Author's Note: Once upon a time, Nathan told a story about the time James and Lily were on the Eurostar to France. I'm pretty sure they got naked at some point, and did a lot of love people things, and maybe it ended up with James in the garden shooting off fireworks and nearly getting arrested.
So I put James and Lily on the Eurostar, on their way to France. They do not (sadly) get naked (yet), but they do do some love people things, and there are metaphoric fireworks, and I'm sure James would get arrested in the name of love if it ever really came to that.
Happy birthday, my dearest, darling Sarah, GhostofBambi. Since this is now officially four days late, and you got my soppiest of soppy birthday messages ON your birthday, I decided to trim it down for here, just hitting the highlights, and the full sop can be just for you. So here are the most important bits: I am so incredibly lucky to be your friend. I don't think you could possibly be told enough that you are amazing, and loved, and talented, and bring SO much joy, and laughter, and happiness, and strength to literally everyone you come into contact with, so I will tell you again (and again and again) because that's what friends do. You are so very much enough, in any and all ways. And I cannot wait to squeeze that into you in approximately forty-two(!) days.
Happy, happy, HAPPY birthday, you gorgeous fabulous girl you.
The Right Track
When James is first handed the train ticket, his immediate reaction is to laugh openly in his father's face.
"No," he snorts, thrusting the Eurostar itinerary back at Fleamont. He briskly moves on to the next stack of paperwork. "These research contracts need to be signed before you—"
"No?" comes Fleamont's startled interruption, hazel eyes going blink, blink, blink in bemused confusion. "What do you mean, 'no'?"
"I mean 'no'," James says simply. "I'm not going to the conference. The contracts—"
"Not—of course you're going!" The blink, blink, blink turns to gasp, gasp, gasp, and Fleamont pushes back in his desk chair, looking positively scandalised. "It's the Sleekeazy International Conference! Everyone is going! You're my assistant—"
"Temporary assistant," James pointedly corrects, with a none-too-subtle lift of his finger. "A temporary admin, Dad. Brought on only through a sly act of familial coercion when Honora got herself put on bedrest in the midst of a corporate overhaul and someone needed to step in quickly. A glorified auto-reply and scheduling service, really. One who you were meant to replace four bloody months ago, if you'd care to recall. What ever happened to that stack of CVs I left in here before Christmas?"
Fleamont bats away the question like an annoying housefly (ta kindly, London's eager workforce!), and skittishly resettles his thick-rimmed specs upon his aquiline nose. On his best of days, the elder Potter might be most fittingly described as a bespectacled Doc Brown sort—wild graying hair, a perpetually distracted frown, prone to random outbursts of scientific babble, genius with a happy touch of madness—but this day, cruelly defied by his difficult spawn, is apparently not a best day. He looks fit to be tied. James would not be surprised if he soon launched himself from his desk chair, stormed out of his office, and started waving his hands about crying, "1.21 gigawatts!" while marching up and down the corridors.
Heavy.
"This is our first corporate-wide gathering since opening the cosmetics division!" comes Doc's frantic reply, sans Dolorean. "And the research facility here next! There will be so much to organise—you've been integral—part of the team, James! They'll all be there! Really—"
"Dad." James draws out the word with slow, painstaking patience. He doesn't add they won't all be there, but he thinks it. "I'm on deadline, remember? My actual job? I've an entire signature of panels to finish before the end of the month. I'll organise whatever you need remotely—"
"Remotely won't do. It just won't do—"
"It'll have to—"
"—think of the team—"
"—it's in France—"
"—so disappointed—"
"—hate France. They wear impractical scarves, and just smugly brag about all their good food all the time—"
"—very important plans—"
"—stupid word, baguette—"
"—James—"
And on and on it went, back and forth, forwards and backwards, time travel not included, and James is certain—almost, honestly,certain—that'd he'd made firm points and persuasive asides. That Dad had gone "France!" and James had gone "No!" and they'd somehow landed there, in a place of reasonable rejection, where Dad abandoned Ye Olde Good Isle for a swotty solo sojourn to the mainland, and James stayed home where things were decent and smoggy and wet.
Except they must not have done, because here James is, striding briskly through the brewing crowds of dreaded St. Pancras, attempting to make his noon Eurostar without actively vomiting up his dodgy station Pret sandwich.
He is clearly a weak, weak man.
A weak, weak man.
But, at the very least, he is a weak, weak man who'd harangued his way into an upgraded ticket, and who also somehow squirmed onto one of the last possible trains out of England. The corporate conference officially began tomorrow, but Dad had been holed up in a Parisian hotel since weekend. Fleamont had originally insisted that James come along—"Set up shop early! Try some macarons!"—but one of James's numerous strongly-worded e-mails featuring no fewer than twenty-three news articles maligning the land of Eiffel and Strife-l, not to mention his own empowering essay, "The Louvre, Lumière, and Lance Armstrong: Why France Ruins Everything," must have finally penetrated Fleamont's basic human consideration, for James had abruptly received a new ticket with his new delayed departure time last week, a single-worded note that had just said, "Wednesday" in Fleamont's handwriting. (Along with a creepy post-it "Hi" note, likely from Handsy Hannah in reception, so James had binned that quickly.)
Wednesday had seemed so blissfully far away, seven days ago.
Really, a time machine would be key right about now.
But there is nothing for James to do here, on said Wednesday, still without a Dolorean, and he's managed to put off the final trek to the train for about as long as is feasibly responsible. He's overslept, overpacked, and over-dicked around in every shoppe available, but it was finally time to walk the plank. He is certain he is not the only one trudging around the terminal with his best Dead Man Walking impersonation. The destination board mocks him with its helpful tip that he can find his train on platform 2, so James sighs with the appropriate amount of resentful drama and makes for the escalator.
The business premier coach is at the very front of the train, a healthy-sized walk, and not only because James is managing it with the speed and enthusiasm of a stupoured slug. The departure platform is crowded, and James's wheeled luggage is towed behind him like a string of dutiful Mario Kart bananas, successfully tripping everyone in its path. The hoards of travelers thin out the farther up the platform he goes, but that only leaves more room for further dread. The noise of vibrating train hurts his ears. His messenger bag strap is digging into his shoulder. The lead car entry door is right there, but James can't bring himself to close the final distance. It's simply too tragic.
Dithering on the platform, he pulls out his phone to check the time. Even the familiar sight of his beloved Marvelous Mischievous Marauders lock screen does not make him grumble any less at the foreboding 11:44.
Scowling, he pulls open a text to Fleamont.
DO NOT MAKE ME GET ON THIS TRAIN, he types.
He hits send, but is not expecting an immediate reply—or possibly any reply at all. Fleamont is, at best, a very distracted phone owner, and one who does not seem to comprehend the clear perils of a France-located convention besides. Proper sympathy, James suspects, will be low on the ground.
But perhaps suspicions are for suckers, because moments later, James is blinking in surprise as the tiny gray bubble appears across the bottom of the screen.
The dots flutter briefly, then:
Train emoji, bride emoji, kissing face emoji, smirking face
"What?" James sputters, staring.
Firstly, naturally, because train, bride, kiss, smirk—what the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?
Secondly, because Fleamont never responds that quickly.
Ever.
And never—never—with emojis.
James's mother, Euphemia, on the other hand? An emoji queen. One would be hardpressed prying the little hearts and faces and aubergines from even her cold, dead fingers.
But that fact is irrelevant. Has to be irrelevant. Because Euphemia is in London. And Fleamont is in France. James's mum can't be typing back nonsense emojis from Dad's phone when she's five hundred kilometers away from it.
Right?
Logic would say so, but twenty-five years of experience has taught James that it's never wise to trust logic when it comes to Euphemia. James begins to jab out the question, but he's quickly cut off at the cross. Almost immediately, a second message pops up beneath the first.
Chk on Gilbert pls
Ah, there is Fleamont.
So...his parents are together.
...somewhere.
Without telling him.
Or else Dad has suddenly gained a penchant for inscrutable strings of pixelated text art.
