Coiled (Book 1 of 2)

You Are the Air

I awake, late for class and silently cursing myself for having gone to bed so late. Yet again Reggie and I worked late into the night.

Two weeks -

Two weeks have passed since our kiss, and though I spend every moment in his company fighting my continued desire for him, we've reached a delicate equilibrium of sorts.

We flirt, yes. Of course we do. To us, flirtation seems to come too naturally to shake. But we keep it to a pure, innocent flirting - one disguised as subtle acts of kindness for one another, or in harmless teasing, jokes.

Throughout it all, I'd not touched him, and he'd been steadfastly mindful of not touching me. No brushing up alongside one another, nor any other physical contact. Even when handling supplies, like passing textbooks or notes, we went to painfully obvious lengths to avoid the temptation of accidentally breaking the touch barrier we'd established.

We've been incredibly disciplined with one another in every possible way.

In every possible way except for our eyes ...

Yes, our eyes betray us at absolutely every turn, rather damningly.

From the way we allow our gazes to linger on one another, to the way our eyes light up each time we find our way back to one another, our eyes always tell the same story, plain as day:

I want you.

I want you so, so bad.

Please, please, please.

Shaking myself out of my residual sleepiness and trying not to panic, I toss on my clothes as quickly as I can, run a brush through my hair, and bolt out the door. In the end, I make it to Charms class only five minutes late.

Not bad, all things considered; I can certainly live with that.

Professor Flitwick, at his lectern and already deeply engaged in a lecture on the utility of Anti-Alohomora, the countercharm against the Unlocking Charm, pauses and gives me a positively disapproving eyebrow raise as I stumble into his classroom.

The sound of stifled giggles and whispers echoes through the class as I silently mouth back to him "I'm - so - sorry" and then scurry across the room towards an empty seat by the window, where Remus sat waiting with a pitying look on his face. As I slink down into the seat, he reaches over and pats my shoulder sympathetically.

As Professor Flitwick begins launching into a tangent about the nuances of Counter-Charms, Remus leans over and whispers under his breath, "Another late night?"

"Yes. Been putting in a lot of hours..."

"With Regulus, you mean?"

I shift uncomfortably in my chair, "It's necessary. We have to."

It's not; we don't.

We're meeting far more than necessary.

But we're doing it anyway.

He doesn't reply back immediately, and when I steal a glance at my friend out of the corner of my eye, I see that his lips are pursed, "... If you say so."

"This whole business will conclude in a matter of weeks."

Remus's face relaxes ever so slightly at that, just as I knew it would.

It's become my go-to, my default phrase to wiggle out of any questions over Regulus, and I toss it out whenever one of the guys mentions or hints at their displeasure about the partnership. And it's effective, too; because though my friends hate Regulus, and especially hate the idea of my spending time with Regulus, they are always, at the end of the day, reasonable. They know that this is something that's been chosen for me, not by me.