![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
traintracksReposting of my ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
nextgen_mas fic, because I realized I never actually posted it to my own journal. Whoops!
Title: Complicated Magic
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
traintracks
Pairing(s), Characters: Harry/Teddy, Teddy/OMCs, (Harry/Ginny [past], mentions of Ginny/Dean and Hermione/Ron, past Sirius/Harry UST if you squint), James Sirius, Albus Severus, Lily Luna, OMC
Rating: NC-17
Words: 14,600
Prompt: "No matter how many men Teddy dates, none of them can compare to his first crush, Harry Potter."
Summary: What happens when a hopelessly infatuated Teddy Lupin and a newly-single Harry Potter collide over Christmas?
Warnings: very mild and brief bondage, mild pain kink, mild jealousy, sexual promiscuity, cross-gen, godfather/godson
A/N: Huge thanks toelrhiarhodan for the non-stop cheerleading and kickass beta, and also torino10154 who gave some invaluable advice. All remaining mistakes are mine.
Original posting here.
"You're one hot little fucker," the man grunted, spreading his fingers into a V around the base of his own cock, holding the condom on while he pulled out of Teddy's ass.
Teddy eased his legs out of his armpits and wiped the spunk off his stomach. "Yeah," he said, although he'd meant to say, 'Yeah, you, too,' which would have been a white lie; Brent/Kent/Whatever had gotten the job done okay.
Brent/Kent/Whatever laughed. "I like your arrogance. Makes me want to fuck that conceited mouth of yours."
"Maybe next time," Teddy sighed, knowing there wouldn't be one. He rolled halfway over and pulled a fag from the pack on the nightstand, careful to light it with the Zippo nearby rather than use his wand. Muggles tended to freak when he forgot that bit, or worse, when he lit the thing with just his thoughts. Hell, wizards freaked out when he pulled that one.
"Got anything to drink?" The man was zipping up his denims.
"Bottled water in the fridge," Teddy yawned.
Let's call him Brent…came back with half the bottle gone and icy drops cascading down his bare chest. He offered the rest to Teddy.
"You keep it."
"Thanks," he said, and then he wrote his phone number down on the pad near Teddy's phone. Luckily, Teddy's cat, Scritchnits, could blend into the Muggle world rather well and none of his one night stands had ever caught her bearing notes in her mouth or between her paws, but you had to face it, sometimes iPhones were just better, if not as snuggly. Not that he would be using his to call Brent, even if he did have a cock like a battering ram. He had Guinness breath and his eyes rolled back in his head weird while he fucked, both things Teddy could have avoided had he taken it from behind. You live, you learn. He liked it on his hands and knees best anyway.
Brent waved as he left, and Teddy gave him a lukewarm smile. When he heard the front door close, he yelled, "You can come out now, you ponce!"
Five seconds later, his flatmate, Bernie Abbot, was sticking his head into the room. "Any good?"
"Couldn't you hear?" Teddy said, shooting him a look over the cigarette in his mouth while at the same time pulling up his pants.
"What the bloody hell happened to your hair?" Bernie was fully in the room now, kicking at his dirty laundry and judging his hair.
"You don't like Weasley-red?"
"It's bollocks on you, mate." Bernie, for all his Hufflepuffness, often behaved more like a Weasley himself.
Teddy shrugged and went back to blue, laying the fag in the ashtray while he looked for clean denims. "Better?"
"In gargantuan ways. You up for eggs?"
"Only if I don't have to make them," Teddy answered, pulling on a tight Sex Pistols t-shirt.
"Right. Floo to Ralph's?"
"Are you mad? It's the middle of the night. His mom'd kill us."
"Ralph's mom…" Bernie practically drooled. "Now there's a MILF." He seemed to shake himself. "Dar's Diner?"
"That's clear off in Byron." Teddy knew he was whining, but he couldn't seem to help it; he was in a post-fuck funk. He tugged his denims up his thighs and over his hips without unbuttoning them, rolling around on the mussed bed to get them over his butt.
"You wouldn't Apparate a foot in front of yourself, you lazy sod," Bernie said, shaking his head. An absurd lock of raccoon-colored hair fell into his eyes, and he shook it out again.
"You're buying." Teddy took a long drag and stubbed the fag out.
"What, didn't the great Harry Potter send his godson any food money this month?"
"Shut it!" Teddy said, much louder than he'd intended, blowing smoke out of his flared nostrils.
"Bloody hell," Bernie said, his hands raised to his sides like he was under Muggle arrest. "It's not like I kicked your cat."
"Ever try it and she and I will both claw your eyes out," Teddy told him, but his insides were still fucked up from hearing his godfather's name. Truth was, Harry had sent him thirty galleons two weeks ago, but once Teddy had converted it to Muggle money, he'd blown half of it on weed, mp3s, and Christmas gifts, and spent the other on rent. Which was why he'd have to bum even a plate of eggs off his friend. It wasn't Harry's fault Teddy was a loser. Things just were as they were.
"I fucking love that cat," Bernie admitted, unaware of Teddy's inner turmoil. "Better with a letter than my Franz will ever be. Don't tell him I said so." Franz was Bernie's rat and rather senile these days. He'd been old the day Bernie bought him in Diagon Alley before first year.
"My lips are sealed."
"That's not what your date said," Bernie needled, then he snapped his fingers. "Say, he sort of had Harry-hair, didn't he? Mate, you've gotta stop picking up guys that could pass as your godfather. People will start to talk." Then he guffawed like it was the most ridiculous joke ever.
Teddy swallowed and tried to smirk. "Right," he said, but it barely came out at all. Truth was it stung a bit. Bernie could lust after Ralph Greengrass' moms or Hermione Granger or feminine-looking lamp posts all he liked, but Teddy… Well, it didn't bear thinking about really. He licked his lips and grabbed his leather jacket off the floor, shrugging it on and pulling the collar way up.
Bernie, ever oblivious, went on. "I swear, Teddy, for having the best grades Hogwarts has ever seen since Ms. G, you are the laziest wizard in England. Maybe the world. Look at this! Two years out of school and you've got no job, no floor that I can see—"
"It's there," Teddy interrupted, but his friend kept on.
"And yet you've got sex coming out of your EARS!"
Teddy shrugged.
"Suppose you've doubled up now 'cause you're gonna be at the Potters' for a week soon. No arse to be had there." Bernie snorted.
Teddy played along. "You're one to talk – your parents don't even snog in front of you."
Bernie made a face. "Thank Merlin." Then he brightened. "I'd die to be Ralph." He stage whispered, "His mom gets it on with a lesbian."
Teddy ignored Bernie's utter ignorance and uncouthness and picked up his pack of Winstons, the lighter, his wallet (more for the condoms and his Metro pass than the three quid in change inside).
His friend switched topics yet again and went back to dogging him. "I mean really. When was the last time you used magic to do anything but add a new tattoo to your oft-visited bum?"
"You'd rather I blackout the Ministry?" Teddy asked. There was a hard little knot in his throat, though, when he said it, a bitterness he didn't care to entertain at the moment. Before his friend could get any ideas – his eyes were already lighting up like Christmas – Teddy grabbed him hard around the shoulders and said, "I'll Apparate us to Dar's – that good enough for you?"
Then with a pop, and without another thought about Harry Potter, they were gone.
…
"You know if you're late, Ginny's gonna hex you."
It was definitely Bernie's voice, and it was coming from…somewhere outside Teddy's head. Teddy went to swallow and realized his mouth was wide open and there was a collection of drool on the pillow under his face. He smacked his lips, wincing at the hangover he could feel surging in with the wakefulness.
Teddy shifted and stifled a groan. Squinting in the sunlight, he peered at the other side of the bed where lay a very pretty bloke – tame sandy hair this time, thank you very much Bernard -- and he looked like he was having a very nice dream indeed.
Teddy vaguely remembered picking him up and getting him home. But he did recall kissing him madly and stripping his clothes off, and then… Teddy reached down and scratched his naked balls. Oh yeah. He'd straddled the fellow's face.
Not bad.
He patted an exposed thigh gently. "Hey. Hey. You gotta wake up. I gotta be…somewhere."
Then it hit him exactly where he was supposed to be.
Ginny'd hex him…
"Bollocks!" he shouted. The guy rolled over but didn't rise. Teddy patted his arse urgently. "Get up…uh, Ian?"
"Wha?"
"Ian, I gotta go. You've got to get up!"
"Teddy?" Ian stretched. "I like that name."
Teddy rolled his eyes and shoved at him. "Out, I said, I'm late!"
"Mmm. M'okay." Ian literally rolled out of the bed and onto the floor, and Teddy left him there in the filthy clothes to go do a cleansing spell and dress.
"Fuck," he hissed as his foot got stuck in his nicest dark denims and he fell into the sink. He rubbed at his hip to make it stop stinging. His wand was in the other room, and he couldn't remember how to dispel a bruise without it. He resolved to take care of it later as he was already -- he checked the clock on the shelving over the toilet -- shit, two hours late. He pulled on a black jumper, cleaned his teeth, fixed his hair, or tried to; it kept going green on him, so he finally left it and figured it would stabilize once he wasn't feeling so…
Nervous. He had to admit – he was nervous.
Teddy looked at himself in the mirror, the wide dark eyes staring back. It had been months since they'd seen each other, him and Harry. Weeks since the last owl which had sounded rushed and tense. Teddy hadn't answered it. He'd slept with a slew of six men in four days and called it a draw. Teddy licked his lips. He was trembling slightly.
Then he remembered Ian in there – worshipful, sweet Ian who he'd used a subtle magic on last night, who he'd made come five times, who thought Teddy was the best thing since Pandora. He wasn't a total fuck up. At least not at fucking.
As he stood there, his hair went dark brown and his eyes shone silver.
That was better.
He walked out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. "Bernard," he said to his roommate. "Get that bloke some breakfast to go, will you? I'm headed out."
"Yeah, sure thing," Bernie smirked over his tea. "You pound 'em till they drop, I ship 'em out the next morning; that's how it works, right?"
Teddy swallowed. "Right." Then he headed to the floo.
But before he reached for the powder, he stopped. He felt around on the mantle and lifted the copy of David Copperfield he kept there. Under it was the card with the letter in it. He brought it down and looked at it, turning it over in his hands. He was about to shove it back to the spot where it had lived for two years now when Bernie snuck up on him.
"What's that?"
