Salt and Pepper Fest: Have You Ever? (Harry/Charlie; NC-17)

[hpgoldenage_mod]

Title: Have You Ever?
Author: doubleapple
Characters/Pairings: Harry Potter/Charlie Weasley
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~9,300
Content/Warning(s): HP Golden Age, older Harry Potter, bisexual Harry Potter, super-hot Charlie Weasley, dragons, thestrals, hurt/comfort, drinking, kissing, making out, hand jobs, mutual masturbation, first time, explicit consent, hint of a hand kink, fluff and smut, the Burrow, sentient houses, past Harry/Ginny, no hating on Ginny, guilt and trauma, post-war, Battle of Hogwarts, HP: Epilogue compliant
Summary/Prompt: Half a lifetime ago, Harry spent an awful summer in Romania with Charlie Weasley. Now, he’s determined to follow up on the seeds that were planted back then. For the prompt, "Never too old for your first same-sex experience."
A/N: Huge thanks to Q — for the beta read, the enthusiasm, and the appreciation for three decades of slow burn — and to N for the invaluable feedback. And thanks to the mods for running this great fest. All characters property of JK Rowling and Scholastic. Title from Brandi Carlile’s song of the same name; have a listen while you read.

Read at AO3 or below:

As Molly and Arthur Weasley got older, the Burrow's magic got wonkier.

New rooms would sprout overnight, popping out from the house wholesale, fully furnished and functional and as cozily decorated as if they'd been there for years. Old rooms would disappear, also usually in the middle of the night. Sometimes, a pyjama-clad great-grandchild or two would be dumped directly onto the wet grass of the garden.

Molly and Arthur were well into their eighties, spry as ever, and completely unconcerned about the new house magic. Arthur was rather chuffed, actually, particularly when the house gave him a new room off the kitchen full of broken Muggle cooking gadgets, but the younger generation wasn't well pleased. After the pyjama incident, James' partner had forbidden their five-year-old from sleepovers with her grandparents until it was cleared up.

So Harry had dropped by one night to see what he could do — nothing, as it turned out; the wards basically laughed at him, the Head Auror of Magical Britain, waving his wand about as the house ignored him completely — but he'd been invited back the next night, when, he was told, Charlie would be visiting.

Of course, Harry came back to the Burrow. Came back hopeful, if he was honest with himself. A few weeks ago, Harry had returned to London after a stint in Eastern Europe, where the Ministry has been looking into a dark artefact smuggling ring. It had been around for decades, pushed underground with the rest of the post-war detritus, and to bust it up, some Aurors had gone undercover. Harry hadn't been one of them. He left that to the junior Aurors; fieldwork was a young wizard's game, he thought a bit ruefully. But this case had been the first in a long while that he'd wanted to oversee in person.

It had ended well, and been rather refreshingly dull. Dull enough that while he was holed up somewhere in Estonia, he'd been restless and idle in the evenings. When he complained about it to one of the Aurors in his unit, she told him about a new gadget that everyone else was apparently already using: a very small, modified Vanishing cabinet set into a regular Floo. A wizard could put in a tiny token — in the shape of an owl, as a nod to the regular owlpost — and instantly send it anywhere on the same continent. After it arrived, its recipient would pull the token out and hold it on their palm to be read by magical signature, and then the sender's voice rang out, perfectly audible and distinct, as though they were standing right there and speaking clearly.

Harry only knew one person who was close enough to use it: Charlie Weasley.

Harry had owled Charlie the normal way, attempting to talk him into trying it out, and the first token that Charlie returned contained three minutes of scoffing at the name "Floodible." They sent messages back and forth a few times a week, which had been just enough to remind Harry how fantastic Charlie was. It was the most sustained contact they'd had since just after the war, when Harry had spent the summer with him at the dragon preserve in Romania. He didn't normally think about that summer much — it had been a difficult time, and Harry had always told himself he wasn't one to dwell.

But bits of it kept coming back him as he listened to Charlie's long, rambling, wonderful stories. He told Harry about his colleagues and his work and the dragons, in his low melodic voice, sometimes scratchy with exhaustion or ebullient when something had gone particularly well. Harry would send tokens back with stories of his own, which he knew were never remotely as entertaining as Charlie's. He found himself looking forward to the tokens appearing in the tiny Floo drawer, rushing to check it before he even took off his coat and boots when he came in at the end of the day.

Once, Charlie's voice had emerged sombre and a bit uncertain, alerting Harry right away something was wrong. He'd poured out a story of another handler who'd been attacked by werewolves, his magical core drained and his body left for dead in a remote forest. The man had been all right in the end, but Harry had found himself gripping the token like a lifeline — and the frisson of panic, the drop in his stomach when he recognised the worry in Charlie's voice, was his first clue that some feelings that had long lain dormant were becoming… less dormant.

Still, Harry hadn't realised what was going on in his own head until months later, in the middle of a long cold night. He could practically hear Charlie say, How thick are you, mate? as he lay back against his pillow panting, having jerked off while listening to Charlie's voice for the third night in a row. His cock was in his right hand and the token was clutched in his left, so hard that the imprint of an owl was still visible the next morning.

Harry thought of it and felt a shiver run through him now, after supper, sitting next to Charlie in front of a crackling fire. It had been a relatively small crowd that night — for the Burrow, anyway — just him and Charlie, Molly and Arthur, and Ron and Hermione's kids, who were both enrolled in university. They popped in often for food, and to take advantage of Molly's clever cleaning charms for their laundry. Tonight, Rose had been especially eager to tell Charlie about her dissertation research on rare chimaera breeds, some of which breathed fire and had dragons' tails attached to the bodies of elephants and Merlin knew what else.

