*No infringement intended
*I honestly thought my one-shot days were behind me. This is just for fun. Enjoy!
Maybe - definitely - the trip down had been a bit too much, a bit too soon. Full brain-tilt dizziness, those last few steps. A sudden bloom of cold sweat and a little panic that he might collapse under the beating Sicilian sun. Harry leans the crutch against the aluminum table by the pool, maneuvres himself, the leg, down onto the armless sling lounge chair, wills his face to look less grey. Ron is doing laps, and Hermione hasn't turned his way (purposefully, he thinks, as she had to have heard him coming, thump-scraping as he hobbled down the path), and it's just as well. He doesn't have it in him at the moment to explain that, yes, she was right, he is not exactly fine, and, no, there's nothing that could make him stay in the house one extra second today, not when there's less than forty-eight hours left before the Portkey home. It's better to lie here and let the sickness pass, hide his face in the umbrella's shade and count how many times she and Ron touch from afar.
And, so, here they all are. Hermione is on the diving board, bare legs tapering down, left heel to right arch — third position, she'd called it — messily eating from an unpeeled peach and ruining the white bikini. Ron bobs at the opposite end of the pool, a silent buoy in a rough sea, hair dark with water and plastered to his forehead, eyes on the peach. Harry looks too, following the juice as it flows down her wrist, drips from her lips to her chin to the swell of her breasts and then over and down where it seeps in to stain the fabric.
"How's your backstroke?" She shouts to Ron, wipes her chin with her thumb. Ron rolls, churns toward her in the water. Her sunglasses drift in Harry's direction as she sucks her thumb tip clean.
"You know all my strokes are bang on," Ron says, grabbing the edge of the board, reaching for her ankle. She steps back before he can touch her, kneels, extends her dripping wrist, feeds him the sweet flesh off the peach stone, then turns with what little is left and tosses it into the fire pit off to the side. Ron bobs, dog-paddles, watches her do a perfect, splashless otter dive. She cuts through the depths like a torpedo, surfaces across the pool at the ladder.
Water sheets off her sunglasses as she climbs, runs in steady rivulets from the full and shifting half-moons of the white bikini. She blows the water from her lips, puh, pulls her dripping hair over her shoulder. Harry drags one of the cylindrical lumbar cushions from the seat beside him over his swim trunks, still too unsure to want in the open.
"Alright, I give in. What did Parisi say?" A swipe of her sunglass gaze from his toes to his chest, then that same pull of tension on her brow from this morning. Her fingers twist in the strings at her hips, and Harry wants to pull those fussy, little bows loose with his teeth, lick away the water drop caught in her navel.
"He said I was progressing quickly, and that the soft tissues have all repaired." He blinks up at her, thinks the word Valkyrie though he really doesn't remember what that is or what they are supposed to do. "Two more rounds of potions for the bones and I'm good as new."
"Good as new…" she says. Then, softly, "I'm glad." She pulls her sunglasses away from her face, lays them on the aluminum table near the crutch, kneels one knee between his broken and unbroken legs. She leans over him, the dripping rope of her hair falling hefty against his chest while she grips the top of his chair with one hand, gently pushes his fringe to one side with three fingers of the other.
"I really am glad," she says, and then she leans back. He lets her pull the cushion away, press the cup of her palm against the clothed tip of his cock. "Can you…?" She asks, guides him through the front slit of his swimming trunks with her cool fingers. And then Ron is there, as if summoned. Ron is blotting out the whole sun. Ron is kneeling behind her, his sausage fingers moving her bikini bottom to the side so he can push himself inside her, and she is bumped forward, lips and tongue tight around Harry's length, and she is watching his face as Harry's eyes flutter closed behind his glasses, as his head falls back against the chair. And, yeah, this could, in theory, kill him, but, fuck…what a way to go.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
That first Sicilian night, they break between unpacking and dinner, arms hanging over the railing of the open deck overlooking the tiered garden, swirling warm dregs of Peroni in the bottoms of their bottles, and listening to the waves batter the jagged coast.
"What's that?" Harry says, lifts his face, sniffs the air.
"Linden blossoms…jasmine…" Hermione says, eyes closed, dreamy.
"Here's to six weeks," Ron says.
xxxxx
It happens first on the second Monday in the villa's echoing cavern of a kitchen. Harry is alone in the mudroom, kicking the door closed, sweating bottle of milk and paper sack of fruit he'd been sent out for in hand. He hears them, Ron's hissing whispers over Hermione's high panting over the slick sounds of fluid being compressed between flesh, all salaciously amplified, bouncing from granite, to glass, to metal, to tile. He turns immediately, sets the groceries on the bench by the door and grabs the knob, is turning it when Ron's voice booms out, "Harry, in here."
Harry holds the door, works through a string of quick calculations. What he knows, what he thinks he knows, what he can't conceive. His face is hot, his pulse is suddenly very loud, and he's at once extra aware of the fit of these jeans. His two best mates are shagging in the kitchen, and, no, he never wanted it before, but right now, he needs to see.
