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Cigarette and Cinnamon Ruins	By : starstruck86 Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Bill/Charlie Views: 2900 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor do I make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 1-Cinnamon and Cigarette Ruins
- 2-Part Two
- 1
- 2
I burrow my fingers
beneath my scarf, and tug on the chain. It slides out of my clothes
and the cross jumps into my fingers, like it always does. I've never
told anybody the truth about where it came from. I said I'd found it
in a tomb and because it was Muggle the bank didn't want it, and I'd
kept it because it seemed special.

I kept it because Charlie
found it. That's why it was special. I thumb the rubies and wonder,
like I always do, if the woman that lost it ever missed it, or if it
would have comforted her to know that somebody had found it, taken
care of it, loved it, as maybe she had. My fist clenches around the
gold and the ends, ornately shaped, dig into my palm. How many times
have I sat, clinging onto this damn thing, feeling the link it gives
me to him?

I laugh at myself, a bitter little sound which
nobody but me hears. I put it back inside my top and feel the
comforting thump as it settles into place on my breastbone. That
thump has always been a crash down to earth, bringing the mistakes
flooding back and my reality inescapable.

God, I've made
mistakes. So many of them I've run out of space to remember them all.
The biggest was her, though. It was running my fingers, tainted with
Charlie's dried sweat, through her silvery-blonde hair, and kissing
her. That was when it all started. That was when it all went wrong.
She tasted so honeyed beneath my lips and moaned so prettily beneath
me... really, she was part Veela. What was I supposed to do? I loved
her for her charms, her face and her tits and her almost-sweet cunt.
I spit in my mouth to wet it -thinking of her sexually still parches
me dry.

It hurt him. I know what kind of person it makes me
that I regret hurting him more than I regret hurting her. I know.

December, 1996

“You
promised me!”

Charlie's distraught shout was loud in
the tiny dragon keeper's cabin, and Bill winced to hear the anger and
burgeoning hatred in his brother's tone.

“You said you
were just fucking her!” Charlie hurled again, his fingers
clenching into fists and slamming down onto the back of the ratty old
sofa. “You said that you just wanted someone to shag when I
wasn't around, and I didn't want you to, but I understood
Bill. Fuck knows I know it's lonely!”
“I love her,”
Bill said desperately.
“AND YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME!”
Charlie was suddenly in front of him, eyes burning furiously. “Did
you not mean it, then?” he gaped. “In Egypt? At the World
Cup? Every time since?! Did you not mean it, Bill?”
“A
person is capable of loving more than one other at a time!”
Bill heard his own voice climb in volume. “I love you both,
Charlie. Don't you dare call me a liar!”
“But why do
you need to love her, if you love me enough?”

The
question was spat and Charlie folded his arms over his chest, waiting
for an answer.

“What we have isn't normal, Charlie,”
Bill knew he was only making matters worse for himself, that hearing
those words would only push his brother further into his rage. Bill
couldn't blame him. He fully understood the betrayal he was
committing.

“Then why did you start it?”
the furious tone broke towards the end and Charlie shook his head.
“Why?”
“I didn't start this on my own,”
Bill yelped indignantly. “No, Charlie, you were there
too.”
“You brought it up,” Charlie rolled his
eyes with icy scorn. “You were the one to make the first move,
Bill. Kissing my hands and staring at me, mentally undressing me... I
should have run, Bill, but when you confessed, I confessed.”
“Then
you're as much to blame as I am,” Bill argued firmly.

Charlie
laughed then, with a strange, horrible sneer twisting his lips.
“Blame? We're placing blame now?”
“No, I
didn't mean blame,” Bill groaned, turning away and stomping to
the mantelpiece. He ripped a cigarette out of the box and rammed it
in between his lips so that, closed and occupied, they might not lead
him into any more trouble.

He lit up and rested his forearm on
the mantel, staring down into the flames with his head bowed. The
heat scorched his face, which was still cool from the frozen air of
the reserve. He had only been there for fifteen minutes. There had
been little point in holding back, beating about the bush and lulling
Charlie into a false sense of security. Bill felt cruel enough; he
refused to hurt his brother any further.

“You're getting
married,” Charlie's words had lost their anger and in
it's place remained something far worse: ruination. “How can...
I can't compete with that? You're going to marry her... and... put a
ring on her finger and... fuck her. Make babies with her.
Shit, Bill.”

There was silence and Bill looked over,
seeing nothing more than he expected. Charlie had sunk down onto the
uncomfortable sofa and buried his face in his hands. Red curls were
hanging over his fingers. Bill thought he heard a moan.

