Oliver isn't a soft boy.
He has never been.
Oliver is undivided focus and burning passions.
Oliver doesn't care about much, besides quidditch.
At his Sorting ceremony he interrupted the hat twice.
The first time was to ask in which house the keeper was a seventh year (the answer was Gryffindor).
The second one was to rebuke his apparent propension for Slytherin, shaped by his ambition and his undivided focus.
The hat was relentless but Oliver was even worse, so he became a Gryffindor and he adapted (like any good snake would).
Oliver isn't a courageous boy, not really, but by his second year he had quidditch and by his fourth year, after Charlie Weasley's graduation, he became captain so he didn't really care (not even when his teammates called him a maniac, not even when he didn't win).
Oliver only ever cared about quidditch, so it was alright.
Percy Weasley was his only roommate and, despite all odds, they became friends (but not really, because Percy is as driven and as ambitious as he is, a snake hidden in a family of lions and the two of them are a match made in hell).
Oliver didn't care about much but quidditch and, after a while, Marcus Flint.
Flint who is his nemesis, Flint who plays in offense while he plays defense, Flint who could have been his teammate, maybe even his captain, if he hadn't argued with the sorting hat.
Flint, who isn't a beauty, not by any traditional standard, but whose beads of sweat Oliver would like to lick and whose thin lips make Oliver think about things that he would really like to keep private.
Oliver is devious and focused and he always knew that he wanted quidditch.
By his fourth year he discovers that capitancy and the Quidditch cup aren't enough, they will never be, because he wants more, he wants Flint's pale skin against his own and the other boy's too big hands all over his body.
He never anticipated wanting something else beside a broom between his legs and his rings to protect, but it happened.
So, like any good snake, he plans.
By his fifth year he is almost convinced it's a pipe dream, because Flint is a tough nut to crack and the boy's only love seems to be quidditch, just like it was for Oliver growing up.
During their sixth year Marcus ' eyes change and become hungry, almost predatory while following him both in and out of the pitch.
Just before the start of their seventh year he discovers they are meant to be (and he never really cared about the markings because he already knew what and who he wanted before they appeared but they feel like a confirmation, somehow).
He doesn't do much, just a passing glance there and there, just a handshake that lingers a moment more than necessary but it works to assure Marcus attention.
When Marcus kisses him for the first time, with too much force, with too much teeth, he discovers that, if the hat didn't let people (at least partially) choose their own houses, he still wouldn't have been in Marcus' team.
Marcus kisses him and then they are seventeen and in love and everything is beautiful, if they don't think about the future. The future that for Oliver is sweet with promises, the future that for Marcus has already been written with the too-thick blood that flows in his veins: a job at the Ministry, a pretty, high-standing, bored pureblood wife and a life fighting with Malfoy to decide which one of them will end up to have claim over the Black's fortune (if one goes to it by blood it should be Marcus, but he doesn't know jack shit about that part of his family, while Mrs Malfoy educated Draco to its ways since he came out of her womb).
It's jarring to hold the Quidditch cup and to know that the robes he bears should be green and silver and not red and gold (it's even more strange to think that Marcus would be more suited for red and gold than him).
Anyway Marcus is a Lion who wears snakeskin to defend himself from the world and Oliver is a snake that feigns himself a lion to ponce when his adversary least expects him to.
In a way, they are a perfect match.
Oliver is a snake and he knows how to wait in the dark, while Marcus is a lion who hates inaction and he is the one, in the end, that seals their fates, kissing him in public for the first time.
Oliver doesn't really care, not when Marcus is soft where he is all sharp angles and sweet when he really isn't.
But Marcus needs softness sometimes and Oliver gives him the only corner of his soul that isn't made of sharp focus and overwhelming ambition. The only parts of him that can give something to the world instead of taking anything and everything are for Marcus and Marcus alone. Because Ollie loves him and also because Marcus has more ghosts than what Oliver can even imagine and, sometimes, he would like to really be a Gryffindor and just blaze out the Flint Manor's entrance and Drag the battered body of Marcus Flint Senior down the stars to shove him at HIS Marcus feet, showing him that the man is nothing more than flesh and bones, that he doesn't need to fear him, not now, not ever again.
Marcus has ghosts and he exorcizes them puring love in everything he does, from cooking to gardening to playing quidditch.
Marcus has ghosts, some of them terrifying, some of them melancholic.
The strangest part of it is that the ghost that hurts him the most is also the one he would never let anyone exorcize.
Lucretia Flint is a creature made of smoke and painful memories and Oliver would like to burn every memory of her from his lover's brain, to stop his sufferings, but he knows that Marcus would never let him.
Marcus is brave, just like any true lion should be, and he doesn't care if it hurts to love the shadow of his sister, because he thinks that having loved and lost her is somehow better than having not loved her at all. Oliver admires his courage, but he doesn't really understand it, he never will (but maybe he already does, because he can't imagine his life without ever having met Marcus, not now, not ever).