He steps back, lets go of the knob and lets his feet take him through to the noise. The kitchen is huge and washed in chalk white, in mid-day sun, and sound, and Harry can only register brief impressions, possibly imagined details. Hermione, flushed and writhing, her thumbs pale, clamping tight to the edges of the granite island, Ron's big hand full of her breast, white lace through his spread fingers, his jeans pooled on the tile as he pulls her backward, the creak of the chair under both their weights, Hermione's smooth, sun-kissed legs draping Ron's pale, hairy thighs, the splay of her toes, his hands working under her hiked skirt, the moment her unfocused eyes finally lock to Harry's own, her pupils big as planets as she reaches for the button of Harry's flies, as she undoes the zip, black, fathomless oceans through her lashes as he swells against her fingers, then her palm, then her lips, then her tongue…
Leaned against the island, her hands atop his on the surface, the sharp granite edge digging into his arse, he feels it when she comes. Feels her grip tighten and her tongue curl, feels her lips go loose as she shakes with a low, grinding moan that quakes through his cock, up his spine, and straight into his balls, setting off a tsunami of release, fast and hard, and then endless following waves. He bows forward with an undignified grunt, spills down her throat for what feels like an age. Geologic time scale cumming. As if when he's finally spent and opens his eyes the earth will be re-shaped, new mountain ranges formed, new rivers gouged through continents.
He's still slumped, head forward, deaf but for the pounding of his heart, when she lets go of his hands. Later, Harry will wonder if he imagines these last moments, the nuzzle of her cheek against his member, the second's ghost of hot breath, before she stands, before she crosses the kitchen, matter-of-factly righting her skirt and blouse, then disappearing into the mudroom to fetch the milk from where he left it.
xxxxx
The next two days are as uncharged and sexless as one of Professors Binns' Goblin War lectures and by Wednesday night, listening as Ron's big feet stomp every step as he follows Hermione up to their room, Harry has it figured they have decided the whole thing is to be a one-off event, an ill-conceived dalliance with the forbidden, never to be repeated or spoken of, again. Disappointing. Yes. So he polishes off the grappa by himself on the deck, leaves the bottle on the marble topped table, then stumbles up to his own empty bed.
He is already awake before dawn, mulling a glass of water and a long, sunrise run to clear his head, when the noise comes. Metal scraping decking. Loud, brief, and from somewhere too close. Too early for anyone not up to no good. He squares up at his third floor window, adrenaline-buzzed and wanting a fight, to find the two of them on a lounger, a candle anchored in the grappa bottle, flickering orange luminance upon a pile of curls and the pale yellow of Hermione's pyjama top, rocking, slowly rocking, her face turning up to him, two fingers beckoning.
xxxxx
Of course, there are rules. Whether they are of Ron's formation, Hermione's, or a combination of the two, Harry can't say.
Set in stone since the beginning: She can only use her mouth on him, and only as Ron is fucking her, and they are not allowed to touch each other, otherwise, except for hands to hands. Harry learns all this the way one learns the habits of skittish animals - quiet observation and making no sudden moves. He likes knowing he'll run up on them in the wild every couple of days. He likes that they now only do it outside where there are no echoes and everything smells like fruit trees and ocean. He likes thinking the phrase half clothed in wanton disarray. He likes applying the phrase to Hermione. He likes how they still don't talk about it. How they're all willfully dumb beasts when it comes to this one thing, motives veiled, drives unarticulated. He likes that there are lots of parts of her he still has yet to see. Most of all, Harry likes Ron not knowing he happily puts up with their parameters - and would do until he died — so long as they come with the devastating way Hermione looks up at him every single time.
xxxxx
"Like this," She says, quiet. "A little more…no, don't overextend…your feet don't need to turn completely backwards, Harry!"
The fresh eruption of freckles over her nose. Grinning lips stained pink from sips of hibiscus tea.
"'S a whole new form." He says, matching her volume. "A brilliant, trailblazing innovation in dance." They titter together in low tones on the deck. Musn't wake Ron on the sofa. Harry straightens, mirrors her pose, poorly.
"First position, spot on. What's next?"
Hermione's tongue peeks through her teeth, cheeky.
"Second position, if you can believe it…"
The sun is high, their shadows short on the planks of the deck. She shows him all she can remember from her lessons, critiques the set of his shoulders, chides him to lift his chin while Ron's riposo snores shake the sliding glass doors.
"I didn't know you knew this stuff," he says.
"I don't know enough to say I know it," she says.
"I want to see it in motion."
"I can show you exactly one thing…"
Feet in fifth position, arms bowed, hands cupped, fingertips almost touching just above her sex, her knees and ankles flex, and then she jumps and lands, jumps and lands, jumps and lands, feet switching front placement each time, and then she's wobbling and laughing at her clumsiness and she's reaching out her hands, and Harry takes them as they were offered — by old, friendly force of habit — but now…
He looks into her eyes and then follows her gaze down as she looks at her feet.
"So you change it up, just like that," he whispers, hoping these joggers aren't giving away what her touch is doing to him.
Her thumbs rub a slow arc over his knuckles. "Yes," she says, "Just like that."
xxxxx
They play Exploding Snap and regular Chess on the covered patio off the kitchen the few days there is rain. They chop tomatoes, garlic and olives, grill swordfish steaks. They dive for coins in the pool. They walk to the village. Hermione listens, rapt, as the antiques shop owner explains the row of pink cameos. Ron learns the difference between a nzuddi and the biscotti di mandorla. They eat cassatelles straight from the box on the way back to the villa. Hermione reads The Decameron in a white bikini by the pool. Harry and Ron argue over who's ball is closer to the pallino.
xxxxx
Harry is sat on a rock wall in the garden, palms to palms with Hermione, their fingers laced, wrists bent and arms outstretched as if steering a speeding motorbike. Ron pounds into her, a sweating pneumatic mechanism, and Harry flexes his thighs to hold himself in place with the increased force, fixates on the moonlit jiggle of Hermione's soft, round hip syncing with the relentless flutter of her tongue, tries to stop turning it over in his head how, almost four weeks in, he still never sees it coming.
