Seven Things

3/7. The third thing is a kiss. By the gods, it's a kiss, if you'd believe it.

It's not her first kiss—it's not even their first kiss. She and James have been leads in two musicals and a short film project before, so his lips (and tongue, mind) aren't completely foreign territory. But it's quite a fucking kiss, and she knows that that's such a pathetic reason to make it this much of a deal. It's the kiss, because it's the first to really matter. While the almost-kiss from summer matters, too—a lot, and it sucks that it does—that one was... that was a breath sighed upon a mirror, misting for a second then gone in the next. This, on the other hand, is a goddamn message scrawled on the glass with bright red lipstick.

Weirdly enough, it's her ex-boyfriend Terrence Hunter that she has to blame for it. (To thank for it, later, but not till later.)

This is what happens:

James and his mates are, for once, in Merlin Hall not because they're in detention. They're there because everyone is. Teresa Lockhart, department head and appointed over-all moderator of the seniors' final project, has called them all up for midyear updates. It's Hogwarts tradition for graduating students to produce a full-scale show to be presented at the end of the year. They're supposed to work on it the whole year round, in between their classes and the other little projects and homework and quizzes and group reports. It's also tradition for Teresa to be full-scale stressed about this, as Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students are invited, and she won't let anything less than perfection to be showcased. This year, the project is a musical on a modern-day version of the Iliad. It was that or the life story of St. Paul, and the decision was unanimous and submitted by the homeroom officers in a beat.

Lily plays Andromache. Terrence is Hector, because Jeanne cast the damn thing, and Jeanne hates Lily. Mary and Dorcas Meadowes (and Lily, really, because she's almost always around when they worked on it) wrote the script. Marlene Mckinnon and the Prewett twins are on choreography. Frank Longbottom and Alice Wells head the stage management team. Benjy Fenwick will direct. James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, for reasons only known to the four of them, have adamantly expressed their desire to stay out of the stage on this one, to the disappointment of Teresa who wanted them to star in it so bad (especially Sirius, who, if Teresa had her way, would have been the face who launched a thousand ships, for goodness' sake). They were assigned instead to produce the music. This particular assignment is probably the only thing Teresa and Lily ever agreed on; the Marauders are, without a doubt, the best in the year when it comes to that.

The updates are a disaster.

By standard (Teresa's, at least), the seniors should have nailed a good half of the show by now—substantially, if not chronologically. Instead, they have procrastinated until last week, when the need for the updates was announced. In their defense, they've been busy. McGonagall and Flitwick have been burying them under piles of homework week after week, and since most of them, being seniors, are also club officers and interns and prefects and whatnot, there really hasn't been any time for a project that they know wouldn't be shown until the end of the year.

They had to stay up all night last night at Benjy's house, the Fenwicks' otherwise spacious living room cramped with frantic, murmuring seniors smelling of coffee and ink; finishing drafts, recording, rehearsing, designing, polishing up a half-arsed half-play for Teresa Lockhart's stupid, graded updates. Honestly, the solidarity is unbelievable. Lily's so proud of them. What an admirable, innovative bunch of procrastinators they are.

By the morrow, they've bullshitted their way to a passable update. Everyone's half-dead. Merlin Hall smells exactly like Starbucks. And, most relevant to Lily's affairs: Terrence Hunter—Lily's ex, Lily's Hector, Lily's play husband whom she has to kiss in the next act—ends up in the school clinic after passing out in exhaustion during intermission.

There is no understudy, for there are only so many of them in the graduating class. Teresa pointblank wouldn't skip any scene. She calls for Sirius (mainly because he's always the first face and name on top of her head) and says, "You go. Be Hector for now."

To which Sirius comes forth from backstage and replies, "Eurgh, no." Lily raises an eyebrow at him. He adds, amending, "I don't know the lines, Ms. Lockhart."

"Take the script. It's only Ms. Evans I have to see. She's not getting away with it just because Mr. Hunter's not around."

Lily was going to protest too, but Teresa's apparent doubt on her ability shuts her up in her want to prove something. Sirius looks so uncomfortable that had it been any other time, under some other circumstance, it would have been funny. "She's like—she's like my sister," he says, throwing Lily a horrified look.

Scratch that. It is funny.

Not to Teresa though. She rolls her eyes. "Mr. Lupin?"

"Same, Ms. Lockhart," Remus calls from behind Sirius, not bothering to step up. "Sorry."

Teresa rolls her eyes again, this time with an impatient tut. "Mr. Pettigrew?"

"Okay," he says at once, jumping on stage. At his eagerness Sirius huffs, Remus frowns, James looks like he's going to laugh, and Lily does laugh.

And so they go.

Except when it's actually time to kiss her, Peter starts giggling, so Lily does too, and Teresa, outraged, yells at him to get offstage. "Mr. Potter!" she calls from her seat in the audience, incensed now, and James's head appears over the right curtain.

"Yes?" he asks.

