A gift for mnemosyne_1!
Title: Fear in a Handful of Dust Author: TBA Recipient mnemosyne_1 Pairing: Percy/Oliver; mentions of past Percy relationships. Rating: Adult Words: 9650 Warnings: I don't know that this needs warning for (it's not noncon or anything frequently found on squick lists, and it's not chan), but for those readers who like to know exactly what they're getting into: * Something on the order of PTSD* Summary: Percy has been struggling with increasingly troubling and disruptive dreams since the Battle of Hogwarts, and now, things are coming to a head. A/N: My apologies for not bringing it back around to smut; it felt pasted-on, and that's generally unpreferred. Also, this fic is hardly dark, but it's also not chipper.
Fear in a Handful of Dust
Percy was halfway across the room by the time his brain caught up with him, and the notion of going back to bed, back to the dream and the dark, made his stomach churn, so he let momentum carry him forward. He stumbled to the kitchen, skin clammy and damp with cold fearful sweat, and ran a glass of water.
He drank quickly, standing at the sink, one hand braced on the counter as the prickling sweat in his hair ran down his nose and along the groove of his spine.
It didn't help.
He'd come out here without getting dressed, without even his glasses, and he felt exposed even alone in his kitchen, still hard from the dream, still trying to focus in the dim dawn half-light, but going back into his room felt threatening and strange, as though he'd be going back into the dream. He counted deliberately to ten, trying to convince his pulse to slow into step with the numbers or his cock to stop throbbing with sick need, then walked carefully into the living room and Summoned his wand.
It was ridiculous that the first thing he did with it was point it right back at the bedroom door to close it; there were no demons here in his flat. They were all in his head and he knew it, and closing the door wouldn't help that. Still, the stutter-stammer of his heart as the door clicked closed and the tension leaving his shoulders were unmistakable, and at least it was enough to sit down on the couch and try to just breathe.
That he wasn't going to convince his erection to just go away without a cold shower was certain. His body played this game with him at least twice a week and often, as time passed, even more. Every time, he woke with the images tangled together in his memory--Oliver and Fred and Remus Lupin and his mother--unshakable, and his perverse body aroused and aching for touch and tongue and tender slow strokes.
Sometimes, he gave in and wrapped his fingers around his cock, ignoring his desire for tenderness as he reached for orgasm, which only solved the problem long enough to make him functional, allowing him to shower and dress and go about his day. It didn't bring him much pleasure--or at least, not enough to be worth the images in his head--but he couldn't help it.
Sometimes, he was strong enough to walk, one foot in front of the other, to the shower, where he could turn on the water as cold as it went and step under, shivering in the frozen stream and gratefully feeling his body respond, sending his difficult blood out to warm his hands and toes and body.
Sometimes, he got as far as the shower and cursed, using words he never said in public--ever--and stepped into warm water and slick soap, jerking himself off roughly, furious that he was broken.
Today, he sat, palms on his thighs, fingers digging slightly into the muscle, arguing with himself: shower, or pathetic wank.
The sweat broke out again as he closed his eyes and let the images come back, the ones that were much too real, memories of shattering rocks and curse-warped doors, of falling men and women amid bolts and arcs of green and gold and scarlet fire. He knew these images shouldn’t arouse him, and that they did made him angry and sad, frustrated that his mind should twist these things into pleasure and irritated at his lack of control, and he groaned, gripping hard and stroking roughly until he shuddered and spilled over his thumb onto his belly and chest.
He clearly needed help.
And even if he were willing to explain the problem to anyone (unlikely), he had no bloody idea how to go about getting it, or when. There was work to be done, enough for twice as many people as there were to do it, and none of them needed to hear one of their leaders was sick and perverted and out of control, so he stood, disgusted at himself, and walked toward the bath. The sun was fully up, and he needed to start getting ready for the office.
The only good thing about having given in to the urge was that it meant a warm shower was nothing to feel guilty about, and Percy stood under the spray with his head tilted back, letting droplets hit his collarbones and throat and run down his chest, washing away the evidence of his loss of control as he relaxed. He rubbed fragrant shampoo into his hair, his lips twisting again at the idiocy of purchasing shampoo that smelled like fruit, and rinsed the lather, then rubbed equally fragrant shaving foam over his face and scraped it away with a sharp straight razor, the requirement of paying mindless attention to the task soothing. Finally, he rubbed soap--also fruit-scented, also absurd--over his skin, his face and chest and unruly cock, until every inch of him was clean, impeccable, indistinguishable from a Percy who didn't wake up and jerk off over death and destruction every week.
It felt like a falsehood, but to stop the work of rebuilding would be to let everyone down, and Percy knew he'd done enough of that. He'd been a fool and a disappointment, but not a deserter of duty, and that, that mattered. He dried himself quickly and cleaned his teeth, then went to put on his glasses and get dressed in the now full light of day.
He had work to do. Real work. Good work. Work that needed doing.
--
Percy was always the first person in the office. Well, the first of the day staff--Alice Morgan or Rhys Winton or one of the other most junior secretaries was generally around unless something had called them out during the night. It was one of the changes Minister Shacklebolt had brought about already in his short tenure (five months, six days, Percy thought, because he liked precision): any department with more than fifteen staff was to rotate junior staff into evening and night shifts because he had no intention of allowing any opportunistic late night incursions into an unstaffed department while so much of their world was still hampered by the chaos of the past administration. The smaller units shared rotations, and a half-dozen new security staff had been hired at a worthwhile rate of pay to see to actual problems during off-hours and weekends. They were, generally, quite bored, and that was the way everybody wanted it. Percy approved.
