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Cigarette and Cinnamon Ruins	By : starstruck86 Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Bill/Charlie Views: 2899 -:- 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
Written as a request fic on LiveJournal.

Title:
Cigarette and Cinnamon Ruins
Pairing(s):
Bill/Charlie;
mentions of: Bill/OMC, Bill/Fleur
Prompts:
A
Weasleycest fic with the elements of long-built UST, familial
discovery and the inevitable following drama.
Warnings:
Incest,
angst, UST, heavy substance use (alcohol and tobacco), sexual spell
magic, slash and the basics it entails, slight religious imagery,
strong language, violence.
Word
Count: ~14,
909

Cigarette and
Cinnamon Ruins

Oh, fuck it, it's cold. I'm waiting
in the dark amidst the stench of Muggle diesel fumes, and I ache,
everywhere.

I'm twenty-nine-years-old, and yet, I'm terrified.
When I was little they told me I'd grow out of my fear of the dark,
and when I entered tombs of the dead, walking into Merlin only knew
what, I thought they were right.

They were fucking wrong.
Every last word was a lie. I'm terrified. My stomach is churning and
it feels like I'm going to lose the contents, though through the
north route or the south tunnel -it can't really decide. The gnawing
sensation in the pit of my belly should be something I'm used to, but
it feels so much worse tonight.

The last place I want to be is
in the fucking dark. It torments me enough when I try to sleep,
harbouring daemons to remind me of my failures. To stand willingly in
it is killing me; the only colourful visions I have are of my
faults.

I just want it to stop.

All of it.

It
should have stopped years ago, before it even started.

November, 1988

“Your
brother's got mad talent on his broom, Bill. Why the fuck can't you
play like that?”

Bill squinted up through the rain. The
Gryffindor and Hufflepuff seekers had just pulled out of a tight
dive, and though neither clutched the snitch in their glove, Charlie
had only missed it by the skin of his teeth. He was currently
hovering; his eyes narrowed with frustration, constantly alert, with
his curly hair mad in the falling rain.

“Nice arse,
too,” the mutter was low in his ear and Bill instinctively
jabbed out with what he knew was a suitably bony elbow.
“Keep
your grubby paws off my brother,” he growled playfully. “Or
I'll be forced to report you for corrupting a minor.”
“Charlie
has never been a minor,” his friend snorted. “Charlie
makes you look innocent....”

Bill's breath hitched in
his throat as a warm hand wormed beneath his long coat and groped
clumsily at his bum. He kept his eyes focused on the game, trying to
ignore how his cock twitched and immediately began to swell.

“You
busy tonight, oh sensible Head Boy?” Dan leered
suggestively in his ear.
“Yes,” he said
automatically.

Bill wasn't sure what was happening between
himself and the tall Hufflepuff, who had been his best friend at
school since his first nervous steps onto the Hogwarts Express, when
they'd crashed into one another with their trunks, but he was afraid
of it. The stolen touches, and the stolen kisses, took his breath
away, but they also frightened him.

“Shame, might have
to see if Charlie's busy... after all... he's got access to the
Prefect's Bathroom these days...”
“I bet you're bitter
we won't be here next year,” Bill grinned evilly, turning to
look at him.
“Why's that?”
“Because when he
gets his own little office in the pitch office for being Quidditch
Captain, you won't be here to imagine him fucking you over it.”

A
pink blush appeared over Dan's rain-damp cheeks, and he looked
away.

“You don't know he'll be captain,” he said
finally.

Suddenly, the Gryffindor supporters roared into life
around them, and Bill's head snapped up to see that Charlie was
punching his fist into the air. Bill slid his eyes over the
ever-growing body and looked at Charlie's thighs gripping onto his
broom tightly whilst his hands celebrated. The muscles were thick and
strong; he had seen them countless times, in various states of
undress. Licking his lips and swilling spit around his mouth to wet
it, Bill forced his gaze away.

Another reason that the things
he and Dan were experimenting with made him feel uncomfortable was
because they made him look. It made him look at other men and
wonder what they were like naked, or what they might taste
like.

That one of those men was his own brother made him
shiver.

Bill had a feeling that his observation where Charlie
was concerned was nothing new, however.

***
As Head Boy, it
was his responsibility to shut down the party, to pack everybody off
to bed, confiscate the alcohol and the cigarettes and turn the music
down. That was, of course, why the tolling of the midnight chime
found Bill sprawled in front of the fire, his hair long and loose
about his shoulders, a pilfered bottle of wine in one hand and a fag
smoking steadily in the other. Sooner or later he would rise and call
an end to the night, but not yet.

He hadn't even managed to
congratulate Charlie. Bill had watched, all evening, as his mad,
socially fantastic brother had bounced from group to group, laughing,
singing, throwing his arms around the girls, who adored him, and
acting brotherly with the boys, who admired him. Charlie was well
loved by their entire house: the good-time Quidditch star who always
had an easy smile and something to chat about.

