Second Hand - For mooncharm

Title:  Second Hand
Author: underlucius
Recipient:  mooncharm
Pairing Sirius/Harry
Rating: NC-17
Length:  1700 words
Disclaimer: The characters and locations belong to JKRowling, the things they get up to are all my invention and I make no money from it.
Author's Notes:  For mooncharm, who requested: "Sirius/Ron/Harry would be my slashy dream come true,  Angst, chan, dubious consent, rimming, felching, and/or first time."  Sorry mooncharm, you got me.  So no felching!


"It's funny, when you've been best friends with someone for such a long time, but it's like, after a while, eating together, spending 24 hours a day in each other's company, there's a lack of any frontier between the two of you.  Oh that's not the right word, not frontier.  More like… lack of distance, you know?  It's not that we can read each other's mind, me and Harry, not like Fred and George can, but it's like… we know how the other one operates.  I've often been able to second guess Harry, simply because..well, we're mates.  You know."

"Or perhaps you don't, ‘cause no-one’s ever had a friend like Harry."

'cause Harry's eyes are unique, blind green streams that when he takes his glasses off look blurred, vulnerable and mild, deceptive as an English river running cold over sharp rocks.  Without his glasses, I know he can't see further than his hands. 

I don't think he's ever seen me. 

Even with his glasses on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hands against the glass, cooled by the grey curtain of rain, shadows of the water flicker across his face, lit only by the orange of the street light.  Ron stands in the dark and the window cries the tears he can't.  Ron knows he shouldn't care.  There are plenty of other boys who have made it obvious that they wouldn't be averse to a little mutual gratification but they tend only to hint once.  The look in his eyes makes them back off; giving them the impression that they had judged him wrongly, and that it was girls after all that Ron lusted after, after all.

Ron was a good actor.

Hermione picked up on it pretty early on; and Ron knows he should have tried harder to keep it from her, at least.  Typically well meaning, she'd tried to help.

"What about Blaise? He's very pretty,"

"Oh sod off, Hermione, I don't need you match-making for me, and Blaise is too pretty by half, I swear everyone thought he was a girl for years."

Harry wasn't pretty, except for his eyes, Lily's eyes, everyone says, but Ron has to take people's word for that. And what did it matter anyway?  No. Not pretty, but his face has an other-world quality to it.  Ron, who has been raised in a second hand world where emotions and even parental affections were tarnished with practice, knows something new when he sees it. Knows it and treasures it.  And since Harry came into his life, well, so had other new things.  New feelings.

Harry is angry.  Angry with life, angry with things that Ron can’t understand and Ron watches him sometimes, when they did their homework, and he wonders how someone could be that angry, even when reading could radiate such a fierceness.  It makes Ron angry although he knew his anger wasn't his own. 

One thing about growing up in a house with seven other people was that you have no idea of loneliness.  What startles Ron is that Harry likes to be alone.  It is a concept that Ron can’t fathom, and when Harry decides to be alone, that's a place Ron can't follow, and all he can do is wait for life to start up again.  Hermione sees this dependence, but she's never commented on it, and Ron is grateful.  It wasn't until Ron realised he was irrevocably in love with Harry that he discovered how lonely you could be even in the company of another, but there was gossamer now between them, spun from the same webs as Harry's cloak, just as strong, as just as invisible.

At first Ron was content in his hopelessness, grateful to take what Harry gave him; friendship, confidence, and sometimes (treasured) a fierce hug of warrior comradeship, but the years slid by, and now and then Ron began to notice a change.  Harry’s attention began to wander; Ron would see him looking speculatively at Oliver as he showered, or catch his eyes following Malfoy walking across the Great Hall.  Young men were stirring his interest like lights, Hinkypunk lights leading him away, even further away from Ron. With a sinking heart, and increasing frustration, Ron realised that Harry was looking for a light far brighter than anything Ron could afford.  All Ron could offer was an old lamp for new, after all.  Something poor and tarnished, and it would never be good enough.

Then blazing, coruscant, came Sirius.  As bright as his name, burning with a force that drew Harry to him, helpless as iron filings against the dark star of his magnetism.  Ron watched as his friend experienced every emotion as he battled with hate for his godfather, then a fierce loyal joy, which slowly and all-conquering as glacial drift turned to love, and Ron's hope became a frozen waterfall, hanging impossibly in time and space.

