this is suze can u answer #34 from that list u reblogged: What is your favorite fic to get comments/messages on?
mwah
ok celeb in my inbox!
i think the answer is usually just "whatever I've posted most recently" because i'm always insecure when i post a new fic lol. but otherwise probably theogony because it's my favorite thing i've written and it's really fun to see what people pick out :) but honestly all comments are beloved and cherished even if i'm terrible about getting back to them because i'm a rotten human being
Ship: James/Lily
Rating: Teen
Relevant Tags: Canon Compliant, Slow Burn, Pining, Hogwarts 6th and 7th Year, Multiple POVs, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Wizarding Politics
Warnings: Minor Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence
Word Count: 738,179*
*WIP
It’s difficult to say when James and Lily took the first steps to love. Perhaps they had always been walking this road, unaware of the person they were walking towards until the mist cleared. They would fall in love eventually — but we would be remiss in ignoring the hiccups along the way.
You know when you go back to a fic (again and again) with the intention to read, just that one bit, but then the fic grabs you by the throat and holds on tight because damn the writing is so good?
If you haven't experienced this then you must not have read Come Together by the one and only @thequibblah
Why IF WE NEVER MEET AGAIN is Art, Capital Letters and I’ll never get over it
An Essay (by someone who has been ravaged by @thequibblah one too many times)
IWNMA is two months old! Wow, the time flies. 🥳 i read this fic on Halloween and it fucked me up even more (yes, more) than that dreaded anniversary. so this is mostly going to be me quoting my favorite bits, rambling and freaking out and occasionally trying to be coherent and actually talk about WHY it’s so brilliant. because it is brilliant, and if you haven’t read it that should be the only thing you need to know: it’s brilliant and sad and hopeful and sweet and yes, right back to brilliant. go read it.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully articulate what it is about this fic that captured my heart and makes me feeling a mixture of longing and confused. It makes my heart ache, in short, and after the first time I read it I wasn’t quite sure why. It took several rereads to put a finger on it—a mixture of beautiful prose enveloping and aiding incredibly crafted characters.
There is something about suze’s writing that makes me want to be a better writer—in fact i think just reading her works DO make me a better writer because I inhale her beautiful prose and weep over her lovely characters and I take a tiny bit of them with me when I’m crafting my own stories.
I don’t know how to describe it other than: IWNMA perfectly captures the fact that words are nothing but strings of letters. Meaningless, except humans put so much meaning and yearning and love into existence, so these strings of letters make us feel absolutely incoherent things. (Incoherence, in general is how I react to suze. Both personally and professionally 😌)
now i’m going to be very embarrassingly emotive and generally freak out.
“I love you,” Lily says, quietly. The night holds the words for a moment, then releases them. She hasn’t yet looked at him. “I’m in love with you, and I’m tired of pretending I’m not.”
Everything splinters after that.
um. Opening lines? Killing me? I am such a sucker for starting the story in the middle and then going back because…Drama. and Showmanship.
I love the pure brilliance of the magazine headlines interspersed throughout and how they give us little details and sneak peeks, and show the complete divide between the Truth and the Show. It’s the flashy, gasp headline writing and when it’s contrasted with the quiet chaos behind the scenes it’s just…
There’s something almost suffocating about movie star AUs to me, because there is so much misunderstood and we know that a lot of them felt trapped, and I can feel that in IWNMA. Even if Lily’s not sitting around panicking, thinking ‘I feel trapped’, you can feel it in the writing, in the breaths taken, the spaces between them. The way she acts, the way the love story plays out behind and in front of the scenes.
“Long time,” James Potter says once he’s finished laughing, holding out his hand.
James Potter makes an introduction, and I Love Him.
I also love that the ex-husband is just…the ex-husband. He needs no space. No capital letters. begone.
To claim that she fell in love again on August 3rd might be stretching things. But Lily tastes possibility, light and sweet as summer fruit on her tongue, for the first time in a long time on that night.
She loses it, too, many times over. Wait — we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
I’m just going to keep repeating myself and saying ‘I love xyz’ but I love these lines. I love the summer fruit, and the lightness of possibility, and the way it feels like a story being told about them, while also a story that is very much Theirs.
“That,” he says, “is a fucking view. Your estate agent wasn’t kidding.”
Lily laughs. It’s maybe easier now to appreciate the stunning beauty of this house through someone else — though it was immediately apparent to her when she first scoped it out.
“Try waking up to it,” she says.
“I want to,” he says at once. “Seriously, I’ll buy it off you right now.”
He wakes up to it at the end I am so—
“I’d offer you my jacket,” says James, “but I have none, and also, it’s August.”
😭
Most of this is just me being In Love with James, until we get to P&P era and then he’s on thin fucking ice so…
“I’ve got two hands.”
“Two hands you’re using to not help me in the slightest.”
Suze I just know you meant this on purpose. You do not fool me. I know.
