Force of Habit

by elanev91

Lily's been riding the same train back and forth to work for the last two and a half years and lowkey fancies the guy who sits one row up from her usual seat. TW: parent death discussed

So remember when I said that I wasn't going to write any more fics probably? Well, I lied.

Enjoy :)

(P.S. I hope you and your loved ones are doing well, especially in light of everything. Sending extra good health and happiness vibes your way x)

---

It's really easy to develop patterns.

Without even realising it, you end up eating the same thing for breakfast every morning, wearing the same five outfits, more or less, on rotation. You develop habits — like going to the library every Saturday afternoon to choose the next week's read and stopping by the shop every Thursday evening on your way home from work (why Thursday? No reason) to get groceries for the week ahead — and no matter how much those self care, lifestyle experts tell you that you need to be intentional about these sorts of things, it's always easier to let them just happen to you. To fall into them without bothering yourself about them.

Because there's something comforting about patterns. When you don't have a life, when you don't have anything else going on, you always have your routines. You have reasons that you would have to turn down a drinks invitation, assuming you'd ever get one, because, oh, well, actually, you like to take your mum's dog out for really long walks on Friday nights because mum can't take her out like that anymore and, you know, Radar gets restless if she doesn't get her walks. And you can't let Radar down.

Marlene insists — because Marlene always bloody insists — that these little routines of Lily's are really just a way to avoid doing anything different, but if Lily ignores her whenever she says this, or effectively deflects the criticism, then it doesn't count. And, no matter what Marlene says, Lily's right, she thinks, in arguing that there is some use in letting herself live inside the groove of her routines.

Grooves which are definitely not, as Marlene insists, ruts.

She's just….

She's just still getting used to everything.

Because Lily had moved, quite suddenly, back home to Ardsley twenty seven months ago. She'd been in her last year of university, her last term, actually, and then her dad….

Her dad.

Her dad had worked in the mines, coming up right around the time that everything was starting to go to utter shit — cheers, Maggie — and he'd had to jump around colliery to colliery through the Dearne Valley as mine after mine found itself shut down. Lily couldn't remember most of it — she was born in '89, and her dad had finally gotten stable employment at Grimethorpe then — but she remembered him moving down to Goldthorpe the year the Grimethorpe mine closed, remembered how he rode the bus every day for a year, leaving well early and coming back, his neck smudged with the coal dust he hadn't caught, so late at night that Lily barely got more than two seconds to say goodnight.

And even though she knew that mining was bad — her father, even in those early days, had a hacking cough that Lily could hear through the walls of their house, and she learnt later that coal, burning coal, was trapping the heat close to the planet and was, one day, going to drown them all if they didn't do something about it, but even though she knew it was bad, mining was also the only thing that her father knew how to do, the only thing that so many men in her village knew how to do. She wanted a different future for him, one that cleared his lungs of the soot she saw on his handkerchiefs, one that didn't melt the ice at the ends of the world, but Lily knew, even then, even when she was young, that they were living in a country that didn't care about people like her father. That would sooner see them out of work to punish the unions than help retrain them to do something better. Something that wouldn't fill their lungs with poison.

When Lily went to university, she learnt that it wasn't just people like her father that this country didn't care about.

But she'd left uni, left London — it was too big for her anyway, too much — and she came back to Ardsley and, now, she's just never left. Her sister lives in Surrey, the fucking prat, is always calling home and talking to mum, and Lily can hear her wiping the North out of her accent with each passing phone call, can hear her starting to adjust herself to fit into this new, posher place than the place that she came from, and it pisses Lily off to no end, this erasure.

Like she should be ashamed of where she's from. Like she has any fucking right to be ashamed.

Part of her thinks that that, really, is why she stays in Ardsley. Yeah, it's because her mum needs her — Lily had meant to move in temporarily, but the moment she had, it had become abundantly clear that her mother just couldn't continue to cope on her own — but it's also because she doesn't want to turn into Petunia. Doesn't want to turn into someone who doesn't talk about how Thatcher all but killed their father, someone who doesn't want people to hear her thick Northern accent. Lily's proud — stupidly, and she knows it, stupidly proud like her father had always been — and that, too, she knows, deep down in the pits of her stomach that she only ever lets herself think about when she's alone in her room and in the middle of an emotional spell that makes herself start admitting such things….

Well, she knows that part of her stayed around because she was just too proud to go back.

To admit that she'd broken. To admit that she'd needed help and she'd been too bloody proud to ask for it.

But she likes Ardsley well enough, you know. It's a small village and sometimes she feels claustrophobic here, but she likes the nature path that runs through, the one that runs from the village centre up toward the River Dearne. She likes how quiet it is, how, when she and Radar are on their walks, sometimes it's only the two of them in the whole world.

It was never like that in London. There was alway something going on, always someone shouting or busking or some ambulance barrelling down the street.

Sure, sometimes she misses that energy, but she likes the quiet well enough.

And it's not like she doesn't get some taste of life in a city. Because for the last twenty six months, she's been taking the train north to Leeds every day to get to work. It's a long journey — an hour train each way and a bus to the Barnsley Interchange and back — but she likes her job with NanoWind. She works on the administrative side of things, mostly making copies and booking meetings and taking phone calls, but her boss is kind and knows that Lily cares about these things, cares about them in a much bigger way than the limits of her job allow, and so she lets Lily sit in on meetings with contractors, trusts Lily's opinion about the plans they're presenting or the wind energy numbers they're going to share with the government.

It gets her emotional sometimes, looking at these things they're making. These machines that, in thirty years, won't make anyone's lungs seize up with cancer. That won't add any more carbon dioxide into the air.

This morning, it's bitterly cold when Lily walks out of her mother's house and starts down Chapel Street towards the bus stop at St Pauls Parade. She wraps her jacket more tightly around herself and, after a bit of adjusting and fumbling with her lunch bag, she manages to tuck her enormous scarf inside her jacket, puffing it up just so so that it's high enough to dip her face into when the biting wind starts blowing again but not so high that the wind can blow down the top of her jacket and freeze every single one of her internal organs.

It's quiet out this morning, but it's always quiet here, especially this early on Friday morning.

She's made this walk so many times now that she's got it down to a very near science. She arrives at the bus stop just a few minutes before the 218 is due to arrive, has timed it perfectly, so she's standing in the cold for the shortest time possible before she boards the bus and starts trundling west towards Barnsley.

She moves in something of a haze through her commute now. The first few weeks, she'd stared avidly out the window, had spent a lot of time thinking about how the tiny village she lived in gave way to the larger, sprawling Barnsley. She used to look around as she walked swiftly from the bus stop into the train station, used to watch other passengers rolling through the interchange, but now, two and a half years later, Lily doesn't need to look anymore. She knows where she's going without having to look and everything sort of blurs in front of her eyes.

The train to Leeds is bang on time this morning — something that isn't always the case, much to her dismay, but at least this part of her journey doesn't impact anything other than how quickly she has to run out of the train station in Leeds to her office building on New Market street — and Lily tucks her bag closer into her side as she taps the button on the carriage door and steps inside.

Lily has been sitting in the same carriage — and in the same seat if she can manage it — on the train to Leeds for almost as long as she's been making the commute. She always takes the 8.08 out of Barnsley, always sits in the penultimate car, always sits, if she can, along the left hand side of the carriage up against the window in the third row of seats from the back door. There's no reason why, really, she just likes that seat, and she likes being able to look out the window, when she fancies it, to watch the landscape outside go from town to country and back again as they move north.

Her seat is open this morning, and she slides in and drops down before anyone walking in at the door at the front of the carriage gets any ideas. She perches on the end of her seat as she adjusts herself — unbuttoning her coat, stowing her bag between her feet, unwrapping her scarf — and glances around, innocently, you know, to the aisle seat on the right side of the carriage, one row up from hers, just barely catching her smile before it reaches her lips.

Because that bloke is there again.

He's there every morning — or, you know, most mornings — and so she shouldn't be surprised, and she's not, you know, really, but she is pleased nonetheless.

She'd made the mistake of telling Marlene and Mary, her friends from uni, about him and now they — Marlene — constantly badger her for pictures of him.

Marlene McKinnon: just take a stealth picture Lily IT ISNT HARD

Except that it is hard and it's also an invasion of privacy.

