This fic was born out of Nina's prompt for a Jily romance that started with a true, no pining, friends-with-benefits arrangement before our leads start to catch feelings for each other for the first time. And then I turned it into a Christmas fic.
ONE
SUMMER (N.): A PERIOD OF MATURING POWERS
Sunday, November 28, 2021
"Try the nightstand, maybe?" Lily calls down the hall. "Second drawer. Oh, but don't—"
"Look in the top one?"
Dread bottoms out her stomach as James reappears in the doorway to her bedroom, that stupid shit-eating grin plastering his face, and waves her very colorful, very generously sized dildo in the air.
"Oh, shut it," Lily scolds, though her cheeks are burning.
James puts his hands up in surrender. "I didn't say anything!"
She can't look at him. "You judged me! I saw it on your face, just now."
His voice softens to a placating, "Lily," as he returns to the seat next to her at the kitchen island, where they had been working in companionable silence before he'd needed to go hunting for a spare laptop charger. "I'm not judging, I promise. Just…surprised you'd go for something this girthy—or this ombré—"
She whacks him across the arm with her notebook and ignores his exaggerated moan of pain. "I didn't pick it out," she justifies with a huff. "It was a gag gift from Mary at Galentine's last year."
"Ah." He sets the dildo on the island between them. "It gets the job done, though?"
Lily considers it, sitting there next to her chemistry book in broad daylight. Now that the initial shock at having her toy exposed has passed, she finds she's not as embarrassed about it as she'd initially been. After all, it's just James. They've known each other since they were kids, and though they hadn't become real friends until taking all the same introductory pre-med classes their first semester at university had really left them no choice, there was still a familiar comfort attached to him. Maybe it was because he'd known her when she'd had braces and she'd been there for his first pair of really bad glasses—and perhaps their shared experiences of multiple dissections as lab partners had something to do with it, as well as several instances of taking care of each other in various embarrassing states of drunkenness—but the awkward TMI topics of adulthood didn't seem to phase them as much as they maybe should have.
She shrugs. "I suppose. Though a real dick would be nice for a change."
James chuckles and turns to searching for an outlet for his newfound charger. "What about Literature Guy? You never did tell me how that went on Friday."
"Didn't sleep with him," she admits. "He was kind of a shitty date, and then the snog was…not good. Quite sloppy."
"Tough luck," James offers consolingly.
"Yeah, well." She scribbles notes absently as she muses aloud, "If I'm gonna cheat on Ombré here, it's gotta be worthwhile."
He slides back into his seat next to her, tapping his laptop awake, but doesn't say anything, and Lily only belatedly realizes the faux-pas she's made.
"Shit," she hisses, dropping her pen and swiveling to face him. "I'm sorry—I shouldn't have said that, I wasn't thinking—"
"It's fine—"
"James." Her hand tightens on his forearm. "It's not fine. It was…really insensitive, actually."
He sighs and gives her smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "It was a joke, Lily. Besides, it'd be nice to not be the friend everyone's tiptoeing around anymore."
She can't help the frown that puckers her brow, but if they're on the subject, she figures she might as well use this opportunity to prod beneath the surface. "How are you? Really?"
James shrugs. "Good. It's all good."
Lily arches a disbelieving brow. "James. You dated her for six months and she spent two of them on study abroad cheating on you with one of your teammates. It's okay to not be good, you can tell—"
"I know," he cuts her off, hazel eyes flashing with a new intensity. "But it's the truth, I'm good. Look, it's been a few months now since I found out, and I've come to terms with it. Really. I mean, yeah, I was…really into her, obviously, but…I'm not anymore. She's not who I thought she was."
Lily nods solemnly, seeing the sincerity in his face, and withdraws her hand. "Are you ready to get back out there?"
He blows air through puffed cheeks. "I don't know," he mutters, returning his gaze to his laptop screen and typing in his password. "I'm kind of over dating right now." Like an afterthought, he adds, "Though a blowjob would be nice."
Lily snorts into her notes. "Bet I've gone longer without head than you."
"Oh, yeah?" he laughs. "I think it's been…five months? Definitely before Cressida went away for the summer."
That's longer than she thought, but she hides her surprise as she gloats, "Ha! I've gone seven. Though I don't think I even got off that last time—"
James chokes on air. "Jesus, Evans."
She gives him an exaggerated eye-roll and taps the dildo with her pen. "Ergo, Ombré."
He's smiling at his computer screen as he idly says, "Well, if it's any consolation, my hand is just as boring."
Something about that makes little levers and gears click into place in her brain, and she turns to look at him—properly look at him. Black hair, sticking up where he'd ran his hand through it only moments before when his laptop died. Stylish glasses, a vast improvement from his first pair, which are memorialized in the awkward yearbook photo that serves as her icon for him on her phone. Strong jawline, darkened with the stubble he manages to gather after about four days. Broad shoulders, topping a hunched body that she knows is half a foot taller than her upon standing. It was crazy, and it could definitely just be her neglected hormones talking, but—
"Hang on," she says. "You're a boy."
"Uh." His hand tugs absently at his hair. "Yeah? Well-spotted?"
She swats his arm. "Shut up. I mean, you're a boy. You have one of these."
His eyes swivel to the dildo she's pointing at, then back to her face, looking half-amused and half-apprehensive. "Yes, and?"
"And," Lily forces herself to finish what she started, even though she realizes the idea is absurd, "I'm a girl, not on a computer screen, and we're both stuck in boring dry spells, so what if we just…"
Her sentence trails off as she sees James's eyebrows climb up his forehead—fuck, she knew this was absurd, she shouldn't have even said anything, hell, she never would have if her dry spell wasn't becoming so fucking unbearable—
"Hook up?" He finishes for her, incredulity painting his face.
