Do It For Pluto

James quickly discovers that there is no YouTube video to assist in the fixing of idiocy.

It is a quite expected though no less reviled finding, an outcome whose inevitability still provides nothing but added fuel for the persistent sensation that picks at him for the several long, despairingly silent days that follow the incident with Lily in her flat: a heavily-weighted sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, a wrecking ball of roiling regret that threatens to fell him with each mighty swing, a perpetual dark cloud of prevailing misery that no amount of reason or reassurance seems fit to combat.

He is, simply put, not in his best state.

Or—as Sirius has termed it—"incessantly unbearable."

"Say her name one more time and I am heaving you over the balcony railing," is just one of the many unfeeling threats he levels James's way—this one delivered a mere twenty-four hours after Lily departs for Manchester. James has popped innocuously into his (former) best mate's bedroom, looking for only the smallest slice of sympathy, as Myrtle has finally deigned to stop by the building to take a better look at Mary and Lily's shower, and James is naturally wallowing a bit.

"That's murder," James replies despondently, then wilts in a maudlin sigh against the bedroom door. "Lily is probably being murdered right now. Fictionally. By Claire Foy."

In response, Sirius throws three shoes at him and threatens to call Euphemia, so James departs.

Myrtle eventually grudgingly admits that James did a semi-decent job in the fix, but even that is no balm to a festering wound. It merely reminds him of how long he'd spent standing in that shower after Eddie had stormed in, diligently piecing together the strands of a game plan as he'd battled with a broken pipe, and how thoroughly he'd somehow mucked it up anyway. When Myrtle leaves with an insulted sniff and a bill charging him double for "emotional cruelty," James just pays it, struggling to resist the urge to ask if the bathroom still smells like coconut, even with Lily not there.

On the third day, the lads sack him from the Fortnite team.

"Coach!" Curtis shouts in a strangled cry, which is quickly joined by a cacophonous chorus of swears and groans over the PS4 headset. "What are you doing? You ran straight into the storm!"

"What?" James's head snaps around from where he'd had it pressed against his bedroom wall, spotting the ominous purple and the "you've been killed" alert flashing on the television screen.

Shit. He prods uselessly at the joystick. No good. They'd been down to the final six this round, and James had been the last man standing for their side. Being admitted onto this coveted Fortnite squad had been a very significant step in James gaining his ragtag team of hooligans' approval, and there is nothing more sacred to any of them.

A death by storm? Pathetic. Practically blasphemous.

He'd only glanced away for a minute, though. Just a quick press of his ear to the wall. He'd sworn he'd heard rustling in there.

"Er—controller went weird," he lies. "Sorry, mates."

"A pride is only as strong as its weakest lion," Marcus preaches through the headset, a disapproving tsk in the teen's scold. "That was a Scar-level performance, Mufasa."

"A what?"

"Ooh, can you feel the burn tonight!" Isaiah cackles.

"Hakuna matata, Coach," Dev pipes in. "Eat or be eaten."

"Those are literally opposite sentiments," James retorts darkly, as the rest of the boys hoot and holler appreciatively. How dare they use his favourite movie against him like this? "You hyenas need to be back in school."

There is more ribbing and debating, and James regrets ever giving them long speeches about freedom and democracy and pride in the pride because he is very quickly voted out of his first-string spot, replaced by an only mildly sorry-sounding Jose.

Things really only deteriorate further from there.

"James," is Remus's tired input, on Day Four. "You need to stop calling me."

"You don't want to talk to me either?" James very nearly whinges, lying cocooned in his dark blue coverlet, blasting "The Christmas Shoes" on repeat. It is July, and the lyrics are far more religious than his generally agnostic sentiments prefer, but it is quite simply the saddest song James can think of, and thus highly mood appropriate. "She posted a picture of a baguette on Instagram this morning. A baguette, Remus. Do you know how many bread puns I know? And I can't comment with any of them. I always comment."

"Just text her," Remus suggests, though it's rote advice at this point. Remus is at some swotty summer teachers' conference, and this is all James has been hearing whenever he manages to catch him between lectures. "Tell her you're an idiot who's half in love with her, even as you're a stubborn arse who is clinging desperately to his preconceived notions about how this relationship ought to be progressing, and thus fuck it up spectacularly at most given opportunities."

"Firstly," James returns indignantly, "I can't text her. The one thing she asked for was space. No contact. I'm just supposed to ignore that too? Atop everything else? Secondly"—he huddles further in the blanket—"even if I could speak to her, I can't tell her any of that. It would only implode things further. She didn't once say throughout the entire ordeal that she fancied me as anything more than convenient sex parts on legs, Remus. Not once."

"You didn't tell her you fancied her as more than convenient sex parts on legs, either. And tried to downplay the whole thing like it hardly happened besides. What was she supposed to do? Declare her love as you were scratching your head like a befuddled geriatric?"

"I thought I was righting the keeling ship!"

"By steering straight into the squall, whistling like it was a sunny day?"

"I wasn't whistling."

"Right. You were brooding. Much better."

James moodily prods the music louder. "She doesn't care about me that way. She's only attracted to me."

"I have never even met the woman, and I know that's not true." There's paper shuffling on the other end of the line, and James sighs. Remus is probably transcribing this conversation to use in a new course he's developing. Something like 'The Mathematics of Mates and Misery'. "You're not a very good liar, James. She likely already knows something is supremely off, which is why she's so thrown. You need to let go of this Dictate nonsense and talk to her. Or I'm resigning as mate."

"You can't resign as mate," James argues. "It's a lifetime commitment. Once you're in, you're in. Like the mafia. Or herpes."

Remus hangs up on him after that, which is likely the only appropriate response when one compares one's friendship to a sexually transmitted disease.

But while most of Remus's claims may be unsupportive rubbish—and James may very well have been better off just ringing Peter again, even though Peter's only input on the situation seemed to be invitations for James to join him at a pub to get sloppily sloshed at noon on a Tuesday—there is at least one bit of irrefutable truth in Remus's overall argument.

James had fucked up.

He had really, really fucked up.

And worst of all? He's no longer even certain exactly where his true misstep lies.

The answer initially seems terribly obvious. Who can doubt that the rampant attraction and rash impulses that had lured him into coaxing Lily Evans into close shower quarters would deserve anything less than complete censure? It's the antithesis of his near-militant plans, his best-laid intentions exploding asunder within the meagre seconds it took to whip off a sopping shirt. Slow? Neighbourly? What's that? If a wrong turn is meant to be marked, clearly it must be there, in that bathroom, where the scent of coconut and the pull of pheromones—not to mention a softer, more yearning sentiment, one that Remus may be ready to call half in love, but James is too depressed to even contemplate—had sparked a perilous detonation.

Except…

Except.

Then he'd...and then she'd…

Kissed him.

She'd kissed him.

Even now, days later, the thought of it still leaves James grappling. He'd done quite a bit of grappling, there in that ill-conceived mess of a conversation he'd foolishly attempted at the breakfast bar. It seems so obvious now that his clumsy ploy to shrug off the shower incident would erupt in his face with a force even greater than that of the dastardly broken pipe. As if Lily would ever let something like that just stand. As if she wouldn't immediately scoff her way through his dithering and dissembling. He'd made it barely a minute before she was already calling him out—bumbling bullshit and betraying boners, alike.

Her honest, straightforward questions had deserved honest, straightforward answers, but giving her any of those seemed too momentous a risk. Maybe he is fixated on preconceived timelines, but for bloody good reason. Lily is too important to gamble on letting an overstimulated attraction take the lead. What if it never amounted to anything more? What if they lost everything underlying in the process? James can't take those odds. Not yet. Which he'd told her. Sort of. Badly. Really, clearly, badly.

Which is why he had certainly never imagined the rubbish-heap answers he had mustered would result in her kissing him.

But she had done.

Lily Evans had kissed him, there in her kitchen.

A quick kiss. A soft kiss. Barely a taste, really.

And yet, it was a kiss that couldn't be measured in length or strength to determine its cosmic significance. He could still feel her fingers cupping his face, the chapped pressure of her mouth on his, the toying little touch of her tongue on his bottom lip. It was everything he'd worried—hoped—it would be. More. So much more. And yet, less too. Less because he didn't know what it meant to her. Less, because while he'd been mourning the loss of her the second she was gone, grasping for ways to draw her back in, to curl her in his arms again and let her burrow there for a day, or a week, or possibly forever, questioning if any of his plans or Dictates held any water in the face of something like this—feelings like this—suddenly paralyzingly uncertain if he'd made the worst kind of mistake with his clumsy sidestepping and insistence on staying friends....she'd simply been crossing that particular task off her to-do list, "scratching an itch," like his lips were a particularly bothersome mosquito bite that required a brisk rub to alleviate.

Lily is an honest person. A blunt, open, wonderfully honest person. She had quite willingly and to her own obvious consternation admitted to being attracted to him, to being an eager participant in whatever may have transpired in that shower if they hadn't been interrupted. And while part of James revels in that—she's attracted to him! Wants him! Still, even now, wants him!—the other part of him had noticed every little thing she hadn't said: that she wants something more than a heady shower shag; that their friendship is as important to her as it is to him; that their physical attraction is something more than a bit of fun to "go along with."

And yet...Remus is right. James hadn't said anything, either.

He'd lied to her instead, saying he just wanted to be friends. He'd lied, and he feels like shit about it, not only because she'd subsequently snogged him and then shut him out, but because dishonesty isn't the foundation James is looking to build here. And as he is still hoping to build something, maybe that, there, is the true mistake. The lie. Maybe he ought have just told her everything. The truth. How he feels. Forget the Dictates, forget his need for a solid grounding, for something stronger always lying beneath. Just said it: I want you. To be with you. I care for you. You're important to me.

He'd managed to get the last bit in there—finally, after too much fumbling—but it was different when tied to the first few. He knew she didn't know how he felt, what he truly wanted from her—from them—and while he'd thought that right at the time, now he's not so sure.

If he'd told her the truth, where would they be now?

Together?

That seems like wishful thinking. He can't be certain. He's never been certain with her.

But now she's asked for space. Didn't want to see him.

Or—thought it was best. Somehow, it was best she not see him.

Just like he'd told her it was best they just remain mates.

None of it is best. James may not know much, but he does know that. Doesn't know yet what exactly is best—but this? This strange, bleak stall they're caught in? The one she'd asked for, that he'd led her to, that she's gone off on her trip stewing in? That is far, far from best.

Despite his steadfast attempts and mortifying apologies and his nearly uncontainable urge to make it so Lily Evans never had to worry or fret or frown about anything, ever, he'd still botched this. Thoroughly.

She'd said they were fine, that all was understood, but it's all paltry platitudes and little comfort.

It isn't enough. It isn't nearly enough.

How is he meant to fix this?

Wednesday evening, Sirius's Grinch heart grows three sizes bigger. He steps into the living room, showing incredible restraint by snarling only minimally, and promptly throws twenty quid at James's vegetating form—the same vegetating form that has spent most of its day painstakingly perfecting its shabbily unshaven depressed aesthetic upon the plush sofa cushions, indulging in more unanswered calls to Remus, and digesting a seemingly endless stream of stale crackers and Love Island episodes.

The pound note lands on his chest, and James glances away from the bikini-clad Welsh woman on the screen—who is apparently furious with a bint called Bitsy for chatting up her lad. Bad form, Bitsy—to stare down at it despondently.

"I generally charge more than this for sexual favours," he intones. "No exceptions."

"Please. You'd be paying me." Sirius kicks aside the pile of building paperwork James had long since abandoned on the floor, then jabs a pointed finger out of the room. "Off the bloody couch. Now. This is getting nauseating, even for you. Pizza. Go."

"You're paying for pizza?"

"Desperate times."

James eyes the crumpled pound note dispassionately again, nudging it sulkily with one finger.

"If Lily were here," he mopes, "I wouldn't need to get off the couch. Sam would deliver to us."

It is, unsurprisingly, the wrong thing to say.

Sirius nods curtly. "Right."

Then he lunges.

"Oi—!"

James is not quite sure how it happens—there is growling, and a surprisingly scrappy scuffle, and some dreadfully unkind things that one's nearly-brother really ought not to be saying to the other, and then Sirius has him by the ear, tugging him towards the bathroom like an old-time schoolmarm leading the troublemaking lad to the punishment corner, railing about audacity, and intervention, and stench of the living dead, and indignity—twenty pounds worth of indignity!—but thirty minutes later, James still somehow finds himself shoved outside the flat door, suitably bathed and dressed, with twenty quid, no keys, and strict orders not to return until he's secured a piping hot pizza and a better attitude.

The flat deadbolt locks audibly behind him.

Amendment: two sizes bigger. One and a half, perhaps.

But James supposes getting himself clean and out into the fresh air isn't a horrible suggestion. If nothing else, it will clear the clinging aroma of failure and blanket lint, and also give his stomach something to process that isn't dry, expired cracker. He opts for walking to Sam's rather than driving, takes his time getting there, and then makes idle chat with the proprietor as the large pizza cooks. It's familiar rubbish, and somehow comforting in that. He's been a body bleeding raw, messy emotion for days, and it's nice to stanch the flow, even if only temporarily.

Temporary. James focuses on that as the pizza shop fills with evening diners. This is all only temporary. Soon, Lily will be back from Manchester—tomorrow or Friday, likely. She'll return, they'll have their chance to talk, and James can quit feeling like he's got a staticy shirt on that won't quit zapping him.

He's still not entirely certain what he ought to say to her. Love Island has taught him what not to do, but in terms of practical solutions, he's still a bit drowned. He's been through dozens and dozens of potential iterations in his head, but it's so hard to predict how she'll react that he's never gotten farther than some kind of stuttering apology opening. Honestly, he just wants to see her. Just...look at her. In person. In front of him. Even if she's set on telling him off, he's fine with that. Deserves it, really. He's got a vision of her already, straight arrived from her train, looking travel-raggled and indignant, still carrying her luggage, ramming on his door to give him a good, thorough what-for. And he will just nod along to whatever she says, so grateful to hear her voice that he won't even care that it's calling him a fickle, frustrating prat.

Then maybe he'll kiss her.

No—god, no, he can't do that.

Or—well, maybe—

James gives his head a shake. He'll figure it out later. All of that, later. For now, he'll go home and perhaps start looking at train timetables. Again. Just to gather some ideas on potential arrival schedules.

With convenient timing, Sam announces the pizza is ready.

James grabs it and exits the shop.

He makes it to just up the road before the desire to prowl through the Euston schedules becomes too strong. En route is practically the same as "home," anyway. And he's likely better doing this now than back in the flat, where Sirius looms with a quick trigger to pummel.

Of course, James doesn't know for a fact that she'll be coming from Euston. Maybe she's out of Paddington. Or caught a bus. Or maybe she's met a friendly crew member, one who drove himself up to the set and who even now has Lily tucked neatly into his passenger seat, speeding back towards London, the pair of them chatting happily and the damn blighter getting to listen to her fervent rendition of "I Will Always Love You" (Dolly's, not Whitney's. Dolly, Lily vehemently insists, is not to be overlooked), or her melodious laugh as she puts on a funny podcast, or chucks french fries in the air and attempts to catch them with her mouth, missing a solid half the time.

Fucking hell, maybe—

No.

No, it's Euston. Or maybe Waterloo. He'll check there too.

James makes it to the building in record time, his distracted steps quick in their researching gusto. He pushes through the revolving door with an expert tip of the pizza box, clicking through a few more of the arrival times for tomorrow, trying to memorize them before he makes it to the elevator. He'll need his mobile tucked away before he's back in the flat.

His steps slow as he reaches the lifts. He leans to jab the UP button with the side of pizza box, and is still haphazardly juggling the square in one hand and speedily scrolling through the schedules with the other when the lift doors open with a friendly ding. He steps forwards, eyes still on the phone—

—and just barely misses maiming Lily in the head with the sharp corner of the pizza box.

Lily.

James's stomach drops to his toes.

Lily.

"Shit—shit. Sorry!" He whips the box around, fumbling it in his grasp, but somehow manages to keep hold of the heated cardboard without further damage. His heart is pounding, blood rushing through his veins, adrenaline suddenly going like she's just jumped out from behind a hedge and yelled boo! in his face. She may be better off having done. He swallows. Hard. Forces out words. "You—you're back."

Back from Manchester.

Back, here in London.

Here, in the building.

Though she hadn't texted, or knocked, or even bloody smoke-signaled to tell him so.

While he'd been checking timetables.

What?

"I am," she agrees, after a beat of silence, and slants a small, sympathetic smile at him, slipping through the elevator doors before they can clang shut between them. "Hey."

Hey. He backpedals, eyes unsure of where to go, because she's looking fresh and pretty in the rose-splattered dress he recalls from the first time he and Sirius came to her flat, as well as her favourite earrings. He shifts his weight and fervently wishes he wasn't stumbling around with an armload of props for this, that he'd gotten through more than just the initial apologetic intros of hypothetical conversations, that he looked cooler or calmer or at least didn't feel like he'd been punched in the gut simply at the unexpected sight of her.

Unexpected, because he hadn't known she was back.

Because she hadn't told him.

Not that he's fixating on that or anything.

How long has she been back?

"How was Claire?" he asks, feeling hollow.

"Oh, she was lovely. Bought me a sandwich in Pret. I was honoured to have her investigate my murder," she babbles, nodding away like an exceptionally beautiful bobble-head figurine. Her face and neck have turned properly pink. "How have you been?"

Miserable, he thinks, but swallows that. Bypasses lonely and sad and angry at myself and now a bit with you too, as well.

"Fine," is what he settles on, the inanest of responses. He shakes the pizza box. "Forced to fetch my own take away because no one was here to smooth-talk Sam into coming near the building, but we all have our crosses to bear."

