Hello! Thank you for all of your responses last chapter:) I hope you don't feel it was too OOC for Florence. I think that when you love someone, you are not only blinded to some of their faults but you choose only to see the best in them, and for me that is the crux of it with Florence. She sees in Tom only what she wants to see - BUT if you feel that wasn't well written or it didn't come across that way, by all means you are entitled to your opinion:) I seriously love how invested all of you readers are and I love hearing your thoughts/opinions!
Also - my FFN is not working so even though it says I have new reviews, I cannot see them unless I go to my email! Regardless - thank you endlessly to ZazaMonkey and MrsLolita for your words. You are so kind!
First chapter out of Hogwarts. I've been waiting so long to reach this point, and I think there will probably be a bit over 50 chapters now that I'm sitting and writing it all down, so we still have a ways to go. Thank you for your endless support, for sticking with this story, and for genuinely being the best. Stay safe everyone!
Chapter 41
"He was another knife I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for."
― Madeline Miller, Circe
Tom's apartment doesn't have enough windows Florence decides once she is able to peel herself away from his bed long enough to truly finish exploring it – something that takes admittedly longer than she first thought because Tom seems to be somewhat unhinged, his desires surfacing to the forefront now that he is no longer bound by the whims of Hogwarts and his role as Head Boy. She tugs on one of his discarded shirts, buttoning it haphazardly as she slips from his room. Tom is in the shower, tendrils of steam issuing out from under the door, meaning that she has at least ten minutes head start before he comes looking, most likely to ravage her upon one of the myriad surfaces with his new quarters. The thought reminds her of the soreness in her gut before it settles into warm, ever present yearning. Perhaps she will hide, force him to hunt for her in his own home.
She had screamed bloody murder the first time they had entered the kitchen a few days prior to find a small house elf in a black linen cloth like a small toga. Her name was Pips – one of the Lestrange's house elves Tom had told her once she'd regained her senses – and further questioning revealed that Leonidas had ordered her to stock his fridge and pantry once a week as well as see too Tom's laundry and linens. It wasn't the same as truly owning your own house elf, Florence reasoned, but it was a generous gesture on Leonidas' behalf, one she hadn't thought the somber boy capable of.
Florence ignores to the best of her ability the black eyes of Salazar Slytherin that watch her from his portrait. Florence attempts to avoid thinking about Slytherin at all, in fact. She'd known how important it was to Tom, she could remember the earnestness in every line of his face as he'd told her of what had transpired, how he'd tried to defend his family honor without wrongfully accusing himself. And yet, Florence could not wrap her head around the idea of the gentle, half-giant Hagrid wanting to attack others – not when he was responsible for caring for most of the creatures on the grounds. But then again, Florence likewise could not picture Tom killing someone.
Well, maybe she could picture it, but she didn't want too.
And regardless of whether or not Tom had darker tendencies and a streak of bitterness a mile wide, she truly did not believe he would lie to her. Because whatever Tom might hide beneath the various masks he wore, she knew without question he cared for her. I want whatever it is you are. I know that you are beautiful. I plan to carve your name into time itself. He would not, she rationalized, lie to her if those things he murmured into her ear when no one else was listening were also true. And the Parseltongue had been proof enough that he was the heir of Slytherin, so why shouldn't the rest of his story also be true? She didn't want to think about it, and so she didn't.
Her self-guided tour takes her through the library, down a long corridor with several bedrooms leading off of it, and at last into a study. The desk is a behemoth structure, rectangular and hard, a deep mahogany reinforced by severe lines and bookshelves of a similar structure against the walls. Charcoal wallpaper makes the room feel smaller than it is, but it is the star pattern drawn onto the ceiling which draws Florence's eyes up. It takes almost no effort at all to picture Tom working here – writing lesson plans, drafting letters to members of the Wizengamot, penning me letters. She takes a seat behind it without thinking, pulling open drawers without any care for his personal space because if she's being honest with herself, she thinks this will all belong to her one day anyway – she may as well acquaint herself with it now.
She's scribbling furiously across a piece of parchment when Tom finds her. Florence doesn't notice him at first, Tom already having mastered the art of moving across the hardwood floors without a sound like a living shadow. Florence does not see, therefore, the innumerable emotions that pass across his face for the briefest moment as he leans against the doorframe, his hair wet, curls hanging low in their damp state like freshly tempered chocolate that is still hardening.
