Archive of Our Own ^beta

age 17

A flick of a lighter and Lily’s hands, face, glows, for a moment, from the inside out.

She’s smoking, straddling the windowsill. Head tilted back on the wall behind her, puffing out the smoke — a divine deity with her mouth of flame. The haze billows out the window.

James follows the line of her neck. How her shut eyes give her the look of something holy, something full of peace. How a nearby streetlamp casts one cheek aglow, the other a shadowed eclipse. She is one-half light, one-half dark, wobbling in that in-between grey area, the deep-rooted chasm between good and bad. Heaven and earth.

“My mum’ll kill you,” he says even though it isn’t true. His mother loves her and Sirius isn’t inconspicuous in his tendencies either. Remus often tells James he can’t keep a room silent longer than two minutes which he’s probably right about.

“Better yours than mine.”

“Yeah, why’s that?”

A moment or two passes. Grey, wispy clouds of smoke escape her mouth.

The subject change is quick, swift. He barely notices. Too busy lingering at the smile on her face — grim, deprecating, a shadowy quirk at the corners.

Head still tilted back on the wall, she heaves a sigh, looks to him finally, finally, then: “I’ve no fucking clue what I’m gonna do with my life.”

They’re so young still, he has to remind himself. In the times the canyon carved in his chest runs deeper than ever before, he has to tell himself that they’re not meant to know what to do with their lives.

This terrifying prospect of growing up isn’t supposed to be as terrifying as it is and yet there they both are, dread painting their faces as the night cloaks their shoulders.

“Me fucking neither.”

Her smile grows while she turns back to look out the window. “In this together then, I suppose.”

“Suppose so.”

Her eyes shut with a breeze. “Lovely.”

Perhaps that’s all they need then: to sit together in their uncertainty.

age 15

He’s gone one summer so she’s left alone to sit with her thoughts and solitude; forced to endure the sweltering heat, coating her skin like cement, all by herself.

She got her phone taken away for the holidays for calling Petunia a good-for-nothing bitch (no matter if she called Lily a worthless pile of shite first), and it’s hard enough making friends as it is, so Lily finds herself almost missing James. Sirius is barred to his room for the next month and it’s a bit awkward hanging around Peter and Remus without one of the latter boys to fill the spaces when she runs out of things to talk about.

It’s lucky for her then, Lily digs up an old landline telephone from her attic, so she spends those months with his voice in her ear, telling her all about the exact shade of blue the water is and how the warmth there is completely unlike the warmth back home. Lily listens, coiling the spiral cord around her finger until it makes a mark, trying not to think too hard when he asks her about her day. He’s nice like that, always wanting to know her, what she’s thinking. She doesn’t have to tell him he talks too much because he already knows.

She tells him she doesn’t have anything interesting to report on because it’s true. Their town grows deader by the minute, and unless he’d like to know about the new cafe that just opened that her sister applied to or the fact she’s been laying on the floor, flat on her back for weeks since the electric fan her dad brought in doesn’t reach her bed, then he’s probably better off doing the talking.

And anyway, she’s perfectly content with the soft, distorted rumble of his voice echoing back in her ears as she tries not to doze off.

“Lily!” His voice crackles against the speaker. She can see him almost, eyebrows raised in that way they do when he’s excited about something. Maybe laying flat on the sofa, a deep, jewel-toned color, the kind of blueish-green that brings out his eyes.

“Hi, James.”

“This was brilliant of you! A lot better than Dad’s idea of fucking letters, old codger.” She smiles. Can’t help it really. “Sorry your mum took your phone, by the way.”

She shrugs, then remembers he can’t see her. “Doesn’t matter. Got this, haven’t I?” She can practically hear his grin behind the receiver. “How’s Greece then?”

“Hotter than England.”

“Well, I’d think so.”

“They’ve got loads of cats here too you know, you’d love it. I tried sneaking one back to our house but Mum saw and made me give it back to the streets.”

She laughs. “I think it’d much prefer the streets of Greece than the streets of England.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right but I’ll try again tomorrow anyway.”

“Tell Sirius I saw a sculpture that looked just like him.”

“Did you now?”

“Mhm. Identical almost. Uncanny, really.”

“Did it actually look like him or was it just because it had a small dick?”

A beat of silence passes. A breeze hits the speaker and for nearly a moment she imagines she’s there with him, the setting sun warming their faces, not laying on the floor with a stuffed animal behind her head while the fan buzzes in the background.

“... both?”

“Mum’s taking us to another museum tomorrow but I honest to God think my feet are gonna fall off.”

“Honestly James –”

“Really this time! I can’t even feel them anymore. What if they really have fallen off? –”

“How many times –”

“– Oh God, Lily, I can’t even look, what if – what if they’re just gone? It’s supposed to hurt, right, if you don’t have feet anymore? Cause, they do hurt.” There’s a beat. “Bad.”

“Your feet aren’t going to fall off, James.”

“But what if they do.”

“They won’t.”

“But what –”

“That was mean of you.”

“Are you done now?”

“... alright, yeah, I suppose.”

He comes back with a tan, and she hardly notices his teasing for the shade of red on her shoulders or the sprinkle of freckles along her nose, too busy blinking against the glare of his beam made prominent by the bronze of his skin.

age 10

It’s raining. Which isn’t all that strange except for the fact that there are two boys throwing wads of mud at each other in the middle of her front garden.

Lily watches from her window, not recognizing either.

*

It gets lonely in this house of hers.

Petunia makes friends so easily that Lily often wonders what she’s doing wrong. Perhaps if she spoke more, ceased her perpetually sad face – the one she didn’t realize she had until watching back her father’s recording of the school play she was forced into; perhaps then she wouldn’t watch with this itching want as her classmates caper about the playground, shouts of glee and laughter escaping their mouths while she runs her hands through the sandbox.

The rays of light peeking through her curtains, dappling through the leaves of the trees outside her house, prevails a loyal companion. It slips through her fingers, dances across her skin in glimmering gold as she traces its speckled marks along the carpet. These hands of hers, grubby and small, hold something so fragile, so delicate, it’s a wonder it lingers as the hours pass on. She holds it like it’s hers, in the same way she wishes to be held, until a long-gone half-light by the time she’s called to dinner.

*

She can be outgoing when she wants to be, not that she often does.

The leaves’ colors lose their vibrancy and crunch, now dampened with rain and she wasn’t allowed outside without the fleece jacket now fitting her frame. Lily doesn’t mind the weather, the breeze is a welcome chill.

The trees shake in her wake as Lily rides through the neighborhood, her hand’s shaky grip clutching the bicycle levers — not afraid, only worried the wind might knock her over. Wisps of hair fall out of her ponytail, brushing her face tenderly.

Suddenly and without warning, she brakes. Each fingernail is painted a different color, a green plaster on her pointer finger.

One of the two boys she saw that rainy day is sitting on the pavement, ice cream cone in one hand, hunched over his knees squinting at the ground below him.

The squeak of her tires catches his attention. He looks up, pushing his glasses, a bit too large for his face, up.

“Hullo,” the boy says with a beam, several teeth missing.

Lily glances over her shoulder to be sure it is her he’s talking to, then slowly walks her bike nearer to him.

“What’s your name?” He doesn’t give her the chance to answer. “I’m James. I’ve never seen you before. You’ve got big hair though, so I think I’d remember. My friend, Pete – do you know Pete? – he lives in the house right beside mine so we’re always together all the time. We just got back from this ice cream place –” he licks his cone as if to prove his point, making his next words muffled, “ – my mum took us, but Pete had to go home cause his grandmum called him in for dinner – too bad you missed it. We can go next time if you’d like. Oh, did you say your name? Sorry, Mum says I need to work on my interrupting.”

His grin is blinding almost, a sunbath on a dreary day. And what a picture he makes: ice cream melting down the side of his hand, glasses crooked on his nose, bright red t-shirt matched with bright blue trainers.

“Your ice cream’s melting,” Lily finally says after he takes a pause long enough to catch his breath. She’s never met anyone who talks nearly as much.

The boy peeks down at his hand, sticky with vanilla and sprinkles. “Oops,” he says with a shrug, then Lily watches with a grimace as he licks it clean and wipes it on his trousers.

“D’you wanna try?” he asks, holding the cone out to her to which she quickly shakes her head at.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” James, eight years old and proud, observes with a tilted head.

Lily’s eyes narrow. She shakes her head.

“That’s alright. Pete doesn’t talk all that much either and Mum says I talk enough for the whole population of England.”

A breeze brushes their cheeks and, for a moment, the sun peeks out behind a cloud.

“I’m James, by the way,” he holds out his left, significantly less sticky, hand, and Lily doesn’t bother telling him he’d already said that.

She hesitates before clasping their hands together, replying, “I’m Lily.”

*

She sleeps in her bathtub. Not for any particular reason, just that it seems like the kind of thing you’re meant to do as a child.

Lily’s always been this way: unbearably aware of herself and her hands and her existence.

Some nights, she’ll eavesdrop on her parent’s room and hear her mother, sick with worry, going on about how far ahead Lily is compared to the other children at school. Her father tries assuring her it’s completely normal, and quite impressive in fact, maybe this means she’ll get into a good university when she’s old enough. Lily isn’t all too sure what ‘university’ is but it sounds boring so she goes to Petunia’s room to bother her.

Later, when Lily asks her about this ‘university’ thing, she’s told one thing with a roll of eyes: You have nothing to worry about. There’s plenty of time.

age 16

Her mother likes telling her how kind she once was. How despite it all, her smiles were often and laughter loud.

What happened to you? Lily knows is what she really wants to say.

*

The night catches up to her. Grabs her from behind, shushes her when she tries to scream. It engulfs her fully until she stares off in indifference.

(It’s like this: the sun is setting and you are chasing the barely-there light. Exhausted, breaths coming out in puffs, the sky is a kaleidoscope of colors.

And you are there: lost among the shifting shapes, the flitting hues. Shoes pounding pavement, the falls of your feet echo around you, the shadows recoiling with every step nearer.

You wonder then, are you chasing the sunset, or is it running from you?)

There’s a ledge, right outside her window, conveniently set so she can climb out to the roof. The sight isn’t as extraordinary as one may think, but if she squints, the fields far ahead look like oceans, encased in the dark. And occasionally, a bird will squawk or the trees will sway and if she shuts her eyes completely, she can imagine it is the sun beating down on her skin instead of the moon.

Only once the headlights of a car pass on the street below will she light a cigarette from the pack she keeps stashed away from her sister’s prying eyes. A rummage, a flick, a flare. This bit of rebellion, sitting here on the rooftop, cig in fingers unbeknownst to her watchful family, is a feat in and of itself and Lily will often save a smirk for herself for it.

And then, she will watch. Capture the scene in front of her, the last moments before the death of the day.

Time moves quicker as she grows older, Lily finds. It’s this awful thing she isn’t sure how to make sense of; she grapples it in a fist, shoves it under a microscope only to find it slipped through the cracks of her fingers, off for another game of cat and mouse.

And sometimes, she has to look in the mirror and remind herself that she’s a real, living, breathing human thing. That she’s more than the thoughts in her head or the little girl still somewhere hidden behind the glaze of her eyes.

She doesn’t tell any of these thoughts or worries or anxieties to James — or anyone else for that matter. It’s simple, really: she put on this tough, careless persona herself and God forbid she let anyone see through it.

*

When they were younger, back before life clutched at their throats and the clock really started ticking (the ‘free trial,’ as Lily likes to call it), they used to trace each other’s outlines with chalk.

The summer heat burning the pavement pierced through their clothes and yet they laid there, taking turns, patiently waiting despite the sweat dripping down their temples. Lily would complain about scraping her knuckles and James would complain about the god-awful sound.

Afterward, when their shirts were powdered and hands dusty, they’d admire their work. Marvel at the colors and designs.

It would rain a day or two afterward. Perhaps that was their first test before reality.

*

She came over without warning. It’s what they often do.

“You look like you’re baking rocks,” she says because he does. Lily rises from her crouch peeking into the oven in trade of looking at him with raised brows.

James grins. It’s inescapable, really. There’s a swoop somewhere in Lily’s chest she convinces herself is entirely irrelevant to the matter. “Edible rocks, mind. How great is that?”