"Well, now I'm home, so…" She lifts both hands in an adorably flimsy little wave. "Ta dah? Magical pizza procurer at your service? I mean, I'm heading out right now and you obviously...already have pizza, but you know what I mean."

What does any of this mean? James thinks.

"Are you off to get dinner, too?" He allows himself only the briefest of glances up and down her again, though it doesn't require any time at all to see she's not in the sweats and t-shirt she would normally throw on to make a quick jaunt to the pharmacy, or to grab some emergency Pringles from the corner shop, or some other hasty outing like that.

The dusky pink flush in her cheeks deepens to a rosier hue.

"I...well, yes, actually. I'm meeting someone in the city," she admits, though her eyes and the tone of her voice suggest a caught criminal confessing to a grievous crime. "It's all a bit manic, to be honest. I was meant to get back yesterday but filming ran on another day and they needed me to stay because, you know, the person lying on the coroner's table is kind of a focal point, so I've been home for all of three hours and Mary just sprang this—this date she's arranged for me with some mate of Eddie's and, well, suffice to say I didn't have much notice. Which is why I haven't—I was going to text you," she adds, and her beautiful face is practically flaming. "I've just been swamped."

There is a loud, insistent ringing in James's ears.

Date, it says.

Date, date, date, date.

She's going on a date.

She's back from Manchester. Back in London. Back in the building. Was going to text him. But she's going on a date right now.

A date, in the dress she'd worn on the first night they'd hung out together. A date, four long days after she'd gone. Four long days which had felt like four hundred.

For him, anyway.

A date.

"A date with a mate of Eddie's?" Even to his own ears, his voice sounds tight, like a python has curled its way around his abdomen and is now squeezing his diaphragm for all its worth. Hiss, clench, hiss. "Didn't know Eddie had mates."

"I think he's a colleague from the hospital, rather than a friend. Some surgeon or other. I'm not sure. Eddie and Mary are like, a real couple now, and Mary insisted that I'd love this guy, but she and I don't exactly have the same taste, so…" Lily shrugs. "I don't really—I mean, I'm sure it'll come to nothing, but if I put in my time now it gets her off my back."

"Right. If it gets her off your back."

The comment comes off more curt than he means it to—though he's not quite sure how he does mean it, except that everything in him seems to be prickling in protest and bubbling with resentment and he's been beating himself up over what he ought to have done that day in her flat for four days, and clearly she wasn't fazed enough to even linger a few dozen hours over it before agreeing to appease Mary's matchmaking.

Something dark—realisation, or concern, or some acknowledgement that all is not well with James—flickers behind Lily's eyes as she hitches the strap of her purse higher up on her shoulder. It's a needless adjustment, as it was already perfectly placed, and in no danger of slipping.

"You're not mad at me, are you?" she asks him, very softly, a woman walking barefoot across a floor littered with jagged glass shards. "I really was going to text you, honestly. First thing tomorrow."

"Why would I be mad?"

Answering a question with a question—and that question—is such a cringe-worthy tactic.

Her head tilts. "That's usually what people say when they want someone to figure out what they've done to make the other person mad."

He doesn't have any real right to be angry with her. He reminds himself of this, even as he feels it anyway, feels his fingers curling around the pizza box in a steel grip, feels the heat sweep through his limbs and the combatting feelings of disapproval and disappointment spreading through him.

He'd told her, directly, he didn't want anything romantic with her.

Hadn't meant it, but it's what he'd told her.

Said it didn't make sense now—which it didn't, then maybe it did, and now seems like it doesn't again.

She has every right to make dates with whomever she pleases. Has every right to text him, or not text him, when and where she'd like.

James knows all this, but he can't not be angry anyway, because her insistence that she meant to text him feels like a paltry defence after she's been caught out, and because he'd felt so terrible and so wrong about everything that had happened that day in her flat for the entire time she's been gone, and now it somehow seems that maybe—maybe—he was right. That if he had gone and explained the truth, what he really felt, that it wouldn't have meant to her what it meant to him. That these clear and obvious feelings between them were more transient and easily pushed aside for her.

That she can't have much regard or feeling for him at all—even their friendship—if a random mate of bloody Eddie's takes precedence over taking a second—just a second, one quick moment—to let him know she was even back.

And James wants to weep for it.

Wants to gasp and gargle and choke and weep.

But he can't do any of those things. It's too raw, too mortifying. His pride—and half his bloody heart, thanks cruel and wily Remus—is too pricked and bleeding to allow it.

So he gets furious instead.

Really, awfully, inappropriately, irrationally livid.

"Well, I'm not mad," he says, with volcanic crispness. "Nothing to figure out."

"Are you sure? Because I really did mean to—honestly, today's just been so rushed, James, but while I was away I really—" She lets out an impatient sort of sigh. "I was going to text and ask if you wanted to hang out. Tomorrow. Or whenever suits you."

Lily is a tremendously honest person, James reminds himself. She's not the sort who would leave him to sit and stew for ages, play with anyone like that. If she was done with him, she'd just say so. But regardless, the series of insistences seem too neatly given at too pointed a time for him to consider them earnest, and maybe that's his temper speaking, or his jealousy, or his hurt, but he can't help it. He doesn't believe her.

Or perhaps he's merely past the rational point where that matters now.

"My team has a match tomorrow," he lies, pettily. "Then I have to head over to the programme offices. A ton of paperwork. Really busy day."

"Well, you'll be free by the evening, right?" she asks, a concerned little crease burrowing between her eyebrows. "Or the day after that, or—I mean, I took the whole week off work for filming, just in case, so I've not got much to do for the next three days."

Stop, his conscious says. Don't.

No, his pride responds.

"Not sure yet. There's a board meeting coming up, and I've got to get all that squared away, as well." He shifts the pizza box, strives—and blatantly fails—not to look too pointed as he says, "I'll text you."

He can tell at once the significance of his choice in words is not lost upon Lily. James can never claim to have been blessed with the gift of subtlety, and she's far too clever to let something like that sail directly over her head. Her frown becomes more pronounced, and she takes a pointed step backwards, moving away from him, her elbow connecting gently with the elevator door.

"You'll text me," she flatly repeats, like she's tasted something foul. "You'll—really, James? You'll text me? That's who we are now?"

"People who text?" Stop. No. "Yeah, some of us are."

"And some of us aren't liars," Lily retorts. "Thought you said you weren't mad?"

It's petulant to deny it any longer. He grits his teeth instead. "You really want to get into this? Here? Now?"

"When else are we going to get into it? You suddenly don't have time in your busy schedule to talk to me."

Schedules. Like train arrival schedules.

"Well, not everything's got to revolve around your preferred schedule, does it?" His voice is growing louder, sharper. "Today was not a convenient time for you to contact me. Tomorrow is not a convenient time for me to contact you. But I'm at fault?"

"Christ, James, I'm sorry for not texting you as soon as I stepped through my front door, okay?" Lily fires back, because she knows, like always—of course she knows—how to cut to the core of the matter, even if she's only uncovered a half-truth this time around. Her bright green eyes narrow in a disdainful glare. "I'm sorry that I thought I'd leave it 'til tomorrow because I've got to go to dinner and thought you deserved my full attention, not a fraction of it between courses. So selfish of me. String me up by my bloody neck, why don't you?"

"No one was asking you to cut into your precious between-meal chit chat, all right? Maybe—maybe—a different mate might have warranted a quick ten seconds somewhere to get a mere 'Getting in tonight. Would really like to speak to you tomorrow sometime,' but that's apparently too much of a fucking fraction here." He wishes he wasn't holding this bloody pizza box. He wants to cross his arms over his chest, or shove them in his pockets, where he can hide how much his hands are shaking. He wants to do something other than glare at her, because that's all he's capable of now. "Text or don't text. Fine. Priorities are all yours. But I don't understand why it's somehow fine when you say it, but an utter insult when it's me."

"Because you're trying to be insulting, and I wasn't."

"Funny thing about intentions. Sometimes they don't go exactly as you plan."

"Well, yours did. Congratulations," she haughtily replies, swaying a little on the spot like she's preparing to take off. "I don't understand you, James. You said you wanted to be friends. I'm trying to be your friend, I don't—I don't know what else I'm supposed to do or what you want from me."

He wants her to have been thinking of him for every second she's been gone, like he's been thinking of her.

He wants to believe her when she says she's thought of him at all.

He wants to, at the very least, merit time before some arsehole mate of Eddie's.

But she's right. He'd said he wants to be friends. She can't be blamed for his jealousy.

But she can be blamed for his friendship not being on the forefront of her mind, surely?

He doesn't know. In any case, it's not enough to pull the breaks on his runaway temper. It's officially taken over at the helm, blaring the horn in furious warning, perfectly willing to ram down any innocent track-crosser who may have had the misfortune of stepping in his path.

"This is what I was worried about," he says, feeling bitter and guilty all at the same time. "All this, after that day. I don't want you to have to try to be my friend, Lily. And that's what this is feeling like now. As if it's all bothersome effort for you. And it's rather shitty. So, yeah, maybe I'm a bit mad about that. You don't have to do anything. I imagine that will only make it worse."

"What are you trying to say? That you—what, you don't even want to be friends now? Because I needed some time and couldn't figure out how to make this work quickly enough, you're just done?"

"I'm saying that this feels shitty!" James snaps back, voice rising again in the—thankfully—otherwise empty lobby. "I'm saying that it feels like 'quickly' doesn't have anything to do with it. It feels like our friendship is number twelve on a to-do list that you'll eventually get to when you feel like it. And it didn't feel like that before."

At the words "to-do list," Lily recoils like she's been slapped across the face.

Then she closes her mouth. Opens it. A sharp gasp of a breath escapes her, but she catches it in her throat and swallows it back down, as if she never gave it permission to leave her chest.

Her gaze slips away from his face.

"I got you a present," she says, so quietly that he finds himself stooping to hear her. She's staring at the opposite wall as if her life depends upon it, a determination that looks as if it's physically taxing, her mouth forming a hard, stubborn line, lips pressed tightly together like she's fighting to hold back…

To hold back…

Oh, fuck.

She's trying not to cry.

She's trying not to cry.

He stumbles forward. "You—what?"

"In Manchester," says Lily simply, but with a tell-tale quiver in her lower lip that fires off every instinct in every synapse in his body, screaming at him, chiding him—hug her, comfort her, make this all go away. "I was going for a walk in the city and there was this tiny party shop and I saw—it's so stupid, but you've been saying that the kids on your team have been on at you to sort them out a mascot non-stop, and I saw this—this stupid, cheap, shitty lion costume and I know The Lion King is your favourite movie so I bought it, but... but you think I don't care, or that—" She takes another deep breath and meets his eyes once more, but there are tears clinging to her lashes and she's shaking her head as if she can't continue and this is the worst thing that has ever happened to him. "I have to go."

He takes another skittering step. "Lily, wait—"

He wishes he had use of his hands. Wishes his body could do more than just panic and move towards her and then freeze up, locked and useless. It's far too easy for her to get away, to brush impatiently at her wet eyes and clutch again at her purse strap, curling it to her like it's a safety blanket, very swiftly sidestepping him.

"Don't bother. I said I had to go," says Lily firmly, coldly, but the hard edge in her voice is undermined by the tear that slides down her cheek despite what are clearly her best efforts to contain it. She dodges out of his path and passes him by, realising his worst expectations, "and you don't need to text me, ever, I got the message. Have a nice night with your pizza."

Ever.

Fucking hell.

"Lily, don't. This is not—"

But if she hears him—cares to hear him—she doesn't let a soul know it. Her shoes clip across the floor with biting clacks, moving too fast to be termed anything less than a determined escape, and she's shoving against the revolving door in a matter of seconds, disappearing into the fast-approaching evening, like a fleeing wraith.

And then she's gone.

She doesn't look back once.

Doesn't pause.

Doesn't even flinch.

Her date's in love with a nurse named Kimmy.

She's a dark-haired Kimmy, brown-skinned and tiny, with kitten-like eyes and a sweet, round face. Lily knows her not but for one photo on her date's phone, but she's a fluttering of long, dark, curly lashes and a winsome, frozen smile that whispers comforting things like bedside manner and you're being really brave and I'll fetch you an extra pillow, sweetheart. Kimmy the Nurse is small and soft and capable—exactly the kind of nurse that any patient would want in a pinch, the very woman Lily would have wanted to prod her veins and draw her blood with a smile and a squeeze of her hand, should necessity and ill health ever call for it.

Sweet, sensible Kimmy, the true heroine of the hour, rushing to the aid of the sick and the helpless and elderly. Lily pictured someone tall and thin, with a high-pitched laugh and an Ellie Kemper twinkle, but Brian's nurse Kimmy is a teeny-tiny angel. She's a gooey, scrumptious dessert. A decadent caramel heart in a box of luscious chocolates.

It's fine, because Lily doesn't care at all.

She's in a delicate condition at this juncture in her night, so it might have bruised her ago, only Lily is the one who won this bout.

She got there first.

How simple honesty is—I'm sorry, I can't, I'm desperately pining for someone else, though he might have broken my heart tonight, I'm not quite sure, it all went a little blurry when the train pulled out of Tufnell Park and I burst into tears—when she's got nothing else to lose but her pride.

It took a mere fifteen minutes of awkward small talk, napkin-fiddling and relieving interruptions from the waiter before Lily cracked and owned the truth. "Where did you grow up?" Brian had asked—or perhaps he'd asked her where she'd gone to school, or if she was enjoying her cocktail, the depths of which she had been staring resolutely into—and in a rush of exhilarating terror she'd discovered the key to her freedom, sitting squarely in a swirling collision of clinking ice cubes and diluted Coca Cola.

"I can't do this," she'd blurted out, and hated herself instantly.

How has she become such a dramatic, tearful mess? I can't do this—such a bloody cliché. Is she a weakly defined character in a second rate rom-com? Is Brian the Surgeon not Brian the Surgeon at all, with his pale, clean-shaven face and Scandanavian good looks, but a chiselled Patrick Dempsey in a white button-down? Should she run from the restaurant in a fit of tears? Return to her movie-standard job in PR or advertising? Turn to Judy Greer for a slice of final act guidance?

Maybe she should take an Uber to the airport, intent upon beginning a new and glamourous life overseas. James will clearly chase the taxi down and stop her, so it's not like she'll need luggage.

"Pardon?" Brian had replied, frowning like he'd spotted a typo in a patient's medical record.

"I can't do this," she'd repeated. Urgh. She's revolting. "I can't do this date, I mean, and I'm sorry. Really, I'm so sorry."

She was gesticulating with her hands the way her mother often did, a sure sign that she was losing the run of herself. As if her flailing fingers might distract her date from the rudeness that was spurting out of her stupid, inconsiderate mouth.

"Mary sprung this on me earlier," she continued to babble, "and I had no idea it was happening, and I didn't—if I'd had more notice or if I'd had your number, but Mary wouldn't tell me and I didn't want to stand you up, but I also don't want to lie because I'm not an arsehole, Brian. I must seem like one right now and you have every right to hate me but I'm just—I'm trying to get over someone. Badly. I'm not getting over someone, really, and Mary's not happy with how I'm handling all of this so she and Eddie set this whole thing up. But I can't do it," she'd finished lamely. "And I'm sorry. I'm so unbelievably sorry."

He'd taken it all in with admirable decorum, studying her face with an intellectual interest.

Then he'd let out a sigh of obvious relief, his broad shoulders slumping, and it all came tumbling out.

Two peas in a pod, her and Brian.

He is, admittedly, slightly less of a mess than Lily. Fraught? Yes? In pain? For sure. Burning with desire for a person with whom he spends most days in close quarters? Ditto. Tentatively suspicious that his feelings for said person are not entirely unrequited? Undoubtedly. But Brian the Surgeon is not a dramatic, tearful mess. Brian is a model of dignity and class. He didn't stumble into the restaurant and whistle out an excuse to run to the toilet first thing so he could wipe mascara tracks from his still-damp cheeks and trumpet into a tissue until he'd cleared his nose of liquified snot.

Lily did.

She's the mess.

She's losing her bloody mind.

Or…is she losing it?

That's an interesting word, losing.

Interesting suggestion,the idea that her mind is not already lost, that Lily is not already hopeless, that she doesn't want to leap to her feet and send everything on the table crashing violently to the ground—one grand sweep of her arm to build a graveyard of shattered china plates upon floor beneath her feet, to see a dark red stain pool across the linen tablecloth like freshly spilled blood—simply because she can, because this anger and resentment is white-hot and churning, with nowhere else to go but out.

They see the date through and form something like a friendship. It's so much easier to talk to one another, now that their respective expectations have been clearly defined, now that the James-and-Kimmy of it all has been set loose like a twittering bird, finally free from its cage.

His romantic quandary is less complicated than hers.

Kimmy clearly likes him back, for one thing. It's obvious from her texts and various social media comments.

Brian's whole problem is that he's running scared.

Much like Kimmy, his ex was a nurse who worked alongside him, and they were blissfully happy until they weren't, and their fairytale ended in a flurry of tears, betrayal and anger. Aimee promptly quit her job in shame, forced out of the hospital by her own pain and humiliation, and Brian feels terrible to have displaced her so severely. Unduly terrible.

He feels far more terrible than he should, in fact, since Aimee cheated on him with a sleazy phlebotomist.

Brian's fear, such as it is, is that he'll subject Kimmy the Nurse—who, bless her, hasn't been made party to this torrid, daytime-drama backstory—to a repeat performance of a damaging disaster.

That's fair enough by anyone's standards, but as Lily points out over their starters, and again as they're tucking in to their main courses, Kimmy the Sweetheart Nurse is not Aimee the Lying Cheat. Kimmy deserves to have all of the information, so that she can make an informed decision and set Brian's worried mind at ease.

