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“Watch the leather,” Dean says, voice low and serious. The hand that has been holding Hermione’s hip - keeping her securely on the narrow seat - finds the elbow she’s digging into the car’s front bench in the desire for more room.
Hermione rolls her eyes.
At first glance, just going on a purely surface level - you know, if you weren’t to look any closer and maybe even if you did - Hermione’s pretty sure a large majority of her acquaintances would say he really doesn’t seem her type.
She’s also pretty sure this has to be the most awkward place to have sex ever.
Dean gives her arm a light, chastising slap and pulls it up above her head, moves it in a way that brings the handle into a suggestively reachable distance. “Careful with my girl. She’s… delicate.”
“And the fact that I’m barely able to breathe…?” Hermione let’s the question hang half formed, glowering up at Dean while she waits for a reply.
It doesn’t come and Dean ignores her irritated huff in favour of fastening his lips around her breast. She resents that it’s a pretty good argument and pushes her hand back against the door.
Her fingers curl and flex around the handle as Dean’s inch up under her skirt and his tongue swirls. Rough finger-pads tickle the sensitive skin of her inner thighs while teeth nip and pull. He smirks up at her - leers - sucks until her nipple’s showing hard and clear through the wet patch his mouth’s left on her jumper. He flicks against it, twists and nips until his caution’s forgotten and she’s causing more damage to the car’s interior – this time with her nails.
Hermione catches herself. She grasps the short strands of hair at the nape of Dean’s neck instead. She can’t deny that she’d be the same way if the situation was reversed and the car replaced with a book. She tugs his head back down until she can feel rather than see his pleased smile.
“Good?” he asks and it’s obvious he’s just fishing; already knows just how good it is.
Hermione has this insane urge to slip him one of the Twins’ Ton-Tongue Toffees. Anything to wipe that smug look off his face. But – she dismisses the thought a moment later. Hermione’s always maintained that of all the inventions Fred and George’s joke shop created, they were the ones that had the potential to be one of the most dangerous. Especially if given to the wrong person. She’d bombarded George with scenario after scenario, medical reports, and finally a number of actual Muggle law suits that bore similarities to the problems she was suggesting. Kept going until he’d finally relented and put a warning on the sweets -‘May impair breathing in extreme circumstances’ – though she was sure he’d done so more to shut her up than any actual concern.
Besides, if she had, by some weird circumstance, not only had one of the sweets, but also ignored her better sensibilities and actually given Dean one, he’d probably just think she was being kinky.
Hermione pulls Dean up, sucks his bottom lip between her teeth. She lets her hand slide over the fly of his jeans, grazing the head of his cock through the denim, and flips them over while he’s distracted. “Ah, now that’s definitely better!” she says and grins – though not as widely as Dean - as she moves to straddle his waist.
Dean shifts his hips, forces her to settle more agreeably and lets out a low, “Hell yeah!”.
Hermione had run into him in Michigan, this time, on the trail of an honest-to-Merlin magic mirror.
She’d been coming out of the antique shop she had hoped would help her track the item down. Except, it had been a complete dead end. Jenning’s Aniques hadn’t had any record of the mirror passing through. The owner hadn’t even heard of the witch whose house had somehow ended up being cleared by Muggle relatives before the specialised American Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Items could be sent in.
Hermione had sighed, pushed her notes and the picture back inside her binder and stepped out onto the street straight into him.
Dean had caught her as she’d stumbled and pulled her closer rather than steadying her at arms distance.
With an irritated huff of breath, Hermione had flipped back her hair and pushed hard against his chest. “Thanks, but I think I can manage to ...” She’d trailed off, left her declaration of independence unfinished as she looked up past the hand on her hip and the familiar leather jacket, realisation flaring bright. “Dean!” she’d said and could already feel her cheeks starting to ache from her smile of recognition.
“’S okay, happens all the time,” he’d replied with a wink.
Hermione had felt justified when she’d poked him hard in the chest and called him an ‘arrogant arse.’
Hermione’s back arches involuntarily as Dean leans up, kisses across her belly. His hands hike her skirt up high enough for him to slide his fingers into the waistband of her knickers.
It’s messy and uncoordinated. Hermione ends up rolling onto her back between Dean’s legs. Her right knee knocks hard against the steering wheel as he stretches and lifts each of her legs over his shoulder so he can tug her pants down and off, discarding them into the back seat of the car.
