The night had settled over the safehouse with that eerie kind of quiet that only came after too many days of chaos, the kind of stillness that didn't feel like peace so much as it felt like anticipation, like something was holding its breath just out of sight. And Luna—Luna, in her maddening, infuriating, impossibly graceful way—decided to act as if none of it mattered. As if the moments that had unraveled them hadn't existed at all. As if his hands hadn't tightened into fists when she left his bed the night before, as if his voice hadn't cracked when he asked her why, as if his entire body hadn't screamed with the ache of her absence. She carried on like she always did—floating through the safehouse with that dreamy detachment, all silver eyes and drifting steps, her presence maddening in how little it betrayed, her silences louder than most people's shouting. She moved through rooms like she wasn't actively driving him insane, like she wasn't the quiet storm he kept walking willingly into, like she wasn't the only thing keeping him tethered to what was left of his sanity.
And maybe—maybe—he could've let it go. Could've let her slip away back into her own room without saying anything, could've buried the anger and the ache beneath all the things he'd gotten good at pretending not to feel. Maybe he could've told himself this was safer, easier, cleaner. That it was better this way. He could've told himself a thousand lies and made himself believe them. If only she hadn't made it so impossible to forget how she felt pressed against his chest. How she breathed like she trusted him with it. How her fingers curled so naturally against his ribs like she had always belonged there. If only she hadn't left him like it didn't matter. Like she hadn't noticed the shift. Like they hadn't crossed a line and burned the bridge behind them.
So no. No, he wasn't going to pretend. Not tonight.
Still damp from the shower, his hair dripping cold water down the back of his neck, his skin still flushed from the heat that hadn't managed to chase the chill from his chest, Theo stood at the edge of her bedroom door with the quiet certainty of a man who was already in too deep to pretend otherwise. The ache in his body had nothing to do with the wound still healing beneath his ribs and everything to do with the hollow space beside him in bed the night before. She was there, already tucked beneath her blankets, curls strewn across the pillow like strands of light catching in the dim candle glow, her breathing calm, unbothered, like she hadn't shattered him by slipping away in the middle of the night without a word. She didn't look surprised when he stepped in. She never did. She looked at him like she had always known he would come, like it was only a matter of time.
His voice, when he finally found it, was raw, frayed, stripped bare in a way he didn't have the strength to hide anymore. "Is it okay if I still stay with you?"
He hated how uncertain he sounded. How small the question felt compared to the weight in his chest. He wasn't just asking for a place to sleep. He was asking for her. For the right to be close to her, to curl himself into the spaces she left behind, to let her be the thing that softened the noise in his head, even if just for a few hours. He wanted to say more. Stay with you until my hands stop shaking. Stay with you until this stops hurting. Stay with you until I figure out how to breathe without needing your skin against mine. But those words would've undone him, and he was barely holding it together as it was.
She didn't make him wait.
"Of course," she said, quiet as ever, but not hesitant, not surprised, just steady. She shifted beneath the covers, making room, not because she had to, not because it was expected, but because it was natural. Because she wanted to.
And that—gods, that was worse. Because he was already moving, crawling into the space beside her with too much care, too much need, his limbs aching from restraint, from denial, from the weight of everything he hadn't let himself say. The mattress dipped beneath him, the candlelight casting flickering shadows across her face as she turned toward him without thinking, without hesitating, without fear. She fit against him like she always had, like her body had been carved into a shape made just for this—just for him. His arm went around her waist like it belonged there, like he didn't know how to sleep without her anymore, his chest pressing into her back, his nose brushing the curve of her neck as he exhaled slowly, finally, like the air had only just become breathable again.
She was warm—too warm—and his body welcomed it like it had been frozen all day, like he was thawing back to life just from touching her. Her scent was familiar now, earthy and soft and entirely her, something that had rooted itself so deep into him that he could probably follow it through a storm. His hand settled on her waist, fingers splayed across the fabric of her shirt, grounding himself in the shape of her, the reality of her, the impossible fact that she was still here. That she hadn't pushed him away. That she had let him back in.
He didn't speak. Couldn't.
