Lubido Comburo Chapter 3

[napchic]

Title: Lubido Comburo
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Ron/Hermione
Chapter: 3



The meal of boiled mushrooms and tinned peaches was eaten in silence, well, relative silence, considering the table manners of the two boys who tucked in at an alarming pace. While the ginger-haired boy grinned and ate with great gusto, the dark-haired boy simply gobbled his food down automatically, while slowly blinking his eyes. He had just awoken and looked as though he might still be partially asleep.

The girl apparently made a meal out of tepid tea and the inside of her bottom lip as she pushed the uneaten mushrooms around her plate absently.

Her gaze constantly flickered over to the ginger-haired boy, sometimes stopping to rest on his hair or his eyes or his lips as he shoveled in an enormous mouthful of peaches.

She watched him pick up another slick piece of the fruit. As it slipped down his chin and back into the plate, the boy swept out his rather noticeably long, pink tongue to lave the sticky skin beneath his bottom lip. He dragged his thumb across the skin as well, sucked his thumb into his mouth, and released it with a wet pop.

The girl let out a ragged breath.

He grinned at her boldly, and without breaking eye contact, the ginger-haired boy picked up one of the peach halves. He tipped the peach to his thick lips and drank the syrupy juice with a little slurp. Then, after licking his lips, he pressed the center of the fruit to his mouth to lap up the last of the syrupy liquid inside it.

"Oi, just shag already," the black-haired boy groused out sleepily.

The ginger-haired boy flushed red all the way up his neck, and the girl beside him looked so guilt-ridden that she might become physically ill from it.

"Sh..shag?"

"Yeah, mate. You should clearly shag that poor peach you're snogging," the black-haired boy said grinning. "I'm fairly sure you're betrothed to it by now. There's no reason you shouldn't already be back in the bedroom with it having a hump."

The dark-haired boy smiled widely at his groggy joke, and banishing his dishes to the sink, he stood and walked toward the tent's entrance in order to begin the night's watch.

Turning back he added cheekily, "Ron, seriously, take that peach somewhere private. I think you're making Hermione sick."

The ginger boy answered with a sticky, two-fingered salute and both boys laughed and nodded their goodnights.

The girl really did look ill.

The boy shoved the remaining peaches in his mouth as quickly as possible, as if he were hiding the evidence of some crime. The girl brought both hands up to cover her face, and whispered.

"You don't think he..."

"Naaw a clue," the boy whispered as softly as he could around a mouthful of peaches.

He finally swallowed down the last massive bite and seemed unsure what to do next.

"I think I'm gonna take a shower. I'm sorta...sticky."

The boy spoke absently as he pressed his fingertips together, audibly pulled them apart, and he appeared to be trying to think of the next thing say. The girl had a pained expression on her face as she watched his Adam's apple bob.

"I'm probably sweaty, too. Don't wanna get you sticky or sweaty when I..."

Words began tumbling out of the flushed-faced girl.

"A shower sounds brilliant. You could do yours in here, and I'll take the bedroom."

"But what about all the..."

"Drying charms, and I've used an impervius charm on all my books and notes. I once tried using it on my clothes, but then they didn't respond as well to tergeo after that, so I had to remove it..."

"You're brilliant. I wondered how you were managing to bathe without doing it outside and freezing your bollocks off... well not bollocks but your ti..."

"It's really more comfortable if you cast a warming charm on the air."

"Cheers, I'll try that," he said smiling shyly.

They had long since banished away the dinner dishes, and yet they both stood facing one another in an awkward attempt to drag out more conversation. It was as if both of them were frightened by the inevitable task that lay ahead of them that night.

"Well, I'll just..."

The girl pointed clumsily to the bedroom opening.

"I'll j..just see you when you've f..finished up," she managed to stammer out.

"Yeah. Um... Maybe call my name when it's safe for me to come into the bedroom. I wouldn't want to catch you starkers."

The crooked grin on the ginger-haired boy's face made him look as though he wouldn't have minded a bit to catch her starkers, but the girl only rolled her eyes at him, and slipped quietly into the tent's bedroom.