“Charlie,”
Bill walked back towards him, but Charlie jumped to his feet and held
a preventative hand out.
“Get out,” Charlie looked at
the door. “Go home, Bill. Go home to your little French bitch.
Don't come back.”
“Don't call her that,” Bill's
eyes widened, as for the first time in his life he saw real malice
twist Charlie's happy-go-lucky features. “She's my
fiancée!”
“French bitch,” Charlie said
obstinately.
“Charlie-”
“Is it that she's
foreign? Is that it? Is the sex better because she can whisper your
name in an accent?”
“Don't be stupid-”

Charlie
cut him off with a fluent sentence in Romanian; his tongue rolled
over the words perfectly and Bill had to admit it, he shivered. A
smug, satisfied smile came over Charlie's lips and Bill sighed.

“My
point exactly,” Charlie switched back into English with
alarming speed.
“When did you learn Romanian?” Bill
looked at the threadbare carpet.
“It happens when you live
somewhere for five years,” Charlie shrugged. “You like
it. You find it sexy, don't you, draga mea?”
“What?”
Bill asked uneasily, and Charlie laughed again.

The stockier
redhead brushed past him to the fire, where he plucked out his own
cigarette and lit it. Bill saw the way the smoke was blown from his
talented mouth and knew that he would never look as graceful.

“My
dear,” Charlie confirmed quietly. “In Romanian. Their
main endearment, if you like.”
“Oh.”
“And
you still are,” came the bitter mutter. “As if you'd ever
fucking be anything else.”
“Charlie, I know this is...
hard. I know it is.”
“It's not hard for you,”
Charlie raised his eyebrows. “You're getting married. You'll
have a hot blonde thing to fuck and balance on your balls when the
world shits on you. What've have I got? Dragons?”
“Sorry
to be blunt, but yeah, you've got your fucking dragons,” Bill
felt his temper flare again. “They're all that's mattered for
the past five years, so, Charlie, yes, you've got your fucking
dragons and they deserve you for all the time you've given them. You
sure as hell haven't given me any since you finished Hogwarts.”
“YOU
LEFT ME!”

“We're going in
circles.”
“Haven't we always?” Charlie snorted.
“Isn't this what we do when we fight? Go round and round until
we're both so fucking dizzy we don't know which way is up?”

Bill
conceded the truth with a shrug as he flicked his ash away into thin
air. His legs and back ached after a hard day at Gringotts, and the
trip to Romania had finished him off.

“Can I sleep on
your sofa tonight?” he asked finally, and Charlie's head
snapped to look at him so fast that he must have invoked
whiplash.

Without another word he padded to the kitchen,
leaving Bill alone in the small sitting room. His brother's Romanian
cabin was a complete dive, but he knew Charlie wasn't one to be
bothered about it. When those first letters had arrived, describing
the shabby walls and threadbare carpets, it might have been a palace
for all Bill knew. It was more than enough for his brother, who only
wanted to work with his dragons, when the superfluous was boiled
away.

When Charlie returned, he was clutching a full bottle of
firewhiskey to his lips, glugging slowly at it.

“You
won't sleep on the sofa,” he rasped finally, his eyes dark with
unhappiness.

***
“S'not... oh... ooooh,”
Charlie arched his back, his fingers twisted into fists around the
bedsheets. “Bill... oh fuck... Bill...”

Ploughing
into his brother's backside, Bill was beyond control. Nothing existed
beyond the blur of his vision and the squeezing tightness of
Charlie's rectum. Sweat stung his eyes -that's what you get for
drinking the whole bottle- and every inch of his flesh
tingled.

“Gonna come,” Charlie panted, stuffing
his face into his pillow and moaning.

Bill pulled at the thick
cock he held in his palm, too harshly for comfort but Charlie had
been rough with him. There were bite marks covering his throat that
he would have to heal or hide with a glamour, and his scalp ached
from the excessive number of times fingers had fisted in his hair and
yanked. Bill had begged Charlie for it all.

They were both to
blame.

Charlie's roughened yell signalled the end; immediately
he pulsed his orgasm over Bill's fingers, and clenched the muscles of
his backside, milking Bill along to the end.

He gasped it out
to the clammy skin of Charlie's dragon tattoo, with the colours of
the beast dancing wildly in front of his eyes. Closing them tight he
let his hips jerk through the aftershocks, and then they both pitched
forward.

