He’s not really sure how it happens. He’s not really sure what cruel twist of fate had them run into each other in Diagon Alley one evening, unplanned. He was just killing time, because Sirius is visiting his uncle and his parents are traveling. She was just killing time, because Petunia doesn’t speak to her and Severus wants her dead, in a manner of speaking, and Mary’s been traveling abroad as an early graduation gift from her parents.
James vaguely remembers his mother saying something about idle minds being a dangerous thing.
They were both just killing time. It wasn’t supposed to lead to this, to her letting him talk to her, to her letting him ask her for a drink. It wasn’t supposed to lead to this, his body pressed against hers, her hands tangled in his hair pulling him closer, closer, closer.
This isn’t how James Potter wanted to kiss Lily Evans for the first time. In daydreams and idle fantasies in times spent drawing out her initials on his parchment, he pictured her arms flung happily round his neck after a glorious victory on the itch or some homework assignment gone wonderfully astray. In fact, he’d been spending his idle summer time trying to map out just how he could convince her to do any one of those things, hyper aware of how precious little time they have together in school for her to even consider fancying him the same way he fancied her.
He didn’t picture Lily wandering alone, he never imagined the dullness that seemed to overcome her usually vivacious eyes, never fantasized about the way she looked at him straight on and asked, “Want to do something stupid?”
He, apparently, was something stupid.
So one moment they’re in the Leaky Cauldron and the next they’re stumbling into the alley way and she’s tearing at his shirt buttons and he’s learning that his hands like running through her hair much, much more than just rustling his own. Her hands are burning the skin across his shoulders, lightly scratching at his back while she’s being supported by her hips and the press of his body against hers into the brick wall. It is entirely, entirely too fast for him, but then Lily Evans moans into his mouth and he gets that same thrill he’s felt when flying a broom towards the ground again and again and again and can’t will himself to stop.
They do stop, though. Eventually. He isn’t losing anymore of his dignity crammed between two crates of bottles for the pub. James gets some amount of satisfaction from the fact that she’s as out of breath as he is, then even more satisfaction that in her glazed eyes, he can see life there for the first time all evening.
He stares at her, completely unable to think, knowing that no thought could make any amount of sense of this. But all Lily Evans does is stare back at him, her bright eyes flickering across his face looking for something he doesn’t know how to give her. Her lips turn up in a friendly sort of way.
“Thanks,” is what she says, like all he did was help her with an essay. Then she untangled herself from him and was gone.
