The mission, at least in theory, had been simple—straightforward in the way most things were when written down in quiet rooms by people who hadn't walked through the ruins, who hadn't bled through their boots, who hadn't felt magic claw at their skin and whisper their names in the dark—simple in its structure, in its intention, in the neat lines of its objectives: locate a safer route to transport the team between safehouses, chart the ancient arteries buried beneath the city that had once served as lifelines for revolution or retreat, rediscover the secret veins of stone and forgotten spellwork that had kept people alive when the world above was ash and fire, uncover tunnels long abandoned, passageways that no longer appeared on maps, paths too old or too cursed or too full of memory for anyone to dare use them again—but of course, nothing was ever truly simple anymore, not in a world still aching with the bruises of war, not in a world where trust was scarce and ghosts were plenty, and especially not in a place where the ground itself remembered.
Because that was the thing—the war had ended, but its echo had not, and the land bore its scars with a kind of silent, simmering fury, too many wounds left untended, too many places scorched by spells that had never been meant to exist, too many corridors soaked in desperation and fear and blood, and beneath the city, beneath the careful reconstruction of ordinary life, magic still clung to the air like a second skin, old magic, wild magic, the kind that didn't obey human law, the kind that hummed when you stepped too close, the kind that never truly forgot, and so even the act of walking through these places—the act of seeking them out—was more than reconnaissance, more than logistics, it was an invocation of the past, a summoning of things long buried but not quite dead.
Theo hadn't expected much from the passage when they found it, hadn't imagined it would be anything more than another narrow corridor carved into the bones of the earth, just another hallway marked by damp stone and echoing footsteps, just another dark mouth yawning open beneath the city, leading them away from danger for a time and then depositing them somewhere safer, somewhere quieter, somewhere functional, because that was all this was supposed to be: a route, a means to an end, a quiet artery pulsing just beneath the surface—but he hadn't anticipated the way the air would change the moment they stepped inside, how it would feel less like entering a tunnel and more like crossing a threshold, like stepping into something that had been waiting for far too long to be remembered, and he hadn't expected the silence to feel like this, not just stillness, not just quiet, but an absence, a hollowness that made his skin itch, that made the breath catch in his throat, that made the hairs on the back of his neck lift like they were reaching for something they couldn't see.
The passage was too narrow, the ceiling too low, the air too dense with dust and a strange undercurrent of something that didn't quite belong to the present moment, and though he had walked tighter paths before, crawled through worse places, fought in spaces so tight his wand had been useless and his knife had become an extension of his breath, this one unsettled him in a way he couldn't name—not because it was haunted, not because it was cursed, but because it felt aware, like it knew they were there, like it was watching, and worst of all, because he wasn't alone.
Because she was here.
Moving a step ahead of him, close enough that he could feel the shifting of her breath in the narrow space, close enough that the soft rustle of her robes brushed against the stone just before he reached it, close enough that the light of the candle she held seemed to wrap around her and no one else, leaving him just outside its halo, as if the corridor had decided that only she deserved illumination. She moved with the same quiet grace she always did, not the kind that demanded attention but the kind that settled in the bones, the kind that turned silence into something sacred, and her fingers—bare, pale, ink-stained—traced along the crumbling wall beside her like she was reading the memory of the stone, like she could hear it, and maybe she could, because there was a hum in her breath, low and absentminded, not meant for him, not meant for anyone, the kind of sound someone made when they were alone with something that understood them, and it threaded through the silence like a soft rope tying her to the place, pulling something forward, coaxing the shadows into speech.
The candlelight flickered in her hands, the flame small but oddly stubborn, casting long, strange shadows that curled and twisted across the walls in shapes that didn't quite match their movements, as if even the light here had forgotten how to behave properly, as if it were resisting the very act of revealing, bending at odd angles as though reluctant to shine in places not meant to be seen—and that golden glow slid along the edge of her jaw, kissed the sharp curve of her cheekbone, traced down the length of her throat like fingers, catching briefly in the fine strands of hair that had fallen loose from her braid, strands that shimmered silver in the dim, as if the tunnel itself had offered her moonlight in place of torches.
She looked like she belonged here.
That was the worst part.
Not like a lost traveler, not like someone walking through an unfamiliar place, but like someone called, someone claimed, someone who had walked this path before in another lifetime, someone who had carved her name into the stone and was now returning to see how it had held up.
And Theo, trailing just behind her, breath caught somewhere between reverence and unease, couldn't stop watching her, couldn't tear his eyes away from the quiet certainty of her steps, from the way she never seemed to fear what lingered in the dark, from the way she moved like she was part of it.
The space between them was too small, the air too heavy, the passage too alive, and he had the sudden, inexplicable sensation that this wasn't part of the mission at all—not really—not anymore.
Theo swallowed, his jaw tightening as he tore his gaze away, forcing himself to focus on something, anything else, except there was nothing else. Just her. Just the quiet movements of her hands against the stone, just the uneven rhythm of the candlelight reflecting against her skin, just the way she seemed untouched by the heaviness of the space around them. The room was barely large enough for them to stand side by side, barely large enough for them to move without brushing against one another, barely large enough to contain the tension that crackled like static between them, too slow, too quiet, too suffocating to be ignored. Every shift of weight, every carefully placed step, sent fabric whispering against fabric, his sleeve ghosting against the bare skin of her arm, the brush of her hair skimming against his chest when she tilted her head to examine something unseen, the exhale of her breath too close, too warm, too much.
