Unthread
It had been such a long night. One of the longest of her life.
And now it's half-ten, and the only light in the kitchen shines down from above the oven, warm and weak and yellowing; though there is also a blue, half-crescent cast from a streetlamp, poured in through the narrow window above the icebox. The flat is near silent save the faint ticking of the gold clock her mother had given her not a day ago when she'd moved out of her childhood home, officially and forever.
Lily Evans curves a hand along her aching neck and moves her head gently from side to side. Exhales slowly. It feels good just to lean against the kitchen counter, breathing. A part of these shadows. Her arches ache and her dress is too tight, so she kicks off the thick square-heeled pumps and tugs loose the knot of her wrap dress, giving her breasts some room to breathe. She pulls her hair from its easy chignon, sighing, relieved, as it unfurls down her back in red waves. Such simple acts of comfort allow some measure of tension to roll right off her skin; evaporate.
Hell had it been a long night.
Half a year ago, Petunia had waltzed into Christmas dinner with an obnoxious diamond ring weighing down her finger, and Lily had known things were about to get bad, and then worse. Lily's subsequent—though far less demonstrative—announcement that she was in a relationship with a wizard was, predictably (though no less painfully), ill-received by the bride-to-be. That dinner had been just the first in a seemingly endless march of tense occasions as the parade of Petunia and Vernon's engagement ensued, each event more riotously uncomfortable than the last, the singularly detestable mob of Dudley relatives somehow getting worse with time; and the worst of it was that Lily couldn't find an ally even in her own older sister, whom had all but written her off as a nuisance and abomination the moment her magical affliction had made itself known. And their mother, their sweet, well-meaning mother, tried her best to smooth the rocky rift—much to Petunia's chagrin—by insisting on Lily's involvement in nuptial proceedings, leaving neither sister exceptionally thrilled by the prospect of Lily being a bridesmaid, stuck in among Tuney's abominable, silky-haired university mates, Tabitha and Candice, who each managed to make her feel less important than a cup of tea gone cold with just a single, withering glare.
June was barely beginning, and it was to be a long summer. The longest.
There's a fumbling sound at the flat door. Lily smiles, despite herself, despite her aching neck and arches, despite the shitty wedding party she's forced to be a part of. Not half an hour before, returning to the flat after the long, insufferable evening, Lily had bemoaned the egregious absence of wine and of crisps, of anything worth eating or drinking at such an hour, when her mind was too abuzz to contemplate sleep—and had really rather vocally mourned her own stupidity for not having through these things prior to such a long, terrible night. James had set his arms solidly at her shoulders and kissed her forehead sweetly, saying, "right then: you sit tight, and I'm off for wine, and crisps, and tea, anything else? Eggs? Loaf?" and Lily had tried to backpedal, to soothe over her childish complaints, but he just wouldn't hear it, he was already stealing several muggle bills from her purse and declaring he'd be back before she could say Gryffindor, striding straight back out the door before she could say a single word more on the matter.
Long nights were never so hard with him.
The dreaded engagement party, hosted by the Evans', Mr. and Mrs., had been in their lovely backyard garden, a whirlwind of tree-hung lanterns and frothy sherbert sunset and surprisingly elegant floral centerpieces. If it hadn't been for such foul company on the part of those recently engaged, it might have been lovely and romantic. And try Lily had to set aside her frustrations, to let her sister have the lovely night. Just the previous week, Lily'd paid a visit to Petunia in her west Essex home in an attempt to swallow her pride, to be civil. Lily had let her know that she was very happy for her and Vernon, and was perfectly pleased to attend the engagement party so long as she was allowed to bring James. Petunia, not even attempting to hide her shock of any continuing involvement with such a "disgraceful boy," ultimately acquiesced; which, in retrospect, may have just been in an effort to get Lily out of her sitting room as quickly as possible. Because the moment Lily and James emerged into the backyard soiree, it became clear that Petunia had willfully blocked the agreement form her consciousness; she flicked her eyes over their interlocked fingers, nose flaring, giving Lily only a curt nod and refusing, outrightly, to acknowledge James, acting as though he were some deranged magical hallucination Lily had invented solely to embarrass the future Mrs. Dursley.
Which, inevitably, did catastrophic things to Lily's temper: Writing her off was one thing, but James? Who had never done anything harmful or deserving of such treatment? It had made Lily's blood boiled hotter and hotter as the evening wore on, eyes flaring each time Petunia glanced her way, disgusted, ashamed, and contemptuous; it burned Lily through with indignance, made her want to stride up to her sister and shake her violently by the shoulders, scream we used to be friends! We used to like each other! What happened to us? What have you done?