"Curious. Very curious," James murmurs, but at least there is nothing quite like a familial mystery to supply some mindless motivation to do things you'd desperately rather not be doing, so he grabs his luggage, takes a fortifying breath, and—ugh—climbs aboard the dreaded train.
He's on the train.
He's on the train to France.
The clean, posh, thirstily trying to impress him train to France. James is much too clever to fall for that neat trick. He sticks his nose in the air, his best French impression, and refuses to be swayed from his strop by Eurostar's shiny, swanky visage. He quickly scans his ticket with the porter, exchanging polite nods of mutual misery, then squints down at his phone as he maneuvers his luggage in front of him. Shall he dive straight into parental interrogation mode, or pull up a quick e-mail to Lily first? The latter, unsurprisingly, is decidedly more attractive. He will subject it, "Greetings to Green Gables, From the Sixth Circle of Hell!" and she will smile—maybe laugh—tucked up in that Australian lab, or maybe up some mountain in New Zealand, and he will—
—and he will curse himself furiously for being so bloody distracted that he barges into some poor, unsuspecting train passenger who is only trying to innocently pop their luggage on the rack in front of him.
Touché, Eurostar. Touché.
"Shit! Shit. Sorry! Sor—"
The second syllable breaks off before it fully leaves James's mouth, puttering out to nothing in a stunned, fading rrrrrrr-oh.
He blinks.
Blinks, blinks, blinks.
Probably gasps, gasps, gasps too.
He blinks, he gasps, and then he quickly glances down at his phone, where he's only managed to get a blank e-mail pulled up—hasn't even typed in her name yet—and has to wonder if boarding a train to France has sent his body into such a traumatised tailspin that he's now hallucinating, conjuring up ghostly apparitions in a paltry defense mechanism that aims to shelter him in his preferred land of blissful non-French safety.
But the blink, blink, blinking does not remove the apparition before him, which means she is not, likely, an apparition at all.
She is real. Here, and real.
And then she speaks, and he knows it.
"You bloody mushy pushover," Lily Evans breathes incredulously, just before her bright, merry laughter rings throughout the quiet train car. "I can't believe you gave in!"
"You—Lily." James's heart skitters into a jaunty, broken concussion at the delightful, musical laughter—live and in-person, that happy, gorgeous sound he's only, up until now, heard through the lacklustre filter of a video call screen or an echoy international phone line.
And not just the laughter—all of her, every sight, sound, sensation, and scent. Everything from the top of her swept back fringe, all the way down to her trainered toes, is right there in the flesh before him. She's wearing a comfy looking jumper and a pair of black leggings, her rich red hair falling in gentle waves around her shoulders. It's different from the lab coat and jaunty ponytail he's used to seeing her in, but different in a way that makes his pulse pound and his fingers jitter.
Different, but not really different at all.
Different, mostly, simply, because she's there. Here.
Fucking hell. And even more beautiful in person.
"Hi," she says, grinning.
"Hi," James manages lamely, feeling like his mouth is filled with sticky peanut butter, or like his tongue has been partially filmed to his palate. "What—what are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here?" The brusque familiar hints of her faint Northern accent play keenly against his ears. "What happened to 'never will I set foot in the land that eats snails and saws off heads'? Or four pages, single-spaced, on how you have eight thousand Livestrong bracelets defunct in a drawer, and that's all France's fault?"
"You read my essay?"
"Skimmed it. Your dad forwarded it on. Really, it was very long, James."
Right. Of course Fleamont forwarded it. He forwards everything to Lily.
Or—just as often—James forwards things to Lily for Fleamont.
Or—increasingly more lately—for himself.
For nearly six months, almost every day since he'd first come to Sleekeazy to step in as Dad's admin, James has been in near constant contact with Lily Evans, one of Sleekeazy's bright and brilliant research fellows, and Fleamont's beloved and outrageously favoured employee. When James had first started hearing about Lily Evans from Dad, ages ago now, he'd assumed she was some dottering middle-aged chemist who Fleamont's science-loving heart had immediately found a blossoming nerdy kinship with. When James had arrived at Sleekeazy and quickly discovered that Lily was, in fact, a vibrant, cheeky, wildly clever, wildly pretty woman a mere set of weeks older than James's own twenty-five...that had been a surprise. But hardly an unpleasant one.
It was rather fortuitous, actually, considering Fleamont could—and often did—spend hours and hours chatting obscure science and burgeoning developments with the woman. Which meant that James was spending a tremendous amount of time talking with her too. The fact that English-born Lily was presently working out of Sleekeazy's Sydney R&D facility, and thus a grueling perpetual eleven hours ahead of the London offices, proved a hindrance but not a deterrent to nonstop contact. Very few days went by where James wasn't fielding at least one e-mail from her, or patching her through on Fleamont's private line, or helping to set up yet another one of their breakfast/dinner Skype calls, because "Really, James, I know you've shown me a dozen times, but I click the button and it doesn't go—ah, there she is! Hullo, Lily! Say hello to Lily, James."
James and Lily say hullo quite a lot.
Or, g'day, mate, which he often says and she rolls her eyes at.
She rolls her eyes at him often, actually, but in a friendly, teasing way, and she laughs just as much, and tells him about her day, and her week, and what she's watching on Netflix, and little tiny slices of her bigger hopes and dreams.
And now somehow she is here. Not in Sydney, but on a Eurostar train from London to Paris.
Lily.
Fleamont's Lily.
James's Lily.
Hell.
"I thought you were on holiday?" he asks, his own giddy smile breaking his mouth's sticky hold on proper conversation. "And in Australia. You live in Australia. This is London."
"London? You don't say. You know, I thought I took a dodgy turn somewhere." She scrunches her nose in teasing delight, then lifts her hand to begin swatting at his luggage. "What are you doing? Quit poking me with this and get over here."
James obediently hoists his luggage on the rack next to hers, then barely has a moment to re-steady himself before she's flying across the space between them.
"Christ, you're tall," is the first thing she says, her sleeved arms curling tight and strong around his waist. She cuddles him easily into a lovely, secure little hug, burying her face against the centre of his chest. "Why didn't you tell me you were so tall?"
"You didn't ask?" The warmth of her is snug and delicious against him. His arms circle around her too, squeezing, and though he knows—knows—this is just an innocuous greeting, a friendly thing, because they are friends, quite good ones even, though this is the very first time they've been on the same continent since they've "met," it's still difficult to convince the triggers in his brain that are firing at their highest speed of enamoured, attracted dizziness that they ought to keep their cool. That, yes, they are hugging Lily, but they are not hugging Lily, because Lily doesn't know that James has spent the past six months trying to keep a handle on his growing desire to hug her...and then some.
That hadn't been such a problem, back when she was seventeen thousand kilometers away. He was allowed to take a rather sickeningly strong fancy to his father's employee when there was absolutely no way anything could come from it.
But now...
She pulls back with a sunny, infectious smile, her bright emerald eyes twinkling at him.
"I can't believe it's you," she says, and gives his cheek a happy little pat. His skin burns every place she touches. "I really can't believe it's you. I thought for certain your resolve would hold. Where's your mettle? And where are you sitting?"
James reluctantly detangles himself from her in order to check his ticket. "30."
"31," Lily reports, holding up her own itinerary. "That's convenient, isn't it?"
Yes, convenient, James thinks, but only gives her a small, silent nod in return. In truth, he's thinking words closer to kismet or destiny or fate…
...or unsubtle familial meddling.
Train, bride, kiss, smirk.
Christ.
A ginger bride, hadn't it been?
And Chk on Gilbert pls.
Fucking hell. He's been shepherded straight into the trap like the blindest of bleating lambs. It's the international travel equivalent of tossing two poor sods in a cupboard, barricading it closed, and shouting, "We won't let you out until you've kissed!"
It's mortifying. Humiliating. That James wants to kiss Lily Evans and has spent far too much time browsing travel sites trying to decide what level of insanity he'd have to accept to actually buy a ticket to Sydney is decidedly not the point. Lily, likely, does not feel the same, because she is far too wise to develop lovesick feelings over someone who lives on the other side of the world. She is unerringly practical that way.