His fingers twitched at his sides in a motion that wasn't really a movement at all, more of a restless flicker of impulse caged within muscle and bone, an instinctive spasm born not from fear or even anticipation but from something else entirely, something coiled and sharp and growing too fast to ignore, a subtle betrayal of the tension building beneath his skin, something that demanded to be acknowledged even if he didn't yet understand it, something that pulsed like a second heartbeat in his fingertips, tight and unrelenting, and though he told himself it was nothing—just adrenaline, just the strangeness of the place, just another mission slipping beneath his skin like they always did—he couldn't shake the weight of the air, couldn't un-feel the thickness of it, the heaviness that pressed against his chest with a pressure that didn't feel like gravity, didn't feel like atmosphere, didn't feel like anything that belonged to this world at all, and it made him clench his jaw and shift his shoulders and tell himself, over and over, like a prayer or a lie or both, that it was fine, that it had to be fine, that this moment was no different from the ones before it, that the tightness in his throat and the pounding in his chest and the heat under his skin were just remnants of tension and war and memory, that there was nothing about this narrow passage, this silent pressure, this closeness, that should have been any different.
And yet—it wasn't fine.
Because she noticed.
Of course she noticed—she always did, always saw through him with those too-wide eyes that made him feel like he was being unspooled one thought at a time, that made it impossible to keep any part of himself hidden for long, and this moment was no different, because though she said nothing, though she didn't turn to look at him, though her face remained angled away from his and her posture remained still, there was a shift in her breath, soft and barely perceptible, a pause in the rhythm of her lungs, an almost imperceptible hesitation as if the air had thickened in her throat just as it had in his, and he watched as her fingers, resting against the cracked surface of the stone wall, tensed and curled inward just slightly, a gesture so small that anyone else might have missed it, but he didn't, he couldn't, because they were too close, because the space between them had shrunk to nothing, because every flicker of movement she made was now a part of the atmosphere pressing in on him, and suddenly it wasn't just about the corridor or the dust or the cold or the quiet, it was about her, about them, about something that had begun to unravel the moment she stepped into the dark with him.
And just as the thought formed, just as the edges of it began to sharpen into something he didn't want to name, her voice broke the silence—soft, even, low but too steady to be casual—and the words slipped into the air like a thread pulled tight between them, stretching across the breathless space they occupied with a tension that made his pulse skip and stagger and recover too loudly in his chest, and she said, "Something happened here," and it wasn't the words themselves that undid him, not the simple observation, not the quiet certainty in her voice, not the implication of history or violence or loss, but the way she said it, the way her mouth parted just slightly before speaking, the way her breath caught the candlelight as it slipped from her lips, the way her voice reached out and touched something in him he didn't know was exposed, the way she didn't look at him but still seemed to be seeing too much, as though her words were less about the place and more about him, more about this, more about the invisible thread strung taut between their bodies in the quiet.
His throat was dry, the air thick in his lungs, and he found himself controlling his breathing with the same precision he used in battle, as if the deliberate pace of his inhale and exhale could suppress the electric pull gathering low in his gut, as if managing the rhythm of his breath could make him stop noticing the way the candlelight flickered against the pale slope of her collarbone, the way her skin glowed in the low light like something carved from frost and fire, the way her body had gone still in a way that didn't suggest fear but attention, like she, too, was listening for something, waiting for something, feeling something that didn't come from the walls or the stone or the shadows but from him, and he hated how aware he was of it, hated how every inch of space between them felt like a decision, like a line he had already crossed in his mind even if his body hadn't followed yet.
She hadn't moved.
Not really.
She was still standing there, still tracing invisible patterns into the stone, still angled toward him in that quiet, unassuming way that made it impossible to tell if she was simply existing in the space or deliberately filling it, but he could feel it, the tilt of her shoulders, the shift of her weight, the subtle, unconscious turn of her body as if drawn toward him without realizing it, as if pulled by the same gravity that had taken root in his chest, and his own body betrayed him in kind, his fingers curling slowly at his sides, his arms stiff with restraint, his spine tight with the effort not to lean forward, not to close the remaining distance, not to press his hand against the small of her back and feel for the truth of her warmth, the reality of her presence, the weight of her breath against his mouth.
And maybe it was the magic of the corridor, maybe it was the press of memory and history and the echoes of something terrible that had once happened here, maybe it was the tension that came from walking through the residue of a forgotten tragedy, but it didn't feel like that—not entirely—because this wasn't fear or grief or horror curling beneath his ribs, it was want, it was awareness, it was something older and deeper and quieter than desire, something dangerous and inevitable, something that had been waiting, patient and still, beneath every glance and every silence and every too-long moment they'd spent breathing the same air.
And yet—he didn't move.
