before the start.
(Strange things happen to strange people.)
For as long as he can remember, Harrison Potter has always been alone.
He wasn't lacking in attention or affections from others; on the contrary, the people of Little Whinging always made it a point to crow over his supposed beauty and grace whenever the boy was in their sights, and far from their touch.
His home life was no different; the Dursleys had always showered him with gifts. Uncle Vernon always seemed to have an extra toy model of his new drill, which he gruffly dropped into tiny, pale fingers. Aunt Petunia was a woman of few mistakes- truly bordering on an obsessive-compulsive scale- but her groceries always seemed a little bit too much, and ended up piling his plate with all of his favorites. Even little Dudley of 3 years, seemed intent to share all of his possessions with his quiet, green-eyed cousin.
No, it hadn't been neglect. But still, Harrison was alone.
Even with the amount of gifts the Dursleys showered upon him, there was always a certain distance, a momentary pause before he ended up too close. They were nice enough, but they- Dudley included- never engaged in any of the normal, familial contact that Harrison had seen in families on the telly.
At the age of four, Harrison had all the material things he could ever want, but he had never been hugged. The only times he had actually touched another human being was accidental, when he had been reaching out for a muffin across the dinner table and his fingers had brushed Aunt Petunia's, or when he bumped against Dudley going down the stairs in the drowsy mornings.
Harrison had thought at first that this was normal, but the amount of hugs and kisses bestowed on Dudley had made him realize that maybe he was the odd one out. After all, all the families in the movies and his books always seemed to be touching in a way.
And so, child Harrison had always watched those hugs between Aunt Petunia and Dudley with a terrible hunger. And at night, in his dark room, he would always stare at his arms above the sheets, before carefully wrapping them around his torso. He had watched the blue veins shifting and running under his almost translucent flesh, before trailing his icy fingers all over his face.
He was always cold, no matter how many layers he wore or how long he touched the radiator until his fingers turned red and blistered.
(Maybe it was human contact he needed. Those hugs always seemed pretty warm, after all.)
When he reached the age of five, he had been enrolled in the same primary school as Dudley.
There, the distinction became even clearer.
Oh his first day, children swarmed him on all sides, grins easy and words welcoming. The girls exclaimed in giggly voices over his fair skin and his shoulder-length black hair. The boys marveled over his green eyes and delicate cheekbones. Even the teachers had smiled affectionately at the boy, and the lunch ladies had slipped him an extra cookie at lunch.
He was at the center of attention, but it didn't last.
Child Harrison tried, bless him.
He had tried to join in on the dodgeball the boys were playing during recess, but they had only grinned uneasily when Harrison had stepped forward and brushed his hands against the ball.
He had turned towards the girls, still eager to play tag with them, but instead they had led him to shade of a tree at the side of the playground. Just rest, they had said, and with suddenly pale faces, they had skipped away.
When he had accidentally touched the hands of the lunch ladies when he had accepted his meal, they had blanched and flinched away, faces twisted unnaturally.
It was the same with his teacher, who had reached out to pat his head. Her fingers had barely brushed his black hair when she had retracted them quickly, as if burned.
It was strange; whenever Harrison got too close to them, shivers would rack their bodies and complex, unsettled emotions would flash on their suddenly too white faces.
And so Harrison had spent the rest of the day balefully watching the children around him scream and laugh, alone.
As the school years progressed, Harrison matured, and with his growing age, his features sharpened. His green eyes became molten emerald, his black hair lengthened and brushed his shoulders in a silky wave, his lips twisted in a crooked smile that beckoned everyone to his feet.
His fellow students all started to view him as precious Harrison, but still, nothing changed. The boys just blushed and casually ruffled their hair whenever they caught him staring at them as they played in the sun, and the girls just giggled and batted their lashes at him when they saw him. But still, the distance between them and Harrison was a concrete wall.
Harrison's perfect grades had also done nothing to breach the gap between him and the others; it only served to further place him on a pedestal. When he had first received his 10 out of 10 test, his classmates had congratulated him and grinned, before turning to their friends to moan over their own grades.
