Reason (R, Fred/George, Fred/Harry)
I can't believe I made it before the deadline. Anyway, new HP fic, written for the A Family Affair fuh-q-fest.
REASON (28/8/04)
Mum will go spare if we bring it up now…
You take it for granted that George is your voice of reason, because if you can’t trust your own opinion then his is the next best thing.
Moving out of the Burrow was definitely something the two of you had discussed almost endlessly and in quiet snatches between stock purchases and working out the final layout of the shop, but when the time came, the gap between telling and doing, there was chaos at 12 Grimmauld Place and then further beyond, ripples of panic and anxiety, and it seemed like the worst time ever. In fact, in the fuss surrounding everyone but the two of you, it had almost seemed reasonable to quietly move the few possessions from the rooms you shared - at the Burrow, at the headquarters - and into the tiny but sufficient flat right above the premises of your new shop.
In the immediate aftermath, you huddle against each other, George’s body around you and blocking the worst of the Howler, your body doing the same for him. Molly’s voice is terrible and ferocious, and worse, loud enough that any workers late into the night on Diagon Alley will hear that you’re not really business ready to make your own way in the world, but two boys still being chastised by your mother. George was wrong - she’s gone spare anyway.
A Weasley account with that much money in it? What if they ask Bill about it...maybe it’s better kept with us…
The goblins give you such looks of distrust - worse that the full force of every Hogwarts teacher you’ve ever had rolled into one, George reckons - but the money is yours honestly, and it legitimises the two of you as rich men in your own right. Once in its vault though, the money looks remarkably little, frighteningly small. You catch George eyeing it intensely, as if it would melt away sitting there if it wasn’t watched by at least one of you, like that tricky gold back at the World Cup.
“We could take it home - it’s not too late - ” he mumbles, but you’re as determined as he is hesitant; as if he has taken all the worry, and in the pageant of Fred’n’George it’s now up to you to bolster with all the confidence.
“I bet we can turn that into four times the amount within the year,” you boast, too loud, voice bouncing off the wall, amplified in volume and even arrogance, it seems. As if agreeing with you - or maybe the echo is mocking.
George slides closer to you. “Harry could afford to just give us the money…Merlin, imagine what his vault looks like,” he says wistfully. You put your arm around his waist, watch him tuck into the embrace. “When our shop’s eclipsed Zonko’s in the prank business, Harry’s vault is going to be seriously dwarfed by ours, I promise,” you say without malice. George turns his head into your neck, snuffles with laughter, warm and like a kiss.
Harry’s a good kid, but he’d be a bit of an innocent without us, I reckon…
You joke that he’s your financial backer, but both of you mean it, and you try to be as grateful as you know how to be. You talk about free samples and a cut of the earnings when they come, and George comes up with the idea of keeping Harry informed with the business in every new quarter. You’re so sick of the paperwork that you jump at the chance to get out of the tiny shop, your tiny flat, even as George’s face falls in acquiescence.
You apparate just outside Hogwarts and hurry towards The Hog’s Head, keeping your face down and avoiding the clumps of students wandering down the streets. You’ve still successfully dodging all questions about the initial capital for the business, but as your business thrives - true to your promise to George, the vault at Gringotts is growing nicely in silver and even galleons - the focus shifts slowly but surely away from the secret partnership. Harry only agreed to spend his Hogsmeade weekend with you once he determined Ron and Hermione to be too occupied to notice him slipping away. The Hog’s Head is as dank and odd-smelling as you remember, the glasses dustier than even at home, but you think you understand Harry’s need for dark corners and tucked-away booths.
Harry slides into the seat beside you with teenage louche. He doesn’t look unhappy but Molly continues to hint, and Ginny writes, that he’s brooding on last year. You’re sure both of you will skirt around that issue, so it’s a pleasant light conversation instead. You spend some time speculating what various teachers might be up to (the Order is never mentioned aloud); then Harry whinges about persecution from Snape, the Malfoy git, even the odd passionately swayed Ravenclaw. You commiserate, and embroider, and reminisce, in turn.
After a second round of drinks, Harry’s face is flushed. He’s pushed up closer to you, though this is necessary to hear each other, your voices lowered for the more sensitive topics. He looks at you with bright eyes over the rim of his glasses, leans in a little more, and says quite clearly, “Tell me about the new line of Skiving Snackboxes, Fred; Ron said you wrote to him about it.”
You open your mouth to begin your spiel - not yet perfected, but the enthusiasm is there - when you feel his hand in the crease of your thigh, sliding across the material to grasp at your cock. The words die in the gasp, the exhalation. “Harry - ” you say, shocked.
