For Blood

It’s just past three a.m. when Charlie wakes up with a dry mouth and a pounding head on his twin brothers’ ratty, burn-marked sofa. His eyes are gritty and sore to the touch, and there is a pile of crumpled tissues on the coffee table. This is how Charlie realises, to his horror, that he must have been crying. He can’t remember it exactly, but the evidence is right there, and Merlin knows that he’s been wanting to fucking cry since the day Bill announced that he was marrying that vile French twit. Abandonment plus alcohol plus stag night apparently equaled this.

“Oh, fuck me,” he mutters under his sour-tasting breath. “Fuck. Me.”

Charlie presses his fingertips to his forehead and inhales deeply, all the way down to the bottoms of his aching lungs, and sits up as straight as the shapeless cushions will allow. There’s a tight band between his shoulders that he tries to shake loose, and then he gets unsteadily to his feet to get a glass of water.

He’s on his way back from the kitchen when he hears it.

At first, in his strange haze, he thinks that Fred or George (or both?) must have pulled at the pub. The noise is distinctly sexual: rhythmic, bouncing, squeaky springs combined with a headboard hitting the wall. It’s coming from their room – with all the Galleons they’re raking in at the shop, why are they still sharing a bedroom? – and it’s not loud, precisely, but it’s not terribly quiet, either.

Charlie pauses, his foot hovering just above the floor, when it hits him: it’s them. One of them moans, soft and low and definitely masculine, and the answering sound isn’t a woman, either. Charlie’s eyes pop open wide as suddenly everything makes sense – as much sense as it can, anyway – and the glass slips through his fingers, and his reflexes are too dulled for him to catch it in time.

The glass shatters.

The bedsprings halt.

The silence rings.

Charlie’s head pounds. So does his heart.

Four bare feet slap onto the hardwood floor, and Charlie stands frozen as the bedroom door opens and two identical faces, flushed in a spread of moonlight filtering through the window, stare at him.

For a count of three, nobody moves.

Fred pulls the door open wider, and Charlie swallows. They’re both naked. They’re both hard.

It’s a strange sensation, like a knife directly to his chest combined with a weight lifting off of it, and Charlie isn’t sure whether he ought to start crying again or just laugh with relief, and, unable to decide, he just stands there with his mouth agape.

He manages a dumb sort of oh after a moment, and with the silence broken, Fred and George tilt their heads – Fred to the left; George to the right, that strange mirror-imaging thing they always do – and, in one sleepy, sexed-out sound, they both say, “Hello.”

“You…”

“Yep,” Fred says.

George follows with, “And you…”

“… Like to listen,” Fred finishes. He shrugs his shoulders, and a strange, slow smile spreads across his face. “Pervert.”

“Honestly. We’re your brothers,” George says.

“Flesh and blood,” Fred counters.

“Sicko,” they say in unison, and Charlie can’t do anything but roll his eyes. They burn when he does, and he brings one hand up to press on them, trying to soothe the sting.

Charlie tries to speak, but it comes out all croaky and weird, so he coughs and tries again. “You always do this when you’ve got a houseguest?”

“Only if we’re pissed,” says George.

“Only if it’s you,” says Fred.

“Only if you’re pissed,” says George.

“Pissed and weeping like an ickle firstie,” Fred says, and a look flashes between them, something private and knowing and warm, and Charlie feels more uncomfortable with that than with anything that’s happened since he got up off the sofa.

“Just… pissed,” Charlie says lamely. “Like you said. Too much firewhiskey. I’m getting soft in my old age. Now if you boys don’t mind, I think I’ll just trot on home now, and you can finish up your business on your own time.” He takes a step towards the sitting room, but they don’t close the door. They don’t go back to bed, to sleep or to fuck or to conspire.

Instead, they both take a step forward into the hall, blocking his path. Side by side, they take up the entire breadth of it, and Charlie notices for the first time that their hands are clasped together. It makes his stomach clench and his chest constrict, watching this thing he knows he can never have again.

"What if we want to finish our business on your time?" Fred asks, one mussed eyebrows raised.

"What if our business is your business?" George says.

"And Bill's business?" Fred says, quirking his other brow to match.

Charlie suddenly feels shaky on his feet, disoriented. He gropes for the wall but misses, slipping sideways and hitting it with his shoulder instead. George is there inside of a heartbeat, insinuating himself between Charlie and the plaster, and muttering into his ear. "S'okay, Charlie. We know. We get it. We've always."

"How the fuck…" Charlie starts, but Fred's insistent finger stops his mouth, slipping over his lips and pressing down hard.

"You always have to look, right?" Fred says, his voice gentle but firm. "Always have to watch how you look at each other, watch your hands, watch your tone, right? Always have to be quiet. Always have to be sneaky. 'S not our fault that we're better at it than you ever were."

The world sways in front of Charlie's eyes, and then the world is just red and white, fire and sparks, skin and hair – Fred's – covering his vision, crowding him, and there is bare skin against his back – George, holding his arms – and he's in between them with the noise of their words buzzing like a hangover in his head.

It's all right you can stay with us we know we know we know Charlie he doesn't have the bollocks for this doesn't have the stomach for this can't handle this but we can Charlie we can we love you we can make it better shhhhhhhhhhh come on there's room

And there is. Their bed is huge – spelled larger than any Charlie's ever seen; it takes up almost the entire room – and it's soft against Charlie's pounding head when he lets them lay him down on it, and they both taste like ale, bitter and sour. Not like Bill. Nothing like Bill.

Familiar, though. Familiar and warm, and he groans as a tongue swipes across his wrist, finds his pulse, and another one presses into the hollow of his throat. He has the absurd thought that they want his blood and almost smirks. Of course they do. His twin baby brothers have always been out for blood, haven't they? Like a pair of hyenas. They can smell it. They laugh at it.

There are teeth in the skin of his belly, then, and hands twined together at the small of his back, and Fred's voice vibrating through his jaw: What a fucking stupid twat he is, hmm? S'okay. We'll make you come a thousand times, and you can say his name if you want. If it makes you feel better. We don’t mind.

(They don't, Charlie discovers letter, sobbing Bill Bill Bill into George's throat as Fred rides him like a fucking broom. They don't mind at all. In fact, he thinks they barely even notice.)