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just finished writing a short story for my creative writing course and i’m so happy to be free! at least for a little while.
it’s American Psycho meets The Picture of Dorian Gray (didn’t plan it that way but that’s how it wrote itself). i’m thinking about publishing it either here or on AO3. anyone interested in reading it?
Summary: When the Hail Mary reaches the halfway point to Tau Ceti, only two crew members remain: you, the mission's pilot-commander, and Ryland Grace, the chief scientist who doesn't remember being appointed chief scientist.
# # TAGS: Semi-Canon-Adjacent, Long Form, Male!Pilot Reader, Eventual Rocky (No Rocky Here Yet), Surprisingly Domestic Space Fluff, Ryland Falls First, Reader Falls Harder, Slowburn-ish, I'm Still Bad at Tags, Part 1 of ???
# # WARNINGS: Canon-typical Space Dread, Mentions of Dead Bodies, Mentions of Isolation, Nothing Too Crazy, Author is Nowhere Near An Astrophysicist And Most of the Science in This Fic was Either Googled or Ripped Directly From the Book
NOTES: A dash of book-canon here and there, some minor divergence from the film timeline. There are no specifications of reader's height nor form. Reader's pronouns are he/him. No use of 'Y/N'. 5.6k words.
“What’s two plus two?”
Thinking shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, but the cold feminine voice — once it broke through the ringing in your ears — heralded a throbbing headache and an instant stinging behind your eyes. You couldn’t remember the last time you had felt pain like that. And to your concern, it didn’t seem like you remembered anything at all.
“What’s two plus two?”
You groaned. The second thing you identified was the desert that was your throat. You shifted in place, only to be restrained by both fatigue and what felt to be a myriad of plastic wires and tubes.
“What’s two plus two?” repeated the persistent voice. A machine’s, you deducted.
Though your tongue felt like a dry stone in your mouth, you felt your lips move. The action resulted in a hoarse voice that you later registered to be yours.
“F… Four.”
“Correct.”
You heard a shuffling beside you, like someone was trying to scurry away.
You groaned again. Your face was scrunched up into a pained frown. It took a worrying amount of effort to pry your eyes open. And when you did, it wasn’t much help. White blurriness blinded you and elicited a hiss.
“Eye movement detected. What’s the cube root of eight?” the machine asked.
As your vision and hearing properly adjusted, you caught sight of one robotic arm. It spun and whirred as it attempted to touch and pry at your body. You regained control of your head and neck, which was achieved by your evasion of its metal claw.
“What’s the cube root of eight?”
“Fuck. Off.”
“Incorrect. What’s the cube root of eight?”
After a few harsher blinks, your eyes seemed to return to their functional state. You breathed through your dry mouth as you observed the space around you. LED lights, cameras, more robot arms. A monitor next to your bunk began to beep as your heart rate elevated. You couldn’t recognize anything. And when you searched your mind for some semblance of a name, none made itself known.
The voice kept at it, desperate to know the cube root of eight. You were about to raise your hand to smack it away when another voice said,
“Just try to answer it. It’s not gonna stop until you do.”
Your breath hitched. That voice was no machine. It was entirely human, shy and hesitant and far away. You furrowed your brows. ‘What?’ you wanted to ask. Instead what came out was a confused,
“Huh?”
“What’s the cube root of eight?” The machine again.
You groaned. Though you felt like you’d just been run over by a semi-truck, the answer came easy to you.
“Two.”
The robotic hand backed off. The answer seemed to satisfy both the machine and your disorientation. For all the agonies your body housed, you felt the strength to sit up. It was exhausting to do so, but you managed. You raised your hand to touch your forehead. Tubes followed uncomfortably. You lifted your eyes and took the rest of the room in. It was as foreign as it was familiar.
In the corner, a man was on his knees, hiding behind a desk. You frowned as you made the mess of his sandy blond hair and bespectacled blue eyes. He looked ridiculous, cowering like you might get up and punch him.
“Are… Are you awake?” he asked.
You looked at yourself, at your half-dressed body, the machines and monitors you were hooked up to, then back at him.
“What’d’ythink?” Responding with more than one syllable was apparently difficult. Your words, though clearly sarcastic, came out slurred.
The stranger sighed in relief.
The rest of the process was odd and obtrusive, but you had managed to retain some of your dignity; which was a fragile thing in that cold and sterile room. The robotic arm continued its methodical work, its movements precise and impersonal as it detached the last of the monitoring straps from your chest.
The blond stranger — no longer hiding behind the desk — anxiously waited for the procedures to finish.
“What is your mission designation?” the synthetic voice asked.
You hesitated. The words felt slippery, buried under layers of drug-induced fog. Remembering proved troublesome, but an answer came regardless.
“Hail Mary… Pilot-Commander.”
The blond man gasped. You frowned at him, but returned your attention to the machine.
“Correct. What is the destination star system?”
“Tau… Ceti.” The name came slower that time. You could picture the star charts from training, the long elliptical transfer orbit, the Astrophage-fueled spin drive pushing you to a fraction of lightspeed. But the details felt distant, like someone else’s memory.
The arm retracted with a soft whir, leaving you floating in the gel residue. You gripped the edge of the bunk to steady yourself, muscles, which were impressively intact, protesting the sudden demand for coordination.
The stranger bit his fist. “Careful, careful!”
You scowled. “Who the hell are you?” It felt slightly easier to talk then. Your words were cohesive, but the corners of your mouth were still relatively numb.
His name was Ryland Grace, and he had little to no idea who he was, or why he was there.
“I woke up two weeks ago,” he said. “Same coma situation, only Armando wasn't as nice to me. And I didn't wake up as well as you did. God, I thought you were dead.” His voice cracked near the end, like he was on the verge of tears. You looked up at him to realize that he actually was. “I-I was just waiting for you to wake up. Your monitors were looking after your vitals and keeping you in the coma because your body wasn’t ready.” He sniffled. “At least that’s what it told me.”
Ryland Grace wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand, clearly embarrassed by the display. His shoulders trembled once before he forced them still. In the dim med-bay lighting, the tears made his sharp features look younger, more vulnerable than the brilliant scientist you were slowly starting to remember from pre-launch briefings. You didn’t intend to look as indifferent as you did, but you felt too exhausted to sympathize, still slightly drowsy from your years of sleep.
Your eyes drifted past him to the floor beside your bunk, where a haphazard pile of spare blankets and a single pillow made for a makeshift bed. A small tablet lay nearby, its screen still glowing faintly with medical readouts. Next to it sat a half-empty water bottle and a crumpled wrapper from one of the emergency ration bars.
He noticed where your gaze had landed. He shifted his weight and cleared his throat. “Oh, that. Yeah… I wanted to make sure I’d be here the second something went wrong with your vitals. I’m not entirely sure what half of the charts mean, but I figured it was smarter to stay close in case the robot glitched or your readings spiked.”
Your brow twitched. “Are you the only one here?”
Grace nodded slowly.
That wasn’t right, you thought. He shouldn’t be the only one. Wasn’t there supposed to be more of you? Four? No, three? You looked at his tired eyes and saw the restless nights he’d spent staring at you, listening to the constant drone of your machines, uncertain if you would ever wake up. He was alone, and lightyears away from home. He must have been so afraid. You knew you would have been. Finally, an emotion other than tired confusion surfaced from your chest; guilt.
“Olesya.” The name left your lips before you could think of it.
Ryland caught his breath. He knew the name, too. Except he didn’t know it because he knew the woman it belonged to— he knew it because it was the name of the corpse he hadn’t yet moved from the airlock.
Sensations flooded you without warning, the sharp sound of her laugh burning the brightest. Olesya Ilyukhina was the chief engineer of the Hail Mary. She’d snuck three bottles of vodka into the ship. You had spent a summer in Russia. She’d attempted to sneak into the Kremlin. You kept her from getting arrested. The sudden wave of grief told you that you knew her well, but you hadn’t the memory to support it. You knew her, and now, she was gone.
You stayed seated on the edge of your bunk for a long time, head bowed, fingers pressed against your temples while the med-bay’s low lights hummed overhead.
“It’ll come back,” Grace told you. “It just takes a while.”
For all his worries, it was clear that he was relieved. He might have been stranded on a ship in space with no clear recollection beyond his name, but at least he was no longer alone.
And what a wonderful thing it was, not to be alone.
Your recovery lasted for a few days. A good percentage of your strength was impressively intact, and it was mostly just a matter of relearning how to have it. You walked (or climbed) the expanse of the ship, familiarizing yourself with the areas, a good exercise for both your mind and body. And when you knew you could move without the numbness in your joints, you set out to give Olesya a proper burial.
Olesya’s body had remained in the airlock since Ryland’s own awakening. The state of her face, the deep circles under her eyes, and the hollowness of her cheeks, told you that she’d been dead for quite some time. Her body could not survive. The experimental hibernation had always been a gamble, even for the rare individuals who carried the gene that made it possible in theory. For years, the ship’s medical system had kept her stable, suppressing her metabolism to a fraction of normal as the Hail Mary burned toward its destination. But somewhere along the way, her body began to fail in ways the automated systems could not correct. There was only fate to blame.
You cycled through the inner door without thought. The airlock was cramped, utilitarian in the way its walls lined with emergency EVA suits and tether lines. Olesya lay secured against the far bulkhead. You had dressed her in her uniform. You took her calloused hands, held them together, and pressed photos of her family into her palm. You kept one to remember her by: a polaroid picture of her 28th birthday. Cake had been smeared across her grinning face, her eyes bright with laughter. You tucked the photo into your breast pocket.
Ryland stood just a little ways beyond the archway, silent, his hands clasped loosely in front of him. He feared to intrude, but then you invited him in. “She was your crewmate too,” you said, wiping a tear with your fist.
He took his place beside you, rueful.
You spoke no grand words, for there wasn’t any need to, and Olesya would have mocked you to death for ‘being such a cornball’. The memories of her that returned were enough: her laugh cutting through tension in the ready room, the way she’d sneak alcohol and call you “flyboy” with that sharp Russian edge. She had kept her promise to keep the ship singing if you kept it pointed true. Now it was your turn to send her on.
Together, you positioned her near the outer door. Ryland keyed in the sequence on the control panel. The inner door sealed with a heavy thunk. The airlock’s atmosphere vented in a controlled hiss, the sound fading to nothing as vacuum took hold. Through the small viewport, the stars waited, indifferent and eternal.
You gave the final command. The outer hatch slid open. Olesya drifted out slowly, pushed by the last puff of residual air, her shrouded form turning gently in the void. You watched until she became another point of light against the black.
Not even the worst medical-induced coma could take your intelligence from you, it seemed. While some memories were blurred, your skills came naturally. Instinctual, second-nature.
“This is the Control Room,” said Grace, who’d been trying not to appear obvious in his concerned hovering. He remembered how he felt the first few days since he’d woken up. He couldn’t fathom how you were moving so much.
You glanced at him with a quirked brow. “I know.”