A nondescript noise leaves her mouth as she shrugs, and when James doesn't look any closer to talking again, she offers, "I mean, yeah. I'd give you a blowjob for an orgasm."
He chews his lip as he smiles, brow knitting like he's trying to figure out if she's having him on. Which, for once, she isn't. She's just a randy girl realizing her best guy friend is a single, stringless specimen. An oasis to her desert, so to speak.
She realizes he's actually been contemplating her proposal when he asks, "And it wouldn't be, you know…weird?"
"Oh, it'll definitely be weird," she processes aloud. "It's you."
He rolls his eyes. "Well, obviously, but I meant like, us. Our friendship. It won't make things awkward if we…shag?"
Lily shakes her head, appraising him. "'Course not. I mean, you're one of my best friends, and we both know it would be like a…you know. I scratch your itch, you scratch mine, kind of thing."
His shit-eating grin is back. Nothing good has ever come from that shit-eating grin—Lily knows this—and yet just then, it seems like a good sign. "So, friends with benefits," he says.
"Yes," she affirms.
"No feelings, no strings…"
"None."
"Do we…tell anyone?"
"Never."
James considers, nods, and sticks his hand out between them. Lily takes it, and they shake with solemnity on the bizarre terms they'd just negotiated.
"Er," she starts, feeling her neck grow hot. "No one's due home for another couple hours."
James smirks and plucks the dildo from the counter, then makes for her room, voice trailing, "I assume you want a break from Ombré?"
He's replacing Lily's toy in its drawer, his brain in the midst of a fleeting existential crisis over the curveball the afternoon had taken, when the bedroom door shuts softly behind him, and he turns to see Lily standing a few paces away and nervously tucking her hair behind her ear.
"So," she says.
"So." He takes a step closer to her. "Should we…start with a kiss?"
"Yeah." Her voice is matter-of-fact, though the flush at her neck betrays her nerves. "Makes sense."
Holding her face seems too romantic and going for her waist is a little difficult when she has her arms crossed, so he cups her elbows as he steps into her space. Her breath hitches, and though her hands uncross to brace against his chest, he can feel her stiffness—her discomfort?—radiating from her whole posture.
"We, um," he whispers. "We don't have to—"
Her eyes widen. "Do you not want to?"
"No—I mean—I'm not—shit." He sucks in a deep breath. "I only meant, if you're having second thoughts…"
Her eyes drop to his chest, fingers scratching at the cracked Hogwarts emblem on his hoodie. "No, no, I'm not, it's just—God, this is stupid."
"Hey." He squeezes her elbows. "Talk to me."
She exhales a deep breath. "When I suggested us, you know, hooking up, I was just…my brain was very focused on the end result from a certain appendage you have, not on…the other parts."
Bizarre as her words seem, they nonetheless make sense to him, and he nods understandingly even as he chuckles. "Yeah, I was mainly just thinking about getting my cock sucked."
Lily laughs, dropping her forehead onto his chest, and James rubs his hands up and down her arms. This, he's done before—being a best guy friend necessarily involves periodic consoling, especially when other blokes are douchebags—but it had always felt platonic, not laced as it was now with the anticipation of doing anything remotely sexual with her.
When she lifts up her head, there's a new glint in her eye, a new resolve in the press of her hands to his chest. "Well," she starts, "if I have to kiss you if I want to use your dick…"
And before he can react to that, her lips press against his, soft and quick. She blinks at him, sinking back down to stand flat on her feet, and James follows her, leaning down in hesitant bursts, gaze flitting between her eyes and her mouth, until their lips meet a second time and he kisses her for real.
At first, his brain can't wrap his mind around what's happening. He's kissing Lily Evans, his literal childhood girl-next-door—and not the movie kind who haunts teenage fantasies in a bikini, but the real life kind who flipped him off when their parents weren't looking and led a contingent of their friends in covering his car in post-it notes. But then, as the kiss goes on, he starts to realize it's not that bad. Hell, it's actually kind of nice. Her lips are soft, her pressure gentle, and as they start to move together, letting each kiss get just a little bit deeper than the last one, her hands slide up to his shoulders, then his neck, as his move from a chaste grip on her waist to wrap farther around her back.
When they break for air, she doesn't meet his eyes, but watches his lips as she says, a hint of surprise in her voice, "You're pretty good at this, Potter."
He hears the hoarseness in his voice as he replies, "So are you."
She makes eye-contact then, pupils dark in a pool of bright green. "I'm pretty good at the rest of it, too. Just so you know."
An automatic smile cracks over his face. "I mean, I'd be lying if I said Gid never made comments about your, ah, skills in the locker room."
Her jaw drops. "That motherfucker—"
"But I always tuned it out," he hurries to add. "It felt…weird, knowing that about you, so I just…pretended I didn't hear it."
Lily smiles and teases, "How honorable of you."
James only shrugs, feeling a rare heat prickle at his neck. "You're one of my best friends."
Her face softens. "Likewise, James."
Unexpected comfort arises in him from that, and with it, he feels strangely emboldened, like the concept of what they're doing finally settles in enough that his mind can fully wrap around it and appreciate its logic. Lily's nothing if not logical, after all, and it truly does make sense: he's been very single ever since his last relationship burnt up in dramatic flames, she's been very single for no reason he's aware of other than a string of bad luck with bad dates, and if they're going to be wanking by their lonesomes anyway, why not make it more enjoyable for both of them? It was really the perfect solution: regular, casual sex without the hassle of having to meet a stranger and vet them for crazy.