(He was a genius, but he still didn't understand why others couldn't stand to stay with him.)
Harrison had gripped his test paper so tightly it crumpled in his hand, before green eyes had hardened.
If they didn't want to be with him, then he had no need for them, child Harrison thought.
He withdrew within himself, pulling away from any form of interaction. And so Harrison had passed his school years, alone, with only his thoughts for company.
the beginning of the end.
(He never meant it to happen, it just did.)
Like most things, it started out small.
Harrison had noticed that on the rare occasions he succumbed to his cousin Dudley's wheedling to join him in the park, the grass around where he would sit and read would look a bit brown after a while. So for a meter radius, the grass was harsh and rough to the touch, but outside that, the green leaves would sway gently in the breeze, unaware of the dead ones next to it.
It was a curious thing, and before he could observe the phenomenon more closely, Dudley always got tired of watching him flip page after page on a book that didn't even have pictures! It was always much more trouble to ignore the larger boy, since he had been gifted with an enormously loud voice. Dudley would throw a tantrum, piteously turning puppy dog eyes on him and make to grab Harrison's hand, before freezing mid-motion and paling.
Child Harrison did not know what fear was at his young age, but if he was a little older, then he would have been shocked at the amount of it overflowing in Dudley's eyes. But Harrison was but a child, and all he saw was a nervous Dudley. So he would sigh, shaking his head wearily and indulge his cousin, and the brief moment of terror would be forgotten by young minds. He would set his book and the curious grass incident aside for Dudley's wild stories of looking for treasure and space pirates.
When Harrison had grown a bit older and entered primary school, there had been a class hamster who was lovingly named Pudding after a food fight episode during the first day of school. Of course, as it was a pet of a couple of grade schoolers, the poor hamster had been passed around by grubby, sticky hands, drooled on by some of the boys and had colorful pigtails on and paint on various areas of its fur after the girls had conducted their beauty makeover.
Even through all of this, Pudding had been an extremely healthy hamster, with bulging cheeks and short, fat legs. So it was quite a surprise when it had died so suddenly, going limp after being held quietly for a few minutes by Harrison.
It had been the first time he had held it, since he had no interest in the creature, but his cousin had insisted he hold the soft fur. After a while, Harrison had noticed that the fast beat of Pudding's heart had stopped and he had given it a few experimental shakes. It had limply gone with the motion, and Harrison had ended up depositing the very dead hamster on the teacher's desk.
The teacher had then attempted to calm the hysterical children who wanted Pudding right now and why wasn't it moving? Harrison vaguely remembered the hasty story the teacher had said, something about how Pudding was now in a better place filled with carrots and grass, but he had known that the hamster was dead.
Year after year, it was the same. He observed the small lifeforms around him, counting silently in his head until their demise. It was never the same amount of time, but the death was a constant in child Harrison's life.
And finally, when he had enough of the constant suspicion, on the eve of his seventh birthday, he had stayed up late, waiting until he could hear the resounding snores of the Dudleys, before sneaking out the backdoor. He had a hunch in his mind, and he would find out once and for all.
Looking around the backyard, the small boy had spotted a squirrel peering curiously at him, and with extremely quick movements, he had lunged at it and trapped it between his two cold hands.
It had struggled, with its nails scratching his palms in a desperate attempt to escape, and an annoyed sigh had left the boy's lips. With a tiny flick of his wrist, the squirrel had frozen mid-movement.
Settling down on the ground with a pleased smile playing around his lips, Harrison had waited patiently, checking his watch ever so often. And after six minutes had passed, the squirrel fell limp, its heart still. With a cursory glance, Harrison examined it, nodding once before tossing it on the ground.
The grass around where he had sat had turned a sickly shade of brown.
Harrison didn't really know what to call what he did, but he now knew for sure that he could kill things by mere touch.
(And maybe that's the reason why people stayed away from him, he thinks.)
With his curiosity satisfied, the boy had gone back inside the silent house and burrowed under his deep green comforter, humming a tune as he admired his small hands.
