another early chapter because I'm busy and I know I'll forget otherwise

happy Sunday my friends x

Whatever nerves James had been feeling when they'd gotten on the plane in London seemed to, thankfully, have seeped out of him somewhere over Europe. When they touched down in Rome two and a half hours later, he was back to his bright, energetic self, and was practically skipping through the airport as Lily jogged along in his wake.

'James,' she snapped as they made their way into the immigration queue, 'you've got to slow down, I'm not as tall as you are!'

James tried to look contrite, but the wide smile on his face significantly hampered the effect. 'Sorry,' he said, now bouncing on the balls of his feet. 'I'm just excited. I was nervous before but now that we're here — I'm just ready to get going, you know?'

'Yeah, James,' she said, rolling her eyes and biting back a smile, 'I know.'

They made their way a bit more quickly through the border control line than Lily anticipated they would have, and so, after grabbing their things at the baggage reclaim, they still had a little over half an hour before the car was scheduled to pick them up.

Lily turned to James as he grabbed the last bag off the luggage carousel. 'Do you want to wait in here or wait outside?'

James positively beamed. 'Outside.'

It was much hotter outside than Lily was used to, accustomed, as she was, to grey, barely there English summers, but she relished the feeling of the sun on her skin and the warmth in her hair, and so she didn't mind the thin sheen of sweat that developed on her brow as they stood and waited for the car. If Lily was enjoying the sun, though, James was brought to life by it — his smile seemed wider, his laugh louder. It was like the sun multiplied every positive thing about him until there was so much of it that he was bursting at the seams.

'You really like it here, don't you?' Lily asked, shading her eyes as she watched James bounce up and down on the balls of his feet.

'I just love summer,' James said. 'It's so warm and bright and just — ugh, it makes me want to go run around on the pitch.'

He had such a wistful look in his eyes as he said it, but there was also a trace of hurt there. He swung his arms into a quick stretch and Lily bit back a laugh.

'Well, unfortunately, we don't have football on our schedule.'

'Surely we could rearrange it.'

'No we absolutely cannot,' she said, shooting him a look that she hoped would tame the rebellious look now shining in his eyes. 'And don't call me Shirley.'

James burst out laughing. 'Fuck Evans, I haven't seen that movie in years!'

Lily grinned. 'We'll have to find it for you at some point — you can watch it on your downtime.'

'How am I going to do that without my phone?'

Ah, so he was still bitter about that. 'First of all, every room that you're going to be staying in is going to have these crazy things, I don't know if you've heard of them, but they're called televisions — '

'Oh ha ha.'

' — and second of all,' Lily continued, determined to ignore the interruption, 'you agreed to give up your phone, so I don't know why you're still complaining about it.'

James sighed and Lily hoped that he would really just give it up this time. They'd had more arguments about his damn mobile in the past week than Lily could stand, and she knew that James knew just how tired she was of talking about it. The thing about James, though, was that he didn't much care if she was tired of talking about it if he thought it was something they needed to talk about.

She both admired and was irritated by his persistence.

'I'm guessing you don't want to hear this argument I crafted about my Snap Streaks?' he asked, raising an eyebrow at her. There was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth and god she wanted to smack him for having fun at her expense.

'No James,' she said, rolling her eyes at him, 'I absolutely could not care less about your Snap Streaks.'

Argument successfully averted, they settled into fairly easy conversation while they stood there on the pavement. The sun eventually got to be a bit much (rather, James noticed that Lily's cheeks and arms were starting to turn a bit pink and, laughing so much that Lily elbowed him, asked if they wanted to move out of the sun so her "little fair-skinned self" didn't get a sunburn) and they moved under an awning near a giant metal statue of something that neither of them could really identify. James still wandered about as they waited, occasionally dipping into the sun and beaming at her "from the other side" and though she told him to shut up, she couldn't help but admire the way that the bright sun made his jet black hair shine, the way it almost looked iridescent in the light.

After a while, Lily's mobile began vibrating in her hand — she tapped her screen to accept the call and pressed the phone to her ear.

'Evans — Yes, terminal three. Just beside that brown metal statue — yeah, that one. Alright, see you in five.'

She clicked her mobile off, stuffed if back into her trouser pocket, and adjusted the bag on her shoulder as she turned to James. 'The car will be here in five. Benjy Fenwick, our assigned cameraman, is going to be in the car when we get there. He'll switch the camera on once we're settled, so anything that you want to say or do that you definitely don't want on camera, you might want to do that now.'

James quirked an eyebrow at her. 'What do you think that I'm going to want to do exactly?'

She shrugged. 'You never know. I'm just saying, this is the last free time you're going to get outside of your room for the next seven weeks, so you might want to use it to your advantage.'

'Why's he going to be filming while we're in the car and shit? That can't be that exciting.'

Lily brushed a piece of hair out of her eyes, squinted into the sun as she scanned the cars crawling past them for the black town car they were expecting. 'It isn't, but Peter is of the opinion that you never know when someone is going to do or say something interesting. The American production crew actually puts cameras in their contestants bedrooms, though, so it could definitely be worse.'

'Fuck,' James pushed his glasses back up his nose, 'thank god I'm not in America.'

Lily shot him a grin. 'For this reason and so many others.'

James laughed. 'Damn right, Evans.'

Their car pulled up a moment later and they walked quickly through the crowd on the pavement. The driver opened the boot as they approached and they dumped their bags in before shutting the doors and sliding into the back.

'Lil!'

Lily grinned at the man in the corner of the car, leaned over and carefully pressed a kiss to his cheek (and doing her best to keep from knocking the camera). 'Fen! How're you doing?'

Lily settled her seat opposite Benjy, smiled encouragingly at James as he settled into the seat beside her.

'Doing wonderful as always,' Benjy said, a wide smile on his face. 'Got to Italy yesterday with the rest of the crew and we had nothing to do, so Peter let us muck around a bit.'

Lily raised an eyebrow at him, a smirk tugging at her lips. 'Did he now?'

'Well, no,' Benjy grinned, 'but we got our work done, so what Peter doesn't know won't hurt him.' Lily laughed and Benjy turned towards James as he leaned over and held his hand out for James to shake.

'Mr Potter,' Benjy said, shaking James' hand. 'I'm Benjy Fenwick, your camera for the next seven weeks. It's lovely to meet you.'

'Just James, Benjy, please,' James said, 'It's great to meet you, too, mate. Evans said that you're going to be filming everything I do for the next two months?'

'That I am,' Benjy nodded, 'so if you've got any last things you'd like to get out before I flick this switch, I'd do it now.'

James shot Lily a quick, amused look before he turned back to Benjy. 'I think I'm good, mate. Go ahead.'

And with one final nod from Benjy, the red light on the front of the camera clicked on.