Of course, he'd have to get over the weirdness of it being with a girl who felt sort of like a sister, or maybe a close cousin, for it all to work, but just then, the prospect of a mouth around his cock after several months without was making him eager to give getting over the weirdness a fair shot.
Ducking back toward her mouth, he whispers, "Should we get to the rest, then?"
"Bloody charmer," she mumbles, but she tilts her head for him and accepts his kiss, and when he slips his tongue in her mouth, she responds in kind.
Just like that, he's proper making out with Lily. And it's…pleasant. Easy. He can almost forget that it's even her, and just be lost in all the sensations of girl that he'd been missing. Warm skin, soft hair, curves squishing against his chest. Even her smell does something to him.
He steps backwards until his legs hit bed, and then he sits down, slipping his hands up the back of her jumper as she smoothly climbs on his lap, mouth still moving hotly over his. She's wearing leggings, and he's wearing joggers, and he is acutely reminded of these facts when she sinks more fully into her straddle and grinds against his lap. An instinctive moan escapes into her mouth, her jumper and his hoodie both come off in a flurry, and then he opens his eyes enough to see her face, flushed and beautiful and—wait a minute, Lily just felt his boner?
James hasn't even noticed he's frozen up until she sits back on his legs and asks, "What is it?"
"Uh." He rakes a hand absently through his hair.
She prompts him with her eyebrows.
He closes his eyes, like that'll somehow make this feeling disappear, but Lily doesn't let him wuss out. "This'll only work if we talk to each other. Out with it."
Of course she's right, but it doesn't make it any less awkward. Still, he's been through far more embarrassing situations, many of which she's witnessed, so it's not like he has anything to lose with being honest. "I just—it's a little weird, um—getting it up for you."
"Do you…want to stop?"
"No, no, I—I want to give this a fair shot, I just—feel a little, um, guilty? I guess?"
Lily laughs, but when she speaks, her voice is filled with affection. "James, you watch smutty anime—"
He's aghast. "How—"
"You gave me your Hulu log-in, remember?"
And just as quickly he deflates. "Shit."
"The point being," she elaborates, "you get it up from watching animated cartoons in CMYK, so I'd be concerned if you didn't have a boner from a real-life girl in your lap."
James chuckles even as he rolls his eyes. "Yeah, but it's you. I mean, are you w—"
He cuts off just before he finishes that sentence, slightly horrified that he was about to say something so dirty to her.
Lily's face is unreadable, but he knows she's bluffing when she prods, "Am I what?"
His eyes dart between hers as he edits his sentence to, "Turned on for me?"
She purses her lips, eyes scrutinizing, before she says, "Am I turned on? Yes. But for you? No. Not like…you know. Personal. I just…" Her voice trails, but then her hips drag over his pelvis as she settles back into the crook of his lap, and she finishes, "want some of this. Biologically."
James swallows. "Yeah, same," he reassures. "I just…I kind of forgot it was youfor a minute. Before. And then…"
Her hands cup his jaw. "Then don't look at my face," she admonishes lightly, tilting his chin down to force his gaze onto her chest. "Just focus on tits."
This, he can do. Especially when they're pushed up like that in an unsuspectingly sexy bra.
"You have great tits," he mutters. Then, as an afterthought, "Objectively, of course."
"Feels like you have a great dick," she returns. "Objectively."
He chuckles, chest warming with that stroke to his ego, and banters back, "You're not the only one who's good at the rest of it, Evans."
Lily hums appreciatively, hips squirming over where he's growing harder, and her cleavage calls to him; wrapping his arms tightly around her middle, he buries his face into her chest, leaving kisses and nips across the delicate skin swelling over her bra. Quicker than he'd thought possible, he's thoroughly lost in her feminine physicality, his whole body lighting up at the dig of her nails in his back, at the frantic little thrusts she makes into his lap, at the curve of her arse under his squeezing hands.
"Do you have a condom?" he mumbles into her chest.
She stills. Then, "Fuck. No. Do you?"
He shakes his head, forehead pressed heavily into her breastbone.
Lily sounds only slightly annoyed as she gripes, "Aren't blokes supposed to carry them in their wallets?"
"I do," he chuckles, "when I go out. Didn't think I'd be needing one when I was packing up textbooks for your flat."
Another beat of silence, her fingers tapping on his back, and then she asks, "How do you feel about pulling out?"
He considers. "Where're you at in your cycle?"
She sighs in defeat. "Too close to risk it."
James smiles. "Hence your enthusiasm, eh?"
"Oh, shut up."
He lifts his head to look at her, a smirk already quirking at his mouth. "Trade you an orgasm for a blowjob."
She chews her lip, like she wants to be sassy but thinks better of it, before she slides off his lap only to crawl around him and flop onto her back. "Ladies first, obviously."
Lily knows she shouldn't be surprised—the bloke's doing a course in medicine, for fuck's sake, and she knows how highly he scored on his anatomy exam—yet somehow she still is when he lowers his face between her legs and within mere minutes has her feeling more high on pleasure than she thinks she's ever been. He knows where to go with his tongue, he knows how to move his fingers, and he must know just how worked up she is, because instead of racing her across the finish line when he surely knows he could, he teases her along, relenting just enough to make her pull his hair in frustration.
"Goddamnit, Potter!" she groans angrily after he does that again.
He only squints up at her, having abandoned his glasses before embarking on this mission, with eyebrows perked in amusement and his chin glistening as he asks, "I'm sorry, are you wanting a plain orgasm or a really fucking great orgasm? Because if you just wanted the first option, you should have said—"
She pushes his head back down and mutters, "Shut the fuck up."
He does, though she feels him smiling as he returns his mouth to her with deliberate laziness, and then he proceeds to shut her up, more figuratively than literally, when he abruptly goes in for the kill and turns her into a screaming, quivering, climaxing mess.
