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firewhiskeyficTitle: Up the Road
Author:ruinsplume
I am of legal drinking age in my region: (yes/no) more than twice over!
Pairing(s)/Characters/Fandom: Tonks/Charlie Weasley but queer, so queer and Harry Potter ofc
Challenge/Prompts used: Madamk PUlddifoots’ Tea shoppe, dirigible bplums, amortentia
Summary: Tokns and Charlie have somehting in common. Even if neither can say what it is.
Rating/Warnings: M
Word count: 2024 omg if only i could write this many words sober
Author's Notes (if any): boy, covid ahs done a number on my tolernace for alcohol. If you don’t like reading het, don’t worry this is not het. like, really hnot.
Tonks can’t go anotyher year without asking someone. She got out of it fifth year but now she’s sixthy year and clearly no one is going to ask her, no boy is going to ask her, that is, adn the idea of asking a girl hovers somewhere just beyohnd the knowable world of her mind, as she knows there are villages up the road beyond Hogsmeade, but no noe ever goes there, all tjye hear about are dark caves. The idea of a girl asking her never enters her head.
So. She has to ask a boy, and she has to ask a boy who won’t laugh at her for asking, it has to be a boy she can stand to ask. IT’s not that she doesn’t like boys. She likes them better than girls sometimes, tkhey’re easier to talk to, they don’t make her feel even clumsier than usual when she knocks things voer vecause she can’t feel her fingers and toes. Sometimes in her room she morphs into one, when no one else is there, or she does it in athe shower. Ad then sne does it int he shower. And then she thinks she shouldn’t and she tells herself she won’t do it again, though she’s not even sure why, when she rubs one off when she’s a girl she doesn’t feel guilty, but morphing nito a bloke and tossing off inthe shower seems like a thing she should not do. Has been forbidden. Though Tonks is nothing if not a rule breaker, but thisw rule, that no one has even told her about (because who would think to make a rule for such a thing?) makes her feel ashamed.
They aren’t friends exactly, the boy she decides on. He’s the opposite of her in some ways—the best Quidditch player Hogwarts has seen in half a century, lithe in the air as if his broom is a sentient animal, a thestral or a dragon or something that loves him so much it will do what no one else’s Comet 100 can manage. He’s clumsy at lessons, though, the way she’s clumsy at mealtimes. He trips over his OWLS so badly he threatens to leave school and his older brother has to have a long talk with him in McGonagall’s office. He hasn’t been to Madam PUddifoot’s either. Not third year, not fourth year, not last year. Girls give him the eye and he doesn’t see or doesn’t care, and Tonks corners him after ARithmancy when he’s had to hang around because Professor Vector is giving him a tlaking-to about his grades.
Shall we go toghether then,” she says. “To PUddifoots’. This year. “
He looks at her, surprised at the sudden appearance of Tonks by his side, and he’s startled into silence a long several seconds but he doesn’t turn red or shift on his feet or laugh at her, and she’s proud of herself for having chosen right because she fairly kneow he wouldn’t do any of those things. She watches him consider, work out what she’s asking, work out what it would mean to say yes, and to say no.
“yeah< he says, “yeah. We should do.” And just like that, Tonks has a date.
Nooooooo not a date. Nononononononononononononono She hopes to god and merlin he isn’t going to show up with flowers or chocolate or those dreadful sugar engagement rings laced with Amortential.
She also hopes he doesn’t expecyt her to wear a dress. She won’t, not for him, not for Valentine’s day, not for her mother, not for the Yule Ball, not for anything. It’s bloody cold in Hogsmeade in Februarsy. Shell wear clean trousers and the boots she got last year when her parents took her to London. She’s seen Charlie going to classs in his Quidditch leathers soemtimes even when he hasn’t got practice jand the part of her that can’t imagine the road beyond hogsmeade can someohow stuilll understand that her King’s Road Muggle combat boots are of a piece with Charlie’s fondness for those trousers with the suede all down the inside of your thighs so the broom won’t chafe you.
