A/N: One-shot warm-ups before I dive back into unfinished business... Thank you so much to shocolate for hosting the R/Hr section of the HP Reunion on LiveJournal!
Leather
He slid his long, bony fingers into smooth, malleable warmth, nearly sighing.
His keeper's gloves were so worn and familiar, molding perfectly to his hands like a second leathery skin. And though he'd only intended to prevent splinters as he worked in the stockroom of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, he now felt a strong urge to bolt out the back door for his broom. He hadn't been flying in days. That would have to be fixed. Only... he wouldn't take back the activities that he had been busy with, no matter how many Quidditch games he'd missed playing with Harry to have done them.
His life, he had to say, was currently pretty fucking awesome... with exception, perhaps, to the look of sly amusement on his brother George's face when he'd walked in this morning in the same clothes he'd left in the night before... only... much more disheveled.
He wondered, briefly, if his mum would hex him the next time she saw him. He hadn't come home the previous night and had very little intention to sleep in his own bed for the foreseeable future...
His girlfriend - he shivered - had got her own flat. They had gone to find her parents, had set their memories right, and had then realised that, for the first time in quite possibly several years, they had nothing to do. And so, the few days leading up to their portkeys back from Australia had mostly consisted of the inside of a Muggle hotel room, avoiding Harry's smirks, and finding out what it was like to share a bathtub...
He slowly came out of the haze he'd drifted under, realising that his right hand had been lifted to retrieve something off a high shelf for several minutes without moving. He laughed as he imagined what he would have looked like to a stranger, a frozen statue with glazed eyes.
He was going a bit mental.
So, they'd come home from Australia and slept apart - Hermione at her parents' place and Ron at the Burrow. But then yesterday, out of the blue, she'd shown up red-faced and a bit hacked off and told him that she'd just rented her own flat and would he like to come round for tea?
It occurred to him, just then, that they'd never actually poured the damn tea. Twenty-four hours later.
Reluctantly, he returned to work, thinking of the nice stack of coins he'd be depositing into his Gringotts account, his exorbitant pay for helping out, per George. And he'd considered refusing, but his brother honestly wanted him here, and he knew that the money meant nothing to George anyway. Hermione had said something to him that morning about the irony in not caring about the thing when you've finally got it, but he had been distracted, at that moment, with trying to mentally work out whether or not his twenty-six total comic books and Quidditch magazines would fit on her wall of already tightly packed book shelves...
Not that he was getting ahead of himself, or anything.
They hadn't even worked out whether Hermione would be going back to Hogwarts in September, or not. And whether he'd be sneaking along packed inside her trunk, or left to go slowly insane with Harry until the Christmas holiday...
Hermione was bored.
It wasn't often, in recent memory, that she could recall this feeling. It was a bit unsettling, and even the thought of memorising another book of runes couldn't occupy her mind enough to distract her from the feeling.
So, she'd gone to find Ron at the shop, flushing as the front door chimed with her entrance, catching George's eyes from a sale he was completing toward the back. He gave her a questioning raise of one eyebrow, and she rolled her eyes, making her way around the high shelves of colourful merchandise, searching a foot above her natural eye line for any other signs of ginger hair.
In the commotion of an always steady flow of patrons, George bustled up to her and pointed toward the back, nudging her with a sharp elbow.
"Happily organising new stock, thank you," George smirked, "and almost certainly hoping to be distracted on company time..."
"Right," she blushed, pointlessly attempting to smooth her wayward hair with a frustrated sigh.
George vanished into the crowds again, and she made her way to the back, pushing open the stockroom door with a muffled scrape, like sand brushing across paper. And then, she was engulfed in blissful quiet. The hum of low music from a distant wireless drifted toward her, the room dimly lit by several lanterns scattered about, between the shelves. She opened her mouth to call out to him. But he coughed before she could speak, and she stepped to the right, catching sight of his tall form, back toward her.
He didn't yet know she was there... She chewed her bottom lip...
His threadbare white t-shirt was so tight across his back that she could clearly make out the hollow of his spine and the smooth angles of his shoulder blades as he moved. Lips parted, holding her breath, her eyes trailed down along the curve of his right shoulder, trickling past the frayed hem of his shirt sleeve, as white cotton melded into brilliant ivory skin, flecked with gold. His bicep clenched as he reached high up for something, and her eyes pebble-skipped down the rest of his arm quite suddenly to land at the start of his dark keeper's glove, snapped, with a worn silver button, in place around his bony wrist, caressing the tendons of his hand, long bones of his fingers...
She made a strangled noise in the back of her throat, and he whipped round, wand flying up out of nowhere. She gasped, startled, as he took in the sight of her. He let out a relieved breath, and his eyes relaxing as they landed on hers. He smiled crookedly, and ruffled his hair.
"Hey."
She suddenly wondered how legs worked, exactly, and if she was really forgetting how to use them...
"Alright?" he tried again, tucking his wand into his back jeans pocket.
She nodded and cleared her throat as he tilted his head questioningly to the side.
"Sorry I startled you," she finally managed.
"S'alright," he shrugged. "Glad you came by, really. This is dead boring work."
He grinned, and she shook her head, amused.
"George said you'd be looking for a distraction."
"Tosser."
"What time are you done?" she asked, sensing the start of the bubbles that churned in her stomach right before she had to face a terrifying bit of conversation...
