mattheo riddle was usually the one performing the disappearing act. ghosting girls wasn’t just a habit for him — it was practically an art form. he’d talk for a week or two, maybe three if the conversation didn’t bore him to death, then drop them like a half-smoked cigarette. forgotten. tossed. gone.

was it shitty? definitely. did he care? not really. it's not like he knew any better, and he didn’t know how to care — at least, not the way people wanted him to.

until you. the first to flip the script on him, to leave without warning, to make him realize how much ghosting actually fucking stung.

it had started innocently enough — a one-night stand that turned into two, then three, until it wasn’t just a hookup anymore. you’d text him late at night, steal his hoodies, make sarcastic comments over breakfast. it was casual, technically. but it felt like something more.

worst thing is, mattheo liked it. liked you, if he was being honest with himself — not that he ever was. it was the perfect setup: not too serious, not too distant. something in-between. controllable.

then, out of nowhere, you vanished.

no text, no fight, no warning. just gone.

you blocked his number, changed your classes, practically evaporated your presence on campus. you even managed to train his owl to fuck off mid-flight. mattheo didn’t even know that was possible. it was surgical, the kind of ghosting that left no trace, only a quiet ache in the spaces you used to fill.

and for the first time in his life, mattheo riddle got a taste of his own medicine — and it went down bitter.

he pretended it didn’t bother him: slept with a few girls, said all the right things, laughed a little too loudly in the great hall. but none of it worked. the stolen glances and quiet, inside-joke kind of laughter he’d had with you stayed lodged in his throat like something he couldn’t quite cough up.

then, one normal tuesday, three months after your disappearing act, he shut his locker door and there you were. leaning against the metal like some ghost in the flesh, arms crossed, staring him dead in the eye. mattheo had forgotten what it was like to hold eye contact with you.

you muttered a "hi" and just like that, his brain short-circuited. his stomach flipped wild fucking backflips. he felt fourteen again, awkward and angry and so wildly unprepared.

his expression faltered for a second: confusion, disbelief, before hardening into something colder.

“oh, hell no,” he muttered, scoffing with enough venom to hide the way his throat had gone dry. he shook his head, slammed his locker shut, and twisted the lock shut like it owed him something. “you do not get to do that,”