A/N: Welcome to the first part of what I'm now calling a "three-shot"!

This is a companion piece to Eighteen Again, my most recent chaptered Jily fic. It serves more as a smutty, fluffy relationship-developing prequel than anything else. It stands alone regardless of its relation to Eighteen Again, although if you're into this, you might be into that.

As always, let me know what you think! Like every other fic author, I love reviews and they're a huge part of what makes writing so satisfying to me. I'm also over on Tumblr at scriibble-fics. Come hang out with me! I love prompts and questions.

If You'd Like

Part One

Lily was driving him mad again.

That wasn't exactly new news. James had first lost his head over her during their fourth year, when she'd shown back up from the summer looking better than he had remembered, but still with that same mouth that had always entertained him. He'd liked teasing her even before he really understood what it meant to fancy a girl, and the moment puberty had flipped that switch for him and he'd started actually looking at her? It has been curtains for his sanity. She did his head in just by the sheen of her brilliant hair and the curve of her arse and the length of her legs and the radiance of her smile, all paired with that mouth that could cut him to the quick or make him laugh or infuriate him or anything in between. That she didn't have to even try to get to him had always struck him as deeply, supremely unfair.

By the beginning of their final term at Hogwarts, he'd started to suspect that he might drive her a little mad too—but in the way he'd always wanted, not in the way that had gotten his arse verbally handed to him on more than one occasion. Throwing caution to the wind, he'd asked her out to Hogsmeade for what he swore would be the last time. He'd even told his mates as much—if she said no, he was done—although all three of them had given him nearly-identical looks of disbelief and skepticism. Sirius had even laughed, because of course he had.

Against all odds, she'd said yes.

Against further odds, she'd asked him to kiss her on that date.

Against even further odds, she kept letting him kiss her—and hold her hand and put an arm around her shoulders and stroke her hair and all of those glorious things that he'd fantasized about doing for years.

Against the furthest odds of all, she'd said yes when he'd asked her to be his girlfriend. She'd even looked excited about it.

Yet she still drove him mad, perhaps even more than before.

Kissing her had turned out to be everything he'd hoped for. Wasting literal hours with her, snogging and laughing and holding her as they skivved off patrol duty, was even better. (And getting perfect Head Girl Lily to forgo some responsibility? Talk about a stroke to his ego and a serious turn on.)

Yet with those new incredible developments came unforeseen problems. Truly, he'd never expected to actually have her agree to give him a shot, so he hadn't considered what snogging her, and exploring the tender skin of her neck, and listening to her breath hitch, and feeling her hands in his hair, meant for his sanity.

As it turned out, it meant that he'd become almost a man obsessed. He spent every day either snogging her or chatting with her or getting her to laugh, or trying to scheme his way into making those things happen.

It meant that even just the smell of her perfume unlocked the part of his brain that had fucking exploded the first time he'd heard her say his name in a breathless, pleased way that had left him throbbing.

It meant that he could somehow find something erotic about even just the way she brushed her hair from her face as she leaned to look at the book he gestured to on the library table.

And that? That felt fairly fucking ridiculous.

Transfiguration. They were studying Transfiguration.

No, he was helping her with Transfiguration, because he'd always run laps around her in class without even trying. He'd always given her shit for it too, and she'd always set out to best him—something neither had stopped even when they'd started dating—although she never had. "You're giving your competition a leg up," she'd warned the first time he'd offered to explain some sort of complex theory to her. She'd smiled as she'd said it, but she'd made a fair point.

He'd ignored her warning, and gave a silent word of thanks to the cosmos—while also cursing the world—the very first time they'd cracked open a book.

He'd missed some of her cues the previous term, those flirtatious looks cast up through her lashes as she'd bitten her lower lip. Back then, he'd convinced himself that he must have read into every hint that she might fancy him, because he'd nearly given up hope and couldn't believe he might have actually won her over. Still, he wasn't a total idiot. He could pick up on some cues, especially after knowing her better, and he could immediately tell that something about watching him explain the theory behind human-to-animal transfiguration just did it for her. She sometimes looked at him like she wanted him to drag her into the nearest broom closet, and it was driving him mad.

He hadn't asked her about it. Something about the whole thing made it difficult to put to words. "What's the weather report in your knickers right now?" he imagined asking her, and he could almost picture the way she'd either berate him or laugh herself silly, no reaction in between even a possibility. She always acted eager and made all the right sounds and said all the right words, but he had no fucking idea if snogging him left her half as wet as it made him hard. Yet he knewthe status of her knickers when she gave him That Look as he adjusted her wand movement, his hand encircling her wrist while he talked her through how to cast some NEWT-level Transfiguration spell or another. She loved it.

Later, he would look back and marvel that he'd held off as long as he did.

After eight or nine of those study sessions, maybe six weeks after she'd agreed to call herself his girlfriend, she gave him one of Those Looks as they sat at the secluded table in the library that had become theirs, and he gave in and gave up and kissed her—really kissed her, maybe closer to an attack.