And then—just as his heartbeat had finally begun to slow, just as the frantic rhythm of his thoughts had dulled to a quiet murmur, just as he had allowed himself, if only for a breath, to believe that maybe he could sleep like this, wrapped in her warmth, breathing in the scent of her skin, with her tucked so delicately into the cradle of his body, her fingers absentmindedly sketching light, senseless patterns along his ribs like she was trying to memorize him in silence—she shifted her hand.
And pressed her palm flat against the scar carved into the center of his chest.
The reaction was instant.
His entire body jerked like she had slapped him, breath catching in his throat so fast it burned, muscles seizing tight under her touch as if instinct alone could protect him from the sudden flare of sensation—the sharp, unbearable jolt of physical memory and something worse, something far more dangerous, something laced with need and shame and the horrible, spiraling desire to let her touch it again. His nerves lit up like flame beneath her fingertips, every inch of him suddenly awake, overaware, painfully alive beneath the press of her soft hand against something that had once nearly killed him, and somehow, she was gentle. Somehow, it wasn't just pain that bloomed there. Somehow, it was longing.
"It hurts, baby," he whispered before he could stop himself, and the word—baby—spilled from his mouth like something ripped from the deepest part of him, unfiltered and horrifically honest.
He froze. His jaw snapped shut, mortification slamming into him with all the force of a collapsing building, as if saying that one word had peeled him open, exposed every desperate, unspoken ache he'd been shoving down for weeks. What in the actual fuck had he just said? Where the hell had that come from? What was wrong with him?
He wanted to backpedal, to vanish, to pull the blankets over his head and pretend it hadn't happened—but Luna didn't flinch. She didn't blink. She didn't mock him, or smile knowingly, or tease him for sounding like some pathetic, love-struck idiot. She didn't even acknowledge it. She just looked at him.
Looked at him like she knew.
As if she had already heard him say it a thousand times in her head. As if she'd been waiting for it.
Her expression didn't shift, but something in her eyes softened, silver-blue and clear and quietly devastating, her hand still resting gently over the brutal ridges of his scar like it didn't scare her at all, like the ruin of him didn't matter. Her voice was soft when she finally spoke, threaded with that maddening calm that always made him feel like she was three steps ahead of him and choosing not to gloat about it.
"You need the balm?" she asked, and her hand stilled, hovering like she was offering him a choice, like she would stop if he asked, like she would always give him the option to pull away if it became too much.
He should've said yes.
He should've reached for the jar on the bedside table and let her soothe the raw ache with magic and patience, should've used the pain as a reason to distract himself, to focus on something clinical, distant, controlled. But he couldn't.
He couldn't because his throat was too tight, and his chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with scar tissue, and her hand was still there, and the weight of her presence felt like something pressing into all the cracked, hollow spaces inside him.
So he shook his head, barely, and said the only thing he could say.
"No, thank you," he murmured, voice rough and low and just shy of breaking, his hand sliding from beneath the covers to press gently to the curve of her waist, holding her like she might slip away again if he didn't, grounding himself in the heat of her. "Just... please... be gentle with me."
And with my heart—but he didn't say that part, because if he said that part, he wouldn't survive it.
But Luna, in her infinite cruelty, didn't give him mercy. She didn't pull away. She didn't retreat and give him the space to recover from his own vulnerability. She didn't let him regroup, didn't give him time to rebuild the armor he'd spent a lifetime sharpening around his ribs.
Instead, she touched him.
She touched him with that same impossible softness, her fingers gliding lower, moving from the scar across the flat plane of his chest, tracing the lean muscle there with unbearable precision, her nails grazing so lightly it sent shudders all the way down his spine. She traced the line of his torso slowly, deliberately, her fingers painting delicate paths over him as though she were reading a story no one else had ever bothered to learn. Her hand drifted over his abdomen, the skin there hypersensitive, twitching beneath her touch like he couldn't decide whether it was pain or pleasure or both.
His body went still. Too still. The kind of still that only came from absolute restraint, from the fragile edge of losing control.
Because this wasn't casual.
This wasn't innocent.
And Luna knew it. She fucking knew.
She was unraveling him. One touch at a time.
And he let her.
Because he was trying—gods, he was trying so hard—to be a gentleman, to be decent, to be careful, to not pull her into something she didn't ask for, something she hadn't chosen. He was trying to be good. But his skin burned beneath her fingertips, and every slow pass of her hand made it harder to think, made it harder to remember who he was supposed to be. His jaw clenched. His breath stuttered. His fingers dug gently into her hip like he was holding on for dear life, because he was.
