Work Text:
“Hmm… nope.”
Sirius disappeared into the dressing room for a moment, then re-emerged. “This one?” he said, slowly rotating. The skirt only came to his mid-thigh. It was denim and bedazzled in plastic rhinestones.
“Eugh!” said Peter from somewhere on James’s right, and James had to admit he agreed with Peter’s reaction.
“So picky,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes and disappearing once more into the dressing room.
“I don’t know why you can’t just borrow some of Mum’s dresses,” James asked, not for the first time. “You know she’d let you.”
Sirius’s response was muffled, likely by an article of clothing that he was struggling into. “What, and look like a middle-aged yoga gal?” He poked his head out from behind the curtain and turned a sheepish smile towards James. “No offense, mate, but I think I have better taste than Euphemia.”
“No offense taken,” James said, thinking about a particularly horrible mauve number in his mum’s closet at home.
“I don’t see why you weren’t satisfied with just one,” said Remus, a bit miserably, as he had drawn the short straw (literally — James carried around a pocketful of straws for this exact purpose)‚ and had been assigned hanger duty. He subsequently was lost somewhere under a pile of dresses and skirts of varying heaviness.
Sirius stepped out wearing a flowy dress with a low cut neckline. “Be cause ,” he began dramatically, “I want to ace this project, and I can’t ace a project by wearing the same increasingly-crusty skirt for a whole month.”
James gave Sirius a thumbs up, and Sirius went back into the dressing room to change clothes. Once he re-emerged for a final time and relinquished Remus from his clothes-carrying duties, the four of them made their way to the cash register to pay for 10 different skirts and dresses. Sirius’s money came in handy for these sorts of things.
On their way home, Sirius twisted around in the passenger seat of James’s car to look at his pile of shopping backs.
“You’re weird,” James snorted, putting his blinker on and merging lanes very safely, thanks.
“It is a fun project,” Peter said, squished somewhere James couldn’t see in the rearview mirror. “I should’ve taken Intro to Sociology too.”
“Maybe you could’ve pretended to be pregnant,” Sirius said. “There’s always someone who does that. Subverting norms, and everything.”
On Monday, Day 1 of Intro Soc’s month long “Social Experiment” project, there were three ‘pregnant’ girls, two boys who dyed their hair, and one student who had brought their chameleon to school and carried it around in a little fanny pack.
“So basic,” Sirius sneered.
“Don’t you think yours is a little basic?” Remus asked. “All you’re doing is wearing a skirt.”
“What I am doing ,” Sirius said, “is subverting expectations.”
“I would’ve expected you to wear a skirt any other day of the year,” James said. “You’re not the most masculine dresser. Not that dresses aren’t masculine, but you know what I mean. Hey, Evans.” This last part was said without hesitation as they passed Lily Evans in the school hallways.
“How do you do that!” asked Peter in a hiss. “How did you know she was there? You were looking the other way!”
“Potter, wait!”
James felt a hand on his shoulder, and when he turned it was Lily, brushing her fringe out of her eyes and looking at the four of them a bit shiftily.
“Hi,” he said again.
“Nice outfit,” Lily said, looking at Sirius, who smirked back at her.
“Thanks.”
A moment passed before Lily, looking back and forth between James and his friends, spoke again. “Do you… sorry, can I borrow James for a moment?”
She took James by the elbow and steered him out of the earshot of his friends.
“Hi,” he said, for a third time, because he was stupid and Lily was looking very pretty today in a yellow dress of her own.
“Hi,” she said back, not quite making eye contact with him. Not for the first time that morning, James wondered why she was acting so weirdly. Sure, they had a somewhat awkward history, but Lily had never been one to go all quiet around him — it was normally the opposite. She had yelled at him quite a lot over the years.
“So…” he said. “Um, what’s up?”
“I was wondering if you wanted to date,” she said suddenly, all in a rush. She was making eye contact now, but twisting her mouth to the side. James was stunned into silence for a moment until he saw Tracey Blake opening her locker behind Lily while wearing a fake pregnancy stomach. Of course. The sociology project. Lily was subverting expectations by pretending to date James, which was a little cruel but at this point was also absolutely against the expectations of the entire school, who had seen James get rejected by Lily one too many times.
