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Lily wraps an arm around her stomach and breathes in deep. Through wide-paned doors she can see the whole of the gleaming white-tiled terrace, its cache of wicker loungers, the silvery drink cart, stocked and topped in a lavish cut-glass pitcher of some flamingoy drink. Beyond, sprawling a good half of the yard: a swimming pool, sleek and stunning midday, water blown-out aquamarine.
Lily wants to down the entirety of that cut-class pitcher; feel its heat swim in the pit of her stomach. Turn her face into the hot sun and let that be sensation enough.
“What’re we doing over here, Evans? Brooding?”
She turns to Sirius. It’s not his holiday house, but he did organize the trip—and has the wide, unabashed grin to prove it. He’d caught the boys—as Lily, unfortunately, has come to think of them—unawares on a lazy June night, cooped up on a single sofa like they couldn’t all stand to sit apart from one another and were willing to sacrifice comfort—when he’d shot James some sort of I’m up to no good glance and James had leaned forward on his knees with a viable energy, asking, “summer plans?”
Lily had been present mostly because Dorcas and Mary and Marlene had been present—her best friends having gone and unaccountably become school mates with the lot of Sirius, Remus, Peter and James—and Mary having unsuccessfully tried to date Sirius round the end of sixth year, and him having informed her after a stumbling month or so that he was, indeed, tied up romantically with Remus—and from there, it had all turned into rather straightforward friendship. Which was inexplicable, and, still, inevitable—and never mind Lily coming along for the ride and realizing, despite it all, that James was a total knobhead in theory but rather a funny, interesting bloke once he shook off burden of ego; and it was most unfortunate that whatever tender holds the whole group falling together had spun between the two of them, the strings had started to tug—a little stutter, right between the heart and the lung.
Perilously annoying.
“Brooding?” Sirius repeats, and Lily blinks over at him, finding him decked out in little else besides very much the smallest swimsuit he could have managed.
“It’s a nice outfit,” she murmurs, off-handedly, turning her eyes back to the pool. Mary and Marlene and Dorcas have come out onto the terrace, laughing as they strip down to just swimsuits, yellow and purple and blue. Peter calls out to them from the silvery cart, inquiring, perhaps, about drinks. Remus stands near the lip of the yard, tugging off his shirt and grinning over at Peter when he asks about a drink; seems to consider it, then nods. The scars of his face are faint from so far.
“You alright?”
The sincerity tracks. Lily sighs. “I love swimming.”
Sirius is silent for a second and so she looks over. “You’re nervous,” he intuits.
She nods.
“If it’s to do with how brash I’m being, right now, then I apologize, deeply.”
This makes her laugh. “Not you, no.”
“Oh, so—”
The sliding door round the back of the terrace clicks open and James walks through, easy and smiling. Shirt unbuttoned and lay open for all the world; skin already sungold. When he meets Peter near the silvery cart, claps his shoulder and they laugh, the shirt shifts on his body, and Lily lets her eyes find a sprinkle of dark hair disappearing below the waistband of his swimsuit.
Something unspools in her.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Evans.”
“Please. Nothing.”
“I mean, you’re bloody gorgeous—you know that, yeah?”
“Coming onto me? In Great-Aunt Lyra’s summer villa?”
“Evans.”
Lily feels his hand on her arm and when she turns he’s not a rueful smile, or a jaunty jab, or anything like a joke for her at all. His hair a summery mess, tied back in a dark knot at his neck.
“Today,” he begins, “we’re younger than we’re ever gonna be.”
She contemplates. “That’s—”
“No, no: I stand by that.” He releases her arm and stands up straight, strong shoulders spreading out. “And, consequently: We’re older than we’ve ever been. So.”
“I mean...it’s not as though you’re wrong, exactly, but—”
“I’ve said what I needed to say.”
“Oh, perfect.”
“I mean—seizing the youth, and whatnot, and living for the day, without fear, and whatnot, it’s all—”
“Fuckssake, Black,” she huffs, with an eye-roll. “Let’s swim.”
The sparkling pink drink is as exquisite as Lily had hoped; it burns well. She stirs a straw through it aimlessly, half-listening as Peter expounds on how the concoction was made.
