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branwenmarya · 2 months ago

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Dramione Month day 13: forced proximity

Draco/Hermione

Rated M

Touch-starved Draco, crying, dry humping

(Link to AO3 here)

———

“We only have to play it once.”

It wasn’t the comfort that her tone made it sound.

Draco scoffed dryly. “The song is four and a half minutes long.”

Standing across the Slytherin table, Granger folded her arms over her chest. He’d hoped she was only here, accosting him at dinner, to inform him of her success after having complained to Trelawney about the assignment. To instead be faced with having to go through with it…

He didn’t want to give it air, but, well, they both knew what they had to do. Trelawney had been very clear with her assignment in her newly minted Mental and Emotional Well-Being class. Being obligated to attend the class was its own issue, but being partnered with Granger was less than ideal. They’d repaired some of the animosity between them but were nowhere close to being comfortable enacting the assignment – not that he’d have felt remotely comfortable doing it with anyone else, either.

But his own sensitivities were beside the point. For her to not have rightfully and adamantly protested against being paired with him…

He was skeptical, and his question was imbued with it. “You’re seriously okay with having to hug me for four and a half minutes?”

Her arms tightened but her chin lifted a stubborn half inch. “We don’t have a choice. Professor Trelawney—”

“I know, I know.”

He rubbed his brow, needing a moment to acclimate to the concept that for the next almost-five-minutes, he’d be hugging Hermione Granger. And not only hugging but holding, the position so intimate he’d blushed at the in-class demonstration performed by two simulacra transfigured from a cobweb.

Trelawney had been blathering on about aligning heart chakras and deep breathing and the power of physical touch as a way to unlock the light of humanity in one another, but all Draco had seen was: hug.

He’d have to hold her on his lap. For the duration of a song. Salazar.

He sighed, lowering his hand. “Fine. When?”

When her eyes dropped to his empty dinner plate, his stomach lurched. Godsdamned Gryffindors and their inability to not charge right ahead. Though, if he was being self-reflective – something he usually endeavored not to be – it was clear he could use a bit of gumption to unstick himself from the lethargy he’d found himself caught up in.

“We could go outside?” she suggested. “It’s a lovely evening. And then we…well, we’d have privacy without being…”

The meaning was plain; he raised a quelling hand, not needing nor wanting her to explain all the other private places she’d rather not be alone with him.

“Outside is fine. The meadow, just beyond the Greenhouses?”

“Yes.” She took a step back, preparing to leave. “Good.”

He rose and followed her out. The warmth of summer lingered in the air and behind the Greenhouses, the grounds opened up into an endless sea of grasses and late summer wildflowers. It was horribly beautiful but mercifully empty.

“So, I’ll just…” From her pocket, she withdrew the small orb that Trelawney had handed to each pair. A single tap of her wand set it hovering a few feet from the ground. “And now you…”

With a resigned inhale, he sank to the meadow. “Trelawney won’t know if we just…sat and listened to it?” He sent an uncharacteristically hopeful look up at her. “Side by side?”

“No. I’m not risking having to do this twice. Come on, let's just do it.”

She clicked her fingers and dutifully, he stretched his legs out straight in front of him, bracing himself with hands behind as she awkwardly lowered down until she was perched on his thighs, face to face. It was immediately clear she was holding the majority of her weight off him, and so he sighed again.

“You won’t break me, Granger. Get comfortable so we can get this over with.”

“Fine.” She settled on him fully, her weight grounding him to the earth in a way he found oddly comforting. “Now…put your arms…”

Before she could finish the instruction, he sat forward, arms coming up to loosely wrap around her ribs, matching the directions of the cobwebs in only the most technical sense. Her arms curled around his shoulders, close enough that her elbows dug into him just slightly.

“Is this right?” she asked, half to herself, then drew back only enough to glance down between them, wiggling slightly to center herself over his lap and making a soft sound of approval when their sternums were properly aligned. “There. That feels better.”

