Work Text:
even just to reach is a triumph
It’s twilight, and it’s nearly midnight. This fact will never not fuck Lily up, a little. The clock in the pub suggests it’s technically around sunset — the time of which she studiously looks up every evening in the guidebook Mary sent her — but the sun shows no signs of going anywhere. The cool blanket of dusk stretches across the endless green outside the window.
Nightlessness notwithstanding, there’s some kind of meteor shower expected over the weekend. It’ll be visible in the coming hours, before the sun begins its relentless march up the horizon again. The boys from her programme have all excitedly made plans to watch it by the dig site — since the workday ended Lily has heard nothing but excited chatter about who’ll bring the picnic blankets and who’ll bring the beer (which is banned in Iceland, and needs to be Portkeyed over by whichever poor sod draws the short straw).
It helps, too, that this is the lead-in to a long weekend, as the head Curse Breaker on the project has a lecture to give in Canada. The boys will react appropriately: getting so thoroughly drunk that McGonagall will be able to smell the alcohol oozing out of their pores all the way from Toronto.
Lily hasn’t yet decided if she’ll go watch. She’s the lone girl in this training expedition, whether by happenstance or an alarming gender imbalance in Curse Breaking. (Equally likely, from what she’s been told.) Some of the blokes have mates over from their hometowns, to take advantage of the break. Not her: Mary’s on the road, and her lengthy letters decrying groupies and smelly loos and rude come-ons from rock stars are peppered with apologies for not being able to come to Iceland. So that makes Lily twice as alone, on this Friday not-night.
The guys aren’t so bad. She’d thought it’d be a problem when they’d first arrived at the small, northern Icelandic fishing village that would be their home base for the duration of the dig. Their curious gazes had scanned her with far more interest than each other. And then, on the first day, one of the real Curse Breakers on the team offhandedly remarked that she’d aced every eval for the programme.
So one of the boys started calling her Ace, and every single one of them has adopted it since.
In her early school days Lily might’ve bristled at the nickname, might’ve jumped to conclusions about the tone in which it was said. But on the second day, she nearly collided with one of the boys right outside the tent they’d set up by the dig.
He muttered whoa, there, seemingly without thinking, as if she were one of the stocky little ponies in the Muggle village. Then, with both of them still blinking, breathless, he put up his hands in some gesture of apology and said, with a charming amount of respect, “Sorry, Ace.” Her heart, oddly enough, jumped to her throat. She wears the name now like a spritz of expensive perfume, a strange gift she’s not going to turn down.
Lily is not exactly friendless here, no. She’s friendly with plenty of her colleagues: insouciant Sirius, a fellow Brit, and Freddy from Sweden, and Mateus from Brazil. But there’s a remove between them that neither she nor they have made any attempt at crossing. She doesn’t want to watch a dazzling dusk while wrapped up in this funny mix of homesickness and loneliness, feeling like she’s missing out on things when she’s right there, living them.
“Is this seat taken?”
She looks up, though she recognises the voice right away. (Sorry, Ace.) Lily offers James a smile. “Not at all. Though there’s plenty of others to choose from too.” She assumes his party — he, Sirius, plus two mates from England — need another chair, perhaps to accommodate the female attention the two of them have been getting in town.
His brow furrows. “Er, yeah, but you’re not sitting next to any of the other chairs in the room.”
They blink at one another. Oh, shit, Lily thinks.
“Let’s try that again,” she says quickly, her cheeks warming. “Yes, please, you can sit.”
He grins as he drops into the chair, a bright sunny thing, and she’s not quite so sick of the sun as she thought. This is a puzzling, though not unwelcome, development. She’s had quite the embarrassing crush on him since their introductory meeting, one that she alternately nurses like a favourite pet and curses like a prodigal child. She took one look at him and thought, uh oh, and then, I’d fuck him, and then, uh oh again. But the programme ends in six weeks, and then she’ll move on to the next expedition. As will he. If she wants anything here with anyone, it should be a quick lay. Not a bloody crush.
But he’s a flirt and she’s a sucker, so that’s the way of things. At least he won’t ever cross a line — flirting is just habit with him. She’s pretty sure he’d try and charm a cave painting if it was sufficiently pretty.
