Chapter Text
Across the pond, there are a thousand shapeless boys like him, flightless and greedy. It churns his stomach, sometimes, the fact that he isn’t a singularity. That he isn’t the only one.
No one ever is.
.
Winter here is not the same as winters back home. Only now does the snow stick to the ground. He had tasted it, in the dark with no one else watching; he had taken a greedy handful and swallowed. The flakes on his tongue melted into brine. The wind was harsh and unrelenting. There are no unflinching obelisks of concrete to stand in their way. He had shoveled snow with his hands and pressed his lips to his frost-kissed fingers. He had laid down on the field and imagined the pale expanse covering him up fully. He imagined himself growing again, reborn as a righteous tree or a weedy flower, with nothing to cut him down.
That bitter December day, some three-thousand miles from home, he stuck the pink tips of his fingers into his mouth until his lips stretched white and thin. And he gagged on it.
.
There was this kid in his sixth grade class with too long limbs and too kind eyes. Deer-like, though the only time Marcus ever saw those animals were when they were staring at him from the side of the road, car screeching to a halting stop. Choosing mercy. Frankie was his name, and he had the voice of a girl and limp wrists and no one ever said that he was a total queer but everyone knew it, even if Frankie himself didn’t know it.
Later in life, Marcus thinks about how horrible it must’ve been for him, to have everyone figure you all out even when you don’t know yourself. Doesn’t even try to imagine it.
The thing was, even as people pushed Frankie in the hallways and Marcus cut his fists on the tip of Frankie’s too big front teeth to the cascading tune of others cheering him on, just once and never again, because the feel of it wasn’t right and there were better things for him to be doing then beating up someone who even couldn’t hit him back, Frankie never faltered. It was just Frankie the Fairy walking with a gaggle of girls in the linoleum hallways, an immovable object in the face of an unstoppable force. And even that fell away, once interest was piqued elsewhere, Mrs. O’Donnel’s looming divorce or Jennifer Browning’s growing tits.
Apologizing meant he had something to apologize for. Bad punch, landing soft and still breaking skin, three years ago. Kissed forever by Frankie Hernandez’s teeth, the pale line runs jagged down his second knuckle on his right hand. Eternal souvenir, thank you New York City.
When he moves away, he runs his fingers down the scar and does not feel bad for little stag boys who stare at headlights with wide eyes and refuse to run away. Incoming car crash, fatal collision, seatbelts failing to keep heads from flying straight through the windshield.
Frankie found out why people were beating on him as soon as the first hit landed and refused to change. Marcus could never figure out if it meant he was asking for it or not.
.
The funny thing was that he fit right in. Nothing but ease when he slotted himself right into the beating heart of it all, the dining table welcomed him with open hands and booming voices. He knew where to go, which stairs to take, the knowledge passed onto him and never forgotten.
Classes were shit, to put it lightly, but it didn’t matter because Terrence sat by his side for most of it and knew what was going on. The oak chairs and high ceilings beat concrete floors and stained walls as distraction anyway. The rolls of parchment worked to drown him and it was completely different from the old tutor he used to go to, her pocket caramels and smoky voice and wrinkled hand guiding him when cutting herbs for potions. His wand, the one his parents had to take him to London for when he was eleven, something about MACUSA regulations that he still didn’t understand, hummed when he tried to cast a charm but otherwise did nothing else.
At least the sound of water soothed him to sleep, nothing like the East River or the Hudson, inky blackness unfurling to Jersey and back. White plastic floating on the surface like stars. The lake sloshed against glass and he dreamt of a fishbowl his first night and the Atlantic his second.
He fit right in and he still had the ache of someone wearing a shirt a size too small, an irritating tightness around the collar, sweaty and annoyed. Missed tossing around footballs and ramming his shoulder into the chests of much bigger boys, taking them down with him. The only physicality he understood.
They had beaten Ravenclaw, an easy win, and apparently they ground Gryffindor into little pieces earlier that year. He wasn’t here for that. Didn’t matter, because the quaffle dinged when he threw it into the hoop and the hands slapping his arm in recognition didn’t leave any room to comprehend anything else but the game.
A rite of passage; the sweat washed off, bodies shepherded into the common room to the sound of joyous yelling. Some girl tossed her hair at him, lips sticky with gloss, cooing over his accent. That’d been happening more to him, the novelty of a foreigner not yet worn off. Curious stares in the hallway.
Someone patted his back and told him that he did a good job, and he shrugged and nodded and tried to think if victory felt the same everywhere. It didn’t, but that didn’t matter. Still felt good either way.
Helluva going away gift, a place on the quidditch team, no tryout at all. Pure blind faith. He had felt it, the pressure of everyone's expectations on him during practice. It felt good though, to prove that he was good. Ruddy cheeks pressed to the cool glass in the common room, he let the sound of celebration wash over him. He fell asleep like that, slumped against the window pane, a boy stark against the pitch dark of the waters.
No one woke him up.
.
He doesn’t think about Frankie for a decade, not until he shows up in the rundown supermarket three blocks away from Marcus’s apartment. School reunion next to the cereal. Clean up on aisle five. Two boxes of baby formula in Frankie’s cart and a wedding band on his left hand. Not gay, he reveals. Just soft. Big ‘ol deer eyes staring at him, not mad, not anything.
Marcus laughs, though it’s not funny, but it might be a little bit. Who would’ve thought?
We were just kids, Frankie says with a shrug. Stupid kids.
Marcus nods and helps him grab the Lucky Charms from the top shelf. Places it in the cart right next to the tomatoes and ground beef. They stand in the line together, next to the matchbox cars and Top 5 Tricks to Become Thin! and straight rows of chewing gum. Spearmint. Juicy Fruit. The lights buzzing and a baby crying in the other lane.
When Frankie walks away, it’s with the same grace that Marcus distantly remembers from school.
And for a second, under the pale streetlights on the cracked sidewalk he grew up on, Marcus thinks that maybe that was all it ever was. Frankie walking light on his feet, high above the world that raised them. No one ever understood it and so they tried to tether him down and crush it until all that was left were smoldering pieces of something they could recognize.
We were just kids, he said, not quite forgiveness but something dangerously close to acceptance. White-tailed stag leaping towards the forest, safe from harm. There are no more headlights to stare dead-on.
.
The first time he saw Oliver, it didn’t mean anything. Easily forgettable. Just one student in a thousand trying to get to class on time, bags thumping against legs and robes being stepped on. Couldn’t remember if it was the second or third week he had been at Hogwarts, decided that the details don’t matter. And so he forgot.
The second time he saw Oliver was when Oliver was looking at him, his gaze one long line running from their table to his. Nothing but contempt. “What’s his deal,” Marcus asked Terrence, who huffed into his porridge and responded, “What isn’t his deal?” It explained nothing and left Marcus frowning into his orange juice.
But in late February, when the clouds were as gray as ever and the wind howled and Marcus stuffed his hands into leather gloves his mom sent a while back, not quite broken in, he watched Oliver get on his broom and save almost every shot the Hufflepuff’s sent his way. It didn’t explain anything about the looks he’d shoot Marcus once a week, steely eyes and unwavering scorn. Marcus thought about Oliver’s lithe form darting from hoop to hoop and gritted his teeth and glared right back.
“Give it a rest,” Adrian told him, shoulder knocking into shoulder. “Fuck off,” Marcus grumbled, still staring in the direction of the Gryffindor. “Fuck off,” Adrian mocked, singsonging. “This is the start of something good, huh?”
