"C'mon, don't tell me you're scared."
"This is a disastrous idea: it's below freezing, the last time I checked a clock it was after one in the morning, this isn't even our hotel, and it is the dead of winter."
Pansy continued to unbutton her silk blouse, her black bolero jacket and black fur coat already cast aside to one of the folded sunning chairs. A few snowflakes broke free of their perch in a crevice of an umbrella, folded, and covered in a shiny clear plastic. Her shoes clicked more noisily than she'd expected as she tried to kick them off at the same time. She laughed at her lack of grace, and hoped she looked as much of a mess as she felt, because she was having the time of her life.
"Are you just going to stand there, or what?" she taunted, pausing in her near fruitless efforts with the small pearl buttons. With one heel off, her hip pushed out much more dramatically, and she was rewarded with a hint of a smile and tilt of a head.
Percy folded his arms across his chest and regarded his coworker with ill-disguised humor, and a hint of concern. "I've no need for hypothermia. One of us needs to be the sane one."
"You mean the boring one," she said, resuming her efforts to disrobe to her underwear for a unadvised dip in the unheated pool she'd uncovered on the rooftop. "All straight laces, and how-do-you-do, ma'ams, and politically correct conversations. I'm going to have some fun."
Once the cups of her rose bra started to show beneath her fumbling hands, she felt warm gloved fingers cover her own, and much warmer breath on the side of her neck.
"Here," Percy whispered, using the hand not stilling her own to steady her at her waist, "allow me."
He turned her, like a soundless waltz, so she was facing the pool and he was at her back. The low lights beneath the surface cast stripes of light over her so the black of her party clothes were washed into a blue hue. The wide buttons on Percy's woolen coat pressed little knobs of cold into her back, forcing the silk against her spine. Even more than the chill wind coiling around her ankles and exposed knees, the press of her once-superior sent her shivering.
Much quicker than her frozen fingers could manage, Percy unbuttoned her blouse, and loosened the clasps of her skirt, before removing his warm frame from hers to pick at his own buttons. An eyebrow disappeared beneath her fringe as she peered at him over her shoulder. The blouse and skirt fell as one when she relaxed her limbs. By the time her other shoe was off, the blush in her cheeks was more than the sign of how much wine she'd drunk, and she found drinking in the long lines of light skin covered in stars much more quenching.
She forgot the way her father had glared at her when she'd run into him and her mother at the Ministry banquet held to thank their department's contributors. She forgot the way her mother sniffed disdainfully at the way she was dressed, more business than party. All that mattered was that the man, who after the first of the year would no longer be her boss, was stripping out of his suit to just his undershirt and boxers, waiting at the edge of the pool barefoot to take her hand. Percy Weasley, who never had a collar unpressed or shoe unshined, waited for her like the gentleman he was.
She recalled, through the haze of wine and cold, the moment his eyes narrowed at her in a silent question of do you need to leave? An unspoken code bred into outcasts to read when solitude was necessary for sanity.
But there was no one else who came close to feeling like sanity than he did.
His posture was the same, his hand outstretched towards her, even if his expression was the opposite. He had deftly guided her away from her parents and the ever-present press with their nasty, forward questions, asking the two accomplished Ministry workers about a war years in the past and things they couldn't change now.
"Ready to plunge in?" he asked, holding her at arm's length so they wouldn't risk knocking into each other once in the frigid water.
Without hesitation, she smirked at her almost-lover and pulled him in with her underwater, the rush of cold forcing the air from their lungs and their bodies to rush towards each other. Bobbing above the surface, Pansy used one hand to grab for the side of the tile pool for balance, her legs wrapped around Percy to keep him afloat.
August 22nd, 2016 - Requested by turbulenthandholding on tumblr, a songfic based on Halsey's "Roman Holiday". And a very happy birthday to Percy Weasley.