His mind was a battlefield—rationality screaming for distance, for decorum, for restraint, while every broken, aching piece of him begged for more.
More of her voice. More of her touch. More of her everything.
He wanted her.
Gods, he wanted her.
Not just her body—though, Merlin help him, he was already on the brink from the feel of her skin against his—but her. He wanted her laugh. He wanted her weird thoughts about stars. He wanted her strange rituals and her quiet knowing and her reckless bravery and her gentle cruelty. He wanted the way she saw him. And it was too much.
Too much and not enough.
And she—Luna fucking Lovegood—just kept touching him like she didn't know she was wrecking him completely.
He didn't say another word.
Because if he opened his mouth again, he might beg.
And that... that would be the end of him.
And so, instead of doing what every nerve in his body was screaming for, instead of letting his hands wander, instead of losing himself in the heat of her skin, instead of pulling her fully on top of him and letting instinct take over, he forced himself to move carefully, deliberately, lifting her hand with a reverence that felt like worship, pressing his lips against her delicate fingers, lingering for a fraction too long, as if that might be enough to satisfy him, as if that might soothe the ache pounding through his veins.
He didn't let himself think, didn't let himself acknowledge the crushing weight of restraint, the fact that every inch of him was trembling with the effort it took to do the right thing, to be the better man, to hold himself together when all he wanted was to come undone beneath her. Instead, he guided her hand slowly to his chest, pressing it over the rapid, uneven beat of his heart, silently begging her to feel what she was doing to him, what she had already done, what had already irrevocably changed inside him.
Like a fool, it took him a full, painful second to realize that she might mistake the gesture for rejection.
Fuck.
The thought hit him like a sudden punch to the gut, a sharp, unrelenting wave of panic that nearly undid all the careful control he had been trying to maintain. What if she thought he didn't want this? What if she thought he didn't want her? That would be a far bigger mistake than anything else he could do because if there was one absolute, undeniable truth in this entire gods-forsaken world, it was that he wanted her. He wanted her so much it physically hurt, so much it was making him lose his fucking mind, so much that every inch of him was screaming at him to forget caution, forget patience, forget whatever fragile restraint he still possessed and just take her the way he so desperately needed to.
But this—this was better than his pathetic, desperate, shamefully obvious arousal.
Because all he really wanted—more than air, more than magic, more than his own goddamn sanity—was for her hands to be somewhere else.
He wanted her fingers wrapped around the aching, throbbing length of him, wanted her touch to soothe and destroy him all at once, wanted her to feel exactly what she was doing to him, exactly how fucking wrecked he already was, exactly how much she had unraveled him without even trying.
And that—that was why he couldn't let her.
Because if she touched him there, if she wrapped those delicate, perfect fingers around him, if she stroked him even once, if she looked at him with that unreadable, knowing expression while he came undone beneath her—
Then he would never be able to stop.
Then he would ruin her, ruin them, ruin whatever fragile, beautiful thing still existed between them.
And he wanted more than just a single, desperate moment.
He wanted all of her.
~~~
The morning arrived with no mercy, dragging him out of whatever restless, tortured sleep he had managed to find, leaving him stranded in the quiet, in the weight of the things he didn't want to name. His breath was slow, controlled, his body heavy with exhaustion, but there was something else, something deeper, something gnawing at the edges of his awareness before he was even fully awake. Pain. A dull, throbbing ache radiating from his hands, sharp enough to pull him back to reality, sharp enough to remind him that he was still here, still breathing, still caught between the past and whatever waited for him in the dark corners of his mind.
His fingers twitched before his eyes even opened, before he fully registered the feeling of his own nails digging into his palms, deep enough that the skin had broken, deep enough that his hands were slick and warm with blood. Again.
Fucking hell.
Theo exhaled through his nose, slow and steady, forcing himself to unfurl his fists, forcing himself to pry his fingers apart, forcing himself to acknowledge the damage he had done to himself in the middle of the night. It wasn't the first time, wouldn't be the last, but it didn't make it any less frustrating, didn't make it any less unsettling, didn't make it any easier to shake the sense of wrongness that lingered in his bones. He blinked against the soft morning light filtering through the curtains, the air in the room thick with something unspoken, something heavy, something that felt too close.