~o~
And yet. It is horrible. Charlie insists on paying but he’s a few sickles short, and Tokns knociks over the tea and neithre of them knows what dirigible plums are and all aroudn them their classmates are wrapped up in each other’s arms and lips and hair and fingers, and it’s not the snogging that repels her its the way the boys are all doing this thing, this boy thing, and the girls are doing this girl thing that she knows sheps supposed to do and if shoe could do it her mum would be so relived, so very relived, vut she can’t. If she did
she can’t even finish the thought. She send s the thought off into a ditch on the road out of Hogsmeade. D’you want to see something, she says to Charlie.
And just like that, the light comes back into his eyes because he’s a boy who alwasy wants to see the something, whatever it is, he’s good like that, if there were OWLS in that he’d get Outstanding. She leads him back to the loos, but of course that was the wrong idea because she’s not going to morph in the bloody hallway and she can’t go into the gents like this, even if she does get called young man in Honeydukes.
Out here, she says, and he follows her past the broom cupboard and past PUddifoot’s office and out the back door into the light snow and darkenign sky.
It’s just the right amoutn of dark. not so dark that he won’t be able to see what she’s about to show him, but not so much light in the sky that he can see her face well, or she his. Dark like the first few steps inside a cave, when you know you’ve left behind the safety of the civilixed world but not som many steps in that you’re completely blind.
tokns morphs .
Charlie stares.
Tonks grins.
Chjarlioe turns brioghjt red.
Tonks stares. She knows that sudden flush on a face, she’s seen it a million times on girls when the boy they like asks them to pass them the aprchment they dropped or can i copy your homewoerk. She’s seen it on boys when the girl they like looks tat them and then whispers toher friend.
You know I’m a metamorphmagus, she says, because she’s only sixteen she doesn’t...konw which way to go in the cave she’s just stepped into but she’ knows she’s in a cave all right, and she takes a step further in, a step closer to Charlie.
Charlie looks at the sonow and shuffles his feet wit his hands i n his bockepts.
The he says to thge snow.,
everyone says’ you’re supposed to snog on Valentine’s day. If you go to PUddifoot’s I mean. But only if you want to.
Tonks stares. She doesn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t that. But honnw now that’ he’s said it, it has a rightness about it that is the X on the map, if she
d had a map. She hasn’t got a map. she’s got only herself, this bloke body that no one ever sees but is standing here in the snow so close to Charlie Weasley that she could cont the freckles on his nose if she wanted to, even in ithsi light.
She godena’t doesnt’ want’s to. Doesn’t want to. What she wants is
to
Kiss a boy without being a girl.
Tonks takes one more step, her leather booted foot landing between his quidditch boots, and it flits through her mind that she’s onlyh ever seen ihim in these boots even in class, he wears them as if he’s got no others and something tells her it’s not poverty that’s behind the choice ti’s the pwoer of flying and then she’s falling into him, bending her head just a bit because in her bloke body she’s a little taller than he is, and she wasn’t sure what was going to happen but what’s happenign is this, his mouth hot soft stubble scrape spark like the strike of a muggle match and she’s gripping his arm. Kissing and kissing more. The hair on her upper lip catches on where he’s shaved his and her dick is thick in her pants and somewhow they’re all up agais t each other, and he’s hard too and he’s still kissing her and their knees knock and there’s cold snow melting on her cheeks and she leans in, in , in, gripping him. kissing him is rubbing two sitcks together deep inside the cave and suddenly fire.
She was drunk once and it was like this.
She fell off a balcony once and it ws like this but without the broken bones.
THIS is what they’re talking about, the giggling, giggling girls who somehow make Tonks feel like an elephant with four left feet when she walks past them.
It’s sparks from the wand at Ollivander’s when you knewit was yours.
She imagines she’s in the shower getting off and Charlie
s there withg her, the two of them naked and the water sluicing down over them while they slick eachother’s dicks with the school soap that smells liek lemons and the steam makes a world where this is okay.
It is okay.
This cave exists.
Even after a noise from somewhere down the lane, the back door of The three Broomsticks banging open or maybe a cat knocking over a bin and they jump apart.
Jumping apart, they acknowledge:
secret.
Keep it.
Their eyes meet.
We did this.
This is s thing that can be done.
The door of Madam Puddinfoog’s bangs open v ery close to them and In a dussdent pannic Toiknks mprhos pabck and it’s like the spelling here very dislocated and jangled and Charlie links his arm thourhgh hers and theys start walking and soene shouldst something but neither of them turn to see whate4ver or whoever it is.