Not because he didn't want to, not because the impulse wasn't screaming through his muscles like a command, but because he wasn't sure what would happen if he did, wasn't sure what would break, what would shift, what would begin that he couldn't take back, because she was too close, still too close, still just on the edge of touch and breath and voice, and whatever this was—whatever was humming beneath their skin, whatever was watching from the cracks in the stone, whatever knew—he wasn't ready to name it.
Not yet.
Because safe had never been a word that applied to her, not really, not when she moved through the world like a question no one dared to answer, not when she stood beside him and made the silence louder, not when she looked without looking and saw everything, not when she felt like a revelation waiting to happen.
And maybe, just maybe, that was the most dangerous thing of all.
His pulse pounded against his ribs in a frantic, unsteady rhythm, not the controlled cadence of battle-ready instinct or the quiet thrum of adrenaline flowing with purpose, but something more volatile, more urgent, something that felt less like a heartbeat and more like a warning, a restless, thrashing force that had grown too loud to ignore, clawing against the inside of his chest like it was begging to be acknowledged, like it was trying to tear its way free from the confines of his control, and with every second that passed in that narrow, breathless space, with every breath that tasted like candlewax and dust and her, it only grew louder, more insistent, a rhythm that didn't belong to fear or danger but to something else entirely, something unnameable and raw and quietly unraveling beneath his skin, and he knew—he knew—he had to move, had to get away from it, had to break whatever was building between them before it reached the point of no return, before the air between them became too charged, before his body betrayed him again and reached for something he didn't have the right to want, didn't have the strength to stop.
He turned sharply, too sharply, the motion too sudden, too abrupt, too much like a retreat to be anything else, as if by moving, by turning his back, by putting even a few steps of space between them, he could shove it all back down—this wanting, this knowing, this terrible, aching pull that had begun to twist itself into every breath he took—and he did what he always did, what he had trained himself to do since he was old enough to understand that emotion could be a liability and desire a death sentence: he locked it away, shoved the feeling down into the deepest place he could reach, wrapped it in iron logic and chained it beneath the weight of rationality, telling himself over and over that none of it meant anything, that her closeness didn't matter, that the way she looked at him wasn't significant, that the air between them wasn't electric, that he wasn't unraveling in the dark with her breath brushing the edge of his sanity.
And Luna—gods, Luna—she didn't follow, didn't reach out, didn't say a single word, but she was still watching, still present, still wrapped around the moment with a quiet patience that made him want to scream, made him want to fall to his knees, made him want to grab her by the shoulders and shake something loose that wasn't even hers to carry, and even without turning around, even without seeing her face, he felt it, felt her gaze settle against the curve of his spine like a second skin, like a pressure that warmed instead of weighed, and the air—the air—shifted again, subtly, just the barest change in atmosphere, just enough to notice, just enough to make the hair on his arms lift, just enough to make him pause, because it wasn't wind and it wasn't movement and it wasn't magic, not the kind you cast with wands, not the kind that required incantations—it was her.
And then, like fate playing its slow, cruel hand, it happened—something small, something brief, something that could have passed for nothing if he'd wanted it to, if he'd been strong enough to lie to himself again—but he wasn't, not now, not anymore, not after everything that had already happened, and so when their hands brushed, the touch so fleeting it could have been dismissed entirely, he didn't move away, and neither did she, and in that tiny, imperceptible moment, the entire world seemed to tilt off its axis just a fraction, just enough to make his breath hitch, just enough to make his chest ache, because it meant something, because it was everything, because it was real.
It was the barest press of fingertips, the lightest contact between skin and skin, a whisper of touch that could have been accidental, that should have been ignored, but it wasn't, because he felt the warmth of her palm against his own, felt the steady, deliberate thrum of her pulse beneath the thin skin of her wrist, felt the way her fingers twitched—not startled, not pulling away, not retreating, but hovering right there at the edge of motion, suspended in choice, in hesitation, in a shared breath that felt like a held confession, and for a second, just a second, the whole of time folded in on itself.
And he—gods help him—he responded.
His own fingers twitched in return, just slightly, just barely, not enough to grab, not enough to hold, but enough to answer, enough to say I feel it too, and when he turned back—slowly, cautiously, as though the moment itself might vanish if he moved too quickly—and lifted his eyes to hers, meeting her gaze in the dim, pulsing dark, something clicked into place, something ancient and inevitable and far too dangerous to name aloud, and he knew—not just in theory, not just in thought, but in every trembling inch of his body—that this wasn't just tension anymore.
This wasn't proximity or confusion or the aftershock of fear.
This wasn't passing.
This wasn't ignorable.
This was something waiting, something poised at the edge of movement, something that had been building between them in the cracks of every silence and the weight of every glance, something that was no longer a maybe, no longer a question, no longer safely unspoken.
This was inevitable.
~~~
By the time they finally made it back to the safehouse, the sun was hanging obnoxiously high in the sky, spilling golden light through the dust-specked windows, casting everything in that deceptively peaceful glow that tried to convince him that this place was normal, that everything was fine, that this wasn't a house full of emotionally volatile war criminals barely holding it together. Theo wasn't buying it. Not for a second. It was barely past noon, which should have meant food, peace, maybe a stiff drink if he was lucky, maybe the blissful illusion of normalcy for at least five fucking minutes before something inevitably went to shit, but instead, the moment they stepped inside, the first thing Theo saw was Pansy Parkinson practically sitting in Neville fucking Longbottom's lap.
