A/N: apologies for the wait, enjoy the absurd length on this one, & thank you, always, for reading!
11
No masters or kings when the ritual begins
There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin
In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene
Only then I am human
Only then I am clean
—Hozier, "Take Me To Church"
James
parity
integrity
justice
(in this order)
twelfth (stone, lucid path); twentieth (notch, rudimentary dial); here, rely on what you need, when you need it
The five of us huddle on the floor of the third Gryffindor boy's dormitory on the left and pass the paper between us. The ink is blue, the words placed haphazardly, almost carelessly. Peter found the tattered parchment earlier in the day, molded to the underside of a marble courtyard bench.
Sirius squints to read the practically illegible scrawl. "Okay, we get it. Pettigrew's writing poetry now."
"Now you recall my aspiration, not when I explicitly gave you those haikus?"
Lily's eyes rove the paper quickly. She mouths the words silently. "I mean, it's about the Order, right?"
Sirius quirks his head. "Order?"
"Of the Phoenix, tosser." Remus elucidates.
Sirius glares at him, "No need for—" then turns again, to Lily, "You reckon?"
I reach a hand toward Lily; she hands me the paper. I re-read. "Parity, integrity, justice, in that order."
Peter has a pained look. "Parity..."
"Equality," Lily murmurs.
"Okay, great, so someone's listed off some nice-sounding principles, stances the Order, arguably, would stand for, sure, but..." Remus takes the paper from me. "Twelfth (stone, lucid path); twentieth (notch, rudimentary dial); here, rely on what you need, when you need it. What's all of that?"
"Well, 12th of the month, that's fairly obvious, I'd say," Lily muses, blinking as though she's somewhere else, not in this room. "And eight in the evening—that's the twentieth notch in a twenty-four hour dial."
"Fairly obvious, okay, Evans, what if it's not a riddle, and it just means there's a well-lit path of rocks and something's going down at the twelfth, huh? And there's, er, a sundial out there, huh?" Sirius opens his palms, as if this is somehow a less-than-surface-level evaluation.
The far-off look in Lily's eyes has intensified. Her mind is whirring, too preoccupied to throw back some smart quip at Sirius. "I don't know. This is a rather casual way to arouse interest in a resistance that's managed to slide under even the Ministry's radar." She's got one knee bent, arms looped around it, chin propped up on it. "Just looks like a student's shitty handwriting."
"Looks like your handwriting, Pete, come to think of it," Sirius mutters.
Remus ignores Sirius, looks to Lily. "I agree. It's an odd way to distribute information on a meeting, anyway. I mean, anyone could've picked this up. Why would it be so easily found?"
"Maybe that's exactly how they'd expect regular-minded people to react." I offer. "I mean, surely it's right bullocks that the actual Order is setting loose poorly written half-riddles on torn parchment in weird nooks and crannies of the castle, hoping someone other than Borgraves or Malfoy or Snape will snatch it up and figure it out—but, again, maybe that's the whole point. Maybe it's, I dunno, reverse-psychology."
"That could be. With the caveat, then, that we don't think so highly of ourselves as not being regular-minded people," Remus smiles sardonically.
"Name one mind in this group that is regular, Moons, go on."
"I can name one that is irregular, if you like."
Sirius chucks a pillow in his direction; Remus catches it perfectly in-hand.
"Ok so we're definitely going to wherever on the 12th, at 8, is what I'm hearing?" Peter says, nodding, checking his watch. "That's a week from now."
"Got a calendar on your watch?" Lily leans over to peek at the watch as Peter nods and shows her. She's smiling, amused. "Muggle watch?"
Peter shrugs, says lowly, so just she hears, "I'm supreme at Muggle Studies. Gotta walk to talk. Or—er, however that goes."
Her quiet laugh flowers just for him. I feel something like gratitude cinch the back of my neck.
Sirius is stretching his legs through the center of the circle, leaning back onto the bed behind him. There are several complaints about the physical disruption, especially from Remus, who receives a pair of feet, tucked over his own socked-ankles.
Lily meets my eyes, briefly, across the circle.
I re-focus our efforts. "Okay, well—what's this last part? Maybe the location? If we've got a date and time?"
"You can rely on what you need, when you need it." Remus repeats, running a finger down the length of his nose; a gesture of deliberation.
"Can't think of a single location in this castle where I've gotten what I needed, when I needed it," Sirius grumbles—then brightens, slightly, "Except, I suppose, that four-poster over there, and my own left hand—"
"Don't think your bed's the secret location, mate," I wince.
Lily, biting at a smile.
"Well, not this secret meeting, but maybe, Lupin, another?"
Remus kicks the imposter feet off his ankles roughly, and Sirius bursts, "Some sensitivity, perhaps?"
"Hardly your forte, Black, is it?"
Lily, coughing to cover a laugh.
"Being pricks now, are we?"
"Yeah, well, you started it."
"Chaps, fucking hell, can we—?" I plead, looking between their now-blaring eyes. Remus collapses back into his cross-legged slump. Sirius' eyes glint a bit longer.
Peter leans sideways, to Remus' ear. "Can we table that? I didn't know you slept in each other's beds."
Remus groans into a frustrated hand. "No tabling."
"How do you get anythingdone?" Lily asks, spinning her eyes from Peter, to Remus, to Sirius, to me; and I shrug, helpless, because most often nothing gets done. She shakes her heads and flips her hair around one shoulder. "Regardless. I think I know what that last bit means."
Four heads turn to her. She folds her knee down, looks around at us. "I feel like you all might too, and if you don't—well, then I know a castle secret you've yet to put on your special little map."
"Special little map? Care to retract such a disrespectful—that thing took bloody ages—"
I snap, "Sirius."
"Right." He flexes his fingers outward, in irritation, but nods in surrender toward Lily. "Carry on."
"I think it means the Room of Requirement."
Four blank faces. Lily observes us all individually. At the corner of her lips, a little tug. "Or, sometimes, the Come and Go room?" Her eyes lands on my face, and now a flash of triumph seizes her, smile bursting through. "No? No one? Not one of you? Intrepid cartographers?"
"Lily," Remus inclines his head, kindly. "What's this place?"
"The Room of Requirement," she begins, clearly relishing the opportunity to divulge a secret to us, when it's so often been the other way around. "Can only be entered when a person has a real need of it. Sometimes it's there, and sometimes it's not. When it appears, it's always equipped for exactly what you need—when you need it."
"Where, though?" Peter asks, craning his neck toward her in mounting curiosity.
"Seventh floor. Opposite the Barnabas the Barmy tapestry."
"No, we would know about that." Sirius slides his cocked eyebrow around the group, then gives it to Lily. "You're having us on."
"I am not," Lily huffs, sitting up a bit straighter, a frustrated slip of hair sliding out from behind her ear. If I wasn't so far from her, I would reach out, tuck it back in place. "It's real, and I've been in it."
"And how's that, then?"
"Well, third year, I was—um," she clears her throat, "I'd had a particularly brutal row with Sev, and I just felt miserable, and alone, and was running rather amuck, not knowing what to do with myself. And I ran into Dumbledore, and it was a bit awkward, as I'd never exactly talked to him, and was in fact scared of him—but that night, when he saw what kind of state I was in, he was very kind. He said when he was feeling a bit homesick, or blue, or something—I don't remember what, exactly—he said he would go up to that tapestry, and walk past it three times thinking about what he needed—and that always what he needed always seemed to appear where he least expected it."
Peter guffaws. "And your first thought wasn't that he was proper hopped up?"
Lily's laugh is high and clear. "Oh, certainly—but I went and did what he said, if only to humor myself—and, well, I've always found it rather difficult to ignore the suggestion of a professor." This smile she spares Remus. I notice it's one she often reserves only for him, the edges of her eyes crinkling, easily, as easily as he returns it. "Anyway, I went up there, expecting to be made a fool, but a door did appear, right across from the tapestry. And I went in, and the room took the shape of my bedroom, back home. It could've been the real thing, that's how perfect it was." She shrugs. "I suspect this isn't information Dumbledore discloses freely, or often. So I doubt too many others know about it."
"I'm burning through, I'm so jealous," I say, my voice coming out a bit lower than I want.
Sirius shoots me an overjoyed face. "Mate, she's not likely shagging Al, take it down a notch."
"That's not—"
Lily doesn't bother hiding her amusement, head leaned back against the bed behind her. Eyes aglitter.
This girl.
I restart, disregarding the blazing look. "It's—I just can't believe you've been sitting on this information for years and haven't told a single soul about it."
"Who says I haven't told a single soul, James Potter?"
"Who else knows?"
She maintains eye contact with me. "I took Owen there, once."
