(能让我的痛)没人看到
pairing: mark/jackson
word count: 7.6k
rating: g all the way
warnings: hp!au, lots of house stereotypes (but that's what we write these for amirite), ooc youngjae
summary: jackson's the gryffindor quidditch captain. he's also in love with mark, who happens to be in slytherin. that's it, really. this is probably a lot less dramatic and more slapstick than it actually sounds.
你在哪里
总是每天要问你的一句
我要戒断这种恶习
~
Prior to all this, Jackson thinks he could very comfortably say he was set for life.
Dream school, dream house, captain of the Quidditch team, on the way for some prestigious scholarship, and even his grades weren’t doing too bad (shut up, I see you laughing there, Jaebum-hyung). His parents were proud of both their sons and his sister-in-law had just given birth to the cutest fricking little baby girl in the world, who’d already been merrily waving around Jackson’s wand and shooting mildly destructive hexes every which way the last time he visited, making Jackson an extremely proud uncle (and public enemy number 1 in their household). Gryffindor even won the House Cup all six years Jackson spent his time here, leading to lots of joke-bragging that he was their lucky charm. Life was pretty much swell, yep.
Then, of course, because nothing in Jackson’s life ever goes that smoothly (Jackson likes to call it a talent) something just had to happen to turn the tables on all that.
*
Youngjae’s excited chatter echoes all the way out on the frozen school grounds, where they’re headed for the lake, to spend some much needed quality bro time together after the Christmas holidays. He’s trying to listen, really, he is, but over the few years he’s known the fifth-year Ravenclaw kid, he’s been lead to the serious conclusion that the boy is physically incapable of not talking, and he’s long learned to tune the incessant stream of words out.
Aforementioned tuning out becomes especially easy when Jackson notices the loud gaggle of green-clad boys heading the opposite direction, but then he feels Jaebum’s warning nudge, and glances back just in time to see the disapproving look on the older boy’s face.
The captain shoots an indignant look back. Head Boy or not, Jaebum totally has no right to police where he looks, for crying out loud. Besides, it isn’t even as if he’sgoing to be-…
One of the boys in the opposite party calls out a (rather poorly executed) insult which does more to make Jackson laugh at his stupidity than rile him up, but it’s too late, and he finds and locks gazes with a particular Slytherin redhead walking nonchalantly amidst the sea of green.
It’s by default that Jackson almost trips then, steadying himself rather comically.
The Slytherin gang promptly bursts into snickers, cruel and triumphant as they carry on walking by, but Jackson’s only looking at one boy, one who’s pinning him with a derisive smirk, and Jackson can almost hear the other’s quiet jibes, feel cold and deceptively slender fingers straightening out his scarf and robes, muttering a soft you idiot, watch where you’re walking or you’ll fall and break that handsome face.
Jackson almost makes a face at him, almost, but he’s subtly pushed on by Jaebum, and tunes back into Youngjae’s unaffected speech. The younger boy, face almost completely hidden by a large aquamarine and black balaclava and beanie, looks even more animated now, dramatically re-enacting a near death encounter some other Hufflepuff kid in his class had experienced with an ugly venomous plant in Herbology, and laughing at his pitiful stupidity.
It’s easy, then, for Jackson to pretend to listen so he doesn’t have to look at the exasperated glare Jaebum’s sending his way.
*
Yeah, so Jackson (who happened to be in Gryffindor) fell in love with Mark (who happened to be in Slytherin). So what. Sue him. Or, actually not, because then you’d have to get in line after all the other people who’d actually pay good gold to see them fall apart.
It’s weird, how Jackson’d thought he was living life perfectly fine till the pretty-eyed redhead boy he shared Potions and Transfiguration with caught his eye. It’d been a mindless infatuation at first, something Jackson thought was superficial and hormonal and ridiculous (because he’s in Slytherin, you moron, a voice that sounded a lot like Jaebum liked to remind him in his head constantly), and he’d been all ready to forget it and move on (okay maybe not so ready, but whatever).
