Incense & Peppermint

29th July 1978

Remus leaned in, closing the mere two or three centimetres between them and slanted his mouth over Hermione's, just slightly. Something inside of him ripped and tore and lurched toward her, and he felt a shockwave spread out from the brief, barely-there contact.

He gasped, as did she, and he jumped back, dropping his hands and balling his fists at his sides while he stared down at her and tried, albeit a futile attempt, to catch the breath she’d stolen.

This couldn’t be normal. This wasn’t normal, and his fucking teeth hurt, and he needed to get away from her because he couldn’t put words to this fucking hunger and he was so afraid, terrified, shaking over the thought of harming her.

But then, she moved.

“Fuck it.” She whispered, echoing his words. She brought both hands up and grabbed him roughly by the face, yanking him toward her and then she pressed her mouth to his again, so hard that he feared they’d both be bruised.

He needed to pull back, to stop this, to keep her safe but then her tongue played across his lip and his cock twitched and she killed him all over again.

He let out some sort of strangled half-growl, half-groan as he brought his hands back to her hips and crashed her back against the shelf, too far gone to bother with gentleness, and he dove into her mouth.

She let out a breathy little moan and fuck, the only thing he wanted to do with the rest of his life was draw these little sighs out of her. He tightened his grip on her hip and trailed his left hand up her side. He splayed his fingers wide, desperate to touch as much of her as he could as his thumb brushing the underside of her breast through her jumper.

Their tongues tangled, their noses knocked against one another, and their teeth clashed almost painfully. But fuck it, his teeth already ached. She could knock them all out for all he cared. He dug his fingers in tighter, trying so desperately to be closer to her in any way he could, and she buried her hands in his hair, holding his face to hers as if she needed this, needed him as badly as he needed her.

His body was on fire, his cock had never been harder, her mouth tasted like peppermint tea and one of the little, red-foiled chocolates she bought for him because she was his, for whatever that meant.

He knew, then, with that surety that was steadily becoming a constant presence in his life, that he never wanted to take another breath that wasn’t mingled with hers.

He ran his hand down her thigh and hitched her leg up over his hip, rolling his hips to grind his painfully hard cock against her, rutting against her and palming her breast like a beast, because he was a fucking beast. She moaned his name again, then braced her hands on her shoulders and rose up to her other leg around him.

He could feel her everywhere, could feel her in everything, and she was everything.

She moaned his name and rocked her hips against him, grinding down on his cock, and he broke again, growling and nibbling on her lip.

She was so fucking sweet.

So perfect.

So very his.

“Mine.” He growled, a deep, animalistic sort of tone he’d never even heard himself emit, but he was too far gone to notice.

He broke away from her mouth and began trailing his lips down her neck, moving as if by instinct, and she moaned his name again, tightening her legs around his hips just as he reached the base of her neck, and his lips brushed over that perfect fucking spot just above her shoulder.

He sucked the skin into his mouth, growling and rocking against her and she was gasping and whimpering and grinding against him and he could smell how wet she was, for him, because she was his.

She was his, and this was his.

This, right here, was where they were supposed to be, and his teeth fucking hurt as they grazed against her skin and he could smell how badly she needed him and he needed to fucking bite her.

No.

No, no, fuck no.

He reared his head back and dropped his hands, tilting his body to guide her back to her feet as he stared down at her.

“Remus..” She breathed out, her face morphing into a mask of confusion.

“Hermione, I – I don’t - ” I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t know why I want to hurt you, he meant to say, but the words were lost when he heard the deep, guttural sound of a throat clearing from behind them.

Sirius.

Her brother.

Fuck.

“I hate to crash the party, but I’ve just buzzed James and Lily in, and they’ll be coming up the stairs any minute, so…”

Hermione glared toward the doorway over Remus’ shoulder, and he heard his friend let out a low laugh.

“Just thought you ought to know.”

“Godsdammit.” Remus cursed as he dropped his shoulders and rested his chin atop her head. He was absolutely going to hear about this later. What was he thinking? He’d been so caught up in snogging his best friend’s brand-new sister that he hadn’t even had the decency to close the door.

Hermione dug out her wand and the door slammed shut, the sound breaking the spell he was under enough that he was finally able to make his feet move. He took a step back and looked down at her, his chest clenching at the sight of her flushed cheeks and wet, swollen lips.

