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Chapter Twenty-Three—Beds

Harry swallowed as Tom gently escorted him to the bed. It wasn't like he hadn't been here before, and it wasn't as if someone had compelled the decision he'd made in the bathroom. He knew what he wanted.

He wouldn't be here if Tom had tried to force him.

Tom paused and caught his eye, which Harry supposed shouldn't be such a surprise. Their bond had to be ringing and trembling with his nervousness. "I promise that I will not hurt you. I'll use all the spells necessary. And if you want to back off and wait for this, I can do that."

The bond sang how much Tom would hate to do that even more than his shaking hand did as he reached out to trace a path down Harry's breastbone. Harry caught his wrist as he lay down and shook his head. "No, Tom, I don't want to wait. This is the right time. But please use the spells." He smiled, and then smiled a little more from the way Tom stared at him, his eyes wide. "It's also my first time, after all."

"You don't know how glad I am of that," Tom said as he moved his wand in intricate patterns, and Harry felt a soft warmth travel through his arse, followed by an odd, involuntary relaxing of his muscles and a slickness at his entrance. "I'm greedy. I know I didn't wait, and I couldn't have expected my soulmate to wait for me. But if I had to know that you'd shared yourself with someone else…"

"Well, you don't have to," Harry said simply. He had seen the way Tom's eyes lingered on the panther-claw scar on his chest, and he already didn't like to imagine how Tom would fight to restrain himself from hunting down the responsible party. "I'm right here, and all yours."

Tom's eyes darkened, and the air around them writhed for a second, dark shapes like the phoenixes he had used to harm Sirius appearing and then disappearing. Harry swallowed. It shouldn't have made him harder, but should appeared to have very little bearing on his reactions.

Tom reached up to the collar of his robes and touched them. The robes folded neatly back, followed by the shirt and pants he had worn underneath them, and puddled on the floor for a second before rolling themselves into a neat bundle on the chair arm.

Harry stared blankly at him, then said, "Unfair not to teach me that spell."

"I'll teach you all sorts of things, darling."

Harry spread his legs with a soft needy sound, and Tom came to kneel on the bed next to him. For a moment, he stared, and Harry caught flickers of thought and emotion, loneliness and yearning and the conviction Tom had come to ten years ago that he would never stop seeking his soulmate, even though by then he thought they must have been born and were avoiding him.

"I think we were always meant to end up here," Harry whispered, arching his neck and catching Tom's gaze, "whatever our politics were and whatever tricks I came up with to hide."

Tom's smile warmed slowly into place, and he reached out and let his fingers curl around Harry's soul-mark. Harry sighed as the blue flames sprang into being. He glanced at the burn scar on Tom's chest.

"Yes, I wish I had one for you to touch," Tom whispered. "I hope that you don't mourn its absence." He glanced towards the pile of robes. On top, the phoenix made of onyx and diamonds gleamed.

"No." Harry took a deep breath and did what he could to shift the mood. Right now, he thought too much softness would drift towards melancholy for the years and things they'd lost, and he didn't want that. "You know what I wish for?"

"What?" Tom stared at him, focused, as if Harry was the center of his existence.

"For you to fuck me," Harry whispered, and grabbed his arm to draw him in.


Tom knew what Harry was doing, but he allowed it. There was no retrieving the past, and he wouldn't spend his completion of the sexual bond with his soulmate trying.

He released Harry's wrist and followed the motion of his demanding arm down to kiss him, then stretched out on top of Harry completely bare for the first time. Harry's breath visibly hitched, and he reached up, half-clawing at Tom, grabbing and holding anywhere he could. Tom welcomed the pain of the small scratches Harry's short nails inflicted.

He breathed out gently and then rolled out of the way, going up onto his knees to reach for his wand again. He cast more lubrication and relaxing charms, and then, with a smile, the one that made Harry twitch his head around to stare curiously.

"Just ensuring that when I'm inside you, you'll experience more pleasure than normal from my cock," Tom hissed as he put his wand aside. "Pleasure just from having it in you, no matter what it touches or if I'm moving."

He knew he'd made the right decision when he saw how Harry's eyes met his, and Harry nodded rapidly twice and spread his legs.

