Warmth
A/NL Based on a prompt DivaGonzo sent me a while ago over on tumblr that she's probably forgotten about. Eventually, there should be a second half of this based on the second half of her prompt - but I'll keep that to myself in case I never get around to writing it.
Ron has to check in on her, before he can get any sleep. He thinks, briefly, about how much that fact would have bothered him (or embarrassed or even enraged him, actually) just a few months ago, but now that need to care for Hermione is almost comforting.
He finds her in the kitchen, bent over a cup of tea. He can't help but observe her from the doorway, irrationally relieved to find her safe and sound (or as close to that as they can manage these days- she is safe here, he reminds himself, and wills his heart to slow down).
"Don't look at me like that," she rasps, looking up at him and interrupting his thoughts. He recognizes that tone – her I'm-going-to-claim-you-started-this-once-we're -arguing tone. He hasn't decided yet if he's going to let her.
"Like what?" he says, doing his best to raise one eyebrow. He doesn't think he manages it, not like Bill and his dad can, but after she replies that hardly matters anymore.
"Like you pity me," she says, dropping her eyes to the cup of tea in front of her. And just like that, the ersatz squabble he had been preparing for is gone. His heart twists and pounds painfully in his chest and his tongue weighs uncomfortably in his mouth, but he answers her. She is looking for a fight, he knows, but he can't give that to her- not now.
"Hermione," he nearly whispers, crossing the room to sit next to her at the table. "I don't pity you." She doesn't look up from her tea. He swallows heavily, and resolves to choke out the rest of his thought.
(He remembers the words Bill spoke to him in this very kitchen just a few months ago, when he lamented all his faults. "I don't care what happened out there - This isn't about you anymore. They need you and you know it – so get over yourself and fix it.")
"Hermione," he starts again, "please believe me – I am feeling a lot of things right now, but not one of them is pity." He doesn't say for you – I am feeling a lot of things for you – but he hopes she hears those two silent words anyway. Her hands are wrapped tight around the cup in front of her, and he reaches for them with both his own. He can see the heat rising from her tea, but her hands around it are so cold he nearly recoils.
She notices, and tenses. He settles his palms against her knuckles, his much-larger hands completely surrounding hers. He doesn't relax until she does.
"I can't get warm," she admits, and he notices then just how many layers she is wearing. It is cool by the water at night, but not so cool that she should need to bundle up that much.
"C'mere," he says gruffly, and he moves his left to her chair and tugs her toward him. The legs of her chair squeak as he drags it across the floor and he winces, hoping that he hasn't woken anyone. He can still hear Harry and Dean's heavy breathing from the living room, so he relaxes enough to remove that hand from her chair and reach around toward Hermione's left shoulder.
His intention truly was to reach for the far corner of her chair - to let his arm loosely hang there, and wait for Hermione to lean back, if she wanted (he hoped that she wanted) - but he can actually feel the cold radiating from her, from under all those layers, as he reaches, and he just can't help himself. He settles his overlarge palm firmly on her shoulder and pulls her to him, running his hand shakily up and down her arm and murmuring words that he pretends are to comfort her, but that he needs to hear too.
"I told you I was cold," she mutters, still looking for that argument, he knows, because that is easier. An argument would be so much easier than whatever this is, whatever they have been oscillating around for years now.
"You should have told me sooner," he admonishes, one hand still holding hers against her warm cup of tea and the other moving up and down her far-too-bony shoulder. He tries not to remember how feather-light she was when he held her in his arms as they handed on the beach, how even as a dead weight (although he hates to even think that word in the same sentence as her) in his arms that were not nearly as strong as they were during the last Quidditch season, she weighed so little.
"What good would that have done?" she huffs.
"I could have gotten you warmer clothes," he muses, "Made sure you were eating more. You're too thin."
"Hark who's talking," she grumbles, but she burrows into him as she does, so he can't seem to take it as the insult she intended. "And that's not why I'm cold," she breathes, an admission. She is still staring at the tea in front of her (or perhaps at their joined hands on the cup - his palm is beginning to sweat and that should embarrass him, but apparently not enough to move it).
"I know," he says, because he does. It isn't the sea breeze, or her clothing, or even her small frame or the lack of sleep that's making her cold. It's everything else - it's the danger that lurks just outside the boundaries of this property, and the damage that monster did to her. It's not knowing what happens next, but knowing that they're the only ones know enough to even try to figure it out. It's the fear of failure, of their own failure that will also mean the failure of everything that's good in this world. His heart his hammering in his chest again (or still, really), and he wants to say more - he wants to say a lot of things, but he just can't get the words out.
She looks up at him, then. Their faces are so close together - closer than they ever have been, probably. She sighs, and he can feel it, her breath warm (but not as warm as it should be) on his face, and he thinks that this entire thing should probably terrify him, but it doesn't. Quite the opposite, really. And everything is an absolute mess (they are an absolute mess), but hell if he doesn't outright grin down at her.
"I don't pity you," he states, suddenly, because he needs her to know. "I think you're amazing." She blinks, and he knows that she felt his words rather than just heard them, uttered so close to her lips. His face is heating up, (because he's never been quite that forward with her before), and he wonders if she can feel that, too.
"I know," she confesses, and before he decides if he is going to allow himself to lean in that fraction of an inch, she moves her face away from his, dropping her head onto his left shoulder. Strangely, he is not disappointed. He tugs her a little closer (closer than he has ever dared to), and rests his head atop the curls that she can never quite get control over.
She sighs into him. Her entire side is pressed against him, hip to crown, and he realizes that she isn't shaking anymore. He sighs back, and vows silently to stay right there, as close as she'll have him for as long as she'd like.