It takes several blissfully incoherent seconds for her to even begin to catch her breath again, and then several more after that until the lingering waves begin to subside enough that she can open her eyes. James smirks at her from where he's still perched between her legs, though it looks like he'd wiped up his chin somehow. "So?"
She drops her head back onto her pillow with a contented sigh. "That was really fucking great," she mumbles. "Which you already know."
The bed dips and wobbles underneath her as he crawls to her side. "Well, I suspected," he admits smugly. "Might've been humping the bed myself at the end, there."
Lily snorts as she looks up at him, finding his gaze already on her from where he lays with his head propped on one hand. Even though she's the one who just came, he seems to have a dazed look about him—or maybe that's just her own post-orgasmic haze projecting.
"Your turn, then," she says lightly, rolling to her side and shimmying down the bed until she can crawl between his legs.
James shifts to lay on his back with his hands laced behind his head, and Lily lowers her gaze to the evidence of his prior statement, which chooses that moment to twitch under his joggers.
She glances up at him. "You know you're in for it, right?"
His elbows fold tightly around his face as he drops his head back into the pillow and groans. "I know I'm probably about to embarrass myself with how much I won't last for this."
Lily just pats his thigh. "Everyone starts somewhere, James."
"Shut up."
He lifts his hips for her as she pulls his joggers and boxers down to his thighs, and while she works the fabric she quotes idly, "Every expert was once a beginner."
A muffled, "Fucking hell, Evans," sounds from behind the hands now rubbing his face.
Mercifully, his hands being over his face means she's confident he doesn't see her reaction to looking at his erection for the first time.
Suffice it to say, her eyes agree with what her lower half had already surmised: James Potter, perennial study partner, insufferable prankster, and annoying quoter of idioms, has a great dick.
Who knew.
"Verdict?"
She's been caught. Damn. Her eyes travel up, over the abdominals flexing from his reclined position (did he have to be so fit?), up to his smile (shit-eating), face (he snuck those glasses back on quick), and hair (that sex hair was her doing, wasn't it?) before she responds evenly, "I'd ride the hell out of you."
He only groans, hips squirming a little between her arms.
Lily ponders aloud, "Who knew you're such a fine specimen, Potter?" and lowers her mouth to teasingly kiss his navel.
A hiss, giggle, and moan combine to the strangest of noises, and Lily chuckles to herself as she continues her teasing nuzzles around one inner thigh, then the other. Though she has an arm resting across his lower stomach in an effort to restrain his squirming, his natural strength is no match for hers, and she scolds lightly, "Hold fucking still."
His laugh sounds almost pained. "Imagine if I'd told you that five minutes ago."
"James, I haven't even started the main event."
"Like I don't know."
"Should I start a timer?"
"Fuck you."
Realizing she doesn't have a ponytail holder on her person, Lily flips her hair to the side, then settles in on her stomach with her elbows bracketing his hips before looking back up at him and saying matter-of-factly, "I'm not swallowing."
He nods, face betraying no reaction, and simply says, "I'll tell you when."
With that, it's time. She's not stupid; she knows from both common sense and first-hand experience of approximately ten minutes ago that missing out on oral sex for several months is bound to make a person react wildly to the feel of a mouth, even if it had all the skill and slobber of a drooling St. Bernard. And yet, she also knows that she's moving her tongue far more artfully than that, not to mention caressing his length with a gentle, twisting firmness that she's honed over the years, and so when his fingers curl in her hair and a stream of whimpering, whiny moans fall freely from his mouth, she can't help but feel warm, glowing pride bubble up in her chest.
Though she tries to take her time, easing on her hand work to slowly massage her tongue around his head, her efforts are in vain, and after what can't be more than two minutes, his voice scratches, "I'm close—shit, just like that. Fuck."
Lily hums, then acquiesces, though she starts giving him slick tugs as she beckons him on with her tongue.
"Ohmygod." His hips buck, and Lily has to fight a smile as tiny little fuckfuckfucks whimper out between his gritted teeth.
And in another blink, it's all over: he pulls her head up with a strangled, "'m gonna come," and she calmly catches his release in one hand while she strokes him through it with the other.
It hits her fully as she watches his scrunched face while sticky release flows hotly over her fingers: not only are her and James really adding the phrase with benefits to their established friendship, but if their first try was anything to go by, those benefits are going to be damn good.
Monday, November 29, 2021
Lily finishes straightening the pastries in the display and then leans against the counter with a sigh; the morning rush was always stressful, but the Monday morning rush was particularly brutal. Honestly, forget weekend time; Sunday was the easiest shift of the week. Monday shift-workers, on the other hand, were the ones who deserved time-and-a-half for their efforts.
Her co-worker, now a friend after two years of working together in Madam Puddifut's, the coffeeshop nestled inside the main floor of the university's renovated library, announces, "I'm making a fucking red-eye. Want me to pull some shots for you?"
"Please," Lily answers, dragging her wrist over her brow. "I need my triple-shot latte."
Dorcas works at the espresso machine while Lily pours her a cup of light roast, and they work in companionable silence as they prepare their typical post-rush drinks.
"Did you hear what those guys were talking about?" Dorcas asks as she leans casually against the counter. "That dating app?"
Lily shakes her head as she sips at her latte. "I wasn't really paying attention. There's a new app?"
Dorcas rolls her eyes. "Like we need another one, but yeah. I heard people talking about it over the weekend too. I guess the premise of this one is like, you're anonymous? Old school. Kind of like AIM or something? No pictures, no profile, just messaging."
Lily blinks. "So…how do you…find people?"
