(TW: Sexual scene.)

Shelter, Machineheart

Like an ancient story
Full of death and glory
Remember who we are
With our eyes wide open
And the doors all closing
Surrender to your heart
Remember who we are

We're running down the halls
We're writing on the walls
We're never letting go

Let my eyes be the rhythm
Let my mind be your freedom
You can take it all, you can take it all
Let my heart be your shelter
Let these bones be the giver
Let this soul be your whisper
You can take it all

Voldemort's agitation grew as the day wore into night, pacing, fists clenched, checking his Dark Mark like it was a watch.

Tom was busy cementing his next line of suggestions and waiting for the right time to voice them.

Harry was rolling in Tom's thoughts and emotions and fighting giggles.

Nurmengard felt smaller with each passing hour, cramped and shrinking around him like heated plastic film. Cooped up with a volatile Dark Lord with a mind that wouldn't stick to the present moment. Sliding off it like hot butter. Pulled back into Tom and the way he felt on an irresistible loop that was almost starting to grate on him.

Ginny and Nagini should have been his primary concerns. Followed by Reed, Pansy, and the rest of them. The devastation he'd caused—albeit because he had been manipulated too close to the sun—was undoubtedly continuing, rippling through the people he cared about, Draco, Ruby, Pollux, Narcissa, Reed, each mourning losses he'd incurred.

Slid off like hot butter.

Right back to examining his feelings for Tom or vice versa.

Har had left shortly after the 'obligatory' deal proposal, though he'd seemed pleased with what he'd seen, grinning as he'd vanished.

Cassiopeia and Lydia arrived what must have been seconds after sunset. Announced by distant yelling in the courtyard below.

Voldemort didn't speak to them together, splitting them apart as soon as they entered his makeshift office. The healer was sent to wait in the hall while the vampire took the seat Harry got out of.

He rocked on his feet, then leaned on the wall, bouncing his knee with his arms crossed. Simultaneously anxious to do something, anything about the situation and have it over and done with. Free to bask without distraction.

The Dark Lord and Cassiopeia were having an intense conversation wholly with their eyes. The vampire's brows, lips, and suggestive head-tilting continued until it was clear she wouldn't be the first to say anything.

"…I need you to-"

"Oh!" She exclaimed, "You need me to do something? Oh, silly me, I thought we'd start with 'Hello, Cassiopeia, dreadfully sorry about the horrendous night we've inflicted on you, again.' At a bare minimum."

"Sorry, Cassiopeia," Harry said when the Dark Lord didn't.

"Sweet, darling creature, I blame this asshole, not you. You need a haircut." She cleared her throat, "Catholic-raised piano-playing orphan dandy-boy?"

"Cassiopeia, I will not hesitate to fucking kill you tonight," Voldemort warned, leaning forward in his seat.

She shrugged, mostly with her eyebrows, "That's weird foreplay, but whatever you guys are into. People are talking, Tom."

"…I do not need you to tell me that."

"Thought you might have, that's all. I'm going to guess what you want. You want me to go to Enos and ask that he arrive early to rip out some throats on your behalf."

"Take Moreau with you; continue training her while you are there. Senseless to have any classes running at the school with nearly half the faculty dead." The Dark Lord pinched the bridge of his nose and winced. "Let Severus know before you leave. Do not take the healer with you."

Cassiopeia finally looked properly affronted, "Leave Lydia? You take your wife everywhere with you? That's bullshit." She gestured at Harry.

"…She is not your wife."

"I'm not his wife either," Harry said.

"Shut up," Voldemort snapped, "Both of you—you especially," he jabbed an accusing finger in Cassiopeia's direction, "Develop some fucking maturity. If Nagini is not back to me unharmed-"

"Okay, alright, I'll go tonight. I'll need some prisoners."

He sat back in his seat and waved a hand, "Speak with Rookwood. Send your wife in. When you return from Bulgaria, you and I will have words about your involvement in this imbecile's plan to seduce power from me."

"Oh, fantastic, I wasn't informed in any way that we'd been caught out," She gave a half-hearted curtsy and shot Harry a sympathetic look.

"Very recent," Tom said, eyebrows raised, eyes on the Dark Lord and not Cassiopeia as he spoke.

Lydia ducked in under the fleeing vampire's arm.

