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sugarsnappeases · 2 months

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@hpsaffics femslash feb day 24 - unhappy marriage | 2.3k words (whoops) | lesbian lilypad (regency au!! rivals to lovers!!) | warnings for a little bit of violence, a little bit of angst, and a little bit of making out <3

for my darling @themuseoftheviolets ilysm and you pushed me off the edge of a cliff the day we first started talking about them. so. hope you enjoy!!

It wasn’t meant to be like this.

Lily was being shown around Potter Manor by her new husband, James was telling her anecdotes about every piece of furniture, welcoming her into his heart and home, and it should’ve been perfect - but it wasn’t.

James had always been the goal, the plan, the marriage that would elevate her family, solidify her status, grant her security - he was meant to be her happily ever after, but she couldn’t seem to manage the ‘happily’ part, and she quite desperately didn’t want this to be ‘ever after’.

They had been married for a day, just one day, and Lily could feel every second of it, the weight of the gold band around her left ring finger, the weight of the life she had married into, the weight of til death do us two part.

And there was nothing wrong with James.

That was why she had wanted to marry him in the first place; he was handsome, and wealthy, and charismatic, and polite, and everything she had ever wanted; he was the stories her mother used to read to her and Petunia before bed, the way she had always envisioned her future, the prince charming to her fairy-tale princess. He was walking her through the manor and trying to engage her with stories from his childhood, trying to make her feel at home, trying to make her happy, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with him but it wasn’t working.

It was with her that the problem lay.

It was in the way that she hadn’t really been listening to a word that he was saying, smiling and laughing in the right places but not properly paying attention.

In the way that she found his enthusiasm grating, his words hitting her ears jarringly, the wrong voice, the wrong cadence; the way that she couldn’t bring herself to care, couldn’t bring herself to fully engage, to offer any of herself in return.

It was in the way that walking around the manor felt like a hollow victory, something almost chasmal between her ribs, threatening to swallow her whole, something with dark, silky hair and silver-grey eyes, a bottomless abyss.

Lily had everything, she had won, the husband and the title and the dream come true, and yet it all just felt wrong, uncomfortable and stifling and not at all how she had always imagined it would feel - it was everything that she had ever wanted and she hated it, and she hated that she hated it.

And she knew exactly who’s fault it was, knew who had slipped between her ribs like fingers through dark, silky hair and opened an crevasse, pushed her down avenues she never would have dared to explore, changed the things she dreamt about, the things she fantasised about.

James pushed open a door, still talking, telling her some inane story that she had completely tuned out.

Lily smiled mindlessly as he gestured for her to enter ahead of him, glancing over the room she was walking into and - stopping dead in her tracks.

She knew this room.

She had been in this room before, just over a month ago now, a memory that she had been trying to suppress, trying to push it down into the depths of that gaping hole inside of her, a memory that she didn’t think she would ever be able to consign to oblivion, a memory that tormented her, that swirled through her mind like smoke, impossible to contain.

Lily could feel sharp fingernails digging into the skin of her upper arm through the fabric of her dress, a hand pulling her along and then shoving her through a door.

A hand that was attached to an arm that was attached to a body that was draped in finely-embroidered white muslin and emerald silk. A body that belonged to Sirius Black, a body that was looming over her now, one hand on each of Lily’s shoulders and shaking her, silver-grey eyes flashing with anger.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked, shaking her harder as Lily tried to pry her hands away, those fingernails digging into her skin again, sharp and cruel and unrelenting.

Lily scowled, crossing her arms instead, feeling that deep well of anger in her ribcage start to bubble up in the way it always did when she was around Sirius.

“What’s wrong with me?” she replied, “You were the one who was all,” - Lily put one hand to her chest, batting her eyelashes, adopting a breathy, simpering voice, and quoting, - “Oh! My lord! Might you like to dance the second with me as well?”

Sirius rolled her eyes, pushing Lily away with one last shake and making her stumble backwards further into the room. Lily looked around as she recovered her balance - it was an extravagant room, yet somehow still elegant despite the excess of red, and likely intended to be used as some sort of parlour.

