A/N Okay, so I've never done this before on It's all over my Live Journal fic account but not here!

If strong sexual content and sexual language isn't your thing then close this window and wait for the next update alert.

Feedback would be appreciated because the readers here on ff dot net, or rather MY readers here on ff dot net, are a different breed and I really respect your opinion when I try something new on this site.

Closer Yet So Much Farther Away

Ron stepped out of the shower and wiped a space on the mirror clean. He looked at himself, his blurry image, and then looked down at his groin.

He couldn't understand why he had been the target, why he had been the one to conquer-–to violate. He closed his eyes and thought of Hermione standing before him naked and let his hand slide down his slippery body to his dick. The tap dripped, the steam rose, and he began to rub.

He leaned forward against the bathroom wall and braced himself for his very first, post captivity, wank.

He felt clean. He felt hot and wet and the air was thick and moist. The tap kept on dripping, drip...drip...drip, and soon Ron was stroking his cock in time to the leaking tap. It was The Burrow. It was the place that was falling apart, toppling over, every tap dripped and he was home and he was safe and he was...he was...he was hard.

"Oh come on," Ron breathed softly, "c'mon...c'mon...c'mon..."

His breathing picked up pace and he began to rub himself into his palm. His hand slipped down the slippery wall, fingers bending and clawing for purchase, and his knees began to buckle as he got swept up in the moment. He saw his Hermione naked. She was watching him and smiling at him and she was never going to hurt him, she looked beautiful and sexy and kind.

"Oh, please, yes c'mon!" Ron whimpered as he pumped his fist faster.

Drip...drip...drip...

He could smell her, he could taste her, he could feel her holding him and telling him everything was alright.

'It's me touching you, only me, always me and I'd never hurt you. I love you'

Ron gasped and jerked his hips into his hand. He bit his bottom lip and slumped over the sink as he lost his purchase on the condensation drenched wall.

"Hermynee...Hermi...Her...H-H-H-H-"

"Ron, are you okay in there?" He heard his girlfriend's voice calling through the locked door worriedly.

"Mmmmmm," Ron nodded and moaned his affirmative answer as he threw his head back.

"You sound breathless, are you having a panic attack?"

"Uh-uhhh!" Ron panted and tried to calm his breathing.

"Ron, why aren't you saying anything?" Hermione asked, trying the door handle and finding the door locked. "Let me in. Please, open the door for me, Ron."

"'N a sec!" Ron hissed as his orgasm gripped him and he gritted his teeth and struggled with all his might to come as quietly as he could.

Ron gave a muffled grunt through his nose and banged his pelvis against the sink as he thrust hard and ejaculated with tremendous gusto. It felt as if he was pushing his teeth right into his gums with the force he was clamping his jaw shut and shuddered as the spurts came. His eyes rolled and he fell sideways onto the edge of the bath tub, feeling as if he could sleep for several weeks now.

"Charlie!" He heard Hermione calling out in a panic, "Charlie, please, the unlocking charm won't work on your bathroom door and Ron's hyperventilating in there!"

Ron was breathing heavily and knew he needed to reassure them both he was fine but he was still lost to his post-orgasm haze. He swallowed and fidgeted and just about managed to wrap his bath towel around his waist again. He mopped up his spunk with a flannel and threw it behind the toilet. Just as he sank down to the floor and leaned back against the side of the bath tub Charlie shouldered the door open.

Ron's sleepy eyes looked up at his worried brother and he grinned. Charlie blinked, his face dropped in realisation and he spun on the spot to shove a frantic Hermione back out and close the door behind them both.

"He's fine!" Charlie said rather too loudly.

"What? But how can you know that so fast? Charlie, he was on the floor!" Hermione was flustered and annoyed, or so it sounded to Ron, and struggling with Charlie. "Let me in there this minute!"

Ron shook his head to clear it and puffed out his cheeks with an exhalation of relief before getting up and straightening his towel around his waist. He reached for the handle and pulled the door, slightly splintered at the frame from Charlie's forced entry, open.

"I'm okay, Hermione," Ron smiled and nodded before passing Charlie and giving him a pat on the shoulder. "Thanks for that."

"No problem, runt," Charlie grinned wickedly. "Good to see you getting back to your old self."

"Oh, shut up!" Ron muttered as he grabbed Hermione by the elbow and pulled her along the landing and up the crooked stairs to his room.

