delmartini - Tumblr blog

delmartini · 17 days ago

Text

Faraway Lands ☾𖤓 Tom Riddle x Reader

summary | At a distance, he can see the window he likes to sit by. And if he closes his eyes, he can see the shells you place in an orderly fashion. On the windowsills and the mantelpiece.

note | a fluffy, kinda sad tom riddle one-shot. it's an older tom and reader insert, and ooc tom. one or two suggestive lines. it's romantic and references to tom's past alongside him trying to grapple with it in the present. i can't think of anything else to mention, will update later if required. I hope you enjoy reading it and let me know what you think, thanks :D

word count | 1,319

☾

In faraway lands lived the victors—girls whose voices traveled far, enchanting boys and their beautiful horses. In those faraway lands, the sun never set, and the trees were always in sight. Such sweet song and such sweet merry, faraway lands such as those were, at best, imaginary.

Perhaps your voice wasn’t enchanting, and you didn’t know if it traveled far. But he had turned to look at you. A distant sight, pale. Slightly hunched, sitting by the shore. The sun shied away this morning from his presence, so you came to grace him with yours.

His choice of clothing was unassuming yet out of place. Trousers with a shirt that was as pale as he was. Or perhaps as he had been. The sun had taken a fancy to him when he first came here, all steely eyes and unruly hair, and it had turned him into something its own. All the skin the sun had touched was left gold-like. Still pale, but warm. When he looked at you, squinting when the sun cupped his face, you didn’t know what to look back at. He had been so pale once that now all color seemed to be their truest when dancing across his face. The reds were their most vibrant when your fingers brushed across his skin, and the blacks of his eyes were as true as the night sky.

You hold out your hand to him, and he takes it, like the first time. One foot follows the other as they support him up, and then, not knowing what else to do, are nudged by yours into a gentle pace.

“Does the sand not bother you, Tom?” you inquire, watching as both your feet leave imprints that never last.

Hearing no response, you look up to him and find him smiling. Eyes closed, head bent slightly. He lets out a gentle hum that answers your question, and you resume looking at the footprints, smiling the same.

One pair of feet was smaller than the other, and their prints were more distinct, too. Only because you were pressing them into the soft sand. His thumb draws runes on your hand, and you brush sand onto his foot. He brushes away the gesture with what feels like a laugh.

“No, it does not.” He responds, deciding to swing your hand with his to that same slow rhythm. Eyes closed languidly.

“And what of the sea?”

His brows quirk a little bit as one of yours raises in question.

“What of it?”

“Does it bother you?”

Both of you had spoken of everything under the sun, and now you settled under it in comfortable silence. All words had been said, and all you were left with were pleasantries. Oh well, you liked to hear him hum just the same.

What of the sea would bother him? Would it be its vastness? Or the salty air it brought with it? The air that made blouses cling to your form?

Perhaps that was why he took such great pleasure in taking them off of-

The sound of another hum interrupts you, and it feels intentional on his part. You came too close to an answer, one too alike his own, you imagined.

Half expecting no response again, you look up at him with annoyance that doesn’t meet your eyes because his do. You blink in happy surprise.

“Sometimes.” He says, gaze affixed on you. It had been the air then. And it wasn’t, too.

His eyes were as true as ever. They travel across your face. Searching for a hint of you being convinced by his reasoning.

“It washes away the footprints.” You murmur.

His eyes still.

“But we’ll be here to cast new ones every day.” You smile.

You were never convinced. His eyes rest on your lips, and your smile isn’t teasing. The little mole on your lip, maybe.

He doesn’t ask the question, and so you answer for him. “And when we won’t be here anymore, we’ll have grown tired.”

No. It was weary, your smile.

Your thumb grazes across his hand, your arms swinging slower than before. The pace of his mind had picked up, and your reasoning was ever the more honest as it was bitter. His eyes avoided yours to meet the sea and closed when he realised there was no expanse he could stare back at.

He wondered if he agreed with you.

You stall on the trail, and his feet follow yours. Turning to face him, you watch his eyes rest on a spot behind you. Your fingers brush the length of his brow, the bone, and the scar from when he fell down a staircase. They come to rest on the apple of his cheek. Warm and smooth, touched by the sun.

At a distance, he can see the window he likes to sit by. And if he closes his eyes, he can see the shells you place in an orderly fashion. On the windowsills and the mantelpiece. He goes on to identify one of them, and you know the rest. Sundial, Cowrie, Nautilus. Murex, too. Of the family Muricidae, you tell him. And you glow with an opalescence while you are at it.

Mundane, without a doubt, but he was never tired. You’ll have grown tired of musing of seashells and walks by the shore, and maybe one day, if he let the thought fester and become corporeal at night, him. He’ll then wake up to have found you gone, your touch cold, lips blue.

But he would never be tired of the seashells or of you.

He didn’t love life and certainly not as ardently as he loved a voice that sang of shells, but life he had held on to in practice. Life brought war, and it brought up a boy in a world Tom had dreamt of in cold sweat. When he had woken up, he was forced into a world where the sun never set and where you were always at sight. A world where he was a man as real as your eyes that bore into his.

Life squandered his efforts to prove the both of you as substantial, washing away distinct footprints each day. But life was all he had, and all that proved to him that he was existing and actual. That you were existing and actual. All victorious smiles and joyous gait.

A life without you was, at worst, unimaginable and imaginary at best, he hoped.

The sea bothered him a great deal.

You wipe a lone tear of his cheek, and he feels as if you had known all along that it would. Your hands leave his face and embrace all of him instead. He holds on to you with love.

He has no choice but to agree with you.

You hear the seagulls, and you hear him breathe, softly as ever, into the crook of your neck. He hears you hum, a tune that reminds him of a musical box from his childhood. All it ever did was lay quiet at that girl’s desk, whose name he did not remember. He had decided then that it would be happier with him. He’d wind it when no one listened and when the walls of the orphanage didn’t care to.

He had decided now that he was happier with you. With your hand all his to hold, and your voice, for all seas to hear. It would travel far, and he’d always come back to it. To you. To the mornings when you kissed him and to the nights when he’d kiss you. All blouses his to take off, all skin his to bear witness, and all gasps his to shush alone.

Who’d hear me, you would ask, stopping him with a finger on his lips. And so, he would go on to tell you of boys in faraway lands and their beautiful horses.

𖤓

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x oc #harry potter #voldemort #oneshot #tom riddle fluff #tom riddle oneshot #harry potter fanfiction #tom marvolo riddle #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle x you #hp fanfic #creative writing #writeblr #writing

28 notes · View notes