Author's Note: Hey guys, it's a third chapter for you! After I post this I am taking a short break from this story to update Potterella and one of my older fics because they need some attention, so I hope this one will be enjoyed. It has definitely been the most fun to write so far.
I've been getting such a strong reaction to this story, which is really strange and hilarious. People have even sent me emails, which rarely happens. I don't normally like answering questions about my fics while they're being written but in answer to Kapow (who I couldn't reply to personally because he/she didn't sign in! Sadface!), nope, Lily was never raped and James, Sirius, Remus and Peter don't hide their identities - there's a reason why but I can't explain it until later on in the story, same with how they all got their powers.
As for Peter's mask, he only wears it because he thinks it looks cool. Boys, eh?
CHAPTER THREE
"Why are you not pregnant?"
The question was thrown at Lily with a vengeance from across an impossibly modern glass desk in an office on the top floor of a building that was smack bang in the centre of the wealthiest part of the city; the main building for the Metropolitan News. The desk itself was mostly hidden beneath stacks and stacks of papers, shopping bags, framed photographs of its owner posing with tanned Hollywood teen idols, randomly scattered cosmetics, and two little plastic tubs of salad. In spite of how Lily's natural instincts to make everything pristine howled with rage from within, even she had to admit that this was pretty tidy for MçKenzie Rhae.
MçKenzie was a very busy woman nowadays. When she wasn't reporting for the news she was writing articles for two different newspapers, appearing on weekly radio and television segments, flying abroad to interview famous people or having yet another rendezvous with the Marauders. Lily had even heard it told that her friend was writing a biography of the four of them, but she just hadn't the stomach to ask her about it and hear her reply in the affirmative, especially not while she was eating.
"MçKenzie," she said, holding her fork aloft as she regarded her friend with bewilderment. "Stop questioning my fertility while I'm trying to eat my salad."
"It's not your fertility I'm questioning," said MçKenzie with a wounded look on her face, and pouted at her tomato slices. "I thought you'd had sex, it was joyous news. I was going to have a plaque made commemorating the date you lost your V-card."
"I already lost my V-card," Lily reminded her wearily. "As you very well know."
"Pish," MçKenzie waved her point away with her perfectly manicured hand. "Brian doesn't count, besides, it's been so long that your vagina has probably forgotten and re-sealed itself."
"Please, don't say vagina while I'm eating."
"Fine, I'll call it your Kevin."
"….. Kevin, MçKenzie? Really?"
"Not that Brian was ever all that memorable anyway," she continued to babble, and then sighed. "Your poor Kevin probably forgot all about him on purpose."
"Oi!" Lily threw her napkin at her friend. "Enough, I don't need to be reminded of the follies of my rash and stupid youth, okay?" Brian was on hand to remind her of those too much as it was, she didn't need her friends jumping on the bandwagon. "Also, what are you so worked up about? I never told you I'd had sex with anybody, you made that up on your own."
"It was implied with the double whammy vajayjay appointments," MçKenzie insisted, waggling her fork at Lily whilst simultaneously checking her teeth out in the large, light-up cosmetic mirror that she inexplicably brought to her office with her every morning. "Nobody goes twice in one week unless they've caught something in coitus."
"You're implying that a baby is a sexually transmitted disease?"
"It's a sexually transmitted pain in the ass, same thing. Ooh, these tomatoes are yummy."
"Your tomato addiction baffles me, Kenzie," said Lily airily, picking up a nail file that lay wedged beneath a pile of magazines. She had noticed the night before that her nails were in need of some tender loving care when she was in the car, and considering the conversation that had gone on between she and her ex-boyfriend, that discovery was probably the only useful thing that had come out of the entire evening.
"Your addiction to celibacy baffles me," Kenzie retorted, munching on tomatoes with gusto. "You better hurry up, Lillers, the men are dying out fast."
"Don't I know it," said Lily dryly, rolling her eyes. "I should pick some bloke at random and gobble him up before somebody else does."
