Standard disclaimer.
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The problem, as Harry sees it, is he simply wasn't prepared. Which, now he's home from pub (two whole hours and several drinks after she left, mind), seems quite stupid, considering. Like for years living on the edge of a mountain- a rumbling, ash-belching mountain- and still being surprised when the lava flow comes.
And he had been surprised tonight- all night- in quick succession. Surprised first to see her there at all. Surprised she was four shades paler than everyone else, glowing close to fluorescent in the sunlight slanting through the courtyard. Surprised by her bare shoulders, and her lips- her Hermione "May I Have A Glass For That" Granger lips- pursed against the mouth of her beer(!) bottle.
He'd been utterly unprepared for the sudden (and apparently rampant) interest in centaur ancestral land laws. Unprepared for the fifth, then sixth (then seventh...bloody...) bloke to squeeze her bare shoulders and kiss their congratulations to both her cheeks. And as the sun set (after an evening of his hand resting on the patio rail near the curve of her back and her hip brushing his every few seconds), when, mid-conversation with Todd From Her Office, she looked up at him, smiled and said "I'm sorry, I'm crowding you," then shifted away, he was unprepared to feel the weight of her gone (open veins, cut strings).
And so this is how it begins- Harry waking, still sauced, with one arse cheek sopping and a lager burp in his throat. It's not glamourous, nor romantic, but then, he thinks, neither is she. Still, if he's going to dream about her, she deserves better than this (a half-slid slumber on a damp settee), so he staggers down the hall (the un-spilled dregs of the bottle still sloshing in his grasp), trying to trap her form and the phantom press of her fingers behind half-closed eyes until he can bury his face in his pillow and properly pretend.
It's not glamourous, nor romantic. Not the second night, nor the third. And maybe this isn't the best way to unwind after pub, after all (flopped on the settee, drink sweating between his thighs, staring at the dim orange spark whirring through the wireless), but it seems to call her up out of the dark every time. Molten flow, foolproof. He lies back and closes his eyes, letting this song (his song for her) lick at the sore, red wound she's burned onto his heart.
…...
He vows to wait it out, vows to neatly fold her back into the same corner of his head where she belongs. Only every night there's some new thing. Night after night (and now the centaurs have thousands upon thousands of acres to roam, she practically lives on this patio), there's some fresh, positive stimuli kneading the edges of the ever-expanding ache. Like the fine hair curling damp at her temples, or the constant, rhythmic stroke of her thumb working the corner of the label away from her bottle, or the tiny tear-shaped gems dangling from her ears (lava red, like stray drips of strawberry jam he wants to suck from her skin).
Still, a vow's a vow (and the rest, he says, is just a passing fancy), so he holds off joining her on the patio. Holds off as she holds court (he says, but only ever to himself) in the late day sun. And it's almost easy most days, this space/distance tack he's put in place, with the rush of off-duty Aurors and the endless rounds and the barmaids' robes unbuttoned one button too low. Like floating in the ocean, far, far from the glowing rock steaming into the sea. It's easy (almost) most days.
(But the nights…)
After the sky goes violet, when he begins to count every creak of the hinge from the patio door… after each entering face that isn't hers is another barb on this thing tumbling around his gut... after he's jack hammered his knee into the table, thinking thinking thinking of how it is out there in the dark- the secrets people tell, the offers they make, the urges they indulge… after he's moved to the bar and begun to stare into his glass, because, it's finally happened, tonight's the night she didn't come find him... Always, after all this every night, she's suddenly beside him, stepped out of nowhere, with a quick one-armed clutch, a peck to his cheek, and her whisper- goodnight, be good, be careful- blowing up goosebumps, searing the oh-so-keen spot of flesh below his ear.
(And so it goes…)
The hottest day of the year, and she's a little late. He hears her before he sees her, recognises her laugh even as it blends with the bloke's whose hands hold the door. Harry looks up at the two of them, then back down, flicking through his bowl of nuts (trying to work out when he swallowed that pecan shell, or if it's some other jagged thing wedged in his throat) when he feels her touch- the warmth of her skin dissolving the snarl of gloom at the base of his neck- as she and the door holder walk on by.