“Okay once more, please. We’re not using the perfectly good motel room you’ve got because?” she asks as Dean’s hand strokes over the bruise she’s sure is already blooming on her leg.
Hermione never thought he was her type at first, either.
The first time she’d met him had been nearly nineteen months earlier, not long before she’d transferred out to the American Ministry for a two year internship.
At the time, Hermione had been working on a research paper for the Department of Mysteries: ‘Unexplained Magical Phenomena in Muggle Adults.’ One of her final projects.
Thanks to a very enterprising young junior in Arthur’s department, The Ministry had caught wind of a number of incidents that bore a definite resemblance to those performed by young wizards and witches who had yet to learn to control their powers. The worry was that they’d somehow missed individuals with magical aptitude or that for some unknown reason they had started developing later than adolescence. Either way it was a concern.
She’d been visiting a professor at Stanford University who specialised in demonology and, from what she’d read, had some interesting, if unorthodox, ideas on the matter she was investigating.
After her meeting with Professor Vasic, she’d taken her notes into a nearby bar with the intention of eating dinner and reading them over in case there was anything she needed to clarify before her Portkey back to Britain.
Dean had been standing at the bar. Practically the definition of rakish or cool, he’d been leant back, elbow propping him up from the counter, beer dangling from one hand. He’d met her eyes as soon as she’d stepped inside, gaze sliding over her in a way that had made Hermione roll her eyes and consider just walking back out, because it had already been a long day.
She hadn’t, and he’d spent the rest of the evening trying to get inside her knickers.
She should have been put off. His intent had been obvious from the start, and while Hermione wasn’t a prude, one-night stands really weren’t her thing. Too impersonal. Too devoid of emotion, and Hermione likes that connection. Can’t see the point without it. They’re just not for her. And really? A quick trip to the bathroom and a discreet Disillusionment Charm and she could have sat in undisturbed peace for the rest of the evening.
Except, she’d found herself smiling wryly and for some reason enjoying the banter he’d offered.
Dean doesn’t miss a beat. Almost.
He replies, “Come on, you can’t tell me you’re not having fun?” His hand on the small of her back helps pull her up from the seat; keeps her balanced while his other grips her right thigh and urges her to shuffle closer.
And not at all avoiding her question.
There’s a moment of green eyes shifting left, face muscles twitching and fleetingly becoming tense. Hermione contemplates dismissing the reaction, contemplates pushing for more, but she knows better by now when it’s worth the effort. Instead, she files it away along with a whole host of other details that she’s collected since that first time.
“My baby not good enough for you, hmm?” Dean persists.
She wants to smile, but doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
Hermione thinks maybe she’s not meant for simple, no strings attached sex. Even this thing with Dean isn’t exactly what it should be.
It’s not like there’s only ever been Ron. But Charlie hadn’t exactly been casual - uninvolved - either.
Well, technically he had, she supposed, but it was still different. Because she’d known him. Not as well as Ron. But he’d still been a constant in her life. There had still been a rapport there.
And Charlie had been the only one not to tiptoe around her after. He’d been the first to make her laugh when she’d been sure that task would be left to George. The first to argue that if she thought she was ready to go back to work then she was entirely capable of making her own decisions. ‘Merlin knows, it’s not like you stand a chance of stopping her.’
Later, after, when her relationship with Ron had ended, he’d turned up at the door of her office. “Ron sent me. I have casserole,” had been his simple explanation.
Hermione, quill still in hand, had raised her eyebrow.
“Okay, Mum sent me. But Ron was in the room. He agreed. Okay, fine, he nodded.”
She’d never expected it to be more than it had. Never expected it to be what it had, in the first place.
It had lasted more than the short vacation/research trip he had taken her on – Molly’s directive also she was sure. Hermione doesn’t think it could have lasted beyond that – too complicated, it would have left them both too torn. But she thinks she wouldn’t be here now without it. Knows she wouldn’t because it had been Charlie who had talked her into applying for the transfer to the American Ministry. She thinks without it maybe her and Ron would have fallen back together, hurt each other more and lost the friendship they’d somehow managed to retain.
She’s never regretted it. Ron’s favourite brother! She’s sure she should feel guiltier about that than she does. She feels worse that Charlie had.
