#jily kitr

[emjee]

those of us at home - KITR fanfic

In which James and Lily talk and kiss (but mostly kiss). Set immediately after the end of episode seven. Also on AO3.

“Yeah. I just, I gotta—”

Is it weird, Lily wonders, that her first thought after Oh my god yes is His sweater is absurdly soft? She curls her fingers into the collar, wraps her other hand around James’ neck. The door clicks shut and she feels his hands fumbling at her waist, trying to undo the belt of her trench coat without breaking what is already the most epic kiss of her life. She helps him with the knot, flicks open the buttons, and untwines her arms for the briefest of moments to let him push the coat off her shoulders and onto the floor.

She simultaneously wants to burrow into him and climb him like a tree.

He helps with the tree bit, hooking his hands behind her knees and lifting her up. She curls her legs around his hips as he leans back against the closest wall and kisses her even more deeply, which should either be impossible or deeply disgusting but is apparently neither. His fingers thread through her hair. She has a strange, fleeting wish that she was a cat, but that makes no sense, because cats don’t kiss humans and she wouldn’t trade this for nine lives, not ever, and then her thoughts become background static when James sucks her bottom lip between his teeth and god. She hadn’t even let herself daydream that it would end this well.

James breaks away just long enough to ask, “Couch?”

“Yes,” Lily breathes, and he carries her—she smooths her hands over his arms and feels all that lean muscle beneath his sweater, which she’s thinking she might have to steal—straight into the living room.

“We should maybe talk at some point,” James says as he lowers her onto the sofa.

“We will,” she says, grabbing his collar and pulling him down onto her, “cross my heart, but more kissing first.”

“Kissing is good,” he whispers, nuzzling his nose against her neck. “How do you feel about hickies?”

She bites back her knee-jerk “What is this, high school?” response, because it’s different with James. Everything is different.

“Do your worst, Porter.”

He starts soft, with light, barely-there kisses down her neck that make her shiver. “I want to kiss you a thousand different ways,” he says. “Six feature films and I’ve only ever gotten to kiss your mouth. Which is, granted, a perfect mouth.” His kisses grow more intense, and Lily cups the back of his head, winding her fingers into his hair.

“Is this okay?” she asks, tugging gently.

“God, yes.” She feels his teeth nip at her skin and she arches her body up against his. He snakes an arm around her back and holds her.

She never wants him to let go, ever.

“James,” she murmurs, because she can, because he’s right here and he smells delicious and she thinks maybe they love each other.

James pulls away to look at her and sees tears in the corners of her eyes. “Lily…”

“I’m fine,” she says quickly, dashing the tears away with the swipe of a hand. “So much more than fine, I’m sorry, I don’t know what—”

“It’s alright,” he says, “it’s more than alright. I—”

He leans down and kisses her long and slow, like they’ve got all the time in the world. Kissing is safer than words, James decides. At least for right now. They’ve had more luck kissing than talking for their entire acquaintance, the past half hour excepted.

God, why had he ever apologized for the tongue? Lily wonders. His kisses make her body feel like a live wire.

They break apart, breathless.

“I know,” says Lily. “Me too.” He kisses her nose. “Take your shirt off.”

James raises his eyebrows.

“I mean—if you want to. I—I certainly wouldn’t mind if—”

He sits up, his knees on either side of her hips, and yanks the sweater over his head. She’s always wondered how boys do that, just grab the back of their collar and pull, and why it’s the sexiest thing she’s ever seen.

He’s wearing a t-shirt underneath, just plain white cotton, but somehow that’s now the sexiest thing she’s ever seen, and good God this is what love does to people.

She runs her hands up and down his sides, feeling the heat of his skin through the soft fabric. “Hi.”

“Hello.”

“This is fun.”

He grins. “It’s a nice change to kiss you when you’re dry.”

The corner of her mouth quirks up; she just can’t resist. “I might have to disappoint you there…” she says, grinding her hips against him to ensure he can’t miss her meaning.

His eyes darken, her pulse quickens, and he practically growls “Good God,” as she laughs and pulls him down again. Her fingers slide under the hem of his t-shirt as he worries her earlobe between his teeth before making his way down her neck again. His skin feels divine, and she wants to feel it against her own.

“One second,” she says, “let me up?”

James retreats to the other side of the couch as Lily sits upright and turns her back to him. “Undo my zipper?”

“Um—yes. Yes, I will happily help you take off your clothes, here, on my couch, where we’ve been making out furiously.”

He unzips her dress slowly, like he’s relishing it.