"Will somebody please tell me what's going on?" Hermione huffed.

"Look, I'm fine! Stop making a fuss and come upstairs, will you?" Ron said under his breath.

"Don't worry, Hermione," Charlie said with a shit-eating grin, "I'm sure Ron's going to explain absolutely everything to you when you're alone...I'll just go and tell Harry to give you five minutes, or do you think you'll need longer, runt?"

"You're funny," Ron scowled playfully over his shoulder. "Make sure you fix that door before Mum sees it."

Ron pulled Hermione to his bedroom and closed the door behind them. She was staring at him as if he'd gone back in time and swapped places with his old self. Ron liked that; he liked suddenly feeling and acting normal, but Hermione was still fretting over him.

"Ron, what happened?" she asked as she pulled him by the hands over to his bed and the two of them perched on the edge.

Ron squirmed his hands free with an apologetic wince and Hermione released him as if an electric current had just passed through them both.

"Oh God, I'm sorry!" She said as she put a considerable space between them both.

Ron smiled and rolled his eyes as he hitched up his towel and got comfortable before taking back her hand and lowering his head to force her to meet his eyes.

"I'm not upset about anything, it's just a bit embarrassing and my towel was falling down an--"

"What's embarrassing?" Hermione asked as she squeezed his hand and shuffled closer again. "Let your towel drop if you like, we've passed that point already, Ron."

"Yeah, I know," Ron nodded and began to blush, "but I just passed another point and it wasn't really something you could...share."

Hermione looked hurt once again. Ron realised he was making a mess of this and wrapped his arms around her. He felt her hair ticking his skin and her soft hands pressing against his back.

"Hermione..." Ron pulled back to look her in the eye, ears pinking by the second. "...I...I got...I had a..."

"You can tell me anything," she whispered.

"It doesn't mean you want to hear everything," Ron snorted. "I mean you could tell me about your woman's doings," Ron pointed vaguely at Hermione's lap, "but I'd rather you didn't!"

"Woman's doings?" Hermione laughed. "My menstrual cycle is 'woman's doings'?"

"Well, let's not make it worse, okay?" Ron huffed and felt the pink in his ears turning red now. "Just let's leave it as...I had a small 'sexual awakening' in the bathroom."

Hermione's jaw dropped open so far it alarmed him as she gasped and stared down at his towel-clad lap.

"Well, it's over now!" Ron said as he tugged at the towel and crossed his legs uncomfortably.

"So you," Hermione said, all a quiver, "you were okay with that then?"

Ron squirmed awkwardly and looked out the bedroom window at the night's sky.

"Well, it's always better to go without one of my brothers coming in but...yeah, I'm okay with it. I mean, it felt nice."

Hermione was gradually smiling at him now and he made himself look at her properly.

"Ron, this is...I'm so happy for you!"

Ron's eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"You are?"

"Of course I am."

"But...Bill said Fleur went mental when she caught him wanking."

Hermione's confidence seemed suddenly displaced before she blinked a few times and shook her head clear.

"Well. why would he need to if she was right there?" Hermione asked with curiosity rather than judgement.

"That's exactly what she said," Ron said in amazement, "only in a French accent!"

Hermione laughed and threw her arms around him. He laughed, not quite sure what was funny from her point of view, and wrapped his arms around her. He held her to his, now dry, bare chest and lost his fingers in her mass of hair.

"Well, you know," Hermione began, pausing to breathe in his scent, "I actually meant I was happy for you because you had a positive sexual experience. You could let yourself go like that and not...you weren't...it wasn't..."

"He wasn't there," Ron said, knowing exactly what she was trying to say without having to say it.

"He wasn't there," Hermione echoed contentedly.

Ron loosened his hold on her and leaned back to look into her face.

"Are you staying again tonight?"

Hermione's lips curled into a wicked smile as she responded.

"And why exactly are you asking me that, Mr Weasley?"

"Mr Weasley isn't asking you," Ron scoffed. "Mrs Weasley would kill him!"

"Well, as enticing as it sounds, I think you should take this new sexual awakening of yours one step at a time, don't you?" Hermione sighed.

"I didn't mean stay to shag, I meant--"

"Ron!" Hermione exclaimed at her boyfriend's choice of words.

"I meant stay to...to..." Ron was waving his hand vaguely as if willing her to catch up with him.

