(no subject)
TITLE: Love Like Winter
RATING: NC-17
SUMMARY: "She wanted love/I taste of blood/She bit my lip/and drank my war." It's the winter after Harry defeated Voldemort, and there are no happily ever afters. But Ginny's not an Ice Princess and this isn't a fairy-tale after all. [post-war angst/smut]
WORD COUNT: 2591
DISCLAIMER: Don't own anything, Scholastic does. And JKR. Humph. (lyrics in summary and title by AFI.)
A/N: This was written for the challenge at catchmysnitch. What an honor to be asked to join, and I hope this fic adds a little to the amazing quality already there! It was so stream-of-consciousness-whateverness I don't know how it will be recieved, but drop me a line either way! Reviews are greatly appreciated.
~*~
She wanders into the party with her hair done in curls, and it's the first time Harry has ever seen it like that. The color, that distinctive Weasley color, catches the light and glimmers strawberry-gold in the glow of the lanterns strung from wall to wall. Each strand caresses her white skin, tumbling past the hollows of her cheeks, brushing the slopes of her shoulders. Always before, her hair has been in braids or a ponytail or a curtain over her sly, knowing eyes. She had been childish once, playful and sporty in her happiness and spunk. Now she is older, the sophisticate, with her soft, blazing halo of waves, revealing vulnerable features and a delicate neck. Her pulse visibly flutters and Harry feels his own pulse shudder at the thought of all her splendor here at the celebration of his darkest day.
She's gorgeous under the moon and the stars, pale white and milky-skinned. Long limbs curve from under the flaring skirt of her black dress, and the dipping collar of her winter cloak reveals dangerous valleys of blushing flesh. There's still snow dusting her lashes, sparkling as it melts and runs down her freckled cheek in a glimmering parody of tears.
Because she's not crying, Harry thinks. She can't be. Her lips are stretched into a wide, reckless smile, and her bittersweet eyes glitter like snitches as they catch his. She's happy, Harry tells himself vaguely. Happy without bloody hands and a heart that is too heavy to love any longer.
And yet. As her curls blow out in the fierce blizzard wind and her cloak closes over her silk finery, the tears remain. Reminders of a time even growing up cannot erase, but in the way her chin tilts, Harry can see that she understands a little of his darkness. She's spent the last year and a half alone, after all, hope dying day by day as those fine lines crawled their way across her face. She looks older now, more regal and untouchable in her isolated beauty, and Harry's fingers itch with the need to mess up her curls, to bring some warmth and youth back to her own freezing form.
He wants to touch her and start her spark once again, make her come alive like slow-burning dynamite and summer fireworks. He wishes he was her lover so he could melt all her ice, against her pliant mouth and familiar taste.
But he's not, so he doesn't, and he thinks, going very still, some people just get used to the cold.
~*~
He stands under the banner lauding him the murderer of another murderer, and even in the thick of winter, Ginny sees a hazy light crowning his temples, every bit the saint everyone fancies him to be. He's alive, breathing heavily and staring at her with hot, diamond-hard eyes, but he's gone on the inside. There is death lurking in the creases of his half-smile, in the tension strung along the cords of his neck, in the angles of his set jaw. He's alive because she can feel his heat all the way from the entrance of the room, the blizzard's wet frost clinging to her back even as an inferno rages against her front, but he's dead in all the ways that count.
Because he still stands across the way, underneath that fluttering banner, and Ginny thinks it's ridiculous that such a flimsy fabric could be such an immovable wall between her hand and his cheek.
Tears blur her vision as she enters the party, as she greets her family and friends with a frozen smile. Frozen--she's cold through and through, and seeing the ancient pain sunk into the planes of his face, she feels impossibly more cold. His hair, dark like the nightmares in his eyes, is combed away from his forehead, and her gaze is drawn to his scar.
He killed Voldemort and an entire army of Death-Eaters just this fall, and instead of fading away into the white slate of winter, the scar has flared and pulsed. It's raw redness screams triumph more vibrantly than the banner above his head, whispers all kinds of things about what has been done to achieve victory and at what sort of price.
