Word Count: 3,800
Warnings: Incest, masturbation, group sex, reference to rimming, canon character death.
A/N: Thank you so much to my lovely Beta, "vix_spes" who fitted the reading and editing into her Christmas schedule despite inconvenient difficulties. A gift for "pochibubblytea" at the lj "charlieficathon".
There must have been nearly three hundred people at his New Year's party, but when he goes to bed alone, George is only thinking about one of them.
Where you can see it, the skin on Charlie's arms is pale and smooth. There isn't much that's not covered by tattoos, though. In between the spinning, writhing dragons there are little brown freckles and long ginger hairs. Only the insides of his wrists are white, the skin there so thin that George can see the blue lines of veins. He remembers kissing that hot, pulsing place, his lips close to the blood that speeds round Charlie's body, the same blood that fills his cock to make him hard.
Charlie doesn't seem to age. There may be a little sprinkling of grey in the ginger now, a few more laugh-lines, but his eyes full of life keep his face youthful. Or is it just that to George he looks as lovely as he always has done?
He could have been a professional Quidditch player, but he chose to work with dragons. The twins didn't know anybody else as cool as that. With his first wages he bought himself a Nimbus. He'd flown home from Wales on it to wish them luck at Hogwarts; Percy said he'd only come to show off the broom. Fred and George had been in awe.
His shorts were tight and revealed most of his muscular, freckled thighs which shone with sweat as he came in to land. Fred gasped.
"Great broom!" Fred said.
George nodded, but he was aware even then that it wasn't the broom that was making him breathless. As he lies in his bed, watching dawn break through the window, he pictures Charlie's hard knots of muscle. His hand strokes down through the amber hairs on his own belly, to close his palm around his own shaft. As he does it, he can't decide whether he's pretending it's Charlie's prick or Charlie's hand.
George throws the party every year for business reasons, inviting all his important suppliers and customers, the store managers and his family. Eighty four branches now, worldwide. He hopes that Fred would be proud. He enlarged the business as a memorial to Fred, though he now understands that it's been built on the grave of his relationship with his children. They take his money readily enough, as does their mother, but it was his time he should have spent on them to earn their love. He can't even spend his profits on lavish gifts to make his lover happy, because that might give away the identity of the man he loves.
Charlie didn't stay until the end of the party. Soon after midnight he left with Bill, Ron, Lee and Harry. They went to wish the dragons a Happy New Year and then get mercilessly paralytic on sloe vodka at Charlie's place. He is the bachelor in the family; his place is safe from the censure of women. It's such a shame, according to gossip, that he never found the right woman. Lee threw his arms round George and drunkenly thanked him for a lovely night, but Charlie didn't even look back before Apparating away.
*******
As kids, the twins had wanted to annoy as many people as possible as much as they could. To be honest, they never grew out of that. Charlie never got riled. He would keep his cool right up until the point where he either burst out laughing or cuffed them. When they left school, the twins joined the Order and it felt like they'd arrived - business was good, they looked hot and they were a part of the war effort at last.
When they sauntered into the kitchen at Grimmauld Place for their third meeting, Charlie was already there, concentrating on some parchment covered in his own scrawl.
"Well, well," Fred said, "look who finally decided to turn up."
"What the fuck are you two doing here?"
"We're regular attendees. We're valuable members of the Order," Fred drawled.
Charlie shook his head. "I guess there's a limit to how many decades anyone can spend being a genius. So, Dumbledore finally lost it."
"What?" George had been watching the way the low light shimmered around Charlie's cropped hair.
"There's fucking Armageddon on the way!" Charlie replied. "A pair of jokers like you are just a liability."
Fred slid into the seat beside their big brother then, making George wish that he'd moved sooner. "Actually, there's a long tradition of pranksters as valued members of the Order," Fred said, looking pointedly over to the other side of the room where Lupin and Black were laughing together. "So, you suddenly decided to show your face, then, brother dearest?"
Charlie looked back down at his notes. "I don't know if you'd noticed, but I live in Romania. Safe Floo connections are getting less frequent. I can't Apparate long-distance; I might land on a Death Eater."
"What's in the notes?" George leaned over Charlie's shoulder.
Charlie swatted him away. "Wait and see. You'll have to sit still and listen along with all the grown-ups. Think you can manage that?"
Charlie's report took up most of the meeting; it was a detailed summary of the influential foreign wizards he had contacted. He explained who he thought might help them, who would remain neutral, and those who would probably side with Voldemort when the time came.
