It starts, for him, like thunder. A low rumble that builds to a crash. He finds himself with his hands in her hair – silken, disorienting – and her lips on his before he can realise that something has changed. It's nothing like he thought it would be. It's everything he thought it would be.
He assumes the secrecy is seated in shame. For someone with such high self-esteem, when it comes to her, he thinks very little of himself. She is happy to rock her hips against his, to tug him closer by his tie, to moan in a way that sounds different every time when his lips skate down her neck, but in public, she remains the same. Head Girl Evans, polite, kind, just a little bit distant. It shouldn't make him want her more, but it does.
He knows that if Sirius knew – hell, if Remus knew, and he is much more kind in his phrasing – he'd be ripped to shreds. He knows that with every day that passes, he sinks deeper into this, this tenuous purgatory state they linger in, as if it isn't just wearing away at his brighter edges until he feels he's nothing but shadows.
He doesn't tell her this, of course. Because then she might stop: stop kissing him, stop brushing her hand across his cheek, stop digging her nails into his back.
It's Sirius who says something. At her birthday, they stand together by the window, watching the crowd. He wants to be able to look elsewhere – no, that's not true. What he wants is to be next to her, his arm round her shoulders, or her waist, her body tucked against his, the smell of her hair (lavender, or sometimes, lemon), her hand tucked into his back pocket, her smile, just for him. And freely given, not stolen, away from the light, in whatever corners and crevices they can find.
But for now, all he has is looking, and he wants to be able to look away. She is lit from within, sharing her smile and her laugh and her attention with everyone around her, a generosity that shouldn't sting, shouldn't leave his mouth dry. If he could look away, he could gather himself back together, the pieces he feels he leaves behind each time they slip away with each other. He could be restored. He could be something that she wants to be seen with. Someone she wants to be more with.
"Mate." Sirius' voice is low, softer than usual; his face betrays no concern, but James knows him, he knows it's there. "You're not yourself lately."
He nods. There's no point in denying it. He hasn't been able to be himself, not since she first kissed him. No – since she murmured the word 'secret', a word which hid its blade behind soft hands and the smooth line of her lips along his jaw. "I know."
Sirius turns, then, and James does too. Sometimes it's too much, to be seen by someone who knows you, who can read every twitch in your face or flicker of your fingers. But actually, he reasons, maybe this will help. Maybe he will be able to see himself, again. "I won't ask you what's going on," Sirius says, a magnanimous gesture that proves just how far gone James really is. "If you wanted me to know, you'd have said by now. But…"
James draws in a breath, nods again. He can't help where his gaze moves to, even just for a moment. How is it that she still sits just beneath his skin, an itch he can't remove? "Yeah," he agrees, quietly. It's not can't remove, is it. It's won't remove. Every day, he is walking into the fire, and asking himself why he is burned. "I need to…sort myself out."
The next day, then, when Trish Barton tells him – whispered, eyes wide, over their shared crystal ball – that Rachel Hart likes him, he nods, and a decision is made. Something has to change. And maybe he's a coward, for waiting for an invitation out of this, but it's just casual, isn't it, and something that's casual should never hurt so vividly.
He feels he should tell her, a part of him wondering – hoping – that she might want to just shrug it off, carry on regardless. It's not in his plan, to date someone and fuck around with Lily behind closed doors, but his destructive side wonders if maybe it could work. If maybe, it would be less painful that way. A bruise, yes, but a fading one, not like this, the sweeping blacks and purples of a storm on his skin.
"Why?" she asks, and he falters.
His hand finds its way into his hair, seeking comfort without thought. In his head, she had shrugged it off. "Well…she's pretty. And her friend told me she likes me…"
He doesn't expect her to look back at him, eyes wide, her jaw tense with holding something back. "Oh," she says, and the single syllable is like a hand at his throat.
His frown deepens. "Look, Evans," he starts, and wishes he knew what to say. "I thought this was casual. I thought it didn't matter."
She looks down; he is surprised, for a moment, to feel so unmoored. Wills her to look at him again. "It mattered to me," she says.
He stares at her, and now, she stares back. He wants to ask her, since when? And how can it have mattered, when it felt like something so small, something that could be stepped on and squashed and squeezed and brushed away completely, without anyone else ever knowing exactly how it had churned up his insides, how it had become such an uncontrollable entity that he couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't think without wondering how he had ended up here, with everything he wanted and yet, nothing at all?
She leaves, and he watches her go, watches the set of her shoulders and the dip of her head, knows she's hiding her face. You did that, he thinks, and has to sit down before he falls.
He finds her, thirty minutes later, in the courtyard. She doesn't say a word as he sits on the stone bench beside her; her cheeks hold proof of the faint path of tears, tears she didn't bother to wipe away. That hurts, in the pit of his stomach. He has never wanted to be the one to make her feel that way.
When he speaks, his voice is not steady. He is not the Head Boy, the Quidditch captain, the Marauder. He is exhausted. Confused. Aching. "You told me it was casual," he says; the words hurt them both. "That it was a secret. I didn't know you'd changed your mind."
She looks over at him, looking for something in his expression. He's not sure if she finds it there. "I…thought we…that you still…"
He's never known her to be lost for words. It's unsettling, the removal of a mask you didn't know was there. "I did," he says, and she frowns. "I do."
"But you asked out Rachel," she points out, ever logical. She can't seem to meet his eye at those words.
He nods. Swallows against the instinct to turn and leave, to protect himself from oncoming pain. "I was losing myself in you," he murmurs. "I…couldn't cope with just being us in stolen moments, anymore. And I thought that…" He looks up, forces himself to; she has tears in her eyes again. "I thought that was all you wanted."
One of those tears spills down her cheek, unchecked. "I'm sorry," she says, and he wants to kiss those words from her lips, swallow them down and store them away, to soothe where they must have torn at her throat. "I think I was…scared. At first. I didn't think about how you-"
He reaches out – it has become too hard not to. He lets his fingers graze along her jaw, her eyes on his for every second. "I'm sorry, too," he says, because he is, he hates how he put that expression on her face. He pauses; offers a half-smile. "It's not like me not to talk about something."
She tries to match his smile, tremulous, a smile that would be too easily washed away. "Nor me."
"Lily," he says, and draws in a breath, "I'd like more, with you."
That smile, a more solid thing now; small, but steady, and something he feels in the deepest, darkest parts of him. "I'd like more with you, too," she says.
It's not that one of them kisses the other: they find each other, together, drawn in there, an unassailable force. Her fingers tangle in his hair, and his arms slip around her waist, and their hearts beat just a little faster.
The next day, he apologises to Rachel Hart. Tries to explain. The thing is, he's in love.
He does his best to feel guilty. But when Lily looks at him across the dinner table, smiles at him, he finds he can't remember why he should feel guilty. Not even a little bit.