“I don’t know what you’re doing to me, Hermione.” he muttered, half under his breath.

“And you’re…gods, you’re Sirius’ SISTER.”

Hermione nodded as she righted her clothing and then twisted her hair up and shoved her wand through it.

Remus had to physically force himself to look anywhere but at the side of her damn neck.

“I know. I am. And this is…intense.”

He laughed – because it was laughable. Intense was an undersell, to say the least. He tore his eyes away from where they had, in fact, trailed back to her neck despite his best efforts and ran a hand through his hair, nodding distractedly.

“Yeah. It’s a lot. I don’t… I don’t do this, Hermione.” He began as he walked back over to his desk and leaned back against it, desperate to distance himself from her, despite the deep-seated ache in his chest urging him to just get her.

“And it’s certainly never felt like this and I – your brother is my best friend, and my roommate, and I CAN’T do this, but I feel as if I can’t not do this and I… there are things you don’t know, things that…” he trailed off, shaking his head as he shoved his hands into his pockets.

“I think I’m spiraling.” He admitted softly.
He didn’t do this.

Save for a few party dalliances in Gryffindor tower – He and Rosaline Roabourn had shared a chaste peck during a game of truth or dare their fourth year, and he had wound up kissing both James and Sirius during a few rounds of spin the bottle in fifth, but pressing his lips to James’ had left the lingering taste of peanut butter, which Remus hated, and Sirius had quickly darted in and put his lips on his for half a second before he pulled back and licked his nose because, well, he was Sirius – but he’d certainly never snogged.

The rumors flew, and he let them spin, let people fill in the gaps of his mysterious behavior and twist it all into a tale of him being some sort of secret Casanova, but in truth? Remus was terrified of women. Not in the sense of being scared that they existed, but more to the point that he was terrified of letting himself get close to anyone.

He was a monster, barely holding himself together, stretched so thin trying to keep the secret of his lycanthropy and balance school and his social life, and he simply never allowed himself to consider that he could have the normalcies that the other lads in school did. There were no alcove sneakaways with that Ravenclaw girl a year above him who seemed to exist as a rite of passage for so many of his peers. There were no trips to Hogsmeade with a girl on his arm.

The danger he posed to someone if he lost control was insurmountable, and the fear of getting attached to someone only to have them run screaming when they learned the terrible truth of his nature was too much to bear. So he did not do this.

But now she was here, and she was her, and he was an eighteen-year-old virgin who had nearly came in his favorite trousers just from kissing her, and she was his, and he couldn’t not do this. He couldn’t make sense of it.

He had spent eighteen days trying to rationalize it, and the only semi-answer he could come up with was that he was a monster, that this was what happened when he got close enough to someone to allow the monster to want them, which had been exactly what he had feared for so long.

Even that fell flat, though, because despite his best efforts, he couldn’t seem to find a way to rationalize why it was her. Everything about her felt like it was his and it was nearly unbearable.

He’d thought and thought and journaled and smoked and drank and thought and journaled some more, but he still couldn’t seem to make sense of it.

Nor could he seem to shake the feeling that she knew something he didn’t.

“I spiral, too. All the time, about everything. Though I sort of… schedule it.”

“Huh.” He laughed. Scheduled spiraling? He could get on board with that. “Well, that sounds efficient.”

“It’s silly, but it’s just… important to me. I know this… I know it’s a lot, all at once. I feel it too. There are things I may not know, but there are things you don’t know either. And I don’t think we’re capable of sorting it all out after…that, anyway. Could you…” She trailed off and looked down, her fingers twisting in the hem of her jumper nervously.

He felt it again, that strange feeling that she knew something he didn’t. If she did, though, she wasn’t exactly being forthcoming with the information, which should have been an infuriating concept, but the only thing he could focus on was that she looked so lost, and she wasn’t supposed to be sad.

And she felt it too.

“Give you time? I’ll give you anything you need, Hermione.” He responded.

Anything. Everything. There wasn’t a single thing in this world he would be unwilling to give to her, and that concept was terrifying. He really needed to get his shit together.

“For what it's worth, I think I could use a bit of time to sort out my head, too.”

“Time. Yes. Shall we say… two weeks, and then we’ll talk it out?”

“Two weeks. Okay. I can do that, if that’s what you need.” Remus nodded. He let his eyes trail down to her neck again and –

Fuck.

