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They should have stopped doing this months ago.
Hermione knows it the moment she opens her front door and sees Ron standing there with that stiff, guilty tilt of his shoulders. He looks down at her with a boyish little half smile, and Hermione knows that she’s always going to let him in.
He’s holding a book she left at Grimmauld Place. It doesn’t matter that she specifically loaned it to Ginny; that’s the excuse tonight, and Ron Weasley is sticking to it.
“It was on the table,” he says. “Didn’t want it to get lost.”
She takes it from him. “You could have sent an owl.”
“Yeah.” His eyes drop to the floor, then move past her shoulder into the darkened flat. “I was already out.”
A lie. A rather obvious one. She’ll have to owl it back to Ginny, whose bookmark is stuck in three-quarters through.
They haven’t been together for almost a year. He’s already moved out, and she’s already built a new routine. Most importantly, she’s already told herself she’s done with the version of Ron who can’t decide what he wants until he’s losing it.
But the problem is simple.
They keep ending up like this.
He steps past her, without waiting for permission she shouldn’t give. Hermione doesn’t stop him. He shrugs out of his jacket like he always did when this place was his refuge, and it lands on the back of the same chair it always did.
“How was the pub?” she asks, because it’s safer than I miss you or why are you here again.
He shrugs. “Fine. Loud. Too many people.” A quiet exhale. “Didn’t feel like going home yet.”
She leans against the counter, arms folded, trying to look unaffected. “This isn’t home.”
“I know.” His eyes meet hers. “Still feels better than Grimmauld.”
That’s the line that means Hermione should send him straight back out the door. It never does. Instead, she remembers what home with Ron was like. There was joy, plenty of it, and good food and good wine, and even better sex. She wishes that they could just have the joy, and the food, and the wine, and leave the sex out of it.
Hermione turns away, lightly asking him if he wants wine, already pulling down a bottle of red. Ron hovers, hands shoved in his pockets, shifting his weight like he’s fighting the urge to touch her. He takes the offered glass.
“You eaten yet?” he asks, voice low, as he sips and puts the glass on the counter.
She shakes her head once.
He swallows. “Right.”
They don’t need to say the rest. This is how it always begins. It's alway something ordinary, something too domestic for exes who swore they were finished.
She makes the mistake of looking at him, and his dark blue eyes catch hers and she cannot look away. He’s so bloody big, and tall, and all that freckled skin that she knows is under his jumper—
Ron steps closer. Hermione feels the warmth of his much larger body, feels that old pull in the space where distance should be.
“You don’t have to stay,” she says, and sips again.
He nods. “I know.”
But he doesn’t move.
Hermione turns towards him, and they’re almost chest-to-chest, close enough that she can smell his cologne on his clothes, and feel the warmth of his breath. Close enough that every stupid, old instinct wakes up at once.
She should tell him to leave. He should go without being told.
Instead Ron murmurs, “Hermione,” the way he used to when he was about to give in.
She closes her eyes.
This is how they get into this situation.
Every time.
The bedroom door closes behind them with a soft click, and Hermione feels Ron’s breath at her neck before she feels his hands. They are broad, familiar, and hesitant only for the span of a heartbeat. Then he pulls her in by her hips, slow and deliberate until her back is flush to his chest and she can feel him breathing against her spine.
His mouth traces her hairline on the back of her neck. Ron is gentle, intentional, and he knows her so, so well. It’s the kind of kiss that comes from knowing exactly what it takes to undo someone. Ron remembers every detail.
Hermione’s fingers dig into his biceps and she turns, and their mouths meet. Ron groans into her mouth, low and unsteady, and Hermione wonders who else he’s kissed tonight. She tastes the wine, and the whiskey underneath, and she wonders if he’s even trying to find someone new.
They fall onto the mattress in the dark. Ron braces himself over her, his body trembling with restraint. She feels the line of his erection against her thigh, hard and insistent, and the way he tries, actually tries, to keep space between them, like he’s determined to honor the promise even as his resolve frays in her hands.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispers against her skin, voice ragged. He doesn’t stop kissing her neck, her jaw, her ear.
She doesn’t.
Her legs part around him, instinctive, pulling him closer. Ron’s breath stutters. His forehead drops against hers, skin hot, jaw tight with effort.
“Hermione,” he manages, like saying her name is the only thing holding him together. His hips fit against hers, barely, only the smallest pressure.