He doesn’t remove his hand, nor does the mild expression leave his face. He says, “Of course, Ron’s not going to put your ad in the common room, he wouldn’t dare go against Hermione - but it would be good if a few copies were made and then circulated around the students, wouldn’t it?” As he speaks, friendly and interested, his hand slides under the waist of your trousers, a firm grip around you, stroking with slightly roughened fingers, steady and exciting all in one.
“I - Ah, we’ve come up with new things to put in the boxes, different symptoms so Madam Pomfrey can’t identify the fakers on sight anymore?” There’s a breathless, questing, quality to your voice that you can’t help. You haven’t had a girl since you moved out of home - the reason a jumble in your mind of managing the shop, earning money, no time, and for some unfathomable reason, George - and the effect of having someone’s skin against you, rough and sure, is an almost forgotten sensation that might just be too much right now.
Harry just nods at your words though, urges, “Go on,” calmly, even as he adds a vicious flick to the movement of his hand, smiling shyly at your response.
“There’s - dammit - there’s some gadgets too, joke prosthetics and tricks, George - ahh - thinks we shouldn’t specialise in sweets only but I’m not so sure - ” you break off in a slight pant, to gather yourself in the moment, before continuing, “- but definitely, we’d like to see the new snackboxes out by Easter. There’s even - even a Epilepsy Egg in there, chocolate of course,” you choke out a laugh, “and we’ll change the look of the boxes too so they can’t be recognised for what they are - oh, fuck.”
Harry has been listening to you, not so much the business details but the hitches in your speech, the gaps of desire. You are so close and he knows it - his fingers tighten around you, urgent. He puts his mouth to the line of your neck, just below your ear, and leaves a teasing kiss. “That’s fascinating,” he says softly, with mock sincerity, and you stiffen and come with the tone of his voice; warm and sticky in his hand, under your clothes. No one is looking your way, but if they were, all they would see would be one boy whispering to another, a brief moment of friendly intimacy.
The resounding crack as you apparate unsteadily right into the corner of your kitchen table that afternoon grabs George’s attention, not to mention the effect of the trail of expletives that follow.
“How was Harry?” George asks, curious and eager for news.
“Um, good,” you say evasively, hobbling as fast as you can for the shower, wash away the smell of the pub and yourself and Harry’s gesture. “I think he - he’s interested in helping us spread the word about the new line.”
“Oh, great,” George says, head back down, engrossed in the newspaper. You duck into the bathroom and close your eyes, heart racing, feeling guilty for no reason your can discern.
I don’t think we can live like this…
No one’s ever taught you - you, or him - how to look after a home, how to look after another person. The first few weeks in the flat are a nightmare of charred or frozen or criminally undercooked or even no meals, dust and grime that becomes threatening every time magic is performed, and four pieces of furniture in total: a workbench which doubles as a dining table, resulting in five separate incidents of accidental ingestion of key ingredients of their products; two mismatched chairs; and one bed that seems to fit precisely one and half people on its length and width.
In comparison, the shop is easy. Sure, creditors are always paid at the last moment, one line unfortunately wipes itself out along with the adjoining wall of the shop next door, it takes a while to build up a market apart from mail-order by Hogwarts students; but between the two of you, hard bargains are struck, glib sales pitches are made, and soon the bell at the door of the shop (one of George’s pet projects, surprising customers with a range of loud noises at inopportune moments) is mooing and cawing and welcoming stunned looking people who readily part with their money.
Each morning, you wake and roll over to a narrow empty space. You don’t think you’ve ever seen George asleep or lying abed since moving in, he’s unnaturally a morning person. The theory is that one cooks while the other washes. The truth is that you’ve had dinner in the Leaky Cauldron though it’s not really feasible by the budget you half-heartedly drew up at the start, and cold cereal for breakfast the last two weeks but you’re going to run out of clean bowls soon. You’re waiting for George to crack and mutter the spell so the pile of dirty cutlery and dishes in the sink will clean themselves up; it’s always grudgingly done though, and the petulance insinuates into the fabric of the spell so that chips appear on the edge of saucers, and the saucepan has a pattern of nasty scratches on its cooking surface.
It’s not just the kitchen that gests unbearably messy, and the last big clean-up was a month ago. Molly forgave you fairly quickly, but you still waited before inviting your family to visit and really, it was a rather ridiculous to see how your family squeezed into the tiny flat. You’d taken the new catalogues back down into the shop, thrown unwashed clothes into closets, and tucked more incriminating items deep into the corners, but you knew your mother could still detect the mess burgeoning behind doors by the frown on her face when she thought you weren’t looking. You’re not certain, but you suspect that every week since she floos into the flat while the two of you are at work and tidies up surreptitiously. There’s never enough cleaning to say for sure, but you keep certain things in a locked drawer under the counter of shop instead, just in case.
