Title: Snake Honey Author: Rhoddlet Rating: R. Do not read without parental permission if you are less than eighteen. Thank you very, very much. Author's notes OK, so it's not all sweetness and light. But no bondage, no graphic sex. Riddle falls in love. This is dedicated to Seri. 'Cuz I'm in love with her. Technical consultation on various canonical points with Seri and the looooovely Cassie. Written: 6.28-29.02 * The thirties are the end of the great wizarding estates. Draco may talk about the Manor, but he spends the months between terms in a (palatial) flat on the wizarding part of Sloane Street furnished with selected bits of the old manse which is quietly rotting into bits in Staffordshire. The cost was too much, at that point, even with house-elf labor, and although the migration to the cities was a bit slower than with Muggles because wizards have always been able to Apparate, there has been the slow drift into the city. By the eighties, something like ninety percent of the wizarding population in Britain is centered in three cities and Hogsmeade -- the Weasleys, the joke goes, make up the other ten percent. The boys of Tom's generation are the last ones, then, to grow up mostly in the countryside. The only boyfriend Riddle ever had, in fact, took him to one of the last great ones. Atwood was years and years older than Riddle, and he didn't even go to Hogwarts -- his brother, Parrish, though, did. Slytherin. Riddle's year, and Parrish and Tom had a rather wary kind of relationship that involved skulking around the Astronomy tower and bed switching. They were only fifteen, after all, and allowed a certain amount of this -- but oh, Tom gets the strangest sensation in his stomach when he sees Atwood for the first time. "My brother," Parrish says, introducing them at the train station while waiting for the Hogwarts Express after summer holidays. "He failed out of Hogwarts, so he went to Durmstrang." Atwood says nothing, just smiles slightly, and shakes Tom's hand. He doesn't look like he's gone to Durmstrang -- Durmstrang boys don't dress like that. Durmstrang boys don't wear coats cut tight to the waist with dazzlingly white shirt-cuffs and little gold cufflinks with a hibiscus engraved on them. Standing on the platform with September wind tugging on his scarf, Tom has a vision of taking those cufflinks off with his teeth and running his tongue along the white wrist that's underneath. He wants Atwood, he realizes. It's the first time he's ever wanted someone like this, and eventually, later in the afternoon, he maneuvers to the two of the alone while Parrish is off seeing about some tickets. They could go off to the bathrooms, step out to the forestlet on the other side of the station -- "I've got a girl, you know," Atwood says, smiling a little. He's smoking and in the most elegant way possible, with two fingers, holding the very base of the cigarette, with the fourth finger and pinky lifted. "I don't care," Riddle answers, hands shaking with want. He's a beautiful boy, he knows it, and Attie, as Parrish calls him, is the most desirable thing he's ever seen. "Let's go. Nobody will take my luggage." "Come for Christmas," Parker throws down the cigarette and grinds it out on the concrete floor. "I don't know if you've got family, but you ought to come. Mum does the whole Yule thing -- ask Parrish to bring you. He'll be so glad for company." Tom just stares at him for moment, then is profoundly glad that Parrish comes back at this moment because he would have thrown either Atwood or himself on the train tracks just to avoid this humiliating embarassment. Once the train gets there, Tom has to lock himself in the boys bathroom for fifteen minutes to stop his hands from shaking -- so angry, so horridly angry that he presses his fingers to the freezing cold windowpane in there until they freeze to the glass and he has to whisper a spell to unstick them. His fingertips are raw for days afterwards, though, and Tom grits his teeth and forces himself to write normally and not to go to the Infirmary. It's his fault for wanting somebody so bad. It's been an unseasonably cold fall. The new Care of Magical Creatures professor doesn't know about Tom being a Parseltongue, and he lets Tom's group tame a spectacled fer de lance Bothrops atrox spetaculii for their fall semester project. On the first afternoon where they're supposed to be working on taming it with Containment Spells and Pacification Spells, the rest of the boys head off to watch the Slytherin Quidditch practice. Tom explains the situation to the snake, then sets it on a rock in a sunny spot and studies for his Transfiguration exam out in the field. When it gets too cool for the snake, he tucks it in his pocket and walks back to the Creatures House with it purring like the most venomous, two-footlong cat in the world. "You're very warm," the snake informs him. "Mammals tend to be. I shall be very cross, by the way, if you bite me." "Even warmer than a mouse. And they're lovely-warm, but don't worry. You gave me such a lovely free afternoon." The snake tastes Riddle's hand, which is lying next to him in the pocket because the sun has faded and the night wind is picking up. "You're even warmer than the heated rock in my cage." Another gentle kiss, and Riddle strokes that lovely, silken head. "So warm. I can taste the love in your blood." There really isn't a particular distinction