a/n: i swear this collection isn't purely slash; it's just all i've put up yet. i have a few in my doc manager and i'm just choosing which ones to upload randomly.


teddyjames — earnest


you are the children of war heroes, and that is the identity thrust upon you from birth.

you accept it.

he bears it.

-:-

you are fourteen years old the first time anyone tells you that you bear a striking resemblance to your parents.

"nymphadora's smile," they say, "but the eyes are all remus'."

james sits beside you, seven years old and having been subjected to this game of guess-the-parents since his very first photograph, published in the prophet two weeks after his birth.

all you can do is fake a smile and think to yourself, tonks. her name was tonks.

-:-

"teddy," the ten year old boy says, clambering onto your bed without even asking, "what do you think being head boy will be like?"

this james is earnest and solemn, resembling his younger brother more than the cheeky trouble-maker that is normally associated with james.

you frown. "responsible, i s'pose," you supply. in all honesty, you don't have a clue.

"victoire's prefect," james says. he looks down. "i didn't think you'd know, seeing as you guys won't talk to each other."

it occurs to you that james sounds like he's reprimanding you, and you quickly lock your eyes onto james' face. the younger boy meets your eyes and cocks his eyebrow in challenge.

-:-

james is twelve when he catches you kissing victoire, and fourteen the day you and victoire have sex for the first time.

you are in a waterfall a few miles from the burrow, kissing every part of her silken skin you can reach, and her breathy gasps are as musical as you'd always imagined. at a particularly satisfied moan, you glance up mischievously from your perch between her legs, only to lock eyes with a hazel-eyed boy, standing at the edge of the rock face a few feet above her.

with an unreadable expression, he turns and walks away.

-:-

you are twenty-five when you see james in the headlines, drunk and alone.

THE FALLEN SON screams the headline, burning into your eyes, along with the image of james falling down, alone.

-:-

he is twenty-one and you are twenty-eight and he is still broken and you are still ignoring your own cracks.

"fucking why, james?" you demand one night as you drag him out of a pub by the scruff of his neck and apparate to his apartment. you are sick of this, sick of him, sick of him turning falling apart into a work of art and sick of everyone in the world wanting a piece of him and the self-fulfilling prophecy they created with every questioning headline about him since his birth.

the kid never had a chance to try. "why, james?" you half-yell. "you have loved ones, worrying themselves sick-"

he cuts you off with a piercing glance. "that's just it, teddy," he says. "i don't love anyone."

you stare at the broken boy, trying to map all his cracks in your mind so you can find the origin of the damage and heal it somehow, but you can't. its been too long, or there are too many cracks, or he's already a shattered object held together by skin, but you can't, so you turn and you leave him, just like the world promised him everyone who cared would.

-:-

you thread your hands through his hair and you kiss his cheeks, his lips, the skin covering his heart, but it isn't enough, now that you know what's in there doesn't beat for anything except surviving.

-:-

you are thirty-five, and married to victoire, and he is twenty-eight years old, alone, and drinking, and mad, lost in the realm of his own demons.

you are still in love with him, and he knows this, and that is a tragedy in itself; he knows that you love him, and still, he chooses to be alone with his demons.

-:-

you are the children of war heroes, and that is the identity thrust upon you from birth.

you accept it.

he turns gods into monsters.