negotiation tactics
Of all the things for James to suddenly become stubborn and sanctimonious over, of all school rules he decided to consider applicable to him, he chose this. The insufferable prat decided to prove he was no longer self-interested in the one thing that could actually be selfish of him.
Lily wanted to kill him. Preferably in the same slow, torturous way he was killing her.
Life was easier when he was an annoying prick. Well, he still is, but somehow he’d become the annoying prick she fancied. Really, really fancied.
She hated him for it all. Hated him for his stupid, annoying laugh and his stupid, annoying charm and ability to keep her steady as the war burns stronger around them. His jokes are clever and best of all, no longer cruel. She keeps the letters and postcards he sent her over the summer tied with a ribbon in her trunk. She’s the first one he finds after bad Quidditch practices, he’s the only person she wants to impress nowadays, and their late night talks during rounds leave her buzzing.
It’s one of those late nights in the Common Room that finds them awake at this hour together. Rounds schedules litter the table with notes and edits about the prefects, an algorithm of schedules and characteristics the two of them have only just begun to hash out. James’ quill scratches across his parchment while Lily studies the Map a bit more, looking for any Slytherin out past curfew to note. They move in rhythm, go at the same pace, understand one another while working together without needing to explain themselves. Moments like these are peaceful, and above all else, right. Things make sense here.
Which is why James’ refusal to go out with her doesn’t make sense.
It’s been a week since Lily grabbed his hand after finding him out on the Pitch, a week since he brought her in closer, a week since she stood on tip-toes to reach his lips as he bent down, her fingers finally laced in the hair his hand can’t get enough of, and a week since he pulled away without explanation.
That means it’s been six days since he refused to look at her, five days since he could actually be in proximity of her, and four miserable days when he politely asked her to just forget about it all.
Four days of Lily trying, and failing, to get him to listen to her.
It’s late now, and they’re both exhausted in more ways than one, but Lily is nothing if not proud and stubborn, which makes for a dangerous combination. Keeping her eyes trained on James instead if the Map now, she tilts her head to the side, examining him curiously.
“You know we can’t ignore this, right?”
James, of course, tries to ignore her. Lily, of course, throws her quill at his head. He didn’t flinch, and Lily began to think that maybe now isn’t a good time if she can’t even make him smile when he shakes his head and chuckles softly, mumbling out, “Pathetic.”
“You’re the Chaser, not me.” Lily defended herself, but James was still pretending to be engrossed in the same schedule that he’d been working on for half an hour. “C’mon, James, I mean it. We have to talk.”
“We’re talking now, aren’t we?”
“About the kiss,” Lily hummed.
His quill stopped its scratching. “There was no kiss.”
“That’s my problem. Yours too, I wager.”
James sighed, running a hand through his hair, before he finally brought his attention from his homework to her. This earned him a pleased smile from Lily. He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, and met her smile with a weary look.
Lily’s grin widened as she mentally ticked off “step one” in her battle plan. He quipped his eyebrow at her pleased grin, which Lily widened ever so wickedly as she sing-songed, “You like me.”
James remained unamused. “They didn’t give you all those O’s for nothing, now, did they?”
“And, as some cruel twist fate would have it, I like you .”
James tried to maintain the cool facade he’d put on, but she could see his lips twitch up in a smile. He was being stubborn for no clear reason, but he wasn’t unaffected. Lily knew what it must feel for him to hear that, to know that he’d finally grown on her… if James could affect her life as much as he could during the months she’s fancied him, she can only imagine what it’s been like for him to wait to hear those words voiced through more than looks and laughs and blushes. She holds her smile, feeling it soften, and he actually looks away from her with a blush, biting the edge of his lip. Lily’s heart swells with warmth, encouraged, wanting nothing more than to make him blush again, to make him smile and to show him in words as well as deeds just how much she likes him. After a moment he meets her eye again, his poker face glowing slightly from the redness in his cheeks.
That wasn’t enough, though. She needed James to actually engage in this conversation if any good were to come of it, which means that the game has begun. James could hold his cards near his chest as long as he wanted. Lily was ready to play her hand.
“So you can see my confusion here,” she continued, sitting primly in her seat, “as to why a perfectly capable and fit pair such as us isn’t living up to every fun potential we’ve got.”
“It’s just not that– you think I’m fit?”
