Chapter Text
There are only two things left to do.
On Friday morning, there were three, but then something had overcome Lily and she had thrown every bit of caution and anxiety to the wind and announced to the world—her world, at least—that James is her boyfriend and she is James’ girlfriend and it had felt so good, so freeing, so delightfully right that she can’t believe she hadn’t done it sooner, only she knows now not to be too hard on herself about that. She knows that she hadn’t done it sooner because she wasn’t ready to do it, and that is okay. It is not a fault to give herself the time and space to come to grips with major life changes, however minor they may actually seem. It is a kindness.
There were three things left to do, but now there are only two. And one is about to happen, whether she’s ready for it or not (she is), and then there will only be one thing left to do, and it is certainly the scariest thing, but for the first time her fear feels an ocean away, and the water between her and it seems warm, sunlit, and inviting.
A familiar knock on the door—he has always knocked in the same pattern, ever since their uni days—makes Lily jump and miss the clasp on her bracelet again. She swears and sets it down on her dresser with an annoyed huff because she’d almost had it that time and she’s been trying for seven minutes, now, but for some stupid reason her hands are shaking and she can’t manage to get the dainty chain and the itty bitty lobster clasp to align.
“Coming!” She calls, straightening her dress and padding to her front door. James is leaning casually against the wall opposite when she opens it, one leg crossed in front of the other at the ankle and a bouquet of sunflowers in his hands. “You’re early,” Lily says, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips.
“And you’re beautiful,” James replies. It makes her blush, which makes him smile even wider.
“And you brought flowers.”
“Correction,” James says, “I brought sunflowers, your favorite flower, and I even brought a vase because I know you don’t have one.”
“That’s a specification, not a correction,” Lily says, moving aside so he can step inside and toe off his shoes, “given my assessment wasn’t actually wrong.”
“Well aren’t you a clever thing?” He hums, dropping a kiss on the top of her hair and leading them to the kitchen. “It’s one of the things I love most about you,” he adds, filling the vase he brought with water and setting the flowers on the table.
There it is again. It’s one of the things I love most about you. It is not an I love you, but it’s as good as. Lily can hear it in the silence between words. It makes her heart flutter; actually flutter, not thump uncomfortably loudly in her chest and send blood rushing past her ears so that she can’t hear anything else, not make her fingertips go mildly numb, not make her tongue curl back in her throat, but flutter. It makes her want to say it back.
“Earth to Evans,” James says, grinning from across the table; there is something knowing in his eyes and something happy in his smile that makes Lily wonder if he knows what she was thinking. It wouldn’t surprise her if he did. It wouldn’t upset her, either. “You almost ready to go?”
“I just need my bracelet,” she says, “one second.” She goes to retrieve it in her room and pauses at her mirror to give herself a look over one more time.
She knows that James thinks she’s beautiful in anything, and he’s already said so tonight, but she wants to admire herself for just a moment. It’s their first date—their first real date—and she has no idea where they’re going but she’s dressed for the occasion rather than the location: a black turtleneck dress and transparent tights, hair tumbling down her back with a long, messy braid down the center, a wine red lipstick that she bought for the evening because Mary had convinced her to when they’d walked past M.A.C. in Carnaby the previous day. It’s been a long time since she’s looked forward to a date, but the thought of this one fills her ribcage with a pleasant warmth, a gentle hum, a soft thrill. She snags her bracelet from her dresser and returns to the kitchen, where James is putting away dishes because he can’t stay idle for long and he knows where everything goes, anyway.
“Is there a reason you’re putting my favorite mug out of reach?” Lily teases.
“I like it when you ask me to get it down for you,” he replies, turning back to her. “Did I already mention that you look beautiful tonight? You always look beautiful, of course, but tonight you look extra beautiful. I love that dress—”
“Wait ‘til you see what I’m wearing underneath,” she quips. “Can you help me with this bracelet?” Ignoring the shocked and delighted expression on his face—his mouth has made the cutest little o and his eyebrows have shot up and he’s running a hand through his perpetually messy hair—she closes the space between them and offers him her wrist.
“Of course I can,” he says, recovering smoothly—he clearly thinks so, at least, but the slight crack in his voice belies his own plethora of emotions, whether they’re nerves or excitement or lust or, most likely, a combination of all three—and accepting her hand. He does up the bracelet with ease, those pianist’s fingers, those steady surgeon’s hands having no difficulty with the delicate task. Before he lets her take her hand back, though, he brings it to his lips, presses a kiss to her knuckles. It makes her heart go all aflutter, again—genuinely aflutter, like a Jane Austen character—so he does it once, twice, thrice more before lacing their fingers together and giving her a tug towards the door.
