Another Kind of Love
Written for A Very Anatomically Correct Very Musical Valentines for @aitafrog. The prompted song was I'm Your Man by Leonard Cohen.
“Tom,” Harry had said then, avoiding eye contact, looking nearly sheepish as he stared out the window of some impersonal cafe they’d never been to before, would never go to again, “It’s really nothing to do with us,” he’d lied, easy and without pause, “I just can’t have a relationship right now.”
Tom took a controlled sip of his espresso, barely registering the sub-par bean, focusing all of his energy on not lunging across the small, round wooden table they shared, taking grasp of Harry’s chin, and wiping away any idea of leaving him.
“And why is that?”
Harry’s expression flickered, a deep frown nearly succeeding at pulling his lips downwards.
“My,” he paused, “My apprenticeship with Dumbledore will be consuming. It’s not fair to you, all the time I’ll be gone.”
“Oh,” Tom surmised, a perfectly placid smile pulling at his white teeth, “You’re rather considerate, aren’t you, Harry. Thinking of me like that.”
So lost he was, that Harry barely detected the warning in Tom’s voice. Maybe it was because he didn’t remember, not yet. Usually it was Tom that needed to be convinced of their bond. Usually, at least one of Harry’s parents were dead. The both of them having made it past Harry's eighteenth never boded well.
“Yeah, well, I’ll be gone longer than we’ve been dating. Seven weeks.”
Tom finally put down his espresso. It barely mattered that he’d just been holding it awkwardly aloft, frozen. Harry wasn’t looking.
“It’s been a pleasure,” Tom said, standing, smoothing his coat, barely tolerating this farce of a break-up and the garishly hippie decor of the establishment around them, knowing there was no use to arguing now, knowing that all he needed to do was let himself linger, let a seed plant, “A shame, though.”
Harry finally tore his gaze away from whatever was interesting about Muggle sidewalk and city, people walking by. It was odd, seeing him without his scar, and perhaps, that was the reason for the stilted interactions that had so far characterized their relationship outside the bedroom.
They’d had duds before, Harry had told him. Lifetimes where one thing or another made it so Tom was stillborn, and Harry wasted years searching; where the basilisk had been too hungry to care he was the heir; where Voldemort died in a forest in Albania. One where Tom killed himself by smashing his face with a hammer— having inherited far too many of Merope's features, having been far later than usual.
This could be Tom’s turn to endure.
“A shame?” Harry dully echoed.
With a smile, his real smile, the sharp one his Harry had spent years biting at, that he could phantomly feel, all snide remarks, hard kisses, Tom answered.
“You were just beginning to be a good lay.”
*
In one lifetime, a very Muggle lifetime, they’d both ended up in the same underground boxing ring. Tom, because it allowed him to vent the anger he felt at his attending, Slughorn, and make money on the side; Harry because Lily had survived the Muggle-typical car crash that time, but not without a caveat, the expensive, pancreatic cancer kind. It was after Harry had broken The Rat’s right arm in a fight, and they’d agreed to rig their games to cash in on the bets, that they’d ended up sharing a cigarette outside the appropriately industrial and isolated London warehouse in which everything took place, that Harry said he remembered, choking not because of the smoke, as Tom had laughed at him for.
It was only later, when they’d met in the hospital, Lily grey, hand limp in Harry’s, that he remembered. Horrible timing to want to fuck one's soulmate.
*
In another, Tom had been Tommie, and she prowled the streets, the same she did her school in the mornings, avoiding a passed out Merope all the while. Good girl, straight A's, but with a more than poor home life, and a desperate need for cash. It was ripped straight from the cliche, Harry a roaming cop, Tommie mistaking him for john until the very last moment.
In another, they’d met on the beach, two eager girls on spring vacation, all hands and unknotted bikini strings and sand in horrible, horrible places and long, long walks with nonsense, delightful conversation; another, Harriette’s car had broken down on a stranded portion of the highlands, and Tom was the not-so-kind stranger that stopped by her with a convenient cottage a few kilometers away, only little coincidences delaying his plans, until the inevitable, until the memories stopping him from tearing open Harriette’s chest and eating her heart.
Here, all Harry had wanted was a lover, but Tom knew Harry better than he knew himself at this point, and if there was anything that would keep him going, keep Tom in those thoughts of his, it was a potent mix of mystery and indignant rage.
Tom made sure to wipe the mind of his neighbors, his landlord, in the flat he’d been renting when he met Harry, this go around. Made sure to be overt about it.
*
“Thomas Riddle,” the doorman seemed puzzled, eyes flicking up towards the ceiling, as if attempting to recall the name, “No, can’t say I’m familiar.”
Harry knew they had been. He didn’t even remember Harry, despite the time he’d refused to let him up to Tom’s flat until Tom called, formally putting him on the accepted guests list, a fiasco that had taken a better part of an hour. It’d only been a few months since then— the lack of familiarity didn’t seem like natural memory loss, the fog of time.
Something’s off.
He’d finished his time with Dumbledore, but hadn’t taken him up on his offer to become a permanent apprentice, to formalize their relationship, to continue as a battle-mage. He’d wanted time to think, and maybe even time to prove Tom wrong. Completely wrong. Just a few times. The sex had been good, hadn't it?
So, whatever this was, the obvious gap in the doorman’s memories, Harry had all the time in the world to investigate it.
Maybe he would.