James knew he probably should say no, because despite everything he told her (and his friends, and his mum, and the stuffed turtle on his bed) he was not over his crush on her even remotely, and thus pretending to date his crush of five years would probably not end well emotionally for him. But, a stupid small voice in his head reminded him that this was probably his only shot of getting to hold Lily Evans’s hand. Plus, it was for school credit, and James knew Lily cared very deeply about her grades.
“Sure,” he said, and instantly threw himself into a deep and utter panic.
Mamma Mia > Citizen Kane
James: HELP
Sirius: what now
James: ok first off all, i resent you taking that tone with me, your very dear friend
James: secondly, i am having a crisis
Remus: I’ve told you before, James, it’s okay that your pee is bright yellow as long as you make up for it by drinking more water
Sirius: wtf what do you mean “i’ve told you before”
James: not at all the problem here!
Peter: what if my pee is red?
Sirius: holy shit, peter, go to a doctor
James: ok can we focus on me now pls???
James: i sort of agreed to fake date evans for her socio project and now i am (understandably) FLIPPING out
Sirius: LOL
James: she texted me during study hall to tell me we r going to the movies on friday. Um???? What am i supposed to do?
Sirius: LMFAO
James: pls help me!!!! i am dying here! i thought i would be able to hide my feelings but uh nopee
Remus: I think you should not have agreed to fake date the girl you’ve been in love with since you were twelve
James: gee, thanks moony, that’s really helpful
Remus: Also, Pete, your pee is probably red from eating beets all the time like a psycho.
James drove to the Evans’ house on Friday afternoon to pick Lily up for their date. Lily had been perfectly lovely on the ride there, laughing at James’s panicked attempts at jokes and even touching him a few times on the arm. They saw a movie Lily had picked out — some sci-fi heisty found family-esque movie that had both James and Lily in hilarious tears at how bad the CGI was. Afterwards, walking out of the theater, they saw a gaggle of their classmates. One of James’s English classmates was actually gaping openly at them, which was probably aided by the fact that Lily had grabbed James’s hand as soon as they stood up from their seats.
James’s hand was very sweaty.
Lily’s sister worked at the mall, so James stayed with Lily until Petunia’s boyfriend came to pick them both up. James had offered to drive Lily home, but he had accidentally let slip that he had to go drop something off at Peter’s house later, and since it was in the total opposite direction Lily had brushed it off and said she would go home with Vernon.
James had known Lily was funny — that was one of the main reasons he liked her — but he had never been in her company (alone) for long enough to really experience her wit, the way she had a wisecrack for every occasion, and the manner of her smile when she saw James bent over from laughing so hard.
“Right,” said Lily finally, glancing at her phone. “My sister’s waiting for me in the front.”
“I can walk you,” James said, and together they walked to the parking lot. They passed Alice Fortescue just before they got to Vernon’s car, and Alice whipped her head around to watch as they passed.
“Thanks for coming,” Lily said, pausing just before arriving at the car. James grinned at her and stuck his hands in his pockets.
“It was a good movie,” James started to say, but Lily darted out quickly and pressed her mouth against his in the fastest kiss of all time. His face burned bright red immediately, but she matched his goofy grin with a smirk of her own.
“See you on Monday,” she said, and then she ducked into the car and was gone.
“She KISSED ME!” James said later on, not for the first time, as he lay in Remus’s bed with his arms flung over his face.
“So we’ve heard,” Remus said. Remus and Sirius were neck and neck in Mario Kart and as a result were being unhelpful. Peter was playing solitaire on the floor next to the bed, and so James seized the card Peter was about to put down and looked him in the eye.
“Tell it to me straight, Pete,” he said, voice rising to an unearthly pitch. “What does it mean?”
“You’re pretending to be dating,” Peter answered. “You just told us there were loads of Hogwarts High students there. She was doing it for the project.”
James slumped back on the bed, flicking the card down to Peter. “I just thought fake dating would include a lot more rules,” he said. “Like in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. ”
“YES!” Sirius yelled in victory, bumping Remus over with a shoulder. He craned his neck to look back at James. “I knew it was a mistake to let you watch that movie.”
