Tom, Tom, Tom.
Author: Queen Nightingale
Pairing: Ginny/Tom Riddle
Style: Dark
Rating: M (Suggested Sexual Activities)
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
You are so handsome I hate you you are so handsome I want to cry. I am Oedipus Rex but I am holding a spoon in between my clenched fingers and you smirk at me above your bowl of soup and I can't gouge out my eyes with a spoon now, can I.
You motion to the waiter and suddenly our soup bowls are whisked away and there is a plate of something very red, very alive, very throbbing in front of us. I look down and there is a black hole in the center of my chest and I look back up and you are delicately taking your knife and slicing down the middle of my heart.
You lift a dripping piece to your mouth with a hint of a smile, your elegant fingers wrapping around the fork.
"Needs a bit more pepper," you comment after chewing thoughtfully.
There are tears on my face. I want to stand up to vomit, but suddenly there are chains on my arms.
I cannot forget you. I was your Lolita, a little redheaded girl with a bounce in her step and breasts that developed too quickly. When you made love to me, you circled your hands around my throat and choked me so much that when I woke up the next morning there were black and blue bruises around my neck. I touched them in the mirror and closed my little girl eyes. They were the only type of hickeys you would ever give me.
At night I would pull your diary out and suddenly you would erupt out of the pages, all black hair and cool skin and cool cool eyes and into the cool cool cool rabbithole we went. Suddenly you gave me robes of gold thread with a silver ribbon for my hair and I was so in love, so in love. There were galaxies inside of an eye-dropper that you kept in your pocket, galaxies of imagination, and if I was lucky, you would drip it into my eye.
They don't tell you what it is like to wear green emerald on your bare skin and listen to a boy trapped in a horrible book. They don't tell you what it is like to slice your finger open and press it to the paper just to hear the sound of a deep moan. They don't tell you what it is like to grab his forearm and watch him flash back and hiss, the sound deep and guttural and dangerous. They don't tell you how to kiss a madman.
Once we went on a picnic outside the Forbidden Forest and you dipped me and I screamed and you laughed and your dimples were romantic.
Tom, Tom, Tom.
They later would call it molestation but to me it was just ballroom dancing. I liked the way you shivered when I placed my little girl hands on your bare collarbones. I liked the noises that you made, glow-in-the-dark, when you bit so hard into my shoulder that you drew blood. I liked the feeling of your happiness when I did something for you, I liked the sound of your dark voice, I liked your beautiful cutthroat cheekbones and the way your jaw clenched when you spoke. I liked your cool, cool eyes.
Tom, Tom, Tom.
"Gwenog Jones?" Your voice was low and dark, but I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the cold parchment.
"Yes," I replied, quietly, "She's a Quidditch player."
"Why do you like her?"
"She's a girl."
"Does that make her special in some way?" Your voice was mocking. I lifted my chin in defiance.
"It's hard to be a girl Quidditch player."
"It's hard to be a girl, oh, poor Ginevra Weasley, such a tough life." You spit out the rest of the words.
I am silent. I am shaking.
Tom, Tom, Tom.
"Girls don't amount to anything. They never become anything without boys." Your sixteen year old eyes are glaring at me.
"That's not true. Gwenog Jones became a Quidditch player all on her own."
"Well you'll never be a Quidditch player."
"How do you know that?"
"You'll be a wife. That's the problem with girls that are hopeless romantics. They never think outside the box. You'll be some prick's stupid trophy wife. "
I pause for a second, then speak, the words stumbling out of my mouth like drunken soldiers in a march.
"Are you … jealous?"
You turn towards me, your eyes flashing. You are incredibly attractive. Sometimes I avoid looking at your face so I do not become even more infatuated.
"Jealous?! Why would Tom Riddle be jealous of you being another man's wife?"
I am silent again, and you turn away, stewing, staring over the edge of the Observatory Tower with your back harsh and arched. There are stars glistening in my eyes, and I can feel them hot and burning on the edge of my lashes.