Once Dumbledore had concluded the meeting, Charlie crossed the room to Bill. The twins had to push their way through the other Order members trying to leave. When they got to their big brothers, Bill was saying, "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were going to be here. I've made plans."
"Dumbledore wouldn't let me tell anyone. Just one drink?"
Bill shook his head and Fred interrupted with, "His plans have long, blonde hair and a sexy French accent, Charlie. You can't compete with that!"
"And beeeg teeets!" George added, doing an exaggerated impression of Fleur's breasts with his hands.
Bill smacked him on the back of the head, as expected.
"I didn't know about this," Charlie grumbled.
"Owl post's being intercepted," Bill muttered. "Anyway, there's nothing to know. We just work together, that's all. Look, I'll see you next time you're in the country, all right?"
Charlie watched his big brother walk up the stairs. Then he turned to the twins and his face changed. "All right, then. Looks like I'll have to take you two to the pub instead."
"Have to?" George queried.
"Yeah, according to Old Snapie-babes, the next safe Floo won't be for another three hours, so I've got to kill time in London."
"Come and see our shop!" the twins said in unison.
They had wanted to show off what they had created to their coolest brother for months. They bounced around the locked store like over-excited puppies, demonstrating their products and boasting about their marketing successes.
"Looks like there might be money in infantile attention-seeking after all," Charlie conceded, but with a small, proud smile.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" Fred asked.
"I wouldn't go that far."
"You are a bit impressed," George pressed.
"Maybe a bit. Is that everything?"
Fred and George looked at each other and shrugged. "Apart from the apartment," they chorused.
'Apartment' was an overstatement; it was a few poky rooms above the stockroom. They had butterbeer, though, which Charlie swigged from the bottle as he took a look round. He stopped at the door to their bedroom.
"Still sleeping together?" he asked, with a raised eyebrow.
"It's that or lose the sitting room."
Charlie looked at the two single beds. "But not in the same bed yet?"
George looked sharply up at Fred, then away again just as quickly when he found an identical, shocked face looking back at him. He looked down to the floor, then back at Charlie. Charlie's amused dimples were dancing beside his smile. "You two never groped each other?"
They were too shocked to reply.
Charlie gave a little laugh and continued, "I always said you did, but Bill reckoned you hadn't worked it out yet."
"Worked what out?" George asked.
George remembers the look Charlie had on his face at that moment. That strange mixture of amusement, curiosity and lust; his lips soft and his eyes dark, the creases at the corners of his eyes moving fluidly. In his lonely bed years later, George licks his own lips and feels the same tightening of his throat and firing of his nerve-endings. He tightens his grip on his cock and strokes up.
With his other hand, he gets the lube from under the pillow. Charlie introduced him to lube. Well, Charlie taught them everything: most of it that night while he waited for a safe international Floo connection.
The twins avoided looking at each other as he stalked over to them; Fred was probably watching the ruffling of muscles under Charlie's shirt, too. Then his clear blue eyes looked into both of their faces as he put his big hands on their hips. He started to slide his touch back, to squeeze the tight-packed globes of muscle that their buttocks had been then. George whimpered.
Fred pulled back, saying, "Stop it. Charlie. No. We're brothers. We're boys. And family. We can't."
"Says who?" Charlie asked, defiantly. "Since when do you follow rules?"
He took his empty hand, the one that had been caressing Fred, and he took hold of the back of George's head with it, yanking him close, shoving their mouths together. George whimpered again. Charlie's tongue poked at his lips and he opened to let him in, pushing their bodies flush together, gripping his big brother's waist, feeling the hardening and twitching as their aligned erections rose together.
*******
When Fred died, George blamed Charlie. Percy, Harry, Ron, Arthur and Lee all managed to blame themselves for different reasons. But George blamed Charlie. At the wake, Bill had yelled at them all that the only ones to blame for killing their Fred were Lord Voldemort and the Death Eater who'd thrown the hex that had loosened the stones that had fallen on him. Fred had died a hero on the battlefield, Bill said, as a result of his own brave decisions. It could have been any one of them; they were all heroes.
George knew better. He knew that broken taboos make bad Old Magic. He knew that Fred had been taken from him as a punishment and it was Charlie's fault for seducing them. He gave the dragon keeper a significant look and left the sitting room. He waited by the chicken sheds in the drizzle, wondering whether Charlie would have the guts to follow him out there.
He never should have doubted Charlie's courage.
"What have I done?" asked the deep voice behind him.