Something good, sure. He wanted to crush Oliver on the field, quaffle whizzing by him. Watch his eyebrows twitch and face turn red. Rile him up.
“I don’t get it,” Marcus complained, limbs sprawled out and heavy on his bed. Hufflepuff wasn’t a bad team, better than Ravenclaw, and the party raged on behind their door. He scored three times, not great, but not horrible either. Oliver had sneered at him that morning, his lips turned upwards, a taunt. You’re not going to win, it said.
“Mate, no one understands Wood.”
“Fucking obsessed he is with quidditch, I think he’s got fuck all in his life,” Adrian chimes in. “It’s just a game, really.”
The three of them raised their bottles in agreement, but it stuck to Marcus like the dregs of beer does to glass. It’s never just a game. Marcus understood that, even if he can’t even fathom why Oliver acted the way he did.
Fuck, he hated him.
.
As a matter of fact, he hated everything. Stupid class and stupid wand work and stupid wrist movements. No more gentle hands to guide him, sugar sweet. It was supposed to be a simple summoning charm, feather sitting dainty on the wooden tabletop. Unmoving.
“Accio,” he murmured, distinctly sounding like he was about to cough up a hairball. Terrence snorted and picked his own feather up from where it had fallen to the floor. Marcus huffed and used the tip of his shoe to push it further away, grinning as Terrence shoved him in retaliation.
Flitwick didn’t even spare the two of them a glance, too busy tittering away with some redheaded Gryffindor on his soapbox. Small mercies.
“Accio,” he tried again. His feather only moved further away from him.
“Nice one, Yank,” someone called, laughing. Not condescending, just chortling. Pure Slytherin bonding. Didn’t stop him from flushing anyways, neck going red hot.
“Thanks,” he called back sharply.
He felt Oliver’s gaze on him again. Tangible, like it always was. Turned to meet him and wasn’t faced with disgust or scorn or any other emotion that Oliver usually looked at him with. Completely unreadable. Marcus wished, a brief fleeting thought, that he’d preferred if Oliver just laughed at him. Laughed and pointed and sneered, not glancing with knowing eyes and turning away. He never turned away.
Marcus didn’t get it. He didn’t really get anything at all, stars on the ceiling and overcast skies. Dark squid in the lake, tapping on the glass in the morning. Oliver’s brown eyes meeting him, gaze of a falcon. Unyielding. He missed sizzling concrete and gum stains on his sole and watching old ladies half-walking-half-carrying their little dogs from his window. Homesickness came and went like a tide, sharp as the scent of salt on the boardwalk.
“Accio,” he tried for the last time, and grinned sharply with ire when his feather didn’t do so much as flutter.
Nice one, Yank.
.
At dinner, his family’s tawny owl flew down to land on Marcus’ shoulder, pecking at his hair until he abandoned his plate and took her to the owlery.
“Ruth,” he chided as she nipped at his ear, taking the package from her talons. “I’ll get you something to eat, just hold on.”
She ceased her preening for a second, only to return to it when she noticed that Marcus made no move to the bucket of frozen mice near the doorway.
Marcus’s mother said it was how Ruth showed affection, rustling through his hair looking for insects and flyaway strands. “She thinks you’re her baby,” his mother had said to him, combing Marcus’s hair flat. “But I’m not her baby,” he replied, as direct as a seven year old could be. She had laughed at him, cooing, and Ruth returned to perch on her shoulder instead.
Fuck, he thought glumly, ears going red. He couldn’t cry now, not at his age, not at this time.
He fed Ruth her mice and placed the package on his bed. He’d open it later, after he finished the essay Snape wanted him to write about metals and how it affected cauldron convection. That he understood. Didn’t mean that he could write the essay though, the package in the outskirts of his vision, nagging at him.
Sighing, he pushed away his hasty introduction and fumbled with the string holding the package together. The contents aren’t remarkable, a pack of pens that he’d asked for and a drawing from his cousin, crayons smudged on a cat-dog looking thing. And of course, a letter from his mom, and another from his dad.
He read them, gnawing on his fingernail, his father’s first and then his mother’s. The same questions; How are you holding up? Do you miss us yet? Is there anything we can get you? The answers to being; Fine. Of course I miss you. Not really—unless you had plane tickets home.
He doesn’t write the last bit. They felt guilty enough already, evident by their considerate if not excessive going away gift.
He just stared at the paper, his father’s letter written on yellow legal pad, edges clumsily ripped, and tried to imagine them both in the living room, his father in the recliner and his mother lying on the sofa, writing their letters separate and still asking the same things.
Curled up in his stomach is an unwavering want. Its form changes time to time, but the essence is the same, wild and unpredictable. An uncontrollable beast, a city rat scampering up shaking train tracks.
A yell from the common room worked as an oncoming train, his rat-heart running away in the face of a high speed metal giant.
“Everyone come down!” his captain shouted, and so Marcus pushed the letters into one pile and vowed to respond later.
.
The field was nearly dark when all of them marched down. Winter nights had finally let up, green protruding from bare branches.
Oliver stood on the grass to meet them, hair mussed by the wind, brown and gold in the setting evening sun. Like a bird perched on a roof, waiting. Already clad in his quidditch gear, that cocky bastard.
“What the fuck is this,” Maurice growled at Charlie, hands gesturing furiously, aiming to throttle. Marcus watched from behind his captain and bared his teeth when Oliver grinned sharply, unreadable once again.
“We booked the pitch fair and square,” Charlie said, tone appeasing, ginger eyebrows furrowed. “If you like, you can use half of it.”
Terrence snorted and whispered to Marcus about typical Gryffindor righteousness, their urge to always feel like the savior. Marcus nodded, half listening, half imagining slamming into Oliver in the air and watching him fall, a slow descent, a bird with broken wings. Knocked flat out of the sky.
They end up sharing the field. Marcus didn’t even know why, because they had no more games to play and they’re obviously winning the cup, so it was probably just to gloat.
Oliver soared near the hoops, a red dot out in the distance. Marcus clenched his fists in his gloves just to hear the leather creak, white scar on his knuckle stretched thin. Bit his lip and wished for a mouthguard, white plastic, no room to say anything.
His heart beat furiously, a rhythm pounding in his skin. The want unfurled like a rose, thorns and all. He spit out blood and watched the watery pinkish glob descend to the grass, down and out of sight.
Above him, far away, too close still, Oliver looked at him and did not say a word.
.
The gray clouds opened up, if only briefly, allowing the sun to shine through. The flowers sprouted up from damp dirt, whites and yellows and pinks, trampled under soles of raucous youths.
Oliver’s stares became few and far between, everyone too focused on passing their final exams. Marcus cursed at his charms, and at his transfigurations, and at any essay assigned. He stopped responding to the letters from home. Ruth pecked at his arm whenever he tried to shoo her away with ink stained fingers. His hands cramped and he had never been so grateful that Slytherin were the first team to stop playing quidditch matches during the season.
Spring fell away to summer, the syrupy weeks before returning home. The lake got warmer and the squid stopped roaming around near their common room and surfaced often. Quidditch cup secured. Once the finals were done it felt like the castle let out a giant sigh and forgot to care. Stairs that Marcus memorized in his first week no longer took him where he needed to go. Paintings that served as markers wandered off to gossip three floors away. He couldn’t get lost walking to the quidditch field, straight line, but thought he could see Oliver’s flying form and decided to brave heading elsewhere instead.
