The Queen of Vipers || Fred Weasley

III.XIV

"Well isn't this sweet."

Electra scrunched her face against the sun's glare behind her eyelids. Holy shit, she was stiff. And why was she sitting up?

"Fuck, my neck," groaned a voice behind her ear, mirroring her very thoughts. Whatever she was leaning against, slouched over her side, shifted as if taking a deep breath— or actually taking a deep breath... and was that a heartbeat in her ear?

A weight on the back of her shoulder, just behind her head, lifted with a soft grunt. Electra blinked against the sleepiness and the sun as she sluggishly picked her head up from where it laid off kilter.

Just above her there was a small, sharp intake of breath. Her eyes adjusted and she squinted down at someone's lap. Not her's. Though her copy of The Crucible laid open over his thigh.

"Where's Colin Creevey when you need him?"

Her eyes widened. Electra pushed herself up by his leg (though her back protested) from where her head had slid down his chest and looked up horrorstuck into Fred's face.

A sort of shock, like a bolt of lightning, went through Electra the second their eyes met. The spark fanned out in a fizz throughout her lower abdomen and the threat of those sinful thoughts she buried surfaced.

Another jolt hit her as her gaze fluttered around Fred's face. She'd never seen him like this before. Never so... flustered. His face was beet red as he looked down at her with eyes as wide as her own, pupils dilated, nearly overtaking the reddish brown of his irises. She could feel her own flush rush to her cheeks.

Oh god. When had she fallen asleep? She remembered moving to sit against the stone wall when their backs started to hurt... but the last thing she remembered was Fred telling her about the time he and George set off a dungbomb under their great-aunt Muriel's chair during christmas dinner and then...

She'd fallen asleep. On him.

And he her.

And stranger still, she couldn't remember a time she had slept so dreamlessly. Besides that time she wore Fred's shirt to bed.

Fred.

Electra quickly withdrew her hands from his lap as if it were searing her palms and leaned back, putting some distance between them finally. "Why didn't you wake me?" she asked, her voice hoarse, while subtly checking her face for drool. 

Fred's face, though still red, pinched as he evaded the question. "I didn't realize my life was so boring to you—"

"It's not," she said hastily. A bit too hastily. "I haven't been sleeping well."

"Evidently."

Electra pouted in annoyance. "Why did you fall asleep then?"

He shrugged. "It's warm and—" he picked up her book from his lap and waved it between them—, "and your book was boring me to tears." Electra scowled. "Though that Abigail is a real piece of work," he grumbled in admission.

"You could have just left after I fell asleep."

"And let you roll off the Astronomy Tower?"

Electra eyed the distance between them and the edge of the landing and then back at Fred in skepticism. "Then why not just wake me?" she asked again.

He rolled his shoulders to get the tension out, but to Electra it just looked like he was squirming. "I— I didn't want to," he said softly.

Electra's brows shot skyward. He didn't want to? What did he mean he didn't wa—