And how had his parents even known? Has he been that bloody obvious?
James should be properly, unmitigatedly furious...and he will be, once he also quits floating on air at her presence.
"Come on, then," he says, angling his head towards the train seats. There are passengers now trying to enter behind them. "You may have to hold my hand in moral support as we push off."
Lily grins at him as she turns to go, but does not reply to his needy little suggestion. Seats 30 and 31 are black and cushiony and placed quaintly right next to each other, a window and an aisle, with a conveniently compact table just in front. It's technically a four-person seating section, with two additional chairs on the other side of the table, but with minutes to spare before the train is set to depart, those seats are still suspiciously empty.
Or perhaps not suspiciously. Strategically.
What's a few hundred pounds in ghost Eurostar seating to Euphemia Potter, unrepentant Machiavellian matchmaker, after all?
Lily slides quickly into the window seat, and James strives not to stare as she goes, but it's still so strange to see her there—Lily, in the flesh!—and he's only human, isn't he? She moves with a smooth sort of grace that is hard to ignore. He drops laconically into his own aisle seat, shooting her glances, like she might disappear if he doesn't keep an eye on her. The train makes impatient noises, clearly ready to get on its way. Lily places her bag on the ground at their feet and James does the same with his messenger, fingers immediately finding the plush armrests and curling over their cushiony edges with tense, tight traction.
"Are you actually going to tell me how you're here now?" he asks, because the sound of Lily Evans's voice may be the only thing that can make the next few minutes bearable. "You said you weren't going to the conference. You were taking a holiday. It was too tight travel."
"I did take a holiday," Lily confirms, crossing one leg over the other and squirming to get comfortable in her seat. "I went to New Zealand for a few days. But I'm a weak, mushy pushover, too. All that 'the team, the team, the team' talk really hits its mark, yeah?Honestly, your father is masterful sometimes."
"Masterful or monstrous," James grumbles, though at the present moment, Fleamont's machinations aren't the worst thing James has ever experienced. Lily shifts again, and he gets a whiff of sweet, citrusy heaven. "So why didn't you fly straight to France?"
"Reckoned if I was flying all the way back, I ought to at least stop home and see my family for a bit." Her mouth flattens, and she gives a rueful little sigh. "That was...delightful."
James's lips quirk gamely. "Just how awful was the bridesmaid's dress, then?"
Lily shudders visibly. "It's pink. And frilly. Honestly, I'm still having nightmares. Let's not talk about it."
James laughs as the train doors officially give their final alert and then mechanically close shut, trapping the unfortunate passengers in the depths of the train's devilish clutches.
"No turning back now," Lily sings, like she knows exactly what James is thinking.
She always seems to know exactly what James is thinking.
Except she doesn't take his hand, which is just about all he can think about at present, which is a real bloody shame.
"Dad wants to know about Gilbert," he blurts, to stop himself from saying there was no turning back with you months ago.
Lily blinks, but that momentary flutter of lids is the only indication she gives that the abrupt change in subject is at all jarring. Those pretty green eyes give one of their patent rolls, but she quickly bends to grab her bag from the floor as the train makes a loud gurgling noise and—ugh—slowly begins to pull out of the station.
"Hold this," she says, and plops her bag directly onto his lap. That her own lap or the table in front of them might have served just as well for this purpose seems briskly ignored as she flips open the latch and begins to dig through the large purse. Her hands scramble around, finally coming back out with a laptop, which she carefully sets down on the table. "Grab that little hotspot in there too, won't you?"
James reaches into the bag and grabs for the small black box looking thing that's tucked neatly against a wallet, a bottle of water, and a mini Pringles stack. It says Sleekeazy across the side.
"Where'd you get this?" he asks, examining it.
Lily takes it from him with a smirk. "I know people in high places."
"So do I," James mutters. "They don't give me posh tech."
Lily's only response is another silent grin, her fingers flying quickly over the keys after she opens her laptop and clicks around to get the signal working. James is a little bit tickled to see the patented Lily Evans deep concentration squint-purse-lips-hum move that he's observed a hundred times over a screen in the office. In person, it's even more adorable.
"Stop staring at me," she says.
"I'm not staring," James lies. "I'm waiting patiently with the appropriate amount of interest."
"Mm-hm." She clicks through a few more things without looking at him, types out a password, and lets her dubious little hum and smug lip tip speak for themselves. A few moments and several more clicks later, the grin spreads properly and she turns the laptop to face him. "Ta-dah!" she says.
James squints down at the screen, then immediately recoils in horror.
"Gah! Why must you—" He cringes in revulsion. "Rats."
Lily sniffs haughtily. "How dare you. You know very well they are mice." She primly turns the screen—which displays an entire night-visioned feed of wall-to-wall squirming and scurrying rodents in cages, courtesy of some additional fancy tech at the Sydney labs—back towards her. "You said I needed to check on Gilbert."
"Yeah, I meant read off a bloody report or offer a general impression. Not invade the train with rodents." James's face wrinkles like he's sucked on a lemon, but Lily is hardly paying attention—she's hunched over the screen again, happily checking in on her test subjects. "You and Dad are weird, do you know that?"
"I believe the word you are looking for is 'brilliant'," she supplies, and clicks the keyboard a few more times. She gives one final tapped flourish, then leans back with a happy sigh. "Gilbert is doing fine. His stats are back to normal, thank god. And look! He and Anne are sleeping! So adorable."
James has a decidedly different definition of adorable, but he is sadly very nearly used to Lily's endless cooing over her overabundant supply of scurrying lab rats like they are precious baby kittens.
Sorry—lab mice.
"That's a relief," she says next, nodding in satisfaction and clicking through a few different feeds. "We've all been quite worried ever since...well, the unfortunate incident with Ginger."
"What happened to Ginger?"
Lily's lips press briefly together. "I'm afraid she's tap dancing backwards in heels on the great stage in the sky now."
"Ginger died?"
"Not from the serum," Lily is quick to defend, and she scuttles closer to her laptop, like she can protect her precious babies from such slander. "Really, we shouldn't have had her in the study to begin with. She was always somehow finding and eating things she shouldn't. Not the brightest bulb in the bunch, Ginger was."
"Was," James repeats in outrage, and sadly shakes his head. "Poor Fred."
"Oh, you don't have to worry about Freddie." Lily gives her hair a quick flick, batting away the lament with a wave of her fingers. "We've stuck him with a new cage partner we're now calling Mercury, and honestly, he's so much better off."
"Wait—who was Mercury before he was called Mercury?"
"Hm? Oh. Erm. Fisher."
"Carrie died too?"
"She wanted to be with her namesake!" Lily cries defensively, but her paltry excuses turn to rueful amusement far too quickly to quell James's traumatised shock. The darkness of the Eurostar tunnels filtering in through the window behind her clearly reflects the darkness in her unfeeling heart. "This is why we don't tell you things," she says. "You really do not have the disposition for research."
James does not feel the least bit guilty about crossing his arms over his chest and sulking like any proper mourner ought.
"Why can't you and Dad call your stupid rats numbers and letters like everyone else?" he complains. "Why have you got to name them after people I like, and then kill them?"
"Mice. And very few die. Carrie wasn't even being tested on," Lily says, though she still pats him kindly on the arm, a gentle stroke of fingers against his sleeve. "She was a neutral subject. It's all part of the great circle of life, mate."
"Weird," he accuses, and jabs a pointed finger at her. Her lips continue to quiver in obvious amusement. "You lot are weird."
This earns him another pat, pat, pat on the arm.
But these are the things a man must accept about a woman he's chosen to fancy—the good, the bad, and the rodently absurd. James does not complain as Lily spends twenty more minutes searching through feeds and updating him on his remaining favourite test subjects—Ben and Leslie, she firmly assures him, are still alive and well. So are Marty and Jennifer, and Meg and Hercules, the ever chipper Becky and Lynch, and even Bill and Pullman, the former of whom had developed a suspicious sort of rash two weeks ago, were once again in tip-top shape.