It's not for want of looking. He lies alone in his bed that night, replaying weeks of furtive observations and wondering. Of note is how the other two rarely touch in front of him; how Ron's snoring starts up so fast there's no way they're fucking at night in their room; how the unpredictable timing and frequency of it all has Harry, himself, so oversexed that he's at a quarter to half-mast, twenty-four/seven; how, though he's been trying and failing to not stare at her since that first afternoon, the last few days, more and more, Hermione has been turning his way, meeting his gaze, looking back.
xxxxx
Harry leans out the window of his room, wishing this was one of those thunderous, shouting rows they'd been known for in school. He pinpoints their voices to the covered patio at the side of the house, catches a phrase here and there over the roar of the ocean.
"…tried this so…"
"…told you, before…, …don't want…"
"… used…, …we left London…"
"…kidding me! I most certainly…"
He's on one foot's toes, stretched, neck craning, craning, hands gripped to the window sill. And then he's registering his own bare navel, the tie string on his joggers…
xxxxx
His arms jerk, try to brace against what's coming.
"Shh, shhh," Hermione's voice somewhere beside him. "It's okay, Harry. You're going to be okay."
Cool fingers on his forehead.
"You're safe. Sleep, alright? Just sleep…"
xxxxx
He reaches out his hand before he opens his eyes, immediately recognizes the weight, the temperature of the hand that clasps around his.
He's propped on the altered sofa in the villa's sitting room, blinking, making out Ron's shape coming toward him with a glass of water. Everything goes swimmy when he moves his head, and he's breathing, but just barely, and the sunlight through the drawn curtains is a bit much, so he just closes his eyes again, tightens his grip on Hermione's fingers.
xxxxx
He awakes in the night, fills both lungs full. Much improved, he thinks, lightly touching the whorls of Hermione's curls where they spread on his blanket.
xxxxx
In the morning, he's starving and he can open his eyes all the way, and it only hurts a little when he half-chuckles at Ron throwing himself down in an armchair with a glass of juice and a "Good morning, you daft plonker."
"Ron, don't make him laugh…" Hermione says, gentle, smiles in Ron's direction. She's propped against the edge of the altered sofa, just out of Harry's reach, and the little something he's begun to let bloom inside shrivels. Of course. Wasn't trying to get him through what brought them together in the first place?
He grins, bears it, winces in all the proper places as they finish each other's sentences about finding him sprawled next to the marble table, the broken femur, the crack in his skull, the brain contusion, the dislocated shoulder, the three broken ribs that punctured through, collapsed his lung.
"You'd have been in serious trouble if Hermione hadn't thought to write down the addresses of the local Healers," Ron says, leaning forward in his chair, forearms to thighs. "There's no way we could have helped you."
Hermione sits, head bowed, her hair obscuring her face. "Guaritore Parisi is a genius," she says to the circle her toes raise in the pile of the throw rug. "He'll be here soon to check on you. He comes by three times a day…"
"Three times a day? How long have I been out?"
Ron looks up, to the left, calculating. "Three days."
"Three days! Bloody… I'm so sorry…both of you, I…"
A little shake of her head. Hermione goes to the window to look down the front path.
"Wouldn't have taken so long if you hadn't had the…" Ron pulls a face, swipes his spread fingers in the air before his forehead, "…brain stuff."
The brain stuff.
Hermione's shoulders fold vertically at the window.
"Well, I feel loads better today," Harry says, throwing back the blanket. "Just need to move about a bit…"
"Oh, absolutely not, Harry Potter!" Hermione's curls flare as she rounds from the window. "The healer said five days bed rest, at least, and I will charm your arse to those cushions before you defy those orders!"
He can't help it, this crook of his lips at her ire. Hermione stomps across the room, pushes aside one of the gauzy drapes to stare out at the ocean.
"Why don't we let him decide…" Ron says, rises to answer the knock at the door.
"Ahh" Guaritore Parisi's arms are wide open, his black bag rattling in his grasp. "Is so good to finally meet you, eh?" He says offering Harry his hand, leaning down to peer into Harry's eyes as they shake.
"Yes. Yes. Much, much better." Parisi murmurs, sets his bag to the side, pulls a wand, conjures a stool beside the sofa. "Eh, first, though…excuse me…" he says, glancing toward Hermione vibrating by the curtain.
"Signorina," he says, shuffling over, taking her hand. "You, you are to go, get the sunshine! No, no. I am here. He is awake. He does well. I talk to him. Your hands, they are ice, and this…" Parisi extends his arms, a pair of parentheses about her shoulders, "this is like nonna!"
Ron snorts into his orange juice.
"Is an order," Parisi says, patting her shoulders then turning back to Harry.
"Here's to professional opinions," Ron says, throws back the rest of his juice, then grabs her wrist and pulls her away.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Her hair soaks a cold splotch into Harry's trunks, her tongue undulating on the spot while her fist works the base of his shaft. Wafting jasmine and the smell of salt water sun-dried on her skin. Lips and hands and the look in Hermione's eyes and the rules are out the window, but she's still so far away, and Harry reaches for what's closest, touches his fingertips to her cheek, over the shell of her ear, into her hair, pushes up into her mouth once, twice, and then comes — a great, bright shudder of pleasure-pain — when she leans her cheek into his palm.
