Cinders | By : KohakuShadow Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Draco/Ron Views: 4047 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1 |
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor am I making any money off of it. |
Written as a christmas gift. Semi-based in movie-verse, or slightly AU, because it served my plot purposes well. :)
Pairing: Ron/Draco
(Yes, I have a mailing list. If you're interested, check my profile for details.)
Cinders
London was burning. To be more specific, London – as well as several outlying provinces – was suffering from an outbreak of mob-frenzied arson. With the war freshly over, the citizens who had done nothing to either help or hinder the cause had become quite riled for their years of stagnation with the energy of the triumph of all that was good and light in the world. Apparently, the only way to burn off this excess energy was to rampage about the countryside in groups of ten or twenty at a shot and burn down the houses of every death eater and suspected death eater they could find. Last week, they'd burned down the home of a two hundred year old woman with cataracts and a hobby of collecting bottle caps who had been in and out of assisted living for the past twenty years.
It was a genuine witch hunt, Salem-style, fueled by hatred and a wild energy that was difficult to tame. It made Ron sick to his stomach to think of it. He knew what it was like to have one's home burn to cinders. Sure, they were wizards, and buildings could be repaired, but you never forgot the flames. Home stopped feeling safe.
No one had died so far, but that didn't mean the burn unit of St. Mungo's wasn't starting to feel the strain. Empty houses, vacant houses, and the houses of death eaters who would be rotting in Azkaban for a long time had been the early targets, but when they'd run out of such places to burn? Well, there were others, and where there weren't others, others had been imagined and contrived.
The Aurors had become so overwhelmed putting out fires – and it was impossible to arrest half the bloody countryside – that they'd recruited a few of the war's young 'heroes' (a term Ron rather loathed) to assist. Neville and Seamus – though Ron wondered if the latter didn't cause more fires than he put out – were halfway up the arsehole of Scotland, they'd been sent so far North. Hermione and Luna were in Wales. Harry, with such a famous face, for all his efforts to the contrary, seemed to instigate the mobs rather than calm them. These people only became more rambunctious when they caught a glimpse of him, as if they were expecting he'd reward them for a job well done. When he didn't that just made them angrier, and the riot became more intense as if their behavior would eventually win him to their side. It hadn't yet, but Harry was so gentle with them that they'd never know it.
They'd had a good and proper fight about it over dinner and drinks last night, which still had Ron steaming. Harry had said, 'I understand how they feel.' The conversation that led up to that sentence snapped in Ron's head, and he'd always been poor at checking his temper. “And, these poor blokes whose houses are being burned to the bloody ground, you don't know how they feel, yeah? Can't fucking imagine it, can you? Only half of them had a damned thing to do with HIM, and you damn well know it, and even the ones that did...!” He'd let out a silent scream, tossed his arms in the air and stormed out. Yes, some of the victims might deserve Azkaban, or even death, but no one deserves this, he'd thought. No one. He'd been having nightmares about the Burrow in flames for weeks.
He sighed and sat back, sipping his fourth coffee and trying, through sleep-deprived eyes, to read the Prophet, which just pissed him off most of the time.
'Malfoy Manor Burns' he read scrawled across the top of the page. The photo was the home, still in flames. He didn't even have time to seethe over how he didn't see a single bloody auror there, or anyone, for that matter, trying to put it out, when the floo call came. It was Kingsley.
Ron glared at the embers. “Are we getting our bloody information from the Prophet now?” he complained at the Minister.
“There are more fires than there are aurors,” Kingsley said calmly. “I leave this one to you.”
Ron cussed ungraciously and was already halfway to the door, pulling on boots, scarf, and jacket in a rushed manner before Kingsely's face had faded completely from the hearth. There was no love lost between Draco and himself, but it was still someone he knew, which always dug a little deeper. He hurried. Of course he hurried. He sped his broom as quickly as it would go through the turbulence and choking ash. The bloody thing vibrated between his thighs, but not in that fun, sexual way – actually it chafed against his jeans and would probably leave a nasty broom rash behind it.
His speed didn't matter, in the end. The manor was already in cinders. The cold of the air, the fact nearly all the smoke had dissipated, told Ron it had probably been that way for several hours. Sitting on the stone wall surrounding an aged tree – the only thing on the estate that hadn't burned, other than the wrought iron archways – Draco Malfoy sat, wand clutched tightly in his fist, shivering. When the fires had started, the weather was the least of anyone's worries, but now that summer had given way to fall, the nights were cold. Ron wondered how long Draco had been out here alone in his shirtsleeves with no one to help him. The rustle of dead leaves under foot as he approached seemed impossibly loud.
Draco turned sharp eyes upon him and when he saw who it was, released a bitter snort of laughter. “Come to gloat, Weasley?”
“I wouldn't,” Ron answered. “Not about this.”
