santi

THE ONLY THING YOU REMEMBER FROM THE DAY YOU FIRST MET STEVE HARRINGTON IS THAT IT WAS TERRIBLE.

It was one of the hottest summer days in Hawkins. The kind of heat that clung to your skin no matter how still you stood, that gathered at your hairline and slid down your temples in slow, humiliating trails. Every two seconds, another drop of sweat formed on your forehead as you stared at the movers, hands on your hips, jaw tight, listening to them explain again why half your furniture was still sitting on the lawn.

They packed up their truck with lazy efficiency, tossing the last of their equipment inside as if they hadn’t just ruined your entire afternoon. You didn’t pay for those, sweetheart, one of them said with a shrug, gesturing vaguely at the couch you’d waited three weeks for and half of the other boxes. And you don’t have the extra hundred dollars for us to do it.

So that was that.

The engine roared, gravel crunched, and suddenly you were left sitting alone on the front steps of your new house, staring at the overwhelming sprawl of boxes and furniture that might as well have been mocking you. Your new beginning, apparently, came with splinters and sweat and a very real threat of throwing your back out before you’d even slept one night here.

You sucked in a deep breath, steadying yourself, then stood and stacked one box on top of another. The lighter ones first – decorations, lamps, framed photos wrapped in newspaper. Nothing heavy, nothing impossible. Still, a knot of dread settled in your stomach every time your eyes drifted back to the larger boxes, the ones stamped with warnings and arrows and words like FRAGILE in aggressive black letters.

By the time you’d dragged all the small things inside, the sun had finally begun to sink, bleeding orange and pink into the horizon. The air cooled just enough to feel like mercy. You stood in the doorway for a moment, hands braced on your knees, chest rising and falling as you stared out at the driveway.

And there it was. Your new couch.

Big. Modern. Ridiculously expensive for someone who now couldn’t spare an extra hundred dollars to move it inside. You’d been so excited about it, imagined movie nights curled under blankets, lazy Sundays spent half-asleep, collapsing onto it after long days that left your bones aching. Now it just sat there in the driveway, untouched and unmovable, too heavy and too real, like a physical reminder of how alone you were in this moment.

“Hey! Oh. Wow. Nugget, breathe a little.”

The voice reached you before the person did, easy and amused, cutting straight through the tight spiral in your chest. You looked up just as the front door of the house next door swung open.

He stepped out like he was some movie star. Tall, broad-shouldered, with that careless confidence that came from knowing he could handle most things life threw at him. Fluffy brown hair sat perfectly in place despite the heat, and a light blue polo clung to him just enough to make the August sun feel personally insulting. Jeans hung low on his hips. Black sunglasses shielded his eyes, reflecting the disaster of your driveway right back at you.

In one hand, he held a leash. On the other end of it was chaos.

A big, overenthusiastic dog barked happily, tugging forward with his whole body, tail wagging like he’d just discovered the meaning of joy. The man laughed – warm, unguarded – and pushed his sunglasses up into his hair as he took everything in: you, flushed and slightly frazzled; the boxes scattered across the lawn; the furniture sitting there like a bad joke.

“Moving day, huh?” he said, tone sympathetic but threaded with humor, like he already knew exactly how this story went.

He and the dog crossed the small stretch of lawn separating your houses in a few long strides, stopping just in front of you.

“You could say that,” you breathed out with a laugh, half-delirious from heat and stress. You offered your hand and told him your name.

He smiled as he took it. His grip was warm and steady, holding on a second longer than strictly necessary like he wasn’t in a hurry to let go. The dog barked again, clearly offended by the lack of immediate attention, and you laughed, crouching down to bury your fingers in his fur.

“I’m Steve,” he said, watching you with open curiosity. “And this menace is Nugget.”

You glanced up at him just in time to catch his gaze lingering – quickly, respectfully, but long enough to make your stomach flutter before his eyes snapped back to your face. They were soft, warm brown, the kind that made you feel seen in a way that was almost unsettling. Heat rushed to your cheeks.

“Uh.. nice to meet you, Steve,” you said, forcing yourself to stay composed even as your heart picked up speed. “And you too, Nugget.”

Nugget responded by barking loudly and shoving his cold, wet nose into your palm, demanding more attention.

Steve laughed, the sound easy and fond as he watched the interaction. “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “He really likes you.”

“Oh, it’s mutual,” you replied, smiling as you scratched behind Nugget’s ears. “Right, big boy?”

The dog leaned into your touch like he’d known you his whole life. Steve’s gaze flicked past you then – toward the driveway, the scattered boxes, and finally the couch. His expression shifted, amusement softening into something more thoughtful. He nodded toward it with his chin.

“So,” he said carefully, like he didn’t want to overstep, “you, uh… you planning on moving those things in by sheer force of will? Or was there a secret team I missed?”

You followed his line of sight and let out a small, helpless laugh. “I was hoping it might just… feel bad for me and walk itself inside.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, lips twitching. “Couches are notorious for that.”

Then, a beat. He rolled his shoulders, casual but deliberate, and met your eyes again.

“I can help,” he offered, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “If you want. It’s hot, but…” he shrugged, a soft edge to his grin, “I’ve wrestled worse than a couch before.”

Nugget barked as if approving the idea, tail thumping against Steve’s leg. Steve laughed, shifting Nugget’s leash from one hand to the other. 

“See?” he said, jerking his chin toward the dog. “He’s volunteering me now. I don’t really get a say when he decides stuff like this.”

You laughed, shaking your head, and that strange, inconvenient flutter bloomed low in your stomach. The kind that made you feel off-balance in the best and worst way.

He moved your boxes like he’d been put on this earth for the sole purpose of manual labor for cute neighbors – hauling them inside with easy strength, barely breaking a sweat, pausing only to ask questions in between. Where you’d moved from. What you did. Whether Hawkins was temporary or if you were sticking around. Each question landed a little too carefully, like he was memorizing the answers.

And then there was the sofa.

You watched from the doorway as Steve wrestled it through the front entrance, muscles straining under his shirt, jaw clenched in concentration. He glanced back at you over his shoulder, grinning despite the effort.

“You know,” he said, breathless but smug, “most people buy couches after they make friends with their neighbors. It’s a strategy thing.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’ll remember that for next time.”

“Oh, there’s a next time already?” he shot back, flashing you that stupid, charming smile.

Something clicked at that moment. Something quiet and terrifying and perfect all at once. Standing there, watching your handsome neighbor manhandle your furniture like it was nothing, you realized it was the exact second everything both started and ended. Because with Steve Harrington living next door, you were already completely done for.

From that first day on, Steve seemed to take it as a personal challenge to fluster you every chance he got.

Your mornings began to follow a pattern. You’d wake up, wander toward your bedroom window half-asleep and there he’d be. Shirtless in his yard, hose in hand, watering a garden that looked perpetually on the verge of filing a formal complaint. Sunlight clung to his skin like it knew it was allowed to. And it was criminally convenient that your bedroom windows faced straight onto his yard.

At first, you tried to be decent about it. Turn away. Find something to do that didn’t involve staring at Steve Harrington like you’d lost all sense.

But one morning, he finally caught you.

He looked up, squinting against the sun, and laughed when your eyes met. Lifted a hand in an easy wave, grin wide and unapologetic, like he’d been waiting for you to look.

After that, there was no point pretending.

It became a ritual. Every morning, you joined him in the yard. Steve with his hose and his dying plants, you with a cup of steaming tea and a treat tucked into your pocket for Nugget, who adored you with embarrassing enthusiasm. It fastly became a favourite part of your day. 

“So,” you said one day, crouching near the sad-looking tomato plants and inspecting the wilted leaves, “why do you even have a garden?”

Steve leaned on the hose, cold water pooling at his feet as he followed your gaze. “Wow. Okay. Just coming for my life this early, huh?”

You laughed, slightly shaking your head. “I’m sorry, but you don’t exactly scream gardening type.”

Steve playfully rolled his eyes and turned off the hose, turning fully to you. He stole a mug from your hand, took a sip and then gave it back to you. When you tried to protest Steve winked, getting you flustered in a second. 

  “Robin says it’s ‘good for personal growth’ or whatever,” he replied, making exaggerated air quotes. “Something about responsibility. Nurturing things. She had, like, a whole speech prepared. I kinda blacked out halfway through.”

“Sounds intense.”

“It was terrifying,” he agreed solemnly. Then his mouth curved into something softer as he looked at you. “Plus, I think she just wants proof I can keep something alive.”

“Oh… uh…” you bit your lip to stop yourself from asking an embarrassingly inappropriate question but the words slipped out before you could even think about it. “Robin… is she your girlfriend?”

Steve blinked. Once. Twice. Cleared his throat, taking a pause. Those small gestures made you rethink all the choices you’ve made in your life. Something unsettling began crawling its path to your heart. Of course someone like Steve Harrington had a girlfriend! How could you ask it? 

Steve finally looked at you, reading your emotions like an open book. And then he laughed, shaking his head.

“What? No! God, no,” he said quickly, almost tripping over the denial. “She’d kill me for that. She’s my best friend. And my emotional support human”

“Oh” Relief came faster than you expected. You tried not to let it show.

He noticed anyway. A slow, knowing smile tugged at his lips as he tilted his head and bumped your shoulder. 

“Why?” he asked lightly. “You checking if I’m taken?”

Nugget barked at your feet, tail wagging like he was rooting for him.

Steve grinned. “Don’t worry,” he added, eyes warm and teasing. “If I was, I’d tell you. Seems unfair not to.”

Your heart skipped, just once, and that was all it took. The smile gave you away, and even when you tried to hide it, Steve saw right through you. Yeah. You were done for.

By the end of the first few months, Steve Harrington had quietly threaded himself into your daily life. By half a year in, you were inseparable in a way that felt natural, unremarkable, like it had always been meant to happen this way.

Movie nights at your place, sprawled on the couch that had once nearly defeated him, VHS cases stacked carefully on the coffee table. Arguments over genre – him insisting on action or something “fun,” you pushing for romances or whatever looked the most dramatic. Grocery runs together because Steve was the only one with a car, and because it somehow made sense that errands were better when he was pushing the cart and dramatically judging your cereal choices.

Late evening walks with Nugget, when the air cooled and the streetlights buzzed softly overhead. Dinners cooked together in whichever kitchen felt closest that night – Steve claiming it was about saving money and time, though you suspected he just liked having an excuse to hover near you, stealing bites off your plate and pretending it was accidental.

And then there was Family Video.

He’d gotten you the job like it was no big deal. Just mentioned it offhand one night, scratching at the back of his neck, saying they needed help and you’d be perfect for it. He never said it was because he wanted you close. Never said it was because working long shifts felt shorter when you were there. That part stayed unspoken.

You learned fast that Wednesday evenings were always slow. The kind of slow that made the fluorescent lights itch your eyes more than they should, the hum of the store settling into your bones. You were in the horror aisle, sliding VHS tapes back into place, fingers brushing familiar titles – The Shining, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, Inferno. Somewhere near the front counter, Steve and Robin were dealing with returned movies, peeling off old stickers and replacing them with practiced efficiency.

Well. Steve was.

Robin had decided she was on break.

“Dingus,” she announced, leaning back against the counter and taking an aggressive bite out of her apple. “It says here that workplace romances statistically increase company morale and profits.”

Steve hummed noncommittally, focused on smoothing a sticker onto a case of Top Gun. “Uh-huh.”

“So,” Robin continued, chewing thoughtfully, “do you think corporate will give you a raise for your… what’s the term… emotional labor?”

Steve finally frowned and raised his head. But he definitely wasn’t looking at Robin. “What are you even talking about?”

Robin followed his line of sight without missing a beat. You were at the end of the aisle, reaching up to slide a tape onto the top shelf, the ladder wobbling just slightly beneath your weight. Your hair was pulled into a high ponytail, but a few stubborn curls slipped free, brushing your face as you worked. Every few seconds, you paused, exhaling sharply to send them flying back.

“I’m talking about the puppy-dog stare you get whenever Ms. Cute-Sexy-Neighbor exists within, like, a five-meter radius of you,” she said brightly, shifting her gaze back on Steve. “Seriously, it’s like watching a John Hughes movie in real time. Painful. Endearing. Deeply frustrating.”

Steve scoffed, peeling another sticker with more force than necessary. He hated these conversations, hated them more than he cared to admit.

First, because he was painfully, stupidly in love with you, and everyone seemed to see it but you. And second – worse – because you’d made it clear, without ever meaning to be cruel, that he lived safely in the category of good friend. No room for hope. No chance for anything more.

“We’re friends, Rob,” he said tightly, eyes fixed on his hands. “I’ve told you that.”

“Steve,” she said flatly, “you once offered to reorganize her spice rack because she mentioned, once, that it stressed her out.”

“That was being helpful”

“That was foreplay in suburban”

Before he could even begin to form a defense, your voice drifted down the aisle – soft, hesitant, threaded with that familiar uncertainty that always tugged at something deep in his chest.

“Steve?” you called, your words echoing faintly between the shelves. “Can you help me for a sec? I don’t think this ladder is… uh… OSHA-approved.”

Steve’s head snapped up so fast it made Robin flinch, her shoulders jerking as she watched him freeze mid-motion. The half-peeled sticker curled uselessly between his fingers, forgotten the second he heard your voice.

“Yeah… yeah, lovie, I’m coming,” he said instantly, already moving, the words tumbling out on instinct rather than thought. He shoved the stack of sticker sheets into Robin’s hands without even looking at her. “Hold these.”

By the time Robin opened her mouth to respond, Steve was already gone – sneakers squeaking softly against the linoleum as he hurried down the aisle toward you, pulled forward like gravity had finally remembered him and decided to do its job.

Robin watched it all like she had front-row seats in a movie theater, chin tilted, eyes sharp, the kind of look reserved for slow-burn romances and idiots in love who didn’t know they were the main character yet. Disgustingly sweet but yet interesting.

Steve reached you in seconds, hands steadying the ladder before you even fully processed he was there. “Okay,” he said gently, voice dropping into that softer register he only ever used with you. “I got you. Don’t move.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” you laughed, gripping the sides. “I like my ankles functional.”

“Valid,” he said. “Huge fan of ankles.”

You glanced down at him, startled, and he grinned up at you like he hadn’t just said something vaguely scandalous. He took the tapes from your hands and slid them onto the upper shelf with ease.

“Okay,” he said, offering his hands as you climbed down. “Easy. I’m right here.”

His hands lingered at your waist just a second longer than necessary, steady and warm. When you were safely on the floor, he reached up without thinking and tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

Your cheeks heated instantly. You looked away, pretending very hard to be fascinated by the carpet.

“Thanks,” you muttered. “You’re… uh. A good friend.”

Steve smiled, a little crooked. But the word ‘friend’ has left a sour taste in his mouth. “Anytime.”

From the counter, Robin made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan.

Later, when Steve vanished into the back room to grab more stock, Robin wasted no time. She abandoned her post and drifted down the aisle toward you, slow and deliberate, arms crossed over her chest like she was bracing herself.

“So,” she said, aiming for casual and missing by a mile, “how long are you planning on pretending you don’t notice?”

You blinked at her, genuinely confused, or at least convincing enough. “Notice what?” you asked, tilting your head, fingers still tracing the spine of a VHS tape you were putting on a shelf.

She stopped right in front of you, blocking your path, eyes sharp but not unkind. There was something almost fond there, buried under the exasperation, like she was frustrated because she cared. “Steve,” she said plainly, as if saying his name explained everything. As if it should.

“Oh.” You laughed, quick and light, the sound a reflex more than a reaction, and waved it off with a flick of your hand. “Robin, no. He’s just… Steve.” You shrugged, forcing ease into your shoulders. “He’s nice to everyone.”

Even as you said it, you could feel the lie sit strangely in your mouth. It wasn’t quite wrong, but not entirely true either. Nice to everyone, sure. That part made sense. Steve was always nice, helpful, easy, warm in a way that felt effortless. But that didn’t explain the way he lingered when he talked to you, or how his voice softened like he was afraid of startling something fragile.

The real problem was that you didn’t know where the two of you were standing. Steve was Steve. Always joking, always flirting just enough to keep things blurry, but never crossing the line. He stopped right at the edge every time. Even when you wanted him to cross it. So you told yourself it meant nothing. That he was just friendly to you the same way he was to everyone else.

Robin stared at you like you’d just said the most unhinged thing she’d heard all week.

“Sure,” she said slowly, each word measured, deliberate. “And I’m straight.”

You frowned, heat creeping up your neck. “He’s just a really good friend.”

“Mmhmm,” Robin replied, the sound dripping with disbelief. She tilted her head, studying you like a puzzle with one very obvious missing piece. “Well. When you two finally figure it out, I want it on record that I suffered immensely.”

She turned on her heel before you could respond, already muttering under her breath as she walked back toward the counter. “Even Nancy Wheeler didn’t reduce him to this level of sap,” she added, shaking her head as if the injustice of it all physically pained her.

You watched her go, heart doing something strange in your chest, and told yourself again that Steve Harrington was just your friend.

After all, if he wanted more… you’d know. Right?

A couple of months after that conversation, the question faded into the background of your life, tucked away and forgotten. Steve remained his gentle, ever-present self – helping you hang new curtains, showing up with flowers he claimed were “on sale” but somehow always matched your kitchen perfectly. You helped him with the garden in return, kneeling in the dirt beside him, laughing when he complained about bugs, celebrating like idiots when the first tomatoes and basil finally survived his care.

Everything felt easy. Safe. Steve was the best friend you’d ever had, the kind that settled into your life so naturally you forgot to question it. So you weren’t expecting anything. Not tonight. Not ever, really.

Then one night, the lights went out.

You were curled up on the couch, legs tucked beneath you, a stupid late-night TV movie flickering in the background. Not even a good one. Just something loud and forgettable, the kind you didn’t have to follow. A bucket of vanilla ice cream sat melting slowly in your lap, cold seeping through the thin plastic, your spoon clinking softly as you ate without thinking. Nugget was sprawled across your legs, heavy and warm, his full weight pinning you in place, head resting comfortably on your knees like he belonged there.

Steve had bought the ice cream earlier that day, grinning as he handed it to you like it was some grand gesture, thanking you for watching Nugget. He’d said he had to “babysit,” which you both knew meant hanging out with Dustin, Will, Mike, Max, El, and Lucas – Robin included – until around seven. Apparently, Nugget had gone completely feral the last time Steve left him alone. Something about chewed shoes and a very offended neighbor.

So here you were. Ice cream. Dog. Quiet.

Outside, the sky had darkened faster than it should have. Rain began as a soft patter, then grew heavier, louder, drumming insistently against the roof. The weatherman had promised a light spring shower. Hawkins, as usual, had lied.

Lightning split the sky. Thunder followed immediately after, violent and close. The movie droned on. Nugget sighed in his sleep. You were just starting to relax into that quiet, drowsy kind of peace in your warm house when the screen went black and the room dropped into darkness all at once.

You froze, spoon hovering midair.

“Fuck,” you whispered, scrambling to your feet.

Nugget whined, uneasy, nails clicking against the floor as he stood beside you. You crouched automatically, fingers threading through his fur, grounding yourself in something real.

“It’s okay,” you murmured, more for yourself than him. “It’s okay, buddy.”

Your house felt wrong without light. Too quiet. Too big. Shadows swallowed familiar shapes, twisting them into something unfamiliar. The storm raged outside, lightning flashing through the windows, briefly illuminating the room in stark white before plunging it back into darkness.

You realized, with a sharp spike of panic, just how wildly unprepared you were for this. No candles tucked away in a drawer. No flashlight within reach. No backup plan at all. Just you, a dog, and a spoon clenched in your hand like a sad excuse for a weapon, your fingers slick with melted ice cream as fear began to creep into your chest, slow and cold, tightening with every second the darkness stretched on.

Another flash of lightning tore through the room, closer this time, bright enough to paint the front door in stark white for a split second. And that was when you heard it. A sound near the entrance. Not thunder. Not rain battering the windows. Something else. Shuffling. Slow. Careful. Too deliberate to be anything accidental. Your stomach dropped, the fear sharpening into something real, something that made your breath catch painfully in your throat.

You and Nugget moved together toward the door, drawn by the sound despite every instinct screaming at you to stay still. Each step sent a shiver down your spine, your skin prickling as if it knew you were walking straight into trouble. Nugget’s growl rumbled low in his chest, deep and protective, his body tense beneath your hand. You tightened your grip around the spoon, heart pounding so hard it felt impossible that whatever was out there couldn’t hear it, couldn’t sense you standing just on the other side.

Then the handle turned.

Lightning flashed again as the door began to open, the sudden light silhouetting a tall figure in the doorway, all sharp edges and shadow…

You screamed.

The spoon flew from your hand on instinct, as Nugget barked violently and launched himself forward, the quiet of the house shattering all at once.

“Ow, lovie… fuck!”

The voice cut straight through your panic, sharp and familiar, stopping you mid-breath.

“Oh my god! Steve?” you yelped, rushing forward just as a beam of light sliced through the darkness. The sudden brightness made you squint, heart still hammering as the room came back into shaky focus.

Steve flicked on a flashlight, wincing as he adjusted his grip. He stood there soaked from the rain, water dripping steadily from the ends of his hair, curls plastered to his forehead. His jacket was half-zipped, shirt damp beneath it and there was blood. Just a small line, but unmistakable.

The spoon had hit him square in the brow.

“Jesus Christ,” he hissed, touching the spot carefully, fingers coming away red. “That’s one hell of a welcome.”

Your blood ran cold all at once. “I… I’m so sorry,” you blurted, words tumbling over each other as you stepped closer. “Steve, I thought…  I didn’t know it was you, the lights were out and I…”

He laughed despite himself, breathless, shaking his head like he couldn’t quite believe this was how his night was going. “Yeah,” he said, wry. “No kidding.” Then he lifted the flashlight, angling it toward your face and his expression changed instantly. The teasing slipped away, replaced by something softer when he took you in: pale, shaken, breathing too fast.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “It’s okay. I should’ve knocked louder.”

“There was… there was a noise,” you rambled, panic still buzzing under your skin like static. “And the power went out and I didn’t have anything and I thought someone was…”

“Hey,” he interrupted gently, stepping closer. His free hand closed around your wrist, steady and warm, grounding in a way that made your chest ache. “You did good. Seriously. Most people would’ve frozen.”

Nugget barked again, just once, then immediately pressed himself against Steve’s leg, tail wagging hard like nothing terrifying had just happened.

Steve snorted. “Wow. Incredible. Betrayed by my own dog.”

You barely heard him. Your eyes were fixed on the thin line of blood at his hairline, guilt crashing over you in a heavy wave. “You’re bleeding.”

He shrugged it off like it was nothing. “I’ll live.”

“No,” you said, already grabbing his wrist and tugging him toward the kitchen without thinking. “Sit. You’re not dripping on my floor.”

Steve followed, flashlight bobbing with each step, rainwater trailing behind him. He raised an eyebrow, amused even now. “You always this bossy when you’re scared?”

You shot him a look over your shoulder. “You always break into people’s houses during thunderstorms?”

“Only yours,” he replied easily. Then, after a beat, his voice dropped, the teasing edge slipping away as if he’d forgotten to keep it in place. “Lights were out. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

The words hung there, heavier than they should have been, carrying something quiet and honest that made your chest tighten before you could stop it. Steve seemed to realize it at the same moment. He shifted his weight, cleared his throat, the sound a little too deliberate, like he was pulling himself back.

“And… uh,” he added more straightly, forcing lightness back into his tone, “of course to take Nugget home.”

You nodded and gently took the flashlight from his hand, setting it on the counter where its narrow beam cut a pale line across the kitchen tiles. The small light made the room feel strangely intimate, like the rest of the world had been shut out on purpose. You opened the cupboard and pulled out the first-aid kit, your movements careful, deliberate, as if moving too fast might break something fragile between you.

Steve leaned back against one of the stools, the legs scraping softly against the floor. His rain-soaked jacket creased beneath him as he sat, damp fabric darkening the wood. He didn’t say anything. He just watched you.

He watched everything – how you set the kit down, how you peeled it open, how you twisted the cap off the alcohol with fingers that were longer than you realized, just a little shaky despite your effort to keep them steady. He watched as you soaked the cotton, the sharp, clean smell filling the space between you.

When you stepped closer, the air shifted. You felt it immediately, a subtle change, like the room had drawn a breath and held it. Thunder rolled outside, deep and constant, and lightning flashed through the window, briefly washing the kitchen in stark white before plunging it back into shadow.

Steve hissed softly when the alcohol touched his brow, his jaw tightening, but he didn’t pull away. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t look anywhere else. His eyes stayed on you, steady and intent, like he was trying to memorize this version of you – focused, gentle, standing so close he could feel your warmth. There was something in his gaze that made your chest ache, like you were something he hadn’t quite figured out yet. Something precious. Something dangerous.

At Steve’s feet, Nugget lay curled up and snoring, utterly unbothered, blissfully unaware that the world felt like it was ending about three feet above him.

“How are the kids?” you asked quietly, eyes fixed on the cut, grateful for something neutral, something safe to anchor yourself to.

Steve let out a soft huff that almost counted as a laugh. “Unbearable,” he said. “As usual.”

Then his hand slid to your waist.

It wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t rough. It didn’t startle you the way it should have. It was just… there. Warm. Certain. His fingers rested like they’d always known where to go, and he tugged you closer until you were standing between his knees, the space you’d meant to keep vanishing entirely. Your heart slammed against your ribs, a sharp, breathless rhythm, and a shiver ran straight down your spine.

“Oh,” you murmured, trying and failing to sound unimpressed. “You like them, Harrington.”

His thumb traced slow, absent-minded patterns along the strip of bare skin between your top and your sweatpants, each pass sending sparks straight to your nerves. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I do.”

You forced yourself to breathe. Finished cleaning the cut. Reached for a small bandage with hands that definitely weren’t shaking now because of fear. Your fingers brushed his skin as you applied it, careful, gentle, like this was something sacred.

When you finally looked up his eyes were already on you. Dark. Open. Searching. Like he’d been waiting.

Heat rushed to your cheeks, sudden and overwhelming. Every instinct screamed at you to step back, to put space between you, to regain control but his hand held you right where you were, grounding and impossibly steady.

“But I like you more,” Steve said quietly.

The words landed heavy, knocking the air from your lungs. He swallowed hard, his chest rising with a breath that sounded like it hurt to take.

“Steve…” you whispered, your voice barely there.

He shook his head immediately, almost desperate. “No… just… wait.” His hands shifted on your waist, thumbs pressing lightly as he glanced down and then back up at you, like he couldn’t believe how right you felt standing there. “God,” he breathed, a nervous laugh slipping out. “I feel so stupid right now.”

Thunder cracked overhead, close enough to make the windows tremble, and for a moment it felt like the storm had finally found its way inside.

“I should’ve said something sooner,” Steve continued, his voice low and rough around the edges, like it hurt to push the words out. “I just… I didn’t want to screw it up. Didn’t want to lose you.” His jaw tightened. “But I can’t keep pretending this is nothing.”

The kitchen felt like it was getting smaller around you, walls pressing in, air thick and electric. Rain hammered against the windows, relentless, but it all faded into the background. Every sound swallowed by the rush of blood in your ears and the way Steve said your name like it meant home.

“I really, really like you.”