James noticed her increasingly short breaths, the flare of angry color in her cheek, and found it all, no doubt, alarming, especially when the rage manifested in an unchecked burst of magic shattering a champagne glass right in Lily's hand—much to the horror and confusion of onlookers. James pulled Lily away from judgmental eyes and into a shadowed alcove of trees, gathering her in his arms until her breath quieted. He whispered against her hair that he knew she wouldn't forgive herself, later, if she ruined the night—and that, really, despite everything, Petunia wasn't worth it. She didn't deserve the attention. Lily felt calmer immediately, just at the sound of his voice; his hazel eyes steady and warm in the shadows, his fingers on her wrists anchoring her pulse into something reasonable. It was hard to feel unmoored with him there. She kissed him, just for just a second, and it was a soft and lingering thing; a promise.
Dinner was silted and awkward, after, but bearable. Petunia hardly spared her a second look, and that much was just fine—preferable. Lily knew she couldn't handle a confrontation, a spat, and so she deflated, deflected any impulse to feel strongly. She had spent so much of their estrangement in aggravation, in anger and grief; and now, she was spent from it. Had hardly any fight left.
It had been a long, hard, trying night.
"Hullo!" James calls out eagerly from down the short hall. Lily hears two dull thumps followed by the soft padding of feet, and then James steps into the kitchen with a brown paper bag and a victorious grin. "Consider me a seeker! Braving the muggle corner shop! Are you terribly proud?"
"I'm terribly proud and indebted," Lily answers, body set eternally at ease just with the sight of him, her lungs filling with more buoyancy than she thought possible given the weight of the evening. His outfit is disheveled, deconstructed since dinner; grey suit jacket thrown off uncaringly somewhere in the hall, sleek blue tie slipped loose and abandoned as well. He'd hardly complained at all to don such muggle clothing, and Lily can hardly object to it herself; he looks, as he does in most anything, unlawfully good. And now—white shirtsleeves pushed back at the forearms, collar unbuttoned at his throat, well-fit grey slacks crinkled from wear and exertion, dark hair rumpled over his brow—he looks almost theatrically debauched.
Lily curls her hands against the edge of the counter behind her, one bare foot arched atop the other as she watches him pull from the bag a bottle of red wine, boxes of crisps and tea, a carton of eggs and loaf of bread. It's so domestic; him in this kitchen, him bringing home groceries. He retrieves his wand from his trousers pocket and uncorks the wine with a thrillingly subtle twirl; a nearly voiceless command and wrist-flick levitating two glasses toward from aside the sink, where Lily had left them earlier to dry.
He pours them each a glass; Lily takes hers gratefully. "Thank you."
James leans against the counter, not a step from her, and reaches out to place a hand on her arm. "I know tonight was hard for you."
Lily closes her eyes to the mouthful of dark wine, savoring the pleasing slide of it down her throat. His fingers on her arm are firm and stable. When she opens her eyes again, he is looking at her, and she gives him a gratified smile. "You know I would've hexed her to oblivion if it weren't for you."
"I realize, yes," he says with a laugh short and knowing. "But I also know that rubbish as she is, you'd feel bad about any sororicide committed."
Lily lets out a laugh of her own. As boring and tedious and grating on her nerves as the night had been, her apprehension is quite nearly dissolved, her irritation at Petunia's behavior all but forgotten—in favor of the handsome boy next to her, the one who was willing to brave both her older sister's awful engagement dinner and a muggle corner shop for her. "Thank you for coming with me," she says, softly, seriously, holding his eyes. "Truly. She's—well, I'm used to her, but she's—bloody unfair to you. It's unkind, and it's childish. I'm sorry."
James shakes his head briefly and furrows his brow and takes down a healthy sip of wine. "I'll withstand her as long as you need me to."
Lily turns where she stands, bends to lean her cheek against their entwined arms. She kisses his fingers and stays there a moment, relishing the comfort of his skin. The home of it all. She loves her parents, but the idea of family is rifted through by Petunia, every time.
James is family without trying. He knows what she needs without asking.
The wine shimmers in the recesses of her mouth. She stands upright and finds a purple half-moon stain on the rim of his glass. Her belly, too, is warm with wine. She asks, "You know what would make me feel better?"
James brings his glass back to his lips and drinks without breaking eye contact. He swallows and she watches his throat. "What?"
Lily takes her eyes down the long, leaning frame of him. Her fingers slide out from under his arm in favor of her turning, her mirrored leaning. She lets her neck roll forward and brushes a slow thumb over her lips; eyes lulled shut by her own touch. "A bit of a filthy shag."
She opens her eyes and finds his lips parted; curious and wanting. His eyebrows gone slightly upward, fingers gripping down on the counter's edge. She knows well enough the tensing in his jaw, the dark flooding golden irises, the soft, jittery thrum of his breath. And his gulp is near imperceptible, but she sees it still.