“Nngh... God.”
“I know,”
Bill breathed. “So good,” he peppered kisses across
Charlie's shoulder blades.
“Gerroff,” Charlie choked.
“Get off me, Bill.”
“No, don't push me away,”
Bill wasn't surprised he found himself blinking back tears. Emotion
heightened in his throat, heating it to a steady
burn.
“Really!”

Bill landed on his back when
Charlie shoved him and was about to protest when he heard the first
heave. Charlie staggered, his legs folding beneath him as he lunged
for the bathroom. It was too late, however, and the first retch of
vomit landed on the bedroom floor.

“Char!” Bill
flopped off the bed, clumsy in his post-coital haze, and crawled to
Charlie's side.
“Don't,” the instruction was weak and
followed by another wave of bile.

It was watery, consisting
mostly of firewhiskey.

“I'm sorry,” Bill breathed,
wanting so much to reach out and touch him. “I'm so
sorry.”

Charlie's only answer was to continue bringing
up the contents of his stomach, until there was nothing but the
frightened dry heaves of his body.

I will never forget that night. He shivered
in my arms all night long, stopping only to throw up again, a few
hours later. When he eventually fell asleep, the day was breaking
through the window and I had to return to England.

I look up
and down the street once more, but it is quiet. The coaches are
becoming less frequent with the late hour, and I wonder again why he
asked to meet me here -especially if he wasn't planning on coming.

I
look at my watch, the one my once proud parents gave me for my
seventeenth birthday. He's half an hour late and I feel my gut clench
as I focus on the hands, wondering if they truly mean what they say.
I hope that they don't.

Another night to commit to history.

1st August, 1997

Charlie dragged
the back of his hand over his mouth, wiping away the remaining fizz
of the champagne. He was drunk, no doubt about that, but he wasn't
sure how anybody expected him to be sober. He was standing in the
deserted kitchen of the Burrow, listening to the loud music and happy
laughing filtering over from the marquee.

He needed to be
drunk to do what he was about to do.

He'd been granted nearly
a whole year to plan this moment, to think about what he would
do to shatter the bonds between them. They needed to be irreparable.
Charlie knew what had to be done. Even so, when the door to the
Burrow opened quietly, and large feet stepped inside, his heart began
to pound with regret.

“What did you want?” Bill
asked in a whisper, shutting the door behind him. “I can't stay
long... I'll be missed...”
“This won't take long,”
Charlie spoke, and as he did, the unfeeling ice spread within him,
just like he had hoped it would.

He stepped across the kitchen
and, with very little effort, grabbed Bill by the hips and swung him
into sitting on the kitchen table.

“What's-”
“Incarcerous,”
Charlie jabbed his wand at Bill's wrists and pulled them tightly
behind his back.
“Charlie?” Bill asked uncertainly,
trying to catch his eye.
“Do I need to do these, too?”
Charlie asked, keeping his gaze on Bill's legs and nudged one.
“What
are you doing?” Bill immediately writhed, his beautiful groom's
robes creasing with the effort.

Charlie had to stop himself
from glancing up and meeting the ripped face. It would dissuade him,
he knew. He grabbed the hem of Bill's robes and yanked them up,
revealing gleaming boots, furred shins and thin thighs, He knocked
them apart with his hips, and bunched the fabric at Bill's belly. The
boxers he wore were of golden silk, a Weasley family wedding
tradition. Charlie smiled, knowing that he was going to soil them and
beat Bill's wife to the novelty.

Then he caught sight of
something which he had not planned for. Beneath the cool silk he saw
a bulge forming; the longer he stared at it the larger it grew and
only then did he look at Bill's face.

“On your wedding
night?” Charlie narrowed his eyes scathingly.

Bill
did not reply, but looked back at him unabashedly. Charlie clenched
his fingers around the swollen flesh and had to stop himself from
moaning at the decadent feel of the silk. He began to pump, the
smooth finish making him clumsy until he found his rhythm. Bill was
canting into his hand in no time, biting into his lip and hissing
beneath his breath.

“You whore,” Charlie breathed,
leaning close and sniffing at the warmth of Bill's throat. His
brother smelt, as ever, of parchment and cigarettes. It intoxicated
him more than the champagne. “Letting me touch you on your
wedding night,” he opened his mouth and bit into the scarred
skin. Bill moaned. “You're going to come for me... your first
night of matrimony and you'll come for me first... your brother...
first love... only love...”
“I love her,” Bill
growled to the room. “I fucking love her, Charlie.”
“Then
why are you sitting here, letting me wank you?”