in Parsel between taste and smell, but Riddle still pulls his hand out of his pocket. "I haven't got it any love." "A snake's tongue doesn't lie." "Snakes do though." "Not to you. To each other maybe. How could we lie to you or disobey you? Do you disobey God?" For Tom's birthday, Atwood sends a Venetian glass ornament. It's pink and white millefiori, spelled to be flexible, use it like a bookmark, he says, and it comes in an envelope that's pasted with foreign stamps. Atwood talks about Italy -- he graduated from Durmstrang last year with an overriding ambition to be warm again, he says, and he's now in southern Europe. Traveling. Disgracing my mother and spending my father's money in places of ill-repute. How is Hogwarts, he asks, in this long-legged scrawl with funny flourishes. I hope my brother has asked you to Christmas at the house because I will go mad if it's just the three of us in that rattling old house. "Italy," Riddle whispers, the thin paper rattling in his hands. He's never been out of the country while Atwood writes about gondolas like boys talk about brooms. There are leaning towers. The Italian Renaissance, sneaking around the Sistine Chapel after hours with an invisibility cloak, sunshine so heavy that it feels like honey on your face in the morning, and this last particularly haunts Riddle. It distracts him in class; it makes him scatterbrained and clumsy, and when they serve honey and brown sugar on new bread for dinner, Tom licks his finger and thinks of Atwood, of Atwood in Italy before he can help himself. So, one afternoon, when he's supposed to be training the snake to spell out letters and point to hidden sources of water, he goes down and takes all the letters and pictures and the bookmark and burns them on the fringe of the Forbidden Forest. Tom forces himself to pile them neatly on the ground. Letters underneath. Then envelopes, rolled into tubes for easier burning, then the little bookmark on top with the frost-hard ground underneath all this, and standing there with the November wind licking at heels through the thin gown, Tom promises that this is the last word he'll whisper to Atwood. Ever. "Incendio." Tom walks away. But comes back the next day and finds the bookmark, only slightly melted at the fringes, sitting on the white bed of ashes, so he goes and finds a pair of flattish stones and smashes it between them. His hands are shaking so hard, though, that he misses a little and ends up smashing his own fingers and getting splinters of glass in his fingers. That evening, he's sitting by the fireplace, sucking the shards out of them with Parrish sitting on the other side of the fireplace. It's the second time he's bruised his fingers for this boy. He's never so much as suffered a cut for another human being, and here he is with tender fingertips and glass underneath his nails for Attie Parker. It's puzzling, but then, Parrish looks up from his magazine. "Come home with me for Christmas holidays." "Stop teasing me." "Come home with me." Parrish looks at the magazine, turns a page. "My father is going to be there." "So?" "I shall be bored out of mind, especially since Attie won't come home if I don't bring a guest" Parker has blue eyes, normally, but they're brown by firelight. Long, dark lashes that cast triangular shadows on his cheeks -- Tom wonders, in a sudden surge of the heart, whether Atwood's lashes do that too. Perhaps. They're brothers, after all. "He hates my father, and Dad just wrote to tell us all that he'll be back from Johannesburg in time for the holidays." The house, indeed, is decorated like a big-game hunter's house. There are stagheads, both with fur and without, everywhere; there is an entire room in the west wing devoted to nothing but trophies. Zebras, wildebeest and a Cape Horn buffalo with horns as wide as Riddle with his arms fully outstretched. A lion in the front "My father is a very keen hunter," Atwood explains, with his hands in his pockets. It's the fifth day that they've been at the estate; he came back the second day after Riddle arrived, and their father was supposed to be back already, but for some reason, is not. "I suspect it's because we're actually very recent money, and on top of that, he's a Squib. He must have a way to prove that he's a man since it's quite well known that my mother will fuck anything that's upright and has a penis." "I know," Tom says, smiling a little. "She tried to kiss me yesterday." Then, he says, with a desperation that makes even him quiver. "Touch me. Why won't you? I --" Atwood looks at him. "I'll kiss you," he says, finally. "I'm not afraid." So Atwood kisses him. Presses him up against the dark cabinetry, wraps his hands around the thin little body and kisses him until they're both gasping and bruised and there's a little blood running down Tom's lip from where they've split because they're so dry. But that's nothing compared to High Mass at the local Anglican church. Before the ceremony, the choir director catches sight of Atwood lounging against one of the columns in the nave and he makes Atwood join them. "We're light on the tenors, and you're the boy with the honey voice -- that is, if you haven't ruined it with liquor and cigarettes. But come on up; I think we've got an extra robe in your size." Atwood winks at Parrish and Tom equally, then follows the choir director up the twisting stairs to the choir loft. And