Same

It's two o'clock in the morning, and I'm woken up out of a dead sleep by this odd, pulsing pain at the base of my skull. It's radiating into my head, and it's the sort of pain that feels like it's been building for awhile and just now reached the pitch to drag me awake. I grab for my neck, blinking and wincing.

I know this sort of pain, been feeling it since I was a kid. It's not my own. It's George's. It's got that dull, nagging quality about it, like it's speaking to me, prodding at me. It was in my elbow when George fell off his broomstick years ago, pissing around out back while Mum made me de-gnome the garden. I felt it before I heard him hollering, and I ran back to find him clutching himself on the ground. When he knocked his front tooth out on the kitchen table when we were five, my mouth pounded like a bloody hammer for hours. It doesn't happen every time he hurts himself, only the big stuff.

So the first thing I do when I wake to this is shoot up straight in bed and get my feet on the floor. I have no idea what that prat has done to himself at this time of the morning, but it isn't good, that's for sure, and it's in his head. It's amazing how quickly I can go from groggy to panicked when my brother is involved.

"George?" I whisper into the dark. There are snores all around the dormitory, but none of them are his. "George?" I hiss again, making my way across the familiar steps to his bed. I know before I get there that he isn't in it, but I yank back the curtain anyway, just to be sure. Empty, except for his wand, jutting out from under the pillow. Its presence there causes me further alarm. George does not go anywhere without his wand. The thought of him somewhere in the darkness, utterly vulnerable without it, makes sweat break out across my back.

Perhaps he's gone to the john, I think, fallen and knocked his head.

He's been having headaches recently, ever since he'd been startled by Lee Jordan in the midst of enchanting some prototype Hugehead Honeys (he meant them to blow up the sucker's head like a balloon; quite brill, really, if he'd done it right) and turned his wand on himself. He was shocked (and a bit disappointed) when his head stayed true to size, but then the headaches started. They've been coming every couple of days. At first, they were just niggling little things, and he ignored them until they disappeared. But lately, they've been spooking him a bit, making him all knackered and dizzy, and I've seen him lean on walls to right himself. Nothing I can feel, myself, but still. Enough. I don't like it, but trying to get him to pay Madam Pomfrey a visit is fairly useless.

Problem is, though, he's not in the john. And as I walk toward it, the pain in my head lessens. I walk back toward the bedroom after finding it empty, and the pain picks up again, like some weird little signal. My guts are twisting a bit, and I'm feeling uneasy. I'm uneasy because I didn't even know that he'd left the dormitory. I'm uneasy because he's disappeared in the middle of the night, without telling me, and managed to bugger himself up badly enough that I can feel it. I'm uneasy because George's pain is a compass in my head, and as I walk into the Gryffindor common room (stopping to grab my own wand out from under my own pillow and tucking it into my waist) toward the portal, it's banging more steadily, leading me out, barefoot and clad only in my striped pyjama pants, into the quiet hallways.

Not that this is anything new to me, of course. It feels odd to be sneaking around after dark alone, but it's nothing George and I haven't done hundreds of times, likely, together. Usually the purpose is mischief. Tonight, I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I'm farly certain it's not going to end well.

I pad through the hallways on quiet, practiced feet, tuning in to the pounding in my head, keeping an eye out for Peeves or Filch. Stealth is one of my many talents, but it's difficult to concentrate between the guiding ache in my skull and the increasing dread for my twin brother, who is as much me as I am, who is somewhere in this castle, likely alone and in an awful state.

The pain worsens as I descend the stairs. It urges me to climb lower, and lower, until I hit the seventh floor landing. I'm practically blinded by this point, both with my hammering skull and with worry, and against my judgment, I whisper his name into the darkness again. "George?"

I hear an odd noise, a low keening, that I recognize as my brother's instantly. My eyes scan up and down the corridor, and then I see him, a pale spot against the black, low to the floor, alarmingly contorted against the wall. I can barely think through the awful throbbing, but my heart immediately stutters into my throat, which goes dry with panic. "George!" I rasp out. "Georgie, love, what's happened?"