“Sure.” Anything to get the music going, so that it would be over.

Granger, perhaps sensing his tension, pressed her lips together into a firm line and reached for her wand, tapping the orb again. It began to emit a soft green light, and then the tones of several string instruments rose up in a long, drawn-out overture.

He inhaled deeply and fixed his gaze to the distance over her shoulder, letting the swells and ebbs of the music wash over him. It was a beautiful song, mournful and yearning, and as the low, grounding notes of a cello supported the ever-soaring rise of the violins, he felt his sinuses prick with emotion.

Fuck.

He swallowed roughly, resisting a more tell-tale sniff, and self-consciously adjusted his hold on her. Her hands slid along her forearms, close enough that he could feel the fingers of her right hand against his right shoulder. Her curls brushed his face in cadence with the way the breeze was flirting with the wildflowers. Her knees hugged his hips, body warm and all around him.

His palms were sweating, heart pounding, as the raw, untended-to emotions within him rose and rose and rose.

When the music hit a plateau, all the instruments idling together in a place of balanced harmony, she exhaled slowly, contentedly, and relaxed into his hold. He couldn’t help himself. A sound escaped him, a broken, muffled half sob, and his entire body flared with mortification.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, clearing his throat.

“It’s alright,” she whispered. “I feel a little emotional, too.”

Her arms tightened around him, a tiny gesture of the truth in her words, and he couldn’t stem the quiver in his lip. It had been so long since he’d felt safe in someone's arms.

“I don’t know why I’m–” He broke off, embarrassed by the warble in his voice. He cleared his throat roughly, and then again. “We can stop – we should stop.”

“Not yet.” Her voice was soft. “The song isn’t finished. Just hold me, and I’ll hold you, alright?”

The tension in his body was beginning to ache, his jaw and chest and throat all tight with restraint, so when she slid one hand down his back in a soft, soothing touch, he didn’t have the strength left to control himself. He buried his face into the crook of her neck and let out a shuddery, tearful breath.

The soft murmurs of her understanding melted into the music, until all he could hear were string instruments harmonizing with the early evening crickets, and all he could feel was the soul-deep anguish of the second chance he’d been given by all the living beings around him. He didn’t deserve it, not in any measure, but here he was, being given it bountifully.

There was nothing he could do that would make her more disgusted by him than what he’d already done, and so he took the invitation offered and anointed her with tears.

It was only after he collected himself that he realized she was trembling in his arms, wracked with soft, quiet sobs. It was reflex to haul her closer, hugging her to his body until there was no space between them at all. She gripped him back.

The music faded, and in the absence of it, everything else sharpened.

The heat of his skin where her temple was pressed to his neck, warm exhales gusting down his damp shirt. The scent of her hair; the texture of it against his lips. He’d never held someone for so long; long enough to have begun to forget where his body ended and hers began. The material of her jumper was coarse as he worried at it with his fingertips, feeling the faint ridges of her ribs underneath as her breathing leveled out.

For a moment they were quiet, and then she drew back just enough to tilt her face up to his. Her eyes were glossy, red-rimmed and framed with tear-darkened lashes. It felt like a liminal state, to be so close to warmth and amber; he was momentarily suspended in her gaze.

“Draco,” she whispered, voice thin and precarious. “Would you kiss me?”

Whether the question was meant to assess his newfound ethos or if she simply needed the reassurance that breaking down didn't mean being broken hardly mattered, not when the answer to both was the same.

He swallowed, and nodded, and when she licked her lips, he leaned in to do the same.

Her lips tasted like salt water but inside, she was sweet. A soft sound escaped him when his tongue found hers, curiosity and pleasure and awareness all rolled into one. She returned it, darting her tongue against his, tilting her head to welcome him further in. His hands slid until his forearms were banded around her back and in response, her arms cinched around his shoulders, knees tightening around his hips.

