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xiubaek-13 · 5 years ago

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Aurora Borealis

Prompt: Xiumin + “You heard me. Take it off.” + “I promise I won’t bite. Unless you ask.”

Setting/AU: Tattoo AU

Warnings: Tattoos, mentioning of needles, a terrible description of a tattoo coz I suck at making it sound nice. Nothing else.

Word Count: 1,775

“What if they fuck it up and you’re stuck with a mangled tattoo on your body for life?”

“Really not helping with my anxiety Youngshin.” You glared up at your so called best friend, whose status as best friend was currently being re-evaluated in your mind. She knew you had wanted a tattoo for forever and she also knew you hated needles so she made sure to be equal parts supportive and trying to scare you out of doing it. She always came through in the end but she sure as hell would take a roundabout way of getting there which more often than not tested your limits with her.

“Sorry. Listen you get to sit down and chat with the artist, they’ll talk to you about placement and if they think it’s too much for you to handle as a first tattoo or not. You can go to that first consultation and your gut will let you know if you need to go through with it or run for the hills.” She smiled and poked her tongue out at you. “See, I can be a good friend when I need to be.”

***

You clutched the plastic sleeve containing your designs like they were your lifeline as you walked towards the shop. The fluorescent Planet Ink sign flickered in the shop front as you stepped through the door. You took a deep breath to try and calm your nerves before approaching the counter.

One of the artists stepped out from a room, talking with a client as he lead her towards the door. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, the gesture making you think he was frustrated with how that consultation had gone but was trying to remain professional about it. “Trust me, you don’t want a gaudy snowflake or the Icecapades above your ass for the rest of time.”

You choked back a laugh and coughed lightly. The girl didn’t notice but he sure did, his intense gaze flicking over to you for a moment before he was back to focusing on the client in front of him. You felt for him, this girl had clearly come in with some grand ideas about a lower back tattoo but there appeared to be an issue of taste. He was clearly repeating himself and you weren’t sure how many more times you could hear “Yes, but like I mentioned before…” before you snapped and pushed the girl out of the shop.

She finally relented to go home and rethink the design and placement. He’d suggested forearm and that he could still do a beautiful piece there fitting with the ice theme she was after. She left and as he closed the door he held his palms against it and spoke to you without looking at you. “Please don’t tell me you are here for the Northern Lights above your ass or a garden or cat above your pussy or some shit like that.”

You laughed at the exasperated tone in his voice. “Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely above my ass?”

His laughter filled the shop and it was contagious. You couldn’t stop once you started and you could see him wiping his eyes, he’d laughed that hard. Once he’d composed himself he came over to the counter to speak to you. “Ok, you can stay. Fuck. I needed that. Please tell me you were my next appointment.”

“Are you Xiumin?”

He beamed. “That’s me. Ok follow me and we can chat.”

He took off towards one of the rooms with you following closely behind. When you entered he gestured for you to take a seat on the chair. You complied and took a moment to look around the room. The walls were adorned with designs and photos of finished tattoos. The range of styles was incredible and you found yourself in awe. Lost in your own little world you didn’t realise Xiumin had been talking to you until his form blocked your view and he cleared his throat. He stared down at you, that intense gaze taking on a playful nature.

“First time huh?”

You nodded. “Is it that obvious?”

“It’s written all over your face. The fear, apprehension, excitement and the fact that you ignored me to look at my work. I guess I should be flattered.”

“So… how does this work?” You asked.

“We chat, and from that I get a feel for what you can handle and hopefully some inspiration for placement and design.” He glanced at the plastic sleeve in your hands. “Or, tweak a design so that it’ll work as a tattoo. So, tell me what you’re after.”

You handed him the sleeve and let him gaze over the various designs you’d sketched. “I’m no tattoo artist so I didn’t want to come in with a fully fledged design. I don’t know what works on skin but these elements are things I want worked into the design. I researched for a few months and everyone I spoke to recommended you are the best person for the job. I want to blend colour splashes with the representations of the physical elements in the background of the wolf. I want it to look like one flowing image rather than a wolf with things stuck around it. I have no preference for where it goes, scratch that, no tramp stamp.”

Xiumin stared at the drawings for a few minutes while chewing on his bottom lip. You could almost see the cogs turning in his mind as he processed everything. “Do the wolf or elements have special meaning to you or is it just an image that you like?”

“It holds meaning. The wolf represents determination, bravery and intellect and the elements represent the various hurdles you reach in life and how you overcome them. I’m happy for it to just look like a nice piece of art - as long as these things are worked into it, I’ll know the meaning.”

“Meaning helps for placement as well. I think it’s something you’ll want to be able to look at without much difficulty so that eliminates your shoulders and back. I’m just gonna go sketch something up so I can see what you think and how it’ll look where I want to place it. Wait in here for me.”

Xiumin smiled warmly then got up and left the room, leaving you to sit and stare at all of the artwork. There were some incredibly cool designs here. You knew he was talented but seeing that amassed on a wall really solidified it for you.You felt like you’d made the right choice with the artist, now you just had to see what he came up with and then if you could even go through with it. The fear of the pain was very real but you were trying to keep it at bay.

Xiumin returned with a piece of wax paper and a sketchpad. He pulled his stool over toward you and took a seat. He handed you the sketchpad and uncovered the drawing he’d done. He let you stare at it for a minute before speaking. “Ok so I started with the wolf. I only wanted to put the face and a little bit of the body in, and I made part of the outline for the wolf the constellation that you wanted in there to represent the galaxy. Then I made the background overlay of the other elements, I did two versions. One is just the colours like ink blots that all fade in and link up and the other is pretty much the same but the ink blots have a partial outline of the elements. Here for example.” He pointed at the dark blue colour burst. “There is half of the water droplet outline on the edge. I wanted to keep that subtle so it didn’t overcrowd the image.”

He took a deep breath. “What do you think?”

You shuddered out a breath. The image was perfect. It was exactly what you wanted but so much better than you could have imagined it. To anyone except you it was just a wolf tattoo with water colour bursts in the background but to you it held so much more meaning. You gazed up at Xiumin and smiled. “It’s amazing. I don’t have the right words for it but it’s exactly what I want.”