“Come to help then?” Draco's bitter laugh carried further this time, and Ron wondered if it was edged with just a dusting of hysteria. “Bit late.”
“Yeah,” Ron answered. “I can see that. Want me to help you dig through, you know, for any possessions that might have made it?”
“Don't bother,” Draco sighed. “Anything that might be left is probably cursed, and there's no telling with what.”
Ron thought he'd better call Bill to go through the rubble, in that case, but was sensible enough not to say so to Draco. Having dealt with several fires like this, he'd learned quickly there were things you didn't say, not right away. “Your parents?” Ron asked.
“Acted in the most perfectly Slytherin manner. I suppose I should be proud. I suppose I should have joined them.”
Ron looked perplexed.
“Oh, for pity's sake, Weasley? They ran, just as they always have. You can't pretend to be surprised,” Draco snipped.
“Oh,” Ron answered dumbly. “Yeah, I suppose that's their habit.”
“Mine as well. You can say it. You wouldn't be wrong. But this...”
“It's your home,” Ron empathized. Draco cringed, as if that bit of understanding was a physical blow.
Ron sighed. He couldn't believe he was about to say this...
“Listen, come back to mine for now. You're chilled to the bone, and the curse breakers won't let you start rebuilding until they've had a run of the place for anything that might be dangerous, anyway. It's standard procedure – one too many rebuilding efforts gone wrong thanks to reacting magical items.”
Draco looked at Ron like he was completely mental. Ron answered by grumbling and roughly pulling his hand-knitted scarf off; he wrapped the hideous thing around Draco's neck. “Don't give me that look. It's the crack of dawn and it's freezing, and I don't want to be out in this shit weather, and once the shock wears off, you'll realize you don't want to be either.”
Draco shivered. The warmth of Ron's scarf made him realize how incredibly cold he was in the thin linen shirt he'd tossed over his flannel pajama trousers. His feet were bare inside of his slippers. His fingers, curled so tightly around his wand, were so numb from cold it actually hurt when he tried to relax his grip – subtly, of course, lest Weasley notice his discomfort. He grunted in reply and lifted himself from his seat on the brick work. He would have managed it gracefully, too, if his knees didn't crack in the half-light of the early morning.
“We'll grab a floo,” Ron said. “Don't think you want to spend five miles on the back of my broom.”
Draco looked at the broom with his trademark disdain. He looked ready to snark, but curbed the impulse as a breeze cut right through him, and his body shivered without his mind's permission. He would say this for Molly Weasley's hideously ugly scarves – they certainly were rather cozy when one was freezing. He burrowed his face deeper into the yarn – half for warmth, half in the hope that he wouldn't be recognized.
When the warm air from Ron's flat hit his skin, the shock of it made his teeth chatter, and made the cold that much more apparent by contrast. In spite of his innate to restrain himself, the body has certain involuntary reactions that are sometimes impossible to curb. He hated to show any weakness, especially to a Gryffindor.
“Right then, sitting room's over there. I'll...yeah. Tea, and warm clothes and...that sort of thing,” Ron said as it clicked how bizarre it was to have a pajama clad Malfoy in his sitting room.
Draco slumped onto the couch. Slumped. Ron watched from behind as the blond head fell against slender fingers and narrow palms. He shook his head and padded quietly from the room, setting the kettle to boil while he went into his room to fetch clothes. He frowned at the closet. Nothing he could pull out would be up to snuff for a snooty bastard like Malfoy, whose underpants probably cost more than Ron's winter coat, so he just settled on anything that might take some of the chill off – a Canons t-shirt, track pants, a hoodie, and a pair of double-knit winter socks. It would have to do. Draco would hate the t-shirt, which the immature brat in Ron couldn't help but appreciate.
When he padded back downstairs, Draco hadn't moved, but he was shivering. Ron had seen this quite a bit since the war. It was the shock more than the cold, most of the time. The childish brat with a vendetta that purposely picked the t-shirt Draco was likely to loathe felt a little guilty. “Here,” Ron said, startling Draco who all but leaped from the couch, still bundled in Ron's scarf. “Warm clothes,” Ron finished, holding out the bundle. “I'll get you that tea. Some soup too, maybe? It comes out of a can, but...”
Draco stared at the bundle for a long, awkward moment.
“I know it's not the fancy shit you're used to, but it's warmer than flannels and a button down,” Ron defended.
Draco blinked. “No, I didn't mean...” but there was no way to finish that sentence between them that would sound genuine, so he lamely mumbled a thank you and took the clothes. “Just tea for now is fine. I don't think I can eat anything.”
“Even soup?” Ron blurted.
“Even soup,” Draco confirmed.