She glared across the room at Sirius who scoffed, “I don’t see why you’re complaining, you danced five times with him at the Longbottom ball, honestly you’re so entitled”

“I’m entitled?” Lily interrupted, heat starting to rise in her cheeks in the way that it always did when she was mad, “Everyone knows that the first dance is the most important one, especially at his own ball, but, of course, that still wasn’t enough for you, no, you had to have the second one too, you have to have everything-”

Sirius interrupted her then, narrowing her eyes, silver-grey like the diamond necklace around her throat or like the jagged rocks at the bottom of a cliff that Lily wanted to push her from, “And you’re jealous, you’re jealous and immature, you’re like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum because someone else took your toy”

As she spoke, she stepped closer towards Lily, index finger pointed in her face, those sharp, unrelenting fingernails, “Duke Potter wanted to dance with me, he chose me this time, and yes, maybe I do think I deserve it - I’m certainly more deserving of it than you”

That last word was emphasised with a harsh jab of that index finger into Lily’s collarbone.

“Is that so?” Lily asked, swatting Sirius’ hand away and putting her own hands on her hips. This close, Lily had to tilt her head up to look into Sirius’ eyes - silver-grey, bright and cruel and hard, “Might I ask what you’ve ever done to make you more worthy of Duke Potter than me?”

“You might,” Sirius replied, smirking down at her, the same smirk that had been on her face when she asked James for a second dance, glancing at Lily out of the corner of her eye, the same smirk that had fallen from her face when Lily had tripped her up, making her fall and interrupt the entire dance.

“For one,” Sirius began, lifting her hand to count out the reasons on those cruel, unrelenting fingers of hers. “I’m fluent in six languages and I know for a fact that your Latin is subpar”

Lily frowned, still looking up at her, still standing so close that the hems of their dresses were touching, “I play more instruments than you, though, you only play the three and even then your flute is really quite abysmal”

“Numeri duo,” she continued, in Latin because she always had to be ostentatious, lifting a second finger and not even acknowledging Lily’s words, “My family name is much more prestigious than yours and so the match will be both auspicious and widely favoured”

“But your parents disagree about almost everything, surely that would make the match rather more disagreeable than my family name would,” Lily rebutted, reaching up with one of her hands to try and forcibly fold Sirius’ middle finger back down again.

Sirius grabbed her wrist with her other hand, struggling to pull it away so that she could lift a third finger, “Thirdly, I have been taught how to properly behave myself in public and don’t go around tripping people over and ruining balls like I’m still four years old”

Lily grinned, because maybe it was messy but she could be just as sharp and cruel as those silver-grey eyes, as those unrelenting fingernails which were now digging into the skin of her wrist, pressing against her pulse. She could ruin Sirius’ pristine reputation, the belle of every ball, the perfect heiress to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, make her the centre of attention in a bad way, trip her over and make it look like it was Sirius’ fault that half the ballroom was knocked over in the process.

“If you didn’t want to fall over, you should have learnt to balance better,” Lily replied, something almost vindictive behind her teeth and rising up her throat from that well of rage in her ribcage, “Didn’t your family ever teach you about the importance of carrying yourself correctly?”

Sirius took a step closer and Lily felt the angry heat in her cheeks start to spread down her neck as well.

“Didn’t your family ever teach you about the importance of growing the fuck up?” Sirius replied, those silver-grey eyes fixed on Lily’s green ones with the weight of an anvil, of a wedding ring, fingernails digging further into Lily’s wrist, not enough to draw blood but enough to hurt.

Lily narrowed her eyes and picked up her foot to press the heel of her shoe into one of Sirius’ feet, relishing in the way she winced slightly, moving even closer, close enough to almost feel the heat of her body through the layers of their dresses.

“Didn’t your family ever teach you about the importance of not being an arrogant, egotistical, conceited, self-important brat?” she hissed back, twisting her foot further into the top of Sirius’.