Teddy stuffed it in his back pocket hastily. "Nothing," he said. "Just a Christmas card. For Harry," he finished awkwardly.
"Well, off with you, then," his friend said, giving him a shove.
Teddy stumbled into the floo. "Take care of Scritch, all right?"
"Hey!" Bernie said, tossing his bottomless bag at him. "Don't forget your Christmas presents."
Teddy caught it against his chest, powdered himself, and said, as confidently as he could, "Potter residence."
…
He landed in Harry's apparently empty study. Teddy stood and brushed himself off and was headed toward the door when he heard, "You're late."
He turned quickly, searching out that voice that made his heart jump and his body warm against his will.
His eyes adjusted to the light in the room, wide beams of it streaming in onto the floor from tall, ornate windows, leaving the corners in sepia shadows. When Harry stood and walked into a shaft of light, Teddy forgot the cool greeting he'd planned and strode into his embrace without hesitance. Harry hugged him hard. He had the wiry arms of a battle-honed Auror, and his hug was vehement, the hold of a man who'd lost too much. His chest was warm, his heartbeat strong, and Teddy wanted to stay there against him for hours.
"Merlin, it's been too long," he said into Teddy's hair. "Why on earth didn't you owl me?" He held Teddy back at arm's length, and Teddy immediately missed the body heat while still quite enjoying the way Harry's fingers bit slightly into his shoulders.
Teddy looked down. "I just got busy. I'm sorry." He'd rehearsed the 'just got busy' part; the apology just sort of jumped onto the end at the last moment and mucked it all up. "Thank you for the money," he added, making things worse.
"Hey," Harry said, making him look back up. "That's not what I meant." As if realizing too late that he should, Harry took his hands off Teddy and backed up a step. "Are you thirsty? I've got fresh pumpkin juice…"
"Nah, I'm good," Teddy said, scrubbing the back of his head and looking around the room at nothing.
"Firewhiskey?" Harry said, then, and Teddy looked back at him sharply, only to be caught by the warm smile there on his godfather's lips.
"You've never offered me a drink before," he said.
Harry shrugged. "I just forget sometimes how… I forget," he finished. "Would you like some?" he persisted, already heading over to the bar and pouring himself one.
"I shouldn't," Teddy admitted, wincing at the idea of more alcohol -- that and the slippery places he could get into but not out of if he were to get even tipsy around Harry Potter. He watched Harry's back, how the white dress shirt fit him perfectly…the exquisite fit of the charcoal trousers over his compact arse. Teddy brought his gaze quickly back up once Harry turned and gestured to the leather sofa against the wall.
Teddy sat at one end and Harry surprised him by sitting toward the middle, close enough to touch. Intimately close. Like the months between this and their last visit never even existed. For the first time it occurred to Teddy that it wasn't near late enough for a stiff drink. He didn't want to be rude and check the pocket watch Harry had gotten him for Christmas last year, but he was pretty sure it was just now past noon.
Harry took a big swallow, and Teddy noticed the little lines at the corners of his eyes that weren't there before. The grey at the temples.
"Is everything all right, Harry?" he found himself asking.
"You're late," Harry said again with a rueful grin. He sat with one ankle propped on a knee, swirling his glass slowly. "I sort of wanted to talk to you for a bit before the boys get home from school."
"Is Ginny getting them at the station?" Teddy asked, trying not to sound as hopeful that she was out of the house as he felt. He hated the excitement coursing along his skin, through his blood, but there it was. He wanted Harry alone.
Harry swallowed. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about—" he swallowed again "—actually." He took another drink.
Teddy felt something terrible and wonderful happen in the pit of his stomach before he'd even heard the words.
"Ginny and I… We're, uh… We were separated."
"Were?"
"Well, now we're plain old divorced," Harry said with a sad smile in his direction. "I wanted to tell you weeks ago when I owled you," he jibed. "I had hoped you could come out…." It was a complete sentence, but something about the way Harry said it made it seem like he wanted to add more but simply neglected to.
"I'm so sorry," Teddy said, half-meaning it. "I should have answered you. I…"
"It's okay. You're here now. I suppose I just didn't want you to hear it from one of the kids rather than me. You know?"
Teddy nodded, but the way Harry was looking at him, into him, made him feel like maybe he didn't know. Harry's gaze was intense and searching for that moment. When Teddy swallowed, Harry turned his attention back to his drink, but he murmured into it, "Your hair's gone plum-colored. D'you know that?" Then he looked back at Teddy, and his smile was so warm…so very…
God…
Teddy didn't want to think the word 'loving'. But he really, really did. He ran a self-conscious hand over his head. Harry's eyes followed in a way that made Teddy flush hot all over, then he abruptly stood and began to pace.
"I should have known. You know?" He looked at Teddy like he wasn't his nineteen year-old godson, like he was someone real, and like he might have answers Harry himself did not. Then he moved on, pacing slowly from desk to armchair in the middle of the room. "We hadn't been right for…well, years really."
"Harry…" Teddy said. He really wanted to accept that drink now. He felt ill-equipped to handle this under the best of circumstances. Harry was single. The man Teddy had wanted, ached for, since he'd turned fourteen…the man he had thought, on stray serendipitous occasions might, might, feel something, too…was now single. Teddy wasn't in the least sure how to handle that. Didn't have a clue what to say. So all he did was lean forward and rest his elbows on his knees like he thought a proper grown-up might and said, "What happened?"
"Nothing. Everything," Harry said, almost sloshing his drink. "Fuck, I'm dangerous with this thing," Harry laughed, lifting his glass. Teddy thrilled at the easy way Harry swore in front of him. Harry came back and sat down again, and Teddy licked his lips. He sat even nearer than before. Teddy leaned back into the cushions cautiously, and Harry slung an arm along the back of the couch behind him and faced him, talking again, as though he hadn't had anyone to talk about this with at all. Maybe he hadn't. "She went to get some space at her folk's and…" He shrugged. "Then I think we both knew…that that was it. I guess."
"I'm sorry," Teddy said again, unsure what else there might be to say besides, 'I want you. I've wanted you forever. Please want me back. Please hold onto me and don't ever let me go. Please let it be me now.' Teddy could almost feel the letter in his back pocket burning. He shifted uncomfortably.
Harry put a heavy, too-warm hand down on his shoulder. "It was amicable," he said to nothing, to the empty air between their bodies. But his hand squeezed Teddy's shoulder rhythmically, reflexively. "We're friends now. Just friends." He looked at Teddy. "It's weird. To go from one thing…to the other…so bloody quickly."
Teddy gulped. "Yeah."
It felt like minutes that Harry stared into his eyes then…that Teddy stared back, his own beginning to tear up for no good reason.
"Teddy…" Harry said tenderly, and his thumb began moving…just an inch…back and forth over the skin exposed at the neckline of his jumper, up and over the collar bone…back down.
Teddy shivered.
And then the front door slammed shut with a loud bang, and Teddy actually jumped off the couch in the next instant.
"Easy," Harry said with a crooked smile. He stood – too close for a moment – and he said lowly, "It's just the kids." Teddy blinked at him for that second, then Harry was setting down his drink and saying, "Come and say hello. I know they're dying to see you."
Teddy nodded, and then he followed Harry out of the room where it seemed they left ghosts of themselves, vapors of unspoken words, a trapped lust hanging in the air that maybe Teddy had only imagined but that perhaps, Merlin willing, he hadn't.
…
"Dad!" James shouted, but it was Albus who beat him through the door and flung himself at Harry. Harry grabbed him up hard, made room in his arms for James (a full three inches taller than his brother), and then saw a purple blur that could only be his daughter, scampering in, too, and landing at his back with a little thud.
"Ooph!" Harry grunted melodramatically. "I take it school's good?"
"More like just ready for the holiday," James informed him, disengaging a good ten seconds before Albus and he five seconds before Lily.
"And you, young lady, are you studying hard with Mummy so that you blow these two out of the water in a couple years when you start?" Harry asked her.
Lily, shy around him since the separation, just shrugged.
"She's brilliant," Ginny's voice came from the doorway. "They all are. Although, James' Muggle Studies could be better."
James made a ppllfftthh sound from where he was already practically inside the refrigerator.
"Hi," Ginny said, then.
Harry stood, his knees popping. "Hi."
They hugged awkwardly, not body to body anymore, and Harry felt a pang of awful regret. He kissed her on the cheek, and she stripped off her gloves. Then her eyes landed on something in the hall, and her lips, for just one moment, made a hard little line. Then she smiled. "Teddy, good to see you made it."
"Teddy!" the kids all yelled in tandem.
Harry watched his godson step out of the hallway shadows just before he was attacked by his kids. Harry smiled, appreciating how Teddy gave them all equal but uniquely tailored attention.
"Lily Loo, you grew a foot!" Teddy exclaimed. "I won't recognize you next time." Then to Albus, "Fantastic new glasses. I hope you got me some for Christmas." And Harry wanted to hug him and maybe never let go for doing that for Al, who, unbeknownst to Teddy, had been teased about his glasses and had flooed Harry in tears three times since school began. Harry watched Albus nearly beam, pushing the thick black frames up his nose and blushing. "I was rubbish at Muggle Studies until third year," Teddy was telling James. "Then we got into rock and roll and—"
"…New Year's, because I think it'll be too difficult to travel, even by floo… Harry, are you listening?"
"Hmm. What?"
Ginny was staring at him with that look -- that disappointed face that made him feel more like a little boy around her than a man. "You said New Year's," he said.
"I said I'd better pick them up the day before. Is that all right with you? Ron and Hermione are having that party and…"
It was something they'd talked about: how both of them could still see the ever-happy, bloody-perfect Granger-Weasleys and if they should do so separately or not. Ron was Ginny's brother, of course. But Ron and Hermione were Harry's best friends. It was just one of the many sickening realizations their divorce brought on, and Harry rubbed at his scar now, sighing. "Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I'll see them later for the…"
"Yeah, the thing. Okay."
It sucked that she could still read his mind. That really should have stopped right after they'd signed the papers, shouldn't it have? Why did it still have to feel like this? So…lopsided and confusing and…nauseatingly adult. Harry was divorced. He could win all the wars they threw at him, receive countless honors as Head Auror. He was still a failure.
"…fireworks on the roof again," Harry caught James saying.
"No!" he said, abruptly leaving off his ex-wife for what could amount to a far bigger disaster. "Not after last time, no, no way, not at all. Teddy." The last was a warning.