His
question went unanswered, as he expected, and he began to squeeze
harder with his fingers, knowing that his touch would soon become
painful. He had been prepared to act against Bill's will, but with it
so volitionally attained he needed to push further, to find something
else to make his brother hate him and drive him away.

If Bill
was gone, Charlie reasoned, than the continual low thrum of desire in
his gut would be gone, too. Maybe then he would find himself able to
move on, to find a boyfriend -someone who loved him and could give
him everything, rather than someone who loved him and could
only give him a quarter of the attention he needed.

Drawing
his wand again Charlie tapped it at Bill's cock, and sped up the
motions with his hand. Bill gasped as he let go; the motion
remained.

“Charlie, what the fuck is this?” he
pleaded, hips canting to the mystery rhythm pumping his
erection.

Charlie didn't answer, but ducked his head and
pulled the elastic of Bill's boxers down. Curling out his tongue, he
slathered it in a soggy circle over the head and tasted salt. He
straightened again.

“S-Stop!” Bill pleaded, his
eyes wild with a pretty mixture of both fear and lust.
“C-Charlie-”
“I want you to hate me,”
Charlie spat, and though he had practised the words in front of the
mirror of his Romanian flat, although he had spat them at the Weasley
bathroom mirror that morning, he couldn't make them as emotionless as
he had hoped. In fact, they were anything but emotionless.
They were full of pain that he could no longer hide. He didn't want
to lose his brother at all. “I want you to remember this and
never come to me again,” he forced the words out. “I want
you,” he slid his hand inside the silk and settled his palm
around a tight sac, “To hate me.”

He yanked
sharply and Bill's cry of pain filled the homely kitchen, and Charlie
fell into a rhythm, harshly tugging whilst his spell continued to
pump and lick at Bill's cock. The stimulation was punishing and
Bill's eyes slipped in and out of focus, his pants becoming moans as
he bucked closer and closer to orgasm with each shift of his
hips.

“Sitting here in your wedding robes,”
Charlie tried his hardest to get the words out in the sing-song voice
he'd rehearsed, purposefully attempting to sound chilling and cold.
“Are you going to come over them for me?”
“I
love you!” Bill cried defiantly. “I fucking love you, I-
oh, oh Godric, oh, Godric, Charlie, I'm coming, I'm-”

There
was a blast of merriment as the kitchen door swung open, and Charlie
froze. Bill, however, was trapped into motion, and at that precise
moment, whilst their mother looked on, her eldest son erupted over
her second son's hand, mewling his name to the ceiling of her
precious kitchen.

Charlie dragged his hand out of Bill's
pants; it was too sticky and incriminating. Bill began to whimper as
the furthered sensations on his cock lurched towards painful.
Dispelling the charm, Charlie vanished the bonds on Bill's wrists.
The only sound in the kitchen came from Bill, who panted like a raced
dog, looking blearily down at his spent cock.

“Bill?”
the voice was tremulous and disgusted. Charlie thought he might pass
out.

Bill's head snapped up, and his eyes flew comically wide.
“It's not what it-”
“Oh, it's exactly what it
looks like,” their Mother's face had blanched to a ghostly
pallor. “Isn't it?”
“Mum, I-”

She
jerked her head, her lips in a tight line. She then proceeded to walk
through the Burrow door, slamming it so forcefully behind her that
the glass shattered and tinkled to the floor.

“Shit,”
Bill leapt from the table, his robes dropping around his ankles as he
dove for the door.
“Why run?” Charlie felt oddly calm.
He pulled his cigarettes from his pocket and lit one from the end of
his wand.

He knew, despite all his hard planning, that it had
worked. It was over, and he could start to live again.

Charlie
waited for the debilitating sense of love and loyalty to float away,
to take away the weights bearing down on his chest.

I know that if Charlie doesn't come, then I
will want to spend the night in this dingy little stoop waiting for
him. I'll sit here in denial until the sun rises, and probably till
it falls.

I can't give up on him now. I can't risk missing him
after everything I've ruined for him, and after everything that he
has ruined for me. We've talked, over and over, about what we're
leaving behind, what we're throwing away. It was always going to be
the bigger sacrifice for me, the homebird, the boy who found a future
because people were pressing him to, and then never enjoyed it. Not
like Charlie, who fled and loved it, who stayed away until the very
last when the battle was tightening and all of our family might have
died on the same night as blood traitors.

I give up more than
him. So why, why isn't he here?

Late August, 1997

“She's
threatening to take us off the clock,” Bill breathed, staring
at the carpet of Charlie's cabin through his fingers.

