Put Your Curse In Reverse [Part 2]

Chapter 4 - Curse

"Cuddling?" he asked. His voice was higher than it needed to be. Albus hesitated for a moment. He looked down at his lap shyly.

"Yeah. Or—kissing?"

Scorpius's heart was soaring. How had the day gone from getting bullied on the train to this? He nearly had whiplash from the transition. Scorpius stood immediately.

"I firmly support that suggestion."

"I'm glad you support it," Albus said, jumping to his feet, too. "It was one of my better ones."

"It was. Sometimes your suggestions are rubbish. 'Let's go back in time', 'Let's try to say hello to Rose and her evil Gryffindor friends on the train', 'Let's see who can eat the most Pepper Imps in one sitting without their head melting'. But this is a great one."

"Hey—all my suggestions are brilliant...if you squint..."

"Right...we just won't mention our fourth year at all, then."

They tip-toed into the dark dormitory. The lights were out, Sig's bed hangings were drawn, and the faint, shifting green light from the lake filled the room and made everything feel calm. Scorpius and Albus hesitated at the divide between the ends of each other's beds.

"Mine?"

"Here?"

They stifled laughter. Scorpius pulled shyly on Albus's hand.

"Mine—the bed hangings don't hang wonky like yours do."

"Oh, right," Albus said. There was a brief moment of hesitation. They both pushed through it, fell down on top of Scorpius's covers, and then wrenched the hangings shut. The shimmering light faded. They were plunged into near darkness.

Somehow, lying side-by-side felt more intimate here than it had at Scorpius's house or Albus's. Maybe it was the fact that it was a single bed. Maybe it was the secrecy of it. Or maybe it was simply because they were both fully realizing that they had no supervision. There were no parents to pop in on them from time to time. No siblings to tease them. Resting there together on Scorpius's bed, sharing the darkness and the silence together, they could've been invisible.

"This feels different," Scorpius whispered.

Albus turned over onto his side. Scorpius did, too, so they were facing each other. He could only barely make out the outline of Albus's face, and that was only because of the aquatic light drifting down from above them, but that didn't seem to matter much.

"Yeah," Albus agreed.

Scorpius smiled. "I like it."

In response, Albus shifted closer. The darkness was playing with Scorpius's ability to perceive distance, so he closed his eyes. He didn't look, he didn't fret, he didn't try to read every shift of Albus's expression. Instead, he felt. He felt the soft brush of Albus's breaths against his lips. He felt the warmth emitting from Albus's body. And when he reached over and placed a hesitant palm flat against Albus's chest, he felt his racing heart. He slid his face forward a tiny bit. Albus did, too. He kept his eyes squeezed shut as he felt the smallest of brushes against his lips by Albus's. He felt his toes curl ridiculously (he would take that to his grave).

"Oh," he heard Albus comment, breathless and soft. And Flirty Albus was lovely, and Smoldering Albus was exciting, but maybe Soft Albus was Scorpius's secret favorite after all, because at that small exclamation, Scorpius went a bit mad. It felt like his chest had opened up, releasing a frantic energy he'd tried so hard to quell, and before he could make an effort to remind himself to tone down, he had his mouth back on Albus's and his fingers clenched around the front of his robes.