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blink three times (when you feel it kicking in)
James looks at Lily looking at the car. She has one hand on her hip, the other on her chin, her brows furrowed with the utmost focus. His uncle is also looking at Lily looking at the car, though rather with the air of a proud old man at last finding a long-lost child. Sanjay Mamu has never looked at him like that, thanks very much.
“It’ll go,” Sanjay Mamu says with unearned confidence.
“I think so too,” says Lily. His uncle beams at her.
Rarely is James the realist in any given situation, but he finds himself compelled to try here. “It’s twelve hours or something by road. She’s never driven this hunk of metal before, and neither of us have made the journey before.”
Sanjay Mamu makes a loud, offended sound. “Hunk of metal? That’s the Standard Gazel Mark III, babu. Have some bloody respect!”
“Yeah, James,” says Lily, grinning shamelessly, “have some respect.”
He rolls his eyes at her. Of course she had to go and charm the entire city of Mangalore; in all likelihood she’ll be doing the same in Goa.
“We could be robbed,” he says, “or have a breakdown in the middle of nowhere. And then be robbed.”
Sanjay Mamu frowns. “So then you’ll go by train?”
“No,” says James at once. His greatest fear is the Southern Railway. It’s a miracle that wasn’t what his Boggart was, back in third-year Defence Against the Dark Arts.
“My nephew is a spoiled brat,” Sanjay Mamu tells Lily. “You’ll have to excuse him.”
She shakes her head sadly. “I’m learning to live with it.”
Unwilling to back down just yet, James says, “We could Portkey.”
“You want to wait at the Portkey Office for three weeks, be my guest,” Sanjay Mamu says loftily. “I’m not coming with you to argue with them. And that travel agency will fleece you.”
“We don’t have three weeks,” Lily says. “The others promised to Portkey in at the weekend.”
He’s well aware, thanks. They don’t have time, period — it took McGonagall’s insistence that they were not needed in July to put this holiday on the calendar. Who knows how much of their lives the Order will take up after that?
Lily lovingly traces a hand over the leather headrest. She looks at him, eyes wide and pleading. “I’ll drive you down the road and you can see I’m perfectly good behind the wheel.”
What is James supposed to say to that expression? No? “Oh, it’s fine. Let’s drive.”
They have his dad’s enchanted tent, anyway, which is probably a good idea unless Lily wants to drive twelve straight hours. He doesn’t know if he can even stretch his legs in the backseat. But she’s so obviously thrilled at the thought of a road trip. And he knows he’d sit through hours and hours of coconut trees and uncomfortably pot-holed roads to see her happy.
She sidles up to him and loops her arm through his, leaving behind Sanjay Mamu to pull the canvas roof over the top of the car.
“What, afraid you’ll get sick of me holed up in a car for a day or two?” Lily says, her smile teasing.
His heart does a painful stutter. He couldn’t possibly be sick of her — there is no limit to his appetite for her, this constant need to be around her and look at her and hear her every wry comment. And it’s embarrassingly obvious too. His aunts have spent all week giggling about how he follows her around. He’s certain they all know, somehow, what he’s got in his pocket. His mother is not known for her secret-keeping abilities.
“I’m afraid you’ll see how terrible I am at mechanical repairs,” he says.
She reaches up and pinches his cheek, a horrible habit she’s picked up from his incessantly pinchy family. “I’ll do the fixing. You can sit around looking pretty.”
He grins. “So you think I’m pretty?”
Lily laughs, bumps her hip into his, and skips back to Sanjay Mamu, who has politely begun scolding his grandchildren so as not to eavesdrop.
“—ah, yes, Lily,” he says, thumping her on the back as is his custom (she hasn’t once flinched despite the force, which always makes James feel some type of way and think to himself, that’s my girl). “You’ll have to fill up the gas. Actually, take it to the mechanic, I don’t want you breaking down on the way.”
James scoffs. “That’s what I’ve been saying!”
Lily is smothering a smile. Sanjay Mamu continues on, serene to the utmost. “Ritu can show you where— oi, Ritu!”