Gooseflesh ran from his neck down his spine, and George hated Charlie even more because even at Fred's funeral he desired him.
"We shouldn't have done it," George whispered, unable to turn and face his brother, lover, mentor, hero. He had thought he wanted to scream at him and vent his fury, but standing so close, he couldn't do it.
"Shouldn't have done what?"
"You know. We did it lots of times, we slept together every night after... we never would have... You started it --"
"I'm glad of that. I don't regret it. I can't regret bringing you two together. Life's too short. Why should he have missed out on the great passion of his life? You danced around each other for years, missing out, letting convention dictate --"
"It killed him!"
A sharp pain tugged George's head backwards; he was pulled round by his hair. Charlie's face was against his, red and angry, spittle round his lips.
"Don't you dare!" he snapped. "Being happy isn't a crime! You made him happy! You did nothing wrong!"
"It's bad Old Magic!" George choked back. His breathing was being cut off by the twist Charlie put in his neck. He was scared that his throat was also blocked by imminent weeping. Fred would have despised him for that.
"Are you saying that Ted and Dora Tonks were at it? Is that why they're dead? That it wasn't Mum who killed Bellatrix, it was some threesome she'd had with her sisters back in the --"
"No! It was a war, I know --"
Charlie dug his nails into George's shoulder and pulled his body round. "Snape managed to die and Merlin knows he must have been a virgin, 'cos nobody would have touched that --"
"It's not the same!" The tears that he'd held back all week burst their dam and flooded down his cheeks.
"Fred died a hero. He died because he was brave and he was fighting for something he believed in. Don't take that away from him." Charlie loosened his grip and ran his hand round through George's hair to wipe at his cheeks. "You can blame me if it helps. But it doesn't. 'Cos if you blame me then you're blaming yourself. He had sex with both of us. It made him happy. It didn't make him die."
Then he put George's face to his shoulder and let him sob there, unseen by anyone else, for almost an hour. That night George crept up a flight of stairs to Charlie's bedroom.
Their lovemaking that night was desperate and filthy. George could conjure the image of Charlie's face between his thighs, licking down and over and inside him. He calls it up now as he wanks, lube all over his palm, making dirty slurping noises as he moves his hand on his shaft. His fingers are dry though, because he wants to feel the burn as it pushes into him.
*******
"Don't tell me you don't want this," Charlie had said to Fred, on that first night. He'd broken away from snogging George to say it. "I can hear your breathing. You just can't decide which of us you're more jealous of."
Charlie dropped to his knees and, as Charlie undid the buttons on his dragon-skin trousers and pulled out his hot, dripping cock, George heard Fred gasp. All three of them had stared at it for a moment, before Charlie put it into his mouth. Briefly, George had wondered how he'd cope if Fred never forgave him for this, but he was beyond being able to stop. Then Charlie sucked hard and George stopped thinking altogether.
He watched Charlie's tightly cropped ginger head bobbing at his waist, was about to push all of his fingers into that hair, when a warmth covered his back and someone took his hand. Wet heat panted into his ear and a hand untucked his shirt tails and slid across his skin to his nipples. He threw his head back and let Fred kiss him. He no longer had enough control to kiss back.
*******
He hadn't known that he had sensitive nipples until then. Fred's were the same and that was why he'd pinched them, twisting and pulling the way he did with his own. In the early hours of New Year's Day, George pulls his fingers out of his arse and takes them up to mimic Fred. His chest had been less hairy then, and the ribs had shown more. He makes the same moaning sound though as he did that first time.
His chest isn't muscular like Charlie's and his fingers are softer. He's spent his life working in a shop. Not a bad body though, all things considered. Charlie works outdoors, the flying keeps his butt tight; throwing food at wild beasts flattens his belly and firms his arms and pectorals. His hands are the rough hands of a working man.
There were numerous nights after Fred's death, when life would become unbearable and George would Apparate across the borders to Romania. If Charlie was on Night Patrol when he got there, then he would wait on his doorstep. Frequently they fucked in front of the fire with Charlie still in his protective Keeper suit, gloves and all. Remembering the feel of tough dragon-hide penetrating him makes George groan loudly and leave his nipples alone so he can finger himself again.
Four years after Fred's funeral, Angelina Johnson entered George's life again. She turned up at the shop and wouldn't go away. He liked her well enough - she was funny and she knew Quidditch - but on the third day she asked him out and it made him uncomfortable.
"Oh go on," she'd said after he turned her down. "You can't mope around for the rest of your life. You've got to let someone else in at some point!"