After that night, Harrison had taken care not to touch any living thing for too long, dwindling his already minuscule contact with others, and he had even taken to wearing gloves, but as he was living with three other humans, he supposed it couldn't be avoided.
With a sigh, Harrison eyes the three pale bodies lying silently in the living room. He had levitated them here when they had collapsed without warning, and with a quick examination, he had concluded that the Dursleys were dead.
(Since that night, Harrison had experimented and he had figured out quickly that taking life was not the only thing he could do; when he wanted something to happen, he merely had narrow his eyes or flick his wrist and books would float in front of him, or annoying children testing his patience would hurt because he wanted them to.)
He hadn't meant to kill them, but with the amount of contact he had with the family, he supposed there wasn't really anything he could do.
Sitting down gracefully on the floor, Harrison takes his bottom lip between his teeth and chews on it, carefully thinking about his options. Either he calls the emergency line and ends up in social services, or he runs.
In the end, he stretches out his hand, frowning in concentration. If he is to pretend as if his uncle had gotten drunk and gone on a rampage, beating up his aunt and son until they died, then he must change a few things about the house.
The wood and steel of the furniture creak loudly as they rearrange themselves forcefully, and the blood from the fresh wounds of the Dursleys splash sickeningly on the floor.
Surveying the crime scene he had just manipulated, the little boy crosses the hallway and dials, forcing a sob and breathing heavily into the receiver. He stutters and cries, and the person on the other end is quick to reassure him that there is help on the way. For a few minutes, the person utters vague promises that everything will be alright, and that honey, we'll take care of you, the ambulance is almost there.
He hears the sirens in the distance and in no time at all, there are adults surrounding him and cringing at the blood and asking him questions and waving their hands everywhere as they set up the stretchers and other medical equipment.
Amidst all the rising chaos, Harrison stands, a satisfied gleam in his bright green eyes as a young paramedic wraps him in a blanket and leads him by the hand outside, away from the blood and death.
There was a long debate, where the men and women dressed in shiny badges and standard blue police uniforms gestured with hands still tinged with the blood of his relatives. They could not decide where to send him, since the only living relative he had left- a hideous woman named Marge- couldn't be reached.
The women with the tight buns and the soft eyes had argued that he was too young to be put in social services, too delicate. The orphanage was out of the question, of course. He would be eaten alive by the older kids who had tendencies to bully, and don't you dare deny it, you know what goes on in those orphanages. The men had merely looked away with clenched fists, unable to rebut the claims. They had no desire to send the little boy to that kind of environment, after all.
The clock's hands had run on, hours passing and Harrison's future still undecided. Most of the police had sat back, tiredly rubbing their eyes as they watched the boy sitting quietly in the captain's office. With feet barely brushing the floor from his seat, large emerald eyes still moist and an unnatural pale sheen on his soft cheeks, the boy had painted a very, very sad picture to the world-weary police. This was not the first time something like this happened; alcohol-induced men had destroyed more families and futures than they could count. But the thought of a boy, a mere nine-year old, all alone in the world, had struck a chord in their hardened hearts.
Slowly, the suggestions had picked up again, all of them reluctant to leave the boy in social service's ruthless hands.
Green eyes observed them, the glass divider doing little to muffle the heated debate outside. He had taken a gamble, letting the police handle his future, but as a young child, he could do nothing on his own yet.
between ends.
(They shouldn't have done that, now look at them.)
In the end, Marge could not be found. For an extremely obese woman, she was quite hard to locate, and so Harrison was placed in social services' hands.
The first foster family he had was a couple unable to bear a child. The lady couldn't have been over 25, but the man was well over his 50s. Harrison had read about men like that, who had too much money and not enough personality or looks to get a decent wife, so they bought a younger, prettier one.
They had seemed nice enough at the start. The lady had been welcoming but maintained a professional sort of distance. It suited Harrison fine, but on the rare occasion their bare flesh had brushed against each other, the woman always flinched and looked… fearful.
(With age comes knowledge, and Harrison was no longer a child who did not know what fear was.)
The man, on the other hand, was the opposite of his trophy wife; his hands were always wandering over the boy, trailing up his face and stroking his shoulder.