He remembers exactly what they said when they broke up, exactly the line they drew.
It’s nothing.
It’s too much.
Hermione arches once, helplessly, and Ron’s control snaps for the length of a single, shaking exhale. His hand slides to her hip, anchoring them together. His body pushes just a little harder, just enough for both of them to feel the danger in it.
All of their clothes are still on and Hermione feels like she is right on the verge of climax. The way Ron’s hard cock is pressing through his denims, through the thin fabric of her leggings, right onto her clit has her rocking against him, desperate.
Tops coming off is alright. Hermione reasons that the French have topless beaches, so it can’t be that scandalous. Ron’s mouth attacks her left breast, sucking her nipple into his mouth and snakes his hand down to rub between her legs, the slickness seeping out through her knickers and leggings.
It doesn’t feel French as he nearly engulfs her whole tit into his mouth; she thinks I have very small breasts and he has a very large mouth. This doesn’t help the situation. Now the only thing she can think of is his very large mouth devouring her very small cunt.
“Ron—” she gasps, and he pops off her nipple obscenely. They kiss, and it is so desperate, so needy that she starts babbling and he knows exactly what she needs.
They part for a moment, and he jerks her leggings and knickers down in one pull. They tangle at her ankles, but he doesn’t even bother to take them the rest of the way off. He grabs her by the ankle and shoves her feet up towards her shoulders, exposing her pussy to him.
“Ah, fuck, Mione,” he whimpers, and rests her heels on his shoulder so that he can reach down and use both hands to separate her lips and stare at the swollen, ready mess of her slit.
She gasps as he probes and touches her, sweat breaking out across her chest.
“Remember when I used to come all over you here?” he asks, tracing one finger around her red, engorged clit. It twitches and jumps under the pad of his finger and he chuckles as he watches it dance. “I used to pull out and come all over your pussy and then finger you with all that come until you begged me.”
“Ron,” she gasps, pushing herself into his hand, and he responds by placing the heel of his hand over where she wants him the most. Hermione whines, pressing her head back into the pillow and lifting her hips up off the duvet in an attempt for more friction.
Ron groans, his head tipping back. “Tell me what you want, baby. Please.”
She babbles, incoherent, and grabs at his denims until he gets the picture and lets her legs go to slide them off. As he’s pulling his belt free off the loops, she wiggles the rest of the way out of her leggings and scrambles up the bed.
When Ron is looming over her again, his shoulders catching the light from the lavatory bulb, she remembers: they’re not supposed to fuck.
“Don’t—” she starts.
“I won’t,” he promises, voice breaking. “I won’t. Just this.”
He lifts his erection and palms it a moment before dropping it with a smack onto her clit. He picks it up again and angles the head of it onto her and pushes. His tip is red, bordering on purple, and thick with a rivulet of pre-come dripping from the slit.
Hermione’s mouth waters looking at his drooling head; no one she’s ever been with has ever produced pre-come like Ron does, and she wants it in her mouth so badly that it feels dangerous. She reaches down and wraps her smaller hand around the base of his cock, fingers barely touching around, and strips it slowly.
“Mione…” he gasps, and removes his hand. “I want you so fucking bad—”
She ignores him, and focuses on the hot, sticky precome dripping from him. Ron gasps again as Hermione drags the head of his cock over her clit and her breath breaks on a soft, helpless moan. Ron’s arms shake with the effort it takes not to thrust. His hips jerk once despite his best effort, his thick head catching just slightly at her entrance before he forces himself still.
“Don’t,” she manages, though her hand tightens around him.
“I won’t,” he says again, and it sounds like a promise he isn’t sure he can keep.
He braces one hand beside her head, the other gripping the base of his cock in a white-knuckled hold, like he’s physically restraining himself. Hermione guides him back up, slipping the smooth crown over her clit, back and forth, slow, obscene strokes that make her thighs tremble against his ribs. Every time she pulls him over the swollen knot of her clit, Ron shudders as if he can feel it in his spine.
“You’re killing me,” he says, voice wrecked.
Hermione can barely think. All she feels is heat. She feels his body over hers, the caress of his forearm brushing her ribs, and best of all: the thick, leaking head of him slicking her clit until her whole body is taut. She drags him lower again, just barely pressing him to where she aches most, letting the pressure sit there, dangerous and heavy.
