Chapter Text
About a third of the Halloween party is made up of the young ministry. Twenty-somethings, a few in their early thirties, a few barely-legals. The other guests are expats, tradesmagicians, members of the magical academia and other young witches and wizards who make up the new generation of magical London society.
It is a grand flat. An address hidden on an otherwise muggle street. One of the magical law assistants had decreed Percy enough of a friend, decent enough a presence at the occasional ministry after-works, to invite him along. Pre-party and eats elsewhere, arriving in time but not too early, watching the rooms fill up and the music get louder. Percy may be a square, but alone in London he has quickly learned when to shut up, when to take the chance to learn something. So he allows himself to be greeted and hugged by those he only barely know, introduced to strangers, stand in conversational circles and biting his tongue in favour of observing. After the whole debacle with Mr. Crouch and Percy’s subsequent rehiring under the Minister of Magics own department, Fudge had pulled him aside as he was getting ready to leave, tapping his nose and telling Percy that being right does not matter half as much as getting the right message across. Do you understand, son? Sure he does. These days he keeps his own leash shorter.
As easy as it is being a cynic, it is also easy nursing a glass of wine, laughing a little too brightly at jokes and chasing the most interesting angles with which to display himself to others. Percy finds himself in a circle of witches – two Swiss girls interning at Gringotts, a freshly licensed auror, as well as his former head-girl colleague – whose voices grow louder as the crowd grows thicker and Percy zones out but is filled with a bubbling delight, probably from the wine in his body reacting to the warmth of a flat filled with bodies, until a hand settles on his shoulder and he snaps himself out of it. Morgan, former Ravenclaw head-girl and a year his senior, grins at him. “You were always too good to party back at school,” she says, continuing before Percy can formulate a proper protest. “Come on,” and she empties her glass, “I wanna dance.”
If you ask Morgan, she could never pinpoint whether her affections for Percy were those of a crush or came from some sort of motherly instinct or a pure platonic curiosity, but no one would think to ask Morgan. That is what separates a great party from a decent one: the connections seem entirely natural and obvious in the moment. So clear and intentional that asking would be silly. You leave feeling at ease and appropriately affectionate with everyone.
Percy realizes, on the dance floor, that the leash held tightly in the hand of his soul is actually two. That one of them he has held a while. That keeping both so short is a tremendous challenge. That one of them matters far less than he had thought it did.
He lets the old leash slip.
The world moves just as quick but keeping even steps becomes significantly easier.
Dancing turns out to come quite naturally if he just lets it.
It takes a while for Percy to recognize the body that has positioned itself next to him on the balcony as Marcus Flint. It is a big, heavy, strong body. Big in all senses and dressed in the kind of robes that old-money purebloods wear, dark and rich in colour, fine in fibre. Subtle. Would look eccentric but elegant to muggle eyes. Marcus Flint has grown up well, Percy thinks, watching as his fellow alumni pulls a cigarette out of a self-lighting case and puts it to his lips. The strong features no longer seem brute. Powerful, but in a subtler sense, an elegant sense. There is a glass in his other hand, same type as the one Percy left inside, making evident the width and roughness of those hands. Nonetheless – the way they handle the thin cigarette is delicate.
Flint catches him looking. Percy’s mind flails. “Want one?” he asks. The case is reached forward towards Percy, who can now see the engraved family crest on it, pausing for a moment to thank his lucky star that that was the assumption Flint had made. He shakes his head, straightens up, turns so that he too has his back against the banister and the lights below.
“I don’t smoke.”
“You sure?” Percy hesitates, looks from the case, up to Flints face. Flint is taller than him, Percy realizes, with a sort of distant interest in the fact. Almost no one is taller than Percy. Flint is not only broader, heavier and obviously stronger, he is also taller. Flint has his realization at the same moment: “Percy Weasley?”
“Uh.”
“Bloody hell. Long time, no see, pal.” Flint snorts, tucks the case into his robes, making Percy realize that perhaps the problem is that school robes never flattered anyone. “Grapevine says you cut yourself free from your family?”
Percy feels his jaw clench. “We’ve had some disagreements.”