He had left a mark, right there in that spot that made his teeth ache, and, Merlin, he liked it.

But it was wrong. There was something about it that wasn’t right, which he wrote off as the fear of her brother seeing it, but it was still there, and it made something twist in his chest that he couldn’t quite name.

“You’ve, erm… you’ve got a bit of a…” he told her, gesturing to his neck. “I can glamour it for you.”

That was wrong. It should stay, it needed to stay because everybody needed to know. What they needed to know, he wasn’t sure of, but sod it all, he loved it.

She touched her fingers to the love bite and she fucking smiled. Gods, she was going to drive him insane.

“Does it bother you, if they see it?” she asked.

“Hermione, I cannot express enough how much it absolutely, unequivocally, does not bother me if people see me on you.” He said, still transfixed by the mark on her neck. He couldn’t explain it, couldn’t even begin to identify a reason, but this, too, settled something inside of him, just slightly, and his teeth hurt a little less, a welcome reprieve from the constant ache he’d grown accustomed to.

It wasn’t enough, but it was something. But she was Sirius’ sister, and Lily and James were here, and he couldn’t bear the idea of anyone saying anything negative to her about it because this was good.

“But your brother, I don’t want him to…”

“I can handle my brother just fine. I guarantee he won’t say a word about this.”

“You don’t know him very well yet, then, because Sirius Black may stop breathing if he’s rendered incapable of making a lewd comment.”

“Don’t worry about him. I promise, I’ve got it. Do you want to glamour it?”

“I should want to.” Remus told her honestly.

“But… I like it.” Need it.

“It’s settled then. This stays, and we go back to normal for two weeks. Let’s go. I’m so ready to meet more people who have managed to tolerate my brother for seven years.” she said with a laugh as she turned to leave the room.

“Two weeks.” Remus reiterated as he reached around her and opened the door.

“But I’m still fixing your tea.”

“I’ll keep restocking your chocolates, then.”

“She’s right there.” Remus said, his hand digging in a little tighter on the arm of the chair he was lounging in.

He was being irrational. Again. He was always irrational, when it came to her, it seemed. He knew they weren’t making her feel ignored, and he knew that would never be their intent in the first place, but it was like they couldn’t even tell that she was the most important person in this damn room, for fucks sake.

He was staring again. He supposed some part of him should feel like a creep, for how often he watched her.

Should, but absolutely did not.

She watched him too.

He liked knowing that she was staring back almost as much as he liked just… looking at her. Watching her, as she kept looking between James and Lily as if she was trying to soak up every single detail about them that she could. She had that look again – that strange, anxious sort of knowing.

He supposed she was just excited to meet them, as Sirius must have talked about them with her, but this, like so many other things with her, just seemed to be hinting at something deeper beneath the surface.

A girl who studied in France for seven years but had the slightest Scottish lilt to her words here and there, just like Lily and so many others did after spending so long at Hogwarts.

The look he’d catch her giving Sirius sometimes, almost as if she missed him, even though he was right in front of her.

The way she looked at him, so knowingly.

There were other things, too. She spoke strangely sometimes and would use words he’d never heard of. She had three jumpers that were exact replicas of ones he had as well, such as the brown cable knit one she was wearing today that looked just like one he’d bought back in May.

Which, okay, that was less strange, as his wardrobe was far more bargain-bin than customized. Besides, the ones she had were far more worn, so they probably weren’t exact matches, and it wasn’t that weird.

It was more just… something he really liked. But that faint hint of himself that seemed to be embedded in her skin was present on some of her jumpers as well and he couldn’t make sense of it.

There were a great many things about her that he couldn’t make sense of.

But for some reason he could not even begin to explain, he had no desire to push her. He supposed it was due in part to the fact that the idea of upsetting her made him feel disgusted. Perhaps it was due in part to the fact that he just… trusted her.

Remus didn’t trust easily, but when it came to her, he felt as if there wasn’t a move she could make that he wouldn’t believe was the right one.

Something was strange about her. Not only in what her presence did to him, but in everything that she was. He was dying to know the answers, to know every single tiny, insignificant detail about her. But she needed time, and he would give her anything.

“Well of course she’s right here, Remus. How could we fail to notice her? She’s really quite beautiful, isn’t she?” Lily asked in a conspiratorial tone.

