A/N: Dearest readers, welcome to my newest waste of time! The idea for this fic bore its way into my brain months ago, and I've used the break on my other WIP, Eighteen Again, to play with it a little. It's intended almost entirely as a fun, smutty romp for me to write while I give myself a "rest" from more plot-heavy fics. (Because do I have a third WIP, a Jily-centric, Grindelwald Wins!AU, also brewing? 100%. How many WIPs is too many WIPs? Asking for a friend.)
Please don't skip what follows.
Warning: If you're familiar with my writing, you'll find that this AU centers around a lot of aspects that sit at odds with my typical work. A huge difference is the choice of Slytherin!Marauders, and Death Eater!James, which I know is not for everyone. I completely respect that. There are also mentions of sexual violence and non-consent, and it could be argued that this fic centers around aspects of dubious consent because the entire concept is based around sex work. There's a current debate in discussions of contemporary and historic sex work over whether sex workers can or could consent at all, or if the transaction of money takes away all choice. While I promise that you will not see a lack of consent played out on screen—and, as this chapter will show, the willful giving of consent and mutual pleasure is something this fic takes seriously—these are issues I'm aware of and you will therefore see in the background. Again, I'm aware that these are darker and less "palatable" themes, for a lack of better term, than the stories I usually tell. And, again, if this isn't for you, that's fine. I'd just rather not hear about it in reviews. I have no issue with constructive criticism, and welcome it happily, but the criticism I've received on other fics (looking at you, Voyeur) almost always comes out in the form of "this character sucks," "fuck the direction of this fic," "you're disgusting," etc., and I'm not here for that. I don't want this to sound like I don't welcome feedback, because I do. I love reviews and asks on tumblr, and I have no problem hearing things you disagree with if it's respectfully written. (Honestly, those are some of the most interesting conversations!) Just please remember that this is a hobby for writers, something we do for free because we love it, and that it takes significant time, effort, and energy and is also a really personal endeavor. Shitting on someone's work because it's not for you is never okay.
And, finally, a shoutout to my girls relyingoldships and TiffanyToms for their early encouragement on this fic and feedback on this chapter. Relyingoldships, thank you for consistently providing a steady diet of support for my ego. Any and all nonsense that comes from my brain definitely bears some mark of your friendship. Tiffany, I'm especially grateful for your encouragement, since dark!James is your current Specialty, proper noun. I'm sure your early characterization of James in What Are You Doing to Me? has percolated in my brain enough to have inspired some aspect of this James. And, of course, everyone should check out her new Enemy Within for further dark!James content.
As always, come chill with me at tumblr at scriibble-fics!
Bought
Chapter One: The Proposition
"Get the fuck out of my office."
Six years have passed since Lily Evans had once suffered the torture of daily interaction with James Potter. Yet it also suddenly feels like no time at all, like a day hasn't gone by where he hasn't smirked at her with the confidence of ten men, his eyes alight with joy behind his spectacles. That joy had always come entirely at her expense, and she finds that it still does as he ignores her demand, closes the door to her cramped office, and settles into the chair on the other side of her desk.
She should sit in a position of power, like a professor ready to dole out justice. In their years together at Hogwarts, she knows James had received more than his fair share of such dressing downs. She also knows that it had never phased him, not once, and it looks like it still doesn't.
"Nice office," he says, folding one long leg over the other.
It's not, and she knows it. It's small and hot and noisy even with the door closed, none of which she can do anything about. What she can do something about—namely, the shelves full of books and knickknacks, and the neat organization of her scuffed desktop—feels suddenly cheap and inferior under his gaze. She feels suddenly cheap and inferior under his gaze, because she knows on sight that his crisp button-down alone cost more than her entire outfit.
That feeling evaporates, replaced by icy-cold dread in the pit of her stomach, when he drapes a shoulder carelessly across the arm of his chair. The cuff of his shirtsleeves looks as careless as his entire being, but she knows better than to assume as much. On his left forearm, ink black against his tan skin, he sports the Dark Mark. It says everything about the state of their world that he wears the Mark with open pride, rather than covertly hidden, as Death Eaters once had.
"Get out," she repeats. "I don't—"
"Nice office," he repeats in turn. "Bit small, though, isn't it? I always figured you'd end up in charge somewhere, not shunted off to the side."
"You know why I'm in this office."
He could act stupid, could goad her into explaining what she means, a game he'd often played at Hogwarts simply to stretch her nerves to their breaking point. He could get her to tell him that she's one of only three muggleborns on staff at the Daily Prophet who even has a fucking office, and the only woman of the three, a fact that she both prides and loathes simultaneously. He could get her to complain that she's had to dig and scrape and claw her way to that position, stepped over by half-bloods and purebloods time and time again, other witches and wizards who have never taken on even half her workload but who now hold salaries and occupy offices two or three times the size of hers. He could do all that, and easily. He's never lacked the ability to make her kick off, and she doubts that he's lost it in the years that have passed.
But he doesn't. Instead, he plucks up a picture frame from her desk and holds it between callused hands. "Your old gang, huh?" he asks, and she knows who and what he sees before him: her, Marlene McKinnon, Dorcas Meadowes, and Mary Macdonald in the Gryffindor common room, laughing like—
Well, like the weight of the world hadn't crushed them yet, because it hadn't.
She has her wand in hand before she can truly think the action through, and the picture jerks out of his grip in an instant. Even after she slams it down beside her, safe from his grasp, she doesn't lower her wand.
Temptation crests. The desire for vengeance, for punishment, for the opportunity to wipe the stupid fucking smirk from his face—for all of it—peaks high, and then higher still.
He laughs, and it's truly the worst thing he could do.
"Evans," he chides, her name spoken warmly, like one might address a willful child. "Come on. Don't make me hex you."
"Try it."