The words hit me in the chest like a snowball: the heat of impact, then the cold of melting.
"Oh, great, so now probably every Ravenclawknows about it." Sirius tugs ruthlessly at his tie, till it pulls loose. He chucks it at Lily. "Nice going, Evans."
"Fucking—" she seizes the tie and flings it away. "I'll thank you not to take that tonewith me, Sirius Black, or with Ravenclaws, who are not so dull or awful as you might think. And, besides—I made him promise not to tell anyone else." She glances at me quickly, then down to her fingers, clenched around her knees. "And at the time, we were in good sorts, and I believed him when he said he'd keep it a secret."
A lingering, unpleasant image of Lily and Owen somewhere scratches ruthlessly at the back of my head, but I will myself to push it away, knowing it's immature to fixate.
"Ravenclaws knowing or not doesn't matter, really, does it?" Peter intervenes. "Is that what this paper means, then? That room, on the 12th, 8 at night?"
"Suppose..." I begin, half-of-an-idea percolating in the front of my head. "Suppose after all, only someone who knew how to get into that place would be able to attend this meeting."
I look up and Lily is already parsing through my look. "You think—"
I shrug maybe.
Sirius whines, "Can we not have this psychic eye-conversation?"
Remus is nodding, though, right along with us. "Massively strange way for him to contact just you, Lily," his laugh, rueful. "But then he's massively strange, himself."
"Who?" Sirius whips his head between us.
"Dumbledore," Peter says, exasperated. "Keep up, Pads."
Sirius gives Peter the finger.
Lily treads an aimless finger along her wand, which lays on the carpet in front of her folded knees. "It's awfully far-fetched."
"Every endeavor this lot have blown me into over the years has been keenly far-fetched," Remus intones.
And Sirius, eyebrow quirked, "Blown you into—"
With almost unseemly dexterity, Remus flicks his wand from under his leg and sends a wordless cloud of blue light in Sirius' direction—which, in turn, erupts in a cloud of smoke around his head and elicits a shrill, quick, shriek. When the smoke clears, his precious hair is tinged with sparkling embers, root to tip. He pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "Yeah. I deserved that."
"You deserved worse."
Their stares, then, seemed less like anger, more like something unresolved. Something to be resolved.
The closer I observe this, the more I feel—for the first time I can physically pinpoint—how complicated the strange new intimacy between them is. A dynamic to which Peter and I are not invited. It leaves a cloud of smoke in my own lungs; something to chew on, later. I make a mental note to get Sirius alone, and soon, to talk over his intentions.
Lily sends a wordless cleanup spell Sirius' way; his hair re-forms its perfect inky ends. She lends him a sardonic look when he says, "Honored, Evans."
"So. We're doing this?" Remus asks, folding his hands together, looking mostly at me.
I shrug. "Can't see the harm. We can use the map, see if there's any activity night of. I mean, if this is actually something, and something Order-related, then I want to check it out."
"Agreed," Remus nods. "Regardless of this being true, we've still got Lily's really shaky O'Connor route."
"It should be noted that I really don't want to have to talk to O'Connor," Lily adds, scrunching her nose. "Skeevy bloke."
"He splinched himself immediately in Apparation lessons, remember?" Peter smiles widely. "His nose has definitely looked odd, since. Adds admirably to the skeeve."
"The skeeve," Lily murmurs, grinning back.
"Okay, well, lovely chat, all," I stand up, and my legs—so long in the same position—protest. I rove a finger between Sirius and Remus. "Please don't, er, kill each other?"
Sirius shrugs. "No promises."
Remus lends a hand to Lily as she stands up, retrieving her wand and robes. Sirius stands, too, and rotates a look to me. "Kind of you to take a break from shagging to come around with the blokes. Not sure you two could stand to live a day without really going at it, and not even in a hidden way, always, just the looks are enough—"
"Listen, fuck off, Black, would you?" Lily smiles calmly at him. "Night, Remus, Peter."
Nothing is better than the stupefied look I catch on Sirius' face just as I turn to follow her out.
Lily is quiet on our walk back to the Heads quarters. I'm not sure if it's Sirius' dumb jab, or the memory of her fight with Snape, or of Owen and the Room of Requirement, or the idea of the Order, in general, or the war, or something even separate from any of that, something I've no pulse on.
I don't push her on it. Her stance tells me she's coming to something, in her own time. She keeps tucking her hair behind an ear, arms curled in around her body. I recognize the firm line of her jaw, the way she walks just slightly ahead of me. It's a companionable silence, anyway, comfortable. To walk with her is—has always been—enough for me.
We're just around the bend toward the portrait when she turns, asks, "We could go a day without shagging, couldn't we?"
I look her way carefully, find a pair of blazing eyes. "Certainly we've..." I wrack my mind for any recent day that didn't involve some lovely little interlude, a common-room quickie, an early morning tirade. The moments, stacked up for analysis, are plenty—and are, indeed, at least daily. "Is this about Black, saying all that? He's a git, Lils, he—"
"Well, partially, I suppose, but I was just sort of going overit all, and wanted to know if you thought we could do it. Go a whole day. No shag."
Some small fire here; a bite in the tone. I look at her again—she's appraising me closely. Perhaps she's not touching me on purpose. Maybe, this a challenge. I dip my toes into the idea. "I mean, certainly I could restrain myself, one day, no problem."
Lily doesn't miss a step. "That so?"
"I've remarkable self-restraint, when necessary."
"It's just funny," she walks closer to me now, "that you should say so—because I was going to say that certainly I could hold out if the situation called for it."
We've landed in front of our dour-faced lady. She glares at me only briefly now before accepting Lily's password, swinging open.
"Can't help but disagree with you there, Evans, if I'm being honest."
"And I so prize your honesty." She pauses on the arm of the couch, pins me with fiery eyes. "But if I'm allowed, I'll push right back."
"Huh." I stuff my hands in my pockets, edge the toe of my shoe at hers. Raise an innocent face. "Seems we're at a right impasse, then."
The heat of even this look from her: Unreal. I can see her throat move. I can see the brilliant thrill it gives her, to speak without saying, to have brought this up at all.
Her mouth carves a lethal, close-lipped smile. "Of course, there is a way to find out who's right."
I dip down onto the table, opposite her. "Go on."
"No sex tomorrow." Her voice is breathy. "See who cracks first."
I raise my eyebrows. "And your stakes?" Her eyes flash, and I have to I laugh. "Oh, c'mon, Evans, I'm a Quidditch player—and, for that matter, a Marauder. I thrive on stakes."
"Fine, then." She stands up off the couch, walks toward me; runs a perilous finger down the side of my neck. "If I win...you're going to use that lovely cloak of yours to finger-fuck me in some hazardously public place."
My pulse really skives off—and the air seems to stops, mid-breath. "Finger-fuck you?"
"You heard me," she murmurs, knee pressing gently between my legs until they part, allow her between. "Your stakes?"
Her finger slides down each button of my shirt. Just touching. I toy absently with the edge of her skirt. "If I win, I think I'd like you to suck me off in the stacks." For a moment, the crease in her brow, the quickening breath, betrays her. I stand up, suddenly, frame consuming her, and she has to look up. "And I think I'd like that to be sans-cloak."
Her lips part. Our bodies still. Dangerous, new tension.
She holds out a hand to me. I shake the hand.
She smiles, halfway. I find my own electric exhilaration mirrored, here in her face, in the hot breath on my chin. Our hands fall away but her mouth tilts upward, for just a moment; brushes tediously on mine. The whole of my nervous system screams. She runs the tip of her tongue along the crest of my upper lip—then retracts, almost instantly.
Steps away.
"Think I'll sleep in my own bed, tonight." Her smile, a dagger. "Tomorrow?"
I am hardly capable of containing the heat that flares my person—but I try. I say, "Tomorrow."
Lily
The feeling of waking up in my own bed, alone, is soothed over immediately by the memory of The Bet.
I take a long hot shower and formulate a dozen and half ways that I can have James hard with just a skillfully-timed whisper—and then try, for a sobering moment, to remember that there's also a Charms essay to finish, an Alchemy lab to worry over, Prefect schedules to review and approve, a general population of Hogwarts students to oversee and keep in order, and a Dorcas and Marlene that keep begging for a study period alone with me.
I suppose it's all enough distraction from any and all thought of a day without watching the slant of hunger light in James' eyes, feel his fingers edge the sensitive curve of my hip, wonder thrillingly if he's going for a Lily or an Evans type of finish—both good, just different.
And it doesn't mean to say it won't end in something like that: Given, that is, the obvious fact that I'm certain I'll have him on his knees come day's end.