Lily nods at the table Sirius is at, needing to divert her thoughts. “Not with your mates?”
He cards a hand through his hair. “They’re off to the dig site in a mo, so…”
So? She can’t follow this to any logical conclusion. Not trusting herself to speak, she keeps silent instead.
James clears his throat. “Are you not going to watch the shower?”
“Haven’t decided,” she says. “I’m, like, slowly being convinced by my inner cynic that it won’t show in this light anyway.”
His eyes widen in mock-outrage. “Your inner cynic is depriving you of a can’t-miss event, Ace.”
She snorts. “What, weird Nordic beer and rubbing shoulders with the lads under the stars?”
She wants to take it back as soon as she’s said it — no better way to make them resent her than to make it seem like she looks down upon them — but he laughs. It’s an unfairly nice laugh. Lily hates it.
“What are your plans, then, Kókómjólk and bed?” he says, referring to the packaged chocolate milk that Lily has actually taken quite a liking to.
“Pegged me in one,” she says cheerfully.
He puts his chin in his hand and stares at her, hazel eyes glimmering. “C’mon, let me change your mind.”
See? This is the type of crap she has to put up with.
Lily manages to look unimpressed. “I can’t believe you’re this bored of your mates already.”
He scoffs. “Not a single one of my mates is a pretty girl.”
Then he blinks, like he didn’t mean to say it. She wants to laugh at the comical oh-shit look on his face, even as something warm and light bubbles up inside her.
“You needn’t look so afraid,” she tells him. “I have been told I’m pretty before.”
James shakes his head quickly. “No, of course. Obviously. Why wouldn’t you have been.”
Her inner monologue, naturally, is singsonging he thinks I’m pretty, but he doesn’t have to know that. Six weeks, she reminds herself. And then she could be in Australia, or Kenya, or Peru. He could wind up in Antarctica, for all she knows.
“I’ll hear you out,” Lily says (and tries not to react to the slow smile spreading across his face), “but would you mind getting me a refill?” She holds out the empty glass of wine she’d been drinking from, then turns to root through her pockets.
“Don’t be silly, it’s on me,” he says, and he’s gone with her glass before she can so much as protest.
She watches him go, wondering what that momentary break in their normal rhythm will lead to. If it will lead anywhere but the dig tent and all the boys hooting Ace! at her arrival. If she wants it to.
He’s wearing a plain white T-shirt that fits his shoulders perfectly. If he were closer, she thinks she might be able to see the play of muscles beneath it. She wants it to. If he wants it to. If he thinks she’s more than pretty, if he thinks he might flirt with her in a decidedly unsafe manner, if there’s more where that smile of his came from. If, if, if.
Six weeks, but who cares?
Then James returns with her wine, and — she snorts — a carton of Kókómjólk. “What?” he says innocently. “Just covering all my bases.”
Lily sips at her wine. “In case I go to bed?”
He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “In case the Kókómjólk was for Muscly Magnus all along.”
“Mag—” She looks at the bartender, a buff blonde guy in his mid-twenties, and bursts into laughter. “Why would I be plying Magnus with chocolate milk he can easily get himself?”
“Oh…are you not… Padfoot told me you and he…” James looks like he’s really, really regretting this train of thought.
Her laughter stutters to a stop, replaced by still more embarrassment. “Oh, oh my God. I— Fuck, I knew Black was a gossip!”
“I…don’t…”
“I told him I was sleeping with Magnus,” Lily says, grimacing and half-laughing, “because I knew he’d tell the rest of you, and then no one would try and, oh, bug me because they wanted to get into my pants—”
“Ah.” He nods. “Right.”
Belatedly she realises what she’s said, and scrambles away from it. “I mean, not that— Not that I— that you— ”
“It’s fine, you don’t have to—” He lurches to his feet. “That’s not what I was—”
“James, really,” she says, with more urgency now, “would you just listen to me—”
“It’s fine, I said—”
He shoves the carton of milk at her, and she pushes it back. There’s a brief, stupid tug-of-war — she asks him to please sit down and he doesn’t listen — and then the worst thing happens. Perhaps he pulls too hard, or she lets go too soon, but the end result is the same, and it’s chocolate milk spraying all over the front of his lovely white shirt.