But not with
me tonight.

Taking a deep swig of the awful wine, Bill set
the bottle on the floor and got to his feet, just about ready to
withdraw his wand and send a cutting noise through the room, when he
heard his name, and his heart inexplicably jumped.

“Biiiiiill,”
Charlie bounded over to him and without a second thought for their
surroundings or company, threw his arms around Bill's torso,
squeezing tight.
“Oof, fuck,” Bill staggered slightly
and placed the cigarette in between his lips so that he could steady
himself with his hands. “You pissed?”
“As much
as you,” Charlie laughed directly into his face, washing Bill
in hot breath that smelt of cider. “Good night?”
“Thought
you'd been avoiding me,” Bill winked. “But then I know
you're just giving the adoring crowds what they want.”

The
conversation went on all the while Charlie held him tightly. Bill was
struck by the scent rolling from the now-dried curly hair, which
their mother despaired of, Charlie sighed at and Bill was fascinated
by. Spices, hot and sweet, were the predominant notes, yet there was
a sharper underlay of broom polish; Bill had always laughed at that.

Charlie smelt like home to him, and he had to stop himself
from leaning forward and taking a heave at it.

“Did I
play good?” Charlie looked up at him suddenly, his amber-brown
eyes wide and desperate, Bill knew, for his older brother's
approval.
“Yup,” Bill grinned proudly, giving Charlie
everything he wanted, and more. “But I have to rain on your
parade now before McGonagall comes and kicks off.”

Charlie
made a face and finally released him. Bill automatically felt cold,
and as Charlie stepped away, his stomach pulled.

The step is freezing my arse further, but I
don't care. I can't stand up any more. I rummage in my pocket for my
cigarettes and pull them out. My fingers are numb with cold and
they're fumbling with the match, but I eventually light it and suck
the first beautiful hit out of the stick.

I jump as a bus
hisses as it rolls to a stop a few yards away. The doors open, tired
looking passengers get out and blink in the dark. Victoria is always
busy. Shivering, I burrow down into my coat and scarf try to fight
off the muscle contractions by smoking hard through the cigarette,
trying to focus on the feel of it between my lips rather than the
cold rolling through my body.

This scarf isn't even mine. It's
his. I duck my nose and press it into the old fabric and, surprise
surprise, there's that cinnamon scent, though it's faded and powdery
with age. It's still Charlie, and it still comforts me and smells of
home.

June, 1989

Bill was drunk,
sitting with his back to the sofa, which rested in front of the fire
in the Gryffindor common room. His long legs were stretched out and
his feet rested on the hearth, being warmed by the slowly dying
embers in the grate. It was impossible to believe that it was over.
Seven years had flown by and for all his professors' praise and words
about his promising future, Bill didn't want it. He wanted to stay at
Hogwarts forever, even if that meant getting up for Potions with
Snape first thing on a Monday morning or putting up with mind-numbing
History of Magic lessons. A lump formed in his throat as he looked
around the room that had been his home away from home.

His
friends were desperate to leave, to head into the 'real' world, as
they kept calling it, and earn money and find lovers and make their
lives. Bill almost wanted to chain himself to the school gates.

A
loud belch came from his left and he looked up into Charlie's
face.

“Go to bed, Charlie,” he admonished, shaking
his head and yawning.
“Not until you do,” Charlie
announced drunkenly. “You're all sad.”
“Yeah...
well...” Bill shrugged and trailed off.
“School won't
be the same without you,” Charlie said quietly, but his remorse
was ruined by the painful sound of a hiccup which tore through his
torso and made Bill jump. “Ow.”
“Deep breaths,”
Bill's concern won through his inebriation, and he turned his head to
the window. On the horizon, the first signs of daylight showed in
lightened patches of black.
“I'm gonna miss you,”
Charlie slurred, rubbing roughly at his chest, as though it would
help. “Perce's no fun. My partner in crime is going so far
away.... all the way to Egypt,” Bill wasn't sure, but he
thought he saw Charlie's lower lip wobble. “Desertin' me.”
“I'm
not,” he said fiercely, and turned to his brother. “Don't
start again. You know I... they all want me to have a dream, Charlie.
So I found them one.”
“But you don't want it!”
Charlie moaned. “Why do you have to go away when it's not
anything like you want, Bill? Stay.”
“I want to,”
Bill admitted finally, dropping his gaze down to his lap.

They
said nothing for a time, and the only sound was that of the dying,
crackling fire.

Bill opened his mouth to speak, and then
closed it again.

“What?” Charlie asked wearily,
his head lolling to the right to look at Bill.
“Do you ever
think, Charlie, that what we have,” he gestured between them,
“Is... is a bit more than we're meant to have?”
“Speak
English,” Charlie made his bemused face, with one eyebrow
raised and his lips in a questioning pucker.