There’s a faint burning smell perfuming the otherwise cinnamon-scented home. “Are you sure you’re not supposed to have already taken them out?” Lily asks, doubtful. “Where’s the box?”

“Threw it out.”

Her eyes narrow, staring at him blankly. “You’re taking the piss.”

James is swinging his legs atop the counter. What a twat. “I’m not.”

“How the fuck are you meant to make biscuits if you’ve thrown the box out?” She’s rummaging through the bin by now while James watches from the kitchen island, perfectly at ease.

“I’ve set a timer,” he claims, like that somehow dismisses the fact he’s already completely botched the batch.

He’s gonna burn down his house one day. Shame too, Lily’s quite fond of the place, with its potted plants and flowers hung all around and a distinct smell of Christmas no matter the time of year.

“Fine,” Lily relents. She peaks back into the oven. They really do look like rocks. “I think even Tuney’s made biscuits more appealing than these.”

He laughs loudly and she tames her smile, scrunching her nose and looking away. “Too bad she’s not here to try them.”

“Yeah, off with that boyfriend of hers.”

“I’m sure he’s a nice bloke.”

“He plays sudoku for fun.”

“Sirius used to be on a croquet team.”

Lily snorts. “I’d pay to see that.”

“Oh, I did. He was awful. Just – really, completely rotten. Felt a bit bad, honestly.”

The oven beeps loudly. The burnt smell is much more distinct now. James hops down easily while Lily follows behind closely, raising her brows pointedly.

*

His parents are dancing in the kitchen when James finds them. The stereo — because we’re old school James, isn’t that what the kids are saying nowadays? — plays an old sixties song. The kind he claims to hate but listens to on the lowest volume when the house is empty. He’d never hear the end of it otherwise.

It is at times like this that the fear is replaced by anticipation. To have what his parents have at their ages, to act as though they’re as young as when they first met, that is what replaces it all.

Sirius is sitting at the island eating cereal, watching with his temple on a fist, offering suggestions like a dip or a spin through mouthfuls.

They’re laughing, all three of them without noticing James in the doorway. He smiles as his dad dips his mum while Sirius cheers it all on.

He at least has this, James thinks. A home and a family, so what a clock above the sink?

*

The alleyway between the grocery and auto shop, with its awful deep darkness and a single runaway trolley turned on its side, has come to be a favorite place of theirs. The pale, titian glow from the nearest streetlamp only faintly silhouettes their forms seated on the grimy ground, backs against brick wall.

Lily is sat furthest from the light, James between her and Peter, while Remus and Sirius are on the wall opposite.

She observes the boys across from her as Remus tells a story to the boy beside him, voice low and soft; the kind of quiet he reserves just for Sirius. They don’t think anyone notices, and the other two probably don’t, but Lily catches how Sirius watches Remus almost hungrily, absorbing his words as if a necessity, lacking his own.

Sirius laughs loudly then; the one she’s grown accustomed to over the years; the kind he puts his whole body into as if jerking his head back will carry his joy through his bloodstream, out his mouth. Remus’ smile is small, stifled as he drinks from the beer they’ve been – perhaps subconsciously – sharing, tapping a beat on his knee. Lily looks away, the moment their own, not to be shared.

The other two have been off talking about God knows what. Something about football or classes, or, like, chocolate milk. It could be anything with them, really.

On occasion, James’ shoe will knock against her own. A reminder to himself that she’s still there; or perhaps for Lily, that he hasn’t forgotten about her. She doesn’t let herself think too hard for too long about it.

“– don’t you think, Lily?”

She glances at James. The jean jacket around his shoulders is faded and well-worn with a rip on the right sleeve he fidgets with when he thinks no one is looking. She thinks it might have been Remus’ once that Sirius probably never gave back and James stole straight from his wardrobe. “I’ll be honest,” Lily says, “I haven’t been listening since you started on about comics.”

James heaves a sigh, throwing his head back dramatically. “That was eight topics ago.”

“Been keeping count, have you?”

Peter takes a swig from his bottle, leaning across to catch Lily’s eye. “Nine, actually. He forgot about the giraffes.”

She smiles as James nudges Peter heartily. He’s so full of love, James. She wonders how it feels to be so filled, like a cup overflowing.

“Ah, right on, Pete!” He turns to her solemnly, “Thoughts on giraffes, Lily?”

She already knows how this one goes. “Don’t trust ‘em.”

“Naturally,” James chimes in at the same moment Peter interjects:

“Why are they so fucking long!”

Pete’s exclamation brings about another round of discussion between the two boys, James asserting that they really aren’t that bad while Peter holds firm in his distrust. Lily keeps quiet, perfectly content swishing the few drops of beer left around and watching the moon and the others.

(… and, alright, sometimes admiring how the light casts a glow on the sharpened edges of James’ profile.)

*

Lily sprawls herself across her bed, blasting music despite Petunia’s complaints. It’s nearly summer and the sun rests in the palm of the horizon for longer periods of time, regularly beaming through the sheer curtains framing her window.

She thinks about James. If you were to ask her aloud, she’d drone on about the irritable boy he is with his consistently mussed hair and ability to fill silences with the most outrageous of topics. But then, there are times like these that she ruminates far too long and begins losing herself in the shape of his grin and the crease around his eyes when he laughs and how carelessly he nudges the bridge of his glasses with his knuckle when talking to her.

In class, the other day, the two of them played three rounds of tic-tac-toe under their desks until McGonagall caught on and confiscated the scrap of paper. Two nights ago, he called her house phone like an idiot so she was forced into sitting uncomfortably on the ground of the foyer as he lamented on about being kicked out of Peter’s basement because he was apparently “cheating” in whatever video game it is that they’d been playing.

(“And were you cheating?” / “‘Course I was! But that’s beside the point …”)

There’s only so long until school’s out and then it’s summer and then school again and then they’ll be thrust out into the real, adult world with its taxes and shitty politicians and awful landlords. When she thinks about leaving this town and her parents and the boys, an odd feeling takes shape in her throat; something she wishes to carve out with a dull knife until the only proof of such thought is but a hole one can peek through if brave enough to bear the ugliness.

Perhaps then she could breathe easier and would quit catching Remus shooting James an unbearably pointed look when she’s near.

Lily groans, thrusting her palms over her eyes until she’s seeing fireworks. Call it teenage angst but everything does seem so very hopeless.

Her door rattles suddenly. A pounding on the white-splintered wood, followed by a vague round of muffled words and expletives from a voice that sounds eerily like Petunia. The song playing is some old seventies tune, long and almost boring and kind of awful; the kind her father loves and sister hates. At that thought, Lily turns the volume knob until her thoughts are delicately smothered.

(It’s still there. The lingering fear, the thought of him. She cradles both in her palm; perhaps if she cares for them enough, they’ll show pity, relent with raised arms and leave her be.)

*

They ride their bikes out to the orchard near Lily’s house. It’s late July and the heat sits heavy on her shoulders, a weight that sags like searing cement. Her head rests on Remus’ stomach, James’ on her legs; the three of them fitted together like a game of Tetris. Their bicycles are thrown off in a heap beneath the largest of peach trees enveloping them in a scent of sour sweetness.

“I’m just saying,” Sirius, reclining back on his elbows, speaks through a mouthful of peach, “if you really liked me you’d share your summer reading with me.”

“But I don’t like you.”

From beneath her, Remus snorts.

Sirius waves a hand impassively, “Semantics. And, really, you should be expressing your deep, immeasurable pride in me, trying to do schoolwork in July, as I am. A real go-getter, me.”

Lily blows a breath, “Said nobody ever.”

A gasp. “Is that –? Are you calling me a disappointment, Evans?” Remus groans (‘here we go’). “A failure, as some may say? Wow.” Sirius scoffs, crestfallen. “Wow. Stooping to the same level as old mummy dearest. And here I thought we were friends, Evans. Pals, almost!”

Peter is in stitches by now, nearly choking on a peach of his own while James smacks Sirius’ shin since it’s ‘not something to joke about, you idiot’ even though she can tell from the shape of his words he’s grinning too.

“And here I was, thinking you were different. Didn’t you, Moony? All women are the same, I suppose.”

“Oh, piss off.”

Sirius gasps dramatically. “That old hag said the same! –”

Nimbly avoiding jostling James whose eyes are shut with a smile, Lily sighs heavily, rising from her position on the ground and walking out toward the plethora of trees. “I’m off for more peaches since you’re being a shit,” she says the last bit pointedly. Peter laughs louder as Sirius continues shouting. Remus covers his face with an arm, whether to block out the sound or the sun, she’s not sure.

“– Honestly Evans, if you’ve been off having tea with her or something all you’ve got to do is tell me –!”

Lily flicks him off over her shoulder.

Several hours later, when the sun is at that point in the sky where everything is painted golden, the boys are taking turns giving her piggyback rides after James proclaimed to give the best ones. It’s stupid and childish but is also the most fun Lily’s had in a while, shrieking with laughter as Sirius bolts through the narrowest paths of trees or Remus bounds around sharp turns or James pretends to drop her to give her a rush.

The thrill of James’ hands nestled in the space behind her knees goes strongly ignored in favor of clutching his arms and squeezing her eyes shut, embracing the feel of wind wafting through her hair and sun beating down on her face. His hair tickles her cheeks when she rests her chin on his shoulder.

These are the kind of simple joys she’s regularly seeking. Drunk, on sun or peaches or him, she’s not sure which.

“What happened with that bloke anyway?”

They’re talking about her sister’s boyfriend. “He’s still around. Just always stealing her away.”

James catches her eye. He has a sunburn around his cheeks and on his nose and when she stares too long, she has to resist the urge to press lightly and see how the color fades and reappears just as quickly. The light is still golden and, between her and her alone, with the backdrop of viridescent greenery, she thinks James has the look of some Greek god.

Peter’s head is resting in her lap, eyes closed, chewing on another peach. “She’s a bit scary, your sister.”

“A bit, yeah. And you’re gonna be sick if you keep at these,” Lily replies kindly, snatching the fruit from his hand and tossing it to the side.

“Has she decided if she’s still going to uni, Lily?” Remus asks above Peter’s protests, lounging on his hands while Sirius sprawls himself across his legs. They’re disgustingly endearing and she still hasn’t gotten around to asking Remus about this situation of theirs.

“‘Course she is. Little Miss Perfect, her,” she can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. They had another fight just last night; Lily stormed out of the house, cried on some stranger’s doorstep, then laid in James’ front garden until he came to join her. “Probably moving in with that boyfriend of hers too.”

“Bloody hell. Do not want to imagine what getting it on with him looks like.”

The gasps are choking and simultaneous.

“Sirius!” Both James and Remus scold between shocked bits of laughter while Peter pretends to retch off on the side.

Lily’s mouth is hung wide open, laughing but not. What an idiot. She’s mates with a proper fucking idiot. “You’re vile!”

“It’s true! He’s like if a beetle had two legs and could stand and was also named Vernon.”

Their laughter grows louder. You couldn’t hear the chirp of birds or the sway of leaves if you tried.

“You’re a right twat, did you know?” Lily says once she’s sobered up.

Sirius lobs his half-eaten peach her way. Lily shrieks, narrowly dodges it, then lobs a rotten one beside her right back.

*

There’s an obliviousness to childhood. You didn’t know you were growing up until you’re sixteen, sitting at the window watching your sister climb into a boy’s car, then never come back.

age 17

Sitting on the bathroom counter, feet in the sink, Lily cuts her hair with the kitchen scissors. It’s choppy at most but the fringe frames her face nicely, strands thin enough she can brush them back if she really grows to hate it.

The door to her bedroom is cracked open, the deep, husky voice of Stevie Nicks drifting through the empty house and hallways, up the pipes, down to her ears. The music plays softly; she’s made sure to keep the volume knob below a certain decibel lately.

“Oh, you look awful.”

Lily stares blankly, then pushes past through the door. “Sirius,” she greets. Twat, she thinks. He’s one to talk, unironically wearing a belt with ‘sex’ embroidered in the leather as he does.

“Really! What happened to you? Did you do that to yourself?”

He’s quick on her heels as she climbs up the stairs to James’ room. “Yes.”

“On purpose?”

Lily huffs, storming through James’ door. “Is it really awful?” she blurts.

