A/N: This is a completed oneshot, written especially for my wonderful napchic, in fifteen minutes, sitting in an apartment in NYC. And an endless 'thank you' to shocolate for the use of her laptop :D

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It was difficult, near impossible, to imagine covering her skin with anything now that he'd seen it without. It needed to breathe, to lay stretched over ribs and hipbones by moonlight, his eyes the only ones on earth allowed to see it this way. That was something more than perfect, and he had yet to name it. He could be a billion miles, a billion years away, and find his home by the light reflected off of her paleness, goosebumps rising like miniature mountains on an abstract planet, nearly white and often seeking the warmth of his own naked body. Or his Chudley Cannons blanket, the one he'd no longer let Harry touch, now that she'd been wrapped in nothing but it for hours on end.

But the sun cracked through the night sky, and he hadn't slept a wink. His heavy eyes knew only the rest found in the study of what he had, now that he could stop to know, to his very soul, that he'd been worth it. She woke as light broke through his open window, breasts tinted a sunrise pink and orange, mingling with the brilliant rose of her natural morning flush. She sighed a lifetime of happiness through a closed-mouthed smile, eyelashes flickering like dying candles until she was staring up into his sleepy face, his own blinks drugged down by a night worshiping his world wrapped in a blanket, in his arms.

"Mmm," she shivered, voice scratchy with the morning. "Where are my socks?"

He chuckled and forced himself to move, to lean over her body and search his rug. And he supposed, as he lifted her socks one by one to hold in his lengthy fingers, that he could learn to grow fond of almost anything, surrounded by Hermione... caressing her in a way that still spoke to him, and gave him permission to move, however he liked.

"Give me your feet," he said gravelly, clearing his throat and grinning shyly at her as she shuffled her bare toes out from under their shared blanket.

He sat up, spine and shoulder blades rolling under smooth skin as his hair fell into his eyes. And he brushed it away from his forehead with the back of his hand before delicately lifting her right foot first, running a light finger down her big toe as he smiled, a secret only he knew about, that she'd learn with every day spent next to him.

That she wasn't just the girl he loved. But she was necessary, beyond the functions of his own life. And that as far as he could see, the world would be a shallow grave without her.

He gathered the first sock in his careful fingers until he'd reached the toe, slipping the end onto her pointed foot as he cleared his throat again. Unrolling the sock bit by bit, he passed ankle and lower shin. And finally, supporting her leg at an upright angle with his other hand, he arrived at her knee, elastic securing just underneath.

"Next," he grinned, and she switched her legs, dropping the bare one into his lap.

He began much the same way, but as he reached her ankle, he paused and gripped her heel in his palm, leaning over her to place a lingering kiss at the bony inside of her foot. Her toes flexed inside of her sock as he worked his way up, a repetitive pattern of a kiss and a tug, until he'd reached her knee again. He lowered her leg to the bed and she rolled into him, eyes shut and lips curled up beautifully.

"It isn't morning yet," she said dreamily. "Come here."

He lowered his body beside her, facing her, and he rewrapped them like a tightly packaged bundle inside of his thick blanket. His arm dropped to her waist as she nuzzled into him, socked feet gliding between his bare shins.

"You're very cozy," he whispered, rubbing his legs against hers.

She sighed once more, pressing her forehead to his as her eyes slipped shut.

He imagined he'd found so much more than 'once in a lifetime'. That it was something like fate, though he couldn't quite bring himself to believe in it.

And as her legs stilled between his, knee socks hugging the perfect curves of her calves, he decided that really, perhaps, he could share the touch of her skin with her own fitted clothing. Because he was the only one, the only thing in the world, who had infinity in that same touch... in unspoken words and lingering fingertips, in unturned pages of a million books... and beneath his own skin, where she'd burrowed, and made life not only worth doing... but worth dying for.