Archive of Our Own

Lily makes her fear into something small and swallows. It does nothing to calm her rabbit heart; the thump of blood in her ears; the dark blue wash of rain down the storeroom window.

She checks her watch and feels the fear pool, acidic, in her stomach.

They should be back by now.

Lily inhales, exhales, considers; considers each and every thing gone wrong: Incorrect coordinates. Surprise drop. Faulty intel. A trap. A coup. A fight. A bad fight.

Injury. Injury. Death.

She shuts her eyes and breathes in so quick it cuts. She erases the word and tugs tighter her buttoned jacket and opens her eyes to the dark blue window. Traces every little rivulet; all unknowing rivers.

It really is a deluge. Enough to drown a rabbit.

From around the outer wall, the cracked entrance, a swift and caustic bang; a gruff, hissing,

“Lils!”

She pitches toward the sound, wand slipping with sweat, fear rising from its acid pool. A thatch of blonde hair barrels inside—a violent tremor in Peter’s jaw; his fear, unswallowed. Slung along his shoulder an arm and a limp—body. Feet dragging. Pair of cracked glasses and chin bobbing up, wand drooping at side and the pale flickering eyes, one arm reaching up and out, unable to touch, unable to even—“Lils—” and her heartbeat, splintering—

“Oh, fucking hell!”

Sirius dives inside the door at a delayed, absurd trajectory, wand high aloft and unwieldy, hair untied and arching, airborne, jumper torn to shreds, blackened by rain. The rabbit thumps its feet on her harried pulse and Lily comes to from the fog of James, fallen; shrieks Protego, throws it out past Peter, past Sirius, past the door; out into the angry wind. There’s a terrible, far-off sound. Flares of red light drum down on the shield and implode, infuriated. Like a nightmare, another sound, a listless gasp: James slumped and falling from Peter. Lily’s knees collapse to catch him—under the arms, at the waist, and his breath is wrong, all wrong, choking and garbled; trainers unlaced and mud drenched; somewhere, the heavy, copper scent of blood. Rain barrels through the open door and stings their bloodless cheeks.

“Portkey, Lils, portkey!” Peter near voiceless against the clang and clap of rebounded curses eating away at the shield, little crimson cataclysms; Sirius lighting the doorway in steady beams of silver reinforcement, one hand outstretched, eyes torn between the fight and the fleeing—Lily has the portkey, yes, yes, somewhere, somewhere safe— but she is faulting, such erratic breath on her sternum, James punished to his knees, face pressed into her ribs, arms clasping at her legs in desperation, his pain like white noise she can feel crackling, everywhere; prickling, faltering, hurt—but Peter is grabbing her arm, watery blue eyes, shaking her arm: “Lily, Lily, Lily, come on, we need the—”

Her mechanical nod—rabbit heart in full-on sprint and leaping—hand thrust in pocket for the leather glove—a distant, disjointed chant, we’re fine we’re fine, we’re fine—James grappling at her waist without grip—and maybe it’s enough just to reach—

The glove finally outstretched. Peter screams for Sirius and the shield bursts above them, ablaze; red and achingly bright; “hold on, love, we’re nearly gone,” Lily begs, miserably, into James’ hair, matted and wet and smelling, strongly, of earth scorched by fire. 

The portkey flashes green and the bodies are yanked, in an instant, from one place to the next.

A turbulent sky beyond; dark, lonely blue. Fathomless. 

At first: a vast and generous nothing.

Smooth, curved, like falling off a slow dark edge, continuously—but he is flat—stationary—and then he hears a voice: a sobbing? I won’t—I won’t go, I won’t go, you can’t—and another voice, soft, stern—Only a bit...honey, he’s—need you gone...Black, will you—?

The next: a wet gasping, like being swallowed alive—

—punctured by rapid influx of air, lungs gone inside out—and the sounds, the sounds crystallizing to hard noise, angled, harsh—heavy, useless arms. Something soft underneath, body stripped to base layers—skin hotcold, sweat-flooded; like burning in hard wind. “Wh—” comes his own strangled voice, half-gone, starved for sound, eyes scraping open to white light—can’t see. Glasses—absent. Broken? Gone. Blurry red mass rushing in, tight grip on his wrist, frantic, “James,”—maniacal, internal, buried: Lils Lils Lils—then another, persistent—“Evans! We’re—he’s losing—Pettigrew, get her out, now!”