This morning, he nodded to Alice, who was carrying a teetering stack of completed routine correspondence to the post wing, and hurried into his office, eager to continue work outlining the new Hogwarts academic and board policies. Hermione had a number of ideas about modernizing the curriculum, and a lot of them made enough sense that the Minister had directed him to work on a proposal with her as one of the new initiatives of rebuilding. She'd invented for herself an independent course of study (because honestly, she had no need for any revision in Defense, Charms, or History for full marks) which involved alternating long weekends in London with Friday and Monday at the Ministry, and she was due tomorrow for her third visit. While in many ways she was doing the bulk of the work on their proposal as a sort of high-level internship, he still had historical records to gather and collate before then, and if there were more than he could reasonably go through, well, that only meant he could stay, and here, he wouldn’t sleep, wouldn't dream, wouldn’t wake shaking and sick and wrong.
Each day he'd settle in at the table behind his desk, examining each piece in turn, working his way through a stack that began higher than his head. Working on this was both gratifying and frustrating, because while the sense of working on something that was ultimately building and creating made his heart feel light--a feeling he remembered from childhood, before Hogwarts and pressure and expectations, when reading a book for the joy of imagination was an afternoon's idyllic play--every mention of the old castle reminded him of flying shards and dying eyes, of heat and flashing light and shattered glass that he couldn’t remember ever seeing. He didn't remember anything about the battle, only the aftermath, the next morning, the heat of a beautiful day no one could enjoy as they scrubbed and scoured and tried to repair, and while he tried not to let this bother him, every mention of a classroom reminded him of desks, of gritty ash and pulverized dust on the smooth surfaces, reminded him of someone who didn't survive, someone who excelled in Transfiguration or perhaps Divination or perhaps only flying and charm.
He imagined for Hermione it was much the same--she'd mentioned something about flashbacks, anyway--though likely for her it was without the pulses of humiliating arousal that continued to spike in his body even during the day, though, to his relief, he was more able to control them when he saw them coming. She said there was a Muggle name for the syndrome, but as he hadn't been remotely willing to discuss his problem with a woman several years younger, he hadn't learned what it was; either way, they weren't what his problem was. Many people struggled with dreams. As far as he knew he was the only one aroused by them.
He didn't linger over considerations of the trouble now. Today's task was the library, and if he finished the summary of historical precedents and policies, he planned to begin to take on the question of how and whether the history and culture classes could be--or ought to be--reshaped, intertwining Magical and Muggle and including a more comparative approach. He knew she'd been working in that area, but he wanted to have a start himself to compare, rather than relying solely on her groundwork.
He detoured from the path to his office, stopping instead in the conference room where he'd taken to storing many of the most-commonly-relevant duplicate files so as not to have to make his way down to sub-level sixteen several times a day, and picked up one thick stack of parchments and files and levitated another, then got himself a large cup of tea and went to his desk.
He worked doggedly, nearly ignoring the images in his mind's eye but for the occasional shudder or wince, and by the time he looked up again, the half-drunk tea was stone cold and it was nearly eleven, but he had a rather intricate outline of section six of the proposal and a number of details for the appendices.
"Percy?"
He realized belatedly that the reason he'd looked up at the clock at the first place hadn't been the growling of his stomach, nor the completion of a discrete section of the work, but because someone had said his name.
Someone he didn't want to talk to yet again, but should, yet again, because they had been friends and more, and none of this was his fault. He turned toward his desk, facing the door. "Wood."
Oliver rolled his eyes and invited himself in, out of place in his track pants and heavy hooded shirt, but, to Percy's irritation (and interest, but that part was under his control, because he was awake, so he stuck with irritation), the clothes were so much part of who Oliver was that somehow even though they were utterly unsuitable for office wear, they were right for him. He claimed the guest chair, moving the handful of files to a clear space on a shelf, and leaned back, thighs a little too wide, shoulders a little too relaxed.
Percy tried not to think about what those shoulders looked like when they weren't relaxed, what Oliver would look like when every muscle was tense, cords of his neck standing out as he threw back his head and grunted his release, but of course once he'd started to think it, there was nothing he could do but follow the image to the conclusion the dreams always brought, with grit against his back and ash in the air, sticking to the sweat of Oliver's sculpted collarbones and chest. He swallowed. "Can I help you? Do come in, of course." This part of the conversation they had every week or so, on whichever day Oliver dropped by unannounced, and still, Oliver never took the hint to wait until he was invited.
Oliver winked at him--winked, as though they had some sort of secret association and signs between them--and shook his head; he'd come by for years, and this was nothing new, but it bothered Percy now where it hadn't when Oliver was the only one who didn't hate him. "Nah. Only, I wondered, had you eaten?"
Percy fully intended to indicate he was fine, but his stomach had a different opinion entirely and rumbled loudly. "I haven't, but I've mountains of work to complete--"
"And you'll have been here since half six or some such, I expect."
Percy shook his head. "Nearly seven, and it's certainly none of your concern."
Oliver stood. "Come on, Perce. Lunch."
Percy shook his head. "I'm certain I've told you there's no need to check on me, or see how I am, or force me to eat."
Oliver leaned forward on Percy's desk, intense and alert. "No need. Perce, you barely eat, you work fourteen hours a day, and half the time you startle like a nervy wee bunny if someone so much as drops a bit of parchment on the floor. You're a bloody wreck and I've let you chase me off sixteen times now, but today, no. No. I'm taking you to lunch. You can't avoid me forever."
"And I've no say? And why should I avoid you?" Percy frowned and tried not to focus on the fact Oliver was keeping count, nor the way he featured in so many of the horrifying dreams as he pushed his glasses up his nose despite that they were already quite settled in place. The feel of the smooth frame against the tip of his finger soothed him, made him feel protected. Which was ridiculous because of course one couldn’t hide behind glasses; they were transparent and only there so he could read, but still, he felt stronger for the motion. "No, I think I shall stay in."