Dorcas slips her phone from the pocket of her apron and thumbs over her screen. "Oh, it's called Blind Date—"
"Suppose that's clever."
"—and I guess you take a quiz when you sign up, sort of a this-or-that of your interests, and give the app some basic information, like your zip code and age range, and then the algorithm suggests people for you to talk to?"
"Hmm." Lily turns that all over. "Doesn't that sound a little…creepy?"
Dorcas shrugs and sips her own coffee. "I think it sounds refreshing, to be honest. Weeding through curated profiles is fucking exhausting. It's like, everyone's advertising themselves but also copying each other, and no one seems genuine. This at least takes all that out of the picture."
A very fair point. Lily nods appreciatively.
"But you don't really do the apps, do you?" Dorcas remembers.
"Nah," Lily smiles. "You know me, Dory, I'm too old fashioned for that."
Dorcas rolls her eyes and teases, "I still can't believe you're not in literature with me. More romantic than the romantics, you are."
This is an exchange they have whenever the subject of dating comes up, which is often. "Yes, well, I can still moon over Mr. Darcy perfectly well from my lab, thank you."
Dorcas laughs. "God, you're such an Elizabeth."
WhatsApp Private Chat
James Potter to Lily Evans
29/11/2021 12:43 p.m.
James: you work Monday's right?
Lily: …James I've worked Monday's since August.
James: cool, bring me a coffee to lecture? i'll Venmo you
Lily: what happened to "I don't drink caffeine after noon on weekdays"?
James: uh, yesterday happened
Lily: ?
James: ?
when I didn't even start work for my morning class until I got home at 7 p.m.?
because of things I will not put in writing that were succeeded by a gluttonous uber eats?
Lily: oh that
James: oh. yeah. that.
Lily: **eye roll emoji** no I meant the 7 p.m. thing
forgot you still had shit to do after you left last night
as I was a blob on the couch watching succession
James: not another word, i'm two weeks behind
Lily: despicable
James: i would say put me on friend probation but…
Lily: tread very carefully Potter
James: i think you'd be a little more resistant to that now
loss of benefits, and all that
Lily: I mean, you're not wrong.
Order?
James: uh. idk what do i like?
Lily: ?
What do you normally drink in the mornings?
James: preworkout and then the free stuff in that machine in the caf
Lily: JAMES.
James: what?
Lily: YOU
oh my god
How are we friends
You go to the gym
And then
You CONSUME fake latte out of a BAG?
DAILY?!
James: …yes?
It's free
Lily: …and you're loaded?
James: is it too soon for a sex joke or
Lily: shut up
I can't talk to you anymore rn
But yes I will bring you a REAL latte
James: you're the best Evans! XD
Lily: see you at 2
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
WhatsApp Private Chat
James Potter to Lily Evans
30/11/2021 8:06 a.m.
James: so you're right
Lily: no shit sherlock
About?
James: this free "latte" is really awful
Lily: revelation of the century, that is
James: is this what becoming a man feels like?
Lily: you had to grow up someday
James: **attaches Britney Spears "not a girl, not yet a woman" gif**
Lily: I just spit out my REAL latte
James: wasteful
Lily: well look at this snobby monster I've created
James: right Frankenstein, you are
Lily: have you done the pre-lab for thurs?
James: started it
Lily: text me when you get to #6
James: ok
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
James opens the front door to the girls' flat and finds himself face-first in Christmas. Twinkle lights line the ceiling, garlands cover every surface, an image of a crackling Yule log fills the TV screen, and the faint sound of holiday music drifts from the kitchen.
"James!" Marlene spots him first and skips over with a floppy Santa hat, which she shoves at his chest, being unable to reach his head. "You made it!"
"Er—" He fits the hat on his head to appease Marlene. "Made what?"
She gives him a funny look. "Our tree decorating party? Lily said you were coming over."
He gestures to his book bag. "We have lab stuff, actually."
"Oh." She rolls her eyes and waves her hand in the direction of Lily's room. "Fine, go be boring science people then."
From her spot on the couch next to Sirius, where they hunch jointly over one laptop as they edit some video or other for Hogwarts Daily Media, Mary defends, "It is a Wednesday, Marly."
"Yeah," Marlene retorts, "Wednesday, December first. Also known as opening day of the best month of the year? The official beginning of the twenty-five days of Christmas?"
Mary squints at the laptop screen. "I'm Jewish, you know this."
"Hence why the kitchen is Hanukkah," Marlene says as if Mary hasn't been paying attention. Which, with the amount of content her and Sirius produce for HDM, their classes, and their own social medias, she probably hasn't.
Sirius looks up and tosses James a wave as he asks Marlene, "And what about spiritual mutts like me?"
She promptly waves a thick packet of what looks like strips of red and green paper bound in childlike packaging, then tosses it into Sirius's lap. "You make the paper chains."
Sirius groans, and James uses Marlene's momentary distraction to make his escape through the kitchen (which is, unsurprisingly, covered in blue and silver streamers with a cut-out menorah taped over the oven).
He knocks softly on Lily's door, then lets himself in when she doesn't answer, though this makes her jump out of her seat before she yanks her AirPods out of her ears.
"Christ, Potter," she hisses, but then her eyes catch on him and she grins. "Nice hat."
"Little itchy, actually," he comments as he pulls it off his head and tosses it atop her dresser.
"Surprised she didn't rope you into a job out there."
"Nah, I managed to escape while she was giving Sirius the paper chain kit."
Her head falls back as she laughs, and James chuckles along with her. They've always laughed easily, him and Lily.
"So, pre-lab," he starts.
"Pre-lab," she echoes with a sigh, throwing her pen down on her notebook. "The fucking worst."
