James Potter (goingstag) wrote in reduxpitch, @ 2016-07-28 21:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | !thread, character: james potter, character: lily potter |
who: james & lily potter
where: #33, godric’s hollow
when: 28 july, lunchtime
what: james knows a secret
status: completed in docs
It had been a long week already and James was already tired of being at the office all the time. And tired in general. And concerned - which had only been amplified after Hermione visited his office and accidentally gave him information that didn't pertain to the investigation but that he found more important. He'd been holding onto that for a couple days, not sure of what to do about it, if anything at all. Other than one thing specifically - telling Lily. There was no good timing for that sort of thing, but he knew the longer he avoided it the worse it would be once he brought it up. So he figured on one of his breaks home from work was as good a time as any, helped a bit by the fact that they'd maybe (ok, definitely) just had sex and he was feeling less overwhelmed by everything going on for at least the moment. He held her in against his chest, their legs still tangled together and his fingers trailing along her spine as he drew in a breath. “I need to tell you something.” -- Going home for lunch definitely had its perks, not least of which was that she was often home alone with her husband and that often meant quite a lot of head-clearing. Not that she would tell her coworkers that this was the reason. She typically told them that it was just nicer to be able to use her own kitchen and take some time to recharge before tackling the second half of the day. These things were certainly true, but mostly it was the time alone with James thing. Today's lunch hour had been quite welcome because there was a virtual mountain of files that she'd gathered over the week from further interviews and she just wasn't quite sure where to start with them and it had turned her brain into mush. Then, of course, James had turned it into soup but now it was returning to its previous state as the clock ticked closer to the time she'd have to return to the office. She was saved from having to worry much more about Mount Paperwork by James speaking. She smiled playfully and snuggled a bit closer, imagining some dirty thought. "Hm? Good something?" -- James tilted his head down to press a kiss to the top of her head, nuzzling against her hair and closing his eyes for a moment to avoid bringing their peace and quiet to an end. He could have let it stay, but it would mean another day of keeping to himself what she had a right to know. So he kept his arm around her to hold her close and let his fingers continue their trails up and down her back. “Not really,” he said quietly, letting his head fall back against the pillow. “It doesn't have anything to do with the mess going on currently but because of that mess, Hermione came to my office to talk to me. While she was there, she let something slip about… when Evan got hexed and was in the hospital.” -- Every muscle in Lily’s body immediately tensed and her blood turned cold. She felt a queasy, clenched feeling in her stomach and she had to force out a breath to calm her suddenly racing heart. She thought about that too much over the last several weeks, though she’d tried to push it down in favor of the knowledge that Evan was fine. Even if he couldn’t remember, even if no one knew why or what happened, he was fine now and would stay fine. She ran her tongue over her suddenly dry lips and tilted her face up so she could see James’s eyes. “What did she say?” -- His hand flattened on her back to move in broader strokes, attempting to keep some sense of comfort even though the topic was one that neither of them liked to think about. He let his head tilt to look down at her, and while he would have liked to give her a reassuring look he knew he couldn't. So he kissed her forehead instead. “She said… it was Harry - that he thought Evan was an intruder and didn't believe he had a brother, something to do with that chocolate… that messed with everyone.” -- Right, so this was a joke and it was in very, very poor taste. Lily frowned and pushed herself up onto her elbows to give her husband a stern look, but she knew him too well to mistake his expression for anything but sincerity. She sighed and swept her hair out of her face, then pushed herself up so that she was sitting upright, her hand still resting lightly on James’s chest. “That doesn’t make any sense.” It’s not that she didn’t believe this third-hand account of what happened, but that she honestly couldn't think of a reason why it happened. -- James loosened his arm around his wife as she moved to sit up, watching her expression. He brought his hand up to rest over hers on his chest, giving a slight shake of his head. No, it didn't. But things didn't always. “I know,” he said quietly, bringing his free hand up to rake back through his hair. “It doesn't. Some things do with it, like Harry being the one to take him in and his journal, it said I'm sorry…” -- Lily waved an impatient hand. She didn’t care that the pieces fit together like a tidy little mystery novel, all wrapping up and pointing, with a dramatic “ah ha!”, to her first-born. She cared that something horribly wrong had happened between her two sons, seemingly out of the blue, and one of them had been hospitalized. “So the… The chocolate things affected him,” she said slowly, forcing down the different emotions fighting for dominance and clinging to cold logic, “and made him think he didn’t have a brother. Why on earth wouldn’t he have a brother? And why would he attack