WRITTEN FOR THE HOUSES COMPETITION, YEAR 7, ROUND 8

House: Ravenclaw

Class: Muggle Studies

Standard

Prompt: [Time] Midday

Word Count: 2417 (google docs)

. . . . . . .

Painty

. . . . . . .

Scorpius knew what he was going to say.

He had practised, Merlin damn it. He had scripted this conversation, agonizing over every word, every clause, every… but there was only one thing he could say that mattered, and it was the only thing out of his entire scripted speech that he could remember when faced with Albus' gorgeous green eyes.

"I'm in love with you," Scorpius blurted out. He immediately clapped a hand over his mouth, watching Albus' eyes widen, because that was not what he had planned to say.

But he had blown it, because of course he had, he was Scorpius Malfoy – when had he ever not screwed up something important?

The midday bells tolled into the silence, and Scorpius felt like they were mocking him. Mocking him for his weakness, for how pathetic he was to fall in love with a man who didn't love him back.

He and Albus stood across from each other in the living room of the three-bedroom flat they rented with Teddy, frozen. It was barely noon; they had been deciding on where to go to lunch when Scorpius had decided for them that they weren't going to go anywhere. No, they were going to stay here and talk about their feelings. The midday light weakly filtered in through the windows in the kitchen, fighting against the hideous paisley curtains Teddy had insisted upon.

Scorpius' heart was in his throat, choking him and preventing him from speaking. Preventing him from taking back every word he just said, preventing him from lying, preventing him from begging Albus to say something, anything.

Albus gaped at him, and Scorpius drank in the sight like it was the last time he would ever see him. His friend's green eyes were crisp and clear through the lenses of his glasses. Flecks of paint dotted Al's cheek and hair, lingering under his fingernails. The paint was dark enough that it was little more than a shadow in the living room; what little light came through the windows was blocked by curtains in an attempt to keep out the scorching midday heat. Scorpius couldn't remember the last time he had seen Albus without the smudges of paint he wore absently; Al had discovered he could do more than sketch in their second year of Hogwarts, and since then, Scorpius had never seen him without a paintbrush nearby. He could remember countless shopping trips, Albus dragging him down to the hole-in-the-wall paint seller in Hogsmeade, or the more high-end offshoot of Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley, and going back to Hogwarts or the flat they shared with Teddy laden with paint cans.

On one memorable excursion, Albus had run out of the Muggle paints that Scorpius' mum – Aunt Hermione, Albus called her, despite the fact that he was no more related to her than he was to the queen of England – tended to pick up for him when they went into Muggle London to visit her parents. He had demanded that Scorpius take him to the shop that she frequented.

Scorpius had enjoyed the irony: the Malfoy family tree was as pureblooded as it came, despite his heroic Muggle-born mother, and yet it was Albus, the son of a half-blood and a blood-traitor, who was uncomfortable in the Tube.

By the time they had finally made it back to Diagon Alley, Al had spilled two whole cans of paint trying to mind the gap, and their creative cursing had caused most of the Muggles around them to eye them as though they were mad.

Scorpius closed his eyes. He couldn't look any longer; couldn't let the good memories linger in the back of his mind.

Not when Al still hadn't responded.

There was a sickening feeling in Scorpius' gut that he couldn't shake. He'd been wrong, he thought. Having everything out in the open was much, much worse than keeping it all inside, Slytherin style.

Albus could never get a handle on keeping his feelings off his face, but Scorpius was excellent at it.

When Albus finally spoke, it wasn't a rejection, yet it wasn't a confession, either. His voice rasped across the words – Al was chronically dehydrated, always forgetting to drink water when he got caught up in his art – and Scorpius could practically see him tugging at his hair nervously, for all that he was determined to keep his eyes closed until this conversation was finally over, or at the least, resolved one way or the other.

"I need to – Scorp – wait here, okay? I'll be right back."

Scorpius' eyes flew open. In front of him, Albus was backing up towards the door to his tiny bedroom, his paint-covered hands up placatingly. He only bumped into furniture once, not daring to look away from Scorpius – like Scorpius was the one who was going to disappear into the relative black hole of Al's bedroom.

