Work Text:
Three seconds. That was how long Lily let herself consider the thought of it, before she pushed it away and forced herself to think of something, anything else. One, there was his mouth, obviously, his lips and how they were slightly chapped and definitely capable of driving her mad by the words that came out of them so she could only imagine what else they could do. Two, his shoulders were broad and he insisted on wearing those stupid threadbare T-shirts so she could see the planes of his chest move beneath them when he laughed or stretched or did anything at all, because apparently she was dealing with some kind of Greek marble statue. Three, his hands, and there was no justification she could give to herself for why they transfixed her that couldn’t be seen with one look at them. And that was three, and she was done.
Except then he called out for her, a quick “Oi, Evans!” and maybe, she thought desperately, it would work if she gave him ten seconds instead.
It wasn’t that Lily completely lost her head around boys. She’d had several reasonably calm interactions with possible romantic prospects, some long-term and some less so. And she had considerably less horror stories than Marlene with her rugby boys and Dorcas with her strange ability to find and fall in love with tourists. The difference was that this one was James. James from first year, James who flirted with her at parties until she yelled at him and they got kicked out of Tesco Express, James who showed up in her tutorial the next term and forced his way into becoming her friend.
James, who before the countless drinks had been just one of Lily’s mates (albeit one of her favorites, but that didn’t matter in the overall context of the thing), and now was suddenly so attractive she could barely look at him.
But she could do it. Three seconds—or, ten, rather—and then she would get over it and everything would be normal. So what if he was calling her over for another shot of tequila, and that he had her lick the salt off the back of his hand (his hands, God), and so what if he left the rind of the lime in his mouth so he could smile at her like he was the cleverest one at the party? She would stay calm, and it would all be over in the morning.
It wasn’t over in the morning, though, and Lily wanted to die for more reasons than the pounding headache and the twenty minutes she spent throwing up in the shower. He and his flatmates had held the party at his, and he’d left clothes on his bed for her. The sweatpants were enormous. The jumper smelled like him. Lily gave herself three more seconds to bury her face in the collar. Just three, and then she had to go into the kitchen, and everything would be okay. If she kept it down to seconds, it couldn’t overwhelm her.
Her attraction to him wasn’t burning anymore, not like it was last night. No, in the weak morning sunlight of his tiny kitchen he was just lovely, in a way that was sweet like honey and made her throat ache. He was stirring beans in a pot on the stove and there was a flat spot in his hair where he’d slept on it. Remus was buttering toast. They both smiled when she came in.
“All right there, Evans?”
She screwed up her eyes and pretended his voice hurt more than it did, just so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“That’s what I thought.” He laughed, covering his mouth so it wouldn’t be too loud. Remus handed her a slice of dry toast and advised her to wait on the eggs and beans, probably.
So Lily sat at the table in James’ jumper that smelled like him and she listened to Remus make fun of how he always cooked his eggs too long and wished, silently, for it to be over. Last week she would have joined in on the teasing. Last week she wouldn’t have gotten drunk enough to need to stay over in the first place. Hell, last week she could look James in the eye without feeling like she was going to burst blood vessels in her cheeks. And then she’d walked into the lecture hall and thought, well, who’s that guy sitting in front of me, he’s really cute. Maybe I should get his name. And when he raised his hand and it was James’ voice that answered the question, well. Everything was different.
All it had taken was a haircut and a bad day to change the slope of his shoulders and Lily had been tricked into thinking of him like this. She wanted her money back.
“Jesus, Lily, it’s like you’re on another planet,” Remus said.
“I wish I were,” Lily said, digging into her temple with one of her knuckles. “I wish you’d shoved me into one of those rich billionaire’s malfunctioning rockets and I was a cold hunk of space dust right now.”
James spooned some beans onto her plate. “Good luck with that.”
There was no such thing as luck. Not at the rest of that awful breakfast, not when James gave her a lift home in his ridiculously nice car, not when he walked her into her flat and knew exactly where she kept the paracetamol without having to ask, setting two tablets and a glass of water on the coffee table in front of her. Lily buried her face in the couch cushion and let James squeeze her shoulder, waiting to emerge until she heard the front door click shut behind him.