The train to King’s Cross he spends laying on his arms, trying to sleep. Another rite of passage; sneaking out to the Forbidden Forest, tripping over each other in their haste not to be caught by the black cat or her crazy owner. Dark undereyes, all the rage, bags similar to the luggages they hauled onto the overhead racks. Spilt fire whiskey concoctions, steaming slightly and triggering any gag reflex in a thirty feet vicinity.
“Don’t miss us too much,” Adrian said, arm around Marcus’s shoulder to keep him tethered in place. If he wasn’t held down he’d be off, aiming to make it across the Atlantic on his own.
“I won’t,” Marcus grinned, and ignored how it felt like the truth.
—
In September he came back different. Fifth year for everyone else, technically only the first year and then some for him. Showed up again with his vowels too sharp, any accent he may have learned abroad teased out of him. New York wasn’t any different than when he left it. He doesn’t know why he expected it to be. Times Square still had too many tourists, the subways smelt of sweat and half smoked blunts. The football felt the same under his hands, helmetless tackles hardly hurting when he had practically prayed for them. Absolute free for all. No referee allowed. Grass staining threadbare t-shirts, rescued from a box of his old clothes his mom wanted to donate.
“Missed this,” he lamented, laying on the ground, wind knocked out of him. The sun beat down and he closed his eyes and watched his eyelids turn orange.
“Don’t even know where you went,” Diego groaned, hissing as Marcus’s elbow made contact with his side.
“Some stupid private school. No football. No nothing.”
“Sounds awful.” Diego replied, utterly sincere the way a man could only be when he spent every day after school on the football field, and who’d never received private education in his life. “They’re gonna turn you into an asshole. Oh, wait.”
“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. Just wait until I’m too good to hang out with you shmucks.”
They both chuckled, and when Marcus opened his eyes again, the world was awash in blue. After image. He blinked it away and let one of Diego’s brawny cousins flip the coin for kickoff. Felt sweat drip from his brow, and imagined that it tasted as sweet as syrup.
Plastic grass and the bright yellow of the uprights, chipping and hot to the touch. Face dripping with sweat, hair matted with who knows what. Baptism by lukewarm water, dumped by sticky hands.
He wanted this so badly it hurt, and it settled down in his stomach only to return vigorously gnawing when it was time to go back to Scotland.
Too old to throw tantrums, he kissed his mom and dad goodbye and pretended to not notice his mom wiping tears from her eyes, fingers interlocked with his father’s. Baby’s first real train ride to Hogwarts. Monumental occasion.
He waited in one of the train cars for his friends, first years squeaking as they tried to push past him.
“Marcus,” Terrence called, grinning. “Join us!”
Marcus’s knee bumped against Montague’s as he squeezed himself into the seat, hissing as a bony elbow made contact with his stomach when he stretched to put his luggage overhead.
“You got big,” Adrian remarked, nonchalant. Marcus shrugged and tried not to feel hulking. He grew over the summer—taller, broader, heavier. Didn’t know how it’ll affect his quidditch performance, didn’t care.
“You didn’t,” he shot back, grinning as Adrain made a sound suspiciously close to a squawk and tried to hit him. Marcus waved him off with a lazy hand, and closed his eyes, head thudding against the window.
“Sleeping already?”
He hummed, muttering something about the time difference, and Adrian cooed. “You poor thing,” he said, dripping with faux-sympathy.
When he awoke, bleary eyed and mouth tasting something foul, it was to Montague’s burly limbs wedged in between his ribs, and the general chaos of ten people trying to get out of the train car at once.
“Hurry up, we need to get a good carriage,” someone said, and Marcus groaned and hastily retrieved his luggage.
Hogwarts was beautiful, he could give it that much. It reminded him of the church on 59th. A giant stone monolith, yellow windows alight in the distance. Fortress-like. He boxed at St. Paul’s sometimes in the summer, knocking his nose funny and brushing off his mother’s concerns. Damp basement, cool reprieve from the furious sun. He wasn’t religious, but something about the church spoke to him. Man reaching towards a heavenly body, trapped between two brick pillars. A block wide and still feeling larger.
Hogwarts wasn’t the same, no mosaics on the floor, no teenage blood sprayed in the ring. It towered and sprawled a way that St. Paul’s could never, Scottish land paved to make way for an intricate castle, no buildings around. Still smelt like mildew near the entrance, wet granite the same no matter where.
Carriage pulled by invisible forces then a boat then finally, walking through the doors. The dining hall still looked the same as it did last time he walked through, stars covered by clouds and candles floating as poor substitutes.
He watched as the hat took about five minutes to tell a kid to sit with Gryffindor, and grimaced with Adrian when a smarmy blonde kid sauntered over to their table. He remembered the hats’ drawling voice in his head, in the headmaster’s office, portraits staring at him.
Slytherin, of course, because both his mother and his father had been. Family genes. Didn’t matter to him, because he didn’t know exactly what traits defined the houses, and once he did learn he thought they all sounded about the same anyway.
He scrambled to reclaim his old bed, the one with the desk right next to it, even though he hardly ever used it. It was about the message. Only faintly bruised due to Terrence’s flailing arms trying to prevent the reunion between Marcus and his mattress, he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep once more.
.
It was only the fourth day back, and he had only gotten lost once. What halls to avoid and what paintings screeched came back to him like he had never left. He doesn’t know why he was surprised by it, the avenues that the tourists frequented and which delis knew his name wasn’t ever something that he forgot, even though it felt like he might.
Marcus lifted his head from where he was laying, this time out in the sun, ignoring how his skin already felt stretched too thin, tan and burnt.
He could hear Montague already groaning about his headache, which Marcus could only assume was a consequence of partying too hard. How he managed to find a party this soon, Marcus didn’t want to know. Hopefully he wouldn’t fall off of his broom during practice.
The squid popped its head up from the water to the delighted gasps of the first years, and it only made Montague groan louder.
“Snape wants to talk to you,” that little blonde kid snapped, swaggering in their direction. Marcus knew it was better to not ask questions. No need to add to the kid’s complex. Adrian jeered at his retreating back, laughing.
Snape wanted to talk to him. Fuck. That wasn’t great at all. He didn’t do anything crazy at potions yesterday, because it really was the only class he understood. Maybe McGonagall had voiced her complaints, but something that Marcus understood early on was that no one really hated each other more than McGonagall and Snape. He couldn’t think of a reason why Snape would take time from his day to talk to Marcus, not when he could lecture in class. That only made it worse.
Stopping before the stone doors of the potion room, Marcus steeled himself. Wiped his palms on his trousers and tugged at his collar.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Mr. Flint,” Snape drawled, “Nice of you to finally show up.”
Snape didn’t even bother looking up from the essays he was grading, and Marcus faintly wondered what his class had to do to get an essay assigned this early. Poor kids.
“I’m under the impression that you are good at quidditch, yes?”
“Yes sir, I like to think so.”
Stoney silence. Bombed joke. Room five times colder than when he entered. Marcus felt his fingers twitch and prayed that Snape didn’t notice.
“Maurice wanted you to be captain after his departure from Hogwarts. I don’t understand why, but he specifically asked for you. I would’ve notified you earlier, but our owls refuse to fly across the Atlantic.”
He stopped to send a sharp glare at Marcus, like it was his fault he chose to go back home for the summer.