He grinned and grabbed the wax paper which you could see had a rough outline on it. “I mean if you hated it we can always go back to the excellent image of the northern lights as a tramp stamp.”

You laughed loudly. “God no. This, please do this.”

He chuckled and sat back in his chair. “Good choice. Now for placement I was thinking forearm. If you take off your overshirt I can show you how it’d look.”

You moved to push your sleeve up when he tutted at you. “You heard me. Take it off. The placement looks more natural if you don’t have fabric bundled all around it. Especially since it’s your first time.”

You reached down and removed your overshirt, leaving you in a tank top. You shivered at the sudden rush of cool air hitting your arms, curling into yourself without thinking. You didn’t know why but suddenly you were feeling rather exposed in front of Xiumin when all you’d done was remove an overshirt. It had to be his gaze. You could feel his eyes on you, taking in all of he bare skin he could see, not in a lewd way but in more of an artist staring at a blank canvas kind of way. It was unrelenting. It didn’t help that he was stunning, all blonde hair and gorgeous features mixed with leather and some incredible black and white work on his arms. You could see the edges of a filigree design creeping from his shirt up to the base of his throat and you gulped. Another chuckle brought you back out of your daze and you blushed. You hadn’t realised you’d been staring.

“I promise I won’t bite.” You held your arm out to him and he wrapped the wax paper around it, showing you how the design would look when it was on your arm. You were lost in the moment, realising that you were actually going to go through with this. You were getting this tattoo, hatred of needles be damned.

You might have been in a daze but you were sure you heard him murmur “Unless you ask.” under his breath.

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fyeahjamesandlily · 8 years ago

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A New Kind of Country

gift for: @lillytalons

A/N: James and Lily log onto FarmersOnly.Com for very different reasons. But they leave with very similar results.

(A quick disclaimer that I come from a family of farmers & grew up in a rural town so all of this is meant in good fun.)

Hope you enjoy!

rating: T

word count: 8,612

“That has to be the stupidest commercial I’ve ever seen in my life,” James said.

“Did I not say?” Sirius demanded. He turned his head to address their other friend. “Moony, did I not say?”

“Yeah, but you’re known to exaggerate,” James said.

It was a Saturday night and the three friends were holed up in James’ apartment, watching a Playoff game and drinking beer like their livers had personally wronged them. At some point during the last hour, James had slid right off the couch in favor of lying on the rug. His feet were cold from where they’d extended past the rug and lay on the hardwood floor, but he was too lazy to rifle around for a pair of socks. To live was to suffer after all. He’d read that once.

James didn’t watch a lot of TV, so he’d somehow managed to miss out on the phenomenon that was FarmersOnly.Com. When Sirius had first mentioned it, like two months ago while they were shopping for a blender because Sirius’ passion of the month was some kind of juice cleanse, James had thought Sirius was full of shit. Having never so much as shopped in a Walmart in his life, Sirius was the kind of privileged jerk that would find a dating website for farmers and “country-folk” the height of hilarity. Then again, James was just that kind of privileged jerk too.

The commercial that had just aired, however, proved Sirius perfectly right. In it, the city-slicker was portrayed as an ugly jackass who only wanted to talk about his car, until the heroine ditched her date to drive off in a truck three times her height with a suitable country boy. All of it was hammy, which James wouldn’t have minded as all of those sites promising love were selling a pretty corny idea to begin with, but what FarmersOnly did was unforgivable.

“Well it’s not really limited to farmers only is it?” James said. “I mean, the name’s misleading.”

Sirius nodded sagely. “False advertising’s what it is. Besides what exactly qualifies a person as country-folk? Is it just growing up in a small-town? Are we using the federal definitions on what qualifies? Because there are towns in like, Wyoming or wherever, where there’s only four people in the whole goddamn place, and then there’s that town in Massachusetts with like 60,000. I demand answers!”

Sirius banged his fist on the table, and Remus practically leapt off the couch in his shock. If they weren’t careful, Remus was going to pass out and spend the night there curled up on James’ couch. Not that James particularly minded, but Remus worked on the opposite side of town and the commute in city traffic could be harrowing.

“I just don’t get how it’s different than Tinder,” James said. “Good, old-fashioned hook up sites.”

“Did you not watch the commercial? It’s only for farmers and country folk, whoever they may be. That’s the difference,” Sirius said.

“But Tinder’s algorithm is based on proximity and similarity of interests. So if you’re in the middle of the “country” and say you love, I don’t know, Larry the Cable Guy, it’s going to match you with someone who also lives in the middle of nowhere and loves, I don’t know…square dancing,” James said.

“You two are going to Hell,” Remus muttered.

“What, why?” James demanded.

“Classism,” Remus answered shortly.

“Classism?” Sirius looked positively scandalized at the accusation.

“Maybe the people who use this site don’t like meeting people who think all farmers square dance and watch Larry the Cable Guy. Or maybe they do, but they want to meet someone who doesn’t think those things are worthy of mockery,” Remus said.

“What’s the point of life if you can’t laugh at yourself, Moony? In fact…” Sirius pulled out his cell and started typing.

In the beleaguered way Remus did most things – mouth pursed into a half-frown and eyes aimed heavenward as if for guidance – Remus returned to watching the game. As James’ team was in the process of scoring a particularly harrowing touchdown, James did as well, but he kept half an eye on Sirius, knowing that his friend would be up to something.

The answer came fifteen minutes later when Sirius proudly presented his phone to James for inspection. A picture of James in a plain, white t-shirt– the picture he’d taken at a bar a year ago as proof to his mom that he was leading a perfectly respectable life, explaining why he looked so wholesome – stared back at him from his new FarmersOnly profile page.

“Piss off,” James said, delighted. He pulled the phone out of Sirius’s hands entirely so that he could scroll through his new profile at his leisure.

“I think we’ve discovered why you’ve never found love, James. Looking in all the wrong places,” Sirius said sagely. “But your perfect corn-fed, cow-milking bride is on there somewhere. I can feel it.”