Harrison had tried to put some distance between him and his foster father since it would be bothersome for him to suddenly die like the Dursleys. He stepped back and away when the man got too close, when old, wrinkled fingers had lingered longer and longer on his clothed skin.
He had wondered at first whether the old man would feel cold and fear, but it seems as if time dulls all the senses.
The boy tried to be good, he really did, but when the man stepped over the line, Harrison lost his control.
It was late at night, the first night after the social services workers had finished their weeklong observation, and the man had finally had enough of the boy's evasion. He entered Harrison's room and locked it behind him, unwilling to let the boy escape his touches once again.
The man had been ecstatic when he had first lain eyes on Harrison; the boy was perfect. The milky, untouched skin, the pink, plump lips, the silky black hair framing the most delicately beautiful face he had ever seen. The man could barely keep his self-control during that first meeting; he had been hard pressed to pretend everything was normal and fine during that first week of observation. But now, but now. The social services workers were gone, and his wife had gone out with her friends. There was nothing stopping him now.
He crept silently towards the bed, taking great care not to wake Harrison.
He didn't know that the moment the door opened, so did unholy green eyes.
When he had drawn close, and when his intentions had been all too clear, Harrison had pushed him away with his will. He held him prisoner with his mind, pushed against the floor, and Harrison made him scream, just like the way he would have if the man had gotten what he wanted.
Bright green eyes hardened at the thought, and Harrison lost what little remained of his innocence that night.
But with loss, there is gain.
As he watched the man writhe in agony, twitching, needy fingers brushed against Harrison's bare leg. With a gasp, Harrison had felt all of the man's emotions pouring over him; the fiery rage, the roaring despair, the painful lust, the terrible, all-encompassing fear.
It was all too much at once; this had never happened before, and Harrison had flinched at the torrent of emotions crashing against him, drowning him in their potency. He had wrenched himself away, bodily, and blindly lashed out to make it all stop.
When Harrison's vision had cleared, the man had stopped screaming.
When the wife came back, it was to the sight of her husband dead and blood painting their bedroom. She had screamed, called 911 and searched for the little boy who she had just fostered, worry for his wellbeing overriding her instinctive fear for his frigid pale flesh.
She found him in his room, wrapped under what must have been six blankets, eyes glowing unnaturally as he shivered and shivered.
They had stared at each other for quite a long time, both frozen in different ways- her, from fear and the slowly overpowering suspicion, and him, from the unwanted revelations of that night. The moment is broken when sirens blare, piercing the silence with its shrill rings.
Once again, Harrison is surrounded by medics and policemen, but this time with hard eyes and tough hands. Someone reaches out to him and clamps their hand on his trembling shoulder, and Harrison flinches away from the constricting fingers, because with every brush of their skin comes the clouding of his own senses with their emotions. It is a sensory overload, and he lashes out again and again.
He can hear the sharp intake of breath coming from the policeman holding him and he knows that the man can feel the sharp pain that always comes with touching his bare skin. But instead of letting go, the hold becomes even tighter, and a rush of cold anger and pain and fear comes with it.
Harrison can feel the man's emotions blanketing him, covering his skin and nose until he can't breathe. He tries to gasp, or shout, but the moment he opens his mouth the sensation intensifies, and Harrison can feel the bitter taste of bile rising up his throat.
He ends up doubling over, acrid vomit rushing out of his mouth and splashing sickeningly over the floor and his shoes.
Mercifully, the hold loosens and he wraps his arms around his torso, dry-heaving and trembling as the policemen wait for his nausea to fade. When the floor isn't rolling underneath him and when air flows easier into his lungs, Harrison stands and nods. The hands are gentler this time, a hovering weight on his shoulder as they lead him outside and into the police car.
There is an investigation, and the police are less sympathetic to his plight than when he had killed the Dursleys. Apparently, there had been bloody footprints leading from the man's room to Harrison's. Footprints small enough to be a child's.
Harrison had nearly cursed at that, but had kept his pathetic expression on. He had muttered something about finding the man like that, and been so scared and shocked that he had fled into the sanctuary of his room.