Harry is barely aware of Ron finishing. Of Ron groaning. Of Ron pulling out of her with a tiny, wet plick. It only matters once he has left them alone, once Hermione's brought herself off on her own fingers, once she's done cleaning Harry with her tongue, has tucked his cock back into his trunks, and is placing a kiss on the skin just over his hip bone.
All the rules, out the window.
She leans back, adjusts the strap of the white bikini, then rests her hand on the immobilized thigh.
"Still okay?"
He thinks on it a second, decides he best tell the truth. "I don't think I can move out of this chair, honestly."
She stands, uses both hands to gather her hair, shakes it out so it flows down her back.
Valkyrie.
"I'll help you when you're ready," she says.
xxxxx
Hermione sets him up on a cushioned lounge chair on the deck, the umbrella from the marble-topped table magically affixed to the back to keep off the worst of the sun, then takes herself into the house for a kip. Alone, Harry shifts to better accommodate the sore ribs, focuses on the din of the sea, the distant horizon, and tries to not think about two days time.
He hears the door slide open, then closed, feels Ron's heel-heavy footsteps shaking the boards before seeing his shadow. Harry takes the cold Peroni he is offered, rests it against the good leg as Ron pulls another lounger along beside his a respectable distance away.
"So," Ron says, plopping down, dropping his sunglasses over his eyes, "exactly how the bleeding hell did you fall out the window?"
Harry sips his beer. "Accident. Pure, careless accident."
"Right. Well, don't ever do it again, yeah? I mean, I guess you're fine, now, but you were a busted mess when we found you. Scared Hermione nearly to death, breathing up blood, turning blue. Old Parisi said 'brain contusion' and I thought she'd never stop crying. Fucking hell." Ron sips his beer.
"I…"
"I know. You're sorry. Tell Hermione. She's the one who's not eaten or slept the last three days."
There's a long pause, and what's coming next is going to be dreadful, judging from the way Ron's scritching his thumbnail against the label of his bottle.
"Might as well tell you, I'm moving out when we get back to London." Ron blurts.
"What?" Harry says, so loud it echos from the glass doors.
"Just…Pipe down, alright. We'd already pretty much decided to pack it in before we left to come here. Mutually. Look, stop gaping. It all fell apart a long time ago. Don't act as if you didn't know."
He didn't know. How could he? A thousand quick recalculations, and not a single certain answer amongst them. Harry says, "I don't know what to say, here, Ron. I'm…"
"I know. You're sorry. Don't be. It has nothing to do with you, and I wanted to make sure you knew it after…" Ron holds his hand out palm up, makes a gesture indicating the whole of the outdoors, and Harry knows just what he means.
There are questions Harry might ask later. Like, 'what did you get out of this?' 'Whose idea was it?' 'Thank you, but why me?' He might ask later, but probably not. And certainly not now. Instead, they both sip their beer, stare at the white crests folding into the inky blue.
Ron takes a breath, begins, "She's a good girl, Hermione…"
"The best," Harry cuts over him.
"Yeah, never left your side. So, just, before we go… you know…be careful with her."
What he means is, 'let her down gently.' Because letting her down is what Harry is supposed to do, now, apparently. Some new rule to the game.
Only, that game is already finished, and as far as Harry's concerned, he won. The trophy being the flush of desire beneath her freckles, a treasure few will ever see, let alone touch. And she'd given it to him, placed it right in his hand, and it is his, now. His.
"I will handle her with the softest of kid gloves," Harry says.
He sips his beer, tries to wipe the stupid grin off his tell-tale face.
xxxxx
Of note, how ten seconds after his footsteps have stopped crossing the floor above, Ron is already snoring. Of note, how Hermione says she might "sleep under the stars tonight" once Harry hobbles out to sit in the lounge chair beside hers, but instead stays up with him, talking and talking and talking, until finally conking out just before dawn.
xxxxx
Guaritore Parisi comes in the next morning like a party, pours Harry's last potion in a champagne glass, cheers as he's drinking it down, then kisses them all on both cheeks and dances out the door.
xxxxx
They walk up on a street festival set around the village fountain that last evening. Tooting flutes and the crowd clapping the beat, tambourines swung high, and the Tarantella. The dancer with the lightest eyes winks at Ron as she whirls past, smiles as she hop-points, hop-points, swishes her skirts his way. Harry catches Hermione's eye, nods toward the dancers, get in there, and she flushes, mouths the words, "no, you," crooks out a secret, little grin just for him, and keeps clapping.
xxxxx
Ron takes a bishop. Ron takes a knight. Harry should be embarrassed, would be were his head in the game, but Hermione went inside to pour a glass of wine fifteen minutes ago and hasn't yet returned.
Ron takes his rook, then moments later, his king.
"Checkmate," Ron says, rolling his eyes as Harry stands.
"Well done," Harry says, cursorily glancing at the board. "I'll be right back."
xxxxx
He moves through the dark rooms of the ground floor, calls her name at the base of the stairs, listens for signs of life. She's not on the deck, nor in the garden, so he sets off down the path to the only other destination on the property, finds her with her glass of wine, sitting, legs and bare feet stretched before her, her back to the path, alongside the edge of pool.
He's been walking into private scenes since they've been here, and he sees no good reason to stop, now. In front of him, the sway of her curls and the tip of her nose, the pool water's ceaseless burbling and the heavy miasma of imported tropic flora. A new blossom has opened somewhere in the beds, heaves out its scent, a bold, lurid thing that makes Harry think of pearl pink rubber and salt, of sex in a hot room, of blood welling on skin.