James nods along like this information is of abject importance to him, but really he just likes to watch the way Lily's eyes light up in excitement as she talks about her research, how her fingers can't keep still against the laptop keys, and how her grin never quite drops to anything less than half-mast as she rambles through a string of data babble.
She is brilliant. So very, very brilliant. Even though she is also weird.
James likes weird.
He really, really likes weird.
But he can't spend the entire train ride mooning over her—not if he wants to keep any of his dignity intact, not to mention his job, as he'd meant to dive straight into work once he got on the train and has already lost precious time at that. He reaches down for his own bag as Lily continues to discuss, at length—really, how does he find this so bloody charming?—Cole and Dylan's reaction to the latest base level adjustment, and pulls out his own laptop.
"Cole is such—Oh." The steady stream of Sprouse twin talk comes to an abrupt halt. James glances over, and Lily is sitting up in her seat, fingers sprung away from the laptop to twist at the ends of her hair instead. She looks faintly embarrassed. "Sorry. Look at me, rambling on. You know how I get. You have things to do—"
"I like your rambles," James says. "Go on."
"No, you don't have to—"
"Look." He clicks his laptop out of sleep mode, shows her the cascading windows of word documents he already has queued up. "Boring planning and paperwork. You're like a background science podcast. I'm rounding out my mind."
Her lips lift slightly at that, but there's still a hooded hesitancy...or maybe even some sort of timid bashfulness? He can't get a good read on it.
"What?" he asks her.
Lily shakes her head. Opens her mouth. Closes it again.
Right. Definitely bashful.
"Sorry," she says, and there's a pink little flush creeping across her face now. "Go ahead—"
"Lily."
"I was sort of hoping you'd be drawing," she blurts, and now she's really blushing—a growing sweep of red pooling up from her neck, blooming bright and wide, momentarily diluting the light sprinkling of freckles that dust across her nose and over her cheeks.
She is not alone in her sudden uncontrollable body reactions. James, too, finds himself inadvertently sitting up straighter, jerking with a flash of genuine surprise, right before the warm and tingling feeling of pleased delight begins to seep fast and furiously through his veins.
She is…
That is...
"You wanted to watch me draw?" he asks.
Lily gains some control over her fleeting embarrassment with a jaunty little shoulder shrug and a confident tilt of her chin.
"For strict ragging purposes," she insists, hands dropping from her hair to splay in faux innocence. "So I can go on the Marvelous Mischievous Marauders forum boards and brag about having seen spoilers of the next issue. It's a status thing."
"It'd be three or four issues out, actually," James corrects, unable to keep the smile off his face. "We do give ourselves a bit of give-time, you know."
"Even better, then." She fidgets restively in her seat, then scrunches her nose at him and nudges his shoulder scoldingly with hers. "Quit grinning at me like that. You don't get to be so smug. You know I like your comic."
"Yes, but people tell me they like my comic all the time," James replies. "A good seventy percent of them are lying."
"That's probably just because they haven't read it," Lily insists, and shakes her head incredulously. "It's brilliant. Truly, you and Sirius have a gift. His writing and your drawings...they're good, James. So good. I've told you that."
She has, indeed, told him that. Many times, even, and with various details and exclamation points and fervent reaction gifs to boot. It's not something James is totally unfamiliar with, but it's also not something he necessarily takes at face value. The unfortunate thing that he's discovered over the last several years—practically since the very moment he and Sirius had decided to quit just talking about the day when they might start up an online comic together, and actually did it—is that people say a lot of things when they hear something like, "I draw comics for a living."
Indulgent, quaint little condescension like, "Wow, that sounds fun! People pay you for that?"
Or pointed, expectant put-downs like, "Anything I've heard of?"
Don't even get him started on the, "Oh! I liked Spider-Man and Batman as a kid, too! I had this idea—"
And generally, underneath it all, there's always that tacitly unspoken question of: Right...but what's your real job?
Lily had never once—once—given James the rote comments.
But there's always the doubt.
Unfortunately, James has been taught to doubt.
"I know," he says gruffly, chest slowly filling like a balloon might with helium—except this gas is something like pride, or maybe happiness, or perhaps just basic, overflowing affection. "But you're also very polite. You'd hardly tell me I'm awful, would you?"
"No, but I'd find a way to handily steer conversations away from it, rather than eagerly sending you raving e-mails every fourth Thursday." Emerald eyes squint curiously at him, like she can't quite believe she has to explain this. "James, I openly weeped when Remy came out in the last issue. I told you that. I have one of the panels hung up in my cubicle. The way you did it in just the drawings, with the text overlay? God, I'm so glad you talked Sirius into that. It was beautiful. Everyone said so. I saw all the posts."
"Not everyone," James amends flatly, partially because he's not certain what to do with this type of gushing appreciation from someone whose every higher inflection leaves his skin prickling with sensation, partially because it was true.
Lily pulls a face. "Everyone who matters. I do not count stupid homophobic fuckboys as worthy of my time or attention, yeah?"
James jerks a half-hearted shoulder, agreeing, certainly, but also realistic enough to know that it was easy to say that, but a bit harder to grapple with when that same wonderful demographic is a loud and unrelenting part of your business community.
But James is used to that by now—has found his own way to deal with it, process it, try not to let it constantly bite at him and send him raging into fits of frustrated exasperation with every troll and trial. He is unerringly proud of The Marvelous Mischievous Marauders, and has never once in the one hundred and twenty-three issues published and dozens more in various states of production compromised himself or his creations in order to please a bitter crowd of smarmy, petulant bastards. The marvelous adventures of Jam, Sirella, Remy, and Petra—superheroes who could transform into animals at will, with some clever magic to boot—remained untouched by terrible trolls and their penchant for petty complaints. Sirius and James tell the story they want to tell, and they are damn good at it.
Damn good, and getting better all the time.
Who would have thought that taking the nicknames and magic games he and his mates had played as children and turning it into a superhuman adventure story would lead to...well, a pretty strong career? Sure, sometimes damn good was not enough, but James and Sirius had managed to gather a healthy following over the last several years, many of whom actively haunted their website on every fourth Thursday when they released new issues.
For James—who has loved drawing since he was old enough to hold a pencil in his hand, and who never wanted to do anything else—it's been a bit like a dream come true. It is perhaps not the dream his practical mother or scientific father had envisioned for their two sons when they were growing up, but James has tried not to let that grate at him too much. Drawing was his joy, his release, and now his career. A real, actual career. That might seem silly to some, but he took it incredibly seriously.
It means the world to him, when other people take that seriously too.
People like Lily Evans, who weeps at his drawings and the stories they tell.
"Drawing on a moving train is not exactly ideal conditions," he informs her now, wincing with some apology, though he wants to hug her in the tightest of unbreakable holds when her face immediately wilts in crestfallen disappointment. He lets out a breathless-sounding laugh, reaching down for his bag again. "But maybe a compromise?"
She look suspicious at that. "What sort of compromise?"
James pulls out his sketchbook, a battered blue hardcover with its billowing pages half-full.
Immediately, Lily eyes light up in interest.
"You're going to let me look in your sketchbook?" she asks, body eagerly shifting forward, like physically restraining herself from lunging for it is the ultimate test. She rocks in place, her eyes never leaving the book. "Isn't that a bit like poking into someone's diary?"
"I don't bring that sketchbook along on trips," James replies flatly, and hands this one over for her perusal. Lily's fingers curl around the hard outer cover the second it's in her hands, and she grins like she's a child who has just been set loose in a sweet store. James wants to make sure her expectations are in check. "Most of these are just drafts from the last few issues," he warns, watching her fingers squeeze. "I usually do final pieces digitally. Don't get too excited."
"Don't tell me what to do," she orders briskly, but she hesitates before opening the cover, fingers spreading over the book reverently, emerald eyes flickering to him again in question. "So I can just…?"
James laughs. "It's not a trap, Lily. Dive right in."
She lets out a noise that is halfway between a scream and a chortle, and flips open the first page.
