So I read this fic, [Polar] by [Melle], and it was this weird smut triangle, with Marcus Flint and Oliver Wood fucking in the broom shed, when suddenly naive Terence Higgs enters. Wow, the classic porno setup. The story was told from Higgs's point of view, and in my head things were already spinning. When I came up with the briliant plan to see what would happen if I threw Oliver to the wolves, this sort of gestated -- I messed with the formula, making Marcus and Terence the ones who were already fucking, and tossing poor, innocent Oliver (ha!) into the mix.

Oliver lurked. He wasn't particularly good at it, because he had very little experience with the finer points of espionage, but he tried. Unfortunately, this led to him lurking earnestly, which didn't work all that well. He should have just hired a Slytherin and been done with it. But then, it didn't often work to have Slytherins spy on their own house.

Yes, Oliver was spying on Slytherin. On the Slytherin quidditch team, to be precise. Gryffindor had lost to Slytherin the last two times they'd been matched up together, and Oliver was convinced it wasn't just more practice that was putting the Slytherin team on top recently.

So here we have Oliver the innocent little spy, doing his "anything for quidditch" thing, and the next paragraph takes that and sort of fractures it a little; the quidditch-obsessed Oliver is still there, but he's now obsessed not only with quidditch as a game, but some of its players, and the opposition in particular. An important thing to note is that I think he's actually acting like a teenager here, with the dirty mind and all it entails, and that was one of the things I was happiest to get here -- that Oliver isn't some perfect construct; he's a real boy, with all that entails. Later he gets a little more idealized in the "seducer" role, but for now he's real.

On top. Oliver's mind went dirty places, and he smacked himself in the forehead, then shook his head to clear away the sting. Focus, Wood. You're here to find out why they're winning, not to have fantasies about Marcus Flint. But what decent Hogwarts boy didn't have a crush on Marcus Flint? The straight ones, obviously. Oliver grinned a bit. Well, and the ones who think the troll rumor is true. He leaned back onto his hands and looked toward the field. Brooms were all over the place -- at this distance he could barely make out the color of their robes.

Alright, closer then. Oliver moved through the shadows of the stands, hoping to stay hidden. He peered around the cloth edging of one of the lower stands. Closer, he could clearly see Marcus barreling past one of the other chasers, quaffle in hand, winding his arm back, emerald cape flapping. He couldn't help but follow with his eyes, the darting form of the Slytherin captain invading his brain.

Two hours later, Oliver was nodding off beside the bleachers when he heard the gentle thump of fliers landing and, rubbing sleep from his eyes, raised his head to see the Slytherin team landing and heading toward the locker room. Damn. I was supposed to be watching them, he thought. But I did see them for a bit, and it was just like any other practice... He was about to leave his hiding spot when most of the team tromped out the door, forcing him to lurch back against the planking of the stands or give away his presence. He noted a rather large hole in the team, namely Marcus Flint, and Oliver's mind started going in naughty directions again.

What is it they say about boys in locker rooms? Later, he would say that he was slightly crazed from just having woken up, but his actions spoke louder than words: he ducked down into the locker room the Slytherins had come from, hoping to catch a glimpse of Marcus in a less-than-robed state.

So I took it from the broom shed into the locker room, but the principle is the same -- boys do it wherever they can, whenever they can. Oliver's anticipation was sort of heightened by this idealized Marcus that Oliver has in his head; he can ignore the troll-like features and oafish behavior because of what he sees Marcus to be. That may or may not be right, but that doesn't matter to Oliver. We also get Oliver's first sight of the forbidden, and his reaction to that (terror and running). Again with the standard high school boy -- run from your problems and desires! It works! Really! Oliver disguises it as fear, but it's desire at its core.

Oliver'd been planning to see Marcus naked. He'd even planned on possibly seeing Marcus's cock, which Oliver imagined to be rather on the larger size, hanging in front of Marcus's big naked body. What he hadn't planned on was not being able to see Marcus's cock because it was buried in Terence Higgs. Oliver's mouth dropped open in awe.