If Kimmy has secured Brian's love, she must also be entitled to his trust.

"Just tell her the truth," Lily advises him, scraping the last of her fish from the bowl and balancing it on her spoon, dashi broth dripping off the edge. "Do you have any idea how many romantic complications can be completely done away with when you're honest?Radical idea, I know, but you might want to give it a try sometimes."

"The way you were honest with James?" Brian counters, lips quirking in amusement.

"Excuse me," she retorts. "James didn't give me a chance to be honest, yeah? I asked him, straight out, if he just wanted to be friends and he said yes. Y-E-S, yes. What was I supposed to do, say, 'no, sorry, that doesn't work for me so you're going to have to be my boyfriend?'"

Brian merely raises his eyebrows.

"Don't give me that look, McDreamy," she scolds him. "When one party tells you that they just want to be friends, you can't argue with that just because you've caught feelings. That makes you an arsehole, and I'm not an arsehole," Lily concludes, and shoves her spoon into her mouth. Her next words are thickly uttered as the fish falls apart on her tongue. "As we've already established."

She may be a little sloppy, and she might be a little drunk. She's on her fourth Long Island Iced Tea of the evening, and that's good for neither her liver nor her bank account, but desperate times call for desperately bad behaviour.

"You know," says Brian thoughtfully, "he probably said that because he thinks that you just want to be friends."

Lily shakes her head immediately. Her spoon is dropped into her bowl with a clatter. "No."

"Ten quid says I'm right."

"No, you're definitely not right, because I made my feelings very obvious."

"Unless you made a definitive statement, I highly doubt that you were obvious."

"Mary says I was."

"Mary is a woman," Brian counters, drumming his fingers on the pristine tablecloth. "And women tend to—sorry to play into a stereotype—but women are better at picking up on context. Men don't do well with subtle hints. We need directness. We're all a bunch of idiots."

"But you're a surgeon," Lily reminds him, aghast.

"I am," he agrees. "And a carotid endarterectomy is ten times easier than figuring out one of Kimmy's texts."

Lily scoffs derisively. "Has Kimmy ever kissed you?"

"No."

"Right, well I kissed him—"

"To get it out of the way!"

"Because that's what he wanted!"

"You're assuming that's what he wanted." Brian's fork is pointed in her direction like a laser pointer. "Look, the guy's clearly a mess, and you're definitely owed an apology for how he behaved today, but also…"

"Also what?"

"I mean...you told him that you were going on a date when you could have just lied," he reminds her, throwing in an apologetic wince, as if that'll soften the blow of being called out. "Don't you think you were trying to make him jealous?"

"I wasn't trying to make him jealous!" Lily yelps, heat billowing across her face. How dare Brian suggest such a thing? How dare he tell the truth? "I was just being honest, and he—" She slaps both palms down on the table. "Which side are you even on here?"

"Yours, of course," says Brian. "I'm just saying, try to look it from his perspective for a bit, yeah? This chap sees you in a play, forms a gigantic crush on you—"

"He didn't have a crush—"

"He looked up everything you've ever done and saw the play a bunch more times," Brian flatly intones. "He had a crush, believe me. You were to him what Freida Pinto is to me, only Freida Pinto's never going to crash my bathroom with her clothes half-off. Nobody's fantasy woman comes charging into their lap the way you did, and suddenly it's happening to him. The poor guy likely panicked. Then what happens next? You turn up at his door with apology banana bread. Now his dream girl is an angel and he's half in love already, but he also doesn't know her from Adam." He sits back in his chair and gestures across the table as if to say and in conclusion, boom. "Any bloke's brain would snap a bit in half at that point."

"That's not—that doesn't explain why he won't—" Lily's mind flounders, scrambling through the rubble for something she can use to counter all these arguments—these scary, confusing, dizzying arguments that make her heart race and her palms grow clammy. "He said that he just wanted to be friends."

"Yeah, because maybe he thinks you're too good for him," Brian gently suggests. "Maybe he wanted to get to know you outside of this actress fantasy he'd concocted before he made a move. Maybe there are other issues that you don't know about—like an ex who treated him badly, or something. The point is, you don't know for sure."

"No, I don't know for sure," she sulkily agrees, "but as he doesn't seem to want to tell me what it is, none of it means a thing."

"And that's a problem, yes—"

"One of many problems in my life," says Lily darkly, and chugs a mouthful of her drink. She sets it down on the table with a peculiarly satisfying thud. "Hurrah."

"Look, I need to pop to the toilet, but we'll keep this going when I get back," says Brian, and rises to his feet. He gives his mouth a demure tap with his napkin and points it at Lily before he drops it on his plate. "Stay strong."

Lily nods vigorously. "Staying strong."

"No texting him, alright? Not when you're upset."

"I wouldn't dream of it," she assures her date. "I don't even want to."

Brian gives her a thumbs up before he turns on his heel and strides away, moving briskly in the direction of the men's room. His pristine white shirt and tan chinos hold not a single wrinkle, Lily notes. Not the tiniest crease can her narrowed eyes discern.

Of course, he would have pressed his clothes meticulously for the occasion.

A man of Brian's profession ought to be as meticulous as he can, or lives are lost. He must be careful. Precise. Detail oriented. All are excellent, enviable qualities. Excellent words—not like losing, which Lily hates and wants to obliterate from the dictionary with a white-hot poker. Brian is an adult man with a university education and a shared-ownership mortgage and a grown-up job. He has grown-up ideas about dealing with her problems, even if he's blisteringly stupid about his own.

Brian does, in fact, give excellent, thoughtful advice…which Lily is absolutely going to ignore, but her reluctance to defer to his opinion does not negate the brilliance of said sage advice. She does not wish to take that away from Brian, so she will defy him very slyly. Swift and stealthy, like a ninja.

It's hardly Brian's fault that Lily doesn't hold with taking advice which does not specifically adhere to the decision she's already made.

It's not his fault that she's right about everything all the time. That's just the way she's wired.

The instant Brian disappears from her line of vision, Lily pulls her phone out of her purse with an unsteady haste that sends a tube of chapstick rolling quickly across the table, and opens WhatsApp. Her fingers fly across the screen as she composes her epistle of searing disapproval to James Potter, lest that careful, precise, sensibly grown-up surgeon emerge from the bathroom and catch her in the act.

If the world affords her any consideration, Brian will be taking a shit.

Men take forever to shit, disappearing into toilets with their phones in their hands, emerging after anything from five minutes to several months with expressions of pride on their slightly sweating faces, as if the expulsion of excrement is a monumental achievement mastered only by few. God knows what they're squeezing out of their rectums in there.

Still, Brian may be quick. He's been very polite all evening and may not wish to abandon her to the mysterious realm of male defecation. Speed is of the essence.

Tap tap tap tap tap, her fingers dance, then whoosh, away it goes.

Look at me, I'm texting you between courses and ignorsing my date anf being really fcuking rude. HAPPY NOW?
brian says I shouldnt text you and hes very smatr becuse hes a kid surgeon
I mean a surgeon for kids not neil Patrick Howser

Pretty damning, Lily thinks.

Only...well.

She's made a couple of typos.

They're not...they're not noticeable typos, surely?

Does it even matter if she made a few meaningless errors? James's use of capital letters are as rare as his abbreviations are frequent. He plays fast and loose with the English language like he's earned himself the right to do it, flat-out refusing to comply with those good and noble rules of spelling and grammar. Those rules that Lily so adores, except for when she's plastered, and that's James Potter's fault, and all.

She takes another swig of her Long Island Iced Tea for good measure, and is pondering other disasters that she could potentially pin on James when the two grey ticks at the bottom of her screen turn blue, and an ominous Typing... appears beneath his name.

No.

No no no no no!

James is supposed to read that message and feel utterly wretched and stew in his own desolation for the rest of the night, not reply!This is not a conversation, this is his eternal damnation, and one does not just respond when cursed to the smouldering depths of hell!

Who does this punk think he is?!

She hastily downs another mouthful of her drink—bless that liquid courage—and composes another text, because James Potter cannot be allowed a chance for rebuttal. He has no grounds for argument, no right to defend himself when he made her cry on the Overground, and she's a much faster texter than he is. She needs less time to think over her words.

Also, she completely abandoned her sense of shame in the sticky, saccharine bottom of her third cocktail glass more than fifteen minutes ago.

She's going to win this argument, damnit, and there's nothing he can do about it.

You shit YOU MADE ME CRY. I NEVER CRY and you MADE me do it and I was NOT wearing my waterproof mascara because I was not expesting to cry today. YOu know what's WORSE than crying with no waterfpoof mascara? Crying with no waterproof mascars ON THE TRAIN WHILE THE GUY NEXT YOU MASTUBATES INTO HIS RAINCOAT PROBABLY. I mean I don't have proof but he was fiddling around A LOT and I wished you were there becase I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS BUT I GUESS NOT. I GUESS NOT. I. GUESS NOT.

It's sent before he can finish whatever it was he'd started.

Hah!

Winner winner chicken dinner, thy name is Lily Evans. Even though she'd had salmon for her main.

Except…

Except James doesn't stop typing.

The little shit is undeterred!

wait
Lily
Im so so so sorry

"You great big flaming arsehole," she hisses at her phone, and sets her glass down on the table, denying herself the victory sip which just a moment ago seemed so stoutly earned. The absolute audacity of James! She sent him a stunningly virulent paragraph of the finest pedigree, a scorching indictment worthy of Jane Austen or Agatha Christie (probably—she hasn't had time to read over that last one) and the best he can manage in response is seven poxy words?

Five words, if she's counting repeats, which she most certainly intends to.

No you are NOT sorry, she starts to type, but finds herself distracted by a fresh stream of incoming messages.

no stop typing, i'm typing
look, im going to give mary my car keys and i think she should come and get u. okay? u wont need to be sad or with a child murder surgeon or see any pervs on the train.

I'd rather spend mynight with a murder surg

"Ah," says Brian. "You're texting him."

The sound of his voice makes Lily jump and drop her phone on her dirty napkin, her elbow colliding painfully with the edge of the table.

She looks up, pink-faced, to see that her date has returned and is standing by his chair. He's watching her from beneath a pair of light, slightly raised brows, and a mildly amused smile is stretched across his face, as if he's her father, and he's just caught her drawing spirals on the living room wall with mother's expensive lipstick.

He's obviously not a date shitter, then.

How fortuitous for Kimmy the Nurse.

"I'm not, I'm texting my internet service provider," she lies, but her efforts to expunge the guilt from her voice fall entirely flat. No wonder she's struggling to find work that doesn't consist of lying on a cold metal slab with her eyes closed and latex lacerations glued to her neck—she's clearly a terrible actress. "How did you know?"

"You were typing like you were trying to punch a hole through your phone with your thumb," he points out, dropping heavily into his seat, "and smiling. Which is a weird combination, honestly, but not difficult to understand, given the circumstances."

"You probably think I'm pathetic."

"Not really, I was checking Kimmy's Facebook in the loo."

"So we're both doomed," Lily declares, then laughs, but it's a faint, helpless thing that can't quite escape the hollow pit in her chest. "Good to know."

"Pathetic, miserable sods, the both of us."

"Care to celebrate said misery by splitting a dessert?"

"I think that sounds delightful," Brian agrees, mirroring her sad little laugh. "This place does an excellent crème brûlée, if you fancy it."

"Sure," she says, waving vaguely in Brian's direction. "I'm good for whatever."

James has sent her another text.

Lily?

Just one. Just her name.

He's probably sitting on his comfortable-yet-comically-mismatched bed, slumped against the party wall they share, wishing he could hear her bustling about in her bedroom, straining to discern any sign of movement and wondering why she hasn't cared to respond yet. Worrying about her—about where she is and who she's with, and how she's going to make it back to Crouch End in one piece.

And doesn't that fill her with a savage kind of pleasure?

Don't LILY ME first of all.
I am not leaving thanks, brian and I are splitting a creeme bruel.
Bruelee.
How the fuck do you spell that fucking french nonsense.
WHy were you so mad I don't understand what I did. Mary onel told me about brian when I got home anf she said whe was already on his way to the restaruatn and she wouldnt give me his number to cancel and hes a KID SURGEON it woudf have been so mean to stand him up

Brian has summoned the waiter somehow—he has zipped towards their table with more zeal and enthusiasm than Lily has ever been able to manage at her waitressing job on even her better days—but she barely registers his appearance as he stops by her elbow to memorise their dessert order and take their empty plates. She's fully engrossed in her phone, waiting for James to reply with her breath caught in her mouth and her heart thundering like the clappers, conjuring up cutting and infuriated retorts before she even knows what he's going to say.

can we talk about this when u get home?
soon?
eat really fast
please

Fabulous. Now he wants her to eat too fast and fall victim to a bubbling cauldron of vengeful stomach acid.

I guess ALL I wanted to do was have some space so we could keep being friends because that's what you want and you meant the world to me and Mercury Mars and Pluto even though it's not a proper planet anymore which makes me so angry like why make it a planet then take it all aaway? Its cruel and PLuto deserves better. Pluto was a lie. YOu were a lie. You said my friendship mattered but I don't think it does
Oh and by the way don Juan kissing you wasn't that great ANYWAY
haha.

now who's lying
right?

That last part was not true kissing you was a journey through the cosmos (inclusive of pluto) ansdf you have a beautful soft mouth but if its full of lies
WHAT'S EVEN THE POINT?
This is Lily Evans by the way you are AN ARsE

"Arse," she stubbornly repeats, her voice low and resentful, like her phone is the receptacle for the curse she's laid upon his soul, smashing the send button with the pad of her thumb before she drops it back on the napkin. Arse. Liar. Shower-adjacent pervert. I hate you. I love you. "No I don't."

"What?" says Brian.

She looks up quickly. "I don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't love him."

Brian blinks at her, just the once. It feels like a deliberate maneuver. "I never said you did."

"Because I don't, you know, and I'm drunk, so it doesn't even matter what I say." It's very important that Brian understands this. It's even more important that Brian believes this, so that Lily can believe it herself. If the grown-up surgeon with the creaseless chino trousers tells her that she doesn't love her neighbour, that's an indestructible truth. He's got a degree. An education. A stethoscope, probably. Someone put a stupid, flat little hat on the top of his head and handed him a rolled-up piece of paper, so he's qualified to make such crucial judgements. "Do you know how often I've been drunk and in a toilet and I've met a girl in the queue and she's telling me she loves me after only five minutes?" She nods resolutely. Very serious business. "It's like, a thing we do. Girls. Men shit for days. Women talk. It's science. Sometimes I'll hold her hair back when she pukes. Also science. And then we say 'I love you' and then we leave and I forget she ever existed. This is like that. Science."

"Right," says Brian. He looks a bit overwhelmed.

"Right," Lily repeats. Her phone vibrates, sliding slightly off the raised fold of the thick linen napkin. "D'you mind if I check that? Only it's the internet, you know, and if Mary can't get Netflix—"

"I get it," says Brian, with a wave of his hand in her direction. "Go for it. It's fine."

She picks up her phone, which hasn't auto-locked in the time it has taken her to retrieve it. Her message thread with James is still still open.

Lily
please just let me pick u up
for pluto

Brians taking me hoem. Bye.

That'll shut him up, she thinks, for all of a second, before her screen lights up and his handsome, chiselled, infuriating face flashes before her eyes.

Calling her, is he? Thinks he can one-up his way to success?

She's not standing for that fuckery.

"I have to take this," she says to Brian. "Important business call."

"Lily, I know it's not—"

"Important business call," she demurely repeats, and lifts her phone to her ear, adopting a falsely cheerful tone. "Sam's Pizza, Lily speaking. How can I be of service?"

"Not funny," comes James's flat voice on the other end of the line. "You—"

"Is that a deep pan or a thin crust?"

"Stop—"

"Pepperoni, you say?"

"Lily, let me come get—"

"Who is this? Jason? Jasper?" Lily lets out a tinkling laugh. "Pardon my insolence, it's just that I'm so used to hearing from that neighbour girl of yours—you know, the one you use when you're in the mood for pizza and sexual gratification? How's she been doing lately?"

"Patently unwell, I believe," James answers tightly, his cool voice taut and crisp. "Some tosser has let her get herself smashed at dinner, and she won't let anyone come get her. It's a real issue, Sam. A real issue."

Lily's bogus buoyancy is dropped at once, replaced by her immediate indignation.

"Don't do that," she scolds him. "Don't play along like you think you're so fucking cute. This is my game, it's not your game. You don't get to act like you're the responsible fucking adult here, okay? My game."

"I don't want to play any games!" James cries. "You started this one!"

"Tell that to all the mind games you've been playing."

"They aren't—" He stops. Takes in a sharp breath. "Lily. Please. It's...I know you're angry. You've every right to be angry. But if you'd just—"

"Just what?" she interrupts. "Don't let the nice surgeon drive me home because it makes you jealous?"

"You do not let strange men who daily work with sharp instruments and who are mates with Eddie drive you home on a first date!" he returns hotly, sounding as if he's quickly running out of breath. "I'm going to your flat now. I'll give Mary my keys. There are three Brians on Interpol's list of most dangerous criminals. Probably. Middle names count."

"Mary's not in," Lily lies, "and she'll slam the door in your face anyway." This part is very likely true. Mary is vengeful, and often quite hard on people who don't deserve it. But unfalteringly loyal to Lily. "Plus, Brian saved three lives today—"

"Actually," pipes up Brian, "I didn't—"

"I told you I had a business call, Brian," says Lily, and rises to her feet in search of privacy with very little grace, sadly, though she's so enthusiastically enthralled by her current rage that maintaining her poise seems like a long-forgotten ambition. She steps away from the table and makes a break for the ladies' room, weaving her way through the assembled circular tables with some difficulty. "Can't be that concerned about Interpol's most wanted if you're not bothered to get off your arse and pick me up yourself, can you? Important Fortnite tournament on tonight, is there?"