Breath
permanently lodged in his throat, Bill reached out and picked up
Charlie's hand in his own, trying not to look at those puckered lips,
just waiting for a kiss to grace them. The hand was warm and heavy;
the softness of his palm was marred with callouses grown from his
brother's love of the outdoors. Heart thrumming, Bill stroked a path
over the back of Charlie's knuckles, letting his thumb slide over the
large, bony bumps, trying to memorise the feel of them.

Charlie
swallowed loudly and looked on, but offered nothing to the
conversation. Bill held onto his hand, as his brother hadn't
complained, and looked at the freckled skin. The fingers were thick
and strong, compared to his own which were slim and almost delicate.
He and Charlie were so different, physically and emotionally, that it
was a wonder they were brothers at all.

And if you
weren't...

Sheer madness prompted Bill to lift that heavy,
masculine hand to his lips, and press them onto the back of it.
Charlie still didn't speak, but in his eyes there was something new,
something that Bill had hoped for. The past year had been confusing.
When Dan had realised he would get nothing more than gropes and
licks, he had cooled off and reverted to their usual thick
friendship, but the fire in Bill hadn't died. He'd continued to look
and imagine boys with their clothes off. The feelings which he had
always imagined were brotherly, the presence of the immense
compassion he felt for Charlie, of wanting to hug him and tell him he
was grand, had been questioned.

His lips parted of their own
volition and the chaste kiss became a wet one.

“Bill...”
Charlie's murmur was throaty, and he leant closer, keeping his hand
to Bill's mouth. “Bill... I...”

“NnnghohGodric,”
someone groaned, and Bill threw Charlie's hand away so hard that it
smacked into his brother's thigh with a loud thud. “I'm going
to die...”

There was a sickening heaving noise, and
their intruder spewed over the rug nearest to the dormitory stairs.
Bill looked back at Charlie, dazed, and saw Charlie's mirroring
expression.

The cigarette dies a quick death as I stub
it out on the bricks next to me, and then flick it into the nearest
gutter. I look around me, but see nothing. Even the last coach load
of people has drifted away now, hauling their suitcases and heading
for the next points in their journey.

I swallow hard and
wonder where my own journey is going- nowhere, by the looks of it.
I'm still on my own, shivering, desperate for the sight I'm looking
for but it's not there. When I think of
everything we've been through to get to this point, it makes me, the
twenty-nine-year-old, want to cry. I want to screw my face up and sob
it out, because really, there's nothing else to do with a history
like ours. What we've promised to give away is so fucking rich
anybody would hurt.

I shift my feet, both of which are dead
with cold, and wrap my arms around my torso. I have always hated the
cold. It was the one good thing about Egypt, fierce heat tempered
with cool showers to rinse the sand from your body. The sand got
everywhere. I miss the feel of it between my toes and my fingers,
even my bloody arse cheeks. I always had madly soft skin, when I
worked in Egypt.

July, 1991

“And do you
really find skeletons and stuff?” Ron's blue eyes were wide,
as, for once, his chicken and mushroom pie lay forgotten, with his
fork in the process of slipping from his plate and his mouth open in
awe of his big brother.
“Sometimes,” Bill nodded. “And
shrivelled up, rotted organs from the crooks that got turned inside
out.”
“Cool!” Fred and George answered together,
but there was a flash of fear in Ron's face and Bill thought he saw
him shudder.
“Not often, though,” he smiled warmly in
Ron's direction, trying to stamp out his fear before it had a chance
to grow. “I wish I could show you lot everything though, you'd
love it.”
“Can we go on holiday, Mum?” Ginny
asked loudly, and Bill winced, wondering if his long time away from
home had made him forget how to interact with his siblings, how not
to set up questions that would embarrass his financially-challenged
parents nor scare the younger ones with his stories.

Guilt
made his belly clench and he didn't want the plate of food that sat
in front of him. He was only home for a week and so far two of those
days had been spent feeling out of place, and, if he'd been foolish
enough to believe his paranoia, unwanted.

There was only one
reason he was there. The following week, Charlie was headed to the
Romanian dragon reserve in which he had landed himself a job, and
Bill had the feeling that after his departure, as a family they might
lose him abroad forever. Charlie wasn't like him; Bill hated being
away, separated from his kin by time, geography and an increasingly
busy work schedule, yet his brother seemed constrained within their
home.

Like a caged dragon... bad pun.

Bill
looked slyly to his right, where Charlie was eating, and saw the
tension in his muscles. The eighteen-year-old was ploughing through
his food, as he usually did, but something was off. He'd been
unusually quiet, and a quiet Charlie normally meant either the onset
of tonsillitis or that he had something to confess. Selfishly, Bill
prayed half-heartedly for the former, because that would keep Charlie
in England, and then he might not be lost.

This is what he
wants. Leave him be.

***
It was odd, lying in his old
bed. The mattress was lumpy and a spring threatened to fire through
the well-worn quilting. The entire bed frame creaked when he rolled
over. As he did so he caught a glint of light from Charlie's open
eyes; Bill paused to wonder at which point in their adolescence they
had stopped bothering to close the bedroom curtains.