“The captain’s meeting is tomorrow, I expect you to show up and make Slytherin proud.”
Brushing aside the parchments, he handed Marcus a badge. Captain, it said, ink black letters on gold. Like a sheriff’s badge, he thought to himself, snorting once he had exited the classroom as quickly as he could without looking like he was retreating.
He kept it in his fist until the sharp corners creased his skin. Balmy hands and an unevenness to his gait. Okay, he thought nonsensically. Okay.
He fell into bed and let the sounds of the common room sneak up on him. Quill scratching, pages turning, Terrence muttering like he’d seen a unicorn, unbelieving.
“Where am I even supposed to meet them?” he asked finally, to no one in particular.
“Library,” Adrian mumbled, not looking up. “Back study room, past the restricted section. I used to go with Maurice sometimes.”
Marcus made a noise of acknowledgement, and turned over. The badge dug into his side from where it laid on his sheets. He made no attempt to move it.
.
A sour wrinkled face looked at him when he entered and refused to look away until he had wandered deeper into the shelves. Couldn’t even remember what he did to the librarian exactly, just knew that every time he entered she shot him a stink-eye to rival all stink-eyes. The library always smelt like dust. Nose scrunched up, he tried to stifle his sneeze.
He couldn’t stand it here, hundred year old lanterns making it impossible to try to read. Sometimes he missed fluorescent lights, lighting up every nook and cranny.
Twisting through the labyrinth, he made his way to the back, hissing as he knocked into a group of Ravenclaws standing near the bookshelf. Shoulders hitting each other, it wasn’t worth apologizing for. They scampered away from him, as quick as mice.
A clipboard peeked out from behind a shock of brown hair. The shelves had thinned out and the air got staler, dust almost as thick as fog. He hadn’t even thought about who’d be captain once Charlie graduated, but of course he was. Marcus didn’t even know why he was surprised.
“Hey,” he said, finger tapping on the table.
Oliver jolted upwards, expression hardening as he realized who it was. Mouth twitching before it rearranged itself in a frown. It was like watching a store locking up in real time; metal shutters pulled down, padlock locked and shaken just to make sure it worked. The clipboard creaked under his fingers, barely making a sound when he placed it on the table.
“Flint,” he ground out, “What are you doing here?”
Marcus pulled the badge from where it sat in his bag, and placed it on the clipboard. The gold glittered in the low light, and Oliver hissed low under his breath. The same sort of satisfaction he got when Oliver missed an easy save made Marcus grin, crooked teeth.
A pause made up of terse silence. Oliver narrowed his gaze, and there was the look again. Scorn. Marcus had forgotten its feel, but he settled into it easily, like throwing a football, neat spiral never slipping.
“Of course,” Oliver finally scoffed, and Marcus didn’t really care to ask what he meant. The summer had wiped away the feel of being stretched thin, not the uncomfortable tightness of a sunburn, but body fitting wrong when wrought with the sort of searing tension always omnipresent around the Gryffindor.
“Where are the other guys?”
“Obviously not here yet.”
Marcus didn’t even know why he tried. Unmovable object. In the face of contempt, he just sat down and rested his head on folded arms. He could practically feel Oliver seething to his left, the clipboard being picked up again and his badge sliding off onto the floor. Marcus made a note to pick it up, but didn’t care enough to do it at the moment.
Oliver preached like well…a preacher, up high on a soapbox. Acted like he was delivering a sermon when all he was doing was making sure everyone was on the right page about practice.
Twenty minutes of the other captains nodding like they understood why the logistics of a north facing needle nose dive formation—which couldn’t be fucking real in the first place—had any bearing on who got to use the bludgers and when. Marcus kept his head down and decided to play like hell, see how well that worked out for his team.
His team. If they didn’t win at least one game, Marcus would get so much shit. Slytherin hadn’t lost the cup in six years. No pressure. At least he could admit he cared deeply about victory, if only for no other reason but his own wellbeing.
Even as the gestures slowed down and Oliver stopped for feedback, expression open and expecting, Marcus felt the low simmer of rage curl between his shoulder blades. Fucking obessed, he thought. A cruel echo of Adrian’s words.
“It’s great that we’re all on the same page,” Oliver said with a smile, placing the clipboard down on the table with a loud thud. “I’m hoping for good games.”
Everyone, Marcus included, voiced their agreement, taking a copy of the schedule from the clipboard. Finally. Orange lights flickering, quiet sounds of the library nothing but silence now.
“Glad we all worked for our captaincy too,” Oliver murmured under his breath, low as to not be overheard. It didn’t matter because Marcus heard him anyway, the itch between his shoulders returning with vengeance. It’d be so easy to punch him. A good punch, head knocked to the side, nose bleeding. Watery eyes and red tinted teeth.
His fingers twitched. Pride wrapping itself around his heart and constricting. Unsteady pattern in his chest. The slick twist of it, his bruised ego, only repairable by crushing Oliver into little bits.
He steered his shoulders and watched Oliver pack his stuff away. Fine, he thought. Let him talk. Marcus’s fist couldn’t do as much damage as a crushing loss would. There were rumors that Oliver cried like a baby when Slytherin beat Gryffindor last year. Marcus wanted to find out for sure.
The slow clenching in his chest eased up a bit. He still left with the bitter taste of half baked revenge coating his throat. Tacked the practice schedule on the common room hall and felt his stomach roll with nerves. Glanced out of the window and wasn't surprised by the blackness. Could almost imagine the dark water as the night sky.
He stood with his forehead pressed to the glass, warm breath fogging up old handprints smudged in the pane. Erased away. The bitter taste wouldn’t leave his mouth when he brushed his teeth. Oliver’s blood-slick face felt less like a fantasy and more like a premonition. Written out in the sharp lines of his figure. Winning would be enough to lose the daydream. It had to be. He just had to hold out long enough to relinquish the urge.
He dreamt of a large glimmering fish, hopping upstream. A skinny old man with a broken net by the shore. The fish took one last hop right into the air, grew wings and transformed into a rocket. The man turned into a dark red pebble and fell into the water. His fishing net stood upright on the bank.
He woke up and promptly forgot it all, abandoned with only the memory of a shining silver scale and the quiet gray craters of the moon.
The dream left but the want was still there, tangible. Breakfast he tried to choke down, not hungry. Juice too tart on his tongue, he pushed around soggy cereal and listened to the fast chatter around him.
“Practice today after dinner,” he said finally, a booming voice he only used when he had to call plays out in the field.
Nods and thumbs up showed him that they had heard him, but no one said anything else. That too settled low in his gut, clenching and unclenching. Somehow worse than the knowledge that he was in charge was the fact that the team had no visible qualms.
He couldn’t disappoint, far past fearing for his own safety. Starving street rat, pack leader, scrounging in the dumpsters for something that could work. The burden of being completely and utterly trusted made the pedantic urge for victory worse.
He pushed away his bowl and left to go write home. First step in whatever this was—his righteous crusade, another item on his sprawling list. Sat there with his fingers picking through Ruth’s smooth feathers, drafting fervid lines he’d never send. Didn’t matter, pen to paper, that he still didn’t know what to say.
The common room was dead silent. Not even the lake lapped at the glass. A jolting reminder he still had classes to go to.
Gleaming silver fish, gone but not forgotten. Bright stars in outer space, high above it all. Nothing beautiful ever made its way back home.
.
“Too much footwork,” Terrence said, “It’s a game on brooms, for Merlin’s sake.”
