All the air left James's lungs as he hit the ground winded.
"Come on," said Alice, sounding deeply unimpressed. "Get up."
James didn't move. He couldn't. Every single part of him hurt. He had been knocked to the ground exactly thirteen times in the last hour and a half. He lay flat on his back and stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out if he’d ever done anything to make Alice Longbottom want to kill him—because it certainly felt like that might be the case. The thought drifted through his head in the vague, detached manner of someone who might be suffering from a mild concussion. A minute—or possibly several—later, Alice's round face appeared in his line of vision as she peered down at him.
She frowned.
"James?"
James managed a sort of pathetic groan.
Alice's frown deepened.
"I think we'd better call it a day."
James accepted the hand she offered and let her haul him upright and onto his feet—a task that, in that moment, seemed to require truly Herculean effort on his part. Alice caught him by the elbow before he could topple back over and steered him towards the stairs. He limped gingerly up to the kitchen, wondering vaguely whether it was possible to bruise every muscle in one's body at the same time. The older Mrs Longbottom was standing at the counter when they arrived. She paused mid-task as she took in the sight of him.
"Oh dear," said Mrs Longbottom, sounding alarmingly sincere. "You'd best sit down."
James didn't need telling twice. He collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs.
"James," said Alice. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
James blinked at the hand currently being waved in front of his face. There appeared to be a disproportionate number of fingers.
"Er... seven?" he guessed.
"Shit," said Alice. Then, turning to her mother in law, she added, "I'm going to fetch him a Pepper-Up Potion. Make sure he doesn't fall asleep or pass out."
Without waiting for a response, she disappeared from the room at a brisk jog.
“I wouldn't take it personally dear,” said Mrs Longbottom place a cup of tea in front of him, “she’s been awfully tetchy recently—hormones you know how it is—”
James wasn’t sure he did know how it was—or even what it was Mrs Longbottom was talking about.
“Of course if you ask me,” continued Mrs Longbottom “—a war is no place for a pregnant witch. ”
Alice re-appeared with several potion vials and wearing an irritated expression which seemed to be aimed at Mrs Longbottom. Although to be fair it could have been aimed at him—it was hard to tell while the room was spinning around him.
“Here,” said Alice, handing him a vial of potion. “Drink this.”
James did, along with the next two she gave him. After a few minutes, the room stopped spinning and Mrs Longbottom no longer appeared to have three heads. It was only then that what she’d said registered properly.
“You and Frank are having a baby?” he asked as Alice walked him towards the Floo.
“Yeah.”
She gave him a small smile, but there was something oddly tight about it. It sat strangely on her round face.
“That’s great,” he said. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” She looked down for a moment, one hand settling briefly against her stomach before she seemed to realise what she was doing and dropped it. “We’re not really telling people yet.”
James caught her meaning and grinned. “Mum’s the word.”
That made her smile properly, some of the tension leaving her face. “Thanks, James.”
She straightened and gave him a critical once-over.
“And sorry about the concussion. Listen, take tomorrow off.”
James tried not to look too relieved as he nodded. The Floo journey back to his flat was deeply unpleasant. The violent spinning seemed to undo all the good the Pepperup Potions had done, and by the time James stumbled out of the fireplace at the other end, the room was pitching alarmingly around him again.
He made it approximately three steps before his stomach lurched. He made it to the toilet just in time to see his breakfast come back up again. Afterwards, pale, clammy and feeling deeply sorry for himself, James rinsed his mouth out, splashed some cold water over his face and staggered towards his bedroom. He didn’t bother undressing. He simply fell face-first onto the mattress with a groan. He woke four hours later to a dark flat. His whole body ached, his head still felt heavy, and moving seemed like an undertaking he had absolutely no interest in attempting. Eventually, though, his stomach gave a long, insistent growl and so with considerable reluctance, he dragged himself out of bed and shuffled towards the kitchen in search of something to eat.