She was still on the couch when Mary stumbled out of her room, looking as shit as Lily felt. Mary’s hair was getting long in the back, curling around the nape of her neck and leading to some truly spectacular bedhead.
“How was the sleepover?” Mary asked from the kitchen. She was trying to fix her hair in the reflection of the toaster, propped up against the countertop on her elbows. Lily tossed a pillow in her direction. It came flying back moments later. “That bad, huh?”
This was par for the course. Mary had always thought there was something more going on with Lily and James, waggling her eyebrows at them during parties or calling their fights “lover’s quarrels.” Lily wished fervently for the time when she could tell Mary off for saying things like that and mean it. “It was fine. I’m just –“
“Yeah, I know. D’you need more water?”
Lily nodded miserably. Mary wordlessly refilled her glass and sat next to Lily on the couch, watching Netflix on her laptop with her headphones in. Lily was in a state of half-consciousness for the next couple hours, staring blankly ahead of her and trying to keep her soul from crawling out her mouth and onto the floor. Every now and then Mary would get up and coax more water into her and Lily pretended that it was just a hangover. Because it could be, reasonably. It didn’t have to be an existential crisis over a stupid boy that was keeping her prone on the couch all day. It could be the fact that she was fun, and went out on Saturdays.
It wasn’t, but it could be.
The next time Lily saw James was at lecture. They had class on Tuesdays at six, and they usually headed to the pub after for a drink and a commiseration about how shit the lecture was. Every now and then they toasted to the fact that they actually learned something, but those nights were few and far between.
Lily tried to beg off, that Tuesday, but James wasn’t having it. He invited Sylvia, who sat in front of them, and her boyfriend Luther tagged along. Luther was a third year who remembered the class being just as pointless, and he was telling stories about his classmates as they walked to the pub. They were good stories, ones about ridiculous questions and students who got in trouble for cheating, and Lily almost let herself relax. Almost, because James was laughing too, and she loved his laugh. She’d always loved his laugh, but the feeling hadn’t threatened to knock her over before.
It was Christmastime, and the streets were hung with twinkling lights and garlands that made everything that much brighter. Sylvia and Luther sat on one side of the table at the pub and so Lily was forced to slide into the seat that was backed against the window. Every time she looked at James it was like he was lit from behind, soft yellow light making him into nothing more than a silhouette. It didn’t feel real, and Lily latched onto that feeling, the idea that this James was just a shadow, someone she could talk to that didn’t make her throat dry and her voice stutter.
“The first time Lily ever spoke to me, she called me an idiot,” James said to Luther.
“I just call it like I see it,” Lily added, and Sylvia hid her laugh behind her hand, leaning into Luther with her shoulder like she was laughing for the both of them. James turned to look at Lily, and she could see his eyes behind his glasses, his gaze fond and familiar. But silhouettes didn’t have eyes; they were voids for Lily to throw all of these pent-up feelings into so she’d never have to feel them again. James was so real her awareness of his body next to hers throbbed like a cavity.
She got up to get them more drinks at the bar.
It was lucky that Luther insisted on Guinness, she thought as she leaned against the counter and waited for the head to settle so the bartender could finish the pour. Her own choice of a gin and tonic didn’t take nearly long enough for her to settle her nerves and head back to the table, and James had asked for a can of the cheapest cider they had. She tried not to read into it too much.
“Thank you, love,” Luther sighed when Lily slid his beer in front of him. “I was just telling James how this course is killing me, I can’t imagine what it’s doing to you.”
Lily felt herself bristling at the pet name, but she forced herself to sit down and assume the regular puzzled expression she wore when she was trying to be polite. “Why me in particular?”
“Well, Sylv and James have that fancy expensive education, and at least mine came form the city. I’ve heard about that little town you come from.” He waved his arms around as if to make his point, like the pub they were in was somehow citified beyond Lily’s comprehension. “I’m sure they can’t have prepared you for all this.”
She was going to just smile and nod, file the experience away for her to complain about with Mary or Dorcas when she got back to the flat, but before she could James set down his drink and leaned forward. The smile plastered across his face was ever so slightly predatory, subtle enough that Lily knew she was the only one who noticed its edge. “Lily’s at the top of our year, actually,” he said, voice honey sweet. “In both of the courses she’s doing. We were in tutorial together and our professor couldn’t get enough of her.”
