Disclaimer: Why yes, all things HP-verse are mine. I expect a letter in the mail any day now with Jo's sincerest apologies for stealing my shit, and many royalties checks... You know, or not.
A/N: Ah, so. This is my first fic after a long hiatus of like, seven million years. And my first James/Lily fic because my obsession has finally spilled over into writing fanfiction again... But anyway, this is just a short, fun thing that I wrote while avoiding studying for exams and the real world in general. Anyway, enjoy it. (Hopefully there will be more to come in way of other stuff once I finish my exams.)
JAMES POV
"S'not even a little bit true, Potter. 'Can walk jus' fine, and I know where I live—where are we?" I huffed out a strangled response as I struggled to drag Lily Evans to the safety of her bed, she rattled on unperturbed, "Don't need your help 'nyway, Potter." I could only attempt to turn my face away from the hand that now swatted at it.
"Evans, shut up. We're almost back. Merlin, I knew I shouldn't have let McKinnon keep refilling your glass—you're a lightweight."
"Am not!" Lily scoffed, her expression reproachful. I snorted and shifted my arms to indicate that having to carry her back to the Head Dorms because her legs had ceased to function over two hours ago told a different story. I was entirely sure she either didn't feel the deliberate movement or comprehension failed to fire in her alcohol-addled head. I felt fingers connect with my face though, and not in the swatting brushes she had been assaulting me with only seconds before. My eyes flickered to the girl I carried in my arms, attempting to juggle her ceaseless squirming and navigating the path back to the dormitory we now shared, and caught her owlish expression as her fingers seized at my jaw, thoroughly exploring it. My heart, unbidden, skipped several beats.
"Your jaw is fantastic." Lily breathed. My heart skipped at least several more as she pulled herself closer to my face to continue her explorations, becoming more invested as she did.
"Evans, I'm trying to walk." I whined after several long seconds. Merlin, she was making it hard. The pit fell from my stomach as her fingers discovered my lips. "I'd really rather we got there without the broken bones of taking the fast trip down a flight of stairs."
Lily burst out into unexpected giggles—though she had been giggling almost non-stop half the night—and my heart skipped again at her genuine peal of laughter. It was certainly better than the alternative she had settled for since the day we had met, throwing me a narrow-eyed glare every time I so much as breathed in her direction.
Lily hooked her arms around my neck—near strangling me in the process—and pulled herself up until her face was pressed against the side of my head. I furiously readjusted our balance so that Lily's sudden movement would send us tumbling to a heap on the stone beneath my feet. "Potter. Potter," Lily breathed in my ear, her lips brushing against it enticingly. A pleasant shudder ran down my spine and the warmth pooled beneath my navel coiled. I barely suppressed a groan, still trying to juggle the drunk girl as I approached the Fat Lady's portrait and swung a hard left, flashing the woman in the portrait an apologetic smile as Lily continued to purr my name in my ear.
"Can I tell you a secret?" Lily said at long last, whispering in a low and husky voice, as if she was attempting to tell me her 'secret' in the strictest confidence. Her arms tightened, but she remained silent as I came to the now familiar portrait of seven robust and aging men smoking thick cigars, the haze always heavy. I gave the password as I waited for Evans to tell me her 'secret', my step immediately angling for her bedroom once I was granted access.
"Potter…" I could hear the fatigue settling into her voice as her addled mind drew her closer to oblivion. I assured her she would be in bed soon enough as I nudged her door open with one foot—her bedside lamp immediately flared to life. "Potter." She mumbled again, her face sinking closer against my head as she let out a contented sigh. I put her down and began untangling myself immediately.
I was secretly thrilled when her arms tightened instinctively, her fingers bunching in the fabric at the shoulders of my shirt, refusing to let me go. My moment, however, was short lived as I gently touched her arms to untangle them and they instantly relaxed and flopped uselessly against her mattress.
With a silent huff, I began to pull away again, finally free of Lily and admiring how adorable she still was even when utterly pissed and passed out in her bed, her mouth slightly agape. Lily, however, rolled as I finished straightening and, with a huge satisfied smirk, seized one of her pillows, hugging it to her face and nuzzling it. I tried not to be jealous.
Drifting back, and trying to be as silent as I could, I headed for the door—and tripped over first her trunk then her dresser, cursing colorfully as I attempted to keep myself upright. A herd of elephants trampling through her room would have been quieter. When I finally caught myself, I glanced guiltily at Lily, expecting her to be sitting up, and although blearily through glazed eyes, glaring at me reproachfully for disturbing her. I should not have been all that surprised to see her still nuzzling against her pillow blissfully, that grin still on her face.
