Title: Journeying: Chapter 1: The Incident
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Ron Weasley
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never have been, never will. They belong to J. K. Rowling. Please don't sue.
Summary: Draco and Ron get stuck in the bathroom together.
Warnings: This takes place sometime within the characters fifth year, so they're fifteen. This means underage! There's also stuff in here that has two guys kissing and being in a relationship together. If you can't deal, leave.
Notes: Uh, none really. There's some language in this chapter and others are racier, so this fic's getting an R rating. I know that these characters are using American cursing. It's because that's what I know and if I tried to use British, it'd sound bad. Go with it, peoples.
Feedback: Yes please. If I don't know what was bad, it ain't ever gonna get better.
~The Incident~
It was their fifth year at Hogwarts, right after the Christmas Eve feast. Ron should have been happy, but instead he was feeling slightly nauseated. Only Harry and he were inside the Gryffindor Common Room, digesting the large meal they'd just eaten. Hermione and all the other Gryffindors had gone home for the holiday, so they were the only ones left in their house. Ron guessed that he was looking kind of ill because Harry keep looking at him funny.
"Ron, are you feeling ok?" Harry finally asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," was Ron's reply, which would have sounded a whole lot more convincing if he hadn't groaned afterwards.
"You sure?" Concern faintly radiated out of his friend's captivating green eyes.
"Um-hmm. I'm going to walk around for a bit." When Harry's eyes didn't lose that touch of inspection, Ron added, "Don't worry so much. For Pete's sake, you remind me of my mum."
Harry snorted at that and Ron beat a quick retreat out of there. Once outside, Ron leaned back against the wall next to the portrait of the Fat Lady. She herself was asleep, happily snoring away. Ron wasn't looking forward to having to wake her to come back in, but his stomach was starting to rebel against all the food in there. He hoped some exercise would help calm it down.
After wandering for several minutes, Ron had to decide that the exercise was not helping. If anything, his poor, abused stomach felt worse. Thinking that a bathroom might just come in handy soon, Ron found the nearest one and went in. It was near where the Slytherins walked whenever they were going back to their Common Room, but presently Ron didn't care that this toilet had probably been used by Malfoy numerous times.
As soon as he'd gotten in the door, Ron dashed to a toilet bowl and hung his head over it. After regurgitating all of dinner into the porcelain bowl, the redhead flushed. He was in the middle of gargling to get the worst of the taste out when he heard someone struggling to open the door. Obeying his sense of something foreboding coming in, Ron went and hid in the stall farthest from the entrance, sitting on the tank with his feet on the lid.
Immediately after he'd gotten out of sight, the stubborn door opened with a bang. A low-voiced string of curses entered along with the person who'd been trying to get in.
"Goddamn door. Just wait'll my father hears about the state things are in around here. He'll fix everything right up, you can bet your ass. He's not just going to fuck around like shit-for-brains Dumbledore is."
It was Malfoy! The unctuous voice was one Ron could recognize in his sleep. He had seen him at the feast, minus Crabbe and Goyle for the first time Ron could remember. He gritted his teeth and clenched his hands, the knuckles turning white, forcing himself not to leap out of his stall and attack the annoying prick. Explaining what he was doing in the lavatory so far from his Common Room could not be easily done. And if Malfoy didn't buy it, which was more than likely, then when school started back up all his classmates would know that he'd been cowering in a washroom.
Malfoy quickly took a piss, of which Ron could make out part of Malfoy's arm through the crack in the door. After briskly washing his hands, Malfoy headed out Ron's sight, assumingly to leave. Ron breathed a sigh of relief that his nemesis was leaving, but it was premature.
Ron heard, as opposed to saw, Malfoy try the handle. It stuck. With another curse, Malfoy tried even harder, even ramming his shoulder against the uncooperative door in a futile attempt to escape. Seeing that leaving was impossible, Malfoy leaned his back on the door and slid down until he was sitting on the disturbingly clean floor. Despite himself, Ron let out a snicker at Malfoy's predicament, momentarily forgetting to be quiet.
Ron berated himself in the stillness that followed. He could have been heard! Lucky for him, Malfoy didn't seem to have heard. The two sat silent, one unaware of the other, supposedly, until Malfoy called out.
"So," the pale boy drawled, "who's in here with me?"
Ron kept still, hoping that his undesired companion would give up.
"Is it maybe Potter? Or perhaps one of the other houses. A Hufflepuff possibly? No wait, I know. It's got to be that impossibly loud-mouthed Weasley friend of his."