"Just a bit?" He murmurs, amused, lips rubbing together, hips leaning back against the counter. "Do tell."
Lily feels her pulse flare with exhilaration; they've never shagged before in a place that was just her own. At school it was always a balancing act of dormmates and after-hours trysts, broom closets and secret passageways and robust silencing charms. Even post-graduation they were rarely alone in a place, sneaking around the Evans house or the upper-London flat inhabited by every loud and attention-seeking Marauder.
And there hadn't been a single second for anything like this since the move-in had been official, less than thirty-six hours prior, since all their helpful friends had left, since they'd stumbled in from the awful dinner, bedraggled and thirsty for wine.
The realization springs a quick and thrilling desire through Lily's form. He is watching as she brings a hand back up along her neck and parts the thick unruly curtain of her loosened hair over one shoulder.
"I want you," she begins, blinking slowly. "Right here. In the kitchen."
James exhales as though he'd been holding a breath. "Yes," he says, and from the way he shifts his weight from one leg to the other, she knows he is already some semblance of aroused. "But—"
"But?"
"But," he sucks in a breath, a strand of hair falling down over round, horn-rimmed frames. "I want to tease you all the way there."
Lily feels the anticipation of his words thread through her white-hot. She shifts her own thighs slightly, feels a dim pulse of throbbing. Her lips part for tremulous breath.
She raises her glass to her lips and wills her arm not to shake as she downs the rest of her wine. The empty glass she slides toward him on the counter, indicating a refill. He reaches for the bottle and pours her another glassful, doing the same for himself. They drink through slowly, watching each other. The tension, here, foreplay; swelling in the space between them. Glittering; palpable.
Wave a match through the air, expect fire.
The bottle isn't finished but James sets down his glass when it's empty. Approaches. Lily feels her pulse seize with excitement, sets her own glass to the side. The skin of her arms breaks out in tremors. He smells like pinewood and sweat. He bends close enough to kiss her but just whispers, "Turn around."
She turns around.
His hands are soft on her shoulders, gliding over the sleek fabric of her dress, plucking down arms and threading, finally, through the spaces of her fingers; anchoring them both to the countertop below. Then, his lips press, perilously soft, to the back of her neck. He breathes through each scrupulous kiss, a stream of air tickling the top of her spine—and though his range is limited, the effect is unconscionable; Lily lets the heat of his mouth spread achingly down her back, her hips, her thighs. Almost instantly needy for more, she arches her back, aching for a firmer press. James obliges, moving his feet to either side of her body and trapping her, effectively. His thumbs brush slowly over her thumbs. Tender. His lips make their way around the side of her neck and he takes her earlobe between teeth, worrying gently, licking with sudden heat. Lily whines, arse rotating back into his groin so she can feel his erection against the curve of her.
"Needy are we, darling?" James murmurs, breath warm on the delicate chords of her neck.
"Don't think I'm the only one needy here, love." One rougher thrusting of hips lends truth to the observation; she feels his prick twitch slightly through trousers. A smile steals at her lips.
James releases one of her hands and tilts her face toward his with two fingers. She catches his eyes behind glasses; gold dulled in the shadowy kitchen. He leans in and kisses just the corner of her mouth; Lily feels her brow stitch itself together, aching. She aches for him, of course, always. It weaves through her simply, at the most basic levels of herself; like light.
James kisses the hollow of her cheek, burning red with attention, laves his tongue slowly down her jaw. Her breathing is a harried, tugging noise, now, and in desperation her free hand roams up her own body, greedy for touch—but James catches the fingers in his own just as they breach the dip of her abdomen.
"Evans," he says warningly; but even then, it sounds more like wanting.
Lily clenches her fingers against the trap of his, impatience twined with affection, with hunger, as she cranes her neck for a better view of his face. She finds whatever semblance of control he projects to be a bitter lie, and nearly keens for it; his lips parted and wanting; a vein throbbing in his neck; a sheen of perspiration glossy along his brow; beautiful pink flowering both cheeks. He heaves in a breath and guides their hands upward, settling along a breast straining at the loosened dress. Her fingers dart out, slip under the fabric and skate over her nipple, and the feeling of relief is almost too much; the fabric pushes away easily, and she groans. James seizes her fingers away with a throaty sound of his own—and this is what she wants, his skin sliding under to palm the breast, thumb sweeping, electrical circuits combusting under sheath of skin. She inhales against the sensation, his fingers much larger than her own, much better to knead, to pluck, to sweep. Her hand rounds his forearm, gripping tense muscle, and her head falls onto his shoulder, back curving at his touch.
