A/N - This is my contribution to efk_girldetective's amazing Summer of Jily 2022 prompt 1:
• Lyric: all that I know is you caught me at the right time —"golden hour" (kacey musgraves)
• Scenario: late evenings with friends in the garden
Also, HAPPIEST BIRTHDAY TO THE LOML, The-Dream-Team on Tumblr!
Loud Silences
It had been approximately thirty-six minutes since he'd last seen her.
Approximately thirty-six, but exactly thirty-six minutes and twenty-one seconds, if one were a desperate fool in love and were unable to help oneself from keeping track of such things with the assistance of one's digital wristwatch, which now displayed an additional two seconds gone since her disappearance.
James Potter, as it so happened, was such a fool.
"I swear to fucking God, Prongs!" Yelled a familiar, annoying voice right against his eardrum. "If you check your bloody watch one more time, or search the room for her with no attempt to hide your sorry state, I'm gonna knock you out to save myself the embarrassment of your company."
James dutifully peeled his eyes away from the band on his wrist, but didn't bother smoothing out the irritated scowl he wore.
"I'm not doing anything of the sort, I'll have you know." He wagged his finger in front of his best friend's unimpressed face and glassy grey eyes. James supposed he himself was slightly drunk, too. But it wasn't a fact of much import, all things considered, given that practically everyone at Amelia Bones's little—and entirely out-of-hand—party was hammered to their last sense. In contrast, James felt positively stone-cold sober. "I was simply… bored."
"Really?" Deadpanned Sirius, the now affronted best-mate. "When I've been regaling you with the story of how I caught Wormtail snogging Genevieve Ryalls in a broom cupboard?"
James blinked. "I'm sorry, you found who doing what now?"
"I can see how captive an audience you've been all evening." Sirius rolled his eyes, tossing back the drink in his hand for dramatic flair, James was sure. "Go on, then. Continue acting like a prat, I won't stop you."
"I'm sorry, mate." James sighed, ran a hand through his hair. "I wasn't—it wasn't like I was trying to be an arse. It's just—"
"Evans."
"What? No! What's she got to do with—"
"Evans." Sirius clapped his palms firmly against James's shoulders, and glared hard. "If you put both of us, and our entire year, out of our miseries, and admit that it's Evans—that it's been Evans for the past two years—I might even tell you where I saw her go."
Hazel eyes widened. "You know where—"
"Did you even listen to what I said?"
"Fucking hell, fine!" James smacked his hands away, leaned against the wall behind him, and tried to pretend like he wasn't flushing all over. "So I think she's sort of smart and fit. Not that it matters, because she can't even stand to be in the same room as me."
"Gross. Can you please stop acting so pathetic?" Sirius groaned. Infuriatingly enough, he then proceeded to snatch James's drink out of his hand and empty it down his throat, expertly ignoring the splutters of protest. "Okay. Now, listen to me carefully because I'll say it only once."
A second passed. Then another. Party music continued to blare from the speakers.
"Well?"
"Good. I wanted to make sure you were listening."
"I swear to fucking—"
"Lily Evans fancies you," said Sirius, with as much solemnity as James knew he was ever capable of displaying. It was a pretty effective statement in getting him to shut up and gape instead. "She may not be as obvious about it as you are, but she's not subtle either. In fact, the only people unable to spot the honestly disturbing levels of sexual tension that undercuts all of your interactions are the two of you. So, enough of this self-pity crap, because it really doesn't suit you, mate. And also, it's incredibly sad and boring; two things I don't like to associate myself with."
"Erm." James swallowed, tried to unstick his heart from the roof of his mouth and pick up his stomach from the polished flooring of Amelia's holiday house. "Wow. That is… all of that—just how certain are you about the factual accuracy of it?"
"I could say a thousand per cent, and you'd still prefer to live in denial, so—" Sirius sighed, placed the glass in his hand on a table nearby, and turned back to throw James a positively maniacal grin. "Why don't I go drag Moony out from whatever quiet place he's undoubtedly found refuge in, and you finally go outside and snog Evans until you've both passed out?"
And before James could clutch onto the back of his jacket and plead with him to not leave something so monumental entirely up to him, Sirius had disappeared into the crowd.
It took James quite a few minutes of internal monologue, an anguishing wade through drunken bodies that were more often than not glued to each other, several rapid blinks to adjust his already-poor eyesight to the sudden darkness of the night sky, and a completely-unsure-of-what-the-fuck-he-was-doing walk around the perimeter of Amelia Bones's house to finally locate one Lily Marie Evans.
