May 6th, 1890 — Slytherin Dungeon, Fifth Year Boys' Dorm — Set after this.

Clue unravelled the latest crumpled note Narcissus had tossed his way, and read it. "I want to be with you... you're a lot more to me than them..."

The ivory boy read it a second time and then simply gazed blankly at the words, before pushing the note away into the pocket of his robes, closing the book in his lap, and leaving the common room. He tried not to look at Narcissus as he passed him, but he could see his strong, bronze form in his peripheral vision so clearly that it was as if he could see nothing else at all.

Clue disappeared into the tunnel that led to the boys' dormitories, and mercifully found the fifth years' room empty, cool, and as peaceful as the still lake outside.

Narcissus Laurent

  

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Narcissus sighed as Clue left without responding to his last note. Had he said too much? Probably. He thought of letting Clue go off on his own but ended up heading to the dorm after him. For once, he felt odd about being alone with him when that was usually how they always were. "C'mon Clue, please talk to me," he urged as he went to his trunk and slid his textbooks into it.

  

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Clue let his satchel drop to the floor, and sat down on his four-poster, gazing blankly at the wall. Then in came Narcissus, cutting a divine figure in the doorway for a moment before he joined Clue in the otherwise empty dormitory. The younger Slytherin looked at him steadily — as if these last few minutes between the common room in the dormitory had somehow delivered a brilliant clarity, Clue now knew exactly how he felt as he looked at Narcissus. No more confusion, no more complexity.

Unless they started talking again, which was what Narcissus wanted to do. He shook his head coldly; "I can't do any of that clever normal talking." Articulating his thoughts, sharing his feelings, working with logic and emotional intelligence through their issues... Clue just could not do that. He wasn't built that way, he hadn't been raised that way. He hadn't been raised at all.

"Show me, Narcissus. Show me what you mean by your words."

For Clue now knew what he felt, and how he desired to express those feelings. And if Narcissus did not feel the same, then Clue had already ruined their friendship.

  

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"Clever?" Narcissus asked in amusement since to him, it was just... talking. Nothing at all clever about it.

Narcissus had no clue what it was that Clue wanted from him. What did he mean by showing him? Show him what? He eyed Clue cluelessly, not sure what he was meant to do right now when Clue seemed to be expecting something, some sort of action, from him.

Acting more on impulse than thought through action, Narcisse closed the space between them. Gazing down at the shorter Slytherin for a moment, Narcisse leaned in and kissed him right on the lips.

Which made everything make sense. Backing away a few paces from the other boy, he kept his eyes on Clues face for the other boys reaction. This was dangerous for the both of them and he instinctively knew it.

  

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Normalcy was clever. He didn't know how they did it, all those people out there. Smiling and laughing and bonding and discussing, rambling and announcing and courting and promoting, expressing and respecting and obeying and believing. The closest thing Clue had ever got to any sort of normal relationship was with Narcissus Laurent — but his feelings for Narcissus Laurent were anything but normal.

The fey lad stood up from the bed as if intending to close the curtains of his four-poster and shut himself in, for he knew the handsome Beater would not know what he meant by "show me", and that would be that. But then Narcissus advanced towards him, and Clue blinked, and then he was kissed, for the first time in his life, and his chest was on fire and his future was too.

There might have been dread or anxiety or regret in the older boy's hazel eyes, but all Clue cared about was the confirmation that what Clue had hoped he meant was truly what he meant. They wanted the same thing. They wanted this.

But perhaps Clue wanted it a little bit more, for he did not hesitate before disrespecting that gap between them, and grabbing the collar of Narcissus' shirt to pull him down for a kiss redoubled.

  

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Narcissus could not help a slight laugh as Clue came after him for another kiss. He gave in for another moment before the noise beyond their dorm room door reminded him of how careful they would need to be. It was untoward for a boy and a girl to be caught like this together, never mind two boys. Which was an actual law instead of merely inappropriate and scandalous. "School is a dangerous place for this," he pointed out as he tried once more for more space between them. "But summer is upon us soon, in mere weeks." And in his words, were a promise of sorts that not even Narcissus was fully aware that he was voicing.

  

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Narcissus backed away, and Clue looked at him blankly, like some snowy creature who'd only just seen a man for the very first time. As if tamed by Narcissus's actions, the younger Slytherin obeyed the concern and sat back down on his bed. They'd already talked of meeting at Narcissus's home during the Summer. Now the prospect seemed even more enticing... and rather less innocent.

"School is a dangerous place for me", he corrected his dorm mate quietly. Oh he would never think to demand such physicality in a public place, certainly, but he could not relate to the flicker of fear he'd seen on Narcissus's face.

Clue had wanted the popular half-Veela. And he'd got him. Why could it not be as as simple as that?

  

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Narcissus could not help but smile at the way Clue was lookng at him blankly - though now there was a different element to the way the half veelas lips curved. They possessed a secret which now Clue knew. The weeks until the school year came to an end seemed very far away and he knew that lying so close and yet so far when they went to bed every night until then was going to be a new kind of sweet agony.

