#this is pure pure fluff with not a whole lot of plot fyi

[jilyyall]

The Art of Charming Muggles

Lily would be lying if she claimed to have forgotten to tell her parents about her boyfriend or his impending visit. Really, she was just too nervous at the thought of introducing a boy to her parents for the first time. She should have known James Potter would have no trouble charming his way into her parents' good graces. He fit perfectly in every aspect of her life; why should this be any different?

Rated T for pure fluff. Word count: 13k+ fanfiction.net / AO3

The antique grandfather clock – just about the only item of any significant value in the Evans house – chimed three o'clock in the afternoon. With something of a determined expression on her face, Lily sighed and stood up from her writing desk, skirting the trunk set in the center of the room, and headed out of her bedroom to search out her parents.

She was not altogether surprised to find them downstairs in the living room, her father in his favourite stuffed blue rocking chair, his nose buried in the morning's newspaper and her mother intently watching Happy Ever After on the television against the far wall while pretending to read a book on the couch.

"Mum, Dad?" Lily waited, hands clasped in front of her, until they both looked up at her. Her father laid the paper down in his lap and her mother looked away from the television with a distracted smile.

"Yes, darling?"

"Well, I was wondering if… I know that Christmas holidays are usually all about being together as a family, but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind terribly if I invited over a friend from school. Just for a little visit." She bit her lip when her parents glanced at each other. Her father shrugged and her mother beamed at her.

"Of course not, darling," she said warmly. "We would love to meet your friends."

"Yes, just let us know when you'll be having guests so we can prepare for them," her father said.

"Oh, right. Thank you." Lily waited until her parents had returned to their previous hobbies, then dropped her hands to her sides and tilted her head back in agony. "See, the thing is," she said once she had mostly composed herself, "I may have forgotten to mention to you that I already invited someone over."

Her parents shared another look before her mother leveled the 'mum' eyes on her. "When are they coming?"

"Er – in about an hour? We agreed on four o'clock," Lily said.

"And when did this conversation take place?" Her mother asked.

"On the train home," Lily admitted with a pitiful pleading look.

"A week ago?"

"Yes, Mum. I'm sorry."

"Ah, well, all's fine," her father said easily, leaning forward to lay a hand on his wife's knee. "You were already planning on making that corned beef with cabbage dish you make so well, weren't you, dear?"

"Yes," her mother said. "I do hope there's enough."

"Does your friend have a large appetite, Lily?" Her father asked. "I hope she likes corned beef. Do you know?"

"Er." Lily looked away from her father's innocent expression and grimaced, steeling herself to ruin his optimism. "I'm sure corned beef will be fine. I've never actually seen James turn his nose up at anything."

"James? Who's James?" her father demanded immediately, looking accusingly at his wife.

"A boy, clearly, I don't know," her mother said, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, James is a boy," Lily said.

"Is he a special boy?" Mr. Evans questioned.

"Well," Lily said lightly, "he certainly thinks so."

"Is he special to you, Lily?" Mr. Evans clarified, giving his daughter his no-nonsense look.

Lily's smile was soft and slow and very fond. She nodded. "Yes, he is."

When she managed to look up from her bare toes on the beige carpet, Lily found her parents in the middle of what looked to be a silent conversation. She watched them for a moment – all locked gazes and twitching lips and barely moving eyebrows – and saw, for a moment, herself and James silently debating the best way to get a derailed Prefects' meeting back on track, or wordlessly making fun of Sirius any time he claimed to be uninterested in all things romantic while simultaneously tracking Marlene's every movement with his eyes. Blinking, she focused back on her parents as her father sighed and shrugged.

"Well, we knew this would happen eventually." He set his paper to the side and made to stand.

Lily frowned. "What?"

"You're seventeen, you go to boarding school in a world that's completely different to ours," her mother said, also standing. "We've been waiting for you to come home with a boy on your arm."

"You could have given us more warning, though," her father said as he began to sweep from the room.

"I'm sorry," Lily said, terribly confused. "Wait, where are you going?"

"We've got to start on dinner," her mother explained, patting Lily's shoulder as she moved past her. "You never did answer, but I'm assuming James has a rather larger appetite than you?"

"Well, yes. He is very active, after all," Lily said with a bemused smile. "Captain of our House Quidditch team, actually."

Her mother paused a moment, a terrified look on her face before she rushed out of the room and into the kitchen.

"Dear, he's an athlete!" Lily heard her mother call out "We'll need more than corned beef!"

Her father swore from the kitchen, then shouted, "We've got loads of potatoes! You could whip up some colcannon to go with it!"

Eyebrows furrowed, completely taken aback, Lily followed her parents into the kitchen. Her father had his head in the cupboard while her mother was pulling out pots and pans.

"But we've got potatoes, cabbage, and carrots with the corned beef," her mother worried aloud. "Do we really need a second potato dish?"

"Does the boy have something against potatoes?" her father said, surfacing from the cupboard with a large sack of potatoes in hands to see Lily standing there watching in confusion. He lifted an eyebrow. "Well?"

"Oh." Lily cleared her throat and shook her head. "No, James likes potatoes as much as the next person. But I don't think you really need to make a side dish. He's really very easy to please."

"We can't just serve the boy corned beef! It would be rude," her mother insisted. "He's a teenaged boy with an appetite. And he's an athlete!"

"But…" Lily trailed off when her father began scrubbing the potatoes anyway. She sighed. "Colcannon will be great."

"What about dessert, dear?" her father asked.

Lily decided to take her leave when her mother swore loudly. Still reeling a bit at their unexpected reaction – she had thought they would be upset to learn about James, not frantic to feed him – she made her way up the stairs. When the door at the top of the stairs opened and Petunia stuck her long neck round the door, blond hair in curlers, Lily paused.

Petunia's blue eyes went a bit cool when they found Lily, but she still spoke to her, which Lily took as a victory. "What's all the commotion about downstairs?"

"We've got a dinner guest coming tonight," Lily said with a small shrug. "My boyfriend, James. Mum and Dad have decided to add colcannon to the menu."

"In that case, I'm glad I've got a date with Vernon tonight," Petunia said with a haughty little sniff.

Lily frowned. "But you love colcannon."

"I meant not having to sit through a meal with another freak," Petunia said, nose upturned as she retreated back into her room and snapped the door shut in Lily's face.

Pursing her lips, annoyed and unwilling to let it consume her, Lily took a deep breath through her nose and walked down the hall to her own bedroom. She had about forty-five minutes before James was due to arrive and nothing really to do; she figured she may as well change out of her loungewear and fix her hair.

She started to plug in her mother's curling iron when she saw her wand lying on her bedside table. She reached over to pick it up then, after a moment's deliberation, abandoned the Muggle method and reached for the book of beauty charms her friend Mary had gifted her for Christmas.

After several minutes of flipping though the pages, Lily found a spell she felt confident enough to attempt in front of her vanity mirror. The result was quite pretty, she thought, with her auburn hair falling in loose waves around her shoulders. She would have to remember to thank Mary properly for the gift.

A movement outside her window distracted her from admiring her wandwork. She looked up, startled to see a tall boy with long, long legs and messy black hair walking down the street toward her house – it couldn't be four already. She checked her watch and grinned when she saw that he was early – only by seven minutes, but James Potter was never seven minutes early to anything that wasn't Quidditch related.

She ran down the stairs, past the kitchen where she ignored her parents' startled questions, and out the front door. He was in front of her neighbour's house when she flew off the porch steps and into her own snow-covered garden. The wide grin that split his face when he looked up to find her running toward him made her laugh giddily.

He caught her effortlessly when she launched herself at him, his arms wrapping around her waist and holding her to him. He kissed her hair, her temple, her cheek, the tip of her nose, and finally her lips, and was smiling when he pulled back to look at her, eyes soft and twinkling like they always did whenever he was feeling particularly fond of her which was very often.

"Merlin, I missed you, Evans," he breathed, then kissed her again briefly.

"I missed you, too," she told him, burying her face in his neck as he held her, feet dangling off the ground.

"I can see that," he said, and the teasing note in his voice was so familiar and had been so missed that she couldn't even think of what he could be teasing her about. "In such a rush to kiss me you forgot shoes?"

She frowned, then quite suddenly became aware of her freezing toes. She had changed out of her loungewear into a nice pair of jeans and a deep violet jumper and apparently, in all the excitement of testing beauty charms and reuniting with her boyfriend, had forgotten to slip on her boots by the front door. Maybe later – when they were back at school and James undoubtedly told all of their friends about this – she would be embarrassed, but this evening she was too happy to see him.

"Cold!" She yelped and tried to climb him.

James laughed loudly, then hooked one arm behind her knees and shifted his other up her back so that he was cradling her in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and tilted her face up to his. Holding her as if she weighed no more than his prized broomstick, he brought his lips down on hers again in a much longer kiss that felt to Lily like a serious effort to make up for a week apart. When he pulled away and straightened up, she buried her face in his warm, thick coat collar.

"Hey, Evans, those folks who've been watching us snog wouldn't happen to be your parents, would they?" James asked conversationally as he began carrying her back to her house.

Lily lifted her face from his neck and turned her head to find her parents standing on the front porch watching them approach. They were speaking quietly to each other and Lily had no idea what they might be saying, whether they were upset or not. She brought her mouth close to James's ear and spoke quietly, her breath undoubtedly tickling him. "Yes, those are my parents, so be on your best behavior from now on."

"You want me to behave, you stop that right now before it's a lost cause." She could hear the smile in his voice, but also the legitimate warning.

They had a tough enough time keeping their hands to themselves at school where they saw each other every day and had ample amounts of time to themselves. After a week apart it would be very difficult to keep their interactions parent-friendly. Lily chuckled in his ear, had the satisfaction of feeling his arms tense under her, and obliged by moving her mouth away from his ear to rest her forehead against his neck as he began to climb the steps to the front porch.

Her parents had stopped chatting by then and were smiling at them. Lily recognized their show smiles – they weren't sure what to think of or how to act around the boy they had just watched kiss their daughter as if they had been apart for months instead of days, the only boy she had ever brought home, the boy who had lifted her into his arms so naturally it seemed he must have always had his hands on her, but didn't want to appear rude to him. Lily locked eyes with her father and watched his eyebrows lift almost imperceptibly.

"I forgot to put on boots." She lifted one foot to wiggle her bare toes at her parents in explanation. "So James, being the gentleman that he is, gave me a lift."

James was grinning at her explanation. She couldn't see it, but she knew it was there when her mother visibly – to her eyes, anyway, if not to James's – melted a bit. Even when Lily hadn't particularly liked James less than two years ago, the sight of that grin, the pure, unadulterated joy it brought to his face, had done things to her.

"Mr. and Mrs. Evans, lovely to meet you," James said and Lily had to fight the urge to turn her head so she could kiss that now audible grin right off his handsome face. She settled instead for tightening her arms around his neck and titling her head so that her mouth was once more buried in his coat collar, almost as if she were kissing his neck. "I would shake your hands," he continued as if he weren't at all affected, but Lily felt his grip on her tighten, "but I might drop your daughter if I did, and I don't think we want that."

"It's nice to meet you, James." Her father stepped aside and gestured for James to go inside.

Once everyone was inside, Lily's parents and James stood in the crowded foyer for an awkward moment. Suddenly uncomfortable, Lily leapt out of his arms and landed on her feet smoothly.

Her parents looked for a moment at Lily, who stood very close to James with his arm now around her waist. Lily looked quickly at James, who met her gaze and then grinned broadly at her parents.

"Thanks so much for having me over," he said as he gripped her father's hand in a firm handshake.

"Of course!" her mother said. "Any friend of Lily's is welcome any time!"

James looked at Lily, one eyebrow arching up at the word 'friend.' She rolled her eyes quickly – her parents just didn't want to say the word boyfriend – and his lips twitched up at the corners. When she looked at her parents, she found them watching her and James with puzzled, if a bit surprised, expressions on their faces and realized that she and James had just been caught having a silent conversation the likes of which she caught her parents having earlier.

"Well, let's move this to the living room, shall we?" Mrs. Evans suggested and began herding everyone out of the foyer.

Mr. Evans bypassed his favoured chair and took a seat on the far end of the couch, and Mrs. Evans sat on the near end.

Lily sat against the arm of the loveseat opposite the couch and James settled himself right next to her, throwing his arm warmly over her shoulders as if they were lounging in front of the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room with their friends instead of visiting with her parents. She caught her father's narrow-eyed gaze on them and considered for a moment signaling for James to give her some space, but thought better of it. Not only would James get his feelings hurt – try as he might to hide it – but she would be lying if she said she hadn't missed sitting like this the past week; their relationship was an incredibly affectionate one and her parents either could deal with it or not. She met her father's gaze, pulled her feet up under her, and leaned into James's side. She wasn't going to pretend their relationship was something it wasn't just for his peace of mind.

"So," her mother said, nudging her husband to stop his glaring. "James, Lily tells us you play Quidditch."

"Yes, ma'am. Brilliant sport. Do you know much about it?" James asked and Lily knew he was eager to launch into details about his favourite pastime – well, maybe his second favourite pastime now that Lily let him kiss her and more just about whenever he wanted.

"I'm afraid not. I haven't really got a good head for sports," her mother said. "But we know there are three balls."

"The Quaffle, Bludger, and Snitch," her father supplied.

"Yes, that's right! There are two Bludgers, though," James said gently as if he were correcting a timid first year's Transfiguration essay.

"Those are the violent ones, right?" her father asked.

"Yes! They try to knock you right off your broom. Had my arm broken in three places by one earlier in the year, right Lily?"

"I think it was four," she said, smiling when her mother gasped in abject horror. "Not to worry, Mum. Madam Pomfrey is a miracle worker and had him back in order by dinner."

"I'm a Chaser," James said to her father in response to a question she missed. "I only handle the Quaffle directly, trying to get it in the other team's goals and score points, but the Beaters are always hitting the Bludgers after the other team's Chasers to knock the Quaffle loose or get the Chasers off track or even sometimes to knock a Chaser off their broom."

"Have you ever been knocked off your broom?" Mr. Evans asked.

"Not since my first game back in second year." James laughed and shook his head, glancing over at Lily. "Do you remember that?"

