“Come on, Charlie. It’ll atrophy.” Hermione directed Charlie’s leg forward again.<\/p>\n
He looked away, turned his face to the wall as she lifted and turned. “So?”<\/p>\n
“So then it won’t work right when they work out how to fix it.”<\/p>\n
“Hermione. They don’t know<\/em> how to fix it, and I’m bloody tired of shaking and straining to move three inches. There’s no bloody purpose.” He let the leg crash to the mat, no longer making any effort to hold it up.<\/p>\n She caught him halfway down. “Charles. Edward. Weasley.”<\/p>\n “Fuck you. You’re not my mother.”<\/p>\n “No, I’m your wife, you fuckwit, and you will not<\/em> give up and cripple yourself. Or worse.”<\/p>\n “Be rather pointless, given I’m already crippled. And I sure as fuck don’t know how much worse this really could get. Ow!<\/em>” He turned back toward her, startled by the slap–the hard<\/em> slap–to his thigh. “You hit<\/em> me.”<\/p>\n “Damn right I did.”<\/p>\n “But.”<\/p>\n “And you felt it. You still feel, and everything still works, just not as well, and you can be depressed about not being able to do what you usually do. I know. You’re an active man. I’ve had the sore arse-muscles to prove it from keeping up, you know. But Charlie, there are good people working on an antidote. Snape’s working on it. Karl Moehler is working on it. Joachim Martin. The best in Europe. They’ll get there, and I will not let<\/em> you be unable to take advantage.”<\/p>\n “Go away. Good isn’t going to mean fast enough, and the damage is going to be lasting by the time–”<\/p>\n “Make me. Come on. Up.”<\/p>\n Charlie’s other leg lifted, and then the strain began–she’d started him at it, mostly by surprising him again, but she wasn’t doing the work for him. He let the leg fall. “Get. Out.” He ground his teeh, hating to be so weak, but there was no point and he knew it. The muscles weren’t well enough to support him, to let him do a damned thing, to even roll over in bed for a piss, much less go to the toilet.<\/p>\n Hermione glared at him. “No.”<\/p>\n “You think you’re going to make my body work right through force of will. That’s crap.” Charlie moved the leg slightly to the right, glaring right back.<\/p>\n And then, she surprised him. She sighed and shook her head, then brought up the hand that wasn’t supporting his calf and drew one fingernail just up the seam in the crotch of his short pyjamas. “Again,” she directed.<\/p>\n He moved a bit further, and was rewarded with another touch.<\/p>\n He set his leg down, and she slapped.<\/p>\n “Hermione, I can’t–I don’t know what you think I’ll accomplish.”<\/p>\n “Now that I have your attention and perhaps you can manage fifteen seconds without moping, I think you’ll accomplish your exercises. If you do them well, you may also accomplish giving me a reason to trade my fingers for my hand for my mouth for my cunt.”<\/p>\n He blinked.<\/p>\n “Well? Up. Come on.”<\/p>\n “That’s completely unfair.” And it was, because functional muscles or no, he did still feel and think just fine, and now his cock was filling with blood at a precipitously fast rate, and she was still glaring daggers at him. He moved the first leg again, an inch to the right.<\/p>\n “No it’s not. To get a real fuck out of the deal, you’re going to have to make me want you.”<\/p>\n “Which you don’t now, of course. Which is part of what I’m telling you.” He sighed and turned away again. “I’m damaged. Unappealing. Unin–”<\/p>\n “Bullshit. You’re petulant and whinging, and that’s unattractive. However, while you moan about how hard it is for you to keep up your exercises for a few days or weeks until they work out a solution–”<\/p>\n “Or months. Or never.”<\/p>\n “It won’t be months if you just lie there; the poison is still at work, and you continue to waste further away because you won’t try, you impossible–”<\/p>\n “So I can just lie here and die?” He faced her again, angry now, though honestly, it felt as though he’d been angry for weeks, which only made him more annoyed; holding onto anger wasn’t his style.<\/p>\n “No.”<\/p>\n “But you just said–”<\/p>\n “I know what I said. If you’d care to let me finish?”<\/p>\n Reluctantly, Charlie nodded.<\/p>\n “While you moan, then, after watching your brother come to terms with his scars, after watching George lose Fred, however, as I was saying, I will clearly have to be the one who kicks your arse, which currently needs a rather comprehensive round of kicking. Up to you whether you want to make that kissing<\/em> instead. I’m not thrilled with this sort of sex-as-currency approach, but since common sense seems to be off the table for you just now\u2026”<\/p>\n Charlie shook his head. “I don’t know why you think it’s that easy.”<\/p>\n “You’re generally a reasonably bright man. Please don’t start being an idiot now; it isn’t your brain that’s wasting away. It isn’t that easy at all, and I know it, and I’ve said so. However, I want you to stay around, so I will tempt or punish you with whatever works, whether it’s a slap or a grope. This is temporary, and I’d like it not to become permanent.”<\/p>\n He lifted his hand carefully and tried to curl his fingers around her back, though it wasn’t particularly clear, from what he could see, that he was. He tried again, and managed to tug her toward him slighyly. “Come closer.”<\/p>\n She frowned, then leaned toward him. He pulled hard with his stomach muscles and managed to lift his head two inches to kiss her, then tugged again. She pushed him back down flat and shook her head. “Prescribed exercises first, Charlie.”<\/p>\n “Then sex?”<\/p>\n She shook her head again. “If you’re up to it. Though really, I’d rather you’d been willing to work because I asked you to. Come one, then. Make me think you’ve earned it.”<\/p>\n Charlie lifted, shaking and straining and managing a full three-inch arc with one leg, then the other. “But this, I can feel. I can feel \u2026normal, I suppose. And it isn’t, I mean, that flesh isn’t all numb and weird and wrong.” He did the motion again with each leg.<\/p>\n “Good start.” She reached up inside the leg of his pyjamas and wrapped her fingers around his cock, which was now not only interested but craving. He did his legs one more time, then lifted and moved each arm carefully, which got her to move her hand upand back. “Normal, huh?”<\/p>\n “Well.” He paused and decided it was time to stop being angry. “Maybe not, since by now I would otherwise be pinning you to the bed.”<\/p>\n Her glare had softened, and now she managed a bit of a grin. “Good to learn a new skill, then, wouldn’t you say?”<\/p>\n “What?”<\/p>\n “Holding still while I get you off.”<\/p>\n “I don’t think so.”<\/p>\n “\u2026What?”<\/p>\n “I think there will be mutual getting off, one way or another.”<\/p>\n Hermione lifted a brow and looked at his unmoving limbs. “Not if you don’t get on with it.”<\/p>\n He sighed and began again, eager now in a way he hadn’t been in days, wanting to make her want to do more.<\/p>\n He was going to be sore, he was certain, but it would be worth it. And, he noted, at least for the moment, he didn’t feel particularly angry.<\/p>\n\n\n