Where his touch smoothed out that quiet coil of tension in her, her words do the same for him. Had he genuinely thought she still hated him? Maybe. Possibly. There was just so much fucking baggage: being on opposite sides of a war, her torture at his aunt’s hands, captured in his own Merlin-damned family basement, a knife at her throat.
It’s a lot. It’s complicated. Draco often wonders how things would’ve played out differently if the war hadn’t happened.
Then again, he’d likely never have wound up working at the Ministry with her otherwise, so.
His fingers curl along her forearm, the same scarred skin he’s already kissed. Hermione’s confession unwinds something further in him and he exhales. “I said something along those lines, didn’t I?” he says, contemplative, genuinely trying to remember. His mouth had been running away with him while she was riding him hard and fast, the truth spilling loose in a flood, and it’s hard to recall the specifics of what he’d blurted out. But now that they’re both clear-headed again, and she’s said it back—
“Good. Because, well, same.” There’s a beat, a calculation of timelines and remembering that interminable period when she’d been with Weasley, and Draco finds himself wondering when he’d finally graduated out of despicable. How long it had taken for her hatred to cool, or at least metastasise into another kind of heat. “Wait, how long is a while?”
no subject
Where his touch smoothed out that quiet coil of tension in her, her words do the same for him. Had he genuinely thought she still hated him? Maybe. Possibly. There was just so much fucking baggage: being on opposite sides of a war, her torture at his aunt’s hands, captured in his own Merlin-damned family basement, a knife at her throat.
It’s a lot. It’s complicated. Draco often wonders how things would’ve played out differently if the war hadn’t happened.
Then again, he’d likely never have wound up working at the Ministry with her otherwise, so.
His fingers curl along her forearm, the same scarred skin he’s already kissed. Hermione’s confession unwinds something further in him and he exhales. “I said something along those lines, didn’t I?” he says, contemplative, genuinely trying to remember. His mouth had been running away with him while she was riding him hard and fast, the truth spilling loose in a flood, and it’s hard to recall the specifics of what he’d blurted out. But now that they’re both clear-headed again, and she’s said it back—
“Good. Because, well, same.” There’s a beat, a calculation of timelines and remembering that interminable period when she’d been with Weasley, and Draco finds himself wondering when he’d finally graduated out of despicable. How long it had taken for her hatred to cool, or at least metastasise into another kind of heat. “Wait, how long is a while?”