Victoire stepped out of the floo into Gallagher's basement, she was gratified to find that Gallagher's reaction to her skirt roughly resembled Teddy's. The most significant distinction was Gallagher's comparative lack of subtlety, which she supposed was probably the result of knowing that he was going to be reaching under it very soon rather than just thinking about it.

"You're dressed up," he said after a long pause.

"I told you, I was at a holiday party."

"Worth leaving for me?"

She considered whether or not she should mention that Teddy had been there, and ended up quickly coming down on the side of assuaging her curiosity. "Yeah," she said as they started up the stairs. "We were just hanging out with Johanna and Teddy, it wasn't like we were doing anything exciting." His footsteps stopped. When she got to the landing, she looked down at him - he was still just halfway up the stairs. "What?"

He shook himself and hurried up to join her. "Don't give me that 'what.' You know exactly what." The grin on his face as he brushed by her took any potential bite out of his words.

She tossed her coat, hat, and tablet on the chair next to his door as he locked it. "Well, it seemed like a good thing -"

"- to say at the time," he finished with her. "Well, I'm not entirely sure how I'm supposed to take that, but it seems like it's probably a compliment, so I'm going to move on." His gaze flitted between his bed and the couch. "Uh - so - I don't -"

She felt her face get warm. It was quickly becoming apparent to her that close friendship diminished a lot of awkwardness, but it didn't completely remove it. "I - er - I liked being on your bed. If that's okay." When he nodded quickly, she bent down to unlace her boots.

He tossed himself onto his bed. "When do you need to get home?"

She kicked the first one off. "My mum just said not too late - they're so used to us all doing stuff on the holidays that they've kind of stopped caring as long as I'm not actually out somewhere." She joined him on his bed.

"Lucky us," he said. "My family thinks I might be covering feeling left out by using you as an excuse - they're feeling a little guilty that I didn't want to go."

"I thought you really felt that way," she teased.

"Well, I did, and then one of my best friends started making out with me, and suddenly -"

Some combination of his words and the way he was looking at her was making her heart start to race. "Can I get on top of you again?" she said, and then immediately realized she'd cut him off. "Fuck - sorry, I -"

"Yes, Vic, please get on top of me."

As soon as she settled on top of him, she laughed. "Holy shit, G, that turned into literally really quickly."

He grinned. "Yeah, well. I don't know what your goal was when you got dressed today, but that skirt has been driving me fucking crazy since you got here, and then you gave me a really nice view down your shirt when you bent over to take your shoes off."

"Did I? I bet I can give you a better one." Their shirts and her bra landed in a heap toward the foot of his bed, and as she started to rock against him, she felt his hand settle on her hip. Their lips met, and then she felt his fingers at her chest again. She broke away, gasping. "Fuck, you really like doing that, don't you?"

"What gave me away?" he joked as she pulled his other hand up. "Oh, fuck, Vic -"

She'd had no idea she was even capable of making the noise that came out of her then, but judging by his groan, he seemed to like it. He shifted their weight, and she tumbled onto her back.

"Please, G, I need you," she whimpered, already aching from the loss of pressure underneath her. "I need you to touch me, please -"

He ran a hand up the inside of her thigh. "Fuck -" he groaned when he reached her underwear. "Vic, you're so wet." He slipped his fingers underneath the thin cotton, and she let her head fall back against the pillow as he started to swirl his tongue around her nipple. When he took it in his mouth, she moaned and threaded her fingers through his hair.

It wasn't enough. She needed more. "Um - G?" He picked his head up from her chest to look at her. "Do you - you don't have to, but would it make it easier if you took off my underwear?" He stopped moving for a moment, and she added, "You don't have to if -"

Then his fingers were tugging her underwear down to her knees, and his lips were on hers again. She pulled them the rest of the way down with her toes and kicked them aside as he started to touch her again.

He'd definitely started to increase the pressure he was using. "I am so fucking hard for you right now," he murmured in her ear as she moaned his name. "Oh my fucking god, Vic, I don't think I've ever been so fucking hard before, I want you, I need you -"

She reached out to fumble at his trousers. It took a few tries to undo the button and yank them down enough to touch him, but once she'd managed it, she spit in her hand.

"Yes," he said, starting to thrust as she moved her hand up and down. "Vic -"

"I love how hard you get for me," she breathed, and he started to move his fingers faster. "I love how wet you make me, I keep thinking about how good you'd feel inside of me -"

She dug her nails into his shoulder as he crashed his lips to hers again. This kiss was not a gentle one - it was rough and frantic and desperate, and she lost track of anything that wasn't his body and the way it felt on hers. He grunted when she broke away, writhing against his fingers. "G - I'm so close, I'm so close, please don't stop, I need you in me, please, G, I need you in me -"

He stiffened and gasped her name. Then he pulled out of her grip and shifted his body down. "Come for me, Vic," he gasped before taking her other nipple in his mouth again.

"Faster," she cried out, wiping her fingers on the bedspread before threading them back through his hair, holding him in place. "Oh my god, G, please, I need you, I need you -" Then the release finally came, and the vibrations pulsed through her. She was dimly aware of him collapsing next to her, but she didn't open her eyes until they started to slow down. "Kiss me," she breathed.

He immediately leaned over and kissed her softly, his tongue brushing against hers. By the time he pulled back, her heart had finally started to slow down.

"Oh my god," she said to the ceiling. "G, that felt - oh, fuck."

"Same here," he breathed. "Uh - I think I might've gotten a little on your skirt, though, and I definitely got some on your side. Sorry - I went from getting kind of close to finishing really, really quickly." He reached over her to grab a tissue box off his nightstand and handed it to her. She grabbed a few and wiped off her side. "I think it was the 'I need you in me' that did it."