You sat in the chair that was quite obviously yours. The ship lit up in response. ‘Pilot detected,’ it chirped. You leaned back and sighed. Even the arm rests seemed tailored to your size. It felt good to be there. Cohesive, in a way. Like sliding two puzzle pieces together. Finally, something unequivocally, and undeniably right.
And your memories did come back to you; better than Grace’s. It wasn’t perfect or entirely whole, but by the third day of your resurrection, you were showing him around. You walked Ryland through the control room, the lab module, and the narrow corridors, explaining redundancies and emergency procedures mostly just to hear them out loud— as though to check if it sounded right. The relief on Grace’s face was unmistakable. The tension in his shoulders eased with every system you named and every checklist you ran from memory. At least one of you knew what you were doing.
As Olesya was the engineer, you were the pilot; which left the role of scientist to Grace. You would have come to the conclusion regardless. He had an obvious knack for the field. And whenever he stood in the Lab, it felt as right as when you sat in the Control Room. Some things just happened to fit. But it took you a while to understand what to make of him. It felt odd that it appeared easier to regain memories of Olesya than it was of Grace. If the three of you were the designated crew for the Hail Mary, wouldn’t you have spent an ample amount of time pre-launch? The gap felt unsettlingly deliberate, and the thought of it often kept you awake.
There’d been other things you had to explain to him. He didn’t know how to access the ship’s confidential logs. Of course he had a passcode that would get him through, but he’d be damned if he could manage to remember it. The amnesia was normal, you assured him. Though it was slightly troublesome that it was taking him longer to recover. You gave him access to the specifics of the mission, the details of the Petrova Line, the trip to Tau Ceti, the need to understand what makes one star different from the rest. Ryland knew most of what you were telling him, but hearing it from another voice made it seem as though he was digesting it all over again.
“It just doesn’t feel right,” he said. “I’m not– I’m not that kind of scientist.”
You’d eat with him in the mess hall trying to resurrect his life on a small whiteboard. You wanted to remember him as much as he wanted to remember himself.
He told you the helpful details: he knew he was a school teacher, and that he had a PhD in molecular biology. He had bits and pieces of a woman named Eva Stratt. He knew the specifics of Astrophage. He knew the sun was dying, he knew the world was ending. And then there was the less helpful stuff: like his favorite icecream flavor, and why the Marvel Cinematic Universe should have stopped at Endgame, and how he ‘felt like a big Beatles guy’, which he’d topped off with a handful of fun scientific facts.
“Do you remember picking your shirts?” you asked him one simulated morning, ducked beneath one of the consoles and ensuring everything was operational. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around it. It’s the night before liftoff: you’re packing your things. You’re going to spend the next decade saving the universe and you think, hell yeah,these shirts will do.”
Ryland was drinking a cup of warm tea. He was sitting on the threshold that separated the Control Room from the corridor. “I don’t remember packing them,” he said. He looked down at the lame scientific pun printed across his chest. “But sadly, yes, these are very much my shirts.”
He liked having you around. He lingered in your space, finding excuses to sit on that same threshold or lean against the console while you ran diagnostics. His shoulders would loosen whenever you entered a room, like the simple sound of another human voice or another set of footsteps eased something tight in his chest. When a small alarm chirped (for something as minor as fluctuation in the thermal regulator,) he would whip his head toward you like a deer that heard a twig snap. It didn't matter if it was a weird noise, a loose panel, or a faint creak of the hull under deceleration thrust. His eyes would find yours every time. And in them, he'd search for the calm confirmation that it was nothing.
“Do we panic? Is that something we should be panicking over?”
“Even if a hole is blown through our fuel tanks, Dr. Grace, the last thing we should do is panic.”
You found it amusing. You were fairly certain that he was at least a little bit smarter than you. Yet there he was, the man who named and bred the star-eaters, looking to the pilot for reassurance over a rattling bolt.
You had a week before your arrival to Tau Ceti. There was time to kill.
You'd explored and catalogued every nook and cranny of the ship. Which, ideally, you would have recognized from the start. But with the amnesia you were still actively recovering from, you couldn't risk not relearning the Hail Mary like a forgotten mother tongue.
In your efforts, you discovered a couple of things. One: that Eva Stratt had somehow managed to supply the ship with an impossible amount of media. (from music, to films, to games, to electronic novels.) Two: that you had some involvement in the engineering of the ship itself. (Your name was credited on the lower-right portion of the main blueprint.) And three, that you had a polaroid of Ryland Grace wedged between one of your notebooks. The latter, you told him over dinner.
Ryland choked on his ramen, which he’d been having for the third night in a row. “You what?”
“Yeah, right here.” With no elevated emotion, you placed the photo on the metal table. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
Slightly creased in one corner, the polaroid was of a charmingly disheveled Ryland Grace, dressed in a lab coat over a faded university shirt, goggles pushed haphazardly against his hair. His glasses hung in a uniquely awkward way, clinging to his ear and jaw. He wasn’t looking at the camera and was instead beaming at the person behind it. It was candid and blurred in a way that made its edges soft; like it was taken without thought nor warning. He seemed to have been distracted from peering at a microscope. The photo caught him mid-smile.
Ryland’s cheeks turned pink. He had never seen a picture of him like that in his entire life. “W-Where did you say you found it?”
You showed him your notebook, that battered old thing. You raised it up like you were presenting your license to a patrolling officer. It was a navy-blue moleskine with the NASA logo embossed on the cover. It was decorated with a few tattered stickers of your favorite band. There was no one reason you kept it. Some pages had aerodynamic computations while others had your grocery lists. It seemed you had it for anything.
Ryland put his ramen cup down. “And what page was it on?”
You shrugged. You flipped it open, pages fluttering until your thumb pressed to a stop. You turned the notebook towards him to show a spread of what looked like an engine. It was covered in your handwriting, words and numbers scribbled about. It was an early concept of the ship’s cable separation system— which was the mechanism that allowed the upper section to detach from the fuel module and spin on Zylon tethers for centrifugal gravity. But it might as well have been written in Chinese for Ryland. And to his surprise there actually was some Chinese text in there.
“Huh.” Grace sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “So you've got a polaroid of me bookmarked on some sort of astrodynamic floor plan… why?”
You shrugged again, snapping the notebook shut. “Beats me, Doc.”
Grace cleared his throat. “You… don't remember taking the picture?”
“No.”
“Maybe we're closer than we remember.”
“Maybe.” You sat across from him. You tilted your head at his nervous expression. “Maybe you asked me to hold onto it.”
“Hold onto what?”
“The picture.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “Why would I do that?”
You shrugged a third time. “It's a good picture.”
A second whiteboard was born that day. It accompanied Grace's, housing its own questions, bulleted by fragmented facts. It was clear that there were plenty of things you were yet to remember yourself. You knew the flesh of things, the shape of them, but you couldn't see the bones. You'd spend hours staring at the board, chewing on the cap of your marker as though you could will those missing memories to return.
“Any luck over there?” You peered over to Grace's side of the room. His was messier than yours.
He whipped his head around so fast that his chair spun a little. “Huh? Oh. No, just the usual.”
You leaned over to catch a glimpse of his whiteboard. You'd unintentionally grown familiar of his handwriting. He had written questions about who you might be to him. He'd listed the possibilities in red ink:
Friend?
Neighbor?
Labmates?
Hung out with on Taskforce?
Always known as crewmate?
Then, at the very bottom, faint and hidden beneath a thin layer of erased ink, you could make out the ghostly outline of the word:
Boyfriend?
You turned back to your own board and smiled.
“Uh, let's try this.” Grace clapped his hands once. “How ‘bout we just throw rapid-fire questions at each other and see how well we can answer them? Theoretically that should jog our memories.”
You nodded your head. It beat staring at a wall. “Alright.”
Grace grinned. He didn't expect you to agree. “Okay, uh– I'll go first: where'd you grow up?”
You took a slow breath in. Your eyes narrowed like you were trying to see something far away. “Too long ago, can't remember.”
“Oh, sorry.” Grace nodded. “Okay, what about where you lived? Before launch, I mean.”
“I moved around a lot.” The faint image of bags and suitcases fluttered in your mind. Five different house keys, seven different addresses. “I went where the work took me.”
Grace raised his brows. “Okay. Good. That's something.”
You made a sound between a scoff and a laugh. “Alright, MacGyver. Your turn. Where'd you teach?”
He tapped the top of his whiteboard with his pen. “Grover Cleveland Middle School. Remembered that a little while back.”
You whistled. “Not bad.”
“Hold your applause. Where'd you graduate?”
You leaned back, arms crossed over your chest. “You're giving me the hard ones.”
Grace laughed at the accusation. “Am not!”
“I wanna say… MIT.”
“Is that a guess?”
“I'm saying what feels right. Do you play any sports?”
“No, and I don't need to be recovering from amnesia to know that.”
Your questions went on, quick exchanges tossed back and forth while you worked, ate, or sat in the dimmed mess hall. Some were easier to answer than others, some made your head hurt if you thought about it too long. But for what it was worth, it did help. Being prompted to think about things acted as a sort of trigger. It didn't matter how mundane. Were you a morning person or a night person? What was your favorite food? Favorite color? What shows did you like? What books did you read? Were you allergic to anything? Did you like coffee or tea? It went on for days.
“What do you miss most about Earth?” Grace's voice was soft and tired, muffled by the arm he leaned his cheek against. He was slumped over a table. You had accompanied him in the lab. He said he wanted to familiarize himself with the equipment.
You hadn't caught his question right away. You were leaning on the doorway, staring at one of the viewports. It was the night before your arrival to Tau Ceti and you were running calculations in your mind. “What?”
“Miss most about Earth,” he repeated. His eyes were closed.
You smiled. You thought long and hard for an answer, rummaging through memories as though you were searching for a wrench in a tool drawer. None came up.
“I think you should clock out, Grace.”
He hummed and mumbled what might have been a protest, but got up and dragged his feet back to your dormitory anyway.
You didn't have the luxury of getting your own rooms. The shared sleeping area was made to be efficient with space. With Ilyukhina's quarters vacant, you and Grace had three bunks between you. There was some privacy to spare, but it wasn’t often that you were present in your dorm together. The two of you slept in shifts, knowing it would be better if one of you was awake and could easily act on an issue.
“Good night, Captain.”
“Good night, Doctor.”
You spent the rest of the evening in the Immersion Node. It was a room of average size, wrapped in large LED screens that showed you virtually anything you could come up with. Grace had taken upon calling it the Don't Go Crazy Room, which was technically what it was. He spent more time in there than you did. He seemed particularly fond of the beach scene.
But you, you missed the fields.
The screens, in all their artificial brightness, projected a warm rural afternoon. A soft breeze passed over a long expanse of wheat. It didn't look like it would take long before they were ready to harvest. Clouds speckled the bright blue sky, moving in a gentle crawl, obedient to the direction of the wind. Your chest felt heavy. There was a lump in your throat. You took a deep breath. You sat on the ground with one knee propped up, your wrist resting against it.