"Nice night," he says, just to let her know he's there. His voice comes out low, agitated by flower thoughts and her turned back, and he can see her listening — listening, but eyes fixed forward, like a wild animal about to bolt — as he crosses the concrete, as he pulls a chair from beneath the aluminum table.
"Yes. Beautiful," she says, cornered, her gaze drifting to the sky.
"Sort of sad, innit, soaking it in for the last time," Harry says, settling shoulders back, far enough away to mitigate the temptation to touch her. "Can't help but dread going back to Old Blighty."
"To real life," she says.
"I suppose you could call it that."
She hasn't looked his way once, so Harry stares at her, unabashed, tracks her eyes' movements from the sky to down over the fire pit, then toward a clump of hostas, then all around the edge of the pool. Everywhere, really, but to him. Her lips part but nothing comes out, and Harry recognizes this for what it is — the moment between the rearing of the dragon's head and the first burst of fire, the moment between flying and falling out of the sky.
"Speaking of real life," she finally says, turns the stem of her wine glass between her fingers, "I was just thinking, if…before you go, tomorrow…if there's anything from here you'd rather leave behind…anything you'd rather not have to think of back home…I could…help with that."
It takes a couple rotations to comprehend the shape of what she's offering, and the understanding hits with the same sick sensation he felt trying to make it down to her yesterday morning, everything tilting, covered in cold sweat and uncertainty.
"Oh, you can help with that?" He says, and it's sort of satisfying to watch her flinch at her own words, so he lets them lie there for one breath, then two, beating like a fresh-torn heart. "It's that simple? You just wipe it away?" Her eyes close. "It's not just me, though, is it? There are rules for this, too, and if you take it from me, you have to take it from Ron. You have to take it from yourself, right?"
She clears her throat, draws her legs to her chest. "Ethically, yes…"
"Do you want to forget?" This is what it all boils down to. If she wants to be rid of it. All the niggling doubts and misgivings he's piled into the deepest corners of his head come tumbling into sight. And it's not hard to conceive, really, how, out of context and described in the coarsest terms, the memory of gagging on her best friend's cock while being railed from behind by her soon-to-be ex might be something she'd rather live without.
She looks up, then, finally, straight into his eyes. "No."
"Do…Do you just not want me to have it?"
Her face crumples in that all-too-familiar way, and Harry wonders if anyone has ever made her as miserable as often as he has.
"No. No. That's not it, at all. It's just that what you do here might not ….align with who you are or what you want there, and I don't want you to ever feel burdened or embarrassed around…"
Around me, she can't finish. And at once it's all so beyond ridiculous — the lengths to which she'd go to spare him, the idea he needs sparing at all. He chuffs, leans forward, elbows to his thighs, edges a little closer into her space.
"You can't save me from this, Hermione. I'm an adult. I made a decision. We all made a decision. Perhaps a bit spur-of-the-moment, in some cases, but still…no, I don't want you scooping things I decided on out of my head. No, don't look away…"
She unfolds a little, then, gives him her full, open face, and he smiles.
"You and I are just going to have to deal with the consequences of our actions, here, Miss Granger, whatever the fall-out might be."
It's the nearest he can get to a promise while Ron is just up the path on the side patio. And maybe (he hopes) she gets it, because she swallows, gives a just-perceptible nod, says, "okay, then," and slowly unfurls. He's close enough now he could reach down and caress her toes, and he wishes it could be as simple as that, as simple as extending one finger and piercing her pensive, little bubble, but it's not. Not yet.
She picks up her glass, takes one long gulp, then sets it back down with a shaky tink on the tile. The wine stains the inside of her lower lip, works it's way through her shoulders, loosens the clench of her jaw. And she's just too tempting in the gentle, lapping diffusion of the underwater lights, so Harry forces himself to sit back, again, occupies his hands with the arms of the chair.
"I phoned the estate agents after your accident," She says, suddenly. "They said I could let the place an extra five nights before having to vacate. Turns out we didn't need it, but I told them I'd take it, anyway…put off 'real life' for another couple of days." An odd flash of a sad smile. She stares at her feet, points, flexes, strokes right arch into left. "I'd ask you to stay, but I heard you promised to help a mate move."
"Yeah," Harry says, "I thought it'd hurry things along."
"It will. I'm sure he appreciates it," she says.
"So, you're just going to be here alone?"
"Yep." The wine talking. "It's alright. Probably best I keep out of the way."
Harry wants to say something here. Something about how he's been through this bit, and doesn't think now is a great time for her to be miles and miles away on her own, and maybe she could just stay at his place a few days until it's all sorted. He doesn't, though, because his place is a couple of cold, empty-ish rooms where he sleeps, showers, and changes clothes, and this is, well, paradise.
"It's not for long." She tips the last of the wine into her mouth, leans back on to her palms and closes her eyes. "God, You can practically bathe in the tuberose, tonight. I've never smelled anything like what's growing here. It's so…" she pauses, breathes in slow and deep, fills her lungs, her breasts straining her grey t-shirt as they rise toward the quarter moon.
"Fleshy," Harry finishes. "You almost want to bite right through it."
Her eyes snap open, her cheeks pink, flushed with wine. She crosses one ankle over the other, looks a little south of his face, says, "You could say that. Yes."
There's no way she could know it, but he's about a second and a half away from crawling over on his hands and knees, spreading her legs apart, and burying his face in the gusset of her shorts. He drags his eyes off her, looks all around into the wind-rustled dark, then decides he'd best take off before he does something beyond the pale.