“Corn-fed?” Remus muttered to himself. “Like you didn’t devour that corn bread at lunch yesterday.”

James ignored Remus because, frankly, he was having too much fun to worry about whether it was elitist of them to sit around mocking the many people in the world longing for a more “traditional” approach to dating. Or as traditional as it could be when it emerged from a dating website. Certainly, it was more fun that admitting that he and Sirius were spoiled rotten and vastly underequipped to live in the manner that so many did. The closest they’d ever been to country-living was when they went camping, and even then, it was really glamping with an RV that had a power strip, a mini fridge stocked with chilled beers, and a hairdryer to protect them from going without for even a second.

Since Sirius had set up the profile from his own phone, he’d been forced to use pictures of James that he had saved in his gallery. All things considered, Sirius had chosen generously, and the image of James that began to take shape on the screen was nowhere near as ridiculous as James might have expected. Given time, James had no doubt that Sirius would have broken out Photoshop to place James in any manner of embarrassing locations – the Icecapades, the assassination of JFK, a Denny’s.

It was in the about section that Sirius had let loose, giving James an assortment of stereotypical country hobbies. For James’ description of an ideal woman, Sirius had written: “Sturdy enough to help with the housework and aware that patience is a virtue. I’m a strong believer in the value of waiting.” James read all of this aloud to Remus, who was clearly amused despite his protests.

“Not a single girl is going to talk to you with a profile like that. People can tell when they’re being demeaned,” Remus warned.

Sirius scoffed. “Have you looked at James’ handsome face? Girls will forget about anything when they see a jaw like that. Kind of like men and legs actually.”

“Yeah, Moony, don’t you think I’m handsome?” James said, before giving his most winning smile.

He started to flip through the different profiles to see if any girl caught his eye. His search wasn’t serious, of course, as he had only to switch over to Tinder to find any number of girls, most of whom weren’t touting their interest in traditional values, which suited James just fine. He was a guy after all. Still, he wouldn’t say no to a stunning blonde in denim cut-offs…

“Besides, James is rich,” Sirius reminded them. “These country girls would dream of a guy like him. A hero to swoop in and show them the delights of the city.”

“You do know that farmers have a lot of money, right?” Remus demanded, completely exasperated at this point. “They’re land-owners. You don’t even own this apartment.”

“Not if they’re farm-hands,” Sirius pointed out, his smile screaming ‘check and mate.’ “And I bet most of these so-called land-owners don’t have hair-gel inheritance money.”

“I bet they have more than disowned at sixteen money,” Remus muttered.

Next thing James knew, his two friends were wrestling on the floor. Remus had Sirius in a headlock that forced Sirius to hunch his body nearly in half but did nothing to prevent him from jabbing Remus repeatedly in the ribs. Ignoring them as this was a bi-weekly occurrence, James continued to scroll through his options. He’d already grown bored – eyes drifting to the game as often as to his phone screen – when he came across it. Her.

“Holy –! Guys look at this!” James cried. Since neither of them stopped wrestling to pay him any attention, James slid off the couch and dangled the phone in front of Sirius’s puce and sweat-soaked face. “Look at this girl!”

“She’s hot,” Sirius agreed before getting his finger into Remus’s mouth and pulling him into a fish hook. Remus howled his pained outrage and kicked Sirius in the shin in retaliation.

“Hot? Hot? Try gorgeous. Try the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in my life. She can’t be real. This has to be a catfish,” James said loudly.

Now interested, Remus slapped Sirius’s hand out of his mouth so that he could look as well. “Oh yeah, very pretty.”

Very pretty? James was beginning to think he wasn’t the only one of their number that needed glasses because Remus and Sirius were clearly going blind. The girl in the pictures was the very definition of beauty, the kind of face that when photographed could be submitted to any magazine and they’d think she was shot by Mario Testino or someone equally talented.

The first thing of note was her hair, deep-red and cascading down her shoulders in every picture – except for the one where she’d pulled it back and given a great view of the long stretch of her neck, an almost equally appealing feature. Her features were nearly elfin, small nose and a rosebud for a mouth, a sprinkling of freckles, and cheekbones that looked like they were drawn on. The only big component of her face was her eyes, wide and green and inquisitive in every shot. Either she was perfectly proportioned or she was tall too, the one shot that showed off her body making it look as if her legs stretched on for six feet like some sort of gorgeous giantess.

And as if life wasn’t already cruelly unfair, she seemed super cool too. There was the photo of her finishing a marathon – makeup free and jubilant at her success. The one where she was vaping, a puff of smoke shielding the better part of her face. In one she stood next to a series of statues at a museum, posed in the same rigid manner so that she nearly blended in with the grey stone. Hiking and giving speeches, and playing the guitar, her interests seemed never-ending. In others, she was less active, just lying around with her cat or reading a book in the sun.

The only word that could rise to his mind was stunning.

So even though this entire profile had been meant as a lark, a way of laughing at a group of people unlike himself that he had never bothered to understand, James started to type.

“Next class we’ll be covering Piaget, so do the reading beforehand and feel free to stop by office hours on Monday if you’d like to talk to me or Professor McKirkland. You can expect your reviewed proposals returned next class. Have a great afternoon,” Lily Evans – TA, Aries, and Masters student in the clinical Psychology department – announced to the auditorium of students.

She always enjoyed the days where she got to lecture because, as she often said, it never hurt to brush up on the basics. After a Freshman year paper on the neuroscience of memory, Lily was all too familiar with how easily the brain discarded facts, even those ones she’d studied for hours on end. Today, she’d been less than happy to take on the additional burden because she was neck-deep in her year-end project for her Social Behaviors class. Hell, who was she kidding? She was drowning.

The issue was a matter of scope. Her original intent had been to observe the way heterosexual men utilized dating websites. Specifically, she wanted to classify their initial approaches and determine whether the four personality metrics could be correlated to how they chose to approach women. Several problems immediately presented themselves: How was she going to survey these men to determine their personality types at the end? Was a ‘hey’ the same as a ‘hey, how are you?’ in her classification system? And how did she control for the different dating websites?

