Happy Sunday my friends x

If you'd asked Lily a few weeks ago how she would feel when she finally got back to London at the end of production, she would probably have said that she'd be thrilled.

Exhausted and overworked and ready for a break, but, nevertheless, thrilled.

That couldn't have been further from the truth as she got off the plane at Heathrow early Monday afternoon.

She and James hadn't spoken much since the ceremony the night before. It was a reaction she expected, especially after she'd snapped at him the way she did, and it such a familiar song and dance at this point that it almost didn't bother her.

She really should have been more worried that she'd eventually push him over the edge.

They were only scheduled to film two days while they were in London — two more days and then they were free, blissfully free, to do whatever they wanted with their lives (outside of getting caught out by the paps and having the show's conclusion leaked before air) until the live reunion show was shot in early November.

This time last year, Lily had been beside herself with excitement.

Today, she was sitting in James' hotel room with James and Benjy, going over the schedule for the next two days and trying not to throw up.

'The representative from Mappin and Webb is due to be here in an hour,' Lily said. 'You'll talk about rings and cuts and whatever else,' she waved her hand, 'that entails, and Benjy and I will get some diary shots of you talking about who you're planning to propose to without actually getting the name. We can cut it if you mess up, but we'll want this first bit to be vague.'

James had been looking down at his hands for the last few minutes and didn't look up when Lily paused. He just nodded mutely.

'Then we're going to head out and get some transitional shots — you in the park, walking around, that sort of thing. We'll probably get some of you here in the hotel, too, looking at the ring, staring dramatically off the balcony, you know.'

Lily tried to laugh, but James still didn't look up.

She cleared her throat. 'After that, you'll come back here and eat dinner. Tomorrow isn't going to be much for you until late afternoon — we'll spend the day getting the space ready in the observation deck and all that, but I'm only going to come fetch you when it's time to film your conversation with Marlene and then, of course, the, uh, engagement scene.'

She said it quickly and then carried on, hoped that James wouldn't notice that she'd almost choked on the words. 'After that, it'll just be some shots of the two of you together, separate diaries, nothing too difficult or involved.'

James nodded and Benjy shot Lily a look.

'Talk to him,' he mouthed.

Lily shook her head and Benjy threw up his hands.

Lily hadn't gone into any sort of detail about what exactly had gone on between her and James in Paris — she hadn't needed to say much, really, because Benjy seemed to have guessed and had started making himself scarce when Lily began lingering longer in his room at drop offs in the evening. She knew that Benjy was curious, especially now that things between them were distant again, a little chilly, but Lily just couldn't….

She couldn't talk about it. She just needed to put her head down and get through the next two days. She needed to be done with it.

Because nothing with James could change until these two days were up anyway. There was no point, none, in hashing out the same conversation they'd now had a million times. Benjy'd given them a solution, a brilliant solution that Lily was now depending on, but James….

James didn't seem like he wanted to take that way out. And Lily couldn't force him either way and ultimately everything was up to him and maybe, despite it all, he'd decide that he was just tired of the struggle of their relationship. That the work and the difficulty and all that wasn't worth whatever he thought the payoff might be.

Maybe he'd just pick Liza or Summer and be done with it.

Or maybe he'd pick someone and break up with them and then he and Lily would sort it out.

She had no idea which way he would go — didn't even have a gut feeling about it — and so even though Lily knew that Benjy wanted to talk about it, knew that he wanted to give her the chance to siphon off some of the tension that was constantly building in her head, she just… she couldn't.

She just needed this to be over.

The appointment with Nigel from Mappin and Webb was, as Lily'd expected it would be, the worst four hours of her life.

Nigel on his own was insufferable — he'd walked in all 'I'm Nigel C Babbington the third, it's wonderful to make your acquaintance Mr Potter' in his top-hat-and-tails fucking accent — but couple that with the fact that she was sitting there watching James pick out engagement rings...

James, who she —

She spent most of the appointment exhaling hard and avoiding making eye contact with Benjy.

James didn't seem even remotely interested in the rings that Nigel was taking out of his pretentious little velvet-lined box and flashing around in front of him. He didn't perk up at the 'stunning diamond solitaires' or 'lovely three-diamond pieces', he had no opinion about yellow gold or white gold or platinum, and the fact that each ring was 'hand-set with scintillating diamonds' made absolutely no difference to him.