Marcus groaned and tugged at his hair. Ceding whatever pride he had left, he reluctantly let Terrence strike through his notes and start anew. Their candlesticks lay abandoned on the table, waiting to be turned into pearl necklaces, the lesson long forgotten in the name of having good practice.
It took two classes and being yelled at by the professor, but in the end they ended up copying whatever Maurice had them do last year, and floated the idea of introducing new warm ups as the season progressed.
It didn’t feel like his team, not yet. Not when all the warm ups were Maurice’s, and Marcus could just feel himself repeating his words. Nothing more than a hollow echo. It would be his team, eventually. If Montague didn’t keep flying like he was aiming to kill everyone in the air, and if Lilith, the second year, could remember that she was a chaser, not a beater. If he knew what to say and if they listened.
The showers were lukewarm against his skin, heart still thudding with leftover adrenaline. Skin too tight, the water not cool enough for a reprieve but not hot enough to be comfortable. He could already feel the throb of a nasty bruise forming on his right side when he flew too close to the beater’s club, trying to critique the hold. “Could be worse,” he quietly admitted to the drumming water. Could always be worse.
Terrence was good, but there were no drills Marcus could run to help him besides just letting the snitch out and timing how long it took for him to nosedive and catch it. Plus, it wasn’t like he was that into quidditch either.
Drove him a little crazy, how he couldn’t say more. Had no tips to help the keeper improve her reflexes other than to play scrimmages. With football he knew what to say, could tell someone to drop their shoulder and protect their head, could help re-adjust the grip on the ball.
The team mocked him when he threw the quaffle. Compared his little wrist flick to the same one used in charms. All in good fun, he took it on the chin, rubbed his wrist unconsciously, and ignored the twinge that came from throwing a ball that wasn’t very aerodynamic. It didn't matter. He still threw straight into the goal.
He tried to remember what his quidditch coach did, but his memories of his little league games have long been mangled with the memories of another little league. Awards and trophies. One bad hit that left him in a cast for three months.
Football was simple, even though the rulebook was a hundred pages long. Didn’t need to remember it all. Felt like he needed to remember all of this, though all the games ever boiled down to was catch the snitch quicker than the other team and make sure you don’t fall and die.
Truth be told, he really only played quidditch at his dad’s behest.
The only thing he remembered were whistles and yelling and tottering on a too large broomstick.The quiet hush before the coach talked. He briefly knew what that felt like to command that kind of presence, out on the field, quarterback on the junior varsity team. Not now.
Oliver would know what to do, he thought, before it brought a hot flush of shame to his neck. Who cared if Oliver knew what to do? He didn’t even have a seeker on his team.
He turned the shower off and wiped his face. In the common room, the sight of the team sprawled on the floor, groaning.
No complaints that he could hear, at least none about his leadership. Other banal stuff sure, like Snape’s essay or dirt from Herbology still under the nails. O.W.L exams in the spring.
“Good practice,” Terrence said to him, bumping their shoulders together.
“Yeah.”
He didn’t really know how to be a good quidditch captain. Knew what losing felt like and hated it vehemently. He just had to keep running from that, and hope that he’d figure it all out, sooner than later.
.
Full moon projected on the ceiling. Spiders hanging from the eaves. Marcus snorted and took another sip of some horrible blood-red concoction, grimacing as it burned on its way down. Halloween spent the same way no matter the place, getting blackout drunk once you realized you can.
At least it served as a welcome distraction from his eternal headache. Montague had thrown his bat in Marcus’s direction when he told him to take a break. He couldn't aim for shit once he got angry, but Marcus had no good strategies to keep him calm other than yelling at him to get his head in the game. Fifty-fifty success rate. Lilith broke her broom flying too close to the hoops on a dare. Marcus wasn’t even flying that day, didn’t know who urged her, but watched the splinters fall to the ground like ash.
“What a shiteshow,” Terrence said once he landed, not unkindly, just a general observation. Saw it all unfold from the clouds, bored of looking for the snitch.
She had told him that her parents already bought her a new one the day after it happened. Marcus sighed, and then thought about wringing his own neck when she told him it’d take two weeks to arrive. She could fly, when she was on her own broom, not the rickety one Madam Hooch used to train first years.
Every goal Lilith threw was saved. Their keeper had complained that it was too easy, and Marcus threw the quaffle hard at her just to see if she’d catch it. She hadn’t.
Across the room, someone bumbled around with a pumpkin on their head. Marcus snorted into his empty cup and went to get another refill, only to be stopped by Adrian and his horde of girls.
“Marcus,” he said, too loud considering the fact that they weren’t even three feet away from each other.
“Adrian,” he responded, trying to measure the distance between them and the glimmering bottle of firewhiskey. Too far. “What’s up?”
The common room had gotten cold. Marcus felt goosebumps rise on his skin and regretted forgetting his sweatshirt—still at home, still not sent back. Three weeks since he last wrote. One, if you counted a hasty note on scrap paper, just in case.
“Did you know my sister once hexed a man? Made his tongue fall right out of his mouth.”
He was so unbelievably drunk. Surprised he was still understandable, honestly. Marcus patted himself on the back for cancelling practice tomorrow. He’d catch up to Adrian soon.
“That’s crazy,” he said instead. The girls hanging off of Adrian’s arm tittered.
“I’m just saying you should totally do that to Oliver y’know? For the whole Potter thing.”
Over the past few weeks, Adrian had gotten increasingly more incessant that Marcus did something horrible to the Gryffindor quidditch team for having a first year on his team. Marcus hadn’t really thought much of it, because he had been a freshman on a team once, but apparently it was different.
“It just isn’t how things work around here,” Adrian scowled. “First years can’t play quidditch and nearly kill themselves trying.”
“You’re just bitter,” Terrence said, chewing absently on a sugar quill.
“Fuck off—I’m not bitter at all.”
Marcus scoffed and shut up once Adrian turned in his direction. He had seen the book Jinxs, Hexes, and Other Curses to Make Someone's Day Truly Awful laying on their shared desk with its spine cleaved in. Well-loved. Didn’t really feel like growing warts or turning purple.
“Right,” Marcus said finally, after it was clear that Adrian was going to keep rambling on about the perceived slight. Even the girls looked unimpressed. “I’m just gonna go.”
He snatched the bottle as quickly as he could without it looking desperate. Judging by the amused look Terrence sent him by the fire, it was still too soon. Passed Lilith on his way over, and shook his head as he heard boast about her flying. Too much confidence for a girl days away from receiving her broom back. Too much effort to bare his teeth and feel the weight of it all. He slid down onto the couch, firewhiskey cradled in between his elbow and hand. Football hold.
He laid there watching candle wax solidify near his foot from where it was dropping onto the leather. Maybe he didn’t need another drink, honestly. Thought about the homework piling up on the desk and groaned.
He missed going to a school where no one really gave a shit. McGonagall didn’t believe him when he said that his owl had stolen his transfiguration homework and sent it home by accident. Wizard equivalent to my dog ate it, he guessed. It was nearly as bad as Tony B in seventh grade, who had told their history teacher, straight face, that his brother used his worksheet as rolling paper. She didn’t take his excuse as well as Mr. Michelle had. Honestly, he didn’t know where the homework went. He had half assed it, left it on his desk, and the next day he woke up and it was gone. Maybe it was ghosts or something. Real poltergeist, not Peeves who just took pots and pans and clanged them together in the hallways.
