Work Text:
Entirely
“You worry too much.” Draco chuckled as he opened the front door to his house, shifting to the side to allow Hermione to be the first to enter and escape the relentless autumn heat. They were instantly greeted by the most deliciously drastic shift in temperature provided by the overworked air conditioner.
“How do you manage to go through every day of your life never worrying at all what other people think of you?” She gently placed her overstuffed bag down on the entryway bench, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow and taking in her surroundings. This was her first time entering Draco’s home. It was not at all what she had expected. It was an average one-story, three-bedroom house planted on the corner of a cul-de-sac, similar to the kind of home she and many of her childhood friends grew up in. It was unpretentious and tidy, decorated with an aggressively feminine touch. But more notably, it was shockingly and unapologetically muggle. It was also glaringly obvious that no one had redecorated this home since the early 90’s. From what she could see, not a single item in the house appeared to have come from the Malfoy estate. If she had to guess, it would seem that Draco and his father had simply moved into a fully-furnished property and decided not to replace a single thing the previous owners had left behind. She hoped those owners had left willingly…or perhaps died together peacefully in their sleep of old age. That sometimes happened in real life, right? She decided to leave the dozens of questions forming in her mind for another time.
“That’s easy. I hate people.” Draco replied, having wandered into the kitchen to grab a cold bottle of water from the fridge. She had just made it past the doorway to the kitchen when he turned and tossed the bottle to her playfully. She caught it with one hand, surprising herself. He lifted one eyebrow, indicating he was mildly impressed, and then turned to grab a large green apple from the bowl on the center island.
“Thank you.” She muttered, twisting the cap off and taking a large sip. The chilled water felt like pure heaven traveling down her throat. She resisted the temptation to moan in pleasure in front of him.
“Also, Malfoy, you do not hate people.” Hermione moved to lean against the kitchen counter behind her, setting the bottle down to her left. She fiddled with the plastic cap in her right hand.
“Wrong. I do, indeed, hate people,” he retorted almost cheerily. He turned to face her and took a massive first bite into the apple. Hermione watched transfixed as his razor-sharp jaw clenched and rolled as he chewed, a small drop of moisture from the apple clinging to his lower lip. Her mouth watered involuntarily (traitorously) in response. She bit her lip hard to break herself free of the distraction and refocus on the freshly-brewing debate.
“Firstly, I’m never wrong. And secondly, I can easily prove you don’t hate people.”
He squinted at her in challenge. “Fine. Prove it.” He darted his tongue out to lick the juice from his lower lip. She felt her ears go red hot, but she pressed on, clearing her throat.
"For starters, you work at Disneyland!"
"So?"
"Well, it's hardly the job someone would choose if they hated people."
"Are you trying to argue that it is impossible to hate the people you work for? If that's the case, I have a feeling the entirety of human civilization might have something to say about that."
“Fine. Point conceded."
"Do you have any further proof?"
"Yes, I do. And it’s ironclad. Although we have spent less than three days together since our…unexpected reunion, I am already extremely confident you don’t hate me.” She cheekily batted her lashes at him.
He smirked. “Correct. I do not hate you.” He pointed at her with the apple, then swung his hand back up to take another ridiculously large bite into the other side of it.
In that moment Hermione found herself fantasizing that the apple was the the side of her neck, and wondered what his teeth would feel like there—his perfectly pointed canines pressing sharply down into that sweet spot where her neck and shoulder meet. She swallowed roughly, then reached for her water bottle, her hand missing it twice before she was forced to tear her gaze away from his shameless apple-ravishing to turn and find where the damned thing was. She grabbed at it spitefully as if it had been intentionally vexing her, and took a long, slow sip to collected herself. When she regained her composure, she forced a cool grin on her face and exclaimed, “Well, there you have it. You don’t hate me and I’m people! Done. I win.”
“Ah. That is where you are wrong. You are not people.” He leaned against the counter directly across from her, tossing the mostly-finished apple into the plastic trash bin beside the kitchen island. He then turn towards the sink beside him to tear off a paper towel from the roll to wipe his mouth and hands, then balled it up and tossed that in the trash as well.
God, this is all so muggle, she thought. And Draco seemed completely at ease with all of it. She suddenly wanted nothing more in the world than to watch Draco Malfoy microwave a burrito. She filed away that image and several other new questions forming in her mind for later.
Draco folded his arms across his chest, clearly indicating he wanted to continue this silly debate, and that he was not about to give her a win so easily. Although they already both knew she would eventually win.
Hermione Granger always won.
Malfoy might be far more inherently stubborn than Granger, but when Granger was trying to prove there was some goodness to be found in someone or something, she could become the most annoyingly indomitable force (or indomitably annoying force?) on earth. And although he had clearly grown and matured greatly over the past few years and their dynamic was much healthier than it was as children, Malfoy wasn’t completely reformed. For instance, he found he was still entirely incapable of passing up any opportunity to fluster her—at least a tiny bit. And, unfortunately for Granger, being a contrarian (a.k.a. prick) was—up to now—still the most sure-fire approach.
