A/N: Thank you so very much to my lovely emmacmf for the beta... and also, just for being amazing. xx
Also, just wanted to let everybody know, I am currently working on updating in-progress stories on here (Sharing Sleep's last chapter, With Me's next update, Stitches, etc). These latest three stories were for a fest on LiveJournal and were completed some time ago. I'm just now able to post them here, after the Master List was revealed on LiveJournal.
Prompt: #14, suggested by redheadsarehot
"I said I was a virgin, not a monk." - Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Knowing
Nervous didn't quite describe how Ron felt.
Scared shitless? No, that didn't do it justice either.
He'd faced down things that he was sure most ordinary blokes his age didn't even know existed. So why was he this out of his mind?
Parts of his body moved of their own accord, bouncing feet and knees if he tried to sit down, trembling hands and shaky fingers through his hair if he tried to pace, and nonsense - utter bloody nonsense - if he dared to speak.
Fuck.
He was about to spend the night at Hermione's. In a few minutes, she'd be expecting him to arrive, via broom, on the slanted roof outside her second story window... at her parents' house. He managed a smirk at that. She'd told him exactly how and where to turn up, as if she'd been scheming down to the last specification. But his secret arrival was unnecessary, considering her parents were out of town for the weekend. This detail somehow made it all the more nerve-wracking that she'd asked him to arrive so mysteriously. Now, the truth was that, irresponsibly, Ron wouldn't have worried about Hermione's parents either way. He was far too preoccupied with the possibilities of Hermione's undergarments to be concerned with practical things like getting walked in on...
Hermione, however...
Hermione had planned it all down to the last minute. She hadn't exactly told him that. But he had a feeling... She had orchestrated this whole thing exactly the way she wanted it. She'd been so busy helping her family, helping the Ministry with arrests, helping anyone who asked for it... and she'd hardly been available. He'd understood. Mostly. Perhaps he'd been a bit of a selfish, sulky bastard from time to time. But tonight, that didn't matter. She'd made herself very much available. And very much alone.
One of Ron's fingers was suddenly halfway through a hole in his pocket... a hole which had certainly not been there a moment ago. Rolling his eyes, he removed his hand from his pocket in order to force himself to stop. He'd been absentmindedly tearing the thread from the already weak seam. Great. Now he'd have to change trousers, unless he wanted to look like a tosser who'd show up in just any old thing to shag his girlfriend.
He swallowed. And a series of strange, strangled sounds emitted themselves from his mouth and nose. He was no longer in control of anything, not even his own vocal chords.
Yeah, he was absolutely sure that ten o'clock would never arrive. He somehow managed to look at his watch and discover that he had merely four minutes remaining before his scheduled departure time. But four minutes might as well have been a lifetime, given the rate that the second hand appeared to have selected for traveling its way around the gold-lined circle of his watch face.
Change trousers. Right.
He had something to do, at last. So he raced up to his room and rummaged around for an article of clothing that at least bordered on appropriate. But what the fuck was appropriate attire, really, for 'going to bed with your girlfriend'? Maybe he'd just show up starkers and skip right to it.
He laughed in a slightly hysterical way as he pulled a pair of dark brown jeans out of his top dresser drawer, hands shaking. At least they weren't too wrinkled. And relatively new. And not too short. Well, not too too short.
He managed to undress and redress and make his way back down to the loo where he brushed his teeth for the third - or was it the fourth? - time. He ran his hand along his jaw, feeling a few stray prickles. Wincing, he looked at his watch again to gauge whether or not he had time to shave for the second - or was it the third? - time. But his watch immediately buzzed against his wrist, whistling and singing the time harshly at him as he fumbled to turn it off. When he'd finally managed to silence it, he glanced back into the mirror, shuddering at his own reflection.
Well. It wasn't like she'd be seeing him for the first time. She knew what she was getting into.
And that's when it occurred to him.
Did she know?
He swallowed the exceptionally large lump that had formed in record time deep in the back of his throat.