"I see you've helped yourself to my study before I've even had a chance to use it," Tom murmurs at last. Florence jumps in her seat, a drop of ink dripping onto her letter as she looks up to see him approaching. Tailored slacks, a silk button down, and bare feet – coupled with a face carved from diamond itself, Florence feels her mind go blank, incapable of thinking in the presence of such beauty.
"What are you writing," he prods, rounding the desk so that he can rest his hip against it, his delicate fingers reaching for the parchment to turn it towards him. Florence feels her face go red, and she swallows before continuing, praying that her voice is under control when she speaks.
"I already sent my mom one asking for pictures of us," she chokes, and Tom's eyes bore into her, the ever-present smirk plastering across his face in such a grotesque display of beauty that Florence's thighs press together.
"And this one?"
"I'm writing to the local Botanist to purchase a few plants for your apartment. And then I'm sending in for new sheets – the ones on your bed are so scratchy."
"Seeing as we ripped them the first time we slept in our bed, I can agree that new sheets would be in order," he replies smoothly, but his eyes glint dangerously, forcing her blush to deepen. She knows she should ask him before she takes over his space, but there is an innately selfish part of her that wants to leave something behind when she is gone in the same way she'd wanted his tree planted upon her estate.
"You're sinful," Florence murmurs, but she gives him a smile anyways.
"Of course."
Tom stands and cups her face, pulling it to his, kissing her as if it is the first time he has done so, not the hundredth this day alone. She kisses him back because of course she does, because she'd awoken this morning realizing that in three weeks they would be parted and she would not know when she could expect to see him next. It had been a bitter pill to swallow.
"You've misaligned the buttons on my shirt," Tom murmurs when at last he releases her. Pulling her to her feet so that she stands between his legs, he sets to work disassembling the shirt, revealing her skin to the cold air of the apartment inch by inch. She must force herself to look away from his face, the wantonness etched into every plane there near intoxicating and Florence does not know how to meet it. How does he manage to make her feel so needed and yet so small all at once? When the last button is undone, Florence feels the pads of his fingers brush across her shoulders, sliding the garment from her frame and allowing it to pool upon the floor. His self-satisfied smirk is enough to burn her into the carpet.
"There, fixed," he whispers, using his knuckles to trace the central plane of her stomach down to her navel, a shiver passing through her body that she cannot contain.
"I'm not going to walk around your apartment naked, Tom," Florence chides, reaching to tug on the stray curl that has fallen across his brow. She's taken to doing this recently, an act she's grown fond of because without fail it always returns to his gaze to hers, a shot of calming serum whenever she needs it.
"Why not? I want you too," he says, and his face is perfectly blank despite the flicker of starlight in his midnight eyes. She giggles despite the ridiculous nature of his request. It's a compliment she supposes, that he desires her to the point of viewing clothing as unnecessary, a potential hindrance.
"People don't just get whatever they want."
"I do," he counters with the kind of confidence he used to wield in the classroom. "I wanted you, and here you are."
"I'm here because I want to be here," Florence says, her palms coming to rest on his upper thighs, nails digging into the sinew she found here. There is only the slightest inhalation of breath to show that he is affected by her nearness, but he maintains the perfect façade he'd mastered long before Florence met him. "But if you take your clothes off too, I'll consider your request, at least for today."
He's already reached for the buttons of his shirt before she's finished speaking.
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Lizzie's engagement party takes place on the back terrace of the Greengrass estate on a sunny afternoon in July. She, and therefore Tom, had both been forced to arrive early as a witness to the wedding, hair perfectly styled and pinned, her pale blue tea dress fluttering slightly in the breeze. Lizzie looked like something out of Witch Weekly, her long blonde hair in a perfect set of curls, red lipstick a dramatic cut across her face that when she smiled, made her teeth all the more radiantly white.
"Florence, thank gods you're here," Lizzie called out the moment they were ushered through the front door. Lizzie took her hand at once, and Florence had only enough time to send Tom an apologetic smile before she was tugged away. "My mother has invited every no-good, nosy, busy-body pure-blooded woman from Britain and the Continent, and I'm about to rip my hair out."