The table was silent for a second before Sylvia laughed, thank God. “I heard about that tutorial. The two of you were famous. They’d get into these arguments even the professor couldn’t break up,” she explained to Luther. “I always wished I’d been put in with the both of you.”
Lily felt James’ finger tapping her wrist, a little reassurance, and her breath caught in her throat. He didn’t seem to notice, though, as he said, “I’m sure plenty of people would have swapped with you. We weren’t easy to be around.”
“What changed?” Luther asked. He clearly meant it to be a joke, as Sylvia laughed, but it made Lily feel breathless and panicky. Whatever had changed, it must have been while she wasn’t looking, and what if it happened again? What if this could happen with anyone she knew, that one day she woke up and found that her relationship with Mary or Remus or Dorcas had changed so irrevocably it never went back? What if she lost them? Oh, God, what if she lost James?
The conversation had gone on without her, but she didn’t notice until she felt James’ elbow nudge her own. “You alright?” he asked under his breath, and Lily couldn’t help herself from shaking her head. “We’re gonna get some air,” he told Sylvia, and then he was gripping her arm and steering her gently out of the pub.
He didn’t say anything, just handed her his can of cider and waited while she took a long sip. “I’m sorry,” she said once she was sure she could talk without her voice shaking. “You can go back in.”
“I don’t think I particularly want to. The only person who’s ever been so insufferable they got me kicked out of somewhere is you, and I want to keep it that way. I like this pub much more than I like the Tescoes on Thomas Street.” When Lily tried to give him the cider back, he waved her away. “No, keep it. I have training tomorrow, I only got it cause I figured you’d drink it.”
Lily looked up at him, taking in the way the twinkling lights around the awning of the pub shone through his hair. It was awfully messy. She knew all at once that this, whatever was going on between them, would never happen to her with anyone else. It couldn’t. This was all him and the way he was looking at her, his kind, sweet expression and the way he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets after he squeezed her shoulder. “Hold this,” she said, handing back the cider, “and stay here.”
She marched back into the pub and stood at the edge of the table. “We’re going,” she told Sylvia, ignoring Luther in favor of grabbing her drink and downing it in one swallow. “See you later, Sylv.”
Their chorus of goodbyes was halfhearted and confused but Lily let it fall around her shoulders as she burst out of the pub and into the cold night air. “No sense wasting a perfectly good G&T,” she said as way of an explanation, and James just smiled and fell into step next to her. “You didn’t have to stick up for me.”
James’ breath steamed in the air as he spoke. “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
“Oh, I know,” Lily said, jostling him with her shoulder. She tried not to lean into the touch, to shove playfully and move back away, but it was cold and when she burrowed against his side he slung an arm over her shoulder. “It’s harder to make you look like an idiot now, though.”
She could feel the rumble of his laugh in his side where she was pressed against him. “Don’t worry. You still make it look easy.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. Because it was cold, because they were walking in easy, companionable silence, because Lily could feel herself falling deeper and deeper into the hole she’d dug herself the first time she’d given him three seconds to drive her mad at that party. The gates had opened and she couldn’t speak for fear that somehow it would all spill out of her. That he’d look at her with that same smile he’d used in the pub and say, you had your chance and you blew it, and she’d lose all of him, including the little bit she had just then on that walk home. His arm over her shoulders and their cold pink noses and how he would sometimes smile down at her when they were waiting for a crossing.
Once they’d crossed the river, after Lily had taken the last sip of his cider in an attempt to chase the cold out of her cheeks, they stood on the corner and said goodnight. “D’you want to study for the exam this weekend?”
Lily closed her eyes. “You just want to copy down my notes.”
“And you want to let me,” he joked. Lily kept her eyes closed. If she looked at him, she was going to lose it, going to kiss him right under the streetlight on the corner where they always parted on nights like these, and then there would be no more nights like these.
“Text me,” she said. “We’ll figure it out.”
The second she got to her flat, she shrugged her coat off and onto the rack and said to Dorcas and Mary, “we have a fucking problem.”
He came over the next evening. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been over to Lily’s flat before; they’d studied like this plenty of times. But Dorcas was running around organizing blankets and changing out hand towels, agonizing over whether she should be there and hide in her room or vacate the premises, whether Lily should stay in her little terrycloth shorts or put on a pair of trousers.
