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leashy_bebesTitle: Something Smaller Than A Teaspoon
Author:leashy_bebes
Rating: Hard R - NC-17 for sexual situations and strong language.
Warnings: Explicit and non-explicit consensual underage sexual situations (15/15 and 16/16), first person perspective. Ron/Zach Smith [non-explicit, in the past] is referred to throughout but is in no way the focus of the fic. We all know where it's going, right?
Genre: Probably romance? With a few glimmers of angst.
Words: ~9500 (wtf how did that happen? I guess it kind of got away from me).
Notes: I read quite a lot of Harry/Ron but I’ve never been inspired to write them before. And then this idea just took root in my head so eep, nervous.
It was probably a bad idea right from the start, I'm man enough to admit that. In fact, I'm man enough to admit there's no 'probably' about it. It was a hum-dinger, a real stinker of a bad idea, the worst I've had in my life, and this from the bloke who once uttered the words 'Accio brain'. (I mean really, weird Death Eater mind-mangling hex or not, I don't know how anyone would say those words in that order. 'Accio brain', indeed.)
But this bad idea has eclipsed that, it's eclipsed every other mistake I've ever made.
See the thing is, apart from Hermione, girls don't really do much for me. It's not a big thing in a family like mine. The straight ones breed like rabbits, and in among all those families of seven or eight or twenty three kids, I've got a lot of gay cousins. Really, it all comes down to numbers.
Hermione is - different. I don't know if it's because she's my friend and part of me is clinging on to the one remaining bit of straightness I can come up with, or what. Hermione's like Harry in that way. I knew them and loved them both when chess was still much more entertaining than girls, and sex was a vaguely scary notion elaborated on at (fictional, I know that now, I really do, no matter what George might tell you) length by my older brothers. I love Hermione and I wanted to punch Krum in his stupid brooding face when they were...whatever they were, but I wouldn't say she...well, the wand doesn't shoot sparks if you catch my drift.
Blokes on the other hand... Well, it started with Seamus, which was a bit mortifying. Seamus of all people. No-shame-at-all-lying-around-the-dorm-in-his-boxers-scratching-his-balls-talking-about-girls Seamus. Honestly, I had no idea where to put my face for a couple of months. When I gave in, with endless promises to myself that no one would ever know, when I wrapped my hand around my dick and imagined Seamus' hand joining mine, his voice telling me to come for me Ron, now, I shot my load faster than I thought was possible.
So. Wanking over the dorm mates is probably not a Good Thing, and one night I got my comeuppance. I was thinking of Seamus' fingers - blunt and strong and everywhere - and I couldn't help a little noise when I came. And Seamus - yes, that Seamus, the one with the fingers - gave a round of applause and a whoop of appreciation. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal. Seamus is the type who never gets embarrassed, and sees shyness in others as a character flaw to be stamped out wherever possible. He's caught us all at it, at one time or another, and has never failed to make his presence known. Normally, retribution is swift, but this time, I just buried my head under the pillow and tried to persuade myself that if I'd said his name out loud, I'd be in the hospital wing by now with broken bones.
So evidently, thinking about Seamus' hands - and his eyes, and his voice, and the way he got the buttons crooked on his shirt some mornings and left a triangle of his chest visible - was going to get me into trouble, and sooner rather than later.
What's a boy to do?
Well I thought, if I actually do it, I won't be thinking about it all the bloody time.
Not with Seamus, obviously. Not with anyone in the dorm. 'Not on your own doorstep' Charlie told me, when I was too young to really have a clue what he meant. But he's right. Not on your own doorstep. Anyway, even if I hadn't been sharing a bedroom with them - and it's very strange when you think of it as a bedroom rather than a dormitory - they were all straighter than straight. Well, Harry was never quite as overtly heterosexual as the others, Dean and Seamus especially, but I always put that down to general World Saving duties. I guess that when you have an evil wizard to kill or be killed by, sex of any kind is pretty far down the list. And anyway, he's Harry. Practically my brother, right?
So I looked around and I spent a painful couple of weeks actually listening to the rumour mill instead of ignoring it like usual. Merlin bless the rumour mill, it worked like a charm. Although most of the names it threw out were Slytherin. While it might have been fun to have some sort of hold over Blaise Zabini, I didn't think I'd be able to stomach it. I sort of wish I had now. Even a prat like Zabini wouldn't have been half as big a mess as this.
Hermione would have my hide for - I don't know, she'd probably call it 'perpetuating stereotypes' or something, but the rumour mill seemed to suggest that there was Finch-Fletchley gay, or Oliver Wood gay - and there's a missed opportunity! - and not a lot in between. See, I think that just because I prefer blokes, it doesn't change me. I haven't started caring about...my hair or - or - well, I don't know. I still like Quidditch, and I still want to Hex Dean's face off when he makes eyes at my sister. Still a bloke, just a mostly gay one.
Anyway! The point of all that is that I like to see myself as much more Oliver Wood gay than Finch-Fletchley gay (really, I don't understand what a gay bloke would see in that, he's practically a girl as it is. Moving on…), so I was looking for subtle. Subtle and, on account of being Harry's best mate, not a Slytherin. So I had a few possibilities in mind, and once I knew, I could sort of see, so I just kept my eye out for a bit. And that's when what was, looking back, a slightly daft idea anyway, turned into the world's worst idea in the history of ever.
One day, one normal day as far as I remember, no Felix Non-Felicis or whatever, I looked at Zach Smith's thighs moving under his trousers (never thought I'd say this, but robes should be compulsory for all years. If I'd never seen those fucking thighs...) and had the idea, 'yeah, he'll do'.
Three words, one thought, totally and utterly fucked from that moment on.
Because he did. We did.
For a while, It was good.
Fuck, who am I kidding? I was a horny fifteen year old, and even if I never liked him all that much - not that I disliked him, but we were never friends - an orgasm is an orgasm. An orgasm from another person is fucking fabulous. I've got no idea how someone else's hand can feel so much better than your own, but it does, it really does. The first and only time he put his mouth on me, I thought I was going to scream, or cry, or faint, or something else horribly embarrassing. He didn't like it much, and didn't ask me to return the favour, but it was enough.
It was good...
If this was ever, in a million years, the kind of thing you discussed with your dad, I know he'd be disappointed. I'd only been twelve when I received a talk on what it might mean to be Harry's best friend. That I should be friends with whoever I wanted, but that being Harry's friend, I should keep my wits about me. I thought he meant Death Eaters, or You-Know-Who, or curses, or something. I didn't know I'd have to be careful of dickheads like Zach Smith.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Things really started going mental that year, and I think everyone felt like they'd been picked up and landed in some strange world where things get worse every day, and no one outside seems to notice. I certainly felt that way. So, like everyone else, I clung to what I knew, which was pretty much Harry, Hermione, Quidditch, even detention. Anything normal.
And the thing with Smith, it started getting complicated. It was painfully obvious at DA sessions that he really disliked Harry, and that bothered me. Not that Smith was my boyfriend, or anything like that, there was no reason for me to want him and Harry to get along, but it was awkward enough slipping away from Harry with everything that was going on, let alone to meet up with someone who hated him so much.
What with one thing and another, with the DA, and bloody Umbridge, and Smith turning out to be a bit of a berk, we just sort of stopped. I didn't really think anything of it.
We had a lot bigger things to think about.
I thought that went for Smith too, and maybe it did for a while, because it was a long time, well into the next school year, until my worst ever idea came back to kick me in the arse. Whatever had kept him silent (and I never really thought there was a reason for him to say anything - exactly why my dad would be disappointed, I expect) only lasted until some time this evening, when...well, to be frank, when all hell broke loose.
I was in the dorm, rooting through my trunk in desperate search of my old Charms text to give to Ginny. Dean and Seamus were sprawled on their beds chatting. Dean was saying something about football and taking Seamus to somewhere called Upton Park in the summer. Apart from that, it was quiet and there had been nothing to suggest that this would end up being such a stinker of a day.
I suppose if you look at it in a certain (very skewed) way, it's comforting, knowing that Harry can summon such an almighty rage. It makes me pretty sure that You-Know-Who will come off worse when they meet for the last time. When it's directed at you though, Harry's anger is pretty fucking terrifying.
He stamped into the dorm, shoving the door so hard that it rebounded back off the wall.
"Is it true?" he demanded, kicking the door shut behind him. Dean and Seamus looked round, but he didn't seem to notice them.
"What?" I'd asked, like a bloody idiot, looking up with my hands full of scraps of parchment and socks.
"You and Smith," Harry ground out. I was barely aware of Seamus and Dean paying avid attention. Too busy gaping at my best friend as his fists clenched and relaxed at his sides, I suppose.
"I - "
I dropped my handfuls of stuff back into my trunk and looked up at him warily.
"Harry - "
"Is it true?" he barked. Now, I've seen Harry do accidental magic before when he's been angry, but either I've never seen him that angry, or he's getting stronger every day. Every window in the dorm exploded outward.
"Shit," Seamus hissed, flinching away. Dean cast a few hasty reparos, but again, I didn't even register it properly until later.
Harry stalked across the room, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and dragged me upright, only to slam me back against the corner post of my bed. Stronger than he looks, the little bugger.
"I know how you look when you come because he told me," he hissed into my face before turning on his heel and marching out.
Seamus made an awkward choking noise and Dean coughed, but I just stared at the door as it slammed shut again.
"Fuck," seemed an appropriate comment, but I reconsidered that in light of what had got me into this mess in the first place. "Bugger." Still not great. "Shit."
"Ron?" Seamus asked, the awkwardness rapidly being replaced by curiosity.
"Shit," I repeated, falling onto my bed before my legs gave out and burying my fingers in my hair. "Shit, shit, fuck."
Well, Merlin's balls.
What in the name of all things magical and muggle was I meant to do about this? I could vaguely hear Seamus and Dean whispering to each other, and when I heard Dean mention Smith – ‘what, Zach Smith?’ - I knew exactly what to do.
Find Harry. Kill Smith.
Not necessarily in that order.
"Not a bloody word to anyone, you two." I tried to say it like it was an order, but it came out begging. I didn't wait to hear what they said but tore out of the dorm, almost tripping down the stairs. Harry wasn't in the common room so I carried on straight down the stairs. If I happened to run across Harry in the meantime, I'd deal with that as well as possible, but for the time being, I headed for the Hufflepuff common room.
It was only as I skidded to a halt outside the door that I realised I had no way of getting in. Without pausing to consider, I started hammering on the door, some distant part of my mind glad that Hufflepuff don't have a portrait guarding the entrance to their common room.
After what seemed like ages, a wide eyed first year opened the door, and I barged past him. Various Hufflepuffs looked at me like I was a lunatic as I stalked around the common room. No Smith.
For fairly obvious reasons, I know which dorm he sleeps in, so I pounded up the stairs, ignoring the shouts below me. I found an empty dorm, and I had just enough time to scrawl You're fucking dead, Smith on a scrap of parchment and leave it on his bed before I was chucked out by a sixth year prefect.
After a few minutes where I stood dumbly in the corridor and let the panic get to me, I headed for the Great Hall. There was no sign of Smith at the Hufflepuff table, but I left pretty vehement messages with a couple of the others.