What was she thinking right now? How did she think this was all going to... work?
Ron's cheeks reddened. Great, so he could make himself blush all alone in the loo. This was going to go spectacularly...
Realizing suddenly how little time he had left, he straightened his shirt and left the relative comfort of the loo and headed down the stairs. Each step now brought him closer to one very specific goal. And it felt like every other piece of his life sort of dropped into the background as he finally exited the Burrow and made his way to the shed to retrieve his broom.
Distractedly, he mounted his broom and kicked off, soaring high above the ground as he tried to clear his head again, to think rationally about this. But now that it had occurred to him how little experience Hermione really had, he couldn't stop worrying that it was all going to be way too much. He had to believe that she wasn't perfectly innocent in all respects, didn't he?
But, no. That was the thing. The really mental thing he'd held onto throughout the years. See, he was very attracted to Hermione. Obviously. No one was questioning... But the truth was, he'd built up this perfectly chaste image of her that he couldn't completely shake off. And this pitted his mind against itself.
Two warring facts, trying to triumph over each other, but neither one quite staking its claim as winner...
Fact Number One, he wanted to do absolutely filthy things with her, every dirty thing that he could possibly dream up... and he felt his temperature increase just pondering...
But.
Fact Number Two, she was as squeaky clean as if she'd just fallen victim to one of his mum's best scouring charms.
Now, these weren't facts of life so much as facts of Ron's distorted brain. And he knew this. He knew on some level that it was much too difficult to imagine that Hermione had done anything more than stand completely still while Viktor Krum had planted his lips against hers for less than half a second.
So she was as innocent as someone could be. And, in the end, he was corruption. And he was on his way to corrupt her.
Not that he minded. No, he was quite ecstatic about it actually, thus his trembling hands against his broom handle, the giddy way he kept laughing for no apparent reason...
But it made him shudder to imagine what she'd say or think if she knew the sorts of things that he fantasized about, the things he thought about far more often than he thought about... well, pretty much anything else, really...
And then, he was staring down at a familiar row of buildings, at the tall house at the end... and at the top right window, wedged up against a large, lush tree, the combined glow of lantern light and an electric bulb illuminating the room inside. Startled, he quickly adjusted his position on his broom to calculate his landing, zooming in a circle to slow down before finally dropping lower.
He'd been so distracted, it had seemed to take seconds!
He tried to calm down as his feet hit the slanted roof just to the left of the window. And he paused, eyes glued to the window, as his heart beat painfully against his ribs.
And then, the window opened. And Hermione's head poked through the gap, turned right, and she was looking at him.
"Hey," she hissed, "come on in."
He swallowed, cleared his throat, and walked... She backed away, and he ducked to squeeze inside, dropping his broom with a noisy clatter to the hardwood floor beneath the window ledge. And then he was standing in the middle of Hermione's bedroom, and she was facing him.
She wore a light silky top, thin straps across her otherwise bare shoulders. Her jean shorts were shorter than he'd ever seen her wear before, and he was sure he'd never known her legs were so long. Her feet were bare, and there was a funny sort of pink polish shimmering from her toenails. She was fiddling with a fray at the bottom hem of her shorts, biting her lip with her top teeth. Her hair was pulled back very slightly at the sides with black clips, but otherwise, she'd left it just as messy as ever. He grinned, relaxing a fraction as the left corner of her mouth tilted up and her eyes sparkled in the light from the electric bulb in her desk lamp.
"We had a problem with the air conditioning. Someone's supposed to come tomorrow to have a look," she said, pointlessly explaining her state of dress and the excessive warmth of her room. And Ron found himself nodding, though he only vaguely understood what she was on about. "Want to leave the window open?" she asked, and he shrugged.
"Whatever you want," he said, discovering too late just how scratchy and hoarse his voice suddenly was. But Hermione nodded, smiling fully at him now. And, blinking, she turned off the desk lamp.
"A bit too bright, those bulbs," she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder in an absentmindedly frustrated way, a gesture he was so used to seeing, especially since her hair had gotten so long over the past year.