It was Christmas when it happened; Ron became aware of it because all of a sudden Harry was a bubbling spring of energy, and Ron knew, recognised the signs, after all – did he not have four elder brothers?  Bile churned in his stomach, rose to his throat that Harry, His Harry with skin that ranged from the palest cream to a toffee brown should find joy with Sirius.  Old.  Ruined.  Thief.

He battles with himself, bites his tongue, punches the wall, avoids Hermione’s puzzled expression, but his mind had been made up since his discovery and there is no will-power left, not for himself.  So, crouched and small – he slides into a corner of Sirius’ room, the invisibility cloak wrapped tight around him, feeling like he’s glowing, visible, his face red with embarrassment.

Sirius enters first, strangely nervous, pacing the room and checking his reflection an insane amount of times; chugging a shot of firewhisky, and Ron is startled at the way the man’s hands shake.  Finally there’s a tentative knock at the door and Sirius seems to gravitate to the door without moving, then everything is blurry, and if you had asked Ron afterward, he would have said that he had something in his eye.  What he does remember is their faces, for in the dim light their eyes light up the world.

Sirius kisses Harry, and it’s a claiming, an affirmation of a closeness they need no words to attest to.  Harry bends in his godfather’s arms, and Ron has to bite his lip so hard it bleeds as Sirius’ buries his mouth in Harry’s neck, his fingers in the cleft of Harry’s arse.  Harry makes a sound like the last sigh in all the world, pushes his godfather back onto the bed and scrambles on top of him.  Open mouthed, Ron watches as his friend, his quiet, angry friend kneels over Sirius, and laughs as he strokes himself, revelling in his power, as Sirius watches hypnotised, charmed by the snake charmer.  Harry takes Sirius’ cock, larger and darker than Harry’s and toys with it, never taking his eyes from Sirius. 

Ron is hard, so very hard, and he stuffs one fist in his mouth to stop himself from groaning aloud, as his other hand fumbles with the button of his fly, releasing his weeping prick, and using his own precome, he begins to ape Harry’s actions exactly, feeling his breath hitch as Sirius’ does and he can almost feel Harry’s breath as he bends over his godfather and laps at the straining head.

Sirius groans, his hands reaching for Harry, but Harry holds back, shifting down the bed, his arse raised so high in the air that Ron can’t resist from sliding around to the end of the bed to get the best view. Harry’s legs are wide apart, framing Sirius’s cock as he pushes up into Harry’s mouth, Harry’s cleft is open, and Ron creeps nearer, so near he can smell the sex of them, longing to slide his mouth between the mounds and lap at the dampened skin, push his tongue into the sweetness of Harry, taste the very essence of his friend.

The tempo changes; Sirius is gasping in a desperate rhythm, and Harry pulls away, allows Sirius to grab him with greedy fingers bruising the slender hips, turning him around, so Harry is now facing Ron, his eyes closed in anticipatory bliss.  There ‘s a clatter of glass as Sirius grabs a phial of oil, a smell of incense and then Harry makes that sound again, and Ron’s hand tightens around his own cock as he imagines how those oil soaked fingers must feel as they push their jealous way into his friend's body.  A vicarious thrill shudders through him as Harry is pulled backwards onto Sirius’ cock, his eyes flying open and it seem to Ron that Harry is looking into his soul.  It’s all it takes and in seconds, Ron is coming, seed spilling over his fingers, tears coursing down his cheeks and joining the moisture on his hands.  All he can do is watch mutely as Harry offers himself up as a vessel for Sirius’ lusts.  He’s never seen Harry with that look on his face, and as Harry comes, Ron catches a little of his benediction on his tongue.

It doesn’t matter that it is not for him.

And afterwards.

Ron watches them as they lie and talk, softly into the night, make their plans, spend their joint fortunes, and he’s touched that even in the aftermath, Harry doesn’t forget to think of everyone.

And afterwards.

All Ron can do is stroke his hair, softly, like Sirius did.  Hold him in the dark, like Sirius did.  Take his pleasure where he could.  Like Sirius did.

It’s a second hand love, Ron knows.  A hand me down.  But Ron has never known anything better.

And he’s never known anything worse.