'L' for Lily! (thatgingergirl) wrote in throwingstones, @ 2010-02-03 03:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! complete, [february 1979], james potter, lily potter |
Who: James and Lily
When: 3 February, about 3am
Where: Caradoc's guest room
What: James and Lily decide on a date
Rating: I for Impulsive teenagers
Status: Complete Log
The hand on the clock at Lily's bedside twitched, bringing the beginning of another minute, and she watched in fascination. She'd been starring at that minute hand for one hundred and seventy-two twitches, her eyes open wide as she added another mental tally to the chart in her mind. Sleep was eluding her, and it was much easier to think about the hands of the clock then about why she couldn't sleep. Normally she's wake James up at this point. And either he'd remember and hold her or he wouldn't and he'd ask what was wrong and she'd make enough vague comments till he understood and then he'd hold her. And she did want to be held, yes. But now things were different. Now he had an anniversary of his own, and he was still getting used to the idea that his father was gone, he didn't need to be reminded of that by seeing how upset she was even a year after her mother's death. And so she watched the clock, forcing herself to follow each movement of the second hand as it ticked in a perfect circle, and adding another tally in her head as the minute hand moved for the one hundred and seventy-third time since she began distracting herself with this game. James on the other hand was dead asleep. He had had the day off and spent it with his mum and her family, which usually wasn't that tiring, but today he had told his aunt and mother that he was recently engaged only to launch into a multi-hour long conversation about what this all meant. Complete with lots of teary-eyed glances from both older women to compliment their shrill exclamations about how wonderful this was. He could play equally long Quidditch games or work a double-shift, and still found today so much more exhausting. By the time he had gotten back to Caradoc's the only thing he wanted to do was get washed up, changed into pyjamas and fall into bed. It didn't happen right away, as he had spent some time talking to Sirius about the latest developments and revelations, and also gave Lily a recap of his day, but it ensured that when he finally started to drift off it was near instantaneous. The last thing he was conscious of was himself tossing an arm over Lily's lap as she sat next to him reading, and as she spent the next hours doing that, then staring at the ceiling before falling to counting minutes, he was ignorant to it all. "Mmm'no. I got Transfiguration and then Quidditch practice, we'll haf'ta... haf'ta figure it out later," he mumbled as he started to rouse, trading some random dream set back at Hogwarts for consciousness. With half-lidded eyes, James raised his head and craned it to look over at Lily's back, bringing the back of one hand to awkwardly rub at an itch on his jaw. He wasn't aware of the fact that she was wide awake, and simply took the opportunity to shift under the covers to move behind her, tossing an arm over her side to pull what he thought was her sleeping figure a bit closer to him. Going back to sleep did sound like an amazing idea - he having no clue what time it was - and he buried his face into the back of her neck, his lips placing a half-hearted kiss on her skin before letting his eyes close once more. At James' movement Lily leaned in against him, smiling slightly at the feel of his lips and rolling onto her back as she abandoned her watch of the clock. Tilting her head towards him she watched him sleep, noting the way his eyes moved behind his lids and his lips twitched, like a cat chasing a mouse while it dreamed. Sleeping, and without his glasses, he looked much younger. And watching him became just as easy a distraction as counting the minutes. And he did start to fall back to sleep, but found himself trying to wake up as Lily turned over, but... Merlin, he was tired. And so there were a few more minutes spent just laying there before he opened his eyes again. A slow smile spread across his face as he found her looking up at him, his hand trailing lazily up her side, coming to brush her hair back from Lily's face before sighing contently. "Hi," he said slowly, pulling away enough so that when he yawned it wasn't directly in her face. Yes, James is nice like that. Settling down again, he looked almost awake now, and barely aware of his surroundings. Almost and barely being the keywords here. "I didn't wake you, did I?" Giving him a small, not quite there smile, Lily turned her body fully towards him, shaking her head against the pillow. "No, I've been awake. Go back to sleep," she whispered, reaching out a hand and smoothing back his hair. He'd had a long day, he was exhausted, no point in them both being up. James hadn't forgotten about what was coming up when he