“Can't
sleep,” Charlie shrugged, and threw back his covers.

He
got to his feet, groaning slightly, his body barely covered by the
low-riding pyjama bottoms on his hips. Bill swallowed and took in the
freckled skin, the muscles, the fiery hair between his nipples and on
his belly. Mouth dry, Bill watched Charlie rummaging in the bedside
table, fingers scrabbling loudly until they stopped, the window to
their room swung outward, and Charlie's face burst aglow with the
hiss and crackle of a match roaring to life.

The roll-up was
lit, and Charlie stood in silence, looking out over the orchard and
smoking through his insomnia. Bill watched every single minute
movement, every rise and fall of his younger brother's chest, words
of discouragement for the unhealthy habit on the tip of his tongue.
He observed the way full lips puckered around the end of the
cigarette, and the casual and attractive way the smoke was blown from
them in the same shape. So absorbed, he hardly noticed the tingle in
his groin and the swelling of his erection until it poked into the
waistband of his boxers. Glad it was dark, Bill blushed, but found he
couldn't look away from the solitary figure Charlie cut by the
window.

“What's wrong?” he whispered finally.
“Talk to me.”

Charlie jerked his head, as though
chasing away an irksome fly, and puffed a few more times on the
cigarette before crushing it out on the windowsill. Leaving the
window open, he walked over to Bill's bed, unknowingly sending his
heartbeat into a frenzy, and perched on the edge.

The broad
span of Charlie's shoulders was too attractive. Bill couldn't tear
his eyes from it.

“Nervous,” Charlie said finally,
his voice tight. “About going to Romania.”
“I
thought you were excited?” Bill remained deadly still, as his
erection began to throb with want. Charlie was close. Charlie smelt
of cinnamon. Charlie was almost palpable in the fucking air.
He took a deep breath to try and steady his stomach.
“I am,”
Charlie's throat bobbed with a swallow. “And I can't wait...
but there's... it feels like I'm leaving for good, Bill, and I don't
know why...”
“Don't be daft, Mum'll never let you stay
away that long.”
“It feels like I don't have anything
to make me come back,” Charlie whispered, turning and bringing
his leg up under his body as he looked down into Bill's face. His
knee was dangerously close to the hard-on Bill was hiding beneath the
blankets. “Because you're not here.”

“What?”
he asked thickly.
“You,” Charlie whispered, leaning
down. “You... you're in Egypt. You're not here, and
it's...”

He broke off, clearly frustrated and searching
for the words he needed to convey what he felt. Bill waited
patiently, but his brother merely shrugged and fell silent again,
looking down at the coverlet.

“It's not home without me,
is it, Char?”

Charlie looked up sharply, alarmed, and
Bill knew he'd touched a nerve -the same nerve that his separation
from the young man sitting on his bed continually pinched within his
own body.

“I feel the same way,” Bill breathed,
closing his eyes and stretching out his legs, forgetting that his
cock might have been visible through the layers of darkness. “Always.
Egypt's better than I thought. I like the adventure. Even the flat's
nice. But it...” he swallowed, and put on an accent to mimic
their Aunt Tess. “It ain't 'ome, is it?”

Charlie's
laugh was warm as the cockney strains tickled him, but the smile soon
faded as he shook his head. Curls flew and quivered, Bill watched
every one that he could.

“You're staring at me,”
Charlie said finally, playing with his hands in his
lap.
“Sorry.”
“You stare at me an awful lot,”
Charlie kept his gaze downwards.
“Do I?”
“And
I reckon you're too busy looking away when I look at you to notice I
stare too.”

Bill faltered, but his fingers suddenly
flexed, as though charged with an invisible force to reach out and
caress his brother's torso.

“What is it?” Charlie
asked quietly. “What's going on... I don't want to leave with
things... weird between us. It'll never get set right.”
“Things
between us are fine,” Bill said, his voice a calibre of firm
which surprised him. “And they always have been, and they
always will be.”
“The night you left school...”

Bill
blushed, remembering the way he had lifted Charlie's hand to his
lips, and the way that kiss had been too moist to be decent; the way
his tongue had lightly ghosted over the flesh before they'd been
interrupted by the oesophageal gymnastics of a fifth year.

“I
think about that night all the time,” Charlie said hurriedly,
leaning in close, causing his spicy scent to grow thicker in the air.
“All the time. I'm going to think about it in bed-”

A
loud knock on the door cut through his impassioned speech and Bill
caught the anguished look on Charlie's face as their bedroom door
pushed inwards, revealing George on the threshold.

“Oi,
will you two pipe down?” he yawned.
“Were we being
loud?” Charlie's voice had snapped back to genial, and Bill was
staggered at his ability to pretend that nothing was wrong.

It
was that which made him begin to wonder quite how long Charlie had
been turning over their relationship in his mind. In short, Bill
wondered if it was as long as he himself had been questioning the
touches, the way that they felt comfortable naked around one another,
the way, even at the ages of fifteen and thirteen, during a
frightening thunderstorm, curling up in bed together had not been
embarrassing or felt wrong.