But then Jackson started noticing little things about the other boy, like how cute it was when he puffed out his cheeks while working on a hard question, or how his voice sounded like soft chocolate and honey when he was answering teachers’ questions in class, or that time when he had his scarf wrapped up to his nose last Christmas and donned this extremely fluffy viridian beanie so the only parts visible of his face were his large, bright eyes and locks of his red fringe.
Jackson had taken several very painful snowballs to the side of his head in the courtyard during his subtle appreciation of the latter that year.
But the one thing that’d pushed a teetering Jackson off the edge into a rather inviting abyss of forbidden love had been that day he’d rushed into Potions after a rushed Quidditch briefing that’d overrun by a few minutes, puffing and panting, and found himself pushed impatiently to the space beside the object of his accursed affections by the professor after getting points docked for his latecoming.
He could feel the burn of curious and anticipatory glances from several of the other students throughout the class, Slytherin and Gryffindor alike. Students from the two infamously conflicting houses never got put together for anything. They’d probably been expecting some big fight to start up, especially with Jackson as the Quidditch captain and everything. Even Jackson had been tensing for some sort of hostility from the other boy.
But then things had been surprisingly civil. Mark- that was the boy’s name, even lent Jackson his knife when he realised he’d forgotten his without so much as a hint of hesitation, conducting himself with a cool, quiet indifference that contrasted starkly with the sneers and disgust he’d been expecting. They’d gotten along in rather peaceful symbiosis. Every student had left the class that day probably feeling either vaguely relieved or disappointed.
Except for Jackson, of course, who was too busy drowning in euphoria and confusion after the class to notice the discreet, curious looks the other boy had sent his way, before both of them had retreated into the comfortable crowds of green and red respectively. And at that point, though they were still in the same classroom, it was like they’d been thrown miles apart, to opposite sides of a vast ocean of preconceived notions and prejudice.
*
“Can evil and good truly coexist in a single person?” Jackson had quietly asked the darkness in a fit of poetic inspiration that night, and Jaebum had groaned wearily into his pillow from the next bed.
*
“So um,” Jackson asks one evening, when a few of them are gathered outside the library, crunching on almond nuts and Chocolate Frogs, to (try to) finish up their weekend homework. “What do you guys think about those Slytherin kids, really? Do you seriously think they’re all as bad as everyone says?”
“Uh, overlooking the fact that they’re nothing but a bunch of arrogant bullying blockheads?” Youngjae rolls his eyes, biting the head off a Chocolate Frog, from where he’s long finished his History of Magic essay and has started criticising everyone else’s work. “Maybe not, yeah?”
“Why the sudden question?” Bambam, another Ravenclaw fourth-year, in the wizard chess club with Youngjae, raises an eyebrow in Jackson’s direction, sharp eyes seemingly piercing straight through Jackson’s head and out the other side, and Jackson swallows nervously. Some of the Ravenclaw boys and girls honestly freak him out, if nothing else. It’s like they’re psychic sometimes.
“Yeah, what’s with you and this thing about the Slytherins all of a sudden?” Jaebum grumbles over a rather difficult Transfiguration worksheet. “You trying out reverse psychology, or something?”
“Just…curious, y’know,” Jackson shrugs, trying to ignore the way Bambam’s watching him critically, as if he knows. Fortunately, he’s saved by a rather oblivious Yugyeom, a fourth-year Hufflepuff Bambam had sort of developed a special soft spot for. Or something.
“Wait…” Yugyeom looks stricken at his worksheet, any prior conversation having gone completely over his head, and Bambam looks over in concern. “Does that mean…if you don’t touch the teapot with your wand-…?”
“We discussed this before, Yugyeom, you need to say the spell and wave the wand and jab,” Bambam says, rather impatiently. Yugyeom still looks like a lost sheep, and Jackson can’t help but pity the kid a little.
