Dusk and Desire - A Mattheo Riddle Story

Get Fucked and Getting Fucked

Nora was practically walking on clouds for the rest of the day. Nothing could go wrong. She was on the Quidditch team. She was on the Quidditch team. From this day onward, Nora Rosier was an official chaser. Things could only go up from here.

The first she did after Enzo made the announcement was run up to the Great Hall where she knew she would find her best friend. Well, that's a lie. The first thing she actually did was put on her t-shirt with as much dignity as one could muster after stripping in front of a crowd and then she went to find her friend.

Aditi Mondal could almost always be found in the Great Hall for two reasons. The first was Aditi was always snacking. "I'm a muncher!" Aditi would call herself before slipping a handful of grapes into her mouth. "Gah, is being hungry illegal?"

The second was that, in addition to eating, Aditi was almost always flirting with someone new, the stark opposite of Nora, who had never dated anyone and almost always just stuck to casual sex. The Great Hall was usually the best place to scour for her next potential lover, who, according to Aditi, was always "the love of her life" until she got bored and the next one came alone. Aditi loved love. Nora loathed it.

By this time in the morning, almost all of the students were gathered around the tables, except for the Slytherin Quidditch Team. They had the unlucky draw at the crack of dawn for their tryouts by Nora didn't mind. Actually, she was glad. If she ate before the tryouts, she was sure she would have thrown it all up from nervousness.

Nora smiled when she saw dark wavy hair pulled into a voluminous half-bun half-ponytail. Aditi could never get her waves to cooperate and she never really tried. To be honest, she somehow managed to rock the messy look.

"There's my queen!" she yelled from across the room. Nora would have cringed from the eyes suddenly on her if it weren't for the fact that Aditi always brought attention to them. Normally, she didn't care about attention. She didn't need it and she hardly noticed whether she had it or not. But she also wasn't normally covered in sweat and grime with her ponytail out of sorts. Still, Nora forced her chin to rise and continued to walk. 

She sat down across from Aditi and winced at the already-blooming soreness in her legs. It took every ounce of muscle in her thighs to hold on to that damn broom. I need more endurance, Nora thought. Linc can help with that.

"How'd it go?" Aditi's garbled words broke her out of her trance.

"Great," Nora smiled, not at all thinking about what would be happening later. Keep telling yourself that, Nora. "I made the team."

Aditi's jaw dropped. "Shut the fuck up... You did not just tell me that so casually. You bitch! No, you are the bitch!" She jumped up and leaned over the table, wrapping Nora in a tight hug that had her wincing. Physical contact wasn't her thing but she forced herself to make an exception for her friend. Being friends with someone who loved touching at any given moment wasn't always the best for someone who could hardly stand it. 

"Yeah, it went really well." Nora couldn't find it in herself to go into any more details. She wasn't always good at this, conversing with other people. She was awkward at times—though she tried to pretend otherwise. Sometimes, words just didn't flow no matter how much she wanted them to, like there was a stopper in her mouth that just prevented them from going any further. She wasn't good at expressing her emotions, coming across as a soulless bitch half of the time because it felt like they, too, were just inside of her. Like there was this little Nora inside, screaming, I'm here! I can speak! I can feel! I'm just like you! But she just couldn't come out.

Oddly, that was why she enjoyed talking with Mattheo. Well, as much as she could enjoy talking with Mattheo. He pissed her off and she wanted to murder him most of the time but at least she could speak freely. With him, the words just seemed to flow naturally. Granted, the words were usually angry but that didn't always seem to matter to her. What mattered was that she could speak and be heard, even if it was by him. Sometimes, when she was so awkward that she felt horrible about herself, she would go up to him and spout off insult after insult to make herself feel better. See, she would tell herself, You are normal. You can talk. You just haven't found the right person or the right words. It probably wasn't the nicest thing to do but Nora didn't care about being nice, not when it came to Mattheo.