There before him was possibly the most beautiful scene he'd witnessed in his rather short life. Marcus bent over his slightly taller teammate, visibly fucking him rather hard. Oliver stared, the image burning onto his retinas in all its taboo-yet-gorgeous glory. Then, as he realized that, should either of the others see him, he'd probably end up in some nonhuman form at the top of the astronomy tower, he spun on his heel and made it back to the castle proper so fast he could have been accused of disapparating.

* * *

And here we have every teen's favorite weapon: deniiiiiiiiiiiial! Lots of it. Oliver to Marcus, and Oliver to himself, really. He tries to play it off like it's no big deal, like it's some cosmic joke that he saw the object of his crush and some other hot boy getting it on in the locker room, but there's a twist inside... he's not one hundred percent comfortable with what he saw, and it's not because he doesn't like boy-on-boy. These are some of my favorite parts to write: the Marcus vs. Oliver snark-fests. Admittedly less realistic than some of the other stuff I've written (it almost seems like soap opera dialogue at times), but they just bounce off each other so well. Oh, and Marcus saying "a little bird told me" is just the funniest thing in the entire world.

That was a lot to think about, wasn't it? Marcus and Terence. Oliver never would have guessed that pair, but it seemed a bit clearer now why Slytherin won -- Higgs didn't want to disappoint his newfound boyfriend.

There wasn't much time for Oliver to think about it, though, because Marcus sidled up to Oliver the next day, in the corridor on the way to Potions. "Where were you last night?" Marcus growled. Oliver pretended not to hear him. "A little bird told me," Marcus continued, "that you were down on the pitch." He glared at Oliver. "Spying."

I love that Marcus feels he has the right to be indignant. Come on; he's a Slytherin, and most Slytherins have probably been engaged in some form of spying at some point, so the wounded reaction he gives is probably more for show than for anything else.

"What do you think I am, Flint? A Slytherin?" Oliver laughed quickly. "What would I gain by spying on you?"

"Cut the crap, Wood. You know as well as I do that you've lost twice to us, and I know how much you hate losing. Besides, I don't much care that you were spying on our practice; it's the after-practice I'm asking about."

"What, you mean in the common room? You know I can't get into Slytherin tower." But Oliver's voice wavered a bit, remembering the boy in front of him on top of Terence Higgs, the snarl temporarily missing from his face.

"Knock it off, you twit. I know you were in the locker room, I just want to kow how much you saw."

"You mean apart from you diddling the seeker?" Oliver tried to sound amused rather than aroused.

"Fucker." Marcus scratched the back of his head and growled. "You say anything and Higgs and I will do our best to see you never get on a broom again."

"Why the hell would I say anything? Who you fuck is your own damn business, Flint." I wish it were mine, he added mentally. "If you want to take charge of the seeker on and off the pitch, who am I to tell you no?"

The line "take charge of the seeker on and off the pitch" actually comes from the movie Cruel Intentions, when Pacey's (er, Joshua Jackson's) character Blaine is talking to Ryan Phillippe's character Sebastian about the quarterback on the football team. The exact line is "let's just say he likes to tackle the tight ends on and off the field" and I just thought it was so perfect. When it got inserted into my subconscious, it got mangled enough that the words were not the same. The idea is, but that idea's been had by just about every porn company on the planet, so I figured not citing it wouldn't be a crime.

"Good."

* * *

Somehow, and Oliver still wasn't sure how, Marcus had gotten the password to the prefects' washroom. Not that Oliver had it legally either, but it still startled him to see Marcus drop the towel from around his waist when Oliver opened the door. Oliver stared.

Marcus stepped into the bathtub and turned on the water; he turned around to pick up his towel and he saw Oliver. Oliver noted later that Marcus's first instinct was not to cover himself, but to shout. And shout he did. "What the fuck, Wood?" Marcus stood up, dripping from about the waist down. Oliver's eyes never found Marcus's face.

"I, I'm. You're not supposed to be here! This is the prefects' bathroom!" Oliver sputtered.

Poor little righteous, repressed, freaked-out Oliver! He's all minding his own business and BOOM here comes the object of his lust-from-afar standing naked in the bathtub, dripping, and he's too tongue-tied to come up with anything more coherent. The way Oliver's eyes are attached to Marcus and his actions, even Marcus picks up on the fact that there's something turning in the rusty gears of Oliver's head, thus the offer, made playfully at first, rapidly crystalizes. Oliver's door-slamming is so clearly the act of a boy in denial, and I love it for that.