Because he wasn't alone.
She was there. Of course she was.
She was always there.
Luna sat beside him, still and silent, her presence like a whisper against the edges of his awareness, her gaze calm, knowing, entirely too steady for someone who had just woken up to the sight of his bloodied hands. She didn't look startled, didn't look horrified, didn't demand an explanation. Instead, she simply existed in that quiet, unnerving way of hers, like she had already known, like she had already expected this, like she had been waiting for him to wake up so she could witness the moment he realized it for himself.
He swallowed hard, his throat dry, his body tense beneath the weight of her attention.
She reached for him without hesitation, her fingers light as they brushed over his knuckles, barely there, just the softest pressure, just enough to make his breath catch, just enough to make something inside him shift.
It was nothing.
It was everything.
It was soft, too soft.
It was gentle, too deliberate, too much like something he wasn't supposed to have.
She shouldn't be touching him like this, shouldn't be looking at him like this, shouldn't be so unbothered by the fact that he had woken up with blood staining his palms, that he had spent the night clenched so tightly around his own agony that his body had physically broken under the weight of it.
He should pull away.
He should say something, make a joke, deflect, do anything to shatter the unbearable intimacy of this moment.
But he didn't.
He couldn't.
Because she wasn't just looking at his hands.
She was looking at him.
Really looking, like she was seeing something he hadn't even admitted to himself yet, something deep and raw and terrible, something that had been eating away at him for far too long.
His pulse thrummed beneath her fingertips, his breath slow and shallow, his entire body locked in place as she traced her fingers over his wounds, as if trying to memorize them, as if trying to understand him in a way no one else ever had.
Luna wasn't afraid.
Not of him, not of the blood, not of whatever it was that had followed him out of his dreams and into the waking world.
That should have been comforting.
It wasn't.
Because it made something in his chest ache, something he didn't know how to name, something too dangerous, too fragile, too fucking real.
He had spent years teaching himself to be careful.
To keep his distance.
To never let anyone close enough to see the things he kept buried beneath the surface.
And yet, here she was.
Here she always was.
And for the first time in his entire miserable existence, Theo didn't know if he wanted to push her away—or pull her closer.
Theo liked to think of himself as a brave man, a man who had faced horrors most people couldn't even fathom, a man who had bled and fought and survived in a world that had tried to break him more times than he could count. But this— this moment, this unbearable, earth-shattering moment, where she was pressed against him, where her breath ghosted over his skin, where he could feel every curve, every shift, every delicate press of her body against his own— was more terrifying than anything he had ever faced.
And yet, he didn't pull away.
He did the opposite.
He pulled her closer, his arms tightening around her without thought, without hesitation, without the restraint he had spent so long trying to convince himself he still had. She fit against him so perfectly, her warmth melting into him like she had been made to be there, like she had been waiting for this, like they had spent their entire lives leading up to this moment.
She smelled like something soft, something sweet, something that didn't belong in this war-ravaged world, something that made his throat tight and his chest ache, something that made him want to lose himself completely in her. He pressed his lips against her temple, a feather-light kiss, a moment of weakness, a silent confession wrapped in nothing but touch. He lingered there for a breath, for a heartbeat, for just long enough to realize that he was terrified to look at her, terrified of what he might find in her expression, terrified of what he might let slip if he met her eyes.
And then, just as he was convincing himself that he hadn't completely ruined himself for her, just as he was begging his body to behave, she spoke.
"Thank you, thank you for everything, baby."
Baby.
Again.
Jesus Christ. What the fuck was wrong with him?
His entire body locked up, his thoughts derailing so violently it was a miracle he remained standing, because she had said it so easily, so naturally, so effortlessly, like it was something she had called him a thousand times before, like it was something that belonged between them, something that fit just as well as she fit in his arms.
He had spent days agonizing over the fact that it had slipped out of his mouth before, had spent hours internally berating himself for letting it happen, for allowing himself to slip into something that felt too much like intimacy, something that felt too much like love.
But now she had said it.
Now it was hers too.
Now he was fucked.
And just when he thought it couldn't possibly get worse, when he thought he could breathe again, she rose onto her toes, her delicate fingers tightening just slightly around his biceps, her lips parting—
And then she kissed his fucking neck.