That last question was her greatest regret. Everything would be going so much more smoothly if she’d just limited her research to Tinder and been done with it. Unfortunately, her eyes had been bigger than her stomach and she’d signed up for a whole host of dating sties: Tinder, OKCupid, Christian Mingle, etc. It was lunacy because they all catered to different demographics, which meant she’d had to create a half-dozen different scales to measure the results. Sleep had been foregone in the effort.

Finally, finally it was almost over. Give her another three days, and she could put the final polish on her research. Hello A+ and goodbye thirsty men of the internet.

With class over, Lily made her way to the café next to the Psych building. She’d made a table there her home over the past three weeks because the restaurant had a download speed of 4.0 mbs waffle fries that she’d want as her last meal on death row. Who’d pick a half-rate coffee shop when there was starchy goodness just down the block?

Lily sat at her usual table and ordered her usual drink from her usual waitress. The stress of the end of the semester always turned her into a creature of habit. She was just debating whether she’d rather a veggie wrap or her beloved waffle fries, when her phone vibrated with a new message. Idly, Lily scanned the reminder from Marlene to bring ice to the party she was hosting on Saturday. The party Lily wasn’t even sure she could make.

Whenever deadlines came around, Lily always dropped off the face of the planet, which was how she’d managed to accumulate nearly six hundred notifications on her phone. Lily almost choked when she saw the number. They were nearly all messages off those dating sites.

Lily clicked into Tinder where the barrage was the worst. Her screen was filled with a page-worth of boring ‘heyyy’ and ‘what’s up, cutie’ messages. Her research had confirmed what everyone knew, that there was no approach more prolific than that of the bland introduction. A little ways down she was assaulted by her first unsolicited dick pic. It was from one of the guys she’d chatted with for a bit, and Lily would have sworn he had seemed normal at the time. Right below was a guy calling her names for not messaging him back.

Pushing the phone out of reach, Lily shuddered. Dating was meant to be fun, not this cesspool of negativity. The real research ought to be on what these jerks hoped to accomplish when they pulled this stuff. Lily imagined girls never fell for it. Or rather, she hoped they didn’t.

A wonderful thought had her reaching for her phone again; the collection stage was over! She no longer needed to belong to any of these sites. Talk about a fast way to handle notifications, she’d just delete all of them.

Tinder was the first to go. Then OKCupid. Goodbye Match.Com and Sayonara EHarmony.

Lily was having so much fun with her social media destruction that a waitress started sending nervous looks toward her table, disturbed by the unabridged glee on Lily’s face as she jabbed at her phone screen. Under normal circumstances, Lily might have cared, but her body was coursing with satisfaction and caffeine. In a time where Lily’s life took on a haze of glowing computer screens, paper cuts, and two-for-one five hour energy shots, she would take her pleasures where she found them.

Going to her FarmersOnly account was an afterthought because she’d ultimately had to cut the site from her research. The default profile Lily had constructed to use across all the platforms simply didn’t fit with the FarmersOnly user base, which meant she couldn’t properly observe how men used the site. Half of them had hit her up with a message along the lines of: ‘You don’t look like any country girl I’ve ever seen.’

Really the only thing she’d learned from her membership was that her decided “city-girl” status did nothing to deter the men. Guys were persistent wherever you went apparently.

Since she’d stopped using the site three months ago, she was surprised to see a new notification from that morning at 2:47 AM. A time that left a poor first impression if there ever was one. (Maybe someday she’d write an online dating advice blog to help these flailing guys.)

The message read: I saw you work at Sonic + I’ve been dying to find one around here. Save a man’s life. I need a coconut cream pie milkshake STAT.

Lily stared, bewildered, at the message for a minute longer. Here she was, ninety percent through a paper on online dating tactics, and this one was entirely new. She felt compelled to answer before she deleted her profile altogether. After all, she didn’t want him dying on her conscience.

Lily: Sorry. I work summers at 1 out of state & go to school at the University here.

There, now that was settled. Except before she had finished ordering (the waffle fries had won out), this guy – James Potter – had written back.

James: NOOOO! And I thought you’d be the girl to save me. But ur just a tease.

James: Wait! Not that kind of tease. A Sonic tease.

James: I don’t want you thinking I mean the other kind.

James: Though honestly that’d be better. I mean who dangles a milkshake in front of a man like that.

James: Rude.

Her paper was waiting for her and she really ought to open her laptop and get to work. Only Lily had no idea how to answer this James, and his bizarre messages warranted some kind of response. He was, well, kind of funny.

Lily clicked into his profile to do some digging, which, if her goal was to quickly move onto her paper, was a mistake because Sonic boy was hot! Hot in that kind of nerdy, unaffected way. In his profile picture he was a big smile of white teeth and impressively rumpled hair. There was an asymmetry to his face, almost like everything was angled just a degree to the side, yet it didn’t diminish from his attractiveness at all. Plain white T-shirt. Eyes that crinkled when he smiled. She couldn’t find a single point to critique.

A quick scroll through the other photos – all six of them – proved the good photo wasn’t a goof. They showed him sweat-soaked and in-shape playing soccer, wrestling with a giant dog, visiting a brewery, and drinking wine with his mates, all of whom were decked out in tuxedos. Lily had to give him a gold star for photo selection. He’d achieved just the balance Lily would have recommended if she was doling out advice.

Moved solely by her shallow admiration of James’ face, Lily typed out a quick response.

Lily: Have you considered travelling to the 1 a county over?

James: You mean drive my car 35 mins to reach the greatest shake on this earth?

James: Don’t be ridiculous.

Lily: Was that your subtle way of telling me you own a car?

James: Impressed ;)

Finding herself laughing at his blatant self-promotion, Lily clicked back into his profile. And here’s where he lost her. He lived in the same city and had graduated from her university, which was good, but his hobbies included mudding, bull-riding, and trout. As if trout was even a hobby! Looking through his photos, it had been so easy to forget that she was on FarmersOnly.Com and she was decidedly not a farmer.

Lily almost closed the app without responding, but the guilt kicked in before she could. What kind of shallow person let a few hobbies scare her off from a guy who seemed cute and charming? It would be the height of snobbery to reject James because of a few cultural differences. And she had no business looking down her nose at anyone considering the part of the city where she grew up. To be fair, she ought to let James chase her away with their incompatibility instead.