He was all but ready to throw in the towel and return back to the party to find Sirius and strangle him for all the falsely given hopes and crushed dreams, when he spotted her in the Bones's quaint little garden.
She was barely more than a silhouette in the distance; dark red hair pulled back into a swinging ponytail that had left her collarbones on display and driven him bloody mad all evening. But despite the dim lighting, there were two things James knew instantly.
One: Lily Evans was clearly sloshed.
Two: Clearly Sloshed Lily Evans was climbing a goddamn tree.
"Buggering hell," he cursed under his breath, before his legs were sprinting to close the distance between him and the tree trunk, muffling the music in his ears the farther he went. "Oi! Oi, Evans! What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
The foot propped against a groaning branch paused in its efforts to find leverage. James followed the length of the limb, up a jeans-clad leg—a rather attractive leg, if he were being specific about the details—to identify the exact moment Lily twisted her torso to peer down at him.
Green eyes blinked at him silently for several beats. And then, her lips pulled up on one side.
"Sort of humid in there, isn't it?"
"Uh…" He shook his head. "I'm sorry?"
"Whatever for?" She snorted, ponytail swishing. "I mean, yeah, you're hot, Potter, but you're hardly the reason for the temperature of the whole friggin' house. Like, narcissistic much? Next, you're going to insinuate I left the party because I couldn't control myself around you. Which is not true, by the way, no matter what Mary tries to say." She turned back to keep climbing. "I mean, you don't even like—Oh, SHIT—"
Cutting through the haze of disbelief and gawking and steady stream of "whatthefuckdidshejustcallmehot?!", James found his legs propelling him forward, acting on pure instinct as he caught Lily's unsteady foot lose its grip against the branch it'd been resting on.
Her shocked gasp was cut short, drowned out by the groan that left his lips when her entire weight toppled onto him, followed by a flailing elbow that dug into his chest rather violently.
"Bloody motherfucking—" They crashed to the ground, James's groan ringing even louder. "Evans, please, your elbow!"
"Oh! Bugger—I'm—I'm sorry!"
He winced, pressing gentle fingertips against his ribs to assess the damage; not too bad, but it'd probably bruise. At least the grass underneath was cool against his flushed skin.
"What the hell were you even doing up there?! You're hammered six ways to Sunday, if you haven't noticed! Was it really the best idea to be climbing a fucking tree right now?"
Silence blanketed the air around him for two prolonged beats, and just as James was about to turn to the side and check if she'd passed out—or worse, gotten a concussion from accidentally hitting her head when he hadn't noticed—Lily's form rolled into him, a hand coming to rest on his chest, propping her up.
Words and sense effectively died somewhere inside his throat, eyes blinking owlishly as red hair tumbled forward over her shoulder.
Jesus, she was mad pretty.
He had about half a second to take in this view peacefully, before she jammed her pointer finger into his skin. Hard.
"Ow!" James cried. "What's the matter with you?"
"I was perfectly fine, for your information," she scoffed, green eyes narrowed, completely impervious to his outrage. "I'm an ace tree-climber, and I've never fallen down before. In my life. If you hadn't suddenly distracted me with all your questions, Potter—"
"Me?!" His brows arched high. "Are you serious? You should be thanking me right now. If I hadn't come here at the right time—"
"I beg your pardon?" She shifted, loomed over him even more menacingly. Or at least, James figured she was trying to be menacing; the effect was rather ruined when he couldn't focus right anymore. "All I know is that you caught me at the right time. There's a huge difference, you know."
The corner of his lips twitched treacherously. "Right."
"Practically insurmountable difference," she continued, almost absent-minded as her gaze fell to his mouth. "Are you… laughing at me?"
"No."
Lily frowned, pushing away from him. "Yes, you are."
"No. Wait, hang on—" James rushed to sit upright, fingers inching forward to touch her arm even though she hadn't really made to get up from the grass. He made himself pull back, tucked away his hand lamely. "Okay, so maybe I was slightly amused. Only a little. It's not as if you don't laugh at me plenty, yeah?"
"Not at you!" Her eyes flashed, almost irritated. "Because of you."
"I—what?"
"Oh, come on, Potter." And now, even swathed in the starry darkness around them, the flush crawling up her cheeks was pronounced. "Don't act like you don't know. Like you need me to tell you how effortlessly you can make everyone laugh."