After this, there's nothing for it. All his good intentions diffuse into the falling dusk, and, next he knows, he's out the door to the patio, finding a spot near her and settling in to stare everyone else away. One by one, the lot of 'em finally give up and drift off (goodbye, Todd), and then it's just him and her (fingers almost-not-quite touching) leaning against the patio rail. And he tries to look at her as she speaks, but the wet swell of her lower lip in the torchlight is just too much to bear and he can feel his eyes going wonky, and he's blinking and squinting, and she asks if he's all right, and then she kneels, digs through her bag and comes up with a tiny vial of headache potion, which makes him laugh, because what she's doing to him, there's no potion in any vial, anywhere that can cure it (and, damn his vow, but he doesn't want a cure, anyway). She presses her hand to his forehead, then, still muttering, slides her palm to his cheek, and (instead of bending down to catch her lower lip, soft, between his teeth) he says, "Simmer down, Hermione, I'm fine." So, she sighs and takes a step back, but not before her thumb strokes, gentle, across the curve of bone just under his glasses, and the feeling is hot and liquid, and there go his eyes, again.
Later, by the bar (when she's long gone, run off at the strike of ten), he'll hear the grumbling, the jabs under their breath. Hired muscle and cock blocker and not her fookin' father (he thought solicitors might be more eloquent), and he'll look a little smug (to complete the performance), all the time knowing he's just as powerless as they are (but still right chuffed they don't know it, yet.)
…....
Outside, it pisses it down, and Hermione is nowhere. Not at her desk, nor in the Ministry corridors, nor peering wistfully out the windows of the pub. Harry floos, but only gets Crookshanks go-away stare, and when he finally asks, the intern left behind pauses a full three seconds before spitting out, "They're abroad. I can't say anymore," then pushes the office door to, the whorl-patterned glass gently tapping the tip of his nose as it clicks shut.
Eight days later, the rain still slaps a rhythm on his windows. Harry ruminates in the dark. He swirls the bottom of his bottle against the settee and watches the whirring orange spark. He thinks on Hermione, her nights abroad. He thinks about her office mates, her 'peers'- young blokes with big brains and tidy hair who don't presume to commandeer her life or drag her into harm's way. He closes his eyes, thinks on safe distances and dwindling views. Of liquid rock and ash-poisoned air. He breathes out, tries to breathe in, tries to work out the moment when floating turned to smothering turned to drowning.
……..
Static on the wireless and a tremble behind his ribs. He opens his eyes. This body's been all his for a long time, now, and he trusts its stirrings, its twinges and yens. He blinks twice, licks his lips, then pushes himself from the settee. The empty bottle clinks to the floor, rolls before him, then hangs up on the fringe of the rug. He steps over it, tosses a pinch of floo powder into the fireplace, and sinks to his knees.
Light bends butter yellow around the corner from her kitchen, and instantly his insides are fizz. Through the crackling of the fire around him, he hears a soft tink, metal to metal (spoon to stovetop? fork to sink?), and then her hair is in silhouette, and she says, "Harry," as if she's been waiting for him all along.
It's late. He didn't realize, but he can see it now in the way she moves, the way he remembers from before. The same dead-of-night steps he'd watched dozens of times through the gap in the canvas. Don't-wake-Harry steps. And it could be tonight there's someone else she's not waking (the thought hooks in the meat of his shoulders), but he's already shown himself, now. Slipping away in silence is not an option. Neither is speaking once she stands in the firelight, a bundle of neutral hued wool and corduroy. He can only think, oh, Hermione, and then Hermione, again, because what she's wearing, the jumper, the skirt, the knee socks (porridge-greige and cabled), it's probably the least seductive ensemble Harry's ever seen, but something about the way she is inside it still fists hard around his throat, still knuckles the burnt spot on his heart.
"Are you all right?" She says. "Do you want to come through?" A thin coat of worry clings to the words, and, as all the other sitting rooms twist by, he tries to untangle the memories of the last late night appearance at her flat. The knot of mumbles and blurred colours. The sweet forest smell of the pillow he'd woken upon. His trainers paired at the edge of her settee the next morning, laces tucked, coiled, neatly inside.
She watches as he ducks from the fireplace, ash flaking off him in clumps, dropping onto the hearth, the rug. Her hands are lifted, ready to reach out, to help, and it's not until she's looked him all over (satisfied herself he's not bleeding, or concussed, or just well pissed and clutching yet another memento from his past life), that her face relaxes a bit and she steps back.
Fact is, he's a damn sad sight (all sleep creases and half-damp rumples), and he's just noticed the lager reek whiffing off his jeans. Fact is, he can't remember the last time he didn't show up a mess on her doorstep.