He bends down to tie the laces of his oxfords again and then grabs the boots she’s left by the door. She steadies herself with a hand on his shoulder as she slips her foot into each like she’s in a goddamn modern retelling of Cinderella, and then he laces them up with ease—and now he’s just showing off his hands, isn’t he, doing things so skillfully with his fingers that she can’t help but imagine all the other things they do skillfully between her legs—before rising to his feet and offering her a jacket.
“I’ll be fine,” she whines, rolling her eyes.
“Yes, you will be fine, because you’re wearing this jacket,” James says, shaking it once for emphasis. “No catching your death in that frigid November chill.”
“Frigid,” Lily scoffs, teasingly, but slipping her arms into the sleeves, “it’s ten degrees.”
“You run cold,” James says, turning her back around to button her up and wrap a scarf around her neck. “You’ve always got your little icicle fingers, you should wear gloves.”
“Can we go, now?”
“Why the hurry, Evans, got a hot date?”
“Hot and handsome,” she says, straightening his collar. “You look very handsome tonight, too.”
She pauses to drink in the sight of him again; the burgundy button down with the floral tie, the black slacks, the belt at his waist, the wingtips that she’d advised him were quirky but professional before he’d started work at the hospital when he’d begged her to help him find clothes that were acceptable to wear to his job but didn’t make him look fifty years old. She laughs to herself, straightening his tie (and trying not to let the fabric under her fingers remind her of the fabric around her wrists two nights ago, trying not to look at his mouth and think about him devouring her for an hour while she couldn’t get away, failing to forget how those countless orgasms had made her feel so floaty and hazy and relaxed). He has no idea, but they’re matching, tonight.
“All for you,” he murmurs, leaning down to kiss her on the corner of her mouth. “I’d kiss you on the lips, but I don’t want to ruin your lipstick.”
“Oh, I suspect you’ll ruin it anyway before the night is done,” Lily hums, clicking off the lights and stepping into the hall.
He throws his head back and laughs as he follows her, moving aside so that she can lock the door behind them. “You know me well, don’t you, Evans?”
“Some things are certain in my life these days,” she says, “and one of them is that you’re interested in snogging me senseless.”
“Interested is an understatement. I’m yearning to snog you senseless is more accurate.”
“Yearning,” Lily laughs, following him down the stairs and out into the—unfortunately, a little frigid—night, “what is this, fanfiction?”
“I can only hope,” he says.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” he sings.
“Why won’t you tell me now?”
“Patience is a virtue, darling.”
“I’m not feeling particularly virtuous,” Lily says, slipping her hand in his back pocket and giving his ass a subtle squeeze.
“Christ!” He yelps, laughing as he drapes his arm over her shoulder and holds her closer. “Give a guy some warning, would you?”
“Would you rather I put my little icicle fingers down your pants instead?”
“At least let us get through the date portion of the evening, love, and then we can talk about where your little icicle fingers go.”
She spends the walk to the Warren Street tube station and the time spent waiting on the platform for the next southbound Northern line pestering him for answers about his plans for the evening, and he spends the entire ride to Waterloo with his arms wrapped around her waist and leaning against the back wall of the car, telling her to have patience and embrace the surprise and enjoy the anticipation. Halloween is over, which means that everybody has decided to start decorating for Christmas in November, whether people want them to or not, and so they admire the lights that are wrapped around the trees as James leads them towards the riverbank and past the queue for the Eye, bobbing through the crowds come to ogle the London skyline as it’s all lit up in the evening—a sight that Lily herself has never stopped admiring, even after all these years in London—and leisurely guiding them towards whatever destination he has in mind. Well, mostly leisurely; there is a decisive spring in his step, a bounce that is even more pronounced than usual as he swings their hands and all but skips them towards—
“The aquarium?” Lily asks, turning to look up at him.
“Thought I’d show you that I’m a better date than a squid,” James says, smirking. “Of course, they don’t actually have squids here, because apparently you can’t house a squid in an aquarium, who knew, but there are plenty of other cephalopods, and I thought this would be more enjoyable than squid fishing, which sounds pretty unpleasant in this area of the world, quite frankly.”
Lily shakes her head with a laugh and then bumps his bicep with her forehead. “You’re cheesy.”
“Just trying to outshine my competitors, Evans, what can I say?”
The aquarium has late nights for adults, it turns out, and once James has checked their coats and retrieved them each a glass of wine they set off in the direction of the glass tunnel that runs beneath one of the tanks. This has always been Lily’s favorite part in every aquarium: pretending like she is actually underwater while she gazes at the sea turtles and the sharks and the brightly colored fish gliding around her. When she turns to tell James to look at that turtle over there, the one that’s munching on the grass on the faux seabed, she finds him not staring in wonder at the underwater world around them but at her. He’s got a soft smile on his face and an even softer look in his eyes as he gazes at her; her wonder is reflected in eyes, a mirror image, only she’s pretty sure he’s not taking in the fish.
“Yes?” She prompts.
