Chapter Text
The thing about Floyd asking to court him was that it was both the most absurd and the most terrifying thing Riddle had ever heard.
They were in the botanical gardens, a place of controlled chaos Riddle usually found calming, but today the humid, earthy air felt suffocating.
Floyd was inspecting a particularly thorny rose, his fingers hovering just millimeters from the sharp points.
"This one's got a lot of rules," Floyd said, whatever that might imply, still not looking at him.
"Don't touch me this way, don't grow that way, or I'll bite. Reminds me of someone." Then he turned, his grin all sharp edges and lazy amusement.
"Hey, Goldfishie. Let me court you."
Riddle's world ground to a halt.
.
.
What. The. Hell?
.
.
The blood rushed to his face, a hot, shameful blush that felt like a brand. The word "court" was archaic to him—it's formal, a word from storybooks, and coming from the infamous Floyd Leech's mouth—it sounded like a profanity.
He wanted to say no.
He wanted to cite a hundred different rules, from public decorum to the simple fact that Floyd was a merman and he was a human male, and such things were not meant to intertwine.
But the words stuck in his throat, trapped by a sick, sweet tide of longing that was so powerful it nauseated him.
He was horrified to realize a part of him, a deep, rotted part he kept locked in the darkest cellar of his soul, was whispering a traitorous "yes."
Instead, he managed to find his voice, thin and reedy.
"That is an entirely inappropriate suggestion." He straightened his posture, a desperate attempt to regain control of a situation that had already spiraled far beyond it.
"We are students. Our focus should be on our studies and duties. Such frivolous entanglements of a relationship is a distraction from one's obligations."
Whatever response Riddle expected—it was exactly this.
Floyd just laughed at him, a low, rumbling sound that seemed to vibrate through the soles of Riddle's polished shoes and up into his bones, a terrifyingly pleasant tremor.
"Frivolous? Nah." Floyd shrugged, unbothered, but his eyes didn't leave Riddle's face.
"Duties are boring. Obligations are chains, I don't do things I don't want to do. Ya know that." A step closer.
"And I want this. Simple as that." The grin was still there but quieter now, stripped of its usual performance.
"So what's the hold-up, Goldfishie? You've got a rule for everything. Cite one."
Riddle felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, a disgusting, human failing he couldn't control.
He took a sharp, shallow breath, the scent of roses and damp earth suddenly cloying.
The hold-up was the ugly, undeniable truth of their bodies—the biological fact that Floyd was framing as simple want, as matter of fact, as though it required no further examination, and that Riddle knew was a perversion.
The shame was a physical weight, pressing down on his shoulders, making it hard to stand upright.
He had to say it. He had to name the thing, to build a wall of logic and propriety between them before the rotting thing inside him burst out and said yes.
"It is… unconventional," Riddle finally managed to say, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. He forced himself to meet Floyd's gaze, his own eyes wide with a horror he hoped Floyd would mistake for indignation.
"Our… dynamic. It is not the standard model for which such arrangements are intended. We are both… male. That presents a fundamental... deviation from the natural and expected order of things."
He said the word "deviation" like it was a terminal diagnosis, a confession of a sickness he was already afflicted with.
He expected Floyd to laugh, to mock him, to finally see the grotesque abnormality Riddle saw in himself.
Instead, Floyd just tilted his head, a slow, considering motion. "Deviation," he repeated, testing the word on his tongue.
"Huh. Never cared much for the "standard model,"
...
"Boooriiing. It's just trying love. There's nothin' wrong with that." He smiled, a slow, spreading grin that was full of terrifying sincerity.
"But 'm guessing, is that a no?"
Riddle's breath hitched.
The word "no" was a fortress, a barricade, a sanctuary. It was on the tip of his tongue, a clean, sharp blade ready to cut this entire untenable situation from his life.
He could end it here, now, with a single syllable and a turn of his heel.
He could retreat to the rigid, predictable safety of his rules and his duties—
But Floyd was looking at him, really looking at him, and for a terrifying second, Riddle felt like he was being seen, not as a housewarden or a rule-follower, but as a person.
And in that gaze, he saw not mockery, but an unnerving patience, a quiet understanding that was somehow more terrifying than ridicule.
"It's okay," Floyd said, his voice softer than Riddle had ever heard it. The lazy grin was gone, replaced by a calm, steady expression that was almost gentle.
"You can refuse. I'm not gonna force my feelings on you, Goldfishie. That's not how this works."
"Just… say the word. And we can forget this ever happened." He took a small step back, giving Riddle space, a physical manifestation of the verbal release he was offering.
And that—that kindness, that easy acceptance of Riddle's inevitable rejection—was the final crack in the dam.
The pressure built behind Riddle's eyes, a hot, frustrated sting. He was being given an out, a clean escape, and the rotting thing inside him, the part that craved this beautiful, disastrous attention, recoiled from the very thought of it.
" NO! "
The word ripped from his throat, a raw, desperate shout that startled a few magical plants in the garden.
It was not the controlled, decisive "no" he had intended. To put it in analogies, it was the sound of a cornered animal, a frantic, panicked denial of the escape being offered.
His face was burning, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, nails digging into his palms. He was losing control, and the only way to regain it was to capitulate.
"You may—" he gasped, the words catching,
"—you may court me."
The words were a death sentence, a voluntary submission to the very thing he feared most. He had said it. He had agreed. But the silence that followed was deafening, a void that filled with the sound of his own heart breaking.
And Floyd was left stunned, only staring at Riddle in this very moment.
And there, standing among the roses with the word still raw in his throat, Riddle told himself there was no harm in trying. Perhaps—just perhaps—it would even be the cure.
It was the most catastrophically wrong he had ever been.