After everyone else had gone off to bed, the soft stillness of the house gathered around Harry and Charlie, sitting alone downstairs in front of the fire. The scent of Molly's apple tart lingered in the air, mixing with the smell of the hearth and the firewhiskey Charlie'd poured from a bottle he'd brought back from some remote place in Scandinavia. It was far better than Ogden's, Harry thought, warm and spiced and sharp. He'd had rather a lot of it, but not quite enough for what he meant to propose. Yet. Liquid courage, he told himself, and took another sip.

Harry thought he could feel the house breathing, somehow, along with his sleeping family tucked away in their beds. It was freezing outside, very cold for April. Snow had fallen earlier in the day, but now an icy rain lashed the windows. The Burrow creaked and groaned in the wind, but — like many things, Harry knew — it was sturdier and more stubborn than it looked.

"Knut for your thoughts, Potter?"

Charlie's raised eyebrows and teasing smile suggested he had an idea of what Harry's thoughts were, and it sent a tiny jolt of panic through Harry. Fuck. Was he being that obvious already?

Harry rubbed at his jaw and said the first thing he could think of: "Er, d'you remember that Polynesian Whalefin, from the summer I was at the preserve?"

Charlie squinted and shook his head. "Not really. Jog my memory?"

"Purple," Harry said. "Ridiculously gigantic. Eminently memorable."

"Ah, right, purple. She was a beauty... released back into the wild ages ago. Too old to wreak much havoc now," Charlie said wistfully.

"She hated me. Tried to incinerate me on multiple occasions."

Charlie smiled. "Well, she didn't not hate you," he admitted, and Harry snorted in agreement.

"That's a major understatement." All the dragons had hated him, actually, not just the Whalefin. He'd hoped he'd have a kinship with them, the way Charlie did. But, to a one, the creatures had been skittish and wary and sometimes even aggressive toward him. Harry's magic had gone unstable and erratic directly after the war, and he'd worried that the dragons had been acting on own his deepest fears about himself — that Voldemort's absence inside of him meant some part of him was missing and he was deeply, irretrievably broken. When he thought about that summer, he felt the echo of the very real fear that he'd never be okay again.

Charlie sipped his drink and crossed his legs, long and lean, one foot on the opposite knee. "Don't be so hard on yourself, Potter. That Whalefin was a tough nut to crack."

"I'm glad she wasn't closer to my nuts when she singed my eyebrows off," he said, and Charlie laughed.

"Well, you got on beautifully with the thestrals, anyway," he said easily. "You practically lived in their paddock."

Harry had. The thestrals had reacted the opposite way from the dragons. They'd seemed drawn to Harry, their stately serenity absorbing some of the grief and pain he'd barely been able to carry alone. He spent long hours tending to them in their huge, open-air pen with shimmery healing wards surrounding it, trying to adjust to the strange new emptiness in his head.

He'd thought about Fred constantly and assumed Charlie had as well, but Harry had been too locked up to talk about it. He'd been afraid that if he started talking — started telling anyone how he was feeling about anything ever, really — he'd never be able to stop. His whole life, Harry had relied on silence as his armor, a lesson learned the hard way in a cold cupboard under the stairs, back when he was punished for making noise. He would rely on silence always, for better or worse.

"Gods, that was a shite summer," Charlie said ruefully. "I know it was ages ago, but I always meant to tell you I was sorry about it."

"Oh," Harry said, surprised. "I guess it was a bit awful, but it wasn't your fault. You seemed all right, anyway."

"Nope, I wasn't all right in the slightest. I'd never even seen the thestrals before," Charlie said. "Hadn't been able to, until Fred was killed. You were there when I saw them for the very first time."

He said it steadily and calmly, the way he said everything, but there was an old sadness in his eyes.

"Oh, really?" Harry could only remember one time Charlie had ever visited the thestrals' pen. It had been around dusk, right after Harry'd laid out huge cuts of meat for their dinner. One of them — his favorite, named Blistral, recovering from an injured wing — had looked up from his meal and whickered in the direction of the large gate. Charlie had appeared, looking pale and dirty, and then left again a moment later. Harry hadn't really thought it odd at the time.

"Yeah," Charlie said. "I only lasted, what, 15 seconds? I couldn't stand it."

"I'm sorry. I didn't realise you'd never seen them before."

"Nah, how could you have known?" Charlie turned the glass in his hand, looking at the scant inch of amber liquid still in the bottom.

Charlie had been 26 or 27 that summer, to Harry's 18. He'd seemed so adult, distant and impossibly cool and — in retrospect — dead sexy. Rough hide-leather gloves, workpants ripped at the knees, all shoulders and biceps and forearms… Harry had idolised him. It wasn't that much different now, if he was honest with himself; Charlie was still sexy, still a bit remote somehow. Still exciting.

"I thought you just didn't want to hang about with the thestrals. They can be a bit creepy," Harry said, after a short silence.

"No, I think I didn't want to be around myself, the way I felt when I was with them. It's all right now, but back then, I didn't know how to handle it."

"Me neither." Harry had been hiding that summer, really, from the press and from everyone, people who expected everything from him. It was suffocating, crushing, their expectations impossible to meet. Instead, he'd had only the watchful, patient eyes of the thestrals — who seemed to know everything and nothing at all. Half the time, he'd slept outside with them under the stars, pressed to their skeletal sides, feeling them breathe when he'd wake up in the night.

"Hm, maybe you didn't want to be around me, since I'd sort of gone feral. I don't recall any showers in our dormitories, and I wasn't really on top of cleaning charms at that point," Harry said, and Charlie laughed.

"It was nothing to do with you. I'd figured I'd be all right that night, but I wasn't. Went back to my room and cried my eyes out afterward."

Harry nodded. In his mind's eye, he saw a flash of Charlie that summer — all hard muscle and broad shoulders and impossible blazing-red hair, bent over in grief, alone. It stung. "I'm sorry," he said again, and Charlie shrugged, still lost in the memory.