And also the one time she'd nearly done it just to shut Marlene up, her flash had gone off and Lily had jerked her phone away, nearly chucked her phone straight into the window, and ended up with only a blurry picture of the carriage ceiling to show for it.

Lily isn't really even sure why she'd brought him up with her friends to begin with, other than the fact that he's honestly disgustingly handsome (and, god, he really is, with his messy black hair and tortoise shell glasses and warm brown skin and colourful, cosy jumpers sort of aesthetic, he is exactly her type, it's almost comical). It was something different, maybe, from what she usually told them about, something new beyond oh, nothing new w me, just training through the north per usual, something that made her life seem like it had more happening in it instead of the bland, repetitive reality.

And she knows that Mary and Marlene don't judge her. They understand why she'd left uni, why she hadn't come back to London, gone back to school, why she lives this small life that is so unlike what she'd always professed to want —

She knows that they won't judge her. That they aren't judging her. But sometimes she feels like she needs a little more excitement in her life. Like she needs something to tell them about.

And this man, whoever he is, is the part of her day that Lily looks forward to the most.

Which sounds sort of weird. And, shit, she doesn't mean it like that.

She just means that he's embedded himself in her daily routine, whether he realises it or not. He and all the other people in this carriage, but, really, mostly him.

Because she looks for him first when she gets into her seat — not that she's looking — and she looks up to see if it's him when she hears someone sighing, checks if it's his phone ringing, if he's the one that's talking in that loud, ringing voice that ensures everyone in the carriage can hear him.

It's not him, it's never him — he's usually got a book open in his lap, actually, always a paperback, and he usually has the cover curled back in that way that you can really only do with a book that's been incredibly well loved. It's never him, but she looks anyway.

Probably for the excuse.

But it's just because he's so part of her routine that she really even notices him. Honestly. It's a weird sort of comfort, seeing the same people populating her space every day, seeing how, even outside her tiny village, there are aspects of the small about everything she does. There are always things that can condense the world, can make this big, sprawling place seem small. Seem familiar.

It's routine, habit, that brings them together.

Lily has her head buried in this week's book — Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch, which she's really enjoying — as the train slides north, jotting notes down in her notes app in her mobile to stop herself writing in the margins. It's the one flaw of library books, honestly, that she can't just underline and scribble her every insignificant thought down in the margins so that, later, she can be embarrassed by the things she was thinking her first time through. She's so engrossed — almost embarrassingly so because she knows what she looks like when she's deep in concentration like this because Marlene had once shown her a sneaky photo she'd taken of her studying for exams and it had been absolutely horrifying — that she's surprised when the train stops in the station. She finishes the paragraph she's on as people in the carriage around her start getting up before she grabs her bookmark from where she'd jammed it between some of the book's later pages and tucks the book under her arm as she grabs her bag off the ground. She's about halfway to the door when someone speaks behind her.

'Hey, uh. Excuse me?'

Lily feels someone touch her lightly on the back of her elbow and she turns, a little bit more quickly than was probably necessary, and finds the bloke, right-up-one, looking at her.

He's wearing a dark, charcoal grey coat today — because apparently he's one of those people who has multiple coats — and it's open to reveal a soft cream coloured jumper underneath. He's taller than she'd thought, though it wasn't like she thought he was short, you know, because his head was always well over the back of the seat, but she has to tip her head back a little bit to fully meet his eyes. She looks at him for a moment, her eyes on his — they're a warm, soft hazel and they're full, full of something that she can't quite put her finger on — before she notices that he's holding something.

Her scarf.

Shit.

'You left this,' he says. His voice is soft and his Northern accent is thick as treacle. God, she loves it. He holds her scarf out to her and she takes it, her fingers shaking a little bit in a way that is deeply, deeply embarrassing.

'Thanks.' She loops it around her neck and pats it against her chest like, stay there you git. He smiles at her.

'No problem.'

He stands there for a second, a beat, and Lily thinks he's going to say something else, but then someone clears their throat behind them, and right-up-one whips around.

'Oh, shit.' He dips his head, embarrassed. 'Sorry.'

And then, with one last glance at Lily and a little wave, he turns, steps out of the carriage, and starts walking swiftly down the platform.

She thinks about the way that he looked at her for the rest of the day.

---

Right-up-one isn't on the train that evening on Lily's way home — sometimes he isn't and she wonders what he's doing, if he's working late or if he'd just left the office a few minutes later than usual and missed train — and she lets herself fall back into her book for the duration. It's dark outside the window except for the passing glow of the street lamps as they head out of the city, but once they hit the countryside, it becomes absolutely pitch black outside. She gets occasionally distracted by her reflection in the black window but, mostly, she reads her book.

Her commute is always hardest in the winter time, when she's standing in the dark at the bus station both morning and evening. As much as she likes autumn and winter, even she has to admit that there's something to be said for not living all her daylight hours within the confines of her office cube.

The wind is bitingly cold this evening, so she puts her book away in her bag when she reaches the bus stop and stuffs her hands into her coat pockets to keep them warm.

It's going to be absolute hell taking Radar on her walk tonight.

Her mum is sitting in the armchair by the fire when Lily walks in half an hour later.

'Hiya, mum.' Lily does her best to shake the cold off her as she slides her coat off, but the chill is sticking to her bones.

'Oh, hi there, love. How was work?' Her mum sounds tired, worn out, and Lily can't quite see her in the dim light — her mum hadn't turned on any of the lamps, it's just the light of the fire — so she can't get a read on her.

'Oh, 's alright.' Lily switches on the lamp on the side table and sits down on the sofa opposite. 'What'd you do today?'

'Bit of gardening,' her mum says.

'Gardening?' Lily breathes a surprised laugh. 'It's below zero out. And windy!'

Her mum shrugs. 'Well, the bulbs won't plant themselves.'

The bulbs. The bloody bulbs.

Lily sighs. 'Still —'

'I'm not so fragile, Lily,' her mum says. Her voice is soft, but there's definitely a ferocity underneath. And Lily knows she's right, her mum, but it's hard to accept that when she remembers, vividly, how broken her mother had been just a few short years before.

And a lot can change in a short space of time, sure, but Lily didn't think she'd ever forget her mother's anguish. That, hell, she'd ever stop jabbing her fingers into her own wounds. Reopening things all over again.

But Lily nods, looks down at her knees, and she's about to ask what they should have for dinner when Radar comes skidding into the lounge, her favourite toy — a stuffed lion that Lily had gotten her nephew that Petunia had sent back, sans note — clamped tight between her teeth. She's growling happily, her tail wagging furiously, and Lily, knowing her well enough to know exactly what she wants, gets to her feet without any further preamble.

Radar starts jumping excitedly, and Lily laughs and reaches down to pat her head. 'Alright,' she says, shaking her head as she scratches Radar's ears, 'let me get your leash.'

'Don't you want to eat first?' her mum says. 'You must be starving.'

Almost as though on cue, Lily's stomach growls, but it doesn't do it loudly enough that her mother hears.

'I'm okay,' Lily says. 'I'll eat when we get back.'

Her mum studies her for a minute, a contemplative expression on her face that feels, to Lily, unbearably familiar. These moments where she sees her own expressions reflected back at her are always so bizarre, like living, breathing reminders that you are always a little bit of the places and the people that made you.

'Okay,' her mum says. 'Well, I can get started on dinner while you're gone.'

'Yeah, okay.' Lily walks out to the front door and grabs Radar's lead off the hook. Radar is still jumping around, and Lily has to physically hold her still to hook the leash on her. Lily sticks her head around the doorframe into the lounge as she pulls her jacket on. 'Do you need me to pick up anything on the way home?'

Her mum shakes her head and Lily watches as she pushes herself slowly, stiffly, to her feet. 'No,' she waves her hand, her other braced against the arm of the sofa as she steadies herself. 'I'll just make spaghetti bolognese if that sounds good to you.'

'Yeah,' Lily waves her own hand as her mum starts crossing the lounge. 'Whatever you want. I'll eat anything.'

Her mum reaches up and pats Lily's cheek, a soft, tender gesture that tugs at some buried part of Lily's heart. 'Have a good walk, love,' she says, and she reaches down to run her hand along Radar's back. 'And you, too, Ray. Be a good girl.'