MçKenzie wasn't being metaphorical, and Lily wasn't either. Over the past few months, six men from the city, all of whom were around the same age and of similar appearance, had been reported missing by their families, and the searches that had been conducted by the police, the volunteers, the Marauders and even Lily herself had mysteriously proven fruitless. That was until just a week ago, when a woman walking her dog in the suburbs had happened upon, not one body, but an entire pile lying together in a ditch. All six men were discovered in varying states of dismemberment with organs removed and bite marks where chunks of flesh were missing, as if they had literally been eaten alive. The newspapers had had a field day printing stories about a Man-eater prowling the street and an investigation had been launched, but there hadn't even been a shred of DNA evidence to go on. Whoever or whatever had killed those men had covered their tracks wisely.
It wasn't particularly classy to make jokes about it, but Kenzie brought that side out of her.
"That's my girl. Aaaaand," said Kenzie, brightening up quite considerably. "If you need any help in becoming a man-eating femme fatale, aside from my considerable experience, I'm going out for dinner with Bella on Friday night and she told me to invite whoever. You're whoever, so you're coming."
"I might actually be busy on Friday," Lily immediately lied. She wasn't at all fond of Bellatrix Black, but Kenzie absolutely loved her. The woman was a combative, entitled princess who looked down her nose at everybody, even people of a higher social standing. Her younger sister Andie was a darling and her youngest sister Narcissa was a little bit sweet when she needed to be, but Bellatrix was a raging shrew who thought she was a cut above just because she was a model, of all things. Lily would have gone out on a date with Captain Spectacular before she went to dinner with Bella Black. "We have to take inventory at the shop; and I've got orders to fill, I might have to stay late that evening and then Mary's having her boyfriend over and she can't cook but she wants to make him dinner, so I said I'd..."
"The financial year ended in September so you already did stocktake, Mary's a fabulous cook, and you're coming," said MçKenzie flatly, tossing her thick, dark hair over one shoulder and pursing her glossy red lips. "Mary too, she can bring Eddie along if she wants, he amuses me. You both missed my rally so you can make up for it now."
"Kenzieee," Lily whined like a baby. "Why can't you take Pedro?" Pedro was one of two of MçKenzie's Spanish boyfriends; she had a thing for stringing men along, particularly those of Mediterranean roots. "Better yet, why don't you and Pedro take a holiday to Valencia and tan?"
She heard something strange buzzing in her ear all of a sudden, but dismissed it as her imagination; she had had to resign herself to not listening out for danger during her work hours.
"I do love to tan," MçKenzie sighed, giving the very last slice of tomato a sad look before chomping it down. The strange buzzing in Lily's ear got a little louder. "But Pedro's not talking to me because I took Antonio to that breast cancer research charity ball thing last week when Pedro's mother had breast cancer and he thought I was being insensitive, or some such stupid shit. He'll get over it, and I don't care if he does, I can just give Antonio a call and have him come over and take me to..."
The rest of whatever she was saying trailed off into nothingness; Lily was no longer listening to MçKenzie, her attentions had just been caught by something utterly horrifying.
Her hearing may have been a thousand times better than they average person, but Lily was fortunate in that this was only a selective process because she would have been forced to suffer from a constant migraine otherwise. She could ignore sounds at will, so although her ears were almost always pricked for screams of terror or cries for help, and sometimes those cries came from so far away that it physically hurt her head to pick up on them, for the most part she could hear things happen like any regular person, with a small few exceptions.
One such exception had just entered the building.
It wasn't a voice that Lily particularly enjoyed hearing and so she simply couldn't understand why she could always immediately pick up on it without fail when he was in the vicinity, nor could she understand why it refused to stop ringing in her ears until she was far, far away from him. It was upsetting, but not as upsetting as the knowledge that he was clearly in the building right now and, judging by the increase in volume as each second passed, moving ever closer to the top floor.
"Lily?" said MçKenzie, not remotely concerned, but annoyed because Lily clearly wasn't paying attention. "You're doing that thing again, where you-"
"Voice my inner monologue?" she interrupted her, just to shut her up, so focused was she on listening to the voice that was steadily drifting closer.
"No," said MçKenzie. "The other thing, where you-"
"Stare at nothing in particular like a lunatic," Lily interrupted her again, and then blinked erratically several times, as if doing this would somehow make her appear less psychotic. "Got it."
"Are you going to explain why you're doing it, or is this a guessing game?" MçKenzie continued to cut in on her listening and was rudely shushed by Lily who, after another couple of seconds, correctly guessed exactly what fate was just about to befall her.