When you woke, the field was gone. You opened your eyes leaning against one of the screen-walls. There was a sign blinking at you. Warning: Engine Cutoff. Action Needed.
“Cap!” It was Grace's voice. He was shaking you awake. His hair was a tousled mess and it looked like he'd just gotten up, too. “She's counting down!”
You shook your head. “What?”
“Mary! She's counting down! There's something about the engine shutting off? What do we do?!”
His frantic questions did not go well with Mary's cold and mechanical counting. You got up, wiping your eyes with your thumb and forefinger. Grace followed you with clumsy speed. You climbed up to the Control Room, where you sat in your seat, checking the screens.
“Ten, nine, eight… Pilot detected… seven, six…”
Your brows furrowed in focus. Grace anxiously took the seat next to yours, watching your face, waiting for you to give him permission to panic. “What's gonna happen at zero?”
“Calm down, this is supposed to happen. We're approaching Tau Ceti's orbit and the engine is about to stop.”
“W-What do I do?”
“You give me a minute to think is what you do.” You frowned at one of the gauges. “I'm making sure everything's in optimal condition. Sit tight, Grace.”
He did not sit tight. In fact, he had been freaking out so much that he didn't notice you buckle your seatbelt in. “I just feel like we should be–” Mary stopped talking. The counter had finished. There was a noticeable absence in the ship, like a fan had been turned off. The silence only scared him more. “Okay, what's–”
“You are now orbiting Tau Ceti.”
Grace started floating. He squealed an impressively high-pitched scream and started floating. He grabbed the closest thing he could, which had been the backrest of his seat, but his grip loosened and he was wriggling on the ceiling. The Control Room was thankfully small, and there were not many places he could float off to, but there were plenty of buttons for him to accidentally press.
“Grace. Alright– Grace, calm down.”
“What the heck! What the fudging heck!”
“Give– stop that. Look, breathe. Give me your hand–”
He managed to get himself spinning somehow. He'd kicked a stray pack of peanuts off somewhere and he was hovering further away from you. You clicked your seatbelt off, shaking your head. Grace helplessly called for your name. You pushed off your chair. You caught him, miraculously. But gravity was a tricky thing and the force sent you both spinning for a while. Like a pair of dancers on a music box. Grace clung onto you. He buried his face in your neck as you used your arm to brace yourself against one of the control panels.
“We trained for this,” you grumbled, straining to keep yourselves steady.
“I don't remember that!” His legs were floating up behind him, dragging you both. One of his knees bumped your thigh, then his elbow caught you in the ribs. He immediately tried to apologize and only made it worse by pushing off you too hard, sending both of you drifting sideways in a slow, lazy spin.
“God–” You were getting frustrated. “Grace!”
“I’m sorry, I'm sorry!” He yelped when his back bumped gently against the ceiling. “Mary, turn gravity back on!”
“Request unclear.”
“What? I want down!”
You managed to hook one foot under a handrail and pulled both of you closer to the console. You had bunched up a fistful of his shirt and grabbed him towards you. The motion swung Grace around and he ended up facing you, chest to chest, his nose only inches from yours. His blue eyes went wide.
“You’re doing great,” you said dryly, one arm looped around his waist to keep him from drifting away again.
“I don't appreciate the sarcasm,” he muttered, but his grip on your jumpsuit tightened anyway.
Grace swallowed thickly. There was barely any distance between you by then. He could feel the rising and falling of your chest. Were his ears getting hot? When was the last time he had gotten this close to anyone? It was a jarring feeling and an explosion of sensations. Grace didn't dare name them.
You braced your other arm against the panel and gently pushed off, guiding both of you back toward the pilot’s seat in a slow, drifting arc. Ryland’s legs kept trying to find purchase and only succeeded in tangling with yours. At one point his knee bumped your hip and he apologized so sincerely you almost laughed again.
“I'm gonna sit you down now,” you whispered, for he was so close that there was no need to raise your voice. You were unaware of the chill it sent down his spine.
You turned so that he was beneath you as you floated down. You sat him on his chair, one hand holding his shoulder as the other strapped his seatbelt in. Your eyes were focused on locking the buckles, but Grace was looking directly at your face. Your knee bumped his thigh as you anchored your foot against the deck to keep from drifting away. And when your hands snaked to the back of his waist to secure the strap, his breath hitched.
“Uh.” Grace blinked. He was safe in his seat then, no longer floating. To his horror, he was still holding your shoulders. “Thank you, Captain.”
You laughed. His heart stuttered. “Hopefully that pre-launch training kicks in sometime soon.”
Grace laughed too, but it was soft and nervous. He moved his hands from your shoulders to the armrests of his seat. “Yeah, I hope so.” He cleared his throat. He watched you move to buckle yourself into your chair with ease. “Can we turn the gravity back on?”
Your eyes were on the monitor. Your hands glided across the haptic interface, checking the parameters, one eye on readouts. The ship was still settling into its new path around Tau Ceti, the big main screen showing the slow, graceful curve of the planet below.
“Gravity's not something you turn on,” you said. Your tone was calm again and it soothed him. “We’re in microgravity now because the main drive cut out for orbital insertion. The ship has a centrifuge mechanism, but we only use that when we need stable conditions for lab work. And we need to conserve energy.”
You glanced over at Grace, then threw him a smile. “Besides,” you added, returning your attention to the panel as another status light blinked green, “we’re still adjusting to the new orbit. Spinning the whole section right now would throw off the stabilization thrusters. Give it a few hours. You’ll get used to floating.”
Grace let out a shaky breath and tried to nod, but the motion only made him drift a little in the harness. He caught himself on the armrest, ears flushing darker. “Right. Centrifuge. Cables. Lab work. Got it.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I think I do remember something about a centrifuge, actually. Did you know they used it to make butter in the Civil War?”
You laughed again, which pleased him. And for the shortest while, he thought dying in space might not be as bad as he thought.
Bello bello… could you pretty please write a fic about Ron Weasley with a male reader who’s a slytherine but they keep their relationship on a down low? Maybe some jealousy with a girl trying to get close with the reader?… pls and thank you
hiya!!
thank you so much for the request! unfortunately, i don’t think I can write that for Ron because i don’t see him that way. i’m so sorry, but i can’t force myself to write for someone i won’t really enjoy :/
if you’d like, i could write for Fred or George, or Charlie when he went to school (although i have no idea which other characters went there then either).
i apologise for the radio silence this past week. i’ve been busy with school, with work, and i’ve also started getting back into reading. just this past week i’ve reread Crooked Kingdom for the fifth time or something, read The Master and Margarita, Red Rising, and i just started To Kill a Mockingbird yesterday.
getting out of my reading slump means getting into a writers block, apparently.
not really, but my writing has been slow lately. i’m still working on all the requests and ideas, so don’t worry!
in the meantime, you’re free to send in an ask to just chat about the finale of the Pitt (cause boyyyyyyyy) or anything in particular!
(Hi) I saw a TikTok about someone claiming they hated avocado because they tasted bland or some other word I don’t remember. Now, I don’t think abbot hates avocado but I also think it would be hilarious if he did. Taking it like a personal attack. That thing taste like oil wdym you love avocado ? You’re crossing the line. Out ✋🏻
as someone who LOVES avocados (they are literally the best) i also think it'd be hilarious if he did hate them, even though i don't really think he does.
he'd be so offended and make such a big deal out of bc he takes it so personal. i wanna write that banter into a fic now bc it's so funny lol
SYNOPSIS ➢ Despite following in your sister's, Trinity Santos, footsteps by being an MS3, you had never had much passion for the medicinal career. You’ve always wanted to pursue your music career full-time but had never dared take the plunge. Your first day in the Pitt, and Dennis Whitaker is picking up some signals. When he comes to your gig, you find it weirdly easy to open up to him—both your heart and your mouth.
CONTENT WARNING ➢ no use of y/n, maybe ooc dennis, post s2, Robby doesn’t go on his sabbatical, medical inaccuracies, implied sexual actions, sexual language, flirting, boys kissing, light angst, banter, Santos is her usual sarcastic self, reader doesn’t know about her self-harm tendencies, no beta we die like Louie
WORD COUNT ➢ 7.0 k [request]
AUTHORS NOTE ➢ I’m actually so proud of this, I feel like my writing has been lacking recently and this felt so good to write because I feel like I’ve got my groove back lol, so thank you for this request! PSA, I don’t actually know where Santos is from but for my idea to work now let’s say her and her family are from out of state. reader can be biological or adoptive brother, neither is mentioned in specifics. this is post s2, assuming Robby doesn’t go on a sabbatical at all or kill himself (if he even will, but it’s not looking great in s2 guys)
MASTERLIST, TAGLIST
FEMALE DNI !!!
“You’re gonna do fine,” Trinity was saying, steering you into the ER—or the Pitt, as they referred to it as—with her arms on your shoulders. “Don’t worry.”
You rolled your eyes at her. “You know I’m not worried about that.”
“Even so,” she chirped. “You’re gonna love everybody.”
“Even Whitaker?” You raised an eyebrow.
“Especially Huckleberry.”
You hummed. “I don’t know, he did steal my spot at your place.”
Now it was Trinity’s turn to roll her eyes. “He didn’t steal anything and it wasn’t even your spot to begin with. I didn’t know you were gonna come study here in Pittsburgh!”
You both knew that you had found a respectable place to live at, although it couldn’t beat living with your sister, and you had decided to exploit that fact as much as you could.
You sent her a wry grin. “Tomatoh—tomahto.”
She shook her head with a dry laugh as you entered the Pitt together.
It was your first day there, transferred from the hospital you had spent your first two years as a medical student when you moved here to Pittsburgh. Partly, it was because of the great things you had heard of the Pitt from your sister, Trinity, and partly it was because you desperately needed to get away from your parents. Changing schools and hospitals gave a much needed excuse to move out of their house.
Trinity’s steps were confident as she led you to what you could only assume was the nurse’s station, weaving between the different nurses and doctors that were rushing back and forth. You glanced at her and couldn’t withhold a small smile. She seemed so secure in her place here, as if she’d finally found a place she could belong to, and you felt nothing but pride for your sister. All those years she had struggled to keep you safe from your parents, sacrificing her own relationships and friendships for your well being and you were glad she was no longer held back by that.
However, you suspected she still felt some sort of obligation for you. If not by the way she was currently introducing you to everybody, then by the way she was still texting you every night and every morning to check in, just like she had done the past six years. You couldn’t blame her, knowing how much she had struggled and that she didn’t want you to go through the same things.
It had took a good while to actually get her to move out of your house in the first place because she hadn’t wanted to leave you alone. You had been forced to assure her that you would be fine without her and could handle your parents by yourself. To her, you would always be her little brother, as she loved to remind you, despite that you had now grown into a fully functioning adult. It had given her great relief now that you were out of the house, though, even if you couldn’t live in the same apartment.