"Nothing you could have done," he said, but Harry wasn't sure that was true. Maybe he and Charlie could have helped each other, somehow, instead of both feeling guilty that they hadn't been able to stand being back at the Burrow. They'd never spoken about it, and the other dragon handlers had been busy and purposeful — maybe intentionally respectful, Harry realised now — so they'd left him almost completely alone. It had been a kindness, in a way, but as the summer dragged on, some of his shock must have worn off. Harry had been relieved to go home, such as it was, back to Hogwarts, back to Ginny and his friends and pretending to care about his N.E.W.T.s. Pretending to just be a teenager finishing his schooling.

Since then, Charlie and Harry had only seen each other in the context of family dinners and such. They'd played a lot of Quidditch out in the garden, drank a fair amount of whiskey together, laughed and joked at Percy's expense. Throughout the kids' childhoods, Charlie had played the role of dutiful but slightly distant older uncle, and humored the kids with tales of dragons at his glamorous-sounding posts around the world, while Harry had dutifully risen in the ranks of the Ministry. And married and had a family, of course, but he didn't want to think about Ginny or the kids right now.

He ventured a glance over at Charlie, still lost in thought, leaning back from the heat of the fire. He was wearing a classic Molly sweater — an old one, by the looks of the frayed cuffs. They were pushed up to his elbows, revealing his strong forearms. Harry had noticed them the first time they'd ever met. He'd seen the burns and the scars, and the blisters and calluses on his hands, too. Back then, they'd seemed like proof of Charlie's impossible cool, and of how grown up he was, how much older and more adult.

Seven or eight years mattered a good sight more then, although Harry still felt the distance between them — in experience, he supposed, if not in years. Charlie was always bigger, stronger, kinder, braver, the best Seeker, the one who never required the spotlight. And fuck, but he was fit. Always had been. Harry could remember the very first time he'd ever touched Charlie, back when he'd swooped in to help with Norbert during first year. Maybe some little part of Harry had known, even then. A part he hadn't known to listen to until decades later, after he had shattered apart and the Weasleys had all helped put him back together again.

Harry jolted when Charlie finally broke their silence.

"Well, before we get too bloody maudlin down here, I'm going to turn in," he said, getting to his feet a bit stiffly and stretching tall, revealing a strip of his stomach that Harry wanted to lunge toward and touch.

Harry didn't want their talk to end on that note. Didn't want it to end at all, if he was honest with himself about what he was doing here tonight. Whatever he said now — even if Charlie turned him down outright — there was no going back. But it was time, finally, to say it.

"Er, hold up," Harry rubbed at the back of his neck and tried to calm himself down. Charlie knew he was bisexual; Harry had come out to all the Weasleys simultaneously at his 40th birthday party, loudly, after far too much of some sort of wicked neon-pink punch Teddy had mixed. Ginny had known years earlier, probably before Harry'd figured it out himself. They'd been separated for ages by then. But Harry didn't remember ever talking about it with Charlie specifically — not this way, anyway.

"Yes?" Charlie asked, still standing. He was smiling down at Harry now. Did he know what Harry wanted? Charlie's eyes crinkled at the corners and Harry's heart, his big Gryffindor heart that nonetheless was scared all the time, thumped in his chest.

"I'm, ah, I wondered if you'd fancy…" Harry trailed off.

"Another drink? No thanks, I'm already halfway in my cups." Charlie yawned and stretched, and fuck, he looked positively edible in the firelight. Charlie stretched his hands out toward the fire, and Harry pictured those hands on his—

"A shag," Harry blurted out, forcing himself to look straight at Charlie, and then fighting the urge to look away immediately.

Charlie went quite still.

"Do I fancy a shag," he said. A statement, not a question. He sat back down carefully and raised his almost-empty glass to catch the dregs of the firewhiskey. Flickering firelight glinted off the glass and he cleared his throat.

"I might," he said casually, his voice neutral. After another beat, he said, "Why? Or, at least, why now?"

Because I've been a coward far too long, Harry said to himself. Because I'm obsessed with your voice, because I wank to it all the time, because you're sitting here looking so beautiful in the firelight that I'm about to go out of my head.

"Because I liked talking to you over the Floodible," Harry said. "Your stories were brilliant, and I'd forgotten how much I liked you."

"I didn't forget," Charlie smiled. "I might have fancied you from afar for… well, for some time," he said, and fuck, Harry's mind supplied, Charlie Weasley was flirting with him. Not even obliquely. Openly. His pulse fluttered in his chest and he took a deep breath and started to speak, but Charlie was already asking, "D'you think Gin would mind?"

Harry had thought about this, quite a lot actually. "No, I don't. She's been with plenty of other people, including our old friends. And it's different with a brother, I know, but I can't picture her really being bothered after all this time. We were kids when we got together. We were practically still kids when we got divorced."

"How'd she react when you first got together with a bloke, then? Or another woman, for that matter, I guess."

"Well… she didn't react at all," Harry admitted. "She didn't have to, because I never did."

Charlie looked surprised. "Really? You've never been in another proper relationship, then? With a woman or a bloke," he clarified. "Er, obviously."

"No, I wouldn't say a proper relationship." Harry flashed back to the loo at a gay wizarding bar, to his awkward fumbles with hazy-faced strangers. They had never gotten very far.

"But you've had experiences with men, yeah?" Charlie looked slightly sceptical.

"Sure," Harry said, lying. He looked down at the now-empty glass in his hand and traced his thumb over its familiar geometric pattern.

"Sure," Charlie echoed, a mischievous smile spreading across his face. "Loads, I bet."

"Sure," Harry said again. Lying was never his strong suit, and Charlie Weasley had known him for a long time.