He draws his wand at that, but without haste. He slides it from his pocket, plucked between lazy fingers, but he doesn't point it her way. "I could have you chucked in Azkaban for threatening me, you know," he says, still chuckling. His wand, a cruel, curved rod of dark wood with a tapered end, twirls between his fingers.
She can all too easily imagine standing on the other end of that wand, hearing that laugh, and counting the seconds until her end.
"I wouldn't, of course," he adds in the next breath, and his eyebrows lift when she scoffs. "What? I wouldn't. You know I've always had a soft spot for you."
"A soft spot?" Her voice breaks over the second word, but with anger, not fear. "Fuck you," she tells him, just in case he doesn't understand. She won't let him think that she fears him, not for a moment, not even if she does.
And she does. Shamefully, horrifically, undoubtedly, she fears him as she once never had at school.
The Dark Mark tends to have that effect, and he knows it. She knows he knows it, the evidence written all over the smirk that has never faltered.
"What are you doing here?" she asks before he can respond, and eagerly, by the look on his face. She lowers her wand, although she doesn't release it fully. "What do you want? Say your piece and get out."
"I'm surprised at you," he says, although his tone that imparts anything but. "What, a Head Boy can't look up his Head Girl to reminisce? There's not—"
"I was never yours, Potter. Not in any way."
Something shifts in his face, although she can't quite tell what. Still, she catches the light tick along the strong line of his jaw, even as he holds all signs of amusement intact, and she grabs onto that single sign of discomfort and holds it tightly.
"A real shame, that," he says lightly. "Which is why I'm here. I have a proposition for you."
She doesn't have to think, or to even breathe, before she answers. "No."
"You could at least hear me out."
"No. It doesn't matter what you have to say. The answer is no, and now that I've given you an answer—leave."
He doesn't, of course.
She also hadn't expected him to. She knows him better than that, an unfortunate but unavoidable fact, and that urges her to her feet and sends her the few steps to the door, which she wrenches open. Instantly, the full sights and sounds and pandemonium of the Prophet's main floor surge into the room.
The doorknob flies from her grasp with a flick of his wand, slamming shut with such force that it rattles the frosted glass. "I'll leave after you hear me out," he says. "You might as well sit, but you're welcome to stand. I don't mind. You look good, Evans."
The rake of his eyes down her body shouldn't feel any different from identical looks she receives around the office. Those looks typically come from men just like James Potter, purebloods with far too much power and influence and confidence to hide their admiration behind covert glances. Yet it does feel different, because James has always somehow made it feel different. Heat burns behind his eyes, searing the curve of her arse and the length of her legs, just as it once had at fifteen. And, just as it once had at fifteen, heat gathers in her cheeks and she hates herself for it.
She hates him more. She hates him so much that it swells in her throat, nearly choking her, as she has very little choice but to return to her desk. It doesn't stop him from looking at her, of course, but the physical boundary offers some form of safety, however meager. "Say your piece," she says again, and she can't hear it as anything other than a loss for her and a win for him.
He takes it similarly. "Thank you," he says, all gracious good manners, and he favors her with a brilliant smile.
She doesn't doubt that it usually encourages the receiver to smile back, but she doesn't. At least she has that, even if she has little else.
"Like I said, I have a proposition for you," he goes on. Apparently no longer threatened, he pushes his wand back into the pocket of his trousers, and it takes real effort not to strike then, when he least expects it. He folds his hands across his lap, fingers interwoven, and his eyes stroke the curve of her flushed cheek as they just had her arse. Somehow, it almost feels worse. "I thought a lot about how to put this to you—"
"I'm flattered."
He ignores the bite in her voice. "You should be." His grin sparkles. "It's kept me up some nights. I figure you're probably the same girl you were at Hogwarts and would rather I just come out with it, rather than wax poetic, but I'm happy to do that if you'd prefer it."
"I'd prefer you to leave and never speak to me again."
"I figured, which means I pegged you right. Anyway—" He takes in a breath, one that dims his smile just a bit, and somehow—
She knows. She knows exactly what he means to say even before he can say it.
"Like I said, I've given this this a lot of thought," he says, "And I want to buy you."
She'd known, but the single second she'd had to prepare herself hadn't been enough.
Unable to resist—and unwilling to resist, even if she'd had the ability—she laughs.
It all tumbles out hysterically, poured from cracked tension and anger and then burst open with a heavy dose of sheer absurdity. She can't get past the latter even after she laughs until tears gather in her eyes and she has to press her face into her hands to try to regain some form of control over herself. "You've gone mad," she says, speaking into her palms and nearly choking with mirth. "You've gone absolutely fucking mad if you think I'd ever let anyone—let alone you—"
His response sounds measured. "I'm sure you've done it by now. Most of your kind has. I know Macdonald has for sure, and the two of you—"
'Your kind' strikes her in the chest, cutting her laughter short, but the mention of Mary hits worse. It washes over her like a bucket full of freezing-cold water.
"Don't talk about her," she snaps, and she regrets the words immediately. The second her head flies up, she can see him award himself another point, but she can't stop herself from plunging on. "You don't know—"
"Really?" He snorts. "You really think there's anything I don't know about what she and Evan got up to? It's a status symbol, having a pretty muggleborn plaything, and he couldn't wait to tell us all about how they played."
Knots twist inside her stomach, tightening to the point of pain. In the frame beside her, Mary waves towards the camera, all cherubic cheeks and dimpled smile and dark, glossy hair.
"And you think I'd go for that with you?" she asks. She wants the question to stab, to cut, to flay, but he doesn't so much as flinch. "You come in here with your brand on your arm, you insult my best friend, you insult me, and you think I'm going to jump in bed with you just because you could pay me?"
"Yes."
"Do you think I'm an idiot, or are you just that stupid?"