Wringing her hands and staring wide-eyed at the floor, she bowed. Tom assumed that her sheepishness came from her first real run-in with both the Dark Lord's murderous, indiscriminate rage and Liquida Tenebris.

"The Weasley," the Dark Lord said, "How long will healing his mind take?"

Harry perked up, coming off the wall by accident. Tom was thinking that healing Charlie wasn't at all for his benefit, that Voldemort wanted to pick his brain for knowledge on the Order and their safe houses—a necessity. Harry could have kissed him, though. Regardless of intent, Charlie weighed a ton in his mind.

'…Every chance he kills him once he is through,' Tom's inner monologue told him. Then on purpose he thought, 'I am sorry, Harry. I will do what I can.'

"I'll need at least three assistants skilled in mind healing," Lydia said, still bowing. "I think it would take a minimum of three days, if it is possible."

"If it's possible?" Harry repeated.

"Well," she glanced up at him, chewing her lip—looking tired, "It depends. The brain is… Complicated. It's been some time since the initial injury…"

"Consult with Narcissa; she will recruit the healers for you."

Lydia took Voldemort's command as a cue to leave, bowing twice more and backing out of the office.

Voldemort's growing irritation prevented him from being still, out of his seat as soon as the door closed, pacing behind the desk and ignoring Harry.

Tom was watching him carefully for signs that it was too much. He'd decided the Dark Lord was at least seventy-five percent of the way to a major mental breakdown. Harry watched Tom conclude that it wasn't the time to push him. Rather, it was time to try and soothe him. At once, a multitude of ideas were pulled from the depths of Tom's thoughts and spun together. Potential combinations of words that might bring him down, all the knowledge he had on what worked presented to Harry while he rummaged in their head.

Throughout the day, information had been slim. A steady procession of Death Eaters had announced that they had captured, interrogated, and murdered a small but growing number of Order members, but not much of it produced solid threads to follow.

Harry hadn't broached the subject of Ginny or Reed because he worried the Dark Lord might say something he wasn't composed enough to hear. Torn between letting Tom handle it and finding the right time to ask.

Tom watched him walk a rapid, short track for a moment before he softly asked:

"What are you reading?" In Parseltongue.

Harry didn't think he looked like he was reading anything. Tom clarified he meant in general.

The Dark Lord stopped and frowned at him like he was being ridiculous. Tom crossed to the piles of books, racing his eyes over worn titles while Voldemort's gaze burned a hole in the back of his head.

Most of them weren't written in English, and more still weren't what Tom was looking for—not casual reading, more a collection of arcane texts. He took three—one from the desk—that seemed promising and flipped through them, putting two of them back. He fell back onto the bed, mildly bothering Bed Sheet, and pretended the Dark Lord wasn't in the room.

He flipped through it, scanning the aged pages while Harry watched Voldemort pace in his peripheral. He didn't think it was possible to soothe the Dark Lord in his current state, but Tom was working with a newfound confidence that would give Icarus a run for his money.

"Defeat, my defeat, my solitude and my aloofness; you are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs, and sweeter to my heart than all world-glory." Tom's smooth Parseltongue made Voldemort stop again, scowling at the floor.

"Defeat, my defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance, through you I know that I am yet young and swift of foot and not to be trapped by withering laurels. And in you, I have found aloneness and the joy of being shunned and scorned."

Harry was trying to watch Voldemort, difficult to see the finer details of his expression from the corner of his eye. It was easy enough to see that he was slowly approaching.

"Defeat, my defeat, my shining sword and shield, in your eyes, I have read that to be enthroned is to be enslaved, and to be understood is to be levelled down, and to be grasped is but to reach one's fullness and like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed."

The Dark Lord sat on the edge of the bed, folded in half with his face in his hands. Harry was almost moved to touch him, but Tom kept him still.

"Defeat, my defeat, my bold companion, you shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences, and none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings, and urging of seas, and of mountains that burn in the night, and you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul." Soft and whispered, tilting his head when Voldemort's shoulders began to shake. Tom summoned the curse and snaked threads along the back of the Dark Lord's neck, tracing, drawing specks of blood and roping gently around his throat.

"Defeat, my defeat, my deathless courage, you and I shall laugh together with the storm, and together, we shall dig graves for all that die in us, and we shall stand in the sun with a will, and we shall be dangerous."

Harry felt Voldemort reach for access to his head, almost a shock. Then he felt his Horcrux a beat later—very much a shock. Tom hesitated, closed the book, and let them both in.

