Title: Time Out
Author:
crazylittleme @
vnillaFandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Sirius/Lily
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex. Sex. Sex!
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling created these characters, I just make them do naughty things.
Author's Notes: For
ciela_night in the
sunandsmut exchange.
--
The end of the school year always had a certain quality of light, bright sad pools of sunshine. Or perhaps it was only a fancy of Lily's, a painful fancy from a memory of a swingset, Petunia with her shoulders set telling Lily that she didn't love her anymore, determined as only a child may be. June was end times, dead times packed in between the muggy air and breathed in. June was broken and June was not a month for brides. Lily wanted to chide herself for silliness as she sat in the window of Professor McGonagall's classroom, listening to her classmates clear out. The last class of their last year at Hogwarts. Some of the girls had wept. Lily only stared.
She half-expected the touch on her should to be James', but when the frog jumped from her shoulder to her lap she only rolled her eyes. "Sirius Black, won't you ever grow up?" He grinned at her, as if to say, Of course, I'm Peter bloody Pan, and the sardonic lift of her brow said, No, you're only a Lost Boy, forever and nothing more. But of course Sirius didn't know about Peter Pan or any other of the stories she grew up on. His mother had probably told him bedtime stories about slaughtering Muggles, anyway.
"Just practicing my Transfiguration," he protested, all innocence. With a tap of the wand, the frog became an innocuous quill once more. Lily did not pick it up, as it looked too harmless, which generally meant explosions, at least when it came to Sirius. "Not that I need to, anyway," he added in that off-hand way that used to drive her to distraction. Only Sirius Black could wear the wizarding world like just another set of robes, like something so commonplace you barely even noticed it was there.
"I could almost believe the rumors about you, Black," she mused.
"What's that, Evans?" he replied, sliding back into their old back-and-forth way of conversing. Well, more like slinging barbs when they were younger, but maturity had taken the bite out of their wit.
"The young nobleman with the world at his feet." Lily flung out her arms to give her words weight. "Dashing, debonair, damnably good-looking, everything from those silly novels with nearly naked women on the cover." Her grin simultaneously struck fear and stopped hearts much the same way as Sirius' did; her grin was mischief incarnate. "The best lay in all Hogwarts, I hear."
Sirius put a hand over his heart, affecting a ridiculous level of embarrassment. "And you have seen right through me, seen my true wicked nature. But deep down all I am wanting is the love of a good woman. One night of bliss to wash my sins away! And I always did want to say I banged the Head Girl."
"How romantic," Lily said, wondering whether Sirius had read any of those novels, considering how well he'd hit upon their major plot points. She felt strangely--itchy, itchy on the inside, as though Sirius was much too close and too serious (he wasn't, they'd played out this scenario hundreds of times). The silence that fell brought tension down with it, however, and the itch became something like a prickle which lit up her belly which was desire, she was actually--
"I said get Lily, not join her." James strolled in, Peter trailing behind him and Remus leaning against the doorway, unobtrusive in his careful way. James draped an arm around Lily and she smiled at him, grateful for an attraction she could place, an attraction and a something more that she held close to her heart.
Sirius punched James on the arm, and the ensuing scuffle ended only when Lily kicked James in the knee. "I was just telling Lily to meet me here after dinner. We're going to run away and get married and have lots of puppies. On account of me not being trustworthy around children."
"We only lost my cousin once," James objected.
As the five of them headed to dinner, Lily could not repress a sudden shiver, which made James look at her in concern. Lily waved it off as nothing, nothing, nothing.
There had been a bit of truth in what Sirius had said. Just a bit.
* * * * *
It was madness. It was June. Lily walked into McGonagall's classroom after dinner, tasting the humidity in the air, the crackle of electricity. She had mentioned studying and James, usually game for just about anything she wanted to do, bowed out on grounds of, he said, moral objection to doing more work on their last day of classes. Most of the Gryffindors decided that a rousing game of Quidditch was just the thing.
Stupid, Lily berated herself, leaning against a desk. James, you love James, you great idiot. You'll get caught, think of the time of day. You're probably just imagining--
Sirius walked in, shutting the door behind him. "Lily."
She stood, hands shaking. She clenched them into fists. "James--"
"You love him. He loves you."