His entire body seized, his steps faltered, his stomach turned, and his scowl deepened so hard he nearly gave himself a migraine because of course, of course, this was his life now. His Pansy—his childhood best friend, his ride-or-die, the one person he had trusted to remain somewhat sane in the middle of this absolute circus—was practically draped over Longbottom at the kitchen table, looking disgustingly comfortable, as if this were a completely normal, everyday occurrence, as if the once-hopeless, once-bumbling Gryffindor, the former bane of their existence in school, the boy who once set his own robes on fire in third year, was now suddenly the object of her undivided, absolutely devoted attention.
And it wasn't just sitting close. No, it was the way her hand rested on his arm, fingers lightly tracing up and down in a slow, lazy motion that made Theo want to gag. It was the way Neville wasn't moving away, wasn't looking even remotely uncomfortable, was instead leaning into it like this was just how things were now. It was the way Pansy tilted her head just so, looking at Neville like he was a particularly rare bottle of Veela-crafted champagne, or worse, like she was about to eat him for dessert, the same way she used to look at a particularly well-made pair of designer heels.
Theo clenched his jaw so hard he thought his teeth might shatter, his brain actively trying to reject what he was seeing, his body revolting against the sheer absurdity of the situation because there was no way, absolutely no way in hell, that Pansy Parkinson—his Pansy—was currently eye-fucking Neville Longbottom in broad daylight like they weren't in the middle of a war, like she hadn't spent seven years dramatically sneering at Gryffindors as if they carried a contagious disease, like she hadn't once threatened to hex anyone who so much as suggested she would ever lower herself to even speaking to Longbottom, much less touching him.
Theo turned sharply toward Luna, as if she would somehow provide clarity, as if she would assure him that he was hallucinating, that he was suffering from some kind of post-mission exhaustion-induced delusion, but she only blinked at him with that quiet, knowing gaze, her expression completely serene, entirely unbothered, making him feel entirely too seen, entirely too understood, entirely too ridiculous, as if his horror was both expected and unnecessary, as if she already knew exactly what was coming next.
It was official. Everyone in this gods-forsaken house was getting laid except for him. Draco and Granger? Absolutely, disgustingly involved, probably shagging on the furniture like they owned the place, probably sneaking around like it wasn't painfully obvious, probably pretending they were still just bickering for fun and not because it got them both off.
Blaise and Ginny? Attached at the hip, completely inseparable, and judging by the way the walls occasionally shook, Theo had far too much proof of how well that was going, had suffered through far too many sleepless nights listening to things that should never be heard, things that had made him reconsider every single life decision that had led him to this moment, things that had made him seriously consider using a permanent silencing charm just to keep his own sanity intact.
And now, as if the universe had personally decided to make his life even more unbearable, as if fate itself was laughing at his continued suffering, now Pansy was making eyes at bloody Longbottom, was touching Longbottom, was practically curling into his side like some kind of love-struck teenager, was proving once and for all that Theo was, without a doubt, the last remaining soul in this house not actively rolling around in bed with someone.
Theo exhaled sharply, pinching the bridge of his nose, as if that might somehow erase the image burning into his retinas, as if that might somehow undo whatever spell Longbottom had apparently cast over Pansy, as if that might somehow save him from the absolute misery of knowing that he, Theodore Nott, the last bastion of self-control, the last man standing in a warzone of excessive romantic entanglements, was officially, indisputably, catastrophically alone.
"This is hell," he muttered, mostly to himself, but Luna, ever perceptive, tilted her head slightly, as if considering it.
"It's only hell if you don't think love is a beautiful and inevitable part of life," she mused, her voice light, her expression unreadable.
Theo shot her a deeply unamused look. "Beautiful and inevitable, sure. But do they have to do it in my kitchen?"
At that exact moment, Pansy giggled—giggled.
Theo shuddered.
Absolutely. Not.
With a firm "I need a drink" muttered under his breath, he turned on his heel, stalking toward the nearest bottle of firewhiskey before he had to witness whatever horrifyingly domestic nonsense was about to unfold in front of him.
Luna, following at a more leisurely pace, hummed thoughtfully. "At least they seem happy."
Theo poured himself a generous glass and downed it in one go.
"Yeah," he muttered darkly. "Sickeningly so."
~~~
The safehouse had fallen into that rare and insufferable lull of stillness that wasn't peaceful or calm or serene in any remotely enjoyable way but instead the kind of silence that made Theo feel like he was slowly losing his grip on reality—like the walls themselves were mocking him, humming with the sounds of couples being disgusting and domestic and, worse, in love. It was as if the house had collectively decided to pair off into little love nests of revolting emotional stability, and he, as always, was left alone in the corner like the resident ghost of bad choices and worse coping mechanisms. Luna and Granger were in the library again, probably cooing over ancient runes and obscure texts, comparing notes and exchanging soft, whispered theories like they weren't hiding from death and ruin and a war that had stolen too much from all of them. Ginny and Blaise—Merlin, don't even get him started on Ginny and Blaise—were apparently on a quest to defile every horizontal surface in the house. He'd stopped counting how many times he'd passed a door only to hear what could only be described as illegal sounds, and had taken to muttering, "Good for them," like a benediction while actively dying inside. And Draco, of course, was stomping through the halls like a haunted Victorian widow, swathed in black, muttering ominous phrases under his breath like he was starring in his own private Greek tragedy.
