#so i allowed myself some cursilería and comfort in the final version which still isn't up to my usual standards

[locatislunaticolupin]

Day Four: Don't Look Now

Written for day four of @remadoramicrofics. 528 words. Also available on Ao3.

“Don’t look now,” Edda said, “but your parents are snogging”.

Teddy, being five, said “No, they aren’t”, because there’s nothing worse than your old, gross parents being loving in public, and proceeded to make sure to loudly express his distaste when he swung around and saw them, in fact, snogging. That, at least, made them laugh, which meant they were no longer snogging.

“Why do you two gotta be gross?!” he loudly proclaimed again when Dora caught him from behind, swinging him and kissing him in that noisy, obnoxious way she saved only for embarrassing him in front of his friends.

“Edda doesn’t think it’s gross, do you, Edda?”

Edda, being seven, said, “It’s very gross, Miss Lupin”.

Dora brought a hand to her chest and gasped loudly enough that a few adults in Edda’s mom’s garden party turned their heads.

“How very dare you. Are you telling me you wouldn’t kiss your husband and son if they were as handsome and sweet as mine?” she declared very dramatically. Edda stifled her giggles when Teddy, still in his mama’s arms, groaned as loud as he could, as if he could hide Dora’s voice behind his. He almost got her to drop him when he went dead weight.

“No, I don’t think I would, miss Lupin. I don’t find them particularly handsome nor particularly sweet, after all”.

Dora gasped again from where she was now almost bent in half holding Teddy’s weight, but then seemed to think it over, finger tapping her cheek.

“I am too good for these goofs, aren’t I?”

A second later, her husband tickled her neck and Dora shrieked. Teddy shrieked when his mom almost dropped him (which she didn’t, she hugged him tighter while twisting away and he screamed again because too tight, mama). Edda, who’d seen Remus coming and who’d also seen the finger he’d raised to his lips, guffawed.

After the party, after leftovers were shoved into their hands and promises of seeing each other soon, isn’t that football game soon?, were made, the Lupins walked home. And they would have spent that time together anyway, but there was something special about the long dirt road, the pink and yellow and orange and purple sky, the chirp of the crickets, the starlings’ and chaffinches’ last flights home, the smell of a summer day gone by. They were quiet, this time, letting time well-spent settle in their bones.

Dora and Remus leaned on each other, swaying, hands weaved together and steps out of sync. Teddy was their little satellite, running ahead or behind his parents and exploring the flowers and bees on the ditches’ banks, the funny rocks on the road. He scared flocks of birds, mooed back at the cows, and swung a long branch around. Sometimes, he looked back at his parents, looked at their hands (knew there was something there warm and safe, something calloused and gentle and strong) and he ran to them, and they caught him (because they always, always did), and they walked home together, their three long shadows stretching to the horizon, melting into one, until Teddy ran off again, being five and happy and careless.

#remadora microfics #remadora #remus lupin #nymphadora tonks #teddy lupin #i had the shittiest day on day four so i wrote like five versions of this prompt and they're just as messy as my head was oh dear #one tried to tackle gender roles that's how lost i was #so i allowed myself some cursilería and comfort in the final version which still isn't up to my usual standards #the good thing is that while day five will also be late i already have day six written so i can catch up #anth: this house is an orchestra