“Wait…you need to say a spell?”
A few seats to his left, Youngjae turns away from Yugyeom so that he can very conspicuously roll his eyes. Bambam’s eyes snap up in irritation and he scowls, before flicking an almond nut in his direction.
“Thanks,” Youngjae replies sweetly, popping the nut in his mouth and crunching, before turning back to Jackson. “Anyway, hyung, about your question, if you want my honest opinion, you’d have to define bad before you ask anything, wouldn’t you? Anyone could be bad,” he shrugs, nodding over at Bambam. “Bambam could be bad for flicking nuts at innocent people who’ve done nothing to incur his wrath. I could be bad for implying Yugyeom’s got the average mental capacity of a Flobberworm. You could be bad that day after the Hufflepuff match for checking out that redhead Sly-…”
Jackson instinctively flings a Chocolate Frog at him to shut him up, eyes immediately darting nervously to Jaebum, who’s now eyeing him suspiciously, worksheet forgotten.
“What’s with everyone throwing food at me all the time, sheesh,” Youngjae grumbles, unwrapping the Frog and biting into it anyway. “Can’t you people get creative?”
Jaebum clears his throat pointedly, looking from Youngjae to Jackson, while both Bambam and Yugyeom peer on curiously. Youngjae takes it as his cue to look meaningfully at Jackson while he chews on his Frog, and Jackson groans once he realises what that means.
Stupid Ravenclaw kids and their stupid big brains.
“Fine, I’ll buy you that stupid replacement chess set,” he grumbles, gloomily mulling over the thought of having to laboriously comb through all the shops in Hogsmeade and lose a sizable chunk of his allowance during the next trip, and Youngjae beams, chewing happily.
“Sorry hyung, I don’t know a thing,” he flashes an innocent smile at Jaebum, who scowls half-heartedly at him, then fully at Jackson.
But as Jackson’s sprawled on his four-poster that night, listening to the comforting rhythm of snores from the beds around him, he can’t help but grudgingly admit that Youngjae has a point, regardless of how recklessly it’d been put across.
What is his definition of bad? And more importantly, how would Mark fit in all that?
*
Jackson leans casually against the outside wall of Honeydukes in well-practiced nonchalance now, trying his best to ignore the probably minus six hundred degree snowstorm that’s raging around him now. This doesn’t stop him, however, from winking at a group of girls tottering by in the buffeting gusts of strong wind and causing them to burst into bubbly giggles, before waving back shyly.
He stuffs his hands in his pocket after they’re gone, tugging the flaps of his beanie lower over his head, before scowling into the frigid snow. This is totally unacceptable. After that long pep talk the last time about tardiness, too.
Jackson’s tracing patterns into the snow with his boots out of boredom and considering going into the shop to wait where he won’t freeze his nose off, when he feels a hot gust of breath against his ear, and whips up, glaring into an annoyingly gorgeous smug face.
“Tuan Yi En,” he says, scrunching up his face and surprised when he can actually feel the muscles in his cheeks at all. “This is unforgivable. What the hell kind of two in the afternoon is this? Do you have any idea how long I’ve been out here? Do you actually want a toeless boyfriend?”
“The others wouldn’t get off my back,” Mark pouts, and Jackson once again feels inexplicably inclined to forgive and forget completely. “Took me longer to shake them off at the Joke Shop,” his eyes take on a more worried hue now. “I think they’re starting to suspect, Jackson. Seunghoon especially, he-…”
“Hey, baby, none of that now, we can worry about that later,” Jackson flaps a hand carelessly, or tries to, anyway, because his joints have all frozen over. “It’s us time now. I don’t wanna hear nothing about all your other guys.”
“My other guys,” Mark laughs, and Jackson’s relieved to see that the worry’s been shelved, at least. They barely get any time together, and he’s intent on making every moment count. “Jealous already? We’re barely four months into this, you don’t think you’re taking it a little too fast?”