He says, with feeling, “Lily, take my jacket, it’ll protect you from this Arctic evening—”
She groans. “Fuck off, oh my God—”
“—your every moment of discomfort tears me apart—” With a flourish, he mimes removing a jacket and draping it over her shoulders.
“You’re a terrible actor,” she says, shrugging off the nonexistent jacket. “Charlie Chaplin’s rolling over in his grave. While weeping.”
Will I copy and paste this entire scene is the question. The answer could be yes, but the word count of this draft post is…embarrassing so close to 2022.
The Rome scenes are just…like, can I frame them and weep? It makes me want to be in Rome and also be in love and also have James Potter as my own, which is not a new feeling per se, but it’s certainly a very strong iteration of it.
Lily has decided she likes Italian bars best of all — drinks are the same everywhere you go, but the food, good God. (James makes a crack about how he’ll look unrecognisable at the end of filming if they go on like this every day. As if, she thinks, with a resentful glare. She’s seen him running around the neighbourhood each bloody morning.)
No comment, he’s ridiculous and the best.
“Oh, no,” James murmurs now, dropping the smile, “I hadn’t realised. I’ll do my best to be attractive for you.”
The entire bar scene, with the snipping and the laughter and how she’s just slightly unglued just by him being him…
Trelawney as the neurotic director is the best thing that’s ever happened, and suze is just so masterful in the way she’s woven the elegant and the silly and the uniquely longing to make this masterpiece.
“If you ask me, this is all for authenticity. Freddy absolutely wonders if Sabine knows he’s an okay kisser.”
“Freddy’s a great kisser,” James says, following.
“We’ll see, I guess.”
His hand closes around her upper arm, just above the elbow. Lily turns around. “What?”
But he simply looks at her without speaking. She waits for a long moment. Then, “Never mind.”
She shrugs, cool as you please, though she wants to stay wrapped in the sudden electricity, here. “See you on set, tiger.”
He chokes on his laughter.
Really all picking out my favorite parts is doing is making me realize how good of a writer she is. like…read these all in a row and tell me you’re not overwhelmed just from that, and then read the whole thing and tell me you didn’t weep.
The first kiss scene. Honestly? suze, you need to direct a movie. The screen and the setting is perfection and you would win awards for it, just saying (as you’ve won awards for this fic, which I’m glad it did, because I would’ve sulked for ages if it didn’t)
Trelawney calls cut!
“Again?” James can be heard saying. Lily stays there, behind the screen, trying to settle her racing heart.
“No,” Trelawney tells him, “that’s the one.”
“That’s the—? But we only—”
“That’s the take.”
😭 the implication that their first kiss was so genuine and perfect it fit the film.
“I’ll walk you,” says James.
She tries to wave him off. “It’s literally around the corner, James.”
“It’s late!”
“It’s half past ten.”
“Late,” he says again.
“Oh, all right,” she says, and tucks her hand into his elbow.
It’s the beginning and somehow it already feels sad (probably because the scroll is still very long, so we know they’re not going to be happy for the rest of it) and yet also euphoric and…I love secret relationships. Secret love affairs.
She’s aware of the rise and fall of his shoulders, in time with her own, and the part of his lips. But she’s not looking anywhere but his eyes, the rich hazel glimmer of them. She is quite helpless.
“You’re not— Are you drunk?” Lily says.
His brow furrows, but he answers, “No.”
She exhales, long and slow. “Then I think… It would be better to just get it out of our systems, yeah?”
When he nods, he seems relieved. “Upstairs?”
I absolutely love this scene because it seems quite abrupt—they haven’t discussed any of it—but the silence in all the words before it might as well have been a full on conversation because they know where they are (physically, at least) and that the other is there too, and so there’s only a few words required to make the jump (that isn’t even a jump, it’s more of a soft step)
“You’re — an okay kisser,” she tells him, left breathless.
😭
Afterwards she wonders about the semantics of this. Fucking one’s co-star seems de rigueur in the industry. But realistically they have not fucked, not unless the definition’s changed since last she checked. A one-and-done would feel separate from the rest of the world, safely so. Now she can still smell the earthy impression of rain on his skin, can still hear plucked strings and Doris Day. Lily realises, rather clinically, that she would like to do it again.
Really, really. She’d really, really like to do it again.
As if he can read her mind, James begins to sit up and get dressed. She watches in silence; when he’s finished, he curls one hand around her calf.
His smile is slanted, ironic. “Never again, then.”
She smiles back, though she’s sure she doesn’t look so poised. At least they’ve come to this realisation together.
And then even at the end they’re in sync. Even when they’re missing each other by miles, there’s this sense of in sync-ness (not the band), because they’re just built so perfectly to fall in love.
It is wrong, definitely wrong, on ethical, moral, certainly religious grounds, to feel a little flustered at the way he does up a zipper.
