Title: These Inconvenient Fireworks
Author: andromeda3116/cupid-painted-blind
Rating: T, for drug/alcohol use and one curseword.
Characters/Pairings: Lily, James, Sirius, Remus, cameos from others. Lily/James, all the way.
Summary: She thinks maybe this is what life is supposed to be like — late nights with friends, questionable decisions, and a boy who makes her knees go weak when he smirks. Collection of drabbles spanning a love story. Fifth in the "Common Stories" series, follows "i await a guardian."
A/N: 1. I tried to keep these to exactly 100 words, but a couple are drabbles-and-a-half at 150 because 100 didn't quite encompass the whole bit. And also one is 300 because seriously I have no self control.
2. I really like subverting the Perfect Pure Lily archetype. I think she'd be an impishly adventurous and curious teenager at Hogwarts.
3. Song is Stray Italian Greyhound by Vienna Teng. It fit.
Oh no, not now. Oh, please, not now. I just stopped believing in happy endings, harbors of my own.
oh, if you knew just what a fool you have made me.
.
.
.
Her pride planned it all out: say nothing, walk in, take her usual seat, act collected, forget. The train ride, the funeral —forget.
But moments after she sits down, someone throws an arm around her shoulder and slings himself onto the bench: Sirius Black. She gapes at him. "Are you… all right?"
"Perfect, thanks," he replies cheerfully. "See, we were just walking in," he declares as the other three join her, "and we saw you sitting over here all alone and that simply won't do."
"So," James continues, sitting almost too close, "we're crashing your peaceful breakfast."
"No need to thank us," Sirius finishes, filling his plate.
"Not true," James cuts in, almost serious, "you do need to thank us, just one thing."
"Oh?" she replies faintly.
"Yes," he says firmly. "Smile."
She does, and the darkness lightens a shade.
.
It takes time to shake off the weight of memory, but they help — their humor, their madcap plans, their ongoing internal prank war… She thinks maybe they're friends now.
She's sure they are after she teams up with James to ruin Remus's morning with red dye and congealed salad beside his bed after a drunken night, and positive when she helps Remus retaliate with heavy blocks of blue eyeshadow, bright red lipstick, and resetting his alarm to ten minutes before class.
James comes to lunch, face scrubbed pink, and points at her.
"It is on."
.
She leans over to him in Charms, "Check out Carrie," she whispers, "how much do you think she smoked this morning?"
He snickers. "All the pot," and turns to her with a cheeky grin that makes her glad she's sitting. "Wanna find her stash?"
"And turn it in to the proper authorities, right?" she says, but matches his grin.
"Naturally," he answers immediately, straight-faced. "I am an authority on the marijuana, you know. I've seen that movie and everything."
Flitwick demands that she stay after class for bursting out laughing in the middle of his lesson.
.
In the seventh year boys' dorm, illicit drugs and working on getting drunk. She feels so alive.
"What we really need," she proclaims, "is a tape of that old movie. You know, so we know how our futures are gonna go."
Sirius snorts. "No, no, no, we need a projector, show it to the whole school. Our good deed for the year."
"We could use the karma," Remus says sagely. "I really wouldn't appreciate reincarnating as a cockroach in the next life."
"Nah," Lily counters, tossing a candy wrapper at him, "you won't reincarnate as anything worse than a house-cat in a loving family. You're too nice."
"Me?" Sirius declares, raising his glass in a toast, "I am completely fucked in the next life."
"I have nothing comforting to say to that," Lily replies. "You're absolutely right."
She dodges the beer bottle he throws.
.
She wakes up the next morning with a hangover she doesn't regret, in James' bed; he's sleeping on the floor. Judicious application of eye makeup hides the dark circles, and when she looks at James, she offers to give him a little, so the professors don't get too suspicious. He thinks about it for a moment, looking at the foundation warily, and then at his reflection.
"Yeah, okay," he whispers, "just don't tell them, they'll never let me live it down."
Except Sirius walks in halfway through, looks in the mirror, pauses, and asks if she'll do him too.
.
The greenhouse: a repeat lesson, planting the puffapods that everyone else messed up, so the task has fallen to them. The ground is littered with flowers where seeds have fallen; she and James are the only ones who step around rather than on them.
"Why do you care so much?" Sirius asks, and takes great care to step on one right in front of her. She scowls.
"They're beautiful. I don't like seeing beautiful things get hurt."
James is the only one who drops his puffapod. He hands the flower to her with a smile and a wink.
.
She thinks maybe this is how life is supposed to be — late nights with friends, questionable decisions, a boy who makes her knees go weak when he smirks. She doesn't want to lose this; she doesn't want to lose him. Her emotions are deadly and lovely and wonderful and exhilarating and powerful and terrible and intoxicating.
The first night it snows, she and James are the only ones awake, and she drags him out into it. The way he looks at her when she twirls in the snowflakes makes her thoughts slow down, and then he takes her hand and dances with her to the music he's set in her blood. It's clumsy, because neither of them can dance, but the steps don't matter; it's just motion and the sense of touch.
