FIC for callie_828

[bestmates_mod]

For: callie_828
From: solstice_muse
Title: Plate Removal
Rating: R
Summary: She can remember when somebody’s working or ill or at a friend’s wedding that weekend but she’ll always forget that Hermione won’t be sitting beside me for dinner...Years of pain and regret expressed in plate removal.
Disclaimer: I have never been JK Rowling.
Warnings: Humour, angst, post-war, first times, oral, and mentions of past het canon relationships. This is written in the first person.
Author's Note: Merry Christmas and may your table be fully laid.



Plate Removal

I wasn't going to be able to stand it.

Did mum even know what she was doing every Sunday? Was she aware that it was like a swift kick in the happy-sacks every time she did it? She's not a spiteful woman but I get the feeling her actions aren't entirely unconscious.

I get it. I understand that there were things she wanted for me. I wanted those things too. Once, not long ago, I wanted those things for myself. Now, I want other things and I can't tell anyone. I want them because if I'm suffering from guilt inducing plate removal, just because I don't have Hermione Granger as my girlfriend anymore, then what am I going to be put through for having...anyone else as my...something.

Hermione was invited for Christmas dinner with her parents. She was going to come, back when we were a 'we', but now she and her family are staying at home for Christmas.

Do you know what it feels like to be me at big family dinners?

I go to mum and dad's for dinner with the family every Sunday lunchtime and she puts twelve plates out instead of eleven and then deliberately removes the place setting next to mine with an audible sigh. Years of pain and regret expressed in plate removal, that is!

Who takes new mums aside while their newborn is getting cleaned up and whispers into their ear how to sigh like that? It's soul crushing, I tell you.

Christmas was coming and I was still bumping into people from school and colleagues I didn't see all that often at work who didn't know what happened between me and Hermione and would ask after her.

What happened? How are you coping? Are you still fiends? Maybe you'll work it out? So is it true then...about you?

Okay, let's not go into that last one until I've covered those others before it.

What happened?

We were walking along the pavement, on our way home from her parents, and it was a month before her birthday. The Grangers, all three of them, had ganged up on me in an attempt to get me to commit to a family holiday for her twenty first and I couldn't come up with any decent excuses for saying no.

I still said no.

I blamed work and her parents let it go but Hermione walked down the road with me, in the fine summer drizzle, and told me that Harry was free to do something special for her birthday so she knew that I would be free to go away with them for her birthday. She demanded I just tell her if I didn't want to go.

I told her that.

There was so much shouting that people opened their windows and swore at us until they got well and truly fed up and threatened to call the 'Pleese'. We swallowed our argument down and stood in the middle of the road, staring at each other.

"A weekend with my parents might be too much for you. I understand that."

"I like your parents, not enough to go on holiday with them to be honest, but I do. That's not the issue."

"So what is the issue and don't you dare say work?"

"We're... I'm not the kind of person...I dunno."

She looked at me and she knew. She said that love can be true and lasting but it can also dwindle through no fault of either person. She told me she loved me, but that she wasn't really disappointed that I didn't want to go away with her and her parents. It was just an issue, something that would need an explanation, that she didn't want to have to deal with.

"I should miss you when you go on a mission on Valentine's Day. I should feel neglected when I don't see you at midnight on New Year's Day for a kiss. I should consider you before accepting my parents' gift of a holiday for the four of us but I just knew I wanted to get away and I wanted to spend time with them and you were... It's horrible, Ron, but you were just somebody who had to come along because our names have become one now. We're Ronanermione, not Ron and Hermione, not two people, we're a couple."

There, in the middle of a Muggle street, in the warm summer drizzle, Hermione told me that we were together for other people and not each other. She told me that I spoke more passionately about work than her and without passion we were pretty empty as a couple.

So we stopped being a couple.

We had a cuddle and swore to be friends and help each other through the rest of the world's disappointment. Then, symbolically, she went one way down the road and I went the other. About ten minutes later the symbolism was ruined by me boarding the bus I needed to get back into London and finding the only available seat was right next to her.

We managed to laugh about it but we didn't speak all the rest of the way home.

So when people hear the awkward and unromantic end to the romance that had its own Rita Skeeter biography they then move along to the next pertinent question. How am I coping?

I'm coping by working all day, and sometimes at nights, going to the pub with the lads and seeing my family every Sunday for dinner. I don't miss her body in my bed, her lips on mine, her smell or anything I should be pining for. I miss my friend who knows why I am the way I am before I realise I'm acting the way that I do.

And she would understand that last bit, even though it doesn't make any sense. I miss that. I miss being understood.

You can't be with somebody for that reason, though.

Dean once said, 'If you can't be with the one you love then love the one you're with', and I thought to myself, 'So that's what I've been doing'.