Surely, he's a room over, thinking precisely the same thing about me.
I set in on preliminary efforts to my own cause: Hair charmed into loose curls, swept into a loosely clipped twist, ready at a moment's notice to be released, pour down my shoulders appealingly. A spot of pink to the cheeks and gloss to the lips, a sweep of emphasizing mascara. On my wrists and neck-pulse, I dab a flowery perfume I rarely wear, jasmine flirting with rose flirting with wisteria. I don a delicate, nearly see-through black bra. I do not put on the matching knickers. Instead, I tuck them neatly into the pocket of my robes. Ammunition. I hike my skirt a bit higher on my hips. Slip into my nicest Mary Janes, the ones with a teeny heel.
When it's all said and done, I catch a look at myself in the mirror. Nod at myself admiringly: James Potter bait.
An irresponsible anticipation flutters through me as I descend the stairs—but, when I reach the common room, James isn't down. I reassess, not anticipating the loss of an immediate advantage. To make up for it, I brace myself on the edge of the couch, as I sat last night, make sure a few pleasantly strands of hair frame my face, and that my legs are extended outward to their best advantage, ankles crossed.
When James comes traipsing down the stairs not a minute later, he flashes me what I think is a far-too-casual smile given the day we're about to have. "Morning." Before I can stop him, he's kissed me full on the lips; and is gone before I can protest, or reciprocate.
I must be blinking, stupidly, so I readjust myself, clear my throat. "Morning."
"Sorry I'm late, was having a bit of a wank, if you must know," he's shooting off, as if this is a regular occurrence and shouldn't come as a surprise, tugging on his robes as he talks and heads off toward the portrait hole. "Devastatingly easy when I think about any time you've done the same, and maybe I ought to be embarrassed by how quickly I manage to—" he turns, at the precipice of the portrait, looks back at me, stunted on the couch. "Coming, Evans?"
My initial surprise at his head-start—in more ways than one—churns, slowly, into a thickening resolve to appear unaffected. This is the game. Acting as though thinking of him thinking of me while he wanks isn't affecting, in the least.
I stand from the couch with purposeful sloth; join him in the dim almost-corridor. Knock the portrait open with a knuckle. "I see this smug half-grin of yours," I murmur, reaching to brush the same knuckle up against said smug half-grin. "But you ought to know," the knuckle slips, slides the length of his throat. Under, a small spasm. Shadowed eyes. I watch his fingers tense on the strap of his bag. "That you're going to have to try much, much harder than that to crack me, Potter."
I leave him then, through the portrait hole.
After a moment, he follows.
James
Breakfast begins as always. Lily and I settle in on opposite sides of the Gryffindor table, greeting our friends and starting in on conversations about class and the state of the fried eggs and the bizarrely specific precision with which Peter can recite the prologue of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Lily goes about her normal routine of skimming the Prophet, pausing on articles of interest or import, gaze taking long journeys down each page, fingers smoothing back the edges. She pours herself a cup of coffee, adds a tiny scoop of sugar and a large spoonful of cream. She stirs the spoon with a subtle spin of her finger.
This all appearing rather business as usual, I conduct myself accordingly. I spread a dash butter and jam onto two pieces of toast and spear a mess of the fried eggs in discussion. I'm pouring out a glass of orange juice when I feel her foot—shoeless—rest atop my own. I maintain concentration on the juice pouring, and take a hearty sip, attempting to establish myself as not really caring about the toes that are now inching, quite slowly, up my calf.
"Reckon we'll have that extra practice you keep threatening?" Sirius asks from next to me.
"What, today?"
"No, todays' regular, the extra is supposedly Thursday. Don't you make the schedule yourself, mate?"
"Oh, um, I dunno, I can't just—you're not going to trick my plan out of me, I'm not so easily manipulated."
"No?" Lily's voice is quiet and flung barely in my direction, her face hidden by the Prophet; the foot is now along my other calf, rotating a lethargic figure-eight.
Like the champion I am, I ignore her. "I think we're doing fine game-wise. It's really a matter of Webster and Bishop at this point, seeing who's first string."
"Meaning I'm first-string? Not Archer? Saturday?" Dorcas jumps in, torn from a chat with Ingrid, excited eyes on me.
"If you'd keep it down," I implore, snaking my eyes down the table to make sure Rhys isn't sitting right next to us, listening in on the whole thing, "Then I would tell you yes, and beg you to keep your mouth shut about it, otherwise I'll hear it from him, and you know how loudhe can get."
"Beg? Loud?" Lily muses, hidden by her strategic newspaper. Her foot is advancing into dodgy territory, skating oh-so-slowly along the inner-knee.
No one else, evidently, notices any of this.
Dorcas smiles down at me electrically. "Fucking hell, right on, Potter, you won't be disappointed, I swear."
"I wouldn't expect—" The precarious, insistent foot has finally landed right where it really oughtn't at the Merlin forsaken breakfast table. I cough, scooting forward on the bench as subtly as I can. "Er, I wouldn't expect to be disappointed, and that's why—er, that's why you'll be first string."
"We doing our project in study or after dinner?" Mary asks Lily from down the table.
"So long as I finish everything else as expected," Lily says, folding the Prophet down to the front page and removing the spoon from her coffee. "I should be able to do afternoon. Good for you?"
Her foot, though indecently placed, has stilled.
"Brilliant, yeah," Mary returns. "I've done notes and initial maths."
I shift a hand beneath the table, find her ankle, take a soft grip.
To her credit, she does not visibly react. "Oh, lovely, thanks. I'm shit at initials."
"Don't have to say that twice," Mary laughs, a sharp, knowing laugh. "Reckon Merrill will be back today? Can't even guess at what's keep her for so bloody long. And I'm not not concerned for her wellbeing, mind you, but I am ruddy desperate for her photographic memory back."
I lean forward so my fingers can creep past the ankle, stroke the base of her leg. Her toes extend, just slightly, and just the smallest forward motion is enough to bring on another cough, and the slightest, almost imperceptible twinkle, in the corner of her eyes, when Remus gives me a strange look, asks, "Cold, Prongs?"
I set my jaw in a firm line and meet her eyes, head-on.
"No," I answer, turning to give him a reassuring grin. "Just caught the 'ole toast down the wrong pipe."
Under the table, Lily's foot slips from its unconscionably precarious position. Aboveground, she reaches for her coffee and sips. Blinks at me slowly.
"Something about you, this morning," Marlene is saying to Lily, leaning past Sirius' body to stare at her full-on. "You're glowing. Isn't she glowing, Potter?"
She looks—as I'd suspected she would—incalculably beautiful. Her hair's done up in some effortless knot, pieces floating down here and there; the planes of her cheeks, already so prone to coloring, pinkened; a sheen on her lips making it a mouth that asks to be tasted; eyes framed in demure, curling lashes; and she smells, somehow, as though she's walked through a field of flowers under a swathe of bright summer sun.
And there's something else—some untouchable vitality, there, in the creased corner of her eyes, in the tremor at her lips, in the slip of her fingers as she touches her own wrist, slowly. It pulses over her, alive: A hard and glittery conviction.
"Always."
I watch her slow blinking, her slow smile, and try to remind myself I've won Quidditch games with worse odds than how this day's begun.
But, then, Lily isn't some Quidditch game. She is—often and eternally—a force to be reckoned with.
Lily
Given our physical separation in Charms, the period slides by uneventfully. I allow myself to let my guard down, slightly, engage in the lesson, and by the time the class draws to an end, I am thinking more on complex implications of performing Legilimency than on how I can next be an absolute prick tease.
The consequence for such a foolish lapse is me trailing Dorcas from the room as if nothing is amiss, chatting amiably with her on our grand improvement in nonverbals, leaving my senses wide open for the assault when it lands: A hand curving along my lower back, underneath my robes, gripping softly but firmly—and his easy, arrogant smile as I turn, inhale.
He acknowledges Dorcas with a nod. "I'm unforgivably rude, but could I steal Lily, just a nip?"
"Again, for the zillionith time, I'm not Marlene, okay? Do I look like I've got a dagger hidden up my corset?" She laughs wildly at this assessment of our friend's murderous potential—and even her potential to wear a corset beneath robes. "Steal away. I'm to the loo, either way."
And then she's gone and we're out in the flood of the corridor and there's nothing and no one to save me from his fingers stroking the treacherous meeting of skirt and sweater, and though there is fabric between him and the skin in my imagination there isn't; and this is why I can't let something as frivolous as learning cloud my mind.
"Hi, Lily." He is cut close to my ear. "How are you?"
I will not clear my throat and I will not look at him. "Well, James, and you?"
"Day is going swimmingly."
