Escape or Substitute
A little story for Cuba who is my lover
The castle walls are hot from the direct sunlight, as there are no clouds today to filter it, and it lends Severus' skin an almost translucent quality.
He neck burns as he rolls his head this way and that against the heating brick, his hands fumbling at the pages of the heavy textbook rested on one boney knee.
Before the shadow falls over him he is aware of the presence of another, shading his eyes with a hand he blinks into the sun.
(their hair is exactly the same shade of black)
They fit into the same mould, Severus Snape and Regulus Black, somehow their lives had become intertwined somewhere in the cold labyrinth of tunnels beneath the castle.
Lost within their own lives they wandered alone but together, respecting each others solitude yet wanting companionship, living not for each other but because of each other.
Regulus winces slightly at the heat from the rocks as he lowers himself beside the other, his own legs are bare and tanned, the sun seeps into them and makes them glow.
(Regulus is glowing)
Lighting a cigarette (which has become his habit) he lets it dangle at the corner of his mouth, his lips slightly curled around it, cradling it like a lost child.
They very rarely talk, the two adolescent boys, for they have nothing of which to talk besides lies, and instead of lies they communicate in silence.
Severus flicks idly through his textbook, it is covered in notes and scribbles, little pieces of thought that have made their own unconscious way from mind to paper, scattered about the processed words of older, more intelligent people.
Regulus smokes and stares at the sun, as if daring it to burn his eyes out, to make him feel something more real than this hard hot brick and this cold unrelenting person beside him.
They don't know how it happens, their lips already raw and parched from the sun and the lack of humidity, their backs run with lines of salty sweat.
(their hair is exactly the same shade of black)
Regulus' smoke is in Severus' mouth – curling and fading behind his teeth, encircling his tongue.
Severus' hand is in Regulus' hair, pulling his head harshly towards him, holding his neck like a death rope he pulls the younger boy across the melting stones and into his embrace.
They have nothing but lies to keep them together and even less to keep them apart.
In the scorching sun they wrap each other up, hands and legs twisted and bruised, lips and necks crashing together in a desperate summer fling.
They are substitutes for the warmth they each lack, escapes for the life they do not live but merely accept.