Ginny wants so badly to trace the lightning bolt with her lips, to calm the mocking congratulations carved into his skin. She wants to warm him like he warmed her once, with a hand on her shoulder, telling her she'd done no wrong in listening to a diary. She wishes she was his hero so she could cut the stone away from his heart, hold him close and keep him safe from himself.
But she's not, so she doesn't, and she thinks, shivering, some people ought to learn to get used to the cold.
~*~
They dance toe to toe, hand in hand, heart to heart. But there is a wall between the drumbeat of their twin pulses, and it is formed in the questions lurking in Ginny's eyes. Why the distance? Why the ice? Why can't we be happy now??? Harry's not sure how to respond, because isn't it obvious? He's nothing but filth now, not fit for her hem of satin and lace. She's innocence and glory, and he is sin and battle.
"I killed people," Harry says abruptly, and it's as close as an answer as he can give Ginny right now. His voice is toneless and bland, and Ginny flinches. He thinks this is good, that she should know this is not the kind of frost that can melt so easily.
"Yes," she finally says. "But--"
"Real people, human beings," Harry continues, as if she didn't interrupt. Their feet move quickly in time to the band's rhythym, and Ginny spins, her heels clacking, as Harry catches her waist and twirls her away. "Real people with families," he whispers against her ear, squeezing her hip. "I killed an entire line of fathers and brothers and some mothers and daughters, too." He smiles slightly. "Don't I smell like a hypocrite?"
His breath barely stirs the hairs at her temple, and her fingers tremble against his nape as she turns and gazes fiercely at him, flinty-eyed and hard. "You smell like snow and leather and that stupid hair-gel you use even though there are spells to slick your hair back, you arse. You killed Death-Eaters," she says exasperatedly. "You brought death on those who breed it for fun. For laughs. You're very different than that, Harry, you've got a soul--"
He dips hers low, his hands fisting in her loose curls so they don't touch the floor. "I'm not so sure anymore, after all I've done." he says matter-of-factly, his tone warning. "And neither are you." He brings her back up and holds her head close, his gaze searching. Ginny's eyes go soft and desperate as she skates her hand down the lines of his face, and for a moment, heat drifts from both their touches. But then the moment is gone and they're both alone with their own trangressions, their own histories, their own demons. Their own winter.
They dance silently around phantoms and memories, careful not to touch the moments their minds know best. Stepping in place, fingers entwined, eyes locked. It's anyone's move, and the cold is damning them both.
~*~
The party is over by midnight, but sleep is a long-time coming, if ever, for Ginny now. Nightmares are so commonplace that she has stopped waking up from them, instead sleeping through each horrific second and enduring the stomach-clenching fear and unease upon her every waking moment. Rather than go through that on a night and morning she already knows is going to be horrific enough, Ginny decides to wander out on the grounds of the Burrow and look at the stars.
There's not much to wish for now that everything she's known to want over the years has come true. Her family is alive, her world is safe, and she is in love. Perhaps it is because she has always been so used to being unloved back that she doesn't think to wish for Harry when she catches sight of a particularly bright star, but even so--she turns, and there he is.
"I don't know how to be anything other than who I've been," he says. "I can't be warm like I used to be anymore, Ginny. I don't know how. Not after all I've done. You don't know the half of it--"
She shrugs. She thought as much. Damn noble bastard, even now. "I don't care," she says simply. "I want you, thorns and all."
Harry's eyes go darker still, and with the moon swimming in their reflection, they look so sharp it's as if they are glinting green knives. "What if I can't hold you without cutting you anymore?" he asks, a challenge and a despair.
Ginny leans close, her lips ghosting over his temple. "Let me show you how," she suggests, and then her fingers sift through his hair and bring his head closer, anchoring him in place so her mouth can cling to his. "I've changed, too," she says. "I'm tired of waiting, and I don't need a hero. Not anymore. Just you." She kisses him, the bravest she has ever been, because when she was locked up in a veritable tower for fourteen months, how was she ever supposed to earn an Order of Merlin like him?
She supposes this will be her courage under fire, and his grasping, bruising fingers will give Ginny her battle scars. The snow is cold as they land on the ground, but in the wake of an unfolding firestorm, neither feels the bite of winter at all.