His hand lifted, careful this time, like he was asking permission without words. His palm cradled your cheek, warm and solid, thumb brushing over your cheekbone with care. You closed your eyes without meaning to, leaning into his touch like your body had been waiting for it all along. Steve exhaled softly, a sound somewhere between relief and awe, his gaze dropping to your mouth.

“I haven’t said this to anyone in a long time,” he whispered. “But I think…” He swallowed hard. “I think I might be in love with you.”

Your eyes fluttered open. The low light painted him in shadows and gold – rain-dark hair curling at his temples, lashes casting soft lines beneath eyes full of fear and hope all tangled together. He shifted closer, breathing in your scent. His thumb traced slowly, deliberately, along your bottom lip.

“Would it scare you,” he asked quietly, searching your face like the answer mattered more than anything else in the world, “if I said I love you?”

Something inside you broke, freeing every feeling you have buried inside.

Your hands fisted in his t-shirt, pulling him closer before you could second-guess yourself, before fear could talk you out of it. And then your lips collided.

It felt like the universe cracked open.

Heat and rain and relief and longing all poured into that single moment. His mouth warm and sure against yours, your heart hammering so hard you swore he could feel it. His hands slid down your back, firm and grounding, tugging you closer until there was no space left at all. You made a small, helpless sound into the kiss when the cold of his rain-soaked jacket brushed your skin, the contrast sending a shiver straight through you.

Steve groaned softly, deep in his chest, like he’d been holding that sound back for months.

Your fingers tangled in his damp hair, curls slipping between your knuckles, and you laughed breathlessly as you pulled back just enough to breathe. He didn’t let you go. His arms tightening, lifting you effortlessly into his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Oh my god, Steve,” you laughed, forehead pressed to his, rainwater soaking into your clothes. “You’re so wet.”

He chuckled, low and wicked, lips already trailing along your jaw, your neck. “Yeah?” he murmured against your skin. “Bet you are wet too, lovie.”

You yelped as his teeth grazed your skin – soft, teasing, more promise than bite – and swatted at his shoulder, breathless and trembling, still smiling like you’d forgotten how to be sensible.

“Pervert,” you whispered, fond and ruined.

Steve laughed, the sound vibrating straight through you. He let you lift his chin, let you guide him back to you, and when you kissed him again it was slower this time, deeper, deliberate, like sealing something sacred. His hands held you like you were real, like you might disappear if he loosened his grip.

For a heartbeat, the world stopped breathing with you.

And the next moment, unexpectedly, the lights snapped on.

White and sudden and almost violent, spilling into the kitchen. You squeezed your eyes shut on instinct, your heart slamming painfully against your ribs as reality rushed back in all at once. The room was too bright, too clear, every shadow chased away, every sound suddenly sharp – the hum of the fridge, the TV that turned on the same channel, the rain still knocking against the windows, your own breath coming too fast.

You broke the kiss with a gasp, hands pressing lightly against Steve’s chest even as he followed you, confused and reluctant to let go, like he hadn’t caught up yet.

“Steve… wait…”

He leaned back in anyway, still smiling, still a little dazed, like the moment hadn’t released him yet, and panic flared hot in your chest.

You pressed your palm over his mouth, cutting him off mid-breath. He froze instantly, eyes flicking to yours, startled but attentive. You tilted your head, forcing yourself to listen, now that the storm inside you had quieted enough to hear anything else.

There.

Footsteps.

Soft, hurried whispers.

Movement outside the window.

Your stomach dropped hard, fear curling low and tight.

“Steve,” you murmured, dread threading through your voice despite your effort to keep it steady. “I think there’s someone…”

He caught your wrist gently, easing your hand away from his mouth, and pressed a quick, grounding kiss to your knuckles. His brow furrowed as he studied your face, like he was trying to fit the fear into a picture that suddenly didn’t make sense.

“Hey,” he whispered. “It’s okay. You’re just…”

He stopped short, a low sound rumbling in his chest as realization finally clicked into place. His jaw tightened. He set you firmly back on your feet, his hands lingering at your hips just long enough to make your knees go weak before he straightened and dragged a hand through his already-ruined hair.

“Okay,” he muttered, exhaling hard. “Okay. Don’t be mad, but…”

The front door flew open.

Noise flooded your house in a rush – wet shoes, laughter, voices overlapping like a poorly planned parade bursting through the walls. You stumbled back on instinct, crossing your arms over your chest as the familiar chaos barreled inside, filling every corner of the space that had felt so intimate just seconds ago.

“I told you it would work!” Dustin crowed, clapping his hands together like he’d just won something monumental.

Mike and Lucas exchanged looks that were equal parts smug and proud, guilt flickering briefly before they abandoned it. Max tried to look innocent. El watched you closely, head tilted, eyes curious rather than apologetic. Will hovered near the doorway, already shrinking into himself like he wished he could melt into the wallpaper. His eyes screaming ‘It wasn’t my idea’.

And then Robin stepped in last, rain-damp jacket slung over one shoulder, eyes bright with unmistakable vindication.

You stared at them. Then at Steve. Then back at them again.

“Steven Harrington,” you said slowly, your voice dangerously calm as you turned to face him fully, “would you like to explain why there is a crowd of children standing in my living room?”

Steve opened his mouth, clearly ready to say something then closed it again, jaw tightening as if the words had abandoned him entirely. Beside him, Robin snorted, the sound sharp and entirely unrepentant.

“Okay,” she said quickly, hands lifting in a mock gesture of surrender, “before you murder him with your eyes,” she tilted her head toward Steve, who looked like he might actually pass out, “in our defense? This was a team effort.”

“A team effort,” you repeated flatly, the words landing with dangerous calm.

Dustin beamed, utterly fearless. “We turned the power back on! Hopper showed us how… well, not showed us exactly, but we watched him once and then kind of figured it out.”

“Dustin,” Steve snapped, mortified, face flushing as he shot him a look. “Not helping.”

Robin just grinned at you, wide and unapologetic, like she’d been waiting for this moment all along. “You’re welcome, by the way. He’s been in love with you for, like, a geological era.”

Steve groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “Robin.”

“What?” she shrugged, completely unfazed. “We just… accelerated the timeline.”

Your heart was still racing, caught somewhere between leftover fear and dizzy awe, and the echo of Steve’s hands on your waist hadn’t quite faded yet. You looked at him again and it was all there in plain sight: the embarrassment he couldn’t hide, the relief that made his shoulders sag, the quiet terror of being exposed and underneath it all, the hope he wasn’t brave enough to name.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Rainwater dripped steadily onto your floor, the sound soft and rhythmic. Nugget trotted lazy circles around the group, tail wagging like this was the best party he’d ever been invited to. The kids stood clustered together, soaked through, buzzing with adrenaline and the unmistakable satisfaction of people who knew they’d just changed something irreversible.

Steve let out a breath that was half a laugh, half a groan, rubbing a hand over his face. “I am never living this down, am I?”

“Not a chance,” Max said cheerfully, popping the bubble of tension just enough to make everyone exhale.

Dustin puffed up like he’d been waiting for this exact moment his entire life, chest out, chin lifted, absolutely glowing with purpose. “Okay, but in our defense?” he said, pointing between you and Steve. “You were insufferable.”

Steve shot him a look sharp enough to cut glass. “Hey.”

“No, seriously,” Dustin barreled on, unstoppable now. “Every time we hung out it was like…” he slumped his shoulders dramatically, pitching his voice lower, exaggerated, painfully accurate. “‘Do you think she hates me?’ Or, ‘What if I ruin the friendship?’ Or…” he paused for effect, “‘Robin, what if I die alone?’”

“I never said that,” Steve protested, but it came out weak, defeated, already doomed.

“You absolutely said that,” Robin cut in without missing a beat. “Twice. And once while dramatically staring out the window like you were in a soap opera. There was rain. It was unbearable.”

Lucas crossed his arms, nodding. “We got tired of it.”

Mike nodded too. “It was depressing.”

Will hesitated, then added quietly, almost apologetically, “But also… kind of obvious.”

El tilted her head, eyes moving between you and Steve with that unnervingly calm, perceptive focus that made it feel like she saw straight through people. “You make him happy,” she said simply.

Steve went very still at that, like the words had knocked the breath out of him. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, eyes flicking to you and then away again, like he wasn’t sure he deserved to look.

Robin stepped forward then, rain dripping from her bangs, eyes bright but soft at the edges. “So we made a plan,” she said, almost proud. “Power outage. Storm. You alone. Steve goes full hero mode.” She gestured vaguely between the two of you, a crooked smile tugging at her mouth. “Boom. Emotional honesty”

You stared at them, stunned, disbelief finally catching up to the chaos. “You… cut the power to the whole street”

“Temporarily,” Dustin said quickly. “And responsibly.”

Steve groaned again, this time fully hiding his face in his hands. “I cannot believe you weaponized my emotional vulnerability”

Robin clapped a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “Oh, please. You needed the push.”

You looked at Steve then. At the way he stood too close and not close enough at the same time, like he was afraid of tipping the balance. At the hope he was trying so hard not to show, flickering anyway in his eyes. At the boy who had loved you quietly and patiently, who’d been so careful with your friendship he’d nearly broken himself trying not to ruin it.

Something in your chest softened completely.

As if on cue, Nugget padded forward and planted himself firmly between you and Steve, sitting down with purpose. He barked once, tail thumping against the floor like a final verdict. You laughed, the sound soft and breathless, tension finally spilling out of you, and stepped forward.

“Okay,” you said, voice gentle but certain. “Everyone… thank you. Really. But I think you’ve done enough meddling for one night.”

The kids exchanged looks.

“…So we should leave?” Max asked.

“Yes,” you and Steve said at the exact same time.

They filed out slowly, of course, dragging the moment with them like they always did, commentary flying freely.

“Use protection,” Dustin called, immediately earning a sharp smack upside the head from Robin.

“DUSTIN!”

“Metaphorically!” he yelled back, already halfway down the steps.

Robin lingered in the doorway, rain still tapping against her jacket, eyes flicking between you and Steve with something like satisfaction and care. She smirked, pointing between the two of you.

“Hold that thought,” she said lightly. “We’ll be back to check on you emotionally in, like… twenty years’.

Steve turned to you slowly, like he was giving you space to pull away if you needed it, his eyes searching your face with a careful kind of concern.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

You nodded, the answer settling easily in your chest. “Yeah,” you said. “I am”

His small, real, a little stunned smile came then, like he was still adjusting to the idea that this was actually happening. “Good,” he murmured. “Because I meant everything I said. All of it”

You didn’t answer him with words.

Instead, you stepped closer and reached for him, your hands sliding up his chest, fingers curling into the damp fabric of his jacket like it was the most natural thing in the world. Steve inhaled sharply, a soft, shaky sound, as if he’d been holding his breath for far too long. His hands came up immediately, cradling your face with the same care as before, thumbs brushing your cheeks like he was afraid you might disappear if he didn’t keep touching you.

When your lips met this time, it wasn’t rushed or desperate.

It was warm and grounding and sure, a kiss that felt like coming home. All those months of unsaid things softened and melted into it – every almost, every hesitation, every quiet hope finally finding its place. His hands slid down your body, confident now, settling at your hips and then lower, holding you close like he’d finally allowed himself to believe he could. Outside, the storm had passed completely, leaving the night hushed and calm, broken only by Nugget’s tail thumping happily against the floor like he was celebrating.

The Polaroid flashed.

You startled just enough to break the kiss, laughter spilling out of you as you rested your forehead against Steve’s, still smiling, still breathless. Robin stood a few feet away, already waving the developing photo in the air, her grin nothing short of triumphant.

“For the record,” she said, entirely too pleased with herself, “this is going on my wall.”

Steve groaned, dropping his head back for a second. “I hate you.”

“You love me,” she shot back instantly. “And you’re welcome.”

Then she was gone, pulling the door shut behind her, leaving the house quiet at last. No witnesses, no chaos, just the two of you standing there, still a little stunned.

“I think we need to take them all for a picnic,” you said softly, pecking his lips, warmth curling through you. “As a thank you.”

“We’ll discuss it tomorrow, lovie,” Steve mumbled, already smiling as he lifted you up without effort, kissing you again soft and certain, smiling right into it like he couldn’t help himself.

And this time, you knew.

Everything – every step, every misstep, every ridiculous power outage – had led you exactly where you were supposed to be. 

After all, if he wanted more… you’d know. Right?

thankx for reading <3

okay, I hope you liked it. this whole thing was honestly just a random idea that popped into my head, and I couldn’t let it go, so I sat down and wrote it. I ended up spending half the night editing before work because I was way too hyped about this story and really wanted it to feel right before sharing it with you.

I really hope it turned out good and that my sleepless night wasn’t for nothing.

as always, you’re more than welcome to share your thoughts in the comments or in my inbox. your words mean a lot to me and they motivate me to keep writing, even on nights when I probably should be sleeping. so I’d really, really appreciate it if you told me what you think about this one :3

– your santi 🪐

YOU HAVE ALWAYS FOUND SOMETHING ABOUT A SPRING AFTERNOON THAT MAKES THE WORLD FEEL DISHONEST. The light is too eager, the pollen too thick in the air, the streets too full of people pretending happiness is a natural response to the sky remembering how to be blue. You walk with your head down, boots scuffing against the cobblestones, heart already tightening with the familiar edge you carry into every room, the one that keeps you alert and guarded before anyone else can get too close.

You weren’t going to come.

You told yourself that twice while brushing your hair out, once while slicking on eyeliner and choosing the right shade of lipstick – the one James complimented not long ago, casually, like it hadn’t lingered in his mind the way it had stayed in yours – and a final time while standing on the threshold of your dorm, phone warm in your hand, glaring down at James Potter’s undignified dump of text messages.

Swing by the quad Free pizza Your fav soda Sirius is dying to meet you. Says anyone who makes me rewrite an entire script deserves canonization Never mind Please come

You’d left him on read, rolled your eyes, and slipped your phone into the back pocket of your jeans like it didn’t mean anything, like the small hitch in your chest hadn’t already given you away. (It does. It means too much.)

And yet, thirty minutes later, you’re here, standing on the uneven pavement at the edge of the university yard, eyes drifting over the crowd as you look for a familiar shape of unruly hair, open posture, that soft charm that always feels slightly out of place on someone who pretends he doesn’t care as much as he does. You’re not here for Sirius Black, no matter how many times James has mentioned him, and you’re certainly not here for the pizza.

You’re here because there was something in that message that unsettled you, a gentleness threaded beneath the humor, a quiet hope that felt dangerously like affection, and you’re still not used to people wanting you around simply because they want you there, not because they need something from you, not because you’re useful, not because you fit into a role they’ve already imagined.

James Potter might be the first.

You find them leaned against a railing that overlooks the south lawn – James, Sirius, Remus, Peter. The whole gang. The quartet you’ve heard about since the first week of the very first term, not because they were campus celebrities or frat boys (though Sirius Black might qualify by the end of the day), but because they’ve been inseparable from the start, bound by art and something else that seems to run in their blood. Apparently, they’re the good chaos kind of people, golden boys with art degrees and black smudged permanently under their fingernails. The Family, as James mentioned once, like it was a fact rather than a choice.

James is wearing a navy hoodie two sizes too big, curls still damp from a shower taken too quickly after practice. His treasured Canon EOS 5D Mark II rests carefully on his lap, paired with the new 24–70mm L-series lens his mum sent him, the one he’s still trying to understand – how it works, what it sees, whether or not he loves it yet. He’s laughing, head tipped back into the afternoon sun. The sight of him lands in your chest like a punch you hadn’t braced for.

And suddenly, more than anything, you want to turn around and run, to retreat into the sanctuary of your dorm with a family-sized bag of Cheetos Puffs and All About Eve playing for the thousandth time, pretending you could ever be half as sharp or cynical as Eve Harrington.

But James Potter sees you before you can change your mind, before you can vanish into the crowd like you were never here at all.

“There she is!” he calls, already pushing himself upright, nearly forgetting about his precious camera, and when you see it start to slide from his lap your heart jumps, horror freezing in your expression. Thank God Remus catches it just in time, muttering something low and pointed to James, who either doesn’t hear him or chooses not to. All of his attention is on you now, undivided and disarming.

“God, I thought you’d ghosted me,” he says softly when you meet him halfway across the pavement, hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans, looking at you like you’re some kind of miracle rather than a girl who almost didn’t show up.

“I considered it,” you mutter, doing your best to sound unaffected, like his voice doesn’t do something strange and warm to your insides. (There’s a funny feeling in your stomach that refuses to be ignored.)

James only grins wider, because of course he does – bright and unstoppable, like a sunrise. He doesn’t touch you, James is careful like that, but he shifts just enough for his shoulder to line up with yours, an unspoken invitation rather than a demand. You don’t lean into him, not exactly, but you don’t step away either.

James looks at you and you feel this stupid ache in your chest, like gravity itself wants you closer to him. You’re silent, as always. You’re never silent with James. Not anymore, at least. But in front of the others you keep your walls firmly in place, because when there are strangers you don’t know what to say or which version of yourself you’re meant to offer so they’ll like you. And you do want them to like you, because they’re his friends, because they matter to him, even if you would never say that part out loud.

James sees it anyway. He always does. He notices the hesitation in your eyes, the small crease between your brows, the way you start picking at the skin of your thumb with your nail, your posture going straight and distant, almost military, like you’re bracing for impact. He smiles softly before turning to his friends, whose curious gazes flick back and forth between the two of you.

“Boys,” he says, pride unmistakable in his voice, “this is her. The girl who made me reshoot the alleyway scene four times because I forgot to give her actual dialogue. My miracle. My actress. My muse.”

Your expression twitches despite your best efforts. You close your eyes for a second and take a slow breath, because you did warn him about calling you that in public, about how it makes something tight coil in your chest. But the Marauders don’t even blink.

Sirius Black lets out a low whistle and claps his hands together like he’s just stumbled upon a hidden treasure. “So you’re the one who made him rewrite his ending and stop acting like Nolan with a head injury.”

Sirius is as pretty as the rumors say – sharp cheekbones, too much eyeliner, an heirloom smirk that looks like it’s been passed down through generations. His hair falls in layered waves like a lion’s mane, stopping just above his shoulders, and his eyes shine with constant mischief. You start to understand why half the campus seems permanently undone around him. He looks like a rock star straight out of the nineties, effortless and a little dangerous. Sirius Black is… exceptional.

Music and sound production faculty. He’s already written a handful of short soundtracks for some of James’ earliest films, back when they were barely in their first year. You’ve seen those shorts, heard those compositions, and you’d be lying if you said they weren’t good.

You study him carefully, arms crossing over your chest as you try not to smile. “I hope you’re not always this charming.”

“Only when I’m scared,” Sirius says easily, chuckling as he winks at you.

You just shake your head, unimpressed, or at least pretending to be.

Remus Lupin is sitting a little apart from the others, perched on the upper steps of the north wing with a worn copy of The Decameron resting loosely in his hands. He looks up when he notices you and offers a soft, almost careful smile, like he’s afraid of startling you. 

You’ve met Remus a couple of times before, back in the literature seminars at the beginning of your first semester, and you remember how completely paralyzed you were by the sheer depth of his knowledge, the way he spoke about texts like they were living things rather than dead words on a page. He helped you more than once with essays you only needed to pass the elective, never making you feel foolish for asking. 

James once told you Remus was an English Literature major, the one who always helped him rewrite scripts and hunt for the right phrasing, because James was good at many things but written words were never his strength – he was far too impatient for them. Back when they were still in school, Remus used to listen to James talk himself breathless with ideas and quietly write everything down, offering gentle advice on how to shape a plot, how to let it breathe.

“Don’t mind him,” Remus says now, nodding vaguely in Sirius’ direction. “He’s been dying to meet you. We all have.” His voice reminds you of autumn leaves crushed underfoot – warm, soft, and reassuring in a way that sneaks up on you.

Peter Pettigrew remains the most mysterious of them all. You don’t know much about him, mostly because James rarely speaks about him, only ever mentioning that Peter is painfully shy and prefers staying back at the dorm to study. You don’t even know his exact major, just that it’s somehow connected to media production.

He hovers on the edge of the group, eyes flicking nervously between faces, before finally stepping forward and offering you a paper plate like a peace offering. You don’t take the pizza, but you nod your thanks anyway, because the thought of eating feels impossible when you’re this overwhelmed, this aware of every sound and movement around you.

James’ fingers brush lightly against your wrist as he nods toward the lower steps where he’d been sitting before, the brief contact sending something electric straight through you. You hesitate for a few seconds before taking the seat, leaning back against the railing, and James settles beside you easily, a small smile playing on his lips like he’s pleased you stayed.

The moment stretches, heavy with unspoken expectation, but no one rushes to fill it with small talk. They’re all just looking at you, not in a way that feels invasive or cruel, just openly curious, like they’re trying to understand where you fit among them.

Some of the tension drains from your body without you noticing when it happens, and for the first time in a long while you don’t feel like a wild animal trapped in a room of glass walls.

James leans closer, his voice lowered so only you can hear. “Do you want to eat? I’ve got a green apple in my bag. Your favorite.”

“I’m good. Thanks,” you say, biting gently at your lower lip.

He nods, like he expected that answer all along.

Someone mentions a classmate’s short film, Sirius immediately tosses in a brutally honest critique, Remus counters it with a thoughtful defense, and Peter changes the subject before it can turn into a proper argument. You sip your drink, the one James gallantly handed to you earlier, watching the exchange unfold, choosing not to speak unless there’s a reason to. You can feel them registering it, the way you hold yourself slightly apart, the resistance in your posture, the razor-edged wariness you carry like a second skin. None of them challenge it, though. They let you be as you are. They wait.

You’re halfway through checking the time on your phone when James gets called away to help someone with sound equipment. He squeezes your hand, quick and reassuring, promising to be back soon before disappearing inside the university building. The moment he’s gone, you stiffen, like a wire pulled too tight, your one tether abruptly cut.

Now it’s just you and the other three. What a nightmare.

For a few seconds, no one speaks, and you find yourself expecting them to stand and follow James inside, because why would they want to stay with someone like you – too guarded, too distant, too easily mistaken for arrogant. You frown without realizing it, too caught up in your thoughts to notice Sirius shifting closer until his presence edges into your space, close enough to feel.

When his voice finally cuts through the silence, you flinch despite yourself.

He strikes a match with theatrical precision, shielding the flame from the breeze as he lights a cigarette. “Smoke?”

You hesitate. You don’t usually smoke. You used to, though, back in your rebellious high school years, when nothing in your life felt stable except your ambition and the family you loved but never quite felt seen by. It was a short chapter, full of bad company and worse influences, one that burned out almost as quickly as it began.

Your gaze drops to the cigarette again. Then you take it, your fingers brushing his as you accept it, because you’re too tense and you need something, anything, to take the edge off.

Remus raises an eyebrow, watching you with quiet interest. “He said you were fireproof,” he says mildly. “I see what he meant.”

You take a long inhale, let the smoke curl slowly past your lips, watching the pale cloud rise and disperse into the afternoon air. “I’m not fireproof,” you say evenly. “I just don’t flinch.”

The boys smile. You don’t.

“Do you like acting?” Remus asks after a moment. He sounds genuinely interested in the answer, not like he’s asking out of politeness, and you make a conscious effort not to let that sink too deeply under your skin.

“I like doing it with people who know what they’re doing,” you reply, your gaze drifting toward the building James disappeared into, because something in your chest is starting to ache again, tight and insistent, like it needs him nearby just to breathe. How stupid. You need it to stop. “He’s one of the only ones who does.”

Sirius smirks around his cigarette, studying you like he’s already catalogued every one of your tells, even the ones you haven’t figured out yet. “You’ve got it bad.”

You blink. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve got the 'I’m Not Into Him But I Memorized Him' expression.”

“Do not assign feelings to me,” you snap, though there’s no real heat behind it, just the habitual prickle you use to keep people at a distance.

You huff out a breath, take one last drag from the cigarette, and hand it back to Sirius. His smirk only grows, and when you glare at him he shrugs innocently, like none of this is his fault. Somehow, that softens something in your chest.

Remus speaks again, quieter this time. “He talks about you like you’re sunlight.”

That does it.

You look down, fingers tightening around the edge of your jacket as your nails find the familiar spot on your thumb again, scraping at skin you’ve never quite managed to leave alone. You try to scoff, but it comes out too soft, too breathless to be convincing.

“He’s dramatic,” you say, already bracing yourself to deny whatever conclusions they’ve drawn, even as your heart starts beating a little faster in your ribcage.

“We all are,” Sirius says lightly. “That’s the job.”

And there’s something unexpectedly gentle in the way he says it, something that leaves you unsure how to respond. You’re used to people pushing, poking, wanting closeness only so they can break you open and see what spills out, but this feels different. It’s like standing in a room with all the windows open – exposed, maybe, the breeze sharp enough to sting, but still clean, still better than stale air. You don’t know what to do with that feeling, so you stay quiet, finishing the last of your soda.

You leave not long after, saying you have an essay ti finish that doesn’t exist, and from the looks they exchange it’s obvious they know you’re lying. It doesn’t seem to bother them.

Remus tells you that he and Peter were glad to finally meet you and that it would be nice to hang out again when you have some free time, squeezing your hand softly as he does. You surprise yourself by smiling back, small and almost shy. Peter just nods, still quiet, still watchful. Sirius, of course, smirks, pressing a lighter and a fresh pack of cigarettes into your hand like it’s a ceremonial offering for the start of your friendship. You roll your eyes and turn to leave.

Naturally, Sirius can’t let you go without making it a performance.

“I’ll tell your director you had an emergency and couldn’t wait for him!” he shouts across the yard.

You don’t turn around, but a full smile pulls at your lips as you walk away. Maybe coming here wasn’t the worst decision after all. Even so, the ache in your chest lingers, restless and wanting, still reaching for something – someone – just out of reach.

Later, when the sun is already dipping beneath the horizon, James finds you. You’re sitting on the library steps, legs crossed at the ankle, a half-finished cigarette hanging loosely between your fingers. Courtesy of Sirius Black. Scattered beside you are the pages of the script for the spring performance, the one where you’ve once again been pushed into the background, handed the stupid role of a servant with a maximum of five words in the entire play. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you show up or prove yourself, at the end of the day James Potter still feels like the only one who sees something more in you.

He sits down beside you without asking. You don’t react, your gaze fixed on the darkening line of the sky. From the pocket of his jacket, James produces the remains of a chocolate bar and offers it to you before breaking off a piece for himself and popping it into his mouth.

“You seem to be the only one who can stand me, director,” you mutter with a crooked grin, crushing the cigarette against the concrete step and tossing the butt into the bin nearby.

Your head tips slowly to the side until your temple rests against the cold metal of the railing. Your thoughts are buzzing, loud and overlapping, and your chest still aches with a familiar sense of injustice. You’ve been working all semester, giving everything you have, and for what? For the role of Mary Warren in The Crucible?

Without even realizing it, you stamp your foot in irritation, and James laughs out loud.

“I knew it,” he says, grinning as he breaks off another piece of chocolate. He reaches for the script and flips through it casually. “So who are you this time? A statue in a museum?”

“Mary Warren,” you mutter, snatching the pages back from his hands. “Three whole scenes, five lines, and thank you very much a monologue at the end!”