“—always think, no, I don’t need this many lemons, but wouldn’t you know it, Lils? You do. And then—just when you think you’ve used enough, you add one more, to counter the taste of the—”
“This chap bothering you?”
Peter and Lily turn. To her complete chagrin, James has abandoned the shirt entirely—she’s left with a fierce and teeth-gritting effort not to look down the sunloved plane of chest, find the little trail of hair.
Peter returns the blistering smile. “If you’re bored, Evans, you should remember it was you who asked what I put in the pitcher, yeah?”
“Not bored at all Peter, I’m—”
“I’m completely un-offended.” Peter turns to the cart for the pitcher, which he hoists delicately and makes for the house, calling, “Needs a refill, anyway!”
Which leaves Lily and her drained drink and James, shirtless; her stomach in spirals.
“I’m beginning to think you never learned how to swim.”
She levels him with her gaze. His hair the most obtusely gorgeous sweep, dark and tawny in June light. “What makes you say that?”
He motions toward the pool, where Sirius and Marlene are attempting some sort of race swimming laps from one end to the next, Remus calling out their times from the center. “You’ve been glaring at it like it’s wronged you for half an hour.”
She smiles a little, ruefully, then turn to place the empty glass down on the cart. A bubble of laughter bursts from the far end of the pool, Mary shoving Dorcas off the edge and into the water, screaming, “foul, Meadowes, really foul!”
“I’m actually an excellent swimmer,” she tells him. “It’s the matter of the sun and my fair skin I’m worried about.”
“Surely you can apply sunblock to...prevent sunburn, yeah?”
“No, really?” she looks over, mock intrigued. “Elaborate.”
He laughs and it’s the worst possible thing he could have done. She’s gone and looked at his swim shorts—not nearly as small as Sirius’, but still, regrettably, flattering.
She glances away quickly. “Potter, I’ve applied sunscreen liberally, I assure you.” She closes her eyes a brief second, damning her own stupidity, then opens them and shucks off the gauzy tunic she’s worn over her own suit—a black piece revealing enough that she won’t be making eye contact now that she’s near stripped in front of him—“And look,” she continues, not sparing him another glance as she walks off, “I’m going in, now, are you happy?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer but—behind her, murmured—she hears it.
“I am now, yeah.”
The second Lily dips into the water Marlene accosts her, grappling her into a watery embrace. “Okay, okay, what is on with you and James, yeah? Looking awfully cozy by the drinks, and all?”
In lieu of a response Lily scoffs and tear herself from Marlene’s hold, submerging herself in the water. Listen, for one sweet moment, to the muffled sounds from above.
When she emerges, Marlene is laughing. “Something I said, Evans?”
“I’d like you to leave me alone.”
“The new suit looks smashing,” the blonde replies, tipping oversized sunglasses down the bridge of her nose to get a better eyeful. “Potter agrees with me.”
“Shove off.”
“Couldn’t take his eyes off your shapely arse, poor lad.”
“Will you shove off, properly?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Marlene exclaims, fluttering a melodramatic hand to her chest. “Isn’t that what you want? For him to be looking?”
Lily sinks down until just her chin is above water. She looks past Marlene to where Remus is perched on the edge of the pool, gazing down at Sirius, who is gesturing with his hands so wildly that he’s creating small waves in the water below. Remus laughs, cheeks going pink.
She turns back to Marlene, who has her eyebrows raised expectantly. “It’s mortifying,” Lily mumbles.
Marlene rolls her eyes. “Maybe you’ll feel better if you shag him, just a pinch.”
“Jesus Christ, McKinnon.”
Marlene shrugs, disturbing the water. The heat of midday floods her face; she wears the suntan well. “I’m only trying to be honest.”
“Why don’t we talk about something else?”
“Why don’t you go keep Potter company?” she gestures past Lily, down the pool. “He looks lonesome.”
Lily cranes her neck around, sees James floating on his back in the middle of the pool.
Marlene smirks, ostentatiously. “Shame for him to be so alone on holiday.”
“I’m furious with you.”
“I don’t care, love,” her smile adoring, affectionate. “I want you to get laid.”