Just when I started to think that Smith had grown some common sense and was avoiding me, he strolled into the Hall looking like he hadn't just taken a crap all over my life. I stalked over and grabbed his arm.
"Outside, Smith."
He tried to step away, tried to tug his arm free, but I just tightened my grip. So instead, he stepped right up close and said to me, "You've spoken to Potter, then?"
Great Hall be damned.
The first one was the best punch I've ever thrown, and more than worth the fifty points from Gryffindor and the week of detention with Filch. The only downside was, obviously, that I was pulled off him before I could land more than a few blows. With the edge taken off my anger at Smith, I managed to listen to McGonnagal's horrified lecture about maturity and violence and Merlin knows what else without caring too much that all four house tables had rapidly filled in time to see my dressing down from my head of house.
When she finished, I nodded as though I cared and left the Great Hall. Smith was presumably in the hospital wing getting his stupid nose fixed, so the next thing for me to do was find Harry.
Considering the little bastard has not only a magical map of the whole damn school, but an invisibility cloak as well, I wasn't expecting it to be easy. Nor was I expecting it to be as difficult as it actually was.
I checked in with Hagrid first, but he hadn’t seen Harry. Next stop was the library. I found Hermione – naturally – at a table with a group of Ravenclaws. Luckily, none of them seemed to have heard about my raid on the Hufflepuff common room, or my one sided altercation with Smith in the Great Hall. Unluckily though, none of them had seen Harry either. I extracted a promise from an irritated Hermione – I’m studying Ronald, and I’ve told you before, I’m not an owl! – to let Harry know I was looking for him if she saw him first and headed off.
Like a right idiot, I hared around the school, checking the Quidditch pitch, the Charms classroom, the room of requirement, the place we'd originally found the mirror of Erised, any number of unlikely places. All the time I was thinking, damn it, Harry and stupid fucking school.
It was pure luck that let me find him. I was halfway up the stairs, having just decided to circle back to Gryffindor tower and check there when the staircase swung around. I kicked the step in front of me in frustration and waited with my hands jammed in my pockets until the stairs clicked into place. I realised that now this staircase would bring me out halfway up the Astronomy tower. Almost idly, I weighed the possibility that Harry might have gone to look at the stars - why he does this I've got no idea, but he does, regularly. Probably something to do with his bloody Muggles locking him in a windowless bloody cupboard for half his bloody life.
Deciding it was worth the risk, I worked up a hell of a sweat pounding up five flights of (thankfully stationary) stairs. After a brief pause to catch my breath I opened the door onto the roof and looked around for Harry. Sure enough, there was a bright white smudge leaning against one wall that I eventually recognised as his shirt.
I padded over and leant against the wall a few feet away from him. He was staring out over the grounds, so I did the same while I waited.
"How'd you find me?" he asked eventually.
"Luck and perseverance," I told him, taking his speech as a sign to cast lumos and shove the handle of my wand into a gap in the rocks at shoulder height, giving me enough light to look at him. He didn’t turn to face me and I heaved a sigh before turning my gaze back to the grounds. "I've been all over this bloody school looking for you," I muttered.
"Should have just looked for Smith instead, I'm sure he'd be easy enough to find."
"Looked for him, found him, broke his nose," I told Harry, not even managing to feel cheerful about that for a second, his tone was so strange.
Next to me, Harry snorted and dropped his head.
"Is it true?"
"I don't know," I said, hedging my bets. "I don't know what he told you, he's a lying little scrote so - "
"He said he fucked you," Harry broke in.
"Ha!" I couldn't help the burst of laughter, although it felt a little hollow. "He wishes, mate. In that case, no, it's not true."
"He said you - loved him," Harry added, as though tasting the word in his mouth first.
"Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!" I stormed, suddenly fervently wishing I'd waited to ambush Smith somewhere with less people around to drag me off him. "I never loved him. Look... Fuck. Okay." Running out of words to stall with, I paused, took a deep breath and stared out over the castle grounds. "Harry, we messed around a bit last year, alright? He sucked me off, once, and that was the furthest we ever went."
"Why - why'd you stop?"
"Cause he's a prick?" I suggested.
"Well spotted," Harry snorts.
"Cause he was a prick to you," I added.
Harry gave me a long, strange look then, his eyes poring over my face intently. Then he turned away, staring over the grounds again.
"What?" I demanded.
He shook his head sharply.
"Smith, huh? Zach Smith. Zach Smith the bloke."
"Is - " I swallowed nervously. "Is that going to be a problem?"
"Smith specifically, or blokes in general?"
"Smith is - not an issue. Honestly Harry, it was over ages ago, and it wasn't ever - I - I just needed to know. If there'd been anyone else then I would have - "
He gave me that long, searching look again before shaking his head.
"There was someone else," he mumbled, so quiet that I barely heard him.
"Huh?"
"Wouldn't someone you actually liked have been a better idea for your gay experiment?" He spat the words out like a curse and I bit my lip, thinking hard before I answered.
"I wouldn't - I wouldn't want to experiment on someone I liked."
"Noble," Harry commented wryly.
"Harry, what's - I'm...confused. What's going on here?"
"You didn't think maybe you could talk to me?" he snapped. "I'm supposed to be your best friend."
"You - you are."
"Oh, clearly," he bit out, his words laced with enough sarcasm to fell a Hippogriff at a hundred paces.
"You are. You're my best mate and I didn't want - I didn't want you to think I was a freak," I mumbled, rubbing at the back of my neck to cover my awkwardness.
"'Cause I'm that much of a prick, obviously," Harry snapped back.
"What exactly do you want me to say?" I asked. "I'm sorry, I should have told you."
"No," Harry said quickly. "No, Ron, you should have asked me."
"Wh - What, for permission? Harry, for crying out loud..."
Next to me, he made a disgusted noise, flinging his hands in the air and turning away before I could stop him.
I swear, he's as bad as Charlie when he gets his knickers in a twist.
I followed him hurriedly, grabbing at his wrist. He struggled against my grip and I snatched at his other arm as well, forcing them out to his sides so he'd just, for the love of Merlin, stand still.
"Harry," I said carefully. "I know that you're angry - "
"Oh, well done," he spat. I frowned at him and then carried on.
" - but I don't know why, and I can't make it - "
And then he lunged forward as much as he could and kissed me.
It wasn't the best kiss I've ever hand, and it certainly wasn't the gentlest. I felt like I could taste his anger when his teeth scraped over my lips. His breath was hot, I mean, really hot, too hot, hotter than any normal person's breath, and his tongue seemed to be everywhere at once.
So not great. But still... Still, it was Harry. My Harry.
I tried to kiss back, tried to soften it, and he lurched away from me, pulled his arms out of my grip and scarpered through the door before I had a chance to do or say anything.
Not that I had the faintest idea what to do or say anyway.
I stood there for a couple of minutes blinking into the darkness, until realisation dawned.
No, Ron, you should have asked me.
Shit, shit, fuck.
I lurched forward through the door and hared down the first flight of steps, but Harry was nowhere to be found.
He never came back to the dormitory that night, and I should know because I stayed awake until Neville's alarm clock rang out and we all trooped down to breakfast. Dean and Seamus gave me some very funny looks, but I wasn't sure if that was because of what had happened the evening before in the dorm, or because I looked like death warmed up and had spent all night pacing the dorm and common room.
Harry finally turned up about five minutes before the end of breakfast and spoke to Hermione briefly before stuffing a slice of toast down his throat, followed by a cup of coffee he drank so quickly that it must have burnt his mouth. Naturally, I was already on my feet and about two people away from Harry by the time he noticed me, slammed down his coffee cup - still half full - and walked past me like I didn't exist.
Normally, when Harry gets in a mood, I leave him alone. If he actively ignores me, I do the same to him. I can't help myself. It makes me really bloody angry actually, when he does this. Hermione has ignored me before, and it's frustrating as hell. When my brothers ignore me, it's a blessing in disguise, but when it's Harry doing it, when it's Harry turning his face away from me, Harry squaring his shoulders and letting my words wash around him unheard, it pisses me off like nothing else ever has, so like I said, normally I ignore him right back, as fiercely as I can.
That day definitely didn't count as normal though, or more to the point, my bloody best mate bloody kissing me the night before and then bloody disappearing didn't count as normal, so I followed him out of the hall, ignoring the way he tried to pull ahead of me.
He didn't speak and neither did I, just followed him like the lapdog Malfoy always says I am. Our first class was supposed to be Transfiguration but Harry stalked straight past that turning without a pause, seemingly picking his directions at random. This was getting bloody ridiculous and I jogged after him, grabbed his arm and told him so.
He turned a stare on me unlike any I've ever seen from him and I was abruptly angry. I would never usually press my height advantage over him, but I'd be damned if I was going to let him keep running away when I didn't even know what I was supposed to have done wrong. I planted my feet firmly and tightened my grip on his wrist.
"Let go."
"No," I snapped. "We're going to talk about this whether you want to or not."
"Get off me."
"No. Fucking hell, Harry, Smith was nothing. Nothing, alright? I do not care about him, not the way I care about you and Hermione."
Maybe it was a stupid thing to say, but Harry's face last night as he'd said Smith had told him I loved him had been burnt into my memory. Hermione has better, more organised theories on why it might be the case, but I just knew that in Harry's mind, love and family and friendship were all tangled up together, and I had wondered if maybe that was the source of the kiss as well as the record breaking bad mood. I'd been thinking that maybe Harry thought there was something more serious between me and Smith, something that would exclude him, and so he'd kissed me and said I should have asked him because it was all he could think of to do, the only way he could avoid losing me. I was pretty proud of that whole theory, it felt mature.
"What are you talking about?" Harry snapped.
"You - you're - "
"Fuck, there must be something smaller than a teaspoon!" he spat, looking exasperated.
"What?"
"How can you be so fucking dense?" he asked, and this time he sagged a little and sounded sad and lonely and hurt, which was possibly even worse than angry. "All those things he said... Jesus, Ron, it was horrible. He said - Look, can we go somewhere else?"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. McGonnagal'll have our hides, but I need to say this stuff or I'm going to go mad."
"Back to Gryffindor?" I suggested.
Harry nodded and we took a roundabout path up to the tower. I'd been given a glimmer of hope by his less confrontational attitude but it deflated quickly as he marched ahead of me, straight-backed and tense.
In the common room, Harry sat in one of the hard backed chairs and I sat opposite him, fiddling nervously with my fingers.
"Smith said - a lot of things," Harry said, clearing his throat and picking at a loose thread on the knee of his trousers. "About you. I mean, you and him, obviously, but mostly about you."
"Me?" I prompted, as Harry looked on the verge of clamming up again.
"Things you - do. Things you say when - when - " he stopped with a strangled noise and raked a hand through his hair.
"Oh." I felt myself pale and looked away. "Fucking - why would he do that?"
Harry gave a snort of disbelief and when I chanced a look back at him, he was staring over my shoulder at the bare wall.
"Because," he said slowly and deliberately, "as everyone in this castle apart from you seems to know, that's what would hurt."
"You - hurt? I don't - "
"Oh, Ron," he said despairingly. "I'm jealous as hell, you stupid git."
