Oh wow, I wasn't expecting to love this as much as I do. Within a few paragraphs I went from being curious but expecting no real 'hook' because it lacks my favorite characters, to being completely under the story's spell. You handled Piers' loneliness and his reaction to Dudley's disappearance so beautifully -- beautifully in character, based on canon gleanings -- that his conviction of Dudley's loss and how solitary and griefstricken it has left him actually pained me. I had to get up from the computer and come back later to keep reading. And yet he was never more nor less than a completely believable teenage boy.
Bravo for the marvelous language (which gives me a suspicion I know who you are) and for the rude, oblique, affectionate dialogue, so ineloquent on the face of it but speaking almost in code, so that only the two boys would truly divine the sneaky little admissions wrapped up in the joky insults. Even so, watching it dawn on Piers that Dudley's feelings are much like his own -- watching him be so undone by kissing and so won over by Dudley's newfound ability to express tenderness --was moving and funny and, holy shit, hot. I adore how unflinchingly physical the descriptions are (I had to look up 'bletted,' and OMG, that's an image I'll never forget), how you linger on the sensuality of flesh and frankly assess Dudley's abundance through Piers' hungry, grateful eyes. It creates a perfect intimacy and history between the two of them, a sense of belonging, of secret ruttings and mutual dependence, and even though we know some of that was forged through years of cruelty and bullying, this fic makes me glad that Dudley came back.
I also love the little canon touches, the descriptions of that grey and meaningless Dementor-haunted year, and Dudley's offhand allusions to magic. Evaporating and epilating, hah! Which reminds me, this exchange made my heart lurch a little, just because Dudley is so wonderfully matter-of-fact:
"So he grabbed me by the arm and epilated me straight to the dorm -- just like a transporter beam, really, except it felt like stuffing myself into my mum's girdle, not that I've ever done that before, promise --"
"Wait, you mean you could beam anywhere you'd like, and you came back to school?"
"I had to find you, didn't I?" said Dudley, like there couldn't be anything more dead obvious.
How oblivious Dudley is and yet how at one they are. Mates. (And Dudley's hasty protest: "not that I've ever done that before, promise -- " Methinks thou art too quick to protest, Big D.)
In short, you utterly seduced me with Piers' sense of desolation -- oh, that moment when he taxes Dudley, not just with missing but with mourning him -- and you made Dudley's reappearance a persuasive, complex reunion expressed through inarticulate, dirty, desperate, open-kneed-and-big-bellied, roughhousing, harmonious sex.
Which takes me right back to where I started: I had no idea what I was in for when I clicked the link and wow, do I love this fic.