She sat on the edge of her neatly made bed, and it took Ron several seconds of frozen staring before he realized she probably wanted him to join her. He started towards her, noticing curiously that her eyes seemed quite glued to his feet.
"Want to take off your trainers?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.
"Ah, sorry," he said, toeing them off before sitting next to her on the bed. She hated it when he wore his shoes throughout the house, and he found himself smiling goofily to himself as he pondered this endearing quirk.
"Aren't you warm?" she asked after a beat. "It's so stuffy in here," and she plucked her shirt away from her body to fan herself. Ron shivered as he forced himself to look away.
"A bit," he admitted. It was rather uncomfortably hot. But there wasn't much he could do about it, other than remove his shirt, and he couldn't fathom the prospect of sitting shirtless in a sweltering bedroom with his scantily clad girlfriend just a few inches to his left. No. He was not to be trusted in a situation like that...
But as he sat there, it suddenly occurred to him how completely rubbish he was. Here he was with Hermione for the first time really in several days, and he hadn't even hugged her hello. God, he was a prat.
"Hermione," he said slowly as he turned to look at her. She was biting her bottom lip again and swinging her feet, staring off at the wall across from the bed. She looked quite nervous, actually, and it somehow calmed him, irrationally, to see that she was.
And he was able, finally, to still the tremor that his hands had developed so he could reach up to touch her hair, to push a piece behind her ear. And she turned to face him, smiling softly. He smiled back, finally feeling lighter as she let him stare into her warm eyes.
"Hi," he said, letting his hand fall to rest on her shoulder.
"Hi," she laughed back.
"Hey, why'd you want me to fly to your window? Could have just Apparated to the back yard or used the front door, really," Ron said, raising his eyebrows.
Hermione sniffed.
"Don't question it," she said, shrugging. And Ron raised his eyebrows further. He nudged her with his shoulder, sparking and intensifying her grin as she looked away from him.
"So what do you want to do?" he asked, neck lighting instantly on fire as his own words registered. His eyes fluttered shut as his brain cursed his lips. But then he felt Hermione's hand snaking along his thigh and his eyes popped open again as she laced her fingers with his.
"Hm," she pondered, but it felt like a very fake ponder.
She dropped his hand, tipped back into the bed, and stretched her legs out before letting them bend back at the knee and drop again, her feet dangling off the edge of the bed as she stared up at her ceiling, flat on her back. The lump in Ron's throat returned with vigour, and he was unable to dislodge it as his eyes landed on a thin strip of newly revealed stomach skin, between the hem of Hermione's top and the waist of her jean shorts... which, Ron suddenly noticed, were incredibly low on her hips.
He was immediately struck with the fact that if he didn't get out of this particular line of sight, he was likely to pin her to the bed right now...
He twisted sporadically and dropped onto his back next to her, focusing on the stark white ceiling in his new line of vision.
If she had an inkling of how strongly she was affecting him...
Shit, he hoped she couldn't tell he was losing his mind...
He felt her hand on his again, and he chanced a glance in her direction as she tugged their joined hands towards her stomach. She seemed to be studying the lines of the back of his hand, and he watched her smooth thumb move against his freckled knuckles, mesmerized.
"Wonder how many there are," she said, bringing her left hand up to join in, running her index finger over one of the tendons from Ron's finger to his wrist.
"How many what?" he asked, his throat suddenly dry.
"Freckles," she said simply, zigzagging her finger up and down the back of his hand, tracing invisible lines, connecting patches of freckles with each other.
"Blimey, too many," Ron said with a surprisingly sleepy smile, the feeling of her fingers so light on his skin somehow hypnotizing him.
But Hermione turned into him, tutted at him, and shook her head.
"Nottoo many," she said, catching his eyes as he turned his head left.
And he stared into her eyes for too long, past the point of being able to wait and think before speaking. And so he wasn't really in charge of the next words out of his mouth...
