Albus was being stalked. He knew it, and was frightened by it, but could do nothing but sit very still and pray that it would leave him alone.
It didn't.
The outlandish idea had been following him for some weeks now, a whisper here, a sudden awareness there. And it all seemed to add up to four strange, unacceptable, embarrassing words, which Al knew would haunt him for the rest of his days if he were ever to act as his stalker so temptingly suggested.
He was being stalked.
By love.
His own.
And Al had to turn away from himself in humiliation and repulsion – even the idea... he was ashamed of himself, really. Or was he more ashamed of the way that he was not really ashamed, entertained his perversions gladly, hosted a party and set up the spare bedroom for them?
And now he was sitting next to the very object of his…affections, the mold from which his midnight avatar had been pressed. Al had never felt so connected to another person – threads of light seemed to be connecting the two of them, and he wondered that everyone could not see them.
He was caught in a perpetual loop of amazement at it, at Scorpius.
It was a problem.
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Al walked very slowly to Muggle Studies, thinking about Scorpius, Scorpius who had ink on his fingers and masticated his own bottom lip, which drove Albus to the edge of his seat in twining, pining desperation. Scorpius who thought things through carefully and seemed indecisive even in certainty. Al craved him painfully and had no hope of winning him.
I mean, he's a boy.
In Muggle Studies he learned how Muggles kill people with oily-looking bits of metal. He put his head down on the desk and thought of his treacherous heart, which seemed to be blistering, and his lips, which pined for the nervous, jerky touch of sunlight Scorpius bestowed on everything he came in contact with. His bottom lip begged to be the one Scorpius chewed. His skin longed to be touched by inky fingers.
(0)
And then of course he had to run into Scorpius. They did live in close quarters and shared many classes, Albus rationed, but it didn't do much for his overworked libido to have Scorpius walking up the stairs to him, smiling, the full sun leaking through the window behind him, his hair nimbus-y, his ears glowing magnanimously, his eyes cast in shadow and his mouth smiling.
It lasted only a second but Al could have cried at the beauty of it.
A moment and an eternity later Scorpius was there next to him – his eyes were smiling and his translucent skin and long hands and chapped lips smiled too.
"Hi," he said, a trifle breathlessly. Al supposed it was to do with the long walk up the stairs, but smiled so hard his mouth hurt all the same.
"Scorpius," he said, and was amazed that Scorpius failed to notice his lustful, worshipping tone.
They set off down the hall.
"I wonder if I did alright on that test," said Scorpius, munching intently on his lip.
"You did fine," said Al, cursing the gods. "You probably got a hundred and eleventy-one percent."
Scorpius smiled a secret smile. Al briefly went into heart failure but recovered. Then Scorpius stopped and frowned. "Where are we?"
Al looked around and found they were definitely not in the Charms Corridor. He felt the direness of the situation immediately. "Um," he offered, swallowing thickly.
Scorpius's brow furrowed once more. "Did we take a wrong turn? I didn't even notice." He turned to Al, and suddenly seemed as incapable of movement or speech as Al was.
The silence hung as tenuously as a violin string. Everything seemed to hold perfectly still for a long moment.
Al couldn't stand it.
They were five minutes late to Charms, but Al found he didn't care, really. There was a strange bubble of elation rising in his chest and his thoughts were boiling. A hopeful breeze had caught something inside him, and he wondered if having a Scorpius of his own was not so inconceivable. Because above all else Al was an optimist, and after that tenacious. It was mad, absolutely mad, and Al found himself teetering, then falling to the temptation.
He began plotting a full-scale seduction.