James sits heavily on the end of her bed and digs into the book bag between his feet. "I think I got the math on six figured out," he tells her. "Here, look."
She folds herself onto her bed next to him, one leg bent in front of her, as she takes his proffered pages of scratch paper. He watches her eyes dart quickly down the page, that little crease in her brow appearing like it always did when she was concentrating, and he's wholly unprepared when her gaze lifts abruptly back to his face.
Unless he's imagining things, he thinks they might be realizing the same thing at the same time: though they have a couple classes together and typically see each other daily, even if it's just a passing wave in the complex of sciences buildings, this is their first time being alone together since that fateful Sunday afternoon, when they'd made a pact that took their friendship to another level and gone down on each other on this very bed.
He swallows. So does she. He clears his throat. "Do you want to…"
Her eyes flit between his. "Can you be quiet?"
He licks his lips. "Yeah, can you?"
She doesn't answer, just gets up, tiptoes to the door, locks it, tiptoes back, and then straddles his lap.
They fall back on her bed, and it doesn't take long until they unzip each others' jeans and slip hands under waistbands. She's hot and tight around his fingers, a mirror of the heat of her open mouth on his neck, and James presses his lips hard into her shoulder to stifle the moans she's drawing from his throat.
Now that they've gotten their first hook-up out of the way, most of the newness of what they're doing gives way to exhilaration. Her body just feels so fucking good, fitted against his with curves that spark downright sinful thoughts, and the soft firmness of her touch, massaging that leaking moisture with precise caresses, unravels him in record time.
He comes first, groaning quietly into her neck, and as soon as he recovers he doubles down his efforts on her, mouth now latched to the skin just under her ear. She squirms next to him, clean hand pulling at his hair as her hips buck up into his palm, and then she whispers a frantic, "Yes—oh right there, yes, don't stop."
Her instructions lead him to the same clenching walls and spasming hips that he previously experienced with his mouth, and if he hadn't came already, he knows feeling her would have done the trick.
"Shit," she mumbles into his neck.
"Yeah," he agrees, withdrawing his fingers and rolling onto his back.
"Why is it so much better when someone else does it?"
James chuckles. "I'm assuming that's rhetorical?"
"Obviously," she huffs back. "But reading the research and feeling it are…two different things."
"Yeah," he breathes in agreement. Then his mouth babbles, "I don't remember the last time I got a hand job."
"Try." She rolls onto her side, facing him. "I'm curious."
He takes a deep breath and stares thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Has to be secondary. Maybe Emma?"
"Vanity or Vance?"
His mouth opens and closes. The truth is, now that he thinks about it, he's pretty sure he got hand jobs from both of them, though only Emma Vance had been his girlfriend for awhile.
Lily swats his chest and scolds, "You were such a fucking player," though he can tell by her tone and her smile that she's just taking the mick.
"Past tense, hmm?"
She slides off the bed and pulls a few tissues from the box on her desk before she starts wiping up the release on her hand and replies absently, "Yes, well, I dare say we wouldn't have become friends if your ego hadn't deflated a few sizes."
James only smiles as he does up his jeans; he can fully admit he was a git who got a bit too full of himself, but come on. How else was a seventeen-year-old boy supposed to cope with being the school's football star and having girls suddenly throwing themselves at the taller, broader, more mature version of his body that had appeared virtually overnight?
Thankfully, for his own sake as well as his friends', he'd grown into his body and his head since then.
She hands him a handful of tissues, which he uses to clean off his fingers before he gathers the pages of scratch paper that had fluttered, forgotten, to the floor. "Pre-lab, then?"
"Pre-lab," she agrees in a bizarre rerun of how they'd started this interaction a half-hour before. But this time, she's all business, and as she sits back on her bed and they start talking through the problems, so is he.
Friday, December 3, 2021
Bass bumps through her bones as she shoulders her way through the crowd packing the boys' living room. From somewhere behind her ear, Marlene shouts, "Maybe the kitchen?"
Lily tightens her hold on her friend's hand and cuts sideways, weaving a different path to check the adjoining room. It's packed with slightly fewer people than the living room is, and she hears them before she sees them: boisterous, barking laughter that can only belong to Sirius Black, followed by an exclaiming voice that still manages to come off as boyish despite the octaves it's deepened since sixth form.
"Lily!" Sirius spots them first. "Marly! Get over here, you need a drink?"
"Duh!" Marlene shouts back.
James smiles at them, cheeks flushed from drink and, no doubt, the body heat of the room, and Lily can't help but smile back. He's always been this way, boundless energy compressed into the constraints of a human body, and it's bloody contagious.
"Here you are." Sirius bestows them with two red cups of the night's concoction, and Lily sniffs at it curiously; she's a little buzzed from the girls' pregame at their flat, but she's sober enough to want to know what she's getting herself into at the boys' house.
An arm drapes around her shoulders, giving her a friendly squeeze, and Lily looks up to see James grinning down at her. "Trust me, Evans?"
"With a recipe? Never."
His head falls back a little as he laughs, exposing the long lines of his throat above the collar of his sporty quarter-zip. It's a strange feeling, being in public and realizing she's kissed that neck in secret, and she has to yank her eyes away and take a long gulp of the boys' concoction to shake herself out of her sudden reverie of their hushed tryst the other night.
"C'mon." James ruffles her hair. "Let's play pong."
They head down to the basement, where they beat the reigning champions of the past twenty minutes, then beat Sirius and Marlene in a very drawn out and dramatic affair, and they are in the midst of losing to Peter and Remus when it happens. James leans down, spiced breath tickling her ear, and whispers, "Wanna go upstairs after this?"
