disclaimer: i don't own anyone you recognize.

notes: for the 25 Days of Christmas competition on HPFC. this one isn't very winter-y, but the prompt was green.

calamity boys
albus/scorpius

so far, keeping it together's been enough
look up, rain is falling, looks like love
- look up, stars

The first thing he notices about Albus Potter is his eyes – greener than the world, darker than springtime, brighter than emeralds, and a hundred other poetic descriptions that would suffice. But the thing that captivates him from the tender age of eleven isn't the color or the shine, it's the way he looks at the world through those stupid glasses and finds every single possible way to appreciate beauty.

It's a rare gift, one that isn't bequeathed to boys like Scorpius Malfoy, sharp angles and lost smiles and a heart curtained in stone, but for some reason, Albus notices at him on the boat ride from the train to the castle and he's got a smile that looks the way blue skies feel.

"I'm Albus," he says, extends his hand, and when you're eleven and a boy that beautiful is looking at you, it kind of feels like the whole world is contained in a single touch. Scorpius accepts his hand.

-:-

Rose is the first to notice, of course she is, because she spends all her waking hours with the Albus and thus, by extension, Scorpius, and more to the point, she has more brilliance in her fingers than most people do in their entire minds. She collars him out of a Weasley family reunion party and leads him away from the chaos.

"You like Albus," she declares once they're a safe distance away from her nosy but oddly lovable family and eons away from Albus, it seems. Scorpius mouths soundlessly at her, trying very hard not to wrap his head around the words she's saying. "Don't look at me like that! I actually can't believe it took me this long to figure it out."

"You're delusional," he finally manages, shoving her away. She barely moves from the impact, looking supremely unimpressed as he turns away from her. "He's my best friend, Rose, you know that, and I don't – "

"Please, you know exactly what I'm talking about," she scoffs, then softens her voice and her gaze both, her eyes the sapphires to Albus' emeralds. "Have you ever – are you going to tell him?"

"There's nothing to tell," and there isn't, there never was and there never will be, because he is a Malfoy and boys don't love boys. Rose sighs and looks at him like he's lost a war, and maybe he has. Malfoys always do, after all.

-:-

There are nights spent laughing in the solitude of the Slytherin Common Room, long after everyone has fallen asleep and it's just the two of them, two boys against the world, sitting in front of the blazing fireplace and discussing everything from mathematical theories to ancient philosophers to medieval revolutions. These are the nights he treasures the most when he graduates Hogwarts, when Albus looks at him like a miracle and smiles only for him to see.

"Emma asked me out yesterday," Albus blurts out suddenly, the words seeming lost on his tongue like they didn't quite belong. "I mean, she sort of did. She kissed me and told me to meet her at the Shrieking Shack this weekend at Hogsmeade, which I think is a date. What do you think?"

What do you think? Scorpius stares into the fire and wonders if there's more than one possible answer to this question. I think that's a terrible idea and she's completely not right for you and you can't go on a date with her – but as much as that's his only real answer, it's also the only wrong answer. He swallows before speaking.

"She's gorgeous," he mutters noncommittally, because it's the only truth he's capable of speaking. "How was the kiss?" like he really wants to know what it's like to kiss a girl, like he pictures Emma Jameson kissing him when he lies awake at night instead of Albus, always Albus.

Albus grins a little, licks his lips. "Bloody brilliant," he admits, then looks sideways at Scorpius, which he wouldn't have noticed if he weren't hyper-aware of his every movement. "Do you like her, though? Rose thinks she's annoying, but Rose never likes any girls I choose."

"Rose has good taste," Scorpius says, then adds mostly out of guilt, "but Emma's fine. You should have fun this weekend."

Albus relaxes back into his chair and smiles. "How far do you think she'll let me go?" and this is the breaking point, because all Scorpius can do is bark out a laugh devoid of humor and hastily excuse himself to go to sleep. He knows that Albus is staring at him, but he can't bring himself to turn back. He never does.