realised the year-mark since her mother had died was Wednesday earlier in the week, but it wasn't something he wanted to fixate on. This entire death of a parent thing was still new to him, but he wasn't going to not be there for her. Sure, he totally didn't have the insight that she had, or maybe even all of the reassuring words... Still. "Why are--" He cut himself off when a wordless 'ohhh.' For a moment he panicked, straight panicked, because he had no idea how he was supposed to approach this. Or what he was supposed to say. Or... or... anything really. Whether or not it was apparent on his face, he did manage to make a smooth enough recovery by bringing his hand down to her waist again. "Well, I'm up now, so I'll keep you company." Did that work? That sufficed in some manner, right? Sliding his other hand under her thin body, he pulled Lily against him more as he kissed her forehead gently. And this is why Lily hadn't woken him up. That look of panic, the pain he had to feel at it... she didn't want that for him. But she let him pull her towards him and rested her head against him. "It's fine, James. You're tired. Go back to sleep," she repeated, squeezing her eyes shut. Three in the morning was not the time for this conversation. He didn't want to get into an argument with her over whether or not he was going to go back to sleep. While some part of him did agree that that sounded like an amazing idea, there was no bloody way he was just going to leave her awake for who knew how many more hours until it had reached an acceptable time to actually get up and start the day. James didn't want to really get into any kind of debate about anything right now. "So. I might still be a bit tired, but I actually got some sleep tonight so far, you haven't. Why don't you try to get some sleep?" Tilting his head down to try and catch her eye, he just sighed as he waited for her to say something or simply revert to telling him to shut up and go to sleep again. Lily was too exhausted to argue more. If James wanted to stay awake, he could. So she let out a breath she'd been holding despite the way her body tensed. "I'm not going to sleep, James," she muttered, but didn't tell him to go back to bed. "But I'm not going to wake you to talk about it, so it's fine." It was almost too easy to slip into the usual approach James took, but the knowledge of what today was - it was past midnight, right? - made him stop right short of doing so. "I'm already awake, Lils," he repeated softly, watching her shadowed and fuzzy figure curled against him. Again, he wasn't sure what to do. Thinking back to how she had been able to appear so strong over the last few weeks didn't work, dragging with it things he did not want to recollect. Instead of trying to come up with some sort of plan, James said the first words that came to mind. His usual approach to life had never failed him too horribly... "I know I'm not as good at this as you are-- And this seems like a really arsed place to use good to describe anything... But, yeah, I'm awake and if you want to talk, there would be no reason to wake me up to do so because I..." James trailed off into a frustrated mumbling, getting the feeling that hadn't worked too well. "It just sucks," she finally said, hours of counting minutes having worn her out more than she'd thought. "Because she wasn't sick and she was strong and she just went to work and it happened and all I was doing when she was dying was preparing for a Prefects meeting? How bloody stupid is that? And if that can happen to her - on a completely ordinary day - then what's to stop things like that from happening to us? We're actually in a war, I'm being hunted, we're fighting for our lives and at any moment we could just be plucked up and captured and killed without warning. How can I plan a wedding for a year from now when I'm not even sure if I'll be alive in a month?" So maybe that was a little more than she'd wanted to say, but once she'd started she just couldn't make herself stop. So to cut herself off from continuing after that she buried her face into James' chest. James didn't know what to expect exactly from Lily, and though it was hard to listen to that all, he really was glad that she did see fit to vent towards him rather than push him away as she sometimes did. Smoothing a hand up and then down her back slowly, he let her get that out, trailing his hand up to the base of her neck when she leaned into him even more. As his fingers ran random patterns over the tendons in her neck, he tried to think of some sort of response. What could he tell her exactly, though? It did suck and it wasn't fair that her mother had died, or either of their fathers for that matter, and they weren't assured a tomorrow with all that was going on and it made a knot form at the pit of his stomach to face all of this. "I know," James finally said, staring off at a framed picture on the wall that he couldn't quite make out without his glasses. "You