'…I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the Earth,' Crux began, radiating a smug joy, 'Holding the four winds of the Earth, that the wind should not blow on Earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascend from the east, having the seal of the living god: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and sea…'

Tom was drawing the Dark Lord into his thoughts while his Horcrux ran a strange monologue that made no sense to Harry. They paid Crux little attention; instead, Tom presented their memories of the dreams to Voldemort.

Which Harry thought was insane. A death wish move.

'Saying, hurt not the Earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, til we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed a hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.'

'…What are you doing? Is that from the bible?' Harry wondered.

'Shh. After this, I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried a loud voice, saying, salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.' Crux was winding the Dark Lord's consciousness up like a spool of thread, and he didn't resist—pulled easily out of Tom's memories as if sedated. 'Not so scary, is it, Morty? Blind devotion? Isn't it what you've sought your whole life, overturning every stone, upending every life you cross in search of unquestioning, searing adoration?'

Emotions that weren't his, weren't Tom's, bleed through his skull—fear—subdued by exhaustion. Curiosity—squashed repeatedly but revived by Crux. Rage—undiluted, though the Dark Lord seemed at least partially immune, not responding properly to what Harry thought was far too much fury for one person to hold. And desire, obsession—growing and destroyed, growing and destroyed. Like weeds with roots too deep to truly decimate.

'That's from the book of Revelation, Harry,' Crux thought. '…I'm hungry.'

The Dark Lord withdrew without a word, his Horcrux along with him. Voldemort was standing when Harry refocused on the room—facing away from him with his shoulders near his ears.

The book was limp in his hand, so he dropped it on the bed. He wasn't sure if they were succeeding in soothing him. He didn't think Crux had gotten the memo, or that he would cooperate if he had.

'No, he is cooperating. At least for now,' Tom thought.

Voldemort motioned for him to stand without turning to face him, replacing his mask and hood. He took a corked and forgotten bottle of whiskey from the desk and ducked into the narrow stone corridor.

'Is he… Are they good?' Harry wondered.

'Your Horcrux is doing great, as far as I can tell. Voldemort, less so. He is malleable, if unpredictable.'

Harry assumed that it was a good thing by the way Tom was buzzing. 'Why did you show him our versions of the dreams?'

'It is what he came for; it is what I wanted him to see.'

Harry was again giddy to find Tom's reasons within easy reach. While the Dark Lord and Crux tried to tear each other to ribbons, softer events occurred on the other side of unconsciousness. As his Horcrux and Voldemort were desperately despising each other, Harry and Tom had been busy falling in love.

'And my Horcrux? Why was he talking about the bible?'

'Needling at religious… Discomfort, I'm assuming.'

Harry had no idea there was any religious discomfort. In the dark spots of his mind, he assumed. He didn't look, though he knew Tom saw him thinking about it.

He trailed behind the Dark Lord out of the second wing and down to the room with the large steaming pool. Almost dark inside, three tall windows spilling moonlight on the bricks and lighting the hazy fog a deep blue. Humid and warm. Voldemort lit the six wall braziers with a flick of his hand. The firelight didn't make it to the water's edge. The room was too wide and too tall for the light to reach, sucked up by the black stone.

The Dark Lord created a dark sheet of magic that acted as a door—blocking the stone archway and the pool from prying eyes. Silencing wards followed. He was stone-faced as he removed his mask and tried to drain the bottle in one go.

Harry felt awkward standing and waiting—for what, he didn't know.

Voldemort summoned a house-elf—snapping his fingers—and told her to bring him a set of torture implements from the dungeon.

"Are you gonna torture me?" Harry wondered, mostly serious.

"Get in the water," was his answer.

"Are you gonna torture and then drown me?"

"…Would that I were." He was facing away from Harry, taking another long draw from the bottle.

Tom decided it wasn't very likely that he would torture Harry without an audience. He also decided that he had no idea what the Dark Lord was doing. He kept the Snakewood wand in his hand while he undressed.

Bed Sheet had come off his shoulders as Voldemort had bid him into the water, only needing a tap to know. Rippling above the pool, iridescent in the moonlight, cracking, popping, and echoing—bouncing off the stones.