I should have known it was over when the two of us talked more during sex than at any other time. It was as if the physical connection forced a verbal one out of us. It wasn't even good sex talking, no 'Oh yeah, right there, fuck me into the mattress good and hard you rampant beast', just 'will you please remember to pick up your good cloak by five tomorrow? I've got a smear test with my Muggle doctor and the cleaner's will be closed by the time I get away'.

But I'm coping as well as somebody can do when people keep coming over to you and tilting their head to one side while telling you how much you can still hope to get out of life. I get angry or sad or deeply pessimistic because of the way I'm treated by sympathetic people, but it gets put down to the break up.

People need to help you even if you don't need help. It helps them to help, so I let them think they're doing it. Harry has been going overboard trying to get me through it. He's gone from trying to force us back together to trying to get me to let it all out. That caused me to remind him how he felt when Hermione tried to make him cry over Sirius and he shut up immediately. After that he started trying to set me up with girls.

Oh God, does Harry have appalling taste in women, sisters of mine being the exception... most of the time.

And his advice! How he ever got a woman to go out with him I'll never know. Do you know what he told me?

"Take her to a place with tablecloths and more cutlery than you will ever need and pretend to enjoy eating while a camp man hovers over you."

So how am I coping?

Well, I'm coping by humiliating myself in public.

I was in Flourish and Blotts, waiting in the queue, when a stunningly perfect young woman started talking to me. She was prettier than Lavender and the Patils but not quite as coma-inducingly gorgeous as my sister in law, Fleur.

She asked me if I read a lot and I told her that I didn't like most of the books that get into the front window. She asked me for specifics so I specified that I didn't like to read books with glitter on the covers, pink covers, pensive women on the covers, or basically any cover that wasn't just the title and the author in plain letters.

I was basically outing myself as a man who judges a book by its cover.

She found me amusing or interesting or whatever and kept talking to me. She wanted to know what books I did like and I said I liked ones that could fit into my pocket. She pushed further and I tried to think of the most intellectual book I'd ever seen Hermione reading and said, "Anything Russian."

"So, what are you getting today?" She asked me.

"Um, I've ordered something."

"What?"

"A...retrospective on...um...the life and times of..."

I was saved, or so I thought, by the cashier calling me forward.

"Your order slip please. Ah yes, you're the gentleman who wanted 'Everybody Out' coming to terms with coming o-"

"Yeah, thanks!"

So there's that.

Are we still friends, that's the next topic to address.

Yes, thank God, yes we are. She is saving me from going insane. She understands all the sympathetic looks and she even understands the plate removal. She went abroad with her family and they stepped into the restaurant on her birthday and her mother hesitated when asked, 'table for three?'

My mother removes plates and Hermione's mother hesitates.

Some relatives will see the Grangers and ask, 'Is that nice young man Ronald coming too?', and Hermione's mother will hesitate and then say, 'No'.

We support each other through our maternal tribulations. We feel guilty because we have ruined their perfectly planned future for the two of us. We'd have to be friends because nobody else can ever understand.

People still throw the question, 'Maybe you'll work it out', at me. It's not even a consideration for me. It's akin to hearing that a person is a vegetarian and suggesting that they might forget one day and accidentally eat a meatball. Some people are vegetarians and some people aren't meant to be Hermione Granger's boyfriend, that's just the way it is.

I never grew that chunk of flesh back that I splinched away years ago and I can't ever regress to the person I was when all I wanted was Hermione's boobs pressed against my chest and a face full of bushy hair.

I've changed and we both know it. Neither of us has actually said anything about it, though. It's one of those things you don't say.

This brings us to the final of the frequently asked questions, and I'm sure you're asking it yourself right now, and...is it true? Am I?

I haven't, not ever, not before. That could mean I'm not, right?

I think about it, a lot, and have done for ages. That could mean I am.

Things confuse me and Hermione knows me and she's trying to clear my head, but then my mum will spin me around with her disappointed plate removal routine and Harry will knock me for six by not showing up at the house anymore until...

We were sitting at the table - Charlie had work so he wasn't there. Mum didn't accidentally set him a place and that made me a little angry. She can remember when somebody's working or ill or at a friend's wedding that weekend, but she'll always forget that Hermione won't be sitting beside me for dinner.

I don't think she's being cruel. I do think she's trying to be subtle and show me the error of my ways. One Sunday, Hermione braved the Burrow for Sunday dinner and mum set her place with glee and almost spilled gravy all over our heads as she poured it for us. Having Hermione sitting beside me at dinner meant something to her.

The following week she set the table as if Hermione was coming again and, though I hadn't asked her to, she did come. She was determined to put a stop to the guilt trip plate removal saga and helped mum set the table before sitting across the table, between Bill and my dad rather than beside me.