“Ye-yeah. Quite.” He responded, tripping over the words as he fought back the urge to argue. She wasn’t beautiful. Well, she was. Of course she was. But it was too typical a word to describe her. She was radiant. Effervescent. Breathtaking.

His.

James and Sirius began to banter as Remus lit a cigarette and relaxed back into his chair. His eyes fell on Hermione again and the rest of the world melted away, until he heard Lily speak his name again.

“Remus? How do you like having a new roommate?”

“It’s… erm…. She’s good.” Fuck, she was so good. He could still feel her in his hands.

“I mean, it’s good. Having a fresh face around.” He corrected himself, then leaned back to look up at the ceiling as he took another drag, the smoke invading his senses and mingling with the taste of her mouth on his tongue and the smell of her that had seemingly taken up permanent residence in his nostrils.

Peppermint. Sugar. Chocolate. Smoke.

Fel tân yn llosgi yn yr aelwyd fore Nadolig.

(Like a fire burning in the hearth on Christmas morning.)

“Well, I’m glad to hear she’s good.” James quipped. Remus bit back a grin, because gods was she good, yet he also felt the distinct urge to throttle his friend for talking about her that way.

That was new.

They talked of dancing, but his eyes had trailed back down to that fucking mark on her neck and there he was, distracted again.

“Remus, could you show me that book you were talking about, in your room?”

“Book?” he asked, snapping his eyes back to Lily. Had he mentioned a book?

She gave him that look – the one Sirius and Peter lovingly referred to as the ‘Mom’ look and he sprung up out of his chair because… well, sod it all, she’d trained them well and he knew her well enough to know that he had about thirty seconds to decide to handle whatever she wanted to say to him in private or she’d just start talking.

“Right. The book. Let’s go.” He rushed out, holding out his arm for Lily to lead the way to his room.

“A moment Remus, really?!” Lily screeched as she grabbed one of the pillows to her right and smacked him across the face with it repeatedly as they both lay sideways across his bed, side by side, with their feet resting on the floor.

“Stop beating me, Lils, for fucks sake.” Remus laughed as he yanked the pillow away and then dropped it unceremoniously on her face.

Lily laughed and picked the pillow up, then tossed it back on the bed next to her. Her eyes caught on the jumper that had been stuffed underneath it prior to her vicious attack and she scoffed.

“Honestly, Remus, why do you have dirty laundry in your bed? Don’t think I didn’t notice how clean the bathroom is. You and Sirius could stand to learn a thing or two from your new roommate.” She teased as she reached out to grab the jumper. Remus sat upright and grabbed her wrist to stop her short of reaching it.

“Don’t… don’t touch that.” He told her as he climbed off of the bed and picked it up. He turned around and shoved it into the top drawer of his chest, fighting down the urge to bring the soft, heathered grey fabric to his nose.

“Ewww Remus, don’t tell me it’s like… wanked on.”

“Gods, Lily, no I didn’t – I don’t wank on jumpers. Shut up.”

“Ooookay, jumper wanker.” She teased as she moved to sit cross-legged on the bed.

“Ni allaf sefyll chi.” Remus shook his head as he sat back down.

“Calm down, you’re going all Welsh-y. What does that even mean?” She laughed. “Forget the jumper wanking. Let’s circle back to the real issue here.”

“It means I can’t stand you. And there is not an issue.”

“Remus. I’m your favorite person in the world.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Stop deflecting.” Lily groaned as she collapsed back on the bed dramatically and began to speak, waving her hands in the air to punctuate her words as she laid into him – Lily always talked with her hands, a habit she and Hermione both shared.

“Remus John Lupin, I have known you since we were eleven years old. You do not have moments. You do not LET yourself have moments. Yet you have spent all night staring at that girl out there like you’re physically fighting the urge to throw her over your shoulder and lock her away here in your book cave so nobody else can even breathe the same air as her.”

Well shit. There were myriad inarguable facts about one Lily Jane Evans, but perhaps the most inarguable was that she could read all four of ‘her’ boys like a godsdamned picture book. She wasn’t wrong, because that is exactly how he’d felt all night.

It was like she Hermione had been too… exposed, in a room full of people. It made the skin on the back of his neck prickle, and his damn teeth were back to killing him all over again.