"Right, then," Oliver said. "A desktop picnic." He reached for the interoffice parchment and a quill. "I'll just send to the cafeteria, then."
"I think not!" Percy shook his head, face flushing at the notion of people thinking he was having a picnic in his office. With a Quidditch player.
"Then lunch."
Percy looked Oliver up and down and sighed. He'd forgotten how single-minded his old roommate could be, and it seemed Oliver had found today's point of focus. "Surely you've practice," he pointed out.
"No." Oliver offered nothing further, and folded his arms across his chest.
"Oliver, why are you here?" Percy asked. He felt suddenly weary, which wasn't unreasonable given his early and unintended awakening, or how often he was awake too early, but this wasn't simple tiredness. Oliver's presence felt exhausting, as though it were a strain merely to look at him, and Percy deliberately didn't rub his fingers together against the grit in the air. The grit that wasn't there, but that Oliver's presence made him feel on his tongue and in his eyes, falling from his hair with every move.
"For lunch," Oliver said. He stood again. "Come on. My sickle."
Percy stood and followed Oliver out, squeezing his eyes tight shut behind his lenses for two steps as he approached the door because looking hurt, and not looking was safe, and not looking felt almost like partly forgetting.
He wished forgetting made sense.
--
By the time the server brought their basket of bread, Percy had concluded this meal was going to be torture. Unmitigated extended unremitting frustrating torture. Oliver was--as he had been ever since he and Percy had first met, nearly fifteen years ago now, in Diagon Alley with their mothers and big brothers purchasing cauldrons and robes and nothing fun for an eight year old, no matter how bookish or sport-minded he might be--relaxed and friendly, flirting with the girl as she set down their glasses, winking at Percy when she got flustered.
Percy pressed his thighs together and glared back and didn't think about circumstances under which Oliver was intense (there were two, and Quidditch wasn't the one making Percy head toward embarrassingly hard as they talked about the memorial fund for those who had died, and why the hell was he remembering fifteen-year-old Oliver, late at night in the showers, head back, arm moving--no, he wasn't going to think about that). Oliver said the donations were coming in ahead of the goal, and Percy found he hadn't checked recently enough, which was bad--he knew he should be staying on top of that. He owed it to far too many people.
But he hadn't. He hadn't checked in days, and once Oliver realized this, he kept on talking, about who had donated and to what purposes the funds were earmarked. He tried to pay attention, tried not to let the way the sunlight was falling and creating a sharp shadow on Oliver's face send his thoughts spinning into another place where everything was sharp and dark and light and broken, but it was a losing battle, and one he couldn’t explain.
"Perce?"
Oliver's expression says this isn't the first time he'd said Percy's name, and Percy shook his head. "I'm sorry. I've a great deal on my mind, and--"
"Perce. Honestly." Oliver's gaze changed, from concerned to something bordering on angry. "You're not distracted and you're not busy. You're a bloody fucked up mess, and if ye can't concentrate for three minutes, you're not doing anybody any--"
"I'm fine." Percy pressed his hand to his crotch under the table, "I'm fine."
Oliver stopped speaking, but his easy flirtation was gone, and he pursed his lips and lifted his napkin, refolding the cloth in the other direction as he looked at it before putting it back on his lap. Finally, he looked up again. "I didn't come to talk about the Memorial Fund, Percy," he said. "That doesn't matter. Well, it does, but I came to talk about you." He paused, then added, "About how you're holding up after everything. Because the Minister's conce--"
Percy blinked and felt Oliver's question coming, the question--condemnation, of course--about his sick twisted response, about why he wasn't suitable to be working, about how he was being sacked and sent to the, to the. The ward for the terminally. Something. Something sick and unexplainable. He flinched hard at the notion, sending his glass spinning out of his hand until it crashed against the wall beside them before either of them had the presence of mind to stop it. The restaurant went silent, each guest swiveling toward them in a wave of o-shaped lips and startled stares.
Percy flushed and picked up a piece of the shattered glass, then another, slicing the point of his finger incautiously. He watched the blood drip and heard, distantly, that Oliver was speaking. Oliver, and someone else, and then he was being stood on his feet, the chair pushed back, and his glasses were sliding down his nose, his wet nose, and Oliver was strong and firm against his side, walking him out into the light of the noon street. Percy pushed up his glasses with his bleeding finger, and when had he cut that deep, and when had he punctured the tip of the second finger, and why did it sting so? The blood dripped on his nose and he felt his cock stirring out of control, poking up hard away from him. He was sure they were all staring at that, as well, and he knew he ought to object, but there was no time.
The shattered pieces remained in his mind's eye, shining and sparkling on the table, a hundred pieces that were cracked and split and some of them bloody, and none of them whole. He couldn't clearly hear the words Oliver was saying over the weird hum of halves of curses and hexes in the air. He couldn't see them, and the sky was clear, but the sound wouldn't stop, and as he tried to place the sound, tried to clear away the apparent glamour or, or see through the hallucination it had to be, he allowed Oliver to pull him along until they came to a door. The door was ordinary, nothing unusually large or small or buckled by the curses, but Percy hung back. If he went through, Fred might be on the other side. Fred, or Remus, who had been so kind to him, long ago, or a hundred others that he'd let down. He stared at the door, trying to parse the straightforward fact that all those people were dead as the notion that they were there and behind the door and angry at him tried to push that to the side, and turned to Oliver. "I can't. There are too many of them. It's too hard."