"How many, then?"

"Loads, like you said." Harry was grinning now too.

"Give me a number, Potter."

"Some."

"Some, as in… half a dozen?"

"Sure."

"Less than that? Three or four?"

"This is a merciless interrogation, Weasley. We should have recruited you for the Auror force."

Charlie laughed, and Harry saw an echo not of Ginny but of Ron in it, the way Charlie threw back his head and let the laughter start in his chest. The way he gave himself over to it, to the happiness of that moment.

Still chuckling, he asked, "So, only one or two blokes, then?"

Bloody hell, he still wasn't dropping it, and Harry didn't want to reply.

"One?" It seemed like Charlie had sobered up over the course of this conversation, and Harry sighed. Of course it would come to this.

"Merlin, you really want me to spell it out for you? Zero. None. I tried to, after Gin and I broke up, more than once, at the loo at a gay bar I tried a few times. But as soon as I'd get a bit — er, you know —"

"Turned on?"

"Sure." Harry croaked, humiliated, cheeks aflame. Merlin's saggy tits, he was blushing like a fucking teenager. He knew his face must be the color of the fire itself, and he hoped Charlie didn't notice. Harry barreled on.

"As soon as I'd get turned on, my glamour would fade. I couldn't hold the charm when I was feeling that way. Which meant that then I'd have to leave, immediately, before they could see my hair or my scar or anything. So, it, you know. Just never happened."

Laughter gone, Charlie leveled an inscrutable look at Harry. The stocking foot resting on his knee beat out a subtle little rhythm as he considered Harry, and he had the mad urge to grab Charlie's worn grey sock to stop it bouncing. Or maybe just a mad urge to touch his sock, his foot, his calf, any part of him that Harry could reach.

He gripped his glass harder instead, ran the other hand through his hair. Charlie was still staring and Harry couldn't meet his eyes now. This humiliating conversation was ending exactly the way he'd known it would would — except that Harry was bloody fucking turned on just by talking about this, some heady combination of shame and defiance fueling years of fantasies, even though he was a full adult. More than, even, and yet. His eyes wandered down as he tried to be casual, adjusting himself ever so slightly and reaching to pull a throw pillow onto his lap to hide his halfie. Desire mixed with uncertainty and firewhiskey and his thoughts about how the salt-and-pepper scratch of Charlie's stubble would feel under his hands.

Charlie cleared his throat. "Okay," he said, and Harry closed his eyes and let his head drop to the back of the couch with a thunk. He winced. He'd hoped they wouldn't really have to discuss this.

"So let me get this straight," Charlie started.

"As it were," Harry muttered, and Charlie laughed again. Warmth flared somewhere deep inside Harry; he really liked making Charlie Weasley laugh. He wanted to do it all the time.

"Every time you tried to pull, and have it off with some lucky bloke, you turned back into yourself and you ran away before they could realise you were Harry bloody Potter. So you've never—"

"Correct! Can we stop this line of inquiry now?" Harry filed that "lucky" away in some dim corner of his mind, but he couldn't stand it a moment longer. He couldn't believe he had to admit this to Charlie. Charlie, who'd probably slept with half the queer blokes on multiple continents, from Romania to Antarctica and back again, fuck.

"What about Muggles?" Charlie asked, and Harry began to get impatient.

"Have you had it off with any Muggles?" Harry's retort came too quickly, and Charlie raised his eyebrows before he shook his head.

"Well, then, you understand why I never tried it either. It feels like lying. And you never know for sure, anyway, if there's another wizard about."

"But who cares if another wizard knows? Why do you always think you owe people something?" Charlie objected, seeming a bit irritated himself now.

"Maybe this was a bad idea—" Harry began, a tight feeling beginning in his throat.

"No, it's a brilliant idea," Charlie said, and Harry's breath came quick again, "but first, I'd like to know: What about the things you owe yourself?"

"How do you mean?"

Charlie paused, and Harry could see him soften. "How do I mean? Potter. Harry. These kinds of things—" and he reached over and cupped Harry's cheek with one hand. It was rough, hard, yet impossibly gentle, unlike anything Harry'd ever felt before. The force of all he'd denied himself — a lifetime, really, of touch and kindness and love, crept up on him. He closed his eyes and leaned into Charlie's touch. He took a few breaths, surprised to find them a bit shaky.

"Someone who looks like you…" Charlie trailed off, and Harry wasn't sure what he meant. "I mean, forget 'looks like' — someone who is you… it's criminal. You deserved everything. Still do."

That sounded ridiculous and some part of Harry wanted to argue, but a bigger part of him wanted to just stop and stay in this delicate, tenuous moment. With his eyes still closed and Charlie's hand both gentle and rough on his face, with the possibility of what was coming, what he'd wanted for so long, laid out plainly.

But Charlie was still talking. "You've been divorced for, what, 20 years? That means—" Charlie stopped, and Harry didn't know if it was better or worse that he hadn't said the words.

Harry hadn't had sex in 22 years. Worse than, actually — he hadn't really been touched in 22 years. Not like this, anyway, not like the way Charlie's thumb was smoothing over his cheek, fingers on his neck, carding lightly through his hair. The word "caressing" sprang to Harry's mind — was this what that felt like?

"I know," Harry said, his voice rougher than he'd like. "It's been so long. And never with a bloke. It's a bit weird, I suppose."

"Weird?" Charlie said softly. His hand was moving now, tenderly, gently, around to the back of Harry's neck. "Don't be daft, Potter. It's not weird. In fact, it makes me… I want to…"

He trailed off again and seemed to lose his train of thought, and it was bloody hot to see his usual breezy composure shaken, and Harry couldn't think of anything but Charlie's hands. They were big. Unmistakably masculine. Warm and rough, chapped, even. He needs lotion, or better gloves, a moisturizing charm or something, Harry thought, a bit hysterically.

