Word Count: 505
Draco stands at the window, his robe hanging off his right shoulder. His skin is milky in the pale moonlight, and Percy can't seem to look away.
"Do you ever feel like we're just killing the loneliness?" Draco asks, pulling a cigarette from his robe pocket and tucking it between his lips.
Percy laughs. "I thought that's exactly what we were doing."
After the war, they had found one another. Both had been broken and desperate and lonely, and it had been so easy to end up like this. Night after night, Draco finds his way into Percy's flat. Sometimes they just drink until the alcohol numbs the pain. Other times, they fall into bed together, and they disappear beneath the sheets in a tangle of sweat-slick limbs.
But it isn't love. Not really. Not for Percy.
They are both hurting, and they don't know how to heal on their own.
Draco laughs, exhaling a cloud of smoke. Outside, beyond the glass, lighting flashes, illuminating the sky. "Don't spare my feelings, Weasley," he says, and maybe he means for it to sound teasing, like he's making a joke and everything is normal. Instead, his voice is dry, bitterness lacing each syllable.
"I don't want to fall in love with you," Percy says.
Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes Draco is a warm body, and that is what he needs. Those nights, it's next to impossible not to say those words and make everything fall apart.
"Love isn't just an excuse to get hurt," Draco says quietly. There's another flash of lightning. He turns, and there's something in his expression that makes Percy shiver. "You're clever. Surely you know that."
Percy shakes his head. Cleverness has done nothing for him. It hadn't been enough to save his brother. It hadn't been enough to save himself from the nightmares that followed the war.
"Are you trying to tell me that you love me?" Percy asks, and his words tremble. He wishes he could be stronger.
Draco laughs and puts out the cigarette. When he turns, he smiles, but he still looks so dead inside, so broken. Percy knows that expression all too well; he sees it every time he looks in the mirror. "Hardly," he says. "But maybe I'm not opposed to the possibility of it."
Percy knows he should end this now. Nothing good can come of letting himself get close to Draco. He needs to run, to push the younger man away, but he can't. Deep down, Percy wants to be fixed. He's tired of being so damaged. Loving Draco won't make everything better again, and it won't bring Fred back. Still, these nights with Draco are all he has to look forward to anymore. They are the faintest hint of happiness beneath the pain.
"Come back to bed," Percy tells him. "We can talk about it in the morning."
Draco never stays the night, but Percy has a feeling that tonight will be different. Something is changing, and Percy doesn't think that it's a bad thing.