the spaces in between
It starts at Lily's 16th birthday party.
He's drinking champagne and Roxy's telling a joke and he's laughing when he looks over at her time freezes.
Her eyes are smoldering and her mouth is curved into a smirk- or a grin- he isn't quite sure with her, anymore, but then again he's never quite sure with her anymore. Nobody is.
Either way his heart stops for a second or two and it almost physically hurts, how hard it hits him. He hasn't noticed her before- well, he tries to believe he hasn't noticed her before, because a 15 year old girl who is your god sister is not the one you should be picturing when you're having sex with your wife. He refuses to accept that her red hair was never far from his mind. He won't.
She's 16, now. That shouldn't make so much of a difference, but it does. Apparently 16 is just the age his brain thinks is okay, even if she's still 10 years younger and he's known her since she was a kid.
She looks him in the eyes and he knows it's all over. He knows it will never be the same again; he knows that it is coming. And he knows- god, he knows, though he sometimes wishes he didn't- that he needs to prepare.
So he goes home, to his perfect wife and their perfect flat and she takes her hair down and starts talking about maybe children, his job seems steady and the spare room would be a nice nursery, don't you think? And all of the sudden he whirls around and he says it.
After he tells her- his voice cracks all the way through- that they need to get a divorce, he's in love with someone else, and no, she doesn't know her, and yes, he does realize that they're 25 and divorcing and what a mess- after he tells her, he floos to Harry's place. He tells his godfather that he and Vic're splitting, and Harry frowns a small frown and pours him some whiskey. It doesn't really matter, anyways, because Harry isn't the one he came to tell. Not really.
She walks into the kitchen at around 6am, and they're both still sitting with their drinks. Her crazy red hair is up in a bun and her pajama shorts are so small he thinks he might die from how unfair it all is. Her eyes widen when she sees them there, and Harry opens his mouth to tell her- Teddy doesn't know, maybe to go back to bed, maybe that nothing's wrong- but Ted beats him to it.
"Me and Victoire are separating." He near spits it out, and her stupid perfect hazel eyes widen and her stupid perfect face turns into a blank mask. He almost wants to break it, for a second, because it looks so much like porcelain and she makes him so, so angry, but it's gone faster than it came because she's Lily. And fuck, fuck, fuck, he just might love-
"Oh." She says, shrugging. And she returns to her room.
But while she's still standing there- the seconds feel like forever- their eyes meet. And they both know what he really means when he says he's divorcing his beautiful wife and ruining everything he's spent so long building.
Happy 16th Birthday, Lily Luna. It's always been you.
The first year of their thing- the thing they couldn't name, couldn't even think about, the thing they danced around in circles until they were so dizzy they tumbled down- they never kissed on the mouth. There were confrontations, whispered conversations in corners with every reason they just couldn't all around them, and it would happen- her lips would press against his jaw, his teeth would meet her collarbone, her wicked eyes dancing as she touched his wrist and his torment as he pulled his face away from her hair- but it wasn't real. It never lasted any longer than a second or two, even though it felt like forever. For both of them it was a millennium, burned against their eyelids, seared into their minds.
Of course, the year is only about to start. There's a nine month gap that later they will be all too willing to forget.
He hates himself. It is his constant: his flat sucks and his job sucks and he hates himself with a passion. He can't help it, when he's in the shower and she creeps up on him and he can't control it because he wants her in every way imaginable. So he hates himself. His days are spent with counting all the ways he hates himself and all the ways he wants her- that, and avoiding any chance of seeing her like the plague.
She's in her sixth year, now, and it's been around nine months since he realized (oh, god, why) and his divorce is final. Her birthday was last march, and before he notices it's christmastime and she's almost a whole year older. Almost legal, that traitorous part of his brain than wants nothing more than her legs wrapped around his waist and her mouth moaning his name whispers to him. He shoves it away but can't stop the blush from rising to his cheeks and his hair flashing bright red for a moment. Luckily, he's stuck in his cubicle after he fucked up on a mission, and nobody is around to see it, but he almost wishes they would. He wants someone to hate him, because he's so sick of having to do it all himself.
It's Christmas in the Potter-Weasley household, and everything that he put on hold is about to start again.
He floos in around noon. There aren't many people there, yet, and Lily is still asleep, so he has some time to situate himself. Ginny hugs him hard and smiles at him but she looks sad, and Harry claps him on the back even though they saw each other yesterday. Al grins and says something about his healer training and Teddy tries to listen but even when James cracks a joke he has trouble laughing.
Finally- finally- she stumbles in around 1 o' clock, looking as disheveled and glorious as the last time he saw her, and his heart catches somewhere in his throat.
"Lily," he says, and he hopes nobody in the family notices the way his voice sounds about to break.
"Hey, Ted," she breathes back, and he hopes nobody in the family notices the way she sounds so happy that he doesn't know how he's still sitting here and not sweeping her into his arms.
They don't, of course, and he thinks he might have made it out alive till he excuses himself to go to the bathroom and she's there, waiting.
Of course she is. She's always been there, waiting.
He tries to clear his head, because he's feeling a sliver of rationality that he knows will be gone in a second and he thinks he'll want to remember what happens next.
