His hand hovered just centimeters from the wooden door before Arthur let out a breath, knocking gently. Percy hadn’t been out all day, excluding the couple of times he had slipped out and right back in for basic necessities. Arthur had insisted that his son would come home after the battle had ended, and though he had, it was as though he wasn’t even there. Their family needed to mend, to heal after what had happened, something that felt impossible.
Arthur held a plate in hand, a sandwich sitting on it for Percy. None of them had really been hungry, grieving as they all were, but it was an offering, at least. He needed to keep up his strength, at any rate.
“Percy? I just wanted to make sure you were alright... I thought... maybe you’d want a bite to eat?” Arthur’s voice came through hoarse and sounding somewhat foreign to his ears, though he cleared his throat a moment later and waited patiently for the door to open.
» @ambitiocaecus ┆ FIVE TIMES KISSED DRABBLES ┆ SEL. ACCEPTING
ONE.
What does this idiot think he’s doing, telling him what to do? Lingering glances, hot steam building up –––––– Marcus has wanted to do this for a long time, if only to establish dominance once and for all. When he grabs the lanky Prefect by his tie, yanking him forward and pressing their lips together in a long and hard kiss, he feels a rush of power. Whether Percy minds is the last of his worries; he gets what he wants, always. Fist curled into the other boy’s shirt, he forces him close, tutoring time completely forgotten. Who needs those damn NEWTs anyway?
TWO.
He’s mad, oh, he’s burning up. There is hot rage inside him and it’s directed at the boy with hair more fiery than the red of his tie and a voice so annoying, Marcus could punch him in the face every time he opens his mouth. Oh, how he despises the patronising tosser with his bloody Prefect badge and his bloody freckles. And now he’s kissing Wood, the ARCHENEMY! Marcus is about to explode when he catches the Gryffindor on patrol in the corridors. With one shove of his hands, he has him against the wall, knuckles soon colliding with his cheekbone. “I saw you kissing Wood last night,” Marcus hisses, grey eyes glimmering dangerously. Jealousy eats away at him, gnaws at the little bits of affection that were just starting to bloom in his raw fists. And then he’s kissing him, hard and bruising, pinning Percy to the wall, allowing no resistance. “Don’t do that again. I’ll kill you.” And he means it.
THREE.
The world has changed. It has moved on without him, leaving him confused and angry because they’ve taken everything away from him when all he wanted was to survive in a world that sorts out the weak. Everything he did, he did to survive. And now he’s lost, alone, and tired. Percy is the only thing he has left, the only person that knows him from before the war and still looks at him. Whether he wants to look at him is a different question. But one day, when Percy comes by to bring him a few papers from the Ministry he needs to sign, he catches him at the door, grabs him by the jacket, and kisses him. I just need somebody to touch me.
FOUR.
Three years later. Things have been going better. He’s thinking that maybe, just maybe, he can have an actual life. Not a normal one, certainly not that. Not the one he used to think he would have, either. That is long gone. But when Percy wakes him up because he’s getting ready for work and the idiot can’t be quiet enough to let Marcus sleep in, he doesn’t have the urge to beat the shit out of him anymore. And when he kisses him at the door, it’s almost as though he can be happy again. But his bubble only lasts a few days.
FIVE.
This thing between the two of them has always been a bloody mess, in both the figurative and the literate sense. And when he comes home to the apartment they share because it’s cheaper and because they both have nightmares, rat-arsed and bruised from a fight at the pub, he almost knocks over poor Percy who opens the door for him, his kiss sloppy and tasting of a variety of liquors. But it’s not a gentle kiss. And when Percy tells him he’s drunk and not thinking and should go to bed, Marcus explodes, grabbing him by collar of his shirt and shoving him backwards. “Kiss me! I said kiss me!” He yells at him, eyelids heavy because of the alcohol in his blood but brute strength remains. “What else are you good for anyway?”
Porcelain fists curl into robes of black and scarlet, grey eyes alike cold steel. Marcus pulls the Prefect forward until their noses are almost touching. “You don’t fucking get to tell me what to do, Weasley.” He spits the name, venom dripping from his voice. “Just because you carry that bloody Prefect sign does not make me your bitch. You’re just some boy.” With that he pushes him backwards, eyes shooting daggers at the younger. “I’m going to go where ever the fuck I want and you can’t stop me.”
Sick of the silence in his flat, George had immediately, unthinkingly accepted his parents’ invitation to spend the weekend at the Burrow. After a day of enduring more pity than he could stomach and forcing half-hearted smiles to put his family at ease, he was beginning to contemplate slipping away that evening and spending the night at St. Mungo’s again. He felt out of place anywhere but at Fred’s side.