The water was almost too hot. Three steps and then a steep drop, he couldn't feel or see the bottom, so he sat on a ledge and watched the Dark Lord—examining the torture implements that the elf had brought him, laid on a narrow stone table. A leather roll-up case carrying sharp, serrated, or pointed tools. Drinking. The bottle seemed nearly empty, but it was hard to tell in the dim light.

Tom was still confident that he wasn't about to be tortured and drowned in the water that was making him sweat.

Voldemort kicked his boots and his socks off after casting over the implements. He rolled them back up and brought them and the bottle to the water.

"…Fed by a hot spring," he said in Parseltongue as he approached, "Keeps the castle warm."

It was always jarring when he spoke casually. No anger or hatred in his voice, warm enough but absent. Talking just to speak—not something he often did. He sat on the pool's edge and put his legs in, though he didn't roll up his pants, soaking them to the knee. He gestured Harry closer, then for him to face away.

He did as he was told, briefly picturing his throat slit from behind before he shook it off and backed into Voldemort's waiting hands. "If you try and drown me, Bed Sheet will eat you. Try and Horcrux your way out of a Lethifold."

The Dark Lord chuckled, vibrating at the back of Harry's head. One hand under his chin, holding him firm between his legs. "Always so suspicious," he scooped up a handful of water and dumped it on Harry's head, soaking his shirt in the process.

"With good reason," he muttered, confused.

Bliss blooming along his jaw and into his scalp as Voldemort ran his hands through his hair, wetting it thoroughly. Head lolling, humming, almost giggling. He glided his hands through the water and decided it felt like hot silk.

'I love you.' He was giddy every time he thought it.

'I love you.' Giddy every time Tom thought it.

"And always laughing when nothing is funny," the Dark Lord said, "Sit forward."

"Are you going to kill Charlie when he's useless?" Harry asked, leaning forward.

A side-ward glance told him that Voldemort had transfigured the tools into scissors and combs.

"You are more knowledgeable when it comes to the Weasley family," speaking softly, his fingers raking through his hair for another moment—longer than necessary—before he began to cut it. Something that could have been done in an instant with magic.

It triggered something in Tom, immediately predatory—grip tight on his wand, hidden under the water—despite the bubbles of soothing warmth spearing his head. "Ideal to track him—complicated, but surely not impossible, without detection—they would take Charlie back. Tentatively, at first, but it is an option you should consider." He said aloud, while his inner train of thought darkened.

'…He's cutting my hair?' Harry thought, still caught on it. Tom deconstructed the meaning of it.

To decide: 'He's done. He's mine now. He's yours.' Goosebumps firing almost painfully.

"Marking begins tomorrow." He wasn't cutting much length from his hair.

Harry wondered where he'd learned to do it, and Tom bristled. He decided it didn't matter right then how he'd come across the skill.

"Stop rolling your head around," the Dark Lord chastised.

"…Thank you. For healing Charlie. Or, trying to." Harry ignored the fact that 'Pleases and thank yous' weren't something they did. Ignored that what he'd done to Charlie had been orchestrated by Voldemort. That he'd held the healing over Harry's head like an impossible carrot on a string. Ignored that he wouldn't have been healing Charlie had it not been for extenuating circumstances.

His hands stilled, then resumed. In the barest of whispers: "…You are welcome."

Harry heard him take another drink, the glass scraping on the stones. "…I'm sorry about the dreams, too. I didn't want to-" Tom stopped him, nervous that he'd trigger Voldemort's flight instinct and firmly believing Harry owed no apologies.

"I know." He didn't sound triggered. Tired.

He figured Voldemort had seen his regret and discomfort in his head.

"What am I to do with you, hm? My Death Eaters need to see you punished, and yet…" He pulled Harry's head back to his chest and held him by his forehead.

He couldn't stop his eyelids fluttering closed, cock twitching in the hot water. Tom answered him, "Harry has told you he will take the punishment willingly," purred in the serpent tongue, goading and questioning without doing either.

"I need more light," almost a question. Subtext that Tom picked up on, summoning the curse.

Snaking the green light above them, below the twisting Lethifold. The blackness he threaded through the water, twining it around the Dark Lord's legs, Harry's thighs, his cock, up his chest, until the pool was full of dark ink. Swimming with green effervescence.

Familiar, blessed, sharp pain. "What does it feel like to you?" Harry asked.

All he heard for a moment was the snipping of scissors and Bed Sheet's eerie cooing. Desire building, a ravenous yawning mouth—not all Harry's.