You jump to your feet and begin pacing back and forth in front of him, frustration spilling out of you with every step. James’ eyes follow you intently, like you’re the most interesting thing in the world, like nothing else exists in this moment.

“What’s wrong with me, James? Huh?” You stop in front of him and steal the chocolate straight from his hand, taking a bite and chewing too quickly, too angrily.

James props his chin against his palm, smiling softly. His free hand drifts forward, fingers brushing against yours, and you don’t even notice, too caught up in the momentum of your own words.

“I deserve more, don’t I?” His smile widens and he nods, like he’s giving you permission to keep going. “But no one likes me… even when I try, and try, and try, and try. It’s like I’m the most untalented person on the planet to them.”

Without thinking, you lace your fingers through his, squeezing his hand as if grounding yourself, and James’ eyes catch the glow of the streetlights flickering on above you.

“Sometimes it feels like you’re the only one who can tolerate me,” you continue, a small pout forming on your lips as you finish the last bite of chocolate. “Even your friends didn’t like me.”

You’re not sure where all of it came from, the words tumbling out before you can stop them, but after you left earlier the ugly thought had settled in your chest – that the Marauders were only kind to you because of James, because of proximity, not because they actually liked you and now it refuses to let go.

“I didn’t say that,” he interrupts you finally, and you frown at him, already opening your mouth to argue, but James shakes his head before you can get the words out.

“They don’t give you roles because you’re too good,” he says instead, calm and certain in a way that makes your chest ache. “And one day the whole world will see it just as clearly as I do through my camera lens.”

He smiles, lifts his camera, that is hanging off of his neck, with his free hand, and snaps a quick photo of you before you can react. You yelp and laugh despite yourself, the sound escaping you as you feel your body begin to loosen, tension slipping away without permission.

Something inside you contracts all at once, tight and overwhelming. You blink rapidly, suddenly aware that there isn’t quite enough air in your lungs, that every sense feels sharpened to an almost painful degree. You feel the warmth of his palm still in yours as you squeeze it, and when the realization hits, your eyes widen in shock. You jump back like you’ve been burned, shoving your hands behind your back as if that might undo it.

“Potter… you! Stop flirting,” you say, forcing the words out as you try to regain your composure, feeling your cheeks heating up.

James just laughs, shaking his head as he stands up, and you take an instinctive step backward.

“I’m just telling the truth,” he shrugs, tipping his head back to glance at the sky. “And for what it’s worth, my friends liked you. Sirius won’t shut up about you.”

You squint at him and let out a slow breath. “Your friends aren’t as insufferable as I thought.”

James grins. “I’m flattered.”

“But don’t expect me to start hanging around,” you add, snatching the script from the steps and turning toward your dorm. He doesn’t look disappointed. Not even a little. “And you and your Marauders,” you go on, glancing back at him, “who even came up with that ridiculous name?”

“Trade secret, muse,” he says easily, hands sliding into the pockets of his jeans as he falls into step beside you. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you.”

He glances at you, expression open and steady. “You can hang out with us or not. It doesn’t really change anything. You’re already part of it.”

You don’t answer, but your gaze lingers on him anyway – on the crooked, gentle smile, the way his hair never quite behaves, the way his eyes light up when they find yours, how calm everything feels around him, how you don’t have to perform or prove anything just to exist. A soft smile slips onto your lips, fleeting and unguarded, and James Potter catches it, tucks it carefully into that mental Muse folder he keeps just for moments like this.

It lasts only a second.

But it feels like the beginning of something you don’t yet have the language for.

thankx for reading <3

i won’t say i’m back, but this series is the one thing that still makes me happy. writing about them comes so easily, especially on days when i have no mood for anything else.

i wrote a lot over the summer and at the start of autumn (all of your requests are sitting safely in my drafts) but lately i haven’t had the strength to edit and post them. i’m also working on a big winter project centered around james potter, a long and really dear fic (it’s already at 14k), but i can’t seem to find it in me to edit that either.

i don’t know… i’ve just been feeling a bit useless lately. still, i hope i’ll be able to share it soon.

anyway, i’d truly appreciate any feedback, whether in the comments or in my inbox :3

                                    – your santi 🪐

LOUD LAUGHTER ROLLS ACROSS THE SANDY BEACH, carried by the wind and folded into the low crash of waves breaking against the shore. It fills the grey hush of the evening. Fills something in JJ too, something deep in the chest where warmth rarely lives, something that feels dangerously close to home.

The clouds have been gathering all afternoon, stacking themselves like bruises above the water. Now the rain comes harder, colder, slicing through the humid air in sheets, and you, of course, don’t care in the slightest. Your clothes are drenched, the thin white shirt clinging to your skin until the pale yellow of your swimsuit shows through like sunlight behind fog. Your dad’s oversized jacket hangs crookedly off your shoulders. Your hair – soaked, wild, sticking to your cheeks – should make you shiver.

But instead you throw your arms out wide and spin in the sand as if the storm were a stage built just for you, as if every drop of rain were a gift falling straight into your palms.

Thunder growls somewhere in the distance, a low warning crawling across the horizon and you only laugh harder. A laugh that sends something bright and reckless skidding through JJ’s ribs. Your appearance, your voice, your entire presence breaks over him like the tide. You’ve always been a siren to him, calling him closer without trying, without even knowing. He looks at you the way a drowning man looks at the surface – with a kind of desperate reverence. As if you’re the only air left in this entire world.

“Don’t look at me like that, Maybank.” 

Your voice is soft, almost teased through a smile, and though the sky is dark, your eyes catch the thin slice of moonlight between clouds, turning them into something he’d swear he could sail by. Something that glows like a galaxy trying to fit itself into human shape.

At the sound of your voice, everything in him curls tight – not with fear, not like it used to when his father opened his mouth, but with a fierce, treacherous wanting that makes him feel unsteady. Dependent. Starved for a warmth he never believed he could have.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

Enchanted. Captivated. Spellbound. The word doesn’t matter – the truth does. Every breath he draws now has a purpose. You. And somehow that purpose both destroys him and makes him feel more alive than he has ever been.

“Come here, Jay,” you whisper or maybe he only thinks you do. 

The rain is too loud to be sure of anything. But then you reach out your hand, palm open, fingers trembling with cold and something tender, and that’s all it takes. JJ catches your wrist and pulls you into him with one sure, instinctive movement.

Your bodies collide with a sound that’s almost a gasp. He wraps his arms around your waist, drawing you in until your chest is pressed to his and there’s barely enough space left between you for breath to exist. Your forehead touches his shoulder, damp hair clinging to his throat, and he drops his head against yours like he’s finally found the place he was meant to fit. Heat surges through him the moment your skin brushes his – warm, bright, expanding in every direction like sunlight trapped under his ribs.

The rain hammers against the sand, against the jacket sliding off your shoulders, against his back. You raise your head, and he looks down into your eyes – and there it is again, that impossible infinity he always finds in them, the one that makes him feel small and huge at the same time.

Your lips brush along his jaw, feather-light, and his entire body lights up like someone struck a match along his spine. The world shrinks until it’s only you, only this moment, only the sound of rain and breath and his heart stumbling in his chest. He’s ready to spill every secret he’s ever held, even the ones you already know. Even the ones he’s afraid of. Because when you look at him like this – like he’s worth something, like you see him – he feels anchored. Chosen. Home.

“I love you,” he murmurs, barely more than breath, leaning in to press a soft kiss to the corner of your lips. A small, reverent thing.

You smile. Soft, luminous even in the storm and nudge your wet nose against his cheek.

“Wait for me,” you whisper.

And then everything falls apart.

The dream shatters in an instant. Not gently, not like glass, but like something heavier, something that takes the breath with it when it breaks. Peace evaporates. Tranquillity is gone before he can even reach for it. All that remains is the darkness of JJ’s small room in John B’s house, swallowing him whole with its familiar cold and the kind of loneliness that tastes metallic on the tongue.

For a few seconds he can’t move. His eyes hang open in the pitch-black, unadjusted, useless. Cold sweat beads at his spine and slides down in thin, uncomfortable lines, soaking the waistband of his boxers. His chest heaves as if he’s been sprinting through a nightmare instead of sleeping in one.

“Fuck,” JJ whispers into the suffocating silence. 

His hand drags over his face, fingers pushing into his messy hair. It’s gotten long again. Even too long. He tugs at the ends just to feel something that isn’t the hollow ache gnawing its way through his ribs. But it barely cuts through the emptiness.

Your laughter is still there, echoing off the inside of his skull like it never left. The memory of your smile, the storm-drenched glow of your eyes, the warmth of your skin pressed to his – all of it spills through him in a dizzying rush of déjà vu so vivid it hurts. He can almost smell your perfume in the room’s stale air, still clinging to fabric and corners despite the fact that Sarah’s the only reason the window ever gets cracked open.

JJ shakes his head hard, as if he can rattle the memories loose. As if shaking off thoughts of you has ever worked. But every moment you spend together replays behind his eyelids like a film he doesn’t know how to turn off. The images stutter and repeat and loop until he’s breathless from wanting something that isn’t there anymore.

He swings his legs off the mattress, misjudges his footing, and his heel crashes into a half-drunk beer bottle. The glass clatters across the wooden floor, spilling warm, sticky liquid that spreads across the boards. JJ barely looks at it.

He needs air. He needs out. He needs to escape the hell he built himself when he lost you.

His hand reaches for the hoodie draped over the back of the chair, the one he’s been wearing like a second skin lately, the one heavy with old bonfire smoke and bad decisions. It slides over his shoulders in one practiced motion. In the pocket, his fingers brush a crumpled pack of cigarettes, then his skin is touched by the cold kiss of metal – the lighter. His jaw tightens.

Nicotine. That’s all he has now.

He quit smoking weed for you or maybe because of you. He thought he could climb out of the swamp he grew up in, that he could cut chains and be someone different, someone better, someone warm in the way you made him feel. He used to joke that you were like the sunlight he carried in his pockets. 

Now every day without you feels colder. Dimmer. Colourless.

He traded one addiction for another, and he knows it. Knows exactly what he’s becoming with every cigarette. Knows the resemblance creeping into his reflection – the shadow of a man he swore he’d never be. The shadow of Luke Maybank. The thought alone chills him deeper than the dawn air.

Outside, the world is just beginning to wake. Birds murmur hesitantly from the trees. The horizon blushes with pink and gold, the kind of quiet sunrise that used to seem beautiful when you stood beside him. JJ steps onto the porch and sinks onto the old, scuffed couch, its springs groaning under his weight.

His body moves without thought  – cigarette between lips, lighter flick, small flame caught between trembling fingers. The tip glows, then softens into smoke. The first inhale loosens something tight and painful in his chest. It always does. Relief, thin and temporary, seeps through him as he exhales toward the sky, watching the smoke dissipate and vanish into the cool morning air like a ghost.

Four years have passed since the night he tore his own world apart on this very porch. Four years since he last held you in his arms, last breathed warmth into the cold corners of his body, last felt you pressed to him like the only thing keeping him from falling clean through the earth. 

Four years – a lifetime for some people. But for JJ Maybank, it’s the blink of an eye. The nightmare he hasn’t been able to run from. The memory, tearing down his very existence, leaving rent free in his head.

He just turned twenty, grown in all the wrong ways and none of the right ones, yet somehow still standing in front of you like the same boy who used to swear the sun rose only because it wanted to light your face. He stands there, fists buried so deep into the pockets of his shorts that the knuckles ache. He stands there biting back the desperate, wild urge to gather you into his arms and never let you go, to seal you against his chest and pretend you were something he could still keep.

But he doesn’t move.

He just stands and watches as tears slip down your cheeks in trembling rivers – the kind of tears he used to wipe away with his thumb, whispering promises he meant with his whole heart. Your hands reach for his wrists, fingers trembling as you try to pull him back into sense, back into the boy you still loved. But he only shakes his head, jaw clenched so tightly the muscles quiver. He pretends his heart isn’t splitting in two, pretends your touch doesn’t make him want to crumble at your feet.

“Jay, don’t do this to me,” you breathe, your voice so soft it feels like a bruise on the night air.

You search his eyes for even a flash of the love you always found there, but all you meet is the cold mask he’d practiced in the mirror for hours before this moment. “I- I… love you.”

Three words. A flame. A spark. A prayer. A surrender.

Three words and inside him something collapses with a violent, silent snap. But on the outside he doesn’t move. Doesn’t even flinch.

He stands there, frozen in the kind of pain you’d never recognize, because he’s learned how to bury it. He knows he’ll hate himself more if he lets you stay. Hates himself already for making you love him enough to leave your dreams behind last year. Hates himself when he imagines you in a few years, sitting at a kitchen table you don’t like, telling your children that your biggest mistake was staying in North Carolina. That your biggest mistake was loving a Maybank who never managed to become more than the life he came from.

So whatever he had to do to make you leave… he did. Whatever lies he had to spit, he spat. Whatever cruelty he had to pretend he felt, he forced into his voice.

Because you’d already given up too much for him.

A whole year stolen from you. A year you should’ve spent at university with your friends, dragging each other out of bed for early lectures, sharing notes and inside jokes, studying in libraries until dawn, dancing at student parties, living the life you’d whispered about since you were a kid dreaming of something bigger than this island.

He wasn’t stupid. He saw the way you watched your friends’ Instagram stories with that small, aching smile – the kind that tried to be happy for them but never quite made it. He saw the university acceptance letter you shoved under the bed, wrinkled from how many times you’d read it, a painful ghost of the future you hid because you didn’t want him to see. He saw how your face lit up when you talked about your friends’ classes, their professors, their stupid campus gossip and the way your voice dimmed right after, as if you suddenly remembered where you weren’t.

He saw all of it. And he hated himself for being the reason you weren’t there.

That’s why he ended it. Not because he stopped loving you but because he loved you enough to let you go. Or at least that’s the lie he tells himself at three in the morning, chain-smoking on this same porch where he broke both of your hearts.

Ending things was supposed to be easier. It wasn’t. Not for a single second since.

JJ let out a long, exhausted sigh and tipped his head back, staring up at the fading stars scattered across the dawn-pale sky. They were barely visible, dim fireflights drowning under the early glow of sunrise, but he stared at them anyway because that was the last thing he remembered doing the night you left.

Back then, he’d believed he’d spoken to you for the last time on that old porch of John B’s house. He’d believed that walking away would save you, even as his heart cracked under the weight of it. And he’d been right: a week later, after days of being ghosted by the boy you loved, after every text was left on read and every call went to voicemail, you’d finally lost hope. 

You packed your life into your father’s car and left the island.

That morning, JJ found himself on your street before he even understood why his feet had carried him there. He made it as far as the old oak tree across from your house, the one with the crooked trunk and the roots pushing through the sidewalk, and that was where everything inside him just… stopped. His courage, his breath, his whole stupid heart. He stayed hidden in the shadow of the tree, fingers digging into the rough bark as if he could anchor himself to it. He didn’t dare step out, didn’t dare let you see him. All he could do was watch.

He watched you hug the Pogues goodbye, arms wrapped tight around them as if you were holding yourself together. Watched you smile – a soft, brave little smile that didn’t reach your eyes. Watched your father lift your bags into the car with shaky hands. Watched the door slam shut, closing away the last piece of home he ever really had.

And then he watched the car pull away. Watched it shrink down the street. Watched until the taillights disappeared and the silence rushed in like a wave.

You drove off, and he stayed rooted to the spot, standing among all the things he didn’t say, all the things he wished he’d told you, all the pieces of himself he never managed to show you before it was too late.

The next day, his phone lit up with a single text from you. Just two words.

Wait for me.

JJ stared at the screen through the blur of a hangover and leftover tears. Maybe it was the alcohol still running through his blood. Maybe it was hope. Or maybe it was the part of him that only ever beat for you but he typed back one word he shouldn’t have sent.

Promise.

Then your number went dead. Disconnected, deleted, gone. And so were you.

Time didn’t heal anything for him. It just kept going, dragging him forward while everything else around him crumbled piece by piece. His father vanished again, slipping away from the cops like he always did, and left JJ with the familiar wreckage: debts he never made, threats he didn’t deserve, promises that never meant anything, an empty house that echoed when he walked through it, and a hundred things that needed fixing because no one else would.

He started working long days at the old garage, letting the smell of oil settle into his skin and letting the endless hours numb whatever hurt too much. Nights ended the same way: bars with sticky counters, cheap drinks, loud music, or in the spare room John B kept for him, where he’d knock himself out with enough alcohol to guarantee dreamless sleep. Four years slipped past like that. Heavy. Flat. The same every day.

And all that time, you were living a life on the other side of the country.

He saw pieces of it on social media. The green campus lawns, faces he didn’t know, the world you were building without him. He studied every photo like it had answers hidden in the corners. Were you happier? Colder? Did you forget him? Did you still smile the same way?

But the worst part was that you hadn’t changed in the ways he feared. You still had that quiet warmth, that soft confidence that always pulled people in, the same bright spark in your eyes. You kept growing, blooming even, while he stayed stuck exactly where you left him. Still the same boy you once held onto in the rain.

The dreams were the hardest part, especially at the start. For two whole years, you came to him almost every night. Sometimes you were laughing, sometimes your eyes were wet, sometimes you slipped your hand into his like you used to whenever the day had been too long. He’d wake up gasping, heart pounding, crushed between the sweetness of seeing you and the pain of realizing it wasn’t real.

But eventually the dreams became less sharp. Less frequent. He still remembered your face, but parts of it began to blur. The exact way your smile tilted, the constellation of tiny moles on your skin, the soft smell of your perfume when you leaned into him. Even your laugh, once so clear it could stop him in his tracks, faded into something softer, distant.

He hated forgetting. Hated how memories slipped away no matter how tightly he held them. But when the dreams finally stopped altogether… life got easier. Quieter. A little colder, maybe but bearable. A kind of emptiness he could at least breathe inside.

And then everything he’d built around you – every wall, every layer of numbness, every bit of denial – collapsed the moment he saw you again last week.

He was only passing by The Wreck to drop off Kie’s forgotten sweatshirt, half-asleep and thinking about nothing, when he glanced through the big front window… and froze. 

You were there. Right there.

Sitting at a table with your family, sunlight catching in your hair. Your head was thrown back as you laughed, that soft open laugh that always made other people look up, that filled the whole café like it belonged there. You looked older in a way that didn’t push him away, older in the way time makes someone settle deeper into themselves. Brighter. Softer. Beautiful in the kind of way that made his chest hurt. 

You didn’t see him, but JJ felt the world tilt under his feet anyway. Felt something punch the breath straight out of him. Felt all those feelings he’d buried years ago clawed their way up like they’d been waiting for the smallest crack to break through.

By the time he made it back to the chateau, his pulse was still racing. And then he saw them, Kie and Sarah, sitting on the porch with their drinks, eyes wide and too-bright, studying him like he was a puzzle finally starting to solve itself. That’s when it clicked. Of course they knew. Of course they’d planned it.

They’d kept in touch with you all these years: visiting your campus on long weekends, calling you, laughing with you, carrying pieces of you back to the island. Pope too, whenever he was home from his university near you, always dropping stories about you when he thought JJ wasn’t listening. But JJ heard every single one. He cherished them like secret treasures – tiny sparks of warmth inside a cold cage he’d grown too comfortable living in.

And John B… John B was the only one who stayed on JJ’s side in his own way. The only one who didn’t bring up your name, not because you weren’t speaking anymore, but because he’d seen what it did to JJ every time someone did. He’d seen the way JJ crumpled at the sound of your laugh floating from a phone speaker. He’d seen the spiral, the breakdowns, the nights filled with nothing but guilt and missing you. So he never pushed. He just stayed, always ready to catch him, always the brother who didn’t need blood to be family.

That night, the dreams slipped back into JJ’s mind like they’d never left. Except now they were painfully sharp. Your voice brushing his ear, your fingers threading through his, your breath warm against his skin as you whispered his name the way only you used to.

You were close enough to feel real again. Close enough to reach. But still somehow impossibly far. And that distance… That endless, aching space between who you were in his memories and who you were now, felt like it was ripping him open from the inside out.

JJ took one last slow drag, letting the smoke burn right down to the filter before tapping the cigarette into the ashtray overflowing with old buds. Sarah was definitely going to yell at him to clean it. She always did. But right now he didn’t have it in him to care.

He ran a hand through his hair, brushing the damp strands off his forehead, and sighed. He really needed a haircut. Something simple – a trim from Kiara or maybe even a buzzcut just to start over entirely. You used to hate that idea. You loved running your fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp, catching little knots just to make him complain and then laugh. You always said cutting it short would be a crime, that his hair was one of the few things in the universe that actually listened.

Maybe that was why he never did it. Even after you left. Even when it got heavy and messy and made him look like someone he barely recognized. A version of himself that existed mostly because you’d once loved how soft he was beneath all the rough edges.

He let out a quiet, almost tired laugh. He’d give anything to find that version again, the one with the spark in his eyes, the one who actually looked forward to mornings, but he felt buried deep somewhere he couldn’t reach anymore.

The sand under his feet was cool and steady when he stepped off the porch, grounding him more than the cigarette ever could. He walked toward the shoreline, the early air hitting his face sharp and salty. The sky was opening into a soft blue, clean and new, but he didn’t feel new at all. Still, he kept walking. Each step carried him farther from the chateau and a little closer to breathing normally again. The waves rolled in and out steadily, loosening the tightness in his chest.

But the memories followed, gentle at first, then stronger.

Your hand slipping into his as naturally as breathing. Your laughter bouncing across the beach when he chased you through the sand. The way your eyes lit up when you spotted the ice cream truck and how somehow his wallet always ended up in your hands. The scent of your perfume trapped in his sheets long after you left. Lazy mornings tangled under blankets, whispering about futures you couldn’t fully imagine but wanted anyway. Your surf lessons, mostly you wiping out, mostly him pretending not to laugh. And the things etched deepest into him: your body pressed warm against his, lips tasting like summer and salt, your breath on his neck, the way you looked at him when passion made your eyes glow like sunrise.

He kept all of it. Held it carefully, terrified he’d forget and hating that he remembered so well.

JJ’s steps slowed as he climbed over the little ridge of rocks, dropping down onto the hidden stretch of sand that had once been yours. Yours. A place that felt like a secret you both guarded. He hadn’t come here once since the breakup; the beach always felt off-limits, like crossing into it would split him open again. Being here used to feel like choosing to bleed.

But this morning – quiet, half-lit, the world still sleepy – the place didn’t hurt him. Not like before. For the first time in four years, it felt soft again. Familiar. Like the beach remembered him just as much as he remembered it. Like something inside him shifted, settling into a shape he had forgotten he once fit into. This place was the one golden chapter he hadn’t managed to destroy.

He sank into the sand near the waterline and let the silence sit with him. The sea barely moved, a slow breath against the shore, and the horizon melted into pale blue and gold. JJ leaned back, letting the cool sand hold him, and closed his eyes. For the first time in a long while, breathing didn’t feel like work.

He remembered the day he knew, really knew, that this was where he wanted to propose to you. The idea had burst through him so bold and certain it almost knocked the wind out of his chest. After that, he replayed it over and over in his mind, like a memory from a life he never got to live.

He pictured the two of you spending the whole day here, warm and sun-dazed, the world narrowed down to your laughter and the steady thump of the waves. You’d be sitting on a blanket after swimming, drops of water sliding down your skin, your hair sticking to your cheeks. He’d wrap you in a towel, drag you onto his lap, and kiss you too many times while you squirmed and complained with a smile you couldn’t hide.

Later, when the sky turned hazy and golden, he’d build a small fire and open a bottle of wine he’d saved up for. Or maybe he’d steal something from your dad’s cellar and pretend he didn’t. You’d laugh at him for that, teasing him until his ears turned pink. You’d share pizza straight from the box and talk about everything and nothing, the pointless little things that always made him feel like the world wasn’t so heavy.

And when the sun finally dipped low and the moon took its place, he’d play your favorite song, that slow one you always put on before bed, and hold out his hands. You’d pretend to roll your eyes but you’d still walk into his arms, letting him sway with you in the uneven sand. He’d whisper that he loved you more than anything he’d ever known. And just when you relaxed into him, he’d drop to one knee.

He could still see it: his fingers reaching into the ripped pocket of his old shorts, pulling out the small gold ring he’d found in his dad’s closet when he was just a kid. He’d kept it all these years, hidden away like a promise he was never brave enough to speak out loud. Knowing his luck, the ring would probably fall through a hole in the pocket or slip from his shaking hands. You’d laugh so hard you’d cry, calling him an idiot and kissing his forehead while he tried to keep his heart from exploding.

But in the end, he knew you would’ve said yes. He believed that in the deepest part of himself. And in the life he once imagined that simple yes would’ve been the start of everything. 

You and him. Walking off this beach and into a whole future together. One that lasted a lifetime. In that world, you didn’t leave. And he never had to learn what it meant to lose the future he’d already imagined down to the smallest detail.

“Um… can I join you?”

For a moment JJ honestly thought he made the voice up – just another ghost his mind liked to throw at him when mornings got too quiet. He’d imagined you so many times that hearing you now didn’t feel real. But then the breeze carried your voice again, soft and careful, and something inside him jolted awake.

He pushed himself up so fast the world tilted. You were standing just a few steps away.

The rising sun framed you in gold, like it was pulling you out of the past and setting you gently into the present, right onto the small patch of sand he’d been hiding on. Your hair was tangled from the wind, strands sticking to your cheeks. A faint blush warmed your skin, like the walk had taken something from you, or maybe speaking had.

You were swallowed by a worn blue hoodie with the emblem of your university, sleeves pulled all the way over your hands, as if you needed something to hold onto. Your denim shorts were dusted with sand, legs bare, knees lightly scraped like you’d wandered through the rocks instead of choosing an easier path. You looked older, softer around the edges, but still so painfully familiar it made him feel seventeen again.

JJ’s throat closed up. All he managed was a stiff nod, and even that felt like too much. He turned his head toward the horizon as if the morning sky suddenly demanded all his attention. He felt the sand shift under your steps. Then the soft weight of you settling down beside him.

Your perfume drifted over to him. The same one he used to breathe in against your neck, while leaving soft kisses first thing in the morning. It hit him so hard his eyes nearly closed on their own. For one dizzy second he was back in old summers, when everything felt easy, when you’d stolen his hoodie and laughed into his chest, when life didn’t feel like a battlefield.

You let out a quiet breath and pulled your knees up, fingers brushing through the sand between you. He noticed your hands first. He always did. Your nails were painted that clean white you’d never given up, and there, on your wrist were the tiny scar from the cooking incident with Sarah. He remembered kissing that spot once, just to make you stop crying.

That little detail, untouched by time, cracked something deep in him.

“Thank you,” you said softly.

JJ went still. The word hit him wrong: too gentle, too unexpected. He stared ahead, every sense sharp like he might be dreaming again.

You cleared your throat. Your fingers kept moving through the sand, sifting it like you needed something to do with your hands. Your voice trembled even though your expression stayed steady.

“Thank you for letting me go four years ago.”

The knot rose in his throat so fast it hurt. You didn’t look at him, maybe you couldn’t. But JJ saw the shimmer in your eyes from the corner of his vision. He knew you were holding back tears. You’d always hated crying in front of anyone, even him, even when your walls slipped and he held you through it. And hearing you thank him – for something that felt like losing the only good thing he’d ever had – felt like the sharpest cut of all.

