Hoping Victory (Percy/Charlie, Percy/Bill, NC-17) by Alisa for Samantha

Title: Hoping Victory
Author: Alisa (prurient_badger)
Email: kill_the_weed @ hotmail.com
Pairing: Percy/Charlie, Percy/Bill
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incest
Notes: This is for Samantha.



Percy is 3 years and 77 days old. He has a chart in his room that tells him so. The chart says it’s St. Valentine’s day today too. Mum says they get presents to celebrate. 1 present, 1 person, Mum says. Mum said that 4 days ago, Percy thinks as he bounces off a wall and into the living room. 4, 3, 2, 1. Charlie’s holding out his arms, and Percy goes to dive into them…and checks. Charlie gestures with the toy again, and Percy looks around. Then he turns and runs.

The next day Mum gives him a tiny cauldron, but it’s not the same. 1 person, 1 present. 1 Percy, 1 nothing.

He doesn’t understand.

~~~~~~

Rebellion: a Weasley watchword.

His father’s obsession with all things muggle.

Bill’s earring.

Charlie’s ridiculously dangerous job.

The twin’s joke shop.

Ron’s relentless search for danger round every corner.

Ginny’s gender.

Percy’s…Percy’s nothing.

~~~~~~

The first time Percy tries his hand at ‘potion making’, pouring water and food colouring into his tiny cauldron, the bottom disintegrates.

As he scrubs conscientiously at the floor Charlie whirls past, tiny dragon thrumming in his hands.

~~~~~~

Percy’s rebellion explodes behind closed doors, hands tight around slick flesh, forbidden words trembling on bitten lips. Eyes squeezed into blinding white, fractured sunlight cutting through his veins, witch’s broom beneath him as he soars…

~~~~~~

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
thud of a shoulder against his knocks the numbers from his head, melting into the ground.

Will you play with me?

Percy stares and counts. Words are just air. Numbers are air.

1 retreating back.

~~~~~~

Bill comes home from school and Percy tries to count him. 1…1…

Words are just air, but so is a tornado.

~~~~~~

3 breaths, half a step forward, 1 cough, 5 heartbeats counting Bill’s freckles.

Charlie is light and heat and noise, unrefined Bill. Who wouldn’t find their copy intoxicating?

73 tears.

~~~~~~

When he jumps from the lip of his mind, words tear at him as he falls.

Incest

Perverse

Failure

Brother

It is numbers that nail him back to his skull, spreadeagled between the eyes. Pin his feet to the roots of the world: grafted life.

Infinity is his Messiah/Lucifer, nadir and zenith not-number. Like Bill. The hand that holds the hammer.

~~~~~~

Pin-head Percy, Pompous Percy, Priggish, Prudish Percy. He knows what they say about him. And it’s all true, in a sense. But…
back arched against sheets starched so crisply they crackle. Thumb pressing into his eye, needle-filled replica of the fire in his groin. Darkness that swirls and sparkles rainbows when he comes, biting hard on his lip as he’s seen Bill do. Trembling confusion at the budding something in his chest that cannot be defined by numbers. Sleeping sprawled, dried semen flaking from his thighs, body twisted to accommodate an invisible presence.
…he wishes Mum had given him a less mockable name.

~~~~~~

7 children. A magical number, Molly told her friends when she was pregnant. Again. 3 pairs and an extra. Spare in case of emergencies. The 7th child, vessel of a family’s vice.

Spokesperson: an advocate who represents some else’s policy or purpose.

Magical for who?

~~~~~~

When the water lilies burst and spread their pustular waste over the puddle of a pond, Bill comes home. 6 weeks. 42 days of counting freckles behind doors. Bill arrives, trailing his fiery comet’s tail. Charlie smiles at Percy, and leans to hiss sibilantly in Bill’s ear, tongue flickering out to trace the line of an earlobe. And Bill smiles.

Percy, the 3-year-old reborn, turns and runs.

He drops to his knees beside the lily pond, pushing at the broad leaves roughly, breaking the leaves in his need. But the water reflects nothing he wants to see. He is not interesting viewing. He stares, willing his features to change; a little thicker, a little older, a lot more exciting. He stares until tears crash into his eyes, shattering the unwanted face beneath him, leaving nothing but darkness behind the eyes.