“I’m doomed,” James said, once again not for the first time that evening.
He really was. Because at school the next week, Lily took to greeting him with a kiss nearly every time she saw him, which was often as she seemed to have memorized his schedule. They had some classes together, too, which distracted him to normalcy for a few minutes — just until Lily shot him a coy smile from across the room or something similar. When that happened, James tended to stop taking notes and stare out the window for the rest of class.
James and Lily went to the movies again on Friday — a second date. James had messed up and gotten the times mixed up, so they ended up sitting in on what must have been the most boring historical drama ever made. Ten minutes in, James shifted uncomfortably in his seat and turned to Lily.
“We can leave,” he whispered. On the big screen, some famous old white dude stared out the window in silence as symbolism for the death of the middle class.
“I have a better idea,” Lily whispered back, and then she leaned in so close that James could see the brown flecks in her green eyes, and then she closed her eyes and kissed him. Unlike the soft, quick pecks of the school hallway, Lily kissed him deeply and soundly, weaving her hand to the back of his neck and cupping his jaw with the other hand.
After the initial shock subsided, James kissed her back. Maybe Lily had seen that a few of their nerdier classmates were sitting with popcorn in the back row of the theater and she was trying to trick them with her sociology project again, he decided, even as Lily’s mouth yielded under his and he took her bottom lip between his teeth.
Two hours later, staggering out from the dark theater into the blinding fluorescence of a bustling mall, James decided he loved historical dramas.
In the coming days, Lily started attending James’ football games, usually sitting in the bleachers with a gaggle of her friends but sometimes stopping by to watch him practice, handing over a coffee or a scone after he finished. In turn, James figured he’d stop by the school library during his study halls to keep Lily company as she shelved books. Sometimes, when her supervisor (the evil librarian, Ms. Pince) left for a smoking break, Lily would push James into the shelves and snog him senseless.
It was times like these where James would get really confused. He understood why Lily would hold his hand as they walked to class together — the whole school was around, and so the chances were high of one of her sociology classmates seeing. But kissing in the library, when there was no one around? James couldn’t wrap his head around it. When he tried to ask Sirius, all he got was a thwack in the head, so he decided that maybe Lily was a method actor, trying to stay in the zone of the social experiment character she created for class.
He was treading dangerously, though. Every time he smiled at Lily and she flashed a grin at him in response he fell even more in love, and he had to admit that sometimes when she kissed him he let himself pretend that this was real, that they were dating for real, and that’s when he knew he was in too deep.
It was a Thursday, and they were at the coffee shop right around the corner from school. James was working through physics problem sets with a practiced ease — it was his best subject, after all — and Lily had the end of her pen in her mouth as she took notes on Dickens.
“Sorry loves, but we’re closing for a private event,” said Rosmerta the barista from the table over, where she was wiping everything down with a clean rag.
“Thanks,” James said. He stood up to pack everything in his backpack. Lily stood too, still copying down one last quote, then the two of them set off in the direction of the parking lot.
Lily tutored a kid downtown in the evenings, so when they got to the car, James tossed his bag in the back seat and turned around to say goodbye. When he turned, he was surprised to see Lily shifting her weight between feet, looking a bit nervous.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I think we should have sex,” she said in a rush, much like when she asked him to participate in her project.
Obviously, James’s brain froze for a full twenty seconds.
“What?” he said finally. Lily looked a bit mortified.
“I know it’s awkward to say it out loud,” she said, “but I think it’s… well, I think it’s the next step.”
James was floored. If she wanted to pretend that she and James were dating, couldn’t she just… pretend that they were having sex? Or maybe that’s what she was asking — permission to spread a rumor that they were having sex? The thought of Lily Evans saying she was having sex with him made James think of what it would be like to have sex with Lily Evans, and he made a mental note to slam his hand in the car door for being so stupid.
“Er, okay,” he said finally, trying to be casual. “That’s fine.”
Lily blinked at him. “I thought you’d have more of a reaction to that, I guess,” she said.
