I wasn't planning on writing a holiday fic this year, but I got an idea a few weeks ago and then word vomited this whole thing out into a Google Doc, so... holiday fic! Also, you can thank scaredofrobots for this title (I was going to call it "Mince Pies are the Best And You Can (a t) Me" but professor-riddikulus talked me out of it, so you can thank him, too, for sparing you from my usual title-related nonsense).

Happy Holidays, everyone!

It wasn't even December yet and Lily was already stressed to her limit about the bloody holidays.

She was in the middle of checking her list against the packages she had out for order when her computer chimed with another notification to let her know that her email inbox had, once again, refreshed itself. She glanced over at her desktop and checked the number overtop her email icon — a bright red fifty-nine (that was just from this morning and didn't even count the mass of "read" but unread emails sitting in her inbox) that she was refusing to let herself think about — before she closed her eyes, took a single, steadying breath, and resumed checking her list one final time before she packed up her bag.

There was nothing that she could do about her inbox right now. And anyway, Christmas time always meant a mass of orders — she knew this, but, somehow, she only vaguely remembered the chaos of it all from year to year.

It was probably best that she forgot, honestly, because she was likely to halt production altogether and close up shop if she remembered just how busy she was from about early November up until Christmas.

The bloody John Lewis ad was enough to give her mild heart palpitations at this point.

But, no matter how stressed she was for those six weeks, Lily couldn't deny that she did, really, love the holidays. She loved the Christmas jumpers — the madder the better — she loved how everything smelled vaguely like cinnamon and clove and that you could eat mince pies for every meal and no one in their right mind was going to tell you off for it.

And she was eating a lot of mince pies. Especially because she needed them to fuel her during the exhausting, overwhelming Christmas shopping period. She did nothing but pack envelopes and drag enormous bags of parcels down to the post office, and she was sure that the postal workers were tired of seeing her by the second week of December.

Though last year, Thom, the guy who usually staffed the desk, had memorised her name and started shunting other customers out of the way when he saw her struggling through the door with yet another bag packed full of notebooks, keyrings, enamel pins, and whatever else it was that she'd sold that week. So he, at least, hadn't tired of her.

And she shouldn't be complaining — and she wasn't, she knew how grateful she was, having a shop that was this successful — but it didn't detract from the fact that she sometimes felt so stressed that she honestly forgot how to do anything other than brew tea. Still, chronic exhaustion and over-caffenation aside, this little shop was something that she'd spent most of her life dreaming about.

Not consciously, not really. It hadn't seemed real enough to be any sort of conscious dream of hers growing up, but when she'd finally graduated from uni and hadn't landed any job more serious than the one she was working at the boutique on Hackney Road….

Well, when nothing else had materialised, it suddenly seemed a little less mad to think that she could take the designs she'd been putting together on the side and sell them on the internet. She'd been working up a few things anyway for uni — like a cohesive print series and a small zine — and she was already creating her own greeting cards and things….

It wasn't a stretch, once she started thinking about it, to think that this might be something she could do quite easily.

There had been other influential factors where that decision was concerned, but it was too painful to think of them. Even still, years later, it was hard to think about them.

But anyway, this shop had rapidly become the focus of her entire life. It took a long time and a load of mistakes and a lot of hard work, but, after figuring out Shopify's sometimes-difficult platform, and, perhaps just as importantly, teaching herself how to use Instagram Stories, she soon found herself the proud owner of a small internet shop that managed to support her well enough that she only needed to pick up freelance gigs if she found she just wasn't busy enough.

She still had to pinch herself sometimes because, really, it just didn't seem real that she could pay all her bills with this.

It became a little easier to imagine, though, whenever she had to make her way to the post office.

She'd just finished dragging yet another massive Ikea bag full of packages down to the post office — Thom wasn't there today and Cheryl, the other person who normally worked the front, was distinctly less charmed by her — and she was properly exhausted by the time she walked through the door. Between the ache in her shoulder from heaving that damn bag all the way to Mile End bloody Road and the dull headache at the base of her skull from having to explain to Cheryl that, yes, the postage was already paid on these please just take them, she was ready to just heat herself up something from the fridge — she was pretty sure she still had a curry in there from yesterday — get in the bath, and then go straight to bed.

No matter how much she wanted to just immediately slouch off, though, she still had a few more things to do before she could officially sign off for the day.

She slid her boots off into the small but artful pile beside the front door, hung her jacket and bag on the free hook over top, and pulled her mobile out of her back pocket as she started towards the kitchen. She unlocked her phone, clicked into Instagram, and, once she switched on her kitchen light and checked that the lighting was alright, she tapped the camera in the top left and held her mobile up.

'Hello again everyone.' She held her hand up at the screen and grinned. 'I've just got back from the post office and posted off a whole new load of orders, so if you put in an order between the twelfth of November and last night, your order should be on its way!'

She just barely got the full message in under time. She grinned, stupidly proud of herself, and posted the video to her Story before she started a new one.

'Now,' she opened the fridge and her face flooded with light, 'I'm just going to heat up a curry because, honestly, I'm too lazy to cook and also I'm terrible at it.' She leant down, bringing the phone with her, and grabbed the container out of the fridge, which she held up to the camera. 'And I really want to take a bath, but I've got to put the finishing touches on those keyrings —'

The video cut her off that time and she swore under her breath as she posted it and started another video.

'Those keyring pictures I was editing earlier — I just up and left them because they were frustrating me, but I really want to get them done tonight so that they can go up on the shop with at least a bit of time before Christmas.' The video ended and she posted it so she could immediately start a new one.

'I don't know why one new product range wasn't enough this season,' she said, laughing at her reflection in the screen, 'but I guess I was just really trying to see how stressed I could get this year —'

She broke off, deleted that one, and started over.

'I don't know why one new product range wasn't enough this season,' she said, laughing at herself, 'but I'm really excited about the keyrings and so, honestly, I just couldn't help myself. And you all seem to love them, too, which makes me feel even more excited.'

She slid her curry into the microwave as she spoke and punched in a minute and a half — she had an annoyingly finicky microwave and hoped it was long enough to heat it past fridge temperature but not so hot that she immediately burned the hell out of her mouth.

It was a difference of, like, two seconds in that microwave, ice cold and lava hot.

When she had about fifteen seconds left on the microwave, she started up another video.

'And that's honestly my favourite part about sharing this stuff on Instagram, getting to talk to you guys about the new things I'm working on. Sometimes I get so in my head about them and then I get all distracted or I don't want to work on them anymore because I'm convinced they're terrible — I'm sure you know what I mean. But you guys are always so kind and you always have brilliant solutions when I pop on here and start complaining about things and so — you know, thank you.'

The microwave beeped in the background, and she grinned and shouted, 'Food's done!' before she cut the video.

She posted it while she grabbed a spoon out of the drawer, and gave the curry a stir to see what she thought of it. It was certainly steaming, but it didn't seem too hot —

She took a bite and immediately regretted it.

It wasn't "putting a fresh lava rock on her tongue" hot, but it wasn't far off.

She fanned her mouth out for a second before she grabbed her phone again and recorded one last bit for her story.

'Anyway, I'm going to go eat this while I go finish editing those product pictures — they should be up tonight, but I'll post up when they're live so you know. And because, let's be real, I can't stay off Instagram Stories. So I'll see you when I see you!' She gave a quick kiss to the camera, posted the video, and grabbed her bowl and started walking back through the flat towards her desk.

She had half a mind, once she sat down, to open up Instagram again and just have a scroll — or, more dangerously, to start answering comments or DMs, something that was part of her job and, therefore, much less guilt-inducing, but —

Oh shit.

She unlocked her mobile and clicked back into her Instagram Stories.

She grinned as the video started. 'I forgot — I'm going to be posting up a little giveaway on here tomorrow — there will be more details about it like, noon GMT, but I wanted to let you all know to stay on the lookout for it. Okay, now I'm working, see ya later.' She blew another kiss to the screen and, before she could convince herself to open her DMs, she dropped her mobile back down onto her desk and, after she put her hair up into a quick — and probably very sloppy — ponytail, opened her laptop.

It took her a few hours to get everything edited to her standard and for the products to, finally, get posted to the shop. She posted a quick Instagram Story about the new products — she immediately got a few very excited comments and, in her email, a few orders — and answered her unopened DMs (she only had two dozen, so it didn't take her long). It was just gone eight by the time she looked up again, and, though she still had about a million and a half things that needed doing, she didn't want to start something and then have to either leave it halfway finished or stay up well into the night to finish it and, though it was hard to admit it to herself, she reckoned she'd earned a bit of rest time.

That was the hardest thing about working from home, really — striking that work life balance.

Before she could guilt herself into doing anymore work this evening, she shut her laptop and set about gathering the dishes from her desk. She had her curry bowl from dinner, but she also had a small collection of tea mugs in the corner, one from the morning, one from later that afternoon, and another from after she'd finished dinner. She knew — especially because Dorcas was always bloody reminding her — that it was a colossal waste of resources, having to wash that many mugs when she could only be using one, and she was trying to get better but….

Well, you know, one thing at a time.

She tucked her mobile up under her arm and gathered the dishes as best she could without clanking them together, and let her phone slip from under her arm onto the sofa as she passed. She set everything carefully in the sink — she should have done the washing, but honestly — and pulled the elastic out of her hair as she walked back into the lounge. Her hair was a complete disaster now — especially because she never remembered to just clip it up or use that new no-bump elastic Marlene had got her — but she was just lying on the couch and who was going to see her?

She grabbed her mobile from the centre cushion before she plopped down onto the sofa and dragged the blanket off the back to cover herself with.

She messed around for a while — she answered her messages on WhatsApp, replied to a few Snaps (because Marlene was literally going to kill her if she lost their streak again) — but it wasn't long before she found herself back on Instagram.

She only glanced at the stats that popped up in the lower right — she had five new followers, a few dozen likes, and a handful of comments since the last time she'd logged on — before she clicked into her explore page.

She lost so, so many hours to the explore page. There were a few crafty, stationary-ish things on her explore page, a couple of videos of people artfully pouring paint, but most of her feed was covered in baking videos and, honestly, those were her favourite videos to watch.

She was a terrible cook — she could make a few things, but it was more to keep herself from starving that it was any joy in actually cooking — but there was something so soothing about watching people bake. Especially people who knew what they were doing.

She clicked on a video of someone sticking honeycomb on top of a tray of doughnuts and very, very quickly fell down a rabbit hole.

She'd been scrolling through videos for almost an hour when she noticed that one account, kneadlondon, kept turning up in the feed she was scrolling through. She hadn't heard of them before — shocking, because she tried her best to stay on top of all the London bakeries — and, intrigued (and also hoping they were no more than a short tube ride away because now she was looking at a massive tray of gorgeous mince pies that someone was taking out the oven and she was practically salivating just looking at it), she clicked over to their account.

It was then, as she read their bio, that she realised she'd made a massive mistake.

Knead Bakery — 10 Stoney Street

Owned by James Potter, alright baker and annual Bake Off hopeful

Breads, cakes, biscuits, doughnuts — you name it, we make it

Vegan/gluten-free options available

She hadn't —

She exhaled hard.

Holy shit.

She hadn't thought about James in years.

Well, alright, that was a lie, because she'd thought about him on and off since they'd broken up, but —

Holy shit.

She thought, for a second, that she should click off the page. She should just go back to her explore page and watch people ice biscuits until she forgot about ever coming across Knead Bakery and James Potter and James Potter's gorgeous mince pies.

She should just click off the page.

But she was curious — bloody sue her, she was curious. They hadn't spoken a word to each other since they'd — she'd — ended things and they didn't follow each other on any social media and it wasn't like she'd known that this shop was his from the outset.

It wasn't her fault that she'd ended up here, was her point. Surely she could stay around a bit and see what kind of bakery James had going.

This was something he'd always dreamt about. She — well, she needed to see how he was getting on.

And by "he" she obviously just meant "his bakery".

James' personal account wasn't linked to the bakery page — something that she was thankful for because, even though she, somehow, still knew his username, she would have to actively type it into her search bar if she wanted to see those more personal pictures and that was something that she just wouldn't be able to justify to herself — but there were still plenty of pictures of him, from what she could tell on a quick, experimental scroll, on the business page. Most of the pictures were of their baked goods — the most recent picture was the one with the mince pies that had got her here — and sometimes customers smiling with some pastry or another, but, every now and again, James' face popped up in the grid. And she knew that it was likely that he'd be featured — it was his bakery after all and he'd gone through the trouble of branding it as such in the bio — but every time she saw him, his chaotic black hair, that cheeky, crooked grin, she couldn't help but be a little surprised.

He looked exactly the same as she remembered.

Maybe a little older, because his jaw was harder, sharper now and it was, if these pictures were anything to go by, usually covered in some kind of stubble, but, mostly, he looked exactly as she remembered.

Not that she'd spent a lot of time remembering him.

She was a few rows down in the grid — he was phenomenally active on Instagram, almost as active as she was, and she knew that she should've clicked off ages ago but she couldn't seem to stop herself — when she stumbled upon a picture that made her heart stop.