“What?” He asks, the smile on his face infiltrating the tone of his voice: light, teasing, undeniably happy.
“You’re staring at me,” she says, poking him in the side so that he jumps a little. He’s always been the most ticklish person she’s ever met, and she’s always used that to her advantage.
“You’re pretty,” James says, catching her hand before she can poke him again. “I can’t help but stare. I’m the luckiest guy here, and probably in the whole world for all time in all of human history and the future, just saying.”
Lily knows her face has flushed a deep red; she can feel it down her neck and across her collarbones where it’s hidden by her turtleneck. She can feel the warmth on her cheeks underneath the rippling blue light cast by the water above them. She can’t stop the pleased smile from overtaking her lips, try as she does to bite it back into something reasonable. Something she’s noticed about James is how freely he gives compliments, but how the frequency never makes them feel less genuine. James has always been one to say what’s on his mind and mean what he says; if he’s giving a compliment, it’s because he believes it, and he believes that his friends should know how highly he thinks of them, how much he loves them. He has always meant it, every word, and he's meant the things that lurk beneath and between the words, too, the implicit I love you that is the basis of every compliment he gives her, these days. He doesn’t need to say it out loud for her to know that he thinks it, feels it, means it.
She means it, too.
Instead of saying something, she takes his hand and brings it to her lips. Her kiss leaves a smudge of red wine lipstick on his knuckles and he looks delighted.
“I think this is my color,” he says, inspecting it in the blue glow.
“Everything’s your color,” Lily teases. “You’re the handsomest man I’ve ever met, and I’m the luckiest girl here—and probably in the whole world for all time in all of human history and the future,” she echoes.
“Pretty sure they universe will never know another love like ours,” he says, transferring his wine into his hand with the lipstick kiss and bringing it to his lips for a sip.
She’s pretty sure he doesn’t even know what he’s said, doesn’t even register that he’s called this what it is, what she wants: love.
A week ago it might have sent her spiraling. Tonight it just feels right.
They ditch their empty wine glasses but neither one of them grabs another, in tacit understanding that they don’t want to be drunk when they get home. At the penguin gallery, they stand side by side in front of the great glass window that shows the world’s second goofiest looking birds—the first obviously being the evolutionary question mark that is the flamingo—sliding belly first down their rock-cut slides into the water and waddling across the enclosure. James wraps an arm around Lily’s back, his hand settling against her waist, and she leans her head on his chest, listening to the familiar and comforting ba-dum, ba-dum of his heart; the heart that loves her. She can hear it in the silence between them, comfortable and easy and familiar and natural, just as natural as the talk, just as natural as everything else.
“That’s us if we were penguins,” she says, pointing to a pair of birds that are huddled together near the window. The larger of the two is resting its head atop the smaller, keeping their bodies together.
“I’m obviously the shorter one,” James says, pulling her in front of him to wrap his arms around her and resting his chin atop the crown of her head.
“Evidence points to the contrary,” Lily says, leaning back against his chest.
“Nonsense, I may look like the taller one right now, but I like being cuddled, too.”
“You do,” Lily confirms. “But that doesn’t change the simple fact that you’re taller than me, and you lorded it over me in my kitchen literally an hour ago.”
She can feel his laughter against her back just as much as she can hear it. “Point taken,” he says, “you can be the shorter penguin.”
At the shallow pool she points at two clams nestled in an alcove of rock and turns to him. “That’s us if we were clams.”
“You’re right,” he says, “except I’d open my shell so you can crawl inside.”
“Is that even a thing that clams do? Is that possible?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, simply, “the limits of possibility don’t apply to you, as far as I’m concerned.”
They trek through the rainforest and Lily laughs when James has to duck the low hanging leaves and when he jumps at a rumble of fake thunder that rolls through the speakers. The tinny sound of pouring rain engulfs them and she takes his hand in the semi-darkness, tugs him over to look at the brightly colored frogs.
“That’s us if we were poison dart frogs,” she says, pointing to two frogs on top of one another, asleep in the crook of a tree branch.
“Am I the red one?” James asks.
“I have red hair!”
“I think I’m the red one and you’re the yellow one.”
“Explain, please?”
“My favorite color is red, duh. My comforter is red, strawberries are red, Haribo cherries are red, cinnamon jelly beans are red, your hair is red, see? All of my favorite things are red, therefore, I’m the red frog.”
“Alright,” Lily grumbles, “but what makes me the yellow frog? Aside from the fact that it’s just the other frog?”
“Your favorite flowers are sunflowers,” James says, “I can’t see them without thinking of you. I know it’s not your favorite color, but yellow makes me think of sunshine and sunflowers and butterbeer floats, and those things make me think of you. Ergo: yellow frog.”
Yellow makes her think of him. She remembers reading once that yellow is the color of happiness, of joy, of optimism and creativity. It’s not her favorite color, he’s right, but she can hear what he’s saying: she makes him happy.
