InsaneJournal

Fic: She Dreams in Sepia (Harry Potter, Hermione/Ginny, NC-17)
Title: She Dreams in Sepia
Pairing: unreq-Hermione/Ginny, Ginny/Katie
Rating: NC-17
Notes: Written for thisredrock's birthday.

She Dreams in Sepia

I dream about you, you know. I dream in your colours, the silky-cream hue of your skin, the ocher of the few freckles on your nose, the gentle cherry-red of your hair. Your eyes are umber, raw with need and want and desire, and that's the colour that dominates my dreams, brown on tan on apricot, the colour of your eyes and your eyelids and your face. I can always see your eyes, even when mine are closed.

My dreams always make sense. Oh, I guess sometimes they have strange elements, because they're dreams, after all, and sometimes we'll be in odd places like my Gram Ellie's house in Manchester (she died when I was six) or in the library over on Old Church Crescent (which is so much friendlier and cosier than Madame Pince in the Hogwarts library). Once I even dreamed that you didn't have any brothers, can you imagine that? But it's always us, you and me, and my hands are inky with splashes of blue and black, and your fingers are cool and calloused from broomsticks and Quaffles and potion ingredients.

Sometimes I dream about those fingers inside me.

The first time it happened, I woke up with my face as hot as your hair and my teeth chattering the way yours did when the Dementor came close. I thanked goodness that my drapes were closed around my bed, that Lavender and Parvati couldn't see me dreaming, couldn't see me waking with my hands clenched and my sheets twisted around my damp thighs. I could have said a charm to clean myself up, could have gone back to being neat orderly Hermione with just a couple of whispered words, but I didn't want to forget that dream, your mouth on my hip, your fingers curled between my legs.

They're so real sometimes that I wonder how they can just be dreams. Because you look like you, with your narrow bony shoulders, your delicate-cupped chin, your whisper-soft hair brushing your shoulders, your small wide feet bare beneath your robes. You smell like you, a grassy scent like the Quidditch pitch and Bertie Bott's beans, a bit of a coppery tang from when your last class was Potions, the clean-soap scent of your robes when your mum washes them. You feel like you, the heel of your hand brushing dream-me the same way you do when you need to borrow a quill, the angle of your knee the same as when we curl up on a bed together at the Burrow. And you even taste like you, pumpkin juice and peppermints and snowy days – but that's what reminds me it's a dream, because I don't know what you taste like when I'm awake.

I want to know. When I dream, the world is red and brown and brilliant and painful, and I'm pushing my tongue against you so fast, so fast, like it all might end if I can't press my fingers against your clit and my lips against your mound. And you taste like metal and sugar and dried flowers, and you're hot like your hair and my tongue and my face, burning against my mouth and chin and all around my fingers. I'm soaking wet with you, my lips and my hand, but I don't want to stop, don't want to do anything but memorize your scent and burn it into my senses. I drink you, trying to make it a memory, a real one, one that I can keep when I wake up.

It might be working, because I can barely look at you in the common room without blushing, and so I bend my neck and stare at my books. When you need to borrow a quill, I push it over toward you without asking so you don't have to touch me. I don't think I can handle it, feeling your chapped palm, your short strong fingers, without remembering my dreams. And then my face turns bright crimson, like your hair and like the fires in front of the table, and I hope you can't see it on my face, hope you can't see me remembering what I think you taste like.

I'll tell you someday. Well, maybe not all of it. Maybe I won't tell you that I've been dreaming about you since third year, since the day the Dementor came onto the train and I put my arm around you to comfort you. Maybe I shouldn't tell you that in my dreams you do things that make me blush, and that might make you blush too, fucking me with your fingers while I arch upward to suck your coral-pink nipples in front of my face. And maybe I can't tell you that my heart rattles when we hug and my breath catches when we kiss – those innocent ones you give me after you win a Quidditch match and the not-so-innocent ones I graze back across your cheek. Maybe I won't tell you any of this, because you'll think I've been lying, for years and years.

But I'll tell you someday. I really will. I've written it down a million times, the things I plan to say, the right way to say it. I'm good at that, I always get top marks on my essays, I know how to say things properly so they make sense and so that I get my point across. Sometimes I even dream about that, what I'll say, if I'll be nervous or worried or my stomach will quiver and my legs will shake (but those dreams aren't as good as the ones where you're kissing the top of my spine and one hand's on the small of my back and the other's between my legs). I don't think you'll be scared or uncomfortable – you won't, will you? And maybe you'll listen, and you'll smile, the little smile that turns your freckles into patterns and pictures, and maybe you'll hug me and tell me it's okay. And maybe you'll feel the same way.