So neither of you ever come home to a hearty meal already prepared, nor to a clean house, but after dinner you always find yourself spread out on the rug at home with George by your side, talking excitedly, happily, about your thoughts over the day, new things you can try for the shop and the products, dreaming of what is sure to come. By the end of the night, you are inevitably touching or tangled together, George’s head on your shoulder or in your lap, his body warm against you, your voices and ideas weaving neatly.
What - don’t - this isn’t - Fred I think we - oh!
It’s the temptation of one bed that gives you away in the end. Awaking to hands comfortable on George’s skin, spooned in sleep because it’s the best way to fit, sticky bodies pressed together in innocence on nights when even the slow enchanted fan you buy from the shop four doors down cannot blow away the heatwave. It tricks you into thinking there’s nothing odd in sleeping so close to your twin that you are almost him with extra arms and a head, nothing odd in waking up with your lips mumbling against his shoulder and legs scissored between his. Possibly not even odd when you sleepily roll on top of him, completing the embrace, kissing the line of his collarbone, a trail to his lips, eyes lidded. It feels, maybe, just like another morning except a little closer to your dreams in sleep.
There’s panic in his voice as he objects, but it fades into a sigh of surprise, and his arms stay locked about you, and even as the words drift away you can feel one hand caressing from shoulder to waist, your bare skin, a soft touch. You take it as reassurance, as you also take the kisses he returns, stronger with each moment. Neither of you are wearing much to speak of, and what remains is removed soon after, until he’s rubbing against you, hard on your thigh, palm flexed flat at the base of your arching back.
“Fred - ” he gasps, warns, as he holds you closer, pulls you down and comes with a final thrust, eyes wide and finally shocked. You finish almost lazily, nudging at him with the increments of your grin, kissing him warmly in the moment. The sun is spilling through the window in fast bright waves, and you laugh as you realise that for the first time, George will be late to work. But it doesn’t matter to you one bit, and you’re glad that sometimes you go right ahead and do what you want. George might be your voice of reason, but you’ve come to notice he’s not always right, luckily.
END
The twins move out of the Burrow and into a flat above their joke shop, and Fred copes with several new experiences.
REASON (28/8/04)
Mum will go spare if we bring it up now…
You take it for granted that George is your voice of reason, because if you can’t trust your own opinion then his is the next best thing.
Moving out of the Burrow was definitely something the two of you had discussed almost endlessly and in quiet snatches between stock purchases and working out the final layout of the shop, but when the time came, the gap between telling and doing, there was chaos at 12 Grimmauld Place and then further beyond, ripples of panic and anxiety, and it seemed like the worst time ever. In fact, in the fuss surrounding everyone but the two of you, it had almost seemed reasonable to quietly move the few possessions from the rooms you shared - at the Burrow, at the headquarters - and into the tiny but sufficient flat right above the premises of your new shop.
In the immediate aftermath, you huddle against each other, George’s body around you and blocking the worst of the Howler, your body doing the same for him. Molly’s voice is terrible and ferocious, and worse, loud enough that any workers late into the night on Diagon Alley will hear that you’re not really business ready to make your own way in the world, but two boys still being chastised by your mother. George was wrong - she’s gone spare anyway.
A Weasley account with that much money in it? What if they ask Bill about it...maybe it’s better kept with us…
The goblins give you such looks of distrust - worse that the full force of every Hogwarts teacher you’ve ever had rolled into one, George reckons - but the money is yours honestly, and it legitimises the two of you as rich men in your own right. Once in its vault though, the money looks remarkably little, frighteningly small. You catch George eyeing it intensely, as if it would melt away sitting there if it wasn’t watched by at least one of you, like that tricky gold back at the World Cup.
“We could take it home - it’s not too late - ” he mumbles, but you’re as determined as he is hesitant; as if he has taken all the worry, and in the pageant of Fred’n’George it’s now up to you to bolster with all the confidence.
“I bet we can turn that into four times the amount within the year,” you boast, too loud, voice bouncing off the wall, amplified in volume and even arrogance, it seems. As if agreeing with you - or maybe the echo is mocking.
George slides closer to you. “Harry could afford to just give us the money…Merlin, imagine what his vault looks like,” he says wistfully. You put your arm around his waist, watch him tuck into the embrace. “When our shop’s eclipsed Zonko’s in the prank business, Harry’s vault is going to be seriously dwarfed by ours, I promise,” you say without malice. George turns his head into your neck, snuffles with laughter, warm and like a kiss.
