FLORICIDE| tom riddle

sette

When the sun sets and the sky is coloured with splashes of sangria and flax, Agnes heads to the library, deep mahagony and parchment scents filling her core. In the big run, her soul emancipates the awakening of rotten aliveness, thick and suffocating, but aliveness nonetheless.

Perhaps fate has sought to reach it out to her now, when his cinammon perfumes into her senses and a familiar feeling rises up within her.

She doesn't look at him and nor does he. She doesn't speak to him and neither does he. But what he does is take her wrist in a swift clasp.

He wants something.

"I don't want to sleep with you, Tom," she says quietly, reaching out for a book.

He raises an eyebrow at her. "What makes you think I want to have sex with you?"

"The last couple of times when you attempted to seduce me, probably."

"Well I don't want to sleep with you."

Agnes burns up with humility but doesn't want him to feel satisfaction so she blows him a kiss. "What do you want then?"

"I'm glad you asked that." He leans against the wall, arms crossed as he sets his eyes on her. She rolls her eyes.

"Your home is in Salerno, yes?"

Her breath catches. "You've done your research haven't you?"

"That's one way to put it."

"Do you like me, Tom?"

He tips his head to the side, incredulity etched on his god like features before he barks a laugh, cold and curt- just like him. "You're not worthy enough for me to fancy you."

"And yet you come here, asking me for a favour, all the while attempting to know my life."

"Who's to say I don't do my research on others? And who's to say I need favours?"

Agnes turns so that she faces him, book clasped cradled like a baby. "Then what are you doing here?"

"Take me to your home."

"No."

His first mistake is assuming that she has a home. His second mistake is assuming she'll take him there. His third mistake is assuming she has a home.

"You will," he says as he steps close, "take me to your home."

"Suck a dick, Riddle."

A few silent beats fast as she attempts to discern his stone cold face. Then his fingers encircle her wrist in a harsh way and he pulls her out of the library and everything happens so quick that she can't utter a single sound.

"The girls' lavatory, really?"

"Shut up and get inside."

"No, I'm getting out of here."

He all but pushes her, and then pushes her down a slide.

Where she is right now, it's cold and dark and reeks of ancient cruelty with its emerald abyss and its aegean ground.

Agnes swallows her shakiness. "Riddle."

His voice breaths quietly and blows a gust of cold in the existing tundra. "To your right is me. To the left is your death. Tell me, which direction do you prefer, love?"

She keeps her eyes up. "Both directions will eventually lead me to my death, will they not?"

She hears his footsteps and the scent of cinammon overpowers her as he places a finger on her chin and tips her head up so that his eyes meet hers.

"I am a slow death. That one is not."

She places her palm on his cheek, poisoned stardust against her life. "You're not exactly   validating yourself here."

"I will hurt everything and everyone you know." His words are sincere and she smiles.

He's needy. It's unusual. He needs her.

So she tears away his grasp and turns to her left.

And in a split second he yanks her back and they're both on the ground now and her heart beats fast but her mind is calm and his eyes appear wild as though he didn't expect this. Of course he hasn't.

She doesn't want to die. She wants to live. And he knows that.

But he's also underestimated her.

"What were you doing?" His words are a haze and his hands cup her face, thumbs against her cheeks.

"Obeying you."

His lips reach hers in a hasty embrace but its anything but an embrace, it's waves crashing against hard ruthless rocks, it's blood dripping on a wound, and it's cherries and alcohol, and pecks and titters.

She kisses back equally as hard and it's melted candles and crunched up roses.

She doesn't understand anything of this. She doesn't understand him. And clearly, neither does he.

But if she can rattle him like this, if she has the power to, she can do anything.

Their breaths are mingled, cinammon and vanilla in a delicious mix, foreheads pressed against each other.

"Okay," she whispers. "I'll take you home."

It's the lies and manipulation that threads them together.

-

a/n

hi besties sorry for the very very very late update. im gna try writinf another chapter this weekend. ily<3