One of the grandchildren he was telling off scampers up eagerly and begins opening the roof Sanjay Mamu just refastened. “I know where it is, let’s go!” She wrenches the passenger-side door open and sits with a whump, patting her thighs in her enthusiasm.
“Sure,” says Lily. She vaults right over the door into the driver’s seat, as smoothly as if she’s practised it a hundred times. James has to consciously close his mouth. Sanjay Mamu is not very subtly laughing at him.
He gets into the backseat just in time to hear Ritu say, plaintively, “James is annoying and can’t drive. I’m so glad you’re here, akka.”
Well, she’s half right. But James can hardly be annoyed at his niece when Lily’s laugh is carried away by the evening breeze and he’s so aware that Ritu called her sister.
“Poor James,” says Lily, glancing back at him as she coaxes the Gazel onto the road. “I’m afraid I love him anyway.”
He’s heard her say it before, but each time it’s like he’s forgotten it. Each time it’s like being knocked upside the head, and yet also steadying. A place to stand. Ritu makes an inspired retching sound as they laugh; the trees rustle their approval.
The air has suddenly cooled, a mark of the soon-to-arrive monsoon rain. James can almost taste it already. Ritu, chattering away, directs them to the mechanic with only two wrong turns, and Lily only once panics at the chaos of the roads.
On the way back, James puts his hand on her shoulder. She reaches up to cover his fingers with hers, tapping along to the Bollywood song on the radio. God, he’s going to marry her.
Somewhere outside of Canacona, Lily starts to get reckless.
They’re about two hours off from James’s mum’s cousin’s something-or-other’s house in Vasco, but she can tell they’ve crossed a state border by the signs — the names of the towns and villages they breeze through sound Portuguese. The radio signal has been getting steadily worse, so they’ve substituted with the Pressman Lily invested in as a gift to herself after school. But she hardly hears the music for the wind; James’s tuneless humming is louder.
The first drop of rain splatters against her forehead. She swipes it away and pushes down the accelerator harder. It takes James a moment to notice.
“Are we going faster?” he says.
“Scared?” she says.
He grins. “With you at the wheel? Never.”
She throws her head back, laughing. What a shameless flatterer her boyfriend is. “That’s not what you said three days ago, James.”
“I contain multitudes.” He slides a hand behind her neck, running his thumb along the curve of his shoulder.
She shivers. “Now I think you want us to crash.”
“Scared?” he says.
She smiles at him and tosses her hair over one shoulder. “Not a chance.”
It’s not that bad things don’t happen now that she’s dating James. There’s been truckloads of awful shit in the last two years alone, and that didn’t stop when they’d finally confessed their feelings to one another. One could argue that it’s gotten worse.
But bad things are less bad when he’s around. Or they scare her less, anyway, because as the war — for it will be a war — continues to cast its shadow over their lives, Lily has learned that she is scared, nearly all the time. And he’s scared too. They need something — someone — to ward off the slow-creeping fugue of fear.
Reining in her wandering thoughts, she says, “Be a dear and Impervius the car, would you? Your uncle wouldn’t want rain to get on the seats.”
It didn’t rain on the first day of their journey, to her eternal disappointment. She’s not about to shut it out now.
James reaches for his wand. “If I told him. If you told him, my uncle would say some gobshite about rainwater actually being good for leather.”
Lily laughs. “You’re jealous they like me better than you.”
“Yeah, obviously. It was over for me the moment Ritu found out you could drive.”
It’s a damn sight better than Lily’s family’s reaction to James. Her smile turns sour; she presses down on the pedal harder still. The important thing is that they’ve been so, so kind to her — heartbreakingly so, showing her around Mangalore with such enthusiasm and stuffing her to the gills, and all the little kids eager to hear her opinion on every last family argument. Her mother would have loved them.
Her mother would have loved him.
“Easy, tiger,” James says lightly, tapping the side of her jaw. “Leave the road intact for the people behind us.”
His voice is an anchor; she mock-glares at him just as the stray droplets turn to a real drizzle. She beckons him closer — “Come here, you.”
