5For Listen, one of the most gorgeous people I've ever met. Happy birthday, bb.
Albus/Lucy – aberrant, sail boat, daisies, transient
She has daisies in her hair and a smile on her face, the corners of her eyes crinkled up and smiles lines panning across her cheeks. She waves to Albus, her thin fingers combing through the sunlight and casting shadows across her cheek. He climbs up the hill towards her, his black hair throwing itself against his forehead in an imitation of the long grass.
She starts running towards him, her dress flapping against the back of her legs and her hair sweeping out behind her like a cape, some sort of golden fire in the setting sun. They meet halfway up the hill in a hug to shatter stars, full of promises they've given up trying to keep. "Lucylucylucylucy," Al murmurs, his voice like sandpaper and her skin like silk, encasing a body as fragile as glass and Merlin, it feels like one touch could shatter her.
"Al, oh Al I've missed you," and then it's just a string of pleasepleaseplease and there are daisies between his fingers and golden fire burning his hands. She pulls back and links her arm in his, dragging him up the hill. At the top is a small patch of grass, somewhere around knee-length and swaying slightly in the wind. They lie together, hidden quietly in the reeds, and watch the clouds pass overhead, blue and white blurring together in beautiful, distinct patterns, blue white blue white. They drink coffee from a thermos and conjure paper cranes, setting them off into the wind like sailboats on the sea, gold in the setting sun and casting shadows across the grass. Her smile is like music, transient and untouchable and ohsosweet. They tangle their fingers together and dance to the silence, magic running between them that is so much more tangible than any spell they could cast.
As the light fades they start talking, shooting each other questions like their tongues are coated in gunpowder, boom-Molly-James-Victoire-boom-Lily-Teddy-Lorcan-boom and the canons keep shooting and the sun keeps setting.
With the sun goes the warmth of the day, the languid heat that wrapped itself across their shoulders and whose place has been taken by each other, curled together in the long grass like the rest of the world doesn't exist. He kisses sweet nothings into her neck and she rubs circles into his back of Berlin and New York and Paris and they share a year and half's worth of memories in only a couple of hours, their voices painting pictures that don't belong in this field of long grass and daisies. She ends up with her head on his lap and his fingers in her hair, plaiting in daisies and strands of grass, a skill taught to him by Lily in the long afternoons she spent waiting for Teddy. She murmurs questions about his job in London and he replies with the kind of wit she fell in love with him over.
She stands up to go, yawning and rubbing her eyes with the palm of her hand, and his heart beats painfully against his chest. He lets it, because it's proof that he isn't dreaming, that this is happening and Lucy is here and real and just as unattainable. He stands up and holds out his arms, desperate to hold her one last time. He can feel her breathing, her heart beating like a butterfly against his palm, and she doesn't tell him it's beating his name, ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-Albus-Albus-Albus and he doesn't tell her that his heart is doing the same Lucy-Lucy-Lucy.
She feels like a fairytale to him, transient and impermanent and not a happily ever after, but happy enough for now. She comes in the middle of the night with the ghost of bad dreams and he chases them away with warmth and light in the darkness that covers her heart. He holds her as she falls asleep, murmuring his name where no one can hear her but Albus, his name like a prayer to keep the monsters away. They pretend that this is normal, but they know they are something aberrant, something beyond the norm (above and beyond, he likes to think, alone where nobody can hear him and nobody can judge him).
He smiles at her, hair burnt out in the fading light, no longer golden fire and more like burnished copper, and eyes shining in the dusklight. "Al," she whispers, "Oh Al, I've missed you, ImissedyouImissedyouImissyou," and then she's hugging him tight like she's not ever going to let go. But she will and she does and he leaves her alone on top of the hill and she conjures a paper crane to follow him down like a sail boat on the sea, a daisy tucked in between the wings and a strand of golden fire tangled in the petals.