There wasn't anything obvious about it — it was just James, standing outside the shop and grinning with a massive, sugary doughnut in his hands and sugar all over his lips. He was wearing a black t shirt, a plain, parchment coloured apron, and an ill-fitting, worn looking maroon beanie, and there was nothing, really, that stood out about this picture, nothing exceptional about it, but she still found herself staring at it, her thumb hovering slightly over the screen as she tried to convince herself to keep scrolling.

She just couldn't stop looking at it. At him. At the slight crinkles at the corners of his eyes that told her he was genuinely smiling, the sugar all over his lips, the hair sticking out from underneath his hat.

She just couldn't stop looking at him.

'I'm going to open….' James moved his hands slowly over the small pile of gifts in front of him and watched Lily's expression. She knew that he was watching her, trying to decide what she wanted him to open first — he was always doing that, always trying to figure her out, even these tiny, insignificant little things like what present she was particularly proud of this year.

They had their usual rules in place — one handmade gift, one gift that was a print or a photograph or something to hang in the gallery they were slowly building up the stairs in their tiny flat, one small thing that wasn't more than twenty quid — and Lily quite liked this way of exchanging gifts with James. Neither of them had much money — between her university budget and his poorly paid apprenticeship, they were both chronically skint — and it was nicer, anyway, giving him things that she'd made with her own hands or bought with the little money she had because she knew just how much he was likely to appreciate them. She often spent weeks picking out James' gifts — alright, months — and so by the time she had them wrapped and stuck under the small artificial tree they'd bought the year they moved in, she was usually pretty proud of the things she'd found and couldn't wait to see his face when he opened them.

She felt similarly this year, though she was a bit nervous about the gift she'd made. She usually stuck with the things she knew she could do — last year she'd painted the London skyline onto his favourite denim jacket, the year before she'd tried a new developing technique on some pictures she'd taken — of the two of them, James and the boys, James and his parents — and stuck them in frames she'd built out of this amazing wood she'd found (surprisingly) in the skip behind her university building. She was good at those sorts of things, painting and working with her hands like that, but this year she'd wanted to try something different and knitting was supposed to be easy and so she thought that that would be a nice way to venture into the fabric-y, sewing sorts of arts that she usually avoided, but she…. Well.

She'd gotten it well enough towards the end and she knew that James would wear a bloody bin liner if it was in the West Ham colours, but, still, she wasn't at all confident in what she'd made.

And she must have shown some kind of emotion on her face about it because that was the gift James plucked out of the lineup. The small, unassuming red bag that Lily had hoped he'd leave for the middle — a kind of disappointing centre to what she thought were two pretty lovely gifts.

'This one.' James smiled at her as he settled the bag onto his lap. Lily bit her lip as he started, very carefully, taking the paper out and setting it beside him. He knew she liked to save it — "it's just so bloody expensive for what it is, James, I'm not buying it every goddamn year!" — and she just — he was so sweet —

'Hey!' James beamed up at her as he pulled the lumpy, knitted thing out of the bag. 'A hat!' He flattened it out on his knee and admired it for a moment before he plunked it onto his head.

Or, halfway onto his head, because — god, she was kicking herself — it didn't fucking fit.

'I —' Lily took a sharp breath and she felt her cheeks start to go hot. 'I've never made one before. I'm sorry it's — it doesn't fit and —'

Between the mass of hair on his bloody head (and the fact that his head was literally giant — she was always telling him so, why she didn't remember that when it mattered she'd never know), the hat barely covered the top of his ears. It was stretched so tight against his head that Lily was worried it would either snap off like those little poppers she'd used to get at the dentist when she was a kid or would cut off his circulation or —

James shook his head at her and reached out to take her hand.

'I love it,' he said, and there was something so earnest about his expression that Lily didn't, for one second, doubt that he meant it. 'I'm going to wear it every day.'

A few days later, completely by accident, she found herself standing outside James' shop in Southwark.

She hadn't meant to end up here — at least, that was the story she was going to carry on telling herself — but now she was here and she was just going to pop in and get something because honestly she'd come all the way here, but she was finding it almost impossible to convince herself to walk inside.

But, and she knew that she was probably just convincing herself of something that was a totally horrible idea, she didn't know that he would actually be in the shop today. She'd seen someone through the window on her earlier pass — because she hadn't been able to make it into the shop that first go and had run off into a cafe nearby to work for a few hours in an attempt to distract herself — that was distinctly not-James, but that didn't mean that he wasn't hiding in the back of the shop somewhere.

Well, he wouldn't be hiding. He'd be working.

Semantics.

And anyway, it was a complete accident that she'd ended up here. If James somehow materialised out of the back of the shop while she was inside, she could tell him that with absolute certainty. She'd just happened to see the tray of mince pies that his bakery — she hadn't known it was his at first, she'd make sure to mention that, though she'd probably leave out the 'at first' part — had posted on Instagram a few days before and they'd given her such a craving that she made a special trip south of the Thames just to get a few.

Because it was never going to be just one mince pie, no matter whose bakery it was.

And he'd probably believe that, James would. As long as she managed to keep a handle on herself while she was talking to him and not let her voice shoot up six bloody octaves, he would probably believe that she hadn't shown up here today thinking that, maybe, she might see him and he would probably even believe that she was totally relaxed about every bit of this, that there was no part of her that was starting to twist round and round in her chest at the thought of seeing him again.

He would believe that she'd accidentally ended up in his shop and that she was nothing but blandly happy to see him again because James was, had always been, the kind of trusting person that wanted to believe the best in you as long as you gave him reason to.

She decided, quite consciously, not to go down the rabbit hole of whether or not James still felt he had reason to believe the best in her.

But still, she wasn't sure if it was a good idea to go inside. It would have been normal to pop in earlier, when she'd wandered past the shop just before nine and the place was busy with other people grabbing coffee and pastries and whatever else James had in there, but now it was nearly five and they were closing soon and the place was empty and, okay, it was still a normal time to be visiting because the shop was still technically open, but it just felt stranger when there was no one else inside the shop to distract from the fact that she'd come all the way here to basically gawk at her ex and buy a half dozen mince pies she'd probably inhale the minute she got home in a fit of pathetic and very embarrassing sobbing.

Except she was over James. It had been five years.

She was over him and so there was absolutely no need for sobbing of any kind.

Finally, because it was freezing and had, over the last quarter hour, gotten terribly windy (and because she knew that she was going to keep dragging herself here every day until she finally cracked and walked inside), she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and then pulled her mobile out of her pocket and clicked into Instagram so that she had something to look at as she was walking through the door.

She normally just texted someone when she needed to appear busy, but Marlene had long since given up talking to her (because she was using me to procrastinate and I know it so just BLOODY GO IN THERE ALREADY and let me get back to work) and she had never quite figured out how to fake-text convincingly, so Instagram it was.

And it worked well enough until the door shut behind her and someone said, 'Welcome to Knead,' and her head shot up because she knew that voice and then, even though he was still in the middle of his sentence ('How can I —') he stuttered to a halt when their eyes met.

'Lily?'

She breathed an awkward laugh and tucked her hair — absolutely chaotic from the wind outside — behind her ear.

'Hey.'

He cleared his throat. 'Hey.'

He was staring at her like he'd seen a ghost, which was funny because Lily was seriously starting to think she'd died the minute she'd walked through that door and left her body behind her on the bloody pavement.

James brushed his hair back from his eyes in a nervous gesture that Lily, quite against her will, remembered all too well. 'Not to sound like the Inquisition,' he said, chuckling, 'but what are you doing here?'

She laughed, a bit of the tension easing out of her at his small joke. 'I, uh — well, I hope this doesn't sound weird, but I saw this place on Instagram, the mince pies, and I just had to have some so I looked it up and — I didn't know this was your bakery before I came.'

The way she blurted that out at the end there probably didn't do her any favours but, luckily, James decided not to press her on it.

He smiled, a warm, genuine smile that made her feel absolutely nothing. 'You saw them?'

She nodded. 'I've got a lot of baking on my explore page.'

He hummed quietly, the small, satisfied smile still firmly on his face. 'Well, I can get you a few mince pies. I think we've only got a handful left, so I'll pack them up for you.'

She raised an eyebrow at him. 'How do you know I want that many?'

James laughed and pulled a white piece of cardboard out from under the counter that he began folding into a box. 'Please.'

She thought that she should probably say something instead of standing there silently, still on the complete opposite side of the shop, but she couldn't think of what to say. Nothing seemed suitable, everything seemed like some weird, awkward kind of placeholder, and she was annoyed that, for the number of times she played this exact scenario over and over in her head, she hadn't once thought of anything to do other than panic about it.

She could've used all that time and energy to think of at least a few conversation starters.

And she knew that they could always talk about the weather, but was she really in the mood to be that aggressively British today?

He finished packing up her mince pies — a cool half dozen if her furtive glances were accurate — and held out the box. Lily hesitated for a moment, not sure if he was going to step around the counter or what, before she finally realised that he wasn't moving and he was making her come to him.

She felt her cheeks go a bit hot and she ducked her head a touch to try and hide it as she crossed the shop.

'Thanks,' she said, smiling quickly at him as she took the box and started rummaging through her handbag. 'How much do I owe ya?'

He waved her off. 'Don't worry about it.'

She set the box down on the counter and frowned at him. 'James. How much do I owe you?'

He shook his head again. 'Honestly, don't worry about it. If you didn't eat them, I was going to donate them. Either way, they're leaving the shop for free today.'

She didn't say anything, just stared down at the box with far too many mince pies inside.

She didn't need these — I mean, sure, she wanted them, she was probably going to stop and buy some from Tescos or something if she didn't take these and they'd be incredibly subpar and she'd be kicking herself the whole time, but he was supposed to donate these to people who actually needed something to eat and, alright, maybe mince pies weren't the best things in the world to —

'Evans.'

Her head snapped up and he smiled at her, a soft, easy smile that wiped everything else clean out of her mind. 'Take the damn pies.'

She made a sound that was somewhere between laughter and a sigh of relief. 'Well, if you're not going to let me buy these pies, what can I buy?'

'You haven't got to buy anything.'

'No, I know, but just —' She huffed and watched James bite back a smile at her annoyance. 'Just humour me, alright?'

The shop door opened behind them and Lily spun around, a slightly embarrassed feeling cropping up in her stomach like she'd been caught at something. A woman walked in and, thinking that Lily was in the middle of her order, stepped off to the side and started looking into one of the glass cases at the front.

Lily grabbed her box of mince pies and stepped back, gesturing towards the till. 'You can go,' she said, and the woman looked up at her. 'I'm still getting sorted.'

She should've just left when that woman walked in. Should've just thanked James and bloody left, but now she was standing here at the back of the shop again, staring around the place and probably making herself a presence where, honestly, she wasn't wanted.

She couldn't be sure that she wasn't wanted, but she could certainly try to convince herself that that was the case in the few minutes that James was going to spend helping that customer.

She also, probably, should have stood around looking at the cases in front if she was going to make it look like her "I just don't know what I want yet" excuse was legitimate, but she was, apparently, not interested (for once) in appearing consistent to this actual stranger, because instead of looking at anything even remotely food related, she found herself wandering between the tables set up through the centre of the bakery towards James' gallery wall instead.

He'd hung up loads of prints — well, most of them were prints, but a few of them were photographs — on the wall to the left and, from her spot beside the counter, she thought that, maybe, she recognised a few of them. And she knew she was probably a glutton for punishment, going to have a look, but she also just couldn't quite help herself.

He had quite a collection going, something that didn't at all surprise her. There were a few new things — she smiled to herself when she noticed a print of the lyrics to that damn blowing bubbles song in the West Ham colours — but the longer she looked, the more she realised that there were a fair few things on this wall that she recognised.

There was the close-up shot of the royal blue sari his mum used to wear all the time, the one that had soft greenish gold border and the almost pewter floral embroidery. The picture of him and Sirius and Remus standing outside their uni building, laughing uproariously about something that she was sure none of them would remember now. The picture of an old, crumbly looking block of flats, shot at a strange angle to get just the top of building in front of the dark orange sunset behind.

She stared at those pictures for a long time.

And maybe there wasn't anything to it — there was probably nothing to it, the fact that these pictures she'd taken were here — but still.

She started at those pictures for a long time.

Lily heard James shut the till and, jolting back into herself, she turned. He was smiling at the woman as he handed her her receipt, but his eyes flicked over to Lily as he wished the customer a goodnight, and there was something about the look on his face.

She didn't know what it was, couldn't name it, but she could feel it in her gut as he looked at her.

The woman caught Lily's eye just as she was leaving and smiled almost a little too knowingly at her as she wished Lily a lovely evening. Lily felt her cheeks go hot as she mumbled, 'Good evening,' in return.

Now, alone again, the little momentum they'd had interrupted, Lily wasn't sure what to say. She thought, fleetingly, of just jauntily tipping her box of mince pies at him and strolling out the door, but, somehow, she didn't think that that would be the best course of action.

Instead, she and James just ended up standing there staring at each other.

They were quiet for a moment, she wasn't sure how long, the sound of the traffic outside humming softly in the air between them. It amazed her how quiet it was in here, how this shop, warm and quiet and clean, was so the opposite of the city that lived and breathed around it. She loved the contrast, loved how this little place felt like something of a haven in the cold, gritty city the sprawled outside it.

She loved that he had her pictures on the walls, but she was trying not to let herself think about that.