I've got it all written down, see? Here, in my homework planner, the same kind I gave Harry and Ron last Christmas. They're too thick to realize that I don't need a homework planner, they're the ones who do, they don't know it's my journal too. These are the things I'll tell you, and I just hope I'm saying them the right way.

"Ginny, I like you."

"No, I mean, I really like you."

"I think you're pretty, and smart, and the nicest, most trustworthy person I know, and good at Quidditch – "

"Yes, I know I don't really care about Quidditch, but you're good at it."

"Okay, erm, maybe I wouldn't know good Quidditch if it dropped a dungbomb on me."

"But that's not the point. I'm glad we're friends. I like being your friend, but I was hoping, maybe … well … I think maybe I have a …"

"I want to kiss you."

There, that sounds good, doesn't it? Well, maybe we could skip the argument about Quidditch. And maybe we could skip my complete inability to talk, too. But there, that's it, that's what I want to say to you. I like you. I love you. I want you.

Okay, maybe that last bit is a little too blunt. And maybe it's too soon to talk about love. But I do like you. That's what all these dreams have been about, isn't it? It's not just that I want you kissing me, want to kiss you, want to spread your lily-coloured thighs, want to bury my nose in red hair and lick from the crack of your hip to the hood of your clit. It's not just that I want your red hair sprawled across my bare shoulders like a cloak, want your pale hands on my even paler stomach, want your thumb-tip on my clit and your fingers thrust up inside me. I like you and that's what I need to tell you, when I wake up from another one of my dreams.

It snowed this morning, and the boys are out pelting each other with snowballs and snow-clumps and snow showers. They're piled on the ground, Dean and Seamus just attacked by Harry, Ron helping Neville to his feet, and you bring a mug of hot chocolate over to where I'm standing at the tower window. You and I decided to stay inside, partly because I've got loads of homework this weekend, partly because rolling around on the wet ground with Ron is not my idea of a good time, and partly because I haven't seen you much lately, you've been busy and haven't eaten dinner with us in ages. You wander back over and curl up on the squishy armchair, a blanket spread over your bent knees and graceful hips, and I plop myself at your feet like a puppy.

I'm trying to work up the courage to tell you, to say all the things I've been writing in my homework planner for years now. I'm watching your face, the little triangle on your cheek that appears, your freckles bunching up and changing when you smile, sparkling and shimmering. Your palm, soft and rough and soap-smelling, is resting on my head, your fingers trailing over my cheek with feathery touches, and suddenly I want more. I want to hug you under this blanket, want your hands on my waist and my mouth on your hair and always your eyes, warm and bright and cocoa-brown, on my face. I want you.

And I'm opening my mouth to tell you that, to blurt it all out, no matter how stupid or inelegant I sound, when you tell me that you're going out later, that you've got a date, and the kicker is, it's not a boy, it's a girl, it's your girlfriend, it's Katie Bell. And now I must look really stupid and inelegant while I sit there with my mouth hanging open, my eyes on your face, my heart thudding too fast for my brain to catch up. You're talking about her, telling me that you've been together for a while now but haven't known quite how to tell people, that you like her, that maybe it doesn't matter that she's two years older, and all the while your eyes aren't on me but elsewhere, soft shiny brown in your gently-flushed face.

You glance down at me and smile again, an absolute grin, and you ask what's wrong, with your brow all wrinkly and curious in concern. And I can't tell you now, even though you've asked – especially since you've asked. I can't tell you because I can't explain how I feel, because I can't explain that I've felt this way forever and never said anything, because I can't make you sad and confused and angry by telling you this now. I would never ruin the thing that's making you beam like a beacon right now, but I scramble up, shrugging it off, making some excuse and heading back up to my dorm room. I can't stand to think about you and Katie, touching and kissing eachother, and I can't stand to think that she's the one who knows what you feel and smell and taste like – if you're all sweetness and sugar, like flowers and sunshine and grass, or if you're something else, something I've never dreamed about, a harsh bitter acrid sour pain, like the one in my stomach.

That night I dream about you again, but it's not in your colours. There's no silky-cream of your skin, no ocher of the triangle-freckles on your cheek, no sweet-smelling cherry-fire of your hair. It's all brown and dull and dark, brown like Katie's silky-mahogany hair, brown like the handles of your broomsticks on the Quidditch field, brown like your hands, yours and Katie's, when you've been training in the sun for hours. Your eyes are umber, raw with need and want and desire, and that's the colour that dominates my dream. Even when my eyes are closed, I can always see yours, and they're never looking at me.

fin.