Or if Charlie had been growing
hard as he sat on the bed, just like Bill had.

“Let's go
on a food raid,” George suggested brightly. “Mum was
baking today, and I know there's cake...”

Charlie turned
around to look at Bill, lying in bed with his secret boner, and
blinked twice, looking desperate.

”You got a light, mate?” I
startle slightly as the voice comes from nowhere, wishing it was the
one I need to hear. I rummage in my pocket for the matches, pull one
out, strike it, and hand it over to the tramp, who's looking at me
like I'm a ghost.

That's actually a pretty accurate
description, now I think of it. Ghostly pale, as of late, only my
hair adding colour. Dressed in black, mourning that nobody
understands. I'm not even sure I do. What was I ever mourning? Fuck
knows. The tramp huffs to blow out the match, tips his ratty cap in
thanks, and shuffles off, a cloud of rancid smoke trailing behind
him. Muggle cigarettes are vile.

Footsteps on the pavement
draw my attention, but it's another man, who half leers at me as he
passes. I don't get many of those these days, after Greyback. All my
handsomeness is gone, replaced by scars and non-healing wounds. I
watch him walk away. Not a bad arse, for his age.

I snort at
my daft thought and wrap my arms tighter around my body; any tighter
and bones will begin breaking. It inches closer to the point where
late means the end, and I wait.

July, 1993

“Oh, God, you
don't visit me enough!” Bill breathed, almost hoisting Charlie
off the floor as they rocked on the threshold of his Egyptian flat.
“None of you,” he looked past Charlie, who had been the
one to knock on the door to herald the entire family's
arrival.

“Mum!” Bill cried, his pleasure so real
that it nearly drove him to euphoria. He squeezed his mother hard,
and then his father, and then every single one of his brothers and
sister until his arms ached.
“Merlin, William,” Fred
rubbed, with an affronted expression, at his ribs. “Miss us or
something?”
“As always,” Bill covered his
desperation with a smooth smile and a wink, and ushered them all
inside. “Is your hotel really cool, then?”
“It's
all shiny,” Ginny grinned excitedly, and Bill reached out to
touch the side of her face. “You! Getting yourself bloody
possessed. I'm never letting you back to that school again.”
“Then
she'd never see Harry again,” George smirked knowingly, from
where he was investigating the Quidditch magazines on Bill's
bookshelf, and began making smooching noises.
“Fancying your
brother's best mate, eh?” Bill tugged playfully on the end of
her plait. “Now there's a recipe for tears and a broken nose if
I ever saw one.”

Ron had gone stiff with suspicion and
Bill laughed, clapping his hands down on his brother's shoulders. He
was so tall and thin. “God, you've grown,” Bill wrapped
his arms around Ron from behind and hugged him. “Being a good
boy?”
“Unfortunately,” Fred made a face. “Though
we have to give him credit for stealing the car.”

Their
mother hissed beneath her breath and Ron went white. Bill grinned and
whispered, “Well done,” in his ear, which sent colour
back into his cheeks and put a small smile on his lips.
“Well,
come on then,” Bill rubbed his hands together. “You've
got your own tour guide right here. Use him. Where do you want to go
first?”
“The library!” Percy chorused
immediately. “At the Headquarters you keep, it's supposed to
huge, and I read that-”

Bill took a deep breath. Home
was in Egypt, for the first time in the four years that he'd been
there.

***
“And you're really alright out
there?”

Bill was eavesdropping on a conversation between
their mother and Charlie, who was being grilled on his life in
Romania, even though they'd visited him not two years before.

“Mum,
I love it,” Charlie grinned, his face full of the sunshine
which had faded beyond the restaurant window. “It's the best
thing in the world, and my mates are great.”
“But
you're so thin,” she said sadly.
“Mum, look at him,”
Fred butted in. He reached over and poked Charlie's ample gut. “Not
thin. He could lay off the pies a bit.”
“Oi, you're
pushing your luck,” Charlie flicked his ear.

“Bill?”
Ron's voice was quiet as he spoke out.
“Mm?”
“Right...
when we go in the tombs tomorrow,” Ron's voice was low and he
shot a nervous glance in the direction of the twins, who had taken to
both haranguing Charlie, “Promise you won't let me get
turned inside out?”
“Can't have my favourite youngest
brother doing that, can I?” Bill managed to keep his smile,
which he was sure Ron would have found condescending, small, and
leant close for Ron to whisper, if he wanted.
“I really miss
you,” Ron mumbled, and then sat up straight and yawned.

Bill
saw his cleverness; their mother caught sight of Ron's yawn and
looked at her watch.
“Well, we might as well all go back to
our rooms for the night now, it's been a long day with the
Portkey...”

Ron got to his feet and drifted to her side,
and Bill noted the distance put between him and thirteen-year-old
after what Ron obviously perceived to be a childish
admission.