'She's always good,' Lily says, knowing full well that it's a bold faced lie. Last week, Radar had chased a duck damn near into the river and Lily had had to run — using muscles and lung capacity she hadn't used since running track in school, mind — at top speed to catch her before Radar ended up getting an impromptu bath.

Her mum flashes her a knowing smile, but she doesn't say anything else before Lily turns on her heel and walks back out into the cold.

She walks along quietly for a minute, but by the time she's down the road, she's pulled her mobile out of her pocket. She flicks through Instagram, then Twitter, but eventually the light in her eyes messes too much with her vision and she really needs to make sure she doesn't get run over by a car.

She clicks into her phone app and taps the number at the top of her favourites. The line rings in her ear for a minute before Marlene answers.

'Hey, babe! How're you?'

'I'm good.' Lily's smiling already — just hearing her best friend's voice is enough to knock her out of the weird funk she hadn't realised she was in. Aggressively southern and painfully posh Marlene's accent might be, it never fails to make Lily smile. 'How're you?'

'Oh, you know.' Lily can practically see the way Marlene had probably just waved her hand in that light, dismissive way she does. 'Getting by.'

Lily hums knowingly. 'You got any proper sleep yet?'

Marlene laughs. 'Fuck no. McGonagall is trying to run us all fairly, you know, but it's impossible to sleep, even when she forces us to go home.'

Marlene had stumbled, as posh people always seemed to — no shade, she loved Marlene, but still — into a job in Minerva McGonagall's office. Marlene had, as Marlene was one to do, swiftly made a name for herself on the staff and, now that McGonagall is running for Labour leadership, Marlene is one of the key strategists for the campaign.

Lily doesn't really understand what Marlene does. She just knows it involves a lot of time on Twitter and Instagram, a lot of data, and a lot of phone calls with journalists.

'You need to sleep, Marlene,' Lily says, and, again, she reminds herself so much of her mother that she considers, fleetingly, lying down in the middle of Doncaster Road.

'I'll sleep when I'm dead,' Marlene says. It's an old line, one of her favourites, and she knows it makes Lily chastise her, so she sweeps quickly past it. 'But anyway, tell me about work. Did you finish that policy draft you were working on?'

'Yeah,' Lily nods even though she knows Marlene can't see her. 'It needs work, but.' She shrugs. 'It sounded coherent to me, but I sent it to Hestia, so we'll see what she has to say.'

'Hestia loves you,' Marlene says. 'I'm sure it'll be fine.'

'Loves me or not,' Lily says, laughing a little, 'doesn't mean there aren't things wrong with it.'

'I wish you would trust yourself more,' Marlene says. Her tone is earnest, surprisingly so, because Marlene is rarely ever earnest. Lily's quiet for a second because she's not sure what to say until finally she decides to just change the subject.

'So, oh, I didn't tell you —'

'What?' Marlene says, her enthusiasm plowing over the rest of Lily's sentence.

'The bloke from the train talked to me today.'

'WHAT?!'

Lily laughs and switches the phone to her opposite ear as she and Radar approach the zebra crossing, sandwiching it against her shoulder as she wraps Radar's leash around her hand to stop her just trotting into the road.

'It wasn't some big thing,' she says, taking the mobile in her hand again. 'He just handed me my scarf because I almost left it on the seat this morning.'

'Okay, but still,' Marlene says, 'that's progress.' And Lily can hear the smile in her voice and god it makes her chest ache. She misses her, misses Marlene so much.

She really needs to make it down to London. Just stop faffing about and book the fucking train already.

'"Progress".' Lily laughs. 'What are you talking about, progress.'

'This is how your romantic comedy begins,' Marlene says. 'This is your coffee shop. Your weird internet forum for bookish people.'

Lily snorts. 'You've been spending too much time with Dorcas.'

Dorcas, Marlene's girlfriend, is very big on the romantic comedy scene. "Very big" in that she's utterly fucking obsessed with them and, since she and Marlene started going out a few months ago, she's made Marlene watch literally every rom com ever made.

Marlene laughs, but it's that light, giggly sort of laugh she always gets whenever they're talking about Dorcas.

'Piss off,' she says. 'I'm just saying, honestly, this could be the start.'

'Of something new?' Lily's so near to laughing it's almost impossible to get the joke out. 'Feels so right to be here with you?'

Marlene groans so loudly she drowns out Lily's laughter. 'Fuck off.'

The truth is — and Lily thinks about this as she and Radar walk along the path after she and Marlene have hung up and it's just her and the torch light on her phone and Radar's frantic sniffing — the truth is that part of her does feel like it's maybe the start of something. Or, you know, it could be. If this was something that was going to happen, it could be. The start. Right-up-one giving her back her scarf.

The truth is that she probably spends a little more time thinking about that bloke than is strictly normal or necessary.

She just likes the look of him, you know? The vibe he puts out.

It's ridiculous. She's fully aware.

But that doesn't make it any less true.

Lily's face is fully wind burned by the time she gets home half an hour later, but the house is warm and the smell of tomato sauce hits her full in the face the minute she opens the door. It's her favourite thing about coming home, how sometimes she walks in and she's immediately bowled over by the smell of her mum's cooking. It's better than letting the smell grow around her, because then it's too subtle for her to really appreciate it. She'd sit outside in the cold all night for the flash of bliss she feels during moments like this.

'We're back.' Lily leans down and unclips Radar's lease, and the dog immediately takes off into the kitchen, her nose going a million metres a second.

'Dya have a nice walk, then?' her mum says. Lily can't tell if she's talking to her or the dog, but she answers all the same.

'Yeah. It was cold,' she shrugs out of her jacket and hangs it onto her hook, 'but it was nice and quiet.'

Good thinking weather.

Lily walks onto the train on Monday morning, hair tangled up from the wind but, otherwise, definitely more dolled up than usual — part of her hates herself for that, honestly, that she'd swiped a bit of lipstick on that morning hoping to rekindle something that honestly probably hadn't been kindled in the first place, but she'd managed to talk herself into quite a bit over the weekend — but a quick scan of the carriage as she makes her way to her usual seat reveals that right-up-one is definitely not here today. Whether he's in another carriage — perhaps heard her thoughts from wherever it is that he gets off the train, perhaps decided to take any other train in the world to avoid her — or he's just not going into work today, she isn't sure, but she definitely can't ignore the sinking feeling in her gut either way.

Chat with: Marlene McKinnon & Mary MacDonald

Marlene McKinnon: have you snogged him yet yes or yes (8:09)

Mary MacDonald: OMg Mar (08:10)

Lily Evans: he's not even here lads :/ (08:10)

Marlene McKinnon: fuckign hell (08:11)

And she's not obsessed with him — really she isn't — but she can't deny that it's a little strange, a little unsettling, not seeing him here in the morning like this.

Though maybe it's stranger to her that she's so used to seeing him. That he well and truly has become part of her life, even in this incredibly small way.

And maybe she's not the only one feeling some type of way after all, because on Tuesday morning, right-up-one is still sitting to the right but decidedly not up one when she gets on the train, and he's turned towards the door and he smiles, smiles, when he sees her.

She sits in her usual seat, but she drops her book down onto her lap instead of tucking into it like she usually does. And she can see him looking at her out of the corner of her eye — she's trying not to look at him, but looking or not, the effort of it, of directing her attention, makes her cheeks heat — and she knows she should just talk to him, but she doesn't know what to say.

It's not fucking rocket science, that's what Marlene would say, but it feels quite a bit like building bloody rockets at the minute.

She looks up again — finally, like, properly looks up — as the train starts out of the station and her eyes immediately catch on his. She breathes a startled laugh and reaches up to tuck a piece of hair nervously back behind her ear.

He smiles at her. 'Hi.'

She smiles automatically, an immediate response to his expression, and she knows her cheeks are pink, but she refuses to let herself duck her head.

'Hi.' She pauses for a beat. Swallows. Gets her bearings. Overcomes the fact that talking to a stranger on the train is overriding every single one of her baser instincts. 'Thanks for giving me my scarf back the other day.'

His smile widens, brightens, and he turns a little in his seat so he can face her. 'Yeah, course. It was a nice scarf.'

Lily laughs. 'Is that the only reason you gave it back, then?'

He nods, amusement shining in his eyes. 'I thought about keeping it for myself, you know, but it was cold yesterday, so I didn't feel right, making you go without.'

