WHAT LOVERS DO

Another of my takes on the last night. I'm beginning to sound like a stuck record. Adele's 'All I Ask' (one of my favourite songs from the album) provided a lot of inspiration.

I don't own anything, and there aren't really any spoilers. There's not anything it would have been possible to miss if you've been alive and awake the last 4 years, anyway.

Hold me like I'm more than just a friend


No one knows me like you do


You're the only one that matters


What if I never love again?


Her hand shakes as she knocks the door. This shouldn't have ever come to this, she had never imagined it this way.

But he's leaving tomorrow. He's taking the TEF23801 out of Heathrow at 1600 hours, and it's a one way ticket to JFK. So it has come to this.

She can feel her knees shaking, like her legs want to give, as he opens the door.

The one thing she thinks, when she sees him looking like that, is he looks inexplicably tired. Like all the packing, planning and saying goodbye has taken it out of him. He told her before he left work for the last time yesterday evening he was going to spend today with his mother. Maybe that's what has driven him over the edge.

He gives her a tiny, seemingly exhausted half smile, and steps back, not even enquiring. It's as if there's nothing that needs to be said. It's as if they've been the two of them for so long, there's something above words.

When he closes the door behind her, he runs a hand through his hair.

"Nikki, I-"

"Don't speak." She breathes, stepping towards him, feeling her eyes filling despite promising herself she wasn't going to let emotions get in the way tonight. "I just need to pretend."

He frowns, but he doesn't say anything, and he doesn't step away.

"I need to pretend we had a chance. To be what we were always going to be."

He sighs, and looks down. "Nikki, I-"

There's one single tear tracking down her cheek, burning, and loathed. "Don't tell me you didn't feel it. Not tonight. Nothing's gonna come of it, not now… I just… I need to pretend. Just tonight."

He slides his eyes back up to meet hers. "It'll only hurt more. What could've been, we-"

She leans into him, as if suddenly she's unsteady. "I need tonight, Harry. I need you."

There's something of a look of resignation in his eyes as he leans towards her, but they close seconds before his lips meet hers, and once they finally connect, she can't be thinking about his doubts. How he tastes, his hands snaking suddenly around to rest at the small of her back, and how solid he feels in front of her, for now, takes everything she's got.

She feels her breath getting short almost instantly, and that's something of a moan already as he tears his lips roughly away from hers, leaning his forehead against hers, closing his eyes.

"I'm not going to be able to stop, Nikki, if we let this go much further…"

He sounds as breathless as she is.

She strains up towards him, brushing her lips against his lightly. "Maybe I don't want you to stop."

He opens his eyes, and there's something in them she's never seen before. But she closes her own as his lips crash back against hers, and it's heady and messy with teeth clashing and all of a sudden there's grasping, groping hands everywhere, fingers splaying under the material of her shirt, tugging her camisole out from under the waist of her jeans. They burn, against her skin, his fingers, and she slides her own into his belt loops, tugging his hips towards her. She can feel him hardening through the denim, and she grinds her hips against his, gasping, teeth clashing with his. She needs him to understand she doesn't want this to take a long time, she can't bear any more waiting. She needs him, all of him.

Now.

There's something of a low groan from Harry as he slides one of those burning hands below her waist, into soaking silk underwear, and as his fingers find her clit, feather light against her skin, she bucks her hips towards him, almost choking on everything, in that moment.

They're both in far too many clothes, she thinks, in her half-lucid state with his fingers still between her legs, as he pushes her into his bedroom, her knee grazing against one of the suitcases (she unbuttons his jeans to compensate for that cruel moment of reality). He slides both her shirt and camisole over her head in one fluid motion before he presses her against his pillows, and then his mouth's not on hers anymore, it's travelling down her throat, and his free hand is unhooking her bra at the back, and then sliding underneath the purple lace to bring her nipple to his mouth. The stroking between her thighs intensifies as his tongue dances against the puckered skin, and for a moment, she almost loses it. She slides the zip down and his jeans over his hips, grasping him – through his underwear, for now – causing his breath to catch, and he suddenly leans heavily against her, teeth on her nipple.

She sheds her own trousers, roughly, his hands too busy dancing on her clit and tantalising the hardened point of her other nipple, and she bucks her hips again, her head rocking back in something somewhere between the most pleasure she's ever felt and what she suspects is a broken heart. She slides her fingers under his underwear as his mouth travels back up, and when she takes him in her hands there's a little pre-emptive gasp at the thought of that inside her.

He doesn't make her wait long. His fingers suddenly stop dancing on the edges and slide within her; once, twice, and then he draws them away, curling them around her already half-ruined knickers and tearing them away. He lines himself up with her, she can feel him, so close.

"Ready?" he breathes against the skin of her shoulder, his left hand still taunting the skin of her nipple. In response, she tilts her hips towards his and cups his balls with her fingers. He slides within her tortuously slowly, both of them groaning.

"Jesus, Harry." She hisses as the perfect friction robs her of all coherent thought, for a moment. He pushes all the way to the hilt, reaching deep, and she knows it's a cliché, but somehow it feels like he fits. She feels a tear in her eye, but she rubs her face roughly, and lays her hands on his buttocks, pulling him closer, grinding against him. He pulls out slowly, tantalisingly, and then with some sort of control she can't even begin to understand at this time, he thrusts back in. He's so slow there's that perfect friction everywhere she can possibly imagine, and she moans. She bucks her hips against him rapidly – futile, for now, he keeps up his brutally slow thrusts – and stares up at the ceiling, Harry's mouth travelling down her throat, teeth grazing her collarbone.

She doesn't think. He's entranced her enough by now for her to be beyond thinking, and if she just concentrates on the feeling of him so completely within her, and slides her hand down to rub at her clit as he pushes so slowly and cruelly against it, she can't think.

His mouth finds its way around her nipple, and her pleasure spikes. She bucks her hips against him a little faster, her nails digging into his skin.

"Faster, Harry…" she hisses, and slowly but surely he starts to build up his speed. Within moments she feels her orgasm building, suddenly imminent, and she wraps her legs higher around his waist, pulling him closer still. She can feel his own control slipping with that movement, and he leans his face against the skin of her shoulder as he pummels into her another few times.

His fingers replace hers on her clit, and with a few cleverly timed gentle pinches between thrusts, she feels herself peaking and crashing. As her muscles clench around him and she drags her nails up his back, she pushes him over the edge.

"Fuck." He swears against her clavicle as he comes. She feels him release inside her, and for moments they lay crumpled together, panting.

"God, you're good." She breathes as he tucks a curl behind her ear and presses his lips against hers.

Still inside her, his legs tangled with hers and his breathing not quite slowed, he sighs. "You know I'm still leaving tomorrow, right, Nikki?"

She swallows a thousand things she could say in that moment. Then, instead of gracing that with any kind of inadequate response, she forces her lips back against his, her tongue forcing itself inside his mouth, rolling him to the side and herself on top of him. She feels him, barely softened, hardening again inside her, and she sits up on top of him, lifting one of his hands up to surround her breast.

"Touch me." Is the only thing she breathes as she tilts her head back in pre-emptive pleasure as they both find their rhythm again.

He supposes she'd probably rather deny what's looming. As she tilts her hips against him at something of a new angle and cries out in pleasure, he's happy to oblige.

That's a wrap. Sorry for the fact it's absolutely nothing but shameless, angsty smut. Would love to hear what you think of it!