Just going to leave this here...
Only fairy tales end in a kiss.
Pansy, eyes tight shut, lips twisting between a grim and a grimace, gave a pathetic groan into Charlie's pillow.
From a few feet beneath her, a voice graveled by late night said "Are you quite alright?"
She gave a noise half way between a "Yes" and a second, muffled groan. She peaked half her face over the side of the bed, perfectly aware her cheeks were pink with embarrassment.
"Good morning," she said, quite severely.
Unbeknownst to her, the effect was quite ruined by the rebellious nature of her hair and the seriousness of her eye contrasting with her reddening cheeks. Despite his bleary vision, Charlie thought her invariably lovely.
Rather than reply he reached up his hand, clasped her shoulder, and with the utmost ease and care… propelled her out of bed and into the crook of his arms.
"Good morning," he replied, taking an appreciative inhale of her hair.
Pansy was not quite sure whether to be impressed, annoyed or… other at this early morning manhandling. Despite the surprised feeling of nausea she experienced while being catapulted through the air, she did not have any complaints about her landing spot. In fact, Charlie's shoulder was quite a satisfactory place to hide her humiliated face.
He rubbed her back in a very similar fashion to how he calmed the Longhorns if they were getting a touch catty.
"I'm told I'm not the most perceptive person (usually by you), but I get the feeling something isn't quite right," he said as Pansy let out another undignified groan.
Despite all his numerous good traits and collection of bad ones, Charlie was still a twenty-something male of easily threatened ego. Tremulously, he said (in the way of young men looking for validation), "Was last night not, um, I mean…? Did you not… like…it?"
Pansy glanced up at him. It wasn't a matter of liking or not liking last night. It was her actions and her words that were the matter. She was used to being forthright, but not used to being… compromised.
The kiss shouted through her bones.
It had started as this chaste lean in, and then before she knew it she was on Charlie's lap with his hands on her waist – placed like they were always meant to be there - and her palms in his hair, guiding that sharp jaw of his closer closer closer.
It seemed all of the joking about Charlie's maladroitness with women was purely on the level of verbal interaction (typical Gryffindor). Pansy, however, was far from innocent and nipped lightly on his slightly bee-stung lips earning an appreciative sound that shook through her. She leant back, teasing, and was rewarded with a response that was part annoyance, part enthusiasm.
He was so different. He was so safe.
Yet Charlie was not a safe man. He chased adrenaline, free falling, fire, dragons. And her.
He was so careful with her, so -
Different. No doubt was here. She could move and not feel afraid at what the response was. His touch felt like she was being cherished, rather than someone counting the number of ribs they could feel. It felt like someone asking is this okay? Can I? May I? Rather than is this enough for me? Are you enough? Satisfy me.
He was a soft strength, not a dry and brittle need drinking the love out of her.
And this was what made her stop.
His lips, so kind, were not the cruel kisses she was used to. Those cruel kisses she had taken to her lips mere hours ago. Years of those kisses. Each etched on her, now being chased and blotted out as if a palimpsest was being made of her skin.
And like that something that felt so right didn't any more.
It felt like she was buying credit she could not afford to pay back. But she couldn't say no, she couldn't say no to his kindness, she'd never said no before.
Charlie, so tangled in his feelings, did not notice for a moment Pansy's ebb. When he finally felt her still a heart beat later, he drew back and placed a low and asking kiss on her cheek. Her eyes were shining with a peculiar brightness and she stroked a curl of his hair.
"I'm so sorry, Charlie," she said in a whisper, utterly aghast.
His thumbs stroked paths across her cheeks, trying to divine the change.
"There's nothing to be sorry about," he said honestly.
She looked tired. Strung out from feeling what seemed like every possible emotion in too short a time.
"I want… I want this. You. But… it doesn't feel quite right, yet. Not after today. I mean, I just ended it… And… is that okay?" She felt idiotic for asking that, however she was relieved that her eyes stayed (relatively) dry. Too many tears had been spilled for Draco Malfoy. She wasn't going to waste more when the mere thought of him was obstructing her from what she wanted (i.e. getting laid).
Charlie gave a low laugh and leaned their foreheads together.
"That is entirely sensible. I don't quite like to admit this, but I'm not sure my ego is quite settled enough to be an immediate rebound. To bed, then?"
Which is how they came to find themselves in Charlie's bedroom. There was a moment where they almost shared the bed, but saw each other's flamed cheeks and wonderfully wide pupils and decided it would be wise if they didn't. Temptation twice avoided might be asking too much.