~*~
He is not surprised that she utters no heating charms. She's always been a firm believer in realism, in roughing it, in showing everyone she's not some stupid chit to be coddled. Comfort's never been high on Ginny's priority list when it comes to living in the moment, and Harry wants her all the more for it right now. Watching her writhe on the cold, glisting bank, her cloak unfastened and spread on the ground, her dress twisted to her waist, Harry can almost taste how very adult she is now.
Harry wants to show her he understands. That she's not just a little child to him, that she's not his ivory queen meant to wait at the gates of the ice castle for his return. Ginny's a warrior, and maybe if he had taken her along, he wouldn't be so dangerously close to losing it right now. Because without her touch, without the flame he can feel burning off of her, he knows he will lose himself. In the darkness, in the pain and confusion, in victory with a price. He's killed so many people, but he hasn't killed her yet, and he won't let himself keep trying. Not anymore.
"I love you," he grunts, his hips knocking against hers as her legs hook over his waist. "I've always loved you. Thought you were too good for me, you know. So sweet, so pure. So good. I've been bad--God, Ginny. I've been so bad. Couldn't hurt you. Couldn't keep hurting you."
Ginny tosses her head, bites her finger as his cock bumps against her center, rubbing through trousers and the silk of her dress. "You've been hurting me," she grits out. "Thought I wasn't good enough. Not good enough to save you. I just wanted to save you."
Harry feels his throat tighten. He'd thought she'd be disgusted with him. He couldn't face her disapproval, the disappointment shining in her eyes when she found out her hero wasn't a hero after all, only a common murderer and a faded legend. He wasn't the Boy-Who-Lived anymore, he was the boy who happened to kill the evil menace to society, and now that his life's task was completed what else was there for him to do? Nothing, he thought, and so he stayed away.
But now he knows. To live, he thinks, to live with this woman. To just live with her and let himself be. He leans in to kiss her again, his hands cupping her breasts as she arches against him. "You're saving me," he promises. Snow blows against his neck and he shivers before her lips are taking his again.
~*~
It's unlike every fantasy she has ever had about this, and Ginny has had a lot. The touch of Harry's callused fingers and his breath against her aching breasts should be old hat by now, considering all the dreams and all the workout her poor fingers and wrists got in the nights of the past year. But somehow, lying in the middle of the field out behind her house, snow soaking through her dress and sodden cloak, this moment, the reality of it, blows every fantasy out of the water.
She's not quite an innocent. There were other men this past year--she wasn't lying about being tired of waiting. But when Harry's fingers hook over her knickers and tug them down, the cool air and nudge of his knee between her legs makes her clench and gasp like a virgin. "I'm not one to hold a candle at the window," she stutters, her legs falling open wider, toes curling in the snow.
"Didn't expect you to," Harry grits, licking his way around her navel. "Part of the reason it drove me mad to see you again. Part of the reason I stayed away. Knew it wouldn't, couldn't be like before." He presses her waist deeper into the cloak, into the snow, and moves farther down her legs. "'M glad, though. Want you to remember this."
She's cold, so cold and damp, shivering from head to toe, but the way Harry's tongue is circling her clit, the bite of his nails against her thighs as he holds her legs open, heats her blood intensely. She's a tornado of sensation right now, of disbelief that this is finally happening. It's like coming alive after being dead for so long, the pins and needles of watching something fallen asleep and numb rumble to life once again.
She's dizzy with the feel of him. His hands tear at her dress, move it up so it slips easily over her head and now she's left cradled only in her velvet cloak and his arms. His mouth descends upon her nipples, nipping and licking, and with each hot swipe, the fire only burns brighter. Ginny clutches his shoulder as his stubble swipes across her sensitive skin, the pain-pleasure a welcome penance for being so wanton, so dirty as having sex in the snow.
And it is having sex, because even though he loves her and she loves him, they're not ready yet for tommorrow. It's today they're dealing with, tonight and the catharsis of waking up from this whole year's worth of nightmares and pain. Maybe later it can be making love, but for now it's sex, and it's hard and hot and wonderful. Harry unzips his trousers and then he is just as naked in the snow, just as vulnerable. When he plunges into her, fills her up and melts her down, she can feel the stone around him start to crack, and it's a start.
The cold winter wind swirls around them both, sinks between the crevices of their bodies and settling in their bones. For once though, they're both warm enough on the inside to take it.