The following day was spent alone in the flat—most of it sleeping, the rest feeling sorry for himself and his battered body. Then, the day after that, he was back with Alice, spending the afternoon with her as she talked him through various fighting techniques. Luckily, it was mainly theoretical. James suspected that was because she felt bad about the concussion and had decided to take pity on him. January disappeared into February beneath low grey skies and bitter mornings, the kind where James woke to frost feathering the corners of his bedroom windows and darkness still pressed against the glass. His life settled into something resembling routine. He trained with Alice. He visited his parents. He went home. He slept when he could—which was not often. Mostly, he lay awake in bed at night and tried not to think about Evan, or why he hadn’t heard from him, or what it might mean that the days were slipping past and Evan still wasn’t back. Then he got up and did it all again..
James got better, technically. He learnt to fall without cracking his skull against the floor. Learnt to get a shield up quickly enough that Alice only sent him flying across the room six times out of ten rather than nine. Learnt that when she dipped her left shoulder, she was usually about to sweep his legs out from underneath him, and that if she smiled during a duel, he should immediately assume something terrible was about to happen. But none of this prevented him from spending a significant portion of every training session on the floor.
James had technically known Alice Longbottom for years, but he realised with each day he spent with her that he’d never really known her. Not at school, when throughout his early years she had mostly existed as a prefect to be avoided whenever he was up to no good, and then later as his Quidditch captain’s girlfriend. And not after school, in the Order, where again he’d mainly thought of her as Frank’s wife and one of Moody’s Aurors.
But as James spent his afternoons with her, he began to learn who Alice was outside of all those things. She was frighteningly capable. Not only was she a brilliant fighter, but she was practical, pragmatic and exceedingly hard to rattle. And behind the round face and deceptively sweet smile was a sharp, cynical sense of humour that, on the rare occasions she let it loose, reminded James a little of Evan.
And as was the way when you spend a good part of most weekdays with someone—James began to learn things about Alice. He learnt Moody had taken Alice off active duty. Alice did not tell him this outright. She wasn’t the type to complain. But Mrs Longbottom had a tendency to talk, and through her, and the occasional offhand comment from Alice herself, James gradually pieced together that Alice had not only been taken out of the field at work, but also was as much under house arrest as he was when it came to the Order.
And he began to suspect that the real reason he spent so much time on the floor was because Alice was frustrated. Frustrated that she wasn’t out there doing something. Frustrated at being stuck at home while Frank went to work. At hearing things second-hand. At Moody deciding what she was and wasn’t allowed to do. At knowing there was a war happening beyond the walls of the house while she sat inside them, perfectly capable and entirely fucking useless.
James understood that feeling rather better than he wanted to. Because it was how he felt too. He knew Evan was out there, probably in danger, probably risking his life, and here James was doing nothing. Well, nothing other than being knocked around by Alice and apparently making very little progress towards becoming someone who could actually be useful.
And James thought that perhaps, in the same way he could see Alice’s frustration, she could see his. Perhaps that was why she started asking him to stay for tea after they finished training. And why tea occasionally became dinner.
And though it all James found himself watching Frank and Alice. Not deliberately at first. There wasn't much to watch, really. They weren’t particularly demonstrative. Frank didn’t sweep Alice into his arms when he came through the door. Alice didn’t sit in his lap. There were no grand declarations or dramatic kisses or any of the things James had once imagined were supposed to signify great love. They simply seemed to move around one another without thinking. Frank would reach for something and Alice would already be putting it into his hand. Alice would get up to make tea and Frank would already be standing to get the biscuits out of the pantry.
What they had was beautiful, in a quiet sort of way. Something that seemed all the more precious in the middle of a war. A cup of tea made without asking. Alice laughing over some relatively boring story Frank told about some bloke in Internal Affairs while he chopped onions for dinner. Alice drying while Frank did the dishes afterwards. The way they moved around each other like each of them had learnt the shape of the other so thoroughly that making room for them had become instinct. They were a team. A unit. At home, on the battlefield, in Order meetings. It didn’t matter what the setting was or what the situation demanded of them. They were in it together.
