Aca-demic Arrangements

Chapter 26

Tom's sleeve cuffs had migrated from their proper position around his wrists to their normal spot just below his elbows on their way back to the house and the smooth way he'd done it had Hermione entranced.

She'd stared hard at his shirtsleeves, amazed that the so snazzy rumpled cuff style that she'd tried so many times on her own dress shirts was so bloody simple. She'd barely taken her eyes off of them since he'd rolled them even though their idle car chitchat had long since moved beyond "how did you do that?"

Tom was turning onto their street, turning his head to check for any random late night traffic when he caught her staring again. He couldn't tell in the low light filtering into the car, but with the way her head whirled back around to stare out of her own window, he could tell she hadn't meant to be seen. "Did you need another explanation?" He asked. "A diagram perhaps?"

"No," Hermione replied quickly. Then, after a moment, her shoulders slumped and she looked back at him. "All these years…and it's really just that simple?"

"It really is." He nodded. He was smirking at her by the time they pulled into the driveway and he was waiting for the garage door to finish opening before rolling the rest of the way in. Tom glanced at her from the corner of his eye and teased her. "Would you like me to show you again?" he said silkily. "We can head up to my room and I'll unroll them and re-roll them just for you. More slowly this time."

Hermione outright laughed at him and the way he even threw in a little waggle of his brows. She smacked him on the arm and slipped out of the vehicle as soon as it was off. "You're actually charming when you're not being an arse, did you know that?" Hermione shuffled along towards the trunk to retrieve her bag, only to meet up with Tom once more who was giving her that damned bloody smirk that did all sorts of not right things to her insides. She could feel herself gulp at the way his eyes were so dark and full of promise and she briefly wondered if it sounded as loud as it did in her ears.

Tom lifted open the trunk lid and snatched up her backpack, looping the straps over one of his shoulders. She eyed the bag as if she were about to take it and he gave her a look that made her think better of it. Tom closed the trunk then chucked her under the chin. "And you're a bit of a delight when you're not being such a bossy bird."

Hermione's mouth popped open in surprise and when she noticed the very slight bob to his shoulders as he held in his chuckles, she snapped it shut again. She quirked a brow at him and tilted her head to one side. "So…never, then?"

The joke tricked a laugh from him and Tom just shook his head and ushered her into the house ahead of him. Locking up behind him, he followed Hermione up the stairs towards her room, dutifully carrying the bag that he idly pondered the contents of – bricks or iron bars, he was convinced. She must have been training for something spectacular because he felt as if he was lifting weights when he shifted it. They made it all the way to her door and she passed through awkwardly, pausing on the other side to look him over as if she wasn't sure precisely what she wanted to do.

When Tom shrugged off her bag and extended it to her across the threshold, her eyes fixated on the bulge of muscle of his bicep in a bit of a gawk and he grinned. "The offer still stands," he teased though there was a definite heat simmering there. "Not going to invite me in?"

Hermione's eyes darted back up to his face and she had the courtesy to give him a proper blush this time around before accepting the backpack and dropping it gingerly to a spot beside the door. "I'd like to," she said, surprising herself with the honesty. "I'm just so tir—" Her sentence was cut off by a huge and largely unflattering yawn that stretched her mouth wide like a beluga whale at feeding time. Hermione only noticed by the way he was doing that smiling thing at her again and she quickly covered her mouth. "Sorry," she said sheepishly. "Tired was what I was trying to say. And filthy. I need a shower…or, really…a pressure washing after today. My hair is all sorts of…uck."

Tom reached and stroked a hand over her hair, his mouth twitching upwards when she unconsciously leaned into the touch. "S'not bad at all, dove. I could help with that though. Four hands are better than two?"

And suddenly, Hermione was awake again.

She straightened once her mind computed that he was essentially asking if she wanted him to accompany her in the shower. It got hung up, however, on the idea of him washing her hair.

Hermione narrowed her eyes and looked him over once, twice, thrice. Gently coaxing his stroking hand into one of hers, she tilted her head up with a skeptical expression. "What could you possibly know about washing a woman's hair? Especially-" Hermione reached back and untied her mass of curls so that, even with the sweat and crud from the day weighing it down, it sprung out in all of its bushy glory. "-hair like this?"

Tom was rather entranced by what he considered a gorgeous mane of hair. The memory of how much he'd enjoyed burrowing his face into the back of her neck through the thick fall of her curls so he could wrap around her after their eventful night sent a wave of shivers through him. She was looking at him funny when he came out of his slight daze and he shook his head with a shrug, finally pushing past her but catching her wrist en route to her bathroom. "We'll find out."

. . .

Hermione's skepticism towards Tom's "just showering" intentions and hair washing skills dissolved into nothingness shortly after he'd peeled her work clothes off of her and prodded her towards the master bedroom's disgustingly large shower with a look of nothing but concentration. She found herself fidgety in front of him like she hadn't been in front of anyone in a significant amount of time. He was conscious of the fact that she was quite naked but he dutifully went about his plans, moving around her only sans shirt, preparing the shower for her without calling attention to her state of undress in a sexual way at all.

She found it very…weird…though not unwelcome.

Hermione watched him, so focused on his task while she stood on the fluffy circular bathroom rug and its multicolored flower petals that made something like the shape of a daisy. He'd brushed past her to check the water temperature again and she allowed a personal moment to praise the lean line of his back; it was just as delicious as she'd remembered from their night in bed. Without thinking, she reached out and traced the jaw of the huge skull shape inked into his back, her fingertips sliding over the scales and belly of the snake that curled free from its mouth and disappeared somewhere below the waistband of his pants and trousers. Her touch startled him out of his concentration but he managed a grin back over his shoulder.