Lily’s clenches her jaw. Though it’s humiliating—she’s going to do exactly what Marlene suggests. “Fuck you,” she murmurs. “Fuck you, I’m going.”
Marlene glows. “Thank Godric, honest, thought I was going to have get a fucking potion and get it in your drink and more of less shove it down your—”
The rest of her heckling is lost; Lily is already swimming away.
She dives down into the pool, letting the submersion liquefy her bones; when she resurfaces, breathes in, she blinks up and clears the water from my eyes. Sunlight ricochets off the blue. There are two hazel eyes following her from the side of the pool.
James looks irredeemably handsome, loitering there, hair wet and slicked back. He tips his head at her. “You are a good swimmer.”
She pulls herself up slightly at the pool edge, meeting his full height. “I told you.”
“You know, I was in a Muggle swim club as a kid.”
“No bloody way you were.”
“Yes bloody way I was, Evans. Mum thought it was important I assimilate with non-wizarding culture.”
She can make out the tiny pathways poolwater makes down the side of his neck—and she should not stare but she does; she does. “And how did that go for you?”
“Really really well, thanks for asking.” He grins, and it’s unbearably wholesome. “We were all good chums! I still write with one of them, Oliver Stalls. Real stand-up sort.”
She rolls her eyes. “My sincere congrats on your exploration of muggle-wizard relations.”
“Thanks very much,” he says, nodding. “But I’ve got to say—it’s actually muggleborn-wizard relations I’m interested in, nowadays.”
It’s the stupidest thing he could have possibly said—and it’s just his luck that before she’s even the breath or comeuppance to respond to such an idiotic come-on Peter is bellowing from an open doorway, “Oi! Prongs! Biiiiiig fucking emergency!”
James turns swiftly. “You’re—what’s on?”
“Quickly, Prongs! Or we’ll all surely perish!”
James heaves a labored sigh. And Lily—foolish girl that she is—blurts out the question boiling in her sternum before she’s any chance to sensor herself.
“Do you mean it?”
He stares, blinking. The sun and water shading them yellow-blue.
“Um, well, of—”
“God, sorry, shouldn’t have—”
“—course I mean it.”
In the confusion of overlapping voices they both emerge slightly flustered, like neither expected the other to confess what just seem to have been confessed.
A confused crease appears between his eyebrows. Lily flounders for something to say but all she can think is if I kissed him right now, he would probably kiss me back.
“PRONGS!”
James shakes his head, slightly, mouth opening, like he’s also looking for words. “Er, I’ve got to—”
Lily lets her body sink down a little into the water, so she’s looking up at him. He can’t seem to look away. She’s fizzling, toe to head. Full of fizzle. “He shouldn’t be allowed on his own.”
This earns her a funny half-smile, tilting along his face. “There’s no smoke coming from the house, is there?”
She checks. “There isn’t.”
James hoists his body up onto the pool edge, water sloshing up and over the side. He runs a hand through his hair, though it’s still perfectly slicked back. She watches his throat move as he swallows.
She’s treading water. “Isn’t smoke yet, I should’ve said.”
“Will you—maybe—”
She’s not sure exactly what he’s asking—but the look in his eyes makes her want to pull her body up by his thighs, meet his mouth in the middle.
“I’ll be around, Potter.”
His chest is unlawfully formed. A very pretty boy. He smiles, hoping. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright,” he murmurs, “Evans.”
And then he’s up and gone, off to assess the level of emergency—and she’s left with that fizzle, and little else.
Dinner is linguini tossed in pesto and a loaf of crusty bread Mary baked by hand and a beautiful system of each empty wine bottle getting replaced with a new one by Remus, who then insists on pouring out each glass. They eat on the terrace, chairs pulled up to a glass-topped table, a record playing somewhere in the house, finding them through an open window. Light fades from the sky, streaking pink, then purple, then blue. Dorcas regales with stories of her summer job at a muggle cinema; Peter finds it endlessly fascinating, the way she’s made to clean up the fallen popcorn and tossed drinks. “With a broom, you say?”
“And my own two hands, Pete,” Dorcas answers, grinning, holding up said hands.
