InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "just a moment"

Lily Evans (lovelily) wrote in flippedrpg,
@ 2012-08-13 00:26:00

Entry tags:

ch: blood: lily evans, ch: thg: james potter, p: rachael, p: serena

Who: Lily Evans ^blood, James Potter ^thg
What: Harry has turned up, so Lily and James need to have a Conversation.
When: Sunday, August 12th
Where: James's unit
Warnings: TBC

Lily idled outside of James's room. She wanted to savour the last few moments of normalcy before the awkward conversation they were about to have, but her time had already been poisoned by guilt, so there was nothing to enjoy. With the arrival of Harry from James's world, Lily had begun to realise that her relationship with James was not just thrown in the face of their respective future spouses. It now included their future children. How would Harry react when he found out that James was with Lily, only not his mother? After speaking to him, however accidentally, Lily felt drawn to him the same way she did with all the H Potters, but how would he feel about her when he knew the truth?

With no reason left to dawdle, Lily knocked on James's door and let herself inside. She closed it quietly behind her and leaned against the doorframe, smiling at James by way of a greeting. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and exhaled slowly. If this conversation didn't go well, she couldn't bear to think of the consequences, not when she felt so strongly for him.

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_weaponofchoice
2012-08-13 12:14 am UTC (link)

James was a father. It hadn't hit him until he had seen his son face to face earlier that afternoon. He could see the way his features - not the ones of one of his alternate selves - had melded together with the woman he had left back home. He had felt a small pang of guilt when he had looked down into Lily's eyes in Harry's face, starting slightly as he stared into a bit of his past and future. However, it was the missing present that unsettled him.

He glanced up when he heard the door open, pushing his thoughts aside as Lily slid into the room. He returned her smile as he straightened up, hands pressing into his thighs as he regarded her from his spot on the couch. His blue eyes caught her green ones, searching them for any indication about what she was feeling. He nodded slightly and got up, his lean frame unfolding as he covered the space between them in a few sure strides.

"How are you holding up?" he asked, capturing her hands and pulling her deeper into the unit. Mindful of her confession that she had a hard time figuring out what was going through his mind when it came to her, he took her hands in his and brought them to his lips.

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lovelily
2012-08-13 12:45 am UTC (link)

Lily smiled a little, her cheeks colouring as his lips brushed over the back of her hands. She let herself be guided into his room, exhaling another sigh as she lowered herself onto the couch. Lily liked this unit much more than the one he'd had in Epsilon. The two blocks were poles apart. This one smelled delicious, and Lily always ended up feeling moderately hungry for pie when she came here, and the punchbag in the corner looked particularly inviting today. if only she had the energy.

"I'm doing a little better. I spoke to Harry - the one from colour world - and he tried to put my mind at ease. Your Harry," it still felt weird to say that, to acknowledge that James was really a dad, "is such a wonderful kid. He said something to me, though, that just... he said if he was going to trust anyone, he'd start with me." Lily shook her head and looked down at her lap, "I feel like I've let him down by betraying his mother, and being a rubbish mother to him by cheating. Even though it's not really cheating... but it feels that way, now he's here."

Lily raised her eyes to James's briefly, "How about you? Did you meet him?"

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_weaponofchoice
2012-08-13 03:51 am UTC (link)

James kept a hold of one of her hands as they perched on the couch, keeping her linked to him as if he was afraid that she would spook at the slightest move and flee. He caught her wistful glance at the punching bag in the corner and peered closely at her her face. He could see the faint lines between her brows that hadn't been there this morning, showing that this wasn't easy for her as well.

"Did talking to him help?" he asked, knowing that Lily was particularly close with the Harry from colour world. To him, it was only natural that Lily had gone to him for help; Harry had been a presence in her life longer than he himself had. He sat back at her confession, his lips drawn down in a frown. "You're one of the few here I trust, so it must run in the fa-ah." He gave her hand a squeeze before releasing it so he could brace his arms against his knees.

"I don't feel like that," he stated, lips pressing together for a moment. He hadn't reached out to many people here like she had, yet his instincts to protect his own were still there. He caught her eye and nodded, confirming that he'd met Harry earlier in the day. "I met him this afternoon. I've only been back for a few minutes."