“Are we about to do something incredibly dangerous?” he says, but he obligingly brings his face nearer to hers.
She takes her eyes off the road for one second to kiss him soundly.
“Oh.” He sounds a little strangled. “My favourite kind.”
Lily laughs — and then shrieks. The skies open up with no warning, and the fine rain is an instant downpour. James swears, letting go of her to pull at his soaked-through shirt. She turns on the windshield wipers, but it hardly makes a difference. Everything is a blur, the coastal road a watercolour landscape.
“We should stop,” James says, and the rain makes him sound like he’s drowning.
She glances over at him and has to fight back more laughter. His hair is plastered to his forehead, nearly reaching his eyes. He’s pouting.
“The road will probably be shit after the rain,” Lily points out.
James pushes back his hair, but it refuses any attempts at being slicked back. “The road is just as shit during the rain.”
He has a point. She pulls over, though there’s not much by way of a stopping place on the roadside.
“Come on,” she says, clambering out of the car.
James is glancing around with undue worry. “Come on where?”
He takes her outstretched hand, his skin warm against her chilled fingers. She tugs him closer — watches his lips curve into a smile — and his arms go around her.
“Are we dancing in the rain?” he says.
The song on her cassette is still playing from the car, somewhere underneath the crash of rain. He finally starts to lead — thank goodness, because she’s not the one who was forced into formal dance lessons as a child — and spins her around as the music crescendoes; her sopping-wet hair slaps him in the face. He yelps and jumps backward.
“Sorry!” Lily says, half a gasp and half a giggle. She slides her arms around his waist, palms flat against his back, and buries her face in his shoulder. He’s solid, here. “Sorry, sorry.”
She can tell he’s rolling his eyes, but he presses a kiss to her temple.
“Can you even see a thing?” she asks. His glasses are streaked with rain.
“I can see what matters,” he says, his gaze intent enough to warm her insides.
Lily smiles. “My vague, blurry outline?”
“Exactly. See, this is why I love you. You understand.”
Every time he says it she has to kiss him; she just needs to, to taste the impression of the words on his lips. She tips his chin downward to meet his mouth with her own, soft at first and then coaxing, slow.
“You taste like rain,” he says, breathless, when they break apart.
“I’m quite soaked through,” says Lily seriously.
She doesn’t realise the double entendre until it’s already out, but he certainly notices. He must have noticed a lot, with these few inches between them, like how flimsy her top is and that she does not have anything on beneath it.
His brows have steadily risen. “Is that so?”
She nods. “Oh, yes. You may have to keep me warm tonight. We’ll have to strip off our wet clothes and get really close, lest we risk hypothermia.”
He laughs so hard, he has to let go of her to clutch his sides. “You realise we’re in India, not Norway?”
“So you don’t want to?” Lily says.
James grabs her by the waist and kisses her again, hard enough to make her dizzy. Then he steps back, brushing away a clump of hair that’s stuck to her cheek. “I’m counting down the minutes.”
Her grin must be positively giddy. “Then you should charm our windshield too. We’ve got a beach house to get to.”
He slips a hand into the back pocket of her cutoffs as she leads the way back to the car. Only the knowledge that they’re not exactly in the middle of nowhere stops Lily from suggesting they start keeping each other warm right away.
That and the fact that she’d never be able to look James’s uncle in the eye again if they had sex in his car.
When they at last arrive in Vasco da Gama, the sun is already dipping below the newly-cloudless horizon. They’ve mostly dried off — without the use of magic, though James can practically hear his mother’s voice in his head chiding about colds — by the time they step through the wards to the quiet house.
His mum’s cousins are travelling and volunteered their place for his use, which he knows is really nice of them but also seems rather ill-advised. Eight teenagers mucking about in your house, in your absence? He’d never risk it, and that isn’t even getting to the fact that he is one of the teenagers.
For now, the house is just his and Lily’s. They levitate the luggage through the front door and raise the roof on Sanjay Mamu’s precious car. (He’ll have to phone and tell him the thing has survived the journey.) Being a still-growing boy, as he likes to tell anyone who will listen, James makes for the fridge first.
