A/N: Happy birthday to me…happy birthday to me…I'm now officially halfway to thirty! How exciting!! It just happened to be good luck that another one of my favorite chapters is going to be posted on the anniversary of my entrance to this world – so enjoy, loves, despite my cliffie of epic proportions! And do not forget to review!
"Lils, wassamatter?" James asked, bewildered. His eyes widened as he came out of the world he'd entered through the song, and took in her distress.
"Taking a Chance on Love…it was always my least favorite song because it's so fucking unrealistic!" Lily raged, slurring her words in her haste. She was back in her drunken flurry, fully irritated as she glared at the gramophone. From the look on her face, one would have guessed it personally sprouted legs and tried to attack her.
"What do you mean by that, Lily?" he inquired, his bewilderment only growing as he surveyed her angry person.
With a huff, Lily chucked the record case she had been previously clasping across the cupboard. It hit the door with a thud, and she glared at it, her lower lip jutting out as she did so. James looked from her to the case, fazed, and with little idea of what made her react so strongly.
"I don't like it, I don't like it, I don't like it," Lily insisted darkly, stubbornly, shaking her head at him for extra emphasis – as if he doubted her. "Jamie, put it off!!"
"Why is it so fucking unrealistic, Lily?" James wanted to know, looking at her dumbly as he dutifully turned the record player off. "Explain it to me."
"Well, he says that he's…he's gonna be happy and everything's gonna be all right if he goes, a-and takes a chance on love," Lily said, frustrated. "It's not gonna be like that! It won't!"
"Why won't it be like that?"
"Because it's hard when you love someone," Lily told him, her tone hardening one way but softening in another. "When I was dating Preston Daniels last year, I thought I loved him, Jamie. I took a chance on him, and you know what? He wanted to go further, and when I wouldn't, he dumped me. Dumped me! Like a bag of shit on the street, he dumped me!"
She swallowed thickly, putting her hair behind her ear and raising her arms to help properly gesticulate her horror. "And you know, I loved him, Jamie; I did, I loved him. Cried for weeks when he dumped me – near Christmastime, too. I had Marly McKinnon send him a bag of maggots for Christmas, so that he wouldn't know it was me, but he knew anyway…he got kind of mad at me, but I didn't care, Jamie, I didn't care – he made me so sad. I loved him so much, and he didn't care about me, and he dated Mary MacDonald a week after he left me; Mary said he was a jerk to her, too, when he broke up with her and we hated him together because we were so mad at him."
Lily's eyes were very serious, despite her intoxication, when she looked at him next. "Before I started dating him, Jamie, I loved him then, too, and Alice Prewitt kept telling me to take a chance on him, because I loved him and he wouldn't know until I told him and I would be miserable because I had such a big secret I kept from him. So I did; I took a chance on him, and he was so nice to me…and then he dumped me, and I thought I'd never get over it. Things were not all right, like the Sinatra man said they would be, because it ended with me being sad and eating so much chocolate with Marly and Alice…I hadn't had it in me to get another boyfriend after him, you know."
Her expression was utterly melancholy as she finished, "I don't like taking a chance on love, Jamie, and I don't like this song. I used to listen to it sometimes, at the beginnings of my relationships, and it used to make me happy…but now it just makes me glum." She chewed on her lip and sighed. "Just really, really glum."
James watched her breathe in and out, in and out, her breaths shallow and despondent while she tucked her hair behind her ear again, only to have it break loose once more. Lily had definitely had a messy history with dating – nobody's love life was ever private in Gryffindor House – but hearing it all from her was entirely different. He recalled now that it was indeed after her end with Preston Daniels that he began to redouble his efforts on Lily, because she'd been visibly down and he figured he could catch her on the rebound. However, he had not known that this song brought back such sour memories for her while it brought pleasant ones for him; he toyed with the idea of holding her like he had before, but decided against it.
She would come if she wanted; he couldn't know if she was sober enough to kill him yet.
In spite of that, though, when she looked at him next, almost ready to cry with her turbulent emotions, the impulse to hold her was almost irrepressible. He might have been able to hold it back on a day when he was not so drunk, but tonight, he was drunk – he couldn't help opening his arms out to her, ready to be her cushion if she fancied it.
