Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter ten: Antinomy

I got no more time to hear what you think about me,
because all your words are so cold, so callous, so clean.
In the moment, you could be honest, you could wake up, up,
but your jealousy is more blind than luck.
And you could be my enemy, and you could be my judge,
if you could start remembering all the time that you used up.
My Enemy - CHVRCHES, Matt Berninger

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He hadn't been able to stop himself. A cold, sneaking, calculated voice, his oldest friend, had whispered in the back of his head as he watched her, trying to warn him, trying to make him listen. Luna had surprised him with the ease with which she had both obtained the violin and placed herself in harm's way for a stranger. He had not arrived to the concert expecting to leave without cursing Mendes in one way or another. He could manipulate and charm and drip with duplicitousness, but sometimes violence was the most expedient way of accomplishing that which needed to be done. He had not seen how any way other than intimidation would secure him the violin. Luna had. Her own talents were so far removed from his own.

Tom had ignored the cold voice, letting gin and want muffle it, even as it told him that she knew he was lying about not intending to use the Cruciatus Curse, that she must know better. She always knew better. It was so easy to ignore everything else when she looked at him like that.

Ah, and then she had said she had missed him. Like she would miss a part of herself, like she would miss a lung. He understood what she meant; she was speaking words that made sense to him and that played along the tune of what he was ashamed to know he wanted to hear. He knew what it was to be without a part of himself, and he knew what it was to be without her.

That critical, icy voice inside his mind rose above a whisper when he moved closer to her, reminding him that she could not be trusted, that she was the most dangerous thing he had ever seen, Acromantulas and Basilisks be damned.

But he ignored this as well, his fingertips touching her pale skin. The pulse in her throat beat against his hand, flitting along at a hummingbird's pace, pumping her blood, much purer than his own, through her veins, and she looked just as fragile as a little bird in the moonlight. A forgotten part of himself was stirring, hot and cloudy as a summer thunderstorm, drowning out the cold voice telling him no, telling him he mustn't. Curses, but he wanted her. The need he felt for her astonished him in its sharpness, and it was only then that he accepted that he had always felt it more at the level of a dull ache, but it had always been there. He had wanted her for years.

He knew he could have her, too, but he wanted to make her say it - as punishment, he supposed, for leaving him. And when she did, the cold voice screeched at him in judgement, in admonition, in disgust, a hateful wail unheard, even as his long fingers tangled into her long hair, demanding more and more of her.

He was out of control, driven by the refuge he found in her kiss. She had always cast a certain protection, a certain forgiveness, and a certain acceptance. To be touched by her, by someone so unlike himself, had always been in some ways a redemption and a belonging offered to him that he knew he did not deserve, and the feeling hadn't waned since that last time they had touched like this so long ago.

It was only when Luna pulled away from him for air that he forced himself to pause. She blinked up at him with the dazed, heavily-lidded look unique to a woman who had been thoroughly kissed by her lover, her pale cheeks flushed, her back against the railing of the Serpentine Bridge. He took a breath and licked the taste of her off his lips. His fingers twitched at his sides, longing to reach for her the way they so often longed for his wand.