I'm on my knees at his side. Like me, he is bare-chested, bare-footed, wearing his striped pyjama pants. There are goosepimples along his arms, which are curled around his bent legs. His ginger head is pressed to his knees, and he's rocking, making this awful sound that is tearing at my gut. Without thinking, I throw my arms around him, pressing skin-to-skin, pushing my nose against his ear. "Georgie, what is it? Are you hurt?" I murmur, feeling the sweat at his temple, despite his chill.

"Gods, Fred," he says, his voice strained and edging on a whine. "My blasted head again. Bloody killing me."

One of my hands is in is hair now, stroking it in relief, in concern, in comfort. "S'all right, Georgie," I'm telling him. "All right. I'm here. Get you into bed, hm?" But he's having none of it. I realize that if I'm hurting the way I am, there's no way he's going to be up and walking through it, forget the bloody stairs. Bugger, I think, feeling my chest tighten, wrack a little with frustration.

But then I remember where I am. The seventh floor. In the corridor. George is tucked into a ball beneath this ridiculous tapestry, and we are directly across from the Room of Requirement. "Hang on, sweets," I promise him, tucking a kiss against his forehead, finding it clammy under my dry lips. He lifts his head briefly to look at me, and his eyes are tight with agony, but he is gazing at me with such utter relief and trust that it makes my stomach clench.

I almost can't bear to step away from him, but I do, and, fixing my mind intently on bed, bed, bed I pace thrice in front of the section of blank wall across the corridor, my bare toes cold against the stone floor, my head still pounding. Holding my breath, I look up to see if I've done it. I have.

"All right, George, up you go, " I whisper quickly, desperately, not wanting the door to disappear before I can pull him through it. I reach out with my hands, and he grips them weakly. "Don't be a git," I say. "Come on. Up you go."

George comes staggering to his feet, my firm grasp on his wrists and a great, heaving pull the only things holding him steady. He comes stumbling into me, tired and gutted-looking, his mouth all chewed, and I hold him to my chest a moment, keeping one hand on the doorknob for the Room of Requirement, willing it not to vanish. His head finds my shoulder, and he slumps down into it. "Sorry, Freddie," he mutters.

I shush him and guide him through the door, being sure to click it shut. For the first time, I take in what the Room of Requirement has made for us, Fred still lolling against me, his body strangely cool and heavy. I feel my eyes go wide. There's a bed, of course. But not just a bed. Our bed. Or, rather, beds. Two twin mattresses, pushed together in the corner of the room (we pull them apart in the morning, now, after Mum told us we were too bloody old to sleep like that - how did the Room know?), faded blue sheets on one, faded plaids on the other. Two pillows apiece. Two identical duvets spread across. The bedclothes are rumpled, looking as though our bodies had recently risen from them after some sort of violent sleep. Or something else. I feel a small flush hit my cheeks. Something odd catches in my chest.

The rest of the room is familiar, also. Two old, wobbly chests of drawers, carved up with Bill's and Charlie's initials, respectively, stand on opposite sides. Clothing is strewn all over the floor. There's a photo of the two of us, fussing in the dirt out front of the Burrow, fairly streaked with grime and filth, clutching hands, propped up on the side table. Tattered curtains hang from a cracked window behind the bed. It's our bedroom, down to the little holes all through the walls, marks of experiments gone awry.

I can't help but stand in awe for a moment, feeling George's breath heave against me, staring. "Gods, George," I finally say. "Can you look? It's our room; it's positively brill." He picks his head up from my shoulder and has a look.

"Bloody fantastic, Freddie," he says, and a smile cracks his freckled face, the mirror to mine. He gets a bit lighter against me. "How'd you manage it?" He winces again, a fresh wave of pain hitting him. My own ache has dulled to an annoyance.

"Let's get you laying down, hm?" I say, and walk him towards the bed. He falls heavily onto the edge and leans back onto an elbow. I help him pull his legs up, then crawl up next to him, tucking into his side. I let my hand feel around his face, pressing against the angle of his jaw, the roundness of his cheek, the furrow of his brow. He feels cool enough, not fevered. His skin is smooth. I wrap an arm around his head, pulling his face to my ribs. A smile touches his mouth, and I can finally start to relax.

