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luveline · 6 months ago

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for the fred x asf!reader, maybe something where one of his family members is like whispering about r or says something rude or backhanded and he sticks up for her? or if you don’t want to do his family, maybe a friend or something?

ty for requesting! fem, 1.7k

Sometimes you get so sick with everything that it makes you gag. It sounds insane, how can an illness that tires you force something like a gag? It might be more appropriate to attribute it to anxiety, but it’s overwhelming, whatever it is. You get this feeling like you’re totally lost in the middle of the day and all Fred can do is watch you as you scramble out of your seat for a bathroom.

You haven’t actually thrown up yet. You stand bent over the bathroom sink in the burrow and breathe. Your gag had been loud —it wouldn’t surprise you if everybody here tonight had heard it. Fred stands just outside the door, the bathroom too small to force his way in while you still stand at the sink.

“Lovely,” he says, without shame despite the tens of ears listening in, “can I come in?”

The basin is made of yellow and orange tile, peculiar as the rest of the burrow. The mirror is framed by the same colours. You meet your own eyes and don’t have it in you to scowl. You aren’t angry at being sick. You aren’t sorry for yourself. You’re just tired.

Fred says your name.

You scoot into the very corner of the bathroom and begin opening the door for him. He’s in as soon as you allow him to be, shimmying between the door and the toilet to close it behind him again. He takes a breath of relief when he finds you unhurt, but his concern doesn’t waver.

“You okay?” he asks.

Sometimes you wish Fred didn’t have to see you at all. Like this, like that, ever. You wish he never met you, because you know he’s beautiful inside and out, and he has to witness you at your constant lows. “Fine.”

“My mum’s making some peppermint tea, if you want some. It settles the stomach.”

“Maybe.”

“Is there something wrong?”

Beyond the usual? No. Everything is the same. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you’ll be in love with him forever without ever feeling enough, maybe he’ll keep looking at you like he is now, softly, the slightest air of defeat about him. There are wires crossed in your head you can’t fix, and he loves you, and sometimes it doesn’t make a bit of difference.

“Hey,” he says, “it’s okay.” Fred holds your arm by the elbow.

“I know. I don’t know what…”

Do you ever?

Fred doesn’t catch onto your dark mood. “That’s enough for today. We’ll go home, okay? Let me just say goodbye to mum, you can say bye to George. Or do we…”

“No. It’s okay, I’ll go and see him.”

“Okay.” He kisses your cheek.

Fred leaves first. By the time you’ve slipped between the toilet and the door back out into the hallway, he’s gone. Not even his scent lingers. You make your way back into the living room where you’d been before you started feeling sick, face angled down.

“You alright?” Charlie asks.

You raise your head to smile at him quickly. “I’m okay. Just not feeling well, sorry.”

“Going home?” George asks.

You bite your tongue and nod. George gathers your jumper where you’d shed it in a hot flush and quickly stands to be by your side.

“Let me walk you down to the garden.”

“Okay. Bye, Charlie. See you next week.”

“Feel better!” Charlie calls as you go.

You pull your jumper on and follow George out into the garden, where you meander. You’d say goodbye to Molly, only she’s so caring that it can make things worse. She’s more understanding of how you feel than you’d first expected, but she made boys like Fred and George, so it shouldn’t surprise you.

“What’s that about? The being sick?” George asks eventually.

“I wasn’t sick.”

“No?”

“No, it’s just kecking. I don’t really know what it is, honestly.”

George looks like Fred, but they’re not as identical as people think. Very occasionally you’ll spot him across the shop and think it’s your boyfriend for a few nanoseconds, but you could never mistake them for one another in good lighting. When George offers a hug, it doesn’t feel like Fred’s touch. You know the difference.

“Maybe it’s, like, a sign you need to chill out for a bit.”

“I’m always chilled out. Nobody expects anything from me. I never do anything.”

George pulls back with an arm still covering your shoulders, “Listen to the way you’re talking,” he says gently, ��you need to be nice to yourself, even if it’s just until you feel better. You know? Something is clearly winding you up, and it doesn’t have to. You can tell me about it.”