Quidditch match in a week. Clock ticking too loudly. Anticipating the awful hangover and wishing for good results.
He heard a loud bang coming from outside and didn’t really care. It was always something at this school. Just closed his eyes and splayed an arm over his face.
“It’s a troll!” one of the girls cried a few minutes later. The whispers went around, a symphony of confusion. Terrence appeared from who-knows-where and snorted.
“You shouldn’t talk about our captain like that,” he yelled back. Marcus hissed, limbs too heavy to hurt, and frowned.
“That’s not cool man,” he replied. “Low blow.”
The leather that had once felt cool to his skin was now sticky and warm. Terrence snorted, pig-like, and handed him a potion. “So you don’t look like death in the morning,” he said, and Marcus took it with clumsy fingers.
If he was a troll, he thought aloud, at least he’d be a big one.
.
The leather on his gloves no longer creaked when he flexed his hands, long since broken in. Tapped his left shin twice, then the inside of his right wrist. Ignored the way the team looked at him and steeled himself to make a speech. He hated doing them. Even back home. Nothing said Go get ‘em team! like him stumbling through a couple of sentences. Just wanted to tell them to not think about losing.
“Glad we’re all out here—” he started, before they all groaned. “Shut up,” someone hollered at him, and he grinned. Thank God.
“Montague you need to keep a calm head out there. Lilith if your broom ever feels like it’s fighting you, slow the fuck down. Terrence, keep your eyes peeled. Cassian, don’t hit any of us. Adrian, pass to other people. Seraphina, I don’t know—don’t let the ball through, alright? Everyone got it?”
Nods and hoots, a clear definitive yes. The wind whipped their faces when they walked onto the field. The Gryffindor team stood in the middle of the field, clad in red. Blink and you’ll miss it, Marcus thought, for the faintest second, of a blood-slick face.
“Captains,” Hooch shouted over the cheering in the stands and some kid in the announcers box, not wearing his house scarf but obviously Gryffindor just based on the way he announced everyone walking out. “Shake hands!”
Glad he hadn’t put his glove back on after his pre-game ritual, Marcus held out his clammy palm. Oliver took it. Thumbnail digging into the white of Marcus’s scar, Oliver didn’t even twitch. Brown eyes and falcon stare, above it all. It made Marcus grit his teeth and tighten his grip, feeling Oliver’s knuckles roll under the skin, like marbles.
“Right,” Hooch said, eying the two of them. “Mind getting on your brooms now?”
The whistle blew, shrill. Didn’t register getting the quaffle, just knew he had it in his hands. Past the Gryffindor chaser, past the other one, bludger to the face—hoped his nose wasn’t bleeding. Felt like it was. Threw the quaffle to Adrian and circled back, muttering a quick healing spell.
Bludger overhead. Ducked. The other chaser too slow, fumbling. Sudden surge of gratefulness for his beaters.
Lilith—finally—taking the quaffle and sprinting. Marcus perched near the Gryffindor hoops and ignored the frantic squawking of the announcer. Oliver didn’t look at him, not until he had the ball in his hand then—in the hoop.
Broom flying upwards, Marcus might’ve bumped into the Potter kid. Hard. Saw Adrian grin, the shout of Foul, Foul! rising in the stands. Groaned. Not even a whistle when the lanky ginger asshole dug a sharp elbow into Marcus’s side, but the second he clipped the seekers’ side, its a fucking war crime.
Shoulder to shoulder. Boxing one of Gryffindor’s other chasers out. Prayed that Adrian remembered what routes correlated to what handsign. Held up two fingers and tapped them upwards to his palm. Almost pumped his fist in joy when he saw Adrian readjust his path, climbing into the air. Ignored the announcer's call of: Looks like Slytherin’s now learning to count—not surprised they didn’t learn sooner.
Took the quaffle. Ignored what might’ve been a hiss of pain from the chaser. Threw it to Adrian up in the sky. Saw Terrence from the corner of his eye. Circling like a bird. Shooting into the air, he caught the ball when Adrian threw it back. Heard the ding of a goal and grinned.
60-50 Slytherin.
He didn’t remember landing, just Adrian asking, “Did he just eat it?” Their feet on the ground, eyes squinted towards the sky. “What,” he croaked. Adrian pointed to Potter’s form, holding up a spit slick snitch, glittering in the sunlight. Marcus felt his headache return and his shoulders tighten, pounding to the tune of the cheers from the Gryffindor section of the stands.
Fuck this game. Honestly. It was like running seventeen touchdowns and losing because the kicker made a really cool field goal.
“No idea what that meant, but there’s no way that him ingesting the snitch is legal."
He couldn’t accept this. Judging by the disbelieving look on the team’s face, he wasn’t the only one. Marcus turned to Madam Hooch and yelled, “He didn’t catch it, he nearly swallowed it!”
She only shrugged at him before walking over to congratulate the Gryffindors.
Red tide flooding the field, swallowing the winning team whole. Marcus turned, ready to snap. Sharp gaze peeking out from the celebrations. Oliver, not even gloating. Just watching. Bird with the mouse already in its beak. Prediction fulfilled, no weight to it, just fact. Unburdened by anything else.
The churning gut feel of his own premonition going to be answered. Personal red tide, sloughing off of their faces. Fist not yet bruised purple. Still to come. Marcus ran his tongue over his lip and tasted blood that hadn’t stopped flowing. Oliver watched him like he knew what he was thinking and welcomed it.
Marcus looked away first.
.
Last to enter, head ducked low, rounding out the walk of shame. With trembling hands he had yanked his zipper too hard and winced when it flew off. Spent two minutes looking for it on the ground of the locker room before he just abandoned it entirely, his robes half spilling towards the ground. Had to keep the straps wrapped tightly in his hands, cutting off his blood flow and turning the tips of his fingers white in order to make it back to the common room without his bag tipping over, sweaty uniform split on cool tile.
He was still adjusting his grip on the bag when he overheard a first year mutter, “We should’ve won that game,” and it didn’t sound like a compliment. A broad palm on Montague’s shoulder kept the beater from snapping back, but it didn’t stop him from flinching.
Heads turned to face them when they entered, but all of them quickly returned to their respective tasks. There was no hollering outrage or quiet sorrow. Just the sounds of pages flipping and quills scratching, a group near the window playing Exploding Snaps and shrieking.
It would’ve been better if they had been mad, at him or Hooch or just in general. The fact that everyone watching took it on the chin somehow stung even worse than the loss, like they knew it was coming or didn’t care to begin with.
Seraphina commented under her breath, walking past towards the stairs. “Could’ve done without the fouls.” It landed like a punch and settled like a slap, molten and stinging. Seismic shudder felt cleaving the ocean in half.
He set his bag by his foot and sat by the fire, the wet ends of his hair still dripping. Felt warm heat leech into his clenched hands and didn’t look when someone sat next to him. He instead opened the dogeared book laying near the lamp and flipped to the beginning, two pages in and already losing the plot.
Leather creaking when he shifted, Terrence’s shoulders hitched when he opened his mouth to start, only to close it again. Marcus stared at the tiny black words and didn’t even bother pretending that he was reading. “I should’ve seen the snitch before Potter. I mean—his broomstick didn’t even work halfway through.”
It would be easy to nod, even easier to blame the loss on him. Instead he tried to ignore Terrence’s look, too open under the firelight and focused on his twisting fingers on the book’s well worn cover. Agreeing wasn’t a right thing to do, but at least it’d be quick.