"Really, Fred," he says, his eyes opening halfway. "How'd you manage? Looks just like home. Feels just like home," he jokes, adjusting his back against the lumpy mattress.

"Dunno, really. Just thought about a bed. This is what popped out." I'm rubbing my fingers into his temples now, slow little circles, the way he likes it. I can feel some of the tension leaving his neck. "How's the head, hm?"

"Better, a bit. Soon as you turned up, really. Bugger, Fred, it was the strangest thing. No idea how the bloody hell I got here. Woke up with a bloody headache, went to get a glass of water, next thing I know, I'm kneeling in the bloody corridor, and I can't bloody move! Fucking agony, I tell you. Awful, awful. How'd you find me?"

"Head woke me up, too. Hurt like mad. Like that time you swallowed your tooth in the kitchen, remember? Knew you'd gone and buggered yourself up somehow. Hurt worse the closer I got to you, and then when I got down the stairs, there you were."

"Merlin, Freddie. Sorry to wake you like that." He's looking up at me through his lashes, looking less pinched, though still not quite right. His hair is all mussed across his face.

"No, s'okay. But you had better get your arse to Madam Pomfrey in the morning, because now your blasted headaches are bothering me."

"Righto, baby brother," he teases. His mouth turns up into a familiar grin, smooshed against my side. Suddenly, his pretty eyes get wider. "Fred, would you look at that?" He cocks his chin towards the side table over my shoulder, and gets up onto an elbow.

I turn to look. There, uncapped, is a bottle of brambleberry-flavored Decongesting Potion. I look slowly from George's face to the bottle and then back again, twice. "I haven't seen that shite since..."

"We were ten, and you had that nasty cold..."

"And you decided you wanted it, too, you silly toss-pot. You changed your mind right up when you had a taste, didn't you?"

George is grinning up at me, his eyes suddenly sparkling with trouble. "As the mistress said to the gardner."

I feel the blush rise in my cheeks, ever so slight. "Yes, well, who snogged who to get it, hm? Jealous, were you, because you had to do chores and I was in bed?"

Truth was, he had fairly snogged me trying to catch my cold, jammed his tongue right in my mouth, licked the insides of my cheeks, ended with a that'll do, pulled back just as Mum walked in to fix my pillows. That was when she decided we were too old for the sharing beds business and pushed them apart into their own corners, briskly rubbing her hands and declaring us big boys now. The next day, George was flat on his arse right along with me, drinking down the medicine and snivelling away.

"No, no," he says "Didn't care so much about the chores. Never liked watching you suffer by your lonesome, anyway, you know." His face has gone soft now, thoughtful.

"I think you just wanted a snog," I say, cocking an eyebrow down at him.

"For God's sake, Fred, we were ten." But he's laughing, like I might not be far off the mark, and the color has come back to his cheeks, and his fingers are clutching at my waist, digging in with some strength, and I know the look in his eyes dreadfully well, and I know it's the same look I'd see in my own if I were staring into a mirror.

"Feeling better, are you?" I ask, my belly growing warm. "Don't like watching you suffer by your lonesome."

"Yes, actually. Quite, now. And apparently you don't have to snog me to share it," he says, looking cheeky.

"Mmm, what if I want to? Would you argue it?" I already know the answer. Pink is creeping across his bare, freckled chest, warming up the skin pressed against mine. His lashes are fluttering a little, glancing off his speckled cheeks, looking bashful enough, but vaguely hungry. I love this. I always wonder if I'm half as lovely when I'm starting to unravel. I doubt it.

"Nope. No argument here," he whispers back. My heart leaps thickly into my throat. He sits up slowly, until we are shoulder to shoulder. Before he can kiss me, I take his head in my hands, burying my fingers in the mess of his hair, and pull him down to me. He smells like sweat, and shampoo, and George. I inhale all the way down into my lungs, grateful to have him smiling, grateful for my own light and painless head, grateful that we are alone, somewhere familiar, somewhere warm.

He turns his head sideways, sliding my palm across his face. His mouth finds the heel of my hand. He kisses at it, crawls up my thumb, wraps his lips around it. When he lets go, he bites gently into the web between my thumb and my forefinger. My spine lights up like a bloody Christmas tree.

