About Last Night

Alternate Universe

They did not leave their bed for two days.

When they crossed through the front door, hands reaching out for clothes, fingers undoing buttons and lowering zippers, mouths pressing urgent kisses, tongues licking up edges and curves and lines, teeth leaving marks over invisible fingerprints, Draco forgot about the rest of the world. If the way she held onto him, if the way she chased his touch was any indication, then he knew Hermione forgot about the rest of the world, too.

He did not know when that happened—when she became the sun, moon, and the stars (how she became the very fucking air he breathed)—but he somehow could not bring himself to resent her for that. Even if he was terrified by it, by how much she had taken from him and claimed ownership on. He just wanted to show her what she meant to him.

Draco had been craving her body for days, but he forced the animalistic pull inside of him to simmer down, to hide away in the shadows until Hermione wanted that side of him to appear. So when he had her on the bed, her brown curls splayed out like a bronzed crown over her head, his desperate, claiming hands became gentle, praising caresses.

The look in her brown eyes almost made Draco falter. For a moment she looked at him with bewilderment, with fear—like she did not know (did not believe) he was capable of such tenderness. His insecurity must have broken past the dark silver of his eyes because in the next second she was pulling herself up, pressing her lips to his and moving his hands back on her waist.

Draco was never a worshipping man (he never understood the necessity to kneel before a person or a deity, not since bowing to a madman left only death, destruction, and darkness), but for Hermione he got on his knees and praised every centimeter of skin she had to offer. With his hands, tongue, and mouth, he tried to show her she was the embodiment of a heaven he never believed existed—a heaven that would never belong to people like him, people with a past covered in blood.

The moment after she climbed down of the blissful heights he took her to, Hermione opened her eyes, settling her erratic breath to say, "Wait, Draco. Please."

He looked up at her from between her thighs, his thumbs running circles all the way up. "You don't want this?"

Hermione reached to cup the side of his face. There was such conflict in her gaze, Draco was sure she was going to draw the line there. He could not blame her if that was her choice; he had no recollection of having sex with her the first time, only the angry uproar that came after. He did not know (even if he had an indestructible ego) if their previous and only experience together had been impeccable, making her want him just as he wanted her at that very second.

"I do," she murmured, "I do want this. I want you, Draco. It's just...The last time I allowed myself to be vulnerable with someone, he broke my heart."

"I'm not going to break your heart, Hermione."

Tears pooled in her brown eyes, her fingers on Draco's jaw trembling as she whispered, "What if I break yours?"

Draco rose from his knees, taking a seat beside her on the wrinkled sheets caused by her previously quivering body. He took her hands into his.

"He doesn't get to blacken your heart, Hermione," he said with a careful voice. "He doesn't get to make you afraid of...of us. He doesn't get to make you hate yourself."

Hermione took a deep breath. "What are we?"

"Husband and wife," Draco told her, but the reply, even to his own ears, sounded too light to actually define the impact of who they were—what they were.

They were old enemies by intolerance.

They were strangers by choice.

They were hesitant acquaintances by others.