Teddy was blushing like a bowl of ripe cherries, and Harry had the urge to…
He didn't know what.
Just…
Something.
"Don't worry, Harry. I don't intend a repeat performance." His jaw tightened. But for all that Teddy seemed tense about the incident, it was actually the family joke now: Teddy's Christmas fireworks that looked more like the London Blitz, taking out half the city. Nobody'd gotten hurt, and the boys had adored it, but…
"It wasn't what you did but what they tried to do in your absence that was the problem, Teddy."
Teddy blushed even harder and dropped his eyes. Then he nodded. He ruffled Al's already-Pottered hair. "You heard your dad. No fireworks this Christmas." Then he added with a smirk, "But there might be some good pranks in your stockings, yeah?" He blinked now-violet eyes back up at Harry once more.
Harry smiled back and held his gaze for several moments. It was good to have him in the house again. He hadn't been a regular guest…well, in forever. Harry had missed his lazy smile. And the way the kids adored him. And how he always made them each feel special. And how brilliant he was at chess, at dueling, at--
"So, yeah, I'm gonna go," Ginny said a tad too loudly.
Harry turned back to her. "You haven't even got warm," he said. "You took your gloves off, Ginny. Have a drink. I know Charlie's going to be late; no reason you can't take fifteen minutes and just sit, is there?"
And yet Harry knew there were loads of reasons.
"I can't drink. I picked the kids up in the car."
"Oh," he said. "The car." Just the mention of that old flying death trap made him queasy. "Well, have some cocoa at least."
"Thanks, Harry," she said. And then for some reason she looked right at Teddy for two seconds before turning her eyes back on him and sighing, "I just really have to go."
Harry nodded. "Yeah, okay. Well… Happy Christmas."
She smiled at him like he was a sad, unbrushed circus pony. "Happy Christmas, Harry."
Then the kids were all muttering 'Bye Mums', and Lily sniffed, and Ginny dropped to one knee to hold her, and Harry heard, "…don't want you to…" and "…be all right." And he felt like the world's most horrid person in that moment.
Until a hand lit softly on his shoulder from behind. And it squeezed. And then he felt like maybe he was only fifth most horrid. And he was so…so very grateful.
…
Teddy helped set the table for Christmas Eve dinner. Harry had taken pains to keep the menu the same as he and Ginny had for the past decade and a half, and yet it all looked…well, lousy.
"This chicken's not right," Harry said, frowning over it.
"I'm sure it's fine," Teddy replied.
"No, it's shit. Taste it."
Teddy set down the glass of wine he'd been sipping and moved in next to Harry by the pot -- close.
"'It's shit, taste it'?" His eyes were dancing with mirth. They dropped to Harry's mouth while his own twitched.
"Come on."
"Fork," Teddy said, holding out his hand.
Harry could smell the berries and pepper on his breath, the wet wool of his blue jumper. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
Teddy laughed. "You're the one who asked me to taste it, Harry." Then he plucked off a piece and ate it. "It's tender," he said after chewing thoughtfully. Then, "Harry… Did you use salt?"
Harry smacked himself in the forehead. "Salt! God!" Then sheepishly, "Thank you."
Teddy just grinned at him, picked up his wine glass, and went back to wanding silverware into place.
It had been like that – easy -- all day since they'd gotten up. Harry had slept badly as usual. At the same time as it was nice having Teddy next door in the guest room, Harry still struggled with being in the big bed all alone. Ginny had insisted he stay in the house since it was close to the Ministry and, as Head Auror, that was a necessity for him. Coaching the national Quidditch team was a country job. "I've got my eye on a place out Wiltshire way," she'd said the night they'd spoken of separation. She'd clearly been thinking of it for some time. Half of her heart was already living in a country house, making marmalade or whatever else country folk did.
Harry could scarcely bake a chicken much less make marmalade. And he hadn't played Quidditch in years.
He'd woken up that morning with a stiff neck and a horrible taste in his mouth. He'd wandered into the hall in just his pants, forgetting that he shouldn't, and he'd run into Teddy in the hall.
There'd been that briefest moment of awkward dancing as each tried to move out of the other's way.
"I'll start some coffee," Teddy had finally said, hair neon green, apparently abandoning any ideas of getting into the bathroom. He'd already been dressed anyway.
Harry had yawned. "God, that'd be perfect."
Then they'd gone their separate ways.
Harry had showered and dressed and emerged to the tantalizing smell of Teddy's coffee. And his hair blue again.
Harry salted the poor bird now, threw some extra thyme at it for good measure, and then set it on the table and called the kids. They took their time, stomping around over their heads and shouting at one another. Harry leaned against the counter, watching the young man drink.
"What have you been doing with yourself, Teddy?" he said pensively.
Teddy immediately tensed. That hadn't been what Harry wanted. The day had been so relaxed. They'd played chess and then all gone for a walk… Harry hadn't felt so unburdened in a long time. He should have known, though; Teddy was so mysteriously sensitive about such things.
"I'm not trying to pester you," Harry tried. "I just… I'm interested. In you."
He watched Teddy inhale deeply, unable to meet his eyes, and realized what he'd said.
"Are you?" Teddy's voice came, quiet.
He raised his gaze then to meet Harry's. Harry hadn't had a look like that directed at him in a long…Christ, a long, long bloody time. And never from Teddy. Merlin, never from Teddy. That look was pure longing. It was sex. It was heady, guilty, breathless sex. That same feeling he'd gotten in the study the day before when he'd touched Teddy's skin just above his jumper swept through him now, looking into his eyes. Harry swallowed.
James burst into the room with Al close behind.
"He accioed my wand!" Albus shrieked.
Harry tore his eyes from Teddy. "He did? Did you, James?"
James shrugged. "He should have silencioed me or something."
"He's first year, James. You're second. Give it back."
James rolled his eyes but handed it over. Lily straggled into the room, groggy from having fallen fast asleep in front of the fire. Everyone sat. Teddy took the seat across from Harry, and Harry swallowed compulsively. That had been Ginny's spot. It was weird and…confusing, Teddy sitting there.
"Lils, would you like some yams?" Harry asked.
They passed plates. But Harry's eyes kept coming back to Teddy. And the unanswered question kept resurfacing in Harry's mind:
Are you?
The children talked all through dinner, but Harry was quiet. All he could do was think about the answer to that question – and realize that there was one, and he'd known it for a while now.
Harry sipped his wine, and he watched Teddy talking to Lily -- James and Al cutting up between them -- until Teddy again looked at Harry, and that thing passed between them. That thing Harry had tried to ignore for the last couple of transformative years.
Teddy blinked at him, slowly, and Harry felt himself blush hot. He had the most absurd and prudish thought on the planet. Hell, it didn't even count as a thought. He heard Ron's fifteen year-old voice in his head, whispering, "Blimey…" That's how Harry felt, though. Blimey…
Harry found himself smiling then -- smiling across the grotesquely chickened space at Teddy Lupin, his godson, a man now and…well, beautiful really. Why had Harry not noticed before?
Because you've had a stick up your arse and you've been obsessed with ignoring a failing marriage for Merlin knows how long, you tosser.
And here he was – Teddy. Wanting him.
The kids cleared the table. Everyone but Teddy had left their chicken in favor of a vegetarian offering. But Teddy had tried to eat it – for Harry's sake. The remains sat gelatinous and horrid on his plate. Harry wanted to laugh and hug him and apologize for…everything.
But before he could think how, Teddy was up and pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and heading out onto the back porch.
Harry let him go and started drying plates after James washed them. "So," he said. "Have you and Teddy talked much since he got here?"
James shrugged. "You mean about other things besides boring Muggle Studies? A little. Why?"
"Just curious what he's been up to." Harry tried to sound casual.
"Well, aside from the tutoring, I'm not sure."
"He said he's been tutoring someone?"
"He never said that; I just know he has."
"From who?" Harry tried not to sound over-eager.
"From everyone. He tutors by floo. Half the school's in line to get help from him. Guess he's some kind of genius. Is that true dad? Teddy's a genius?"
"I don't know," Harry said, staring at a dry plate. "What do you think, son?"
James looked pleased to be consulted. "I think… Well, yeah. I'd say he probably is." He looked just like Ginny when he thought-frowned like that.
Harry sighed. "Why has he never said anything?"
It was rhetorical, but James gave him a 'duh, Dad' look and answered nonetheless. "He's on the porch. Ask him yourself. Al dries better than you anyway."
Harry laughed. "All right. Thanks, Jamie."
"Whatever," James muttered.
Harry rumpled Lily's hair on the way through the living room. She was busy composing an owl to Rose. "Daa-aad!" she scoffed and then smoothed her hair down again.
"Sorry," Harry said, feeling like an oaf.
He opened the door and stepped into the cold with Teddy. Neither of them was wearing a coat. Harry stood next to him while he smoked. He was about to scold him but thought better of it. Teddy was a grown man, for one. And second of all, Harry rather liked the awful smell of it.
"Hey," he said, looking out at the stars and thrusting his hands into his pockets.
"Hey." Teddy took a drag, inhaled audibly, and then blew smoke out into the sky. Somebody, somewhere, was burning leaves.
Harry wanted to say, 'You're a good person, tutoring those kids.' He wanted to say, maybe, 'You ought not be ashamed of yourself. Why do you always seem so ashamed? Did I do that to you? Who made you feel that way?' He wanted to hold him and tell him how much he'd missed him. Merlin, did he want that!
He wanted to say, 'I could kiss you right now and no one would see.'
Harry wanted to lean in and whisper in his cold red-tipped ear, 'I want to kiss you right now, and I want everyone to see.'
He wanted to touch Teddy's body in ways he'd never considered before – the slender, pale torso; he longed to run his hands through that ever-changing hair, palm the perfectly round globes of his naked arse…dip his fingers in between and find the warm little hole….
Bugger.
He wanted to say, 'I am interested in you. I'm more than interested in you.'
What he said instead was, "You didn't have to eat the chicken."
Teddy took a drag off his cigarette. "It wasn't too bad," he smirked.
"Bloody liar," Harry teased.
But something in it doused the light in Teddy's eyes. He shuffled his feet.
"It's cold tonight," Harry rambled.
"It's too warm inside," Teddy answered.
"So do you charge?"
Teddy turned to him, wide-eyed and affronted, blinking.
"For the tutoring."
"What… How did you find out about that?"