He was utterly astonished when she sniffed hugely and crawled towards him again with an air of retreat, sinking into his arms with all her weight and resting her head back against his chest. Her fingers were stroking his shoulder, his arm, his ear – it wasn't in a lustful fashion by any means, but there was a certain tenderness to the way she did it that caused goosebumps to come up where she touched him.
She was unaware of this, though, as she said in a tone that implied her full use of gut over mind, "You were so annoying when you kept telling me you loved me as kids, Jamie…I really thought I hated you for it, because you wouldn't go away when I told you to. But now, I don't think you're that annoying anymore. I even kind of miss your teasing me, stupid as it was. Marly thinks I've fallen in love with you, which is why we're in this mess, but I…I thought she was talking through her hat at first, as 'cuz it wouldn't be the first time she did, but I'm not so sure now. This was kind of how I felt with Preston; wanting to sit in his lap and curl up with him every night. He used to love it when I touched him like this."
Her fingers traced the shape of a flower with the tips of her fingernails on his arm. "Do you love it when I touch you like this?"
"I love it when you touch me any way," James told her bluntly, as absent as she.
"He'd say the same thing." She smiled vacantly. "I'm so tired, Jamie. I'm tired of love and I'm tired of people telling me I like him or him or him or him or whoever else they can think of who is half decent that I've not dated yet. I'm tired and all I want to do is sleep. And never drink wine again."
She looked up at him, pure Lily Evans staring up at him through the depths of her cloudy emerald eyes. "I don't want take any more chances on love, no matter how tempting they are."
James mulled this over for a moment or two, his expression contemplative as Lily watched him think, the strangest murkiness to her eyes that was completely unrelated to the wine she'd consumed.
Then he said, thoughtfully, "Lil, I've had six girlfriends in my five and a half years at Hogwarts – I took a chance on all of them, and even though some of them ended badly, I figured, hey, they just weren't right for me. The important thing is you…you gotta learn from 'em, you know what I mean? It helps you get ready for the one you're gonna settle down with eventually. It helps you feel alive and gives you someone to look forward to in the mornings. I'm a bit of an optimist that way."
Lily's roaming fingers came perilously close to touching the smooth skin of the base of James's neck, to his throat, but she pulled back at the very last second. "I'm not an optimist. I've stopped dating. I've never fancied anyone after Preston."
"Pity," James said carelessly, his fingers going up to her hair and twirling it between his fingers. "You ought to start again. One of my secret desires is to get married and have eight children and retire to Switzerland, where I will spend the rest of my days munching on Swiss chocolates."
"Eight children?" Lily laughed, and with the chuckle came a loud hiccup. "Damn big family you want, eh?"
"I like kids, but I'm leaving my brilliant wife to the diapers and sleepless nights," James said with a snicker, poking her in the side. "What's one of your secret desires?"
"It's called a secret desire for a reason, you idiot," Lily said, chortling, ignoring his poke. "You're not supposed to just say it."
"Yeah? Well, I've decided it can be my question for Truth – which means you have to answer it honestly," James said smugly, giving the lock of her hair he was playing with a little tug.
"Gah, screw you, you little fucker," Lily growled playfully, giving his neck a small smack with the back of her hand. "I don't know what I want."
"You must know what you want, you have to have something you can tell me," James insisted, resuming his activity of playing with her hair. "What's some mad, dirty, perverse desire you've harbored inside of you for the longest time? Everyone has at least one."
"A mad, dirty, perverse desire I've harbored inside of me for the longest time?" Lily tapped her chin with luxurious, exaggerated movements, her eyes good-humored. "Hmmm…that's a difficult one to answer…"
"Take your time, we've got all the time in the world," James said idly, gesturing around about them.
Lily giggled, but continued to ponder the question, her eyes growing more mischievous by the millisecond, until her expression lit up with the radiance of illumination. "How about this?" she asked, an odd suggestiveness coloring her tone.
James opened his mouth to inquire after it, to wonder aloud what she could possibly mean by it, when all of a sudden, she lunged forward with surprising determination and forced her warm, rosy lips sloppily, but surely, onto his own.