Oliver nodded, but pulled Percy's wrist again. "But you sorted to Gryffindor, Perce. C'mon." Percy frowned at the lack of roughness in his tone; he should have been hoarse from the smoke and dust, shouldn’t he? He tried to get his hand free, to wipe at the smudges of blood from when Oliver helped him move Fred, from the Creevey boy, from the far too many in the Great Hall, but Oliver held him firm. "I'll help you."
And that was the problem, wasn't it? That Oliver had helped him? But he needed the help. He took a deep breath and opened the door.
The bright pale light of St. Mungo's took him by surprise. He'd expected, irrationally, a classroom, here in the middle of London. A desk, splintering. A falling stone wall raising a cloud of dust into everyone's hair and nose and eyebrows. He turned to Oliver, who was clean, unbloodied but for a few drops on the cuff of his hoodie, and shook his head. "It's not happening, is it?"
"What's not?"
"The walls. The castle. The dust and--it's not here and now?"
Oliver pulled Percy close against him, gentle for all his stocky quick muscles. "No, Perce. Nothing's happening, not here and now."
Percy let Oliver hold him, ignoring the way his body waved its figurative bloody arms and announced this only meant the hallucination was continuing, all part of the dream, because Oliver held him then, too, quivering like this then, too, and tried to remember to breathe.
--
It seemed a long time before he woke again, on a soft yellow bed, no, yellow sheets, warm, on a mattress that wasn't his, in a room with… he felt on the blurry table beside him for his glasses. With faded wallpaper and a dormer winder to the left and moldings badly in need of refinishing. He frowned.
He needed to make a trip to the toilet, though apparently he was bound to the bed. That wasn't surprising; he'd shattered the dishes and gotten hard and bled all over Oliver and then… His frown deepened. And then, he had no idea what. It was disconcerting. What day was it? Surely he should be at work? What about Hermione's project? What about the Minister? What about it being his day to stay until Alice came in? The sun was high out the window, and it wasn't Saturday, was it? Where was his wand? Should he be here? This was clearly not any sort of hospital. Unless it was a private room in some sort of sanitarium, which would reflect quite poorly on his employment record indeed.
He felt what seemed like panic rising and closed his eyes, swallowing dread, trying not to allow his stomach to churn, when he realized it wasn't. Churning. This alone was enough to bring another wave of panic, or should have been, but instead it only brought a wave of detached concern, which was also quite worrying, which… he was evidently working himself into quite a state of overlapping waves of mild and unassuming disgruntledness. When he should be angry! Or frightened! Or…something other than evenly and thinly dismayed.
He took a deep breath, and then another, and decided to work on that which seemed likely to be in his control. "Hello?"
He immediately heard footsteps outside the room, evidently coming up the stairs. "Perce?"
He tensed again. "…Oliver?"
The door opened. "Ya decent?"
Percy pursed his lips and thought about that. "I don't think I can get indecent, stuck in bed, unless the blanket is imaginary" Wait, why was he concerned that was a possibility? He ran his hands down his front, trying to decide whether the blanket was real, and how, exactly, he would tell if it weren't. He also said, "Though I doubt that would stop you."
"I was hoping." Oliver came in more fully. "How d'you feel?"
"…I. I think, I don't. It's alarming. But I can't remember how to be alarmed."
Oliver nodded. "They said that might be an issue, but thought it better to be sure there were no nightmares while you rested."
"They?" Percy tried to put words in a row again to ask whether he had been to St. Mungo's or somewhere else and what day was it and how had he got here and where was here, but there were too many words piled irrationally in his head, all sharp points and round bellies of b's and d's and the occasional q, and he couldn't line them up, and then Oliver was talking and he should listen, only attempting to straighten out the letters was distracting.
"St. Mungo's. They've seen quite a bit o' this sort of thing in the last month, they said."
Percy blushed hot, feeling the rush of blood to his face even while noticing he didn't actually feel embarrassed. He wondered what time it was. "This sort of thing?" Was that the right answer to that statement? Was it his turn to speak? How many words in a row should one person say, and how many had he, and did thoughts count while he was counting them, because that would complicate everything. Oliver was talking again.
"This sort of thing."
Percy frowned, waiting for the phrase to stop bouncing around in his head because he didn't think it was clear what sort of thing, but given his general state he might be wrong. Finally, he shook his head. It was hopeless. "What sort of thing might 'this' be?"
"They had a name for it, but I didn't much pay attention to that--don't go being exasperated, now; I wasn't attending to nothing, just not the name. Something about trauma and stress. Said the Muggle-borns told them."
Percy started to speak, then wondered if it had been an appropriate amount of time since Oliver stopped, so he said nothing about how that completely didn't answer his question. He was just about to try again, when Oliver went on.
"Oh, so, anyway, it's a trouble of the mind associating things with an overwhelmingly bad memory, bringing it into ordinary places. Like lunch."
Percy blinked, which felt like it took a long time but didn't seem especially slow. "Can we stop?"
"Stop? The associations?"
"No. The not…" Percy gestured weakly in a circle. "Is it a potion? That's making everything all uncoordinated?" He paused. "Un. Is that a word? When the parts are misarranged into… it's tiring."
"Oh. Not exactly, no. More like a memory charm, only no' quite."
Percy felt his eyes widen. "What? I didn't give anyone permission to… did I?" He trailed off, trying to recollect whether he could say that definitively. Which he couldn't, only he wouldn’t have, unless it was because he was hurting people, but then wouldn’t he know that? Or would he?
"No," Oliver said. He looked away. "You didn't. I did."
Percy let that roll around his head for a bit. Oliver had given permission for a something. A something charm that was making him numb and delayed and generally stupid, and was that all right? He reached up automatically to push his glasses up his nose, though they hadn't slid, he found when he went to push, so it wasn't that that was disorienting him. He took a breath, in and out and under control, and said, "You gave permission, for what, exactly, and, I might be confused--no, I definitely am confused, but I mean about this--but how did that happen, that they let you?" He thought back over the question and concluded it made sense.