“I was crushed,” you said, and the way your voice trembled under that small, almost apologetic smile made JJ’s chest twist. It wasn’t an accusation. Somehow that made it worse. “I didn’t know how to breathe without you. Back then… I loved you so much I didn’t leave room for anything else. I forgot myself. My own life. My own plans. I thought being with you was the whole world. I thought it was enough.”

You swallowed hard, blinking fast, your lashes catching the early light like they were trying to hide what was gathering behind them.

“And maybe that’s why I needed you to end it,” you whispered, and something in your voice thinned out, like a loose thread pulling from a sweater. “Because if you hadn’t… I never would’ve walked away. I never would’ve learned anything about who I am now.”

Your fingers curled into the sand as if you could hold onto something solid. The grains clung to your skin, catching in the faint tremble of your knuckles. JJ watched your hand, remembering all the times it had rested on his chest, in his hair, on his cheek. Now it was holding nothing.

“And for a long time,” you breathed, “I hated you for it.” 

The confession came out small, honest. “But now… I don’t. Now I think it saved me.”

You drew a slow breath, letting the ocean fill your lungs. The morning air carried that sharp, salty bite you’d almost forgotten – the same one that soaked into every hoodie of his you smuggled off to university. The ones you kept buried at the back of your closet. The ones you clung to on lonely nights when you still didn’t know how to sleep without him. You used to press your face into the old cotton and pretend the steady thud you imagined beneath your ear was real. But when you opened your eyes, there was only empty light and quiet ceilings and a version of you trying to rebuild from scratch.

“And then you let me go,” you murmured, your breath ghosting across your knees. “You made it easy to leave. Or maybe you made it impossible to stay. And everything fell apart… but then it came back together.”

A small, wry smile tugged at your mouth, so fragile it barely held shape. JJ didn’t move. He didn’t trust himself to. His silence stretched between you – warm enough to say he heard every word, cold enough to remind him none of this erased the past.

“So thank you,” you said, barely louder than the waves. “Thank you, JJ.”

The moment his name slipped from your lips, a wave of emotion coursed through him, leaving him momentarily breathless. You sat so close he could see the fine trembling in your shoulders, the way the oversized hoodie swallowed you but couldn’t protect you from the truth you were spilling out. Your nails dug small half-moons into the sand. Your lashes trembled against your flushed cheeks, revealing the emotional toll of the morning.

And JJ wanted – God, he wanted – to reach across the small space between you. To drag you into him the way he used to, to press your head under his chin, to hold you until the world finally gave you both a break. But that wasn’t his place anymore. That wasn’t his right.

So he stayed absolutely still and sat beside you like a shadow. He let the silence lie between you, accepting the past without trying to change it. He didn’t even let himself breathe too loudly, terrified that one wrong move might shatter the fragile peace you were both trying so hard to keep standing.

Seconds dissolved into minutes, and neither of you shifted even an inch. Time moved the way it always had between you – soft around the edges, stretched thin, slowing itself just enough to make the moment feel like a fragile bubble suspended between breaths.

“I couldn’t live with the idea of you hating me,” he finally said, his voice barely louder than the push of the tide. “Not for chasing your dreams. Not for… everything I ruined.”

The last part cracked in his throat. He looked away quickly, the muscles in his jaw tightening until it almost hurt to watch.

Overwhelmed by the weight of unspoken words, a sudden flash of frustration broke through him – a sharp, reckless thing – and he snatched a stone from the sand and hurled it into the water. The splash split the calm surface with a harsh, ugly sound. You startled at the noise, shoulders jumping, and he closed his eyes as if punishing himself for it.

“I could never hate you, JJ,” you said, your head snapping toward him before you even realized you’d moved. “Never.”

Your voice shook with urgency, as if the truth had been building behind your ribs for years and finally found a crack to escape through. It was the first time you truly looked at him since you’d walked up to the beach, and when your eyes met his, something familiar and dangerous unfurled in the air – the same spark that had always existed between you, refusing to die no matter how hard life tried to change it.

He had changed. His hair was longer now, brushing the nape of his neck in soft curls you had to force yourself not to reach for. There was a roughness to him you didn’t remember. Harder angles, a sharpness that came from long nights, long losses. His smile lines had faded, replaced by faint creases along his brow, as if worry had become a habit. He stared stubbornly at the horizon, holding himself still like one wrong glance might break him in half.

And then, as if he heard the pulse of your heartbeat begging him to look at you, he finally turned.

His eyes caught yours. Blue, soft, familiar. And everything inside you stopped.

Because beneath all the grit and exhaustion, the warmth you’d once fallen into was still there, the quiet sincerity that he never showed anyone but you. It flickered to life like an old flame catching air again. Your chest tightened, your breath tangled in your throat. Seeing him like this – older, bruised by life, but still him – made something inside you cry out, a feeling that was too big to swallow and too dangerous to say.

“I’ve… loved you too much for too long,” you confessed before your mind could stop your mouth. The words trembled into the space between you and stayed there, glowing like a lit match.

JJ stilled. Love. Not past tense. Not a memory. Your voice hadn’t carried distance or closure; it carried the weight of the present moment. He stared at you as if the world had tilted, as if everything he thought he’d buried suddenly clawed its way to the surface. His breath caught in his chest, refusing to move. The sand beneath him might as well have dropped away, leaving him hanging between disbelief and hope so sharp it almost hurt.

You still… what? After four years? After university, after new friends, after every guy who had tried to replace him and failed? After he had broken the version of you that once loved him with every piece you had? 

No. It couldn’t be real. It felt too much like one of the dreams that used to torture him, the ones where you whispered his name in the dark and reached for him just before he woke up alone again. This was impossible. It had to be.

Any second now, he expected the whole scene to rip at the seams, the colors to bleed out, the sand to dissolve, the air to thin until he woke in that dim, claustrophobic bedroom at the chateau, the sour taste of last night’s beer still on his tongue. That was how it always ended. Every dream of you collapsed the same way: darkness swallowing light, hope folding back into emptiness, your voice fading just as he reached for it.

But the minutes ticked by. One. Two. And you didn’t vanish. You stayed right there – knees tucked close, sleeves pulled over your hands, eyes fixed on him with a steadiness that felt unreal. You didn’t fade. You didn’t blur. You didn’t run.

You waited. Waited for him to speak, or breathe, or fall apart. Waited for him to choose you or walk away. Waited like you had every right to sit inside the ruins of his morning and ask for the truth.

“Don’t do that,” he whispered at last, the words scraping out of him like they’d been trapped too long. “Don’t… don’t stay. Live your life. Forget this place. Forget me.”

His voice cracked, and before he could hold himself still, he shook his head hard, as if he could shake you out of this moment, and surged to his feet. The sand slid under him, but he pushed forward anyway, desperate to outrun the pressure building behind his ribs. His hands shook. His breath came uneven, ragged. Every step felt wrong, too heavy, like the whole world was leaning on him from behind, shoving him toward a future he never wanted.

The sky dipped. The shoreline tilted. He felt himself breaking all over again, like he had four years ago when he watched your car drive away and couldn’t force his legs to move.

The next second he felt a small, sharp pull. Your hand on his wrist.

The sand clinging to your palm scratched his skin, but he didn’t even notice. Your touch hit him like diving into ice water – shocking, electric, mercilessly alive. His whole body locked in place, breath trapped in his throat as if time had snapped its fingers and commanded him to be still.

“You promised to wait,” you whispered.

The words trembled, fragile as sea glass, but they cut through him all the same. He turned just enough to see your face, tears catching the early light, turning your lashes into tiny drops of gold. And suddenly it struck him: He had waited.

Every single day. Every empty morning. Every sleepless night when he lit cigarette after cigarette just to keep the silence from swallowing him. Every shift at the garage, every drink, every dream, every stupid hope he tried to drown. He had waited like something in him had been tethered to you, stretched thin but unbroken, refusing to snap even when everything else inside him did.

And now you are here. Real. Solid. Holding on to him like you still knew his pulse by heart.

JJ swallowed hard, chest tightening until it almost hurt to breathe. For the first time in years, he realized that waiting had never been the curse he thought it was. It had been a promise. A quiet one. A stubborn one. A living one.

“I’m waiting,” he breathed.

The words fell out of him shattered and raw. The truth of four years compressed into three small syllables. He turned toward you fully, letting himself give in just a little, letting the wall he’d built crack where your fingers touched him. His hand rose slowly, hesitantly, as if frightened the world might break if he moved too fast. His fingertips brushed your cheek, trembling as they found familiar skin. Your eyes fluttered closed at the contact – soft, trusting, like you’d been holding that breath for years.

And when he felt you lean into his palm, something inside him split wide open, flooding him with a warmth he hadn’t felt since the day he lost you.

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. The moment said everything.

Everything else – the sand, the horizon, even the hush of wind moving across the water – slipped out of focus. There was only you. Only this fragile, impossible now that he had carried inside him for four years. Every sleepless night, every lonely morning, every ache he had tried to bury seemed to settle right here, in the space between your breaths. He would have given up anything to stay in this moment. He would’ve handed over his whole life if it meant he could keep you this close.

“I’m still waiting,” he whispered again, the words brushing the space between your mouths, frayed and aching. It wasn’t even a confession, it was the truth he had lived inside for years.

Tears streaked down your cheeks, warm and unrelenting, and JJ lifted his hands to your face, brushing them gently against your skin as if he could somehow carry the weight of them for you. The storm wasn’t in the sky. It was here, in you, spilling into his hands, into his chest, into the hollow space he had carried for years. It brought a rush of hope and fear and longing so fierce his knees wobbled, his ribs pressed tight against the breath he couldn’t fully pull in.

But he held himself up. He had to. Because you were here, trembling as you clung to the fabric of his T-shirt like it was the only thing keeping you steady. Your lashes glittered with tears, your breath hitched, and when you looked at him it was with the kind of raw devotion that could break a man clean open.

In that gaze, he remembered how to exist again.

“Take everything,” he murmured, voice thick and warm and a little broken. “Everything I’ve got… it’s yours. It’s always been yours.”

He pulled you closer until you were tucked against his chest, the crown of your head under his chin. The first sob shook through you, quiet and tight, and then another followed, heavier. You cried like a dam finally giving way, like you’d been holding the whole ocean inside your chest for years. JJ wrapped his arms around you and held you through all of it, letting your tears sink into his skin, into his heart, into the years he had lost without you.

“Take everything,” he whispered again, breath trembling against your hair. “Just… don’t leave me this time. Please.”

It wasn’t desperate, not really. It was honest. Painfully, beautifully honest. Every word carried the weight of the nights he’d lain awake imagining your face, the mornings he’d opened his eyes to an empty pillow, the long stretches of time where he’d tried to forget you and failed.

You clung tighter, sliding your arms around his waist as if you were trying to fold yourself into him, to fit into every space you used to fill. And he held you like you belonged there, like you had never left.

JJ lowered his forehead to your hair, breathing in the scent he’d never been able to replace. Your sobs softened slowly, turning into shaky breaths, and he let each one settle into him like a heartbeat. When he finally lifted his eyes, the sea was calm again, stretching out in a long, quiet line. The sunrise slipped over the water, pouring soft gold into the waves until everything glowed – the sky, the sand, the two of you tangled together as if the world had built this morning just for you.

He pressed a small kiss to the top of your head – gentle, steady, a promise spoken without words – and wrapped his arms around you, refusing to let even an inch of distance return.

You stayed there with him, curled against his chest, feeling the warmth of his breath and the solid beat of his heart. And in that fragile, glowing moment, every broken piece of the past seemed to ease just a little. The years fell away. The hurt loosened its grip.

You were here. You were real. And finally you were in his arms again.

thankx for reading <3

i don’t think this is my best work. something feels a little off, like it’s missing something, but i can’t quite put my finger on it. maybe it’s just been a long time since i sat down and wrote something for you. lately, i’ve mostly been writing just for myself. i might share some of those pieces later, but this time i won’t make any promises about publishing soon, because every time i do, i hit a block and can’t even edit my drafts.

i’d love to hear your thoughts on this one, though. lately, i’ve been feeling low on motivation, and maybe your feedback or even just your remarks could be the spark i need to write something new.

so, I’d really appreciate feedback — whether in the comments or my inbox! :3

  – your santi 🪐

A COOL BREEZE DRIFTED THROUGH THE HALF-OPEN BALCONY DOOR, gently stirring the curtains and carrying with it the scent of the sea. Somewhere in the distance, waves whispered against the shore, lulling you deeper into sleep. Since JJ had left – since the salty wind and sun-soaked warmth that once clung to your sheets had faded – you hadn’t been able to sleep without the window cracked open. The ocean air filled the room like a memory, curling softly around your limbs, wrapping you up in something that almost felt like him. And somehow, with the scent of sea salt in your lungs and the echo of waves outside, the distance between you didn’t feel quite so impossible.

BZZZ. BZZZ. BZZZ.

The phone buzzed against the wooden surface of the nightstand, its sound cutting through the silence and pulling you from that fragile space between dream and waking, an hour suspended in darkness, when the world feels neither fully real nor entirely gone. Eyes still heavy with sleep, you reached for it blindly, the screen glowing in the shadows as you brought it close, squinting through the blur. 

Unknown number. 

A soft sigh slipped past your lips as your head dropped back into the pillow. Your thumb hesitated for a moment, then tapped the green icon almost without thought.

At first, there was only static. Just the distant crackle of a weak connection and the weight of silence stretching out across the line – long enough for your finger to hover uncertainly over the screen, ready to end the call. But then, through the quiet, a voice broke in – rough, unmistakable, and laced with something desperate. 

“Hey! Shit… -hi. Baby, is that you?”

It was his voice.

You sat upright in an instant, the sheets tangling around your legs as you clutched one to your chest like a lifeline. The sudden movement filled the room with the rustle of fabric, but otherwise everything was still, too still. Your whole body went still with it. Every muscle locked. Breath caught in your lungs like it had nowhere to go. The walls of the room seemed to close in, the night folding tighter around you, thick with memory and silence and the echo of a voice you hadn’t heard in too long.

“Please say something,” JJ pleads, his voice ragged, breathless, like he’s just sprinted across town with the weight of the world on his back. You can hear him curse under his breath, then let out a shaky exhale that crackles against your ear. “I… uh… I’m not even sure if this is still your number. I’ve had it in my head so long it feels like it’s tattooed behind my eyes, but I swear to God, if I dialed the wrong one… damn, sweetheart, say something. Please.”

His voice is uneven, laced with a desperate kind of humor that almost masks the tremble underneath. He’s trying to keep it light, to pretend he’s not falling apart, but there’s something fraying at the edges like a string pulled too tight and starting to snap.

You open your mouth, but no sound comes. Your heart is too full, too stunned by the sheer reality of him. It’s not ink and paper anymore, not letters scrawled in haste, not memories softened by time, not a voice imagined in dreams. 

It’s him. Real. Alive. 

Breathing into your ear like a ghost that somehow made its way back through the static.

And just like that, you’re wide awake. Your eyes fly open. Your body locks up, tight as a coiled spring. Blood rushes too fast through your veins, drumming in your ears, sending your heart into a frenzy. Your grip tightens around the phone until your knuckles burn, as if letting go might make him disappear again.

“Love?” he says again, quieter this time, the word breaking gently against the silence. “I swear if this is a wrong number, the next twenty letters are gonna be my emotional unraveling.”

Still, you say nothing. You want to. God, you want to say something, anything, but your throat closes around the words. They clog up like a lump behind your sternum, and everything beneath your ribs burns with the ache of air you can’t seem to draw in. You feel like a fish dragged suddenly onto dry sand – shocked, gasping, suspended in a moment you didn’t know you were waiting for. Your eyes sting, your chest tightens, and it feels like if you speak, even a single word, it’ll all unravel into tears. And you can’t have that. Not yet. Not now. Not when his voice has just returned to you after two long months of silence.

JJ keeps talking because that’s what he does when silence stretches too long and starts to feel like a threat. He’s always hated those heavy pauses, the ones where doubt creeps in like a spider scaling the walls, silent and certain. And the realization of it – how little he’s changed – makes the corners of your mouth twitch upward into the ghost of a smile. Of course he keeps talking.

“Damn, I’m sorry,” he mutters, almost to himself. “Didn’t mean to sound so desperate, I just…” He lets out a sharp breath, one that sounds like disappointment carved into sound. “It’s been so long since I’ve heard your voice. I mean, letters help… don’t get me wrong… but they don’t laugh. They don’t bite back. They don’t tell me off when I’m being an idiot. They don’t call me dumb when I deserve it.”

You still haven’t said anything, and now your hands are shaking. You draw your knees up under the covers, curling into yourself like you could somehow shield your body from the ache blooming inside. But it’s already too late. 

He’s here. 

In your room. 

In your ear. 

Under your skin.

Again.

“I keep hearing you in my head, sweetheart,” he says, quieter now, his voice low and vulnerable, like it’s meant just for you. “When I fall asleep. When I’m out running. When it’s dead quiet at night and I’m the only one still awake… –I hear your voice. But it’s never loud enough. I keep thinking… if I heard the real thing again, if I heard you for real, I’d know I wasn’t losing my mind.”

You finally exhale. Not a word, just a breath, fractured and full of everything you still can’t say.

But that’s enough.

“There you are,” he murmurs, and there’s something in the way he says it that breaks you open. It’s not quite a relief. Not joy either. Just this soft, wrecked sound, like some pressure inside him has finally cracked and spilled. “God, I thought I imagined you.”

You try to speak, but your voice trembles at the edges. “I didn’t think…” You pause, swallow hard. “I didn’t think you’d call.”

“I didn’t think I could,” he admits, voice warm with weariness. “Had to trade two energy bars and a busted pen just to borrow a satellite phone with shit reception and, like, three minutes of talk time. Honestly? Highway robbery.”

You laugh then – quiet and unsteady, like the sound isn’t quite sure how to exist in your mouth. It breaks the tension, but not the emotion. There’s too much between the syllables, too much air, too much ache. And even though JJ doesn’t laugh back, you can feel the grin in his silence like warmth through the phone.

“I’ve missed this,” JJ says, quieter now, like he’s almost afraid of the silence after.

You lean back slowly, pressing yourself into the headboard as the blanket slips from your shoulders. Your grip tightens on the phone. Your eyes drift to the faded green glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling – dim now, after all these years, but still burning soft against the dark like they refuse to disappear.

“You scared the hell out of me,” you whisper. Your nose starts to sting, and you wrinkle it, trying to keep the tears at bay. One finally slips free and slides down your cheek. “I thought I was dreaming.”

He goes quiet. Then comes his voice, low, a little rough around the edges. “Well… if it is, let’s not wake up yet.”

You smile, even as the tears keep falling. “It’s not.”

There’s a pause. You hear him breathing – just breathing – like he’s afraid to say more and mess this up. Faint sounds echo in the background on his end, rustling, muffled voices drifting in and out, but none of it feels real. Only him.

“I’ve been thinking about that morning,” he says eventually, clearing his throat. “When I was walking away and you yelled after me… told me you loved me.”

Your chest tightens. But your lips curve into a small smile as the memory flashes back – his boots hitting the pavement, his bag already slung over one shoulder, that dumb grin tugging at his mouth, all swagger until it softened. You hadn’t planned it. It just spilled out because you couldn’t let him go without saying it. Not then.

“I love you,” you say, barely more than a breath.

“Shit,” he breathes out, and then he laughs, hoarse and unfiltered. You don’t need to see him to know his head’s tipped back, his hand probably dragging down his face as he grins. “I really didn’t think I’d hear you say that again.”

You let out a shaky sigh, wiping your cheeks with your sleeve. “Yeah, well. I kinda had to.”

There’s a beat of silence, softer this time. Then his voice drops, like it’s coming from somewhere deeper. “You didn’t just say it, you know? You rewired my whole damn brain.”

You let out a quiet, tear-soaked laugh. “Okay, that’s dramatic.”

“I kissed you,” JJ says, voice low, like he’s dragging the words out from a place that still stings. “Then I had to get on that damn ship and act like I hadn’t just completely lost it. Spent the next hour trying to breathe like a normal person… trying not to stare at the spot where your hand touched my face for the last time.”

The ache hits you like a tide – deep, aching, not just physical but something heavier, something that claws at your ribs. It’s the kind of wanting that comes with remembering what you lost, and the memory leaves a bitter twist in your gut, crawling beneath your skin.

“Do you still think about it?” you ask, softer than you mean to. Because you think about that moment every single day. Sometimes in flashes, sometimes like it never left.

“All the damn time,” he says, no hesitation. “And not in that cheesy romcom way, like the kind you made me watch that one time, with a guy holding a rose between his teeth or whatever. It’s just… stuck. That second’s burned into my brain. Like it branded me.”

You drag the back of your hand across your cheeks, trying to pull yourself back together, to keep your voice from breaking again. But JJ goes quiet. And then he asks, his voice dropping into something quieter, more careful.

“Hey… are you crying?”

You don’t answer. You can’t. If you try, if you even breathe a word, you’ll break wide open. You want him here – not in your ear, not a voice over the line – but right here, real, warm, within reach. The sob slips out before you can stop it, soft and raw. You press your hand over your mouth, but it’s too late.

“Shit,” he mutters, voice cracking. “Baby… don’t. Don’t do this to me. I can’t take it.”

Another sob rises. Quieter. Smaller. But it hurts more somehow, because he’s still not here.

“Baby,” he says, harsher now, like he’s trying not to fall apart. “You don’t have to say anything. Just… fuck, just let me talk. Let me say dumb shit for a second, okay?”

You nod. He can’t see it, but somehow, he knows.

“I need to hear you breathing,” he whispers.

So you do. You breathe. Deep, slow, painful breaths. You let the silence hold the weight of that day – on the dock, in the heat, the last time you touched. You let it say everything you can’t.

“How’s home?” he asks after a moment. “What’s it like?”

His voice is soft again, but there’s something in the way he says it like the answer means more to him than he wants to admit.

You take a deep breath and sink deeper into the pillows, curling inward as if the mattress might hold you together. The phone is tucked between your shoulder and cheek, warm against your skin, your fingers still clutched tight around it like it’s the only real thing left tethering you to him. The ache in your chest hasn’t lessened since he spoke your name, but at least now it has a shape – a voice, a laugh, a memory you can reach out and touch.

“It’s the same,” you murmur, your voice drowsy and low. Your gaze drifts up to the ceiling where the glow-in-the-dark stars still cling, barely visible in the soft dark of your room. “Sarah’s about ready to pop. Everyone’s counting down. Kie’s convinced the baby’s going to show up during a thunderstorm, you know… for maximum drama. She says his godfather wouldn’t have it any other way.”

JJ chuckles, the sound crackling softly through the speaker, rich and familiar like summer wind. “Told her the kid’s got style if that’s how he enters the world.”

You can’t help the small grin tugging at your lips. “So you’re planning to live up to the role then?”

“Hell yeah,” he says, without missing a beat. “I’m gonna be the favorite. Uncle Chaos. Teaching him all the wrong things and none of the useful ones. It’s gonna be legendary.”

Your smile widens, despite the lingering ache behind your ribs. You can already see it – JJ barefoot on the beach, hoisting a tiny giggling kid up in the air, sand flying everywhere, both of them covered in sun and trouble. You picture the mischief on his face, the light in his eyes, the way he’d look back at you as if to say see what I made?

“And the others?” he asks, quieter now.

“They’re okay,” you say, pulling the blanket tighter around your legs. The breeze from the balcony carries in the scent of salt and distant night jasmine. “Pope’s buried in books again, researching something none of us can understand. I stopped pretending I did. John B still swears HMS Pogue runs smoother without you.”

JJ lets out a sharp laugh, and for a second, it fills the whole room. “Lies and slander,” he says. “I’m the only one who could get that rust bucket to obey.”

You giggle, tucking your chin down as your voice brightens for the first time in what feels like forever. “Told him the same thing. I stood up for your honor. Your legacy. Your questionable driving decisions.”

He snorts, and you can almost feel his grin through the line. That crooked, sun-drenched smile that always made you feel like the world was less impossible.

Then, the laughter fades, and a quiet settles between you. Not empty, but full of something else. Of everything you don’t know how to say. You draw in a slow breath, the kind that stings just a little, and let it go.

“They all miss you,” you say softly, your eyes on the shadows cast across your ceiling by the curtain’s slow dance. “But I miss you the most.”

On the other end of the line, you hear his breathing shift. A rustle, the creak of fabric as he shifts his weight. You imagine him lying somewhere dark and unfamiliar, phone pressed to his ear, staring up at a ceiling that isn’t yours. He doesn’t speak right away. 

“I miss you too, baby,” he whispers, and the words hit like a hand on your heart. Not loud, not dramatic. Just real.

There’s a lull in the conversation, a silence that hums softly between you – comfortable, but charged with everything unsaid. You don’t want it to end. Not yet. So you speak, cautious but curious, coaxing more of him into the quiet.

“So…” you begin, your voice light, teasing. “Are MREs really that bad? Or were you just being dramatic?”

JJ lets out a theatrical groan, dragging the sound out like he’s in pain. “Baby, it’s worse. Imagine wet cardboard soaked in regret and seasoned with pure, uncut desperation.”

You laugh, the sound bubbling out of you as you fall back against the pillows. The warmth of it surprises you. “Wow. Sounds… exquisite.”

“Oh, it’s top-tier,” he says, clicking his tongue. You can hear the grin in his voice. “I even sent Pope a photo of the ‘menu’ the other day. He said it made him feel like a refined gentleman by comparison. Like he eats with cutlery now.”

You smile into the dark. “And the training?” you ask, rolling onto your side. The blanket bunches around your legs as you glance at the clock beside your bed. 2:21 am, blinking in a soft green light, like time is daring you to forget how late or early it is.

JJ exhales slowly. “Grueling. Brutal. Commander Pike has the emotional depth of a dish sponge and the voice of a man who’s forgotten how to smile. But hey, I haven’t passed out yet. So that’s something.”

“Yet,” you echo with a small smirk.

There’s a pause, then a smug little grin slides into his voice. “I’m slippery. They can’t catch me.”

“And the guys?” you ask, voice quieter now, more curious than teasing.

“Carter’s convinced he’s going to open a surf school in Florida once we’re done. Which is wild, because I’m not even sure he’s seen a surfboard in real life. Alvarez misses his dog more than his girlfriend by, like, a wide margin. And Singh… I swear to God, I caught him trying to teach himself harmonica last week. He’s awful, but he thinks he’s found his calling. It’s chaos. Total misfit crew.”

You laugh again, quieter this time, letting it melt into the hush of your bedroom. You roll onto your back, blanket tangled around your legs, and stare up at the ceiling. You try to picture him. Not as he was, but as he is now – somewhere far away, probably sitting on a metal cot in a cold, windowless room or maybe lying under an open sky. 

You imagine him speaking into the receiver with that sideways grin, one knee bouncing, his fingers twisting the cord or flicking at something absentmindedly. You wonder if his hair’s longer now, or if he cut it all off again. You wonder if he has new scars – ones you don’t know about yet. If his hands look the same. If his eyes still carry that wild, restless light where your reflection used to live.

And even without seeing him, even across the miles, you feel him. Right there. Filling up your room with the sound of his voice.

He asks a little more gently this time, his voice careful like he’s testing the weight of it: “How’s your dad? Still giving you hell?”