-:-

He doesn't intend to end up alone with Albus in a secluded corner that Hogsmeade weekend, but here he is, and here's Albus, frowning at him through too-perceptive green eyes. "You're avoiding me," he's declared, and Scorpius doesn't know what the appropriate response here is. The truth is out of the question.

"How am I avoiding you?" he demands instead, on the defensive immediately. His father's taught him well. "We live together, for Merlin's sake," but it's a weak excuse, and they both know it when they hear it. They're Slytherins, the both of them, and they can recognize a lie when they hear it.

Albus shakes his head, adjusting his glasses absentmindedly as Scorpius tries not to trace the path his fingers take. "No, you're still avoiding me," he says insistently. "You haven't spoken to me in two days, and I didn't even see you for the ride down to Hogsmeade today, and Rose says you haven't been in the library lately, either, which is where you usually are if you're not in the Common Room, and I haven't see you for meals either and – "

Scorpius cuts him off by kissing him, and it normally takes quite a lot to render Albus Potter, brother to two of the most troublemaking pranksters in recent Hogwarts history, speechless, but he manages. Albus tastes like butterbeer and honey cakes and when he moves after his initial shock, he doesn't exactly push Scorpius away.

"I'm sorry," Scorpius mutters when he finally breaks apart for air, his breathing heavy and his stomach churning at the realization of what he's just done. There's a reason his mother always tells him not to let his emotions rule him, and it's only taken him sixteen years to figure it out. "I – I'm sorry," and before Albus can say anything, he's run away into the crowds, as far away from his best friend as he can.

-:-

He's gotten pretty good at avoiding Albus, despite being in the same House, so it takes Rose to drag him out of his chosen hiding place of an abandoned classroom on the sixth floor where he's been doing his homework, his spell-casting, and his brooding.

"Stop being stupid," she tells him matter-of-factly when she storms into the room. "He wants to talk to you and you clearly need to talk to him, and for God's sake, Scorpius, are you living in here?" She stares in disbelief at the piles of food he's amassed and eaten from his daily journeys to the kitchen.

Scorpius makes a face at her. "Well, yeah," he says, "obviously. I can't go back to Slytherin until Al's asleep, and he stays up till midnight on most days, you know that."

Rose smacks him. "You're an idiot," she says, and then she forcefully drags him out of the classroom and straight to the Slytherin Common Room. He's rather impressed that she knows the password, but then, he knows better than to underestimate Rose Weasley.

Inside, after Rose glares anybody giving her dirty looks into submission, she marches him over to the corner of the Common Room that he and Albus have claimed over the past seven years, where her cousin is waiting in his usual chair, reading quietly alone. The chair next to him looks remarkably empty, and Scorpius feels suddenly guilty.

"You have a visitor," Rose announces, and all but pushes Scorpius into his chair before flouncing out. Albus doesn't even seem to register her presence, his gaze focused intensely on Scorpius. There's a moment of silence, and Scorpius can feel his heart hammering in his chest, before Albus speaks.

"I'm not mad at you," he says finally, voice soft and sure. "You're my best friend, Scor, and I don't – I don't care if you – "

"Thanks," Scorpius interrupts to save him from actually speaking the secret out loud. "I'm sorry I… assaulted you," he adds, sighing as he sinks his head into his hands. "That was stupid, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have – even if you were a girl, that was wrong of me."

"It's okay," Albus says, a smile finally appearing on his face. "Are we good?"

"Yeah," Scorpius laughs a little and offers his hand. "We're good."

Albus clasps it happily, and his touch sends a jolt of warmth straight through Scorpius' body, but he keeps his smile plastered on anyway. We're good means I'm not in love with you and sure, it's a lie, but it's one he has to live with, because boys don't love boys. He wonders if Albus can see his emotions in his eyes.

-:-

Things go back to normal after a while of discreet glances and half-smiles from Albus, and Scorpius accepts it despite Rose's exasperation with the two of them because while she's used to happy endings working out for everybody, he know that this what life is like when you're a boy who craves the smiles of another boy. It never works out quite so easily as do the stories of prince charmings and their princesses.