"Yes, you landed yourself an extended stay in the Hospital Wing," Lily said, closing her eyes and sighing as if recalling a particularly pleasant memory. "Such a peaceful few days."

"Rude," he said on a chuckle.

"Really, though. Sirius skived off all of his lessons to sit with you in the Hospital Wing the entire time and Remus and Peter, with neither of you to distract them, actually sat and took notes all day. I have never experienced such peaceful lessons at Hogwarts," Lily insisted.

"Sounds boring to me," James said, smiling when Lily rolled her eyes at him. He turned his attention back to her parents. "After spending three days in the Hospital Wing, I decided to avoid getting knocked off my broom as best I could."

"Quite right," Mrs. Evans said just as the timer went off in the kitchen. "Oh, my timer! I'll be right back. Come help me, dear."

She stood and pulled her husband to his feet, leading him toward the door, where they paused to look back at Lily and James, who seemed not at all affected to find themselves suddenly alone.

"Come on, I'll show you around," Lily said to James as they both stood. "I know you're really curious about all these Muggle objects."

James grabbed Lily's hand and used it to pull her close to him as they toured the living room.

"Bit of a… hands-on fellow, isn't he?" Mr. Evans muttered to his wife as they watched their daughter lead James around the living room, pausing to explain whenever he seemed particularly interested in something: the lamp, for one; the blank screen of the television; the photos on the wall that he prodded curiously.

"He doesn't seem to be the only one," Mrs. Evans quipped when Lily laughed and slid her arm around his waist to tug him away from the digital clock. "Come, let's leave them be."

He hesitated when his wife laid a hand on his arm. "You think we should?"

Mrs. Evans looked at him with a fond smile and shook her head. "I think they probably get much more privacy up at school. A few minutes alone here won't change a thing."

"You know Muggle photos don't move, James!" Lily laughed and took his wand out of his hand when he pretended to consider trying to make them move. "I also know you've seen Muggle photos before; I've seen Sirius's collection of pin-up models, so there's no way you haven't."

"You know that stealing a wizard's wand is serious business, Lily!" James mocked her, but made no move to take his wand back.

Until just a couple weeks ago, Lily hadn't understood it, having never seen a wand or known much about them until she was eleven, but she had been told by a few of her friends that it was a big deal, a big show of trust for someone to allow another to use their wand.

She hadn't thought anything of it the first time she had reached for James's wand because hers was stowed away in her bag at her feet. She had cast a spell – something mundane: a warming charm, probably – and handed it back to him as if it were nothing. To her, it had been nothing. But she had noticed the wide eyes of those around them afterwards and the depth of passion in James's.

A few days later, he had used her wand to clean up a spill at the breakfast table for no reason, he had said, other than because he wanted to. His wand was sitting right next to him on the table. Several people had gasped as if they'd just been privy to some lascivious act and James had smirked and given her wand back.

When she asked him about it later when they were alone in his dormitory, the curtains drawn around his four-poster, he had kissed her.

"It's a big deal," he had said quietly.

"Yeah, I get that. But why?" She had rolled her eyes, but hadn't been annoyed enough by his evasiveness to reject him when he had clasped her hand in his and brought their joined hands to rest on his bare chest.

"You got your wand at Ollivander's, right?" he had asked and shrugged when she nodded. "Did he say something along the lines of the wand chooses the wizard when you went in?"

"Witch. He said witch."

Smiling fondly, James had rolled his eyes at the correction. "Okay. Witch. Well, he wasn't just being an eccentric old man, even though he is that. The wand literally chooses the wizard. Or witch. It's sort of a sentient thing. A wand has a conscience. It has loyalty. It's loyal to its owner. Most wands don't work properly for someone if their loyalty is to someone else."

"How do you get a wand's loyalty?" she had asked.

"You win it. In a duel." He had said it so simply, so matter-of-factly. "Or it chooses you."

"But your wand worked fine for me. And mine for you."

"Sometimes… if the relationship between two people is strong enough… that could come through. The wand could, essentially, choose to have two masters."

"Oh." She had said. And then, "Oh."

They had looked at each other.

"It's a big deal," he had repeated.

And then he had stroked his fingers through her hair softly and she understood. It was so simple, really. He loved her. She loved him. It wasn't some silly, fleeting first love. It was real and their wands sensed it and shared their loyalties.

Standing in her parents' living room, Lily twirled James's wand between her fingers. He smiled at her, remembering the same conversation as she. She knew now that he liked it when she used his wand, and that he liked using hers as well. He reveled in the fact that both of their wands worked the same for each of them. It was a sort of confirmation for him that she was really with him long term. She would be lying if she said she didn't like it as well.

Still, having no use for his wand at the moment, she handed it over and watched him pocket it.

"I'm assuming Muggle houses have bedrooms, or are they all just living areas and kitchens?" he asked, desire winking in his hazel eyes.

Her parents hadn't said anything to her about James only being allowed downstairs – they hadn't had a chance – but she knew they wouldn't approve of him being up in her room. Lily narrowed her eyes at him, looked over her shoulder, and listened to make sure her parents weren't coming to check on them any time soon. She took his hand and shot him a grin she had picked up from him. It said Rules? What rules?

She didn't have to tell him to tread lightly or to skip the fourth step from the top as she led him up the stairs – the boy was a natural at sneaking around and was obviously watching where she placed her feet because she didn't hear a sound behind her on any of the creakier steps.

She rushed him past Petunia's bedroom and into hers, shutting the door stealthily behind them. She expected his hands on her instantly when the door closed but when she turned to him he was surveying her room with great interest. Her nerves surprised her until she realized that this was the first time he had ever been in her room; she had been in his dormitory countless times since they had started dating, but the spell keeping boys out of the girls' dormitories was just about the only school 'rule' he and his friends had yet to get around.

"Is it all that you dreamed of?" She leaned back against the door and watched him walk the perimeter of the room.

"Well, you're not naked on the bed, so no." He flashed her a grin and then stopped in front of her vanity to pick up her wand. He turned to her with a frown and one arched brow. "You left the house without your wand?"

She bit her lip and ducked her head, knowing he was right to be troubled. It wasn't safe for her to be unarmed in this day and age, especially not outside of her house. Hell, she probably shouldn't put her wand down when she was inside, either, since there was no protective enchantment around her parents' house to keep out unwanted visitors. The lack of protection for her parents when she wasn't around was something that bothered her more each day.

He was still frowning at her when she lifted her gaze to him, so she shrugged. "I forgot."

"You forgot your wand," he repeated blankly.

"In my haste to get my hands and mouth on you? Yes. Or have you forgotten my enthusiastic welcome? Here, let me remind you."

She launched off the door and jumped into his arms, kissing him soundly. James laughed and wrapped his arms around her, one hand sliding to her bum and the other pressing into her lower back when she twined her legs around his waist.

"Nice diversion." He smirked at her, then sighed and shook his head. "Look, I know you don't need a lecture on safety – especially not from me – but please don't leave your wand behind again. I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you."

"I won't." The tips of their noses brushed and she felt his dubious frown on her lips, saw it in his furrowed brow. "I won't. I sometimes get a bit complacent when I'm home, that's all. But I promise I won't leave the house without it again."

He wasn't satisfied by that, she knew, would only be satisfied if she never had her wand out of arm's reach. He never left his wand out of sight and Lily had a tendency to stow hers away in her bag when she didn't know she would need it. It was an argument they had had before and she knew he had the right of it given the war they would be joining as soon as they left school. It was just that she didn't like to worry her parents and if they saw her constantly carrying her wand around, they would be suspicious.

To appease him, she reached behind her and took her wand out of his hand on her lower back. She shoved her wand under the elastic hair band on her wrist and pulled her jumper sleeve down over it. It wasn't the most secure spot for it, but it would suffice until she could find a more suitable place to stow it since her pockets were not as roomy as his. "Better?"

"Much," he said, and then his mouth was hungry on hers. The hand on her bum squeezed and Lily laughed, ripping her mouth from his in the process.

He took the opportunity to lie her down on her bed and cover her body with his. His mouth ravished her neck and one of his hands slid under her jumper while the other slid up her thigh. Alarm bells rang in her mind, but it still took her a few seconds to push him away.

"We can't." She frowned when he tried to lean in and kiss her again, putting a hand against his face to keep him at bay. "I mean it. I want to, but we can't. I need my parents to like you and if they think we've shagged in my bedroom while they're downstairs making dinner, they'll hate you."

"You're right. I know." He let his head hang, neck arched dramatically, so that his forehead rested against her shoulder. His lips brushed the side of her neck when he whispered, "I just missed you so much."

Lily shivered and brought a hand up to comb through his messy hair, the other arm wrapping around his back to hug him. Her legs spread open a bit wider, forming a more secure cradle for his hips to drop into. He groaned his desire and she felt the insistent evidence of how badly he wanted her. She smiled. "I love you."

"Love you, too." He rolled off of her to lie next to her, and pulled her into his side.

She gave him – and herself – a minute to enjoy a good cuddle and then struggled against his hold to sit up. "We should go back downstairs. Or at least open the door."

James let her go with a slight frown and sat up when she swung to her feet over the edge of the bed. "Is it strange for me to say that I can't wait to go back to school?"

"No. Let's not pretend that you haven't always loved school." Lily smirked at him over her shoulder. "And I know it's not just the freedom and the boys. You genuinely love classes, mister Transfiguration prodigy."

"Not so loud!" He winked at her. "You'll damage my reputation."

Lily's hand had just closed around the doorknob when she heard her mother call her name. She looked, wide-eyed, at James. "Shit."

He stood leisurely from the bed even as Lily threw the door open and rushed to the top of the stairs where she saw her mother halfway up the stairs looking up at her with pursed lips and one arched brow.

"Come introduce James to your sister before she leaves," Mrs. Evans said curtly and turned on her heel to head back downstairs.

Disappointed in herself for already having screwed up her parents' perception of James, Lily looked over her shoulder intending to have to call out for him, only to find him standing right behind her. She jolted, forced a smile for him, and turned to lead him away.

"Hey, it's okay." He laid a hand on her shoulder as he followed her. "We can fix this."

She didn't see what he could possibly do or say to convince her parents that they hadn't gone upstairs to fool around. They had, after all, gone upstairs to snog a bit even if James had gotten sidetracked at first. She supposed it could have been worse, though. It could have been her father that came up the stairs to get her. Her parents could have burst into her bedroom. She and James could have been doing much more than kissing on her bed when her parents burst in.

After allowing herself to worry over her parents' reaction for the maybe thirty seconds it took to walk down the stairs, Lily rolled her eyes at herself. So what if her parents thought she had taken James upstairs to have a shag? She and James were adults, and her parents could get over their preoccupation with the state of her nonexistent virginity.

On the landing, Lily turned to plant a kiss on James's cheek and allowed him to slip his hand into hers. "We didn't do anything wrong." She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Now come meet my dreadful sister."

Petunia was standing near the front door, one hand on the knob, glaring at Lily when she and James rounded the corner. "Mum and Dad said I couldn't leave without meeting him."

"How dare they expect you to be polite!" Lily rolled her eyes.

Petunia ignored her sister, her blue eyes sweeping past her to settle on James. Lily watched her face, reading her reaction: the pinched mouth was likely in response to his messy hair; the narrowed, roving gaze a quick take on his exceptional height. She liked to think that the fleeting, almost indiscernible widening of the eyes before Petunia settled a disapproving glare on her features was a moment of awe at his defined jaw, handsome face, and – Lily glanced back at him to see his trademark easygoing grin – friendliest smile.

"Nice to meet you, Petunia," James said loudly as if she had actually bothered to introduce herself. He brushed past Lily, giving her hand a quick squeeze before releasing to offer her sister a handshake. "I'm James Potter."

"Pleasure." Her voice was cold and stiff and the downward turn of her mouth did nothing to hide her distinct displeasure, and she backed away from him.

When Petunia didn't accept his handshake, James let his hand drop to his side casually as if nothing had transpired. He took a step back, noting the way that Petunia was all but flat against the door.

"I've met him, Mum," Petunia announced. "Now I'm leaving. I'll be back late. Don't wait up."

Without another word, Petunia opened the door and fled. James turned to Lily, eyebrows raised, and then his gaze flicked past her and he smiled. "Must be a sister thing. Lily used to hate me too."

Lily rolled her eyes, but looked over to find her parents standing behind her in the kitchen doorway. She moved closer to swat at him playfully. "I did not. I just thought you were a prat."

"Well, I'm a prat who's going to help you do some extra-curricular research tonight, aren't I?" James retorted, flashing a book she hadn't noticed him carrying.

She read the title quickly. Charms of Defence and Deterrence. Despite her confusion, she nodded.

"We were talking just a few moments ago about which protective charms would work best on a Muggle household, so we just went to get this textbook from her room," James explained, seeing the curious expressions on her parents' faces.

For a moment, she was speechless. Was the boy a Legilimens or something? She wouldn't put it past him; he and his too-smart-for-their-own-good best friends had managed the extremely difficult and very illegal Animagus transformation back in fifth year. He could probably manage Legilimency. But no, she realized it wasn't much of a surprise that he would use this time to work on coming up with a way to ensure her safety when they were apart, to ease his mind a bit now that he knew she was likely to walk around unarmed even here.

"Protective charms?" Her father said, his narrowed gaze flicking between James's innocent face and the book in his hand. Her mother cocked her head in wonder as well. "Why would we need protective charms?"

James looked at Lily, silently questioning whether or not she had told her parents anything about the social climate in the wizarding world. She hadn't. He shrugged, shaking his head in a bemused sort of way.

"Why wouldn't you?" He looked genuinely confused and Lily found herself thankful that his years of troublemaking had given him the ability to convincingly talk his way out of just about any situation. "All magical families have protective charms over their homes. It's just an additional precaution."

"It's a bit like investing in a really good lock, Dad," Lily added. "Except free. And more effective."

"Besides," James added brightly, "it's good practice for us, learning how to protect a home. It will come in handy when we've got our own place."

Her parents' eyes widened and Lily froze. When her father scowled at James, Lily turned to look at him and saw that he looked perfectly complacent, like he was aware of what he had implied and had done so intentionally. He smiled at her and Lily leveled her most intimidating glare on him, but her stupid courageous boyfriend was not easily intimidated, not even by her.

