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There is a spot where the waves trail off, conspicuously absent, before they resume once again, lapping around his feet, foamy with white bubbles that quickly pop once they arrive on sandy shores. A quick, fitting death. Around them, around both Tom and Percy, around the shore, seashells are littered across, some smooth, some scalloped, some chipped and rough.
“Look, Tom,” Percy says. His red curls obscure his face as he crouches down, examining one or two— what does it matter, this study of things that are long dead? Do these seashells hide some mystical truth to a magic that has eluded him, and will continue to elude him, for years more?
“I’m looking.”
Perhaps something in his voice gives away his impatience because Percy’s gaze snaps up and then down before he lets out a sigh. “These shells aren’t native to this area,” he muses. “It’s just curious how they’ve gotten here.” He picks a few up, and lays them out in his hand— it is true that the shells that he has picked out stand in sharp contrast to the others, larger and more numerous, with more contrasting colours .
Tom shrugs. “They’re predators.” He folds Percy’s hand over itself, feeling the softness of it, the absence of wand calluses that speak of an absence of duelling . “It’s only a question of where their prey go.”
Percy is flushing, horribly, red blooming over his cheeks, and his eyes flick down to where Tom’s hand is still clasped in his. It’s something that is so unmistakably Percy that for a second, he loses his thoughts— there is, again, nothing really besides the hand in his grip. He is so vulnerable, like this, and everything screams at him to use it.
It’s an impulse, really, the way Tom pulls Percy’s hand to his lips, giving him the traditional introduction— one you would give to someone you could be courting, for example. Perhaps he shouldn’t play with Percy's feelings so, but Percy’s flush, incredibly, deepens. His hand spasms. Abruptly, an unnatural calm washes over his features, wiping his face of thought. Oh, Tom is flattered. Occulmency, for something as small as this? Well, it’s certainly clever. He immediately drops Percy’s hand, uncaring of the polite formalities. It’s no fun if Percy won’t play.
Something stirs in him. He wants it. He wants to see that expression. Only he can make Percy like this, only he can make Percy feel like this. This is something that only he will get to see— how dare he try to hide it from him?
Tom once saw Abraxas pull a girl in, just like this, except with Percy he teasingly brushes his lips over his neck, slowly kissing him up to his jaw, watching him carefully as he presses his lips to the very corner of Percy’s mouth.
Percy’s breathing changes, but only in the slightest way. His control is impeccable. The day he truly broke Percy’s shields and knew him, every inch of him, knew him so well he would confuse Percy’s very own bones with his…
Not today. Tom has more important things to do today. He casts a charm— it’s almost noon, surprisingly. Tom wonders if the executions will be starting soon, or if some inevitable delay has forced them to stretch out longer. It wouldn’t be the first time. Should he go back and check ? Percy seems to realise something because his eyes slightly widen and his shields drop, slightly, to allow a crack of emotion to flood his face.
What is it with these impulses, the ones that want Percy to not see bloodshed, the ones that whisk him far away, and the ones that let him taste the slight alkaline of his skin? They may grow to be a problem. Tom looks at Percy, looks at him critically now, at the freckles that sprinkle across his skin, at the gold of his signet ring, at his fine maroon robes that would put many purebloods to shame. Still, he is quite unassuming. What is it about Percy that can do this to him?
He lets the thoughts fall for now. Percy is wearing a face he has worn when speaking of his father— he guesses it is one of stress, and again he feels something flicker inside of him. He wants Percy to be thinking of him, not whatever mundanity he is fixating on now, one that requires such focus, such concern. Tom wishes Percy were above such things, but alas, it is like trying to figure out how to make a fish and a bird fall in love. It cannot be.
Tom absentmindedly summons a scrap of random shell before he transfigures it into a large blanket. It is chequered , loud, bright, a facsimile of something he once saw in an old Muggle magazine— it will do, in any case. He shrugs off his robes, takes out his tie, hears the clink of his belt as he unravels the clasp, and then pulls off his trousers.
A glance confirms his suspicions. Yes, Percy is looking at him, no matter how much he tries not to, cheeks lightly flushed. “Tom!” he whisper-yells, and his name has never sounded better than when it comes out of Percy’s mouth.
“I’m just about to go for a swim,” Tom says, his eyes wide and unassuming. “Would you like some assistance?”
Delightful, far too delightful how Percy’s hands tremble as he hides his face and quickly turns away. How lovely. What a lovely thing. He’d like to pry open those fingers, if he could, just to drink in what must be a wonderful expression on his face. Really, he thinks. Percy is gorgeous.
***
The water is very cold. It is also incredibly salty, seeping into his nostrils, sticking to his hair, and clinging to his mouth. Despite this, it is somewhat relaxing, especially with the steady flow of light beating down at his neck. Not as good as, perhaps, a modified cooling charm, but still relaxing.