It’s something, but it’s something he knows already. You hold your arm to his, struggling to explain, to want to. You wish you could go back to saying nothing; it was easier to be quiet.

George isn’t disappointed. He rubs your arm. “You can tell me whenever. Or not tell me. Don’t tell me anything, let’s just ditch Fred and go get cake.”

“I can’t ditch Fred.”

“Why?”

“I like him.”

“Ugh.” George puts his cheek to yours. “Whatever. You’ll pick the right twin eventually.”

Shouting echoes from the house. You and George look up at the same time, startled, the light mood of your joking quickly tanked. “Is that Fred?” you ask.

It’s definitely Fred. “I couldn’t care less what you think, Ronald, I’d be surprised if you could form intelligent thought–”

“Fred!” Molly shouts, “Boys, please, there’s no need for all the shouting!”

“If I were you I’d look at yourself carefully the next time you're tempted to open your fat gob–”

George laughs beside you. “Jesus, what’s Ron said?”

“I have no idea.” The twins argue with Ron every time they see him, so it could be anything. “Maybe he’s harping on Fred to cut his hair again.”

“Well, he should.”

“No way.” You picture your lovely boyfriend with short, short hair as everyone wants him to have and cringe. “No, thank you.”

“Just don’t talk about her, Ron! It’s really quite simple, even a half-wit like you could understand it if you tried, don’t even think about her–”

Your chest falls as you realise what it is that’s making all the fuss. At Fred’s shout, there’s an upheaval of sounds, Ron’s yelling, Molly’s, and Arthur’s quieter pleading for everybody to calm down. Fred says something you can’t hear, and then the door out into the garden is opening, and Fred huffs a breath as he makes his way down the path.

“Hey,” he says, forcing a smile when he sees you and George. “Ready to go?”

“What happened?” you ask.

“It’s nothing. Ron being Ron.”

“Did he say something?”

Fred looks between you and George with a frown. “He’s hardly capable of stringing four words together. But yes, he said something.” His frown deepens. “He’s just being a dick. It doesn’t matter.”

“Was it about me?”

Fred squints at you. “Could you be less perceptive?”

“No.”

He visually debates telling you what’s been said. George grabs your shoulder, half a hug as he says, “I can invoke a divine punishment.”

“It was nothing cruel, ghost.” Fred sighs. “He asked me why you act like that, and I– He doesn’t get it, okay? But that doesn’t mean you act wrong.”

“I see,” you say.

Fred watches your face. His own turns to heartbreak. “Listen, I’ll go back in there. I’ll kill him.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Of course I will.” Fred ducks his head a little to see you where you’ve shied away. “I will kill him.”

George snorts. “Me first. He’s such a fucking dolt of a boy.”

“No, it’s okay, I know I’m weird–”

“I’ll kill him–”

“Fred,” you interrupt. You take a moment to formulate what you’re saying, because it’s important, and because you constantly toe the same line, “I am weird. He doesn’t have to pretend I wasn’t just almost sick in the living room for no real reason–”

“It’s not about pretending, it’s that he thinks you do it on purpose.” Fred speaks with such severity that you immediately close your mouth. “I’ve seen you struggle for so long, it’s painful, ghost, and it’s worse for you, I know it is, and the insinuation that you’re choosing–”

“Fred,” you say, putting your hand to his chest. “It’s okay.”

“Well, it isn’t,” George says, “but yeah, it’s okay. I’m gonna make slugs come out of his nose.”

George kisses your cheek, a smacking joking thing that you bat away before he jogs back up the path to the house. Fred looks down at your hand on his chest, still frowning, but with a slowly relaxing brow.

“You can’t blame people for not getting it,” you say.

“Yes, I can.”

“You can’t.”

“Yes, I can. You are difficult to understand sometimes, lovely, but being difficult to understand does not mean you’re difficult to care about. Ron’s total lack of empathy is ridiculous. He should be better than that.”

“He just doesn’t get it,” you say, raising a hand to his chin to turn his head, and lifting your chin to kiss his cheek primly. “But I don’t need him to. Just need you.”

He grabs you in a hug before you can move away, his face pressed against yours. “How do you feel now?” he asks quietly. “Still poorly?”

“Yeah, a bit. George told me I need to chill out.”