He hadn't thought through how she might react—and he had to wonder, how much living in the moment was too much?—but she gave him exactly what he wanted. She froze for a second and he almost tasted her surprise, but she had her quill down so quickly that she nearly upended her inkwell.

She was on him after that, maddening in a sudden, new, infuriating, wonderful way, and the reality of it hit him hard.

He was snogging Lily Evans in the library.

No, not just snogging her. He was snogging her and she had one hand curled around his tie and the other around the back of his neck. He was snogging her and dragging her close and then closer still, nearly pulling her from her chair. He was snogging her and actually pulling her from her chair, dragging her to his. Then he was snogging her and holding her on his lap, her legs straddling one of his own, and he could feel the warmth of her skin through the leg of his trousers as the scent of her hair overwhelmed him.

He groaned against her mouth when her teeth nipped his lower lip in a way that he'd come to see as signature for her, and he'd quickly come to love it for that. He loved everything about snogging her, because he'd discovered right away that they were ridiculously, stupidly good at it. He'd snogged a few other girls with varying rates of enjoyment, but it had never worked like it did with Lily, and it had started to work with her immediately. From the second they'd first pushed past soft, singular kisses and into something more intense, they'd just gotten it. Snogging her came as easily and flowed as fluidly as their banter, and was every bit as enjoyable too.

Her pupils looked blown out, brilliant green eyes more than a little dazed, when she pulled back after what felt like several seconds and several hours all at once. He could no longer talk, voice lost somewhere in her mouth, and he didn't have time to regain it as she took his glasses off, folded them carefully, and set them on the table.

He knew then that she meant business.

He knew it even further when she just looked at him, looked at him like he knew he looked at her, like she held onto her head by the barest of strings. Her hands went to his shoulders—where she gripped him so often when they snogged that she'd finally admittedly that she'd always liked his shoulders even when she'd disliked him, which he considered possibly the greatest compliment he'd ever received—and he could just feel her nails through the thin material of his uniform shirt. For a beat or maybe two, she just looked at him—no, Looked at him, That Look—and then she made a soft sound under her breath, something that sounded frustrated, as frustrated as he felt, and he cracked even further.

"Evans—" he said, because he still called her that as often as 'Lily,' but he had no idea what he planned to say afterwards. He didn't plan to say anything after that even as he said it, but grabbed her and literally yanked her down to his mouth, rougher than he ever had before. He didn't have the brainpower to wonder if he acted appropriately just then or not, not like he normally did when they snogged. He typically teetered between wanting her so bad that he only just held himself back from seeing how far she'd let him go, and wanting to respect whatever she did and didn't want to do to the point that he let her set the pace. The latter always won out in the end.

He didn't have it in him to think about all that just then, but he'd also never had her in his lap before, so that certainly changed things.

She'd also never quite kissed him like that, all heated need. She would kiss him back that way, but she'd never seemed to initiate it like she did as she leaned down to his mouth, her hands running over his shoulders and down his arms and up his chest, each stroke a nonverbal admiration. Her hair draped over his face, soft and sweet-smelling, and he let it hang there as her tongue stroked his in so many different ways—slow and sensual, gentle and almost tender, nearly frantic with desire—that he'd lost all concept of space and time and even his own identity.

The way her thighs squeezed his leg, first at different intervals and then with a constant pressure, didn't help things either.

Another thing that didn't help? When he finally reached up to push her hair away so he could caress her cheek, she brought her own hand over top of his and brought it down to the soft swell of her breast.

She'd never done that before.

He disengaged from her mouth immediately to all but gawk at her, frozen from shock beyond belief.

Her cheeks had flushed and the waves of her hair had gotten a little mussed from his hands. She bit her lip, flushing a little darker at whatever she saw on his face, and he knew without asking that she had no idea how unfairly irresistible it made her look. She didn't seem to get that about herself at all, which fucking floored him, considering she'd starred in his fantasies for literal years.

"You can. If you'd like." Her voice sounded a little unsteady, and he only realized then exactly how hard she breathed, or how the pace of his own breath matched hers entirely. His gaze dropped to her chest, where he'd cupped her breast on instinct, and he would swear then and later that his vision actually blurred for a second, too overwhelmed by it all.

If you'd like. The urge to laugh sat somewhere just beneath the surface, threatening to spill over at any moment just from sheer giddiness. Like he hadn't thought about her breasts constantly for years.

He sucked in a deep breath. His throat burned from the way his heart throbbed there. "Let me take you somewhere else."

She didn't hesitate. "Okay."

"I'm going to need a minute first."

He knew she knew why. She had to feel why, although she didn't address it. Neither of them had ever talked about the fact that he'd gotten hard basically every time they'd snogged since they'd started snogging, and if she finally said something then, he had the distinct feeling that he'd lose his fucking mind.