“You’re at the ministry, right?” Percy nods. “See, I always knew you were the family black sheep, Percy. Stick-up-your-arse as you were. Stick up my arse, really.”
He smiles, not quite a grin, but there is a smugness there and Percy finds himself entirely at a loss. Him and Flint never particularly got along and at times Percy felt his authority as prefect seriously challenged by the promise of Flint’s imposing stature and mean expression. He had entirely dismissed him as a deeply unintellectual and incurious brute. Maybe it is because the Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry is the one thing he has not quite washed out of: Percy was a hatstall way back when and these days he seems to walk a tightrope of trying not to signal any alliances, so fraternisation with the ostentatiously pureblooded feels unhelpful. “Black sheep?”
Flint shrugs. “Your family is all about playing quidditch and being popular, being the hero of the day, no? I guess I always thought you’d have done better with us.”
Us. The common room underneath the lake. Percy takes a deep breath, feels the undercurrent of alcohol in his system, feels the less important leash slip out of his fingers and away with the wind. “I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it.” The gaze fixes on Percy. “It’s… I’m realizing a lot of things about myself now that I am no longer so much tied to them. I have a place of my own here in London now.”
Smoke ripples from Flint’s lips as he nods. Still a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Percy shudders. “I’m glad to hear,” Flint says, “Now I don’t know about your folks, obviously, but I know there’s a lot of pressure when there’s a lot of tradition. No offense, but I’m glad my family isn’t, uh…”
“Eschatological?”
Flint takes on a blank expression. The cigarette hangs on his lip. It is Percy’s time to break into a grin and as he does, he notices something about how he has positioned his body in comparison to Flint, the fact that his first reaction is to analyse it makes him feel more than a little crazy. “What?”
“It’s this sort of… like believing in the rapture, or that there’s a grand change coming, the end of days kind of deal. And that it’s best to be part of making it happen rather than wait for it. Kind of.” Flint huffs out this sort of half-laughing sound.
“So just say that instead. You know no one is going to grade you on this shit anymore, right?”
“Can I borrow your cigarette?”
“You can have your own.”
“No, I just want…” He gestures, vaguely. Flint reads his expression for a second, then reaches up, taking the cigarette from his lips and handing it to Percy. Percy takes it, feeling surprisingly confident in his movements, all learned passively from watching others. He puts the filter to his lips and inhales. Does not dare to take the smoke down into his lungs, equally for fear of looking a fool, as for fear of who he is becoming. He holds the taste of the smoke for a moment, decides it is not as bad as he had feared, then lets it slip out into the night. Flint watches. Percy sinks down a little, so that he has to look upwards slightly if he wants to meet Flint’s gaze, taking a second drag before handing the cigarette back. He watches the hand which takes it from his fingers; the breadth of it, the density of its muscle, compared to his own slim and bony hands. “You’ve really big hands.”
“What?”
“What?”
The cigarette glows between Flint’s fingers and he looks Percy over. Both their hands still in the air between them, frozen in the moment following the handoff, Percy’s pinky leaning lightly against Flint’s wrist.
“They’re not that much bigger than yours.” The one hand turns both their hands, pressing their palms together, soft office-fingers to sportsman’s rough skin. “Just more meat on ‘em.”
Percy swallows. Watches. Lingers. “I suppose,” he says, finally, forcing himself to pull his hand back and straighten up to his full length again. “Thanks for the cigarette,” he says, a bit too fast before heading back into the warmth of the flat.
Flint finds him on the dance floor. Morgan and the Swiss girls had dragged him along and he genuinely just feels happy to be there. It is the absurdity of a wizard with a home-mount of muggle turntables playing music from both worlds, of magical showers of sparks blooming from half a dozen different wands, of Percy’s robe hanging open and the buttons of his shirt getting undone one by one as the windows fog up. He has forgotten any notion that he cannot dance, allowing Morgan to lead him, too short to twirl him and instead using him as an anchor to fling herself around and he laughs and picks up well enough. There is the strange contrast between his empty apartment and working late nights, because what else is he supposed to do, and the warm hands in his and the smiles and the other bodies sharing this living-room-turned-dancefloor.