Harry’s a good kid, but he’d be a bit of an innocent without us, I reckon…
You joke that he’s your financial backer, but both of you mean it, and you try to be as grateful as you know how to be. You talk about free samples and a cut of the earnings when they come, and George comes up with the idea of keeping Harry informed with the business in every new quarter. You’re so sick of the paperwork that you jump at the chance to get out of the tiny shop, your tiny flat, even as George’s face falls in acquiescence.
You apparate just outside Hogwarts and hurry towards The Hog’s Head, keeping your face down and avoiding the clumps of students wandering down the streets. You’ve still successfully dodging all questions about the initial capital for the business, but as your business thrives - true to your promise to George, the vault at Gringotts is growing nicely in silver and even galleons - the focus shifts slowly but surely away from the secret partnership. Harry only agreed to spend his Hogsmeade weekend with you once he determined Ron and Hermione to be too occupied to notice him slipping away. The Hog’s Head is as dank and odd-smelling as you remember, the glasses dustier than even at home, but you think you understand Harry’s need for dark corners and tucked-away booths.
Harry slides into the seat beside you with teenage louche. He doesn’t look unhappy but Molly continues to hint, and Ginny writes, that he’s brooding on last year. You’re sure both of you will skirt around that issue, so it’s a pleasant light conversation instead. You spend some time speculating what various teachers might be up to (the Order is never mentioned aloud); then Harry whinges about persecution from Snape, the Malfoy git, even the odd passionately swayed Ravenclaw. You commiserate, and embroider, and reminisce, in turn.
After a second round of drinks, Harry’s face is flushed. He’s pushed up closer to you, though this is necessary to hear each other, your voices lowered for the more sensitive topics. He looks at you with bright eyes over the rim of his glasses, leans in a little more, and says quite clearly, “Tell me about the new line of Skiving Snackboxes, Fred; Ron said you wrote to him about it.”
You open your mouth to begin your spiel - not yet perfected, but the enthusiasm is there - when you feel his hand in the crease of your thigh, sliding across the material to grasp at your cock. The words die in the gasp, the exhalation. “Harry - ” you say, shocked.
He doesn’t remove his hand, nor does the mild expression leave his face. He says, “Of course, Ron’s not going to put your ad in the common room, he wouldn’t dare go against Hermione - but it would be good if a few copies were made and then circulated around the students, wouldn’t it?” As he speaks, friendly and interested, his hand slides under the waist of your trousers, a firm grip around you, stroking with slightly roughened fingers, steady and exciting all in one.
“I - Ah, we’ve come up with new things to put in the boxes, different symptoms so Madam Pomfrey can’t identify the fakers on sight anymore?” There’s a breathless, questing, quality to your voice that you can’t help. You haven’t had a girl since you moved out of home - the reason a jumble in your mind of managing the shop, earning money, no time, and for some unfathomable reason, George - and the effect of having someone’s skin against you, rough and sure, is an almost forgotten sensation that might just be too much right now.
Harry just nods at your words though, urges, “Go on,” calmly, even as he adds a vicious flick to the movement of his hand, smiling shyly at your response.
“There’s - dammit - there’s some gadgets too, joke prosthetics and tricks, George - ahh - thinks we shouldn’t specialise in sweets only but I’m not so sure - ” you break off in a slight pant, to gather yourself in the moment, before continuing, “- but definitely, we’d like to see the new snackboxes out by Easter. There’s even - even a Epilepsy Egg in there, chocolate of course,” you choke out a laugh, “and we’ll change the look of the boxes too so they can’t be recognised for what they are - oh, fuck.”
Harry has been listening to you, not so much the business details but the hitches in your speech, the gaps of desire. You are so close and he knows it - his fingers tighten around you, urgent. He puts his mouth to the line of your neck, just below your ear, and leaves a teasing kiss. “That’s fascinating,” he says softly, with mock sincerity, and you stiffen and come with the tone of his voice; warm and sticky in his hand, under your clothes. No one is looking your way, but if they were, all they would see would be one boy whispering to another, a brief moment of friendly intimacy.
The resounding crack as you apparate unsteadily right into the corner of your kitchen table that afternoon grabs George’s attention, not to mention the effect of the trail of expletives that follow.
“How was Harry?” George asks, curious and eager for news.
“Um, good,” you say evasively, hobbling as fast as you can for the shower, wash away the smell of the pub and yourself and Harry’s gesture. “I think he - he’s interested in helping us spread the word about the new line.”
