He'd gotten used to the silence. He could read it, and he knew what that stillness represented.
The calm before the storm.
Huddled in the middle of the cold cell, blood from the last time drying underneath his naked body, Tom didn't bother to lift his head. His body hurt, but pain had become such a constant companion he'd managed to place it somewhere in the back of his consciousness. If he could move his fingers, he'd curl them into fists, but for the moment they hung limply.
Only one thing could cut a silence so thick, and Tom waited for it.
Waiting was something he was good at. And killing. Nowadays the waiting held more weight, because he was biding his time, waiting to kill.
Or to be killed.
The other half of the coin.
He was good with either option.
Especially now that he knew that James had been the one to free him from that curse… It was James that had kissed him… It was his blood that had awoken him… How had he not sensed it?
He opened his eyes and peered into the darkness. Time didn't have much of a meaning inside his cage. He didn't have a clock, or sunlight, only freezing darkness. No way to tell how long he'd been held here, caged captive, tortured and tormented by James.
As if his thoughts had conjured him, a single scrape of shoe against the dusty floor reached his ears. He made himself look up then, though it felt as if a concrete block sat on his neck. He had to blink repeatedly to get his burning eyes to focus.
The darkness shifted, parted, and the lightbulb overheard came on, revealing his captor.
"Mr. Voldemort."
James's voice made Tom shudder.
"Call me…"
It was strange to hear himself nowadays,
"Call me Tom."
His lips cracked, and fresh drops of blood ran down onto his chin when Tom smiled,
"We are, after all, intimate now. Right?"
He didn't expect a reaction from the man watching him so carefully, and Tom didn't get one. James's gaze on him was almost casual, dismissive. He expected Tom to break. He expected him to crack under the force of his torture.
James Evans should have inquired as to how Tom reacted to expectations.
Defied them. He defied them.
"Are you happy to see me?"
Talking hurt so he had to pause, force the words out,
"Because I…"
He lifted his chin and a severe shock of pain sliced through his skull, greying his vision for a moment,
"I missed you, James."
He licked the blood off his bottom lip,
"It is so much fun when you are here."
It was. When James was around, they played the game, the one where James got to be God. He killed Tom then brought him back. He had never been scared of death. Now, thanks to James, he knew what awaited him on the other side.
The entrance to the cage swung open and James walked inside. Tall and skinny, clad in head to toe black, foreboding eyes gleaming as they remained focus on Tom. The closer he got, the more Tom prepared himself mentally.
The only thing predictable about James was his unpredictability and he found it…fascinating.
"Mr. Voldemort."
James knelt next to him, a knee in the small puddle of blood congealing on the floor. He touched Tom, a hand with no glove, on the back of his neck.
Fingers sinking in and gripping tight as he yanked. He gritted his teeth, eyes watering at the pain.
"I am glad you're alert…"
James murmured,
"What comes next, you must witness it."
Tom made himself smile; weakness would never be something he'd willingly show. Inside his chest, though, he was a frozen block of ice. But James was a worthy adversary and underestimating him had been a deadly mistake.
"I'm ready,"
He told James in halting words,
"Whatever you have, throw it at me. Along with a bottle of O negative."
That bread and water shit was not cutting it. The beatings, delivered on an almost daily basis by the sour-faced Conner, coupled with the cold and hunger had him in a state of physical weakness he couldn't properly describe.
James's mouth curved. It was a gorgeously cruel mouth, set in a perfectly handsome face. Tom always admired cruelty. That didn't change, not even in this moment, and out of all the things that should have had him despairing of his tenuous grasp on sanity, his admiration of James Evan's mouth was nowhere on that list.
"You know I liked you,"
James said,
"You shouldn't have been so reckless… so faithless."
The hand on Tom's neck gentled then fell away,
"You shouldn't have taken away the most important thing in my life."
It was conversational, James's tone, but goosebumps burst across Tom' naked skin. Crying out a warning, putting him on guard, and not a moment too soon. The pain in his left side made him gasp and he tore his focus from James's face to look down. A knife was there, James's hand curved in a loving caress around the handle, knuckles grazing Tom' skin as blood ran down to join the already drying puddle on the cold floor.
James wanted him to beg for death. To beg for the torture to stop.
His vision wavered, and a traitorous sound fell from his lips as he lifted a hand. Slowly. He touched the arm of the man holding the blade inside him. A new wound to add to the countless others he'd acquired since coming awake inside James's cage for the first time.
Wounds upon wounds.
This one, like the others before, would bleed and hurt and scar. But it wouldn't endanger his life, not yet. James wanted him to suffer. Tom had to be alive for that.
He didn't have strength to do more than cling to James's wet and slippery grasp as his captor pulled the knife out. The suctioning sound Tom wasn't unfamiliar with it. The warmth of his blood chased some of the chill away, and he held up his hand in front of his face, staring at the dripping red on his fingers.
"You like it when I bleed."
Even to his ears, his words were shakier than normal. Faint.
"You do it so well."
James sounded weirdly proud, like he approved of the rivulets soaking Tom's side and the tiny puddle congealing next to them,
"And it brings me so much pleasure, watching you suffer."
Tom was fading, but he brought his bloodied fingers to his mouth, licking the red away one by one… was it all his, or maybe some of James's blood was mixed up in there, too? As he held James's gaze,
"It brings me pleasure…"
His voice got softer and softer, slurring, vision narrowing down to the man next to him…the man with impenetrable eyes and that beautifully cruel mouth,
"Watching you try."