“You do. That’s what we’re going home to do.”

Fred is so careful with you that it sort of hurts. Like, to have someone stand in front of you and to hold you without a second thought, to have never let you down, to grab you at the first sign of weakness and hold you together. You will never, ever feel like you deserve him. Maybe you don’t. But Fred doesn’t work on deserving, he just loves, lips soft on your temple as his hand scrunched into your side. “Don’t worry,” he says gently, fingers curling in and out against you, almost like a loving scratch, “you’ll feel better soon.”

#a special friend universe #fred weasley #fred weasley x reader

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luveline · 18 days ago

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Jade I’ve entered my Fred Weasley era and a special friend owns me. Almost finished with my second read through and will probably immediately roll into my third. From the bottom of my heart, it hits different. I was wondering if you’d do one where ghostie gets overwhelmed in the shop and spontaneously decides to take a walk to clear her head. And Fred assumes she’s just stepping out for a moment to get air and promptly freaks out when he sees she’s gone? Doting, overprotective Fred makes me melt 🥹

The Weasley’s do three for two on Thursdays, drawing a large crowd without fail and despite a sore lack of their most common demographic. The school kids, often too overwhelmed with their schoolwork to mail in, and too far away to come in person, send their parental gophers with lists and good intent.

“And, uh… Genovian powder,” the white-haired woman says, peering at you through a pair of wonky glasses. Behind one green half moon and a purple star lense, spider-leg lashes blink slowly.

“Peruvian?” you offer nervously.

“No, don’t think so.”

“We have Peruvian Darkness Powder, or there’s Calesthian Dragon Powder, but if there’s a Genovian one here I haven’t seen it,” you say with an apologetic frown. “But I can ask George.”

“Who’s that?”

“One of the Weasley’s. I’ll be right back, okay?”

Working like this as someone to help and appease customers makes you cringe at yourself. Hearing how you talk to people. It’s not as though there’s shame in giving the customers patience or working, but there’s definitely something to be said about how fake it feels on you. Your poor attempts at being easy-going can make your chest ache in slow, overdue regret hours after you’ve turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED. You’re still worrying at your cheek when you find George where you’d suspected him, demonstrating firecracker poppers disguised as hair ties to a crowd of frowning parents.

He thankfully abandons the task quickly when he notices you waiting. “What, ghost?”

The nickname is said without thought. Anyone listening won’t get it, but it doesn’t matter. You feel a little bit better when he says it because getting it marked the first time anyone ever noticed you enough to care, and whenever they use it now, it’s reinforcement. Like a reminder that you’re their ghost, whatever that is (a too long definition).

“Genovian powder?” you ask.

“No, not us. Calesthian–”

“I asked her, she’s sure it was Genovian–”

“They’re all bloody sure until you show them the box–”

“I know, but I don’t think she’ll believe me–”

“She’ll bloody well believe me, then,” George says, giving your arm a shake before he rounds you. He spots the woman and her Technicolor glasses immediately, jumping into a spiel they give about the Darkness Powder as he goes.

“Can you show us the Pygmies?” someone asks you.

Pygmy puffs, fake love love potions that explode in your face when you try to use them, help with a return, bathroom break, tight jeans with a stiff zipper, bruise on your elbow from the back door, customer doesn’t know where the stairs are to get to the second floor, you’re on the second floor, a flash of lovely Fred by the till, his loving smile, encouraging, his huff and the hair on his forehead ruffling about.

You nod toward the door. Fred nods back, hurried, It’s fine.

The second you’re through the door you can take a breath. The further you get from the shop, the looser your chest feels. You hurry down the alley past the dragon popcorn machine and just keep walking. Some of the other shopkeepers are around and greet you quickly, but there’s barely anyone to see. Everyone must be in the Weasleys’.

You spot a few sturdy looking boxes down the side of the Magician’s Tree pub and sit down hard. Your face feels greasy and itchy, your hands are aching from the Pygmies, a scratch running in a road line down your wrist. You feel at it with your thumb nail. It looks like you could’ve done it on purpose.

What if Fred thinks you did it on purpose?