They didn't sleep immediately, even the 4am light could not suffer that. In their waning energy, Pansy told him more. A few secrets muttered in the dark of his bedroom that she had only admitted to a rare few. It was the first time she had recounted seventh year to anyone, well… parts of it. And she told him one more thing, one thing she had been promised never to tell.
It was those words and those narrowly missed midnight actions that worried her. Never tell, they had said. Never tell.
"There are only three people left alive, who are not blood relations, that know what I told you last night, Charlie." His hand stroked her back, slowly, waiting. "I'm not worried at all what you'll do with that information. Not a bit. It just takes a little getting used to? The others are Slytherins – loyalty is in our marrow (that and the knowledge of mutual self-destruction if we were to betray one another)… telling you is a bit different."
She didn't want to say it was a bargaining chip or a test of trust. After so many months of not sharing things with Charlie, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to tell him this one thing and for him to blink at it as if it was nothing at all. Others would see it as information to kill or to die for.
"And as for me not liking last night, I'm not quite sure what you're referring to…" She looked him straight in the eye mischievously expecting him to look momentarily baffled. Instead, he raised an eyebrow in a weirdly familiar manner. He was getting cocky.
"Is that so?"
"Hmm, not at all. Not unless you're referring to this," she stretched to reach the side of his brow and placed a kiss there. "Or this…" She whispered, kissing the side of his mouth.
She was so close that the expression of his eyes narrowing and mouth smiling was such a distraction that she hadn't a chance to predict his hand dovetailing with the crease of her knee, and angling her-
"Breakfast, Charlie!" Echoed shrill familiar tones of someone who had clearly spent an awkward amount of time listening to an extended period of kissing before building up the courage to say something.
Charlie swore under his breath. It was the most attractive thing he'd done all morning.
"It's probably for the best," Pansy sighed seriously, trying not to look at his bicep looming above her head. His jumper had been jettisoned pretty swiftly. Pansy prided herself on her efficiency in such matters. "Rebound rules, of course."
Two crimson eyebrows met in a good-natured frown. "Did we have a time frame for this… Not that I'm trying to, um, hurry things-"
She moved slightly, calculated. He muffled a groan into her lips.
"You are the devil. In my pajamas."
Pansy smiled sweetly. "You were expecting...?"
"Foolish statement," he kissed her nose and drew himself up, eliciting a furious frown at his absence and the frightfully cold winter draft that she'd been too preoccupied to previously notice. "Because I'm a little fond of you, I'll do you the service of not going downstairs in an identical Weasley jumper."
"People would get terribly confused, what with our similar looks and everything."
He turned and took off his jumper. Pansy prided herself on not actually weeping at the sight of him. His back was ridiculous. For all his broad shoulders and muscled bulk, he had a remarkably slim, toned waist. Words like rippled and beautiful and my god all came to Pansy's mind and she was very glad to have been struck so embarrassingly mute. Her head was starting to sound like a Mills & Boon novel.
He cast a little glance back to her (Pansy ensuring her face was trained to a little pleasant smile, rather than a goldfish's gob smacked façade). "It looks better on you anyway."
Looking at him now, it felt very difficult to compute that her messy, disheveled self could equate to that. However being a Parkinson, she refused to show any weakness and shrugged this off with an impressive amount of cognitive dissonance.
"Charles Albert Cornelius Miranda Weasley-"
"My middle name is Septimus, after my grandfather… and apparently my parents who cannot count-"
"Is that a tattoo?"
"I don't think I know what you're referring to…." Charlie replied mildly, taking longer than he usually did to pick a shirt.
Pansy lifted herself from the blanket nest on the floor, her shoulder peeking out of the neck of her jumper, and touched his back gently.
The boy actually shivered at her touch.
When his muscles stopped quivering she laid her palm flat on his back, warm and comforting to indicate she was safe, and stroked upwards to follow the picture's path.
"Hmm, I don't know how to tell you this. I'm pretty sure it's a tattoo."
"You're sure?"
"I could try cursing it off, but I don't think it's going anywhere. You don't remember getting a giant tattoo from your tailbone to your shoulder blade?"
"Um… Oh, now you mention it. I'm not sure about a tattoo, though I do remember getting a spontaneous act of rebellion drawn on my back. Think it was something to do with travelling, meaningful, yadah yadah, something permanent to remind me of my youthful idiocy. That's probably what it is."
"Could be, could be," nodded Pansy, somewhat entranced. Of course, he would have a tattoo. Charlie "Thrill seeking within the lines" Weasley, she thought fondly. It wasn't bad. It was a bright and brilliant turquoise green, made of a series of triangles and swooping lines. It shone against his skin, rippling with the curves on his back.