She rolled her eyes. “So, I’m not people? Then what am I?”
He shrugged, casually crossing his feet to match his arms. “You’re Granger.”
She glared, flicking the plastic cap she still had in her hand at him as a warning. He didn’t so much as blink as one hand rose to effortlessly catch it. She was fairly impressed (turned on) but refused to give him any credit in that moment.“That is treacherously close to feeling like an insult.”
“It isn’t an insult at all.” He rolled the plastic cap skillfully across his knuckles. Show off.
“Given our history, Draco Malfoy, telling me that I’m ‘not a person’ is—”
“—Ah, ah! I never said you weren’t a person. I said you’re not people. Entirely different.” He tossed the cap back to her. She caught it. They both stopped their bickering momentarily to grin at each other. They were 3 for 3.
Hermione lightened her tone. “Ok, well, obviously. If you’re going to be pedantic about it. Yes, I am one single person and not plural ‘people’.”
“That’s not what I mean. There’s far more to it.”
She sighed and twisted the cap back onto the bottle. She then hopped up on the counter, crossing her legs and arms, attempting to matching his pose—and height—in defiance. She caught his eyes following her movement, darting down to her thighs ever so briefly as she crossed one leg over the other. He then caught her catching him and quickly lowered his gaze further, pretending he was merely examining the tattoos on his forearms. The corner of her mouth quirked up as she realized she was about to gain the advantage.
“I’ll bite. So, explain to me how things work in that warped little mind of yours.” She mischievously wiggled her crossed legs from side to side, knowing fully well he was still watching them in his periphery.
He fidgeted for a moment. She had a strong feeling she knew what that fidget meant. She smirked and decided to double-down, rolling her shoulders back in an exaggerated manner and raising her crossed arms to ever so slightly push her breasts up. The effect on him was instantaneous and marvelous. He hurriedly uncrossed all his appendages and pushed himself off the counter, casting one final shameless glance at her chest before turning sharply and pacing to the far right side of the kitchen towards an ancient (mid-1970’s) oven that was set beneath a equally ancient shabby red brick arch, giving himself the extra buffer space he needed to collect his thoughts (and adjust his boner). Once he had succeeded at both, he turned to face in her direction. But he wouldn’t look directly at her. He shifted his focal plane higher up, just above her head where a dusty, fake ivy plant hung over the upper cabinets. His stance was far more rigid and formal than moments prior and it was clear he was doing everything in his power to hide his growing apprehension (and arousal). Hermione noted the change and quirked her eyebrows in curiosity.
“Instead of endeavoring to explain the deeply complex inner workings of the great Malfoy mind to a—”
“—Watch it!” she warned.
He continued, unabated, “—brilliant, intuitive witch who doesn’t need to be spoon-fed what she can easily ascertain on her own, I’m going to ask you two questions.”
“Alright.” She relaxed. Cheap flattery worked far too well on her.
“First question.” Draco cleared his throat and shifted his weight from the right to the left, then back to the right. Oh my god, he’s nervous! Hermione thought. She tried not to grin, but it was so adorable she couldn’t help herself. But she took pity on him and hid her grin as quickly as she could so she wouldn’t make him feel even more self-conscious.
He continued, “Do you know what it’s like to—” he stopped abruptly, growling and frustratedly sliding both his hands through his hair. Hermione knit her brows with worry. The tension radiating off of him was growing by the second and she was searching for clues as to why. What she couldn’t have known in that moment was that a great internal struggle was raging within Draco Malfoy. Half of him—the Malfoy half—the half that valued self-preservation over all else—was telling his other half that he ought to shut-the-fuck-up-right-this-instant before he said something he would regret. The other half—the Draco half—the half that would traverse any perilous path on earth that might bring him even one step closer to earning Hermione’s affection and smile and warmth and singularly brilliant mind (and doubly brilliant tits)—was determined to open himself up to her, and to the possibility of imminent rejection, by asking a question he knew he shouldn’t be asking at such an early stage in their relationship. Relationship? That word felt so loaded, even though it was technically accurate. A friendship is a type of a relationship, after all.
After balling his fists and muttering something to himself that sounded an awful lot like quit being a cunt, Draco decided his braver half would win. Hermione had gone completely still in anticipation. He began again, rephrasing the question.
“Have you even been surrounded by people and all at once become stricken with the realization that you have never felt more profoundly alone? And not just alone despite their presence, but because of it?”