"Is it? Much to your plan?"
"Plan? I've no plan. Only an honest heart."
My laugh: Unbelieving. "Bollocks, Head Boy."
We've reached the forked in the hall that will lead in one direction toward Transfiguration, but James compels me, instead, fingers-warm-on-waist, to a darkened alcove betwixt the second-floor landing and a Muggle Studies classroom.
"James—" I start, but he's cornered me, effectively, back against wall, both of his disobedient palms pressing now to such a daring spot. I put my own hands on his chest, if only to keep from further approach.
He asks, "Can I kiss you?"
"No, absolutely not."
"Come on. Just one kiss."
"Just one kiss. As though you've no ulterior motive."
"I don't!"
He does a hell of a job playing the perfectly blameless bloke. His eyes warm and golden, hair brushing temple in that outrageously effortless, gorgeous way, mouth curling a smile that hits me, without fail, right between the ribs. I urge myself not to stare at the triangle of skin caught between his shirt collar and neck, or at the sturdy line of his shoulders, or at his lips; especially his lips.
"Do you think I'm thick?"
"No, I think you're hellishly smart."
"They'll be no kissing."
But still, I make no move to leave. I rather like the feeling of his lean against me, pining mapped so clearly along his face, my thighs touched oh-so-gently along his.
"There might be some kissing," he murmurs, and ducks so near my lips that my inhale seems to pluck from his exhale.
"You're going to try and snog me into submission," I protest, though it sounds weak even to my ears, and here are my hands, spreading up around his shoulders, digging into his robes.
"No."
"You're going to be flirty, and you're going to slip me some tongue."
"I'll do neither."
The fizzle is so delicious it hurts. I can feel his lips on mine as if they already are. Around the treacherous corner, the din of peers flitting for one class to the next.
I concede. "Just one."
He does, in fairness, keep to this. But this one kiss is wickedly slow, and soft, and arduous, and dizzying, and sweet in a way I did not anticipate, and I am so distracted by his obedience that I forget, again, my lethal weakness for his sincerity and adoration, because in the middle of the slow soft arduous dizzying kiss his hands move cunningly into distinct arse-territory, my skirt shifting under robes, and I notice this at the same moment his tongue betrays my trust and penetrates the barrier of my lips, and for a split second—a paralyzing moment—I just feel the feeling, and am washed through by such immediate gratification that a pleased whine curls my throat, and that's it: That's all it takes to be ripped from my foolish melting and realize I've gone and walked right into an idiotically transparent seduction.
I push him away immediately, seizing his hands and throwing them from my waist. "You incorrigible, manipulative, exasperating—"
He is smiling, thrilled. "—can't say I've heard these descriptors from you in reference to me since last year, really."
Lungs heaving, I swallow, heavily, to recover from my own idiotic fall. "I said no flirting, I said no tongue, I said no kissing and you—"
"Say, Lils, you're going a bit red, there, face-wise, looking a little flushed—are you flustered? Has something got you going?"
I want so badly to wipe the haughty look off his smug, handsome face. I want to push up against the opposite wall and have him whining for me just the same.
But the game, Lily, the game.
And, as it goes, Transfiguration.
"You've cheated, and it's very rude."
"Cheated? I'm sorry, there was no going over rules at any point here, other than the one—"
"I'm going to class."
"Funny, so am I."
In the still and the staring that precedes the actual going to class, I sense, with uneager precision, the possibility, here, that we could both throw off the veneer and a certain measure of pride and run off to find some way to do exactly what we both want to do so bad.
But I am stubborn, and he is arrogant, and the mutual antagonism is near excruciating. Combustible. Until the flares catch flame, there'll be an almost painful tremble in knowing that the explosion—inevitable—will make all torments pay off to absurdly sumptuous ends.
"Potter." I nod my head, oddly, professionally.
He grins stupidly. "Evans."
We go to class.
Lily
"...load of owl dung if he thinks he's better at it than I am, women know women best, it's an actual irrefutable fact."
"Well, then you speak to him about it, I don't bloody care."
"Merlin's tits, like I'd do that. Can you see the look on his face? Blugered."
"Yeah, I've seen that look before."
"Should I talk to Potter about it, too?"
I am only half-listening, engaged in a mindless reverie of staring at just the same boy, across the room, watching his fingers hassle his hair, over, and over, and over: An unbelievably basic attack on my senses.
The motion is a variation on what he did for the entirety of Transfiguration, not an hour before. Our assigned seats, across the room from one another, made his assault simple: Fingers through hair, a known weakness; a finger along the lip, a thumb along the jaw, other known weaknesses; the rolling up of sleeves, the revealing of forearms, a catastrophically known weakness; and even some improvised measures, brutal in austerity and effect: the close-mouthed smile, dipping up from below, the lethargic blinking, a subtle lean back into the chair, regarding me with what I could only term sex eyes, impenetrable gold sparking so hotly to my figure I was forced to look away, desperate to avoid the daggering idea that he was undressing me, piece by piece, with the very same eyes.
The Transfiguration lesson was lost to me, completely—much to my own mortification.
"Should...talk about what?"
Ingrid shakes her head at me. She's sporting new hair today, a pretty shade of clementine that accentuates the already dreamy effect of soft brown eyes. "About hunkering down between your legs and making you see gods."
I turn a severe look on her, and Mary, Marlene, and Dorcas burst into hushed laughter.
"If so, I've got a solid five things I could tell him just off the top of my head—"
"He doesn't actually need help in that area, thank you very much," I roll my eyes. And now, of course, I've the unfortunate pleasure of thinking of any time James has done the very act she implies, this hunkering down, this making me see gods, and my skin rudely erupts in the memory, swathes of goosebumps and a flare of heat down my shoulders and back.
I cross my legs; quell the unnecessary sting.
"Blimey, this defensive tone on her!" Marlene's eyes gone wide, shifting around to glance at James where he sits with the other Marauders. "How often is he going down on you, Evans? Tell us right bloody now."
The maddening part is I'm stuck fast on the image of him curling my skirt in his hand, shoving it up as I fall guilelessly back onto the common room couch, whimpering uncontrollably as his mouth usurps my underwear in favor of my cunt and his fingers curl my thighs so firmly there were small bruises, after.
I give Marlene no such pleasure as answering her question. I close my eyes, lay my head down in my hands for a brief reprieve. "I've—I'm going to find Goshwak's volume, Mary, okay? Be back."
"Oh my gods, she's going to cool off in the stacks, I'm wrecked!"
I ignore Marlene further, pushing back from my chair and starting off in the direction of the upper stacks—being sure, as I pass, to avoid any eye contact with James fucking Potter.
James
I follow her into the stacks because I know she wants me to find her there, in apparent need of assistance, stretching upward on tiptoes, reaching for a book far too high up on the shelf. A lovely swathe of thigh peeks out as her skirt rises, minutely, with the reach.
I walk into battle: Step up behind her, arm reaching along her arm, fingers curling along her fingers, my height advantage the clear-cut winner. I grab hold of the volume she desires.
Her body pauses. The alignment here: A hazardous liaison. The second her hips shift, subtly back—the arc of her bum pressed to a distinctly fraught area of my anatomy—I am sent into a sensory spiral.
Knowing, of course, that I've willingly tossed myself over this edge.
Lily snatches the book from my hand and turns, swiftly. I let my now-free hand fall, casually, to grip a shelf at her eye-level. She's trying desperately to hide it, but her chest rises unevenly with breath, and even in the poorly lit corridor between shelves I can see the red that stains her cheeks, disclosing her own provocation.
"I'm sorry," she says. "But I need this book more than you do."
"So you admit it: You're needier, in this moment."
She leans back against the books as I lean forward, into her. Her face raises to mine confidently. "I would never admit such a thing." A knee, in clear opposition, comes between my legs.
"As it happens, neither would I."
But I'm inclining toward her still, a display of my real and prying neediness; there's a tightness in my limbs, tugging, from all the agonizing thoughts of her I've thought all day, failing in any way to ignore the idea of her, the sight of her, the memory of her—and never mind it's only the bloody afternoon.
I watch her blink up at me, slowly; I stop my face not a breath from hers. Her lips hint at, but don't divulge, a tiny upward twist. "I know what you want."
I knowit will kill me to hear. "What do I want?"
"You want to kiss me," she begins, rubbing her lips together. One of her arms remains locked around the book, but the other comes to the middle of my chest. "And reach under my shirt, find out what kind of bra I'm wearing." Her hand, distressingly warm, moves down over my stomach, languid. "And slide your fingers between my legs." Her fingers slip to the waist of my pants, edging my belt. "And touch me, right here, where anyone could walk by and see."