This wasn't even awkward; awkward wasn't strong enough a word. “Right then. Tea,” Ron said before removing himself, leaving the Malfoy some privacy to change. He stared at the teapot for a good five minutes before settling on bringing it back to the sitting room. Draco had pulled the track pants and hoodie right over his pajamas, leaving the Cannons t-shirt neatly folded at the end of the table. Ron nearly laughed. Stubborn prat. He was fumbling with the zipper of the hoodie, and still barefoot. Not noticing him there, Draco cursed under his breath. It was testament to how much the burning of his home had rattled the Slytherin, Ron thought, that he was that unusually inattentive to his surroundings. He gently put the tea tray down on the side table, and grabbed the end of the hoodie. “Here,” he said, and quickly zipped it up before the blond could protest.
Draco glared defiantly at him in response. Ron just rolled his eyes and pointed at the tea tray. “I'll get you something to eat.” It must be the Weasley in him, to constantly feel the need to push food on people.
Draco sighed. “Don't bother. I'm not hungry.”
Ron knew that what he really meant was, I doubt I'd be able to keep it down, so he relented at last and left Draco to himself for a bit, to go to the floo and report in with Kingsley. When he returned to the sitting room, Draco, bundled as he was, was shivering again.
'Shock,' Ron reaffirmed in his head, but it bothered him to see someone who had always been brimming with false confidence and cheek in such a state. The teacup rattled in Draco's hands until he finally gave up and set it back onto the tray. 'Poor guy.' Words, again, he never imagined he'd even think for a Malfoy. He pulled the throw from the back of one of the armchair and wrapped it around Draco's shoulders. The shattered look in Draco's eyes floored him. He sat down beside the blond on the couch and pulled Draco's head to rest against his shoulder as if someone had used the Imperius Curse to make him do it. Draco, likewise, leaned against him without the slightest disdain and made no effort to pull away.
The silence between them remained pregnant with unspeakable words for quite a long while. Draco drifted in and out of fitful slumber. Ron wondered whether the intensity of his shock was more from the burning of his home, or from the fact his parents had abandoned him in the heat of the moment. The aurors were searching, of course, as best they could with more work than men to do it, anyway; that went without saying. It also went without saying that, after several hours of his arse going numb on his hand-me-down couch, was that if there had been any sign of the Malfoys attempting to return for their heir, Ron would have heard something by now.
“They won't come back, you know,” Draco said stonily – the first words spoken between them since dawn.
“You think?” Ron asked, just because talking was a good sign.
Draco scoffed. There was nothing to say. If his parents were as worried about his life as they had been concerned for their own, they would have looked back; they would have checked to see if he was following. They didn't. He hadn't. It was a family situation that boggled Ron. It didn't seem as if Draco's parents didn't love him at all, more like, they didn't love him quite enough, and as a result, he didn't love them quite enough, either.
“I can't imagine what that must be like,” he said frankly.
“No, I don't imagine you can,” Draco replied.
Another awkward silence extended between them. Ron searched for something to say. “The curse breakers are making a go of things, but it will probably take them a few days. You can stay here until you've got things sorted, unless you've got someone else to...”
Draco scoffed again, cutting him off. “If I did, I should hope they would have reached me before you and your antiquated broom,” he remarked.
Ron gave him a look that told him just what he thought of the snobby comment about his broom. Sure, it was old, and not top of the line, but it was reliable for what it was, and he wasn't a stupid kid anymore who thought 'newer and shinier' automatically meant better. Some of the newer and shinier things he'd bought after the war - on the grounds that he could, for the first time in his life – had more than a few magical kinks that needed working out. He particularly remembered a kettle that was charmed to learn your schedule and have a hot cup ready for you in the morning. Unfortunately, it also got rather testy when you weren't ready for it, and he had three pairs of melted and scorched trainers to prove it. Instead of starting a fight, Ron changed the subject – proof that he'd matured a bit since Hogwarts, perhaps, or proof at least that he didn't want to give Draco the satisfaction of seeing how much he hadn't. “Want something to eat yet?”
“If you want to escape my company so badly, just say so,” Draco answered, grudgingly sitting up.
“No, I..!” Ron sputtered. “I didn't mean it that way, I just...it's...” Ron's stomach grumbled in complaint.
Draco looked down at it, quirking a brow indignantly. In spite of himself, a tiny smile quirked his lips. “I see. Fine, something light, then.”
“Er, yeah,” Ron answered. “It's nearly dinner time, and neither of us have eaten all day, so...” he stumbled awkwardly over his words as he clambered to his feet, finding his legs even less willing to move than they'd been willing to sit still. His arse tingled at being so abruptly awakened from its long slumber.
Draco quirked a brow at his wooden movements.
“I don't even want to hear it. Who do you think I've kept my bony arse glued to the couch all day for?” Ron snipped, and disappeared into the other room, giving Draco adequate time to think about just how much trouble the boy he used to bully was going through on his account, when nobody else cared enough to even check if he was alive.