Tom looks over at Percy and sees a similar feeling on his face. Good. He’d worried, for a moment, when his feet brushed against the waves. Tom supposes he’d have dragged Percy in, anyway, but he’s found that it is always more thrilling when an animal willingly drinks from a spring rather than from a harsh word or touch.
Percy seems to take it surprisingly well, as if the water wasn’t water at all, but rather the very air he breathed. Curious.
Percy glances at him, then glances back. “It feels like…it does feel like your magic, Tom.”
Tom is mildly discomforted. How does he read him so easily? Even Abraxas was selective with interpreting his gestures, his thoughts, and almost none but the very best of his Knights even got but a glimpse at them.
But Percy seems to look at him again, and Tom carefully tucks his thoughts behind some Occulmency of his own. “So it does.”
There is a little strip of water, a little further away from them— darker, absent of waves. Suddenly, Tom feels himself being swept away, further and further, rapidly carried away from the beach.
“Tom!”
He instinctively reaches for his wand— but it, too, has been tucked carefully into his clothing back on the shore. Has he always been this stupid?
It is fine. It is nothing more than a matter of will. Tom breathes in, out, and practises long perfected movements, moving his body forward, back, but every movement is useless— nothing, compared to the water around him— how could something so quiet be so powerful?
It’s almost admirable.
He regrets the thought as soon as his head is dragged underneath.
Magic. That is the first thing. Salt, too, he supposes, salt that is so pervasive and powerful that he feels it seeping into his stomach, pervading his mouth, but he feels an unfamiliar hum of something around him, something dangerous. At this, he hesitates. What is this? He has heard of nothing unfamiliar along this coastline, nothing to indicate danger, nothing to suggest caution. And yet here it is. This strange taste of sunlight, here in waters that it barely reaches. It is oddly familiar. He struggles to place it…it is really, quite familiar…
Coherency flees from him as Tom feels the air in his lungs inhumanly suck out of him, and he makes to scream before he realises that all that does is get more water in his mouth. No. No, he cannot die here, he will not die here, in some unmarked place, with not even a body to occupy his grave. He fights, he slams his body into the surrounding sea, and for a moment, he moves—
But then the ocean pulls back, and he is gone, gone in the waves and wind. He catches a breath. They take two more. He catches another. He does not take another.
A sharp, twisting pain explodes in his chest. It rips at Tom, devours him, demands from him. He needs air. He gets water. Water. Water. More water, more salt, more bitterness in his mouth. Tom could choke if it wouldn’t just lead to more. Tom would fight, if…if…
He is running on a very high platform, he is hiding in the bushes, he is greeted at a large, dark castle, he is talking, at a very fast pace, to a woman who is enthralled. If he had air left, it would be lost, and Tom feels an eerie crawling sensation, as if something is shuddering in his stomach. Is this it? Is this the life he has made for himself? Is this all the world is willing to grant him?
There is something, something that could come to him if he just thought…
His brain feels clouded, something strange inhibiting his mind, his thoughts, his being. Slowly, a sense of serenity comes to him, something calm, something peaceful. So, then. So. So?
Tom feels a sharp tugging at his body, something dragging him away, and he is once again enveloped by familiarity as he violently settles on moist sand.
He catches a glimpse of glorious red hair, and something clicks into place— something fundamental, something overarching, and he stares into hysterical, terrifying eyes. No. No.
Magic is forced into his body, more violent and intrusive than anything that he’s ever known before. It knows every part of him. He feels it worming around in his intestines, travelling down to his bladder, seizing his capillaries. No, No, No—
Tom throws up. It’s lukewarm, tinged with salt and strange chunks, and is the only thing in his body that has not been tinged with this awful, awful force. No. This cannot be happening to him. This is a fate so terrible, so disgusting, so horrifying that he’d never even considered it. He’d rather die. He’d rather die in an unmarked grave than die like this, crowned in glory and honour .
“Tom?”
He feels slow, soft threads greedily latch onto the voice, physically carving out a space in the very seclusion of his soul for him. Just for him. Liquid runs down his face, and he cannot tell if it is the ocean’s or if it is his.
“Tom, please talk to me. Tom!”
Talking. Why talk? Why talk when he has been gagged and bound so well that a time will come when no word will need to be shared before he does his bidding?
“It would have been kinder….” He coughs, a steady stream of mucus desperately clogging his ragged throat, but he is even more desperate to get the words out. There will be a time when even they are torn from him too.
“It would have been kinder to kill me,” he rasps out, and he thinks his voice doesn’t even sound like his own anymore. Nothing sounds like his own, feels like his own, and when he sees Percy recoil, he doesn’t even feel that old, familiar sense of satisfaction.
Yes, it dawns on him, dawns on him with terrible purpose. Why kill? He has worried about death, prevented from it, protected from it, but this is almost certainly more devastating, almost infinitely more cruel. Why kill, when you could do this?
“I’m sorry,” Percy begins, lying down next to him, as if he is the one who has just been condemned. Oh, he knows what Percy might say next, but the words all inexorably fall hollow on his ears. No one is ever sorry for a life debt.