She smirks. 'What a gentleman.'

His smile widens, and she's trying to keep it together, but bloody hell, his smile's infectious.

'Glad you think so.'

Lily rolls her eyes at him, but he just leans over the edge of his seat, extends his hand across the aisle. 'I'm James, by the way.'

Lily takes his hand — it's bloody enormous, but his hand folds easily around hers — and she squeezes slightly as she shakes. 'Lily.'

He returns her squeeze, just the barely there pressure of his palm against hers, and he smiles again. 'Nice to officially meet you, Lily.'

And fucking hell if she isn't smiling again.

'Likewise.'

Her hand almost feels numb when their hands part, like her fingers are full of static, and she grabs her mobile out of her jacket pocket to prove to herself that her hand still works, her thumb clicking, automatically, the button on the side to illuminate the screen. James is watching her, an expression on his face like he's trying to read her, trying to understand what she wants him to do — keep talking or leave her alone — and, because she doesn't want him to get any wrong ideas, like that she's checking the time because she can't wait to be away from him, Lily clears her throat.

'So….' Lily starts turning her mobile over and over in her hands and she wills herself to still, to stop looking so fucking nervous. 'When do you get on? You're always on the train when I get on.' She almost kicks herself because admitting that she notices him all the time is probably the same as admitting that she looks for him every day which is probably the same as admitting that she's pathetic and possibly desperate.

James laughs and shakes his head, like he's deeply amused at her nerves. Not that she's nervous.

'Sheffield,' he says, leaning onto the arm of his seat so that he's basically dangling the top half of his torso across the aisle.

Lily gapes at him. 'And you take the train all the way to bloody Leeds? One city to another?'

James laughs again, and she quite likes the sound of it. It's soft, but she can tell that he's intentionally quietening it because of the fact that they're in a train carriage. There's a deep, resonant quality about it that makes her want to hear his laugh ring out somewhere public where he can really let it rip.

'I'm from Sheffield originally,' he says, and he reaches up to brush his hair back out of his eyes as he shifts around in his seat. She's not sure why he doesn't just sit up properly, but he seems determined to carry on leaning like that so that he can face her. 'My mum and dad taught at the university.'

Lily doesn't miss the past tense.

'Basically,' James shrugs, and the gesture is so unbelievably light and easy, 'I was already working in Leeds when I decided to move home. And I like my job, you know. I like the company, so it didn't feel right to leave.'

Lily hums thoughtfully. 'What do you do?'

'I'm an urban designer,' James says. He taps the messenger bag on the floor between his feet. 'This baby is chockablock with brownfield reuse plans.'

Lily snorts but, also, she can't help but be a little impressed. 'I'm glad that someone's doing something about all the brownfields in Leeds.'

James smiles at her, clearly pleased that she knew what he was talking about without having to explain himself. 'We're not part of the green belt for nothing.'

His smile is a little teasing now, and she rolls her eyes at him before she can catch herself. This, though, just makes his smile wider.

'Tell me about what kind of projects you're working on right now,' Lily says, settling back in her chair. She's leaning up against the window so that she can get a better look at him and the glass is cold against her back, but she doesn't move.

James hums thoughtfully and drops his head sideways onto the seat. She felt sure — based on what he'd given her — that was going to pause, collect himself, but James just jumps right in and starts talking.

'Well, so, before I started working with this company, we were working with a lot of developers, you know, and talking about the economic benefit of converting some of these brownfields. Refurbishing them, essentially, so that they could become usable capitalist space.' There's a glint in his eyes as he's talking, the ghost of a smirk playing on the corners of his lips, and Lily feels herself smiling.

'But I didn't want to talk about economic viability or economic theory. I know it's always going to be an important part of the conversation for some people, but I wanted the chance to talk more about the environmental impact of redeveloping these areas. Cleaning them up and letting them be, regardless of whether or not it might be more economically viable to build, like, a shop there or something.'

'So you're creating green spaces?' Lily says. 'Urban farms and that?'

James tips his head up off the seat and smiles at her. There's a vivacity to this smile, a warmth that Lily swears she can feel against her skin.

'Exactly. But so I think my favourite thing from the last few months was, we went to this school — uh, this secondary school in Leeds — and we taught them how to make seed bombs.' He laughs a little. 'We heard from the Head Teacher the next week saying that a few students had gotten caught out chucking them out of their parents' car windows, but.' James shrugs and Lily smiles.

'There are worse things to chuck out of car windows.'

James laughs again. 'Exactly.' He slides his foot out into the aisle and taps the toe of his shoe against hers, a light gesture of solidarity. 'You get me.'

She does.

They chat about her work, about Ardsley, until, eventually, the train slows as it moves into the city, and Lily feels a certain anxiety start to build in her chest, a worry that this bubble between the two of them is going to burst and never quite reform.

James seems to feel something similar, and Lily thinks, at first, that it's her own wishful thinking, but he starts fidgeting as the brakes start screeching, shifting around uncomfortably in his seat. He turns to look at her as they pull into the station, a remarkably open look on his face.

He's so easy, so giving with his emotions. It's astounding to her.

'Looks like we're out of time for today.'

Lily breathes a little laugh and tucks a piece of hair back behind her ear. 'Apparently.' She looks out the window, her eyes tracing over the lines of the concrete tunnel they're now driving through.

James breathes something that's not quite a laugh and not quite a sigh. When she meets his face again, his soft hazel eyes are on hers.

If his face, if he, is open, it's nothing at all to the look in his eyes. There's a warmth there, an earnestness, but also a cheek, a touch of mischief, and his eyes on hers is overwhelming, gut wrenching in the best way.

'Is it too much,' he says, 'to say that I want to just ride around on the train with you all day?'

Lily laughs a little and brushes her hair back behind her ear again. She can feel her cheeks heat, and she hopes they're not so flushed that it's unbearably obvious how flustered he's made her.

'Maybe.'

James smiles like, her hope aside, he knows just how much he's affected her. But it's not a predatory smile, not like the ones she's used to when men realise just what their position looks like, but it's a bright one, a giddy one. A similarly affected one.

'Well, I did always have a tendency to go from zero to a hundred quite quickly,' he says, stating it baldly like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

She cocks an eyebrow at him and she can feel the lightness of her expression begging her to smile, but she refuses to give into it just yet. 'Have you now?'

He grins at her and, fucking hell, it's impossible not to smile when he's smiling, it's infectious.

'Yeah. Heart on my sleeve, you know?' He pats his bicep, and Lily's eyes flick down and hover there for a moment.

She takes a second to get her bearings, swallows to avoid full out drooling over him, and when she speaks, there's a quiet challenge in her voice. 'That so?'

James nods slowly, his smile softening. 'Yeah.'

And it's stupid, the silly little feeling in her chest as they gather their things a minute later when the train stops at the platform, the heat in her cheeks when he hands her her scarf again and their fingers brush. It's stupid how she feels as they walk through the train station, lock step, or nearly so, chatting away about their days ahead and how they'd much rather, honestly, be home in bed.

Which sends her down a whole mental path of her thinking about her and James in bed together.

And it makes her feel silly, how she feels just talking to him, how easily the words slip off her tongue, how little she has to think before they trip out, but no matter how silly and, god, giggly, it makes her feel, really she loves the feeling of it. Can feel herself getting addicted to it, wanting to horde it.

Because he's chipping away at something in her chest, Lily can feel the mortar and concrete and everything else starting to crumble away, and it probably would have scared her if James wasn't so good at distracting her. At making her laugh.

James' pace slows as they approach the exit — Lily's surprised they're walking out the same door because she doesn't remember seeing him go this way before — and he turns to face her just before they step out onto the pavement. He's smiling when his eyes meet hers, that bright, cheeky glow positively shining there, making his eyes look almost golden in the sun.

'I'll see you on the train home this afternoon?'

Lily smiles and nods, her gaze flicking down for a moment before she meets his eyes again. 'Yeah. I'm on the 17.38 every day.'

She wishes, as always, that she could catch the 17.09, but her office is just a little too far away to be able to make it on time.

James' smile widens. 'Well, I'll see you then, then.' She expects him to move, to start off down the pavement towards his office, but he stands there for another moment longer, just looking at her. And the longer he looks at her, the more serious his expression seems to become, the more contemplative, and the intensity of it makes Lily feel like she needs to catch her breath.