"Neither. I know you're brilliant, and I edged you out in most courses, didn't I? That makes me—"
That particular wound still hasn't closed in the time since Hogwarts. "'Most courses'? It was Transfiguration and Defense and that was it. You're so fucking delusional—but you always were, weren't you? Get out. Get out and—"
Still, he doesn't move. "You're not even going to ask what I'm offering?"
"No! No, I—"
"I've missed this, you know," he says, and he no longer sounds quite so flippant. He leans forward in his chair and rests his elbows upon his knees. "Bantering with you. It always—"
"We never bantered, you idiot. We fought because I couldn't stand you, and I still can't."
He smiles. With his wrists turned down and his Dark Mark obscured, he could pass again for seventeen, even though his shoulders have broadened since then. He's filled out well, past the category of lanky and into both tall and broad. "Don't lie," he says, words softly spoken. "You're better than that. We were friends once, weren't we?"
He'd looked very different then, his hair longer and his face rounder, and that alone keeps her from hurtling too far back into a dangerous past she doesn't want to revisit.
"We were," she says, and she doesn't mind admitting it. He can't count it as a point for himself, because she won't let him, not when she can add, "That was a long time ago, before I realized what trash you and your friends would become. I was right, wasn't I? How soon after graduation did you earn your mark?"
He doesn't hesitate. "Two weeks," he says. His eyes dart around her face, searching. "Disappointed in me?"
"No. I forgot you existed a long time ago."
His jaw ticks again, and she clocks it. "I haven't thought about you in a long time either, but—"
"Bullshit." The tick in his jaw clicks again, and she grips the metaphorical knife she's discovered, determined to twist it. "Don't lie, even though I know you're not better than that. What, you just happened to think about me and then decided to waltz in here and ask me to be your secret muggleborn mistress? You expect me to believe—"
"Oh, I'm not asking to keep you as a secret."
He earns another point, one she can hardly even begrudge to give him, because he briefly stuns her into silence.
Delight reemerges, mapped across the smooth angles of his face. "You really think I'd hide you, Evans? Gryffindor golden girl, prefect, Head Girl, ridiculously fit as you are—you're a bloody prize. I'd want the world to know I bagged you. I can't imagine anyone wouldn't. I have no idea how you're still unattached, but that's a boon for me. It is for you too. You'd realize that if you weren't so bent on acting insulted, like this is the first you're ever hearing about this kind of arrangement or this is the first offer you've ever had."
"There's nothing about this that's beneficial to me," she says flatly. "You said your piece. I gave my answer. Get out."
"It's not the first offer you've gotten, is it?"
"Potter, I swear to Christ—"
"Is it?"
All at once, without warning, she's had enough.
Fate intervenes at precisely the same moment that she slams her hands down on her desk.
The door flies open as she rises to her feet, and so suddenly that she wonders, for one wild moment, if she'd caused it to happen through a burst of accidental magic. Her body certainly feels pushed nearly to that brink, her muscles drawn impossibly tight and all her nerves on edge and her face hot, and all as she hasn't felt since she'd gotten a true handle on her magic in her early teen years.
Titus Gibbon's head, craned around the frame of her door, tells a different tale.
It takes a few seconds for the realization to catch up with James. Clearly, he'd shared her assumption, as his wand has once again flashed into his palm. Yet he looks excited by the prospect of outraging her into emotional outbursts of magic. His eyes flash and his grin shines brilliantly, the latter of which only dims when he sees Titus' hand gripping the doorknob.
Titus, on the other hand, beams at the sight of him. "James!" he says, dark eyebrows shooting high upon his forehead. "What—behind closed doors with my best copy editor? What are you playing at?"
James laughs, and he unfurls his legs to stand and grip the hand Titus extends. Side-by-side, their Dark Marks become a matching set.
"I came by to see you like you suggested, but got sidetracked," James says. He drags a hand through his hair, and he rests his palm against the messy curls on the back of his head. "Evans and I were reminiscing about Hogwarts days. Seems she hasn't changed a bit."
Neither have either of them. Just like James, Lily knows that Titus is still every bit as spoiled, bigoted, and dangerous as he'd been at Hogwarts.
"I don't know about that." Titus flashes a wink her way, and nausea crawls up her throat. "She's a bit easier to handle now."
No, worse. He's worse than he'd been at Hogwarts.
Titus turns back to James. "Come on, let me show you my office. Dad set me up right next to him, so I've got—"
"Give me a minute to finish up with Evans, will you?"
The smile melts from Titus' face like rain sliding down a window.
Lily loves to see it—would normally pay to see it, and dearly—but doesn't take a moment to even relish the sight. "Oh, we're quite finished," she says quickly. She sits back down and uncaps her inkwell. "Mr. Gibbon, I'll have the Pitts report finished and out to illustrations within the hour."
She doesn't look up to hear a hated sound: Titus' familiar laughter under his breath, every bit the same as it had once sounded at Hogwarts. How often had she heard him laughing in just that way, quiet and understated and threatening all at once? How often had James stood alongside him, Slytherin brothers to the end despite their three-year gap? "Titus, Evans. You can call me Titus."
He'd urged the same near every day for months, ever since he'd moved into his spacious corner office, but she's never taken him up on it. The way he'd looked at her the first time he'd extended the offer had immediately made her vow that she never would.
She takes a breath, holds it for a moment, and then exhales. "Right. Potter, close the door on your way out, please."
He ignores her. "Let me finish up here," he says to Titus again. "Go break out whatever you have in your desk and I'll come find you."
"What—" Titus begins, but he cuts himself off. "Oh, you're fucking joking me."
Ready to chuck her open inkwell across the room—job be damned—Lily looks up just in time to see disbelief break across Titus' face. A moment later, he begins to laugh.