You nodded in greeting to your new attending, Dr. Robby, when he introduced himself. He held himself with a casual confidence, his arms crossed, when he spoke to the rest of the assembled residents. You had already heard a lot about the people here, so it was nice to finally put a face to the names.
“Santos!”
You and Trinity turned your head in unison, only to see that the voice belonged to an older lady whom Trinity had told you was the charge nurse, Dana. She waved her hand and shook her head with a motion that seemed like annoyance.
“Older Santos,” she said.
Trinity gave you a tight lipped smile. “Guess that makes you younger Santos. What about Baby Santos?”
You grimaced. “I don’t like that.”
“I’m needed. I’ll see you later. Robby’ll take care of you.”
With a small salute, she turned on her heel and walked off to the nurse, leaving you standing with the rest of the residents and med students assembled around Robby. You took a quick glance around the faces, seeing one curly-haired blonde already staring at you.
His eyes were flitting all over you, from your face down to your figure, in the same way you were looking over him. When he saw that you were staring at him as well, his eyes widened a fraction and looked away with a haste that made you narrow your eyes. He was biting his lip in a way that could be a nervous tic, but he didn’t look that nervous. He seemed quite sure of himself as he gazed at Robby, though you could imagine that you saw a faint dusting of colour on his cheeks.
On account of you analysing this particular resident, you didn’t notice that Robby had stopped speaking and was currently staring at you.
“So,” Robby said and you startled. “Baby Santos, huh?”
Inwardly, you cursed your air-headedness. “Just Santos is fine.”
“We gotta separate you two somehow.” When he smiled, you noticed the edges of his eyes crinkled, not quite unhandsomely.
“Maybe I could be Cool Santos.”
He let out a snort he didn’t quite manage to smother before looking away. “Alright. You’ll start with Doctor Whitaker over here. We usually have the med students jump around with the residents and attending so you get a good feel of the place. Sound good?” He asked the question as if you had a choice in the matter, which you knew you didn’t, so you nodded.
“Yeah.”
The resident who had been staring at you earlier stepped forward while the rest scattered to get started on their rounds. “Maybe you could start with the aortic dissection in trauma two. Heard the night shift had a blast with that one.”
Whitaker nodded with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Eyes that looked weirdly open and honest, you noted, as you could imagine almost knowing exactly what he was thinking only by looking through them. “Sounds good,” he said.
Robby clamped a hand on your shoulder as he started walking away. “See you later, kid. Hope you can keep up.”
You gave him a weak salute when Whitaker then turned to you. You hummed as you crossed your arms and tilted your head to the side. This time, Whitaker’s smile shone in his eyes just as clear as on his lips. It made your own lip want to quirk up but you managed to school your features into a light scowl as you took him in. You weren’t supposed to like this guy, after all.
“So you’re the famous Whitaker?”
He let out a small laugh at that, a bit shaky at the edges, as if he was nervous. “Uh, famous?” His brows pulled into a frown. “Don’t know about that.”
“Yeah,” you agreed as you bit your lip in thought. “Maybe infamous is the better term.”
“What do you mean by that?” Whitaker looked more confused than ever, his shoulders tensed.
You cocked your head at him. How dense was this guy? “Y’know, stealing the only available spot at my sister’s place isn’t the best way to get into my good graces.”
Whitaker’s mouth opened in a silent gasp. His finger lifted to point at you. “You’re Trinity’s brother,” he realised.
A wry smile made its way to your lips. This guy seemed to be an even bigger air-head than you were. “Didn’t you listen earlier?”
“Listen, man—”
You saw him start to wind up what would no doubt be a long explanation that you had neither the desire nor the energy to suffer through, so you held up your hand to stop him. “Don’t worry,” you said and he closed his mouth again, looking a tad deflated. Not unlike a sad puppy, you noted. “There’s no hard feelings, Whitaker. I’m only pulling your leg.”
His shoulders relaxed as he blinked in relief and you saw how the corner of his mouth tilted into a smile again. Despite what you had told him and Trinity, you really couldn’t hold it against either of them that he had gotten the room before you; especially when Trin had had no idea you were coming to Pittsburgh and Whitaker didn’t even know who you were. Besides, looking at Whitaker right now, the way he was shifting from foot to foot and looking at you with a weirdly sweet expression, you would be a monster to base your opinion of him on that. Was that just his normal face or was it because he looking at you?
“I’m starting to see the family resemblance.”
You could feel your lips tug upward in an involuntary motion. “Better get used to it,” you said, nudging his shoulder. “I’m a part of your life now.”
Whitaker made a show of letting out an annoyed groan, but it was negated by the grin he sent you. Combined with the glint in his eye, it looked almost playful, which had something in your stomach flipping in a way that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. That was when he cocked his head, already beginning to turn in the direction of the trauma room Robby had directed you to, beckoning for you to follow him.
He moved seamlessly through the chaos of the ER as he explained everything you two passed, swivelling between the other residents and avoiding to crash into anyone with masterful precision. It seemed that the Pitt was a dance you had yet to learn, but would soon do. If you didn’t drop out, that was.
The thought had been gnawing at you for two years now, always at the back of your mind when you listened to professors drone on about the different medical diagnoses and their side effects, suffering through countless of hours of trying not to fall asleep. It was ever present during the long hours you and your fellow students had stayed up revising difficult medical terms, quizzing each other on things when the ever-present pressure of your memory being the difference between someone’s life and death.
You hadn’t been the same as the other students, you knew. It was painfully obvious when they talked about what they wanted to specialise into, what they were looking forward to, which hospital was their dream, and other questions to which all your answers boiled down to a simple, ‘As long as I can get out’. You didn’t care about the prestige or the status that came with being a doctor, only about the pay check that would inevitably allow you to get away. Where the other students were driven by a passion to get into the medical field, you were driven by a desire to get out of your city.
Trinity had moved out a few years ago when she started studying in Pittsburgh and you, desperate to follow her lead, had figured that going down the medical line was the best way to do so. You were slowly starting to regret that decision, however. The pressure from every day having to put yourself through the process of making yourself into someone that could save lives when all you could really think about was the rhythmic tap of a pen against the desk, the sound of footsteps falling in tandem, or the melody of voices overlapping into an overarching symphony throughout the ER.
You had an affinity for that, to find music in whatever surrounded you, and you realised that you were drawn to whatever you could find a melody in. If we were talking about passion, that’s where yours lied without a doubt. But the way Trinity had looked at you when you told her you were gonna be a doctor, just like her, would have had you believing you hung the moon. She, who rarely showed emotion outside of through her sarcasm, had been so happy and so proud of her baby brother. Now that you were here, there was no way you could disappoint her.
No, you were going to see this thing through, even if it was going to kill you.
The rest of the shift was spent with you alternating between following Whitaker and jumping on different cases with the other residents, and one with the attending, Doctor Robby. It was hectic, busy work and you found yourself getting lost in the flow of it. On one of the cases, you and Whitaker joined up with Trinity to help a teenager who had trouble breathing and pains in his chest. It went smoothly, but Whitaker stayed unusually quiet—unusually from what you had observed so far, as he had been more than happy to ramble on about any of the residents—and opted to observe as you and Trinity traded jabs and comments at each other.
It was refreshing seeing Santos so relaxed, Dennis thought. Of course, during the ten months he had lived with her she had opened up much more and would usually be relaxed around him, but never like this at work. You seemed to bring that out of her, something that pulled her back to when you two were just two kids who didn’t know how to show your love for each other through anything other than bickering. She thrived in the medical setting, Dennis knew, with her casual confidence and assuredness in her own abilities. This, however, was something warmer than he had seen before and he couldn’t help but admire the cheeky smiles you sent her in between the medical jargon.
It was during the early afternoon when he noticed you started slipping. You had just went to help Mohan with a case of hers while he dealt with an elder mother and her daughter, when he noticed you going to the break room with your feet dragging behind you. He bit his lip as he glanced between you and his patient, before quickly shooting them a quick apology and hurried after you.
Inside the break room, the chaos of the ER couldn’t reach you, offering a silence you had taken for granted only a few hours before. You glanced up at him from your spot at the sink when he walked in and shut the door behind him. He stepped forward towards you but caught himself when he saw the glassy look to your eyes. It was such a stark contrast to when he had seen you with Santos just a little while ago that he hesitated.
“Hey, you, uh, you okay?” Dennis asked, still on the other side of the room, uncertain if he should step closer or not.
You gave him a brief smile that tried and failed to mask the way you seemed to be seconds away from breaking down. “You don’t have to pretend like you care just ‘cause you’re my sister’s roommate,” you muttered, focusing on a piece of dried blood under your nail so you wouldn’t have to meet his gaze.
“No, I was just—” Dennis paused, uncertain how to formulate himself. He didn’t want to outright say that it looked like you were so sad you were going to cry. He barely knew you, that would be too forward. Instead he settled on another adjective. “I saw you looked a bit tired?”
That gave you pause, as your hands stilled. “Is it that obvious?”
“It’s just that I recognise the signs.” You chanced a glance at him, but he wasn’t looking at you with any open hostility, only a kind sympathetic gaze. Your head tilted to the side that was awfully similar to Santos’, though your motion looked much more gentle than her usual sharp gestures. “Stressed out from med school?” he asked.
You grimaced, looking away before meeting his gaze head on. It was surprisingly heavy, and Dennis found himself trying to memorise every detail of your eyes. Gone was the glaze over your eyes, and instead of looking like you were going to cry you looked suddenly determined. “Please don’t tell Trinity.”
“Sorry?”
“I don’t want her to worry about me,” you said, eyes jumping to the door on the lookout for anyone else coming in. This was really bothering you, Dennis could tell, despite the limited time you had spent together. “I can handle it.”
“I don’t doubt it, but—” he started.
“But what?”
Dennis scratched the back of his neck and stepped closer so that he also leant against the counter, side to side with you. “It’s not really healthy to go on until burn out,” he said, turning his head to look at you. “If you need a break you should take it before you crash.”
The corner of your mouth turned upward as your brows raised in a question. “Who says I’m gonna burn out?”
“No, uh, I didn’t mean anything by it.” Dennis cleared his throat, crossing his arms over his chest.
Your eyes swept over him and he felt a weird itch as you scrutinised him, suddenly feeling awfully pit on the spot. “What do you recommend then? As a break?” Thankfully, you adverted your eyes shortly afterwards, relieving him of your piercing gaze.
He huffed a surprised laugh. He wasn’t prepared to be asked about his own interests by you. “Oh, I like going out to the country,” he said. “Y’know, I grew up on a farm, so being out on one again always makes me relax.”
“Hm. I’m more of a city guy, myself.” This time, your gaze was more calculating than the last time, as if that information had changed your view of him.
Hopefully for the better, Dennis thought. Then he found himself wondering why he wanted you to think well of him? He had just met you and so far you had mostly made teasing comments that had him playing catch-up with you. Still, he felt drawn to you—whether it was the way you looked at him so intently, like you wanted to note everything he did and said, or if it was the way you spoke to him like you actually cared what he had to say.