"I thought you liked being the center of attention," Florence laughed. Lizzie gave her a stare that could wilt flowers.
"Not when all of wizarding society that actually mattersis about to be judging everything from my shoes to my shift."
"Lizzie, you look like a magazine star, please stop fretting."
"I do love when you compliment me, feel free to keep it up, Florence dear," Lizzie teases, checking herself in the mirror. "How is Tom's apartment," she asks, their eyes meeting in the reflection with a knowing look. Florence at least has the decency to blush.
"Even more scandalous than you think," she replies, tossing a stray ringlet over her shoulder in defiance. Lizzie rolls her eyes.
"If your mother finds out you're sleeping with him before you're engaged, she'll have a heart attack."
"Do me a favor and don't tell her," Florence says with a wry smile. "I forgot to ask, how's Avery in the sack?" This time it's Lizzie who blushes.
"Well, we're not rabbits like you and Tom, but I've always been left perfectly satisfied."
"You really have a way with words, Liz," Florence teases.
"Has Tom told you what he plans to do after your little honeymoon is over?" Elizabeth asks, taking Florence's hand once more and leading her out onto the terrace and towards the bar where two glasses of Elven wine are waiting for them. "Pyrrhus told me he turned down a meeting with the head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation."
Florence fights to keep her face still as Lizzie speaks, but her words come as a surprise. She'd never truly seen Tom working for the Ministry, but something within her does ache to realize that there was a detail of his life he'd not seen fit to share with her. She knows at once this is a foolish thought considering it was mere weeks ago that he told her that he descended from Slytherin himself, a much larger fact that had shaped him in innumerable ways, but that omission was out of necessity. This one stings more for its simplicity, that he'd thought to tell others and not her.
"He's got an interview with Dippet near the end of the month about a teaching position at Hogwarts," Florence murmurs, her eyes grazing the gardens below. She spots nearly at once the bench where she and Tom had sat all those months ago, his hand held in hers, discussing the Iliad and dancing beneath the moon.
"And if he doesn't get the position?" Lizzie asks. Her voice is light, but Florence can read the tension in it from miles away.
"I know you hate speaking plainly, but what are you really asking, Liz?"
The blonde girl sighs.
"I just don't seem Tom settling for something small, at least not in the long term, and I'm trying to see how you picture into grandiose plans on the other side of the globe."
It's a fair question delicately put, but it doesn't stop the agony that seems to radiate outward from that space within her chest that Tom has come to occupy. She does not want to think about the hurdles they have yet to overcome, not when he has finally agreed to being a suitor and playing by the rules of Southern, Spectre tradition.
"And do you really think choosing me would be choosing a small life?" Florence hates how weak her voice sounds, how desperately she needs affirmation from Lizzie who is not one to give out white lies, even when they soothe. Lizzie turns, taking Florence's hand in her own so that their eyes meet.
"Choosing you would be the smartest thing that boy could ever do, and don't you ever think otherwise, Florence," Lizzie says with such fierceness that Florence's brows shoot up her brow, her mouth falling open slightly. "I just want you to be happy, and if that means asking you hard questions until his ring is on your finger, then so be it."
"Speaking of rings," Florence says, because she is close to tears and she doesn't want to ruin her makeup or Lizzie's special afternoon. "Show me what Pyrrhus picked out for you."
They ooh and ah over the diamond for several minutes before both of their dates arrive to sweep them off in various directions. Florence is forced to smile through a long, arduous conversation with Hector Fawley who Tom seems determined to win over with every charm in the book, before having to repeat the act with whom she later discovers were most of the high ranking officials at the Ministry. Florence has no idea why he wants to talk to them considering his own disinterest in politics, but she's not about to let him go, and so she allows herself to be toted around on his arm. With Tom there is always a compromise to be made.
"There is a band inside," Tom finally murmurs when the dark haired Lestrange Senior, acting head of the Auror office, at last leaves them in peace.
"If that was you asking me to dance, you can try again," Florence snaps, attempting a scathing look that earns her nothing more than a raised brow.
"Would you prefer to find a seat?" He asks, his voice musing as if speaking to a child.
