i.
He smokes; you don't remember him smoking in school, but maybe you just never bothered to notice, too wrapped up in tormenting him for imagined reasons to pay attention to his real vices. Still, the way the cigarette is worried between nimble fingers, the way the tendrils of gray smoke spill from his mouth. You want to be the smoke or you want to be the cigarette. His lips wrap around the filter. This is not a new desire. There's a sense of nostalgia. You remember being sixteen, Sirius offering you a cigarette, how you choked on the acrid taste of it, how you watched his mouth and his hands and wanted them on your skin instead. You are twenty now. Severus does not offer you a cigarette.
ii.
You are the first one to vouch for him after Albus. This is surprising, somehow. Everyone's eyes are on you at the meeting, breath caught, waiting for the punchline, the laughter. You are tired of making jokes and you're tired of fighting him. It makes sense in your head but when you open your mouth nothing comes out right. There's this funny thing about love, this certain look to a man who is trying desperately to fall out of it. It takes one to know one. This is not your secret to tell. Severus's eyes are on you, charcoal eyes, dark eyes. People will do anything to fall in love and they'll do anything to fall out of it. You don't know what he wants. You're afraid it might not be Lily anymore.
iii.
You had this dream once, third year, that you were both in Gryffindor and he was your friend instead of Lily's and everything was happy bright and no one was getting hung up by their ankles or having their mouths washed out with soap. You had this dream once, sixth year, where you pushed him up against the shelves in the restricted section and put your mouth on his mouth, your hips pressed to his hips. There had been disgust and disbelief then, but now you watch him from across the Order headquarters and think I should have, I should have. You want a cigarette, or maybe you just want something in your hands, your mouth. You had this dream where it was Severus.
iv.
There are things you are not supposed to do anymore, but you do them anyway; the rules have never applied to you, so why should they start now? So while Lily is at Marlene's and Harry is being babysat by Albus, you apparate to Spinner's End. You sit at the kitchen table and drink stale tea. He stares at the clock and taps ash into a coffee cup. There is a place you're trying to meet at in the middle but neither of you are prepared to make the first move, to show weakness, to concede defeat, and finally, when you can't stand it anymore, you reach for the curve of his jaw and whisper Severus. He exhales on a shudder and you wish you could bottle that sound up and keep it forever.
v.
You do not trust him to do this. You trust him as a spy and you would trust him on the battlefield but you do not trust him within the confines of his own bedroom. He wants to be held down and you want to hold him down, pour into it all the anger and frustration and hate that's run dry. You bury your face in the pale skin of his neck when he wraps his legs around your waist in a motion far too practiced. He rakes his hands up and down your back, leaves a trail of desperate scratches. You aren't any gentler. Magenta and violet bruises blossom over his collarbones, like flowers. You should bring him flowers. What do people who are in love do? You still don't know.
vi.
Sometimes you think Albus knows. He watches you more closely these days, a show of grandfatherly concern. Sometimes you want to tell him, want to tell Lily, want to tell everyone so your life can stop being a whirlwind of fighting with Sirius over his suspicions of Remus being the spy and lying to your friends about a broken marriage and stealing off to Cokeworth after Order meetings when you're supposed to be at home in Godric's Hollow, safe, in hiding. Severus and Harry are the only good parts these days, the only fixtures you have in your life. You want to believe there's a way to have both of them. You're still trying to meet Severus halfway, still trying to find that place.
vii.
You tell him you love him, just once. You don't mean that, he says, fingers twitching for a cigarette, uncomfortable and uncertain. You try to catch his hands but they slip away. I need you to believe me, please, Severus. He burns himself on the lighter, or maybe he burns you. Don't be stupid, James. If you had a knut for every time someone told you that. You wanted to be a cigarette but every fire has its lifespan and you're burning out, whittled down to the part where his fingers are touching the filter. Another cigarette. How many has he smoked? Can you overdose on nicotine? He blows smoke into the chilled October air and you kiss him on the inhale.