Dean’s hands are roaming over the cheeks of her arse; slipping strokes that curve and sweep down her body, then climb back up to squeeze and pinch. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure the chance of being caught isn’t turning you off.” He slides a hand further up the inside of Hermione’s leg towards the juncture of her thighs, strokes two fingers against her cunt.
Her cheeks heat at the insinuation and she stills, leans into his touch even as Dean pulls his fingers back. “Exhibitionist!” she hisses.
“And there was me thinking you’d try and deny it.”
Hermione rolls her eyes, flips her hair back over her shoulder, out of her face, and continues to scoot further up Dean’s body, undeterred even as she throws him a look of mock-disapproval.
The bare skin of her knees is squeaking discourteously against the leather of the seat and Dean’s still grinning like a child on Christmas morning. The picture’s only ruined by the way his tongue flashes out to lick his lips in a familiar leer. Any moment is long gone and she mutters ‘classy’ when Dean sucks his fingers inside his mouth and hums a gratuitous sound of approval.
Hermione sighs, moves back to the subject of location. “It’s just a little lacking in the space depar…” she says, but she cuts herself off as a too eager tug on her leg causes her to over balance. She catches herself against the window, palm spread wide and sliding down the condensation on the glass to grip at the door.
She glares down at Dean. He’s licking a stripe up her thigh looking far from the sorry he mumbles to placate her. She narrows her eyes and he just grins wider, palms her arse and pulls her closer to his objective.
“Bigger than that modern piece of shit you’re driving around.”
“That ‘modern piece of-” Hemione clears her throat. “- ‘shit’ uses probably a quarter of the petrol this thing does,” she replies in defence of the Prius she rented.
Dean laughs, murmuring, “small as fuck” and “freaking fugly too” into the skin of her thigh before his teeth graze and bite.
Hermione remembers looking at him the first time they met.
“So, you go to school around here?”
She’d let her eyes stray down to Dean’s mouth, letting herself wonder what if, and somehow missed him pulling her into conversation.
Looking back, Hermione likes to think that maybe it was something more profound. Like the sense of some familiarity in the set of his face when she’d answered his question on what had brought her to the area and returned it; “ Just work. How about you?”
And it wasn’t that there hadn’t been that moment. Hermione remembers it like a word in a book that doesn’t quite sit with the tone of the rest of the narrative. But it wasn’t that, even if she would prefer to think it had been, and she doesn’t hold with lying to herself.
Not then, when it was simply mild attraction, pretend possibility.
Simply the allure of the temptation to lose herself, just for a while in the warm open smile Dean had tossed at her. That one that made him look a little more boyish - a little less predatory; bar light catching his freckles as he asked what she was drinking.
For the first time in - too long, she’d looked. Had thought about something other than work and making sure her mind didn’t stray to the memory of reaching down to feel her stomach when she’d woken in St. Mungo’s. She had allowed the possibility of letting herself just be someone normal.
The air in the car is cool. Winter’s closer than summer and Dean’s got the engine off so the heater’s as good as redundant. Hermione’s skin feels tight with goose pimples prickling everywhere her clothing’s pulled away.
Dean’s tongue flicks out against her clit, teasing little barely-there touches. Hermione tries to move closer; get more, but his hands slide around, flatten over the curve of her hips, thumbs hooking under her thighs and holding her back. She looks down, ready to demand, and groans in frustration when she sees the teasing curve of his lips.
She’d learnt the on first job they’d worked together just how stubborn he can be; that attempting to dissuade him when he has that look on his face is as pointless as the study plans she’d made Harry and Ron back at school. Her argument dies, but she promises herself she’ll get her revenge later.
The second time they’d met, Dean had been totally different.
“Fucking shit for brains college kids!”
It’s the first thing Hermione heard him say.
Her head had tilted to the side. Hermione had squinted, but kept her wand levelled at his chest while she’d looked up at him down the barrel of his gun. She remembers the pang of recognition when her eyes had adjusted enough to make sense of his features.
She’d had a Knock-Back spell readied ever since the Trip-Wire charm she’d cast over the cave’s mouth had triggered, but Hermione had let it go: felt the magic slip-slide over her skin as it receded back and faded.
