"Scorpius, aléjate de la orilla!"
The tall, slender man shook his golden hair out of its usual slicked back form and sent it flopping over his eyes. With a smile that could have charmed the pants off of any Hogwarts girl back in the day, he placed his hands on his hips.
"You know, you don't have to pretend to be a local and yell at me in Spanish at the moment. I assure you, there's no one around."
Rose Weasley rolled her eyes behind her big sunglasses and turned to lie face down on the warm beach towel. She could feel the grains of sand tickling her abdomen, but she couldn't care less at the moment. Opening her book, she muttered something about her being fine with him drowning in the damned ocean.
It had been two weeks since they'd left England. It wasn't a spur of the moment thing, her being on a remote island in the Caribbean with Scorpius Malfoy. During their formative years, they had been the most responsible Hogwarts students you could think of. They submitted all their essays on time, had a knack for handling crowds and students, and possessed silver tongues that could manipulate even the most acute professor. With Rose's Ravenclaw wit and Scorpius' Slytherin cunning, they soon formed a tight bond─mainly over their highly complex plans to steal valuable items from their classmates and professors and sell them to the highest bidder.
Seeing as they were always put in charge of investigating these robberies, it was clear that no one suspected a thing. The investigations sometimes resulted in the duo framing someone they didn't much like, or someone who had disrespected them in some way. It wasn't a surprise when each found themselves charmed by the other. Their attraction, which they thought had been merely physical at the beginning, along with their chemistry, grew until they couldn't imagine someone else touching and grabbing and knowing what things they liked most, and they soon became exclusive.
It also wasn't a surprise when they'd applied for the same position at Gringotts as Head of Magical Artifacts Inspections, and were both offered the job. Apparently, everyone knew they came as a package.
Yet no one suspected their smuggling business: recreating exact replicas of the artifacts and selling them to the highest bidder.
Between their passionate trysts under the sheets and their double lives, they managed to formulate the most formidable plan in all their time together.
Scorpius had had the idea one night. He was sitting on the edge of the bed unbuttoning his white shirt, when he drawled, "You know, my family has a lot of shite inside their vault."
Rose had been reclining against the headboard, staring at his form as he discarded his shirt and placed his wand on the bedside table. "I do know. But we're still bloody loaded with money, so you don't need it."
As he turned to look at her, he had that look—that look that said he had an idea he was about to reveal. Usually, "the look" was mixed with lust and yearning that could set her off in seconds, but this one was a low burn that would drag on for a very long time…
She smirked at him and waited for him to crawl his way over to where she was. His hands snaked their way around her legs and spread them apart, gently touching inside her thighs as he pressed his lips against her neck, his breath warm and his musk captivating her senses.
Rose hummed, "You have my attention."
Scorpius' tongue made its way towards her chin, leaving behind a tingling sensation that traveled up and down her body and made her squirm expectantly as his hands kneaded her thighs and ignited her. "Imagine if we could get rid of it all," he whispered into her neck.
Rose opened her eyes at the warm contact of his breath. "That would be a magnificent feat."
"But we of all people could do it," he said, his voice heavy as his hands traveled over her back, the skin of his hands cold against her simmering body, making her chest arch toward him. He pulled back, taking her with him so they were kneeling in front of each other, Scorpius' chest bare against her nipples that poked through her silk blouse.
She tilted her head back as he made a trail of wet, hot kisses from her lips to her flushed chest, and knotted her dainty fingers around his neck, casually tracing lines from the base of his neck to his glowing blond mane. "Of course we can, it's you and me," Rose breathed to the room, the sound echoing around their bodies and enclosing their budding pledge.
Scorpius grabbed her face between his hands, running his thumbs along her cheeks with a tender look on his face. Caressing the outlines of her full lips and studying her form, he whispered, "You always have my back, why is that?"
Rose placed her hands over his and brought them to her lips, decorating his fingertips and knuckles with light kisses that took his breath away. "Because we're the same, and you've never given me a reason to doubt you," she whispered into the palm of his hands. "You are mine, as I am yours," her voice broke a bit at this confession, but when she looked into his eyes she could see how awestruck he was at this confession.
They resumed their passionate kisses, tongues delving into each other's souls, and hands exploring their best kept secrets, as unsaid words of love were being replicated all over their bodies…
As Rose lay on the Caribbean beach, the memory of how their bodies could meld together made her tremble, her book practically forgotten. She'd been looking at the same line over and over again, not able to concentrate with the crush of the waves a few yards away.