Find out. Like it was some dirty secret. "James," Harry told him, waving his hand back toward the light in the kitchen. "Reminds me of Hermione. He knows everything. So? What do you charge?"
Teddy gulped. "Nothing. They're kids."
Harry turned to him, too cold for tact. "Teddy, why don't you teach ? They'd hire you for any class you wanted, and in a heartbeat!"
Teddy stomped out his fag and whirled on Harry, his face close, breath hot and ashy and wonderful. "Why are you fucking on me about this? You said you didn't mind sending the…the money…" The word was like a foul taste he could hardly stand. "I just—"
"I don't," Harry insisted, completely unsure where all of this vitriol was coming from. "I don't mind at all. I want to. You're my…"
Teddy laughed, and there was no humor in it. "Right," he said. "I'm your godson. The bane of your existence. The scab you can't scrape off. You're interested in me, because you're interested in where your Galleons go, right?"
"Bloody hell, NO!" Harry shouted. He'd never shouted at Teddy before. It felt terrible. Just terrible. But Harry was becoming truly buggered with him. What the hell was this?
Before he even really registered that they were, for the first time, fighting, Teddy was storming out into the field behind the house, into the low-lying fog.
"Teddy!" Harry rushed after him, grabbing for his jumper.
But Teddy jerked his arm away.
"Teddy."
"Oh sod off," Teddy spat, and Harry heard the tears that clogged his voice.
He reached out for him again, but there was nothing there – just the crack in the air and the stunning realization that everything had somehow gone horribly wrong.
…
Harry did what he did whenever there was an emergency he didn't feel qualified to handle, namely anything unrelated to magic: he flooed Hermione.
"Harry, what's wrong?"
"It's Teddy," he told her. He relayed the bit about the tutoring and the teaching idea and how that had set him off and now he was gone and "What the fuck should I do?" he whispered. "I'm afraid he'll go off and get himself into some very real trouble. He's so like—" He cut himself off.
"Like Sirius," she finished for him.
He gritted his teeth. "Yes." That fact hurt maybe more than anything and for so many awful, splendid, sorrowful reasons. Remus would have been equally delighted and horrified for his son to take after his best friend. It was confusing at best for Harry. "What do I do, Hermione?"
"Well, you have two choices," she told him, ever the matter-of-fact one. "You can stay put and trust him to wander back on his own after a few hours."
"Or?"
"Or you can floo Bernard. He'll know where he's gone better than anyone. Then double your house elves' pay for the night, have them baby-sit, and go get him."
"That's it? Go get him?"
"Harry, if he's going to act like a brat, you'd do well to treat him like one."
"He's not a—" Harry began to protest.
"No, I know. He's the reason eighty percent of my third years got Outstandings last term. It doesn't matter. The point is, Harry, you're Head Auror, are you not?"
"Yeah." He wasn't at all sure where she was going with this. That he put Teddy under arrest for being an incomprehensible ponce? That he hire him?
"You can't be Harry, old buddy, old pal. You've got to take him in hand." She sighed. "He needs it." Then he heard her hissed, "Mommy's in the floo. Go tell your father if he can't remember the spell for mending a cut, there are Band-Aids in the cabinet and it serves him right." Then, "I'm sorry."
"It's quite all right," Harry told her. He could feel something settling into his gut; it felt the same as when he'd go into battle – that deep knowing of what he had to do and that he was more than capable of doing it. "Okay, I'm doing that second thing. Thank you, Hermione. I don't know what I'd do without you."
"At least you know how to heal a paper cut," she snarked. "As if a person can't just live with one on his finger."
"Happy Christmas," he told her sincerely.
"Happy Christmas, Harry," she sighed back.
He pulled his head out of the floo and prepared to stick it back in again and deal with Teddy's roommate, a boy who had once goosed his wife, Bernard Abbot.
…
The beat throbbed through him, and Teddy finally shucked the jumper, much to his dance partners' delight. The smaller one smoothed his hands up Teddy's bare chest while the larger one, behind him, butted his cock up against Teddy's ass. Teddy raised his arms over his head, wrapping his hands behind the big guy's neck. He closed his eyes and undulated to the heavy music, his nipples tight in the one's fingers, his cock hard even with the three Firewhiskeys he'd thrown back in the hour and a half he'd been at Duro.
"You…are so…gorgeous," Big Guy said into his ear. "I could fuck you all night long."
Smaller Guy bent down and laved his tits. "And I'll suck him."
"Sounds about right to me," Big Guy agreed.
Teddy let Smaller Guy unzip his denims. He was buzzing and hard and the arousal kept him from thinking, from feeling, and that was exactly what he needed. So what if they planned to bang him right here on the dance floor? Nothing mattered except losing his mind as much as possible. Nothing was real except these demanding hands becoming more demanding – the fact that the one was on his knees, his face in Teddy's crotch, wetting his cotton-covered dick, and the other's hands were dipping down inside the back of his pants and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing and then—
"Get away from him. Now."
It hadn't been a shout, but that voice commanded the entire room. Teddy opened drugged eyes, blinked over at his godfather, standing there like he owned the world, in his Auror robes.
Teddy pulled the twink's head in tighter.
"Leave me alone," he said. How did you find me? he thought. Why did you even make the effort?
Harry pulled his wand without hurry. He looked at Big Guy, and the man pulled his hands out of Teddy's pants. "Is that…? Are you…H-Harry Potter? Shit, Henley, that's bloody Harry Potter." He backed away a step.
But Teddy used two hands and kept Henley in close, his cock throbbing against the aghast mouth. "I didn't say you could stop," he said without taking hard eyes off Harry. Let him see. Let him fucking see.
Harry flicked his wrist just the slightest bit, and the two men slid ten feet away from Teddy in opposite directions. Teddy was left with his denims open, a large, wet, see-through spot over the strain of his cock, standing in the middle of a stunned-still dance floor.
The music kept on – dark and hard – and Harry said to him, "You're coming with me."
Teddy could feel tears of shame spill over his eyelashes and slide down his cheeks. "No," he said petulantly. Not to be your godson, Harry. Not for that.
And then Harry reached out his free hand, turning it palm up. He wasn't offering. He curled his fingers in one by one, yanking back as though Teddy were on the end of an invisible line, and Teddy FLEW into him.
Into his arms, where Harry caught him, held him fast. Teddy had two seconds to realize Harry hadn't used his wand – just like Teddy didn't need to. And then Harry looked at Teddy's lips, and he struck, his mouth opening Teddy's, his tongue pushing inside.
There was a soft but decisive crack, and it was the best Disapparation of Teddy's life. His whole body was squeezed up against Harry's, his dick, his chest, his mouth crushed. Then he was in a loud, ringing silence. They'd landed in Harry's study, the only light a barely-there fire in the hearth, and Teddy was standing on his own two feet, and yet he wasn't.
Harry had him, pulled in hard. And his mouth tasted of blood-iron and ferocity and tenderness – his tongue hot and fucking Teddy's mouth like he was a virgin.
Teddy couldn't help it – a little whine of pleasure escaped his throat. Harry inhaled it like it was manna. When Teddy reached for Harry's clothes, Harry slapped his hands away hard and then, quicker than humanly possible, held them behind Teddy's back, strong, in his own hands, keeping him immobile.
He'd broken the kiss. Harry's lips were blushed and swollen, his eyes dark. "If I'm going to let this happen," he said, "you need to know something, Teddy."
Teddy shivered at how Harry said his name - no one said his name like that – like it was mulled wine.
Harry went on, "You need to know that this changes absolutely everything I've ever tried to make between us." He was breathing hard, nearly shivering with certainty and lust. Teddy could feel his hard cock against his hip. Harry's hard cock. Harry's cock was hard for him. He blinked, nearly unable to look this kind and powerful man in the eye.
"I've already fucked everything up, Teddy. Whatever's gone wrong, it's been my fault, and whether or not this is what you want, I intend to fix things one way or the other." He took a breath. "But if I do this – if I make love to you –" Teddy couldn't help the groan that came out of him then. "Listen to me," Harry urged, his fingers tightening painfully around Teddy's wrists. "If I do this… If I do this, Teddy, you're mine. Do you hear me? No more clubs. No more giving it away like it means nothing, like you're nothing." He spat the word. "You're special. Teddy. Do you understand me?"
He nodded emphatically.
"I'm not joking," Harry said, jaw hard. "Teddy, so help me Merlin…"
"No… Harry… I want it," Teddy found himself whispering, hardly trusting his voice. He swallowed, flexing his fingers, shivering at the way his nipples brushed against Harry's clothed chest. "Christ, Harry, I've wanted you for five years. Maybe more."
Harry blinked, taking that in. He released one wrist and touched Teddy's face, wicking away one last tear.
"I can't stop wanting you, Harry," Teddy confessed. "I can't. So please." He wriggled his other hand free of Harry's grip, stepped back, and stripped off the rest of his clothes as efficiently as he could, throwing them aside, and standing before his godfather naked finally, his arms out, cold and yearning. "Please. Take me."
Those must have been the right words, because Harry spared but one hungry look down Teddy's whole body, then he stalked in again, grabbed Teddy up, and held him fast. There was no blisteringly hot kiss this time. There was just Harry holding him – holding Teddy's naked body in against himself, his breath warm in Teddy's hair, his hands gentle and strong.
Teddy wrapped his arms around Harry, then, too.
Harry whispered a spell against his ear, locking the door.
Part Two
nextgen_mas fic, because I realized I never actually posted it to my own journal. Whoops!Title: Complicated Magic
Author:
traintracksPairing(s), Characters: Harry/Teddy, Teddy/OMCs, (Harry/Ginny [past], mentions of Ginny/Dean and Hermione/Ron, past Sirius/Harry UST if you squint), James Sirius, Albus Severus, Lily Luna, OMC
Rating: NC-17
Words: 14,600
Prompt: "No matter how many men Teddy dates, none of them can compare to his first crush, Harry Potter."
Summary: What happens when a hopelessly infatuated Teddy Lupin and a newly-single Harry Potter collide over Christmas?
Warnings: very mild and brief bondage, mild pain kink, mild jealousy, sexual promiscuity, cross-gen, godfather/godson
A/N: Huge thanks to
elrhiarhodan for the non-stop cheerleading and kickass beta, and also torino10154 who gave some invaluable advice. All remaining mistakes are mine. Original posting here.
