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Thank you to the people who beta read this fic, goldenzingy46, epiagaea_repens, and Romantica!
This entire trip was shaping up to be a disaster of Tom Marvolo Riddle’s own doing.
Harry ran his hands through his hair once again as Tom tried to reason with a tour guide about the churches they would visit on their walking tour. Whilst he knew how to speak Italian, he wouldn’t give this (arguably important) information to Tom, who was the one who’d gotten them stuck here in the first place.
It was Tom’s splendid idea that the two should go on a holiday of all things after ninety-six years of being together. His impulsivity–combined with the enthusiastic suggestions of his Death Eater followers ready to rid his obsessive presence for a few weeks–led him to surprise Harry with their plane tickets the night before the trip.
Harry hadn’t expected this level of idiocy though. When he reviewed the itinerary Abraxas had created in the plane ride, he felt a headache grow. The man had pulled the search results for “top places to go in Italy” and made their reservations without double-checking exactly what he was paying for.
They’d only been on Italian soil for three days and they had experienced dozens of attempts on their life just from being there. Ancient warding combined with the sheer presence of religious sites and garlic laden food made it nearly impossible for them to move around.
When the tour guide reached out with his hand, Tom ran off at supernatural speed into the shade instead of doing the normal thing of shaking the damn man’s hand. The guide didn’t even have a chance to call after him and blinked in confusion, almost believing him to be an apparition.
“Why’d you come back just like that?” Harry asked.
Tom frowned at the question, his lip curling in disgust, hissing, “He was wearing a rosary bracelet on that hand.” He yanked his sleeves down and adjusted his cap to cover his face better, trying to cover his humiliation as well as his sun-sparkling skin.
“Of course,” Harry said dryly as the two walked over to a small, empty coffee shop. They both made a quick check for any religious symbols that would be lining the walls, and only entered the shop when they found none. It was quaint; Harry ordered an espresso and a cheese focaccia for himself and nothing for Tom, who didn’t deign to eat like regular people, claiming his body was a temple and didn’t deserve to be sullied by human food.
Harry took a large bite of his Focaccia bread, moaning at the taste. Tom leered at him, but was ignored; whilst Harry couldn’t derive any nutrition from the food, he still enjoyed tasting and eating it for pleasure.
There was nothing that could come between Harry and his food, until something did. When he tried to swallow, Harry’s muscles failed him and his limbs locked in place.
Tom sprang into action, he struck Harry on his back with enough force to knock down a bull. When his boyfriend continued dying, he placed his arms around his waist and punched his stomach repeatedly until the food dislodged and Harry wrenched out both the bread and his breakfast from his body, pooling out on the floor, a twisted mixture of blood and stomach acid.
“What did you put in that?” Tom snarled at the cashier, who was rapidly growing pale at the bloody mess Harry had thrown up on the ground.
“It’s just a new recipe I just experimented with,” the man whispered in terror, pinned under the gaze of Tom’s burning red eyes.
“Oh really now?” Tom managed to say through his fanged teeth, “Do you mind saying what exactly you altered?”
The poor man began to recite from memory, “Dry yeast, a touch of honey, salt, olive oil, flour, butter, garlic cloves–”
His culinary innovation, however, became his downfall. Tom had sunk his fangs into the tender flesh of the cashier’s neck as soon as he uttered the last ingredient. The venom entered into his bloodstream and took effect immediately, stopping his internal organs cold in their tracks. He was dead even before Tom dropped the body on the ground.
Harry’s instincts kicked in before his brain did, grasping the man’s arm and biting down on his wrist.
Once the corpse was drained of blood, Harry seemed to come back to himself, wiping his mouth on one of the few clean areas of the dead man’s apron and scowling.
“You murdered him,” he said flatly, standing up to assess the damage they had wrought upon the poor cafe. They had to clean up the bloody mess they made of the cashier and his shop. “We can’t just leave his body here.”
Tom apparently had enough common sense to flip the cafe’s sign from open to closed and lock the doors, concealing them in darkness. On the upside, the cafe was old enough that it hadn’t recorded everything on CCTV, which was nice.
Valentina Volta frowned at the documents the family underlings supplied her with. Two high-ranking British officials, Harry Potter-Black and Tom Riddle, had arrived in Malpensa Airport on July twenty-third of that year at eight forty-three p.m..
They had ambled about the busy airport before having a thirty minute argument with the car rental company over models, third party services, and various other semantics before finally negotiating for a car.
Valentina tracked their movements in Italy as they followed a familiar path of tourist attractions. They had, oddly enough, avoided visiting many of the classics, like the Duomo and any religious areas.
The most bizarre of their activities, however, was their total avoidance of any Italian cuisine, besides gelato and alcohol, leaving Valentina to wrinkle her nose at the long list of recorded purchases at fast food chains and cafes.