It’s fully-stocked, thank Merlin. He digs out a knife and picks up a mango from a basket on the kitchen table, and wanders out to find Lily unlatching the verandah doors.
“Not hungry?” he calls to her as he peels the mango.
She shakes her head; she has her gaze fixed on the sea, glimmering in the faint moonlight. “I want to see the famous cove.”
The cove is why this house is so sought-after along James and his cousins. It’s built near a little inlet of the Arabian Sea, so the swathe of beach behind the house is a perfect holiday haunt. The nearest neighbours on either side of them are a good distance away. This isn’t the most touristy part of Goa; the neighbours have been the neighbours for years and years, and though James can’t recall if they’re wixen, they’re certainly put-off by the wards.
“You won’t see much in this light,” he says, but she kicks off her sandals and heads for the water anyway, and he follows.
She takes a few purposeful strides towards the water’s edge, then stops. James grinds to a halt too, ankle-deep in sand and hardly concentrating on the knife in his hand. The sea breeze sends her hair fluttering. He can’t see her expression but he can picture every facet of it. He catalogues her every look — and yet he’s so often surprised by her.
So he’s still not prepared for when she turns around, studying him and the house behind him like she’s framing a photograph. Lily is usually so put-together, every private, vulnerable bit of her hidden behind wry smiles and witticisms. But she’s looking at him like he hung the moon, with the waves crashing behind her and the stars bringing an otherworldly glow to her bare shoulders.
That’s the thing about being in love. It’s not just that he loves her smile or her mind; he loves tiny things, mental things about her. Like the way her shoulders look under the moonlight.
Her lips part and he wonders what she sees. What she’s thinking. For his part, his brain is rapidly losing control over the situation; his pulse judders into high gear when she takes a step closer, as if he’s never kissed her before, as if he’s never so much as touched her.
His hands are apparently working even though his mind is not. James glances down in surprise to find that a perfect spiral of mango peel is at his feet. He tosses the knife a safe distance away and takes an experimental bite of the mango.
Any Indian worth their salt has a firmly held opinion about what makes the best fucking mango. This is it, for James; a perfect marriage of sweet and tart, a texture not too fibrous or pulpy, a surprising sharpness at the very end.
His enjoyment must show on his face, because Lily smiles and comes closer still. Realising his rudeness, he extends the mango out to her.
She takes it in both hands, laughing a little at the sticky mess of it, and bites into it. “Oh, my God,” she sighs, her mouth still full. “I can never eat an English fruit again.”
James grins, reaching for her — and forgetting his own mango-covered palms. Lily leaps back at his touch, brandishing the half-eaten mango like it’s a weapon.
“Stay back,” she warns.
He puts up his hands in surrender, the picture of innocence. She’s still wary, but after this silent stalemate goes on for several moments Lily finally sets her sights on the mango again.
So James charges for her, obviously.
She screams and chucks the mango at him — which he catches, thanks — and takes off at a run along the beach. He follows her laughter like it’s a tether, happily eating the mango on his leisurely way. He makes a big show of pausing to toss away the pit, then he’s sprinting behind her, catching her by the waist, swinging her around as she squeals.
“Merlin’s sake, James— eek, you’re so cold!”
He’s slid his hands under the hem of her top. He murmurs into her neck, “You’re the one who said something about keeping each other warm. I’m trying to get a headstart.”
She squirms around in his arms. “You’re going about it all wrong.”
They’re just about nose to nose, the arresting green of her gaze fixed squarely on him.
“Am I?” he says.
“Yes,” she says, and she cups his face in her own sticky fingers.
James yells and is surprised enough to let her go. Cackling in triumph, Lily puts distance between them as he rubs uselessly at his cheeks.
“I got you worse,” he pants. He’s probably wound up smearing more of it on his face than she’d put there in the first place.
Lily grimaces, lifting up her top to examine her stomach. “Yeah, you did. I’m going to need a bath.”