“Not too fancy,” she kept saying, “but casual. You look fit in your brown corduroys, but will he think it’s weird that you’re wearing them while you’re hanging around the flat?”
Lily was sitting on the sofa with absolutely no plans to let Dorcas be in her room while James was over. Their flat was tiny and Dorcas was projecting a frenzied energy that could be felt through the walls. “Go meet Mary at the library,” she instructed when Dorcas refolded the blanket for the fifth time.
“What if you need me?”
“I won’t,” Lily said, finally getting up off the couch. She put a hand on both of Dorcas’ shoulders and ducked her head so they were looking each other in the eyes. “I’m going to get over it, okay? This is the first step towards getting over it.”
Dorcas wasn’t convinced. “Let me at least-“
“If I put on my corduroys, will you leave?”
“…I suppose.”
Dorcas must have left just in time, because Lily heard the familiar rumble of James’ voice in the stairwell. She tugged on the cuffs of her sweater, picking at a loose thread. She wondered if it smelled like her the way James’ jumper had smelled of him, and then forced the thought out of her mind when he knocked at the door.
The horrible part about it was that it wasn’t strange. Oh, Lily was constantly aware of him, the way he held his body and his proximity to her on their tiny sofa, but they were still able to study together like they always had, comparing notes and making up practice essay questions just to debate the right way to answer them. Lily hadn’t done the reading on the politics of the Eastern Front so James summarized it for her, and while she was a bit fixated on the way he illustrated his words with his hands, she was still able to take in the main points and do the analysis questions the professor had set.
She was starting to feel more and more comfortable, like she might be able to accept the way she felt and keep on going just the way she was, and then he said, “d’you want to go out after this? Gerard is having some sort of party, I think.”
Lily didn’t usually go to any sort of party Gerard threw, because he was pompous and followed people around his flat telling them where he’d gotten this vase or who’d given him that painting, and who their age had art to put in their houses anyways? Unless it was photographs or paintings from charity shops (or, in Mary’s case, newspaper clippings of the Pope that made her laugh), student walls generally stayed bare.
But she looked at James and her brain screamed I don’t want to say goodbye yet, so she said, “All right.”
And then there she was, standing against the wall while Gerard hovered over her talking about the little figurine his mum had brought back for him when she visited Nepal. She had a cup of whatever fancy mixed drink he was serving and it burned on the way down, but she kept taking sips of it so she didn’t have to respond to Gerard with anything but a polite nod. He kept edging closer, and he had his hand braced on the wall beside her head.
James had gone to look for something to drink that wasn’t as foul as the concoction Lily had in her hand and she was looking around to see if she could spot him when Gerard said, “Did you hear what I said?”
Lily started. “No, sorry.”
“I was just saying I’m glad you came. You know, I asked James specifically to bring you since you never come around anymore.” He leaned in, lips right by Lily’s ear. “At least he’s good for something, right?”
Lily jerked away from the feeling of his hot breath on her neck and felt her drink slosh over her hand, soaking into her sleeve. “Shit,” she said, and then again, “shit. This is going to stain.”
Gerard reached out, his hand circling Lily’s wrist. “Come on, it’s fine.”
But she tugged away from him and pushed through the crowd of people milling about the living room, finding the bathroom thankfully empty. The water that came sputtering out of the tap was freezing, and Lily began to shiver as she shoved her arm under the tap and started scrubbing at her wool sleeve.
It wasn’t long before James found her. “You okay?” he asked, and Lily didn’t take her sleeve out from under the tap, didn’t even look up.
“Gerard made a pass at me and I stained my sweater,” she replied, and the fact that she could hear the tears in her voice made her even more frustrated, even more at risk of letting them spill over.
James stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. “C’mere,” he said, reaching out his hand, and when Lily ignored him he sighed. “Come here, please.”
“What?” Lily snapped, finally turning around. He’d taken off his jacket and was wearing another one of his torturous T-shirts, this one with a hole by the collar that would have driven her crazy if she wasn’t already at her breaking point. He was holding up a glass full of some kind of drink.