Lily drains the last of her third glass of wine; she tries to focus on Dorcas, tries to resist the temptation to turn her eyes, find James. She’s been doing a poor job of it. She knows she’ll see his cheeks pinched with a gentle smile, his button-down pulled apart at the collar to let the tan chest breathe; his arm resting lazily on the vee of his legs, near obscenely spread as he sits among friends, laughing.
She’s been looking all night. Caught on the memory of his eyes in the daytime pool—the I’ll be around, Potter. Caught on the way she sometimes catches him, looking back.
There’s a flush down her neck. Wine-encouraged. Originating in the way his eyes sometimes linger on her mouth—just before he looks away, quickly. Sucking in breath.
Lily so focused on maintaining focus anywhere else she misses how intently Marlene is staring her down from behind her own glass, blonde hair wet from a shower, swept up in a pretty coif. Blue eyes aglitter. She sets down her wine and says, “You look really nice tonight, Lils—doesn’t she look lovely?”
And then the whole of the group has turned eyes on her, and Lily swallows, feeling all of a sudden uncertain in the frayed jeans and camisole Marlene herself had insisted looked very holiday dinner casual—but now feels a bit too much, the clip holding up her hair letting too much of it down in unruly pieces, the neckline of the thin shirt far too low for the way she knows one particular set of eyes might be iooking—and she swallows again, opens her mouth to refute the point, or change the subject, or anything at all, when Sirius chimes in with, “A picture of beauty, Evans.” He looks over at James, not even trying to be subtle. “Incandescent, no?”
“You—” Lily starts, but doesn’t even have a chance to finish before Dorcas is adding, “And this light really brings out your eyes—so, so green.”
Mary reaches out from the chair next to Lily to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “And such a beautiful heart, too.”
There is a risk of overheating now; Lily feels her breath congeal in her chest and clears her throat and shakes her head adamantly, avoiding the eyes she wants most—the eyes all her stupid friends are trying to draw to her, as if they weren’t already drawn, as if she could stand to see him now, or hear him speak one single word.
“Well—maybe we should tidy up?” It’s Remus: A complete godsent. “Course, I think Lily’s as pretty as any of you do, but—” his smile is rueful as he rises from his chair. “Getting mad buggy out here, no?”
Lily thinks she owes Remus her life. There’s a mass of grumbling and he tempers it by saying, “we can go to the screened porch, yeah? Have one more bottle?”
This seems to appease the group. The tidying up allows Lily the safety to not look; though if she feels eyes, that’s just a coincidence. If she is painfully aware of where he is; that’s just because the kitchen is such close quarters, and there’s bound to be bumping into one another—and there’s bound to be the moment when she does catch his eyes, handing him a plate to tuck into the sink, a towel slung over his shoulder and his smile quirking up halfway, hazel eyes aglitter. “Thanks.”
She nods because she doesn’t trust herself to speak—and then escapes to the loo before anyone can tease her in private. She consults herself in the mirror and though they were all right—her cheeks stained pretty pink, her mouth dewy with a bit of gloss—she is terrified. How is it that just his small smile—tucked in with the clutter of washed dishes—has turned her inside out?
Lily splashes her face in cold water. Dries it off with a towel. Takes several steadying breaths. Rolls her shoulders back and leaves the loo, running almost right into Peter, who smiles with two wine glasses in hand, saying, “I’m the last one out, and have only these two hands, Lils, would you go back and grab the bottle?”
But Peter lied, on purpose—or didn’t know any better. Because James is still in the kitchen, midway through hanging up the wet rag to dry on a rack. He looks up and sees her and she halts, round the side of the icebox. “Um, Peter said—”
James reaches for a bottle of wine. “Looking for this?”
She swallows.
Perhaps the pool had made her bold. The sun and their friends, laughing, and the fizzy pink drink down the back of her throat, and the way water makes you weightless; maybe she overstepped.
But James is leaning his hip against the counter and looking at her like she didn’t—like she was well within her bounds, eyeing him and saying those things, submerged.
“You do look lovely, tonight.”
She doesn’t know how to respond; she takes the coward’s way out. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk.” He frowns, slightly. “Are you drunk?”
And though she almost wishes she was, she is not. “Well—no.”
