Work Text:
Just outside the perimeter area of Caesar’s Palace’s elaborate “Chapel of Juno” premium wedding venue, a knot of eager paparazzi gathered, murmuring amongst themselves and trying to catch a glimpse past the privacy screens with their zoom lenses.
”When are they coming out?”
”Are we absolutely sure they’re here?”
”My source—Michael—he’s worked here a long time. He’s reliable.”
Acting on a red-hot tip, they were here today to get exclusive photos of the postnuptial bliss of London’s hottest couple: Tom Riddle, professional poker player on an unprecedented winning streak, and his boyfriend Harry Potter, fashion-house brand ambassador and chat show darling for his down-to-earth charm. Rumors of an engagement had circulated since their whirlwind romance kicked off two years ago, but today—with both of them scheduled to be in Vegas on business and looking almost sickeningly happy together in recent weeks—seemed a safe bet for the big event.
“Look, there he is!”
Every head snapped up as a skinny man with glasses and a wild nest of messy black hair emerged from behind a screen dressed in a toga (the rumors of a themed wedding were true!), hunching his shoulders and looking around furtively.
”Potter!”
”How does it feel to be a married man?”
”Where’s Riddle? Did he get cold feet?”
”Do you have any comment on the latest allegations of cheating against your new husband?”
”Shit, shit, shit,” the young man yelped—and promptly bolted off into the hotel, dropping the bunch of red roses in his hands. “Catch me if you can, you vultures!”
The chase was on, the crowd of photographers stampeding after Potter as fast as they could while lugging camera equipment (though one enterprising soul stooped to pick up the fallen bouquet for future eBay auction). They followed him through hallways and across courtyards, dodging guests and leaping right through luggage trolleys, until finally they had him cornered in the middle of the casino floor, surrounded by jaded employees and dumbstruck tourists.
”No!” he yelled dramatically, pulling at his draped garment in frustration. “How could this happen!? Why do you buggers always ruin everything? All I wanted was to quietly pledge myself to the love of my life!”
A ripple of unease and confusion went through the crowd. Public celebrity tantrums were very much not Harry Potter’s brand, or even Riddle’s for that matter. Behavior such as this was more the specialty of—
The man in front of them raised his head from its defeated slump and stood up straight, revealing a form that was at least half a foot taller (and significantly broader) than that of Tom Riddle’s adorably petite fiancé. Hazel eyes sparked with mischief behind his designer glasses, and across his face was spread a wide, shit-eating grin that was anything but ‘down-to-earth’.
”Surprise, lads! What, did you mistake me for a different Potter?”
Various loud reactions went up from the audience, from groans that they’d been fooled to excited whispers about the arguably-even-bigger-star they’d just managed to catch.
”Prongs!!!”
“Are the other Marauders here too?”
”Is this a flash concert!?”
Ignoring them all, James Potter—co-leader of the Marauders, the multiplatinum-selling band whose trajectory was as inexorably skybound as the constellations on their merchandise—leapt onto a roulette table with the grace of a stag, leaving several women squealing as they tried to get a glimpse under his toga.
“Spread the word, everyone!” he shouted, voice naturally carrying across the space. “The new Marauders album—our greatest work yet, our baby for the past year of blood, sweat and tears—drops this Friday, July 31st!”
He clicked a small remote hidden in the palm of his hand, and every screen in the casino lit up with a display of an album cover featuring the four band members dressed in leather and furs, snarling ferally with their instruments in front of a live wolf. The words Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day were scrawled beneath in a punk-rock font. The reactions of the casino employees suggested that they had not been in on this prank, and were currently panicking over the state of their digital security operation.
Screams and cheers went up from the crowd. No one had even known the Marauders had been in the studio lately.
“Produced by our brilliant keyboardist Remus Lupin…”
”Moony!”
”He produces too!?”
”He’s so multitalented!”
”…and featuring no less than three tracks co-recorded with the beautiful Lily Evans!”
The casino exploded into absolute pandemonium. As thousands of thrilled vacationers raised their phones to take videos and post live reactions, James surreptitiously withdrew his own from inside his toga and sent a text.
Mischief managed. Should be all clear.
He grinned for the cameras, drinking in the multifaceted satisfaction of a prank well-played, the high of public adoration—and the selfless joy in helping a friend.
After all, he owed Harry Potter—and, okay, maybe Riddle just a little—everything. It was two years ago, after a press conference they’d all organized together (with the two lovebirds being photographed together all over the city and James’s protests that he had a mysterious lookalike dismissed as “just another load of Potter rubbish”, it had become imperative set the story straight before his reputation as a ladies’ man never recovered), that James had casually mentioned (okay, maybe went on about for a quarter hour) his futile struggle to collaborate with the red-haired angel of a singer-songwriter. And Harry had piped up, easy as you please:
”Lily Evans? Oh, my boss, Severus Snape, is friends with her.”
