SUMMARY: Best friends and kisses don't mix. Harry wonders why. Dark. Slash/Het.
WARNINGS: Rated Mature for language, sexual situations, and just being so damn angsty.
DISCLAIMER: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter. I don't. Therefore, she makes money. I don't.
The Mortality of Kisses
They don't kiss much, because he says that best friends aren't supposed to kiss each other. He wants to tell him, maybe best friends aren't supposed to shag each other either, but neither of them complains about that and hell, he's got to take it while he can get it and if it isn't with his best friend, than who with? So he doesn't say a thing and tries not to kiss too much, only it's hard because he needs that reassuring feel of mouth against mouth, swirl of tongue over the sensitive palate and the smooth inside of the cheek and maybe just the warmth of breath moving from one mouth to the other. In, out. There is a certain rhythm to the way they move together, simple as their friendship.
Hermione maybe doesn't approve, or maybe she does and he's just been too tired lately to care either way. And either way, she says nothing, and sometimes she'll smile a bit sardonically at him. She has a sweet smile, really. A sharp tongue, and a soft mouth. He wonders what it would be like to kiss that, to kiss her. He's wondered such things since his fourth year and the Yule Ball and that pretty blue dress clinging to her, showing off how she was growing up. They were all growing up, and suddenly it seemed too fast, too sudden, and he isn't sure he wants it anymore.
But growing up meant things like learning what sex means; not its physical attributes or its technicalities or where was the best place to get a quick one in before breakfast or how to make it hurt less and feel better, but more like how it can mean in the few moments before climax that everything is perfectly fine and nothing is going to happen, how lying afterwards in each others arms for those precious seconds the world seems safe again.
He was never a child the way maybe other people were children, so he didn't really understand how a person could feel safe until now. It had come so naturally, really. Not a kiss but a touch, warm fingers brushing over one another as they sat staring into a fire, trying to decide how to go about finding the Horcruxes and managing to stay alive long enough to face down the bloody fucking Dark Lord one more time.
Ron was shy about it but Harry wasn't; he had grasped Ron's wrist and held it too long for it to be any normal gesture of friendship or reassurance; it was perfectly clear what he wanted and later that night Ron chose to take advantage of it. They had fumbled with the clothes but it was obvious that both of them had enough experience not to warrant this one a complete clumsy failure, but when he had darted in for a kiss Ron had pulled back. "Best friends don't kiss," he'd said. "Not on the mouth. I don't think." He had been too horny to care much about that and had tossed it aside with the other clothes, to be picked up and examined in the morning. He shouted Ron's name when he came and felt better for the first time in the past few miserable weeks that they had begun their search for the remaining parts of Voldemort's twisted soul.
But subsequently, during each deed in the dark, sometimes (rarely) in the day, they had managed not to kiss mouth-to-mouth, the proper way, the way that was less about mechanics and more about romance, which in and of itself was a ridiculous thing to be thinking about when at any moment you might meet with a horrible death at the hands of a psychotic, death-obsessed wizard. He missed it more than he thought that he would've, so one night when they were taking the briefest respite from searching for the goblet of Helga Hufflepuff and were occupying 12 Grimmauld place in all its grim, dark lonesomeness, he had forced Ron down and taken his damned kiss.
It was warm and wet and their mouths fit together so perfectly that he couldn't understand how Ron would ever not want to kiss. He had forced in his tongue to tangle with Ron's, smooth and sinuous as a snake, and then he'd known why Ron didn't want to kiss, because Harry recognized instinctively that beneath the heavenly sugar-bright taste of his best friend was the sharp cinnamon-pepper taste that could only belong to Hermione.
He doesn't blame Ron and he can't; hell, he took advantage of the situation to get his much-needed affection out of Ron, so why can't Ron do the same thing to Hermione? Kiss her, and enjoy it? They aren't best friends, they are something much more different and complex than a best friendship. They are in love, and he is coming in between it.