Ron still kept quiet, still hoping that the idiot would get bored and leave him alone.
Hearing Malfoy stand again, Ron let out a small sigh of relief. He was going to try the door again. But instead of the banging and thumping he expected, there were Malfoy's unhurried steps echoing in the small room. Occasionally they would stop and Ron could hear a creak as the unoiled hinges on one of the stalls opened.
Just as Malfoy started to reach for his door, Ron could see him through the crack once more; he leapt of his seat and shoved the door open, hitting Malfoy right in his kisser with the edge. While Malfoy was still leaning over and howling in pain, Ron rushed past, determined to leave.
He tried the door handle, but it wouldn't move. He started applying more and more pressure, but the knob was still as immobile as it had been before. Giving up on the traditional way of opening the door, Ron backed up, fully intending to run into it and break it open.
Draco, having recovered from the blow, noticed what Ron was about to do and grabbed the boy's elbow. The fool struggled, but Draco refused to let go.
Ron, unable to wrench himself away from Malfoy, chose to glower instead. "What're you going to do now that you've caught me?" he spat.
Malfoy, seeing that Ron had given up breaking down the door, released Ron's arm. "The door won't open, at least from this side, for a while yet. Better make yourself comfortable."
Malfoy's voice was surprisingly free of venom. Ron didn't trust it. Malfoy resumed his position seated against the door, staring at his long fingers, only now Ron could see how that thin body gracefully folded in on itself, almost swallowed by volumous black robes.
*Graceful*! Had he, Ron, just called something about Draco, his worst enemy, graceful? Apparently he had. Disturbed by his own thoughts, Ron sat cross-legged leaning against the wall opposite Draco. So that he wouldn't have to look at white-blond hair falling in front of pale blue eyes and brushing pale pink skin, Ron cast his eyes about the room for something to stare at.
The overhead lights were very bright, exposing everything underneath. No way was he going to ask Draco about the door. There were a few urinals on one side of Ron. He also wasn't going to ask Draco why he had, as yet, to pick a fight with him. On the same side as the urinals were two sinks. In fact, he wasn't going to ask Draco anything. There was no soap, which wasn't surprising since this was a boy's bathroom. He wasn't going to question himself as to why he was calling Draco Draco instead of Malfoy. Opposite the sinks and urinals were the four bathroom stalls. In fact, he wasn't going to think about Draco at all.
Lighting his eyes on the floor, Ron spotted the spider. It wasn't especially big, but it definitely wasn't tiny. Fighting his natural instinct to run away and thus lose face in front of Draco, Ron sat perfectly still. He was the picture of calm, except for a slightly gray tint to his face, until the thing scampered an inch closer to Ron. Giving in just a touch to his fear, Ron pulled his legs up so that his arms were wrapped around his knees. The spider inched a bit closer to Ron. Ron pressed his lips together tightly, draining them of blood, and whimpered slightly.
Draco, hearing noise from the, until now, silent boy, looked up from his hands curiously. Ron was staring at the seemingly blank floor, blue eyes widened in panic, though not too noticeably. Draco glanced back down at the floor, but this time he happened to see a small, black spider there. Looking at Ron, Draco couldn't quite bring himself to believe that a harmless insect was causing the other's blind terror.
Out of the corner of his eye, Draco saw the spider move even closer to Ron. Bringing his gaze back up to Ron's face, he observed that now his companion had tightly clenched his eyes shut. So, it was the spider after all.
Closing his eyes was a mistake, he knew. But Ron couldn't stop himself. Draco wasn't dumb; by now he should have figured out Ron's behavior. Ron heard a slight rustle of clothes but didn't dare open his eyes.
He heard Draco come nearer to him and soon felt the boy's hot breath tickling his ear. Draco blew a puff of air onto his ear, tickling the sensitive hairs there. Ron snapped his eyes open and turned his head just enough so that he could see Draco, hands drawn back behind his robes and therefore hidden, kneeling by his side.
Draco, seeing that he had Ron's attention, twisted his thin lips into a grin. "I take it, Weasley, that you don't care for spiders much?" he said maliciously.
Ron didn't answer, instead staring transfixed as Malfoy drew both hands forward, separating them only as long as necessary. They were clasped together as if holding something. Ron had a terribly feeling that he knew what the something was.
When Draco opened his hands, he saw that he was right. Sitting in one palm was the lone spider. Ron gave a faint cry and tried to scamper away but was trapped by the wall on two sides and by Draco on the other two. Before he could pull himself together enough to go through where Draco was, the boy did something surprising. He smashed his palms together, killing the insect in one swift blow.
