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Everything Fred was saying made sense... Somewhere. Keiran couldn't exactly find that part of his mind just then. His mind screamed at him, reminding him just how much he was going to hate himself for this. Bad. This was very bad, and Keiran was a massive, colossal idiot. Then why did this feel like the best idea he had ever had?
It wasn't his idea. It was Fred's. Or he told himself so, anyway. And would continue to tell himself forever. That hardly mattered now, though, when Fred had conceded, at least for a few moments, to raise the challenge against Keiran once more. His grip on the younger man relaxed as their brief battle for dominance occurred. Enough to make it almost easy for Fred to shove him back.
As the Gryffindor backed away, Keiran just watched him. He was right. Obviously Fred was right. The Slytherin had far more control within him than he had been able to harness in those past several minutes.
It had only been minutes, right? How long had Fred been there?
Standing still seemed incredibly stupid, particularly given that he felt a need to continually shift his weight to alleviate certain... sensations he wanted to be rid of. For a moment, Keiran wished he wasn't stuck with Audriana. Then he could have had whoever else he wanted, obviously, and he wouldn't be so strung out. This wouldn't have been so easy for the Weasley to manage. How had they even ended up like this?
And why was Keiran suddenly fascinated by Weasley's hair? That was stupid. Keiran felt stupid. But, more than anything else, Fred Weasley's hair was utterly stupid. Buggering hell, but he was confused.
Fred's last word sunk in and Keiran concurred. They needed to think. He ripped his gaze away from the other student, unsurprised when they landed on the cauldron he had been using. Shit. He had completely forgotten. Despite Weasley's demand that he stay on his own side of the potions lab, Keiran wasn't about to let the potion catch fire, or worse: do something like what had happened to them already.
So he stepped forward, his attention focused (even though it seemed physically painful to do so) on the smoking cauldron. Reaching it, he cursed. "F*ck." The color was all wrong, and the flame beneath it was still lit. Not helping. And hell, it was just making the room that much hotter, wasn't it? Upon Registering that, Keiran draped his robes over one of the lab stools, and he wasn't sure where he had placed his tie. But, Merlin, it was so, just, humid in there. The sort of weather he wasn't used to after so long in the UK, but the sort he was immediately realizing made long-sleeves just unbearable. So he rolled up his cuffs, then reached around to pick up his wand, which had somehow been returned to his pocket. The flame went out. Well, the physical one, anyway.
The metaphorical heat, as well as the layer of tension mixed with just layers of want? That was obviously still here. And Keiran was rapidly coming to realize he couldn't handle it.
It was his sleeves, he decided. Those were the real traitors, nearly as much as his own mind. As much as he wanted to just tear them off, Hayes was too tidy for that. So he reached up to undo the rest of the buttons on his shirt, completely unaware of what might happen if he let it join the robes on that chair. Which he did, by the way. And it felt glorious. He actually relaxed slightly, as though he had been waiting for years to be rid of it.
In the corner of his eye, he saw the Gryffindor again. Keiran hadn't forgotten he was there. But now that the danger of an accident was gone (beyond everything else that had happened which he would later qualify as 'accidents'), his focus narrowed again. He was half naked in front of one of his near-rivals, and he could still feel the pressure and heat and force of Fred's lips on his own. Was he past those so-called "base" desires? Keiran wasn't convinced.
Somehow, that uncertainty turned into a need to shift his body so that he faced Weasley. No, faced the door. That was it. Though, walking into the dorms without a shirt on would be fairly odd, wouldn't it? Keiran himself wasn't sure what he was after until his arms unconsciously crossed in front of him, the tension in his frame making it clear exactly where each muscle had been toned, and to the extent each one had been. His feet strained to move forward, but he refused to let them.
His jaw set and he stood there for a moment before pointing out, "this is entirely your fault, you know. If you were interested, you could have just said so instead of getting in my face. Doesn't mean I would've taken you up on it, of course. You're... alright enough, I guess. Decent, of course, but... Not really up to my standards, though."
Plus he's a guy... Keiran's mind was quick to remind him, but not quick enough, really, for him to add it on without making it sound like a cover-up or an excuse. People who clarified belatedly always sounded like they were lying, and Keiran definitely wasn't.
Definitely wasn't.
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