Lily’s mouth falls open. “Oh. Oh, shit, fuck, oh, my God—”
James’s face is screwed up in a grimace. “I’ll just…” He reaches for his pocket, for the wand that must normally be stored there, only to stop short. Lily remembers it too: no wands in the village, McGonagall’s instructions, lest they accidentally violate the Statute of Secrecy…because, for instance, she spilled chocolate milk all over him.
“I’ll just go to the loo,” he finishes.
“I’ll get a towel,” Lily stammers out, and all she wants is to be away from this mess, so she hurries to the bar as he disappears in the direction of the toilets.
After enduring Magnus’s laughter at her embarrassment, she heads down the small hallway herself, arms bundled with hand towels. She knocks on the bathroom door — calls, “James?” — and it creaks open at her touch.
The first thing she sees is skin. She can indeed see the muscles in his back — his arms are braced against the sink — and far better now than with the shirt in the way.
“Stupid door doesn’t lock,” James mutters, glancing over his shoulder at her.
She steps inside and mutely holds out a towel. He takes it and begins mopping at his chest. God, give me strength, Lily thinks.
“I’ll Scourgify your shirt,” she blurts out, “if you want to come back with me to the inn—”
“Might as well just do it myself and get a fresh one while I’m at it, no?” he says, turning on the tap to wet one of the towels.
Well, yes, that’s much more efficient, but efficiency is not high on her list of priorities.
“Let me try that again,” she says, “please come back to the inn, because seeing you like this is going to drive me absolutely mad, and I feel so guilty about spoiling a shirt you look really nice in.”
He goes very still. “What?”
“You look great with it off, too,” Lily says.
“What?”
Are these still mixed signals? “I think you’re really fit. I could go on, there’s probably a bunch of ways I can rephrase it.”
James turns to look at her, tap still running, wet towel still in hand. One single drop of water rolls down his stomach. She forgets to meet his gaze and instead watches its progress.
“I didn’t think,” he begins hoarsely. “I…”
She shakes her head. “No, I didn’t think. Stupid Sirius — I only said it because I didn’t even want to consider the possibility that you might…that you…” She realises she doesn’t yet know what he thinks of her or feels for her. “That you think I’m pretty,” she says lamely.
He appears to temporarily lose control of his mouth, and splutters for a good twenty seconds. “Ace, I think you’re fucking beautiful.”
Her stomach gives a dizzying swoop; no one, she thinks, has ever really called her Ace before. Not like this, not looking at her like this. Lily says, faintly, “Oh, good.”
James is wide-eyed, still frozen on the spot. “I just assumed that you didn’t — that someone who looks like you would even bother. I genuinely wasn’t trying anything with you earlier. I…thought you shouldn’t be alone, I dunno.”
He’s so sincere, sweet enough to make her heart sing. “Then come back to the inn with me,” she says, quietly.
He puts down the towel and takes a step towards her, then another. Her hands come up of their own accord, reaching for him, curving into empty space that he will soon occupy. A shaft of not-quite-sunlight peeks through the wooden shutters on the window, and he walks into it. A tug, like something hooked into her stomach, at the desire in his expression.
Then he’s smiling. “Sure you’ve got time to spare for a guy bugging you to get into your pants?” he says.
Another step, and his skin is warm beneath her fingers. “For this one, yeah,” she says, her voice low. “I’ve got all night.”
He exhales slowly, his hands sliding to her waist. “So — four hours, then?”
Right. Fuck. Iceland. She shakes her hair out of her face and attempts a save. “I’ve got more than time.”
He ducks his head and for a single hopeful second she thinks he’ll kiss her. But he simply presses his forehead against hers. “Like what?”
“Mm, let’s see…”
“Stamina?” he says, grinning.
“Fuck off,” she whispers, but she’s laughing, because she can’t help but be fond of his stupid innuendoes and boundless charm, and he’s a flirt and she’s a sucker and she likes it so, so much. She likes it all the more for his proximity.