"Fuck off, Wood. You're not a prefect either. Get your eyes off my groin and come back in half an hour." Marcus turned aside, hung up his towel, and sank back down into the bath. "And Wood," he called toward Oliver's departing back, "if you like what you see, you could always try asking next time." There was a pause in Oliver's movement across the floor, and then the door closed with more than a hint of finality. Marcus grinned.

* * *

Oliver stared at his scroll. Binns wanted a four-inch summary by late afternoon, and the homework hand on Oliver's clock was slowly winding its way toward "overdue". The final paper would essentially be his whole grade for History of Magic, and while he wasn't worried about it yet, he couldn't come up with another inch and a quarter in summary of "economic sanctions on wizarding items across the English Channel during the Dragon War of 1835 and their effects today." The bloody title was practically longer than his summary.

He looked at what he'd written: "The British wizarding society showed a Marcus decrease in its consumption of Marcus goods and sex, leading to..." Oliver rubbed his eyes and looked again. Bad idea to be half-daydreaming while writing. He sighed and picked up another roll of parchment.

I love this. Love love love. The fact that Oliver is subconsciously writing about Marcus is just... I love it. (wow, tooting my own horn much?) Because clearly Oliver wants to say "marked", and it's just too close, so his mind wanders... and we see the pattern from above, of crush from afar, and sex on the brain every two seconds.

Terence Higgs entered the library and Oliver almost spilled his ink bottle. He hurriedly covered up his first scroll with the text he was using for research, and tried to look as smug as possible as Terence walked toward his table. "Higgs."

"Wood. You think you can beat us next time?" Terence raised his eyebrow and grinned. "You'll have to try a little harder."

"Well, I may not have your particular advantage," Oliver returned pointedly, "or should I say, incentive. But some might see that as a good thing." He smirked. "On-team relationships are one thing, but nothing beats talent and practice."

Higgs laughed out loud, prompting a chorus of "shh!" from the stacks. "Is that what you... Oh, that's too much." He lowered his voice. "Wood, you are a piece of work, you know that? Marcus fucks like there's no tomorrow. Goddamn. Relationship, my ass. When we win, I get it good. We lose, I get nothing. Incentive? You bet your scrawny little Scottish ass."

"You're awfully snippy for a guy who pays the hooker with a snitch," Oliver retorted.

Terence punched Oliver in the stomach. As Oliver clutched his stomach and fell toward the ground, Terence bent over him. "Don't you ever talk about my captain that way, Wood," Terence said quietly. He's a better man than you are any day of the week."

And there's Terence in Shining Armor, protecting the Fair Marcus. Or something. The fierceness of Terence's loyalty surprised even me as I was writing this. He's totally on one guy, and it happens to be the guy Oliver wants. So what does Oliver do? Pushes Terence's buttons. It doesn't have the effect he intends, though, as Terence lashes out.

* * *

Oliver told Madam Pomfrey he'd run into a table, but she took one look at him and said "a lover's quarrel if I've ever seen one. That's enough out of you, Wood. Lay on your back and ice the bruise. A nasty one, but I can't give you anything or you'll be in even more agony. Best to just ride it out until you can bear to touch it." She bustled away, and Oliver wondered just how far medicine at a boarding school had trained her intuition.

He also wondered what she meant by "lover's quarrel".

Clueless to the end. I love Oliver.

* * *

The Slytherin/Ravenclaw match was a joke, but Oliver went anyway, under the guise of making notes on the competition. He mostly just stared. Marcus was in rare form, sliding between beaters and tossing the quaffle with pinpoint accuracy and too much power for the Ravenclaw keeper to stand a chance of stopping. Oliver left himself a mental reminder to wear more padding under his robe and kept watching the game. He stood and left the stands when Slytherin won, as any good Gryffindor should do. He was startled then, to see the owl appear at his window bearing a note.

Prefects' bathroom 10 p.m.

Oliver looked at it suspiciously, as though it would catch fire if he examined it too thoroughly. He'd be there.