'I love this place,' she said at last, letting him watch her look around the shop again. The cases and shelves behind the counter were largely empty of their stock and the place was nearly silent, but she could see it so vividly in her mind, what this place would be like in the morning when James first opened. When he'd have stacks of fairy cakes and biscuits in the display cases and loaves of bread in the baskets all along the back wall and there'd be a queue of customers to the door and the coffee machine would be going at full steam behind the counter — she could see it all so clearly in her mind and just the thought of it made her feel warm inside because he'd worked for this, he'd wanted this, and she was just so, so happy that he'd made it for himself.

'It's —' She shook her head because none of the words coming to mind could really do it justice. 'James, it's really wonderful.'

He smiled at her, a warm, genuine smile that felt surprisingly familiar. 'Thanks. I just opened this place last year and sometimes I forget it's actually mine, you know?'

She did. She'd felt like that so many times in the early days with her little shop, and she could only imagine how much more intense it must be when you've suddenly found yourself with a store front.

She nodded. 'You'll get used to it, I'm sure.'

James shrugged. 'I don't know. I wouldn't mind the occasional bout of shock that I somehow managed to get my own place. It'll keep me humble.'

She raised an eyebrow at him. 'Do you have issues being humble these days?'

He grinned. 'Not that I know of. But maybe I'm just too cocky to realise.'

She rolled her eyes and he laughed.

'You like the wall, I take it?'

He pointed towards the gallery wall behind her and Lily was so surprised that he brought it up that she didn't have anything to say for a second. She assumed — foolishly, because she really should have known better — that he wasn't going to bring up the pictures she'd been looking at because it would have been awkward, probably, to go down this road after the history between them. She'd assumed that, though, based on what she would have done, and she really should've known that James was never one to shy away from those types of conversations.

She nodded. 'I love it. It brings a bit of life into the place. Makes it unique, you know?'

She was trying to get around specifically mentioning the fact that her photographs were on the wall, but James, true to form, brought it up anyway.

'I saw you noticed your pictures.' He brushed his hair back off his forehead and looked down for a second, almost sheepishly. 'I hope it's alright that I hung them.'

She sort of shook her head and half shrugged in an attempt to look casual. 'Yeah. Yeah, of course. I'm happy you still have them.'

'Of course I still have them. They're some of my favourites.'

They were dangerously close to territory that she wasn't prepared to talk about and she could feel the anxiety starting to tie itself up in her stomach. It had dulled as they'd talked — she'd forgotten just how easy it could be to talk to him once she let herself relax — but she knew that he was probably trying to get her to talk about, well, everything, and she just.

She wasn't ready.

And she knew that it was absurd to say she wasn't ready to talk about it after five years but he was — James was —

She wasn't ready.

She cleared her throat. 'Alright, well — you're closed, so, uh. I'll leave you to it, I guess.'

He nodded and she could see that he was disappointed despite the fact that he was trying to hide it. 'Alright. It was really lovely seeing you, Lily. I hope you stop by again.'

'Well, if these mince pies are half as good as they looked on Instagram, I'm sure you'll at least see me again every week during the holiday season.'

James chuckled. 'Well, in that case, I'll make sure I bake off an extra tray every week. Any idea which day you'll be coming?'

She rolled her eyes. 'I do not need an extra tray.'

James just grinned. 'Don't lie. I know how much you love mince pies.'

She shot him a look. 'I'm leaving.'

He smiled at her tone — that jokingly offended one she loved to put on — and then his smile softened. It wasn't much, it was barely detectable, but there was something almost tender about the way he was looking at her now and the feeling in her chest —

'Goodnight, Lily.'

The feeling in her chest was unreal.

She took a breath to try and steady herself and hoped that he couldn't hear it from across the shop. She smiled at him. 'Goodnight, James.'

She could feel his eyes on her as she started back across the shop and there was, inexplicably, something in her stomach that wanted her to stop. To turn around. To say something else. But she had nothing else to say and anyway, everything had gone well, especially because she hadn't planned to actually talk to him and it had been years, years, and they hadn't ended things on the best terms and —

'Hey!'

She jolted to a stop, wobbling a little bit on her toes, and, trying not to let herself feel relieved — that he'd called her back, that he was clearly feeling some of the same bizarre uneasiness about her just walking out of here — she turned around.

James was casually leaning on the counter, but he straightened up immediately when she caught his eye. His pushed his hair back, and she bit back a smile.

'Is your mobile number still the same?'

She cleared her throat. 'Uh, yeah. Yeah.'

He nodded slowly and she knew, by the too-even look on his face, that he was trying to conceal something.

'Okay. Cool.'

And she wanted to press him on it, to find out what, exactly, was cool about that and what he wasn't quite smiling about. She wanted to ask him, but she wasn't sure that she was ready to hear the answer.

She smiled at him instead, this one a little softer than she'd intended, and said, 'Cool,' before she turned and stepped out onto the pavement.

She pulled her coat tighter around her neck and wished to god that she'd remembered to bring her scarf when she'd left the flat. She'd been too busy fuming, though, to remember much of anything and even though she knew that wasn't an excuse, it was the reason.

And it was her fault, really. She shouldn't have taken the damn call from her sister, she should have known that it was just going to set her off, but she'd been in the holiday spirit and she'd been thinking that, maybe, Petunia wasn't calling to harass her about something (like how aggressively working class and vile she was for living the way she did and why did she think that getting an illustration degree was sensible when she could barely afford to pay her bills, which was the subject of their last phone conversation five months ago) and she'd decided to answer.

It went without saying that Lily was, of course, completely and totally wrong.

'I don't know why you're insisting on bringing that horrible boy home to meet us. It's not like any of us actually care about meeting him.'

'You're just some artist and he's, what? Some dirty layabout who was too stupid for university? I mean, honestly, Lily, it's incredibly irresponsible. You're both massive drains on the country and you expect us to be happy for you?'

Lily played Petunia's words over and over in her head as she'd walked around the flat gathering the last few things that she and James would need for the weekend — because, no matter how ridiculous, she was bringing James home to meet her family regardless of whether or not she had Petunia's support because, honestly, she hadn't expected her support anyway and Petunia could go fuck herself because James deserved to meet her parents — and she felt herself starting to slip into the kind of bad temper that she only ever got when she'd spoken to Petunia.

Normally James was good at knocking her out of just this sort of funk, but he'd popped into the bakery he worked at for a few hours before they left because he wanted to get a couple more hours' worth of work in his bank account before they went up to Newcastle to see her parents.

It made sense and she'd supported him going, but now that she was in a temper, she found that she was a little annoyed that he wasn't around to comfort her and pack his own things while he was at it.

Still, she'd managed to suppress her temper just enough to get through the packing and, hitching their bags over her shoulder, she started out their door and down the steep flight of stairs to the pavement. She'd texted James to let him know that she was going to meet him outside work so they could take the tube to the train station together, and now that she was feeling the icy wind outside, she was regretting the fact that she hadn't stopped stomping around long enough to remember that she actually needed to keep herself warm.

By the time she reached James' work, her hands were chapped from the wind and looked a bit blue. She was sure that her face was burnt red, too, from the cold, and she was about to pop into the bakery to wait for him, just long enough to start to defrost a bit, when James pushed open the front door and stepped out onto the pavement, the soft jingling of the bells on the door just preceding him.

He beamed as he stepped towards her, but it was brief, little more than a flash, because once he scanned his eyes over her, the smile immediately disappeared.

'Evans, you're frozen.'

She shook her head and the action seemed to loosen something in her jaw and her teeth gave a few loud, insistent chatters. 'No.' She was now have difficulty keeping her jaw still enough to actually talk. 'No, I'm alright.'

James didn't seem even remotely convinced by her denial — he just took her by the elbow and led her back into the bakery.

The rush of warm air, even warmer than usual because they must still have the ovens going to meet all the Christmas orders, was glorious. Her face and hands immediately started to sting a bit now that they were warming back up to normal human body temperature, but she didn't mind it in the least.

She was only dreading going back outside and freezing them again.

James left her standing beside the door and grabbed an apron from the hook just inside the counter. He pumped a bit of hand sanitiser on his hands — an imperfect fix, he was always telling her, but alright if you're just grabbing something quick — and rubbed it in furiously before he grabbed a travel cup from the stack on the cart behind the counter and set it on the worktop. He opened a tall, airtight container, and scooped out a massive scoop of the powder inside and dropped it into the small silver pitcher beside the coffee machine.

'I can't believe you didn't bring a hat or mittens or anything,' he said over his shoulder. He grabbed a litre of milk from the mini fridge under the worktop and dumped a healthy measure into the pitcher.

'I just forgot them when I was rushing out the door.' She tried to sound light, casual, but she was sure that he heard the undercurrent of please god can we just not talk about this?

She was sure that he was going to get her to talk about this.

James was quiet as he steamed the milk, the hissing and soft mechanical whirring of the machine filling the space between them. He still had his back to her as he pulled the milk back from the machine and started pouring it into the cup he'd gotten out, but she didn't need to see his face to know what his expression looked like when he spoke.

'You never just forget things. What was going on when you left?'

He didn't look at her, just upended the silver pitcher in the sink over the sprayer and set it, clean, on the counter before he grabbed a lid and popped it onto the travel cup. It gave Lily the opportunity to shuffle her feet a bit and decide just how much she wanted to tell him.

She told him everything, she always told him everything, but did she really want to start this trip up to see her parents with Petunia's foul comments in the back of his mind? He'd been so excited because, finally, they were making their way north, and he wanted to learn everything about her, he said, what her house was like, who her parents are, what kind of streets she'd used to run around on. He'd been so excited, and the idea of telling him what Petunia — who he knew was wretched — had said….

But, alternately — did she really want to send him up there without him knowing just how horrible Petunia might be to him? Without preparing him for the fact that it would, at least, be Petunia and her husband against them, but she was sure Petunia was talking to their parents and so it wasn't completely out of the question that they might be a little horrible to him, too? She hoped that her parents would give James a chance — she thought that her mum, at least, might give him a chance — but it was still going to take a while for her parents to get to know him and see just how wonderful he was and what if they were just completely awful to him in the meantime?

James lifted his apron off with one hand and set it on the hook as he walked back around the counter, and then started rummaging around in his jacket pocket with his free hand.

'Here.' He pulled something dark maroon out of his pocket — a mitten. 'Wear these.'

'I —' James raised an eyebrow at her as he switched the cup into his other hand and started searching his other pocket. He handed her the matching mitten and, when she had them on, handed her the drink.

He started towards the door, but Lily didn't move. 'What are you going to wear?'

'My favourite hat.' He reached back into his pocket — they must be a bloody mile deep, these pockets — and pulled out a worn, maroon looking piece of knitting. He slid the hat on over his head and smiled at her.

'I can't believe you still wear that thing,' she said, rolling her eyes and following him as he stepped through the door and back out onto the pavement. 'It's kind of awful.'

James took her free arm and looped it through his, pulling her just enough so that their sides brushed together as they walked. He leant down and pressed a warm kiss to her temple.

'It's not awful,' he said, straightening up and grinning down at her. 'I love it.'

Lily checked her phone an inordinate number of times over the next few days.

She tried not to obsess over it — if James was going to text her, he was going to text her — but why had he asked if her mobile number had stayed the same if he wasn't going to message her right away?

She could always text him, too, but then what if he hadn't texted her for some specific reason, like maybe he decided that he didn't really want to strike up a friendly conversation with her again or maybe his phone was broken and so he couldn't get her texts anyway? In the latter case, her texting him would really only increase her paranoia because it wouldn't matter that her messages wouldn't have blue ticks underneath because she'd have completely convinced herself that he'd somehow seen her messages and decided not to reply.

Needless to say, she got a little paranoid.

Luckily, she still had an absolutely obscene amount of work to do, and so she threw herself into that instead.

It was Wednesday evening by the time James finally texted — a full five days since she'd been in his shop. She'd been sitting at her desk printing out packing slips — she'd been trying to design her new stationary range through a horrific creative block all day and, finally, took refuge in something mindless before her brain started up with you're just shit at everything aren't you — when her mobile dinged from beside her. She'd finally settled down to the point where she wasn't snatching her phone up and nearly fumbling it in her excitement — that had been this past weekend when she thought James might reach out — but she still picked her mobile up a bit quicker than she normally would have done (and she still had it on ring so she could actually hear it when things came through). She was expecting to see another message from Marlene or Dorcas or someone, but when she turned her mobile over so she could see the screen, she nearly had a heart attack.

James.

James had texted her.

She'd never clicked into her damn WhatsApp so quickly in her life.

James Potter: Hey! Sorry it took me so long the message you work was crazu this week. But it was lovely seeing you on friday lily hinestly. Hopefully youre close to running out of pies?

She rolled her eyes — he was such an idiot — but she couldn't help the smile on her face or the warm, happy feeling in her chest as she read his message. Her thumbs hovered over the screen for a few seconds before she started typing. It took her a few goes at it — she couldn't quite decide what to say — but she got something casual enough in the end.

Lily Evans: Nearly. I've bene restraining myself to one a day so that I dont run out too soon

She didn't think that he would respond right away and was just about to put her mobile down when her phone pinged again.