Eternally grateful that Lily was not conscious enough to witness this spectacular moment, I made for the door again, mentally slapping myself and silently cursing every single piece of furniture in Lily's room—including the innocent pieces.
Who would have thought, of all things, that swinging her door would have been what caused Lily to sit bolt upright, suddenly wide awake again. "Where am I?" She demanded. Her James-radar went off and her eyes immediately fell on me.
"Easy, Evans." I said before she could howl at me or leap for my jugular. "I brought you back from the party. Put you to bed." I said gesturing vaguely toward herself and the bed. Lily was already following the line of my gesture, settling on herself in her rumpled dress, risen gloriously high on her thigh. We both stared at her attire for a long second, until: "These are not my pajama's."
I dragged my eyes away from Lily's exposed thighs—for the millionth time that night, I am only human—and found her face. Lily was already commando rolling out of the bed. I took a step forward, coming back into the room, but Lily was already standing—having somehow miraculously regained the ability to do so—and before I could prepare myself for the maneuver, had shucked the dress over her head and dumped it. I froze, every urge of a non-platonic nature I'd ever had for the fiery redhead crushing down on me all at once, and stared at her as she looked down at the dress with a crinkled nose.
A thousand years later, or so it seemed, I finally managed a strangled: "Lily," and she brought her eyes up to mine. And of course, of course, she had to be the only one, for once, that didn't seem to mind in the slightest that she was standing before me in nothing but her underwear. From this point on, I really could not be blamed for anything that happened.
She smirked. She bloody smirked. A hand drifted to her hip, her body shifting ever so slightly to accommodate for it and give it some purchase as it came to a rest. I ordered my eyes not to follow it as they clung to Lily's in a futile attempt to keep them there. Had I not, I would not have seen the glint in her eye. "Potter." She said, her voice much too sultry for my overactive imagination. Her chest rose and fell as she spoke my name, and my eyes lost the battle, immediately falling to stare like a bewildered twit at the movement.
"Like what you see?"
I started and lifted my eyes back to hers again guiltily. "I—you, what?" Merlin, I was flustered and floundering.
"Like what you see, Potter?" She repeated coolly. I could only stare at her, frozen to the spot. Inwardly, I was screaming YES. I swallowed. Had my mouth always been this dry? That glint returned to Lily's eye, along with a smug and challenging smirk, and I exercised every restraint I had not to trip over myself getting to her, making myself look like a fool—which I probably looked either way.
"Potter," she purred, fucking purred, at me just as I became aware that my eyes had wandered again. Guiltily, I brought them back up again. "When you're good and done, would you mind turning around. You don't get to see." I was already seeing, and my poor seventeen-year-old teenage boy hormones could hardly handle it. I wanted to growl a response at her, or irritate her with my own smirk and disgustingly inappropriate comment. Nothing came; I spun on the spot and felt my face burn.
My hands went instinctively to my pockets and my shoulders lifted and hunched over as I ducked my head between them and my face continued to burn. "Potter," Merlin, she really needed to stop saying that. My head came up obediently, but I didn't turn my head to look at her, taking sudden intense interest in the patterned wood panels of her door. "Potter." She rolled the 'r' this time, almost thoughtfully, and another pleasant shudder raced down my spine. Unable to help myself, I chanced a glance over my shoulder and found her standing where I had left her, though her hand had fallen from her hip and now hung limply at her side. She swayed, her gaze unfocused again as she stared at nothing, and I turned back to her with concern. She swayed dangerously and recognizing the signs—Padfoot being just as bad on his feet after a particularly wild night—I swooped in to catch her and save the day before she fell.
Evans hung limply in my arms for several seconds, all dead weight as I tried to decide how I was going to get her into bed. One of her hands had caught my bicep as I caught her and she seemed transfixed to that as I moved her back to the bed. The back of her legs hit the frame of her bed and I diligently began to deposit her onto it again, wondering at my own self-control, when Lily's hand tightened on my bicep and I let my eyes fall to hers.
Her hands instantly shot up and locked around the back of my neck, jerking me down as she rose up to me. For the barest of seconds, I almost thought she was going to snog me. Instead, her lips brushed against my ear once more as Lily flattened herself against me. "Potter," she muttered breathily against my ear, "Can I tell you a secret?" I tensed and my fingers tightened at her hips. It was the only reply she was likely to get. My brain and ability to strings coherent syllables into words had long ago left the building. Evans's fingers tightened in response and then shot up into my hair, tangling themselves in it. "I have always wanted to do that."