The scene in the trailer just makes me…have I mentioned I’m in love with this James yet?
“You’re brave,” James says, simple as that. “For holding onto someone when you found them, and even more so for letting go when you needed to.”
They get each other. A love story could be boiled down to that simple fact, and IWNMA is just two people who get each other (in a variety of torturous situations, thank u suze)
“We made something,” he says, softly.
There, he has voiced the thought she’s had since that last day of filming, since he spun her around and the world seemed forever changed once her feet landed on solid ground again. She’s made something — and she’s done it in collaboration with people, of course, it’s not about who owns how much of this. But she’s made something, and (heart tripping, breath catching) she’s done it with him.
This is one of the lines that actually made me tear up. This fic hurts to read sometimes, because it’s so earnest and it just…tugs right at the most aching, deep parts of you because it’s about the start of love, the making of art, and the two intertwined. I’m 😭
She shifted in her chair, crossed and uncrossed her legs. “I think if there’s one thing my romantic life proves, it’s that vetting by sex is not very thorough.”
“If it’s thoroughness you’re worried about,” Mary says seriously, “all the more reason to find Potter again and give him a few more goes.”
I love Mary. 🥰
Maybe the naïve reaction to that is to believe she was always made to be an actress, not a model. Lily knows it’s silly — no one is made to be anything — but she holds onto the childish impulse in that dark room.
Will I use something other than 😭 to describe my feelings maybe maybe not.
The moment might’ve come across as abrupt, but the camera lingers sweetly on Freddy’s face as he strides out of the garden. This is no guilty, hurried retreat, which was how Lily’d assumed it would appear.
Instead James milks every ounce of his natural earnestness for all it’s worth. Freddy is lit with wonder, giddy and flushed and quite appallingly in love. He lifts a hand to his mouth as he goes, not to wipe at it but just…to touch, as if to memorise through every sensation what he’s just experienced.
The film goes on, but, if she’s being perfectly honest, Lily stays there. Replays that lovely little smile, his thumb upon his lower lip, again and again.
That is what makes James Potter good at his job. Instinct. Sincerity. There is no doubt to the viewer that he absolutely believes what he’s doing.
He believes it because he’s in love with you, idiot.
You brought me all this way to say hello? she almost says. “Hi,” is what she actually says.
His mouth tilts into a half-smile. “You know something funny?”
No, she almost says. “What’s that?”
“Last year in Rome, when I left the villa and flew back home, I suppose I knew we’d have to see each other again—”
Now Lily manages to get her dig in, a well-placed elbow to the ribs. “Oh, you sound thrilled about it.”
He rolls his eyes. “Let me finish. I knew we’d both be at this premiere, but I felt as though you’d just…vanish. And I’d never see you again.”
She manages a blustery laugh. “That’s a touch ridiculous, no?”
“Oh, it’s quite ridiculous,” he says with a nod. “You know I enjoy giving you ammunition.”
Are her cheeks red? They must be. She feels like she’s had a dizzying number of shots in a too-short period of time.
The universe is playing some kind of joke on her, she thinks, because surely a thought that she’s had — on the night they first kissed, no less — didn’t organically occur to him too? Surely he can’t read minds?
Made for each other. Made for each other.
The LA scenes are right up against the Rome scenes for my favorite, because it just feels stingingly alive. You can feel the sun and the wind and the exhilaration and the plastic-life in every word, in all their actions and the studio sets. And I was waiting for them to get together the ENTIRE first time I read it and I was very miffed when they didn’t, but now I appreciate the space. It felt like it was time for them (unknowingly) to settle into love. Because...(yes, i’m going to say it), they’re best friends. 😭
“Please, Evans. We’re both having the time of our damn lives, and you know it.” He’s back to his relaxed position of earlier.
Lily arches a brow and does not feel a thrill in her stomach. “Are we?”
He glances at her, grinning that crooked grin of his. “Well, we’re in it together, aren’t we?”
Yeah, I had to get up and pace when I read this bit. You know the lines that bury themselves somewhere deep in your chest and fill you with restlessness and you need to take a break just to savor it and also to get out of the headspace of it, because it’s nearly too much to feel? This is that. It did it to me on my first, second, third and fourth rereads. I paced and made a cup of tea and then returned.
In a smooth American drawl James says, “You’re in El Ay, baby. Get used to it.”
This should not be as attractive to me as it is.
Drunk Remus is the best thing to ever exist, suze thank you for inventing him.
“No,” she says, nonchalant, “I didn’t think you looked cool.”
“Ouch.”
She shrugs, trying to think past the alcohol to put the sentiment to words. “I mean, you looked — like a person. Not like a movie star.”
“Ah,” he says.
At first he mulls this over in silence and she wonders if she’s misstepped. But then he laughs quietly, and she wants to kiss his dimple…only Mary floats into view in her mind’s eye. Her sex life is not something that happens to her.