James blinked. Opened and closed his mouth a few times.
"Everyone," he managed eventually, voice stumbling. "Not you."
She sat with his response in silence, seemingly chewing on its meaning. And for half a heartbeat, the unfocused glaze in her eyes cleared, but then her lips were pinching on one side, openly unimpressed. "Right. Of course. Because you never intend to make me laugh, do you?"
He gaped.
This woman was going to drive him bloody spare.
"Are you intentionally trying to misinterpret everything I say or do?"
A loud scoff. "I'm not—"
"Lily." Her name rolled off his tongue with a strange sense of urgency, though the steadiness of his voice was highly deceptive in contrast. James tried not to waver under the shocked blink she levelled at him, but he was more than aware that he'd never actually called her that outside of his own head. "What you were saying earlier—you never completed it."
"What?"
"Before you slipped," he explained, all of a sudden captivated by the way her eyes had cleared again. "I thought you said something about me not even liking…something. Someone." A pause, and she did nothing but breathe deep, "…you?"
"Well." Lily cleared her throat, looked away, pulled violently at the shards of grass next to her lap. "Not like that's a big secret, is it?"
"Actually, yeah, you'll find that it is." James frowned.
Her gaze snapped up at that, face scowling. "You can stop that, alright? I don't want to be the butt of some joke between your mates, Potter. It's bad enough that everyone else seems to know already, so I don't need—" She huffed angrily, shook her head. "You know what? You were right; I'm feeling a little toasty here. Think I'll go back in and find Mary—"
"Wait a bloody moment, would you?" This time, he did reach out to grab her arm, all but upending himself in his haste to prevent her from leaving. She didn't immediately slap him away, which he took as a positive sign. "Just. Wait. I don't—I've never made fun of you. My mates… we don't do that. I don't know why you'd think that, or if someone has been telling you that, but we don't. I—" His hand swiped through his hair in frustration. And then: "Bloody hell, Evans, I like you! I do."
For a second, all James could hear was the rapid thumping of his own pulse against his neck.
But then, she said, "Bullshit. You argue with me all the time in class, and then act all unbearably smug every time you think you've outsmarted me, because you know that I—"
He cocked a brow, waiting for her to finish, but she seemed to swallow down the rest of her sentence rather bitterly. "That you what?"
"Nothing."
"Look," he said, laughed humourlessly, feeling the back of his neck heating up. "I'm just… dumb sometimes, alright?"
Lily bit her lip. "Yeah, I know."
"Good. So, it shouldn't be that difficult for you to believe that I act like a complete moron sometimes to just get your attention." Jesus, he wanted to close his eyes to stave off the embarrassment. "Fuck, the only thing I'm even smug about is probably that I got you to talk to me, because I can't recall even a single bloody instance where I've completely outsmarted you, Evans. Just the idea of anyone doing that is absolutely mental, you get that?"
"Oh my God, stop." She finally batted his hand away, but James grinned at the laughter shining in her eyes now. When she looked at him again, however, something uncertain still resided in her expression. "So you really haven't been making fun of me?"
"No!" James splayed out his arms. "Why would I even do that? For what? Who told you that?"
"People talk, Potter." Lily sighed, hunching over and rubbing at her temples. "Everyone's got their own theories, haven't they? There's Snape and Avery and their little gang who say—"
"Good God, Evans, are you really listening to those ponces—"
"—that you and your mates know that I fancy you and that you keep using that to mock me in classes because you couldn't possibly take someone like me seriously, not when—"
"What?" James choked out, heart banging against rib cage, brain melting out of ears. "What did you say?"
Lily looked up, grimacing for a moment before she caught his expression. "Um, which part?"
"The—uh—" Shit, he better not have misheard this. "The part about… you… fancying… me."
"Right, that." She rubbed her lips together, sat up a little straighter, all the while her face flamed something horrid. "Yes. What about it?"
"What about it?" He screeched, head spinning. Lily's eyes widened, and James figured he was being entirely uncool about this whole ordeal. Sirius would be appalled. "I mean… how are you so casual about it?"
"What do you mean?" Lily frowned, eyes scanning his highly confused face. "It's not like…"
But then her voice faded, jaw hung open, hands coming up to cover her mouth. And before James could so much as blink, she was up on her feet, staring down at him with decidedly sober, horror-filled eyes. "You… didn't know. Did you?"
James shook his head, slow. "How the hell was I supposed to?"
"Because literally everybody else does!"