He makes her happy, too.
“Okay,” she concedes, “you’re the red frog, I’m the yellow frog.”
“For the record,” he says as they wander their way through the exhibit, towards the coat check and the exit, “red makes me think of you, too. And so does green, because of your eyes. There are very few things I love that don’t make me think of you.”
She lets him help her into her coat and wrap her scarf around her neck once more before donning his own outerwear and reaching for her hand. “I think of you when I have a cup of tea,” she says, bracing herself against the noticeably more frigid air. “You make the perfect cup of tea. I can’t even make my own tea as well as you make it.”
“You have a lot of cups of tea per day, Evans,” James points out, swinging their hands between them.
“I think of you a lot of times per day,” she replies. “All the time, really,” she amends. “I think of you when I have coffee, too, and hot chocolate.”
“Warm drinks remind you of me?”
“You make me feel roughly the way a warm drink makes me feel,” she explains, looking up at him. “A warm drink is all about comfort and ease and, well, warmth in my chest. That’s how you make me feel.”
“And I make the perfect coffee and hot chocolate, too, don’t I?”
“You do,” Lily says, “though my Keurig works just as well.”
“You like the French press more, though.”
“Correction: I like that you made it. And that’s an actual correction, by the way, because I do not have a preference towards French press over Keurig, I have a preference towards James-made coffee over non-James-made coffee.”
“I’ll make you coffee in a French press every day,” he says, pulling her in to kiss her head. “Do you want dinner?”
“Am I dinner?” She asks. “Are we back to using my euphemism?”
James throws his head back in laughter and it lights up the street. When James laughs, people can’t help but look; it’s always been this way, he has always been radiant in a way that nobody else is, but that radiance has only lit up the people around him, rather than dimmed them.
“I meant actual food,” he says, still laughing, “but I’m not opposed to your suggestion.”
“I like my suggestion better,” Lily says, “but we can get food on the way.”
They stop for pizza on the way and then for gelato at the place where the lemon ice cream isn’t yellow and the pistachio isn’t green, and she uses her spoon to steal a bite of stracciatella from James’ cup, careful not to get some that touches the pistachio because ew, J, and he laughs and leans in to kiss the ice cream off her upper lip and lemon and stracciatella is a surprising flavor combination, but I don’t hate it, and she laughs when he comes away with a little wine red lipstick on his lips, can’t resist the urge to take his face in her hands and pepper his cheeks, his nose, his jaw, every available inch with kisses until there are lipstick prints in the shape of her love for him everywhere and she can take a picture of them and make it her phone background, and then he wants to, too, and now they have matching phone backgrounds and empty gelato cups and her fingers are icicles and so he tries to warm them in between his hands but determines that it’s time to get out of the cold before they fall off and then what’s he going to do, if his girlfriend has no fingers?
“Guess you’ll be back to using your left hand,” she quips as they make their way through the puddles of light from the street lamps. He’s leading him towards her flat, but then again, she thinks, his is closer, and she stops at the next crosswalk and tugs him right instead.
“Where’re you going?” He asks. “Home is this way.”
Home is this way, he says, because her flat is home to them both, now. She can hear it there, too, hear those words on their way home, unsaid, maybe, but still felt.
But there’s something else she wants to do, a secret last thing, in addition to the other last thing.
“Let’s go to yours tonight,” she says, “it’s closer, and I’m cold.”
He seems to accept her reasoning and changes course, leading the way down familiar streets until they get to his building. It takes everything in her to not jump him in the elevator as she’s done before, to instead let the anticipation build on the walk down the corridor to the door to his flat. Standing behind him while he unlocks the door and steps over the threshold, she’s suddenly overcome with a fit of giggles.
“What’s so funny?” He asks, glancing over his shoulder, expecting her to follow.
“Nothing,” Lily says, unable to hide her laughter.
“Doesn’t seem like nothing,” he teases, holding out a hand. “You coming?”
“I’m sure I will be soon,” she says with a smirk, accepting his hand and letting him pull her inside so that he can shut the door behind them.
“If I have anything to say about it, certainly,” he hums, helping her out of her jacket and kneeling down to undo her boots, and echo of four hours ago when he’d helped her put them on; reverse Cinderella, it seems, or more like full circle Cinderella. Prince Charming puts the shoes on her feet and takes them back off and he does this forever, every time they leave or come home, because it’s no longer about finding the right fit but reveling in how right the fit is every single day.
“I was just remembering,” Lily says, when he looks up at her to ask what is so funny once more.
“Remembering what?”
“The second time we ever slept together,” she says, covering her face with her hands as the blush creeps above her turtleneck and over her cheeks.
“Ah, yes, the time when you showed up at my door unannounced and demanded I get you off?” He teases, rising to his feet again and pulling her further inside.
“That’s not how I remember it—”
“How do you remember it, then?”