And Theo? Theo was doing what he did best: avoiding. Avoiding people, avoiding feelings, avoiding the all-consuming void of having emotions in a house full of aggressively functional relationships. He was in his room, wrapped in a too-thin blanket, drink in hand, staring into space like a man moments away from spiraling into philosophical despair, and just as he was beginning to enjoy the low-level existential crisis—the sweet, numbing silence of his self-inflicted misery—the door burst open like the gates of hell, slamming so hard against the wall it rattled the pictures he hadn't bothered to hang straight.
Pansy Parkinson, herald of chaos, bitch goddess of melodrama, destroyer of peace, had arrived.
"Honestly, what in the name of Merlin's saggy left—WHY is it so cold in here?" she bellowed as if she wasn't already halfway into the room, flouncing in like a Victorian ghost with too much eyeliner, rubbing her hands together dramatically, her expression one of appalled betrayal, as though Theo's personal climate control was a personal attack against her.
Theo didn't even look at her. He raised his glass to his lips and muttered, "Maybe it's just you. Cold-blooded snake that you are."
Pansy snorted like she was flattered. "Oh, please, if I were a snake, I'd have bitten you by now. Repeatedly. And with intention."
She plopped herself onto his bed like she owned it—because of course she did, because personal space to Pansy was a theoretical concept she liked to ignore for sport—and started scanning his room with the judgmental precision of someone about to suggest an exorcism. "You sit in here like a vampire with a caffeine addiction, sulking in the dark, muttering to yourself, nursing some sad little dram of whiskey like it's your only friend. I swear to god, Theo, I've seen more cheerfulness in a morgue."
He sighed, deeply and with great effort. "What do you want, Parkinson?"
She beamed, all teeth and wicked delight. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe just to check on my dear friend and also tell you something very important."
He narrowed his eyes. "You're going to say something deranged, aren't you."
"Obviously," she replied sweetly, already kicking off her boots onto his rug with zero shame, making herself obscenely comfortable like she hadn't just trampled all over his emotional stability.
She waited just long enough for the silence to stretch before dropping the sentence like a bomb wrapped in glitter and doom. "Just shag her already."
Theo choked—choked—on his drink, hacking into his sleeve like someone who had just been publicly cursed.
"I'm sorry—what?!"
Pansy gave him a look. Not just any look. That look. The one she wore when she'd committed to the bit and wasn't backing down until someone cried or confessed their sins. "You heard me. Shag. Her. You and Loony are circling each other like drunk Veela in mating season and it's genuinely making me consider hexing you both out of your misery."
He pressed his fingers to his temple, as if he could physically push the memory out of his brain. "We are not—"
"Don't." She held up a hand, eyes blazing. "Do not insult my intelligence. I have seen the way you look at her, like she's the answer to every Riddle and you're too stupid to understand the question. And she—gods, Theo, she looks at you like you hung the stars. It's revolting. Romantic. Whatever."
"Pansy," he growled, voice dark with warning, which of course she completely ignored.
"She has an amazing body, by the way," she added with alarming nonchalance. "We've showered together—"
"Oh my fucking god," Theo groaned, standing up like he could physically escape the words.
"—twice, actually," she continued, delighted. "You should see her cu—"
"STOP. RIGHT. THERE," he barked, covering his ears like a child being told where babies come from, which only made her laugh harder—cackle, really, the sound unholy and victorious.
"You're such a coward," she said, flopping back against his pillows with the smugness of someone who had just kicked down the door to someone's repressed desires and peed on the carpet. "You want her, everyone knows you want her, hell, Longbottom knows you want her and he thinks innuendo is a kind of Italian cheese."
Theo dragged both hands down his face, a man spiritually withered, mentally annihilated, emotionally flayed.
"This is hell," he muttered to himself.
"And I," Pansy said, stretching luxuriously on his bed like a victorious demon reclining on a throne of chaos, "am your personal devil."
And he believed her.
~~~
The evening had fallen over the safehouse with a weight that felt far heavier than anything natural, not merely the creeping descent of twilight or the hush that came after dusk but something more oppressive, more intimate, like the house itself had drawn in a breath and forgotten how to let it go again—like grief and tension and weariness had seeped into the floorboards, into the walls, into the bones of the place, and now lingered there, silent and unmoving, a pressure that pressed in through every crack and crevice and made it hard to breathe without feeling it in the back of the throat. It was the kind of night that turned shadows into watchers, the kind of quiet that wasn't calm but held, waiting, coiled, and it crawled into Theo's skin like smoke, like dread, like the kind of silence that was meant to be filled but never would be. The mission earlier had gone as well as missions ever did—which was to say no one had died, but everyone had come back more frayed than they'd left—and the hours since had been a slow bleed of pretending, of sidestepping the truth of how exhausted they all were, of moving through rooms and meals and conversation like actors in a play none of them had auditioned for.