James, lounging lazily on his bed, blinks up from the book in his hand. “Oh.”

“Fucks sake,” Lily groans.

It’d been a good idea in hindsight but now, out in the daylight, the fringe is a lot messier than the artificial lighting of her bathroom made it out to be. It’s sticking to her forehead too, after riding her bike out from her house to his.

“No! No, not bad ‘oh.’ Just – you look great.”

She glares. “You’re a shit liar.”

“I’m not!” He sits upright now, setting his book to the side. “It looks lovely. Frames your face nicely.”

Sirius, leaning against the doorway, “Well, I think it looks shit.”

“Would you piss off?”

He backs away slowly, hands in the air. “Really bad,” the rotten boy whispers as he goes. Lily’s almost positive he’s wearing that ridiculous belt too.

“Ignore him, he’s just saying that ‘cause of the partner thing.” (It isn’t even like it’s her fault; their teacher assigned partners randomly. She’s just lucky she got James and not that Mulciber kid like Sirius did.) “But, er – no, yeah,” James pushes up the bridge of his glasses, “I like it. You look very pretty.”

Lily isn’t quite sure what to do with this. James has always been nice. It’s rooted in his bloodstream, this stubborn, unrelenting kindness that seeps out of him at every corner; but those words, paired along with the way he’s looking at her, in a way he never has before…

…Maybe it’s the lighting.

His cup of kindness could just be overflowing again — that, or the hair really is awful.

The quiet has gone on far too long. She swallows and nods awkwardly to the discarded book beside him. “Didn’t know you read.”

“Where’d you think my good grades came from?”

She shrugs. “Copied from Remus or something.”

His eyes dart across her face and it’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing. “Only sometimes.”

*

Oh dear God. He’s hopeless.

*

Here’s the thing: he doesn’t want to kiss her. He doesn’t. But sometimes they’re sitting there, just the two of them, and everything goes quiet and there’s something small like an urge. But it’s only because it’s a certain silence he isn’t sure how to fill so, obviously, his mind jumps to all these crazy ideas. It’s stupid, really. Completely, utterly dumb.

He really, really, doesn’t want to kiss her. Swears on it.

*

Sometimes Lily gets so restless she doesn’t really know what to do with herself. On the nights everything feels a bit more hopeless than usual, like time will grab at her throat and squeeze until her vision’s gone blurry, she’ll take her mind off it with a smoke or a drink or a party.

The latter has become far more frequent lately.

Sometimes, the boys will join her. Other times, she’ll go on a whim, downing shots with anyone that challenges her, and dancing on unsteady tables when she’s intoxicated enough, and kissing boys with names she won’t remember by the time she gets home.

A girl from her maths class, Marlene, with hair so blonde it’s almost blinding and a wicked grin alike to the devil, has come to be an almost friend, regularly accompanying her to such gatherings. She has a pair of colorful, too-big sunglasses for every occasion and keeps a cigarette behind her ear for safekeeping.

Now, Marlene flicks her bright blue lighter, nails chipped. “So, tell me,” she blows a breath of pungent smoke out the open window, “who’s that boy you’re always with? The one with the glasses.”

They’re in the bathroom, haze-filled, air so thick it’s hard to think straight – though that could just be the weed. The window above the toilet intromits a kind of greenish light, neon pulsing along tile; music muffled behind closed doors, behind insect buzz.

“That’s James,” Lily replies.

“Boyfriend?”

“God, no.”

“No?”

A shake of her head.

“Shame.” Lily blinks. “For you, I mean.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Just – you know. You fancy him, don’t you?”

She says it like the most obvious of things. Like it’s something everyone just knows. “You know,” Marlene continues plainly. “LilyandJames. JamesandLily. Fits well together.”

Lily chokes out a laugh. “No. It’s – it’s nothing like that.” (LilyandJames. JamesandLily.)

Marlene stares doubtful, then shrugs, offering Lily another drag.

LilyandJames. JamesandLily.

*

“Found you.”

The sun still hasn’t set, dappling through the tree branches in colors of orange and yellow and pink. It filters through her fingers, sifts along the strands of James’ hair as she peers up at him from on her back. She’s in her neighbor’s front garden because there’s a short brick wall that blocks the dining room window from where her parents could see her smoking, and also because the trees provide more shade here.

Lily, sitting up crisscrossed, puts out her cigarette on the grass tickling her legs as he lowers himself beside her.

Here’s the thing: she’s been avoiding him.

Here’s the thing: it’s getting harder to stop thinking about him.

Here’s the thing: these things go two-in-two.

“Where’ve you been?” James asks, casual. He’s wearing that jean jacket again, the one with the rip in the collar and sleeve.

She looks at him, then promptly looks away, fiddling with the stubbed ashes between them. “I’m right here.”

James watches her. She’s always off, doing all these crazy things, all these things that he notices but wouldn’t change because she’s her. And he’s fine with it, really, as long as she doesn’t go completely dark on him.

“Right, well,” he says, tapping a beat on his raised knees, “Sirius says he misses you. You don’t come ‘round nearly enough anymore.” I miss you. Where’d you go?

Lily laughs, scratching her nose. Her hair falls across her shoulders in loose, delicate waves, brushing her sun-kissed shoulders. “‘Miss you’ isn’t in Sirius’ vocabulary.”

It’s in mine. I miss you, I miss you. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Something with Marlene, I think. You can join if you’d like.”

The moment fizzles out between them. Quiet, and simple, and easy. It usually is with Lily. Her eyes flutter with a breeze, hair flying, the floral scent that is her drifting past him.

“You know,” she begins, “Marlene said the strangest thing a bit ago.”

“What’s that?”

“She thought we were together.” Her gaze flickers to him. His breath whooshes out of him. “Like, together together.”

James forces a chuckle. “What made her say that?”

“No clue.” Her lips draw upward, that sunshine smile, in remembrance, adding, “She was a bit stoned, mind. Said your glasses make you look like a teddy bear too.”

This time he really laughs. “What teddy bear does she know with glasses?”

Lily grins. “I don’t know, you already look like one without them.” She looks at him fully. He swallows. “Sort of.”

“Ah, yeah, cheers.” He nods like he understands, furrowed brows overtaken by his grin, shaking his head like she’s crazy. “What’s that even mean?”

She’s laughing again and he could never tire of this sound. “I don’t know,” she sputters, hugging her legs, grinning. (He is too.)

A breeze, a moment; the chatter of birds, a second. She lays her head on his shoulder then with a small sigh, barely perceptible.

Lily is softness masked in armor. She is strawberries and sun-baked declarations, a tempting concoction of fresh and piquant. Tangerine sweetness, tangerine sourness.

“Well,” James declares, breaking the quiet like he does, “if you were a soft toy you’d be a fucking–“ he tries to think, “-penguin,” – Lily bursts into laughter –, “I don’t know.”

“I quite like that, actually.” He can hear the smile in her voice, coiling her words by a delicate string of gold, in the same way a mime may pull at his lips.

“Yeah, you would.” He scoffs. “A teddy bear. Not even a fucking raccoon or something.”

“You’d rather be a raccoon?”

“Well. No, actually, but a choice in the matter would’ve been nice.”

Her hair smells like flowers, so close to his neck. A butterfly, golden in its wings, dances by, flitting past Lily’s reaching fingers, a ring on her index. He can feel her laughter in his chest and imagines what it’d be like to swallow it whole, for her joy to become his. How it would taste. Tangerine sweet, tangerine sour.

They watch the sunset together like romantics or something.

And afterward, when they’re racing each other on her bike, he swerving recklessly so she can lose her footing and fall behind (‘You’re a cheat!’ / ‘Alright, slug!’), she remembers why exactly she can’t avoid James, no matter how much she convinces herself she’d like to. And it’s not all that complicated either: He simply finds her, always.

*

It’s during exams that he remembers.

Sometimes he wishes he could curl up in a ball beneath his bed like he did when he was a kid and the world got too loud. He’d stay there for hours, toying with whatever trinkets he hadn’t realized he’d lost until then; only coming out when his mum bribed him or did so by force.

The world’s not so loud anymore, only overwhelming, which James supposes is the same thing. There are so many things he wants to do — talk Sirius’ ear off until he’s kicked out of his room, poke fun at Remus for his shit taste at the record shop, bake a cake, help sort through paperwork with his dad, dance under the streetlamps with Lily, sneak the vodka out of the cupboard his parents don’t think he knows about, play bad at chess with Peter, hug his mum —, what happens when time, in all its entirety, runs out?

This fear follows him like a dog to its owner or a moth to a flame. It lingers in the days and swallows him whole in the nights; the need for control sagging with his shoulders.

He’s seventeen, still so young. James knows this. His mother has told him so so many times before. And yet it’s urgent this – this earth-shattering, very real thing.

The future closes its fist around him; Think, it says. Think, and think, and think some more. Think until you’re sick of it; until you’re sick with fear and dread and longing. You’ll never get what you want. Think about it.

The fist squeezes, smothers him fully until he relents; until he’s small and naive and hopeful for good — just a boy again. That’s all he is anyway.

*

Perched on the windowsill, James sits beside her. They’re sharing the last cigarette in her stashed pack even though he doesn’t smoke. Truthfully, she doesn’t like the taste well either but does it anyway. It seems a fitting thing for her, something she’s done long enough that the flavor sits in her mouth less heavy. And maybe it’s not the taste that entices her, but the defiance, the ritual. The exhale that follows the inhale. This accustom, positive in its way of doing, of what will occur because she’s done it so many times before.

An inhale, an exhale.

Lily quietly watches as James takes a long drag, tilts his head back, allowing the haze to slip out his lips slowly, steadily. This is the kind of thing that usually happens. Time slows when James is near. The fumes dance along their cheeks, then ripple out into the night. The moon is his limelight, cloaking him in a beam of radiance like some kind of god.

He chokes then, a cough straight from his chest. Lily smiles. He isn’t nearly as suave as he thinks he is.

Their silence broken, Lily nudges James with a laugh. “I’ve got something to show you,” she says, already slipping onto the ledge just a spring away.

“You’re not leading me to my death, are you?” she hears him call back from behind her.

“Let’s hope not.”

Together, they climb onto the roof, treading along the slanted tile until finding their footing. She lets him sit closest to the chimney, carefully leaning back on her hands. There’s thunder in the distance, lightning flaring the night if she looks far enough while the air sits heavy, sticking to her skin.

Lily thinks back to the first time he came over to her house, leafing through her books and admiring the photographs delicately hung around her room. It’d been an accident, caught in an outpour that made their hair cling to their foreheads and run halfway across town for familiar shelter. They’d talked a while then, Lily reclined on her bed while James flopped on the window seat, observing the scene outside — the lash of rain, shaking leaves.

“This is it,” Lily says once they’ve settled, playing with the chipped polish on her nails. Blue.

James gazes out to the street and the fields beyond. His hair, dark and messy, a bit frizzy from the humidity, curls under his ears. “So this is where all your best thinking happens, then?”

“Sometimes. No one – no one knows about it, really.”

His gaze flickers to her. “Just me?”

She avoids his eye, licks her lips. “Just you.”

“What do you usually do? Out here.”

Lily shrugs helplessly, looking at him (helpless, once more). “Think?”

He chuckles. He’s quieter tonight, unusual for him.

“About, y’know,” she continues, breathing deeply, casual, “time. Growing up. Real boring stuff.”

(A voice purrs low in her ear: There’s nothing you can do, little one.

You can take the batteries out of the clock, force your blinds closed so as not to see the setting sun or rising moon, but time keeps its ticking. The earth continues its orbit. The world will move on with or without you. What will you do with that?

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.)

*

Their results come back over the summer and James holds her hair back while Lily retches what little is left in her stomach into the toilet bowl the morning after.

She didn’t even do that bad — great actually, near top of the class. And yet, it all feels to be moving too quickly for her taste. There is so much she wants to do, so many lives she wants to live, and instead, she is biting her tongue when her mother tells her she needs to get it together and swallowing tightly when some distant family member asks what she’ll be studying in university.

It’s uncomplicated with James. She told him so last night.

The music pulsed through her veins like a drug, purple and blue and red streaking through the darkness, illuminating the forms of shifting bodies. The party had been Marlene’s idea, as most bad ideas are, teeming with plastic cups and poor beer and badly-rolled joints, the air thick and stale.