They had only talked about moving in together once, and it hadn't been a particularly long or detailed conversation. Rather, they had been lying in his bed one lazy afternoon, laughing about something or other with the rest of the boys, when Sirius had dropped the emotional equivalent of a nuclear bomb on James.

"Keep on like that and I won't invite you to my place over Christmas," he had warned them all as they laughed at his expense.

"My parents' place," James had corrected him distractedly as he took the opportunity to slide his hand under Lily's shirt while she was busy laughing.

"Actually, I've been sneaking out to Muggle London on Hogsmeade weekends to look at flats and I've found one I really like and so I rented it." He had said it casually, like it wasn't a big deal.

James's hand had frozen – his whole body had – and Lily would have sworn his heart had stopped for a moment. When the room went completely silent, it became clear to her that Sirius getting his own place was a very big deal. At least, judging by the concerned looks Remus and Peter were shooting James, Sirius not telling James that he was getting his own place was a big deal. The two were practically inseparable and she had to admit it was difficult for her to think of a time Sirius had kept something important from James before.

"You just… got a flat?" Peter had said slowly. "Just like that? Just went out and got a flat?"

"No, I just said that I've been going out and looking every time we've been to Hogsmeade this year." She couldn't see him over the mess of James's hair, but she had practically heard him rolling his eyes.

"But did you at least tell anyone you were leaving Hogsmeade?" Remus had asked. "Or that you were looking into getting your own place?"

"No." Sirius had said, and Remus and Peter had continued questioning him, growing more and more frustrated with his simple answers as time went on. Before long, they had all three been practically shouting at one another.

The three of them had never complained about her inclusion in their group, had never moaned about her always being around, at least to her knowledge. They had never treated her like an unwanted, unnecessary fifth wheel and had acted from the day she and James had gotten together as though it was always meant to be the five of them – and maybe it was – but she had still felt as though this particular conversation wasn't for her to participate in, so she had simply lain there next to James, his hand frozen on her ribcage, and waited for him to come round.

"Come on, Prongs. Don't act like that." Sirius had rolled his eyes and chucked his pillow at them. "I'll still be over at your place all the time. You know I can't feed myself and your mum and dad would worry incessantly if I tried."

But it wasn't about his mum and dad, Lily had realized. It was about James feeling like his best friend was abandoning him, like his brother was up and leaving without a backward glance. The two of them, from the very first moment they had met on the Hogwarts Express, had been practically co-dependent. James had three best friends, but if he had to choose only one, it was no secret to anyone who he would pick.

"Besides," Sirius had said loudly, sounding as close to desperate as Lily had ever heard him, "you'll be getting a place with Red, yeah? When we're out? You'll be moving in with her, and then we'll all stop in at your parents' together and, honestly, it'll be more like we've got three homes between us. My place, your place, and your parents' place."

He had said it so matter-of-factly, like he and James had discussed it, like he knew that James and Lily were going to move in together after school. But James had grown even stiffer beside her and Lily knew that it was his first time hearing about that part of the plan as well. He had slowly turned his head to look at her, and she had seen the moment that it dawned on him that that was actually exactly what he wanted.

His eyes had turned to molten caramel and he had kissed her sweetly but not quickly, and whispered, "What do you think?"

"I think…" She had paused for a moment, kissed him again to buy some time. "I think it sounds like Sirius has our lives all planned out for us."

"Yeah?" James had said quietly, and it was more a question of her approval of Sirius's plan than anything else, she knew.

"Yeah," she had said.

James had smiled at her, and then threw Sirius's pillow back across the room, whacking him in the face none-too-gently with it. "Sneak out of Hogsmeade without telling any of us again, and I'll write you up, idiot."

That was almost a month ago and they hadn't discussed it since, so Lily hadn't realized that James seemed to have been actually planning for that future. She wasn't surprised, exactly, but she wasn't sure why on earth he had decided to announce his plans to her parents the first time he met them.

"You're not going to… set the house on fire, will you?" Her mother asked after a moment and Lily was both grateful to her for attempting to break the tension and humiliated.

"No, Mum!" she exclaimed, and knew instantly by the sudden increase in temperature that her face was blazing. "It was once, and I was twelve, and I fixed it, didn't I?"

"Actually, that Ministry fellow fixed it for you and threatened to expel you if you didn't stop doing magic away from school," her father said.

"I have to hear this story," James practically shouted, rocking forward on the balls of his feet.

"I'll tell you later," Lily said immediately, relief coursing through her when a timer started beeping in the kitchen.

"Oh, that's the potatoes!" her mother said.

"We're going to start looking through this," Lily said, taking the textbook from James and holding it up.

Her father watched them as Lily led James by the hand back into the living room, and she knew he hadn't forgotten that she had snuck James up to her bedroom or that James had announced their intention to live together after school. When Lily turned to face James in front of the sofa, expecting him to still have that lighthearted, eager look about him and for him to badger her for the story of the time she had accidentally set the house a little bit on fire, she was surprised to see concern in his eyes.

"You haven't told them?" James asked, leaning forward and bending over so that he could speak quietly enough that her parents wouldn't be able to hear if they were still listening in from the hallway. "Don't you think they ought to know?"

"That we're going to live together?" she whispered. "James, I didn't even know that. We've only talked about it once."

"Not that. You didn't even tell them you had a boyfriend until right before I got here." He rolled his eyes. "Our other… after graduation plans."

"What, that we're going to be unemployed volunteer soldiers fighting a war against horrible odds?" Lily frowned up at him when he took the book from her and set it aside on the coffee table. "It's a bit more complicated having to explain things to my Muggle parents than it is for you to explain to your parents who have known about all of the shit out there since before you were born."

She wanted to shield them from the worry, save them countless sleepless nights alone in this house while they wondered who or what was out there, imagined the horrors their youngest daughter might be facing, feared they may never see her again. If she could save them from that with a few little lies, then she would.

"You can't protect them from everything, Lily," James reminded her softly.

Sometimes, it scared her how well he knew her. She sighed and turned away from him to kneel on the floor in front of the spellbook on the table. "No, but I can shield their house."

When she shook her wand from her sleeve and made the pages of the book flutter open to the section on protective enchantments, James let the topic drop and sat himself on the edge of the sofa behind her, his long legs on either side of her body blocking her in as he read over her shoulder. After a few moments of silence broken only by the occasional rustle of turning pages, James waved his wand and a piece of parchment and her favourite self-inking quill flew down the stairs from her bedroom.

She pointed out a few spells that seemed promising and James diligently jotted them down in his frustratingly tidy scrawl.

"I haven't ever heard of this one," Lily said, pointing to a spot on the page. James set down the quill and slid off the couch to sit beside her and leaned in close over her shoulder to see what she was looking at.

"The Fidelius Charm? It's really old magic," he told her, still staring down at the book. "One of the oldest known spells, even. Extremely powerful and almost impossible to cast. Only really talented Charms Masters can achieve it. Dumbledore, likely. Possibly Flitwick. An area – a home, usually – is completely concealed and the secret of its location is given to one person only, and that is the one person who can share the secret with others. Even once you've been let in on the secret by the Secret Keeper, you can't speak of it to anyone who doesn't know. It's beyond our skillset, I'm afraid, and it's a bit too comprehensive for our needs."

"You think my parents would be too safe?" Lily's eyebrows drew together as she stared at him.

James, recognizing the tone of voice that warned of approaching anger, looked up and rolled his eyes. "Calm down. I wasn't saying they don't deserve the best protective enchantments out there. It's just that comprehensive and best are not one and the same. No one would know your parents lived here. Anyone who hadn't been told the secret wouldn't even be able to see the house. Your parents couldn't be Secret Keepers because they're Muggles, so if we were able to pull off casting Fidelius, you would probably want to be the Secret Keeper. They wouldn't be able to have guests over because you would have to meet them first and give them the secret and then they would watch a house seemingly materialize out of nowhere. It wouldn't be practical."

"Okay, okay, you're right. Sorry." Lily sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. "I just … now that you've got the idea in my head … I really want to find something I can do for them now."

"I know, and I think we have," James told her.

Lily lifted her head and squinted suspiciously at him. "Do you have another, better book of spells over there, Potter? We're supposed to be sharing."

"No, I don't." James laughed and shoved her hand away when she started to jokingly pat him down. He pointed down at the book they had been sharing. "Look on the next page. Salvio Hexia and Protego Totalum."

Lily read the descriptions quickly. "Salvio Hexia to protect against basic hexes. Protego Totalum to create a protective shield around a dwelling. It's a good start."

Her parents wouldn't understand why they needed protection from magic, but she just wouldn't tell them exactly what they were being shielded from. Besides, for all they knew, she and James were only practicing for when they had their own place. She rolled her eyes at the thought and kept reading.

James jotted something down and she stared at him in horror.

"Repello Muggletum?" she questioned. "The Fidelius Charm is too much, but a barrier to keep Muggles away from my Muggle parents' Muggle home in a Muggle neighbourhood? Really?"

He laughed and shook his head. "No, of course not. But we can use the spell as a sort of base idea. Perhaps not a barrier against Muggles, but against people with ill will? Something to play with."

"Can you do that?" She asked, cocking her head. "Can you change a spell?"

"Sure." James shrugged. "How do you think new spells are created? You just take the useful bits of other spells and take away what you don't need, add what you do, and there you have it. It will take time to craft this one into what we need because we would have to define exactly what ill will entails and what exactly would happen to anyone who fits the bill."

"You sound like you've done it before," Lily said suspiciously.

"You think it was easy making the Maruder's Map?" James said with a small laugh. "Took us a whole year to get the first draft and then there were constant alterations that had to be made, new enchantments we had to add, some of which didn't exist so we had to create them."

She looked at him for a moment, full of wonder. Here was this boy, this tall, beautiful, athletic, intelligent, funny, popular, well-liked boy, and he spent countless hours researching and inventing spells with his three best friends so they could create a map of a school they were unlikely to ever set foot in again after they graduated. They were all just a bunch of reckless swotty idiots.

When she didn't say anything, James looked over at her and seemed very much confused by the soft look on her face. She kissed him slowly, one hand on the rug to prop herself up, the other caressing the side of his face. When she opened her eyes, he had a goofy, somewhat dazed grin on his face.

"What was that for?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Because I love you."

And she did. She loved him so much it startled her sometimes. They were only seventeen, but she still felt as though she had wasted all this time not wanting to fancy him, wanting her wanker of a best friend to be worthy of her time, time she could have been spending with James, loving James. They had the rest of their lives together, though, she had to remind herself. Countless days of James being smarter than he had any right to be, of him knowing things she didn't have to say, of the warm, comfortable, dizzying feeling she got from just sitting next to him. Millions of kisses and hours, days, years, a lifetime of curling up against his long frame, his arms around her.

But it wasn't the time for such thoughts, so she slid her hand from his face and shifted her weight to lean into his side as she turned back to the book they were sharing. He swung his arm across her shoulders, pressed his lips to the side of her head, and they continued to read.

They worked in silence for quite a while and by the time they got through the entire section of the book that would be useful to them, they had pretended at least a dozen times not to notice her parents walking past the entryway. Lily flipped the book closed and sighed, rubbing her eyes. Next to her, James stretched dramatically, his back and neck arching, arms and legs splaying, and yawned loudly. She laughed when he suddenly jumped to standing, fully of energy, and held a hand down for her.

"Shall we?" he asked.

They would cast the spells that they didn't feel the need to change, they had decided, and take their time working on the others. Those enchantments wouldn't be ready to go until after graduation, they figured, but in the meantime it would give Lily some peace of mind to know that her parents were safer, at least, than most Muggles.

She swiped her wand from the table, took his hand, and let him pull her up. She led him to the door to the back garden, then paused, looking at him worriedly. "Do you think it's okay to do this? What if the Muggles see?"

"Muggles never notice magic," James said dismissively, and sighed when she shot him a disapproving look. "Have they ever noticed the Knight's Bus? The magic that they do see they always find a perfectly Muggle explanation for. The pyramids of Egypt? Stonehenge? All magic. If they see us out there casting protective enchantments, all they're going to see is a couple of teenagers walking circles around a house. If anything, they'll think we're looking to break in."

"Maybe if it was just you, but they won't think I'm breaking in to my own house," Lily said, but he had a point. Muggles did often explain away the unexplainable. Besides, it was growing dark out and it was a bitter cold evening and snow was beginning to fall again. No one would be outside anyway. She opened the door and led him outside.

"Here, why don't you go that way and I'll work my way this way," James suggested, and they began pacing away from each other.

"Salvio Hexia. Protego Totalum. Protego Horibilis. Fianto Duri." With each step she took, she muttered another incantation and a quick, dull, shimmer of light appeared in front of her, the shield taking shape.

She reached the hedge at the side of the house, looked over her shoulder and saw that James was no longer in sight. He had either jumped the hedge or magicked his way through. She sighed, decided that there was no way she was risking jumping over the waist-high prickly hedge, and tapped it with the tip of her wand. It disappeared and she quickly stepped through, waving her wand over her shoulder so that it appeared again.

"Salvio Hexia. Protego Totalum. Protego Horibilis. Fianto Duri."

She met him at the front door. James, with his longer legs, had finished his half of the house first and waited for her there instead of continuing on and meeting her. It was a wise call on his part; she probably would have been disappointed to have taken less responsibility over her parents' safety than he had. It surprised her, protective as she was wont to be, that she wasn't dissatisfied with only having done half of the work. James was a brilliant wizard, after all, and she would be hard-pressed to think of someone she trusted more.

"I feel better now," Lily confided in him. "Now that I know they're fairly well protected."

"So do I," James told her, drawing her near to him. His concern, she knew, was mostly for her next week or so here, but she also knew that he was the type of person who would have been worried over her parents' safety even if she weren't there.

The door opened and light flooded them just as he leaned in to kiss her. Without pulling away from one another, they turned to look at her father, who blinked awkwardly out at them.

"Oh," he said. "There you are."

"We were just finishing up with our enchantments," James explained as he slid his hands from Lily's waist languidly and took a few steps back from their embrace.

"I see," Lily's father said and he seemed to contemplate something for a moment before he settled on his decision. "And do all enchantments end with a kiss?"