The softest press of her lips, warm and gentle, barely even there, but enough to fucking ruin him, enough to set his entire nervous system on fire, enough to make every thought in his head instantly disappear in a haze of static and white noise and unholy, unbearable, gut-wrenching need.
And in that moment, Theo was absolutely certain he had come in his pants.
There was no other explanation.
Because his entire body betrayed him, every single nerve ending lit up like a fucking wildfire, every ounce of restraint he had ever possessed crumbling into dust, every muscle in his body tensing so violently he thought he might actually fucking die.
He needed to get a grip.
He needed to pull away.
He needed to stop embarrassing himself.
But instead, he just stood there, completely frozen in place, his grip tightening around her waist, his breath ragged and uneven, his pulse hammering so hard it was a miracle he was still upright, his brain short-circuiting from the sheer, overwhelming force of his own fucking attraction.
Luna Lovegood is going to be the death of him.
The room was too quiet, the kind of silence that wasn't empty but full, thick with something heavy, something unseen, something pressing against the very air around them. The candlelight flickered, casting shadows against the walls, stretching too long, twisting at unnatural angles, warping as if they were listening, as if they were waiting. Theo could feel it crawling against his skin, a prickle along the back of his neck, a wrongness that had been following him for days, weeks, ever since that night.
His hands trembled, not from fear, not from exhaustion, but from something deeper, something buried beneath his skin, something curling into his ribs, whispering in the marrow of his bones. He had ignored it, convinced himself it was nothing, convinced himself it would pass, but it wasn't passing. It was getting worse.
Luna sat across from him, her presence eerily still, her gaze too knowing, too patient, too calm, as if she had been waiting for this exact moment, waiting for him to finally acknowledge what he already knew but refused to say aloud.
"Your body is fighting it," she murmured, her voice soft, weightless, drifting through the air like smoke curling between them, settling somewhere deep inside him, somewhere he couldn't reach. "But it won't win."
Something in him snapped.
His fingers moved before his mind could catch up, reaching across the space between them, wrapping around her wrist in a grip too tight, too desperate, too full of things he couldn't name. She didn't flinch, didn't recoil, didn't fight him. She just watched, waiting.
"What am I fighting, Luna?" His voice came out rough, low, uneven, edged with frustration, with exhaustion, with something dangerously close to fear.
She tilted her head, slow, dreamy, unbothered, the way she always did when she saw something others couldn't, the way she always looked when she was about to say something that would dig its way beneath his skin and never leave. Her lips parted, the faintest curl of something unreadable ghosting at the edges of her mouth, and then, softly, deliberately, she whispered—
"What you let in when you killed him."
The words sank into his skin, seeped into his veins, coiled around his spine like something alive, something real, something that had been waiting for him to notice.
The air shifted.
The candlelight dimmed.
A creak sounded from the floorboards, the sound sharp, wrong, out of place.
Theo's grip on her wrist tightened.
Because for the first time since this nightmare began, he finally understood.
Something had come back with him that night.
And it was still here.
~~~
From that point forward, there was a silent, unspoken understanding between them, a fragile agreement built on shared fear, quiet denial, and the desperate need to maintain some sense of normalcy. They wouldn't talk about it, wouldn't acknowledge it, wouldn't breathe life into whatever it was, whoever it was, that had crept into their reality the night Theo had taken that life. Some things were better left buried, some doors better left shut, and whatever he had let in—whatever was watching, waiting, lurking in the spaces between dreams and wakefulness— would remain locked away in silence.
Luna strengthened the protective spells in her room, her fingers tracing ancient runes into the wood, her whispers curling through the air like a language older than time itself. He didn't ask where she learned them, didn't question the way the air seemed to hum beneath her touch, didn't let himself think too hard about the fact that she had clearly done this before, that she had been prepared for this, that she had known, somehow, that he would need this.
And so, without ceremony, without discussion, without any real acknowledgment of how much things had changed, Theo officially moved in. His things were still in his old room, left abandoned like a relic of a life he could no longer return to, but his place, his space, was now here.
No one questioned it.
Not really.
Everyone in the house had felt it, that shift, that thick, suffocating wrongness that had bled into the air the night it happened. Something had changed, something had sunk its claws into Theo's reality, and no one—not even the most stubborn, most logical among them—could pretend otherwise. They had all seen the way he had stopped going back to his room, the way he stayed by Luna's side, the way she never let him be alone in the dark anymore. They didn't ask why. They already knew.
