Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Pairing: Lily Evans + James Potter
For: Ela (snickets)
Prompts: no clichés, "harmony"

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unbearable

Lily woke up happy. An emotion that was impossible to define, even more difficult to pin down, but here in the dark at four in the morning, lying on a mattress that took up much of the wood floor, feeling James's right hand on her hip — tight, even in his sleep — happiness felt easy.

He was breathing on her neck, each exhale sending a few strands of red hair up into the air, each inhale drawing them nearer to his mouth. She wondered whether he ever woke up, disgusted, because a tendril of hair had hit his lip, slipped between his teeth, settled on his tongue. Whether he hated when the citrusy taste of her shampoo interrupted his dreams.

James always exhaled when Lily inhaled, creating a harmony of breathing that she loved and he probably didn't notice. Every breath she took carried traces of James. It shouldn't have been possible, she thought, to be able to want another person so much. To find even breathing romantic — a year ago she'd have kicked herself in the ass for such a stupid thought.

But here she was, one month out of school, sleeping on a mattress in a house she and James owned — actually owned — trying to work out how to get even closer to James, even though they were twisted together utterly indecently, and she didn't want to kick herself in the ass at all, because she was very, very happy.

James's fingers began moving in a light rhythm over her skin, a tap of his index finger, then his ring finger, then his middle finger, and then his other hand snaked from beneath her and pushed her hair up on the pillow, and he pressed a kiss to the bare skin of her neck.

"Doesn't it feel weird?" he asked, when he pulled away.

"What feels weird?" Lily still faced the square of gray light falling through the window on the wall above them.

"The fact that we're so grown up."

Lily rolled over, out from beneath his hand. She could make out the mess of his hair and the slight shine of his eyes and the angle of his nose, but everything was shadowy and dark and perfect in a quiet way. "I still think we're playing at it. My mum and dad are going to come through the door tomorrow and ask how we like our new playhouse; we'll cook with plastic food and our tea'll be water and everything will be smaller than it should be."

James let out a breath of a laugh. He smelled raw and sour, like the wine from the housewarming dinner with the boys the night before, and Lily buried her nose in the skin at his collarbone.

"Wouldn't it be sad if we couldn't even be trusted with real tea?" he asked, digging his chin into the top of her head, a little harder than normal, like he wanted to get beneath her skin and bone and into her brain, to settle there.

"And normal sized dishes." Lily imagined the two of them, sitting at a tiny table and using small forks and small knives to slice through fake miniature carrots set on sickle-sized plates. She laughed into James's shoulder, and then sobered. "I don't know, I think it might be weirder for us not to be ready, in a way."

"Ready to be on our own, you mean?" One of James's hands was caught in her hair between her shoulder-blades, weaving strands between his fingers, and the other was on her lower-back, fingertips pressing five indents into her skin.

"Yeah. Can you imagine going back to school next year?"

"Merlin, no. Us back in McGonagall's class? We'd kill her, probably. I couldn't stand another hour sitting there."

"Exactly." Although it was more likely that McGonagall would have killed them. She'd gotten close to it a few times, towards the end of the last year. "And with everything else going on," Lily shut her eyes, even though she couldn't see anything with them open against James's skin, "it would just seem such a colossal waste to spend our time taking exams and writing essays."

"Let's not, Lily."

"Sorry," she murmured. She knew what he meant. Moments like this weren't meant for sadness and fear; this was stolen time, time outside of everything else.

"It's all right, just," he tightened his hold on her, "I love how sometimes you and I don't need to think, when it's just us. We don't need anything, because what we are is — enough, I guess, is the word, even though it doesn't seem like much."

Lily sighed. "Enough seems like a lot to me. Exactly right, you know? Like when you're eating chocolate and you only have one piece and that's too little and then you have five more and feel sick, and we're that perfect amount in the middle — the one you never really hit, because you always think you want more. But for us, we always hit it."

"Merlin, Lil, you would boil us down to sweets."

"I'm just saying," she protested, "I only mean that I could never have too much of you. So in all honesty you're not like chocolate at all. Except that you're good."

He didn't say anything for a few minutes. Lily thought he might have fallen asleep, and then he pulled away from her, rolled from the mattress and stood, crossing to the window and standing in front of it, a silhouette against the lightening sky outside.