Then he wondered why a not-exactly memory charm was working out not very different from being drunk. Except without the spinning or the churning in his stomach.
Oliver was still looking away, and Percy tried to reach for him, thumb and fingers grasping his sleeve rather than his whole wrist. Well, at least it got his attention.
"I told them we were together. Which, er. They asked you if that was true, and you said it was. I'm nearly sure you misunderstood the question, but then right after, you started hollering, and they saw to you quick."
Together. He had told St. Mungo's they were… "My family?"
"Came in later. Sleeping, ye were, and no need to disturb."
"Is my mother still angry? Fred died. I was right there, and she was so upset, and--"
"Ye'r mum, no, no' angry. Ye remember, then, about Fred?"
Percy wondered if Oliver had always become more Scottish-sounding when he was anxious, then he remembered that he had known Oliver since they were children, and he had. He supposed there were worse blokes to be 'together' with. Except for the part about how he hadn't even been willing to have lunch with Oliver, and shouldn’t see him, and all of that was going to have to be dealt with.
Maybe.
Later.
"Glad ye think so," Oliver said.
Percy wondered what Oliver was answering, then realized he'd verbalized the part about worse blokes and scowled, then forgot to be (mildly) annoyed at his mouth for having spoken without checking and worse, answering the wrong question, and yawned. "'m tired," he said." He wondered how he'd managed to have all those thoughts between reasonable speaking intervals, while in other cases it seemed like he couldn't manage even one thought during a lengthy pause. Maybe the pauses weren't lengthy.
"They said ye migh' be. Sleep again, then."
There had been some reason he was awake. Oh, right. "Toilet?"
Oliver waved his wand and helped him out of bed, then guided him through the door, which was harder than it looked, and led him to the toilet. "Ye need help?"
Percy looked at the toilet and thought about his disorientation, which was, it turned out, worse upright than lying down, and nodded. He consoled himself with the thought that it was better to have Oliver help him sit down and manage himself as he urinated than to have to have Oliver help him clean up if he wet himself.
Also, having Oliver touch him was, in theory, not bad, though for all the trouble his cock had been giving him, it was certainly quiet now. Which was …odd: he had Oliver's hands touching him in areas where he ought to be reacting--had been reacting, in his head, in his sleep, in his living room and shower and office for months--and everything was quiescent and strange, with the slightly electric feeling of numbness and the odd hum of silence as neither of them said anything.
Finally, after the toilet and a sort of abbreviated sponge bath, they went back to Percy's bed.
It had been a busy day.
No, that was wrong, he'd only been awake for …he tried to calculate the time, and couldn't make anything make sense. Well, it felt like it had been a busy day, and that was going to have to be close enough.
Even if there was something dreadfully wrong about allowing Oliver to take care of him.
--
The next time Percy woke, Oliver was there again, with strong hands to help him to the toilet and then hearty soup and bread. They didn't speak much, but as Percy drifted off again after, wondering why, exactly, he was so exhausted, he realized that the conversation they had had, had made much more sense--it had all followed from one sentence to another without weird awkward space in which Percy wasn't sure whether it was his turn to talk, or at least, not any more than usual. He'd never been a noteworthily clever conversationalist. He tried to make a mental note to ask if that, then had an effect of whatever memory potion they'd given him as well, but he didn't think he'd remember. To ask about a memory potion. He felt his face stretching into a grin and heard himself chuckle, but didn't manage to answer when Oliver asked what was so funny. It was self-evident.
--
By the time he woke once more, the remaining numbness--well, not numbness, that was imprecise; it was more failure to react to sensation, or something--had apparently lifted, and he wasn't bound to the bed. He sat up experimentally, waited to see if dizziness came (it didn't), and carefully turned away from the window, putting his feet on the floor in the ridiculous fuzzy socks Oliver had carefully put on him when he was awake before.
He stood, slowly, and started toward the toilet before disorientation slammed into him hard, leaving him uncertainly balanced and reeling. He reached for support--the door, the dresser, a table--and found nothing in reach, and he couldn't quite manage to hold himself upright. He sat down, hard, bruising his tailbone and the heel of his hand as he hit the floor with a thump. Immediately he heard movement below, and then Oliver was coming in again. "Perce! Honestly, I thought I told you to call out, should ye need--"
"I know." He did know, now that Oliver had reminded him; he remembered that Oliver had said it would be some days before he was entirely better even if the first bit was so noticeable. But he'd forgotten, for one thing, and for another, even if he'd remembered, he thought maybe he'd have tried to get up on his own anyway. He didn't like being indebted.
"Well, up with you then," Oliver said, shoving his arm under Percy's and hauling him upright. "Toilet?"
"Uh." Percy blinked. "I was just, yes."
They moved through the door and into the hall easily, and Oliver left him to do his business as far as the toilet, which he mostly could manage today (tonight? Which day was it, and what time?) if in a slightly distracted manner. He finished and flushed the toilet, then blinked when the door opened again. "I expect you could stand a shower?"
"I don't think I can. Stay upright, I mean." Percy paused, then added, sounding pathetically wistful to his own ears, "But it would feel nice."
"No problem," Oliver said. "I'll help."
Percy blushed, but again, this was Oliver, who'd certainly seen all of him before (recently and not) and who was taking care of him. And a shower did sound nice. He felt sweaty and his hair was ridiculous, in the glimpse he'd seen in the mirror. Still… "Oliver, it's not. We're not." Percy frowned. "You said we were together, and I know we were, but we're not, and--"
"I wasn't propositioning you, Perce. You're currently in no state, and I'm offering to help you with a shower." Oliver's tone was even, but his eyes were sharp, and Percy sighed.