They don’t talk on the road back tothe castle.
Neither of them has the words they’d need to say.
tahnk you tonks wants to tell him, though she’s not shure what dh’ed’ be thanking him for.
Charlie is blushing and tongue tied and lovely and she says, I won’t tell if youi won’t, because he shoudl know about her what she alread knows about him.
“I won’t tell,” he says. and then nothing until they’ve reached the castle when he turns to her and says, “We’re playign Hufflepuff this Saturday. D;y ou want to come?”
“Oi’, I”m a huffle puff, you prat, I’;ll be there.”
“not to—I mean. I just.”
“I’ve been getting driving lessons from Miranda Sprout,” Tonks says. “on her motor bike.”
“yeah? That’s cool.” He opens his mouth and closes it again. Miranda Sprout is Professor Sprout]s niece, and that protects her from kids saying *dyke* behind her back because the rumor is that Professor Sprout will fail anyone who fucks with her family—
“I could take you for a ride sometime,” Tonks says. “When I learn how to steer properly.”
“I want to ride a thestral,” Charlie says, “Or a dragon. Soemthing that you can talk to witout having to use words to say waht you mean. Do you know ehat I mean?”
Tokns thinks abouty it. About knowing somehting she hasn’t got the words for. That Charlie knows that too.
“yea,” she says . “I know. “
Author:
ruinsplumeI am of legal drinking age in my region: (yes/no) more than twice over!
Pairing(s)/Characters/Fandom: Tonks/Charlie Weasley but queer, so queer and Harry Potter ofc
Challenge/Prompts used: Madamk PUlddifoots’ Tea shoppe, dirigible bplums, amortentia
Summary: Tokns and Charlie have somehting in common. Even if neither can say what it is.
Rating/Warnings: M
Word count: 2024 omg if only i could write this many words sober
Author's Notes (if any): boy, covid ahs done a number on my tolernace for alcohol. If you don’t like reading het, don’t worry this is not het. like, really hnot.
Tonks can’t go anotyher year without asking someone. She got out of it fifth year but now she’s sixthy year and clearly no one is going to ask her, no boy is going to ask her, that is, adn the idea of asking a girl hovers somewhere just beyohnd the knowable world of her mind, as she knows there are villages up the road beyond Hogsmeade, but no noe ever goes there, all tjye hear about are dark caves. The idea of a girl asking her never enters her head.
So. She has to ask a boy, and she has to ask a boy who won’t laugh at her for asking, it has to be a boy she can stand to ask. IT’s not that she doesn’t like boys. She likes them better than girls sometimes, tkhey’re easier to talk to, they don’t make her feel even clumsier than usual when she knocks things voer vecause she can’t feel her fingers and toes. Sometimes in her room she morphs into one, when no one else is there, or she does it in athe shower. Ad then sne does it int he shower. And then she thinks she shouldn’t and she tells herself she won’t do it again, though she’s not even sure why, when she rubs one off when she’s a girl she doesn’t feel guilty, but morphing nito a bloke and tossing off inthe shower seems like a thing she should not do. Has been forbidden. Though Tonks is nothing if not a rule breaker, but thisw rule, that no one has even told her about (because who would think to make a rule for such a thing?) makes her feel ashamed.
They aren’t friends exactly, the boy she decides on. He’s the opposite of her in some ways—the best Quidditch player Hogwarts has seen in half a century, lithe in the air as if his broom is a sentient animal, a thestral or a dragon or something that loves him so much it will do what no one else’s Comet 100 can manage. He’s clumsy at lessons, though, the way she’s clumsy at mealtimes. He trips over his OWLS so badly he threatens to leave school and his older brother has to have a long talk with him in McGonagall’s office. He hasn’t been to Madam PUddifoot’s either. Not third year, not fourth year, not last year. Girls give him the eye and he doesn’t see or doesn’t care, and Tonks corners him after ARithmancy when he’s had to hang around because Professor Vector is giving him a tlaking-to about his grades.