"Do this scene please and let's all be done with it."

He emerges fully. He's holding his guitar, and he rakes his hair with his free hand. "Can we just be done with it period? We can do it tomorrow. We're wasting time—"

"You're wasting my time making excuses."

James casts Lily a sheepish glance. "Ms. Lockhart, she's like my sister," he supplies, like that hasn't been said twice in the last ten minutes.

Lily licks her lips and stares determinedly at the many empty seats of Merlin Hall.

"Yes, it appears that Ms. Evans here is a sister to everyone, but it also appears that I don't care. You know, truthfully, I expected so much more from all of you." She crosses her legs and leans back on her seat. "Now you're either going to take the script from Mr. Pettigrew and endure not five minutes onstage with your sister, or this is all over and you all get a T for the second quarter in my subject."

James lowers his guitar, the bottom hitting the stage with a thud. "That's a bit too much," he says, the same time Lily says, "That's unfair."

But they have driven Teresa Lockhart to her most terrible mood now, and in response she only takes the clipboard from the seat next to her. She starts scribbling. The discussion's over.

James takes a deep breath—angry, clearly—and shoves the guitar into Peter's hands. Peter trades the script for it.

He walks over to Lily, eyes roving over Terrence's lines.

This is terrible, Lily thinks. My god, this is terrible.

She shouldn't have had that much coffee, because now the caffeine, on top of exhaustion and lack of sleep, is clouding up her brain, making her mind race more than usual.

When he reaches her side, James looks at her and mutters, "Sorry."

Lily shrugs.

Out of the Marauders, Lily would say Remus is the best actor. Sirius is good too, the second best, but tends to lean towards particular genres, and is better on screen than on stage. Peter is the best singer, hands down. James is... He's sort of the "jack of all trades master of none" type. Brilliant with his guitar though. Has a knack of creating something beautiful out of chaos—never mind that sometimes, his and Lily's definitions of 'beautiful' vary.

He's got pretty hands, too, she observes, while she waits for him to finish reading through. And is annoyingly cute when worried.

He delivers his lines mechanically, just recites them off the paper, possibly to piss Teresa Lockhart off. Unsuccessful, that, because like she said, Teresa only cares about Lily. He's nervous. Lily can't linger on it for long, because unlike him she has to actually do her role with justice, but she's pretty sure his hands are shaking. He won't look directly at her. Of course, it could just be the anger. But Lily doubts it. She's known him long enough to know which is which.

When it's time, all too quick, to kiss, he drops the script to his side and looks at her, properly now, as if in question. If it is, she doesn't answer. For one, she doesn't really know what the unspoken question is. For another, she doesn't dare break act. She can't what with Teresa being a terror at the moment, but also for her own sake. She can't afford to let Lily be here, to let herself be the one to kiss him. She is Andromache. She is an actress, a good one, not some amateur who cracks because she hopelessly fancies this nervous idiot.

She waits. She'd have kissed him first, that would still have made sense in the context of the scene, but she knows Teresa to be a strictly-by-the-book person and Hector's supposed to move first. She doesn't want to screw things up lest she be made to do it over again.

James leans in. Lily hears the script crumple in his hands, but she doesn't look to check. This is terrible, she thinks again. His lips touch the corner of hers, a hand coming up to cup her face. He is moving. So. Maddeningly. Slow. Given the situation, she probably ought to be grateful that he's settled for this—a careful, chaste kiss on the corner of her mouth—but it just leaves a burning want in the pit of her stomach that almost, almost shatters her composure. He chooses now, of all times, to be a gentleman. Christ.

Over James's shoulder, she sees Teresa watch them with a crease on her brows and a subtle shake of her head.

This won't do.

Lily curses in her head, makes up about a hundred thousand excuses for the next second, and then—you're Andromache, you're Andromache—she practically grabs James down by the back of his neck—Hector, your husband, the love of your life—and kisses him fully, desperately, fervidly.

His bottom lip is chapped. He tastes like roasted caramel macchiato. Which is so not Hector, and is so, so James, that Lily just... melts. Goddamn it all.

He seizes up, catches on, and then kisses her back.

It lasts longer than the script requires.

You're Andromache.

The script is on the floor, his hands are on her waist.

Jeanne definitely hates you now.

Teresa Lockhart clears her throat.

They break apart.

"That will do," says Teresa, waving a dismissing hand at them. "Someone call Mr. Fenwick up."

James turns to Lily. Before she can say anything, he ruffles her hair, something he habitually does to annoy her. She pats his hand away. He chuckles, but it's more a huff than a real laugh, and his lingering smile is stilted. He leaves without a word, exits through the same way he came.

Lily goes the other way, making sure her intense internal rampage isn't reflected in any way on her face.

Before she's out of range, he hears Sirius say from the other side of the stage, with a smirk that Lily can't see but is so sure is there: "This is why you're an only child, James—you do know it's socially unacceptable to go around snogging your sister like that?"