The water from his hair fell behind his ears and slowly descended towards his neck. The rhythm of his heart had long slowed from its speeding pace, but it still thumped unruly. He ground the droplet into his vein with a calloused hand and felt himself swallow.
“Yeah,” he said eventually, tasting each word. “And I could’ve scored more goals. Listen, we’ll talk about this at practice tomorrow.”
With that he stood and picked his bag up, placing the book back where it belonged. Nodded sharply when Lilith looked at him, her head shifting on her friend’s lap, her slim fingers pressing lightly at the large bruise on her arm.
He set his gear down with a thud and prodded his split lip with his tongue. He didn’t feel like healing this one, even with the beat up first aid under his sink, red cross. The thought of walking over there made him groan unbidden, sinking even deeper into his mattress. Not when he couldn’t even be bothered to untie his shoes.
He didn’t want to think of what Oliver was doing, but he couldn’t help himself. It was like a car crash, he couldn’t stop thinking about it, all twisted metal and screaming passengers. Busted rear windows. Tinged with undeniable urge to flee, but the obligation to stay.
Traitorously, he wondered if someone was patting his back, gingerly pressing ice to his bruises. Maybe he was getting drunk, rowdy yells echoing from the tower. Whatever he was doing, it had to be haunted by a spare paper with shit plays.
The sloppily folded sweater was the sight that greeted him when he turned his head. Sleeves sticking out from beneath it, sprawling on his pillow. Reaching for him. Groaning, he sat up and put it on, careful as to not smear blood on it.
It smelt like home; dust, detergent, and his mom’s perfume. Found a couple of stray white hairs laying on the gray fabric, a cat shaped dent if he stared hard enough. Courtesy of Harvey, their new siamese cat. Could make a joke outta it in his next letter, tucked after paragraphs of loss; I think I found some of your hair on my sweatshirt. Could’ve told me you were going gray.
Quarter still in the pocket from the summer—the kickoff deciding coin; George Washington on the front, eagle on the back, scratched from hitting the sidewalk too many times. Nothing otherwise remarkable about it other than the fact that Diego gave it to him, grinning under the August sun. He knew that it wasn’t in there when he put the sweater in the laundry bin because it was still sitting on his little rickety desk. This was his Dad’s doing, he could tell. Marcus laughed wetly and thumbed at the bridge of Washington’s crooked nose.
He slipped the hood over his eyes, kept the coin clutched in between his fingers. Toed his sneakers off and curled on his side, felt the metal warm in his hands. It had to be enough, just for a couple of minutes.
.
The days didn’t drown him as much as they just passed in quick succession, sliding away too fast to remember it, no letters left unsent that he could read to jog his memory. Blink and he missed Thanksgiving. Blinked again and opened his eyes to the sight of snow. Felt like grinning, looking out from the owlery into the open white plans, the novelty not yet worn off. Hand tugging at his coat, half hearted arguments in the common room, finally—forced into Hogsmeade, sloping windows, smoking chimneys, and hot chocolate too bitter, singing taste leaving his tongue burnt. Wanted to hate it, but he couldn’t, not when it reminded him of home, dull ache rising in his chest, making his stomach twist before it settled—not even hurting, no more harsh feel of longing, just looking into the ritzy and excessive window displays and thinking; Looks a lot like Macy’s.
No more tight collar, sweaty neck, the unmistakable feeling of not yet fitting. At least not with the team, not when they finally figured out what warmups to keep and which ones to scrap. One-on-one sessions with just the chasers and the keeper, Marcus on the ground supervising Montague and Cassian’s task of shooting bludgers at Terrence. They didn’t even spend Monday’s on the field, just huddled in the common room talking, making increasingly useless hand signs and trying to remember what they even meant. Always forgot them by Wednesday, the ones they joked about, but three or four stayed.
It made Marcus practically sick with pride, watching Seraphina call for the beaters and flipping them off. Watching the way their twin brows furrowed, offended, before it clicked. Grateful that they didn’t need him to hold their hands anymore, shouting instructions when they confused the motion for climb with the one for dive. He could just sit up in the bleachers, the wind biting at his face, and smile as they talked in signs.
It was the one part of his life that didn’t feel like it was slipping. The team made sense. He poured everything into shouting commands over the wind—it didn’t make him feel better, but because it made him feel nothing. And nothing was better than the slow crawl of everything else; dragging class, letters he didn’t answer, how quiet the dorm room felt after lights out. None of that followed him onto the field.
Sometimes he’d finish practice, fingers frost kissed and red hot, and still felt like he had forgotten something. Maybe it was making sure everyone’s brooms flew normally, or checking that Terrence wasn’t sick of being pelted by the beaters. Whatever it turned out to be, it was the missing piece of a puzzle. The final beam meant to hold it all up. It would be glaringly obvious when he looked at it from afar, but he couldn’t afford to take a step back. Not when everyone was lazy from break, himself included, clad in clothes unearthed from novelty Christmas wrapping, new gloves and refilled bottles of broom oil. Trapped in the memory of home, like an ant in molasses. Suffocating in sweetness.
No one else looked concerned about this except Oliver, and that only left him even more on edge. Captain’s meetings relocated from the library, the window too drafty, their voices too loud. Instead they met at the abandoned classroom on the second floor, just left of the painting of the mermaid with her tits out.
Marcus didn’t know how the argument started, but he was sure it’d end with something awful. Roger and Edwin had fucked off when their voices had started to echo off of the cool contrete walls and under the floorboards, Ravenclaw smarts long beating any Hufflepuff compassion.
“You don’t get it!” Oliver shouted, voice bellowing.
Drove him crazy, because talking to Oliver felt like trying to understand someone else’s phone call, all half formed sentences and listless meanings. Marcus didn’t have the brains to put Oliver’s words together, and even if he had the brains, he didn’t have the heart.
He didn’t say: What the fuck are you talking about, but there must’ve been something in his expression that gave it away. Oliver’s lips pinched and he had the look of someone getting their toenails pulled, which was all to say, he wasn’t happy.
“You don’t get it,” Oliver said, like repeating it helped Marcus understand. It didn’t.
Marcus stepped back, jaw tightening. “You don’t even play until March. Who cares that your team isn’t motivated?”
Oliver shot him a bitter look that very clearly said, I care. And that was the issue, they both cared too deeply, but neither of them had any reason to try to agree on the reasons why. No one has any reason to agree on anything, and so when Oliver’s fist collided with Marcus’s jaw, it really wasn’t that big of a surprise.
Rat with the last slide of 99¢ pizza, gone gray from laying on the sidewalk. It was the cleansing knowledge that Marcus was right, has been right, will continue to be right—as long as Oliver bleeds red and hits back.
Of course, the issue with fighting is that it’s gotta stop eventually. Knocked out or just plain bored of tackling each other, teacher stepping in just in time. The two of them laid there in their own little puddles of god knows what, panting and cursing like they just ran ten miles.
“Gonna have to find a new room to meet in.”
“Just use a cleaning charm,” Oliver responded, and didn’t say anything else, just picked himself up on shaky legs and wiped the crusting blood off of his face.
The door closed with a muffled thud, anticlimactic. Marcus sat up, ribs throbbing thanks to Oliver’s pointy elbows, prodding what looked like a bite mark on his hand. Dirty fighter, no surprise.
“Fuck.”
.