"James?" Lily sat up, too, drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin against them, watching the way he stood so still, so serious.

"I'm sorry." He leaned his forehead against the glass, she could see in the angle of his body how everything felt suddenly heavy. Her lungs felt thicker, the air like something else entirely, her heartbeat sluggish. "I know I was the one who — I know I said we shouldn't think."

"But?" she prompted.

"But." He turned. "I just feel like we don't have enough time, like if we never slept, if we were awake and together and breathing the same air and if we never let even a centimeter of space get between us, I still don't think there'd be enough time. Like when we promise, 'until death,' or whatever, when we do that — even if we live until we're one thousand — I still worry about the end. I'm still terrified of being without you. Because I said we're enough, and we are, we are, but without us then there's...really, Lil, I think of the possibility of being without you, and all I can think of is emptiness."

Lily got off of their mattress and met James at the window. She stopped in front of him, her toes three large inches away from his. He stood still and thin and blocking barely any of the light that spilled, suddenly bright, through the spotted pane. He didn't move, but his breaths were coming fast, matching hers, now, taking air at the same time that she did.

Lily held out her arms, James's old t-shirt scraping higher up on her hips as she reached for him. He still didn't move, and she said, "The idea of being alive and not being able to see you makes me want to die," and he bit his lip. "I know that's not what you want to hear. I don't mean that I will die. I will want to, but I won't. If one of us dies before the other, then the other will keep going on, because we are brave and in love, and that means," James's gaze had dropped to their feet, and Lily snagged his chin on the fingertips of her right hand, tilted his face to look at her, "that means that we will keep loving each other. Death doesn't take any of this," she dug her thumbnail into the beginnings of stubble growing on his chin, a red mark she would kiss later, "this moment, right now, yesterday, and the day before, and the first day I saw you, really saw you, it can't take any of that away. Okay, James? I love you, and I will keep loving you, and of course there won't be enough time, of course there won't, there never is, but there is time, and that is what matters."

"But it will still end, Lil."

Lily stepped forward until she stood on James's feet. They were nearly the same height and she wrapped her arms around his neck, leaned until she could press her ear against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat, could hear it, slower than hers but made of the same cells, rhythms, the same mysterious propulsion keeping it moving. "Everything does. Would you like to spend your life mourning an ending that hasn't happened yet?"

"Endings," he corrected, "mourning endings."

"Okay." Lily stepped back and took James's hand. "Come with me."

He didn't ask where they were going, even when they crossed through their bedroom and the hall, across the box-filled living room and out the back door with its creaky hinge, down the small square lawn and to the lone tree whose branches hung over the rock wall that marked the edge of their tiny property.

Lily hopped up on the wall, her bare toes digging uselessly at the hard surface as she pulled James up beside her. The sun was almost risen, and they stood, nearly-naked, staring out over the field between their house and the next, and Lily said, "I am sad that someday you and I will be dead. But I am happy that there is this field out here, this tree," she placed a hand against the bark of the branch above them, "that there is a place where you and I can be alive, can be ourselves." She turned to face him. James's eyes were sad, hesitant as they met her gaze; he had violet shadows above his cheekbones and his hair was a mess. Lily needed him, and she wanted him whole, happy. "I am not saying that the happiness of being here discounts the sadness of the future. Both are very real; I get that. I am just saying that if I could have anything, my love, anything at all, I would not have eternity. I would have you. I would have now."

James reached out and tangled his fingers in her hair as he drew her toward him. He pressed his lips against hers, and their morning breaths mingled, sour tastes and vague remnants of mint toothpaste mixing in with the sweetness of a terribly sad kiss.

Lily knew that she and James would say goodbye to each other a thousand times. It felt right that their first real goodbye came with the sunrise of their first morning in their new house. She only hoped that their last kiss, their last goodbye, would carry half the meaning that this one did.

A/N: I haven't read enough Lily/James to be sure of what constitutes a cliché, but all of the fics I've read have been set at Hogwarts, so I thought I'd just take them out of there. I'm sorry if this is still terribly cliché, as I'm fairly sure it is. I hope it's not horrible, anyway.

And that's a wrap on this collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and to all of those who were lovely and left reviews, thank you doubly. xx