“So you have to let me buy you a Fluffy Duck, anyway,” she says, hurriedly circumventing the past few minutes.
“They don’t feel the same way about Fluffy Ducks here,” James says.
She wraps a hand around his forearm, allows him to steer them to the bar. “Don’t they? Well, you’ll have to read me what’s on the menu, then.”
“Me?” He points at his specs.
“Hmm. We’re fucked.”
The bartender’s occupied, so they stop a ways off. She doesn’t let go of him as she squints at the board. His head tilts towards hers; he’s frowning at it too.
“Any luck?” Lily whispers.
“Can’t see a damn thing.”
“Just make up an innuendo. Half the cocktails are sex-related. You know, on the beach, in the sheets, what have you.”
He laughs, and she swells with pleasure. “Is that what you’ve learned today?”
She scoffs at his teasing tone. “You laugh, but I’ll go up to this bloke right now and say, ‘I’ll have a Slow Comfortable Screw on the Countertop,’ and he won’t even blink.”
James laughs even harder, a hand pressed to his ribs. “Sorry?”
“Didn’t you hear me?” With an exasperated sigh, she turns to say, right in his ear, “A slow, comfortable screw—” And then her brain catches up to what’s happening, and she stutters to a stop, wide-eyed.
James tips his head even nearer, hazel eyes so close. “No, go on,” he says, half-smiling.
Her face grows hot. “Erm.”
“You ordering, or what?” the bartender calls.
“Yeah,” says James at once. “She’s having…a Slow Comfortable Screw — any particulars on the where and the how of the slow comfortable screw, Evans?”
“Fuck off, oh my God—”
This entire thing—! Just makes me 🥰😭
Then she plucks their drinks off the counter, smiling at the bartender. “Here’s your slow hard fuck,” she tells James with a playful glare.
“Slow comfortable screw,” he says.
“Whatever, Potter.” She takes a sip, then hums approvingly.
James is watching closely. “Good, isn’t it?”
“It actually is. I never took you for such an expert on slow comfortable screws.”
His grin spreads wide. “Didn’t you?”
Lily’s mouth falls open. “You— Wow.” That’s the first time either of them have mentioned Rome. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“No need, I already know how you feel about it,” he says.
“Jesus Christ.”
❤️
“That was a better apology than my ex-husband’s,” she jokes, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the sun.
She’s ready for him to laugh in return. But instead, his eyes flash and his jaw clenches.
“Just for the record,” he says, his voice dropping to a low murmur, “fuck that guy, yeah?”
She’s so surprised she can’t do anything but make another joke. “Won’t be doing that again, actually.”
But James is utterly serious; he shakes his head. “Really, Lily. What a fucking moron he is.”
Her mouth is dry. It takes several tries at clearing her throat for her to speak again. “Yeah, I know. Erm. Thanks.”
He gives her an odd sort of look. “Don’t thank me.”
I’m running out of ways to say: I love James and this is amazing so…I love James and this is amazing.
After L.A., London is a strange place to live.
Or maybe that’s backwards — L.A. was a strange place to live, and in returning to London she’s discovering how much her notion of normal has changed. London is a place, but Los Angeles is a dream, a story breathed into life by the sun-bronzed hopefuls who crowd its streets. But even dreams can feel stifling sometimes.
just. How many ways can you make me incoherent.
“You look beautiful,” James murmurs into her hair.
“I know,” she says without thinking.
He laughs.
(Later her mother will cut out a photo of this moment from OK magazine, and Lily will look at it every time she’s in her kitchen.
Until she won’t anymore.)
Yeah now I’m enraged. Fuck you suze.
Don’t cry when you’re on divorce number two.
She doesn’t pull him towards the doors. She says, “And…what did you think?”
Something between an exhale and a laugh escapes him. “I didn’t think.”
She waits for him to elaborate, for one moment, then two, then three. He leans close, his breath warm against her ear, lips brushing her skin as he inhales. Now, he’ll say something, and the sparks skidding along the surface of her skin will be set to rest.
Then James draws back, brow furrowed. He makes no sound. For a moment Lily wonders if she did something to dissuade him, or if someone else called out to him — but she realises that it’s far simpler than that. He has nothing more to say.
He takes her hand, and they move towards the theatre.
I can feel myself heading straight for actual anger right now. The lovely shininess of this fic has been replaced by rage because we’re heading straight for P&P and…
😭 (not the good kind)
Desire tightens in her belly. How long, she wonders? Today? Just now, waiting for her to arrive at his door? Or is it an older imagining than this film, this set?
She pauses to shed her top, and James takes the time to remove his. She marvels at the breadth of his shoulders, at the lines and muscles she hasn’t seen like this in years. He’s filled out. She wants to map the new feeling beneath her fingers, re-learn the topography of him.
It’s absolutely insane how it feels so familiar and intimate despite the fact that they haven’t had sex in years.