First, he takes her in. She's leaning against the wall, her red curls flowing down, and her hazel eyes are wide open. She's wearing one of his old v-necks, one of the really old ones that he hasn't seen in years, and her neck is so white and exposed except for the golden dusting of freckles across her collarbone- freckles he's been counting for forever- and he feels like a lecherous creep but he can't stop staring. Everything about her is beautiful, and everything about her hurts.
Second, he listens to her speak, trying all the while to pull himself to reality.
"Teddy," she's still so close to a whisper, "You divorced Victoire because of me, didn't you?"
He jerks back like he's been slapped. He may as well have been. It's the truth, of course, but he already hates himself without her reminding him and-
Apparently the desolation in his eyes is confirmation for her, because next he knows she's thrown herself at him and he wants to hug and kiss her so, so badly but he can't and he wants to scream from how unfair it all is.
She presses her lips to his jawbone, then, and he actually sighs out loud. "Lily," he murmurs, "You're 16."
This causes her to pull back, but only slightly. He knows she knew he would react like this. He knows she'll keep on trying. He knows he'll give in, eventually.
He knows she knew, from the time she was 7 and she opened her eyes wide and told him that they would be married one day, that he was hers no matter what he said.
"You're 26." His lovely Lily steps away and smirks. "That's not what's important here, Ted. You're a good person, and that's why you're saying these silly, silly things."
"I'm not," he says. He hopes she doesn't know how much he hates himself, but he also knows that she'll know better than anyone, because he strongly suspects she's just as filled with self-loathing as he is. "I'm a terrible person. The things I think about you, Lil-" He doesn't finish. He doesn't need to.
She has that look in her eyes like she's won something amazing, but she also looks kind of sad, and he doesn't dare dream that she wishes he didn't have to condemn his very existence for loving her.
"10 years," he says finally. She pauses- looks at him carefully-
"9 years, 11 months, Teddy," she breathes. Then Lily Luna Potter is gone, but she'll be back, and he slumps against the wall, utterly defeated.
Teddy's been visiting his sort-of-Uncle Draco since he was 17. Nobody knows, of course- his Aunt Andromeda knew, but she's been dead for nearly 6 years, and he doesn't want to think about that because it makes his chest clench up- but he does.
It's not that Harry isn't an amazing father figure, because he is. Really. He's always been there for Teddy, even when he was a 16-year-old brat who drank too much and slept around and caused far, far too much trouble than he was worth, but this is something even Harry wouldn't be able to accept.
(The thought makes Teddy nauseous.)
He goes to the Malfoy residence, already tipsy off the wine he took a large sip of every time a Weasley glared at him during Christmas dinner. He's stumbling a bit, and ends up knocking over some vase that it takes him an embarrassingly long time to fix, but he sobers up completely when he sees Rose.
She's sneaking out of a room he knows is Scorpius', and he almost drops the vase again when he sees her, but she just holds a finger to her lips, eyes wide, and continues to walk towards the apparition point before disappearing with a small pop. The family had wondered where she had gone off to earlier. He would laugh, but there's a silent agreement there, an I won't tell if you won't tell, and he continues towards the room where he knows Draco's waiting.
When he arrives the older man is already sitting with two glasses of suspicious clear liquid that is definitely not water in front of him and an expectant look on his face. Teddy lets out a choked sigh and falls into the chair, managing to get out the whole story through frantic gulps of liquor, and eagerly awaits the advice he knows will save him, because Draco always has a solution. Always.
He's bitterly disappointed when all he gets is a mild grin and a "That Lily Luna really is a true Slytherin, who would have thought it? I'm impressed.", and he says so, too. The smile drops off Malfoy's face, and what Teddy hears next are the words that he's convinced damned him to his horrible fate.
"I'm sorry, Ted, but you're fucked. Fucked."
So it continues to happen. They push and pull and he keeps on hating himself and keeps on thinking of her when he picks up random women and can't help himself in the shower and he's so close to finding a his balance when she shows up at his apartment.
By this point she's 17, and she's pissed. He can't blame her, really, but that doesn't stop him from fighting back, and their yells would wake his whole apartment building if he hadn't had the foresight to cast a silencing spell. It's no surprise when they collide, even though he's not sure who started it- realistically it was probably her, but he still blames himself for just existing, so he'll later insist that he's the one at fault.
It's all a haze of sweat and pain and flashes of red hair flowing through his fingers like water. She's a biter, and the sickest part of him smirks at this- she always was, even as a toddler- but he's the one who's fucking her into this mattress so hard he knows it has to be hurting. He won't stop, though, can't stop, he's like a man possessed and her shrieks and moans and gasps tell him that she would kill him if he did.
When it's over she lays there while he whispers apologies over and over again, head in his hands. Lily just smirks and tells him he's being stupid before she and launches herself at him again and he forgets what he was saying sorry for.
In the morning, he promises himself, I'll fix it.
(He doesn't. But maybe that's okay.)
A/N: WELL. Here you are. This is my first time writing Teddy/Lily, but I've been a huge fan for a while- I actually spent around 3 days reading every fic about them that looked even okay. I barely took bathroom breaks. It was sad. Really sad. But the point is I love them. I can only hope this is even half as good as the rest of the amazingly talented authors who write for this ship, and more importantly that you, the reader, like it. I was kind of trying to explore some of the more fucked-up aspects of their relationship, but it just turned into craziness. Oh well.