and can't you just adore her?
"You're adorable," she says to him once, grinning, with her hands tangled in his hair.
They are fifteen and she likes that word. She likes words in general; says that they're trustworthy, and far more interesting than people. She's always picking up new ones, tossing them around endlessly if she likes them. The words are usually exotic, bizzare. She attracts a great many strange looks, Lily Evans with her words. The better ones sound intelligent; the others sound made-up.
Sometimes, though, her word of the week is simplistic; something that she can apply to anything from a bluebird to a nice-looking arrangement of food to Remus Lupin without a second thought. Something that's always been at the back of her vocabulary, waiting to take center-stage.
Adorable.
He likes this habit of hers, likes that she's charming and intelligent and witty. A quirk on every corner. He likes it when she says something that confuses him, when she's a mystery that he has to dig through countless dictionaries to figure out. He likes her.
But he hates that she's calling him adorable.
Adorable?
It's ironic, he thinks, that the one word she likes that he can actually define is the one that is most mystifying to him. What can she even mean by that? Adorable.
He thinks, at first, that it's a compliment. Of course it's a compliment. She thinks he's adorable. He's feeling quite smug for awhile, although of course he won't dare show it to anyone. He will, however, look it up in the thesaurus.
Synonyms for adorable: ambrosial, appealing, attractive, captivating, charming, cute, darling, dear, delectable, delicious, delightful, dishy, fetching, heavenly, lovable, luscious, pleasing, precious, sexy, suave.
At first glance, these are comforting synonyms. Captivating, appealing, fetching, sexy.
All very good words indeed. But then there was the issue of darling, which made him sound like a sweet but ignorant five-year-old, for whom her feelings are positive but not romantic in the slightest. And then there was the ever-puzzling delectable, which made him sound like chocolate cake. He didn't realize that a word he had been familiar with since he was a very small child could possibly cause him so much confusion.
But everything is confunding, coming out of her lips.
"You're adorable," she says, and he has no idea how she means it, but he likes the sound that it makes, the three quick syllables rolling out of her ever-smiling mouth. Her eyes are rather serious, though, and her fingers linger on his face for just a half-second too long to be casual. She seems to catch herself, roughing her hands in his neatly combed hair, grinning playfully. And perhaps it didn't mean anything after all, perhaps he's imagining things once again, imagining things forever.
But Lily Evans never says adorable again.
Ah, Remus/Lily. How I have missed the comfort of my favorite pairing... :D This isn't a one-shot but a series of drabble-y Remus/Lilys that will each center around one of Lily's words. I've got one locked down, but I'm definately open to suggestions, so if anyone has a word that they particularily love...
You could leave it for me in a review.
Just a suggestion.
And even if you aren't as partial to words as I am, that little blue-ish button wants to hear from you!