But Tom wanted to touch him other places first, and he spread his fingers out around Harry's nipples. They were already tight, and Tom didn't pull them. He leaned down and breathed on them instead.

Harry gave a hoarse hiss in which Tom could, unfortunately, detect no Parseltongue words. Then he lunged his head off the pillow and kissed Tom in a painful click of teeth. Tom eased back and slipped his hand around Harry's cock.

It hardly needed the help, straining up from between Harry's legs as it was, but Tom had had too many fantasies about this moment to let them go so easily. He formed his fingers into a ring and held still.

"What do you—want?" Harry asked, after a second. He was concentrating on Tom as hard as he could, but Tom wasn't surprised that he couldn't pick up exactly what Tom longed for. Their mental bond was too new and not complete yet.

"I always thought, if I had a male soulmate, that I wanted him to fuck my fist."

"People would be so surprised to know how lazy you are," Harry muttered, but his smile was already the deep, shining one that Tom liked best. He began to thrust up, his erection sliding along Tom's fingers and slicking them. Tom just stared, and his heart thundered and sang in his chest.

It was better and more vivid than anything he'd imagined. Everything, from the soft sounds it made to the way that Harry's cock caught here and there at the calluses from quills, was real.

"I'm starting to feel like I'm doing all the work here," Harry finally drawled, sprawling back on the bed and giving Tom a challenging look. "Is there going to be any reciprocation, or is the Minister for Magic too lazy to do that?"

"What do you want?" Tom repeated, and then again in Parseltongue, to watch that greedy dark look creep into his eyes.

"I want you to—"

Harry half-closed his eyes as if to gather his strength, but Tom was a practiced Legilimens, and he picked up the flash of the thought. He laughed. "Well, soulmates are supposed to be well-matched sexually as well as in souls and minds and magic."

"Shut up," Harry muttered.

"Glad to," Tom said, and slithered down the bed with his mouth open. Harry was thrusting before Tom got him in his mouth, which made the position more challenging, but he hardly cared. He rode the violent pushes into his throat, and Harry's shaky groan made him thrust, too, against the bedsheets.

Tom didn't get long to suck Harry, unfortunately, since Harry was already near his peak and Tom had to do what he wanted. He reached out, timing it, waiting until the last safe second, and then cast the spell that choked back Harry's orgasm.

Harry cast back his head and uttered a strangled howl. Tom remained calm, knowing exactly what Harry was feeling from the emotional bond surging around him. Harry swallowed and lay there with his chest heaving—an attractive sight, Tom had to admit—and then looked at him.

"Thank you," he whispered. "That was intense."

"That's part of what you need," Tom whispered, reaching back down and letting his fingers trace around Harry's slick arsehole. Harry let his eyes flutter shut and sighed. "That intensity of experience. You crave it." He paused, and his eyes turned against his will to Harry's chest. "Was that part of the business with the panther?"

"Fuck you," Harry said crossly, his eyes flying open again and the emotional bond turning nearly to a solid block of ice around Tom. "I didn't conjure it and it wasn't my idea to have it attack me!"

"But you also treated having the scar completely nonchalantly, and I'm sure that you never told the name of the person who conjured it to your Head of House." Tom had evaluated Minerva McGonagall carefully before he had let her become Head of Gryffindor House, and he didn't believe she would have let someone like that go unpunished.

Harry flushed a dull red. "It doesn't matter."

"Once we have the mental bond, I can read the name out of your head," Tom said, and laughed at the way Harry snarled. Not because he couldn't feel the anger, but because he loved the way Harry looked when he felt like that.

"Are you going to fuck me, or am I going to have to conjure a cock and do it all myself?"

"Do you know that spell, then?" Tom asked, as he renewed the pleasure charms on his cock. He didn't want Harry to get any idea about relying on his own hands.

"Yes."

"Did you use it often?"

Harry met his gaze, and his face lost some of the red tint. But he breathed in deep and answered. "Not often. It just felt like reminding myself of something I was never going to have. Or I thought I was never going to have."

"You'll have all you want, all you'll ever need," Tom promised, and his fingers settled on Harry's hip. "And you'll let me know if you do feel pain, or something beyond the level of intensity you want."

"I'll tell you."