"Reckon I could shove off round 7," he said, scratching the back of his neck.
It was almost too predictable to be embarrassing anymore.
"What did you have in mind?" he continued.
She forced out a breath and shrugged in an exaggerated effort to appear casual.
"Would you, ah... you think you'll want to stay over again tonight?"
"Yeah," he grinned, "but I might like a change of clothes. Don't reckon I can make it through day three. George was bloody cheeky about it this morning."
"Oh, yes," she nodded, wrinkling her nose, "and of course that's the only reason to change out of your own filth. Honestly."
"You think I'm filthy?" and he raised an eyebrow, slowly.
"Shut up."
She shivered as he forced back laughter.
"Reckon I ought to pack a week's worth of clothes to save time?"
"Well, yes," she agreed, lifting her chin as she swallowed. "That seems practical."
He pressed his lips together, but she caught his ears reddening.
"Oh, sod off, Ron."
Smiling, cheeks tinged pink, he looked down at his feet as he scuffed the toe of his boot against the rough wood floor.
"So..." He cleared his throat and looked back up at her. "Just come by to say hullo, then?"
"Sure," she shrugged.
He eyed her carefully.
Too carefully.
"I can see you're busy," and she tilted her head in the direction of the shelf he had been stacking. "See you later, then?"
She turned. He grabbed her wrist with a gloved hand.
"Come all the way here just for that? Seems like I should make it worth your time."
He stepped up closer, and she leaned her back against his chest.
"If George comes back here, I will murder you," she promised.
He shoved his way between boxes, Hermione close behind him. On the other side of the mess was a row of tighter shelves, none of which were used in regular business and all of which were out of sight of the door.
He stopped, turned round, and watched Hermione promptly lose her balance from where she had been following him a bit too close. Tiny cardboard boxes clattered to the floor, and he grabbed her round the waist to keep her from going with them.
The tips of his fingers brushed cool, bare skin.
She gasped.
He flattened his hand to her back, beneath her shirt, and she closed her eyes, swearing. He swallowed thickly as he watched her, his gloves preventing him from being able to feel her properly.
"Sodding leather..." he mumbled, removing his hand as her eyes flashed open.
He tugged the button closure of his right glove, unsnapping it. She glared at him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
He blinked.
She grasped both his wrists and sighed, staring.
"What?" he asked, genuinely perplexed.
"I see no reason to be so hasty with removing your gloves."
He snorted.
"Why? I've just been trying to avoid splinters. Don't reckon I'll find any doing what I'm about to do…"
"Different reason..." she muttered.
He raised an eyebrow and watched carefully as her tongue darted out nervously to lick the corner of her lip. His wrists still held loosely in her hands, he twisted them until he was wrapping his long, gloved fingers around the undersides of her own forearms. She let out a tiny squeak.
"Explain yourself," he said, hoarsely.
"Just… leave them on," she swallowed. "Prat."
He let go of her arms and raised his hands to her cheeks. Her lips parted as she closed her eyes. He let out a deep, contented breath and kissed her, running his fingers up into her hair. She tightened her arms around his waist, and he twisted, pressing her back against the painted brick wall.
She lifted a foot off the floor to wrap around his calf. His gloved hands floated down her cool neck, and she slid several inches down the wall. He attempted to follow her for a second before removing his mouth from hers and pressing a knee between her legs, to the wall. Her eyes still shut, cheeks red, she grasped his left hand and slipped it inside the front of her shirt, centimetres away from the bottom edge of her bra.
He sniffed.
"Are you going to tell me what the hell I'm doing so I can make sure to do it every time?"
"Shh, Ron," she commanded, breathing through her mouth.
Very lightly, he ran his fingers under the edge of her bra, left to right, glove very slowly smoothing across her ribs. Right to left again, and she squirmed against the wall a bit, puffing out a breath somewhere between excited and frustrated.
He chewed his lip for a moment, deciding.
And then, suddenly, he ducked his head, biting down on her hardened right nipple through both her thin shirt and her bra.
Her hand flew up and harshly tugged his hair. He winced, but didn't let go with his teeth as he sucked, hard, through her clothes. And he slipped his left hand fully up under her bra, rubbing leather across her left nipple.
She shivered and muttered something he couldn't make out. Removing his mouth, he swiped his right hand over the wet spot on her shirt that he'd left behind.
Sighing, she slid her hands underneath his shirt and ran her fingernails up his back.
He pressed her firmly to the wall and ducked toward her again, sucking lightly just below her jaw.
"Oh, God... Hurry," she mumbled.
He moved back just far enough to look at her flushed face, her eyes slowly opening with mild frustration at his pause...
"Hurry? That's unusual."
"George," she mouthed, laughing softly.
"Fine," he said, dropping his right hand to unfasten her jeans... sliding his hand down over her knickers, between her legs, "but you..." She gasped as his fingertips reached a hot, soaking wet spot. "Oh."
He tried to calculate how long he'd been at this and came to the exciting conclusion that it had to be a much shorter time than he'd ever spent getting to this point before.
He pressed a knuckle against her, moving slowly. Swallowing hard, he watched her eyes slip shut again, blissfully.
It took about a minute and a half.
Removing his wet glove from between her legs, he smirked at her, moving both hands to her waist as she clutched his biceps for balance.
At last, she opened her eyes and looked shyly into his.
"Well, shit," he said. "Leather?"
"Apparently."