Cedric stood silent and scarily tall, his steely grey eyes watching the students before them with an indifferent type of kindness, like the look of a cashier near the end of their shift as they ring up your groceries. He was kind and compassionate, but it wasn’t like he would sit down and listen to all your problems once his shift was over — at least that’s how Fred saw him.
Fred looked up from the book he obviously was not reading and surveyed Cedric. He was standing stiller than the statue Fred had been hiding behind when Cedric caught him with a fake Honeydukes cigarette; it was made of sugar, but Fred had accepted the detention without telling Cedric it wasn’t a real cigarette. Maybe it was because Fred wanted a bad-boy image; maybe it was so he could study Cedric a bit more with a reason to. Whatever it was, it was the reason Fred was now in detention with a bunch of fourth-years as Cedric, looking as though he was carved out of stone, watched all of them silently.
Fred took a look around the classroom; Draco Malfoy was looking bored, eyes closed by his seat at the far corner, though every now and then he would look up at Harry Potter across the room. Harry was sleeping like a bear at his desk as Ginny Weasley — ever the fiery little sister Fred recognized a bit of him and George in — discreetly tied Harry’s shoelaces together under the table. She had earlier chucked a paper airplane at Ron’s head, carved her initials into the desk she was sitting at, and stolen Harry’s glasses. George had always gotten a kick out of Ginny, but, Fred was reminded as he looked at the empty seat next to him, Fred’s other half was missing in action; he had run off to talk to Angelina Johnson only minutes before Cedric Diggory had stumbled into Fred holding a fake cigarette.
Diggory, Fred thought bitterly. Wouldn’t know good timing if it danced naked in front of him and snogged him senseless. Still, it lingered in the back of Fred’s scattered mind once again that his thoughts had somehow circled back to Cedric, but that idea was quickly dismissed as Ginny flung a roll of parchment at Pansy Parkinson, who shrieked like a cat and damn near hissed at her.
But again, like the cycle of the setting sun, Fred’s mind sank once more from the horizon of his blissful forgetfulness and into the confusing, albeit beautiful night that was thinking about Cedric Diggory.
He was just letting himself sink deeper into the comfortingly smothering blanket of that night when Harry gave a sudden yelp. Fred’s focus was shifted at a record breaking speed to turn and see Ginny clutching her stomach, laughing at an ear-splitting volume as Harry’s face went red, his hands reaching up to his messy hair to pull out a Exploding Bon-Bon, which he flung into a corner just before it lived up to its name and abruptly imploded. As Ginny laughed even harder and Harry went even redder, Fred did some quick math and realized her hands must have been in his hair to place the Honeydukes sweet. Fred watched as Harry slammed his head onto his arms so only a sliver of his still-red face was visible, and watched as Ginny smiled to herself and hid her own blush; Fred made a mental note to tease Harry for it later.
“Weasley! Potter!” said a deep voice, and Fred recognized it quicker than a song on the radio.
He found himself looking at Cedric, and could not think of when he had turned his head. But it was now undeniably trained on the goody two-shoes Cedric Diggory, whose statue-like poise had not faltered by a fraction throughout the whole ordeal. He looked at the two fourth-year Gryffindors, shook his head slightly like a disappointed father, and merely waved his wand at the corner to repair the damage done.
Cedric sighed, turned to address the whole room of delinquents, and sighed once again.
“Anyone here who’s got banned Honeydukes contraband with them,” Cedric said in a flat voice, “please give it here and you can have it back before you leave.”
Ginny snorted, but the rest of the class took Cedric quite seriously. Fred watched them all incredulously as they emptied their pockets and queued up to hand Cedric their sweets, and he could not believe his eyes. Cedric just seemed to have that effect on people, and it bewildered Fred to no end. Sure, Cedric was quite undeniably attractive, but surely the fact he was fit had no effect on the level of —
“Weasley,” said Cedric, and, shamefully, Fred felt himself jump to his feet with his hand in his pockets.
Fred restrained himself from bashing his head in on a desk and miraculously kept his cool, his head held high as he sauntered up to the front of the room, trying his hardest to ignore how utterly whipped he was. He wondered if Cedric knew how Fred had heard that commanding type of voice many times before, only in the deep shrouds of night, when he could enter a world of dreams where it was only him and his rampant imagination...
“Weasley,” the deep voice repeated.
Fred snapped back to reality to find himself at the front of the classroom, staring into a pair of guarded-looking eyes. Silver, Fred thought hopefully. They always look like thunderclouds when he’s angry. But they’re silver now....
“Diggory,” Fred said in a mocking tone. “What d’you want?”
“Your sweets,” Cedric said flatly, holding out a hand towards Fred. “That’s what you’re here to give me, isn’t it?”
Fred rolled his eyes. “Of course.” His tone was low and dry. “Whatever you wish from me is what you’ll get, sir.”
It was only when Fred bent his head to his pockets that he realized the implication of his words. His head shot up to stare stupidly at Cedric, who was staring back at him as if Fred had pulled a Bludger out of his pocket and used it to whack Cedric across the head. It was perhaps several centuries before Fred shook his head and blinked forcefully, and the look on Cedric‘s face subsided back into his former indifferent patience.
“The sweets, Weasley.”
