Work Text:
Today- another day...
I'd like to be stealing other people's memories and lose my own.
Every time I looked at him today, he was a shadow among young stars.
I couldn't recognize the darkness that flashed in his eyes when we met for the first time since last night.
He was like a black dwarf; and I was foolishly looking for the old spark, hoping for the heat to return.
I was cold.
And he was standing there, next to the door to the Great Hall, adjusting his bag that looked like it was about to burst at the seams from the dozen of books.
I was never able to understand why he always carried them all with him.
"You don't have to wait, Al. I still have Arithmancy."
I guess I got lost in his handsome features again... He smiled as though he wanted to apologize for every next beat of his heart.
Something tightened in my chest. I wanted to scream this horrible feeling out to the whole world, tell them to pay for every moment when the smile on this beautiful face was not sincere. And when it wasn't there at all. And when that face gleamed - milky-white skin - marked with trickles of tears.
The only thing that prevented me from doing so- like I was a hungry wolf locked under a bell jar, forced to watch how a juicy feast flees safely just in front of his nose- was the very reason why I had to keep standing still and be a witness to the unpaid sins: Scorpius.
"I'll walk you."
And before he tried to protest, I walked over to him and took him firmly by the arm.
I had to do this every time I grabbed his hand; always, lest to cross the safe limit. Always, lest to make the wrong move. Always, lest to go an inch too far.
Although barely a dozen hours earlier I had let myself go much farther than an inch too far.
Although my state of mind had been calling for a safe sleep then, I still remembered his touch: gentle, as if he was afraid he would hurt me with a bolder move. Or maybe he didn't have the courage to do something more... But I didn't have enough prudence to do less than I did. I gave myself up to the opportunity. He aroused the flame, and I didn't know how to put it out before it became uncontrolled fire. Back then, each breath was a new dose of drug and I didn't have the strength to resist its paralyzing effect on the reason. I had no will to forbid myself doing what was on my mind every day and night when I dreamed dreams that should never come true. I couldn't say "stop" when the blood in my veins was boiling, my body was burning and his breath was my air. I wasn't able not to surrender to his charm when he looked at me, stunning with the silver glistening with the blood of a thirsty soul. I simply was there, for him, letting his touch drive me crazy, and then myself find the longed for relief in this intoxication.
Somewhere in all that I had lost the awareness of the fact that I was the one who got him into this game.
The dull headache wasn't my only worry when I greeted the following day with self-disgust.
When I was reviewing those moments later, I didn't remember if I had even wanted to restrain myself at all back then; and the heat of the images that can't become reality ever again, was consuming me- and once again I didn't know how to escape. I was being chased by his wanton pleads for more as his heavy eyelids shadowed the shine I had never known before, his lips tempted with a new bloody shade and sounds sweeter than the finest sweets in the Honeydukes, and his body- slender but healthily muscled from months spent on the broom- shivered under me, shining with fresh sweat;
droplets of sweat like stars in the sky; his body like the Moon- so far away, yet so close finally;
and how could I refuse him anything?
Back then - yes, back then I wouldn't be able to. Even if I knew that it was not the right door, that it was a one way road, and that then it would all be forever scarred with the scars of the moments of weakness.
I should have stopped. For myself. For him. For us.
He always knew how to turn back; he always knew, in a way that fascinated me, where the limits were and how not to cross them, even by chance.
And I was a flame that was constantly shaking dangerously, announcing a fire if only too much happened around me. I shall not be free.
"I'm sorry."
His quiet voice reached my ears. He was so cold, so devoid of the old spark, that my body almost instinctively reacted with shiver.
He sounded like a homeless person who no longer had the hope of regaining the roof over his head.
I turned my face towards him to catch him averting his gaze.
He was afraid to look at me?
"What for?"
I sounded almost plaintively - as if my voice was a melody coming straight from my heart, which once again broke and bleed, heavy like a stone, crushing my lungs. I did have a reason to apologize to him, but he... He- again- was just the innocent victim of my stupidity.
Several long seconds- maybe minutes; I lost track of time- and one shaky breath have passed before he answered, looking somewhere in the space of the corridor in which we happened to be having this conversation:
"Yesterday..." he started, and I knew where he was going with it. He didn't follow up with this sentence though, but built a new one. "We can forget about it... if... if you want to."
Carefully, as if he was in contact with a wild animal, he released his arm from my embrace.
Always so gentle...
My body stiffened. I wanted to touch him again, to feel his warmth again... For a short, awful moment I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, shout him right in the face what I want. I wanted him to know. To know everything. I wanted for him to learn the whole truth, each inch of this ocean of emotions that have been flooding me more and more since the first time we met, years ago. For a moment my world got dominated by the storm and I had the feeling that I would surrender to the waves again. And then his voice, like a salutary gust of wind, broke through the clouds and for a split second it was bright and warm again in my world. Almost.
"It will just be like before. Yeah?"
This time he looked at me; I met his gray eyes, and for a strange moment I felt like a lion in whose jaw a deer's life was laying. I swallowed with effort; my stomach suddenly clenched and I got struck by the overwhelming desire to kill all my emotions, go back in time and never have lived the past few years.
Things will never be like before, Scor.
That's what I wanted to tell him. Instead, I stood there, silent, not daring to move. The feeling of guilt burned, stung, eating me alive; and somehow I loved that pain because I deserved it.
And Scorpius was too good.
And life was so unfair.
The loud sound of bell shattered the wall of silence that grew between us.
"See you later then."
And once again I got awakened by this voice; and once again it was weak, the old spark still absent. I wondered if I would ever feel it again.
I watched him walking off the last corridor leading to the Arithmancy class- a slender, tall figure bravely carrying the weight of too many books; and I remembered that I wanted to walk him all the way to the class.
Maybe next time. Maybe next time I will have the courage.