Draco was still thinking about that in the middle of the night, when Ron Weasley, like a proper bloody gentleman, gave his bed up to his guest. It was a small flat, with only the one bedroom, and Draco knew that meant that Ron must be sleeping on that hellishly uncomfortable couch. He had half a mind to buy him a new one, as a sign of gratitude, but on second thought, as he couldn't seem to sleep anyway, perhaps he'd tell Ron to go upstairs and get some rest, that he'd had enough – which was a lie, but at least was true in that it didn't seem as though he was going to be getting any -more or otherwise- tonight.With little other purpose in wiling away the dark hours, Draco thought maybe he'd see about the leftover stew Ron had put away in the fridge and padded downstairs. He was surprised to see Ron sitting up at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the crossword from yesterday's prophet. The candle didn't cast nearly enough light to read by, so he didn't know who Ron thought he was fooling with the paper.
“What are you still doing up?” Draco asked from the doorway as he entered.
“Eh?” Ron startled as the voice broke his silence, but replied. “I could ask you the same.”
Draco moved toward the fridge and lied, “I got hungry.”
Ron laughed minimally. “Right then, there's not much of anything in the cupboards, but help yourself.”
The cupboards looked pretty stocked to Draco, but he supposed when one was used to living with as many siblings as Ron was, the cupboards at the Burrow must be bursting at the seams just to feed them all. 'Not much of anything,' must be a comparative statement. Instead of the stew, he pulled down a tin of biscuits and a spare mug to partake in some of Ron's coffee, which smelled as dark as the night. He put a few biscuits on the lid of the tin and carried them to the middle of the table. He was sure if they were out, Ron would pick at them. He was almost right – Ron picked one up, but he fiddled with it rather than actually eating it.
“And you're still up because...” Draco pressed.
“Oh, I don't sleep anymore, really,” Ron answered. “Not at night, anyway.”
Draco finished pouring himself a cup. His first instinct had been to sit across the table from Ron, but on impulse, he sat on the bench beside him instead. He made it look natural, but this tiny little change of plan made him question his judgment, and his sanity. “Why's that?” he asked.
Ron shrugged complacently. “I guess the dark of night makes people a little crazy. Things that they know are wrong in broad daylight, somehow become less wrong once the sun sets. The floo never stops, or, it never did. I guess they're running out of things to burn.”
There was something very un-Slytherin about impulse, but maybe Ron was right, maybe the dark of night did make people a little crazy. Draco didn't question the impulse to reach out and cover the redhead's hand with his own. Right now, this sadder, more mature Ron Weasley was someone Draco found himself eager, nearly desperate, to form a connection with. Or maybe, after having his parents run off on him, Draco was just feeling a desperate need to connect with anyone, and Ron was the only person who'd bothered to put in any effort on his account.
Ron startled at the cold fingers clasping his own. Frankly, he damn near jumped out of his skin. Draco was freezing. “Bloody hell, Draco, are you always this cold?” He didn't know why he didn't call him Malfoy. He'd always called him 'Malfoy', hadn't he? Ron decided he must be more sleep-deprived than he realized.
“You need to sleep,” Draco said instead of replying to the question asked.
Ron shrugged. Draco's cold fingers curled around his a little tighter. Something flip-flopped in Ron's stomach. He'd always been a little daft, but he wasn't daft enough to not know there was some subtlety here that he was supposed to be picking up on. “What are you driving at?” he hedged, not sure he really wanted to know.
Draco looked at him like he was every bit the idiot he felt for having to ask. Ron returned the look by screwing up his nose. Draco sighed and let go of his hand. “I can't sleep either,” he said.
“Yeah, I figured that much, since you've not touched the biscuits, after saying you were hungry.” What Ron hadn't figured was, well, all of the important points.
“I am proposing we exhaust ourselves, Weasley.”
“How do you fancy we do that?” Ron asked dumbly. He would later blame it on lack of sleep, but he might have missed what Draco was driving at even if he was fully conscious, because it was so unlikely that someone like Draco would propose such a thing to someone like him that the thought would never have entered his mind, even as a joke.
Draco quirked a brow. Ron knew, from having had Snape as a professor, that the look meant, 'you can't seriously be this much of an idiot.' Well, he could, and was, thank you very much! Hermione reminded him of it often enough for him to know it was true. Even Harry sometimes looked at him like he walked through life in a fog. He wondered when the last time he'd seen Harry was. The days all bled into each other anymore. That could be because the nights were so bloody long.
He blinked away the randomness of his thoughts. Draco was looking at him like he was trying to read the thoughts in his empty head. His blond brow arched a little higher and his head tilted, as if he was waiting for Ron to catch up. Impatience won out in the blond, and cold hands grabbed Ron rather suddenly by the face. Those hands pulled Ron into a rather abrupt and forceful kiss.