“Well of course,” Jackson pretends to be affronted as he arranges the scarf wrapped around Mark’s face, tugging the beanie down a little lower to protect the older boy’s ears from the chill. “Seeing my guy with all these strange boys every day? How can a dude not be jealous?”
“Speak for yourself,” Mark takes his turn carefully rearranging Jackson’s scarf, with considerably more gentleness than Jackson’d used, but with no less affection. Though his words are light and sarcastic, Jackson can feel the weight of the truth behind them. “You seem awful chummy with that Gryffindor Head Boy every other day.”
“Jaebum-hyung?” Jackson almost laughs. “Naw, you can’t say that man, he’s been like my older brother since I first got here. You’d say the same if you got to know him well enough.”
Mark’s fingers still his in actions suddenly, and Jackson looks up questioningly, squinting through the swirling snow, stunned to see the muted loss that’s appeared out of nowhere in his boyfriend’s large eyes.
“Jackson, I just-…” Mark pauses, before letting out a derisive laugh, one that’s weighed down with sorrow and pain. “I wish I could get to know them. Your friends.”
“Hey, hey,” Jackson reaches up to grab Mark’s hands, staring in concern into the other boy’s eyes. “We…we talked about this, didn’t we?”
“I know, but,” Mark gestures helplessly, frustration bearing down amidst the listless tone in his words. “It’s so stupid, just because I’m in one house and you’re in another then everyone’s judging if we’re within a metre of each other. I can’t get to know your friends, your family, I can’t see you in school so half the time I’m just wondering if you’re with someone else-…”
“Well then you’ll be glad to know you’re not alone,” Jackson announces, wrapping an arm around Mark’s shoulder, surprising the older boy. “Welcome to the Insecure Forbidden Lovers’ Club. Please collect your membership card and Angst Survival Pack from the leader (that’s me) and remember to report for meetings every Saturday evening where we share wartime flashbacks and over-exaggerated kdrama-style grievances.”
“You’re such an idiot,” Mark lets out a breathy laugh, pushing at the younger boy halfheartedly, and Jackson grins, proud that he’s managed to make the other boy smile again. As if for good measure, then, he sends a furtive look down the snow-obscured street, before pressing a fleeting kiss against Mark’s lips.
“C’mon,” he steers them around, gesturing vaguely into the flurry white distance. “What say we get a Butterbeer before we both die of frostbite, then we both go to Honeydukes and pig out.”
“You’re paying,” Mark mutters, flushing a dark red, from the kiss or the cold, Jackson doesn’t know, but he still holds the other boy close anyway, as if being spending as much time in contact as possible now will make up for the time they’ll be apart later. He grins anyway, something swelling his chest when Mark leans over slightly to rest his head on his shoulder for a moment.
“One more year,” he murmurs into the older boy’s hair, and a smile finds its way onto Mark’s face. “One more year, and we’ll be out of here and free to do whatever we want.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Mark lets out a bitter laugh. “These years are supposed to be the best of our life, and we’re spending it in fear of the people we’ve sworn to be brothers with.”
Jackson chuckles. “Yeah, but it’s not like they don’t take care of us, though?” his mind flashes back to the pensive looks on Jaebum’s face, the hostility concealed carefully behind indifference on Youngjae’s and Bambam’s ones, and Jackson somehow knows that they know, but they’re just not saying anything. “They’re looking out for us. Just…with imperfect information.”
Mark doesn’t speak after that, and with a pang, Jackson wonders if he’s thinking about his own friends, the Slytherin boys.
He tightens the arm around Mark’s shoulder when he wonders what the boys in his house would do to him if they found out about them.
“You think we’ll last?” Mark asks after a moment’s pause, and something in Jackson hesitates.
“You think we won’t?”
But they’re in the Three Broomsticks already, and split apart instinctively, Mark drifting to the quiet tables in the back that no one ever notices, while Jackson goes to get drinks, mulling the older boy’s odd words in his head.