"Magic is so archaic," Scorpius' voice said as he made his way over to her, making her snort out loud.
"I know that." Really, it was the most obvious thing ever; wizards could only do so much without muggle help. They couldn't track wands after witches and wizards turned seventeen, and if you used muggle technology, whatever you decided to do was even more untraceable. If you put a Flagrante curse on an artifact, you couldn't touch it, but what if you were to put it in a magical bubble? It would just come out of the vault and the curse would deactivate, permitting them to replicate the artifact so well that it escaped even the notice of the most observant Gringotts goblin. Imagine this done to 100 artifacts in only one vault.
"Are you not coming to the water?" he inquired in an almost petulant way.
"Not with those strong currents," she replied while putting down her book. She wasn't going to be able to read when he was so near.
"Ro-ose!"
"Scorpius!" She gave him a cheeky grin when she looked at him.
In one swift move, he scooped her up from her spot and held her over his shoulder as she sputtered and thrashed around. "So it's going to be the hard way?" he said offhandedly.
"Scorpius Malfoy, put me down this instant, I did not put my life on the line so I could die because of your impertinence!" She punctuated her sentence by hitting him on the back.
"You're so violent. Your parents would be disappointed in you," he pointed out while slowly making his way towards the water.
"Yeah, well, it's been a long time coming, now, put me down!" She could hear the splash of the waves getting louder with every step.
"No!" He proceeded to spin with her over his shoulders, making her laugh at his silliness.
"Stop, I'm going to vomit all over you!"
"There's plenty of water to clean me off!"
"You're a pig!"
He stopped his spinning, and she was giggling like a madwoman. No longer able to maintain his balance, he put her down. Of course, she proceeded to collapse on the ground in fits of laughter mingled with dizziness, and he gladly joined her, sitting beside her while their laughter died down.
As they sat there staring at each other, Rose could finally comprehend there was no going back. She couldn't even fathom the thought of them not being together.
"Can I ask you something?"
He smiled at her and nodded.
"Where do you see yourself in five years?" She stretched out while leaning on her arms for support. His smile grew bigger, yet his eyes looked at her curiously.
"I dunno, maybe trying to take a piss from the top of Mount Everest."
"Be serious for a moment!"
"I told you, I honestly don't know!" He laughed at her, the sound of it generating a smile on her face. "What I do know though, as cheesy as it sounds, is that you're with me, in every possible situation."
Scorpius took her hand and kissed her sandy knuckles, completely ignoring the grains until the last second and then cleaning off his lips with his forearm. "Wow that was deep," she laughed at him.
It took him only a second to grab her again and pin her to the sandy terrain, grasping her hands above her head while straddling her with a smirk. "Cheeky."
"Idiotic prat." She gave him a smirk in response and he hummed amusedly as he inched closer to her lips and captured them, sending Rose into delighted bliss, her heart attempting to jump out of her body.
"Have you ever had sex on the beach?" he whispered huskily to her ear, gently sucking on her earlobe.
"No, and I'm not planning to." His lips were already making their way to her chest.
"Why not? I think I'm making a pretty good case for it." She could feel him smirking against her collarbones, so she grabbed his head so he would look at her.
"Two things for my case against it: One, there'd be fucking fish swimming around us and that creeps me out, and two, do you know how hard it is to keep sand from going into unsavory places?"
"I figure it's very hard," he sighed, looking crestfallen.
"Extremely," she finished, but he looked so disappointed about it that she started to laugh at him. "You're such an idiot. If you really want us to have sex in the water, we could just charm the swimming pool cameras so they aren't looking at us and do it there. We also have a comfortable hot tub in our room." His eyes lit up again, and he started to get up.
"I knew I liked you because of your hidden sense of adventure," he exclaimed. "Now, up, up, up! Last one there has to be the bottom later!" He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
"Oi, that's not fair, Scorpius fucking Malfoy, you have a head start!"
"You're a witch, and you're Rose fucking Weasley, I think you're smart enough to win!"
Sometimes, she wondered how the hell they managed to outsmart everyone back in Britain, especially when Scorpius insisted on behaving like an utter prat most of the time. Pulling off the biggest heist in the magical world since the so-called 'Golden Trio' broke into Gringotts, and escaping to the Caribbean intact was a feat in and of itself. Still, they were free, and they had everything they wanted, and she was happy to have only him, prattish behavior and all.
They had each other, and somehow, that was the only thing that mattered in the world.