"Because you are in love with me," I spit out, stubbornly, "Because, Tom, you are in love with me."
Tom, Tom, Tom.
I sometimes wonder if when I pressed my bloodied hand to the paper – if you had appeared as an overweight acne-prone bald man, if you had been anything other than Tom Riddle, sixteen year old cocky asshole – if I would have still loved you the way I loved you back then.
"Suck it."
You dip your finger in my mouth like a ladle.
I open my eyes when you draw your finger back out, and suddenly your hands are on the sides of my face pushing back my hair, and you are staring at me, and you are just a naked sixteen year old boy again.
You tell me I am beautiful that night, and I never talk to you about Harry Potter again.
But then the dreams start.
I wake up one morning with rooster feathers all over my robes and I sit up straight in my bed and clutch my hands to my mouth.
That night I scribble frantically in your soul.
"What is going on?" I hiss, you turning away from me with a sneer.
"You're my whore, my girl – my object, mine mine mine. You don't get to know what is happening, stupid little girl."
I can feel my pulse in my neck. I know I should disagree with you, but there is something so tantalizing about being controlled.
"I'm scared."
You snap your fingers, and suddenly I am standing in front of you raw, and I frantically try to cover my body with my hands.
"Mine … mine … mine … mine." Your fingers slide down my sides, until suddenly I wrap my arms around your neck and you press your cool cool lips against mine, my back arching.
"Mine," I moan.
You slap me across the face, and I grit my teeth, stumbling back from you. Suddenly I am clothed again. My pulse is still jolting out of my neck, and there is electricity roaring up and down my legs.
"Oh, Ginevra," you say, my eyes on your cool cool lips, "Always such the optimist."
"What are you talking about?"
"I have a feeling you will kill me, my beautiful Red."
"You're my best friend. Why would I kill you?"
"Because I am doing things to your body that you do not understand."
One night you put me in a red dress and tie my hair high and your eyes meet mine in the vanity mirror. You place your hands around my neck and I shudder because you are all cold bones and cold skin and I am a hot-blooded scared little girl.
I wake up before you can kiss the side of my cheek. I stare at the ceiling and try to not think about how much I wanted you to kiss the side of my cheek.
"Have you ever thought that all of this is just a dream?"
Tom, Tom, Tom.
"That you are really going mad, that I do not exist?"
Tom, Tom, Tom.
"That you so desperately want to be loved that you have made me up?"
Tom, Tom, Tom.
I lift my eyes from my bloodstained hands. I am in the girls' lavatory again and you are leaning against the wall, all debonair and slightly flushed, black hair swooped back, cheekbones glistening and predatory. There is a genuine smile on your face. I have never been so frightened by such a beautiful sight. I want to peel it off your skin.
Tom, Tom, Tom.
"Look, Ginevra, listen."
Suddenly your piano fingers are pressed to my throat and my head tilts back and I pretend I am not a little girl with blood sticking to her palms next to a dirty sink at eleven at night.
"Do you hear that?"
Tom, Tom, Tom.
"It beats for me. Your heart, Ginevra, beats for me."
You are so handsome I hate you you are so handsome I want to cry. I am Oedipus Rex but I am holding a spoon in between my clenched fingers and you smirk at me above your bowl of soup and I can't gouge out my eyes with a spoon now, can I.
You motion to the waiter and suddenly our soup bowls are whisked away and there is a plate of something very red, very alive, very throbbing in front of us. I look down and there is a black hole in the center of my chest and I look back up and you are delicately taking your knife and slicing down the middle of my heart.
You lift a dripping piece to your mouth with a hint of a smile, your elegant fingers wrapping around the fork.
"Needs a bit more pepper," you comment after chewing thoughtfully.
There are tears on my face. I want to stand up to vomit, but suddenly there are chains on my arms.
Tom, Tom, Tom.