His gaze is blistering. If she wasn’t sunburnt before—surely, she is now.
“It’s—should I not have said that?” James wonders, voice climbing in pitch, anxious. “It seems the whole bloody...” he waves a hand in the direction of the porch, “lot of them were baiting me on, as though I wouldn’t notice how beautiful you are, any day, any time.”
Lily lets her stomach flip. There is already red down the sides of her neck; she can feel it. Everything in the kitchen narrows to his nervous stance. He's looking at her like she’ll scare easy, like she'll run off.
She wants to get back his tender smile. She whispers, “It would be easier to dislike you, still, if you wouldn’t go around saying things like that.”
“Dislike me...still?”
“Merlinssake,” Lily wraps her arms around her stomach and has to look away, for fear of being blistered. “As if it isn’t obvious.”
“I’m shit at subtext.”
Lily thinks, briefly, on Sirius’ seizing the day nonsense, his we’re younger than we’re ever going to be, his time is brief, the time is now.
Her pulse pounds; there’s sweat down the backs of her knees. And she feels, quite suddenly, that perhaps time is running short; that perhaps the time is now. She walks over to James, and watches his lips part, watching; she makes the decision. She leans into his space. Touches her mouth to his.
The mouth is sweet with wine; the unopened bottle stuck between them. The kiss, surprisingly gentle, given Lily feels flung out of her body. And over too soon, given James pulls out of it, blinking; somehow, still, disbelieving. “That’s the subtext?”
He is tall enough that she has to tilt her chin up to look at him—and there is something about the way his glasses have slid slightly down his nose that squeezes her chest into a miserable mess.
“Are you trying to talk me out of it?”
The question unravels down his face slowly. He sets the wine next to the sink and uses one free hand to feel the shape of her cheek. “You’re right,” he murmurs, eyes on her mouth. “I should stop talking.”
She closes her eyes and hears him inhale, once, before the second kiss. Before her bones seem to give up on being bones, his mouth so soft and pliant—and the little careful run of his tongue, sweeping along her lower lip, sloughing the whole of her into some kind of quiet kitchen limbo; and though she has no memory of bringing her hands to his chest she feels his collarbone under her thumbs, bare skin warm where his collar cuts away. Someone makes a sound—is that her?—a plying, urgent sound; throat tipped open and swept of air.
Lily surprises herself with how quickly she wants more; she parts from him and stares, finding herself breathless. All of a sudden bashful—because he’s got dark eyes. Red lips.
She takes a moment to take stock. Press her thumbs down into his collarbone. From the porch, a burst of wild laughter. On the principle of three glasses of wine, on the day spent sundrunk, on the way James holds her face like she’s a tender thing—she thinks the porch can have their mates, and they can have each other.
If he wants.
“I say we leave that wine and let them find it on their own.”
“Yes.”
His answer is so immediate she blooms all over with heat. There is air leaving his lungs quickly and she feels it under her palms. “Do you want to go upstairs?”
“God, yes.”
His room is dark save the light of one lamp. The bed is neatly made; there’s a framed photo on the wall—a much younger James, small and laughing.
It’s next to this photo that Lily finds herself backed up, bracketed by his hands against the wall. She is shocked by her quickening hunger. Her weakening knees. He kisses her once. Stares down. She reaches out and runs her hands up through his hair and tilts his face for something deeper; longer and tangled, slower, infuriating. From the back of his throat, a groan; he presses her into the wall. She can feel every part of him closely. And though they’re not underwater, she may as well be weightless; he starts kissing down her neck and this may as well be the end of her life.
His hair is soft between her fingers. She presses her nails into his scalp and his thighs tense against hers. Hips pushing in. Lily makes a strangled sound. Her mind a hotblooded haze; his mouth dragging up to her ear, then all the way down to her throat. Her hands are restless. “Hey,” she says, trying to sound like a person with a voice, and not a girl with no breath.
“Hey,” he responds, gruffly, emerging at her chin, breathing shallow and short.
Meeting his eyes in the middle is like letting her body go, entirely. Her hands spread—perhaps too eagerly—down the front of his shirt, over bare skin. “Can I take this off?”