Evans fiddled with my hair for an undetermined amount of time, combing through it and making it her own until it no doubt stood up in every feasible direction. I, for my part, had gone desperately to my happy place in order to keep myself in order, reminding myself sternly time and time again that I would not—should not—shag a drunk and impressionable girl. My fingers had not followed me to that happy place and mutinied against me, skimming Evans's smooth flawless skin around her waist even as she tugged at my hair. Electricity shot back along my fingers at the touch.
"Potter," I hummed in response, only vaguely hearing her as I explored skin. "Potter." Lily's ministrations in my hair had stopped, my eyes flew open as I immediately assumed she had realized what we were doing and was now preparing her best glare and a slap. At some point, one of us had moved so that our foreheads now pressed together, our lips only a breath apart. Green filled my eyes as she gazed up at me.
"If you don't snog me right now I am going to explode." I obliged.
LILY POV
I woke with a start. Or, more accurately, I woke and clung to the illusion of sleep for several minutes stubbornly, curling further into my ball and burrowing deeper beneath my duvet in a stubborn attempt to wrest sleep back beneath my control and fall back into for at least another week or two. Sleep, it would seem, had other plans and I silently cursed the early riser genes I had inherited from my parents as I slowly and groggily drifted back into total consciousness.
I immediately wished I hadn't. Reality was not as kind as the wild dreamscape that was already slipping away from conscious memory, like a secret that would only ever be known by my unconscious mind. In reality, a blistering headache that rolled into full-blown nausea hit me, memories of the night before sinking jaggedly back into my conscious memory as my head immediately attempted to put reason to this merciless attack on my body. I hissed and moaned quietly, curling in further on myself, and began a wild trip of self-loathing for letting myself succumb just the once.
I had barely even begun the self-loathing, already throwing plenty of accusations at Black—who had been the one to actually call me a prude and a scrooge—and Potter, when I became suddenly aware of a warm and solid something curled against my back that I was entirely sure belonged to neither my mattress nor my duvet. Too quickly however, I dismissed it in favor for my self-loathing pity party. I blamed myself most of all for letting them get to me—Potter and Black—and for encouraging everyone else at that party to encourage me, but there was, I felt, always justification for inwardly loathing Potter and Black, and how he—the former—could so easily get in beneath my skin.
It hadn't bothered me until the day, at least a whole year ago, when sitting behind Potter in Transfiguration and staring absentmindedly at the back of his ridiculously disheveled head, he had lifted an absent hand to ruffle his hair while he worked, and I had heartily envisioned joining him there for several seconds. Matters only got worse from there as my body mutinied against me for Potter, tingling in ways far too pleasant for my taste wherever he touched me, accidental or otherwise. I'd gone far too quickly from vigorously plotting his brutal murder in my head, to innocently wanting to tangle my fingers in his hair, to yearning for the more sensual and lingering touch of his fingers, the feel of his lips against mine, and then against my body. Within weeks I'd begun having raging sex riots with the obnoxious twat—bane of my existence—in my head, and of course I buried it as deep as it would go and never once entertained the idea of telling a soul that I was now quite positive that I did want what Potter had to offer, unable to stand the mortification of catching myself thinking something dirty and perverse when I let my mind slip. I blamed Potter twice as hard. Of course it was Potter's fault, it was always Potter's fault.
Suddenly aware that my pity party had become a thinking-about-Potter party, I shifted and hunkered down further to distract myself from thought. It was then that I became aware of the dead weight draped around my middle, as it shifted itself tensing and relaxing again, and remembered the warm and solid mass pressed against my back. I froze, my earlier headache and nausea totally forgotten as I tried to imagine all the things it could be, wracking my brains for some clue from the night before that might present itself. I prayed, oh Merlin I prayed, that it was not a body—particularly that of someone who I would not want to wake finding myself next to. I didn't want to turn over to find out.
I inched my head across my pillow painfully slowly, not wanting to disturb the unidentified mass pressed into my back. I rolled my head back even slower, stretching it to its extent and rolling my shoulder minutely where I had to. A thousand years later, I was staring with wide eyes at a familiar dark head of ridiculously tousled locks. Potter's glasses were missing—as was his bloody shirt, I tried not to stare and failed miserably—but he looked the most at peace that I had ever seen him, asleep as he was. I did not particularly want to think how Potter had come to be in my bed in such an undressed state, not when I had quite literally just been thinking about him and the completely unfair reactions he elicited out of my body against my will. I settled, instead, for wondering where he had gotten the small white scar on his collarbone.