I trace his eyebrow with my other hand, soft and feathery; I trace his ear with my pinkie finger; I feel for the corner of his eye, bend my face low to kiss it, be sure that it's dry. Sometimes he cries, and I have to catch it on my tongue, bring the salt to his lips, give it back to him to keep the balance. He's not crying. His eyes are closed. He's taking every finger, one by one, wetting my hand, setting off a slow burn under my skin.

"Georgie," I whisper into his temple. "Kiss me."

I open my eyes to watch him lift his face from my hand. He knows where I am, tilts his mouth, slippery-looking and pink, to me, and I grow dizzy and fall inside. With my tongue, I search for the places that make him sigh, make him sound small, remind me of when we were babies and Mum would tuck the blankets up under our chins. His little groans sound like a happy song inside my head, and I can't help but sing along. He holds my face, his grip getting tighter, and I sing louder. I like his fingertips hard at my neck. I like the press of his thumbs on my jaw.

He feels sturdy, and I lean into him, our shoulders fitting inside one another neatly, the same breadth; our arms, elbow to elbow, the same length. I always feel as though I am trying to crawl back inside him when we kiss, back to where I belong, back to wholeness. I am trying to dive down into the warm tunnels of his veins, rush through his body, feel whether we are as similar underneath as we are outside.

We are up on our knees now, belly to belly and hip to hip and thigh to thigh, making one shadow on the wall. He breaks our kiss, panting lightly, pressing his forehead into mine. We open our eyes, looking up at one another. His pupils are blown wide. Mine, I know, match. All of the tension has flown from his face; he is nothing but angles in his cheeks and softness in his mouth, beautiful in the way we all become beautiful when we know that we are loved.

"Lay back, you," he says, nips at my nose, brushing his lips against it. I feel my own lips curl happily, and I let him run his hand the length of my spine, urge me backwards until I'm sitting between my feet, untuck my legs slowly, press me against the mattress. I feel like I've swallowed a ball of sunlight.

He strips away my pyjama bottoms reverently, lets them fall to the floor. His stay on, for now, as he leans up over me, lets his whole length meet mine. "Thank you," he says to the beating pulse at my neck. "Thank you for finding me. Thank you for getting out of bed."

I laugh a bit. "Lot of good that did. I'm back in it."

He smiles into my chest. His mouth opens over my nipple when he speaks again, says "With me, though. Better, hmmm?" The m-sound hums. My back arches. He bites lightly, lets go. "That's a yes, I take it?"

"Quite," I answer, returning his smile.

He sprawls back out over me, winds his fingers through mine, pushes our arms above our heads. His breath is right at the shell of my ear, hot. Tight together, side by side in the cradle of our hips, I can feel both our cocks hard and pulsing, his through the fabric of his pyjamas. I feel his tongue slip into my ear. I lick at his shoulder, taste the chemistry of his sweat and bite down, harder than I mean to. He mews in surprised delight, grinds down a little.

I love his noises, his sweet little ohs and purrs and delicate, breathless gasps. We are the most different when we're gagging and desperate for each other. He goes soft and pretty with need, whispers, hisses, happy little moans, all of those throaty things. My sounds come from my belly; rough, loud, aching things that wrench themselves out of me, utterly graceless. When people ask how to tell us apart, I don't tell them the secret.

I bite down again, closer to his neck, and he rewards me with a roll of his hips. Mine buck up to meet him. I am suddenly frustrated by the garment in between us; I need to feel his skin. I tug at one of his hands, and he lets me come free. I let my fingernails drag down his forearm, press my wrist to his for a moment, trying again to make one pulse out of two. I reach between us, letting my hand wander over his collarbone, connecting the galaxy of his freckles with one finger, making him squirm and suck at my throat.

I slide my hand lower, and he drops my other hand, pushes up against the mattress, creates space for me to move. I trace the planes of his chest, drag my knuckles through the shallow cavern between his muscles, let it lead me to his belly, flat and soft. I press the heel of my hand against his navel, that place that, almost seventeen years ago, made us into one body for the last time, then let my finger swirl circles around it, languid and slow.

