Chapter 70: (Tom's POV)
Harry was an enigma.
Maybe that was what he liked about the other, he wasn't really sure what it was.
It was easy to dismiss his fascination as being due to the horcrux, to rationalise and justify everything that made Harry quite so significant to him…while he was away from the other boy at any rate.
When he was near him, everything just shifted slightly, and he couldn't even dream of batting the pseudo Gryffindor aside like one of his followers.
It was uncharacteristic.
He was obsessive, he always had been, and he liked to collect trophies. Harry was just a trophy, a prized, inexplicable, maddening trophy, the latest obsession.
Except when he wasn't.
The times when he wasn't were starting to claw inch by bloody inch past the times when he was just a pet, a toy. He'd never intended that to happen, and maybe he could still break the whole thing off…except that he couldn't do that either.
The only way Harry was getting separated from him was if Harry forcibly walked away, and Tom wasn't planning on letting that happen any time soon. He'd break the other boy's legs to prevent it.
"You're crying," he murmured, feeling an unnerving sense of déjà vu as the words slipped past his lips, before he himself had noted the truth of the statement.
Killing curse eyes snapped to him, startled, before a hand jerked against his own grip as Harry tried to move it to brush away the droplets of grief that clung so stubbornly to his lashes.
Tom's head tilted to one side. It was odd how someone so fragile could be so strong simultaneously, and Harry was strong, the strongest person that Tom knew….and yet, so easily broken.
He could have snapped and unravelled the boy easily enough, it was what he was good at, so why did he so often go against his nature and try and stitch the boy together instead? He experimented, he toyed and he plucked at Harry's flaws as if they were violin strings for his muse to tease out a tragedy, but he always stopped on the brink of shattering Harry completely.
Then he did some delicate fixing.
He repressed an inaudible sigh with the smoothness of a lifetime of masks, moving off Harry, tugging him up into a sitting position as he did, and pulling him back to lean against him.
It wasn't a hug, that sounded too mushy, but it was something like that. Harry immediately stiffened, seemingly mortified, trying to pull away, but he only tightened his grip in response.
Perhaps it was inappropriate to feel amused at this situation, but he was. Harry's emotional turmoil was amusing, and oh so interesting. How could one person possibly feel so much?
"No, no, let me go," Harry was panicking. "Tom, let me go, you're not supposed to be-"
"-comforting you?" he offered, arching a brow, though the other couldn't see it. "Because you killed the blood traitor and want to dwell in heroic angst?"
He hid a smile-smirk into Harry's hair when the other shuddered. Okay, so maybe he wasn't completely perfect at the stitching people back together thing, but needle and thread weaving in and out of your skin was supposed to hurt. He wouldn't even attempt it if he didn't get some gratification from the painstaking process.
He wrapped his arms tighter, leaning to Harry's ear to whisper in an indulgence that only the intoxicated could manage.
"Haven't you figured out by now that I'm never letting you go?" he hissed. Harry went still in his arms, completely frozen, before he turned boneless, accepting it.
"You're strangely affectionate when you're wasted," Harry said, staring morosely into the fire in front of them. Stupid…it wasn't the alcohol, it was Harry.
"And more easily offended, if you're thinking of continuing that line of thought," he returned. Harry gave a weak, choking laugh.
"You're a bastard," he muttered. "Sometimes I wonder why I like you." It seems he wasn't the only with lowered verbal inhabitations.
He kept quiet, rather curious for the other to continue.
He knew Harry's reactions like the back of his hand, knew exactly which strings to tweak and pull if he needed, which buttons to press, but he couldn't fully say he understood why Harry was like that. He'd just taken the utmost care to memorise every detail. He could tell when Harry's mind caught up with his tongue, because the chosen one tensed once more.
"But not like that. As a friend. Cause we're friends. I'm rambliing - shut up! Remind me never to go drinking with you again…I should go to bed. Will you please take down the mental barrier?"
Stubborn. Always so stubborn, even when he was drunk.
"Sorry darling," he replied, not in the slightest bit apologetic. "You're emotionally compromised and thus, I will not take anything you say as true."
Harry was silent, head lolling back into his shoulder, hair tickling his neck. He didn't move. He was still waiting, and Harry would take soon enough start talking, like he'd never concede enough to do if he wasn't completely messed up in the head at that moment, exhausted and more than a little bit tipsy.
It wasn't taking advantage, it was using his resources.
"I'm always emotionally compromised around you, so you should just do it anyway," Harry retorted, before pausing again.
Tom bit back a grin. Was he now?
Harry tried to disentangle himself again, but was once more prevented from the action.
