quarrels were not particularly infrequent occurrences in you and tom’s relationship, but they certainly hadn’t been severe in temperament, save for the anomalous nasty ones here and there. the evening had been relatively uneventful, yesterday, when tom had returned home with a boastful grin stretching his lips. what had incited such triumph?

horcruxes.

your partner had sat you down and delved into an in-depth elaboration of his outrageously well-schemed plan. it was too thorough to have been a spur of the moment type of thing, and he hadn’t made much effort to conceal the fact that he’d been developing this scheme for quite a stretched interval of time.

tom had always been pursuing immortality, after all. perhaps the universal belief that he’d never acquire it had simply stoked the flames of ambition.

that was what had elicited objection from you, which then rapidly escalated the situation into a full blown argument. vases smashed, doors slammed—scathing words exchanged and unkind profanities spat. it was terrible.

and as the sun lit up the sky with a golden glow for the subsequent morning, tom allowed his temper to mellow and moved onto more refined methods of being problematic.

the cold shoulder.

he had disregarded you the entirety of the day. no initiation of touch and subtle intimacies. no sweet nothings uttered into your ear in the late hours, when you both should’ve been folded beneath the duvet. not a single word exchanged.

miraculously, he had addressed you first—partially due to the paranoia festering within him finally rearing its ugly head. “apologise, so we can spend the evening together,” tom mandated, his own expression utterly unrepentant as he delegated the entire responsibility of reconciliation to you. it was most likely that his primary reason for approaching you was due to insecurity at your capability of pretending he did not exist.