It sounds nothing like his usual laugh. No longer subdued, the laughter he gives comes out explosively, loud and with abandon, and—
As far as she can recall, for perhaps the first time ever, James doesn't join him.
"Are you for real?" Titus demands, and Lily can hear the room behind him hush abruptly, or at least the area that sits in the immediate vicinity of her door. She can imagine the turned heads and incredulous stares too easily, every set of eyes surely staring at their boss' son's sudden break in behavior. "I never should have mentioned her around you, should I? Fuck, if I'd known better— Bertram, he warned me, you know. He said, 'James had it bad for her at Hogwarts, so you better not talk about her too much,' but I didn't listen. I figured, no, that was years ago, there was no way you—"
The twist of James' mouth shouldn't give Lily any amount of satisfaction—it shouldn't, not when it clearly also pleases Titus, who she seeks to never align with if she can help it—but it absolutely does. It does, because no one at Hogwarts outside of his very closest mates had ever dared to take the piss out of James Potter, at least not seriously, and it shows. He hates it, hates it every bit as much as he clearly savors every single time she's given it to him harshly and seriously, without a bit of banter in her tone. He's never batted an eye at that, and yet he does at this.
It feels like winning a thousand points against him. She'll never forget it.
"Yet here I am," James says shortly. "Will you—"
"Were you even going to stop by and say hi to me? Or were you planning to sneak in here without me knowing to try to get at her? That's cowardly as fuck, and I would have thought you'd appreciate a little friendly competition."
Competition.
Belatedly, it hits her exactly what Titus means by that. Her victory, so recently won, vanishes immediately.
"I'm going to suggest that you take this conversation away from me," she says. It's nowhere near what she truly wants to express, not by a long shot, but it does the trick. Both men turn to look at her, and she can't even relish James' clenched jaw. "I have zero interest in hearing it—honestly, less than zero interest. I'd sooner—" Several possible endings to that sentence emerge and then die in her brain, and she releases a fist she hadn't realized she'd clenched. It takes effort to unwind her fingers, and her palm shines up at her, red with the marks of her nails. "Mr. Gibbon, I'll—"
"Titus."
She could lift her wand, cast a Severing Charm, and never have to listen to him correct her in that low, smooth, winning way again.
She doesn't. "I can have that report finished in the hour if you'll let me get to work."
Titus had never once stopped laughing, although it's softened by then, worn down to chuckles once again passed under his breath. "Sure, sure," he says, and he manages to make it sound like he provides her with a great favor. He claps James on the back, a single pat given between the shoulder blades, before he ducks away. "Game on, mate. Come see me when you strike out here."
He doesn't shut the door after him, so James does it for him. Once again, the glass rattles with the force of an airstrike passing overhead.
Relative quietude falls over her office, at least in comparison to the chaos that has passed. She waits.
He says nothing.
She speaks first. "So that's what made you think of me."
"Yes." He heads back to the chair across from her desk, although he doesn't sit. He clutches the backrest, his shoulders taut. "I never could stand him."
Her mouth falls open outside of her control. "You—liar. Liar."
Tension ropes down each of his arms, bulging out the veins of his forearms, turning his fingers white. Still, he smiles a little, though he lacks his usual ease. "I expect you didn't like everyone in your house either—although maybe you did. If anyone did, it's you."
"I liked everyone outside of Slytherin."
"Warranted," he says, and he doesn't give her time to react. He moves on quickly, head nodding sharply towards the door. "He hasn't—" he begins, but he stops himself. His forehead creases behind his glasses. "Has he?"
She considers answering, but only for all of half a second. "Go on. Ask me."
"Evans—"
"You're going to have to say it."
He doesn't want to. It reads all over his sigh, all over the careful flex of his fingers as he releases the chair, all over his posture as he sits down again with his shoulders still tense. "Has he put it on you?"
"It depends on what you mean by that."
He stares at her, mouth tight. "You're enjoying this."
"Yes." She can't even begin to feel badly about that.
"Why?"
"Because you hate it." His mouth opens furiously, although she continues before he can speak. "If you're asking if he's come into my office, sat down in that chair, and offered to buy me—no. He hasn't."
"He's going to now."
"No, I'm sure he'll call me into his office for that. He prefers having me in there. The power dynamic is on his side there—although it always is. He's my boss."
"His father is your boss." For some reason, he makes it sound like an important distinction.
It's not, and she knows it. "As good as, then. What—"
"For fuck's sake." He wrenches his glasses from his face abruptly, and he cradles the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed. Before her eyes, he transports back to Hogwarts and prefect meetings they'd held their seventh year. He'd often sat similarly, drawn to the very brink of his patience by some form of her words or actions or both, although he'd always bounced back quickly. Age or circumstance appears to have finally robbed him of that ability, although she can't tell which one is the true cause. "Are you going to go there? Because it's him or me, and you'll need to—"
"Him or you?" she repeats, incredulous. He doesn't look up. "Him or you or neither, which—are you serious? I'm not about to sell myself to either of you, you arrogant piece of—"
"Do you really think he's going to give you a choice?"
Outside of logic, but undeniably, the air in the room stills.
She licks her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. "What—"
"He'll let you say no for a while. He'll like that, probably, until he doesn't, and then—" He pushes his glasses back onto his nose and looks at her, his eyes unusually dark. "He could just do it, you know. He doesn't have to offer you money or protection or anything else I'm trying to get you to take. He could just call you into his office, do what he wants, and chuck you out. What are you going to do, go to the authorities? Do you think anyone would do anything? Do you think anyone has done anything? This—listen, this shit happens all the time, and I don't want—"
"What, you don't want it to happen to me? To me specifically, and only me, but you have no problem turning a blind eye when your mates do it to god knows who else?" Her breath comes in hot and sharp, and vitriol pours out in turn, each word more furious than the last. "You know the reason this happens to people like me, but you have the balls to sit there with your fucking Dark Mark on your arm and act like you're above it. You're not. You can act like you're better than Gibbon, but you're just as complicit, even if you're not—"
He raises his wand, and she reacts on gut instinct alone. She ducks, body thrown behind the solid mass of her desk.