Dean had swung the barrel away from her, finger still on the trigger, crossed hands sweeping the area with keen eyes and the beam of the torch held in his other hand. She’d taken the opportunity to mouth the incantation for a Disarming charm, held it heavy on the tip of her tongue, ready to release. Tried to reconcile this with the boy from a month earlier in that bar. She hadn’t quite been able to dismiss the feeling of discontent that rose uncomfortably with the awareness that she’d been too busy daydreaming when they’d last met to catch this side of him. Because there had to have been some hint, right?
Motion had blurred across the opening to the chamber, and she’d looked away briefly; watched something agile slide around the edge of the wall.
“Dean?”
She hadn’t been able to see the newcomer very clearly; too many shadows especially with the light from Dean’s torch turned her way, but she’d noted the straightening of Dean’s back, forehead creasing as he said, “Sir?” his tone so different from the pub in Palo Alto.
“Just bats. “You?”
Dean had looked back at Hermione, and his gaze had swept over her with an accompanying huff of annoyed breath. “Art student or something,” he’d replied, eyes rolling as he sidestepped Hermione to investigate further into the chamber.
Her eyes narrowed at the dismissal. “Art student or something?” she’d bit out, arms crossing while Dean’s foot nudged into some of the thick root stems that had worked their way down through the rocks in search of water and nutrients.
Dean had half turned, waved vaguely in the direction of her wand in reply, before turning his full attention back to the cave’s floor.
“It’s not here,” the stranger’s voice had interrupted, catching both of their attentions. “No signs of recent occupancy and this is the last chamber. Get her out of here. I want to check something else out. I’ll meet you back at the room in an hour.”
“Yes, sir!” Dean had replied, while the other man turned to leave.
“I don’t need anyone to get me out of here, thank you very much,” Hermione had snapped, shirking Dean’s hand on her arm. “I’m more than capable of looking after myself.”
“Look,” he’d started to say, then paused. “Hey, don’t I know you?”
That second time Dean had definitely proven a bit more interesting, even if he’d been even more of a prick at first.
“Not as well as you wanted.” Hermione had snorted.
She holds herself up, arms braced against the door, back bent over. The window’s misted up with every exhale of breath she lets out against it, she can see the dark outlines of the woodland shrubs that line the side of the road, but no detail. Hermione thinks really that fact should make her feel more at ease, but she can’t see what’s coming and she’s never liked being surprised or caught off guard. It’s why she read all the Wizarding books she could get her hands on before she started Hogwarts; she’d needed to feel prepared.
She wipes her palm across the window, clearing the glass and giving her a view of the surrounding area for a few moments before the moisture re-coalesces and claims the space once more.
There’s a movement in the bush and Hermione freezes, body tense.
“Relax,” Dean whispers, and as he exhales on the last syllable, breath ghosting over already sensitised nerves, Hermione shudders, lets her head fall back, and she forces herself to try not to get caught up thinking.
It really shouldn’t be hard given her current situation.
Dean strokes a finger down from her clit, slides inside just briefly, before pulling back out and returning to the almost not enough. He chuckles and it vibrates straight through her, pulls at her stomach and her thoughts shift to frustration – aggravation.
Hermione closes her eyes, focuses all her concentration on the feeling of Dean’s mouth, the way he’s sucking a bruise into the top of her thigh, the way his nose knocks against her clit as his mouth moves lower, closer to what she wants. She puts all ‘what ifs’ out of her head.
It’s easy when she just tries.
His fingers push up inside of her again, and she can feel them curling familiarly. She knows what’s coming even before they find and press on something that always makes her gasp.
Her eyes flash open and a deer darts out from the scrub, doesn’t even look at the car as it dives back into the undergrowth on the opposite side of the dirt road.
Dean pauses, digits still and he looks up as Hermione hic-ups out a laugh. “What?” he asks, forehead creased and lips shiny even before his tongue darts out and over them.
First time they had sex, Hermione had cried.
It sounds more dramatic than it was, though she still flushes hot with embarrassment when she thinks back on it.
It wasn’t huge hiccupping sobs. But Hermione had felt the tears in her eyes, had tried to blink them back, push them away. She’d needed to come so badly. Dean rocking into her, pace speeding up - urgent and right there. And she was sure he’d come before she did, that she wouldn’t get the release - the moment of just feeling that she wanted. And it had hurt – that not quite feeling. She kept trying to push herself that little bit further, but she just couldn’t get there and she almost felt sick with the need.