She slipped out of his lap, and he wanted her back there immediately, missing her warmth and the smell of her skin and the wonderful pressure of her thighs.

"What the hell," he said, and he knew he sounded more than a little accusatory. "What—"

"You're seriously so fit when you show that you're not a total idiot." He put his glasses back on just in time to see a flash of her embarrassed smile before she ducked her head. When she looked up at him again, she'd pulled herself back to a teasing expression he recognized much better than any sort of embarrassment. "The rest of the time you're fairly good-looking, but when you act like you actually know a thing or two—well, I really like that."

"You like that I'm smart." It wasn't a question.

"Obviously. Was there something unclear about all of this? Would you like me to explain things better?"

"Yes. Extensively." Ache in his cock or not, he couldn't help but grin, a grin that quickly grew to the point that he knew from experience would start to hurt if he kept it up too long. She made him smile that way all too often. "You're such a little swot."

"This isn't news, Potter. Don't act like you haven't said that to me eighteen times a day every day for the past seven years." She paused for a second, and then he caught something undeniably wicked in the glint of her eyes as she plucked at the knot in her tie. As he watched, mouth dry, she slowly unraveled the knot and then slid her tie through her collar until it puddled in her lap. "You can take my shirt off, if you'd like."

There. There, she clearly got it, what she did to him, as she apparently didn't when she laughed a certain way or bit her lip or cast him one of Those Looks. She knew what he thought and how he'd react and how he had to fucking hurt from wanting her, and—

And Lily Evans set out to do those things to drive him mad on purpose—him, James Potter. On purpose.

He'd never loved and hated anything quite so much at the same time—although loving it won out in the end, no question.

"You're killing me," he said, words ground out between gritted teeth, and then he lowered his head to press his forehead against the table, unable to even look at her anymore. He had no way of knowing that he'd repeat that same phrase back to her over and over and over again in coming months, but he absolutely would.

"You kill me a lot of the time, but every time you act like you're passionate about magic."

"So if I'd started helping you with Transfiguration sooner—" He couldn't even finish, but she knew what he meant anyway.

"I don't know, maybe. It certainly would have helped your case when you kept asking me out."

Frustration gripped his chest. "If you'd told me that—"

"In my defense, you never showed me that you were really good at this and cared about it before now. I thought you just knew flashy magic to cause chaos. I didn't know you thought about things, and I didn't know I'd like it like this."

"Like what?" he asked, because apparently he loved to torture himself, but he rushed on before she could answer. "No, don't tell me. I mean this as kindly as possible, but—shut up, will you?"

He heard the smile in her voice. "Yeah, alright."

After she fell silent, he did his best to think about everything but her. He thought about Snape. He thought about the horrible crunching noises from the last full moon, when Remus-as-Moony had chased down a rabbit and all but swallowed its torn, bloody body whole. He thought about how he'd feel if Gryffindor lost the Quidditch cup.

It worked. Eventually.

He had her in an unused classroom, door locked and silenced behind them, and his mouth back on hers in record time. They'd snogged in classrooms before, and it got a little more serious—and therefore a little more difficult—every time. Just the week before, she'd asked almost shyly if she could take his shirt off, and that was when she'd told him that she'd always liked his shoulders. He'd done his best not to let it immediately go to his head, but he'd failed entirely when she'd added that she liked his arms too, something she'd first noticed when she'd watched the muscles flex when he'd thrown a quaffle with particular force over halfway down the Quidditch pitch. She'd never paid much interest to Quidditch, so the fact that she remembered that spoke volumes. She also remembered the practice where it had happened, sometime early in the first term of that year, when she'd gone with her mates to laze around in the grass near the pitch like complete and total distractions. He remembered it too, because he couldn't even get after the blokes on his team for their inability to focus. He'd been the worst among them.

She'd gotten after him for his smugness and ego at his request for her to repeat the story back to him a second and then third time, but it hadn't stopped her from taking his shirt off again the next time they had an extended moment to while away with each other.

He pulled her down into a chair, eager to have her in his lap again and already very, very aware that he'd probably wouldn't want to snog her any other way from then on out for at least several weeks. She went willingly, but ended up with her legs on either side of his hips, straddling his lap as she only had his leg before. The difference was tiny, just a handful of inches, but it changed things entirely.