She had dragged James who had dragged Sirius who dragged Remus and Peter because that’s the way of things when it comes to them. And it was all fun for a bit, James and Lily effortlessly beating Pete and Marlene in a game of beer pong, how their hands clasped fittingly in a high-five, how his grin lit her up to her core. She stuck to him most of the night and she isn’t even sure why; maybe because everything is becoming so real now her body forces her to cling to something familiar.

They competed seeing who could tame their faces best downing straight vodka. When Lily conceded, procuring her worst, she felt his laugh to her toes, sharper than the taste on her tongue. Marlene and she danced on tables, drunk out of their minds, trying to get anyone close enough (James) to hop on with them through their wildly seductive rope movements until they toppled off in their inebriation. James caught her, of course he did.

She walked in on Remus and Sirius at one point too, eyes-wide, backing out trying (and failing) to suppress her grin. James wasn’t there then and she refused to tell him when he asked what had her grinning so hard, but he looked at her long and hard and shook his head with a laugh, relenting.

Sat in the back garden, playing with the strands of grass poking at their legs, a bit drunk out of their minds he says: “I’ve thought about it and – and if you were a – a fucking soft toy, y’know… you’d be a lion. Or something.”

“Would I?”

“Yeah. Real brave, and – and fierce, y’know? Big hair too.”

Lily laughs. “My hair’s not big,” she says indignantly.

“Right, well, it’s orange.” He pauses. “Are lions orange?” He squints like that would help him remember.

“My hair’s not orange, either, twat.”

“Isn’t it?”

She slaps his arm and he cradles it with a grin. “Idiot.”

“Lily,” he utters quietly after a while. Their arms are touching. They’re watching the trees, how they sway with the breeze, the melody of the leaves.

“Yes?”

“Do you ever think about… like, what it’s gonna be like next year? You, me, the whole world.” Lily swats a mosquito away. “Do you think there’ll be flying cars next year?”

Lily glances at him to see if he’s serious, then collapses into laughter. “I don’t think so, James.”

“No? Oh. Well – yeah, anyway, do you think about that stuff?”

He’s looking at her so softly, so earnestly, like he’s trying to memorize her until she’s printed behind his eyelids. “All the time,” she admits.

“Yeah?”

Lily nods.

“Shall we make a pact, or something, then? That we’ll still be around, you and I. Next year or – fucking – ten years from now?”

She turns to face him fully, dimly thinking how sentimental and honest James gets when he’s drunk, how it spills from him like gold-splattered liquid. Compassion bleeds from him, oozes in his words and actions. There’s never been a day where he isn’t kind or gentle but it never ceases to surprise her when it’s aimed toward her — that is to say, always.

“I promise, James.”

He holds out his pinky. “Pinky swear?”

She smiles, connects their fingers. “Pinky swear.”

Another long moment, staring at each other. His hair is curling under his ears again, big and messy, falling across his forehead. The light is faint, illuminating him in muted gold. Golden boy.

“Lily?” he says again, even quieter. They’re so close, fingers still connected.

Her eyes trail down to his lips. “Yeah?”

There’s a muffled crash from inside the house, followed by a shriek of laughter that sounds eerily like Marlene’s.

“You’re my – my, er, favorite. I think.” He isn’t finished, words stilted and brows furrowed like he isn’t sure himself the words coming out of his mouth. His eyes dance across her features. “And I also think you’re just – really lovely.”

Lily isn’t sure what to say. It seems she never is. His words thrum in her veins and her stomach is doing flips, and is it her that’s drifting closer or him? He smells like summer.

The back door opens suddenly and he is illuminated even fuller than before.

They jump apart.

“Right, I – I think – we should,” she points her thumb back to the booming house. Dim laughter reverberates across the garden.

“Right, yeah,” James shakes his head. “Yeah. I don’t know why – sorry. I’m – sorry.”

Sorry for what? Do it again. Do it again.

“I’ll be right there,” Lily says smiling kindly as he walks back, unable to process it all.

When she comes back in, minutes, maybe hours later, he’s sitting in the kitchen with Sirius, talking to a beautiful girl, her hand on his arm.

When she comes back in, she takes two more shots and kisses the nearest boy.

Now, he holds her hair back from slipping into the toilet bowl. If she so much as moves, Lily worries her head will split right down the middle. Perhaps then, she thinks dimly, I’ll forget it all.

James hasn’t brought it up, the near – the almost. She can’t bring herself to say it, can’t bear to think about it long enough it becomes another idea in the long list in her head she’s forced to sort through.

“Sorry for hogging the bowl,” she mutters, voice cracked, head on the arm resting on the white porcelain. A welcomed chill.

“S’alright.” The hand not holding her hair rubs soothing circles along her back. She hates how kind he is, even like this — flopped on the floor, his head resting in the crook of his elbow to block out the sun. He got up when he heard her heaving in the bathroom down the hall and refused to go back to sleep. “Won’t need it for another hour at least.”

She hums weakly. She hopes, for the sake of himself, for the sake of conserving his heart, he’s forgotten.

*

He’s not sure what he thinks about, only that he does.

*

They paint his room blue.

Icy tears fall from the sky in heaps, floating softly to the ground in delicate drops. It had taken only minutes for the Near-Almost months ago to be forgotten. He brought it up, awkwardly, slowly, and she brushed it off just as quick. They were drunk. A complete accident. Weren’t thinking straight.

He sometimes wonders how he can still remember it in such clarity (the brilliance of her eyes; her smile, more luminous than the moon) if they were as drunk as she says.

James considers this often, then comes to the conclusion that, to put it kindly: Lily simply doesn’t think about him in the way that he thinks about her.

This thought hits James right in the ribcage, but then he remembers he’d rather have Lily’s presence as a friend than not at all.

Even still, this fact doesn’t change the other fact that he still makes a fool of himself whenever she’s around. Sirius thinks it’s pathetic but then James points out how he looks at Remus and earns a slap across the head. And it isn’t even like he’s trying, it’s just that when Lily is near, his head fogs and then he’s saying the first thing that comes to mind like how in certain lighting Sirius sometimes looks like a crow or that he doesn’t even really like salt and vinegar chips, and only gets them to see how bothered Remus gets just to hear her laugh once more.

But for now, at this moment, they paint his room blue.

Music blasts from the stereo Lily helped him haul upstairs and he can’t tell if it’s the song or her that makes him feel all all-encompassing.

Paint splattered shoes and clothes and hands, he holds his hand out for her to take with all the chivalry he can muster (which she rolls her eyes at, then takes his hand anyway.).

Then, he swings her around like it’s what their bodies were meant to do, and for a moment – for a moment – he lets himself imagine (these arms of mine / they are yearning / yearning from wanting you). And then she is laughing, all unrestrained, and she is pulling away because he’s a ‘sap’ and it starts all over again.

It’d been her idea, painting his room. She had overheard his mum telling him how dull his room was and suggested painting it because ‘The walls really are quite ugly, aren’t they?’ Euphemia thought it a splendid idea and went off to buy the paint herself.

He thinks about how there’s another world, in a universe a far distance from their own where they aren’t painting his room like this — full of teasing remarks and laughter and smokescreen love — and is overcome with inordinate gratitude. The kind that fills him completely so that when he looks at her when she’s handing him the paintbrush, the enormity of the world and all its greatness reflects in her eyes.

When they finish, admiring their work and not shivering despite the open window releasing the fumes and bringing in the chill, they dip their hands in the pail. It’d only been one wall they painted, so together they stamp their smudged handprints on the wall, still white, nearest to his bed.

That was his idea. Maybe he is the sap.

She’d always thought so but today confirms it. James is blue. He is summertime and too-sweet lollies, cupcakes with sprinkles. He is love tightly bottled.

They’re in Sirius’ room now, playing the shitty music he likes while Remus tries to help her study and Peter begs someone to bear the storm with him so he can buy chocolate milk at the shop.

“Right then, where are your shoes?” James gives in because of course he does. Love tightly bottled. “Good God – sound like my mum, don’t I?”

“You sound like a fucking killjoy, you do,” Sirius reproaches. “Pete, get back here we weren’t done! I’ve said I want strawberry –!”

James pulls his jacket on, hands still a tainted blue.

She glances at him and it feels like a punch in the throat. Look at you. Look at you. You’re blue.

*

She thinks about him in the same way she thinks about time and death and growing up. Ceaselessly. Hopelessly.

age 18

She calls him from a payphone, shivering against the coat around her shoulders. It was a good idea in hindsight, but she’s left without a ride home now, and only the faint smell of cigarettes and cologne line her senses.

“Lily?” His voice is rough with sleep, low and deep.

“Yeah, it’s me, sorry.” A puff of white frosty air drifts out her mouth. She hesitates a blink of a second, “Could you – pick me up? Sorry.”

There’s rustling on the other side and a car passes, the headlights blinding before darkness encompasses the street once again. “Yeah – yeah, of course. Where are you?”

Her eyes shut, relief feels funny on her form. She knew he would come — of course he would — but there was a lingering hesitance, doubt, she couldn’t shake. It was late after all.

(Lily knows she isn’t good all the way through like James is. Sometimes, she wonders when he’ll give up on her.)

Lily’s eyes drift to the empty shops, their signs flipped, lights off. It’s a near ghost town here, utterly silent, utterly empty. Wholly unlike the pulsing lights and pulsing music of the party she just left. She thinks about pulling the jacket tighter around her as an icy breeze passes but refrains.

“Over on main street,” she tells him. There’s a faint dinging sound in the background followed by what sounds like the starting of a car. “By the only phone box in town.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Don’t rush,” she says quickly. “Nothing happened, I just need a ride.”

“What’s the bet? Under two minutes?”

Lily rolls her eyes, warmth in her chest. “Get off the phone, you’re driving.”

He finds her sitting on the curb, arms on her knees, head on her arms. For a moment, he worries the worst until she blinks up at him, squinting against the headlights shining right on her folded form.

“Took you long enough,” she mumbles as he sits beside her. It wasn’t all that long really, five minutes at most, but it felt like the right thing to say. Her head falls to his shoulder. “M’freezing my tits off.”

“You’re the one calling me up at two in the morning.” She huffs and he smiles. “Why’re you out so late?”

Her eyes are shut again. “Party.”

James hums. She does this a lot, he notices. Stays out late, off doing God knows what, then calls for him to pick her up. It’d be irritating if it weren’t her. She’s his weakness in that way.

He matches her succinct sentences. “Fun?”

“Been to better.”

He nods, watching the stars winking against their backdrop. Clears his throat. Plays it off as casual. “Who’s coat is that?”

The red speck of a plane blinks across the sky. Lily shrugs. “Just some guy I’m seeing.” (Or saw. A one-time thing.)

James doesn’t prod further and she doesn’t tell him what she’s thinking.

(She isn’t a yearning girl but the idea of being wanted, even if only for a certain length of time, isn’t so bad a prospect, is it?)

*

Sirius gets detention for punching a boy in the face after he boasts loudly to his friends about what he got down to at a party last Friday. Lily’s face doesn’t heat because of the boy’s self-praise, but because she can feel James’ eyes poking through the back of her head, cutting straight through like a knife, like he’s trying to figure her out.

She hears the whispers in the halls and the fact of the matter is that she didn’t hook up with him because she liked him, but because he showed interest, and sometimes the loneliness comes back in patches. Sometimes it squeezes her ribs so tight she wonders if she’ll ever breathe again.

Later in the day, when a different boy has the guts to call Lily a whore right to her face, Remus punches him and gets detention too. Lily and the other two join them after school and she teases that she’s never known she was around such violent boys until Marlene skids in, hair wild, grin blazing saying she’s distracted the school enough to have forgotten about this whole thing.

Lily is suddenly overcome with such love and admiration for her friends that she feels like she’ll be crushed by it completely.

*

It isn’t until her birthday that Lily remembers multiple things at once.

The cake is a bit lopsided and her cheeks are cupped in her hands aching with a grin as they sing happy birthday noisily and painfully off-tune. Marlene and Peter have their arms around each other, swaying dangerously while James blows a party horn, utterly obnoxious, and they’re all wearing too-small party hats with a string that pokes into their chins. She would bottle this moment forever if she could.