Theo was tired in the way that didn't come from lack of sleep or physical strain but from the kind of deep-rooted weariness that crawled into the marrow and refused to let go, the kind that made his limbs heavy, his chest tight, his thoughts sluggish and sharp at the same time. It wasn't something rest could fix. It was the kind of exhaustion that turned silence into noise and stillness into suffocation, the kind that hollowed out even the small moments of reprieve and left only a restless, gnawing ache behind. And when that ache got too loud—when the walls of his room closed in, when the ghosts in his head stopped whispering and started screaming—there was only one place he ever went.
Her.
It was almost muscle memory by now, the way his feet found the path to her door, the way he moved through the house like a shadow in search of light, not consciously thinking, not pausing to wonder if this was wise or appropriate or fucking dangerous, but simply obeying that deep, silent pull toward the only constant that had made sense in weeks. It wasn't something they talked about, the way he slipped into her space on nights like this, the way she never asked questions, the way she simply made room for him—sometimes with words, sometimes with touch, sometimes with nothing but breath shared in the dark. It had become a quiet ritual between them, a soft, unspoken agreement neither of them dared name in case it shattered under the weight of definition.
But tonight—tonight, everything shifted.
Because the moment he stepped into her room, the second his fingers curled around the edge of her doorway and the air shifted around him like the place had been waiting for him, he realized—too late—that she wasn't dressed.
And it should have been so simple.
He should have backed away, should have shut the door, should have apologized and disappeared like a ghost, should have gone back to his room and buried himself in a blanket of shame and denial and vodka. He should have. But he didn't. He couldn't. Because something in him caught—froze—collapsed.
He stood there, utterly motionless, as if every nerve in his body had short-circuited all at once, as if he'd been hit by a curse so powerful it bypassed his muscles and went straight for the core of him, rooting him in place, locking him into the moment with a stillness that felt less like self-control and more like surrender. His breath stuttered in his chest, his heart lurching against his ribs like it was trying to break out of his body and run away from what he'd just seen—her bare back, the line of her spine lit by the soft flicker of a bedside candle, her hair falling loose like a curtain of light over her shoulders, the subtle slope of her hip just visible as she turned, startled, toward him, her arms moving in slow confusion to cover herself, too late, far too late.
He jerked his gaze away so violently that he genuinely feared he'd strained something in his neck, his entire body rebelling against the burn of that image—of her, of what she looked like without the barrier of robes or distance or silence. "Fucking hell—" The words tore from his throat, hoarse and broken and far too loud in the charged quiet of her room, and he felt the heat rise like fire beneath his skin, shame and desire mixing into something volatile, something thick, something that made his vision swim.
"I'm so sorry," he rasped, the lie clinging to his lips like ash, brittle and obvious and useless. "I didn't see anything. I swear."
Except he had.
Gods, he had.
And no matter how fast he blinked or how hard he tried to erase the moment from his memory, it was already etched into him—seared behind his eyelids, pulsing in his bloodstream, screaming through every inch of his now painfully tense body. Because it wasn't just the sight of her, though that alone had been enough to undo him. It was the way he'd seen her. It was the intimacy of it, the softness of the light, the stillness of her breath, the unguarded moment that wasn't meant to be his to witness but now belonged to him whether he wanted it or not.
And worse—far worse—was the fact that he was already hard.
Shamefully, unbearably hard, the pressure of it sharp and relentless, the kind of arousal that came not from lust alone but from the totality of the moment—the forbiddenness of it, the closeness of it, the reality of it. His skin felt too tight, his breath uneven, his fists clenched at his sides like he could anchor himself there, like he could keep from reaching, from speaking, from doing something that would ruin everything. Every muscle in his body had gone taut with the effort of not reacting, of not wanting, and yet every inch of him was betraying him all the same, burning with the memory of her skin, of her eyes, of the soft, stunned sound she'd made when she turned to face him.
And somewhere beneath all that—beneath the tension and the shame and the hunger—was the simple, devastating truth: he didn't want to leave.
He should. He knew he should.
But he didn't.
She didn't scream, didn't flinch, didn't hurl a pillow or hex or scathing remark his way, didn't shove him back out into the hall like she should have, like anyone with a shred of self-respect or dignity or self-preservation would have, didn't even reach for her wand with the kind of casual, cutting grace she had when the world required her to be ruthless—and that alone should have told him that something was different. She just blinked at him, calm and wide-eyed in that unnervingly serene Luna way, the light from the bedside candle flickering across her features like she'd stepped straight out of a dream—or worse, some fevered hallucination of his own making—and for a moment she just stood there, not moving, not speaking, just watching him with an unreadable softness that made the skin at the back of his neck tighten. Then, wordlessly, without theatrics or dramatics or even the faintest trace of awkwardness, she turned and climbed into her bed, the movement fluid, unhurried, natural in a way that made his stomach turn inside out. She pulled the sheets up around herself—not because of his words, not out of embarrassment, not to protect herself from him, but because something in her had shifted, something quiet, something fragile, something that felt far more intimate than her nakedness ever could have been. It wasn't shame—it was vulnerability, and that, more than anything, made his chest ache.
And he still wasn't moving.