He blows out a breath, stands, scratches behind one ear. "'S an early Portkey, tomorrow, and I've still all this packing to do. Reckon I'd better…" he says, then shoves his hands in his pockets, begins the slow lope away.
Hermione leans, pulls her fingertips over the surface of the pool, says in a small voice only someone passing so near could hear, "I really do wish you could stay."
He stops, looks down at the rippling water, thinks of fountains and tribute and coins to pay, of destined returns and promises of safe passage. "I can't."
"I know," she says. "Just wishing."
Harry nods, clenches his hands in his pockets.
"Don't stay out here too late, okay?" he says, and then, when she doesn't answer, climbs up the path.
xxxxx
Harry listens for her steps on the deck, strains to pick up any creak of the squeaky hinge on the mud room door. He listens for her rhythm on the stairs, for water moving through the pipes to rinse a toothbrush, for Ron to stop snoring when she climbs into bed.
He searches every room as Saturday dawn breaks, looks by the pool, in the garden, down the first quarter mile of road leading into the village.
A white sack sagging heavy with pastries and biscuits sits in the middle of the granite island. Safe travels, the note beneath it says, Love, Hermione.
xxxxx
The flat over the joke shop is a tip, three years of abandoned prototypes, discarded furniture, dusty sweets, and empty bottles. Harry is stuck in, dismantling, scouring, then multiplying, filling, and shrinking boxes. They work all Saturday, and Harry's ready to plug on into the night until Ron finally throws a wobbly and demands they stop for supper.
"It's not a death march," Ron says. "And it's not like there's anywhere else you need to be."
She wasn't by the pool, in the garden, or down the first quarter mile of road.
"I suppose not," Harry says.
xxxxx
It takes a single morning to pack up Ron's last five years, a single morning of being in the midst of her things for Harry to finally break and send the owl to the Ministry on Sunday afternoon.
The Portkey Office sends a response within the hour. "We'd be delighted to accommodate you, Mr. Potter," it says.
xxxxx
There are three peaches on the granite island that weren't there when they left. Harry lifts the smallest of them, gives it a little squeeze, a sniff, touches its velvet skin with the tip of his tongue. Thirty seconds through the door and he's already half hard, and this is not why he came back here, but what can he say? Memories.
She's not in the house, not on the side patio, nor the deck. It's a tad unsettling to find her in the same place he last left her two days ago, but there she is, sitting on the diving board, hair in a pile, the grey t-shirt over the white bikini, her back to the path, drawing her toes through the water.
She glances at him over her shoulder, seems unsurprised to see him there, easing himself to sit on the mounted end of the wooden plank. Maybe he should have gone for the big entrance, stripped down while crossing the concrete then dove into the deep end to surface at her feet. Maybe she would have shed that t-shirt, then, slipped into the light and water with him for a night swim. Maybe she would have smiled, disarmed, charmed by the silliness of it all, instead of looking at him with this distant curiosity.
"Nice night," he says, holding her gaze.
"Yes," she says. "Beautiful."
Call and response. The heavy, scented air and her unwavering stare. There are all these things he needs to say, but the words in his head choke, wither inside a haze of pink fumes.
"Flowers are still at it," he says.
"It's a biological imperative, attracting a pollinator in season." She says with a lilt of clinical detachment, and Harry imagines her in glasses and a white, muggle lab coat over the bikini, a pencil behind her ear, clipboard wedged between hand and rib, propping up one breast…
"It does my head in." That, and her bare thighs, but this is not why he came back here.
"An allergy? We can go somewhere else…" She says, and he laughs, shakes his head.
"No." He toes off his trainers onto the concrete then bends to pull off his socks. "Not an allergy." He pivots where he sits, leans forward to grasp the edges of the waxed plank, digs in his heels, and rows himself right up next to her.
"I take it everything's sorted back home," she says toward the water.
"Yeah. It's all done."
"That was quick."
"Yeah, well, one of us had incentive to get on with it," he says. Then leaning, trying to catch her eye, "Hermione…"
She angles his way in segments — face, shoulders, hip, then knee — until they're both astride the hardwood, feet dangling into the water.
He's not been this close to her, face to face, for this long since the day he caught her hands on the deck. He looks down to where they now rest on the board between her thighs, fingers intertwined upward (…see all the people…), then plants his own palms on his knees, no wandering.
She sighs, looks him over. "What are you doing here?"
What is he doing here? It's harder and harder to keep track when it all bleeds together, the worry, the wanting, and the need.
"I'm out on the beat, Miss," he says. "Did you know your door was unlocked? Any old, bad man could have come in here."
"That'd be unfortunate for the old, bad man, wouldn't it?"
"Your wand's all the way over there," he says, nodding toward the table.
She exhales a laugh."I've been listening for your footsteps for the last six weeks, Harry. I knew it was you."
A deflection, and a good one. No doubt it's true, she'd listened and learned. And it does something to him, knowing he had divided her attention from whatever Ron had been doing with her, and for a second Harry wonders what it would take to overwhelm that higher brain of hers completely, to be so utterly inside her and around her that he is all there is, beginning and end.
He grasps the board, pulls himself closer to her. "I…I needed to know you're alright. I mean, I don't expect you to be fantastic considering the circumstances, but taking off like that yesterday morning…I didn't like not seeing you before we left."
She looks down to where her fingers open then twist closed, like an anemone dancing with the deep tide. "I'd just made it all so awkward …and I didn't think it would matter…"
"It did matter," he says, his knees nudging hers as he moves closer. And this is it, this moment, the reason he came back here. The moment he's supposed to revert to gelded Best Friend and say he's been there, and that Ron has loads of people at home while she has no one here, and that he'll sleep in his own bed, but she shouldn't be all alone.