Lily scrunches her nose at a particularly grating attempt at harmony. And it’s when she catches James’ eye and the candlelight reflects so brightly, so gloriously in them that she remembers: Oh dear, it’s you and Oh dear, I’m all grown up.

*

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

“Do you?”

Lily, hopping down the stairs, shoulder bag poking at her thigh, plops down on the sofa beside James. They’re in Pete’s basement with its mismatched furniture only grandmother’s seem to have, rugs of red and armchairs of orange clashing powerfully, and a glittering disco ball dangling from the ceiling, casting James in a luminous, kaleidoscope glow.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she declares, crossing one leg up onto the cushion. She’s wearing a blue knitted jumper that used to be her dad’s, paired along with tights and an old skirt she found in Petunia’s wardrobe. (Sirius, upstairs, asked who she was dressing to impress so she pushed him off the counter he was perched on.)

James lounges against the armrest, the condensation of his canned soda dripping down his hand. A song plays on the stereo in the far corner of the room — euphonic, smooth, golden-blue. A bang from the floor above where Peter and Sirius are waiting for Remus and Marlene to arrive.

“I have not,” James says.

“No?”

He takes a sip of his soda, shakes his head. There’s a twitch at the corner of his lips he doesn’t think she notices.

“Really?” Lily, voice low, leans closer, nearly loses her breath halfway there. “Where’s my tenner?”

His eyes dart to hers with a glint and this time she really does lose her breath.

Then: “Oh, what’s that?” James straightens, nearly knocking their noses together. It isn’t that she’s caught off-guard, but Lily sits up just as quickly. “Pete – Pete is that you calling me? Right. Yeah,” he makes a noise like what can you do, tapping his thighs before hoisting himself up, “sounds like Pete needs me. I’ll be off then –”

Lily makes a grab for his sleeve, pulling his crouching form back down to the sofa, “No – no, you’re staying.” She says this through grunts, tugging his arm until he gives in. “The bet was your idea, twat.”

“Right. Well. That was before I knew you’d walked in on them months ago.”

Lily smiles cockily, “A bet’s a bet.”

James looks at her fixedly, then groans. Quietly, just for herself, Lily admires the tilt of his throat as he glares at the ceiling before looking back at her. She smiles again, all innocent-like.

“Fuck. Alright, alright, pesterer.” He pulls his wallet from his back pocket begrudgingly, handing her the betted money with all the air of it being all he has left. As if he isn’t filthy rich, the tosser.

“I’ll take that, thank you,” Lily plucks the note straight from his fingers, admiring her riches against the light. The song changes, slower, a beat more distinct, purple now.

Lowering the money so it’s no longer obscuring her view, Lily startles to find James staring right at her. His head rests against the back of the sofa, tilted toward her. There’s a glare against his glasses, but a hint of a smile — soft and hardly there — graces his lips. He is all dark curls, spiraling beneath his ears, checkered flannel, and tattered converse. A dusty pink drifts, prismatic, around the room. He is rose-colored lovely.

“What?” she asks with a half-chuckle, brows crinkled. Don’t do that, she thinks. Don’t look at me like that. Not if you don’t mean it. Please don’t please don’t.

“Did you do something different with your hair?”

On instinct, Lily raises her hand to her hair. It’s tied up messily with a navy blue ribbon, flyaways framing her face.

“Never seen a girl with her hair pulled up, have you?”

James gives her a look. “It looks different with your haircut, is all.”

The thing is this: Lily has a problem. And the problem is this: Lily fancies James. The other issue is that she’s not quite sure what to do with that.

She’s liked boys before, of course, but James is her constant in this world — the mantle holding the timepiece, the tick in the clicking of the dial — and Lily doesn’t want to find out what happens when you disrupt a steadiness. The sureness that comes with James could crumble like brittle in her hands if she clutches too tightly, if she rearranges the splintering museum sculpture.

“If you’re trying to insult me, James,” she settles on saying because casual is normal and normal is good, “all you’ve got to say is –”

“I’m not,” he cuts in. “You look pretty.”

Lily stares a moment too long. “Oh.” This is normal this is normal this is normal. “Right – well, thank you.”

The clock above the stereo chimes three times.

“Oh! Nearly forgot,” Lily, shaking herself, reaches into the bag settled on the ground by her feet, quick and brisk, anything to forget. “Brought you – erm… biscuits.”

She is suddenly swamped with an ornate kind of awkwardness, hit with the understanding that this is not what you do when you like someone so much you’re overcome with an ache. When you’re trying to keep things normal. Lily continues anyway, clarifying, “For the money.”

“You brought me baked goods in exchange for money?” His smile grows steadily, sprouting blooming greenery weaved in her ribs.

“Well, I wasn’t going to give them to you if you didn’t give in.”

“How’d you know I was going to?”

The air shifts in a way she can’t describe, like the moment before lightning strikes. Lily shrugs, offhand. “Cause you always do.”

James studies her and, for a moment, she worries he sees right through her; that she’s been too obvious, has I like you written in neon-bold, blinking letters across her forehead, and now he’s going to do something awful like tell her he’s been seeing someone or, worse, that he doesn’t feel the same; but then, he’s nodding distractedly with a chuckle saying, “Yeah. Yeah, suppose I do.”

Lily isn’t sure what to make of that.

“Evans! Evans, are you down here? Pete said you brought biscuits. Said they’re just for me – yes, yes that is what you said, Peter, you’ve just –”

The storm of Sirius’ feet trampling down the stairs adjourns whatever sentence Lily might have responded to James with. The others aren’t far from Sirius’ own footsteps, filling the room loudly and sizably.

Lily feels James’ glance — heavy, but delicate — and catches it in time, cradles it kindly. They share something like a smile.

Sirius is already prying open the container of sweetness, talking through mouthfuls as he offers one to Remus who rolls his eyes, but accepts one anyway, plopping down close enough that their knees touch.

It isn’t that he makes her nervous but Lily is well aware a dusty-pink powder is painting her cheeks when James looks at her like that, so Lily steals the can of soda from his hand and knocks it back.

He lets her. Strange.

*

It’s his birthday and he’s the kind of drunk where everything is sentimental, and beautiful, and dripping with glitter gold.

When James was a child — Isn’t he still young? Does this change things? When the clock struck midnight, did his youth vanish? —, he had a light dome that shone stars across the walls and ceiling. Now, he sits in his back garden with a cushion held to his chest, marveling at the sky above. Swinging lanterns blink around him while the muffled rhythmic bass from inside echoes through his veins.

There’s a faint, leftover streak of glitter around the corners of his eyes he let Marlene apply earlier after she slathered too much on her thumb. She and Lily had gotten ready at his house, cranking the music while exchanging makeup and flat-irons so they had to shout over each other to be heard. (Sirius complained about their shit music until Remus mentioned he liked one of the songs, then he was boosting the volume more until Peter warned he’d call Euphemia if it got any louder.) When the girls finally emerged from the bathroom — leaving behind a potent scent of floral and vanilla —, Lily wore green flared trousers paired with a bell-sleeved top that brushed the shoulders of anyone close enough anytime she moved her arms (near always, James was close enough.)

A click behind him as the back door opens, letting in the clanking of glass bottles and cheers, and James’ stomach lurches as the tapping of Lily’s heeled boots on cobblestone grows closer.

“Fucking nightmare, these shoes are,” she says by way of greeting, plopping down on the patio step beside him. She sets a glass bottle by his shoes before prying off her own with a wince. “Brought you a beer.”

“Cheers.” James watches Lily set the boots, glowing white against the darkness, behind her.

(Didn’t know it was possible to see your eyes straight-on, he’d teased earlier, trying not to appear as visibly flustered as he was with their heights near matching. He could see her so fully: her eyes, viridescent wonder. Yeah, she’d replied thoughtfully, scrunching her nose, the air’s a bit foggy up here. Clouded with your ego, I think.)

It’s one of the warmer nights, the kind where he doesn’t necessarily need a jacket if he’s got a buzz to accompany it. James sips from the bottle, ignoring the thud in his chest thinking about the fact Lily had already taken the cap off before coming outside.

“So,” Lily begins, “the big eighteen. Finally caught up, huh.” She nudges him. “How’s it feel?”

“A bit of the same.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I think – I think there’s always this, like, expectation that you’ll feel like a changed person on your birthday. That – y’know, you’re brand new, or whatever and every age before now was just – a trial run, or something. But, really, it just feels the same as every other day. Y’know?”

“Yeah – no yeah, I know what you mean.” A clamor of laughter, muffled inside. A blink, a breeze, a shiver. “Birthdays are kinda shit sometimes.”

“Growing up is shit.”

Lily laughs, lays her head on his shoulder like she always does. “It is.”

They’re silent a while, James resting his head on Lily’s, entwined like yarn, or a locket, or hands. They are a merging of neutron stars, the two of them, pulled into the other’s orbit, locked and fastened, so that one change is the other’s; so that their collision brings about the brightest of gold.

Earlier, before the rest of the party arrived and it was just the six of them, they’d sat him around the table so they could sing happy birthday, loud and awful. Something like love, though, seeped past their voices, fondness dripping out their mouths like honey. The cake, too, was a bit lopsided so the ‘H’ and ‘D’ in ‘BIRTHDAY’ fell over each other like two drunk lovers; but they had all collaborated on it and Lily had sat next to him, pointing on which parts they’d each done (Peter, the baking; Marlene and Lily, the frosting; Remus, the candles; and Sirius, lighting the candles because he’s predictable like that).

“Thank you for the gift, by the way,” James is the first to break the silence, shrugging the shoulder with her head on it lightly, in case she dozed off. “Can’t remember if I actually thanked you.”

“You did,” Lily replies quietly. “Don’t worry.”

The gift in and of itself had been a scrapbook, brimming with pages upon pages of photographs James hadn’t even known Lily had. Some were accompanied with a witty comment in black pen — ‘you & sirius being lovers. taken by: me’ scrawled beside a picture of the two of them asleep on the bus. Or, ‘nice shoes’ above a shot of him passed out drunk wearing a pair of Lily’s heels. And, ‘us that day at the orchard. taken by: pete.’ Meanwhile, others spoke for themselves like him in the kitchen trying to make dinner, not realizing Lily had snuck a picture, or the two of them asleep, cuddled on that awful couch in Pete’s basement.

There are so many, James wonders when Lily had the time to take them all, then wonders how he never noticed.

“How long have you been making it? The book. Looks like it took ages.”

“Y’know.” She’s so offhand about her love and talents. He sometimes wishes to shake her, force her to see all that she is. She’s good to the bone, Lily. “A bit.”

There was even the film strip from the day they piled into a photo booth. All six of them. She sat on his lap and he was aware he was sitting far too still to be normal, and they’d sat that close before, but that was different. This was different. Sirius climbed on top of the booth, poking his head through the curtain so in two out of the four shots Remus’ face was covered by a black mop of hair. It was chaos, exhibited in the way Lily’s head was thrown back in laughter in most of the photographs, hand on James’ chest, as Peter grinned cheerfully and the corner of Marlene’s face was shoved in the bottom corner unhelpfully and James tried adjusting Sirius to actually be in the shot above Remus’ expletives, all without jostling Lily.

“Was it –” Lily continues, head still on his shoulder. “I was worried it was a bit much.”

“It wasn’t,” James assures her quickly. Then: “Don’t tell Mum, yeah, but I think it might’ve been the best gift I’ve ever gotten.

Lily looks at him, unimpressed. Speckles of stardust glitter in her eyes. “Don’t take the piss.”

“I’m not,” he insists. “Granted, Sirius got me a card that said ‘Happy Birthday, World’s Best Grandpa!’ with the ‘best’ crossed out. So, maybe I’m not comparing it to much.”

Lily grins, scoffs, pushing his shoulder as he laughs. In the way that they always do, they move back together, never able to be apart too long, two magnets fitted together as she loops her arm through his.

“Happy birthday, James,” Lily whispers softly. A confession to the night, almost.

James thinks about finally letting it out. Admitting to her that what’s really got him up to his ankles in rumination is the fact that they’re growing up and he hasn’t been able to get her off his mind since they were fifteen and in a few months everything will be different but he wants her and he wants her and she’s an ache he can’t get rid of.

