Aftertaste
by Silvia
mprov: shiver; whisper; lemonade
Marcus sips at his glass of lemonade while Oliver sips on butterbeer, and Marcus thinks maybe that's a whisper of them, saying all that needs to be said.
His mouth is tart and his tongue stings.
Oliver sits on a slim booth beside slim boys, in a row of golden shoulders dipping out from the collars of skewed robes. Gryffindor robes never fit quite right; not like his.
"What, you want something?" the small freckled thing says, that friend of Potter's, and Malfoy sneers back, and Marcus says nothing. He watches.
"Maybe for you to give those robes a bath, " Malfoy says, and sniffs haughtily, just like his mother - aristocrat upturned nose.
Marcus saw her once, Lucius' blond slim-hipped wife, clutching at the bookcase until her knuckles turned white. Marcus's father was fucking her, and it was summer so Marcus was home, and had come down for something from the pantry; he couldn't remember for what, suddenly, and he can't remember now. She had very small breasts and a shiver in her spine.
"Looks like a troll had them first," Malfoy says, and Marcus remembers that she never made a sound.
Oliver scoots out of his slot, pushing his mug to the center of the table, and Marcus' sip is too deep - makes his forehead spring up damp and the backs of his eyes prickle. They make the lemonade here with shaving of peel, and it's more than sour, more like sharp.
The boys slide in to cover Oliver's tracks - sun warmed water scooped from the ocean, ripples settling and falling still. Pucey will stretch out his legs when Marcus leaves, and not give an inch.
Marcus rises.
Legs skitter back from his steps and he bares his teeth at them, pushing through the pub door and plodding quickly across cobblestones. He can hear the crunch of footsteps to his right, and knows Oliver turned the corner.
It's an alley, and maybe Oliver should know better, but then it's not quite dusk yet and Oliver is not quite bright.
Pretty, though.
Marcus catches his elbow, and it's as if Oliver is caught in his own head, because he blinks a couple times before frowning. It's almost as if he's surprised.
"You'll be late getting back." Marcus presses into the curve of Oliver's arm with his thumb, and Oliver peers down to examine it. "Thirty points from Gryffindor, and you know I like beating you on the greens."
"You don't beat us anymore, " Oliver says, and smiles.
His breath smells like honey and spices, and his skin is warm beneath the cloth, and Marcus thinks that when they kill his seeker Oliver won't smile so much, and that's a pity. It is.
Marcus plays rough but he usually plays fair.
He would let Oliver leave, even, if Oliver tried.
Oliver watches Marcus' mouth as he tells him to shut up, and Oliver breathes behind Marcus' fingers, and Oliver quakes in the center of his back as Marcus presses up against it, and Oliver's knees wobble but hold. He's never hidden anything very well.
"Try," Marcus murmurs into side of his throat, and bites at it, and Oliver stills. Oliver waits instead, and his shoulders taste like morning. It's morning all around them, dew gathering on their necks, as the sky falls into black.
They'll be late, both of them.
There's a thick bumping in Marcus' veins, and it makes his fingers twitch and his hips push forward until his stomach sizzles. He's fumbling beneath the robes for Oliver's belt buckle, and fucking up against rough cloth, and it's too much trouble, maybe, to do anything more, so he grinds the base of his palm down against the hard press of Oliver's cock, until nothing is perfect or good or clean; just sticky and wet.
There, he thinks, and then says it.
And Oliver says nothing, because he's beautiful and borrowed.
And she never made a sound, not when her head craned back, against his father's fine gold watch, not when she met Marcus's eyes.