“Well… Like that, but less crass. More fanfiction-y.”
“What’s not fanfiction-y about showing up at my door and jumping me?”
“It should be a little more romantic!”
“Firmly disagree,” James says, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her flush to his chest. “I’ve read a lot of fanfiction, now, and I would most certainly not call all of it romantic. Some of it, yes, but categorically? Evans, admit it, you like dirty, nasty, smut.”
“I do not!” She gasps, thumping him on the chest. “I like romance!”
“And smut,” he says, nodding matter-of-factly. “But how’d I do on the romance factor? Did I outshine that one by that girl you follow on twitter? The one named after the Taylor Swift song?”
Lily buries her face against his chest, muffling her laughter in his button down and wrapping her arms around his middle to embrace him tighter. “Yes,” she says to his sternum, to the spot just below and a little to the left of his heart. “Yes, you put her to shame.”
“Bet I can outdo her smut, too,” he whispers against her ear, his hands sliding lower. “Did you insist on coming to mine just to recreate our second coupling?”
“Coupling?”
“Are you aching, quivering—”
“Am I what?”
“Can you feel my throbbing member, desperate for your core—”
“Throbbing member—would you shut up?”
James laughs, the sound of it reverberating in Lily’s chest. “What, you don’t like my smut?”
“You should leave it to the tiny people in my phone,” she informs him, “and stick to doing surgery on people. Are you seriously hard right now?”
“Correction: my mem—”
“Do not finish that sentence, or I’m walking out this door.”
“No, you’re not,” he teases.
“I hate you,” she informs him, “for being right all the time.”
“Nah, you don’t,” he says, “and to answer your question, yes, I am hard right now, because you’re touching every inch of me, and it takes far less than that to get me hard, where you’re concerned.”
“What does it take?” She asks, tilting her head back and resting her chin on his chest, so she can gaze up at him.
“The right look,” he says, cupping her cheek with his right hand. “A little bit of banter, a dream.”
“A dream?”
“Any dream, really,” he says, “you have no idea how often I wake up hard because you crossed the street to see me in dream-London—but on the topic of dreams, are there any in particular I’m making come true tonight?”
Lily doesn’t have it in her to roll her eyes at the reminder of how all of this started: her unrelenting sex dreams about her then-best-friend-turned-boyfriend. She doesn’t have it in her to retort with any number of the yet unexplored dreamscapes that still make their way into her nighttime fantasies. She doesn’t even have it in her to sneak a hand between them and palm the bulge in his trousers, to lower her voice to a sultry, husky, breathy, romance novel whisper, to reach for his neck to loosen his tie and pop open a few buttons.
“No,” she says, instead, not even sure where she’s going with it, “you’ve already made all of them come true. Even the ones I didn’t know I had—or, rather, the ones I didn’t want to admit that I had—have had for a long time, really. I mean it when I say that you have—you have changed everything for me, James. I mean it when I say that I love you. I love you more than anything, I love you so much that I hear it everywhere and all the time, and I’ve been thinking it all night, and possibly for my entire life, I just haven’t been able to say it until now. But I do love you, I love you and I want to keep loving you forever, and I want to love you out loud.”
Lily thinks that she’s never been one for big, dramatic speeches, except for when she’s with him, apparently. The words are tumbling under her mouth and suddenly she’s remembering lying naked and draped over his lap on the couch just five feet to her left, baring her heart and soul and every last vulnerability she’d had for him while he’d sat there and listened. She’s remembering how it had been terrifying, but she’d done it, and how every single time she’s gone on a long monologue, he’s never interrupted, never mocked, never walked away or stopped paying attention, never done anything other than fully and completely listen.
And that’s just the thing about James, isn’t it? He listens.
“I love you, too,” he says, the biggest, silliest, most heartwarming and butterfly inducing and every-idiom-for-happiness-that’s-ever-existed provoking smile stretching across his cheeks. He doesn’t say anything more, which would be funny because James is one for big, dramatic speeches, he always has been, except that instead it just makes sense, because James is also one for saying exactly what he means, and this is it: he loves her.
He loves her, she loves him, they are in love.
Their lips meet in a crash that is also unmistakably and heart-wrenchingly tender. His hand cups the back of her head as she goes up on her tip toes and tilts to reach him, and her fingers find purchase in the hair at the nape of his neck; his free warm wraps around her waist and crushes her to him, and her back arches as he bends forward, the push and pull of this kiss—this first-I-love-you kiss—making everything else around them fade. It is like being in that pool of light from the street lamp on that night all those weeks ago, when he’d brought up her dreams and they’d slept together for the first time, with the way that all things cease to exist beyond this limits of their bodies.