Then, there is the undeniable mass of that body, again. A point of gravity in the room. Percy stops, a bit unsteady, a bit too close. Feels the uncontrollable thrill of its breadth and the eyes just a little bit higher than his own as he tips his head back. Flint gives him a subtle smile. He moves just barely to the music. Perhaps he is about as drunk as Percy is. As Morgan moves on, the realization dawns on him: Percy wants to be the one getting twirled. Percy wants to be the one with a hand on his waist.
Ever so gently, he slides his right hand into Flint’s, brushes his left over his shoulder before taking a step back. Flint lets him. Lifts his hand to guide Percy out on the floor and back, but as Percy attempts to firm his grip to pull Flint with him, the hand slips out and away and then Flint has turned elsewhere. Percy sinks. Percy disappears back into the music. Then again, all this is so strange to him, none of the truths he once knew seem to matter. A muggle pop song comes on. Morgan, half-blood and proud, cheers. Next time Percy looks, Flint is gone.
Later, Percy spots Flint alone at the billiard table. It is kind of crazy there is a billiard table in this flat, he thinks, but does not linger on the thought. He should just leave. The crowd is thinning, not significantly, but enough that he has noticed. He has reached his drunk peak and has only had water in his glass for the past hour. He should just leave. Sneak out. There is a sort of dignity to that. He should leave.
Flint fixes his gaze.
They look at each other from across the room. Flint raises an eyebrow. Percy loses track.
He should leave.
The thought of his cold and empty flat, of a dreary Sunday with no one to call, is insufferable.
Where is Morgan?
Morgan is nowhere. He turns back. Flint is approaching. Percy backs up towards the wall, holds his glass in both hands, tosses the hair out of his face.
“Percy.”
“Marcus.” Not Flint. Marcus comes closer than he has to. Marcus props a hand against the wall on the side of Percy’s head.
“How are you doing?” Percy shrugs. “Enjoying yourself?”
“Well enough.” Percy leans his head back against the wall. Breathes out. The hand is so close. Marcus is broad, blocks so much of the room, almost hides Percy from it. He cannot think of anything to say. He cannot figure out what the question actually is. “Could I borrow a cigarette?”
Marcus grins. It is a little wolfish, Percy thinks, a bit like showing your teeth as a warning. “You wanna bum a fag, Weasley?”
“Shut up.”
He makes a gesture somewhere between a slap and a punch at Marcus’ upper arm. Lets the touch linger. Marcus shrugs, grabs him somewhere along the arm, leads the way. “Sure thing.”
The air is crisp. The sounds of the flat, muffled with magic, leak whenever the door opens. Percy leans on the railing again, but this time, Marcus stands in front of him. Not by his side. They pass the cigarette back and forth and Percy sinks deeper for each drag, his body softer, his legs on either side of Marcus’ firmly planted feet until he is towered over. He asks about quidditch, genuinely this time, not as a courtesy. Marcus explains, without any of the snark and wit the same responses would have been steeped in, had they come from Percy’s siblings.
“You don’t really care about any of that, though, do you?”
“It’s interesting enough. You talk about it differently. It’s different when it’s not… them.”
Percy suck on the cigarette. He is still too drunk and unleashed to mould the words needed but there is something about the taste of tar and its proximity to his lungs that is quite thrilling. “Different,” Marcus says, after a moment’s pause. Percy’s mind is rushing with how quickly he is getting used to, addicted to, the eyes reading his body. “I think I figured something out.”
He is so confident now. Percy has never felt so confident. It is as if all the blur of the drunk has washed off of him, leaving only the confidence, perhaps some of the clarity of purpose. His fingers wander, brushing over the robes draping along Marcus side, seeking to further smudge the distinction between their spaces. “What? About me?”
“Merlin, Percy, I got other stuff to think about. But yeah. About you.”
“What about me?”
Marcus hovers over him and that body once more seems to protect him from the world. Precise but thick fingers pluck the cigarette from Percy’s lips. Before he speaks, he finishes the cigarette, stubs it on the sole of his shoe and puts a hand next to Percy’s body leaning on the railing to support himself as he does it.
Percy shivers.
“What do you think?”