He never gets to hear his answer.
*
part II
word count: 7.6k
rating: g all the way
warnings: hp!au, lots of house stereotypes (but that's what we write these for amirite), ooc youngjae
summary: jackson's the gryffindor quidditch captain. he's also in love with mark, who happens to be in slytherin. that's it, really. this is probably a lot less dramatic and more slapstick than it actually sounds.
你在哪里
总是每天要问你的一句
我要戒断这种恶习
~
Prior to all this, Jackson thinks he could very comfortably say he was set for life.
Dream school, dream house, captain of the Quidditch team, on the way for some prestigious scholarship, and even his grades weren’t doing too bad (shut up, I see you laughing there, Jaebum-hyung). His parents were proud of both their sons and his sister-in-law had just given birth to the cutest fricking little baby girl in the world, who’d already been merrily waving around Jackson’s wand and shooting mildly destructive hexes every which way the last time he visited, making Jackson an extremely proud uncle (and public enemy number 1 in their household). Gryffindor even won the House Cup all six years Jackson spent his time here, leading to lots of joke-bragging that he was their lucky charm. Life was pretty much swell, yep.
Then, of course, because nothing in Jackson’s life ever goes that smoothly (Jackson likes to call it a talent) something just had to happen to turn the tables on all that.
*
Youngjae’s excited chatter echoes all the way out on the frozen school grounds, where they’re headed for the lake, to spend some much needed quality bro time together after the Christmas holidays. He’s trying to listen, really, he is, but over the few years he’s known the fifth-year Ravenclaw kid, he’s been lead to the serious conclusion that the boy is physically incapable of not talking, and he’s long learned to tune the incessant stream of words out.
Aforementioned tuning out becomes especially easy when Jackson notices the loud gaggle of green-clad boys heading the opposite direction, but then he feels Jaebum’s warning nudge, and glances back just in time to see the disapproving look on the older boy’s face.
The captain shoots an indignant look back. Head Boy or not, Jaebum totally has no right to police where he looks, for crying out loud. Besides, it isn’t even as if he’sgoing to be-…
One of the boys in the opposite party calls out a (rather poorly executed) insult which does more to make Jackson laugh at his stupidity than rile him up, but it’s too late, and he finds and locks gazes with a particular Slytherin redhead walking nonchalantly amidst the sea of green.
It’s by default that Jackson almost trips then, steadying himself rather comically.
The Slytherin gang promptly bursts into snickers, cruel and triumphant as they carry on walking by, but Jackson’s only looking at one boy, one who’s pinning him with a derisive smirk, and Jackson can almost hear the other’s quiet jibes, feel cold and deceptively slender fingers straightening out his scarf and robes, muttering a soft you idiot, watch where you’re walking or you’ll fall and break that handsome face.
Jackson almost makes a face at him, almost, but he’s subtly pushed on by Jaebum, and tunes back into Youngjae’s unaffected speech. The younger boy, face almost completely hidden by a large aquamarine and black balaclava and beanie, looks even more animated now, dramatically re-enacting a near death encounter some other Hufflepuff kid in his class had experienced with an ugly venomous plant in Herbology, and laughing at his pitiful stupidity.
It’s easy, then, for Jackson to pretend to listen so he doesn’t have to look at the exasperated glare Jaebum’s sending his way.
*
Yeah, so Jackson (who happened to be in Gryffindor) fell in love with Mark (who happened to be in Slytherin). So what. Sue him. Or, actually not, because then you’d have to get in line after all the other people who’d actually pay good gold to see them fall apart.
It’s weird, how Jackson’d thought he was living life perfectly fine till the pretty-eyed redhead boy he shared Potions and Transfiguration with caught his eye. It’d been a mindless infatuation at first, something Jackson thought was superficial and hormonal and ridiculous (because he’s in Slytherin, you moron, a voice that sounded a lot like Jaebum liked to remind him in his head constantly), and he’d been all ready to forget it and move on (okay maybe not so ready, but whatever).