Stifled shriek: Doubled by acute, shocking pain—pulsating, and pushing in, wedging itself inside; he opens his mouth to say no, no thank you but the noise is hard enough to hear and there’s a sudden blinding light, thick, striped cyan, and a careful hand on his arm, a voice he knows and he knows he is losing, now—“steady, steady, Prongs, all right, we’re—we’ll get you well—just nearly there, now—”

His throat clamps shut—and he loses light. Pitched forward into vast, generous nothing.

A boy falls into a dandelion field. Beholds the perfect sky; splintering sun. Bees hum nearby. Fingers crisscross stems; pluck off spiky yellow heads. Tossed off into a little pile. Make a wish, little boy.

He wishes for peace.

The field absorbed by a narrow black vacuum and the boy lands in the moment of injury: in the cold rain, rain smelling of mildew and rot; black puddles underfoot. Time is running out—there isn’t time. Shouting and shouting and Potter! We’re outnumbered, we’re leaving, don’t be bloody stupid—distant figures crumbling into black smoke; smoke that seethes, writhes; repulsed and spilling with curses, with dark, roiling lights, each flash a death near avoided, each lash like a tongue, heavy and unforgiving and forked—

—and the boy, licked through in silver pain— 

Something cuts through the ether—an incoherent voice, “—out of danger, but —the leg, Mags, his leg—”

The leg is on fire, or else frozen in ice. Or regrowing, slowly—excruciatingly slow.

The vast becomes round again and he falls forward, plummeting: this time, into a quiet room pooled in water. Upright and walking. He takes a step and this is the future; he can feel it. Feet wet and heart so strong and clear.

A girl standing somewhere on the other side. Long red hair tangled and wet. Precious hands wrung tight together. Brow contorted in pain. I don’t know how to reach you.

I’m right here, sweetheart. He stretches out his hand—but finds it made entirely of water. Outstretched, and dissolving; a useless, watery reach. 

I’m right here.

A soft knock on the bathroom door. “Evans? Everything all right? You’ve been—oi, I’m standing here, will you—what d’you mean leave her alone, she’s—oh, come off it, Lupin, I’m just trying to be a help, honestly—”

Lily presses her forehead to cool porcelain. Focuses on one breath in; one breath out. It doesn't work. Her stomach roils, and she sicks up. Hardly anything left—but it burns just the same.

There's scuffling outside the door, voices quick and low. Lily flushes the basin and rises to the sink, avoiding her own eyes in the mirror. Swishes around mouth rinse and spits it out. Washes her hands and turns the light off and takes a backward look at her reflection, hand on the doorknob.

Her face is stark and pale and scared, even in the dim.

The door swings open to Remus and Sirius mid-argument. They fall silent; turn to her, cautious.

“I’m fine,” she says, though she doesn’t meet their eyes, either. Pulls at the sleeves of her linen blouse, at the collar; sticky with nervous sweat. Remus takes out his wand and casts a cooling charm. She closes her eyes to it and nods. “Thank you.”

“Jesus, Evans,” Sirius murmurs, his hand on her arm. She wants to pull off, turn from the touch, tell them both to piss off —but the tightness in her throat intensifies, the pit in her stomach glomming like a rock. She loses footing, body asway; Sirius catches her elbow and pulls her forward, into the crook of his shoulder.

Lily takes a long, painful breath.

That morning she woke from fitful sleep to disorientation; pain; loneliness; panic. Remembering James, a room away, deep in spelled sleep. Remembering, disjointedly, the tossed-off owl from St. Mungo’s: ...three weeks lapsed...tri-monthly Contraceptive Charm...would you care to reschedule your appointment?

The bleary eyes, the dry throat, the: This can’t be right—

I never forget—

I never forget.

The problem with war is the blur. The carousel of unease, its unremitting haze; the constant, constant disruption. The this is not my time anymore. The my time belongs to war.

Lily feels sick again, suddenly, tucked in Sirius’ shoulder. It’s not the right time. This isn’t our time.

Remus puts a steady palm on her back, as if he can feel her tremble. Voice low, “there’s something else, isn’t there?”

She raises her head—and how clearly he seems to see her. His hair is overgrown; the color of sand wet with sea. All those narrow silver scars. She tries to say his name but nothing comes out, and besides that there’s another voice, round the corner of the hall:

“Lads? He’s awake—oh, shit, Lils, he's up, he's—”

“He’s awake?” Sirius interrupts, disbelieving.