The shining eyes and the shining face uptilted to him ruined Tom's simple plan to slide into Harry. He leaned forwards and did it at the same time he was kissing Harry, swallowing his gasp, and running his fingers down Harry's chest and over that panther scar.

He wanted everything about Harry. His wounds, his pain, his desires, his embarrassment, his cravings, his memories. And he was on the way to achieving it.


Harry hadn't been lying when he'd said that he rarely did the Invisible Cock Conjuration. He would lie there after it was done with his eyes closed, wanting to be fucked by his soulmate, knowing it couldn't happen, feeling guilty for wanting it to happen, feeling angry at the people who had told him it never could.

Now he knew that it wouldn't have mattered if he'd conjured the damn thing every day. Because having Tom inside him was nothing like the invisible, tiny cocks that he'd managed to conjure before this.

He lay there, gasping, and feeling the hardness inside him, piercing him, opening his arse, separating him from the man he had been. Tom leaned down above him with a frown, hands on his shoulders and eyes bright and concerned.

"Harry?"

"I'm all right." Harry blinked his eyes open, and found that he was smiling, although that was no surprise when he could feel their bond spinning open around them like a sunburst. He reached up and let his hand rest on Tom's cheek. "I still promise that I would tell you when it gets too much for me."

Tom nodded, that serenely smug smile creeping back into place. "In truth, I no longer think you would need to. I would feel it." And he began to thrust.

Harry reached back, gripping the pillows above him, and opened his legs and his body and his mind.

There was nothing like this, and Harry let himself spiral into the bond. There was pleasure spreading from Tom over him like fire, and there were the harsh motions of Tom's body that caused that pleasure, and there were so many emotions tumbling over him that it was like being caught in a flow of warm water, and there were flickering, dancing thoughts—

Harry reached out towards them.

Mine, my soulmate, worth waiting for, wish I'd waited, wouldn't have been able to make it so good for him if I had—

Harry let the thoughts go with a gasp and worked his inner muscles around Tom, making him lean closer and hiss in Parseltongue, "You're going to need more than that to bring me off, darling."

Harry just stared at him, still reeling with the possessiveness he'd felt, and Tom's determination to have and keep him. Tom smiled lazily at him and continued moving. True to his words earlier, he must have been able to feel from the mental bond that Harry's shock was nothing bad.

"I can do more than that," Harry whispered when he'd recovered his breath, and began to squeeze in opposition to Tom's thrusts, bearing down when he pulled out, relaxing as he pushed back in. Tom's mouth dropped open, and his eyes fluttered. The bond danced around them again, chaotic and golden.

Harry immersed himself once more in the thoughts. He'd always belived they were calm and orderly; that was the way Hermione had described the bond she had with Ron, at least, the one time Harry had been masochistic enough to ask her about it.

But instead, this was a storm.

Mine, protect him, keep him, have him, he's safe, he's underneath me, he's staring at me like I'm the center of his world, I'm going to be—

Harry darted back out again, a swift shudder of pleasure running down his spine. Tom smiled down at him and kept languidly thrusting, and damn, Harry had lost the rhythm he'd been maintaining. He squeezed down again, doing his best to envelop Tom in warmth and pleasure that would hold him.

His mind was spinning, and not just because of the fierceness of the bond that might calm down when it wasn't so new.

Tom was—

Tom was mad over him.

If they had known, it would have been possible to have peace with him a long time ago. Tom would have agreed to almost anything, including, Harry knew, treating Muggleborns better, when it was such a game to him in the first place. To have his soulmate, to know that his parents were raising him and treating him kindly—

To be able to meet him when he was younger and reassure Harry that he would live by Harry's principles in the future—

Because of fear, that chance had been taken away from all of them, not just Harry and Tom but the Order and the world.

"Harry," Tom whispered, and touched his cheek. Harry blinked up at him, dazedly. "You're crying. Are you all right?"

Harry bit his lip and nodded. Tom had stopped moving. Harry mustered a laugh when he noticed. "How are you going to get me off by holding still? Sorry, but I don't think even you're that good."

"Will you tell me what you were weeping about later?" Tom's eyes had more than a hint of red to them, and he was frozen above Harry, so intent still that Harry felt a rush of possessive affection of his own.