And perhaps that was what love really was, James thought. James had never really been a team with Lily. He had kept too much from her, hidden too many pieces of himself for Lily ever to know him well enough for that. And Regulus in turn had kept too much from him. They had loved each other. James didn’t doubt that. But they had never really known how to stand beside each other.
That night, lying in bed, James found himself fiddling with the watch around his wrist. He shouldn’t. He knew that. Had known it every other time he’d wanted to contact Evan and stopped himself since he left. It was dangerous. Stupid. And yet, for whatever reason, that night James’s resolve finally broke.
He cast the charm.
Nothing.
He tried again the next night.
Nothing.
In the days that followed, the fear settled into him so completely that James no longer remembered what it felt like not to be afraid. Alice noticed. Of course she did.
Mostly because James, who had begun their training merely terrible, somehow managed to go from terrible to downright god awful—the small amounts of progress he had made the weeks they’d been working together totally disappeared.
Alice finally put her foot down after James failed to get even a shield charm up for the sixth time in one session. She crossed the room, hauled him to his feet and, without explanation, marched him into the kitchen and pushed him down into one of the chairs and then busied herself with making tea.
“Alright,” she said in her usual no-nonsense way. “What’s going on?”
“I’m fine.”
There was a pause.
“No,” Alice said sternly. “You’re not.”
James ran a hand over his face.
“No,” he admitted. “I suppose I’m not.”
She raised her eyebrows in a way that very clearly said, no shit.
“You want to talk about it?” she asked after a minute, when it became clear he wasn’t going to offer anything else.
“Not really,” said James.
“Yeah, well, too bad,” said Alice.
She slid a mug of tea across the table towards him, followed by the biscuit tin with considerably more force than was strictly necessary.
“I think you might need to. And correct me if I’m wrong, but from the fact that Black and Lupin don’t seem to be talking to you, and Evans won’t even look at you during Order meetings, I’m going to take a wild guess and say you don’t have anyone else.”
James stared at her. Alice pushed the biscuit tin another inch towards him. James shifted a little uncomfortably—and then—realising he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter—he said
“I’m worried something’s happened to Evan.”
She nodded—looking neither surprised nor put out by his words.
“When was the last time you heard from him?” she asked.
“I haven’t,” said James.
Her eyebrows rose. “At all?”
James shook his head. “No. Like I said when Moody asked last week. Nothing.”
Alice considered him for a moment.
“I sort of assumed you meant you hadn’t heard anything on the intel front. Not that you hadn’t heard anything full stop.”
James blinked. “What?”
She shrugged. “Figured there might be some personal shit between you that you were keeping from the Order.” She gave him a small smile. “Not that I’d blame you for that, by the way. That’s your business. Despite what Alastor might think, he’s not entitled to every detail of your personal life.”
“I haven’t heard anything at all.”
He didn’t miss the way Alice’s expression softened at the fact that he hadn’t actually denied her assumption. James chose not to examine that too closely.
“I’ve tried,” he admitted instead. “We came up with a way to contact each other a while back. Something secure. But he hasn’t answered.”
Alice nodded. “Knew you had some way of contacting someone on the inside even before we knew it was Rosier.”
James looked at her.
“Alastor knew something was going on after Bones saw you get grabbed at the Ministry. Thought for a while that maybe you’d flipped. That you were the spy.” She reached for her tea. “Then you came out with all that stuff about Peter and he didn’t know what the fuck to make of you. Alastor’s a suspicious bastard. It’s practically a professional requirement.” She took a sip. “But after the safe house, we knew you had help from somewhere. It was too much of a coincidence.”
She gave him a pointed look.
“No one is that lucky, James. And the amount of residual dark magic in that place was insane.” Her mouth twitched. “And that was before I knew how bad you were at duelling.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. So we knew something was going on. We just didn’t know what, or who, until you brought Rosier in. Thought it might’ve been Sirius’s brother, actually. That maybe he wasn’t really missing. Similar age, obvious connection through Sirius. It made sense.” She shrugged. “Think that’s why Alastor was so interested in getting into Sirius’s parents’ house. Wanted to see if he could find anything.”
James was momentarily distracted.