James Potter: """restraining yourself"""

James Potter: you should never do that. Just come back and see me. Ive got more

She snorted and quickly typed her reply —

Lily Evans: I should hope so. I'd have to lead some kind of revolution otherwise

The ticks under her message turned blue the moment she sent it and she watched as James began typing his reply. He typed for a moment before 'typing' disappeared from the header and Lily set her phone down, fighting off a wave of disappointment.

Because it was silly, really, thinking that he was just going to sit around texting her all night. He had things to be getting on with and, in truth, so did she.

She'd just finished printing off all her packing slips for her delivery the next afternoon when her mobile pinged again.

James Potter: Sorry i had a class walk in just as i was getting ready to answer you

James Potter: and id love to see you lead some kind of revolution against me

She knew that it was dramatic, the sigh of relief that fell out of her then, but she was just so happy that he hadn't decided to just up and ignore her until the end of time.

Not that James would ever do that — he was too good, far too good — but she still wasn't quite sure what it was that they were doing, texting again.

And she knew that she was probably reading too much into something that was absolutely nothing, but it felt good to be talking to him again. Really, really good.

Lily Evans: Am I to take that as a challenge Potter?

James' reply, this time, was instant.

James Potter: you can take it however you like Evans

They spent the next few days texting on and off. They weren't constantly in contact, not like they'd used to be, but things between them weren't like they used to be and so she was adjusting her expectations.

They'd changed a lot — or, at least, she had — and so they needed to figure out who they were now that they'd grown into themselves a little more. Last she and James had been together — something that she still found it difficult to think about because it was all just so foggy there at the end — they were anxiety-ridden and stressed out of their minds and they were terrified almost all the time because he'd moved up in his apprenticeship and spent ninety percent of his time feeling like he had no idea what he was doing and it was her first year out of uni and everything is awful your first year out of uni and they never had enough money. The last time she and James had been together, almost nothing in their lives was stable. They'd had one another, but, even then, that had only lasted a short time out in the real world.

Looking back, she wasn't even sure when things had started to fall apart between them. She only knew that, that December, things finally peaked enough that she just finally snapped.

It was hard, though, to think about James and not immediately think about her and James together. But it had been five years and, clearly, in that time, the major wounds had healed and so, even though they weren't together, she refused to let that colour the friendship that she was now trying to build with him.

She didn't even want to get back together anyway, so she didn't know why she was fixating on it.

She showed up at James' bakery — she was going to say "as usual" but a one-time occurrence does not a usual pattern make — on Friday evening, her white box from last week tucked carefully under her arm. She smiled at him as she walked through the door and he grinned back for just a moment before he noticed she'd brought her box.

He raised an eyebrow at her, his mouth stretching up into the slightest smirk. 'Bringing your own takeaway containers, eh?'

She held her fingers up at him. 'This is your box, you prat. I just didn't want to be wasteful and make you fold me another one.'

He laughed. 'Well, I suppose that's alright.'

'You're damn right it is.' She set the box down on the counter before she started rummaging around in her bag for her wallet. 'And you're going to let me pay for these this week.'

James had bent down to pull the tray of remaining pies from the display case, but she didn't need to see his face to know that he was smirking again. 'Am I?'

'Yes,' she said, shooting him a stern look as he straightened up and started piling pies in her box. 'Because I know that you're just letting these leave the shop one way or the other, but I don't feel right not paying for them.'

James sighed and opened his mouth to say something, but Lily held up her hand.

'Please? You've worked hard to make these and they're bloody delicious and I'm sure your energy bills are like, absolutely mad, so just please let me pay for them.'

James studied her for a moment before he half shrugged. 'Fine. But I'm giving you the friends and family discount.'

'And what's that?'

He grinned. 'Free.'

She stomped her foot. Actually stomped her foot. 'James.'

He sighed. 'Fine. 75 percent off.'

She scoffed. 'What? James, no. I won't pay less than half.'

He laughed and shook his head at her. 'You have to be the first person in here who is arguing with me because she wants to pay more.'

'Look, I've already allocated a certain amount of money in my budget this quarter for this, so it's not like you'll be sending me to the workhouse if you let me pay for them.'

James snorted. 'Of course you have a line item in your budget for mince pies.'

She shot him a look. 'They're my favourite. So now, please just agree to at least half price and then I'll pay you and we can stop bickering.'

He opened his mouth immediately, another cheeky grin starting at the corners of his lips, but whatever he was going to say must have suddenly seemed ill-advised, because he closed his mouth again and stayed silent. He studied her for a moment, his eyes moving over her face, and Lily tried not to wonder at what he was thinking about as he looked at her.

James sighed and he looked back down at the now empty tray of mince pies on the counter. 'Fine. Half price. How many do you want?'

Lily glanced down into the box — it was full and they were stacked on top of one another — and struggled to keep her face even as she said, 'That's fine.'

James breathed a laugh and shook his head at her. 'I should've known.'

Lily opted to ignore him as she pulled her wallet out of her bag. 'Alright. How much?'

'Ten quid.'

She frowned at him as she held out her card. 'That can't be right.'

James took it and stuck it into his credit card machine. 'You said half off.'

He spun the machine around so she could punch her pin in and handed her the receipt when it finished printing. He shut the lid over the mince pies and slid the box across the counter towards her.

She narrowed her eyes at him. 'Still. I know it's more than ten pounds.'

James shook his head. 'Nope.'

She sighed. 'You're ridiculous.'

He grinned. 'As always.'

She snorted, the shock of his answer knocking her out of her mild annoyance about the damn pies. 'I can't believe you remember that.'

He shrugged. 'We used to say it all the time. I think it's, like, part of my DNA or something now.'

There were so many things she wanted to say to that — like how could that possibly still be true after years apart, how could he stand there and so casually say that some part of them, some part of her, had imprinted itself on him like that — but instead of saying anything, because everything she could think to say started towards unsure ground, she just rolled her eyes at him and slid her box of mince pies off the counter.

'Anyway,' she checked her watch. 'I should probably let you get to it, eh? I'm sure you want to get home.'

James frowned. 'Well, wait. Have you, uh, got any plans for the rest of the evening?'

She shook her head. 'No. Why?'

'Well, I've got a bit of cleaning to get done, and if you haven't got anything better to do — I mean, this is probably boring for you, but if you haven't got anything better to do we could chat? While I close up?'

Did her throat just close up? Her throat just fucking closed up.

'Oh.'

James waved his hand. 'Nevermind. It's stupid.'

Shit, fuck, fuck why couldn't she ever just —

'No.' She shook her head enthusiastically. 'No, I'd love a chat. Honestly,' she added, seeing the slightly sceptical look on James' face. She unbuttoned her jacket and slid it off, turned around to scan the space before she threw it over the back of a chair at the table directly opposite the till.

James raised an eyebrow at her, but she just dropped her mince pies (gently) onto the table and settled into one of the chairs. She crossed her legs and grinned at him.

'So. Tell me about your day.'

James laughed and slowly shook his head at her. 'Now you're ridiculous.'

She grinned. 'As always.'

James turned and started moving things around on the back counter. She couldn't quite see what he was doing from this angle, but when he set two mugs on the counter near the till, she thought she had an idea.

'Day was alright,' he said, as he grabbed the frothing pitcher and filled it with milk. He fell silent as the espresso machine kicked on and Lily watched for a few seconds as he steamed the milk. He turned off the steam wand with a quick turn of the dial overtop and caught her eye as he turned back to the mugs he'd set up near the till.

'I got here a little later than usual this morning, so that sort of threw my day off,' he said, picking up the thread.

She watched for a moment as he poured milk into the mugs before she looked up and caught his eye. 'What time did you get here?'

'Four thirty.' James turned the empty frothing pitcher over the sprayer nozzle in the sink.

Her jaw dropped. 'Four thirty is late?!'

James laughed as he lifted their mugs, a bit more recklessly than she would have done knowing how full they were, and started walking around the counter. 'I'm usually here by four,' he said, nudging open the half door between the dining area and the back of the bakery with the side of his leg. 'Half four this morning was a nightmare. I was immediately behind on everything.'

He set one of the mugs down onto the table in front of her and Lily looked down at it. 'Hot chocolate.'

He nodded and took a sip from his mug, despite the fact that it had to be lava hot. 'Figured you'd like something to drink if we're going to be sitting here banging on.'

She thought that he might walk back behind the counter and start closing up the shop, but he pulled out the chair across from her and sank heavily into it, groaning unconsciously as he relaxed into his seat. He took another long, slow drag off his mug before he set it down, leant his head back, and closed his eyes.

'God, I haven't sat down in hours.'

She shot him a stern look even though she knew that he couldn't see her expression.

'James. You need to make time to sit down at work. You're going to completely wear yourself out.'

'I know,' he said, and Lily watched his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he swallowed. 'I just never think about it until I'm practically dead on my feet.'

She sighed and muttered, 'Of course you don't,' as she picked up her hot chocolate to take an experimental sip.

It was hot, though not as hot as she was expecting, but what immediately took her aback was just how good it was.

He'd made it extra chocolatey just like she liked. And she couldn't believe that he'd remembered, but maybe it was too much to assume that he'd remembered it because, maybe, it had just been an accident. Maybe he'd just added one too many scoops of powder and then he'd hoped she wouldn't mind, or maybe he hadn't even noticed he'd done anything at all. Maybe this was just how he always served his hot chocolate here.

She decided that she wasn't going to carry on any further down this road because it was only going to make her an absolute train wreck.

'So how were you so behind, getting here at four thirty? That still seems awfully early to me.'

James picked his head up with a sigh.

'Well, we open at seven and I need time to get a bunch of our early morning stuff in the oven and then I have to get some of our doughs rising for preps throughout the morning.'

'Are you getting all that stuff done yourself?'

He shook his head. 'God, no. My two assistants get here at four, too.' He laughed. 'I would honestly die if I had to do all the prep myself. It's a lot.'

'So you got here at four thirty this morning and you're still here?'

'Well, the baking assistants go home at noon, because by that time we're done baking for the day, but then I usually have to transition into doing paperwork or helping out out front depending on how the lunch rush is.' He was completely evading the point and they both knew it.

'Jesus christ. How do you even have time to eat?'

James shrugged one shoulder. 'Deliveroo.'

Lily breathed a laugh. 'Good lord. We both know that isn't sufficient.'

'Well, luckily, I work in a bakery, so there's always something around to eat if I'm really starving.'

She shook her head at him. 'You are just determined to work yourself to death, aren't you?'

He chuckled. 'I mean, you know how I am.'

'That you literally don't know when to stop anything ever?'

His smile widened. 'Well, that, but also, like — when you work for something for so long, once everything starts happening the way you've always hoped, you kind of don't care if you're tired. Like, I'm willing to work myself into the ground for this, and I know that's probably, like, super counter productive, but I just can't bring myself to work less?'

He sighed. 'I want to be here. More than I want to be anywhere else at the moment. And maybe that changes,' he looked at her and there was something about the look in his eyes that went through her, 'but for now, I'm happy. Even if I am absolutely exhausted.'

She breathed a laugh. 'Well, I'm glad you're happy. And I get it, you know, the like. No boundaries thing. I've got a shop. It's just on the internet,' she added hastily, seeing James' expression shift to one of utter excitement. 'I work from home, obviously, and I don't wake up as early as you do, but I also spend way too much time during the day working on stuff because I just… want to. So I get that sometimes it's worth it to sacrifice a bit of your sanity if it means that you get to work on something you love, but you still need to take care of yourself.'

'I can't believe you didn't tell me about your shop earlier,' he said, shaking his head. 'Lily, that's amazing.'

She felt her cheeks go hot and she ducked her head, took another small sip of her hot chocolate. When she met his eyes again, he was still smiling at her.

'Honestly, I'm so happy for you. You wanted that for years.'

She chuckled. 'Yeah. Thanks. I — I mean, it's like you, right? It's sometimes hard to believe that I've actually got it. That it actually pays my bills. That's the most shocking bit, I think.'

'Right? Especially living in London. It doesn't make sense that we don't need awful jobs to eat and afford our rent.'

She breathed a laugh. 'We're joking, but honestly, I feel that so viscerally sometimes. Like I'm genuinely shocked at the end of every month when I've made enough money. And sometimes I even feel guilty for it — like shouldn't I have to suffer like every other millennial we know?'

'Well, I'm sure you're suffering,' James said, grinning. 'We're all bloody suffering if paying our bills is the height of luxury for us.'

She tipped her hot chocolate at him before she took another sip. 'Excellent point.'

James inclined her head at her and they both smiled.

'But outside the shop,' she said. 'You're alright? How's the rest of it going?'

'Well, like I've said, I haven't got time for much,' he said, laughing and brushing his hair back off his forehead. 'I'm working on training up some of my staff so that I can take at least a day off a week, but I also like being here, like I said, so I'm fighting against that, too.'

'The impulse to work yourself to death?'

James laughed. 'Exactly. But otherwise, everyone's alright. I haven't been up to see Dad in while. I usually call him on Mondays — I mean, he's used to being alone now, but —' James fell silent and Lily dropped her gaze. He was absently spinning his hot chocolate slowly around in his hands, and she watched for a moment before he sighed and she looked up at him again.