“Oh, great,” George says, head back down, engrossed in the newspaper. You duck into the bathroom and close your eyes, heart racing, feeling guilty for no reason your can discern.
I don’t think we can live like this…
No one’s ever taught you - you, or him - how to look after a home, how to look after another person. The first few weeks in the flat are a nightmare of charred or frozen or criminally undercooked or even no meals, dust and grime that becomes threatening every time magic is performed, and four pieces of furniture in total: a workbench which doubles as a dining table, resulting in five separate incidents of accidental ingestion of key ingredients of their products; two mismatched chairs; and one bed that seems to fit precisely one and half people on its length and width.
In comparison, the shop is easy. Sure, creditors are always paid at the last moment, one line unfortunately wipes itself out along with the adjoining wall of the shop next door, it takes a while to build up a market apart from mail-order by Hogwarts students; but between the two of you, hard bargains are struck, glib sales pitches are made, and soon the bell at the door of the shop (one of George’s pet projects, surprising customers with a range of loud noises at inopportune moments) is mooing and cawing and welcoming stunned looking people who readily part with their money.
Each morning, you wake and roll over to a narrow empty space. You don’t think you’ve ever seen George asleep or lying abed since moving in, he’s unnaturally a morning person. The theory is that one cooks while the other washes. The truth is that you’ve had dinner in the Leaky Cauldron though it’s not really feasible by the budget you half-heartedly drew up at the start, and cold cereal for breakfast the last two weeks but you’re going to run out of clean bowls soon. You’re waiting for George to crack and mutter the spell so the pile of dirty cutlery and dishes in the sink will clean themselves up; it’s always grudgingly done though, and the petulance insinuates into the fabric of the spell so that chips appear on the edge of saucers, and the saucepan has a pattern of nasty scratches on its cooking surface.
It’s not just the kitchen that gests unbearably messy, and the last big clean-up was a month ago. Molly forgave you fairly quickly, but you still waited before inviting your family to visit and really, it was a rather ridiculous to see how your family squeezed into the tiny flat. You’d taken the new catalogues back down into the shop, thrown unwashed clothes into closets, and tucked more incriminating items deep into the corners, but you knew your mother could still detect the mess burgeoning behind doors by the frown on her face when she thought you weren’t looking. You’re not certain, but you suspect that every week since she floos into the flat while the two of you are at work and tidies up surreptitiously. There’s never enough cleaning to say for sure, but you keep certain things in a locked drawer under the counter of shop instead, just in case.
So neither of you ever come home to a hearty meal already prepared, nor to a clean house, but after dinner you always find yourself spread out on the rug at home with George by your side, talking excitedly, happily, about your thoughts over the day, new things you can try for the shop and the products, dreaming of what is sure to come. By the end of the night, you are inevitably touching or tangled together, George’s head on your shoulder or in your lap, his body warm against you, your voices and ideas weaving neatly.
What - don’t - this isn’t - Fred I think we - oh!
It’s the temptation of one bed that gives you away in the end. Awaking to hands comfortable on George’s skin, spooned in sleep because it’s the best way to fit, sticky bodies pressed together in innocence on nights when even the slow enchanted fan you buy from the shop four doors down cannot blow away the heatwave. It tricks you into thinking there’s nothing odd in sleeping so close to your twin that you are almost him with extra arms and a head, nothing odd in waking up with your lips mumbling against his shoulder and legs scissored between his. Possibly not even odd when you sleepily roll on top of him, completing the embrace, kissing the line of his collarbone, a trail to his lips, eyes lidded. It feels, maybe, just like another morning except a little closer to your dreams in sleep.
There’s panic in his voice as he objects, but it fades into a sigh of surprise, and his arms stay locked about you, and even as the words drift away you can feel one hand caressing from shoulder to waist, your bare skin, a soft touch. You take it as reassurance, as you also take the kisses he returns, stronger with each moment. Neither of you are wearing much to speak of, and what remains is removed soon after, until he’s rubbing against you, hard on your thigh, palm flexed flat at the base of your arching back.
“Fred - ” he gasps, warns, as he holds you closer, pulls you down and comes with a final thrust, eyes wide and finally shocked. You finish almost lazily, nudging at him with the increments of your grin, kissing him warmly in the moment. The sun is spilling through the window in fast bright waves, and you laugh as you realise that for the first time, George will be late to work. But it doesn’t matter to you one bit, and you’re glad that sometimes you go right ahead and do what you want. George might be your voice of reason, but you’ve come to notice he’s not always right, luckily.
END
The twins move out of the Burrow and into a flat above their joke shop, and Fred copes with several new experiences.