A/N: Written for the Pairing Diversity Boot Camp Challenge at the HPFC forum. (Prompt #22: nerves.)
Thanks to Morghen for beta-reading.
Dedicated to mew-tsubaki.
don't ruin the leather seats, boys
Music is blaring out of the speakers and you cast another glance at him. He's staring so hard at the road and his fingers are grasping the steering wheel to the point where his knuckles are whitening. The rain is smattering against the windows and he isn't swerving for any of the puddles, making water splash up around you, a spraying mist of dirt and wetness.
His cheeks are also wet, you notice as he speeds up even more.
"Al, come on," you say, but he doesn't answer. He keeps staring at the road ahead of him with those eyes he's sported ever since he stormed out of the Potter house, shoulders tense and a tremble all through his body. You'd followed after looking blindly at Harry, listening to Ginny's fork falling silently to her plate and feeling Lily's foot nudge your numb leg.
Suddenly he brakes determinedly, and you can't help but being impressed with the way he handles a Muggle car—first of all, he's not yet eighteen and he has no license, and secondly—this car isn't his so he can't be used to it the slightest. But the stop isn't screeching and the engine isn't hacking, and soon the car is at a full stop by the side of the road.
The windshield wipers keep forcing the rain away. You keep following them with your eyes. Albus keeps clutching the wheel with pale cheeks.
"It's all right—" you try, because while you do understand why he's upset (and you curse them, your god-parents, for the way they don't see their second son and when they do see him, they miss him completely, the real him) you desperately want him to be all right.
He inhales in a split breath and laughs, not letting go of the wheel. "Sure, it's all right," he says in a voice that sounds like someone else's (that sounds like Harry's, you think, Harry's when he said sure, just go ahead and be completely irresponsible). "It's just all right that I've stolen a fucking car, that I can't even man up and stop these fucking tears, that I just want to kill someone right now."
"It'll be, eventually," you say slowly and he turns around swiftly. He hasn't put on his seat belt, and your fingers dance around where yours is fastened, until you unleash it.
"How do you know that, Teddy? How do you know that I won't do as I said and Mum and Dad will keep thinking I'm a failure? How the hell do you know?"
You look at him, and he looks at you. You turn your head and look at the windshield wipers again.
"Fucking hell, Teddy," he says under his breath. "You could at least lie to me," he says and shuffles in his seat so he stares out the side window instead.
"Are you going to return this car before the owner finds out?" you ask while the wipers go swish swish and the rain hammers loudly against the steel that's protecting you. If only you could be Albus' protective shell.
Albus grunts something and puts his hand on the key. But then he stops, and turns his head so all you see of him is a mop of black unruly hair.
"Teddy, would you do me one favour?" he asks, a strand of his hair hesitatingly standing straight up from his head.
"What? And yes."
"Don't ignore me…" You make a noise of disagreement, but he continues as though he hasn't heard, "…when they will. Because, I want to do this. And, it's for certain; Mum and Dad would want me to do something better with the grades I got, so they won't be happy with me for a long time."
"Al—"
"I just want to keep you in my life." You try and think of something to say along the lines of how it's not that big of a deal, that he's only going to move in with Scorpius Malfoy and Clara Thompson in a flat which they will pay—try to pay—with the money they'll raise from gigs with their band (which isn't quite a band yet, if you're being completely honest), but his eyes are green against his paleness so you don't think it would come out all right, not when it doesn't even come out right in your brain. "Teddy?"
The wipers keep swishing across the windshield and your breath gets stuck in your throat, but you put your hand on top of his on the gear lever. He's not looking at you or your hand or anything else.
Then, when he restarts the engine, it dies over and over again and he slams his fist on the steering wheel, swearing and sighing until it works and the car hacks away, returning.
"You really got to stop stealing cars," you say about a month later when you have unfastened your seat belt and argued with yourself whether you should scold him or not for the way he dragged you with him.
He makes a scoffing noise with beaming eyes and fingers dancing in excitement across the steering wheel. "What did you think of it?" he asks in a high-pitched voice and you wonder whether it depends solely on him being hoarse after singing.
"Loved it. You were smashing." Your answer comes promptly, and really, they were. You know nothing about music but you know they were, him and Scorpius and Clara, and even though they only played in a tiny club, five songs, the place had buzzed afterwards, as Albus had, who, with sweaty hands and an overwhelmed smile, dragged you out in the night and into the first car he saw.
He smiles at you and you mention the way Clara ripped Scorpius' shirt off from behind in the middle of one of the songs, and he laughs.
The lampposts next to you fly past as he drives down the road, and after a moment of silence you ask, "Where are we going?"
"I don't know," he answers in that loud, excited voice again. "I just needed to move."
The windows on both yours and his side are rolled down and the air floods in, drenching parts of his worked-up prattle, but you don't mind and you hope he doesn't either.
Then he stops the car next to the road and turns to you with glittering eyes. "Thank you so much for coming tonight, Teddy."
You begin to say "It was nothing, I loved being there," but then he comes closer and his eyes are a bit darker than usual, and you aren't really aware of what's really happening. His head bends, and then he is sucking on your throat, teeth grazing the skin, and you are shuddering because while that was unexpectedly, your reaction to it—the way you urges him closer and want it—is so much more out of the blue.