~*~
RATING: NC-17
SUMMARY: "She wanted love/I taste of blood/She bit my lip/and drank my war." It's the winter after Harry defeated Voldemort, and there are no happily ever afters. But Ginny's not an Ice Princess and this isn't a fairy-tale after all. [post-war angst/smut]
WORD COUNT: 2591
DISCLAIMER: Don't own anything, Scholastic does. And JKR. Humph. (lyrics in summary and title by AFI.)
A/N: This was written for the challenge at catchmysnitch. What an honor to be asked to join, and I hope this fic adds a little to the amazing quality already there! It was so stream-of-consciousness-whateverness I don't know how it will be recieved, but drop me a line either way! Reviews are greatly appreciated.
~*~
She wanders into the party with her hair done in curls, and it's the first time Harry has ever seen it like that. The color, that distinctive Weasley color, catches the light and glimmers strawberry-gold in the glow of the lanterns strung from wall to wall. Each strand caresses her white skin, tumbling past the hollows of her cheeks, brushing the slopes of her shoulders. Always before, her hair has been in braids or a ponytail or a curtain over her sly, knowing eyes. She had been childish once, playful and sporty in her happiness and spunk. Now she is older, the sophisticate, with her soft, blazing halo of waves, revealing vulnerable features and a delicate neck. Her pulse visibly flutters and Harry feels his own pulse shudder at the thought of all her splendor here at the celebration of his darkest day.
She's gorgeous under the moon and the stars, pale white and milky-skinned. Long limbs curve from under the flaring skirt of her black dress, and the dipping collar of her winter cloak reveals dangerous valleys of blushing flesh. There's still snow dusting her lashes, sparkling as it melts and runs down her freckled cheek in a glimmering parody of tears.
Because she's not crying, Harry thinks. She can't be. Her lips are stretched into a wide, reckless smile, and her bittersweet eyes glitter like snitches as they catch his. She's happy, Harry tells himself vaguely. Happy without bloody hands and a heart that is too heavy to love any longer.
And yet. As her curls blow out in the fierce blizzard wind and her cloak closes over her silk finery, the tears remain. Reminders of a time even growing up cannot erase, but in the way her chin tilts, Harry can see that she understands a little of his darkness. She's spent the last year and a half alone, after all, hope dying day by day as those fine lines crawled their way across her face. She looks older now, more regal and untouchable in her isolated beauty, and Harry's fingers itch with the need to mess up her curls, to bring some warmth and youth back to her own freezing form.
He wants to touch her and start her spark once again, make her come alive like slow-burning dynamite and summer fireworks. He wishes he was her lover so he could melt all her ice, against her pliant mouth and familiar taste.
But he's not, so he doesn't, and he thinks, going very still, some people just get used to the cold.
~*~
He stands under the banner lauding him the murderer of another murderer, and even in the thick of winter, Ginny sees a hazy light crowning his temples, every bit the saint everyone fancies him to be. He's alive, breathing heavily and staring at her with hot, diamond-hard eyes, but he's gone on the inside. There is death lurking in the creases of his half-smile, in the tension strung along the cords of his neck, in the angles of his set jaw. He's alive because she can feel his heat all the way from the entrance of the room, the blizzard's wet frost clinging to her back even as an inferno rages against her front, but he's dead in all the ways that count.
Because he still stands across the way, underneath that fluttering banner, and Ginny thinks it's ridiculous that such a flimsy fabric could be such an immovable wall between her hand and his cheek.
Tears blur her vision as she enters the party, as she greets her family and friends with a frozen smile. Frozen--she's cold through and through, and seeing the ancient pain sunk into the planes of his face, she feels impossibly more cold. His hair, dark like the nightmares in his eyes, is combed away from his forehead, and her gaze is drawn to his scar.
He killed Voldemort and an entire army of Death-Eaters just this fall, and instead of fading away into the white slate of winter, the scar has flared and pulsed. It's raw redness screams triumph more vibrantly than the banner above his head, whispers all kinds of things about what has been done to achieve victory and at what sort of price.
Ginny wants so badly to trace the lightning bolt with her lips, to calm the mocking congratulations carved into his skin. She wants to warm him like he warmed her once, with a hand on her shoulder, telling her she'd done no wrong in listening to a diary. She wishes she was his hero so she could cut the stone away from his heart, hold him close and keep him safe from himself.