"I've offered a half-dozen times to come get you!" he objects instantly. "Apologies if your blatant dismissals gave me the incorrect impression you might strangle me if you saw I was the one driving up. And I wouldn't even mind all that much," he adds drily. "Strangle away. Except you clearly can't drive yourself home at the moment, so it would all rather defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"

Lily reaches a long corridor, off which branch several doors which lead to kitchens and toilets and goodness knows what else—sub-zero temperature dungeons for the minimum-wage proletarians they kill and skin for their meat like Sweeney Todd's well-barbered victims, perhaps—and sags against the wall, digging the heels of her favourite silver shoes into the plush, carpeted floor.

"I don't want to see you," she tells him.

There's a heavy, significant silence. "Lily—"

"And I don't need to drive myself home," she carries on, "because Brian—"

"The same fucking Brian who's let you get completely smashed at your first dinner?" he whips back furiously, the sarcastic derision dripping from his every word. "Yes. Brilliant Brian. Real bloody winner there, Lily!"

"This isn't about Brian, this is about how you don't think I can take care of myself—"

"I never—"

"And how you want me to die alone—"

"I don't want you to die alone! Just because—"

"And then you have the audacity to get mad at me for not banging on your door the second I got home when you caused all of this! You lied to me—stupid wet shirt, stupid wrench—you didn't even need it, James, you lied to get me into that stupid shower and then Eddie turned up and you couldn't follow through so you turned it all around on me!"

"I didn't turn it all around on you! I never said you did anything wrong that day in the shower!" He makes a short noise of frustrated resignation. "And, fine, I was mad earlier, but that's only...that's only because I don't think it's so audacious to care enough to want to bang on someone's door the second they get home. I think it's following through on friendship—one that was really bloody important to me, in case you hadn't noticed! So maybe I have fucked up the rest of it, but I'm certainly not going to be sorry for caring that I haven't seen or heard from you in days, and when I finally do, you're going off with bloody Brian!"

"Shut up about Brian," she says nastily. "I'm sick of hearing about Brian. You're not my boyfriend, James. You don't get to not want me and not want anyone else to have me. You don't get to be jealous."

"If you want me to quit acting like a jealous boyfriend," James replies tersely, "then quit dangling the likes of bastards like baby-saving Brian at me, trying to make me one!"

"Dangling—"

"Yes! Dangling!"

"I didn't want to be with Brian, I wanted to hang out with you, and I'm not dangling anyone!"

"If you wanted to see me, then why didn't you?"

"Because Mary made me go, okay?!" she cries, startling an elderly woman who has just emerged from the loo. "I got home and I was tired and she was all—surprise! Blind date! Can't stand him up or you're a bad person! And I'm glad I didn't stand him up because he's in love with a nurse and he's sad about it and he needed to talk and I helped, okay? I helped and it made me feel good and I needed to feel good."

James chokes. "Wait—so bloody Brian's been in love with some nurse this whole time?" He expels a strangled noise of victory. "Ha! See? That! Dangling."

"I can dangle whoever I want, James—I'm not the one who wants to keep things platonic between us, that's your prerogative. It's all bloody platonic with you, except for when you're jealous or you want sex and I'm just down the hall and you know I'll give you what you want because I've skewered myself on the end of your bloody hook. That's why Mary says you think I'm just a—that I'm just convenient. Just a sex part. Just a backup you're storing in your closet until you're in the mood to fuck someone. She says you're playing me and that I'm thick for not seeing it."

"And is that what you think?" James asks in a tone so flat, it hardly seems a question at all. "That I—Christ, a sex part." For some reason, he lets loose a humourless laugh. It peters out breathlessly. "I don't think you're a sex part, Lily. I think you're the most wonderful and brilliant and insanely infuriating person I know because—because you make me do insane things! This is all insane. And I know that! I've made a mess of this, I get it, but if you honestly believe that me trying to shove aside attraction so that I don't lose you as a friend is treating you as a sex part—" He huffs in a short breath. "Well, then you are thick, and I know that's not true because you're six times smarter than me, and I can't even yell at you without complimenting you, and I don't do that to sex parts!"

She wants to ask him why, if all of this is true, if she's so wonderful and brilliant and insanely infuriating, she's still not enough for him.

She wants to ask him why he doesn't want to be her boyfriend, for real and proper, even though nothing would really change if he was. They'd still share their dinner from the same pizza box, still curl up on the same couch to watch whatever sitcom strikes either of their fancies, still call each other up five minutes after parting at her door for the evening. It would be everything and nothing like it was before, because she could kiss him if he was her boyfriend, trail the tips of fingers across an expanse of warm, inviting skin, feel him inside her. Have all of him. Give him all of her. If he was her boyfriend.

James wants to kiss her, to touch her, to fuck her. Lily knows he does.

She wants to ask him to explain himself, to make sense of all of this confusion.

But she really doesn't want the answer.

"I don't—I wish I'd never met you," she says quietly, and squeezes her eyelids shut, blotting out the light. A hot and expansive pain is beginning to swell beneath her skull, prodding and pushing at the soft tendrils of her brain, hotly demanding that it yield some space, an angry cry echoing through its alcohol-fogged chambers. "You make my head hurt. My head hurts."

"Lily—"

"I am a whole and complete and self-sufficient person, y'know," she says haughtily, "and I was before I met you. I didn't just—I didn't just burst into existence in your bathroom. Sometimes I even got drunk, and I always got home safe and I don't need you looking out for me when you don't want—"

"I do recall a time or two when you even got drunk," James cuts in. "One memorable occasion, even. When you became a housebreaker. A half-naked housebreaker. One who certainly got somewhere safe—my flat. My bed!"

"You want me in your bed." Arse. Liar. Shower-adjacent pervert. I hate you. I love you. No I don't. "If I came home right now and knocked on your door and asked you to fuck me, you'd do it."

"That—that's not—"

"Maybe I should come home," she coldly suggests. "Might as well just do it, right? Final nail in the coffin? We could have gotten it over with ages ago, if you hadn't—"

"The fact that I'm trying to fix this between us and all you seem concerned with is a final nail in the coffin is exactly why you shouldn't," James shoots back angrily. "And if you can't see that—Christ, I don't even know why I'm arguing with you about this! You're not going to remember any of it in the morning, anyway!"

"Don't hear you denying that you'd do it." She's not letting this point lie. She's getting an admission—some admission, some infinitesimal modicum of the truth she's entitled to, even if she has to scrape it from the ground like a filthy scavenger. "Liar."

"Liar? Because I—" His words cut off, replaced by a heady scoff with a cross and impatient air. "Come off it, Lily. Of course I'd do it. You know I'd do it, I know I'd do it—everyone in the greater London metropolitan area knows I'd do it—but that doesn't mean we should—"

"Thank you," she says, with great delicacy despite the thrill of righteous, savage, painfully aroused victory shooting through her body, "but I have to get back to my date."

"You...wait—"

"Bye," she says flatly, and hangs up on him.

Then she turns off her phone, because he's going to call her back, and she can't be held responsible for what she'll do if she's forced to hear his voice again tonight.

Arse. Liar. Shower-adjacent pervert.

She hates him.

She loves him.

No, she doesn't.

She almost follows through on her threat.

Almost.

She's very nearly poised to do it—switch her phone back on, find an Uber, slams her fist against his front door until he wrenches it open and takes her roughly against the corridor wall, because what's decorum, or subtlety, or even other people, when she wants to fuck him this badly?—and she's justified her decision.

Justified, and then some.

It's reasonable, or so she explains to Brian over a shared French dessert. Lily wants to be James's girlfriend. She wants a real relationship, the talking and the sharing and love, the kind of love that wraps them both in cushiony warmth and drizzles them in chocolate, and hand-holding, and weekends away in ivy-covered country cottages, and hours and hours and hours of mundanely domestic errands that don't feel so mundane because he's there and he's hers and she's got him, and dinners and snuggling and maybe another cat, if Algernon could accept that...which he probably can't, so she's prepared to concede that point.

But James doesn't want any of that, it seems.

As best as Lily can tell, he wants to have his cake and eat it. Wants her body and her brain, but couldn't give less of a shit about her heart.

Friends with benefits, she thinks it might be called.

Except...except she can't be his friend, not now, not when friendship is a chisel intent upon hacking away at her soul, so she might as well go home and let him screw her brains out just the once, before they're forced to make strangers of one another, and then they'll both get half of what they actually want.

Brian gives her his full attention as she raves and rants, allows her to plead her case without a word of interruption, but when it's all done, when she's holding down the power switch on her phone, he quickly reaches over and plucks it from her hands.

"You don't deserve half of what you want," he points out, regarding her with an unquenchable sternness which brings to mind a formidable schoolmarm, "you deserve the full thing, and besides, you're really quite drunk, so we'd better get you home so you can sleep it off."

She's very drunk at this point—trashed, really, in a horrific departure from Three Years Ago Lily, who would have shaken off this drama and taken herself home at a sensible hour. Three Years Ago Lily wouldn't have been out this late in the first place. She would have been back in her old flat in Peckham, wiping the last remnants of stage makeup from her face and going to bed with her sense of hope in the world still intact.

Three Years Ago Lily still thought that she could make it as an actress.

Three Years Ago Lily would not have spent her free time on a Claire Foy helmed crime procedural emailing her agent about modelling opportunities just so she could afford to keep paying her rent.

Three Years Ago Lily believed that she fully deserved the things she wanted, but Present Day Lily would have been lucky to get her hands on half.

Still, despite her drunken state and her somber acceptance of the slow decay of her life and common sense, that's too nice a compliment to deliberately ignore, and she's too touched by Brian's quiet insistence to disagree out loud. She is so very drunk, so amped-up on indignation, on her fear and triumph and her own hurt feelings, on that towering structure of flesh and sinew and bone who has so enslaved her, he who has somehow manipulated her nerve-endings to respond frantically to the sound of his voice, or his scent, or even something so innocuous as his name. She's packed a month's worth of adrenaline into one strange evening, so her tired, miserable body could flip-flop either way, but Brian has a soothing, sensible air that leaves her feeling boneless.

He's such a calming influence, Brian. Nothing like her—nothing like that idiot next door.

Nothing like James.

God, she adores that name.

James, so warm and darling, James, drips from her tongue like honey. She's caught on the end of his line and flopping helplessly, half-dreaming of reasons to forgive him, starved for him and obsessed with him and how dare he? Who told him that he could yank her heart from her chest and tuck it away in a lock-box of his making? She gave him no permission to leave her in this state.

Arse. Liar. Shower-adjacent pervert. She hates him. She—no. She's not doing that again.

She hates him.

She...wants him.

That's better. Much better. Especially since there's sturdy, dependable Brian, who sees her all the way home like the most proper of gentlemen and wrestles Lily away from James's apartment door, regaling her with such enlightening statements as, "you don't want to do this while you're drunk" and "you'll only regret it in the morning," which she probably will, he's right.

"You're very clever," she tells him, as she hands over her keys. It seems pointless to attempt to wrangle them herself in the state she's in. Brian performs complex surgeries on the chests of tiny children—he can probably put a key into a lock without much difficulty.

"Thank you," he replies.

"You're very welcome, good sir."

"You're very clever too."

"You think so?" Lily scoffs loudly, uncharacteristically happy to splash about in self-deprecation. "I've been rude to you, I had a fight on the phone in the middle of a fancy restaurant, I'm completely trashed—"

"That's all very true, but I understand what you're going through, remember?" Her apartment door clicks and swings inwards, just as Brian inclines his head in the direction of James's flat. "We are none of us sane in love. Would that we could be, life would be much easier."

"That sounds like a quote from somewhere."

Brian shrugs, and tugs her forwards, successfully hauling her into her flat. There's a little bit of a stumble as she crosses the threshold, but luckily, she does not have to rely upon herself to remain upright, and she'd kicked off her pretty silver shoes in the elevator.

She will break no ankles today.

"Hey, you're home!" she hears Mary call out, and the crack of space between the living room door and its white-painted frame is quickly thrown open, revealing her pyjama-clad friend. "How did the—"

The words die in Mary's mouth as she comprehends the sorry sight in front of her eyes.

"Ah, hello," says Brian stiffly, his arm still firmly fastened around Lily's back, and he hitches her up like she's a baby on his hip. "Mary, isn't it? Nice to finally meet you. She's had a little too much to drink."

This is why it never would have worked out with Brian, Lily reflects. He's trying to force her to comply with the laws of gravity at a fraught and emotional time in her life, and she, for one, does not appreciate his efforts. If she wants to fall down on the floor, she can fall down on the floor.

"I can see that," says Mary.

"I tried talking her out of it, but—"

"She's a law unto herself, I wouldn't worry about it," Mary counters, waving the matter away. "Tell her what to do and she'll always do the opposite."

"I thought that maybe she should get some sleep."

Someone is playing smooth jazz in the living room.

It's probably Eddie, because he is the fucking worst.

"You're right. Thank you for bringing her back," Mary agrees, and moves toward them at speed, holding both arms out to receive Lily. "I'll get her to bed."

"Don't wanna sleep," Lily grumbles, and tosses her shoes across the hall.

"Yes you do, darling."

"No I don't," she insists, but allows herself to be shifted into her friend's care. "But you don't listen, do you? You never listen. Never at all."

Mary grunts, swaying slightly as Lily flops into her arms. "Time for bed, darling."

"I didn't want to go on a stupid blind date."

"I know you didn't."

"I want to be with James and you know I do and you don't care because you've got your opinions and no one can ever say you're wrong—"

"Bit of a pot and kettle situation there," says Mary quietly. She wraps one arm around Lily's waist and guides her away from the front door. "But that's not important. Brian, if you want to pop into the living room, Eddie's just—"

"James is a good person!" Lily passionately continues. Somehow, she and Mary are moving towards Lily's bedroom at a pretty good pace, even though Mary is struggling to keep them both upright, and Lily is dragging her feet to spite her. "He always smells nice, and he uses the recycling bin, and he doesn't want a motorcycle—"

"A motorcy—"

"Yes, Mary," says Lily haughtily. "Motorcycles are so dangerous—all that open space and hard road around you and you're going so fast—"

"How is this remotely important?"

"I'm just saying, it'd be one less thing to worry about!"

Mary doesn't attempt to hide a derisive laugh. "You're so fucked."

"I could've been, if you'd let me do what I want."

"I doubt that you could do what you wanted right now even if I let you," Mary informs her, and Lily finds herself being unceremoniously shoved in the direction of her bed. "You're welcome to try, though. I could do with some entertainment."

Lily flings her purse onto her bed and flops down after it, face-first, her arms curling around her duvet to hug it to her chest.

"Did you wash my sheets?" she wonders aloud. The telltale jasmine scent of Mary's favourite fabric softener is wafting up her nostrils, and it's far too fresh to be a remnant from last week.

"I did," says Mary. Lily can hear the laughter in her voice. "Y'know, just in case you and Brian..."

"Gross!"

"What's so gross about Brian?! He's lovely!"

"Nothing's gross about Brian, but he's not my type and you know he isn't." Lily lets go of the duvet and turns onto her back, her eyes flicking up to the bare white ceiling. She ought to find some glow-in-the-dark stars to stick up there, so she can spend the rest of her life regressing to her childhood whenever the sun goes down. "Why's Eddie listening to smooth jazz?"

"Because he's worldly."

"He's not fucking worldly."

"Fine, he isn't, but you're in no position to judge his tastes when the bloke you fancy listens to depressing Christmas music in the dead of July."

"He listens to…" Lily listlessly repeats, her voice trailing off into a slow exhalation.

Arse. Liar. Shower-adjacent pervert.

She hates him she hates him she hates him.

She hates him so much, because she…

No.

No.

Lily scrambles up and twists her body backwards, propped up on her knees, grazing the wall behind her headboard with the tip of her nose. She balls her hand into a fist and pounds the wall in front of her face—once, twice, several more times in quick succession—each vengeful, pointed slam of her fist against the plaster replacing the last before the sound it makes has time to fade from the atmosphere.

"I'M HOME, YOU LYING SHIT!" she bellows, and adds a few more bangs for good measure. "HAPPY NOW?"

She'll let them take a limb before James Potter wins this battle, before she finds herself scrambling on her hands and knees to navigate a trench from which escape is impossible, before she lets herself feel...that. She'll give her limbs and her bones and her frayed-wire nerves, her heart and her eyes and her fingers, but she will not let him win. He will not make her love him. He won't.

If she could just keep her hair, though, that would be nice. She'd rather not give that up.

"I've never seen anything so tragic," says Mary flatly.

"You're dating something so tragic," Lily retorts, throwing herself dramatically upon her pillows, curling up like a kitten. "Where's my phone?"

"In your purse, right next to you."

"In my—" She lifts her head slightly, sees the aforementioned purse, and her hand shoots out to rummage for her phone amongst stray receipts and loose mascara wands. "Oh. Thanks."

"You're welcome, nutcase." Mary's voice begins to fade. She's retreating to the living room. Lily's bedroom door has been left ajar, swaying gently back and forth. "Don't fall asleep in your clothes."

"I'll do what I want!" Lily shouts after her, but she's found her phone and is already less than invested in this chat. Her fingers are already moving, dancing to the rhythm of her swansong before James can get to her first. She's a venerated blacksmith at the top of her game, forging one last, great, scorching hot poker to press against a wound in the chest of a man she cares for intensely.