"No," Florence sighs, some of her ire fading. "I'm just tired of sharing you with all the old patriarchs of the Ministry. I'd love to dance."
Tom's smile is luminous, his hand strong within her grasp as he pulls her through the doors and once more into the ballroom where they had first held each other, swept away by a different tune at a different time, but the magic is as present today as it was then. By now they fit together without thinking, her hand upon his shoulder, his pressed against her waist, their movements like a rhythm they'd been born to perform. Florence wonders if other people feel so completed when they dance, or if this is yet another example of something only they can share, a magic with no name.
"I still think of it," Tom whispers into her ear when the second waltz begins, a slightly too upbeat tune for Florence's liking, but content to remain in Tom's grasp nonetheless. "Of Samhain. I kept those hairpins I took from your hair."
"Do you plan on giving them back?"
"Never," he murmurs, and Florence shivers at the rumbling in his throat.
"Thief," she accuses.
"If you are mine, then they are mine as well."
The music changes tempo and they switch arms, Tom steering her off in the other direction, swirling counterclockwise across the floor.
"Stay in England," Tom mutters abruptly. "Don't go back to Georgia. Stay with me."
His hand tightens around her own, and Florence feels a lump begin to swell in her throat.
"What on earth would I do here, Tom?" Florence says through a pitiful laugh because his words seemed to have pierced her side, agony weeping from the wound he's just invoked. "I can't just be your bedwarmer, as much as I have enjoyed the position over the past days."
"You could," he counters, his jaw tensing as he glares across the dancefloor like it is the band's fault that she will be returning to America so soon. "Or you could ask Yarrow to tutor you for your Herbology Mastery, or I could get you a job at the Ministry. Anything you would want now or in the future I can provide, there is no reason to go."
Florence doesn't ask where he will get the money, nor how he can assure her a position at the premier office in the country. She is too fixated upon his need, the words which seem to cut her to the bone.
"You know I'm not ready to give up my land, my home. There is still so much more of myself that I want to discover."
"I could help you, look at what you have learned by my side. Who could teach you what I have? Who could push you in the same way?" She wants to tell him to lower his voice, to take him into a secluded corner and kiss him. Florence hates the hardness in his gaze, the snapping tendons in his neck that tell her he is fighting off anger. How can a boy who never knew family know what it means to leave yours behind? Florence understands there are no words that can make him comprehend.
"You would not want me here if I was a dull housewife, sitting around waiting for you to come home, and I don't want a Herbology Mastery when I can instead work the land of my forefathers."
"As if I would leave you at the apartment as a housewife. Where I go, you would follow," Tom sneers. Florence's heart clenches.
"You just said you'd find me a job, but now I'm to tag along after you? I'm not a dog, Tom."
"Don't make me beg, Florence. I do not beg anyone, not even you." And he sounds truly desperate now and her eyes are welling with tears and she doesn't want to say no but she must because she's only seventeen, and even for long-lived witches and wizards that is a very young age to commit to one future, to leave everything she has ever known behind.
"You say you would want me like that, but you wouldn't. I'd be moody and testy without a yard to run in and plants to sing too and some larger purpose to fill the hours you're not there."
"You have no comprehension of what I do and do not desire," he hisses, his fingers lacing through with hers, lips coming to her temple so that they are really only swaying now, not dancing. "I crave you all of the time, in every waking moment. Every time you walk away I fight the urge to spell you back to me, I threatened to break every bone in some fools body because he wanted to dance with you at your debut, and I would have too had he touched you. You think you have to go to Georgia to find yourself, but I don't want you too. I have already said we can find some larger purpose for you, I can be that larger purpose. "
"And what of what I want?" Florence demands, unable to tamp down the anger within her. How dare he say all of this now, how dare he superimpose his wishes over hers, acting as if their impending separation was not something that also ate her alive? She had refused to play by Spectre tradition, she would not likewise be bound by the British insistence in housewifery no matter what he might say, waiting dutifully by the door for Tom to return home from a long day at work. He may say she could find work, but it hadn't stopped him from dragging her around the party this afternoon like nothing more than an ornament upon his arm, an expectant future wife who would be beautiful and docile and everything he'd be raised to believe women were. She refusedto believe that was what he truly wanted. I want the best version of you he had said, and somewhere within her iron-will Florence knew that the best version of herself was waiting across the ocean, yearning to delve deeper into the magic of Adsila and her people.