Albus was going to disappear into his bedroom, and Scorpius was never going to see him again. As the door clicked shut behind him, Scorpius was suddenly, utterly convinced of this.

It wasn't the first time Al had disappeared into his room, after all. The first time after Scorpius had revealed something so major, to be sure, but Albus had gone into his room and closed the door behind him many times before now, emerging hours later covered in paint. Scorpius had no idea what was going on in there; Al hadn't invited him in since the ill-advised night they moved his bed into the closet.

Scorpius' knees wobbled, and he briefly considered letting himself collapse onto the couch and not getting up ever again. That had… well, it had gone horribly, hadn't it? Scorpius had forgotten his script, the one that was supposed to perfectly prime Albus for Scorpius' throwing his feelings at him. He had just blurted it out, and Al hadn't said anything, then he had run back to his room to hide.

The bright midday sun twinkled through the gaps in the curtains, mocking Scorpius, sitting here alone in the dim living room. He shouldn't have said anything. Not in the middle of the day, so explosively, so unexpectedly, so randomly. He should have waited to do it over dinner, if he did it at all, like a normal person. But it was far too late for regret now, and Scorpius was seriously considering going to bed and not getting up again until Albus had forgotten all about this disaster, no matter that it was the middle of the day.

Albus' door stayed firmly closed. He was hiding, Scorpius knew it. He was lying when he said he was going to be right back. Scorpius felt the empty space where Albus would normally sit next to him like a hole in his heart. It hurt worse than all the other times recently, when Scorpius would glance to the side to catch a glimpse of Albus sketching quietly beside him as he was wont to do, before remembering that Albus wasn't there – Albus was holed up in his room.

Scorpius straightened his knees, his lips flattening into a thin line.

No.

Scorpius had just told Albus he loved him, and Albus responded with "wait here"? That was unacceptable. At the very least, Scorpius deserved a proper rejection, a disastrous "it's not you it's me" explanation.

He was moving across the room before he gave it much thought, feeling the expression Albus scathingly called his "Slytherin mask" fall over his face as he grabbed the doorknob, and wrenched the door to Albus' room open, stepping in – "Look –"

"Scorp! No! Don't move! Shite, where's my wand –"

Scorpius froze, more affected by the assault of colour on his eyes than Albus' warnings. He blinked rapidly, his brain stuttering as he attempted to take in the sight he was seeing.

The strong midday light streamed in through Albus' window – the best light in the place, Albus had said, before claiming this room as his own – and illuminated the tumultuous colours soaring about the room. Scorpius' mouth fell open.

This was why Albus had been holed up in his room, he realised as he gazed around himself, dumbfounded. He'd been working on something new.

Every inch of the room was drenched in paint, excluding the ceiling. Colours streamed around his feet in a river of sensation, some shimmering with magic and others relying on their own gleaming depth. Starting on the wall behind Scorpius, the wall with the door, the walls were covered in art, flowing around the room to where Albus stood, red-cheeked, sketching on a blank piece of wall.

"I wanted," Al started haltingly. "It was… I was going to show you…"

"It's us," Scorpius said blankly, because he was suddenly so certain it was true. It was them, the two of them. Albus had painted them across the room in swathes of green and grey, gold and silver. He recognised his hands, painted in a corner – his hands, like he was looking at them in a mirror. His hands entwined with Albus', whose hands he had stared at often enough to know them as well as his own. "Al… you painted us."

"I…" Albus was still mostly speechless, and he rucked up his hair in the back, scratching his neck. "Yeah. Um. I did."

Every inch of the room was covered in paint, and there was not a stitch of furniture save the rickety improvised table off-centre, laden with paint cans both Muggle and Magical. Colour bloomed across the walls, and Scorpius scanned the progression of fearful black turning into a cool combination of silver and green, the Slytherin crest adorning the wall above two faint silhouettes, which moved into a riot of silver-gold-orange-red that seemed to breathe a Phoenix into life, travelling onto the wall by the window, where practically every colour Albus had used swirled in a terrible tornado. A tornado that, after it moved around the window, calmed into two silhouettes again: two boys, standing shoulder to shoulder.

