[Fic] Numbed (Percy/Oliver, PG)

[locketofyourhair]

Numbed
700+ | Percy/Oliver | PG

Unbeta'ed; kink_bingo: washing/cleaning

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When the war is over, Percy feels nothing. He sits with Fred’s body and no one speaks. Harry lives, and some of them go to see him, Ginny needing to touch him, but he can’t bring himself to move from Fred’s side. He stays with George and knows that he’s absolutely the last person who should be here with him. His hands are sticky with muck, the cast-offs of spells. There’s blood there too, dark like ink, and he can’t stop the bubbling laughter from rising.

Someone is at his side in an instant. “Weasley, what’s wrong?” someone asks, and he knows the voice, and he can’t just say that there is ink on his hands, except that it’s not. It’s blood and it may even be Fred’s blood. It could be Thicknesse’s. Who knows?

“Percy,” the person says, holding his face now between calloused hands. He blinks and he has to look at the man.

“Sorry, Wood,” he whispers, and he prides himself in remembering even that much. He knows Oliver of course, but his Hogwarts years feel centuries passed now. “I don’t know what came over me.”

Oliver shakes his head. There’s blood at his hairline, but he doesn’t seem to notice. It’s fresh. “Come with me.”

“You’re bleeding,” Percy murmurs, but Oliver doesn’t hear him, bringing him to his feet and pulling him along. He stumbles on stones, bits of blasted walls. He keeps thinking that they’re bodies, looking down, but it’s just rocks.

“You’re shocky,” he says simply, and he is taking Percy away from George, away from Fred. Mum is somewhere else.

“I can’t leave him,” he says, and his voice is pitched too high. He’s shaking.

Oliver slides an arm around his back, holding him where they stand. “Percy, you need a bit of help, mate, and George needs a bit of time alone. I will get you back.”

He knows it makes sense, but he wants to wander back. His feet don’t feel right, like they don’t know the ground. Oliver steers them into a little hollow that Percy doesn’t remember. It’s all rough, uneven stone, crumbling around them. Someone blasted this crater out. This is a war scar on Hogwarts.

Oliver pushed Percy against the wall like he means to protect him. “The fighting is over, Oliver,” he says, and it sounds like him.

“Humour me,” Oliver says softly, eyes sparkling, and he’s conjoured a bowl of water from somewhere. The water is clean but for a fine level of dust. There’s a grey cloth in the water, and he washes Oliver lift the cloth and squeeze out the excess.

Oliver takes Percy’s left hand in his, and his skin is warm, soft. Percy should not be surprised when Oliver begins rub the dirt and blood from his skin, but he jumps just the same. He rubs small circles on Percy’s skin, so the freckles are slowly exposed.

“You could have used a charm,” he says, and his voice sounds close to tears. It doesn’t sound like it belongs to him, like he is feeling things much later than it happens.

“Mum was Muggleborn. She liked to wash things, and I always found I felt cleaner this way,” Oliver whispers, and then Percy’s left hand is clean, wiped clear. He takes the right just the same, the same gentle movements.

Percy breathes out slow, and he forces himself to concentrate on the feeling of Oliver’s cloth on his skin. He is crying now, but Oliver doesn’t mention it. There is a swath of blood on Oliver’s shirt, and the sleeve is ripped. The bleeding around his hair looks worse, but he seems fine, steadily washing Percy’s grime away until at least his hands are clean and look like they should belong to him.

“Oliver, you’re bleeding,” he says again.

Oliver dips the cloth into the bowl, and now he takes swipes at Percy’s cheeks, his jawline. “I know. I’ve been checked, though, and there are people who need the healing more. They’ll get to me eventually, and if now, it’ll be a rakish scar, you think?”

Percy smiles, and his face feels close to cracking. “I could heal it,” he whispers.

“Let me finish this,” Oliver whispers, and he goes for the bowl again. “And then you can do as you like.”