"I didn't let myself think you weren't wearing a bra at dinner." His lips press agonizingly slow to the crown of her forehead, mapping the line of her hair, pausing in soft contemplation in the space between eyebrows, down the delicate bridge of her nose. "But you leaned into me, once, brushing on my arm, and I felt it, I felt your nipple, and then I couldn't not look, Merlin almighty. And gods did I nearly get a hard-on, right then."
Lily lets her hip push back hard, now, mind fogged with the retroactive knowledge of his looking, his noticing, his struggle. She had felt such a charge herself, midway through the main course, when his thigh had pressed firmly to hers underneath the table, his mouth a polite smile as he was addressed quite rudely by a cousin who wondered "exactly what sort of private school" it was that the two of them went to. James fielded the discourteous remark brilliantly, though Lily was hard pressed to remember exactly what he'd said, having been so thoroughly distracted by the feeling of his thigh along hers, a reminder, in any context, of her ever-present desire for him; a reminder, in any context, of all the times such pressing had been private, had been skin on skin, had bloomed a daring flush down her body, throat to thigh, clavicle to cheekbone.
At dinner, she had inhaled deeply to rid herself of the inappropriate thought. Shelve it, Evans, she had urged her body. Shelve it for later.
And so such a feeling comes off the shelf and pours down her spine like liquified flame. James drags his fingers across her chest, fingers enflamed, ensconcing the other breast; and torn from her throat, a wretched sigh. "I wanted to suck on you till you screamed," he admits, capturing this second nipple in his grasp and pinching gently. Her hips attempt a push, a pressing back, but he steps his feet into a tighter hold, bracing her so tightly she can't move.
"Tell me what you want, Lily." He sets into her neck again, the exposed plane powerless to his nipping teeth, his tongue swathing great, wet, sweeps. Lily digs her fingernails into his forearm, grasping desperately as his fingers continue such merciless tease. He clears the breast of its fabric, her dress askance on her chest, and she gasps, for the air on her skin is a strange and specific torture; her limited range of motion exquisite torture.
"Tell me exactly what you want."
His remaining grip on her hand eases, and then he has both breasts in his warm hands, and he's staring her down from the side. Her eyes are so heavy in yearning she can barely keep the lids up, lashes dense and thick and blinking, both of her hands falling to brace against the counter, back bending so his hands have better access to her bare chest. She licks her lips and groans. He smirks; he bites into her neck, sucking. "I want—" she manages, somehow, between the painful pleasure of his teeth and tongue, the overstimulation of his fingers flicking unruly spirals of pleasure at her tits. "I want you to let me turn around, you utter, fucking—" He squeezes his fingers and she shrieks; caught amid indiscernible ecstasy; thighs clenching with a swift bolt of heat. "You utter, fucking tosser."
"Oh, come now, Evans, insults?" he growls in her ear, fingers spreading carefully off her breasts, rosy now with his ministrations; coming to a rest at her hips. "Not such a polite way to get what you want, is it?"
"I will insult you—" Lily grits through her teeth, holding back the whimper that would rather come out as his fingers plant firmly through the slippery dress, pressing so deliciously hard at the skin of her waist. "All I please, Potter. It's been a particular prerogative of mine since—oh."
His fingers tug at the loosened tie of her dress, slipping it free, the dual panels falling clean away and baring her stomach to him, his fingers quick to slide just under the waistband of her knickers.
"Since?" James prompts, lips hovering at her ear.
"Since I first laid eyes on you." His fingers creep maliciously downward, legs spanning hers slightly so her body can bend backward, allow him space between the cupboard to slither further down, brush into her wiry curls and tug, gently. Lily takes advantage of his widened stance to push her bum back and swivel her hips, relish in the earnings; his hitched breath on her neck, leg muscles tensing, the pleasing bulge in his trousers.
"And tell me," James whispers, voice tight; nearly just air. "Have the insults often gotten you what you want?"
"Gods, yes," she whines brutally. "Always. You're so desperate for me to bully you. You're so fucking hungry for it."
"Am I?" His fingers dip lower, dangerous. Her hips stutter in wait. She can tell his hardness is painful, now, just in the way breath catches, in the way his free arm wraps her waist, pulling her tightly to his body.
"You're—" she cuts off with a breathless cry, two intrepid fingers pulsing quickly into her waiting heat, dewed, lascivious. "You're weak, and you're—you're furious with me, because I'm supposed to be the one—oh, Merlin fuck, James—" she cuts off again with his sudden, quickening speed, fingers rubbing frantically, her hips canting backward to this punishing rhythm, the pattern of their wild breaths matching, overlapping, syncing without a design to. "You're supposed to be the one taunting, here, not me," she finally chokes out, falling forward onto the counter as if spent with the effort, forearms crooked to the surface. James releases his tight hold just long enough to ruck up the fabric of her dress around her hips, the meeting of her arse and his trousers closer—tortuous—with fewer barriers between. He moans into her shoulder, teeth clamping down.
