In the Comfort of Your Arms
After a very bad week, Lily Evans finds herself unable to sleep, and the only person that can possibly offer her any peace is fast asleep in his own dormitory where she is definitely not allowed, especially not in the middle of the night. Good thing the Head Girl isn't too fussed about following the rules.
or "I'm sad, please cuddle me to sleep."
She didn’t know why she was so nervous. It wasn’t like she’d never broken a school rule before; she may have been Head Girl, but she wasn’t without flaws. It certainly wasn’t that she was worried that what she was about to do wouldn’t be well-received.
Perhaps it was more that what she was about to do held certain implications. A teenage boy could hardly be blamed for having certain expectations when his new girlfriend climbed unannounced into his bed in the middle of the night. He wouldn't be inappropriate with her, wouldn't try to push past any boundaries she set. She knew that. She knew him and trusted him. Maybe, just possibly, she might even love him.
But he had three roommates, and sure they were among her best friends too, now. But if they awoke when she was trying to wake him, she would never hear the end of it. She knew this for a fact since they had been ridiculous teenage boys about just seeing her sitting on his bed the other day in the middle of the afternoon. He wasn't even near the bed with her when they walked in after whatever nonsense they had been up to, but leaning over his desk scribbling the last of his Transfiguration essay before he had to run down to Quidditch practice.
She really didn't want to hear the teasing again.
But, well, Lily had a bad week. So bad, in fact, that she hadn't even wanted much to do with her boyfriend or any of her friends. She had been mopey and withdrawn and antisocial. And lonely, by her own design. But now it was the middle of the night and she couldn't sleep yet again and she would go absolutely mad if she had to lie here staring at the ceiling for the fourth night in a row. Lonely still. She could wake one of the girls, she knew. They would grumble, but they were good friends and they would listen to her talk about her stupid family drama even if it was nearly three o'clock in the morning and they had Potions first thing tomorrow.
The problem was that as lovely as her friends were –and they were truly the best friends she could imagine– she wanted James. She wanted his arms around her, his scent engulfing her, to feel the steady rise and fall of his chest and to hear every beat of his heart beneath her ear. She wasn't sure she wanted to talk about it all just yet, but James was as good an ear as her girls. Better, sometimes as he always seemed to know intuitively whether she wanted him to help her problem-solve, just sit there and listen, or spew hilarious insults about whoever or whatever had upset her.
She stayed, frozen as she was at the foot of the boys’ stairs, for another moment before she took a deep, steeling breath, and darted up the long winding staircase, rushing lest she lose her nerve over time. If she woke the others, so be it; she could handle a few obnoxious boys. If James woke and automatically expected sex by simple virtue of her being a girl in his room in the middle of the night despite the fact they hadn’t even gotten past a good heated snog yet and she had been depressed all day, then he was a tosser of a boyfriend. If she embarrassed herself she would live, she told herself as she reached their closed door and silently, carefully, slowly, pushed it open and slipped inside.
It was dead silent within and to her horror none of them had bothered to draw the curtains around their four-posters. They were all sound asleep, at least, and not a single one of them stirred as she crept to James’s bed in the far corner, trying desperately not to look at anyone else since she could tell there was an awful lot of bare skin illuminated in the moonlight filtering in through the open window. It shouldn’t surprise her that they all slept shirtless, but she hadn’t considered that they might not be fully clothed when she’d convinced herself to barge right in uninvited.
She reached James’s bed and, not wanting to push her luck with the rest of the boys, pointed her wand at his bed hangings so they silently closed themselves to offer some privacy. Then, she cast a quick muffling charm on them. Then, finally, at last, on a shaky breath, she climbed into his bed.
He woke immediately despite her effort to move gracefully and jostle the mattress as little as possible, his eyes snapping open as he turned in her direction. Lily froze, halfway sitting on the edge of his bed. Though his vision was absolutely dreadful without his glasses, and although he had not been expecting her, he seemed to already know it was her. He sighed deeply and smiled up at her.