Too often, Dennis felt overlooked by other people. Growing up, his brothers usually took the spotlight and he was considered the least out of the four of them. That had improved greatly since he had received his official residency status, but still his soft appearance often made people underestimate or discard him. Patients tended to trust him because he looked nice, but outside of the ER it was difficult to have people take him seriously. You looked at him as if that wasn’t even a thought in your head and he felt oddly naked under your perceiving gaze, suppressing a shiver when you kept staring at him.
“I like music. That’s what makes me relax,” you said finally, pulling Dennis out of his thoughts.
His brows raised in surprised. “What kind of music do you like?”
“Mostly indie,” you shrugged. “A bit of rock. But I like most genres. As long as there’s a nice chorus for me to sing along with.”
Dennis was already nodding before you finished your sentence in a manner he hoped didn’t look too lame. “Oh, that’s cool,” he said, rather lamely.
“You know,” you started, shifting to lean your hip against the counter so that you were facing Dennis, “I’m in a band. We have a gig tonight. You should come.” Your smile made it impossible for Dennis not to return it.
“Really? That’s cool.” He mentally berated himself for not coming up with something better to say, but your words had surprised him. “I’ll, uh, be there.”
You pushed yourself from the counter, walking backwards towards the break room door. “See you later, Huckleberry,” you said with a wink at him.
If he wasn’t so distracted by your use of the nickname, he would have blushed. Instead, he groaned. “Not you too.”
Your knowing smile turned into a frown when you paused at the door. “Thanks, by the way,” you said. “For the talk.”
“Of course, anytime.” Dennis nodded, licking his lips as he tried to process that whole interaction before going back to work. Suddenly, his evening looked much more appealing.
After a few more hours of gruelling work, you were finally free. It was almost with a run that you went to the lockers to change out of your scrubs and grab your things. After the talk with Whitaker, you had felt better, but the pressure of today had still been weighing on you. You couldn’t wait to go take your long awaited ‘break’ with your band that night.
Just as you were about to walk out of the doors, Trinity stopped you with a hand on your arm. “A few of us are going out for post-shift drinks,” she said, cocking her head. “You coming with?”
You gave her an apologetic smile as you shook your head. “Nah, I got a gig tonight. I’ll come with next time.”
She gave you a knowing glance. “Alright. Good luck with that.” She knew how much you loved your music and your band, despite refusing to ever come watch one of your gigs. Something about not wanting to watch all the teenage girls thirst over her brother, she had said with a laugh. Instead, she turned to the person walking out behind you. “Huckleberry?”
“Oh, uh, no,” he said. “I have, uh, something. Else.” Whitaker’s eyes shot to you before quickly going back to her, his smile uneven. It was amazing how bad he was at coming up with an excuse, you thought with a small smile.
Trinity’s head tilted to the side as she looked between you two and then she shrugged. Whatever the reason why Whitaker acted so weird she frankly didn’t care to find out. “Hm. Right. See you at home, then.” Whitaker nodded as he separated from the group.
He had a little time before your gig was supposed to start, only enough for him to get back home and take a quick shower. You had texted him all the information when you had asked Santos for his number, so he had time to prepare for tonight. Why he felt he needed some time to prepare or get ready, he wasn’t sure. It was just a gig, something that you had mentioned because you wanted more people there, not because you wanted him personally there.
Still, he found himself fussing with his hair. Changing between three different outfits before settling on one good enough. Choosing carefully which cologne to put on. One part of his brain told him he was ridiculous for worrying about all of this. Another told him that you had invited him out of everyone and that had to count for something. Right? And the fact he wanted to fix himself—to essentially make himself pretty for you—he refused to acknowledge.
By the time Dennis finally made it to the bar you had sent him the address of, your band had started making its way onto the stage. He couldn’t see you, but by the sound of the many people crowding the locale, you were about to step out any moment. Hastily, Dennis started weaving through the people to get as near the stage as he could, ignoring their mutterings or cursing when he bumped into someone. He threw a quick apology over his shoulder but it was drowned out by the sudden ear shattering applause around him.
When he turned his eyes forward, he forgot about anything else as that was the moment you stepped on stage. There was something about the way you carried yourself, how you smiled and winked at the audience, that was so different from the person he had met earlier that day in the ER. It was like you were a whole different person. Gone was the guy who stressed out because of school or who was worried about what his sister thought of him, and instead all Dennis saw was a guy who was confident in his skills to entertain a whole crowd this evening and planned on delivering.
And deliver you did, alright. Dennis watched you sing your heart out, dancing all over the stage and with your bandmates in a way that both looked so natural and so impressive. He could do nothing but lamely applaud at the end of every song, too wrapped up by the sight of you on stage to even have a coherent thought. At one moment, you were beckoning for the audience to sing with you, leaning lower on stage to make closer eye contact with the people at the front—you knew the audience loved that, and loved you for it—and you had found Dennis’ eye in the crowd. He didn’t think he was imagining the wink he had seen on your face, especially not as a chorus of screams had erupted after the gesture, but with the way his heart was acting up, he couldn’t be too sure that he wasn’t seeing things.
Dennis had to agree with the rest of the audience when they kept screaming compliments and professing their love in between your songs, even though he couldn’t voice those thoughts. There was something so attractive about a guy looking as casual on stage as you did: like you belonged. And the fact that you knew you were hot up there probably helped as well. Dennis didn’t have long to contemplate over those thoughts because when you heard everyone yelling at you to take your shirt off and your laugh echoed through the mic, he could swear that his heart actually stopped. He really was no better than these other teenage girls, he thought grimly.
Luckily, your set was almost finished, and with one last song you and your bandmates bid the audience farewell and goodnight. Dennis could finally breathe normally, safe from the overwhelming presence of you. He wasn’t sure how he would be able to look at you tomorrow, knowing that the med student he had thought you were was actually a guy fit enough to be a rock star.
He decided to hang back for a bit, letting everyone else stream out of the bar to the wardrobe. Instead, he made his way to the bar for a much needed drink and to get some space. It wasn’t a long respite, however, as you soon had made your way to him, slinging an arm around his shoulder as a greeting.
Instantly, Whitaker’s face lit up with a big grin. “Hey!” he greeted and you thought you could see a faint dusting of red on his cheeks. In fact, he looked overly hot and bothered, and you were suddenly worried that something was wrong with him.
“You good there, Whitaker?” you asked. Your eyes jumped from his eyes to his cheeks and you decided against checking his temperature with the back of your hand. “Looking a lil flushed.”
He ignored your question with a wave of his hand as his eyes stayed trained on you. “You were amazing up there! You didn’t mention you were the singer!” he said, holding up an accusatory finger in your direction.
You laughed, leaning against the counter of the bar that he was sitting at. You shot an easy smile to some passer goers, whom immediately broke into whispers and giggles, but thankfully did not come up to interrupt you. When you turned back to Whitaker, your smile had turned slightly bashful. “Oh, thanks,” you said with a wave of your hand. “That was nothing.”
“If that was your nothing I’d like to see what your all looks like,” he replied, rather cheekily if you could say so yourself.
“Really?” A smirk formed on your face, not being entirely able to keep the glee from your face.
“Really.” His eyes were wide and looked to be full of wonder and you were quite taken aback by the honesty in both his gaze and his words. It shocked you to feel how your stomach flipped from something as simple as Dennis Whitaker gazing at you with such an open-hearted expression. It felt weird and yet you weren’t displeased by the fact.
You had to clear your throat to again be able to speak—such an impact did Dennis have on you. “Heard you just recently got your resident status. Congrats.”
Dennis immediately perked up and leant closer to you. “Yeah, uh, thanks! You’ll get there soon.” You couldn’t keep the wince from showing on your face and Dennis’ head tilted to the side. “Something wrong?”
Your teeth found the edge of your lip, biting down on it as your eyes strayed away from Dennis’ face. “No. Well, maybe.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
A smile formed on your face at the question. Ever so considerate, Dennis was. “I’m just not that sure about med school,” you said.
“No?”
“I mostly applied because Trin did it, because look at how well she’s doing!” you said, eyes going back to Dennis. You missed the way he grimaced at that, but he kept his tongue to allow you to keep speaking. You clearly needed to get something off your chest and he’d be damned if he was the reason you weren’t able to. “I don’t know if you know, but we don’t have the greatest parents.”
He nodded hesitantly at that. “I’ve heard some things about them, yeah.”
“Well, I needed to get away as well.” You shrugged and Dennis resisted the urge to reach out to you then. “Med school seemed like the easiest option.”
“You thought med school was gonna be easy?” he asked with a snort he wasn’t quite able to smother. The humour in his tone made your smile turn soft.
“Ironic, I know.”
Dennis sobered up then, his eyes doing that captivating thing again where you felt you could be falling through them forever. “What do you want to do, then?” he asked thoughtfully.
You opened your mouth to answer but paused. The easy answer of ‘medicine’ was all too ready to slip off your tongue, the way it had done so many times before when you had been asked. But the way Dennis asked you, like he knew you, and the way he looked at you, like he could see right through you. Whatever you saw in his eyes, it made you want to tell him the truth.
So, you did. “I’ve always wanted to be a singer.”
“No surprise there.” He huffed a laugh. “But, if you’re not enjoying med school, why are you still here?”
You bit your lip again in that nervous habit of yours and saw how Dennis’ eyes followed the movement before shooting up as soon as you began speaking. “Trinity was so happy when she heard I was following in her footsteps and I can’t possibly give up and let her down now.” You sucked in a shaky breath, trying to keep yourself steady. “It’s just.. I’m under so much pressure, I’m not sure how much more I can take before I crack.”
One side of Dennis’ mouth quirked up. “Santos would start calling you Crack if you did,” he said.
“Not funny.” You settled him with a glare that you couldn’t entirely muster up the displeasure for.
“Sorry,” he grinned wider.
You shrugged helplessly. “And not to mention all that student debt I’m in.” You slumped against the counter, holding your head up with one of your hands. “I’m not sure I can get out this late in the game.”
Dennis swallowed thickly when he saw you look up at him through your eyelashes just so and he had to remember to keep his eyes on the upper part of your face. He forced himself to focus on the conversation at hand, and not let his thoughts go wandering of how you could look up at him like that in other situations and positions.
“There’s always time to get out,” he said, clearing his throat. “Listen, being a doctor is a lot. My professor used to say that it will ‘chew, swallow, and spit every one of you out’.” He let out a small laugh at that and your lips lifted, watching the scene with a fond amusement. “He liked to be dramatic. But the point stands that if you don’t have the burning passion you will not make it in this line of work.”
You nodded absentmindedly, but knew in the back of your mind that Dennis was right. You weren’t in med school and on the way to become a doctor out of a passion you had but out of necessity. That was no way to live your life. Looking at Dennis then made you realise that, seeing him be so sure of himself and his decision for a future. You wanted that for yourself as well, to be happy and proud of what it is you’ve done with your life. Of course, you would have been proud to be a doctor, but you also suspect it would have been killing you slowly to not pursue what you wanted to do.