If youre wondering what the knosking was for I am MAKING MY DISPLEASUR KNOWN OKAY?
Als o you were wroried about me geting back so jsut letting you know I am safe so yuo don't worry.
But I am STILL SO ANGREY our friendshio is broekn forevr like the nose of The sphinx of Giaz
*Giza
Night night xoxox

She hears movement in the room behind her. Perfect. Brilliant. He deserves to have his sleep interrupted. Then she turns her phone off, again. Denies him a response. Again.

Hah.

That'll show James what for, she thinks, and it's the very last lucid idea that frisks giddily through her brain before she drifts into a vodka-soaked sleep, the phone discarded clumsily on her pillow.

That'll show him.

James does not sleep much that night.

He tries. Truly, he does. He's livid, at first, just as much as he's ravaged. He yells at Algernon when he can't yell at Lily because she's turned off her phone, or maybe blocked him—a litany of furious raves about stupid smart women, goddesses of guile and disaster and wonder, who only want his admittedly very fit and constantly aching for her body...but what about his soul? he demands of his cat, who hacks up a furball in response. What about his...alright, maybe half his heart, he's not really sure, and he doesn't want to think too much about it now, fractions were never his strong suit, and also she's half a monster, so what does it matter? Bloody Brian and his bloody lover nurse ought to go in and fix her, and James will only bring flowers to her hospital bed the once after surgery because that's what she deserves.

Also, maybe some chocolates.

Can people eat chocolates after heart surgery? Well, he'll bring them anyway, and if all she can do is stare at them longingly from her cot, coveting the sweets, all the better.

How did this go so wrong?

James doesn't know, but Drunken Lily had said everything James had thought—feared—Sober Lily might. Nothing about a real relationship or fixing the friendship he'd thrown a (literal) wrench into, just needling barbs calling him a liar and heated threats to show up at his door to...god. She'd prodded and taunted and pushed him, and was still somehow hurt—upset by it all, by him—and James wants to take objects from around his room and begin pelting them one after another against their party wall until she does exactly as she's threatened and shows up at his flat so that they can…they can...but she's not even there. She's out with bloody Brian. She's the liar, throwing that out there but never intending to act on it.

And the worst bit? She's correct. James has no right to complain, not even a whit. He is not her boyfriend. He is not wholly confident that she's ever wanted him to be—and why should she? He's an emotional fuck-up, and she's got a bloke who saves sick children for a living sharing her swotty French desserts. And even if she may not, one day, be totally opposed to the idea of James tagging along on her life's journey...he still does not want to get there thinking with his prick first. He doesn't want sexual frustration to be the driving force when she won't even text him when it counts and is still agreeing to go on dates with other people. That's no way to build this.

So he's angry with her. Really, really angry.

But...she'll make it home alright, won't she?

At some point, Algernon leaves the room like he's never been so disgusted, and James falls into his bed for a fitful attempt at slumber.

Except he doesn't slumber.

Or, he does, some, but it's a haunted sleep—a fitful doze plagued by hazy visions of James's own greatest dream and nightmare: Lily, in her pretty flowered dress, the strap of her lacy red bra visible just a slice, standing tightly drawn and furious at his threshold. She is fairly quaking with emotion, glares at him with that blazing emerald stare, opens her mouth to unleash unholy hell on his undeserving arse...except he doesn't let her. He doesn't let her get even a word out, simply cuts her off completely with his mouth, kissing her—his whole body, suddenly, just on and around hers. In the apartment corridor. Clumsy, shuffled steps until her back hits the far wall. And she lets him. Her long arms curling around him, her mouth feverishly matching his, harder, more. Clothes begin to fall like a brisk spring rainstorm: shirt here, shoe there, ping, ping, ping. He thrusts himself against her and she thrusts back. He says some very embarrassing things—emotional embarrassing, not dirty embarrassing...though he says some of those too. So does she. They are—it's—

When the furious slams of hands and fists sound above his head around eleven, James springs from his flagrant sex dream like a shot, feeling as if he's just received a glorious reprieve and a torturous punishment.

She's hollering at him. Hollering...and fucking hell, he aches with it. Aches a lot, truthfully, in several key places, but it's pathetic how needy he abruptly feels for the muffled sound of her taunting voice. Whatever sleep he's managed has successfully stripped him of his blustering fury. He wrestles for it, but the indignation is mist on air. All that's left is a husk of a man, sexually and emotionally stunted and relieved that she's home in one raving piece.

Bing. Bing. Bing.

Bleary-eyed, James grapples for his phone, reading the texts that come through, one after the other.

Oh, she's cross. It's a lot—typos and caps and historical allusions and anguish—she's so angry with him—and there at the bottom—

Night night xoxox

xoxox

That's…

Right.

He tries to call her, but she must have turned off her phone again because it goes straight to voicemail. He listens raptly as her lovely voice requests he leave a message and momentarily considers suffocating himself with a pillow.

Asphyxiation by bedding is too good for him. Public beheading by a dull and blood-crusted guillotine is too good for him. He deserves...something much, much worse. He can't think of it now—it's quite dark, he's emotionally ravished, and what little sleep he's managed has been anything but peaceful—but he'll concoct a suitable death scenario when he's better equipped for clever pith.

By two a.m., he is reading and rereading their texts. He plays and replays their phone call from earlier in his head. The elevator scene. The shower. All of it.

By five, he's at the Tesco up the road, scouring the aisles with the sleep-deprived students and irritatingly industrious mothers for baking supplies.

By seven-thirty, he's chucked five failed loaves of banana bread into the bin and has been back to Tesco twice more for replenished supplies.

"The fuck—" a furious Sirius shouts as he storms out of his bedroom at approximately eight thirty-seven, voice competing against the repeated blaring of the kitchen fire alarm. Red-faced and wild-eyed, he takes one look at the flour-covered James, frantically waving a dishrag at the blinking alarm, surrounded by more bowls and pans than Sirius likely thought they owned, and promptly reverses back through his door, slamming it closed behind him.

James takes a nap after the fire alarm. He deserves it. But a few replenishing hours later, he's back at it again.

He needs to get serious. He grabs his laptop from his bedroom and turns on the Coldplay Spotify channel. To Chris Martin's soulful crooning, he carefully follows the recipe he'd grabbed from the internet. This one seems...better. Sort of. He doesn't set the bread or the kitchen on fire, in any case, which is improvement. And though the loaf definitely presents with a distinct lopsidedness that would undoubtedly leave Paul Hollywood sneering with glee, it at least smells correct, which James reckons is as close as he's going to get to proper Apology Banana Bread.

She'll get what he's trying to do.

Apologize.

She'll forgive him.

...Won't she?

"How's it look?" he asks Algernon, who has recently reappeared, though they are both quite aware that it is on a completely probationary basis.

Algernon licks his paw and purrs a short sigh.

That's nearly three stars in Algernon's book.

James will take it.

The heat of the fresh bake will only last so long, and in the mess James has made of the kitchen, he can't for the life of him locate where he's stashed the cling film. He gives up after a few minutes, too antsy and anxious to waste further time searching. He locates his best plate instead—the one with the fancy swirls and the cats chasing yarn—and plops the bread at its centre. He changes his flour-crusted shirt, swipes what grime he can off his jeans, and makes for the flat door.

You can do this, he pep-talks himself, entering the corridor and turning briskly towards Lily's flat. She was cross yesterday, but you can fix it. You can—

Christ, she lives close. James stops in front the the closed portal, hands not quite steady around the rounded plate. He takes a deep breath. Moment of truth, then. It's fine. You'll fix it. It's fine. Throwing nerves to the wind, he reaches up to knock firmly on the door.

For several long moments, all is silent.

He counts the seconds passing.

There are a lot of them.

More seconds than he was anticipating, honestly.

—thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—hell—

Ah!

Footsteps.

They're there, faintly, sounding in time to the staccato beat of his pounding pulse. James can't keep from leaning in, then barely has time to snap back straighter, bolster himself for come what may, when the door abruptly swings open.

Open...on the scrunched up face of a deeply scowling Mary.

Mary, who immediately tries to slam the door in his face.

"Oi—!" he shouts, recklessly thrusting his foot between the closing door and the stalwart frame, wincing as his poor trainer is squashed with the vengeful force of a furious friend. "Wait—Mary! Hold on!"

"Don't think I won't break your foot if I have to—"

"Go ahead," James challenges, wiggling his poor pummelled limb, as much to try to get some feeling back into it as to fanagle his way further inside. He grits his teeth against the pain. "Might save me the trouble of sticking my foot in my mouth so often, yeah? But once you've amputated, at least let me hobble inside, alright?"

Mary is glaring as if she'd like nothing more than to follow through on her threat and then some, but she reluctantly pulls the door away from his foot.

James sighs in relief.

"Thank you," he says.

"You can hobble back to your own flat," she replies coldly, with a self-important toss of her dark hair. "Lily doesn't want to see you."

"I know," he says, though his chest burns with the admission. "But if there's any hope of changing that, I've got to start somewhere. She doesn't need to see me. Just...hear me. And my thousand apologies. If she...wants."

"What are you hoping to apologise for today?" Mary taunts, long arms folding over her chest. "Treating her like a sex doll? Calling her a shitty friend? I only ask because you've been such a tremendous prick on so many fronts that you might have lost track."

"I didn't—" He bites his tongue. "Yes," he amends, tight and flushed. "All that. Most of it. But I'd really rather go through the annotated index with Lily herself, if it's all the same to you." He pauses again, recognises he's got to do a bit groveling to an unexpected party. "Mary, please. You've got every right to play devoted gatekeeper. I know I fucked this up—I know. And if she wants me to go, fine. But I'd like to hear it from her. Please."

Mary doesn't respond at once, but studies his face intently for a good ten seconds.

"Your fight almost ruined her date last night," she says, having evidently come to some private conclusion, "but she pulled it together. Good thing, too, because Brian's a great guy. A surgeon. That's a proper, grown-up job, you know. Lily said so herself."

The words make James feel like vomiting, right there in the flat threshold, an unwanted topping for the unfilmed banana bread. But he quells the reaction with a firm scold. He's had hours to think about this. Bloody Brian could not be the point here. It was about trying to salvage his friendship with Lily, above and beyond anything else. He'd deal with half or whole or hearts or souls later. He'd accept the consequences of his words, his stupendously foolish and confusing actions, and just try to make it up to her. If Lily felt...if she wanted to date someone else...Brian…

James presses his lips together, cuts off that road of thought.

He'd find a way to be okay with it.

Somehow.

Later.

"I hope Lily had fun—"

"No you don't," Mary says bluntly, like she can read the every thought on his face. "You hope she hates the guy and never sees him again. You picked that fight with her because she was going on a date and you were jealous, because you might not want her—for whatever batshit insane reason I can't even begin to understand—but you don't want anyone else to have her."

"Mary." He gives a hopeless shrug, unable to refute anything she's saying—the foundations are too true, even if her conclusions are tremendously off—but confirming it is equally as impossible. "Please. Just let me talk to her. There are explanations to give, but don't you think she deserves to hear them first?"

His stalwart pleas seem to be making some kind of hesitant headway. Mary steps from foot to foot, not yet moving from the doorway, but not so intractable, either. Her blue eyes narrow on him. Eventually, she lets out a weighted sigh. "Look, under any other circumstances, I'd love to stand here and watch you crash and burn, but I'm super late for a meeting and I have to leave, so you can't come in because I'm not leaving her alone with you. I'm sick to death of watching her be kind to shitty, undeserving men who take and take and treat her like—"

"James?"

The quiet sound of his name sees James's eyes darting up, his body seizing in taut, tingling awareness. His gaze catches on the familiar figure who has suddenly materialized behind Mary in the doorway.

His heart skips.

Lily.

She looks tired—and no less beautiful for it, but still, her skin holds a slightly sickly pallor and her pretty emerald eyes are distinctly red and puffy—garbed in an oversized grey sweatshirt and her favourite pyjama shorts, the ones printed with innumerable cartoon dinosaurs in various states of play. Her long red hair is tied in a ponytail which falls over one shoulder, but most of it has escaped and hangs loosely around her face, as if she slept on it and has only recently dragged herself out of bed.

Without pausing to think on it, he bumps gently but determinedly past Mary.

"Lily." Her name on his lips is a plea in itself, a benediction. "Are you—I'm so—"

The words get clogged. Shit. He'd practiced this, earlier, but it was clearly all for naught. He's forgotten everything at the first sight of her. Flustered, he thrusts forward the plate.

"I brought banana bread," he babbles. "Made it. For you. Apology banana bread. Like the last time—I mean, that was you, of course. And also not...this was so—I was so...worse. This was worse. I'm so—"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Mary snaps, striding between them. "Lil, darling, you shouldn't have to deal with this hungover. Just go and take your bath like you wanted. I'll handle—"

"It's fine," says Lily quietly, hugging her arms to her chest. She toes the wooden floor with her stockinged feet as she nods towards the front door. "I'll deal with this. Go to your meeting."

"You don't have to—"

"I want to."

"Darling, you've got no obligation to forgive this prick for anything."

"Mary," says Lily, in a tone which, while softer and less snippish than it might have been were she operating at full, non-hungover strength, is no less firm and formidable. "I said I'll deal with him myself."

Deal with him sounds ominous, but perhaps less so than what Mary might have planned. There's a long silence while the brunette studies Lily for signs of weakness.

She comes to a swift conclusion.

"Great," Mary says, as if she's been sentenced to the executioner's rope. "Just fabulous." She picks up her purse from the hall table and slings the strap over her shoulder. "Behave yourself," she warns James as she turns, jabbing a finger directly at his face. "She'll tell me if you're a wanker, and I know exactly where you live."

James can only nod, too revved on the moment to do a response justice. He can't say he doesn't deserve the warning, but he needs to save his best apologies for Lily. He can deal with Mary and her flagrant disapproval later.

"I'll text you in a bit," Mary says to Lily, sending her a very pointed look. "To check in."

Then she stomps forward and leaves them to it, finally, though she takes great care to slam the door behind her—a message of clear and present anger—as she departs.

James uses the sound to bolster himself, a cross reminder that he's here for a purpose and that purpose is to make this up to Lily and explain himself in any way he can. His fingers squeeze around the banana bread plate as he turns back to her, but instead of an opening apology, the start of many contrite monologues he will shower her with, the first thing out of his mouth is: "You look really pretty."

Which was...not the plan.

True, though.

Lily's flat, softly sleepy expression does not change, but a light pink flush blossoms behind the dusty little freckles which dance across her nose. "That's not what my mirror told me."

"Then you need a new mirror," James returns, but doesn't know how he got here—this isn't what he meant to open with, despite that she is, and she does, and she ought to know it. "But that's not—different issue. Not the...that's not why I'm here. Obviously."

"Aren't you?" The look on her face is impossible to read. She idly shuffles around some more. "Pity, could have done with the ego boost. I've been told I was outrageously drunk and uncouth last night, so my self-esteem's not exactly riding high."

"Told?" The possibility that she may actually not recall the details of the previous evening abruptly occurs to him. "Do you...not remember?"

She shrugs noncommittally. "I remember enough."

"Right." Enough is telling. "Well, at least you've the excuse of alcohol. I was outrageous and uncouth and only have myself to blame." He takes a cautious step forward with the quip—just the one. She's cool and joking, but it may only be tiredness keeping her from seeing him immediately back out the door. He needs to navigate this wisely. "I'm here...well, to apologise within an inch of my life, honestly. Though Mary was right. You've no obligation to accept, or even listen, if you...if you don't want to. But I'd like to. If you'll let me."

She doesn't answer him right away, merely gazes, her bleary eyes fixed unblinkingly on his face, still completely unreadable, still potentially situated at any point between immediate forgiveness and expelling him from her flat in a sudden rage, hell-bent on never seeing his face again.

She'd have every right to, he reminds himself, even as every fibre of his being prays please, please, please.

Then she lets out a long, exhausted sigh, dropping her arms to her sides.

"Did you say that was banana bread?" she asks, tilting her head to the left.

Blinking, James glances down at the sad little loaf. It's obvious lopsidedness has never looked so stark.

"Er, sort of." He openly winces. "If one isn't judging too firmly by appearances. It's the best of the approximately forty-five trial loaves I have scattered about my kitchen right now, in any case, and it does smell correct, and Coldplay was playing the whole time, so—" He gives a one-shouldered shrug, thrusts out the plate again. "A symbolic gesture whose present state reflects my own."

She looks down at the loaf for a bit, then back up at him.

"Right then." She holds out one hand. "No point in standing over there like you're worried I'll infect you with my lurgy. You can't catch a hangover. Come and give it here."

His flicker of a smile comes on a rush of relief, the stronghold of tension keeping James's shoulders taut finally relaxing some with the invitation. He feels like he's just successfully managed the first hurdle of a thousand-meter stretch. His feet move closer, step by step, until he's within arm's length of her.

He wants to reach out and pull her to him and ramble his apologies into her hair as he sucks in her coconut scent, but that's hurdle nine territory, and he's got to pace himself.

"Lily." He doesn't even bother thrusting the plate out again. "I am so—you have no idea how sorry I am. All of it, you were right. You were so right—"

"James—"

"No, listen—"

"Give me the banana bread," she cuts in, and takes a step toward him. Her other hand joins the first, palms up, and she looks rather like a beautiful, scraggly orphan waiting for a second helping of gruel. "Please?"

He doesn't know why he's clinging to the plate. He doesn't know why he isn't kissing her feet in gratitude rather than pushing to expel another apology. He doesn't know, but he still finds himself protesting. "No. Not yet. I still have to apologise for—"

She lets out a loud, exasperated huff of air and boldly takes the plate from his hands.