Of course, there was little to no evidence that he had been the cause of either his relatives' or his foster father's death, but to any eye, it was quite the suspicious predicament he was in.
In the end, he was still a minor, so they had sentenced him to a mandatory, six-month stay at the nearby mental hospital to deal with the supposed trauma.
The mental hospital wasn't so bad, after a while. He was always watched, through the cameras in the corners and the one-way glass walls, but Harrison was quite used to having eyes on him.
He quickly falls into a routine: waking up early, eating his surprisingly good breakfast, then spending some time coloring and doing some stress exercises. His morning consists of a fragile peacefulness.
After lunch, he is required to meet a psychologist every afternoon. The man's office is on the second floor, where only the milder patients are allowed. Harrison's room is on the sixth floor, for the more troubled invalids, and a male nurse has to accompany him to the lower floor every day.
Harrison thinks it's a waste of his and the nurse's time; there is absolutely no way Harrison would reveal his abilities here just to escape when the hospital is required to release him in a couple of months time anyways.
The doctor's office is different from the sixth-floor rooms; the walls are painted a soothing teal color, with plastic fish and stars hanging from the pale ceiling. The lighting is also distinct. Instead of the standard, harsh white bulbs, the man had opted for a warmer orange light. It was the epitome of a nursery, and Harrison hated it.
There are no cameras in the man's office, however, which Harrison thinks is a slight relief.
The sessions are long and filled with a strained silence. The doctor had been eager to help him at first, with a smile so wide it hurt to look at.
The doctor did try, always coming up with different ways to get the boy to open up, but in their afternoon sessions, Harrison never spoke. With baleful green eyes and tightly-pursued lips, Harrison spent the sessions picking at his fraying gloves and alternately glaring at the man and the door that cut off his only avenue for escape.
The six months pass excruciatingly slow, but in the end, the hospital is required to release the boy. The day he steps out of the hospital is a gloomy one, and Harrison thinks that it is quite apt.
the awakening.
(This is the reason why.)
Harrison is transferred to an orphanage after that at the edge of small town, with a population of 1,308. He snorts softly as pass by the sign welcoming travelers to St. Brutus, which draws the attention of the social services woman driving the car they are in. He ignores her questioning glances and instead takes in his new surroundings.
The orphanage is rundown, with the air of a rowdy child uncared for. The paint is peeling around the gaping holes that are doors and windows, and the yard is unkempt and overtaken by weeds and insects.
Harrison follows the social services woman- was her name Kate? he can't seem to remember- down what could have been a stone walkway before but is now green with moss and brown with dirt. He can hear the disapproving sounds she makes under breath, and Harrison is well-inclined to echo them.
She barely stays long enough to drop his bags and hand over his papers to the woman in charge, and then Harrison is suddenly all alone with a bunch of children and an unhappy matron.
Useless woman, that Kate, Harrison thinks viciously, before staring sullenly at the group of children. There is silence before they all rush towards him and start chattering excitedly, throwing questions about who he is and why does he wear those weird gloves and what did he do to get here and oh boy did he come from London and if he did, did he ride the tube?
Harrison feels a bit of nostalgia at the noise, remembering his elementary days when boys and girls would jostle each other to have a chance to talk to him. He is suddenly hit by a wave of loneliness, as he thinks that nothing has quite changed since those years. His jaw clenches, and it is all he can do to prevent himself from shoving everyone away from his person.
"Alright, leave the new kid alone, you lot probably terrified him with all your girlish screaming!"
Green eyes widen at the new voice, and they meet amused grey ones over the din of pre-pubescent whining. A hand reaches out and takes his bag, and the older boy with the grey eyes hoists it over his shoulder and cocks his head up the stairs.
"Come on, I'll show you to your room," he says, and Harrison raises his eyebrow and musters up a soft thanks.
They make their way up the rickety stairs, leaving behind the gaggle of boys behind. The duo reaches the room at the end of the second floor, and with the air of put-upon pretentiousness, the older boy waves his free hand dramatically while bowing.