Pansy, however, was less interested in the supernatural implications of it all and far more invested in whatever the hell was going on behind Luna's closed bedroom door.
Nosey little bitch.
It started with pointed looks, dramatic sighs, the slow, calculated raising of her eyebrows whenever Theo emerged from Luna's room looking particularly exhausted, his hair mussed, his shirt wrinkled. It escalated to casual innuendos, unsubtle winks, and the occasional "so how's the view from her bed?" whispered far too loudly when she knew others could hear.
Theo ignored her at first, refusing to indulge her insufferable curiosity, refusing to give her the satisfaction of knowing that she had already gotten under his skin. But Pansy was nothing if not persistent, and soon it became a goddamn sport for her, an endless mission to see how far she could push before he snapped.
"Honestly, darling," she mused one afternoon, perched lazily on the arm of the worn-out sofa, twirling her wand between her fingers, "you can keep pretending all you want, but we all know what's happening in that bedroom. I just want details. For research purposes, of course."
Theo, who had been peacefully drinking his tea, nearly choked, his fingers tightening around his mug as he shot her a withering glare.
"There are no details," he gritted out, his patience wearing thinner by the second.
Pansy pouted, fake disappointment dripping from every word. "Oh, so what? You two just lie there all night, cuddling, whispering sweet nothings, exchanging soft little forehead kisses?"
Theo's jaw clenched so tightly it ached, because fuck, she was dangerously close to the truth, and if she ever found out just how much of his sanity relied on Luna's warmth, on the quiet comfort of her steady breathing beside him, on the way she never left him alone when the whispers started creeping in, he would never live it down.
And Pansy, the nosy little menace that she was, could smell the weakness.
"You know," she continued, tapping a manicured finger against her chin, eyes alight with mischief, "for a man who has spent every night in a beautiful woman's bed, you seem... tense. A little frustrated, perhaps?"
Theo's entire body went rigid, his fingers flexing against his mug as he fought the very real urge to strangle her.
Luna, who had been sitting quietly across the room, simply looked up from her book and said, in that infuriatingly serene voice of hers, "We do actually exchange forehead kisses sometimes."
Theo was going to die.
Pansy squealed.
Theo stormed out of the room before she could see the heat creeping up his neck.
~~~
As evening folded itself over the safehouse like a heavy woolen cloak—quiet and dense and humming with the weight of all the things none of them had the strength to say aloud—Theo found himself exactly where he had been for what felt like forever, or at least for every night that mattered: lying beside her, wrapped around her like a man who didn't know how to let go. His arm was slung around her waist, his hand resting over the soft curve of her stomach, their legs tangled beneath the threadbare blanket like they were two halves of the same fractured thing, stitched back together through sheer force of proximity and desperation. It had become ritual now, not habit, not convenience, not anything so casual as coincidence—it was sacred, this, the quiet way their bodies knew how to fall into place, the way she instinctively folded into him as if they were made to exist in the same bed, the same space, the same impossible life.
There had been no discussion, no agreement, no rules spoken aloud—just a slow, creeping inevitability that had pulled him from the edge of whatever darkness had been swallowing him whole and pressed him into the gravity of her. Now, when he laid down at night, it was not a question of if she would be there. She was there. Always. And it wasn't strange. It wasn't something he questioned anymore, not even when the ache in his chest grew unbearable, not even when the silence between them felt louder than any scream. It had become his new constant. The way she sighed when she fell asleep. The way her hair tickled his throat. The way her fingers traced slow, thoughtless shapes against the inside of his arm like she didn't know she was doing it. Or maybe she did know. Maybe she did it on purpose. Maybe she knew exactly what it did to him.
And gods, he should have been used to it by now—should have built up some kind of resistance to her, some kind of defense—but it never came. Not once. Not even after all these nights. Instead, it felt worse, sharper, more intimate every time. Because this was not just comfort. This was not just body heat or insomnia or nightmares kept at bay. This was her. And she was real. And she was his. Even if she hadn't said so, even if she didn't know it, even if he didn't deserve it—she was his.
At least for now.