Finally he clears his throat and stuffs his hands into his pockets. 'Are you the cheek kissing sort or?'

It takes her a moment to hear him properly but, when she does, when the words click, one at a time, into place in her brain, she feels her cheeks go a little red.

'Oh. Uh?' She clears her throat, flicks her gaze down to the floor before she meets his eyes again. 'Yeah, yeah.'

James looks like he wants to say something about the fact that she just spent a full five seconds tripping over herself, but he seems to decide against it. He steps forward until his shoes are nearly touching the tips of hers and he leans down, his eyes on her face until they're too close and he can't look at her anymore.

When he brushes his lips against her cheek, Lily feels like everything in her body simultaneously stills and kicks into hyperdrive.

He straightens — it's all happening so swiftly, she can't pick out the separate pieces, the stubble on his jawline scratching a little against her cheek and, when his eyes find hers, he smiles that brilliant, beautiful smile she loves.

'Have a good day, Lily.'

She smiles at him, she can't help it, and her smile seems to unlock his again.

'You, too, James.'

And then she walks out onto the pavement, ducking her head against the biting cold.

Chat with: Marlene McKinnon & Mary MacDonald

Lily Evans: so we chatted the whole train ride in today

Lily Evans: he's called James

Marlene McKinnon: YOU BIG SLUT GOOD FOR YOU

Mary MacDonald: Lily and James I'm dying you defo pass the first name test

---

He isn't there, again, when she gets on the train that afternoon, and she's three quarters to getting herself down about it when, less than a minute before departing, the carriage door slides open and James stumbles inside. His glasses are still a little fogged up at the edges like he's that recently come in from the cold and he's absolutely huffing and puffing. Still, he smiles at her when he notices her watching him and points at the vacant seat next to her.

'Mind if I sit down?'

And so, steadily, this becomes her new routine.

He saves her preferred seat in the morning, standing and stepping out into the aisle to make way for her to pass him, smiling so brightly she thinks, genuinely, cheesily, that's he's outshining the bloody sun (though the British sun is quite a low bar to be fair). She almost always beats him to their train in the afternoon — it's only a fifteen minute walk from her office, a twenty from his, even with his enormously long legs, so it really isn't fair — and he always laughs at her attempts to look uninviting and imposing to keep anyone from dropping into his seat before he arrives.

'You looked very scary today,' he always says, smirk playing at the edges of his lips and positively shining in his eyes. 'I almost didn't sit down.'

She always swats at his forearm or tells him to fuck off, both of which just make him laugh and smile wider.

And it's remarkably easy talking to him, James, like she thinks less, like she relaxes the tension in her shoulders and the block on her tongue and she just talks, talks without thinking, and from time to time, she sort comes to and realises just how much she's melted. How much she's softened.

All of it happening without her even realising.

Because he's just that sort of person, James, the sort who catches you up in his gravity, who finds your one loose thread and pulls on it until you've unravelled.

Or, no, maybe it's that he's the sort who lays himself so bare, who talks about his feelings like they're nothing at all, maybe he's so everything-on-the-surface, full feeling, heart on the sleeve that you just…..

You start to unravel all on your own.

Because Lily keeps her cards remarkably close to her chest at first — he asks her questions and she talks about work, talks about Radar, talks about her friends, and she drabbles a little bit into her time in uni when it comes up, but she mostly avoids it because talking about uni means talking about the end and the end is always so hard for her to talk about — but James? James is an open bloody book.

So much so that she learns a truly absurd amount about him.

He tells her about his mates — his friend Sirius who he's so close to he might as well be a brother, his friend Remus who now, apparently, is dating Sirius and they're making it their personal mission to make James flip out because he keeps coming home and finding Sirius and Remus in the middle of things and he really doesn't find it funny, you know, because he has now seen Sirius' arse more times than anyone should see their brother's arse, but also it's hilarious to him because he really should expect it by now — tells her about uni, his family, his work, everything under the sun. He just talks, and Lily can see how, with a lot of other people, he could be overwhelming, too big, too much, and he's definitely a lot — the way that he laughs, because she finally hears his full, unrestrained laugh one day when they're walking out through the station, the way that he laughs is unreal — but she likes how big he is, how unavoidable he is. He loosens her up, shakes laughs out of her, and the more that he talks — his voice all fast and his accent as thick and Northern as they come — the more that Lily starts to feel... well.

Maybe a little like herself again.

She laughs more freely than she used to and the mortar in her chest starts falling away in massive clumps.

But she's mostly in awe of how much she's managed to learn about him, how easily he just talks about any and everything that comes to mind.

They hadn't even exchanged numbers yet — though the minute she points this out, mid-joke about how she's basically read his whole autobiography but doesn't have his mobile number, James immediately whips his phone out and starts trying to tease her number out of her, guessing a number at a time and Lily is clutching her stomach she's laughing so hard — but a few weeks in, Lily feels like she knows more about him than almost anyone else in her life.

Feels like, maybe, she's comfortable enough to start opening up a little bit herself.

At least a little.

Still, it's another week or so before she works herself up to it.

Chat with: James Potter

James Potter: im literally going to kill michael hes got me leving late AGAIN (17:16)

Lily Evans: omg you better run Potter (17:17)

James Potter: RUNNING (17:17)

Lily gets to the train, per usual, a fair few minutes before it's due to leave, and sits down in her usual seat near the window. She settles herself in, dropping her bag into the aisle seat in an attempt to hold it, and though she gets on her phone and flicks through Instagram while she waits, she'd be lying if she said that she wasn't simultaneously watching the time at the top of her screen and the carriage door, anxiously awaiting James' arrival.

She's got her book — she still reads at lunch and, really, she has to because it's really the only time she has to read anymore except when she can convince herself to get in a few pages before bed, which isn't often these days — but she knows that she's just going to spend the whole train ride home thinking about the fact that James was sprinting across Leeds to get to the train station and probably just missed the bloody thing.

She doesn't, if she's really being honest, want to spend the duration of the train ride home alone.

She's just starting to worry, properly worry, when, a minute before the train is due to depart, the carriage door slides open and James comes stumbling through the doors.

Lily hopes to god that he doesn't hear the relieved sigh she definitely heaves.

He's a mess — his tie is loose around his neck, his jacket is open, he's got a thin sheen of sweat across his forehead, and his bag is in his hand rather than draped over his shoulder — but he smiles when he sees her sitting there alone and he just starts making his way across the carriage when the train starts moving.

'Fucking hell,' he says, and Lily just barely has time to move her bag out of the way before he drops heavily into the seat next to her. 'I didn't think I was going to make it.'

He leans over and drops a swift kiss onto her cheek in greeting, and Lily makes a sound somewhere near a hum hello and an awkward choke.

'How was your day?' James isn't looking at her, is just getting settled into her seat, and the fact that he isn't currently looking at her and seeing just how red her cheeks are means that she feels a little bit more together than she might otherwise.

'Long.' She drops her bag down between her feet and turns a little in her seat so that she's facing him. 'I'm glad it's over.'

James sighs as he straightens and he gives her a tired smile when his eyes find hers. 'Me, too.'

He looks at her for a moment, his soft smile twisting up inside her chest.

'So I've been thinking.' James says, and he lays his head back on the seat. He's facing her and there's something strangely intimate about it, the way he's lying there and looking at her like that.

Lily quirks a smile at him, but it's ninety-nine percent performance. 'Glad to know you can manage it.'

James flashes a quick, amused smile at her, but, still, he ignores her completely in pursuit of what he's actually trying to bring up. 'I've been talking about myself endlessly and I know that you seem interested, but I can't be that fascinating.'

Lily laughs again, but she knows where this is going now. Something desperate is trying to kick off in her chest, digging into her ribs like it's dangling over the edge of a cliff, but this isn't that deep. Or, it's deep, but it's not —

It's not the sort of thing that she should be kicking off about. And fuck "should", right, but she — she wants to talk about this. Whatever James is asking her about.

Assuming she's right and that he's asking her about anything.

'And here I thought you seemed so sure of yourself.'

'I can only go on what Sirius tells me,' James says. He's smiling, but there's an unmistakable studiousness to the way that he's looking at her. 'Apparently, I'm a "disgustingly straight bore".'