I know, I know, that I should have been formulating a plan to escape with as much of my dignity intact as possible—preferably where Potter slept throughout and later couldn't recall the events of the past three days because I had been a little too vigorous with my memory charm—or shrieking and slapping him awake, bringing all hell down on him for his state of undress, and for climbing into my bed like he had been bloody invited—insolent twat. Instead, I stared rather stupidly at the scar on Potter's chest and wondered anxiously if his shirt was the only item of clothing he'd discarded. I sternly told myself that I would be disgusted beyond words if it wasn't. My fingers itched to reach out tentatively beneath the duvet and check.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when Potter stirred suddenly, his head shifting on the pillow, and his whole body pitching back and forth as he burrowed himself further down into the mattress. I didn't wait to see if he woke up or not, I threw myself back over into the position I'd been in when I'd first felt the mysterious mass—now revealed to be Potter—and did the only thing I could while my cheeks burned hot: I pretended to be asleep.
Potter, somehow, did not wake. Though not all of him slept. My cheeks burned hotter as his readjustment brought a telltale stiffness up against the back of my thigh. I froze and whimpered on the inside, wanting nothing more than to sink through the mattress and into oblivion to escape the most awkward moment of my entire existence, now or ever. If Potter had been awake, I hoped he'd be feeling the same. Probably not though, nothing ever phased that awful, arrogant git. I could already picture the lazy smirk on his stupid face, and the inappropriate comment that would no doubt fly unhindered from his lips. My cheeks burned hotter for thinking about the type of comment he'd make.
Ruddy git. I had half a mind to turn around and slap him, but I had barely processed the—hugely satisfying—thought before Potter moved again. His arm flexed and tightened, drawing us closer together until my back was pressed tight to his chest. His face found my hair and I felt him nuzzle into it, his chest expanding against my back as he inhaled deeply. A pleasant shiver rolled down my spine, sweet rather than stimulating, but Potter—asshole that he was—saw to that too, his hips rolling as he moved again and his stiffness now lodged firmly between my thighs. I thanked Merlin when I felt the rough material of his jeans against the back of my bare thighs, something of both his modesty and mine still left to us. Although, what use that would be if last night we had—
I stopped myself before I got any further, not sure where to even begin to broach that particular topic in my head. Especially since I certainly did not recall—with all the urgent wracking of my brain that I was doing—inviting Potter into my bedroom or my bed. Least of all as spectacularly, distractingly underdressed as he was.
Potter moved again and my eyes flew wide. He rocked his hips against mine, the move too deliberate to be explained away as anything but a thrust. Warmth unexpectedly pooled within me and something carnal coiled in the most delicious of ways. Somewhere, the logical part of me that might have existed once, wondered if Potter was awake now and fucking with me. His still deep and even breath against my back, however, told me otherwise. Of course that git would still be attempting to get into my knickers—though judging by the way he rocked his hips again, and I, the idiot I am, gasped quietly and arched into him, pushing my hips back against his, he clearly thought he was already in them. I would swear black and blue, and probably until the day I died, that I had never done such a thing, and I would hex Potter into oblivion if he stated otherwise.
I must have been confunded quite seriously for what I did next; I certainly had no control over my own body. I, Lily Evans, Head Girl and always, eternally responsible and levelheaded, would never have done such a thing otherwise. I took the initiative. When Potter settled and failed to push his hips against mine again, I pushed mine back against his with more urgency, rolling my hips and parting my thighs ever so slightly to give him more room like the whore I apparently was. His arm tensed around me again and I felt his fist clench on the sheets next to my stomach. That should have been the first sign, or the second. The first sign should have been his change in breathing as he settled against me. I should have at least felt his eyes fly open, suddenly completely awake, and then his smirk as he worked out what was happening much faster than I had. But, of course, my now lust-hazed head was completely down around my hips and riding the waves of heat the rolled out from there, and I noticed nothing.
He was nowhere near close enough to where I wanted him to be. The jeans I had thanked Merlin he was still wearing earlier, I now silently cursed. But as he rocked his hips harder against mine again, I rolled mine in eager response. The moan we shared should definitely, if nothing else, have been enough to pull me from my stupor, but I was too busy silently cursing whoever had invented jeans. He rocked again; I replied again; we shared another moan.