Well, it was like a stunner, I don't mind admitting. I sat and gaped at him for a few moments, distantly worried that he would disappear on me again. Mostly I was just thinking fuck, fuck, fuck, what a fucking mess, because for all my earlier bluster about not on your own doorstep and not experimenting with friends, I couldn't help thinking how different it could have been. Imagine discovering all that mad, brilliant stuff with Harry instead of some boring, big headed Hufflepuff that I didn't give a damn about. Imagine all that but comfortable and familiar. Imagine laughing at the ridiculous moments, kissing him because I wanted to, not because it went with everything else.
"Oh, Harry - "
"Don't, okay," he said glumly. "Just - I've been waiting for you to go off with Hermione, and I was kind of ready for that but this was just - it was a shock, okay?"
"Ready for it?" I asked. "How - how long?"
To his credit, Harry didn't even try to misunderstand the question.
"For...ages," he said with a shrug, looking off towards the empty fireplace.
"Fuck. Fuck, I'm so stupid. I'm - "
"I get it, alright?"
He's so fucking frustrating sometimes. "Get what, Harry? Cause I don't."
"Believe it or not, Ron, 'has a cock' wasn't the only reason I came up with for you not wanting me."
"I - "
"I mean, you always say I’m like a brother and I suppose if you have actual brothers, that must be pretty strange. And, well - I know I'm a bit of a prick sometimes. A lot of the time. And there's the - well - if he's your type then - God. Feel free to stop me anytime you want," he offered bleakly, rubbing his hands over his face.
"He's not my type," I said, with my usual knack of latching onto the least important part of anything that's just been said. "I wish I'd known, mate."
"What, so you'd have felt obliged or something?" Harry asked, snarling the word out like it was disgusting to him.
"No. I'd have felt - less mental for a start. And - thrilled. Really, really thrilled. I mean - my Harry - "
"You can't say things like that, Ron," he protested weakly, closing his eyes.
"Why not?" I asked, leaning forward in my chair and pushing my point by rapping sharply on his knee with my knuckles. He flinched away from it and my heart sank. "Really, why not?"
"'Cause you're going to drive me mad. I just - you have to let me get over this and I can't if you're saying shit like - like - "
"Harry," I said, scraping up every last bit of Gryffindor courage I could find and half-falling out of my chair to kneel in front of him and look up at him seriously. "What if I don't want you to get over it? What if – ” I reached out and grabbed his hand as it moved to fiddle with his glasses. “Look, I fucked up, alright. Smith was - a mistake, a stupid fucking mistake, and I'd never have done it if I'd thought even for a second that you - "
"Are you saying - what are you saying?"
"Just - " I reached forward and fiddled with the same thread he'd been tugging earlier. "Like I said, you're my Harry and - aw, come on mate, you know I'm no good at this."
He just looked at me with eyes that were somehow troubled and warm and familiar and new all at once so I decided to spell it out as best I could.
"We're already - you're like the other half of me, mate, I can't think properly without you and if - if we did this it'd just be one more thing, one more us thing because - " I swallowed and prepared to consign myself to the ranks of Finch-Fletchley gay forever more. "There is no one like you in my life, Harry. I - you matter, and - "
To my utter relief, he reached out with one hand to touch my hair in a clumsy, petting motion, and I took that as my cue to just shut. The hell. Up.
He got as far as, "Ron," before I moved or he moved or we both moved and met in the middle or something, I don't know and I don't care because the upshot of it was that we were kissing. His fingers slid deeper into my hair and his tongue swiped over my lip, pressing for permission that I gave gladly, opening my mouth under his to taste him. His free hand moved up to my shoulder and squeezed in time with the press and retreat of his lips.
And alright so I was kneeling on a stone floor and Harry’s glasses were digging into my face and my neck was frankly killing me, but Harry's lips and tongue and teeth were already better than anything that berk had ever tried. I wanted to tell Harry that somehow, but I knew that was probably not the subject to bring up with him so I just moved my hand to his cheek and kissed him, three quick kisses on his lips before moving back a little and looking at him with what was probably a really stupid grin on my face.
I don’t know what I was expecting but it definitely wasn’t a gentle pat on the cheek and a, “We need to get to class.”
“What?” I squawked.
"Yeah," he said, standing up and running his fingers through my hair before I scrambled to my feet. “We’re already ten minutes late.”
“But – Harry,” I protested, leaning in to kiss his jaw. Palm flat on my chest, he pushed me back.
“C’mon.”
Grumbling, I trailed out of the common room after him. As we walked down the stairs he nudged me.
“I had to wait, now you have to wait,” he said with a wicked grin.
“How long?” I asked, but he just walked quicker. “How long?” I demanded as I caught up to him a few doors down from McGonnagal’s classroom.
“Just ‘til tonight,” he said, looking up at me and squeezing my fingers. “I’m feeling smug, not stupid.”
I laughed at that and he smiled so naturally and easily, and his face was so familiar and precious that I couldn’t resist doing a quick scan of the – empty – hallway before giving him a quick kiss. Just as we turned apart, the classroom door opened and our head of house filled the doorway, glaring at us.
“Sorry Professor,” I started.
“I broke my – ” Harry said and then floundered.
“Glasses,” I supplied. “Blind as a bat, had to fix them for him.”
Even McGonnagal’s patented you are lying and I will learn the truth and you will pay glare couldn’t deflate me as we hurried to our seats. Hermione turned the same look on both of us (is it a woman thing? A Gryffindor thing? Merlin only knows…) but underneath the table, Harry pressed his thigh against my own and I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything else. We were supposed to be transfiguring snails into something, but just as McGonnagal was telling us what Harry leant over to pinch one of Hermione’s spare quills, steadying himself with his hand on my thigh as he did so and well… I lost track a bit.
It took me until lunchtime (I know, I know. Teaspoon) to realise that he was touching me on purpose, teasing me on purpose. I was amazed that he could pour himself a glass of pumpkin juice, chat amiably to Lee Jordan and run his hand up the inside of my thigh all at once. I jolted in my seat when he did that, getting more than a few curious looks from our classmates. As I settled back down I was sure my face must be flushed bright red, and out of the corner of my eye I could see a tiny smirk on Harry's face.
Once I realised, I caught him sending me furtive, promising looks to go along with the little touches and even though it was a bit disconcerting at first to see my oldest friend looking at me with such obvious flirtation in his eyes, it seemed natural. It seemed like it was supposed to be that way, like it was just one more thing about each other that we understood better than anyone else ever could.
Draining his pumpkin juice, Harry set his glass down neatly on top of the table and flicked my leg under it.
"Need the loo," he said, standing and grabbing his bag.
"Oh, yeah, me too," I said around a mouthful of sandwich, swallowing hastily and following Harry.
In the ground floor bathroom, Harry grabbed my hand and tugged me over to a cubicle, slamming the door behind us and pushing me up against it. Like I said, he's a strong little bugger when he wants to be, but I didn't particularly notice that because his hands were fisted in the front of my robes and his whole body was pressed against me as he went on to tiptoes to kiss me. I murmured appreciatively into his mouth and put my arms around his waist, holding him to me and easing him down onto his feet, chasing his mouth with my own.
Again, it struck me that this was easy. It felt normal, and everyday. And fucking hot as well, don't get me wrong. For all his supposed lack of experience, Harry was no slouch, and I made a mental note to ask some serious questions about that later. It felt great, and he tasted fantastic and his mouthtonguebody was so hot against mine but it wasn't weird at all. There was none of the hesitation and almost fighting spirit that there had been with Smith, just an absolute certainty that this was where I should be, this was who I should be with, and exactly what I should be doing.
"Skive off with me?" I asked, moving my lips to kiss Harry's neck. The skin there tasted spicy and hot and fresh and I licked a circle over his fluttering pulse before he nudged my head up and kissed the corner of my mouth.
"No," he said with a sharp grin, and ran one hand down the front of my shirt, holding me back against the door. "Tonight," he said, "Straight after dinner, we'll go to the Room of Requirement."
"We've got loads of homework," I pointed out, still hoping he'd give in to my request. "We'll never get Hermione off our backs if we wait 'til tonight."
"We'll find a way," he assured me. "Invisibility cloak, remember? Besides, she'll kill us if we miss classes."
I groaned in frustration but nodded and loosened my grip on him.
"Hey," I said, smiling at him wickedly as a sudden thought occurred to me. "You don't think maybe Myrtle - "
"Oh, don't even start," Harry grinned, shaking his head and squeezing my hand.
"Come on, then," I grumbled. "Let's go if we're going."
"Yeah," Harry said wistfully. "Be nice to stay."
"In the bogs?" I asked. "Besides, you're the one who said - "
"I know, I know. And I didn't mean in the loo, I meant with you."
"Oh." I said, lost for more coherent words, and tugged him in again for a quick hug. His head tucked under my chin and that crazy hair tickled my neck and his fingers squeezed at my back for a second. Listening closely for a moment to make sure there was no one else in the bathroom, we slipped out of the cubicle and hurried off to afternoon classes.
It was one of the longest, slowest afternoons of my life. Me and Harry always sit together, so I had no choice but to endure his little looks and touches and whispered comments. It was torture, but in a good way. I didn't hear a word of the lessons, but then that wasn't entirely unusual. I barely heard anything that anyone else said to me either, but I was vaguely aware at one point of Dean and Seamus, heads close together, talking softly and glancing at us, but I couldn't bring myself to care. They were good blokes. Well, Seamus was a little stroppy, but Dean usually kept him in check when he got too daft.
Finally, finally, finally, dinner dragged itself around. I'd been aware for a couple of hours of a nervous excitement building in my stomach, and I could barely force down the excellent Shepherd's Pie. I managed the treacle tart, naturally, but it was a close thing.
"Hermione," Harry said. "We, uh - we're going to go - "
"Flying," I suggested.
Hermione raised one hand an cast a surreptitious muffliato charm.
"Don't lie to me, boys," she said calmly.
I exchanged a nervous glance with Harry who shrugged minutely and rubbed his nose.
"Um..." I ventured.
"Oh honestly Ron, it was halfway round Gryffindor about you and Zach before I told Dean to keep Seamus quiet," she said, still calm.
"What?" I managed. I knew from experience that Hermione was at her most deadly when she seemed calmest. Sure enough her next words were delivered rapid-fire and in a gradually escalating tone.
"I've told everyone that Zach said something bad about Harry and that's why you hit him - which, incidentally, I don't approve of at all - and people are either believing it or keeping their mouths shut, so tell them whatever you want but do not lie to me."
I didn't have a clue what to say, and as usual in such situations, Harry stepped in for me.
"Alright, Hermione," he said, reaching over the table to pat her hand. "Sorry, that was rotten of us. We have some things we need to talk about so - "
"Oh, of course," she said with a little smile. It struck me as unfair that Harry was always able to defuse the Hermione-bomb in seconds. "Have a nice talk."
"Hermione!" I protested, shocked at the leer on her face.
"Ronald," she said coolly before rolling her eyes and taking my hand in the one Harry wasn't already holding, squeezing us both for a moment. She looked between us with a fond smile on her face. "Oh, you two are so dense."
"He's the dense one," Harry protested.
"I - Yeah, I am the dense one," I admitted after a second's consideration.
"Come on then, you," Harry said, tapping my shoulder and standing.
"See ya, Hermione," I said, offering her a smile. She grinned back at me and waved us off.