Lily laughs again. 'Sirius is, hand on heart, the best person I've never met.'

James rolls his eyes. 'He says the same thing about you.'

Lily smiles at him then, her heart beating a little faster. 'Have you been talking about me then?'

James nods, like, as always, it's the most obvious thing in the world. 'Course. Haven't you been talking about me?' There's a slight smirk on his lips, teasing just like his tone, and Lily wants to roll her eyes, wants to have him on, even just for a second, but she can't bring herself.

'Course.'

James' smile widens and Lily feels a little knocked flat on her arse by it. He just smiles at her for a second, his eyes on hers, and she's not sure — like, seriously, she is not even remotely sure — how she's supposed to breathe when he's looking at her like this.

Finally, he takes a breath, his smile dropping, and Lily's heart's just about to resume it's normal rhythm when he says, 'I've been thinking about you, you know. A lot.'

She wants to laugh, but the sound gets stuck in her throat. 'Have you?'

James nods, and he's smiling again, but there's a bald earnestness to the way that he's looking at her this time that makes her chest ache.

'I want to know everything about you, Lily.'

And that, that, is the final sledgehammer to the remaining bits of concrete in her chest.

And so she tries to explain it all to him. Herself. How she'd gone to London for uni, partially because it had seemed like the thing to do, but mostly because she'd had this sense, one that grew during sixth form and became impossible to ignore, that she just needed to get the fuck out of South Yorkshire. She needed something bigger, needed something grander, busier, needed something other than this small life she'd been living and London, London —

It had seemed like the only place in the world, London.

And as she's talking about it, she gets this feeling in her chest, this longing that feels so heavy she almost feels sick to her stomach. It's for Marlene and Mary, for uni, for London almost most of all, but it's also for the version of herself that she'd been back then. The Lily that was bright and open and vibrant and didn't know, really, what heartbreak looked like yet.

She misses that girl. Or, maybe, she misses her energy. Because she can't ever go back to being that girl again.

James listens to her — she's sure it's rambling — nodding along and smiling and taking it all in. He just listens, and when she finally stops blathering, he lets her final words settle between them before he takes a deep breath, his gaze soft on hers.

'So why did you come back?'

Lily shakes her head and looks down at her knees. There's so much to unpack there, too much for her to even remotely figure out where to begin. She starts with the simplest bit, the hardest truth.

'My dad died,' she says. And it's such a simple phrase, three little words, but it emcompasses an entire universe of hurt, some bits of which she hasn't even discovered yet. 'In the middle of my last term. And I just sort of….' She shakes her head, heaves a sigh, and she finds herself waiting for him to tell her the things that she's always heard. The why didn't you transfer to Sheffield's or why didn't you ever go back's and she's stiff through the shoulders, bracing herself for it, and she doesn't even realise it, the way her body goes hard, until the thing she's expecting doesn't come.

Doesn't realise it until she has to relax her shoulders. Loosen her jaw.

'I'm sorry,' James says, and he looks it. 'Losing a parent's the fucking worst.'

He says it like someone who knows, and Lily wants to ask, wants to pry, but no matter how many conversations they've had at this point, he's still just some bloke she sits with on the train.

Though even that, she supposes, is an upgrade from bloke she sits near on the train by complete accident.

Or, as Mary insists, because Mary was always just this type — a bloke she sits near on the train because fate.

But even as she thinks it — that he's a bloke she sits with on the train — she feels the falseness of it. It might have been true once, but there is, without a doubt, an intensity to this connection between them. A depth.

She's not quite sure what James is, but he absolutely isn't just some bloke she sits with on the train.

She's still struggling with something to say when James clears his throat. When Lily looks up at him, he's got a look in his eyes that looks something like a smile. She's never seen anyone smile with just their eyes before.

'Hey, do you want to get dinner?'

They get off the train at Lily's stop — Barnsley Interchange — and they walk around for a few minutes, googling restaurants and stopping to stare at menus in the windows of the restaurants they're passing, before they finally, after a bit more googling, decide to go to Lemon Tree off Peel Square.

Lily laughs as she locks her mobile and stuffs it back into her coat pocket. 'I love that Lemon Tree is on Peel Square.'

James laughs, too, and slides his hands into his jacket pockets as he falls into step beside her. 'I hope they did that on purpose.'

'Do you think they did? Like moved there intentionally?'

'Or maybe they petitioned the town,' James says, and he's grinning at her now, that bright, easy thing that makes Lily feel, hand on heart, like she's floating. 'Maybe it was called something like "Manor Road" and they demanded a name change.'

Lily laughs as they come to stop on the corner of Queen Street, their gazes on the traffic as they wait for the perfect moment to dash across the road. 'I like that you went for the most extra option.'

James turns quickly to face her and flashes her a grin. 'Well, you know. I've got a brand to maintain.'

Lily snorts and is about to open her mouth to say something — like, did he honestly just say that he has a brand — when, at a break in the traffic, James suddenly takes off the road. 'You could have let me know you were going, you prick!' Lily shouts, as she, too, checks the traffic and darts across the street.

James grins at her, his strides still long and fast as they pass the bank and then Greggs. 'I've got to keep you on your toes, Evans,' he says.

Lily shoots him a look, but James just winks at her as he steps forward, takes the handle of the restaurant door, and pulls it open, gesturing in front of himself so that Lily can walk inside. She raises an eyebrow at him as she walks past, but James just carries on smiling at her.

It's an eclectic little place, this restaurant. There's a dark wooden table with black leather chairs immediately near the door, the same wooden table with some bright white chairs (with electric green cushions) opposite, and tall, white, wood topped tables standing around the pillars that run the length of the restaurant and, from a quick scan, it looks like there are at least three or four other kinds of table set ups going on through the space. There's a string of blue fairy lights outlining the liquor cabinet behind the bar, a green light illuminating the small menu overtop the bar, and it's sort of a mess in here with all the colours, but there's something about it that Lily just loves.

They must be standing in the doorway sort of awkwardly — there isn't a host's stand or a sign or anything telling them what the hell they're supposed to be — because the barman looks up, still pulling a pint for someone sitting at the bar, and nods his head at them.

'Just sit wherever you like, love.'

Lily smiles at him and raises her hand, 'Cheers,' before she and James start off through the restaurant.

They sit themselves down at one of the tables towards the back of the restaurant, away from most of the hustle and bustle of the bar. It's a private little corner, almost, and between that and the fact that James is sitting opposite her now, properly facing her, Lily feels a little overwhelmed.

Which is silly. She knows it's silly.

But this is distinctly different from sitting next to him on the train every day. No matter how much their arms brush or how their thighs occasionally touch when they're sitting too close together, the very fact that they're on a train is enough to keep Lily from feeling, really, too much about most of it.

But when James' foot brushes, accidentally, against hers underneath the table in this quiet little corner of this softly lit — in this back corner, anyway — restaurant?

Bloody hell.

'Have you ever eaten here before?' James says. They'd gotten menus a moment before, but he'd scanned it for about two seconds before he dropped it, apparently satisfied, back down onto the table in front of him and now he's just sat there watching her try to decide what she feels like eating.

Lily shakes her head and scans, a little slower this time, through the Turkish options on the menu. She's not vegetarian — except for when, sometimes, she is — and she can't quite tell if that's her vibe this evening or if she wants that one lamb kebab.

'Barnsley's really just a stop on my way home, honestly. I mostly just come here if I need to go to Primark,' she says, glancing up at him, a small smile curving up at the corner of her lips. 'We used to take the bus here a lot, though, my mates and I, when we were in school, to wander round the shopping centre.'

James smiles at her. 'That's so cute.'

Lily breathes a laugh and shakes her head, looks back down at the menu. 'We thought we were quite rebellious.'

'There's nothing quite like teenaged rebellion.' James sounds almost wistful as he says it, so Lily looks up at him again, eyebrow cocked this time.

'You sound like you have some experience, Mr Potter.'

'Oh, Evans, if you only knew.'

They order a hummus starter when the waitress arrives — because James, apparently, is the sort of person who gets a restaurant starter — and, through slightly indecent moans (because holy shit this hummus is delicious and the warm bread they've served it with is just) Lily demands that he tell her all about this "teenaged rebellion" of his. James teases her for a little while — 'Oh, I don't know if I could possibly' — but, eventually, the storyteller in him absolutely can't resist the opportunity to regale her with some fantastic tales of his youthful idiocy.

