Previously in the Darklyverse: Peter and Emmeline talked around the nature of their relationship and kissed. Emmeline reconnected with Sirius and got him a job working with her at Scrivenshaft's.

xx

October 18th, 1978: Emmeline Vance

Oh, god, Emmeline can't help thinking when she awakens the next morning in Peter's bed next to Peter. Oh, god, she slept with him.

With her roommate! What's going to happen if they have some kind of horrible breakup and she's stuck living with him until the lease is up? She knows she's getting ahead of herself here, but she can't help spiraling down worst-case scenarios of all the things she's probably screwed up by virtue of sleeping with him. Okay, maybe it's permissible to pursue a romantic relationship with the person she wants—maybe she even owes it to herself, deserves it—but she should have just dipped her toes into the water to start with, not cannonballed right in by sleeping with the bloke.

Peter is still asleep, and she can't decide whether she should bolt for her room and get dressed and run away to work or wait for him to get up so she can check in with him before she goes. He makes the decision for her, though, when she tries to sit up without jostling him and his eyes immediately flutter awake. He smiles at her, though he looks nervous. "Morning, Em."

"Morning." Is this the part where she kisses him hello? Emmeline has no point of reference for any of this stuff, and the only thing that comforts her a little is that Peter doesn't really know what he's doing, either.

She can't help but feel like she's lost something—her virginity, obviously, but something more than that, something intangible. She wonders if Peter feels the same way. She wonders what in god's name is going through his head right now.

"So, um," Peter says quietly, "about last night, it doesn't have to happen again if you don't want it to."

"Is that what you think I think? That I don't want it to happen again?"

"Do you?"

"I… don't know," Emmeline admits. "I mean, it wasn't bad or anything."

"Because that's exactly what every bloke wants to hear from the person they just had sex with for the first time," says Peter, but he's smiling in a sort of teasing way, and she lets her guard down just a little.

"No, I mean… I liked it. I did." Why is that so hard for her to say? "It's just also a lot, and I feel like I should be doing something to process it, but I don't know what."

"Can I kiss you?"

"Only a little bit," says Emmeline ruefully.

He sits up, too—she tries not to look at his bare chest—and leans in to kiss her once, twice, three times, four. "You liked it, too, didn't you?" she asks, suddenly concerned that he didn't and feeling oddly alone.

Peter laughs. "Yes. Yes, I liked it. I liked it a lot."

"Okay," says Emmeline, and then, "This doesn't mean we're ever going to do it again, necessarily."

"Of course not," says Peter. "Listen, I'm going to go take a shower. Do you want me to cook us breakfast?"

"Can't; I'm running late for work," she says apologetically. "But you could make me dinner tonight instead?"

"Sounds like a plan. I'll dig my wok out of the cupboard."

"That's perfect." They're both still sitting there staring at each other—Emmeline's got the covers pulled up to her chest and doesn't want to get out of bed while Peter is still here to see her, and she imagines he feels the same way because he isn't moving, either. "I, um—I won't look," Emmeline says.

"Okay. I'm really going now."

"Go," Emmeline laughs as she bows her head and feels Peter getting up and out of the bed.

At Scrivenshaft's, she and Sirius kind of skirt around each other for the first half hour of their shift, until he finally bursts, "Are you doing all right, Em?"

"I—yeah. Why wouldn't I be all right?"

"It's just—you're limping, and you look… I don't know. Nervous."

"I…" She's fully prepared to say it's nothing or blame it on Order stress, but for some reason, she blurts out, "Peter and I had sex last night."

Sirius's eyes widen, and he laughs a little. "Are you sure you want to be telling me about this?"

She sees his point, but she shrugs. "Who else am I going to tell it to?"

"Point taken," says Sirius. "All right, then. What happened?"

"Things have been a little, well, heated lately, and we kind of got on the subject after Peter started writing to Siobhan Flynn—you remember the girl he dated back in sixth year? And it just—escalated. I feel sort of—is it normal to feel empty afterwards? Because I feel kind of empty. Empty and lonely."

Sirius sighs. "I'm not an expert or anything, but I think that's normal, yeah. That's sort of how I felt, too, after Marlene. I think it's just—everybody tells you to save it, you know? I think, after a lifetime of hearing that, no matter how long you save it, you're going to feel bad about it when you do give it away."

"Does it stay that way forever? I mean, am I ever going to…?"

"It doesn't feel like that for me anymore, if that helps," he says. "Eventually, it just becomes a normal part of your life—if you want it to be, I mean. Not everybody wants to have sex all the time or even at all, and that's okay, too."

"It's not like I never want to do it again," says Emmeline. "I think we moved too fast yesterday, but I don't think we can't ever get there again. I just wish I felt like I know the right thing to do."

"I can tell you this," says Sirius. "Peter isn't the type to shag you just to dump you after he's had enough of it. He's a sap, and he wants this stuff to mean things, and if he went there with you, it means he really cares about you."