He's rehearsed it and means to say it, but her hands…and that damn flower…and her hair trailing down…and the little, white strings…and the reason is all gone in the ether but the truth is just there, easy.
"Hermione, where you are and what you're doing," he untangles her fretting fingers, "it's all I think about. When I was away, nothing else mattered but how i was gonna get back to you, and if you were gonna let me in…"
He wedges his hands in the creases of her knees, guides her thighs open, lifts, then draws them in to drape across his own. Hermione makes a sound somewhere between "huh" and "oh," her body swaying and rolling as if she's riding atop a large beast, spine accommodating the shifting angles, and Harry thinks that will look brilliant in the morning when she's on top of him, well shot of the t-shirt and bikini, but tonight he means to have something else entirely, if she'll let him.
The plank bounces a bit beneath them, equal, opposite reactions. Hermione has seized a handful of his shirt to hold steady, and there's zero chance she's going anywhere, but Harry catches at her arm, palms the fever hot crook of her neck, anyway. He doesn't have to guide her when she knows where she wants to go, but he still pulls her toward him so there will never be any doubt. His eyes catch on her lips just before contact, and for a nanosecond he thinks of the one outside part of him she's already mapped, how a cock can never know a mouth the way another mouth can, and then he is on her, lips, teeth, and tongue, and all his pithy observations dissolve in heat and pulsing, pink fumes.
Pink, and stalk green, and the shimmering salt blue of the water his feet cut through. His head echos with the layered reverb of what she has done moments before, is doing now. Not then, then, then, but and, and, and — her little tongue, flick-swirling against his and the tip tracing the inside of his lower lip and behind her tugging teeth at his earlobe and tasting the sweat on his neck — a delayed playback of sensation lapping in and over, all at once and on and on, until he's only just barely tethered to linear time by the dense, aching weight of his cock.
Hermione's legs wrap around his waist, the wet of her crossed ankles pressing just above his arse as she clutches his lats and arches forward. Her weight is hardly anything to bear, but he is snatched back into muscle and skin, back into needing to grab and grind and suck. His hands slide under her shirt, the tips of his fingers following the furrow of her spine, up and up, to the riveting valley of smooth skin between her shoulder blades, the place he's watched writhe and work. She leans into his hands, flattens her belly to his, and he rasps, "Need a bed for what I'm gonna do to you," and she groans out a little "yes" then scrapes her teeth over his jugular.
A few more nips at her mouth, and now they really need to get up off this wood plank, and though it would be easiest to just fall into the water, Harry knows that would only add another set of troublesome delays, and, no. He drops his hands to her knees, kisses the hollow of her throat, and Hermione gets it, leans back, unwraps her legs, and parts her thighs wide. Harry reaches behind, grasps the board and rows himself backwards, manages to get his legs under him while Hermione, spread and jiggling and biting at her lip, watches him move from the centre of the board. "You gorgeous, little tart," he says, leaning in and offering his hand, then, as she's about to step off the board, grabs her round the hips and throws her over his shoulder in a sack carry and takes off, barefoot, up the path.
He silently thanks Guaritore Parisi for the job well done when he reaches the patio, grateful there's no injury in the way of holding her up as she straightens, as his hands catch, slip, catch up the curves of her body as she slides down his torso, slow as a honey drip, to stand on her own feet. Through the door, then the mud room, and into the dark kitchen where it all began. The peaches sit on the island, waiting, and Harry thinks to prop her there, to spread her legs wide and tear into the fruit with his teeth, to crush the soft, open flesh of it against her cunt then lick away what's left behind.
Maybe later, he thinks as she suddenly takes off with a yelp. He follows her up the stairs, past the second floor and to the third, to the door of his room, and then through. Her pyjamas are on the chair and there's a book he knows he didn't leave on the nightstand by the lit bedside lamp, and he takes her by the waist when she turns, presses his forehead to hers.
"It felt like you could walk in here any minute…your soap….something on the sheets…" she says, her hands resting on his chest, "I didn't think you were coming back."
"I had to." He grasps one hand, brings it to his lips to kiss the pads of her fingers. "Had to."
He's slightly less frenzied, now, as he tugs at all her strings, as he bends like a reed to help her strip off his clothes and then pins her to the mattress, working his way from bottom to top, tracing every tan-line with the tip of his nose, his lips.
He looms over her on straight arms and she reaches up, lifts his glasses from his face, places them atop the book on the nightstand. He folds down onto his elbows where he can see her clearly, and she fixes his gaze with hers as he finally pushes through her folds, just like the first time she took him in. Yes, we are, written right there. And he hopes she can read between the lines when he lowers his head, that she can hear in his breath, heavy in the curve of her neck, how long he's needed this — the steady exertion of thrusting and her nipples catching at the scant fuzz on his chest and her hands touching him everywhere and knowing, sometimes, she is feeling the full weight of him in the cradle of her thighs.
She grasps his hair in her fingers, gives a little tug, says his name and "yes, oh rightthererightthererightthere." He lifts his head, glances down the length of their bodies to where he can see her leg drawn up, foot and ankle curled, flexed in, bobbing in time with the rhythm of his hips. He thinks of that day on the deck, how brilliant she'd looked stretching, toes pointed to the sun, her hair blowing all about. How she hadn't known he'd been watching. How what she was doing hadn't all been pretty, but it had all been very hot. How he had almost left her alone, almost waited for Ron to wake up so they would only be three people playing a game, again, but then just couldn't.