"O-hhhh—"
James laughs and laughs and falls.
Hard.
Like he hasn't already been flat on the ground, lying at her feet, for months.
"James—God, this is cool," she breathes in clear enchantment, turning through the first few pages with the kind of slow and careful reverence usually reserved for things found in museums, or posh galleries. James knows what's in there—the uneven sketches, the unfinished scratch-outs, the eraser marks that often far outweigh the pencil ones—and can't quite believe she's acting like he's Rembrandt. It must be put on. She can't be that enamoured of something so messy and ordinary.
"You don't have to do that," he mumbles in half protest, feeling his skin begin to heat. "Really. Half of them are just shitty doodles. They're nothing—"
"Shhh—shut up," she scolds, taking only the briefest of moments to shoot him a dirty look. "Quit insulting my friend's art, you git."
"I'm not insulting it, I'm just saying—"
"Oh—look! This is from when Jam had to save Sniv from the enchanted tree!" Lily jabs a finger at the page, eager little taps as she beams in recognition. She unceremoniously shoves back her laptop so she can lay the sketchbook down across the table, giving herself a better view. "He's such a good villain. Completely and utterly odious in the most appallingly realistic way. Reminds me of a bloke I used to be friends with, actually, back when I was young and stupid. Jam ought to have let him get walloped a few times before he tugged him out of there."
"Sirius agreed with you, but Jam's counterpart protested," James replies, watching her glowing face with his chest still tight and full. "His sense of right and wrong is too black and white for that."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah—characterization and continuity, blah blah blah. But Sniv still deserves it." Lily turns to the next page, still leaning in and enraptured by its every new reveal. It's like a drug, watching her fingers stroke over the same places James's had. A drug and a curse, all at the same time. "You coloured some of these. I thought they were just sketches?"
"Sometimes the colours come as strongly as the lines," James explains, wishing for a moment that he was that piece of paper, that it was his soft, sullied surfaces she was running her hands all over...fingers on his skin, in his hair, stroking up and down and over his face and—
"Interesting," she says.
James coughs. Flushes. Shit. "Er...yeah. I just get down whatever is in my head. Some are more detailed than others. There's this group I did recently—think they're in there...here, let me—no, a few more—yeah, there. They're quite complete, actually—"
"Ohh—god, you're so bloody talented it's almost sickening," Lily says, with the perfect amount of disgusted pride. Then, scowling: "You need to talk to your dad."
James flinches, blinking in surprise. "What?"
"You know what," she murmurs, still sweeping her hand over the drawings. "You've been too kind and too patient for too long. A hundred thousand people can be trained as his admin. Only one person can do this, and he's spending eight hours a day fielding annoying e-mails from me, and calling in work orders for the broken Xerox that someone probably cracked while copying their bare arse again. Put your foot down, James."
James certainly puts something down—his shoulders, namely, which slink in discomfort as he skittishly begins to toy with his laptop to keep his hands busy.
It's not an unfamiliar conversation, this.
"Trying to get rid of me?" he jokes, because that's easier than addressing the rest.
Lily is having none of it. She's even more menacing in real life than she is from within a screen, and she shoots him a truly glowering frown as she tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear and lets him have it.
"How can someone who is so obnoxiously confident twelve hours out of the day be so utterly uncertain during the thirteenth?" she asks, sounding irritatedly perplexed. "When his confidence is most warranted? I'm glad I finally got to see you, because now I can slap you upside the head in person."
"That's not very nice," James objects, crouching away from slapping hands that never actually move. "And I'm not uncertain. It's a complicated situation—"
"No, it isn't."
"Yes, it is." He sticks her with a deepening frown of his own. "Dad is...look, I can't just leave him—"
"You're not 'just leaving'him, James. 'Just leaving' would have been five months ago."
"He needs me there—"
"He wants you there," she corrects, a brisk, impatient emphasis on the word. "You're his favourite person in the world. Of course he—"
"You're his favourite person. And you—"
"If you want him to take your job seriously, you need to take it seriously, which starts with—"
"Oh, hullo there, kettle. It's me, pot." James sticks out a hand in sarcastic greeting. "Or did I somehow miss the part where you finally told Dad you want to start that project of your own? Gather together a few Mickey and Minnies, and Jake and Amys, and work on your research, not his? The new U.K. facility is going to have a medical research division, Lily. That's what you want. It's what you've helped build—"
Lily bats away his waiting hand with a scowl. "We are not talking about me—"
"Well, we should be—"
"—we are talking about you, and the fact that you are so ridiculously caught up with this idea that Fleamont doesn't respect what you do that you feel the need to spend eight hours a day trying to drive the point home with him, except you don't even need to drive anything home, because he's already so appallingly proud of you that he practically drips with it at every given opportunity, and it's so infuriating that you don't see that!"
She's run slightly out of breath at the end of all that, but apparently not quite out of gusto, because she finally lets loose a strangled sort of noise and begins peppering his head and arms with tiny, exasperated swats.
"You. Are. So. Frustrating," she grits out—then curiously lays one hand flat on his head. "But your hair is really, really annoyingly lovely and silky, and I've wanted to touch it for ages, so I am going to, but I am angry with you, all right?"
It's a difficult sentiment to believe when her fingers begin to move through his hair, the searching stroke of her fingers as they sift through the messy strands and begin tracing errant, irritated lines against his scalp successfully seeping James's bubbling bluster out of him. Honestly, it nearly sees him purring like a kitten.
He gives a grunt—gargled, bitter, needy—and narrows his eyes on her softening face.
"You can't pet me and yell at me at the same time," he complains, leaning into her. "It's not fair."
"I don't have to be fair," Lily insists, running her nails gently around his head. "I'm right."
"Maybe," James concedes grudgingly, because it's hard not to concede, grudgingly or otherwise, when she's touching him. "But I'm right too."
"That's not—"
"It is. You practically run that lab in Sydney, Lily. At twenty-five, that's what you're doing." She opens her mouth to argue again, but he quickly cuts her off. "And that's not because Dad likes you. It's because you're brilliant. Really, really brilliant. You're not his assistant. You don't owe him your time or your work. You should have applied for that director position when it opened a few months ago. You should be fighting for grant money in the new facility now. And you wouldn't have got either because Dad dotes on you, you'd have gotten them because you're good. Because you can help people. Any bitter bastard working under you who'd say otherwise is just jealous of that. We pots and kettles need to stick up for each other. So I am. And you should listen."
Her face softens more, features slipping into some kind of rueful fondness, fingers moving more slowly in his hair.
"I appreciate that," she says quietly, gingerly. "Really, I do. But I'm only sticking up for you too, Pot. If you would just—"
"I take my job seriously," James interrupts. "Maybe I've got hang-ups with Dad, fine, but I take all of it seriously. In fact, I've—"
He slams his mouth shut, the unfinished words of his babbled defense crashing against the unrelenting wall of his own sudden forethought, which has come through just in time to remind him that maybe he shouldn't be talking about the "In fact, I've" just now. He and Sirius haven't told anyone yet. Not even Peter and Remus. Not even Euphemia and Fleamont—especially not Euphemia and Fleamont. It's not a sure thing. It's incredibly far from a sure thing, even. It's exciting, yes, and it was James who had made the contact, and Lily who had been in the back of his head, urging him on as he did so, but that didn't…
He shouldn't.
He really shouldn't.
"In fact you've what?" Lily asks, fingers stalling in their leisurely strokes. "What were you going to say?"
"Nothing." James clams up. "It's nothing. I'm useless. You're right."
"Quit that." She frowns, scoldingly flicking at his specs and then—tragically—dropping her hand back down to her lap. Her familiar features, angling ever closer, are curious and imploring. "Tell me."
"I shouldn't," he says in some apology, though even as the words filter out, other words are bubbling inside his throat, brewing in needy release, desperate to have their day. "It's not a sure thing. I shouldn't be babbling about it."
"Oh." She pauses, gives a slow nod in understanding. Even in the agreement, she's not terribly good at masking her disappointment. "Right. Okay."
