Entry tags:

character: harry, character: percy, genre: au, genre: slash, pairing: percy/harry, rating: pg

Brothers in Arms (Percy/Harry, PG)
Title: Brothers In Arms
Pairing: Percy/Harry
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1045
Warnings: Nonmagic AU
Disclaimer: Not mine. JKR's.
Summary: In an empty ward, in a beam of sunlight, two damaged men find love.
Notes: For mnemosyne_1, who requested hurt/comfort and disability. Written as part of the 24 Insane Hours QuickFic Fest.

The boy had been a medic, Harry learned from one of the nurses, and a damned good one. And he wasn't a boy—he was four years older than Harry was himself, though his shy manner and his slim, pale hands had at first made Harry think otherwise.

He watched the man—Weasley, Harry had discovered his name was—all day for the first two days he was in the ward. There was little else to do. Weasley stayed on his bed in the corner by the big window where the sunlight streamed in. There were always books at his bedside, books which had been brought in by the young nurse with the bouncing brown curls. Weasley ran his hands along their spines and caressed their covers before opening them, tracing a finger along as he read.

Harry wondered where the nurse had got the books, and if he might have some for his own. He had grown bored and restless censoring letters and longed for a change—to be sent home, to be sent back to the battlefield, anything but days of sunlight and regular meals in the near-empty ward.

(He supposed he should be glad the ward was empty save himself and Weasley and the man behind the curtain whom he'd glimpsed only thrice, but Harry was selfish and he was young and his supposition didn't last for very long before he found himself wishing again.)

Weasley rarely left his bed unless escorted by the curly-headed nurse, and then only to bathe or to use the lavatory. Harry didn't see anything wrong with his legs and wondered why Weasley seemed so fragile, gripping the nurse's arm like a life raft.

On a day that Harry thought might be a Saturday, he grabbed his crutch and hauled himself out of bed when the nurse had left the room and began his long limp down the ward towards Weasley's bed.

"Who's that?" Weasley said, snapping his head around as Harry approached, and that was when Harry realised that Weasley hadn't been looking at the book he was reading.

"Are you blind?" Harry asked, and immediately afterwards he cringed. He'd meant to at least start with hello. Not his bloody fault Weasley had caught him off-guard.

Weasley nodded. "Mostly. I can see light and shapes. You're quite dark and small. Who are you?"

"Potter," Harry replied.

"Hello, Potter." Weasley stretched out a slim hand, and Harry grasped it in his own, rather more brown and callused.

"You were a medic."

"Yes." Weasley blinked and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He laughed at himself, then, a laugh like paper, like the studded leaves of one of his books.

"I used to wear specs," he said, his voice apologetic, "I'm still not used to going without them." He indicated the book he was holding. "I'm learning Braille."

Harry adjusted his own spectacles on his nose, careful not to mention anything about them. His hand crept towards Weasley's again, where it lay limp along the folded edge of the sheet. He patted it once, then drew back.

Weasley merely cocked his head. "What's that for?"

Harry's breath caught in his throat. He knew he couldn't be attracted to Weasley—a fellow soldier, a fellow patient, a fellow fellow—but it was too late.

"Nothing," he said, and there was a long pause.

"Were you in the trenches?" Weasley asked finally, settling back against his pillows.

Harry nodded, then remembered Weasley's condition.

"Yes," he said, a trace of an apology in his voice, "I was."

They began a conversation, then, until the nurse with the bouncing brown curls entered the ward, announcing lunch.

"Can I come visit you again, later?" Harry asked, rising, grasping for his crutch.

"Certainly," Weasley replied, turning his head towards the sound of the nurse's voice, "As this visit was quite short and I find myself more and more in need of company these days."

---

They became fast friends—if friends was indeed the word for it. Harry had managed to push aside his inappropriate feelings for Weasley—for Percy, that was his name. Mostly.

They chatted, basking in the warmth of the sunlight. They took their meals together, one at the bedside of the other.

They played chess. Percy won most of the games.

Harry was quite determined by the end of their third month together that he loved Percy, and just as determined to keep his feelings in a tight little ball wound around his heart. Letters from home were fewer as the months wore on, and Harry needed a friend just as much as Percy had declared he was in need of company on the first day they had met.

When the news came to their isolated hospital that a cease-fire had been declared and that they were to be sent back into the waiting arms of Mother Britain, Harry was certain he felt his heart breaking, crushing inwards upon itself.

---

"Come home with me," Harry begged when he discovered—and how had he not known it, loving Percy all these months?—that Percy had no family to return to. His brother Charlie had been killed in Ypres, and Charlie was all that Percy had had.

Percy gave him a single nod an hour later, and it was settled.

---

Their time in their shared flat was at first much like their time in the hospital, but for the absence of Penelope, the nurse with the bouncing brown curls, and for the marked lack of sunshine. They chatted, sitting on Percy's narrow bed shoulder to shoulder. They took their meals together, side by side at the scrubbed wood table.

They still played chess. Percy still won most of the games. Harry wondered how the hell he did it.

And if the maiden sisters across the hall noticed anything, they would merely have noticed an arrangement between two bachelors, neither desirable to any girl with a head about her, the one blind, the other with half a leg missing.

They couldn't know that in the night, when Percy cried out for the sights he had seen, Harry crawled into his bed and comforted him with kisses, slicking the sweat from his bare chest, bringing him safely home.