The normally bright modern lighting of the common living room was off, and Hermione was reading by a combination of the small lamp next to her and the lavish amount of light coming from the Christmas tree in the closest corner. Sleet was falling outside, the sound barely breaking through the windows. Book bathed in the warm, amber-tinted light it was easy to pretend that she was spending yet another Christmas Eve peacefully alone.
"'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…" Tony paused as he tried to come up with a proper rhyme. Well, it had been easy to imagine she was alone.
"As she tried to read Faust?" Hermione closed her book and set it on the glass coffee table before her. "Are you really incapable of a comfortable silence?"
He leaned nonchalantly against the glass wall separating them from the chilly sleet outside. He'd just come from his lab, apparently having finished with work at a late hour, and within three minutes he was trying to start a conversation. "Why even bother with German literature? All they're good for is engineering and beer." It was just like him to try and rile her up like this.
Of all her super-coworkers, Tony was the one Hermione liked the most. They bickered constantly, of course, like any two strong personalities would. She wondered often if her affection for him extended past appropriate for coworkers, but she typically was able to stuff the thought into the back of her mind. Now, with little to focus on except him, she was unable to do so.
Apparently taking her lack of reply as incentive to change the topic, Tony strutted towards her and picked up an object from the end table closest to her: a small snow globe. "Where's this from?" He squinted. "Is that snow regenerating?"
"That's Hogwarts. My school," she added, not sure if he remembered the name. A warm feeling came over her when he nodded in recognition, and she couldn't help but smile. "And no, it doesn't regenerate. It's just like a fountain, the snow feeds back into the top."
"But using magic." He sounded suspicious.
"But using magic," she confirmed with a laugh.
"You people use magic for everything. I am going to make myself a Muggle drink with my Muggle hands in a Muggle glass that I bought with Muggle money." With that, he strode back towards the wall of windows and what could understatedly be called a large bar cart.
"Always so theatrical." If she wasn't careful, the feelings she'd developed for Tony were going to get her in trouble. Unless he feels the same, her mind whispered, and for once the idea didn't seem as traitorously absurd as normal. Watching from behind as Tony painstakingly assembled a single-ingredient drink, she found herself imagining what might happen if she took a chance.
Her thoughts froze in their tracks when he turned quickly to face her. "How rude of me – would you like a drink?"
"I'm alright, thank you," she said politely.
He turned to face her with an almost accusing expression. "Christmas Eve and you don't even want a nightcap?"
Hermione smiled and held up her mug of hot chocolate in a makeshift toast.
Tony laughed harder at that than she expected. "Do you know how long it's been since anyone touched the peppermint schnapps?"
Pink nose in the air, she huffed. "Some people just have no taste."
He settled into the overly modern chair across from the sofa with a heavy blanket and glanced at his phone for the time. "Half an hour 'til Christmas," he murmured. He straightened in his chair. "Hermione, I…"
She interrupted his search for words with an incantation. Her cocoa was quickly turning to room-temperature chocolate, so with a wave of her wand she summoned a jar of bluebell flames. Hot enough to warm hands, but cool enough not to shatter. She wrapped her hands around the jar, but the immediacy of the still-cold glass made her shiver and let out a small gasp.
The sound distracted him from whatever he'd been starting to say. "You look freezing," he accused. "Does that thing even give off heat?"
She smiled indulgently. "You know very well it does." He'd only spent six weeks trying to isolate the exact mechanism by which magic transformed itself into other forms of energy, heat included. "You're welcome to come test it out, once again."
She hadn't expected Tony to actually take her up on it. He looked ridiculous as he untangled himself from his blanket and dragged it with him over to her, balancing his drink in one hand and mobile phone in the other. He squeezed through the space between the sofa and coffee table to settle in so close to her that their thighs were touching.
"Hey!" she cried when he ripped her blanket away. "I was using that!"
"Mine is better," he said with a ridiculous grin. Fortunately for Hermione, he was right. The blanket was a plush maroon sherpa that felt luxurious as he tucked one side of it between her and the arm of the sofa.
"There," he said proudly. "Saved by non-magical means where witchcraft failed."