Again, a smile spread across his face, lighting up his hazel eyes in the way she adores before he seemed to remember himself, pulling it back down to a grimace. “It’s not that simple, Evans, and you know that.”
“I honestly don’t,” Lily shrugged, standing up and walking around the table to his side. James kept his eyes trained on her, calculating. “You fancy me, I fancy you. I’m not speaking in runes here.”
It’s odd seeing James this composed and reserved given that he wears his heart on his sleeve every other day. He follows her path along the table, sitting back in his chair as she stops at his side.
She wants to physically shake sense into him but settles on sitting herself on the table instead, propping herself up right in front of him, letting her skirt sit a little too high on her thigh. His eyes trace its hem before he glares up at her.
“Oh, I can play a lot dirtier than this if you’d like.”
James breathed out wearily, looking at the suddenly-interesting-ceiling rather than at her. “Can you not make this any harder than it has to be?”
“Come again? I can make a lot of things har—”
Pleased but slightly abashed, Lily pulled at her hem, uncrossed her legs, and slumped down a bit, more casual, more level with his eyeline in the chair. James relaxed too, staring up at her the same as he always does, eyes lit bright with an upward tug at his lips. She’s played the game well so far, and he’s a good sportsman if nothing else.
“What’s this about, really?” She asks, genuinely curious. She’s in no rush. The Common Room is empty, they have free period first in the morning. “Is there something I’m not seeing about trying to date you?”
Again, his smiles in such a boyish way it makes her heart melt, but this smile is as wistful as it is playful.
“Evans,” he asks, “Is it really so unbelievable that all I am trying to do is follow school code?”
She raised an eyebrow at him.
James simply shrugged. “I mean it.”
Lily stopped herself from rolling her eyes, but just barely. “That code that hasn’t been enforced in years. Everyone knows the Alice and Frank were shagging, and that was years ago. Nothing happened to them, you know.”
“Yeah, well,” James says, clearly unmoved by her excellent counterpoint to the rule forbidding romantic relationships between the two Head students for sake of school stability, “It wouldn’t make it right for us to ignore the rule as well.”
Lily’s head fell into her hands, shaking back and forth in disbelief.
“This is karma. This is a cruel, cruel joke for all the times I yelled at you to read a code book when I was made Prefect. Some hag heard me begging you to follow at least one school rule and cursed me— and this is what it looks like.”
James had the decency to laugh then, quiet and soft, a wonderful timbre that reverberated through her body.
“Stop laughing,” Lily shoved his shoulder in good humor. “You are mocking my very deep pain. That’s not the way to treat the girl you like.”
James’ expression suddenly turned serious again. “No, it isn’t. You’re right, Lily. I know you’re upset with me.” He sighed, suddenly old, weary. “Trust me, I find it harder and harder keep myself focused each day.”
The question, So why bother? died on her lips as she held him in her gaze, trying to understand what she couldn’t comprehend. Slowly, tentatively, James reached up with one hand to meet the one Lily had on his shoulder, holding it there.
He held her hand in his, wonderfully caring in the gesture. He closed his eyes and something in her nearly broke at this false surrender of his trust in her. She allowed the silence to pass over them in waves as they both indulged in the first touch they’d shared together since the non-kiss on the Pitch a week ago.
“I wouldn’t be pressing this point if I didn’t think it mattered, James,” Lily nearly whispered, hearing a tenderness she’d never heard in her own voice before. “But it matters more than anything else to me. You and us, right here and right now, is the most important thing in my life.”
James ruefully opened his eyes, staring intently at her as he never had before. He slowly pulled her hand and held it in his own, playing with it.
“You think I don’t know that?” He breathed out. “You don’t think I don’t agree, and that right here, right now isn’t tearing into me?”
“A mess of your own creation,” Lily cut out, almost unkindly. His confession came close to angering her, because if James agreed with her and still wasn’t doing anything, then she wasn’t sure she really knew him after all. She tried to tug her hand out from him, but he clasped it in his own, tight and desperate, keeping it in place. His eyes begged her to stay, to hear him out. Lily sighed.
“Out with it, James,” Lily commended gently. “If you’re going to be a giant bloody idiot about this, I need an actual explanation.”
“It wasn’t long ago when you could you couldn’t stand the thought of going out with me, let alone be near me,” he spoke to her hand, turning it over in his. “You ever think about how this happened?”
“All the time.” She watched him carefully, unsure of where this was going. “But it feels like a lifetime ago.”