“Bill, are you sure you want to go back to
your flat?”
“I-”
“Come up to my room
for a drink,” Charlie asked suddenly. “I've got stuff to
tell you.”
“Brotherly catch up,” their father
winked and hurried away to catch up the rest of the family, who had
begun to leave the hotel restaurant.

Bill got tiredly to his
feet and looked at Charlie.

“Two years,” his voice
cracked. “Two fucking years, Charlie...”
“I
know,” the soft words came with an apologetic stare. “I
know. Come on. Let's go to my room...”
“No, my flat,”
Bill said flatly. “No more interruptions.”
“Okay.”

The
automatic compliance made his heart pound. The letters they had
shared in the past two years had been of deepening heart and content,
but they were rare, and Bill craved more. He wanted to know where the
tension would lead when nobody knocked on a door, or when there was
nobody to treat an antique rug to a vomit rinse. He needed to
see if Charlie had been thinking the same dirty, wrong thoughts that
he had.

The journey back to his flat was silent, and they
apparated together. Bill unlocked the door, immediately lighting the
candles and freshening the cooling spell. Charlie slouched to the
sofa and perched on the arm, his hands folded in his lap as he waited
for Bill to stop dithering.

“So you're really alright?”
Bill asked, pressing a bottle of cider he'd imported from England for
the occasion into Charlie's hand.
“It's brilliant,”
Charlie shook his head, the beaming smile back. “More than I
could have dreamed. I've got so much power, and responsibility, and
my mates are brilliant... never a dull moment.”
“There
never could be, with you around,” an astounding wave of pride
washed over Bill, and the next thing he knew, he had one arm hooked
around Charlie's neck in a playful hug.

What was not entirely
playful, however, was when he ducked his head, and placed a soft kiss
to the top of Charlie's curls. They both froze. Bill squeezed his
eyes tightly shut, cursing his stupidity, and wondered why his lips
were still on his brother's head, if he regretted the action. Charlie
moved then, the curls sliding over the skin of Bill's face as he put
his head back.

“Open your eyes,” the whisper was
rough.

Bill obeyed, frightened of what he might
see.

Charlie's lips covering his own chased the fear
away.

“Oh gods!” Bill heard the clunk of the full
cider bottle hitting the tiled white floor and the following shatter,
no doubt sending sticky apple fizz to every far-reaching corner of
his living room. He didn't care as Charlie grabbed his back and threw
himself over the arm of the chair. Bill went with him, landing on top
of Charlie's body, squashing him, feeling him, writhing
against him.

He rocked his hips, rolling and pushing as he
ravaged Charlie's mouth with his tongue. Which of them moaned louder,
he wasn't sure, and he didn't care as the taste of Charlie's
delicious mouth filled his own.

“Wanted you for... so...
long...” Charlie gasped up at him, tipping his head back and
revealing his throat. Bill paused, appreciating the sight, before he
dropped his head and sucked in the hollow between Charlie's
collarbones.

The shout of desire cut right through to his
core. It made him shiver and stop, panting over the wet flesh he'd
created, causing dizziness in his mind.

“Bill?”
“I'm
fine,” he promised, and with effort lifted his chin to look
Charlie in the eye. “I just... this is... I didn't think you'd
want this?”
“We've been idiots,” Charlie laughed
then. “Because I've wanted this for years. You have too. All
the time we could have had... and...”

Bill was
speechless looking at him. They stood poised on the edge of a gaping
chasm of immorality and danger and he knew it was so because
he'd been dreaming about it since 1989. Charlie's eyes were bright
whilst his lips were reddened and parted. He looked sinful. Bill
couldn't help but throw himself into the trouble when that was
his reward.

He pulled up, huffing as the arm of the chair
banged into the erection he'd grown in the tumble, and grabbed
Charlie's hands. When they were both upright, he only waited a second
longer before he was ripping at the black t-shirt, yanking it over
Charlie's head. The jeans went next and Charlie stumbled trying to
kick off his boots; Bill caught him, and his fingers, unable to help
themselves, began to caress and adore the freckled muscles of the
dragon keeper's top half.

They were firmer than he remembered
and Bill eagerly tested them, squeezing and probing until he had
mapped Charlie out like a freshly discovered chamber in a
tomb.

“Something to show you,” Charlie grinned
suddenly, and turned, revealing his back.

It was inked with
the most beautiful work that Bill had ever seen gracing human flesh.
It encompassed the whole canvas, fire curled up towards Charlie's
neck whilst the tail licked around the wizard's left hip. A dragon
sat in a nest of roses, artfully coloured to set off the fiery scales
of the beast. Bill touched the work, finding it smooth and
hot.

“Godric's arse,” he breathed, and put his
lips to it, flicking out his tongue, but the skin tasted of Charlie,
and Charlie alone.
“Mum doesn't know,” Charlie was
grinning, Bill could tell. His brother turned back to face him. “Your
turn.”