'I've just got to check on him more often, is all. Sirius and Remus get up there for tea — I think they go on Thursdays — but I'm always here and I can't go. I'm glad that they can make it, though. Helps me worry less.' He smiled then, and there was something sort of long-suffering and exhausted about it.

She just barely suppressed the urge to reach out to him then, because the feeling — to hug him or take his hand or something — rolled through her at that one small look on his face. Because he was tired and overworked and worried about his father who'd been alone for six years, and he was probably used to it, James' father, in the way that you get used to the terrible things that have altered the course of your life, they were both probably used to it, but it didn't stop James from worrying and guilting himself for not being there as often as he felt he needed to be.

With James, any misstep, any misdirection of his energy was something that he let himself feel guilty about.

'You can't be all things, James,' she said. She smiled softly at him, a little bracingly. 'It's alright to work on this for yourself. You've worked your whole life for this. It's alright to focus on that.'

He pulled in a long, slow breath and dropped his gaze to his hands. They were still spinning the mug, though it was so slow now that you might not notice unless you were watching him for a minute.

'I know,' he said. 'But you also know that I can't help it.'

'No, I know. But you should be proud of yourself. For working on this. And I know Fleamont is proud of you, too.'

She didn't say that Fleamont had used to talk to her about this when she and James had come round for Sunday roast. They'd gotten into the habit of going over for tea — it was something his mum had always been insistent on, this tradition, and they were keen to carry it on after she'd died — and Fleamont was forever telling Lily, whenever James was busy cooking because he was the only one who knew how to manage a stove without anything catching fire, that he was proud of his son.

'He's got his mother's eye for such things,' he used to say. 'I know he's worried about it all, but I know he'll be fine.'

It wasn't much, not on the surface, and Lily wasn't sure why Fleamont hadn't just told James those things himself, but then, she sort of understood. Her father wasn't ever particularly open, either.

James sighed. 'Yeah. It's hard, you know, but — thanks.'

He smiled at her and Lily nodded. 'Course.'

'Anyway,' James exhaled and a lighter, easier expression immediately flooded his face. 'What about you? How's your life outside work?'

She laughed. 'It's fun when we pretend to have lives outside work.'

'I'll take it you're in a similar boat, then.'

She nodded. 'I don't do much besides argue with Shopify these days. It's not a difficult platform, I guess, but I'm planning a massive website redesign in all my free time — because, you know, I needed something else to work on — and nothing is displaying right in any of my demo pages. And I should just read some manual they've got up on their website or try a different pre-set layout, but I just want it to look how it looks in my head and I don't know how to get it to look like that and it's driving me a little mad.'

He grinned at her over his mug. 'I'm glad you're just as stubborn as I remember.'

She tried to frown at him, but she knew that some of her amusement must have been evident on her face because his smile widened.

'I'm not stubborn.'

He snorted into his drink and a bit of hot chocolate shot out of the mug and splashed him. He swore and set the mug down to wipe at his face with the edge of his apron, and Lily grinned satisfactorily at him.

'Serves you right.'

James dipped his finger into his hot chocolate and flicked a bit at her. She tried to duck, but the drop landed on her cheek, and James laughed as she huffed and wiped it off on her shoulder.

'You're a child.' She was trying to chastise him, but the barely suppressed laughter was clear in her voice.

He grinned. 'But alright,' his smile softened and he took another sip of his hot chocolate. 'So you're arguing with Shopify and you're working too much. Anything else going on?'

She breathed a laugh and shook her head. 'It's pathetic, but that's about the most accurate summary of my life I've ever heard.'

He chuckled. 'Well, hopefully it helps to know that you're not alone, because I'm definitely equally pathetic.'

'Yeah.' She bit the corner or her lip and nodded. 'It helps a bit.'

She thought that he might say something — he always had something to say — but his expression shifted as he looked at her then and he sat there silently, just looking at her. He held her gaze and there was something weighty there, something she felt on her skin, and she felt her heart start to pound just a bit harder in her chest.

But there was no reason for that.

No reason at all.

After a moment, James cleared his throat, and Lily exhaled hard.

'Alright,' James stretched his arms over his head and Lily absolutely didn't notice the way that his shirt slid up just a bit. 'I should probably get cleaning. It's nearly six.'

He stood and Lily frowned. 'I feel bad. Now you're going to be here for ages.'

James shrugged. He held his hand out for her mug and, knowing he'd refuse to let her carry it over to the sink herself, she just handed it to him.

'I don't mind.' He walked across the shop and grabbed a dish bin Lily hadn't seen and set their mugs inside before carrying the whole thing back behind the counter. 'The cleaning's mindless anyway. And I only live a half mile from here, so I haven't got a long walk home.'

She frowned. 'Still. Can I help you?'

James shook his head. 'No, you're alright. It won't take long. The kitchen crew clean up back there before they leave and then the front of the house stuff isn't much. The espresso machine is the worst bit.'

'Still —'

'Honestly, it's alright. It won't even take me that long.'

Lily sighed. 'Alright, well. If you're sure you don't want help —'

'I'm sure.' James smiled then and there was something soft about his expression, a fondness in the way he was looking at her. 'Are you going to pop by and visit again?'

She nodded, a slow smile stretching across her face. 'Yeah. Yeah, I'll be back. But only for the mince pies.'

James laughed. 'Of course. Only for the mince pies.'

Lily grabbed her coat off the back of the chair and pulled it on, fastening the buttons slowly. James watched as her fingers moved and Lily felt her chest go tight at the look on his face.

And she was sure that she was making it up, the intensity of the expression on his face. She was reading too much into it. Not that she wanted there to be anything to read into, but —

She cleared her throat as she secured the final button and grabbed her bag off the chair and draped it over her shoulder. 'Well, I'll see you. When's a good night for you?'

'Any.' James cleared his throat, and she thought that he might look away, but his gaze held firm. 'Any night's good.' His voice was low, a bit scratchy, and Lily could feel it against her skin.

She swallowed. 'Alright. Uhm,' she closed her eyes, shook her head in an attempt to clear it from the entirely unbidden images that had started floating to the front of her brain. 'Well, okay. Good. So I'll see you.'

James nodded. 'I'll see you.'

She held his gaze for a moment longer before the tension in her finally snapped and she turned. She pulled her mittens out of her pockets and began pulling them on as she crossed the shop, and she could feel James' eyes on her as she walked, knew that he was watching her, but she couldn't bring herself to turn around. To look back.

She didn't know what would happen if she looked back.

So, instead, she walked steadily across the shop, opened the door, and stepped out into the cold.

'James, my fucking walls won't stand up!'

James looked up and took in the mess over on her piece of cardboard, but he didn't put his piping bag down.

'Pipe a bit of icing onto the cardboard to give your walls something to stick to.' He shifted his piping bag into one hand and handed her his empty mug from the centre of the table. 'Set this in the middle to help stabilise things while the icing dries.'

Lily frowned at him. 'I never see them do that on Bake Off.'

James snorted and turned back to his own gingerbread. 'That's because you're usually too busy screaming about how much you love Mel and Sue.'

Lily nudged him with her foot. 'And Mary.'

James laughed as he trailed icing along the edges of his somehow intact room. 'Of course. And Mary.'

They worked quietly for a few more minutes – well, quietly but for their Christmas playlist going in the background and Lily's soft but near constant swearing because her fucking walls just wouldn't stand up straight – before Lily finally managed to get her roof on.

'I don't know why we bothered making this a competition,' she said, leaning up against the table and watching as James piped neat scalloped lines along his roof. 'You do this for a bloody living.'

He laughed and she was surprised that the motion didn't disrupt his smooth piping. 'You love a competition.'

'I love winning competitions,' she corrected. 'This is just making me wonder if I'm a masochist.'

'Well, that's certainly something we haven't explored yet.'

She swatted his bicep and the jolt made him drag a long straight line off the end of his roof.

'Shit.' She flushed. 'I'm sorry.'

He raised an eyebrow at her. 'Trying to sabotage me, Evans?'

She flushed even more violently in spite of the teasing tone in his voice. 'No!'

He laughed and reached over to grab the long, flat, spatula-looking thing from the corner of the table. 'It's no harm done,' he said, running the spatula underneath the full line of scallops he'd just drawn. 'It's just icing.'

He scraped the spatula off into a bowl full of other bits of spare icing and then grabbed his piping bag again. She watched as he twisted the bag automatically in his hand, how he shifted his grip just so. He didn't hesitate as she'd done every time she'd piped a line onto her own house, measuring the lines and trying to decide on the right amount of pressure and then eventually working herself up so much that nothing looked right. He just placed the tip right at the end and piped one smooth, perfect line across the roof, and she was impressed — how couldn't she be — by the ease with which his hands moved.

And once she was thinking about his hands…. Well.

He looked up as he finished, pulling the bag away from the roof with a sort of twisty flourish, and caught her staring.

'What?'

She shook her head at him, a small smile starting at the corners of her mouth. 'Just watching you.'

James set the piping bag down on the table and brushed his hands off on his apron. 'Oh yeah?'

She nodded. 'Yeah.'

'And what did you see exactly?' He turned so he was facing her, his thigh pressed up against the side of the table.

She half shrugged and tried to subtly step forward so she was closer to him, but the way that James' eyes darkened told her that he hadn't missed it.

'I just like watching your hands.'

'Do you?'

She nodded, stepped forward again. 'Mhmm.'

'What is it about my hands exactly?'

She looked down at them now — he had the remnants of some icing he'd long wiped off on his wrist and his fingers were slightly chapped at the knuckles from the cold outside, but she could also just feel the way his hands would be against her skin, the rough pads of his fingers digging into her hips, the large expanse of his palms dragging slowly up her ribs, cupping her breasts.

She inhaled and it sounded slightly shaky to her own ears.

'I just like them.'

James hummed and started sliding his hand slowly across the table towards her.

'That's not very descriptive,' he said. 'I'll need a bit more detail about what exactly you like about them.'

His hand inched a bit further across the wood and it was only a few inches away from where her hip was pressing into the table. It wasn't going to take much to get his hands onto her body and she felt the tension in her gut start to wind itself tighter.

She could feel it, she could almost feel it, because the way that his hand slid smoothly, slowly over the wood, the way his thumb curved, just a bit, over the side —

She needed his hands on her.

'I like how they feel.' She stepped closer — there was only a few inches between them now and James had to dip his head to keep eye contact.

She could see the question forming, how do they feel, but she beat him to it.

'They're always a bit rough,' she said. She had a moment where she thought that she might step forward again, where she might close the distance, but the air between them was crackling with electricity, with potential, and she found that she quite liked the tension.

And, perhaps even more than that, she liked what the tension did to him.

She liked watching him coil himself tighter and tighter until it was only a matter of time before his control slipped, and she was keen, she was always keen, to see just what it was that made him snap.

And she loved just how all-consuming he was whenever she pushed him to that point.

'I love how you run your hands across my ribs. Right here.' She traced her middle finger up her ribs, the fabric of her t-shirt dulling the sensation, but only just. 'And I like how you squeeze my hips just slightly before you pull me against you.'

James hummed and, this time, he stepped closer, his hand pushing further across the table until it was barely a centimetre from her.

'What else do you like?'

'I like your hands in my hair. You always tug a bit when you tilt my head and kiss my neck and I just —' She closed her eyes and exhaled hard. When she met his gaze again, his eyes were black.

'Though there are more interesting places for your hands to be, if I'm honest.'

'Oh?' James raised his eyebrow. 'And where would that be?'

'In my pants, obviously.' She'd shifted abruptly back into her normal tone of voice, and the shock of the change set James laughing. She grinned at him and placed her hands innocently on his stomach and ran them slowly up his chest.

He just shook his head at her, laughter still shaking through him as he spoke. 'Is that so?'

He lifted his hand from the table and finally, finally, placed it on her hip, his fingertips just underneath the hem of her t-shirt. The suddenness of it, of the contact and the heat of his skin against hers, made her suck in a sharp breath.

'So I should skip all the fun stuff,' he said, and he slipped his hand more fully under her t-shirt, 'and get straight to the point, eh?'

'From time to time.' She tried to sound casual, light, but she was already out of breath and it completely hampered the effect she was going for.

James hummed and she felt his chest vibrate under her hands.

'I guess I could see the advantages of that.'

He slid his hand across her stomach, his hand dipping down the front of her joggers. And even though he was giving her exactly what she wanted and she knew, or thought she knew, exactly what he was going to do, he was still bloody teasing her. Because he knew exactly what he was doing, trailing his fingers slowly over her skin and leaning down so he could whisper right into her ear and let his warm breath brush across her skin, he knew he was drawing the threads in her gut so taut that she could barely breathe because of how intensely she wanted him.

And he'd always been like that, even in the early days of their relationship when everything was new and she expected him, like the two other guys she'd been with, to be rushed, hurried, for him to skim his hands across her body, desperate to cross just enough terrain so he could jump right into the good stuff, but James had always been slow, had always been patient. He took his time, even when things were a bit rushed, to trace new lines over her skin, to weigh her curves in his hands.

He learned every single part of her, studied every angle and curve, and he took his time figuring out what she liked best.

'I don't know,' James slid his hand into her knickers and she inhaled sharply and threaded her fingers through his hair as he ran his fingers up the length of her, just barely brushing against her clit.