“Moody’s been in Grimmauld Place?”
“Few times. Me and Frank too. Found some pretty spooky shit,” she gave him a dark look, “don’t envy Sirius growing up in that house—I’ll tell you that for free—but nothing particularly useful.”
She shook her head—and then said: “you really haven’t heard anything at all?”
“No.”
“Shit,” said Alice. And then with a frown added: “let me see what I can do—maybe I can dig up something through the official channels.”
James blinked at her—it had never occurred to him to ask Moody or Alice—or Frank if they might be able to find out if Evan was alive.
“You could do that?” he asked.
“I can try,” she answered.
Three days later, when James stepped through the Floo into the Longbottoms’ living room, Alice was waiting for him, standing with her arms crossed and a grin on her round face.
“Hey,” he said cautiously.
He was used to seeing that particular smile immediately before being knocked onto his arse.
“Come on,” she said, ushering him towards the kitchen. “I’ve got something to show you.”
James followed her with some apprehension. When he reached the kitchen, he found several newspapers spread out across the table. He frowned and, at Alice’s gesture, bent to inspect them. The first looked to be a page from some sort of society column. A black-and-white photograph showed a middle-aged man in dress robes smiling and posing beside a beautiful witch outside a building that looked to James like a palace. The headline was written in French. He was about to ask Alice why on earth she was showing him this when he caught sight of a familiar profile in the background of the photograph.
James’s heart skipped a beat.
Evan.
Evan was there.
He was walking through the background of the shot beside a man with long, flowing blond hair whom James recognised as Lucius Malfoy. Both were dressed in formal robes. As the photograph moved, Lucius raised a hand in greeting to someone outside the frame while Evan turned his head, briefly bringing his face fully into view.
James stared at him.
The paper was dated two weeks ago.
He snatched up the next one.
This one was dated less than five days ago. The photograph showed a group of wizards in dress robes gathered together for the camera, and there, almost directly in the middle, was Evan.
Looking straight into the lens.
James scanned the other papers. One contained a photograph of Evan shaking hands with someone. In another, he was little more than a figure in the background. All of them had been taken within the last few weeks.
Alive.
He was alive.
“Used to sit next to a Hufflepuff called Amber Puddleston in Arithmancy,” said Alice from behind him. “She married a Frenchman after school and moved to Paris. Works in media now.”
James looked up at her.
“Told her I was looking into Evan Rosier for possible tax evasion, thought he might be in Paris and asked if she could help.”
Despite everything, James blinked. “Tax evasion?”
Alice shrugged. “Needed something boring enough that she wouldn’t ask too many questions.”
James looked back down at the photographs.
“She sent me these,” Alice continued, “along with a rather detailed letter about his movements in French society. I can show it to you if you want. Apparently Rosier’s been pretty active amongst the Parisian elite for the last month or so.”
James barely heard the rest. His eyes had gone back to the photograph from five days ago. Evan was alive.
Alice was quiet for a moment.
Then, more gently, she said, “I worry every single day when Frank leaves. More so now that I’m not there to guard his back.” She paused. “I expect Alastor will have people with eyes on the French court. He’s a damn good Auror, but he’s not always so good at seeing the human side of things. Probably wouldn’t even have occurred to him to let you know Rosier was alright.”
James turned to her and, without thinking, pulled her into a hug.
“Thank you,” he said.
Alice patted him on the back.
Then, over the course of the next hour, she proceeded to send him flying into the wall no fewer than three times. But James found that he didn’t particularly care. Evan was alright. And Alice had cared enough to go looking for proof of it simply because she knew James needed to know. He thought he’d probably forgive her for sending him headfirst into a hundred more walls just for that.
The next seven days were better.
James held tightly to the knowledge that there was proof Evan was probably alright and tried not to think too hard about why he hadn’t answered. Perhaps he’d had to take the watch off for some reason. Perhaps it was broken. There were plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations that didn’t involve anything terrible having happened to him. Either way, Evan had been walking around Parisian high society within the last week, alive and apparently well. So James did his best to stop obsessing over it and focus on training. It wasn’t as though he had much choice. As Moody reminded him every time James asked when he might be assigned to another mission, he wasn’t going anywhere near the field until Alice confirmed that he was capable of defending himself. And judging by Moody’s increasingly grim expression whenever the subject came up, James was fairly certain Alice wasn’t fudging her reports about his progress in the slightest.