Ron’s breath stutters. “If I push—if I even breathe wrong—”
“You won’t,” she whispers, though she doesn’t know why she believes it, except that Ron Weasley has always listened to her in moments like this, even when he didn’t listen to himself.
He drops his forehead to her shoulder, jaw clenched so tightly she feels it. “Hermione… please.”
She rolls her hips once, slow, letting the head of his cock glide up, catching and sliding, catching and sliding, until her orgasm builds so fast she has no breath to warn him. Ron feels it before she can tell him. Her thighs clamp, her back arches, and her hand stutters around him.
“Yeah—yeah, that’s it—fuck, Mione, that’s it—”
The sound she makes is muffled against his shoulder. Her whole body locks around the pleasure tearing through her. Ron holds himself rigid above her, shaking with the effort to stay exactly where she put him, even as she rides the spasms against him.
When she finally sinks back into the mattress, trembling, Ron lifts his head. His hair has fallen into his eyes and he looks undone in a way she hasn’t seen since before they ended.
“Please,” he whispers, the word barely audible, like if he says it too loudly he’ll break whatever it is that they’re doing. “Let me come on you.”
Hermione swallows, still dazed and quivering from the aftershocks. She nods once.
Ron drags his cock over her again, once, twice, and then he’s gone, pulling back just far enough to stroke himself, fast and tight. Hermione spreads her thighs wider, and he moans, loud, as she spreads her lips and lets him look at the mess he’s already made of her
“Look at me,” she says quietly.
Ron’s eyes jerk from her cunt to her face at her command, blue and desperate, pupils blown wide. His fist tightens around his cock, stroking himself with a frantic, punishing rhythm. He’s been given permission, but it’s not quite enough, he isn’t quite satisfied.
“Hermione,” he rasps, and it’s not a question. It’s worship.
She props herself up slightly, one hand braced behind her, the other sliding down to rest just above where his hand works himself. She brushes her fingers across his head and comes away with a plump drop of pre-come, still strung out connecting the liquid to his tip. Unable to stop herself, she wipes Ron’s pre-come onto her sensitive clit, and further down, pushing it inside her. She feels her body react to the pheromones, and everything inside her years to be filled.
The sound he makes is broken, like she’s reached into his chest and squeezed something vital. His hips jerk, the muscles in his stomach tighten so sharply it looks spasmodic.
“Good,” she murmurs. “You’re being so good for me, Ron.”
“Please—please don’t stop talking,” he pants.
She lets her gaze rake over him: the flushed chest, the trembling thighs, the way he’s fighting not to thrust into her. She sees every inch of him straining for approval he should not need from an ex-lover, but does.
“You always listen when I tell you what to do,” she says softly, and presses her sodden fingers to his lips. He takes her fingers into his mouth and sucks off the combination of her lubrication and his own pre-come.
His breath hitches violently.
“You always tried so hard,” she continues, voice low and intimate as she rubs his lips, then his cheek and jaw with her wet fingeres. “You always wanted to make me feel good.”
He groans loud and ragged. His whole body bows toward her as if the praise physically drags him forward.
“And you did,” she finishes, her tone warm and devastating. “You were so good to me, Ron.”
He chokes on a sob. His hand stutters, like he can’t decide whether to finish or fall apart.
“Mione—” His voice cracks. “I—please—I’m—”
She leans forward and threads her fingers into his hair. She barely pulls but its just enough to anchor him.
“Come for me,” she whispers. “You’ve earned it. You’ve done such a good job, Ron. You made me come all over your cock. You deserve to feel good, come for me—”
Ron’s whole body snaps tight, his mouth falling open on a cry. He stops stroking and just holds himself, thighs shaking, cock twitching before he spills hard across her belly and cunt, thick and hot in long, shuddering pulses he can’t control. His eyes stay locked on hers the entire time, wide and wrecked, as if her looking is the only thing keeping him from disintegrating.
Hermione watches him unravel, and sees the moment that thee praise goes straight through him. It goes all the way through to something young and tender she thought he’d hardened over, and she sees him transcend it.
When it finally ends, Ron collapses onto his hands above her, chest heaving, face buried in her shoulder as though he can’t bear the intensity of what just happened.
His eyes are still dark when he pulls back to look at her, but there is something soft in them. It might be reverent, but it’s mostly raw. Hermione feels his hand slide down her thigh, almost tentative, as if he’s not sure he’s allowed to touch her again after the way he just came apart.