Shall we go toghether then,” she says. “To PUddifoots’. This year. “
He looks at her, surprised at the sudden appearance of Tonks by his side, and he’s startled into silence a long several seconds but he doesn’t turn red or shift on his feet or laugh at her, and she’s proud of herself for having chosen right because she fairly kneow he wouldn’t do any of those things. She watches him consider, work out what she’s asking, work out what it would mean to say yes, and to say no.
“yeah< he says, “yeah. We should do.” And just like that, Tonks has a date.
Nooooooo not a date. Nononononononononononononono She hopes to god and merlin he isn’t going to show up with flowers or chocolate or those dreadful sugar engagement rings laced with Amortential.
She also hopes he doesn’t expecyt her to wear a dress. She won’t, not for him, not for Valentine’s day, not for her mother, not for the Yule Ball, not for anything. It’s bloody cold in Hogsmeade in Februarsy. Shell wear clean trousers and the boots she got last year when her parents took her to London. She’s seen Charlie going to classs in his Quidditch leathers soemtimes even when he hasn’t got practice jand the part of her that can’t imagine the road beyond hogsmeade can someohow stuilll understand that her King’s Road Muggle combat boots are of a piece with Charlie’s fondness for those trousers with the suede all down the inside of your thighs so the broom won’t chafe you.
~o~
And yet. It is horrible. Charlie insists on paying but he’s a few sickles short, and Tokns knociks over the tea and neithre of them knows what dirigible plums are and all aroudn them their classmates are wrapped up in each other’s arms and lips and hair and fingers, and it’s not the snogging that repels her its the way the boys are all doing this thing, this boy thing, and the girls are doing this girl thing that she knows sheps supposed to do and if shoe could do it her mum would be so relived, so very relived, vut she can’t. If she did
she can’t even finish the thought. She send s the thought off into a ditch on the road out of Hogsmeade. D’you want to see something, she says to Charlie.
And just like that, the light comes back into his eyes because he’s a boy who alwasy wants to see the something, whatever it is, he’s good like that, if there were OWLS in that he’d get Outstanding. She leads him back to the loos, but of course that was the wrong idea because she’s not going to morph in the bloody hallway and she can’t go into the gents like this, even if she does get called young man in Honeydukes.
Out here, she says, and he follows her past the broom cupboard and past PUddifoot’s office and out the back door into the light snow and darkenign sky.
It’s just the right amoutn of dark. not so dark that he won’t be able to see what she’s about to show him, but not so much light in the sky that he can see her face well, or she his. Dark like the first few steps inside a cave, when you know you’ve left behind the safety of the civilixed world but not som many steps in that you’re completely blind.
tokns morphs .
Charlie stares.
Tonks grins.
Chjarlioe turns brioghjt red.
Tonks stares. She knows that sudden flush on a face, she’s seen it a million times on girls when the boy they like asks them to pass them the aprchment they dropped or can i copy your homewoerk. She’s seen it on boys when the girl they like looks tat them and then whispers toher friend.
You know I’m a metamorphmagus, she says, because she’s only sixteen she doesn’t...konw which way to go in the cave she’s just stepped into but she’ knows she’s in a cave all right, and she takes a step further in, a step closer to Charlie.
Charlie looks at the sonow and shuffles his feet wit his hands i n his bockepts.
The he says to thge snow.,
everyone says’ you’re supposed to snog on Valentine’s day. If you go to PUddifoot’s I mean. But only if you want to.
Tonks stares. She doesn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t that. But honnw now that’ he’s said it, it has a rightness about it that is the X on the map, if she
d had a map. She hasn’t got a map. she’s got only herself, this bloke body that no one ever sees but is standing here in the snow so close to Charlie Weasley that she could cont the freckles on his nose if she wanted to, even in ithsi light.
She godena’t doesnt’ want’s to. Doesn’t want to. What she wants is
to
Kiss a boy without being a girl.