Ten minutes later, the boy stood twitching on the balls of his bare feet in the tent's tiny kitchenette. His wet hair was a dark, rusty orange where it was plastered to his face and where it curled against the pale freckled skin of his neck and shoulders. His skin was all gooseflesh as rivulets of water cascaded down his chest catching in a sparse grouping of light copper hairs between two circles of stippled, pink flesh that were nearly painfully hardened by the cold. His wand was still under the pillow on his bunk where he'd been kipping an hour ago. His gaze darted rather frantically is if he was hoping that neither of his companions would notice him using their one bottle of washing-up liquid and their kitchen sink as his personal bath. He shoved a poor tea towel… the gossamer, threadbare rag that he'd, no doubt, defiled beyond repair, into the bundle of his dirty laundry.

"Sssshit."

The shivering boy suddenly realized he'd forgotten to ask her to dig in that beaded bag of hers for a set of clean pyjamas…

"Shit."

…or for clean pants…

"Bloody buggering shit."

…or a towel.

The boy wiped his hand down his face and sighed. He dropped his bundle of dirty clothes and soon-to-be-banished-forever tea towel to the floor and sifted through the cloth pausing to cautiously sniff at various items. He pulled a face as if he'd gotten a whiff of mountain troll at his two layers of sweaty shirts, and finally seemed to come to a decision. He shook his jeans free of the pile and pulled them up over his boney, damp hips. The once snug denims hung dangerously low and only the moistness of his skin held them firmly in place. They were his oldest pair, and they had a frayed hole beneath the left back pocket, but they were soft to the touch. He studied the loose waistband and sucked in his already concave stomach. The jeans slumped down and the bony edges of his hips slipped into view.

"Shit."

He'd taken off his belt, socks and shoes before napping.

Nearly stepping on the hems of the low-slung denims, and with a burning blush, the boy padded across the tent to the canvas bedroom door.

"Ron?"

The girl seemed taken aback by how quickly the boy popped in through the canvas door flap. Well, she seemed startled by his punctuality and by the fact that he'd stepped through the doorway directly into her, and she now stood clutching his damp, bare arms to avoid tipping backwards.

"Yo..ou're..." she stammered directly into his bare chest.

"Forgot to ask for pyjamas," he said with a blush that spread from his fringe to his sternum. He continued speaking as if imperioed to do so, and added, "or pants."

The girl's gaze darted to the trail of dark ginger hair below his navel, and back up to his eyes before she settled on staring intently at the canvas wall to her left.

The boy obviously took her distraction as an opportunity to do a bit of staring himself. He smiled at her still-damp hair that, while it was a complete ringletty mess, looked deceptively tamed in its current state. She wore a large, faded t-shirt with the neckband stretched out and unraveling from the cotton body of the shirt. The bottom hem hung just below her thighs, and from all appearances, the t-shirt might have been the only garment the girl was wearing.

"You're not wearing a shirt," the girl whispered.

"You're not wearing trousers."

The girl smirked at the tent wall.

"At least I have a reason to be half-starkers. I didn't have anything to wear. What's your excuse?"

"Medicinal purposes," she said grinning rather mischievously.

"Oh, really," the boy laughed out.

"Shit, sorry," the boy said, returning his voice to a hushed tone.

The boy slid his hands down the girl's arms, and she gave a little shiver as he pivoted around her and stepped away from the bedroom entryway.

He leaned in so closely his lips brushed against her ear and said, "Better do that silencing spell before I embarrass the both of us."

The girl turned and stared after him as he padded over to her camp bed yawning and stretching as he walked. One impossibly long, freckled arm stretched straight up and ended in a white-knuckled fist. The other lanky arm bent over his head as he ran his right hand up the length of his left bicep. His arms were thin, deceptively strong, and covered in an intricate pattern of raised, pink scars - the effect of which was more decorative than disfiguring. As he moved his lean, sinewy back and sharp shoulder blades cast fluid shadows on his fair, freckled skin.

The girl seemed hypnotized by him.

It was not until he looked back at her expectantly that she seemed to realize that she had yet to secure the bedroom door. After two whispered spells - perhaps she was too distracted to perform them nonverbally - the girl walked to stand beside him by her bed. The boy swallowed thickly.