"Sorry." He was sorry a lot, of late. He let Oliver take off the silly socks and help him off with the loose pyjamas he was wearing--which, now that he looked at them, were clearly Oliver's own; what other adult would wear a tartan pattern with fluttering Snitches? He sat on the closed toilet while Oliver turned on the water and stripped off his own clothes, then stood unsteadily once more and let Oliver help him into the shower.
The water felt lovely.
He stood under the spray for several seconds, just enjoying the feeling, then felt steady hands rubbing soap on him. He put up his own hands to hold onto the wall and closed his eyes, shuddering or trembling or maybe both because it all felt good. His knees felt liquid and he wasn't sure he could stay upright, but before he could voice the thought, Oliver was there, holding him up, turning him so he was resting back against Oliver's chest.
Oliver was a little shorter than him, so it wasn't a surprise when, when he spoke, asking if Percy needed to sit down, his lips brushed Percy's shoulder, high on the muscle below the junction of shoulder and neck. It wasn't a surprise, but Percy jolted anyway as his body responded to Oliver's lips touching him, thighs tight, cock rising up hard against his belly amid the cacophony of a million tiny pieces hitting the ground, pieces that he could see, when he opened his eyes, were only water, drops of water, harmless and clean and doing no damage, but his ears were filled with sound and he flinched at the echoing explosion when Oliver moved and the collected water that had been trapped between his elbow and body fell all at once. He opened his mouth, but couldn't answer.
Oliver nodded and sat him down on the floor of the tub, shaking, then turned off the water and waited with him, saying nothing for a long while. Finally, he asked, simply, "All right?"
"What just happened?" Percy felt as though he were twitching, though his eyes told him he was not, as though small muscles throughout his body were firing over and over. He deliberately ignored them and looked at Oliver. "You expected it, didn't you?"
"You asked to stop the potion that was blocking all these pieces of memory and disorienting you," Oliver said. "The cost is, you get it back--the memory and all the associations. The coordination is to take longer, they said."
Percy considered that a moment. "So. My choices are, have no sense of time and too much clumsy bloody falling over my own toes to do bloody anything, or be completely useless half the time when…" He gestured at his lap, where his cock had relaxed again and lay limp between his raised up thighs.
"Not half the time, no. And it'll pass, Perce."
Percy laughed bitterly. "Yes. This is what I've been telling myself for months now, Ol. It doesn't. It doesn't pass, and I wake up hard and with dust in my mouth and Fred and there's Remus, and…" He clamped his mouth shut and looked away, unwilling to drag his demons out here for Oliver to have to look at, too, but Oliver ducked down a little, forward, and forced him to meet his eyes.
"Aye, but now it's working out, coming to a head, of sorts. It's why you're having the crisis, you know."
Percy tried his best to manage a slightly chilly look of utter doubt, but with his glasses on the counter and water dripping from his hair, he was sure it was hopeless. "It's not getting better."
"It is. I checked, with the healers, while you slept. Had them give me it in big words, so you'd understand. Ready to hear, then?"
Percy sighed. "Of course. I'm positively desperate to know how collapsing with an erection in your shower because there are explosions in my mind is an improvement."
Oliver made a rude noise with his mouth. "Here it is. They said, you're conflating the battle itself with …events surrounding the battle."
"Yes, I know that."
"No, Perce. I think you don't know."
"I watch my little brother die, and I think it's real, and I didn't take care of him, which was my first job when Ron was wee, to watch them, and what did I do? I…" He couldn't say it.
"But that doesn't mean you understand what that complicated big brain of yours is doing now," Oliver said gently.
"It's my body," Percy said, his tone sharp which was awful of him, with Oliver taking care of him but Oliver had no idea.
"Aye. But what it's feeling, it's all tied up in other things." Oliver brought his feet under him and rose to a crouch. "Do you want to try to finish the shower, or take this conversation back to the bed?"
Percy blushed. "You don't have to do anything about. It's not. The bed is--"
"Warm, and again, it's no proposition, but also, not that I'd object."
"What?"
"I certainly haven't any objection to doing something about the physical part--never have done, and you should know it--but today, I meant only, the bed is warm. But so is more water, if you'd rather."
Percy shook his head. All his irritation and frustration had gone, leaving him numb again, which was, if anything, even more disconcerting, that he could go from flushed to emotionally flaccid in the space of a few minutes. "I don't think I can."
"All right, then." Oliver stood and stepped over the lip of the tub, reaching for a towel. He rubbed his hair and swiped at his body, then held out a hand to help Percy up once more. "So, shall I tell you the rest of the big words?" He hugged Percy against him again, rubbing the same towel in his hair. "It's complicated and also simple, Perce."
"That's impossible. The terms are mutually exclusive."
"Not really." Oliver knotted the damp towel around Percy's waist and opened the door. "Take Quidditch, for instance."
"I'd rather not." Percy tried for a smile, hoping it didn't look and sound as ridiculously out of practice and rusty as it felt.
Oliver chuckled. "Tosser. It's a simple game: throw the ball in the hoop as often as possible while one member of each team looks for the Snitch; try to build and maintain a lead that even the Snitch won't defeat. But it's also complicated. There are strategies and feints and skills. There are methods of confusing the opponent, and besides, you have to do it all without crashing into the walls, the hoops, or the ground--or the stands--and without flying so high you can't breathe. Fast, with people shouting, while the other team does the same."
Percy glared. "My problem is not a game."
"Course not," Oliver agreed easily. "I'm merely demonstrating that simple and complex are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For a more universal example, perhaps falling in love would work."
"That's not--"
"Perce. Examples. I'm not saying literally your issue is…wait, actually, it rather is. About love and guilt and family and complicated things."