Except then Dean had reached down between them. He’d locked their eyes and pressed the heel of his hand into the flesh just above her pelvis, moved just right while his voice kept telling her to ‘Let go. Come on.’ And like that everything clicked.
After Hermione had lifted her head from where it was pressed into his shoulder, felt the way the tears had mingled with Dean’s sweat to stick loose hairs to her cheeks as she pulled away.
If Dean noticed, he never said anything.
Hermione’s body feels limp and like it only does in these moments after an orgasm. Her forehead’s pressed against the glass and she’s pretty sure she’d be sliding down it if not for Dean’s hands on her stomach and thigh holding her up, keeping her weight off him.
He lifts and shifts her, shuffling inelegantly on the seat as he tries to change their position. Hermione would help, but she’s pretty sure he can manage fine on his own.
Dean huffs at her, finally gets them both sitting upright, Hermione straddling his lap, her head slumped against his shoulder and eyes sleepy.
She nuzzles into the hollow of his neck, breathes in the bitter smell of gun oil, leather and the almost unpleasant tang of carbolic soap mixing with his sweat. It’s familiar and expected, and Hermione finds she likes the way she can dissect and identify the different components.
“Are you falling asleep?” Dean grumbles, smoothes his hand all the way up her spine until he can tug on her hair, pull her head back to see her face. “You know, you can be surprisingly lazy, Miss Granger?”
“Just, give me a minute, okay?” Hermione’s feels her vowels slur as she replies, doesn’t really care right that minute that her Gloucestershire accent’s slipping out. She blinks sleepily at Dean, studies his face in a way she doesn’t always get the opportunity to. Tries to count the freckles on his nose, but gets distracted by the one in the middle of his upper lip she hadn’t noticed before. He’s smiling at her: lax and oddly soft and it belies the hint of irritation he’d tried to push into his question. Hermione grins, drops forward against his neck again, waits until she hears Dean’s sigh of defeat and then bites, just below his ear. “My teachers always said I was an over achiever actually.”
After that first time, Dean had covered her up. A threadbare yellow motel duvet drawn up around Hermione’s shoulder whilst Dean left to clean up in the bathroom.
Hermione doesn’t remember him coming back in, just waking up, stretching out and feeling the press of Dean behind her; red digital numbers blinking eight-thirty-three at her importantly.
Almost eight hours asleep and Hermione hadn’t been able to quite wrap her mind around that. She’d never been a good sleeper, even as a child. Then with the demands of her school work and all that being best friends with Harry had brought, her sleep patterns had distorted further. Never to the extent that they had in the months since St. Mungo’s.
Lying next to Dean, Hermione tried to remember the last time she managed to sleep five hours straight.
In the end she gave up, slipped out of the bed, scribbled a note and got dressed. She’d retrieved two cups of coffee from a local Starbucks before heading towards the town library she’d run into Dean at the day before. The ache in her shoulders – constant pressure like a migraine in the tendons of her neck – was still there, but it felt easier.
She’d stopped by the bench at the side of the library steps. Hermione had rolled her shoulders, looked up at the austere building and thought Madam Pince would probably approve of it’s exterior appearance if not the too bright open plan interior. She’d listened curiously as the bones in her neck cracked and had taken a long sip of her too hot drink. Her tongue burned numb, but her lips curled in a smile when she wiped away the sleep irritating the corner of her eye.
Hermione has to push herself up onto her knees so Dean can lift up enough to pull his jeans down. Her shirt’s gone, discarded in the back of the car like her pants and Hermione can’t help but wonder if maybe the back wouldn’t have been a better place to do this?.
She leans back to give him more room and nearly overbalances. Dean drops down hard against the seat, jeans caught awkwardly halfway down his hips, as he reaches out to catch her, stop her from falling back against the dash.
“Careful.”
“Worried about ‘your girl’ again,” Hermione snarks, rolling her eyes and bracing herself more securely so he can finish with his jeans.
Dean’s reaching into his back pocket when he goes, “Yeah,” thick and low, eyes focussed somewhere near the hand still steadying Hermione’s hip.
