Fic: Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself. [Darkones Phobia Challenge.]

TITLE: Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself.
BY: Starkiller
BETA: Rian 219
RATING: 15+
PAIRING: AU Blaise/Tom Riddle
DISCLAIMER: I do not own, nor pretend to own any of the characters or locations of the Harry Potter universe. They remain the sole property of their copyright holders.
NOTES: For the Darkones phobia’s challenge. Include two of the following: sweat, blood, silver, vomit, fever, sex, a lie, tears, closet. Include this quote: When you fear, the fear becomes powerful. Phobia: Autophobia- Fear of being alone or of oneself.



He’d risked so much to gain his hearts desire – so much to pull a person through time after seeing their picture in the archives of the school library. He’d managed to find a way to communicate with the object of his fascination – his obsession, and with the help of dark magic, blood rites in the middle of the night, he had grown to know the object of his desire far better than he had ever thought possible. And now, Blaise Zabini, nineteen years old, was living in a small flat in London with his transplaced lover, Tom Riddle.

In a world where the threat of Voldemort had been eradicated by the destruction of artefacts called horcruxes – Tom had spent a long night explaining the complexity of them – Dark Arts were frowned upon even more than they had ever been in the history of the wizarding world. No one wanted a repeat of the Dark Lord and his followers, and so everyone watched everyone else with an eagle-eyed gaze, eager to alert the Ministry if their neighbour was acting the tiniest bit out of the ordinary.

Blaise’s circle of friends had fallen apart after sixth year. Crabbe and Goyle had never been what he would ever have considered friends; Draco had succumbed to the Dark Lord’s wrath, Pansy and Millicent had been taken out of school. He was left with Theodore, who spent most of his time buried in books, and himself. Seventh year had been a lonely one for Blaise, and a boring one as well. It was that boredom that had led him to read the old archives in the library and learn about Tom Riddle. It had led him to develop an interest so strong it had culminated in dark magic to bring the young Tom from 1945 into 1998.

The experience had been interesting if nothing else. Tom was not Voldemort, and he still had most of his soul. Blaise had wondered idly about such things as time and history and altering continuums and the like, but had decided that he didn’t really care. The first six months they had spent together had been bliss – endless days and nights of sex, rolling about the bed, indulging their lusts, fucking in the bath, in the kitchen, on the balcony of the flat, everywhere they could. Neither could keep their hands off the other, and neither seemed to feel any requirement for other people in their lives. They lived in a bubble of isolation, just the two of them in their flat, the rest of the world becoming irrelevant.

Six months became a year and Blaise began to grow restless. He’d spend long hours on the balcony alone, smoking, thinking. At first, Tom thought nothing of it, but after a while, he began to grow worried. And then when Blaise started going out without telling him where he was going or who he was with, Tom began to grow afraid. He would wake up in the middle of the night and reach for his lover and find his hand brushing over cold sheets and Blaise nowhere to be found.

The worry gnawed at him. He fretted and thought and wondered about what Blaise might be doing and thinking. Tom was very aware that he was alone in this brave new world, and about to enter a new millennium: all the people he had once known were either dead or doddering or people he had no desire to see. His family were gone – had been gone from the moment he had been conceived, truth be told, and his one fear was coming to life right in front of him. He was, he believed, being abandoned by the one person he had allowed himself to love, and he was terrified.

A year had passed now, and every night, Blaise would go out without explanation and not return for hours. Each time the door closed behind him, Tom would huddle into himself and worry. The more he worried, the more distressed he became. It was as if he could feel Blaise slipping away from him, and it terrified him. He had lost his mother, he had lost his father, his uncle, his grandfather. He had lost his friends, his home within the walls of Hogwarts. He had thought it a more than equal trade for the chance to be with Blaise whom he loved to distraction, but now…now he was frightened that he would be left completely and utterly alone.

