Part Five

Ron groaned as he squeezed his eyes tightly closed. A shaft of mid-morning sun was trying to sear brutally through his eyelids and fry his few remaining brain cells.

What was it about good friends plus alcohol that made you feel all cuddly and fuzzy at the time, but in the morning had you upchucking so violently you'd swear major organs had liquefied and also been purged?

Oh god.

Ron could have sworn it had been dark only minutes ago. It was the last time he'd scrambled out of bed and darted into the bathroom. He shrank back further into his tangled sheets as that beam of monstrous light had the audacity to creep between his curtains and into his bed.

Lifting his head off the pillow was more difficult then it looked. Muscles refused to budge on command and his head throbbed in protest at being disturbed from its resting place. Still, with much grunting, he managed to flip himself over and bury his head in the warm expanse of naked skin nestled beside him.

Fuck.

He sprang from the pillow into a sitting position, only to groan in agony as a particularly nasty thud of something…well bloody nasty indeed stabbed at his brain insistently.

"Oh fuck," he gasped and collapsed back on the pillow. There was someone in his bed, but he was damned if he cared right at this very moment. Ron closed his eyes and nuzzled into the warm body aligned with his. He decided he'd fret about that after the mountain troll had grown tired of stomping on his head.

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Harry was finally able to exhale the moment he heard Ron's breathing turn from erratic, to the gentle even breath of one deeply cradled in peaceful dreams.

He'd watched Ron stumble practically naked from the bathroom and back again all night. He couldn't sleep and it wasn't because of any hangover. Harry had built up a tolerance to alcohol over the summers spent in Dudley's company. No, as always his insomnia was due solely to the very presence of his friend.

Except it wasn't Harry that got to share his bed, oh no it was Seamus who nabbed that pride of place he had hungered for so long. Seamus who got to have Ron's lips grazing his shoulder, those arms curving possessively over his hips, Ron's every breath ghosting over his warm flesh, trickling down his spine… the sweetest, most agonizing pleasure imaginable.

How he hated Seamus. Harry seethed with bitter jealousy that the Irish git had beaten him to the ultimate prize.

As he shook with fury under the covers of his bed, Harry wanted nothing more than to march right over there and yank Seamus from Ron's bed. Holding him up by his scraggily hair, he would punch him in the face for even daring to get that close to what was by rights…his.

Then something happened that Harry could not have predicted. Ron blindly reached for the neglected blanket that had been dispatched to the foot of the bed, fisting a handful, he yanked hard, elbowing Seamus in the process and much to Harry's extreme delight, sending an unfortunate companion rolling over the side and crashing to the floor.

Harry tried not to laugh, really he did, but when Seamus head finally popped up and he turned his dazed expression on a very smug Harry Potter and then switched to glaring angrily at him. Harry could not help it; he burst into hysterics at the timing of such an incident.

Ron, on the other hand, appeared to be so immersed in the dream world that he hadn't even stirred when Seamus was shoved so dramatically out of his bed. If anything he seemed to find the absence more than welcome as he stretched out luxuriously over the mattress, a smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

Seamus was rubbing his palms into his eyes and moaning incoherently. Harry, unlike before, when he'd been more than sympathetic to Seamus plight, had turned his back and closed his eyes to the obvious agony being voiced behind him. Served Seamus right for getting into bed with Ron, he deserved every ounce of pain that the hangover could wring out of him and more.

Harry was secure in the knowledge that once Ron had slept, he would still be in need of a best friend to comfort him in his pain. That was a job Harry was more than willing to fulfil. All he had to do was be patient and wait.

Behind his eyelids he registered a flash of intense light, followed by a small popping noise and then silence on Seamus part. Harry's eyes snapped open wide. He froze in a slightly curled foetal position, holding his breath while the wool blanket suddenly felt prickly over his bare chest, causing a desire to itch like mad. Gritting his teeth against the spiralling need to scratch, it took a warm breath ghosting over the back of Harry's neck to wrench a full body shiver out of him.

Harry jumped, flipping over onto his back just as the curtains around his bed were yanked back violently and the wind was knocked out him as someone landed squarely over his prone body…straddling his torso.

Immediately, Harry began to struggle but the other person had the advantage of being on top of him, bloody heavy and unfortunately in the position of trapping his arms ruthlessly against the mattress. The individual's hair whispered across his face, tickling his nose and generally driving him insane, as well as blinding him from identifying his attacker.