You shift under the blanket, sinking deeper into your mattress as you tug it over your legs again. The phone is cradled between your cheek and shoulder, and your fingers drift absentmindedly to a loose thread on the seam of your pillowcase. “Only when he catches me checking the mailbox twice a day,” you murmur, voice dry with a hint of a smile.

JJ lets out a short, amused exhale. “Tell him I respect the hustle. Man’s got commitment to the bit.”

You laugh, quick and breathy, and let your head fall back against the pillow. “He still asks about you,” you admit, twirling a piece of hair around your index finger like you used to do in class when you were nervous. “He pretends he doesn’t, but he lingers when I read your letters out loud. Just kinda hovers near the doorway like he’s deciding whether or not to say something.”

“That’s… actually kinda sweet,” JJ says, and you can hear the smile curling into his voice. “In a very grumpy, I-will-never-acknowledge-my-feelings kind of way.”

You grin. “Mom’s worse.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She asks about you a hundred times a day,” you say, propping your elbow up and leaning slightly to the side as you draw your knees toward your chest. “Keeps trying to snatch the letters from my hands before I’ve even finished reading them.”

JJ lets out a hoarse, barking laugh. “Jesus. Looks like I’ve got a fanbase brewing over there. Should I be worried?”

“She’s already cleared a space on the fridge for your next letter.”

He groans dramatically, and you can practically hear him pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead. “Okay, okay… –note to self: start addressing letters to Mrs. No Chill.”

You snort, then groan. “And my brother… –God. He acts like every envelope is packed with state secrets. I caught him holding one over the toaster the other day like he was trying to reveal invisible ink or something.”

JJ laughs so hard this time you hear a slight crackle of interference in the speaker. “That little shit. He's a menace. Tell him espionage’s not a good look on him.”

You smile, toying now with the edge of your blanket, folding it over your fingers just for something to do with your hands. “He likes you,” you say quietly. “He just… won’t admit it.”

“I’ll take the win. Doesn’t matter how reluctant,” JJ mutters, mock solemn.

A moment of stillness follows. Not awkward. Just full. You close your eyes and focus on his breathing – steady, quiet, close. You let it wash over you, something soothing and real. The ache in your chest eases slightly, like pressure finally finding a place to go.

And you think, for a heartbeat, that maybe if you don’t move, if you just stay here wrapped in this blanket with his voice in your ear, time might forget to keep moving forward without him.

But then, like a question that slips out before your mind can catch it, you murmur, “Do you… know when you might get a break?”

There’s a pause. A soft kind of silence. You can hear him inhale, hold it. Not like he didn’t expect the question, more like he’s choosing how to carry the weight of it without making it heavier.

You shift on the bed, your legs pulling up closer to your chest as the words sit between you, still warm. Guilt tingles at the base of your neck. You rush to soften it.

“I mean, not like that… –I wasn’t trying to ask when you’re coming back or…” you stop, groaning quietly. Your hand flies to your forehead. “I just meant… like, a weekend. Whatever it’s called over there.”

He lets out a small breath, low and hoarse.

“They call it a leave,” he says after a moment, voice softer than before. “And if I manage not to screw anything up between now and then, maybe… in a couple of months. Just a few days.”

You nod instinctively, even though you know he can’t see you. Your fingers curl in the hem of your blanket, tugging it tighter under your chin. “That’s good,” you say quietly, barely above a whisper.

He’s quiet for a beat, and when he speaks again, there’s a gentleness to it you hadn’t expected.

“If I could… I’d come home just for an afternoon,” he says. “Doesn’t even have to be long. I’d sneak into the backyard like some idiot who forgot he had a front door. I’d sit at the kitchen table and steal a sandwich while your dad pretends not to notice. I’d mess up John B’s surfboard on purpose just to hear him whine.”

You smile, but your lips quiver with the ache rising up in your throat. You bite down gently, just enough to ground yourself. The taste of blood and salt lingers in your mouth.

“You’d be disappointed,” you whisper, your voice shaky. “The sandwiches are just peanut butter and pickles now.”

There’s a second of horrified silence.

“…What kind of war zone are you living in?”

You let out a laugh – small, surprised. It bubbles out of you and catches you off guard. The sound is raw and sweet and too short.

“I don’t even know anymore,” you say through the laughter. “It’s like Dad’s trying to test our loyalty.”

JJ groans. “Your father’s a war criminal.”

You laugh again, then fall quiet, holding the phone tighter, your hand cradling it like it’s the only real thing in the world.

The silence that settles isn’t awkward. It’s full. Like both of you are trying to stretch the seconds, hoping the connection holds. Hoping time forgets to move forward.

“…JJ?” you whisper.

“I’m here, baby,” he answers instantly, like he was already leaning in.

You hesitate. Your throat feels tight again.

“I just… I wasn’t dreaming, right?” you ask. “Was this real?”

His voice comes back soft and rough, like it’s brushing against your cheek through the receiver.

“No,” he says. “You weren’t dreaming.”

Then quieter: “But I’ll pretend I was. When I fall asleep tonight.”

The lump in your throat is back. You close your eyes. You can almost feel the weight of him beside you, the way his arm would hang lazily over your stomach, fingers curling absentmindedly around yours. You want to believe this moment could keep going. That his voice could anchor you through the night.

“JJ,” you start again, voice cracking just a little.

There’s a pause. You know he hears it in your tone.

His voice comes in low, wrapped in warmth.

“Good night, sweetheart.”

The line clicks.

You stay frozen, the phone still pressed to your ear even though it’s already gone quiet. The silence in the room hums with the ghost of his voice. You can still feel it in your bones. He’s not here but it’s like a shadow of him lingers anyway.

You draw the phone slowly to your chest and hold it there, your palm flat against your heart.

And in a breath, barely more than a thought, you whisper into the dark.

“Good night, JJ”

thankx for reading <3

it really means a lot to me. i haven’t updated where the tide waits since april, and i’m so happy to finally share more of it. i know it’s not the most popular thing on jj, but i love writing it, and i’m planning to finish it, no matter how slow the updates might be.

if you ever have ideas or thoughts, feel free to send them to my inbox or dms! sometimes i hit writer’s block, and your input helps more than you know.

also, if you feel like leaving a comment, i’d be super grateful. they honestly mean more to me than likes or reblogs :3

                                    – your santi 🪐

HE DOESN'T SEE IT COMING.

One second, he’s half-watching a movie he doesn’t care about, Coke bottle sweating in his hand, mind drifting lazily between nothing and nowhere and then you’re there. Climbing into his lap like it’s yours, like you own the space between his legs and the breath in his chest, like you were born knowing the exact weight of your body against his. You move like you’re made of sleep and moonlight – soft, quiet, a little messy from bed – and he swears everything in him slows down just to take you in. The air shifts. The room changes. You ruin him with nothing but presence.

You smell like lotion and heat, like skin just out of a shower, like the way morning tastes when you’re still tangled in someone’s sheets. Your hair is falling in your face, and he wants to tuck it behind your ear but he doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, because you’re speaking and your voice is sugar-coated mischief.

“What time were you born?” you purr.

He squints at you, not sure he heard you right. “What?”

You tilt your head, look at him like he’s the strange one. “Your birth time. Exactly. I already know you’re a Virgo sun, obviously, but that’s just the beginning. I need your rising. Your Mars. Your chart ruler. The deep stuff.”

He blinks at you, trying to reboot. You’re straddling him in tiny shorts, your legs bare and golden and warm against him, and your voice is talking about Mars like this is a normal Tuesday. He’s so busy trying to remember how to be a person, he forgets how to answer.

“You–... what?”

You sigh like he’s hopeless, but your mouth is twitching, and there’s something in your eyes that makes him feel like he’s being watched and chosen at the same time. Like you see through him, and it doesn’t scare you.

“Your natal chart, Rafe,” you say, drawing the words out like they’re obvious. “If I’m going to keep making out with you, I need to know if the planets approve.”

And you say it so easily. So lightly. Like it’s not the most fatal thing anyone’s ever said to him.

His heart skips, actually skips, and suddenly it’s not about astrology at all. It’s about you – sitting in his lap like a question he doesn’t know how to answer, like a poem he’s only just learning the rhythm of. It’s about how natural you look here, how you fit without trying. It’s the fact that you’re making jokes while your body hums against his, and he’s trying not to fall completely in love with the way you tilt your head when you’re teasing him.

He wants to say something clever, something that’ll make you laugh again, because your laugh makes his stomach flip and his throat tighten. So he tries: “What if my Mars is in, like… Saturn? Do we have to break up?”

You laugh. Hard.

And Rafe fucking melts.

He watches the sound bloom out of you like sunlight through a storm, watches your mouth open wide, your eyes close just a little. He feels the vibration of it against his chest. He thinks, stupidly, God, I’d ruin my whole life just to keep hearing that.

You lean in, your face so close it’s dizzying. You smell like something sweet, something soft, something meant for him. “Mars can’t be in Saturn, baby,” you murmur, a grin curling your mouth. “But nice try. I’ll teach you.”

He stares at you, completely gone.

There’s a movie playing in the background, but the world’s gone quiet except for you. You. The curve of your jaw, the glint in your eyes, the way you’re half-laughing, half-serious like you could flip into something darker, deeper, and he’d follow. You speak about constellations like you could touch them. You talk about compatibility and chart rulers and fate, and all he can think is: I hope my stars are good enough for you.

He doesn’t know a single thing about astrology. Never cared. Never bothered. But now? Now he’s sitting in his truck at 2:13 a.m., scrolling through some half-baked astrology forum with the screen lighting up his face like a confession. He’s typing things like Venus in Virgo meaning and Moon in Cancer compatibility with fire signs like it’s going to help him understand the miracle of you, like it’ll explain why you feel so inevitable, so stitched into his ribs already. He’s not trying to find out if you’re written in the stars. He’s trying to figure out if he’s worthy of being read by them.

Because that’s what you do to him. You talk like the universe is just a crossword puzzle you already solved but still reread for fun. You drop celestial terms mid-sentence with a shrug, like everyone should know their chart ruler by heart. You call Mercury retrograde “emotional weather,” blame your tears on a video of a lizard dancing to ’80s music, and claim you can feel eclipses in your kneecaps. It’s weird. It’s endearing. It’s so unfiltered and alive, and Rafe thinks maybe you’re the strangest, brightest, most radiant thing that’s ever happened to his dimly lit world.

And maybe he likes you more than he should. More than he understands. More than he’s ever liked anything that wasn’t toxic or dangerous or numbing.

So when you text the next morning: “Ask your mom what time you were born. It’s urgent.” He doesn’t even question it. Just sends the message. Waits.

She replies: 11:27 am, Kildare, North Caroline. That’s all it takes.

That night, you’re on his lap again, tangled in his hoodie like you belong there, like he’s something you’re allowed to claim. Your bare legs are folded comfortably across his, your hair damp from a shower, your glasses sliding a little down your nose. You’ve got some chaotic app open, with spinning planets and arcane symbols, whispering numbers under your breath like a girl possessed or maybe a librarian witch decoding God’s diary.

He doesn’t get any of it. Not really. But he gets the sound of your voice when you’re excited. He gets the heat of your skin pressed to his. He gets the soft way your foot taps against his calf when you’re focused. And that’s enough.

You hum thoughtfully. “Rising Libra, Moon in Cancer, Venus in Virgo– ugh, your chart is so aesthetically pleasing.” You pause. Then your head tilts. Your tone turns devilish. “Wait– Mars in Taurus?”

You look up at him like you’ve just uncovered his deepest secret.

He squints. “What the hell does that mean?”

You grin like sin itself. “No wonder you’re like that in bed.”

That gets his full attention. “Like what?”

You lean in, your voice dropping to a satisfied purr. “Slow. Intentional. Obsessively into neck kissing. Also kind of possessive. Which is hot.”

He opens his mouth to protest, maybe deflect but then he closes it. Because... yeah. He is all of that. He does love kissing your neck, the tender slope of it, the way you arch for him. He is possessive. He notices every guy that looks at you, every hand that lingers too long, every stranger that makes you laugh a little too easily. He’d bite the moon in half if you asked. He’d rearrange the damn constellations to make you smile.

So maybe Mars in Taurus fits.

He lets you run the compatibility next – not because he believes in it, but because you’re sitting cross-legged in his lap like it’s your throne, eyes sparkling like you’ve just been handed the universe in a language only you can read. You hum under your breath as you scroll and swipe, talking to yourself with that dreamy focus that makes him feel like the world’s gone quiet around you. Every tap of your finger on the screen feels like casting a spell.

“Oh my god, look,” you whisper, reverent. You tap the glowing web of lines stretched between two birth charts like it’s a map to heaven. “We have trines in emotional houses. That means we just… get each other.”

You look up, bright and breathless, and Rafe swears his heart stutters.

“And your Venus doesn’t square mine, which is huge. And our Mars signs? Totally in harmony.” You wiggle your eyebrows with a little smirk, teeth catching your bottom lip like you’re trying not to say something obscene. “Sexually aligned.”

He rolls his eyes, but it’s mostly for show. His chest feels oddly full, like someone poured warm sugar through his ribs. He rests his palm low on your back, brushing his knuckles down your spine, slow and aimless, like he’s trying to memorize the exact length of you.

“You’re such a nerd,” he murmurs, voice too soft to sound like teasing.

You grin, lazy and smug, and slide your fingers into his hair like you were made to belong there. “Yeah,” you say, gentle and matter-of-fact. “But I’m your nerd.”

And then you kiss him – sweet, deliberate, mouth to mouth like you’re syncing your breathing with his, like the only language you trust is the one written in heat and skin and silence. You kiss him like you’re aligning your galaxies. And Rafe, who’s always been so unsure of where he belongs, suddenly feels like he’s exactly where he’s meant to be.

Maybe your charts are onto something.

After that night, it becomes a joke between you. Only, to him, it never really feels like one. Not when it’s you saying it, with your face all serious and your voice lilting like a lullaby.

“You forgot to text back because your Mercury’s in retrograde again,” you accuse one afternoon, chin perched on your folded arms as you lie across his bed, upside down and amused.

Rafe raises a brow. “Maybe you’re mad because your Moon’s in, like… divorce.”

You blink. “That’s not even a thing.”

“Neither is star math,” he shoots back, but his voice is already dissolving with laughter.

You make that face then—the one where you try to pout but your smile leaks through, lip jutted just a little, eyes shiny with affection you don’t bother hiding anymore.

Rafe folds instantly.

There’s not a single version of the cosmos where he could ever say no to you.

Not one. Not in this lifetime or the next. Not even in the far-off version of himself he used to be – the colder one, the reckless one – before you started touching his heart like it was something fragile, something worth translating through stardust and quiet.

He pretends he doesn’t care. Shrugs off your astrology talk with a smirk, tosses out lines like, “Yeah, sure, Mercury’s doing cartwheels again,” as if he isn’t secretly listening to every word. As if he doesn’t replay your voice in his head later, soft and hushed and reverent, explaining soulmates like it’s a science you’ve already mastered. As if he doesn’t feel something heavy and holy settle in his chest when you talk about “celestial timing” like maybe, somehow, the universe didn’t mess up when it gave him you.

He watches you sometimes when you’re not looking: out on the porch wrapped in his hoodie, hair damp from your shower, blanket tucked around your legs as you tip your head back to look at the sky. Your eyes flicker, chasing constellations only you seem to recognize. And then, in a whisper, like it’s for the stars alone, you say, “Venus is bright tonight.”

He doesn’t know what that means. Not really.

But you say it like a prayer. And suddenly, he’s certain it means everything.

Because you glow when you say it. Because the night bends toward you. Because if happiness had a shape, it would look like this – your body folded into the outline of his, legs tangled with his beneath the blanket, the moon spilling silver into your eyes, your breath fogging up the air between you as you talk about love like it’s written in orbit.

He starts checking the sky before he sees you. Just to know what you’ll notice first.

His friends notice too. How he’s changed. How he’s softer now, steadier. Less quick to explode. More like someone who’s been touched gently by someone who meant it.

“She’s got you doing horoscope shit now?” Topper jokes one night, beer in hand, eyebrows raised like he’s caught Rafe in a crime.

Rafe doesn’t blink. Just looks at him for a beat too long, voice even and simple when he says, “She loves it. And I love her.”

Silence. Thick and awkward.

He doesn’t care. Let them laugh.

Because later that night, when you’re curled up against him, skin bare and warm, your fingers tracing nonsense over his chest like you’re mapping out new constellations, your voice is slurred with sleep and full of something weightless and real.

“Bet your Moon in Cancer is why you always kiss me here,” you mumble, nudging your shoulder toward him.

And he leans in. Presses his mouth to that same spot, slow and sure, because you’re right. He doesn’t even know why, but he does always kiss you there. Like instinct. Like ceremony.

“Don’t act like you don’t love it,” you murmur, eyes fluttering shut, your body sinking further into his like it’s where you’ve always belonged.

And he smiles, mouth still resting on your skin.

“I love you,” he mutters, so quietly he’s not sure if he meant for you to hear it.

But your breath catches.

Your hand stills on his chest, fingertips hovering like they’re listening to something only skin can hear. And then – so soft he could miss it if he wasn’t holding his breath – you say his name like it’s the only one the universe ever made.

He never knew his name could sound like that. Like a wish. Like gravity. Like home.

The first time you really fight, it’s over something stupid and small like all the real fights are. You’re pacing, fiery-eyed and fuming, hands flying as you spit, “This is so your Venus in Virgo showing. It’s like you have to be right and can’t just let things go–”

And something in him snaps. Not cruel, just sharp and tired. “Maybe your Mars in being a brat is the problem!”

Silence.

You blink. He blinks.

Then you both dissolve – sputtering laughter through clenched jaws, the tension cracking like glass between you.

You crawl into his lap five minutes later, still warm from the storm, arms around his neck and cheeks flushed. Your voice drops to something fragile. Honest. “I know stars aren’t everything. But they help me make sense of people. The way I feel. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

He exhales, hands tracing lazy circles on your back, grounding himself in your closeness. Then he kisses your cheek and says it before he can think too hard: “The only star I need is you.”

You groan and throw a pillow in his face. He absolutely deserves it.

And he absolutely means it.

Later, when everything is quiet, when the lights are off and the world is reduced to tangled limbs and the slow rise and fall of your breathing, you’re curled naked in his bed. Your legs wrap around his like instinct. Your hair spills across his chest like a second blanket. You smell like soap and skin and his detergent, and he’s never known peace like this – just your weight against him, the dark holding you both like a secret.

You whisper into the quiet, half-asleep: “We’re still in the green zone, you know.”

His voice is rough with sleep. “Hm?”

“Our charts,” you mumble. “They match. Not just for sex – which is obviously a ten out of ten – but for, like, life. Long-term stuff.”

You say it like you’ve been thinking about it. Like it matters. Like it’s safe to hope.

He kisses the top of your head, the place where your hair parts and your skull is soft, like maybe he can plant the truth there and let it grow.

“Yeah?” he murmurs.

You nod against him, your nose brushing his collarbone. “We fit.”

He doesn’t answer.

But he remembers the first night you climbed into his lap without asking. The way your fingers curled into his shirt like you’d always belonged there. The way you looked up at him and asked, “What time were you born?” like it was the key to something sacred.

He remembers thinking, I’d give her every answer I’ve got, just to keep her close.

You believe in the stars.

He believes in you.

Same thing, really.

thankx for reading <3

I think I'm in my rafe era. I've read so many fics about him during my "rest" time that now I cannot stop thinking about my own scenarios with his appearance. I know that my requests are closed rn, but if you have ideas for rafe and you've read till that moment, you can write me and I'll try to write it to live.

and as always, you can share your opinion in comments or my inbox. for me your words are very important and they motivate me to wrote more. so, I will rly appreciate if you write some of your thoughts about my work, please :3

                                    – your santi 🪐

THE AIR OUTSIDE THE GREAT HALL IS THICK WITH MID-MORNING CHATTER, the kind of easy, unbothered noise that only follows a public humiliation. Someone else’s, not yours. You're leaned against a cool stretch of stone wall, arms folded, robes impeccable, a Slytherin constellation in the midst of flickering green and silver. You’ve just walked out of Potions with the satisfied swagger of someone who has committed a petty act of academic violence.

And the victim?

James Potter. Golden boy. Quidditch Captain. Gryffindor menace.

He’d confused powdered manticore spine with crushed scarab beetle – a rookie mistake, really, but an explosive one. His cauldron had burped, hissed, then violently frothed over like it was trying to escape the shame, the room quickly filling with the scent of scorched cabbage and what can only be described as broom bristle cremation.

“Don’t say a word,” he’d muttered through gritted teeth as you glided past his desk, his spectacles fogged with steam and regret.

Naturally, you’d offered him a parting gift: “Nice perfume, Potter. Eau de Incompetence.”

Which brings us here. The corridor. The smugness. The slow approach of James sodding Potter, who walks like he owns the floor, the walls, the bloody ceiling. There’s that look in his eye – the glint that usually precedes some half-brained challenge or unholy prank.

Sirius Black trails behind him, grinning like a man who’s just tossed a lit match into a pile of fireworks. Remus and Peter flank the pair at a safe distance, watching like seasoned war generals preparing for the fallout.

You don’t move. You merely tilt your head and ask, perfectly cool, “Got something to say?”

James stops just short of your boots, his gaze sweeping over you – not lecherous, not exactly admiring, but observant. Calculating, like he’s memorising the shape of a puzzle he intends to break.

“Actually,” he says, voice calm, “I do.”

You arch an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Well?”

He smirks, tongue pressing to the inside of his cheek like he’s tasting the words before he says them. “I bet I can make you fall for me by the end of term.”

You blink.

And then – oh, then – you laugh.

A sharp, full-bodied sound that slices through the hallway and turns a few third years' heads. It’s not a giggle or even a snort. It’s the kind of laugh that starts in your chest and spills out like you can't quite believe how stupid he is.

“You think I’d fall for you?” you ask, between peals.

“I’m serious.”

“No,” Sirius calls, still grinning. “I’m Sirius.”

James rolls his eyes without looking back. “You said it last week,” he continues, undeterred, eyes locked on yours. “You’re immune to charm. I’m just testing a hypothesis.”

You narrow your gaze. There’s something alive between you now – not quite fire, but close. A chemical reaction in the air, the kind that makes your skin tingle, like you’ve touched something volatile.

“Let me get this straight,” you say slowly. “You think you’re going to win me over like I’m a Quidditch Cup?”

James rocks back on his heels, hands in his pockets, cocky and infuriating. “I think I’ve got better odds.”

“You?”

He leans in, just a fraction. Enough that you smell something clean and citrusy beneath the lingering scent of charred potion. His voice drops, soft but smug. “Terms and conditions apply, of course.”

You narrow your eyes. “God, you’re insufferable.”

James doesn’t flinch. He shrugs, but there’s something dangerous in the movement. Something alive. The way he rocks back on his heels, all lazy confidence and feigned indifference, like a boy who’s never had to doubt that the world would spin just slightly in his direction. His grin curves like a blade.

“Still not a no.”

Your arms tighten across your chest, more armor than comfort now. “And what do I get if I win?”

James brightens, like he’s been waiting for that. “Your pride.”

You roll your eyes so hard it’s a miracle they return. “Not enough.”

He pauses, theatrically thoughtful, tapping a finger against his bottom lip. You hate that it draws your attention to his mouth.

“Alright,” he says at last, a glint of mischief blooming in his eyes. “If you don’t fall for me by the end of term, I’ll walk into the Great Hall in nothing but a pair of socks and confess my undying love for Professor Slughorn. Loudly.”

You squint. “Strip and serenade Slughorn?”

He nods solemnly. “In verse, if you’d prefer.”

You try not to smile. “And if I do fall?”

“You kiss me.”

The words land like a lit match tossed into dry grass.

You scoff, maybe to cover the beat your heart just skipped. “You’re awfully confident.”

He doesn’t look away. “Do I have a reason not to be?”

It’s your turn to pause. Just for a second. And it’s not nerves. You don’t get nervous. Not over boys like him.

You know exactly what kind James Potter is. Loud. Golden. Lion-hearted and tragically proud of it. He’s the kind of boy who sets the world on fire just to warm the people standing close. A walking contradiction of heroics and hubris. You’ve seen him flirt with first years to get them out of trouble, charm professors out of detention, win arguments with nothing but a grin and that infuriating Quidditch-captain glint.

He’s a distraction. A glittering, glorious, useless distraction.

And you? You were raised better than to play a game you don’t intend to win.

Still.

You extend your hand and hold his gaze. “Fine. I accept.”

His palm is warm against yours, calloused from broom handles and reckless living. Your fingers curl before you can stop them.

Sirius gasps like it’s the best twist he’s ever seen. Remus mutters, “Oh no,” and Peter’s already betting on how long it’ll take.

James straightens, surprised. “You do?”

You smile, slow and sweet and deadly. “I’m just curious how badly you’re going to embarrass yourself.”

WEEK ONE: HE STARTS STRONG.

By the beginning of the new school week, you’ve already forgotten about the bet with James Potter or at least convinced yourself that you have. It drifts somewhere far in the back of your mind, buried under the comfort of routine. 

Your day begins as always: a quick shower in the steamy hush of the bathroom, the usual walk down stone corridors toward the Great Hall, the rhythmic chatter of your friends filling the space around you with gossip about who snogged who over the weekend, and then a mercifully quiet Transfiguration class without Gryffindor. You slip into your usual seat near the back, your fingers already flipping open the worn spine of your textbook, half-listening to the scrape of chairs and rustle of parchment. You’re determined to catch up on the reading, your eyes scanning the familiar lines until something tucked between pages 114 and 115 stops you cold.

There, nestled between the diagrams of spellwork and theory, are white hyacinths. Enchanted, of course, preserved so perfectly they look like they’ve just been plucked from the first bloom of spring. You can smell them even before you touch them – clean, delicate, a little green, like damp earth and warm sunlight. 

You stare for a moment too long. They sit innocently in your book, soft and lovely and unmistakably placed there for you. Your stomach turns – just slightly, just enough – and you inhale once more before snapping the book shut. 

“Too obvious,” you mutter, your voice flat, and with the same practiced indifference you use for most things that make your heart lurch, you pluck the flowers free and toss them into the nearest bin. Like it means nothing. Like your pulse didn’t catch. Like it didn’t feel like a dare tucked between the pages. And just like that, you forget it again. Or try to.

But if you’ve forgotten, James Potter clearly hasn’t.

Later that same day, in Charms, he makes his next move. 

You’re halfway through copying down the lecture when something starts circling over your head – slow, insistent, impossible to ignore. A swan, made of parchment, flapping its delicate wings as it spirals above you like it belongs there. You blink up at it once before looking across the room – and of course, there he is. 

Potter, looking irritatingly pleased with himself, wand still in hand. You shoot him a glare sharp enough to cut through steel, and he has the audacity to raise his eyebrows like he’s innocent. Professor Flitwick sighs, exasperated, and with a flick of his wrist, the swan lands. You snatch it out of the air with a huff, and for a moment, you consider crumpling it without looking. But curiosity is a trait you’ve never managed to fully extinguish, especially when it comes to him.

So under your desk, out of sight, you unfold the swan with careful fingers, smoothing out its delicate wings and sharp creases. The handwriting inside is unmistakable: neat, confident, slightly slanted, like someone who never doubts his own thoughts.

I bet you smiled.

You didn’t.