* * *

Of course, Oliver's also a little wary of playing with strangers. While the note is a plot device, having Terence in the room when Oliver enters was totally a spur-of-the-moment choice, and I like it, because it gives Oliver something to bounce his nervousness off of, making it into anger, which he's got much more experience with.

"Not him! What the fuck, Flint?" Oliver thrust his hand out, pointing at Terence Higgs, who was buckling the belt on his pants.

"Oh keep your pants on, Wood. I'm just leaving. Marcus is all yours." Oliver caught the first-name drop.

"Wood". It was the quietest demand Oliver had ever heard. He immediately turned to face Marcus.

"Yeah".

That wasn't really an answer, but Marcus let it slide. "Get over here. And get less clothes on. It's no fun if you just stand there." He was on his back in the bathtub, and Oliver's jaw dropped at his audacity.

Okay, here we have demanding!Marcus and clueless!Oliver, and the two didn't mix. So I had to do something. Marcus spontaneously developed a sense of humor, and Oliver, well... he developed the ability to react to a good offer when he heard one.

"I'm pretty sure I never hit on you, Flint. So why the bathroom invitation?"

Marcus chuckled. Snarky Oliver was just on the hot side of cute. "Wood, you're about as transparent as they come. Higgs said you had a jealous streak that showed up in the library the other day. I like 'em feisty and when you showed up in the bathroom the other day you couldn't pull your eyes away from my dick. I put three and four together and came up with a big gay seventh-year."

That last line may be my favorite in the whole story. It's totally a throwaway line, but it cuts the tension and makes Oliver breathe easier, even if he's pouty. Marcus is internally rolling his eyes as he says Oliver is hot, because he feels it's a tack he shouldn't need -- anyone good enough for him to go for must be hot. Oliver, of course, misses that entirely, so he needs some reassurance.

Ignoring Oliver's indignant glare, he continued, "and yeah, Wood, you're hot. So get your ass naked and over here. Higgs is an impatient little fucker, but I intend to take my time with you."

Oliver blinked a couple of times. Here was Marcus Flint, his quidditch opponent, a Slytherin, beckoning him into a bathtub. And yet, Oliver couldn't say no. His hands reached for the hem of his robe and pulled it over his head. It fell to the floor in a heap when Oliver's hands moved to his belt buckle. Forty-five seconds and seven pieces of clothing later, Oliver found himself under Marcus's approving gaze.

Marcus said "mine," and Oliver didn't argue. At least, not yet. Marcus pulled him into a kiss and it was hard and fast and deep, a second and then with tongue and Marcus owned Oliver's mouth, corner to corner. And with a rush of water their bodies were together, Marcus on top having pulled and pushed and Oliver's not ready.

Mmm, boysex. Oh, the sex. I knew it would happen, and I'd never been quite so porny before (had I?), so there was much in my head about Arty Porn, where you rarely say "dick" and frequently use metonymy and synechdoche to avoid... unpleasant words. Of course, it's still two boys fucking in a bathtub, and the visual was making me take cold showers every so often.

And then he is, and he's crying out against Marcus as the older boy grabs Oliver's cock and rubs; it's a new sensation for Oliver, another man's hand on his dick, and there's a sense of helplessness at the same time as he's trying to explode from the tactile sensation. He's in overload, water and fingers and too much skin, far too much skin. For a moment he can't breathe and then he can and there's warmth in the water between bodies. Marcus is heavy beneath him, but Oliver's not in a mental position to go about returning the favor -- he's still reeling from the touch.

Marcus knows, though, and just sort of slides and his arm moves and Oliver doesn't know what's happening, and then there's pain. He's not so much crying as leaking, fiercely trying to keep back the involuntary tears, and he suspects Marcus will make fun of him for it, but Marcus just licks at his eyes and grunts "yeah, it hurts the first time". Then suddenly it hurts worse, but there's a greater sense of something going on Down There. And Oliver surfaces from his muddle and there's Marcus and pain and oh my is he full and Oliver can't do anything about it; he's helpless and weighed down by Marcus and newness.

And pain. Can't forget the pain. Except he does when Marcus' fingers get just a little farther inside him and wow. His breath becomes unpredictable and his eyes widen. "What the fuck was that?" he manages to get out.