They kept having to re-shoot scenes because James would be looking down at his hands or making unenthusiastic, noncommittal sounds, and then he would huff and get all annoyed when they had to reset and do it all again. Lily snapped at him a few times — 'Well, if you would just look like a little excited, maybe we wouldn't have to keep fucking reshooting!' — but it only made him cross with her and then he shut down even more and it just wasn't fucking worth it.

James finally settled on a platinum ring with a one carat diamond solitaire and a diamond band that Nigel said was 'inspired by the Boscobel English rose' and the 'perfect marriage of romance and femininity'.

Nigel'd made a whole big show of selecting the tiny velvet box James would be presenting it in, but James, instead of fawning over it like Nigel apparently expected him to, just lifted it quickly from Nigel's outstretched hand and stuffed it into his pocket.

When Nigel finally left (after much blustering about shining the ring up nicely before opening the box on camera), they walked James out to Potters Fields Park (Benjy had laughed for a full minute when he'd suggested it and Lily gave in because they'd put him through so much and he deserved something) and sat him on one of the stone steps in the grass overlooking the Thames to film his diary. The sun was just peeking out behind the clouds and so the city looked soft, a bit warm, though not so bright that it overwhelmed the scene. They positioned him just so so that you could see the bright blue lines that made up Tower Bridge, and the people milling around in the background were just enough to give the scene a bit of movement without it being too much.

It was going to be a lovely little shot.

James shifted uncomfortably as Benjy set up the camera.

'Alright,' Lily clapped her hands together and tried to smile. 'So you know what we're going to be doing here, right?'

James nodded.

'Okay, great. So, uh — do you know who you're going to choose yet or?'

James shook his head. 'I — have an idea, but I — I don't know.'

'Okay, okay,' Lily nodded. She sounded peppy, like a fucking cheerleader in one of those movies for teenagers, and she wanted to throw herself over the wall into the Thames and just be done with it. 'That's okay. We can just talk in vague, general terms.'

James raised his eyebrows at her. 'I thought you wanted me to do that anyway.'

'Well, yeah,' Lily laughed awkwardly. 'See, you're an expert.' She whipped around and saw that Benjy was done with the camera. 'Alright, let's get started.'

She walked back behind the camera so that she was out of the frame and took a deep breath.

'Why don't you tell us a bit more about the woman you're planning on choosing tomorrow?'

James looked down at his hands and was quiet — for a minute, Lily thought that he was shutting down again, that he wasn't going to answer, but then he looked up and there was a softness in his eyes that hadn't been there before.

'She's amazing,' he said, and there was no way that he was faking the warmth in his voice. 'Everytime that I'm around her, I feel… invincible. Like everything is right in the world, like we can just forget everything else exists because it's just us.'

A hard knot formed in Lily's throat the moment James began speaking and she swallowed hard against it. She nodded, gestured for more, and James continued.

'She's easily the most amazing person I've ever met. She's funny and beautiful and dead clever. She gives me a run for my money.' James breathed a laugh and he looked down at his hands again for a moment.

'Every minute I'm around her, even when things are tough or tense or whatever — every minute I'm around her is better than every single one I'm not.'

Lily pulled in a long, slow breath, braced her hand against her knee. 'That's — that's great. Okay, uhm, have you put any thought into what your lives would be like together?'

'Yeah. Loads, actually.'

Lily's stomach bottomed out.

She swallowed hard, funnelled all her energy into keeping her voice calm and even. She was not, under any circumstances, going to have a breakdown. Not now, not in front of all these bloody tourists. Not in front of James. 'Any details you want to share?'

The left corner of James' mouth twitched just a bit before he bit it to hide his smile.

'Uh, I don't know, uhm…. I think the clearest picture I have is the two of us waking up one morning, like a Sunday, and we've had a bit of a lie in…' his smile broke free then, and he was so unbearably beautiful that Lily's chest hurt.

'And we go downstairs and we're in our dressing gowns and she's teasing me about how my hair is a wreck or something and then — we just put the kettle on and we turn on the radio and stand at the cooktop and make porridge and — I know it's nothing exciting, but that's the stuff I think about most. Just being able to be together and just be normal.