Lily grins as her chin stutters to her chest. She wiggles her hips, bucking backward without remorse. "But you can't help yourself, can you?"
"I can," he whines. And as if to prove himself correct, he clamps his hands down suddenly onto her hips and spins her around. Lily yelps at the sudden spinning, reaching out for handfuls of his shirt to balance.
"I can," he repeats, softer.
But he can't, really, he can't—because he's already gone for it, already coming undone. But far be it from him to admit a loss, however small, despite a loss almost always being a win, and mutual, between them; the indulgent craving to retain control an eternal wellspring of unstoppable force meets immovable object.
Never mind the salacious spoils of each such meeting.
They glitter in the pain of it—in the luxury of it—for just a moment. Lily takes the moment to shrug her dress fully off her shoulders. It pools to the ground and she kicks it to the side, naked save knickers, hardly a slip of silk at her hips. Her hair falls down her back in no doubt unruly curls, tickling between shoulder blades. She leans back against the counter and tilts her chin up.
James heaves with the exertion of alleged resistance; his eyes travel down her hungrily, uninhibited, fingers flexing outward, like they're missing the sensation of her skin.
"Fuck," he remarks eloquently. "Fuck."
His return to her is instant; cataclysmic. His eyes flash and his hands fly to her hips and hoist her upward; she's only a second to react to the harsh feeling of the counter on her bare thighs before he's dragged her flush to his torso, her legs lifting to wrap solidly around his waist, culled neatly to the tragic place of his want. His mouth is on hers, then, its own hungry thing; tugging and sucking and lapping at her lips like a man starved. She drags her fingers up through dark and disorderly hair, yanking his head to an angle that suits her own ferocious kiss, titling his throat open, tasting his long, pleased groan. Lily rolls her hips emphatically and sets in on the task of ridding him of clothes, clamoring at the buttons of his shirt. "Want this—need this—" she mumbles into the twine of their tongues. James rips his mouth away in time for her to finish—"off, please."
He steps slightly back from her, looking dizzy, panting, lips well-kissed and wrung into a stupid half-smile as he rakes his hands from her hips in order to set in on the buttons, himself. "Now she's polite."
"Now," Lily glares, "she's going to finish on her own if he doesn't take those well-pleated trousers off right this very instant." She punctuates the threat by leaning back on one palm for support and letting the other hand slide down her arched abdomen and under the waist of her knickers.
James chucks off one shoe at a time and shoves his shirt off, staring in aggravation and envy at her disappeared fingers. His throat moves through with hard swallowing as she elicits a slow whine, hips bucking up into her hand, craving deeper friction. His face goes slack at the sound; she watches in undue gratification as he leans backward against a tall wooden cabinet, seemingly against his will.
He looks better than sin, propped there, breathing raggedly, teeth biting gently at his lower lip. Lily lets her eyes fall across the strong line of his shoulders, down the tensing, slender muscles of his arms; and is overcome, irreverently, with the urge to tease her fingers through the dark hair of his chest, to tug at his nipples and hear his breath quicken and rush. She zeroes in on the neediness between his legs, and needs, more than anything, for him to rid himself of the rest, to see his pink and swollen cock; to reach out, feel its heaviness in her palm.
"Oh, gods," she groans, fingers diving madly through her own wetness. "Now you've gone and made me want to suck you off right there, you fucking—you look so sodding pretty pressed up against that cabinet."
James' chest deflates with a rapid inhale and he struggles to unbuckle his belt, thread it out and toss it aside, then resume his harried energy to the clasp of his trousers. "I've really more than half a mind to eat you out right there, Evans, no utensils required."
And Lily laughs at this, because she wants it so badly, and fuck is he good at that, at the eating, at the slow and methodical plunge, at the making her beg for it. She can feel the tongue, almost, and squeezes her eyes shut, stills her hand in her knickers. The heat too hot, the sensation building too quickly.
She wants him here for it. "I want—"
When she opens her eyes James has done away with his trousers and pants in one go, and is standing naked in her kitchen—naked and breathing hard and it's so hard, it's so hard like this when she wants him in every way she can have him, because no way can she be diplomatic. She can only be selfish. And he has made her this way, with his own insatiable needs, rucked right up against hers each time, the scrape of libido made even worse by the fact of their love, a trench so unending it just keeps getting deeper.
"What?" he asks, he challenges, he begs. "What do you want?"