Percy sat heavily on the side of the bed, which had remade itself fresh while they were in the bath. "If I sit here and don't interrupt, can you just tell me what they said is wrong with me?"
"I can."
"Fine." Percy folded his hands in his lap and resolved not to let anything twitch. Not that he had any real control over his body, but he was going to pretend.
"They said, Perce, you lived through a series of horrible events. We all did. And you, like loads of others, Perce, I wasn't kidding they've seen it a lot; it's just that most people went to St. Mungo's rather than trying to keep up with work! You survived it the way you could. You took all that horror--your guilt, and watching Fred die, and your fears, for your mother against that Lestrange hag, for the rest of your brothers, for people you thought you'd failed, and your mind tried to hide it packaged it all up as small as you could--"
Percy frowned. "Which is why I couldn’t remember it. I thought that was just as well. I've done plenty of things I prefer not to remember." He shuddered for a moment, uncertain whether he needed to elaborate, then decided that would only complicate things further, and right now, Oliver didn't, apparently, hate him.
"Yes, well. You did rather too good a job of forgetting on this one. No, I know, not on purpose, exactly, but it's not like you've ever met anything that mind couldn’t do, and in this case it shoved that hidden little package into a ball and tied it with a ribbon made of the few bright points in the day to make it bearable."
"What?"
"What were the good things about that day?"
"Nothing."
"Not true, Perce. For one, you were there. You made your brother laugh--"
"Just in time to die." Percy was startled to realize there were hot tears running down his cheeks. He wasn't sure when they'd started, but apparently if he was going to command his body not to twitch, it was going to disobey him some other way.
"Just in time to laugh," Oliver said. "The one had nothing to do with the other, and a good moment was that for the first time in, what, four years? You and Fred had a moment that was good."
"But--"
"You're not interrupting, right?"
Percy scowled, but didn't answer.
"And then, there was another good part of the day. And you feel guilty as fuck about it, too."
"I never feel 'guilty as fuck,' because I wouldn't say that."
Oliver sighed. "Right. You feel exceptionally guilty about it."
"I fail to see how that matters."
"It matters, Perce, because in your head, in the part that manages dreams and unconscious thought, you've tied together Fred's death, other deaths, the horror of all the dust and blood and dirt, with fucking me."
Percy flinched, feeling something somewhere between his breastbone and tailbone shift. It left him queasy. "I didn't--"
"Please. Perce, look at me." Oliver waited for a moment, then sighed again and folded down onto the floor, sitting with his ankles cross and his arms around his knees in Percy's line of sight. "Perce, it's been months, and you're driving yourself crazy. I know you didn't start it. I know it's not your fault, nothing is. No, not even Fred, and not even Remus Lupin. I saw, Perce. It wasn't you he was so surprised to see. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just as much as he was."
Percy shifted uncomfortably, remembering the look of startled shock on the face of his one-time professor and one-time, just the one time, lover, and opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. He was supposed to be not interrupting. He swallowed and looked at Oliver, waiting for him to go on.
"And then it was all over, and I don't know about you, but I needed…"
"To fuck," Percy said. He used the crude word because Oliver had, but something was wrong with that, too, because while he supposed there had been urgency and possibly less privacy and order than could be hoped, it hadn't been anything like the handful of times in the past four years he'd met a willing bloke in a pub and let himself be taken home because having sex in a public toilet was just not done.
"That, but no, Perce. I needed to be definitely not dead for a few minutes, and so did you."
"So we, what, decided a quick shag on Flitwick's cracked desk while…" Percy trailed off, then added, "It shouldn’t have happened. Not you specifically, I don't mean. In general, just, running off from the mess to have sex. It was wrong. Disrespectful. I'd just watched--" He shook his head. "I'd just seen two men who'd. You shouldn’t lose two. I can't even say what we were. And my mother would be so… Anyway. Two, in an hour. It's just. Professor Lupin, it was just the one time, but." He clamped his mouth shut again."
"But you and Flint it was more than that." Oliver nodded, sober, apparently not remotely bothered by the nightmare that was Percy's current relationship with grammar or sense. Which was just as well, since Percy was nearly sure there wasn't enough time in the world for him to make sense about any of this.
Wait, Oliver had brought up Marcus. "How did you--"
"Please. Percy. We lived in the same bloody room for a long time. I knew about you and Flint, possibly before Flint did. It's not like I didn't make a practice of paying attention to what you were doing." Oliver paused. "I put him in with everyone, you know, afterward. Not with the other… He was there with his father, but I choose to believe he wasn't necessarily on the wrong side."
Percy's stomach trembled and he wondered whether he was going to be sick. "I didn't see him until after. With all the." He stopped and then pressed his lips together and said, "all the bodies."
Oliver nodded. "Well, he was with one of the Lestranges. The younger one, I think. No one else there, so it's possible… But that's not the issue, Percy, and that's not what's making you, what's messing you up. You lost Lupin, and Flint, and Fred--and no, I know that's not the same thing at all, but you lost so much, and then, with a free moment, you did something about being not dead. You were hardly the only one."
"Yes, but I--"
"Perce, honestly. And now you've got it all tied up in a knot: the sex and the dying and the mess."
"That's sick, though."
"Well, yes. Hence you falling to pieces. You can't keep thrashing yourself over having been human, and you can't keep trying to hold the whole day just inside." Oliver pushed forward and stood, and Percy's eyes followed him up. "D'you mind if I sit with you, rather than on the floor?"
Percy shook his head.
"Good. So, they gave you the potion, and it did its work, unblocking the memory, more or less, stirring pieces of it up so you'd have to process it this time. It did other things, too, as you noticed, but the main thing was to force you to do something with all that shite besides shove it in a corner and rake leaves over top for the winter. I should probably tell you there's a charm in here to make sure you're improving and not going backward at all."
