Snufkin never minded the nights when the firelight cast a glow in his eyes from its light and warmth. Or so Moomin said. But it wasn't too rare to have caught him gazing at him whilst he looked toward the stars. Those nights where the ones with Moomin where the daytime before the dark lingered on the edge of winter, thus leaving the nights to be spent as a goodbye.
He'd asked before why Moomin would stare, but the response often was too flustered to be understood and would often end with a sheepish smile that somehow answered what couldn't be said. Snufkin found his eyes afterward drifting over Moomins mouth hoping for another enthralling and captivating smile. That sheepish, knowing, smile to be exact. It lacked that friendly facade and dove right into his deepest feelings with an enthralling hesitancy. Specifically his feelings that it was somehow forbidden to see a friendly companion in such a way.
He'd often thought of what love was. He'd understood it as two people so undeniably smitten for each other that they became almost apart of each other like an organ or a limb. And somehow that felt like his friendship with Moomin. But nobody called it anything different. It was reduced to the most ignorant of things. Friendship. Nothing wrong with that, but to deny it had something more to it was ignorance at its best.
But maybe the words of others had substance. For all he had known, someone who felt as boyish and adventurous and was as familiar as his own self wasn't someone who he'd seen really as an option to hold so dearly and call a person you loved. He'd always known that someone who was opposite to your own familiar kind was what love had to have been. He was told anyway that he'd find a nice lady and would love her like no other. Yet something more akin to friendship always blossomed in his mind at the thought of such a love. It seemed to be as close as he could get with someone like that.
In all honesty he wanted someone like him who could share the familiarity of his sort of body and mind which he had found so comfortable to embrace. He found that solace within Moomin. Moomin anyway was as much a boy as he was and seemed so easy to understand unlike someone any different, He felt perfect with him really.
His mind always lingered on Moomin's smile. He wanted to kiss Moomin and feel his soft fur and make him smile again. He wanted to feel that smile against his lips as if to transfer it somehow to his. He had no idea how though he would be able to achieve such a thing as a kiss. They where so close, but where so far from making a move.