'Did I ever tell you about the time Sirius and I missed our train and got stranded in London?' James asks, smiling at her, a hummus-covered hunk of bread in his fingers.

Lily gapes at him — luckily remembering to cover her mouth because good god, that can't be a great sight.

'Uh, no.' She grabs another bit of bread off the plate between them and drags it through the hummus. 'How the fuck did you manage that?'

She should have known, based on the stories he'd told her over the last few weeks while they'd been commuting, that James (and James and Sirius, especially) always tends to get himself into truly bizarre scenarios.

Like when he decided to dress up as a "sexy pirate" for some fancy dress party when he was in lower sixth and he ended up poking himself in the eye (he 'still doesn't know how') and he had to leave A&E in full pirate gear with an honest to god eye patch over his one eye.

Or, and this one makes Lily laugh especially hard because James still seems so affected by it, the time that Sirius had had to shave his head because he'd superglued — accidentally, apparently, because he'd 'made one of those Roman looking leaf crown things' and 'the glue wasn't dry when I put it on' — a bunch of gold leaves to his hair and, rather than go to a barber or something and have them just cut them out and try and fix it, he'd just said, fuck it, and shaved the lot.

'A lot of your disasters seem to be fancy dress related,' Lily says. She's waving another hummus-covered piece of bread at him, the last one on the plate. 'There's a lot less rebellion here than I expected.'

'Oh, we rebelled,' James says. 'I just told you about us being stranded in London, didn't I?'

'That was idiocy,' Lily says, laughing. 'Not rebellion.'

James frowns at her, but it's a comic sort of expression, a gross exaggeration that just makes Lily laugh harder. 'We rebelled, Evans. We were rebels.'

'Sure you were.' Lily reaches across the table and pats the back of his hand, and James is about to reply when the waitress appears again.

'Have you thought about mains yet?' She's smiling at Lily and Lily flashes a triumphant grin at James before she turns back to the waitress.

'Yeah, thanks, uh, could I get the —' She scans down the menu again because, in all this talk of eye patches and shaving heads, she'd forgotten what she'd wanted to order. She sits up a little straighter and makes a sort of "oh" sound when she spots it again. 'Can I have the moussaka please?'

'Moussaka, brilliant,' the waitress scribbles it down on the little pad in her hand and holds her hand out to take Lily's menu as she turns to James. 'And for you, love?'

'Adana kebab,' he says, holding his menu out to the waitress. 'Thanks.'

They sit there quietly for a beat as the waitress clears the hummus plates off the table and, once she's gone, it feels a little like the momentum has fallen out of their conversation. It's not awkward, not exactly, but she can feel James looking at her now and she feels like —

'So, when you were in uni…'

Ah, there it is. There's nothing to do now that they've eaten all the hummus, and Lily's hands feel nervous, like she wants to just do something because god knows what he's about to say —

Though he hadn't, on the train, he hadn't said what she'd thought and so —

'What were you studying?'

Lily exhales.

'I was doing an environmental science degree at Queen Mary,' Lily says, tracing her fingers absently along the outside of her fork. 'I'd thought about doing sustainable energy engineering — I was quite back and forth about it, actually, because I'd gotten the grades,' she smirks at him, and James just grins at her.

'I've literally no doubt that you had the grades to study whatever you liked,' James says.

Lily's smile widens just a touch and she tilts her head at him slightly in acknowledgement. 'Cheers.'

'Did you like Queen Mary?' James leans forward, his forearms coming to rest on the table top, and there's such an obvious interest in his expression that it almost makes Lily shy. This isn't a new look — she'd seen it any time she offered up information about herself on their commute — but there's something about getting it full on like this, something about James looking straight into her eyes like this.

'I loved it,' Lily says, and she means it. QM had been everything that she'd hoped it would be and she'd loved, loved, east London. She still found herself thinking about it — the little coffee shop she'd loved to study in off Roman Road, the one with the brilliant apple cake that, if she hadn't been careful, would have run her broke in her first month, the way they used to lie out in the sun along Regent's Canal when the sun was even remotely poking out through the clouds, how she and Mary and Marlene used to run around Mile End park, gins in tins in hand, in the middle of every term, screaming at the sky because they thought they were going to die from all the stress.

QM, and Mile End, had been the best part of her life up to that point.

She misses it every day.

James smiles at her, a soft, knowing sort of smile, and she can't lie — while she's certainly a little scared at the idea, there's some comfort in someone knowing her like this. Seeing all the things she isn't saying.

'What did you love about it?'

And she's not sure how he knows that this, this, is what she needs.

She tells him about every single thing and, as she talks, she thinks of more things, her excitement building as she remembers the tiny things, the things she'd forgotten, like that cheeky alcove in the geography building where she used to do some of her reading. She tells him about her advanced research professor who had pushed her to do work that 'was brilliant, if I do say so myself', about the research trip she'd been invited on — 'to the very exciting Essex' — at the start of her third year to learn more about historic coastal landfill erosion and tidal flooding.

She'd forgotten how much work it was — how hard it had been to balance work and uni and having some kind of social life and finding time to sleep — but, god, even thinking about it now, explaining it all to James, she can't help but feel invigorated by it. Can't help but feel impressed by her past self, by all the things that she'd managed to do.

QM really had been — it really truly had been — the best time of her life. And on top of the pain of what, you know, had actually happened, it really just….

It broke her heart that she hadn't been able to finish that last term. That she'd had to leave.

And everyone always says why don't you just transfer to Sheffield, love but she hadn't been ready — to apply to transfer, to do the work, to write her dissertation, to make the hour long journey every day — and it also didn't feel right, going somewhere that wasn't Queen Mary.

She'd chosen QM for a reason, and, yeah, some of those reasons were I need to get the fuck out of Ardsley and I bloody love London, but she'd chosen Queen Mary. She'd've chosen Sheffield if she'd wanted to go to Sheffield and yes, she just had to finish up her last term, just had to write the rest of her dissertation, but she just….

She couldn't go anywhere other than QM. And she hadn't been ready to go back to QM.

'I bet it was hard to leave,' James says. He's watching her again, and the weight of his attention is staggering.

'Yeah.' Lily swallows, nods, looks down at her hands for a beat before she meets James eyes again. 'But I just couldn't stay. I was —' She exhales and, as the breath leaves her, she feels the weight of twenty-seven months' stress slide, just a little bit, off her shoulders. 'I was struggling. And I took leave at first, you know, I was planning to go back, but once I got here —'

She waves her hand around in the air in front of her like, you know, and James nods, his lips pressed together in something like a grim smile.

'You felt more comfortable being home,' James says. He's playing with his fork absently, lifting it up and running his thumb along the side of the handle. 'I get that.'

She watches him move the fork around in his hand for a moment before he seems to catch himself. He sets the fork down and leans forward across the table again, his eyes flicking back up to hers. There's something sad in them now and the shock of feeling in Lily's chest —

She never wants him to look like that again. Wants to gather him against her, soothe the sadness, make it leache out of him, because James is — he —

'My parents —' James takes a breath and, in the pause, he reaches up to brush his hair back off his forehead. 'My parents have been ill for a while,' James says. 'Mum got sick last year and Dad was alright for a while, you know, but I think…. Watching Mum broke his heart. And there's the stress of caring and all that, you know, but….'

He pauses again, takes a deep breath, and the lines of sadness across his face recede slightly. 'They're still around,' he says, 'but their loss is just imminent, I guess, and —' He breaks off, then, and laughs a little, the slightest bit of amusement sparking in his eyes.

'This is morbid as fuck.'

'No.' Lily shakes her head and, before she can think twice about it, she reaches across the table and laces her fingers through his. And she doesn't expect him to react immediately, but James exhales the moment she takes his hand and something in him stills — she can't describe how she knows, she just feels it — as he settles his fingers through hers.

And she knows it's entirely inappropriate, but the burst of giddiness in her chest….

'I mean,' she laughs a little (hoping to god that she doesn't sound as nervous and excited as she feels) and squeezes his hand, 'it is a little morbid, but it's —'

James brushes his thumb, just the once, along the length of her index finger.