She felt him tense, and even though she'd already started back on his mouth, her fingers loosening his own tie as if she had no time to waste, she paused. "Should I—" she began, and she started to slide back from the intimate, terrible, glorious way her hips had settled over his, but he grabbed her arse and pulled her back to him. The move was all instinct and no thought, because even though he'd run his hands over her arse before—how could he not, when he'd become obsessed with it at fourteen?— he'd never grabbed her before, and it felt different. It felt better, because he slid her over where he'd already begun to grow hard again, as his erection had never fully gone away, and the friction sent sparks flying across his body. He wanted to drag her there again and again and again—

"Don't move. Please don't move. Stay here permanently. I never want to see you anywhere else." She smiled at him, something soft and almost sweet, and then went back to work at the buttons on his shirt. He chanced a glance down at where their hips met, and he swore, a quiet, desperate, "Fuck." Her skirt had ridden up further than he'd ever seen it, so far that he knew just a few more inches would have revealed her knickers to him for the first time. He wanted that so bad that it fucking ached, but not as badly as he wished that they wore nothing at all. Just the way they were joined told him that removing the barrier of clothes would have him inside her, and he'd never wanted that so badly in his life. He'd messed about with other girls before her, although it had never gone that far. He'd had similar thoughts then, wanting more, but it had never felt as it did with her, like need clawed at his stomach. "But there's going to come a point where we're going to have to stop," he said after a deep, unsteady breath. "Or—"

Or it would either really start to hurt or he'd come in his pants, although probably both, the prior before the latter.

She nodded. "Tell me when," she said, and then she had his shirt untucked and slid off his arms and his glasses back off his face, all motions she made as if she'd done them for years. Her eyes traveled down the length of his chest, fingers splayed across his shoulders, and he closed his eyes to avoid seeing the way she bit her lip, because it just wasn't fair.

She took that cue to kiss him, and he dragged her to him, her chest against his chest, hips locked on his, his arms wrapped around her back and her fingers skimming across his shoulders. He wanted her closer still, even though he knew that wasn't possible. He wanted inside her, and more than he ever had before. She was driving him mad, so wonderfully, horribly mad.

At least he knew, finally really knew, that he drove he mad too.

She ended up untucking her own shirt, almost as if she knew that he still hesitated to go for it himself. Even with her express permission, it still felt like pushing his luck to try for anything further when everything was already so fucking good and incredible and exactly what he'd wanted for years. The fear of scaring her off still flickered in the back of his mind, even though it had receded greatly in recent days. Still, he'd thought more than once that if she knew how badly he wanted her—how long he'd wanted her, how intensely he'd wanted her, how desperately he'd wanted her—that it would send her running in the opposite direction.

She apparently didn't share those fears. Just as she had in the library, she took his hand in her own, and his entire body tensed in anticipation because he knew what she intended to do that time. She slipped his hand under the hem of her shirt, and just his palm resting against the bare skin of her stomach left his head spinning.

He broke the kiss inelegantly, and she leaned back enough for him to see where his hand had disappeared. The fingers of that hand curled involuntarily. "Can I really—" he asked, because it still hardly seemed real and he wanted her consent.

No, he didn't just ask for her consent. He asked for her enthusiastic consent, because he wanted to know how badly she wanted him to touch her.

She nodded before he could even finish, and that told him everything without a single word. Still, she gave him more, adding, "And my bra too, if you'd like."

If you'd like.

The urge to laugh broke through there, as it hadn't in the library. She seemed to somehow know that he didn't laugh ather, fortunately, which he would have bet had a lot to do with the grin that split his face. "I want to do anything you want me to do, love. Anything."

Maybe it was too open and honest, one of those things he should have held back to keep from showing his hand and letting her see that she drove him fucking mad and that he'd lay the world at her feet if she'd let him. He didn't think about it until it left his mouth, but it didn't make her run. She smiled at him in a way that was just her, brilliant and beautiful with a scrunch of her nose that he'd admired long before she'd started aiming her smile his way, and she squeezed his shoulders lightly. "Go on, then."

xxx

Studying for Transfiguration became foreplay after that.

"I'm not doing that with you every time," Lily insisted the next time he offered to walk her through one of McGonagall's particularly grueling lessons. "Are you offering to help me study, or are you asking if you can take my shirt off?"

He didn't hesitate. "Yes."

For all her insistence, she'd laughed as she'd said it, and they'd ended up back in the same classroom, her seated on a desk and him wedged in between her legs, both their shirts on the floor.

"You're seriously so perfect," he said, mouth against one of her breasts and his hand on the other as she had her head thrown back fucking whimpering like he'd never heard before. He didn't even know she could whimper. "You're the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life." He'd taken to talking like that to her immediately, almost from the very first time they'd seriously snogged, and it had become compulsory. He just wanted her to get it, exactly how unreal she was, because she still acted like she had no idea. Sometimes she looked almost surprised when she caught him giving her That Look of his own—which happened at least once an hour like clockwork.

"James—" His name fell from her lips in a mindless, desperate way that he had grown to crave, just as he'd grown to crave what followed as his lips trailed to the sensitive skin on the side of her breast. "Fuck," she breathed, and it hit him as hard as the first time he'd heard her say it after he'd discovered a particularly sensitive swatch of her neck. It hit him that hard every time, as did the use of his name. She pulled him closer, one hand buried in the back of his hair and the other clutching his shoulder, and she lifted her legs higher on either side of his hips, like she meant to wrap them around his waist—

No, she did mean to wrap them around his waist.