Lily: Not really. A car in this city? Not a good investment.

James: Oh I don’t drive it around here.

James: I like to take it out on the weekends. Speed down the highway with the top down and the music on blast.

Lily: Well aren’t you just an Eagles song.

James: What can I say? I like to Take It Easy.

James: Your profile said you like Oscar bait movies.

James: You mean like good cinematography or Meryl Streep in literally anything?

Lily: I mean sweeping biopics about suffering and triumph.

James: Eww. Bad taste L

Lily: Don’t try to neg me.

James: I would never. You’re gorgeous & you know it

James: You just also have bad movie taste.

Lily: Fine. Favorite movie?

James: Fight Club.

Lily: You have to be joking.

James: Dead Sirius.

James: That was a pun.

James: Which I now realize you can’t get because you’ve never met Sirius.

James: My best friend, Sirius.

Lily: Weird name.

James: Tell me about it. His parents name on a theme. All constellations.

James: I mean who does that?

Lily: My parents named me & my sister after flowers.

James: …So apparently your parents do that…

James: All I can say is OUR children won’t be named on a theme.

James: I’m thinking Trudy and Blaze.

James: Thoughts?

Lily: I’m speechless.

James: Kewl. I want you to WRITE your answer not speak it.

They continued in much the same manner for another hour and a half until Lily realized the sun was setting and she hadn’t so much as glanced at her research. James Potter appeared to be many things – contrary and confident and contradictory to name a few – but he was decidedly a distraction as well.

Despondently, Lily decided it was time to bid James a goodbye because she’d rather see the back of him than her destroy her average. Surprisingly, James accepted that she had work to do without complaint. Lily had half-expected him to start rattling on about the possibility of him dying without her company or something equally extreme. In the short time she’d known him, she’d picked up that he was prone to that exact type of exaggeration.

Just before she logged off, however, he did ask whether he could have her number so that they could keep texting later. Lily deliberated for another minute before typing out her cell number. After all, what could it hurt?

“He takes aim. He shoots. He scores!” Sirius practically roared, upending a bowl of popcorn as he threw his hands into the air. His controller tumbled off the couch in all the excitement. “Prongs, did you see how I just outmaneuvered you there? …Prongs?”

“What?” James asked absently, not bothering to look up from his phone.

He almost fell off the couch like the controller when Sirius reached forward and yanked his cell right out of his hands. James blinked a few times to adjust. After hours of staring at a phone screen, his eyes were no longer accustomed to making out shapes in his dimly lit apartment.

“What the hell?” James demanded, making a move to snatch his phone back, which Sirius deftly evaded.

“It’s not fun kicking your ass in Pro Evolution when you don’t even bother! I invited you over to play, not to stare at your phone,” Sirius complained.

“You sound like, really old,” James said, amused even as he plotted how to get his phone back. “Like ‘those darn millennials always on their phones’ old.”

Sirius made a highly offended noise in return and switched off the TV, interrupting a montage in which Sirius’s team was rewarded for their goal. “First off, rude. Second off, you could have stayed in your own apartment if you didn’t want to play. What are you even doing?”

“Just texting,” James said ambiguously.

Purposefully ambiguously because James had found through years of experience that Sirius was a menace to a man’s love life. Not only was he the kind of handsome that could have any girl questioning her choices, but Sirius was also the kind of jackass that could send a girl running with a few well-placed stories. James would let Lily in on his secrets one day, but that would only be after he was confident she was invested. He would need to trap his dream girl just like his ancestors before him.

“This isn’t that farmer girl is it?” Sirius asked. When James didn’t answer, Sirius’s eyebrows shot up practically past his hair line. “It is! A farmer! Really, James?”

“She’s not a farmer. She was born in a city and she’s at the university,” James corrected quickly. “I think she just must like the farmer type, you know? That’s why she was on the website.”

Sirius gave him a long, assessing look. “You do know that you don’t exactly fit that mold, right?”

“Yes.”

James was unfortunately aware of his failings in just that area. Lily had joined FarmersOnly.Com to find a good, old country boy, and James hardly qualified despite his profile’s many false claims. So far, the disparity between the James of reality and the James that had first attracted Lily hadn’t been an issue. Their conversation flowed smoothly, better than any experience with a woman that James could remember with both of them alternating between flirtation and serious conversation effortlessly. So much of that fact was likely due to Lily being perfect: clever, beautiful, accomplished with a variety of interests and experiences to keep him on his toes. The only trouble was that he didn’t meet her desired mold at all.

“Just give me my phone back, dude,” James pleaded.

“I don’t know. Maybe I want to see what’s so special about little Miss Cowbell,” Sirius said.

“Please don’t play around right now. She’s going to think I’m ignoring her if I don’t text back,” James said.

Since they’d started talking three days earlier, James had been quick to respond to every one of her messages. The longest gap between her writing and him replying stood at four minutes. She had texted him about dying for a caramel latte but being too lazy to leave her apartment just as he got out of the shower. He’d nearly pulled his hair out when he realized he was keeping her waiting. Because when it came to someone as perfect as Lily, James didn’t want to take any chances.

Knowing that Sirius didn’t respect little things like privacy and might actually start reading through his conversation with Lily – Sirius always figured out James’ passcode no matter how many times he changed it – James figured it was best to just answer. “She’s just asked if she can psychoanalyze me. She’s got a Bachelors in psychology and is getting her Masters right now.”

“I can psychoanalyze you,” Sirius snorted. “Low-degree narcissism and a weird aversion to cramped spaces that can only be you remembering back to your time in utero.”

“Aren’t you funny,” James said drolly.

“Yes, I am,” Sirius said, but then, “Seriously though, dude. Put the phone down on hang out with me. That or go home. I could still be in bed playing Tetris but I put on clothes to hang out with you.”

Reluctantly, James surrendered his phone to Sirius. The rest of the afternoon was spent in the typical fashion – eating too many Doritos and arguing over who had played better when they’d both won an even number of matches at FIFA 2014. Bit by bit, James forget that there was a beautiful girl on the other side of the city, going about her own life like something out of a fairytale. One filled with pen stains and haunting deadlines, but a fairytale all the same.