But then Jackson started noticing little things about the other boy, like how cute it was when he puffed out his cheeks while working on a hard question, or how his voice sounded like soft chocolate and honey when he was answering teachers’ questions in class, or that time when he had his scarf wrapped up to his nose last Christmas and donned this extremely fluffy viridian beanie so the only parts visible of his face were his large, bright eyes and locks of his red fringe.
Jackson had taken several very painful snowballs to the side of his head in the courtyard during his subtle appreciation of the latter that year.
But the one thing that’d pushed a teetering Jackson off the edge into a rather inviting abyss of forbidden love had been that day he’d rushed into Potions after a rushed Quidditch briefing that’d overrun by a few minutes, puffing and panting, and found himself pushed impatiently to the space beside the object of his accursed affections by the professor after getting points docked for his latecoming.
He could feel the burn of curious and anticipatory glances from several of the other students throughout the class, Slytherin and Gryffindor alike. Students from the two infamously conflicting houses never got put together for anything. They’d probably been expecting some big fight to start up, especially with Jackson as the Quidditch captain and everything. Even Jackson had been tensing for some sort of hostility from the other boy.
But then things had been surprisingly civil. Mark- that was the boy’s name, even lent Jackson his knife when he realised he’d forgotten his without so much as a hint of hesitation, conducting himself with a cool, quiet indifference that contrasted starkly with the sneers and disgust he’d been expecting. They’d gotten along in rather peaceful symbiosis. Every student had left the class that day probably feeling either vaguely relieved or disappointed.
Except for Jackson, of course, who was too busy drowning in euphoria and confusion after the class to notice the discreet, curious looks the other boy had sent his way, before both of them had retreated into the comfortable crowds of green and red respectively. And at that point, though they were still in the same classroom, it was like they’d been thrown miles apart, to opposite sides of a vast ocean of preconceived notions and prejudice.
*
“Can evil and good truly coexist in a single person?” Jackson had quietly asked the darkness in a fit of poetic inspiration that night, and Jaebum had groaned wearily into his pillow from the next bed.
*
“So um,” Jackson asks one evening, when a few of them are gathered outside the library, crunching on almond nuts and Chocolate Frogs, to (try to) finish up their weekend homework. “What do you guys think about those Slytherin kids, really? Do you seriously think they’re all as bad as everyone says?”
“Uh, overlooking the fact that they’re nothing but a bunch of arrogant bullying blockheads?” Youngjae rolls his eyes, biting the head off a Chocolate Frog, from where he’s long finished his History of Magic essay and has started criticising everyone else’s work. “Maybe not, yeah?”
“Why the sudden question?” Bambam, another Ravenclaw fourth-year, in the wizard chess club with Youngjae, raises an eyebrow in Jackson’s direction, sharp eyes seemingly piercing straight through Jackson’s head and out the other side, and Jackson swallows nervously. Some of the Ravenclaw boys and girls honestly freak him out, if nothing else. It’s like they’re psychic sometimes.
“Yeah, what’s with you and this thing about the Slytherins all of a sudden?” Jaebum grumbles over a rather difficult Transfiguration worksheet. “You trying out reverse psychology, or something?”
“Just…curious, y’know,” Jackson shrugs, trying to ignore the way Bambam’s watching him critically, as if he knows. Fortunately, he’s saved by a rather oblivious Yugyeom, a fourth-year Hufflepuff Bambam had sort of developed a special soft spot for. Or something.
“Wait…” Yugyeom looks stricken at his worksheet, any prior conversation having gone completely over his head, and Bambam looks over in concern. “Does that mean…if you don’t touch the teapot with your wand-…?”
“We discussed this before, Yugyeom, you need to say the spell and wave the wand and jab,” Bambam says, rather impatiently. Yugyeom still looks like a lost sheep, and Jackson can’t help but pity the kid a little.
“Wait…you need to say a spell?”