Mum didn't seem to know what to do about this. She didn't want to tell Hermione to change seats, but she had no reason to remove Hermione's plate and, if she wasn't removing the plate, she couldn't sigh. It was like, forgive me for this as I do love and respect my mother, when a dog runs after a pretend ball you have thrown. She had that same look on her face, excited but baffled, convinced that she had seen something but unable to grasp it.

It threw her so badly that she sat down to eat before she realised that there was a plateful of food set beside Ginny with nobody eating it. We all looked at mum, mum looked at the empty chair, and then everybody looked at Ginny.

"Harry's not coming." Ginny cut into her roast beef as she spoke, focused so fiercely upon her meal so she didn't have to lock eyes with her mother, and I forced myself to look elsewhere.

"Is he working?" Mum asked, glancing at me as if I should have mentioned such a thing.

"Nope, he's just not coming." Ginny said before lifting a piece of roast beef and potato to her mouth.

Mum rose from the table, dad grabbing at her pinafore in a futile attempt to stop the inevitable, and we all cringed as she moved around behind Ginny to pick up Harry's plate with a disappointed sigh.

Ginny looked straight up at me and I looked back. It was like looking into a mirror, only the eyes were a different colour, but the feeling was exactly the same. The crushing burden of plate removal now rested upon her shoulders and I couldn't stand it.

I jumped to my feet, throwing down my cutlery, and marched towards the fireplace.

"Ron, don't!" Ginny called after me, but something had to be said.

The vicious cycle of plate removal had to be stopped.

I think Harry was waiting for me as I stormed out of the explosion of emerald flames in his living room because his hands pressed flat against my chest to keep me from knocking him off his feet with my momentum as I staggered out.

"How could you do that to her?" I demanded.

"It wasn't meant to be an insult to Ginny," Harry said as he backed away from me, "and I thought...we'll I was given the impression that...you wouldn't mind."

"I wouldn't mind?" I yelled. "After what I've gone through since Hermione, you thought I wouldn't mind?"

Harry backed away a little further and looked everywhere but at me.

"Things came between us and I realised I was with Ginny for the wrong reasons. You know what it feels like to feel like you have to carry on with something that isn't working just because it's what everybody else wants for you."

"I also know that you didn't let me and Hermione give up without a fight." I suddenly took in what Harry had said to me and lunged at him to keep him from backing away again. "When you say things came between you," I gripped his arms tightly enough to bruise them and gave him my hardest big brother look as I spoke, "do you mean a person?"

Harry gulped and then nodded.

"You cheated on my sister?" I asked, voice faltering as I realised that I might have to beat the crap out of the most important person in my life.

"No! Never!" Harry blurted, eyes bulging.

I somehow felt better about the idea of my sister having betrayed him, not because it would have hurt Harry but because I could support him rather than attack him. Any time I've felt compelled to fight with him, verbally or physically, it's made me feel painfully sick inside. Still, she was my little sister and I couldn't stand to see her as unhappy as she was at the dinner table.

"Whatever she did she didn't deserve plate removal. No one deserves plate removal, Harry. It's devastating!"

Harry paled.

"Plate removal?"

"When mum heard that you weren't going to be coming to dinner she took your plate away."

"She didn't sigh did she?" Harry asked, shrinking before me.

"Of course she sighed! It wouldn't be plate removal if she didn't sigh. It wouldn't impact like a kick in the face if she didn't sigh."

"But it's my fault, Ginny wanted us to be together, she shouldn't have to have Molly sighing at her," Harry said as he pushed his hand over his already dishevelled hair.

"If you didn't want it to happen, you should have been there. You could have changed seats, Hermione did it and mum was too confused to sigh. If you're there, she can't take your plate away as if Ginny's at fault for your inevitable starvation."

"I couldn't come," Harry snapped back before recoiling at the expression on my face. "I'm sorry but it's not fair to Ginny."

Maybe he could see that I was about to bellow the words 'plate removal' into his face or something because he cowered after he said that and held up both hands in defence.

"I want to be with somebody else!" He practically yelped like a scolded puppy who'd just peed on the rug. "It wouldn't be fair for me to sit at the same table with her after telling her that."

I clenched my jaw and braced myself to have to do something I didn't want to do.

"You do know I'm gonna have to hit you now, right?" I managed to say.

Harry nodded and removed his glasses.

"Make it good, because I really deserve it," Harry said as he closed his eyes and leaned forward, chin sticking right out before him.

I balled my hand into a fist and took a deep breath in.

"Why'd you have to do this, you shit?" I said, shakily, as I drew back my arm.

"Because it's not fair to string along the sister of the man I'm really in love with," Harry said before wincing, in full expectation of having his lights punched out.

I froze, standing like a statue of a boxer in mid punch, and gaped at him. He cracked an eye open, still cringing in the same way Kreacher does when spoken to by a stranger, and we both lowered our arms.