(You did.)

If you thought that was all James Potter was capable of, then you were deeply mistaken. 

He’s been showing up at the library all week. Always within five minutes of your arrival, like it’s a coincidence. Like he wasn’t just sitting at the far end of the Gryffindor table seconds before you stood up. As if he hadn’t slipped away from Quidditch practice early or escaped another one of McGonagall’s detentions. He doesn’t say much when he joins you, just falls into step beside you in the corridor, hands shoved into his pockets, letting the silence stretch between your footsteps. There’s no forced charm, no theatrics, just his quiet presence keeping pace with yours, like it's always been this way.

He always reaches for your books without asking. You raise a brow the first time, caught off guard by the ease of it. 

“Chivalrous now?” you ask, arching an eyebrow with just enough bite to cover the small, unwelcome flutter in your chest.

He only shrugs, like it’s nothing at all, like this isn’t wildly out of character for him. He takes your bag from your hands in one clean motion, slings it over his shoulder as if it weighs nothing, and keeps walking forward beside you.

“I can’t let you wear yourself out doing advanced Arithmancy,” he says, voice easy, unbothered, like the two of you aren’t supposed to be enemies in some long-forgotten rivalry everyone else has outgrown.

Then there’s the Quidditch match. You’ve always loved Quidditch. Not playing, of course, but watching. There’s something otherworldly about it, something exhilarating in the way players carve through the air like birds born to fly, spinning and diving and scoring in impossible arcs. It’s always felt like a celebration to you. Your father used to take you to matches when you were small, and that sense of magic has never quite left. 

But today, the weather is working against it. The sky is a heavy grey, swollen with rain, and the wind cuts straight through your scarf. Still, you sit in the Slytherin stands, your eyes tracking the green and blue blurs as they dart back and forth across the pitch, pretending not to care that your robes are damp and raindrops are crawling slowly, coldly down your spine. You tighten your silver-green scarf around your throat and shiver.

The last thing you expect is to see James Potter here. First of all, it’s the Slytherin grandstand. Second, he’s not even playing. It’s a Slytherin versus Ravenclaw match, and Gryffindor has no stake in the outcome. But somehow, despite all that, he finds you in the crowd. Soaked through, cheeks flushed from the wind, lips pale. And without a word, he presses a mug of tea into your hands – still steaming, warm against your skin.

“I don’t take bribes,” you say, but you wrap your fingers around the cup anyway. 

The heat sinks into your hands instantly, comforting in a way you don’t want to acknowledge. You turn your eyes back to the field, willing yourself to focus on the match and not on the curly-haired boy beside you who is looking at you like you're the most interesting part of the day.

James gives a casual flick of his wand, and the rain in your scarf disappears. The fabric dries instantly, soft and warm again against your skin. “Call it community service,” he says, as if it's the most natural thing in the world.

And that’s not even the end of it. James Potter seems determined to sabotage your peace, orchestrating one absurd stunt after another until your attention is practically tethered to him by invisible thread. The most outrageous, by far, is when he praises your handwriting in Herbology. Your handwriting. Of all the tactics to employ.

“Are you trying a new approach?” you mutter, bending with him over a fluttering, fanged geranium that snaps at your gloves.

He twirls his quill between his fingers, casual, maddeningly at ease. “Maybe I’m just trying to be nice.”

You glance at him – measured, unreadable, the way you’ve trained yourself to look at things that shouldn’t matter.

He winks at you. That ridiculous wink. The same one that has likely caused an epidemic of fainting spells up in Gryffindor Tower.

You don’t faint.

(But your quill does stutter slightly in your grip.)

Still, you refuse to let any of it cloud your judgment. You’re determined not to fall first. Not for the ridiculous hairstyle, not for the way he suddenly remembers to hold doors open, or the way he’s begun smiling like he actually means it. It’s infuriating. Unnatural. James Potter, gracious? It reeks of strategy. It reeks of a boy who made a bet.

But you’re a Slytherin. And you didn’t get here by being unprepared.

So you begin to plot.

You start small, but clever. Something simple, something certain to break his polished new mask of gentlemanly charm. Something guaranteed to get a reaction. You curse his chair in the library.

It’s a subtle spell, just enough to ensure that the moment he sits, it will moan – loudly, long, and unmistakably suggestive. A moan echoing with the sultry creak of a bedpost in the back room of Madam Puddifoot’s.

He arrives. Sits. And the chair lets out its moan. 

You brace yourself for victory.

But James Potter doesn’t flinch. He simply raises one eyebrow and turns his gaze toward you – steady, direct, amused. You expect him to explode, to launch into the familiar rhythm of your arguments, but instead, he catches your eye with unsettling calm and says smoothly: “I didn’t know you were into theater, darling.”

You frown. Heat floods your face like a storm surging through your bloodstream. If you were a mandrake, you’d be screaming loud enough to knock out the entire floor. You’re boiling, silently combusting, and yet the best retaliation you can muster is a crumpled ball of parchment launched at his smug, insufferable head.

He dodges it with ease. And somehow, in the same motion, he flicks a chocolate frog across the table toward you, grinning like he’s already won.

But you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t keep trying.

After spending the better part of the night concocting 1001 Ways to Piss Off James Potter (a working title for your increasingly elaborate campaign), you woke in the morning with purpose blazing in your chest and pettiness blooming like a fresh hex. At breakfast, you carefully lace his pumpkin juice with a few drops of a mild truth serum – nothing dangerous, just potent enough to loosen his tongue for five minutes. Just long enough, you hope, for him to say something utterly stupid. Something embarrassing. Something that will unravel that smug composure and trigger the signature Potter fury you’ve grown so fond of provoking.

You don’t touch your food. You barely hear your friend beside you, who is chatting animatedly with a mouth full of toast. Your eyes are fixed on the doors of the Great Hall.

And then – finally – he arrives.

Loud as ever, flanked by his usual entourage, gesturing wildly as he tells some story that has Sirius Black howling and Peter Pettigrew clutching his sides. The morning light slices through the windows just in time to catch in the wild curls atop his head, turning his hair to gold. His smile stretches wide, dimples flashing, and he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a casual flick of his fingers.

He looks up. Right at you. 

Your stomach stutters. 

His grin widens, devilish. He winks.And you roll your eyes so hard they nearly fall out of your head.

You hear his laugh echo down the table, and your jaw tightens. He ruffles the hair of a passing first-year, who shrieks in indignant protest. Typical. But you’re not looking at him because of that. You’re watching for the moment – the moment – when he reaches for the pumpkin juice. He always does. First thing, every morning.

There it is.

He takes a sip.

You watch him closely, barely breathing, bracing for the spell to kick in. He pauses. Tilts his head. Then leans across the table toward you like he’s about to reveal some sordid piece of gossip.

“I think,” he says, voice low and maddeningly sincere, “you’re the most annoying and beautiful person I’ve ever met.”

You choke. Loudly. Toast nearly takes you out. Your eyes fly to his face, wide with shock, but James only shrugs, all smug amusement and maddening ease.

“I told you,” he says, lifting his glass in salute, “I’m honest.”

After two failed attempts, you abandon subtlety. You decide it’s time to go for the jugular – destroy what James Potter holds most sacred. And what does he love more than pestering you within an inch of your patience? Quidditch. Obviously. You spend the better part of lunch orchestrating the sabotage, hunched over the Gryffindor equipment trunk with the precision of a criminal mastermind. It costs you an apple, two napkins, and most of your dignity, but you manage to swap the standard practice Quaffles for a set that lets out a piercing shriek with every throw.

You sneak into the stands just in time to watch the chaos unfold. Players drop their brooms in mid-air. One Beater nearly falls off his handle from the shock. The sound is hideous like a mandrake gargling but it’s satisfying. You lean back against the stone, arms folded smugly across your chest, ready for James to finally snap and come storming over with smoke pouring from his ears.

He finds you exactly two minutes after practice starts.

“Smart,” he says, landing beside you like the broom is an extension of his body and not a barely tamed beast. He doesn’t ask if he can sit. Of course not.

You don’t look up. You flip a page in your Divination textbook, feigning intense concentration on a badly drawn palmistry diagram. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right.” His voice is amused. Too amused. “The screaming Quaffle must’ve just been in the mood today.”

You glance at him, ready to spit something scathing. But he’s just sitting there. Flushed from flying, his cheeks bright from the wind, hair a glorious, messy disaster, and smiling – smiling like he’s proud of you.

“You’re lucky I like you,” he says, and it doesn’t even sound flirtatious. It sounds like a fact. As if the sun rises in the east and you drive him insane but he’s decided to adore you anyway.

The air leaves your lungs in a soft gasp, and you gape at him like a stunned fish. You want to retort, to insult, to laugh in his face. But all you manage is a pitiful half-squeak as your brain catches fire.

“What are you doing?” you whisper, horrified.

James stands up and stretches, back arching slightly, as if this is just another Thursday. Then, with infuriating confidence, he leans down and brushes a strand of hair behind your ear, fingertips barely grazing your skin. “See you at dinner, darling,” he says with a smirk that deserves to be outlawed.

You don’t move. You don’t breathe. You sit there for three whole minutes, stunned and incandescent, heart pounding like you had been flying laps around the pitch instead of just sitting there. Then you stomp back to your dorm in a fury, vowing to destroy him once and for all.

Which is how you come to cross off the final, most extreme item on your list of highly questionable tactics: false rumors.

Because if there’s one thing James Potter hates – truly loathes – it’s being talked about. Especially when the stories aren’t true. So you do what any girl on the edge would do: you casually, loudly, very deliberately spread the rumor that James Potter is secretly in love with Professor Vector.

The next day, while rifling through your bag in the middle of Arithmancy, you find a note tucked between your spare quill and a piece of licorice wand.

Nice try. P.S. You’re prettier when you’re jealous.

You let out a sound that is not a scream but something close – a strangled groan that sends your friend staring. You spend the next hour buried face-down in your pillow, kicking the mattress and muffling curses until your voice gives out. And then you read it again. And again.

You consider setting it on fire next to the fireplace in the Slytherin common room.

You don’t.

You fold it. Smooth the edges. Slip it into your potions textbook and pretend not to smile for the rest of the week.

WEEK TWO: THE BEST DEFENSE IS OFFENSE.

By the second week, you switch tactics. If James won’t fall for your traps, maybe he’ll fall for your victories.

You don’t wait for him this time. You act first.

You sit down opposite Sirius Black like it’s your personal writing desk. Your green-lined swamp robe gleams defiantly amid a sea of crimson. Slytherins never sit at any table but their own. And yet – here you are, surrounded by stunned Gryffindors. A couple of them pause mid-bite. A group of Hufflepuffs whispers behind their hands. Ravenclaws crane their necks. First-years scatter like startled owls as you cross your legs and rest your chin on your hand, as if this was always the plan.

“Well, aren’t you a vision this morning, Black”

Sirius looks up with a mouthful of toast and stares at you like you’ve grown antlers. Suspicious. Intrigued. You flash one of your better smiles – the kind that’s charmed professors out of giving you detention, and helped you avoid several homework assignments in Charms.

He chews. Swallows. Snorts. “What do you want?”

You lean in slightly, voice smooth as treacle. “Attention.”

That makes him bark out a laugh, loud and sudden enough to make a third-year flinch. You raise an eyebrow, unamused. He wasn’t supposed to enjoy this. Sirius downs his orange juice in one go, then starts twirling his fork like a wand, all smirking and dangerous.

“Careful, baby,” he says, glancing at you from under his lashes. “You’re playing with fire.”

Across the table, James Potter chokes on his pumpkin juice so violently you think he might combust.

You don’t even look at him at first. Instead, you lean closer to Sirius, fingers brushing against his chest as you reach up to adjust his red-and-gold tie – smoothing it like you belong there. The moment your hand moves, you feel it. James’s gaze: sharp, molten, unblinking. You meet it deliberately, holding eye contact as your fingers trail back down.

Your body’s blazing, but your face is sugar-sweet. “Is there a problem, Potter?”

He wipes his mouth with a napkin, the motion aggressive, then drops it into his plate like he wishes it were a hex. His eyes narrow like he’s trying to solve a riddle. Or start a fight.

“I just think you have terrible taste.”

Sirius arches a smug brow, enjoying this more than he should. “Careful, mate. You’re making it sound like I’m not your best friend.”

James doesn’t even look at him. His eyes stay locked on you. A silent warning. A dare.

You smile and turn to Sirius. “See you later.”

You rise, your skirt swaying just enough to make someone’s breath catch – possibly James’s – and stroll toward the exit without a glance back. Until, of course, you do. You turn just before the doors, catch James’s eye again, and blow a kiss like a threat dressed in lace.

Sirius’s laughter rings out behind you, uncontained.

James Potter watches your back all the way out of the hall.

Later, at dinner, you finally get your revenge.

You bide your time, patient as a Slytherin should be, watching as James Potter animatedly tells Remus and Peter about some ludicrous Quidditch stunt he wants to try at the upcoming match. He’s all flailing limbs and boyish enthusiasm, gesturing wildly with his fork like he’s dueling the mashed potatoes into submission. The poor things cling for dear life, wobbling on the edge with every sweep of his hand.

That’s when you strike.

Leaning back, you slip your wand beneath the tablecloth. A muttered spell, barely more than breath. A flick. A whisper. And then… you wait.

By the time he finishes recounting his story, something about a reverse Sloth Grip Roll and a spiral dive, his hair has turned the color of pond scum. Not even a flattering green. We’re talking true swamp algae. Something that might crawl out of the Black Lake and ask for citizenship.

He’s none the wiser.

Until, of course, you can’t help yourself. You smile. Broad and sharp and unmistakably evil.

Sirius catches the expression first. Then he turns, sees James, and promptly snorts pumpkin juice straight up his nose.

“Oh, Prongs,” Sirius wheezes, practically falling onto Remus. “You look like the love child of a mandrake and a traffic light.”

James blinks. Frowns. Turns to the nearest reflective surface. Unfortunately for him, a silver serving tray that offers no mercy. The sound that escapes him is somewhere between a groan and a growl. A strangled, vaguely inhuman noise of pure betrayal. At the other end of the table, you raise your goblet of pumpkin juice in a slow, mocking toast.

He sees you.

You laugh.

And for just a moment, right before Sirius starts howling again and James runs a hand through his mossy curls in horror, you swear he almost smiles too.

You don’t stop there.

The little reactions you get from James – flushed cheeks, clenched jaw, the way his eyes narrow like he’s trying not to smile – become your new favorite currency. So the next day, you up the stakes.

You steal his favorite quill.

It’s a nice one, made of dark wood with quick-drying ink. He always uses it for Transfiguration essays. He leaves it unattended for precisely two minutes in the library, distracted while chatting with Remus.

He spends the whole day asking around, retracing his steps, even checking under sofas in the Gryffindor common room. But strangely, he never once accuses you. He doesn’t even act suspicious. In fact, James walks beside you to the library that evening like nothing’s happened – quieter than usual, though. His head hangs low, and he kicks a small stone along the path, not really looking at anything. You don’t speak. You just smile to yourself, triumphant.

You take your usual spot in the far corner of the library, now almost a private corner of the world, just for the two of you. But he doesn’t joke this time. Doesn’t lean in to bother you. Doesn’t even touch his parchment. He answers your questions with dry, hollow monosyllables and stares at the table like it's trying to tell him something he can't quite understand.

Something inside your chest twists painfully, but you push the feeling down like you’ve been taught to.

On the walk back, he's still quiet.

He walks you all the way to the Slytherin entrance like always, but before you disappear inside, he stops you. He hands you a little bag of peppermints – your favorite, the ones you can only get from Honeydukes, in the fancy blue-and-silver wrapper.

“We went to Hogsmeade yesterday,” he says, voice softer than usual. “Sirius and Peter were trying every sample like lunatics. I saw these and thought of you.”

He gives you a small smile. Then he turns and walks away, like he hasn’t just spun your whole internal compass off its axis.

You hate the way your heart stutters. You hate that your fingers curl a little tighter around the bag. But most of all, you hate the way that, when you get back to your dorm, you don’t toss the candy aside.

You place it carefully on your desk.

You unfold a fresh roll of parchment.

You pull out his quill – the one you stole – and write the first line of his unfinished essay in slow, neat script: “The Nature of Change: Mastery Not Through Force, But Will” by James F. Potter

The next morning, just after breakfast, you slip into Transfiguration before anyone else. You place the quill back on his desk. Set your finished essay beside it, tied with a green ribbon. A note rests on top:

The effort is 5 out of 10. Try harder, lover boy.

You don’t stay to see his reaction. 

You’re halfway down the corridor when you hear him shout your name – half accusation, half promise. Your mouth curls before you can stop it.

That night, you return to your dorm and find something on your pillow. A lone chocolate frog.

Your dormmates giggle behind their curtains, whispering in that high, conspiratorial way that means they’ve been watching. You approach slowly, like it might vanish if you move too quickly. It’s an ordinary box – except someone’s scribbled over the tagline in black ink. Where it once said “Collect them all!”, it now reads:

Just try to resist me, darling The Terms and Conditions remain in force.

Next to it, there’s a folded note. You sit down on your bed and open it.

“True transfiguration is not a matter of power, but of surrender – of allowing something to become what it was never meant to be, and loving it anyway.”

It’s a quote. From your essay. The one you wrote for him.

You stare at the words until they blur. You don’t know whether to roll your eyes or fall a little harder. 

In the end, you crumple the parchment and toss it into the deepest corner of your drawer. Then you open the frog box and bite its head off in one go. It tastes suspiciously of cinnamon and honey. 

Your favorite.

Damn him.

WEEK THREE: HE SWITCHES STRATEGY.

He stops playing for the crowd. No more enchanted parchment fluttering overhead with rhymes he knows you'll hate. He no longer bellows compliments in the corridors, doesn’t make grand gestures designed to echo through the common rooms like some headline you didn’t ask for.

Instead, it’s quieter now. Softer.

You’re skipping dinner after hours buried in the library, the kind of night where ink stains your wrists and a headache blooms like a slow, spreading curse behind your eyes. You're too tired to remember what hunger feels like. Your fingers ache, cramped from too many pages of notes.

When you finally shuffle into the common room, bag slipping from your shoulder, you find him there – James Potter. Curled up on the battered sofa, legs tucked beneath him, half-asleep with a History of Hogwarts book pressed to his chest. The armchair beside him bears his invisibility cloak, the silver fabric draped like a secret. On the low table: a plate. Toasted bread, slices of apple, cheese, and a scattered handful of chocolate-covered raisins – Sirius’s stash, no doubt, and you’re sure James didn’t ask permission.

When he hears you, his eyes open, still heavy with sleep, and he presses a finger to his lips. Then he nods to the plate, like an offering.

You cross the room slowly, still watching him as you sink onto the couch. He doesn’t say anything. Neither do you. But you eat – every last bite, and he stays until you’re done.

When the plate is empty, he rises, stretches with a quiet groan, and winks at you. He mouths a single phrase – you’re welcome – before sweeping the cloak over his shoulders. In a blink, he vanishes.

You can still feel his warmth lingering, stitched into the air around you, until the common room passage creaks open. A draft rolls through, damp and cold, straight from the dungeons.

That’s when you know: James is gone. And this time, he took the warmth with him.

The next day, when you’re trying to study – really trying, even though every word looks like the same broken scribble – he finds you. The library is half-empty, soft with the hush of late afternoon, when even the light seems drowsy. You don’t notice him at first, not until a warm mug is set down in front of you, right at the corner of your parchment. Milk tea. No sugar. Exactly the way you take it.

You blink up at him, caught off guard, mouth parting with a question you don’t quite form in time.

James doesn’t say anything. He just drags out the chair opposite yours and sinks into it, flipping open a spellbook like he belongs there. His hair is all wind-tangled from practice, sticking up in every direction, and there’s a flush still blooming high on his cheeks and throat – that pink that comes from cold air and running fast and not caring about the burn in your lungs. His Gryffindor jumper is rumpled, collar askew, a glimpse of bare collarbone where the knit slouches. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t smirk, doesn’t make a scene.

He just turns a page and says softly, like it costs him nothing, like it’s just a thing he knows: "Your hands shake when you've had too much caffeine."

You stare at him then. Not the way you’re supposed to, not with irritation or exhaustion, but with this awful, unwanted warmth spreading in your ribs, slow and heavy and honey-thick. You don’t like that he noticed. That he watches closely enough to know something like that. You don’t like that he cares. You especially don’t like the part of you that… likes it. That wants to ask how long he’s been noticing.

So you don’t say anything. You drink the tea in silence, and it tastes exactly right, which somehow makes it worse.

The next day, your Charms essay comes back with a fat, unforgiving red P slashed across the top. The sight of it is a blow – sharp and sour, humiliation tightening in your throat. You’d tried. You really tried, and for what? You stare at the parchment so long that your eyes blur, but you don’t blink, don’t move, just sit there letting the shame settle, heavy and certain.

Across from you, James is still doodling, his quill skating lazily along the margin of his notes, sketching what looks like a dragon mid-flight. For a moment you think maybe he hasn’t noticed,  that you’ve folded yourself into smallness well enough, but then his hand slides across the table. A folded piece of parchment, pushed to the edge of your book.

You hesitate before opening it, already braced for whatever nonsense he’s decided to throw at you. But when you smooth it open, you can’t stop the smile. It betrays you, blooming soft on your lips before you can strangle it. You press your fingers to your mouth, hiding it poorly.

Why did the Hippogriff refuse to duel the Blast-Ended Skrewt? Because he didn’t want to stoop to its level.

It’s ridiculous. Childish, even. And yet. You’re not laughing.

(You’re laughing. Quiet, breathless. Like the sound snuck out before you could catch it.)

When you break your chocolate chip cookie in half at the end of class and wordlessly leave one piece on his side of the desk, you don’t wait to see his reaction. You disappear into the tangle of students before he can say anything back – before you can regret it.

Still, nothing has changed, not really. He remains an unbearable presence. Still bumps into you in the halls with the casual arrogance of someone convinced the earth itself is tilted in his favour. Still calls you darling in that ridiculous drawl, turning the word into something between a provocation and a promise. Still looks at you like he knows something you don’t.

But it doesn’t feel like a joke anymore.

It feels like something steadier. Something gentler, humming underneath everything, like the low, distant pulse of the sea. It doesn’t crash, doesn’t demand. It’s just there, insistent as gravity. Simple, the way a lighthouse is simple: a fixed point you can’t help but see, even through the thickest fog.

And that, you think, is the most dangerous part of all because you can’t remember when you stopped thinking about the bet every time he smiled. But you did.

And now it feels like something is beginning. Something without rules. Something without conditions. Something without reservations.

WEEK SIX: YOU FORGET WHO'S WINNING.

The Astronomy Tower is quieter than usual. No fifth-years sneaking kisses behind the columns. No prefects whispering warnings about curfews, no sharp footsteps echoing up the stairs. Just the two of you and the night, soft and silver-streaked, spreading across the stone floor like spilled ink.

You’re both hiding. Not just from your housemates or your homework, but from something murkier. From what’s happening between you, pressing in like a secret neither of you knows how to say aloud.

There’s a bottle of firewhisky between you, pinched from beneath Sirius’s bed.  James had caught you in the hallway after lights out, his grin lazy, his offer simple: “Come have a drink with me”. Now the bottle sits half-finished, warm in the way alcohol gets when too many stories are shared and not enough confessions.

His shoulder touches yours – confidently, thoughtlessly. Like his weight belongs to you. Like it’s always belonged to you.

Overhead, the stars are smeared, blurred like fingerprints dragged across glass. You should be paying attention to them. Measuring the sky, plotting coordinates, marking distances like they matter. Like the universe isn’t already expanding too fast for you to catch up.

Instead, your gaze stays fixed on the wood between your knees, the old grain split and scarred. You trace circles there, over and over, your fingertip moving without meaning.

Your voice comes out low, quiet enough that it might have been mistaken for a thought left unsaid: "Why did you make the bet in the first place?"

You don’t look up when you ask. You keep your eyes on your hand, the dumb curl of your fist like it might shield you from whatever answer is coming.

He doesn’t reply immediately. The silence isn’t awkward. It settles between you both, heavier than the whisky, stretching out like the Tower itself is holding its breath, waiting to hear how this will land. A cold wind ghosts between you, but you’re not cold. Not really. James is too close and the warmth coming off him feels like enough to thaw the whole castle if it wanted.

When his voice finally comes, it’s softer than you’ve ever heard it – a confession whispered to the sky, or maybe to the Moon, like he’s ashamed to give it to you directly.

"Because you looked at me like I wasn’t worth your time."

You blink. The words land sharper than you expect, and it takes a beat before you can even lift your head. When you finally turn to him, he’s not grinning, not smirking, not baiting you into a fight.

He’s just watching the sky. Like he’s trying to memorize it. Like it might save him.

"Does that bother you?" you ask, and your voice is rougher than before. Not sharp, just uncertain.

His jaw clenches. You see it first, that flicker of frustration, before he exhales and lets it go.

"More than it should have," he admits. His gaze doesn’t waver from the stars. "And maybe... I wanted you to take another look."

And Merlin. That’s when it hits you – low in your stomach, blooming up through your chest with a kind of aching clarity. You’re sitting here, heart pounding harder than you’d like, the stars dragging their slow arc overhead, his body warm against yours, steady, unthinking.

You don’t answer. You can’t. Because somewhere between the taunts and the bets, the shoulder nudges and the tea left waiting, the whispered jokes and stupid, scribbled notes – somewhere between all of it you looked again.

And you didn’t stop.

WEEK TEN: YOU CATCH YOURSELF.

You can see him on the other side of the courtyard.

It's foolishly windy outside. His tie is fluttering like a banner, his hair is disheveled, his cheeks are pink from the cold. A stray cat is sitting on his arm like a royal, purring, and he is humming to her. Obviously, Sir Mittens. He smiles like he has nothing to prove.

And your heart – usually a well-defended fortress of your gut, covered with sarcasm – turns over. Violently.

You tell yourself it's indigestion.

(That's not true.)

You're lying.

You start to notice things – terrible, intimate things that you shouldn't know about. For example, when he reads, his glasses always slide down the bridge of his nose, and instead of adjusting them with his hand, he just squints like a determined mole. Or the way he bites the inside of his cheek when he's trying not to laugh, especially when McGonagall is reprimanding Sirius and he's so close to snapping. Or how he always, always, without delay gives Peter the last chocolate frog from the package, even though you've seen him look at it as if it holds the secret of eternal life.

You tell yourself that it's just an observation. Tactics. Preparing for a counterattack.

(It's not like that.)

Worse, you start looking for him. In the corridors. At breakfast. During the lectures, which you should pay attention to. Your eyes scan the room as if searching for coordinates, as if your system won't calibrate properly until you know where he is.

Sometimes it's not there.

And that's when it really hits you.

You miss him.

Not in a vague, tolerant way. And in particular, why, damn it, it's calmer this way. It's like some part of your day is behind you. It's like your mood is waiting for something – or someone – to come before it can settle down.

You're not sure when it started. You don't know how to stop it. But you're losing. And the worst part, the thing that keeps you awake longer than you can imagine, is that it doesn't feel like a game anymore.

It feels like surrender.

And it terrifies you.

LAST WEEK OF TERM: ARE YOU WINNING (OR NOT?).

