Chapter Text
Harry has always compared the taste of blood to chocolate.
It is, maybe, a bit cliché to liken it to candy, but for Harry, it isn't about its sweetness. Blood is not sweet. There is something rich, something decadent to the iron flavor when one becomes a vampire, and that is what sits on his tongue, glides down his throat, and keeps him fed every evening until his next kill.
Tom Riddle, he finds, is better than chocolate. He is something unnamable, richer to Harry's senses than any wrist Harry has ever sipped from. He makes Harry, for all his carefully erected walls against his hunger, want more.
Harry lifts his mouth from Tom's slender wrist. A soft buzz hums beneath his skin.
He was careful not to spill a single drop of blood. All he needs to do is glide his tongue over the twin puncture wounds in that pale flesh, and it heals.
"Well?" the boy purrs, his hand on Harry's shoulder. He stands with Harry in a pub off Knockturn Alley. It isn't where Harry would have chosen for them to meet, yet he can't deny that the humans here are less likely to ask questions.
Tom is young, barely graduated Hogwarts. He has his entire future in front of him, yet he flirts with death. So easily, Harry could lose control… It is a wire thin line that he walks in managing his hunger. Already, he longs to bite that wrist again, to draw deeper than a sip, to pull it so far into himself that it lingers for an eternity.
"Sanguini told me about you," Harry murmurs. "You want to travel the world. Is that why you want me as your 'bodyguard'? Protection?"
"And to pay the way," Tom says.
"To pay the way," Harry repeats. He reaches out—tucks a curl of Tom's hair behind his ear. Tom's dark eyes widen at the familiar gesture that Harry hasn't earned, but he doesn't pull away. He's not afraid of Harry. Good. "You think your blood is enough for such an arrangement?"
"Of course, it is." Tom's lashes lower to half-mast. "You tasted it. You know."
Harry does know.
Just as he knows Sanguini has remained enamored of Tom since he sipped from the boy's wrist a year ago. He'd gone to one of Horace's parties again, content to let Horace show him off to the children.
Sometimes, when the children leave their precious school—a school Harry hasn't graced with his presence in centuries—a few will choose to seek out Sanguini. They think they're interested in eternal life. This is the first time one of them has approached Harry.
"He won't stop talking about you," Harry says. But Harry is… fine. Sanguini must have had far more than one sip. "Maybe I don't want that for myself."
Tom steps closer. Harry closes his hands around his thin, delicate waist. The boy is so tall, yet so slender. His scent tantalizes Harry, inflames him—Harry would like nothing more than to sink his fangs into the ivory column of Tom's throat.
"Don't you?" Tom asks. "Sanguini has told me about you, too, Harry Potter. The last of your bloodline—able to walk in daylight. How lonely it must be, to face all these years as the only one of your kind."
"You would be my companion," Harry murmurs. "Distract me from eternity. In return, I will care for you as we travel to where you wish, and protect you—something I doubt you need. You seem more than capable of protecting yourself."
Tom smiles. "You flatter me, Harry."
Harry glides the tip of his nose over the boy's cheekbone. "I have stated your terms correctly?"
"Yes," Tom breathes. A flush coats his sharp cheekbones, and his pupils are dilated. Harry's natural pheromones are affecting Tom—drawing him in, marking him as prey.
The tips of Harry's fangs touch his lower lip as his control erodes that much further.
He steps back, releasing Tom. "No."
Tom pouts. "Why not?"
"You taste too good," Harry says. He lifts Tom's hand so that he may kiss the back of it. That is all he intends to do, yet he finds that his lips slide over the thin skin of Tom's inner wrist without conscious thought. "It's dangerous."
"Does that not make it more exciting?" Tom's breath runs short.
They both shudder as Harry's tongue rubs along where he'd last left puncture wounds. The skin remains unblemished, begging for Harry's fangs to pierce through it again. They graze—Tom's pulse throbs under his lips—his blood is so close to the surface—
Harry trembles as he kisses Tom's wrist.
"No," he whispers. "Not yet."
He leaves the seedy bar on Knockturn Alley with speed a human's eyes won't be able to track, but he doesn't stop thinking about the taste of Tom's blood.