They stumble over one another towards his bedroom, breaking their lip lock only long enough to come up for air. Lily’s fingers are adeptly fumbling with his buttons and she is trying to resist the urge to simply yank the shirt from his body, because she is not keen on locating all of the buttons so that he can sew them back in place. She manages to get them all undone, though, and he shrugs it off his shoulders and it falls to the floor, quickly followed by his undershirt—she’ll have to admire his arms in a tank top another time, then—leaving the broad expanse of bare chest open for Lily’s lips. She just manages to undo his belt he decides to take over, his fingers finding the edge of her dress and yanking it up over her hips. She lifts her arms overhead so he can pull it off—he takes extra care to tug on the tight neck so that it doesn’t catch her face or hair uncomfortably—and then he casts it aside along with his shirt and steps back to ogle her.
“Christ, baby,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re beautiful.”
“We match,” she says. “Burgundy.”
“How’d you pull that one off?” He murmurs, swooping down to kiss her, one hand slipping up her stomach and coming to cover her breast. He groans into her mouth as he kneads and massages the skin, his thumb swooping along the low cut edge of the burgundy lace, a searing warmth against the flesh that is spilling over the fabric.
“Had a dream,” she teases.
He kisses her once more, the hand not occupied with her breast gently pushing her back towards his bed until the backs of her knees make contact with the mattress and she tumbles backwards. He drops to his knees on the floor before her, shoulders pressing her thighs apart, and she props herself up on her hands to gaze down at him and run a hand through his messy mop of hair. His hands are on her ankles, slowly making their way up the backs of her calves and the insides of her thighs until he reaches her core, concealed still by her matching knickers and a pair of tights.
“These have a run in them,” he comments idly, finger tracing a ladder in the thin fabric that leads to a little hole at the seam.
She must have punctured it with her nail putting them on; classic, tights have really always been a single-use item of clothing for her. She opens her mouth to say something but before she can, James has worked the first finger of his right hand into the hole, and then he is ripping the flimsy fabric apart like it’s nothing and baring her knickers—already soaked—to him.
“James!” She gasps, lightly swatting him on the head.
“Oops,” he says, not taking his eyes off her cunt. “They had a hole in them. It was beyond repair, really, I checked.”
She finds herself the farthest thing from annoyed, laughing hard instead and then moaning as he brings a single finger between her legs and traces up the wet fabric. He presses lightly against her clit—oh, James Potter, the man you are, she thinks, ever impressed by his ability to find her clit even when there’s fabric blocking his view—and the barest bit of friction makes her squirm already. His free hand is working the remnants of her tights off her legs while he presses kisses to each newly exposed bit of flesh. His teeth scrape the skin of her upper thigh, gentle but insistent, and he nips and sucks a bruise there.
“Mine,” he murmurs, running a thumb over it.
“Mine,” she echoes, reaching for him so that he’ll join her on the bed.
“Yours,” he confirms, crawling up onto the mattress over her, laughing when she flips them over and straddles him.
Her mouth descends upon his again, and his hands come up to firmly grip her ass, mostly exposed given the very little coverage her knickers actually offer. He levels a light swat against one cheek, a teasing one rather than a real spank, but certainly enough to remind her that she’d like to do that again, sometime soon. Not tonight, though; tonight is for something different, and she can tell that they both know it. He shifts them backwards up the bed at her urging, leaving his trousers and boxers behind as he does, until he’s sitting with his back against the headboard and Lily straddling his lap, peppering his face with kisses, every available inch of skin now hers for the taking.
“I love this set,” he murmurs, fondling her breasts once more, admiring the way they are practically spilling out of her balconette bra, ducking his head to bury his face against them for just a moment.
“The lingerie, or my tits?”
“All of it,” he says, muffled, “all of you. I love you.”
Much as he loves her lingerie, he has it off her in only a few more breaths, more fabric on the floor, a record of their path across his bedroom. She takes his cock in his hand, familiar and, indeed, likely throbbing, and gives him a few strokes before she raises herself up on her knees. James’ hand covers hers, the other holding her in place while he takes a few moments to trace the tip through her folds and over her clit, teasing her entrance until neither of them can take it anymore and he lines himself up so that she can take him.
“Slowly, my baby,” he murmurs in her ear as she gasps when his tip is finally inside of her. “That’s it, love, you can take all of me, I know you can. Fuck, you’re so tight—you feel so good, do you like this? Does it feel good?”
His soft cooing against her ear is the only sound that matters as she slowly sinks down on him, his cock filling her cunt like it was made for her, stretching her out so thoroughly that it makes her gasp and pause every few centimeters to catch her breath. She forgets that without the preparation of his fingers, the size of him is so much more. But fuck if she doesn’t love it, fuck if she doesn’t love him, fuck if she doesn’t want to stay here with his cock inside of her forever, her hips flush against his, her face tucked into his neck as she adjusts to the feeling of having him fully inside, listening to his quiet oaths and moans as they both savor the moment.
