the love for three oranges
Hermione Granger is thinking.
This is not unusual. Far from it. (Except when someone puts their hands on her—she does quite like being touched, in an unfairly-stereotypical omega kind of way, and lately that someone has, well. Touched.)
Said someone has left her with—many things. Spit and sweat and scent and scourgify-removed come, for starters. The memory of his mouth on her, and glistening, after, and the taste of something indecent, in the way of raw physicality, of magic and natures honed by thousands of years of evolution. Her body remembers, too: marks that ache, warm and soft, colour themselves in on her thighs and hips, and if she cared to dwell on it further, there's a distinct warmth that lingers after every inhale, something just waiting to be felt. She doesn't. Care to, that is.
That said: she likes thinking. It's better, or easier at least, than doing, even if it is a precursor to action. Sometimes. There's something to be said for deliberate choice, something preferable to the impulse-instinct-reflex of youth and omega and, to some extent, emergency healing. Hermione is aware of what she is, and what she'd like to try to be, and frankly, being decidedly unprofessional is... far from that.
She weighs this thought against the echo of Draco's voice that doggedly resurfaces every, oh, two minutes or so. That large hand, fingers sucked clean, resting on the door handle, still-dilated grey eyes unmoving from hers: All you need to do is say the word, and I'll give you more than enough. His footsteps had long disappeared from earshot before she'd managed to find her voice.
Not Draco. Malfoy. Someone. Or him. Not Draco. Names have power (does fear-of-a-name-only-increases-fear-of-a-thing-itself apply to feelings other than fear?), and his has wormed itself into her head, her work, and she keeps thinking about it—she can't keep thinking about it—she can't keep from thinking about anything but it.
It's been terrible all week: her paperwork, once filled in with the tap of a wand (a nifty trick Parvati once taught her), now finds itself riddled with blanks, or worse errors, that have to be manually corrected. She's obsessively cleaned the oblong little examination room to the point where it smells of nothing but new plastic and antiseptic, and still, every time, every hundred-and-twenty second interval...
She's thinking, and she's trying not to remember, and she thinks maybe she's possibly, sort of, doomed.
She lies in bed awake, at night, five days and fifteen hours, to the dot, after That Day. She hasn't seen Draco since then, only glimpses across a few of the cafeterias, or as a small, moving dot across the vast Quidditch field. Once, lined up in a room full of shirtless men and Healers, taking measurements of their heights and weights. She could, probably, make more of an effort. Ostensibly she could find out where his room is—although she doesn't quite fancy sneaking around the players' lodgings—or even call him in for an appointment. An 'appointment'. The very thought is ridiculous, and humiliating.
God. This is beyond unprofessional.
He left his jersey behind, that day. Strode out of the room topless, to goodness knows where, after making that tantalising, absurd offer that seems determined to make itself an earworm. She took the sodden mess back to her room, where it lies, in a crumpled heap, over her headboard. The material smells still of diluted coffee and, beyond that, the faintest hint of sweat. It could be wishful thinking, or imagination, or the lust-sharpened senses of her body.
She reaches for it now, buries her face in the cloth, soft now and bone-dry. Each breath aches, in a way she'd call unnameable, only she does know its name, and it's hard, so hard, to think of it as this abstract cloud, when all she wants to do is make it real. It's navy blue, not Slytherin green, not sky-grey, and that fact is somehow both unfairly attractive and just unfair.
She closes her eyes, and wedges a pillow between her knees, and breathes against the material.
The memory unfurls, close in the dark. Something vivid and well-loved, the details soft but etched into place. Brilliant green, brilliant sunlight, Ginny's brilliant smile. Verdant fields stretching out beneath the scattered flower petals and wooden benches and rows of guests. And he had been there, because of course Harry Potter would invite his old rival-schoolmate to his very own wedding.
The bride had kissed the groom, and Hermione, standing to the side in her bridesmaid's dress, had twitched her wand to charm the flock of singing birds on cue. A love story for the movies, and in her periphery, because it was hard to spell animals without looking, she'd noticed blond hair and grey eyes, the slightest quirk of a mouth. He'd been looking, even then.
He'd brought a date, of course. Daphne Greengrass, as omega as her, and objectively prettier besides. And she'd had Ron. But Draco had looked glorious under the sunlight, all pale muscle and long, lean lines. Even Ron had said so, albeit in less words.
(What does it mean, now, that both of their pairings are nothing more than friendship?)
And even then there had been the slight wonder, the possibility of something, the odds far enough from zero to be significant. Something reserved there in awareness, whether due to her innate nature or the nurture of never being more than three social connections away from him, something conscient and determinedly noting down the way he'd smile, the way he'd move and speak and look, and now, if she dares let herself know, the way he smells.
She shifts, the pillow riding higher, between her thighs, and freezes.
She's wet.
