His cheeks are impossibly smooth.

It's the little things you notice when you are here, like a visitor admiring wall hangings. Realizations that come in flashes, inspired bits you catch and collect. His eyes are very dark. His hair reflects the light so brightly. His fingers are long and slender, like a pianist's, and they tease your skin with confidence that speaks of practice.

But they're pale, too, impossibly pale as they move.

Your teeth sink into your lip as the soft skin of his face brushes up against either of your thighs again, moving up and down. Up and down. Sometimes you can almost taste him, an opaque flavor so very distinct in its obscurity. Yes, this is shared, this is dual, this is the clarity you spoke of once, that other side of maybe.

The room swims in front of your eyes, a washed-out expanse of smudges and light without your glasses to draw lines into focus. Looking down all you can see is a blur of you, all white and red, and him - the blackness of his hair, the old-fashioned uniform carved of reminiscence and dust. And that is what this is made of. You, pulsing and breathing and bright. And him, faint and whispering and dark. There is only one thing in the war-tossed world for you now, and that is this, this, this - his shadowy splendor and his embrace of power.

And yet the thought has crept through your mind at midnight, and sometimes it lingers in the corners of your room, in the bindings of the small book, in the papercuts on your fingers.

This is Tom Riddle.

Oh! Oh! But it isn't, you hasten to argue silently, it isn't, it isn't. This a phantom lover, not really him. It's a mistake, it's a folly, it's someone else. It's a memory, it's only a dream.

He is a ghost made of cobwebs and ink. He isn't passionate, he isn't angry or loud or harsh, he is nothing that is Vol - Volde - You-Know-Who. Justification gleams brightly on your tongue as he winds himself around you, and you know in your heart of hearts that you are right. You are Percy Weasley, you are fastidiously correct. This has to be right because this is all that your soul needs.

His kiss is like an engulfing shower of unsteady emotion, and you gladly drown inside of it. There isn't room here for words, there isn't room here for sound. There is only room for the two of you, for two lost boys falling into the rhythm set by a thousand pied pipers.

Your lips fall open and your eyelids flutter open and shut, skin teetering on the edge of glory under his hands. You know you will give this elusive specter of truth anything he wants, anything he needs. You know it every time he touches you, every time you caress the creamy, blood-stained pages, and every time he brings your nerves to that place where reality crumbles.

And afterwards you are in the blank world again, full of blank people without names or faces. The bed here is made and the surfaces are dull, and the woman with the gentle hands pulls the tome from your fingers.

Finished your diary entry for the night? Don't fret, I'll just put it here next to your bed.

When the curtains are closed over your vision and you're squinting your eyes shut as hard as they go, you can almost make his face out in the purple patterns.

Just a memory.

End.