"Your majesty, your humble accommodations," he says pompously, and Harrison cannot help the laugh that escapes him. A grin spreads the other boy's lips, and he sets down Harrison's bag by his bed.
"There you go, you look so much better when you're not plotting to kill us all!" the boy cheekily says, winking at the other.
"I wasn't-" Harrison protests, feeling heat crawl up his neck and cheeks. What a curious feeling, he thinks.
"Joking, your majesty," is the reply that cuts him off, and Harrison is quite affronted and confused with the ease the other boy could act around him. It is quite refreshing and so different from the way others acted.
"What's your name?" he asks abruptly and feels a tiny sliver of humiliation well up inside when the other boy widens his eyes in surprise.
"Arthur. I think we'll have a lot of fun together…?"
"Harrison. My name's Harrison."
A smile as bright as the sun blossoms on Arthur's face and Harrison stares unashamedly at it. He can feel a hunger in his belly, trying to pull him forward and touch and swallow that happiness, but Harrison plants his feet and clenches his hands. He knows what will happen when his bare skin touches another's.
He allows himself to look though, and he is still staring when Arthur reaches out to ruffle Harrison's hair. Eyes widening, Harrison tries to dodge the hand, with the faces of all the people who he had killed with his skin flashing in a blur behind his eyes. But he is too slow, and when Arthur's long fingers gently pat his black hair, he freezes.
He expects Arthur to flinch away, to retract his hand and make some excuse to get away. Harrison idly wonders what he is going to say, what reason the boy will tell him before leaving and staying away from him.
But Arthur doesn't move away; he just keeps stroking the ebony hair, making some sort of remark about its softness, and Harrison slowly lets out a confused sound from the back of his throat.
Harrison cannot remember the last time someone has touched him without some sort of fear or startled disgust behind it, because of his uncanny ability to know what someone was feeling the moment their skin touches him. But all he can feel from Arthur is warmth.
For the first time, Harrison isn't cold, and he wonders how he has survived this long without warmth.
He does not lean into the hand, but he allows it to stay longer than he normally would, and the knowing smile on Arthur's face is ignored.
Harrison tries to avoid the older boy after that.
He has been cold his entire life; the warmth, no matter how inviting, scares him. Harrison remembers his childhood days when he placed his fingers on the radiator for warmth until they burned and blistered; Arthur is somewhat like a radiator. Harrison fears that if he stays close to the older boy long enough, he might go up in flames.
Arthur doesn't share the same thoughts. He follows Harrison around, sitting next to him at breakfast, making inane one-sided conversations throughout the day that Harrison rarely responds to, and generally just latching onto the younger boy.
Harrison attempts to ditch him, climbing up trees to hide early in the morning or tucking himself into a small nook in the orphanage, but Arthur has an uncanny ability to appear right when Harrison thinks he's not going to. He always does, a quirky grin on his lips and with an apple or some other pastry that Harrison is sure the older had stolen from somewhere.
Another thing that frustrates Harrison to no end is the constant amount of skinship Arthur requires. Whether it be from a casual arm slung around Harrison's bony shoulders or a trail of fire from Arthur's fingertips as he brushes Harrison's fringe out of startled, green eyes. It is always a shock, always a burn.
Harrison always shoves the older boy away, harsh and swift, with his gloved hands, before the fire incinerates him alive.
(Harrison always watches the boy's face closely though, when his fingers rain down on Harrison's cold skin. He watches and he feels with his ability for the fear. And time and time again, Harrison does not understand why Arthur's eyes remain clear, remain grey and warm like molten silver.)
This continues on for weeks, until one especially cold November night.
It is a restless one, and Harrison tosses and turns on his frail bed, unable to slip into unconsciousness. For some reason, his nerves are all on high, and there is a ringing in his ears. His head is pounding a rhythm, and with each beat pain radiates all throughout his body.
He pushes away the blanket and opens his window, leaning out and allowing the wind to drag its icy fingers along his scalp. It is a temporary relief, dulling the ache from the frigid cold, but it doesn't last.
Harrison groans softly, wishing this uncomfortable feeling away with his abilities, but the pain merely increases tenfold. The sudden spike of agony startles him, and he loses his grip on the windowsill as he bends over, and falls.
