Mattheo Riddle - Imagines/OneShot

A Man Without Love

Word Count: 692

Song Inspo: A Man Without Love - Engelbert Humperdinck

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇

Mattheo's POV

Everyone thinks I'm fine.

And maybe that's the problem.

They see me in the corridors-same smirk, same sarcastic bite in my tone, same effortless swagger. They think I don't feel shit. That I just moved on.

I let them believe it.

Because it's easier to be the bastard than the broken one.

It's late when I make it back to my dorm. The castle's gone quiet, moonlight slicing through the tall windows like blades of silver. I close the door behind me, slow. My fingers shake as I slide the lock.

The silencing is suffocating.

I rip open the drawer of my nightstand, hand brushing past scattered chocolate frog cards and a couple of broken quills until I find the joint Theodore rolled last week. He told me to save it for when I really needed it. I scoffed at the time. Told him I wasn't some sad sod who needed a high to get through life.

Guess the joke's on me.

The tip burns gold when I light it. The scent curls in the air, thick and earthy, wrapping around me like a memory I never asked for.

I drop onto my bed, exhaling slowly as the ceiling blurs.

And that's when she comes back.

Y/N.

Laughing in that stupid way she did when she found something I said genuinely funny, even if she was trying hard not to let it show. Her hand tucked into the sleeve of my jumper, curled next to me on Hogsmeade weekends. Her eyes-God, those eyes-looking at me like I was someone worth loving.

I close mine, try to breathe through it, but the weed's dragging everything out of hiding.

There was a time I thought I was untouchable. That I could have her without ever needing her.

She told me once-soft, after midnight when the common room was empty and the fire was dying-that she didn't think I knew how to be vulnerable.

I laughed.

I always laughed when I was afraid.

But she wasn't wrong. And eventually, it was what pulled her away.

We didn't even scream when it ended. No dramatic fight, no shattered glasses or slammed doors. Just a quiet, tired kind of ending. The kind that feels more like a death than a breakup.

"I can't keep trying to love someone who doesn't want to be seen, Mattheo."

She said it without looking at me.

I didn't stop her.

I should have.

I see her now in flashes behind my eyelids. The way her nose scrunches when she reads something particularly dumb in class. The soft humming when she cooks in the dorm kitchens late at night. The way she once touched the back of my neck when I was spiraling and didn't even realize it.

She saw me.

And I pushed her away.

The weed dulls the edges of the pain, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

I let out a bitter laugh, the kind that twists in your throat. Everyone still thinks I'm that guy who doesn't care about anything. Who beds a new girl and forgets her name the next morning. Who fights anyone just to feel something, anything.

They don't know that every time I close my eyes, it's her voice I hear in the quiet.

That when I wake up, my first thought is how I forgot what her shampoo smells like, and it terrifies me.

I turn my head to the side. Her scarf is still hanging on the hook by the door. I told myself I'd give it back, but I never did.

Pathetic, isn't it?

A Slytherin prince reduced to ashes over a girl who deserved far better than the wreckage I gave her.

"Every day I wake up, then I start to break up/ Lonely is a man without love..."

The song's in my head, playing over and over like a broken record. My mother, before she went crazy, used to sing it around the house when I was small. I never understood it then.

I do now.

I'm not whole anymore. I'm just a body pretending to be fine, a boy wearing armor made of sarcasm and cruelty. And underneath?

I'm nothing but a man without love.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇

Sorry for the little hiatus...life got a little hectic and I had a writer's block. I'll be getting back into the groove of posting, I promise!!

Stay Beautiful <3