Peter looks drained, nodding. “Awake.”

Remus urges Lily, palm on back—but it's Sirius she looks to, now. The skin beneath his eyes made into translucent half-moons. “We’ll be just on—you go.”

She pauses one more half a second, then goes. Feels a tremor overtaking. Rushing so quickly she nearly smacks into Mags, exiting. The door cracked an inch. “Be gentle, yeah? It’s fragile. But—a day or so of rest, he’s good as fine.”

“Maggie,” Lily breathes, tunneling the woman into her arms. Gripping like she doesn’t know how hard she holds. Entrenched in gratitude—for her, for him; maybe, for a third. “Thank you.”

“All in time, Evans,” Mags says gruffly, pulling back, bristling. “All in time.”

Lily steps in slowly, squinting at the brightness. Someone has opened the shades and the room is light with midday. In the center, in their bed, pillowed upright by cushions and sheets, blanketed in the purple quilt her mother made for them—James sitting up, open-eyed.

Lily inhales deeply and blinks to be sure that it’s right; that it’s real. Amid such a downy pile he looks younger. But his eyes are blaring gold, glasses un-cracked—and he’s breathing.

“Hi,” he says, quietly, sheepishly. Someone put him in pajamas. The green-and-white striped collared shirt buttoned unevenly, off by one looped hole.

At such a little thing, the pulp of Lily's heart gives a definitive jolt.

She stumbles. Slows; remembers Mags saying fragile. Looks down to his leg, bandaged and glowing the deep indigo of stasis charms. Her throat locks and she remembers the morning; her hapless nerves. Turns her head out of necessity, eyes landing on the bedside table, the little framed sketch of her own profile—doodled by James in the back of seventh-year Charms.

She turns back and finds him apprehensive, chewing at his lower lip, as if she’s the one that should be handled carefully. As if he didn’t fall to his knees and nearly leave her for good. “Hi,” she tries—and it really almost works, if it weren’t for the cracking, midway, for the way his arm falls down onto the bed, palm up, open, reaching, for the way he breathes out—

“Lils.”

She goes to him. Feels the palm, carefully, with her own—and skin so familiar, and finally warm, and dear, fingers latching onto hers, that she folds forward at the waist, unable to stop, face pressed wholly to the bend of his arm. Mouthing at the skin, desperate to prove he is solid; prove he is whole. “I’m sorry.”

“No, love, no,” he murmurs, and he’s threading a hand through her hair, urging her face upward, till she finds herself facing the uneven buttons—a detail still so tender that it breaks her over again. Reaching out to touch any reachable part; the other elbow, the good leg, the hollow space between collarbones.

“Come on,” he says, so earnestly.

“Don’t you—” she cuts her head to the side and suddenly exhaustion crashes over her; the night of poor sleep, the morning so blue with sickness and owl and abrupt, unwelcome truth. “Don’t you go and pull that shit ever again, Potter, you can’t just—” His hand stroking up through her hair, his hand cradling her jaw. “I won’t live without you.” And it’s irrational and true. His thumb across her lips. “You arsehole,” she adds, though she’s crying—though the sentiment is real—though her lungs are crying out for air.

“Rather selfish of me to nearly die, I realize," his mouth quirking minutely, a smirk so gentle and so Jameslike it pains. “And I apologize, I really do, from the bottom of my heart.”

“Honestly,” she laughs, cut through at once with pain and a flood of gentle levity, his eyes so bright and healthy; the sweet flopping of dark hair over forehead. “Honestly.”

His throat moves. There’s no time to tell him—not the right time—others wanting reunions, wanting confirmation he’s awake. But his face so open and honest. “We’ll be okay,” he says, always quick to ground, to hold steady; to carry her face in his hands. “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head, words gone out. Kisses him on the cheek, on the other. “Stay with me,” she begs. Implores. “I love you, stay with me.”

His brow creased in a tender pull. Breath shallow and warm when their lips meet between, pulling her out of herself. Everything will wait. Relief is like a river; long, slow, and plenty.

Lily pauses, lazy with sleep, in the cusp of the hall—glimpsing round the corner James and Sirius stood in the kitchen, bent together, talking in quiet tones. She leans her head to the wall, watches James smile and laugh. He looks well-rested. He’s wearing the sweater she gave him for Christmas, lavender and woolen. One elbow already rethreaded with magic.