shouldn't have had to go through that, no body deserves that. Not you, not me, not anybody. On either end of the equation, but it happens without explanation and..." Why couldn't he just stop talking, or at least throw at something useful? His mouth was feeling very dry, and James found himself still trying to explain this all to Lily, when the same thoughts had been in his head oh so recently. When it didn't make sense to him either. "We could plan ahead with all of these brilliant ideas, but you're right, we have no idea what will be right around the corner at any point in time, but I guess that's why you've got to make the most out of the time you have." Now he was jumping from subject to subject to no real avail. Godric, why was he so horrible at this? "That's why I asked you to marry me, because I didn't want to miss that chance." "But we might," she said into his chest, her words muffled by his skin. "We're just engaged but what does that really mean? It means we're planning to get married. We're making plans but plans don't mean anything. It only counts once we're married. Right now we're just..." trailing off, Lily let her hand move to James' stomach, her index finger making interlocking circles across his chest. "I don't know. Waiting for something to happen." "Then why do leave it at waiting and planning? Nobody said we had to leave it at being engaged forever, plus it's not like we are going through some dumb courtship or something." Saturday they had decided to keep the knowledge of their engagement to just a small group of people for fear of being called young and irresponsible, and now they were having a talk about marriage only a few days later. Huh. "Hey," he murmured, freeing his hand from under her so that he could tilt Lily's chin up to look at him. "Name a date and it's done." Maybe it was a bit inadvisable to be discussing something like this on a day like today, but he'd pushed and she was upset and now that they'd started she couldn't stop. What was the point in waiting? They were going to end up in the exact same place if they waited a year or a week: married. Did it really matter anyways? "Friday," she heard herself saying, looking up at James, her eyes wide. "I want to get married on Friday." James paused and just stared at her for a moment. Did she mean Friday as in two days Friday? "Friday," he repeated back. That was a little closer than any date he could have expected, but he had just said he'd go along with whatever Lily came up with and he had meant it. Tilting his head a bit, he watched her for a few seconds more as a slow grin spread over his face. "Then let's get married Friday." Lily blinked, sitting up a bit and moving away from him so she could be at his level. "Really? You're alright with getting married on Friday? You don't..." Stopping, she smiled, her lips curving up and her eyes brightening. "Okay. So Friday. How? I mean... I can ask Alice if she minds letting us invite people over? But I don't really wanting it getting out because then there's expectations and if anything goes wrong it's... so maybe tell Alice and tell everyone else it's like, dinner or something?" Her words coming out in a rush as she tried to instinctively figure out all the logistics. James couldn't help but let out a small chuckle as Lily started to ask him a question, not pausing in between trailing off and then launching into speaking more, not really giving him a chance to respond. Her sudden excitement with this all was infectious and his smile grew. "I don't see why she wouldn't say yes, and alright, I mean people might ask question as to why we are all randomly getting together. But if you don't want to tell people beforehand, we don't have to." Wow, they were quote unquote planning their wedding, weren't they? "Chinese food. We could get a bunch of Chinese food? No one would think anything was up if we mention the Longbottoms and Chinese food, right?" Without any warning James pulled Lily towards him and kissed her briefly. "I love you," he said through his grin, "In case you didn't know that." "Oh that's perfect!" Lily breathed, kissing James back before returning to this mad idea that made complete sense to her. "And Caradoc married Greta and Gideon so we could ask him about ours. And I can see if Greta would make a small cake for dessert and I can just make Marlene hold a flower and the boys don't really need boutonnieres and we can just have it done and move onto takeout and it'll be perfect!" And why wouldn't it be? No driving herself insane over colours and favors and menus and table settings. Petunia's wedding had been such a nightmare of planning and even though Lily could plan something like this down to the very last napkin, she knew it would drive herself and everyone else crazy in the process. And if one little thing disrupted any of her plans... well, it was just best not to have them. James was going right along with all of this, because caught up in all of this, it