A few things…This is a M&MWP and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg as far as weird things about this fic. I don't normally write femslash, nextgen, or first person, and yet here we are! I used a prompt from the Pairing Diversity Boot Camp: nuzzles.
This is also a slightly early birthday present for autumn midnights!
There are days when I take off my clothes and look at myself in the mirror, and my first thought is always that I look like a boy. I'm flat-chested, all sharp angles and no curves at all, and despite my insistence that I don't care about anyone finding me attractive, the fact remains that I wish I looked like my cousin Lily. She's got the perfect porcelain skin and strawberry blonde hair that's so, so soft and green eyes that blink too much.
Some days, I am sure that she sees right through me.
I tell her that I don't think I'm pretty enough, and she hugs me and tells me I'm wrong. I hear what she says, but I'm not listening. I'm just breathing in the scent of strawberries and all too conscious of the soothing way she rubs my back. She means to comfort me, but there's something unsettling in the pit of my stomach when she pulls away and I realize I don't want her to. I suppose the feeling resembles butterflies fighting for room to spread their wings, though I think the more accurate expression should be hummingbirds instead of butterflies.
Yes.
Hummingbirds.
Hummingbirds that beat their wings eighty times a second, once for every time I open my mouth only to swallow confessions instead, once for every time I question my sexuality, once for every time Lily makes me smile.
It is sixteen years, seven months, and twelve days of birthdays, family reunions, and mischief in the Slytherin common room before I finally realize that my inexplicable desire to run my fingers through her so soft hair is not an act of jealousy, but…something else…
It's the kind of thing cousins definitely don't think about each other.
And then I shrug my shoulders and figure that maybe they do think it, but surely no one talks about it.
And then we are talking about it, and the curtains on my four-poster are drawn, and she's showing me all the ways she thinks I'm beautiful. My angles seem to soften under her fingers, and she traces my collar bone, and my flat chest rises and falls in time with hers. She nuzzles her face in my neck, and her eyelashes brush against my skin as she blinks too much.
It's bloody perfect.
"Lily?" I say.
"Roxanne?" she says.
"Are we absolutely mad?"
"Absolutely."
Silence.
"Lily?"
"Roxanne?"
"I think I might love you."
"I think I might love you too."
She kisses me, and the hummingbirds take flight once more.