You scratch at the thickest part, which isn’t any wider than the edge of a nail, not even deep enough to scab. It’s just two lines one after the other where whatever hurt you must’ve been jagged. It’s a scratch. It isn’t– you couldn’t have done it with intent, and Fred will know that. You picture his worrying and feel sick to your stomach suddenly, dropping your head back against the wall to take deep, cold breaths. He won’t mind the scratch, and he’ll believe you when you tell him it wasn’t you, but he’ll worry first.

You aren’t sure where you are for a little while. Eyes slipped shut, someone else’s hand on the wheel.

He’ll worry, you think insistently, standing up.

You make your way back to Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes and shoulder open the door.

The displays are a mess. A stack of potions that promise to turn your skin a modern, appealing green have come down. Ones come unstoppered, leaking a bright yellow liquid in an oval across the floor. You think vaguely that you should clean it and kneel beside it, pulling the slight of your wand from your back pocket. “Tergeo,” you whisper, curling your wrist.

The potion disappears.

Standing, you hold your arm wide and pull, thinking a meagre moving spell that deigns to work, upping the display and shuffling each potion back onto its shelves.

You hadn’t thought you were gone so long as for it to be closing time, but perhaps it was nearly the end of the day. You give most things a clean with quick magic or elbow grease, closing the shutters and locking the door. You go up the staircase to the second level and do the same, before retreating back to the ground floor and heading past the tills to the stairs to the flat. Fred and George will be making dinner, or George might’ve gone home already, though he usually says bye first. Yesterday he stole a sideways hug and disappeared a half a step away from you, clothes whipping in his wake. Fred called him a prat, and a few seconds later George had apparated back, sure that Fred had said something cruel. I know you were, brother mine. Their freaky twin sense knows no bounds.

The boys aren’t in the flat. The door to the bedroom is open wide and there’s an obvious lack of them —if Fred were here, you’d hear him. Humming or mumbling or making the bed.

A slip of white fog slams its way into the room in a swoop from the kitchen, a hurried magpie curling around your shoulders to hold itself, flapping pearly wings an inch from your face. GHOST, it whispers, WHERE ARE YOU? MEET ME AT THE FLAT, NOW.

You blink at it. “I’m here,” you say, startled again when it disappears in a burst like sand.

A minute later and there are footsteps barrelling up the stairs. You let your wand fall back into your hand and point it at the entrance through doorways, not actually sure what you’d do if it were an intruder.

The logical part of you knows that it’s Fred, but the relief doesn’t come until he’s opening the door and stopping short. “Oh,” he says, sounding as cracked in half as he can be while still physically whole. His lips part again as though he’s got more to say, but he crosses the flat to you in four big strides and wraps his arms around you instead. He squeezes you hard enough to make the bones in your back click.

“What happened?” you ask worriedly. “Are you okay?”

He says your name, again like he means to keep on.

“What?” you ask.

“Are you alright?” he asks, pulling away to take your face into cold hands, missing nearly all of his usual tenderness. This is the touch of lingering panic, slowly melding itself into love. “Are you? Where did you go?”

“I went– just went past the Magic Tree. Did you close?”

“When I couldn’t find you, yes, I closed. I looked up and down the alley twice, I didn’t see you.”

“I– sorry–”

“No, it’s okay, it’s fine if you’re alright.” He gazes at you imploringly. “Are you?”

“I don’t know,” you admit, a little diffident in the face of all this worry. You hadn’t thought of whether you were alright or not, you’d just walked off, and now you’re not sure you were fully you when you came back. The longer he holds you in his palms, the worse you feel. The pinch of his mouth brings tears to your eyes.

“Are you hurt?” he asks quietly.

Obviously you aren’t. You show him the scratch anyway.

“Ow,” he murmurs, sympathetic as his hands fall from your face to hold your elbow and wrist instead. It seems deeper while he looks, longer, and it stings as he presses his thumb to an edge. “Shall I mend it?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

Fred pulls your arm to kiss the crook of your elbow, and then the cut is healing, from red to pink to purple to white, a second and then gone, his non-verbal cut-mending charm practised, perfect. Tomorrow, you won’t be able to see the scar.

He smiles at you. “See that? Magic kiss.”

“That was good.”