"Thank you," she says pointedly, and turns away from him—only briefly—to set the plate down on the hall table where Mary's purse once sat. Her eyebrows lift in question when she returns to him, resuming her position of only moments before, stationed squarely within easy reach of his arms. "How many loaves did you say you'd tried before that one? Thirty?"

"I think I set thirty on fire alone," James replies grimly. "I'm surprised you didn't hear the fire alarm beeping all morning. But that's not the point."

"I was probably in a drunken coma. What is the point?"

"That I was acting like a complete prick yesterday. That I was caught off guard when I saw you in the elevator, and I didn't know what it meant, so I just...got angry and...all the rest. You didn't deserve that. I'm sorry. Just—so fucking sorry."

"I know, James, and I'm sorry too—"

"You shouldn't be sorry. I'm the one who's handled it all wrong from the beginning. You were right about that day in the shower, too. I started it, and then I was being confusing, and you were…you had every reason to question it. And I clearly wasn't listening enough afterwards. All you asked for was space, a few days to think, and I flipped over an hourglass and had your sand running out from the moment I left the flat. That wasn't fair. So you didn't text? Or bang on my door the second you crossed into London? It seems so bloody stupid now to have made so much of it, but I just…" Wanted you. Needed you. Felt like someone had taken an axe to my chest. "...panicked."

"I understand that," she says, calmly, strongly. "Really, I do. I didn't yesterday because everything felt immediate and painful and shitty, and consuming my weight in cocktails didn't help, but how am I supposed to be upset that you were worried about losing me?"

"So worried," James emphasizes, like she needs the reminder. "Psychotically so."

Her lips seem to quiver at the corners. "Yeah."

"But...that's not all you were upset about." He lifts a hand grimly to his hair, pulling at the short strands in back. He feels itchy at where he needs to turn this, how it cuts a slice of his heart—in all its contradictory glory—out there for her to dissect. But she deserves an explanation. A full one. She's being far too kind to him right now. "I couldn't stand the idea of losing you, but I also...you were going on a date, and that just...well, you saw. I know what I said that day in your flat—and I meant it. I don't want to lose you for anything else. But I was still…" He sighs. Just needs to tear off the bandage, say it. "Jealous. And really uncomfortable and barbed with it. And you didn't deserve that, either."

The word jealous seems to awaken something in her, he can tell by shift in her stance, the lift of her chin, the slight clench in one side of her jaw.

It's the hint of last night's anger, perhaps, that he's been looking for this whole time. That he's wanted from her,somehow, much as he fears it.

"You say that," Lily begins, with a sudden warmth, though it seems to surprise her and exhaust her all at once and she hastily presses her lips together. She shakes her head. "Nevermind. Nothing."

"It's not nothing," James gently protests. "What?"

It seems to take her an age to respond, whether she is struggling to compose a response or because she has one that she doesn't wish James to know, he is unsure. One hand lifts to rub idly at her eye.

Her fingers are clenched inside her sleeves.

"I have no idea what, honestly," she admits. "I never know what you want. I never know where you're coming from. I feel like I've—like I have half the information, like you're just expecting me to figure out what's missing by myself."

"I know," James says, cringing again. "I've confused myself half the time. And I don't mean to be that way. I just don't know how...to make both sides of this work yet. Not without risking something. Because these things go wrong, Lily." He anxiously punctuates the word. "I've had them go wrong, before, when you just jump into an attraction and don't think any of it through. And then everything goes to shit and you've got to make strangers of each other, and maybe that's been all right with other people, but...not with you. I couldn't stand it if that happened with you. So I've just been...trying to avoid that. Poorly. With all the other emotions still in play."

"Oh," she says. "Right."

As her gaze slips away from his face and lands, vaguely unfocused, on an indeterminate spot some several feet away, she seems to fall still.

She's thinking hard, he can tell—those industrious cogs in her marvellous brain spinning at lightning quick speed, a wholly silent whirring that he dare not interrupt. Wherever her mind has taken her, whatever it is she's dwelling upon, his input is clearly not required.

"This—um," she eventually pipes up, then stops to clear her throat. A violently pink hue is pooling across her neck. "When it went wrong. Before." Her lips twist in displeasure. "Did she live in this building?"

James hesitates, not certain they ought to trek into the specifics. But she's asked. And he owes her answers. Whatever honest answers he can give her without confessing anything that will terrify her away.

"Yes," he confirms shortly, begrudgingly. "But that's not...you and me, all"—he motions between them—"this. It's not like anyone else. I would never want you to think you were like anyone else."

He flushes with the declaration, but strides past it quickly. Saying anything more might reveal too much, and they're not ready for that. Clearly aren't ready for that.

"But, yes," he continues, "there was someone who lived in the building. A few years ago. And I know a huge part of why it all went to shit is because I just went with what felt good and easy, rather than what was right, and we're better than that, you and me. From the start, you've been...so important, to me. More important than good and easy, yeah?" Then, because he can't help it, adds ruefully, "Though good and easy have been...supremely tempting. Still working on that."

"Good and easy," Lily repeats, then lets out a humourless laugh. She's still not looking at him. "I guess one slip in a couple of months is somewhat reasonable. She must have been much harder to resist."

"Lily," James returns flatly, "I nearly jumped you in the shower. One does not do that unless they've already been slipping pretty firmly from the start. And you know it."

"So she was harder to resist."

It's such a laughable conclusion, James can't help letting out a short snort. "Do you honestly need me to list all the ways in which you are a very hard person to resist? That's not the point of this conversation, you know."

"I can make it the point of this conversation if I want to," says Lily primly. "What was her name?"

James hesitates again, then answers, "Sasha."

"Christ." Lily hugs her arms across her chest as if she's staving off an oncoming chill, and laughs for a second time. It's a sorely empty sound. "Sasha. Of course her name is Sasha. Of course her name is fun and sexy, not dusty and old-fashioned like mine. Sasha." She repeats it like it's a curse word she finds particularly offensive. "Does she still live here?"

"No," James answers quickly. "She moved out ages ago. And I haven't seen her since. Haven't wanted to." He throws her a look. "And 'Lily' isn't dusty or old-fashioned. It's lovely. Classic."

"That's just another term for 'old-fashioned,' so you can spare me the etymology lesson," she says, then quickly shakes her head. "That was mean, sorry, and I didn't—I mean, this—this Sasha person, was she your girlfriend or were you just...y'know?" She sighs, and drags her eyes up to meet his, and looks a little sickened. "Were you just shagging her?"

James pauses again, lifts a hand to scratch at the back of his neck. "I mean...technically, yes, we were dating. Rushed right into both, honestly, which was part of the problem."

Lily makes a strange movement, quick and convulsive, like she's trying to suppress a shudder, and lifts one arm to scrub at the tip of her nose with her sleeve.

"So I'm a sequel," she says flatly—quietly, like some private utterance that he's accidentally overheard. "Huh."

"Sequel?" James drops his hand, shakes his head incredulously. "You are not a sequel. You're your own bloody bestseller, Lily Evans. That's not...look, you don't need to be jealous of Sasha Peters." Though the fact that she might be—is, he can see it, in the way she's moving, evading, griping—makes something prideful roar in victory inside his chest. It's not just him. She feels it, too. "Is that what this is?"

"Oh, no, I'm not jealous," says Lily at once, her voice rising half an octave, dripping with such derision that it seems foolish to assume that she's made any attempt to hide it. The hand which has been rubbing at her nose lands squarely on her heart. "I love thinking about you with other women, actually—makes me want to vomit and scrub my skin raw with a wire brush, which as you know is super fun—and thanks for telling me her full name, by the way. Can't wait to look her up on Facebook and obsess about how pretty she is."

"You're much prettier than she is," is all James can think to say, blinking.

"I'll make up my own mind on that score, thanks," she dryly responds, before another biting laugh escapes her. "This is just what I deserve for dangling Brian in front of your nose, you know. Apologies, and all that. I'm just terribly horny, and it's all churned up inside me like I'm some sort of sexless washerwoman."

The glimmer of something more hope her jealousy has sprung shrivels like a clawing thing inside his chest. Right. She was still leading with her horny foot first. Maybe only her horny foot. That was still an issue. Even though...sometimes, he swore…

He could ask.

But asking might turn this entire thing wrong again.

He can't let it go wrong again.

Maybe that makes him a coward, but he'll be a coward who still has Lily Evans in his life.

"I think we've both gotten a bit...undertow-ed by all of this," he tries diplomatically, though it feels like a free-fall, like he's missed the last handhold on the tall mountain, like he's losing something. "Which is why I've been trying to keep a rein here, make sure we're not drowning in anything. Though I think we can both concede I've done an utterly shit job of it."

"I'd like to point out that just last night, I threatened to come home and have sex with you out of pure spite," she reminds him. "I mean, not just out of spite, because you're—whatever. The point is I almost did, only Brian stopped me. He had to drag me away from your door, so you're not the only person who did a shit job."

James lets out the poorest replication of a chuckle, forcing it from his mouth with some inner-strength he did not know he possessed.

She almost did. Christ.

He's never wanted to strangle Bloody Brian with his swotty stethoscope more.

"Right," goes the chuckle. "Luckily 'almost' doesn't count."

"It counts to me," she offers, then waves a hand, seems to be trying to swat this all away like a pesky fly swooping through the air. "Look, I'm sorry for getting jealous—especially since you were trying to make a point about why you've been such a headcase and I blew right past it."

"It's fine—"

"I mean, don't get me wrong, I think your logic is nuts," she cuts over him, "but I also can't imagine that it would be nice to live next door if we simultaneously screwed each other and our friendship."

"It would just gut me completely to lose that—you," James reiterates, stumbling back on the familiar grounds of apology with relief. "But it was my fault, yesterday. I'm the one who let it get out of control. I'm the one who just didn't say how he was feeling. And I'm still sorry. So sorry. For making you rant and...and cry on the train. So if you need some time to think about all of it, that's okay. I'll respect that this go. I swear."

"No, it wasn't—you thought that I didn't want to see you, and that wasn't—" She lets out an exasperated sound and lifts her arms, only to let them flop heavily by her sides as if she's making an attempt at something hopeless. "It's just that I think you think that our friendship doesn't matter to me as much as it does to you, and that hurt so much, to think I'd made you feel like—"

"I know—"

"No, you don't know. Please, can I just finish?" Her bright green eyes are fixed imploringly on his. "I need to get this out."

Swallowing down his own imploring, James nods. "Go on."

"Thank you," she says, softly.

That burst of gritty, jagged-edged anger that Sasha seemed to stir in her has vanished, and in its place is softness—all softness—her voice, her eyes, and the hazy, familiar scent of coconut that lingers in the air like the imprint of a pleasant dream.

He wants to touch her. Any small touch. Her hand in his. Cool fingers to her flushed neck. The chastest of kisses to her forehead.

"I just wanted to—to tell you this," she starts. "I want you to know that you're my best friend, which probably means that I'm an awful, fickle person because I've known you all of five minutes, but you are. You're my best friend, and I love you, and I never, ever, ever want you to feel like you don't matter."

"Then we're both awful, fickle people," James says hoarsely, a glowing brightness popping in his chest. Best friend. Love you. "Because you're my best friend, too. And I never should've been acting like you had to prove that. I don't want you to feel that way. I just…let it all get tangled."

"I know that," she says. "I know what you were trying to protect, okay? It's fine, I don't want to—"

"It's not fine. There's so much I still need to—"

"I told you, I understand, it's not—"

"No, I was an arse, and you were right to be angry and confused, and you haven't let me apologise or explain any of it properly. You're even accepting banana bread that's so below basic acceptability it's practically not banana bread, and that is unacceptable in and of itself—"

He gets no further before she moves in and wraps her arms around his neck, pulls him close to her soft, warm body, fills his every overloaded sense with the scent and the feel and the reality of her.

Her chin tucks neatly against his shoulder, her heart beating solidly against the thrumming mess inside his own chest.

"Idiot," she murmurs, a gently spoken admonishment that sounds more like affection, filtering like silk through his ears and moving straight down to his needy, wanting heart. "Just let me forgive you, for goodness sake, so we can be friends again."

Too good for this world, Lily Evans is. And certainly too good for him. On nine-thousand levels.

But that does not mean James isn't going to scoop her up and keep her close for as long as she'll bloody well let him.

"I want that, too," he says, but her warmth—the damn bloody goodness of her—is like a prickly bush against his conscience. He wraps his arms around her back, holds her tighter against him. "But I want to make sure you—that you understand. I don't want this festering somehow. And I know I haven't got the best hand on this bloody attraction yet, how to keep it sorted from everything else. I don't know what to do with it all yet."

"It's okay," she mumbles into his chest. "I think I do."

He pulls back some—slowly, reluctantly—so he can look at her. "What?"

Lily lifts her head from his chest and tilts her chin up, her eyes locking onto his.

"Kiss me," she tells him.

Kiss—

James nearly staggers back.

She may as well have struck him over the head with the banana bread plate.

"W-what?" he sputters. "You—that's not funny."

"I'm not joking," she says simply. "I mean it."

James shakes his head, blinking frantically, like someone's just thrown a burst of confetti glitter in his face and the shiny little pieces of spark are clinging for dear life. If his fingers clench a bit too tightly on her arms, she has only herself to blame.

"That is not," he manages hoarsely, "the solution. It's the problem. That's...exposure therapy. At best."

"You're wrong," she says. "And I was wrong, that day in the kitchen, thinking that I could kiss you once and we'd be done with it. That's never going to work because...because I want you." Her eyes are fixed entirely on his. Unblinking. Shameless. Beautiful. "So much. And you want me too, I think, and if we keep trying to ignore it, it'll all turn to shit like it almost did yesterday, and become this stupid, angry night of sex that exploded out of nowhere because we were repressing all of this. So we have to be okay with wanting each other, even if that means we kiss sometimes without tearing ourselves up with guilt afterwards. Like a vaccine," she finishes, and almost sounds surprised by the word as it falls from her tongue. "Exactly like a vaccine, so it doesn't spiral out of control."

"A vaccine," James repeats, like he's on autopilot, a complete automation, and regurgitation is all his control panel is programmed to do. It's all he can manage, this robot-like response, because she's just...and it's what he wants, exactly as she's said. So much. Her unsubtle emphasis on the word shakes him, shatters him, leaves his wiring properly sparked and electrocuted, like a pulsing vibration strumming through him from head to toe.

I want you. So much.

Her logic...honestly, he can't make odds or ends of it. But what does he know? Nothing he's attempted to rationalise into fruition thus far has done anything but implode disastrously, so maybe this is better in her hands.

Maybe she's better in his hands.

Or maybe he's making up excuses so that he can kiss her again.

Christ, how he wants to kiss her again.

She thinks he feels guilty for feeling that way, but it's not guilt. It's never been guilt. It's always been wariness, and feeling like the ground moves beneath him when she walks by, and the harsh reality that he's been stumbling for his footing every time since. He doesn't know what she wants from him, and he's too terrified to ask. He's too certain that any false move will blow up like it had with the shower. Like it had yesterday. There are too many minefields to navigate here. Even if they're minefields of his own making.

Kissing Lily is another minefield.

It's the biggest of minefields.

But James is too drawn in by the tempting heat and the pretty lights of the inevitable explosion to resist.

"Are you sure about this?" he hears himself ask, a last-ditch out, because it's not just him standing so close to the blast he's likely to get charred. She's in the red zone, too. "It went so wrong last time—I mean, not the kissing part. That part was...well, you know. Pluto. But all the parts afterwards...you asked for a line, that day in the kitchen. And this is the opposite of that. Very much the opposite."

"I did ask," she agrees. "I was caught up in the idea that there had to be something inherently wrong in us being attracted to each other, but there's not. Not if we're both adults about it. I'm not going to send you away so that we can have distance because we don't need it. I want to be your friend. I'm all in on being your friend, but I also think you're really fit, and if that's where our relationship is at right now, I'm telling you I'm perfectly happy with that."

James lets out a short, almost amused sigh, dropping his arms so that they're no longer twined around her, but flop back down to his sides instead. Already, he can feel the surge in them, his fingers drumming against his thighs. They have a tense, magnetic pull to touch her again, one that does not seem to care that it ought to be circumspect. It's another layer of undertow, and James knows—knows—he's got no real fight against it. It's too strong. He wants her too much. So much.

He stares down at his recalcitrant limbs...and suddenly gets an idea.

Hastily, he snatches up one of her hands.

"All right," he says, clasping her right hand in his left, first standing them palm to palm, then carefully folding their fingers over until they're tightly interwoven like an intractable zipper. He refuses to become distracted by how soft her skin feels against his, how right. Instead, he squeezes and tugs, testing. The clasp holds firm. Satisfied, he turns to the second set and does the same—her left hand into his right; palm to palm; fold and twine; locked.

They are...holding hands.

If hand holding were a hostage situation.

"There," James says.

Lily lifts an eyebrow, eyeing their clasped hands in confusion.

"There, what?" she asks. "What is this?"

"Insurance," James answers briskly, squeezing her fingers with his own. He steps slowly forward, closing the distance between them until their bodies are nearly touching. Their sealed hands fall to either side of their hips. "Don't let go," he orders. Then, ruefully: "Don't let me let go."

"Is this the part where I make some kind of Titanic quip?" she asks faintly, her voice a sudden sombrous tone. Her dark eyes flicker from their locked hands up to his face. This close, he can see the rosy backdrop her suddenly flushed skin has given to her playful dust of freckles. Her hands jerk briefly in his, like they're itching for relief. "'I'll never let go, Jack'?"

"I'll never let go, James," he corrects, and drops his head.

Then he's kissing her.

Finally—properly—kissing her.