"Yes, I'm fine," he said. "And I'll be better than fine when you get your arse moving in my arse again."

Tom continued to study him for a second as if he wasn't sure Harry was telling the truth, but Harry projected the calm and reassurance he truly felt through the bond, and Tom finally nodded and began to move. Harry opened himself up again, this time not trying to read the individual thoughts as they swept through his mind like soft rain.

He knew what they meant, anyway, without hearing them. He was loved.


Tom could feel the grieving edge to Harry's thoughts, but he couldn't grasp them well enough to tell what he was thinking about. Harry's mind leaped and darted like a fish, and the waters of their bond were too new yet. Tom had heard the effect described many times, but for some reason, he had never thought it would happen to him.

He shook away the disappointment as a glow seemed to spread out of Harry's mind and embrace him. The important thing was that they loved each other, and they were soulmates, and together at once.

And he wanted to concentrate on giving his soulmate as good a first time as it was possible to have.

He thrust without taking his eyes from Harry. Harry stared up at him for a second, and then began to smile. He squeezed down again, with a devilish edge to the smile that reminded Tom of how Harry had resisted him when he'd first begun to suspect there was something unusual about the young man who had saved him from a collapsing roof.

Tom bent down next to Harry's ear and breathed, "It occurs to me that I still technically owe you a life-debt."

Harry scowled at once. "No, you—oh." He let his eyes fall half-shut as Tom thrust again, carefully hitting his prostate.

"So glad that you agree, since you're not actually disagreeing," Tom said casually, and laughed a little when Harry's eyes flared open to focus on him again. "I love you, darling."

Harry gaped up at him, and Tom touched his cheek before he resumed his thrusts. Harry swallowed and whispered, "I—love you, too."

The emotional bond around them might have been lit on fire, a gentle, coruscating warmth that made Tom's heart beat faster in his chest. He held himself back from coming with an effort, and managed to smile as he said, "I'm going to make this so good for you."

"It already is."

"You have no idea," Tom said, and then closed his eyes and descended into the haze of warmth in his own chest. Harry's power thrummed there next to his own. Tom paused for a startled moment. He had always expected the magic of his soulmate to blend with his own, but hadn't known that—

That they would become one like this. He wouldn't be pulling on Harry's magic when he cast a spell if he wanted extra power. He would be pulling on theirs.

But at least it made what he wanted to do easier. Tom shook away his own surprise and hissed out the incantation, slowly, envisioning a serpent winding up and around Harry's chest as he did so. Parseltongue made the manipulation of nerves and physical sensations easier, the snake-like pattern of veins and arteries and neurons resonating in sympathy with the language. Tom had only done this once before, however, and he fed the strength slowly through the net of his concentration.

"You stopped again."

"My apologies," Tom murmured, and opened his eyes to see Harry frowning at him in a way that was honestly marvelous. "I think I can promise that from now on, that's not going to be a feature of our sex."

"Altogether?"

"No, just this one time," Tom admitted, and then cast his own small charm to ensure that he wouldn't hurt his back and hips doing what he wanted to do, before he began to thrust wildly forwards.

Harry gasped and then began to buck back to meet him. But his muscles hadn't been enhanced by the magic Tom had used, and it only took a few minutes before he ran out of strength and lay there, making the most minute of motions with his hips, his eyes locked on Tom's.

"What did you do?"

"Something special," Tom said, and then thrust forwards and plowed directly into Harry's prostate.

Harry gasped again as he began to come. Tom watched with his emotions whirling around him and Harry's incoherent thoughts flying beside his as Harry coated his own belly, and then raised an eyebrow when Harry stared down in bewilderment.

"I'm still hard," Harry whispered, his eyes darting back up to Tom.

"Parseltongue has a charm that allows for multiple orgasms," Tom explained, and then began to thrust again.

Harry just stared at him, but in less than a minute, he tipped over the edge again, vibrating and shouting. Tom grinned. In truth, the spell was more a matter of giving Harry the pleasure than making him come more than once; his erection hadn't gone down much. Tom thought there might be enough magic left for twice more.

Harry was breathing harshly as he managed to focus again. "I—Tom. I feel so good."

