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‘… and mostly researching ways to become immortal,’ Tom hears himself blabbing. He’s absolutely rat-arsed; evidently he’d underestimated Slughorn’s dedication to hedonism. The booze is strong.
‘Why the fuck would you want that?’ Harry mumbles, shoving Tom further into the musty dark of a cramped broom cupboard. Tom doesn’t know how they got here. ‘Not dying? Walking ‘round … but you’re just a fuck pile of zombie bones?’
‘Obviously,’ it takes a few tries for Tom to properly pronounce that word, ‘I’ll have to be healthily immortal. I just don’t know how.’
‘But you’ve already made your first Horcrux. No point denying, Tom, I know you have.’
Tom squints at Harry. In the low light, he can just make out the softened outline of his cheeks; his lips.
Tom forgets what he’s supposed to interrogate Harry about.
‘Dying is bad,’ he settles lamely. ‘Dying is – you’re everything, and then you’re nothing.’
Harry doesn’t speak for a while, he just looks at Tom, his breath ghosting Tom’s skin.
‘Boom – then nothing,’ Tom stresses. He wants Harry to understand.
‘Okay,’ Harry whispers, like he’s letting Tom in on a grand secret, ‘but sometimes you come back because somebody needs you so much.’
Tom shakes his head. ‘No one’s come back for me,’ he says, too drunk not to wallow in self-pity.
And Harry – to his intense dismay – pulls him into a tight hug, fingers digging into his back.
‘No,’ Tom complains, ‘not this.’
Secretly he thinks it’s not all that bad. Harry’s warm, lithe body a comfortable weight against his own. Harry’s hair, soft and springy and tickling his neck. Harry’s clean, masculine scent; of his body soap and the leather gear he wears to Quidditch practice …
‘You’re wrong,’ Harry says softly, his voice sounding muffled against Tom’s pullover. ‘I did.’
15052024 | @microficmay | nothing & everything