Her heart stutters, then speeds up as her body processes his real question. She knows her answer—hell, she got ready specifically for her answer, thinking it was a very real possibility—and yet now that the moment is here, she nevertheless feels nervous.
She tilts her mouth up without looking at him, instead tracking the arc of the ping pong ball with her eyes as she responds, "Obviously."
They finish out the game, losing by three cups to the boys, and James mutters a low, "My room in five," before drifting over to his friends to take their gloating smack talk in stride.
Lily elbows her way into the crowd, which seems to have grown larger since she'd last had a proper look, and with the adrenaline of her mission mixing with the heady buzz of the alcohol she'd consumed steering her way, she moves with purpose: finding Marlene with Mary, telling them laughingly that she's off to find an open loo after three rounds of that blasted game, weaving through bodies, climbing the stairs to the main level, weaving through more bodies, and then slipping up another staircase to the quiet corridor containing the boys' bedrooms.
James's room is the last on the right, and she lets herself in. The boys are going on their second year living in this house, so Lily's more than familiar with the layout and the sight of James's king-sized bed (taking up nearly the whole room), lone nightstand adorned with clutter, walls covered in footie memorabilia, and en-suite bathroom—her personal favorite of the house, only because James keeps his the cleanest.
When she re-emerges from the en suite, the bedroom door is opening, letting in a rush of blaring music from downstairs. James grins as he sees her and offers a quiet, "Hey," then shuts and locks the door behind him.
"Hey." Lily takes a step closer to him, heart suddenly picking up its speed as she registers through her tipsy giddiness just what's about to happen. "Quite a party."
He chuckles. "Aren't they always?"
She hums and takes another step closer. "And yet you're the one who wanted to leave."
His hands slide around her waist. "Yeah," he whispers roughly, "because I'm randy as fuck."
Lily can't help her smile as she slides her hands over his chest. "Like my help with that, would you?"
He squeezes where he holds her. "I believe your exact words were, I scratch your itch, you scratch mine, no?"
She lifts her eyes to his, blown nearly black in the dark. "We should be quick about it."
In answer, he drops his mouth to hers, instantly hot and wanting, and starts walking her the short distance to his bed, where he pulls away only to spin her around. She catches herself with palms on his duvet but barely has a second to catch her breath before he's kissing her neck, sending her head tipping back with a soft moan.
His whisper's husky. "You like it from the back?"
Her answer's a breathless, "Yeah."
James slides his hands deftly up her sides, lifting her jumper over her head, then moves to her thighs, pushing her skirt up over her hips and around her waist. She hears the low growl from his throat that can only mean he's finally seen the lacy black knickers and stockings she'd donned for such easy access, and then she hears the rustling sounds of clothes, drawer, and wrapper against the backdrop of thundering bass.
The next time she feels him, it's his hot skin pressing into her back and his mouth brushing her shoulder as he pulls her knickers down around her thighs and starts stroking her with deft fingers. They don't speak, and Lily wonders if he's doing the same thing she is, being, distracting herself from the fact that it's James by simply focusing on all the manly bits he possesses that are turning her into a human water fountain: muscles, heat, stubble, breath spiced with drink, teeth scraping along sensitive skin, calloused fingers touching her with a purpose indicative of practice, and then—finally—yet also so suddenly she can't really believe it's happening—that thick length she's now met on two prior occasions is sliding into her.
And good god does it feel good. She thinks she moans something to this effect, but if she does it's quickly subsumed by the symphony of shagging that follows, and Lily stops thinking altogether. There is only pleasure, brewing and building and striking, over and over again, with the deep strokes that fill her. Her fingers scrunch into handfuls of duvet as his squeeze handfuls of her hips, her arse, her breasts, and then somehow they end up fully on the bed and he's pressing his palms into her low back, pounding her into the mattress, and she's close, so close, but then he scoops her back up to her knees, hips rolling into hers as his fingers reach between her thighs. For a second, she feels dizzy, but then she realizes it's because she's suddenly upright, his chest hot against her back as his lips move along her shoulder, and her hand jumps instinctively into his thick hair as his hips swivel underneath her and his fingers take her apart.
There's a fleeting thought—he remembered what she liked—and then she's blinded with climax, limbs quivering, breath ragged, before he bends her so she drops instinctively onto her forearms. Only this time, he stays folded over her, mouth on the back of her neck, as he thrusts through his own end.
Seconds gradually trade awareness for time, until she notices the rhythm of his breathing slowly returning to normal, the heat of his exhales against her skin, and—most profoundly of all—the steady throb of his pulse where he's still inside her.
James.
She just had sex with James. If she was any less tipsy (though she can already tell their romp has started to sober her up), she might be freaking out, but as it is, she wades through her whirling mind with the sort of laid-back calm that only a little alcohol can provide: it's James, yes, but it's also just James. Her best guy friend, someone she knows she can trust with anything. A man she respects, hell, admires. And, as luck would have it, a bloke who knows how to thoroughly shag a girl.
Maybe she'll blame the alcohol for this thought later, but just now, though she cares for his happiness dearly, she hopes he doesn't find a girlfriend for awhile, because if this is how he has sex, she'd rather not give up these benefits anytime soon.
James slowly pulls out of her, and Lily has to stifle the noise that rises up at the loss of him. His footsteps disappear towards his en suite, followed soon after by the running of the sink, and Lily maneuvers herself off the bed, then adjusts her knickers and skirt before James reemerges and holds the bathroom door open for her with a smirk.
"So I might've messed up your lipstick a little."
She scowls at him but pushes past him without a word, too focused on the process of cleaning herself up, until, "Hey—you have any hairspray in here?"
James materializes in the doorway with her jumper in hand. "What kind of Sleekeazy kid d'you take me for, Evans?"