"That moron is in the building, isn't he?" she whispered to MçKenzie as quietly, yet as angrily as she could, acutely aware that if she could hear Captain Arsehole, he could probably hear her, should he be the sort of fellow to eavesdrop on conversations going on around him. Knowing her luck, he probably was. "You've got a meeting with him today, don't you? He's coming here, isn't he? I'm going to have to meet him in person, aren't I?"
"What?" MçKenzie started blankly at her friend as Lily half-rose out of her seat and immediately started stuffing the last of the salad into her mouth with haste, because she was starving, and she didn't want to have to stop and buy another salad on the way back to work just because she had been scared away from lunch by a foolhardy superhero and his gigantic ego. "He won't be here for another ten minutes, relax!"
"Shush! He'll hear! You lied to me!" Lily continued to hiss like an angry snake, more for dramatic effect than anything else. MçKenzie was always trying to introduce the Marauders to Lily and Lily was always backing out at the last minute, unwilling to meet them as herself but also unwilling put them down too harshly in front of the girl whose career they had help to kick-start. She had only ever run into the idiots during a handful of her vigilante exploits, never while she was walking around in the everyday world as herself, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. If he recognized her voice or even picked up on something in her general demeanour that reminded him of her masked alter-ego, she'd be utterly done for, and he would harass her about it until the day she died.
"Seriously, Lily," MçKenzie repeated lazily, picking up a magazine and leafing through it. "He's not due in until two, it's only ten to. Did you read my appointment book when I went to the loo or something? If you did I'm a little bit freaked out by the super delayed reaction."
"No, idiot girl." Having polished off all of the salad that she could stomach in such a small amount of time, Lily swung her handbag over her shoulder and chewed on her lip as she surveyed her friend's desk to see if she had left anything there. He was undoubtedly going to appear at that door in a matter of seconds. "I have asshole radar, okay?"
"Is that it?" asked MçKenzie, quirking one eyebrow upwards as she perused an article about The Best Pair of Jeans for You. "Why'd you still talk to Brian, then?"
Lily stopped in her tracks, and dropped her handbag back on the desk.
"You never mention Brian this much in conversation," she pointed out, quite correctly. "Did Mary tell you about our row in his car last night, and if so, why didn't you kick her ass for betraying one of the oldest and most sacred rules in the friendship bible?"
"Thou shalt not let my friends have sex with French guys because they're icky?"
"Thou shalt not spill secrets, Kenzie!" Lily would have stomped her foot in frustration had she not been scared to put a hole in the floor - normally she could have managed it with relatively human force, but her nerves were shot to ribbons. "And what on earth is wrong with French guys? Did you know that it's customary in France for red headed women to be treated with great resp -"
"Um, hello?"
The voice came from behind her all of a sudden, and even though she had known it was coming, she still nearly jumped out of her skin with fright, entirely unprepared to go through with meeting this imbecile. She wondered if Kenzie had planned for this to happen.
"Oh, hi," said MçKenzie, cocking her head to the side as she surveyed her new guest. Lily still hadn't turned around, she couldn't, lest she go bright red or explode with anxious laughter or simply lose her head and kill the guy straight out, which probably would have been a difficult task to accomplish, given the circumstances. "You're early."
"Sirius set my watch forward an hour, I thought I was late." He was talking, of course, about Sirius Black, also known to the people of the city (even Lily, who couldn't have given two shits about famous people) and almost exclusively to the rest of the world as Black Bachelor. "Am I interrupting something?"
"No, no, it's fine," said Lily quickly, who could now delay the moment no longer without appearing completely psychotic, and spun around on her heel to face him, like ripping a Band-Aid from a wound with haste. "I didn't know you were coming, I'll just g-"
The very moment Lily turned around, looked at him, and actually caught his gaze properly, his eyes widened in what must have been surprise and he stared at her, just stared, dumbstruck and slightly open-mouthed, which was weird as it was, but for absolutely no reason whatsoever she realized after a moment or two that she was doing the exact same thing, and gawking at him.
She could only assume that he figured out who she really was in a heartbeat, and was therefore staring at her like that because the shock of finding the information he wanted so very easily had momentarily killed him.
She, however, had no such reason to explain her own reaction to his gaze, nor why she blushed so hard, nor why the first thing she did when she eventually did regain the use of her functions was to self-consciously fix her hair. How embarrassing.
