Guiding Light || OC x Draco Malfoy

Chapter 11:

He didn't move off of me for several minutes. If I was honest with myself, I didn't want him to. I couldn't even remember the last time someone devoted that much emotion to me. Even my puzzle-piece memories couldn't jog up a recollection of it. His body was warm, and his smell overwhelmed my senses in a comforting way. The sweetness of lemongrass flooded my nose in the best way possible, but was cut and balanced out with the ghost of a spearmint scent. His cool breath, the largest source of the latter of the scents, was fanning over my face as he wrapped my frame in his arms.

I felt his hands skim down my arms from where they initially sat around my waist. Confused at first, my back stiffened at his touch, but when I felt the friction on my wrists dissipate, I relaxed. Once they both got done with their tasks of freeing me, his hands stayed down with mine, gently massaging the blood back into my wrists.

My forehead was pressed onto his surprisingly sculpted chest, and his chin sat delicately on top of my head, not pressing into it, but using enough pressure to reassure and calm me. This type of contact was very alien to us, but I never realized how much I needed it. Despite the unfamiliar territory, neither of us seemed too uncomfortable, at least not to me. With that said, I couldn't help but notice the rapid yet stable rhythm coming from the epicenter of his chest. When I turned my head to the side, his heart was right beneath my ear, filling my head with the soothing pump of his chest.

"Would you like to walk around a little?" His voice was low in tone, and the raspiness in it sent a wave of tremors over my skin, raising up little goosebumps all over the surface. I nodded my head, but it just moved both of ours in and awkward way.

Letting out a light chuckle that reverberated through his chest and into my head, he pulled away from me and the cold air of the room felt like it smacked me in the face with the bluntness of the temperature differential. Taking his equally as warm hands off of my wrists, he moved them down to the bottom hem of my blanket, lifting it off of my legs and quickly undoing the buckles on my ankles, rubbing the blood back into them as well.

The gesture was oddly domestic, and, even though it went against every moral I had made for myself, I found myself leaning into his touch, being calmed by the gesture rather than being appalled by it. In only a few seconds, both of my legs were free and, with much help from him, were moved to the side of my bed so that I was sitting up, and he took my stick-like arms in his hand as he slowly eased me to my feet.

My first few steps, if you could even call them that, were just me stumbling over my useless legs as Draco practically carried me around the room. By the time I got to the first wall, I could at least bear my weight while standing. Taking actual steps was where I was lacking, however. After doing a weird dance to try and reposition ourselves to move more functionally, it ended with Draco behind me, his arms secured around my thin waist as he slowly guided me around the perimeter of the room.

Every time I took a step, I could feel the fabric of our shirts slide between us. His head, which had been hovering over my left shoulder, was right next to my own, the fringe and edges of his hair tickling my ear with every shift in position. Every time I got to a new corner of my room, he would mumble little encouragements to me. I know that walking is about as trivial as it gets, but for me in this case, hearing him was like pure gold going into my ears. The smile that I saw on his face when I turned my head gave me a surge of determination. Finishing up my lap, I got to my bed and sank down into it, my heavily shaking legs dangling off the bed as I sat there.

Still smiling widely, Draco bent down to my level and all but knocked me over with the power of his hug. My weak little body could barely support itself, let alone him as well, so when he hugged me like that, I fell back on the bed, Draco's arms still wrapped tight around me. His body was pressed on top of mine, and his now bright red face was turned away, causing his comparatively white hair to brush my face in a similar way to what it was doing earlier. From the angle and position I was in, I saw something that I had never noticed on him before: A silver necklace chain.