A Talk Between Friends

Author: Aggered
Summary: Lily and James have different definitions of what "friendship" is.
Notes: It's the 28th here, but hey, better late than never, right? Happy birthday, Prongs. Time to get the girl.

"He's not serious, Remus. He can't be."

Remus Lupin idly twirls his quill around his thumb and shrugs, unconcerned about her argument. "He was serious enough two years ago."

"Yes, but it's different now. We're friends now, and we talk, but never about that, so it's obvious he's joking… He's obviously joking, or he'd say it to my face." They have been debating this particular point for the past 10 minutes, so if Lily Evans is starting to get a little impatient, it's understandable. She's desperate for Remus to see where she's coming from, to agree that yes, James's feelings are just a joke, he's not serious, he's just trying to get a laugh out of the crowd by saying the things he's been saying – but Remus sits there so calm and composed with his stupid quill-twirling and maintains his opinion that James Potter's feelings are not just a joke, and that they are very real.

"I've lived with the guy for 7 years, Lily; I know when he's joking," Remus says, all gentlemanly and dignified, and to be honest, Lily wants to stab him with the quill he's twirling because of it.

"Then why can't he say it to my face, Remus?" she sighs, putting her hands on her hips and scowling at the ceiling of the empty Charms classroom. "If he has real feelings for me, then why do they only seem to exist when there's someone around to entertain?"

"Well, to be fair, you haven't exactly been the most welcoming of his feelings in the past," Remus says drily. His tone is the first bit of impatience that he has shown all afternoon. "Can you blame the bloke for disguising them as a joke?"

Lily drops her hands and tries to snatch at an answer. "Well – I, I – shouldn't he – I mean, he should know – we're friends now," she finishes weakly, running a hand over her brow. "We're friends, we should be able to talk about…it. If it exists."

Remus shrugs again, before getting up from his chair and gathering his notes. "Then talk about it," he suggests, once more the voice of calm reason. He starts to stuff his things in his bag. "Talk about it now. He's in the dorm with the others, but I'll clear the rest of them out. Come up in five. And thanks for the notes, Lil."

And before Lily even has a chance to register what he's said, before she even agrees to the terms, before she even agrees period, Remus is gone, has shut the door, and apparently she has an appointment to have a talk with James Potter in five minutes. She thrusts a hand into her bag and grabs at the first thing she touches. "What if I had something to do?" she shouts at the door, and then throws the hairbrush – which, after hitting the door with a satisfying thump, she then hurries to pick up because her hair is a mess and if she has no choice, she might as well look presentable.

When she walks in, he's sitting on the edge of his bed looking confused. He seems to mistake her wary expression as something similar to his confusion and tries to explain. "I have no idea either. Moony came in three minutes ago and told Padfoot and Wormtail to bugger off and then he told me not to move an inch so…" He leans back on his palms and then pats the spot next to him. "You're here to keep me company while I wait, right? How'd that Arithmancy test go?"

Lily tentatively takes a seat. "It went well," she replies, smiling weakly.

The Headboy immediately senses her preoccupation. "Something wrong?" he asks, nudging her shoulder with his. She turns to face him and is struck, not for the first time, by the way she can feel his worry as soon as she meets his eyes. It settles over her, warm and comforting like a blanket, so that every frown that touches his lips is an almost tangible reminder of his concern for her.

It's knowing that he cares for her – at least as a friend – that spirits away the tension in her body. She leans into his arm. "No, nothing's wrong," she says, though she sighs deeply and draws another frown from James.

"Doesn't sound like nothing's wrong," he tells her.

"Nothing's wrong," Lily says, "We just…need to have a talk."

James draws back with narrowed eyes. "A talk," he repeats slowly, as if the word were a particularly nasty insect that he'd found dead in his shoe. Lily tentatively nods, which draws a scowl from him. "Moony," he accuses. "This was Moony's suggestion, wasn't it? Nothing good ever comes out of my mates' suggestions, Lily, you should know this."

She winces. "It wasn't so much a suggestion as a…an order, I guess."

"All the more reason not to listen to him! Listen, I had a peek into the kitchens earlier and the elves were baking some pie, and I think I'd really love some pie right now. I mean, it smelled delicious and I'm rather peckish and dinner's not for another few hours so do you want to pop in and have a bite or – "

"James."

"Yes?"

"We really need to talk."

A heavy sigh. "That phrase never signals anything good, Lil. Right, then. Alright. Go on." He lays back until he's resting on his covers and puts his hands on his stomach, watching the ceiling of his four-poster bed as he waits. He has the slightest wince of anxiety on his face.

"Why do you assume we're going to talk about something bad?" Lily asks, looking over her shoulder to frown at his prone form. She wants to lay a hand over his forehead, erase the unease creasing his brow, but she can't do that without clarifying some things first.

"You wouldn't need to prepare me for good news," James says, and he's pouting now, like a child told to get ready for bed when he was just starting to have fun.

Now Lily's the one doing the sighing. She lays back until they're both looking at the dark red cloth stretched above them. "I don't know if it's good news or bad news, James," she says honestly. "I just had a question. I'm the one waiting for the good news or the bad news, not you."

There's a heavy silence, as thick as the comforter they lay on, except uncomfortable and stifling. Lily turns her head to look at the profile of the seventeen-year-old next to her. He's closed his eyes, but the furrow between his brow hasn't gone away.

