I hear you call my name and it feels like home.

-Madonna, "Like A Prayer"

Six days after yesterday, fourteen years from now, Oliver Wood will kill Marcus Flint. Neither of them knows this, which is why they're more-or-less okay with their current position, underneath a table in the cellar of Honeydukes Sweetshop, sliding into a kiss. And it is like sliding, too, as Marcus's tongue, hard and domineering like the rest of him, flits between Oliver's chaste lips and makes a man out of him.

"Fifteen is just a number", Oliver tells Marcus, who's not quite ready to lift his robe, "and only one away from sixteen." Marcus hesitates still. The stark physicality isn't the problem. He's thinking of little, but feeling quite a bit, and he puts his hands on Oliver's neck and pulls him in for another kiss.

"Not quite yet," he tells Oliver. "Maybe when you're older."

Oliver is older now, by two years, and Marcus has gone off to the little leagues. Any of Britain's teams are far beyond him, but he barely makes one of the minor squads. Oliver entreats him "come back -- I'll smuggle you in and we'll do what we should have."

Marcus's reply is just what Oliver expected. "Didn't I say 'older'?"

Oliver is not surprised. "I am. And you haven't changed." Marcus laughs then, unexpectedly. It's short and rough, like he's out of practice. Judging from the way things are going for him, that's probably not far off. "You haven't changed," Oliver says again. "I've missed you. There's nobody like you around anymore. They're all young upstarts, and I can't --" He's cut off by Marcus's finger on his lips.

"Like that Potter kid?" Oliver frowns.

"Harry's not --"

"Believe me, you're much better off without me around." Marcus lets his eyes fall to the side and doesn't finish the sentence to fuck everything up.

"I need you." There, it's been said, thinks Oliver. Let the stubborn bastard try to get out of this one.

Marcus is, expectedly, caught off guard. "Need?" He turns the word over in his mouth as though sucking on a lemon drop. It's sweet and sour and altogether too strong for Marcus. "How could you possibly need someone you've kissed half a dozen times?"

"Everyone needs someone." He hums the first couple bars of a Muggle tune, and after a minute Marcus picks up the line, voice scratchy and an octave down, but clinging to the melody. Oliver's clear tenor joins him. Don't you want somebody to love, don't you need somebody to love.

Marcus stops. "You're too fucking much, you know that?" He says goodbye the way he did after graduation, tongue in Oliver's mouth. When he leaves, Oliver loses something.

He gets it back three months later, when he runs into Marcus at the World Cup. Marcus is there to watch, to learn. Oliver is there to party. He has finished with Hogwarts not so long ago, and is in attendence with a few friends. When he gets up to use the bathroom, Marcus is in line. "Flint!"

"Wood." Marcus's brow is still low over his eyes, and Oliver cracks the beginnings of a smile. "You look well. What've you been up to? Graduated?"

"I didn't see you there." It's not accusatory, but there is an implicit reprimand. Marcus raises one eyebrow.

"You expected me? I had a match. Congratulations, though." Marcus has his arms across his chest, but he unfolds them and extends a hand in Oliver's direction. Oliver looks at Marcus with an unreadable expression, but takes the hand willingly enough. It's not enough for him.

The restroom is crowded and noisy and they're in and out in moments, but Oliver grabs the back of Marcus' robes and pulls him behind one of the structural pillars. There is hot breath on Marcus's neck and "missed you. Why couldn't you come? You should have come." There is anger buried there, but buried beneath a crust thick with an unfamiliar emotion.

"I. I couldn't. You know that." Their words are just whispers now, postadolescents meeting secretly for what they know is taboo. Marcus shifts uncomfortably. "What do you want?"

Oliver misses a beat. "What?" He doesn't cry, but he's focusing so intently on Marcus that he's near. "I. You. You. God, you can be so daft sometimes."

"So can you." Marcus breaks away a little. "I can't do this. I. I have a team. People depending on me. You're. I guess you're too big a risk." He closes his eyes, presses them shut, and then opens them again. They're wet. "I can't."

And then there is the quidditch match, the best all year. Oliver spends the rest of it behind the pillar.