"You want me," Tom cuts.
"Of course I do," Florence hisses back. "But it does not mean you are all I want. I want to continue to learn, and I want to be my own person for a few years before I pick up my life and meld it with yours. I have never questioned that you want me, but I've never tried to stop you from wanting your own career – your own future. Afford me that same choice."
Tom glares at her.
"You want land? You want greenhouses? Fine, I'll buy you a fucking manor house with a thousand fucking gardens, Florence," he spits, his beautiful face warping with anger in a way that makes her pulse freeze. "I'll buy your fucking family the one next door if that's what you want, just stay."
She has ripped herself from his arms before he can register her anger, before he can stop her from pulling away. Florence feels her chest rising and falling rapidly, and she bites her lip to stop from screaming, from making a scene at her best friend's engagement party.
"Do not ever," Florence whispers, fighting every instinct within her to hit him. "Curse my family again, Tom. I will not stand for it, not now, not ever."
She does not know where she finds the strength, but she moves across the dance floor with her head held high and her eyes dry, walking just how her mother taught her too. On her finger Tom's ring burns, but not nearly to the extent his gaze does upon her back, watching with silent fury as she moves away from him, leaving him to ruminate in his self-inflicted agony.
The grand foyer with the black and white checked floor is empty, in the daylight a far cry from the scene where she'd looked down upon Tom in black dress robes and lost her mind, different from the moment she'd first touched him and understood what it meant for another's magic to burn your own. She is on the top step when she hears steps behind her – men's steps, and without looking she knows it is Tom because she can feel his magic in the air.
Unable to think straight, she reaches into her hidden pocket for her wand and twirls on the spot, disappearing into apparition before he can reach her, disappearing into the void where he cannot hurt her.
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Tom finds her – he always finds her and how she does not know – sitting upon the front steps to her father's manor home in Somerset staring listlessly at the trimmed hedges. She'd pulled the pins from her hair, releasing her curls in such strange configurations that she'd been forced to use a stream of air from her wand on to return it to her natural waves. Tom stands at the base of the stairs, most likely taking in the red around her eyes, the dried tracks of tears that had dried upon her cheeks, the slump of her shoulders. Idly she wonders how he learned to stand so still, both separate and a part of the scenery before her, a black presence amongst the green.
"Elizabeth asked where you had gone after the speeches," he begins, and Florence notes he is using his head boy voice that she despises when it is turned against her. "I informed her you'd eaten something that had not settled well."
"Thank you," Florence replies stiffly, ignoring the curling of guilt in her stomach that she had abandoned her friend at her own party.
He falls silent again, and Florence's mind wanders out across the horizon. She wraps her arms around her knees, ignoring the trickle of sweat that runs down her back in the mid afternoon sun, the burning sensation across the top of her head. Florence cannot decide if she is glad he is here or not, but there is no sending him away now.
"You know I want to stay," Florence mutters at last, speaking more to her kneecaps than to Tom.
"Then why won't you?"
"Because I also want to go home for a few more years and participate in my family legacy. You say that you would find something to fill my time here, but none of it would be the same. None of it could replicate hundreds of years of family magic that I want to be a part of."
"We could build something new, you and I," Tom suggests, his voice carefully neutral. Florence looks up at this to find his eyes driving into hers, his lips narrow as he attempts to control himself.
"Please do not make me choose between you and my family," Florence murmurs. "Would you give up your ties to Slytherin for me?"
"Of course not," he says, his brow wrinkling. "I would never have too."
"Then do not ask me to give up my own ancestry. It is not fair, and I would never request it of you."
"You're not giving up your ancestry, Florence," Tom murmurs, his foot coming to rest on the bottom step. "Your magic lives inside of you, it is wherever you are."
"But it is strongest there, where the Great Spirit resides. How did it feel for you to leave the Chamber behind? I cannot image the pain of it – and I want that one last time, Tom, to dance where my forefathers danced and to sing with the trees they raised from the earth. I have already told you I will move to England for you, please stop asking."
He moves up the stairs to take a seat beside her, his arms weaving around her waist like vines, tight and constricting and warm. She leans against him without thinking, relaxing into the grip she has come to know better than any other.
