Beyond The House Crest - Ominis Gaunt x Reader

Chapter II: Of Touches and Tempest

Slender fingers wrapped themselves around your throat, your pulse quickening beneath their firm grasp. The silhouette of a figure much larger than your own leans down over your trembling frame, pinning your hips in place with their own as their grip on your delicate throat tightens.

Their lips trace a blazing trail across your jaw, only emphasized by the near-darkness of the space. Words remained unsaid, yet their unspoken desires hung in the air like stars in the velvety night sky.

Just as the electrifying tension in the air threatened to wreck you from the inside out, the figure pulled away from your torrid skin and finally met your hungry gaze, revealing an all too familiar pair of milky eyes.

You abruptly jolt awake, pushing away the disarrayed sheets as you gasp for air. Cold beads of sweat cling to your skin which is suddenly too hot and too tight to be confined in.

What in Merlin's name was that?

The remnants of the puzzling dream lingered in your mind like a fragile web of memories. You stood up, pressing your palms against your eyes as if to suppress the images your tired brain had just conjured.

You were at a loss. Disgusted with yourself. Mortified even. Questioning the very essence of your subconscious. An unending, hellish nightmare would have affected you less than this.

Surely it was just exhaustion interlacing with the bizarre events of the day. Just a bad dream, no different than the plethora of others I've had in the past.

Content with that explanation, which oddly felt like you trying to convince yourself of a second truth, you stumbled towards the door leading to the common room. Your entire body was overheating, and you were desperate for a cold glass of literally anything.

The common room was almost completely dark, save for the dim greenish hue filtering through the murky water beyond the tall windows. It was eerie in an oddly comforting way.

You slowly made your way across the cold stone floor, your mind still dazed and only half-present as your head gently swayed from side to side.

"Couldn't sleep?" The resonant voice made you freeze in your tracks, silencing your every fleeting thought as your sleep deprived mind finally put a face to it. Ominis Gaunt. Of course.

You couldn't help but let a quiet, humourless laugh escape you. Of course he would be right there when you wished him as far away from you as possible. Love him or hate him, his timing was aggravatingly perfect.

"Something funny?" He followed up his initial question with another, a hint of confusion present in his tone.

He stood leaning against one of the windows, his head falling back against the cold glass and strands of his usually impeccable hair falling across his forehead in a repulsively endearing way.

"No, not at all." You respond after letting his question hang in the air for a brief moment, the ironic amusement evident in your words. If you weren't so disgusted with your own thoughts, you'd almost find this situation properly laughable. Almost.

"Really?" He turned towards you, taking a step away from the window bathing him in a cool green hue. "You seem rather amused by something."

You hated everything about that moment. You hated him for being there while your mind was in a clearly fragile state. You hated his need to pry information out of you for his own entertainment. You hated the way his features were cast into shadows as he stepped beyond the reach of the window's luminance, reminding you of your godforsaken, wrethched dream. And, most importantly, you hated yourself for how pathetically and inexcusably attractive you found him in that very moment.

You dug your fingernails into your palms, the brief jolt of pain aiding you in regaining a crumb of common sense. Enough to form a coherent response, anyways.

"I'm just here to grab some water. Nothing more." Water was the last thing on your mind. No, your thirst required a lot more than that to be satiated. But you'd rather let yourself dry out and crumble into dust before you'd allow yourself such a weakness.

He let out a low hum in response, taking another slow, almost taunting step towards you. He was somehow able to gauge your mood despite not having his wand with him. His eyes seemed to study you, see through you even, despite being sightless altogether.

This entire situation was ridiculous. It was confusing, awkward, and downright embarrassing. And you needed to remove yourself from it before you said, or Merlin forbid did, something that you'd regret for the rest of your life.

"Good night, Ominis." You tried to keep your tone as neutral as possible. To hell with him, and the dream, and that glass of water you never managed to get. You needed to walk away and sleep this mess off.

"Wait." The pleading undertone of his voice made you stop against your will. It's as if your own body worker against you, trying to compromise the sliver of self-respect you had left to your name.

He walked up to you, slowly, agonizingly, as if knowing how much he was affecting you. He stopped only a step short of you, the air seeming to get lost somewhere in the cavity of your chest as your gaze remained locked on his face.

Unreadable, you thought to yourself. There wasn't a single emotion present across his features as those cloudy eyes gazed into your very soul.

The silence was unnerving. Nothing but the sound of your faint breaths filled the air around the two of you as you stood there. Not saying a word. Not making a move. Nothing was happening, and yet it was too much to handle.

You opened your mouth to say something to fill the agonizing silence, the tension beginning to ache somewhere deep within you. But before you could form even a single sound, he reached for your face with a slow, steady hand.

Silence. Not even a breath dared to go past your lips as his warm fingertips made contact with your cheek. His face still gave nothing away, not his thoughts, not his intentions, and definitely not his emotions. You, on the other hand, looked like a frightened doe caught in the headlights, and you were never more grateful for his lack of sight.

His fingers grazed your cheek gently, slowly tracing the contour of your cheekbone and the line of your jaw. His touch was light, almost nonexistent, but it impacted you no less than a full-on blow to the face would have.

Your mind was screaming at you. To pull away. To push him away. Anything that would put some distance between the two of you. But you were unable to move, your own body betraying you in a moment when you needed it to behave the most.

For a brief moment you considered saying something instead. To question what he was doing. To question why you were letting him do it. But the sensation of his thumb gently brushing against your lower lip shot those thoughts down before they were even properly conceived.

Your heart quickened, unbidden warmth spreading through your veins like wildfire. It all felt so foreign, like discovering a hidden path in your psyche you never thought could exist.

His touch was still feather light, gliding across your lip in seemingly no hurry whatsoever. He seemed oblivious to the fire he was igniting beneath his fingertips, his features as stoic as ever.

But then he suddenly pulled his hand away, the ghostly echo of his touch still lingering on your flushed skin. His brows furrowed, casting a shadow over his bewildered eyes as he brought a hand to his mouth, as if ensnared in pure regret.

He stepped back from you, clenching the hand which caressed your skin a mere moment ago hard enough to turn his knuckles white. His stoic façade dissipated, leaving behind the image of a man overcome by something you were in no state to decipher.

He pressed his lips into a thin line, a muscle twitching in his jaw as he stumbled backwards and damn near ran towards his dorm room.

He left you alone and confused once again. To wrestle your turbulent emotions however you can, alone to sail a sea of uncertainty.

His touch had caught you off guard, momentarily bridging the divide between disdain and something unspoken. You hated him for touching you, and you hated yourself for enjoying it.

"This cannot be happening..." You muttered to yourself as you stood in the darkness, your fingers unconsciously tracing the same path his touch ignited a mere minute prior.