He pulled back from her as if burned.

"Sorry," he said, voice trapped in his throat. He'd held his hands up like he stood at the end of her wand, not like she breathed heavily in front of him, the delicate pink of her nipples turned red from his mouth and hands. "Sorry, but—if you do that—"

He didn't even fucking know what would happen, really. He just knew he'd end up getting carried away in some fashion, and he didn't want that. Walking that fine line between wanting her and wanting to wait and do it right waged constantly in his soul, and it got more difficult rather than easier. The more he made her look almost dazed with desire, the more she swore and said his name and whimpered—which he still couldn't believe she could do—the harder it got to keep from pushing a little more, because he had the growing feeling that she wanted him badly enough to probably go along with it.

Somehow, knowing that was both the biggest boost that his ego had ever received and also the worst thing in the entire fucking world.

"Sorry." She repeated the apology back to him, but she looked like she meant it just as much, maybe more. She lifted a hand to run over her hair, and even that was unfairly sensual. "We can go. I don't want you to—"

"No. No, no, no. Not yet." He stepped back towards her, and he tried not to notice how her legs spread automatically to let him back against her. Instead, he touched her cheek. "Just—the higher your skirt goes up—" He didn't finish. He knew he didn't have to.

"I know." And, fuck, she sounded like she did know, and she looked it too, all furrowed brow and longing eyes. "I know. Tell me if it's too much, and I'll tell you."

His thumb paused near her mouth, and he tugged her lower lip out from between her teeth the second she bit down. He'd seen it coming. "Meaning what?"

She sighed. "What do you think?"

"Oh, I know what I want to think. Tell me what you mean so we can see if I'm right."

She leveled him with a long, silent look, one that reminded him so much of the exasperated way she'd treated him in years past that it would have made him smile if every muscle in his body hadn't thrummed in anticipation. "It's not easy for me either, you git," she said, and he did smile then. She smiled back, but then her eyes flickered down, like she couldn't look at him any longer. "Obviously it's not easy for me either. I fucking climbed in your lap in the library, James."

"I know. It was the greatest moment of my life."

It had the intended effect. She laughed, and she could look at him then, as if banter had gotten her past what looked quite a bit like shyness. He'd never even seen her act shy before they'd started snogging, and he'd loved it immediately. "Fuck off." She tipped her head a little, leaning into his hand, and kissed his thumb when he ran it across her smile. "I just don't want to rush anything. I've never—" It was another one of those things that she didn't finish, but she didn't have to.

Something relaxed in him that he hadn't known he'd held tense. She'd dated other blokes, and one stupid Hufflepuff for several months the year before, so he hadn't known for sure. He didn't think it would have put him off her if she'd shagged someone else—he was too far gone for something like that to matter—but it would have changed things, because—

"Me either." If he wasn't mistaken, something relaxed in her a little bit too. "But I would. With you. If you'd want to. When you're ready. If you're ever ready. It's fine if you're not. I'd never push you."

There. Haltingly put or not, at least it was out.

She gave him a different Look then, although still a proper noun. It wasn't the one that smacked of pure desire. No, she looked at him almost in wonder, like she'd never liked him better, like she thought he could walk on water, and it wasn't dramatic—it wasn't—but he rather thought he could if he tried just then. She made him feel that way.

He'd known he was in trouble from their very first date, which had confirmed every wonderful thing he'd ever thought about her, and she just kept confirming those things more and more as the days passed. Yet he'd never known it quite like he did then, because he knew in a second that he'd do anything to keep her looking at him that way forever.

He'd probably already started falling in love with her before then—probably back to that first date, if he was honest—but seeing that expression on her face really drove it home. He wanted to be the kind of bloke who deserved to sit on the other side of that Look. He would be that bloke.

"I'm going to get there," she said, and with such quiet promise that a fresh wave of heat hit his stomach. "I want to get there, but I'd get there even if I didn't want to, because you're—fuck, you're dangerous, Potter."

He was going to study his arse off—and not just in Transfiguration, but everywhere—just to appeal to her little swot ways, because he wanted to hear her say it as often as possible.

xxx

She understood the motive behind his increased interest in coursework without even having to ask. He saw that all over her face when Sirius made some derisive comment about how she'd turned James unendingly dull and bookish.

"I don't know what to tell you," she said, shrugging. Her tone carried an innocence that came off just a little too innocent. "I don't control him."

Sirius snorted. "Sure. Sure you don't. You're having me on. You've been controlling him for years, even if you didn't know it. You knew it, right?"

"If that's true, why were you lot constantly breaking rules and getting thrown into detention?"

"Because you did a shit job at it. The way I see it, he's got different motivations now. He doesn't respond well to fear, but he clearly responds pretty damn well to whatever you're doing these days."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Sure. I'm sure your little study sessions are entirely above board, Head Girl. Here, watch." James found himself on the other side of Sirius' taunting gaze. "James, mate, can I come study with you and Lily?"

