[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Twelve and One, Harry/Tom Riddle, R, 5/7

[lomonaaeren]

Part Four.

Part One.

Title: Twelve and One (5/7)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Tom Riddle, background James/Lily and Merope/Tom Riddle Sr.
Content Notes: Angst, past minor character death, violence, fairy tale AU
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3400
Summary: AU. King James Potter has twelve daughters, each more beautiful than the last, and all under a devastating curse. He also has one son, who serves as his father’s steward. Harry has begun to wonder if his sisters will ever be free from the curse, until Prince Thomas Slytherin comes seeking a consort. (Very) loosely based on the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”
Author’s Notes: This is one of “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year. It will have seven parts.

Part Five

“Eager, aren’t you?”

The dark tone in Tom’s voice made Harry catch his breath, but also made him pull up. The falcon had transported them to the other side of the forest, into a wide “meadow” of silver, spiky grass. Given the thickness of the blankets that Tom had brought, Harry wasn’t really worried about sleeping on it.

But he was concerned about other things. He turned his head back over his shoulder and watched Tom with a steady gaze. Tom paused when he saw it.

“If you’re here to mock me for my lack of experience or anything like that,” Harry said, “then we’re not going to do this.”

“You misunderstand me.” Tom stepped up behind him and leaned down to kiss the join of his neck and his shoulder. Harry caught his breath with a delight that he thought a second later he shouldn’t have showed, but Tom’s voice still seemed sincere. “I am delighted with your forthrightness. There are too many games in most courts where people play with me and hint that they want certain things, only to retract them later and mock me for having paid attention to them or believed them. With you, I can believe in what you say. That is a relief for me. And makes you even more desirable.” His hands rose and smoothed down Harry’s shoulders in that tantalizing touch again. “And proves what fools the people in your father’s court were, not to try and fight harder for you, but also allows me to do whatever I wish, so I cannot hold it too much against them.”

“You-ah.” The sensation shot straight to Harry’s groin as Tom’s fingers slid up the side of his throat. “It would help if you could stop mocking the people in my father’s court, too,” he moaned, tossing his head back as Tom’s fingers worked their way across his muscles in a torturous massage that only aroused him more.

“No. They should have known what a treasure they had,” Tom whispered, and planted a sucking kiss where his mouth had been before.

Harry turned around to claim Tom’s mouth and return the kiss with interest. Tom cupped Harry between his legs, and Harry waved a hand without thinking about it, a human spell trotting out on the air.

Tom drew back with a lifted eyebrow as the blankets flew out of their packs and arranged themselves on the grass. Harry realized he was blushing. “I-”

Tom’s kiss stopped the protest or the explanation or the apology, whatever it would have been; Harry honestly wasn’t sure himself. Then Tom was untucking Harry’s tunic, and Harry hissed and reached for Tom’s trousers.

Tom was slender and covered with lean muscle in the way that the best elves were, but not as fragile-looking as most male elves Harry had seen. His gaze was even more intense when Harry could see his hard cock, it seemed. Harry shuddered a little and did his best not to think about what Tom was seeing when he gazed at Harry.

Whatever it was, Tom didn’t seem to mind it. He reached out and let one finger linger on the tip of Harry’s own erection, and Harry closed his eyes.

“Wet,” Tom said, and that was the only word as he once again took Harry’s shoulders in his hands and walked him backwards to lie down on the blankets.

Tom had some kind of oil on his hands when he touched Harry again, this time on his arse. Harry parted his legs while silently biting his lip. He wasn’t ignorant of what two men did in bed together-he had walked unwillingly into rooms where two of the guards were fucking each other before-but this would be his first time.

“Hush,” Tom said. Harry glanced up and found himself unable to turn away from Tom’s eyes, blazing now like the hills of the underworld with sunlight on them. “I will treat you as gently as you could wish. I promise. Do you think I never want to sleep with you again?”

Harry opened his mouth to ask what one thing had to do with the other, and then Tom’s fingers dipped into him. Harry gasped and seemed to float on the gasp until Tom stroked his hip with that same intense, tickling touch.

“Breathe,” Tom said, and Harry managed, and focused on the incredibly strange sensation of fingers inside him without panicking.

