bittersweet //scorbus//

we can share the bed

After dinner, Scorpius was busy looking all around the house. To Albus's great embarrassment, Lily had offered to take Scorpius on a little tour around the home.

"Lily, the house isn't that big anyways. He's lived in the Manor all his life, I'm sure he can manage this for three weeks." Albus said, a mix of angry and embaressed.

"No, Albus, it's a lovely home, I'd quite like to look around." Scorpius replied calmly, touching Albus's shoulder gently.

Albus clammed up at his friend's touch.

"Why don't we begin with the living room?" asked Lily.

Scorpius smiled sweetly without taking his eyes off of Albus. He let his hand fall and instead took Lily's.

Albus was left staring after his little sister and his best friend. He reached a warm hand up to the spot where Scorpius had touched him. It was such a small and soft gesture, but it somehow made Albus shut up faster than anything else could. He knew that only Scorpius could do that.

"And here's my room." Albus heard Lily say.

Had he been standing there that long? And had Lily and Scorpius walked past him, up the stairs? Did that mean that Scorpius had seen Albus holding the area on his arm that he'd touched? Albus was absolutely overthinking all of this, so he dropped his hand from his shoulder and ran up the staircase.

"Hey, Al?" he heard his father's voice call.

Albus stopped running to turn around. Harry was standing in the doorway leading from the living room to he and Ginny's bedroom.

"Yeah, Dad?" asked Albus.

"I, er..." Harry stuttered, "Scorpius. Is it alright that he's staying in your bed? I can run to the shop and get another mattress, if you'd like."

Albus opened his mouth, but closed it.

"No, we're alright. Thank you, though."

Harry watched Albus dash back upstairs and listened to the laughing of his children and Scorpius. Harry smiled to himself as he put down the car keys and walked back into his room.

The clock on Albus's wall read 1:16 a.m. The two boys were awake, sitting on Albus's denim rug and talking. What they were talking about, I could never tell you. It was one of those idiotic conversations you have with your best friend held much too late in the night to make any sense or follow any path of topic. So they just talked. 

Lily had gone to sleep, James had locked himself away in his room, and Ginny and Harry had had a warm mug of tea before going to bed themselves.

The door creaked open and James's tired face appeared.

"Are you two drunk or something?" he whispered angrily.

Scorpius stopped laughing to answer, "What are you talking about?"

"You two are laughing way too hard to be sober."

"No," Albus said, annoyed, "You've just never had a good enough friend to laugh hard enough with, have you, James?"

James hardened his expression and said, "Just go to sleep. Mom'll have your heads if she finds out you two were awake at this hour." before slamming the door.

Albus and Scorpius looked at each other before bursting into laughter.

"Okay, we really should get to bed." Albus said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

Scorpius got up and pulled out green and silver pajamas from his trunk. Albus grabbed dark green pajamas from a drawer in his dresser.

Albus took off his shirt to change. Scorpius, before he knew what he was doing, stared at Albus. Albus didn't notice, he was busy pulling on his nightshirt. As Albus pulled down his jeans, Scorpius realized he was staring and turned away quickly.

Ironically, Albus caught himself staring at Scorpius's bare back. His back was turned, so Albus didn't reckon Scorpius could tell.

As Albus crawled into bed, he shoved himself to the wall so Scorpius would have plenty of room. Scorpius slid into the little bed and put a pillow between him and Albus.

"Goodnight, Al." Scorpius said sleepily.

"Night, Scorp."