“That’s it, baby,” he says, which is new — he’s only ever called her by her name in bed. It is so breathless as to seem involuntary. She pushes against him harder, desperate to see what else he might say.
if I wasn’t so upset about what’s coming I’d be screaming
Amelia seems not to have noticed the effect of her words because she adds, thoughtfully, “You’d be good for Shakespeare.”
“Macbeth,” says Lily, the same time as James says “Much Ado.” He squawks at her, horrified, and Amelia laughs.
“What d’you mean, Macbeth? I thought we miss being typecast!” he protests.
We, Lily registers, her smile warm, satisfied. “I’d make an exception here, we’d be an excellent pair of Macbeths. On the stage, I reckon. No cameras, loads of fake blood.”
“Ha bloody ha.”
“Quite literally, yeah.”
[…]
She shrugs, maybe so. “It’d be fun with you. Sexy, even.”
James laughs. “Murdering a king is sexy?”
“Being haunted by it afterwards is sexy,” she corrects.
“Sometimes I forget you read English at uni.”
“Well, I didn’t finish the degree, so there’s no need to sound that way about it.”
His smile has softened, the sun slipping towards the horizon. “Come to bed, Lily.”
The night is hers. She goes with him
Yeah still upset.
Lily drops her cigarette and squashes it beneath her heel. “I don’t think you’re that terrible a person, no.”
His smile is a little fainter than usual. “Oh? High praise, that.”
“Considering that for a very long time, I thought men were out to get me personally, especially the ones I was attracted to,” she says, “I think so, yes.”
James says, “Ah, so you are attracted to me.”
“Were you unsure?”
“Can’t a bloke have a bit of an ego boost from time to time?”
She lifts one sardonic brow. “And what is it we’re doing, shagging in secret, if not that?”
He grins and presses a kiss to her mouth. They’re alone, but still, his confidence is quite breathtaking. Then again, many things about him are.
When he pulls back, he says, still grinning, “You taste disgusting. Please quit smoking.”
Lily tells him to fuck off. He kisses her again before he goes.
Now I’m just angry and it’s entirely because the next scene is The Scene and I don’t even want to read it because it’s so well done and intimate that I feel like I’m intruding and also JAMES YOU CLOWN 💖 and the symbolism of the love confession, the unprotected sex, the walking away—
She looks at him then. He hasn’t yet taken off his specs, which he usually does by this point. She hopes he won’t try to, because she’ll tell him not to do it and will have to come up with a reason why.
Really, she’s not even sure she knows why. Maybe it’s because he looks most like himself with them on. Maybe she just wants him to see her.
This is the only bit I’m going to put in here, because otherwise i’d do the entire scene and then I’d be a mess for the rest of the day. Moving on.
“I fucking love you,” she says, without turning around. He might not even hear it. She’s basically professing her love for the door.
But she hopes he‘s heard. She hopes he sees the shadow of her leaving behind closed eyelids for days — I fucking love you. She’ll love him resentfully until she doesn’t anymore.
Lily lets the door swing shut behind her.
No no no nope nope nope NOPE this made me cry and pace too but this was in more of a rage-fueled upset.
Quietly, he says, “It was good, though, wasn’t it?”
[…]
“It was really good,” Lily says, “since you want to know so badly.”
She hitches up the skirt of her dress and walks away. That, she knows, is the last time she’ll see James Potter. Or the last time he’ll see her.
rageandcryingrageandcrying
“Is it as easy to you as it is for me?” she says, reaching for her car door.
He doesn’t ask her to clarify any aspect of that question. James only glances upward, momentarily, before saying, “It’s almost too easy.”
I think I’ve pinpointed what it is I love about this fic and it’s the whimsy and it’s how it’s two love stories in one. It’s a love letter to acting and it’s a love letter to people, and they’re falling in love so many times it’s like a constant rollercoaster you never get off. They just keep falling and falling and you wonder when they’ll realize it (or not be idiots about it jfc James)
“I just,” James says, then stops to close his eyes briefly. “I don’t want to pretend with you. I want things to be real and I want to make certain that they are, and I want to mean it when I say I love you.”
Lily’s breath hitches. When, she thinks. When. Only, maybe he didn’t mean it like that; maybe the wording is incidental.
She says, softly, “It’s all pretending. But I suppose when you’re in love you just…don’t mind them catching you slip up.”
A faint, desperate laugh escapes him. “I’m not ready. I’m sorry, but I’m— And you don’t deserve to have to wait, Lily.”
I’m so
Can I take back all my compliments and say I hate suze?
All the notes and flowers and messages sent back and forth through third parties is just longing and distance and the wrong timing and I’m physically antsy reading it because I want them to be in the same place at the same time so they can fucking fix it.
James being fucking James Bond.
The fucking PHONE CALL. If I’ve made it this far into the fic, I’m either beaming or weeping or snarling, there is no other options. (Today it’s a weep-beam)
“I read the interview too. It was a nice profile.”
