Title: Too Far Apart To Touch
Pairing: Seamus Finnegan/Hermione Granger
Prompt: Lime Table #21 (phone fun)
AN/Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and places are the property of their respective owners and do not belong to me. This is a work of fanfiction and I am in no way profiting from the use of these characters and places.
Challenge: citrus_taste

He often wondered how they'd managed to end up together. It certainly hadn't been helped along by first impressions. He could remember her, eleven-years-old, bushy whiskey-brown hair sticking out from under the Sorting Hat as she screwed up her admittedly plain face in concentration. He'd wanted to do nothing but laugh. No, he decided, it wasn't first impressions.

It had nothing to do with living together at school, either, he acknowledged. She'd been Weasley's girl all through school. Even before Ron had quite figured out what girls were for – hell, before any of them had figured out what they were for, they all knew that Hermione Granger simply belonged with Ronald Weasley. Besides, during school, he'd been more interested in the lively, pretty girls with the flirtatious smiles and eyes that spoke of stolen half-hours in dark corridors. Hermione had been more of a glare-at-you-for-making-noise kind of girl.

After school, they hadn't seen one another. She was busy freeing House Elves, and he? He'd gone back home to Ireland, where the grass was greener than in any other place. His mam was gone, it was true, and his father had been gone for some time. It was rather depressing, really, if he stopped to think about it. His da had died, killed by Death Eaters for daring to marry a witch, and his mam, one of the strongest women he'd ever met had just seemed to give up, wasting away until there was nothing left of her will. He shook his head to clear the melancholy thoughts.

It had been three years after he'd finished with Hogwarts that he'd seen her again. He'd taken a job with the Leaky Cauldron, owned now by that Patil twins, as an entertainer. He rolled his eyes. He sat on a stool and played his guitar and sang for the customers and at the end of the night the Patil twins paid him a handsome number of Galleons and he curled up in a room above the bar to sleep. Four nights a week he played and the other three he was free to sit in silence in the faded kitchen where he could swear he heard his mam's ghost putting supper together and his da's soft snores as the old man dozed by the fire, never completely comfortable, even after more than twenty years of marriage, with the idea that in the kitchen, his wife was waving her wand around to create a meal fit for the old Kings of Tara.

But that night, he couldn't bear the idea of going back home where the ghost of his parents seemed to haunt every room, and so he'd talked to Padma about keeping his room for one more night and taken a long walk through Diagon Alley, marveling at the difference a few years had made. Where the streets had been deserted when he'd gone for his school books in his seventh year (the one he'd had to repeat thanks to the fact that he'd gone into hiding half-way through the year) now they had flourished again, bright lights and cheerful decorations shrouding the prevalent gloom. With a shock he'd realized that it was Christmastime, and that the holiday itself could be only a few days away.

He'd rather miserably returned to the Leaky Cauldron, and there she'd been. Sitting alone in a darkened corner, books spread around her and her nose nearly to the page as she read and made notations on a sheet of parchment, looking for all the world like the schoolgirl he remembered her as. He'd crept towards her and stealithly seated himself across from her, noting with no little interest that she appeared to be studying the fabled Fae of old, who, legend had it, had first come to the Earth via Ireland. He smiled.

“Searching for the wee people, are ye then?” he'd said and delighted in the way she'd jumped, startled to find him sitting there.

“Seamus!” she'd exclaimed, and even her exasperation hadn't hid the smile in her voice. “What in Dumbledore's name are you doing here?”

“Feelin' a bit sorry for myself, truth be told,” he'd replied, surprised to hear the honest answer slipping from his lips, but more surprised to see the flash of recognition go through her eyes before she nodded. Padma had come by then, offering them drinks, and she'd put her books away (something he was sure he'd never seen her do before) and they'd sat in companionable silence for quite a bit. After the third round, when he'd started to realize that Hermione could quite possibly drink him under the table, the light, casual conversation had given way to more serious subjects, and before he knew how it happened, they were seven rounds in and the sad stories had spilled out.

He'd heard, of course, that she and Weasley had split up; hell, that news had made the papers and public opinion seemed to be that it was the most tragic thing to happen since Voldemort's return. Her family had been on holiday in the Canary Islands but she'd had to work and wouldn't be joining them for several more days. The tempation to end the night up in his room had been strong, but he'd resisted the urge to offer and the moment had passed. When he arrived back at his parents' home the next day, it was to find a letter from her on the table and he'd read it with enjoyment, laughing at the slightly self-depricating tone she'd taken about her tolerance for alcohol and staring when he came to the end of the missive, which contained a telephone number with a London exchange.

Curious, he'd gone to the phone and dialed it, delighted to hear her voice answering him, and they'd continued talking as though they were still sitting across from one another in the dark pub. After that, the phone calls had become a nightly occurance. He found himself tossing and turning on the rare nights they didn't speak, and though she was terribly busy and they never seemed to find time to see one another, their telephone calls got longer and the subject matter covered everything from childhood stories to family tales and bad jokes about work.