“Boo hoo.” He checks his pockets to make sure they’ve still got his wand...and the small embroidered pouch, through which he can feel a reassuring circle. Not lost, then.
Of course, in his few moments of distraction Lily has considered and decided upon a course of action. Her smile is mischievous, which, for him, means danger. She peels off her top and it flutters to the sand, and all that’s beneath is bare skin, and he can almost imagine the sweet-slick impressions his hands have left on her.
He wants to do it again. He wants to press his mouth against every inch of her.
“I think I’ll hop in the water,” she says, jerking a thumb over her shoulder as if she’s at a public pool, not topless on a quiet beach.
James doesn’t think he can formulate a response. If he tries to force himself to speak, he might just spit out the question, but he’s fairly sure it needs a little more consideration than he’s capable of at this moment.
“Coming?” Lily prompts, pushing back the hair that’s fallen over one shoulder. He loves her hair, but this view is vastly improved.
“Fuck me,” says James, without thinking, but at least it’s not marry me.
Her laugh is one of pure delight, like she’s somehow forgotten she has this effect on him and every time he reminds her she’s pleasantly surprised. “I’ll do you if you’ll do me,” she says, teasing but also not quite; something in the air shivers.
God, he’s going to marry her, but in the immediate future — no priests or witnesses in sight — he is going to do a lot of things with her that his mum’s Catholic family would very much disapprove of.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he manages.
She beams at him; he reaches out to hold her but she’s already whirling around and out of his grasp, skipping for the water. That's fine, James thinks. They might not have ages, but they’ve got all night.
He empties his pockets, wedging the pouch beneath his wand, and jogs after her. When he’s caught up she leans into him and runs her hand through his hair. He is, to be perfectly honest, looking at her tits.
“James,” she says.
He tears his gaze away. “Are you going to say ‘eyes up here,’ or something?”
She wrinkles her nose. “I was going to say I hope you’re planning on doing more than just watching.”
He kisses the first available part of her, the slope of her cheekbone. “One thing at a time, right?”
She snorts, her gaze dropping meaningfully below his waistband. He’s sure it’s a dead giveaway. “If you say so.”
The sea laps at their toes now; she offers him her hand and he intertwines their fingers. When the water is at her hips it hits him mid-thigh. Her arms are covered in goosebumps, and he traces a finger over her bicep. This probably doesn’t help much.
“Kiss me,” Lily says, tugging on his hand.
He obliges; she sighs when he slips her his tongue, her fingers running down the front of his T-shirt.
“Do you,” he starts, and he’s not even sure how he plans on finishing that question, but it doesn’t matter because she says, “Yes,” and he never takes a yes for granted, not least from her, and she’s trying to walk him back to the beach and wrestle off his shirt at the same time (ineffective, even for a nimble multitasker like her), and he eventually shucks it off himself.
The sand is cool against his back, and he doesn’t even care how it sticks to his damp skin. He just watches as Lily unbelts her shorts and slides them off, and then she’s too impatient to undress any further, which makes him laugh even as she straddles him.
“Don’t laugh,” she complains, but she’s fighting off a smile of her own.
“Sorry,” he says, not meaning it one bit. “You’ve got some mango just there, by the way.” He points at the corner of his own lips.
“No thanks to you.” Lily rubs it away with the back of her hand, and this must surely be the most bizarrely erotic thing he’s ever seen.
Love, man.
Never one to be distracted from the task at hand, she’s fumbling at his waistband the next second, and then he’s too busy angling their hips together to think about the charming oddities of love. As they both catch their breaths afterwards — she, still atop him, cheek nestled against his chest — he runs his hand along the ridge of her spine.
He’s going to marry her.
“You are,” she agrees, still a touch breathless.
Did he say that aloud?
James should probably be panicking right about now — it’s ruined, any plans he had are all down the bloody toilet, and, yeah, so he didn’t have real plans and was just waiting for the right moment, but now the whole thing is useless—
Lily hums contentedly, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. “You are,” she says again, softer now.
