Title: Ardor Animorum
Author: AristideCauquemaire
Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter
Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.
Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations
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FlowerSpaceship: Aww yiss, a review! I always get so clingy so quickly, and when y'all don't write any more I get insecure and become either convinced that a) my story has turned boring (the normal case) or that b) you have been kidnapped and are held hostage by terrorists in areas without WLAN or mobile reception so that you can't read and review any more (the special case) :/ But I see that you have a legitimate excuse :) Moving is such a pain... in the thighs and calves... I know every time I move I feel like I've just been exposed to the world as a compulsive hoarder. "I hope no one else is watching and counting all these boxes, omg. What do I need all this STUFF for?! Where did it all come from? How did this happen to my life?" I hope your flat-moving experience was less traumatic than that...
Anyway! Re:Stars: Ha, that's a perfectly valid explanation for forgetting about Layla :D I don't know whether she really deserves the top spot in the Evil Female ranking, though. She did her job, what she was hired and paid to do, and then happened to be grossed out by Draco's true inclinations because her parents and culture f*cked her up. (Regardless of that, she's a total b*tch.)
I guess I should go read Death of Today, huh? Seems that story has a lasting effect. (Reading other ffs while writing one myself is ridiculously difficult for me... so I'll put it on my list, if you can recommend it, so I can read it someday in the future when I've got nothing else on my mind.)
Re:Ardor: Damn. Sorry for the confusion about the variations. I'll try to make things clearer next time. (English isn't your first language, either? I would never have guessed it. Good job! :) )
No idea if I should be mildly offended by the idea that my ffs are as predictable as your mum's favourite soap operas... hmmm. Isn't predictability just a symptom of consistency coupled with attentive readers/watchers anyway? :'D "Oh, and I have the feeling, that the strip session won't end well, what with this extra dangerous potion left unattended... " See, this is just what I mean... Attention to the important details, such as a big pot full of boiling acid right on the table. (Which doesn't necessarily mean that the strip session will end badly, though :P) Anyhoo, thank you for reading and reviewing, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story!
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Nudity and bad language ahead (not in that order). This is the second-to-last chapter, everyone! Please enjoy, for the penultimate-th time...!
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Chapter 10
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"Take off your robe," Potter demanded, more impatient now.
"Wh- why?" Scorpius stood frozen to the spot and suddenly more than a little afraid- in a... in a good way.
Fuck, that doesn't even make sense, his inner voice snapped angrily. He frowned.
"I told you to mind the damn tincture," Potter growled as he went and snatched up one of the pails of water that stood in the corner near the Dragon Tonic. Water sloshed over the rim and splashed onto the bare concrete floor. "It's eating through. Take it off!"
"Wha-What?!"
Scorpius looked down on himself for the first time and noticed a hole about the size of his hand growing on his robe. It was rapidly growing outward with bright-orange edges as the horclump tincture ate through the fabric, revealing his white shirt underneath. As he watched, the white also started growing black blotches as if being sprinkled with ink. Only now did he smell the stench of burning fibres. Small black flakes were snowing onto his shoes.
"Fuck!" he yelled and frantically shed his robe, pulling the clasp open so roughly that it tore off with a loud, silvery ping!-sound, then quickly continued with his shirt. He ripped the buttons open – they clicked as they rained onto the floor – shrugged out of the garment, twisted and stepped on it to pull his trapped hands out of the sleeves. There was a itchy, burning sensation on his skin. He gritted his teeth against it. "Fuck, fuck!"
"Malfoy!" James called just as he had succeeded in ridding himself of the shirt's cuff's tight clutches. Scorpius turned around and was hit by a flush of cold water when Potter threw the pail's content at him.
The burning and prickling subsided. He patted the bits of skin that had previously been on fire, just to make sure. Breathing hard, he fought down the panic.
As it retreated, the cold set in. His hair was dripping water into his eyes. The front of his trousers was soaked through, the wetness was slowly making its way down to his knees, and, quite noticeably, through to his underpants. The cold sensation around his privates actually made him gasp and he swore he could feel his testicles retreat into his body.
He wondered why it was so normal to be stark naked in the Quidditch changing rooms and the boys' showers in Slytherin quarters, but mortifying to be shirtless in front of James Potter.
"I told you to be careful with the boiling horclump tincture," Potter chided him again, emphasising every word, pail still in hand. "Did you get anything on your trousers or your shoes? Let me see."
Feeling numb and really stupid, Scorpius actually twirled for him once.
When he finished the turn, Potter dumped the rest of the water on his head. "For good measure," he said when Scorpius glared at him through watery eyes.
His discarded clothes were doused with the second pail. "Tell me you didn't have your wand in your robe pocket somewhere," Potter said as he carefully spread the sopping wet, holey fabric with his foot, searching for still-smouldering patches.
Scorpius shook his head. "Left it in the dorm," he said. Sometime during the second week of being his assistant, he had realised that he didn't ever need it. Potion-making just didn't call for foolish wand-waving and silly incantations, even though it probably would have come in handy when the roof window needed to be opened and the spill needed to be swept up.