And the bond burst into light around them, not fire, and Tom had to close his eyes as he felt it immerse him to the point where he could no longer imagine being separate. He reached out and wrapped his hand around Harry's erection, stroking, touching, and then pulling back and pushing forwards once more.

Harry shivered through another orgasm, his expression open and simply happy in a way that Tom had never seen on him before. He looked up and met Tom's gaze, and then he laughed, a sound as simple and happy as the grin. He reached out a yearning hand, and Tom claimed it and kissed the back of it.

One more, he thought, and the spell would be finished. And his bollocks were beginning to ache with the effort of holding back, and the spell he had cast to strengthen his muscles would be fading before much longer, too.

"Ready?" he whispered.

"I don't think there's any getting ready for this," Harry said, and laughed again. "Thanks for having lovers before me and studying sex magic, Tom."

A bit of guilt Tom hadn't realized he was feeling burned away at that, and he smiled and thrust again, and then again, and then once more—

And the whole of his being caught on fire.

He saw the shapes of phoenixes sweeping past him for a moment, and serpents, and Harry's face. And then he fell into his orgasm, and into the bond at the same moment.

It pushed him to the bed, and then it pushed him into unconsciousness less than a second later.


Harry wrapped his arms around Tom and settled back on the bed. The steady hum of their bond sang around him, reassuring him, despite the odd blackness where Tom's thoughts should be. Even when he had been asleep before, it hadn't felt like this, not since the mental aspect of the bond had started and they had been catching glimpses of each other's thoughts. Then it had been like standing at the edge of a restless dark pool alive with darting fish.

But Harry knew their bond wouldn't hurt Tom. He had to trust in that. He took a long breath and closed his eyes, and listened to the humming song around them.

It wasn't exactly like anyone else's bond, but then, Harry was starting to suspect that no words really existed to describe that bond to someone who hadn't experienced it. There were bright ribbons of emotion, trails of light that marked where their bond had completed itself, echoes of pleasure. Harry smiled and stretched a little around the soreness in his arse, and watched as the impressions in front of his eyes danced and rippled into new configurations. Yes, the physical, sexual aspect of their bond was complete as well.

And their magic…

Harry reached out and yanked carefully on their magic, and the mingled, pooled power leaped at him. He gasped and sagged back against the pillow, and shuddered as new memories and knowledge settled into the back of his mind like a heavy block.

He knew how Tom had called forth those serpents from the earth when he had faced Dumbledore and the Order. He—he didn't know if he could do it. It didn't feel as though he could speak Parseltongue, as though that ability had transferred. But he knew so intimately how it was done that he might be able to anyway.

And there were other memories, Harry thought, as his hand went to his chest. He knew, as if he passed through it and out again in a flash, what it was like to have a soul-mark on his chest, and have it burned off.

He swallowed and touched the memory again, and this time the sensation that swept through him was one of dark rage, freezing rage, the conviction that he might lose his soulmate forever and the desperation to make someone pay for that.

Harry closed his eyes. He could no longer claim to be innocent of the darkness in the depths of Tom Riddle. He turned his mind in another direction, and he knew kinship with the freezing indifference that had made Tom able to vote for laws that he knew would hurt and disadvantage Muggleborns and Muggles.

Harry understood what it was like to care for nothing and no one but himself and his soulmate.

He breathed out and released the feeling, and then moved closer to Tom, curving one arm around his back. He thought, as he began to drift off to sleep, that if he got to understand what it was like for Tom, then at least Tom would also get to understand what it was like for him, and that might teach him compassion in a way nothing else had been able to do.

And then Harry's eyes snapped open again. Tom would also get the emotional content of the memories where Harry had lain there in the dead of night and thought no one would ever love him and he would have to suffer alone for the rest of his life.

Well—I mean, the compassion has to outweigh that, right? The things I think are right mattered more to me than my loneliness over my soulmate. I thought about them more.

At least, I hope so.

But Harry found, as he lay down in the embrace of the stirring, complete bond, that he wouldn't have given up any of it to protect his privacy. This was the course he had chosen, and it was the right one, the only one, that would bring him to love and peace.

And if I have to drag Tom along behind me to get him to follow it, that's what I'll bloody do.