"I'll, um, I'll just go, then," she murmured, ignoring the silent giggles that she knew MçKenzie's shoulders were shaking with, because of course she had planned this all from the beginning, and hurried out of the room, squeezing past him as she went. The elevator was thankfully open when she reached it and she threw herself inside, leaning against the wall with relief as soon as the doors closed in front of her. His voice was beginning to buzz in her ears; evidently he was talking to Kenzie about something, and she blocked it out with great effort.
He was, incidentally, far more attractive when he was dressed in regular clothes.
In a bid to get a hold of her senses once again when the elevator started to descend, Lily rummaged through her purse for her phone so that she could call the bookshop and check on a few deliveries that had been meant to arrive that day. There was nothing like work to slap her back into reality, especially now that it was December and she and her staff were coming into their most hectic time of the year. She had to speak to her assistant manager about getting a little coffee bar set up in shop in time for Christmas and organizing a vampire themed party because some God-awful books about the undead bastards were all the rage this year.
The elevator had travelled down two floors by the time Lily had the phone pressed to her ear, and she had literally just dialled when the doors slid open once more and she was greeted by the sight of the last person she had been expecting to see.
She hung up the phone.
"Um, hi," he said, looking sheepish.
If it had been within Lily's powers to evaporate into nothingness on the spot, she would have done so right then and there because it was now blatantly obvious that he knew who she was. He must have known, there was no other reason why he would have run down the stairs (although really, that would have taken him all of two seconds) in order to stop her on the elevator. He wanted to rub it in her face that he had finally figured it out. She was doomed.
"Hi," she replied apprehensively, eyeing him as if he were likely to whip out a grenade and throw it into the elevator. "Can I help you?"
"Actually, uh, yeah," he replied awkwardly, scratching the back of his head, his eyes darting this way and that as he blatantly ignored her gaze. "I, um, I… left something in the elevator."
Lily blinked. "Pardon?"
"Just now, when I got off the elevator?" he attempted to clarify. He appeared to be even more flustered than she felt. "I left something on it and I came back to see if it was here. Is it here?"
"Uh. Okay." Lily quickly scanned the bottom of the elevator and found nothing, the floor was completely bare. "There's nothing here. What did you forget?"
"Can't remember." His voice was shaky and he was still avoiding her eye determinedly. Perhaps he was now suddenly scared to reveal he knew her secret in case she kicked him in the crotch. Even superheroes had sensitive balls. "Mustn't have brought it."
"Right." There was nothing else to say, if that was the case. "Okay then." She pushed the elevator button and the doors began to slide shut again, much to her relief. "Bye."
He stood there in silence and watched her as she waited for the doors to slide shut, and then as they finally began to close, and right when he was about to fully disappear from view for the second time that day, thus sparing Lily from an eternity of headaches, he sprung. Shoving his hand into the tiny gap left between the doors, he forced them open as easily as if they weighed nothing at all.
"You're Lily Evans," he said breathlessly, even though his actions must not have cost him much effort. He leaned against the frame of the doorway with his arms folded, went pink, and stood up straight again. "Aren't you?"
"Yes, I am." She was secretly being filmed for one of those hidden camera blooper shows. Any minute now Captain Spectacular was going to pie her in the face and all of her friends were going to spill out of the surrounding office doors and everyone was going to have a good laugh about it and she'd be known as Lemon Meringue Lily for the rest of her life. "How did you know that?"
"Oh, MçKenzie, she told me. She tells me a lot about you, actually, and seeing as how we've never met, I thought I should - yeah," he held his hand out for Lily to shake. "I'm -"
"Captain Spectacular," Lily cut in, taking his hand and shaking it even though she didn't much want to. "I know."
To her absolute astonishment, his face screwed up in embarrassment. "Actually, it's uh, it's just James."
She blinked. "James?"
"Yeah, James Potter, it's my real name, slash preferred name," he explained, and gave her an apologetic sort of look when they both realized that he was still holding her hand. He dropped it immediately. "You recognized me, then?"
Lily had actually heard the Marauders' real names before, since none of them had ever bothered to hide their identities, and she vaguely remembered reading about it in an article once that she hadn't devoted much attention to and therefore she would not have been able to recall all of their first names were she to be asked about it.