She presses a hand to her ribs. Afraid if she doesn’t hold her heart inside, it will spill out. Sirius leans back against the counter and flicks his wand at a simmering pan, at the toaster; she can smell eggs and nearly-burnt bread; the lingering scent of James, head heavy on his morning pillow. His fluttering lashes as he woke, slowly, culled his fingers to her neck, kissed her through halfsleep; whispered I’m here, sweetheart. I’m here.

Lily lets the fingers shift down; rest on her belly. Tender and soft. She steps into the kitchen.

“Morning, sleepy,” James murmurs when she tucks herself into his side, feeling the sweater between her fingers, feeling his warmth and his being here, being alive. Gripping at the loops of his jeans. Unwilling to let go.

“Toast, Evans?” Sirius asks, slipping past them. “Eggs?”

They share slow breakfast. Peter joins not long after and steeps tea just the way they all like. They laugh when Remus finally emerges, disgruntled and bedheaded, shoving at Sirius lightheartedly as he’s pulled in for a kiss; hands touching necks. Lily keeps herself connected to James; hand on his leg as it bounces under the table; mouth pressed into his shoulder when he refills her juice; fingers moving up through his hair, still damp from a shower. As if he’ll stay, just here, if she can keep him steady. As if touch could save him—any of them.

“Come with me to the library?” Lily wonders as the table breaks up— Remus fully awake and talking aloud through his list of Saturday chores, Sirius groaning that they ought to just go back to bed and loiter, Peter insisting on clearing the dishes, jostling a kind and gentle hand at James’ shoulder—“I’ve got books to return.”

They pile on their corduroy coats and cast warming charms and walk down the street through late November leaves, sunlight yellow and cold. Lily concentrates on the feeling of their hands, entwined. Hefts her tote of books higher on her shoulder. Feels his thumb rubbing her thumb.

“Okay?” he asks and in response, she brings the thumb up to her lips.

The Muggle library is scarce with patrons. Lily returns her books and chats for a moment with sweet, silver-haired Fran. “You’re quite glowing, love,” the librarian says as Lily shuffles a stack of new books into the tote. “Has that tall handsome mister gone and given you a ring?”

Lily smiles—and it bursts in jest as much in sadness. “Not yet, Fran, no ring.”

“He’s a right plonker should he not be ring shopping, at least. Tell him I said that, would you now?”

Lily finds James in the back of the library, flipping through a book on car mechanics, muttering on about how bloody impossible it all is, sans spellwork. The glass-ceilinged atrium above scatters gold light over the floor, over the stacks; catches in his dark hair. Lily feels the heart-spill, tenfold. Fits herself to his back and wraps her arms around his body; buries her face in his coat.

“Lils?” he asks, spreading his hands over hers.

“I love you,” she tells his coat.

He twists around fully and cradles her jaw and the library feels immense—but, still, too small. She chokes on the weight of her nerves, on the weight of the future. “You’re pale,” he murmurs, and she shuts her eyes. “Really, is everything okay?”

“Let’s walk,” she diverts, eager for someplace else to breathe.

They walk to a nearby park. The sun has dimmed behind clouds. Lily feels her footsteps very intentionally. Tucked into the crook of his body, she knows this is before. The after, unknowable. They will never be the same.

They meander to a bench with a nice view of a small pond, catered in late autumn by dreary clouded algae, birds splashing their wings in the water.

James doesn’t push—knowing, perhaps, that the words are glomming in her throat, that her fear and panic and wrong time wrong time wrong time are fraught enough to bury any thrill; affection; growth.

She asks, to stall, “your leg?”

He gives her a small smile. “Aches, just a little.”

“Good,” she nods, breathing out, running her hand down his arm; feeling his eyes on her. She looks out over the water. “Good.”

A family teeters down the path behind them. The babbling child throws the skin of an orange into the grass. Lily concentrates, very hard, on the way an orange smells when its skin is peeled off; the pleasant, stinging sweet. She remembers like her own breath the day she and James shared an orange under summer sun, eighteen years old, besotted; juice dripping between fingers. I love you shimmering between them for the very first time. “Can you feel it?” he wondered, hair moved through with wind. She held his eyes and cupped his hand in hers; gave over the last slice of fruit. “I’m full of it.” She tasted the orange on his lips. Amended, “overflowing.”

“I don’t know," she whispers, now, on the cold bench, "how you’ll react.”