Hermione’s chest lurched, and her mouth formed the shape of a oh. She did not see that coming. Before the mood had shifted, she was so sure he was about to come at her with his trademark brand of 100% raw, unfiltered Malfoy snark. She tilted her head, examining the pained, embarrassed look that now filled his eyes. Eyes that were still refusing to look down at her. She recognized how exposed he was allowing himself to be in that moment; a vulnerable position he normally would never willingly put himself in. She found this raw, unfiltered Malfoy brand of distressed vulnerability to be quite appealing, albeit in a slightly sadistic sort of way.
No. Not just appealing, it was kind of sexy. Who was she kidding? It was hot as fuck.
The youthful, underutilized female hormones raging inside of her were screaming at her to jump off the counter and run over to him, press every inch of herself up against him, wrap her arms tightly around his middle and squeeze as hard as she could until every last lonely feeling he had ever experienced was forced out of his body for good. Instead, she merely uncrossed her arms and legs and gripped the edge of the counter tightly with each hand.
His eyes instinctually tracked her movement until they accidentally met hers once more. His face had softened slightly. He had moved past his initial feelings of humiliation and anguish and settled somewhere in the realm of resignation. He was waiting patiently for her to answer. He knew what he just admitted had doubtlessly cast him in an unattractive light, especially to someone who notoriously adored people—and not just people—all living creatures great and small. He had likely doomed himself and had already come to terms with it.
Hermione granted their poor, overworked eyes a reprieve, turning her head to look out the large kitchen window on the far left wall opposite Draco, filling the awkward silence by humming contemplatively. She hoped to convey the idea she was in the process of forming a thoughtful response to his question, even though the moment he had asked it, she had immediately known her answer was an emphatic Yes! All the time, yes! Especially now that I have to pretend I’m always happy so I don’t worry anyone anymore. It makes me feel so utterly and completely alone. And the physical pain of that loneliness is indescribable. Endless. Unbearable. It’s one of the worst feelings I have ever felt and it absolutely shatters my heart to think you have ever felt similarly. But she was torn on how honest of an answer she could handle giving him. She had never told anyone these feelings before. And even though she knew he understood—maybe more than anyone else could—she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear herself say all that out loud. So she settled on saying, “There have been moments. Yes.” She tensed her shoulders upon hearing how insufficient that sounded. She hurriedly added, “More than a few.”
Her response broke the tension that had enveloped the room. She wasn’t looking at Draco, but she could physically feel his energy relaxing behind her. He exhaled, then leaned back against the stove and looked out the window along with her. They sat in nearly comfortable silence for a minute, both staring out at the same sky blue nothingness, listening as the air conditioning clicked back on and droned away. Hermione had another question forming now. After running it through her mind a half dozen times, she decided it was alright to ask it.
“Do you feel that way all the time?”
He took a long, deep breath before answering, “Lately? More often than not.”
With a meekness that betrayed her underlying fear of hearing the answer, she asked, “With everyone?”
“No. Not everyone.” His words flew out almost before she had even finished asking. They carried a confidence and weight that took her aback. She twisted her head towards him, surprised to discover he had already gone back to staring at her. It made her entire face flush with heat, but this time she refused to let herself look away.
She soon realized what an entirely dumb-ass decision maintaining eye contact with him was. His eyes were hardened steel. His gaze was penetrating and relentless. Her throat went very dry. She audibly gulped. The sound was humiliating to her ears. But she still could not tear her eyes away from him. They began burning and watering slightly. She seemed to have forgotten that blinking was a thing.
She reached for her water bottle beside her without breaking eye contact, immediately knocking it over onto the floor. She listened to it roll all the way across the kitchen and hit the fridge. She cringed internally but didn’t let it show, other than allowing herself to blink twice slowly. Draco remained unwaveringly fixed on her.
After 3 full eternities (she had estimated, but likely rounded down), she finally allowed herself to lose the staring contest and ask him, “So, what’s the second?”
Draco was lost in thought. He absent-mindedly repeated, “The second?”
“Question. You said you had two questions.”
“Oh. Yes.” He reset his mind and pushed himself off the stove, standing tall and straight, his gaze still locked in on her. He had swiftly managed to recover most of the charming, carefree demeanor he had displayed earlier, and it seemed he had tacked on an additional layer of something else. Something a bit darker, bolder. Something almost…animalistic. Even though he was over on the far right side of the kitchen and she had a wide open path to the exit on her left, she suddenly felt as if he had her cornered.
“Before I ask it, let’s recap. So far we have both acknowledged the negative effect that people have on us.”
“Some people. Sometimes,” she corrected. “But, yes, we both can have an averse reaction to the…peopley-ness of people.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“And you also said that I am not ‘people’.”
He tilted his head, his eyes still penetrating hers. “No, Granger. You most certainly are not.” He lifted the corners of his mouth into the faintest ghost of a grin, and then he took a small step forward.
“I’m still not clear on what that makes me…to you.”