"You want company in bed again?" she asked him with a tilt of the head and a sympathetic frown.

"No," Ron said firmly, "I want you in bed with me."

Hermione sighed deeply and moved towards Ron, taking his hand and pulling him over to his bed. They both sat down on the edge and started at each other, hands still clasped.

"I don't think your mum approves of my overnight stays becoming a regular thing, Ron."

"L-Let her try and stop you!" Ron said defiantly.

"I spoke to my mum too and she's worried abou-"

"Well, tell her to stop worrying! I'm sick of everybody worrying. What does it do? What does it change? How does it help me?" Ron said, brow furrowed and shoulders growing tense.

"She's worried about me," Hermione finished her original sentence.

Ron blinked and found himself lost for words. Did Mrs Granger think he was going to hit Hermione like he'd hit Harry so many times before? He wasn't sleeping nearly as badly since Hermione and Charlie had been running the relaxation exercises every night. He liked her warmth in his bed and the smell of her all around him and he loved waking up in the morning and seeing the light spilling into the room and illuminating her like an angel.

Because that's what she was--his guardian angel.

If he was alone in his bed, he was alone in his dreams, his nightmares, and there was nothing and nobody to cling to. He wasn't snuggled up with Tommy in his improvised hammock. He wasn't lying with Lee to share warmth. He wasn't surrounded by Fergus, Dean and Colin in a dark hole in the ground and tangled in arms and legs as they all tried to share the small space to sleep. He wasn't lying on his bed, he was laying on a table. He wasn't tangled in the sheets, he was suspended from the ceiling in agony. He wasn't in a place he could survive while not able to die, just like when he was being held underwater but kept from drowning by Cally's protection spell.

If he didn't smell Hermione scent in his sleep, he would smell those cells. He would smell stale urine and faeces and dried puke and fresh blood. He'd smell sweat and grime and damp and filth. He'd smell that vile breath against the side of his face. He'd smell Danny Prang. He'd smell Danny Prang in the same way anyone else would smell chicken or bacon.

If she wasn't there when he woke up, it would be just as bad as all those other times he woke up to find that somebody was gone, never to come back again. He woke up from his one-sided duel with the Puppet Master to call out a word of thanks to Cally for saving his life with the emergency treatment...only to be told that Cally wasn't there to be thanked. Cally had been executed as soon as the last healing spell had been absorbed into Ron's weakened body.

"Ron?" Hermione stroked his fringe away from his eyes and lowered her head to peer up into his downcast face.

He blinked and shook his head to come back into the room where Hermione had obviously been waiting for an answer from him.

"I'm...H-Harry...y-yo-you don't ha-ave to...'s fine I c-can jus-" Ron felt as if he had a dozen different thoughts all trying to vocalise themselves in the one sentence.

Hermione cupped his face with both hands and looked pained.

"See this is what I've done to you!" she said as if she was a fraction away from dissolving into tears. "This is what my mother warned me could happen. She told me I shouldn't let you associate me with your improvement otherwise you'd go right back to square one as soon as I'm taken out of the equation."

"But I don't wa-wan-want you out of the equation!" Ron said desperately.

"You've replaced Lee with me and I can't let that happen, Ron." Hermione said with determination.

"I don't wanna hold Lee like I do y-you!" Ron said, his throat drying as he spoke.

Hermione looked at him desperately before drawing in a shuddering breath and speaking to him as if doing so pained her greatly.

"I think you should make an appointment and start seeing Madam Boo instead of having me settle you every night with Charlie."

"No," Ron said shaking his head, eyes wide and pleading her to understand that having some strange woman digging around inside his head was going to make things even worse for him.

"I'll calm you down for tonight and we'll go to St Mungo's together tomorrow, okay?"

"No!" Ron said again, feeling as if the bedroom was suddenly much smaller than he remembered.

"You don't have to see her if you don't want to," Hermione said, hands fussing with his t-shirt and stroking up and down his arms in a nervous gesture of reassurance. "But you should know I can't cope with this on my own and I'm going to stop doing it after tonight."

Ron got up from the bed and shook off her touch.

"If you don't w-wanna sleep with me then that's fine! Nobody's making you do it. No-nobody's going to think any less of you for not wanting to b-be my girlfriend anymore so ju-just say it!"

"I love you, Ronald Weasley," she said fiercely.

"And what if I'm not him anymore?" Ron yelled, shocking himself slightly. "What if I'm a different Ronald Weasley who you don't like?"