Somehow Charlie, even though he was the more
rambunctious of the two of them, managed to undress Bill with
unnerving patience and calm. His shirt was stripped away, followed
shortly by his dragon hide trousers. There was a moment where his
brother's eyes lingered over the garment and Bill wondered if he
would be on the receiving end of the usual lecture on ethically
sourced dragonhide clothing. The moment faded, however; Charlie knelt
at his feet to ease them out of their boots, and peeled away his
sandy socks. Each item had been thrown aside, and before he rose
Charlie's eyes skimmed the line of Bill's body, drinking in every
inch, every imperfection and quirk, until their eyes met.

When
he stood, they were both naked, and both solid at the groin. Bill
stared. The men he had previously slept with had never looked as
delicious as the cock which bobbed in front of him, flushed and
determined in a flaming patch of curls. A hand on his hip jerked him
from his appreciation.

“Bed?” Charlie asked
enticingly, though his nerves were evident in the slight quiver of
his tone.
“No,” Bill shook his head, reaching back to
pull the band from his hair. It slipped about his shoulders and the
tension in the nape of his neck dissipated. “Here.”

Charlie
mouthed a kiss against his lips, and their arms, tired from hauling
bags, pointing at interesting artefacts and hugging, each looped
around a slim and thick waist. Bill moaned at the friction Charlie's
cock gave him and bucked forward, sliding one hand down to hold his
brother in place.

“What do you... have you done this
before?” he murmured in Charlie's ear.
“I've sucked
cock and fingered, but never fucked,” Charlie answered with his
usual boldness. “For some reason, I couldn't do it... I had men
falling at my bloody feet, and they were all thin, and wiry,”
he squeezed at Bill's upper arm. “But they didn't have long red
hair, or... blue eyes... so I couldn't. I decided I wasn't really bi
after all... but...”
“They weren't me,” Bill was
glad Charlie couldn't see his thrilled smile.
“No,”
the whisper was low.

Changing his mind, Bill proceeded to lead
Charlie to the bedroom, which was cool from Bill's usual handy spell
work. He pushed him down on the sheets -freshly changed, so their
mother couldn't chide- and crawled on top of him. Curls tumbled back
from Charlie's brow onto the white, a blaze of fire in the cold.

“I
want you to fuck me,” he mouthed breathily against Bill's lips.
“Hard.”
“Will you scream when you come?”
Bill muttered back, barely paying attention to the words he said, but
noticing explicitly how they sent heated pleasure into Charlie's
eyes.
“Your name,” a wicked smile curled up plump,
wide lips.

And so it began; they tumbled and turned, groping,
moaning, touching, licking and sucking. The bedsheets were soon a
rumpled pile on the floor as they spread over the mattress. They both
shook, trembling with what seemed to be years of unspent lust as it
forced its way to the fore. Charlie was loud and his cries echoed to
the corner of the room. Bill knew that he would never forget the
desperate yelp which broke free of his brother's lips as he entered
him for the first time. With each subsequent pounding, Charlie cried
out, his head thrown back, mouth open.

When they reached
crisis point, it turned out that neither of them had the breath to
shout or even moan the other's name. They were locked in a kiss, and
found themselves bucking and shivering as Charlie made the skin
between them slippery, his come spreading with every contraction of
Bill's stomach muscles as he poured deep within his brother's
body.

It was only afterwards, as he slumped onto the mattress
by Charlie's side, that the words came, and then they were low,
loving mumbles accompanied by sloppy kisses. Charlie ended up draped
on top of him, licking at his tongue and kissing him until Bill's
lips were sore. He smoothed his hands down the plane of Charlie's
back, and exhaled in relief.

Four years worth of tension blew
into Charlie's face, and all he did was smile.

Godric, when I think of how we fucked that
week. It was totally mental. I showed them the sights by day and
caught up on what I'd missed by moving to Egypt, and then at night,
Charlie would be with me; we fucked and licked and sucked and screwed
each other so thoroughly that we were drunk on the bliss alone.

It
was his hot whispers telling me that it was the best week of his life
that prompted me to say the same. I meant it, but I still know now
that I would never have said it without him leading me.

It
only took me half an hour after my family left to double up with the
shame of what I'd done with him, how I'd made him shiver, scream and
groan my name.

A door slams shut, making me jump and look up;
a coach driver locks the door to his bus and strolls away with a yawn
towards the concourse.

It's a horrible feeling to know you're
waiting for panic to catch up with you.

August, 1994

Charlie jabbed his
wand into the dark hollow, created from an unfortunate family's
smoking tent, and shone the light into every corner.

“This
is fucking useless,” Bill's voice was high with his despair and
Charlie straightened, fighting his own worried tension in his
neck.
“We'll find them,” Charlie said firmly, looking
around again, although they had already scoped the area three
times

Tiredness should have had him fast asleep in his camp
bunk, contentedly unaware of Ron snoring and the twins farting in
tune with one another. But, standing in the middle of a scorched and
mostly smoking camping area, the tiredness was actually all that was
keeping him going, and he longed for the disruptive noise. His limbs
were as numb as his mind.

