Warning: this story is rated M for every reason a story might be rated M. Written for The Teachers' Lounge Hard, Loud, and Fast Challenge. Seriously, if you are looking for fluffy Rose/Scorpius, turn back, now.
Disclaimer: not mine.
For Christopher, and the madness he encourages in us all.
He might not have noticed the macaque but for the tri-coloured flag clutched in its paw. He might not have noticed the flag, either, except the macaque is wanking with it, its triangle tip flapping a white blur in the green leaves of the mango tree.
Rose's laugh blankets a smack of flesh on flesh, but Scorpius ignores it, zeroing in on the macaque, instead. He tilts his head back, nostrils pinched between his thumb and forefinger, coaxing the very expensive clump of numb into gliding down his throat. In his other hand, the empty foil crumples easily, wads into a tiny meteor which Scorpius wings out the window. The macaque, still occupied and unsuspecting, catches it dead between the eyes, flinches, then falls in a rush of rustling leaves and snapping branches, its flag left fluttering on the jag of a bent limb.
He almost feels bad for a second, attacking a lesser creature like that. But then Scorpius remembers how much he's paying for this scene, how far they've had to come, and, damn it, he's not about to share with some fucking, freeloading monkey.
...
'Les' fly to...to Rotterrrrhagen,' she slurs, broomstick dragging the astronomy tower's stone. 'You an' me... eccshlent flyers. From goo'stock. We...' She shivers. 'We shou' go.' She snorts, stumbles. Her knees fold at odd angles.
It's late April, but the nights are still cold. All of Rose's tips are red. Fingers, toes, nose. Scorpius pulls the broom from her hand, gathers her thin, bare flesh to him inside his school robes.
'Darling,' he says, moving their four legs toward the stairwell, 'I think you mean Amsterdam.'
...
Six weeks later, she's decided Thailand. Definitely Thailand... tomorrow. There's no agenda, no plan, and Scorpius is sort of terrified, but Rose will be going, whether he goes with her, or not. He owls back that he's sleeping on it, then shoves two changes of clothes into a rucksack. The next day he Apparates, as planned, to their secret meeting spot behind the dumpling shop in Ealing.
'Your ticket, and your passport.' She pushes the documents over the table into his teacup, knocks drops of weak brew onto his inch of good fortune. 'Just do as I do as we're boarding. Oh, and your I.D...' Her forgeries are flawless. Scorpius tucks them into his jacket pocket, marvels at her flair for compartmentalising. He won't dare say it, not now, and probably never again, but she truly is her mother's daughter.
He puts down a ten pound note, peels the fortune from the table. Sometimes, it says, you just need to lay on the floor.
...
Scorpius turns from the window as Rose's pink tongue flattens against the arse of the girl in their bed. The residue of white powder disappears as a wet trail glistens in its place. The girl, Lamai, she said her name was, squeals, lets loose a raucous laugh and then Rose suddenly pulls back down, the tips of her teeth scraping a red wake into the bulb of pale flesh lifting from the mattress. Lamai hisses, and Rose raises up on her knees, slaps her open palm against the wet, then tugs Lamai over onto her back.
For his part, Scorpius is just pleased she seems to be having a good time. Rose likes fanny the way she likes blow: it's a fun party favour, and she'll take it if offered, but she'd never deign to seek it out for herself.
He sits back on his calves, cock in fist, pulling long, slow strokes and biding his time. Rose slithers over Lamai's lithe frame, every slope and hollow of her curves pliant against the firm, sharp body beneath. Lamai works her hands between them, palms Rose's breasts over her bikini top, humming as she tugs the fabric down.
It's a scrap of tune Scorpius knows, the lyric a quick burst of too true as he kneels at the end of the bed.
Lay your hand in mine, darling,
Ain't no way I wanna lose you, girl
We could drown in misfortune,
Lies, and distortion,
Lots of fine poison in this big, bad world
It's midday, glaring bright, and the sort of wet-hot that oozes into the pores just so it can seep back out and take the will to breathe with it. Lamai is beautiful, even so. Not pretty- beautiful- with glass green eyes that morph as Scorpius stares into them, pupils elongating, vertical, viperous, until she blinks and refocuses on the face above her.
She takes Rose's nipple between her lips. Her cheeks cave around her teeth when she sucks in, hard.
...
What it all comes down to is monkeys.
Rose wants to see them in their temple at Lopburi. She wants to touch their prehensile tails.
They spend the week before at Haad Rin. Seven days in a hurricane of epileptic lights, white dust, syringes dripping dirty amber, and blue-speckled tabs stamped with tiny eyes of Horus. There are bass-shaken shags in dance floor corners, a group snog with a Denmark blonde, a powder-fueled wrestling match with a faerie-eyed boy, his painted lips smearing a broken stripe of sky blue from Rose's sternum to her navel, and then a bit below.
Scorpius wonders when another man's fingers leaving trails through her sweat became a thing he'd want to see.
He closes his eyes, throws his head back and cracks his neck, tries to calm the rushing, the hard buzz driving this forward as he slips between her knees.
When he looks down, again, Faerie-boy's nails are black beetles crawling up her throat, scuttling into her knickers.
And, it really isn't that he wants to see. More like, he can't look away.
...
The Lopburi monkeys are roguish, thieving, and unabashed. They do not have prehensile tails. They snag the chopstick from Rose's bun as she sits on the pavement. One attaches itself to Scorpius' rear, grabs a handful of baht coins from his back pocket, then tugs his shorts down over his arse as it leaps away.
They copulate wherever a female lifts her tail; Ditches, benches, stretches of grass, sun or shade, atop the Buddha, the male's tail thumping into one smiling, enlightened eye. Rose watches one particularly promiscuous female, mouth twisted, somehow vindicated.
'Look at her. No wonder some of us still can't keep our legs closed.'
…..
At the start of all this, after her Origin Strand matched Al's in the wrong part of the sequence, at the first slow lowering of the bell jar over her unique breed, Rose posed the question.
'How do you think it happened, Scor? I mean, do you think it was just once, or was it, like, an every week thing? Was it...' here she breathed out through her nose, tilted her head, closed her eyes, 'civilized and scheduled in hotel beds, or just one quick, dirty fuck behind the bloody broom shed?'
The more she talked, the simpler it was to build the pictures in his mind. Having even a passing knowledge of the parties involved, Scorpius thought it might well have been civilized, scheduled fucks behind the broom shed. She wasn't asking so he'd answer, though, so he kept that theory to himself.
Another thing he doesn't say: since she found out, he can't stop seeing flashes of her father in her eyes. Not in what's there - their colour, or their shape- but in what's missing. How, now, they both look to always be searching for the same lost thing.
…...
Rose is on her knees, thighs trembling, aligning her centre over the girl's face. Lamai reaches up, touches Rose with the tips of her fingers, skimming light over her arse, dipping into the curve of her back, tracing the flare of her hips, then coming to rest on the jut of bone cradling the softness of Rose's belly. It's not a move Scorpius has ever made before, but the response is breathtaking. Rose arches, her hips twisting as Lamai leans up, burying her lips in auburn curls. Scorpius takes note, files it away. Later, when Lamai's time is up and Scorpius and Rose are left all alone, and he's still able to taste the passion fruit lip gloss Lamai was wearing, he'll remember this very moment, Rose's hand in her bikini top, her eyes fluttering closed as she drags her hips forward, finally, finally, on the right side of lost.
Later, he'll think of the song Lamai was humming and he might whisper the words in Rose's ear.
Or, maybe, he'll just tell her he wants to go home. There's a rug in his room big enough for them both.
.Fin.