"I. Love. You," Hermione stated with unshakeable conviction.

"M-Maybe you and him have something in common then, eh?" Ron heard himself saying with a shrug.

Hermione launched herself forward at him and gripped his shoulders firmly.

"He did not love you," she said darkly. "He was suffering from a sick perverted obsession and I don't want you ever to confuse anybody's feelings for you with that...that abomination of a man!"

"Why is the only way for me to get better to have everybody leave me?" Ron said bitterly. "They take Lee away, they take Harry away, they take Ginny away, and now you."

"Who's 'they,' Ron? Nobody's taken anyone from you." Hermione looked stricken and pale as she gazed up at him.

"Everybody!" Ron said running his hands roughly over his face and through his hair. "Everybody keeps giving me space while wanting to be touched while wanting me to talk while not wanting me to talk to them but to a specialist at St Mungo's and it's driving me fucking insane!"

"Ron!" Hermione gasped, hand over her mouth.

Footsteps thundered on the stairs and soon Harry was skidding on the rug and into the bedroom.

"What's wrong? Why's he shouting?"

"I'm here, ask me!" Ron bellowed.

"Calm down and tell me what's up, mate," Harry said with a wary smile as he approached with caution.

"Mate," Ron said blankly before laughing to himself, "still your mate, aren't I?"

"Of course you are," Harry said incredulously.

"Funny, I was b-beginning to think I was just the prize in the comp-p-petition you had going with Lee."

"Look, Lee's not an issue, you don't have to wor--" Harry began to explain himself but Ron wasn't up for reason at that moment.

"Lee's not around anymore and s-s-suddenly, neither are you. When you were all jealous of him you were following me all over the house and now he's being kept away I never see you."

"Ron, mate, I was trying not to crowd you. Everybody said..."

"And there's everybody again!" Ron said, waving his arms wildly and turning back to Hermione, whose eyes were shining with unshed tears.

"Y'know what? Every time I take a forward step and feel normal again somebody has to tap me on the shoulder and remind me I'm anything but and I'm sick of it!" Ron hissed angrily.

"You're not normal," Hermione said, with a look that seemed to indicate she'd surprised herself as much as Ron and Harry with that statement, "you're special. You're exceptional."

"I'm too unstable to sleep with," Ron whispered darkly.

"You're not," Harry said angrily, "and if you want somebody to sleep in your bed with you then fine, but you're wearing pyjamas and no snogging."

Ron was bemused for a second or two before Harry pulled back the bed sheets and climbed into Ron's bed.

"Are you taking the p-pi-piss?" Ron boggled.

"You want to feel safe in your bed, I won't hurt you. You want to feel closer to me, we'll be right next to each other. You want to rant and rave at the shitty hand you've been dealt, then go ahead but give Hermione a break. She loves you."

Ron stared at Harry and pressed his lips together tightly. He was thinking and breathing and his hands were balled into fists while his heart and head pounded with the same rhythm.

"I love you so much, Ron," Hermione said from behind him.

Ron drew in a shuddering breath and turned around on the spot. He walked past Hermione without even looking at her and straight out the door. He strode along the landing and down the small, wonky flight of stairs before slowing his pace as he neared the second room on the left, his parents' room.

"Ronnie?" his mum said as she set her hairbrush down on the dressing table and got up to step towards him.

She was wearing her tatty, and slightly faded, peach dressing gown and her fluffy yellow slippers that looked like two dead Puffeskeins on her feet.

"Mu-Mum?" Ron said, feeling the weight of shame falling upon him for what he was about to do. "Can I...Can I sle-sleep in your bed tonight?"

His mother blinked and stared at him. He hadn't asked her that question since he was six-years-old. He felt humiliated and pathetic and sick in the head for wanting to feel that security he used to get as a child, the security of knowing if he was sleeping curled up into his mother's side then he was protected from everything.

She stepped towards him and took his hand with both hers.

"Of course you can, sunshine."

Ron suddenly broke and fell into her body. He crumpled and sniffed while she stroked his hair and swayed with him from side to side. It was the first genuine cuddle they'd shared since he'd been free and Ron felt the weight on his shoulders shift slightly as the silent tears dampened the shoulder of his mother's dressing gown.

"M'sorry," he said shakily.

"Don't be, just lie down with Mummy and get some sleep."