"I meant, I don't really think of it like that, not usually," Harry said. "Gin was always good to me. I had the kids, and my work. I had your family. I wasn't lonely."

"I was lonely. Am lonely, maybe." Charlie still looked distracted, like he was telling far more truth than he meant to. That hadn't occurred to Harry— Charlie had always had the dragons, and Harry had assumed he'd been with quite a lot of men. The family had met more than one of them, and he'd never imagined Charlie Weasley to be lonely.

"Don't look at me like that, Potter. You're the one who's been celibate for two decades—"

Harry laughed. "Stop it already with your bloody maths! And I hate that word, 'celibate.' Sounds like I'm a fucking nun."

"Well, not a fucking nun…" Charlie trailed off, his voice teasing, and ran his hand down to Harry's shoulder, then down his arm, and Harry shivered a bit. His touch felt so fucking good.

"Charlie Weasley, that was a bonafide dad joke. An R-rated one, but still."

"Come on, that was a brilliant joke," he said, eyes still alight. He brought a knee up onto the couch and leaned over to put both broad hands on Harry's shoulders and gently pull him closer, until their foreheads touched. Harry closed his eyes; Charlie smelled of whiskey and warmth, and somehow it all felt just a bit familiar. Harry tilted his head and kissed him.

It was almost chaste, just a gentle press of their lips together, mouths open just a bit. Charlie's hands were still on Harry's shoulders and they smoothed down his arms, and Charlie grasped both his hands. They broke apart, still impossibly gentle. Charlie's hands stayed wrapped around his.

"So, Potter, if you've waited 20 years to be with a man, you probably got very good at other things."

"Things? Ah… like pinochle, or bridge?" Harry's voice came out strained as he tried for another feeble joke.

Charlie looked confused, and Harry let out a quick laugh. He'd forgotten that wizards had no use for cards; he'd had several enjoyable evenings fleecing Ron at poker.

"Sorry, those are Muggle card games. I was… joking, or something. Never mind."

"Is that another dad joke, then?"

"No, more like a willfully obtuse joke. I knew what you meant."

Charlie's eyes crinkled with mischief. "So no need to spell it out, then? Because what I meant was wanking. Having one off. Rubbing one out. Tossing off. Masturbating."

"Right, thanks, I got it."

Charlie hummed thoughtfully. "Would you like to go on and show me, then?"

"What?" A current ran through Harry and his cock jerked at the thought of being touched right now, even by his own hand.

"I'd rather like to see what you've learned, you know. In all those years of practice."

"Oh." Harry felt himself smile nervously. An uncomfortable tightness was starting up in his throat, and it felt like the oxygen was leaving the room. Was Charlie asking… he was really supposed to just… touch himself?

Charlie seemed to notice his jitters and moved closer.

"Hey, if you want this, I want it too. Quite a lot, actually. But let's do it the way it feels right to you. As slowly as you care to go." The kinder Charlie was, the more nervous Harry got. At their age, to be anxious about this — and yet. Harry felt his chest tighten and his palms go clammy. How did you start this? Was he really going to—

Harry's head hurt, suddenly, and he took off his glasses to rub his eyes, blurring the room into an orange smudge, everything hazy and strange. Harry was still half-hard, too sensitive, on edge. He still wanted it, wanted Charlie, rather desperately, but that uneasy prickle kept growing stronger and now he felt panicky, half-blind and defenseless. The fire was too hot, and Charlie was so close to him, yet somehow he went cold. He froze, and Charlie noticed.

"All right, there, Potter?"

Harry tried to answer, tried to say yes, he was fine, but he wasn't. He felt the old armor of his silence clamp down around him like a physical shell. Harry didn't want the armor, he didn't — but the armor could only do one thing and he didn't get to choose. When he was scared, he protected himself. And he was scared now.

And Charlie Weasley knew the signs of fear, Harry realised, as he looked silently into his eyes. The animal instinct of it.

"Oh," Charlie said. The teasing was gone. "Let's, ah... let's slow down a bit, yeah? It's all right."

He edged away, and Harry was sorry for it. He felt worse without Charlie beside him, like he was fucking this up, irretrievably, after he'd waited and wanted all this time.

"D'you want to hear about what happened with that Whalefin?" Charlie asked, and Harry just nodded, not thinking.

Charlie began talking in a low, calm voice, and kept at it for a long while, long minutes when Harry at first just focussed on breathing, and then relaxed into the story. Slowly, the fear receded. By the time Charlie finished — and the dragon had been released back into its home at the bottom of some Pacific volcano — Harry found himself able to speak again.

"Sorry." He studied his hands, the fire, the wall opposite them. He couldn't look at Charlie. "That was… embarrassing."

"No worries, mate. Does it happen often?" Charlie asked.

"Not much anymore. Not for years," Harry said.

"Maybe I should be the one apologizing, then—" but Harry cut him off and found himself talking over Charlie, the words tumbling out over themselves.

"Can I touch you again? I mean, I'd really like to. Please," Harry added.

"Thought you'd never ask," Charlie said, those eyes crinkling at the corners again, and he let Harry reach over and pull his hand into his lap.

Without thinking, Harry mumbled, "Did you know… your hands… the very first time I ever met you. Even then, I noticed your hands."

"Really?" Charlie asked, and Harry nodded.

"Really."

And then Harry kissed him again, still slowly, impossibly so, but with a bit more intention this time. Harry explored his lips, his mouth, his tongue. He ran his hands up and down Charlie's arms, his strong shoulders, and gently pushed his hands up under Charlie's shirt. Maybe his body was softer than it had once been, but the broadness remained, the sense of heat and power beneath his skin.

Charlie pulled away quickly and held Harry a little off, as though he was worried he'd get too close and fall back under a spell.