She’s not sure how long they stay like that, and she suspects that he doesn’t know, either, but eventually she finds her hips rolling against his of her own accord, her arms coming to wrap around him while she keeps her face buried against his neck, her little gasps and moans muffled by his skin. His arms bracket her, too, one hand on the back of her hair, holding her close, the other wrapped securely around her waist, gently urging on her motions in the rhythm she’s set. With every roll of her hips, her clit grinds against his skin, the pressure and friction making her head spin even though he’s holding it still. Soon, her small motions have become bigger, more insistent, and she’s lifting her hips up on his cock and then sinking back down, whimpering each time he fills her once more, each time his tip presses on that spot as deep inside of her as he can go, the one that makes her thighs tremble and her fingers knot in his hair. He’s meeting her from underneath her, each thrust up making her cry out against his neck; she can feel his lips against her shoulder as he seems to have done the same and press his face to her skin, hold her as close as he can.
It is quiet, but for the sound of their skin meeting and of their muffled gasps and moans, so Lily knows he hears it when she says “I love you, James,” against the thrum of his heartbeat beneath her lips. She can hear it when he says “I love you, too, Lily,” and she can hear it in the silence that follows as the fingers of his left hand dig into her ass, urging her faster, harder, more, until they are both coming together at the same time, intertwined in his bed and gasping for breath against one another, unwilling to loosen the embrace even a little bit. They stay that way for forever and a day, both of them trembling and breathing heavily, until James leans his head back against the headboard again, staring at the ceiling.
“Fuck,” he says, “fuck, baby, I’ve gotta eat you out, if I don’t taste you, I might die.”
“Dramatic,” she says, still muffled, “but go on, then.”
“I love you,” he announces, every bit as sincere as the other times he’s said it. She never wants him to stop saying it, knows it’ll be sincere every day for the rest of their lives—because that is where this is headed, she knows for certain.
“I love you, too,” she murmurs as he gently settles her on the mattress with her head on the pillows and kisses his way down her body.
Once upon a time, this much bare skin would have left her feeling deeply vulnerable; now, it only leaves her feeling adored.
His mouth descends upon her clit with such swiftness and skill that her back bows off the mattress and her hands immediately grasp his hair, pulling him closer. He sucks on her clit until she is pretty sure she’s about to come—only sixty seconds into this—and then changes tack, earning him a frustrated wail from her. He kisses down her cunt, kisses her folds and her entrance, shaking his face and dipping his tongue inside of her, lapping up all of the wetness that she quickly realizes is her arousal mingled with his release, which makes her gasp and cry out and twist under his attention. His hands hold her hips steady, though, and he continues to devour her from center out, wave after wave of pleasure crashing over her as he directs his attention first here, first there, keeping her on the edge just long enough that she can feel her climax just beyond reach before changing course.
He doesn’t make her wait forever, though, and soon she is spiraling once more, her body jerking under his hands and his mouth, her fingers pulling on his hair so hard it surely hurts, but the moans from his mouth are entirely of appreciation and pleasure as he tastes her orgasm, drinks it up from her cunt, clutches her closer and feasts with even more dedication until she’s sagging against the bed, her chest heaving and a thin sheen of sweat covering her skin.
She looks down at him and can’t help but laugh; his face between her thighs is always a sight to behold, the sort of sight that makes her crave more of him even immediately after having all of him, but tonight she is more charmed than she has ever been by this beautiful, kind, devilishly handsome man that she loves. He is covered in lipstick; it’s everywhere, on his cheeks, his nose, his jaw, his chin, his forehead, his lips, but the bottom half of his face is also glistening with her own arousal, and the sight is so overwhelming that all she can do is tug on him until he crawls up the bed to settle on top of her. Their lips meet again—more lipstick, surely—and she savors the taste of herself mixed with the familiar taste of him on his tongue, accepts everything he can give to her, rakes her nails up his back and into his hair.
“One more?” He murmurs against her lips.
“Yes,” she whispers back, sighing and dropping her head back against the mattress as his cock—already hard again just from eating her out, god almighty—fills her up once more.
They aren’t long for it; she’s still coming down from two successive orgasms and he’s oversensitive and the weight of his body on top of her is equal parts grounding and intoxicating and the movement of his muscles against her chest and her hips is dizzying and the words he’s saying against her ear—I love you I love you I love you—are echoing in her own voice against the walls of his bedroom, and it is only moments later that they’re both coming undone once more, with simultaneous cries of each other’s name.
Lily holds him to her and pushes his hair out of his face, bringing his forehead to her lips so that she can press more lipstick kisses to his skin. He accepts them gratefully, peppering her with kisses of her own, tangling their fingers together and resting them on the pillow next to her head. They kiss like that, slowly and sloppily and softly and still joined together, for an indeterminate amount of time. They will kiss like that forever, Lily knows.