I was expecting just to walk to the Room of Requirement as usual but as soon as we reached the first alcove beyond the Great Hall, Harry tugged us inside and reached up to swish the invisibility cloak over both of us.
"Everyone's still at dinner," I pointed out.
"Yeah, but - " Harry said, sliding his arm round my waist and pressing himself in close to my side, making his point eloquently. I wrapped my own arm around his shoulders, using my free hand to keep the cloak steady. I had to stoop a bit, but that just brought my face closer to his hair, to the smell of the mint shampoo from the Gryffindor bathroom. I was so dazed by it all, by his closeness and his warmth, that I barely noticed we were outside the Room until Harry was marching us back and forth quickly. Taking a quick glance around, he tugged off the cloak and shoved me in through the door that had just finished materialising.
Some quiet part of me had been dreading what the room might give two people looking for a bit of privacy, in case generations of straightness had led to an overload of candles and rose petals and silk. Instead there was a bed, just a little bigger than those in the dorms, a small table next to it with a jug of water and two glasses, and a lamp off in one corner that cast a dim glow over the whole room. We looked at it in silence for a moment before Harry spoke.
"It knows I don't need anything except you."
"Girl," I told him, but I turned my head to kiss his temple and signify my agreement.
"Well, you and a flat surface," Harry quipped, tilting his head to kiss me properly.
"What d'you want to do?" I asked, turning and tugging off my robes, letting them fall carelessly to the floor.
"I want - " Harry looked away for a moment and then stepped up close to me. "I want to completely wipe that fucker from your memory."
"Harry - " I said warily. "You did that with one kiss, mate. Let's not make this about him, eh?"
"Now who's the girl?" he said, poking me in the ribs, but he did look reassured, smiling up at me. I could tell he was expecting a kiss so instead I busied myself with undoing the clasp of his robes and slipping them off his shoulders. I couldn't resist flicking open the first few buttons of his shirt either, and running my thumb over the collarbone that was exposed. Harry's own hands fluttered at his sides, his fingers twitching, while his eyes never left my face, and mine never left the pale skin I was slowly exposing. When his shirt was hanging open he seemed to snap out of a trance. “Wait, wait,” he said, taking my hand and backing up towards the bed.
He sat down on it and looked up at me, clutching my hands.
“I’m sorry I was a dick,” he said, and it was such a Harry apology that I couldn’t help smiling.
“I shouldn’t have kept it from you,” I said seriously. He opened his mouth to protest but I insisted. “I shouldn’t keep anything from you,” I added, and knew that he took it for the apology it was.
He tugged on my hand and I sat down on the bed next to him. For just a second, I felt awkward and then his hands were on my shirt front, fumbling a little and making him curse as he fiddled with buttons and got me into a similar state as himself. I took the opportunity to tug his shirt the rest of the way off as I wriggled out of my own and dropped them both unceremoniously somewhere on the floor – I don’t know where because I couldn’t stop staring at him, which was ridiculous, because I’d seen him more naked than this almost daily since we were both sorted into Gryffindor. Dorms don’t offer much in the way of privacy, but I had never felt this before, this tug in my chest that was like a Portkey but muted and a little different. I couldn’t stop staring at him, at the line of his collarbone, his pale skin, the sparse dusting of black hairs, and I reached out blindly at the same time as he did.
Before I knew what was what, he had pulled me down over him, his legs still hanging over the edge of the bed, his mouth fastened onto my neck, licking and sucking and nipping. I tried to support my weight on my arms at first but he tugged me down insistently and groaned in satisfaction when my body pressed his down into the bed. Half-reluctantly, I shifted my neck away from his mouth and kissed him instead, reluctance evaporating in an instant as his tongue sparred with mine and he raised one leg, his thigh against my hip, making me feel secure and trapped all at once. And then I realised I could feel him. Through the trousers I’d almost forgotten were still in my way he was hot and hard and I dropped down to kiss his collarbone, one dusky nipple and down, licking through the few wiry black hairs on his chest.
He tasted so good there that it left me wondering desperately what other parts of his body might taste like. I wanted to touch his neck and his ribs and his back and his legs and - oh, Merlin - his arse and his balls and his prick and everything. I wanted to taste it and feel it and learn it and never let it go.
"Harry," I muttered into his skin. "Oh, Harry." I kissed his stomach and said to him, "I want to suck you."
And I did. I really wanted it, in a way I never thought I would. I wanted to drive him crazy, and that was the quickest way I could think of to do it, but I also wanted to do it in its own right. I wanted to suck him, I wanted to feel him in my mouth, the head of his cock at the back of my throat, and I wanted to taste his come because it was him, mine, Harry.
Harry's only response to my words was a desperate whine and a helpless upwards cant of his hips.
I moved down, pressed a biting kiss to his hipbone, and made short work of his trousers before I wrapped my hand around the base of his cock. He made a choked whimper, which turned into a choked scream when I licked the head of his prick, around the tight ring of his foreskin before sliding my mouth down onto the length of him as far as I could. It was more difficult than I'd imagined and I had to pull back almost straight away the first few times I tried to take more than the head in my mouth.
Harry didn't seem to care about my lack of finesse. I watched him as best I could through the hair that fell over my eyes, and his head was thrown back so far that his neck was a sharp line. His fists were clenching wildly in the sheets and he was making these noises, these desperate, whining, broken-off, needy noises that were driving me wild.
God, I wanted this, it, him, wanted it so much and I reached up to rub my thumb over one of his tense, pebbled nipples before reaching down to cup his balls in my hand. That was it, and I filed it away for future reference, how his body immediately bowed up off the bed in response to that touch, and he let out a hoarse shout, flooding my mouth with something hot and salty and bitter and Harry and I swallowed it all save for a blob on my lip which I reached up and removed with my thumb. Just as I was about to lick it clean, Harry grabbed my wrist.
"What's - " he asked, still panting. He cleared his throat and said, "What's it taste like?"
"Er - " I wasn't entirely sure how to describe it, but Harry solved the problem for me by hauling himself into a sitting position and sucking my thumb into his mouth.
My thumb. His mouth.
Fuck.
It was indecently sexy, I mean really, it should have been illegal, the way his cheeks hollowed around my thumb and his tongue swirled across my skin and his eyelashes fluttered closed. He kept sucking on my thumb long after that tiny trace of himself was gone, teasing and caressing my knuckle with his tongue. Finally, he pulled back and flopped down onto the bed. I laid myself down on my side next to him, unable to stop myself reaching down and pressing the heel of my hand into my own erection. His hand clamped over my wrist and stopped my slow movements.
"Harry," I whined.
"My job," he said in a low voice, turning onto his side to face me, his hands unbuttoning my trousers and shoving at them as I wriggled them down to my knees. Harry buried his face in my neck and said,""I think - IthinkIwantyoutocomeonme."
"Say again?" I asked.
He kept his face pressed to my neck as he said haltingly, "I think I want you to come. On me."
"Oh - oh my - fuck - "
"You want?" he asked, pulling his head back to look at me.
"So much," I nodded. Harry shuffled closer to me and nudged my own hand out of the way to encircle my aching erection. I groaned at the touch of his hand - a little smaller than my own, a little rougher, hands that I knew so well anyway and now - It was too much, and I let my eyes drift closed.
"Open," he insisted, and when I did, his forehead was right against mine, his eyes turned down between our bodies, watching avidly as his hand moved up and down my length.
"F'ster," I begged, reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder, to feel his muscles tensing and relaxing as he pumped me, his pace increasing gradually. "Harry," I pleaded. "Please."
His thumb dragged over the hyper-sensitive head of my cock and I couldn't help jabbing my hips forward a couple of times. Harry just grinned and brought his own thumb to his mouth this time, licking off the droplet of liquid he'd gathered. I swear I almost lost it then and there, just at the idea of him tasting me, but his hand quickly went back to groping me, squeezing and sliding along my shaft, really putting some effort into it this time. He nudged my head up with his own and kissed me hard and hot in between my ragged breaths.
"Good?" he asked.
"Good," I managed, my hand tightening on his arm. "Really - fuck, Harry!"
He started up a vigorous rhythm, twisting his hand on every upstroke and tightening it on every down stroke. I could tell that I wasn't going to last so I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him close and kissed him, kissed him for all I was worth, kissed him with everything I had, swirled my tongue around his mouth craving moremoremore of that taste, that perfect Harry taste.
I think I bit his tongue of something when I came, if that startled little twitch was anything to go by. I was distantly aware of him pressing himself closer, closer, closer to me, and I could feel myself throbbing against his belly, feel the liquid heat cover us both. Mostly though, all I could feel was the pleasure, the too-much too-good just-right pleasure and everything behind my eyes bloomed with sudden bright colours and I realised I was making a desperate whining noise with each breath, my sides heaving.
As I calmed down, I reached blindly for Harry and pulled him to me. He ended up tucked in to my side, one hand playing idly with the mess on our bellies and his fingers.
“Worth the wait,” he said, mumbling the words into my chest.
“Was only a few hours,” I pointed out with a lazy grin, fiddling with a lock of his sweaty hair.
“Not really,” he shrugged, drumming his fingers on my ribs.
Author:
leashy_bebesRating: Hard R - NC-17 for sexual situations and strong language.
Warnings: Explicit and non-explicit consensual underage sexual situations (15/15 and 16/16), first person perspective. Ron/Zach Smith [non-explicit, in the past] is referred to throughout but is in no way the focus of the fic. We all know where it's going, right?
Genre: Probably romance? With a few glimmers of angst.
Words: ~9500 (wtf how did that happen? I guess it kind of got away from me).
Notes: I read quite a lot of Harry/Ron but I’ve never been inspired to write them before. And then this idea just took root in my head so eep, nervous.
It was probably a bad idea right from the start, I'm man enough to admit that. In fact, I'm man enough to admit there's no 'probably' about it. It was a hum-dinger, a real stinker of a bad idea, the worst I've had in my life, and this from the bloke who once uttered the words 'Accio brain'. (I mean really, weird Death Eater mind-mangling hex or not, I don't know how anyone would say those words in that order. 'Accio brain', indeed.)
But this bad idea has eclipsed that, it's eclipsed every other mistake I've ever made.
See the thing is, apart from Hermione, girls don't really do much for me. It's not a big thing in a family like mine. The straight ones breed like rabbits, and in among all those families of seven or eight or twenty three kids, I've got a lot of gay cousins. Really, it all comes down to numbers.
Hermione is - different. I don't know if it's because she's my friend and part of me is clinging on to the one remaining bit of straightness I can come up with, or what. Hermione's like Harry in that way. I knew them and loved them both when chess was still much more entertaining than girls, and sex was a vaguely scary notion elaborated on at (fictional, I know that now, I really do, no matter what George might tell you) length by my older brothers. I love Hermione and I wanted to punch Krum in his stupid brooding face when they were...whatever they were, but I wouldn't say she...well, the wand doesn't shoot sparks if you catch my drift.
Blokes on the other hand... Well, it started with Seamus, which was a bit mortifying. Seamus of all people. No-shame-at-all-lying-around-the-dorm-in-his-boxers-scratching-his-balls-talking-about-girls Seamus. Honestly, I had no idea where to put my face for a couple of months. When I gave in, with endless promises to myself that no one would ever know, when I wrapped my hand around my dick and imagined Seamus' hand joining mine, his voice telling me to come for me Ron, now, I shot my load faster than I thought was possible.