Still, James couldn’t quite shake the grim weight in his stomach when he woke on Monday morning. Two months. It had been exactly two months since Evan left. James tried not to let that fact get to him. Not when Alice disarmed him for the tenth time that morning, and not when he returned home that evening with some small, stubborn part of him still hoping that, despite all odds, tonight might be the night. The night the watch finally grew warm against his wrist. The night he heard something. Anything.
It wasn’t.
The watch remained cold.
James slept uneasily, his dreams twisting themselves into confused fragments of duelling and Death Eaters, Alice firing spells at him, black-and-white newspaper photographs of Evan that moved whenever James tried to look directly at them.
The first of March arrived and James dragged himself out of bed feeling no better than he had the day before. He went shopping. Tried to occupy himself around the flat. Eventually gave up and lay on the couch instead, staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about how many new bruises he was likely to acquire in a few hours’ time. Training went about as well as expected. He stayed at Frank and Alice’s for dinner afterwards, a bag of frozen peas held firmly against his freshly twisted ankle, and tried not to wallow in the sharp stab of longing that caught him when Alice smiled at Frank across the table and Frank smiled back. Then James went home. By the time he got there, he was exhausted. Sore, lonely and thoroughly sick of trying to convince himself that he was handling any of this particularly well. So he collapsed onto the couch and, for once, simply surrendered to feeling sorry for himself.
The living room was dark when he woke, the fire having burnt itself out. James checked his watch. Half eleven. He grimaced. He felt grimy, the sweat from the afternoon’s training session having dried on his skin. He made his way to the bathroom and started the shower: letting the hot water chase away the self pity of the afternoon. Then afterwards he dug around in the laundry hamper for a pair of trackies that were probably not as clean as he would have wished for, pulled them on, then headed for the kitchen with the vague intention of making himself a cup of tea. He made it as far as the living room door.
For one disorientating second, James couldn’t make sense of the scene before him. He wondered, stupidly, if he’d fallen back asleep in the shower and was currently dreaming. If his mind had conjured the very thing he wanted most out of thin air—Evan alive and here in front of him—standing in the middle of his living.
His hair was longer than James had ever seen it, the ends brushing his cheekbones, a few loose strands falling across his face. He was wearing a leather jacket, dark jeans and a pair of heavy boots—he looked.
Well he looked good.
Really good.
“Hey,” he said, the corner of his mouth hitching into a small smile.
Evan was here.
Evan was back.
And James was standing in front of him shirtless, wearing a pair of rumpled trackies he’d owned since school. Even worse, he hadn't done anything to his hair after his shower, which meant it was probably sticking up in every conceivable direction.
He should say something.
But he couldn’t seem to make his voice work. Couldn’t seem to look away. His entire body had gone completely still, as though someone had hit him square in the chest with a Stunning Spell.
Evan’s slight smile faded into a frown. “Tosspot?”
“When did you get back?” James asked finally.
“Few hours ago,” said Evan, and then paused, casting a quick look around the room before adding, “Piss poor excuse for a safe house. Took me all of thirty seconds to get through the wards.”
James managed a choked sort of laugh. He felt almost delirious. Partly from the sheer relief of seeing Evan standing in front of him, alive and whole and insulting his wards. And partly from nerves. Because Evan was standing in front of him after two months, and suddenly this was it. The moment James had imagined over and over again. The thing he’d spent weeks hoping for, praying for. A chance to say everything he wished he’d said before Evan left. Everything he’d promised himself he would say if Evan just came back. And now Evan was here. In James’s living room. And James had absolutely no idea where to begin or what to say. He swallowed and forced his limbs back into action, stepping properly into the room.
“Yeah, well, that would be because it’s not a safe house,” he said, trying for light and failing—the words coming out shaky and a little stilted, he cleared his through and tried again.