James squeezes her hand. “It’s okay,” he says gently. “Anything, Lils. I’m here.”

“It’s...” she smooths a hand down her wool skirt, the thick stockings beneath. Looking for something to ground. “These last weeks have been—tumultuous,” she begins, “with the Order, and the moon, and the—with you, your—”

Out in the pond, a pair of ducks submerge their heads underwater. Lily reels in the tight knot of breath in her throat; tries to swallow past.

“Love,” James says, eyebrows pressed together, shifting himself sideways, arm reaching out under her back, round her waist. “What’s happened?”

Her lips quiver. How stupid it is—how reckless. “I missed my period, fully, last month,” she whispers, toying compulsively with the hem of her skirt. “And...I’m late on my charm, I missed the appointment. In the middle of—” she cuts her head away from him; can’t bear to see his face, falling. “I didn’t go. I forgot.”

There are birds in distant trees, calling out; anxious. The memory of the child, the orange peel, and the summer sun are blurring, too much the same thing. A love without home.

A sprawl of fingers on her cheek; she lets her face turn. His eyes gone soft. “You’re—” he clears his throat and runs a thumb over her chin. “Are you—?”

No chance of swallowing this lump, now. She lets it lump. Lets herself nod, slowly.

James goes still, save the stroke of his thumb. She feels frantic to move—to gasp—to scream. But she stays in his stillness and watches for signs of life. For signs of annoyance, of anger, of this is not our time.

None of it comes.

“I know,” she says, to fill the quiet, without much of a voice, “we’re too young, and there’s—so much wrong with it, and no time for—I know I’ve fucked up, I know there’s no place for such—such irresponsible—”

“Lily,” James chokes, flattening any further defense. “Lily,” he repeats, and his eyes are wet and his hand on her chin is shaking, shaking entirely.

“Are you...upset?”

“Upset? How could I—” James searches her eyes, frantically. “Are you upset?”

She bites her lips. Finds a swell of heat, in the space of their bodies—shakes her head, suddenly certain. “No. Scared, yes, but....no,” she breathes in. “I’m not upset.”

His breath seems to rush out all at once. He hiccups on a laugh, and pulls her in desperately, arms wrapping around; she lets herself burrow. Safe and warm. His lips press into her neck without aim. His smile presses, too. “Lily,” he whispers, and even her name is safe, tucked under his tongue. “When did you—” he pulls back, wet-cheeked. She scatters it away with her thumbs. “How long have you known?”

“Only yesterday. St. Mungos sent an owl and...” she feels herself blushing. “When Mags was in, wrapping up your spells...I went to the corner shop for a Muggle test and took it in their loo.”

James blows air out through his lips. “The Muggle tests...they’re accurate?...I mean,” he restarts, deliberately, brow knit in careful concentration. “You’re—you’re absolutely sure?”

“A Healer will be able to confirm, but...” Lily extracts one of his hands and folds it over her stomach; hears his quick inhaling breath. She covers the hand with her own. “I feel...full.”

“Oh my god, Evans,” he laughs, looking up at her; voice faltering, split in two; eyes overfull with wonder. “We’re having a baby?”

To be growing something that belongs to them both; to watch him transform with the knowledge, blinking, and teary, and happy. Lily’s heart pushes hard at her ribs. The birds are calling out in the trees. In among the this is not our time: something flowering, something organic—we will make this our time.

“Yes, Potter,” she smiles, chasing his sparkling laugh; her body a home to such love. “We’re having a baby.”

“Don’t have too much fun while we’re off, yeah?”

“Never, Padfoot, we—”

“Head Girl? Can you reassure?”

“Former Head Girl, mind you—”

“Sirius, honest to Merlin, we’re so, so late, and you know how Moody gets, he’ll have our—”

“—bollocks, yeah, had the exact same and shuddering thought, dearest—”

“—amount of calling me dearest can make up for that image, fuck’s sake—Pete? We’re near—”

“I’ve been ready, Remus!” Peter exclaims, springing indignantly from his seat on the sofa. “Been sat right bloody here, reading a book while you lot argue on and on about ‘oh, do you have the coordinates, or do I?’ Honestly, could’ve read through Hogwarts a bloody History frontward and backward, already!”

James grins at the exasperated trio, puffy-coated and scarf-wrapped and leaving not thirty minutes after they ought to have left. Between his wide-leg lean at the kitchen counter, Lily calls out, “Be safe, okay?” Sirius accios his wand all the way from down the hall, quite nearly missing the tawny tuft of Peter’s hair—“And be polite!”