James nods quickly; looks down to watch her shaky hands at the buttons. They both see his chest, how quickly it rises and falls. Lily thinks this is very sweet—and even sweeter the look he gives her, unsure and wanting, when the shirt is shrugged off. She smooths her hands over his skin. She thinks she can feel his heart.
When she looks up at him, she knows she is right. The gait of it matching her own.
He pulls her forward by the hands. He climbs back onto the bed and she finds herself above him, a knee on either side of his body.
It isn’t lost on Lily that the last person she kissed was Walter Lack, a short-lived romance that lasted just one night, spent cramped in his Ravenclaw dormitory. It wasn’t as though Walter was bad in bed, or an unpleasant bloke; on the contrary, he was funny and smart and all legs and blonde curls. Lily had tried very hard to like him past that night—to no avail.
Dark-haired Gryffindor Chasers having nothing to with that in the least.
Dark-haired Gryffindor Chasers with pectoral muscles stuck fast, now, beneath Lily’s hands, her body pressing flush into his, hips blessed by the quick grip of his hands; and when she pushes down into the hold, she can feel his arousal and hears him exhale, unsteady, breaking away from her lips.
She takes the opportunity to kiss along his neck, across his shoulder, into the little forest of chest hair. “Oh,” James says, suddenly, neck craning upward to watch her sprinkle gentle kisses down his belly.
Lily looks up. He seems laser-focused on the descent of her hands, spreading closer and closer to the bulge in his jeans. Wide-eyed, he swallows. She watches him closely as she closes her fingers over the bulge; presses her palm against his erection. His eyes snap shut. He looks pained. He exhales slowly. “Evans,” he pants.
Lily leans down, takes her tongue along the edge of his jeans, snapping open the button and unzipping and reaching into his pants; feels him hot and bare under her fingers. “Oh, fuck,” he swallows, scrambling to his elbows in time to watch her pull his prick out of his pants and spread her lips over the sticky crown.
Lily feels his hand spread up through her hair as she kisses down to the base of him; prick hard and blushing under her lips. She smiles. She did this. She has no intention of bringing him off with her mouth—she is far too selfish—but she takes her time in teasing, letting her tongue taste every inch, and slowly. He makes the best noise when she sucks at the top; so she stays there, sucking. James is shaking underneath, his thighs a steady rattle. Fingers tighten in her hair.
“Lily,” he says, and he sounds so desperate that she looks up, fingers going slack.
James is red-faced, mouth ajar. If she wasn’t already so certain she wanted him, this would do it: The way he mouths her name a second time, without sound, and pulls her up toward him—how her heart punches out of her chest as he shifts his body over hers, laying her back onto the bed, vying again for her lips.
This is evidently all it takes for her teasing attitude to dissolve, for her mind to fog completely with just the feeling of him, everywhere: Pushing her camisole up and off, fingers spreading over her breasts and spurning swathes of warmth down her belly and thighs, her hips canting up into his half-unclothed body, bare prick rubbing at her jeans. This torture she can’t take—not after a long day in the pool and watching him and being tortured by friends who knew they were watching each other—not after a year of school where she tortured herself, watching him.
Lily scrambles to the waist of her jeans and unbuttons and pushes them all down her legs, kicking until she is free, until she can run her hand down James’ arm and bring his fingers to the cusp of her knickers, down into the heat. He moans against her lips. She matches the sound with her own, hikes her leg around his hip. Their mouths slant off, breathing hard. Lily grips his back, tightly.
“Are you keen on shagging me, at some point?”
This has James laughing and groaning, simultaneously; his thumbs hooking into her knickers and pulling them off. Lily takes the second of breath to watch as he scrambles onto his side and takes off his own jeans, chucks his glasses somewhere far away before coming back between her spread thighs, returning to her mouth. The kiss is slow, contrary to her burning blood. James retreats, a second, meeting her eyes.
She senses hesitation. “You sure this is okay?” He nods, but the hesitation remains. “You have...shagged a girl before, haven’t you?”
James laughs and lets his head fall into her shoulder. “Yes,” he says, “but never you.”