Then, another breeze brushes past them like an exhale and Lily presses closer, squeezing his arm. And then, he remembers that even if – even if, they can’t. Shouldn’t. Who’s to say it’ll all work out? (Who’s to say it won’t?) Who’s to say in a few months’ time, things will be the same as it is now? He’ll be off to university, and Lily still hasn’t brought up her plans for the future.

What if it’s all for nothing?

(But what if it isn’t?)

He settles on this instead: a brush of his lips on the crown of her head. A confession through a slip of breath.

*

The sky is a blush, and they’re all adults now. Or something like it. That’s what McGonagall had said anyway after they bid their farewells to the halls of their school.

It’s a bittersweet thing, knowing all the memories they’d made in those dingy corridors will fade with time, like an old photograph in a leather-worn album.

They’re laying around the meadow behind Remus’ house, with grass that tickles the back of their ankles and a large pond a little way down the hills. An array of blooming dandelions sit beside Lily. She plucks one from the soil, hands it to James: “Make a wish,” she prompts.

Sirius and Remus are a mess of limbs a few feet away, lazing on their backs, hands entwined as they speak softly to the other. Lily has never seen Sirius so serene and Remus so rested and there’s a wish in the back of her throat that the two of them are like that forever: rested and serene.

A bit farther, Peter’s trousers are rolled up to his knees, wading in the shallow water of the pond, in search of the sunglasses Marlene had thrown in a fit after James pointed out she won’t be able to smoke in her claimed corner of the school library anymore. Marlene, now, is smoking a cigarette coolly, a different pair of shades (purple-rimmed, these ones) shielding her eyes as she directs Pete where to go next.

(‘They’re red, Pete! It can’t be that hard, can it?’ / ‘You come try then, yeah!’)

A gentle wind kisses Lily’s cheeks and she turns back to James, watches as he shuts his eyes, blows softly so the tufty white bits drift around them.

(James once told her love is a choice. That it’s something you have to consciously choose to do over and over or else you’ll find yourself picking apart the things you once found endearing. That you have to wake up each morning and make a choice despite all the bad in the world.

Choose me, she thinks looking at him. Over and over and over again.)

“What’d you wish for?” Lily asks, instead of voicing her innermost thoughts, safeguarding them close to her chest with cupped hands.

“Can’t tell you, can I? Else it won’t come true.”

“You would believe in that, wouldn’t you.”

“‘Course I would. Have you seen me?”

Lily grins. James is always able to get these smiles out of her, it seems.

Briefly, she remembers fourteen-year-old Lily: sad and angry at the world for relatively no reason other than the fact that she’s a teenage girl and the world is much crueler now than it ever was before. And yet, even then, James was able to coax out a smirk, a snicker. He’s golden in that way, Lily supposes. Aureate brilliance coats him like fresh paint, and there’s something about this fact that compels you to echo his smiles, so his joy becomes yours.

“They’re disgusting, the two of them,” James gestures over to where Remus presses a knuckle to his eyebrow, his laughter stuttered as Sirius falls about outright.

“It’s endearing,” Lily insists.

“I mean – it’s about time, yeah? But get a room or something.”

Lily nudges him, grinning. “Someone’s bitter,” she says, sing-song.

James twists the dandelion stem around his finger, shaking his head ruefully. “Can’t believe you found out before me. You!”

“It’s not like they were hiding it. You’re just too oblivious to see what’s in front of you.” Lily thinks there must be some deeper meaning to that.

“Me? Oblivious? Doing standup now, are we?” A shout from over by the water. Maybe Pete finally found the sunglasses.

“Funny.”

“I’m the least oblivious person present, thank you.”

“You wouldn’t notice a girl fancied you with the words ‘I FANCY YOU’ branded on her forehead in red marker.”

James laughs and Lily can’t look away. “Where’s your marker, then?”

(Oh.)

Lily’s head jerks back imperceptibly as a laugh stutters out of her chest. “What’s that mean?”

(Fuck.)

James flounders a bit, then, turns his face to her, “What do you want it to mean?”

A beat. Her cheeks match the sky and she can only hope it blends with the rest of her sunburn. James has never been so upfront and Lily doesn’t know what to do with herself.

Her smile is stained on her lips like cheap blue nail polish and her eyes devour him, trying and trying and failing to understand what this could mean.

He’s looking at her so plainly, so patiently, still twirling the dandelion stem.

“You –”

Another shout and Lily is cut off as Marlene dashes away from the pond, whooping joyously as Peter trudges behind her, feet squelching in grass.

James is the first to face ahead, casual, while Lily’s vision hooks on a swaying tree branch over past his shoulder, then follows his lead.

Marlene replaces her current pair of sunglasses with the other, still dripping with drops of water, while Peter laments about not getting a thanks despite ‘putting his life on the line for a pair of fucking shades.’ The other three are saying something too, their voices a dull buzz in her ears.

Lily can’t celebrate much — the picture of poise still seated beside James, but alarm bells and flashing lights ringing in her brain. Oh my God oh my God, he knows. It feels like dying, this revelation.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Lily’s head snaps toward Marlene. “What? Nothing.” Everyone’s looking at her and this is so, totally awful.

“Are you sure?” Remus asks this time, brows creased in concern.

“I’m fine,” she forces a laugh, unable to look anyone in the eye. Her face is warming again, James’ gaze burning her cheeks which, of course it does — he’s the sun, isn’t he?

“Am I still not getting a ‘thank you?” Peter bursts, hair sticking to his forehead with sweat, the cuffs of his jeans soaked.

In unison, a ‘Thank you, Pete’ carries with the wind, while the boy himself beams, satisfied.

It’d been a stupid remark. A completely idiotic, utterly stupid remark he hadn’t realized the implications of until it was out of his mouth, hovering between the spaces of their bodies, lingering like a sour aftertaste.

And, after thinking it through, he’s a fucking idiot, that’s what he is. James isn’t even sure what came over him, just that something did and he made a fucking fool of himself. And likely made Lily uncomfortable while he was at it too, if her pinkened cheeks were anything to go by.

Face stuffed in his pillow, airways blocked because he deserves it, James groans even louder at the creak of his bedroom door.

“Right. Up you go,” Sirius orders. “You’re being an idiot.”

“I know.”

“Know what?”

“That I’m an idiot.”

“Oi, it’s no fun when you admit to it. The whole point is I say it, you get offended and we go on with our lives. Take it back.”

“Fuck off.”

A prod at his back. Sirius yawns obnoxiously through his words. “What’d you do, even? You make a fool of yourself in front of Evans every day. Couldn’t have been that much different today.”

“Leave.”

James’ body sinks further into his bed cushion as Sirius plops down near his waist. A quiet moment, birds chirping despite the grace of the moon, then: “You’re quite boring when you’re in distress, you know that?”

A beat as James peaks over his shoulder at Sirius from the corner of his eye, laughter on the tip of his tongue. “Did you just say ‘in distress’?”

“Well, you are, aren’t you?”

“Right, yeah, but I’m not gonna go on saying it like that. Posh twat.”

“Hm. Think I liked you better when your face was shoved in a pillow, actually. You’re mean when you’re mopey.”

James, face back in the pillow, snorts, “In distress.”

Sirius nudges his shoulder a bit harder than needed. “Go on, then. What’d you do this time?”

“Said something stupid. Made her uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable? Well, that’s just how you are, making everyone uncomfortable all the time. There was a petition at school, actually; a march to protest–”

“Piss off.”

Sirius heaves a sigh and there’s a clink to his left that has James thinking Sirius is toying with his glasses now. “Right, well, can’t very well help you if you don’t tell me exactly what happened, can I? Christ, it’s like pulling teeth.”

So, James tells him, leaving out the bits about how his insides twisted like the dandelion stem when she’d nudge him playfully, or how he couldn’t even admire how pretty she looked with her cheeks colored in pink as panic wrote itself on his face; too busy contemplating whether to shove his foot in his mouth or drown himself in the pond for the words that escaped him.

And Sirius erupts into laughter by the time James is finished because of course he does. “Am I getting this right? So what you’re saying is, is that you basically snitched on yourself using a fucking analogy?” He guffaws, louder this time. “You’re both completely hopeless.”

“It’s not like I meant to. It just slipped out! And it wasn’t even a proper confession, just – just a, you know. ‘I fancy you, do you –” James splutters “– fucking – fancy me, back?’ kind of thing. Or something.” It sounds even stupider on James’ lips, awkward and uncomfortable. Just like he made Lily feel. Fucking great.

Sirius laughs harder.

“Alright, if you’re just gonna be a pisshead then go call up Remus.”

“Mate, of course she fucking fancies you. She looks at you like she’d give you her left fucking limb if you only asked.”

This, of course, is news to James. He’d had a suspicion once or twice before, like when he’d catch her stare from across a throng of people at a party and he’d raise his hand in a wave and she’d raise her eyebrow as she does, confidence leaking out her pores, but there would be… something. A hesitance, a linger, something only James would notice because he’s always trying to find a crack in that mask of hers.

But to hear it out loud — the words “she fancies you” — does something entirely different to James’ insides. Until he remembers it’s Sirius saying this. The Sirius who regularly mixes up the words ‘hostel’ and ‘brothel.’ The Sirius who moped in his room after thinking Remus hated him because he didn’t call for two days when it turns out he just lost his phone in Sirius’ room. The fact of the matter is that Sirius would be the last person to know anything about Lily’s romantic thoughts on James.

“Go bother Remus,” James grumps, “you’re being a shit.”

“And you’re being a sulk,” Sirius counters but gets up anyway, patting him soundly on the back. And as he’s leaving, before shutting the door behind him: “Quit moping or I’ll tell Mum and she’ll confess to Lily for you.”

James flicks his finger to the closed door.

*

The sun dips its toes in morning, testing the waters. It peaks through the gaps of Lily’s curtains shyly: oh, hello.

Lily stares at the ceiling, counting the cracks until she loses her place. Yesterday, as the two of them were walking home along the dirt roads of their town, kicking rocks under the moonlight, Lily told Marlene of her conundrum. Of course, she’s the worst at giving advice, so the most helpful thing Lily got (after Marlene finished boasting about knowing from the start) was to put on her favorite lipgloss and give James ‘the snog of a lifetime.’

Frankly, that’s the last thing Lily wants to do. But Lily also has a tendency of lying to herself.

After she got over herself last night, allowing her frustration — at James? At herself? — to simmer, she settled on sleeping instead of calling James to shout at him for saying something so stupid. Had she been too obvious about it, the nudge too much? Was it a slip of the tongue, something he’d said without thinking?

Or (and this is almost worse), had he meant it? Had he wanted to hear her answer? Was that his way of a confession of sorts? That thought alone is enough for Lily to want to puke out her insides over the side of her bed. The possibility, the chance that James feels the same is something she can’t dwell on too long else she does something stupid like run straight to his house and listen to Marlene’s advice like a fool.

It all gets to be too much what with her inability to actually do something about her problems, so Lily grabs a pillow, stuffs it over her face, and screams.

*

Four days later and the moon, mantled with mist, observes the sights below. A party (pulsing lights, shifting bodies), a bedroom (blue walls), a boy and girl (LilyandJames, JamesandLily).

They can’t avoid each other; the magnet theory or something like that.

Lily is drunk, sitting on the kitchen counter talking to Peter and Remus who try coaxing her into drinking a glass of water, which she pointedly ignores. James watches her from his place between the kitchen and living room, a plastic water bottle in one hand. Marlene, leaning on the other side of the doorframe across from him, takes a drag from the cigarette in her hand.

James swats it out of her hand when he notices. “Quit that.”

“Oi! I’ve got the window open, don’t I?” She blows smoke out from the corner of her mouth. “And, anyway, you quit.”

James gives her a look. “Quit what?”

“Pining so openly. It’s embarrassing to watch.”

“Then look away,” James says plainly, turning his head to look back to where Lily is now holding the glass, at least. She’s talking to both boys, wide gestures, afflicted expressions until she heaves a sigh and falls forward so her forehead is resting on Remus’ shoulder. He and Pete share a look.

Marlene watches with heavy eyelids then huffs, muttering something like ‘git’, then turns on her heel to the back garden.