“Seeing guy who usually does my wards fucked off to France for two months I had to make do with what I could manage myself.”
“This is your place?”
James nodded—suddenly, acutely aware of all the reasons he was living here, in this flat, instead of at the cottage with Lily—and that the man responsible for those reasons was watching him curiously from a few feet away.
“Yeah,” said James.
He stepped further into the living room, shoving his hands into the pockets of his joggers and trying not to focus too hard on the fact that he really wished he was wearing a shirt—
“me and lil—we broke up.”
There was a long pause—one which to James seemed to stretch an eternity—-an eternity in which a pair of very blue eyes bore into his—an eternity in which he wished more than anything in the world that he knew what was going on behind them.
“You’re not engaged anymore?” Evan asked finally.
“No,” said James.
“Because of Reg?”
“He was part of it I suppose,” said James. “But mostly it was because of me. Think she might’ve got past Regulus if things had been different: if it had just been about him but it wasn’t.”
James waited—waited for Evan to ask. Wanted him to—to give James the opening. To give James no option but to come clean but he didn’t. He simply watched James with those impenetrable and impossibly blue eyes. The seconds dragged on. Then, just as James thought he couldn’t stand the silence any longer he asked quietly—gently:
“You doing okay?”
Time seemed to fold in on itself. Suddenly James was seventeen in a Quidditch changing room, muddy and exhausted, with a heart that felt as though it would never be whole again. And Evan was there. Standing in the doorway, watching him with that same careful expression. Asking him the same question. The same words. Because somehow, Evan was here again. Asking if James was alright. Looking at him and waiting for an answer as though the answer actually mattered. James felt a sudden, almost violent rush of emotion—want and need and gratitude and relief, and fifty other things he couldn’t have named if he tried. All of it coalesced into the one thing he needed: courage.
He closed the distance between them—stopped less than a foot away, close enough to see the darker ring of blue around Evan’s irises, to count the brighter flecks near their centres. Slowly, he lifted a hand to Evan’s cheek and brushed his thumb along the sharp line of his cheekbone.
“Yeah. I am now,” James said quietly.
He felt his gaze fall to Evan’s mouth—almost against his own will—as if his eyes were dragged there.
“Tosspot—”
James didn’t know what Evan was about to say. He only knew he couldn’t bear for it to be no—so he didn’t let him finish.
“Please,” he cut in.
He didn’t care that it sounded desperate. Didn’t care that he was all but begging Evan to want him back. Didn’t care if that was pathetic, if he was pathetic. He would have begged for far more than this if it meant Evan might kiss him back.
“Please don’t stop me this time,” he said, and pressed his lips to Evan’s.
For one endless second, Evan didn’t move at all. Then there was a hand on James’s chest—moving up, over his shoulder to the nape of his neck, fingers tangling in his hair. And then he was being kissed back. Kissed as if he were oxygen and Evan were a drowning man. Kissed in a way he had only ever been kissed once before—except this time, it didn’t stop.
The lights were on.
And James knew exactly who he was kissing.
The hand in his hair tightened and tugged—hard—forcing James’s head back as Evan drove him backwards. For one horrible instant, James thought he was being pushed away again. Then Evan moved with him. James stumbled, only for a strong arm to catch him around the waist and hold him upright as Evan backed him into the wall and pinned him there. Fire tore through James, every nerve in his body suddenly screaming at once. He needed more. He needed skin. He broke the kiss just long enough to shove Evan’s jacket down over his shoulders—to fist his hands in the collar of Evan’s shirt where it opened and yank, sending buttons scattering across the living room floor—and then to shove the now open shirt back off Evan's shoulders so that joined his jacket on the floor.
James had just enough time to half-register smooth golden skin contrasted with the shiny pink scar tissue of nearly healed wounds before Evan was pressing his body against his again—giving James the skin-on-skin contact he'd been in search of.