“Then — what?” he prompts.
Lily finds herself compelled to honesty. (Six weeks be damned.) “Affection. Plenty of it, if you’ll let me show you.”
Maybe he says oh or maybe he just lets out a noisy exhale; she can’t be certain. She hasn’t the time to think about it anyway, because he’s kissing her, and it takes every bit of her to respond in kind. She threads her hands through his hair and presses into him, closer but not close enough, not nearly.
“The bathroom door — doesn’t lock,” says James, pulling back.
He’s right. It’s time for an executive decision. She takes him by the hand and grabs the sodden mess that is his T-shirt in the other.
“This’ll look interesting,” he says under his breath. But he lets her pull him, still shirtless, out of the hallway, and they hurry through the pub — perplexed patrons watching them go by — and out into the road, laughing breathlessly by the time they arrive at the inn.
Lily’s room is at the very top, a floor away from any of the boys’, but for some reason they don’t try James’s. This may have more to do with the fact that she keeps stopping to kiss him on the staircase, and it’s easier to stop climbing up it when there’s nowhere else to go. Her back thuds into the door to her room, and he kisses her mouth, then her jaw, then her neck—
“You do realise,” she gasps out, “we’re not inside my room yet? And that McGonagall’s room is just there?”
“Minnie’s in Canada,” James says into the curve of her shoulder.
She laughs, bubbly and delirious as if it’d been five glasses of wine, not one and a sip. “So, what, you’re going to fuck me in the corridor?”
He glances up at her as he nudges the collar of her blouse aside, presses his mouth to the newly-exposed skin. “Do you want me to fuck you, Ace? In the corridor?”
“Yes to the first.” She pauses. “Maybe next time to the second.”
Now it’s his turn to laugh, thumbs pressing into her hipbones as she strains to get closer to him. “Next time?”
“I told you,” says Lily, “lots of affection.”
He lets up then, and she unlocks the door (his hands are still on her hips as she does it, and she has the distinct, prickling pleasure of just knowing he’s looking at her). It’s only open long enough for them to stumble inside, and then he’s kissing her with renewed enthusiasm. They narrowly avoid crashing into the room’s sole table — her left heel bumps into the chair that goes with it — finally he’s sat on the edge of the bed and pulling her down into his lap, and he’s gorgeous, gorgeous, and endless twilight has never looked so good on anybody. And he’s looking at her.
She presses a hand over his pounding heart. “Your mates will wonder,” she starts.
“Don’t care,” he says at once.
Her lips tug upwards, but she has to add, “The meteor shower, too…”
“You’ve got a perfectly good window right there.” He waves a hand in entirely the wrong direction, not looking away from her. “What, were you thinking of not taking a break all these four hours?”
Lily laughs, hides her face in her hands at the frankness of the question. He tugs them away; his shameless grin comes into view once more.
“Pleased with yourself, are you?” she says.
“Oh, very. Thanks, Ace.” He kisses her again, slow and lingering — and pulls back too soon, so she lurches forward to follow him and almost bumps their noses together.
“Do you know who came up with that nickname, anyway?” she says, trying to kiss him and frowning reprovingly when he ducks out of reach again.
But then his teasing smile falls away; he’s looking at her like she’s just asked the stupidest question of all time. “Seriously? I did, obviously.”
“Obviously?” she repeats, though she can’t deny the happy little thrill the revelation gives her.
“Yeah, obviously. Why would I call you by someone else’s nickname for you?”
The past few weeks slowly rearrange themselves in her mind. It is suddenly obvious that it was him all along — he’s got funny little names for everyone on the dig, but she’d always assumed Ace was teasing, at least at first, and he makes it sound like a compliment…
“It was yours all along,” she says, marvelling.
“Well, yeah, that’s what I said.”
“No, I mean—” She traces his mouth with a finger, watches his lashes flutter in response. “I mean, it’s yours. And other people were just borrowing it.”
