On a Mad Axis

When the twins were six, Fred fell off of Bill's (nicked) broom from an ungodly height and broke his left arm in three places. Before Fred could even let out a holler, George came bolting, bare-arsed and dripping wet, out of the pond, his face pale and sickly as though he'd felt everything himself.

Percy had been watching from the window, mere seconds from reporting the shenanigans to Mum, when it happened. He stood dumbly and stared as Fred wailed savagely, screeching and batting every hand away from him but George's.

It took a full ten minutes before George's whispers coaxed Fred to his feet. Percy studied their faces, so similar in features and expression, and realised, maybe for the first time, that no matter how many other people were speaking, it was just background noise. They only heard each other.

Back upstairs, Percy closed the curtains and laid atop his neatly-made bed, watching the ceiling swim.

_______________


Percy was sixteen when he finally discovered that somebody could hear him, too.

Penny was sharp and witty and wicked. She taught him a charm to Transfigure the dreary dinner tea into the best coffee he'd ever had. She could edit his Potions essays with one hand and jerk him off with the other, never missing a beat of either task. She had hair like a tornado: dark and wild with the power to suck him in and spin him out of his shoes.

In short, she was perfect.

And then, in the spring of his seventh year, she was gone. Just like that. Let's stay friends, she'd said. Please?

But Percy was never good at friends.

At night, he would crawl under his sheets and press one hand over his heart, trying to detect a change in the rhythm. He felt foolish, but he was sure that he would find one. It wasn't possible for something to hurt so badly and not manifest itself somehow, was it?

Was it?

_______________


"It's her tits, isn't it?" Fred said, sprawling out on his back in the grass. "You miss her tits."

Percy's face fell into something between a gape and a scowl, and George snorted. "Insensitive twat," he said, plopping down beside Fred. He turned a sympathetic gaze up at his older brother. "Sorry, Perce. Fred doesn't quite understand the nuances of romantic relationships just yet. His only one's been with his right hand. Besides," he added, shoving his own hand into his pocket and rummaging around. "It's her mouth, innit? Pretty lips, that one. Bet they looked fabulous wrapped around your…"

Percy turned on his heel and started to stalk off towards the castle. This had been a terrible idea. He didn't know what in Merlin's name had made him think that anything his twin brothers came up with could possibly be helpful. This whole situation was, apparently, driving him 'round the bend. Bloody women.

He only got a few steps away, however, before a strong hand closed around his ankle. He turned to see George flat on his stomach grinning up at him, his eyes imploring. "Sorry, sorry… I know, Perce. C'mon. We didn't mean it; we were just taking the piss. Come sit down."

Percy shook his head. "I'm quite finished."

George tugged harder. "Just come sit. I promise you'll like it." He jerked his chin backwards over his shoulder at Fred, who licked one finger to seal up a rolling paper and grinned back.

Percy looked back and forth between them for a moment. Both sets of identical eyes were focused on him. They were looking at him. Someone was bloody looking at him. Two someones. These someones. "Fine," he said, "fine," and sighed, half with defeat and half with relief.

_______________


Percy did like it. He hadn't expected to. He still wasn't sure why, precisely, he had agreed to this – loneliness, desperation, some tiny seed of rebellion Penny had planted under his tongue before she left, maybe – but it didn't seem so awful.

He sat cross-legged on George's spread-out t-shirt and watched the smoke curl out of Fred's mouth, languid and lazy, into the air. It made his features blurry and soft when it drifted around his face, and Percy thought, briefly, that he had never seen the two of them look so different: George in sharp relief, clear against the line of trees behind him, and Fred lost in a funny cloud. Percy snickered.

"What?" Fred asked, smiling sleepily and blowing one last wisp between his lips before passing the joint Percy's way.

Percy took it and sucked on it for a moment, his lungs still feeling tight. He fought back to urge to cough. "You're… all fuzzy," he said at last, cupping his slender palm underneath the glowing end to catch the ash.

Fred laughed. "Get a load of him," he said to George, who was grinning so widely it nearly split his face in half.

To Percy, George said, "Fuzzy, yeah? In't he? You should see him under the shirt."

"Reckon I look just like you," Fred snorted back.

Percy gazed back and forth between them for a few moments, a strange, syrupy laughter bubbling up in his belly, before he opened his mouth and let it out. He rocked forward and almost dropped the joint into the grass, but George leaned in at the last second and rescued it.

"Gimme," Fred said, reaching out a hand.

"C'mere," George answered. "Too far. Too lazy."

They met in the middle, George breathing out and Fred breathing in, the smoke drifting between their open, smiling mouths, and then it was like they forgot he was there. They got closer and closer and closer and then they were touching, and they were laughing into each other's throats, and George was pulling grass out of the ground with his fists and Fred had his palm flat against George's bare chest and they were…. they were…

Percy closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to see through the haze over his brain, but when he opened them, they were still there. Closer. They looked like they were whispering, like they were telling secrets, and then things started poking at the back of Percy's eyes, sharp and hard, making them water, and he wanted to get up and run, but he couldn't really move. He was stuck. And nobody was looking anymore; nobody was hearing anymore, and the world was just thick and weird and he didn't feel better anymore, and he had a History of Magic exam tomorrow, and the sky was a funny colour, not pretty anymore, the clouds were sort of like Penny's hair, and…

Then there was George's hand, grass-stained and dirty, reaching sideways for something.