He and Marcus move in together after graduation and it's wonderful and strange and difficult but they are living their shared dream and he is happier than he has ever been.
He knows that for Marcus it's different.
Marcus loves him, that's true (Oliver's name imprinted on his ribs, in between his sternum and his armpit, like a token of love or like an oath).
Marcus loves his job, his new position as first reserve chaser for the Falmouth Falcons.
Marcus loves the life they are building together, but even knowing that Oliver can't ignore the dark shadow that crosses his eyes every time one of his mother's Howlers grace the window of their apartment. He can't ignore the fact that his post is always heavy with gifts and praises and love and Marcus’ is, at best, made up of a missive from Adrian Pucey and the daily prophet (if one doesn't count those hateful, hateful red envelopes his mother still sends him).
Once, in one of Angelina's letters he reads that her boyfriend and his brother told Harry that :
"Wood might have done the Slytherins if he could have"
They don't really know how much those words are true so he sends them a photo of him and Marcus making out and he receives a howler with their sketches (he and Marcus laugh about it for weeks). He doesn't even remember the last time he felt that carefree, but it isn't strange, not given the times.
He can't relax, not really, not anymore. He needs to be careful. He is a halfblood, an halfblood in a very public homosexual relationship to boot, a relationship that turned one of the most prominent Heirs to not one, but two Lordships into a blood-traitor. He needs to be careful because his mom is a muggle born and Alder, his brother, is a freak of nature, an abomination, being a Squib (not that he thinks any of those hatefulwords to be true, but the public opinion is changing, and he is afraid).
He is twenty-one when the world becomes a too-dangerous place for his family and they go into hiding.
Oliver feels lost, but he has Marcus and he has his job and everything is perfect, still (maybe, if he repeats it enough times he will start to believe it). In the end, the truth is that he never felt more alone.
Then Marcus discovers that the ghost who has been haunting him for eighteen years is never gonna come back in the form of his sister and his lover's heart is utterly broken. Oliver never really understood Marcus’ childish hope of a happy ending for Lucretia's tale, but then again he isn't good at this sort of thing. Oliver never really understood Marcus' blind belief that he would see her again, but he knows pain and he knows that his lover is not in any kind of shape to face the war that is taking shape just over the horizon of their lives.
They go away and they are happy in France (if one can call happiness knowing that their friends are dying just over the Channel, if one can call happiness not knowing who is still there and who is gone forever).
Then, not even a year later, the war is over and everything goes back to normal, more or less (but it isn't true).
When he discovers of Fred's death he cries. It's quite out of character for him, but Fred was his friend, his teammate.
The twins were also the only people, beside Percy, who really understood him in school, being just like him, snakes who feigned being lions not to disappoint their family (their motifs were probably more noble than his, but in the ends it's all the same, because they all were snakes in lions’ pelts and Fred is dead, he would be dead even if they all made different choices).
Even then, he needs to be the strong one because he may have lost one of his best friends, but Marcus has lost everything.
His mother dead and buried, not even a letter left for him to believe she had forgiven him (and Marcus knows, he KNOWS, she was an horrible being, but she was his mother and he loved her).
His father thrown into Azkaban and, even if Marcus always hated the man, he can't forget the way in which both of them loved Lucretia, who is long gone, but that still ties them together in death as she did when she was alive.
Sometimes they write to each other. Oliver doesn't know the content of those letters, but Marcus seems a little lighter, afterwards, so maybe it's okay.
They live together and it isn't always easy because they are both stubborn and hot-headed and ambitious, but they love each other and they make it work.
Then, in no time at all, seven years pass and the war is, more or less, just an old memory, just like Fred, just like Marcus’ parents, just like Lucretia.
He and Marcus are still together, still happy and about to start the process to adopt a little bairn or two of their own.
Then their carefully ordained lives are destroyed.
When the Ministry howls them about the discovery of Lucretia Flint, still alive, still eighteen, under the dark like she allegedly died into, Marcus crumbles.
All his dreams are coming to life in the worst possible ways, because Lucretia is alive, but just barely, and they don't know if she'll ever wake up.
When she wakes up (and Oliver never really doubted it, because if she is anything like Marcus she is stubborn as a mule and twice as resistant) she is just an eighteen year old girl, an eighteen year old girl Oliver knows, in a way, and it's only more strange.
Lucretia is the farthest thing from what he imagined from Marcus's tales and at the same time she isn't.
Lucretia is like him, in a way, and like Marcus too.
Lucretia is sharp angles and bitterness and an overwhelming longing for love, all wrapped in one person.
Lucretia is Marcus, just more jaded, more broken, more constricted in a mold that gave her a shape she could never call her own.
Lucretia is a creature made of broken dreams and shattered hopes, forever stuck between the past and the present, unable to call either of them home.
Lucretia is a girl and she is a ghost and she is still trying to mend the broken pieces of herself back together.
Even then, she makes his Marcus happy, happier than he has ever seen him.
For Oliver is enough to make her a wonderful being.