Sure, she knew that Sirius Black was Black Bachelor, but everybody knew who Sirius Black was. The Blacks were the most prominent political figureheads in the city, and they practically ran the place. Sirius' father Orion was the mayor, his mother was a minister for education, he had aunts and uncles who were also high up in politics and his brother was, as far as Lily was aware, studying law abroad or something of that nature. Three of his cousins, a set of sisters, were involved in the entertainment industry and the oldest sister Bellatrix was a fashion model and the city's most sought after socialite. The fact that Sirius had turned his hand to fighting crime was nothing more than another string in the ever expanding Black family bow. His parents probably wouldn't have allowed him to conceal his identity even if he wanted to.
"Well, yes, I haven't been living under a rock," she said smoothly, surreptitiously trying to press the elevator button again. "My roommate's boyfriend is a big fan, actually. I should tell him I met you."
"What about yours?" he replied quickly, as the doors made to close and he immediately forced them open again. People in the corridor had stopped to stare at them and Lily was beginning to feel embarrassed. If he wanted to reveal his knowledge of her second life, that was fine, Lily probably would have done the same in his situation. She would not, however, have messed around with his head first by pretending to be interested in getting to know him. What was he playing at?
She stared him down as if trying to read his true intentions, and came up with absolutely nothing. His usual pomp and bravado were gone, and with the plain old t-shirt and jeans he was wearing, he looked just like any other regular, down-to-earth, devastatingly handsome guy on the street. If he hadn't been a ridiculously famous superhero and somebody she despised, Lily probably would have been batting her eyelashes at him and trying to get him to ask for her number.
"My what, sorry?"
"Your boyfriend," he clarified. "Not so fond of us?"
"Of course not. Everybody loves you," she said dryly, not even bothering to keep the disdain in her voice from surfacing. "I'm sure my boyfriend would too, if I had one. What exactly did Kenzie tell you about me?" she quickly changed the subject, not wanting to spend the next five minutes discussing Captain Spectacular's likeability.
"Not much; just that you're one of her best friends and that you run a bookshop about five minutes from here, and that you're awfully hard work," he said, with a little twinkle in his eye.
"I'm awfully hard work?" she repeated, highly affronted. "MçKenzie thinks I'm awfully hard work? Has she looked at herself in the mirror lately?"
"Highly strung, I think is how she put it," he said, looking very amused by something. "I wouldn't know, I've only just met you."
"Is that all she told you about me," Lily demanded to know, hands on her hips, all thoughts of fleeing the scene entirely forgotten in the wake of these revelations. "Or do you have any more complimentary notes about Lily to pass on from her?"
"Well, I dunno," he said, shrugging. "She also said you hate my guts."
For a brief moment, pure embarrassment stole over Lily and turned her puce from head to toe, but she shook it off. She was perfectly entitled to hate whomever she wished to hate, and no two-bit celebrity could come after her and try to make her feel bad about it. He had plenty of reason to be hated and she was sure he knew it.
"She said that? She said that I hate you?"
"Yeah," he said. He did not seem to be bothered by this. "Do you?"
"Well I can't say I'm a fan of your work." Lily tossed her hair over her shoulder and lifted her chin daintily into the air. "If that can be construed as hatred."
"Oh, I don't care if you're a fan or not," he explained, waving away that matter. "That's just my job, you don't have to like my job. But, I've sort of got this thing; I guess you could call it a personality flaw -"
"I'm pretty sure you have several of those, actually."
"- That is, when I meet somebody who hates me without knowing me properly I get the strangest urge to actually get to know them and in doing so prove them wrong. Or at least give them ample reason to despise my guts," he added, with a rather sunshiny grin. "Judging on appearances is a bit of a dated practice, don't you think?"
"How very deep of you," she said, with a wry smile, and pressed the elevator button again. "I do really have to go now, though. Some of us actually have to work a nine-to-five job to get along in the world."
"Oh yeah, your bookshop," he said. "I was actually thinking of doing some Christmas shopping there soon. I've got this friend, Remus; he loves books. Can't get enough of them. He'd probably eat a book if you covered it in sauce and put it in a toasted bun."
"Oh, I don't think that would be wise," Lily replied, blatantly pressing the elevator button over and over even though it didn't make one blind bit of difference, and she wasn't really mad at him for holding it open anyway. This strange little conversation was beginning to amuse her in spite of her better judgement. "Think of the calories."