Her hand rises, quickly, and rests, for a moment, at my agitated pulse; this gives her immense satisfaction. Quantifiable evidence of arousal. Ever the scientist. Now fingers cull my neck, pull my ear to her mouth. She kisses the meeting of cheek and neck: Once, twice. "You want," she whispers. "To turn me around, right here, right against this stack, and fuck me. You want to be rough."
Her vision and its demoralizing accuracy. The angle in particular: I've craved and never acted on, long before today. The phantom feeling of her skin; the phantom sound of her pleasure; the phantom indulgence of having her, here, in such a lascivious position: it coils me up and strangles.
My breath, caught, painful, leaves its wretched home; becomes a groan of acute devastation.
"And you want to, but you can't hide how much you want me right now," she whispers, knee taking an unfortunately slow trip closer to the site of said arousal. My inhale is quick and revealing.
She retreats from my ear; smirks up at me, brazen.
Going into this day, I knew the self-restraint I bragged about was carnival magic—complete artifice. She will best me every time. She has bested me long before this moment. She will best me long after.
But: There is one thing she always forgets to count on. Only one thing I can hope to hold over her.
I step away. Her warm hand falls along my neck and leaves me, too.
"I do want that." I say plainly.
If only a sliver, her assertive expression falters. A soft flashing in emerald eyes.
"But something you forget, Evans," I admonish gently, hands slipping into my pockets. "Is that I've spent years wanting you, in every way. And waiting." She grips tighter the book in her hands. "I am practiced in patience for you. Maybe not free of frustration, but practiced."
Her mouth parts.
"So I might not be pleased with passing up the opportunity to have you, right here, right now, in that exact way, but it's enough to know that I will have you," my voice quieting, ardent, "and soon."
I leave her with her book. And I hear, quietly, behind, a strangled breath of her own, sourced of the same exasperation that devours me, mind, body, and spirit.
James
En route to the great hall for supper, Peter asks Lily and me if we've had a row.
"What makes you ask?" Lily wonders, voice free of insinuation whether he's right or wrong.
"Well, for one, you're not standing next to one another right now, which is strange," he points out, looking at each of us, on either side of him and Remus. "And I haven't so much as seen you hold hands all day, which is unusual, as well—and further, I keep catching these very intense stares, like you're waiting for the other to say something first."
Lily smiles over at me, unabashed. "We're not fighting." She steps deftly back, re-joins me at the end of the group. Slides her hand through mine.
Remus turns to Peter. "Told you."
"You're good at emotional observation, Moony, I know that, but the physical indicators were not adding up, 's all I'm saying."
I rub my thumb down her fingers. For a second, I feel the guise of competition shift; her eyes on mine and there in her eyes, real admiration. She blinks. Seems to be weighing her options. Is she thinking, as I am, that maybe a little kiss, in the name of appearances, couldn't hurt? I whisper, "Maybe a small kiss, in the name of appearances, couldn't hurt."
"No kissing." She answers, though she seems disappointed about it, herself. "Last time was no good."
"Last time was good."
"You know," squeezing my hand, "what I mean."
"—never ask you to compromise your morals, but I might compel you to rethink the situation from Padfoot's point of view. He's near failing, have you seen his recent scores?"
"I'm not helping him cheat. I've never helped him cheat before, and I'm not starting now just because he thinks our something special is grounds for illegal coursework."
Remus and Peter's conversation fades as their trajectory continues forward into the great hall, and Lily stalls ours, pulling me along to the side of the entrance, into a shallow reprieve from the crowd clambering toward dinner. "Something you should know," she starts. "I keep forgetting to tell you."
"What's on?"
She rubs her lips together for a long second and drops my hand. "I'm not wearing any knickers."
She pays me close attention as I digest the information. My initial reaction, of course, is disbelief, followed immediately by distrust. "Rubbish."
She smiles. "I thought you might say so." She reaches into the side of her robes, retrieves something. Takes my hand, sure to shield the exchange from prying eyes with her body, and places something soft in my fingers.
A quick glance confirms my initial, and worst, suspicion: A pair of lacy black knickers.
I close my fingers around the fabric. Try to avoid an uneven tremor in my voice as I say, "You could still be bluffing. This could be a decoy pair."
With a pause that is as cruel as it is long, Lily gives me eyes that I rarely see outside of the bedroom. Reaching back, she unclips her hair from the frustrating coil it's lived in all day; a verifiable flood of curls follows—and with it, something in me cracks, hard.
I want to slip my fingers through the flood and drown in it.
She places the clip in her bag. Regards me coolly, and without remorse. "I guess, then, you'll just have to take my word for it."
I watch her turn and walk off, into the great hall, red hair bouncing behind, skirt flaring mockingly with every step.
I stuff the knickers in my own robe pocket and take a hard minute of self-evaluation to decide if I've the capacity to walk into dinner and sit next to her knowing there's likely been nothing between her hips and the rest of the world save that flippant skirt for the entire fucking day.
Innumerable deep breaths and one harsh chat with my lower half later, I do just that. And though it is risky, I'm unwilling to allow Lily the idea that she's rattled me, so I sit next to her, slide an arm around her back, kiss her cheek.
"He's overcompensating," Peter whispers to Remus.
"He is, isn't he?" Lily muses, sliding closer to me, her own hand sliding up along my neck. Our thighs meet. My pulse stutters. Heat all down the back of my shoulders and back. Against my better interest, I look down.
Her skirt rides halfway up her thigh.
"For what?" Mary wonders through a spoonful of soup. "Total lack of composure in Potions, earlier?"
"Why, what'd he do in Potions?" Sirius wonders, grinning like a real maniac.
Mary, Marlene, and Remus all share a pre-meditated laugh, one Lily impolitely joins in on.
I begin to protest any retelling, but Marlene beats me to the punch. "Evans whispered something in his ear and he set his cauldron on fire bloody immediately."
"Should've seen Slughorn's face, I thought he was going to bowl over then and there with the horror of it," Mary cackles, face going red.
"And Potter just stood there! Just stood there! Slug just screaming at him. Dunno how he's still Head Boy, at this point, honestly, just based on the loss of ego alone." Marlene grips at Mary's arm, the memory allegedly so sidesplitting that she needs a physical anchor to hold her down from the ceiling.
"Never been more disappointed in myself for quitting that class," Sirius shakes his head, turning to face me in glee. "What'd she say to you, mate?"
My hand drops from Lily's back. She is smirking, without a doubt, but I don't look to find out. "I don't remember. I blacked out."
"Fucking hell, Evans, what'd you say to him?" Sirius' eyes blaze on Lily, now, who just shrugs innocently.
"Nothing I'd care to repeat at the dinner table."
Even Peter joins in on this batch of unmitigated laughter.
Somewhere in the middle of the jubilation at my expense, I touch her thigh.
Her fingers go tense on my neck.
"I find gobs of new respect for you every day," Sirius tells her blissfully, wiping at his eyes. "I pride myself on James-specific torment, but you've obviously tapped a market I'm powerless to."
The conversation shifts eagerly to myriad other times I've made a Lily-related fool of myself. Like the good friends that they are, the group doesn't limit themselves to current events, quite unafraid to dig into the archives of my best and greatest pre-seventh year attempts to win the caged heart of Lily Evans.
Beneath the quips and howling laughter: Lily leans across me, over the table, to fetch a biscuit, chest landing heavily on my arm, her "oh, sorry," the most unapologetic thing I've ever heard, her smile sparkling as she sees my reaction to her nearness—but I've fingers on her thigh, and I tighten the grip, and she swallows, almost undetectably, as she retreats.
There is something I have to know.
Dorcas is waxing poetic on the time second year I charmed a bouquet of flowers to scream "Lily" every time they bloomed. My fingers are sliding up past her skirt. Lily reminds everyone that I gave her said enchanted bouquet during class, and she'd been humiliated having to explain to Professor Glass why her bag kept screaming Lily! Her skin is warm; it flushes as my fingers creep upward. Marlene says she caught Lily looking at the bouquet later, in the dorm, and saying it was disgusting, but the charm was one she didn't know, and if she didn't hate me so powerfully, with every inch of her being, she would ask me to teach her how to do it. Finally, I find where the edge of her knickers should start: Where they should be. One finger slips, further, finds out exactly what I've dreaded is, indeed true.
Absolutely no knickers to speak of.
Lily looks at me for just one second. Triumphant. Told you.
I remove my hand surreptitiously, quickly. Lean forward, face-down, into my dinner. Her fingers on my neck stroke slowly along my hairline.
I focus every ounce of my energy on not getting hard at the dinner table.
