James Potter goes out of his way to ask Lily Evans for a good luck kiss before every Quidditch match. He made the team in second year, still stinging with resentment for the rule that will not allow first years to play, and with every practice his head swells full of praise. He is the best Chaser the school has seen in years. He is incredibly talented for a twelve-year-old.
He is not many things.
Yet he asks Lily to kiss him ceaselessly. The first time was shy and a little hesitant, with the immature tenderness of a toddler chasing a butterfly, but now he is brash and all of Gryffindor cheers him on enthusiastically. They await her acidic refusal with catcalls and can't understand why she won't go out with him.
Sometimes Lily can't, either. Lately this occurs more frequently than is wise.
"Would you care to orally wish me good luck, Evans?"
"Certainly, Potter. Have a nice goddamn match."
He still accepts her rejections with some odd sort of grace, though it's becoming more obvious to her that each one pains him. But Quidditch players are not allotted time to grieve, and since she's made a habit of not supporting his cause, she doesn't feel much sympathy. So he saves his sighing for the precious, few, tired moments before he sleeps, and sometimes if they're the only ones awake at five in the morning she can see a dry crust round one eye that might have been a tear.
They remain silent as the ghosts of his fears at these times, and when he steals these moments she wonders restlessly why he lets her see his maybe-tears. Anyway, the spineless neither of them say nothing to confront the other about it. They don't think to, they're only teenagers.
She begins to crumble and her cold resolve begins to collapse when she becomes Head Girl in their seventh year. Through no especially upstanding talent of his, he is Head Boy too. At first Lily fails to understand. Many do.
Many do.
Gradually, however, she sees where he is changed. How his shiningly handsome wand (made of mahogany, he tells her) remains in the deep pocket of his robes instead of flashing out curses in the hallways. How he doesn't ruffle his hair so much anymore, to the degree where it happens to become somewhat endearing. How he cracks open a textbook every now and then. How he abstains from what used to make him happy.
How he doesn't ask for her cherry red kisses any longer.
She is surprised but not a little flattered to find she is the cause. His cause. She flips her hair absentmindedly, but more for something to do than not. What witty reply can she summon up from the dredges of her shame now? How can she answer the love he's bitingly offered up to her? She can't return it, at least not properly, not yet.
But she finds that maybe those kisses she hasn't given him could have been tokens of her faith, which was, until now, lacking. Somewhere he fills the empty and cold reserves of her, and she still doesn't love him, but she thinks she can try. She will try. So she decides on a crisp and cool and drizzly November morning, the beginning of the season (which should signify something, she thinks), she decides that she can start with those lingering kisses that she has long owed him.
Lily chooses the reddest, most succulent, most brilliant lip gloss she can find, from borrowing or stealing because she doesn't have one of her own yet (she'll let James buy her one soon, once she kisses him). She does not take much care in the actual application because today's objective isn't to keep it intact.
She wakes up early with a handful of elaborate and entirely fabricated excuses but as it turns out, she doesn't need them. James isn't up yet. So she trips down the staircase to breakfast, with what could possibly become a light heart. She manages to saw through a piece of toast but the taste dies in her throat.
She licks her lips, nervously savors. She thinks she tastes rather good, but she'll have to ask James for his opinion.
After breakfast everyone leaves. She follows them, smothered by her friends alternately bitching about the rainy weather and poorly attempting to cheer her up. She doesn't need their cheering up, and she doesn't need to be cheered up anyway!
When she manages to lose her way and then find it in the boys' locker rooms he is the only one there. There is almost forty minutes before the game, so of course none of the other male teammates are present, which is all to the good, she tells herself.
"I've come to wish you good luck," she says. She berates herself for sounding so breathless. She sounds as if some childish girlfriend dared her to come here.
She almost didn't come at all.
"Thank you." He looks up to give her the benefit of a smile. It's weak though (she has no idea why), and its usual dazzling effect is not in place, and it doesn't calm Lily's nerves, which by now are snapping.
She sighs in frustration, "Well, are you going to allow me to wish you a good match?" Her voice crackles. She tells herself it'll just be one kiss and then it's over with.
Confused. "I thought you already did, Lily."
"No, no, I mean—well, don't you remember? Don't you remember second year?" A pause. Shit shit shit. "No, I suppose not. Well you're not making this any easier."
He shakes his head, pulls his scarlet and gold robes over his tousled jet hair. There is a rather intimidating lion emblazoned across his chest. "I haven't the foggiest idea imaginable about what you're saying." He begins to walk outside, onto the pitch, underneath the sea of umbrellas obligingly tipped toward his head. He bellows for his truant men (the girls are in their locker, of course, primping for no reason at all).
Lily follows him, gets her hair wet. She is angry now, angry with herself for being this stupidly and self-importantly presumptuous, but truthfully angrier with him for not jumping at the chance. He's already been jumping for years, hasn't he!
"You mean you don't remember all those times you asked me to kiss you? And here I am, ready to wish you good luck and you don't know what I'm talking about?"
He peers at her (the crowds begin to as well, leaning in the direction of the noise she is making). Sheepishly, "Well, I do now."
"So aren't you going to kiss me, then?" she blurts, stabbing the lion with the pad of her index finger.
Now he is startled by her willingness, but even as he asks he shyly, haltingly closes the space between them and catches her fingers with his own. He has returned to chasing butterflies, though for once, thankfully, he doesn't need a net. "Do you want me to?"
Lily is nearly exploding. The dizziness in her head has made her sick from wanting to kiss him and now he has to ask her whether she truly wants to. So she neatly finishes the job by loosing her fingers from his warm grasp and seizing his collar and propelling his lips to hers.
She told herself it was only one kiss and it would be done with rather quickly, but as it happens, there is more than one kiss and it does not end in a hurry. The dizziness has prudently left her head and seeks to stoke the flames somewhere else. Somebody, some damn blessed idiot, moved the huge umbrella so that the spectators waiting for a match could see. Somehow she ends up in midair, as he's lifting her up with strong arms around her waist. She leans down (but not much, he is tall) and laughs so he can taste her breath, too.
Not quite ready to pull away, Lily gently bites his lips again to catch one last vestige of cherry or apple whatever it is that she applied that morning that's all over his mouth. It doesn't matter, though, because she doesn't need lip gloss for him to want to claim her unique taste again (though maybe not in such a spectacular manner). She wipes his lips with his sleeve, which is already crimson.
They share a secret smile, still wrapped around each other in arms and knots that will not come undone when everyone who can see and everyone who just saw spontaneously bursts into applause.
She retreats to the stands so he can't see her blushing. "You better win the goddamn match, James."
He allows his teammates to thump him on the back as he looks after her and sniffs his sleeve.