Designated Driver
By RD
Remus smokes around the back of the Quidditch pitch.
"Filthy, disgusting habit," says Lily, leaning over to pluck the cigarette from his long, delicate fingers. He flinches when her blood-red painted nails scrape the air against his skin. "The worst part of it is that we poor impressionables take after you, because you're the sensible one. Always the designated driver."
Remus doesn't understand. Lily likes to pass him sly muggle quips every so often, just to remind him she knows more than him.
Lily breathes out the tiniest dramatic sigh, and says, "You'll kill the children of course," and Remus doesn't know whether this means she is pregnant or she is talking about Sirius and James. Instead of thinking about it, he watches her drops of sarcasm condense in the winter air.
Lily brushes the flames of her hair behind her ear, then tucks the cigarette in the gap left. She leans over and kisses Remus. She breathes smoke into his mouth. He doesn't think he likes it much, when the smoke is second hand. Remus puts his hands in his pockets as they are kissing. Lily's body is turned away from him.
Then it is finished. Lily twists the cigarette back between Remus' slightly redder lips.
"Want to make out in the common room tonight?"
Remus shrugs. He thinks of his Transfiguration essay lying blank on his bed. He thinks of promising James to explore the Hufflepuff corridor for the Map. He thinks of Sirius and Sirius in his bed last night and Sirius asking the same question. He wonders why he does it.
Lily frowns at him and tries not to pout, and fails. "It's not like you have to choose me over him. This is just a thing."
Remus doesn't know what 'a thing' is classified as. He wonders if 'a thing' even really exists.
"But what would you do, if you had to choose?"
Remus shrugs again, more half-heartedly this time, and only really with one shoulder. He takes such a deep drag on his cigarette that he chokes, then drops the stub onto the well-trodden mud, damp and thick with cold.
Remus does not make out with Lily in the common room that night. She doesn't wait up for him.
And Remus starts smoking below the window ledge of the charms room instead.