"Medicinal purposes, eh?"

He tried to force out a casual laugh. This was, no doubt, an effort to hide the fact that he'd just gaped open-mouthed at the girl as she'd walked toward him showing more long, bare leg than he'd probably realized she had.

"Yes, I thought easier access might be of some medical benefit," she said with a nervous laugh.

"Always knew you were the brains of the operation."

They smiled awkwardly.

"I'll just get the bed ready for you... the blankets are a bit scratchy..."

The boy trailed off and busied himself with turning down the woolen blanket and exposing the soft white sheets below. In the process he exposed something else.

The girl sucked in a gasp of air.

As the boy bent over to tuck a stack of large volumes under the camp bed one book at a time, the low-slung jeans pulled taught and gaped open at a rather sizable tear. The girl stared slack-jawed at a two-inch oval of snow-white arse... with exactly five freckles on it. Her hand twitched forward. Her index finger inched toward the hole. Her eyes were half-lidded as she breathed heavily through her open mouth. The boy was saying something... something gently chiding about having so many bloody books, but the girl didn't seem to hear him. She had two fingers rubbing a bit of white, frayed, denim thread between them, and then she shifted just a little, and the boy absolutely squealed.

"HERMIONE!"

"What?"

"What?!"

He screamed the word back at her with incredulity.

"You just goosed my fucking arse, that's what!"

The boy was nearly smiling but still sounded utterly offended.

The girl's face was flaming.

"You've got a hole in your jeans, by the way. Did you know? Just there..."

"Yes, I bloody well know. I knew before you grabbed my bloody arse through it."

"Well, yesterday you...you sucked bloody my arse; so forgive me if I'm a bit unsure what the proper protocol is between us anymore."

The boy blushed nearly purple.

"That was for medicinal purposes!"

They paused to glare at one another, and then the girl's expression softened.

"You're right. I'm sorry, Ron. I honestly... I don't know what's gotten into me, but I think it's this... this bloody curse. I shouldn't have... It was just right there and so tempting... and..."

"You think my arse is tempting?"

The boy was wearing an insufferable grin. The girl closed her eyes and sighed loudly.

"Please don't be a prat, Ron. You know this curse affects me... that way. And I am really sorry."

"Quit apologizing. Any man would love to have you grab his tempting arse, but sometimes a bloke needs a bit of warning, love."

"You are not helping."

"But I will," he said more seriously. With a pat to both her shoulders he added, "And I promise you that we'll get you so cured of this thing that even my stunning bare arse won't tempt you."

She lifted a single eyebrow at him and smiled.

"On the bed with you. Face down and no peeking," he ordered with mock sternness. The girl grinned wider and silently obeyed.

"I'll just start with your legs, yeah?"

The boy's voice had wavered on the last word, but he slapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously in a reasonable approximation of confidence.

He knelt down on the tent floor, sat back on his long legs, and hunched forward until his face was nearly touching the back of her t-shirt-clad left thigh. She'd nervously tugged at the old shirt as she'd settled onto her stomach on the camp bed. She'd tugged so vigorously, in fact, that the neck of the shirt had stretched over to bare her left shoulder.

He sighed at the fabric tucked around her thigh and shuffled on his knees towards the foot of the bed.

He lifted her foot a bit, and cupped the sole as he ran his thumb along the hollow of

the tendon above her heel. The tail end of a winding length of hearts curled there under his caress.

He could hear her take in a sharp breath as he leaned in and sucked on her ankle. He paused immediately.

"S'okay," she replied rather thickly to his silent question.

Minutes passed as he awkwardly dragged wet kisses in an ever-ascending spiral up her leg. He had long since given up any particular technique and sometimes dragged his jaw against the rash or swept it with his tongue. As the boy stared down at his handiwork uncounted minutes later, he swallowed at the patches of stubble-raw skin and winced before speaking.

"Hermione?"

"Mm?"

"I've done all that I can see. I'm gonna have to move stuff around a bit, okay?"

The girl nodded into the pillow.