”What.”
“Yeah, she’s really nice. Comes round and performs at all of Fawkes Designs’ charity events for free, takes pictures with the employees. I’m not really into that kind of music, though.”
As James sputtered, desperately racking his brain for what he could offer his fey-eyed doppelgänger in exchange for an invite, Riddle had only smirked and shaken his head, clearly already used to this kind of thing after only six weeks of dating.
”Welcome to the world of Harry Potter,” he’d said, with more than a hint of possessive pride.
*
Across the hotel, in a far more low-key, secluded chapel (though it still featured Italian marble and fresco-inspired stained glass), the actual Harry Potter checked his phone and smiled at the incoming message from the number he’d cheekily labeled Mr. Romilda Vane.
“We’re good to go,” he said, turning to his new—holy shit, holy shit, he still couldn’t really believe it—husband. When he looked at Tom Marvolo Riddle—the long line of his body leaning effortlessly against an Ionic pillar in a bespoke black tuxedo, dark eyes gazing at him with an expression more molten than Vesuvius—he could genuinely believe, for the first time in his life, that the “Potter luck” was real.
”Finally,” Tom sighed, pushing himself off the column and stretching like a predatory cat before the hunt. “I’ll bet the King of the Forest took his sweet time mugging for the cameras again…”
”Tom,” Harry chided halfheartedly. He’d never really understood Tom’s irrational antipathy toward James (he constantly griped that the rockstar was not even attractive and actually looked nothing like Harry, who he praised as beautiful, stunning, a priceless treasure), but he couldn’t bring himself to be too annoyed when he knew very well the reason why his man was so impatient. He could hardly wait himself for them to be alone in the honeymoon suite.
They strolled hand in hand across the lobby, completely unnoticed amid the huge commotion focused on the casino, despite Harry’s unusual, historically-accurate wedding attire.
When he’d told Dumbledore he and Tom were getting married, his old mentor had been over the moon. “My dear boy,” he’d said, looking up from where he was bent over a length of fabric, stitching in thousands of tiny blue beads that twinkled just like his eyes, “I am simply delighted for the two of you. I insist on creating you a couture wedding garment, of course—“
”Sir, we’re eloping in the chapel at Caesar’s.”
”Precisely! Ah, the Roman Empire; such a rich source of historical inspiration. The drama, the decadence, the theatre! I have a vision, my boy, and a vision is exactly what you will be when you meet Mr. Riddle at the altar.”
That little speech had left Harry mildly terrified, but as it turned out, Roman brides actually wore relatively plain outfits, to symbolize their devotion and purity (blech). He’d been pleasantly surprised when Dumbledore presented him with a simple white knee-length tunic, its handstitching and imported silk nonetheless probably making it worth more than a month’s salary. It fit him perfectly, was more comfy than his favorite t-shirt, and let the air circulate freely around his legs in the searing heat of Vegas in July.
(“I cannot believe you told that insufferable old goat about our elopement,” was the first thing Tom had to say when Harry mentioned his boss’s kind gesture. “He’ll probably leak it to the press to get PR for his tacky brand.”
Harry threw up his hands. “Why are you always convinced Dumbledore is up to some nefarious plan? He’s never been anything but nice to you, and he’s an amazing boss. He even let Ron and Hermione have a two-week paid honeymoon when they finally admitted their marriage was real. He made up a fake business trip so I could expense the flight to Vegas!”
”Exactly. It’s obviously a front, my sweet, trusting darling…”)
As for Tom, the only concession he had made to the setting of their ceremony was the laurel crown that, at Harry’s insistence, he’d permitted the officiant to set on his head. Absolutely, positively, 100% worth putting my foot down, he thought, drinking in the sight of the gilded leaves glinting as they peeked out from between Tom’s thick chestnut curls. He looks even more like a bloody Classical sculpture than usual.
“Mr. Vincere! Mr. Felicis!”
Tom and Harry both popped out of their cozy two-person bubble at the call of the fake names they were checked in under. They’d already reached the lift, where a vaguely familiar man in a smart uniform seemed to be awaiting their arrival.
”Wait—Michael? How are you here? I thought you’d—“
I thought you would’ve quit this job and skipped town a long time ago, after the fear of god Tom put in you for the Pansy Parkinson incident, he barely stopped himself from saying.
Tom smiled indulgently down at him. “You may have persuaded me to spare Mr. Corner the worst of my wrath, love, but I kept his contact information in my files. He proved rather useful today in misdirecting the media jackals to the wrong location.”