The thought pierced through him like a rusted blade, lodging somewhere beneath his ribs, in that fragile, traitorous place he never let anyone near, the part of him that still believed in permanence, in hope. He didn't know if he shifted at the weight of it, didn't know if she felt the change in him, but then she spoke—soft and light and deceptively casual, like they weren't tangled together like limbs from the same body, like she wasn't the only person who had ever made him feel like he existed in a way that mattered.
"You know they talk about us, right?" she murmured, her voice laced with amusement, with moonlight, with that particular brand of knowing that made him want to scream and laugh and fall apart all at once.
Theo exhaled, a dry sound more exasperation than breath, because of course she would bring this up now. Of course, in the sanctity of this private, burning little space they'd made between themselves, she would choose now to acknowledge the very thing he'd been doing everything in his power to ignore.
"I'm aware," he muttered, voice flat, but she didn't react, didn't tease, just shifted a little closer, curling herself more fully into him, her hair brushing against the underside of his jaw like a spell designed to break him.
Her fingers never stopped moving.
The way she touched him—it was careless in the most devastating way, like she didn't realize her touch was making it harder to breathe, like she didn't know what it meant to him, or worse—like she did know, and didn't mind.
"We can sleep in different beds," she offered, as if it were that simple, as if she hadn't just ripped the floor out from under him with twelve quiet syllables.
And before his brain could catch up—before logic, pride, or shame could crawl their way through the fog of need—he said it.
"No."
It came out fast. Sharp. So forceful that it startled even him, the way it tore from his throat like a prayer too long suppressed, like something desperate and ugly and painfully true. No. No, he couldn't. He wouldn't. Not now. Not after everything. Not when she was the only place that still felt safe.
She paused, just for a breath, her body going still in his arms.
And then—Luna Lovegood, angel of mercy, agent of his undoing—laughed. Not cruelly. Not mockingly. Just a soft, warm, melodic sound that felt like candlelight flickering in a dark room. Like forgiveness. Like understanding.
"Okay," she whispered. No argument. No explanation. Just okay. And the way she said it... gods. It was worse than teasing. Because she knew. Of course she knew. She always knew. She knew he would say no before she even offered. She knew he was already hers, whether he admitted it or not. And she didn't gloat. She just... accepted it. Accepted him. Even like this.
And Theo—Theo, who had always prided himself on restraint, on dignity, on composure—felt something in him break.
He couldn't let it go. Couldn't stay silent. Couldn't bear the weight of this thing unspoken between them for another second.
"They think that we... you know..."
He trailed off, pathetic, fumbling like a teenager, the words refusing to come out cleanly, and fuck, he wanted to die. He was a grown man. A trained operative. He had slit throats with cleaner efficiency than this sentence. And still, here he was—stammering.
Luna lifted her head just enough to look at him, her eyes bright and unbothered in the dim candlelight.
"Yes, having sex. I know, Theodore."
And that was it. That was the end. That was the moment he ascended to a plane of embarrassment so profound it may as well have split his soul in two.
He was going to combust. Right here. Right now.
But Luna, bless her terrifying heart, wasn't done.
"I still don't mind."
Theo's brain shut down.
His lungs forgot how to function. His heart went silent for a beat. The room tilted. Because—what? She still didn't mind? She was just... fine with that?
It wasn't just the words. It was how she said them. So easy. So soft. So terrifyingly sincere. Like the idea of them together—really together—wasn't something strange or frightening or impossible. Like it was inevitable.
And gods, he wished she did mind. He wished she recoiled. He wished she laughed it off and left it at that. Because he minded. He minded so much.
Not because it repulsed him. Not because he didn't want it. But because he wanted it too much. Wanted her so completely, so violently, so irreversibly that the idea of touching her like that—of having her, all of her—was something that would destroy him from the inside out.
His thoughts spiraled, wild and unspeakable. He wanted to date her. Gods. Date her. Hold her hand like a fool. Bring her tea and touch her waist and kiss her in the fucking hallway and be hers. He wanted Sunday mornings and long conversations and laughter that cracked open the cold, dead places in him. He wanted her in every way a man could want someone. And he couldn't have it. Couldn't ask for it. Couldn't take it.
Because with her, it would never just be sex.
It would be everything.
And Theo Nott, who had spent a lifetime mastering the art of needing nothing, now found himself wrecked by the single truth he couldn't outrun:
He was already in love with her.
And he didn't know how to survive it.