"You're one hot little fucker," the man grunted, spreading his fingers into a V around the base of his own cock, holding the condom on while he pulled out of Teddy's ass.
Teddy eased his legs out of his armpits and wiped the spunk off his stomach. "Yeah," he said, although he'd meant to say, 'Yeah, you, too,' which would have been a white lie; Brent/Kent/Whatever had gotten the job done okay.
Brent/Kent/Whatever laughed. "I like your arrogance. Makes me want to fuck that conceited mouth of yours."
"Maybe next time," Teddy sighed, knowing there wouldn't be one. He rolled halfway over and pulled a fag from the pack on the nightstand, careful to light it with the Zippo nearby rather than use his wand. Muggles tended to freak when he forgot that bit, or worse, when he lit the thing with just his thoughts. Hell, wizards freaked out when he pulled that one.
"Got anything to drink?" The man was zipping up his denims.
"Bottled water in the fridge," Teddy yawned.
Let's call him Brent…came back with half the bottle gone and icy drops cascading down his bare chest. He offered the rest to Teddy.
"You keep it."
"Thanks," he said, and then he wrote his phone number down on the pad near Teddy's phone. Luckily, Teddy's cat, Scritchnits, could blend into the Muggle world rather well and none of his one night stands had ever caught her bearing notes in her mouth or between her paws, but you had to face it, sometimes iPhones were just better, if not as snuggly. Not that he would be using his to call Brent, even if he did have a cock like a battering ram. He had Guinness breath and his eyes rolled back in his head weird while he fucked, both things Teddy could have avoided had he taken it from behind. You live, you learn. He liked it on his hands and knees best anyway.
Brent waved as he left, and Teddy gave him a lukewarm smile. When he heard the front door close, he yelled, "You can come out now, you ponce!"
Five seconds later, his flatmate, Bernie Abbot, was sticking his head into the room. "Any good?"
"Couldn't you hear?" Teddy said, shooting him a look over the cigarette in his mouth while at the same time pulling up his pants.
"What the bloody hell happened to your hair?" Bernie was fully in the room now, kicking at his dirty laundry and judging his hair.
"You don't like Weasley-red?"
"It's bollocks on you, mate." Bernie, for all his Hufflepuffness, often behaved more like a Weasley himself.
Teddy shrugged and went back to blue, laying the fag in the ashtray while he looked for clean denims. "Better?"
"In gargantuan ways. You up for eggs?"
"Only if I don't have to make them," Teddy answered, pulling on a tight Sex Pistols t-shirt.
"Right. Floo to Ralph's?"
"Are you mad? It's the middle of the night. His mom'd kill us."
"Ralph's mom…" Bernie practically drooled. "Now there's a MILF." He seemed to shake himself. "Dar's Diner?"
"That's clear off in Byron." Teddy knew he was whining, but he couldn't seem to help it; he was in a post-fuck funk. He tugged his denims up his thighs and over his hips without unbuttoning them, rolling around on the mussed bed to get them over his butt.
"You wouldn't Apparate a foot in front of yourself, you lazy sod," Bernie said, shaking his head. An absurd lock of raccoon-colored hair fell into his eyes, and he shook it out again.
"You're buying." Teddy took a long drag and stubbed the fag out.
"What, didn't the great Harry Potter send his godson any food money this month?"
"Shut it!" Teddy said, much louder than he'd intended, blowing smoke out of his flared nostrils.
"Bloody hell," Bernie said, his hands raised to his sides like he was under Muggle arrest. "It's not like I kicked your cat."
"Ever try it and she and I will both claw your eyes out," Teddy told him, but his insides were still fucked up from hearing his godfather's name. Truth was, Harry had sent him thirty galleons two weeks ago, but once Teddy had converted it to Muggle money, he'd blown half of it on weed, mp3s, and Christmas gifts, and spent the other on rent. Which was why he'd have to bum even a plate of eggs off his friend. It wasn't Harry's fault Teddy was a loser. Things just were as they were.
"I fucking love that cat," Bernie admitted, unaware of Teddy's inner turmoil. "Better with a letter than my Franz will ever be. Don't tell him I said so." Franz was Bernie's rat and rather senile these days. He'd been old the day Bernie bought him in Diagon Alley before first year.
"My lips are sealed."
"That's not what your date said," Bernie needled, then he snapped his fingers. "Say, he sort of had Harry-hair, didn't he? Mate, you've gotta stop picking up guys that could pass as your godfather. People will start to talk." Then he guffawed like it was the most ridiculous joke ever.
Teddy swallowed and tried to smirk. "Right," he said, but it barely came out at all. Truth was it stung a bit. Bernie could lust after Ralph Greengrass' moms or Hermione Granger or feminine-looking lamp posts all he liked, but Teddy… Well, it didn't bear thinking about really. He licked his lips and grabbed his leather jacket off the floor, shrugging it on and pulling the collar way up.
Bernie, ever oblivious, went on. "I swear, Teddy, for having the best grades Hogwarts has ever seen since Ms. G, you are the laziest wizard in England. Maybe the world. Look at this! Two years out of school and you've got no job, no floor that I can see—"
"It's there," Teddy interrupted, but his friend kept on.
"And yet you've got sex coming out of your EARS!"
Teddy shrugged.
"Suppose you've doubled up now 'cause you're gonna be at the Potters' for a week soon. No arse to be had there." Bernie snorted.
Teddy played along. "You're one to talk – your parents don't even snog in front of you."
Bernie made a face. "Thank Merlin." Then he brightened. "I'd die to be Ralph." He stage whispered, "His mom gets it on with a lesbian."
Teddy ignored Bernie's utter ignorance and uncouthness and picked up his pack of Winstons, the lighter, his wallet (more for the condoms and his Metro pass than the three quid in change inside).
His friend switched topics yet again and went back to dogging him. "I mean really. When was the last time you used magic to do anything but add a new tattoo to your oft-visited bum?"
"You'd rather I blackout the Ministry?" Teddy asked. There was a hard little knot in his throat, though, when he said it, a bitterness he didn't care to entertain at the moment. Before his friend could get any ideas – his eyes were already lighting up like Christmas – Teddy grabbed him hard around the shoulders and said, "I'll Apparate us to Dar's – that good enough for you?"
Then with a pop, and without another thought about Harry Potter, they were gone.
…
"You know if you're late, Ginny's gonna hex you."
It was definitely Bernie's voice, and it was coming from…somewhere outside Teddy's head. Teddy went to swallow and realized his mouth was wide open and there was a collection of drool on the pillow under his face. He smacked his lips, wincing at the hangover he could feel surging in with the wakefulness.
Teddy shifted and stifled a groan. Squinting in the sunlight, he peered at the other side of the bed where lay a very pretty bloke – tame sandy hair this time, thank you very much Bernard -- and he looked like he was having a very nice dream indeed.
Teddy vaguely remembered picking him up and getting him home. But he did recall kissing him madly and stripping his clothes off, and then… Teddy reached down and scratched his naked balls. Oh yeah. He'd straddled the fellow's face.
Not bad.
He patted an exposed thigh gently. "Hey. Hey. You gotta wake up. I gotta be…somewhere."
Then it hit him exactly where he was supposed to be.
Ginny'd hex him…
"Bollocks!" he shouted. The guy rolled over but didn't rise. Teddy patted his arse urgently. "Get up…uh, Ian?"
"Wha?"
"Ian, I gotta go. You've got to get up!"
"Teddy?" Ian stretched. "I like that name."
Teddy rolled his eyes and shoved at him. "Out, I said, I'm late!"
"Mmm. M'okay." Ian literally rolled out of the bed and onto the floor, and Teddy left him there in the filthy clothes to go do a cleansing spell and dress.
"Fuck," he hissed as his foot got stuck in his nicest dark denims and he fell into the sink. He rubbed at his hip to make it stop stinging. His wand was in the other room, and he couldn't remember how to dispel a bruise without it. He resolved to take care of it later as he was already -- he checked the clock on the shelving over the toilet -- shit, two hours late. He pulled on a black jumper, cleaned his teeth, fixed his hair, or tried to; it kept going green on him, so he finally left it and figured it would stabilize once he wasn't feeling so…
Nervous. He had to admit – he was nervous.
Teddy looked at himself in the mirror, the wide dark eyes staring back. It had been months since they'd seen each other, him and Harry. Weeks since the last owl which had sounded rushed and tense. Teddy hadn't answered it. He'd slept with a slew of six men in four days and called it a draw. Teddy licked his lips. He was trembling slightly.
Then he remembered Ian in there – worshipful, sweet Ian who he'd used a subtle magic on last night, who he'd made come five times, who thought Teddy was the best thing since Pandora. He wasn't a total fuck up. At least not at fucking.
As he stood there, his hair went dark brown and his eyes shone silver.
That was better.
He walked out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. "Bernard," he said to his roommate. "Get that bloke some breakfast to go, will you? I'm headed out."
"Yeah, sure thing," Bernie smirked over his tea. "You pound 'em till they drop, I ship 'em out the next morning; that's how it works, right?"
Teddy swallowed. "Right." Then he headed to the floo.
But before he reached for the powder, he stopped. He felt around on the mantle and lifted the copy of David Copperfield he kept there. Under it was the card with the letter in it. He brought it down and looked at it, turning it over in his hands. He was about to shove it back to the spot where it had lived for two years now when Bernie snuck up on him.
"What's that?"
Teddy stuffed it in his back pocket hastily. "Nothing," he said. "Just a Christmas card. For Harry," he finished awkwardly.
"Well, off with you, then," his friend said, giving him a shove.
Teddy stumbled into the floo. "Take care of Scritch, all right?"
"Hey!" Bernie said, tossing his bottomless bag at him. "Don't forget your Christmas presents."
Teddy caught it against his chest, powdered himself, and said, as confidently as he could, "Potter residence."
…
He landed in Harry's apparently empty study. Teddy stood and brushed himself off and was headed toward the door when he heard, "You're late."
He turned quickly, searching out that voice that made his heart jump and his body warm against his will.
His eyes adjusted to the light in the room, wide beams of it streaming in onto the floor from tall, ornate windows, leaving the corners in sepia shadows. When Harry stood and walked into a shaft of light, Teddy forgot the cool greeting he'd planned and strode into his embrace without hesitance. Harry hugged him hard. He had the wiry arms of a battle-honed Auror, and his hug was vehement, the hold of a man who'd lost too much. His chest was warm, his heartbeat strong, and Teddy wanted to stay there against him for hours.