His eyes are so, so dark as he kisses her fingertips. She bends to meet his mouth and his hands fumble for the buttons on her shirt; she can feel their slow progress by the occasional touch against her bare skin, almost coy, almost modest, and she wants him unbearably. Lily shrugs off the shirt without pulling back from him. James at once starts on her bra, one hand tracing her stomach, the other at the clasp— She wants to make a crack about his ambition, going at it one-handed, but before she can he’s got it undone. For a moment they’re both equally surprised.
Then, with the warm spark of mischief in his gaze, he says, “I’ve always wanted to get that right.”
She tells him to shut up and he just laughs, sliding off the bra, and takes a good, long look at her chest. Almost long enough to make her embarrassed, but they seem to have breezed right past it, too quickly for her to feel shy. With unimaginable reverence, he runs his hands higher up her stomach, cups her breasts.
“You’ve really got,” he says hoarsely, “great tits. Like, fantastic tits.”
Lily giggles.
“No, really—” He kisses her just over her heart, then moves lower, still butterfly-soft, until he traces her nipple with his tongue, and nothing is soft and sweet anymore. He sucks, hard, and she gasps out his name, and that makes him look up at her when he says, “Really, really lovely tits.”
Something in his expression reminds her of that first time he spoke to her, one on one, her hands full of the Viking necklace they’d had to counter-curse and dismantle, his nose smudged with dust from the ruins. Either that means there’s an apology somewhere in him now, or — and this option seems more likely and more thrilling — from the start he’s looked at her with desire, and she never knew.
“You’ve got a lovely — mouth,” says Lily stupidly, on the heels of this revelation.
James grins and his lovely mouth goes to her sternum, and his attentions there are sure to leave a mark, which normally she despises, but it’s all right if it’s him, she thinks. No one would see it anyway — but what if they do, she can have the satisfaction of everyone knowing. They all could have a piece of the nickname but they can’t have this.
He follows the seam of her jeans with his fingers and she grinds into him. “Are you sure,” he says, his eyes finding hers, “that you want— I don’t know, are you—”
“Yes,” she says, too quickly and not quickly enough, because she’s quite positive that the combination of how much she wants him and how attentive he’s been so far will make this good. “Are you sure?”
His breath comes out in a quick laugh. “Fuck, I’m sure.”
“Okay.” She’s smiling so hard it hurts. “Okay, then— what now?”
He laughs again. “Are you asking me?”
It’s contagious, and she’s laughing too. “Well, yeah, I suppose I am.”
His laughter turns into a smile, a proper sunbeam, and his hands are on the waistband of her jeans. “Then take these off.”
Lily slides out of his lap and starts to unbutton them, retorting even as she does, “You take yours off.”
“I thought I was the one calling the shots here,” he says, but he stands up too, mirroring her, and though they are a good few inches apart it feels more intimate than his mouth on her breast. There’s suddenly so much to look at, to think about — the several inches he has on her, how well-kissed his lips appear, how his gaze is fixed on hers while she watches him undo his fly.
She steps out of her jeans. “You are.”
Now he’s looking, at her silly frumpy polka-dotted knickers. “I don’t know about that,” James murmurs, fingers on the elastic edge. Her breath stutters until she’s sure she’s not getting any air into her lungs at all. That would explain the lightheadedness.
“Just take it off,” Lily whispers before she can stop herself.
He grins like he was waiting for her to ask, like the question itself is a victory for him, which is infuriating but fine, whatever, if she has to get through this— “I think I won’t,” he says, touching between her thighs now, and before she can react he’s kissing her and pulling off his jeans, and before she can complain he’s guiding her onto the bed.
Her back hits the headboard, though her eyes have not moved from him.
“I’m feeling a bit objectified, Ace.” He shifts her legs apart, hooks one around his waist.
“Good,” she says breathlessly, “that’s the plan.”
James tsks. “What happened to affection?”
He leans forward, hands on her waist, to kiss her, and now that he’s closer she can wrap a hand around his length, stroke slowly. His mouth stills on hers; his breathing grows ragged.
She bites his lower lip. “There’s your affection.”