“So you gonna meet her?” Sirius asked.

James struggled to follow the question as he was currently on the phone with the pizza place down the street and he was trying to do the math as to how many pizzas to order. Two would be plenty for the two of them, but there was the very real possibility that Peter and Remus would come over later, and that would be two pizzas too few.

“What?” James asked stupidly, before quickly telling the guy on the other end of the phone that they’d take three pizzas.

“The girl you’re texting. The farmer,” Sirius said, “Are you planning to meet her?”

James stared at Sirius as if he was questioning whether his friend had suffered a braincell destroying accident. Sarcastically, he said, “No. I don’t want to meet the hot girl I’ve been texting non-stop for days. Distance makes the heart fonder and all. I want her to stay far away forever.”

“Okay, okay. Just asking,” Sirius said placatingly. “I’m happy for you two. Honestly.”

It was nearly two A.M. and six Yuenglings into the night when James Ubered back to his own apartment. He’d have slept over at Sirius’s, but the cushions of the couch had been worn down to the point that sleeping there felt like lying on the floor, and as James’ buzz had grown, so too had his desire for a night’s sleep surrounded by fluffy pillows. He favored as many as seven on an average night. Only as James was walking out the door did Sirius think to return his phone, which James had altogether forgotten about after Peter had arrived with a deck of cards.

He skipped over the texts from his parents – forever anxious about how he was holding up in the city alone, as if all his friends didn’t live a few blocks away – and the snaps from girls he’d known at one point or another. With the ease of muscle memory, he moved to check for more messages from Lily, and he nearly dropped his phone in horror at what he found there. The last thing that had been written before Sirius had stolen his phone was Lily’s request to psychoanalyze him. In the absence of a reply, Lily had assumed the worst.

Lily: James????

Lily: I was just joking. You know that.

Lily: Right?

Lily: Shit. I’m really sorry. I wasn’t trying to annoy you or anything.

Lily: Okay…well good night.

James swore he was going to gut Sirius when he saw him next. What had he been thinking letting Sirius talk him into abandoning his phone for the night? James knew all too well that most of Sirius’s ideas about relationships were toxic, and, worse, that he was all talk, never applying them to his own romantic endeavors. If Sirius had been talking to a girl, he never would have surrendered his phone in the name of friendship.

Quickly, James typed out his response.

James: SORRY

James: Definitely didn’t mean to drop you like that. I was just caught up with friends and lost track of time.

James: Sorry if I freaked you out.

Lily didn’t immediately write back, so James figured she’d fallen asleep for the night. He was forced to content himself with the idea that she wouldn’t see his apology until she woke up the next day. The lights of the city blinked as his driver took him the rest of the way home, a glint of color that would blaze brightly and then fade away into darkness a second later as they rounded a corner. These lights acted as a replacement for the stars that were muted by the many competing colors of the city.

Maybe that was why Lily was spending her time looking for men on FarmersOnly. To a degree, James had to admit that he could see the appeal. Out in the country, where the sky stretched for miles into the distance, James imagined a person could breath. A person could lay out in a field, staring up at the night sky with no fear that he might be mugged. More importantly, a person could be truly alone.

The prospect made him sigh longingly.

His phone dinged.

Lily: whewww, no worries. I just didn’t want you to get the wrong idea or anything.

Lily: Glad everything’s okay :)

Maybe he ought to have respected that it was late and Lily was likely tired, but James was in an uncharacteristically sentimental mood, and he wanted to talk to her. It seemed ridiculous, but he’d missed her in the few hours they hadn’t talked. They’d known each other for a few days and already she was a fixture in his life.

James: I missed you today.

It took her a few minutes to write back, but when she did, James grin was exaggerated enough to make his cheeks ache.

Lily: Me too.

James: Tell me something abt when you were growing up.

Lily: Like what?

James: anything just a story

Lily: ummm growing up i lived on a really busy street & we were pretty far from any parks or anywhere we could play because we were on the wrong side of downtown.

Lily: so my sister and I really wanted to play tennis but we couldn’t safely.

Lily: like one time I literally almost got hit by an SUV so my mom forbade us from ever taking our rackets outside for any reason.

Lily: so we developed this version of tennis where we played in the house. Like actually lobbing balls over the kitchen table and up and down the staircase.

Lily: It was WILD. We destroyed half the house by the time my parents realized what was happening. Broken glass everywhere. The dog traumatized from running back and forth so much. But it was so much FUN.

Lily: it’s still like my best memory with my sister.

James: I guess I can see why you find the country lifestyle so appealing.

James: Seems like the right way to raise kids.

Lily: Trudy and Blaze would certainly like a little open space.

James: Yea they would

James: Do you think you want to meet sometime soon. Face to face?

Lily: No.

James: No?????!!!!!????

Lily: No.

Lily: I’m pretty sure you’re like a 60-year-old man and I want the illusion to last a little longer.

James practically collapsed in relief.

James: What if I promise I’m not 60?

Lily: Are you 59?

James: I promise I’m not a day over 58.

At this point he’d arrived back at his apartment and he had to focus on finding the key to his building. When he looked back at his phone, Lily had answered.

Lily: my friend’s having a party this weekend. Do you want to meet me there?

James: it’s a date.

And right there in the middle of the sidewalk, with the lights blinking down on him and pedestrians sending him dirty looks for taking up so much space, James thrust a triumphant fist into the air. It was a date.

As was typical, the party was overcrowded, the combined tempo of the occupants’ thundering pulses almost overpowering the heavy bass of the Tropical House music that Marlene had come to favor. A step in any direction was guaranteed to encroach on at least one guest’s personal space, so stubbed toes and muttered ‘excuse mes’ became the theme song of the night. The problem was that Marlene was far too popular for her own good, a former debutante with a practiced smile who knew when to ask the right, probing question. Lily would have sworn that every familiar face on campus was crammed into the studio apartment that night.