She suddenly felt a little warm - she hadn't quite realized she was saying what was going through her mind. His reaction did seem to suggest that he wasn't bothered by the comment, though, so it seemed like as good an opening as any to bring up doing it again. She rolled onto her side to look at him, and his gaze immediately drifted down.

"Sorry," he said, dragging his eyes back up to her face. "This is exactly why I put so much effort into not thinking about you in this way before you went of making friends with banshees. Now I'm absolutely obsessed with your boobs."

"I don't mind," she said.

"I do, though." The frustration was clear in his voice. "You're one of my best friends, I don't want to start thinking about what you look like without a shirt on every time I look at you just because we hooked up a few times."

She felt like she'd been submerged into a bath of freezing-cold water. "Does that mean you don't want to keep doing this?"

He looked a little taken aback. "Are you saying that you do? Even after we get back to school?" She bit her lip and nodded, and his gaze drifted back down to her chest before he rolled onto his back and threw an arm over his face. "Fuck."

"I mean, G, I care about your friendship a lot, too," she said quickly, stumbling over her words. "Way more than this, so it's fine if you don't, really - I'm sorry if I'm just assuming - it's really fine if you don't want -"

He cut her off. "Oh my fucking god, Victoire - if you're really not sure whether or not I want to, just get on top of me again."

After a moment of hesitation, she swung her leg over him to straddle him. She moaned when she found him already hard, and when she felt his hands in her hips, she started to rock against him. With his jeans yanked down and her underwear still on the floor, there was just a single layer of cloth between them, and it felt better than she'd realized it would.

"Were you seriously confused?" he asked incredulously. She made a face, and his face broke into a grin. "Vic, you are impossibly dense about things sometimes."

"Well, you said you hadn't generally thought about me like that," she said, trailing her fingers down his chest.

"Yeah, and I also said that was intentional. There was a really good reason I hadn't - now I don't know how to turn it off again." His groaned and moved one hand up to her chest again. "Fuck, I really didn't think that one through - I was just trying to make the point, I wasn't expecting you to actually need to get on top of me to check."

"Sorry," she said quickly, feeling her face get hot. "I can get off -"

His hand shot back down to her hip. "Oh, god, please don't - unless you mean getting off in a more fun way."

"Well, you just said you minded."

His chest was rising and falling very quickly now. "Not enough to want you to move." When she hesitated, he added, "Vic, trust me - doing it again isn't going to make me any more obsessed with your boobs than I already am." She whimpered as he started to move his hips, but when he reached up toward her chest, she stopped him.

"G?" she asked. "I…"

He frowned at her and stopped moving. "What's wrong?" She shook her head and start to move again; this time, he stopped her. "Vic, now I'm going to worry if you don't, so spit it out."

She swallowed. "No, I just - I feel like maybe it's a stupid question, if you're already -"

"Vic, get off me and lay down here, okay?"

When she'd settled next to him, he reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder. "Should I put on a shirt so you can be coherent?" she joked.

He rolled his eyes. "Vic, I'm your friend, not a fucking caveman - I'm always going to care a lot more about how you feel than how much you're wearing. What's up?"

She sighed. "I just - I was going to ask if you wanted to take off the rest of our clothes, but now I feel I shouldn't, if you already don't really like thinking about me like this. And, I don't know, I know it's -"

She was starting to ramble, and it was a relief when he stopped her. "Vic, just so I have this straight - you're telling me that right now, you want to get naked with me, get each other off for the second time tonight, and then just keep doing that for - what, the foreseeable future?"

She nodded.

"Fuck. This is a thing that's actually happening, right? Because I'm going to be royally fucking pissed off if I wake up tomorrow and this is a fucking dream I have to get out of my fucking head."

"Yeah. But it's - it's fine if you don't want to. Really."

"Vic, you were just on top of me - you know how much I want it. I just don't want to open a pandora's box and lose you as a friend, you know?" He considered her for a moment. "Can I - just - like - I don't know, hug you?"

She nodded and immediately edged closer to him. She couldn't count the number of times they'd hugged before as fully-clothed, fully platonic friends, so when his arms circled around her and she felt his bare skin on hers, the embrace somehow felt comforting, familiar, and thrilling all at once. She could hear his heart racing in his chest, and she nuzzled her face against it. His breath caught in his throat. "I really do care a lot more about our friendship," she said softly. "I'm sorry if I'm fucking it up with my shitty impulse control."

She felt as well as heard his laugh. "Oh, Vic. Look at me?" When she met his eyes, she felt something lurch inside her that she didn't think had anything to do with sex. He brushed his lips against hers, and when they pulled back, he shook his head. "Yeah, I don't know about you, but I think I'm already pretty much fucked - it's not like I'm going to stop thinking about you telling me you want to keep hooking up with me either way."

The anxiety in her chest started to ease. "If it helps, I'm probably going to be thinking about you shirtless whenever I see you, too."

"Wait, are you telling me you like what you see? You're so subtle - I really couldn't tell."

She pressed her body against his. "If you're really confused, just stick your fingers in me again." His hand immediately drifted down her body, and she moaned when he slid two fingers inside of her. "I was expecting you to do that," she breathed as she started to grind her body against him.

"Oh, I know you were." He shook his head. He hadn't stopped smiling. "This is so fucking weird. Not in a bad way - I just didn't think that all these years getting to know you so well was ever coming to help me get you off." He pulled his fingers away. "Take off your skirt, Vic," he gasped as she whimpered an objection. His jeans landed on the floor. "I'm leaving my boxers on, though - I don't know if you meant - but either way, it doesn't matter, I don't have a condom."

"We should probably get some."

He rolled her onto her back and started to thrust against her. "I think I'm going to lose my fucking mind if we don't."