images.
scorpius, with his hair bleached nearly white by sun, wearing a handsewn linen shirt open down to the middle of his chest, perched atop a sand dune overlooking a ruin in the dessert, shaded by an honest to god oldfashioned white victorian sun parasol and utterly ignoring the hilarity james, sunburned and gorgeous, gets out of this every time he looks up at him from among the jumbled sandstone pillars.
james diving headlong and gracefully into what looks like simply a giant opening in the jungle floor - a cave with a deep lake in it, open to the sky, and scorpius dropping to his knees on the edge with his heart in his throat until james surfaces in the dark water below, waving and grinning like an idiot. come on, it’s great! - i am going to eviscerate you, potter! i hope there’s a giant lindwurm down there that eats you! - brightly; oh, you think there might be?
a grove of flowering wild apple and cherry trees at night on a mountainside somewhere, the air cold enough to bite, sleeping pressed close together under gloriously bright stars. every inch of ground covered by white flower leaves, like snow, and scorpius waking before dawn to press hot kisses to james’ chest and neck, his cheeks flushed with cold. james. wake up. i’m freezing. fuck me.
a raft on a river somewhere with bamboo, james enthusiastically steering it alongside a boy of ten, and scorpius sitting crosslegged in the middle of it, deep in conversation with a wizened old woman, who is showing him a complicated way to use small, carved statuettes of bone for something arcane, her gnarled fingers deft and clever with magic. his attention never strays from her words, but when james comes closer, dripping, scorpius reaches back a hand and touches him, featherlight.
a hut during the rainy season somewhere stiflingly hot, scorpius having contracted some tropical fever or other, talking james through making a potion for it because he can’t see straight enough to do it himself, voice a little hoarse but calm and patient, even when james makes a mess of it for the third time because his hands are shaking.
meeting wild cheetahs a late night somewhere in africa, and scorpius kneeling down among them, whispering praise and magic into their fur until the large felines cluster around him like kittens, lazy golden predator eyes blinking up at james. the uncomplicated joy in scorpius’ expression when he looks up, too, after a moment. come, come sit with me. aren’t they glorious?
working through the night translating an inscription on a stone tablet that will be buried in the next sandstorm, pressed close together in a small space, hands on top of one another tracing patterns that were ancient before the pyramids, torchlight, urgent whispers. james pulls scorpius away when the horizon disappears in the rising storm, the work unfinished. after he apparates them away, he holds scorpius for a long time, in silence.
riding the same horse, bareback, across a grassy plain that seems to stretch forever under an endless blue sky darkening into evening. scorpius has his arms wrapped tightly around james from behind, resting his cheek against a muscled back. the rhythm of the horse’s gait eventually makes him close his eyes, and he mouths silently into the dirty linen of the shirt, i love you, james potter. that night, in a strangely shaped tent, stretched out together on thick furs, he tells james again, out loud this time, his heart feeling like it will beat its way out of his chest.
james waking up under a mosquito net in the middle of the night, having reached out in his sleep and startled to find himself clutching a fistful of soft, silver hair. he has a vague memory of stroking his fingers through it hours ago in a dubious attempt at soothing scorpius’s vehement opposition to the intolerably thick, humid air, smiling as scorpius’s breaths slowly began to even out, his protestations dwindling as discomfort gave way to exhaustion. there’s a thin film of sweat glistening on scorpius’s brow and in the sunburned hollow of his throat, a tiny uncomfortable twist to his mouth that softens once james’s fingers quietly resume their gentle stroking.
a series of ancient underwater caves they navigate for hours, bubble-head charms rendering them mute, swimming through schools of glittering silver fish that congregate in hundreds and thousands. it’s pitch dark but for the glowing tips of their wands tied tightly to their wrists, scorpius’s hair trailing behind him in the water like an eerie, bright flame. when they surface, breathing in huge lungfuls of non-recycled air, james reaches for scorpius with a hand that’s very slightly shaking, overwhelmed by the sudden noise of the world-the bright, chorusing birdcall beyond the caves’ entrance, the insensate rush of wind, the tinkling music of water dripping down stalactites. it’s a while before james lets go, longer than that before he manages to shake off the near-crushing memory of that ageless, endless silence.
haggling for goods at an open air market in paraguay, james stumbling through broken spanish with an easy, self-deprecating smile, filling a small leather satchel with papayas and mangos and guava. at a neighboring stall, scorpius is peering at a palmful of colored beads while a woman with more teeth missing than present gestures over them with thick, brown fingers, scorpius nodding thoughtfully as though he understands, and maybe he does. he tips them over into a tiny brown bag, hands the woman a coin, and says a few words. james watches the shape of the language in scorpius’s mouth and knows what it means.
scorpius sitting on the edge of a sheer cliff face, legs dangling, looking fearless for all that james knows that, most of the time, he isn’t. he tilts his head very slightly as james approaches, a sign that he wants james to know that he’s heard him. james stops, looking down at his hands, which are holding a small, leatherbound journal as though it’s something very precious. without a word, he closes the distance between them and sits beside scorpius, peering at the landscape below, all jagged rock and canyon, crevices leading deep beneath the earth and, far off in the distance, the rumor of mountaintops. he opens the journal, careful of the pages, and of the things pressed inside the pages. he starts writing.
hours and hours and hours spent waiting for scorpius to finish looking at rocks, oh my god so many fucking rocks, the significance of which was lost on james after, oh, the first two hours of looking at rocks. scorpius's focus is unshakable, resisting james's best, most concerted efforts at distraction. james is lying on his back and has actually started banging the back of his head against the rocks, of which there are so many, when scorpius makes a small, familiar noise of victory that startles james into perfect stillness for the space of a heartbeat. then he stands, so quickly his head spins, and finds his approach forestalled by the adamant span of scorpius's palm pressing in the center of james's chest. "that's only the first half of the ritual," scorpius says seriously, and james isn't sure what his face is doing, but then scorpius is legitimately chortling with laughter, bright-eyed and impossible and the most hateful person on the planet, and, "james, stop, i'm only joking-- look, the clues were in the spaces between the stones the whole time, it really is quite--"
james fists a hand into the front of scorpius's dirt-stained shirt, heart heaving in his chest. "i don't care."
he crowds scorpius against, guess what, more rocks, mouthing along the long, pale line of his throat, overcome and overwhelmed and touching every part of scorpius he can reach, hands tearing at the waistband of scorpius's trousers, biting over a tendon in scorpius's neck almost tenderly, teeth sinking into the skin without making a mark. he fucks scorpius against the stones with a painstaking slowness that's only a little bit vengeful, cradling the vulnerable wings of his hips, drawing each trembling noise out of him with a similarly unshakable sort of focus, mind tight with every detail, every gasp and arch and sigh. it isn't, strictly speaking, a ritual, but it's the closest thing to a ritual that james ever holds himself to.
a very early memory of a very old place that wanted to keep them out, but didn’t. the joyful, inarticulate noise james made at that, the heady, incomparable feeling that always accompanied it, only this time-this time, it’s joined by the bright, beautiful sound of scorpius’s laughter. james turns to look at him, feeling strangely breathless, gut-punched and winded and suddenly quite off-center, as though he’s collided with something very large and very heavy. what is it? james? what’s wrong. scorpius sounds graver by the second, and james shakes his head, tries to salvage a smile and manages it, wondering with a feeling like sawdust in his chest how it is he’d never realized he was lonely.