"Wait, wait. You didn't say before… is this… okay?" Charlie asked, with some difficulty.

"Yes. Definitely. More than okay." Harry couldn't look away as Charlie ran a hand over his mouth and through his short, spiky gray hair. The ginger had faded a decade ago.

"All right. Yeah. With me too. I don't want to go too fast, Harry, I just... can I touch you? More, I mean?"

That tone of Charlie's — it had a hint of begging, even, and it went straight to Harry's cock.

"Yes," he said clearly, loudly. "Yes. Definitely yes." He launched himself back at Charlie, who caught him with a muffled "mmph" as they flopped over on the couch together. Charlie subtly shifted Harry's weight onto his right; his left leg had been amputated decades ago, in some impossibly brave and heroic dragon-related mishap, of course. His prosthetic was woven through with magic, and Harry hadn't thought of it in ages.

"Can't feel you on that side," Charlie mumbled, pulling away from Harry just far enough so they could talk. "Stay here," he added, kissing Harry again, repeating "stay" almost in a whisper, and it seemed to be about more than just his position.

They snogged again, in earnest now, tongues and teeth. Charlie was stretched out beneath him and Harry wasn't sure but he thought maybe he could feel Charlie's erection pressing up into his leg, and he moaned just a bit, low in his throat, and—

A loud pop, like a firecracker, sounded next to the fireplace. They were both up like a shot, scrambling for their wands before either of them could form a coherent thought. Harry's Auror instincts kicked in; he put his back up against Charlie's and whipped his head around to the stairs, the front door, the entryway to the kitchen. No one was there.

"What the fuck was that?" Charlie said quietly, and just then, Harry noticed a new darkness next to the fire. A small door was set into the wall, in the shadows.

Harry relaxed and lowered his wand, and laughed, low in his throat.

"The house made a new door?" Charlie asked, still on guard.

"Not just a door, a whole new room," Harry said. "Just for us, I think."

Charlie finally lowered his wand too, and a look of delight stole over his face. "Brilliant," he breathed, and moved toward it. He tugged Harry by the hand behind him, like a recalcitrant child, and pushed open the door.

The new room was dark, but as they stepped inside, floating candles flickered to life. They lit up a tiny high-ceilinged room, painted a rich gold color. One wall had a huge window, one had a small hearth with a glowing fire, and the other was bare. Above them, more candles floated against a dark ceiling that echoed the sky.

"D'you know what I notice?" Charlie asked, almost in a whisper, his voice almost reverent. "Or, rather, what I don't notice?"

"What?" Harry was so conscious of how warm Charlie's hand was in his, how the room had a slight chill to it that made him want to get closer.

"There are no portraits or photos. There's nothing on the walls."

And Harry knew, right away, what he meant. Unlike the Burrow's living room, this tiny hideaway was almost completely without decoration — no furniture or trinkets at all, no ornaments save the candles. And no photos meant there was nothing, no one, to watch them. No photo of Percy looking officious with his prefect's badge pinned to his Hogwarts robes, or George holding a baby in his arms, or a triumphant Ginny after winning the Quidditch World Cup. No photo of the whole Weasley family grinning in Egypt, or on horseback at the Grand Canyon, or camping in the Lake District with a threadbare extendable tent behind them.

In fact, there was nothing at all in the tiny room except the candles and several large plush cushions on the floor.

"The house made a shagging room for us," Harry said, still holding onto Charlie's hand. He was wasn't sure whether to be amused or amazed or a bit creeped out at the Burrow's uncanny ability to channel magic.

"The house wants what the house wants." Charlie shrugged, smiling, palms up.

"I don't think that's exactly how the saying goes," Harry said, but he walked directly into Charlie's arms and cut him off with a kiss before he could respond.

He kept going, too, backing Charlie up against a wall and kissing him madly, for a long moment, feeling his cock harden more as he pressed their bodies flush together, all heat and want, now.

"I think we're meant to just be on the floor, then?" Harry rubbed a hand across his jaw and motioned to the large plush cushion on the floor, easily big enough for both of them to lie down on. He suddenly, desperately, wanted Charlie's hands back on him. "Would you rather a bed or something? We don't have to stay here, just because the room appeared. We could go up to your room, or Apparate back to mine—"

"Not a chance," Charlie says, lowering himself down on the cushion. "I love the shagging room. And I've had too much whiskey for Apparition, besides, and I've almost got my hand in your pants, finally, after all these years — I'm not about to risk Splinching myself now."

Harry laughed again. In all his fantasizing about Charlie Weasley, all the layers of desire, he'd forgotten how funny he was. He liked how all of this could be funny, even as "celibate for twenty years" still rang in his ears and grated on his nerves.

Harry sat down across from him, both knees cracking, far clumsier than Charlie. And gathering all the Gryffindor courage he could find, keeping their eyes locked the whole time, Harry brought his own hand up to Charlie's face. He traced it just the way Charlie had traced his.

After a moment of lingering on the stubble along his jaw, the cheekbones, those perfect eye creases, Harry pulled Charlie's hand up to his mouth and kissed each finger. Slowly, slowly, Charlie pressed his thumb onto Harry's lips, just the barest hint of pressure, and Harry drew it into his mouth, nipped at the pad of it. Charlie closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them, a flicker of desire burned hot and bright. Charlie took a deep, unsteady breath. When Harry licked the palm of his hand — broad, warm, rough — Charlie shut his eyes again and Harry felt him shudder.

Harry couldn't stand it for one more moment. He grabbed the back of Charlie's neck and brought their lips together in a hard kiss, different from the others, nearly crashing their skulls together. Harry pulled him down so they were lying next to each other, and it was clumsy and off-balance when Harry pulled away.

