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"Are you ready?" Tom asks, and Harry looks up from where he's fidgeting with the cuffs of his only good shirt. He flushes, jittery with nerves, and gets up from the stoop in front of the orphanage. He hadn't even heard him arrive.
Tom looks good, leaning against his sleek, white car, in a crisp white shirt with neat collars, pressed gray trousers, and a lovely pair of oxfords. Seeing him here, breathing the same oxygen as him, lends the moment to intemporality. The world tilts back on its axis.
"I'll never understand how you managed to get your hands on an Audi a year after leaving," he says, a little wistful as he runs his fingers over the still-warm contours of the hood, drawing close.
Tom straightens, and says, "I told you, convertibles on the secondhand market go for cheap, because stupid rich people don't want their impulse buys anymore."
"Okay," he says, not really listening. He's never been able to resist Tom's gravitational pull, and at last he slides his hands around Tom's lean, handsome waist. Despite the heat he's not perspiring in the slightest, Harry notes, his eyes fluttering shut, as he pulls the tails of Tom's shirt free from his trousers and presses his fingertips against the bare skin at the small of his back. Here, slotted beneath his chin, tucked into the crook of Tom's neck, is right where he belongs. He inhales, deeply, and the desperate, miserable thing in his chest finally settles.
It's perfect here. He's missed Tom with a persistent ache, ever since he reached his majority and left the orphanage, with a job already lined up in the Minister's Office. And Harry's happy for him, he really is, but the orphanage is so much lonelier in his absence, and on the worst days he feels like a planet cast out of orbit, spiralling through space. Even with Tom gone, the other orphans continue to give him a wide berth.
And some days it does feel like that, like Tom is the one thing his life can't help but revolve around—the one thing keeping him grounded, but try as he might he can't get any closer.
"Happy birthday, my love," Tom says, soft and treasured, and Harry discards the nebulous thought. There's no time for melancholy today, so instead he focuses on the way the words resonate through their bodies, pressed flush against each other, like a single plucked string.
"Where are we going?" Harry asks, blinking his eyes open.
"You'll see," Tom says, as he opens the door to the plush leather interior, and Harry has to laugh, because no one looking at them would think that they're two dirt-poor orphans with next to nothing, barely legal and entirely in love.
#
The sunset is hazy and rosy, bleeding into lavender twilight by the time they pull up at the restaurant. Clouds scud across the sky, pearly gray. Tom's hand has been wrapped around his thigh the whole time, fingers tucked into the inner curve, drawing constellations through the fabric.
The restaurant is situated in a verdant courtyard, like the entrance to someone's stately, quietly expensive manor. Ivy climbs up the white brick exterior. Gravel crunches beneath the wheels as the car slows to a stop.
"Come on, then," he says, taking Harry's hand. A valet—a valet—takes the car keys and the maitre'd has their reservations and a waitress relieves them of their light jackets. They are shown to their seats by stiff-backed waiters, who seat them in stiff-backed chairs. If they notice Harry is a little younger and grubbier than their usual clientele, they're too good at their jobs to let it show.
In the flattering golden light of the restaurant, Tom looks more otherworldly than usual. Even after a day at the office, his shirt looks perfectly pressed, not a strand of hair out of place—although the sweet little curl that Harry adores has been permitted to sweep down over his handsome brow. He, at least, looks as if he belongs entirely here. Harry wonders if it would be terribly inappropriate to ask to sit next to Tom, so that he can press their knees together under the table.
Probably.
Tom nudges his foot beneath the tablecloth, as if he knows what Harry is thinking.
He flips open the menu, and then after a few seconds of perusal, closes it.
"Tom."
"Mm," his best friend replies, still engrossed in lists of unpronounceable ingredients.
"This menu has no prices."
"I know."
"Tom."
He looks up. "Yes?"
Harry lowers his voice to a point where he's basically mouthing the words, and it's fine, because Tom always knows exactly what he means. "We can't afford this."
"I can," he mouths back, just as soundless, "and it's your birthday treat, so don't worry about it."
Harry glares at him. His lip-reading is also impeccable, and he retorts, "Tom—"
Another nudge to his foot, with a hand-tooled, goodyear-welted, burgundy leather oxford.
"Relax," Tom says, stealing his hand from across the table to plant a smug kiss onto his knuckles. He smiles then, briefly, but as dazzling and disarming as ever.