She doesn’t stop him.
Ron swallows, hard. His gaze drifts down her body, to the lines of his release streaked across her belly, her hips, the soft curls between her legs. His breath catches. His fingers hover for half a second—hesitating, asking without asking.
Hermione nods once.
He exhales, shaky with relief.
Very gently, Ron presses two fingers through the warm spill, gathering it, coating the pads until they glisten with the mix of him and her. Hermione’s breath stutters as he brings his hand between her legs again, spreading her open with the same reverence he had earlier. Now his touch is slower, almost devotional.
“Fuck,” he whispers, voice hoarse as he watches what he’s doing to her. “Look at you…”
His fingers slide inside her, slick with him, and Hermione lets out a sharp gasp. The sensation hits her deep and the heat curls instantly through her belly. Ron groans at the feel of her spasming around his fingers, at the way her body welcomes the mess of him.
“You feel so good, like you’re all open and welcome for me,” he murmurs, barely coherent. “Still—Merlin, Hermione…”
She arches into his hand, hips lifting off the mattress, her thighs clasping down on his forearm. Ron’s fingers curl just right, slow at first, then purposeful as he feels her walls fill with blood and engorge around him.
He presses his forehead to her sternum, and breathes hard against her chest.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers, hands sliding into his damp hair.
He doesn’t.
Ron fucks his fingers into her with slow, deliberate strokes, using his thumb to spread more of his release along her clit. The friction, his come, his fingers, the warmth of his palm against her, it all hits her like a bow string snapping.
Hermione gasps, and her legs shake helplessly around his arm as her second orgasm crashes over her. Ron groans against her chest as she clenches around his fingers, as her hips buck into his hand. He holds her through it completely firm and steady, working her through every spasm like he’s guiding her out of a storm.
“That’s it,” he whispers, sounding wrecked with awe. “That’s it, Mione… that’s my girl…”
She feels like she can’t stop coming. It’s hot and she’s shuddering, her fingers fist in his hair as she rides the waves of it. Ron doesn’t let up until she collapses back into the mattress, jerking away when it becomes too intense.
Ron pulls back.
Not because he’s done, Ron will never be done, or because he wants to pull away, he doesn’t. He stays right there on top of her, breath unsteady, fingers still trembling with the urge to keep moving inside of her. But he stops because she jerks a sharp, overstimulated shiver that means one more stroke would unravel her into pain rather than pleasure.
He feels it instantly. He always could.
His hand withdraws from between her legs with a soft, wet sound, and he lifts it toward his mouth without thinking. He stops, catching himself, hovering like he’s afraid the act would break whatever this fragile thing is. Hermione reaches up, takes his wrist gently, and guides his fingers to his lips.
He closes his eyes and sucks them clean.
When she releases his wrist, Ron sinks down beside her, face open and raw in the low light. For a moment, they just hold each other close. They’re too aware of one another, of what they’ve done, of what they keep doing, to speak.
Hermione pulls in a slow breath. Her chest still trembles with the aftershocks, her thighs feel boneless, her skin hot. Ron looks wrecked. His hair is stuck to his forehead, and his freckles are flushed dark on his nose and cheeks.
He reaches for the duvet they’ve pushed to the foot of the bed and draws it up, hesitating as he looks at her again.
She nods, and that’s all it takes.
Ron settles into the bed beside her, and tugs the blanket over both of them. It’s instinct, muscle memory, like the hundreds of nights they’d done this before. Except this time there’s no justification, no relationship binding them, and no excuses they can cling to.
Hermione turns slightly, enough that her shoulder brushes his chest. Ron’s arm lifts automatically, offering, and she fits herself beneath it like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It is the most natural thing in the world. His hand rests warm against her upper arm, steady and gentle.
She feels his breath hit the top of her head. He’s trying to control it, but he can’t quite get it even.
“Shouldn’t stay,” he murmurs, voice hoarse, low.
“I know.”
He presses a soft, almost absent-minded kiss into her hair. She inhales sharply, because it’s the kind of kiss that belonged to mornings they lived together. Mornings that were gentle, warm, and thoughtless.
Ron’s fingers flex slightly on her arm, betraying him before his voice does.
“I can’t seem to stop,” he whispers.
Hermione closes her eyes. The bed is warm. His body is solid and familiar.
Neither of them moves away.
The silence answers for them both.
They won’t stop.
They’ve never stopped.