Emmeline feels a little relieved, though not much. "I know I need to talk to him, but I kind of just don't want to deal with the conversation I know we need to have."

"No matter what you want to do, he'll understand," Sirius promises. "But you shouldn't put it off. Marlene and I put off too many things throughout the whole of our relationship, and it just made everything worse, believe me."

Emmeline is still thinking about this when she gets home to find Peter already bustling around in the kitchen making stir fry. "Hey," she says, and she can never un-know the way he looked and felt and touched her when—

"Hey," says Peter. "This is almost ready, if you want to come sit down?"

So Emmeline comes and sits down. Is their relationship the reason Peter has been acting so fishy the last month or two, she wonders? Has he been worrying about the same issues that worried Emmeline all day long?

Dinner is a relatively normal affair; Peter doesn't try to touch her, and they make light conversation over their food. Peter complains about his boss; Emmeline grouses about the way people treat you in the customer service industry. They sit there at the table for a long time, and it feels normal at first, but sometime after she finishes eating, the electricity between them ramps up and starts to make her anxious again.

It's not like it's a bad thing, feeling this way about Peter. But it's different, and Emmeline doesn't do great with change, and it kind of scares her to know that the fundamental dynamic of their relationship has altered into something that can never change back. Peter seems to sense her discomfort because he keeps sitting across from her at the table, never proposing to move onto the couch or anywhere else that could risk their bodies touching.

It's not like he's suddenly a completely different person, she reflects as she watches his forearms flex where his robe sleeves have hiked up. Her best friend is still in there, and that brings Emmeline comfort. It's just—new, all of a sudden, and she wishes she could fast-forward six months to a time when whatever they're doing together is settled and normal.

Finally, Peter says, "I was going to practice more guitar, if you want to hang out here with me? I picked up some tabs the other day."

She follows him into the living room, where he fishes his guitar out of the front closet and starts to pick at a song. Emmeline wouldn't say that Peter is good at the guitar yet, but he's certainly doing far better than he was when he picked up the hobby last year. Even disjointed, the sound of Peter plucking at chords is soothing and refreshingly normal, and she curls up across two cushions on the couch and allows her eyes to flutter closed.

Some time later—Emmeline doesn't know how long; she's a little out of it—Peter stops playing, sets down his guitar, and seconds later drops down onto the still-free couch cushion next to her. She lets out a tiny utterance when one of his hands slips into her hair, the other running along the top of her arm. This is new, too, and somehow both more and less frightening than the sex stuff was—it's less extreme, yes, but intimate in that way that only comes from small, simple gestures.

After a while of this—Emmeline guesses it's been ten minutes, or maybe an hour, or a lifetime—she fidgets and drags herself up into a sitting position. "We're going to be okay, right?" she blurts out. "No matter what?"

He frowns, but he nods, too, and says, "Yeah, of course. No matter what."

The next few days, they kind of skirt around each other a lot. They don't touch much, and when they do, Emmeline feels like her skin is going to burn right off. She's starting to second guess herself, like Peter doesn't want anything more than friendship and she's alone in this disturbed yearning, but then, she reminds herself, she hasn't given off any signals either—maybe he's feeling the same way about her as she is about him.

And then, on Saturday night, Peter gets home from seeing the boys and knocks on her bedroom door. She's in bed already, sitting upright in her pajamas while scribbling out a letter to Alice. Alice's owl is hopping around on top of the dresser, hooting, as it waits for her to finish. "Cool if I come in?" he asks.

"Yeah, I'm just finishing this, if you want to come in and sit."

It takes her longer than it should to finish the letter, distracted by the bleeding heat of Peter's thigh against hers even through two layers of cotton. When she's finally, finally done, she ties the letter to the owl's leg and pulls open the window so it can fly out.

There's not a lot of room in Emmeline's bed for the both of them—it's a twin size, and Emmeline is not as small as she was when she got this bed as a kid. "I feel like I haven't seen you all week," Peter says quietly.

Really? Because Emmeline feels like all she's done is see Peter the last few days. Then again, the contact they've had has been halting and incidental, and they haven't really talked the way they usually do. "I know we haven't really… talked about it," she admits.

"Do we need to?" he asks seriously.

"I mean—we can't just leave it where we left it."

"What would we say, then?"

"I…" She's grasping at straws; there are so many things in her head, but she can't pin any of them down. "Does this mean we're dating now?"

"Do you want us to be dating?"

"Do you?"

Peter lets out a long breath. "It feels sort of, I don't know, cheap to try to put a label on what I have with you. You're not just some girl I'm seeing. You're my best friend."

"I thought James and Remus and Sirius were your best friends."

"Well, you are, too, and that's not going to go away just because we start… you know, doing something physical."

"Are we going to start doing… that… regularly?"

"I don't know; do you want to?" asks Peter.

"…I'm not opposed to it."

"No?"

"No," says Emmeline softly.

This time, when he kisses her, she knows what's going to come after it. This time, she's still afraid, but only a little.