Hermione feels like she’s back in Divination and is still not really sure what she’s supposed to do even though she asked Trelawney to confirm the directions twice.
“You’re surprisingly clumsy.” Dean adds, looks up with a toothy grin as he tears the shiny blue foil wrapper of a condom open with his teeth. Hermione’s not sure that makes things any clearer.
“I’m not clumsy,” she retorts, huffing and pushing the hair back off her face. “It’s just that there’s no room to manoeuvre adequately in here. What?”
“You don’t think it’s cozy?”
He’s laughing at her, Hermione can tell. She scowls. “I think I’ve just remembered I have a line of enquiry I should be looking into,” she says, raises an eyebrow and lifts her leg to start to move off him.
Except, Dean’s hand slides to the small of her back, presses firm and she finds herself falling in towards his chest.
“At -” He glances around her to look at the car’s clock. “- twelve-forty-five?”
“I can -” Hermione starts to answer, but Dean pulls her just close enough to brush their noses together. It’s stupid and corny and kind of a too sweet a gesture for him, but somehow he pulls it off, makes it feel dirty with the way he’s looking at her the whole time.
“You know, if you were such an overachiever -” Dean tangles his hand in the back of her hair, combs his fingers through the roots in a way that makes her feel sleepy and on edge all at once. His eyes are on her mouth and her skin feels cold, hot; prickled and tense.
Hermione’s eyes flutter closed in anticipation while he trips his finger tips over the shell of her ear. They pause too long on the edge of her jaw bone and impatient, and she blinks, catches his tongue flicking out over his lips. She leans forward - quick reflexes she had to learn to perfect in order to keep up with Harry; make it through – catches the tip before it disappears. She smiles before pulling it inside her mouth and coxing out a kiss.
“If I was such an over achiever, what?” she asks, settling back on her haunches slightly, taking the split packet from Dean and starting to roll the condom down onto his cock.
“Fuck!” He sucks in a breath thrusts up into her hand twice before she tightens her fingers at the base and makes him groan; take a moment. “I was going to say -” He pauses and Hermione watches the quick rise and fall of his chest smugly whilst he catches his breath. But Dean shifts, tips her back and pulls her down onto him.
Hermione’s forehead presses into his shoulder as he rolls his hips, the rough hairs grazing her clit just the right side of painful and there’s something so brief and hard to capture about that first moment. Dean smiles. “- if you were really an overachiever you’d have figured out how to put it on with your mouth by now.”
Hermione swats him, feels his reaction in a quick burst of pleasure as he shifts away.
“Not that I’m not really complaining.”
“Arse,” Hermione mumbles. She tugs his shoulder and adds, “Move. Please.”
First time they kissed was in a cupboard.
It was horribly clichéd, squashed and possibly even more awkward than this whole car/sex thing. But kind of amazing in a black and white film kind of way.
Hermione’s always tried to be pretty practical when it comes to the idea of romance. Back at school, the other girls in her dorm, Lavender, Ginny, even Luna in her rather oblique fashion, used to do the whole moony eyed, daydream, wouldn’t-it-be-lovely thing on the occasions they’d camp out in each other’s rooms. Hermione had always tried to keep her head on straight. After the whole Lockhart debacle it seemed the wiser option. Dreaminess clearly only led to foolishness and Hermione wasn’t foolish. Except for that one slip-up. And it still felt like she’d never live that down.
Besides, being best friends with Ron and Harry had kind of killed off any optimism she’d had for romance in real life.
Except, she wasn’t as disaffected by it all as she liked to pretend she was.
She remembers watching old films with her Gran in the school holidays; Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, and Tony Curtis charming Marilyn Monroe with his impersonation of Cary Grant. She would let herself get lost in them so easily; forget for a few hours all the worries that lay with school and being part of an infamous Trio.
And she remembers looking down at Dean in that too small space of the cupboard. The flicker of light as he’d tossed the lighter in his hand, sparked it on and off; the flame reflecting and catching in his eyes, making them gleam.
She’d swayed into him as he’d grabbed her hips and pulled her down sharply into his lap, clearly frustrated because she’d already kicked a bucket with her foot twice.
“Will you try and stay fucking still, please.”
