Pairing: Hermione Granger and Tom Marvolo Riddle Jr.

Setting: Modern AU, non-magical

Prompt: Hermione Granger's birthday!

A/N: Originally just a little thing posted on Tumblr.

N O I R

She sat down at the bar all dolled up in a curve hugging dress of sequin and lace. Her hair was pinned tightly along her scalp to a point on her crown where it all came spilling out into gorgeous ringlets that had to have taken her hours upon hours to manage.

If he had been any other man, he might have been smitten by how well she fit the dress (top and bottom) or by the way her lips pursed into a perfect and entrancing little pout all glossed in a wickedly dark shade of burgundy that screamed nothing less than "drama." Seeing as he was who he was, however, Tom was smitten instead by those dark, clever, and glinting eyes peering up at him from equally dark lashes.

"Hello, love," he said warmly with a charming tilt to his lips. "What's a pretty bird like you doing in a dump like this?"

His dark haired vixen let out an unladylike noise, a mixture between a scoff and a snort, and settled more comfortably on her stool. She dropped a glitzy handbag onto the bar and moved to start pulling pins free from her hair. "Do you use that tired line on all the women you plan on taking home or is that new?"

Tom raised a brow at her blunt retort but merely shrugged. He watched pin after pin come out with soft little "tinks" sounding as they hit the counter. Her tresses fell free, one after another and then another until she'd loosed at least half of them. They cascaded over one of her bare and delicate shoulders, taunting him like a cape to a bull and his fingers twitched with the urge to brush them back so he could see the dainty set of her shoulders. "It's a valid question," he said, "and if you answer mine, I may answer yours."

She looked at him, paused in the midst of her unpinning and looked at him. He didn't actually need to watch her undressing him with her eyes because he could have felt it - could have felt it from yards away. He could practically imagine her going button by button, divesting him of his vest…his shirt…he guessed she'd gotten around to his trousers before she finally spoke up again.

"I was stood up."

She smirked when she spoke and Tom had never felt more like a piece of meat as when she eyed him in those moments.

"I came here looking for some…company."

He decided he didn't necessarily dislike the feeling.

"Company," he echoed with a hum and wiped the one perpetually smudged spot on the bar that always needed cleaning.

"Company," she said again. She was looking at him again, openly admiring his bartender's uniform and all the little pins and badges his employers required him to wear. Finally ceasing the letting down of her monstrous mane of hair, she reached out to tilt the nametag fastened to his vest in her direction and purred, "So, Tom, what's your answer?"

He smirked at the flirtatious tone, replying with, "Yes…to the first."

Something flashed in those dark eyes of hers and her hand jerked away at the same time she huffed a disgusted noise past her painted lips. Tom let out a laugh but caught her before she'd withdrawn completely and tugged her fingers back to him to kiss each of their tips one by one.

"Of course, since you're the only one I plan on taking home…"

"Prat." She scoffed again but he caught the way she tugged her lip between her teeth and her eyes couldn't seem to pull away from his lips.

Tom shrugged once again and turned her hand to place a soft kiss to the pulse point on her wrist. "Work ran late," he said apologetically.

"I know." Her shoulders relaxed with another kiss and a murmured noise of affection.

"You look beautiful tonight."

"I know." She sniffed haughtily; he snorted.

"I'll make it up to you."

She smirked at that. "Oh, I know."

Tom matched her smirk with one of his own. "For the rest of your birthday." He swiped at that smudgy spot again and added, "All night. And then one more for each hour that I missed with you today."

At that, she visibly preened and leaned over the bar to draw him into a languid kiss that was more a warm pull on his lips and a breathing of his essence than anything else. His dark vixen kept him there, like that, for uncounted minutes massaging his lips and tongue with her own in deceptively innocent looking nips and tastes that made the few remaining pub's patrons gawk and stare until he was breathless and hard beneath the shelter of the bar. She pulled away, let her chocolate stare rove over the sharp angles of his face and her fingers dance along the hollow of one cheek before nudging a short curl of hair away from his brow.

"I know," she said finally with a wink. "I'll be waiting for you."

And with that, Tom watched her gather her pins into her bag, turn on the expensively upholstered stool, and slide back to her stiletto clad feet with catlike grace. He watched his Hermione walk away, her hips rocking fluidly from one side to the other in that way she knew he adored.

"I know." He smirked at her back, shook his head, and wiped the perpetual smudge until his "situation" calmed itself down.