The Catch (R/Hr)
I'm guessing that there comes a time in every Ron/Hermione shipper's fandom spree when they have to tackle this subject. Written prior to Book 5.
The Catch
by Silvia
It's not that Ron doesn't see. It's just that maybe, a little, he doesn't want to.
Maybe he likes his life, and his friends, and saving the day and resting afterwards and warm hugs all around and no awkward silences.
And there would be.
Awkward silences.
There's one now in Ron's brain, and it's icy sharp and real. It's solid enough to near pluck out and roll between his fingers.
He thinks it would have a glass-like, glossy sheen, and it would feel like glass too -- but unbreakable.
Unbreakable and so not like them, and that's what he's afraid of, isn't it? That he might break them, if he kisses her. That he might tear the whole world down.
That he might lean forward when she sits and looks at him like she's doing, with brightly awake eyes and windy morning hair.
He tries to remember what Bill told him over the summer. Their conversation about not buggering this all up. Because, yes, Ron thinks that Bill has a lonely job and if he saw humans a bit more often then maybe he'd remember what it was like to want one, but. He doesn't really mean it.
Or, not mostly.
Mostly he thinks his oldest brother is always right, because that's his oldest brother and he loves him as much as he's glad it's just him and Ginny now.
He likes to be heard, more than anything.
It's just him and Ginny, and maybe if she were a different girl his world would feel less fragile. Selfish, selfish thought, but. It's there.
Things would be so much easier if they were even and four, but Ginny is such a strange little girl and never quite right after the Riddle business that no one talks about but that makes everyone handle her just a bit more... gently.
And he should be kinder about her in his head, because a lot of it is probably his fault. He should have gotten there, he should have seen it, he should have stopped it. But Ron doesn't do guilt very well, and he knows this. He's all right with it.
There's always been too many of them around to share the blame, chip at it, spread it, thin it out.
So. This isn't guilt.
This is self-preservation.
He's not worried about Harry.
Ron's watching her speak so loudly that they can hear her two tables down, above the din of chattering and silverware, and he wants to touch her. He wants it bad enough to reach for her books when she does, even though he knows she'll have that startled look about her and their fingers will get all curled together.
He can feel them turning purple and numb, and that's how his tongue feels. Almost limp, and it's almost a relief. Sick -- all kinds of crazy -- but true.
And he's well aware that she would say he's being impossible if she knew, so like him and stubbornly impossible, and she would be right.
Impossible, but it's working. Sick and sad -- because there are things happening inside of him, all the time, and he can only tell anyone, ever, who won't tell his best friends -- but making the kind of sense that's displayed in midnight races across the Quidditch pitch and insanely complicated potions.
They still work, and Harry swears people have stepped across the moon, and Ron thinks they could do it.
He can stand here and not rub the dirt sitting high on her cheek, staining her and staring at him.
She had been down, cleaning under the dressers again, to leave the house elves less work. They have their own rhythm and set of tasks and they clean it anyway, but it makes her happy so he doesn't point that out.
He points out other things instead, and laughs as she screws up her face, and wants (badly, so badly, and he can't breathe) to kiss her.
He could, but he can't, and it's so much even more complicated than that.
She carries her own books, of course, and he hands them over, both of them wobbling a little, as if they've never handled stacks like this before.
Awkward.
Funny, because that's what his life is, in that series of flashbacks he gets when he's just that close to dead -- and he's familiar with it enough that he should be seriously disturbed.
His life is carrying books, and books, and wouldn't you know it, more books. Towers of them and rustling pages in his head, and he should cut that right out, he should, because half those memories are of them getting him into some serious trouble.
Relatively innocent at the moment, though, and the books are something to watch, along with Neville tripping over his own feet, instead of the tight set to her mouth. He laughs, and they all join in, and it's like that moment was never there and if it was, it was a flicker of some wacky parallel universe dream.
A forever ago from that bright smile she's wearing and the swing of her hips and those knee socks that peek out from her robes as she walks, and look prettier on her than on anybody else.
Forever, and he's pretended for so long that he doesn't see, that it's gone and run away from him.
It's a bunch of wild, charging mad horses. It's a shifting, snoring, waking wizard's photograph. It has a life of its own.
It makes him a liar, and not a liar, and more than a little trapped.
It makes these blurs and hollows in his thinking that he calls silences, and he thinks about how much worse they could be still, if he could hate Harry out loud as well.
And he really, really doesn't mostly mean that.
He doesn't even think Harry wants her -- at least not consciously. At least not in any way that fits her into that master plan that Harry has to have and Ron doesn't.
And that's why he can wait, and that's why Ron remembers, most of the time, that he's not the one with the short end of the stick, with the future that's maybe even shorter.
It's not that Harry's in the way, it's that Harry's there and that's enough, but Ron would miss him, hurt for him, achingly, if he were gone, and it's just sometimes so hard to reconcile those two truths.
It's not that Ron doesn't see. It's that he sees too much and doesn't know what to do with it.
He doesn't know how to make them all happy, and that's a hard pill to swallow when he has soft girl shoulders at his left side and a Quidditch broadened neck on the right, and they're grinning at each other around his back, and she's pinching his waist with her sharp little nails.
He makes a grab for them and they dig in his palm, small spikes of heat, and he thinks he might be in love with her, and he thinks he might never tell her.
And he know she sees it, she's always seen it.
And he worries she'll never forgive him.