He exhaled hard, his breath a little shaky, and she felt his fingers twitch against her as he tried to maintain some semblance of control over himself.

He pressed a searing kiss to the spot under her ear and pulled his hand out of her joggers.

'I quite like taking it slow.'

He reached up and ran his thumb along her jaw, threaded his fingers through her hair, and kissed her.

His lips moved with a practised, carefully maintained slowness over hers, and though she knew this dance — the one where he carried on teasing her until she was practically out of her mind for him — it didn't mean that she was any less on edge. Every single bit of her hummed — the places where his skin was touching hers (now he was running his fingers down the column of her throat), but, more, the places where she wanted him to touch her. His absence was heavy on her skin and she was desperate to alleviate even the slightest bit of tension.

And the best way to do that was to try and push him over the edge herself.

She pulled his lower lip between her teeth, undid the tie on his apron, and slid her hand over his hip before slipping it under the fabric of his jumper. He hummed against her lips when her hands found his skin and he shifted so his hips brushed against her. She sucked in a breath when she felt him, hard, against her stomach and, unable to help herself, she moved one hand between them and pressed her palm against the front of his joggers.

He gasped against her lips and his restless side began to win out. He ran his hands from her hips, up over the curve of her waist, bringing her t-shirt with them. He brushed his thumb once, twice along the edge of her bra, and Lily gasped into his mouth. He grinned and moved to kiss the corner of her mouth, her cheek, before his lips were at her ear.

'Alright if I take this off?' He brushed his thumb along her ribs again and she shivered as she hummed her assent.

She lifted her arms and he stripped off her shirt and dropped it somewhere behind them while she reached back, unclipped her bra and dropped it onto the table — she quite liked this bra and didn't need them to accidentally trod on it.

When she looked up at James again, he was watching her, his eyes dark. He put his hands on her waist, spreading his fingers wide before he moved them slowly around her back, doing his best to cover as much of her body as he could with his hands.

'You're so soft,' he said, leaning down and pressing a kiss to her neck. 'How're you always so bloody soft?'

She tried to shrug but the cheeky gesture got lost in the way his hands were moving over her and the feeling of his thigh — she couldn't remember how it had gotten there — now pressed between her legs. He nudged the underside of her jaw with his nose and she tilted her chin up towards him. He pressed one more kiss to her throat and just caught the soft moan on her lips as he kissed her again.

'Come on, James,' she pulled back and kissed his jaw, his throat. 'I can't be the only naked one here.'

He nodded a bit shakily and reached up behind his neck to peel the apron off, knocking his glasses clean off his face, and she laughed as she moved her hands to the waistband of his trousers.

'One of these days, you're going to break those things.'

She managed to push his joggers down to his thighs, but James chuckled and started tugging on hers before she made significant progress.

'They've survived this long,' he said, hooking his fingers in the waistband of her trousers. 'I'm starting to think they might be indestructible.'

He tugged her joggers down over her hips, bringing her pants with them. He knelt in front of her as he went, began dropping soft, barely there kisses against her skin as it was revealed. She could hear herself panting — it sounded like she'd just run a bloody marathon and the sound of it was echoing in the otherwise silent kitchen — but James didn't mind and she couldn't be bothered about it.

He carefully lifted each of her feet, tapping each one just before to signal that she should shift her weight, and pulled the joggers off completely and tossed them behind him. She reached down and immediately started tugging on his shoulders, but James leant forward, dropped a kiss to her thigh, her hip, her stomach, between her breasts before he returned to standing.

Despite the fact that he'd taken his time to reach her, his mouth was far more insistent on hers now. They were close, they both knew it, to some kind of relief, and their movements became all the more frantic at the prospect.

He slipped his hand between her thighs and brushed his fingers against her clit, and she broke the kiss, moaning into his neck. James smiled as he kissed her jaw and did it again.

She reached between them and grabbed the hem of his jumper and pulled it up. She knew he'd have to stop touching her but she was already — she didn't care —

He leaned back and tugged his jumper over his head and Lily took the opportunity to pull his joggers and trunks off. He laughed at her urgency as he kicked them away.

'Someone's in a hurry,'

'James.' She took him in her hand and James sucked in a sharp breath. 'If you don't fuck me right now, I swear to god.'

He swallowed hard. 'How do you want —'

She didn't even wait for him to finish — she just turned, careful to brush her bum against him as she grabbed the back of one of their dining chairs. James' hands slid over her as she moved, and he swore as one of his hands went up to cup her breast.

She dropped her head between her arms and exhaled hard. 'James —'

He chuckled, though the sound was deeper, raspier than usual. 'Yeah, alright.'

And though she'd been waiting for it, though they'd done this a million times before and she'd been thinking about this exact moment almost nonstop since they'd started this fifteen minutes ago, she still wasn't totally prepared for the sensation when he finally pushed into her.

Because — fuck — everything felt so different from this angle, like she was fuller somehow, and she didn't know her back was that sensitive until James was kissing down her spine as he moved against her.

She twisted her hands against the back of the chair, hoping that the motion would give her something else to focus on so she might be able to retain at least a little bit of composure, but then James slipped his hand between her thighs and brushed against her clit and she nearly lost it.

'Fuck.' James kissed the centre of her back and she moaned again as James swirled his fingers over her clit.

'I —' She lifted one hand off the chair and moved it between them to bump his out of the way. 'I'll — just — harder.'

It wasn't coherent, her direction, but luckily, James seemed to understand. He moved his hands to her hips and, with one final kiss to her shoulder blades, he straightened up.

The change in the angle — it had been good, so good, before, but this —

They both swore and she thought that he might still for a moment, that they might take a second to adjust, but James, apparently, wasn't interested in slowing down now. He moved his hips hard against hers and she moaned again, louder this time, because he was hitting something absolutely perfect and between that and his hands on her hips and her fingers on her clit —

Between all that, she was dangerously close to falling apart.

And normally, she might've tried to hold it off, prolong the moment, but she wasn't interested in holding off today. There'd be other times, other days where they'd hold off, both of them, their orgasms dangling over them and tantalisingly close, but today was not that day.

She swirled her fingers over her clit and moaned, her knuckles going white as she clutched harder onto the back of the chair.

'James, I —'

He hummed and, thankfully, seemed to understand without her having to finish her sentence. He picked up the pace just slightly, pressing even more insistently on that spot inside her, and it wasn't long — just a few more well timed thrusts and the constant movement of her fingers — before she fell over the edge.

She dropped her head down, her moan echoing around them, and she thought, for a moment, that her legs might give out. James squeezed her hips and she knew he was close from the soft groans falling out of him.

He moved three, four more times against her before he finally broke. He swore, the word nearly swallowed by his moan, and his hands flexed against her hips as his thrusts slowed. After a moment, he stilled, and, still inside her, he exhaled hard and dropped his forehead to her back.

They stood there for a moment gathering their bearings. James' forehead was pressed against her shoulder blade and she could feel his breath against her back. After a moment, she adjusted her grip on the back of the chair and slowly started pushing them upright.

James hummed in acknowledgement, his chest vibrating against her back, and kissed her, once, twice, down the centre of her spine.

'Hold on, let me —' He sat up and twisted behind her to try and find something, and she breathed a laugh.

She turned as best she could to look at him over her shoulder. 'No rush.'

James handed her a tea towel with an apologetic smile and she half shrugged as she accepted it. He stepped back and she made quick work of cleaning herself up before she dropped the towel, balled up, onto the chair.

She straightened up completely and stretched, her eyes skimming over him again before she turned and began searching for her clothes.

'How do we always end up completely naked?'

She leant down and grabbed her shirt from underneath the table, and James swatted her bum. She shot him an amused look as she turned around and pulled her t-shirt back over her head and James half shrugged.

'Couldn't resist.'

She quirked an eyebrow at him. 'Smacking my arse or stripping me down for all the world to see?'

James hummed, the sound low and rumbly in his throat, and stepped forward, put his hands on her hips again. 'Both.'

He started skirting his hands up her sides and she just barely managed to roll her eyes at him.

'You're ridiculous.'

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her cheek, the underside of her jaw. 'As always.'

She snorted and pushed his chest so he took one slightly stumbling step back from her. He was still grinning and she rolled her eyes at him again before she bent down and grabbed their underwear from the floor.

'Get dressed, you prat.' She threw him his briefs before she pulled her own knickers back on and, scooping her joggers up off the floor on the way, walked down the short corridor to the bathroom.

James had pulled his own joggers back on by the time she'd returned, but he hadn't, she noticed, bothered to put his jumper back on. He was standing shirtless at the sink, his back to her, doing the washing up, and Lily tried not to let herself get too distracted by the way that his back muscles shifted as he moved.

He was washing dishes for god's sake.

Still —

She walked quietly across the kitchen floor, careful to avoid that one incredibly creaky board in the centre, and, when she reached him, put one hand on the small of his back. He jumped, just a little, and she smiled to herself as she ran her hands around to his chest.

'Hey.'

She pressed a quick kiss to his shoulder and rested her cheek against his back, let herself relax into the feeling of James' body moving underneath her. James finished rinsing whatever he was holding before he took her hand, his own still wet, and lifted it off his chest so he could kiss her palm.

'Hey.'

They stood there like that for a few minutes — James washing up while Lily ran her fingers through the soft hair sprinkled across his chest. And she couldn't believe, then, the immensity of the things she felt for him. They were heavy, almost, but they didn't weigh her down like she might've expected they would.

They grounded her, he grounded her — he added a bedrock of easy, unshakeable consistency to the rest of her life that, sometimes, felt a bit like it was teetering towards the wrong side of madness.

Because she was the flakier one of the two of them, no matter how they looked from the outside. James was buoyant, carefree, and to most people, that made him seem untethered and mildly out of control. And he was experimental, sure, was quick to discard things that weren't working, but he was also steadfast and unendingly loyal and dedicated when things clicked.

And god, she needed that.

She tried not to obsess about the fact that she'd now started, embarrassingly, thinking about James almost constantly.

She tried not to obsess even more about the fact that, more often than not, the things she found herself thinking about were not at all the sorts of things that friends were supposed to think about.

Luckily, she was so swamped with work now that it was December that she barely had time to fantasise as much as she otherwise might've.

Though, "fantasise" was totally the wrong word.

Thinking.

She was just thinking.

And if she occasionally found herself thinking about James in… certain ways — the way his hands had fitted perfectly on her hips or the way his bum looked in those jeans he wore or the way he'd always known just where to kiss her neck to drive her out of her mind….

Well, if she found herself thinking about those things, it usually wasn't long before she got an email or a question on DM or she remembered that she was supposed to be packing orders and then she could bring herself round to much more suitable lines of thinking.

It probably didn't help matters, though, that she'd now started marking a point of stopping by the bakery a little more often.

She still went in the late afternoon sometimes, just before James closed, and they'd drink hot chocolate and chat — though James, luckily, let Lily convince him to get his cleaning done while they talked so that he could actually leave at a decent time — but Lily had also taken to going, occasionally, during the day, too.

The bakery was, as she'd imagined that it would be, incredibly busy during the day. She'd gotten there at ten thirty one morning, thinking that it would be empty because most people were at work by then, but the shop was so packed that she'd had to loiter around with her tea until someone vacated a seat. Despite the seating gamble, though, she found that she quite liked coming here in the morning.

Being around people was a nice change from her usual life and she found that she got a lot more work done with the buzz of the cafe backing her thoughts.

The mid-morning also had the added benefit of the fact that James was usually still in the kitchen, so she actually got to pay for the things she was eating.

He always grumbled at her for paying once he strolled out of the kitchen around noon, but he never put up enough of a fight about it that she actually listened to him.

She was sitting in the bakery late one afternoon — she'd been there since about half eleven and had stayed right up until closing because she'd been so damn productive — a cup of hot chocolate in her hands while James cleaned the espresso machine and moaned about the annoying customer who'd come in that morning before she'd got in.

'He's just —' James shot a bit of steam out of the steamer before he wiped it down with the rag. 'He's a fucking bellend. And I don't like saying that about a customer, you know, but I swear to god, Evans.' He detached the drainage tray and set it carefully in the sink before he turned to look at her.

'Jade said that he was in here today and that he said something really foul to her. He's lucky that she didn't tell me until he'd already left because I swear, I probably would've murdered him right here in the damn bakery.'

'You could just ban him,' Lily said. 'That seems like the safer option.'

James pulled the sprayer up from beside the sink and turned on the tap to spray out the drainage tray.

'Yeah,' he said over the sound of the water. 'But that's so much less satisfying.'

She snorted. 'It's not always about what's the most satisfying.'

James glanced at her over his shoulder, a wicked smirk on his lips. 'You don't think?'

She rolled her eyes at him but she couldn't deny the things that that look was doing to her.

They chatted easily while James carried on wiping down counters and Lily answered Instagram DMs. It wasn't much — they just talked about work or things they'd seen on telly when they actually took five minutes to sit down or some new song they'd heard on the radio — but it was just… nice. It was nice to sit here in the evening, doing the last few things she needed to do for the day, and chat with someone about her day or something else going on in the world.

It put her outside herself a little bit. Made her get out of her own head.

But there was something about James in particular, too. Because it wasn't just having anyone to talk to — she loved Marlene and Dorcas and everyone else, but this was… this was different.