If I had been paying attention—or maybe it was best to say, if I hadn't been ignoring the signs that told me there was no way on earth Potter could still be asleep—I would have noticed that each following thrust inched him closer to the very top of my thighs, or that the way he suddenly brushed his lips against my shoulder would have obviously required him to lift his head from the pillows. I certainly would have noticed that when he next shifted his body, his other arm snaked beneath my body and wound back around to boldly end up idly in the hollow of my hip. He was dangerously close to cupping me, and to my dismay, above the lace of my knickers. I sorely wished them gone as heartily as I did his jeans before mentally slapping myself for such a thought.
Heat seared through me and radiated against my knickers. I was surprised when they did not spontaneously combust, or smell the sizzle of burning flesh when Potter's fingers should have leapt away from me scorched. He thrust again more eagerly, and I replied just as eagerly. Potter, as I did so, tensed his arm and rolled back, dragging me with him, coming forward again just as quickly. I practically fell into the cup of his hand, and I should have realized it was orchestrated to happen that way. His middle finger tensed and applied the smallest amount of pressure, I leaned into him willingly and he groaned sharply.
"Evans, you little minx." My eyes flew open. That was not the sleepy murmur of someone talking in his sleep; it was the deliberate purr of his teasing. My mind flew back into its proper state and I realized what we were doing, and most mortifying of all, I realized Potter was no longer asleep while we did it. I scrambled forward instantly, kicking and clawing my way out of the bed and away from him. Once standing, I whirled to face him with a livid expression already prepared. Potter was already on his back, his hands behind his head, that stupid smirk firmly in place as he watched me coolly.
Potter lifted an eyebrow and his smirk deepened as he drank me in; I followed his gaze down and immediately wrenched the duvet from him, shoving it up against my exposed chest. Merlin, where had my bloody bra gone? I had definitely been wearing a bra last night. My cheeks flamed, but Potter only got more comfortable, wrapping one ankle over the other in his now exposed state. I forced my eyes to stay on his face as I glared at him, attempting to murder him with my eyes.
"Best wake up call ever," Potter drawled with another smirk, I pictured leaping back across the bed and clawing his eyes out with my fingers, "Though, in future, you could just wake me up for a shag, Evans. I really don't mind when it comes to you." His smirk widened into a grin. I contemplated the many benefits of gruesome murder.
"Drop dead, Potter."
"I might if we don't finish what we started, preferably naked. Blue balls are the worst."
My livid expression turned to one of disgust. "You are disgusting."
"And yet you fancied a go at me. Not that I blame you. I reckon you've fancied a go for a while."
"I would sooner shag the giant squid." Potter only grinned at me. "How did you get into my bed?"
"You attacked me with your mouth, and then you wrestled me into it. I'm only human and you were only a shade more dressed than you are now. I can't be held accountable for the things you did to me."
I crossed my arms, trapping the duvet to my chest, and looked away. "Did we—?"
Potter was silent for a second, and when I peeked back at him the grin had slipped from his expression somewhat. "No." I almost heaved a sigh of relief. "You gave it your best go and must have undone the button of my jeans a thousand times, but my shirt," we both glanced down at his bare chest, I really wished I hadn't, "was the only thing I let you take from me. The things you were saying though, and the way you touched and snogged me; it wasn't bloody easy."
The wide grin was back but I refused to look at him, my cheeks still burning, until I heard a rustle from the bed and turned to see Potter getting up. Before I could stop myself, I blurted: "Where are you going?" Potter lifted an eyebrow at me as he stood and I regretted it.
Potter jerked his hand in front of the still prominent bulge at his crotch, to which my eyes immediately fell despite every order they had not to, and he made a popping sound. The gesture could not be mistaken. Disgust found its way back to my expression as I looked up and found his smirk back in place.
"Unless you'd prefer I stayed?" He waggled his eyebrows at me.
"Merlin, no. Get out." I heaved out, seething with anger and contempt. My body screamed YES but luckily Potter couldn't hear my body, and he swept a mocking bow, his glasses already back on his face as he straightened and finally turned to leave.
"You know where to find me if you do fancy that shag."
"Get out, Potter." He only laughed as he trotted to my door. He turned back to me over his shoulder before he disappeared. I anticipated the question, as I had since fourth year, and interrupted him before he could even start, still adamant that I would not ever date a git like Potter. I couldn't help the smile that crept onto my face.
"Not on your life, Potter."
He grinned and challenged, "Promise?"
"Promise."
A/N: Okay. So. It's bloody long. I got carried away. Obviously. Apologies. Anyway, leave a review if you're feeling it, chicas.
Tell Your Mom I Said Hi.
~Molly