If he was a normal child, he would've gotten a few broken bones from the fall, but impossibly, his body slows down as the ground rushes to meet him. His body lands gently on the snow-covered grass, and a soft sigh leaves his lips as the white snow soaks his hair and clothes.
The world is quiet here, he thinks, as snowflakes gently float around him, covering the world in a soft white. In the darkness, it seems as if he is all alone in this desolate land of white, and a dull throbbing settles heavily in his chest. No matter how far he has gone from his life at the Dursleys, it seems as if he is still motionless- he cannot run from his own loneliness.
He raises his arm, fingers outstretched, to paw at the night sky. His bare flesh is a stark contrast to the inky black, but as Harrison splays out his fingers, he sees that the tips are blending into the background.
"Oh," he murmurs, the word escaping his cold lips out into a soft puff of air. He wonders if this is the reason why he is in so much pain- he is disintegrating, starting from the tips of his fingers and all the way to his toes. He can see through his knuckles now, the stars glinting and shining through his translucent digits.
Is this what it means to die?
He wonders if he should do something about it, if he should fight to stay alive. The inching of transparency in his body is slow, and he can probably figure out how to solve this problem.
But what else is there to live for?
He will always be alone anyways, separated and unable to truly be with someone. He will only cause death; it is fitting that he has somehow caused his own.
He lays there, quiet and aching in places that cannot be seen.
He doesn't know how long he stays there, the cold seeping into his flesh, when the sound crunch of footsteps on snow awakens him from his pain. He doesn't have the energy to move though, and he merely waits to see who the outsider is.
He does not expect the pained shout of his name, drawn out into three sentences (Har ri son!), the sharp burst of pure terror licking his insides, or the crackling and roaring and burning angry fire that gathers him up and hold him close.
"A-arthur?" he calls out, because who else could this inferno belong to?
A pale face comes into his narrowed vision, and dimly Harrison thinks that this is the first time he has seen the boy so white. Everyone else who comes into contact with him turns pale; now, Arthur feels it too.
"Thank god, I thought you were…," Arthur's words trail off, and his grey eyes close briefly in pain. When he reopens them, they are molten silver, and Harrison nearly gasps as the arms around him suddenly constrict and lips descend roughly on his.
The flames are pouring into him now, dancing angrily and scorching everything in their path. They melt all the frozen glaciers in his body, turning them into liquid that boils and blazes.
Along with the heat comes the passion, so similar to the fire that it consumes Harrison wholly, body and soul. Everything around him is Arthur, and he can feel everything.
Arthur's thoughts and emotions run wildly inside Harrison, and they threaten to drown Harrison.
Don't leave me here.
Please.
Stay.
Be with me.
I'll never leave you.
I'll take good care of you.
I- I love-
Harrison wrenches himself away from Arthur's lips, shock tinging his blood as he breathes hard. His head is dizzy, and he has a hard time figuring where he ends and where Arthur begins. The other boy's thoughts are still swirling in his mind, and Harrison tries in vain to return them to Arthur, pushing them away as gently as he could.
Licking his lips, Arthur merely leans his forehead against Harrison's, silver eyes burning into emerald.
"Stay," he whispers, and the word resonates something within Harrison. It is so full of fear and desperate, human hope, that Harrison has to bite his lip and look down.
He stares at his hands instead, placed delicately against Arthur's broad chest. He wonders what it means, that they are no longer transparent. The pounding in his head is gone now, no longer radiating pain all throughout his body. In fact, he feels stronger now, warmer, and it is such a contrast from his earlier feeling that Harrison gasps.
Does this mean he's no longer dying?
"Stay," Arthur murmurs again, and it brings Harrison back to this moment. Harrison realizes that Arthur brought him back, from his near-death.
Arthur brought him back.
Harrison bites his lip harder, because he wants so badly to give up, to let Arthur hold him close and warm him up to the edges of his soul, but he's so frightened that he would be the cause of yet another death.