"Sorry, sorry, I don't know what I'm doing…" Harry's voice sounded rough and low, unfamiliar even to his own ears.

"I know, I know, and it's perfect," he said. "It's fucking perfect. You're perfect. You—"

Harry kissed him again, so hard their teeth clicked, his tongue insistent, meeting Charlie's eagerly. Charlie broke away, breathless.

"Merlin, Potter, you're killing me. I'm your first, yeah? Fuck. I like that."

"You do?" Harry asked, breathless too, and wanting.

Charlie's hands rucked up under his shirt, all roughness and heat. "Yes. It's not weird. It's the opposite of weird. No one before me."

"Right. You're my first," Harry repeated. "I've never… it's you, Charlie." The same things that had terrified him — that had made him hesitate all these years — were those things that could make Charlie want him more?

As though he could read his thoughts, Charlie growled, a filthy groan low in his throat, and tangled one hand up into Harry's hair. With his other hand, Charlie cast a lubrication charm, wandless, while still snogging him. The rush of his magic was so bloody hot that Harry groaned too — he could cast wandlessly himself, and Hermione was just as casual about it, but… context, his mind supplied wildly, never in this fucking amazing context, wrapped around another person, the rush and heat of Charlie's effortless magic somehow coursing through his own body and making Harry feel every point of contact between them.

He rolled his hips, just once, wanting something to rut against. Charlie pulled back; they were both panting and the look of desire on Charlie's face was going to make Harry go spare. He idea that Charlie wanted him, him, that this was happening right now — some deeply buried part of himself (twenty years, his mind supplied) was waking up.

Getting bolder now, Harry slotted his leg between Charlie's and was rewarded with a hard roll of the hips in response. Charlie kissed and sucked and nipped at his neck and Harry could barely breathe, I want you to fuck me echoing in his head so loudly it was like he was shouting.

He pulled back. "Can I — your clothes — please can I, please —" and felt a shudder run through Charlie.

"Yes, yes." Charlie nodded, still nipping at Harry's neck as he Vanished their clothes — their pants and shirts, too, and fuck it was probably still dangerous for Harry to be casting when he was this turned on because every stitch of clothing on their bodies disappeared, even though he'd only meant to do their trousers. His magic was stuttering, shaky and uneven.

"Getting down to business, I'm into it," Charlie said breathlessly, and Harry ran his hands across his broad back. There were scars there too, most of them old and healed, but one gash was still fresh and angry-looking. Charlie drew in a quick breath when Harry touched it. Harry pulled back, worried it had hurt, but Charlie tried to arch into the touch, kissing him harder, his tongue in Harry's mouth. Tentatively, Harry put his hand back there and pressed, his fingers exploring the tender edges of the scar, and Charlie bucked beneath him and pressed into his leg. Harry could feel that Charlie was starting to get hard, and that was definitely his cock pressing up against Harry's thigh.

He pulled back yet again. "So, ah, are you comfortable with—"

"Yes. Comfortable. No more talking," Harry said, directly into his mouth, as though they were sharing their very breath. "Done talking. I want you. Please," and Charlie nodded.

There was more mad snogging, and then a moment later, Harry felt Charlie's hand down between them, rubbing in some kind of slow rhythm that pressed again and again against his leg — and he realised that Charlie was working himself, his prick pressed between them, getting himself harder.

Harry, shameless now, thrust his hips toward Charlie, and, wordlessly, Charlie took them both into his hand. Harry felt the press and the slide of Charlie against him, his smooth foreskin and his rough palm, and fuck, it was unbelievable. Charlie worked them both at the same time, and Harry felt their bodies move together in response to his touch, rough and gentle at once. He felt the heat from the fire on his back and heard its popping with the rush of his pulse in his ears. His breath was coming faster and faster, and then Harry knew he was going to come from this, even though he shouldn't, even though it was probably too soon and there were so many more things he wanted to do.

But he'd been hard for so long, and Charlie's hand just kept moving, and the coil of heat in Harry's belly began to unfurl. He closed his eyes against it, wanting everything to last as long as it possibly could, forcing himself to concentrate so he could Pensieve this and watch it a thousand times later — the cushion on top of the rough floor, Charlie's rough hand, the heat of the fire. He gripped Charlie close to him and heard his own breath, panting, hitching in his throat.

Harry cast aside his armor, he let it all go. He opened his mouth silently and squeezed his eyes so tight that he saw pops of light, and for a single beautiful moment, he could have sworn they were stars. Tiny bright pinpricks against an inky midnight blue, the most lovely of his life, with a glittering dragon streaking across his sky.


Chapter 2

There are many ways it could have gone, the night Charlie first saw the thestrals.

One way looks like this:

Charlie looks at the skeletal horses, their visible bones and withered grey-black skin, their huge wings, almost glowing in the cold mountain twilight. Their eyes gleam a fathomless black. One of them whickers and it echoes, somehow, inside Charlie's head. It's a horrible sound, lonely and hollow. They're hideous and terribly beautiful.

They're not like his dragons, nothing like them at all.

The sun's almost down. Harry is there in the pen, just where Charlie expected him, but there's a new tension in him, somehow, that Charlie never remembers seeing before. He's been avoiding Harry almost more than the thestrals, but tonight — July 31, his 19th birthday; he doesn't know if Harry's realised the date — Charlie's forced himself to come.

But he can't even look at Harry. The war hollowed him out, stole his childhood, took away things Charlie himself had taken entirely for granted. Harry's pain is so raw and apparent that it hurts just to be near him. He's beautiful and young and tragic, standing there in the windswept pen, surrounded by those eerie creatures. His jacket is too thin, his arms wrapped around himself too tightly.

Charlie can't bear it. He runs away. Just runs, without even saying hello or happy birthday, because he can't bring himself to speak or spend one more second near those fucking thestrals that embody everything he's tried so hard to push away.

