Chapter Text
Five years.
That was how long he had been waiting to do this.
Five fucking years.
But tonight, was the night. This was finally the day he was going to get Harry back for what he had done to him.
For such a meaningful day, Tom had half-expected it to be more dramatic, but unfortunately breaking into Harry’s apartment had been far less exciting than he’d envisaged, and certainly far too easy. The sweet old lady in the apartment next door was so kind to let him in when he’d explained he was Harry’s cousin and really needed to the spare key.
It had seemed such an obvious ruse that he nearly hadn’t tried it.
But she’d just smiled so warmly and told him he didn’t need to be that discreet, she wouldn’t judge.
He’d smiled at that, as sweet as saccharine, and come into her apartment. He’d even tried a piece of her lemon drizzle cake served with a cup of Lady Grey, which was lovely, and probably a far, far nicer welcome than he was going to get from Harry.
So, Tom indulged her.
She never got many visitors, and she talked a lot, and one of her cats was eyeing him suspiciously for the entire visit. But Tom was still charming, that mask was old now, and so meticulously decorated that no one through it. So, he talked back, complimented her wallpaper, and praised her cakes, and even admired her cat, and in return, she chatted about the weather, about politics, even about Harry.
As though Tom didn’t already know everything about him.
She was so lovely that Tom left her in exactly the same state as he found her, after all, if he was going to rekindle some amicability in his and Harry’s relationship, it was probably best not to kill off Harry’s neighbours just yet.
He’d wait at least a week.
Inside Harry’s apartment, it was dark; the light switch not where he’d expected it to be, and for a brief second Tom felt his heartbeat pick up. A faint fear, however small, that he’d misread the situation and had stumbled straight into something nasty.
But after a few more steps and little more fumbling, he knew he hadn’t.
Harry’s apartment was just poorly fucking designed.
Going around other people’s houses had always fascinated Tom, particularly when said people were not around. For when people know they have guests coming, they prepare a spectacle. They clean each room with mops and brushes and polish. Whilst they think they are scrubbing their house down to its bones, what they are really doing is coating it in a thick glaze of assumptions.
They are constructing the reality they want people to see.
It is as if they are going to church, where they hold their partner’s hand, and they wear their best clothes, all in the pathetic attempt to hide their sins from God.
Homes were the same.
So, the best time to get to know someone is to look around their home when they are not expecting you, and even better when they are not even there themselves. Like that, you can see who they truly are. Whether they are clean or messy, whether they are particular or careless, whether they like the other people who fill their lives, or whether they despise them.
On the scale of homes Tom had been in, Harry’s apartment was – tolerable. If Tom had to describe its features, he would have said it was devoid of any; a starkness hung about it, as though bare walls and beige furniture could achieve the anonymity that Harry so craved. As though, by buying the most boring colours in the world, he could assimilate himself with them, and blend into the background of humanity.
It was sweet, really.
That he thought he could hide.
As Tom walked around, as few lights on as necessary, he ran his fingers over the worktops and placed his hands on the desk. The place was so empty, he was honestly surprised that his fingers were not sheened with dust and spun up with spider’s webs. It was like looking around a display piece with few additional home comforts. But there was another feeling too, strung through the very atmosphere of the apartment, as thick and heady as if there were a gas leak.
That, almost palpable sensation, was that Harry had done his utmost to keep Tom out of this apartment, and not merely physically, though the five locks of the door would keep most ordinary people out.
Shame Tom wasn’t ordinary.
But it was rest of it, that was so telling. For not only was there nothing of value here, but there was certainly an absence of all the things Tom liked. The furnishings that were not neutral, were yellow because Tom had always expressly disliked yellow. For the same reason, he suspected, all the woods were pale pine and frankly hideous. Even as he meticulously searched through each and every cupboard in the kitchen, the only cutlery Harry had here, was the ones with the plastic handles that he knew Tom hated for their lack of class.
Along a similar vein, the books on the shelves were trashy novels, that barely deserved to be called novels at all; detective thrillers and soppy romances that either had the happiest of endings or the angstiest. Likewise, the music was modern and tasteless, there was only white wine on the rack, and coffee in the tins, and there was only one, minuscule, mirror in the entire apartment.
All in all, it certainly looked like Harry was doing his best to keep him compartmentalised.
Firmly outside of this new life he was living.
Though, it hardly looked like living.
And Tom genuinely doubted whether there was a day that went by without Harry checking over his shoulder again and again and again and wondering, just when he’d see that familiar shadow at the end of the street.
Because Harry must have known, that Tom wasn’t going to give up until he’d found him again.
They had surely spent long enough together for Harry to realise that, no matter how far he tried to run, or how anonymous he became, Tom would always find him eventually, just so he could give him exactly what was due.