"If you and Hermione can still be friends, even closer now in a way, then we can too...maybe. Yeah?" Harry said, uneasily.

I was still staring at him. I shook my head and his head fell.

"But you're not gay," I said, still shaking my head.

"Gay means I like men and I don't."

"I don't understand," I said, head spinning.

"I just... I got the impression you might be..."

We were trying and failing to read each other as we stood in Harry's living room. I am on the receiving end of plate removal and maternal sighs because I can't even cope with having Hermione as a girlfriend. Hermione was a great girlfriend. She was the most perfect woman for me that could ever have been created. Some have even said that she exists to be my perfect woman.

I think she exists to save us all from ourselves and be the next Minister for Magic to be honest.

I don't want to be with any woman if I can't be with her... and I don't want to be with her.

Maybe it's time I admit what I do want. Only that opens a big can of worms and who likes cans of worms? If cans of worms were appealing, they would sell them in supermarkets. When people open cans the last thing they would want to see inside would be worms. People would be disappointed and disgusted.

If I can't handle sympathetic plate removal, then how would I cope with disgust? I wanted to talk to Hermione. I wanted her to tell me what to do, what to say, who to be.

I tried being with somebody I didn't want just so I could have somebody, and I ended up as miserable as I made Lavender in the end. It's not in my nature to fake a relationship. That's why I couldn't do it with Hermione.

"Ron," Harry said, his voice like a bucket of cold water over my head, "I got the feeling that you and Hermione didn't work because you picked the wrong friend to try and be with that way."

"What are you saying?"

"You're the one I would miss most, and the whole time I was with Ginny I did, I missed you."

"You're not gay," I said, head shaking again.

"I'm not," Harry agreed as he stepped forward. "I'm Ron Weasley's."

I don't remember moving. It was as if I was looking at two photographs of this moment. In one, Harry is saying my name and I am looking terrified and, in the next, I am attempting to swallow my best friend's face.

My momentum slammed us into the wall behind Harry and our teeth clattered together. It was rough and scratchy, a kiss with sharp stubble and big strong hands gripping at hairy bodies.

I don't know how long we'd both gone without sex or if maybe it had just been that Harry wasn't getting what he wanted out of sex but we found ourselves moaning as if we were on the verge of climax just from kissing each other.

Our mouths were clamped together and neither of us could tear our lips away. We took frantic breaths through our noses and groaned, gasped and whimpered into the other's mouth while our tongues thrashed and knees buckled. We slid down the wall and crashed, clumsily, onto the floor. Harry still had the wall behind him and, therefore, something to push off of and force me onto my back with a grunt.

I slammed down onto the rug and Harry's chest thudded against mine, forcing me to stop kissing him and gaping to let the air that was being forced from my lungs to escape. Harry hummed in satisfaction as he stared at my gasping mouth. His weight was pressing down on me and his cock poked into my stomach. Mine grew hard as soon as I felt his arousal and I tried to arch my back and wriggle along the floor a little way so we could rub our cocks together, but Harry interlaced his fingers with mine and held my hands to the floor, on either side of my head.

"God, Harry!" I panted.

He ran his hand across my face, down my neck and then splayed it over my chest. I let my arms stay where they were, forming a diamond shape around my head, while Harry dragged both hands down my body and across my nipples.

"When I thought you might be gay," Harry said, his hands now sliding past my stomach and around my hips, "I couldn't stop think about you like this."

"Wait," I blurted, wanting him to carry on touching me but freaking out about somebody's head appearing in the fireplace, "what if Ginny...? My sister...we can't."

"I got possessive when I thought about it, y'know?" Harry whispered as his fingers unfastened my fly and his breath felt hot and moist against my skin. "I could cope if you wanted another woman, but," Harry eased my cock free and lightly stroked the pad of his thumb over the tip in tight circles, "the thought of another man. Any man but me..."

"Never done this before!" I blurted, eyes closing and body arching away from the rug beneath me.

"Me neither," Harry said as he pushed his free hand up and under my t shirt. "I never wanted to, not until I thought about doing this with you."

I flung both my arms outwards and pounded my fists against the floor with a growl of animal passion.

"I want to put it in my mouth, Ron," Harry said, voice husky but hands trembling.

"Don't do this and run back to Ginny," I blurted. "Don't you fucking dare!"

Harry crawled up the length of my body and hovered over me. The tip of his nose brushed against mine and I opened my eyes to look up at him. I let out an awestruck breath and his glasses steamed up. I think he tried to laugh but all he could manage was a strangled noise at the back of his throat.

"You," Harry said before lowering his head and kissing me once again.

I tried to tell myself he didn't mean that but it felt like he did. It was a kiss that meant it. I gave in and kissed him back, our faces rubbing together made a sound like a match striking the roughened side of a matchbox and the skin around my lips became tender and sore but we didn't stop.