He's whispering. "Freddie, Freddie, Freddie," my name, so soft, right up against my parted lips, just rocking there above me, eyes closed. The muscles in his stomach are jerking madly under my fingers. As I brush lower, following the pale path of hair down to his waistband, I feel his cock jerking in the same haphazard rhythm. A moan starts in my guts, falls out of my mouth, meets his words there. "Off," I say, much rougher than I mean to, but he understands.

He lets his hips fall to the side, lets himself be rolled onto his back, and I position myself above him, hooking my fingers through his waistband. I make swift work of his pyjamas, letting them fall into the puddle with mine, and then we are naked. We match up, length for length, width for width, shape for shape.

I press down into him again. My lips find his ear. "Georgie," I say, feeling the underside of my cock slide against his sweat-slick belly, making me growl into him. "Georgie, do you think we taste the same, too?"

He doesn't answer, just gasps at my words, at the feel of my mouth against the tunnel of his ear. "You taste like salt. Like grass and salt and the way it smells after it rains," I tell him, which is true, which is exactly what he tastes like. When he cums in my mouth, I swallow it and it feels like I'm swallowing spring, and I think of nicking Charlie's wand when we were kids and trying to make the puddles splash up into his hair from five metres away. "I bet I do, too," I say, biting down on his earlobe.

He reaches for my head, grabs handfuls of my hair, pulls me even closer. "Do you want to see?" he asks. I do.

He rolls me back over, and I let him, all of me becoming pliant and buttery. He climbs over me, lithe and pale and lovely, and closes my ribs between his knees, facing my feet. The heads of our cocks meet, brushing each other slick. My head tips all the way back to the mattress, chin in the air, and I swear into the dimness. I feel George lean forward, so slow it makes me ache, and wrap his hand around my cock. He's inching his body backwards, up on his knees, and I realize what he means to do. My head snaps back into place and I reach between his legs, my hand guiding him to my mouth.

At first we just kiss, wet and hungry, our lips slippery with our own spit and each other's pre-cum. When I feel him open for me and slide me back across his tongue, my mouth opens to groan and his hips sink down, burying his cock in my throat. It takes me off guard. I almost gag, but I hold still, let everything go wide for him, swallow, and there he is, the whole of him. I lap with my tongue as I let him thrust in and out, hollow my cheeks, feel him throb and pulse in my mouth. He taught me how to take all of it. It makes him lose his mind, start speaking in tongues. It makes my lips numb, my throat sore. It makes me want to cum.

He's got his mouth wrapped around the head of my cock, swirling his tongue around it, flicking it back and forth . He knows what I like, those fast, slippery, maddening circles, and then he licks down across the nerves underneath, and there are noises inside of me trying to get out, but they don't fit around his cock, they just vibrate there, which makes him start to pant and hiss as he's pumping me with his fist and licking. His breath is quickening; I can feel it against my cock, and he's losing his rhythm as I bring him closer and closer, and I feel his entire body pull tight.

He suddenly pulls his hips up, and I flatten my tongue as he slides out of my mouth. I know what he wants, and I give it to him. I curl my lips around the head of his cock and press my tongue into it, giving that last bit of friction before he starts swearing, Oh Freddie, oh fuck, in that breathy, gorgeous voice, then words I'll never be able to understand come spilling out of his mouth, which is still hovering over my throbbing dick, and his cum comes spilling into mine, and I lick it from my lips, lick it from his beautiful prick, every last bit of it. Springtime. Grass. Salt.

He collapses down against my chest and, his mouth hanging slack, he lets me thrust my hips up, slide my cock between his lips, and cum with a howl I'm sure echoes through the walls of the entire castle. I don't care, because I'm cumming and cumming and cumming, and my fingers are bruising his thighs, and my toes are curled under, and I am riding this wave to the end, when my muscles unclench and fall apart beneath me.

Quietly, gently, he slides himself off of me. He doesn't speak. I open my eyes as he crooks his elbow behind my shoulders and lifts me up to meet him. I balance on my shaky arms, let him pull me into a kiss. When his lips meet mine and part, I recognize the taste.

"The same," I whisper when he pulls away.

"Just," he says.