Work Text:
The warmth of Floyd’s chest against his back haunted Riddle.
In the library, reviewing for his Magical Analysis exam, he had snapped a pencil. He’d seen it crumble and fall onto the floor as though sawdust, as though a waterfall; a force of nature. He was never one to sing praise and wax poetic of emotion that saddled him - literary analyses were never that specific, practical magic was much more concise, history of magic dealt with concrete factoids… Nothing had prepared him for the surge of heat in his chest that would erupt as though the Coral Sea licking up the cliffs of Western Rose Queendom, eroding the rocks with as much ferocity as Floyd’s smile alone made his cheeks burn up.
He must focus on class. He must.
The graph he’s supposed to draw comes naturally from the pen he had switched to. The y-axis labels the surplus of magic energy, and the x-axis demonstrates magic potential; the magic consumption curve is downward-sloping, showcasing the inverse relationship between the y- and x-axes…
(“Goldfish,” the Floyd in his memories bares his teeth at him, “you’re
sooo cute.”
“Are you mocking me?!” he had flushed a scarlet worse than his dorm room wallpaper. “How can you say such things with a straight face?”
“It’s just the truth,” the other boy shrugged, “it’s because I love you so much!”)
I love you
, huh.
Riddle tripped over the three words as he would over thorns, over spines, over prickles. The sweet relief of having yelled them at Floyd felt forever ago - distant and yet so close, just as Floyd’s warm laughter upon his skin, just as the feeling of fluster emanated from his face as he hid it in Floyd’s shoulder.
Focus, focus. The equation is the change in magical potential over the change in magic energy, multiplied by a hundred to be broken down into percentages. It’s grade-school level.
Oh, how he wishes he could apply something similar to whatever Floyd has made him feel ever since he barged into his life and into the entrance ceremony. He had tried running a chi-square test for goodness of fit, something he’d gone through in practical magic, to ensure he is not smitten. (To no avail. The
p-
value was lesser than 0.0001, giving him 99.9999% confidence of… being in
love.
)
He wondered if he could ever figure Floyd out, and vice-versa. For all their differences, there’s always been an air of laid-back airheadedness in him whenever the other boy was nearby. The way his heart would throb whenever he’d wait for Floyd outside of whatever class he had last period, the way he would shy away from his gaze; the way Floyd himself would seem so starstruck when Riddle did tell him he
loved him, loved him so much,
and the aura of comfort and awkwardness that ensued - this all made home in the back of Riddle’s mind, nestling in-between two-hundred page-long notes and mock exam revisions.
Love it is, then.