He’s not even sure where she got it.
Logic dictates that she can only have taken it from his room, but a brief scan back through the memories of the last few times she’d poked her head in throws up no clues. Had he simply not been paying attention? Hardly likely, where she’s involved. Perhaps she’d snuck in when he wasn’t there, and nicked it. Only that doesn’t seem all that likely, either; Lily’s not the sneaking the type. She’s the unapologetic, here-I-am type; just one of the many things he loves about her.
Either way, the point is moot, because she’s standing on the stairs outside the common room, deep in conversation with a Ravenclaw prefect, in his quidditch jersey. Right out here, in the open. Like it isn’t doing something bordering on indecent to his heart, twisting it all up into a tangle with his lungs so that breathing is suddenly secondary to the way his pulse is thudding somewhere in the roof of his mouth.
“Well, we’ve lost him now,” he hears Sirius say sagely, and doesn’t quite catch the low laughing response from one of the others.
She’s got the sleeves rolled halfway up her forearms. As she talks, a particularly animated gesture causes the jersey, overlarge on her petite frame, to slip from her shoulder. The pale, smooth-and-freckled expanse of skin that’s revealed is somehow one of the more distracting things he’s ever seen, especially in contrast with the maroon of the jersey, the letters of his name peeking out from under her loose hair.
“What?” he says, vaguely aware that someone, possibly Sirius, has said something to him. He regrets it almost immediately; Sirius raises his voice loud enough that it catches the attention of everyone in the corridor, Lily and the Ravenclaw prefect included.
“I SAID,” he repeats, bouncing his patronising tone off the stone walls with a clarity and volume that makes James wonder if he’s using an amplifying charm. “THAT WE’LL LEAVE YOU TO UNDRESS LILY WITH YOUR EYES AND SEE YOU LATER!”
James flicks a rude gesture in Sirius’ direction, but he’s already slung an arm around Remus and Peter and both, tugging them away. When James turns back, Lily’s looking at him—curling smile barely repressed—and so is the Ravenclaw prefect, though that’s neither here nor there. He clears his throat.
“I wasn’t,” he says. “Undressing you with my eyes, I mean.”
“Of course not,” she agrees, and there’s laughter warming her voice. She knows exactly what she does to him, he’s sure of it. “A gentleman like you.”
Between them, the Ravenclaw prefect does an awkward duck-and-shuffle away, only to be caught up in Sirius’ magnetic field, pulled in to join in the joke. She laughs, in a not-quite-sure, wide-eyed sort of way. James doesn’t even notice.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting it back,” she says.
“No!” James says, blurting the word out embarrassingly quickly, unable to stop the way it flies from his mouth like a rogue bludger on the warpath. She laughs at that tipping her head back and leaving the long column of her throat breathtaking and bare before him. “I mean—you could borrow it. For a while.”
“How generous of you,” she says, and leans up on her tiptoes, pulling him close with a handful of his jumper to press a kiss to his cheek. His arms come around her waist automatically, a perfect fit, like they were designed to rest just there.
“That’s me,” he agrees. “Generous to a fault, Evans.”
She swats him gently, but she’s smiling. “Haven’t you got places to be? Sirius’ll wilt like a sad houseplant if you leave him alone for too long.”
“He’ll survive,” James assures her warmly, eyes glancing up and finding Sirius automatically. He’s gesticulating wildly, the way he does when he’s dramatising a story to the point of fiction. Remus is rolling his eyes. Under Sirius’ arm, the Ravenclaw prefect is laughing so hard that her cheeks are pink, or maybe that’s just the effect of Sirius’ attention. Sirius’ gaze flickers up too, drawn by James’ own, and grins one of his just-for-James grins.
“Lucinda might not,” Lily muses, eyeing the way the girl under Sirius’ arm is gazing up at him with a giddy smile on her face. “Poor girl. Does he realise, d’you think?”
“Unlikely,” James says, fondly. “Big idiot.”
“Like you can talk,” Lily says. “Mr. I-wasn’t-undressing-you-with-my-eyes.”
“Can you blame me?” he asks. His hands are still at her waist, fingers curling into the familiar fabric of his own jersey.
“Ah,” she says, eyes sparkling. “So you admit it.”
“—guilty?” he says, after a long moment of juggling how she might respond. That is, apparently, the right answer. She rewards him with a soft laugh and a small smile and a palm pressed against his cheek.
“As ever,” she says, and pulls him down for a kiss.
“Disgusting,” Sirius calls in the background, and is thoroughly ignored.