"You sure you want to do this?"
There was a moment of confusion followed by embarrassment followed by disappointment in Hermione's eyes, and Ron instantly snapped out of his daze and came to his senses, realizing with horror that he would now be faced with a series of terrible questions, none of which he knew how to answer. He couldn't back away from his own words, couldn't pretend he hadn't been the one to bring it up.
And an abrupt consideration struck him. She'd never said what it was that they were going to do, never spoken the words or even written them down. And why had he just been assuming all this time? It hadn't even occurred to him that he'd gotten it all wrong...
But as his lips parted, as an assembly of explanations and back tracks formed in a queue between his brain and his tongue, she sighed. And spoke first.
"You don't want to?" she asked softly, but she seemed skeptical of her own words, despite the distant hurt he could see in her eyes.
"Huh?" was all he could manage.
"You're so jittery. And we haven't really..." She blushed, and it dawned on him where she was going with this... "We never discussed what..." She was unable to finish a sentence, and he was sure he would do no better, but he had to try.
"Wait," he began, shaking his head against the bed to clear it. He noticed that Hermione had not dropped his hand, and it encouraged him to form the right words this time. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't want anything that you want. I only asked because whatever you want... is going to be what I want. So... you can say anything and..." He shrugged, desperately hoping that his words had come across in a way that made even the vaguest amount of sense.
"You know," Hermione sighed suddenly, dropping Ron's hand at last and propping her head up on her elbow. She looked quite fed up, and Ron wasn't sure if he was more turned on or terrified... though he knew how vastly inappropriate both reactions were at the moment and tried to mask everything he could possibly feel, arranging his features into as neutral an expression as he could manage. "If someone overheard this conversation, it would sound like a load of gibberish."
Ron swallowed. And waited.
"Shall I make everything clear?"
He nodded, though he was now so lost that he couldn't have begun to verbalize what it even was that she was about to make clear. Whatever it was, he was sure it wouldn't do any harm for him to hear it.
"Okay," Hermione said slowly, and he could just pick up on a hint of nervousness as her lip twitched and her cheeks flushed light pink. "Ron, I'm in love with you, you know that."
He grinned as if it was the first time she'd said it, his heart fluttering rapidly. She rolled her eyes, but laughed happily, and he was struck with the need to level his eyes with hers. So he propped his own head up on his elbow, facing her, inches away from her.
"Oh, I like this," he said. "Go on."
"We've been holding hands and sort of snogging for weeks and-"
"Sortof snogging?" Ron interrupted, raising his eyebrows. "Am I that rubbish?"
"No, no," she said quickly, and the pink Ron had seen darkening her cheeks earlier was now decidedly rosy. "But it's not like we're doing anything I'd ever need to hide from my mother..."
"Oi!" Ron said sharply, removing the support of his palm against his cheek and propping up further onto his elbow. "That's not nice. I'm trying to be polite."
"Polite?" Hermione giggled. "Ron..." She shook her head and half-rolled her eyes again.
"Let's go back to the part where you're telling me how much you love me," Ron said quickly, settling his head back onto his palm and playfully glaring at Hermione as he tried to riddle out why it was that she seemed to think his gentlemanly snogging was sub-par...
Hermione grinned at him and scooted a tiny bit closer, her knees bumping against his before she continued.
"I know what you've been hiding from me," she said cryptically, and Ron frantically tried to recall any secrets he was still keeping from her, anything at all that she could be referring to. But he couldn't pull up a thing. He'd already had all those revealing conversations with her, the ones he'd known would come someday. He'd told her about leaving her behind in the tent with Harry, about his nightmares and what he'd seen when he'd destroyed the locket... He'd even gone back to his childhood, told her how he'd felt like a failure, overlooked... So what could she possibly mean...?
"I haven't been hiding anything," he finally said, confusion pressing forward now as his predominant emotion, beyond the sting of her words from earlier, his embarrassment, and even his happiness at finding himself in her bed, listening to her tell him again that she loved him.