Albus seems to have settled in just fine to their new friendship dynamic with the revelation that his best friend likes boys, and in a lot of ways, he's even more understanding of it than Scorpius is, himself. Maybe it's a side-effect of growing up in such an unusual family, filled with half-breeds and muggle-borns and whatever Luna Lovegood is, or maybe it's just Albus. Either way, Scorpius is grateful, even if things aren't as perfect as he'd like them to be.

But he's been steeling himself for rejection since the moment in fourth year when he awoke with the image of kissing Albus imprinted in his dreams, and he hardly notices it anymore when he sees Albus flirting with a girl. At least Emma hadn't lasted long.

It's near the end of seventh year when things start to shift, and it begins with a warm-eyed Gryffindor boy named Richard Finnigan offering Scorpius his quill in Potions class.

-:-

"You're telling me you've never kissed a girl?" Richard asks, his chuckles disbelieving as he lounges on Scorpius' bed in the empty Slytherin dormitory and tosses him their practice quaffle. "Sorry, but given how many girls at this school have been falling all over you since you hit your growth spurt in fifth year, I find that rather hard to believe."

"Believe it," Scorpius grins, throwing the quaffle back and then tumbling down gracelessly onto his bed after Richard catches it with ease. "I'm not really – not one for dating," he says, tongue tripping over the secret kiss that he's kept close to his heart for over a year.

"Really?" Richard smirks at him. "Not one for dating, or not one for girls?"

Scorpius feels his heart pounding in his chest as he looks over at Richard, a boy made of molten gold and star-strung wishes, whose eyes are so kind, so bright, and so terribly close. Before he can dream up an unhappy ending to the day, Richard's lips are on his, soft and solid and coffee-flavored, moving slowly into a kiss deeper than he's ever had before.

Albus hadn't kissed him like this, but before he can ask himself why he's thinking about another boy during a kiss that feels like heaven, the door to their dormitory swings open, and Albus is standing behind it.

-:-

"Are you mad at me?" Scorpius demands the day following the kiss, after twenty four hours of being studiously ignored by his friend. "I thought you were – that you were okay with the whole… thing," he says, unable to keep the hurt from leaking into his words.

Albus doesn't respond for a moment that stretches uncomfortably long in the already-dead silence of the library, instead taking off his glasses to clean them deliberately slowly. "I'm not mad," he says finally after Scorpius makes it clear he's not about to leave. "I am okay with it, I promise. More than okay. I just – I just don't like Finnigan, that's all."

Scorpius furrows his brow. "What do you mean you don't like him? What's he ever done to you?" he asks in confusion, unable to imagine anyone not liking Richard, certainly not the Richard who'd looked at him with a wistful smile after Albus left the dormitory and said, I thought that might be it, like it was a mere fact of the universe that Scorpius Malfoy is in love with Albus Potter.

"Nothing," Albus grits his teeth and slides his glasses back on. "Nothing, Scorpius, just – just don't worry about it. I'm fine, everything's fine. He's – he's good for you."

And Richard is good for him, good for him because his kisses are still sweet on his tongue, because his touches are nothing but warmth, because he might actually be able to bring him home to meet his parents one day. But Scorpius steps closer to Albus instead.

"Are you actually going to tell me the truth?" he asks with all the patience of being Albus' best friend for seven years. "Because I've got all day to figure out why you don't like Rich—"

This time, it's Albus who cuts him off. He doesn't taste like butterbeer today, rather like chocolate cake from dinner, like happiness, like home, and when his hands find their way underneath Scorpius' shirt, his touch is cold and filled with electricity, but he finds it hard to care when he's lost in their kiss.

Maybe he can't bring Albus home to his parents just yet, but they've still got time to spare today. Scorpius smiles and mutters, "Idiot," just the way Rose would when they part, and Albus only grins a little sheepishly and tugs him back down for another kiss.

He probably should have listened to Rose in the first place. She's got an annoying tendency of always being right.

a/n: if you've read this far, please let me know what you thought in a review, thank you!

and DON'T favorite without reviewing, please and thanks.