Naturally, he couldn’t tell Lily that. Normally, he did tell her everything, but the way Hermione made him feel was… personal. Inexplicable. And, truthfully, something he should be ashamed of, because something about her made him feel so fucking animalistic in the exact way he’d always feared.

The shame just never seemed to come, though. He was supposed to feel this way, knew it as well as he knew the way his own veins felt within his body, but he couldn’t exactly explain that to Lily.

So, he deflected.

“I dunno, Lils. She’s a fox.” He said with a shrug as he tried his best to sound unaffected.

“See? That, right there?” Lily said, sitting up to poke him in the chest.

“You don’t talk about girls like that, and you don’t look at girls like that, and you DON’T have MOMENTS.”

“Lils, I can’t… I don’t know, okay?”

“I don’t know. She just… there’s something about her and makes me feel all these things I’ve never felt and it’s almost like it physically hurts sometimes.” He continued as he brought his hand up to rub his chest as if he had any hope of soothing the ache that had taken root within him.

“Oh, Remus.” Lily said, grinning broadly as she looked up at him with watery eyes.

“You like her.”

“I think… yeah. I like her.”

Roedd yn ffycin caru hi. He thought, then physically recoiled.

He fucking loved her.

Shit. He was a lost cause. Two weeks with this infuriatingly everything girl and he was worse than James 5^th year. It wasn’t possible, was it? To feel that, this fast?

‘When you know, you know’ James had said. Remus hadn’t really taken the words to heart at the time – a mere few weeks ago, though it felt, now, in the aftermath of knowing her, as if an entire lifetime had passed – but he got it now.

He knew.

“Good.” Lily said, leaping off of the bed and brushing her hands together as if to say she was all done.

“That’s all I needed to know. Let’s go dance.”

“I don’t dance.”

“She does.”

“Yeah, she fucking does.” He laughed.

Remus could watch Hermione dance for hours. And he had, over the last few weeks. Her being around had been such a welcome change of pace. Sirius, for one, was absolutely loving having his new sister to join in on his previously-solo little dance parties, and was all too keen to shove the coffee table out of the way and throw on whatever record she preferred.

She loved to dance more than anyone he’d ever seen. He could practically taste the relief and pure joy rolling off of her when the right song came on and she started to twist and writhe and throw her hair around.

She was a bit shit at it, if he were honest, but it didn’t matter. The way her body seemed to spring to life when the music hit her was breathtaking.

Music was a big deal for her. She seemed to love everything, even some of the more obscure shit that Sirius had tucked away. He’d made note of her favorites, jotting them down on the ever growing mental list of things she liked, things that made her happy, and even things to absolutely not do, such as;

Ash your cigarette in the kitchen sink (Sirius)

Forget to put the toilet seat down (him)

Leave your shoes in the middle of the room (Sirius, again – Remus carefully did not bring attention to the fact that she also kicked hers off wherever fancied her. That was okay, though. He’d taken to quietly picking them up for her and moving them to the rack by the door.)

Leave the screen open after you sit in the big picture window in the sitting room to watch traffic as you smoked, thus allowing a bird to get into the flat (the jury was still out on who did that one)

The list went on, though she seemed to adapt well to living with two lads, as if she’d been doing it her whole life, but gods, did she have a temper on her. It was rare, but it was powerful. He never wanted to see her angry again, almost as much as he couldn’t wait for it to happen.

He continued to watch her dance, her and Lily now back-to-back belting out ‘Say You Love Me’ by Fleetwood Mac – another in her long list of favorites – while James and Sirius took turns twirling and dipping each other off to the side.

Remus had never been a dancer. He had never quite gotten with it as far as moving comfortably in his body was concerned. He stumbled and tripped and swayed on his feet, dropped things, ran into walls. A fun little side effect of your body being torn to shreds every thirty or so days, likely.

But gods, she made him want to dance.

/Have mercy baby, on a poor fool like me/

He was going to try, for her, he decided, just as soon as he could be within a foot of her without his damn teeth hurting.

She loved to dance, and he loved to watch, and she danced, and he watched, his eyes trained on her the entire time, hers darting to him every thirty seconds or so like clockwork, as if she just had to be sure he was still there. She seemed to be as constantly aware of him as he was of her, which did all sorts of great and terrible things to his insides.

Two weeks. He reminded himself as he watched her twirl.

Two weeks. As she collapsed to the floor and began to giggle and whisper with Lily.

