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Hermione was never going to live this down. How was she ever going to explain that she, war heroine and youngest Unspeakable to ever be hired, had been arrested by a Muggle. The fact they had somehow been investigating the same phenomenon was hardly an excuse. No, despite her magic, she had been bested, and that was a hard pill to swallow.
However, she could best him at his interrogation techniques all day, any day. He hadn't even taken off the kid gloves yet, not that torture would faze her anyway, not after being under Bellatrix Lestrange’s tender care.
Hermione yawned instead.
“Are you quite done for the day, Coulson? I need my beauty sleep.”
He smiled, then did that annoying thing with his pen, twirling it between his fingers like he was spinning it for a dance. She looked away. Tried to. But it was mesmerizing. She'd had the same problem in Hogwarts when Professor Snape had been her potions teacher. She had pinned it on a silly schoolgirl crush, much like the fiasco with Lockhart, but she was a fully grown adult now, she should not be a slave to such… fancies. Those long fingers though, and large hands, they must be quite strong…
“No, I think I'm far from done,” he replied, voice deeper than usual, and full of a dark promise.
Her eyes snapped back to his at the unusual tone, and she knew he knew. Worse: he knew she knew he knew, because the corner of his lips quirked up in the most self-satisfied smirk she had ever seen, worse than Draco Malfoy’s which was saying a lot. He carefully placed the pen parallel to his blank notebook, then did the unthinkable and reached towards her hands which were cuffed, as always during interrogation, to the table in front of her. Eyes wide, Hermione reflexively tried to pull them back. He couldn't just… touch her. Surely, that counted as inappropriate, non-consensual, very forbidden fraternization with the enemy. Except she very much wanted those hands on her. They were even more desirable this close up: calloused, rugged, and those veins…. Oh, Merlin… this was worse than torture. At least Bellatrix had the good sense to have dirty, bony hands with black nails bitten to the quick. She had been easy to dismiss, but now, Hermione knew she had to be strong. The Statute of Secrecy depended on it.
“Stop!” she shouted, short of breath, his hand an inch from her skin.
And how she would burn at his touch.
“Stop?” he repeated. “I was just going to uncuff you to return you to your cell.”
Hermione flushed. She knew he was lying because he had never done so before. He let one of his underlings deal with the chore of putting her away for the night, and his minions cared as little for manicures as Voldemort’s did.
“Liar,” she seethed.
He leaned forward, close enough she could smell his cologne, close enough he could whisper in her ear.
“Yet, I don't think the United Nations would qualify this as torture,” he said as he deliberately brushed his knuckles against her fingers to put the key of the cuffs in the keyhole.
Hermione bit her bottom lip as a kilt of electricity ran through her body. Her face felt like it was on fire, and she was feeling lightheaded from the skin on skin contact. He was so warm. She wanted his hands on her. All of her. How long had it been since such beautiful hands had touched her? Too long. Far too long. He was wrong: this was blissful torture. She squeezed her eyes shut, and bit her bottom lip harder to snap out of it, but things only got worse as her imagination took over. Her breathing grew more laboured, her dizziness worsened, and she was glad when a black curtain fell over her consciousness.
Hermione woke up in a hospital bed. You could call it an upgrade from her prison cell, if she wasn't handcuffed to the bed railing that is. The sound of metal clanking against metal alerted her chaperone, and she was mortified to find Coulson sitting in the chair beside her bed.
“Well…” she said, looking away when it looked like he wasn't going to have the decency to either speak or leave. “This is embarrassing.”
“You shouldn't be. I apologize,” he said in earnest. “I should not have crossed that… line. It was ungentlemanly of me.”
“It's fair game. You found my weakness. Congratulations. You're the first.”
“Really? It seemed quite obvious to me.”
“Took you a few days to figure it out,” she pointed out, finally daring to meet his eyes. She hated being cowardly just because she had made a fool of herself.
“Oh, no,” he chuckled. “I found out within a couple of hours, but like I said, I'm usually too much of a gentleman to stoop so low.”
“But… you did.”
“Desperate times… Again, I'm very sorry.”
Hermione stared at him. He looked like he meant it too, and she had to look away from such an honest, pleading gaze. He was the enemy, for crying out loud. Sort of. He wasn't, actually. But he was an annoying, smart, Muggle complication she was having trouble getting rid of. At this rate, aurors were going to have to rescue her, and the best she could do was spare him the obliviators, which could always end badly. No magic meant no need for them.