Eyes on the back of her head, or maybe just the fact that Oliver probably went and told one of the twins, who most definitely shouted it from the fucking tower, McGonagall summoned the two of them to detention the following weekend and made them sort Divination trinkets until the scent of tea leaves followed them around into the next week.
The second time they fought, they had to polish the trophies by hand as punishment. Marcus could’ve sworn he saw Oliver kiss the Quidditch cup, blink and you’ll miss it, a faint mirage in the golden gleaming reflection. The oil dug into his hands, cat scratches that refused to heal, stinging in the low light. He caught Oliver looking at him, narrowed eyes and downturned lips.
Wanting made a beast of him, and release only made it worse, too tired to protest going to the hospital wing, not caring enough to show up. Meandering down the halls and into the pitch like a moth towards a light, beckoned by the inexplicable knowledge that Oliver will be there to greet him. He thought that getting what he wanted never hurt this bad, but that wasn’t necessarily true.
The third time they fought, no one found out. Near silent groans under the pale moonlight serving as the soundtrack to their tussle on the grass. Theirs, no one else's. Marcus laughed with the others when Oliver had his nose rebroken by a quaffle to the face against Hufflepuff and ignored the ache of his own ribs throbbing.
It was so easy to fight with him, to get lost in the bared teeth and bitten out swears and the sheer physicality of it all—a catalyst and a release. There was always a moment, when his blood pumped fast and he could feel it in his fingertips, when his bones would settle right in his body.
Oliver’s teeth were not as blunt as they look. The canines digging into his skin, a last ditch effort to throw him off, gleamed pearly white and broke skin. Sharp teeth in his shoulder, inches from his neck, furious exhale dusting on sweaty skin. Marcus, laying there panting, knuckles already bruised, hands pushing Oliver’s mouth away; standing on a precipice waiting for talons to swoop in and carry him elsewhere.
Marcus wanted to hate him—and it was easy too, easy like breathing, one punch and one hit. He wanted to hate him and Oliver wanted to hate him too, or maybe it was the other way around, Oliver wanting to hate him and him just not seeing the point in trying to do anything differently.
It was becoming a bad habit, and they knew it, the body healed but the mind still remembering.
It was becoming a bad habit, and neither of them had the guts to quit just yet.
.
Spring came, in true English fashion, with rain. There were exams approaching and mud caked to the soles of their quidditch shoes, thick like plaster. Marcus had to learn to pass Oliver in the hallways without snarling at him. By April, when the damp of the rain seeped into the brick of the halls and left them muggy, they had stopped fighting. The only time they touched was when they were already in motion, the inky darkness of their shadows overlapping. Sweaty shoulders pressed against each other’s starched shirts. One class to the next. One side of the pitch to the other.
All the bruises on his body were from quidditch, nothing else.
.
It wasn’t fair.
A lot of things weren’t fair, at least that’s what Marcus thought on a semifrequent basis, when he really missed his parents and was waiting on Ruth to fly back from home. A lot of things weren’t fair, but Marcus thought this was—fuck whatever Oliver had to say about it. What did he even know about anything anyway?
Apparently he didn’t know much. He sure acted like he knew more than he did, judging by the long drawling monologues during captain’s meetings, the way his eyes couldn’t stop from gazing outside towards the pitch during lessons.
Conceited, Terence called him once. Marcus had nodded, but wasn’t sure if he agreed. Oliver wasn’t as entitled as that little blonde kid, every person in the bottom-most pit of their heart believed that if they put enough effort into anything they’d get what they want. God knows that Marcus felt the same way, no matter how much he didn’t want to. It just was the way things were, even if you didn’t want to feel that way.
It wasn’t conceited, just kind of stupid—which meant that it was just kind of human. Oliver—for all of his holier-than-thou presence on the pitch was just as human as Marcus. Their blood split the same color over the floor, tasted the same when Oliver’s dripping nose had fallen into Marcus’s panting mouth.
He didn’t know what he expected honestly, maybe that Oliver was a robot or something and his blood had been replaced with red-dyed broom varnish, man’s perfect quidditch machine with one fatal issue. Perfect at quidditch—doomed to lose.
Anyway—it was a fair win, fairer than a lot of other games that Slytherin played, which meant that no one flew off with their limbs broken. Sixth year winning the quidditch cup, Marcus was surprised that he managed to do it. Not that he didn’t think that he wasn’t capable, but that’s totally what he thought, for a couple of months.
“It’s not fair,” Oliver hissed again, pressing Marcus into the wet tile of the showers. The water dripped down his hair and into his eyes, and Marcus could pretend that he was crying, crying because Marcus had won and he didn’t, crying because he worked so hard and had nothing to prove for it once again.
Marcus grinned and he knew how it looked, crooked teeth and snarling smile, water sloughing off of his body and into the drain. He felt like being a piece of shit, because it was easy, because Oliver made it easy.
“If we’re going to fight, at least let me change first,” he said, and Oliver blinked, like he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing, lost in the haze of jealousy. Let go of his arm, quick like someone had cursed him.
Marcus put on his pants and ignored Oliver’s presence, halfway surprised that he hadn’t run out already. Itching for a fight. Marcus wasn’t, he knew that the party had started already and he could be halfway to wasted by now, but there was some part of him that felt that he owed Oliver this. It was a strange sort of chivalry, and it’s funny, because Marcus didn’t think he had any chivalry to begin with.
“It’s not fair,” he said again, a record on loop. Marcus tied his shoes, bunny-ears, ignored the disbelieving muttering.
“Adrian doesn’t think it was fair for you guys to have a first year as a seeker,” Marcus said, unsurprised as Oliver whirled around to face him. “I guess it didn’t matter either way though.”
He was so easy to rile up, and easier to beat when he was like this, seams ripping apart. He was always clumsy when he hit and furious when he yelled, accent chewing up his words and spitting them back up half-understandable.
This is what it looks like when you lose, Marcus thought to himself, gut curling. This is what it looked like when you lose—shaking fists and red face. This is what it looks like when you could’ve won, and there was nothing you could’ve done to stop losing anyway.
“Don’t fucking pity me,” Oliver hissed, glassy eyed, hands clutching Marcus’s shoulders. Marcus laughed, an unconscious noise, and shook his head.
He didn’t pity him. Understood him, sure. Oliver wasn’t deserving of his pity and didn’t need it anyways, his pity was reserved for wounded animals and beat-up boys and Oliver wasn’t either of those. Despite it all, he wasn’t either of those.
This is what it looks like—
Oliver by his side, glaring into the foggy mirror as Marcus prodded on his cheekbone, swelling an hour after the game. Oliver by his side, his hair curling damp into his nape, hands still shaking.
“I’m going now,” he said, even though he didn’t need to. He took an unbidden glance at Oliver’s hunched figure over the sink, hand wiping at his eyes.
Stupidly—because it was stupid, because Marcus didn’t have a chivalrous bone in his body, because his fists didn’t touch Oliver’s body, because Marcus was tired and aching and had a party to go to, stupidly because that’s what Marcus was—he realized what it was all about.
It was never about winning. It wasn’t really about losing either.
It was about not being able to get what you want, no matter how fucking hard you try. And God—fuck Marcus for ever thinking that Oliver could’ve been this killer quidditch machine, man-made robot, because he was more human than everyone else.
Marcus watched him for a second too long, standing in the doorway. The steam had emptied the room and left it cold and Oliver was still standing there, crying.