"I am not accustomed to asking for things, Florence," he whispers into her hair, the pads of his fingers sinking into her skin. "Nor am I accustomed to desiring the presence of another person. If I have offended you, it is only because you stir within me feelings I cannot name and I cannot comprehend which blinds me from rational thought."
Florence knows it is the closest the will get to an apology, but the relief of his words does not erase her sadness. How many people had left him during his childhood – parents, other orphans, even Dumbledore who'd introduced him to magic and then abandoned him to this world. She loathed that he might consider her amongst that list, even though she planned to return, even though she wasn't really leaving if her heart was to remain here within his possession.
When he reaches to kiss her, she gives it too him.
"Do you think other people feel this much? When they love another?" Florence asks, leaning her head against his shoulder. She does not see the shadow that flickers across his face at the mention of love, the emptiness within his eyes. Tom is bone and sinew and fire under her touch, and she cannot understand how she will be expected to live across an ocean from this – from him– and yet she cannot bear the thought of not being a full part of her family history, at least not one last time. Tom makes a sound that is something akin to a laugh.
"Other people are simple, how could they?"
"If this is uncommon, then I believe it to be strong enough to overcoming time and distance," Florence concludes with more surety than she feels. She takes one of his hands in her own, peeling back delicate fingers to reveal his palm, lines she has traced a thousand times which she knows better than her own.
"Let's go back to the apartment."
Florence nods, and without standing Tom apparates them into the foyer having structured the wards so that only he or Florence may do so.
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Florence tries to cook dinner. Tries – because she has never cooked once in her life having been raised in a family with a small army of house elves, and immediately it is apparent that she has no idea how to handle herself in the kitchen. After their prior fight, Tom and Florence had come to a silent agreement to dine in that evening, as if by choosing to stay inside the apartment, they could stave off any further disagreements, their impending future. Choosing to stay in, however, did not magically present Florence with the ability to prepare a full meal.
She has already boiled over the water for the pasta and mutilated the tomatoes she is supposed to be cutting when Tom steps in. Florence watches with unabashed fascination as he moves deftly across the tile floor, his aristocratic features relaxed in what can only be described as a knowing look.
"Sit down Florence, you're going to burn down my apartment," Tom commands, wandlessly vanishing the boiling water from the pot. She scowls at him, her face burning, and he meets her gaze with a glowing look of his own that oozed with self-satisfaction. Florence seats herself at the countertop, content to watch him work.
What a strange sight – miraculous, powerful Tom Riddle with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows preparing dinner. The knife flies through the air, slicing the loaf of sourdough with decisive movements while he uses a finger to move the spoon stirring the pasta. A few stray curls have fallen across his face, his weight rocked upon one hip as he mans his position, like a captain behind the helm of a ship, completely at ease with his place. Before she can understand why, Florence is laughing, earning her a scathing look from Tom.
"Considering you are incapable of feeding us, I think you should be more thankful that there is yet another skill I am in possession of that you lack."
"I'm sorry, I don't really know why I'm laughing," Florence manages to gasp out between fits of giggles. "I just never pictured you cooking."
Tom leans over the cutting board where the knife is now neatly slicing a variety of vegetables that he will add to the skillet of browning garlic and butter.
"We had to cook in the orphanage," Tom says, and even though he is facing away from her, Florence can read the tension in his spine like it is a line from the Iliad. The ache in her heart for him swells. "That is, of course, when there was food. That incessant muggle war made things difficult before I was finally rid of the place."
"But you are rid of it," Florence murmurs even though she thinks he may be talking to himself at this point. "You never have to go back. You have your own home and you will have a career and a life…and me," she tacks on at the end, blushing at the inclusion of herself and the insinuation that she is a prize. But was that such a bad thing in the end – to be his prize? It meant that she got him in return.
Tom glances over his shoulder again, his eyes seeking hers as if she is the meal he is preparing, and even though he smiles at her, Florence can see in the hardness of his gaze that he will never truly be rid of that orphanage. That what he suffered there – those injustices to his person and his pride would haunt him forever. There is a needle in her heart, a sharpness acute and deep that Florence cannot name but understands nonetheless, that she desperately wants to rebuild it for him, to erase that sadness, and yet the task seems insurmountable. How can one overcome the foundation of one's life, those memories and experiences which have shaped every step? She feels again that bone deep feeling of never being enough, that she will never be able to be whatever he needs.