Fred gritted his teeth, ignoring the pinpricks of disappointment in his chest. For a moment, it’d looked as though Cedric’s eyes were almost — Fred felt ashamed for thinking it — pleading. It had looked as if they were asking Fred to give him something other than sweets, something just as delectable that neither boy would have ever spoken aloud...
“Right!” Fred wrenched himself out of his filthy mind. “You still want your swe — my sweets.”
Fred dug into his pockets, fake cigarettes and various sweets wrappers falling into the floor. He bent down to scoop them up, and several Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans spilled out of his pockets. Fred felt his face growing hotter and hotter, nearly breaking into a sweat as he swept wrappers in his hands and shoved them into Cedric’s still arms.
Bad-boy image, Freddie, he told himself. Keep up the bad-boy image.
“You know,” said Fred, now with an unfamiliar air of edginess, “supervising detention must be hard. I’ve got some sweets you can have if you’re done with eating all the ones you’ve stolen from the fourth-years. After all of your hard work of doing McGonagall’s job for her, I reckon I’d fancy a strawberry sweet. Wouldn’t you?”
For whatever reason, Cedric’s eyes flickered up to Fred’s hair. “Yeah, I normally would... but I’m good for now. Thanks anyway.”
Fred blinked, expecting a snappier response. But, alas, Cedric was one of the most typical Hufflepuffs that Fred had ever met, and so he resorted to different tactics.
“Are you sure?” Fred goaded him. “Strawberry flavored things really compliment the taste of a fresh cigarette... Let’s say you and I sneak off and let the kids take care of themselves for a little while, smoke a little by the statues.”
It worked. Cedric’s face of infuriating neutrality dropped into a disapproving frown, his eyes a stormy grey, and he snatched the sweet from Fred’s hands with far more force than needed.
“Strawberries and cigarettes, Weasley?” said Cedric tightly. “Really, I feel sorry for any girl who has to snog you.”
Then the rush of getting underneath Cedric’s skin was shooting to Fred’s head, and he was speaking before he could stop himself —
“Any bloke, actually.”
The sweet in Cedric’s hands dropped and hit the floor. And just like that, he had turned yet again into a statue.
Fred was torn from trying to look cool and confident to punching Cedric across the face and legging it to the Astronomy Tower so he could pitch himself off it. It felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room, and both Cedric and Fred were left speechless by the words just spoken, staring at each other breathlessly and silently as their visions both tunneled in on the other. Fred wanted to do so many things, but he was rendered motionless, frozen and staring at Cedric and wishing that he could suddenly explode into a thousand pieces like Ginny’s Exploding Bon-Bon had.
“You’re... you’re...” were the only words that came from Cedric’s mouth, which was hanging open and making Fred think wild things that had no business living in his head.
“I’m...” said Fred, just as speechless.
Ginny burst into laughter from something Harry said in the back of the classroom; Harry wheeled around in his chair to shush her, and she blushed yet again.
“I’m...” Fred repeated, and when he looked back at Cedric, the words tumbled once again out of his mouth, low enough so only they could hear. “I’m gay.”
Cedric stared at him, unblinking. His eyes had softened to an utterly bewildered silvery-grey, and no matter how hard Fred searched for a thunderstorm of anger, he found none there.
“Oh,” Cedric said softly, “you’re... gay?”
“I’m — yeah. Yeah, I guess I am,” Fred said in a high, panicked voice. He had never said this to anyone before, not even George, and by the dazed look on Cedric’s face, Fred was starting to wish he had kept it that way.
“And you realized this...?”
“When you said I’d taste like strawberries and cigarettes.”
Cedric turned a sudden shade of red. “Well, I wasn’t saying it was definite; there’s no way of actually knowing what snogging you would —”
“Want to find out?”
At this, Fred clapped a hand over his mouth. He wasn’t nearly as shocked as Cedric was, however, for Cedric had had such an intense double-take he stumbled back a few steps and smacked his head on the back of the wall.
Fred kept on staring at him, staring into that sea of hilariously confused grey eyes, and then such a rush of sudden daring coursed through his body that it crawled into his throat and took what felt like a permanent residence there.
“Well,” said Fred, though it didn’t feel like it was coming from his body, “do you... want to find out?”
When Cedric looked at him, massaging the back of his head, it was as though he and Fred’s mind were locked into some sort of race, and it appeared Cedric’s mind was in the lead. He got to his destination much faster than Fred did, and suddenly his hand shot out to grab Fred’s wrist.
“I do,” Cedric said just as distantly, like he too was unbelieving of his own level of daring. “I mean that do want to —”
“I know what you mean.”
Again, they stared at each other. And it took Fred using the last of his daring to urge their wrists towards the door for something to click in Cedric’s mind, and then Fred was being pulled from the room just like he was pulled only a few hours ago for getting caught with a fake cigarette. Cedric stayed ahead of him, charging forward towards the door, and Fred’s mind was left capable only of replaying their conversation.
Strawberries and cigarettes, Fred thought over and over, as if he was praying. That’s what he thinks I taste like. Strawberries and cigarettes, Weasley.
And as it turned out, the very minute they had turned into the nearest empty corridor, looking breathlessly at each other — the very second Cedric had pressed Fred into the wall, kissing him like he was the only source of oxygen left for a pair of struggling lungs, Cedric’s hands tangled in Fred’s strawberry hair and his cigarette-smoke grey eyes shut tightly closed — Cedric had been exactly right.