When the ball smashes into the pool, Percy can’t hear it. Red speck engulfed by liquid cruelty. And he doesn’t hear the words, Come and play with us, only sees Charlie’s smile. Percy, who read by numbers, feels smiles unravel in his grasp like thread, leaving only their mocking remains.

The only way to deal with a snake-in-the-grass is to cut off it’s head.

The water darkness snarls in his blood as he reaches for Charlie’s throat.

~~~~~~

He spends the next 2 days in his room. It was meant to be 4, but Mum can’t see past the red hair and light eyes. He hears her talking to his father, words rolling between hollow household sounds. Lucky Bill was there…6 stitches…vicious…2…4…lucky Bill was…

Charlie’s scratches are long healed, but there is still skin under Percy’s fingernails. This is what comforts him when he remembers it was Bill who gave him the bruised he can still feel under the magic that coats his flesh like oil.

~~~~~~

Years crawl by in a bitter blur.

CharlieandBill

By the time Percy goes to school they are paired irrevocably.

BillandCharlie

Percy retreats, as always, into numerology. And maybe, just maybe, opposites attract.

(So) he busies himself in timetables and schedules and work, paper shell against the world. Creamy husk of a boy, skin of letters and numbers in his eyes.

~~~~~~

Jagged shards of bone rising triumphantly out of their fleshy cave, full lips bitten to gristle and slices of ivory. Freckles branded, stink of burning winding through empty sockets. Blood cooling on the floor, staining the body as red as what remains of its hair.

~~~~~~

Bill finishes school and Percy’s heart shatters into 17 pieces.

~~~~~~

Black blood and sweet screams smooth over his tongue. Cracked bones oozing marrow onto his fingertips. Lift them to his mouth and suck…

Percy has these dreams often and wakes swooning and sweating and hungry. And when his hand tightens and jerks, he sucks milky fluid from his fingers and wishes it wasn’t his.

~~~~~~

When Charlie leaves school, Percy is ridiculously relieved. It means he won’t have to see Bill’s owl arriving with such monotonous regularity. He pretends they lost touch after school and now live separately, alone, never to see each other again. But the family grapevine has far-reaching roots, and when Charlie’s training takes him to Romania, where Bill is posted, Percy is the first to know.

~~~~~~

He doesn’t go home often. It’s deceptive; skews his perceptions. Candyfloss over the iron maiden. It’s easier to stay away. Pretend. He makes excuses at Christmas and takes holidays in the holidays. Molly’s letter rain on him until he flounders beneath their snowy weight. His hold slackens on his life lines (girlfriend, work, money, travel, work) and he drowns; cream filling his eyes, rendering him blessedly blind.

When he arrives at the Burrow he pushes past his mother and walks the 23 stairs to his room quickly and firmly. He crosses to the window and opens it, flooding fresh air into a stagnant cycle. Stands, face turned to the breeze, for a few minutes. Turns away, face disappointed. Whatever transformation he desires has not been wrought. But there is nothing unusual in that. Nothing.

~~~~~~

Red:

Bill’s hair
Charlie’s blood under his fingernails
Lipstick prints on two collars
Nail welts
Love bites
Anger

~~~~~~

Percy immerses himself in his mother, his sister, his other brothers. Tries to catch their unseeing eyes, absorb their deaf ears. Ginny welcome him into her arms, smothers him in feminine softness; abstract and strange. But there us no solace in her company, only frustration. How can she not see?

~~~~~~

Three days after he has come home, Percy dies. Blades of reality bite his skin, while ropes of disillusionment choke away the air he no longer needs.

Percy has forgotten how to breathe.

The beast with two backs sucks all the oxygen from the room, leaving him to die softly on poisonous fumes.

Home is where the (bleeding, broken) heart is.

~~~~~~

Percy dreams:

Heat. Above him, below him, in him; sparking and flaming in burning coils. Mouth desert-dry, breath rasping, hands clawing at blistering hips. Gasps and moans mingle in a pillar of fire that speaks to him in letters of lust. Bill rocks in him, pushing a heated sigh from over-heated lips: this is just how he imagined it. Then he remembers, reaches up a hand to touch his face. And he is not Charlie.

~~~~~~

Four days after he has come home, Percy dies. Blades of iron bite his skin while ropes choke away the air he no longer needs.

~~~~~~

It is Charlie who finds him, and Charlie who stands and stares. But it is Bill who cuts him down, lies lilies, the flower of death, on the dark wood; 33 nails in the coffin.

He wants no ghosts.