Tonks takes one more step, her leather booted foot landing between his quidditch boots, and it flits through her mind that she’s onlyh ever seen ihim in these boots even in class, he wears them as if he’s got no others and something tells her it’s not poverty that’s behind the choice ti’s the pwoer of flying and then she’s falling into him, bending her head just a bit because in her bloke body she’s a little taller than he is, and she wasn’t sure what was going to happen but what’s happenign is this, his mouth hot soft stubble scrape spark like the strike of a muggle match and she’s gripping his arm. Kissing and kissing more. The hair on her upper lip catches on where he’s shaved his and her dick is thick in her pants and somewhow they’re all up agais t each other, and he’s hard too and he’s still kissing her and their knees knock and there’s cold snow melting on her cheeks and she leans in, in , in, gripping him. kissing him is rubbing two sitcks together deep inside the cave and suddenly fire.
She was drunk once and it was like this.
She fell off a balcony once and it ws like this but without the broken bones.
THIS is what they’re talking about, the giggling, giggling girls who somehow make Tonks feel like an elephant with four left feet when she walks past them.
It’s sparks from the wand at Ollivander’s when you knewit was yours.
She imagines she’s in the shower getting off and Charlie
s there withg her, the two of them naked and the water sluicing down over them while they slick eachother’s dicks with the school soap that smells liek lemons and the steam makes a world where this is okay.
It is okay.
This cave exists.
Even after a noise from somewhere down the lane, the back door of The three Broomsticks banging open or maybe a cat knocking over a bin and they jump apart.
Jumping apart, they acknowledge:
secret.
Keep it.
Their eyes meet.
We did this.
This is s thing that can be done.
The door of Madam Puddinfoog’s bangs open v ery close to them and In a dussdent pannic Toiknks mprhos pabck and it’s like the spelling here very dislocated and jangled and Charlie links his arm thourhgh hers and theys start walking and soene shouldst something but neither of them turn to see whate4ver or whoever it is.
They don’t talk on the road back tothe castle.
Neither of them has the words they’d need to say.
tahnk you tonks wants to tell him, though she’s not shure what dh’ed’ be thanking him for.
Charlie is blushing and tongue tied and lovely and she says, I won’t tell if youi won’t, because he shoudl know about her what she alread knows about him.
“I won’t tell,” he says. and then nothing until they’ve reached the castle when he turns to her and says, “We’re playign Hufflepuff this Saturday. D;y ou want to come?”
“Oi’, I”m a huffle puff, you prat, I’;ll be there.”
“not to—I mean. I just.”
“I’ve been getting driving lessons from Miranda Sprout,” Tonks says. “on her motor bike.”
“yeah? That’s cool.” He opens his mouth and closes it again. Miranda Sprout is Professor Sprout]s niece, and that protects her from kids saying *dyke* behind her back because the rumor is that Professor Sprout will fail anyone who fucks with her family—
“I could take you for a ride sometime,” Tonks says. “When I learn how to steer properly.”
“I want to ride a thestral,” Charlie says, “Or a dragon. Soemthing that you can talk to witout having to use words to say waht you mean. Do you know ehat I mean?”
Tokns thinks abouty it. About knowing somehting she hasn’t got the words for. That Charlie knows that too.
“yea,” she says . “I know. “
no subject
Date: 2021-02-16 05:47 pm (UTC)I can't even take the mickey out of any drink typing because the writing was too good.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-16 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-16 08:09 pm (UTC)Phenomenal.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-16 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:15 am (UTC)♥
Date: 2021-02-17 01:16 am (UTC)*and neithre of them knows what dirigible plums are
Hee!
This was a lovely story (well worth a sober edit at some point).
Re: ♥
Date: 2021-02-25 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-17 04:43 am (UTC)and the ending!!!
“I want to ride a thestral,” Charlie says, “Or a dragon. Soemthing that you can talk to witout having to use words to say waht you mean. Do you know ehat I mean?”
Tokns thinks abouty it. About knowing somehting she hasn’t got the words for. That Charlie knows that too.
this was so very good!!
no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-17 07:52 am (UTC)"because he’s a boy who alwasy wants to see the something, whatever it is, he’s good like that..." :D
no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-19 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-19 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-20 06:20 am (UTC)This line was so sweet!! 💖
no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 03:24 am (UTC)♥ ♥
no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 05:34 am (UTC)And CHARLIE.
I just want to squeeze and cuddle both of them and let them know that they'll be okay in the end. Well, except for Tonks's dying too soon. But that the queerness won't kill them and they'll find ways of being satisfied in the world.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-25 02:22 am (UTC)