Lily exhales and lets her fingers come out of her knickers and she feels herself actively unraveling; not a girl, not a woman, just a string pulled loose. "I want a really filthy shag."
James chokes on air. "I should've known."
"Are you going to do it?" she ties her lips into a small, smug smile. "Or shall I go on and ring up another bloke?"
He approaches slowly this time, perhaps out of self-preservation. His fingers touch down on her knees as they hang over the countertop. He catches her eyes and she lays her hands along his face. Even among the thrill of the chase there is this: His eyes alight in adoration; her kiss, soft and pulling and calm.
"Out of curiosity," he murmurs against her mouth, tongue darting out to lick along her lower lip. "How am I to interpret 'filthy?'" His tongue wraps briefly around hers; pulls at it, wanting. "As 'hard?' As 'quick?' As 'vulgar?'"
Restraining herself from a full and hearty groan, Lily removes his glasses and places them carefully away from them, next to the sink. She feels his lips take the opportunity to lean down, latch at the hollow of her throat. She hums in appreciation and scoots herself close enough to the edge of the counter to urge his fingers up her thighs; they rest there, unmoving, warm and steady. She slides her own hands down his back and scrapes fingernails over his skin, lightly. "Yes," she says to the first, and "yes," she says to the second, and "and yes," she breathes to the third; a breath punctured with his lips having traversed down her collarbones. "I want to remember this part of tonight."
"I think..." James says, kissing softly toward the curve of one breast, pausing in his descent to turn his cheek against the flesh. "We can manage that." His tongue washes over the nipple and she keens, fingers rounding his shoulders and tugging through his chest hair, as she wanted to before. "Don't you?" He murmurs, lips already on to the next breast, the symmetry of his attention as satisfying as it is unfair, as it is slow, as it is not enough.
Lily arches her back into his mouth despite herself, ankles hooking around his back, pulling their bodies close. He inhales swiftly. "Yes, I certainly do," Lily says, thumb titling under his chin so she can seize his ravenous mouth with her own, patience all but run dry.
James has deemed the time for teasing over, too, it seems, fingers hooking the waistband of her knickers and yanking them down. Ever helpful, Lily lifts her hips, hands anchored to his shoulders for leverage as he pulls them clean off. The counter is cold beneath her arse but his fingers are hot and gripping at hips, pulling her flush against the edge, flush against the taut bob of his cock; and the both of them immediately voracious for this. "Oh, fucking hell," Lily moans as his forehead falls forward, presses firmly to hers, his grip sliding further up her hips so she's free to writhe against his erection, free to reach between them with to assist the undulations, fingers sliding round the rosy head of his prick, smearing at its liquid eagerness. "Fuck, Lils," he gasps, hips rocking inward as her ankles tighten at his waist, thighs tense and squeezing. He leans in to kiss her, lovingly, roughly, slanted, and her hand stickies up with their arousal, sliding frustratingly each time she pushes desperate hips, culling every aggravating sensation of contact; the coarse hair of his chest chafing the sensitive peaks of her nipples; every sound loud and lewd and gorgeous; he smells like sweat and wine and faintly of parchment and good grief could she just die, could she just die, right here, and be happy; crying out into the earth mine! Mine! Mine!
Lily leans back from the movement and releases his cock, placing several long and perfunctory kisses on his lips, murmuring, "I need you inside."
"Yes," he says immediately, recognizing, perhaps, the light behind her eyes, or the absence of light—the flood of I need you to shag me now, and shag me well. James Potter, all too happy to oblige her—any time, any way she wants or needs—uses two spit-slicked fingers to ease wide the thatch between her legs, one arm crooked around her back so she can lean safely down, onto the counter. James' brow crinkles, and he mutters, "accio wand," though he has no hands to catch it so she reaches out to catch it for him, giving a funny look. "Your head, love," he murmurs, and then she understands, levitating her fallen dress so she can bunch it up as a makeshift pillow, saving the back of her skull from the hard marble surface. James presses his hands to the insides of her thighs, spreading them further apart and her back shifts along the countertop, bowing minutely at the first stretch of cock sliding slowly inside.
Lily sighs affectedly; in relief, in fullness, in contentment. She flutters her eyes closed and smiles as she feels his fingers slide up her legs, over her belly, over her neck and into her hair. "I always think I'm used to how good you feel." His voice is strained and gruff as he rests in her, unmoving. She clenches her thighs slightly; is rewarded with a sharp breath. "But it's always better than I remember."
Her fingers latch to his wrists and she turns her head to kiss his palm. She opens her eyes and breath pauses in its path to her lungs; his face is awash in vulnerability, the line of his jaw tense with waiting, eyes gone soft and blurry. His trust—evocative in its tender strains—is what makes her body melt the most.