"It's—" Bloody hell, just tell her. "I don't…" There's no contract saying you can't. She won't tell a soul. It's Lily, for fuck's sake. "We...you can't say anything."
"Of course not."
"To anyone."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"You know what it means."
She bristles in offense. "You know very well that I won't tell your dad a thing. Have I ever spewed any of your secrets to him? Did I ever mention the missed Chinese fax? Or that mishap with the hand sanitizers? Or the fake birthday present?"
"Hey. Firstly—just because we found out later that bloke got arrested for fraud does not mean the book I bought from him might not have actually belonged to Einstein. It's Einstein. I bet he had loads of books. And secondly—" James trails off, but not for very long. He's dithering about presents because he's anxious and excited. The simple fact is, he wants to tell Lily about Gryff Comics. He's wanted to tell her since nearly the moment he first got the meeting. Even Sirius had given him a look as soon as they got off the first conference call and said, "Evans better keep mum, you hear?" like James telling her was an assumed thing. It's likely a miracle he's lasted as long as he has. "Secondly, I know you wouldn't say anything. Sorry. I just...it's sort of big and I'm nervous about it."
"You? Nervous?" She gives him a teasing little prod, waits until she earns herself an acknowledging lip quirk back, then settles her hand atop his. "Tell me," she says.
James eyes their overlapped hands with unwavering focus. "We...have a meeting. In a few weeks. A serious one. With a publisher. It's..." He presses his lips together, then looks up and finishes, "It's pretty big."
"Wait—a publisher for Triple M?" Lily's brow furrows, and James gives a brisk nod. Her eyes flicker briefly down at his sketchbook, then up at him again. "So...what does that mean exactly? They'd buy it? The comic? And it'd be...what, in print? No more online?"
"Well, we'd likely do simultaneous, online and print, but—yeah, print, too." Even the paltry mention of it now—print too—gets James's heart racing. "It'd be the chance to get in stores. Probably easier pathways to conventions, too. All that brings a wider audience, and it wouldn't be just the two of us anymore. All the publicity, merchandising...we'd have help. Sirius could likely stop trolling brands on Twitter to get us clicks—though he'll likely be salty about that, so—"
"So—wait. Wait." Lily's head skitters back and forth, like she's still trying to process, a dog shaking off confusing water. "That's like...that's like big big. Like...fully next level, right?" She doesn't wait for his answer, just shakes her head again, this time in clear wondering bemusement. "James. That's...You're meeting with a publisher. A big publisher. Who wants to buy The Marvelous Mischievous Marauders."
"Yeah." Timidly, excitedly, James begins to smile. "I started sending out some queries a few months ago. Sirius wasn't certain about it at first, but he hasn't got a kettle whistling in his ear about his potential going to waste all the time, yeah? And I didn't know if they'd come to anything, but...well, one did, obviously, and now—"
"And now you'll be in stores!" James feels the heady pressure of a giddy hand squeeze a moment before Lily lets out a wild little whoop, then sends herself launching towards him, twining her arms around his neck in an enthusiastic tackle. It's a clumsy kind of side hug across their paired chairs, and his hands fly up as he falls back into his seat, trying to hold her steady. "That's amazing! And exactly what you've wanted, isn't it? It's a big thing! The next step! You listened. God, I'm so so crazy proud of you—"
"Nothing is official yet. It's just a meeting," he rushingly warns, squinting as her over-exuberant limbs squeeze his specs sideways on his face. "I mean, it is sort of last stages. We've had a few discussions before. Sirius thinks we should get an agent—it's the done thing, I guess, but the product is already out there, so it may speak for itself...dunno. Haven't worked it all out yet. But it's...it's good," he says, and grins wider. "It's really good."
"It's great," Lily corrects, and she beams at him. Truly, properly beams as she settles back down in her own seat and makes him miss her clumsy, uneven warmth already. "You deserve it. You've worked so hard, and the comic is so good, and—and I swear, after all this, if I see your stupid pretty face in that office one more week—"
"I know, I know." He rolls his eyes, resettles his glasses. "'Talk to Dad.'"
"He's going to be so excited for you," Lily insists, cheeks still flushed with happiness. "He just likes having you there. He'll grumble about the inconvenience, but he doesn't mean it. He just—" She cuts off the rest of the sentence, pressing her lips together with a sheepish flounce, then quickly runs a zipping finger over the closed seam. "Nope. You know what? Kettle is done whistling. You've done very very good, and I am very proud of you, and no more lectures. I promise."
James snorts loudly. "Bets on how long that will last."
Lily circles her thumb and pointer finger together, then flicks at his nose. "Oi. I'm being magnanimous."
"Oh, yes, terribly magnanimous." He laughs again, the vibrations rumbling in his chest like a pleasantly chuffed locomotive—much more chuffed, surely, than the one they're presently on. He feels like he's just taken a soothing gulp of hot tea, or the first bite of a delicious molten lava cake. He wants to lean over and kiss her—Christ, how he wants to lean over and kiss her. She thinks he's talented, and she's proud of him, and says he has a stupid pretty face. Maybe she wouldn't…
"Well, now I really need spoilers," she suddenly declares, sighing like she's just been through a trial, picking up his sketchbook and certainly not acting like she was sitting there, consumed with romantic thoughts of him, like he's been sitting here, consumed with romantic thoughts of her. "I know too much now, and if I can't brag about your future success, I need something to lord over the lemmings on the message boards. Quit holding out and show me where the juicy bits are."
James stomps down his prickling disappointment, reaching over instead to flick through a few pages and get her towards the more recent stuff. He can't be cross that she's not as achingly lovesick as he is. She lives in Australia. This is the first time they've even met. If she hasn't thought about him overly much in any romantic way, that's perfectly logical. She doesn't owe him affection in the first place. He's being stupid.
"Here." He musters out the most congenial smile he can manage, taking comfort in the familiar crisp smoothness of the drawing paper beneath his fingertips. "If you...yeah, around there."
"Excellent," she preens, and sticks him with a gleefully smug smirk, one that he feels straight down to his gut, that hot-tea-molten-lava brewing goodness. She tucks her trainers up on the train seat, then balances the sketchbook on her bent knees and buries her head in the pages. If she had a blanket and a tiny torch, she'd be the little girl staying up late to sneakily read past her bedtime.
His chest aches, watching her.
He should tell her.
Buck up, take a deep breath, and just tell her.
I want you. Want to talk to you constantly. Want to touch you, and kiss you, constantly. Some days I can hardly concentrate for it. It's—
It's too much. But maybe she will…
But they're on a train. Trapped, for another ninety minutes at least. And he'll sound insane. Completely and utterly insane. And he genuinely could not promise that he wouldn't leap from this seat, head straight for the locked train door, and force his way out to cast himself upon the mercy of the deadly accelerating ground below if he hints at the fact that she carries around half his bloody heart in her pocket at all given times and she kindly—because it would be kindly. She cares about him too much as a person, as a friend, to be anything other than kind—explains that she does not feel the same way, that she'd prefer to hand back his heart, thanks very much, because she's rather certain she never asked for it in the first place, and would he mind terribly sitting across the table for the rest of the journey? She's a tad bit uncomfortable now. Ta.
He would rather stab himself in the eye with a pencil.
Would rather stab himself in both eyes, with a dull pencil.
He can't.
He just can't.
But—
"I'm not going to lie—I'm still a wee bit saddened I didn't get to see you do all this," Lily comments lightly, not knowing what thought stream she's pulled him out from, but that's likely all for the best. She's back to petting the sketchbook pages again. "I bet you do that face."
"What face?"
She scrunches up her mouth in an incredibly exaggerated moue, slitting her eyes in something that looks vaguely like concentration, although mostly like she's trying to fight off a sneeze.
"I do not," James states primly in offense, "make that face."
"You definitely make that face."
"Well, you hum."
"I know I hum. I'm amazing at humming."
"Not even a full hum. Just a little—hmmm—then gone."
"Chin up, old buck. Size doesn't matter."
"I'm heartened to hear you feel that way. But still—"
"But still, he says!"