Despite his good advice, you couldn’t help but tease Dennis, raising your brow into a sceptical frown. “Are you saying I’m weak, Whitaker?”
His mouth immediately formed into an ‘o’, and his expression shifted with a quiver of his brows. “What—no, absolutely not!”
“Relax, I’m joking,” you interrupted, taking hold of his drink and taking a sip from it. Dennis watched the gesture with an appraising glance but he refrained from voicing any thoughts that could be running through his head. The only give-away to what those could be was the way his eyes kept glancing between your eyes and further south, to your lips. “And anyway,” you continued, “that is just a distant dream. Not sure I would even make it.”
“I think you could,” Dennis said.
“You’re just saying that.”
“No, I’m being serious.” You looked into his eyes and true enough, there was nothing but his usual honesty there. Weirdly enough, you trusted it without a second thought. After a moment of hesitation, he continued. “You were amazing and, like, a whole different person up there! I don’t know, it just seemed like you were really being yourself.”
It was your turn to hesitate, the words pausing on the tip of your tongue as you smiled at him. When you reached out to squeeze his arm, you could feel his muscles tense under your touch. “Thank you. That means a lot.”
The faint dusting of red was back on his cheeks and this time it seemed to extend to his neck. He ducked his head as if it would prevent you from seeing any of it. “Of course, uh, anytime!” he said with a grin.
It made your tilt your head, the way he was so unashamedly himself when talking to you. It was refreshing, to say the least, and something that made you want to lean even closer to him. “So,” you drawled, “you really think I could make a career out of it?”
“Definitely.” His grin seemed to light up his entire face as he spoke. “I saw the way these people looked at you. I bet some would show up to your concerts just to get a glimpse of you.”
You couldn’t help the snort that came out of you, nor the warmth that suddenly rushed to your cheeks. Had Dennis just confessed to what you thought he had? Some small part of you wished you read him right, but the way he was leaning towards you and looking at you with eyes that basically said ‘fuck me please’, you thought you were right.
“I’d rather they showed up because they liked my music,” you said, letting a smile form on your lips. “But good to know you find me so attractive, Whitaker.”
Dennis was in the middle of taking a sip from his drink, one which he then choked on upon hearing you say those words. He held one hand out in front of him as he tried to gather his breath, voice still croaking when he spoke. “I, uh, didn’t mean it like that.”
Had you read him wrong? You glanced between the way he was leant forward on his elbow, almost as far as he could, and how his own eyes kept jumping all over your face. Almost as if he was afraid that if he concentrated too hard you would disappear, not unlike the way an optical illusion was only there until you focus too much on it. The urge to grab his chin and force his eyes to stick to yours, the way they had earlier that evening, was almost overwhelming. Your blush deepened as your thoughts turned down that route, but it was already too late to stop them.
And it was with thunder in your ears and fire on your cheeks that you said the next words. “Hmm. Shame.”
Dennis eyes’ widened a fraction and finally stayed on yours, though you he knew wanted to stray south by the way he was licking his lips. You would be lying if you said you weren’t having the same thoughts he was probably having. It was difficult to tell underneath the dim light of the now almost empty bar, but you thought you could see his cheeks get darker. Then, with one deep breath he leant forward and downed the rest of his drink. Your eyebrows raised at the motion, but your lips quirked up when Dennis spoke again.
“You know,” he started, “I’ve always had this thing for musicians. Especially singers.”
You tried to school your features into a casual grin despite the way your heart was thundering in your chest at his words. “You don’t say?”
Now that Dennis had leant closer, you could be sure of the furious blush that was coating his face. “Yeah,” he breathed.
“Huh.” You let out a disbelieving laugh. “You ever acted on it?”
“No, hadn’t had the chance,” he said and you thought you could detect a hint of hopefulness in his words. He was looking at you through his lashes in a way that made it very hard not to start your wishful thinking.
Your eyes dropped to Dennis’ lips, the way they were parted slightly in a silent gasp, his tongue peeking out to wet them, and your brain all but short circuited. “Maybe this could be that chance then,” you said carefully, watching for his reaction.
Dennis’ breath caught and he tried not to get ahead of himself as you slowly leant closer. You pushed off the counter and stepped in between Dennis’ parted legs, looking down at him. It was with a bated breath that he watched your hand come up to cradle his face and his head tilted towards the touch, sending shivers down your spine. When he made no resistance, you leant down and saw his eyes flutter shut as his hands reached for your waist to pull you closer to him.
When your lips met his, he let out a small noise of surprise that you swallowed with your mouth. His hands gripped you tighter and the sensation made you moan into Dennis’ mouth. He moved against you, eager and excited for every touch of your skin against his. His lips were soft but the way he was pressing them against yours was bordering on bruising. Your other hand reached up to run through his curls and he melted into the touch, embracing you even further. When you felt his body even closer, a deep warmth started to form in the pit of your stomach.
You pulled away from Dennis with a dry chuckle, knees bending so your forehead could lean against his shoulder. The kiss had made you lightheaded and you felt like a little schoolboy with a crush. “Trinity would give me so much shit if she knew I was hooking up with her Huckleberry right now.”
Dennis tilted his head down to look at you, an incredulous expression on his face that made you want to burst into laughter. “Her Huckleberry? Does she really refer to me that way?”
“No, but you’re her roommate,” you hummed. “Can’t really refer to you as mine, can I?” Your eyes stayed trained on his face as your mouth moved against his skin, kissing your way from his chin down to his throat. His throat moved as he audibly swallowed beneath your lips.
His lips opened when a low moan slipped out and the noise made blood rush straight down. “Hu—ohh, um, mmph—no—uhh.” His words were shaky and interrupted by the low noises made from the back of his throat.
Your lips quirked up in a sly smile. “Maybe not yet, at least.”
Dennis’ hand pushed against your chest and you backed up, a question written all over your eyes. He looked almost pained to do so, as if the gesture to push you away required any actual strength from him. If you looked anything similar to how he did at that moment—lips red from kissing you so hard, cheeks flushed and a dopey smile to accompany the joyful glint in his eyes—then you understood the difficulty to do so.
He cleared his throat while his hands squeezed your waist softly. “Santos would also give me so much shit if she knew I kissed her brother.”
Your head tilted to the side, grimacing. “I’m more than just her brother, you know.”
“Yes, well, of course, but you know what I mean,” he said, grinning at you.
“Hmm, no,” you hummed. “You might have to show me what you mean.” You shot him a wink that got him rolling his eyes before you pressed your lips to his throat again. Dennis immediately melted against your touch and you couldn’t keep the smile off your face. Dennis had such an effect on you that gone were the troubling thoughts of your doubts around being a doctor, and he seemed to be relishing in being able to touch you so intimately. “And let’s make sure Trin doesn’t find out about this, then,” you whispered against his skin.
AUTHORS NOTE ➢ could potentially do a part two where the reader and Santos bond over not doing so well and get even closer. Santos would also then find out about Dennis and him and give them soooooo much shit lol
hey guys, i’ve been working the whole week and will be working the whole day today (easter holiday chaos lol) so unfortunately i’ve had no energy to write. i’ve got a free day tomorrow though so im hoping to finish the dennis fic and post it tomorrow and l hope to also write more on the jack fic!
i so badly wanna write something with male reader who has a sorta rivalry with jack abbot and then he gets so angry about reader eating avocados out of all things.
would be fucking hilarious and you guys already know i love writing tension and rivalries
i NEED more frank langdon/male reader and your writing is so scrumptious pleasee 🙏🙏
ahhh i love to hear it.
seriously, i'm a whore for attention and validation, keep 'em coming. do you have any specific request with langdon or just anything i can come up with?
might take a while because i am a bit busy the coming week but i'll try to write as much as i can!
thinking about writing a jack abbot x male reader fic where the reader is a part of the SWAT team that goes out with abbot in s2, but he is the one getting hurt because he was trying to protect abbot.
imagine the angsssst and the fluff afterwards at the hospital. what do we think?
SYNOPSIS ➢ After your professor forces you and your biggest rival—Regulus Black—to work together, you learn there is more to him than meets the eye. Still, you cannot keep yourself from baiting him, as usual, and he surprisingly rises to it, inviting you to a party at the Slytherin Commons. Curious to what else he might surprise you with, you accept.
CONTENT WARNING ➢ no use of y/n but use of l/n, everyone's 18+ (bc i said so), academic rivals to lovers, sexual & romantic tension, ace smut, angry tension, banter, insults as flirting, pretentious dialogue, british slang
WORD COUNT ➢ 5.0 k
AUTHORS NOTE ➢ I, in no way, shape, or form, support Rowling’s views or work (I am trans myself) and this is written in no support of her work. fuck her and fuck anyone who still supports her. that being said, the marauders fandom is made in protest of her shitty views, I am only posting this because I have had this in the works for years and felt you deserved to read it. enjoy, but remember, boycott anything that woman can gain from.
MASTERLIST, TAGLIST
FEMALE DNI !!!
Page after page turned by your hands, your eyes skimming along the text. Your classmates were all having a difficult time concentrating during the lesson, despite the professor’s attempts at focusing everyone’s attention; endless chatter coming from all directions; laughter filled your ears and a constant movement out of the corner of your eye, which in turn made it difficult for you to pay attention. The movement would be the four idiots you made the mistake of befriending; James Potter, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin. Remus and Peter weren’t too bad in your opinion, but they generally tended to get dragged into whatever new scheme James and Sirius were plotting. Sometimes, they’d even manage to rope you in.
Not today, though.
Today you were having lessons with the Slytherins in the year below you, which meant you were solely focused on one thing and one thing only: beating Regulus Black. One might assume that he was a quiet kid who would keep his head down and mind his own business. It was an assumption that would be incorrect. He was an overachieving asshole—at least around you—with a temper as cold as the Black Lake. You had had the privilege of witnessing his very rare outbursts in person, often directed at his brother, Sirius, and sometimes even at you.
You knew that he was at the top of almost all of his classes in his year. How he managed to do so well, you didn’t know, considering he shared the same gene pool as Sirius. It was a constant competition between the two of you, Remus occasionally joining in as well. Right now, though, Remus seemed to be more preoccupied with the other Black brother to pay any attention to the History lesson.
You glanced over at Regulus, seeing him hunched over his book in a horrible fashion, almost looking as if he were asleep. You knew he wasn’t, only by his small movements and the turning of the pages in his book. He seemed to be able to ignore everyone around him fine enough. Even his best mates Rosier and Crouch Jr failed to distract him, though not from lack of trying. Pandora Lovegood and Dorcas Meadowes appeared to be in their own conversation, occasionally throwing glances around the room. You knew them only because of their relation to Regulus, and because Marlene couldn’t stop talking about Dorcas.