Something ticks, the sound just audible. Then silence.
Actual silence.
"I silenced the room," he says. "I'm not—did you really think I'd actually hex you? Don't be—"
"You have before!" Her cheeks once again burn as she sits up, ready to face the smirk that's surely worked its way back across his face, but—
He stares back at her, unsmiling, just as before. "Sure I did, and you did it back, but—we were just kids then. It's different now."
Words come, but nothing short of accusatory or incredulous or biting. Nothing of that nature that seems to suffice, so she says nothing.
"You were getting shouty, and I didn't want anyone to hear you going on like that," he says after the silence has warmed the stuffy air hotter. "I don't know why you don't keep the room silenced permanently, or at least one-way. These walls are shit."
"I'm not allowed to silence the room fully or halfway. I'm not allowed to do much of anything."
"So quit. I'd pay you enough to do that."
They've circled back around, apparently, back to the cusp of the matter and the reason he sits across from her. Once again, he leans forward onto his elbows with the distinct look of someone anticipating a fight. Not only that, but he looks like he almost wants a fight. His eyes have begun to glitter anew, although he shows no other signs of outward amusement.
Thank god for that. Another smirk from him might mean rash actions and then Azkaban for her.
"I'd give you a choice, at least," he adds. His voice holds a strange, almost bitter note, one she hasn't often heard before. "If you said no, I'd respect that. You can think whatever else you want of me, and that's fine, but—I'd give you a fucking choice, Evans."
"Why?"
He blinks. "Why what? Why would I not force you to—"
"You've killed people, haven't you? I doubt you let them say no."
His mouth hangs open, prior thoughts still unspoken on his lips.
He doesn't need to answer. His face says it all.
"It's different—no, it is," he insists immediately, because she doesn't doubt that her own face gives away far too much. "Look, I don't want to explain this to you, but I will if you make me. Just—just trust me, okay? It's different—or least it is to me."
"I don't trust you."
He has the decency to not look offended. "I mean, I figured," he says, his shoulders lifting in a shrug. "But you'd get there, I reckon, and hopefully you trust me more than you trust that berk. You fancy me more, anyway, and that's a decent start."
There. There he goads her, easing back into a dynamic she hasn't once missed, even if he has.
She shouldn't react. She shouldn't. She shouldn't let him under her skin, not for a second, not when he clearly wants nothing more, but—
"I don't fancy you," she insists before she can stop herself. "I never—"
"Do you often go around snogging people you don't fancy? I'm surprised at you. Didn't think you were the type."
Once, she wants to say. Once, and only once, an accidental kiss their seventh year in the midst of patrolling. Even years later, she still can't fully articulate how it had happened. One moment they had walked, arguing over his housemates' treatment of younger students. The next, he'd had her face between his hands and his mouth on hers, and she'd found her fingers woven into his stupid, messy hair before her brain had caught up with her actions. She'd pulled there the moment realization had hit, although she'd never quite figured out if she'd meant to cause pain or pleasure or both. He'd certainly taken it as the latter, groaning into her mouth and dropping an eager hand to the small of her back to pull her into the hard lines of his body. He'd wanted her to protest, wanted her to fight back with every bit of ire that she gave him verbally, evident in every pleased shiver at the use of her nails or jerk of his hips when she'd tugged at his lower lip with her teeth. He'd liked it, and, worse—
So had she.
Yet he'd let her go without protest the second she'd finally pushed him away, far after she'd come to her senses, his hands releasing the back of her thigh and the swell of her hip without complaint. He'd simply smiled at her, mouth swollen and pupils wide and trousers tight, and had let her stalk off without another word.
In fact, to her surprise, they'd never spoken about it again. She'd waited for days, for weeks, expecting to see some burst of laughter from all of his horrible, slimy Slytherin mates once he'd broken the news with arrogant pleasure, but it had never come.
Her nails once again find the ridges pressed into her palm. "Fuck you. Just—fuck you."
The insult packs none of the punch she desires, something she should have expected. She's said it to him too often for it to do much more than make him smile.
"That's what I'm offering you. I'm even offering to pay you for it. It's a good deal. You're not likely to get a better one."
The inkwell sits beside her, ready to lob and every bit as tempting as a potential bomb.
She opts for words instead, those just as carefully thrown. "Based on the conversation I just witnessed, I'm actually going to get another offer pretty soon."
She doesn't want that offer—in fact, she fears that offer with the same amount of passion that it repulses her—but it doesn't matter in that moment. Only wiping the smile from his face matters, and it works.
Another point to her tally.
He doesn't mince words. "Tell me you want to shag him and I'll leave."
It's the most tempting offer he's given her all day.
"But make sure you mean it, Evans," he adds quickly, as if he can see that information written all over her face. "I'm going to have to go listen to Titus brag about his new gig and drink whatever overpriced shit he has in his desk, so I'll have ample time to tell him whatever you say. If you tell me you want him to buy you, I'll make sure he knows it, and—he'll have the coin ready before the end of the day. I know you don't trust me, but you can trust me on that."
The thought of Titus' mouth on hers, Titus' fingers opening the buttons of her blouse, Titus' hands on her body, is enough to make her skin crawl—and quite literally. A shiver runs up her spine. If she can't stomach the thought of calling him anything less than 'Mr. Gibbon,' she can hardly imagine giving him access to any part of her, body or mind.
She can't imagine giving James Potter access to those things either, but—maybe because she's already snogged him once, maybe because she knows he'll let her go if she pushes him away, maybe something else entirely—she hates the idea just a little less. Just a little.