They’d been locked inside a museum on the trail of a cursed mummified Egyptian cat, trapped for ninety minutes in a cupboard that felt like it was less than two foot square whilst they’d waited for the window between guard shifts. It was the second time she’d run into Dean on a job, and the first they’d actually teamed up on. Her right foot was cramping, tiny pins and needles shooting up her ankle into her calf, and her arm was going dead where it had been wedged against a broom because she’d been trying to maintain their personal space. But Hermione hadn’t been able to help thinking that it was the closest she was ever going to get to one of those old films she’d loved so much and that maybe she’d been right to be tempted before. Because Dean wasn’t really that bad when he was actually focused on something other than getting laid, and you’d got the chance to get to know him a little.
She’d licked her lips. Dean’s gaze had dropped to her mouth. She’d watched his throat work as he swallowed for a moment too long and she’d just leant in; pressed her mouth to Dean’s, let the small licks of his tongue and the gentle nip of his teeth part her lips, drag her in.
She’d let all her weight lean into him. Tipped her head, touched the tip of her tongue to his and watched it all from afar. Like it was just another great screen kiss.
And it could have been.
Dean’s hand on her face, his thumb brushing gently over the angle of her jaw bone, pulling her mouth open just enough to deepen the kiss that bit more before sweeping up, ghosting over her eyelashes to rest on her cheek – it felt too perfect. No awkward clashing of teeth like the first time she’d kissed Ron – hurried and desperate with the threat of battle. No hasty withdrawal full of apologies like with Charlie.
Hermione had felt a little drunk on it. A little treasured.
She’d savoured the moment right up until he’d pulled back with a smug grin; looking far too satisfied not to rile her up when he bit her bottom lip - tugged it until it popped from between his teeth. His wide eyes looked almost too innocent for her to refuse him as he tugged her back in.
“Stop looking like you’ve won something,” she’d said, pinching his arm as his hand tried to slip under her jumper.
“Haven’t I?”
Hermione lets her weight drop forward onto Dean’s chest. She lies flat against him, buries her nose into the dip of his collar bone and breathes out, heavy rapid little pants with her eyes closed, still processing touch and feel. Dean’s hand settles in a heavy weight on the small of her back as he holds her to him. He stretches and shifts, moves them up until they’re on their sides and he can reach into the back.
He comes back with a blanket; red tartan, itchy wool, but warm as he settles it over them and then body heat spreads. It’s a too-tender gesture that Hermione wants to tease him for, but finds it catching in her throat as he grunts, “Shut up!” She closes her eyes, kisses his chest, lets it go.
“I lost my cherry in a car,” Dean says as Hermione’s almost comfortable enough to try dosing off.
“Huh?” She asks, cupping her hand over her mouth as the question turns into a yawn.
“Marissa Delaney, Mackville, Illinois. I was fifteen. I think she was sixteen. She had this -”
“I really don’t want or need to know,” Hermione grumbles, catching on. She really doesn’t. From all Dean’s said she’s pretty sure this car’s been with him forever and something uncomfortable broils in her belly at the reminder of the other girls he’s probably had in it. Not jealousy. More something that resembles the caution that had held her back when they first met.
“Huh! Funny. That’s pretty much what Sam said when I tried to tell him after I dropped her home.”
Hermione rolls her eyes. “I think I’d probably like your brother.”
Dean’s quiet, but his breathing shifts irregularly like a child trying to feign sleep. Hermione finds herself starting to be lulled back into that half way state, counting breaths - one long two short, three long two short - time feels slow and drawn out, but too quickly passed when Dean finally speaks; wakes her back up. “Yeah, you’d probably want to run off with him to a fucking library. Get your rocks off reading some ancient book.” He snorts, then goes quiet again.
Hermione wants to look but doesn’t doesn’t feel able; it’s like a closed door in a museum with a staff only sign posted on it.
“He’s -” Dean sighs again. Shifts them both slightly. “So what about you?”
“Me?” Hermione feels like she’s missed something. Tries to remember the train of conversation before Dean’s enigmatic brother was brought up. Sometimes, how Dean talks about him- his tone and the weight in his voice – it makes her wonder if Sam’s dead, but the tense is off. Not quite right for that.
She pushes up, bracing herself on her arms so that she can look at Dean. His jaws tense, but his forehead’s smooth, attention focused on the roof of the car. He snaps his eyes back to Hermione, paints on a leer.
“Your first time. Who and where? A car?”
