Title: I Need Her Touch

Theme: Shower

Year: 7th

Hot. It rolled down his back, dipping down his shoulder blades and rounding the curves of his legs, and pulsating on the tiled floor. He ran a hand through his hair, letting the water drip down his face. Smiling, he shook his hair. Oh he needed this. After coming home to a somber Easter without a father to greet, his mother looking at him with dampened recognition, wondering for a moment if James was a memory of her husband, his grin placating her overemotional turmoil, James realized he needed to escape. As much as he enjoyed a well-meant break from the last months of his schooling. Well. He honestly missed it.

He only had a few months left, he knew, he had started counting down the days during sixth year, and each one passed quicker than the last. Sometimes, as he ran through the halls with the Marauders, aiming hexes at each other and pulling pranks on Filch, he wondered how much longer he had with the boys. Sometimes, when studying in the common room, Lily leaned up against him, her breath humming softly back and forth, he wondered what would happen when they left this place - if they could make it.

Ah, James thought, taking a bar of soap and running it along his body, roughly pressing into his back, there's my damn problem.

Lily Evans. He lied when he said he missed school. There was only one person he missed, and taking a shower only made it easier to miss her, and much harder to stop thinking about her. He knew, after this shower, he'd be in the kitchen with Sirius, leaning up against a corner nook as his best friend tried to catch grapes in his mouth (for a well-about quidditch player, Sirius was lousy with hand-eye coordination), and each time Sirius would look at him after a rather energetic display of coordination, they'd both know his thoughts were on her. Those emerald eyes from the last time he saw them, gazing at him in the early morning, covers pulled up to the precious small of her back as he laid with her, a quick grin enveloping her lips before he kissed them, telling her to get some sleep. And with that he disappeared into the morning, back home.

Why didn't he take her? She had asked, she had pleaded. It wouldn't be an odd time, honestly. She visited during Christmas, she met his parents, she would be able to comfort. Damn, she was probably the only person that could keep him from staring into the mirror in the bathroom, wondering why he hadn't cried yet. Because he hadn't. His father died and - nothing. Nothing.

The steam lolled over his body, wrapping clouds around his waist, draping kisses on his back. For a faint moment he believed she stood behind him, a immeasurably small chuckle descending from her pursed lips, her arms reaching out. But, with his arms uncoiling behind, he felt only the wispy breath of steam. He sighed. This was when he most missed her.

Leaning against the wall, his forehead pressed against periwinkle tiles, he pretended, for a moment, that it was Lily's forehead and her body he was pressed against, the water like her fingernails, gently grazing his backside. Originally, showering together came with a few perks. Suddenly, his showers, if she decided to walk in, carrying her naked skin with an air of primal sensuality, took a longer time and caused a few more falls to the ground, giggles rising from her reddening chest as they let the last dribbles of the faucet fall in between them, their fingertips pruned. But as time passed, it became a devoted act of not sexuality, but instead loving embrace.

Her warm body pressed against his was not that of desire, but instead a deeply loving understanding, light kisses on her liquid forehead grasped as an act of gratitude for being alive. She would smile, wrapping her arms tightly around him, leaning into his point, tirelessly there. After awhile of being together in these warm embraces, nothing more than occasional kisses, he realized that this was her complete and utter love for him; existing for him.

He sighed against the wall. Without her here, without this supreme love gazing into his eyes, grinning like a mad child, the shower felt... empty. No one else stood with him under a torrent like this, and without Lily the steam played tricks on him, whispering her words into his ear, touching his chest and running along his face like she would when they were quiet against the hot water. He never wanted this again, this dissolving loneliness without her hair, without hot water lingering on her skin also, redness appearing where he kissed her collarbone. No, it wasn't a want.

He needed this. He could not go another morning without her gazing at him when he woke up, following him into the shower with her hair rolling down her back in waves.

Suddenly tripping over his feet, James turned the shower head, letting the last dribbles touch his lips before grabbing the nearest towel and shouting, "Mum!"

"James," His mother called from down below, most likely moping around the library.

"We need to go shopping today!" He yelled, dashing out of the bathroom, his hair stuck up from a quick dry.

"For what?"

James started rifling through his closet. "I dunno... something for Lily."

He paused, glancing back at a picture of them dancing around a fountain, her eyes laughing. He grinned.

"Like a ring."

Author's Note: Thank you all so much for reading. This is probably one of my favorite chapters I've ever written. So please review!

Let's get it up to 400 yeah?

-St. Walker