So. Wanking over the dorm mates is probably not a Good Thing, and one night I got my comeuppance. I was thinking of Seamus' fingers - blunt and strong and everywhere - and I couldn't help a little noise when I came. And Seamus - yes, that Seamus, the one with the fingers - gave a round of applause and a whoop of appreciation. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal. Seamus is the type who never gets embarrassed, and sees shyness in others as a character flaw to be stamped out wherever possible. He's caught us all at it, at one time or another, and has never failed to make his presence known. Normally, retribution is swift, but this time, I just buried my head under the pillow and tried to persuade myself that if I'd said his name out loud, I'd be in the hospital wing by now with broken bones.
So evidently, thinking about Seamus' hands - and his eyes, and his voice, and the way he got the buttons crooked on his shirt some mornings and left a triangle of his chest visible - was going to get me into trouble, and sooner rather than later.
What's a boy to do?
Well I thought, if I actually do it, I won't be thinking about it all the bloody time.
Not with Seamus, obviously. Not with anyone in the dorm. 'Not on your own doorstep' Charlie told me, when I was too young to really have a clue what he meant. But he's right. Not on your own doorstep. Anyway, even if I hadn't been sharing a bedroom with them - and it's very strange when you think of it as a bedroom rather than a dormitory - they were all straighter than straight. Well, Harry was never quite as overtly heterosexual as the others, Dean and Seamus especially, but I always put that down to general World Saving duties. I guess that when you have an evil wizard to kill or be killed by, sex of any kind is pretty far down the list. And anyway, he's Harry. Practically my brother, right?
So I looked around and I spent a painful couple of weeks actually listening to the rumour mill instead of ignoring it like usual. Merlin bless the rumour mill, it worked like a charm. Although most of the names it threw out were Slytherin. While it might have been fun to have some sort of hold over Blaise Zabini, I didn't think I'd be able to stomach it. I sort of wish I had now. Even a prat like Zabini wouldn't have been half as big a mess as this.
Hermione would have my hide for - I don't know, she'd probably call it 'perpetuating stereotypes' or something, but the rumour mill seemed to suggest that there was Finch-Fletchley gay, or Oliver Wood gay - and there's a missed opportunity! - and not a lot in between. See, I think that just because I prefer blokes, it doesn't change me. I haven't started caring about...my hair or - or - well, I don't know. I still like Quidditch, and I still want to Hex Dean's face off when he makes eyes at my sister. Still a bloke, just a mostly gay one.
Anyway! The point of all that is that I like to see myself as much more Oliver Wood gay than Finch-Fletchley gay (really, I don't understand what a gay bloke would see in that, he's practically a girl as it is. Moving on…), so I was looking for subtle. Subtle and, on account of being Harry's best mate, not a Slytherin. So I had a few possibilities in mind, and once I knew, I could sort of see, so I just kept my eye out for a bit. And that's when what was, looking back, a slightly daft idea anyway, turned into the world's worst idea in the history of ever.
One day, one normal day as far as I remember, no Felix Non-Felicis or whatever, I looked at Zach Smith's thighs moving under his trousers (never thought I'd say this, but robes should be compulsory for all years. If I'd never seen those fucking thighs...) and had the idea, 'yeah, he'll do'.
Three words, one thought, totally and utterly fucked from that moment on.
Because he did. We did.
For a while, It was good.
Fuck, who am I kidding? I was a horny fifteen year old, and even if I never liked him all that much - not that I disliked him, but we were never friends - an orgasm is an orgasm. An orgasm from another person is fucking fabulous. I've got no idea how someone else's hand can feel so much better than your own, but it does, it really does. The first and only time he put his mouth on me, I thought I was going to scream, or cry, or faint, or something else horribly embarrassing. He didn't like it much, and didn't ask me to return the favour, but it was enough.
It was good...
If this was ever, in a million years, the kind of thing you discussed with your dad, I know he'd be disappointed. I'd only been twelve when I received a talk on what it might mean to be Harry's best friend. That I should be friends with whoever I wanted, but that being Harry's friend, I should keep my wits about me. I thought he meant Death Eaters, or You-Know-Who, or curses, or something. I didn't know I'd have to be careful of dickheads like Zach Smith.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Things really started going mental that year, and I think everyone felt like they'd been picked up and landed in some strange world where things get worse every day, and no one outside seems to notice. I certainly felt that way. So, like everyone else, I clung to what I knew, which was pretty much Harry, Hermione, Quidditch, even detention. Anything normal.
And the thing with Smith, it started getting complicated. It was painfully obvious at DA sessions that he really disliked Harry, and that bothered me. Not that Smith was my boyfriend, or anything like that, there was no reason for me to want him and Harry to get along, but it was awkward enough slipping away from Harry with everything that was going on, let alone to meet up with someone who hated him so much.
What with one thing and another, with the DA, and bloody Umbridge, and Smith turning out to be a bit of a berk, we just sort of stopped. I didn't really think anything of it.
We had a lot bigger things to think about.
I thought that went for Smith too, and maybe it did for a while, because it was a long time, well into the next school year, until my worst ever idea came back to kick me in the arse. Whatever had kept him silent (and I never really thought there was a reason for him to say anything - exactly why my dad would be disappointed, I expect) only lasted until some time this evening, when...well, to be frank, when all hell broke loose.
I was in the dorm, rooting through my trunk in desperate search of my old Charms text to give to Ginny. Dean and Seamus were sprawled on their beds chatting. Dean was saying something about football and taking Seamus to somewhere called Upton Park in the summer. Apart from that, it was quiet and there had been nothing to suggest that this would end up being such a stinker of a day.
I suppose if you look at it in a certain (very skewed) way, it's comforting, knowing that Harry can summon such an almighty rage. It makes me pretty sure that You-Know-Who will come off worse when they meet for the last time. When it's directed at you though, Harry's anger is pretty fucking terrifying.
He stamped into the dorm, shoving the door so hard that it rebounded back off the wall.
"Is it true?" he demanded, kicking the door shut behind him. Dean and Seamus looked round, but he didn't seem to notice them.
"What?" I'd asked, like a bloody idiot, looking up with my hands full of scraps of parchment and socks.
"You and Smith," Harry ground out. I was barely aware of Seamus and Dean paying avid attention. Too busy gaping at my best friend as his fists clenched and relaxed at his sides, I suppose.
"I - "
I dropped my handfuls of stuff back into my trunk and looked up at him warily.
"Harry - "
"Is it true?" he barked. Now, I've seen Harry do accidental magic before when he's been angry, but either I've never seen him that angry, or he's getting stronger every day. Every window in the dorm exploded outward.
"Shit," Seamus hissed, flinching away. Dean cast a few hasty reparos, but again, I didn't even register it properly until later.
Harry stalked across the room, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and dragged me upright, only to slam me back against the corner post of my bed. Stronger than he looks, the little bugger.
"I know how you look when you come because he told me," he hissed into my face before turning on his heel and marching out.
Seamus made an awkward choking noise and Dean coughed, but I just stared at the door as it slammed shut again.
"Fuck," seemed an appropriate comment, but I reconsidered that in light of what had got me into this mess in the first place. "Bugger." Still not great. "Shit."
"Ron?" Seamus asked, the awkwardness rapidly being replaced by curiosity.
"Shit," I repeated, falling onto my bed before my legs gave out and burying my fingers in my hair. "Shit, shit, fuck."
Well, Merlin's balls.
What in the name of all things magical and muggle was I meant to do about this? I could vaguely hear Seamus and Dean whispering to each other, and when I heard Dean mention Smith – ‘what, Zach Smith?’ - I knew exactly what to do.
Find Harry. Kill Smith.
Not necessarily in that order.
"Not a bloody word to anyone, you two." I tried to say it like it was an order, but it came out begging. I didn't wait to hear what they said but tore out of the dorm, almost tripping down the stairs. Harry wasn't in the common room so I carried on straight down the stairs. If I happened to run across Harry in the meantime, I'd deal with that as well as possible, but for the time being, I headed for the Hufflepuff common room.
It was only as I skidded to a halt outside the door that I realised I had no way of getting in. Without pausing to consider, I started hammering on the door, some distant part of my mind glad that Hufflepuff don't have a portrait guarding the entrance to their common room.
After what seemed like ages, a wide eyed first year opened the door, and I barged past him. Various Hufflepuffs looked at me like I was a lunatic as I stalked around the common room. No Smith.
For fairly obvious reasons, I know which dorm he sleeps in, so I pounded up the stairs, ignoring the shouts below me. I found an empty dorm, and I had just enough time to scrawl You're fucking dead, Smith on a scrap of parchment and leave it on his bed before I was chucked out by a sixth year prefect.
After a few minutes where I stood dumbly in the corridor and let the panic get to me, I headed for the Great Hall. There was no sign of Smith at the Hufflepuff table, but I left pretty vehement messages with a couple of the others.
Just when I started to think that Smith had grown some common sense and was avoiding me, he strolled into the Hall looking like he hadn't just taken a crap all over my life. I stalked over and grabbed his arm.
"Outside, Smith."
He tried to step away, tried to tug his arm free, but I just tightened my grip. So instead, he stepped right up close and said to me, "You've spoken to Potter, then?"
Great Hall be damned.
The first one was the best punch I've ever thrown, and more than worth the fifty points from Gryffindor and the week of detention with Filch. The only downside was, obviously, that I was pulled off him before I could land more than a few blows. With the edge taken off my anger at Smith, I managed to listen to McGonnagal's horrified lecture about maturity and violence and Merlin knows what else without caring too much that all four house tables had rapidly filled in time to see my dressing down from my head of house.
When she finished, I nodded as though I cared and left the Great Hall. Smith was presumably in the hospital wing getting his stupid nose fixed, so the next thing for me to do was find Harry.
Considering the little bastard has not only a magical map of the whole damn school, but an invisibility cloak as well, I wasn't expecting it to be easy. Nor was I expecting it to be as difficult as it actually was.
I checked in with Hagrid first, but he hadn’t seen Harry. Next stop was the library. I found Hermione – naturally – at a table with a group of Ravenclaws. Luckily, none of them seemed to have heard about my raid on the Hufflepuff common room, or my one sided altercation with Smith in the Great Hall. Unluckily though, none of them had seen Harry either. I extracted a promise from an irritated Hermione – I’m studying Ronald, and I’ve told you before, I’m not an owl! – to let Harry know I was looking for him if she saw him first and headed off.
Like a right idiot, I hared around the school, checking the Quidditch pitch, the Charms classroom, the room of requirement, the place we'd originally found the mirror of Erised, any number of unlikely places. All the time I was thinking, damn it, Harry and stupid fucking school.
It was pure luck that let me find him. I was halfway up the stairs, having just decided to circle back to Gryffindor tower and check there when the staircase swung around. I kicked the step in front of me in frustration and waited with my hands jammed in my pockets until the stairs clicked into place. I realised that now this staircase would bring me out halfway up the Astronomy tower. Almost idly, I weighed the possibility that Harry might have gone to look at the stars - why he does this I've got no idea, but he does, regularly. Probably something to do with his bloody Muggles locking him in a windowless bloody cupboard for half his bloody life.