The second kiss was hard and hungry. Hot tongue and teeth on his lip. It was needy and desperate and the single hottest thing James had ever experienced. Right up until the moment Evan used the grip he had on James’s hair to tug his head to the side and pressed open-mouthed kisses down the side of his neck. And then that was the single hottest thing James had ever experienced. Evan’s teeth scraped and nipped a path down his throat—and James made a sound that was entirely involuntary—hips rolling forward instinctively because he needed more.
Evan continued down James's chest, dropping slowly to his knees in front of him, hands dragging down over James's stomach until they came to rest on his hips, fingers digging into the skin above his waistband. Evan looked up at him then, and James forgot how to breathe. He’d seen Evan’s body before, when he’d helped him into the shower after the attack, but he hadn’t looked. He looked now. Long scars cut across the golden skin of Evan’s chest and abdomen, still pink after only a few months of healing. They ran from his left shoulder almost to his right hip, stark evidence of just how close Evan had come to dying.
It should have detracted from his beauty—-should have distracted from the body beneath—should have made it less breathtaking. But it didn’t. Muscular chest and arms, stomach that belonged in a museum, sculpted as if by an artist's hand rather than the battlefield James knew it belonged to. No, the scars didn't detract from any of it. If anything they made him look more lethal, and somehow more beautiful for it.
James watched, transfixed, as Evan hooked his fingers into the waistband of James's joggers and raised an eyebrow in question. James nodded. Unable to speak. It took everything in James not to let his hips jerk forwards the second Evan’s mouth made contact with his skin—his hands fisted against the wall behind him and he groaned—his thoughts stuttering to an abrupt stop. Everything else ceased to exist—he didn’t even notice when his hands came to tangle in Evan's hair—didn’t notice the low noise of satisfaction Evan made when James tugged him closer by the hair. All he could register was the heat of Evan’s mouth and how good it felt. Somehow—and James wasn’t sure how—he managed to drag himself back into some form of coherence long enough to utter a half half choked and half desperate warning.
"If you don't want me to come in your mouth you need to stop now," he said—the words coming out breathless.
Evan didn’t stop. He looked up and caught James’s gaze, and something in his expression shredded the last tiny scrap of control James had. His hips jerked forwards. Evan didn’t look away. Didn’t even blink. He held James’s gaze as he swallowed everything James gave him. Then he rose and leant in to kiss James, both hands coming up to cup James’s face gently as if he were something precious.
James, who was fairly sure Evan had just sucked his capacity for speech right out of him, did the only thing he was currently capable of: he pulled Evan closer and kissed him back with everything he had. Then he reached between them to undo Evan’s jeans. Evan groaned against James’s mouth the moment James touched him—a sound James felt as much as heard. The kiss turned filthy, wet and messy, as James worked his hand in time with his tongue. Then Evan tensed against him. A half-gasped, half-groaned word that might have been fuck broke against James’s mouth, Evan’s fingers digging into his skin as warmth slicked his hand and another aftershock of desire rushed through him.
They stood there for a long moment, Evan’s forehead resting against James’s shoulder, the only sound in the room, their breathing slowly evening out—untill eventually—Evan stepped back. James felt the loss of contact immediately—wanted to pull him back—but didn’t. Instead he focused on pulling his joggers back into something resembling a respectable position. Evan did up his fly, and then glanced down at the remains of his shirt on the living-room floor, buttons scattered across the carpet in a small constellation of collateral damage.
“I liked that shirt, Tosspot,” Evan said.
“It was a nice shirt,” James agreed.
And then, because he didn’t know what else to say he asked:
“You want a drink?”
Evan considered him for a moment and then inclined his head.
“Could murder a cup of tea, if that’s an option.”
James pushed himself away from the wall.
“Tea it is.”
James retreated to the kitchen—got two mugs out. Filled the kettle. Forced himself to focus on the mundane act of making tea—and not the slightly nervous energy that was currently trying to bubble up inside his chest—he felt giddy—like a teenager. Like he had at sixteen after the first time he’d kissed Regulus, except this was more than that. This was more. The kettle whistled. James drew in a slow, steadying breath and told himself firmly to get his shit together as he carried two mugs back towards the living room.