"Ask your question," James says quietly. His hand reaches blindly between them for hers.

Lily swallows, her hand involuntarily jerking in his. They're friends, have been friends for months now, but it's the first time he's held her hand. She can't help but feel that this moment is significant and should be savored – except that he's waiting – and also nervous, if the clamminess of his hand is anything to go by. She squeezes his hand.

"Last week, by the lake," she begins haltingly, "with our friends. I made biscuits. You said they were great and I said they were horrible and then you asked me to marry you."

The memory is still fresh: a lovely day, Saturday, with a soft breeze tickling her sun-warmed hair. The seventh year Gryffindors were picnicking by the lake, and she had baked some peanut butter biscuits to nibble on. She was sitting next to the boys on the bank while the other girls cooled off in the shallows, and James had all but nicked their share of the biscuits.

The Marauders complained about his greediness, but James continued to munch on the biscuits. "They're delicious, Lil," he said, on his sixth one.

Lily had gone through three batches of burnt ones before finally settling on the fourth – they were still burnt, but she had run out of time. "I think they're horrible."

"I don't care what you think; I will gladly eat them for the rest of my life when we're married."

Sirius guffawed. "Proposing already, Prongs?" he asked, clapping James on the shoulder.

James grinned. "Yes," he said simply, but without looking at Lily. He dug his hands into the basket and came up with two handfuls of biscuits. Then, leaving behind 3 of his cackling friends and one bemused Lily, he waded into the lake to share.

"I remember," James says now. "They really were delicious."

"Not the point," Lily says. "The point is you asked me to marry you."

"Right."

"And then you walked away."

"Yes."

"So it was a joke."

A pause. Lily sees his lips twitch downward for one millisecond, but then it's gone and he repeats, "So it was a joke."

Another silence. Lily suddenly realizes that even though she said she had a question, she never actually asked one. It's a simple enough question – do you still have feelings for me? – but they're friends now and somehow she finds it harder now to talk to him about their relationship than when she despised him. She licks her lips, suddenly parched. "And two days ago, in the common room – when you said…that…"

When he said he loved her. She was taking her leave of an impromptu meeting with the Gryffindor prefects, clutching her books to her chest and intending on taking a nap. "I'll see you later," she said to them, then turned away.

"See you, sweetheart!" James called out, and before Lily could turn around, he added, "I love you!"

She could hear the smiles in the prefects' voices when they called out their goodbyes after his pronouncement, but was so befuddled she didn't turn around to look or reply. She retreated up to her dormitory and instead of taking a nap had lain awake in bed for three hours, trying to understand what James had meant.

It was a similar scene to the one in which she currently finds herself, except now James is next to her and ready to answer questions – if she could only ask some. "That was a joke too, then?" she asks. Their hands are getting clammy between them, but she holds on all the tighter.

James takes off his glasses and tosses them somewhere above his head. His eyes are still closed when he covers them with his free hand; he hasn't opened them since she started the "talk" he was dreading. "What do you want, Lily? Do you want it to be a joke?" he asks, and the bottom of her stomach drops. What she wants? This isn't about what she wants.

"I don't understand," she says.

"It's a joke if you want it to be a joke."

"If I want it to be a – what, do your feelings depend on mine or something? You can't have feelings of your own?" she asks, and she hears her voice, harsher than she meant it to be, against the silence of the dormitory. He's frowning now, almost scowling, but he still won't look at her, and she hates this James, this serious James, this beaten James.

"My feelings are whatever you want them to be," he says. His voice has risen to match hers.

She sits up, tugs her hand out of his. "I'm not going to decide what your feelings are, James."

Finally he lifts his hand away from his eyes. He squints at her, but doesn't reach for his glasses. She knows he can't really see her from that distance. She scoots backward until she's sitting at his shoulder and he's looking directly up at her face. "Lil," he says. Softly. "We're friends, and I care about you. How I care about you is…your choice."

She shakes her head. "That makes no sense. You're right – we are friends." She touches his shoulder. Softly. "That means that I will accept anything you give me."

"Doesn't mean you'll return it," and the words spill so quickly from his lips that Lily suspects it had been waiting there all along.

Something clicks in her head. "You still have feelings for me," she says, and it's both the question she's been wanting to ask and the answer she's been wanting to hear.

A soft, ragged sigh escapes his lips, like the tiny figure of Hope after Pandora released the evils of the world. "I thought it was obvious," he said weakly. He moves to place his hand over his eyes again, to hide, but she stops him.

"I thought you were joking," she says plainly. She rests their joined hands on his stomach. "I thought you just wanted to make people laugh."

"And you never said anything. I thought you just didn't want to deal with it."

"You're an idiot."

"So you do want to deal with it?"

"Isn't that what we're doing now?"

James has his expression caught between relief and confusion, all pouting lips and raised eyebrows. "I don't know what we're doing now," he admits. "But you're holding my hand, and I think that's a good thing, right?"

Lily smiles, and before he can register what she's doing, she's dropped a kiss on his cheek. When she draws away, the pout is gone, but his eyebrows have climbed even higher. He blinks at her in surprise for three seconds – but then in one single, smooth instant, he's smirking – and his expression of surprise morphs into something infinitely more mischievous.

"Best talk ever," he says, before rising up in one fluid motion and kissing her.

Notes: I'd have written more, but kissing scenes make me feel awkward - especially when I'm writing them. Also, I want to take a nap. Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think.