Lily
James gets back from Quidditch practice and walks across the common room like absolutely nothing is amiss—says something like "hullo, Lils" or "bloody cold out there," something I barely hear, having since looked up from my hunched studying and taken in his appearance: Sweaty. Hair matted along brow in damp curls, face flush, cheeks swatched in red, jersey and pants tight around torso and thighs and ass—holy hell his ass. My breath swells and knots in my throat and I try to swallow, try to control the frantic jolt of my pulse. He says something like "alright?" or "something in your throat, Lils?" to which I can't respond, not even a bit—I'm thinking about all the times I've seen him look like this, but from above, or below—but I banish the thought as quickly as it comes, I can't think of that, not with his knowing stare, this pleased light in his eyes, him knowing as well as me that I've been blind to this play seeing as he's never once before come back to the common room in such a state; never once returned post-practice without showering in the locker rooms first.
Godamn irredeemable son of a Potionmaster.
"Potions?"
I stare. The question, the question...slow connection from the question to the work in front of me, the forgotten task. "Er—not yet. I'm—Arithmancy."
"Library? Potions?"
I stare. Blankly. Use every remaining ounce of willpower to ignore the spot of abdomen revealed as he tugs his jersey up to wipe his sweaty nose.
"Library, Evans—place with all the books. Potions? The subject you love best?"
My blood is boiling. "I get it, yes."
"Good. I'll shower, then be down."
He grips his hands to the chair next to mine, leans forward. My throat catches, and for a terrible moment I'm afraid he's going to do something drastic, like remove his shirt, ask me to resist, or take my tongue between his teeth, ask me to resist—but he just reaches a thumb out, brushes it quickly along my mouth. "Bit of drool, just there."
He bounds up the stairs.
It's not much better when he returns because all I've managed to do is stare dumbly at my unfinished Arithmancy and try, very, very hard, not to close my eyes and see only the obvious outline of his prick through skintight Quidditch trousers.
"Ready?"
I am not going to meet his eyes. I forsake my outer robes and sweater as he has, shove work into my bag, shoulder the bag. Flee the common room. James jostles to keep up with my rushed exit, my purposeful gate. His entire frame buzzes of success. He thinks he's almost there. We face the labyrinth of roving stairs; step from one to the other in silence, all the way down. We exit on the first-floor landing.
I am ignoring him so pointedly. I am thinking of him so pointedly.
"You know how I knew I really got to you, in Transfiguration?"
No looking and no watching. No answering. The halls are near empty. We round the corner of the east hall to the library, pass a pair of Prefects on patrol. I don't remember their names, but I wave, half-heartedly.
James barrels on, undeterred, once we're past the Prefects. "You were taking a few bent fingers along your throat, sort of back-and-forth. You might not have even known you were doing it. But I recognized it—I'd seen it before. And I couldn't place it, for a bit, but then I remembered. You'd do it over the summer, in the beginning, when we'd hang about, and sometimes under a pretense of just hanging about, and then I'd catch that little motion, bent fingers on your throat, and it drove me wild. I wanted to be the fingers, or the throat, or both."
I spin on my heel, suddenly, stop him in his tracks with a palm to the chest. "Appealing to sentimentality, Potter, really?" He opens his mouth, to defend himself, maybe, or refute the claim, but I cut him off. "I can be sentimental too, yeah?"
He wants to smile—jaw tense, cheeks caving inward—but holds off.
"I spent," I begin, voice low. "This summer you speak of laying on the floor of my bedroom wondering how in the hell it came to be that I couldn't think of anything besides the hands of a boy that for years made my life at school a genuine hell. I'd think back on the years in question, how you didn't care one jot about the shockingly low amount of self-respect you projected, how despite how clearly contrived your entire persona was, there were still girls that wanted you because of it—and thanks to them, you thought you were some special brand of untouchable. You were fucking insufferable. I wanted to kill you."
"I know."
"No, do you know? Do you remember fifth year when you harassed Sev so badly it turned into a rather four-way-hex situation between you and me and him and Black? And I tore you apart, I screamed at you something awful, and when I left you followed me into the loo and tried to apologize and I shoved you so hard you'd a mark on your neck the next day?"
His eyes alight. He nods in recognition.
I'm heaving with the effort of breath. "Well, you don't know that after you left I locked myself in a toilet and cried, and not even for any of the obvious reasons—not for Sev, or the fight, or your conceited habit of inserting yourself where you weren't needed, or even for myself, for losing my temper so badly—no, I was crying because somewhere between you following me into the bathroom and watching your eyes as I hit you, I felt something soft and good and I felt it somewhere so bloody shameful that I wanted to actually kill you. I wanted to kill you."
The pleasure had pulsed in me briefly, almost negligible, an anomaly—but it pulsed, and I had sobbed for it, confused and furious. My ragged breathing, my flared cheeks, here, a product of the same feeling, returned, brighter and more painful than I remember. The shame might be gone—but the anger remains.
James looks a bit like he's been set on fire. "Lily—"
"Don't Lily me," I fume, aching for him, repulsed by my own longing, exhausted, exhausted. "Don't you dare."
His hand raises, tentatively, as if to reach, but the fingers fold in on themselves, as if a fist. "Is this real? Are you really upset?"
"I'm upset about how calm you are, right now, sure!" I am dazzled by my own loss of control, here, and the shadow passing his face, maybe the memory of our old heat, the fury-based spark; it's such a gross thrill, being shuttled backward in time, finding the ghosts of our former selves. "Won't you fight me?" I ask, helplessly. "Won't you scream at me?"
His head cuts to the side. "I'm not angry with you."
"Please," I plead, and my body is flushed, quickly, without permission, by the sound and the word. I go to him miserably, push against him until he's pinned to an opposite wall, the poor light of ensconced flames quivering like dismal observers. I feel his lungs depress with air; a crinkle of quiet noise from his throat as my fingers traipse his hips, curl into claws. "Fight me. Be angry. Give it back."
I am near tears not by any admission but by the rude and sublime feeling of his body and its resistance, unbending, taut. The excruciating refusal to participate in my chaos, handmade. My neck rolls on his shoulder, his breath like a trainsong in my ear, something calling me closer. He hasn't touched me. I am furious.
"Lily," he says, calmly, as if he isn't asking to be murdered with every second he hasn't pulled me closer, claimed me, kissed me. I inhale so sharply it sounds like a sob.
And then he does touch me, he grabs my shoulders and yanks me from his neck, and I look at him, desperately, finding a flicker of that same desperation broken over him, a rift down his perfect defiance.
This is where I leave him. I leave so quickly that there must be some wind alongside, my eyes blind to a corridor I've walked a hundred times before, cold stone floor just a path to someplace else, someplace empty of fear and desire and need so heady it drags through me like nails.
My last resort in this stupid game, it seems, is running.
Only my feet know where I'm going. I drag a shaking wrist over my mouth. Banish all thoughts of his taste. I am scared of myself, for a hard beat of a minute. The pounding of my heart so loud and angry. In my throat, stuck words. My hair is a screaming wave. I shove it from my face impatiently.
I don't go to the library. I go to an Arithmancy classroom. The board I often use after hours for calculating the future stands blank at the front of the room. I chuck my bag down and seethe along myself. I kick the leg of a desk. Accomplish nothing but a hurt toe. My breath knots exasperatedly; I heave in droves. If my body is trying to have a panic attack, I swallow the instinct. These lungs will do this work.
There is someone in the doorway.
I want to tell him to fuck off. "Fuck off."
He shakes his head, no.
Whatever artifice created this scenario to begin with—my coy teasing about who could or couldn't stand a full day sans shag, his biting right onto a competition, as is his nature—is a crumbling column of sand. I'm standing in the shoes of my former self, a girl so antagonized by his presence that even the smallest flicker of attraction at his expense sent her into a spiral of cold, bitter dread.
"Fine. Fuck you, then."
I mean it. I want it. I do not look at him.
"Will you look at me?"
I look at him.
"How long have you been wet?"
The question spools a thread of surprise through my stomach. I am breathy; laced in defeat. This body is heavy and needs to be held.
And, anyway, as if he doesn't know. "Since breakfast."
The collapse is simple, really: His tongue slips out over his lips. He just says, "Fuck."
"Come here."
He comes to me and the first thing he does—unforgivable—is dip his fingers under my skirt and fill his palms with my thighs. The sound he makes, along my open mouth: Feral. I eat it with my tongue. My own sound, he swallows. The second unforgivable thing he does is hoist me into his arms, lurch us toward the front of the room, the professor's desk, place me down clumsily—I push him from my mouth with a hand to the throat. "Give me your wand."