"Like that? There's more where that came from."

"Bloody hell. Do that again." Oliver practically leans into it the next time, his head and shoulders twitching forward involuntarily when it happened again. "Fuck. Still hurts, but. Ohhh..." he clenches his muscles involuntarily and Marcus withdraws.

Here we get demanding!Marcus again -- he's going to do exactly what he wants, and Oliver's just sort of along for the ride, however things go.

"Hold on tight, Wood. I don't want to have to stop." Marcus slides his body down Oliver's just enough and then lifts Oliver's legs a bit and just sort of slides a little more and then pushes. Oliver leans into the pushing, even though it means more pain, because frankly he'd do anything to get that rubbery warm good feeling again, and it doesn't matter if it's Marcus or not. There's pain again, and more pain than before. And then just a little push and Oliver's gone.

Marcus thinks Oliver is possibly the tightest ass in the entire world, and he loves it. Loves the fact that he almost can't feel his cock, but can from where Oliver's ass grabs on and even for Marcus, who has taken many boys in his nineteen years, it's a struggle not to let go right away. Oliver's a first-class fuck, and Marcus is determined to get his fucking while the fucking's good.

"Mine," Marcus keeps repeating, and when he's finally done, he looks at Oliver and says, "Higgs likes the bottom, but I figured you for a top. If you win, I'll let you top. If."

And here Marcus makes his fatal mistake. The "mine", possessive bit was really something I thought Marcus would do -- he's not the kind of kid to share his toys with others -- and his almost lazy postscript to Oliver comes out so much like a challenge that that's really how he takes it, as a "you can't do this, so don't even try". Oliver, being the pigheaded stubborn boy he is, of course wants to prove Marcus wrong. And does.

He pulled his towel from the rack and stepped out of the tub, dripping onto the tile floor. Drying quickly, he threw on his clothes and left the bathroom, with Oliver still on his back in the bathtub.

* * *

Oliver couldn't sit right on his broom for three days afterward, begging off quidditch practice for an imagined backache and leaving Alicia in charge of putting the team through its paces. Oliver spent the time alternately yelling at himself for getting literally fucked over by Marcus Flint, and in awe with himself for having been fucked by Marcus Flint.

There was, of course, one distinct disadvantage. He hadn't fucked Marcus Flint. At least, not from the giving end. And, again, what boy in his right mind wouldn't want to do that? After all, and here he almost burst out laughing on the sidelines of the pitch, it's better to give than to receive.

He told himself Gryffindor would win the next time.

* * *

And they did.

* * *

Right about here, Marcus is going "oh shit, what did I tell him?"

Marcus stormed down the hall, dragging Terence by the front of his robes. Anyone who wasn't Professor Dumbledore gave him a wide berth, though as it was nearly ten o'clock at night, there were few people in the hallway. Those who were heard Marcus muttering under his breath, but couldn't put the words together, though they felt the waves of sheer disbelief coming off of him at almost supersonic speeds. Once free of the morbidly curious few, his muttering increased in volume until he was almost shouting "who the hell does that fucker think he is?" Terence made no reply.

Unless you have really good health insurance, do not mess with a jock high school senior who is really pissed off. This is the context in which Marcus would be really scary to me -- when he's the bull who's seen red, about to charge at you, despite the bullfighting cape being held out to the side. The fact that Terence comes with him isn't really explained, and I leave it to you to come up with reasons Terence is with Marcus -- is he really Marcus's boytoy, where boytoy literally means toy? Or is there something going on that would require Terence's presence? I just wrote him into the story; I'm not sure why that happened, other than the threesome that's coming up. The idea of Oliver sending Marcus his own note back is the height of arrogance, and so just one of the things I thought Marcus would do, so I had Oliver do it in reverse.

He ripped a piece of parchment out of his pocket and glared at it:

Prefects' bathroom 10 p.m.

It was the note he'd written a few days ago. The fucker used my own damn note. He came to a door and spat out "fireflies", at which the door swung inward. Still dragging a sullen Terence behind him, he entered the room.

There was Oliver, lying on his back in the bathtub, in practically an identical position to where Marcus had left him last time. "You sent me my own fucking paper back," Marcus accused.