Tom added a third soon enough, and a fourth. Any protests that Harry might have had died on his tongue when he saw the way Tom was watching him. The hunger was enough to steal his breath. It was just so unlike any way that he’d ever thought someone would look at him.

“There,” Tom said, and his voice flowed like soft, hypnotic water over Harry. “The oil has calming and pain-killing properties as well, and I think you’re ready to have me inside you, Harry.”

“I want to feel that connection again,” Harry said. He was talking about the connection they’d had when their magic blended, but he didn’t think he could put it into words right now, and not just because he was breathless with longing.

“Yes,” Tom said, seeming to understand what he meant without words, and slid into him.

Harry had always thought, if this ever happened for him, that he would close his eyes and just savor the pleasure while floating in darkness. But he found it impossible to close his eyes or turn away from Tom. Tom was gripping Harry’s hands now, their fingers entwined as if they were wrestling, his eyes as locked on Harry’s face as Harry’s were on his. His lips were slightly parted and his face shining. Harry got lost in the rocking motion of their hips that seemed to carry him out on a sea of heat and pleasure, but he never looked away from Tom.

Tom’s lips curled in a slow, smug smile as he kept up the rocking, and he altered the angle of his hips a little. Harry gasped, blinked, but continued to look.

“You can’t turn away, are you?” Tom lowered his head a little, shifting the angle again and sending a flare of sensation so deep up Harry’s body that he felt as if he had fallen into golden sunlight. “What an interesting revelation.”

“W-well-enjoy it,” Harry said, and he moaned as he Tom freed one hand and reached down to stroke his cock, although how he managed to find it between their seemingly joined bodies was the question.

“Oh, I am,” Tom said, and the purring tone was back in his voice. Harry wanted to close his eyes because otherwise he was going to thoroughly embarrass himself, but somehow they stayed open.

And somehow he didn’t embarrass himself, despite the hand stroking and smoothing and pulling, again and again, up and over and around him. He could feel his eyes rolling back in his head, and he hissed in response to it. But Tom’s face always floated in front of his eyes.

“When my mother told me to get married,” Tom breathed, from somewhere that had to be full of air for him to talk in coherent sentences, “I told her I was only going to choose someone who could be as devoted as I was.”

Harry rescued his voice from wherever it had gone. “Devoted to-what? Fucking?”

Tom rewarded, or punished, him with a long, curling stroke for that. Harry moaned again.

“No,” Tom said. “Someone who could be as devoted to me as I was to her. Someone who could meet and match me and equal me in magic and intelligence and beauty and all the rest of it.”

“Modesty, too,” said Harry, unable to help it, and Tom’s fingers spread and snaked under his cock’s head and did something unspeakable and wonderful.

“You’re going to come for me,” Tom said, his smile languid and completely contradicted by the sharp, jabbing motions of his hips. “With me. When I say.”

“No,” Harry countered. It was the only thing he had the strength to say right now. Stars were bursting in front of his eyes, and his lungs were laboring as if they were going to burst out of his chest. Where did Tom get the breath for it all?

“I think you are,” Tom said, and the self-confidence was unshakeable, and so was the gloating way he smiled.

Harry didn’t bother responding, being too involved in meeting Tom’s thrusts with his own, as much as he could on his back, and squeezing down with his inner muscles. That was another wonderful thing he’d never known about, a thing he could do.

He watched Tom’s face change and wondered for a moment what he would do when this was over and done with and he would never have it again-

But in the meantime, there was this, and this was now, and Harry clamped down and saw Tom’s breath stutter, his head bow so that he was the first one to break their joined gazes, after all. Some part of Harry that he hadn’t even realized was there rejoiced.

“Come for me,” Tom said, and his fingers touched and slid and coated Harry with his own wetness.

Harry surrendered without knowing it was going to happen, thrusting up and freezing in place for a second, and then flooding Tom’s hand helplessly, crying out under his breath, rotating his hips in a desperate search for more sensation. Tom hissed him through it, saying things in Parseltongue that were probably just as gloating as all the rest.

Harry didn’t care, though. Not when he felt so good, and not when Tom sat back and shook his hair out of his eyes and smiled and Harry squeezed down on him without warning.