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lovelily
2012-08-13 07:24 pm UTC (link)

Lily stood up and walked a slow circle around the room. She felt drained of energy but entirely wound up, so much that sitting still wouldn't do. "What's he like? I bet he's brilliant," Lily smiled softly at James from across the room, her fingers tinkering with whatever objects they could find. "He told me that you helped him prepare for the games, and that you were there for him after. I hate that he had to go through what you did, that he was reaped... but I'm so happy you're his father. I'm not sure how anyone else would have helped him overcome what he had seen and done to survive, unless they had been through it like you had."

It was best not to expend too much thought on Harry being reaped. He survived, and that was the main thing. Her mind threw flashes of made-up imagery, horrible scenes from the depth of her imagination of things that Harry might have seen or done, but she squashed them away. She worried for him, but his arrival made her worry for the future she had imagined with James. Lily didn't want to let him go, now that they were growing so close.

"What are we going to do? You said...," Lily raised her shoulders slowly in a shrug, "you said you wanted to take another step forward."

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_weaponofchoice
2012-08-13 09:43 pm UTC (link)

James turned on the couch as Lily walked around the room, careful to keep his eyes on her as she burned off nervous energy. Years of training had taught him never to turn his back on his opponent, a lesson that had permeated into his everyday life. “From what I can tell and remember,” James said, glancing at the old pair of glasses she was toying with, “he seems to favour his mother more than me. I think you’d like him more than you like me. He doesn’t have as much of the Potter swagger as I do. I don’t think he’s someone you’d ever consider insufferable.” He kept his eyes trained her long fingers as she moved on to the next object, watching them twitch slightly as she talked. His gaze flickered up to hers, trying to puzzle out exactly what she wasn’t saying.

He draped an arm across the back of the couch, his casual posture stiffening slightly as she talked about the Games. He suppressed the sequence of rapid-fire images almost as soon as they appeared in his mind; he didn’t want to picture the young man with the same tousled hair he wrestled with each morning fighting in a game his father couldn’t prevent him from playing any more than he wanted to revisit his time in the arena. Today was a day for the present, not for versions of his past.

James dipped his head in agreement, all the while keeping his blue eyes on her face. “Only if you want to as well,” he allowed, standing up and subtly maneuvering his lean frame so he was between Lily and the door. “I only want to take that step if you’re with me.”

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lovelily
2012-08-13 10:10 pm UTC (link)

Lily stared at James, clamping her teeth together to keep herself from speaking without thinking. She replaced the latest knick-knack onto the table very carefully. She wrapped her arms around herself, then disentangled them and ran her hands through her hair. She drummed her fists on her thighs. Her jaw hurt from setting it, so she let go.

"What do you want?" she said, a little louder than she meant to. "Your son is here - what does that mean to you? Your Lily could turn up tomorrow, and she could be a little older and so happy with you, and what will you want then? You said you need me, so what do you need?"

Lily spun in a circle and walked to the punching bag, but when she got there she thought better of it. Instead she leaned against it, her forehead on the cool leather. "I really need you to just be straightforward with me right now James. Don't consider what I want, or anyone else. Just tell me about you. You're... the only one whose opinion matters right now."

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_weaponofchoice
2012-08-13 10:34 pm UTC (link)

James reached up and rubbed at the small scar on his eyebrow, tracing the raised skin with his thumb as he counted to ten. He didn’t want to argue or raise his voice with Lily; they had done that too often in the past and he didn’t want to fall into the habit of shouting his emotions at her. He clenched his teeth together and fixed his blue eyes on her, anger turning them to ice.

“What I want?” he echoed, incredulous. His hand tightened on his waist as if he was resisting the urge to reach over and shake some sense into her. He watched her spin around and move towards the punching bag, retreating further away from him. He dropped his hands to his side and stalked after her, easily eating up the physical distance between them.

He stopped a few paces behind her and addressed her back, a muscle in his jaw jumping as he fought for control. “I can’t control who comes here, Lily, and you know that. What if your James showed up? What if he showed up and gave you convincing evidence that he didn’t cheat on you and he was happy with you?” He knew he had hit below the belt, but he couldn’t look back now. “Merlin, Lily. I want you, not her. I’d fight him to keep you at my side. What do I have to do to get you to see that?”

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lovelily
2012-08-13 11:36 pm UTC (link)

Lily looked sharply at James when he talked about James from her world. Whenever she explained what Petunia had said to her, people met the accusation with shock and disbelief. Everyone thought she was lying, or had been lied to. This James though, he knew better. He knew her insecurities.