He's surprised, for an instant, then reaches into his pocket and gives me his wand. This I aim over his shoulder. "Colloportus obstina." The sound of the door shutting, lock clicking firmly. "Fortis quiescis." An almost indecipherable noise, like the quick and sudden spill of water down a sink.
His wand clatters to the floor as I pull him back to me, kissing him with the same level of cataclysm that has plagued every minute of my day. "Not only can you wield my wand, no questions asked," he manages somewhere between my tongue and fingers tugging up roughly through his hair, "but you fortify two charms in a row, like we haven't just barely learned to modify incantations last week."
I nip frantically along his neck, sucking so agitatedly in one spot that no doubt I'll leave a mark. "I'm showing off," I huff, and he laughs. "Good thing, too," he's breathless with this continuing effort to speak, fingers scraping up the undersides of my thighs till I'm pulled clear to the edge of the desk. "Was a bit on the fence about having you, here and now, after all—"
This will not stand. I bruise our mouths together and dig my fingernails into the skin of his back until he's caught firmly between my legs and his egregious moan, long and hard and eddying, is all I need to know we both have lost.
James
To have Lily Evans panting on the edge of a professor's desk after a long day of imagining her naked in every form of the fact I'd ever witness: Incomparable.
Well—comparable, perhaps, to the unfortunate manifestation of a match struck down the side of the box. There are, truly, only seconds between the motion of the striking, the igniting of the fire, the burning of the flame; the ruining of the short, wood, stick.
Somewhere in the metaphor I lose my head.
Somewhere in the losing of my head I drag my mouth along her neck, suck long at the point of her pulse, just to taste its furious clatter, take it with me as I kiss down throat and collarbones till I have the good sense to start in on shirt buttons, which really sets her off. "Taking your godforsaken time, I need—" She shoves my hands off to do the work herself so I catch the skin as it comes, mouth impatient for breasts covered by little more than a scrap, no contest for my tongue, lips, and teeth, all groping for equal purchase; her whining, here, my prize.
"Potter," she moans, tearing my shirt up and out of my pants, shoving her hands beneath for skin. "Get out of my tits and pay attention to me this instant."
I do no such thing. I thrust the flimsy bra down on both ends and tend coarsely to each nipple; her hips jut, and she squeals, astonished at my voracity, unbroken. Skilled though she is in retaliation: Hands scrambling for my shirt, picking off buttons in haste, my ear caught in the slope between lips as she exhales her frustration where I can hear it best. "I will proper kill you," she says, in the same second pushing my arms and face from her chest, wrangling my shirt from my shoulders; and when it's gone, and I lean in to return to her, she stops me, thighs trapping my hips, her fingers curling to fists on my stomach.
I am reeling. A short, thankless laugh. "What, we're stopping?"
She inhales a long and unsteady breath. "What if we were?"
She is still fighting. She is always going to win. "I could finish just looking at you," I confess, eyes roving her, starved: Red stained column of her throat, rosy breasts, hair a disorder so assaulting I want to yell—and her mouth, her precious mouth, parted through with panting, swollen with our efforts.
I reach for one of her fists, uncoil. Slip it to my aggravated bulge. She presses of her volition and my eyes fall shut. Now her lips steal mine, just slowly.
I give those lips my secret. "I touched myself three times today."
Her fingers close down, fast, on the hardness. "Three?"
"Could've been more." She tugs on my tongue, as if she'll not be satisfied till it's taken out, twinned with her own. "Only so many chances for a bloke to duck into the loo between N.E.W.T level—ooh, courses."
"Tell me what you thought about," she demands, scrambling at my belt, zipper unzipped, hand slipping down. This moan—ungodly loud—I settle between her neck and shoulder. Fingers card through the torturing hair, palm at her neck, cheek, head. She repeats herself. "Tell me."
I drag in painful breaths. I have no restraint left, no resolve. Life as I know is cut down to these measly square inches, her fingers tugging me. "I thought about fucking you."
"Where?"
"Everywhere. Anywhere." My tongue is back with hers, begging for forgiveness, but she doesn't let me kiss her long. Green eyes like jewels, glinting in the shadowed room. "In the common room, in your bed, in the middle of Transfiguration—fuck, Lils—"
Her hand is gone and she's forcing my pants and underwear off my hips, down to my knees. She's ripping my hands out of her hair and forcing them up her skirt, over her warm naked hips, curling them till I feel her arch in response. "Where else?"
"In the library," I groan. "In the stacks."
"You wanted me there, how I said?"
"Oh, gods, yes." A hand slides inward—finds her unforgivably wet. Her face collapses, lips vying for mine, desperate: But I resist. Trace small circles with a finger. Find her wild eyes. Wide and trusting and rapturous. "Lily..."
My fingers still: Her mouth breaks into an o. Breathless, "Yes?"
"Can I be rough with you?"
"Yes," she says immediately; a finger slips inside, and her gasp. "Yes, I want you to."
"I won't last long."
"Potter," she whines, grasping a hand along my neck.
Another finger; her gasp here. "I'm going to lose it so quick."
"Potter, I—" she takes my chin and my mouth and fills me through with yellow light. "I was such a shit student today. I only thought of you."
"Tell me," I murmur, hand slipping out from under, the pretty wet brought right between my teeth, lavished on my tongue.
Her face screws up in pain, or pleasure, or whichever lay unbearably between the two. Her skirt is staying on, apparently, because she's frantically tucking the bottom edge up into the waist. "This," she runs a thumb along my mouth, "I thought of here," a finger down along exposed thatch of curls. "And this," she blinks up through dark lashes, knuckles tracing indifferently down my overeager length. "I thought of here," the fingers coming from between her legs and running along her mouth, brutal to the tensing muscles of my shoulders and my arms, desperate to be put to work; the sparkle of the game spiking, again, viciously. "And this." All hands on deck, now, my face drawn insistently down to hers, "Here."
The tragic and elemental truth of my body is it needs hers like another needs gravity. She pulls this truth out of me and exploits, and endures, and I've yet to capture anything close to the knowing she wants me back and wants me bad: Here, her breath becoming the fabric of my fragile hold to any world beyond. I push into her, blissfully.
In the second after, she smiles. She laughs.
I am all the way inside. "Something funny, Evans?" The backs of my hands on the tops of her thighs.
Her hands spread up my back, along my shoulders, down my arms and chest. "I'll tell you later." She swallows my response with her lips, swivels her hips, just so, and we're sunk. "James, please, will you—"
I'm out and back in before she can finish, the thrust so coarse and sudden that her fingers dig into my arms, hard. She finds my eyes. Puts her mouth on mine and just breathes. In, and out. "Harder."
Lily
The moment I give James permission to bear down on me in the quick and brutal way I know he wants to—have known he wanted to since the library, feeling the instinctive response of his hips culling to mine from behind, agonizing in the possibility—I watch light leave his eyes in favor of baser needs.
His immediate vigor pitches me backward onto the desk, hard and cold beneath, though I hardly notice, my basic senses obliterated in favor of my legs held up by firm fingers, fastened to the plush of my thighs, the sight of his face in quick flashes, my neck unable to stay up for long amidst the unspeakable delirium of the quick and the thrust; and even the sound of his glasses, chucked unthinkingly to the side, their defeated fall somehow unreasonably lewd, the reality and abandon of this act unconscionable in a classroom, where I've sat to learn; and here I am, learning again, learning the tug of his teeth on his lips, the puckered brow, hair flopping deliriously, this continuous, gasping, burgeoned groan. With a thrill so carnal I'm almost appalled I lay back and listen to the sound of our sex, the slap and suction and slip, tugging at my nipples and bruising fingers between my legs because apparently he will not—and this is how I know he's wanted to fuck me like this for a long time, long before today, long before the library: He is eyes-closed and cursing, undaunted by his own audacious strokes and their salacious effect on me, my fragility cast off in favor of this glorious, punished filling. His needs have commandeered any clear thought of my own.
Lucky for him I like it. I wind my fingers around his and tell him it feels good, so good, and he molds his mouth the inside of my leg, kissing, biting, groaning into my knee, opening his eyes to find me, useless, lying, and there's some hopeless word formed by his mouth that never gets out when he sees my messy fingers, glued to the site of his abandon; I am breath-robbed and unbidden as he cries out, some semblance of a swear, or a prayer, or a plea, with a bright, burning, decisive inward plunge.