"Ready for you, dove." Tom gestured to the shower.

She arched a brow but finally moved in and under the spray, carefully letting the water cascade only down her front from the neck down with an awkward shuffling from foot to foot. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out why she was so bloody nervous! It wasn't as though she'd never been naked in front of a man before, she'd been naked in front of this very one just a night ago!

…and oh the things they'd done…

No, this wasn't different. This wasn't any different from any other time she'd showered with anyone.

Except for the fact that it totally was.

Her thoughts were spinning and running a mile a minute and so entrenched in them was she that she physically jumped and yelped when he climbed in behind her. Hermione whirled around with one hand clutched over her heart to shoot him a scandalized glare and was met with an amusedly raised eyebrow and a so very naked Tom Riddle.

"If it bothers you that much, I could go?" Tom offered carefully.

Hermione loosed a nearly offended exhale. "Pfft-" He flinched from the spittle she spat on his face, swiping himself clean with a palm as she continued. "I'm not bothered."

Tom reached around her to palm some of the water from the spray and wet his hair so the normally unruly waves were saturated and plastered to his skin. He started to do the same to hers and saw her shoulders tense awkwardly. "You're such a shite liar."

She huffed at him, fixed him with a hard glare to cover the tinge of pink to her cheeks and inched backwards until the water began to seep into her thick curls. Hermione opened her mouth to snark but got distracted with the way the water was bouncing off of her head and shoulders and back to splatter onto his still relatively dry chest. Something about the way the little beads of moisture squirreled their way down the sparse hairs on his chest and down, around, and through the mounds and valleys of muscle that made up his chest and stomach was disgusting.

Just…disgusting…

Hermione's tongue darted out to moisten her lips.

"I've never done this before," she said more breathlessly than she intended.

Tom didn't look at her, just gave another of those lopsided grins then swept a hand beneath the curtain of her hair along her nape, working the water more thoroughly into each section of it. "What'd I just say?"

She scoffed and smacked his chest, the sound amplified by the water and bathroom acoustics. "I'm not lying!" Hermione snapped then finally admitted in a muttered, "This is…different."

It was something in the way she spoke that made him pause and finally look at her. With the way she was standing, arms tucked tightly against her sides, one hand fiddling with the other and hovering between their bodies, it became clearer that she seemed to have no idea of what to do with them as he tended to her. Suddenly, the realization that she had never done this – just showered and been, well, what was he doing? Pampering?

Fuck. A spade's a spade.

She'd never been pampered by her significant other before?

Tom's jaw tightened, the idea not sitting well with him at all. Flashes of an arrogant, pointy face and a pale blond head flickered in the lines of his vision. That muscle in his neck was twitching with the way his teeth started to grind at the memory of Abraxas' pissant of a cousin and his hands balled into fists.

"Ow!"

He started at Hermione's shriek of pain and released the wad of her curls abruptly, looking at her wide-eyed. Without thinking, Tom dipped down to press a kiss to her forehead and murmured an apology. He untangled himself from her locks, reached for the shampoo and then tucked her more closely to his chest as he occupied himself with just enough of it to work it into her scalp.

Tom could feel her muscles slacken with every little massage near the roots of her hair and she'd started making distracting noises that were swiftly tugging his irate thoughts towards any and all of his girl's exes back in a completely different direction. He cleared his throat but his words still came out thicker than before. "Bollocks," he said. When he felt her head tilt up and watched those heavy lidded eyes focus sleepily up at him, he added, "That no other bloke's ever done this with you before."

Hermione's eyes narrowed but her skeptical look was washed away along with the hot water rinsing away all that sweat, grime, and the inescapable coffee dust and syrups from her pores. "Mmm," she purred lazily, "Who are you and what have you done with my non-bizarro world Rickle?"

She completely missed the way he preened at her offhanded claim. "Perhaps if you'd curbed your tastes from scrawny, albino bitches years ago—"

"Ah. Nevermind, there he is," Hermione rumbled even as she leaned more into his chest as he started working conditioner into her hair.

Bloody…hell…she'd died.

She was completely and utterly certain that she'd actually died in prison and everything from then until that point where Tom-fucking-Riddle was conditioning her hair was this wonderfully ridiculous and heavenly dream.

Everything but that Pansy girl, she was still a menace…but mostly everything else was magnificent.

Hermione was almost positive she was drooling on herself at that point, actually.

She wasn't sure how much time had passed, only knew that in it, Tom had managed to thoroughly condition her hair, wrangle her barely conscious form to stretch and bend and lift so he could scrub away all the muck from her long day at work, and turn her out into the bedroom feeling cleaner than she'd felt in ages.

Tom told her he'd be a few more minutes while he, himself, got cleaned up. Hermione suspected that his persistent, turgid arousal that had been slapping into her thigh when they were maneuvering around each other beneath the hot water may have come into play as well. If she'd been even mildly more coherent in that supremely late hour, Hermione might've found it funny that when she even seemed tempted to offer aid in solving his problem, he'd just dotted a kiss to the corner of her mouth and shooed her out.

Instead, her sleep deprived noggin just found it all rather…nice.

Thoughts of just how nice it was circled in her mind all the way until she passed right the fuck out sprawled on top of her bedsheets, a towel draped over her bare arse, and her face at the footboard with her feet tucked beneath the expensive memory foam pillows at the head.

A/N: Fluff, fluff, fluff. All the fluffs.