He stood rooted to the floor like an idiot, like a man struck dumb by the gods, like someone whose brain had fully short-circuited under the weight of everything he'd just seen and everything he couldn't unsee. He didn't even know where to look anymore—every part of him was screaming at once, a tidal wave of guilt and desire and disbelief crashing through his skull—and the silence that followed was thick and unbearable, pressing down on his lungs until he thought he might choke on it.
And then she broke it—of course she did—her voice cutting through the tension like a warm knife through ice. "Oh, it's okay," she said softly, gently, as if she were soothing a frightened creature instead of a man who had just walked in on her in the raw and was now seconds away from combusting on the spot. And it shouldn't have been okay, nothing about this moment should have been okay, because he had crossed a line, had stepped into something that he couldn't walk back from, had let himself witness something he had no right to see—but her voice was so steady, so composed, so fucking calm that it made something inside him twist, made the knot in his chest cinch tighter, made him want to curl into himself and disappear completely.
He should have turned around right then, should have walked back out the door, should have found literally any other floor to sleep on, should have thrown himself into the cold night air and let it freeze this out of his bloodstream, because staying here—staying now—was dangerous in a way no battlefield had ever been. But instead, like a man who'd just lost the war against himself, he cleared his throat, willed his voice into some semblance of function, and spoke before he could talk himself out of it. "Can I... uhm..." His voice cracked slightly, rough with something too raw to name, and he swallowed hard before forcing the rest out. "Can I still sleep here?"
She didn't blink. Didn't laugh. Didn't look at him like he was pathetic or disgusting or ridiculous, even though he felt like all three. She just nodded, so easily it almost undid him. "Of course."
Of course.
As if it were the most obvious answer in the world. As if he hadn't just seen her bare skin catch candlelight like it was art, as if his entire body wasn't thrumming with heat and tension and guilt and something far worse. As if this was still the same ritual they'd fallen into on nights when the world was too loud, when the grief was too thick, when neither of them wanted to be alone but didn't know how to ask for company.
And maybe it was.
But it didn't feel like it.
Not now.
Not after this.
He moved slowly, each step weighted with effort, his muscles tight with restraint, like he was afraid even the motion of walking would betray what was running riot under his skin. The air between them felt charged now, crackling and sharp, and even though he'd been in this room a hundred times before, had curled beside her in silence and shadow like it was the only place in the world he could breathe, tonight felt different. Tonight he could still see the line of her back, still feel the imprint of her skin burned behind his eyes, still ache in a way that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the quiet, terrifying realization that he was far too deep in this.
"I'm not going to do anything inappropriate," he said, voice low and gravel-edged, rough from trying to keep the rest of his thoughts buried where they belonged. "You know that, right?"
She looked at him then, really looked, and her smile came slow and quiet, tinged with a kind of soft amusement that made his throat tighten, like she was already ten steps ahead of him, like she'd been waiting for him to catch up this entire time. "I know," she said, and her voice was full of something that felt like safety and inevitability all at once.
And then—just as he started to exhale, just as he let himself believe that maybe they could still keep this moment contained—she tilted her head and said, "I heard your conversation with Pansy."
His blood turned to ice.
His heart flatlined.
Every part of him seized up so completely he was sure he looked like he'd been hit with a petrification curse, because of course she had. Of course she had heard. Because Luna heard everything. Saw everything. Knew everything, even when she wasn't supposed to.
He stood there, frozen in his own humiliation, trying and failing to find a single sentence that might save him from the unholy level of mortification that had just descended over his entire existence, but his mouth was dry, his brain was static, and the only thing that came out was a pitiful, half-mumbled excuse that sounded worse the second he said it aloud. "I just don't think that war is the right time to have feelings for someone."
A lie.
A stupid, obvious, flimsy little lie that collapsed under its own weight before the sentence even ended, because the truth was so much worse, so much bigger, so much more dangerous.
The truth was that he wanted her.
Not just wanted—ached for her.
Not just her body, though gods, that was part of it, part of what was making his chest so tight and his breath so shallow and his hands curl against the sheets as he climbed into bed beside her. No, it was everything—her silence, her patience, her maddening softness, her strange way of making everything feel like it would be okay even when the world was on fire. It was the way she saw through him without making him feel exposed. It was the way she never asked him to be anything other than what he was. It was the way she stayed.
And he was terrified.
Terrified because he had already fallen, had been falling for longer than he cared to admit, and there was no catching himself now, no climbing back out, no pretending that this didn't mean everything.
But she didn't call him out.
She didn't push him.
She didn't challenge the lie, even though she clearly saw through it, even though she could have torn it to shreds with nothing more than a look.
Instead, she met his gaze with that quiet, devastating understanding that only she could offer and said, simply, gently, "I understand."
Except she didn't.
She couldn't.
Because how could she possibly understand that she had become the only thing holding him together?
How could she know that she had already changed everything?
He looked away then, exhaled slowly, the weight of everything unsaid coiling in his chest like a storm that would never pass, and as he finally settled beside her, feeling the warmth of her body brush against his, hearing the soft cadence of her breath in the dark, he realized with a quiet, aching certainty—he was fucked. Completely, entirely, irreversibly fucked.