I pulse, unbelieving, an architecture extorted: He has used me to his ends, robbed me of higher pain. He comes hard and quick and pauses there, unmoving. "Potter," I growl, furious, clambering onto my elbows to find his sweaty-chested apology, eyes collapsing down my prone form. "You can't—"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he groans, bending over me to gather my back in his arms, pulling me upright, our buzzing bodies like exposed wires, sparking flares, "I told you I wasn't going to—" I kiss him, angry, desperate, tug at his tongue with my grief, body stuttering on the edge of an end, excruciatingly near; the promise of pleasure pulses through me, taunting, as I writhe, trying to get him to move, to restart his brutal rhythm, but he just says, "Will you—turn—"
And then he's out of me and commanding my hips to spin, body thrown unevenly along the edge of the desk, and he drags his fingers down every shaking, defenseless inch of me, sinking onto his knees so his mouth can press right to my cunt; I cry out immediately, the feeling too much, too much. I turn, desperate to see, scrambling to shove my skirt out of the way, but all I can accomplish is a view of his hair, desperately skewed, bobbing up and down and the mouth: He is gone, here, too, tongue delving in and out of me with carnal ferocity, palms wrapping my thighs to keep me upright and still my violent tremble. He is eating me alive. Alive. In the end, I am glass, shattered uncleanly, thrown out of myself; a mess of unfathomable pieces. I am furious. I've been cut from my own center. I weep down into the desk. The wood bruises my throat.
He breathes into me for countless moments, tongue slowing but not relenting, hands sliding softly up my thighs, a soft, loving pressure along my arse. He kisses every inch. I feel him pause, swallowing, along my knee. Breathe in, out.
My head, usually so useful, is inadequate for words. I am only the lope of my heart. I touch the top of my cheek and find a tear.
James will be bashful, now; I know this before I see him. He stands and gathers me, pulling me up from my harsh landing, arms surrounding me so carefully I know he must think I am angry. I am just trying to breathe. I feel hollowed out and spun tight, throbbing. Fulfilled. If he took me now, again, I would die, somewhere in the middle. I would ask for it, given the chance.
"I'm sorry," he whispers so wretchedly I crane my neck round for his face, find the needless pain.
"James," I try to admonish, but he is genuinely sorry, and for what, I've no idea. I kiss him, but his heart isn't it in and this is frustrating, given the start, the middle, and both of these ends. "James." I say firmly, turning around fully, making him look at me. "What are you sorry for?" I pull his hands along my back, look at him carefully, "Did I not ask for that? I wanted that." His anxiety falls into his breath. He is listening. His hands spread up my back as he swallows hard, exhales, looks at me with a vulnerability that both frightens and warms. I try kissing him, again, and this time he responds, gently. I say, "Ask me if I liked it."
He closes his eyes against my cheek. "Did you like it?"
"Yes," I breathe, pressing my mouth to his jaw. "Didn't you hear me? Didn't you feel me?"
"I thought I was hurting you—and I—" he is agonized with the remembrance, falling forward into my shoulder. "I just keep going, I didn't stop, that was so selfish."
His empathy and adoration, normally beautiful things, are irritating beyond belief. "Look at me," I say, sharply, and he emerges quickly from my shoulder.
I spread the disarray of sweaty locks off his forehead. "You've nothing to be sorry for, you're not selfish, and I am still, just now, feeling what you just made me feel." My fingers span his jaw, keeping his eyes firmly in mine. "I know you like to be gentle with me, and I like that, too, but I asked you to be rough, and it was so good," I continue, voice low. "Watching you like that, completely unrestrained—it did it for me, too, okay?" I swallow. "We were both very pent up, that was bound to be messy." He laughs, and I am filled with relief at the sound. I stroke my thumbs along his chin. "The only thing you should be apologizing for is how sore I'm going to be tomorrow."
His slow smile is a good and familiar sight. "Okay." He exhales, kisses me slow. Stares at me. His hair is catastrophically frazzled. "I liked it too."
"I know," I laugh, reaching down to adjust my massively skewed skirt, feeling the messy evidence of him along my inner thighs. "Haven't ever heard sounds like that from you."
"I..." he gazes at me differently, now, lighted eyes dimming. "I took out my frustration on you."
"Frustration with me."
"Yes." He has a lilt on his indented cheek. "The combustion...off the charts." I laugh and kiss him—and he leans away to say, "I think that's just always going to be a part of it, yeah? It's intrinsic, almost, to you and me."
I think of the fixation on combustion I had in the summer, my irritation behind a grocery in the middle of June: Are we going to kill each other? "Yes, I think so, too," I whisper right into this kiss, gentle and nostalgic. "Are you okay with that?"
Now he looks at me in the way I sometimes catch, the softness and openness nothing compared to the feeling, along my every inch, like I've been shot into a strange atmosphere, and lost, then found, instantly, by him and this look. "I wouldn't change it for anything."
"Good," I exhale and laugh and he takes me up in his arms and I can hardly fathom the day, and how it hasn't been years since the morning.
After a minute I leave him to re-dress. My pragmatic nature has been forsaken for a long time, and I have to reclaim my own footing, if only in a small way. James watches as I readjust my bra, retrieve my shirt from its thrown place around the desk, put it back on. I find his wand on the floor. "For your, er, mess."
"Mess," he echoes, taking the wand as I lean back on the desk, smoothing my hands through hopelessly disordered hair. I watch him take care of said mess, quickly pull up his pants, refasten the zipper and belt. His shirt returns to him wordlessly; he is staring at my chewing smirk, watching him redress. I cross my hands over my chest. "I feel depraved," he admits.
"You look it. You look insufferably fucked."
He shakes his head at me as he redoes the loop of his tie. "Merlin's sake, Lils."
"Library. Potions."
He smooths his hands down the front of his shirt. "You're—kidding?"
"Not even a little." I respond, grinning. I walk to retrieve my bag, chucked so violently down. That anger feels like an afterthought, now.
James follows my swift retreat after grabbing his own bag. I untangle my fortified locking charm, removing the silencing spell.
On the way to the library, I take his hand and say, "Can we save the argument of who won and who lost for later?"
He laughs suddenly, fully. "Blimey, the bet. How—its fully slipped my mind."
"Good." I pause for a kiss, singular—he tugs me in, hand-on-neck, for another, longer.
"Gods, you drive me crazy." He whispers this solemnly, like it's a matter of life and death, and I laugh into his mouth and smooth my hands down his collar, readjusting his tie.
"You know you drive me crazy, too, right?" I wonder, tugging him along again.
"I know I do when I'm post-practice, now, sure," he needles, the triumph in his voice arguably well-earned.
"Oh, do not bring that up, right now, when we're about to be in the library, working on Potions, you prick."
"It was actually my prick you couldn't take your eyes off of, if I recall correctly."
I shove him for good measure, but my heart isn't in it, my heart is beating like crazy, he's destroying me in every way, in every facet, stupidly, ruthlessly. "Whatever. Wear that around me again and you'll be sorry."
"No, I will be happy." We turn the corner into the library, drop our close huddle, but keep fingers clasped. "Hey," he whispers. "Why did you laugh? You said you'd tell me later."
I rub my lips together, remembering the moment, looking over at him. "You really want to know?"
"Yes."
"Okay." We round the corner to the east end of the stacks, where a table or two of our friends are bound to be, still, even this late. "I just thought, in that very satisfying moment, how grateful I was to your father for uprooting your family from London and moving in down the street."
"Oh, for fuckssake," James turns to me, brow knit through with his aggravated reaction.
"I knew you wouldn't want to hear."
"Fuckssake!"
"Believe me, it wasn't a choice!" I return, quietly as I can given our setting. "The sentiment, however, was true. I am unreasonably fortunate."
His eyes shut briefly. "I'm ignoring and forgetting forever that you thought of that in that moment. I am focusing, instead, on the rest."
"Oh, you mean when you fucked me so hard you forgot I was there?"
"Evans, I already—"
"You should've seen you, you looked absolutely feral—though I could barely keep my head up for more than a second, was getting pounded something sublime—"
James grabs my arm and gives me a severe look. "If you don't shut up we're going to have to skive right off into these stacks we keep talking about—"
"—no, actually, too late for that, love, your stupid mates have spotted us and are ogling."
Indeed, a tablefull of Marauders have turned to look at us with odd eyes.
I lean into his ear. "It's because you insufferably fucked."
"I am already so close to being hard again—"
"Boys! Lovely night, is it not?"
Sirius and Remus, at least, know instantly what James' windblown expression and flushed cheeks clearly indicate. Peter, bless his heart, just says, "It would be more so if you'd help me wrangle another this foot out of this essay, Evans."
"Sorry, Pete," I say, kindly, dropping James' hand. "I'm leaving immediately."
As I leave in favor of a further table and Dorcas' waving hand, I hear Sirius exclaim, harshly, "What happened to you, Prongs? You realize it's obvious, right? The sex you just had?"