They stay out until it's too cold for her pull away. It only because she's cold, she lies to herself.
.
She doesn't have anywhere to go for Christmas, and the thought of the holiday crushes something inside of her; it's been three months, but she still hates thinking about it.
And then he invites her to spend it with his (their, right?) group. They're getting so close now, she's falling for him, a terrifying and breathless feeling, and spending Christmas with him is dangerous. She wastes time considering it although she already knows she'll spend forever regretting it if she refuses.
"All right," she tells him, and he smiles.
Her heart beats loud in her ears.
.
She isn't sure what she expected from Mrs Potter; she knew his family was rich, so she expected the estate, but she didn't expect to be greeted with a cheerful smile and a massive bear hug. "I've heard so much about you," she says softly.
"Really?" Lily asks faintly, although it's hardly surprising. "All good, I hope?"
"Mostly," Mrs Potter replies, with the cheeky grin she passed on to her son. "Make yourself at home, dear. James is an only child, and now that Thomas is gone, it's usually just me here — " but it doesn't sound like self-pity, just like it's a simple fact "— so I always tell James to bring everyone over when he comes. It's nice to see a new face this year, especially such a lovely one. You'll be here for Easter, yes?"
Oh god, Lily thinks, eyes locked on Mrs Potter's. She knows.
.
Christmas is more anxious than excited. Her pockets are depressingly empty, so the gifts she's gotten the boys (and Mrs Potter because she would feel like a terrible guest if she didn't) are either cheap or handmade, but she tried to make them nice. Lily almost forgot how to have friends over that awful sixth year, and she's worried that they haven't really accepted her yet.
She gets to the tree in the dawn silence and, for a second, feels horribly alone. But then Mrs Potter bustles in with a platter of hot cocoa and peppermint candy canes and she's so cheerful that it startles Lily into a smile.
"Just you wait, love," she says knowingly, handing Lily a mug. "The best part of a Potter Christmas is about to come up."
"Is it?" she asks, glancing around for some grand spectacle.
Instead, Sirius crashes in from the stairs with a harassed twitch in his eye, followed by a disheveled and staggering James, a nodding-off and tripping Peter, and finally, after several more minutes, a bundle of shuffling blankets that, by process of elimination, must be Remus.
It's a parade of zombies dressed in Christmas pajamas. It's fantastic.
"Why does Christmas have to start so early?" Sirius whines, and James crashes into the seat beside her, almost making her spill her drink.
"If you spill my hot cocoa just after I've got the candy cane all melted," she threatens coolly, "I'm going to hurt you."
"Ah, Lils," he says, sleep-drunk, and slings an arm over her shoulder, leans in close to whisper, "Save the kinky stuff for the bedroom, yeah?"
"You are just dying to get hexed in the face."
He smirks; she rolls her eyes; Mrs Potter grins.
.
The Christmas she's been dreading comes out wonderful. Everyone seems to love her gifts, and she's amazed at all the presents for Lily.
"If you hadn't come," James explains, looking away from her, "we were gonna send them all anonymously, drown you in presents."
"Well now I'm sorry I missed that," she replies, and he snickers. "Really, though," she says slowly, "you didn't have to do all this."
He finally looks up, confused. "Why not?"
She can't come up with an answer, and for a frozen, ringing moment, James just watches her like he's hurt. She turns away this time.
.
"I don't understand," he's saying on the other side of the door, "how she can think she doesn't deserve — "
"James," Mrs Potter says lightly. "She's had a rough time. You said she seemed sad and kind of lonely… that changes how you see yourself."
"But — I — " he starts, and her breath catches in her throat; she remembers the kitchens, the rest of the sentence she ran from hearing, but he hesitates and maybe changes his mind or was never going to say it at all. "She's — "
"James," his mother repeats, "it's nothing she can't heal from. She's not broken," she says, "just scared."
"I don't want her to be afraid of me," he replies, almost too quiet to hear.
The words almost fly out of her mouth, but she catches them in time: I'm not. It suddenly strikes her that it's true.
.
It's dark, cold, and everything but lonely in the quiet snowfall. She has a Riesling, he has a Merlot, and the warmth she's feeling has nothing to do with wine. Their conversation is more bitter than sweet, and illuminating; it's too dark for any sense but touch, so he's close enough that she hears his heart beating loud and fast, and she's finally seeing him.
"To the future," James declares, and they drink; "To the past," Lily counters, and they drink; "To any time but now," James mutters, and he drinks without Lily.
"To right now," she whispers, and kisses him.
.
It isn't bliss: they argue and challenge each other and learn each other, the dark shades in their personalities, things they always hide. It's not perfect, but she's never wanted sterile perfection.
It feels like she's been coming to this for years, and maybe she has.
It feels like the calm before the storm, and maybe it is.
It feels like he's all she has left to believe in; it feels like the deck is stacked against them; it feels like nothing good will come of the future —
except that this moment might last.
.
.
.
But you had to come along, didn't you? Rev up the crowd, rewrite the rule book.
where do I go when every no turns into maybe?