someone?” She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, trying to understand. -- “I don't know, Lils,” James said, quite unhelpfully. He knew he had nothing to give her to make it less confusing, or bad. All he had was what Hermione had told him and the pieces he'd pulled together after the fact. Without talking to the boys, it wasn't likely they'd ever have much more than that. “That other world, I don't know, nothing I've heard about it has been good. Whatever Harry thought or saw, it was enough to cause him to do that. Neither of them wanted to tell us.” -- “Well they should have,” Lily snapped, then she sighed and turned away, swinging her legs over the side of the bed so that her feet touched the soft carpet. She placed her shaking hands on the mattress and let her head hang, hair falling down off her shoulders and covering her face. “Sorry,” she said. She reached up and raked her hair back so she had a clear view of the dresser across from her and the family photographs. “I need to hear this from them. I need a proper explanation before I know what to do.” -- James shifted, sitting up and moving closer to her as she sat on the edge of the bed. He circled his arms around her waist and pulled her back against him, pressing a kiss to the crook of her neck before letting out a sigh. Of course he would have preferred to hear it from Evan or Harry, but he thought the important part was that they knew now. “They should have,” he agreed, thumb stroking gently against her side. “I didn't know how to go about it, with them. Or you. But I wanted you to know.” -- Lily very nearly resisted the embrace, but the feel of him had always been a stabilizing, reassuring thing, and so after only a moment of tensing up, she relaxed into his arms and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. She would have to go to work after this and it would be all that she’d be able to think of until she was able to sit her boys down and demand an account. “Well I’m glad someone told me,” she said, feeling quite annoyed at everything. Why was it such a big secret? Nothing made sense and it made her stomach hurt and she just wanted to yell at somebody. -- “That's how I felt when Hermione let it slip,” James said, huffing out a wry chuckle as he hooked his chin over his shoulder and hugged her a little closer. He still had no idea how to approach it with anyone, especially not his sons, but at least they had a united front? “We’ll get it figured out, Lily. There's been a bit of time, heads have cooled, wounds have healed… maybe they'd be more agreeable to talking now.” -- “They certainly had better be,” Lily responded, “because I expect a full explanation.” She wasn’t sure exactly how she was going to get it if the the boys continued to insist that nothing had happened. It’s not like she could force them. She sighed and pulled herself slowly out of James’s grip so that she could get up and start dressing with furious gusto. “Evan lied when he said he didn’t remember. I’ve been beside myself with worry about his brain being damaged.” She realized that she was just making herself more angry so she bit down on her lip and finished dressing in huffy silence. When she was done, she turned to face her husband as she worked her hair up into a quick bun. “You are the messenger,” she said evenly, “I’m sorry for shooting at you.” -- James let her go, watching as she pulled on the clothes they'd been so quick to discard when he’d gotten home not long after her. He could see the tension that had crept back into her body, the obvious concern on her face. Shifting how he was sitting, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and let them dangle toward the floor, giving a little nod to what she was saying. “I know, Lily,” he said gently. That was a concern they'd both shared, that there had been permanent spell damage to his brain, so there was a slight relief that might not be the case but it was overshadowed by the reasons why not. He reached out to put his hands on her hips, pulling her back closer to him and looking up at her. “Hey, I love you.” -- Lily, with her hands up in her hair, was completely powerless to stop James grabbing her and pulling her closer, and the look she gave him was the old familiar one of affectionate annoyance. She dropped her hands and settled them lightly on his shoulders, thumbs brushing the sides of his neck as she leaned in to kiss him lightly on the forehead. “I love you, too,” she said as she straightened. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to rest easily until she’d spoken to her sons, but there wasn’t really anything she could do right now. Not and be able to give her full attention to her actual job which, at least for the remainder of the work day, needed to be her priority. -- The look Lily gave him was one of James’ favorites and always had been. The oh my god James why mixed with love that was the perfect combination to reflect the many, many years of their marriage. They wouldn't be them if he wasn't pushing her buttons at least a little, right? He liked to think he made up for it in other ways. “I’ll make sure to come home for dinner, alright?” He leaned in to nuzzle against her stomach, arms sliding around her hips as he leaned his head back to rest his chin on her stomach and look up at her. “We can try to work out what to do then.” -- Lily’s fingers found their way into James’s hair and she nodded. “We can talk it out over dinner,” she agreed. She’d have some time, then, to process and decide what she thought the best course was so that she and James could compare and work out where they would go next. “I’ll pick up wine and an obscenely expensive dessert. I think we’ll need it.” |