Hermione laughed. "It's not a competition, Tony."
"Of course not," he allowed, "but if it were, Muggles would clearly win."
His smug face was so… handsome. She shook herself. "You have got to let this go."
"Stop me if you can. Until then, I'll stay this cocky."
"Somehow I don't think there's many ways I could get you to stop." An imagining of covering his words with a kiss floated across her mind, and she barely kept her eyes from glazing over.
"Seriously, you know what you have to do, you magical thing, you. You're gonna have to kill me." He was so close to her she could feel his breath.
"It would be so much easier to kill you if you weren't so cute." It must've been the peppermint schnapps she'd rather heavy-handedly poured into her mug; it never could've slipped out otherwise.
"Aren't you charming?" She might've been tipsy, but she still noticed the faint pink tinge to his upper cheeks. Studying his face was like second nature now, she had spent so much time doing it since she'd first joined the Avengers. White Witch, Tony had tried to name her alter ego, and that had been the first argument they'd ever had. Thinking of it warmed her despite the persistent chill in the room. "I mean it. You're very charming. And I don't mean that as a witch pun," he added sheepishly. "It would've been a good one, though."
Like a monster, her insecurity lashed out. "Compliments don't count if they're Christmas gifts." Why was she ruining whatever he was trying to say?
"It's not a –"
"Or Yule," she interrupted, "in case you think we celebrate that." Why couldn't she shut up?
"I'm trying to –"
The words came out in a rush: "Because we don't celebrate that."
"Would you just let me tell you how I feel?" It was the first time she'd heard Tony plead for anything, and the very idea rendered her mute. She nodded, her heart practically beating out of her chest. "Thank you."
For a moment their breathing was the only sound in the room. Tony was gazing into her eyes so intently that it seemed he must be able to read her every thought. Hermione felt slightly dizzy. "You were saying?"
Her words seemed to snap him back to reality. When he spoke again, his tone was gentler than she'd ever heard, shy and quiet. "This entire year, it's like I've been free-falling, and it is entirely your fault. The first few times you were in the field I could barely focus on fighting, I just kept watching you. I was either in awe or I was afraid for your life – Banner of all people had to help me figure out how to get back to normal." He shook his head, not breaking eye contact. "But I'm not really back to normal, not outside the fight."
"Oh." It was the only word that she could manage. She hoped he could read into it every feeling swirling in her chest.
"I want to have something with you. To be honest, I want to find some mistletoe and kiss the hell out of you under it, and I want to keep kissing you every day that you'll let me."
"When did you become such a romantic?" she asked weakly.
"Don't do that. Stop running away from this." He used one warm hand to turn her chin towards his. "You know what I want for Christmas. Tell me what you want," Tony murmured. They were so close that their noses were almost touching, and Hermione's unsteady breath felt more like a shudder.
"I like you," Hermione whispered.
Tony's lips nearly grazed hers as he whispered back, "Probably not your best idea."
"Shut up," she said, and pulled him by the front of his shirt into a kiss that began chaste and slowly transformed. While deep, it was also gentle, none of the shirt-tugging or rough hands that had featured in her fantasies. It was so much better than that, and she let herself get lost in the sensation of his mouth on hers until she could no longer ignore the human need to breathe.
"I… well," said Tony as they pulled away from each other. "Well. Wow."
Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Did you use breath spray?"
Though the tender moment had disappeared, his smile was contagious. "I didn't want you to be distracted by the whiskey."
"When did you even have the chance?" He only raised a brow in response. "You're incorrigible," she said through a laugh. Warmed inside and out, she curled comfortably into his side. They sat like that for who knew how long before he broke the comfortable silence.
"Do you want some more?"
"Hmm?" She lifted her head from his shoulder to look up at him. Her gaze flitted down to his lips, which pulled into a smirk.
"Some more hot chocolate," he clarified.
She felt a blush rise, just as he'd definitely planned. "It can wait, I think."
Sleet continued to fall outside, snow continued to fall in the tiny Hogwarts globe, and as his lips captured hers in another sweet kiss, Hermione continued to fall hard for Tony Stark.