She smiles, briefly placated. “Thanks.”
“You, er, said you wanted to make movies with me until you died.”
“Oh, God.” Lily laughs, palm to her forehead. But she finds herself not embarrassed, somehow; there’s a strange new feeling in this conversation, one she can’t remember from Love Ends, and it makes her comfortable. Something where there was nothing, or the pronounced absence of something else. “I did say that, didn’t I? In retrospect, maybe a bit much to admit in national press—”
“No, I’ve been trying to say it to the press for years,” James says. “My publicist is running out of favours to call in. Eventually I’ll see it in print, don’t you worry.”
“You should come into the party and let it slip. There’s bound to be some tosser here who’ll go running to the paps.”
😭😭😭😭😭
I hate the waiting…but that’s what makes it so sweet at the end.
There’s an odd moment of hesitation, and she wonders if the line has been disconnected. Then he says, “Yeah. Me too. Are you sure you’re having a good time?”
“Mm, positive. Why?”
“You answered as soon as I called. How did you hear the phone ring?”
Lily shifts so her back isn’t digging into a jar of something or other. “I was in the kitchen. Perfect timing, like it was meant to be.”
She hears his little exhale. Another pause. “Are you drunk?”
“Maybe,” she says, coyly. “So, you should really come inside, because I think I might fall asleep in my own pantry, and no one will find me. Then I’ll wake up with my neck totally fucked.”
James laughs again but it’s quiet this time, like something private. “Yeah, okay.”
The quiet, sunny feeling of this last part of the story is worse/better than a grand declaration. Grand declarations almost fit better to short-lived romances—ones that only last a few chapters—rather than ones sprawl out over years, where the love has been slipped into their bones, not just their hearts, and can’t be taken away. They both know this and so the ending is a quiet coming together, just like that first night in Rome. It’s an, I know we’re in the same place now. I know.
Now a montage of this perfect final scene.
“What?” He’s still frowning. “You said love ends.”
“Not this one,” she retorts.
[…]
“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” Lily says. “You could’ve told me on the bloody phone yesterday, and I’d have come to the phone box and snogged you senseless, and brought you back to the house, and—”
He’s starting to smile. “You were very drunk.”
“So?” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I think you owe me eight or nine hours’ worth of kisses, James.”
“That’s a serious debt.” He reaches out haltingly, slides a hand around her waist. “Is that why you’ve come out in a bikini now? More available real estate to kiss, as it were?”
[…]
“But…you thought about it?”
“A lot,” he admits begrudgingly, and she adds a point to her tally, “but I tend to think about you a lot.” He kisses where her pulse trips frantically in her throat, glances up at her from under his lashes. “You really weren’t naked?”
Lily’s grin is broad, giddy. “You really aren’t James Bond?”
[…]
“And I won’t be on the cover of Vanity Fair all the time,” Lily muses, tangling her hands in his hair. “We can’t have you forgetting me.”
This laugh is big and incredulous; his eyes fly open. “As if, Lily. As bloody if.”
[…]
She shakes her head thoughtfully. “I can’t see myself swayed by any such loser. What about when some small-town coed with big dreams sidles up to you on the Strip and asks to buy you a Slow Comfortable Screw?”
“I get my slow comfortables elsewhere,” he assures her, teeth grazing her collarbone.
Lily takes his face between her hands, drops the act for a second. “Our schedules really won’t line up well. If we’re going to do this, we—”
He’s already nodding. “I’ll make the time. For you, anything.”
“So will I,” she says, a sudden warmth blooming in her cheeks.
She’s in love, and he loves her back. This is the sentiment on the tip of her tongue when he kisses her again.
[…]
“I am not,” he says, pausing to kiss her hard again, “going to forget you, Lily.”
“I know.” She has to blink forcefully to clear her vision, sure that she has some reasoning to give even as all conception of logic scatters from her head. “But I want you to keep me with you.” His eyes are such dark pools. She swallows, grasps for something lighter. “Think of it as an anniversary gift. Ten years to the occasion you first pretended to see Barry Manilow in my house.”
Fervently, James says, “Next year I’ll bring Barry here myself, I swear to God.”
Lily tips her head back and laughs. It hits her all over again, that she loves him.
[…]
She feels a shiver run through her and smiles, flicking open the button on his shorts. “So, you know I’m going to see you again.”
His gaze softens. He pushes up his specs, still balanced on his elbows to look at her. “I know I’m not letting you go.”
And of course the iconic:
yes i am writing a quick oneshot of the rest of the day before james goes back to malta, no it will NOT be 40k words thanks
xoxo quibblah
👀
HA. Love you suze 😘
(also maybe I’ll do this for IWEP on its 2 month anniversary, because we know I still haven’t gotten over ‘you’re my best friend’. like. At all. Still haunts my dreams).
the original draft of this post was basicallly just: hey suze you fucked me up answer for ur crimes.
so...
hey suze you fucked me up answer for ur crimes.