It’s the final night of the semester, and it feels like the castle is holding its breath. Like even the walls know something is about to end, or maybe about to break. Outside, snow lashes the tall windows, battering the glass as though winter itself is trying to claw its way in. Inside, the Gryffindor common room glows gold and red, pulsing with the low, heavy thump of music – a heartbeat loud enough to rattle the floorboards. Laughter ricochets off the stone, a little too bright, a little too sharp, like everyone is desperate to be louder than the endings creeping up behind them. Enchanted lanterns bob lazily through the air, and someone’s charmed sparkles burst overhead, dissolving into smoke that shimmers for a second longer than it should.

You came because you wanted to win. You dressed like a warning. Dark green velvet, a slash of silver at your throat, eyeliner winged sharp enough to cut. Your smile is a blade, your voice all silk and teeth. You let two Ravenclaw boys orbit you, laughing too loud at one of Sirius’s wilder jokes, drinking when Remus pressed a glass into your hand. You played the part perfectly – untouchable, careless, victorious before the final move was made.

And all the while, you could feel James Potter watching you.

Across the room, beneath the lazy whirl of the disco ball, his gaze didn’t waver. But something was wrong with it. Wrong with him. The usual light in his eyes, that bright, golden flicker of something like mischief, was gone. Instead, he watched you like you were already gone. Like you were slipping, sliding, vanishing – a shape he couldn’t keep hold of. And behind it, buried deep, was something worse. An abyss. A sadness that looked like it had nowhere left to go.

You felt it. Of course you felt it. But you told yourself not to care.

A few hours more – that’s all that remained. A few hours and you could win. Win the stupid, pointless bet. Prove him wrong. Prove yourself right. A couple more steps and you’d walk away clean, the whole stupid game nothing more than a story you’d tell, some day when it didn’t ache anymore.

So you kept going. You laughed. You danced. You swallowed the firewhisky your friend handed you without so much as a flinch, the burn of it scorching down your throat, pooling heavy in your stomach. You let the music drown out the rawness in your chest. You let some stranger put his cold, unremarkable hands on your waist, let him spin you beneath the glimmer of enchanted lights.

One last night, you told yourself. One more move. Win the game. Walk away untouched.

That was the plan.

So why, then… why did it feel like you were losing?

But it didn’t work.

No matter where you stood, no matter whose hands curled around your waist, no matter how loud you laughed – your gaze always, always found its way back to him. Like a tether you couldn’t cut. Across the room, half-shrouded in the lazy dark of the corner, James was leaning against the wall with the Marauders clustered nearby, though they seemed far from his mind. He barely spoke. The glass in his hand twirled in slow, thoughtful circles, the amber liquid catching flashes of light like it held answers at the bottom.

This wasn’t the James Potter you’d come to know – not the boy who lived with noise in his lungs, the gravitational pull in every room, the storm and the sun and every chaotic thing in between. He wasn’t smiling, wasn’t calling attention to himself, wasn’t filling the spaces with his unbearable, inevitable charm. He was still. Quiet. Eyes dark, far away from wherever the party was trying to drag him.

You watched him longer than you meant to. Let your eyes linger for three, four, maybe five seconds too long. Then you swallowed it down and threw your head back, another laugh tumbling out, empty as the glass in your hand.

You kept up the act. Of course you did. You flirted with some boy a year below you – you couldn’t even remember his name, just that he looked at you like a prize. Your dress clung close, soft velvet like a whispered secret, and his hands traveled your hips in time with the music. It didn’t feel like anything. Just motion. Just the weight of someone else’s palms and the prickling trail of goosebumps that felt more like a warning than a thrill. But you didn’t stop him. 

And then James found you.

You didn’t see him coming. Just felt it, like a shift in the room’s gravity, the air tightening around you. Your would-be date was already gone, wandered off in search of someone easier, someone less preoccupied. And there James was, pushing his way through the crowd like he’d just decided he’d had enough.

He was flushed, the kind of flush that wasn’t just from drink but from frustration, heat blooming in his cheeks, his neck. His hair was a disaster – worse than usual, a wild tangle like he’d run his hands through it too many times. His shirt hung open at the collar, rumpled and loose, like he’d either tried to fix it and failed or never bothered to try.

And he had two cups in his hands. One of them – your favorite.

He held it out to you, saying nothing. Just standing there, eyes heavy, shoulders slack, offering you the drink like some kind of peace treaty.

You took it. You shouldn’t have, but you did. The glass was cool against your fingers, and you raised it to your lips, taking a small, wary sip.

Your face twisted immediately. Too sweet. Sickly. Off-balance. You turned away from him to hide the frown, to gather yourself before your mouth could betray you.

"It’s too sweet," you muttered, pretending to examine the crowd instead of him, pretending you weren’t unraveling.

He just shrugged. "You like sweets, darling"

You rolled your eyes, sharp and fast. "You don’t know what I like."

And you meant it to sting, you always did, but the blow landed somewhere else entirely. Because when you finally looked back at him, when you risked the glance – he wasn’t smirking. He wasn’t cocky. His eyes, usually burning gold, looked dull, greyed out like something had drained the color from him. He stared at you like you’d taken something from him without realizing, like he was trying to recognize you through a fog he didn’t want to admit was there. Like you were already halfway gone, and he didn’t know how to call you back.

The silence stretched between you, taut and aching. He didn’t argue. He didn’t tease. He just stood there, watching, motionless ike if he moved, you’d shatter.

And it made you nervous. All of it. His quiet. His stillness. It wasn’t like him. James Potter was meant to be reckless and noisy, a boy so loud they could write headlines about him and still not capture the whole of it. But here he was, hollowed out in front of you, like some part of him had given up already.

The lump in your throat was sudden, sharp, impossible to swallow. Without thinking, you muttered some excuse, something flimsy and forgettable, and you fled – drink in hand, pulse tight and fast like it wanted to escape your body altogether.

The taste of the too-sweet drink lingered on your tongue. And so did the way he’d looked at you like you’d already left. And for the first time that night, it didn’t feel like you were winning at all.

You slip into a group of fellow students – familiar faces, easy voices talking nonsense you don’t care about. Some joke about McGonagall’s lectures, another about next term, another about how many drinks it takes to make Slughorn sing. You nod when it seems appropriate, toss in a smirk, sip the too-sweet drink James gave you just to have something to do with your hands. You don’t hear a word.

Because anything – anything – is better than standing there in front of James Potter, staring at the hollowness in his face. You’d rather pretend. You’d rather hide here, surrounded by noise, than look at the boy who always seemed too full of life to ever go quiet.

It’s almost midnight when you leave. The party is still pulsing behind you, but you slide through the corridors like smoke, like shadow, the castle dimming, softening, as if the walls themselves are growing tired. Drunken students have already collapsed into beds, some half-draped on couches, others giggling in corners. The portraits are murmuring to one another in voices too low for you to catch, and up above, through frostbitten windows, the stars shiver faintly over the Astronomy Tower, sharp and cold as needles.

You don’t know why you’re heading for the library. You just are.

Your heels tap sharp echoes into the empty hallways, each step a hollow sound that bounces back at you, too loud, like the castle is laughing under its breath. The air gets colder, the stone narrowing around you, like the walls themselves are squeezing you forward faster and faster.

The library is dark. Colder still. You pass shelf after shelf, the spines of old books watching in judgment. Dust heavy in the air. But you’re headed for the nook. Your place. The little corner tucked behind two tall stacks, where the light from the high window always falls in soft stripes.

The place where James used to find you. Where he’d sit – sometimes reading, sometimes watching, sometimes talking nonsense about his friends, about Quidditch, about things you’d pretend not to care about but always, always remembered. Where you didn’t have to fight him off with sharp words and sharper looks – you could just sit there, beside him, and forget there was supposed to be a game between you.

You settle into the chair, the dark pressing in around you. The great clock in the tower looms visible through the tall window, its face bathed in moonlight, each tick dragging you forward. You light the stubby candles you find in the little cupboard, their flames small and shaky, like they know they don’t belong here at this hour.

Thirty minutes left. Thirty minutes until the end of the day. The end of the term. Thirty minutes until the bet is over. Until you win.

You exhale, slow. Watch the clock hand crawl forward.

But you can’t see the time for long. All you see is him. James –  standing across the room, his eyes drained of light, watching you like you were the one who’d hollowed him out. His eyes follow you still, burned into the back of your eyelids, dull and disappointed, like you’d proved something to him that he wished you hadn’t.

Twenty-nine minutes.

You close your eyes.

Maybe it’s true what they say about Slytherins – that your heart is just a myth. Something you learned to live without.

James Potter finds you ten minutes before midnight.

You don’t even have to open your eyes to know it’s him because the air changes when he walks in, like the room exhales with him. The weight of it shifts – warmer, quieter, as if his presence tucks itself around you like a blanket. Gentle, encompassing. It’s him. Of course it’s him.

You’re curled in your usual armchair, legs folded beneath you, a book sitting untouched in your lap. The candles have long burned down to nothing, puddles of wax cooling in place. The only light now is the moon, spilling silver and pale across the frost-lined windows. You can see your breath when you exhale. Cold, sharp. You pluck the pencil from behind your ear and start rolling it between your fingers like it’s a wand or a weapon. Something to keep your hands busy. Something to pretend you’re still armed.

You feel his gaze before you see it – heavy and patient. He’s standing between the shelves, just watching.

"You’re late," you murmur, eyes still on the book you’re not reading. You say it like you’ve done this before like this is just another evening in the library, just another study session.

"I didn’t know it was planned," he answers, and his voice is soft. Not smug. Not teasing. Just James.

You glance up then, and there he is. Hair a mess from the party, tie loose around his neck, collar rumpled and dotted with faint sparkles that caught in the fabric somehow, as if the party still clings to him. His eyes are steady now, quiet. No wildness, no desperation – just something like peace. Like he’s glad he found you here.

"You look like you’ve been hexed," you say, because it’s easier than telling him what you really think.

He smiles faintly. "You look like heartbreak."

It lodges in you, sharp and sudden. You forget to breathe for a second. The pencil goes still between your fingers. Slowly, deliberately, you close the book on your lap – not that you’d read a single word anyway.

James steps closer, then drops into the chair across from you. He leans forward like he’s going to say something clever, some easy line, but the words don’t come. Instead, he just sits there, elbows on his knees, gaze flicking between you and the candle stump in the middle of the table. The clock ticks on. Five minutes to midnight.

Silence spreads between you – delicate and trembling, like the thread of a spell stretched too thin. It hums around your ears, sharp at the edges, and you can’t stand it anymore.

"Why did you actually do that?" you ask. Your voice is quieter now, thin with something you don’t want to name. "The bet."

He exhales, and it sounds like surrender. His shoulders curve in, and his eyes drop to the candle between you like if he looks hard enough, the wax and flame might hold the truth for him.

"I already told you, darling," he says, the nickname soft and worn-down, missing its usual mischief. "Because I didn’t know how else to make you look at me."

You blink, barely breathing, watching him like if you look away, he might vanish. Your hand grips the pencil tighter beneath the table, as if holding on to anything could stop the shaking just under your skin.

"I thought it was funny," he says, and there’s a crack in his voice he doesn’t bother to hide. "I thought you’d laugh. Roll your eyes. Maybe hex me. I thought it’d be another story to tell – Potter, the idiot who bet he could make the sharpest girl in school fall for him."

He pauses, swallows, his gaze flickering.

"And then you started resisting," he admits, like it still astonishes him. "You didn’t just brush it off. You fought back. And I thought- maybe… maybe that meant I had a chance."

The pencil might as well be a knife between your hands now. You keep your grip on it so you don’t say something dangerous.

Because he’s sitting there, his eyes glassy with everything he’s still trying not to confess. And you’re sitting here, four minutes to midnight, your victory perched on the edge of the hour – so close you could taste it, if not for the too-sweet drink still coating your tongue, and the sour ache curdling at the back of your throat.

You stand. Slowly, deliberately, like there’s a storm gathering in your limbs. The chair creaks faintly as you shift, but you don’t notice. You’re watching him, and James is already on his feet too, like his body refuses to let you rise without him. Instinct. Gravity. A need to match you move for move.

You cross the space between you – not too close, not yet – your expression unreadable, a mask of something dangerous or nothing at all. The candle between you spits and gutters, casting the sharp corners of your face in flickering shadow. The jut of your cheekbones, the curve of your mouth, the glint of your eyes that he still, still looks for.

"And that’s it?" you ask, voice too bright, too sharp-edged to be real. A theater smile curling at your lips. "The final act of your little charade? The last card in the deck?"

He flinches, barely, but his voice stays soft. "Do you think ’bout me like that, darling?"

It startles you. The tenderness in it. The quiet. You dig your nails into your palms. Hard enough that it should sting, but it doesn’t. You grit your teeth, forcing your jaw to stay steady. You want to hate yourself for him – for caring, for being here, for not walking away when you still could.

"We’ve been competing since first year, Potter," you snap, trying to make your voice as sharp as your memory. "You charmed my feathers off my quills. I hexed your broom so it hiccupped mid-air. You brewed me a potion that made cat ears grow out of my head."

His mouth quirks, just barely, and it lights something in your stomach that you don’t want to name.

"I hid your Marauder’s Map in the castle for a week, pretending I didn’t know where it was," you press on, voice rising, cutting. "We were at war, James. And now- … now you’re holding doors for me. Remembering how I take my tea. Bringing me food when I’ve forgotten to eat, making those- those stupid paper swans with their stupid sweet notes-"

"I meant every one of them," he murmurs.

"You flirted with half the castle!" you spit, like you’re trying to make it hurt.

His eyes don’t waver. He steps forward, slow, careful, like he’s afraid too sudden a move will send you fleeing. "It never mattered," he says, and his voice is a whisper you feel in your bones. "No one but you ever did."

You shake your head. Hard. You raise a hand, palm up, as if to block the words physically. You can’t let him do this. You can’t let yourself-

There’s a lump in your throat, rising and rising, so you force an exhale, try to gather up all that old hatred, the easy irritation that always fit so comfortably between your ribs. You close your eyes and reach for it – the biting annoyance, the sharp retorts, the rejection, the pride.

But it’s gone.

All you find is warmth. Gentle, steady, inevitable.

There’s no hatred. No real irritation. Maybe there never was. Maybe it was all a mask to hide the first time he ever smiled at you and you couldn’t stand the way it cracked something open.

All that’s left now is the unbearable, inexhaustible warmth that spreads through your chest every time you think about James Potter. And there’s nothing – nothing – you can do to stop it.

Your world falls apart quietly. Not like glass shattering, but like silk tearing – soft, devastating, irreversible. The walls you built crumble without a sound. And in the space where they stood, something new is rising, rebuilt from warmth and ache and inevitability.

You open your eyes.

Your gaze drifts, dazed, to the clock face high in the dark window. The moonlight pooling silver across its hands. It’s done. It’s passed. And the words leave your mouth before you can stop them, low and clear and final: "It’s after midnight."

James blinks, his brow creasing gently. "Yeah?"

You step closer. Slow and sure, until the space between you hums tight with electricity. Your breath fogs the lenses of his glasses, blurring you both together. And in that hush, that sliver of a heartbeat where he’s still waiting, you whisper, "Which means, technically... the bet is over."

He swallows, throat bobbing visibly. His voice is smaller than it should be. “So what?”

You tilt your head, eyes heavy-lidded, voice velvet-wrapped and dangerous – a blade slipped between ribs. "Looks like you've lost."

And before he can say a single word, before he can even draw another breath… You kiss him.

You kiss him like it’s a battle you’re finally, finally surrendering to. Ferocious, definite, like you’re claiming the ruins of everything you tried to hold onto. His mouth is warm, stunned at first but then he’s moving, kissing you back with a desperation that feels less like victory, and more like relief. Like he doesn’t give a damn who wins, as long as it’s you. As long as it’s this.

You pull away just an inch, barely a breath between your lips and his. Your eyelashes brush the edge of his cheekbone, and when you tilt your head up, his eyes are already waiting – wide, burning, reverent.

And then, so soft, so delicate he almost doesn’t catch it, you whisper, "I think I love you."

James doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

Because his hands are already in your hair, his mouth on yours again, kissing you like he’s heard it, like he’s known, like he’s been waiting for exactly this all along. Like the only thing he’d ever wanted was for you to say it out loud.

And now that you have, he’ll never let you forget it

A FEW WEEKS LATER:

The fire in the Gryffindor common room is burning low, all red coals and sleepy embers, the flames licking at the stone like they’ve grown tired. Shadows stretch across the walls, long and swaying, and the only sound outside is the hush of snow as it kisses the stained glass, soft and weightless. Inside, everything is warm – thick socks, threadbare rugs, laughter drifting faintly from the dormitories upstairs. The castle is folding itself into curfew, but no one’s come to usher you out yet.

You should be in your own common room. You’re not.

You’re here, pressed against James Potter like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like you belong here, tangled with him, folded into his warmth, your head tucked beneath his chin. And maybe you do. Maybe you always have.

His jumper smells like parchment, mint, and boy – that specific, careless scent of someone who lives out of a satchel and a Quidditch locker and never remembers to cap his ink. His fingers are moving slowly through your hair, not with purpose, but with a lazy kind of affection, like he’s got nowhere to be but here. Like he can’t imagine a better place to be.

"You know," he murmurs, his voice a low echo against your temple, "I really thought I’d have to confess to Slughorn."

You laugh – soft, stifled, your breath catching where it brushes his collarbone. "I almost let you."

James leans his head back, grinning up at the ceiling like it’s shared in on the joke. "It would’ve gone down in history."

"You still can," you tease, your fingers idly tracing the seam of his shirt, a gentle map of something familiar. "Gryffindor student arrested for indecent behavior in a public place and unforgivable taste in bets."

"Hey," he protests, mock-wounded, "you’re injuring my pride."

You tip your head back to look at him and of course he’s already watching you. He always is. It’s in his gaze, the way he looks at you like you’re something improbable he’s still not entirely convinced isn’t a dream. Like if he blinks, you’ll vanish.

"I kissed you, didn’t I?" you murmur.

"You did," he says, and his smile is soft, reverent. Not smug. Not victorious. Just… grateful.

You hesitate, fingers pausing in his hair. Your voice drops, lower, more fragile than you meant it to be.

"It wasn’t a fair bet."

His brows lift slightly, curiosity crinkling at the edges. "No? Why not?"

You shift, turning to face him more fully. The firelight paints him gold and shadow, haloed and human all at once. And something fierce presses tight behind your ribs – the terrible, beautiful ache of loving someone in the quiet, when there’s no one left to witness it but the dark.

"Because," you say, your voice slow, your hand slipping into his hair like you’ve done it a thousand times in another life, "I think I liked you from the very beginning."

You feel him freeze – just a breath, a second, the air hitching between you. And then his smile spreads, wide and unstoppable. Not prideful. Not like he’s won. Just… joy. Pure and warm and so achingly James.

"Yeah?" he asks, and his voice is just the faintest bit hoarse.

"Yes."

He kisses you then. Softly. Carefully. Like he’s still learning the shape of the word yours on his tongue.

There’s no argument this time. No clever retort, no battle to win. No conditions.

Just the terms of a heart freely given – and returned in full.

thankx for reading <з

if you enjoyed it, i’d love to hear your thoughts – comments, likes, and reblogs mean the world and help more people find my work. <з your support keeps me writing!

– your santi 🪐

YOU SHIFT BESIDE HIM, just barely, your bare shoulder brushing his chest as you curl away from the slant of morning sunlight spilling through the half-open window. The sheets rustle, soft and worn from too many mornings like this. Outside, waves break gently against the shore, that steady rhythm threading into the room along with the salt-heavy breeze. It smells like summer. Like home.

JJ blinks awake. His eyes are slow to adjust, drifting toward the dim red glow of the digital clock on the nightstand. 10:49. His heart stutters.

Without a word, his arm wraps tighter around your waist, anchoring you to him, as if his grip could freeze time. His nose buries into your hair, breathing you in, like he’s terrified to forget. You let out a soft, sleepy giggle at the ticklish sensation.

He exhales against your neck.

Twelve hours left.

Exactly twelve hours until the world tilts again, cruel and familiar. Until the loop resets, and he’s forced to start over. Again. And again. However many times it’s been – he’s lost count. He doesn’t want to know anymore. All he knows is he loses you. Every damn time.

You stretch with a lazy smile, limbs brushing against his beneath the sheets. Your fingers trace a lazy line along his jaw as you lift your head, blinking up at him with sleep-heavy eyes. “Are you ever gonna stop looking at me like that?”

His throat tightens. He blinks once. Breathes in.

“Not really.”

Your laugh bubbles out – soft and familiar, like the morning light. Like the first time. JJ watches you with a kind of desperate reverence, memorizing your face even though he already knows every freckle, every dimple. You say those words every morning. Every time.

He used to answer differently. Used to joke. Flirt. Now he just tells the truth. Because the truth is, he doesn’t know how not to look at you like this. Like you’re everything.

Maybe it’s been a month. Maybe longer. A year? Two? Time is water in his hands. He can’t hold onto it, and he can’t let go.

But he always counts the seconds between now and 10:49 pm.

Every time you whisper his name, it cuts deeper and heals all at once.

And every time he watches you die, it feels like the first time – and the last.

The first time it happened, he thought it was a dream.

He told himself that for a while, for hours, days, maybe longer. Maybe because it was easier to believe that than face what was real. Or maybe because everything felt too bright, too sharp, too final to be anything else. But the thing about dreams is they fade when the sun comes up. They don’t keep repeating.

And this did.

Over and over and over again.

He remembers that first day the way someone remembers the worst moment of their life. Not like a memory, but like a wound. It doesn’t fade. Doesn’t dull. It just pulses.

The same road. The same fading sun. The same song playing low through the speakers, something soft and careless and golden. You were in the passenger seat beside him – legs curled up, hair messy from the wind and the salt, bare shoulders glowing from the beach. You hummed along to the music, drumming your fingers on the window, laughing to yourself like you were holding a secret.

He remembers thinking that silence had never felt so earned. The kind that sinks into your bones after a long day, when nothing needs to be said because everything is perfect exactly as it is.

JJ doesn’t remember his eyes getting heavy. Doesn’t remember the moment his body gave in. But he remembers the time on the dash.

10:48 pm.

His hand rested on your hip, warm and easy. You ran your fingertip along the inside of his wrist like it meant something, like you were memorizing him, even though you didn’t know why.

“I think I could stay here forever,” you murmured.

Soft. Thoughtless. Real.

He smiled. God, he smiled like he meant it. Squeezed your hand gently, knuckles brushing yours. He turned his eyes back to the road, but his heart… it was loud. Loud in his chest, too loud to ignore. The kind of loud that meant something was trying to break out. Words pressing against his throat.

Three of them.

Three words that had never crossed his lips with you, not yet. Not because he didn’t feel them, but because he felt them too much. And because saying them would make them real. And real things break.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw your face shift. That soft, open look you wore when you were hopeful. But then – just like that – it faltered. You turned your head. Bit your lip. Looked out the window like you were trying to hide something. It was small. Quiet. But it gutted him.

He hated himself for not being ready.

10:49.

He looked at you again, just as you reached out, touched his cheek with the back of your hand, featherlight. You smiled, like always, and turned his face gently back toward the road.

Then– White.

Searing, unnatural light. The sound of tires screaming against asphalt. A jolt. A crack. A tearing. And nothing.

Not even silence. Not at first. Just absence. Like the world had been yanked away all at once and replaced with static.

When he opened his eyes, the windshield was shattered, the world outside swallowed in smoke. Sirens were wailing somewhere far off – thin, almost unreal – but he barely heard them. The only sound that mattered was the blood rushing in his ears, loud and panicked and alive.

You weren’t moving.

You were still holding his hand, but limp. Unmoving. Your head rested against the seat, neck tilted too far, lips parted. There was a softness frozen on your face – the trace of the smile you’d given him just seconds ago.

He couldn’t breathe.

Not from the smoke. From you. From the absence of you. It wrapped around his ribs like a vice.

“Hey,” he whispered, voice cracking. “Hey, baby. Look at me. Come on.”

He shook your shoulder. Brushed the hair from your face with trembling fingers. Touched your cheek. You were still warm.

“Wake up,” he said, louder now. “Come on, please– Hey. Look at me.”

Nothing.

The pressure in his chest cracked. It split him wide open.

He was shouting your name. Screaming it. Again. And again. Like maybe if he said it enough, the universe would give you back.

But you didn’t move. You didn’t blink. And all he could hear now was the sirens growing closer, and his own voice falling apart.

He blinked. And the world blinked with him.

Morning.

Your body shifted beside him with the quiet rustle of sheets, your skin warm against his under the thin motel blanket. Sunlight slid in through the blinds in long gold stripes, catching in the strands of your hair, gilding the dust that floated in the air like ash. The room was too still. The silence was the kind that makes your lungs hesitate, like the world was holding its breath.

JJ didn’t move.

He lay there, barely breathing, watching you stir, your lashes fluttering before your eyes opened. You blinked at him like you always did – sweet, drowsy, unguarded – and then stretched with a soft sigh, the sheet slipping down your bare shoulder. You looked like heaven, like something the sea might’ve given up just for him.

“Will you ever stop looking at me like that?” you asked with a tired laugh, unaware of the weight behind his eyes.

He blinked once. Only once.

Then he let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Like your voice pulled him back from the edge. His hand found your cheek, brushing his thumb under your eye, and he kissed you with something quiet and trembling in him.

“Never,” he whispered. His voice broke on it.

But it didn’t matter.

Because it all repeated again.

Night. The highway. The quiet. 10:48.

The same moment, the same song, the same soft way you laced your fingers through his. You turned to him, smiling. He kissed your hand like it might save you.

And again light. Blinding. Screaming. And you… You weren’t there anymore. And he woke up. 

Alone.

The third time, he didn’t wake up calm.

He sat up with a gasp, the sheets tangled around his legs, the air thick in his lungs like smoke. He turned to you, grabbed your wrist, heart pounding so fast it felt like it would rupture. His voice cracked as he begged – begged – you to stay.

“Please. Don’t leave the room today. Don’t fall asleep. I need you to trust me. Just- Just for one day, please-”

You blinked, confused. Concerned. Laughing at first, like it was a game. But he wasn’t laughing. He was already shaking. Already staring at the clock like it was counting down to a bomb.

You died anyway.

The fourth time, he got behind the wheel and didn’t slow down. Drove the car straight into a tree before 10:49 could touch you.

But he woke up again. No blood. No scars. Just the guilt still clinging to his chest like smoke.

The fifth time, he screamed until his voice gave out, shoving his face into the motel pillow so no one would hear the way he broke apart. He kicked the nightstand so hard the lamp shattered. He tore his knuckles on the wall and bled in silence. You lay sleeping beside him the whole time.

The sixth time, he didn’t talk to you. Didn’t touch you. Couldn’t look at you.

He just counted the minutes.

The eighth time, he changed everything – your breakfast, your route, your clothes, the music you played. He filled the day with distractions, hoping to outsmart the loop, to reroute fate. And for a moment, it worked.

Until it didn’t.

Because at 10:49, you were gone again.

The tenth time, he tried to beat death to the punch. He took every pill in the drawer, fell to the floor in the motel bathroom. And still, he woke up next to you. Alive. Cursed. Crushed.

Time lost meaning.