But there was one conversation he needed to have before he left; and so here he was, hesitating outside Percy’s bedroom door. Fred had never had any qualms about barging into this room without knocking. But he wasn’t Fred, and Fred wasn’t here. He sighed and knocked.
“Perce?” he said softly, turning his head so his intact ear was facing the door. “Got a moment?”
They’ve got a corner of the common room to themselves – Angelina and Alicia and Katie and Fred and George and Lee, who’s basically an honorary member of the Quidditch team – and the girls are trying their hardest to keep the group quiet as they play truth or dare, but quiet is damn near impossible when you’ve got Fred, George and Lee in the group.
It’s Angelina’s turn, and of course she picks dare.
A wicked grin plays at George’s lips as he proclaims that he has a dare for her: he dares her to kiss Percy.
Angelina panics briefly. She wonders if her little crush on Percy (that she swears isn’t a thing) is glaringly obvious, or if George is just being an arse. She decides that it’s the latter, but either way, it doesn’t matter.
She has to kiss Percy Weasley, and with her reputation on the line, there’s no way for her to back out now.
So she goes to find him, which really isn’t that hard – he’s seated at a table, mumbling to himself as he works on homework for some class.
It’s painfully awkward as she taps his shoulder to get his attention and Percy looks up at her with a slight frown that dissolves into a smile when he sees that it’s just her. He shifts, arm draping over the back of his chair as he turns to look at her properly.
Her heart is beating a million times a minute as she babbles, explaining that they’re playing a game and she’s been dared to do this and she’s really really sorry like really sorry and then she leans in and very quickly pecks his lips before she turns and scurries back to the group.
Her face is bright red – she doesn’t know how she’s going to face Percy after that mortifying incident – but she takes her seat again with her head held high: you really should come up with better dares, Weasley.
2.
They’re at her apartment, talking about work, about what the Ministry is doing to Percy – he refuses to tell her, and that’s how she knows that they’re doing something to him.
It hurts her. They’ve been friends for so long, and she knows he’s estranged from his family, and Angelina doesn’t know if he has anywhere to go or anyone to talk to, and all of that hurts her.
Touch has always been a comfort to Angelina, so she thinks nothing of reaching out to squeeze his shoulder as she asks if he’ll spend the night here because it’s no trouble at all to make the couch up for him (and because she doesn’t want him to be alone, not with the way he is right now).
He says nothing. He looks at her and there’s a look in his eyes that Angelina can’t place, can’t figure out, but there’s something oddly comforting about–
–and then he’s leaning in, closing the distance between them as he brushes his lips against hers and Angelina freezes. She gets her senses back not a moment later and she’s pulling away, her cheeks bright red and hot because she doesn’t know what to feel or what to think. She doesn’t see the look on his face as she turns away, says something about going to get him some tea, and then she’s off to her kitchenette.
When she comes back out with a mug of tea in her hands, Percy’s gone.
She barely sees him around at the Ministry after that, and when she does, he doesn’t look at her.
3.
Fred’s funeral is hard for Angelina. It’s not just that he’s gone – there is guilt inside her because she doesn’t know if she loved him. The look Mrs Weasley gives her is making things worse – it tells her that Mrs Weasley thought that Angelina was good for Fred, that she thought that one day they’d settle down, and Angelina doesn’t know if that’s how she feels about Fred. (Goodness knows she can’t imagine ever settling down with him, and she’s not sure if it’s because he was never exactly the settling down type, or if she…)
She lingers longer than she wants to, because Alicia and Lee and Oliver and Katie are there and she’s with them and they’re not leaving yet. But she’s quiet, her gaze fixed on the ground, a look on her face like she’s not really there, and she tries to ignore the looks that they’re shooting her, but she can’t and finally she mumbles an excuse me and leaves.
She’s not sure where she’s going – all she knows is that she needs to get away from everything. That means going out of the Burrow is out of the question, because the grounds are full of people spilling out from the house. So she goes up, her feet tentatively leading her to where she remembers Fred and George’s room being (and she hopes that George isn’t there because she can’t look at George, not at all).
George isn’t there, but Percy is.
Angelina hasn’t seen him in a long time, but he looks like hell, like he hasn’t slept in days and like he’s been doing nothing but crying for a long time.
He stares at her silently for a moment, then turns his attention back to the sweater in his hands, and Angelina moves towards him. She sits down on the bed next to him, close enough that their sides are touching, and after a moment, she turns just enough that she can press her face into his shoulder as the tears finally fall.
He doesn’t shift at all, doesn’t put his arm around her or anything, and Angelina isn’t expecting him to. But she feels his body shudder as he starts sobbing too, and she can’t imagine what a sight they must make right now.