“Merlin only knows where they
are, I bet you they think they're saving the fucking world when all
they're doing is giving the rest of us a bloody heart attack,”
Bill burst out, and his voice carried across the patch of land they
were searching. It stood close to the forest path which led to the
now-empty and defunct stadium.
“C'mere,” Charlie
reached out and wrapped his fingers around Bill's thin wrist, and
yanked him hard enough to swing his form against a tree.

Bill
landed with a thud and a surprised huff of air from his mouth, and
then he frowned. “Charlie?”
“Just, shh,”
Charlie admonished, and herded closer, so that Bill had no choice but
to be trapped between his brother and the tree.
“We can't,”
Bill paled.
“We're not doing anything,” Charlie
insisted, putting his hands on Bill's shoulders. “But you need
to calm down, because you're going to be no use to anybody if you
have a paddy, are you?”

There was no reply but azure
eyes shuttered away and Charlie heard the deep sucking of air into
Bill's system.

“That's it,” he leant forward and
ghosted a kiss over the tip of Bill's perfectly straight nose, and
didn't pull away again.

Checking they were alone, Charlie let
his fingers wander over Bill's mud splattered band t-shirt, slipping
the tips beneath the hem. Playing in the hair there, he crept upwards
until his entire hand was flat to Bill's chest, and he could feel a
rapidly beating heart though bone and flesh.

Bill finally
opened his eyes and looked at him, appearing every bit as tired as
Charlie felt. When their lips met, it was slow and careful; sweet,
Charlie would have said, had he not known the both of them better.
Licking at Bill's lower lip, he kept his eyes open to watch the way
that Bill's shut again, and how his long eyelashes made him almost
feminine in the darkness.

They didn't see each other enough,
and such moments made him realise it. Breaking off the kiss, Charlie
whispered, “I love you,” and rested his forehead against
Bill's.

Azure eyes blinked at him, twice, and then Bill's lips
parted. No words came out. Charlie blushed.

“This will
be a war soon, right?” he shrugged. “We're both going to
join that Order wotsit that Dumbledore's thinking about reforming.
We'll both be in a war, Bill... and in wars, don't people say mad
things but they do mean them, they just wouldn't have said
them without the possibility of dying before they got the
chance?”
“Nobody's dying,” Bill's grip on him
suddenly became iron-tight. “None of us. No, Charlie.”
“Calm
down,” Charlie kept his voice soothing, but inside it stung to
see how riled Bill could become on the subject of their family. It
didn't help him to convince himself that his brother had found
happiness in moving to Egypt. Knowing he was living there in
discontent created guilt for how much Charlie loved living away from
England.

“I love you too,” Bill murmured.
“Shit.”

Charlie staggered as Bill pushed him away,
and his hand fell from the confines of the taller wizard's top. He
was suddenly shivering.

“People,” Bill hissed, and
they began walking again, side-by-side, under the pretence of
continuing their search.
“Found anything?” One of the
approaching party called.
“Nothing,” Bill shook his
head defeatedly. “Floor's too muddy for footprints, magic
sensory spells are scrambled by the ambience...”

Charlie
zoned out of the conversation and buried his hands deep in his
pockets, looking down between his feet. There in the mud something
glinted, and he frowned, nudging his foot against it. The other party
turned away and he ducked, plucking the small gold object from the
floor. With it trailed a long, delicately linked chain. Holding his
wandlight to it, he saw that it was a Christian cross, set with a
delicate ruby at each of the four tips. He frowned, wondering what
the Muggle emblem was doing on the floor considering the influx of
wizardry that had occupied the field for the past week.

But
when he looked up, Charlie caught sight of the ring in the muddy
field which had not yet been obliterated, where the Death Eaters had
stood as they tormented the muggle owner of the field and his family.
The cross looked old, possibly antique, and he felt sick as it dawned
that the jewellery had probably slipped from the neck of an
upside-down victim.

“Bill, look at this,” he held
it out. “On the floor.”
“Muggle,” Bill
said immediately as he took it, testing the weight of the gold in his
palm. “Good quality, too, nice rubies...”
“Should
we take it back to the house, d'you think?”

A grave look
came over his brother's face as he shook his head. “Their
memories have been so modified they've had to reprogramme their
names, Char. Horrible.”
“Oh,” Charlie frowned,
and reached for the necklace and unlocked the clasp. “Call
it... though it's sick, treasure, then.”

He slipped the
chain around Bill's neck and tucked the cross beneath the neck of his
t-shirt. Bill looked dazed, and his large fingers came up to rest
over the spot where the cross rested on his chest. Charlie gave him a
small, sad smile, and leant forward to kiss him
again.

“MORSMORDRE!”

A mass of green
erupted in the sky, and they both gaped at it, kiss forgotten, as it
formed into a skull.
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