'I forgot how much I like talking to you,' James said, smiling at her. He'd just finished wiping down the counters and and she only noticed him turning the rag nervously around in his hands the instant before he carried on speaking. 'And I don't know if we're bringing it up, but — I mean, we haven't yet and —' He brushed his hair back off his forehead and dropped his gaze so he was speaking to the counter. 'I missed you.'

She exhaled and felt an invisible weight lift from her shoulders. 'I missed you, too.'

It felt so good to say it, to acknowledge what she'd been dancing around in her own head since she'd strolled into the bakery a few weeks ago. Because she had missed him, so much, and she hadn't even realised it until he was back and she was chatting with him again and, somehow, it was easier now than it had ever been before.

She didn't know what changed — so much about both of them had changed that it was hard to point to one specific thing that felt different about their relationship now — but she knew that the change was a good one. It was just a gut feeling, a deep, happy, satisfied feeling, but it was….

It was light years away from how they'd left things, certainly. And though she remembered being happy when they were together, there was something different about this feeling now.

It was subtle, but it was significant.

'I never did understand why we broke up,' James said, apparently deciding that they'd crossed enough of the line and he might as well throw them over it completely. His voice was light, casual, but Lily could still read the subtle shifts in him.

She dropped her gaze from his and turned her hot chocolate around in her hands.

'I just….' She sighed and looked back up at him. 'I guess I never did tell you, did I? Properly.'

James shook his head and leaned easily against the counter. He looked, to anyone else, utterly at peace, completely casual, but the interest in his expression was unmistakable. 'I think the best I got was "I just can't live in this tiny flat anymore!" before you stormed out.'

Lily breathed a bitter laugh. 'God, I'd forgotten that's how I'd done it.'

'At least you didn't throw a hair dryer at me.'

She quirked an eyebrow at him. 'Is that a Parent Trap reference?'

James grinned and Lily felt her stomach clench. 'Of course.'

She rolled her eyes at him, but she couldn't help the smile twitching at her lips. 'You're ridiculous.'

His smile stretched just a touch wider and he said, 'As always,' before he sobered.

'Anyway, uh. We don't —' He cleared his throat. 'I mean, we don't have to talk about it obviously. If you don't want.'

She shook her head, but James was still carrying on talking. 'I've just been thinking about it, which is maybe a weird thing to admit, but — I mean, I have been. So if you want to talk about it, I'm obviously okay with hearing about it, but if you don't want to talk about it, it's alright, too.'

He paused and just stood there looking at her for a second before he stepped out from behind the counter and began wiping down tables.

She watched him for a minute — the way his shirt stretched across his shoulders — before she cleared her throat. 'I don't mind talking about it, James.'

He straightened up and looked at her. 'You don't?'

She shook her head, but it was such a small movement she wasn't sure he'd seen.

'No. I —' She took a deep breath. 'I've been thinking about it, too.'

'Have you?'

She nodded. 'Mmhmm.'

He looked at her for a second, some look on his face that she couldn't quite read, before he dropped his rag down on the table he was standing behind and crossed the bakery towards her. And there was something about it — the look on his face and the fact that he was walking across the shop to her and that she had no idea what he was going to do, but there was just something about the look on his face — that made her stomach feel like it had flipped fully upside down.

He pulled out the seat across from her and the sound of the chair scraping across the wood floor made her arms break out in goosebumps.

They were quiet for a second before James reached up and scrubbed the back of his neck.

'So, uh — I'm not quite sure where to start except to say that I've always assumed it wasn't the flat.'

She breathed a laugh and shook her head. 'No. It wasn't the flat.'

James nodded slowly. 'Okay.'

'It —' She sighed and looked down at her mug for a moment while she gathered her thoughts. 'It was a lot of things, but almost none of them had to do with you.'

She expected him to say something, but, when she looked up, James was just sitting there quietly looking at her.

'I was —' She exhaled hard. 'I mean I was done with uni and so I was feeling profoundly directionless. We were stupidly poor, I was working at that damn shop and we were talking, sort of, about my starting up a shop of my own, but I wasn't feeling up to it yet — mostly because I was so busy freaking out about everything else in my life that I couldn't even take five minutes to think about the logistics of how a shop would work and I didn't have any money to start anything anyway and so it felt sort of pointless — and I just,' she shook her head, 'I was miserable.

'And I probably should have talked to you about it — I know that if I'd talked to you about it you would have said something kind and helpful and sweet — but, I mean, one, I couldn't bring myself to talk about it because I could never bring myself to talk about anything then, and then the longer I went feeling like I was spiralling out of control, the more you started to get tied up in that.

'And I know that it's not fair, that I started to like — I mean, I wouldn't say that I blamed you, necessarily, but you were definitely somehow tied up in the panic that was the rest of my life and so, I mean — Obviously one day I just snapped.'

She took another deep breath and sighed heavily. 'It sounds so stupid now I'm sat here explaining it.'

James shook his head. 'It's not.'

She breathed a bitter laugh. 'Yeah, alright. I was an idiot and we both know it.'

'No, you weren't.'

She shot him a look and he shook his head again, more earnestly. 'You weren't. It was just — a lot. I think.' He sighed. 'We both had a lot of growing to do. It would've ended one way or the other probably.'

She furrowed her brow. 'You think?'

'No.' He held her gaze for a long moment before he sighed. 'I mean, I don't know, obviously, but… no.'

She looked down at the table, her eyes focusing on a random point in the space between them.

'I'm sorry.'

'For what?'

She looked up at him, thinking that maybe he wanted her to be more specific, but he was looking at her like he wasn't quite sure what she was talking about.

'You have nothing to be sorry for. I mean maybe a clearer reason for why you were up and leaving, but — I mean, Lily, you've got nothing to be sorry for.'

She breathed a laugh. 'I can't believe you're not cross with me.'

'It's been five years —'

'I know, but —'

He raised an eyebrow at her. 'Would you have been cross with me all that time? Roles reversed?'

'I —' She sighed. 'No, I guess not.'

He grinned at her and took a sip of his hot chocolate. 'Well, alright then.'

They were quiet for a minute. They'd been looking at one another, but Lily, unable to carry on looking at him because her mind was starting to twist off into all sorts of confusing directions, took a sip of her hot chocolate and took the excuse to look away.

She could still feel him looking at her, but she needed a second before she looked back up at him again.

Because she was finding it hard to believe, no matter what he said, that he wasn't, or hadn't been, upset with her. And, alright, maybe she believed that he wasn't upset anymore — because, he was right, she wouldn't have been upset with him anymore if he'd broken up with her like that — but….

He had to have been upset at one point.

'But you were cross with me?' she said, looking up and catching his eye. 'At one point?'

He hummed noncommittally. 'I wasn't upset with you so much as I was upset about the whole situation. But I was upset that you didn't talk to me, yeah. It took a little bit to sink in though, because I mean, you basically told me you were leaving and then you packed up all your things and left the next day. I was basically just in shock for a while.'

She nodded slowly to let him know that she'd heard him, but she couldn't think of anything to say to that.

'Like I said, though. I wasn't really angry. Honestly, I was just heartbroken.' He laughed self-effacingly and looked down at the table for a moment before he caught her gaze again. 'I was quite miserable, actually.

'But, was I a little angry with you? Yeah, eventually. But it was only because you didn't really give me anything to go on. Things had been going well and I'd thought that,' he reached up and brushed his hair back out of his eyes, 'we were maybe going to get a bit more serious, and then it turned out to be the complete opposite of that. And so yeah, I was confused and yeah, I was a bit cross, but…. I mean, Lily, mostly, I was just….'

He sighed heavily and there was something distantly sad about the way he was looking at her now.

'It was a while before I was alright again,' he said at last. 'Let's just say that.'

She sighed. 'See, I can't believe you weren't upset with me for making you feel like that.'

He frowned and leaned his arms onto the table. 'Is it so hard to believe that I wasn't angry at you? That I was just… sad?'

She shrugged and tilted her head. 'I mean, kind of. I stormed and raged for like, three weeks, and I was the one that did it.'

'Well, you always were the storming and raging type.' She shot him a look and he smiled at her. 'Tell me I'm wrong and I'll take it back.'

She huffed and he breathed a laugh.

'No matter how it ended,' he said, his expression smoothing out again, 'I don't blame you. We needed that time, I think. To figure ourselves out a bit. And maybe it was better that we did that on our own. Maybe we needed to do it that way.'

She hummed and looked down at the hot chocolate in her hands. She knew that he was right — she'd been right, maybe, to leave when she had, had been right to step back and figure herself out because she hadn't been okay then. She'd been panicked and at her wit's bloody end and she was so busy trying to figure out what her life was going to look like that the idea of having anyone else to worry about, about having to channel her energy anywhere else had made her even more anxious. And it hadn't been fair, really, that she'd handled that in the most emotionally stunted way possible, but he was right in saying that they'd both needed that time.

They'd both needed to focus on themselves for a while. And maybe he could've done that with her in his life — she was sure that he could've done — but she couldn't do it when she felt like she was being pulled in a million different directions. She'd felt unsure about everything then and James had become just one more demand on her time and it just —

It wasn't fair to think about him like that. He'd deserved better. He still deserved better.

And she found herself, quite against her will, thinking about how different things would be if they were giving their relationship a go right now.

If they were together now that she was stable. Now that she'd learnt to be confident in herself and taught herself to navigate the uncertainty that was, apparently, going to be the rest of her life.

She was still a bit of a mess, but who wasn't?

She looked up and met his gaze again. 'Do you feel figured out?'

She thought that he might laugh, shake his head, make some kind of joke about how they were both tragic, millennial disasters, but he just looked back at her for a long moment before he tipped his head noncommittally.

'As I'll ever be, I think.'

She was in a haze for a long time after she and James broke up.

Or, more accurately, after she'd broken up with James.

She spent a lot of time round Marlene and Dorcas'.

Spent a lot of time drinking tea and crying into glasses of wine about how she was such a fucking idiot and why had she broken up with him because he was the one, Mar, he was the fucking one.

Dorcas told her she should delete his number off her phone, should unfollow him off all her social media so that she wouldn't be tempted to reach out to him. There was a reason she'd broken up with him, Dorcas had said, and of course she regretted it right now when she was in the thick of getting over him, but it would become clear, later, that she'd done the right thing and the best thing she could do now was make it easier on herself.

She did unfollow him on social media — she unfollowed him on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and deleted him off her Snapchat and then, for good measure, she deleted all his friends off her social media, too — but she couldn't bring herself to delete his number.

It meant that she spent a lot of nights wine drunk and staring at his number on her screen.

She could just press it. Just a slip of the thumb and he'd be in her ear.

But it wasn't fair.

She'd left him and she still couldn't quite say why but she'd had to leave him and it just —

It wasn't fair.

So she never called him.

But she still spent many, many nights staring at his number.

She wasn't sure why she'd come all the way down here today.

It was a few days before Christmas and she was sure that he'd been busy today and was exhausted by now or, you know, maybe he just wanted to go home or go to his father's for their own thing, but she didn't have anywhere else to go — which sounded so dramatic when she thought about it that way — and so….

Well, here she was.

She'd taken her time today — had walked across the bridge as slowly as she could manage without frustrating someone enough to push her into the Thames, had wandered a little aimlessly instead of just walking straight to the bakery — because she couldn't quite stop trying to convince herself that he wouldn't want to see her. And it wasn't because she thought the he was upset with her — that anxiety dream had long since gone because it was clear, from the last few times that she'd visited, that he absolutely didn't mind her stopping by — but it was because she really didn't want to have to admit why she was here today.

She didn't want to talk about it, the fact that she was here, and she knew that going to James was going to mean talking about it.

With James, it always bloody meant talking about it.

And she knew that her therapist would say that she was going to him precisely because she wanted to talk about it, no matter what she was telling herself, but her therapist could be wrong.

Finally, because she realised that it was now dangerously close to five and her only valid excuse for stopping by was going to end, Lily turned around on Winchester Walk and started back towards Stoney Street.

It was a minute before five when she finally got to the bakery — someone was walking out as she crossed the street and they smiled up at her as she reached for the door.

'I think he's closing,' they said, looking at Lily before looking pointedly at the times posted on the door.

Lily nodded and pulled the door open anyway. 'I know.'

They shot Lily a look as she stepped inside, but she was too far gone to give a shit today.

James was standing behind the counter, his head down as he sorted through a stack of receipts on the counter. He looked up as the bell over the door rang and his eyebrows shot up when he realised it was her.

'Evans! What are you doing here?'

She frowned as the door fell shut behind her. 'I — are you busy?'

James shook his head. 'No! God, no. I just wasn't expecting you this week.'

As though trying to prove that he was perfectly alright with having her here, James turned, pulled two mugs off the shelf behind the counter, and began preparing their usual hot chocolate.

'I can leave, though,' Lily said. 'I'm sure you've got other things to do.'

James finished filling the frothing pitcher before he turned and looked at Lily over his shoulder. 'Just sit down.'

Lily sighed, but James had started steaming the milk, so it went completely unnoticed.

The shop was, as it always was when she got here this late, completely empty, and it smelled like the perfect combination of bread and spice, but there was something different about being here tonight, something that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

She knew that it was her, that being here right now and feeling the way she did was the only thing that was different, but it still felt like something outside her had changed.