He scrambled to his feet too, not liking how dizzy this conversation—along with looking up at her—was making him feel. "No, they don't."
"Yes, they do, James!" Lily cried, throwing up her hands. "Even your mates do! I know for a fact that Black does, at least, because he keeps shooting me these knowing, insufferable looks all the fucking time. And don't you dare try to tell me he's not told you anything, because you're both scarily attuned to each other and everyone knows it."
"He hasn't—" James stopped, felt his tongue turn thick inside his mouth. Lily Evans fancies you. "Oh my god. He has."
Lily's shoulders sagged visibly at the confession. "I have no idea what just went on in your head right now, but… wow, I didn't imagine this conversation could get any more humiliating. And to think I only wanted to climb a tree in peace. Maybe find a fruit or two while I was at it, if I got lucky. But then you had to come along and just blast all my plans into smithereens, didn't you? Why am I surprised, it's entirely like you to do that." She shook her head. "What were you even doing out here? The party's clearly still raging inside there, and you're not really the type to seek out a lot of solitude—"
"Lily," James whispered, something stirring in his chest at how quickly her rant came to a halt. He took a step forward. "Why did you say I couldn't ever take someone like you seriously?"
She shrugged a shoulder, though it was fairly obvious that whatever was to follow didn't strike her the slightest bit unimportant.
"To be clear, I didn't say that. But, well, Avery's piece-of-crap mouth wasted no time in spreading the idea that a Potter wouldn't ever dream of dating a low-class rag from sooty old Cokeworth."
Burning anger and horror clawed up James's insides. "And… you believed him?!"
"No!" Lily looked at him in surprise, and relief seeped through his veins instantly. "Of course not! I've never pegged you to be that sort of a jerk, Potter. I just thought—" Her face reddened further, "That you didn't like me but knew that I did and it was just your way of…well, teasing me."
"Hm." He mulled that over. "Still makes me sound like a jerk, there."
Lily tilted her head, fighting off a smile. "Not my problem when that's what acting so smug gets you."
"Now, I might be reaching here, but—" He pressed closer, pulse fluttering when her gaze dropped to his mouth; back to his eyes. "I thought it was the whole smug thing that got you to fancy me in the first place."
"Dangerous misconception. In spite of it, would be more accurate." Her breath hitched slightly at the gentle press of his fingers against her wrist. They were standing close enough now that James could smell the soft notes of vanilla in her hair. "Are you—?" Her eyes skittered over his. "Do you—I mean, you never said…"
It took him a few seconds to decipher the hesitation, then the question, but eventually it clicked. James smiled; lopsided, euphoric, and probably a little smug, but it couldn't be helped.
"When I said I liked you earlier," he whispered, brushing a thumb against the slope of her cheek, "It was in an entirely non-platonic way, Evans, no matter how much I respect your ability to destroy me in class, too. And there's only one reason I left the raging party inside to come out here. Only one person."
"Oh," Lily said softly.
"Yeah."
He watched as her mouth then curved into a smile that matched his. "You could've told me sooner."
"Are you kidding?" He scoffed. "I couldn't have been more ridiculously obvious about it! You could've told me soon—"
"Shut up," she laughed, dragging him forward to slide her lips over his.
James could hardly complain about this course of action, not when he could make much better use of his energy by wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her flush against his body, tipping her head back with his and swallowing the little sound of contentment she pressed against his mouth. Her fingers raked up his hair, tugged lightly at the strands that stood up at the back, and he could only cup her face and kiss back harder in response.
"Wow," Lily panted harshly a few moments later, slightly disoriented as James took to brushing a slow path along her neck and collarbone with his lips. "Am I still drunk, or are we just really good at snogging?"
His body shook with silent laughter at that. "I think it might be a bit of both, actually."
"I'll take it." She grinned, making to tug him closer again, but found herself distracted by the incessant buzzing that emanated from the back pocket of her jeans. A quick scramble of fingers revealed her phone and Mary's name flashing across the screen. Lily groaned. "Time's up, I guess."
But James considered the situation with intense focus, and said, "How about you take that call and appease Mcdonald while I do the same with Sirius, and then we can go grab some late-night ice cream? Pretty sure I saw a store nearby on our way here."
"Hm, that sounds sort of unhealthy."
"Oh, it's completely unhealthy."
Lily snorted. "Meet me by the entrance in five minutes, Potter." And then, with a quick kiss against his cheek, she jogged back out of the garden.