"Tom-" he began, helplessly, before falling silent. "You really want to talk about Mr-him now?" Finally.
"Yes," he murmured. "It will do you good."
And it would, he'd been serious when he'd told the other bottling everything up was going to kill him…and no one was killing Harry except him.
It wasn't that he actually cared…well, not much…it was that something about Harry again.
Harry made him better.
Somewhere along the line, the stupid twit had actually succeeded in changing something in him. It wasn't a visible something, not really, but it was that shift. That tiny, miniscule shift. He hated it.
Harry sighed, playing absently with the fingers that kept him trapped. Tom's eyes widened slightly at the sensation. Normally it was him initiating physical contact, though he was rather less tentative than the Gryffindor.
"I just can't believe he's gone," Harry said finally. "And I don't know…I feel so guilty…god, I sound like I'm on a psychiatrics couch…" Tom's lips twitched slightly.
"If it eases you any, I'm not taking notes." Not written ones anyway.
"Not written ones you mean," Harry replied immediately, causing him to blink, before responding.
"You can try and avoid this conversation, along with other conversations, all you want, but they're going to happen sometime," he said, not sure if he's words were fond or warning.
Both. Always both, with Harry it never was as black and white as he'd like to make it.
"That sounds ominous," Harry muttered, almost sinking into him. The alcohol was draining the energy from the already exhausted half snake, half lion,. "But can we not have it now - please? - I can't, I, it's too," Harry fell silent.
He studied the other for a moment, noting the tinge of begging in Harry's tone. It alarmed him, though he made no sign of this outwardly.
Harry did many things to evade and generally get out of things he didn't like; he baited, he fled, he offered distractions and bargains or simply remained stubbornly silent, sometimes he even flirted in a manner of speaking, but he never begged.
Did Harry really care about that man so much? That was pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
Still, he supposed he could allow the other this one lenience. He had come to Little Hangleton after all and he did reward loyalty…and Harry was loyal, just not in the traditional sense.
The boy would make a terrible Death Eater, that was why he had refrained from forcing the Dark Mark upon Harry's arm. Absently, his fingers trailed across the forearm in question, his magic flickering in response to the gentle thrum of power and ownership beneath his fingers.
Tear tracks had dried on the other's face, and he moved his fingers up to these. He didn't much like crying, but Harry cried silently…it was, somewhat mesmerising, in its way.
"You owe me then," he stated, watching with glee as Harry inclined his head in acceptance, not flinching from his inspecting touch. "Okay, then, I'm calling that in and you are not leaving your study of Mind Arts behind."
Harry began to nod again, half asleep, before his eyes widened.
"Wait - what? Tom! No," he started.
Tom chuckled, pressing a hand over the boy's mouth once more. It seemed to silence the other rather efffetively.
"Enough; no use protesting. You agreed. Up you get."
Still stumbling through his protests, all of which Tom ignored with a practised ease, he bought them both to a shaky stand. They walked, perhaps just the tiniest bit unsteadily, towards the Slytherin dorms.
Ah. Right. Bed. Zevi. Damn. He really needed to get Harry his own bed. He couldn't believe none of the staff had done so.
He eyed his wand, then mentally checked his coherency levels, before sighing.
Salazar. Sharing it was. Harry seemed to notice the dilemma too, pausing in the threshold.
"Oh…I'll, um, go sleep on the sof-"
"-Nonsense," he dismissed, briskly. What was the point?. "Strip, change and get in bed. And don't bloody well hog the covers," he ordered.
Harry was still, eyes fixed on the large bed.
"But people already think we're a couple," Harry said, dumbly.
"Well, you have slept with me before," he smirked. Harry's gaze shot to him, clinging to the normalcy with desperation.
"Yes, literally! As in, that's all we did!" the other stated, clearly investing an awful lot of effort into not thinking outside of this present conversation.
"No need to sound so flustered. Now move," he instructed, pushing the younger into action.
"I'm going to have a panic attack if I can't remember how this happened in the morning…" Harry muttered, presumably in a tone that was meant to be under his breath.
He bit back a laugh. Harry really shouldn't give him ideas.
A/N: I'm going to hide. I know this was HUGELY disappointing. I'm disappointed. So, I'll just post, you guys can tell me how much better you expected it to be, and I'll hurry along a better, new update so we can forgot all about it…yes? Sounds like a plan. Seriously, if anyone wants to rewrite this chapter then I will happily replace this with something that actually lives up to expectation. I'm so ashamed…
In my defense, to Harry, what he said and did (like crying in front of Tom) would be a big deal...
On the other hand! MERLIN IS STARTING AGAIN SOON! Anyone hyped? ;)