The light was weakening as it began its slow summer descent, and it cast Sirius' face into planes of skin and shadow. End light, end times. There was an unspoken And I love him and he loves me at the end of that statement, but boys were always a bit stupid about the meaning of best friends. Somehow all the facts, all the feelings, made everything all right. Nothing could come of something born in June, conceived in secret. Lily crossed the distance between them.
They kissed each other wild. They kissed each other for stolen time, for lost time, for old time's sake. Sirius' hands on her breasts and thumbs back and forth across her nipples said, I used to watch you from afar, even if you were a right bitch, and she moaned and fumbled at his belt as if to say, And I looked at you and wondered if I would ever belong here like you do. Urgency quickened motion and emotion alike. Lily had his trousers open in a moment and shoved him against the wall; hopefully any unlucky passersby would glance in the room without checking all of the corners.
"Lily--what--" Sirius began, then her hands were around his cock and he stopped making much of any sound, aside from labored breathing. Her strokes were measured, tantalizing, not the quick up-down pump most useful for James in the morning, when all she wanted was a bit of breakfast and certainly the opportunity to brush her teeth. Sirius felt the same and yet different under her palms, skin taut and heated, the texture so subtly off as to almost be unnoticeable. Not James, her senses told her anyway.
"You're not the only one responsible," she murmured, filling the silence. Somehow she needed to compress everything within the space of these few moments, keep the tenuous balance between whatever this was and real wrongdoing. Not that this wasn't wrong, that James couldn't walk in--any minute--
Sirius growled, low in his throat, and in a whirlwind of movement unwrapped her hands, pressed her against the wall as she had done to him, on his knees and tugging down her knickers with single-minded determination. "Oh," she cried out, startlingly loud, she expected Filch or Mrs. Norris any minute, but Sirius had his mouth between her legs, first an almost chaste kiss, then the gentlest touch of his tongue, just a little taste, as though he wanted her to linger on his tongue long enough to memorize, and then he had her moaning, slumping against the wall as his tongue flicked out and over, around her clit and then across it and then slow circling around it... Lily's eyes were half-shut, eyelashes blurring her vision, the room a sudden endless expanse of wooden floor and pale walls, stretching on and on and on. Her hands knotted in Sirius' hair and his hands gripped her knees as they began to go weak, fingers digging into her calves, and she came, half-sobbing as she took in gulps of air, a woman pulled above water before the final submerge closed in.
He slid his hands up her body as he rose, keeping her upright. "Want you just like this," he said into her neck, guiding her into position, sliding inside her with a sigh that sounded almost like a prayer, and he kissed her and she tasted herself on his lips, more lasting than telltale lipstick on the collar. "Lily." She knew he was trying to go slow but was speeding up anyway in spite of himself, driven by some indelible force, time almight ticking in terrible, wonderful rhythm.
"Sirius," she answered him, and her body answered him as well, the pressure rising once more, straining against him hard as she could despite the awkwardness of their position, but it wasn't enough, it wasn't enough until she grabbed one of his hands and guided it swiftly downwards. "Yes, God, yes," she panted; it hadn't taken him long to catch on. "There, there--" Her hips slammed into his and she was coming again, felt him shudder, and they both slid to the floor, a descent gentle, a descent that felt as though it should be a crash.
Lily was the first to rise, dragging a sleeve across her face to wipe away the faint sheen of sweat. Her blouse, she was surprised to discover, had not come undone, so there were only her knickers (ugh, cold and damp) to slide back on, only her breath to catch. Sirius in the meantime had straightened himself out as well, though she noticed his hands shook as he buttoned his trousers.
They stared at one another, and this time Lily almost did cry, for her girlhood endings had truly begun at this moment, the last shadows of the crush she had never allowed herself admit to having flitting away, ghostlike, pressing against the crevasses of this room and dissolving. Her heart ached. She regretted nothing about her decisions, all the choices she had made in Hogwarts, and yet--
Sirius reached out and brushed away the single tear that escaped, and then everything was all right again.
"Go play Quidditch," she said, and caught his hand in hers, squeezing it. They were friends once more, their stolen time trickled through the hourglass. (An hourglass, of course it was, how could she have thought of an enormous clock?) "I'm going to have a shower."
Sirius nodded once, all at once breaking out into a grin, just as wild as ever. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he strode whistling down the hallway.
Lily held that last image to her heart, used it as a bookmark for this chapter of her life so recently closed.
The next one, she was certain, was meant for James.