To be kissed after being held was a luxury he’d never known, and when her fingers hesitantly rose to card through his hair, he nearly wept again. But with their hips pressed snugly and her tongue sliding deliciously against his, the intimacy of the moment shifted to a different variety.

“Sorry,” he mumbled into her mouth, when her hips canted against his and discovered how fervently he was responding. “Ignore it.”

She pinned his bottom lip between her teeth instead, and rolled her hips forward with intention.

“Actually, if it’s alright–” She sucked on his lip, then kissed him again. “–if you wouldn’t mind–it’s been so long–”

He kissed her hard, dropping a hand to her arse. “Fuck. Anything.”

“Then—like this…just like this.”

She spread her knees, hips tilting downward, and he shot a hand between them to align his cock for her, tugging it up along his zip, knuckles brushing against her in the process. Even through the crumpled fabric of her skirt, he could feel a new sort of heat and dampness.

He wanted to rotate his wrist, to rub his fingers between her legs and watch as her face filled with an agony so different from before. But she’d said just like this and so he slid his hand to her thigh instead, helping her roll her hips over him again and again and again.

She panted into his mouth and he had to brace with a hand behind himself, thighs tensed with the restrained desire to thrust up against her. The music was still echoing in his head, complemented by the sounds of nature performing its twilight routine, tucking away and waking up in perfect symbiosis. It was an insubstantial distraction.

It shouldn’t have felt so easy to find balance with her, not after all the ways he’d tried to tip the scales, but in that moment, he didn’t overthink it. And so when his head fell back, heavy on his nape at her next perfect grind over him, he groaned and gave in.

“Oh.” Her knees slid further on the grass at the urgent upward roll of his hips. “Oh gods, do that again.”

He did, fingers curling into the grass and her jumper, the heels of his dragonhide boots digging into the earth as he bent his knees enough to rock his hips up under her, grinding against her. Her lips slid to his jaw and then his neck, the damp heat of her gasping breaths against his tear-streaked skin making him shiver, goosebumps prickling across his body.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Like that. Like that.”

If it had been long for her, then it had been eons for him. And with the way she was grabbing at him, holding tight, her fingers agony in his hair, the pain-pleasure of it making his eyes roll shut–

“I’m going to—” He panted, helpless to stop it. “Oh…fuck, I’m going to—Granger, I’m–”

She whimpered into his mouth, stealing the rest of his warning and destroying any remaining chance he had of holding off. Heat flared in his lower abdomen, radiating along his inner thighs and up. His jaw stuttered then went lax as the pleasure crested. A broken sound muffled behind his lips and then, when it became too much, into the crook of her neck. Jumper fisted tightly. Pleasure. Relief.

He was only distantly aware of her own shuddering, the high little whimpers barely escaping the tightness of her throat, and then the pleasure faded, and in the absence of it, everything else sharpened.

The weight of her body over his, overwhelming in the comfort of it. Her exhales, gusting over his damp lips, wet from her kisses and tongue and his tears. The scent of her arousal; of his own. The reality that they’d just gotten off together. Outside. In plain sight, the sun just barely flirting with the horizon. After having hardly exchanged a word.

Panic was rising up, the uncertainty of what would come next his familiar foe, but before it had a chance to retighten the knot in his chest, she leaned back.

He winced as she put fresh pressure on his sensitive, spent cock but the next second she was settling on his thighs, knees tucking in around his hips and cheek resting against his shoulder.

He felt the swish of her wand at his side and then the overture was swirling in the air around them, the rising lilt of violin grounded by the low drag of the cello.

In his chest, his heart seized.

She exhaled slowly, contentedly, relaxing into his hold, and he couldn’t stop himself.

“Granger–”

“Shh.” She nuzzled against him, curls tickling his nose. “Just hold me, and I’ll hold you. Alright?”

He huffed a little laugh, but did as she said. They could sort it all out when the song ended.

Or perhaps they’d just let it play again.

#dramione #dramione month #hp fic #draco malfoy #draco x hermione #hp fanfiction #hermione granger

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