Rated M for: implied sex, cousincest, the f-bomb once.
He was poetry.
Through the stutter and the reluctance and the social awkwardness, Albus Severus Potter was artwork in ink, just waiting to be read. His skin was crumpled paper, his hair was etched in with a fountain pen and lips were the blood the poet cried over his piece. He was bound in old leather, waiting to be peeled open and revealed, sparkling and fresh, like the first snow.
He learnt this with his cousin's 'goddamn useless writing classes' (at least, that's what Uncle Ron said) and they said that when people spoke in those story books Hugo pored over, it wasn't flowing and smooth like melted chocolate, it was broken and disorientated because people didn't speak in liquid.
Years had gone by, years of wind and skulls cracked open and too-sour lemonade by the river and forbidden kissing gates, and this had circled around Albus's head. He believed it, too; he believed that if he was in a classic Muggle novel, like the B-B-Bronzie sisters or J-J-J-Jane Oswin or Charles Ha-Ha-Ha-That's-What-She-Said, that he'd have a poem in his character description, yet his speech would be b-b-broken and st-st-strange.
Until he met Scorpius.
They were both Slytherins, but the most personal thing they knew about each other was that they wanked in their beds sometimes (it wasn't a big deal, they all did it, so why be shy?)
But one night, at someone's sixteenth birthday party – nobody really knew the girl, but they knew she had alcohol and that was enough – he spoke to him, and his voice was water, brooks running into streams, into rivers, into seas the colour of his eyes.
Albus had never wanted to kiss anyone since Louis leaned over and kissed down his cheekbones at that Christmas party that they all got drunk at. His breath smelt like sweets and heartbreak and Albus couldn't get enough.
Scorpius smelt like alcohol and late nights and grenadine and guilt.
He couldn't get enough.
It was an art really. A few well-placed laughs, and a smile: he was dancing on the stepping-stones and praying he wouldn't slip on the last one. However, his stutter was oil on his shoes and the water suddenly looked enticing.
He used his tongue as rope.
"I-I'm not really a p-p-party p-person," giggled Albus, his voice tripping on the words.
Scorpius would smirk and offer up the bottle, saying, "Everyone's a party person when they're drunk, stoned or dead."
It was utter nonsense, but it sounded like a song.
But one day, Albus couldn't resist snuggling into his arms and letting himself become transparent, until you could see how fast his eburnean heart was beating, because darling, armour is too heavy for even Albus Severus Potter to carry all the time.
That was the moment when he realized they were mirrors. Albus was a book coated in leather with a diamond bookmark, and Scorpius was a gemstone-bound novel with muddled up words inside.
And that night, when Albus licked up the silver from his skin, Scorpius stammered for the first time.
Like sandals on seashells, they raced after sunsets that were too fast, Albus chasing those lyrics that he could never quite understand, Scorpius searching for a place to put the ones he already wrote.
On Albus's seventeenth birthday, they were standing by the wailing ocean, and Scorpius said that he'd started a journal. Albus did too.
Scorpius still spoke like he was liquid diamond, and Albus still couldn't get his words the right way round, but Scorpius was the only one who could read Albus's handwriting, and Albus was the only one who found the meanings beneath what he had for breakfast and who was fucking who.
But there was always that one night, past the gates and the ghosts, when Albus was reading W-W-Withering Heights by the lemonade stand, and Louis was nibbling at his ear, and they were fourteen all over again: Albus couldn't lie and say it didn't feel like both dying and flying.
Scorpius scribbled out the ink on Albus's lungs, and that kissing gate was rebuilt in steel, but even so, Louis squinted at Albus's journal before throwing it into the wardrobe.
Scorpius couldn't understand metaphorical resonances of the latest gossip anymore.
Albus turned nineteen. Hugo kissed him.
Hugo's fingers were fountain pens, recreating the poetry on Albus's paper skin. That song played again, the one the sunset sang, and Albus was humming it as he was pressed down into the mattress. It bubbled and blossomed through his mind was teeth sapped it out of him, as his wrists caught and were caught, as his inky bones coiled and twisted like a heartbreaking melody. Even through the pain and pleasure, Albus was looking into the brown of Hugo's eyes and thought about those goddamn useless writing lessons and how they weren't that useless after all. Albus could arrange his mind into metaphors and similes, and he could describe through rhymes the constellations of the freckles on Hugo's cheeks. They were all clashing chords and complementary colours, and it was black-white-red of hair and skin (ink, paper and blood).
Albus couldn't play an instrument, but his mind just longed to play those chords on the vertebrae of Hugo's spine, to pat out a drum beat on his ribs.
Albus could feel Hugo's firm fingers pressing into his back, and the faint sound of skin breaking under nails - they were called shoulder blades for a reason, and they could cut.
Albus was kissing the cheekbones and whispering things against the eyelids. But his eyes always wandered up, as the pleasure rattled through him once again, and he fell back down from his high every time with a sting in his eyes, taking in the crimson. He sounded like a whiny teenager that didn't get the car he wanted, but no writing classes could change a ruby to a diamond. Those moments were the minor keys.
Those lyrics whirled around again, tightening the hold on his skinny wrists and defining themselves against kissed jawlines.
He could remember those lyrics now.
He tried not to believe them.
They said 'Scorpius'.
Albus left for Devon, enveloping himself in conch shells and small cottages by the high tide. There were bookshelves as tall as trees for Sh-Shakesteer and Edgar A-A-Allan Woe (Toe? Moe? Crow?) The music was never loud enough and the cliffs were never high enough, and his bones couldn't break on sand this soft.
He met a blond buy that called himself Cory. Albus called himself Alex.
They stroked leather and watched sunsets and pretended not to remember the past. Tried not to remember Potter and Malfoy.
Then they kissed by the ocean one more time, and it was all alcohol and late nights and grenadine and no guilt, not this time. They stared at one another.
The forest and the pond and the lemonade stand were knocked down – a housing estate, the reporter said on the Muggle news, would be built there.
They screamed and huddled like spoons in the bed upstairs, and neither of them stuttered, and then both of them did.
They moved out of Devon to a flat in London, and buried themselves halfway between the Muggle world and the Wizarding world. Albus still couldn't pronounce his favourite author's names, and Scorpius still spoke nonsense sometimes, but Scorpius left a note on the kitchen table.
I left the orchids in Devon, babe, see you tomorrow.
And Albus smiled.
Review please, it'd be good to get some feedback so I can improve.
Next Gen Characters and Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling.
Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!
-PotterIsMyPatronus