Two weeks. When he realized they were talking about him.

Lily had always tended to forget about the whole ‘heightened werewolf senses thing.’ Even the guys thought to cast a silencing charm sometimes – though, Remus had to admit, he more than a little bit hated that Sirius never forgot to throw up a muffliato when he’d be off in Hermione’s room or she’d go to his.

It wasn’t that Remus was nosey, per se. It was just that he wanted to know one hundred percent of the information as far as she was concerned. And maybe, possibly, also a tiny bit because he was curious if she’d mentioned him to her brother.

He rather liked the idea of her mentioning him.

The night went on, Sirius and James devolving into a debate about some quidditch game or another, and he drank and smoked and watched, until everyone else seemed to collectively decide it was time to get serious.

“No.” he said, fighting back a wince at the way he nearly growled the word as every head in the room turned to face him.

“It’s her choice, Moony. If she wants to help with the war efforts, then she should get to help.” James said, his tone light, as if he had no idea how not okay this was, how important she was. Remus had to remind himself, then, that of course it would be fine to James. He wasn’t… She wasn’t his… something. Whatever the fuck she was.

“It’s going to be fine. She’s tough.” Sirius waved his hand, as if he, too, had no idea that this was very much not fine. Nobody else seemed to notice how priceless she was, and, irrational or not, it drove him mad.

“She’s been through enough. She just lost her family. She needs time to heal.” Remus said. It wasn’t enough. It was the truth, but he had no idea how to convey how or why the idea of her fighting in this damn war was absolutely not fine.

“She is right here.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him as if she were challenging him and gods, he loved that fire, that intensity. She, too, had that same power that Lily had, the one that made them want to leap out of their chairs and follow her commands with the slightest look. Though, to be fair, he was quite sure Hermione could have commanded anything of him, and he would have obeyed in an instant just to keep her close.

“I’m sorry, Hermione, I just…” he began, but really, what could he say?

‘I just have this insane feeling of possessiveness when it comes to you, and that is only rivaled by the urge I feel to protect you, and also I’m a werewolf, surprise, and for some fucking reason this beast that lives inside of me has decided he wants to eat you alive, and my teeth hurt if I’m too close to you for too long, pesky little fact, that, and somehow in the combination of all of that, my brain has decided that it is my personal obligation to keep you safe, please do not resist?’

No. It was crazy.

He was crazy.

She made him crazy, but crazy or not, he hated this. He just wanted to throw her over his shoulder and lock her up in his bedroom and guard the door so nothing and no one could harm her. It was irrational, but he didn’t think he had a rational thought left in his brain where she was concerned, and he was so very tired of trying to rationalize it all.

“I get it.” Hermione said softly, that damn voice wrapping around his heart and soothing him in an instant. She did get it, didn’t she? She knew. She’d said she felt it, too.

“But I need you to… well, I need all of you to understand that I need this. That bastard and his little leeches took everything from me. I’m going to fight, and I’m going to help end this. For good.”

“Fuck yeah you are, Kitten.” Sirius rang out.

She looked back over at him, her eyes pleading with him to understand, and gods, he would give her anything. She seemed so strong in her convictions, as if she knew she would be the one to end the war and his resistance died in the air between them.

He nodded at her, just once, and her face broke out into a wide, radiant grin, as if she’d been desperate for him to – not approve, no, because he had no doubt that she would do this with or without his support. She seemed so relieved, though, to have his support all the same. As if she wanted him with her. Needed him.

Remus had already joined the Order, already planned to fight this war, because of all the good and just and right reasons, of course. The choice had barely even been a decision that needed to be made. This was right, and he would do what was right. Now, though, it was her. Every single thing in his life had narrowed down to one point. Hermione.

If she was determined to charge headfirst into the battle between good and evil, then he would be at her back every step of the way. He was supposed to stand beside her.

“Next meeting is on the eighth. I’ll owl Moody tomorrow.”

“Yes!” Lily sang as she raised her glass for a toast.

“Here’s to ending this shit.”

They all clinked their glasses together, Remus’ finger brushing against Hermione’s just slightly and they both jerked their hands away and brought their drinks to their mouths. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and blushed, and he couldn’t help but grin.

Gods, he had no idea what she was doing to him, and he was so terrified and so unsure of so many things, but the one thing he did know for certain was that he hoped she never stopped looking at him like that.