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It started as a whisper in Tom’s skull, a murmur of a voice he didn’t recognise, and it spread like an infection.
But that was love, wasn’t it?
That was beautiful, beautiful love.
Just shaking hands. Mudded thoughts. Three questions in a row answered wrong.
But that was love, wasn’t it?
Mistakes. So many awful little mistakes that, if he had been sober; simply without love curling up through his veins, he would have been angry at himself. More than angry. Disgusted, because he did not make mistakes. Those were for lesser people, with lesser hopes and lesser dreams.
But he could not complain, for he had granted many liberties to love. The object, the cursed object of these feelings had sown them quite against his will, and now they grew like wildflowers in an empty field, spreading up from every inch.
He had not weeded out those fields and so it was his fault that such affections grew uninhibited.
It was his fault that love had wrapped itself around his heart in great tendrils that simply him sick the closer they got to the bone. Burrowing down like insects into wood, taking him over until there was nothing left but feelings.
Awful feelings.
They all said that infections like this could be removed, cut out, but that was only done if they were unpleasant. If they were harmful.
This was not unpleasant.
This was not harmful.
This was gorgeous.
This was torture on the tip of the tongue, barbed wire strung through his stomach like fairy lights until it was bleeding internally. Tom could almost feel it seeping, hot and wet down the walls of his stomach; but what was a little blood, a little tear, and little gash, if not beautiful? If not a true demonstration of the power that love could have. These were just the battle scars that he had always craved, but never yet had the opportunity to get himself. They were victories of their own and he would cherish them.
His ‘friends’ did not think such things.
His ‘friends’ said he was sick.
That this wasn’t love anymore.
This was obsession.
And, oh, it was gorgeous.
They did not understand. They could not understand. None of them had been so deep in love that they reached the other side of that rabbit hole. Obsession was merely love taken to its natural conclusion. The farthest that one could go, the most beautiful thing that one could do was to take love to the very end of the world. To reduce it down to its smallest part.
The glance of an eye.
The touch of a finger.
The corner of a smile.
To take it so much deeper. Love was nothing but chemicals:
Dopamine.
Serotonin.
Oxytocin.
Endorphin.
Love was ripe with limitation. It could only by nature of its existence go so far. Love was boring. Obsession though, that was fantastic.
Obsession was watching Harry until his eyes were burning, thinking about Harry until every contour of his face was stitched into his brain, wanting Harry until his own body was numb from overfeeling.
Watching. Thinking. Wanting.
Just watching. Just thinking. Just wanting.
Just…
Just…
Just…
But love was never enough, though obsession filled the gap well enough.
Tom had let that plant grow inside him, fed it, watered it, and now it bloomed, as gorgeous and as deadly as dead man’s bells. Its roots tangled in his stomach and secreted their poison like a spring, staining his world with yellow headaches that itched beneath his skin.
And it lasted so long.
He had expected it to be ephemeral, like fairy’s wings in the rain, but it had not been. This feeling had just grown taller, and thicker, and fuller inside him; spilling over every edge and filling up every crack.
Harry was what he lived for.
What he would die for.
And there was so much he wanted to know. If Tom just let go of all the rationality in the world, flung himself off that carefully constructed path he always walked, then he could drown in all that he wanted to do.
And it was almost sickening.
That there was something inside him so awful that it was stretching his skin. A monster that he denied existed until it had grown too big to hide, and now it was swallowing him whole, chewing his insides constantly until there were teeth marks stained into every organ. Obsession wore him out, tired him out, but rarely let him sleep, the throbbing always there.
His heart collapsing in on itself.
Over
And
Over
Again.
And sleep did nothing to sate it.
His body was just worn down to the wires that held it together, shredded, grated, things that were frayed at the end and exposed, like an electric wire, and Harry was the water that would cause the deadly spark.
They just had to touch.
And oh, how he wanted to touch.
To touch.
To taste.
To take.
This was perfect obsession.
But people did not see the glory, they only saw what they believed was suffering. They saw pain. They saw him being torn open and split apart.
They did not see the beauty in this brutality.
The wonder of the simple buzzing of his blood, like bees through a field of dead men’s poppies.
They did not understand.
Because obsession was not woven into their bodies. Whereas love was a flimsy thing that came and went, obsession settled, built itself a nest and festered. Obsession was a disorder, an infestation of feeling that ran through families. And Tom was built off rotten men, stitched together with the blood of his ancestors, and it was their obsessions that ran through his veins.
Their wanting for things they could not have.
Things he could not have.
Harry.
Harry was what he wanted but could not have. Harry was his love. Harry was his obsession. His days began and ended with his visage staining the air before his eyes. Whatever stitching held Harry together was slowly threading itself around Tom’s throat.
Like it was Harry himself who was strangling him with love.
Guttering him.
Choking him.
Suffocating him.
Tom had never thought himself a masochist, but his adoration for this suffering was masochistic. Watching what he could not have because it hurt. Because it stung like sticking his fingers into a fresh wound and playing around with all the softness inside of himself.
Torture was such a gorgeous thing.
And the more that Harry ignored him, the more tortuous it became.
Because the paramour of love was not hatred, but apathy. And it hurt. It hurt so much to be ignored day after day after day after day. To be stared at like he was nothing, because no one had ever treated him like he was nothing before.
But Tom would win Harry, eventually, because he always got what he wanted, however hard he had to work for it. He would get Harry between his teeth, get his fingers between his ribs and his hand around Harry’s sweet little heart.
He would snap him out of the apathy.
Just snap him really. Take him apart like a doll, open him up just to understand what Harry really was, why he made him feel like this, because it had to be something inside him.
A reason why he was drawn to him.
Because there just had to be a reason.
And when he found it, well, then the fun would begin.
When he finally knew what it was about Harry that dragged all his insides out, what crushed his lungs and squeezed his heart half to death. When he knew those things, then he could play with them.
He could play with Harry.
Get him to truly feel the same way.
To fall in love.
To fall into obsession.
Perfect obsession.
It was all he could think about, like stars before his eyes, blocking his view from everything else. That single consuming thought that ate away at his mind, burrowing and swallowing him up until he no longer recognised the person that smiled at him in the mirror.
They said this wasn’t healthy.
But this was love, wasn’t it?
That didn’t stop them though.
They said he wasn’t healthy at all.
It was really quite a bore to hear it over and over, a scratching record stuck on repeat. The same condescending tone and haughty stare from all of them, it reminded Tom why he hated his ‘friends’.
They were all just so unbearable.
But Malfoy was the worst.
All because Tom had once made the mistake of letting Malfoy a little too close, and now he was stuck to him like an insect to fly paper. An annoying buzzing in his ear, constant ‘advice’ and recommendations and unwarranted opinions that could only be described as irritating.
Though he at least knew when to shut up.
Unlike the others.
Malfoy was the one who always found him. Lying on someone else’s bed with someone else’s skin under his nails and someone else’s blood on his teeth, because hurting people was the easiest way to make them hurt him back.
“This can’t go on,” Malfoy had said, refusing to sit on the bed, and instead, stayed standing, leaning against the door, just watching with a disdain that was almost palpable.
Abraxas got jealous easily.
“What do you want us to do about him?”
“I don’t want to do anything about him, it’s what I want to do to him, Abraxas, I doubt you’d understand.”
“Fine. What do you want to do to him?”
Tom smiled.
“I want to kiss him and chew him and eat him.”
And Malfoy left him lying on a bed that didn’t belong to him, because Malfoy would never understand hurting.
He would never understand love.
He would never understand the obsession.