They’d spoken, Lily and James, when she first arrived, stilted and almost awkward but not quite because things can never be truly awkward with the two of them. Her eyes traced the lines of his face, he knows that much, and his may have lingered on her lips longer than necessary, but Sirius dragged Lily away to show her the disco ball he managed to convince Mum to let him hang up in the living room before James could open his mouth to say anything of importance.

Now, Sirius comes up to him, dragging his feet, drunk or high off his mind — probably both. “James,” he slurs, putting his hands on James’ shoulders. “Jamesie Boy, you’ve just – you’ve just got to go for it, yeah? Just –” He makes some weird noise, a mix of an imitation of an explosion and, some other odd thing, “do it.”

James sighs, not entirely in the mood to care for a drunken boy. “Do you need water?”

“What? No, I’ve got this, haven’t I?” Sirius waves the bottle of beer in his hand, takes another gulp as James winces. “And actually – actually, you should listen to me. I’m the one with the hot boyfriend and then there’s you: sulking in the corner of a party. Longing, pining, aching for Li –”

“Right, that’s enough, thank you.”

Sirius holds his hands out, brows raised, smacking his lips.

James rubs a hand on his jaw, then, watching Sirius sway to the music like an idiot. The boy jumps as someone pushes past and before he can get further past his “Oi!” and rant on good manners or some shit, James intervenes. “Right,” he says, “take this.” He hands Sirius his water, plastic crinkling with the exchange.

Before James can instruct him to actually drink the water instead of just staring at it in awe, however, Sirius is running off, probably to find Marlene to discuss the ripples in the water, how they flicker with the beat. That, or he thinks he made the heist of the century and is off to boast to Marlene about it. Either way.

“James! Oi!” James glances over to the kitchen where Lily is leaning on a grimacing Remus, as Peter waves frantically, knees crouched trying to bring the glass of water to Lily’s lips.

James moves forward instantly.

“She was –” Peter begins. “Well, she was asking for you. And then she wasn’t. And she won’t drink the water and –”

“You’ll take care of her, won’t you?” Remus interjects. Before James can refuse (not that he would anyway), Remus is already shifting Lily towards him.

She topples into his arms messily. “Oh,” Lily says peaking up, a drunken, lazy smile on her face, “hullo.”

James smiles down at her, powerless, “Hi there.”

“A bit drunk, me.”

“I can see that.” He adjusts her, balancing her on his left arm with his right hand lightly on her waist. “Think we should get you to lay down, what do you think?”

She scrunches her nose. “Yeah, alright.”

“Cheers, mate,” Peter thumps James on the shoulder.

Remus follows suit, moving his lips near James’ ear to mutter low enough Lily doesn’t hear, “She didn’t give any details, but I think she’s pretty upset about the whole thing that happened. Wouldn’t stop mumbling on about you.” Pulling away, he gives James a pointed look before following Peter out into the crowd.

James heaves a sigh. Fate is surely having a laugh somewhere at him.

“Right,” he heaves her upward. “Up we go.”

Her head rests on his shoulder all the way through the throngs of people, up the stairs, and down to his room. He moves slowly, avoiding jostling her too much, so she can still walk in somewhat of a straight line — James is there to guide her either way.

Before long, they’re in his bedroom, a jumble of clean and messy, with posters on the walls and trinkets littering his desk. In the darkness, he nudges a stray shoe away before Lily can trip over it.

It’d been a relatively silent trip other than Lily’s rambles — pointing out Sirius who tried getting Lily to join him atop the coffee table until James coaxed her away kindly; or babbling on something about her nail polish that’s chipping, asking James what color he thinks she should do next (‘Pink?’ / ‘Pink?!’ / ‘Right… er – purple, then.’/ ‘Hm. Maybe.’).

Once they began up the stairs, her rambles turned into mumbles beneath her breath, a mutter of words James couldn’t pinpoint, and now (after forcing her several cups of water from the bathroom sink), James lightly lays her down on his bed, then flicks on his bedside lamp so she’s cast in gold.

Briefly, he’s reminded of the times before with a scene just like this; when she would call him in the early hours of the morning, the muffled beat of music or passing of a car behind the receiver. He’d already have his shoes on from the first hint of breath, bringing her wherever she asks him to – his house, hers. Things were different then. They’re different now. As long as it was him Lily was calling at the end of the night, as long as she didn’t go dark, as long as it was him she always came back to, James couldn't find it in himself to complain.

Lily breathes deeply as she lays her head on his pillow. She is an angel, hair splayed to form a halo, skin glistening against the faint light. James pulls the covers, blue-plaid, over her form. He wishes a lot of things, but right now, in this moment, most of all James wishes he could freeze the scene before him, that he could make all time stop and roam about, watching Lily from every view, every angle. See how her eyes flutter softly, how the brief spatter of freckles on her cheeks catch the moonlight slanting through the window, how her breaths come and go, quietly, without disturbance. James wishes to caress her face, to whisper into the night, to declare and confess.

Her hair falls across her face. James gently brushes it away.

Smiling, quietly, to himself, James adjusts the covers once more and turns out the light. The room is cast in midnight-blue darkness. He turns to leave.

“James,” Lily murmurs as his hand touches the doorknob, so low he almost misses it. He turns without thinking. “Did you – I mean, will – will you…”

James steps back toward her, whispers softly, “What is it?”

She pauses a moment, covers pulled to her chin. “Will you stay?”

The music isn’t as loud up here, muffled beneath the door. An owl coos from somewhere outside. “What?”

“With me. Will you stay with me?”

Her eyes peek open, and despite the shifting shadows and dark, he can still see the green aimed right at him. His heart feels punctured.

“Yeah,” he says and his eyebrows are still furrowed and he’s shaking his head for some reason, like she didn’t have to ask in the first place, she could have just said. “Yeah, of course.”

Lily shifts over, pulling the blanket back, inviting him in. James swallows as he lays down. The bed is big enough to fit them both with room leftover, but they haven’t shared in what seems so long. In the times before, he’d make do with a couple of blankets on the floor when Lily didn’t want to be alone; or when she collapsed the moment she hit the mattress, he’d shove Sirius over in his bed or settle on the sofa downstairs.

James’ arms cross over the covers as he stares at the ceiling, indisputably aware of Lily facing him on her side.

Several heartbeats later – quick and stuttered –, Lily is the first to break the silence, voice hushed, nearly silent. “Did you mean to say what you did? The other day?”

James furrows his brows, clears his throat. He hadn’t expected her to say that. “I – erm…”

Lily pulls her lips in. “Not that – not that it matters. I just… I was wondering. Thinking about it. You know.”

James swallows. He isn’t sure at all how to go about this; isn’t sure if she even knows what she’s saying, drunk as she is. They’ve been tiptoeing a tightrope, fraying at the ends, for so long now, how much longer can it hold? “Right. Yeah. I, erm – I wanted to apologize. For that. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, or… awkward, or something. It was – I mean, we were just… teasing, weren’t we?”

Lily’s silent and James is digesting his words, playing them back in his head, analyzing whatever it is he could have said differently. Then, she huffs: “You’re the most frustrating person I’ve ever met, you know that?”

James’ head snaps to her right as she turns over on her side, back to him. “What?” he asks, bewildered, voice still a near-whisper. “What’d I do?”

“Do you just… go around flirting with girls at random for fun?”

James splutters. Perhaps James really is as oblivious as Lily says he is because, for the life of him, he can’t figure out what he said wrong. He apologized, didn’t he? “What are you on about?”

Lily sighs deeply. He still can’t see her face. “You’re just –. You – you frustrate me, James.”

Oh.

Right.

James thinks he understands now. All her shrouded guises, sheathed with indignation and indifference, make more sense now. All her diverted gazes, her smothered smiles — James can’t see how he never put it together. Lily is an avoidant person through and through, she’ll fend off anything she doesn’t understand, or doesn’t want to understand.

She won’t say it aloud, too headstrong and obstinate. But James can rival her at many things — perhaps not history, and certainly not biology, but his adamance emulates hers at equal levels.

“What, so you don’t like me?”

“I – what?”

“Isn’t that what you mean?”

From her bewildered silence, he can almost see her expression — furrowed brows, open and closing mouth. “Are you being purposely obtuse?”

James plays down the ruse. “What is it that you mean, Lily.”

“I just – I –.” She huffs, exasperated.

Two songs play in full downstairs and James gets the impression she’s fallen asleep, allowed her drunken state, no matter how clear the glasses of water made it, assume control once more when her next words come out slow and drowsy, practically whispered, “You make me mad.”

He wants her to say it. To hear it out loud. His world may very well crumble all around him, but to die knowing is better than to die heedless.

He’s still on his back when she turns over, laying similar. Their shoulders are touching and James doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“You can say it, Lily,” he whispers.

She doesn’t say anything else and her silence sticks to him like honey — not in a bad way, just such that he knows it’s there, tenacious like glitter glue. He glances at her from the corner of his eye: her pose matches his and her eyes look heavy, like she’s trying to blink away her exhaustion. Her head falls closer to him, he could rest his head on hers if he wanted to.

Stubborn, stubborn girl. She’s an enigma he can’t figure out.

And as her eyes are slipping shut, struggling to maintain consciousness, falling asleep, her hand reaches out to his. Holds it. Sleeps.

*

Lily sits on the sofa, chin resting on her forearm that’s atop the back of the seat, looking out the window. It’s a golden evening, ripples of light peaking through the trees, casting the clouds aglow.

There’s a new awareness to her, a settledness she’s grown into like a pair of new shoes, squeaky clean.

James has been gone the past two weeks, on vacation with his family somewhere in the Mediterranean. They never got to speak about that evening nor that night at his house, but things have shifted in a way she can’t explain, a mellowness encircles them now in yellow-orange hues.

And he calls her, or she calls him from that same silly landline telephone, every day without fail.

It’s like they’re fifteen all over again.

“How’s Remus and Pete?”

“Peter came over last night cause he had a bad dream so we called Remus over and smoked a pack.”

James laughs loudly. “So pretty well then.”

“I’d say so.” Lily doesn’t realize she’s smiling until she glances at her vanity mirror and catches herself. “How’s Sirius?”

“A pest –”

“ – as always.”

“ – but more so than usual now that Mum’s been coddling him since his sunburn. She’s going between scolding him for not wearing the sunscreen like she told him, and placing cold rags all over his back while he moans on his bed.”

“Tell him to take a hot shower.”

James bursts into laughter, all infectious.

“Marlene’s eating expired crisps.”

“Oh, is Marlene there? Hello, Marlene!”

Lily holds the phone away from her mouth, raising her brows to the girl herself across the kitchen counter. “He says hello.”

“Tell him to piss off,” Marlene replies between mouthfuls of crisps, which are, indeed, expired.

“She says to ‘piss off,’” Lily relays the message swiftly.

“Doing so. How expired are the crisps?”

Holding the bag to her face, elbow on the countertop, Lily inspects the label seriously. “Two months.”

“Aren’t they stale?”

Now on speaker phone, Lily holds the phone out to Marlene, “The people want to know.”

“No, and piss off Potter I was having a perfectly pleasant conversation with my friend until you decided to call.”

Taking him off speaker, Lily holds the phone back to her ear. “The lady of the house has spoken it seems.”

“Seems so. Any indispensable, life-and-death information I need to know before I call you later tonight?”

Lily’s lips twitch and Marlene makes kissy faces all the while, which Lily pointedly ignores. “None that I can think of. Besides the whole expired crisps debate.” To make a point, Marlene shoves a handful in her mouth. “We’re friends with a sociopath. Might have to call Remus and Pete over for their stances.”

“Let me know how it goes.”

“Will do. Try not to miss me too much.”

“It’s much harder than it sounds.”

Lily laughs, her chest flooded with summer.

“ – and then the policeman — imagine one of those really short ones with an awful mustache that takes up half his face, right — starts chasing after us!”

“Did you not tell him you were of age?”

“We tried! He was all ‘Bambini stupidi,’ and we were like ‘Sir, sir, we don’t speak Italian,’ and then he whips out this whole baton and starts waving it like a madman. So we had no choice, really, but to run until this ice cream shop owner — real nice lady, by the way — took pity and let us hide out.”

“So this all could’ve been resolved if you just showed him your ID?”