It was
late, and he should have been at home with his wife, curled up in bed
with her, maybe stroking her breasts and making a baby with her.
Fleur wanted a baby. She wanted his children, to raise them in the
home that they had bought for themselves from his savings. Bill loved
his cottage. He was at a loss to understand why he was hundreds of
miles away, despairing, yet again.

“But we're not
hurting anyone!” Charlie protested. “Especially if she
doesn't know about it. That one time was a... an accident.”
“You
said you wanted to chase me away that night,” Bill said
roughly. “You were trying to force your touches on me against
my will.”
“I didn't count on your will being that
up for it,” Charlie hissed sarcastically, and scrubbed his
fingernails over his scalp. “I thought you'd hate me. I thought
you'd be happy to shove me away from you at the end and never look at
me again.”

“I could never hate you,” Bill
said weakly. “Even though we've nearly ruined everything by
getting caught.”
“Well, we won't get caught again,
will we?” Charlie pleaded.
“She's not told anyone,”
Bill informed him. “But she will, if she gets wind. She means
Fleur first, then Dad, and then everyone else... she'll turn them all
against us, Charlie. She'll cast us out... she's... she can't even
look at me. She won't talk to me when she doesn't have to keep up
appearances. You're not there, you're not getting the brunt of
this.”
“Oh right, just like the fuckin' war, eh?”
Charlie threw his hands up frustratedly. “I'm not there for
anything, I'm not fucking working my arse off out here and risking my
sodding life by courting the vampire covens into joining us. I nearly
got turned the other night, Bill. How'd you like that, a bloodsucker
for a brother? Would you let me have at your cock then?”

“Don't
die,” Bill swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat.
“I'll never fucking forgive you if you die and leave me in this
muck.”

He got to his feet and stepped closer, hooking a
possessive arm around Charlie's waist. They kissed, a kiss as rough
and as brutal as their words had been. By the time they were
finished, Bill's lips were sore and Charlie was panting.

“In
secret,” Charlie hissed, his eyes narrowed and dangerous.
“In
secret,” Bill breathed, afraid of what giving any other answer
would get him.

Charlie immediately softened, and strong arms
wrapped around Bill's waist to hold him. It was possessive but
gentle, and thick curls nuzzled against his throat. Cinnamon and
spice floated upwards and Bill drank it in like nectar. He knew It
would be enough of a hit until the next time, until the next time
they were alone together.

“You need to get back to her,”
Charlie's words were calm and collected. “If you want to stay
on the clock, then you have to go home.”
“Don't you
want to stay on the clock?” Bill reached up and tucked a curl
behind Charlie's ear. “Doesn't it matter to you at
all?”

Charlie shuttered away his eyes and became very
still. “Not if the woman who owns it can't love us
anyway.”
“We're brothers,” Bill whispered,
shocked at the confirmation of what he had suspected. “Can't
you see why she's so angry? It's unnatural, and I'm married -it's
adultery.”
“No,” Charlie scoffed. “The
only time it's officially been adultery was the time that she
walked in on. The rest... the rest was just infidelity between
lovers.”
“And that's better?” Bill could barely
hold back his disgust.

Charlie warily lifted his eyelids and
met Bill's stare. “No, it's not better, Bill. Better would have
been you loving me enough to never have found someone else in the
first place.”
“Better would have been if you
were around for me to not need to.”

They stood on the
cusp of another painful argument, but for some reason neither could
summon the energy to set a match to their anger. They stood in each
other's arms, in silence. Bill kissed the top of Charlie's head, and
stroked his back. Charlie nuzzled against Bill's throat, and they
both pretended that the only world was the one inside the grotty
dragon keeper's cabin that they stood in.

Please come. Please come. Please come,
Charlie. I need you.

I'm chanting the words in my mind to the
thrum of a coach that's just started up, and it rolls off into the
road, belching pollution out of its rear end. I hate London.

Where
is he?

June, 1998

The hard slap around
his cheek sent him reeling, and Bill staggered backwards into
Charlie's body.

His mother was shouting, loudly, words which
carried through the house. There was a crowd at the door, looking at
the pair of them, agape.

“And to let your wife see it!
Are you thick? You've ruined everything!”
“Mum-”
Bill tried weakly.
“I am not your mother,” she
snarled, and raised her hand again.

If her stinging blow
hadn't hurt so much, Bill might have been tempted to laugh at how she
had to stand on tiptoe to land it. It pulled back again for another,
but Charlie suddenly stepped forward, grabbing hold of her arm and
forcing it down. She stared at him madly for only a second before she
began shouting anew, directing the vitriol at him for corrupting his
brother and ruining their lives.

