Chapter Text
He doesn’t look at her.
He doesn’t.
And if he does, it’s only to make sure their poses are complementary.
For the artists.
That’s why he’s here, after all, standing naked in the middle of a circle of easels while the late afternoon sun streams in through the nearby window, leaving him nowhere to hide.
But he’s not alone in his exposure.
Standing in front of him and just to the side is Granger, equally bared.
It had been a shock to see her waiting outside the studio door half an hour earlier, her curls windswept in a way he knew would drive the artists wild with trying to capture. She’d looked surprised to see him, too, which was fair enough. Running into a former classmate in France wasn’t what he’d expected either, and certainly not when said former classmate was about to strip down within a foot of him.
He’d managed not to think of her in the three months he’d been abroad (except for that once in the cluttered bookshop, and perhaps that other time while ordering a coffee with honey, and possibly that so-brief-it-didn’t-even-count instance while on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower), so for this to be her reemergence into his life was a level of unfair he’d never thought the universe capable of.
Her appearance hadn’t altered much – three months wasn’t enough to have shifted anything dramatically – but there was something unmistakably different about her. He’d stared, caught in the same single-minded focus that she’d pulled him into so often from across the classrooms back home in England, trying to discern what had changed.
She’d cleared her throat and offered him a half-smile then, tugging him out of it, but before he could sort out an appropriate facial expression in response, the instructor had come to collect them, showing them to the back rooms where they could shed their street clothes and don robes; robes they’d worn for hardly a minute before draping them over the back of a chair and stepping up onto the raised platform in the center of the studio.
And now here he is, one hand posed strategically across his groin to offer him a semblance of modesty and the other cupping the back of his neck, his elbow out to the side to invite shadows into all the ridges and grooves of his figure.
Granger is similarly arranged, a mirror image, facing him. She’s gracious enough to have angled her face to the side, offering him her profile rather than forcing them into eye contact, but she’s standing closer to the window and the effect is beautiful.
It’s golden hour in Paris, and it loves her.
He stares over her shoulder at a point on the wall, willing his mind blank instead of itemizing all the places he wants to take a closer look. But an idle mind is the devil’s playhouse and it takes less than a second for his thoughts to drift back to her.
So he focuses on the artist in his sightline instead, a short man who’s glancing over the top of his glasses at them and then back to the easel in front of him. Draco watches the man’s eyes scan a few square inches and realizes with a hot coil of jealousy that the man is looking at Granger, cataloging the shape of her arse, learning it well enough to transpose it to paper.
Draco thinks unkind thoughts about the man to assuage a jealousy that doesn’t even belong to him, silently judging the man for things that are very likely untrue: that he is a shit artist with terrible eyesight and no concept of what to do with the female form, on paper or otherwise.
Lord, he’d love to see what any of these amateurs come up with when trying to capture her with lines, with strokes of a pencil or a wedge of charcoal. She doesn’t belong in two dimensions; they’re not even close to enough to contain her.
The only strokes able to map those curves are the ones he’d make with his hands.
Said hands twitch with the desire to do it, now, immediately.
But he can’t, and not only because they’re in public and being actively observed by a dozen seated sketchers.
If he touches her, even a tiny bit, it will turn this drawing class into something else entirely (not to mention that she hasn’t exactly given him permission to).
“One more minute with this pose,” the instructor calls out softly, “and then onto the next.”
Has it really been twenty minutes already?
Draco releases a soft exhale. He can do this. He can manage another twenty minutes standing naked next to Hermione sodding Granger without reacting to it.
Physically, at least.
“Fin.” The instructor directs her gaze to them on the platform. “Let’s do a seated pose next. Together.”
Internally, Draco screams.
Externally, he nods stoically and watches as the instructor brings over a backless wooden bench.
She directs him down onto it, seated with his feet flat on the floor and thighs apart. He keeps a hand in front of his groin until the instructor gestures for him to move them both aside. It’s a rather revealing pose for him, genitally-speaking, so he’s initially glad when Granger is positioned over his lap, her bum perched on his thigh and legs slanting down between his.
The instructor assesses them with a fist under her chin, head tilting this way and that, as she directs their bodies until she’s crafted his own personal version of hell.
Granger is leaned against his chest, her left arm around his shoulders and spine twisted just slightly to open her up to him, her face so close that he can feel her breath against his forehead. Her other hand hangs down behind her, fingertips just barely skimming the bench beside his right leg. Her left leg is bent at the knee, her foot planted on the outside of his left thigh and her other is between his, her knee braced gently against the inside of his knee, toes on the floor. His right hand is wrapped around her ribs, fingers splayed below her breasts, and his left is hooked under her bent knee, hand on the soft skin of her inner thigh.
His hands are on her.
He can feel the warmth of her all over him.
He wants to die.
He never wants to move.
“Très bien,” the instructor announces and the pencils begin anew.
The first minute is excruciating but then he relaxes into it.
He can feel her slowly relaxing against him, too, the pose shifting from taut to lithe. He’s mindful of his exhales, aware that his breath is gusting over her skin, not wanting to impose it on her or tickle her with it. She seems similarly controlled with hers, the soft rise and fall of her chest likely perceptible only to him.
He wonders if she does this often, undressing for strangers so they can draw her. It would be unbelievably generous of her if she did; truly a gift to the arts.
He wonders how often she undresses with a different sort of art in mind.
He stares at the light dusting of freckles on her chest until he’s not wondering about anything else but how many patterns he can find amongst them.