Ron blinked owlishly.
Draco arched his brow again, more impatiently, as if that should damn well be clue enough.
Ron blinked, before returning to full alert with a start. The candle sputtered at the abrupt motion. “Y-you mean...! You...and, and me?” His voice squeaked. “With...the...like, that is...er...”
Draco laughed. “We are grown men, Weasley, it is not such a difficult thing to say.”
“You say it, then, rather than wagging your eyebrows trying to get me to!” Ron declared.
Draco pulled him close again, cold hands on either side of Ron's neck, leaving the Weasley wondering if he was about to be kissed, or strangled. “Slytherins know what they want,” Draco said. “And, the most expedient way to get it.”
“A-and you want...”
“To show you a bit of gratitude,” Draco said, fingers snaking down the front of Ron's chest. “For your hospitality.”
“That's not really necessary,” Ron hedged, his pulse racing. In spite of any sense he might have had, or any pride, he was still a man with certain basic needs that hadn't been met of late – his body started to respond to the hot breath on his ear and the cold fingers resting lightly on the shell of his ear.
Draco acted as though he hadn't said a word. “And, to get some sleep.”
“S-sleep,” Ron stumbled. “Yeah, I...I guess...”
Draco kissed his jaw with a tenderness Ron had never imagined him capable of. When the lips wandered down to his throat, Ron was already imagining 'exhausting' Draco as much as possible. His hands came to the blond's arms.
Draco smirked against his skin, as if he'd just won a fight. “If you don't like my body temperature, I suggest you come upstairs and do something about it,” Draco purred against the shell of his ear before getting up and leaving the room. He paused only once, framed by the doorway with that delicate arch to his brow that told Ron – a message the Weasley actually received – that if he didn't take Draco up on this offer now, the offer wouldn't come again. Like any respectable Gryffindor, Ron acted impulsively: he followed at a scramble and caught up with Draco just at the bedroom door, where he crushed his lips down on the slender blond's.
It was a clumsy affair – teeth clattered thanks to his overzealous effort. He apologized, but Draco just shook his head. “Just a bit slower, I think,” the Malfoy told him, closing the bedroom door to keep the heating charm in. It was only a few spare steps to the bed – which Draco was clearly unfamiliar with; he stubbed his toe on the post, trying to act suave as he led Ron by the hand.
Ron laughed, and abruptly apologized as Draco sat to rub his toe. “You sleep in a closet,” Draco complained.
“Rent's cheap,” Ron answered, sitting beside the blond. “Are you alright?” he asked belatedly.
“Yes,” Draco answered, though it sounded like a complaint.
“Want me to distract you from your suffering?” Ron asked, eyes alight with mirth.
“Think you can do it without making me lose a tooth?” Draco retorted.
“I'll give it a go,” Ron answered. Something about being in one's own room grants a measure of confidence impossible anywhere else in the world. Ron felt more at ease, and with that ease, the strangeness of what was happening disappeared. Draco was attractive, and male, and clearly horny if he was hitting on Ron. There was no reason to make a big to-do out of it all; he didn't know why he nearly had.
With his newfound confidence in tow, Ron cupped Draco's cheek and pulled him in for a much slower, far more successful kiss. He felt Draco relax into it. Actually, it was rather nice – just the kissing. Maybe it had just been so long since he'd kissed anyone, let alone wholly sober, and this was a kiss worth being sober to remember. Draco was relaxed, but not complacent. The blond had always had a competitive streak a mile wide, and it didn't take long before the kiss became a battle of wills – who would conquer, who would relent? When? For how long? There was a subtle ferocity to tongue stumbling over tongue that heated the air between them. Draco's hands, too, didn't seem quite so cold, when they slid beneath Ron's shirt.
That was just the kiss, and if the kiss was that good, Ron couldn't even begin to imagine what the rest of their encounter was going to be like. He lifted his arms to help Draco get him out of his t-shirt – a task the Slytherin seemed to think required haste. Once Ron was free of it, they returned straight back to that kissing they'd been so enjoying in the moments before. This time, though, he put himself a little more to task, and unbuttoned Draco's shirt as he went. It joined his own without unnecessary delay, and the two young men fell to the bed.
Draco wasted no time pushing Ron onto his back. Ron blinked up at the blond, clearly a man with a purpose, as he straddled across Ron's thighs and went straight for the button of his trousers. The heat pooling under those trousers was already obvious, and the intensity of Draco's concentrated gaze only made it worse. Draco might be rushing things along at warp speed, but it didn't matter. Ron lifted his hips and let the Slytherin have his way. His pants came off with the trousers, and in one firm tug he found himself bare but for his socks. The sudden cool air against his heated flesh made him shiver.