“Let me pour this on.” When Lily remained staring at him, confused, he grabbed her wrist and held her arm steady, tipping the contents of his glass onto it. “The tonic water is carbonated. It helps lifts stains, which I learned when Sirius threw a party at my parents’ house in our last year of school and spilled half a bottle of wine on our dining room carpet.”
He had his tongue between his teeth as he concentrated on her sleeve, and Lily screwed her eyes shut because she was afraid if she didn’t she would lean forward, chase it back into his mouth until there was nothing left for her but a strained old sweater and the guilt that pooled in her stomach. She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t, there was no way- “Hang on.”
James froze, startled, while Lily took a step back and pulled the sweater off. His eyes flicked down over her body and she flushed, sure she could see the red in her chest over the hem of her little camisole. “Um,” he said, and Lily turned even redder.
“I don’t even know why I came,” she said, talking just to talk, so she didn’t start doing something else she’d regret. “I mean, I know you brought me because Gerard asked, but I shouldn’t have come. And I shouldn’t have worn this sweater, because everyone’s dressed like they’re going clubbing after and I’m in clothes my Nan knitted for me and no one would let me into a club anyways, and now I’ve gotten you stuck in the bathroom trying to help me when clearly you should be talking to people, or chatting someone up, or…” she trailed off, looking miserably at James. “You can go. I think I’ve embarrassed myself enough.”
“I didn’t bring you because of Gerard,” he said.
“What?”
He had a pained expression on his face, and when he took a step towards Lily he lurched in a way that was familiar to her, but she couldn’t figure out how. “I think you look lovely in the sweater. I like that you wear things your Nan knits and I don’t want to chat someone up. I don’t want to go anywhere in this stupid flat unless you’re there too.”
Lily felt herself lurch forward then, too, and she breathed in sharply as she realized that he’d been straining towards her and holding himself back just as much as she had. “You don’t want to go anywhere I’m not?” she said, her voice almost at a whisper.
“Don’t make me say it,” James said. He scrubbed a hand through his hair almost frantically.
“I think you have to say it,” she said. Her eyes flicked to his hands, the hollow of his throat, his lips, finally letting herself look at him while he was looking at her. “Because I’ve been driving myself mad thinking about you the past few weeks and cursing myself for missing my shot. And I tried to get over you so I could at least have the part of you that wants to be my friend instead of none of you at all, but it hasn’t been working, so yes, you need to say it out loud so I can stop-“
And he swallowed the rest of her words as he surged forward and kissed her, one hand at her waist and the other on the back of her neck, tangled in her hair. The sweater fell to the floor, all thoughts of it forgotten as Lily breathed him in, her hands finding his waist and then slipping under the hem of his shirt to rest against the skin of his back.
He hissed a bit then, pulling away and laughing breathlessly to say, “your hands are freezing.” Lily barely heard him because she was chasing his lips, folding herself into him as if she could tuck herself up under his ribcage and live there in his warmth forever. Kissing him was like walking along the river at midnight, exhilarating and wondrous and a bit unbelievable, this thing that made every part of her body feel so alive she could scream, and she did let out a little noise, barely more than a whine but even that made James kiss her deeper, dirtier, and lift her up onto the bathroom counter so he could mouth down the column of her neck.
“You never actually said anything,” Lily said, but her voice was bright and breathless with laughter.
James pulled back and looked up at her, the hazel in his eyes almost swallowed by his pupils. “I haven’t even been able to think of anyone else but you since you yelled at my in tutorial that first fucking day, and I like everything about you, so goddamn much.”
“Remember the night I stayed over at your flat?” Lily asked. James nodded. “I drank so much because I was trying to convince myself that you weren’t my type and that I didn’t fancy you at all.”
He laughed and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “The sight of you in my jumper made me mad,” he admitted. “I almost burnt breakfast.”
“I wouldn’t have minded,” she said, and pulled his lips back up to hers.
Lily wasn’t sure how long they spent together, that first night, only that there was a sense of expansiveness to it, like both of them knew this was something that was going to last a long time. And it did, of course it did, because he was the most exasperating and funny and kind boy she’d ever met, and because he thought she was the cleverest and wittiest and most generous person in the world, or at the very least the city of Dublin.
Not to mention that when she didn’t have to limit herself to three seconds, when she had all the time she wanted with one James Potter, there was a lot more to notice and a lot more to drive her mad.