"Not while I'm around," he corrected in turn. Not all of Clue's bullies had desisted, of course. But incidents had hopefully lessened from those that had already witnessed for themselves the depths that Narcissus's wrath could go. He was half-Veela after all and with that also came a certain sort of temperament.

  

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Clue finally looked away at this, a little bashful at knowing he was so well-protected. He'd never felt safe until Narcissus had come along. There were a lot of things he'd never felt until Narcissus.

He looked up again, and voiced a thought that had now surfaced. "Have you kissed boys before?" For he seemed to know more about the matter than Clue did.

  

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"I had never kissed anyone before," Narcissus answered truthfully as he busied himself with tidying up his part of the dorm. "Genuinely never occurred to me to." In fact, he had hardly even noticed most girls interest in him, let alone other boys. And he had always taken any girls interest that he did notice as a reaction to what he was and thus, something to ignore without little thought to it.

  

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While Narcissus was potentially somewhat flustered as he sought distraction and proceeded to bustle about the room, Clue was cool and still in contrast, watching him steadily. Now that they had kissed, he was hungry for another round. But he knew Narcissus would not allow it. Not until the Summer, when they could steal moments of true privacy.

Clue had met people who'd wanted to kiss him before — but that had not been a good thing. In fact that had been a very bad thing. For he'd been a vulnerable orphan on the streets, a pretty little lost boy, and men had approached him with ill intent. The magic running through his veins had saved him, and he'd felt a dire sort of pleasure at inflicting (albeit accidental) pain on those who'd wish to harm him. In one memorable incident, a man had reached out to grab his arm and had appeared to get electrocuted by it.

He would never wish pain on Narcissus, he'd never back away from him, he'd never feel fear as he approached. The look in the older Slytherin's eyes had been so very far from the look in the eyes of those menacing strangers.

And despite all that, he'd never considered any sort of physical contact; not until that afternoon they'd spent by the Lake. "Me neither", he replied. "I think it is something a gentleman and his wife are supposed to do", he theorised, frowning slightly. He was not sure where he'd got that idea from.

  

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"And yet, people who are not gentleman and a wife do such things all the time," Narcissus said in amusement. Well, that was probably an exaggeration. But he did know how babies were made and he saw women having babies out of wedlock all the time, usually shamed into the gutter. And considering he wanted to be a lawyer someday, he tended to read things to do with the law. And if boys like them had not existed before, why would there be an entire law forbidding it? And in this moment, Narcissus found a whole new reason to become a lawyer other than his fuel to fight for the rights of his kind and others like him. "Society is the one who isn't right when it comes to this, I think." For how could something that felt so... right. So good- be considered unlawful?

  

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Clue, who was far less learned in the ways of society than Narcissus, did not pick up the implication that a boy kissing a boy was a known happening, and a criminal one at that. "Maybe we've invented something new", he suggested, quirking one pale eyebrow.

He continued to watch Narcissus steadily. Clue liked him very much. He was relentlessly appetising, like chocolate.

  

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For a very brief moment, Narcissus didn't know what Clue was referring to. "I don't think we have since there's been a law surrounding this kind of thing for centuries. The punishment was death until 1861," he said as he stopped fussing about with his part of the dorm as he turned to look at Clue, his eyes travelling over every inch of the dainty boys face. He had read the law surrounding things like this but it now hit very differently to realize that it was not a law that would personally effect him. "That's why I said it's dangerous."

Walking over to Clue, he chanced one more kiss. He lingered for a moment before sighing as he went back over to his own space. "I just can't wrap my head around how something that feels as natural as breathing can be considered so wrong that they made it a crime, though." He was going to do more research on it, he decided as he sat on his own bed.

  

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Clue's grey eyes widened at this, but he wasn't frightened. Death didn't frighten him, as far as he was aware. He wasn't sure what frightened him.

A meat freezer. Cubes of grimy ice all around. Frozen slabs of steak, stacked. Grey, pink, white.

Narcissus moved to kiss him, and Clue realised he was frightened of never being kissed by him again. He didn't want to be apart from Narcissus over the Summer... but perhaps he wouldn't be, for long. Surely they'd find a way to be together. Instinctively intending to draw him in closer, Clue raised a hand but found himself grabbing at mid-air, for Narcissus then moved away back to his own four-poster. It was dangerous, after all.

"I don't understand it either", he admitted, and, giving up on contact with the one person he wanted to have contact with, Clue lay back on his own bed and gazed up at the Slytherin-green canopy. "There are many things I don't understand. Many, many things."

  

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Narcissus turned over so that he would be able to gaze at Clue from his own bed. "I don't think the world was made for us to understand, anyway," he said, his eyes taking in the dainty slope of Clues nose and the other boys lashes that could barely even be seen against Clues skin, they were so light. "But I don't think we need to understand some things - just feel them."

/ fade out and then a summery thread, perhaps?

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