He hisses Lily, and oh, that’s new, that’s good. Then he’s tugging at her knickers — thank fuck — and two fingers go where cloth once was, hard and fast and perfect, like his patience has at last given way. She hasn’t let go of him, but she’s probably not good for much, and she can’t bring herself to care. Forget the meteors; she may well see stars now. And yet she’s never felt so completely in her body, so hyper-aware of every touch. She needs to tip her head back, to gasp more air into this helpless moment, to— to—
Maybe she says his name, or maybe her cry is a wordless one. She comes so quick and hard that it almost hurts, and she’s already thinking more, and pulling him closer still.
James laughs, nips at her ear. “Don’t you want to—”
“No,” Lily says, “no waiting, I want you.”
He swears and kisses her, slow and deep and searching, his fingers knotting in her hair. He pushes into her like that; she can’t hold back a moan just at the feeling of him inside her. She grabs him by the shoulders, then lets go, sure that she must be hurting him, and settles for gripping the headboard behind her instead.
Eventually, between kisses, he says, panting, “I want you—” and really, he could stop there “—to feel good.”
Good? Good? “I feel like,” she says, trying to think through the rhythm of his hips and the friction of his thumb against her tits, trying to find the words to convey the sheer relief of this but also that she will not be sated. Friction; she wants more of it, here, between them, against every part of her that can feel.
“I want—” she begins anew; he hits a spot that wrings a cry from her, and then he does it again. “I want—” and she can’t figure out if she’s trying to say I want you to come inside me or I want you to come on me. She just desperately wants to see him unravel, so much so that she cannot think past it.
Evidently he reads something else into her helplessness, because he reaches between them to press more white-hot want into her, and his hips jolt against hers, hard. She watches his mouth part, hears the whine in the back of his throat.
“I’m going to—” he says, breath hitching.
“Please do,” she murmurs, “please do.”
He kisses her while he comes, his fingers finding her cunt before he’s done gasping, and this time it’s a long, slow undoing, like a stretch in the afternoon sun, eminently satisfying. James rolls to her right, splaying a palm over her rising and falling stomach like he has to keep touching her.
At length he says, “I’ve wanted to do that for—” He pauses, considers his words, and concludes with a demure “quite a while.”
Lily can’t help it; she laughs, squeezing his shoulder. “Since before or after you started calling me Ace?” she teases.
“Before,” he says seriously. “That’s what it means, I hope she’s ace in bed— ouch, no, joking, I swear!” (She’s let out an outraged squawk and, yanking the pillow from underneath her head, whacked him with it.) They’re both laughing now, and he catches her wrists. She lets the pillow drop, lets him kiss her sweetly. “You are, by the way.”
She snorts. “What?”
“Ace in bed,” he says, with horrible earnestness.
“You’re such a stupid boy.”
“I know,” James breathes, “you should teach me not to be. Promise I’m not incorrigible.”
Her heart jumps, skips, trips. “Aren’t you?”
“Mostly not incorrigible.”
She rolls her eyes and sits up, groping for her knickers. “Come watch the meteors, then.”
He’s quick to follow her to the window. She’s only just braced her elbows against the sill when his arms slide around her from behind, his mouth against the top of her spine. Lily’s brows rise; he is definitely still undressed.
“It’s a Muggle thing, isn’t it, to make a wish when you see them?” says James.
“Oh — yes, it is.”
As if on cue, a silvery streak passes through the murky blue twilight. She gasps, squeezes her eyes shut, and realistically no wish ought to be wasted on a boy, not even one who’s made her come twice in the span of, like, fifteen minutes, but she thinks, six weeks, let them be good, please. Whatever comes next — that is a problem for later.
She opens her eyes and realises their reflections are barely visible, like faint watercolour, in the smudged window glass.
“What’d you wish for?” she asks his reflection.
“I.” He coughs. “I forgot to wish, actually.”
“Ah, well.” She got hers in, at least, and that’s what matters.
James exhales quietly into the crook of her shoulder. Another meteor zips past. He’s not even looking at the sky. She can feel him suck in a breath, feel his arms tighten around her.
“I like you, Ace,” he says, soft but not so soft that she can mistake it for anything else. “Really like you.”
Lily leans back against him and releases a sigh — warm, satisfied — of her own. For once she’s not inclined to ask what next?
“Me too,” she whispers.
The words sit with them in the room, by the window, as the stars fall.