“IT WOULD BE ME,
WOULDN'T IT?!” Charlie bellowed back into her face, very
suddenly, and she blinked, falling silent. His breathing was harsh
through his nose, and the vicious scratch marks across his own
cheeks, where Fleur had attacked on finding Charlie's tongue down her
husband's throat, were horrifically vivid. “It would be
me that caused the fucking problem, and not your perfect first
son!”
“Charlie-” Bill reached out for his
shoulder, feeling a cold stab in his gut at Charlie's profound
resentment; his hand was shrugged off.
“Bill started this,”
Charlie shook his head. “Bill. Your precious first born. He
made the first move, when I was sixteen. Sweet, innocent sixteen.
What do you make of that?”
“Is that true, Bill?”
someone's ashen voice came from the doorway, it might have been
George but Bill couldn't tell. He was so used to it being Fred.
“It's
true.”

The low, muttered admission made him flush and
Molly Weasley glared at both of her sons.

“I told you to
stop this nonsense last year,” she seethed.
“You
knew?” their father's voice was strained.
“Oh I knew,”
she laughed. “I threatened them with exposure, because that's
all that could ever come of a secret as... disgusting as this,
but they decided to go for that on their own. Just like when they
were little, and they could never keep their treats a secret from the
rest of them!”

Having their childhood dragged into the
foray hurt more than Bill could ever have imagined.

“It
was just a kiss!” he burst out frustratedly, knowing that he
did them no favours, but equally that there no longer any favours to
be had.
“A kiss that is going to cost you your future
children, and your life, and your house, not to mention your money-”
the hand rose again, ready to strike. “And your
family.”

“Molly, calm down.”

Everybody
took a collective breath as they heard the steely note creep into the
Weasley patriarch's tone.

“I am calm,” she shook
her head.
“You've already lost one son this year, do you
want to really lose two more?” Arthur whispered.
“I
don't want two sons that partake in something as... as... unnatural
as this.”
“Why, because your brothers were fucking and
you've never gotten over it?”

Bill looked in shock at
Charlie, whose mouth had spoken the words.

“What
did you just say to me?” red eyebrows rose on a redder
face.
“Gideon and Fabian. Twins. Your brothers, who were
fucking, and you knew about it, and you never forgave them for it
either.”
“How do you...”
“Letters,”
Charlie shrugged. “In the loft. Letters saying how much they
loved one another, how much they needed one another... they were all
open, and read, by you, Mum.”
“Get out.”

Charlie
looked at her a second longer before swallowing decisively and
striding for the kitchen door. Bill could see in his face that he was
leaving, and leaving for good. He couldn't understand why his own
feet were glued to the floor.

“Stay, and you never see
him again,” Molly said coldly.
“Don't make me choose,”
Bill pleaded. “Mum, we can work this out. We can, we'll, we'll
stop-”

The slam of the Burrow's door was loud behind
Charlie's departing form.

***
“Why did you come
here?” Bill stood limply, looking at Charlie hunched in front
of the fire.

Shell Cottage was cold and quiet; his wife was
nowhere to be seen.

“I... I didn't have anywhere else to
go. And I'd missed the last Portkey and I... I hoped you'd come after
me.”
“I did,” Bill licked his lips and sank down
on the floor next to him.

He looked around the living room at
the items they had shared together, touched together, loved together.
The flowers that he had bought his wife only two days previously sat
with bold cheeriness on the sideboard, in a pretty vase that had been
a wedding gift.

“I love her,” Bill shook his head
and looked at the fire. “Charlie... I know you can't
understand, but God, I love her.”
“I know you do,”
Charlie answered soberly. “And for... for what it's worth,
Bill, I am sorry that she caught us.”
“No,
you're not,” Bill tipped his head back to look at the ceiling.
He reached back and pulled his hair from the tight band. It loosened
about his shoulders and the tension in his scalp relaxed slightly.
“And you shouldn't be. I was the one leading the both of you
along... this is my-”

A knock on the front door
interrupted him, and they both sat staring at it apprehensively.
Bill's cheek stung with all the slaps his mother had treated it to
-the thought of more made him want to die of shame. But when the wood
crept inward, it was not their mother. It was a tall, thin redhead,
with a young and confused face.