Her lips press underneath his chin. She feels him reach between them and slide his prick along her; just rubbing. “You’re—” she says, then chokes, a bit, at the sensitive sensation. He pulls out of her shoulder and watches her, carefully. “You’re doing excellent so far.”
She got his good smile back, finally; the one that melts down the whole of him, glowing. He presses into her slow; really takes his time. Lily closes her eyes and feels the feeling. How full. The way his hips meet the backs of her thighs. How he kisses her cheeks and whispers, “Okay?”
She nods. Reaches to grip his shoulder, his back. Nods again and kisses him, shifting her hips upward. He takes the go-ahead and begins rocking; lethargic at first, thorough. He feels remarkable. The hair on his brow darkens with sweat. Cheeks gone ruddy and red; she touches them, feels their heat. James keeps kissing her, and it’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful she begins whining much quicker than anticipated, a coil of pleasure twisting up in the heat of her hips. He spreads his hands around her thighs and squeezes.
In her fairly limited experience with sex—having only slept a handful of times with a Muggle chap, Thomas, and then the once with Walter—Lily knows her own pleasure will be reliant on how long the bloke manages to last; how long he bears into her and leaves her feeling good, but not as good as she knows she can feel, given her own private experiences.
But—James is already being more attentive than she’s used to; he hears her gasp when he lifts her hips just a little, and the angle of his thrusting changes, and he stays there, quickening. He even leans into her ear with breath hot, asking, “What do you like?” he kisses the space between her neck and her chin. “Tell me what feels good.”
Lily is hazy on the specifics, because it all feels good; much better than anything else she’s felt so far. But she takes his hand down between them again, and bucks up at the feeling; that feels good, two fingers rubbing. Her throat constricts. “There,” she breathes. “That’s—oh, oh, right there.”
James is breathing hard, now, hips snapping quick. Lily twists up into his movements, whimpering, desperate for the feeling of fullness, the feeling of his fingers slippery and tender, the way his breath hitches at her neck. She can feel his muscles moving underneath her fingers, tensing with the roll of his hips; she turns her face into his arm and mouths at his bicep. His stance widens, suddenly, thighs pressing closer, lifting her hips further, and she gasps when his fingers stutter on her clit, the speed becoming syncopated.
“Evans,” James mumbles, clumsy, “I’m gonna come.”
Lily squeezes her fingers into the muscle of his shoulders, feeling his sweat, his heat; she has never had the pleasure of knowing prior to the male simply coming, abruptly, without warning. And though James sounds embarrassed about it, she finds it impossibly endearing—especially given the taut spring inside of her, aching, nearing an end of her own.
Maybe he wants her permission, or encouragement, or praise—so she tells him, “You feel so good.” She kisses his cheek and his neck and bites at his earlobe; he’s moaning at her neck, loudly. She’s never heard a boy so loud. She loves it. She loves how he plants his face in her neck and gasps; hips pushing irrevocably quicker, barreling, sparking a fire inside of her. She closes her eyes to it, open-mouthed, hearing, distantly, a litany of her last name, spilling from his mouth.
When James thrusts into her the final time, his finger on her clit a spasm of heat, she clenches her thighs around him so tightly she fears she’ll never get them loose. His orgasm hits forcefully; she feels the warmth of his come inside of her, and then he goes slack and pulsing, noiseless save a cutting gasp, gulping in a wave of quick breath.
And though Lily assumes this is the end, and she’ll savor the buzz, just the same—his hips are moving again, and there’s a kiss on her neck so soft and slow that all the air leaves her lung in a strangled sigh, in a sound that turns quickly to a reedy whine as her body begins tingling; a tingling that increases tenfold as James invigorates the stroke of his fingers on her clit—and every sensation suddenly concentrated in the base of her spine; a wild, unbidden pulsing that must feel like how a star feels, flashing white through the dark; sparkling, hot. James is looking down at her now, one arm wrapped around her waist to lift, to press deeper. Her mouth opens and closes, voiceless, breathless, wordless—“Lily,” he gasps, dipping his mouth down between her breasts, tongue lolling on the skin. “Lily.”