He swore he felt it—not just imagined it, not just sensed it in that vague, intangible way people sometimes did when they were in too deep—but felt it in a way that was achingly physical, visceral, real—the slow, silent warmth of her tears as they slipped from her cheek and found him in the dark, soaking into the fabric of his sleeve and then into his skin like ink staining parchment, seeping down into the marrow of him, as if every drop held the weight of something he couldn't name, something sacred and unbearable and heartbreakingly human, as if her pain had chosen him as its witness, as its resting place, as the one person who might be able to understand it and hold it and not look away. And the thing that killed him—the thing that unraveled something deep inside his chest with a soft, twisting snap—was that he didn't know how to carry it, didn't know how to deserve it, didn't know how to fix it. He wasn't built for this—not for emotion, not for grief, not for that fragile tenderness that came from watching someone you care about try to make themselves small in order to hide their hurt—but here he was, lying in the dark beside the only person who had ever made him feel like he had something to lose, and all he could think was I did this. I did this. I made her cry.
And that thought alone nearly undid him.
Because she was curled away from him now, her back a quiet wall of silence, her breath just barely trembling as it left her body, and he could feel the tension in her—subtle, but there, the kind of tightness that came from someone trying not to fall apart—and it made something inside him splinter. His chest was too full, too tight, too loud with guilt and want and something so sharp it felt like it was slicing him open from the inside. It was a sensation he didn't have a name for, something between grief and desire and terror, and it was all because of her, only ever her. He had hurt her, and it didn't matter if he hadn't meant to—it didn't matter if the words hadn't come out the way he'd intended, if he'd been too cold, too sharp, too afraid to say what he really felt—it didn't matter, because he had hurt her, and it made him want to tear his own skin off just to escape the weight of it.
He wasn't supposed to feel like this. That was the thing. He wasn't supposed to want like this, to care like this, to be so fucking consumed by someone that her pain became his own, that her tears became a brand he couldn't wash off. He had spent years building walls around himself, years mastering the art of detachment, of silence, of isolation, and she—Luna—had slipped through all of it like it had never been there, had carved her way beneath his skin with soft smiles and strange wisdom and maddening patience until she had settled inside him like she had always belonged there. And now? Now she was hurting because of him. And he hated himself for it. Hated the way her stillness felt like rejection, hated the way she wouldn't meet his eyes, hated the way he didn't know how to reach her without breaking her even more.
He wanted her—wanted her in a way that scared him, in a way that made him feel like a live wire under his own skin, in a way that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the fact that she had become the only thing that made him feel human again. He wanted to kiss her until she forgot how to be sad, until the memory of whatever he'd said or done that had caused this melted under his mouth. He wanted to pull her beneath him, to feel her move with him, around him, to fuck her until all she could do was say his name and remember that he was here, that he wasn't going anywhere, that even if he didn't have the words, he still wanted her, still chose her. But more than that—more than the heat, more than the ache—he just wanted her to be okay. He wanted to take it all back. He wanted to be someone who knew how to make this better.
But he didn't know how.
Because the truth—the awful, unrelenting, inescapable truth—was that he didn't know how to be soft in the right way. He didn't know how to be good. All he knew was that he had never wanted anything like he wanted her. Not sex. Not safety. Not even peace. Her. And it scared the hell out of him. Because she had become the one thing that mattered. The one thing he couldn't afford to lose. And he was already fucking it up.
And so, desperate, drowning, he acted without thinking—without planning, without weighing the consequences like he always did—and leaned forward, closing the already too-small space between them, pressing his lips softly to the curve of her neck, the touch barely there, more plea than kiss, more I'm sorry than I want you, though it was both, and he let his mouth linger, just for a breath, hoping—hoping—that maybe this could be the thing that stitched the moment back together.
But then—she moved.
Pulled away. Slowly. Intentionally. Not in shock. Not by accident.
She moved like someone reclaiming her space.
She moved like someone who didn't want to be touched.
And it shattered something in him so thoroughly that he didn't even have the words for it.
Because he had burned her.
Because she didn't trust him in that moment.
Because he had done this.
It was pain—raw, sudden, deep. A bolt of it slicing through him and leaving something hollow in its wake, something that twisted low in his stomach and climbed its way into his throat. It made his fingers twitch against the sheets, made his jaw clench, made him wish he could undo every word, every look, every second that had led to this exact moment where she had chosen distance instead of him. And he knew he deserved it. He knew. But gods—it still fucking hurt.
So he didn't speak.
He didn't move.
He just lay there, eyes fixed on the ceiling, heart hammering so loudly in his ears it drowned out everything else, breath shallow, chest tight, the weight of the silence pressing down on him like a punishment he couldn't escape. And for the first time in his life—not just in the war, not just in grief, not just in this fucked-up parody of a home—but in his entire life, Theo Nott had no idea what to do. No plan. No defense. No armor. Just this unbearable ache where something soft had started to grow, something he'd been too afraid to name, too afraid to want.
And for the first time in his life, he was terrified—not of death, not of failure, not of ghosts or guilt or violence.
But of losing her.
Of losing something he hadn't even let himself admit he wanted.
Of losing the one thing he might never find again.