He almost felt guilty he wasn't participating more in their mutual undressing, but Draco seemed intent on disrobing them both as quickly as humanly possible. Ron watched from the bed as the blond got up and slipped quickly out of his pajama bottoms.
It was Ron's turn to quirk a brow and smirk when he found the blond not wearing any pants beneath them.
Draco frowned. “I only had the ones I've been wearing since yesterday,” he defended as he returned to the bed.
“I may not have fancy pants like the ones you're used to, but you can borrow a few pair,” Ron grinned, trying to contain his laughter at the awkwardness and embarrassment that were so unlikely on a Malfoy. It was as if all of Draco's macho posturing had been removed with his clothes.
Draco silenced him with another kiss. He really was a brilliant kisser. Ron decided it would be best not to wonder at how much practice was necessary to gain Draco's current level of skill. He didn't spend much time wondering at anything at all, as Draco's hand snaked between his legs. He bucked shamelessly into the touch and gasped against Draco's lips.
“Been a while?” Draco asked with a light laugh that surprised Ron.
“Well, what about you, then? In a bit of a hurry, you think?” Ron replied. It didn't sound as defensive as he planned, what with Draco's hand making mischief at the junction of his thighs.
“I would argue that you're not making any effort to slow things down,” Draco answered against Ron's throat.
“You're making every effort to...” What was he saying? Draco's lips found that tender spot where his neck met his shoulder, which also happened to be the precise spot that thwarted every effort to string together coherent sentences. “...to...” A tiny moan escaped his lips.
“Prevent you from changing your mind?” Draco offered, and without skipping a beat, “where do you keep the lubricant? In the side table here?”
“Inside the spectacle case,” Ron answered. “And, I was going to say, “to distract me.”
Draco pulled open the side table drawer and found a spectacle case that had likely never seen a pair of spectacles. Inside was a half-empty blue box labeled “Madame Merrycock's Lubricating Gels.” Draco couldn't have thought of a more vulgar name if he'd put effort to the task, though, as he took one of the gels curiously between his fingers, he wondered at the novelty.
“Have you never seen them before?” Ron asked.
“Hmm...” Draco answered, unwilling to affirm that there was something that existed in the world that Ron Weasley knew about and he didn't.
Ron laughed at the stubbornness and took the little bead in his hands. “Look, ever get a little overeager and spill the lubricating potion on the duvet?”
Draco seemed completely unwilling to admit to it, but he knew it happened to everyone, especially if you brewed it a little on the thin side, which also happened to everyone.
Ron laughed at the petulant expression and pulled Draco down to a kiss. “Impossible with these,” he said. “They detect body heat. Plus, they're pre-measured, so it's always just the right amount. Saves a bit of trouble, and a bit of mess.”
“Sex is supposed to be messy, Weasley,” Draco chided.
“Sex is, yeah, but only if you manage not to make an arse of yourself before you get that far,” Ron replied, pressing his lips to Draco's throat.
Now that Draco was the one distracted, tilting his head to expose his throat more fully to Ron's lips, Ron's confidence reasserted itself. He pressed kisses down the pale throat, across the jutting collarbone, and took the first gel to task, slipping it down the curve of Draco's lower back.
The gel became gradually more slippery, and in spite of his so-called distraction, Draco didn't miss the sensations the bead left in it's wake – buttery and a little warm against his skin, slipping down into his crack. He knew where Ron was headed with it, but he wasn't sure if it would be fully gelatinous by the time the redhead's fingers reached their destination.
It wasn't. It was still a slippery little bead about the size of a marble which, once pressed past the tight ring of his anus, caused lights and colors to explode behind his eyes. A startled cry of pleasure tore past Draco's lips. The lubricating gel erupted inside of him – coating him with such persistence and force that it stretched his muscles and opened him as easily as any spell. It swirled and pressed and coated him so thoroughly as to leave him breathless. He rested his head on Ron's shoulder, trying to get his wind.
Ron sucked his earlobe between his teeth, which only made Draco's body quiver all the more shamelessly. The lobe attended, Ron dragged his lips along Draco's sharply angled jaw. “Not in a rush now, are you?” he joked.
Draco answered by crushing their lips so eagerly together that their teeth very nearly clattered again. Tongues clashed haphazardly. Draco's impatience peaked. He could feel a greasy sheen coating the flesh between his buttocks. It made him feel filthy and incredibly sexy at once, and he straddled Ron's thighs anew as if he intended to impale himself right that instant.
“Oi, hey! Draco, hold on! I'm not lubed up yet!” Ron protested, a wild squeak of a noise as he tried to stop the Slytherin from hurting himself.
Draco kissed him hungrily again, fumbling blindly beside him for another gel. When he found it, he sat back on Ron's thighs and held the bead over the swollen pink organ that looked damn near ready to burst already.