"I can, and I will, say no to you both," she says, but he just shakes his head, like he'd expected the answer.
"We've been over this. He wouldn't listen. If you're unattached, he's going to keep at it until he gets what he wants. You heard him—this is a game to him."
"What is it to you?"
"Like I said—a beneficial situation for both of us. Do you understand that yet?"
No. No, she can only see the situation in much the same way she's seen every interaction with James Potter: as an event where it doesn't matter how many points she earns or how often she wins small battles against him. He'll win, because he always wins. He always wins because wizards like him have set up society in such a way that he can never lose.
Nothing about their world benefits her. Nothing.
"He'll leave you be if you take up with me," he explains. He speaks slowly, as if connecting careful dots she's sure to miss. "That's the only thing that'll deter him. He's not going to respect a no from you, not like he'll respect me."
He's right.
He's right, and she knows he's right. Worse, perhaps, she knows he knows he's right, and that he can see the realization strike and then wash over her. Her face once again seeks the comfort and safety of her hands, although in a different manner than before. Her prior laughter at the absurdity of the situation seems like an entire lifetime earlier.
"I have other options," she says into her palms, spoken more to herself than to him.
"Other men?" The question sharpens to the point that she nearly jumps despite herself. As if he catches himself, and as if he's maybe given a bit too much away, familiar joviality softens what follows. "Again, didn't think you were the type. What, do you have some stable of blokes sitting around waiting for you?"
"No."
Yet she kind of does, although not as he clearly suspects, not in the way that had made his question stick in his throat. She simply has friends—male, pureblood, respected friends—who she knows would probably let her play the role of concubine in public and ask for nothing in return in private. Hell, she's done that already, and more than once—
He reads her mind, or perhaps something in her tone. Nothing else explains his next question, another which comes out a little stilted. "You've done this before, haven't you?"
Yes and no and something in between, none of which she feels like delving into with a man attempting to push her towards his bed—and especially not this man.
She looks up through her hands. "Have you?"
"No. I've never needed to pay a woman."
Arrogant dickhead, but—
She believes him, sadly.
"Again, I'm flattered." Although she doesn't mean it any more than before, it lacks her earlier venom.
He doesn't call her on it. His venom, too, seems in short supply. "I wish you'd see that I'm trying to give you a deal here," he says, and he sounds a little impatient for the first time. "I'm offering you protection from Titus and blokes like him, which you seem to want. I'm offering you money, which I'm sure you need. I'm offering you the chance to say no, which someone like Titus would never do. I'm willing to put all that in writing, if you want it, although—"
That changes things, whether she wants to admit it or not.
"So you're telling me—"
It hits her, even as she speaks, that she's moved out of incredulity and into the arena of bargaining, and it cuts her vocal cords.
He watches her falter, and he waits all of five seconds. "Go on."
It takes effort, but she manages. "You're saying that I don't have to do a single thing with you, and you'll respect that and—what, just pay me to exist near you?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
"But—"
Understanding clicks, perhaps belatedly again.
She stares at the confident hold of his shoulders, at the elevation of his eyebrows, at the slight lift in the corners of his mouth. "You think you can convince me to shag you, don't you?"
He shrugs a second time. "With enough time and energy and effort? I could seduce you, yeah, and—for the record, that's how it'd go down. You'd want it."
All she wants is to strangle him, truly, and to the point that risking Azkaban feels suddenly worth it.
"You arrogant—"
Final understanding strikes, borne from the delight that breaks open in his smile.
"That's what this is, isn't it?" She leans forward and he leans back, as if startled at the shift in her body and tone. "This is you trying to heal your ego because I wouldn't give you a go at Hogwarts. That's why you'll give me a choice. You want me to want you because then you'd win, wouldn't you?"
His hand returns to the back of his hair, and his eyes again trace her cheek. For a brief moment, her mind skitters back into the past, to those same fingers stroking her same cheek the one and only time. "That's definitely part of it," he says quietly, so quietly that she has to wonder if he's had the same thought.
Something pushes her forward. Perhaps it's the lowering of his voice or the look in his eye, but it doesn't matter either way. She leans further across her desk, eyes dropping to his throat, and imagines her hands wrapped tightly there. "So this is a game to you, and you'd give me a choice because the prize is—what? The boost your ego would get if I got on my knees for you, or if I begged you to fuck me? Because then you'd feel like you won?"
His throat constricts once, and then a second time as well. Without the familiar buzz of voices and grating gears of printers outside her door, she can hear each swallow. "Evans—" he begins, her name warningly put, but—
But she wants to win, damn it, just like he does. She wants to win even though she understands just how deeply the chips are stacked against her. Despite the restrictions placed upon her by her blood status, she's never stopped trying to win.
Yet what has all that trying given her? A miserable, tiny office and low pay for far too much work, while the world gives Titus Gibbon a cushy spot as second-in-command on only the merit of his blood.
She wants to win just once. Just once.
She can't stop herself. The words flow from her unbidden, each one after the other seeking a victory she knows she'll never achieve. "I bet you'd really try with me," she says. "I bet you'd be desperate to make me come, because that would really feed your ego, wouldn't it?" His jaw clenches, and a muscle flexes near his ear. Another point. "How do you imagine this going? Tell me. Tell me, because—you have imagined it, haven't you? What it would be like to fuck me, to make me come, to hear me say your name when—"
"Stop."
She can't. She can't and she doesn't want to, not when he shifts restlessly in his chair, fingers gripping the arms where they had once so carelessly dangled as his throat works overtime. "Do you get off to it? To me?" The answer comes through loud and clear without a single word given, written across the quickening heat in his cheeks and the dark fury in his eyes. She doesn't need a mirror to know she looks the same—angry, pushed to the brink, muscles on fire and heart racing beneath her chest. "How long? How long have you fantasized about me? Since you kissed me, or before that? Back when we were friends, when you used to make me laugh and I used to call you 'James'? Did you get off to me then?"