“Polite, Evans, honest?” James tucks into her sweet-smelling hair. “Like Moody wants politeness, not moxie or gall or some imposing four-syllable word that escapes me at the moment.”

Lily pinches the skin of his arm.

“See you for dinner, yeah?” Sirius is calling back. “Right chuffed for steak pies—”

“Black!”

“Oh, for—coming, coming!”

Peter’s aggravated scowl is the last thing they see, the babble of Remus and Sirius floating down the hall, disappearing behind the closed door.

“If we’re going to be parents,” Lily says, running her hands along James’, wrapped round her waist, “We ought to start practicing, no?”

James laughs, sweeping her hair away and leaning down to kiss her neck. He contemplates the skin, a small pair of freckles marking the place where neck and shoulder meet. He thinks of their furtive trip to the fertility clinic earlier in the day; how the charms glimmered cerulean over Lily’s stomach, her hand gripping his tightly as the Healer surveyed her vitals, told them how healthy the baby—their baby—looked, inside, just about ten weeks along and growing so well. James took it all in as if from afar; heart beating out of his body, sense of place, of home, tied so firmly to Lily’s five-fingered hold on him; how her eyes shone with nervous excitement as she looked at him from the examination table—red hair a stark contrast to such a sterilized room. She whispered, “Okay?” and squeezed his hand. He nodded, bent to kiss her forearm, unable to find words for how he felt; an overflowing of love that left him just as tethered as it left him unmoored.

In the kitchen, he tries to make sense of the paradox: how he might be sinking for all his unruly, anxious fears—and at the same time buoyant, near-weightless in pride, in joy. He bends his cheek to the freckles and blinks slowly. “You’re going to be such a good mum.”

She sighs, turns in his arms. Happy and healthy and growing. “If you let go of any absurd dream involving an infant Quidditch player,” she murmurs, hands winding up his chest and neck, “then I know you’ll make a really wonderful dad.”

Though he is unwilling and unable to let go of hope for an infant Quidditch player, he makes no mention—he leans forward and kisses her cleanly, slowly, letting the overflow transmute into tenderness, deliberate and ebbing; Lily responds in kind, threading his hair through her fingers, some soft urgency sounding in the back of her throat. Her body melts closer, thin pink cardigan letting him know just how little she’s wearing beneath—and is unsurprised, given the turmoil surging inside, that need floats so easily to the top; skimmed out of overwhelming affection, of the delicate knowing that their bodies, together, created.

And the idea of when that might have been—when it happened, in any of the jumbled and run-together instances of love, of impatience, of time-taken and stolen and stretched out and yearned for—eats at James, digs at him—merges with the feeling of limbs lethargic on his, her lips moving from chin to jaw to neck and loitering, heatedly, on his throat. “When—” he begins, short on breath, hands moving up her back, under the thin fabric, finding the warm skin of her back—“when do you think it happened?”

Lily hums into his neck, nipping gently. “When what happened?”

He laughs, ruefully, fingers pressing into the curve of her hips. Closes his eyes to her hair. “Er, the conception.”

“The conception?” Lily emerges from his neck, laughing, too, lips pulled apart in mirth. “What, we're religious, now?”

“Well, it’s the technical term, Lils—would you rather I call it procreation?”

Lily groans, “Oh no, that’s far worse—so detached and impersonal,” she steals a long and wandering kiss. “Hardly what I feel when you’re inside of me, moving.”

"Oh, fucking hell—" James kisses her, can’t help it—and again, and again. “Really, though, semantics aside—” he moans, and she kisses him again, still laughing—“I want to know when you think it happened, is all.”

Leaning back from him, and really looking at him clearly, Lily lets her smile fall into something smaller; something like a smirk. “Alright, well,” she exhales, thinking, hands falling from his hair down his shoulders—and slowly, slowly, down his arms, pausing at the sleeves of his shirt. “It had to have been two months ago, or so,” she muses, eyes meandering from their lean to the expanse of kitchen counter behind them, the oven and the hob. “Maybe, it was just there, over the...” her eyes turn back to him, aglimmer.

James swallows deliberately, tilts his chin upward; takes a short moment to compose himself. It hardly works. “Evans,” he articulates, slowly. She laughs, fingers slipping, rounding his biceps; an insufferable squeeze, and stroking.