The fear reached its zenith at three am one wintry morning when Blaise came home to find Tom curled up in a foetal ball on the sofa, sobbing helplessly. They had been together for thirteen months now, and in the last thirty days, Tom had worked himself up into a frenzy of panic as the terror of being alone – again – grew within him. And so when Blaise came home and found his love pale, shaking violently and sobbing uncontrollably, he did not know what to do.

“Tom?” Blaise blinked in surprise, flicked his fingers at the candles in the room and lit them with a whisper of magic. His lover did not reply, and alarmed, Blaise moved to him, lightly touching his shoulder. “Tom? What is it?”

Green eyes, glassy with tears gazed at him, and Blaise recoiled slightly at the pain and misery he could see reflected there. “You…you don’t want me,” Tom whispered, his voice unsteady with tears.

“I…what? Of course I do! What makes you think I don’t?”

Gulping, Tom sat up, tears still streaming down his cheeks. “You go out, every night, and you don’t tell me what you’re doing or where you’re going. You’ve been doing this for so long, I’ve forgotten when it started! I’m scared, Blaise! I’m scared of being alone! I’m so scared I’ve lost you!”

Blaise sat down on the floor, blinking. “I…Gods, Tom, you haven’t lost me! Oh fuck, I’m so sorry.” He moved closer to the sofa, gently reaching for the shaking form of his lover and tugged him down onto the floor, pulling him into his lap. “Shh, my heart, it’s okay. It’s okay, really. You’ve got nothing to worry about, my love. When you fear, the fear becomes powerful. It eats you. I’m so sorry, my heart, I didn’t mean to do this to you.” He held Tom close, stroking his hair with one hand, rubbing soothing circles on his back with the other, and Tom clung to him like a dying man clinging to a raft.

“Then…then why all the secrecy?” When Tom eventually spoke again, his voice was rough, hoarse from a night of sobbing and panicking and emotion.

“Dear one…I was trying to surprise you, and clearly I have, but not in the way I intended. I was having something made for you.”

Stunned, Tom pulled back from the warmth of his lover’s body and stared at him, blinking. “What?”

“Well, it’s been a year, yeah? So, I, um, wanted to have something for you. Only it wasn’t ready when we got to the year, so I, um, had to go and help, because it was pretty fucking fiddly and I’m babbling, but it’s finished now, so, here.” He dug into the pocket of his jeans with one hand and pulled out a small, black velvet box, and handed it to Tom.

Silently, he took the box and just stared at it. There was magic in whatever was inside, that much he could tell. A quick, curious look at Blaise and then Tom opened the box. Inside was a pair of rings, the triple interlaced white gold bands of the Russian wedding ring. He stared at the rings and then at Blaise, suddenly feeling incredibly foolish. “You…Blaise?”

Blaise blushed. “’S a tradition. See, we wear these on our left hands, on our ring finger. Each circle in the band represents something: eternity, love, trust. Which is what we have together. And, because we did all that blood magic to get you here from 1945, I had some of our mingled blood, and that went into the forging of the rings. Which is what took so long, mixing it all and the magic and yeah.” A shy smile as he continued. “So, I don’t want to leave you, dear one. I want to be with you. Always.”

Tom simply stared at him. And then he threw his arms around Blaise’s neck, clutching the box with the rings tightly in his hand. “Gods, I love you,” he whispered against Blaise’s skin. “I’m sorry…”

“For what? It’s a natural fear, all things considered, dear one.” Blaise gently untangled his lover’s arms from about his neck and took the box, removing one ring and sliding it onto Tom’s left ring finger. “I love you, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m with you, my heart, my Tom.” He held the box out to his lover, who, with shaking fingers lifted out the second ring and gently slid it onto Blaise’s left ring finger.

“Thank you, Blaise,” Tom said softly, kissing him gently. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, my heart,” Blaise replied, gently kissing him back. “I’m sorry I made you freak out so much. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Tom kissed him again, and then again, and soon there were no more words necessary between them.