did make sense. It did seem simple, even though it was quite obvious that neither of them were thinking of how hard it could be to pull this off. That was to fret about over later. When it came down to the last minute and they were scrambling to make this all work. But right now, this sounded like the best idea he had ever heard. "Sure, yeah, we can do all of that. We'll just ward everyone..." James paused suddenly, blanching slightly as a thought came to mind. A variable that obviously neither of them had taken into account. "But, my mum," he said much softer now, not needing to explain why this could be problematic. Lily knew just as well as he did that there was no way they could reasonably know all of the people in the Order through their everyday lives, and there was so much to be compromised, but this was his mum they were talking about here. How were they supposed to include her in all of this? Caught up in the excitement, it took Lily a beat to recognise what James was saying. And she visibly deflated, sinking down into the bed letting her head flop back against the pillow. "Right. Well, it was a silly idea anyway," she muttered. "You have lots of family. And I can't exactly send out invitations publicising a place I'll be at the exact day and time. So we probably just have to wait." Sobered up by the realisation, he didn't speak for a moment, moving away from Lily enough to pull himself up to sit cross-legged. Hunching forward, he ran a palm down his bare arm, only to have it drop to mess with a loose string on his pyjama bottoms. "Not that much family that I really would want there, though," he added. "And it's not a silly idea." "We could-- We could always just--" Picking at that string, causing it to undo more, James sighed. That general excitement may have worn off, but now that this idea was out in the open, he didn't want to turn back now. "I don't know, let's just go get eloped and then tell her afterwards." His chuckle may have been the feeblest one in known history. "James..." Lily started to say, her voice soft as she refused to look at him. "I'm not going to make you get married and not be able to invite your mum... I can't..." trailing off she lapsed back into silence. Not tonight. She couldn't ask that of him tonight. Yes it seemed like the best idea but she was his mum. It had to be his choice, either way. When she said his name, he lifted his head to look at Lily, squinting slightly to actually make out her features in the dark. Screwing up his face, he chewed on the inside of his lip and debated just laying back down again to join her in things like counting minutes or staring at the ceiling. "Who..." James wasn't sure if it was right to even verbalise this train of thought, but it didn't stop him from doing so. "Who says this has to be it? We said ourselves this would just be something small and thrown together, but the thing is... This way you won't be able do all of that crazy planning with the flowers and everything. And I know how much you love your lists and planning things..." Lily nodded, her eyes starring back at the clock she'd been watching before. "Right. Planning," she echoed, leaving out the fact that it was impossible to plan in these times. That their entire wedding party would be mostly Order members. That there was still a real possibility that they would loose and any chance that someone of James' blood would be allowed to marry someone of hers would be nonexistent. Of course this could just be the paranoia she was prone to in stressful situations, but it was still a real fear. Lily hated uncertainties. She needed to know exactly what was coming and how to process it. And the fact was she couldn't do that. But she also couldn't demand this of James. So instead she watched her clock again. And this only caused James to sigh again as he finally ripped the thread off, effectively leaving the hem of his pants now quite uneven. It was the least of his worries, though, when faced with this all. Now that Lily had brought this into play, he couldn't think of anything else. She was right, who knew if they would ever be able to make it to some unknown future date to actually get married? James' worst fear boiled down to losing someone close to him, and now that he had lost his father there was no way to deny the fact that any of the people around him could be next. Or even him. He didn't want to risk this, risk not being able to follow through with his promise from Saturday to marry her. "What if we could plan later? What if we do this and it's just to get it done? Not that I'm saying getting married wouldn't be something big in itself. But like, we do this Friday and we could tell my mum we eloped or something, but-- But we can always do some big, giant thing with as many bleeding colour-coordinated daisies as you want later on? Because I know we might not be able to go through planning everything now or want to, or whatever, but you do deserve a proper wedding where