(tldr: if you haven’t read IWNMA READ IT and in conclusion we stan suze in this house)
So... been tossing around this idea over the weekend of Jily during the Troubles. Snippet below.
Definitely looking for feedback because I'm super intrigued by this idea but have no long term plot plan. It's both exciting and vaguely terrifying.
Untitled Snippets
Cracks. Myriad fractures in the cream coloured plaster stretched across the ceiling like spiderwebs. That was the first thing Lily noticed when she woke up. Her eyes traced the constellation from the tight bundles of threads found near the window out to their distal ends. With no memory of how she arrived at such a place, Lily guessed that she was in the hollowed out carcass of an old parlour. The slanted rays of sun that made it through the boarded up windows raked across the broken and burnt debris strewn across the floor. An old couch lay on its side running parallel to the windows. The charred remnants of a built fire lay next to rather than inside the fireplace.
Turning to the side, Lily fingers brushed against the olive twill coat stretched out underneath her. Its presence only served to make her more confused. She didn’t own anything similar and would be hard pressed to imagine Remus wearing anything so coarse.
Remus
He’d been with her that morning in the city centre. She dropped off a letter for Petunia at the post office and they were on their way to a record shop when…
Lily’s stomach lurched as her memory faded. Though still not entirely sure what had happened, where she was, or how she got there, an overwhelming feeling of dread settled in her stomach as she felt more than knew that something terrible had happened. She had to find her friend.
A gnarled, throaty cry rent itself from her lungs. Placing her hand down to push herself up, bolts of screaming fire shot up her arm.
“FUCK!”
“Alright then?” chirruped an amused voice.
A tall, black haired man hurried into the room. He was simply dressed in khaki trousers and a white button down shirt with the sleeves pushed back to his elbows. He nimbly dropped to his knees before Lily and pushed his square shaped glasses up his nose. Lily slapped away his hand as he stretched it out towards the right side of her face. He said nothing but raised his brows at her inquisitively. With the same hand he reached towards the left side of her face only to be slapped once more.
“Well, good news: doesn’t seem as though your reflexes were impacted.”
“By what?” Lily croaked, realising how dry and split her voice sounded. “What’s… where are we? What happened? I had a friend—”
“Hey, hey, hey,’ he reassured in a mollifying and hushed tone. His eyes softened and he leaned towards her. “You’re safe. We’re safe. Focus on that.”
“What happened?”
“A bomb. Or bombs, plural. I’m really not sure. I was on my way to the bookshop and then… fucking mayhem. I found you, crumpled in a ball on the side of the road. Thought you might get trampled if I left you, so I brought you here.”
“Here?” Lily questioned as her eyes darted about their derelict surroundings.
“Well, I intended on bringing you back to mine for proper medical attention, but well, you’re a mite heavier than you look,” he teased with a grin. That grin. That devilish, toothy grin that stretched widely across his face and just hinted at a dimple on his left cheek. That grin stole the breath from Lily’s lungs and in return thrust forth two words from the deep recesses of her mind.
bright, loud laughter ringing clearly over the clamour in a room; resting your head against the train window and listening to the rain pour down; striding ahead of the group, paper map crumpled in your hands as the rest follow.
send me your name & i'll tell you what it reminds me of!
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this, Suze! You can find her on ao3!
1. What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
All of my writing quirks are insane, not interesting, and one of the ones I hate (and love to mention) the most is that I am super, super neurotic about numbers and love keeping track of my timed sessions. I have been known to have Excel spreadsheets for my writing…
2. What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your stories?
Hmm...probably the exact balance I strike between juggling things in my head vs. being super organised. I think when I came back to fic I thought I could handle a lot with minimal organisation, but I have proven myself very, very wrong.
3. Do you have any suggestions to help others become a better writer? If so, what are they?
Read. A lot! I know people dish out that advice a ton, but it can’t be understated — and read widely. Try to read published books as well as fanfiction. You’ll learn a lot about developing your own style by sampling the breadth that’s out there. And read about writing, not because everyone’s methods will work for you, but because it’s both interesting and helpful to see what other writers find helpful. Plenty of well-known authors have blog posts or even memoirs about writing, so go find what your faves say about their approach!Everything else, I think, is subjective. But these two are essential.
4. What do you think makes a good story?
For me personally, a good story is immersive. It sucks me into its world totally, and makes me feel along with the characters. It makes me not want to put it down — and when I do put it down, I feel like the world around me has changed with the experience I’ve had in reading.
5. What is the first book that made you cry?
Oh, geez. Charlotte’s Web for sure, ha, but I basically spent all my teen years crying into my pillow over young adult fiction, so there’s a long, long list after that.