“They’re all like that, you know,” he says, which is as much warning as you want or need as he ducks in to kiss you. Kisses twice, a third time, nose tapped into yours and breath warm as it skims your lips, your Cupid’s bow, and your soft cheek.

“Fred.”

“Ghost, I thought you were going to have a sit down outside of the shop like you do, but you– why’d you go all the way to Magic Tree?”

“I didn’t mean to walk that far.”

You can see his tongue behind his lips, running against the line of his teeth. He’s frowning without meaning to, deeply, his eyebrows drawn and his usually gentle eyes dark, like he’s angry, or he could be, but it never turns itself on you.

“No?” Fred asks, his voice dropping in register, “Where’d you mean to go?”

“I didn’t mean to go anywhere.”

“You don’t have to cry,” he says under his breath. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m not,” you say back, because you don’t want him to worry, because you’re not sure if you’re gonna cry or not and it wouldn’t matter if you did, only you don’t think you can stand the look on his face now, like you’ve accidentally hurt yourself and he feels sorry for you, like you could be sitting in the hospital wing at school right now waiting for a verdict.

“What happened?” he asks.

“The scratch?”

“Everything, lovely.”

“I cleaned up downstairs.”

He nods. “Okay. Thank you.”

Fred guides you wordlessly to the sofa and waits for you to sit before sitting right next to you, not a lick of space between you as he bunches an arm around you and presses your forehead to his mouth, but he doesn’t kiss it. He hugs you, occasionally adjusting against you like you’re slippery, and he doesn’t speak.

“I scared you,” you croak.

“Yeah, you did.”

You feel a sob like a bubble in your throat. You squeeze your mouth shut and press your face into Fred’s shoulder, nonplussed by your own emotion, hating to make a show of things. Fred shushes you gently, already waiting to rub your back as the tears start, and when they won’t end. “It’s okay,” he says, twice, three times, until it’s one word. “S’okay, you’re okay, it’s alright, Y/N. It is.”

You don’t make a sound that isn’t sucking in air or the worst kind of whine at the back of your throat. You don’t sob out loud. You don’t try to say sorry.

Eventually, you scare Fred worse. “Baby,” he says into your forehead, more touch than sound, “you need to calm down. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

You nod emphatically and cling to him, worried he’ll move. He stays where he is, humming approvingly when your tears begin to slow. You must sniffle into his shoulder for a quarter of an hour without his complaint, an odd relief in his hand as he rubs circles against your upper back, like this is a good thing. A part of you thinks he must be furious and annoyed to have to do it, but the reality, and that you’re familiar with, is that Fred just loves you, so he doesn’t mind.

You don’t say sorry. You won’t try. It’ll upset him more.

“Alright?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Want a drink or something?”

“No.”

“Sure you’re okay?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“You don’t have to know,” he says, pulling away to rub a nice finger down your cheek. He dries salt tracks and carefully, carefully brushes the last of your tears from your eyelashes with a pale fingertips. His cheeks are blushed from your hugging. His freckles are like paint flecks wet against his skin. “We can have a cup of tea, or hot chocolate or coffee. I can make you cream of chicken, if you want. It’s about dinner time.”

“I don’t want anything. Do you want something?”

He smiles. Endeared.

“No,” —he follows the bridge of your nose with a fingertip— “I don’t need anything.”

“Okay,” you say, more to yourself than him, paying a great deal of interest to your lap.

“Are you feeling at all better?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

He draws a line across your jaw, past your chin to shy of your ear. “It’s okay if you don’t feel better.”

“Do you want me to?”

“Feel better? Of course I do.”

You let yourself sink into his lap. Shuffling and collapsing, his hand falling to the small of your back.

Fred holds you for a long time. After, he makes dinner, and you get misty eyed at the table, and he can’t pretend he doesn’t notice, and you struggle through every bite and ask him if he was really, truly scared, and he says he was. He doesn't protest when you ask to go to bed while the sun is still up, only closes the curtains and casts a charm to keep the light out, only tucks you in, only rests his weight against you with his hand held lightly across the bottom of your face. You kiss his palm. He lets his index finger brush under your nose, like he’s looking for a seam.

#a special friend universe #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley

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