Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger

Word Count: 1,035 words

Setting: "The 'I'm a [blank] for olivie and Ride or Die' Christmas Nonsense"/ fanfiction of a fanfiction

A/N: everyone read Ride or Die, like now :)

"Peppermint?" Hermione briefly wondering if Theodore Nott would accept the candy cane, suck on it until he had the end sharpened and stab it graciously into her eye socket.

Theo rolled his eyes, though, and gave her a sly wink, "Now you are just flirting."

She eyed the neatly lined coffee cups by the seat. "How long have you been here?"

"An hour, maybe two." Theo muttered, his long fingers unwrapping the candy; the tearing of the plastic packaging echoed in the narrow corridor, tucked away from the population stuck in the hospital for Christmas.

Hermione shifted in her feet and her right hand slipped from the pot's ledge for one moment in time—

Theo didn't pause from tying a knot with the wrapper at the base of the candy cane, "What you got there?" and his eyes followed the tiny round candy rolling away from her back.

"Um." She felt foolish for even trying to hide from Nott at the first place: he was part of Them and was remarkably observant and seemingly, as she flushed under his gleeful smirk, liked to torment anyone into admitting every unnecessary decision they have ever made. "A Christmas tree. For… every room in the hospital. I'm… making my rounds."

"I see. But," the cane popped from his mouth without taking away his grin, "I would recommend a shower before you go in."

Giving up, she rounded the tree into her stomach, turned her nose into her sleeve and sniffed. She couldn't distinguish the smell of iodoform from herself. "Do I smell?"

"Not for you," Theo waved his candy cane towards the room in circles as if he was waving a wand, "— for him. The idiot has been in surgery for half a day."

"Oh." Hermione sobered up when she was reminded that the last time she got to smell him was more than five days ago and his skin had tasted of her body wash and leather. "… how bad?"

"At least it wasn't bullets this time." Theo was treading cautiously vague, as expected, so she wasn't going to press him and overstep their evanescent acquaintance.

"Who falls with a knife in their hand?" she offered up her interpretation, tongue-in-cheek.

"Malfoy, that's who. Trying to be the angsty hero. Is your shift over?"

Hermione had to glance over her shoulder to make sure the corridor was still empty with the way Nott just nonchalantly tucked snippets of theirworld into a follow-up question back to her. The way the corner of his right eye tightened told her that was all he was going throw her.

"Yes," she knew she had to play along; the sooner she fulfilled the courtesy call with Nott, the quicker she would be able to swallow the lump in her throat and compose herself before going in, "He is my last stop."

"Great. I will wait and get you home." And he was back at the candy cane, crunching chunks off with his teeth.

It was no use arguing with Nott when he could just kick down the door and waltz out with her over his shoulder in two breaths, no answers given.

And she wasn't wearing good underwear.

"I won't be long."

With another knowing canine grin from Nott, Hermione left him in his guard duty, oddly enthusiastic and uncharacteristically cheery with his candy.

"You come with the sponge bath I requested?"

She was a sight for sour eyes: the pencil she had lodged into her bun was lopsided, spilling locks of hair messily over her shoulder and she didn't seem to notice; the top two buttons of her shirt were undone, the right collar was slightly ajar from the weight of her fancy ball pen with those ridiculous white-and-red canes… and he thought Granger was vehemently against any forms of sugar for enjoyment. The room was dark enough that her eyes seemed to flash in amber and the light from outside framed around her like a halo; Draco blamed the poetry on the itch to trace over her exposed collarbone and the morphine.

"No one is getting anything for at least—" Hermione bent down and ran her eyes down his chart. Bruised ribs and a slashed and fractured shoulder as results of a motorbike accident. Fair enough. "—two more days. Anything hurting? Irritations?"

Draco watched her subconsciously clipped her hair back with two fingers and half-rolled his eyes as he twitched below. Could he really not control how much he took almost masochistic pleasure in seeing Granger treating his injuries?

"You might need to up the drugs a notch, Doc." he suggested almost hopefully; as long as he didn't have to breathe with his sore side with a few nights of medical-induced sleep, that could be his vacation.

"No can do." Her professional frowning at the overhead monitors was close enough for him to notice the shadow casting over her features, to see her tired and pale face; she was blinking in quick intervals, her jaw moving the way when she concentrated.

And then he glanced down at what she had set down on the nightstand: "Did they run out of flowers that you got me a goddamn tree?"

Hermione bit her lip: he was not the kind of person who would want and frankly, not in the position at the moment, to celebrate the merriest of holidays. The notion of taking aside a small tree from the stock for him had be so instinctual that it made her feel silly, stupid and nerve-wrecking; it hit her stomach now, as he offered up a drunken grin and his eyes molten silver. "Sorry if the tree is pathetic and tiny and I couldn't find anything better than Smarties—"

Drugs. He blamed the inadequate drugs.

Draco heaved himself up, ignoring his stinging arm against her scrubs – damn her in that uniform, by the way—winded his fingers into her collapsing hair and tugged her down, the smell of hospital in the crook of her throat, her damp lips and her know-it-all mouth—

She tasted of tangerine, the bitter whiskey in eggnog and Christmas.