Albus had stopped on the wall nearest Scorpius. There, the rich colours and detail in the silhouettes calmed into soft pink hues, and faintly sketched hands, eyes, the broad sweep of a shoulder and blond hair curling behind an ear...

Oh. He felt it as solidly as the beat of his heart.

He never had to doubt that Albus would come back to him. This was proof that even when he wasn't by Scorpius' side, he was still never far.

"Albus." As he surveyed the room, a horrifying thought hit Scorpius. "Where have you been sleeping?"

"What? Oh, er…" Albus rubbed a hand through his hair, smearing splotches of green and an eerily shimmering white paint through the strands. "On the couch, mostly. But, hey!" He turned his brilliant smile on Scorpius. "Now that you're in love with me and all, I can sleep in your bed!"

Scorpius could feel his blush, heat rising up all the way into his ears, and knew he must look like a terribly unattractive beet. Merlin, he berated himself, I can't catch a break.

"You can't sleep in my bed," he muttered through the blush. "You're… all…" His hands gesticulated at Albus as he tried to find the words for why, exactly, the boy he'd been in love with since first year couldn't sleep in his bed. "...painty."

Albus' grin didn't shrink so much as it grew quieter. He stepped carefully across the floor mosaic, following a pattern only he could see, until he was standing so close that Scorpius could feel his breath ghosting across his cheek.

He closed his eyes. Up close, Al's green eyes were penetrating, and Scorpius didn't want to know what he saw. Cool, paint-sticky fingers brushed his chin, skimming across his jawline until Albus was cupping his face in one hand. One paint-covered hand.

"There," he said, and he sounded so strange that Scorpius' eyes flew open, desperate to see what was written on his face. "You're painty too."

Albus' glasses had a smudge of fiery orange paint on them at the edge, right where Scorpius was sure it would be most irritating, but his emerald eyes didn't flicker to the side once as he gazed at Scorpius.

"I love you too," he confessed. "Thank you for being brave enough to say it first."

Scorpius huffed breathlessly. "Brave is something I've never been."

"Don't lie," Albus whispered. He leaned closer, tilting his head to the side, and Scorpius' eyes fluttered shut. Al's lips brushed against his as he spoke, the ghost of a touch. "You're not good at it."

Kissing Albus was more than Scorpius could have ever dreamed it to be. He tasted like the paint absently left at the corner of his mouth, the bitter, acrid tang overpowered by the chocolate that Albus had obviously eaten to spoil his lunch as he pulled Scorpius closer, tongue doing something indescribably filthy.

"Merlin," Scorpius gasped against Albus' lips. Their clothes were sticky between them, the paint coating Albus' shirt glomming onto Scorpius' pristine button-down. "Albus, you're covered in paint. We're covered in paint."

"Oh?" Albus was less interested in pursuing this train of thought than he was in trying to get Scorpius to make embarrassing sounds as he kissed his way down his neck. "And?"

Scorpius pulled away, taking a step back and probably ruining a piece of Albus' floor mosaic. Albus stayed where he was, his hands trailing after Scorpius until he was too far away to hold, and they dropped to his sides. "I want to –" Scorpius took a deep breath, lacing his fingers together behind his back before he gave in to the urge to reach for Albus again. "We need to change. First. Into – no paint."

Albus nodded, wetting his lips. "Right. No paint." He looked around the paint-covered room, his brow creasing. "I'm… not sure what's dry and what's not."

"Merlin," Scorpius rolled his eyes so hard he was surprised they didn't pop out of his head. This time, he did reach out, grabbing Albus by the hand and yanking him towards the door. "Come on. I have some clothes you can borrow."

He steadfastly did not acknowledge the suggestive wiggling of Albus' eyebrows.

When Albus and Scorpius left Albus' room, heading someplace more habitable and less a work of art, they left the door open behind them.

The walls glowed in the iridescent sunlight.

a/n: thanks to LadyS and Theoretical-Optimist for the betas!