Dim yellow glow of a table lamp. Heavy curtains, drawn. Faintly musty smell of a room that's probably never had its windows open for too long. It takes Harry a second to remember where he is, and then it hits - he's in the motel Tom brought him to, of course. Tom. The thought of the psychotic fucker makes Harry's heart pump with all the rage he forgot to feel last night, and it makes him even sicker to remember how he just swooned pathetically into Tom's arms without a fight after getting his throat slit. And speak of the devil. Tom is kneeling by his bedside, murmuring - what, lullabies? no, incantations, a vial glimmering darkly with what appears to be blood cupped in his hands. He smiles slightly when Harry sits up but doesn't stop chanting. That is, until Harry lunges at his throat.
Blood stains the carpet a rich scarlet.
"You fucker," Harry curses as he misses Tom by inches and collapses out of bed and right onto the damp, bloody splotch on the carpet. His head spins sickeningly - he's guessing he's still running low on blood - but he fights the dizziness and lunges again at Tom, who's scrambled to the other side of the room for cover. But Tom is too quick for him. He waves his wand (my wand, Harry thinks with outrage) and Harry finds himself sailing backwards, back onto the bed where he hits his head against the wooden headboard with a nasty thump. He nearly blacks out, but still he strains to get at Tom. It's no use, though, it's like there's an invisible sumo wrestler pinning him to bed, and all he can do is wave his arms and kick his legs uselessly like a toddler in its cot.
"It's foolish to exert yourself like that, Harry. Calm down before you pass out again," Tom orders, crossing the room again and sitting down at the foot of the bed. The vial of blood he sets gently on the bedside table.
"Fuck you," Harry snarls. "How can I relax when you gutted me like a pig raised for slaughter?"
"I did not gut you like a pig," says Tom, still sounding infuriatingly calm and self-possessed. "Believe me, if I had you wouldn't be alive right now. I made a small and calculated laceration on your jugular, missing the carotid artery entirely. Pigs are slaughtered very differently. Yes, you would have bled to death eventually, but I didn't think the chances of your friends allowing it were very high. Also I reckoned you'd rather I attack you than your friends."
There's a pang in Harry's heart at the mention of his friends, and he wonders if they all think he's dead. Probably so. He feels guilty for the suffering he's caused them, especially after all they've been through. "How considerate of you," Harry says dully, his anger fading, quickly replaced by sadness and exhaustion. How's he going to face Hagrid?
Tom, who's been watching him all this while with his head cocked like he's listening for something, now turns his attention to the vial of blood. He summons it and cradles it in his long white hands, looking abstracted. Then he remarks, "Well on the bright side at least I'm an improvement from Voldemort, don't you think? I'm not actively trying to kill you, attempted murder was just a side effect of my other schemes."
Harry's anger flares and he makes another failed lunge at Tom's throat.
Tom only smirks and twirls the vial in his hand. "I'm going to make you sleep now, Harry. It isn't safe for me to stay too long, so we'll need to finish the blood transfusion without any further interruption."
"Why do you care?" Harry asks, aware of how petulant he sounds and hating it.
Tom shrugs. "Look, I'd rather we didn't part enemies."
"You don't attempt to murder your friends," Harry points out.
"It was the cleanest solution I saw to getting out of there," is all Tom has to say to his defense.
"And trusting me to get us out of there wasn't an option?"
"I'm not used to trusting other people," Tom says quietly.
Harry shuts his eyes and sighs. "You could just say you're sorry," he says.
"I'm not used to that either."
"For fuck's sake."
"Alright I'm sorry," Tom says, looking uncharacteristically flushed. "And thank you. For giving me my life back. For everything. Not many people would have done what you have for me."
"Apology accepted," says Harry.
Tom smiles a little at this and reaches into his pocket, producing a stopped vial of clear liquid. "This is a sleeping potion. Will you take this and let me heal you while you sleep?" he asks, more hesitantly than before. "It's not just about the interruptions, sleeping while I heal you will speed up the process."
"Alright," Harry says. "Will you wake me before you leave?"
"Alright," Tom says, and Harry reaches for the potion.
But when Harry wakes for the second time it's to an empty room. Everything is exactly as it was before - dim lamp light, drawn curtains, musty smell - apart from the noticeable absence of Tom. The blood stain on the carpet is gone too, Harry notices. He gets out of bed, pleased that rising to his feet is no longer a dizzying experience, crosses the room and draws the heavy velveteen curtains. The perpetual night of the motel room is suddenly dispelled, replaced by a London morning too dazzling for Harry's eyes. It makes Harry wonder, not without melancholy, what morning looks like in San Francisco.
A\N: This is the end of Part One. Tom will be back, he's too sexy to not write about.