He means to ease into it—a slow settling of mouths, a testing beginning brush. That first time, in the kitchen, everything had been so strong and so fast and so coaxing for more and yet denying it utterly. Here, now, James means to be deliberate, to be thorough, to be so lazily lingering with it that he will be able to keep firm control, the tightest of holds like the tightest of hand clasps.

But things never progress the way he means with Lily. Never have, likely never will. It's an instantaneous thing—a zap, the moment their mouths touch, so much more a flashing lightning storm than the churning typhoon James had envisioned being able to powerfully wade into. His lips hit hers and it's immediately not enough—never enough. Not for either of them. His soft prod of mouths becomes a harder stroke of lips. His chin dips down as she parts her mouth beneath his and the taste of her becomes a spontaneous craving, a necessary craving. Whatever distance between their bodies existed seconds before is plundered in the blink of an eye. As their bodies align, parts matching, moving, squirming to get closer to each other, more of each other, James recognises that whatever control he'd laughably thought to have is gone. Bugger it, anyway. He just needs to kiss her.

It's not long before he feels the jerk of her fingers inside of his—a tug, a pull, as she makes a greedy sort of complaint against his lips and swings their clasped hands upward to try to reel him in closer, touch more, but no no, he won't let her loose. The whole point is not to let either of them loose, to keep some kind of rein on this, not to let his hands get to her because he knows they won't bloody well stop, and she knows it, so he kisses his scold into her mouth, letting their fisted hands settle at either side of her shoulders. She seems to take the rebuke well, sighing against him, lifting up on her toes and fitting her body more snugly against his, content to get her fix that way. He rewards her with a deeper taste—dipping his head, a longer stroke of his lips, then teasingly quicker, playing like he'll pull away, but only to come back. Of course he comes back. Kissing her is a required thing now.

He doesn't know exactly when he backs her up against the wall. It's an unconscious thing, a desperate bid for something to keep either of them afloat, but he hears the quiet thumps as he thrusts their clasped hands against the hard plaster, and knows they've got there. It is, perhaps, a bit too like his dream the night before, except in the dream the taste of her wasn't so heady, the feel of her leg hitching over his thigh didn't make his knees buckle, his mouth plunge more, moving down to her neck for only the briefest of seconds so he can hear her breathy gasps, and then returning just as quickly to swallow them down with his lips again.

Her fingers are squeezing his so hard, it's very nearly painful.

James can't register much of anything except the pleasure. The joy of kissing her. The thrill of it. The rightness, and the heat, and the magic—

She wrenches her mouth from his.

"Wait," she forces out, through a hard heave of a breath, as if she has been holding her head under water for a very long time. Her eyes find his and catch them fast, stubbornly refusing to let go. "We should just—just wait."

James is certain his entire body is shaking like a leaf in the wind. Somehow, he finds the ability to nod.

"Yeah," he gets out. "Yeah, good."

He stares back at her, out of breath, his pulse racing, but refuses to apologise. In a morning of apologies, each more valid than the next, this kiss is not something he's even remotely sorry about. And with her fingers still crushingly interlaced with his, it's simply not in him to pretend.

"So," he eventually manages. "That's vaccination."

His words seem to take some time to filter through her ears. She's gazing blankly up at him, her eyes clouded and soft, dark greens swirling into emerald and threaded through with minute strands of gold, reflecting his own longing back at him.

"Think so," she whispers, finally. "My heart is beating so fast."

He brings one of their still clasped hands to the centre of his chest, placing the back of her hand against his own clopping heartbeat.

"You jump, I jump," he jokes.

The laugh this elicits is a weak, breathless wisp of a thing. "I've never been kissed like that before."

"I've never kissed someone like that before," James returns, the bubbling sense of surreal euphoria still twinkling behind his eyelids. That the kiss has rendered her similarly stunned is another heady, powerful rush of adrenaline. He doesn't know what to do with any of these brewing emotions but laugh. "But really, it's a two-person effort. Teamwork, eh?"

"Yeah," she agrees, as her eyes slide from his face and light upon their intertwined hands. Her gaze is hazy and unfocused. "Teamwork."

It strikes him, then, that she seems a little...lost.

Lost, and hollow, and maybe a little frightened, like he's found her wandering alone in the midst of a storm, abandoned in a harsh, enclosing darkness, as if someone or something has unnerved her terribly, like she's seeing something different to what drifts before her eyes.

Her mind is somewhere else, but she clearly doesn't wish for it to stay there.

This can either be a tremendously good thing, or a tremendously bad thing, and though James suddenly is forced to recall that it was she who'd stopped it, who'd pulled away, the rest of him clings to the fact that he cannot possibly have had such a transcending moment on his own. That she must feel...some of this. Be overwhelmed and crashed over and reeling from that, as opposed to...what? Regret? Misgivings? A treatment that went perilously wonky and spread an illness no one saw coming?

He moves their hands slowly—she still hasn't let go of his hands—to lightly nudge at her chin with his knuckle.

"Hey," he says. "All right?"

"Hmm?" She looks up at him again, seems to recapture some of herself. A small smile touches the corners of her sumptuous, well-kissed lips. "I'm fine, I think. Just got dizzy for a moment."

"Endorphins," James says wisely, nodding, like he has any idea what he's talking about. "Body chemicals. Sero...something. It's a thing."

Take that, Bloody Brian, James thinks in victory. Sero-something!

"Serotonin," says Lily listlessly. "You make me feel too much sometimes."

Too much? James's breathing catches. "That's—"

"Could you give me some air for a second? I think the heat is getting to me." She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, as if some inconsiderate cad flicked water in her face, then unclenches her fingers from around his. "Body heat. Chemicals. Endorphins. It's fine. I'll be fine if I can go and sit down."

"You're probably dehydrated, too," James puts in, and can't believe they're still talking about body wellness when his heart is unwell—fluttering and skipping and everything in him protesting the fact that no part of him is presently touching any part of her. She moves past him, towards the kitchen island stools, and his hand finds the small of her back like it's a north-south magnet. "I ought to have skipped the banana bread and brought you electrolytes. Poor planning, really."

"I suppose it was."

"Are you sure you're alright?" The niggling doubts begin to seep in through the smallest of cracks in his post-kiss bliss. "If—if that was all too much, or—?"

"I'm fine," she says quickly, and pivots around to face him. Despite the presence of his hand on her back, she mustn't have been expecting him to be so close, because she blinks in surprise and takes a small step back, barely missing a collision with a stool. "I mean, it was too much but—it was a nice too much."

"Yeah? Because...you're allowed to rethink this. I don't want—"

"I liked it," she cuts over him. "I'm not made of glass, James, just… very turned on."

He lets out a short little laugh. Choked, really. Her honesty may kill him one day.

"Right," he says. "That...happens."

"Easier to tell when it happens to you," she remarks, her eyes flicking downwards. "I'm flattered, by the way."

"Maybe that's just...a spare banana," he offers lamely, flushing. "I was working with several of them this morning, you know."

"I'm sure," says Lily wryly, with an enquiring quirk of her eyebrow. "Whatever you need to tell yourself."

She swivels ninety degrees to the left on the heel of one stockinged foot, seems to hover for a moment, then moves abruptly toward the sink.

"Electrolytes," she announces.

"What?"

"For the dehydration," she continues, while she removes two glasses from a cupboard above her head and sets them down on the counter. "We snogged for a very long time out there, if you hadn't noticed. Not that I'm complaining."

"We're pretty good at that," he agrees. "Ought to keep us properly vaccinated for a bit, yeah?"

"Oh, definitely. At least, I reckon I'll be good for a while, and you know where I am whenever you feel the need for a top-up."

"Top-up?" he repeats. "That's...you're not a mobile. It shouldn't work that way. We just...I just...whenever?" He shakes his head. "That's crazy."

Lily swings back around to face him, her hands landing squarely on her hips.

"Why is it crazy?" she asks him.

Because every time I kiss you, it seems more and more impossible to stop. "Because...because it's just not done like that. I don't know!"

"Says who?" she retorts. "I'm an adult, you're an adult, we just spent several minutes snogging in the hall and it was better than any sex I've ever had, and yet, ta-dah—" She flips her hands outwards. "We're still best friends. I still adore you and respect you as a person. In fact, I'd really like it if you'd spend the day with me because we have a lot of Parks and Rec to get through and I missed you while I was away."

"I missed you too," he says, because that's the easiest thing to address, the most honest he can be. "But—"

"But, before you ask, no, this isn't some clever ploy to get into your pants. If I wanted that, I'd just ask."

"I didn't think it was a clever ploy to get anywhere, I just—" He stalls, lifts a hand to his hair and tugs at the strands, the pressured pull some kind of paltry attempt to ground him.

Honestly, why is he fighting this? Doesn't he feel a bit better now? A bit like he might...like she might...that they might be getting somewhere? That with all the sexual tension ebbed ever so slightly, they can concentrate on some kind of larger picture? Or at the very least, fall back into something normal? Sitting tucked up her couch, watching Parks and Rec, deciding whether or not poor Jerry deserves a bit of a break?

Never mind that now he has to contend with statements like better than any sex I've ever had.

He can manage that rationally.

Somehow.

"I suppose…" He sighs. Gives in. Of course he's going to give in. When the prospect of touching her is on the table, did he ever stand a true chance of objection? "Yeah. We're adults. We can...top-up." He cringes. "No, not top-up. Something else. But...maybe you're right."

"Of course I am. I'm right about most things," she says lightly.

Apparently unaffected by the raucous emotions that are currently battling one another for dominance in James's chest, Lily walks over to the fridge, where she pulls open the door and appears to carefully examine its contents.

"Anyway," she blithely continues, "it's not like it's a requirement, but if you ever feel a pressing need to kiss me, you can kiss me. It won't be a big problem." She reaches into the fridge and takes out a bottle of lemonade before nudging it shut with her elbow. "We can do the hand thing again. I liked that. Made me feel irresistible."

"We never did get to that long list of how difficult you are to resist," James murmurs, watching her carefully. "Actions speak louder than words and all."

Lily smiles brightly at him as she sets the bottle down next to the glasses.

"You," she says, "are an insanely handsome man and a wonderful kisser and an even better friend."

The needy, wanting thing inside his chest flutters and beams all the more, hardly believing they've somehow gotten to this point, the point of being okay—better than okay, even, in a strange sort of Twilight Zone maneuver that he is afraid to even think too much on, lest he jinx it. Lily has forgiven him. She's still his friend. His best friend. He continues to be a tremendous wreck of a man...but he is a wonderful kisser, and an even better friend, and somehow he's going to find a way to meld the two without imploding either of their lives into disastrous confetti.

"I get that a lot, in precisely that order of importance," he says, then claps his hands together. "So. Parks and Rec, then?"

"Yes please. And banana bread. It smells pretty good and I haven't had breakfast," she says, with an affirming nod. "You don't mind watching in my room, do you? Kingsley gave me his old telly and it's smaller than Mary's, but I've got a bunch of place cards to make today and they're all spread out on my bed."

"Place cards? Are you throwing a party?"

"No, you silly sod, for my sister's wedding. Didn't I tell you about the change of plans?" She frowns slightly. "Or did I just plan to ask you to come with me, and this in fact is now the first time you're hearing about it?"

James's eyebrows lift. His heart, skittering along, misses a beat. "You want me to go to your sister's wedding with you?"

"Well, originally I couldn't bring a date, but our cousin Dotty broke her leg and Petunia thinks casts are unseemly," she explains, with an accompanying eyeroll, "so I got roped in as a replacement bridesmaid. It's annoying as arse, but I get a plus one, so naturally…" She gestures towards him. "If you don't mind meeting my sister, that is. And my parents, though they're significantly less of a problem."

Naturally, James thinks, and not for the first time this morning, his brain pops and prickles and his chest does a giddy flip-flop.

She wants him as her date.

Naturally wants him as her date.

And has decided snogging him is some kind of delightful medical treatment.

It's not...well, it's not precisely confirmation of anything, but for the first time in days—weeks, maybe—James feels…

Hopeful.

Maybe, eventually, she might…

Maybe this is the start of…

Something.

"Yes," he says immediately, succinctly, with zero detail provided. "Of course I want to meet your family. And I am an amazing date. I have witty commentary for everything. And I look extra fit in a tux, because my mum buys custom ones without telling you. They just turn up in your closet. Ninja formal wear delivery."

"I still have to meet your mum," she reminds him. "When's that happening?"

His mum, Euphemia Potter, who has never discerned a secret any later than moments after James decided to keep it, and would spot Lily from six dozen paces away and proclaim—loudly—"Yes, that's the one my son is half in love with!"

James can hear his mum's smug laughter already.

No thank you.

"She's...she travels a lot," he dithers, waving a hand. "You'll meet her as soon as she recalls her children and stumbles her way over here."

"Really? I thought you said she was overly involved and impossibly nosy, and in your flat so often that she sometimes feels like furniture?"

"Did I say that?" He scratches his head and shoots for an innocuous expression. "You know how I exaggerate."

"Right," says Lily slowly, with a slight frown creasing her brow. She's clearly smelling a rat in the kitchen. "Well, can I at least meet your friend Remus soon? You talk about him like he's some sort of magical Dickensian professor and I want to make sure that he's real."

"Yes." James immediately jumps on this. "You can meet Remus. Definitely can meet Remus. I swear, he's real. I mean—well, he's off at some swotty tutors conference right now, so maybe not immediately...and also, he may have asked for a bit of space after I compared our friendship to a sexually transmitted disease. It was meant to be a compliment. I'd just got sacked from the Fortnite team. It's been a very trying week for me, honestly."

"Same, honestly," she agrees, and picks up the glasses, and the bottle, which she balances against her chest. "But now it's all sorted out and we're bestie mates again, come along to bed, please." She turns on her heel and practically glides toward the open kitchen door. "Just keep those hands to yourself."

James lifts said hands in the air, fingers splayed, all innocence. "To myself."

"You didn't fuck him, did you?"

Lily looks up from the rectangle of stiff, gold scalloped card over which she has been labouring with a calligraphy pen for the past couple of minutes. She's had one earbud in for the duration of half of a playlist, and been intensely focused on the task at hand, so she hadn't heard Mary return to the flat.

Her friend is lucky that her interruption didn't make Lily jump and spoil the card. Petunia has exacting standards and is bound to take sly jabs at her work, despite tasking Lily with the cards in the first place because she's so good at calligraphy. Her sister will criticise them aloud and love them in secret. That's just the way she functions. Lily hardly possesses the energy to bring herself to care.

She pulls her earbud out of her ear and drops Sia's gentle crooning into her lap before she shuts down Spotify on her phone. Her stretched-out legs are beginning to cramp a little, but the only way to work from her bed is to sit with a breakfast tray perched above her thighs, and she hasn't wanted to leave her bed for...reasons.

"That's crass," she tells Mary.

"Can you answer the question?"

"Does it look like we did that?"

"No," says Mary derisively, gesturing to the soundly sleeping man on Lily's bed. "This is a totally normal setup."

Lily's gaze alights upon James, who hasn't moved once since she wriggled gently out of his grip.

He's absolutely darling when he sleeps—long, dark lashes brushing his cheekbones, glasses woefully askew, messy strands of black hair sweeping low across his forehead. His full, soft lips—Lily is officially obsessed with his lips, hasn't she mentioned?—are ever so slightly parted, and he breathes so deeply that it rumbles in the centre of his chest. It's a low, reassuring sound, a reverberation which had caressed her skin through the fabric of her shirt when she woke up not an hour ago, wrapped up in an arm that was not carelessly slung across her torso, but nicely, neatly tucked around her waist with clear deliberation.

The muscles in her face start tugging on her sleeve and pleading most obnoxiously—smile, smile, smile, you goofy, infatuated twit—but she's a pretty decent actress, so she callously ignores them.

"He dozed off," she says simply.

"Shame. I was hoping he'd been murdered."

"We were watching Parks and Rec and I fell asleep first," Lily expounds, finishing the y in Marley with a flourish before she sets her pen down next to the card. "He was like this when I woke up."

She wonders if he watched her sleep before drifting off himself.

She really hopes he did.

Mary makes a noise of utter disgust in the back of her throat, regarding James's back as if she's spied a fat slug crawling along his spine. "Wake him up, then."

"No."

"Why not?"

"He didn't sleep much last night. Needs the rest."

"Yeah, because you were banging on your wall like a psycho, remember?" Mary points out. She's folded her arms across her chest, the defensive stance she likes to take when she is preparing herself to dig her heels in about something. "Because you fought with him, because he's a jealous little shit, because he—"

"Keep your voice down, please."

Mary drops her arms by her sides and seems to grow a couple of inches in height, sucking in her cheeks as she takes a breath, nostrils flaring, her bright blue eyes expanding to the size of two-pound coins. Her hands ball into fists and release again, their slender fingers twitching with blatant purpose.

She looks as if she'd very much like to start shouting, or throwing things, or smashing James in the face with a crowbar.

"How can you—" she whispers, then stops, releasing the breath she'd drawn in deeply. Her voice tightens; irritation has taken a vice grip on her throat and reduced it to an angry hiss. "How can you just forgive him after everything he said last night? After everything he did in the shower, Lily? Jesus fucking Christ!"

"Because."

"Because what?"

"Because," Lily quietly repeats, and her gaze falls once again on the dozing man beside her. "Because he's in love with me, I think."

That's a very strange thing to say aloud.

And such an arrogant theory to foster, too—this idea that she alone could drive a man to such a heightened level of bonkers—and without confirmation from the lion's mouth itself, speculative at best. The evidence is all circumstantial. She's got no definitive proof at all.

So it's even stranger still that she believes it.

Or...half-believes it, at least.

There's context, and that context is vital.