"I love you," she tells him.
His eyes shut momentarily with the rinse of her words. She kisses his palm again and rocks her hips forward. She is patient enough to wait, but eager enough to ask for it. Burn for it. As he explicated—hard, quick, vulgar—filthy is really up to interpretation; an improvised act in new surroundings. Surely there are uncaring sisters to be weathered and disastrous weddings to attend; and what more, there's the steady bruise of war beyond this cluttered kitchen, bare of even essentials. But the din of it all, unimportant, now, here; pushed back by pulse of needy flesh.
This apocalypse? All their own.
"I love you but you're killing me," Lily amends, quietly, hands reaching out to pluck at the skin of his hipbones, along the angled lines pointing inward, brushing through the alluring trail of dark hair vying toward his prick. James creaks his eyes open and a haughty grin alights; cheeks burning red. He's gorgeous and virile and godlike, even sweating in a kitchen; and although it's been years since he's flaunted the fact obnoxiously for her explicit—undeserved—attentions, he still knows it. He knows it, godamn it.
Lily sees a flash of it now, in his eyes, a sparkle inimitably his own; lustrous and bursting in arrogance; it's the part of him that got the girl.
The part of him that's got the girl pinned down to her kitchen counter, panting.
"Mercy," he gasps, swallowing his smirk. "Can't have that."
His eyes, in particular—the infuriating golden orbs, tinged black in dilation—light up with this victory. Part of Lily wants to be furious at him for being so self-congratulatory; but how can she be? Especially as he begins to move, adopts a jaunty, rhythmic thrusting, filling and unfilling the cavern of her body, drawing out of her a gasp that sounds just like a sob; and is likely just that, a crying out for the inexplicable sensation of their joining, familiar and novel all at once; unbearable, compulsory.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Lily can feel James like another part of her, close as blood, dense as bone; engrained, by now, in her biology. His palms fill with her breasts, lavishing delicate peaks, and she keens with it, her own hands sewn to the flesh where her thighs meet her cunt, spreading herself further apart, allowing a deeper, painful fill. She is rarely so good at having a body as when she's with him.
"Please." Is her plea, single and ringing.
James—with cutting breath, breath cut in two—sings with the please. He thrives on please. Elated by it, and cunning with it, prying her open one nerve ending at a time; bearing into her with momentum she can tell sends his balls slapping clean against the counter—something in fact she can hear, and it's such a disreputable, wicked sound that she grinds her hips against the lascivious surge of arousal, rising up off the cold surface to feel the deep and deepening breadth of his cock, his delirious, miserable, beautiful cock. "Oh, fuck me," he keens straight into her skin, head bowed to her leg, teeth sinking right into her thigh. "Fuck me." James is biting her skin and whimpering into her skin and he's got two fingers burning into the bundle of nerves that please her the most, his hips violent on the backs of her thighs and the slice of their sex is suddenly agonizing, an unrepentant madness of sensation, an all-sided assault on the senses; Lily gasps and moans and nearly laughs for it, borne into new urgency as she grapples forward on her forearms to watch his hair rove wildly over his brow; watch his eyes alight on her and notice her and hear her when she whines with the building pressure above her abdomen, the thrush and spin of pleasure unthreading her, string by string by string. She is unspun from anything solid except the pound of their bodies; two tapestries soon destroyed. Annihilation—of which he is a part, and his mouth parts and heaves with air, a pink and swollen thing, gasping for words or for air or for something like light.
"Let me up, baby," Lily finally begs, when she can stand it no longer, being so far. "Help me up."
His laugh is breathless, but he indulges, pausing hasty thrusts to cradle her body and fold her up against him. Their mouths meet with enthused and frantic reunion and their hips pulse, stutter, lips gasping through the gratification. Lily grips at his neck and cheek. "Hi." She bruises his lips with hers and he smiles around her voice, tangling tongues, his eyelashes like birdwings, aflutter. "Hi, Lils. Care to keep on?" Now her turn, and laughing, biting at his lower lip just to hear him groan with it; clenching her inner muscles just to hear him cough, "Bloody hell."
"Quite keen to keep on," she assures. "If you're inclined."
No singular second of contemplation before he reinvigorates the pace, barreling on as though he hadn't stopped; and the condemnation thereof is bright and blinding madness, nerve endings and muscles incandescent, betrothed with pain and pleasure and every space between; bones filled, too, with something so hot it can only be living, can only be life. James presses his cheek to hers and their separate breaths go out onto the sweaty plane of the other; each inhalation pain eased; pain incurred.
