Then there's a small twitch in the corner of her lips that might've been scorn, though Oliver isn't convinced, and he feels like the sun is imploding inside him again.

          "One week to make you love me again," Sawyer muses.

          Oliver rolls his eyes, and he has to stop himself from choking on the old brag of his heart: I never stopped.

          Instead, he says, "clock's ticking."

This is a story about things spinning out of control.

          About the friends you love and the love you lost and the life you shaped in the wake of grief. A life hastily safety-pinned together by bloodied hands and pricked thumbs and with tears in your eyes and a bandaid smoothed over your nosebridge.

          This story is a bruise, and Sawyer Lee is both the fist and the Tiger Balm breaking and healing the capillaries ruptured in her wake.

          After graduation, Sawyer kept all of her promises. Or, she tried to. She went professional, signed on with the Appleby Arrows as their second Beater, got on fine with some of her teammates, worked it out with the ones she couldn't. She moved out of her parents' house, got a nice two-bedroom flat in London to share with Rio, her best friend, then moved out of that apartment and into a new one-bedroom flat in Edinburgh with Oliver, when the future was sprawled out ahead of them, sprinkled with red little pins and markers to denote the touchstones of their life together. She made peace with her Mum and the effort to visit her brother at muggle Uni semi-regularly. She made a life worth living from scratch and it was more magic than the seven years at Hogwarts.

          This is where things spin out of control.

           At first they're okay, then they are definitely not.

           Oliver Wood had risen through the ranks with Puddlemere United fairly quickly. After a couple seasons spent warming the bench, he was taken off the reserve team, and when he made it onto the Quidditch pitch, there was only the game and the goal. And Sawyer. Always Sawyer, who fit into him like a puzzle piece, the picture complete, and everything made sense. He'd planned everything to the dot and the dollar, and there was nothing he couldn't see coming with that scaffolding plan of his filed away in his ever-calculating brain.

          Things changed after the war. Oliver had seen battle in his own home before, and so had Sawyer, but a seige like this was different. They lost friends, laughter in hallways reduced to mere memory traces and names scrawled across tombstones; they lost parts of themselves, things they couldn't even name. And then, somewhere along the way, they didn't fit together anymore, the picture no longer resolved, and they had to come to terms with the fact that no matter how hard they tried, the pieces had shifted, no longer interlocked where they should be.

          This is a story about a heart unstitching itself.

          About the people you lose on a random Tuesday afternoon and the leftovers of that love scattered across your bedroom floor; little crumbs you stumble upon when you're folding the laundry or vacuuming up the last four years or looking for your old Walkman and find the casette tape that was once a gift that would tear your last semblance of sanity asunder. A love that was once constant as the stars and the only thing you dream about for the next ten months in the same breath as the carnage you both dragged yourself out of.

          This is a story about love. And so it is a story about grief. And therefore it is also a story about hope, and Sawyer Lee standing awkwardly in Oliver Wood's door after a bad fall that would put him on bedrest for two weeks while his bones heal.

          This is a story about fighting for what you want.

          It's also a story about coming home.

OR

          Considering his sister and his best friend seem to have lost their way, Wyatt Lee takes it upon himself to correct the course. Because he loves them both very much. And because he is a meddler through and through.

SAWYER LEE.

OLIVER WOOD.

SOUNDTRACK.     snakebite heart

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

SURPRISEEEEEE

i KNOWWW i said i closed the chapter on sawyer and oliver because i left them at a very good and idealistic place because that's what i needed at the time and what i felt was best, BUT!!!!!! adulthood is kicking my ass and i need this fic, once again, as a vehicle for my own adulthood angst. i hope we learn some stuff along the way.

also don't be alarmed about the title of the fic - i just liked the way it sounded and some parts of the song will resonate (like the retrospective vibe) BUT there are absolutely NO elements of emotional abuse in this relationship. things just don't work out sometimes.

absolutely rawdogging this fic - no graphics and no playlist and no bells and whistles just straight up PAIN for the few chapters i have planned that would make up this extremely brief but also emotionally HEFTY fic.

if you can't tell, this is a continuation of the little bonus chapter at the end of SKOD (which is kind of required reading since this is a sequel i suppose). we are moving away from teenage angst to adult angst, and also the topic of grief and loss which is... my favourite topic to study as a psychology major.

AND ALSO. the friends we make along the way.

AND ANOTHER THING. absolutely do not worry everyone in the core friend group (and wyatt and violet) survives the war because they are nothing if not survivors. AND ANOTHER THING. ... maybe sawyer and oliver do unofficially adopt more stray children........ just maybe. AND ANOTHER THING!!!!!!!! will there be smut? who knows. (knowing me, probably not) AND ANOTHER THING - thE LAST ANOTHER THING - the emotional damage i sustained while planning this story AND also imagining the sawyerxoliver breakup ........ you will feel it. get your tiger balm ready.

I KNOW I SAID IT BEFORE BUT THIS WOULD BE THE LAST "ANOTHER THING" I PROMISE.
i refuse to acknowledge jk rowling's input. also her epilogue for harry and ginny is Wrong and i refuse to acknowledge it. in this universe, ginny plays for the holyhead harpies and harry plays for Puddlemere United. with oliver. aka his FATHER. THIS IS VERY MUCH A SPORTS ROMANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!

i dedicate this fic to bayports elysianfieId and sweetjawregui

TRIGGER WARNING.
mentions of self harm, suicidal ideation, regression, minor character death, and violence.

cover & graphics done by bayports

© TARYN