"Go back to your comics," James mutters. "Before I take it away."
Lily grins cheekily at him, but does indeed turn back to the sketchbook with a certain unmistakable amused satisfaction. That he is still so wildly attracted to her even when she is so mercilessly poking fun at him seemed patently unfair.
"I never said I disliked your concentration face," she puts in generously, flipping to the next sketchbook page. "There is a certain appeal to it, really. A truly unique sort of—"
She stops.
A truly unique sort of...nothing.
Her eyes are frozen on the page. Her feet drop down to the ground. She goes pointedly, eerily still.
"What?" James asks, blinking at her sudden stillness, alarm bells beginning to flare in his head. "Lily. What's the matter?"
"That—it's—"
"What?"
"Oh my god."
"Oh my god what?"
"James."
"What—"
"That's me." The tiny words—that's me—burst out with the effectiveness of a firecracker. Emerald eyes finally dart up to his, accompanied by a startled, insistent poke, poke, poke down on the page. "James Potter...that girl right there in the background eating a falafel is me."
James feels the blood immediately drain from his face.
Shit.
Shit.
"What?" he forces out, a choked little pathetic attempt at incredulousness. It gets about as far as the next seat before drooping in failure. "That—"
"That is me," Lily cuts in forcefully, jabbing her finger some more at the slim, clearly identifiable redhead standing in the background behind Jam and Remy as they discuss an impending outing to defeat evil while catching a bite to eat. "That is me—in that bloody ugly jumper I wore the day after Valentine's. You drew me in that bloody ugly jumper?"
"It wasn't bloody ugly," James protests weakly, hands reaching out for the sketchbook, like he can take it back and make this entire conversation go away too. How had he forgotten? "I told you it wasn't. I said it had really striking colours. You didn't believe me—"
"So you drew me into a panel to prove it?" It's very difficult to tell whether she is outraged or merely uncategorically stunned by this possibility. Her voice is too flat, her face positively inscrutable, and she's giving James no real hints about what she feels beyond totally dumbstruck accusation. Her hands slap down to cover his, stopping him from tugging the sketchbook away. "You drew me in a panel."
His stomach dips anxiously. "Lily, I'm really sorry—"
"You drew me in a panel." There's a slight kip in the last word now. He doesn't know what it means. He's too mortified to learn what it means. "You. Drew. Me. In. A. Panel."
"Always in the background. Only in the background. But I—"
"I'm in a panel." And now there's no kip—there's a clear, clear rise in the heady rush and fervor of the word, an unmistakable gushing of emotion that Lily accompanies with a telltale bouncing in her seat and a childishly clapping of her hands that she soon tucks together in giddy excitement just beneath her quivering chin. "James Potter, you bloody darling star, you drew me in a panel!"
"I...you're not cross?" James feels like he's about to have a heart attack. "I mean, I didn't ask—"
"I'm in a panel!"
"Yes—"
"I'm in a panel!"
"S," James blurts without thinking. "Sss."
Lily stops bouncing, whirling. "What?"
"S," James repeats softly again, after a moment's hesitation, because now that he's said it, he can't very well take it back. His face has never burned so furiously. "Plural. Panels. You're in panels."
"What—"
"You just have one of those faces," he hastily defends, which is not a lie, even if it is not the full truth. "It—I do it with a lot of people. Sometimes. And it was only two other times before this one—"
"Two—" Lily's movements are quick as lightning. She drops the sketchbook to his side of the table, then immediately yanks her laptop forward. In a rapid series of two clicks, she's pulled up the Marvelous Mischievous Marauders website. "Where?" she demands.
James blinks down at the screen. "Lily Evans...do you have me bookmarked?"
She ignores him. "How did I miss this? Twice before? That's...there's no way. Where? Where?"
"You have me bookmarked," James marvels, grinning. "You have the Triple M website bookmarked."
"One was the issue that came out on my birthday, wasn't it? You sly bastard." Her fingers are a blur across the keyboard, clicking through links and shuffling through panels like she has superhuman reading speed. "Also, Peter's complaining again about Petra being a girl."
"What?" James leans over, glancing down at the screen where Lily is pointing, and indeed the first comment queued up beneath the issue from a few weeks ago is Wormtail666, saying "OK but all….does ne1 else thk petra should b a bloke?"
"Jesus Christ, not again," James mutters, reminding himself to send a scathing text to Peter later. "It's been almost three years. I don't know why he won't let that go. We needed a balanced cast of characters. Sirius loves that he's Sirella. And they're not even real reflections of us, for fuck's sake." James grabs for his phone. He needs to screenshot this for Sirius. "I told him last time if he keeps being a prat, we're going to turn Petra evil and have her betray the whole group. See how he likes that—"
"Can we please refocus here?" Lily asks, poking him in the chest. "Where am I?"
"Fourth page. Top right." James scowls, forwarding the picture to Sirius. "It would be a big twist, you know. No one would see it coming. Maybe it can be the big push for our first print issue. Peter will howl for ages, but the little git deserves it. Honestly—"
Lily's sudden burst of laughter cuts in through James's ranting. "You drew me in a pink dress?"
James glances over briefly, seeing she's found the panel. "You said 'no redhead ever looks good in pink'. And I thought, 'Challenge accepted.'"
"You arse," Lily snickers, and she nudges her shoulder lightly with his, her smile bright and wide and contagious. "Where else am I?"
James shifts closer so their shoulders are still touching. She doesn't move away. Doesn't much move at all, really.
"Where's the fun if I tell you all of them?" he asks, his voice going softer. He keeps his eyes focused on her, like he can burn his thoughts and feelings into her skin with his gaze. And while that may be the stuff of magic and superheroes, she does turn her head to look at him, meeting his burning stare with one that's not so terribly unheated herself. James's heart kicks up in speed. "Now that I know you don't want to strangle me for it, I reckon I might want to enjoy this little Where's Waldo? game a bit."
"I don't want to strangle you for it," Lily says, and their faces are getting closer as she keeps her gaze on his—their faces are close, so much so that James can see the flecks of lighter green in her eyes, can almost count the scattered bunch of pale freckles peppering her skin. She takes in a short breath, and he nearly feels the inhale. "I want to—"
"Want to what?"
Lily shakes her head. Almost smiles. But doesn't. Not quite.
"Hey, Pot?" she says.
"Yes, Kettle?"
"I have a confession too." She bites at her lip, wrinkles her nose in a curious little twitch. "Well—hm, actually, three."
"Three confessions?" James's eyebrows lift. He is, frankly, afraid and reluctant to move much more than that. "Is one of them that you named a rat after me?"
Lily snorts. "Mouse. And no. You're still safe there." She takes another visible inhale, then glances down, and James feels the gentle brush of her finger sweep lazily across the top of his. "The first is that I'm really, really glad that you're a giant, mushy pushover and got on this train."
He chokes out a laugh, twisting his wrist around, catching her fingers with his.
"Me too," he says. "Even though it's France."
"Right." The almost-smile gains more traction—lifts, James sees, along with the rest of her head, though her lips continue to waver as if they're not quite certain what to do yet. "The other…" Her eyes meet his again. "The other is that...all this? The tolerable French train ride? The drawing me into panels? The way you keep staring, and haven't once posed any sort of objection when I've shamelessly put my hands all over you?" She laughs a little herself, pushing her hair behind her ear. "I'm reading into it. Like, really, just super extra reading into it. In a way that's got my stomach in butterflies and my heart"—she takes control of his hand, places it firmly against the centre of her chest—"just skittering. So if you'd prefer I not be doing that, if the reading has gone off track somewhere and I shouldn't...be thinking really inappropriate and particularly pining thoughts about you, you should probably say something now—"
"No," James cuts in immediately, feeling like his own heart is about to explode—like fireworks are going off somewhere, and they've been set off just for him. "Right track. Completely, totally, right track. That's...yes." He stops her hand from fiddling in her hair. Takes over the task himself. Laughs, because he's not sure how else to expel the bright and bubbling feeling inside his own chest. "I'm glad you...picked up on all of that. Right on track. Good on you."