It had long ago crossed into the realm of the embarrassing how often Lily glanced at her phone, which Marlene was quick to remind her whenever Lily failed in her stealth attempts, hiding the phone beneath her leg and glancing down for a message from James. She couldn’t help that he was late, nor that the fact of his lateness had unleashed a hurricane in her stomach. Still, a man didn’t text non-stop for a week, just to stand you up on the first date.

Seated by the TV, with Marlene practically sprawled across her lap, Lily had the perfect position, able to socialize as she pleased with the court that naturally surrounded Marlene wherever she went and able to keep an eye on the door, her visibility only blocked when the basketball team – all of whom were too tall for their own good – crowded into her line of vision. Whenever that happened, Lily’s foot would start to tap in double-time, outpacing the beat of the music currently playing. Lily wanted to believe that her nerves were subtle, but the amused curl of Marlene’s smile belied her hopes.

Somehow, despite all the precautions she’d put in place, Lily missed when James first strolled into the party. Just about no one else did because, well…he stood out. Lily was delicately scooping the remains of vodka-tinted jello out of her shot glass when James appeared at her shoulder like something straight out of a Nicholas Sparks movie, one of the ones about rodeos, a pseudo-Western hero with none of the gruff of Clint Eastwood. Lily nearly choked, as the jello slid, slimy and sweet, down her throat.

To his plaid button-down and worn blue jeans, Lily couldn’t complain, but she had some major objections to the enormous cowboy hat that perched jauntily on his head, sliding slightly to the left like it didn’t quite fit. His belt buckle was enormous, easily the size of her clenched fist and bronze. In a room full of university sweatshirts and non-descript tees, James stood out like a sore thumb; a thumb that had been beaten with a hammer and then become infected with gangrene.

“Sorry I’m late,” James said. He shouted to be heard over the music only the song switched over mid-sentence, so half his apology was just yelled in her face.

��No worries,” Lily said, pushing Marlene’s gaping form to the side so that she could stand up and greet James properly. “I didn’t see you text. Did you find the place okay?”

James didn’t answer for a moment, too busy staring at her to remember his manners. He shook his head like he was coming to himself and said, “Sorry. Sorry. Yes, I found the place fine. I just…wow, I can’t believe you’re real.”

“I could say the same to you,” Lily said, and then prayed that had somehow sounded less cheesy to his ears than hers.

Lily wasn’t quite sure what to do with her hands: present one for a shake, move in for a peck on the cheek. Maybe James was feeling the same anxiety because he lowered the tip of his hat – thumb resting on the braided leather – and said, “M’lady, do you like my hat?”

The creepings of embarrassment were already making themselves obvious in the blush that appeared across her cheeks. She ought to lie, of course. It was the socially acceptable course of action. Unfortunately, one of the main lessons she’d taken from her studies was that the truth was imperative. She could never expect people to truly know her, let alone develop a healthy relationship when it was built on dishonesty. Even the little white lies that most people excused as a normal part of social interaction were inexcusable.

So, horrified with herself even as she spoke, Lily admitted, “Actually I kind of hate it.”

Taking off the hat, James looked between her and the infernal thing, obviously perplexed. Evidently he’d thought that sort of thing would appeal. Then, in a move so smooth she would have thought it was practiced, James tossed the hat like a Frisbee in to the crowd of dancing bodies, lost forevermore.

“There. No more hat,” James declared pleasantly.

His hair stuck flat to his head from where the hat had plastered it down, looking nothing like the pictures. Before her eyes though his hair appeared to engage in a battle against gravity, slowly unsticking from his skull and rising in disordered clumps. She wanted to pet it down back into place, but something told her that any effort on her part wouldn’t be enough.

Smiling brilliantly, Lily stuck her hand out for a shake. “Since we’re meeting formally for the first time, it’s nice to meet you, James.”

Instead of shaking her hand, James picked it up gently, running his thumb – so much longer than her own – along the vein at the center of her hand. She half expected him to pull a goofy move like raising it to his lips for a kiss, but instead he pulled her entire body forward for a hug. Lily had to remind herself that it was just a hug because the gesture felt so intimate that she half-expected everyone at the party to stare at them with disgust, and this was the same party where a few freshman had been grinding in one long train for the last hour. It only lasted for a few seconds, but the hug was warm and exciting. Just like James.

When they broke apart, Lily said, “Want to find somewhere to talk? I’m excited to see if you’re half as witty as you like to think you are.” James cocked an eyebrow at her, so Lily elaborated, “You’ve had an unfair advantage when we’re texting. It gives you a couple of seconds to think. For all I know, you’re googling your best lines before sending them.”

“I respond pretty fast,” James pointed out. “Either I’m every bit as clever as I’ve led you to believe, or I’m the speedy type.”

“And you know that’s one of the main things that I look for in a man,” Lily said.

Rapid fire, James said, “Well then it may interest you to know that I can type 70 words per minute. Thank you high school computer class. These fingers are agile.”

He wiggled his fingers in her face, giving Lily the perfect opportunity to grab him by the hand and pull him toward the balcony. It was the only place in Marlene’s apartment that wasn’t brimming with people because she’d hung a curtain to cover the sliding door that separated the apartment proper from the narrow balcony outside. Anyone who wasn’t familiar with Marlene’s place wouldn’t even realize there was a door behind the gauzy drapery, but Lily knew to just peel it away for a quick escape.

Why the architects had thought adding balconies to the units here was a good idea was a mystery to Lily as the view from Marlene’s apartment was bleak, blocked off entirely by the towering brownstone across the street. All that anyone could really make out from there was the comings and goings of the passersby on the street. Since the view wasn’t impressive, Marlene hadn’t bothered to decorate much, setting down two low-sitting, white-plastic chairs and a cardboard box to act as a table. It was in these uncomfortable chairs that Lily and James settled, repositioning them so that they half-faced each other.

“These remind me of being in kindergarten,” James said, tapping the chair in question idly.

“That’s funny. They remind me of my Grandma. She had chairs like this in her garden,” Lily said.

Lily suddenly was unsure of what to say, which was funny because they’d never run short of conversation when they were texting. Their banter had flowed naturally like how she’d only ever witnessed on television. Maybe that was the problem though. All of the normal getting-to-know-you talk had already occurred between them.