Deciding it was worth the risk, I worked up a hell of a sweat pounding up five flights of (thankfully stationary) stairs. After a brief pause to catch my breath I opened the door onto the roof and looked around for Harry. Sure enough, there was a bright white smudge leaning against one wall that I eventually recognised as his shirt.
I padded over and leant against the wall a few feet away from him. He was staring out over the grounds, so I did the same while I waited.
"How'd you find me?" he asked eventually.
"Luck and perseverance," I told him, taking his speech as a sign to cast lumos and shove the handle of my wand into a gap in the rocks at shoulder height, giving me enough light to look at him. He didn’t turn to face me and I heaved a sigh before turning my gaze back to the grounds. "I've been all over this bloody school looking for you," I muttered.
"Should have just looked for Smith instead, I'm sure he'd be easy enough to find."
"Looked for him, found him, broke his nose," I told Harry, not even managing to feel cheerful about that for a second, his tone was so strange.
Next to me, Harry snorted and dropped his head.
"Is it true?"
"I don't know," I said, hedging my bets. "I don't know what he told you, he's a lying little scrote so - "
"He said he fucked you," Harry broke in.
"Ha!" I couldn't help the burst of laughter, although it felt a little hollow. "He wishes, mate. In that case, no, it's not true."
"He said you - loved him," Harry added, as though tasting the word in his mouth first.
"Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!" I stormed, suddenly fervently wishing I'd waited to ambush Smith somewhere with less people around to drag me off him. "I never loved him. Look... Fuck. Okay." Running out of words to stall with, I paused, took a deep breath and stared out over the castle grounds. "Harry, we messed around a bit last year, alright? He sucked me off, once, and that was the furthest we ever went."
"Why - why'd you stop?"
"Cause he's a prick?" I suggested.
"Well spotted," Harry snorts.
"Cause he was a prick to you," I added.
Harry gave me a long, strange look then, his eyes poring over my face intently. Then he turned away, staring over the grounds again.
"What?" I demanded.
He shook his head sharply.
"Smith, huh? Zach Smith. Zach Smith the bloke."
"Is - " I swallowed nervously. "Is that going to be a problem?"
"Smith specifically, or blokes in general?"
"Smith is - not an issue. Honestly Harry, it was over ages ago, and it wasn't ever - I - I just needed to know. If there'd been anyone else then I would have - "
He gave me that long, searching look again before shaking his head.
"There was someone else," he mumbled, so quiet that I barely heard him.
"Huh?"
"Wouldn't someone you actually liked have been a better idea for your gay experiment?" He spat the words out like a curse and I bit my lip, thinking hard before I answered.
"I wouldn't - I wouldn't want to experiment on someone I liked."
"Noble," Harry commented wryly.
"Harry, what's - I'm...confused. What's going on here?"
"You didn't think maybe you could talk to me?" he snapped. "I'm supposed to be your best friend."
"You - you are."
"Oh, clearly," he bit out, his words laced with enough sarcasm to fell a Hippogriff at a hundred paces.
"You are. You're my best mate and I didn't want - I didn't want you to think I was a freak," I mumbled, rubbing at the back of my neck to cover my awkwardness.
"'Cause I'm that much of a prick, obviously," Harry snapped back.
"What exactly do you want me to say?" I asked. "I'm sorry, I should have told you."
"No," Harry said quickly. "No, Ron, you should have asked me."
"Wh - What, for permission? Harry, for crying out loud..."
Next to me, he made a disgusted noise, flinging his hands in the air and turning away before I could stop him.
I swear, he's as bad as Charlie when he gets his knickers in a twist.
I followed him hurriedly, grabbing at his wrist. He struggled against my grip and I snatched at his other arm as well, forcing them out to his sides so he'd just, for the love of Merlin, stand still.
"Harry," I said carefully. "I know that you're angry - "
"Oh, well done," he spat. I frowned at him and then carried on.
" - but I don't know why, and I can't make it - "
And then he lunged forward as much as he could and kissed me.
It wasn't the best kiss I've ever hand, and it certainly wasn't the gentlest. I felt like I could taste his anger when his teeth scraped over my lips. His breath was hot, I mean, really hot, too hot, hotter than any normal person's breath, and his tongue seemed to be everywhere at once.
So not great. But still... Still, it was Harry. My Harry.
I tried to kiss back, tried to soften it, and he lurched away from me, pulled his arms out of my grip and scarpered through the door before I had a chance to do or say anything.
Not that I had the faintest idea what to do or say anyway.
I stood there for a couple of minutes blinking into the darkness, until realisation dawned.
No, Ron, you should have asked me.
Shit, shit, fuck.
I lurched forward through the door and hared down the first flight of steps, but Harry was nowhere to be found.
He never came back to the dormitory that night, and I should know because I stayed awake until Neville's alarm clock rang out and we all trooped down to breakfast. Dean and Seamus gave me some very funny looks, but I wasn't sure if that was because of what had happened the evening before in the dorm, or because I looked like death warmed up and had spent all night pacing the dorm and common room.
Harry finally turned up about five minutes before the end of breakfast and spoke to Hermione briefly before stuffing a slice of toast down his throat, followed by a cup of coffee he drank so quickly that it must have burnt his mouth. Naturally, I was already on my feet and about two people away from Harry by the time he noticed me, slammed down his coffee cup - still half full - and walked past me like I didn't exist.
Normally, when Harry gets in a mood, I leave him alone. If he actively ignores me, I do the same to him. I can't help myself. It makes me really bloody angry actually, when he does this. Hermione has ignored me before, and it's frustrating as hell. When my brothers ignore me, it's a blessing in disguise, but when it's Harry doing it, when it's Harry turning his face away from me, Harry squaring his shoulders and letting my words wash around him unheard, it pisses me off like nothing else ever has, so like I said, normally I ignore him right back, as fiercely as I can.
That day definitely didn't count as normal though, or more to the point, my bloody best mate bloody kissing me the night before and then bloody disappearing didn't count as normal, so I followed him out of the hall, ignoring the way he tried to pull ahead of me.
He didn't speak and neither did I, just followed him like the lapdog Malfoy always says I am. Our first class was supposed to be Transfiguration but Harry stalked straight past that turning without a pause, seemingly picking his directions at random. This was getting bloody ridiculous and I jogged after him, grabbed his arm and told him so.
He turned a stare on me unlike any I've ever seen from him and I was abruptly angry. I would never usually press my height advantage over him, but I'd be damned if I was going to let him keep running away when I didn't even know what I was supposed to have done wrong. I planted my feet firmly and tightened my grip on his wrist.
"Let go."
"No," I snapped. "We're going to talk about this whether you want to or not."
"Get off me."
"No. Fucking hell, Harry, Smith was nothing. Nothing, alright? I do not care about him, not the way I care about you and Hermione."
Maybe it was a stupid thing to say, but Harry's face last night as he'd said Smith had told him I loved him had been burnt into my memory. Hermione has better, more organised theories on why it might be the case, but I just knew that in Harry's mind, love and family and friendship were all tangled up together, and I had wondered if maybe that was the source of the kiss as well as the record breaking bad mood. I'd been thinking that maybe Harry thought there was something more serious between me and Smith, something that would exclude him, and so he'd kissed me and said I should have asked him because it was all he could think of to do, the only way he could avoid losing me. I was pretty proud of that whole theory, it felt mature.
"What are you talking about?" Harry snapped.
"You - you're - "
"Fuck, there must be something smaller than a teaspoon!" he spat, looking exasperated.
"What?"
"How can you be so fucking dense?" he asked, and this time he sagged a little and sounded sad and lonely and hurt, which was possibly even worse than angry. "All those things he said... Jesus, Ron, it was horrible. He said - Look, can we go somewhere else?"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. McGonnagal'll have our hides, but I need to say this stuff or I'm going to go mad."
"Back to Gryffindor?" I suggested.
Harry nodded and we took a roundabout path up to the tower. I'd been given a glimmer of hope by his less confrontational attitude but it deflated quickly as he marched ahead of me, straight-backed and tense.
In the common room, Harry sat in one of the hard backed chairs and I sat opposite him, fiddling nervously with my fingers.
"Smith said - a lot of things," Harry said, clearing his throat and picking at a loose thread on the knee of his trousers. "About you. I mean, you and him, obviously, but mostly about you."
"Me?" I prompted, as Harry looked on the verge of clamming up again.
"Things you - do. Things you say when - when - " he stopped with a strangled noise and raked a hand through his hair.
"Oh." I felt myself pale and looked away. "Fucking - why would he do that?"
Harry gave a snort of disbelief and when I chanced a look back at him, he was staring over my shoulder at the bare wall.
"Because," he said slowly and deliberately, "as everyone in this castle apart from you seems to know, that's what would hurt."
"You - hurt? I don't - "
"Oh, Ron," he said despairingly. "I'm jealous as hell, you stupid git."
Well, it was like a stunner, I don't mind admitting. I sat and gaped at him for a few moments, distantly worried that he would disappear on me again. Mostly I was just thinking fuck, fuck, fuck, what a fucking mess, because for all my earlier bluster about not on your own doorstep and not experimenting with friends, I couldn't help thinking how different it could have been. Imagine discovering all that mad, brilliant stuff with Harry instead of some boring, big headed Hufflepuff that I didn't give a damn about. Imagine all that but comfortable and familiar. Imagine laughing at the ridiculous moments, kissing him because I wanted to, not because it went with everything else.
"Oh, Harry - "
"Don't, okay," he said glumly. "Just - I've been waiting for you to go off with Hermione, and I was kind of ready for that but this was just - it was a shock, okay?"
"Ready for it?" I asked. "How - how long?"
To his credit, Harry didn't even try to misunderstand the question.
"For...ages," he said with a shrug, looking off towards the empty fireplace.
"Fuck. Fuck, I'm so stupid. I'm - "
"I get it, alright?"
He's so fucking frustrating sometimes. "Get what, Harry? Cause I don't."
"Believe it or not, Ron, 'has a cock' wasn't the only reason I came up with for you not wanting me."
"I - "
"I mean, you always say I’m like a brother and I suppose if you have actual brothers, that must be pretty strange. And, well - I know I'm a bit of a prick sometimes. A lot of the time. And there's the - well - if he's your type then - God. Feel free to stop me anytime you want," he offered bleakly, rubbing his hands over his face.
"He's not my type," I said, with my usual knack of latching onto the least important part of anything that's just been said. "I wish I'd known, mate."
"What, so you'd have felt obliged or something?" Harry asked, snarling the word out like it was disgusting to him.
"No. I'd have felt - less mental for a start. And - thrilled. Really, really thrilled. I mean - my Harry - "
"You can't say things like that, Ron," he protested weakly, closing his eyes.
"Why not?" I asked, leaning forward in my chair and pushing my point by rapping sharply on his knee with my knuckles. He flinched away from it and my heart sank. "Really, why not?"
"'Cause you're going to drive me mad. I just - you have to let me get over this and I can't if you're saying shit like - like - "
"Harry," I said, scraping up every last bit of Gryffindor courage I could find and half-falling out of my chair to kneel in front of him and look up at him seriously. "What if I don't want you to get over it? What if – ” I reached out and grabbed his hand as it moved to fiddle with his glasses. “Look, I fucked up, alright. Smith was - a mistake, a stupid fucking mistake, and I'd never have done it if I'd thought even for a second that you - "
"Are you saying - what are you saying?"