"Oh, good." She laughs a bubbly, bright spiel too, tilting her head into his touch, pressing his fingers firmer against her chest. "Just thought I'd...check. In case."
"I'm definitely going to kiss you now," James replies, already leaning in. "So if you have any objections…?"
Lily's only response is to lift her head, pressing her mouth to his as it reaches for hers.
And bloody hell—why has he wasted this entire ruddy train ride doing anything other than this? Touché, Eurostar, in its last nasty game, for making him doubt even for a moment that this wasn't the natural state in which his mouth should be at all times. That Lily—Fleamont's Lily. James's Lily—would not immediately be of a similar mind, that she may not have welcomed his lips against hers exactly as she's doing now. That she wouldn't have made a soft humming noise—a full, soft humming noise—as she sighs into it, as she leans up against him, as her mouth opens under his and he eagerly gets his first taste. He grows clumsy with it, almost—messy swipes of lips, fingers curling in whatever purchase they can find, heart doing a Fred and Ginger style tap dance inside his chest. But he's not alone in it. She's right there too, the perfect partner, equal in all snogging and touching things. Equal, it seems, in affection, which still makes James want to shout and leap and snog her more.
(He does the last one. He really, really does the last one.)
He kisses her until his lips feel chapped, and his lungs feel out of breath, and he thinks that maybe—maybe—she now understands approximately one-tenth of what he feels for her. What he's been feeling for ages, and now finally has a place to put.
And then he kisses her some more, for good measure.
"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do this," he eventually finds a moment to tell her, holding his forehead against hers for a brief reprieve, sipping at her lips between words. "Really long. Embarrassingly long."
"You should have said something," Lily protests, and gives his lower lip a playful nip in gentle scold. "I would have told you to get on a plane. Immediately, to get on a plane."
"You're joking, but I've looked up tickets."
She laughs warmly against his mouth. "You didn't."
"So many times." He's laughing at himself too—because it's funny, now. Thank god it gets to be funny now.
She shakes her head, kissing him again. "You should have done."
"You would have thought I was insane!"
"Yes," she agrees. "And then I would have brought you back to my flat, and made out with you on my sofa."
"I'll buy a ticket right now," he says, and pulls away, nodding briskly. "Right this second."
"I'm busy with you right this second," Lily objects, and grabs him by the back of the head to lead him back down to her mouth. "And you're not buying any tickets."
"Yes, I am." He kisses her because her prodding is asking him to kiss her, and because kissing her is a necessary thing, and because he wants to make sure he has her taste memorised, absorbed completely like fibres to his skin, just in case this ends up being a dream and he's about to wake up. But he has a point to make too, and he's not going to brush right past it. "Look, maybe it is completely mad, but I...I don't want to just kiss you. I mean, I do, obviously, want to kiss you, but I also...I want...this. All of this. You. And me. I can do my job anywhere. Even if I didn't leave Dad, I could do half of his rubbish right from where you are. So I want to visit. I want to...try this. Really try this. With you. Are you...I mean, if that's not the right track, you should probably say something now—"
"No. You—" She peppers his mouth with kisses, but pulls away again, her face flushed and her lungs working quickly to catch her breath. "Yes, that's what I want. Not the wrong track. Still the right track. But—"
"Don't say but," James sighs. "No buts."
"You've got to hear this but. It's not a bad but, I promise, it's just—" She drops her hand from around his neck, gulping in another large breath. "Wait. Give me a second. My head is all swimmy."
"I like your head swimmy." One strangly strand of her hair has caught over her fluttering eyelashes, and James pushes it back with an adoring grin. It's gone a bit messy, her hair, tangling about with his fingers as it's done. "Swimmy is good."
"Yes. Swimmy is good." Her kiss-reddened lips purse in amusement, but she doesn't move them back towards his. "But this is important. I never got to confession three."
"That's because I really liked confession two," James says innocently. "I wasn't quite done with it."
She gives him a look, and holds a hand up against his lowering face.
Huh. Didn't even realise he was doing that.
"James," she warns.
He presses a kiss against her fingers, but remains obligingly still and silent.
Her lips quirk, but she nods at him regally. "Thank you." Then she drops her hand down to her lap and clears her throat. "The reason why I do not want you to buy any tickets...is because I am going to buy a ticket. Or—well, actually, the company is buying my ticket. As part of my relocation package. It sort of comes along with the whole...Assistant Director of Research, U.K. thing. Job perks. Convenient."
"What?" James blinks, thinking that he must have heard her wrong. Thinking what did she just say what did she just say. "You...what?"
"I'm the new Assistant Director of Research at the U.K. facility." She smiles—pleased, self-satisfied, teasing. "Or, I will be, once it's up and running officially in a few months. I'll probably be lazing around the London headquarters for a bit until then, so I guess you ought to get used to me." James can only proceed to gape uselessly like a fish out of water, so she quickly continues, "You're not the only one who listens on Team Pot Kettle, yeah? All of those rousing pep-talks were not dropped on completely deaf ears. You were right, about a lot of it. I was nervous, and I never want anyone to think I was handed anything because I've worked with your dad, but it's what I wanted. Really wanted. So I just…" She shrugs lightly. "Asked."
It's such a dainty little word—asked—and yet James feels it straight down to his bones, dug in and gripped tight as the reality of what she's saying finally begins to settle in.
Job.
London.
LondonLondonLondon.
"You're…" He's afraid to speak it, to even whisper it. "How? When?"
"I talked to my supervisor in Sydney a few weeks ago. She...don't get smug, but she said she was surprised I hadn't asked after it before, and that she'd happily send along a recommendation with my application. We figured out a sly way to keep Fleamont out of the loop until the very last second—you should have seen him. He was so shocked when I turned up at the London office for my in-person interview last week—"
"Wait—London? My London?" James practically leaps from his seat. "You were in the London offices last week and you didn't tell me?"
"I didn't tell anyone," Lily replies quickly, but not without some commiserating sympathy. "I sneaked in after you left for lunch. I was literally hiding behind a potted plant in the lobby. It was highly embarrassing. And then I swore Fleamont to secrecy. Nothing was official yet, and I didn't want to presume any. I wanted to be able to tell you something concrete myself—either I got it, or I hadn't. And Fleamont promised he wouldn't tell you anything if I agreed to go to the conference, so—" She waves a hand, ta-da! "Here we are."
James sputters in shock, in part outrage. "That...you…"
"I did leave you a note," she offers flimsily, wincing with some amusement. "On your desk. On a post-it. It said—"
"'Hi,'" James recounts for her, and wants to slap himself in the face. "Christ, that was you? I thought it was from Handsy Hannah in reception! I binned it!"
"Wait—Hannah Dobler?" Lily's smile drops. "She's handsy with you?"
"She's handsy with literally everyone," James replies quickly, but immediately waves that off. "Wait. Back to...so—you got it. You got the job. Of course you got the job. And now you're…"
"Moving back to London," Lily finishes for him, and smiles big and wide as she says it. "In a few weeks."
"That's—" James doesn't even know where to begin. Doesn't even know the words. "You—"
Hell. Who needs words, anyway?
He takes her face between his hands and kisses her.
Long, hard, exuberantly, he kisses her.
And Lily Evans, Assistant Director of Research, U.K., kisses him right back.
"I told you," he crows, when he has snogged his shock, his delight, his euphoria, completely into her. "I told you you should apply. I told you you would get it. Why don't you listen to me when I tell you you're brilliant? We could've been doing this ages ago."
"Yeah, yeah—shut up and kiss me, please." Lily tugs his mouth down for another heady snog. "I told you you would like confession number three."
"Yes, but I find I'm still partial to two." He teasingly pulls his mouth away. "You're the posh director of research now—what do you think?"
"I think this requires further observation." Her lips brush his—whisper-light, tickling. "And I think we better hurry—because at some point the English Channel can only rightfully be called the Sea of Brittany, and then you'll be officially kissing me in France. Oh, the horror."
"Oh, the horror," James agrees, and kisses her again.