“Right, yeah. But he had it out for us, I swear on it! Even Sirius said he was stalking us like prey while we were in the shop; then the moment we sat at the park. Bam. He pounced.”

“Maybe he just hates posh English boys like yourself.”

“That’s our theory.”

“Any massive parties I’ve been missing?”

“Haven’t been to many, really. They’re all a bit boring without you to bitch about with.”

“If I squint I’d say that sounds a bit like a compliment. I’m flattered, Lily, really.”

“How’s Sirius getting on without his lover man?”

There’s muttering across the receiver and then Sirius’ voice, loud and booming, sounding as if he pressed his lips right to the microphone. “Look at you, Evans! All worried for yours truly. Thought the day would never come! Well,” he smacks his lips as if preparing to go through a long story, “to tell you the truth, Lily dearest, a bit like you and Jamesie boy here, the phone sex has been phenom –”

Making an exaggerated noise of disgust, Lily has to move the phone away from her ear as an outcry erupts on the other side, Sirius’ pleased laughter distinct. Sometimes, Lily truly cannot believe the people she willingly surrounds herself with.

The moment persists behind the receiver, muffled, as James admonishes Sirius (‘Why are you the way that you are?’) and Sirius remains well pleased with himself (‘Remus doesn’t seem to hate it when –’ / ‘Eugh! Stop that!’).

Some time later, after a lengthy chastisement, Sirius’ voice returns. “Right. Hello, Lily, you’re still there, aren’t you? –”

“ – Unfortunately.”

“ – Seems that’s still a sensitive topic for the two of you. No worries, it’s not for everyone! We can still sort that out.” Lily can almost see the exact face Sirius makes as a slap from James echoes (‘I’m gonna kick you out of my room.’). “Alright, alright. I’m finished now. Lovely of you to check in as always, Lily. Tell the others I said hello, blah blah, boring stuff. I would say give Remus a kiss for me but don’t do that. I’ll try not to steal your boyfriend in the meanwhile.” Lily thinks he must be finished by now until he continues boldly, “Did you know I’ve been lounging all over him this whole phone call, kicking my legs and everything –”

There’s shuffling on the other side and Lily gets the impression James shoved Sirius off of him. Her cheeks ache with laughter and even this, just listening to two of her favorite boys bicker back and forth, is as delightful as it would be if the both of them were really here.

Finally, James’ voice, familiar, speaks into the receiver. His voice isn’t as loud as Sirius’, as if he’s grown used to speaking over the phone, knows the reasonable volume. “I would apologize but you’ve always known Sirius is an idiot.”

“The reminder is sometimes necessary, I think,” Lily replies. All this time she’s been lounging on her bed, staring at the ceiling. At James’ voice, she sinks back further into her pillows.

Distantly, she hears: “Bye, Lily!”

“He’s been kicked out,” James explains but she can hear in the shape of his words that he’s trying not to smile.

Lily laughs before replying, resignedly, “Bye, Sirius.”

There’s a short conversation between the two boys, then, “He says he misses you and that he loves you more than he loves me.”

“Well,” Lily says. “We both know that’s impossible.”

“Do you know when you’re coming back yet?” She doesn’t say what she’s thinking (I miss you, I miss you. Come home soon.), but Lily thinks her thoughts come across anyway.

“Only a few more days. But you know what? Once we’re, you know, settled and all in London, and we’ve got holidays or a break sometime next summer, we should – I mean. Well, I was thinking, anyway. I could take you here, maybe. If you’d like. The others would come too, obviously. Just – when we’ve made the money and stuff. Dad’s already said we could use the house if we’d like and, well, – what do you think?”

That’s right. The clock struck twelve, chimed, and in only a few short weeks they’ll all be piling into James and Marlene’s cars, and by some twist of fate, some stroke of luck, off to the same destination.

Lily still can’t quite believe it. There’s a part of her, the cynical fourteen-year-old somewhere huddled in her chest perhaps, that worries something will come up – she won’t be able to afford the flat she’ll be sharing with Marlene; Peter will have to call it all off to stay with his grandmother a little longer; a falling out, a mix-up, a misunderstanding. This uncertainty shovels its way into Lily’s thoughts more often than she’d prefer now as their departure day looms like a shadow on the horizon.

And still, she knows things will be different anyway; that it won’t be exactly the way she once imagined now with herself taking a gap year alongside Sirius; James, Remus, and Pete off to their respective universities within the city, and Marlene to fashion school. But despite that, despite it all, excitement still bubbles in her chest every so often, knowing she won’t have to say goodbye to her favorite people just yet, at least for a little while.

And the idea, the very prospect of James already planning so far into the future, of a summer that hasn’t even awoken from its sleep yet, his quiet reassurance that things will be well enough to travel all together like they’d always talked about creates a pressing in Lily’s throat that feels awfully close to hope.

“You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” Lily’s voice comes out cooler than she really feels.

James chuckles and it reverberates through her skull so close to her ear. “A bit, maybe. But you’d love it here — the beaches, the people, the food.”

Lily groans. “Eugh, don’t say that, I’ve already eaten dinner.”

“My mum’s friend gave her the recipe for this otherworldly pasta dish –”

“James.”

“No, no, listen! I’ll make it for you when I’m back. She says I’ve got a gift for cooking.”

“She did not.”

“Nah, she didn’t, but I’ll try at least. We can make a whole thing of it: lit candles, romantic music, cheap wine — I’ll even dress pretty for you.”

Lily laughs, knowing what it is he must be hinting at. But, at this point in time, she’s willing to go all-in; to, finally, finally release her hold at the peak of the rollercoaster and allow things to play out the way they were meant to because perhaps, perhaps, she’s been holding out for far longer than she needed to be. Perhaps she’s willing to let loose for once, to allow time to seep past in any way of its choosing without it feeling like her grip is lost and floundering.

“Alright,” Lily agrees, twirling the phone cord in her hand, wrapping it tightly around her pointer finger before releasing.

A pause on the other end, then: “Yeah?”

Finger crossed, eyes screwed shut, a pinch of hope. “I don’t see why not. But get the good kind of cheap wine, yeah, not that stuff Sirius likes.”

She isn’t wearing any makeup, her brief splatter of freckles visible. Her hair, loose, cascades down her back and any minute now James will be back.

The scratch of tape resounds around the room as Lily shuts the cardboard box close, placing it by the mountain of others on the far wall. She blows a stray strand of hair that escaped from her ponytail away from her eyes, scanning what’s left to pack.

Four days and things will be different. Four days and she’ll be climbing into Marlene’s car as her parents wave her off into a world wholly unlike the one she’s been living in the past eighteen years.

She’s wearing short dungarees and a white tank top, white socks that go just above her ankles which she adjusts mindlessly before beginning to fold what’s left of her clothes on her bed — jean shorts, a white t-shirt, a patched cardigan here, a black turtleneck there.

There’s a knock on the doorframe. Lily whips around.

“Oh,” she says, biting her lip, trying, and failing, to contain her beam. “Hello.”

James smiles, that brilliant, mega-watt grin. “Hi.”

It’s the first time she’s seen him since he got back, and the sun has kissed his nose and cheeks, painting them a shade of pink Lily could stare at forever. His hair is longer, messier, falling about his forehead and curling beneath his ears.

“Hi,” Lily says again, then shakes herself as James’ grin widens imperceptibly. She motions to the boxes, a single sock in her hand which she fidgets with. “I’m just finishing up packing.”

He’s still in the doorway, leaning on the frame, and there’s something in the air, a hint of a promise. An implication that something is about to occur, something they’ve been holding back on.

“Your mum let me in,” James says. “Said you were almost done.”

“Right, yeah, just this last box.” Lily swallows. “It’s a bit sad, isn’t it? Packing away all your things; the stuff you’ve had in your room for years.”

“Well, I’d assume so. I’ve hardly started so can’t confirm,” James says and Lily’s eyes crinkle with her laugh.

She turns back to her bed where the box is sitting, pairing the lone sock in her hand, then folding a new shirt.

She feels James’ movement before she hears him beside her, “Need any help?”

Lily hands him a pile of socks, “You can pair these. I don’t trust you with folding.”

“I’m great at folding, thank you! Could get an award with my skills, I could.”

“Best practice on your sock pairing in the meanwhile then,” Lily replies. “Don’t want to forget that skill, do we?”

They pack in silence for a moment, then Lily glances at James — brows furrowed as he pokes through his pile, taking his job more serious than frankly needed. “How was Italy?” Lily asks for conversation, smiling down at the trousers in her hands.

“What, you didn’t get enough of my bragging on the phone?”

“Oh, I got more than enough of that, thank you. But, you know – are you glad to be back? Even though we’ll be gone again in a few days.”

What Lily’s really trying to say is: Did you miss me? Did you miss me like I missed you?

“God, yeah, don’t remind me.” James sets down several stacked pairs of socks into the box. “But, yeah, I missed here a bit.” He clears his throat, then, “Missed you.”

Lily feels her heart drop to her toes as she peeks up at him, holding two different socks up as he scrutinizes the two. “Did you?”

“‘Course I did.” He turns his head to her, shrugs. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Well. I missed you too.”

His grin pierces her entirely. Lily wonders if she had any chance in the first place.

Some time later and Lily is sitting on her bed, one leg up folded in front of her as she closes the now-brimming box. James, sitting opposite her, only the box separating the two, tears the tape with his teeth, and Lily swallows, something close to desire pitting in her stomach.

They’re on the brink of something new, something all changed and revived — a dwindling flame that’s fortified by the stroke of a stick, a puff of oxygen.

Sealing it shut, then pushing it to the side, neither of them says a word, too busy taking the other in. The fan in the corner of the room buzzes in the background, whirring left and right, blowing the strands of James’ hair ever so lightly. They take in a breath at the same moment:

“I –”

“Are you –”

Their soft laughter blend. In unison: “Sorry,” then more laughter.

James scratches the tip of his nose with his knuckle, scrunching it in the process, and oh dear, oh dear, Lily’s been far gone for longer than she’d care to admit. “I got you something.”

“What?”

“In Italy. I got you something.” James fidgets in his back pocket, then pulls out a small pouch. He slowly opens it, pulling out a simple beaded necklace, avoiding her eye. Lily thinks his cheeks have gone pink. “I – erm, I saw it on a stand one day on the way to dinner and thought it looked like something you’d like. It’s nothing fancy, and, I mean, you could probably make it on your own, really, but it’s – you know. I’ve –”

Before he can finish his ramble, Lily does something wild, something she’s been wanting to do for years.

She kisses him.

James’ words cut off abruptly and before he can fully comprehend what she’s done, before Lily too can comprehend that she’s done something neither of them can go back from, she’s pulling back. Their faces hover just close enough to count his eyelashes which flutter as he blinks down at her.

Voice low, hands shaking, she whispers a soft, “Thank you.”

James’ brows furrow endearingly. He’s still holding the necklace, hands near his lap. “You –”

Lily pulls her lips in, buzzing. She nods. “Yeah.”

His head jerks forward, like he can’t fully understand. “Do you? You –”

“I like you, James.”

James stares at her, eyes darting around her face, taking all she is in. His smile begins to grow steadily. “You like me?”

“Yes,” Lily says, “desperately.”

James’ grin is blinding and then he is kissing her and it’s exhilarating. It’s his hand cupping her cheek, and hers steadying herself on his chest, and it’s summertime and sweet berries. It’s lost time, it’s look at all the time we have; it’s a confession, it’s look at what we could’ve been doing. Look what we can do now.

He kisses her and with it comes life. A thousand bushels of roses bloom in her rib cage.

The fan is still whirring somewhere behind them, and the room smells stale of cardboard and vacancy, but James is kissing her and Lily is kissing him back, and together, they fill it full.

He tastes like candyfloss and sunshine and Lily kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, like it’s all they were made to do.

Pulling back a minute, an hour, an entire lifetime later, Lily’s eyes flutter open and she looks at James fully. Golden light slants across his face, casting him aglow. Beautiful, beautiful boy.

Lily’s chest is so filled she doesn’t know what to do with herself but he’s looking at her all soft, and she’s looking at him in return. And then he does something wondrous: he beams, sunshine woven through his teeth.

And Lily knows, she knows.

Life begins at James’ smile.