"And you," he agrees, and Florence is on her feet before she can think, wrapping her arms around his waist and inserting herself under his arm so that he has no choice but to pull her close. In his grasp, in seems easier to remember herself, to recall that she loves him, that he has chosen to be here with her in this kitchen playing adult.
"Teach me to cook?"
"A potentially impossible task from what I have seen of your abilities, or lack thereof," Tom says, pinching her chin between forefinger and thumb so that he can hover before her lips, tantalizing her with what she truly wants. She wants to be embarrassed by the way his magic brushing against hers makes her pulse flutter and her skin burn, but she has become so accustomed to the thrill of being in his arms she cannot even blush when his hips angle against hers and she can feel his desire there.
"You don't believe in impossible," Florence reminds him. "And you love telling me what to do."
"Not that you listen."
"Please teach me to cook?"
"I do like it when you beg," he whispers, and his voice is a sin, his lips like the brushes of feathers across her cheekbone. Florence does blush at this, at the insinuation there, at the teasing in his tone.
"Please, Tom," Florence whispers, wrapping her hand around his wrist so that he will release her face, using her newfound freedom to kiss him the way she really wants to – none of the light, teasing motions that Tom wields to make her knees knock.
"What will I get in return?" He asks when they pull apart, one hand settling at the base of her neck while the other performs a variety of wandless magic that stirs the various foods in their pots and pans.
"How about I promise to write you once a week? When I get home," Florence proposes.
"You would have already done that." Tom says, and Florence frowns because of course he is right. "Something else."
"Well I do have something for you, but I was going to give it to you as a parting gift…"
Tom's stare is so hungry that she immediately revises her plans, releasing him to grab her wand and summon the package from their room. Beside her Tom casts a stasis charm over the food, catching the wrapped box from the air.
"Your summoning charms are vastly improved, Florence," he says with a voice like thunder, his eyes finding hers for a moment before he begins to tear off the paper. There is a flush to his skin, a frantic pulsing in the kitchen from his magic which is vibrating with his boyish excitement. Florence will never tire of giving him gifts, of seeing him unwind like this. There is a slight wrinkle in his brow as he lifts the silver pocket watch by its chain, a plain, unadorned trinket that has long ceased to count time.
"Explain," he murmurs, and Florence has to drag her eyes away from his fingers as they brush over the back of the time piece.
"It is a multi-use Portkey," Florence says, stepping forward to flip open the watch cover. "Ambassadors use them to travel between their home and the foreign embassy where they work. They are programed with two locations – so for this one, it's programmed for Diagon Alley and the Spectre arrival point."
"What about customs?" Tom asks, but his face is shining with wonder, with the discovery of magic that makes the world small.
"They are government issued and extremely hard to secure because they override the use of customs. Each time you use the Portkey your departure date and time will register both with MACUSA and your Ministry of Magic in their Departments of Transportation. It means they have your travels on record, but you don't have to go through the hassle of purchasing a new portkey each time or get approved for international travel."
"How did you come by this?"
"My dad got it, actually," Florence admits. "I had to beg him, but he gave in."
"And you have one? To come here?" Tom prods.
"No," Florence answers, and she cannot keep the line of bitterness form her voice. "Dad didn't think it was safe for a young woman to have something that allowed her to travel internationally, unaccompanied upon the slightest whim. He said I would run into danger."
"All the same," Tom murmurs, and the depth in his voice makes her stomach coil. "You will not be so unreachable now."
"I know you will be busy when you secure a job, and it's unrealistic for me to hope that you will pop across the ocean just for lunch, but I do hope you will put it to good use," Florence murmurs. Tom kisses her like she has given him the sun, and in some way she supposes she has. He'd wanted her, but this was as close as she could get to giving herself without giving up her dreams of working for her family. When he smiles at her, everything else pales in comparison.
They practically run to the bedroom, dinner long forgotten under its stasis spell.
Alsooooo if anyone does make a playlist, feel free to send me the link! toodleoo for now!