He answered immediately. "No. Fuck off."

Sirius waved his hand as if that proved his point to the letter, but Lily just laughed.

She stuck to her word about not rushing off to fool around with him after every time they studied together—or attempted to study, since he still spent significant time trying to make her laugh even as he worked to show her he was Smart, a proper noun. Yet it became glaringly obvious that the times they didn't go off together usually came from some outside circumstance—him needed at Quidditch practice, or her with some outside obligation of which there seemed dozens, or Head duties for one or both of them, or plans to meet their friends. When he finally pointed that out to her one night, watching as she gathered her things so she could go meet up with a couple other students who also planned to take the Healer admittance exam, she didn't deny it.

"I don't know why you still sound surprised," she said, tucking a long scroll of parchment into her bag. "You know I want to snog you. I basically attacked you earlier today."

She had. He'd gone to simply kiss her goodbye when their schedules separated for the space of a few hours, and he'd found himself snogging her instead, his hands in her hair and his body pressed into hers as he'd pushed her up against a wall in the deserted Defense Against the Dark Arts corridor. No, he hadn't pushed her against the wall—she'd pulled him there, and they'd stayed there long enough that he had showed up last to Quidditch practice. His teammates had just looked at him, like they'd all known, and he had to assume they had known, given away by how he hadn't managed to stop grinning all practice.

"I loved it," he told her. "I'd like to be late to everything from now on, if you could get on that." He watched her pull her long hair back, securing it all atop her head. "Join me on patrol tonight."

"If you ask me nicely—"

"Please, Evans? Is that good enough?"

She smiled, and lifted herself onto her toes to kiss him very quickly. He had the distinct feeling she didn't trust herself near him very long, which he fucking loved, of course. "Yes, but I'm only giving in this easy just this once. The world doesn't need you to get more demanding."

Still, she didn't seem to mind the demanding way he pulled her to a classroom that night on patrol, even though she teased him about it. He'd expected as much.

"We walked the whole castle," he said. "I'll walk it again with you later if you want, because I want to hear you talk more about the spells behind reattaching limbs—you know how that gets me going, love—"

She laughed, reaching for him the second he locked and silenced the door behind them. "Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure." Her fingers felt wonderfully persistent against his shoulders. "I've wanted you to kiss me again all night."

He knew immediately that he'd never get tired of hearing that.

The closer they got to NEWTs, the closer they got to each other, the harder it had become to stop himself when he knew he needed to. Things were just so fucking good with her, everything from the physical to the emotional to the mental, and he had no idea how all of that combined couldn't make him want to tear her clothes off. He hadn't entirely joked about how he loved to listen to her talk about Healing—not for the gory details or the magic behind it all, but because it made her face light up with the sort of intense academic pleasure he'd admired for years in the classroom. She loved it because she loved learning, the swot, and there was something so endearing about that that it made him want her.

Her rapt attention when he talked about his own dreams of Quidditch made him want her.

Watching her playful banter with Sirius and long conversations with Remus and careful attention to Peter made him want her.

Her utter fury when dressing down a Slytherin student for throwing around bigoted words made him want her. She got even angrier when they used that word in reference to someone else, not herself, and that selflessness made him want her too.

The way she looked at him after he made some move as Head Boy that impressed her—when he had some suggestion or quelled some argument in prefect meetings or deescalated a duel in the corridors—made him want her.

Catching her reading Quidditch Through the Ages just so she'd understand the game he loved made him want her.

And none of that—none of that—had a single thing to do with physical attraction, which fucking overwhelmed him sometimes. If he caught sight of her looking particularly good when he hadn't expected to see her somewhere, or if she sat in his lap or draped her legs over his in the common room and he let himself really think about her closeness, or if she showed an inch of skin past the usual confines of her uniform, he lost his head a little immediately. He fancied her to the point that he knew he would have ended up fantasizing about shagging her even if he didn't like her past that, but fancying her so intensely while also straight-up falling in love with her? It only made her look better and better with every passing day.

Add to that the stress and pressure of NEWTs, not to mention Head duties and Quidditch captaincy and the full moon each month and the growing possibility that it looked like the Appleby Arrows might actually sign him? All of that pressure—positive and negative—sometimes made him feel tense enough to just snap in half.

Wanking helped. Of course it did. Even just joking with her usually left him with that familiar swoop of desire in his stomach that had become a constant around her, and he didn't mind taking care of it on his own. He just could never quite get out of his head how close he was to her doing something about it, and knew that that would be leagues better than anything he could do himself.

It also helped—but also really didn't help—that it seemed like she was in a similar boat. She had actually stopped him a couple of times when she'd gotten to the point where she worried about what she might want to come next, and he'd had a very hard time after that not imagining her with her hand between her legs, thinking about him while she touched herself.

So between it all—their growing closeness, the pressure of NEWTs and life, a stupid amount of physical chemistry—it hardly should have surprised him that he finally got to watch her come that night, but it still shocked the hell out of him.