Harry laughed. “Brilliant! I was wondering how James corralled them so easily!”
“And he has generously kept this lift reserved, so that we may ascend to our suite in privacy.”
A bolt of pure anticipation shot up Harry’s spine and into every nerve ending at the suggestive undertone in those words, like a lightning strike. Holy Jupiter, is that you?
As Tom practically dragged him into the gold-lined elevator chamber, Harry just barely maintained the presence of mind to press a hundred-dollar bill into Michael’s clammy palm. Tom may be of the opinion that the concierge was permanently in their debt, but if anything Harry owed him, from that very first mixed-up room service order of fettuccine two years ago.
The moment the doors slid shut with a quiet hiss, Tom was on him, pressing him up against the wall and sliding his hands all over his body, every touch palpable through the thin tunic. Harry reciprocated with no less enthusiasm, hopping up on the handbar that circled the room at waist height (sorry to any pensioners who grab it for balance later, he thought giddily) to mitigate their height difference and get a better angle. From there it was simple to wrap his bare legs round his husband’s waist, brace his hands on those broad shoulders, arch his neck to grant kissing access to all the most sensitive parts…
He felt slender fingers at his waist, toying with something there.
“Tom, not yet. You know the rules—no cheating.”
Tied loosely around his hips was one of the few embellishments on his minimalistic tunic: a golden rope, richly braided and tied at the front in what Dumbledore described enthusiastically as a knot of Hercules.
“Only the groom is permitted to untie it, on the wedding night,” the old man had burbled, clearly riding the high of one of his all-night binges through university archives for fabulous fashion history details. “It is said to represent the strength of the couple’s bond, as well as the seventy children sired by Hercules himself—“
“Wow, that’s really interesting, Sir,” Harry had interrupted loudly. “Where did you source the fibers for this?”
Personally, Harry thought Tom might better appreciate the legend that as a baby, the hero of myth had tied two huge snakes into a similar knot when they tried to kill him in his cradle.
Now Tom’s oh-so-talented fingers were teasing eagerly at the double loop, bordering on insistent tugging. Tempting as it was, Harry grinned and slapped his hands away. “No cheating,” he repeated.
“Oh, but darling…” Tom purred. “This lift is moving far too slowly for my liking, and we still have”—his eyes darted to the display above the doors—“twenty-five floors yet to go.”
“No. I refuse to risk the integrity of our bond,” Harry said primly. When Tom pouted, he smiled wickedly and grabbed his husband by the wrists, pulling them suggestively in turn to his chest, neck, thighs.
“Don’t be such a grump. I didn’t say you can’t touch me anywhere—and everywhere—else…”
Tom’s expression rapidly cleared, thoughts now plainly turning to just how much could be achieved within a slow-moving twenty-five floors.
As his ministrations began again in earnest, Harry tipped his head back with a blissful groan. Before his eyes fluttered closed, he glimpsed their reflections in the mirrored ceiling, multiple angles of them snogging madly like a couple of shameless drunk coworkers on a business trip—or like two young gods in a fresco, ravishing and reveling in each other’s immortal glory.
*
By the time they reached the suite, they were both too worked up to care about much else than the curves of each other’s bodies and how they felt pressed together—but Harry couldn’t help but notice one last ironic detail.
”Ha,” he huffed breathlessly, once Tom had carted him over the threshold and dropped him onto the wide, cloud-soft bed. “It took us two years, but we finally get to sleep in a high-roller suite.”
”Oh darling, we won’t be doing much sleeping tonight.” Tom was undoing the buttons on his suit blindly, eyes only fixed on Harry as he pulled at the fabric so fast it threatened to tear. Hope the gift shop still sells tacky shirts…
“I dunno,” he drawled, dragging the words out lazily. Something about Tom’s open want, so uncharacteristic for the composed, unreadable card shark, always made him want to push his luck. “I’m awfully tired after that long lift ride. And this bed’s so big—I bet we could even share this one without you ‘accidentally’ touching me all night like last time.”
His husband growled and pounced onto the mattress after him, landing neatly with his arms caging Harry’s upper body. “You wouldn’t dare,” he murmured low, lips grazing his ear.
”Probably not.” He dropped the hard-to-get pretense and seized Tom’s head, his fingers brushing laurel leaves and lush curls as he pulled the man down for a proper kiss. “But this really is one quality California King. We won’t have to worry about this one breaking on us.”
Tom pulled back and regarded him for a moment. “Oh, you think so, do you?” His face was flushed, eyes glazed like Bacchus before a revel; his hands drifted inexorably back to the intricately knotted rope.
“Would you be willing to bet on that?”