If we stopped, I'd have to start thinking again and when I think I mess everything up and end up losing what I want. Things like, you can't have your cake and eat it, springs into my mind and then I start thinking about eating a whole cake and then being violently sick and suddenly I'm shoving Harry off me and scrambling away from him with my undies around my ankles and my furious erection waggling before me.

"I don't want to have a quick fumble and then lose my best mate for the rest of my life. We're not doing this!" I heard myself saying.

Harry grabbed the tight material at his crotch and squirmed, wincing in discomfort, while pleading with me to get over my self esteem issues.

"Do you really think it's possible for you to lose me?" Harry's voice was strained and slightly angry. "After everything we've been through together, you still think it's possible to be without me for the rest of your life? When we fell out over the Tri Wizard tournament, I took you back without an apology. When I got together with Ginny, I was thinking about you, looking at you, waiting for you to give the nod. When you walked out on us, I was fucking livid for all of thirty seconds and then I would have done anything for you to walk back into that tent. When you did come back, I didn't need an apology or an explanation or a penance. I was just so fucking delighted to have you back."

"None of that's the sa-"

"If you tell me you're gay for every man on the planet except me, I'll still be here," Harry yelled at me and I felt a little dizzy, it's hard blushing with an erection y'know?

"I've laid it all on the line to be with my best friend before and it got all fucked up and...and... they took her plate away!" I couldn't help it; this fixation of mine on the removal of a place setting at dinner was defining every thought in my head during those days after my break up with Hermione.

"But you still have her. Everything wasn't lost. You got to be who you really are and still have your best friend. There's still a place for her at your table, just not the place you first thought."

Merlin's droopy arse, this metaphor was going to be the death of me.

"I've never kissed a man before this," I said, looking away. "Never done anything."

"Me neither."

I took a deep breath and looked up at him.

"Sex is gonna hurt, I read a book."

Harry almost fell backwards as he reeled in shock.

"Hermione didn't get you a book on this did she? I mean I knew she was understanding, but for fuck's sake..."

"I got it," I mumbled. "I didn't know what the bloody hell I was getting myself into so I ordered a book."

He smiled at me. I gave an embarrassed shrug and then moved my hand to my stiffy, self consciously. Harry crawled across the rug and knelt before me.

"I'm not expecting you to dive straight into gay sex. I just wanted to...touch you. I wanted to let you know that I have urges and they're all for you."

I licked my lips and Harry slid his hand over mine. We both moved our hands together, around my aching cock, and soon I was resting my forehead against his and closing my eyes.

"You smell different," Harry spoke softly into my face while our hands stroked my cock. "You smell different to the way you do when you're angry. This is sexy. You have a sex-smell."

I didn't know if I was being told that I sweat more when I have the horn or that Harry's really part bloodhound. All I knew was that he must have been a champion wanker because his hand felt better on my cock than my own did. I moved my fingers away from my own penis and began to stroke his. He moved his head and mine drooped as I bit my lip. I felt his breath against my eyelid and then a kiss that was barely a lip brush across my closed eye.

It was great how solid his body was. There were no squishy bits, no in and out bits, just smooth and solid muscle. For a moment I felt a little self conscious about being so bony. Could Harry read my mind? Was he so tuned into my self deprecation that he can address my internal struggles before I get bogged down in them? I have no idea what it is that makes him stamp on my inner Dementors but he did it yet again as he slid his free hand back out from under my t-shirt and settled it upon my protruding hipbone.

"Wow," he said with a kind of wonder. "I finally get to touch these."

"You what?" I laughed, nervously.

"These," Harry stopped teasing my cock and slid both palms along the contours of my pelvis. "These two sticky out bits used to mesmerise me."

"My bony hips? They make me look like a skeleton!"

"They make you look naked," Harry said, still staring at them and moving his thumbs along the hollow and fanning his fingers around my waist. "When you reach up for things or you stretch as you yawn and your too short jumpers ride up...God that glimpse of bone and stomach...I'd nearly wet myself."

"Fuck off," I said, trying to behave as if I knew he was teasing me or using a cheesy line as a Mickey-take. "There's nothing sexy about that."

Harry hooked his thumbs over the crest of my pelvis and spoke in rough whispers, lips moving against my muscle free stomach and down toward the mass of auburn hair between my legs.

"When you shower after Quidditch the water flows down them in little channels. I used to want to pour wine in that hollow your collarbone makes and let it overflow down your body, all the way down this fucking amazing curve, and kneel here and lap it all up."

"Wow," I just about managed to say before he pulled on my hips, so I fell back onto my elbows, and held them still as his hot breath caressed my desperate cock.