"Just - " I reached forward and fiddled with the same thread he'd been tugging earlier. "Like I said, you're my Harry and - aw, come on mate, you know I'm no good at this."
He just looked at me with eyes that were somehow troubled and warm and familiar and new all at once so I decided to spell it out as best I could.
"We're already - you're like the other half of me, mate, I can't think properly without you and if - if we did this it'd just be one more thing, one more us thing because - " I swallowed and prepared to consign myself to the ranks of Finch-Fletchley gay forever more. "There is no one like you in my life, Harry. I - you matter, and - "
To my utter relief, he reached out with one hand to touch my hair in a clumsy, petting motion, and I took that as my cue to just shut. The hell. Up.
He got as far as, "Ron," before I moved or he moved or we both moved and met in the middle or something, I don't know and I don't care because the upshot of it was that we were kissing. His fingers slid deeper into my hair and his tongue swiped over my lip, pressing for permission that I gave gladly, opening my mouth under his to taste him. His free hand moved up to my shoulder and squeezed in time with the press and retreat of his lips.
And alright so I was kneeling on a stone floor and Harry’s glasses were digging into my face and my neck was frankly killing me, but Harry's lips and tongue and teeth were already better than anything that berk had ever tried. I wanted to tell Harry that somehow, but I knew that was probably not the subject to bring up with him so I just moved my hand to his cheek and kissed him, three quick kisses on his lips before moving back a little and looking at him with what was probably a really stupid grin on my face.
I don’t know what I was expecting but it definitely wasn’t a gentle pat on the cheek and a, “We need to get to class.”
“What?” I squawked.
"Yeah," he said, standing up and running his fingers through my hair before I scrambled to my feet. “We’re already ten minutes late.”
“But – Harry,” I protested, leaning in to kiss his jaw. Palm flat on my chest, he pushed me back.
“C’mon.”
Grumbling, I trailed out of the common room after him. As we walked down the stairs he nudged me.
“I had to wait, now you have to wait,” he said with a wicked grin.
“How long?” I asked, but he just walked quicker. “How long?” I demanded as I caught up to him a few doors down from McGonnagal’s classroom.
“Just ‘til tonight,” he said, looking up at me and squeezing my fingers. “I’m feeling smug, not stupid.”
I laughed at that and he smiled so naturally and easily, and his face was so familiar and precious that I couldn’t resist doing a quick scan of the – empty – hallway before giving him a quick kiss. Just as we turned apart, the classroom door opened and our head of house filled the doorway, glaring at us.
“Sorry Professor,” I started.
“I broke my – ” Harry said and then floundered.
“Glasses,” I supplied. “Blind as a bat, had to fix them for him.”
Even McGonnagal’s patented you are lying and I will learn the truth and you will pay glare couldn’t deflate me as we hurried to our seats. Hermione turned the same look on both of us (is it a woman thing? A Gryffindor thing? Merlin only knows…) but underneath the table, Harry pressed his thigh against my own and I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything else. We were supposed to be transfiguring snails into something, but just as McGonnagal was telling us what Harry leant over to pinch one of Hermione’s spare quills, steadying himself with his hand on my thigh as he did so and well… I lost track a bit.
It took me until lunchtime (I know, I know. Teaspoon) to realise that he was touching me on purpose, teasing me on purpose. I was amazed that he could pour himself a glass of pumpkin juice, chat amiably to Lee Jordan and run his hand up the inside of my thigh all at once. I jolted in my seat when he did that, getting more than a few curious looks from our classmates. As I settled back down I was sure my face must be flushed bright red, and out of the corner of my eye I could see a tiny smirk on Harry's face.
Once I realised, I caught him sending me furtive, promising looks to go along with the little touches and even though it was a bit disconcerting at first to see my oldest friend looking at me with such obvious flirtation in his eyes, it seemed natural. It seemed like it was supposed to be that way, like it was just one more thing about each other that we understood better than anyone else ever could.
Draining his pumpkin juice, Harry set his glass down neatly on top of the table and flicked my leg under it.
"Need the loo," he said, standing and grabbing his bag.
"Oh, yeah, me too," I said around a mouthful of sandwich, swallowing hastily and following Harry.
In the ground floor bathroom, Harry grabbed my hand and tugged me over to a cubicle, slamming the door behind us and pushing me up against it. Like I said, he's a strong little bugger when he wants to be, but I didn't particularly notice that because his hands were fisted in the front of my robes and his whole body was pressed against me as he went on to tiptoes to kiss me. I murmured appreciatively into his mouth and put my arms around his waist, holding him to me and easing him down onto his feet, chasing his mouth with my own.
Again, it struck me that this was easy. It felt normal, and everyday. And fucking hot as well, don't get me wrong. For all his supposed lack of experience, Harry was no slouch, and I made a mental note to ask some serious questions about that later. It felt great, and he tasted fantastic and his mouthtonguebody was so hot against mine but it wasn't weird at all. There was none of the hesitation and almost fighting spirit that there had been with Smith, just an absolute certainty that this was where I should be, this was who I should be with, and exactly what I should be doing.
"Skive off with me?" I asked, moving my lips to kiss Harry's neck. The skin there tasted spicy and hot and fresh and I licked a circle over his fluttering pulse before he nudged my head up and kissed the corner of my mouth.
"No," he said with a sharp grin, and ran one hand down the front of my shirt, holding me back against the door. "Tonight," he said, "Straight after dinner, we'll go to the Room of Requirement."
"We've got loads of homework," I pointed out, still hoping he'd give in to my request. "We'll never get Hermione off our backs if we wait 'til tonight."
"We'll find a way," he assured me. "Invisibility cloak, remember? Besides, she'll kill us if we miss classes."
I groaned in frustration but nodded and loosened my grip on him.
"Hey," I said, smiling at him wickedly as a sudden thought occurred to me. "You don't think maybe Myrtle - "
"Oh, don't even start," Harry grinned, shaking his head and squeezing my hand.
"Come on, then," I grumbled. "Let's go if we're going."
"Yeah," Harry said wistfully. "Be nice to stay."
"In the bogs?" I asked. "Besides, you're the one who said - "
"I know, I know. And I didn't mean in the loo, I meant with you."
"Oh." I said, lost for more coherent words, and tugged him in again for a quick hug. His head tucked under my chin and that crazy hair tickled my neck and his fingers squeezed at my back for a second. Listening closely for a moment to make sure there was no one else in the bathroom, we slipped out of the cubicle and hurried off to afternoon classes.
It was one of the longest, slowest afternoons of my life. Me and Harry always sit together, so I had no choice but to endure his little looks and touches and whispered comments. It was torture, but in a good way. I didn't hear a word of the lessons, but then that wasn't entirely unusual. I barely heard anything that anyone else said to me either, but I was vaguely aware at one point of Dean and Seamus, heads close together, talking softly and glancing at us, but I couldn't bring myself to care. They were good blokes. Well, Seamus was a little stroppy, but Dean usually kept him in check when he got too daft.
Finally, finally, finally, dinner dragged itself around. I'd been aware for a couple of hours of a nervous excitement building in my stomach, and I could barely force down the excellent Shepherd's Pie. I managed the treacle tart, naturally, but it was a close thing.
"Hermione," Harry said. "We, uh - we're going to go - "
"Flying," I suggested.
Hermione raised one hand an cast a surreptitious muffliato charm.
"Don't lie to me, boys," she said calmly.
I exchanged a nervous glance with Harry who shrugged minutely and rubbed his nose.
"Um..." I ventured.
"Oh honestly Ron, it was halfway round Gryffindor about you and Zach before I told Dean to keep Seamus quiet," she said, still calm.
"What?" I managed. I knew from experience that Hermione was at her most deadly when she seemed calmest. Sure enough her next words were delivered rapid-fire and in a gradually escalating tone.
"I've told everyone that Zach said something bad about Harry and that's why you hit him - which, incidentally, I don't approve of at all - and people are either believing it or keeping their mouths shut, so tell them whatever you want but do not lie to me."
I didn't have a clue what to say, and as usual in such situations, Harry stepped in for me.
"Alright, Hermione," he said, reaching over the table to pat her hand. "Sorry, that was rotten of us. We have some things we need to talk about so - "
"Oh, of course," she said with a little smile. It struck me as unfair that Harry was always able to defuse the Hermione-bomb in seconds. "Have a nice talk."
"Hermione!" I protested, shocked at the leer on her face.
"Ronald," she said coolly before rolling her eyes and taking my hand in the one Harry wasn't already holding, squeezing us both for a moment. She looked between us with a fond smile on her face. "Oh, you two are so dense."
"He's the dense one," Harry protested.
"I - Yeah, I am the dense one," I admitted after a second's consideration.
"Come on then, you," Harry said, tapping my shoulder and standing.
"See ya, Hermione," I said, offering her a smile. She grinned back at me and waved us off.
I was expecting just to walk to the Room of Requirement as usual but as soon as we reached the first alcove beyond the Great Hall, Harry tugged us inside and reached up to swish the invisibility cloak over both of us.
"Everyone's still at dinner," I pointed out.
"Yeah, but - " Harry said, sliding his arm round my waist and pressing himself in close to my side, making his point eloquently. I wrapped my own arm around his shoulders, using my free hand to keep the cloak steady. I had to stoop a bit, but that just brought my face closer to his hair, to the smell of the mint shampoo from the Gryffindor bathroom. I was so dazed by it all, by his closeness and his warmth, that I barely noticed we were outside the Room until Harry was marching us back and forth quickly. Taking a quick glance around, he tugged off the cloak and shoved me in through the door that had just finished materialising.
Some quiet part of me had been dreading what the room might give two people looking for a bit of privacy, in case generations of straightness had led to an overload of candles and rose petals and silk. Instead there was a bed, just a little bigger than those in the dorms, a small table next to it with a jug of water and two glasses, and a lamp off in one corner that cast a dim glow over the whole room. We looked at it in silence for a moment before Harry spoke.
"It knows I don't need anything except you."
"Girl," I told him, but I turned my head to kiss his temple and signify my agreement.
"Well, you and a flat surface," Harry quipped, tilting his head to kiss me properly.
"What d'you want to do?" I asked, turning and tugging off my robes, letting them fall carelessly to the floor.
"I want - " Harry looked away for a moment and then stepped up close to me. "I want to completely wipe that fucker from your memory."
"Harry - " I said warily. "You did that with one kiss, mate. Let's not make this about him, eh?"
"Now who's the girl?" he said, poking me in the ribs, but he did look reassured, smiling up at me. I could tell he was expecting a kiss so instead I busied myself with undoing the clasp of his robes and slipping them off his shoulders. I couldn't resist flicking open the first few buttons of his shirt either, and running my thumb over the collarbone that was exposed. Harry's own hands fluttered at his sides, his fingers twitching, while his eyes never left my face, and mine never left the pale skin I was slowly exposing. When his shirt was hanging open he seemed to snap out of a trance. “Wait, wait,” he said, taking my hand and backing up towards the bed.
He sat down on it and looked up at me, clutching my hands.