"I like you, Ang, but I'm not looking for --"
"I've been asking around since I got back to London and people say you haven't been on a date since he died. You think he'd want that?"
"I don't care what he would want!" George snapped. How dare she bring Fred into this?
"He'd want you to find someone and be happy with them."
He couldn't tell her that he had someone already. That he had found the right man. That they made each other happy.
She wouldn't go away and it drove him mad. He told Charlie about it one night in Romania. The Keepers' cottages all had glass roofs, the idea being that if a dragon escaped then someone would see it fly away, even at night. They were always on duty.
"You're energetic tonight!" Charlie commented.
"Sorry."
"No, that's how I like it. You know that." They lay naked, breathing deeply, staring up at the stars in the clear sky. After a couple of minutes, as George's eyelids began to close, Charlie added. "Something on your mind?" He always knew.
So George told him about Angelina. Charlie wove his big fingers in between his brother's smaller ones and lifted their hands to his mouth. He kissed George's soft palm and then surprised him by saying, "You should say yes."
Hurt and bewildered, George sat upright and pulled his hand back. Charlie lay still and stared up through the skylight.
"I love you, George. Don't be like that. You know I do." He turned his face away. "This is your chance to be normal, to have a life like norm..." He sniffed and paused, but his voice sounded clear when he spoke again. "You have to take that chance."
And if George hadn't taken that chance then there would have been no Freddie and no Roxie. It had made his mother glad. He'd asked Ron to be Best Man and Charlie had faked gastric Dragon 'flu at the last minute to avoid the wedding. Maybe it had been worth it. What would Angelina say? Had it been worth it for her?
The thought of his wife puts him off his stroke like iced water. So he thinks some more about his brother. As he often does when he masturbates, he recalls that first night with Fred and Charlie in the rooms above the Diagon Alley shop.
*******
Charlie had replaced his mouth on George's cock with his hand, then with Fred's hand. He'd pushed them both into their bedroom and thrown them onto the bed together. They had been stroking and kissing and frotting with a blinding fervour. Fred tasted like a feast after a prison release. They'd tugged without co-ordination at each other's clothes, but it was Charlie who had stripped them.
That was when he'd taken the tube out of his pocket and squirted it into both of his palms. Then he took hold of their pricks. Seeing Fred writhe, sweaty, flushed and moaning, George could see what he looked like himself.
Charlie hissed, "Now which one of you is man enough to let me inside?"
He'd vaguely heard Fred's "Huh?", but it was drowned out by his own cry of "Gods! Yes! Oh, now! Yes! Please!"
Charlie flipped him over then, so that he was on all-fours, with Fred under him. He got their hands back on each other's slippery cocks and they looked into each other's red faces, as Charlie's fingers got to work loosening George up.
"You sure about this, George?" Fred checked. When his twin nodded, he asked, "What's it feel like? What's he doing?"
"His fingers... inside... in and out... I want to..."
"He loves it," Charlie said. "He's pushing back onto me, he's sucking me in. I need to... Shit! George! Are you ready? Can I? I need to."
George just nodded, biting his lip. "He's ready," Fred said.
When Charlie repeatedly thrust onto his prostate, George's arms gave way. Fred held him up by the shoulders. He kissed his chin as they sprayed come onto each other's bellies and the sight of that finished Charlie off.
*******
George thinks about the grunts Charlie made then, as he thrust his release into George's arse, about the way their three young bodies had collapsed onto each other and it brings him close. He's so far gone that he barely hears the noise at the grate. His wrist keeps tugging upwards. Someone is breathing in the dark room, heavy breaths that are not his own. He stills his hand and holds himself on the brink.
"Started without me?" Charlie asks.
George takes a couple of steadying breaths. "You got rid of them then?"
"They're asleep. I'll Floo back before they wake. Happy New Year."
"Where's my kiss?" George asks groggily.
At midnight, while all the other men had openly kissed their wives, Charlie had kissed their mother and George his daughter. They would never be able to kiss in public; nobody else would ever know what they meant to each other.
Charlie pulls his Christmas jumper up over his head, and then drops it on the floor. The inked dragons undulate across the firm slopes of his pectorals, shooting harmless flames across his nipples, but rearing back from the small picture of a man with a lance on horseback. Only two people would ever know why Charlie had chosen to be tattooed with Saint George over his heart.
He leans over the bed and lets his mouth hover over his brother's, before yanking off the duvet and planting a wet kiss on the sticky, swollen tip of George's cock.