She doesn't expect an answer, at least not one verbally given. Yet he surprises her, as he so often had, and it doesn't matter that six years have passed. She hates the way that surprise knocks her off kilter, briefly halting her in her tracks, just as much as she had as a teenager.
"Yes." He surges forward in his chair, moving with every bit of speed that she'd once witnessed on the Quidditch pitch, and she doesn't have time to pull back. His hand closes around the nape of her neck, fingers threaded into the curls at the base of her scalp, and he drags her impossibly closer. The solid safety of her desk becomes a laughable barrier as her palms scrabble for purchase, reaching for the edge closest to her and then pressing flat as he pulls her forward. Her hips hit the desk's edge and hold there as he leans into her until his forehead rests on hers. "You know how much I fancied you—and, hell, you loved it, Evans." His skin burns against hers, but nowhere near like his breath sears her face. "You loved the way I used to chase you. You loved watching me lose my head when you'd laugh at my jokes—or later, after you blew me off and you'd laugh at some other lad's shitty—"
Trembling fingers locate the inkwell beside her, and she dumps the contents all over his perfectly-tailored shirt.
It has the desired effect. He releases her immediately, a short hiss escaping between his teeth as he lurches to his feet. Behind him, his chair launches with such force that it topples, and crimson ink spills across one shoulder and down his chest. It hits the floor with drips just audible over the sound of his heavy breathing, and, in the heat of the moment, she can almost pretend that she's made him bleed.
Her own breathing matches his, and she hates it. "Don't fucking touch me," she snaps, pushing herself back across the desk and rising to her own feet.
He laughs.
"Oh, you—" he begins, but not as she might have expected mere seconds before. The words hold no rage, only a familiar note of amusement, and that same note stretches across his face as he surveys her once again like a favored, willful child. "See, this is what I missed. I never know what I'm going to get with you, and—honestly, there's nothing like it. You—"
"It's clear what you want to get with me."
He follows her gaze down to the growing bulge in his trousers, and he snorts quietly. "What did you expect? Talking like that—you knew what you were doing." His wand twirls between his fingers, the flourish elegant, and his shirt once again glimmers with cleanliness. "If you wanted to turn me on so I'll give you better terms, you didn't have to try so hard. Just flash a little leg next time. You have to save something for when we—"
She can't win with him. Why, why had she ever even tried?
"I didn't—I wanted to shut you up, not—"
"By all means, shut me up. I can't wait for you to really shut me up."
Every inch of her body burns. "I'm glad you have practice at waiting, because you'll be waiting for the rest of your life."
"I don't think so." He sits again, but she doesn't. "You could have just told me to let you go. I would have, for the record. Anyway—sit." He waves a hand towards her chair. "Sit and tell me what you need to make this happen. I'm not in the mood to try to lowball you, so—you know, good job, actually. Looks like your tactic worked and you can just set your terms."
Sitting has become an impossibility. "Leave or I will."
He ignores her, of course. "What do you want? One hundred galleons a month? Two hundred?"
One step taken to round the corner of her desk, her eyes staunchly on the door, she freezes.
She doesn't make that much in a quarter, not without overtime, yet he can offer it to her without pause. And for what? For literally nothing in return on her part, at least not anything guaranteed? For him to bank on the power of his skills of persuasion to get anything more from her than disgusted looks and bitter dialogue?
"More?" he asks, and it sounds rather like a guess. It looks that way too, evident when her gaze travels unwillingly to his face and she sees the quizzical pull of his mouth. "Is it—"
His expression clues her into something big and unexpected: he clearly has no idea what he's doing.
Maybe she should have expected it, but she hadn't. Sure, he'd admitted that he'd personally never tried to buy a woman's companionship before, but so what? She's heard of the widespread nature of the practice just within her own extensive social circle, of friends who had sold themselves out of affection or necessity, or others who had heard stories of those they'd known who had engaged in purchase or sale. If she's heard those tales in her friendship with the more redeemable parts of society, she can only imagine what he's heard or witnessed amongst his friends.
"I'll give you more," he says. "I know what you're worth."
She should have held onto her inkwell. "What am I worth? Tell me. I can't wait to hear this."
He ignores the biting lift to the question, although his mouth twitches in barely-suppressed mirth. "More than I can afford, probably, and I don't mind telling you that. It's the truth. Listen—" He shifts again in his chair, and the amusement flees his face. "Titus is going to come looking for me before too long, so let me lay it out for you. Here's what I'm offering you." From his lap, he lifts a hand and then raises a finger. "Two hundred galleons a month, although I'd give you more if you wanted it." Another finger. "A place to live—and your own place, not with me, before you get all bent out of shape." A third finger. "The ability—"
"I don't need a place to live. I'm not homeless, you prat."
She can hear it herself, the way that her responses have transformed from an outward 'no' and once again into negotiation. And if she can hear it—
He hears it too. He grins, the look equal parts smug and charming and infuriating all at once, which sums up James Potter as neatly as she can imagine. "Right. I figured. This is more a benefit for me. I'm sure you're holed up somewhere with McKinnon or Meadowes or Macdonald or all three, and I'd rather not deal with seeing them whenever I want to see you. I can't imagine they'd give me a very warm welcome."
Marlene, at least, would almost certainly hex his bollocks off on sight. Moreover, Lily knows she doesn't have it in her to even try to stop her.