Maybe this is why she seems so stumped by her own empty hands. She regards them, still ready in mid-air, and for a second, Harry thinks if he'd just reach out and take them he could maybe pull her to him and explain what he's doing here. He could maybe say, I know how it looks, but this isn't like before. I woke up with this feeling and sort of stumbled toward where I knew you'd be. It's the truth, and he could say it, just like that. And she would say, Really? And he would say, Really. And then the snogging would begin, and next he'd know, he'd have all of her, every part, at the tip of his tongue. Her sweater would be hanging from one wrist and her skirt would be hitched up around her hips as he takes her, right over there, pressed to the wall between the painting of the bucolic, sheep-dotted landscape and the closet door, and no No NO- that's not what this is about...
Only, it's sort of exactly what this is about.
This desperate creature. This starved, nameless animal. He doesn't want her to see it like this, doesn't want her to count it's ribs. He attempts to cover it all with a smile, but, fact is, I WANT TO TOUCH YOU written in the sky would be less telling than the look in his eyes, right now.
She blinks, drags the tips of her teeth against her lip. She tilts her head toward the kitchen, says, "I was just pouring a cuppa...," then turns and pads off, leaves him to fumble for his wand. A quick Tergeo, and he's fresh as a daisy and following along, rounding the corner just as she's pulling a mug from the hooks beneath the cupboard. She blows a speck of dust from the handle, then reaches for a dish towel. "Pardon the mess, I've..."
"I know. You've been away." He steps close, pulls the mug from her hands, sets it on the counter. "Work."
She tucks a tea bag in, reaches for the water. "You checked up on me?" Steam rises from the mouth of the kettle as she pours, breathes a cloud over his glasses. He can't see, but it sounds like, maybe, just a little bit, she's pleased.
He raises an arm, smudges the fog on his lenses with the sleeve of his t-shirt. "Well, you'd carelessly abandoned your post on the patio, so..."
"Mm." She's a smear of peach nodding slowly. He hears her swallow, her throat working wet-slick against itself. Through a clear spot he can see her cup cradled gently in both hands, like a dove she's about to loose into the night. "'Twas cold in Tasmania. I missed that patio."
"You missed the blokes from the patio," he mutters, smiles. A joke. Just a joke.
She turns, flips the dish towel over his shoulder. She bumps him gently as she passes, says, "I missed one bloke from the patio," and then she's gone, turned the corner, trailing the faintest trace of chamomile and honey out of blurry sight.
It waylays his breath, this double time beat in his chest. A feeling like he's sprung a second heart, an extra vessel to help hold all this that keeps rising up inside.
He wipes his glasses with the towel (then re-bends them back to their proper shape), cleans up a minor mishap with the milk (damn, shaking hands), then wanders into the sitting room to find her on the floor, back against the settee, toes stretching for the fire.
A 'thinking' fire, this. Small flames built for watching, not warmth, the hisses and cracks just loud enough to make a room less empty. Harry steps over her legs and makes to sit beside her. The way they manage, Hermione offers her hand, holds his mug. He lowers himself down, then twines his arm beneath hers to take his tea. Motions so oft practiced her eyes never leave the flames.
Habit.
Muscle memory.
How easy it is for her to slip into the well-worn way they've always been.
He could still play off his sudden appearance as the odd bit of post-pub sentimentality, then maybe kiss her on the cheek and go home. Nothing ventured, and nothing lost.
But she feels so warm inside her jumper beside him, and the firelight licks (gold on gold) over the sudden hint of bare leg peeking between her skirt and her sock, and he takes it as a portent to be still, to stay and see what else might be uncovered. He sinks down, leans his head back onto the cushion. He stares at the light quick-shifting on the ceiling, presses the tip of his thumb against the hot mug (burns, burns), then, before she can, he begins.
"It's funny, this," He says. "The two of us, here, on the floor. I was sort of thinking about it, earlier... not the floor bit, but just sitting ... and you... and- well, you know how a word will sometimes catch your ear, and the most everyday thing will suddenly sound really foreign and odd- and I... I was wondering, why the hell do I call it a settee? I mean, Aunt Petunia had a Davenport. Ginny and I had a sofa. And to most blokes, it's just a couch, I reckon. So I was sitting, wondering… and then it hit me. That's what you called it. A couple years back, remember? You were standing in my flat, and you had your hands on your hips, and you… well… you were being a bit of a cow about it, actually, and you said, 'An employed adult male should have a place for guests to sit.' And then you said, 'A settee. A settee, and a proper chair.' And I remember the tips of your fingers had gone white, you were squeezing your hips so hard... Like you had to hold yourself back from yanking that bean bag right out from under my arse and tossing it into the street..." He pauses, chuckles at the ceiling. "You know, I remember thinking I'd miss it, but I'd honestly forgotten all about the damn thing until today."