So Charlie nearly sprints back to his tiny room in the dormitories, with nothing but a bed and a hearth. He races blindly up the stairs and tries to shove the door shut behind him, but the tears overwhelm him before he even makes it fully inside his room. He cries for the first time since Fred's funeral. Even then, he'd held back, sitting rigidly next to his silent father on one side and Ginny on his other, his dress robes choking him, wound so tight he couldn't breathe.

Here, for the first time, Charlie lets his grief take him. He stumbles to the edge of the bed and sits down heavily, breathing hard. The fire roars to life even though he hasn't done the spell to kindle it, as though it knows, somehow. He leans toward it, folds his arms over his knees, and sobs painfully into them. Images crash into him, over him.

The terrible frantic trip across the sea, which he'd known he should have made months before he actually did. The battle itself, and the castle, the walls falling to pieces around him, curselight and screaming everywhere. He'd arrived right in the middle, too little too late, and begun hexing immediately, blindly, firing off spells he'd never used before. Crucio, Avada, every single violent curse he could think of. He'd never even said the words before. He hadn't trained with them back at Hogwarts, hadn't practiced. He could have and had chosen not to. He wasn't prepared.

Guilt rushes at him like a current and Charlie sobs harder, gasping for breath. He worries, distantly, that he might sick up. Had he killed anyone? Death Eaters had fallen in front of him, he knew that much. There had been a moment when he'd been knocked to the ground by a slashing painful hex to the chest and he'd lain immobilized with fear, a freezing wash over his whole body. For one long minute at least, it had pinned him to the floor, gasping for breath, while the battle raged around him.

That icy terror had been his first thought when he saw his family bent over Fred's body in the Great Hall, an image he'll never forget, that he'll never get to forget. What if that frozen moment had been the moment Fred was killed?

At first, before he'd even known who was lying there on the stone floor, he'd just wanted to run. Whatever it was, he wanted to force it not to be true, and now that terrible moment too sweeps toward him now. Then come the punishing funerals again, and the unrelenting days afterward, when Fred's absence filled the Burrow and its walls felt tenuous, like they could crack and crumble at any moment.

Charlie doesn't know how George is doing now, months later, can't fathom how his mum and dad are managing. And worse, he knows the distance he's keeping is unfair and selfish and cowardly, and likely making things worse for them. But he can't fight it. The fear and loss are a crater inside him; he is on one side and his family is on the other, and only guilt builds the reluctant bridge between them. If Charlie's honest, he still wants to run from it. He wants never have to see the reflection of his own grief written on any of his brothers' — or on Harry's — faces ever again, and that desire feels like a betrayal.

So he cries, alone, in front of the fire, sobs and guilt shaking his body, tears and snot soaking the sleeves of his threadbare sweater, until he can't cry anymore. He lies down and falls into an exhausted, restless sleep.

That's one version, one path, one way the story could have gone.

Here's another.

It starts out the same:

Charlie still comes to see the thestrals for the first time.

Harry is still there, and Charlie still cannot bear to look at him.

Charlie still runs back to his room without saying a word.

But maybe in this version, when Charlie runs, Harry follows.

In the thestral pen, Harry saw the stricken look, the face going pale, the hands tightening to fists. He saw how warily Charlie backed away, how quickly he turned and headed toward the dormitory instead of the mess hall for dinner. Harry watched his retreating form and saw him break into a run. Why would he run?

So Harry follows him. He closes the gate carefully and whispers, "I'll be back soon" when Blistral lifts his head to watch him leave.

Harry follows Charlie up the hill, into the building, up the narrow stairway that echoes with every step he takes. No one is there to hear it; everyone is with the dragons or eating supper. He pauses before Charlie's door, which is slightly open, before he goes in.

Charlie looks like he's folded in half, his head on his arms, crying so hard that Harry at first wonders if he's coughing or shouting. His hoarse sobs are so harsh, so guttural and raw, that Harry's paralysed for a long moment in the doorway. He doesn't know what to do.

He's sat with crying people before, loads of times. It was a war, after all. He'd been in the Great Hall after the battle and gone to far too many funerals. He'd pressed close to Ron and Hermione as silent tears streamed down their faces while they wore that vicious, heavy Horcrux. Harry's hand strays to his collarbones, the imprint of its scar still smooth and strange on his chest, and only then does he step forward and reach out for Charlie's shoulder.

Charlie scrambles up and whirls around, his face contorted in pain and surprise.

"Fuck! What the— oh," he says, gasping, "Merlin, Potter—" but then he breaks off and drops back onto the edge of the bed just as he was before.

Harry doesn't, can't, say anything. But he sits down on the bed next to Charlie, very close. Charlie's back is heaving, and Harry puts his hand between his shoulder blades, not thinking, and Charlie shifts to lean on Harry's legs instead of his own. Harry's other arm wraps around him and somehow Charlie's in his arms, then, cradled on his chest and sobbing into his dirty jacket.

Harry doesn't say shh, or it's okay, or don't cry. He just holds Charlie, awkwardly, imperfectly, but solidly. Harry smooths his hands down Charlie's back, rubs his heaving shoulders, memorises the stitches in his sweater. Still Charlie can't stop. His hands ball into fists and clutch at Harry's jacket as he pulls himself closer.

It feels like hours and it's too hot in front of the fire, but Harry stays. He holds Charlie to him. Maybe Harry even kisses the top of his head and finds some soft words to say after all, or maybe not.

Maybe Charlie falls asleep in his arms, and Harry sleeps too. Maybe in the morning, they're still together there, the fire long extinguished, the weak sunlight filtering through the dirty window at dawn.

Who's to say it couldn't have happened that way, Charlie thinks now. He holds Harry close while he dozes, his face peaceful in sleep, at rest. Who's to say?