"Yes, you have," Hermione stated firmly, still smiling. But why, if she thought he was keeping secrets, was she smiling at him like that?
"Well, what do you think I'm hiding then? Because I must be hiding it from me as well..."
"I could be wrong," Hermione began, but it was very obvious from her tone that she was quite sure she couldn't, "but I think you'd be quite happy with doing... other things... things that we absolutely couldn't do in front of my mum."
Ron's stomach twisted into a very tight knot. So he had been that obvious.
Fuck.
He opened his mouth to defend himself, even though his only real defense would be a sodding lie at this point, but Hermione beat him to it yet again.
"And you know, I sure hope that I'm right, because I feel the same way. Which is why I asked you over here tonight, knowing that my parents were away. And coincidentally, that's also why it's so bloody hot in this room."
The overwhelming impact of hearing Hermione admit, out loud, that her intentions had been to lure him over to her parents' house to shag him still could not completely drown out the surge of confusion that rose yet again at her last sentence.
"What?" Ron half-whispered, half-groaned. Well, he was far too gone now. His motor functions had clearly been reduced to irreparable levels.
Hermione blushed deeper red, bit her lip, and clarity abruptly broke through Ron's bewildered astonishment.
"You lied!" he shouted, leaning up off his palm again and staring, wide-eyed, down at Hermione. "There's nothing wrong with the air conditioning, or whatever the bloody hell... You made it hot in here on purpose!"
Hermione shrunk back very slightly, looking incredibly guilty as she averted her eyes from Ron's.
"Okay, so what if I did?" she defended, staring a hole through a pick in her quilt. "I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't have, but-"
"No!" Ron laughed, sinking back down to her level again and staring, jaw hanging open, directly into her eyes again. "God, you're amazing!"
His heart was pounding so loud that he could hardly hear himself think. But it didn't seem to matter. Hermione smiled shyly at him and licked her lips.
"And here I was wondering if you really knew what you were getting into... You really did plan everything," Ron laughed again, grinning as his stomach untwisted, his body suddenly very light and tingly.
"You wondered if I knew?" Hermione asked, grinning with awe back at him. "Ron, I invited you over so I could shag you. Does that sound like 'knowing' to you?"
"Fucking hell..." Ron muttered, completely unapologetic for his dirty mouth. Somehow hearing Hermione even say the word 'shag' had opened up doors for him. He couldn't see a way he could possibly muck this up now.
"Youshould have known. I know everything, remember?" She grinned playfully at him and he nudged his knee firmly against hers.
"Yeah, well, libraries don't have books on that."
"Oh, you'd be surprised," Hermione said, lifting an amused eyebrow as Ron gawked at her.
"What?" he whispered, as images of a blushing Hermione, sitting in a corner with a large text planted themselves firmly at the forefront of his mind. He had no idea if they were real memories or invented for the purpose of fitting this new description of his Hermione, but either way, he blissfully held onto them.
And in a cloud of smoke and a flash of lights, Fact Number Two vanished from Ron's head as if it had never been.
Hermione knew everything.
Of course she knew everything! It was too bloody logical. And why would she ever skip a subject, why wouldn't she learn all there was to learn about this just as she had learned every potion ingredient and each of their usages or memorized lists of ancient ruins and text translations?
It made far too much sense. And Ron suddenly saw just how stupid he had been.
"So do you want to..." she tilted her head and let the sentence hang unfinished between them as Ron studied her with new-found awe.
"You already know the answer to that," he said.
"You're right," she said slowly, "I believe I do."
He slid magnetically closer to her until her breath tickled his lips, until the glow from the lantern on her bedside table barely cast light between their faces, harsh shadows from the angels of their features darkening their skin. And Ron touched the tip of his nose to Hermione's.
"I love you," he whispered.
"Perfect," she said.
He tilted his head, pressed his lips to hers, and closed his eyes.
And Ron spent every second for the rest of the night making sure Hermione knew the truth of every single secret she said he'd kept from her.