Ron watched, bemused since that all he could handle at this moment, as Draco's body got up and washed his hands clean of the spider guts. With still wet hands, Draco once more sat, only this time next to Ron, and chuckled.
Unable to cope with such great derivation from his foe's normal routine, Ron decided that he would go on the offensive. Jumping to his feet, the livid boy shouted, "What kind of mind game are you playing with me, huh? What, no insults? Are you loosing your touch Malfoy?"
With his chest still heaving from his outburst, Draco looked up at him and smiled. A genuine smile. If he hadn't been staring at it right now, Ron would never have believed it could even exist.
Draco countered with another question. "Don't you ever just get tired of it all?"
Ron stared blankly and Draco clarified his previous statement slightly. "Trying to live up to what society expects of you." The smile had slipped. Draco's voice held weariness in place of his usual contempt.
Ron sat back down next to Draco. The two shared a companionable silence, both lost in their own thoughts. On occasion Ron would fidget or Draco would shift so as not to lose feeling in any limb.
Finally, Draco spoke up. There was a speculative, wistful quality to his words that indicated, to Ron anyway, that the Slytherin boy was being more truthful than he ever had been to his present company. "My father's always pushing me to achieve more than he ever did, to continue on the way Malfoy's have been for centuries. Sometimes I feel like I'm his clone instead of his son. And I want to shatter that image he has of me. And the image everyone else has of me. I think, perhaps, I should do something brash and stupid just to prove that I'm not who everyone believes I am." Ron had turned his head to watch Draco as he spoke, but the other youth had stared straight ahead. Now, he turned his head and brushed his lengthy blond hair out of the way.
"Do you ever feel that way?" he whispered.
Ron watched curiously as Draco leaned closer and caught his own lips in a tender kiss. Ron opened his mouth slightly and Draco pushed his tongue in, exploring gently. Ron remained passive and soon found his mouth freed from the other boy's. Draco gracefully stood and opened the door, which unlatched easily. He exited, leaving Ron alone on the bathroom floor. Ron stared, thunderstruck, at Draco's retreating figure. Searching his brain for a coherent thought, the first one he found was that his mouth must have tasted terrible.
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Ron Weasley
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never have been, never will. They belong to J. K. Rowling. Please don't sue.
Summary: Draco and Ron get stuck in the bathroom together.
Warnings: This takes place sometime within the characters fifth year, so they're fifteen. This means underage! There's also stuff in here that has two guys kissing and being in a relationship together. If you can't deal, leave.
Notes: Uh, none really. There's some language in this chapter and others are racier, so this fic's getting an R rating. I know that these characters are using American cursing. It's because that's what I know and if I tried to use British, it'd sound bad. Go with it, peoples.
Feedback: Yes please. If I don't know what was bad, it ain't ever gonna get better.
~The Incident~
It was their fifth year at Hogwarts, right after the Christmas Eve feast. Ron should have been happy, but instead he was feeling slightly nauseated. Only Harry and he were inside the Gryffindor Common Room, digesting the large meal they'd just eaten. Hermione and all the other Gryffindors had gone home for the holiday, so they were the only ones left in their house. Ron guessed that he was looking kind of ill because Harry keep looking at him funny.
"Ron, are you feeling ok?" Harry finally asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," was Ron's reply, which would have sounded a whole lot more convincing if he hadn't groaned afterwards.
"You sure?" Concern faintly radiated out of his friend's captivating green eyes.
"Um-hmm. I'm going to walk around for a bit." When Harry's eyes didn't lose that touch of inspection, Ron added, "Don't worry so much. For Pete's sake, you remind me of my mum."
Harry snorted at that and Ron beat a quick retreat out of there. Once outside, Ron leaned back against the wall next to the portrait of the Fat Lady. She herself was asleep, happily snoring away. Ron wasn't looking forward to having to wake her to come back in, but his stomach was starting to rebel against all the food in there. He hoped some exercise would help calm it down.
After wandering for several minutes, Ron had to decide that the exercise was not helping. If anything, his poor, abused stomach felt worse. Thinking that a bathroom might just come in handy soon, Ron found the nearest one and went in. It was near where the Slytherins walked whenever they were going back to their Common Room, but presently Ron didn't care that this toilet had probably been used by Malfoy numerous times.