'So much about this is just… I mean, it's mad. It's so far from normal and… that's all I really want with her. I want to build something with her. I want to build a life.'

The more James talked, the larger the knot in Lily's throat grew until it was so large she didn't feel like she could breathe through it. Benjy looked at her at one point — she must have made some sort of sound — and frowned. 'You alright?'

She nodded jerkily. 'I'm fine.' She sucked in a sharp breath and looked up at the sky, blinked back the tears that were just starting to form in the corners of her eyes. She looked back down at James. 'Great,' her voice was rushed, short. 'Anything else you'd like to tell us?'

A slight crease formed between James' eyebrows and he shook his head.

Lily got increasingly short as they moved through their answers — when James talked about the diamond he'd picked and he reverted back to this closed off, cross, sad version of himself, she'd just about snapped.

'James! You were just all lovey dovey about whoever the fuck you're picking tomorrow! What is it about the ring that's throwing you? Surely you can muster up some of that energy.'

James shot her a scathing look before he circled back and tried again. 'The ring is beautiful — she's gorgeous and so I wanted a ring that spoke to that.'

He had to do it a few more times to get the anger out of his voice, but they got there in the end.

By the time they got back up to James' room after shooting the transitional shots, they were both at the end of their respective ropes.

They'd spent the entire walk back quietly sniping at each other, Benjy had long since given up moderating (really, he was a much better friend than Lily could've asked because she would have given up ages ago), and they could barely even look at each other as they walked through the door of his hotel room.

James took the ring out of his pocket and set it down hard on the dressing table as Benjy shut the door behind him.

'We aren't staying.' Lily's tone was clipped and she heard Benjy sigh as he walked past her to gather up the filming things he'd left in the corner of James' room that afternoon. 'Benjy just has to get his filming things.'

James sank down onto the end of his bed and dropped his head into his hands. He was quiet for a long moment, and Lily looked down at her feet and watched as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. She was still angry — she could feel the fight simmering in her veins, could feel the words she'd snap at him on her tongue — but she was determined to keep her head. They were so close to being done with this, so close to getting out of here without having some big, stupid, explosive row —

'I'm sorry.'

Her head snapped up.

The look on James' face could've stopped a thousand hearts.

'Lily, I'm so sorry. I'm just — I'm tired and cross and I — my feelings for you haven't gone away no matter what I do, and tomorrow is —'

James looked at her for a moment, just a moment before he dropped his gaze, but the moment was enough.

James had never been good at hiding his emotions, at disguising them, and try as he might, the dark shadows under his eyes, the deep lines on his forehead, the impossibly sad look in his eyes….

He needed her. It was only a question of whether or not she was going to be there.

Lily turned to Benjy.

She opened her mouth to say something — she didn't know what — but Benjy shook his head. 'It's alright, Lil, I know the drill.' He smiled softly at them as he slung his bag over his shoulder, stepped forward to shake James' hand before he turned and pulled Lily into a brief hug.

'You two can still call it off you know,' he whispered into her hair, and Lily sucked in a sharp breath to ward off the tears burning in her eyes. She pulled back, smiled at Benjy, and hoped that the look on her face would tell him everything he needed to know.

'Thanks,' she said. It wasn't enough, was nowhere near enough to tell him exactly what she meant. It was thanks for being there, for listening, for pushing her, for giving her the space she needed when she needed it. Thanks for dealing with all the bullshit they'd put him through, for sitting through all those painfully awkward car rides.

It wasn't enough, but Benjy seemed to understand. He squeezed her forearms in a bracing sort of way and smiled softly at her before he released her and started across the room.

When Benjy pulled the door shut behind him, the tension in the room shifted. It settled heavily in her gut and she couldn't quite read it — was it anticipation or dread or —

James moved towards her and Lily immediately held up her hands.

He froze. 'What?'

'I,' Lily shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet. 'I shouldn't have — I should leave.' She spun around, looking for her bag and coat and all the fucking folders she'd brought in with her earlier, shook her head as she watched James fist a hand in his hair out of the corner of her eye.

'You don't have to leave.'

Her eyes snapped back to his, more because of his tone than anything else. She knew he looked sad, knew that he'd pretty much stopped sleeping since the ceremony in Paris, hadn't seen him eat anything properly in about as long, but she hadn't ever heard him sound the way that he did just then, like every bit of energy and fight had been sapped out of him.