"I want to..." Harry began, his voice sent the slightest of vibrations through my cock and my breath caught at the back of my throat. "I want to do something now. I want... I want you now somehow or I'll explode."

I cursed myself for doing it but instinct took over coherent thought and I pushed back on my elbows and lifted my hips off the rug and towards Harry. The head of my cock nudged his lips apart and I felt his tongue flick out and tease my foreskin.

"Me too," I yelped. "I want you to. I'm ready."

I felt Harry's breath coming hotter and faster and wetter around me and a slight touch of his lips as he moved his open mouth down my shaft without closing it and making any deliberate contact.

"I'm ready," I said again, staining not to thrust up into him and beginning to pant with anticipation.

Then, rough, wet and warm, Harry's tongue was pressing against the underside of my cock and sliding up as he pulled backwards and closed his lips tightly around the tip. I made a strangled sound of blissful torment and let my head fall right back as I resisted the urge to fuck my best mate's mouth. I tried to concentrate on my breathing, keeping it slow and steady, keeping a rhythm, and not getting carried away before we'd even started.

I felt Harry's hands pushing down on my hips and holding me in place. I let my locked elbows loosen again and thumped down onto my back.

"Don't squirm, just enjoy," Harry said as he took me in his mouth again and slid all the way back down, rubbing his tongue against me until he could go no further.

He closed his lips tight around me and hummed. I twisted my shoulders away from the floor with pleasure and let out a grunt as I fought not to move my hips. Harry still held them firmly and was working his lips and tongue back and forth an inch or so around my cock. I let my shoulders thud back down onto the rug again and curled my toes as I drew my knees up.

Harry pulled back again and began to rub the end of my cock with the tip of his tongue in teasing circles. Moving the skin back and around and watching as my cock strained and pulsed despite my hips being held so forcefully by Harry. He curled his tongue around the head of my cock from beneath and just let it push itself back and forth against the firm, wet muscle. I began moaning at this.

"Put your mouth around it. Now, fuck, now!" I cried out as my willpower fell away and I pushed hard against his palms and felt my cock slide in a little further before Harry moved his head back and leaned right over me, locking his elbows so his full body weight was forcing my hips back down.

"Take your time," he said, firmly. "I want you to know this isn't some quick blow job I'll regret later. I mean this, I want this, I'm doing this as slow as possible."

"Fuckin' hell, Harry," I growled, "too slow!"

I reached for my cock and stroked it for some relief.

"You don't want to push it all the way down my throat then?" Harry asked me.

I grunted in frustration and flung my arm back away from my body, clawing at the rug for something to grip.

"Please?" I gasped.

Harry's grip on my hips loosened as he began to rub the palms of both hands up and down my hipbones, around them to my arsecheeks, and back to force my thighs apart. My breaths were deep and I let my legs fall wide open as Harry took my cock back into his mouth.

His hands were still moving as he paused every inch to suck, slowly, and, by the time I couldn't focus on anything but my orgasm, I knew there was one teasing my nipple beneath my t-shirt and another rubbing against my stomach as it moved with my increasingly frantic breaths.

Able to rock my hips at last, I did and ended up cross-eyed with bliss as I felt my cock sliding with fluid motion down Harry's throat. Then there was a tight feeling around the end of my cock as he swallowed. I screamed something and he did it again and again and again until...

I had never come so hard I was shaking all over before. I'd definitely never come so hard that I carried on shaking a good minute or two afterwards.

"Want something to drink?" Harry asked me, he was laying by my side now, his arm draped across my chest and a dopey look on his face.

I swallowed against my dry throat and then nodded. He moved to get up and go to the kitchen but I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him towards me. I kissed him and he smiled against my lips. I licked mine and then kissed him again, pushing my tongue into his mouth and sucking upon his own. I could taste myself on him and it felt amazing.

"Forget the drink, we'll Accio a bottle of something when we're about to pass out from dehydration," Harry said with a smile as he threw his leg over my body and plunged both hands into my sweat-dampened hair.

I nodded and kissed him at the same time, everything could wait until later.

When I woke up on Monday morning, I was lying under a tartan blanket on Harry's sofa. I looked around for him but there was no sign. I called out to him as I padded, barefoot to the toilet for my morning wee and still nothing.

Frowning, I flushed the loo and washed my hands. Just as I wandered back into the living room a Ministry paper plane memo zoomed into the room and whizzed around my head like Pig with his tail feathers on fire.

I grabbed it and unfolded the paper. It was Harry's handwriting.

I'm doing overtime today so we can both have Christmas Day off to be at the Burrow for dinner, no empty plates!

You are on the night shift tonight, aren't you? I'm stuck on days what with the early morning overtime. I won't see you until Saturday evening.

Stay at my house this week, you shouldn't say anything to your family about us, until we've had a chance to talk about it properly ourselves.