"Merlin, it's been too long," he said into Teddy's hair. "Why on earth didn't you owl me?" He held Teddy back at arm's length, and Teddy immediately missed the body heat while still quite enjoying the way Harry's fingers bit slightly into his shoulders.
Teddy looked down. "I just got busy. I'm sorry." He'd rehearsed the 'just got busy' part; the apology just sort of jumped onto the end at the last moment and mucked it all up. "Thank you for the money," he added, making things worse.
"Hey," Harry said, making him look back up. "That's not what I meant." As if realizing too late that he should, Harry took his hands off Teddy and backed up a step. "Are you thirsty? I've got fresh pumpkin juice…"
"Nah, I'm good," Teddy said, scrubbing the back of his head and looking around the room at nothing.
"Firewhiskey?" Harry said, then, and Teddy looked back at him sharply, only to be caught by the warm smile there on his godfather's lips.
"You've never offered me a drink before," he said.
Harry shrugged. "I just forget sometimes how… I forget," he finished. "Would you like some?" he persisted, already heading over to the bar and pouring himself one.
"I shouldn't," Teddy admitted, wincing at the idea of more alcohol -- that and the slippery places he could get into but not out of if he were to get even tipsy around Harry Potter. He watched Harry's back, how the white dress shirt fit him perfectly…the exquisite fit of the charcoal trousers over his compact arse. Teddy brought his gaze quickly back up once Harry turned and gestured to the leather sofa against the wall.
Teddy sat at one end and Harry surprised him by sitting toward the middle, close enough to touch. Intimately close. Like the months between this and their last visit never even existed. For the first time it occurred to Teddy that it wasn't near late enough for a stiff drink. He didn't want to be rude and check the pocket watch Harry had gotten him for Christmas last year, but he was pretty sure it was just now past noon.
Harry took a big swallow, and Teddy noticed the little lines at the corners of his eyes that weren't there before. The grey at the temples.
"Is everything all right, Harry?" he found himself asking.
"You're late," Harry said again with a rueful grin. He sat with one ankle propped on a knee, swirling his glass slowly. "I sort of wanted to talk to you for a bit before the boys get home from school."
"Is Ginny getting them at the station?" Teddy asked, trying not to sound as hopeful that she was out of the house as he felt. He hated the excitement coursing along his skin, through his blood, but there it was. He wanted Harry alone.
Harry swallowed. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about—" he swallowed again "—actually." He took another drink.
Teddy felt something terrible and wonderful happen in the pit of his stomach before he'd even heard the words.
"Ginny and I… We're, uh… We were separated."
"Were?"
"Well, now we're plain old divorced," Harry said with a sad smile in his direction. "I wanted to tell you weeks ago when I owled you," he jibed. "I had hoped you could come out…." It was a complete sentence, but something about the way Harry said it made it seem like he wanted to add more but simply neglected to.
"I'm so sorry," Teddy said, half-meaning it. "I should have answered you. I…"
"It's okay. You're here now. I suppose I just didn't want you to hear it from one of the kids rather than me. You know?"
Teddy nodded, but the way Harry was looking at him, into him, made him feel like maybe he didn't know. Harry's gaze was intense and searching for that moment. When Teddy swallowed, Harry turned his attention back to his drink, but he murmured into it, "Your hair's gone plum-colored. D'you know that?" Then he looked back at Teddy, and his smile was so warm…so very…
God…
Teddy didn't want to think the word 'loving'. But he really, really did. He ran a self-conscious hand over his head. Harry's eyes followed in a way that made Teddy flush hot all over, then he abruptly stood and began to pace.
"I should have known. You know?" He looked at Teddy like he wasn't his nineteen year-old godson, like he was someone real, and like he might have answers Harry himself did not. Then he moved on, pacing slowly from desk to armchair in the middle of the room. "We hadn't been right for…well, years really."
"Harry…" Teddy said. He really wanted to accept that drink now. He felt ill-equipped to handle this under the best of circumstances. Harry was single. The man Teddy had wanted, ached for, since he'd turned fourteen…the man he had thought, on stray serendipitous occasions might, might, feel something, too…was now single. Teddy wasn't in the least sure how to handle that. Didn't have a clue what to say. So all he did was lean forward and rest his elbows on his knees like he thought a proper grown-up might and said, "What happened?"
"Nothing. Everything," Harry said, almost sloshing his drink. "Fuck, I'm dangerous with this thing," Harry laughed, lifting his glass. Teddy thrilled at the easy way Harry swore in front of him. Harry came back and sat down again, and Teddy licked his lips. He sat even nearer than before. Teddy leaned back into the cushions cautiously, and Harry slung an arm along the back of the couch behind him and faced him, talking again, as though he hadn't had anyone to talk about this with at all. Maybe he hadn't. "She went to get some space at her folk's and…" He shrugged. "Then I think we both knew…that that was it. I guess."
"I'm sorry," Teddy said again, unsure what else there might be to say besides, 'I want you. I've wanted you forever. Please want me back. Please hold onto me and don't ever let me go. Please let it be me now.' Teddy could almost feel the letter in his back pocket burning. He shifted uncomfortably.
Harry put a heavy, too-warm hand down on his shoulder. "It was amicable," he said to nothing, to the empty air between their bodies. But his hand squeezed Teddy's shoulder rhythmically, reflexively. "We're friends now. Just friends." He looked at Teddy. "It's weird. To go from one thing…to the other…so bloody quickly."
Teddy gulped. "Yeah."
It felt like minutes that Harry stared into his eyes then…that Teddy stared back, his own beginning to tear up for no good reason.
"Teddy…" Harry said tenderly, and his thumb began moving…just an inch…back and forth over the skin exposed at the neckline of his jumper, up and over the collar bone…back down.
Teddy shivered.
And then the front door slammed shut with a loud bang, and Teddy actually jumped off the couch in the next instant.
"Easy," Harry said with a crooked smile. He stood – too close for a moment – and he said lowly, "It's just the kids." Teddy blinked at him for that second, then Harry was setting down his drink and saying, "Come and say hello. I know they're dying to see you."
Teddy nodded, and then he followed Harry out of the room where it seemed they left ghosts of themselves, vapors of unspoken words, a trapped lust hanging in the air that maybe Teddy had only imagined but that perhaps, Merlin willing, he hadn't.
…
"Dad!" James shouted, but it was Albus who beat him through the door and flung himself at Harry. Harry grabbed him up hard, made room in his arms for James (a full three inches taller than his brother), and then saw a purple blur that could only be his daughter, scampering in, too, and landing at his back with a little thud.
"Ooph!" Harry grunted melodramatically. "I take it school's good?"
"More like just ready for the holiday," James informed him, disengaging a good ten seconds before Albus and he five seconds before Lily.
"And you, young lady, are you studying hard with Mummy so that you blow these two out of the water in a couple years when you start?" Harry asked her.
Lily, shy around him since the separation, just shrugged.
"She's brilliant," Ginny's voice came from the doorway. "They all are. Although, James' Muggle Studies could be better."
James made a ppllfftthh sound from where he was already practically inside the refrigerator.
"Hi," Ginny said, then.
Harry stood, his knees popping. "Hi."
They hugged awkwardly, not body to body anymore, and Harry felt a pang of awful regret. He kissed her on the cheek, and she stripped off her gloves. Then her eyes landed on something in the hall, and her lips, for just one moment, made a hard little line. Then she smiled. "Teddy, good to see you made it."
"Teddy!" the kids all yelled in tandem.
Harry watched his godson step out of the hallway shadows just before he was attacked by his kids. Harry smiled, appreciating how Teddy gave them all equal but uniquely tailored attention.
"Lily Loo, you grew a foot!" Teddy exclaimed. "I won't recognize you next time." Then to Albus, "Fantastic new glasses. I hope you got me some for Christmas." And Harry wanted to hug him and maybe never let go for doing that for Al, who, unbeknownst to Teddy, had been teased about his glasses and had flooed Harry in tears three times since school began. Harry watched Albus nearly beam, pushing the thick black frames up his nose and blushing. "I was rubbish at Muggle Studies until third year," Teddy was telling James. "Then we got into rock and roll and—"
"…New Year's, because I think it'll be too difficult to travel, even by floo… Harry, are you listening?"
"Hmm. What?"
Ginny was staring at him with that look -- that disappointed face that made him feel more like a little boy around her than a man. "You said New Year's," he said.
"I said I'd better pick them up the day before. Is that all right with you? Ron and Hermione are having that party and…"
It was something they'd talked about: how both of them could still see the ever-happy, bloody-perfect Granger-Weasleys and if they should do so separately or not. Ron was Ginny's brother, of course. But Ron and Hermione were Harry's best friends. It was just one of the many sickening realizations their divorce brought on, and Harry rubbed at his scar now, sighing. "Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I'll see them later for the…"
"Yeah, the thing. Okay."
It sucked that she could still read his mind. That really should have stopped right after they'd signed the papers, shouldn't it have? Why did it still have to feel like this? So…lopsided and confusing and…nauseatingly adult. Harry was divorced. He could win all the wars they threw at him, receive countless honors as Head Auror. He was still a failure.
"…fireworks on the roof again," Harry caught James saying.
"No!" he said, abruptly leaving off his ex-wife for what could amount to a far bigger disaster. "Not after last time, no, no way, not at all. Teddy." The last was a warning.
Teddy was blushing like a bowl of ripe cherries, and Harry had the urge to…
He didn't know what.
Just…
Something.
"Don't worry, Harry. I don't intend a repeat performance." His jaw tightened. But for all that Teddy seemed tense about the incident, it was actually the family joke now: Teddy's Christmas fireworks that looked more like the London Blitz, taking out half the city. Nobody'd gotten hurt, and the boys had adored it, but…
"It wasn't what you did but what they tried to do in your absence that was the problem, Teddy."
Teddy blushed even harder and dropped his eyes. Then he nodded. He ruffled Al's already-Pottered hair. "You heard your dad. No fireworks this Christmas." Then he added with a smirk, "But there might be some good pranks in your stockings, yeah?" He blinked now-violet eyes back up at Harry once more.
Harry smiled back and held his gaze for several moments. It was good to have him in the house again. He hadn't been a regular guest…well, in forever. Harry had missed his lazy smile. And the way the kids adored him. And how he always made them each feel special. And how brilliant he was at chess, at dueling, at--
"So, yeah, I'm gonna go," Ginny said a tad too loudly.