After that, Harry lets Tom order. The frown keeps sliding off his face, overwhelmed as he is by the shivery warmth that suffuses him every time he catches sight of his best friend across the pristine tablecloth.
The food is transcendental. It's a world away from what they serve at Wool's, from a world where people don't pinch pennies and the food never spoils. His main course is a lamb dish, and it's unbelievably fragrant, and positively melts in his mouth in a medley of perfectly balanced flavours. Harry savours every bite as slowly and thoroughly as possible, eyes wide, heart hammering in his chest. Tom, too, looks similarly starry-eyed, and they eat mostly in silence, except for the occasional breathy compliment.
There are approximately ten different types and sizes of cutlery, but Harry isn't worried about not knowing which is which. A few years ago, Tom had brought home a book on dining etiquette and read it cover to cover. Then he'd grilled Harry on all the important details, and they'd held mock meals in their own room with mismatched cutlery appropriated from Wool's kitchens. Harry knows what he's doing, knows the proper grip for a soup spoon and a salad fork—he just wishes they weren't all so dainty. They look tiny and breakable in his hands.
There is more wealth concentrated in this venue that Harry has seen in his entire life, and he and Tom are easily the youngest couple in the restaurant; Harry doesn't know how Tom managed not to get turned away at the door, much less acquire a table for two during what must be their peak period. All around them are luminaries and politicians and celebrities, shimmering in the dark, but Tom, ambitious though he is, isn't looking at any of them.
"Can we get dessert to go?" Tom asks, and their waiter nods and departs with a quiet, "Of course, Mister Riddle."
#
"Where to next?" Harry asks, breathy with exertion as he lets himself by tugged ahead.
"Our favourite spot," Tom says, spinning him lightly around before their car pulls up. He slips a tip into the valet's hand—Harry can't see how much, which makes it a little hard to be cross about—and then opens the car door for him, smiling charmingly.
Their favourite spot is nearly an hour's bus ride from Wool's, where the suburbs start to encroach upon the city and the houses grow further apart, the roads widening and becoming lush with greenery. The engine purrs impatiently beneath his thighs, the scenery speeding past.
Harry rolls down the window, and in an outrageous feat of daring, toes his shoes off, and props his socked feet up on the window-ledge. Tom rolls his eyes but doesn't comment, the corner of his lip curling deliciously, the streetlights flickering over his face like the Scorpion chasing Orion across the sky, night after night, long before they were born and long after they're dead. He grins boldly over at Tom's striking profile, a little breathless, and laces their fingers together.
The stars are almost fully visible once they reach the top of the hill; this late at night, there's practically no one around—only the odd person sleeping rough. Harry's eyes find Sirius, the Dog Star, skimming over the brown-grey surface of Mercury just as Tom unearths from the trunk the box of dessert and a bottle of wine.
This feels more right, Harry thinks, as they lean up against the bumper, pressed flush from shoulder to thigh, balancing the waxy paper box between them as Tom pours the wine into a glass—a proper, honest-to-god wineglass. More right than stuffy restaurants and glittering socialites, no matter how excellent the food. Just the two of them, with the city stretching out beneath their feet, lights shining like comets.
"Tell me again about where we'll live when I finally move out of Wool's," he begs, nosing into the soft cotton of Tom's shirt. The temperature had dipped after the sun went down, and Tom has relinquished his jacket.
Tom stills, and then he brushes his lips against Harry's crown.
"You see that building over there? The tall one, with the—you can just make out the penthouse," he says, jabbing into the distance with his little dessert fork. It's a high-rise apartment building that towers above the rest, like a modernist statue; the top floor is dark as though unoccupied.
"That's where we'll live. We'll have a bedroom twice the size of the one we had in Wool's, with an attached bath we'll never have to share, complete with a rain shower and a tub big enough for two. It'll be next to the window, so that we can look down at everyone but no one will be able to see us. We'll have a living room for me to entertain guests, and a big gleaming kitchen that you'll never have to set foot in."
Harry giggles; cooking is a chore he despises.
Tom feeds him another spoonful of tiramisu, smiling indulgently. It makes Harry feel like a cracked-open geode, his insides full of jagged edges. "And there'll be a big study room, bigger than you could imagine, and we'll fill it with all the books I've always wanted, so that we can work next to each other, or read, or play chess. It'll be warm in the winter and airy in the summer, and there'll be food in the pantry year-round."