“Not to me,” he said, looking up at her with intent, eyes heavy with weight she is unfamiliar with from him. “Not to me. Everyday I’m surprised I managed to pull my head out of my arse and get my act together. I owe you and Sirius a lot for that.”
She smiled. “Remind me to thank him later.”
He paused, gathering himself. “I’m not ready to risk everything. I’m not ready to rush in. Not when I’ve only just proven myself to Dumbledore, not when everything else seems so fragile.”
She didn’t need the gentle caress of his thumb on her hand to know exactly where he categorized her in this.
“I’m not fragile, James, and neither is what I feel, or else I’d be well done of you for making me wait like this.”
He regarded her with a careful gaze, trying to communicate something important to her. “Can you blame me?” He whispered, low, entranced. “Can you blame me for being afraid? For taking my time?”
His hand gripped hers again, tighter. “I can’t lose this chance, Lily. I can’t fail you now because I wasn’t careful.”
“You’re talking like you’re the only one here with fear or with doubts,” Lily spoke back, matching his low, soft tones. “Don’t make this decision without me. Don’t forget me in this noble quest you’ve undertaken without much thought for my needs.”
James narrowed his eyes and she could see a sign of real anger being quelled beneath his resolve to finish this conversation. Lily admired him, considering how often she’d walked out on him at the first chance during the days before whatever this was between them.
“That’s not fair,” he countered, the anger showing through enough to add an edge of sharpness to his rebuttal. “I’ve been thinking about nothing but your needs. I can’t stop thinking about what you need, what Sirius needs, what my parents need and what Remus and Peter and McGonagall and—“
“I don’t care about what they need,” Lily cut him off. “What do you need?”
She wanted him to say, You. What she heard instead was, “What I need doesn’t matter. I’m more concerned about you and Sirius and—“
“James. What do you need?”
His eyes said, You in the way they fell down to her lips, tracing them. In the way he took a small breath, steadying himself. His mouth said, “I need to know that the moment I kiss you isn’t the moment everything gets worse. People will talk, Lily. Not here at Hogwarts. Outside. Regular people and people who I never want knowing your name will have something to say about us. I need to know that I’m not killing us by kissing you.”
Lily didn’t speak for a long time, and neither did he. It was a strange feeling, wanting to escape from the truth and fear in his concern while being consigned to her fate in a calm, accepting manner.
“I can’t give you that .”
Another beat of silence. James stared at the fire and she stared at it reflected in his glasses. Lily came close to indulging the melancholy of what waits for her outside of Hogwarts before her happier senses kicked in and she gave her own shuddering breath, releasing fear and breathing in the warmth and light she felt from the boy in front of her.
“I don’t want to focus on what we can’t change,” she started. “I’ll tell you what I need instead, so please, try to get it through your beautiful, wonderful, thick head. I need time, and not the kind you can give me. I need time to live because I think this war is going to kill me.” She didn’t let him interrupt, didn’t let him try to sell a lie about what happens to Muggleborns like her nowadays. “I need time I can’t have, so I need to at least live a bit before I go. I’m not fragile, James. I’m just mortal.
“So,” Lily quipped with some air of finality. “We can carry on, wasting time and ignoring whatever mess we’ve got going on, or–” she made sure to deliver this with the most James-like, devil-may-care-smirk she could manage, “–or we could just accept reality and bang on this table.”
She didn’t look back at James when she stood straight, fussing out the wrinkles of her skirt to shift it back and forth. One doesn’t look back at explosions they’ve caused, no matter how tempting. Lily took a few deliberate steps forward, towards the stairwell to the Dormitories, when her effort paid off.
She’d nearly made it to the stairs when she hears the chair scrape behind her, can practically feel James’ eyes on her back when she spins to claim her victory, satisfied smirk on her face–
When she’s struck silent first by the blazing look in his eye, and next by his mouth on hers, desperate and greedy, his hands cupping her face for more contact, better access. The shock wears off fairly quickly, and she’s kissing him back, fingers curling delightfully in the mop of hair at his neck, finally able to wander into territory they’ve been itching to explore for themselves. His hands wander, pulling her in, and it’s a while before he gathers himself enough to slow down, coaxing longer, slower kisses from her lips.
“That,” James says, haggard breath doing something wonderful to all of her as she smiles, big and warm, “That is a kiss worth talking about. That is a kiss worth risking it all for.”
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