A few seats to his left, Youngjae turns away from Yugyeom so that he can very conspicuously roll his eyes. Bambam’s eyes snap up in irritation and he scowls, before flicking an almond nut in his direction.
“Thanks,” Youngjae replies sweetly, popping the nut in his mouth and crunching, before turning back to Jackson. “Anyway, hyung, about your question, if you want my honest opinion, you’d have to define bad before you ask anything, wouldn’t you? Anyone could be bad,” he shrugs, nodding over at Bambam. “Bambam could be bad for flicking nuts at innocent people who’ve done nothing to incur his wrath. I could be bad for implying Yugyeom’s got the average mental capacity of a Flobberworm. You could be bad that day after the Hufflepuff match for checking out that redhead Sly-…”
Jackson instinctively flings a Chocolate Frog at him to shut him up, eyes immediately darting nervously to Jaebum, who’s now eyeing him suspiciously, worksheet forgotten.
“What’s with everyone throwing food at me all the time, sheesh,” Youngjae grumbles, unwrapping the Frog and biting into it anyway. “Can’t you people get creative?”
Jaebum clears his throat pointedly, looking from Youngjae to Jackson, while both Bambam and Yugyeom peer on curiously. Youngjae takes it as his cue to look meaningfully at Jackson while he chews on his Frog, and Jackson groans once he realises what that means.
Stupid Ravenclaw kids and their stupid big brains.
“Fine, I’ll buy you that stupid replacement chess set,” he grumbles, gloomily mulling over the thought of having to laboriously comb through all the shops in Hogsmeade and lose a sizable chunk of his allowance during the next trip, and Youngjae beams, chewing happily.
“Sorry hyung, I don’t know a thing,” he flashes an innocent smile at Jaebum, who scowls half-heartedly at him, then fully at Jackson.
But as Jackson’s sprawled on his four-poster that night, listening to the comforting rhythm of snores from the beds around him, he can’t help but grudgingly admit that Youngjae has a point, regardless of how recklessly it’d been put across.
What is his definition of bad? And more importantly, how would Mark fit in all that?
*
Jackson leans casually against the outside wall of Honeydukes in well-practiced nonchalance now, trying his best to ignore the probably minus six hundred degree snowstorm that’s raging around him now. This doesn’t stop him, however, from winking at a group of girls tottering by in the buffeting gusts of strong wind and causing them to burst into bubbly giggles, before waving back shyly.
He stuffs his hands in his pocket after they’re gone, tugging the flaps of his beanie lower over his head, before scowling into the frigid snow. This is totally unacceptable. After that long pep talk the last time about tardiness, too.
Jackson’s tracing patterns into the snow with his boots out of boredom and considering going into the shop to wait where he won’t freeze his nose off, when he feels a hot gust of breath against his ear, and whips up, glaring into an annoyingly gorgeous smug face.
“Tuan Yi En,” he says, scrunching up his face and surprised when he can actually feel the muscles in his cheeks at all. “This is unforgivable. What the hell kind of two in the afternoon is this? Do you have any idea how long I’ve been out here? Do you actually want a toeless boyfriend?”
“The others wouldn’t get off my back,” Mark pouts, and Jackson once again feels inexplicably inclined to forgive and forget completely. “Took me longer to shake them off at the Joke Shop,” his eyes take on a more worried hue now. “I think they’re starting to suspect, Jackson. Seunghoon especially, he-…”
“Hey, baby, none of that now, we can worry about that later,” Jackson flaps a hand carelessly, or tries to, anyway, because his joints have all frozen over. “It’s us time now. I don’t wanna hear nothing about all your other guys.”
“My other guys,” Mark laughs, and Jackson’s relieved to see that the worry’s been shelved, at least. They barely get any time together, and he’s intent on making every moment count. “Jealous already? We’re barely four months into this, you don’t think you’re taking it a little too fast?”
