Hello, friends! This is my tribute to Shirtless James Potter May, which is now definitely a Thing™
Dedicated to all my lovely Jily Discord buddies! And special thanks to @mppmaraudergirl @the-dream-team @constancezin and @blitheringmcgonagall for making this happen.
A screech tears from her throat, excited and giddy and decidedly drunk, as the small ping-pong ball lands neatly inside the cup of beer across the table. Her partner’s roar of triumph is followed by an enthusiastic slap of hi-five that has her reeling, the blazing heat of his palm rather delicious against her own.
Quite generously, he decides to bestow more of this warmth onto her person when he lifts her off her feet, mad and grinning, arms tight around her waist. His cheeks, ruddy from all the drinks he’s downed, accompanied by the dazzling brightness of hazel eyes, causes something to clench painfully inside her.
He’s just a mate. He’s just a mate.
“James!” she yells, half-laughing, fully breathless. “Put me down, you big buffoon.”
“We won! Again!” he grins, letting her feet touch the floor after another spin.
Before she can so much as inwardly lament on the loss of his comforting warmth, a pair of lips land on her cheek. Heart thundering, she forgets how to breathe, a reaction that is by no means justified given the sloppy, open-mouthed, intoxicated nature of the kiss.
A kiss that is not even a kiss because it leaves her lips feeling petulantly ignored.
“You…are fucking brilliant, Evans,” James slurs, entirely oblivious to what he’s just gone and done. She can only stare at him with poorly-hidden surprise, face blazing, warmer and warmer by the second.
“Er, thank you,” she sputters eventually, immensely grateful that everyone around them seems too drunk to pay their little interaction any mind.
“Another game!” James announces.
But she can’t; it’s impossible now.
“I think I’m done for the night,” she tells him, fingers brushing over his arm apologetically. “I’ve had too much to drink already.”
“WHAT?” he shrieks, betrayed, glasses sliding off nose. “You can’t ditch me now, Evans! We’re this close to being named The Hogwarts Beer Pong Champions.”
“Winning the Quidditch Championship wasn’t enough for you?” she laughs, hands rising above her head to point at the banners and streamers dangling from the common room ceiling.
“Oh yeah,” he blinks, grins blindingly. “I’d almost forgotten about that. Next year is going to be even more amazing. We’re going to win all the matches!”
James smiles, triggering that annoyingly familiar tumble in her stomach. “You sure you don’t want to play?”
“I’m sure. Why don’t you ask Sirius? He’s probably withered away to ash without you by now.”
“Good call,” he says, instantly cupping his palms around his mouth. “Padfoot! Up for a round?”
She saunters over to the drinks table as Sirius walks by to take her place, casually ruffling her hair as he passes by. “What’s the damage, Evans?”
She makes a show of observing James. “Mm, five shots from blackout.”
“Excellent. Gotta bring that down to one.”
Sirius adopts a ridiculously fierce expression as he joins James, facing off against two fifth-years. “Let’s take them down, Prongs!”
She chuckles quietly at the silliness, fingers pulling out a bottle of butterbeer despite her previous proclamations of having had enough alcohol for the night. With some sensible distance yawning open between her and the stupidly affectionate Quidditch captain, oxygen is easier to draw inside. She sighs, chilling the bottle with a quick wave of wand.
With sixth-year coming to an end, she feels the significance of everything the past year has brought to her life rather tremendously, but especially on the James Potter front. While being his friend has been an experience she wouldn’t trade for anything in the world—well, it’s also a lie, because there is one thing she would trade it for: being more than his friend.
But she worries, quite justifiably, that they’ve already crossed a phase too many in such a short span of time to tease at their dynamics any more. There’s a strange fluttering in her chest every time her eyes land on crazy hair and goofy grins that she knows certainly aren’t friendly reactions though.
She’s distracted from her thoughts by a sudden wave of excited hoots that ring out through the room. Curiosity piquing, she twists around to spot the fuss, eyes immediately flying to the beer pong table because there’s no doubt that that’s where the eye of the storm lies.
At the sight, the bottle of butterbeer almost slips from her fingers.
James stands, eyes even more glazed than before, crooked grin splitting over his face, bursting with laughter as he chest bumps Sirius. And if she hadn’t already noticed it before (she most certainly had) the action draws her gaze to his very sweaty, very bare chest, no doubt the target of the still ringing catcalls. She watches, mouth completely dry as the muscles in his abdominals ripple with movement when he runs a hand through his hair. It’s almost as if her ogling registers on his radar, because half a second later, James is looking at her.
She immediately lifts the bottle to her lips, hiding the awe-struck expression behind tinted glass. Fuck, was he fit! She’d guessed as much, of course; it was impossible not to when she hugged the boy as often as she did, but knowing and seeing, it turned out, were vastly different things.
“Lily!” he slurs, tongue rolling over the name as he walks over. “We trounced them. Did you see?”
“I think Evans was rather occupied with seeing something else,” Sirius smirks, the look he throws her entirely too knowing.
She takes another swig, unable to reply, unable to breathe, unable to think with James standing so close. The heat rolls off of him in waves, as sweltering as the fireplace in the room. To make matters worse, he raises his hand, swipes a thumb over her cheek. “You’re so red.”
She mumbles something unintelligibly while Sirius snickers.
“I’m tired. I’m gonna go to bed.”
And before either of them can protest, she chugs the rest of the beer and all but bolts from the party, heart pounding mercilessly in her ears. She almost makes it to the third step of the girl’s staircase before a hand wraps around her wrist, the warmth of the touch telling her enough. “James,” she sighs, turning around.
“Are you mad at me?” His brows pull together, sweat dripping from his hairline, down the side of his face, over that strong neck to pool into the hollow of his collar bone. She swallows, wondering if it would look too weird if she reaches up and licks it away.
He steps closer, makes it worse. “Then why won’t you look at me?”
She looks at him then—of course, she does—and something like adoration bursts inside her. “I’m not mad at you, James. You’re just too distracting right now.”
Some remnant of Gryffindor courage has her reaching forward, placing a palm over his chest. She feels it, right beneath her skin, when the beat of his heart alters rhythm. “You’re quite shirtless, if you haven’t noticed.”
A rush of breath tickles the top of her head.
“Lily,” James breathes, fingers drifting to her waist, and when she catches his eye again, the look in them has changed wholly. Any previous glaze is wiped clean, replaced by some brightness that wars with the expanding darkness of his irises. “Will you—”
“Wait!” she says, almost moaning when his fingers squeeze her hip. “Not like this. Not now. We’re drunk.”
“I—” he looks down, eyes on her mouth, and she thinks he’ll lean forward anyway, kiss her anyway, fuck it all. It isn’t until he sighs, deep and resigned, that she realizes she wouldn’t have minded. “Yeah, alright.”
She smiles, slow and confident, because now she knows, and leans forward to brush her lips over his cheek. The hints of stubble feel delectably coarse against her mouth, and even more so when he groans somewhere at the back of his throat. She pulls back sluggishly, weak in the face of her own want. “Ask me later,” she whispers.
James watches dazedly as she takes a step back, then another. Eventually, he finds his smile. “I’ll hold you to that, Evans.”