Lily laughed, pleased that her father actually seemed to be trying to make light of the situation. She wondered if James stating that they would be living together after Hogwarts had said something of his commitment to their relationship and had made her parents like him, or at least not think of him as some strange boy who was only after one thing.

"Only the best ones, sir." James said with an easy grin. Lily rolled her eyes and gave him a small sideways shove, but she knew her grin matched his when he slung his arm across her shoulders and pulled her closer.

It wasn't until she felt the warmth radiating off of him that she realized she was freezing her tits off. She had remembered her boots this time, but neither of them had bundled up nearly well enough, and it was only getting colder the later it got.

Her father seemed to realize this at the same time she did and gestured for them to come inside. Lily wrapped her hand around James's and dragged him inside behind her.

"Dinner's ready," her father mentioned as he closed the door behind them.

"Oh, is that why you were looking for us?" Lily asked mildly. She noticed her mother standing at the foot of the staircase, looking as though she had just come back down the stairs. Lily wondered if she had gone upstairs expecting to find James and Lily in her bedroom again.

"Yes, come along into the dining room," her mother said, gesturing awkwardly down the hall.

Lily paused briefly to kick off her boots, and then she and James followed her parents to the dining room. Her mother had plated everything on nice serving dishes: her corned beef, the delectable colcannon, a colourful fresh salad, and a pitcher of water. She sat down across the table from her father, and James took the seat next to her.

While her mother served up everyone's plates, something she did every time they had guests over, her father resumed asking James about Quidditch.

"Usually a match will last a couple hours," James told him with a shrug. "Course, there are the ones that take up the entire day. It's why we only play on weekends; it could take too long if we were to play after lessons. And then there are the rare quick games that only take a few minutes."

"A few minutes?" Her father asked, pausing a moment to thank his wife when she set a plate down in front of him. "How does that work?"

"The game always ends when the seeker catches the snitch," Lily said.

"So, if it's a slow snitch and a quick seeker, they could catch it in the first couple minutes," James added. "Doesn't happen often because you usually want to score as many points as possible before you end the match to rack up your points for the Quidditch cup. That and it's dead boring if it's over before it really begins."

He pulled a dreadful, tortured look, and Lily laughed at him, reaching over to pat his knee under the table. "I remember you nearly cried when Martin caught the snitch in the first five minutes of the game against Hufflepuff last year."

James threw his head back and groaned like he was having the life sucked out of him. "I told him not to catch the snitch until we had a good lead over them." He leaned back when Lily's mother set an overflowing plate before him, smiled up at her. "Thank you."

"It's not like it affected our standings. Hufflepuff has never been an actual contender for the cup." Lily rolled her eyes when he stared at her in horror. "You're so dramatic. Thanks, Mum."

"I am not being dramatic," James insisted. "It wasn't about Hufflepuff. It was about getting more points on the leaderboard! We only went up by one-fifty when we could have gone up by at least three hundred and put a decent gap between Slytherin and us. Instead, we dropped below them and needed to wallop them in the final!"

"Which we did," Lily reminded him. "And won."

"Yes, but that's not the point!" James said, gesticulating wildly now as he was wont to do when he grew impassioned. "The point is that instead of focusing on catching the snitch in the final, Martin had to focus on stopping Regulus from catching the snitch and keep track of the score so he didn't mess up and end the game before we had enough points to win the cup."

"But we did win the cup," Lily said.

"I know! But we could easily have won the game and still lost the cup and it would have been all Martin's fault."

"But we won both, James," Lily said.

James made a strangled sound in his throat and his shoulders hunched over as if he were in immeasurable pain. When he pressed his fingertips against his eyelids and knocked his glasses askew, Lily smirked. Across the table, her father looked on with amusement as her mother grew more and more confused.

"Love," James finally said in a strained voice. "I'm aware that you're actively trying to frustrate me, but it's working a little too well. Can you please stop?"

Lily laughed and reached over to pat his thigh. When she leaned into him and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, he gave her a warning look. Not in front of your parents, you impossible girl, she practically heard him say.

"So sorry, dear," Lily said innocently, giving his leg another little taunting squeeze under the table before she pulled away and picked up her fork. "Let's dig in, yeah?"

"Yes, this looks amazing, thank you so much," James said, picking up his fork as well.

"You are very welcome," her mum said, looking delighted when James began eating with great enthusiasm.

For a while, there was little conversation besides small pleasantries. Then, when everyone had nearly cleared their plates, James spoke up again.

"Mr. and Mrs. Evans," he said, nudging Lily's foot under the table and sparing her a slight wink, "I would love it if you would tell me how Lily set the house on fire."

"You…!" Lily choked and kicked him in the shin.

"Ow!" he complained, reaching down to massage his leg.

"Lily!" her mother chided while her father tried to pretend he wasn't laughing.

"I told you I would tell you later!" Lily said, ignoring her parents as she glared at her boyfriend.

"You were never actually going to tell me, though! I know your tricks! You would only distract me every time I brought it up until I forgot all about it if I waited for you to tell me!" he accused. "You know plenty of my embarrassing moments! Hell, you've witnessed most of them!"

"That is beside the point!" she protested. "I've never asked you to relive any of those moments!"

James scoffed and leveled an incredulous stare at her. "Are you going to look me in the eye and pretend that you didn't actively make fun of me for weeks after Peter's spell backfired in Transfiguration and I ended up completely bald for a few hours back in fourth year?"

Lily bit her lip, unsuccessfully trying to hide her giggle. She had in fact teased him horrendously for what was probably closer to a couple months, but she simply couldn't help herself. As much as she had tried to convince herself that his hair was stupid for years, she'd been forced to admit to herself even back then that he just wasn't Potter without the hair. She had taken perhaps a bit too much pleasure in those few hours he had looked truly awkward. Even now that she loved him, the memory still made her feel almost giddy.

"I was trying to levitate a pillow onto my bed. I was making my bed, you see, magically. My entire bed caught fire rather abruptly and when I tried to put it out it just spread even quicker," she said in a very quiet rush.

"Scared us half to death," her father added.

"Scared us even more when the Ministry fellow just appeared in the middle of her room and set it all to rights," her mother said.

"And then the fellow scared Lily to tears, saying that if she ever did magic outside of school again, she'd be expelled forever and have her wand snapped in half," her father said.

James was smirking when he turned to her, but he quickly adopted a more stoic expression when he saw the warning glare Lily was sending him. He cleared his throat and tried to cover the amused twitch of his lips by speaking.

"You know, they don't really do that," he said in what he clearly meant to be a conversational tone. In truth, his voice was a little on the high, tremulous side as he repressed laughter. "Expel you and snap your wand. Not unless you do something really awful like purposely expose a bunch of unsuspecting muggles to magic. They just threaten muggleborns with it because you can't have a bunch of kids running around waving their wands all freely in the muggle world."

"I bet you got to do magic all the time when you were away from school, even before you turned seventeen," Lily grumbled at him.

"I never said it was fair." He reached for her hand on the table, twined their fingers together and stroked his thumb along the back of her hand. "And I'm sure it was terrifying to be threatened that way your first summer back from school."

"Did you ever set anything on fire?" Mr. Evans asked, looking at James.

"Oh, loads of times," James said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"He means by accident," Lily told him.

"Oh, well. In that case…" There was an amused twinkle in his eyes when he winked at her. "Maybe once or twice."

Her parents looked a bit concerned at that – was the boy a pyromaniac? But Lily and James were exchanging very amused glances like it was nothing that he'd just casually admitted to starting fires on purpose. Perhaps it wasn't a big deal in their world.

Lily laughed quietly; she remembered many a time James and his friends had caused explosions and mild fires in classes as either pranks or distractions, but he hadn't done anything like that since fifth year. Besides, a small fire in the back of the Charms classroom was nothing for Professor Flitwick to fix.

Mrs. Evans stood and began to gather the dishes from the table. "I'll just clear this up before pudding, shall I?"

James stood quickly. "No, don't trouble yourself. I'll clear this up."

Mrs. Evans started to protest, but Lily shook her head with a small smile. "We'll take care of it, Mum."

James and Lily made quick work of cleaning up the dishes in the dining room, charming them into neat little stacks and sending them gliding gently through the air to the kitchen, where they charmed them to wash and dry themselves. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Evans served up four dishes of a scrumptious pudding, smiling softly as they listened to their daughter giggle as James struggled to make sense of the dish organization in the cabinets. If nothing else, at least they could see that the boy made Lily happy.

They came back in both glowing happily, James following closely behind Lily as if he couldn't bear to be more than a few inches from her. Not now that their time together tonight was drawing to a close. They both knew that after dessert came goodbye, and there was no guarantee yet that they would see each other again before they headed back to school.

Mrs. Evans sat a dish of pudding in front of Lily and a substantially larger serving in front of James as they took their seats again. It was all James could do to wait until Lily's parents both had their forks in hand before he dug in. He acted as if he'd never tasted anything so delightful in his life. If Lily didn't know that he ate just about every dessert with as much gusto, she might have thought he was just kissing up to her mother.

"A fan of a good pudding, eh?" Mr. Evans said with a slight chuckle.

James grinned unabashedly and nodded. As eagerly as he tended to devour his dessert, he never did so with a lack of basic table manners, so Lily's parents found his enthusiasm endearing rather than repulsive.

"James usually eats pretty healthy because of Quidditch," Lily told her parents. "But about once a week he'll lose control over a whole platter of treacle tarts."

"A whole platter?" Mrs. Evans said. "Shall I get you a second serving?"

"I really shouldn't, thanks." James grinned over his empty plate. "But you should see me in Honeydukes."

"The sweet shoppe in Hogsmeade," Lily explained when her parents looked intrigued. "I swear, he buys about a ton of sweets every time we go down there."

"And what is a magical sweet shoppe like?" Mr. Evans asked.

"Oh, Dad, don't get him started." Lily rolled her eyes good-naturedly even as James brought his finger to her lips and playfully shushed her.

"Mr. Evans, sir, you have never seen such wonder," James began before launching into a longwinded, incredibly detailed description of the inside of Honeydukes and all the sweets they offered there.

Lily watched him fondly for a moment before her mother caught her attention.

"Did Petunia tell you that she expects Vernon to propose soon?" her mother said quietly so as not to disturb the boys. Lily thought she probably could have shouted it and her father wouldn't have even blinked from James's compelling descriptions.

"Petunia doesn't tell me anything, Mum," Lily said with a small frown.

"She thinks he's doing it tonight," her mother continued in a tone that wasn't quite full of sarcasm, but was clearly forced enthusiasm.

"Well, isn't that brilliant," Lily said, and her tone was dripping in sarcasm. "Congratulations to the happy couple."

"Lily, she's your sister," her mother reprimanded softly.

"She's a mannerless, trifling hag," Lily grumbled, and crossed her arms over her chest as she settled deeper into her seat.

James, still waxing poetic about all of the sweets her father had never seen before, slid his hand over her thigh beneath the table, giving her leg a warm, comforting squeeze. His gaze briefly slanted toward her when her father asked him a clarifying question, and she leaned in closer to him. Her mother let the conversation drop, instead rising to carry the dirty dessert dishes to the kitchen.

"I should probably be going," James said when Mrs. Evans walked back into the room, a regretful note to his voice when he looked at Lily. It was difficult for him to not be able to see her everyday, to just walk down a flight of stairs and find her seated in front of a roaring fire, or to wake up in his four-poster and find her next to him, her brilliant hair fanning across his pillow and over his biceps.

She frowned at him, feeling rather sad to have to say goodnight to him herself. Lily missed walking down the long corridors with him at night, pulling each other into a broom cupboard and losing herself in him like they were supposed to be stopping other students from doing. She wished he didn't have to go, that he could stay here with her. As much as she loved her parents, it was dreadfully boring to be home sometimes, completely separated from all the magic she had grown accustomed to. That, and any world in which James Potter was not constantly accessible to her was plain miserable.

The four of them gathered in the foyer, much like they had when James had first arrived. Only, this time James was pulling on his coat instead of hanging it on the rack and Lily was frowning, on the verge of pouting, instead of beaming and vibrating with excitement.

"Oh, I nearly forgot. When I told my parents I would be meeting you, they got very excited and a bit jealous and made me promise to invite Lily over for dinner," James said very suddenly, turning to level a hopeful look on her parents. "Lily's told me that in the Evans household, Christmas holidays are traditionally spent just with the family, but they'd really love to meet her. If you want to, that is."

He looked at her with wide, inviting eyes, one eyebrow quirked questioningly. Her heart skipped a beat and it was all she could do to hide just how badly she wanted to snog him senseless.

"You mean before we go back to school?" she asked, and bit her lip to keep from betraying her mischievous smirk when he nodded. James's parents had left out of the country on business early that morning and wouldn't be back until the night before the Hogwarts Express left. "Yes, I would absolutely love to have dinner with your parents."

"Is that alright with you, Mr. and Mrs. Evans?" James asked, turning his innocent gaze back to them.

Her parents looked at one another and Lily rolled her eyes. James caught her eye and gave her a warning look – don't mess this up, Evans. Instead of sending him an apologetic look, she rolled her eyes again, more dramatically so that she almost gave herself a headache. Suppressed laughter twinkled in his gaze and they both turned back to her parents before they were caught having another silent conversation. She nearly laughed when instead she and James caught her parents doing the very same.

It was almost funny that they actually thought they had a say in the matter. Lily was going to this "dinner with James's parents" whether they thought it was a good idea or not. Not that she thought they would have a problem with it, really. They had, after all, just hosted a dinner for James and Lily was certain that they approved of him wholeheartedly.

"That would be fine," Mr. Evans said after a moment, his conversation with his wife ending so suddenly that even Lily was a bit taken-aback. He looked at James, who had schooled his face into that uncanny innocent expression once more. "When did they want to have her over?"

"Oh, they didn't specify a day," James said. "They're really not busy, though, so any day would work, I'm sure."

"Tomorrow?" Lily suggested, her eagerness hidden behind wide, innocent eyes and a soft, easy smile. James smirked somewhat proudly and more than a little smugly.

"You've got to give them time to prepare, love. I'm sure tomorrow is far too soon." Mrs. Evans issued her daughter a gentle reprimand, a reminder to be a courteous guest as well as a reminder that she hadn't given her parents enough time to prepare for James to come over, an issue James was not at fault for.