She had him in one of his favorite ways—pinned to a chair while she straddled his lap, her mouth on his and his fingers painting teasing patterns against her breasts—when it happened.

They'd started moving against each other in recent days, hips on hips if they stood or him between her legs if she sat on the edge of a desk as he really liked. It had happened organically, without him even realizing it, but once he had—and realized that she was into it, moreover—he'd stopped holding back that desire for some sort of friction against his cock beyond shifting or repositioning. It felt far, far better than it had any right to, especially since he'd gone further with other girls and knew what waited for him beyond that, but that hadn't suprised him. Everything with her was just better, and he'd slowly given up the embarrassment of what a swearing, aching mess she made him, because she had too. He'd made every last sound he'd felt when grinding against her, especially when he could actually look down and see it happening, and she had in return.

But then she made a new sound.

She leaned forward, pressing her chest to his to lightly tug at his earlobe with her teeth as she'd discovered he very, very much liked, and that left him with a crystal-clear, front-row seat to the way she almost gasped against his ear as her hips shifted.

It startled him at first, especially because she froze in the next second, both in the wonderfully frustrating way she'd swiveled her hips against his and with her lips against his ear. "Love, what—" he began, but she rocked against him just as she had before, but as if with more purpose, and that cut him off.

He didn't need her to explain anything after that, because she said his name differently than he'd ever heard it, although the feeling behind it came through loud and clear. "James—" she said, and she didn't sound desperate like he'd always enjoyed before. No, she sounded pleading, and that was entirely new as well, but it didn't take a genius—or even someone with their full mental capabilities, which he lacked in that moment—to figure that out.

He still wanted to hear her say it.

"What?" he asked, heart pounding and cock throbbing harder than ever before. "Look at me. I—oh, Christ, Lily—" It was one of her muggle swears that he liked to hear from her in those moments, and he'd fallen into using it.

He'd known that she'd found just the right angle to really, really get to herself, but he still hadn't expected to see such a combination of blazing pleasure and pleading need when she leaned back just enough to see his face. She'd looked longing before, and desperate, and more than a little frustrated, but never like that.

He could fucking drown in that look.

The need on her face had apparently pushed her past any embarrassment that might have cropped up with exploring something new—or maybe they'd just gotten past embarrassment. He wasn't sure. Either way, she answered him without pause. "I can come like that," she said like she just fucking knew, and he was sure he'd never heard more beautiful words in his entire life. "I want to come like that. It feels—fuck, it's just—"

"Tell me." His voice hurt to pull from his throat, and he heard all her pleading reflected back at her. "Please tell me."

Her legs were tensed tighter than he'd ever felt before, as if she only just held herself back. Really, he thought he might have pegged that entirely right when her brow furrowed with frustration. "It's going to be so easy," she said, and she ran her fingers through his hair. "It's going to be so easy, because—baby, you smell like you, and you sound like you, and you feel like you, and I've thought about all those things so much to make myself come. So much."

It was the first time she'd ever called him 'baby,' and he knew immediately that he'd want to her say it every minute of every hour for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, he might actually spontaneously combust, because she'd confirmed what he'd fantasized about almost daily for weeks.

He wanted to ask her what she thought about when she thought of him, and he would, he absolutely would, but he couldn't just then. He couldn't do much more than stare at her, transfixed. "Do it," he said, and her shoulders dropped a little, her relief clear. "Do it. I want to watch you come." It only struck him after he said it that he was about to get to do just that, and the whole thing hit him all over again, only harder than before. It snapped him out of whatever trance she'd sent him into, and he promptly lost his head a little, as he later thought he probably should have from the beginning. "Do you know how long I've thought about watching you come? Fuck—years, love. Years. Show me. I want—"

"If it's too much—"

Oh. Oh, she thought she was going to push him past pleasure and into pain with no conclusion of his own.

He very nearly laughed. "I've never cared about anything less in my life. And there's no way—there's no way—I don't come in my pants. I've never actively wanted that before, but—seriously, Evans, show me the angle you like and I'll fucking move you myself if you want. I need this."

She gave up and gave in, just as he had that first Transfiguration lessoned that seemed to have started it all escalating down the path that way, and he had never, ever appreciated education more in his life.

She hadn't exaggerated when she'd said that it would be easy. He'd tried his hand—literally—at getting a couple other girls off before, the furthest he'd gone. It had always gone just alright. It absolutely hadn't helped that he hadn't known what the hell he was doing, really, just as neither girl had known how he'd wanted them to touch his cock. He'd never gotten comfortable enough with either to actually ask what they wanted or explain what he wanted, but he'd accomplished it a couple of times with one girl—unless she'd convincingly faked it—and he'd always gotten off in the end. He knew it was just easier for lads, and he knew that between how badly he wanted her and the fact that she was Lily Evans, all she'd probably have to do was look at his cock and he'd come.

