swim || remus lupin

what a feeling

Small flakes of snow began to float down again as the eight of us wandered the streets of the little town and I smiled to myself as they sprinkled into Remus's soft waves of oblivious hair.

His nose was pink with cold and his cheeks matched in chapped rosiness. He was laughing distantly with James, something about Mrs. Lupin wanting to meet up with Mrs. Potter for tea again soon, and his chin was rising and falling with each word, as if to further animate his speech. His lips, too, curled purposefully, as though he were dotting each 'i' and crossing each 't' as he spoke.

The harsh white light seemed to soften Remus's bronzed appearance. His tan skin, dark scars, glowing in a muffled way against its radiant and attacking brightness. His navy blue sweater aided this, cushioning his willowy figure, which had begun to slender down as the moon waxed.

The boy's left hand was intertwined with my right, swinging ever so slightly as we walked and he talked. He had on fuzzy and scratchy sort of gloves. The kind with holes by the fingers, which I found to be somewhat counterproductive. Nevertheless, they were completely warm against my bare hands, and his exposed fingertips moved in subconscious circles around my skin, our shoulders bumping from time to time as we strode on.

I tracked one shaving of snow, which wafted side to side in the sky, wavering slightly before landing, too, in Remus's hair. By now, there was an entire population of white freckling his hazel strands. They floated, settled, and melted, their lives circling fully around his beaming existence.

His amber eyes, now meeting my conversely ice blue ones, were gleaming against the contrasting weather. I felt my insides melt, as though I were the snow and he was the sun.

He lifted his free hand and adjusted one side of my hat - well, his hat - and his crinkled eyes smoothed over as he shifted his attention to me. 

"You're doing it again," his words came out in a sigh, his adoring smile blurring away the sounds of the other teens around us.

"Doing what?"

"The thing," he said. "When you just stare at me with that look."

"What look?"

"That look."

"I don't think I have a look," I stated, nearly breaking the imagined bubble around us.

"You do," he swore. "It would be creepy if you weren't so cute."

"Cute?" I asked. "Nah, not me."

"Not you?" He laughed, the crinkles returning.

"Nope," I insisted. "You must have the wrong girl."

"Hm," he narrowed his eyes and bit the inside of one cheek as if trying to judge the truth of my words.

"No," he decided. "Definitely you."

"No way," I said. "I'm far too sophisticated to be 'cute.'"