Percy sat dumbly, his eyes still prickling, as George's fingers curled into a beckon, and it took him longer than it should have to realise that it was meant for him. "What?" he said. "What? You…"

Fred and George's mouths came apart with a wet sound, and George turned to look at him, his eyes hooded and soft-looking, his mouth all red and shiny. "'Sokay, Perce. C'mon. Bet you ten Galleons 's better than Penny."

Fred smiled, gripping the waist of George's trousers. "Bet you twenty," he said.

"Thirty," George grinned.

"Forty."

Percy stared, his hand curled into a fist in his lap, his head muddy and slow, and then they were both coming towards him, crawling like a couple of cats or something, and then Fred was on his right and George was on his left, and their breath was warm and they smelled like sex and then Fred licked a spot under his eye and whispered salt into his ear, and then there was his tongue where his words had been, and George was all the sudden in his lap, and George was hard, and they were both smiling and listening and seeing, and….

_______________


"Prettier than Penny," Fred said, his teeth sinking down into the joint between Percy's neck and shoulder. "Open your eyes. Look at him."

Percy blinked his heavy eyelids and stared down between his legs, where George was crouched. George's mouth was hot, almost too hot, slippery, full of friction and suck and it was too much, his tongue sliding under Percy's foreskin and licking circles, his cheeks pulled in and his hair all sweaty and mussed, and…

Fred's voice was loud in Percy's ear, even though Percy could tell it was a whisper. "He'll swallow for you, too. Bet she didn't do that. Watch, yeah? But you have to warn him. Right? Be a good Head Boy and mind your manners. Tell him when."

Percy heard himself make a noise he didn't recognise, something whimpery and stupid, and he wanted to stop, but he couldn't. His hips just moved on their own, and Fred's mouth was covering his ear, and Percy could feel it coming, felt it starting somewhere in his belly, and how did Fred know?

"Tell him," he hissed again. "Be nice."

Percy felt George laugh around his cock – he must have heard Fred – and he felt his own muscles tighten, and he felt Fred's breath again when the words toppled over themselves into his ear. "Tell George before you fucking come."

"I…"

"Say it!"

"Now," Percy said, and his voice was garbled and high and then there it was, the world shattering into shards of nothing, and his pulse everywhere, and his heart – he could feel it now, all of its broken beats – just going haywire, wanting out.

______________


George did swallow. All of it. And licked his lips and wiped his wrist across them and grinned.

Percy saw all of it through eyes that just wouldn't stay shut, no matter how hard he tried.

And then George was wrapped around Fred's leg, grinding himself against Fred's shin as he sucked him into his mouth all the way. He took every last inch of Fred – and there was plenty, Percy noted, a lot of him – into his mouth like it was easy. Like they'd done this before.

And Percy watched. He couldn't help himself. His head was heavy and spinning, a mad planet on a mad axis, and he was caught up in their strange gravity. Fred's hands in George's hair, petting him and moving it out of his eyes, tucking it behind his ears. George rutting against whatever was in front of him – Fred's leg, his own palm, the air.

Fred didn't warn him. Fred wasn't polite. He just came, quick and loud, his knees buckling, into a pile with George in the grass. And they kissed. Messy, Percy noted. Messy, drippy, sloppy, all over their chins.

_______________


"Your turn." George reached out for Percy's hand with his own. It was sticky, but gentle, and it closed around Percy's wrist.

George was hard, his cock up against his belly, his knees dirty.

Percy was still for a moment, then he shook his head. "No," he said. "You." He nodded his head in Fred's direction. He didn't trust himself to move, or to think, or to do anything.

Fred smiled, and in the funny light he looked like he was glowing. "Hear that Georgie?" His voice was thick and blissed-out, happy. "He wants to watch."

"No." George's tone had suddenly gone sharp. It broke through the clouds around Percy's head, and he watched George's face turn hard. "I want him."

Fred's expression changed to match, and then they were staring at each other with eyes Percy had never seen on either of them before. It only lasted a split second, and then something clicked into place in George's head. "No," he said suddenly, and he dropped Percy's hand, grabbing Fred's in between both of his own. "Not like that. But he has to do it. Then he can’t tell anyone. Then he did it, too."

______________


Fred's arm snaked around Percy's head and took his glasses off. The world melted together in front of his face: the pale skin of George's stomach, the ginger of his hair, the grey shadow under his hipbone.

"See?" Fred murmured, reaching over Percy's shoulder to take hold of George's cock. "You don't need her." He pressed a kiss against Percy's neck, then tilted Percy's chin up until his lips met the head of George's cock. "I told you. So much better. Now you're going to make Georgie come, yeah? See? You're just like us. Aren't you?"

Percy opened his mouth, then he opened his eyes, and they were both looking right past him. All they saw was each other.