In contrast, he had no idea what it would take to get her there, or how long it would take, but he found out fairly quickly. Once she'd gotten into the rhythm, she started falling to pieces almost immediately, and it was better than he'd ever imagined over the years. She made constant soft, longing noises, her hands moving incessantly as if she couldn't decide which part of him she liked best, and every once in a while, when it really seemed to hit her, she made one of those whimpering noises he loved, which only increased the closer she got.

They increased further when he moved his hands to her breasts, stroking and caressing and teasing in all the ways he'd discovered she liked best, and further still when he pulled his eyes away from her face so his mouth could join his hands. She arched into mouth, tugging gently at his hair, and she started saying his name then, once, and then again, and then more often than she didn't.

He just about lost it at that.

He just about lost it because her hips offered him all the friction he'd fucking craved for weeks, which was good enough—great enough—but watching her lose it herself topped any physical pleasure of his own.

He told her that, and once he started talking he couldn't stop. He told her how fucking crazy she made him and how beautiful she was and how he just couldn't get enough of every single part of her. He told her that he'd never wanted anything in his life—anything, not just any person—as badly as he wanted her. And he told her that he already knew that the desire to watch her come was going to take over his entire existence.

It was all so much, so much, that he later couldn't remember everything he said, or everything she said in return, but he tried to tuck some of his favorite things away in his brain.

"I love the way you look at me," she said at one point, and she looked it, like she couldn't get enough of that on top of everything she physically felt.

"Snogging you has been driving me mad, and you're all I think about afterwards," she said a bit later. "I can't even think about anyone else. It's just you."

"No one has ever made me feel like this," she said once she'd devolved into more whimpering than words, and he thought she meant just physically at first—which, good. Great. Fuck, he wanted to hear that. But it got even better when she added breathlessly, "I'm so fucking into you."

Finally, when she saw the way he kept looking down at her hips, hypnotized but frustrated from the hem of her skirt, she said, "You can pull my skirt up if you want to watch," and that? That just about shattered him.

He didn't question it, just dragged her skirt up to reveal all the smooth skin of her thighs that had made him salivate just through fantasies, and he saw her knickers for the first time—blue, soft, and trimmed with lace but otherwise unremarkable from some of the pairs she would show him later.

Still, in that moment, he'd never seen such an erotic sight.

She topped that sight moments later when she came.

He could tell when she got really, truly close just by the way her breath came in, all short and soft, almost like gasps. Her face changed too, and she looked almost greedy for a second, like he had something she wanted very, very badly and she knew he was about to give it to her. (And, fuck, he really wanted to give it to her.) Then her legs tensed again, and then her arms, and then the rest of her, every muscle taut down to the fingers that gripped his shoulders.

He didn't think when he moved his hands under her skirt to her arse. The move just felt instinctual and almost normal, like he often used his hands there to pull her against him with greater force. That felt so good that his brain almost totally shut off, and the enthusiastic affirmations she gave in return just clouded his mind further. "Yes, yes, yes," she breathed over and over, his name interspersed at times. Yet when she finally reached her peak and fell over the edge, she didn't say his name. Instead, she gave a broken, fervent, "Fuck," her face positively luminous.

He'd never witnessed anything more incredible in his life. Period. Full stop.

As promised, he came in his pants in short order, pushed over by the look on her face and the sight of her knickers and the pressure of her hips against his and his hands on her arse. He'd fantasized about the latter for years, immediately a mess if she wore anything that showed off her shape as her uniform did not. Using her arse as leverage to make her come and also get himself off just made an already unbelievable moment even better. His brain flew promptly out the window, just gone.

In the aftermath, she turned even softer and sweeter than usual.

She kissed him even before she could regain her breath, and her hands came up to cup his face for a moment before she slid them into his hair. She relaxed against him, the tightness vanished from her muscles, and she seemed content to rest there, the pace of her kisses slow and almost lazy.

He liked that nearly as much as watching her come. Nearly, but also still less by a lot, because nothing even came close to that.

He ran his hands over the smooth curve of her backside, back up, and then back down again, just fucking fascinated. It took a second for him to remember that he hadn't okayed it with her, that he'd just shoved his hands under her skirt, and he went to pull back. It seemed like she felt the reluctance as he did so, because she reached back to push his hand again into place, which was all the enthusiastic consent he needed.

Eventually, kissing her became difficult because he couldn't stop smiling. He felt better than he had in weeks—months—maybe years.

"Watching you come was the hottest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life," he told her, his voice still hoarse from desire. "Holy shit, love. From here on out, it's all I'm going to want to do."

Or make her come, if he could, because it rather felt like she had done all the work and gotten herself off—not that he'd minded. At all.

"I'm fine with that," she said, and she dropped her face to nuzzle into his neck, breath soft against his skin. Her smile had matched his, and he still heard it there, warming her tone. "I'm really, really fine with that."