Oliver ignored Marcus's little barb, but smiled at Marcus and said "good, you brought Higgs. I didn't want you to have no fun at all tonight." He grinned, and Marcus could have sworn there was a trace of Slytherin in Oliver, however noble he usually acted. Oliver stood up, dripping, and Marcus found himself unconsciously drawn to Oliver's cock, and Oliver said "I can feel your eyes on my groin, Flint. What say you get naked and I fuck you? Isn't that what you said would happen?"

Cue porn music.

Oliver walks up to Marcus, leaving little puddles on the floor, and roughly pulls Marcus's robe off. Marcus is no longer Captain; more like captain, and Terence, free from the spell of blind obedience, gathers his wits and his robes and edges toward the door. Oliver's tongue is quicker, though. "Higgs. Help me with Marcus." It's an order, and issued in the closest tone Oliver gets to a sharp rasp, something hard but at the same time still the voice of a Scottish teen. Terence doesn't want to, doesn't feel any magic operating, but cannot stop himself. Oliver moves away as the other boy approaches, as he goes and unbuttons his captain's shirt, unbuckles his pants like he's done before.

Actually, this felt rather... weird to write. It felt like Oliver was acting through most of this, using something Marcus said one time to play the role he always wanted. I got the sense that this was an experiment on Oliver's part, regardless of the outcome.

The familiarity of the Slytherins is startling to Oliver, who thought intimacy was only practiced by the other three houses, but he's corrected and he watches Terence run his hands down Marcus's chest toward his underwear, his body almost free, Terence's long-fingered hands taking their time, sliding muscle and skin. "Stop." Terence freezes. Marcus is breathing heavily, his arousal obvious. Oliver walks over to the pair, presses their mouths together. Tongues in less than a second. Oliver clears his throat and the two break apart guiltily, even though what they're guilty for is never obvious.

"Marcus, why is Higgs still in all his clothes?" It's a not-so-cleverly disguised order, and Marcus takes to it with all the gusto he can muster; not exactly ripping, but there's evidence that he too is experienced at divesting his seeker of clothing. Marcus gets Terence all the way naked before Oliver says anything more. Oliver returns to the bathtub, beckoning the others to follow, which they do, reaching the tub before Oliver is all the way in. Oliver takes his time removing Marcus's underwear, but when Marcus is free, Oliver whispers to him, and Marcus jumps Terence.

There's no gentleness, but it's never really been gentle between them, only close, and lots of hurried action in a too-public space. Marcus fucks Terence six ways to Sunday and Oliver tries to stand there impassively, but is soon running: his tongue along Terence's lips, his hand down Terence's abdominals, and his fingers through Terence's hair. Terence comes when Marcus does, as if by some inherent serpent spirit binding the house, and he makes a noise into Oliver's mouth, half moan half gasp.

Oliver turns his attention to the bigger boy emerging from between Terence's legs. Marcus is wet, but that's mostly from the bathtub, and some from his exertion. Oliver leans in and kisses him, once, then pushes him down onto his ass and then to his back, eyes locked. There's a quick pause for Marcus to experience the joy of first pain, then more pain, then a quick burst of "ohhhhhhhhhh", and Oliver's inside and Marcus is tight, so tight. Much tighter than Oliver imagines Terence would be.

They fuck, but it's purposeful. Oliver marking clearly each stroke, counting in his head, but still drawing odd strangled noises from Marcus, the mighty Captain now fallen, a new Captain arisen in his ashes. Oliver holds off as long as he can, but eventually reciprocates, whispering "mine."

He told Marcus "you were right," just before he left.

* * *

There wasn't any real formula to it, but quidditch took care of the details. Big C to little c and back in the span of two weeks. There was never enough practice time.

And, frequently, Marcus lurked.

And somewhere in there is the story of Oliver Wood, who likes being topped and who likes having Marcus Flint around for sex when he wants it, but isn't really a top himself. Of course, it came out as Oliver Wood, Big Man On Campus, who fucks all the quidditch boys in the prefects' bathroom. Not that that's an image I mind, but it's not what I had envisioned. Oh, well. Sometimes fic gets away from you.