As soon as he'd gotten in the door, Ron dashed to a toilet bowl and hung his head over it. After regurgitating all of dinner into the porcelain bowl, the redhead flushed. He was in the middle of gargling to get the worst of the taste out when he heard someone struggling to open the door. Obeying his sense of something foreboding coming in, Ron went and hid in the stall farthest from the entrance, sitting on the tank with his feet on the lid.
Immediately after he'd gotten out of sight, the stubborn door opened with a bang. A low-voiced string of curses entered along with the person who'd been trying to get in.
"Goddamn door. Just wait'll my father hears about the state things are in around here. He'll fix everything right up, you can bet your ass. He's not just going to fuck around like shit-for-brains Dumbledore is."
It was Malfoy! The unctuous voice was one Ron could recognize in his sleep. He had seen him at the feast, minus Crabbe and Goyle for the first time Ron could remember. He gritted his teeth and clenched his hands, the knuckles turning white, forcing himself not to leap out of his stall and attack the annoying prick. Explaining what he was doing in the lavatory so far from his Common Room could not be easily done. And if Malfoy didn't buy it, which was more than likely, then when school started back up all his classmates would know that he'd been cowering in a washroom.
Malfoy quickly took a piss, of which Ron could make out part of Malfoy's arm through the crack in the door. After briskly washing his hands, Malfoy headed out Ron's sight, assumingly to leave. Ron breathed a sigh of relief that his nemesis was leaving, but it was premature.
Ron heard, as opposed to saw, Malfoy try the handle. It stuck. With another curse, Malfoy tried even harder, even ramming his shoulder against the uncooperative door in a futile attempt to escape. Seeing that leaving was impossible, Malfoy leaned his back on the door and slid down until he was sitting on the disturbingly clean floor. Despite himself, Ron let out a snicker at Malfoy's predicament, momentarily forgetting to be quiet.
Ron berated himself in the stillness that followed. He could have been heard! Lucky for him, Malfoy didn't seem to have heard. The two sat silent, one unaware of the other, supposedly, until Malfoy called out.
"So," the pale boy drawled, "who's in here with me?"
Ron kept still, hoping that his undesired companion would give up.
"Is it maybe Potter? Or perhaps one of the other houses. A Hufflepuff possibly? No wait, I know. It's got to be that impossibly loud-mouthed Weasley friend of his."
Ron still kept quiet, still hoping that the idiot would get bored and leave him alone.
Hearing Malfoy stand again, Ron let out a small sigh of relief. He was going to try the door again. But instead of the banging and thumping he expected, there were Malfoy's unhurried steps echoing in the small room. Occasionally they would stop and Ron could hear a creak as the unoiled hinges on one of the stalls opened.
Just as Malfoy started to reach for his door, Ron could see him through the crack once more; he leapt of his seat and shoved the door open, hitting Malfoy right in his kisser with the edge. While Malfoy was still leaning over and howling in pain, Ron rushed past, determined to leave.
He tried the door handle, but it wouldn't move. He started applying more and more pressure, but the knob was still as immobile as it had been before. Giving up on the traditional way of opening the door, Ron backed up, fully intending to run into it and break it open.
Draco, having recovered from the blow, noticed what Ron was about to do and grabbed the boy's elbow. The fool struggled, but Draco refused to let go.
Ron, unable to wrench himself away from Malfoy, chose to glower instead. "What're you going to do now that you've caught me?" he spat.
Malfoy, seeing that Ron had given up breaking down the door, released Ron's arm. "The door won't open, at least from this side, for a while yet. Better make yourself comfortable."
Malfoy's voice was surprisingly free of venom. Ron didn't trust it. Malfoy resumed his position seated against the door, staring at his long fingers, only now Ron could see how that thin body gracefully folded in on itself, almost swallowed by volumous black robes.
*Graceful*! Had he, Ron, just called something about Draco, his worst enemy, graceful? Apparently he had. Disturbed by his own thoughts, Ron sat cross-legged leaning against the wall opposite Draco. So that he wouldn't have to look at white-blond hair falling in front of pale blue eyes and brushing pale pink skin, Ron cast his eyes about the room for something to stare at.
The overhead lights were very bright, exposing everything underneath. No way was he going to ask Draco about the door. There were a few urinals on one side of Ron. He also wasn't going to ask Draco why he had, as yet, to pick a fight with him. On the same side as the urinals were two sinks. In fact, he wasn't going to ask Draco anything. There was no soap, which wasn't surprising since this was a boy's bathroom. He wasn't going to question himself as to why he was calling Draco Draco instead of Malfoy. Opposite the sinks and urinals were the four bathroom stalls. In fact, he wasn't going to think about Draco at all.