“Should I have a reaction?” he asked her slowly. He had already agreed to be her fake boyfriend, and while this was, sure, a weird pivot, he wanted her to do well on the project.
“I guess not,” said Lily, who was looking a bit downtrodden. “Okay, I should get going, then?”
“Sounds good,” James said. “I’ll see you on Monday.”
For some inexplicable reason, Lily’s cheeks were turning bright red. “Fine,” she said, and James got the sense she was annoyed at him. “See you Monday.”
Women. Always so bloody confusing.
The Full Monty > Citizen Kane
Remus: Okay hear me out, I think snails might have more emotional intelligence than humans
Remus: Salt is a metaphor for their deep and inherent vulnerability
Peter: wtf
Sirius: moony is extremely stoned don’t pay attention to anything he says
Remus: I would die to hold a snail in my two little hands
James: ughhh u guys i h8 sundays
Sirius: you should’ve come and smoked with us
James: and ruin my lungs forever? No thank u!
Remus: Do snails have lungs?
James: sundays are scary because you know what the next day is? MONDAY. And tomorrow i am going to need to walk into hogwarts with the knowledge that lily is telling everyone we had sex & i’m going to have to go along with it
James: i am starting to really hate sociology
Sirius: at least the project is almost over!
Sirius: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m tired of showing off my sexy sexy legs in these miniskirts
Remus: Snails are so lucky to be free of the linear progression of time
Peter: It is a bit weird about lily tho
Sirius: tru
Sirius: idk mate, do you want us to be telling people the two of you had sex?
James: no idea! I guess? Maybe? But that feels weird! So maybe not
Sirius: i think you guys should have sex for real so you’re not such an annoying little virgin
James: you’re also a virgin!
Sirius: yeah but I’m not so bloody annoying about it, am i?
Monday morning came around despite James’s protestations, and he trudged onto campus with a heaping spoonful of apprehension. Was he hallucinating, or were people staring at him? Were people gossiping about his sexual escapades of the weekend? Would they ask him about sex with Lily? Was he supposed to invent details?
For all his effort, he felt like he should be getting some sort of academic credit, really.
First period passed without any issues, although Peter did try to crack a joke about James ‘losing his virginity’ to Lily and Gideon Prewitt’s eyeballs almost bugged out, but as he was walking to his next class he saw Lily out of the corner of his eye. He turned to say hello and was greeted with what he privately called her ‘murderous face.’ It was pretty self explanatory why he called it that.
Lily marched right up to him and tapped her finger against his chest.
“ Why on Earth are you telling people we had sex?” Lily asked, sounding incredulous. James opened and closed his mouth several times before answering.
“I thought you said you wanted to have sex,” he said finally, trailing off at her expression.
“I did say that,” she hissed. Her eyes darted around and then she tugged James to the side of the hallway where they wouldn’t be overheard. “But the thing is we didn’t have sex.”
Now James was baffled. Wasn’t the whole point that she was going to tell people they had sex? Was she waiting for a certain deadline or something?
“But we did have sex…” he said slowly, not sure what she was getting at. Lily’s jaw dropped open.
“What the…” She couldn’t even muster a full sentence; instead, she threw her arms up and rolled her eyes. “You make zero sense to me, James Potter.”
And then she turned cleanly on her heel and marched off to class, leaving James even more confused than ever.
The Incredibles > Citizen Kane
James: and then she said ‘you make zero sense to me james potter’ and left
Sirius: she’s always been a bit of an odd one
Peter: what are you getting on this practice sheet problem #4?
Sirius: the derivative simplifies to 4x^3
Sirius: anyway i think lily was a bit off herself there
James: should i ask her about it?
Sirius: i mean, our soc presentations are in three days
Sirius: you could just wait it out
Peter: what about #8?
James: 3x^2 + 5x - 1
Peter: thx
James had opted for the coward’s method, and set out to lay low and avoid Lily for a few days. He wasn’t sure where he had overstepped, but her reaction let him know that he had crossed some line in the weird game of fake dating they were playing, and he figured it was better to just pretend things were going back to normal, in which Lily wouldn’t give him a second glance and he could pine in silence.
Of course, this all went wrong when he walked straight into her in the parking lot of the grocery store.
