Motivation ⌁ Tom Riddle ✔

34

My hand slipped off the door handle as his words hit me. As though he filled parts of his words with extras to cover up what he was saying to me. I didn't look behind me, but heard him stand from the green armchair.

"You don't understand, Abigail," Tom's hand wrapped around my arm and he tugged me away from the door. The way he said my name sent somersaults to my stomach.

"Understand what?" I asked, gently yanking my arm out of his grasp.

He didn't seem to notice - his eyes were too focused on my face, as though he were trying to memorise every small detail, every flaw. He suddenly stepped closer, his face hardening. I wanted to step back but my legs wouldn't allow me to. I was frozen on the spot yet I didn't know why.

"You don't understand how bad it is. These feelings, they all just..." he suddenly paused, air exiting his nose fast and quick, and he looked like he wanted to get straight to the point without messing up. "I want to crush - just...I want to end people who try and harm you - no do not talk. Let me get this out before I change my mind. I want to end those who try and harm you, and not unlike you, I don't understand that myself. It fills me with as much hatred as I already have for human beings and it clouds my mind with nasty, putrid thoughts. Someone like you'd faint straight away if you knew what I was thinking, Abigail. I don't want to feel this way - I really don't. I despise myself for it. If you knew just what I wanted to do to that foul leech. It's like this..." he paused again, his desperate eyes finally leaving my face and darting to all sorts of spots on the floor. "You know how I am. You understand the darkness I must be feeling yet whenever you walk into the room...I cannot even say it," he mumbled, pursing his lips in anger. He flailed his arms around as he half ended his sentence, his eyes finally looking into mine again. "Just...you just give me this strangeness that not even I -"

My feet leaping off the floor made Tom interrupt himself as he staggered back slightly, my arms enveloping themselves around his shoulders and my face burying itself in the crook of his neck. Tom seemed to be frozen. He didn't move. He barely even breathed. I still stood there, though, my arms around him, face burying deeper into him, waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Until I grew worried of Tom not breathing, I began to step away when Tom forced me back into him, arms crushing me half to death. The feeling of despise for Tom from the idea of him turning me into a horcrux immediately melted away. I could tell he was sorry, guilty. He didn't even have to speak for me to know that; I could see it all over his face. Plus, he was afraid of telling me the night before.

"It's OK," I told him. "I get it."

I pulled away slightly, still in his arms, and my eyes flickered downwards, and I began to lean in to press my lips to his. He didn't move. I felt him staring at me though I wasn't looking into his eyes. They felt like lasers and me, I felt like a fool. But I never reached his lips. Tom grasped my arms and gently pushed me away, not letting go of me, but shaking his head slowly.

A brick fell in the pit of my stomach and shame washed through my skin. Not a word could float into my mind that could describe the way I was feeling - other than embarrassed.

"I - I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me. Why did I do that?" I spoke more to myself than to Tom, and soon afterwards I found myself muttering nonsense to myself.

"It doesn't matter," Tom said loudly, and I snapped out of it and bit my lip. "Your friends are probably waiting for you. Go on."

Nothing more than defeat filled inside me, and I felt my shoulders sag. I was unable to understand why I had suddenly felt so disappointed at how the situation had ended up, but I forced a smile before spinning around toward the door.

I didn't get very far.

I heard a faint, "oh, what the hell," and my arm was gripped so tight I almost screamed if I had not been pulled toward the sudden force, and a pair of soft lips were smothered over mine.

I groaned at all the mixed signals and confusion Tom was making me feel, but I hadn't done it very loudly. Content bubbled in my stomach and my heart skipped twenty beats. Not to mention how weak my legs began to feel and how I almost stopped breathing; had I not gripped Tom I might've just fallen in the middle of the kiss. But nonetheless I returned to kiss I hadn't expected the actually want.

Tom's hand left my arm and planted itself gently on my cheek, the other resting on the back of my neck underneath my hair. The kiss deepened and my hands naturally found their way in places without me even noticing - one gripping his top at his chest and the other crept to the back of his neck. The kiss went on for what felt like years but was really minutes, our mouths fighting for dominance and our tongues at war. This was something I had not expected to, dare I say it, repeat itself.

Tom pulled away unexpectedly, and I felt a little satisfaction at the fact that this time he was slightly out of breath, his lips all plump. Disappointment filled me again.

"Don't think this changes a thing, Benjamin."