you don't have to worry about Death Eaters barging in... Though I don't want to miss out on the chance for you to be my wife." These were such serious topics they were discussing here now, subjects that kids their age shouldn't have to ever think about. As much as they might have wanted for things to not be so bleak and depressing at every turn, it was the world they found themselves in. Lily listened to James, the clicking of the minute hand becoming of less and less importance as she digested what he was saying. Elope now and renew with a big celebration if (when) they made it out of this war alive. It made sense. Surely other people would be able to understand that mentality as well. Slowly, Lily turned her head so she was looking up at James, studying his face carefully to see if he really was okay with what he was suggesting. "I think that's a good idea," she said, measuring her words out deliberately. "If you're alright with it. Your mum is bound to be very cross at us, and if you aren't completely sure you want to do it this way we don't have to." Then, taking a deep breath, she dove into the rest of it. "But I think we should keep who we tell about this being what it is to a minimum. Alice and Frank, because we're using their house, and Caradoc since he's the only one who can perform the ceremony," she gave as an example, "but if we advertise it as a wedding to the whole Order it could get out of hand." The smallest of crooked grins came to grace his face, answering Lily in possibly the most indirect manner ever. "My mum's been cross at me for one reason or another since I was born, but don't worry, I figured out how to counter-act the crossness," James said lightly. It was the truth, honestly, he having figured out long ago how to win over his mother's favour with a few choice words or a properly timed smile. "She'll harp at us, definitely, but I think she'll get over it eventually." He hoped. He hoped that he had his mother and her personality figured out well enough after almost nineteen years. James looked at Lily levelly, "I wouldn't have suggested it if I didn't want to go through with it, Lils." Then again want could easily be confused with a few other words, but that was not the focus right now. "You're right, it probably would." Leaning over more to crack his back, as if that helped figure any of this out, James then slid down to lay next to Lily again, propping his head up with one palm. "Then we only tell Frank, Alice and Caradoc, and figure out a way to ensure that everyone else is one way or another." Being closer to her made her features actually in focus, and James reached out his unoccupied hand to brush back her hair that was dangerously close to falling in front of her bright green eyes. Doing that was one of those cheesy, quixotic things that he would never grow old of with her. They could deal with his mum later. If James had decided... well, perhaps it was selfish of her but Lily couldn't exactly bring herself to talk him out of it. Instead she smiled up at him again as he brushed back her hair, bringing her own hand up to run her thumb over his cheek. "Alright then. I'll take care of Alice and work out the details, and I'll leave you to deal with Caradoc, since he likes you. And the rings, you have to do the rings," she added after a beat. "Probably as soon as possible so if there are any kinks we can work them out." Suddenly, she pushed herself up and kissed him quickly, a laugh escaping from her as she flopped back down on the bed. "We're getting married," she giggled, clapping a hand to her forehead. "We're getting married in two days... Merlin we're insane. I love you." There was the start of a nod as Lily began talking again, those James paused in bemusement at the mention of Caradoc liking him. Okay, now, he didn't know about that. True he had discovered a newfound respect for the Auror since living in his guest room, and perhaps it was mutual - who knew? - but James didn't know if he'd go as far as saying that Caradoc Dearborn liked him. Rather than bringing this up, he did in fact finally nod. "'Kay, I can talk to Caradoc, and..." Yeah, rings. He was clueless about that, but would somehow figure out how to get that done without failing miserably. "I'll look into rings on my break tomorrow. So we can avoid kinks, hopefully." He had barely finished speaking when he bolted forward to kiss him, and everything dissolved into pure excitement once more. "Yep. Yep. And yep. I could throw in a fourth yep, but I think an I love you too might work better." Laughing softly, James let himself roll onto his back as well, searching out her hand closest to him to lace their fingers together as he stared at the blurry ceiling. "We're getting married in two days. Merlin is right." Out of the corner of his eye, he looked over at Lily as his smile grew even more. This may not have been under the best circumstance, or the most thought out plan, but still, it was more than amazing. |