"Don't think I haven't seen the way you stare at your best friend…Harry. You think you're so composed. I guess this will come as a nasty shock to you…" the voice hissed in his ear, those dry lips rasping over the shell, as each word was carefully enunciated for effect.

"He. Knows!"

Harry's heart thumped painfully in his chest 'Shit.' He knew this day was coming, but he'd just planned for it to be later, perhaps at Christmas when everyone was home with family and he had Ron to himself at Hogwarts.

If Ron knew how he felt, then it was over, all of it, their friendship, the possibility of more…he'd never have the chance now. If Ron was indeed aware and not calling him on it, then that said it all. Ron wasn't interested.

Honestly, he'd suspected that Ron had known; still, now it was confirmed. Harry wasn't sure how to handle any of it. Harry had been entirely prepared to be Ron's shoulder to cry on, him waking up still in the throes of hangover hell. Now that plan had been ditched, he had no alternate strategy and no idea what came next.

"Harry!" Ron blurted out in a voice that was husky from lack of sleep and threaded with barely repressed pain. He was propped up on one elbow staring at what he could only guess was foreplay he'd interrupted between his best friend and one Seamus Finnigan.

Harry could hear the distress in Ron's voice, but it wasn't until the person straddling his body leant their head back slightly and he could see the wicked grin on Seamus' face, that he understood why he'd been manipulated in to this pose. All of it had been meticulously planned. Seamus wanted Ron to see what he'd been ignoring all this time. He wanted to show Ron who Harry Potter really was, what he really desired and he should have struggled, fought, instead he just laid there and let it play out.

Then maybe it was time for Ron to know and as Seamus bent down towards him, angling his head so that when his warm lips caressed Harry's, the alignment was just so, that he could arch his neck up to meet Seamus midway.

Harry had forgotten that they had an audience as a wet, hot tongue pushed into his mouth causing a moan to be immediately stifled. Harry gave in to need and thrust his own tongue into the mouth so eagerly attached to his. Capturing Seamus' tongue between his lips he began to suck on it perversely, implying it to be only a taste of what was to come.

Frustrated with the whole aspect of not having the use of his hands, he wrenched them out of Seamus' iron grasp and clasped them to either side of his lovers head. Harry glided his hands upward, into sandy hair. The texture of those silky locks increasing his excitement as he combed his fingers through each gorgeous strand.

Seamus panted into that hot mouth, his heart pounding as he struggled just to hold on as Harry consumed him in the most devastating way. He'd expected Harry to balk, to hit him and then warble out some explanation to Ron, all red faced with exaggerated innocence of being touched in such an inappropriate manner.

He hadn't bargained on this, not that he was complaining.

His muffled groan was devoured by Harry's ferocious kiss as 'the boy who lived' thrust his pelvis up off the mattress and directly into his painfully hard erection. Seamus was fairly certain that he was already leaking through his underwear, but now he was positive that if Harry did that again…well it was going to get decidedly messy very quickly.

It was probably just as well then that Ron chose this moment to trip over his own feet as he hastily fled across the dorm for the haven of the showers. Picking himself off the floor with a grimace at twisting his ankle, he half hobbled to the bathroom, not once did he dare look back at the two writhing on the bed.

Ron firmly closed the bathroom door and then leant heavily back against it. For a second he entertained the idea of using a locking charm, but then realized he was being far too paranoid and there were other people who may need the facilities, especially considering the night they had all had. Okay, yes he was freaking out. Because bloody hell who wouldn't be? His best friend, a man he considered to be like a brother to him was kissing another male.

Slamming his head back against the solid oak door, he let a stream of curses fall uselessly from his lips. Ron was in shock and his brain refused to comprehend just what he had witnessed. He was disgusted and he couldn't think what else there was to say on the subject. He knew he shouldn't be acting this way, he did know about Harry and how he felt about him, but to see it, to see them doing…

Ron waved his arms about in horror as if even the mere thought of what those two had been about to do was just too revolting for even his mind to voice.

Some how he had wandered from the door to the shower stalls without even being conscious of his feet moving at all. Ron gasped, shrugging helplessly as he reached out to turn on the taps directly before him, a slightly glazed expression on his pale face.

Warm water pelted down on his bent head, trickling over his shoulders and down his long spine, only to cascade deliciously between his cheeks. Recent images flashed uninvitedly across his ravished mind. Ron moaned feebly into the empty stall. Its echo mocked him as his fingers urgently grasped his hard cock through a sodden layer of thin cotton. The first agonizing stroke almost became his complete undoing.