"Really, it's fine," James assured her. "If tomorrow works for you, it will work for my parents as well."

Lily wanted to throw her fists in the air and scream in triumph or maybe do a hearty little jig about the foyer when her parents relented.

"Well, if it's really okay with your parents…" Lily's mother said.

"It is," James cut in eagerly. Lily clenched her teeth in a concentrated effort not to smile at him, and they both avoided meeting her parents' gazes.

"Then, fine. Tomorrow is fine," Mrs. Evans finished.

"Brilliant!" Beaming, James turned to Lily. "I'll pick you up for five?"

She wanted to frown at him and demand he come for her earlier, but he'd said dinner and if her parents weren't already suspicious they certainly would be if he offered to pick her up for dinner first thing in the morning. "That's perfect."

"Mum's going to be so excited." James's eyes twinkled with mischief as he gazed down at her before he forced himself to turn back to her parents. "It was a pleasure to meet you both. Thank you so much for having me over."

"It was lovely meeting you, James," Mrs. Evans said, charmed when he shook her hand warmly. "I hope you'll come for another visit before you go back to school."

"Oh, absolutely!" he said. "I'd love to!"

"Have a good night, James," Mr. Evans said, impressed by the firm handshake he received from the tall boy before him who was standing very close to his daughter. "Don't be a stranger."

"Thank you, sir. I'll bring some of the Fizzing Whizbees you were so curious about when I come for Lily tomorrow," James promised.

"Really? That would be fantastic!" Mr. Evans said enthusiastically.

For a moment, the four of them stood awkwardly in the foyer. Lily stared expectantly at her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Evans stared at James, and James pretended to study the wall clock over the coat rack. Mrs. Evans suddenly caught Lily's gaze – her eyes were steadily narrowing into a mild glare – and jolted in realization. She gripped her husband by the elbow and tugged him away.

"Come, dear, let's go straighten the dining room," she said in a much too chipper tone.

"We've already done that," Mr. Evans huffed, but allowed himself to be towed into the room.

James was already reaching for her, quietly chuckling, when Lily turned her body into him; he folded her into his arms, tightening his grip when he felt her rock up on the tips of her toes to press herself closer.

"You know, I actually would like to have dinner with your parents one day," she whispered into his ear.

"Yeah?" She felt his smirk against her neck. When he pulled away, his eyes were dancing with mirth. "Because you can't wait to have them tell you all my embarrassing stories you haven't witnessed first hand or because it's a big thing, meeting the parents?"

"Both," Lily said, and kissed him. Then, she laughed against his lips. "But mostly for the stories."

"I love you," he grinned and kissed her properly and they both were lightheaded and lighthearted and smiling when they pulled apart.

When he Disapparated with a loud crack right there in the foyer and she turned away still with that dreamy grin on her face, she didn't even notice her parents watching her glide her way to the stairs from the door to the living room, practically floating on that familiar weightless feeling he always brought to her life.

Mrs. Evans turned to her husband with an elated smile when Lily called a distracted good night over her shoulder from halfway up the stairs. "Our little girl's in love."

"Bloody wonderful," Mr. Evans grumbled, but he knew his wife wasn't fooled; in fact, her smile only widened.

That James Potter was a good boy, and it was clear their daughter wasn't the only one in love there. The way he'd hardly been able to take his eyes off her even when he'd been so patiently and masterfully explaining the details of Quidditch and magic sweets to him it was clear that none of the other great passions in his life even held a candle to Lily.

Mrs. Evans twirled away from him and into the kitchen to fix a cuppa, humming happily for their younger daughter. When he sat back down in his favoured blue recliner to wait for her, he was smiling too as he thought of the besotted expression on his not-so-little-anymore girl's face.

Well, he thought, she certainly picks them better than Petunia.

[love-fireflysong]

yIt's done. It took me waaaay to long to write this piece out but between June and my computer apparently deciding to kick me in the teeth this month, the fact I made it to 5 full squares completed anyways I will gladly take as a victory! And, just fyi, this WILL be the last piece for this month. I know that there is still another four days left of June, but I am sick and tired of dealing with my keyboard so this is the last fic you're gonna see from me until I get a new laptop hopefully fairly soon. (Unless I decide that I'm desperate enough to try and write things out on my tablet of course...)

Anyways, the First Date trope was specifically requested by @jesus-hotsauce-christmas-cake when I let her know that the one she did guess (road trip) was going to be a second chapter of a twoshot. Which you still might get because I'm very likely going to be sharing the short little summary blurbs I had written down for each trope so people can very easily bully me into writing them anyways if people still wanted to read them. And even though it would be like months and months late, still post them under this bingo board because I can and I had a cool idea for what I was doing with the colours and layout before life decided to say 'NO!' in a very firm voice. (Unless of course the three lovely ladies that came up with this idea in the first place say no obviously)

Rambling over though now I promise. Chocolate Covered Confessions can be read over and AO3 of course, with the full fic also under the readmore as well.

Chocolate Covered Confessions

Trope: First Date Fandom: Until Dawn Characters: Ashley Brown, Chris Hartley Words: 8214 Rating: General (though reader beware there is some almost scandalous hand holding and a couple of scandalously public kisses. You have been warned...) Authors Notes: Oh look, more chrashley fluff. Who da thunk it? Pride month? What pride month? This is just me apparently figuring out how many different ways I can get Chris and Ash to confess their feelings. Because you only read like three of them, I still have another two waiting in the wings. Plus at least three others if you count climbing chrash lol.

Something was...weird. It wasn't something that Ashley could put her finger on just yet, but something was definitely off that was for sure. The problem of course was that she didn't even know where to start looking in the first place, because for the most part her day had been extraordinarily ordinary.

She, Chris, and Josh had planned to go and see a movie Saturday morning a few days back and then hang out the rest of the day. But seeing as they were, you know, best friends that certainly wasn't the issue. Not even close. They always made plans to do stuff like that together. And yeah, okay, so maybe Josh had 'coincidentally' texted them just before the movie started to let them know that something unavoidable had come up and he wasn't going to be able to meet up with them. And when her and Chris had brought up just waiting until a later showing when he was free, he had immediately been quick to affirm that nope, he was going to be busy the whole rest of the day actually. So the two of them could continue with their original plans and they could make it up to him another time.

While certainly suspicious, that wasn't what was wrong though. Josh had been flaking out on their plans more and more, especially when it was plans that took up an entire day. Ashley Brown wasn't stupid. No siree Bob she was not! She knew exactly what Josh was trying to do by leaving her to spend the day with Chris. Alone . And she appreciated it (she really did!), but if Chris was going to make a move then he would have done it ages and ages ago, because she sure as hell wasn't going to do it! Ashley Brown wasn't stupid, but she also wasn't exactly what you would call brave either.

Not that Chris had seemed to notice what Josh was pulling though, he had just sighed and rolled his eyes with a grumbled "fucking typical", and then the two of them had entered the theater to watch the movie. And as per their usual shtick when Josh wasn't there with them, Chris paid for the tickets while she paid for the food and drinks. Or, at least, that was how it normally went. Instead, when she had decided to take a run to the bathroom while he held their spot in the long concession line, she had come back to Chris waiting for her with the pop and popcorn already in hand. After brushing off her flustered apologies, he had explained that shortly after she had left, another cashier had popped on till so the line had gone down in half the time either had expected. And it seemed like a dick move to just wait there until she came back so he had just decided to get the food instead.

She still felt a little guilty about it honestly, even after swearing that she would get both the tickets and food next time.

And, to be completely fair to Josh, he hadn't exactly been missing out on a lot by skipping out on the movie. It wasn't a horror flick (he would never even think of skipping out on that after all) so it wasn't one that he would feel the need to make the two of them watch again with him. Which was more than fine honestly, because if she was to describe the movie in a single word, well, that word would definitely have been 'dreadful'. If she was given a few more words, then she would have easily elaborated and stated that it was 'a boring, plot-hole driven mess, with only extremely over-the-top action scenes and explosions every five minutes to carry any semblance of the extremely loosely written plot'. In other words, she had lost interest in the movie barely half an hour in, and considering that Chris had started scrolling through his phone bored, she wasn't alone in this boat either.

Still, Ashley had resolved herself to sit through this over-budgeted explosion fest if only because movie tickets were horribly expensive. Not to mention the fact that Chris had shelled out money for both the movie and the food. But then he had turned to her, asked if she was as bored to tears as he was, and once he got that confirmation, asked if she wanted to just ditch the movie entirely. And she did—she really, really did—but didn't want Chris to waste the money he had spent more. And then yet another explosion...exploded on screen, and she realized that she was wasting precious hours of her life that could be used to do something more fun and less mind-numbingly boring.

Like watching paint dry. That at least had a semi-cohesive plot.

And so the two of them had walked out, continuing to share the extra buttered popcorn between them (the movie may have been awful, but the popcorn certainly wasn't) as they left the movie theater behind and wandered into the nearby mall. That wasn't the strange thing either. The mall and subsequent window shopping had absolutely been part of their day plans after, even if those had been unexpectedly pushed forward a couple of hours.

Admittedly the art show that the mall was running in one of the empty storefronts was unexpected, but  it had been simply a nice surprise and a great way to kill time. So after paying the $2 entrance fee, the two of them had continued to share the popcorn as they looked at some of the paintings and sculptures that had been on display, giggling childishly at most of them. And okay, so one of the curators had been glaring at them( or rather, at their greasy, butter-covered fingers) the whole time, but that had just been a little rude and insulting. Not strange. And that had stopped almost the moment they had run out of popcorn, Ashley nudging him in the stomach with her elbow as she licked her fingers clean, and the two of them laughing under their breaths at the curator who had looked exceptionally much more at ease once Chris had crumpled the empty bag into a ball.

The rest of their day in the mall had just been spent following the rest of their day's plan, wandering from shop to shop and browsing at all the things that caught their eyes, and then taking a break after a few hours to have a late lunch in the food court. The two of them checked out another couple of stores, these ones to try and get some ideas for Josh's birthday in another month, before moving onto the small arcade on the top floor. As part of their deal and agreement since it had just been Josh and Chris (Ashey not joining the duo until five years later), Chris bought the tokens needed while she scouted out the various games for an empty console and claimed it until he could join her in another couple of minutes.

They spent the next hour in there, trying to beat each other or work together depending on the game in question. They almost never played a game twice before moving onto the next one, in hopes to both try as many games as possible before their self imposed hour ended and to see if they could beat their previous high scores or make it onto the leaderboard in only a single try. But as the hour came to a close, they both made their way over to their final game: one of the racing simulators scattered around the arcade. And as had been done for ten years now, played to determine which of them would be paying for the tokens next time they came.

And once the race ended, with Ashley winning by photo finish for the third time in a row (and celebrating her winning streak by maturely sticking out her tongue and doing an awkward little shimmy dance in the seat while Chris jokingly sulked and pouted), they had finally left the mall altogether and got into Chris's truck. There, he had surprised Ashley with the novel she had been eyeing in the bookstore (or at least, eyeing closer than all the rest she had picked up) and that he had somehow been able to buy without her noticing. And that certainly hadn't been weird, because it had been so exceptionally sweet of him, sweet enough that Ashley had so badly wished that she could thank him properly. But as mentioned before, Ashley Brown was a coward pure and simple, so she had just clutched the book to her chest and beamed at Chris in heartfelt thanks instead.

He may have said something in reply, but Ashley had already settled into the passenger seat and opened to the first page of the book, so she was already long gone. A fact that Chris had anticipated, if the light chuckle he had let out before starting the truck meant anything. And no, Ashley reading a book while Chris drove them to their usual game store across town was not the strange thing either. If Chris hadn't wanted her to read on the drive over and talk to him, then he never would have given her the book now of all times. He would have waited until he had dropped her off home, or not even bought the book in the first place. After over a half a decade of friendship, if anyone knew what would happen after giving Ashley Brown a new book, it was Chris Hartley.

The drive over is done quicker then she had expected, and even then Chris still hadn't let her know that they had arrived until she had finished her chapter. Yes he had certainly teased her about it the entire time, joking about how she would never find someone as understanding of her reading habits then him (he didn't know how right he was, that she didn't want to find anyone else), but the fact that he had just continued to let the music play in the truck and distracted himself on his phone was so unbearably sweet that she decided to let it lie.

The fact that Ashley and Chris hung around in the game shop comparing dice and looking at new books while wincing over the prices for nearly two hours wasn't what was off either. Hell, if anything the fact that they only spent a couple of hours there before leaving was weird! Her, Chris, and Josh could easily spend almost half a day in there flipping through comics and rolling dice to test them out, only leaving because a tired employee was forced to ask them to leave for making too much noise and taking up a table when they weren't playing anything, especially when there was a group that had been waiting for a table for close to an hour now.

Which brought Ashley to where she was right now, sitting at a sticky plastic table under the shade of a cheap umbrella while Chris had run off to get them some ice cream before dropping her off at home. Her new book was open in front of her, the pages crisp white even in the umbrella's shade, but her mind wasn't on the book anymore. A random line had a character mentioning that something had been feeling off all day ever since they woke up ('like everything had been moved three centimeters to the left, so while it all looked normal, nothing felt right anymore'), and Ashley had also realized that hey, wait a second, her day was also feeling just a little wonky too! But no matter how hard she thought about it, she couldn't put her finger on exactly what it was. Today had just been a normal day hanging out with Chris after all. They went to see (and bailed) a movie, spent hours hanging out in the mall and at the game store, and now they were each going back home. Nothing unusual had happened, so why did it feel like something hugely monumental had been going on all day?

"Oi. Earth to Ash, you okay in there?"

A light flick to the center of Ashley's forehead has her blink in surprise, and she finds herself back into the present once again. Chris is standing next to her, carefully balancing the two cones in his right hand and his left ready to flick again if needed, and a bemused smile on his face.

"Oh, uh, sorry Chris. Got a little too into the book I think." She closes the book, not wanting to get melting ice cream all over its crisp white pages (and she really hasn't absorbed a single word for nearly ten minutes now), but Chris doesn't hand her the cone just yet.

"Yeah, I'm not buying that," Chris says as he snorts in disbelief. "I know your 'praise be to books' look, and that was not it. That was your 'head full, too many thoughts' look."