Harry turned back to her. "You haven't even got warm," he said. "You took your gloves off, Ginny. Have a drink. I know Charlie's going to be late; no reason you can't take fifteen minutes and just sit, is there?"
And yet Harry knew there were loads of reasons.
"I can't drink. I picked the kids up in the car."
"Oh," he said. "The car." Just the mention of that old flying death trap made him queasy. "Well, have some cocoa at least."
"Thanks, Harry," she said. And then for some reason she looked right at Teddy for two seconds before turning her eyes back on him and sighing, "I just really have to go."
Harry nodded. "Yeah, okay. Well… Happy Christmas."
She smiled at him like he was a sad, unbrushed circus pony. "Happy Christmas, Harry."
Then the kids were all muttering 'Bye Mums', and Lily sniffed, and Ginny dropped to one knee to hold her, and Harry heard, "…don't want you to…" and "…be all right." And he felt like the world's most horrid person in that moment.
Until a hand lit softly on his shoulder from behind. And it squeezed. And then he felt like maybe he was only fifth most horrid. And he was so…so very grateful.
…
Teddy helped set the table for Christmas Eve dinner. Harry had taken pains to keep the menu the same as he and Ginny had for the past decade and a half, and yet it all looked…well, lousy.
"This chicken's not right," Harry said, frowning over it.
"I'm sure it's fine," Teddy replied.
"No, it's shit. Taste it."
Teddy set down the glass of wine he'd been sipping and moved in next to Harry by the pot -- close.
"'It's shit, taste it'?" His eyes were dancing with mirth. They dropped to Harry's mouth while his own twitched.
"Come on."
"Fork," Teddy said, holding out his hand.
Harry could smell the berries and pepper on his breath, the wet wool of his blue jumper. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
Teddy laughed. "You're the one who asked me to taste it, Harry." Then he plucked off a piece and ate it. "It's tender," he said after chewing thoughtfully. Then, "Harry… Did you use salt?"
Harry smacked himself in the forehead. "Salt! God!" Then sheepishly, "Thank you."
Teddy just grinned at him, picked up his wine glass, and went back to wanding silverware into place.
It had been like that – easy -- all day since they'd gotten up. Harry had slept badly as usual. At the same time as it was nice having Teddy next door in the guest room, Harry still struggled with being in the big bed all alone. Ginny had insisted he stay in the house since it was close to the Ministry and, as Head Auror, that was a necessity for him. Coaching the national Quidditch team was a country job. "I've got my eye on a place out Wiltshire way," she'd said the night they'd spoken of separation. She'd clearly been thinking of it for some time. Half of her heart was already living in a country house, making marmalade or whatever else country folk did.
Harry could scarcely bake a chicken much less make marmalade. And he hadn't played Quidditch in years.
He'd woken up that morning with a stiff neck and a horrible taste in his mouth. He'd wandered into the hall in just his pants, forgetting that he shouldn't, and he'd run into Teddy in the hall.
There'd been that briefest moment of awkward dancing as each tried to move out of the other's way.
"I'll start some coffee," Teddy had finally said, hair neon green, apparently abandoning any ideas of getting into the bathroom. He'd already been dressed anyway.
Harry had yawned. "God, that'd be perfect."
Then they'd gone their separate ways.
Harry had showered and dressed and emerged to the tantalizing smell of Teddy's coffee. And his hair blue again.
Harry salted the poor bird now, threw some extra thyme at it for good measure, and then set it on the table and called the kids. They took their time, stomping around over their heads and shouting at one another. Harry leaned against the counter, watching the young man drink.
"What have you been doing with yourself, Teddy?" he said pensively.
Teddy immediately tensed. That hadn't been what Harry wanted. The day had been so relaxed. They'd played chess and then all gone for a walk… Harry hadn't felt so unburdened in a long time. He should have known, though; Teddy was so mysteriously sensitive about such things.
"I'm not trying to pester you," Harry tried. "I just… I'm interested. In you."
He watched Teddy inhale deeply, unable to meet his eyes, and realized what he'd said.
"Are you?" Teddy's voice came, quiet.
He raised his gaze then to meet Harry's. Harry hadn't had a look like that directed at him in a long…Christ, a long, long bloody time. And never from Teddy. Merlin, never from Teddy. That look was pure longing. It was sex. It was heady, guilty, breathless sex. That same feeling he'd gotten in the study the day before when he'd touched Teddy's skin just above his jumper swept through him now, looking into his eyes. Harry swallowed.
James burst into the room with Al close behind.
"He accioed my wand!" Albus shrieked.
Harry tore his eyes from Teddy. "He did? Did you, James?"
James shrugged. "He should have silencioed me or something."
"He's first year, James. You're second. Give it back."
James rolled his eyes but handed it over. Lily straggled into the room, groggy from having fallen fast asleep in front of the fire. Everyone sat. Teddy took the seat across from Harry, and Harry swallowed compulsively. That had been Ginny's spot. It was weird and…confusing, Teddy sitting there.
"Lils, would you like some yams?" Harry asked.
They passed plates. But Harry's eyes kept coming back to Teddy. And the unanswered question kept resurfacing in Harry's mind:
Are you?
The children talked all through dinner, but Harry was quiet. All he could do was think about the answer to that question – and realize that there was one, and he'd known it for a while now.
Harry sipped his wine, and he watched Teddy talking to Lily -- James and Al cutting up between them -- until Teddy again looked at Harry, and that thing passed between them. That thing Harry had tried to ignore for the last couple of transformative years.
Teddy blinked at him, slowly, and Harry felt himself blush hot. He had the most absurd and prudish thought on the planet. Hell, it didn't even count as a thought. He heard Ron's fifteen year-old voice in his head, whispering, "Blimey…" That's how Harry felt, though. Blimey…
Harry found himself smiling then -- smiling across the grotesquely chickened space at Teddy Lupin, his godson, a man now and…well, beautiful really. Why had Harry not noticed before?
Because you've had a stick up your arse and you've been obsessed with ignoring a failing marriage for Merlin knows how long, you tosser.
And here he was – Teddy. Wanting him.
The kids cleared the table. Everyone but Teddy had left their chicken in favor of a vegetarian offering. But Teddy had tried to eat it – for Harry's sake. The remains sat gelatinous and horrid on his plate. Harry wanted to laugh and hug him and apologize for…everything.
But before he could think how, Teddy was up and pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and heading out onto the back porch.
Harry let him go and started drying plates after James washed them. "So," he said. "Have you and Teddy talked much since he got here?"
James shrugged. "You mean about other things besides boring Muggle Studies? A little. Why?"
"Just curious what he's been up to." Harry tried to sound casual.
"Well, aside from the tutoring, I'm not sure."
"He said he's been tutoring someone?"
"He never said that; I just know he has."
"From who?" Harry tried not to sound over-eager.
"From everyone. He tutors by floo. Half the school's in line to get help from him. Guess he's some kind of genius. Is that true dad? Teddy's a genius?"
"I don't know," Harry said, staring at a dry plate. "What do you think, son?"
James looked pleased to be consulted. "I think… Well, yeah. I'd say he probably is." He looked just like Ginny when he thought-frowned like that.
Harry sighed. "Why has he never said anything?"
It was rhetorical, but James gave him a 'duh, Dad' look and answered nonetheless. "He's on the porch. Ask him yourself. Al dries better than you anyway."
Harry laughed. "All right. Thanks, Jamie."
"Whatever," James muttered.
Harry rumpled Lily's hair on the way through the living room. She was busy composing an owl to Rose. "Daa-aad!" she scoffed and then smoothed her hair down again.
"Sorry," Harry said, feeling like an oaf.
He opened the door and stepped into the cold with Teddy. Neither of them was wearing a coat. Harry stood next to him while he smoked. He was about to scold him but thought better of it. Teddy was a grown man, for one. And second of all, Harry rather liked the awful smell of it.
"Hey," he said, looking out at the stars and thrusting his hands into his pockets.
"Hey." Teddy took a drag, inhaled audibly, and then blew smoke out into the sky. Somebody, somewhere, was burning leaves.
Harry wanted to say, 'You're a good person, tutoring those kids.' He wanted to say, maybe, 'You ought not be ashamed of yourself. Why do you always seem so ashamed? Did I do that to you? Who made you feel that way?' He wanted to hold him and tell him how much he'd missed him. Merlin, did he want that!
He wanted to say, 'I could kiss you right now and no one would see.'
Harry wanted to lean in and whisper in his cold red-tipped ear, 'I want to kiss you right now, and I want everyone to see.'
He wanted to touch Teddy's body in ways he'd never considered before – the slender, pale torso; he longed to run his hands through that ever-changing hair, palm the perfectly round globes of his naked arse…dip his fingers in between and find the warm little hole….
Bugger.
He wanted to say, 'I am interested in you. I'm more than interested in you.'
What he said instead was, "You didn't have to eat the chicken."
Teddy took a drag off his cigarette. "It wasn't too bad," he smirked.
"Bloody liar," Harry teased.
But something in it doused the light in Teddy's eyes. He shuffled his feet.
"It's cold tonight," Harry rambled.
"It's too warm inside," Teddy answered.
"So do you charge?"
Teddy turned to him, wide-eyed and affronted, blinking.
"For the tutoring."
"What… How did you find out about that?"
Find out. Like it was some dirty secret. "James," Harry told him, waving his hand back toward the light in the kitchen. "Reminds me of Hermione. He knows everything. So? What do you charge?"
Teddy gulped. "Nothing. They're kids."
Harry turned to him, too cold for tact. "Teddy, why don't you teach ? They'd hire you for any class you wanted, and in a heartbeat!"
Teddy stomped out his fag and whirled on Harry, his face close, breath hot and ashy and wonderful. "Why are you fucking on me about this? You said you didn't mind sending the…the money…" The word was like a foul taste he could hardly stand. "I just—"
"I don't," Harry insisted, completely unsure where all of this vitriol was coming from. "I don't mind at all. I want to. You're my…"
Teddy laughed, and there was no humor in it. "Right," he said. "I'm your godson. The bane of your existence. The scab you can't scrape off. You're interested in me, because you're interested in where your Galleons go, right?"
"Bloody hell, NO!" Harry shouted. He'd never shouted at Teddy before. It felt terrible. Just terrible. But Harry was becoming truly buggered with him. What the hell was this?