She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but finally she pulls away, rubs at her eyes with the back of her hand, mumbles a sorry that has Percy shaking his head just the slightest bit.
Touch has always been something that comforts her, and so Angelina reaches out and cups his cheek, gently turns his face to her. There is pain in his eyes, pain and confusion and something else that Angelina can’t quite understand, and this time Angelina’s the one closing the distance between them and pressing her lips to his like it’s her way of telling him that he’s not alone, that she’s not alone, that they’ve got each other.
Initially Percy doesn’t pull away, doesn’t lean into the kiss, doesn’t anything. Then he pulls away, bites down on his lip as he turns away. Angelina thinks she’s crossed a line, and she probably has – they’ve only just buried Fred, and here she is, kissing his brother on his bed (and her brain chooses that moment to remind her of some of the things she and Fred have done in this bed).
The guilt of what she’s just done hits her hard. Her vision blurs as she says I’m sorry again, and then once more, and then she stumbles out of the room.
She doesn’t say goodbye to anyone as she leaves the Burrow.
4.
It’s a little over year since what has become known as the Battle of Hogwarts, since Fred died, but there are still nights when Percy wakes up from nightmares that he won’t tell Angelina about, and there are still nights when Angelina wakes up crying because she’s dreamt of Fred.
But there are some nights when Percy stays over at Angelina’s apartment, when they fall asleep curled up against one another, where the line between just friends and I think I’m falling in love with you slowly gets blurred. There are some nights when one of them wakes up from a dream, and the other wakes too, because neither of them sleeps all that well anymore, and they spend the rest of the night drifting in and out of sleep, knowing that they’re safe in the other’s arms.
On nights like this one, Angelina stirs awake as the weight on her bed shifts and she feels rather than sees Percy leave the room – either he’s had a nightmare, or he can’t sleep. She sits up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she follows him out of the room. He heads for her couch, and she for her kitchenette.
She’s started keeping a box of chamomile tea for the two of them, for nights like this one. She makes him a cup and brings it out, settling next to Percy on the couch. She holds the cup out for him, wordlessly, and wordlessly he takes it. She grabs a shrug from the back of the couch and winds it around the both of them as she curls against him, her body gently pressed against his to ground him, to remind him that she’s here and he’s not alone and there are no nightmares here.
They’re quiet as he drinks the tea, slowly finishes it. Angelina dozes off, but wakes when Percy shifts to set the empty cup down on the coffee table. He settles back against the couch. This time he wraps an arm around her, and she shifts closer to him. She looks up at him, and he looks down at her. She reaches up to brush his hair back, gives him a soft smile, and he leans down to kiss her softly.
Thank you.
Anytime.
5.
Over the course of the last five years, Angelina has become an Auror (after being placed on the management track in the department, which apparently requires one to spend at least six months in each division in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to get a feel of how each one works), Percy has transferred to the Department of Magical Transportation, and Angelina’s apartment has become Angelina and Percy’s apartment.
There’s something to be said about coming home after work to the knowledge that Percy’s either there, or will be there soon.
Angelina’s home late that evening, and she’s exhausted and quite ready for bed, but their apartment smells like food and Percy’s there and breaking into a smile and making his way to her. She lets him envelop her in a hug, presses her face into his chest and breathes in the scent that’s grown familiar to her.
He asks her if she’s hungry, and she shakes her head. He presses his lips into her hair, tells her that he’s made sandwiches, and she lets out a little whine. She just wants to sleep, she tells him, but he nudges her over to the couch and goes to the kitchenette. She curls up on the couch, watching as he comes back with a plate, and then she curls against him. They eat together, keeping each other quiet company, only occasionally speaking to one another, and it’s comfortable and familiar and Angelina is happy.
It doesn’t take them long to clean up – Angelina helps, because it’s the least she can do, considering he cooked. Then they’re in bed, and Angelina has the covers pulled to her chest.
She’s half asleep, watching Percy read in the light of the bedside lamp, and Angelina can’t help thinking about just how happy she is – in general, and with Percy.
“Have I ever told you that I love you?” she murmurs.
She supposes that she hasn’t, because he blinks at her, smiles slowly, shyly, then leans down to kiss her.
“I love you too, Angie,” he tells her, and Angelina goes to sleep with a smile on her face.
@ambitiocaecus continued from the kiss meme Percy was being far too sappy for his taste. And then there was that nickname again. Marcus turned around in the other's arms and gave him a stern look. He, too, was slightly more than tipsy. But that did not change his opinion on bekng called "Marky". "Don't call me that," he grumbled, placing his hands claimingly on Percy's sides. "You're drunk, of course you're sleepy. I thought YOU were the smart one of the two of us."