Tom came, too, choking on air with his eyes as wide as suns. Harry gave him a smug smile and then rolled over on the blankets and sighed a little. Already a comfortable tiredness was creeping over him. He had heard that conversations after sex were always uncomfortable, but at least this way, maybe he could avoid it, and when he woke, things would be back to normal.

“I want you,” Tom said into his ear.

“Again? Already?” Harry managed to lift an eyelid, but that was only by taking it in his fingers and levering it up.

“When I-”

But then the sleep Harry had been anticipating came along, and made everything more comfortable than it had been.

*

“Lie still, Harry.”

Harry opened his eyes slowly. He was lying on a pile of blankets with Tom’s arms around him, for some reason. Not that he had forgotten what they’d done before he fell asleep, but he’d assumed Tom would have gone to make his own blanket pile by now.

“Why?” Harry asked softly, darting his eyes around. He saw at least one problem before Tom answered, and grimaced. Of course he shouldn’t have assumed the elven underworld would have left them where they were.

“We’ve moved into a large-dome, that’s the only thing I can say.” Tom’s arms tightened around his waist until it was painful. “And we’re on a bridge over a sea that’s rising steadily. And there’s fires burning at the ends of the bridge.”

Harry lifted his head then, as soon as Tom seemed to be reassured that he wouldn’t simply roll out of the makeshift bed. Tom’s hands slid absently down his back. Harry managed to ignore them as he stared at the enormous dome overhead, but it was difficult.

The inside of the dome seemed to be made of a single gigantic sapphire. Maybe the inside of a sapphire carved into an egg, Harry thought, looking up at the curve overhead. The inside was hollow, of course, with shining silver bridges that seemed to be made of spidersilk arching and stretching over it. Beneath them snarled a sea of what looked uncomfortably like molten silver.

And the sea was rising.

Harry glanced at the fires burning at the ends of the bridges. They appeared identical at first, red flames rising and entwining, bonfires built on nothing. The bridge Tom and Harry were on joined up with other bridges, and the fires squatted at each crossroads. The largest bridge rose steadily as a unicorn’s back towards what looked like a crack in the dome, and light was there.

Harry concentrated on the fire that blocked their way to it. And after a moment, he nodded. Yes, there was a gleam of gold about those flames that was familiar.

It ought to be, after he had watched Hyacinth use it for years.

Harry took a deep breath and shifted in Tom’s hold. Tom let him go with a small frown. Harry hated the way his heart bounded at the sight of that frown, and he had to ignore it firmly as he stood up and began to put on his clothing that was folded neatly at the edge of the blankets. Tom was already dressed, which made it all the stranger that he’d gone back to holding Harry’s naked, sweaty body.

“I know which way we have to go,” Harry said, and nodded at the golden fire. Or the fires, as he realized now that he was standing up and could see them more clearly. There was a red fire burning right in front of the golden one, while the flames at the other end of the bridge held only scarlet hues. “This way.”

“We’ll die if we walk through fire.” Tom’s voice was flat, in the kind of way that Harry already knew was meant to hold emotions back and keep them from escaping.

“No. Do you see that there are two fires? We have to go through them back-to-back. And unless I’m wrong,” Harry said, reaching back to wrap his hand around Tom’s arm, “this is also the key to breaking Garnet and Hyacinth free of the curse.”

Tom stared at him blankly. Harry rolled his eyes. “They’re both gifted with fire magic, or have you forgotten?”

“I had not forgotten.”

This time, the flat voice had failed Tom. Harry could hear the shiver that edged his words, and saw the way that he stared at the flames more often than the molten silver sea that surged slowly up the walls of the dome. Harry blinked. “Are you-afraid of fire?” Tom hadn’t reacted that way when the dragon breathed flames.

“Bonfires,” Tom whispered. “Like the one that my father died in.”

Harry nodded, although he hadn’t actually known that particular story. “Come with me,” he said. “I promise that it’ll be fine.” He had to tug again when Tom’s feet seemed frozen, but after a long moment, Tom took a breath and followed him.

They raced up the silver bridge towards the twin fires, and Harry heard a creak and a rumble behind him that might have been the silver sea rising further. He knew he didn’t imagine the sound of flames crackling at their backs, not with Tom almost trampling him down. The fire on the other end of the bridge had started to burn it up behind them the moment they made their decision.