Sirius kicked her in the shin with her other foot, knocking Lily’s foot away and making the two of them stumble backwards slightly, Lily’s calves pressing against the edge of a red, velvet sofa. She ground her heel into the top of Lily’s foot in turn, hand around her wrist squeezing tighter and the entire line of her body pushed up against her.

Lily forced down a grimace from the pain and scowled up at her, craning her neck to meet her eyes as Sirius spoke again, “Didn’t your family ever teach you about the importance of not being an uncouth, selfish, desperate, grasping whore?”

Lily slapped her.

The hand that wasn’t caught between Sirius’ fingers coming up almost on instinct and slapping her across the face, a sharp crack ringing through the room.

“How’s that for uncouth?” Lily asked, breath heavy, hand stinging. There was a red mark on Sirius’ porcelain cheek in the shape of her fingers.

Sirius looked at her then, an intensity in those silver-grey eyes that was different somehow from the cold cruelty of before, an intensity that made Lily’s breath catch in her throat.

There was a moment where the two of them just looked at each other, a pause, and then Sirius was moving even closer, letting go of her wrist to instead slide her fingers into the base of Lily’s elaborate hairstyle and pressing their lips together.

They were kissing, and it felt like Lily’s world was being ripped in half, an abyss opening up between her ribs, fathomless and ever-expanding, a chasm that chanted her name, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, everything was Sirius.

Lily had both hands on Sirius’ shoulders, fingers digging into skin through the fabric of her dress, and she was falling backwards off a cliff, eyes shut tight and hot lips on hers, falling backwards into that bottomless well, filled with something that maybe wasn’t anger, swallowed by the dark, silky hair and silver-grey eyes of the abyss, falling backwards onto the red velvet sofa, a leg wrapped around Sirius’ and pulling her down on top of her, teeth clashing together messily as they fell.

There was a hand in her hair, pulling at it, ruining the up-do that had taken hours to perfect, hair pins falling out onto the sofa, and another hand high on her waist, pushing against her ribs through the corset she was wearing and manoeuvring the two of them so they were sideways on the sofa, Sirius with one knee between her legs, body pressing down close on top of her, hot breath and sharp, unrelenting fingernails digging into her skin.

Sirius moved, trailing kisses down her jaw and neck, and Lily’s back arched, head tilting backwards, panting as she moved her hands to squeeze at Sirius’s neck, thumbs pressing into her sharp jawline. There was heat wherever Sirius touched, all over her body and it wasn’t like the angry heat that had been in her cheeks before, it was burning and passionate and carnal in a way that came directly from the depths of that abyss, that splitting rupture in the life she had planned for herself, those intense, silver-grey eyes and the dark, silky hair that she was now running her fingers through.

Sirius bit down on her neck, hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to hurt, sharp and cruel and unrelenting, and Lily gasped, pulling on Sirius’ hair, opening her eyes -

- and the room looked the same, the same red velvet sofa, the same extravagant elegance, but everything was different, everything was wrong.

Sirius wasn’t there.

It was just James, looking at her concernedly, asking if she was okay, and Lily, with the infinite chasm in her ribcage that was eating her alive, irrepressible and boiling with something and burning her up from the inside out.

It was suffocating. It was tormenting her. It was the realisation that maybe she wasn’t the fairy-tale princess she had always dreamed of being, maybe everything she had ever thought she wanted was wrong, maybe she was going to spend the rest of her life feeling hollow, a bottomless abyss that she would never be able to fill.

#heyyyyyyyy 👉👈#little offering for the femslash feb gods ❤️ and also for lia ❤️ and all the other lesbian lilypad understanders out there ❤️#lesbian lilypad #lilypad #lily evans #sirius black #also!!!! baby's first microfic... i should make a tag #kara’s incy wincy fics #<- that feels fun and right #even tho idk if 2.3k really counts as all that incy wincy lmao that’s my bad #anyway peace and love angels hope you liked her <33

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