"For example?"
"It took a little doing to get the hospital to let me take you away, Perce. They were a little afraid someone as tightly wound as you might decompress in, I believe they said, a drastic and final sort of way. I asked what they meant, and evidently there've been a few cases where people, er, didn't deal well with the treatment."
"What? Oh. You mean… I wouldn’t--"
"Yeah, I know. I wouldn’t have brought you home if I thought you were likely to bleed all over my carpet or whatever. Still, they do have your wand."
Percy nodded. "I don't think I could use it very effectively right now. Ol, why am I here?"
"I didn't think you'd like staying in hospital. Thought it would worry you that it looked bad. We've always been friendly enough, until recently, and I didn't think it was very likely anyone had noticed we haven't been lately, with my stopping in every week, so it wouldn't seem too strange, and I reckoned you'd do better with something mostly familiar--"
"You did a great deal of thinking for me."
"Oi, I can, you know. I know you think the Quidditch is--"
"I didn't. That wasn't what I meant. I don't think. Either way, I hate the hospital. I'm glad not to be there." Offering polite thanks, even sitting here in a draped towel, felt normal and good, and that was soothing.
"I know," Oliver said. "That part, I was actually sure about."
"Still, you could have just let my mother take me home and fuss." Percy paused with an uncomfortable thought. "Unless she didn't want to."
Oliver rolled his eyes. "She did. I'm reporting to her twice a day."
"What? Why on earth would you take on--"
Oliver stood abruptly and pulled Percy upright so he could lift the sheet. "Because I wanted to, Perce. It's really not more complicated than that."
Percy slid his feet under the sheet and shook his head. "Oliver, you couldn’t possibly just want to tolerate my mother. That's insane."
Oliver shrugged. "Quidditch players have to be slightly masochistic, you know." He tucked Percy in, which, embarrassingly, led Percy to yawn again. Oliver went to the door. "Sleep well."
Percy lay on the bed staring at the ceiling and listening to the creaking sounds of the house for a long while, wondering why Oliver had really brought him here. Some time later, he heard low voices and wondered whether that were his mother, and sometime after that, he slept.
--
"Perce?"
Percy woke in the dark. "Oliver?"
"I didn't really answer your question."
Percy rolled over to see Oliver's profile against the moonlight coming though the window. "About my mother? No, you didn't."
"She sends her love."
"Tell her I do also." Percy shifted again, budging over in the bed. "Oliver?"
"Yeah?"
"Were you going to? Now? Or are we to have a guessing game?"
Oliver chuckled, low and dry. "No, that would be bloody inefficient."
"I doubt it," Percy said.
"Do you?"
"I thought about it, after you went," Percy explained. "And I thought, if you were willing to deal with Mum, you wanted me here. And then I thought about that day. And I thought about what you said."
"I said a lot, earlier."
"Not today. That day. You kept saying you were grateful. More or less." Percy felt his face heating and was glad for the dark. "Ol, you didn't mean for winning, did you?"
"Not really. That too, but no."
Percy nodded and shoved the blanket partway down, freeing his arms so he could reach to catch Oliver's sleeve with his fingers.. "And you kept coming to see me. You were worried."
"I was concerned. Worried sounds unmasculine and not like a star Keeper."
"And you've been missing practice to stay--"
"Only a little. I've never missed before. They're fine."
"But you're not. You should go back to practice." Percy paused and folded the blanket back a bit more, propping himself up on his elbows. He felt strangely calm, calmer than he ever had in the months leading up to the battle, or during it or after, or any time in years, really, though it occurred to him that in years past, when Oliver would show up irregularly at his office door, he'd occasionally felt the sense of rightness. For all his brain could do great things, he was, it was clear, an idiot. At least he had practice admitting it. "Ol, is the potion all worn off?"
"What?"
"Am I supposed to be in my right mind now?"
"Yes, but you can't go home. You still need help, though you could go to your moth--"
"I just wanted to make sure you knew it. So you don't think I'm under the influence when I say you've done a lot of thinking for the both of us recently, it's my turn to think. And I think you should get in here with me."
Oliver went very still, and Percy could just see the line of his nose in silhouette between the bed and the wall. "Perce, you're not--"
"Right? You don't want to?"
Oliver shrugged. "No, you're right. I always want that."
"Then, what?"
"You're not up for, er."
Percy laughed, a chuckle that became something more like a giggle. "No insulting my manhood."
"But--"
Percy lifted the side of the blanket higher. "Ol, get in here. We can worry about what I'm up for later, unless that's the only thing you--"
"You can't be serious."
"About getting in here?"
"No." Oliver pulled his shirt over his head and sat down, still wearing track pants and socks. "The other part."
Percy tossed the blanket around him. "No, I wasn't."
"Good." Oliver stretched out alongside him and Percy set his head on Oliver's arm, and his arm across warm stomach muscles.
"Any chance you'll be willing to help me with some correspondence tomorrow?" Percy brought up a knee tentatively, resting it on Oliver's thigh.
Oliver turned toward him immediately, tangling their legs together and pulling Percy's head against his chest. "Yeah. I think I can do that. Who are we writing to?"
"For one thing, my mother, to come look after me so you can go fly about and play with your toys."
"Oi! Wanker!"
Percy looked up to see Oliver grinning broadly and boldly said, "Not soon, I hope." He rolled his eyes at himself and unconsciously squeezed Oliver's hard waist tighter, then relaxed and closed his eyes, making a list of everyone he needed to be in touch with: the hospital, the office, Hermione.
But first things first. He gave another little squeeze and settled back to sleep.