The boy blew out a long breath and eased the hem of her shirt up. He paused just below the swell of her buttocks, still holding the hem. Blinking with a look of determination, he continued moving the hem upwards until a thin, heart-covered strip of the small of her back was revealed.

The girl shivered.

It was then that the boy seemed to notice her knickers. They were still plain white cotton, but were decidedly smaller and somehow shorter and very likely thinner than the ones she had worn before. And where the other pants had proper sides to them, the leg holes on these nearly merged with the elastic waistband. The boy seemed to find these marked differences extremely perplexing...and fascinating.

He checked to make sure the girl's eyes were shut tightly.

He checked again.

Then, he held his telltale breath. Dropping his hand to the noticeable swelling at the front of his jeans, he pulled at the fabric shifting the contents inside until a rather large, linear bulge pushed its way between denim and thigh. He ran the heel of his palm down the length of the bulge...and then, so, so, slowly back up.

His eyes rolled back in his head in what had to be bliss as his Adam's apple slid down his throat in a slow swallow. After squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, he let out a rigidly controlled breath and placed that very same palm on a large patch of hearts... directly below her arse.

She jolted.

It seemed to embolden the boy, who literally smirked, and in what would have been a tedious pace had the girl not been holding her breath with her perfectly brushed teeth clamped down on her swollen bottom lip, he agonizingly slowly dragged his hand down her thigh to the tender skin behind her knee. His hands were spectrally thin and wiry with long, delicate fingers and a thick, muscular palm. His hands were also inordinately long, and at her dimpled knee, they could nearly span the circumference of her leg.

She shivered and took a ragged attempt at a breath.

He smirked again. And again, at that same maddening pace, he dragged his palm up as much of her thigh as his considerable grasp could take in. His thumb dug against the bed sheet curled under her, and the tip of his middle finger was well between her thighs as he dragged gooseflesh behind him, higher and higher. The girl was absolutely rigid and whether involuntarily or not, she clenched her thighs together against his undaunted hand, and flexed her very round little bottom.

His hand paused on her thigh, and it was the boy's turn to take in his own shaky breath as he pushed his free hand roughly against the stretched-taught denim at his pelvis. He sucked his thick bottom lip into his mouth and bit down hard. Seconds ticked by in breathless silence as he ground denim against his fist. When the boy's lip finally slipped out of his mouth, wet and swollen, a half-moon of teeth marks stood out against the pale skin below it. Without moving his hand from where it seemed sealed to her flesh, the boy lifted up onto his knees and pressed his pelvis against the cold iron edge of the bed under the thin mattress. Giving the bed a ghost of a thrust with his hips, he stared down at his own hand as he pulled it up the last few inches… as he slipped his fingers, one at a time, across the indentation where her thigh merged upwards… as he locked his cupped hand around her firm, round bottom, and with his thumb nearly grazing her hipbone and the tips off his fingers digging the fabric of her knickers between her cheeks, He squeezed. Hard. And he gave what looked, for all the world, like a possessive, yanking, tug. The movement jerked the firm mound of flesh in his hands directly toward his hips and effectively opened her to the cool night air.

She gasped loudly and cried out as a violent shudder ran down her body.

Hearts evaporated from both her legs, her arse, and halfway up her spine.

They were dead silent and it seemed, both resolute to pretend not a moment of that had just happened.

Which was difficult to do since the boy had yet to release her arse. He seemed to snap to realization, and released her so abruptly and completely that he flung his arms up behind his head clutching his hands together until they were nearly bloodless. When he finally brought them back to flex in front of his face, he glared at his right hand as if he held it completely responsible. After staring at the hand for a full minute and mouthing four silent "fucks" at it, he made two fists and whilst staring at the canvas ceiling, the boy apparently tried to make his voice sound completely normal.

"We..ell…

He failed.

"Well… that was most of them. I'll get the rest of them now."

The girl said absolutely nothing

The boy nervously shuffled to his feet, and leaned over her very carefully and in such a way that he didn't come in contact with her at all. He seemed determined not to let himself get carried away again. Biting his lip in concentration and squinting at every bit of her visible skin, the boy breathed loudly through his nose as he ducked and stretched and angled just inches above her. Surely the girl felt his hot breath against her ankle, her elbow, or her neck.