"If you squint it kind of looks like a dragon…. That's a bit out of character for you. I always had you down for a butterfly tramp stamp kind of guy, or maybe an inspirational quote? Like… Let magic be your guide or Challenge Accepted."
"Haha. Now let's have breakfast so I can avoid ravishing you."
The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and sweetness.
Mrs Weasley was on form, panicking only out of habit when really everything was in perfect order under her stringent care. Rather than accept help in the kitchen, she batted Charlie away to rearrange the holly outside and for Pansy to cover every possible surface of the living room with mince pies and other assorted food groups.
Pansy had donned a pair of trousers and added a smart white shirt under the Weasley jumper. It was an odd mix of preppy and slouchy, but she didn't want to part with the blue woolen monstrosity yet.
She was glad Mrs Weasley had sent Charlie outside. She felt too full of him. She wanted to experience the Weasley house for herself for a bit, playing pretend that she was used to a family that did this – who cooked and cared and said how well she was looking (without the implication of well meaning rotund). Here she was dressed as a Weasley, munching on Weasley food, making stupid faces to a Weasley through a Weasley window. Anxious and angry Pansy Parkinson felt very far away. What really was there to worry about in this warm home and loving family?
Charlie made a last gruesome face through the window before his father called him to help rebalance the 13 foot Christmas tree which had gained a worrying tilt. Pirouetting in the lounge with the last plate of mince pies, she could not quite think of when she had felt quite so content.
Behind her was the sudden noise of chaos. Lots of voices, jovial, laughing, clamored from the front door.
Oh Merlin, no, Pansy thought, clutching the plate of mince pies to her, how could I forget.
"Mum, we're home! Pop the kettle on-"
"Hello, Mrs Weasley, we're here- uh… hello?"
Three figures stood in the doorway, looking at her as they'd just seen a Swedish Short Snout read the morning news. The tallest, a malformed gangly version of Charlie, actually let out a little shriek while the expression on the girl next to him turned from shocked to thunderous. Even Harry Potter, looking like some weird mirror version of herself with messy black hair, even height and a scarlet Weasley jumper, seemed to be taken aback.
Pansy bared her teeth in an attempt to smile and proffered the plate of mince pies, wondering distantly how good a shield it might make.
"Er, Merry Christmas?"
Hermione's face turned even whiter with rage. It looked like she was beyond speech, which was a relief because Ron was not.
"Do we arrest her?" he said, as if Pansy wasn't there. "Why is she wearing Charlie's jumper? Good Merlin, what has she done with him? Where's Mum?"
"We saw your Mum through the window. She's alright, Ron," replied Harry, who did not sound wholly convinced. Pansy hadn't looked away from the terrifying trio, but she became aware Harry had taken out his wand without her even noticing. Shit, she thought, mine's upstairs. Brilliant witching, Pansy. Maybe if you get mince pie in their eye you can get out of this one…
A tall red head appeared at the door, but not the red head Pansy was hoping for. This one lacked an ear.
The remaining half of the Psychopath Twins saw Pansy and swore. "Isn't that Malfoy's bint?"
Automatically, and not very helpfully, she replied, "Actually, Malfoy was my bint. I couldn't bint for my life."
A blond comet appeared from between their heads and for a second Pansy thought she might pass out. How could Draco be here too?!
Slipping like a hare through their elbows, Luna emerged wearing a ridiculous orange summer dress and looking as beautiful as an angel.
"I knew you'd be here," her melodic voice sang, no panic or excessive excitement evident as she gave Pansy a much needed hug.
"I am so glad to see you, Luna." Pansy reluctantly released her once she realized it looked like she was using Luna as a human shield. (Which, if we're to be perfectly honest, she was).
More heads gathered at the door – Girl Weasley (Also with a look of shock. Merlin that one is going to be awkward after 7th year), Veela Wealsey (looking aesthetically affronted at how crowded the doorway was), Wolf Scars Weasley (Bill, Pansy reminded herself, and latched onto his kind, jovial expression) and finally Crazy Dragon Weasley.
Pansy panicked at him with her eyes, and using his gentle bulk he moved through the crowd to join her and Luna at the other side of the room. Three against seven. At least they had seventy-five mince pies on their side.
"I think most of you know Pansy from school," Charlie introduced her, utter calm emanating from him. He placed a reassuring hand on her lower back. "Pansy is my… fri… erm, Pansy?"
"You're her bint?" George said, traumatised.
"What?"
Next to George, Ron looked like he was having a heart attack. "I always knew Charlie would bring home something deadly. Worst than Hagrid, you are. First those death defying broom rides when I was seven. Then the dragons. The reckless apparating. This. You're trying to kill us all."
"Well, Merry bloody Christmas, everyone," said George. "I think I need a drink."