This is a curse, Harry told himself. The hard part of this is going to be overcoming Tom’s fear, getting him to trust me.

They reached the twin fires, and Tom’s feet set again behind him. Harry turned towards him. “It is dangerous, and it will hurt,” he said quietly. “I won’t lie to you about that. But if you come with me…”

“Then I’ll get to experience the pain?” Tom was watching the scarlet fire more than he was Harry, as if he could see nothing else in the world.

Harry reached out, cradled Tom’s face beneath both hands, and gently turned him so that Tom was looking only at him. “You’ll get to experience renewal, too,” he promised, and kissed him gently. He saw Tom’s eyes widen, maybe because Harry had put more than passion or magic into the kiss.

And, well, that was his own problem, wasn’t it? They would be near the end of the quest once they had freed Garnet and Hyacinth from the curse, and what Harry might feel or not feel was his own affair.

He turned to face the scarlet fire, ignoring for a moment the rumble of the silver sea beneath him and Tom’s sharpened stare on his back.

Harry braced himself to accept the pain, and then sprang straight into the heart of the bonfire.

He shrieked, a sound torn from his throat without his permission. The pain was like teeth closing on every part of his body at once, and his shirt was on fire, and his hair, and he was losing his eyes, they would melt like jelly down his cheeks-

Harry forced himself to keep moving, feet rising and falling in ways that he knew he would probably never be able to duplicate again, and then he jumped, and there was a different kind of flame around him, yellow and soft and welcoming. Harry gasped and stretched his hands out. This was like being bathed with cool water, and every touch brought more than coolness.

It brought healing. It brought renewal.

Harry watched in wonder as the skin that had scorched came blossoming back, running up his arms like growing vines. It was softer and firmer than any of his skin had ever been, and he noticed a few old scars that were missing. His clothes were growing back, too, and the fabric was rich silk, rippling in the slight air that seemed to be blowing down from the crack in the dome as though it was made of some material even lighter. Harry looked up and laughed and blinked, and the slight imperfections were gone from his sight.

The second fire was Hyacinth’s phoenix flame. Harry knew he had recognized it. And only someone who had passed through the withering power of Garnet’s gift to get here would be able to embrace it.

Harry turned back, wondering if he would need to call to Tom across the flames to encourage him, and found him stumbling out of the phoenix fire, staring at his hands. Harry laughed again and caught him close, thinking that the elven glamour shone through Tom’s features more strongly than ever before. His skin was as clear as glass, his eyes blazing like the indigo hills lit on fire.

He was beautiful. And, for the moment, he stood as docilely in Harry’s embrace as if he was Harry’s in truth.

That didn’t last, of course. Tom staggered backwards and stared at Harry. Then he reached forwards, grabbed his arms, shook them, and snapped, “What in the world were you thinking, you madman?”

“That we freed two more of my sisters?” Harry nodded back over Tom’s shoulder, although it had become difficult to take his eyes from the man he’d slept with. The other prince. His future brother-in-law.

Make yourself accustomed to those titles now, Harry told himself, and it will hurt less later.

Tom turned around, although Harry noticed that he kept his tight hold on Harry’s arms while he did it, just reversing which hand held which grip. He stared in silence at the garnet gem cradled in the middle of the hyacinth flower that was growing where the fires had been.

And as he kept staring, the dome and the bridges and the silver sea all dissolved around them. Harry blinked. They were standing on a green hill in the middle of what seemed to the indigo range he had glimpsed from afar, a breeze blowing around them that whispered and hissed in their hair.

For some reason, Tom tensed further. Harry frowned at him. “What is it?” he asked. “We freed Garnet and Hyacinth. We’re almost done with this quest. I thought you’d be happy.”

You slept with me. Harry bit back the words. They had no place in this conversation, not right now.

“Did you hear the breeze?” Tom asked, turning around. His grip on Harry’s arm had become painful, but Harry didn’t think it was the best moment to mention it.

“Yes, of course.”

“It was speaking.” Tom’s eyes were furiously searching the horizon, which only showed more hills, as well as the darkened slopes around them. “In Parseltongue-”

“Hello, my son,” said a cold voice from behind them.

Tom’s shoulders slumped for a moment, but he lifted his chin as he turned to face the top of the hill. “Hello, Mother.”

Part Six.

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