Quill and Ink

It started like this:

Percy was brushing a quill against his lips absently, a quiet swish swish. Oliver watched him from across the room, saw the absolute concentration and the tawny freckles that trickled down under his crisp shirt collar. It gave him ideas, that quill, ideas about a pale body covered in ink, staining that boy’s pristine sheets.

It started like this, with solemn eroticism, that boy’s thin lips open just so, a small O.

And then came the dreams, vivid curling images of translucent skin and jutting bone. Oliver’s eyes snapped open and he found himself tensed like he was waiting for the Quaffle to sail into his goals, like he had to keep watching or something very bad would happen.

Oliver kept watching. He saw Percy bent over a library table, tie perfectly dimpled, working an Arithmancy problem with a second-year. He saw Percy wipe disappointment from his dark eyes when he handed the twins another detention notice. Mostly, he saw Percy step out of his robe and clothes at night, and the way the lamplight picked out the strands of gold in the boy’s auburn hair. Mostly, he saw the freckles trail down that boy’s fragile spine when he turned his back.

It reminded Oliver of a game, a silly Wizarding children’s game. Connect the dots, pull wavy ink lines from one spot to another. Watch the design take shape until it floats off the parchment and becomes solid. A three-dimensional animal that frolics cheerfully.

Oliver found it embarrassing that his most private, most passionate thoughts involved bending over that boy’s slim form and tracing him like this, connecting him. But he wanted to see Percy take shape, to draw him out of the flat surface that everyone else saw. All this watching was no good if Oliver could not let Percy know that he saw the truth.

It started like this, a quill and the quiet. And then it started again, but with a gasp.

Oliver heard it from his bed and thought he was dreaming, but in his dreams there were no sounds. This was a sound, a jagged sound that lodged in Oliver’s mouth as if it had moved right from Percy’s throat to his. And so he did what he could; he moved to Percy.

The boy was clutching his knees, torso bare in the harsh moonlight. His gasps gathered in Oliver’s throat, and so he put out a hand to the boy, sluiced up the wetness from his deep blue eyes. Percy sniffed hurriedly, turning on his back to face Oliver’s gaze.

The boy watched Oliver’s fingers slip down his shoulder, onto the ridge of collarbone. He watched each freckle raise with the gentle touch and felt each muscle tense as the fingers dipped their way down. He raised a palm to Oliver’s face, and breath left him as the brown eyes met his, as the fingers curled warmly around him.

Oliver watched all this and knew that nothing bad would ever happen again. He could see the beginnings of wavy golden lines across Percy’s cheek and neck and chest and stomach. He could see Percy’s gasps fail him, and so he leaned forward to give them back, to give back the sobs lodged in his mouth.

It started again like this, with sound and skin.

When Oliver’s eyes snapped open, he was relaxed, tangled with a gently smiling boy. The sheets were soaked in ink.