We'll discuss it at dinner on Saturday night, Bellino's at eight.

Take care without me!

Harry

I reread it immediately.

We're both going to be at the Burrow for Christmas dinner, that's good, and a plate joke.

I won't see anything of him all week, that's bad. I'm still not exactly sure where we stand. He said it wouldn't be a mistake or a regret, but he hasn't said that it will be anything else either.

And I need to talk to him before I can say anything to my family. Does he want to keep it a secret? Maybe we should keep it a secret, for Ginny's sake. I mean I came over to punch him and I didn't do it. A Weasley man still owes him a punch in the face. I had my cock in his mouth; maybe I deserve a punch in the face. Oh shit, I'm the person Harry left Ginny for, I'm the other woman!

Bellino's at eight, we're going for dinner. That sounds good, right?

Only, if we're in a public place then we can't do anything...not like we did the previous night, so maybe it's not good. When Harry took Cho to that fancy tea room he hated it. Fancy places are the death of his misplaced sexual fantasies.

Shit, what if I'm a Cho? Good as an obsession, but bloody awful in practice.

I'm like the Canons' Quidditch strategies, good on paper - shit in the air.

Oh fuck, I'm the Canons!

He got lumbered supporting a loser from a very young age and now he thinks he has to stick with that great orange loser for the rest of his life out of loyalty.

I ran to the toilet again and threw up.

I composed myself and got to my feet again, wiped my mouth and then washed my face in cold water. I looked at my dripping wet face in the mirror and ordered myself to stop it.

"This is the locket side of me thinking. Remember what Harry always said, if I catch myself thinking things the locket Harry would agree with then I know it's a pile of dragon dung."

I took in a deep breath and let it out.

"Dragon dung," I repeated and nodded my head.

A week of working all night and sleeping all day, ignoring owls from the family, trying to get Hermione to reassure me that everything I think about myself is wrong via Floo, got me through until Saturday.

Then, of course, I had the nightmare of spending half the day sleeping off the previous night's shift and the other half wondering if we were going on a date or having a talk about how it was all a big mistake and he'd got it all out of his system at last.

I couldn't stand waiting around for eight o'clock to come, so I went out and did some Christmas shopping. I bought my mother a self setting tablecloth, it banishes plates to the sink as soon as they're clear and, with some tweaking, I reckoned I could get it to banish a plate that was set where nobody was sitting. I saw it as a nice gift and a pre-emptive strike.

I got Ginny a professional, leather bound, book made of all her Harpies cuttings for her first full season with the team. Then, while I was wandering around Muggle London in search of something that winds up and runs on mechanical cogs and wheels, for Dad to take apart and put back together all wrong, I found myself wandering around the high street nearest Hermione's family home.

"So, you're buying presents before Christmas Eve, with aforethought, what's wrong?" She had come to meet me at the cafe as soon as I had phoned her from one of those boxes on the street.

"I have dinner tonight. It's the first time we've seen each other without being half asleep or apologising for waking the other since... It's a dinner away from the house, together."

"It's a date?" Hermione offered with a smile.

"Or an, 'I'm over that phase but thanks for the stubble rash', public meeting."

She sighed and told me to take off the locket. I protested that I used to have issues with being rejected and unwanted long before I put that bloody locket around my neck but she wasn't having any of it. She walked along the street, arm linked with mine, and assured me that self doubt and an irrational preparation for people who love me the most to reject me were not the same thing.

We stopped outside a shop window and she pointed at a suit. My whole body stiffened.

"I can't wear a suit. Bloody hell woman, I'm not appearing in front of the Wizengamot!"

"Well, you're not wearing jeans," she said before dragging me inside.

In the end we had to go to a special shop for tall people in order to get me a pair of trousers. I got a black pair that didn't flap about my skinny legs too badly and a fitted shirt that she made me tuck in despite the fact my body was almost too long for such a thing. She then took me to something called a 'charity shop', which I found most offensive, until I found out that it wasn't the person buying the stuff who was the charity case, and rummaged through the donated coats and jackets until she found a nice brown leather jacket with a torn lining. She fixed the damage magically and then informed me that I was 'smart casual'.

I was just chuffed I didn't have to wear a tie.

I dropped the gifts off at Harry's place and then realised that I might not want to go back there after dinner. Then I tried to perch a little Pig sized mental Hermione on my shoulder to tell me not to be stupid and that of course I would be welcome back at Harry's house.

Then I relaxed a bit at the thought of little mental Hermione. Not that she was raving mad, you understand, I mean that she was a figment of my imagination. I Apparated to Gastronomic Alley and pushed open the door to Bellino's, feeling the rush of warm air and rich aromas from the kitchen as I stepped inside.

"Are you eating alone tonight, sir?" The olive skinned camp gentleman asked me as he approached.