"Teddy," he breathes against your chest, and then his fingers are very close to the zip on your pants, and yours are busy exploring their way beneath his black, almost humid, t-shirt, and you don't answer because there is nothing that could be said that would express the way your hitched breath and half-closed eyelids express it.
When Albus leans his head in the crook of your neck your hands leave his goose-bump-covered chest and join his because Albus is grumbling "Can't. Work. That. Fucked. Zipper. Out," with fingers that more and more exasperatedly pull at the hem of your jeans, and you really can't wait any longer now.
When it finally is opened, he mumbles a grinning "Thanks, man" in your ear and you think of how it really isn't him who should be thanking you, it should be the other way around—but then there isn't any spare time for thinking.
Afterwards, he begins to giggle madly and looks anywhere but at you, and your breath is jagged and your hands are still shaking a bit, and you laugh, too, just because you don't know what else to do and all you want is for Albus to look at you. But he doesn't. Not even when you've driven all the way back and leave the car where you took it.
You contemplate writing him a letter.
Then you dismiss the idea. How on earth could you define something on paper when you don't have any clue at all of what it is that you want to define?
You have contemplated Flooing him, as well.
That was as dismissed as writing.
So was a regular visit.
You haven't heard from Albus in weeks, you realize as your eyes fall upon the calendar that hangs, askew, on the side of one of the cupboards in your kitchen that you never use.
Weeks. That is a long time. You should do something about that. You're the…more mature one, as you're the oldest out of you two—and besides, is there even something about which to be nervous or awkward? Why don't you just man up and go see him?
You put your head against the table, hands hanging on your sides, and there you stay.
"So," Scorpius says, then pausing to blow bubbles in his soda with the straw he insisted he'd get with his drink.
You look at the blonde in front of you, and wonder for the hundred millionth time why he, of all people, wanted to grab lunch with you today. The only connection between you two is (except from that cousin-thingy-bond which no one ever mentions) Albus… Oh…
He lets go of the straw and stares at you, folding his hands beneath his chin. You ogle the straw instead. It's striped.
"You need to apologize to Albus," he says promptly and you frown.
"Er… What for?"
"Teddy!" He rolls his eyes, leaning backwards in his chair. "You don't just receive a blowjob from someone and then leave it at that!"
You spit out all the coffee you just had swallowed to do something else than glaring at a straw. "Oh, Merlin, I'm so sorry! I really didn't mean to," you say as Scorpius has gotten the hot liquid all over him, and you practically throw all the napkins you can find at him.
When Scorpius is dry again, and has finished scowling at you for ruining his favourite t-shirt (even though he can fix it as soon as you leave this Muggle-ridden place), he speaks up again and your blush reappears. "But really, man, you have to do something about it. Al is completely messed-up, I can't have him moping over you to the point where he's writing shitty poetry on the bathroom walls and not sleeping."
"He writes poetry at the bathroom walls?" you ask.
"Yep. He's spending ages in there, and I dunno, he says it makes him get it out of his system. But considering the amount of scribbles on those walls, there has to have been a shitload of 'it' in that system."
"Oh," you answer while Scorpius takes another slurp of his soda.
"Anyway, what I'm saying is that you and Al need to get your shit together and get back again. Do you know how exhausting it is to wake up each night by an Albus who's teary-eyed and who you need to cuddle with for hours until he's stopped crying and fallen asleep? Clara has had to take Albus' bed all night—the things I do for my best mate is indescribable," Scorpius says.
"But—"
"And especially so since the solution to it all is just there, waiting for you two," Scorpius continues without pausing, leaning across the table, a stern look in his eyes.
"What?"
"Merlin, you are stupid. I don't see why Albus is so head-over-heels with you." He pauses to look challengingly at you, but your mind is a complete blank. Maybe because Scorpius' last sentence is on repeat in your head. "Because, you can just get back together, for fuck's sake!"
"Oh," you answer.
Scorpius is a quite overwhelming person, you decide as he continues to babble on with flailing hands and animated faces.
You're in a car. Again.
"I didn't steal this one," Albus says and laughs, a bit too loud. Or maybe it's your nerves that are too tuned in on him so his every move and noise becomes slightly more prominent in your mind.
"That's good," you answer. It becomes quiet for a while, and then you add, "I mean, not that I minded you stealing cars," because you don't want to sound boring and reprimanding, as though you're more and better than Albus.
He laughs again. "Thanks, or well, yeah… I borrowed it, from Clara's brother."
"Ah," you answer. "I see."
"So, umm…," Albus trails off, the laughter gone and another type of a blush spreading across his cheeks. You don't know what to say, and Albus is playing with the volume button on the stereo and you look at his wrist because that's the only effort you can make not to say something that won't fit.
"Scor gave me loads of advice on how to avoid the awkward silences, but suddenly I can't remember any of it," Albus says quietly.
You're beginning to get a bit angry with yourself now. You're saying absolutely nothing, you're doing absolutely nothing; you feel as though you're letting Albus down. "Don't worry. I'm worse," you say at last.
Albus snorts. "I'm clearly the worst here." There's a light playing in his eyes as he meets your look for the shortest amount of time.
You keep your focus on his eyes as they flicker back to yours and you think that maybe this actually will be the start of something real.
As Albus' lips tremble slightly before splitting out in a grin, you let yourself become certain of it.