Her name sounds so exquisite on his tongue—and the world is ending, slowly, her hips jolting under his ministrations, and her eyes are filled, suddenly, with bright, bright light. She cries out—and the voice isn’t her own, it’s so pained, so joyed, so surprised. James pushes inside of her and then stays, letting her spasm. She gasps, then again, burning; and even on the way down she trembles, totally dazed; slowing, slowly, to a still.
She can’t gulp enough air. Strands of hair stuck fast to the side of her neck—his breath there, too, lips moving gently.
Lily knew she wanted to touch him—knew she wanted him. But this; this is different than anything. This is swimming without arms; thrown right into the deep end. Her heart echoes loudly in her ears. She hears his voice, soft, careful, pressed into the skin of her throat: “You’re wonderful. Wonderful.”
She closes her eyes to it, turns her face toward his and kisses him, spreading her hands up his neck, decides that her favorite sound is the one he makes when she threads her fingers through his hair and gently tugs. She sighs against his mouth; and although she should be satisfied, she still feels her body yearning; sticky and warm and wanting.
After a moment, James dips out of her, rolls off onto his side; runs a hand up through his hair and exhales, hard. His chest is streaked red and there’s something about looking at him like this that’s painfully more intimate than even their previous act; Lily rolls onto her front, pushes up on her elbows and stares over. Completely, wholly unsure how to articulate much of anything.
James laughs; turns his head to the ceiling, shakes it, looks back at her.
She has to clear her throat, because she’s still winded; still tingling, toe to head. “You’re really good at that.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”
“Yeah,” she breathes.
His brow creases in the middle; he scoots in, smooths a hand back through her hair and kisses her slowly. Lily covers his hand with her own. Feels her body sighing, turning, shifting along his, again.
“I really only lasted...six minutes tops,” he explains, as though she wasn’t there, experiencing it.
“You—” she begins, then searches his eyes, biting her lip. “I’ve...that’s never happened to me, during sex.”
“A bloke lasting six minutes, only?”
“No, no,” she laughs. “I mean...” she feels a tentative hands on her thighs. “Um.”
“What is it?” James seems concerned, propping himself up on his elbows to get closer to her face.
Lily is painfully aware of how naked and sweaty they both still are. “It’s just, I don’t think I’ve ever actually...finished, during.”
This seems to only perplex James further. He stares at her, working through the words. Fingers pressing into her hip.
“Er,” Lily stumbles, “but it was so lovely, really, I—”
“Evans, who have you been having sex with that hasn’t been...” he clears his throat. “Reciprocating?”
“Um, arseholes, I guess?”
James sits up fully, suddenly, his back turned. Lily worries that she’s said too much; admitted too much. But then he turns, perching one hand on the bed, looks down at her. “I’m so sorry.”
“What for?”
He exhales through his nose. “What kind of...” his head shakes back and forth, the movement scattering his dark hair, “fucking wanker wouldn’t even—”
“Listen, Potter,” Lily rolls her eyes, sitting up on her elbows, “I’ve done just fine, really, you needn’t act so chivalrous or—”
She barely has a breath to follow for how quickly James turns and flips himself back onto the bed, hooking an arm around her waist, pulling from her a surprised sound, her hands flying to his shoulders to brace herself.
His eyes are quite serious then, and she notices just how different they look without glasses. The hazel almost gold; a summer sun giving off the last of its light.
“It’s nothing to do with chivalry,” he clarifies, gently. “It’s everything to do with you deserving to feel good. Often.” His hand is sliding down her back, slowly. “Always.” Lily swallows, caught fast on the sight of his slow blinking lashes. “You shouldn’t waste your time with any pillock who doesn’t think the same.”
“Should waste my time with you, instead?”
He rubs his lips together. “Depends if you think this was a waste of time.”
She wants to kiss him badly. His mouth still red with use, the stain of his cheeks fading but still hot to the touch; she presses her fingers there. “No.” She shakes her head, to reassert, and pushes on James’ shoulders until she’s on top of him again, and he’s looking up at her blindingly, hands floating up her back.
“Your eyes, Lily,” he says, so quiet she can hardly hear. “I can’t find that color anywhere else.”
She does kiss him, then, letting herself be pulled down, tasted. There is an echo in her ears; something about time, and being as young as you are before you get older; about diving right in, despite fear.
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