"I've never forgotten it," she says softly, swiftly into her tea. She takes a sip, shifts a bit beside him. He raises his head and looks at her, watches her grind at the memories with her back teeth. Those weeks after Ginny- with the rotting piles of take-away containers, and the neck stubble, and him never more than a few inches from the floor every time she came round- it wasn't the bean-bag she hated, but all that came with it. "I hope I wasn't too awful about it."
The way she looks at him when she says it- like she knows she was hard, but she'd be just as hard again if it got the job done- it's so damn Hermione it sparks a deep, hot hum in his belly, and he has to sit up straight and set his mug to the side before he fumbles it to the floor. The same undeniable compulsion (the now now NOW) that earlier propelled him toward his fireplace boils up inside, so he turns, opens his whole body wide to her, then leans in and lays his closed fist against her skirt.
"You were just awful enough about it, I reckon." The grain of the corduroy makes an easy path for his knuckles. Underneath it, he can make out the musculature of her thigh, long and taut. "But I wasn't really thinking on the bean-bag... " The hem of her skirt bumps against his cuticles and he opens his hand. His fingertips skate over the dome of her knee, straight to the spot (that smooth, warm, softsofuckingsoft spot) inside, and when he looks, her eyes are half tiny fires (red and gold flames reflected), and half fathomless night, and he traces the movement of her gaze from his lips, to his shoulder, and then down his arm to where his hand is curled around that one strip of bare skin, his fingertip slipped inside her sock, just to touch...
It's not subtle or suave, this piece of him pushed into a place it ought not be. He stares at it alongside her, ears thudding, skin pulsing, want heavy in his groin, and shame flaring over his cheeks. He looks up, looks into her eyes.
He's not subtle or suave, but as she turns her leg to press the skin he's already touching tighter to his palm, he thinks 'clumsy, but bold' might hold a charm of its own.
So he leans in and kisses her. Not her lips, not yet, but that suckable spot just under the teardrop gem dangling from her ear, and the way she trembles then sighs is so sweet he can't help but smile against her before flicking his tongue out for a taste.
The fire pops, hisses. Rain tick, ticks at the windows. Somewhere close by, Crookshanks steady rumbles, but none of it drowns out the rising rhythm of Hermione's breath or the sound of fabric sliding against her skin. Harry buries his face in her neck, her hair. One hand holds him upright while the other grips her thigh, his thumb stretched up and up, just under her skirt, out of sight. He breathes deep, deep, fills himself with her sweet forest smell, then whispers, "Can we try, Hermione? You and I?"
(It's not until later...)
After she's somehow astride him... after she's caught his avid hands in the bends of her knees and he wants to weep from the merciless onslaught of tongue-teeth-tongue upon his collarbone... after he's squeezed bruises onto her thighs ... after she pulls back pink-cheeked and feline-eyed then rolls her hips against him and his vision, for a split-second, goes white... After all this, when she holds his face between her tea-cup hot palms and her lips hovering just above his still haven't been kissed, Harry rasps out, "Your mouth- give it to me."
And Hermione shivers, whispers, "Take it."
What he does next, even he's a bit awed at the brass of it. He tugs her forward, then in one swift motion, she's on her back, head braced in his hand so as not to smack the floor. He crawls his knees closer, slots the leg between hers a little further in, and, oh, gods, the heat off her. How her body shakes, same as his, with pure, un-sprung, need-it-now desire.
Take it.
He dips down, first for just her lips, then her honeyed tongue. The way she moves underneath him, all the grapple's gone out of her, leaving a slow, searing fluidity in it's wake. Harry tries to maintain, tries, for once, to be completely mindful, wholly aware, of Hermione. But one soft stroke, just the swirl of her fingers inside his palm as they kiss, and he's gone, altered-state elsewhere. Toppling, spinning, splashing down.
........
I'll tell you this: don't try to touch her while she's sleeping...
Ron's words, ages ago. A dead letter memory rising, riding away on the rolling thunder outside.
Here, now, Hermione's fingers between his own flex then fold tight as the lightning flickers through the window. Just on the edge of awake, Harry registers the gentle rumble of the storm, the warm, raw throb that still buzzes in his lips. He blinks slowly, curls closer to the stitches of her jumper, the two long halves of her back, underneath. Here, on her bed, her heart beat this close to his is a seismic force. Tiny, devastating tremors. He closes his eyes, presses his nose into her hair. He breathes. Drifts. Sweet forest and molten flow.
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A/N- Inspired by, and title stolen from, the Arctic Monkeys' Do I Wanna Know.
Thanks so much for reading! And any thoughts are always appreciated.