oh, it's glorious -- midnight. Tom has never even so much as been in a church before, and this with its ancient stone walls and vaulting ceilings, the candles that are as thick as his forearm, and O Regem coeli lifting from the throats of the boys. . . There Atwood is, taller than all the other boys by a good head and shoulders but stepping forward for the solo as if he had never run away from the little village church and the white robes with a lace collar. If his voice is a little rusty and he stumbles a little over the old Latin words, Tom's eyes are shining too bright for him to hear. Afterwards, when they stagger out into the cold courtyard, breaths steaming after the hotpacked church, Atwood throws an impartial arm around Parrish and Tom and declares that he thinks the new year's going to be all right. Tom closes his eyes and promises that it will be. He makes the same promise when Atwood sneaks into his bed that night. Parker lays him flat out on the the white sheets that are cool with moonlight, then warms every inch of him and makes Tom ache and shiver so that he has to leave the bed and throw upon the windows to let some of the winter air in or he'll melt. Tom grips the edge of the window, runs his fingers along the cold metal edge and feels the breath shrink in his lungs. He has to forcibly remember to breathe -- it'd be easy to forget, being this happy. "I'll take you hunting tomorrow. I don't suppose you've shot before?" Atwood says, lazily, from the bed. The moonlight is too bright on the snow; Tom shuts his eyes and grips the edge of the window fiercely. "I'd like to, but I've never done it." "Good," Atwood smiles. Even in the dark, even with his eyes closed and half-blind from the moon on the snow, Tom knows that there is a flash of teeth, lips curving in a smile. Atwood holds out a hand from the tangle of sheets. "Then you won't have any bad habits about shooting, but come back to bed. I've got some to teach you." Atwood is whispering about it into Tom's ear until dawn comes. Brown hares, white snow, briar ravines, and how tricky it is hunting without dogs. Hunting with dogs is like cheating, unless it's pheasant because they you really don't have a shot at all, and boar, but you hardly get boar in this part these days. The only place where you can get wild boar is at a preserve, and they're dreadfully expensive and not for beginners, anyway -- Tom dreams of quail and stags with the heads of boars and the wings of doves, and wakes late, at ten, with Attie is gone. Master Attie is downstairs eating breakfast, the house-elf tells him, and no, he cannot bring Master Tom a tray. When Master Parker is at home, breakfast is served in the dining hall at nine AM sharp, and he has Atwood's nose, Parrish's mouth, and red-faced to boot. He's wearing twill and isn't reading the Prophet at breakfast -- some Muggle newspaper. "By the way, Attie," Mr. Parker says, when Tom comes in and looks at the empty table cleared of dishes, with Atwood sitting, head bowed and red-faced between his mother and his father with Parrish on the other side -- there are four chairs. "I hope you haven't forgotten that you're getting married later this month? Have you picked out a girl yet?" Tom looks quickly, and he sees Mrs. Parker smile into her teacup. Her eyes are the color of dishwater, of the glaze on the porcelain -- so pale they don't exist. Rather like those of snake's really. Snakes don't have pupils. The world is full of snakes, it seems. "I thought you changed your mind," Atwood says. "I changed my mind again." When Atwood sets the teacup down on the table, it rattles, spilling tea all over his hand and on the tablecloth. As flees up the stairs, his hand brushes Tom's, just vaguely, the faintest passage of fingers past fingers. He trips on the third stair, goes flying, then picks himself up and keeps on running. Nobody turns to look after him, but Mr. Parker looks up from his newspaper. "Tom, it's been wonderful having you around. Is there anything you'd like to do before we take you back to the train station? You're due for the orphanage at Glenbury, I believe?" When they're loading up the car in the driveway, there is a crack from inside the house which makes the window-panes rattle. Mr. Parker doesn't look up -- Tom does and finds Parrish staring blankly from a second-story window. Parrish's hand closes briefly about the window frame, then he shuts the window and goes back inside. Parrish doesn't come back for the spring term. That spring, Tom summons the basilisk up from the depths of Hogwarts. The moon is shining through the windows when it spills out into the floor -- just the head, actually, and it comes slithering out into the wash of silver. It raises that enormous head and looks him over, tastes him at the cheek and throat and then his outraised hands, and bows its head before him. "Master," it whispers in a sound that shakes Riddle to the soles of his feet, that fills his ears with images of silver and glory. There is no distinction in Parseltongue between sight and hearing; snakes are deaf only in the mammalian sense of the word. Sounds come to them as vibrations, as tremors of the ground and shifting of the air. "I've waited so long for you -- I'm so cold. Give me some warmth, Master." "Well," Riddle says, stroking that blunt snout and counting the labial scales and the scutes. He kisses it gently. "I haven't got any."