Still, even though her heart was begging her to stay, to take him in her arms, to call Peter and shout, 'Fuck the show, James and I are together and we're leaving,' the logical side of her was still winning out.

She shook her head. 'James, I,' she closed her eyes, pulled in a slow, steady breath. 'I have to leave. This — James, tomorrow is — '

'I fucking know what tomorrow is, Lily,' James snapped. His tone was sharp now, a fire she hadn't expected burning in his eyes when he looked at her.

Her temper kicked to life before she could stop it, and she threw up her hands, her voice rising in volume. 'Then why the fuck are you acting like I can stay?!'

'Because,' James' voice matched hers in volume and ferocity, 'I would have thought you would want to help me come up with a plan!'

'Plan?!' She scoffed and watched a look of hurt flicker across James' face, 'There is no plan, there can't be a plan because you're refusing to take the only way out that we've fucking come up with!'

James narrowed his eyes at her. 'You know bloody well why I can't do that.'

'Yeah, James, I've heard your reasons,' her tone was scathing and she knew he heard the the insecurity there. 'I just don't think you understand that that is literally our only way out!'

'That's only because you're so fucking stubborn and refuse to think of any reasonable way out of this!'

'You signed a contract,' Lily said, her voice dropping in volume and pitch as she tried to hammer home to finality of it all. 'There is nothing that either of us can do about what has to happen tomorrow and —'

'Only because we let it get here!'

'Oh no,' she shook her head vigorously, took a few steps closer to him, hands on her hips, 'don't try to act like we did this — '

'You're right,' James said, nodding, 'we didn't do this, you fucking did.'

Her eyebrows shot up. 'I did?!'

'Yes! You kept insisting that there was nothing we could do, no way out, that I had to fucking go through with it, that our fucking feelings,' he gestured quickly between the two of them, 'didn't matter because I signed a fucking piece of PAPER.'

'Well they don't,' Lily was practically screaming now, and even though she knew that anyone walking by would be able to hear them, she also couldn't find it within herself to give a shit was she was this fucking angry. 'They don't fucking matter, James, not when every single lawyer that uTV has can bring lawsuits down onto your head because you decided to catch feelings for your fucking producer!'

'Oh, well thank god you're looking out for my best interests here, Lily, I really wouldn't know what to do without you making sure everything was alright.' His tone was scathingly sarcastic and Lily rolled her eyes.

'Please, James, stop acting like I fucking made you do this — '

'No, you're right,' James said, nodding, 'I was a fucking idiot for agreeing to do this show — '

Lily shouted, 'Exactly,' but James just shook his head and talked over her, 'Because I fucking knew from our first lunch meeting that this,' he gestured between them again, and even though his voice was still angry, the gesture was softer this time, 'was more than anything I'd get out of this bloody show.'

Lily barely suppressed the impulse to roll her eyes again. 'Then why the fuck did you go through with it? If you honestly felt that way, which I doubt, why go through with the whole fucking series?!'

James had scoffed at her doubt, but now he just looked thoroughly exasperated. He shrugged. 'Fuck, I don't know. Because I'm a fucking idiot? Because I'd signed a contract and everything was already in motion and I felt obligated to go through with it? Because Sirius had pushed me to do this and I didn't want to back out and have him think I was falling back into my post-football depression?! A million fucking reasons, Lily, none of them good!

'I regret so much about this whole thing,' he continued, 'how much — how much I've hurt Summer and Liza and everyone else on this bloody show. I hate that I was dating them, letting them think that they had a chance, when really, I couldn't stop thinking about you.'

She wasn't sure when the tenor had shifted from argument to confessional, wasn't sure how to feel now that James was looking at her like he was, now that he was closer and his tone was softer. They needed to get back to fighting. She wouldn't do something she'd definitely regret if they were fighting.

'I regret that we started like this, that I didn't get to date you properly, that every fucking piece of our relationship had to be some giant secret. I regret so much about this, but even if I could go back and decide not to sign that paper, I wouldn't do it. Because I got to go to that lunch and meet you and then I got to fall in love — '

'James,' she held up her hands again, and James fell silent. His forehead creased, and she knew how much this, she, was hurting him, but she couldn't. She couldn't hear it and then watch him propose to someone else tomorrow. She knew it was true, she'd be an idiot not to know, the way he looked at her, but she couldn't hear it.

