One shot from James's POV. Not all arguments have happy endings. Enjoy.
Gods damn her FUCKING pride.
I watch her packing things into boxes. Random muggle things, all stowed neatly in boxes, the muggle way. I want to pick everything up and throw it. That is what this woman does to me. I sink onto a chair in front of the desk in her tiny bedroom in Cokeworth with a frustrated, angry noise. Lily turns around and glares at me like she's never glared at me before, and then turns around to pack another box. Ice shards are in her irises; they cut me to shreds and make me more combative. The more I'm losing a battle, the harder I fight. I'm an idiot that way. Red-blooded Gryffindor.
She's all pointed hips and tangled hair. It's late, or early, and neither of us have slept. I feel words boiling up in me like scalding bile. I spit them out.
"Lily, I don't want you living on your own in muggle London," I spit. It sounds acidic and possessive. A dragon on its hoard, breathing fire.
The sound of the heavy book slamming to the bottom of the box hits the ears like a cannon blast. She spins around in a gunpowder haze of indignation and fury. Her hair is a red battle flag flashing in the dimly lit room, and her face is fixed in stone, carved like a monument to her cause.
"Well that's just too fucking bad, because that's where I'm living. By myself." The words are laced with venom as green as her eyes. The tone phosphoresces and burns and stings in blazing technicolor. By herself. My eyes narrow even as my heart breaks. The breaking just makes me more angry.
"You could just move into my house, Lily. It'd be closer, and safer, and I wouldn't have to fucking worry about you every minute of the goddamned day," I growl, staring her down with my arms folded over my chest.
I hear her crumple newspaper around some bauble or other from her armoir. "Nobody asked you to worry," she spits, her face toward the window instead of me. I can see her reflected in the glass against the night. Even in my anger, I can't help but notice the gap in her neckline. The swell of her small breasts makes me ache. I'm tense all over, and she can't move by herself to London.
"Lily, they are killing muggleborns out there for FUCKING SPORT," I rage at her, standing to pace, stalking around the edge of the bed like some tethered carnivore. "They'll pick you off in a moment, and I won't always be there-"
"There are defenses already in place, James. Stop being such a fucking PRAT about this. I want this chance," she says, whirling on me, all thoughts of packing forgotten.
She is not a flower. She might be named for one, but she's not a flower. She's not the thorns either. She is raw, crackling, and consuming. Every hair on my body stands on end from the sheer force of her ire. All barely contained in a slim package of alabaster flesh: straight lines, blue veins, bony elbows, acute cheekbones. I marvel at and despise this force of nature, because I am eclipsed by it.
"And I want you to be SAFE. What the fuck is wrong with that?" I bluster, thoroughly aware that I am losing this fight. But I will storm the hill with the troops I have left, because I committed to this. The sacrifice play. That's me. "There's this thing called APPARITION, Lily. You could just do THAT to get to work in the mornings, and make it home in ONE FUCKING PIECE every night!"
"WHAT THE FUCK GOOD IS SAFE?" She yells. Her voice is rasping, bleeding, razor-sharp clarity. I might as well be arguing with myself, because my own inner voice has been turned on me, full fucking force.
I fall into a broiling silence, still pacing. She lashes out with her tapering fingers and plucks a shirt out of a drawer as though she were plucking the eye out of a toad for a potion, tossing it onto the box. I half expect to see steam rise from it.
"What the FUCK good is SAFE, James?!" Lily continues, a little more softly, dangerously, her lips tightening like a bowstring. She nocks another arrow and lets fly. "I might NEVER get this chance again, so I'm grabbing it. With BOTH HANDS. Nothing in this world is safe anymore. Nothing is sacred."
She's wrong, because she is church; she is hallowed ground. Ground I am treading on in wrath and greed, because I want her to consume my sins and baptize me in fire, and I want her to redeem no one else.
"This could be the ONE chance I get to do something on my own, James," she hisses. "The ONE chance. Maybe I'll fuck it all up and you'll get your own way, but until that day arrives, I want to do this!"
"What the hell happens when they find you? They KNOW who you are, Lily, they KNOW. You KNOW that Snape has told them about us. I've been nothing but a pain in the ass to them as an Order member. What happens when they come after YOU to get to ME? I will fucking die before I let them take you, and I don't want that to happen!" My voice sounds foreign in my ears; angry, and sad, and afraid. Fear. What a foreign thing it is.
"Leave him the HELL out of this. James, I am MORE than competent. In fact, I might be more capable at magic than you are," she says pointedly, jamming the barb in. No matter how much I pretend it doesn't bother me, it sometimes secretly galls me that she's better at magic than I am. And she is, no doubt about it. But I am still storming this hill with all the wounded I have. "That's WHY I got this opportunity in the fucking FIRST place," she finishes, those eyes flashing at me, a green poison that I'm all too happy to die for, but not to concede to.
This job at St. Mungo's. I know she wants it, and I want it for her. But she's insisting on living on the fucking front lines. She'll be the rabbit living by slipping through snares.
"I won't lose you, Lily," I say. "I refuse. And I really think this is a terrible idea."
"And it very well might be," she snaps back. "But I'm willing to risk that. Because I want to taste life on my terms. NOT on yours, or some Death Eater's, or ANYONE else's."
She's hoisted the banner, slung that red silk over her shoulder and defended her rise with oaths and volume, and with her fists on her hips. She's waving it like a victory flag, but this isn't done.
"Why is it that you are so hell-bent on NOT living with ME?" I ask. Some of the anger seeps out and guilt creeps in to fill the void. This is an unchivalrous shot, but didn't she just say she could fucking take it? Well, let her have at. "I LOVE you. I want you near me. Why don't you want that?"
"I DO fucking want that, James, I DO. But NOT right now. We've only been together since CHRISTMAS, for fuck's sake. I'm NOT about to run off and marry you right this second. I want to have a LIFE."
Silence. Blistering silence. It rings through the room, and carries right through the universe I'm living in like the shockwave of some massive, collapsing star. I can't breathe. Anger is choked out by confusion, and hurt, and resentment. She's right. Damned, fucking right, and I don't even care, because I love her so much it's agony.
"Well fuck me, Evans. Tell me how you REALLY feel." I can feel myself going red from emotion. I watch her face change from anger, to shock, to remorse. Too fucking late for that.
Since the world is in smoldering ruins anyway, I kick a box to vent my feelings on my way out her bedroom door. For a first real, adult fight, this is pretty shit. I mean yeah, we've had our disagreements, and we've argued a bit, but this, this is a fight. This is a laceration that will take time to heal.
I can hear her coming down the stairs.
"James-" she starts. Her voice is frail now, brittle, like it might split.
"Lily, I just- I need some fucking space right now, ok? I'm leaving."
Even with my back to her, I can almost see her dissolve, salt into water, washed away up on some distant shore.
"I'll… please, don't… Please send me a note to let me know you got home safe."
It stings. It burns. There will be no apologies tonight. We're both too raw, and nothing we say will do anything but chafe in the tenderest spots. But we're still here. We still care. I still care.
Damnit.
"I will," a say roughly, before shouldering my way out the front door. It slams bodily behind me, severing my contact with her like snipping a lifeline, lost at sea.
I know she's moving to London, and there is nothing I can say that will stop her. If there was, I wouldn't love her half so fucking much, immovable, infuriating woman that she is. I sigh in the warm July air. It clings and sticks, and makes me even more irritated. I kick the garden gate open. The light goes out in her window behind me. I can feel her there, sitting in the dark, smoldering, sobbing, breathing.
We'll weave another tie to bind us.
But not tonight.