His back begins to ache after a few minutes and he can’t help a tiny arch just to ease some of the pressure on his spine. The movement eliminates any space between their torsos and he sees as much as he feels her breath hitch, her ribs freezing under his hand and her throat pulling tight.
He wants to lick his lips to alleviate the way they’ve suddenly gone dry but he doesn’t.
He carefully eases his spine back to how it’d been, inviting that half-inch of distance to settle between them again, and gives her the barest press of his fingertips against her ribs in apology.
Her hand on his shoulder twitches and he takes it as a non-verbal acceptance.
He distracts himself by counting his breaths and so he knows it’s just shy of two minutes before she moves again. This time it’s her hips, a micro-adjustment backward, and he keeps his forearm strong behind her back, supporting her while she presumably eases a little ache of her own.
Her fingers twitch again, perhaps in thanks this time, but when she shifts back, there’s a sudden dampness on his thigh. He puzzles over it for the first half of a breath and then the second half of it catches in his chest as understanding strikes.
Oh god.
Ohgodohgodohgod.
She’s wet.
And fuck but he’s just a man – a weak, pathetic, yearning man – and so he can’t help the way he’s instantly erect at the tiniest hint that her body might be reacting to his.
There's no way to conceal it from her, not with the way she’s literally leaned back against it, and when she stiffens in response, spine going ramrod-straight, he knows she feels it. For a brief moment of madness he’s pleased to have a companion in his rigidity, but then he gets a shallow breath in him and the surge of oxygen is just enough to form a coherent thought.
He’s hard.
While he’s naked in public.
And Granger’s touching it.
That last nearly does him in but he’s not so gone as to forget his manners.
“Sorry,” he mumbles under his breath, “I can’t help it.”
She makes a little sound in the back of her throat, something like acknowledgement and understanding and surprise all in one, and though he’s conscious that they're not supposed to be talking while on the platform, his lizard brain is fucking dumb and so it interprets the sound as something quite different, sending heat all through him and spreading his blush down his neck to his chest.
The room is kept warm, both for their comfort and to keep the artists’ fingers supple and dexterous, so he knows it’s not the air that has Granger’s nipples furling into hard little buds.
His mouth waters at the sight and since he’s not allowed to lift his head, not allowed to close his eyes, even, he presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth and swallows with effort, willing it deep inside. It works, in that his mouth is now dry, but in a more real way, it only makes things worse because her fingers twitch on his shoulder again at his unsubtle swallow and he knows now that they’re twitching with a tension of her own.
He flexes his thighs to release some pressure only to remember she’s currently sitting on one and so perceives that, too.
And thank god it’s just a figure drawing class because if they were being painted, he’s not sure there’s enough vermillion or carmine or cadmium in the world to accurately depict the level that he’s blushing.
“Un minute,” comes the instructor’s voice and Draco can’t decide if he’s relieved or terrified for what’ll come next, “and then we’ll do a final pose for the three-minute sketch to end our session.”
His stomach plummets. Terrified, then.
He tries to will his erection away but all he can think about is that if he slid each hand approximately five inches, one would be cupping her breast and the other would be finding out just how wet she’d gotten.
Needless to say, when the minute has elapsed, he’s harder than ever.
The instructor bids them to stand and it’s with genuine effort that he releases her leg, easing it onto the ground to join its mate. She unwinds her arm from his shoulders and rolls the joint delicately before levering herself up to her feet.
He drops his hand to his thigh, wiping away the evidence of her cunt because he’s a gentleman. (And if he considers wrapping that same hand around his cock to smear her along it, well…perhaps he’s also a bit of a rake).
Granger holds out a hand to help him to his feet and the gesture – the fact that she’s willingly offering him another reason to touch her – shouldn’t make his heart skip a beat but it does. Her grip is firm around his fingers and it distracts him enough to momentarily forget that he’s erect. He stands and the insistent bob of his cock against his abdomen swiftly reminds him of his current state. He thinks to cover himself but she’s still got his hand and, to be honest, for a moment he’s forgotten he has another.
“C'est manifique! Je veux le dessiner! ” gasps the bespeckled man, gaze landing decidedly south, and Draco decides perhaps the artist has a good eye after all.
Granger compresses her lips to contain her smile but the corners defy her, twitching upward, and her badly-concealed amusement seeps through him, light and sweet like honey on his tongue. The instructor tuts at the man, explaining in rapid French that the erotic pose class is on Tuesdays and to not harass the models. She comes over to them next, apologizing to Draco for the man’s objectification and then gestures with her hands for Granger to stand in front of him, facing him.
He’s got a few inches on Granger and so appreciates the pose both for the way her body blocks his embarrassment from the rest of the room and because it gives him a chance to look over her head to the wall beyond where he can find a focal point to ground himself.
But then she steps another inch closer and his chest compresses again, tightening in awareness.
And when the underside of his cock skims across the softness of her belly, he learns the true meaning of torture.
She makes that small sound again at the contact and his hands curl into fists at his sides.
“Touch him,” the instructor says and he’s certain he dies in the second it takes for her to form the rest of her sentence, “with your right hand on his shoulder and the left raised above your head. And shift your right foot to the side.”
Granger obeys, glancing down to check her feet as she does. But then her gaze doesn’t lift.
“Don’t look at it,” he hisses helplessly.
“It’s looking at me,” she whispers back and the sound that escapes him isn’t human.
He feels the gust of her laughter and then her face is tilting up to his, the pose be damned.
“Buy me a coffee after,” she murmurs and though she didn't phrase it as a question, he’d never take it as one anyway; the answer is so obvious.
“Oui,” he breathes. “Yes.”