“Perhaps you’ll gain clarity after I ask my second question.” He took another slow, casual step towards her. “Have you ever been alone with a person and just felt entirely—”
She waited a moment for him to finish his sentence. When he didn’t, she asked, “Entirely what?”
“Actually, that’s it. Just felt. Entirely.”
He emphasized the last word with such passionate intensity that it caused her heart to flip up into her throat and crash back down to her stomach. And it didn’t stop there. It then proceeded to haphazardly bounce off every wall and corner of her chest in a chaotic zig-zagging pattern like a rogue rubber ball. And she couldn’t even begin to acknowledge the similar effects it was having on another area of her body. Hermione was astonished by her physical response to that word. “Entirely” wasn’t even a remotely sexual word. Not normally, anyhow. But now she was considering that it may have been the most erotic word she had ever heard. She wished she could have recorded it so she could play it on repeat when she was alone in bed at night. She wanted to ask him to say it again—to say it every day for the rest of her life. But she found herself rendered speechless.
He advanced another step. Her grip on the counter tightened until her knuckles turned white. He took yet another step. She parted her lips to inhale sharply, having forgotten to breathe for the past…oh, how the hell was she to know? Along with the functions of blinking, speaking and breathing, apparently time was yet another concept that was now lost to her. Hermione’s thoughts flashed back to a nature documentary she watched once as a child that featured a lion slowly stalking towards an antelope in the African savannas. The antelope did something eerily similar to what she was doing now—which was a whole lot of nothing. And from what she could remember, it didn’t end well for the antelope. With one final step he was now standing directly in front of her, less than a foot apart.
Then he made it worse. So. Much. Worse. He leaned forward and placed his palms flat on the counter on either side of her, excruciatingly close to her own hands that were still white-knuckling the counter so severely she was sure it would leave indentations in her palms for the next several days. His face angled down so close to hers that it instinctually made her lean back, her stomach muscles contracting and straining in order to hold the awkward angle. Not a single part of him was actually touching her, but with the way her body was reacting, he may as well have been fucking her into oblivion right there on the kitchen counter. She had to concentrate on breathing slowly and steadily through her nose to hide her rising panic (arousal).
“Are you going to answer my question?” His hot breath caressed her face. She inhaled his scent - a heady blend of green apple and wicked intentions. The tables had clearly turned and it was now Draco’s chance to torment the little witch with his wiles.
“I, um. Yes. The question…whether I have ever felt…when I’m alone with—”
He smirked, releasing a laughing breath. “I’ll make it easier. What do you feel right now, with me, Granger?”
Hermione meant to respond with a thoughtful hum, but it came out as a full-on moan. Draco’s eyes danced in response.
“For instance, do you feel horribly alone right now?” he asked teasingly, thoroughly proud of himself for pulling a whole new level of flustration out of her.
“No,” she whimpered.
“Do you feel-”
“-Entirely?” she cut in.
“Yes. Entirely,” he whispered directly over her mouth. She got him to say it again. She could die now. She may already be dead.
“Yes,” she exhaled. Draco closed his eyes and breathed her in.
“Granger,” he groaned with his eyes squeezed shut, “Can I—”
The front door suddenly sprung open, slamming against the wall and Lucius Malfoy popped his head inside. He shouted out into the house, “Draco, m’boy! I’m back! Come help with the groceries. I bought everything we need for chili night! 4 types of beans this time! We’ll have to sleep with all the windows open tonight! Haha!”
Draco had leaped backwards away from Hermione the moment he heard the door slam, his face going instantly red. As his father had rambled on, the red on his face grew several shades darker. Hermione's body had gone stiff as if she were back in 4th year and had just been caught canoodling in the Slytherin common room.
Thankfully, once Lucius had finished speaking, the jolly old man ran right back out to his car, and they had a moment to gather their wits. Draco chuckled, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly.
"That would be my dad."
Hermione nodded slowly, taking in Draco's use of the word dad. "His voice does sound quite a bit more...dad-like than I last remember."
"Yeah. He's come a long way." Dracos eyes darted to the side. There was definitely more to that story. She filed more questions away for later.
"Can I help?"
"Help?"
"With the groceries."
"Oh. Yes. Of Course. And you are welcome to stay for dinner. His chili really is his best dish."
"I'd be happy to. But I think I'll have you take me home before-"
"-Before he starts cracking the windows?"
Hermione burst out into a fit of laughter. Draco's laughter followed right behind. It was one of the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard. She thought she might want to listen to that sound every day for the rest of her life.
"Are you ready for this?" He held his arm out to her like a proper gentleman.
Hermione wasn't sure if he was referring to going back out into the miserable heat to carry in the groceries, spending the evening with Lucius Malfoy, or perhaps both, along with everything else that was to follow. But that didn't matter because she knew her answer would be the same regardless. She hopped off the counter and hooked her hand around his arm, replying, "Entirely."