"No, I'm meeting Harry Potter for dinner," I said, glancing around and realising Harry wasn't there yet.

"Ah yes, Mister Potter, he has a table in the corner. Nice and private and out of the way, nobody sees you, like he wanted." The man said in his ever so slight Mediterranean accent.

I followed him as he wove between tables bearing candles jammed into empty wine bottles, most with couples seated at them, and sat me in the farthest corner from the window. It was dark and out of sight of anybody else in the restaurant because of a hugely overgrown potted plant blocking the way.

The table was set for two and the candle was burning in the middle of it. There was a basket of bread rolls and two white china plates waiting to be loaded with food.

This didn't bode well, I thought, I was already being swept under the carpet. Ron Weasley: the man who went from 'hero's best friend' to 'dirty little secret' in the space of a week.

Mental Hermione poked me in the side of the head and I was almost insane enough to turn and glare at her as if she was really there and snap, 'see, I told you so'.

I waited for five, ten, fifteen minutes and still no Harry.

The man came over offering me something to drink at regular enough intervals to make me sink down in my chair and wonder if it was possible to cringe yourself to death out of raw embarrassment.

"Has there been no message at all?" I asked him when he came back over at the twenty minute mark. "Not a Floo call or an owl or anything?"

"No messages, sir, but I'm sure Mister Potter will be here soon. He is a very important man. There was probably something he has to do that we will read about in tomorrow's Prophet." The man grinned.

"Yeah," I said with a half laugh and heavy headed nod.

"A drink sir, for waiting so patiently?" The man cradled a bottle of wine before me.

"Yeah, sod it, why not?" I nodded, not caring about keeping up appearances anymore. "It's not as if anyone can see me getting plastered all alone, can they?"

I drank deeply from the glass and then held it back up for a refill. The man went away and left the bottle, the very definition of discretion, and I began picking at one of the bread rolls, chewing angrily, then nibbling dejectedly, then hiding the empty basket with humiliation, and finally sweeping away the crumbs and knocking my knuckles against the clean plate across from me.

The man reappeared and took away the empty bottle without a look of judgement or pity. I loved him at that moment. I also decided to face my demon and reached out to tug at his sleeve as he turned to leave.

"You know what?" I said, correcting my volume so I wasn't quite so loud. "You can take the other plate away too. I'm ready to order."

"You do not wish to wait for Mister Potter?"

"Just take the plate away," I said before picking it up and handing it to him. "I'm on my own."

The man took the plate and walked away from the table. I picked up the menu and chose the first starter, main course and dessert that caught my eye. I put the menu down when I heard approaching footsteps and jumped as I saw Harry pulling out the chair and sitting across from me.

"So, I suppose I deserve that," Harry said, head bowed in shame "You're right, plate removal is more painful than a kick in the balls."

I stared at him.

"You're late."

"I know. I'm sorry. I should have sent a message or something, but I was freaking out and didn't realise how late I was until the clock chimed half past the hour."

I nodded and set the menu down.

"I got myself in a right state you see," Harry said as he smiled, nervously. "I was changing out of my Auror stuff and I suddenly thought that maybe you didn't think this was a date, so I shouldn't dress for a date. I mean - I meant it to be a date, but I was really embarrassed and I'm a bloke and you're a bloke and I didn't want to say the word date to you, so then I thought that maybe you didn't think it was a date and you'd be here in your jeans and a sweatshirt and thinking we were going to talk about what happened, but look at you - you're all sexy and on time and thinking you're on a date and I'm half an hour late and don't have a plate anymore."

I was still taking in the longest sentence I'd ever heard in my life when Harry slumped over the table and put his head in his hands.

"This couldn't have been worse even if your mother had taken the plate away and sighed." He groaned.

"So, this was a date then." I said, numbly. "Hiding me in the corner where nobody can see me is a date to you?"

Harry's eyes bulged as his head jerked up again.

"God, no! I asked for a table where nobody could see me. I didn't want autograph hunters to disturb us or people passing the window to stare in like we were in a goldfish bowl. I didn't want us to be interrupted, that's all."

I didn't feel quite so bad about being hidden away after he said that. I looked at him properly.

"You're wearing your t-shirt on back to front y'know?" I said, blankly.

Harry looked down at himself and then up at me.

"When I realised that I'd all but stood you up I threw on the nearest stuff I had and came straight here. I'm really sorry."

I nodded and the man came back, smiling with delight that Harry was finally here.

"You are here. I shall bring back your..." he stopped mid sentence and looked at me, questioningly. I nodded to him and his smile lit up his face again. "I will bring the plate back."

The man left and Harry reached across the table and took my hand.

"We're both idiots, and we're both new at this," Harry said, "but for the record, Ron, my plate will always be on the table."

And do you know what? It always is.