“I imagine an act of such passion could surely lead to conception,” she stands on tiptoes, finds his ear, nips at the lobe, “don’t you agree?”

For this he has only one long, breathless moan—the memory of a night without housemates, a shared bottle of wine; her breath so soft and wanting as they necked in the kitchen, necking that turned— near instantly—into a clamor of hands under and tugging at clothes, lips on necks, whimpers and gasping and an oh, Merlin, please as he sunk to his knees and fixed his tongue between her legs— which led, inevitably, to a growing plea for more and more now; to her impatient keening as he grappled with her skirt and knickers, his own pants barely pushed aside before he pressed inside, hard and leaking, half-gone and humbled at her neck, her shoulder—her sweet gasping James what took him clear over the edge, right there in the kitchen, adjacent the hob; her hips tight in his hands, legs shaking madly under his.

And in the same kitchen her mouth connects to his softening breath, drinking it down, knowing. “Or,” she continues, “perhaps that time in the en suite, when not five minutes in you—”

“Jesus fuck,” James interrupts, voice high and reedy—a sound that changes, and breaks, as Lily swivels her hips over his—“Hadn’t seen you for three days, you can’t just—it was—”

“I wasn’t complaining, though, was I, love?” she laughs into his mouth. “Especially not when you said such nice things with your tongue, afterward.”

"That made up for it?"

"More than made up for it, darling."

He smiles, quietly, and slips his hands down the warmth of her back, round her thighs, and lifts, jostling her into his arms. Lily tightens her grip on him, presses a kiss to his neck. “Could’ve been any one of the times you’ve fucked me senseless into our bed,” she muses. “Oh, excuse me—our premarital bed.”

“Thank you,” James says, “for acknowledging our unwed sin.”

Their bodies sway forward as he pushes up off the counter and staggers, indiscriminately, toward the bedroom, urged on by her burgeoning moan. “You know, I—” he tries, fixing her weight against a doorframe, finding it near impossible to speak around her suddenly desperate kiss, the sparring of tongues—“I just think—”

“—do tell me what you think—”

“—that talking about this was a shit idea.”

“Shit idea? No, really?”

“Really,” James repeats, short on breath and having stumbled from the door right into their bedroom, replete with purported sin. “Because all this talk of conception has me thinking—”

“All this thinking,” Lily whines into his ear, tongue swirling, dangerous. “You’ll hurt yourself, Potter.”

James lays her down on the bed, laughing; hair scattering and soft, cardigan pulled taut at the buttons, a flush of red spreading down her neck. She bites her lip as he leans back, looks at her.

“Thinking of...?” she prompts, fingers fall down his forearms, stroking.

“Of everything that leads up to conception,” he clarifies, swallowing, dipping his face into the swells of her breasts, nuzzling; lifting her sweater up enough to find her belly. His touch slows, gentle as it traces down the skin, as his mouth bends to kiss, slowly, like she is some delicate thing. He turns his face, lets his cheek rest against the center. Closes his eyes. “Hi, baby.”

Lily clambers onto elbows and reaches a hand through his hair. “Baby says hi back.”

James lifts his head. “Oh, you can hear the baby?”

“Yes,” she says, fingers moving across his brow, down his cheek, feeling the indent of his grin. “We’ve a telepathic connection.”

“And what’re they saying, now?”

“Mmm,” she hums. “Saying it’s alright if mum and dad want a bit of a shag, they’ll close their eyes.”

His laughter precedes his body, coming over her, weight shifting down. Her hands latched to the exposed skin of his neck. A gentle kiss between. Pulling and yearning, like yarn. The center, a knot, growing stronger.

Lily weaves her legs around his waist. Breaks gently from his mouth. “When do you think it happened?”

The question is considered, serious and slow, in the nape of her neck; in the pink plane of her cheek; in a blinking, unbroken stare. James lets the world settle down into the space of the bed and their bodies. Answers, eventually, with a tensed forehead, a hand gentle along her thigh. “If this came to be...because of an intention to love you as much and as long as I can,” he murmurs, “then it could’ve been any one of those times.”

She exhales, and he takes the same air as his breath.

He dips toward her mouth, quietly. “Any time at all.”

Lily makes a small sound, pulls down his lips—and of course he can feel their love growing, still, even in the quiet of the room. If he is to drown and float, all at once, then let it be like this; in warm and gentle waters, fixed to the tide of their hearts.

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