Fortunately for her, James wasn’t the type who ever wanted for something to say, and he quickly launched into it. “So you said you’ve been busy with the end of the semester. Did you finish up all your work? You should know that I expect good grades from such a bright young lady.”

“I don’t know. My work’s been better,” Lily admitted.

She’d finished her paper and expected an A considering all of the work she’d poured into it, but some of her other projects were lacking. Plus, she’d barely studied for any of her test. She’d pass, but she’d be lucky to score above a B minus.

“I’m gravely disappointed,” James said, in a tone that suggested he was trying to mimic a stern father.

Lily snorted. “It’s your fault in the first place.”

“Mine?”

“Yes, yours! You kept distracting me when I should have been working. I’m lucky I got anything finished at all what with you blathering away all the time,” Lily said with more vehemence than she actually felt.

“I feel…oddly proud,” James smiled. “If you really need me to stop texting for a week so that you can get some work done, just say the word.”

Lily’s lips remained pressed together. It was mortifying really, how she couldn’t force herself to ask he stay away for even a minute, let alone a week. That was when she made a decision.

Looking him directly in the eyes, Lily said, “Maybe you can take me mudding sometime.”

If she wanted the rise of feelings – swelling and hot and shiver-inducing – that came with James, that meant acceptance of who he was. Mudding and all.

“Mudding?” James asked a bit nervously. He must have picked up on the fact that Lily, for all her appreciation of casual attire, wasn’t exactly the mudding type.

“Yeah, it was listed as one of your hobbies on your profile,” Lily said. “I don’t have a clue what to wear, of course. You’ll have to help me out a bit. Would sneakers be the right call? Or do I need some special kind of boot? Mudding sounds, well…muddy.”

James winced, scratched at his knees, looked away. All signs of a man with a secret. It set Lily a bit on edge to watch him so obviously nervous.

“I mean…if you don’t want to take me that’s fine,” Lily said.

“No! Of course, I want to take you. I mean, I want to take you everywhere. Try everything,” James said, such a shockingly unexpected declaration that she was left blinking and confused.

“Then, mudding,” Lily said firmly because they both had something to prove.

James remained silent, allowing the moment to stretch and turn awkward. Her intuition that James was keeping something from her grew unignorable. As much as Lily loathed dishonesty, she didn’t want to pry. Everything they had felt so tenuous, as if the smallest mistake might dash her image of James forever, send him back into the realm of her daydreams.

“I have to tell you something,” James said, like he had no idea that those words brought with them a million allusions to heartbreak and betrayal.

“What?” Lily said, feeling just that heartbreak and betrayal.

“I’veneverbeenmudding.”

“What?”

“I’ve never been mudding.”

Under normal circumstances, Lily would have responded to such a statement with a shrug, but James was sweating like he’d just let her in on one of the darkest secrets of his life. Faced with his inexplicable solemnity, Lily felt like she ought to treat the situation with the same level of gravity.

“I don’t understand…that’s fine,” Lily tried uncertainly.

Head in his hands and elbows propped on his knees, James sighed. “I don’t think you understand, Lily. I’ve never been mudding. Never been mudding, or to the rodeo, or to Nashville. None of it.”

“You’re still young. Plenty of time to cross things off your bucket list in the future,” Lily said.

The only sense she could make of the situation was that James was poorly handling his death anxieties, coming face-to-face with the reality that he still hadn’t done so much of what he had planned in life. Perfectly natural if a little poorly timed. She patted his shoulder in sympathy.

“No, you don’t get it,” James looked up at her with wild-eyes. “My whole profile was a lie. I got you to meet me under false pretenses. I’m not a country guy at all! I’m born and raised in the city, and I love it. The closest I have to any country-credibility is I like that one Rascal Flatts song.”

As Lily listened on incredulously, James filled her in on the entire, ridiculous tale. He was genuinely terrified that she was going to dump him on sight for being too urban. What struck Lily as the most ludicrous of all was that two city-bred people with their northern values, had managed to find each other on FarmersOnly.Com.

She began to laugh.

“Lily?” James asked nervously.

She kept on laughing.

Only after several minutes did she find the voice to explain why she’d been on the website in the first place. Overcome at the realization that he hadn’t ruined his chances for her, James leaned forward seemingly at an impulse and kissed her. Almost the second his lips touched hers, a car alarm set off down the street. Startled, James tried to pull back to see the source of the commotion, but Lily yanked him forward by his collar, not letting him separate from her by so much as an inch.

James kissed her back then. The sharp point of his nose caressed along her cheek. His hands combed a soft path through her hair. All of the sounds of the party behind them and the traffic below faded to nothing. Their chemistry was undeniable, heat sparking between their lips and and casting fire down her spine like a series of sparklers.

“Well, what have we here?”

Hesitant to end what had been gearing up to be an earth-shattering kiss, Lily turned to see Marlene standing by the open door with a bottle of Merlot held high. Lily gave Marlene her best intimidating look, a silent plea for her to go back inside so that things could continue but Marlene’s eyes were slightly unfocused like she was already four or five glasses in and she missed the signal.

“You two look so adorable together,” Marlene sighed pleasantly before sliding down to sit on the balcony with them, back propped against the door.

“Thanks, Marlene,” Lily said tightly.

James gave Lily’s hand a light squeeze and smiled. It was a promise that there would be plenty of time for kisses later. Lily felt something relax inside of her. Plenty of time.

The city really was beautiful at night, even their limited view from the balcony. Here, Lily had a view into so many different lives, all of these people bustling about in different directions with loved ones and decisions to make that she could never guess at. Hubs of humanity. That was what cities ought to be called.

“So where’d you two meet anyway?” Marlene asked.

Funny as their story was, Lily liked that it lived as a secret between them. Someday she’d tell the truth to anyone who asked, but for today…today it was theirs.

Like they’d rehearsed it, James and Lily said in unison, “Tinder.”

Their subsequent grins matched just as perfectly.

They matched perfectly.

#lillytalons #jily #jily fanfiction #jss 16

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