At intervals, the boy lifted or shifted some part of the girl to meet his lips. He double-checked her legs, and kissed away a heart on the top of her right foot near the ankle. He ran his hands through her thick, still-damp hair, caressing her scalp and finding two raised hearts by touch alone. He pressed kiss after kiss into her madness of fragrant locks until the cure apparently, seeped through to his satisfaction.

All the while, the only sound from the girl was her sometimes uneven breathing.

He had touched everywhere except her shirt or knickers. The boy found himself apparently frozen. Just the revelation of her knickers earlier had apparently inspired the boy to rut her camp bed and to help himself to a handful of her arse. He seemed almost afraid to go near them again.

He gulped at the cloth-covered bits of her body.

"Why are you stopping?"

It was a muffled question asked deep from the stuffing of her pillow.

"I've gotten all of them I can see."

"But you can't see everything," she said or perhaps asked. The girl sat up abruptly looking a bit groggy, and pulled the sheet around her waist.

The boy backed away several feet and swallowed.

"I'll get you a mirror," the boy blurted out.

"What?"

"For your...," the boy said while pointing vaguely at his own crotch and then back at her.

"You can take a shufti around your private bits, and let me know if you... need anything, and otherwise I don't have to see them."

The girl looked rather offended.

"Not that any bloke wouldn't jump at the chance to see them, but..."

The boy splotched red at his jaw line, and dug more furiously in the beaded bag.

"Harry's got a bit of mirror somewhere he keeps staring at all bloody time," the boy said while digging shoulder deep into her bag.

"I've got a mirror in the bag."

With an "accio Hermione's mirror," the boy retrieved it, wiped it down his denim-clad leg to clean the glass, and tentatively stepped toward the girl to place it in her outstretched hand.

"I don't have to use the mirror, you know," the girl stated as if he really did know.

"I... I wouldn't have confided all of this to you if I hadn't trusted you, Ron. You're..."

"Yeah, I know I'm your best mate," the boy said almost resentfully.

He dropped his head and missed the stricken expression that crossed the girl's face, as he continued speaking toward the rug.

"I'd do damn near, hell, I'd do anything for you…"

The boy took a long swallow.

"…but you shouldn't have to have me do it. So, I think we should start with the mirror, yeah?"

He looked up to see her blank expression. The girl gave him a single nod, and the boy tried to smile.

Clearing his throat, he continued.

"When you're looking Down There..." he said significantly.

"Well, you might... well if there's...you probably need to feel under it... of course, I've heard there's a spell to charm it off, but I never figured you for the type who would, not that I've been figuring...about you having or not having...."

"Ron, are you trying to say the words pubic hair?"

He swallowed dryly.

"Yeah."

"I actually do know the charm."

His eyebrows lifted behind his fringe.

"I lived with Lavender and Parvati."

She said the sentence as if it explained everything.

"Oh."

And apparently it did.

The boy's eyes suddenly looked a bit glazed over.

"So they don't..."

"Oh, don't even pretend you didn't know," she said with a sudden bit of venom in her voice.

"How the fuck would I know what's on or not on their bits?"

The girl scowled at him for a full thirty seconds.

His eyes finally widened.

"Hermione... No... I never... I haven't ever…"

His face turned a rather lovely shade of red, and he added.

"...not yet."

The girl looked down and might have smiled.

The boy looked down as well, and the blush spread down his chest, but he continued.

"There's loads of things I haven't done before... until yesterday."

The girl glanced up at him for a moment, then looked down and shared a radiant smile with her knees before speaking.

"Well, you may have to add a few more items to that list; so turn around and cover your eyes; so I can suss out the effectiveness of your skills thus far," she said with a mischievous smile whilst still averting her eyes.

The boy grinned wildly at the top of her curly head, and cheerfully turned around clamping one hand over his eyes and shoving the other hand deep into his front pocket. He looked as if he could have whistled merrily.

(continued in Chapter Four)