But she's not, so she doesn't, and she thinks, shivering, some people ought to learn to get used to the cold.
~*~
They dance toe to toe, hand in hand, heart to heart. But there is a wall between the drumbeat of their twin pulses, and it is formed in the questions lurking in Ginny's eyes. Why the distance? Why the ice? Why can't we be happy now??? Harry's not sure how to respond, because isn't it obvious? He's nothing but filth now, not fit for her hem of satin and lace. She's innocence and glory, and he is sin and battle.
"I killed people," Harry says abruptly, and it's as close as an answer as he can give Ginny right now. His voice is toneless and bland, and Ginny flinches. He thinks this is good, that she should know this is not the kind of frost that can melt so easily.
"Yes," she finally says. "But--"
"Real people, human beings," Harry continues, as if she didn't interrupt. Their feet move quickly in time to the band's rhythym, and Ginny spins, her heels clacking, as Harry catches her waist and twirls her away. "Real people with families," he whispers against her ear, squeezing her hip. "I killed an entire line of fathers and brothers and some mothers and daughters, too." He smiles slightly. "Don't I smell like a hypocrite?"
His breath barely stirs the hairs at her temple, and her fingers tremble against his nape as she turns and gazes fiercely at him, flinty-eyed and hard. "You smell like snow and leather and that stupid hair-gel you use even though there are spells to slick your hair back, you arse. You killed Death-Eaters," she says exasperatedly. "You brought death on those who breed it for fun. For laughs. You're very different than that, Harry, you've got a soul--"
He dips hers low, his hands fisting in her loose curls so they don't touch the floor. "I'm not so sure anymore, after all I've done." he says matter-of-factly, his tone warning. "And neither are you." He brings her back up and holds her head close, his gaze searching. Ginny's eyes go soft and desperate as she skates her hand down the lines of his face, and for a moment, heat drifts from both their touches. But then the moment is gone and they're both alone with their own trangressions, their own histories, their own demons. Their own winter.
They dance silently around phantoms and memories, careful not to touch the moments their minds know best. Stepping in place, fingers entwined, eyes locked. It's anyone's move, and the cold is damning them both.
~*~
The party is over by midnight, but sleep is a long-time coming, if ever, for Ginny now. Nightmares are so commonplace that she has stopped waking up from them, instead sleeping through each horrific second and enduring the stomach-clenching fear and unease upon her every waking moment. Rather than go through that on a night and morning she already knows is going to be horrific enough, Ginny decides to wander out on the grounds of the Burrow and look at the stars.
There's not much to wish for now that everything she's known to want over the years has come true. Her family is alive, her world is safe, and she is in love. Perhaps it is because she has always been so used to being unloved back that she doesn't think to wish for Harry when she catches sight of a particularly bright star, but even so--she turns, and there he is.
"I don't know how to be anything other than who I've been," he says. "I can't be warm like I used to be anymore, Ginny. I don't know how. Not after all I've done. You don't know the half of it--"
She shrugs. She thought as much. Damn noble bastard, even now. "I don't care," she says simply. "I want you, thorns and all."
Harry's eyes go darker still, and with the moon swimming in their reflection, they look so sharp it's as if they are glinting green knives. "What if I can't hold you without cutting you anymore?" he asks, a challenge and a despair.
Ginny leans close, her lips ghosting over his temple. "Let me show you how," she suggests, and then her fingers sift through his hair and bring his head closer, anchoring him in place so her mouth can cling to his. "I've changed, too," she says. "I'm tired of waiting, and I don't need a hero. Not anymore. Just you." She kisses him, the bravest she has ever been, because when she was locked up in a veritable tower for fourteen months, how was she ever supposed to earn an Order of Merlin like him?
She supposes this will be her courage under fire, and his grasping, bruising fingers will give Ginny her battle scars. The snow is cold as they land on the ground, but in the wake of an unfolding firestorm, neither feels the bite of winter at all.