“Ron?”
“What
does she want?” Charlie asked wearily.
“Nothing,
nobody sent me,” Ron looked affronted at the implication. “I'm
here of my own accord.”
“Why?” Bill looked up at
him. “Don't get yourself into trouble, Ron, not for our sakes.
Go home.”
“No,” Ron sat stubbornly down next to
them. His blue eyes lingered over the way they had somehow ended up
holding hands. “Weird to see you do that.”
“I
know,” Bill immediately let go, but Charlie chased him and Ron
shook his head.
“Did you mean it, Charlie... about the
letters... and Mum's brothers?”
“I shouldn't have said
it,” Charlie breathed. “But it's true. I made it ten
times worse.”
“You were angry,” Ron said
quietly, fiddling with a stray thread in the inner seam of his jeans.
“We're all... so angry at the minute...”

They
descended into uncomfortable silence and Ron continued to pick at his
denims.

“D'you need anything?” he said finally,
getting to his feet. “Tea? Firewhiskey? Food?”
“Ron,
what are you doing?” Bill asked incredulously.
“You
always looked after me,” Ron said fiercely, the colour
rising in his cheeks. “You always protected me and you...
Godric knows, Bill, you sheltered me when you shouldn't have.”

Their
eyes met, speaking without words of the time earlier in the year when
Ron had returned, miserable and hurting, after walking out on Harry
and Hermione.

“What are you two talking about?”
Charlie frowned, looking between them.
“It's...” Ron
opened his mouth.
“Just the war,” Bill shook his head.
“We've all got secrets, Charlie.”

He merely nodded
and turned away, putting his eyes to the fire again. Ron's footsteps
were soft as he drifted away to the kitchen, and Bill heard the
bustle of him making them both tea. The kettle boiled shrilly and
Bill found his eyes wet. The noise was comforting; it was the sound
that greeted him as he stepped through the Floo, home from a hard day
at the bank, or into his mother's kitchen for a visit.

Charlie's
hand tightened around his. It was still tight when Ron came back to
them, clutching two mugs. They were set down on the hearth, close to
the fire to keep them warm, and he folded back down onto his long
legs and rubbed his palms over his thighs.

“What will
you do now?” his question was fearful.
“We don't
know,” Bill answered truthfully.
“She'll take you
back...”
“Together or only apart?”
“Do
you want to be... together?” Ron blushed slightly. “Like
that? In a relationship...”
“We already are,”
Charlie turned to look at him. “For... since 1993,
Ron.”
“Oh.”
“And to give it up now...
I've tried to give him up,” Charlie met Bill's eyes. “We
always end up in bed together.”

“Too much
information,” Ron's voice was hushed. “Look. I should...
I just wanted to make sure that you were alright, and that you
weren't...”
“Weren't what?”
“Running
away.”

Running away. The idea seemed mad at the
time.

And yet, here I am, at this bus station. And I was
waiting to run away. But Charlie's not here, I'm alone, and I can't
do it any more. I get to my feet and hoist the bag, packed with the
things I truly couldn't bear to leave behind, onto my shoulder, and
groan at the extra strain on my bones. Panic begins to thrum in my
chest, throwing splashes of the past at me with sickening speed. It
forces my feet to move, though I don't want to leave the stoop.

I
can't believe this. I can't. After all everything, this is what it
boils down to.

We'd arranged to meet here, and then we were
going back to Romania. He's got his reserve job, still, and I...
well, I'd find something even if it was just a bar hand position.

What he whispered to me last night as we laid in bed together
was clearly a lie, and as I walk along the pavement, not able to feel
my feet, or my arse, or my heart, I know I should convince myself
it's for the best.

But who can control that kind of pain? I
can't. I stop, the bag hits the floor and I stagger slightly,
flinging my hands out for something to cling to.

With the
choices I've made, if I don't have him, I have nothing.

“Leaving
without me?”

The words are warm in my ear, and the hands
-oh, those hands- are hot as they web over my hips from behind. Spice
washes over me, finally driving the diesel fumes from my nose. I feel
so sick.

“Sorry I'm late,” Charlie whispers in my
ear. “So sorry. I got... some letters I had to write. I know we
said we wouldn't, but I had to, Bill.”
“I sent mine by
Owl,” I murmur over my shoulder to him.

His lips kiss my
ear. I close my eyes. There is no relief, not yet.

November, 1999

Charlie watched,
his head propped up on his hand, as Bill snuggled further into the
rumpled white sheets of their bed. It smelt of them both, of
parchment, cigarettes, cinnamon and spice. Bill was naked beneath the
cotton, his groin hidden from view by the way the sheet twisted
around his hips. Charlie glanced up, to the rain lashing past the
window of the small house.