“Well of course,” Jackson pretends to be affronted as he arranges the scarf wrapped around Mark’s face, tugging the beanie down a little lower to protect the older boy’s ears from the chill. “Seeing my guy with all these strange boys every day? How can a dude not be jealous?”
“Speak for yourself,” Mark takes his turn carefully rearranging Jackson’s scarf, with considerably more gentleness than Jackson’d used, but with no less affection. Though his words are light and sarcastic, Jackson can feel the weight of the truth behind them. “You seem awful chummy with that Gryffindor Head Boy every other day.”
“Jaebum-hyung?” Jackson almost laughs. “Naw, you can’t say that man, he’s been like my older brother since I first got here. You’d say the same if you got to know him well enough.”
Mark’s fingers still his in actions suddenly, and Jackson looks up questioningly, squinting through the swirling snow, stunned to see the muted loss that’s appeared out of nowhere in his boyfriend’s large eyes.
“Jackson, I just-…” Mark pauses, before letting out a derisive laugh, one that’s weighed down with sorrow and pain. “I wish I could get to know them. Your friends.”
“Hey, hey,” Jackson reaches up to grab Mark’s hands, staring in concern into the other boy’s eyes. “We…we talked about this, didn’t we?”
“I know, but,” Mark gestures helplessly, frustration bearing down amidst the listless tone in his words. “It’s so stupid, just because I’m in one house and you’re in another then everyone’s judging if we’re within a metre of each other. I can’t get to know your friends, your family, I can’t see you in school so half the time I’m just wondering if you’re with someone else-…”
“Well then you’ll be glad to know you’re not alone,” Jackson announces, wrapping an arm around Mark’s shoulder, surprising the older boy. “Welcome to the Insecure Forbidden Lovers’ Club. Please collect your membership card and Angst Survival Pack from the leader (that’s me) and remember to report for meetings every Saturday evening where we share wartime flashbacks and over-exaggerated kdrama-style grievances.”
“You’re such an idiot,” Mark lets out a breathy laugh, pushing at the younger boy halfheartedly, and Jackson grins, proud that he’s managed to make the other boy smile again. As if for good measure, then, he sends a furtive look down the snow-obscured street, before pressing a fleeting kiss against Mark’s lips.
“C’mon,” he steers them around, gesturing vaguely into the flurry white distance. “What say we get a Butterbeer before we both die of frostbite, then we both go to Honeydukes and pig out.”
“You’re paying,” Mark mutters, flushing a dark red, from the kiss or the cold, Jackson doesn’t know, but he still holds the other boy close anyway, as if being spending as much time in contact as possible now will make up for the time they’ll be apart later. He grins anyway, something swelling his chest when Mark leans over slightly to rest his head on his shoulder for a moment.
“One more year,” he murmurs into the older boy’s hair, and a smile finds its way onto Mark’s face. “One more year, and we’ll be out of here and free to do whatever we want.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Mark lets out a bitter laugh. “These years are supposed to be the best of our life, and we’re spending it in fear of the people we’ve sworn to be brothers with.”
Jackson chuckles. “Yeah, but it’s not like they don’t take care of us, though?” his mind flashes back to the pensive looks on Jaebum’s face, the hostility concealed carefully behind indifference on Youngjae’s and Bambam’s ones, and Jackson somehow knows that they know, but they’re just not saying anything. “They’re looking out for us. Just…with imperfect information.”
Mark doesn’t speak after that, and with a pang, Jackson wonders if he’s thinking about his own friends, the Slytherin boys.
He tightens the arm around Mark’s shoulder when he wonders what the boys in his house would do to him if they found out about them.
“You think we’ll last?” Mark asks after a moment’s pause, and something in Jackson hesitates.
“You think we won’t?”
But they’re in the Three Broomsticks already, and split apart instinctively, Mark drifting to the quiet tables in the back that no one ever notices, while Jackson goes to get drinks, mulling the older boy’s odd words in his head.
He never gets to hear his answer.
*
part II