"What's it called?"
"What's what called?"
"Your bookshop."
"Ask Kenzie."
"I'd rather ask you."
"I'd rather not tell you."
"Then how am I going to give you my business this Christmas?" he whined, pouting at her. "Not to mention constantly harass you until you're forced to admit that you find me rather charming and rescind your earlier declarations of hate. Tis the season to be jolly, Lily Evans. Have a heart."
"I have a feeling that this isn't the last I've seen of you, is it?" she said, folding her arms across her chest and giving him a knowing look.
"Probably not, Lily," he agreed, with an easy smile. "I do have a lot of Christmas shopping to do; everyone's asking for books, you run a bookshop, it's conveniently close by..."
"It's called The Yellow Book Road," she interrupted him. "I can't afford your everyday sponsorship fees, I'm sure, but if you're going to come and do your shopping there you better tell everybody you know about it."
"I remember that place!" he said happily. "Do you still have a little corner with toys for children to sit while their parents look around?"
Lily laughed shortly. "Yes."
"And that big chair by the fireplace where that nice man with the sweets used to read stories to the kids every Saturday?"
"That's my father," said Lily amusedly. "He still does it. He used to own the place, actually, but he passed it to me when he retired."
"That's really cool," said James in admiration, his eyes glazing over with what apparently were old memories. "I probably sat next to you when we were children, then. I was down there every Saturday."
"I probably didn't like you then, either."
"Probably not, I was a bit of a brat," he said, with a laugh. "So you don't mind if I stop by some time? Maybe say hello to your dad?"
"Well, no, I don't," she admitted. It would be silly of her to turn away a customer no matter how much she disliked him. "I don't suppose I'd be able to stop you either way, would I?"
"Not at all," he agreed jovially, seeming unfathomably happy with himself for some reason. "Well, for a conversation laced with one-sided dislike on your part and blatant rudeness on mine, I think this has been quite pleasant, Lily Evans."
"It's been interesting, I guess," Lily conceded gracefully. "I'd shake your hand if I hadn't already."
"I'll treasure that first one forever, don't you worry," he assured her. "And I'll see you soon, at your bookshop. I assume there's some sort of discount if you know the owner, right?"
"For you?" she said, with a raise of her eyebrow and a little quirk of her lips. "Not a hope in hell."
He laughed softly, gave her a little salute and let go of the doors; they began to close uninhibited by the big oaf's hands at long last, but just before they closed they were stopped again, this time by Lily, who had smacked the hold button in a sudden fit of inspiration. The doors slid open for the hundredth time and he popped back into Lily's line of vision with his eyebrows raised.
"Can I help you?"
"One question," she said, holding up a finger. "Since you seem so awfully open to the idea of drilling somebody you've only just met, you won't mind, will you?"
"Fire away," he shrugged, hands in his pockets.
"Why Captain Spectacular?"
He blinked several times in quick succession. "Huh?"
"Out of all the possible names you could have picked for yourself when you made the dubious decision to begin a life of crime-fighting -" This was something that had been bothering her ever since the Marauders first made their debut into the public eye. "Why that? Why the gayest name in the world?" she finished innocently, as if she hadn't just grievously insulted him. "Just curious."
"Ah, well, that." He shrugged, smiling at her, and Lily was forced to admit, deep deep down, that James Potter wasn't all that bad when he wasn't posing on a stage in spandex or whatever and pretending to be a hero. "I reckon life's a lot more fun if you can take the piss out of yourself now and then. Don't you?"
"Ah," she said, her fingers searching for that now all-too-familiar button, with a little hint of a smile threatening to make itself known on her face. "Fancy that."
"Bye, Lily."
"Adieu, Captain Pisstake."
He grinned one last big, infectious grin, waved at her as the doors of the elevator did at last close completely, and it was only when she was finally left by herself to travel down to the ground floor did she distinctly hear his laughter ringing in her ears.
She laughed, too.
A/N: Because I needed something cheerful to counter the utter misery that was chapter two. There was meant to be a Mary scene at the end but it flowed well as one continuous scene without a break and so I'm putting the Mary part in chapter four, where it fits in so much better. Hope you enjoy, guys.