Long auburn hair was knotted on the
pillow around Bill's face, and Charlie looked at him in all his
glory. He reached out and traced a finger along the curve of his
brother's cheek.

“Mmm,” Bill stretched languidly
in his sleep, and rolled over onto his side, away from Charlie. The
trumpeting sound that followed made Charlie laugh and screw his eyes
shut, thinking of how Bill had shattered the image of beauty with one
dozy fart.

Cuddling into his back, Charlie wrapped his arms
around Bill's body.

“Time?” Bill mumbled.
“Hours
yet, go back to sleep,” Charlie kissed the back of his neck.

Bill did just that, and left Charlie to watch over him. There
was no need, but he did it anyway, as he had done since the night
they'd departed London with no more than the bags on their backs,
their wands in their pockets and their hands in each other's. That
night Charlie had known that Bill was giving up more than he was,
that he had more bonds to sever.

That was why he laid
there and watched. If Bill didn't have him, then Bill had nobody, and
Charlie knew he was responsible for the awful isolation. He pressed a
kiss into the back of Bill's hair, and closed his eyes for a brief
second.

There had been no contact from their family for
months. Ron had written, a few times, sending his letters to the
reserve where he had guessed Charlie must have been. Charlie had
replied, never giving details of where they lived, only of their
safety. The letters had then tailed off and they were forced to
assume what they had guessed -that by leaving they had deeply hurt
their youngest brother, and his parting scrawl of 'missing you,
always' was heartfelt.

It wasn't that Charlie didn't miss
them, because he did. He longed to wake up one morning and roll into
the kitchen and find somebody there to laugh with, or to tease, to
eat his mother's cooking with.

But such eventuality could
never have been more satisfying than what he and Bill had made for
themselves in their run-down old house. Situated in the mountains, it
therefore rained ninety percent of the time. The grey sky sapped the
energy and life from his sun-seeking brother. Charlie had offered to
move, and Bill had refused.

They fought, they screamed. They
kissed and made up. Charlie had never shared such loving domesticity
with another human being. Bill had ached, for a long time, for the
ending of his marriage, and there had been arguments, insults and
even punches. But they were solved in the time old practice of a
cigarette and a drink.

No matter how easily their arguments
were resolved, however, the truth remained that they were fragile.
They stood together and caressed each other's skin, kissed it,
murmured soft words into eager ears. But their foundations creaked,
weakened by the rough onslaught of history. Bill was fragile mentally
and Charlie, as hard as he tried, couldn't hold them both aloft all
of the time. Darkness often passed over the older Weasley's face,
when the memories caught up with him and Charlie was forced to wonder
whether Bill regretted their decision.

He watched because he
was terrified that the day he glanced away they would break under
Bill's unhappiness, shattering everything to make the same mistakes
again, and send them miserably sliding back to the start.

Starting
again was not an option, for either of them.

Bill turned
again in his arms, bringing them face-to-face. The kiss they shared
was sour with morning breath, yet still sweet and warm. A chain
glinted at the man's throat, and the attached cross had left an
indent on his creamy skin, red and deep, almost branding the shape
there.

Since the night at the camp site, he had never seen
Bill without it. He had even worn it on his wedding day, not even
choosing to remove it after their mother caught them. He also still
wore the ring he had acquired on that day, but Charlie had never been
foolish enough to comment. If the cross was anything, it was their
own bonding gold, as oddly feminine as it was. He didn't need
his own version to cement his feelings. If Bill wanted a
physical reminder of his first marriage, Charlie felt he had no place
in suggesting otherwise.

“Love you,” Bill muttered
in his sleep with a smile.

Charlie paused, knowing he didn't
have to answer. He leant forward and pressed their lips
together, stretching his body out alongside Bill's.

They had
both given up waiting on a letter from 'home', because their mother
was no longer 'home'. That distinction went to the poky house with
it's leaking roof and bad plumbing. It went to the place where nobody
cared if Bill forgot the glamour to turn his hair into a mousey
brown, and never asked his second name. It went, in short, to where
they were together.

Reaching up, Charlie stroked Bill's hair.
It was silk beneath his touch, like the boxers on the night he'd
tried to ruin it all. Yet, in the end, Charlie hadn't ruined
anything; he had saved it, instead. He would love Bill through
the moods, strive to put a smile on his face and make him feel
cherished. The effort was nothing to him, and the reaping
everything.

“Love you too,” he murmured back,
cupping the base of Bill's warm skull in his palm.

-fin-
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Cigarette and Cinnamon Ruins