Your gaze, however, was still fixated on Regulus. Because you were so focused on him, you barely noticed your Professor of History had begun speaking until Remus nudged your side. You grimaced, but he only nodded in the Professor’s direction. He had begun to assign you into pairs for some new project that would be due, forcing a groan out of you. You hated working in pairs.
Before your mind could catch up to what was happening, everyone had already been paired up, and your professor’s attention was on you.
“l/n, and—“ His gaze flew across the room to the only single person left, “Black.”
Your eyes immediately flew to the spot where Regulus sat, finding his eyes as wide as yours. Your thoughts were voiced as he began to exclaim, “Wait, no— Professor!”
The Professor raised his voice above the chatter of the rest of the class, “If you’re disappointed with your partner—” He sent a pointed look at Regulus, “Please do not come complaining to me, I do not care whatsoever.”
Regulus’ jaw flew shut, but not without a surly expression painting his features. Dramatic bastard, you thought. You’d be stuck with him as well. And in your opinion, your fate was much worse. You considered arguing with the professor, despite of what he’d said. You decided against it. Better make the best of bad situation, right?
With quiet resignation, you heaved a sigh as you gripped your bag tighter and stepped towards him. Immediately his head raised in your direction, but you ignored his glare as you easily sat yourself down in the empty seat beside him, book thrown to the floor and feet kicked onto the table. The younger boy immediately recoiled in his seat; not smaller in his presence, but more reserved. His hand reflexively made its way to block your view of his books and notes, as if to shield any secret information from your eyes.
“Alright there, Black?” you asked with a nonchalance you certainly did not feel.
Regulus’ eyes narrowed, a scowl making its way onto his face. “Your idiot friends annoyed you too much?” he sneered, cocking his head in their direction.
You glanced at the mentioned four idiots, smiling. It was difficult to ignore the pointed looks they were sending you, well aware that they’d take any chance to tease you. Your head turned back to Regulus, meeting his gaze with a wide grin.
“Not annoying enough, no. Thought you’d succeed much better.”
“I am certain you stand for all the annoyance that is in my current vicinity,” he scoffed.
Your face twisted into a hurt expression, a hand pressed to your chest. But you couldn’t keep the corner of your lips from tugging up in amusement. “Oh, Black, and here I was thinking you were starting to like me.”
“Let’s just get this over with,” grumbled Regulus, trying and failing to hide his dismay of being paired up together with you. “I’ll do the first section, you’ll do the second one, and we’ll go over it all by the end.”
“Fine by me,” you said while rolling your eyes. The two of you might have been in a competitive rivalry, stretching through different classes throughout the years, but you hadn’t spent that much actual time together. Aside from the occasional sneer or sarcastic comment—or in your case, prank—you’d never properly interacted with him. And save for what Sirius had told you about his despicable demeanour, you didn’t know much about him either.
Regulus was already deep in the coursework, writing on his parchment and glancing to the book every once in a while. You rolled your eyes; what a goody two-shoes. You almost had the mind to say it out loud, but refrained in light of your cooperation. It would only put him in a sour mood—which ultimately made you want to do it more. Even though you were good in class, you liked to consider yourself as something more than just your grades. Regulus, however, seemed to only care about his schoolwork.
“Do you ever have any fun?” you asked him suddenly.
Regulus halted in his writing and looked at you with a confused frown. “What?”
You shrugged and said, “I always see you with your nose in a book, always with that surly expression on your face. It’s like you’re allergic to being happy.”
“I’m happy,” he countered, glaring at you.
“You know what I mean,” you sighed. “I mean having silly, innocent fun with your friends, laughing your arse off, going to parties and doing stupid shit ‘cause you’re too pissed. That sort of fun.”
Regulus raised an eyebrow, almost defensive. “I do have fun.”
You found it hard to believe him. The most introverted and standoffish Slytherin actually enjoyed partying and getting up to drunken adventures? Not a chance.
You voiced your thoughts, saying, “I don’t believe you.”
He leant closer, gripping the edge of the desk. “I do have fun.” Your shoulders raised in a shrug but Regulus’ gaze didn’t stray from yours. He sighed. “You don’t believe me.”
“No,” you whispered mischievously. It wasn’t a question, but you felt compelled to answer anyway.
A breath released from Regulus as he shook his head. “Whatever.”
You shook your head, as well, and returned to your schoolwork. Soon, you were distracted again by Regulus working diligently beside you. The way his focus overtook his entire person almost made it seem as if there was no world outside of the one he created around his work. It was mesmerising seeing his hair fall in locks over his eyes and his lips quietly move along with silent words. You didn’t think you’ve ever taken the time to appreciate him like this. He looked almost peaceful.
Then his hand halted mid-air, his eyes shifting back and forth over the page, and his entire demeanour tensed. It seemed that he was almost unsure of what to do. You could feel the edges of your lips start to quirk as you realised what was going on.
He doesn’t know the answer, you thought to yourself.
A normal thing for any other student, but a reason for gloating and pettiness in your case. You did a quick sweep of the class around you, but all the other students seemed too preoccupied with their own work to notice anything amiss. Your eyes shifted back and forth to Regulus and back at your book. It felt as if your thoughts ran a mile a minute.
Fuck, am I really doing this?
You turned to the boy, grinning. Regulus noticed your stare and looked up hesitantly at you, narrowing his eyes.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
Your smile was cocky as you considered him. You knew you had the upper hand, but still a part of you wanted to help. Not only because you were partners in the same schoolwork, but because you genuinely wanted to help him. Why, you didn’t let yourself think of for too long.
“Listen, l/n, I don’t have time for this,” said Regulus. “Just say something arse-y and leave me be.” His eyes fell to his textbook as your own smile faded.
Is that all he thinks of me?
You cleared your throat before sitting up straight. “Black, as much as I like to be an asshole, I want to help.” You saw his eyebrows furrow as he if he tried to detect the lies in your words.
Am I really doing this?
“What?” His eyes finally met yours, an eyebrow raised in disbelief.
You nodded at his textbook. “With the questions. I saw you needed help.”
I’m really doing this.
Regulus rolled his eyes. “I don’t need any help, and certainly not from you.”
“Huh, could have sworn you hesitated for a second there,” you trailed off while a smile started to tug at your lips. Then you straightened, amusement gone from your tone. “Listen, if you fail, I fail. I’m doing this for me.”
Regulus’ eyes were fixed at a point in front of him, staying silent. You began to wonder if he had even heard you. Maybe he knew you were lying, and an actual part of you wanted to help him instead of blaming it on selfish reasons.
Finally, he sighed, muttering, “Fine, you can help. But no mentioning this to anyone—especially not Sirius and his three dancing mice.”
You tried to smother a laugh. “You know you can be real funny when you’re not being an arrogant prick.” Regulus rolled his eyes as you continued, “Besides, it’s only Peter that is a rodent.”
“What?” he raised an eyebrow.
“What?” you dismissed the comment.
You turned your attention to the paper in front of Regulus. He only sighed and gestured for you to proceed. Between a few competitive comments and the tension between Regulus and his brother, the two of you hadn’t really had the chance to properly speak before. Talking to him was… refreshing, to say the least. Even if it was just to explain the rules of grammar in the mid-twentieth century when the Wizarding English was being affected by the mingling of Muggle English. Today, there was almost no distinction, except from a few terms and phrases; back then, however, people constructed sentences in entirely different ways.
Your interaction with him earlier had left you on edge but you were still intrigued. You didn’t know what, but something was there; it was an itch you couldn’t get rid of but couldn’t help but to scratch. Multiple times while talking did you find Regulus’ eyes on your face instead of whatever you were gesturing to in the text. You were also painfully aware of how close every part of him was to you. Your skin burned when his hand came too close—itching to draw it closer or further away, you didn’t know. You blamed it on your nervousness of being this close to your well known rival, and nothing else.
“—which is why main clauses were written with this subject-verb relationship, instead of what is common in today’s Wizarding English.” You fingers shifted over the page, pointing out the paragraphs you mentioned. When no reply came you glanced at Regulus, finding his gaze already pinned at you.
He cleared his throat, already moving his quill. “Right, yes.”
You sighed, glaring at him. “Alright, what is it?”
“What?” Regulus met your gaze with a seemingly bored tone but widened eyes that betrayed his real feelings. Exactly what those feelings were, you didn’t know.
“You keep staring at me. What’s your problem?” When no reply came you scoffed. “Just spit it out already.”
His head tilted to the side, as if inspecting you. “I keep thinking of what you said earlier. About me not having fun.”
“Oh, yeah? You’re gonna have to prove it, Black,” your smile immediately widened, leaning back in your chair.
You didn’t know why he was so adamant on convincing you, but the Gryffindor in you didn’t back down. An eyebrow arched at the challenge before he levelled his stare on you. He let out a deep sigh.
“Fine, there’s a gathering at the Slytherin Commons tonight. Be at the entrance at seven.” Regulus even smiled, a dangerous smile that showed nothing but pure glee. “I’ll show you fun.”
You hadn’t thought Regulus would take the bait. You’d always known him as the antisocial type, with a calculated cool to him, unlike the hot temper of his brother. In no universe would you have guessed he would invite you to spend time with him just out of spite. The spite part, that was believable, but not him inviting you.
“What? Not gonna give me the password?” Your lips tugged up, not being able to refrain from teasing him.
He scoffed, turning to his parchment again. “Oh, please, you’d just bring my brother and all his delinquents to ruin our party. Come alone.”
It made you wonder if he was up to something else; maybe something he and his Slytherin friends had cooked up to get the drop on you.
But the offer sounded too good to pass up on and you smiled. “That sounds awfully murder-y.”
Regulus lips tugged into half a smile. “Guess you’re just gonna have to trust me.”
You couldn’t keep your own smile from widening, also turning your gaze to the book in front of you. Despite your previous judgements, you were eager to learn more about Regulus. The better you knew him, the better you could beat him in academic levels, right?
Regulus cleared his throat. “Thanks for this, by the way.”
“Just don’t expect it again,” you said, handing back the book to him. You added with a rushed whisper, “And I did it for me, not you. You’d do well to remember that.”
Regulus considered you with a raised eyebrow, before huffing out, “Whatever.”
His fingers flew by yours, featherlight and barely touching as he took the book from you. It was all it took for the hairs on your arms to raise and your pulse to quicken suddenly and unexpectedly. You drew your hand back as if burned by his touch. His gaze met yours, a suspicious narrowing in them. You hoped that he didn’t note the slight warmth that had spread across your cheeks; or if he had, would choose to ignore it.
The rest of the lecture flew by, almost entranced by the course work at hand. You actually enjoyed studying, as crazy as it might sound. And it made it slightly easier forgetting you were currently working together with Regulus Black. It was even sort of… nice.
Soon, the professor dismissed the class and you handed your parchment to Regulus for him to combine them and turn them in to your professor. You caught his gaze, saw the thoughts swirling in his eyes, an ongoing battle seeming to unfurl inside that brain of his.