In most places where they’d been photographed, Riddle stared directly at Potter-Black like a starved man and, in some photos, it almost seemed like he was making direct eye contact with the photographer, who was positioned in distances and heights above buildings no normal human would have been able to identify.
Valentina had not become Lorenzo Volta’s right hand without clawing her way up the family ranking above her scheming brothers and cousins. She turned towards bodyguard Pietro, forming a new plan in her mind. “Looks like we will need to give them a personalized welcome,” she said with a vicious smile, baring all her teeth.
Pietro, however, looked impassive as he walked her to her car and stepped into the driver’s seat, being well used to her monologuing - it never meant well for anyone.
“This isn’t what I signed up for, Tom,” Harry hissed as they dragged a garbage bag across the street as inconspicuously as they could. The results were still incredibly dubious because they were lugging an entire seventy-three kilograms of man™ over the cobblestone. People stared at the two well-dressed but out of place foreigners dragging a large black trash bag that was shaped somewhat like a body. It wasn’t a good look for them, that was for sure.
“Well, it’s what you have to do now, unless you wish to detail a report explaining to the British Parliamentary Government why we were arrested in Italy on our holiday,” Tom said as calmly as he could, but Harry could tell he was barely pulling himself together to form the words. He did not have the same sway or power as he had had during his heyday in the mortal world, and they could not afford to draw more attention to themselves than they already had by dragging a fucking corpse across the road.
Parco Giovanni Paolo had the infamous reputation for being the meeting place of several drug lords and mercenaries from the Volta, Arcuri, and Capri crime families. The police and local residents steered clear of the park to avoid getting caught up in any of the business deals taking place.
They found their way into the local (and dilapidated) park. It was clear no one was going to go looking here for anything other than the various patches of cannabis growing around the area. On second thought, might have meant a lot of people came here, but at least they weren’t going to be cops.
Harry saw Tom eyeing the weed and smacked his arm to remind him of the actual body they had to bury. He handed him the long branch he grabbed from the entrance of the park. “Dig,” he ordered.
Tom reluctantly picked up the branch and started shoveling dirt begrudgingly. Harry rolled his eyes, and helped his idiotic boyfriend bury the man they had killed together.
At times like these, Harry rued ever giving this dumbass sanctuary a century ago. Should have left his ass for his priestly father James to exorcize.
“Beloved, let’s get back to the villa,” Tom whispered in his ear. Harry shivered and cursed Tom internally. The bastard was always saying the right things at the right time to calm him down, even when he wanted to be mad at him. They strode off, hand in hand, to find a cab outside of the park to drive them back to the rented villa, giving up on the tour guide entirely.
What they didn’t notice was the small camera angled in their direction from above the tree, the camera in question owned by the Volta family.
Valentina smirked at the footage. She’d got them now.
“What the fuck are you doing up there?” a tired voice said from below.
Tom didn’t answer from where he perched at the tip of the rooftop, a height that would have killed an ordinary human but was nothing to an ancient vampire like him. He should know, he had literally ruled over the vampires of Europe at the height of their power (Harry would always refer to it as ‘Tom’s bullshit Lord Voldemort era’, no matter how incredibly scary and intimidating Tom claimed he was).
“Tom, the sun’s about to fucking rise, you dramatic bitch,” the voice continued talking, audibly frustrated.
“Just let me die in peace,” he sighed, face angled to where the sun would rise in just a few minutes. “Staying in this country is a hell in itself, let me have this way out.”
“If I recall correctly, you were the one who decided that Italy was the ‘perfect holiday spot with beautiful views and amazing food’. Did you forget everything when you decided to plan this trip? The cuisine, the weather, the Catholics per capita! Not to mention you forgot about the warding that Pope Clement made to defend Venice from any supernatural creature.”
“How was I supposed to remember one Clement from the other thirteen?”
“It’s not that fucking hard, Tom! All the popes are in the fucking Vatican!” Harry leapt onto the roof and kicked Tom off the edge. He watched in satisfaction as the man flailed his arms for a bit before face planting into the grass. Not that Tom felt pain from it, but it was the principle of the matter.
“Ow, that really–” Tom began, only to stop when Harry raised an eyebrow. “Well, okay, maybe it didn’t hurt that much.”
“Cut the shit, Tom, we’ve got to get out of here. Contact one of your Death Eaters underlings so we can get a private flight back to London,” Harry said, running his hand through his hair. “We can try this again next year, but this trip is over.” With that, he walked back into the leased villa to pack away his items.
“Fine, I shall call Abraxas in the morning,” he conceded, but when he turned around, Harry was gone.
Harry woke to the smell of meat burning and the searing pain around his wrists, waist, and ankles binding him, keeping him flat on his back. The silver cuffs burned hot against his skin as his body struggled against the constant assault of skin to metal. His eyes watered as he gasped from the pain.