“No. Not a car. Not really accessible where I went to school. Boarding school, remember?” Hermione smiles, licks her lips and watches Dean’s eyes track her tongue.
“But there were boys, right. Or wait, actually an all girl’s school would be hot. Umm, yeah just let me –“
“Perv,” Hermione admonishes, slapping Dean’s chest. “There were boys.”
“But you shared a dorm with other girls, right? Come on, don’t ruin all my fantasies. Tell me you at least had pillow fights.”
“You’re incorrigible. I really hope your brother never had to share a room with you, God knows what he would have had to put up with.” Hermione huffs, drops back down onto Dean’s chest and closes her eyes again.
Her head fills with white noise. The whirl of wind blowing through the forest combines with Dean’s breath, hers. It moves to join their heart beats, the tick of the car’s old analogue clock and she can feel the way her pulse slows, almost as if to keep pace. On the nearby highway there’s a low constant hum of cars and trucks on their way past the small town. All of it grows and blends, fills the silence and almost covers Dean’s whispered, “Enough.”
“Hermione.”
Dean’s shaking her shoulder when she wakes. She yawns, stretches out and kicks the car door with her foot. “Sorry,” she says, looking over her shoulder apologetically. Her neck feels stiff and the air is cooler now she’s waking up. “What time is it?”
“Two.” Dean answers, smoothing his hand up her arm, his fingers digging into the muscle of her shoulder. “I can’t stay all night.”
Hermione pauses at the tone of his voice; quiet, weighty. She wonders if he’d give her an actual answer this time if she tried asking again. Because there’s just something off about this whole night. Since the afternoon and the way he hasn’t asked about her case, just whether he could see her later. She doesn’t ask. Instead she smiles, turns over and kisses the underside his jaw. “Probably not good for our limbs anyway.”
Dean laughs, pulls Hermione up so he can reach her mouth, teeth nipping her bottom lip insistently. When she opens and reaches her tongue out to touch back and try to deepen the kiss, he pulls back. Laughter lines crinkle around his eyes as he presses a quick kiss, lips just touching, almost chaste and not quite - normal. Normal as they both get anyway.
“Yeah, my left arm’s been pretty much dead for the past half hour. Where are you staying? I’ll drop you off.”
Hermione looks, hesitates then sits up. “There’s a little B&B just outside of town,” she answers, moving off Dean and onto the seat, giving Dean room to dress himself while she starts pulling her shirt on. She casts him another glance as he pulls his t-shirt on, watching as it slides down over his head and he pulls his necklace free to hang visible on top. She almost says Dean, feels her mouth poise ready to speak the first syllable, but shakes it off and starts on her buttons before air and tongue can form the sound.
“My brother’s with me,” Dean says.
Hermione’s pulling on her jumper, making sure her shirt doesn’t end up bunched and uncomfortable as she pushes her arms into the sleeves when he says it. Just tosses it out as he thumbs through his tapes, voice thick and heavy like the edge of what she heard when he said he couldn’t stay.
“That’s why.”
She pulls her jumper the rest of the way on, using the time to repeat what she heard in her head and trying to recall a question she must have asked. It takes her a while before she remembers and when she does, her mouth forms an ‘o’ and her brain latches onto a whole plethora of new questions all far more poignant than, ‘why not your motel.’
When she looks across at him, he’s pushing Pink Floyd into the player, other hand on the key in the ignition.
“Okay, which road should I take?”
Hermione sighs. “Dean,” she says.
“His girlfriend just died. It’s -” Dean lets out a puff of breath, slumps forward a little, arm dangling over the steering wheel. “I know not asking questions probably goes against your religion or something, but can you just –“
Hermione reaches over, places her hand on his arm. “Go right onto the highway.” She pulls back and draws the safety belt across her chest, settles her hands in her lap. She focuses on the headlights as they catch and play over the leaves of the forest, startling a rabbit as they switch on in two bright beams. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Dean as he reaches down, starts to press the play button on the stereo.
“Thanks,” he murmurs almost unspoken just before the opening of Comfortably Numb clicks on, fills the silence growing.
Hermione waits until Dean’s pulled out onto the highway and switched lanes to take the next turn into town. She smiles, just a small tug up at the corner of her lips and throws him a sideways glance. “You know, we could have just used my room.”