Constellations

Chapter 1

"Alright, you've got to drink now, Scorp."

Albus handed me the nearly empty bottle of firewhiskey and I groaned.

"Do we really have to do this every year? We're just going to be knackered tomorrow for the first day of classes." I had already had a lot but not enough to not care or think about the hangover that tomorrow will no doubt bring.

"Come on," Trevor coaxed. "If you didn't suck so much at this game, you wouldn't have to drink so much."

"This game is rigged," I grumbled but took the bottle out of Albus's hand to take a swig.

That continued on for a few hours. By the time 2 am rolled around, Trevor, Jamie, and Elliot (Al's and my other roommates) had passed out. Al and I, however, were still up. We've been swapping stories of our summers and asking each other questions for the last hour. We were both leaning against the foot of my bed, the empty firewhiskey bottle in front of us.

"Okay, I got one," Al said. "Who's this girl that Annabelle has been saying that you fancy?"

"What? When'd she say that?"

"It was a few weeks before we got to school. She was telling me that you were going to talk to her about some girl you liked but you didn't. She said that she could tell that you fancied someone because you got this smitten look in your eyes or somethin'. So? Who's the girl? Do I know her? Is she a Slytherin?"

It was starting to come back to me. I had gone to talk to Anna about someone I fancied but it wasn't a girl. It was Albus that I had suspected for a while that I had feelings for. This summer those feelings had only grown more fervently and I was going to tell Annabelle since we'd been friends for so long and I could always count on her for good advice. But I had chickened out and never did. She must have figured me out, she had always been really good at reading people.

"You know, I'm really tired," I said, stumbling to my feet. "We'll talk more tomorrow."

I tried to get to my bed but I ended up tripping over the firewhiskey bottle and tumbling onto Albus's lap. I quickly sat up and ended up straddling Al. My face had been flushed red from the alcohol but flared up more from embarrassment, which with my pale skin was impossible to mask. I looked down at Al and was startled by how close our faces were. His green eyes were shining with amusement and a soft smile was playing on his lips. His dark hair was long, nearly covering his beautiful eyes, and all I wanted to do was run my hands through it. And with the firewhiskey running through my veins, I did just that. Albus looked startled but he didn't push me away. Instead, he reached his hands up and cupped my face.

Then we were kissing. I didn't know who had leaned into who but at that moment I didn't care. I had only ever kissed one other person and it was a girl. Kissing Albus was nothing like my first kiss. This was messy and passionate and left a deep wanting feeling in my gut that I had never experienced before. I didn't know how long that lasted, all my awareness of time had disappeared, but eventually, we did pull apart. Al's eyes were wide and I'm sure mine mirrored his. I didn't know what to say. How do you move from best mates to snogging? I'm sure there is some sort of middle ground between those but we had skipped that part and I was left on uneven ground.