Eventually, though, he shifts off of her and grabs one of the throw blankets from the pile that slide to the floor, drawing it over her. “One minute, love,” he whispers before getting up and disappearing into the bathroom, returning a moment later with a damp wash cloth and kneeling gently between her legs. The mattress dips with her weight and Lily lets her eyes fall closed as he cleans her up, another act that once upon a time would have left her feeling ashamed and embarrassed, but now only makes her feel loved. His hands find hers and he pulls her up into a sitting position.
“You need to—”
“Don’t say it,” Lily groans, lolling back towards the bed, dead weight in his arms.
“You need to pee!”
“It’s the least romantic thing you possibly could have said in this moment. We finally say I love you, we have loving and adoring and hot sex, and then you kill the romance by telling me that I need to pee.”
“It’s romantic,” he insists.
“Pray tell, how?”
“Because I’m telling you because I love you,” he says, simply, “and I don’t want you to get a U.T.I., just like I tell you not to sleep on the couch because I love you and I don’t want your back to hurt, and just like I refill your waterbottle during your shift when you’re not looking because I love you and I want you to be well hydrated.”
Lily blinks at him, a smile on her face, a laugh somewhere in her mouth, but not quite yet in the air between them. She shakes her head and leans forward, hands on each side of his face, to pull him in for a kiss.
“I love you, too,” she murmurs against his lips. “And because I love you, I will go pee after sex, since it will make you happy.”
“Thank you,” he says, setting her on her feet, lightly smacking her ass before she walks away.
She makes a half-assed attempt at stopping him before he manages to do it again, sticking her tongue out when she misses and he gets a half tap, and then picks her way over the clothing-strewn floor and into the brightly lit bathroom.
She’s having another memory: the first time she slept with James, standing in this bathroom after he told her to go pee so she doesn’t get a U.T.I. and staring at herself in the mirror, telling herself how absolutely unsustainable this situationship would be.
Well, she was right, wasn’t she?
It was entirely unsustainable; she and James were never going to work as friends with benefits. She was a fool to think they ever could.
As she’s reaching for the towel that he’s left on the counter to dry her hands, something catches her eye that stops her short: a little pile of rocks, nestled on the trinket dish that holds his contact case.
Another memory:
“You don’t have to stay, Evans, though I’d love it if you did.”
“I can’t.”
“I’ll drive you home, then. Just don’t forget your rocks this time, little magpie, yeah?”
“Well then what reason would I have to come back?”
“Good point, clever girl, on second thought, I’m not telling you where they are, you’ll just have to let me ravish you on every surface of the house until you find them, how’s that?”
He’d left them on the bathroom counter. Perhaps he intended to ravish her on the bathroom counter, only he’d ravished her in bed, instead. The thing is, she’s been in this bathroom since that conversation, and she knows they weren’t there. She’s looked at the trinket dish before—she painted it for him at a paint and sip with her friend Emmeline—and knows it holds his contact case and occasionally a floss pick, but no little magpie collection. He’d put those rocks there, then, at some point, but she doesn’t know when.
“Alright, Evans?” He asks when she emerges, as he always does.
“Alright, Potter,” she says, coming to stand between his knees, as she always does.
“What have you got there?” He asks, nodding at her closed fist.
She opens her hand, showing him the rocks.
“You found your magpie rocks,” he says, grinning up at her.
“You didn’t ravish me on the bathroom counter,” she says.
“Maybe tomorrow?” He offers.
Confirmation: he had put those rocks there in the hope that she would see them one morning. He had put her magpie collection in his bathroom, hoping that one day, she’d find them after she woke up in his bed, while he’s making coffee and breakfast and she is taking her sweet time donning clothes and joining him.
“Tomorrow it is,” she says. Tomorrow, and every day after that.
“Evans,” he says, after a minute, “love, if you want me to drive you home tonight, though, I can.”
“I want to stay,” Lily says, simply.
There it is: the final, secret thing.
The smile that breaks across his face is nothing short of extraordinary. He stands up to take her face in his hands and kiss her once, twice, three times for good measure, before finding them both something to wear to sleep. They brush their teeth side-by-side at the vanity with two sinks—a feature she has always questioned, but now makes perfect sense—with a yellow toothbrush from his dentist that she feels certain he saved just for her, because yellow makes him happy, and yellow makes him think of her.
He pulls back the covers and she crawls into bed, nestling down on the side that has already become hers without her ever staying in it. Before he clicks off the lights, though, she arranges her little handful of magpie rocks on the nightstand to her right, a new magpie collection that is going to stay right here, to mark her place in his life and his place in hers. Satisfied, she rolls over and tucks her face against his chest, eyes already closed before the room goes dark and James’ arm settles over her with a comforting, familiar weight.
She loves him. He loves her. They are in love.
This, she thinks, in the heartbeats before she drifts off, lulled to sleep by his steady breathing and the sound of his heart in his chest, this is entirely sustainable.