Jily oneshots

Elevator Love Song

done by B. C Daily on fanfiction.net

12:14 .

For fuck's sake. Sirius would choose to live in a building two (rotting) steps above a bloody tenement.

"Swotty snob," the blighter had scoffed ten minutes ago, when James had had the astonishing audacity to point this out. (The fact that Sirius had been eating ramen out of the very same bowl he'd been using to trap an errant cockroach most of the morning seemed apt, if unspoken.) "I am living," Sir Ramen insisted.

Living, emphasis sarcastic, is one way to put it. James closes the flat's door behind him, noting the sound of his best mate clicking, clacking, and sliding the nine different locks and deadbolts it takes to secure his new home into place on the other side of the closed portal. It's a bleak, foreboding symphony, and James cannot quite suppress the rueful shake of his head. After fifteen years of friendship, he does not know why he is surprised that Sirius would abruptly decide that living in romanticized poverty was the perfect way to spend his twenties (while his hefty inheritance conveniently continued to accrue interest in the bank, mind), but somehow, here they are.

James plods down the corridor, hunching his shoulders, dubious of brushing against the cracked and stained walls. He passes a dark, narrow stairwell that spirals steeply downward. Sirius would naturally also be on the top floor. There's a sad-looking elevator, one of those cupboard-sized traps that had you holding your breath with every painstakingly slow moment of ascent and descent, but at least it's something. James jabs the down arrow, watches the button light up, then darken, then light up again, not quite able to decide if it felt like working today.

Sirius would get Remus here only on the pain of death, James is certain of it.

There's an ominous ding and the elevator doors rattle open. James steps inside, wondering how he is supposed to explain to his mum that, no actually, she cannot come visit her de facto second son in his new home, because she might very well catch a rat plague and die.

Euphemia will love that.

James pulls out his phone, texts Mum leaving sirius's now, pray 4 him with excessive emoji praying hands, adding an X-eyed smiley for good measure. The blue line of sending things ticks up to three-quarters, then stalls.

Of course. Shotty service, too.

James sighs, shoving the phone back into his pocket as the elevator doors begin to creep closed.

"Hold the elevator!" a voice shouts.

James whips out an arm, risking possible amputation to stop the closing doors just in time. The elevator groans in protest, but obediently rattles back open. A second later, a woman appears at the opening—deep red hair, huge dark sunglasses, a slim green coat. Her arms are laden with tote bags and a phone is pressed firmly against her left ear.

Oh.

Well.

All right. So perhaps the building isn't all bad.

Thank you, she mouths at him with a fetching smile, a second before she says into the phone, "Of course I rang him. I rang everyone. I have sucked the teat of my male acquaintances dry, and nary a prospect. No one wants to go to this sodding thing."

She swings around, giving James her back (don't look at her arse, don't look at her arse, it's so rude to look at—Christ, that's a good one). She attempts to juggle fitting both herself and her bags into the tiny space without blocking the doors or crushing James, and is not overly successful. She shuffles closer and closer to him.

"Who?" she says next, lifting her arm in the air, looking to use vertical space to her advantage. There's a clack of glass—she must have some kind of bottled beverage in one of the totes—but it's still not quite enough. She scoffs in disgust. "That—Terry Heaney? Are you mental? You are. I may as well just call a bloody escort service."