He drags his hand up the back of her thigh all the way to her knee, presses, tests the bounds of her flexibility, then holds her there, gives her something to work against as she rocks up while he drives down. "So good," he murmurs by her ear, because it is so. fucking. good. and anything else he could come out with would sound just as trite compared to what it's actually like for him to move inside her.
"So good…" she repeats, slow, high, and dreamy. Harry opens his eyes to look at the side of her face, thinks of those Victorian cameos carved from the pink lips of conch shells, of Selene with her crescent moon and star, her poppies, and the owl that had drawn his attention in the first place, of the thousands of Galleons he'd pay a carver to capture this moment's image of Hermione, face twisting into fallen curls, eyes closed, lips parted, so he could carry her, just like this, in his pocket for all time.
He can tell she's close, clenching, arching. He maneuvers back onto his hands, bucks hard against her once, twice, three times before she's on one elbow, reaching up to clutch her fingers through the sweat on his spine, and he is dragged back down, back to her belly and her tits and her teeth on his shoulder, and everything is hot, pink, tight, and then an endless, unraveling spectrum of white.
He likes the art nouveau shapes her curls make against the sheets. He likes the shell pink of her nipples, the way they sit on the un-sunned apex of her double cream breasts. He likes the way he fits around her as they sleep, and not knowing whose sweat is soaking into whom, or who has started what, or who will finish whom off first. He likes feeding her sliced peaches on the deck and holding her hand in the village. He likes how utterly wrecked she looks in the mornings. He likes how her whole body clings to him when she comes, how, instead of grabbing for every object around, she touches it all back into him, a reminder of how they started, when hands were all they had.
xxxxx
"Honestly, Harry, after everything, to almost die from eavesdropping…" She shakes her head against his chest as he flattens his palm against hers.
Harry turns the disc of their hands this way and that, compares the spread of their fingers. "I still don't know what you were arguing about. You should tell me, rub it in so I can feel the full weight of my folly,"
She's quiet a moment, composing, likely trying to find a way to make the truth sound as neutral as possible. It's the night before they leave, and they seem to agree there are things best not packed away and taken home, so…
"Let's just say there was an attempt to leverage the activities here into carrying on in a way more suited to Ron's own taste back in London."
"Really?" Ron, you dog. You dirty, skirt-sniffing…
"Really." Hermione shifts her fingers leftward, folds them between his, draws their hands down to her hip beneath the sheet. "I can't exactly fault him for wanting to have the conversation. I wish he'd had the same courtesy before he called you into the kitchen. Bit of a shock, that."
This is the first time she's mentioned that day, and Harry goes quiet, gives her the space to fill, then realizes she's waiting on him. "You…didn't know?"
"I had no idea. And I was livid until you rounded the corner…"
He holds his breath. "And what happened, then?"
"This is going to sound so twisted, but it was like finally having permission to look at you, really look at you….and, you truly are the most stunning thing, Harry…and, well, I thought, In for a penny..."
He bites his lip to keep from laughing out loud, growls, "Yeah, you're in for the pound," then kisses her hair, "but first, go on…"
"I don't know. It seems unfair to project motives into his head, so I wont. But, I did tell him, it was never about being with two men for me. It was about the two of you. And, then…I couldn't tell him it had become just about you. About this…" she trails her fingers down the strip of hair trailing down from his navel, "and this…" she palms his stiffening cock, "and those…" her hand crosses the tops of both thighs, trails back over the centre of his everything, "and then these…" her thumb, moonbeam light, drags across the seam of his lips as he smiles.
He angles into her, murmurs, "And here I thought you loved me for my big, throbbing heart."
She lays her fingers over the scar that marks the spot, presses her ear to his chest to listen. "You can't even imagine…" she says, turns her face into the pocket of jaw, pillow, shoulder, places a kiss on his collarbone.
He doesn't think he'll ever get used to her whiplash tenderness, the way it always leaves him reeling. He spreads his hand over her hand over the scar over his heart, stealthily feels out her ring finger for the hundredth time that night. Maybe she's right, in this case he can't imagine. The size, shape, and form of her love is likely beyond anything his own uncomplicated soul can comprehend. Could be an overflowing manor house, or a dozen sided puzzle box, or an expanding nebula where every star is a kiss she hasn't given him, yet. His own love is a photo album, one of the messy, front-loaded ones stuffed with hand-scribbled notes, a pressed feather that always tips out, and obscure, broken bits taped to random pages inside. The latest additions (behind a divider labeled "CONSEQUENCES") are less moments captured and more vivid projections of things he hopes are to come: his hand feeding her strawberries in a pale yellow kitchen, her hair riding the breeze as she reads, barefoot, in their garden, her legs in sheer, black stockings with the tiniest pink bows at the thighs, his ring on her finger, her belly big and back arched in a white summer dress in the setting sun.
Her lashes flick against his jaw, and then her nose slides, and, finally, there are her lips, the faintest warm suction drawing every thought down. He pulls at her thigh, rolls so she's on top of him, says "How soon isn't too soon to ask for what I want?"
"What do you want?" Her lips catch the underside of his chin.
He guides her hips over, around him. "You. Forever."
Her tongue peeks through her teeth, cheeky.
"Six weeks?"
He weaves his fingers through hers, kisses just the one on the tip.
"Better mark your calendar."
~la fine~
Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to share your thoughts.