liability | solomon & august
@am-flying-solo
Ravenclaw Tower was familiar to August from days - and nights - spent waiting for Solo, curled up on his bed. August was not Solo’s first choice of partner, this he knew - August couldn’t give Solo what he wanted, needed, even though he was sure that he gave Solo something that no one else could. It wasn’t sex, though - there had never been sex despite Solo’s reputation and August’s loose and easy one. August’s long waits in Solo’s dorm, stretched out on his bed and riding whatever high had usually been peppered with conversations from Solo’s dormmates, who August didn’t particularly care for (and nor they, he). But after so many years of chasing Solo’s company, affection, and love, August had gotten familiar with the entry points to the house - which students would let him in for nothing, and those whom he had to pitch a somewhat believable excuse to. Today, August got in by the grace of his own intellect. Given he was painfully, frustratingly, almost sober, August could rustle together enough wit for the password and slip inside. It was cooler here than Hufflepuff, and August tugged his jacket closer around his chest, hands already cold and shaking without the lofty heights of Ravenclaw adding to it.
He needed something. Bad. The problem with Hogwarts was that most people were too upstanding for their own - and his - good. They tucked a joint away in their sock drawer, feeling naughty for their small rebellions, but it did nothing for August when he was like this: out of drugs, out of money, and out of options. The pain in his head was dangerous, a living thing that thrashed inside his skull, and he knew that he’d start getting nosebleeds soon. Then the head-splitting pain. And then the visions -- and it wouldn’t stop at one. August picked up his pace, slipping into the seventh year boys’ dorm and glancing around. It was empty, save for Smith’s rabbit chewing on a sock by Lennox’s bed, so he set to work. Crossing the room to Solo’s trunk, he pushed it open unceremoniously and dropped to his knees. Trembling hands began clawing things out - shirts with holes in them, stretched too big to have ever belonged to Solo; some books, some socks. August might have been enamoured by these finds if he were high, but to him, sober, these were infuriating - where did Solo keep his stash? The trunk’s contents were empty, and he swung, shaking and frenzied, to the drawers, pulling them out and upending the contents on the floor. There had to be something - anything - to take the edge off, because if Solo didn’t have something like that, who would?