Though maybe it was just easier to think that than to admit that she'd come here tonight because she couldn't bear the thought of carrying on at home alone.

She decided to sit at the bar seating along the front window this evening instead of their usual table at the centre of the restaurant. She wanted to look out onto the street, look at the lights strewn up along each storefront and through the market opposite, and watch the people bustling around outside. She wanted something to distract her.

She hated how dramatic that made it all sound, though, because, really, she was fine.

She looped her bag and coat over the back of one of the tall chairs at the bar before she turned and walked back over to the counter. James was just pouring their hot chocolates and he looked up and smiled as he noticed her approaching.

'Almost done,' he said. 'Did you want anything else while I'm back here?'

She shook her head. 'Thanks. I'm not really hungry this evening.'

James dropped his pitcher into the sink and handed Lily her mug with raised eyebrows. 'You're not hungry?'

She rolled her eyes. 'I don't always have to be hungry.'

James grabbed his mug and, after carefully sliding his apron off with his free hand and hanging it up beside the door to the kitchen, stepped out from behind the counter.

'I'm pretty sure that's wrong,' he said, grinning at her as they fell into step beside one another. 'I think you told me that if you ever come in here and say that you aren't hungry, that I have to alert someone because you were obviously body-snatched.'

Lily nudged him gently with her elbow so not as to upset his hot chocolate. 'I didn't say that.'

James grinned at her. 'Well, you might as well've done. You've made it abundantly clear that the only reason you've been stopping by is my food.'

She rolled her eyes. 'You're ridiculous.'

His smile widened and she hated that she'd walked into this again. 'As always.'

She ignored him as they settled into their chairs and turned a bit so that she could look out at the street instead. The shop opposite — a butcher's, she thought — had strung lights up along the windows, and there was something about it that was darkly amusing to her.

She was about to comment on it when James cleared his throat and Lily turned to look at him.

'So, what's up?'

She shook her head. 'Nothing's up.'

He raised an eyebrow at her. 'Don't lie. You're obviously upset about something.'

'I — I'm not.' She took a sip of her hot chocolate to buy herself a moment, but James used her silence as an opportunity to carry on.

'Evans, you walked in here looking all lost. And it's, what, two days until Christmas? You're never here then.'

'How do you know my schedule?'

James tipped his head, a slightly exasperated look on his face. 'We dated for four years. I think I learnt your habits pretty well.'

'They could've changed.'

He raised his eyebrows at her. 'Did they?'

She nodded a little defiantly. 'I haven't been home for Christmas in a few years. That year we broke up, actually, I stopped going.'

James frowned. 'Really? Why? You always went home for Christmas.'

She shrugged, sighed, tried to make it seem like this wasn't a big deal, because it wasn't a big deal. She hadn't been home in years, not just for Christmas but at all, and her parents knew why and they didn't blame her — they came to see her in London when they could and so it was fine — but she could tell that she was failing miserably at this, keeping her face even, because James clicked his tongue in that way he did and he reached out immediately — not hesitantly, not tentatively, immediately — and put his hand on hers.

And something about that, that small, insignificant little gesture, broke her remaining resolve and started her crying.

James spun his hand over hers so he was holding it now, the pads of his fingers pressing into her palm and his thumb rubbing across her knuckles, and the feeling of it, the sharp familiarity of it —

Lily laughed, or she tried, but it was too watery to sound like a proper laugh, and wiped the tears off her cheeks with her free hand. 'I don't know why I'm crying,' she said. 'I'm just being stupid.'

James shook his head and he squeezed her hand just a bit tighter. 'You're not being stupid, Lily.'

'How do you know? I could just be being dramatic.'

James breathed a laugh and started brushing his thumb along the back of her hand again. 'Because I know you,' he said. 'You're never "just being dramatic".'

She exhaled again, the sound a bit shaky, and looked down at their hands.

'What's happened today? Because you wouldn't just show up here looking like you did for no reason.'

'I —' She sighed and wiped a few remaining tears off her cheeks with her free hand in an effort to at least look a little less tragic. The movement seemed to trigger something in James because he let go of the hand he was holding.

'Nothing happened. Honestly,' she added, because James had opened his mouth to argue with her. 'I just — I always get a bit upset when I get this close to the holiday. Because the train I would normally take home comes and goes and it's another year that I'm not on it and I just —' She shook her head and sighed again.

'I just feel guilty, is all. And I know that I don't go home because my sister is a fucking minge and it's honestly better for me that I don't subject myself to her and I'm going to see my parents in a few weeks anyway, but I just — There's something about this time of year that makes me wish that it didn't have to be like this anymore. That I could go home without having to worry about what my sister's going to say and — I mean, it's stupid to hope for it, right, but I just wish that things were alright between us, and there's something about this time of year that always reminds me that things are just utterly ruined. And I miss Newcastle. Which is, like, the lowest on the list, right, but —'

She sort of petered out then.

James sighed and leaned across the table. He flattened his palm against the wood and pushed it towards her, but he didn't move to take her hand again.

'I'm sorry, Lily.'

Lily shook her head. 'You have nothing to be sorry about.'

'No, I — I want you to feel like you can go home. I'm sorry that you don't. But you're right,' he gave her a small smile, 'your sister is a knobhead.'

She burst out laughing. 'She really is, isn't she?'

James nodded. 'It's a wonder you're related, honestly.'

She laughed again. 'God, isn't it just?'

They were quiet for a moment. And she appreciated it, really, that he wasn't pressuring her to carry on talking about it. There wasn't really anything more to say anyway. She was upset over something that she couldn't change. Something that she knew the contours of so well at this point that, honestly, she was almost more upset about the fact that she was still letting this affect her than she was about the situation itself.

But she felt, now, exponentially better than she had when she walked through the door. He'd drawn her out just enough, not so far that she felt like she needed to close off again, but just enough for her to release a bit of steam.

She didn't know how he knew how to do that.

She looked up at him and smiled, a warm, soft smile that wasn't nearly enough for the things she was feeling just then. 'Thanks, James.'

He nodded. 'Anytime. You know I've got your back.'

Anyone else might have said it casually, like they meant it, but not really, but James — looking at him right now, the heavy, serious look underneath his soft, easy smile… James meant it.

'And hey,' he brightened a bit and Lily felt her eyebrows go up. 'It's lucky you're here anyway, because I've got something for you.'

She furrowed her brow at him. 'What?'

He pushed up from the table and started back behind the counter. 'I was thinking I'd give it to you later, but as you're here now….'

She sighed. 'You didn't need to get me anything.'

And he especially didn't need to get her anything because she hadn't got him anything and now she was quietly starting to freak out.

'Oh, don't start.' He pulled a thin envelope out from underneath the counter. 'It's nothing that crazy anyway, so it's not that big a deal. I didn't even pay for it.'

She raised her eyebrows. 'How's that?'

'I've started my crime ring up again.'

She narrowed her eyes at him. 'Ha ha.'

He flashed her a grin before he sobered again. 'So I thought I'd follow the old rules….' He looked a little nervous now and the realisation made Lily's stomach clench nervously.

'And I only followed one anyway because I didn't — well, anyway.'

He handed Lily the envelope.

It didn't feel like more than one of those thin mailing envelopes, but he'd still taken the time to wrap it carefully in some plain red paper with white snowflakes on. And she couldn't explain the feeling in her gut just then — well, alright, she could, but it was preposterous, wasn't it, feeling this way about him again. They'd done this before, had failed at this before, and now a few weeks, dozens of mince pies, and a carefully wrapped envelope had her thinking that, maybe, this was something she needed in her life again.

That she needed him in her life again.

But he was already here, wasn't he? That's what these last few weeks had been, the two of them chatting and laughing and learning who they were now. And she should just be happy with that, with the friendship that they'd built — she should just be happy with that. Because they clicked, somehow even better than they had before, and she should just be happy with that, with the fact that they'd managed to find one another again and that it was way, way better than the catastrophe that she'd always imagined it would be if she'd ever run into him again.

But she still couldn't stop thinking about him — about the way he'd used to run his hands over her, about the way she sometimes caught him looking at her now with a look in his eyes that was so reminiscent of the way he'd used to look at her that it was sometimes hard to catch her breath — and she couldn't help, now, thinking about how much better things could be this time.

And things had been so, so good the first time.

She slid her finger through the seam in the wrapping on the back of the envelope.

It was a mailing envelope just as she'd suspected — James started mumbling something about how he didn't have the right kind of packaging and he was sorry it was weird — but Lily just ignored him and slit open the envelope.

There was a thin sheet of paper inside — it felt like photo paper — so she slid it out carefully so she didn't accidentally bend one of the corners. It was upside down when she slid it out — James swore softly under his breath and said that he was sure he'd wrapped it the right way round — and, when she turned it over and took in the picture on the other side, she immediately grinned.

It was a picture — ridiculously — of a massive tray of mince pies so fresh that James — she couldn't see his face, but she knew it was him — was just taking them out of the oven. He was wearing his standard black work shirt and that soft beige apron and she got caught up, for a second, in the way that the sleeves were just a bit tight around his biceps, before the pies, golden brown and glistening and a little bubbly around the edges, caught her attention and god damn if they didn't look amazing.

And then it clicked, as she was staring at the pies and thinking longingly of the ones she had in the box next to her, that this was the picture she'd seen on Instagram back in November, the one that had dragged her all the way to the South Bank in the first place.

She looked up at him, her eyes bright. 'James —' It was hard to talk, smiling like this, but honestly, this was — 'James, it's perfect.'

He brushed his hair back off his forehead and breathed a laugh that sounded a bit relieved. 'Really?'

She nodded. 'It's excellent. I'm going to have this up year round.'

He laughed again, louder this time. 'I thought you might.'

She looked back at the picture again — this silly, perfect picture — before she set it down carefully and stood.

'Thank you.' She hesitated for a moment, her arms sort of twitching out before she spread them fully. 'Hug?'

James nodded and stepped forward and then she was in his arms.

God.

She'd forgotten — well, no, not forgotten, because it was different somehow. He was different. It wasn't much — they were little, subtle changes — but they stood out to her against the rest of him that was achingly familiar.

He was warm and he still smelled vaguely of that crisp, cool spice of his deodorant and she still fit just so underneath his chin, but his chest was a little harder than she remembered (and his stomach a little softer), and he smelled almost overwhelmingly of the bakery. She rested her head against his chest for one moment, maybe two, before she pulled away, her hands sliding around to his hips.

He'd ducked his head — she hadn't realised because she was so busy rolling over everything in her own head — and so as she pulled back, he was angled just so so that he was looking her right in the eye.

'Thank you,' she said again, though her voice was softer, more intimate this time.

He nodded slowly and his fingers flexed against her back but his arms didn't move from around her. She noticed his gaze flick down to her lips — just once — before he pulled in a breath.

'I'm glad you like it.'

She nodded and moved her hands, slowly so she could gauge his reaction, to rest on his stomach. He looked down and watched as her hands moved over him and, when he looked back up at her, his eyes were dark.

'James?' She slid one hand up between them and cupped the back of his neck, and James swallowed hard.

He ran his tongue along his bottom lip and Lily exhaled sharply as she threaded her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck.

'Lily.'

That, there —

That was all she needed.

She pressed herself up onto her toes and pulled his mouth down to hers.

He exhaled the moment their lips met, like the weight of the anticipation had finally fallen off his shoulders. She knew the feeling, god did she know the feeling, because the minute she was kissing him, finally kissing him again, it was like everything else in the world ceased. It was just them, alone in this bakery, and it was warm and he smelled so good and god, he kissed better than she remembered —

Nothing else mattered just then.

Not home, her fucking sister, the fact that she hadn't gotten James anything and he'd clearly thought to get her something —

All the panic and mild obsession about those things, about everything, was set firmly on the back burner when James was kissing her.

He pulled back, breathing hard, and rested his forehead against hers.

'Evans.' He threaded his fingers through her hair and Lily shivered as she stepped into him.

'Yes?' She tried to sound like she was teasing him, but her voice was far too breathy to pull it off.

He grinned, a bright, silly grin, and dropped a soft kiss to her lips, along her jaw, the side of her neck. 'I take it you liked your present.'

She laughed, the sound a bit breathless, as she angled her neck to give him better access. 'The only trouble is,' she said, biting her lip when James found that particularly sensitive spot under her ear, 'is that I'm going to be craving them all the time now.'

She felt him smile against her neck before he turned to look at her again.

'Is that so?'

She nodded, a big, brilliant smile starting on her lips. 'I reckon I'll suffer through it.'

James grinned, and they probably looked so absurd, standing there beaming like fools, pressed up against one another in the middle of the bakery, but she didn't care. She didn't care if anyone saw them through the window, didn't care that they definitely looked utterly ridiculous right now, because James was warm and he was smiling at her and her heart was pounding in her chest, and it was ridiculous, wasn't it, because they'd been here before, but this was also wholly new and she couldn't wait to learn the shape of this thing between them now.

James grinned and his hands spread out over her back and pulled her tighter up against him. 'Do you now?'

She bit her lip in a failed effort to contain her smile and mumbled something like, 'I'm sure you'll help me through,' before she kissed him again.

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