Catch the Sun
By: Simplistic (infinitesimal)
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It's not about Lily Evans, he tells himself. He tucks his shirt in and makes sure his tie is straight, and his hair is hopeless but what does it matter anyway? He let's his hands drop and he stares at his reflection in the mirror.
"It's not about Lily Evans," He says out loud, and he feels more confident, somehow. He puts on his glasses and heads for the door.
Sometimes all you need is a little outward affirmation.
(but when he sees her at the bottom of the stairs and forgets how to breathe he knows this is a lie. Everything is always about Lily Evans, everything, always.)
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"We need to have sex right now."
She laughs and it bounces off the little-girl pink wallpaper, gets stuck in the space between the dusty dollhouse and the dusty windowpanes. He grins as he kneels above her, cotton sheets making a tent over their heads, dappled sunlight glowing mutely under the covers. He likes her scandalized oh I want it as badly as you do look, but he likes the way she looks spread out beneath him even better, taut and perfect and unforgiving in her innocent yellow panties and the button up thermal with the flowers around the collar.
"We need to have sex right now," He repeats, grins against her mouth, just rests there; her lips are soft and he finds himself kissing her again, again, just once more. "God," he pants, smiling. "We need to have sex right now."
"So I've heard," She turns her head against the pillow and laughs, and he swears he can see it– light pink like her wallpaper, collecting in the open mouth of a porcelain doll laying forgotten on the top shelf of her closet.
He rolls over her curled up form and lays his head down beside hers on the pillow, nose-to-nose, facing love head on, he thinks, cause he can see it there exploding like fireworks in the astonishing green of her eyes.
They stare at each other for a while, and James traces the exquisite line of her jaw with the tips of his fingers.
"You're still so thin." He whispers, and immediately regrets it. She had always asked him not to talk about it. She'd gotten so mad last time, and he had hated himself so much when she had cried and cried.
But it's different now, he thinks, because she's home, and he's there with her, and when you're under the covers everything feels a whole lot safer.
"I've been trying. You know that." She looks at him in earnest, wide eyes, eager to please him, like she'd ever done anything but please him.
"I know. I know you have. It's your bones," He traces the sharp curve of her hip with one hand, rests the other on her side and feels the jagged prongs of her rib cage. "I can feel them through your skin, and your clothes."
Lily watches him through her eyelashes and she never means to skip meals, he tells himself, she just forgets sometimes, that's all. There's a lot of things she's worried about. He knows that.
They were all worried.
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"You're an arrogant pig," She hisses, and it must be the look in her eyes that gets him because for the first time he can remember he is the one that is walking away.
Yes, I am arrogant, James thinks, and he quickens his stride upon the pavement, yes, yes, I am, but that doesn't mean I can't love you, because god Lily, I do, I do, I love you more than anything.
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He smoothes the hair back from her forehead and presses a kiss there too, and then he moves her head back onto the pillow, careful not to wake her. And he's getting good at this, he realizes, from all the nights when she needs him there to coax her into sleep, all the nights when he has to leave as soon as she does (because he knows they would get their badges taken up if the other girls decided to tell, and he could never let that happen to Lily, she loved helping the students so much).
He pulls the sheet off the top of their heads and blinks at the sudden bright light, wondering how it could still be daylight after a day as long as this one had been. Grabbing the overstuffed comforter bunched at the foot of the bed, he tucks it around her little body as tight as he can without waking her, murmurs "I'll come get you for dinner" in her ear, and smiles when he hears her mumble something sweetly incoherent in return.
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"You've got something-" She pinches the shoulder of his coat and pulls back. "A leaf."
She twirls the little dead thing in her fingers and he watches the bone white contrast against the rust brown. He can see the veins on her hand and for some reason, all he can think about is how delicate she is and how he wished he had a pair of gloves to give her. He knew she'd be furious with the thought.
"Oh, right. Thanks."
"No problem."
She smiles up at him and they continue walking. It's freezing and gray and ugly outside. The snow is nothing but gray slush now, and the lake is a solid crush of steel. He realizes suddenly just how unromantic this is and glances to the side at her, wondering if she's disappointed. She's got her hands clasped in front of her mouth and he knows it's corny, but at that moment he thinks that she looks just as an angel should, all pale and glowing and purity.
She catches him staring and gives him a shy look, just the kind he loves.
He'd brought her out here after dinner mainly because he's seventeen and inexperienced but also because there's only so many places you can bring girl at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, especially this time of day. Maybe a little part of him liked the romantic potential, the lake at sundown, dazzling right?, him and her and her and him, but really, he knew, he brought her out here because he can't stand being away from her for even a little bit these days, and he knows letting her go back to the dorms means saying goodbye at the foot of the staircase. He needed to be with her, and around her, and god, to just see her. He wanted her to know that. Maybe, more than anything, he wanted her to feel that.
They stop just at the edge of the lake, a few meters from Hagrid's frosted gray hut by the forest. He's glad when she takes her hands away from her mouth despite how angelic she looked, because then he can take them in his own and maybe not feel so worried about them freezing and breaking apart like glass. It's snowing, he realizes, and then he smiles because the flakes look like feathers, they're always so damned pure before they hit the ground, and they're landing in her hair.
He likes the way the last weak bit of sunlight goes right through her eyes like that, and how the cold's turned her little nose and cheeks pink. He likes how she's got a soft, clean face and a big ready smile, and he especially likes the way her eyelashes brush just beneath her eyebrows when she's looking up at him, she has to after all, since she's so much smaller. She moves in close to him and rests her face in his big coat and he likes how, taken out of context, she's the brightest thing for miles. Of course, he always considered her the brightest thing for miles. According to him, Lily Evans was the sun.
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Light pours through the early morning windowpanes and she holds her hand out to capture the sun. It glitters in her palm; a reflection of god. When she spreads her fingers it spills through the cracks. He watches it trickle in solid gold lines across the floor and he thinks, silly girl, it's the beautiful things that are hardest to hold on too.
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Authors Note: A collection of moments. Meant to be brief and vague.