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note: thanks must go to bonibaru for needling me about a certain perfectly-good-thing, which made me actually go back and, yes, prune. *sob*
The Catch
by Silvia
It's not that Ron doesn't see. It's just that maybe, a little, he doesn't want to.
Maybe he likes his life, and his friends, and saving the day and resting afterwards and warm hugs all around and no awkward silences.
And there would be.
Awkward silences.
There's one now in Ron's brain, and it's icy sharp and real. It's solid enough to near pluck out and roll between his fingers.
He thinks it would have a glass-like, glossy sheen, and it would feel like glass too -- but unbreakable.
Unbreakable and so not like them, and that's what he's afraid of, isn't it? That he might break them, if he kisses her. That he might tear the whole world down.
That he might lean forward when she sits and looks at him like she's doing, with brightly awake eyes and windy morning hair.
He tries to remember what Bill told him over the summer. Their conversation about not buggering this all up. Because, yes, Ron thinks that Bill has a lonely job and if he saw humans a bit more often then maybe he'd remember what it was like to want one, but. He doesn't really mean it.
Or, not mostly.
Mostly he thinks his oldest brother is always right, because that's his oldest brother and he loves him as much as he's glad it's just him and Ginny now.
He likes to be heard, more than anything.
It's just him and Ginny, and maybe if she were a different girl his world would feel less fragile. Selfish, selfish thought, but. It's there.
Things would be so much easier if they were even and four, but Ginny is such a strange little girl and never quite right after the Riddle business that no one talks about but that makes everyone handle her just a bit more... gently.
And he should be kinder about her in his head, because a lot of it is probably his fault. He should have gotten there, he should have seen it, he should have stopped it. But Ron doesn't do guilt very well, and he knows this. He's all right with it.
There's always been too many of them around to share the blame, chip at it, spread it, thin it out.
So. This isn't guilt.
This is self-preservation.
He's not worried about Harry.
Ron's watching her speak so loudly that they can hear her two tables down, above the din of chattering and silverware, and he wants to touch her. He wants it bad enough to reach for her books when she does, even though he knows she'll have that startled look about her and their fingers will get all curled together.
He can feel them turning purple and numb, and that's how his tongue feels. Almost limp, and it's almost a relief. Sick -- all kinds of crazy -- but true.
And he's well aware that she would say he's being impossible if she knew, so like him and stubbornly impossible, and she would be right.
Impossible, but it's working. Sick and sad -- because there are things happening inside of him, all the time, and he can only tell anyone, ever, who won't tell his best friends -- but making the kind of sense that's displayed in midnight races across the Quidditch pitch and insanely complicated potions.
They still work, and Harry swears people have stepped across the moon, and Ron thinks they could do it.
He can stand here and not rub the dirt sitting high on her cheek, staining her and staring at him.
She had been down, cleaning under the dressers again, to leave the house elves less work. They have their own rhythm and set of tasks and they clean it anyway, but it makes her happy so he doesn't point that out.
He points out other things instead, and laughs as she screws up her face, and wants (badly, so badly, and he can't breathe) to kiss her.
He could, but he can't, and it's so much even more complicated than that.
She carries her own books, of course, and he hands them over, both of them wobbling a little, as if they've never handled stacks like this before.
Awkward.
Funny, because that's what his life is, in that series of flashbacks he gets when he's just that close to dead -- and he's familiar with it enough that he should be seriously disturbed.
His life is carrying books, and books, and wouldn't you know it, more books. Towers of them and rustling pages in his head, and he should cut that right out, he should, because half those memories are of them getting him into some serious trouble.
Relatively innocent at the moment, though, and the books are something to watch, along with Neville tripping over his own feet, instead of the tight set to her mouth. He laughs, and they all join in, and it's like that moment was never there and if it was, it was a flicker of some wacky parallel universe dream.
A forever ago from that bright smile she's wearing and the swing of her hips and those knee socks that peek out from her robes as she walks, and look prettier on her than on anybody else.
Forever, and he's pretended for so long that he doesn't see, that it's gone and run away from him.
It's a bunch of wild, charging mad horses. It's a shifting, snoring, waking wizard's photograph. It has a life of its own.
It makes him a liar, and not a liar, and more than a little trapped.
It makes these blurs and hollows in his thinking that he calls silences, and he thinks about how much worse they could be still, if he could hate Harry out loud as well.
And he really, really doesn't mostly mean that.
He doesn't even think Harry wants her -- at least not consciously. At least not in any way that fits her into that master plan that Harry has to have and Ron doesn't.
And that's why he can wait, and that's why Ron remembers, most of the time, that he's not the one with the short end of the stick, with the future that's maybe even shorter.
It's not that Harry's in the way, it's that Harry's there and that's enough, but Ron would miss him, hurt for him, achingly, if he were gone, and it's just sometimes so hard to reconcile those two truths.
It's not that Ron doesn't see. It's that he sees too much and doesn't know what to do with it.
He doesn't know how to make them all happy, and that's a hard pill to swallow when he has soft girl shoulders at his left side and a Quidditch broadened neck on the right, and they're grinning at each other around his back, and she's pinching his waist with her sharp little nails.
He makes a grab for them and they dig in his palm, small spikes of heat, and he thinks he might be in love with her, and he thinks he might never tell her.
And he know she sees it, she's always seen it.
And he worries she'll never forgive him.
------------------------------------------------------------
note: thanks must go to bonibaru for needling me about a certain perfectly-good-thing, which made me actually go back and, yes, prune. *sob*