And then one night, the tenor of the conversation changed. They were talking about their failed love lives and how pathetic it was that the dates they'd both gone on for the past several months had all ended poorly. Her voice had dropped into what he called her 'sleepy voice', the one that made him think of hot chocolate and marshmallows, and he'd prepared for her to remind him that unlike him she had to work early in the morning and she needed her sleep as it was going on two in the morning, but she'd shocked him.

“Seriously, Shay, I'm going to explode if I don't get laid soon,” she'd grumbled, and the voice that had always made him think of sweet things began to make him think of things less pure than hot chocolate, things like firewhiskey and long morning spent in bed. It was astounding that in all the months they'd been talking he'd never had those thoughts and now, with just the admission that she was as horny as he was, though not necessarily for one another, he began to think of her and wonder if her skin was as soft as it looked and what it tasted like.

“Is that a problem you have often?” he'd asked, imagining for the first time where she might be in her flat, the one he knew only from her descriptions of it the month before as she'd begun redecorating. Was she sitting in the large reclining chair with the butter-soft brown leather, her riotous, whiskey-coloured curls spread out around her like a halo, or was she curled up under that crisp, white and blue down blanket she'd bought for the bedroom, the one she said made her think of the sea and the sky and the place that they meet?

“More often than you can imagine,” she'd said, a slight catch in her voice, and in his mind's eye he could see the soft, delicate hand holding the phone as she rolled her eyes at him.

“It's a common enough problem,” he'd assured her, recognising that his voice had dropped an octave as they'd begun this new conversational foray. “You could always take care of that problem yourself, you know. I hear that Muggles have an astonishing number of aids for that.”

She'd laughed then, a deep, husky laugh that had sent chills up his spine and caused his cock to stand at urgent attention. “Oh, Shay, don't you think I have several of those already?” He remembered being surprised that she was sharing that information, wondering if she had any idea what she was doing to him before rational thought had vanished under the mental image of her, pale legs trembling and spread as she grasped one breast and used the other hand to reach between her legs, sliding her fingers into the curls of her mons and dipping a single, perfectly manicured digit between her lips. He was throbbing and beyond thought when he finally pictured her face, eyes glazed over and head thrown back.

“I think ye've shocked me, Hermione,” he'd murmured, reaching down to adjust his uncomfortably tight pants and wondering just how much she was going to share with him tonight.

“I didn't think you'd shock so easily, Shay,” she'd teased, that rich, throaty laughter echoing through the line. “I thought it would at least take telling you how and where I like to be taken for that to happen.”

“I'll bite,” he'd answered, knowing that his voice was rough and she could very easily guess the effect she was having on him. “Just how and where do you like to be taken?”

Her voice had shifted again, getting breathy, and he suddenly just knew that she was lying in her bed, completely nude, with the phone propped beneath her ear on the pillows and her hands roaming her body. “Would it surprise you to learn that I'm really quite submissive?” she'd asked teasingly and he'd taken one look at the raging hard-on she'd given him and known there was no choice but to play along. He'd left the kitchen, where his late dinner was already cooling and strode to the bedroom, pulling his shirt off as he went and dropping it to the floor.

“Not really,” he'd admitted. “It's always the bossy ones.” He'd shucked his denims and boxers then, and dropped to his bed, using his wand to put start a fire and douse the lights. A part of him was in shock; was he really lying naked on his bed on the phone with Hermione Granger, or was he hallucinating this? The rest of him didn't care. He'd never sleep until he'd relieved himself, and the thought of doing so while she listened – hell, while she did the same to herself – made him harder than he could ever remember being in all his life.

“And what experience do you have with bossy ones?” she’d asked, laughing heartily. “You avoid any woman with half a brain!”

“Except you, you mean,” he’d reminded her. “Present company is always excluded.” And always had been, until tonight, he’d added silently.

“Yes, so you claim,” she’d said drily. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment, you know.”

“Oh, aye,” he’d murmured, knowing she’d have to strain to hear him as he reached down and gently stroked the underside of his cock. “You’re the unique exception to every rule, Hermione.”

His memory of the exact words she’d spoken or his replies got foggy after that point. The conversation had gotten progressively more teasing, but never explicit and she’d finally whispered, around half-smothered moans, that it was late and she did have to work the next morning and that she’d never get to sleep if she continued talking to him. He knew she’d merely been covering, close to an orgasm she didn’t want him to hear, and he’d closed his eyes after hanging up the phone and pictured her there on her bed, working her body until it shuddered in release – one that he shared.

As he lay in his bed, shirt off, denims unfastened with no shorts beneath, already hard as he waited for her phone call, he accepted that it might just have been that night that had sealed it for him. Any girl who was able to tease him into one of the most intense orgasms he’d ever had was definitely the girl he wanted.