Lily scrutinizes the contents of the second drawer she's rummaging through. "A poser, apparently."
"In a bin under the sink."
"Ah." She extracts the bottle and gives it a little shake, telling him through the mirror with a smirk, "If I'd known shagging you could give me the best hair I've ever had, I'd've suggested this a lot sooner."
He crosses his arms and leans against the door frame with a grin. "Best hair, eh? Anything else about that the best you've ever had?"
Lily throws him a look. "Check that ego, Potter."
His grin only widens. "Sure sounded like the best shag of your life—"
She points the hairspray bottle at his face, suddenly self-conscious about whatever obscene moaning she'd been doing under the influence of his cock. "It's been awhile, that's all."
A soft look spreads over his face as he holds out her jumper for her. "Me too."
She nods, taking her jumper back, and just like that, her defensiveness dissipates and they're back to whatever this weird normal is that they have.
Lily shrugs her jumper back on and fluffs her hair with little spritzes of hairspray. "Okay, ready."
James touches up his own hair in the mirror. "Do we need a cover story?"
The idea comes surprisingly fast. "Uh, I had to hide from one of my bad dates."
"Which one?" he asks absently, attention still on the unruly pieces of hair by his forehead.
Lily swats his arm on her way out the bathroom. "Doesn't matter, they all sucked."
His chuckle follows behind her.
Saturday, December 4, 2021
Rare morning sunlight streams straight through his eyelids, and James groans, rolling onto his side and reaching for his phone. His lock screen reads a little past eight—offensively early for a Saturday morning—and his throbbing head screams at him for forgetting to shut the drapes before passing out the night before. But alas, it had been so dark from late afternoon onward that he'd forgotten, and then he'd proceeded to get decently drunk, so of course the one morning he wanted to sleep in is also the one morning the usually gray skies decide to be sunny.
Lovely.
Too awake to go back to sleep but too miserable to move, James scans through his phone, first checking his texts, then going to Instagram. At the top of his feed is a photo Mary posted of the girls the night before, and he double-taps before zooming in on the girl on the far right. She looked cute last night with his alcohol goggles on, and she still looks cute now without them, memorialized in that burgundy velvet mini skirt and fitted ivory knit. But what he's focused on is her hair: dark red, styled in cascading curls, and looking a little more tousled than normal.
Definitely taken after they shagged, then.
Smirking to himself, he types a comment: hair on fleek lilynotlillian
He's scrolling when he gets the notification of her reply—hair by sleekeazy obvi—followed in swift succession by her DM: *cough* …and a great shag.
Grinning at his phone, he thumbs over to their chat.
Instagram Private Chat
James Potter to Lily Evans
04/12/2021 08:33 a.m.
James: it was pretty great
Lily: James I'm sore
James: ahahahahaha
Lily: it's not funny
James: oh it really is
Lily: **eye roll emoji**
James: let me know when you can walk again, yeah?
Lily: you're so annoying
James: so hungover actually
Lily: ugh same
James: real talk though—no regrets i hope?
Lily: None whatsoever
You?
James: god no
i think this might be the best idea we've ever had
Lily: lol same
Still smiling at his phone, he leaves their conversation there and scrolls through his feed before closing out Instagram, but right as he's about to open Twitter, a new black icon catches his eye. Oh, yeah.
His thumb hovers, bottom lip between his teeth. He'd downloaded it later in the night following a drunken heart-to-heart with Sirius, and now that it's morning and he can reflect on everything that happened the night before with a clear (albeit throbbing) head, he finds that his drunk self wasn't actually that far off.
He's ready to get back out there.
Only, as he'd told Sirius the night before, this time he wants to do things a little differently. Throwing himself into a whirlwind romance only to wind up cheated on and blind-sighted had done a number on his attitude toward relationships in general, but as the time had passed, as he'd started this secret friends-with-benefits arrangement with Lily and remembered how great sex can be, and then as Sirius had explained this new app, he'd realized that he was finally ready to give the idea of a relationship—or at least dating—another try.
It had taken a lot of self-reflection, but he'd come to understand that what had bothered him the most about how things ended with Cressida wasn't just the loyalty aspect, though that had been huge—it was also the fact that he'd felt like their relationship had been a fraud. He'd thought he'd known her, connected with her, but then when it was all said and done, he felt like she was a completely different person than who he'd thought he'd been with.
He didn't want that to happen again; the next time he gave his loyalty to a girl, he wanted to feel confident that he knew her. And though he'd only used the apps occasionally before—mostly as a tool to hook up, if he was being honest—and though this new one seemed to be the topic of a lot of a lot of sarcasm and fodder, maybe it was exactly what he needed to get back in the dating game while mixing things up from the usual routine. Maybe getting to know someone without the distraction of seeing their curated profile really could result in finding a more genuine connection—the kind he'd thought he'd had before his heart had been stomped on. Maybe getting to know someone anonymously would make it hurt less if it didn't go the direction he hoped.
Swearing to himself that he'll never tell a soul he's doing this, not even any of his friends, he presses his thumb down on that icon and watches the screen load into a welcome page that then begins prompting him to create a profile.
First things first, you need a username.
Remember: No self-identifying information, please.
(You have Tinder for that, okay?)
My Blind Date alias is _.
James hesitates, brain sluggish with hangover, but Sirius's words from the night before come back to him: It's like AIM, remember that? Dumb screen names and shit?
So he types the first dumb screen name that pops into his head.
baller4life
Miraculously (tellingly?) it hasn't been taken yet, and the app congratulates him on creating an account before prompting him to start the compatibility quiz.
"Here goes nothing," he mumbles to himself.