6. Does writing energize or exhaust you?
Energise, for the most part. I won’t lie and say i’ve never been stressed or tired even writing the most exciting parts of my fic, but by and large the experience of writing is cathartic.
7. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? If so, what are your tips to overcome it?
Oh, often! I usually change format or genre when I'm bored of reading — or I watch something or listen to a podcast instead. Usually it’s just that I'm forcing myself to read something I'm not that excited by, or not in the right headspace for. So taking a step back is what helps best.
8. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly?
Honestly, I think anyone could be a writer. All it takes is reading, and practising expressing yourself — a.k.a., practising writing. It has less to do with actually feeling emotions yourself, and more to do with being able to imagine and express emotions. So, yeah, that might be easier if you feel things strongly, but it’s not a requirement. You could be the most repressed person in the world (LOL) and be a successful writer.
9. If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Oooh — I think to stick to my guns and treasure every idea. In young-me’s defence, I do still have tons and tons of notes with discarded plots and concepts, but there’s no such thing as hearing that piece of advice too much. Being able to tap into creativity — and being able to come up with concepts that are uniquely you — is special!
10. What was your hardest scene to write?
Like, ever? I think, keeping things vague in the interest of avoiding spoilers, there’s always a lot riding on big relationship beats — fights, shippy moments, etc. — that stresses me out as much as it excites me, ha. And the fights tend to be the harder ones for me, because it’s hard to parse the emotion I feel the characters are feeling and sell it so that the reader can believe an argument would escalate the way it does. (I love writing arguments, though, so it’s totally a love-hate scenario!)
11. What is your favorite childhood book?
Ah, I have about nine million answers to this, but I’m going to pick a maybe lesser-known answer — I adore the Old Kingdom books by Garth Nix, and haven’t found anything that makes me feel the same way those books did.
12. How long on average does it take you to write a one shot or a chapter of a fic?
I’m a pretty fast drafter once I sit down to write, and I usually manage about 1000 words every 30 minutes, but it takes weeks of pre-planning to get there. Maybe it’s just that I'm a fast typist, lol.
13. A fic that inspires you?
Gosh, what fic doesn’t? I feel like if i answered this honestly i’d list out dozens, and Joy would be furious at me for exceeding the character limit or something. But I'll choose one at random — I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Burn Easy”by efk_girldetective since I first read it. Warning, it’s mature, but what I love about it is that it’s a Muggle AU that still manages to immerse me in the magic of its setting. I feel just as transported reading it as I would reading something set in Hogwarts — and I want all my fics to feel like they’re their own little universes!
14. How do you edit your work?
Bold of you to assume I “edit”... No, haha, seriously, I just reread my own writing a lot. Like… I can’t overstate how much. I tend not to do big-picture edits, because usually (with a multichap like Come Together at least) I’ve done enough planning before I draft that I don’t need to do massive restructuring once words are already on the page. So I just line-edit my way to posting, and miss plenty of typos in the process.
15. Where does inspiration come from?
Art of all kinds! I read and watch a lot of things that I cherry-pick fic ideas from, and of course music factors into my writing process so heavily, playlist-making is a step of its own.
16. Who has been helpful for you as you write for the fandom?
Well. WELL. I think it is a well-known fact that I would languish without the support and friendship of Clare ( @clare-with-no-i ) and Senem ( @keepingupwithpotters ). I worry that I’ll miss someone if I continue to name names, but there have been loads of people sprinting with me on Discord of late or just direct-messaging me on Tumblr and I appreciate all of them so, so much!
17. What is your fav POV to write from?
I said recently that while I find it easier to write from Lily’s POV, James is fun because he surprises me more!
18. What is a fic you would love to write but are worried you won’t be able to accomplish it/nervous it wouldn’t work out?
I’m not necessarily nervous it won’t work out...but I’m writing a loose Edwardian era AU with magic that is...basically a novel and I’m not entirely sure there’s a target audience for this...but there’s ME and I know I can’t wait to read it LOL.
19. Do you ever self insert in fics?
Well, I think there’s a little of me in pretty much every main character in my stories — it makes it easier to grapple with their emotions, their quirks, and their flaws when I have a direct reference point. And there are other characters who are, say, aggressive Jily shippers who exist in the background that I relate to for obvious reasons LOL. But I’ve never straight-up dropped myself into a story — though I could do it and find a way to make it hilarious, I think.
20. What is the story you are proudest of?
This is so hard because my answer changes so often! But I will give the easiest one here: Come Together has taken so much of my time and has been such a labour of love, and I sometimes forget how far I’ve come with it. And I’m really proud at having done that.
21. Do you prefer writing canon jily or muggle au?
I wouldn’t say Muggle AU, but I think I like canon vs. AU for different reasons — the former because the wartime pressure offers the kind of stakes you can’t really get in other universes, the latter because of the flexibility and range. Which I know is such a non-answer, but I do like both equally and I just switch between my WIPs when I get tired of one or the other, ha.