“This was tolerable, I guess,” he managed to force out at last.
You gave him a lopsided grin. “I agree, I can be quite the chap.” Regulus rolled his eyes as you stood up, taking your books in your hand.
Regulus muttered another, “Whatever,” before leaving the desk to join his group of friends.
“See you at seven,” you threw over your shoulder with a grin, before turning your attention to your own group of friends. You saw them pack up their books and quills with strays of laughter reaching you. You already dreaded their taunts and teases. Behind you, you heard Crouch Jr and Rosier exclaim in harsh whispers and loud laughter, while Regulus stood between them, stone-faced. Between the two, you much preferred your Gryffindors’ jokers.
You hurriedly made your way out of the classroom and practically got jumped by James and Peter, stumbling with their weight around you. You couldn’t help but bark out a laugh, when Marlene and Mary then opened their mouths with the same glint of mischievousness in their eyes.
“Oi, you looked pretty chummy there,” said Mary.
“Yeah, when you changing to the Slytherin House?” asked Peter.
“Snogging with Regulus, huh?” That was James.
Sirius emerged from the classroom with Remus, grimacing, “Oi, that’s my brother you’re talking about. I don’t wanna hear it.”
You were silently thankful for Sirius’ disgust of hearing of his brother’s paramours; maybe that could keep them from pestering you. You listened to them absentmindedly, only processing half of what was being said. The other part of your mind was focused behind you, where Regulus had just exited with Crouch Jr and Rosier, his usual stoic expression on his face. You glanced at him, seeing Regulus meet your gaze and his lips tug into a smile almost imperceptibly.
Maybe you imagined it? The conversation you’d had with him implied there was more to him than what was perceptible at first glance, and you were intrigued to find out more. Your head whipped around to your friends again, rubbing the back of your neck.
Mary eyed you knowingly, crossing her arms. “Couldn’t get enough of the Slytherin, huh?”
You settled her with a glare, sighing. Guess they weren’t done with their remarks quite yet. “We were just working on the project together and he didn’t know an answer to one of the questions, so—”
“So you decided to take the opportunity to flirt with him,” interrupted Mary. Your glare returned to her, releasing a huff.
Marlene leant on the tips of her toes to rest her cheek on your shoulder. With a wicked glint in her eye, she whispered, “Better be careful so you haven’t got Slytherin cooties on you.”
You sent her a seething glare, muttering, “You’re one to talk.”
Her cheeks turned red and she quickly shut up, her teasing remarks forgotten. She muttered something you couldn’t hear, but chose to ignore her. The rest of them weren’t so easy to shut up, and you bit down your own remarks as the rest of them erupted into laughter, keeping your face cool and walking off their comments.
It didn’t stop them from making more. They trailed behind you, jumping and laughing with glee. Sirius looked almost as annoyed as you, but you could tell even he found the situation amusing despite whatever dispute was between the Black brothers.
You considered telling them about the invitation to the Slytherin party and about the way you had challenged Regulus to prove you wrong. However, you could almost see Sirius’ face fall in your mind when you told him that you would genuinely want to go, without any ulterior motive. He would see it as a betrayal to your friendship; even considering wanting to willingly spend time with Regulus when the two were on such poor terms was a form of betrayal. So, you thought better of it and kept your mouth shut.
They kept up their teasing the whole way to the Gryffindor tower, finding it weirdly hilarious. Why, you couldn’t understand. But you couldn’t keep them from it. As soon as the painting swung open and gave you passage to the common room, you immediately dropped into the sofas beside the fireplace. Remus sat next to you, letting the others settle around you, and immediately turned to the page he had been at in his book. You marvelled at his ability to read at anytime and at any place. James, Sirius and Peter curled up together on the sofa opposite you, throwing playful jabs at one another, while Marlene and Mary’s faces lit up in smiles. Their bags had been dropped in a heap on the floor beside them.
Before anyone could get a word out, a figure stepped through the portrait’s entrance, her red hair trailing behind her. James started, jumping from the sofa and calling out to her. She looked up from her book and smiled, running towards the rest of you. She threw her book bag by her feet, claiming the spot next to you.
“Perfect timing.” Sirius’ grin was back, his eyes full of glee. “Lily, guess what happened today?”
“Bloody hell,” you groaned, chest heaving with a sigh as you laid down in her lap, covering your face with your hands. Apparently Sirius was no longer annoyed by the topic but found it just as entertaining as the rest of them. You weren’t sure which was worse. “Can we not?”
Lily chuckled, looking down at you. “I’m guessing it has to do something with your poor mood.”
The fire from the hearth cast an orange light across the ground, flickering against everyone’s faces. The sky was turning grey outside, the sun going down over the Black Lake. You saw James lean forward on his elbows through the gaps of your fingers, and Peter was practically bouncing in his seat with a grin to match Sirius’.
“It has something to do with him, alright,” said James.
You blew out your breath through your clenched teeth and sat up again. If they’d just drag this on forever and avoid getting to the point, you might as well just rip the bandaid off. “I got paired up with Regulus in class today, that’s all.”
Lily looked to Sirius. “Your brother?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Well that’s not too bad.” She looked between you and the others. “What’s the big deal, then?”
“There’s no big deal,” you said. You turned to the rest of them. “I was only studying with him, I don’t get what’s so funny about that.”
Peter cocked an eyebrow. “I’ve seen you studying before, you’re always quiet.” He turned to the rest of them, question written in his eyes. “Right? You guys have seen him?”
“Yeah,” exclaimed James, pointing an accusatory finger at you. “You refuse to talk to anyone when actually studying. Almost as boring as Moony over there when he’s reading.”
Remus lowered his book to send a glare toward James. “Hey!” he sneered.
“What Prongs means,” said Marlene, “is that you were doing more than just studying. Especially considering you supposedly despise Regulus.”
You shrugged with defeat, dragging a hand over your face. You knew they could go on forever if you didn’t stop them, and you were in no mood to be stuck here all night. So, you finally exclaimed, “Okay, fine! I was helping him study. Happy?”
“My brother needed help?” asked Sirius, suspicion lacing his words.
“Yes,” you bit out. “I don’t think I understand what your point is.”
Sirius’ head tilted while Peter’s smile faded a little. Mary turned in her seat, an eyebrow cocked. “What our point is, my dear,” said Mary, “is that you actually chose to help the mini Black.”
“Actually more like helping myself,” you muttered. At their glares you rolled your eyes. “So?”
“So?” answered Marlene. “You don’t find that even a tiny bit suspicious?”
“What?” you frowned, honestly having no clue as to what she was implying but still dreading the answer. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your crush.”
You choked on air upon hearing her words, with every eye turned towards you. Sirius looked at you incredulously, his leg bouncing and a sour expression on his face. The rest of them seemed a lot more amused. Marlene sat on the floor and leant against Mary’s leg, chuckling lightly. Lily smiled, but chose to ignore their comments.
“He’s my brother,” sneered Sirius.
“And a Slytherin,” added Peter, as if it were any worse than Sirius’ statement. Maybe it was, but you chose to ignore it.
“Frankly, it’s quite obvious,” said Mary.
Remus fully put down his book, closing it against his thigh. He almost looked disappointed. “Mary’s right.”
You glared at him. “Et tu, Brutus?” He rolled his eyes and resumed reading his book.
“We all know how you’ve been in rivalry with the lad since the beginning of times,” said Marlene with a pointed glance.
“I like to do well in school, so what? That doesn’t mean I fancy him.”
“Fine,” countered James, through gritted teeth. It seemed as if they were all just teaming up to attack you. “I’ve been talking about Quidditch for years, but you only got interested in joining the Gryffindor Quidditch team after Regulus became a seeker on the Slytherin one.”
You winced, because that was a difficult thing to explain away. Frankly, even you were unsure as to what made you suddenly interested in Quidditch. All you knew was that suddenly you had noticed a player with a mop of black curls and got the urge to join the game. You could only counter with a meagre explanation, “I became possessed by the House spirit, is all?”
Marlene raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Or, hear me out, you wanted another excuse to be in rivalry with Regulus.”
“He’s a competitive arse, why would I want another excuse to be around him?”
“You jump at every chance to prank or annoy him,” said Peter, way too gleeful for his own good. You vowed to get back at him and the others some day, some way.
You cocked your head in Sirius’ direction. “I’m only doing the decent thing and helping Sirius get back at his git of a brother.”
Mary turned to Lily, her head tilted and face twisted in mock confusion. “What’s what they say about when a boy is mean to someone?”
“That he fancies them,” said Lily with a broad smile.
“So suddenly you guys fancy Snivellus?”
You were glaring at her, but the question was directed toward the entire group. Remus remained impassive, as if he hadn’t heard the comment, but the rest of them couldn’t help but bark out a laugh and grimace at the thought. You smiled at their discomfort. Serves the bastards right.
Mary was the first to compose herself, levelling you with a stare. “Stop avoiding the subject.”
“I’m not avoiding anything,” you exclaimed, throwing your hands out in the air. “You’re the ones making up stuff that aren’t there!”
“Normally when my brother is brought up you’ll sneer,” Sirius muttered. You glared at him, anger radiating off your person. You didn’t even bother retorting, but only rolled your eyes. Dramatic bastard, you thought. Just like his brother.
“Whatever you say,” James chimed in, snickering behind his covered mouth, while sending glances at Peter.
You sighed, standing from your seat and taking hold of your bag. Remus looked up with a raised eyebrow. “Now, if you would excuse me, I have other stuff going on than to sit here with accusations thrown at me.”
“What other stuff?” chirped Marlene.
“Homework.”
“What?” asked Mary, far from genuine in her question. “You didn’t finish it all with Regulus today?”
“No,” you bit out, striding towards the stairs to the dormitories with their laughter echoing behind you.
You loved your friends, but they could be real arses sometimes. Maybe it was a good thing you were going to spend some time with other people for a change. You threw your bag to your bed as soon as you entered your dorm, shutting the door after you. Your dormitory was shared with three other guys, who where currently not present, and laid just beside the other Marauders’. It gave you enough privacy and time away from them, while still being close enough when needed for pranks. It also allowed you to hear the occasional laugh and shouts through the walls.
You changed from your uniform, pulling on a pair of black trousers and a loose shirt over your torso. It wasn’t a fancy outfit by any means, but it was an almost perfect blend between party and casual, and it complimented your figure. You hastily put on some black kohl on the waterline of your eyes, blinking against the contrast. Remus called it guyliner, but you and Sirius liked to refer to it as gayliner. With one last look at yourself, you were satisfied and flashed a grin to your reflection, before rushing down the stairs again.
The rest of the group were still there, deep in their discussions. Something made you suspect they were still talking about your class with Regulus, but you tuned them out with a shake of your head. The idiots could amuse themselves however they wished, as would you. Silently and quickly, you made your way to the painting at the entrance, swinging it open and climbing out. None of them seemed to notice you, too busy in their conversation.