"Fuckssake, Potter, it's good, it's so good," Lily keens as he dives back down into her neck, licking its pale length, pinning his fingers through her hair to tilt toward her ear, tease the lobe and kiss her jaw and swallow down the cluster of freckles where neck meets shoulder. His hips embark on a speed wrought in devastation; Lily comes nearly undone from her own fabric as his thumb fastens steady to her clit. She clings to him any which way she is able; grasping at shoulders, at his back, at the soft skin between neck and hair, at the curve of his arse clenching with exertion, at muscled thighs. He cries out her name, hips stuttering, legs quaking like trees in the wind, breath like a caged thing set free, a bird that's never seen the sky. "I'm not long for it—" he swallows and he swallows again and moans loudly in her ear; she can feel him trembling, she clutches desperately at his head as it folds to the crook of her neck. And if love is just the deluge before grief, she catches him there, carries him up out of the emptiness, and feels her own body full, not of blood but of him; but of light; but of happening.
Even in the thrash and filling and end; his tender lips under her chin, pleading her name relentlessly. Urgently. "I love you, oh, oh, fuck, Lily."
Even her ribs feel the flood, when it comes; rushing and compact, something bigger than them both. She turns her head against his and grasps his hair, thighs spasming as the orgasm clenches her in its unreasonable, maniacal fists, as she's burst through with the voracity of—the commotion of—such pleasure. Body split in three; her, him, and the fusing of self with other. She's got her teeth in him and feels his own violent rattle, the unmistakable sound of him coming; carnal in its gasp, in its voicelessness. He spills into her, hot. "Baby," she whispers, spent on the feeling of their braided beginnings, their braided ends. Their bodies pause and listen to the other, unable to move but for fear of forgetting; the brightness stuck between them like a valley of its own. And when they slip slowly toward the intersection of finishing and being finished; all four lungs must work hard. Lily smiles into his neck as his hips ease deliberately through the aftershocks, her legs clenching and unclenching with each residual flare. She is a gamut of tangled threads, undone, and James is reverent in the afterlight, worshipping her shoulder and neck with lazy lips, his warmth unspooling along every pressed surface of skin.
He raises his head finally, finds her eyes; lets his hair be brushed away from his brow, smoothed back with careful fingers. "You killed me anyway," Lily asserts, low on breath and volume, palms culled to his cheeks. His eyes are returning to their lovely golden haze, sewn up in devotion; he chews on the bow of an amused grin. "Most sincere apologies, love." But he doesn't sound sorry, not even a little, and his lips ghost softly over hers and she makes a sound of divine contentment, low and rumbling, mouth parting for his gentle tongue. He kisses her as one might say a prayer; lips sanctifying lips.
Lily thinks—Lily knows—she would cross oceans for this feeling, for this place of slow and steady calm; this plateau past hunger; this field burned down by their fire, grass laid flat in the scorching.
The world settles down around the space they occupy. When Lily blinks her eyes open, pulls away from his mouth, she finds the near-empty kitchen, blue lamplight spilling on the green tile floor, all the clutter of moving in. She exhales. James settles his arms on the countertop and eases himself out of her, flinching at the sensitive task. "Well?" he asks, teasingly, as she finds his wand behind her and cleans them up with a small murmur. "Filthy enough for you?"
Lily bites down on her lip bashfully. The act—one of utter abandon, one with small regard for hygiene, or tact—had, indeed, felt properly dirty to her. Never mind they couldn't get walked in on; never mind it was perfectly within her rights as a tenet of the flat to shag whoever she likes, wherever she likes. "I'd say so," she says, lips rubbing together, dashing a finger over his mouth. He catches her wrist in his hand and kisses the point of her pulse. "Had to christen the new place somehow."
Now James has a gleam in his eye that can only mean he's far from satiated—and thank Merlin for that, for neither is she. "Fancy christening some other locations, while we're at it? Call me old fashioned, but the bed sounds like a logical next move."
"I fancy it, sure," she admits, sliding off the counter and unknitting her wrist from his hand. She steps delicately over his discarded clothing at the lip of the kitchen doorway, making off toward the bedroom. "Though I imagine we may have to do some hallway-christening, on the way..." She hears James make a sound of acute affectation, and it's not a second later that she feels him bounding up behind, twirling her around in his arms, taking her startled laugh with his lips, as his own.
And there are boxes to be sorted and dealt with, a flat to be arranged and adorned and made snug. Other anxieties, too, and abound—but such thoughts are effectively banished to the back of two minds, now, for the night, too focused as they are on hallways and bedrooms and showers and the all-importance of claiming each as their own; and not even in the morning, when the sun bleeds in pink and orange through the windows to illuminate the unholy mess of it all, will either heart be bothered, wrapped up as they'll be in a room furnished only by bed, by quilt, by two bodies; each threaded through with the other.