~*~
He is not surprised that she utters no heating charms. She's always been a firm believer in realism, in roughing it, in showing everyone she's not some stupid chit to be coddled. Comfort's never been high on Ginny's priority list when it comes to living in the moment, and Harry wants her all the more for it right now. Watching her writhe on the cold, glisting bank, her cloak unfastened and spread on the ground, her dress twisted to her waist, Harry can almost taste how very adult she is now.
Harry wants to show her he understands. That she's not just a little child to him, that she's not his ivory queen meant to wait at the gates of the ice castle for his return. Ginny's a warrior, and maybe if he had taken her along, he wouldn't be so dangerously close to losing it right now. Because without her touch, without the flame he can feel burning off of her, he knows he will lose himself. In the darkness, in the pain and confusion, in victory with a price. He's killed so many people, but he hasn't killed her yet, and he won't let himself keep trying. Not anymore.
"I love you," he grunts, his hips knocking against hers as her legs hook over his waist. "I've always loved you. Thought you were too good for me, you know. So sweet, so pure. So good. I've been bad--God, Ginny. I've been so bad. Couldn't hurt you. Couldn't keep hurting you."
Ginny tosses her head, bites her finger as his cock bumps against her center, rubbing through trousers and the silk of her dress. "You've been hurting me," she grits out. "Thought I wasn't good enough. Not good enough to save you. I just wanted to save you."
Harry feels his throat tighten. He'd thought she'd be disgusted with him. He couldn't face her disapproval, the disappointment shining in her eyes when she found out her hero wasn't a hero after all, only a common murderer and a faded legend. He wasn't the Boy-Who-Lived anymore, he was the boy who happened to kill the evil menace to society, and now that his life's task was completed what else was there for him to do? Nothing, he thought, and so he stayed away.
But now he knows. To live, he thinks, to live with this woman. To just live with her and let himself be. He leans in to kiss her again, his hands cupping her breasts as she arches against him. "You're saving me," he promises. Snow blows against his neck and he shivers before her lips are taking his again.
~*~
It's unlike every fantasy she has ever had about this, and Ginny has had a lot. The touch of Harry's callused fingers and his breath against her aching breasts should be old hat by now, considering all the dreams and all the workout her poor fingers and wrists got in the nights of the past year. But somehow, lying in the middle of the field out behind her house, snow soaking through her dress and sodden cloak, this moment, the reality of it, blows every fantasy out of the water.
She's not quite an innocent. There were other men this past year--she wasn't lying about being tired of waiting. But when Harry's fingers hook over her knickers and tug them down, the cool air and nudge of his knee between her legs makes her clench and gasp like a virgin. "I'm not one to hold a candle at the window," she stutters, her legs falling open wider, toes curling in the snow.
"Didn't expect you to," Harry grits, licking his way around her navel. "Part of the reason it drove me mad to see you again. Part of the reason I stayed away. Knew it wouldn't, couldn't be like before." He presses her waist deeper into the cloak, into the snow, and moves farther down her legs. "'M glad, though. Want you to remember this."
She's cold, so cold and damp, shivering from head to toe, but the way Harry's tongue is circling her clit, the bite of his nails against her thighs as he holds her legs open, heats her blood intensely. She's a tornado of sensation right now, of disbelief that this is finally happening. It's like coming alive after being dead for so long, the pins and needles of watching something fallen asleep and numb rumble to life once again.
She's dizzy with the feel of him. His hands tear at her dress, move it up so it slips easily over her head and now she's left cradled only in her velvet cloak and his arms. His mouth descends upon her nipples, nipping and licking, and with each hot swipe, the fire only burns brighter. Ginny clutches his shoulder as his stubble swipes across her sensitive skin, the pain-pleasure a welcome penance for being so wanton, so dirty as having sex in the snow.
And it is having sex, because even though he loves her and she loves him, they're not ready yet for tommorrow. It's today they're dealing with, tonight and the catharsis of waking up from this whole year's worth of nightmares and pain. Maybe later it can be making love, but for now it's sex, and it's hard and hot and wonderful. Harry unzips his trousers and then he is just as naked in the snow, just as vulnerable. When he plunges into her, fills her up and melts her down, she can feel the stone around him start to crack, and it's a start.
The cold winter wind swirls around them both, sinks between the crevices of their bodies and settling in their bones. For once though, they're both warm enough on the inside to take it.
~*~