And then he realises there’s no point in having a fit about it. She knows. Maybe she’s always known. It’s not the method of asking that really matters, is it? It’s this — the certainty, the warm summer comfort of it, their legs tangled together.
He tightens his arm around her and looks up at the stars. There’s not much left to say. James has learned to love the quiet, with her. So he falls silent, drawing aimless shapes on her back, for several long minutes.
Then he says, “So, did you want me to give you the ring now or later?”
She sits up so fast it’s a wonder she doesn’t give herself the spins. “The what?”
Ohhh. Now he’s done it. James blinks at her; she gapes at him.
“The...the ring,” he says. “The ring I’m going to marry you with.”
Her jaw drops lower still. “The what?!”
Shit. Fuck. Maybe he’s misunderstood all of this. “If you want to marry me. Merlin, fuck.” He rakes a hand through his hair and only succeeds in getting sand everywhere.
Her mouth works like she’s trying to formulate an answer. “Is it here? Did you bring it here?”
“Er, yeah…”
Lily glances around like it’s a beacon, not a ring. Then she looks back at him, eyes narrowing. “I — can’t believe you would say that now, when we’re—” She gestures at their lower halves, which just so happen to be...still connected.
“You answered in the affirmative!” James protests. “I thought, I dunno—”
And she still hasn’t given him an answer.
“What are we going to tell our children?” she says, huffing. “That we were shagging on a beach and you just asked me to—”
He scoffs. “We’re clever people, we can come up with a decent cover story—”
Then his brain catches up. Their children? Their children?
Above him Lily is the colour of a tomato. “Well,” she says.
“Well,” he says. It seems like a good summary of events.
She clears her throat. “Can I see the ring, then?”
James says, “Are you gonna hop off for that, or did you want me to get it with you still— ouch, Lily, don’t punch me!”
He’s still rubbing his arm and pouting at her when she kisses him, a hot, wet affair that’s definitely going to have to be edited out of their cover story. Especially given the, er, response it garners from him, down south.
“You prat,” she says between kisses, “you prat, I’ll marry you right now.”
This is what flying feels like, he thinks — the girl of his fucking dreams, saying those words to him. All those times on a broom can’t even compare.
He manages to mumble, “I dunno, Lily, the priest might not appreciate premarital—”
She rolls her hips in a particular way, just so, and even the actual presence of a priest couldn’t compel him to caution against sin. She’s going to marry him. He’s going to marry her. She’s never felt better.
This time when they finish, Lily springs up and determinedly puts her shorts back on. James watches with one eye cracked open.
“I think I should feel like I’ve underperformed,” he says as she stalks towards the house.
She returns with his wand and the pouch, and promptly sits on top of him again. He pushes his way into a sitting position and takes the pouch from her, working it open with one hand.
“Wait,” she says, clasping his wrist. There’s a faint sort of panic in her gaze all of a sudden. “Wait wait wait. This is—”
“Real,” he assures her. He didn’t know where or when or how this would happen, but he did anticipate this. Leaning on one elbow, he lifts a hand to her jaw, presses his thumb to her bottom lip. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. If I hadn’t been thinking about it for ages.”
“Ages?” she repeats.
“Ages,” he confirms, “of knowing you’re it for me.”
And with that he produces the ring. He watches her eyes well with tears, as she desperately tries to blink them away.
“Lily Jane Evans,” James says quietly, and it takes effort to keep his voice steady. “Marry me, please.”
She chokes out a laugh. “The please is what did it.” Gingerly, she takes the ring from him to study it, and gasps. “It’s…”
“Yep,” he says.
This is the thing about Lily. She always knows.
She gives him back the ring and he slides it onto her hand. The enchanted gold resizes to fit her; she holds it up to the moonlight, her other hand pressed to her mouth.
Then she looks back to him. There are no more tears in her eyes — her expression is all awe, all curiosity. “How did you know— I’ve loved it, ever since— even before I thought anything would actually—”
“Lucky guess,” James says, and if he looks a bit too smug, he thinks he’s allowed.
Sometimes he knows too.