“Why am I here? In this hospital room,” she added at his quizzical look.
“Ah. You hit your head on the table when you fainted. And then on the edge of the table when you fell from your chair. And then on the floor.”
Her threat level must be close to zero after such a pitiful display. Hermione felt the weight and tightness of bandages on her forehead now that he told her, but when she tried to feel it for herself, the cuffs clanked in protest once more.
“Is this really necessary?” she asked, moving them noisily once more to prove her point. “I'm no Houdini.”
“You're worse. You're an unknown,” he replied. “Besides, I'm not sure I should take them off as they are the sole reason you ended up in the hospital. Legal wants me to make sure that's very clear for you.”
Hermione blushed. He didn't need to sound so smug about it, and she wished she hadn't just looked at his hands at the reminder. However, if she was strong enough, she could turn her weakness into an opportunity.
“I understand,” she said, agreeing tacitly she would not sue him for the incident. “No table here to knock my head on. I should be fine,” she said before pointedly looking away, reciting the list of potion ingredients necessary for a draught of living death to keep her breathing under control until one of her hands was free, just in case he touched her again, even by accident. “Thank you. I think I need to rest now.”
Coulson nodded, hesitated at the door, but left without a backwards glance. She could hear his phone go off right outside her door, but couldn't hear what he was saying. She waited until he walked away to let go of the breath she'd been holding. If she had been tied to her bed, unlike in her cell, it meant the room didn't lock and that she could escape. She only had one handcuff left, which was easy to deal with now that she had one hand free. One wandless alohomora later, the other cuff was off and she shimmied off the bed. Someone had unhelpfully taken off her boots and they were nowhere in sight. Breaking out barefoot was not ideal, but she'd been through worse.
As expected the door was unlocked, and after a quick glance to make sure there were no guards around, she turned the knob and slipped out. An emergency exit sign down the corridor to her left caught her attention, so she ran that way, quiet as a shadow. Having her boots stolen was a blessing in disguise in the end. She reached for the door’s handle to push it open, anticipating sunlight, wind, and the sweet taste of freedom, when a hand grasped her forearm. A hand she knew all too well.
“Not so fast,” Coulson said.
Hermione twisted to break his hold on her, but he held fast, and worse, pushed her against the wall, pinning both her arms above her head, his hands as strong as she'd imagined. She would have kneed him in the privates to make him let go, but he must have seen it coming, because he pressed his body flush against her, leaving her no wiggle room. She heaved a breath and glared at him, because she'd rather be angry than aroused at this point.
“No Houdini, eh? Well, we're in a bit of a pickle now,” he said, so close she could feel the words rumble in his chest. “If I let you go, can you promise not to do anything stupid.”
“Of course,” she replied snidely.
“That doesn't fill me with confidence, Unspeakable Granger,” he said, eyes crinkling at her shocked face.
“How?” she demanded in outrage. “I gave you nothing.”
“No, you didn't so you really do deserve to be called Unspeakable, whatever it really means, but to answer your question, another agency I'd never heard of before came knocking at our door to retrieve you. Their credentials check out though, so it seems like I almost caused some major diplomatic incident.”
“You still are,” she argued, trying to wrench her hands free from his grasp.
“Again, I apologize,” he said as he took a small step back now that he knew the chances of his family jewels remaining intact had been all but guaranteed.
His hands lingered though, leaving a tingling sensation where their skin came into contact. She wanted more. She hated that she did, but if his hands set her body on fire, the man himself did intrigue her too, more than any wizard had in the past decade anyway.
“You crossed a line, Coulson. You'll need to do better if you want me to forgive you,” she said, wondering how he would interpret her warning.
“Like… dinner?” he asked.
Smart man.
“Home cooked,” Hermione bartered, because she would love to see his hands at work in a kitchen.
“Deal,” he agreed, letting her go before offering his hand to shake with a smirk.
He knew exactly what he was doing, the tease that he was, but Hermione would not let him win that easily, so she ignored him, walking ahead to meet the wizarding squad that had been sent to rescue her, only to be teased in an entirely different way by her colleagues. Looking back, Coulson still had the cheek to wave goodbye at her with his thrice damned hand before she climbed in the back of a car like a normal human being. She would get back at him, she promised herself. She would find his weakness and give him a taste of his own medicine, see how he liked it.