"Excuse me? What? I do not have a reading look! Or a thinking look for that matter!"

"Oh you do. You really, really do. Trust me. You may have been staring at that book but there was no way that you were reading, I would bet my own ice cream here on it." Chris brandishes his double chocolate cone at her, then seems to reconsider and switches to show off her own dipped soft serve that he still has yet to actually let her eat. "Actually, you know what? I would eat your dipped monstrosity if I'm wrong."

Ashley sighs, but she can't keep the smile from her face. "It's not that bad this time, oh my god. It's chocolate ice cream dipped in blueberry syrup. This is actually a normal combination for people who go out of their way to order more exciting cones then two scoops of chocolate." She leans forward and places her elbows on the table to support her head in her hands. "But I wanna see you do it anyway, so tell me exactly why you're so convinced that I wasn't reading."

Chris opens his mouth, but immediately closes it a second later, as though he didn't realize exactly what he had signed himself up for here until now. Ashley of course takes it as a sign of victory. "I knew it. So let's see this Chris, I wanna see you eat something that isn't—"

"When you read you get, like, super attentive." Chris's face is pink, and not looking at her but at the book on the table as he bashfully continues. "You become so drawn in to whatever you're reading that you ignore everything going on around you, because all of your attention is now on that book. Pretty sure a bomb could go off right next to you and you wouldn't even notice sometimes. And it's always so easy to tell what's happening in the book when you're reading too, cause your face is always so expressive. Like your eyes get big when something exciting or surprising happens, and when you're really enjoying whatever it is you're reading, you start giggling like a loon."

Ashley is too stunned and, quite frankly, her heart is beating too fast for her to even think of a proper response to that . She manages to squeak out a quiet little "oh, um" but Chris doesn't notice. Not when he's still babbling and not looking at her at all.

"But when you get deep in thought, you're not like that at all. All of your attention goes inward, and everything around you disappears cause all the important stuff is going on inside your head right now. Your mouth falls open just a little, sort of like you're gaping at all the information in front of you. And-and sometimes you'll mouth out what's going on inside your head as you try to fit the pieces of everything together so it's neat and tidy like a puzzle. And even though you have the, like, blankest stare imaginable, it's not empty at all if that makes any sense. Cause your eyes narrow and your forehead scrunches just the tiniest amount so you have a small little wrinkle form like right here—" with his unoccupied hand Chris points at the bridge of his nose right between his eyes "—and it's weirdly, insanely cute? But when you finally figure out the puzzle in your head, your face lights up like a kid on christmas morning and...and..." He lets his words trail off and stops awkwardly there, as though finally realizing exactly what he's been saying this entire time.

His face is almost beet red now, and Ashley is pretty sure hers is too. "Oh, uh, wow. I-I didn't realize you paid any attention to me when I was like that..."

Somehow his face only gets redder, and though he mumbles the words under his breath, Ashley can still make them out. "I'm always paying attention to you."

But not close enough attention it seems, she thinks sadly. If you did then you would have noticed something way more obvious than that. But she doesn't want to embarrass him anymore than he already is (then she already is), and she isn't sure what else she could possibly say that wouldn't be her blurting out that she likes him, so instead she pretends that she hadn't heard a single thing and wordlessly accepts the ice cream that he hands to her, accepting her defeat as she takes a small bite of the blueberry covered chocolate soft serve.

...The blueberry covered chocolate soft serve that he had bought for her. Or, you know, the ice cream he had paid for himself. Just like he had paid for everything today. Kind of like it was almost a, uh, date. Like he had taken her on a date.

Oh .

"Oh boy, let me guess: I was right and your ice cream really is a crime against taste buds?"

Ashley comes crashing back down to reality to see Chris, his face still a little red but the playful smile back on his face as he teased her. And yet, that only makes it worse as she can't help but feel the usual gymnastics routine the butterflies in her stomach perform at that particular smile, only they're a thousand times worse now that's she's realized exactly why today had felt so strange. And she can't help thinking how much everyone else would classify what was just a day hanging out with her best friend as a date. And how much she really, really wished it was one.

"Nope," she unfortunately squeaks out, and clears her throat so she can continue in a more normal tone of voice. "Nope, sorry to disappoint Chris, but the ice cream tastes fine." She takes another bite for proof (and to her credit she's not lying, it tastes more than fine). "Just, uh, realized something funny that's all." And the moment the words leave her mouth she realizes just how badly she's screwed everything up, because there is no way in any world that Chris Hartley is just going to let that comment lie.

"Funny? Oho, well now I'm interested. You mind sharing your glorious epiphany with the rest of the class Miss Brown?"

Taking another small taste of her ice cream, Ashley averts her gaze as she gives what she is kicking herself for is obviously an extremely forced laugh. "Did I say funny? I meant boring, just super boring actually."

"Well now I just want to hear it more."

"No, you don't. Trust me, you really, really don't."

Chris's brows furrow in concern. "Ash? You okay?"

She isn't, of course she isn't. She's now realized exactly what a date with Chris would be like, and it would be exactly like this. With them going to all the same place and doing the same things but she's allowed to hold his hand and kiss him when he does stupid sweet things like buying her the book she's been eyeing and talking about all day. She's never wanted something to be so true so badly in her life. And it's likely this thought in her mind that causes her to blurt out "A date." before she even realizes what she's said.

That only makes the confusion on Chris's face go deeper, which is appropriate considering she's sinking deeper and deeper into her chair in a futile effort to hide or escape as well. "What? Are you saying that you just remember what date it is today? Or that you had something you were supposed to do today instead? I'm not really following you right now Ash..."

This is perfect. It's the perfect excuse, she could laugh and say that she totally forgot what day it was and that she had an essay due pretty soon, or that she was supposed to babysit for a neighbour tonight. Anything really, the sky was quite literally the limit. And instead she just bit her lip and stared at the ice cream melting in her hand before weakly admitting "No, a, uh, date. As in, the romantic kind. I realized that today probably looks like a date to anyone else. Funny, huh?"

She's not sure how Chris would react to that. Maybe a startled laugh, and hand wave as he brushes her off. A scoff as he assures her that this definitely isn't a date, cause they're just friends and that's all they'll ever be. Whatever the reaction she expected, it was certainly not the fumbling for his ice cream as he nearly drops it in his shock, and how absolutely flustered he sounds as he trips over his own tongue. "W-what? I-I-I, uh—I mean, th-this obviously isn't—Who would even—? Wh-what would even give you the idea that we could um, possibly be on a date?"

Ashley shrugs weakly. "Isn't it obvious Chris?" She ignores his even more flustered babbling that no, he absolutely did not see what was so obvious as she continued on, still too nervous to look him in the eyes. "You've kind of paid for everything today."

"I wha—? I mean, no I haven't!"

"You kind of have, Chris. The theater?"

"You know I always pay for the tickets, and it would have just been really rude to make the line even longer!"

"The art show?"

"It was just a couple of toonies! And you saw the face of the worker there, they would have kicked us right out if they'd had to break a twenty. It was just easier."

"Lunch?"

"They-they'd had a special on for a two-person meal at that stall in the food court, and they wouldn't let each of us pay half..." he neglected to point out that Ashley could have easily paid for their lunch, and probably should have, but before she had been able to offer he'd already been swiping his debit card.

"The arcade?"

"Okay, that was my turn to buy the tokens, you know that. That one doesn't even count."

Ashley lifted her eyes from the ice cream to the book that sat menacingly and innocently all at one at the center of the table, it's pristine cover mocking her. "The book?"

"T-that was just a gift! You seemed really into it at the store and friends buy each other gifts all the time—"

There was no describing how soft and nervous her voice got as she asked the question that would put the final nail in the coffin. "The ice cream?"

"I, uh, it was just—um..." Chris let out a breath in a weak chuckle. "Shit, I guess I kind of did, huh?"

Ashley doesn't say anything, and neither does Chris, as the table goes silent. She's bracing herself  for when Chris inevitably shoots her down and confirms that it doesn't matter. That the two of them will never be anything more then friends and that she never should have hoped for anything more and by revealing this she's ruined their friendship for good—

"Hey, uh, Ash?" He sounds so nervous that it immediately takes Ashley out of her anxiety driven thoughts of doom and gloom, but she can't do anything more than just shakily nod to let him continue. "It's, uh, probably like a really, really, really stupid question but—" he takes a nervous breath "—did you want this to be a date?"

Her head immediately shoots up as she stares at him with wide eyes, her breath caught somewhere in her throat where her heart is currently lodged. She frantically rakes her eyes over Chris's face looking for any hint that he's mocking her, or playing some cruel joke on her and her feelings, but all she sees is just nervousness all over a pale, shaking face with what she thinks ( prays ) is a glimmer of undisguised hope. But it's still too much uncertainty, and she's too scared to risk it all on a mere glimmer that she is likely only imagining because she wants it so badly to be real, so she throws the question back at him instead.

"...would you have been opposed if this was actually a date?"

"Nuh uh, I asked you first."

Ashley realizes that he's just as scared at what the answer might be as she is. She wants to tell him, has wanted to tell him for years and years and years. And maybe this is the chance she's been waiting for her whole life. The two of them sitting at a sticky plastic table under the early evening sun, long forgotten ice cream melting in their hands, and she can finally tell him that she's had such a huge crush on him since she was twelve.

"Yeah." The word is less choked out than it is released. Like it's a breath of fresh air and she feels simultaneously lighter and heavier for it. "I-I think I would have liked that. I would have liked that alot."

Chris snaps his gaze up to meet hers, and the glimmer of hope that she had seen earlier has now nearly taken over his face at the disbelieving smile that's threatening to crack his face in two. "Really? I-I mean, uh, I would have been alright with the idea too. More than alright actually."

She can feel her own smile start to nervously match his, and then the first giggle breaks out. His own ecstatic laughter quickly follows her own until the two of them are both giddily laughing at the table, but too embarrassed and bashful to even look at each other now. The giggling abruptly cuts off when Chris lets out a yelp of surprise when he realizes how much of his ice cream has melted onto his hand and Ashley joins him in trying to finish off their ice cream before it's melted entirely. But there's definitely a change in the atmosphere around them now. The contentness and laid back ease that always formed between them whenever they hung out was still there, but there is a charge that hadn't been there before either. An excited anticipation that only surges higher and higher whenever Ashley shyly glances in Chris's direction to find he's looking at her with the same disbelieving smile beaming on his face.

They never say anything more about it as they both finish off the ice cream, but Ashley knows. With that little agreement, the entire day had changed. This wasn't just them hanging out as friends anymore, this was an actual, factual date now, pure and simple. So when Chris hands her a couple of extra napkins to clean herself off, she may have let her fingers brush against his for just a moment. The resulting blush and dumbstruck smile on his face when he cautiously took his hand back so he could clean up the rest of the mess on the table was oh so worth it. And when he returned from his trip to the garbage can and held out his hand as an offer to help her up from the chair, she accepted it readily.

Once she's back on her feet, the two of them drop their eyes to stare at their still clasped hands, realizing that they could easily hold hands the entire short walk back to Chris's truck if they wanted. And she does want that—horribly in fact—but it seems it's still a little too early for either of them to make that teeny tiny but monumental jump to hand holding so they let go awkwardly and slowly, letting their fingers linger against the others before letting go completely. As though giving themselves a taste of what may yet actually come to pass in the (hopefully) very near future.

The short walk back to the truck is filled with both anticipation and dread alike, but unusually silent. Ashley knows it's because she's now a buzzing ball of nervous energy, terrified that saying anything at all will shatter this dream that's apparently coming true before her eyes, but Chris is different. He looks more like he's trying to work up the courage to say or ask something, and is spending all his energy on that alone. So when he reaches out to open up the passenger side door for her, Ashley can feel her heart pick up speed when he stops with his hand on the door handle and looks at her nervously. His mouth opens and shuts a couple of times as he tries to work up the courage to say whatever it is he wants to say, and all she can do is stare at him expectantly as she struggles to hold back an excited smile.

"Hey, Ash, ca—nevermind. It's, it's stupid. Don't worry about it." A second later, he has the door opened for her and the moment she can't see his face, she lets her smile fall crestfallen. But only for a second before a polite one replaces it as thanks when he closes the door for her and continues to his side of the truck. It's fine, she supposes as she buckles herself in, while the two of them have been hanging out all day, it's only been an actual date now for barely ten minutes. And once he drops her off home in just another few short minutes it's going to be over. The fact that she even managed to get this far is franky mind blowing, so expecting anything more from her dreams would just be extremely selfish. She can't have everything she wants all at once, no matter how long she's been waiting for it.

The drive back to her place is also quiet, filled with only the droning of the radio playing in the background. Ashley's returned back to her book, but she knows that Chris knows that she's not absorbing a single word, hasn't turned a single page even. She keeps glancing at him out of the corner of her eye as he nervously taps at the steering wheel, and then tightening his grasp when it looks like he's going to say something, only to return to the nervous tapping when he inevitably backs out at the last second and returns to the frantic pep talk he's likely giving himself. The air that fills the vehicle is heavy and thick with anticipation and it's taking almost everything in Ashley to not start shaking the question out of Chris at every red light they stop at.

But, eventually, they pull up in front of her place and Chris stops the truck. There's a moment where the two of them just sit there, not wanting to leave because leaving means the end, and Ashley schools her face into a cheery smile in an effort to hide as much of the disappointment as she can when she turns to face him and bid him farewell, only to have it fall to confusion when he starts fumbling at his own seatbelt.

"Chris? What are you doing?"

He struggles further at it, frustrated that the buckle's apparently decided that now is the perfect time for it to stick once again. "Trying to get this fucking thing off."

"Yeah, I figured that much. But why are you trying to take it off, you're just gonna leave right away again anyway."

He slows his fumbling as cheeks start darkening in embarrassment. "I, uh, I just thought that was something you were supposed to do after a date, walk them to their door to stay goodnight. I mean, at least I think this is a date now? And, and only if you're okay with it! I can stay in here instead if you don't want me to. I was just hoping..."

The once forced cheery smile on her face is certainly not being forced any longer, if anything she's trying not to show how much the idea of Chris walking her to her door thrills her. "N-no!" Well, so much for trying not to show how desperately she wants that. The startled look he gives her at the unexpected outburst had her trying to control her voice into something less desperate, but considering she doesn't think she's ever going tame the frantic butterflies that have been flapping around non-stop in her stomach ever since the ice cream realization, she's probably doing a terrible job of it. "I-I mean if you want to, it's completely up to you after all..."