“Yeah,” Ron said breathlessly. “Just, rub it along the tip a little and it'll do the rest.” His chest rose and fell.
Draco slid the gel lightly around the head of Ron's organ. Ron tried to remember how to breathe. But Draco was not so complacent as to obediently follow the orders of a Weasley. He felt compelled to turn Ron into a puddle of goo. He was supposed to be exhausting him, after all.
Ron noticed the sparkle of mischief in Draco's eyes too late. The blond pushed the squishy little gel bead into the slit of Ron's cock.
“Draco, don--!!!!” Ron couldn't finish the sentence. He choked on his own oxygen as the gel burst forth from inside of his cock. Heat swirled in the head; lubricant dribbled out of his tip, doubly hot for the elevated temperature inside of his organ, and dripped down toward his balls like candle wax. His shaft felt like it was on fire – hot tendrils of lube and lust swirling in intimate areas not meant to be penetrated, but that still, much to his surprise, felt incredible when they were. “S-so good...” he groaned, unable to not say something. It was good; it was so good. Too good. Brilliant. His balls tightened. He tried to hold back, which made his eyes tear. He dug his nails into the pillows, and if it were flesh beneath his fingers now, he would most certainly have broken skin. He tried to hold it back. He needed to. Draco was already prepared, and he'd be a real twat to come and leave the blond hanging! On the other hand, this was completely Draco's fault, putting the gel inside his goddamn bloody fucking cock and making it...
“Shit!” Ron declared, unable to hold any longer, as the first shots of seed tore out of him with the lubricant. “C-coming...coming! Fuck! Aah...aaah!” It wasn't just an orgasm; it was... “Oh fuck me! Merlin's arse...Shit!” He cussed his way through it, the world spinning uncontrollably around him until he no longer had any sense of gravity and his chest was covered in semen and Madame Merrycock's Lube. His cock, spent as it was, was also well and properly coated in the stuff. He tried to remember how to breathe. That was...well, it was something he was going to repeat when he had some uninterrupted time alone, is what it was. For the moment he could only lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to remember his limbs – how they worked, what they were, and, for that matter, the English language, while he was at it.
Draco wasn't done with him yet, though. Ron whimpered helplessly as the blond's tongue darted out across his collarbone, then across his chest. He hissed and arched up into the Slytherin when that serpentine tongue coiled around a nipple. The hands were no more idle. Draco smoothed the sticky, gelatinous mess evenly over his rod as if he expected it to come to life at any moment, and continued kissing and licking at the mess Ron had made of himself. Licking at it! In fact, one might say it was more accurate to say that Draco was lapping it up.
His tongue dipped into Ron's navel. Ron felt his cock twitch. 'You've got to be kidding me...' Did he really have enough left in him for a second erection? It seemed impossible.
Another thing that seemed impossible, or always had seemed like it must be, was Draco wrapping his lips around Ron's cock. Ron would never call anything impossible again. His fingers curled tightly in blond hair as Draco lapped at his head, slowly descended over the rod, taking it to the back of his throat. And, again – slide back, suckle down. Rinse and repeat.
Ron's cock grew less and less exhausted with every stroke of Draco's tongue, which, Ron was sure, could most certainly not be doing this for the first time. Draco's words 'slytherins know how to get what they want' echoed in Ron's head, leaving him to wonder just how many cocks Draco had sucked in his life to get his way. The only sound to the effect of asking he could produce was another moan as his shaft hardened between those talented lips.
Once he was so hard again that it hurt, Draco released the rod with a soft suck and a dribble of saliva. There couldn't be any lubricant left on his erection, but Draco didn't seem to care, nor could he seem to remember he was supposed to. The blond kissed him deeply, sharing the taste of lube and cum, as he positioned Ron's freshly hardened cock to his still stretched hole, and started to press back against it a half stroke at a time.
It was torture of the most exceptional variety and took every last bit of Ron's resolve to be patient until Draco fully seated himself. Once he did, Ron's patience evaporated. He rolled them over and pressed the blond into the mattress. Draco moaned as it forced Ron a bit deeper into him. He moaned, and he arched his back. Ron couldn't remember if he'd ever seen anything so sexy before that moment. The way Draco's eyes fell half-closed and his chest rose and fell heavily left him breathless. He pulled Draco's hips upward to better meet him, and was rewarded with pale thighs curling about his hips – slim ankles locking behind him.
That was the end of that. Ron thrust. Once firmly, then with repetition and abandon. His fingers gripped at Draco's hips. His lips, sadly, were too occupied with remembering how to breathe to busy themselves with too much kissing. It had been so long. Too long. He didn't know how long it would be until he had the chance to feel this again. His head was swimming. Draco's arms curled around his shoulders. Somehow, in between all that cumbersome breathing, clumsy kisses recommenced. Draco moaned against his mouth. Several Times. Loudly. Fingernails dug into Ron's shoulders, but not enough to hurt. Ron breathed heavily, thrust harder. Draco moaned louder. It was a cycle that continued until the shag reached a screaming, groaning, messy crescendo and Ron fell breathless beside Draco on the mattress.
