☃️ / build a snowman with my muse .
Hanging out with Pari was still weird now, but Monty was so grateful for her wanting to be around him at all that he’d have done anything. Even spend time out in the dumb, cold snow, bundled up but still freezing, as he helped her with making her snowman. He’d thought they were going to make something grand and beautiful, like her, but by the time they patted the last mount of snow on top and stuck his coal eyes on, he noticed that she was giggling. Her laugh made his stomach do flips, but Monty wasn’t sure if they were the good or the bad kind -- what was so funny? Had he done something wrong again?
Relief coursed through him as he realized Pari’s smile met her eyes. A happy laugh. He couldn’t help but grin too, even though he wanted to tap his foot and impatiently and ask what was so hilarious. He couldn’t be annoyed with Pari, though; he never had been, no matter how different they were. She made coming out of his hermit hole almost easy. And definitely fun. And she kind of got him, in her own weird way -- like right now, when she said, “It’s because the snowman ended up looking like you,” answering his unspoken question. Monty squinted at it, trying to see it, and then he was laughing, too, a short chuckle compared to her continued fit of giggles. “Kinda does,” he agreed, wrinkling his nose. “Hey, do you want to punch it? Since you know, you never got to punch the real me for being a jerk? Because uh...”
Why had he brought that up? It was so stupid, reminding her about the date auction fiasco when she was acting so normal and happy around him right now. But still, his words -- usually so scarce -- seemed to just pour out of him now. “Because I mean, I totally get your friends defending you like that and stuff, but I don’t know -- the only one I care about what they think about me that much is you. So if you think I deserved to get punched, then I don’t know, you should have been the one who got to do it. If you wanted to.” Monty swallowed the lump in his throat; he couldn’t read the look on Pari’s face, and he definitely didn’t know what to say about the silence.
Punch a snowman. So fucking stupid, he told himself again, wondering if Pari wouldn’t rather just leave now. He held his breath, waiting for her answer, and then she surprised him again -- she flashed him one of those stomach-swooping smiles, and said, “Nah. Let’s just try to make one that looks like me now, so they can hang out.” Monty could have hugged her, or maybe even kissed her again... but instead, he just smiled, the heaviness leaving his chest as he knelt down in the snow again and immediately started working on Snow-Pari.
CHRISTMAS / WINTER THEMED MEME .