Before he even really registered that they were, for the first time, fighting, Teddy was storming out into the field behind the house, into the low-lying fog.
"Teddy!" Harry rushed after him, grabbing for his jumper.
But Teddy jerked his arm away.
"Teddy."
"Oh sod off," Teddy spat, and Harry heard the tears that clogged his voice.
He reached out for him again, but there was nothing there – just the crack in the air and the stunning realization that everything had somehow gone horribly wrong.
…
Harry did what he did whenever there was an emergency he didn't feel qualified to handle, namely anything unrelated to magic: he flooed Hermione.
"Harry, what's wrong?"
"It's Teddy," he told her. He relayed the bit about the tutoring and the teaching idea and how that had set him off and now he was gone and "What the fuck should I do?" he whispered. "I'm afraid he'll go off and get himself into some very real trouble. He's so like—" He cut himself off.
"Like Sirius," she finished for him.
He gritted his teeth. "Yes." That fact hurt maybe more than anything and for so many awful, splendid, sorrowful reasons. Remus would have been equally delighted and horrified for his son to take after his best friend. It was confusing at best for Harry. "What do I do, Hermione?"
"Well, you have two choices," she told him, ever the matter-of-fact one. "You can stay put and trust him to wander back on his own after a few hours."
"Or?"
"Or you can floo Bernard. He'll know where he's gone better than anyone. Then double your house elves' pay for the night, have them baby-sit, and go get him."
"That's it? Go get him?"
"Harry, if he's going to act like a brat, you'd do well to treat him like one."
"He's not a—" Harry began to protest.
"No, I know. He's the reason eighty percent of my third years got Outstandings last term. It doesn't matter. The point is, Harry, you're Head Auror, are you not?"
"Yeah." He wasn't at all sure where she was going with this. That he put Teddy under arrest for being an incomprehensible ponce? That he hire him?
"You can't be Harry, old buddy, old pal. You've got to take him in hand." She sighed. "He needs it." Then he heard her hissed, "Mommy's in the floo. Go tell your father if he can't remember the spell for mending a cut, there are Band-Aids in the cabinet and it serves him right." Then, "I'm sorry."
"It's quite all right," Harry told her. He could feel something settling into his gut; it felt the same as when he'd go into battle – that deep knowing of what he had to do and that he was more than capable of doing it. "Okay, I'm doing that second thing. Thank you, Hermione. I don't know what I'd do without you."
"At least you know how to heal a paper cut," she snarked. "As if a person can't just live with one on his finger."
"Happy Christmas," he told her sincerely.
"Happy Christmas, Harry," she sighed back.
He pulled his head out of the floo and prepared to stick it back in again and deal with Teddy's roommate, a boy who had once goosed his wife, Bernard Abbot.
…
The beat throbbed through him, and Teddy finally shucked the jumper, much to his dance partners' delight. The smaller one smoothed his hands up Teddy's bare chest while the larger one, behind him, butted his cock up against Teddy's ass. Teddy raised his arms over his head, wrapping his hands behind the big guy's neck. He closed his eyes and undulated to the heavy music, his nipples tight in the one's fingers, his cock hard even with the three Firewhiskeys he'd thrown back in the hour and a half he'd been at Duro.
"You…are so…gorgeous," Big Guy said into his ear. "I could fuck you all night long."
Smaller Guy bent down and laved his tits. "And I'll suck him."
"Sounds about right to me," Big Guy agreed.
Teddy let Smaller Guy unzip his denims. He was buzzing and hard and the arousal kept him from thinking, from feeling, and that was exactly what he needed. So what if they planned to bang him right here on the dance floor? Nothing mattered except losing his mind as much as possible. Nothing was real except these demanding hands becoming more demanding – the fact that the one was on his knees, his face in Teddy's crotch, wetting his cotton-covered dick, and the other's hands were dipping down inside the back of his pants and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing and then—
"Get away from him. Now."
It hadn't been a shout, but that voice commanded the entire room. Teddy opened drugged eyes, blinked over at his godfather, standing there like he owned the world, in his Auror robes.
Teddy pulled the twink's head in tighter.
"Leave me alone," he said. How did you find me? he thought. Why did you even make the effort?
Harry pulled his wand without hurry. He looked at Big Guy, and the man pulled his hands out of Teddy's pants. "Is that…? Are you…H-Harry Potter? Shit, Henley, that's bloody Harry Potter." He backed away a step.
But Teddy used two hands and kept Henley in close, his cock throbbing against the aghast mouth. "I didn't say you could stop," he said without taking hard eyes off Harry. Let him see. Let him fucking see.
Harry flicked his wrist just the slightest bit, and the two men slid ten feet away from Teddy in opposite directions. Teddy was left with his denims open, a large, wet, see-through spot over the strain of his cock, standing in the middle of a stunned-still dance floor.
The music kept on – dark and hard – and Harry said to him, "You're coming with me."
Teddy could feel tears of shame spill over his eyelashes and slide down his cheeks. "No," he said petulantly. Not to be your godson, Harry. Not for that.
And then Harry reached out his free hand, turning it palm up. He wasn't offering. He curled his fingers in one by one, yanking back as though Teddy were on the end of an invisible line, and Teddy FLEW into him.
Into his arms, where Harry caught him, held him fast. Teddy had two seconds to realize Harry hadn't used his wand – just like Teddy didn't need to. And then Harry looked at Teddy's lips, and he struck, his mouth opening Teddy's, his tongue pushing inside.
There was a soft but decisive crack, and it was the best Disapparation of Teddy's life. His whole body was squeezed up against Harry's, his dick, his chest, his mouth crushed. Then he was in a loud, ringing silence. They'd landed in Harry's study, the only light a barely-there fire in the hearth, and Teddy was standing on his own two feet, and yet he wasn't.
Harry had him, pulled in hard. And his mouth tasted of blood-iron and ferocity and tenderness – his tongue hot and fucking Teddy's mouth like he was a virgin.
Teddy couldn't help it – a little whine of pleasure escaped his throat. Harry inhaled it like it was manna. When Teddy reached for Harry's clothes, Harry slapped his hands away hard and then, quicker than humanly possible, held them behind Teddy's back, strong, in his own hands, keeping him immobile.
He'd broken the kiss. Harry's lips were blushed and swollen, his eyes dark. "If I'm going to let this happen," he said, "you need to know something, Teddy."
Teddy shivered at how Harry said his name - no one said his name like that – like it was mulled wine.
Harry went on, "You need to know that this changes absolutely everything I've ever tried to make between us." He was breathing hard, nearly shivering with certainty and lust. Teddy could feel his hard cock against his hip. Harry's hard cock. Harry's cock was hard for him. He blinked, nearly unable to look this kind and powerful man in the eye.
"I've already fucked everything up, Teddy. Whatever's gone wrong, it's been my fault, and whether or not this is what you want, I intend to fix things one way or the other." He took a breath. "But if I do this – if I make love to you –" Teddy couldn't help the groan that came out of him then. "Listen to me," Harry urged, his fingers tightening painfully around Teddy's wrists. "If I do this… If I do this, Teddy, you're mine. Do you hear me? No more clubs. No more giving it away like it means nothing, like you're nothing." He spat the word. "You're special. Teddy. Do you understand me?"
He nodded emphatically.
"I'm not joking," Harry said, jaw hard. "Teddy, so help me Merlin…"
"No… Harry… I want it," Teddy found himself whispering, hardly trusting his voice. He swallowed, flexing his fingers, shivering at the way his nipples brushed against Harry's clothed chest. "Christ, Harry, I've wanted you for five years. Maybe more."
Harry blinked, taking that in. He released one wrist and touched Teddy's face, wicking away one last tear.
"I can't stop wanting you, Harry," Teddy confessed. "I can't. So please." He wriggled his other hand free of Harry's grip, stepped back, and stripped off the rest of his clothes as efficiently as he could, throwing them aside, and standing before his godfather naked finally, his arms out, cold and yearning. "Please. Take me."
Those must have been the right words, because Harry spared but one hungry look down Teddy's whole body, then he stalked in again, grabbed Teddy up, and held him fast. There was no blisteringly hot kiss this time. There was just Harry holding him – holding Teddy's naked body in against himself, his breath warm in Teddy's hair, his hands gentle and strong.
Teddy wrapped his arms around Harry, then, too.
Harry whispered a spell against his ear, locking the door.
Part Two
no subject
Date: 2012-12-21 08:42 pm (UTC)You know how much I love this fic - from word one. And I am so happy to be able to comment now (I was afraid if I did, I'd give the game away).
My favorite bits:
She smiled at him like he was a sad, unbrushed circus pony. "Happy Christmas, Harry."
I why know you put that in there - but honestly, I can really see this image. Scruffy, slightly depressed Harry, hair and glasses askew, robes messy, maybe a little gray at the temples.
And then compare and contrast with THIS:
"Get away from him. Now."
It hadn't been a shout, but that voice commanded the entire room. Teddy opened drugged eyes, blinked over at his godfather, standing there like he owned the world, in his Auror robes.
...
Harry flicked his wrist just the slightest bit, and the two men slid ten feet away from Teddy in opposite directions. Teddy was left with his denims open, a large, wet, see-through spot over the strain of his cock, standing in the middle of a stunned-still dance floor.
The music kept on – dark and hard – and Harry said to him, "You're coming with me."
Teddy could feel tears of shame spill over his eyelashes and slide down his cheeks. "No," he said petulantly. Not to be your godson, Harry. Not for that.
And then Harry reached out his free hand, turning it palm up. He wasn't offering. He curled his fingers in one by one, yanking back as though Teddy were on the end of an invisible line, and Teddy FLEW into him.
Into his arms, where Harry caught him, held him fast. Teddy had two seconds to realize Harry hadn't used his wand – just like Teddy didn't need to. And then Harry looked at Teddy's lips, and he struck, his mouth opening Teddy's, his tongue pushing inside.
Dom!Harry - so delicious, so powerful.
BUNKS ME EVERY TIME.
And then this:
"I love you, too!!!" Harry called after him, his voice catching badly at the end, and he watched as Teddy turned, smiled at him, and then took off like a shot once more.
Harry just leaned against the rail and watched. Watched and watched and watched as the man he loved spiraled into the thin rays of sun, laughing the whole time.
Because for all the hothothot sex, there's also love.