“Oof,” Lily said, head against his chest, and then recognized that it was James. “Hi!” Her face brightened instantly, then she winced as she seemingly remembered she was supposed to be angry at him.
“Sorry!” James said. “I was just picking up groceries for my mom.” He waves the grocery bags in his hands around for a bit.
“Me too,” Lily said. She bit her lip and looked up at him. “Do you think you could drive me home? It looks like it’s starting to rain.”
“Sure,” James said.
Once they were in the car, the rain started. Big water droplets splashed on James’s windshield, and he turned the windshield wipers on with a flick.
“So…” James began, after a few minutes of silence. It was a quick drive to Lily’s house, but he wanted to fill the space nevertheless. “Are you ready for your sociology presentation tomorrow?”
“I think so,” Lily said. “Are you going to come watch?”
It was typical for students who weren’t in the class to come watch. James hadn’t really thought about it.
“I guess I might come for Sirius,” James pondered aloud. “It might be awkward if I was there for yours, though, right?”
Lily blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
They had reached Lily’s street, and James pulled parallel to the sidewalk in front of her house. The rain pattered down even louder. He parked the car and switched it off so he could face her.
“I guess I just thought it would be weird,” James said. “Unless you wanted me there? As, like, a show-and-tell component?”
“What?”
James was flailing a bit trying to get his point across. “You know, like, ‘hey everybody, here’s James, my fake boyfriend. Haha, pranked ya!’”
Lily’s face went white as a sheet. “Oh my god,” she said. She clapped a hand over her mouth and her eyes bugged out. “Oh my god .”
“What?” James said, panicking a bit. What had he said that offended her so badly?
“James,” Lily said, her voice trembling somewhere between horrified and laughing. “Did you… oh my god. Did you think I asked you out for my sociology project?”
Buzzing filled James’s ears. “Uh… yes?”
Lily gaped at him incredulously. “Oh my god” she said again. “Holy shit.”
“What!?” James said, heart beating out of his chest. “What’s wrong?”
“Did you think we were fake dating ?” Lily squeaked.
“Weren’t we?”
Lily shoved James’s shoulder and finally took her hand away from her mouth. “Holy shit, James, I was dating you for real!”
James blacked out for a second and for some reason all he could think about was the sociology project. “What was your social experiment then?”
“I only spoke in French when I was at home,” she said hurriedly, then gasped at the look on his face. “Oh my god, I can’t believe it! We’ve been dating for a month!”
James was starting to regain feeling in the tips of his fingers, but his brain still felt frozen. “I was just so shocked that you would…” he trailed off. Then his own eyes bugged out. “Holy shit, you wanted to have sex with me!”
Lily buried her face in her hands. “Oh my god.”
James realized something even more horrifying. “Oh god, I had a lame response when you asked if I wanted to have sex with you!”
Lily poked her head out from behind her hands. “Uh, yeah, you did.”
“Oh my god.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Lily began to giggle, and James broke into laughter, and they laughed at themselves for a good while.
James leaned over and kissed Lily. Breaking away, she giggled again for good measure and then leaned back into him.
“Do you want to come inside,” she asked softly. “My parents are still at work, and Petunia’s at a friend’s.”
“Yeah,” he answered even softer, and then he followed Lily Evans inside and made out with her on her bed and lost his mind for a little while afterwards.
Lily’s presentation for sociology was flawless, of course, and she had the whole audience in stitches as she recounted her father’s reaction the first time she answered his question in French. Sirius went after her, and his presentation was just a slideshow with photographs of him in his skirts. When he flipped to a particularly risqué one, James let out a wolf whistle from where he was sitting in the back of the classroom. Lily, who was standing by the door with the rest of her class, craned her neck until she could catch James’s eye. He smiled at her, soppy as anything, and she winked back at him.
Perhaps love was the best social experiment after all.
“Did you just say ‘love is the best social experiment?’” Remus hissed at him from his left side. “God, you’re even more of a sap now that you have a girlfriend than when you were just a mooning loser.”
Lily winked in his direction again and Remus rolled his eyes and stepped on his foot, but James couldn’t bring himself to mind.