Evan was sitting shirtless on his couch, arms folded loosely across his chest as he stared contemplatively into the fire now burning brightly in the grate. His boots were off and, predictably, his legs were stretched out in front of him, socked feet resting on James’s brand-new coffee table. Evan was gorgeous. That wasn’t news to James—but there was something different about this. Something about seeing him here, like that, with his hair still mussed from James’s hands.
Merlin.
James swallowed and made himself move—cross the room, hand Evan his mug, then settle onto the couch beside him.
“We should probably talk. That was my original intention in coming here,” Evan said. Then he shot James a sideways look, the corner of his mouth hitching into a half-smile. “Least, that was the excuse.”
James shifted sideways, pulling one knee onto the couch so he could face him.
“Excuse?”
“Wanted to see you,” Evan answered. Then his expression smoothed into something more serious. “Was planning on talking, though. Figure you have questions. Things you want to know—about me. About the shit I said under truth potion.”
“Right,” said James, dragging his attention away from the embarrassingly warm feeling the words wanted to see you had elicited. “Yeah, I did—I mean, I do.”
Evan nodded, and then—setting his mug down on the table turned mirror James’s position on the couch so that they were face to face.
“Told you before I left that I’d tell you whatever you wanted to know. Meant it. Still do.”
James nodded, then swallowed. For nearly two months, he had done little but accumulate questions. They had kept him awake at night, circling endlessly through his head. Now Evan was sitting in front of him, offering answers freely, and James couldn’t seem to summon a single one of them. Over the last year, Evan had become the person he trusted most. Someone James had fallen in love with so seamlessly that he hadn’t even noticed it happening, collecting a hundred small, singular pieces of him along the way, and yet, sitting across from him now, James was struck by how much he still didn’t know about Evan.
There were things he should ask—about Evan’s blood oath, about Voldemort, and probably a hundred more. Yet none of that felt nearly as urgent as the question James actually wanted answered.
So he asked it.
“You and Crouch,” James said. “What, er…what’s the deal there?”
Evan blinked.
It was barely a reaction at all, but James knew him well enough to recognise it for what it was: surprise. Of all the questions Evan had apparently prepared himself to answer, this was clearly not one of them.
James felt instantly embarrassed by how much the question betrayed.
“I mean,” he began, attempting a feeble backpedal, “I was just wondering, you know, because I know you two were…” He trailed off.
Evan was smiling now, as though he found something about the situation deeply entertaining.
“Jealous?” he asked. “Or are your Gryffindor sensibilities just making you worry you might be the other woman?”
“Yeah, all right, fuck off,” James said even as he felt his face grow warm. “It’s hardly unreasonable to ask, considering you had my cock in your mouth fifteen minutes ago.”
Evan’s smile widened—a flash of white teeth and dimples—and James forgot to be embarrassed. For a second, his heart seemed to miss a beat. He had forgotten Evan could smile like that. Or perhaps he had simply never noticed. No, that was a lie. He had noticed. He had just never properly appreciated it: Evan’s real smile, rare and wide and utterly unguarded.
“We’re not like that,” Evan said. “Haven’t been for a long time. He’s the closest thing I’ve got left to a best friend, though even that’s probably stretching it. Want to kill him half the time. More like family than anything else.”
He paused, cocking his head as his eyes raked over James’s face.
“Like the fact that you asked. Lot more than I probably should.”
His smile softened at the edges. He stretched an arm along the back of the couch, his fingers brushing James’s shoulder. The touch was light, tentative almost like he was testing the waters.
“If you want me, Tosspot, then I’m yours. Isn’t anyone else—won’t be as long as you're interested.”
James decided he was done with talking—because right now evan was touching him, not because he had to—Not because James was injured. Not because one of them needed help. Not because there was some practical excuse for it. He was just... touching him.
And James liked it.
He really liked it.
Almost as much as he liked hearing Evan say the words, I’m yours.
Everything else could wait: the war, the order—the whole world— it could all wait. What couldn’t wait was leaning in and kissing Evan.
That couldn’t wait.