Hearing it was too final, too real, too much.

'The bridge,' she shook her head. 'Everything you said this afternoon by the bridge — you… you have to have feelings for one of them. You couldn't have made that up.'

'I didn't make it up.' He held her gaze, and even though Lily wanted to drop her gaze, to duck her head and run away, his gaze had her pinned where she stood.

'Lily, every single word was about you. You're who I want my Sunday mornings with. You're who I want teasing me about my hair. You're who I want to spend every single day with, to build a life with. I want to get out of this fucking mess and I want to put on the radio and drink tea and laugh and dance around the kitchen with you.'

Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes before she could stop them, and she reached up to wipe them hastily off her cheeks.

'Evans, just,' James stepped forward, watching her as he went to judge whether or not she was going to continue to push him away. When she didn't move, he took her hands in his, and Lily bit her lip to stop the sobs now threatening to work their way out of her, squeezed his hands just a bit tighter. 'Stay with me tonight. We don't have to talk about any of this, just — stay. Please.'

He was asking her, begging her, and even though the logical side of her knew that this was a terrible idea, knew that she absolutely should say no, knew that she wasn't doing either of them any favours, she stepped closer, rested her head on his chest, and nodded.

They'd already done so much damage. What was one more night?

James dipped his head down, buried his nose in her hair, pulled in a long, slow, shaky breath, and it was that, finally, that broke her.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, tried her best to muffle the sob that escaped in the fabric of his t shirt.

James pulled back, moved his hands to cup her cheeks, and even though she knew he didn't believe it, it eased pain in her stomach when he brushed her tears away and said, 'It's going to be alright, Evans.'

It wasn't and they both knew it.

But they weren't talking tonight.

xxx

She moved one hand from his waist to wind her fingers in the hair at the base of his neck, lifted herself up onto her toes, and pulled his mouth to hers.

His hands moved immediately from her face to her hair, his fingers threading through the strands in the way they always did when she was kissing him, and he stepped forward until their bodies were pressed together.

Their kisses were usually rushed, heated, full of roaming hands and frantic breathing, but this kiss was something wholly different. James' lips moved slowly, purposefully over her own, and though his hands were in her hair and then they were sliding over her, tracing down her neck, over the swell of her breasts, her waist, her hips, it was like he was memorising her, committing every bit of her to memory instead of trying to escalate things. Instead of lighting her up, instead of pushing her to the edge and making her desperate for more, for him, he was taking his time. He was weighing her curves and tracing angles and brushing his fingers, his palms, against every part of her that he could reach.

It hit her, then, as he moved his mouth to her neck and he started whispering words she couldn't catch into her skin. It hit her, what he was doing.

He was saying goodbye.

Lily felt more tears escape, but instead of pulling away, she pressed closer to him, let her body, her hands mimic James' slow, steady, almost reverent pace.

She let her hands run a bit slower up his sides as she stripped off his t shirt. Pressed a few more kisses across his chest. Let her fingers linger longer on the sensitive spots of him, the ones she knew drove him mad.

When they finally fell into bed, she pulled him over her, pressed him to her until there wasn't a breath of space between them. She wanted him to surround her, to fill up all the space between her and the rest of the world, for their bodies, together, to block out everything else, space, time, contracts, commitments, all of it, everything.

When they finished and James climbed back into bed beside her, they laid on their sides, foreheads pressed together in whispered conversation, his hands in her hair and hers on his chest. They didn't talk about anything in particular, she couldn't really even remember, but what they talked about then wasn't the point. It was the feeling, the bubble, the soft intimacy they'd created.

She wasn't sure when they drifted off, legs tangled, bodies still pressed together, silence wrapping around them, but the last thing she remembered was how warm he was against her and how soft his voice was in her ear and how, in that moment, she would have done anything to stop the sun coming up the next morning.

That wasn't really smutty, but I still wanted to mark it off just in case.

And I reckon I might have time to edit another chapter today. It won't be for a while, but I think I want to post a second chapter so... stay tuned for a few hours. I have to go visit family etc etc but later. See you then xx