"…It feels like you. Painful, like you." The Dark Lord stilled. "She is gone, taken by the enemy that I have grown lax with, and all I can think about—"

"I understand." Tom interrupted him before the seed of emotion in his voice went nuclear. "You think I could not possibly understand, but we are the only ones who can."

One of Voldemort's hands was in the dark water, swirling it up to his elbow—the other arm around Harry's chest, chin on his shoulder, haircut forgotten.

Tom's thoughts reached a fever pitch. Harry couldn't react appropriately. He did, however, possess the capacity to be brought halfway to orgasm at the mere idea.

"No one can see you here," Tom began, twisting ever so slowly in the Dark Lord's grip to face him, "Letting go is not weakness," he wrapped an arm around Voldemort's thigh and made it clear he intended to drag him into the water, pulling slowly at first, looking up and searching his expression for refusal. No refusal. Just beautiful. "His mind is a fortress erected in your honour, unshakeable devotion; you are safe inside it."

One hand gripping the stones, the other on Harry's chest, holding him at a distance—hesitation flickering on his face. Tom was thrilled to see it. Hesitation would become acceptance. Hesitation was almost consent. He could convince hesitation. "Let me take the pain away. Let me show you. You can trust this. You can trust him."

"I won't hurt you unless you want me to," Harry whispered.

The Dark Lord gasped and suddenly Harry was starving. He yanked him in—one quick movement—fully clothed on Harry's naked lap. Forehead to forehead. Voldemort frowned and relaxed repeatedly; Harry felt the muscles tensing against his scar. Nails digging into his shoulders.

Tom held his wand to the Dark Lord's thigh, "There is peace in relenting—Evanesco—control is heavy—let it go for an instant. I promise you, you can pick it back up." He vanished his pants. He didn't risk removing his soaked white shirt in case it startled him out of the trance.

Harry wasn't allowed to kiss him, though his lips were so close, spearmint whiskey breath ghosting his mouth. Tom did allow him to rock his hips desperately, though. Bucking up and snaking his hands under his shirt, seeking more contact—always seeking more contact—gasping and sucking his breath from the air like it might draw his lips all the way in. His legs wrapped around Harry's waist.

Tom slicked his cock with a muttered spell that froze them both. Nose to nose and blinking at each other, shocked to be where they were.

"You can trust him," Tom repeated, positioning himself but stopping Harry from bucking wild.

Voldemort lowered himself, inching onto Harry's cock. The sharp heat of the black water, the tightness of him, the bliss rocketing spitting fireworks through his body, and the adoration bleeding out of his skin intoxicated him. He sank his teeth into the Dark Lord's shoulder so he didn't try it on his lips. Gasping moans, pulling him down, desperate.

'I wanna kiss him,' Harry thought, somewhat coherently. Tom didn't allow it, a risk he wouldn't take—likely to send the Dark Lord scrambling off.

And Harry didn't want that. The curse was thick in the hot water, inhaling steam and cedar, blissed up to his eyes—rolling closed as Tom allowed him to slowly rock his hips.

The idea that Voldemort was his was taking root in Harry's mind just as his cock was taking root inside him. Intense pleasure burning in his abdomen, the Dark Lord's cock pressed against his stomach. One hand locked tight in his hair, the other arm wrapped around Harry's shoulders. Hanging on as if trying to absorb each other. Vaguely aware of his nails clawing Voldemort's back—wand tossed to the stones—his teeth drawing blood through white cotton.

There was nothing, no one, he loved more than he loved Tom Riddle.

There was nothing, and no one Tom Riddle loved more than Harry Potter.

All there was left to do was convince the Dark Lord. 'He's mine like you're mine I like that I love this I love you fuck,' thoughts strung together like beads on a string, 'I'm gonna cum.'

"…Harry."

His name moaned breathlessly at his neck hit like a truck, thrusting into the Dark Lord twice and all but screaming into his shoulder.

The Dark Lord relentlessly bucked his hips as Harry came, almost torture—gasping in his ear, losing rhythm, pulling Harry's head back to bite his jaw and turning him to liquid, red and gold light erupting from Voldemort's skin.

(AN: Tom recites 'Defeat' by Kahlil Gibran. Crux recites a section from chapter seven of the book of Revelation. Was the gift Charlie or bottoming? To that, I say, yes...? (Fuck yeah, Harry, get it.))