Lighting his eyes on the floor, Ron spotted the spider. It wasn't especially big, but it definitely wasn't tiny. Fighting his natural instinct to run away and thus lose face in front of Draco, Ron sat perfectly still. He was the picture of calm, except for a slightly gray tint to his face, until the thing scampered an inch closer to Ron. Giving in just a touch to his fear, Ron pulled his legs up so that his arms were wrapped around his knees. The spider inched a bit closer to Ron. Ron pressed his lips together tightly, draining them of blood, and whimpered slightly.
Draco, hearing noise from the, until now, silent boy, looked up from his hands curiously. Ron was staring at the seemingly blank floor, blue eyes widened in panic, though not too noticeably. Draco glanced back down at the floor, but this time he happened to see a small, black spider there. Looking at Ron, Draco couldn't quite bring himself to believe that a harmless insect was causing the other's blind terror.
Out of the corner of his eye, Draco saw the spider move even closer to Ron. Bringing his gaze back up to Ron's face, he observed that now his companion had tightly clenched his eyes shut. So, it was the spider after all.
Closing his eyes was a mistake, he knew. But Ron couldn't stop himself. Draco wasn't dumb; by now he should have figured out Ron's behavior. Ron heard a slight rustle of clothes but didn't dare open his eyes.
He heard Draco come nearer to him and soon felt the boy's hot breath tickling his ear. Draco blew a puff of air onto his ear, tickling the sensitive hairs there. Ron snapped his eyes open and turned his head just enough so that he could see Draco, hands drawn back behind his robes and therefore hidden, kneeling by his side.
Draco, seeing that he had Ron's attention, twisted his thin lips into a grin. "I take it, Weasley, that you don't care for spiders much?" he said maliciously.
Ron didn't answer, instead staring transfixed as Malfoy drew both hands forward, separating them only as long as necessary. They were clasped together as if holding something. Ron had a terribly feeling that he knew what the something was.
When Draco opened his hands, he saw that he was right. Sitting in one palm was the lone spider. Ron gave a faint cry and tried to scamper away but was trapped by the wall on two sides and by Draco on the other two. Before he could pull himself together enough to go through where Draco was, the boy did something surprising. He smashed his palms together, killing the insect in one swift blow.
Ron watched, bemused since that all he could handle at this moment, as Draco's body got up and washed his hands clean of the spider guts. With still wet hands, Draco once more sat, only this time next to Ron, and chuckled.
Unable to cope with such great derivation from his foe's normal routine, Ron decided that he would go on the offensive. Jumping to his feet, the livid boy shouted, "What kind of mind game are you playing with me, huh? What, no insults? Are you loosing your touch Malfoy?"
With his chest still heaving from his outburst, Draco looked up at him and smiled. A genuine smile. If he hadn't been staring at it right now, Ron would never have believed it could even exist.
Draco countered with another question. "Don't you ever just get tired of it all?"
Ron stared blankly and Draco clarified his previous statement slightly. "Trying to live up to what society expects of you." The smile had slipped. Draco's voice held weariness in place of his usual contempt.
Ron sat back down next to Draco. The two shared a companionable silence, both lost in their own thoughts. On occasion Ron would fidget or Draco would shift so as not to lose feeling in any limb.
Finally, Draco spoke up. There was a speculative, wistful quality to his words that indicated, to Ron anyway, that the Slytherin boy was being more truthful than he ever had been to his present company. "My father's always pushing me to achieve more than he ever did, to continue on the way Malfoy's have been for centuries. Sometimes I feel like I'm his clone instead of his son. And I want to shatter that image he has of me. And the image everyone else has of me. I think, perhaps, I should do something brash and stupid just to prove that I'm not who everyone believes I am." Ron had turned his head to watch Draco as he spoke, but the other youth had stared straight ahead. Now, he turned his head and brushed his lengthy blond hair out of the way.
"Do you ever feel that way?" he whispered.
Ron watched curiously as Draco leaned closer and caught his own lips in a tender kiss. Ron opened his mouth slightly and Draco pushed his tongue in, exploring gently. Ron remained passive and soon found his mouth freed from the other boy's. Draco gracefully stood and opened the door, which unlatched easily. He exited, leaving Ron alone on the bathroom floor. Ron stared, thunderstruck, at Draco's retreating figure. Searching his brain for a coherent thought, the first one he found was that his mouth must have tasted terrible.