"Yeah?"
"Yes, I promise."
Harry smiles, tipping his head up so that he can look Tom full-on, green eyes meeting gorgeous, gunmetal-grey ones. The air feels hazy and ripe with possibility.
"You know it doesn't matter where we are as long as I'm with you, right?" Their breaths mingle in the humid summer air.
"I know," Tom murmurs a breath from his mouth, his eyes containing galaxies, universes, the entire cosmos, and then he's kissing him, his lips sliding hot and perfect over his, slick and hungry and just a little out-of-control, the only person Tom truly relaxes around. He tastes of coffee and chocolate and cream, mingling with the oaky tartness of the illicit wine.
Isn't it amazing, Harry thinks, that he and Tom managed to cross paths in this whole wide world? That they managed to be born at the same time and then be sent to the same orphanage, how effortlessly he fits into Tom's spaces and him so easily into his? They're perfect for each other, so complementary on a molecular level that it must be some kind of cosmic miracle, like stars colliding, like the lightning that happens between an evanescent cloud and the ever-shifting ground.
The paper box topples to the ground—thankfully empty—in a sprinkling of coffee powder, and Harry threads his fingers through Tom's immaculate hair, mussing it up and laughing into his mouth, and Tom seizes the opportunity to lick past his parted lips and kiss him like he's devouring him down to the last morsel. Electricity crackles between them. It's all teeth and tongues and searing heat, and Harry's burning up like a meteor tearing through the stratosphere. He trails his fingers down, skimming broad shoulders and the well-loved curve of his spine as Tom tightens his embrace, crushing their bodies together, as if he could fuse them down to their
very
atoms.
A beautiful alliance.
#
A year later
"Are you ready?" Tom calls, and Harry tosses him a smile over his shoulder.
"Yes, just give me your address and I can drive," Harry says, eager to test out Tom's car—not strictly legal, since he doesn't have his license yet, but Tom is an excellent teacher. He pants with exertion as he drags his suitcase past the front stoop—for someone with meagre possessions, he's pretty amazed at how much he's managed to accumulate in eighteen years. Granted, most of it is stolen—by Tom—and he can't bear to throw them away. They were gifts before they could even afford gifts.
"I sold the car," Tom informs him, and Harry turns, startled, his suitcase bumping down the last step and narrowly missing his toes.
Metal clinks together as a set of keys sails through the space between them. With quick reflexes, he snatches it out of the air. It's not the keys to the Audi; it's an ordinary, nondescript set, stainless steel, held together by a simple metal key ring.
He runs his thumb over the steel notches, and looks up at his best friend, wondering.
"What's this?"
"I bought our apartment," Tom admits.
Harry's mouth falls open. He'd been fully expecting to move into Tom's flat, which Tom has briefly mentioned once or twice; it can't be very large, on a Junior Undersecretary's salary, and he imagines the two of them squeezing into a twin bed like old times, waking up with his knees tucked between Tom's thighs, attempting to slip out into the chill morning air to make tea the way Tom likes it, except he always holds him too tightly to make sneaking out remotely possible, and oh good god, who did Tom blackmail for this?
"You what?"
Tom smiles. "I've always known I'd spend the rest of my life with you. This is as good an investment as any."
"Better than your car?"
"Of course. I found a good buyer." Harry narrows his eyes at him; he knows from experience that such an innocuous statement can mean any number of devious things. The metal teeth of the keys cut into the backs of his fingers.
"Is this the part where I ask you if you're going to make an honest man out of me?"
Tom's smile grows teeth. He saunters forward to gather him into his arms and press a kiss to his forehead, warm and tender. "I never thought you the sort for jewellery, but if you wish."
"Or we could always continue living in sin," Harry offers helpfully, and Tom laughs. The caress of his hands down his back is all comforting reassurance, and under the blazing heat of his smile, Harry feels immolated by it.
"As long as I never have to be apart from you again," he murmurs, as he pulls Harry in for a kiss.
And, as his eyes shutter and his hands come up to encircle his best friend, Harry thinks about chemical reactions and cosmic design and the slow shift of tectonic plates, irrevocable. He thinks back to seeing Tom for the first time and knowing, of loving him more than he loves himself, of the precious space they have carved out for just the two of them.
And he thinks lastly about how lucky he is, how infinitely lucky, to be so well-loved by the only person who matters.
"Happy birthday, my love."