And maybe, subconsciously, he had wanted to avoid the temptation.
"Lucky you," Potter said. Then, inspecting the kettle, "Yeah, this one's messed up. We'll have to start over."
For a moment, both of them just stood there and took deep breaths.
We'll have to start over seemed to hang in the air like potion fumes, sweet and heady and elusive. Scorpius breathed in to say something like "Is that even possible at this point?", but then it occurred to him that it wasn't his place to ask this, after everything that had been said - after everything he had said to James. So he shut his mouth again. Only when it was closed did he fully realise that Potter had been talking about the potion and nothing else, and he was silently relieved for a second.
But then the relief dissipated, too. He sighed.
Scorpius didn't even dare to move his head when James walked across the room, toward the door. He waited for the sound of the door handle creaking and a cold gust of wind even though he had no idea where he might be going.
"Catch!"
He flinched and turned in the last possible moment. Potter threw him a towel from the cot in the corner. Scorpius fumbled but at least didn't drop it. "Thank you," he mumbled.
While Scorpius dried himself off as best he could, James tended the abandoned thimble full of horclump juice and the wolfsbane with calm precision, ignoring the shivering, half-naked Slytherin in the room with apparent ease.
Scorpius cleared his throat. "I guess I'll leave, then." He hugged the towel to himself. It smelled of detergent and, pleasantly, of something else. "Can I- uhm, borrow this for a bit?"
James stirred the wolfsbane twice more, then put the spoon aside with great care, looked at him and said, "Turn around."
He blinked. "Why?"
He gave a long-suffering sigh. "Just do what I tell you for once."
And then opened the upper clasp of his own robe.
All responses along the lines of 'Are you kidding me, I've been doing what you're telling me for months now!' promptly got stuck in his throat. Scorpius, startled and wide-eyed, turned around on his heel so quickly it almost gave him a whiplash.
"You'll catch your death otherwise," Potter said. "Not to mention that it would reflect badly on me to have you run around the castle semi-nude."
Clothes rustled.
Scorpius caught himself twice as he tried to glance over his shoulder.
Clothes rustled some more.
"I meant it," Scorpius told the bare wall before him. "You know. I do. Care." About you.
"You've got a weird way of showing it," James retorted dryly.
"I know." He chuckled once, but became sober very quickly. "I fucked up." How often will I have to reiterate that? "It's an easy enough thing to do, showing that, you know, one cares... in concept. In practice - not so much." So much stuff can go wrong and before you know it you end up sucking a dude off against his will.
He practically heard the nodding.
"I- can't undo... what I've done." He whispered 'dammit' at himself when his head turned of his own volition again. He only caught a glimpse of white.
"And even if I could, I... don't know if I would, really." Suddenly his heart was in his mouth. "Even though it was... really messed up, I- I liked it." He hesitated, then dared to add, "And so did you. I think. Just a little. And that's not even remotely an excuse. Just... an observation."
More rustling. Potter remained silent. At least he didn't deny it.
"So, uhm." He took a gulp of air. "Tell me." Now that all this had been said and done, it seemed impossible to go on like before. "What do I do now?" he asked and put all the weight into it that had been resting on his heart for months and months, all the confusion and distress, and threw what little hope he had onto the pile as well.
"Arms."
His voice was so loud and close that Scorpius flinched with an embarrassing 'huaah!'-sound and turned his head.
Potter stood right behind him, visibly wearing his grey brewer's coat over nothing, holding a white shirt by the shoulder seams.
"B-But I can't-!" He jerkily shook his head. That triangle of bare skin at the base of his throat drew his eyes like a magnet.
"Arms," he repeated evenly, unperturbed by the back talk.
After spluttering some more and blushing without good reason, Scorpius slipped, right arm first, into the sleeves of the shirt and shrugged it on.
There was something familiar and friendly about the gesture, including the monosyllabic, repeated command. He imagined that this was how James, in his capacity as the eldest brother, had helped Lily Luna dress when she was still too small to do it by herself, or maybe reluctant to wear her coat while playing outside.
The shirt was a size too big, still warm and smelled really good. He started buttoning it up. His fingers were twitchy.
"What else?" Even though he focussed on the buttons, he still managed to do it wrong. He huffed, frustrated with himself. "What else do I do?" What else can I do?
He waited for long moments, until he stopped expecting anything.
He flinched again when he felt something on his upper arm.
The warmth of James' palm and fingers seeped right through the relatively thin fabric of the borrowed shirt, poured onto his skin, soaked into him as if it were much, much more than the simple touch of a hand.
"Be patient." Potter's voice was barely above a whisper, but it was loud enough to hear. "This is- It's complicated. Gi...Uhm. Give me time. Please."
Scorpius lifted his hand and brushed his fingertips against his knuckles, so lightly that they barely even made contact. So lightly that he didn't pull away.
"Yes, James," he said.
/TBC
Thank you for reading this far! Ready for the last chapter?