It wasn't hours or minutes anymore. It was just distance. Distance between now and the moment the world ended again. The sun didn’t rise anymore. It just counted down.

He tried everything.

He nailed the door shut, dragged the dresser in front of it. Burned the car. Hid the keys. He locked you in the bathroom and stood outside, sobbing, fists clenched against the wood. He made you wear a helmet. Made you promise not to speak, not to move. He held your body too tight, lips against your temple, whispering, please don’t die this time, please don’t leave me, please, please, please-

Still, every single time- 10:49. 10:49. 10:49. 10:49. And you were gone.

It started to feel like punishment. But for what? For his past? For the fights, the arrests, the lies? For not telling you he loved you before the loop began? Did that moment even exist anymore?

He didn’t know what day it was. What month. If it had been weeks or months or years. You never remembered a thing. You were always new, unbroken, untouched by the fire of this loop. But he remembered everything.

And that was the curse.

Then came the night he stopped trying.

He lay beside you and didn’t speak. Didn’t tape the windows, didn’t light a candle, didn’t check the time every ten seconds. He didn’t tell you to stay. He just curled closer and held you as if it wasn’t the last time. He told you stories – real ones, messy ones. Childhood memories. Dreams he had. Things he’d never said out loud. He told you about the first time he realized you were it for him.

And when the clock struck 10:49, you didn’t jerk, didn’t bleed, didn’t vanish in a storm of glass and steel.

You just… faded.

Soft. Silent. As if the light went out in the universe and took you with it. But before it happened – just before – your eyes locked with his.

And something in them knew.

You looked right at him like it wasn’t the first time. Like it never had been.

“I know you.”

That broke something. Or healed it. Or maybe both.

From that night on, JJ stopped fighting the end. Instead, he started changing the middle.

He gave himself twelve hours to love you like he never dared before. Twelve hours to kiss your wrist. To trace the freckles on your back. To slow dance in a motel kitchen. To laugh until you snorted. To watch you bite into an apple and act like it was divine.

Twelve hours to live like it would last.

If this was a curse, then he would make it beautiful. Make it worthy of you.

And after that something has changed.

10:01 AM.

You shift beside him in the mess of motel sheets, limbs tangled, your skin warm against his beneath the thin blanket. The morning light creeps through the slats of the blinds in golden stripes, cutting across your bare shoulder and catching the dust suspended in the air, making everything shimmer. The room is still and slow, like the world itself hasn’t fully woken up yet.

JJ doesn't move. He just watches you. Like he always does. Like it's the only thing he's sure of anymore.

He memorizes every single detail – how your nose wrinkles just a little when the sunlight finds your face, how you instinctively shift closer to him, nose nudging against his chest, the ghost of a smile tugging at your lips as you bury yourself in the safety of his warmth. How your eyes flutter open, heavy with sleep, but still sharp, still playful, that familiar glint already dancing in them.

And then, like clockwork – like ritual – you stretch slowly, a grin tugging at your lips, and ask the question that starts every day in this cursed cycle:

“Will you ever stop looking at me like that?”

Your voice is sleep-rough and teasing, but he hears the tenderness under it. The hope.

He blinks once. Breathes in. Breathes you in.

“Not really.”

Your laugh is slow and unguarded, like the morning sun itself – warm, soft, effortless. And for the first time in longer than he can remember, JJ doesn’t think about 10:49. Doesn’t think about the end. He lets it go. Just for now. Just for this.

He lifts a hand and gently brushes a strand of hair from your cheek, tucking it behind your ear. You’re still smiling. Still his. So he kisses you. Your temple first. Then your eyelids. Your cheeks. The tip of your nose. Slow, reverent kisses like prayers. Worship. Like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he stops. He kisses every inch of your face until there’s nothing left but your mouth.

You laugh again, half-heartedly trying to squirm away, but it’s no use. The moment your lips meet his, everything else in the world falls away. There’s no motel. No clock. No curse. Just you and him. Just this.

His fingers cradle your jaw as he deepens the kiss, tilting your chin toward him, and your hands slide into his hair, pulling him closer. He doesn’t stop until his chest starts to burn from lack of air, and even then he breaks away only for a second, breathing hard, and between every sharp inhale, he kisses you again. Tiny, desperate kisses. Like he’s trying to stay tethered to this moment.

You're breathless when you turn away, laughing, cheeks flushed. His weight is half draped over you now, hovering just enough to watch you, to keep taking you in like it might be the last time.

The sunlight glints off your lashes. The freckles you always complain about – his favorite thing – are scattered across your nose like tiny constellations. Your lips are swollen, kiss-bruised and parted, and you look like a secret he never wants the world to find out.

You look like infinity.

“Too greedy today, Maybank?” you tease, brushing the hair out of his eyes. Your fingers thread slowly through the strands, and your nails scrape gently across his scalp.

He shudders.

And then he crumbles.

He lowers himself until his forehead rests against your collarbone, his body curled into yours like a man in need of shelter. His arms wrap around your waist, and he breathes you in like you’re air, like you’re home, like nothing else matters. And in that moment, he is soft. Unguarded. Devoted. He hums low in his throat, a sound that’s not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh.

You laugh again – light, musical, perfect – and hold him tighter.

And JJ thinks if this was all the loop ever gave him, he would let it break him a thousand more times, just to hear that sound one more time.

12:17 PM.

You're still in bed.

Neither of you has moved much. The sheets are tangled around your legs, warm with body heat and littered with crumbs from the biscuits you demolished straight from the pack. The sweet scent of raspberry tea lingers in the air, mingling with the faint haze of cigarette smoke. Sunlight, now softened and lower in the sky, casts long golden shadows across the motel floor.

The radio murmurs in the background, an old tune playing like it wandered in from a 1960s rom-com, all soft guitars and dusty vocals. Static crackles through every so often – brief bursts of white noise – like the universe can’t quite hold the moment still. You’re lying on his chest, your ear pressed to the steady thump of his heartbeat, and every so often, he feels your breath against his skin.

JJ hasn’t said much. He’s content to breathe you in. To let your weight anchor him to the moment.

But then, without warning, he stubs out his cigarette and leans down, his lips brushing the shell of your ear.

“Shall we dance?” he murmurs, low and soft, like it might break the spell.

Your body shivers involuntarily at the sound of his voice so close, and you twist just enough to look up at him over your shoulder, pressing a light, lingering kiss to his neck. But your brows furrow.

Dance?

JJ Maybank doesn’t dance.

Not at parties, not during slow songs at school dances, not that one night at the Château when it was just the two of you left under the stars. He always stayed back, leaning against the wall or the hood of someone’s truck, cigarette tucked between his fingers, watching you like you were something he couldn’t quite reach. Like he was scared that if he moved, you might vanish.

So you frown in confusion, and he notices immediately, letting out a quiet laugh as he reaches up to smooth the crease between your brows with his thumb.

“Don’t look at me like I’ve grown two heads,” he says, smiling in a way that makes your stomach flip.

You roll over, sitting up, pulling the blanket with you as you plant yourself in front of him, eyes narrowing playfully.

“You, JJ Maybank, my boyfriend of three years who can barely clap on beat, you’re asking me to dance?” Your voice is half mockery, half wonder, your mouth already twitching with the threat of a smile.

He shrugs like it’s no big deal, but there’s something in his eyes. A softness. A hunger. You haven’t seen that exact look before.

You gasp, dramatically clutching your chest.

“Where’s my boyfriend?” you say, eyes wide. You throw the blanket off and leap from the bed, backing away toward the center of the room. “You alien! What have you done with him? Where is my real JJ?”

He laughs – really laughs – and the sound is so full and bright that it sends shivers through your entire body. That laugh always gets you. It always has.

You squeal and take off across the room like a mouse, darting from corner to corner, trying to keep distance between you, but it’s useless. He chases you with a grin, slow and patient, eyes full of amusement like a hunter who already knows the ending.

When he finally catches you, his arm loops firmly around your waist and pulls you flush against him. You're breathless with laughter, heart pounding, and you reach up to push at his chest, but he just kisses you instead. Quick and hot and full of something deeper than playfulness.

The music shifts behind you. The radio skips into a slower song, mellow and swaying, like the universe decided to join in.

He pulls away from the kiss just enough to make you chase his mouth, to leave you hanging there for a second, lips parted and wanting. His forehead presses against yours, and his hands find yours, curling his fingers gently through yours as he breathes you in.

“Kisses only after dancing, my lady,” he whispers, voice thick with teasing but there’s an ache in it too, something too tender to ignore.

Your heart stutters.

You exhale and let him lead, stepping with him into the middle of the room as he guides you into a slow sway. It’s awkward at first – he steps on your toes, mutters a curse under his breath, and tries to apologize– but you just laugh, grabbing his face and brushing your fingers through his messy hair like you always do.

You whisper something silly. Something soft. And he smiles against your forehead.

There’s nothing graceful about the way you move together. His rhythm is clumsy, yours offbeat, but none of it matters. Not when he’s looking at you like this. Not when you’re so close that you can feel his breath between each word. Not when the air around you is glowing with sunlight and something that feels suspiciously like forever.

JJ wants to bottle this moment. Wants to burn it into his skin. He wants this memory to scar. Because nothing – not time, not death, not fate – could take this from him if it’s part of him.

You rest your head on his chest, and he closes his eyes, letting the music and your heartbeat blur into one.

Few things in the world could ever be better than this.

And if he has to lose you again- … if 10:49 comes and rips it all away- … then at least he had this.

At least he had you, dancing barefoot in the middle of a cheap motel room, smiling like you had no idea the world was ending.

2:53 PM

He gave this day to you. Every second, every breath.

If there was a time when JJ Maybank fought this loop – raged against it, tried to break it – those days were long gone. Now, he didn't fight anymore. He endured. He accepted the curse, welcomed it even, because what was the alternative? A world without you.

He could live in this purgatory a thousand lifetimes if it meant hearing your laugh in the morning, watching your lashes flutter open, feeling the weight of your body slide over his under sun-warmed sheets. He would watch you die a hundred more times just to see you wake up again. Because you always woke up. Disheveled. Glowing. Soft.

So when you stepped onto the motel balcony, coffee cup in hand and sunlight painting your skin, and said you wanted to go to the beach.

He didn’t hesitate.

He packed the bag before you finished your sentence. You teased him about it, still in your robe, rifling through your bag to choose a swimsuit like it was the most important decision in the world. Maybe it was.

Ten minutes later, you were in the passenger seat, legs on the dashboard, blasting a playlist of chaotic 2010s summer hits. Your voice cracked as you sang too loud, too off-key, but JJ had never heard anything better. The windows were down, your hair whipped around like a wild thing, and he thought: God, don’t let this end.

He gripped the steering wheel too tight.

The wind tangled your hair, and you threw your hands up to the chorus of a song that meant nothing, and yet suddenly, everything. His chest ached with it. You weren’t doing anything special. Just being. Just existing. And he couldn’t bear the thought that soon you wouldn’t.

You stopped at a gas station halfway there, claiming the picnic wouldn’t be complete without “a borderline irresponsible amount of snacks.” He didn’t argue. He didn’t look at prices. What did money matter in a world that reset?

You stood in the candy aisle debating the moral superiority of double-stuffed Oreos versus original. He watched you like he was afraid you'd vanish if he blinked. He bought both. And a pair of overpriced tourist keychains – mini surfboards, one pink and chipped, the other blue. He handed you yours, clipped the other to his keys like it was sacred.

You beamed. Your arm looped through his like you never wanted to let go.

By the time you got to the beach, the sun had begun to soften into gold. The sky was pale and endless. The air smelled like salt and sunblock. The water was warm like milk, shimmering with that late-afternoon kind of peace that made the world feel far away.

You spread out the blanket, flopped onto it with dramatic flair, and asked him to rub sunscreen on your back. Of course he made a comment. He always did. Something whispered in your ear that made you squirm and laugh and swat at him. But you let him linger. His hands warm against your skin, fingers tracing your spine like he was trying to memorize you all over again.

And then he went to surf.

He felt more alive than he had in days, months, maybe ever. The board under his feet, your voice calling from the shore like the sun itself had learned how to speak.

“That’s my man! Get it, babe!” you shouted, clapping like an idiot, earning a few looks from strangers. You didn’t care.

He fell. Of course he did. The wave knocked him sideways and the water filled his nose and ears, but when he came up sputtering, all he could hear was your laughter ringing across the sand.

“Fall more gracefully next time, Maybank!” you shouted, tossing him a towel as he dragged himself onto the shore. “I’m out here hyping you up and you’re out there dying!”

He didn’t even bother with the towel. He grabbed you instead.

You squealed and kicked, laughing so hard your body went limp against his as he hauled you toward the water. You shrieked when it touched your skin, cold and shocking, but then you melted into it, into him, arms around his neck.

You splashed water in his face. He got you back. You shrieked louder, but your smile never faded.

It ended in a kiss.

It always did.

Your mouth met his with salt still on your lips, your legs still tangled around his waist, and his hands pressed against your back like maybe this time – maybe – he could hold you together.

“PG-13, JJ,” you murmured between kisses, breathless, flushed. “There are kids here.”

He grinned like he owned the ocean.

“I’d care,” he said, biting back another kiss, “if they were ours.”

You blinked at him.

Before you could react, he slapped your ass underwater and lifted you into his arms again, spinning you around as you shrieked and giggled and wrapped your legs tighter around him.

People stared. But you didn’t notice.

JJ didn’t care.

All he could think about was you. The weight of you in his arms. The way your laugh carried on the wind. The feeling of your body molded against his in a sea that could wash it all away in seconds.

And he thought: if this is the day I have, I’ll live it like it’s the only one that ever mattered.

Because to him, it was.

6:37 PM.

JJ stands shirtless at the tiny stove in the motel kitchenette, wearing nothing but gray sweatpants slung low on his hips, the waistband damp where the shower never fully dried him. His skin still smells like your soap. His curls drip onto the back of his neck.

You’re sitting cross-legged on the counter behind him, legs swinging idly, dressed in one of his T-shirts that swallows you whole. The hem brushes your thighs and clings to your still-warm skin. You hum a ridiculous, made-up melody – off-key and proud of it – as you balance a spoon on your nose like a circus act.

He doesn’t turn. Doesn’t have to. You know he’s smiling.

The spoon wobbles. You catch it, spin it like a baton.

“Macaroni and cheese counts as dinner, right?” you ask, tone serious like this is a moral dilemma.

He hums in acknowledgment, still focused on the bubbling pot in front of him. But you’re not looking at dinner.

You’re watching his back. The ridges of muscle shifting as he moves. The constellation of tiny red marks along his shoulder blades – your marks. Left there last night in a fit of laughter and gasps and nails digging in too hard because you didn’t want to let go.

You grin, a slow burn curling in your stomach.

Sensing your eyes, he turns the burner off and finally faces you.

He walks toward you slowly, lazily, like a predator indulging a game. His bare feet are quiet on the linoleum. When he stops between your knees, you feel the heat of him first – radiating off his skin, soaking into yours.

Without a word, he plucks the spoon from your nose with two fingers. You open your mouth to protest, but the words die when he leans in and presses a feather-light kiss to the tip of your nose. The most infuriating kind of disarming. You roll your eyes, but your smile gives you away.

He laughs. The sound vibrates in his chest – low and warm – and you press your hands to him just to feel it.

“Only if we open that bottle of wine that’s been in the fridge forever,” he murmurs.

You snort.

“We’ve been here two days, Maybank.” You flatten your palms against his chest, feel the subtle flex of muscle beneath your fingers. He’s not trying to impress you. He’s just there. Solid and warm and yours.

Your laugh slices through the stillness like a spark in dry air.

He watches you like he could memorize you in pieces. The curve of your cheek. The glint in your eyes. The way you tilt your head when you laugh like this. He wants to burn this version of you into his memory. Etch it into his skin. Something he can take with him when time rips you away again.

His hands slide to your hips. And then his voice drops, barely a breath. “This is forever for me.”

The words are soft but heavy. He doesn’t say them like a promise. He says them like a fact. Like a quiet surrender.

Then he kisses you.

Slow. Intentional. Like he’s trying to kiss twelve hours into forever. Like if he lingers long enough, you won’t disappear at all. Your fingers slide up the back of his neck, pulling him closer, and he lets you consume him. Lets himself fall.

You exhale into his mouth, your body melting into his, the taste of salt and heat and a long day clinging to his skin.

You don’t notice the way his hand shifts behind your back. The way his eyes flick down to his wristwatch.

6:43. Time is still moving. And he’s running out of it.

7:44 PM.

You’re curled up on the motel’s hideous plaid couch, one of those scratchy, faded things that looks like it belonged to a waiting room in the '90s. The television glows quietly across the room, playing some forgettable drama neither of you is watching. The volume’s low, the dialogue muffled, white noise against the silence that’s slowly thickening between you.

Your legs are stretched out, your bare feet resting in JJ’s lap. His hands trace gentle patterns along your ankle, lazy and distracted. He doesn’t look away from you, though. Not really. His eyes are there in the periphery, watching the way you fidget with the hem of his shirt. The way your breathing changes when the silence goes on too long.

The room is dim, lit only by the flickering blue light of the TV and the faint red glow of the clock on the nightstand. It flashes rhythmically… 

7:44… 7:45… 

…like it knows something you don’t.

And maybe you do. Some part of you. Somewhere deep in your bones.

“JJ,” you murmur. Your voice is small, tired. A little lost. You shift your head to rest against the back of the couch, your eyes on the ceiling now. “If this were the last day of your life… what would you do?”

It’s quiet.

Too quiet.

He freezes. Just for a second. But you feel it.

JJ’s breath catches in his throat, and his grip on your ankle stills. His chest contracts like something inside him is physically caving in. The clock pulses again.

7:46.

He turns his head to look at you.

And in that moment, he sees you in a way that punches the air from his lungs, like he’s seeing you for the first time and for the last time all at once. He takes you in like someone memorizing a painting before it’s torn off the wall. Your bare knees curled into the cushion, the sleepy line of your mouth, the creases at the corners of your eyes, the way his shirt hangs off your shoulder like it was made for this: for you, here, now.

He doesn’t want to think about time. Not now. Not with you like this.

So he doesn’t.

He leans forward slightly, his voice low and steady.

“I’d spend it all on you.”

He presses a kiss to the crown of your head. Gentle. Almost reverent. Like he’s afraid it’ll break you. Like he’s already broken.

You blink at him, surprised by how serious he sounds. You weren’t expecting a real answer. You meant it as a joke – something light to toss into the room to fill the silence, to chase away the shadows gathering at the edges of the night. But JJ doesn’t laugh.

He’s still watching you.

And there’s something in his gaze – tender and full of something else, something heavier. A kind of sadness you can’t name yet. A softness you don’t quite understand. Like he’s letting you see something he’s been hiding for a long time.

Your throat tightens.

You open your mouth to joke, to defuse it – something about how cheesy he sounds or how he forgot about pizza – but the words don’t come. They catch halfway and fall flat, and suddenly your chest aches and your eyes sting and you’re pressing your face into his neck without knowing why.

Tears slide down your cheeks silently. They don’t come all at once. Just a slow, steady leak of emotion you can’t explain. You don’t know why it feels like this. Like something in the room is shifting. Tilting.

But JJ knows.

He wraps his arms around you like he means it. Like he needs it. Like if he doesn’t hold you right now, he’ll fall apart completely.

And you ask him, voice shaking: “Tell me something true.”

There’s no hesitation. He doesn’t say it like it’s a confession. He says it like it’s a fact. Like it’s always been true and always will be. “You are the only thing that has ever mattered.”

You don’t respond. You can’t.

You just stay there in the dim glow, tucked into his chest as the clock ticks louder in the silence.

7:49…

7:50…

And the night is beginning to end.

10:42 PM.

The motel is quiet now. The television’s off, and the soft hum of the fridge is the only sound left to fill the room. The air is warm and still. Your leg is tangled over his, your cheek resting on his bare shoulder like it belongs there, like you belong there.

JJ doesn’t move. He barely breathes.

He wants to remember this moment in microscopic detail. The way your fingers curl loosely against his ribs. The sound of your sleepy exhale. The faint scent of coconut shampoo clinging to your damp hair. He wants to stop time – not to fix it, not to change anything – but just to live here a little longer. In the quiet. In the warmth of you.

You speak softly. Your voice is low and dreamy, heavy with the kind of sleepiness that makes everything feel far away.

“I had a dream once,” you say, like you’ve forgotten the weight of the world, like you don’t know what’s coming in seven minutes. “We lived in a town in the mountains. Really small. There was this little house with yellow shutters and a garden that needed weeding all the time.”

JJ closes his eyes. He can picture it.

“I worked in a bookstore,” you go on. “And you… I don’t know, you fixed bikes or something. You wore flannel. We had a dog- … huge, stupid thing. Chewed everything. You hated that dog.”

He lets out a soft laugh, his nose buried in your hair. It smells like your soap. It smells like home.

“I’ve never hated dogs,” he mumbles.

“You didn’t like this one,” you murmur, smiling against his skin. “He ate all your shoes.”

He laughs again – quiet, real – but it barely rises above a breath. He wants to say something, but his throat is tight. Too tight.

You tilt your head and look up at him, your eyes still half-lidded from sleep.

“I liked that dream,” you whisper. “It felt like something we could’ve had. If things had been easier, I guess.”

JJ swallows hard.

He can see it all now. You in a faded apron behind a bookstore counter, glasses slipping down your nose. Him outside in the cold, grease on his hands. A porch light that never goes out. Mismatched mugs. A kid with your laugh and his temper. You yelling at the dog while he swears under his breath about another chewed boot.

It could’ve been a good life. 

It would’ve been.

“It sounds perfect,” he says, quietly.

“I'd give anything to give it to you.” But he doesn’t say that part out loud.

You keep talking, voice barely above a murmur now. You say the word wedding, and it slips through his chest like a blade. Then something about matching tattoos. Then you mention fixing some beat-up car together. A child. Porch lights.

Your sentences start to drift, unravel, blur into one another. Like mist on glass. Like you’re dissolving and don’t even know it. But JJ knows.

He doesn’t panic. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t try to stop the clock anymore. He just watches you with the kind of stillness that only comes when a heart is breaking silently.

And maybe that’s the difference tonight.

Because this time, he isn’t fighting fate. He isn’t screaming or running or trying to change the rules. He’s just… loving you. With everything he has left.

And suddenly, something inside him breaks open – not with fear, but with clarity. This isn’t about endings. It never was.

It’s about you. Your voice. Your warmth. The way your lips twitch before you smile. The way you say his name when you're too tired to pretend you're not in love with him.

So he says it. Quiet. No weight. No build-up. Just truth.

“I love you.”

You blink.

Then you freeze – not like someone dying, not like someone slipping away. But like someone hearing something they've been waiting for their whole life.

“What?” you laugh softly, blinking again, like maybe you misheard.

JJ doesn’t look away.

“I love you,” he repeats, even quieter now. Like a prayer. “I don’t need the house, or the dog, or the porch light. I don’t need anything if you’re not there.”

Your eyes shine in the half-light of the motel room, wide and startled. Your hand comes up to touch his chin, soft fingers grounding him in this moment.

“You’ve never said that before.” 

He breathes in, slow and deep. “I know.”

“Why now?”

He looks at you. There’s no fear in his eyes anymore. Only you. “Because I finally stopped being afraid.”

You blink again – once, slowly – and lean in so close your forehead brushes his. “Then say it again.”

He smiles, like it’s the only thing that’s ever made sense.

“I love you.”

The clock glows behind you. 10:47.

10:49 PM.

You're breathing. And then you keep breathing.

10:52 PM.

JJ doesn’t notice it at first.

Not when the minute hand ticks forward. Not when the silence in the room stretches out just a little too long.

He’s too used to the ending by now. Too used to bracing for it every time, like it’s a wave about to hit. The split-second shift in the air. The noise. The light. The crash. The absence.

But this time… the wave never comes.

The hum of the air conditioner kicks back in. A soft mechanical sigh that fills the quiet, casual and familiar and utterly, impossibly normal.

Then you shift beside him. Just a little.

You murmur something, your voice drowsy and sweet, sliding over his skin like a dream: “I think I fell asleep.”

You stretch, move against him, and your leg brushes against his. Warm. Solid. There.

And suddenly the room is too loud.

His heart begins to race – rattling inside his chest like it’s trying to escape. His mouth goes dry. His skin floods with heat, then chills a second later. He doesn't know what to do with his hands.

He blinks once. Then again.

He doesn't understand.

Not until he realizes the clock says 10:52. Not 10:49. Not 10:49 and 12 seconds. Not frozen.

10:52.

You're still alive. You're still here.

He lets out a sound – an exhale, a choked gasp – like someone learning how to breathe again. His hand reaches blindly for yours, like he needs proof, physical proof, and he closes his fingers around your smaller ones. Clutches them tight. His grip is trembling.

You blink at him in surprise, your head tilted slightly as you watch him. Confused. Concerned. Soft.

“What?” you ask, barely above a whisper. Your thumb brushes against the back of his hand.

He stares at you.

He doesn’t speak right away. He can’t. He’s still somewhere between disbelief and prayer, between memory and miracle.

You’re still here. Still breathing. Still real.

He blinks hard, and something inside him breaks open. Tears sting his eyes before he can stop them, slipping down his cheeks without permission. You’ve seen him cry before but never like this. Never with that look in his eyes. Like he’s watching something divine.

“You’re still here,” he whispers.

You let out a breath of a laugh, confused but smiling. You tuck your head into the curve of his shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Of course I’m here,” you murmur. “Where else would I be?”

He doesn’t answer. Because how could he tell you?

That he’s watched you die more times than he’s taken a breath. That he’s kissed your body cold. That he’s screamed until his throat bled. That he’s fought and begged and bartered with a world that refused to let you stay.

And now … now you’re here. Just here. Skin warm. Heart beating. Eyes sleepy and kind.

So he doesn't say anything. He just pulls you to him, both hands holding your face like it’s breakable, and he kisses you. Not frantically. Not desperately. But like he’s coming home.

And when you kiss him back, your lips soft and sure, you don’t know what you’re giving him. You don’t know that in this moment, you’re rewriting every ending he’s ever lived through. 

You don’t know that this kiss is a sunrise after a thousand storms. But JJ knows.

He pulls away only to press his forehead to yours, eyes closed, like he’s memorizing the shape of your soul. Everything in him is shaking. But slowly, steadily, the fear begins to fade.

There’s no sound but your breath. Your heartbeat. The quiet hush of the world still turning.

The clock ticks again. 10:54.

Nothing happens. Except you.

You look up at him, smiling in that way you always do when he looks at you like this – like you're his whole life, and he’s just now realizing it. You brush a thumb under his eye and kiss his cheek.

He whispers, hoarse: “That was it.”

“What was?” You tilt your head.

He smiles through the salt still drying on his face. It’s broken and bright and brand new. “All it ever took.”

You don’t ask again. You just press yourself into his chest and close your eyes.

And JJ Maybank stays awake just a little longer, watching the clock blink forward, every second now an uncharted miracle.

Because you’re here. And this is tomorrow.

thankx for reading <3

okay, that’s it. hope you liked it, because i adore this work. wrote it after rewatching “If I stay” — some old good ya adaptations never leave me with my sad girl mood alone. so if you’ve got any thoughts, I’d really appreciate feedback — whether in the comments or my inbox! :3

                                    – your santi 🪐