He wiggles his fingers, the motion somehow obscene. "I've already said it once, but I'll say it again. I'm offering you the ability to say no, which you're not going to get anywhere else. I won't ever make you do anything you don't want to do—sexually, at least." The latter comes out almost as an afterthought, another tiny clue that, despite his confidence, he's planned very little and knows even less about what he's doing. "I will make you spend time with me, because I'm entitled to that, but I'll be reasonable about it. I have a life. You won't see me every second of every day."
He speaks as if he already has her agreement on lock. It sends fury balling into the back of her throat, desperate to burst out in a scream.
He adds a fourth finger. "I'll get Titus off your back, and anyone else sniffing around. I can't imagine he's the only one interested, is he?"
She doesn't answer. She doesn't trust herself to answer.
"Is he, Evans?"
Her words come out short and jagged. "That's none of your fucking business."
"Ah, but it will be." Again, he sounds completely convinced of her compliance. "See, I'm not just paying you to fuck me—and, again, you will. You'll want to. I'm going to get you there." As if he anticipates the furious open of her mouth, he raises his voice a notch, fully prepared to talk over her. "I'm paying you not to fuck anyone else, and I want to know if anyone tries it out. That's really all I'm asking for in return. You're getting one hell of a deal."
"You're a pig."
"I'll go to Gringotts in the morning and put all this in writing. We'll set the terms for a year." He stands and stretches, suddenly all loose muscles and ease. The widening of his body shrinks her tiny office even further. "Think about that for a minute. I'm offering to pay you to do nothing but exist for a whole year. What would you do with that kind of money? You could quit this shithole. You wanted to brew once, didn't you? That's what you used to say. You could do that. You could take the money and start your own business—hell, I'll introduce you to my dad and you can pick his brain about it, if you want. You could—"
She can suddenly see him all too clearly as he'd looked at fifteen at Hogwarts, his smile less smug and more eager and his gaze open and earnest, as he'd once sat across from her in the library or frolicked with her in the lake or joked with her in the corridors. Had she told him about her dreams then? Or in the midst of Potions, perhaps, over the top of some steaming cauldron while he'd worked at a nearby station? She must have, and she could imagine her younger self—not yet burdened by the world, not yet let down by the choices he'd make—doing just that. Yet she can't remember ever actually saying the words, ever revealing the dreams she'd kept locked deep in her chest, dreams of becoming the sort of potioneer that she spoke of in revered terms, that she read about in textbooks, that she looked up to like most people admired Quidditch stars.
Her body reacts before her mind catches up to her actions, and she crosses the room and throws open the door before he can blink. "Goodbye."
He doesn't blink, not even after the pandemonium of the main room bursts into the office in a cacophony of raised voices and grinding machines and rushing bodies. "Think about it," he says, and he pauses beside her on his way out. "But be quick. Titus is going to be on you as soon as he hears that I made an offer. Actually—" He glances down at a heavy, gleaming watch on his wrist. "I'll stall him for a while, so finish whatever bullshit he had you on and then duck out. He's—"
"I have a job. It's not like—"
He sighs, and the soft puff of his breath hits her face. "We're going to drink, Evans. Do you really want to still be here after he's had a few and he's determined to get what he wants?"
Her fingers contract on the doorknob, pressing until the color bleeds from her knuckles.
"Duck out," he says again. "Think about it. Write to me tonight."
"You—" she begins angrily, and she doesn't know where she even plans to take things. Truly, she doesn't care. She just wants to let out the scream that pulses in her throat, that's he's built ever since he'd first stepped into her office, that she can't swallow no matter how hard she tries.
He doesn't let her finish. In the span of a single breath, he bends his head to her cheek and kisses her there. His lips burn sensitive skin just south of her ear as he closes a hot, hard hand around her hip. "I'll see you soon," he says against her ear, the words low and silky with promise, and she has just enough time to grab his wrist and throw his hand off of her before he steps out the door. In the split second before she slams the door after him, she can hear him laugh.
He'd left the room silenced, and her ears ring with it as she presses her face to wall beside the door, her heart working at double-time. Silence no longer soothes. It hurts.
Into the cool drywall, she releases the scream built up in her lungs. Afterwards, she feels the better for it.
xxx
It takes the entirety of her work on the Pitts report for her anger to subside long enough for reality to set in.
It takes the evening for a plan to form.
That night, it takes a single hour of lying awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling, for her to head straight to Albus Dumbledore's office. It takes far longer than that for her to explain the entire situation, and further still to repeat it once Dumbledore goes and wakes up Minerva McGonagall to provide him with backup.
McGonagall offers him that backup in the mode of righteous anger wrapped in a tartan nightgown. "You can't do this," she says, all brilliant fury in a frail form. "I won't let you do this. I don't know what you think you can get out of Potter, but—the Order has other spies. I won't condone you selling your body—"
Lily cuts her off before the heat in McGonagall's cheeks can surely overtake her entire self. Between rage and embarrassment, she looks fit to burst into flames that could rival those of Fawkes the phoenix. "I'm not asking either of you to condone it. I'm simply telling you what I plan to do, and I'm doing it whether you want me to or not."
Behind her spectacles, McGonagall's dark eyes flit to Dumbledore. "Albus, tell her you won't allow this."
He's already removed his own spectacles, and he doesn't lift them. His eyes remain closed. "I have. Several times. I'd hoped you might have better luck."
She doesn't.
It takes hours, but Lily convinces them in the end. Somehow, it doesn't feel like winning.
Her owl departs near two in the morning, an unsigned scroll attached to its leg. 300 a month, she writes, mainly just to see if he'll agree.
He does. Tapping at her window pulls her from a restless sleep an hour later.
You drive a hard bargain, she reads. Even his handwriting looks smug. I'll have the contract written up and sent to your lovely office first thing in the morning.
Staring at the thin, careful slant of his penmanship, she knows she won't sleep until then. Really, she has to wonder if she'll ever spend another night of the next year sleeping soundly.