“Shut up, vampiro,” a woman said, standing in front of him and rolling her eyes. “We know enough about your kind. Your body will continuously deteriorate and regenerate with the silver, so you can scream all you like, but it won’t save you.” She moved to crouch down by his head.
“What I want to know is why you’re here. There has not been a single vampiro who dared to step within the borders of Italy. Why has your kind decided to enter our sacred grounds now?”
Harry glared at her, hoping his eyes conveyed why the fuck are you asking me this shit?
“I would speak, vampiro, if you want any chance of living more than a few minutes,” she demanded, playing with the silver cross around her neck.
Harry didn’t answer, trying to access his mental link with Tom, even as he was met with only silence.
“Let us try this again. I am Valentina Volta of the Volta family. You have trespassed on our land that has been warded for centuries against your kind. Not one vampiro has dared to land on this soil. The power of Christ compels you to answer! Why did you two come here?” she” spat on his face.
Harry wrinkled his nose at her bad breath. “A little toothpaste and floss once in a while wouldn’t hurt, while you’re at it, Ms. Volta,” he said in the same tone he’d use with his long dead school teacher Snape. Harry’s brain had long since stopped functioning, and he found that he had summoned his inner Ron Weasley to talk for him. “But you know, it wasn’t a deliberate choice, we just needed a change of scenery. You know how awfully dull it gets in bureaucracy.” He smiled at her and realized his chances of dying had risen by at least ten percent when he saw her expression change to raw fury.
Valentina picked up a spray bottle, spraying it on Harry’s bound hands, a scream ripping out of his throat before even had time to think. Steam rose from his skin as his flesh melted off his hands, the water eating into his skin, the bones in his knuckles poking up through what was left of his hand.
Undiluted holy water. Shit. While holy water normally only had the same effect as silver, his weakened state meant his regeneration was slow, fighting against the burns of the silver and holy water.
“There are many other ways to get information from your kind.” She bared her teeth in a cruel facsimile of a grin. “It’s only a matter of time before your healing slows from fatigue. I am willing to wait as long as it takes to make your pretty mouth scream,” she purred.
Harry shivered uncomfortably, barely managing not to scream through the pain.
“Your fate was sealed the moment you dared to cross the Volta famiglia.”
Tom was furious. His beloved had been kidnapped by a two-bit Mafia family whilst Harry was under his protection. Harry was suffering Salazar knew what at the hands of those incompetent fools and he wasn’t there to save him.
His trail of information and murdering led him to an office building in the eastern end of Milan at one in the afternoon.
The office building was abandoned with bright “to let” signs offering it at increasingly lower prices with every new sticker.
Tom ripped the door clean off its hinges and dumped it on the ground before entering the building. The lobby was empty but surprisingly clean, especially considering the fact it had been abandoned for the past couple of years. Someone else had taken up camp here.
He heard a muffled voice from the other end of the building. A human, of course, would have missed it, but his enhanced abilities allowed him to detect the source.
He followed the voice, finding himself in a warehouse inexplicably attached to the back of the office building. The doorway was blocked with terribly drawn runes made with salt.
Tom had to laugh. That was appallingly bad warding, and anyone with even an ounce of logic knew that salt was to keep out the ghosts, not vampires. He stepped over the boundary with ease.
“How lovely for you to join us,” a woman whispered in his ear.
Tom lashed out, sinking his claws into the person next to him. An ax soared over his head, missing his curls by barely a hair’s distance, and he whirled round to face his attackers. “So you are the ones who kidnapped my beloved,” he growled, his eyes flashing red, “and you shall be dealt with accordingly.”
While Valentina Volta had enough measures to prevent a fairly young vampire from escaping, her minions had no chance against Tom.
He grabbed the neck of Minion Number Thirty-Two, clawing inward and squeezing it like a fruit that was destined to become juice. Blood gushed from the sites of the puncture wounds, splashing down the soon to be corpse and staining the floor red, which was an improvement to the soulless gray of before.
“Now, now, no need to come all at once,” Tom drawled as the mafiosa ran towards him, charging with various silver knives and weapons. His eyes scanned the area, looking for evidence of where Harry could have been taken.
Harry was barely conscious as he looked at the ceiling through lidded eyes. Volta had left him at some point, but she’d stationed another man to spray him every few minutes and, judging from the way the man’s smile grew, he was probably into the entire scenario. Repressed Catholic maschilismo with a vampire bondage kink, who would’ve guessed?
He didn’t get enough time to think before the basement began to shake from floor to ceiling. The false ceiling above him groaned before caving in entirely. Mr. Maschilismo shrieked and abandoned his post next to Harry, disappearing into the system of tunnels that continued beyond the warehouse.
Harry craned his neck to see as his boyfriend landed beside him. “You came,” he rasped, then promptly fainted.