Of course she would be—she's breathing the scent of his jersey, which does not bode well for any sort of self-control—but more than that, she keeps thinking. About him, and his words, and the way maybe, just maybe, that moment of temporary insanity has been something building up in scattered moments, across scattered years. And yes, there's lust, and want, and as many reasons for this to go right as they could wrong, and—
The shame comes belatedly, and spirals into desire.
It is utterly, infuriatingly unfair. Here, on what amounts to a work trip, where the rooms are warded and spelled and ought to leave her freer from scents and pheromones and the complications of biology—can it really be here that she'd fall prey to him, to her own want, to the desire or lust or base instinct of her hindbrain?
She's thinking about it, really she is, and then her thighs squeeze and she rocks against the pillow, and she stops thinking.
The details are hazy, and it's difficult to separate reality from memory from imagination: the scent; the teeth; the mouth, promising, wet, hot. His face, caught between rapture and pained desire. The eyes on her. The hands on her. Except there's no one, here, in the dark, and she bites down on the navy blue jersey that smells too much like coffee and grinds, rocking almost frantically against the pillow. It bunches up between her thighs, rubbing everywhere, and the friction of its corner against her clit is softened just enough by the barrier of her knickers and sweatpants. Desperate little circles. Faintest scent of him.
She doesn't do this, usually. Ride pillows like—like they'd be someone instead of soft cotton. She prefers lying on her back, using her fingers on her clit, maybe a pillow between her teeth.
She runs a hand up her torso, tracing the ribs, feels the soft underside of her breasts. Toys with a nipple, pinches it, and it helps but all the same it's not enough. She lets out a harsh breath into the soft wool, trying to hold onto that churning feeling of heat, everything oversensitive but still inadequate, her glands thrumming at her neck and thighs; the orgasm rises, stretched thin between clenched teeth, and forces her into a frozen, startled mess, silent but for panting breaths.
With shaking hands, she reaches down between her thighs. A brush of fingers sends aftershocks jolting through her.
Her knickers are soaked. Draco's face swims before her eyelids, half-closed in the dark. She tries and fails to blink it away.
It felt good. It didn't feel good enough. Not really.
She thinks she knows what she wants. The problem is that she has to take it.
Two floors and one building away, Draco Malfoy lies asleep in his bed.
His dreams are vague, mutable things. They shift from indistinct images of the recent days—where Wood has run them hard (but not too hard, not before the big game)—to wavering impressions of warmth, and hands, and... honey. Mostly honey.
With a tinge of salt.
Unconsciously, Draco shifts against the mattress. The movement wedges a pillow further between the wall and his hip. His sleep-slowed breaths grow heavy, and he shifts again.
He wakes up hard, already leaking, his pyjamas rumpled, reaching for something—someone whom he can't even bear to—
"Granger," he groans under his breath, palming himself through the cloth, too bothered to cast a silencing charm. "Hermione. Fuck."
His mouth, hot and tender, is a taunt, the phantom taste-scent-memory of her still unbearably present. The need pressing.
This is pressing, anyway, and he falls back against the pillows, already sweating, as he strokes himself slowly through his pyjama bottoms. It isn't so much an issue of control, here, as the lack of it; every little missive he's received the past days has had him eagerly unfolding the parchment, only to find—nothing that even hints at her whatsoever.
He's only had the way she looks at him, whenever they do meet. And it's not nearly enough.
By all rights he should be tired enough to not wake up at—he glances over to the clock—bloody three a.m. with his heartbeat too fast and his cock hard. But here he is. Trying to stroke himself off without even a silencing charm.
It's not like she'd hear him, anyway. It'd be physically impossible. It's an enticing fantasy, though, one that spurs him to tug his pyjamas down and slide his hand under the waistband. He closes his eyes and imagines the way she'd—sidle up to him, maybe, in some empty corner; say come with me or want a repeat of last time? or just, absurdly, tug him down into a kiss, maybe slide those soft hands up his shirt, down his pants—
He grunts her name again, into his fist, and strokes himself faster. Already too close from a dream he can barely even remember—merlin, he has no idea how he managed to walk away that day, when she was staring up at him, all dark eyes and fast breaths—and this, this is stupid, he could have anyone in his bed, probably, except he doesn't, and he wants a very specific someone.
He hadn't even taken off her underwear fully before putting his mouth on her.
The image-memory slams into him with a jolt, and he works himself faster, arm straining, swallowing down most of the sounds that threaten to escape. There's the strangest sense of déjà vu: how many times has he wanked to thoughts of Hermione Granger, or someone like her? (If there were anyone like her.) But now there are memories in the mix, and all he wants is to grip those soft brown curls in a fist, or go down on his knees—again—for her, and—
He comes into his fist. It soaks through his pyjama bottoms immediately.
Two days later, Hermione passes through the cafeteria where his Quidditch team usually has dinner. His eyes are on her in a second, so it's easy to pick out the way she briefly meets his gaze and subtly tilts her head toward the restrooms.
He's out of his seat in a second. And nobody's the wiser.