After several minutes of silence, Draco was the first to reach for a wand to clean them up. Ron was too dazed and far too sated to remember to mistrust any Slytherin who happened to be pointing a wand at him.
Draco proved trustworthy enough for now, putting it aside and weaseling his naked arse under the duvet. It seemed like a good idea, and Ron groaned and grumbled as he moved his body, which felt unbearably heavy at the moment, to do the same.
“Exhausted yet?” Draco asked with a smile that Ron found remarkable. It made his heart skip a beat.
“Mission accomplished,” Ron answered, burying his face into the pillow.
He was too tired to question it when Draco curled close into him, and even dropped an arm around his old enemy's shoulders. He still didn't question it in the morning – the soft kisses that fell onto his lips - until after coffee, and even then he didn't question it out loud.
Draco seemed to like to keep close. Ron wondered if it was just a sense of abandonment that made him that way. He didn't ask, and Draco didn't tell, but they spent the next two weeks like this – casually kissing, casually fucking, never talking about it. But, there were smiles, there were even a few jokes, and once there was even Malfoy in an apron trying – with white dust splattered across the kitchen – to make pancakes for breakfast. In the end they'd ordered in, because if they had to clean up the mess and cook breakfast all over again, they'd be half starved by the time it was ready. A pleasant side effect of Draco's failed cooking experiment, Ron found, was a shared shower – a rather long one.
It was all rather like enjoying a honeymoon without the wedding. Except – oh yes, there was an except – except that when the call came that the curse breakers were done, and the basic structure of the house had been repaired to the point of being livable – as much as the Aurors could afford to do, and more than they cared to do for the Malfoys – Ron realized the honeymoon was over.
Draco packed up the few things he had – the clothes he'd come in, and a few basic necessities he'd had to purchase, and prepared to go. Ron watched him, wondering what you could say to a person who you weren't sure you liked, but you didn't dislike as much as you'd at first thought, and who you'd like the chance to decide if you liked or were just vaguely fond of, but who you most certainly liked to shag, when the honeymoon was over.
Draco dipped his head under his new shoulder bag so the fancy leather strap crossed his chest with it's little silver grommets in a perfect row and the brushed metal buckle resting against his abdomen.
“You going to be alright?” Ron asked from the doorway, where he'd glued himself, lest he foolishly chase after a man who clearly had only needed a distraction, not a lover. There was something about this all though, that didn't feel quite final. Something had changed. He didn't know if that change between them was a beginning, an ending, or just a sad state of neutral somewhere between.
“I don't know,” Draco answered frankly. “There's only one way to find out.”
Ron nodded. Draco couldn't hide here with him forever. He knew that. He half-wished it weren't true, Merlin knows.
“Right then,” he said.
“Right,” Draco echoed, turned sharply on the heel of his shiny new shoes. “I'll see you, then.”
“You think?” Ron asked. “I mean, we don't really run in the same circles.”
Draco looked back over his shoulder. “You could come check on me now and again, if you want. Merlin knows nobody else is going to bother.” He almost regretted saying that. He didn't seem to know how Ron was going to take it.
“Yeah?” Ron asked.
Draco turned his gaze back ahead of him. “I wouldn't mind it,” he answered, abruptly followed by, “It's not as if I care.”
Ron had always been a little daft, but he knew when Draco wouldn't look him in the eye, he was embarrassed. He'd learned that fast.
Ron took a step out of the doorway, and gently turned Draco around by the shoulder. For a moment, they just stared. Then, Draco leaned in and kissed him; it was an unusually shy kiss. Tender, uncertain. “Thanks, Weasley, for...”
It was charming, but Ron rather preferred their usual kisses. He impulsively pulled Draco against him and swallowed the end of Draco's sentence with his tongue, and, mercifully, no clashing of teeth. Draco wrapped his arms around Ron's shoulders. In the broad daylight of mid-morning, Draco kissed him back with all the passion Ron had learned in the past weeks that the selfish blond had in him. He kissed him back, and embraced him.
“You can leave after breakfast, yeah? I'll do the cooking this time,” Ron offered. “Eggs, maybe? Some toast?”
“Eggs sound good,” Draco answered.
A beginning then, Ron decided, one that might just turn his life upside down, but a beginning. He frowned thoughtfully.
“What are you thinking so hard about?” Draco asked.
“I was wondering what sort of eggs I should make,” Ron lied.
Draco rolled his eyes. “It's just breakfast.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Ron answered. It was just breakfast, for now, and breakfast was a fair place to start.
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