Her face felt hot and she had never been more grateful for his poor vision and the darkness of night as she felt her chest flush as well. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi,” he said, his hand alighting on the back of her wrist and trailing gently up the length of her arm to the back of her neck. He sat up to try to actually see her, and frowned, concerned. “Are you alright?”
Lily shrugged and shifted so that she was sitting more comfortably facing him, her knees bare below the hem of her soft blue nightgown. He was still looking at her, squinting really, studying her. She wondered not for the first time how much of her he could really make out without his glasses. Could he see how sad her eyes still were? She sighed, and shook her head. “No, not really.”
He was quiet for a moment, and the hand at the back of her neck shifted to stroke down her hair soothingly as the other covered her hands in her lap. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She peered at him through the dark, and felt foolish for even briefly considering that he would be anything other than this perfect, concerned, caring boyfriend.
“Tomorrow, maybe,” she said, turning one hand over to thread her fingers through hers. “Can we…James, can I sleep here tonight? With you? Would you mind if I just ask you to hold me?”
“Of course I don’t mind,” he said immediately, already shifting to lie back down and pulling her down with him. “Of course you can stay. Tonight, any night.”
It took some shifting for her to get comfortable, and it was awkward for a moment as she had to lift the covers and shimmy her way beneath them with him, and she flushed hotter when her bare legs brushed his and she realized he didn’t even have pyjama bottoms on but was sleeping in only his boxers. She moved her leg back, but he didn’t seem to be embarrassed by her discovery.
“You must think I’m ridiculous,” she said softly, not quite meeting his gaze. He shivered when her warm breath fanned against his collarbone. “Crawling into your bed in the middle of the night after barely speaking to you for days, begging you to hold me.”
“Not at all.” He slid his arms beneath the covers and around her waist, pulling her closer so their bodies were fully flush. Their legs tangled together and she could feel that her nightgown had bunched up so that her knickers would be on full display if not for his quilt. It was the most intimate moment of her life, and there wasn’t even anything sexual about it. “Lily, if I could, I’d have snuck up to your dormitory ages ago.”
She smiled at that, but it must have been a bit of a sad smile because he slid a hand up her side to gently rest on the side of her face, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth.
“Whatever it is, Lily, you don’t have to go through it alone,” he murmured. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
She was impossibly moved, but could think of nothing to say, so she turned her neck to press a kiss to his wrist, and then snuggled in, her head on his shoulder, nose brushing his neck. The untidy ends of his hair brushed against her face as he shifted, angling his head so that hers was tucked safely beneath his chin. His hand slid down against, warm on her bare arm, to drape over her back.
For a long while, they stayed like that, and Lily felt herself drifting off to sleep for the first time that night in the peace that he created for her. But something struck her, some tenderness in her heart that nagged its way up into her brain so that it was on the tip of her tongue. She lifted her head, expecting to find James soundly asleep. He wasn’t. Not quite. His eyes fluttered open, sleepy and half-alert, and a slight smile played at his lips.
“I want to say something,” she whispered.
“Okay,” he prompted when she didn’t immediately continue.
“I want to say I love you.” It was silly to be nervous again, when he was holding her so tenderly, when he was being so, so impossibly sweet to her, when it was written all over his face that he felt the same.
His smile widened, just a bit. “You may.”
She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t stop the small smile she felt tugging at her lips, or her hands from sliding up his firm, bare chest to rest on his shoulders, fingers tangling in his hair. “I love you.”
He pressed a lingering kiss to her temple, then drew back to look her in the eyes. “I love you, Lily Evans.”
Tomorrow when they woke she would pull him away from his friends, and hers. Tomorrow, she would confide in him about the awful letter her sister had sent her and she would probably cry all over him, and he would listen and he would console her. But tonight, she was finally able to set aside the heavy overbearing angst she had carried with her all week.
Tonight, she rested her head on the pillow next to James, the tips of their noses practically touching, and she breathed in the warm, comforting scent of him; cinnamon and parchment and night air. Tonight, she let the warmth of him, the love and peace that they shared, envelop her.
Tonight, she finally slept.
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