"Cool. Cool cool cool. Just, just give me a second." He continues to struggle with his seatbelt buckle, letting out more and more agitated curses escape the longer the thing continues to stick, and Ashley is getting the feeling that if he was able, Chris would have ripped the entire thing straight out of the seat by now. Broken safety laws and ensuing repair costs be damned. The moment he finally manages to unstick the traitorous buckle it's with a cry of victory and relief so exuberant that Ashley finds herself laughing in disbelief and awe that he had wanted to walk her the short ten or so feet to her front door that badly. Thankfully, for both of them, her seatbelt unclicks easily and much more quickly in comparison, only taking another couple of seconds to grab her bag from the footwell and joining him.

The far too short walk up to her door is over before either of them realize it. One second the two of them had been standing awkwardly and nervously by the truck as she fought the urge to reach out and grab his hand, and the next they're standing just as awkwardly and nervously (if not moreso) in front of the front door. Both of them waiting for the other to say or do something to break the tension, but cleanly aware that doing so would signal the very final end of the day, and the date. In fact, just knowing that Chris doesn't want this to end just as badly as her, is what gives her the courage to look at him with a surprisingly heartfelt and soft smile.

"Today was fun."

Chris lifts his eyes from where they had been staring at the dried leaves on the doorstep to match her smile. "Yeah. It was."

"And thanks. For the movie, and everything else." Ashley raises her hand to give the new and still shiny paperback a small wave. "And, you know, the book too. Of course."

"Yeah, it was no problem. Anytime." There's something with how he says the last bit—not really emphasizing it but making it clear all the same that he means 'anytime'—that causes her face to flush giddily as she pulls her lower lip in between her teeth in a weak effort to fight back against the ecstatic smile that forms anyway. And when she sees his eyes lower just a smidge to follow the motion and the way his shoulders stiffen in reaction, Ashley very quickly also finds she's trying (much more successfully) to hold herself  back from just saying 'to hell with it' and throwing her arms around Chris so she can finally kiss him silly and until they're both breathless. But considering that she's too much of a coward to initiate something as innocent as hand holding apparently, there is absolutely no way that something as...as scandalous as kissing him on her doorstep is ever going to happen. Clearly.

And yet, she gives Chris another few seconds to try and work past that blockade in his throat, but when he still can't muster a single word, she decides to just put the both of them out of their misery. Or further into it. It's probably just the same thing really. "I guess I'll see you next time. I'll talk to you later, okay?" She turns away and puts her hand on the doorknob, and tucks the book under her arm so she can dig into her bag for keys, but is stopped when Chris's hand abruptly snakes out and wraps itself firmly around her wrist before she can reach into the bag. And it works—boy does it ever —turning back to him and the hand wrapped around her wrist as excitement just starts to bubble up inside of her.

A second later though, his brain has apparently caught up with the movement he clearly hadn't intended to make, because his face goes beet-red and he's dropped her hand so he can shove both into the pockets of his jeans. He averts his eyes so he's back to staring at the loose gravel and dried leaves under their feet.

"Oh, uh, sorry about that. I didn't mean to..."

"It's fine, Chris." Ashley tries to smile softly at him in reassurance, but it's considering she's gripping the doorknob in an almost vice-like grip in anticipation, it's likely far more eager than she would like. "What is it?"

Somehow, his face goes even redder and he blurts out the question so fast that it may as well have been one word. "CanIkissyou?!"

Immediately, Ashley's gaping at him wide-eyed and her mouth open in shock as her heart's beating so fast that she's pretty sure it's ready to burst out of her chest at any moment. "Wha—"

"I-I mean goodnight. Can I kiss you goodnight? That's what people are supposed to do on dates, right? A-a-a-and I think we agreed that this is a date now, or at least I really, really hope we did. Cause I've wanted to go on a date with you for the longest time and-and-and I didn't want Saundra or-or-or any of your neighbours to see cause I know that would just really embarrass you and me but I've been trying to ask you for the past thirty minutes now cause I've wanted to kiss you since forever but I was scared about how you would react cause I really, really, really like you Ash and I just wanna to kiss you so fucking bad right now you have no idea and—"

Ashley would like to believe that she's brave enough to throw her arms around Chris and drag him down into that searing kiss she's been dreaming about forever and ever, but she doesn't. Even with a confession that is everything she's ever wanted to hear and more. That's not to say that she doesn't want to do it—god does she want to do it—but she's so frozen in place from shock that she physically can't. So instead she just continues to gape at him as he (adorably) rambles on and on, and giggles out an elated little "okay".

His nervous rambling stops dead in its tracks, and he finally looks back up at her, nervous relief evident all over his face. "Really? I mean, are you sure? I'd understand if you didn't want to—"

" Chris ."

That immediately shifts the relief to a different kind of nervousness entirely, one of excited disbelief, but even then neither move to actually initiate this promised kiss for several seconds. Instead just staring at each other waiting for the other to be the first to move, Chris with his hands still in his jeans pockets and Ashley glued to the doorknob with her other hand frozen as it hovers over her bag. Finally, Chris is the first to slowly bend down to meet her awkwardly half turned body, and she unsteadily tries to rock herself onto the tips of her toes without losing her balance completely and falling over. And still, they both pause about an inch away from each other's faces, though whether to give the other an out if needed or just to work through the logistics of how to do this exactly without their foreheads or noses smashing into each other or Chris's glasses getting in the way is anyone's guess.

But finally, mainly due to the fact that Ashley can't lean forward anymore without falling completely on her face, Chris closes that final bit of distance and kisses her. It's a nervous brush of the lips really—a quick peck at best —but they jolt back from each other so quickly that the single action may as well have activated some hidden magnetic repel function that neither had been aware of until this moment. Both of them are staring at each other wide-eyed and breathless as the magnitude of what they had both finally managed to accomplish hit them. The kinda-sort confession and the almost hand holding meant absolutely nothing in comparison to this. Those she could have (and would most likely have) brushed off as her reading too much into innocent statements and gestures when she thought over everything that had happened today in the safety of her room later tonight. But this? This was physical proof .

Looking back, Ashley's not sure which of them moved first. One second they had been staring at each other in disbelief, stuck in the same awkward bent and leaning stature from before, and the next it's as if the magnetic attraction between them reverses its flow entirely. Chris is cupping her cheek with one hand as he kisses her in the way she always dreamed he would, his other hand slowly skating across the back of her neck so he can pull her up closer to him. The book that had once been clutched protectively under her arm was completely forgotten about—fallen to the ground with a sharp crunch as it crushed the dried leaves beneath their feet—as her arms wrapped possessively around his shoulders as she props herself as high as the tips her toes will allow her. She can still taste a hint of the chocolate from earlier on his lips, and the small part of her that isn't being blown away by all of this is wondering if he can taste the blueberry and chocolate on hers as well.

She's not sure how long the two of them stood there on her doorstep, kissing for all the world to see, but she does know that they still separate much, much too soon for her liking. Not that they fully separate of course. She may be back on the soles of her feet, but neither of them have removed themselves from the embrace itself. And with the way that Chris is lightly brushing his thumb over her cheekbone as he just stares at her with the same stupidly giddy grin she's got, Ashley would be perfectly fine if they could just stay standing like this forever.

"So..." she starts, and stops to take a moment to giggle when Chris bumps his nose into hers. "I think that was a perfectly acceptable first date if you ask me."

Chris doesn't let go of her when he leans back to consider her, the comically raised eyebrows in shock doing nothing to take away from the absolutely thrilled beam of his smile. " First date? Why Miss Brown, are you perhaps asking me out for a second one already?"

"I mean, if it's not too presumptuous of me, I suppose I am. I-if you're not opposed to it of course." She can't help the way her nervousness starts to bleed through with that last sentence, already panicking that she's somehow completely misread everything that's just happened and that maybe that kiss didn't mean as much to him as it did to her after all.

His next words completely derail those fears entirely. "Of course I'm not, I would love nothing more than to go on a second date with you. Followed by a third and fourth and even a fifth if you have the time for it."

"I mean, I'm a pretty busy girl but I think I can open up as many days in my schedule as it takes if I need to."

Before she knows it, the two of them are leaning in for another kiss when the sound of pot being dropped in the nearby kitchen through the open window jarringly brings them back to reality and the two of them let go of each other red faced and embarrassed. Oh no, how much of this had her mother heard? Or worse, saw? She wants to leave the doorstep (which is rapidly becoming her favourite place in the whole entire world) even less now, but the longer she takes the worse the excited interrogation from Saundra will be so she starts digging back into her bag to try and find her keys once again.

"I'll text you later, okay? And, maybe, we can talk some more about that second date...?"

The reply from Chris is flustered but eager. "Yeah, totally. I-I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Cool. And um, the next one's one me. The date that is. It's only fair after all."

"Yeah, right. Only fair. Totally. And, uh, your book..."

She finally finds her keys from where they had sunk to the bottom of her bag, and looks up at him and the paperback book that had fallen during their, uh, intimate embrace. "Oh! Uh, right. Thanks." She could easily leave it at that, but the last few minutes have made her bold so when she reaches out to take the book back from him, Ashley curls her fingers over his and bounces onto the balls of her feet so she can give him one last kiss on his cheek—almost the corner of his mouth really—before finally stepping back with the book and keys in her hand. "I mean it. Thanks . For everything."

"Yeah. No problem. It was my pleasure."

She lets herself have one last glimpse of the stupefied grin on his face just as he turns to walk just a little unsteadily down the path back to his truck. The only sounds being the leaves crushing underfoot and the jangle of metal as she sticks her keys into the door to finally unlock it. A sound that it quickly interrupted by not only the click of the door unlocking, but a muffled shout.

Alarmed, she turns quickly expecting to see Chris having accidentally shut his coat into the door as he is sometimes known to do when the weather gets colder, but instead watches in elated shock as he continues to keep energetically flapping his arms and fist pumping into the air and screaming what she can vaguely make out as 'yesyesyesyesYESYESYES' over and over again.

Suddenly it hits her. Despite the shy confession over ice cream, and then the much more rushed and rambled one only minutes ago, and followed by the kiss(es) that are still sending her heart into rapid fire, Ashley still hadn't believed what all the evidence had been saying. Chris liked her. He really, really liked her. Possibly as much as she liked him even! This wasn't just a one-off event that would now make things awkward between them for the rest of their lives. This was happening. They'd just had a first(!!!!) date and after Chris had kissed her goodbye, she had asked him out for a second one.

And he had accepted .

Ashley fumbled with the door and the moment she was in the house, slammed the door behind her, not even bothering to lock it. She let her bag fall from her shoulder to the floor with a soft thump and slowly slid down the door until she was sitting against it with her eyes wide and breathless. She ignored the surprised clatter coming from the kitchen as Saundra immediately dropped whatever it was she had been doing in and held up the book so she could stare at the once innocuous cover in amazement.

He had bought her this book and the ice cream because he liked her and he had gladly and excitedly accepted to go out on another date with her. And even more if he had been serious about that third date and beyond line.

And not that either would ever know it, Ashley mirrored Chris at that exact moment by placing her head into her hands and screaming as the built up joy and bliss finally exploded out of her.

[postalninja]

Fic Writer Meme

I saw @cicaklah post this and wanted to try :) 1) How many works do you have on AO3? 

17 currently - 14 fics, 2 pieces of fanart, and 1 how-to guide thingie. I’ve been writing/posting for less than a year and a half, though, so there’s much more to come!

2) What's your total AO3 word count?

196 767.

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

6 for fics, 7 if you count fanart. They are mostly for video games, ‘cuz that’s how I roll:

- Octopath Traveler

- Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

- Legend of Zelda

- Persona 5

- Chrono Trigger (fanart)

And two non-game fandoms:

- Violet Evergarden

- Drawfee RPF

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1- Adrift in the Ocean of her Eyes by a large margin. My first and only fic to surpass 100 kudos as of yet! I almost didn’t finish it after I kind of stalled on it and was unsure whether it would be redundant in the fandom, but I’m so glad I did because people seem to love it.

2- A World of Knowledge Awaits, which as a crossover appealing to two fandoms, doesn’t come as too much of a surprise.

3- Sins of the Father, which I put a ton of work into, and I’m so glad it resonated with people.

4- Someone Strong, my very first baby fic! My initial foray into fanfic writing, spurred on entirely by the fact that my OTP was exceedingly underrepresented, if not entirely absent, from the Octopath Traveler fandom. I am a one-person H’annberic cheerleading squad, and I will *never* put these pompoms down! (FYI, I typoed ‘squard’ instead of ‘squad’ at first and almost left it that way. Squaaard!!)

5- A Cleric’s Quandary, based on a completely silly idea, so it was really fun to write!

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do, indeed! I love getting comments, and I always want to at least acknowledge them even if I don’t have anything profound to say in return. But if someone replies back to my reply, then I may not always add more if the conversation feels complete, ya know?

6) What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Ooooh, definitely What the Heart Wants. (Spoilers ahead) The reader is left unsure about whether or not the protagonist survives.

7) What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Probably Someone Strong, because it was my chance to write the story of H’aanit and Olberic’s relationship, and I wanted to give them the whole happy ending of a wedding and a baby on the way. Of course, it wasn’t the *ending* of their story, per se, given that I have a whole series of fics about them, and I’m not done yet!

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

Only one so far, so it is by definition the craziest. Persona 5/Octopath Traveler, which isn’t even that crazy considering that it’s canon in Persona 5 that characters can enter an alternate universe using an app on their phone, so....

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I am lucky not to have received any hate, which I am very grateful for, but then again, I haven’t been at this for all that long, and I don’t get huge views either. So I am quite happy in my little corner being ignored by the haters.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Why yes, I do! Why else would I write about the characters I love, if not to make them bone? lol.

I’ve only written M/F smut, since that’s what I’m most comfortable writing, and it’s rarely *super duper* explicit - I’ll use a fair few euphemisms a lot of the time. The more smut I write, though, the more I worry that it’s all the same... might need to start taking more risks! 

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge, but that would suck.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Again, not to my knowledge, but that would be awesome!