Context. Brian had mentioned that word at dinner with no particular stress on its importance, but it has been bouncing around in her head since she awoke that morning and found herself floating in a strange, indelible calm she hadn't anticipated. Possibly while she was tossing and turning in sleep. Context. He might be in love with her. That.

It's nothing but a lens to which to view this situation, really. A framework. A bowl in which she can toss all these components and make some attempt at swirling them together. She can't claim to understand James's logic, can't help but suspect there's more to be revealed that one failed relationship with a different, former, neighbour, but James clearly can't be pushed, would rather let the truth come out in little dribs and drabs, and Lily can only work with what she's given.

"You make me do insane things," James had told her, and they were none of them sane in love, according to a solemn, sensible, highly educated surgeon.

She'd made sense of it all, somehow, in the midst of a weighty slumber, then James had turned up on her doorstep to offer her his profuse, most heartfelt apologies, so torn-up and shattered by the idea of losing her in any sense, and then he'd said things—telling things—and then they'd…

There's context.

"He's in—" Mary's chin jerks upwards. "What?!"

James stirs slightly at the sound of her voice, a low, garbled, nonsense sound of disturbance rising from his chest, shuffling his body closer to Lily's. Instinct tells her to lay a reassuring hand upon his shoulder, so she does, shushing Mary in the process.

Miraculously, the gesture seems to work, and James settles back into the groove of his peaceful sleep at once, evidently none the wiser as to the mostly-whispered conversation that's pinging back and forth above his head.

Lily watches him for another handful of seconds, just to be sure, before deeming herself satisfied.

"It's a hypothesis," she says airily.

Mary's features contort. "A hypoth—"

"There was context."

"Context?"

"Look, it's fine. I have a theory and I'm looking into it," Lily replies, keeping her tone even. "No doubt I'll happily present my findings at a later date, but right now—"

"Forget your findings,what I want to know is how you came up with this hypothesis in the first place."

"I'll explain it all later, when he's not lying right next to me and liable to wake up at any minute," says Lily, and sweeps a hand through the air, gesturing toward the door. "So can you please excuse us?"

Mary rolls her eyes so hard that she's in danger of subjecting her lacrimal bone to a hairline fracture, but she does as she's asked and leaves, accompanied by a plethora of huffing, grumbling, and pointed stomping of the feet.

She has, at least, the decency to shut the door behind her.

Lily lifts the breakfast tray from her lap and leans over the edge of her bed to set it down on the floor. She deposits her phone and her earbuds on her bedside table before she shuffles around to face James, returning to her earlier, prone position, one hand tucked beneath her pillow.

Only a couple inches of space and crumpled duvet is sitting between their faces, their chests, her feet and his calves. He's so much taller than her that they can only ever be at eye level when they're both lying side-by-side.

She wants to let him stay, entwined with her all night, but she can't.

That's too much by far, when her entire plan hinges on giving him just enough. Lily has done her part already, declared herself receptive to his wants and desires, so super cool and light and casual! Look at her, so nicely recovered! No bumps and bruises on her heart. James can kiss her, hold her, touch whatever parts of her he wants to, share her lonely bed all night, and she'll raise not one objection, but he's going to have to ask. She can't. Won't. She has to let him feel, at least, that he has some sort of control over this.

She'll touch him, though. Kiss his cheek, maybe. Flirt with him and tell him that he's handsome. She'll be sweet and romantic and breezily neglect to set a single boundary, and gently nudge him into his own private conclusion. No pressure. No tense negotiations. That's all he seems to need from her right now.

James can't be rushed, clearly. She can't push him or force him or demand an explanation that he's not ready to give. Whatever crazed parade he's throwing in his head, theories he's floating, confetti he's attempting to bat out of his eyes, he needs to figure it all out by himself. Needs to be ready, not strong-armed into agreement. She can wait—she's got a lot of patience—and it will work, because it has to, because she's shot herself in the foot if she turns out to be wrong.

But she's not wrong. She can feel it.

She'll happily subject him to a teasing when all of this is over. Look at her, so clever, knowing all of his secrets before he knew them for himself.

He kisses her like his need for her is electrifying his skin and nerves and bones, gazes at her like he's trying his hardest to memorise her every freckle. He speaks to her like he's in love with her—speaks to her like she invented the concept of love in the first place, like he was so naïve and untouched by it, fresh and dewy and baby-soft new until she came along and showed him what it meant. I don't want to lose you for anything else. Jealous. I couldn't stand it if that happened with you. Jealous. I would never want you to think you were like anyone else. Jealous. Jealous. It would just gut me completely to lose that—you. Jealous. Jealous. You're your own bloody bestseller, Lily Evans. Jealous.

He'd told that little white lie about his mother, who by his own admission can read his mind like an open recipe book. Wouldn't his mother know, if James was secretly in love, tuned into him as she is? And in knowing, would she be content to keep it secret, or would she blurt it out at once, brandishing her matchmaking oar, intent upon setting ripples in the pond that he's been working so hard to keep still?

And does Lily not feel a similar symbiosis? Their click? Their mutual ease? Is it not magic—the way they are with one another, the way they can talk and talk and never feel uncomfortable, the way they can kiss each other senseless and bounce right back into their friendship, breathless and ravaged and scalded with desire for each other, but ultimately unscathed?

Lily had thought she knew that recipe, had believed herself well-versed in any and all ingredients that she could mix together to make James Potter happy, learned it and studied it and sealed it up behind her ribs, until it was intrinsic. Second-nature. As easy to recite as the alphabet or two-times tables.

To make James Potter happy, one needs: a well-filled cup of good, strong coffee, a generous cuddle from an ornery ginger cat, a dash of cheesy eighties pop and splash of his aunt's best chicken avgolemono. Add a slice of Sam's best pepperoni and mushroom. Toss in some movies with over-the-top explosions. Drive though the city with a window slightly cracked. Don't dare neglect that solitary drop of his best mate's woeful shower-singing—sour to the taste and unpleasant by itself, but crucial, utterly crucial, to his contentment day-to-day.

If there ever was anything missing from this compound, if ever the recipe called for something vital that no one had ever thought to scribble down, Lily would not have been so vain as to assume that she was it.

But maybe...maybe she's it.

Maybe that's the context she's been missing all this time.

And maybe, when she examines their friendship through the lens of he's in love with me, I think, it becomes so much easier to make sense of all the rest.

Even if, perhaps, he hasn't fully realised it himself.

"James?" she whispers, and gently nudges his arm.

This seems to alert him to her presence, though not enough that he is stirred awake. With a muffled mumble of a word she can't discern, his arm lifts up and curls around her, his fingers settling easily against the curve of her backside.

That settles it. He's definitely not faking sleep.

Not that she thought he was.

Lily bites back a laugh at the thought of how embarrassed he'll be if he wakes with his hand still sitting there, and forgoes the kiss she's desperate to give him in favour of placing her hand on the small of his back, snugly nestled beneath his t-shirt. His skin is a lovely, comforting kind of warm—a fallen star she caught in the palm of her outstretched hand.

She shakes him a little, setting them both to rocking slightly back and forth. "James, sweetheart? You need to wake up."

His mouth forms a noise rather more than a word, a humming sort of acknowledging grunt at her sweetly put request, one that he accompanies—eyes still firmly closed, shifting a bit, but only closer to her—with an almost inadvertent lift of his hand. His palm pets her head—a stroke of hm, yes, noted, thank you, good night—and then he seems much content to continue to doze.

"Oi," she gently admonishes, and sways them a little harder. "Who gave you permission to set up camp for the night?"

"Hmm?" he murmurs, but it's with a bit more awareness, a firmer grasp on the prodding. A second or two more and one squinted eye shutters reluctantly open and then closes again. The other sluggishly does the same. "Ugh," he complains, blinking. Then his gaze seems to register her, centimeters in front of him.

He freezes.

She gazes unblinkingly back at him, which is all she really needs to do. She's got pretty eyes, or so she's heard it told, that do things to susceptible hearts.

"Hi," he eventually croaks.

"Hi," she echoes, and smiles at him. "You're impossibly cute when you've just woken up."

His sleep-flushed skin seems to burn a slightly brighter hue, or perhaps that's just wishful thinking. In any case, he keeps warm brown eyes flickering around, like he isn't certain where to look or how to process where he is.

Slowly, he begins to shift upward.

"Didn't mean to fall asleep," he says, moving his glasses into place, then lifts his hand to the back of his neck, arching it with a wince and a telling crack. "You did, and then I was going to leave, but...well, best laid plans, I s'pose. Sorry."

She shifts up to her bottom and stretches, her arms knocking gently against the headboard, flattening her legs along the mattress. Though she has been awake for the better part of an hour, the muscles in her legs and thighs are stiff from working on those confounded cards.

"Don't apologise, it was nice," she tells him. "Cosy. Been ages since I shared a bed with someone."

"Next time, my bed," he says with a yawn. "Yours really is quite shit. We need to get you a mattress topper or something."

Then he freezes again, seems to realise what he's said. Next time, my bed. His eyes immediately find hers, and she can see the scroll of thoughts as clear as day. Shit. Should I have said that? Am I allowed to say that?

Her boundary games have caught him already.

But it's all fine. He's safe. They're progressing at his speed now.

"If only I could afford one," she sighs dramatically, "but I paid for myself last night and the restaurant Mary sent me to was inconsiderately expensive."

"A blind date at an expensive restaurant?" He blinks some more, shakes his head. "You ought to have let the bloody surgeon pay. I bet you anything he offered and you refused. Or Mary should have paid, mastermind that she is."

"He did offer. I did refuse," she admits, "but he alsotried to advise me against all those bloody cocktails and I didn't bother listening, and it would have been unspeakably rude to let him pay for my drinks."

"Even so—"

"And as for Mary, she was clearly hoping that I'd let him pay for everything and thank him for his kindness by letting him spend the night. Which I did, I guess, but he slept on the couch," she adds, careful to clarify that point quickly. "And I can't ask her to spot me for money. She's still covering more than her fair share of the bills so I can carry on living here."

"And likely doing it happily," James returns, but there's a weighted sort of pause as he shifts until they're sitting properly side by side again. Their legs nearly touch, and he's shooting her a tentative look out of the corner of his eye. "I didn't know things were still that tight," he broaches slowly.

"They're always that tight," she replies. "The money I'll get for this Claire Foy thing will just about pay Mary back and cover my rent for another month, but the fact remains that I'm not a member of the wage bracket that can comfortably afford to live in this building. I never should have moved in," she finishes flatly, drawing her knees up to her chest. "And—"

"Don't say that." James's hand covers hers. "You absolutely should have moved in."

"No, I know, I met you and that's been everything, but it was a really irresponsible decision and—"

"It's not irresponsible to get out of a shit living situation and find somewhere safer to land," James objects firmly, frowning at her. "You did what you had to do. There's no cost when compared to that. Your friends are grateful for it. Mary. Me."

Lily turns her hand beneath his so that their palms touch, and laces their fingers together.

"Is that allowed?" she asks him, tilting her chin to catch his gaze.

James squeezes her hand in return. "This bit was always allowed."

She smiles softly up at him, and nuzzles her cheek against his shoulder.

"I know I could model again, if I needed to," she continues, though the mere idea of it feels exhausting. "It pays a lot more than what I'm doing and that should matter more than my principles, or whatever. I wouldn't blame Mary if she eventually gets pissed at my repeated refusals, honestly. She's done enough for me without paying my way through life."

"You deserve to be able to do what you want," James says, his head dropping atop hers. "I don't think Mary will wipe her hands of you that easily, but if she...if she ever does get to that point, and it's a matter of your principles…" He pauses, head shifting slightly. "Lily, you know I would always—I mean, anything you really needed—"

She pulls away from him at once—though not his hand, she squeezes his hand harder—to fix him with a stern look.

"No," she says, firmly. "I'd rather take another modelling job than ask you for money. That's never going to happen."

"You're not asking," James objects, "I'm offering. I just want you to be happy. And money...it makes me sound like an arse, but it's not an issue for me. You know it isn't. And that's so little compared to...to you...or—" He stops, maybe sees the stubborn, unmovable look on her face. He sighs. "Just...as back up. Just in case."

She shakes her head at him, her lips stretched in a rueful smile.

"It doesn't work like that with us." Because I'm probably in love with you. "You said you'd rather do what was right than what was good and easy, and that applies here, too." No, I'm definitely in love with you. "It might put your mind at ease, but I'd feel shit. I'd feel like things were all...imbalanced. Like I'd used you, or something." I am so in love with you, and I think you might love me. "I don't want that to be a factor in my relationship with you."

He looks like he may want to argue more on it—gets a frowning sort of pout, a deep wrinkle right in the middle of his dark brows—but a few seconds of brewing argument seems as far as he gets before conceding. His shoulders slump in defeat.

"Fine," he mutters. "I don't want you to feel like shit. Even if I still think imbalances shouldn't count in friendship. But I'm not just going to let you...end up in a cardboard box or something."

"I don't think it'll come to that," she assures him, with a wispy accompanying laugh. "If all else fails, I can move back in with my parents for a while. Leicester's okay, and I could probably get a job at—"

"Leicester?" James cries the word in outrage, shaking his head furiously. "That's...that's so far! And you've just really started to like the girls at the restaurant! And...Algernon would be so cross. He hates having to drive anywhere."

"It's a two hour drive!" she protests. "And let's not pretend that the girls are a real consideration here. You'd never approve of my living anywhere besides the flat right next door. Who'd talk Algernon out of one of his vengeful fits or sweet-talk Sam into delivering your dinner?"

"Who'd give me knocks goodnight?" James adds, glancing quickly at her. "Who'd make sure I don't skip breakfast, or help overrule Sirius when he says he'll only watch Russian films, or spend all night helping me reorganise a community charity function because they've just switched locations on us and my sorry lot of kids need funds for proper shin guards to keep their legs safe during matches?" He nudges his shoulder into hers. "You can't move to Leicester, Lily."

Of course I won't. I'm in love with you, flits impatiently on the end of her tongue, but she swallows it back and settles on brushing his forefinger with her thumb.

"If I promise not to move to Leicester, will you at least be okay with me moving elsewhere in London once my lease ends?" she asks him, and wonders if her pulse is thrumming so hard that he'll be able to feel it through their conjoined hands. "Somewhere more affordable?"

"If worst comes to worst," he dissembles, "we can always buy you a tent and hitch it up on the rooftop. Perfect, affordable alternative."

"The rooftop?"

"It's a lovely place to squat beneath the stars. No one ever goes up there."

"I can't believe you'd squirrel me away on the roof like some sort of secret shame when you have that massive bed all to yourself," she scolds him, laughing. "How would I keep from freezing to death in the winter?"

"Very thick, woolen socks," James replies, grinning. "And one of those sherpa-lined blankets. Nice and cosy. A foolproof plan." He nudges her shoulder again. "Or you could always take my bed. If vaccinations and imbalances allow, of course."

"Of course," she agrees, "and anyway, my lease doesn't end for another nine months, and plenty could have changed by then. I might have won the lottery. I might be a West End success." She pauses for a moment, then drops her head to his shoulder once more. "We might not need a vaccine."

"Hm," he hums noncommittally. "Just...can you at least promise that if things ever are reaching Leicester territory, we'll at least talk about it first? Before anyone's catching a train or hitching a tent?"

"I was thinking that I'd run off in the dead of night and never say goodbye," she says, and smiles to herself, allowing her eyelids to close. "But your way sounds better. I promise I'll let you know."

She feels his cheek brush over her hair, then the almost ghostly press of his lips to the crown of her head.

"I'd go to Leicester, you know," he says. "Every day. But an alternative just seems a bit cleaner."

"Every day?" She laughs lightly, moves away from his shoulder, lifts her eyes to his. They're as close as they were when he'd kissed her earlier. "Why would you need to see me every day?"

He blinks at the question—startled, though if by her inquiry, or at the sudden realisation that he's said something a bit more telling than he meant to or noticed, Lily can't be sure. Either way, he opens his mouth, then closes it. Does it again.

"I—"

A prim and loud procession of knocks sounds on Lily's bedroom door, rescuing James from the necessity of providing her with an answer to her question.

"I'm ordering Chinese for dinner." Mary's knowing voice floats through the door. She sounds unduly smug, evidently of the opinion that she's going to keep James from some long coveted treat, and the irony of the situation—Mary Macdonald, of all people, sparing James from an awkward moment—is so delicious that Lily can hardly bring herself to be annoyed by the interruption. "Do you two want anything? Potter will pay if he knows what's good for him."

"I do know what's good for me!" James immediately calls through the door, looking relieved. "See?" he says, turning to Lily. "There's a woman who doesn't mind taking my money."

"She also wouldn't mind watching you drown, but it'd make me cry for weeks, so consider your argument countered," Lily points out. "Still, you should probably sort things out with her."

"Good points," James says, and swivels to spring from the bed with an alarming level of agility considering all of ten minutes ago, he'd been passed out contently with his arms tangled around her. "I know how to put on a good grovel. Or, at the very least, know where she keeps all the sharp knives, which will be carefully avoided until I've successfully bought back her affection." He reaches the door, glances over his shoulder at Lily. "What's your mood? Orange chicken? Extra spring rolls?"

"How about you pick my dinner?" she offers, smiling up at him. "I have absolute faith in you."

"Challenge accepted," he says, grinning. Then he throws open the door, takes a step out, and calls, "I'm exiting the bedroom! Don't shoot! Why, Mary, don't you look stunning—ah, yes, you too, Edgar—"

"Arse," she murmurs fondly under her breath, watching him bounce from the room with all his renewed energy, and smiles to herself before she scrambles to her feet and follows him out the door.

Arse. Liar. Shower-adjacent pervert.

She loves him.

She loves him.

She does.