Arthur must have seen the rejection in Harrison's glazed green eyes, because he says, one last time, "Stay", before leaning in and capturing Harrison's lips again.
This time, Harrison is ready, and he can pinpoint the exact moment Arthur starts to flow inside him. It's not just Arthur's feelings or thoughts or hopes; it's Arthur himself, his very essence, his very soul.
It fills Harrison up to the brim, whispering promises of happiness and warmth into every empty space in Harrison and caressing every lonely strand in the boy. Harrison is overwhelmed, because no one has ever felt this way for him ever.
When they separate, it takes longer for Arthur to leave Harrison's mind, and when it does, Harrison feels emptier than ever.
Dimly, Harrison wonders if this is what soulmates are.
"Sta-,"
Harrison shuts the other boy up with a quick press of his lips, and the action thrills him to the core when Arthur's soul comes briefly to caress his own.
"Okay," he whispers, hating himself for being weak, but unable to resist. The fire is already inside him, and he cannot, for the life of him, bear to put it out.
Arthur hugs him roughly again, burying his face into a cold, pale neck. Harrison shifts and tentatively wraps his arms around the boy, before glancing up at the black sky and sighing.
Going up in flames seems a whole lot better than death by ice anyways.
After that night, they soon become Arthur and Harrison, a package deal. You can't see one without the other, and if Arthur's hands slowly moves lower and lower down Harrison's back, or if Harrison's bare fingers lingers on Arthur's nape longer than strictly necessary, no one says anything.
Arthur's effect on him doesn't wane with every interaction they have; on the contrary, with every touch and every word they exchange, Harrison can feel his walls being broken down by that warmth. Every day he allows the boy to sit closer, hold on to him tighter and smile at him longer. Arthur's presence is intoxicating, and Harrison breathes it all in, with teeth sharpened and fingers digging into the boy's flesh.
They talk most of the time they are together, and Harrison finds out more about Arthur's past. The boy had a family, a loving one that gave him hugs and cherished him. They were dirt poor though, and when the fire had ravaged their small house and killed his parents, Arthur had been left all alone with nothing to his name. He had been rotated between foster homes, much like Harrison himself, but he had merely acted out.
Here, Arthur had paused in his story and lifted his fingers that had been stroking Harrison's hair to scratch sheepishly at his jaw. He had been heartbroken at his parents' death, and he had thought that being with a foster family would only betray their memory.
And so Arthur had been transferred to the orphanage, and he had stayed for over five years. He had always made sure to not get adopted, and he was merely biding his time until he turned eighteen and he could finally get a job and have his own home.
Weeks into their pseudo-relationship, Arthur had slowly started to hint that he would take Harrison with him when he left the orphanage, and with a heavy heart, Harrison would only nod and look away.
(Arthur had suffered enough in this life; Harrison had no intention of killing him as well, no matter how inadvertently.)
When Harrison wakes up one night in his bed, sweat pouring down his face and the blood of all those he killed on his hands, he shivers and shiver and shivers in his cold, empty room. His fingers are starting to tingle again, and with a brief bout of horror, he watches them slowly start to become transparent again. Unconsciously, he leaves his bed and makes his way to the only person who makes him feel warmth and heat and that delicious fire that licks up his inside until the cold is but a distant memory.
Arthur's room is the one next to his, and the door is unlocked. He climbs into Arthur's bed carelessly, breaths escaping his lips and into the room, loud and harsh. Arthur opens his eyes with a curse on his lips, half-asleep, but when he takes in the way Harrison stares unseeingly at his pale fingers, he rises and kisses the boy.
That night is the first time they make love, and Harrison cries into the pillow, because he suddenly feels his age. It is the first time he thinks that he hates his ability, because he knows that if he stays with Arthur, he would only end up killing him. He tries to say this to him when they are lying side by side breathing heavily, tries to tell the older boy that his dreams about them together after the orphanage will never happen, but the words are stuck in his throat.
Arthur watches him silently, before leaning over to kiss his mouth harshly.
"It'll be fine, Harrison," he murmurs gently, and Harrison swallows his fears and lets himself cling to the warmth that he has been searching for his entire life.