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Kiiiiind of? Years ago, my D&D party started an email RPing campaign that was sort of like writing a fic together, but it stalled at some point and is long since lost to time.

My partner and I also wrote the beginnings of an original story together (also started as an attempted RPing campaign) and some day I might want to work on that one some more, because I liked what we came up with.

14) What's your all time favourite ship?

Olberic Eisenberg, the Unbending Blade of Hornburg, and H’aanit, huntress of the Dark Wood. I have never been so enamored of a fictional pairing, and this is literally what has thrust me into getting involved in fandom instead of just quietly enjoying content by myself. LET ME YELL AT YOU ABOUT HOW MUCH I LOVE THEM! If I had to pick a runner-up, I’d say the Evil Queen/Robin Hood from Once Upon a Time. I will read anything @somewhereapart writes about those two for as long as she keeps writing.

Another, more recent favorite, is definitely Agent 47/Diana Burnwood from Hitman! I only discovered the Hitman games this year, but I love that pairing to bits.

15) What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I do intend to finish all of my current WIPs, of which I have... 4? 5 if you count the one that’s currently being beta-read. I guess the one I’m struggling with the most is an Octopath H’aanberic family-fic with the working title of Journey to Cobbleston. Olberic and H’aanit are taking their daughter B’renit to Cobbleston for the first time, and it doesn’t really have much more plot than that, so I’m finding it challenging. It’s just a cute story partially from the point of view of a four-year-old traveling for the first time, and it feels like not enough “interesting” stuff is going to happen. I struggle with pure fluff, y’all.

16) What are your writing strengths?

Grammar! And writing emotions - I’ve gotten enough comments from people telling me that they could feel my characters’ emotions in my writing for me to gather that I must have a knack for it.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

Pacing and plot/worldbuilding, ie. bigger picture stuff. And using too many clichés, probably.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?  

I’ve only written in English so far, but it’s not my first language, so I would definitely not shy away from writing dialogue in French if it was called for. Otherwise, since I am a *huge* language nerd, I would likely give other languages a try if the story called for it, and get a native speaker beta to look over it for me before I posted.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for? 

Octopath Traveler, as previously stated. It’s still my main fandom.

20) What's your favourite fic you've written?

I have a soft spot for The Measure of a Man. I just really liked what I was able to accomplish with it as a character study for Olberic, and I enjoyed incorporating a lot of the other canon characters into his story, too. Feel free to join in with your own answers, friends! :)

[orionsangel86]

What are your favorite canonverse destiel fics?

Aww man nonny this list is gonna get long! Okay so first of all I have very specific requirements for my canon verse reading material. In that it has to be during or post season 8, Dean is bisexual and not just “gay for Cas but otherwise straight” and preferably Bottom!Dean or at least implied switching, as otherwise its out of character in my head. I also do not read Major Character Death or anything too extreme in terms of trigger tags. All these fics have a happy ending but MIND THE TAGS.

FYI for me MCD means that either Dean or Cas are separated by death at the end and it ends a tragedy, I don’t read those. I DO however read fics where they BOTH may die and reunite in heaven together to live happily ever after in their own personal heaven. I think one of the fics in this list has that kind of ending. 

In no particular order:

The Path of Fireflies

The Chronicles of Dean’s Bisexuality

The Pillow Verse

The Prophet Must Die

Dream as if You’ll Live Forever

The Dance of Inanna - This is the one where they both die and go to heaven.

State of Nature - Alternative season 11 which gave me extremely high expectations of the Darkness which the show obviously failed to meet.

The Cabin

The Most Important Thing - Fantastic fic with Claire Novak

Contrapasso - This one gets pretty dark and doesn’t have many tags. It isn’t too horrific but just be warned.

What is Hidden, What is Seen

The Mirror - Absolutely heart breaking at times but one of my faves

The Story of You and Me

Dream of Now - I love Cas so so much in this fic. He majorly turns me on ;)

To Mend the Cracks With Gold - Again an amazing story

The Law of Equivalent Exchange - READ IT OMG READ IT I LOVE IT

What Has Eight Tentacles and Isn’t Allowed to Eat Pie? - This is the cutest! Do NOT be put off by the tentacles. It is 100% pure gross fluff

My Heart Is Beating From Me

A Turn of the Earth

Happily Never After

Forget Me Not

If You Get Lost You Can Always Be Found

Its a Long Life to Always Be Longing

Return

Same Deep Water

The Guardian of Angels

Hurry Up and Wait

Ultraviolet

Plot Holes

Circadia - This is a really gripping story that I found difficult to put down. If you are a Cas girl it will hurt so much but you will love it.

Raspberry Cliche

Let It Be - Technically this is canon divergent from the night Mary died (where John died instead) but I heartily recommend it because it is an amazing take on what the boys lives would have been like had Mary raised them instead. 

I also highly recommend anyone who hasn’t already to read Redemption Road. It is a 600K behemoth of a fic but was written with a lot of love, a truly gripping plot and a whole new world of interesting characters.

I have so many more faves, but I don’t always save them to my bookmarks and then I lose them and wonder what happened to those fics... I used to have one about the God of Dreams and Sleep and he takes Dean, and Sam and Cas have to rescue him and my god it was abstract and awesome but I haven’t been able to find that for years. *sigh*.

But anyway. Enjoy!

[hiraethtae]

BTS Fic Rec | part 1

**- fav ***- amazing fics i love

see you through the screen by FlaminkoMage ***

There was Taehyung, a popular internet blogger, and there was Jeongguk, one of the most famous idols in Korea.

AU where Taehyung manages to befriend his favorite singer without even knowing it.

note: it’s ongoing! ( no smut, slow burn )

#Taehyung\jungkook

min yoongi, the park jimin stan by lovelivesinthedream 

Min Yoongi is a few things: college student, amateur music producer, composer, lyricist, and part-time cashier. Min Yoongi is not a fanboy for idol groups. No way.

At least not until he sees BTS perform for the first time and is instantly captivated by Park Jimin.

note: it’s ongoing! ( no smut, fluff )

#yoongi\jimin

Before I Fall by riinkuun (corporalrin) **

Jimin isn't all too fond of the popular idol group, BTS. Okay, so he knows most of their songs and even has a favorite member. And he might have memorized at least one piece of choreography for one of their songs. He would really like them more if it weren't for the notorious douche bag of the group, Jungkook, weren't in it. However, when he and Taehyung get a chance to meet up with the idol group, Jimin gains some unwanted attention from a certain someone he'd rather have no involvement with.

note: completed! ( enemies to lovers, fluff, every fangirls dream )

#jimin\jungkook

all because of you by xxdevilishxx for chunshi **

jeongguk frowns, ruffling his own hair, and whispers, "even if you’re j-hope in front of the fans, you don’t have to play that part in front of the rest of us. i like hobi hyung a lot, but i like hoseokie hyung even more.”

(based off festa 2016 where the anonymous letter for hoseok stated how sometimes he made the members uncomfortable by being too happy and excited)

note: oneshot ( one of my most fav fics because i’ve never read anything like it. pure and sweet. wished it was longer tho ;3; )

#jhope\jungkook

I Want You To Be My Night by TheOrgasmicSeke 

The Big Bad Wolf may be big, but he's really not all that bad. He's more like an over sized puppy who just wants to be loved.

note: oneshot! ( jungkook is the cutest werewolf and yoongi is a caring person )

#yoongi\jungkook

그 손을 내밀어줘, Save Me by TheHalesNyx **

That’s when Min Yoongi, self-declared ‘simple man’, turned the corner onto his street, mid-yawn, his breath escaping with a small squeak he’d never admit he made, when he collided into another body, and his ‘simple man’ life was thrown into chaos.

In which Jungkook is angry, nearly a high school drop out, and alone, and Yoongi is an adult who is struggling, and somehow, they find someone to save them in each other.

note: completed! ( has the same vibe like ‘i want you to be my night’ but this whole fic just made me have faith in humanity again )

#yoongi\jungkook

the moon and the stars (are nothing without you) by wowoashley (orphan_account) 

based off of Real Events that happened to me the other day. i ended up screaming to siobhandestele about it and they told me to write a fic about it. and the word moderation does not exist in my vocabulary so :) based off the prompt: "Taekook college AU! The college tour guide raved about the uni's friendly atmosphere and amicable student body, but wanted a high five from a cute student and all he got was a glare"

note: completed! ( cute & funny, I really enjoyed this one. jungkook is hella awkward and tae is personality goals. seokjin isnt the nicest chara here so be warned )

#taehyung\jungkook

The World by RoseFangedLion  ***

They say if you go and put your ear to the Heart of the World for long enough you'll hear the name of your soulmate whispered out in its heartbeat. But Yoongi fell asleep on that thing almost every night and he had never heard a word. Not that he's bitter or anything...and his bitterness certainly doesn't drive him to leaving his comfortable home to go out adventuring as a mail currier or anything...not at all. That said there is a distinct possibility that Yoongi is more sarcasm than human.

note: completed! ( This fic is on a completely differnt level then any other fic i have ever read. World building, amazing story line, amazing imagination and just the whole idea. Yoongi’s character here is absolutely stunning and the plot twist at the end had me sighing wistfully. i highly recommend you guys to read this fic it’s highly underrated )

#yoongi\taehyung

preorder bonus by abdicar 

Jimin is a lesser known streamer who works at a video game store during the day. He’s pretty happy with his routine and his small audience, at least until famous youtuber AgustD decides to take an interest in his channel.

Thankfully, he’s too busy developing a crush on Yoongi, one of the store’s new regulars, to worry about it.

[aka the gamer and streamer/youtuber au nobody asked for]

note: oneshot! ( aka a really cute fic. really liked the concept. highly recommended )

#yoongi\jimin

The Songbird and the Sea by MissterMaia ***

In a world where dominance of the sea is an endless battle between pirates and mariners, Park Jimin is content living in his little village on a small, uninteresting island by the eastern mainland. He wants nothing to do with the bloodshed of good and evil, the heartless killing of both innocents and condemned, the constant establishment and disruption of order. What he wants is peace, to live his life in the same town he was born in, to spend his days in the beautiful forest, and to use the powers of his Blessed Rune to nurture the home he loves so dearly.

But when his island is attacked by pirates, Jimin will have no other choice than to do as they command and leave all thoughts of peace behind in favor of boarding the Agust, a pirate ship captained by the infamous Min Yoongi, Black Fox of the East.

note: ONGOING BUT ALMOST FINISHED! ( enemies to lovers, slow burn. amazing world building. plot and characters, i bloody love this fic, if i can quote it like a novel i will. it’s absolutely breathtaking with amazing unique concept just like ‘the world’ fic and i highly recommend you guys read it!!!)

#yoongi\jimin

refrigerator humming, chewing gum and instant karma by locks

Taehyung sets the flowers down on the dining table, plucking the card off the little holder. "Dearest Taehyung, just wanted you to know that I'm thinking about you. I hope you're thinking about me too. Love--" he pauses and squints before cocking an eyebrow and pursing his lips. "Hyung, why is the boss of your little boy band gang professing his love for me?"

Yoongi drops the noodles on the floor with a loud curse as he burns his hand.

Or, Taehyung's been trying his hardest to avoid Yoongi's criminal life for a long ass time, but a cute kid and his infuriating father keep pulling him deeper into the mix.

note: completed! ( THIS FIC OMGOD, it’s funny, it’s cute, it got me squealing here people! taehyung is great with kids, jungkook is hella smooth, this shiz has explicit sexual content and gang story oml it’s good people! also taehyung scares people i bloody love his character here! )

#taehyung\jungkook

white balance by sasireun ***

Yoongi brings his camera along to the event without thinking much about it, but Jimin really is too cute to resist photographing.

(Alternate-reality where Yoongi becomes a Jimin fansite master.)

note: oneshot! ( god i loved this concept so much! if any of you have more fics like this send me a message! it’s well written and cute and i wish it would continue )

#yoongi\jimin

Blow Me Like Your French Horn by ohdizzy for jiminiminiminie ***

In which Jimin undergoes a transformation from Cinnamon Roll to Sinnamon Roll and Jeongguk is a little too competitive, a little too tsundere, and a little bit too moony-eyed for his own good.

(A tale of red converses, sandpit wrestling, shitty best friends a little too obsessed with playing Cupid, emotional constipation, existential crises, and that one body roll Jimin does that makes Jeongguk re-evaluate his life)

“i see that you adore playing your loud ass trumpet at random moments in the middle of the night, well fyi i happen to be a master at the French horn so fuck u i challenge you to a brass off” AU

note: completed! ( this damn fic had me wheezing continously across this storyline. jungkook is a tsundere and good is this story amazing, highly recomended if you want to have  agood day it will certainly bring up your mood. also the bloody fic name i cannot- )

#jungkook\jimin

King of the Library, Knight of His Trade by madigraye 

Moral of the story? Don't fuck with Jeon Jungkook or else you'll end up ruining your perfect attendance to chase his coattails.

note: oneshot! (Taehyungs character here reminds me of the tae from ‘the moon and the stars (are nothing without you)’ fic and i really liked his character there so hell yeah. a funny chain of misfortune keep tae meeting kook and it left me cackling)

#jungkook\taehyung

Constraint by Harlot ***

Jungkook is young and he is more acquainted with confusion and poor-decision-making than he’d like to admit. Despite being only 19 years old, he sometimes argues that he’s been through and seen some shit. He is never sure where he’s going to end up and he’s not entirely sure what kind of future is waiting for him. He is often not sure of a lot but he is certain—absolutely certain—that he’s not gay. Alternatively, a story in which Jungkook meets Park Jimin and doesn't like him whatsoever. There's just something about him... there's just so much about him. Jungkook really can't stand him. In fact, he can't stand him so much he can't quite seem to get him off of his mind.

note: oneshot! (This story is bloody real to me. Awesome characterization, about the same level like the world and the s&s. Jungkook’s character development is amazing and jimins character is hella strong. I love this story. Please read it. No matter how painful it is)

#jungkook\jimin

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Kavbj 

Taehyung has magic in his veins and Jungkook's determined not to let it kill him.

note: completed! ( The fisrt BTS fic i ever read. really original, well written, can be confusing at times but i really liked the concept and taehyungs character)

#jungkook\taehyung