"You want me. I don't know why, but I accept that you do. The problem is, I don't know if you need me. Maybe you think you do right now, but if Lily turns up, and she and your Harry want you in their family, you won't need me anymore. And you're right, you can't control if they turn up. I'm not blaming you for Harry turning up, and I am happy he's here instead of back in your world, but I can't help how I feel." Lily stepped away from the punch bag and faced him, fidgeting in place. "I know that right now, if James turned up from my world, I wouldn't believe him. I wouldn't want to be with him. It's different for you."

Lily pinched her nose and sighed, "I'm scared of losing you." She dropped her hand and fixed him with an exasperated stare, "See? I used my words. You know how I feel."

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_weaponofchoice
2012-08-14 12:14 am UTC (link)

James matched her sharp gaze unflinchingly, his clenched teeth the only sign that her words were finding chinks in his armor.

"They won't need me," James said, speaking in slow, measured tones. "They'll need the James that they know, their father and husband. They're not in my life back there, Lily, but you're in my life now and I need you to keep me here." His fingers twitches as if to reach out and hold her, but she fidgeted out of his reach. "I don't want to be with a stranger. You're the only Lily - Snape, Black, Evans, or Potter - that I need."

Now it was James' turn to fidget, anxiously shifting his weight between his feet as he peered down into her face, hoping that she'd be able to see past the guards he let down when he was around her. "Where I'm from, words can be twisted," he quietly explained, hand twitching up to his waist. "You have to show people what you feel, and even then you have to be careful so they won't be taken. I had a Lily taken from me once. I don't want the one I love taken from me again."

He glanced away and took a step back, fishing a small box out of his pocket and handing it over to her. It was slightly worse for wear from being carried around in his pocket for weeks and traveling through time and space, but the ring inside was untouched. "It was my grandmother's and I thought you deserved something unbroken from my world. I'm not asking anything from you other than for you to believe me when I tell you that you are the Lily Evans I want."

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lovelily
2012-08-14 12:55 am UTC (link)

He loved her. And really, that was all that mattered. Lily took a step toward him the moment he said that word, matching the step back he took. She didn't understand why he wanted distance now of all times, but when he produced a box, her heart stopped. Though it was hastily explained, Lily couldn't quieten her heartbeats. Lily turned the box over in her hands, her eyes fixed on his face.

"I believe you," she said quietly, a hint of a smile on her lips. Lily opened the box, her breath catching when she saw the beautiful ring inside. Lily didn't realise that something so pretty could exist in a world like James's. She took the ring from its cushion and held it up to the light. It caught every piece of light in the room and reflected it in rainbows across her skin. "I read a book once, about a magic ruby ring that granted wishes." Remarkably, the tiny ring fit perfectly on her ring finger - but Lily was careful to put it on her right hand, not left.

Once more, Lily took a step forward. She placed her hands flat on James's chest. The ring looked as though it had always been on her finger, and maybe that was where it was supposed to be. "I'm sorry I panicked. I was just afraid of losing you." Lily raised a hand to his face, tracing over the scar on his brow, cradling behind his neck. His blue eyes were the most shocking colour up close. "I love you," she said, her lips brushing against his and leaving the words there. As she kissed him, she moved a hand to her shoulder and brushed the toga sleeve down, and with one slow wiggle of her hips, the toga pooled at her feet.

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_weaponofchoice
2012-08-14 01:55 pm UTC (link)

Flamboyancy wasn't a characteristic of the people from the Districts, but even the simplest of gestures and words could hold more meaning than added embellishments could ever hope to capture. He watched her open the box, revealing the ring he had asked for Christmas, and let the warm feeling of relief sweep over him.

He smiled when she stepped closer, his larger hand reaching over to capture her right hand. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead before pulling her hand to the side so he could admire the ruby sitting on her hand. Mine, his mind whispered as he squeezed her hand. He couldn't give her more, but this declaration was enough for them. Other people didn't need to know what it meant; she was the only one that mattered. A slow, satisfied smile appeared on his face as he heard her words, and he pulled back to take his turn cradling her face. "I love you, Lily Evans. You won't lose that," he promised, the words flowing easily from his lips.

"And if I had known what kind of response that would have elicited," he rumbled around her lips as he felt her shift against him, "I would have given it sooner." His blue eyes darkened as he felt her toga slip down, the mischievous sparkle in them deepening into more. His hands replaced the missing fabric, roaming over her creamy skin and caressing the smooth contours of her body.

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