“I’m sorry I was a dick,” he said, and it was such a Harry apology that I couldn’t help smiling.
“I shouldn’t have kept it from you,” I said seriously. He opened his mouth to protest but I insisted. “I shouldn’t keep anything from you,” I added, and knew that he took it for the apology it was.
He tugged on my hand and I sat down on the bed next to him. For just a second, I felt awkward and then his hands were on my shirt front, fumbling a little and making him curse as he fiddled with buttons and got me into a similar state as himself. I took the opportunity to tug his shirt the rest of the way off as I wriggled out of my own and dropped them both unceremoniously somewhere on the floor – I don’t know where because I couldn’t stop staring at him, which was ridiculous, because I’d seen him more naked than this almost daily since we were both sorted into Gryffindor. Dorms don’t offer much in the way of privacy, but I had never felt this before, this tug in my chest that was like a Portkey but muted and a little different. I couldn’t stop staring at him, at the line of his collarbone, his pale skin, the sparse dusting of black hairs, and I reached out blindly at the same time as he did.
Before I knew what was what, he had pulled me down over him, his legs still hanging over the edge of the bed, his mouth fastened onto my neck, licking and sucking and nipping. I tried to support my weight on my arms at first but he tugged me down insistently and groaned in satisfaction when my body pressed his down into the bed. Half-reluctantly, I shifted my neck away from his mouth and kissed him instead, reluctance evaporating in an instant as his tongue sparred with mine and he raised one leg, his thigh against my hip, making me feel secure and trapped all at once. And then I realised I could feel him. Through the trousers I’d almost forgotten were still in my way he was hot and hard and I dropped down to kiss his collarbone, one dusky nipple and down, licking through the few wiry black hairs on his chest.
He tasted so good there that it left me wondering desperately what other parts of his body might taste like. I wanted to touch his neck and his ribs and his back and his legs and - oh, Merlin - his arse and his balls and his prick and everything. I wanted to taste it and feel it and learn it and never let it go.
"Harry," I muttered into his skin. "Oh, Harry." I kissed his stomach and said to him, "I want to suck you."
And I did. I really wanted it, in a way I never thought I would. I wanted to drive him crazy, and that was the quickest way I could think of to do it, but I also wanted to do it in its own right. I wanted to suck him, I wanted to feel him in my mouth, the head of his cock at the back of my throat, and I wanted to taste his come because it was him, mine, Harry.
Harry's only response to my words was a desperate whine and a helpless upwards cant of his hips.
I moved down, pressed a biting kiss to his hipbone, and made short work of his trousers before I wrapped my hand around the base of his cock. He made a choked whimper, which turned into a choked scream when I licked the head of his prick, around the tight ring of his foreskin before sliding my mouth down onto the length of him as far as I could. It was more difficult than I'd imagined and I had to pull back almost straight away the first few times I tried to take more than the head in my mouth.
Harry didn't seem to care about my lack of finesse. I watched him as best I could through the hair that fell over my eyes, and his head was thrown back so far that his neck was a sharp line. His fists were clenching wildly in the sheets and he was making these noises, these desperate, whining, broken-off, needy noises that were driving me wild.
God, I wanted this, it, him, wanted it so much and I reached up to rub my thumb over one of his tense, pebbled nipples before reaching down to cup his balls in my hand. That was it, and I filed it away for future reference, how his body immediately bowed up off the bed in response to that touch, and he let out a hoarse shout, flooding my mouth with something hot and salty and bitter and Harry and I swallowed it all save for a blob on my lip which I reached up and removed with my thumb. Just as I was about to lick it clean, Harry grabbed my wrist.
"What's - " he asked, still panting. He cleared his throat and said, "What's it taste like?"
"Er - " I wasn't entirely sure how to describe it, but Harry solved the problem for me by hauling himself into a sitting position and sucking my thumb into his mouth.
My thumb. His mouth.
Fuck.
It was indecently sexy, I mean really, it should have been illegal, the way his cheeks hollowed around my thumb and his tongue swirled across my skin and his eyelashes fluttered closed. He kept sucking on my thumb long after that tiny trace of himself was gone, teasing and caressing my knuckle with his tongue. Finally, he pulled back and flopped down onto the bed. I laid myself down on my side next to him, unable to stop myself reaching down and pressing the heel of my hand into my own erection. His hand clamped over my wrist and stopped my slow movements.
"Harry," I whined.
"My job," he said in a low voice, turning onto his side to face me, his hands unbuttoning my trousers and shoving at them as I wriggled them down to my knees. Harry buried his face in my neck and said,""I think - IthinkIwantyoutocomeonme."
"Say again?" I asked.
He kept his face pressed to my neck as he said haltingly, "I think I want you to come. On me."
"Oh - oh my - fuck - "
"You want?" he asked, pulling his head back to look at me.
"So much," I nodded. Harry shuffled closer to me and nudged my own hand out of the way to encircle my aching erection. I groaned at the touch of his hand - a little smaller than my own, a little rougher, hands that I knew so well anyway and now - It was too much, and I let my eyes drift closed.
"Open," he insisted, and when I did, his forehead was right against mine, his eyes turned down between our bodies, watching avidly as his hand moved up and down my length.
"F'ster," I begged, reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder, to feel his muscles tensing and relaxing as he pumped me, his pace increasing gradually. "Harry," I pleaded. "Please."
His thumb dragged over the hyper-sensitive head of my cock and I couldn't help jabbing my hips forward a couple of times. Harry just grinned and brought his own thumb to his mouth this time, licking off the droplet of liquid he'd gathered. I swear I almost lost it then and there, just at the idea of him tasting me, but his hand quickly went back to groping me, squeezing and sliding along my shaft, really putting some effort into it this time. He nudged my head up with his own and kissed me hard and hot in between my ragged breaths.
"Good?" he asked.
"Good," I managed, my hand tightening on his arm. "Really - fuck, Harry!"
He started up a vigorous rhythm, twisting his hand on every upstroke and tightening it on every down stroke. I could tell that I wasn't going to last so I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him close and kissed him, kissed him for all I was worth, kissed him with everything I had, swirled my tongue around his mouth craving moremoremore of that taste, that perfect Harry taste.
I think I bit his tongue of something when I came, if that startled little twitch was anything to go by. I was distantly aware of him pressing himself closer, closer, closer to me, and I could feel myself throbbing against his belly, feel the liquid heat cover us both. Mostly though, all I could feel was the pleasure, the too-much too-good just-right pleasure and everything behind my eyes bloomed with sudden bright colours and I realised I was making a desperate whining noise with each breath, my sides heaving.
As I calmed down, I reached blindly for Harry and pulled him to me. He ended up tucked in to my side, one hand playing idly with the mess on our bellies and his fingers.
“Worth the wait,” he said, mumbling the words into my chest.
“Was only a few hours,” I pointed out with a lazy grin, fiddling with a lock of his sweaty hair.
“Not really,” he shrugged, drumming his fingers on my ribs.
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Date: 2008-07-18 12:59 am (UTC)I love it when Ron's oblivious and think's he's fooling everyone.
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Date: 2008-07-18 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 03:10 am (UTC)<3
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Date: 2008-07-18 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 03:45 am (UTC)YOU WROTE A HARRY/RON??? hgdslahgf;aghjdafhg;ahfdg;ah
I'd read all your R/S as of last summer when I was still a lurker (excellent stuff, btw). I'm so glad you wrote this!
I got interrupted no fewer than five times while reading this and was this close to telling everyone in the house to go AWAY and I finally got to finish and now I have and it was all that I'd hope for and more.
Gorgeous and hot and just the right amount of fluffy and they love each other and... *big happy sigh*
ETA: AND TRUST IS FINISHED? I have to go back now and read and comment on it all. Damn it.
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Date: 2008-07-18 07:32 am (UTC)And yes it is finished! Finally! Sorry for the wait ;)
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Date: 2008-07-18 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 07:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 07:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 05:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 07:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 06:39 am (UTC)Truer words were never spoken ... er, written! An amazing story line done just right. With all the "normal" angst that accompanies our teen years, you got the very-extra-tricky "gay" bit just right. (Believe me, I *know*!) Thank you for a story both hot and kewl. It evoked many powerful memories ... some not so wonderful, most totally awesome!
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Date: 2008-07-18 07:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 07:13 am (UTC)You have no idea how much I needed this - or how late I am for work!
Just. Perfect.
['cept where he is sucking Ron's thumb and it turns intoa a tongue... but that's a beta thing]
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Date: 2008-07-18 07:34 am (UTC)And honestly, you have no idea how glad I am that you liked it. *cuts short the gushing*
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From:no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 10:17 am (UTC)*sighs and flails*
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Date: 2008-07-18 10:35 am (UTC)Wow
Date: 2008-07-18 10:29 am (UTC)Re: Wow
Date: 2008-07-18 10:36 am (UTC)Also: icon! I love his face! /obsessed
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Date: 2008-07-18 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 01:36 pm (UTC)gorgeous, silly, marvellous, ridiculous boys! (and wonderful knowing hermione.)
"Fuck," seemed an appropriate comment, but I reconsidered that in light of what had got me into this mess in the first place. "Bugger." Still not great. "Shit."
fantastic!
my Harry - "
"You can't say things like that, Ron," he protested weakly, closing his eyes.
*heart clenches*
really. love stuff.
(recc'd by
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Date: 2008-07-18 03:55 pm (UTC)I'm really glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the comment :)
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Date: 2008-07-18 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 07:44 pm (UTC):)
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Date: 2008-07-18 06:16 pm (UTC)I've always enjoyed an oblivious Ron, but you made this so believable and with the right amount of teenage-boy-drama; not overly done but perfect and extremely funny.
It was amazing. :)
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Date: 2008-07-18 07:45 pm (UTC)here via shocolate
Date: 2008-07-18 11:50 pm (UTC)Re: here via shocolate
Date: 2008-07-19 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 03:05 am (UTC)Wonderful job with Ron! He and Harry's interaction are well done and HOT!
Hope you right more H/R!
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Date: 2008-07-19 12:28 pm (UTC)And I'm glad you liked it btw :)
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Date: 2008-07-19 04:47 pm (UTC)nice, happy ending, though.
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Date: 2008-07-20 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 11:54 pm (UTC)write another one soon! please. i might die if i don't read another ASAP. haha. thank you againnn!
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Date: 2008-07-20 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 11:40 pm (UTC)I have a huge soft spot for clueless!Ron, and I love reading about them when they're still at school so this was especially lovely.
xxx
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Date: 2008-07-21 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-21 02:15 pm (UTC)And I disagree with
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Date: 2008-07-21 02:28 pm (UTC)And re: Harry's angst. He pitches fits over a lot less in canon right? He's like the original emo kid. *pets Harry*
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Date: 2008-07-22 02:15 am (UTC)It was so good. And hot! And everyone was perfect. So well done! :)
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Date: 2008-07-22 01:26 pm (UTC)And yeah, Hermione's way too smart not to know in advance.
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Date: 2008-07-29 05:57 am (UTC)Nicely done :)
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Date: 2008-07-29 10:09 am (UTC)Great job
Date: 2008-10-03 11:02 pm (UTC)Re: Great job
Date: 2008-10-04 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-10 06:36 am (UTC)