“I want to try something,” he says, and he begins to press kisses to skin newly revealed by the undoing of the zipper, starting at back of her neck and working his way down to the small of her back.

“Oh,” she sighs. “That’s lovely.”

“I want to kiss every inch of your body,” James says, and Lily feels heat rush through every part of her. She lifts her arms above her head and James pulls her dress off, tossing it on the floor and making sure his t-shirt quickly joins it.

Lily turns back to face him. Wearing her best bra seemed like tempting fate, but she’s glad she did it anyway.

“You don’t have to pretend to be a gentleman,” she says. “You are welcome to stare at my chest.”

“I—okay. Thank—you’re beautiful.”

He wraps a hand around her waist and bends his head to kiss across her collarbone, swirl his tongue in the hollow of her throat, and brush his lips across the tops of her breasts. When he comes back up to kiss her mouth, she presses a hand to his chest and pushes. “My turn.”

He’s not about to argue with that.

Lily climbs on top of his and explores his face with her mouth, skimming her lips across his forehead, his cheekbones, his fluttering eyelids. He squirms deliciously when she finds the hollow behind his ear. She kisses down to the dusting of hair across his chest, takes a chance and runs her tongue over one of his nipples.

He makes an intensely satisfying sound that she thinks is best described as a squeal and he will later argue is—fine, it’s a squeal, he admits it, there’s nothing shameful about the woman you’ve maybe-loved for years causing you to make incoherent noises because she’s clever with her tongue.

She reaches his navel and he curls his fingers in her hair again, stilling her. “Lily, I don’t—this is what I want to do, tonight. Just this.”

She rests her head on his torso and looks up at him. “Me too.” She can already feel the stubble burn setting in, and she’ll probably wake up to a minor breakout tomorrow as a result of rubbing someone else’s face oils against her own, but she is out of bothers to give.

James shifts and pulls Lily up towards him, so they lie on the couch face-to-face. He skims his thumb across her cheek and leans into her, lips meeting once more, soft and sweet and perfect.

“But maybe later for the other things?” she asks after a few minutes.

“Definitely. I definitely want the other things.” He wraps an arm around her and shifts them again, so she’s lying on top of him with her head resting on his shoulder. He stares at the ceiling, feeling the weight of her on him, one hand playing idly with her hair.

We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

“What are you thinking?” Lily asks him, and he almost says “Nothing,” because that’s what he’s used to, but that’s not how things are anymore.

So he tells her.

“That sounds familiar,” she says.

“It’s from a poem by Arthur O’Shaughnessy.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“It’s also in the original Willy Wonka film.”

“That’s it.”

“It’s only the start of the poem. Wandering by lone sea-breakers, and sitting by desolate streams.” She doesn’t stop him, and he decides to just go through with the whole first stanza. “World losers and world forsakers, on whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers of the world for ever, it seems.”

His voice takes on a musical lilt with the rhythm of the piece, and Lily remembers working with him on Syntax, how he walked around set muttering various bits of Poe’s poetic oeuvre under his breath. It was many and many a year ago…It should have been annoying, would have been annoying if he had done it on their first picture, or their second, but by the time they did Syntax she had come to the upsetting realization that she loved hearing his voice, that maybe she wanted to hear it more often, that she cared enough to be hurt when he wouldn’t talk to her.

Lily reaches for James’ hand and tangles her fingers with his. “I love it,” she says.

“It’s a good poem,” he agrees.

“And a good speaker.” She presses a kiss to the hollow of his throat and feels the hitch in his breathing. “Do you remember that song from Let’s Say We Did?” She hadn’t been able to get it out of her head, always found herself humming it in the shower by accident. It used to make her so sad.

Lily begins to sing under her breath. “Want to, I want to die, here in your arms…”

James loves her singing voice; he’s pretty sure he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that she could sing even before she showed up on his porch. “Yeah. The soundtrack for that movie was incredible.”

“I get that song now,” she says. “I didn’t before. I didn’t understand—” She snuggles into him, tries to hold him even tighter.

“Why you’d be so happy you’d want to die?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you get it now?”

She raises herself up and locks eyes with him. “I absolutely do.”

They lounge on the couch for hours, switching on a Doctor Who marathon that they only half-watch (the remaining half of their collective attention span is equally divided between talking and making out). Lily stays, borrows a t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants that hang dangerously low on her hips, and sleeps tangled up with James in a bed he’d always thought was slightly too big, until now.

They talk in the morning over tea and breakfast, really talk, and then James presses Lily against a wall in every room in the house, and then her hips lose the battle with his pajama pants, and then they find themselves back in bed before lunchtime.