Or maybe he isn't, because one day or night or dawn or dusk (the world starts to blend until the moments between sex and fighting and searching have no distinct time of day), after a particularly long bout of sex following a failed attempt to recapture the Horcrux of the long-dead Hufflepuff founder, they become so exhausted that both fall asleep in one another's arms. He is a light sleeper, so when the door to the room in Grimmauld place that he usually inhabits alone swings open, he hears it but keeps his eyes closed.
The footsteps are light and whispery and most definitely Hermione's; she comes up to the bed and stands there. He can imagine her staring down at Ron as if he were Endymonian and she Selene; the only part left for him to play is mortality, wrapped around Endymonian and slowly sapping his strength and vitality and youth as Selene watches helplessly. But she whispers no words of anger or regret; instead she leans down, soft warm breath on his upturned cheek, and brushes a light kiss right on his scar. Then she moves to Ron, and kisses him as well, though he cannot tell where because he keeps his eyes shut. Then she leaves without a word.
If it is approval, he takes it. If it is acceptance, he'll take that as well. If it is damnation, then she is doing a very good job of hiding it. So as soon as she leaves he gets up, balancing on his forearms, and drops a kiss on Ron's slack mouth before falling back to sleep. He tastes the cinnamon-spice on his lips and dreams of it and her.
Ron comes to him more and more, but he never spends the night again, because his nights are for Hermione, and his kisses are for Hermione. If he dare take those he will become less of a burden and more of a leech upon the pair which Should-Have-Been. Should-Have-Been back at Hogwarts completing their seventh year, Should-Have-Been falling in love properly and romantically, Should-Have-Been caring more about their future and less about his, because instead of the Should-Have-Beens they leave the school that his their second home to go to the ends of the world with him searching for the solution to his problem just so he has a chance of surviving to face his demons, which he will do and do alone.
Instead of the Should-Have-Beens, they are sharing their love with him.
Sharing their love, and occasionally their kisses, and with each sneaking kiss they share a bit of their mortality. He is a bloodsucker in the worst sense of the word, but maybe he got that from Voldemort. Maybe it isn't his fault. Maybe he wasn't loved enough as a child.
It takes them a year of hell to find the last Horcrux and destroy it; a year of covert fucking and bitter smiles and apologetic eyes. A year of stolen kisses.
The night before he decides to face Voldemort, Hermione comes to him and kisses him deeply until he is flooded with her taste; she has always been a bit more perceptive than Ron and she knows that the final test is his alone, and with all that he has stolen from them for himself they don't need to go with him to face the Dark Lord. Then she leaves without a word to embrace her love, while he is left alone without his lover. No best friends for the night vigil, no kisses from his best friend to steal away the last bit of him.
He leaves before Ron wakes up from Hermione's arms, and that is good, that is right. He faces Voldemort and wins because he has to win, not just for himself but for everyone else. Yet he also has to lose, and he has to lose not just for himself but for Ron, so that Endymonian can finally be free of mortality and embrace his beautiful Selene and be happy and alive forever with her, his love. That is why they are best friends, because he is more than willing to do this for Ron, and for the memory of Ron's kisses.
So he stumbles away from Voldemort's prone, dead body and collapses in the dirt to face the death that is slowly sucking away the last bits of him, drained of the power that his stolen kisses gave him. Even best-friend-kisses can't stop death.
Then Ron leans over him and babbles words into his ears, and he feels wet teardrops and smiles despite himself. Ron wasn't supposed to see this but Ron can't let him die alone, and that is why they are best friends.
He feels the soft press of Ron's lips against his own even has his last breaths are leaving, being drawn into the warmth of living Ron. He blinks as the world grows hazy and Ron pulls away. "I thought best friends didn't kiss. Not on the mouth. You thought so."
He thinks he knows why, now. Maybe it's just too simple to survive. Maybe best-friend-kisses are meant to spark and die quick, because they aren't about love, they're about life, and life sparks and dies so quickly. Even a few stolen kisses can't keep it going longer than it is meant to.
Mortality and kisses finally fail. He dies with a smile on his face, and the heavenly sugar-bright taste of his best friend in his mouth.