'You need to talk about it,' she says. 'I want you to be able to talk about it.'

James smiles at her then, a soft, intimate thing that — well, it might not be her favourite smile, because nothing beats his miles wide, heart stopping grins — but it's….

Well, it's an incredibly close second.

'Thanks,' he says, and he brushes his thumb over her finger again. Lily thinks that he's going to let go, that that last brush of skin was going to be it, but he doesn't take his hand from hers.

'Anyway,' there's something more relaxed about his tone now, not quite a resignation, but a this is the truth of things, 'that's why I moved back home to Sheffield. My parents insisted that I get my own flat and don't "take care of them" because they "don't need it",' he does the inverted commas in the air with his free hand, and she can't help but smile at him. 'But I've got a flat down the road from them and — well, they never used to call me when I lived up in Leeds, but they're calling me for little things all the time now.'

He pauses for a moment, lets his silence fill the space between them. 'It's nice being there for them,' he says. 'Even if mum is still going to insist that I need a haircut every time I'm round.'

Lily laughs, 'I like your hair,' and James smiles at her, gives her hand a soft squeeze.

'I'll be sure to tell her that. Get her off my case.'

They chat a little while longer about their parents — now the floodgates have opened, it seems, they're both content blabbering on about the people that made them — swapping stories about whatever comes to mind. And Lily doesn't know about James, but there's something cathartic about this, talking about her dad — and her mum, too, her mum before, her mum without the shadows underneath her eyes — and remembering the good things, like how they'd sometimes go on walks to the river in the evenings after Dad got home from work, how they used to go down to the park and kick around for hours on a Saturday. It's such a different game from the one she usually plays with herself, the one where she thinks over and over again about how awful and angry she feels.

She'd forgotten about these lighter things.

Or, she hadn't, but she'd forgotten to remember them. Forgotten to think about them.

They're both laughing when the waitress appears by the side of their table a few minutes later — James had been telling a story about his mum catching him and his sixth form girlfriend snogging in his car and, subsequently, deciding to leave a box of condoms and the most embarrassing note ever written on his desk in his room the next afternoon — and, as they both settle back into their seats, Lily lets their clasped hands fall apart. It feels strange, not holding his hand anymore, but there's something about the waitress appearing there, something about her seeing them holding hands like this that makes it feel a little awkward.

Like she's showing some sort of affection that she shouldn't be showing yet.

James lets her hand fall away from his but, as the waitress leans down, smiling at them both, to set their plates on the table, he catches Lily's fingertips with his own and holds them there for a second. And she feels silly — he's just holding her fingers for fucks sake — but there's an intensity, a gratitude, maybe, in the way that he's looking at her right now that makes Lily feel like her stomach is bottoming out.

James turns and smiles at the waitress at the same time as he lets go of Lily's hand. 'Thank you.'

Lily has no idea how he seems so normal so soon.

She copies him, smiling too. 'It looks great,' she says, and she's not just saying it, it genuinely looks fantastic. 'Thanks so much.'

The waitress just smiles at the both, a knowing little smirk, before she says, 'Shout if you need anything,' and walks off.

James smirks at Lily as he picks up his fork. 'Do you think she really means "shout"?' He spears one of the grilled snow peas on his plate and smirks at her as he lifts it to his lips.

Lily just rolls her eyes at him and shakes her head. 'Absolutely not.'

They transition to lighter conversation as they make their way through dinner. They talk, a little more in depth, about their days, and Lily's laughing so hard through most of it that she barely manages to eat her dinner without feeling like she's accidentally going to choke to death on a bit of aubergine. James tries to insist that he pay for dinner when the bill comes — round about an hour later — because "it was his idea to get dinner", but Lily manages to talk him round to splitting it.

'You don't need to treat me to dinner,' she says, turning to him as the waitress walks off with their credit cards. 'I'm more than capable —'

'No, I know,' James nods, almost as though he's double proving to her that he knows that she's more than capable of paying for and taking care of herself. 'I just — uh —'

He runs a hand through his hair and breaks off and then the waitress is back before he can figure out what it is that he wanted to say.

Night has properly fallen by the time they walk back out onto the street. Every street lamp is lit and the squares of window light from the buildings around them almost blur in Lily's eyes against the darkness. They cross Peel Square back over to Eldon Street and, as they start walking up the road, James turns and smiles at her.

'Thanks for getting dinner with me,' he says. He's stuffed his hands in his pockets and between that and the almost shy look to his smile, he looks like he could be years younger.

Lily smiles back at him and shrugs one of her shoulders playfully. 'Yeah, of course. Thanks for inviting me.'

James just looks at her for a beat before he laughs and turns to face out in front of them again. 'We sound like business colleagues or something. "Thanks for joining me this evening, Lily,",' he affects a deep, apparently businesslike tone and Lily snorts.

'Well, what are we supposed to say?'

James shakes his head, still laughing. 'I don't know. I just didn't expect us to suddenly sound forty-five.'

'Well, alright then,' Lily's smirking at him, but she's keen to play along, 'what's something really young we could talk about? Make ourselves feel cool again?'

James thinks for a moment before he turns to her, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. 'Have you heard about this new app called TikTok?' He's got on this voice that makes him sound like he's bloody eighty, and Lily immediately bursts out laughing.

'You whippersnappers,' James says, his voice still hoarse, 'always coming up with new ways to take selfies.'

It's quiet outside Barnsley Interchange when they get there round quarter past seven. Lily's got no idea when the next bus back to Ardsley will be there, though they usually run them fairly regularly on weekday evenings — and, honestly, if she has to take some other line, something that will mean a little bit of a walk at the end, she's not that opposed. She could do with a walk this evening anyway, to work out everything that's been swirling around in her brain since she and James got off the train together earlier that evening.

She's more worried, truth be told, about James finding some way to get home, because the trains don't run nearly as often as the buses do.

Lily's all ready to leave him to it — she's got the words halfway out of her mouth — but James smiles at her as they walk underneath the sheltered area outside the front of the station.

'Do you mind if we pop in and check the timetable? I think there's a 7.30, but I want to make sure.'

Lily nods, and, together, they walk into the station. It's a bit busier in here than it is outside, but, still, it's fairly quiet. They both look up at the massive timetable overtop the barriers to the platforms, scanning for the trains to Sheffield towards the end of the list. Sure enough, there's a train at 19.22.

James turns and, though he's grinning at her, there's also something distinctly sort of sad about the way that he's looking at her. 'Looks like I'm getting home tonight after all.' Lily shakes her head at him — he's so bloody cavalier — but James' smile just widens, effectively wiping out the traces of any sadness on his face.

'It's nice out. Want to go wait outside?'

They walk back outside to the sheltered entrance area and amble over to one of the support structures near the edge of the covered space.

'I like that they had to gate these off,' James says. He runs his hands over the metal barrier the council must have put up around the low-angled support structures holding up the roof.

'I'm sure people were climbing them like mad before they did,' Lily says.

'Oh, absolutely. If I were five years younger, I'd be all over these things.'

Lily laughs and shakes her head at him. 'There's nowhere interesting to go,' she says, tilting her head back so she can look up at the roof. She points. 'You just get to the underside of the roof.'

James shrugs. 'I wouldn't have cared. It's about the challenge.' He steps towards the barrier, surveying it with interest as he runs his hand over the metal again. 'And, I mean, I would've climbed over this, too, look how easy it is to get around this.'

He puts his foot on the bottom bar of the barrier and pushes his hands onto the top, making like he's going to press himself over it onto the support, and Lily immediately starts laughing and darts forward to grab at the back of his jacket.

'Get down, you idiot,' she's laughing so hard she can barely breathe, but she's fully fucking serious. She tugs hard on the back of his jacket to pull him down, but James turns at the same time so that he's facing her, and the combination of forces sends him sort of stumbling off the edge back onto the pavement. Lily's hand tightens, automatically, on his coat, and she tugs him a little closer to her, accidentally, as she steadies him.

She's breathing a little harder than normal — less from the laughing now — and her fingers are still clenched right in the fabric of his coat and she thinks, briefly, that, really, she should let him go, should take a step back, laugh, again, about how he's such an idiot, when James' hand moves. She sees it out of the corner of her eye, the slow, shaky movement of his hand upwards, but he hesitates before he can put it anywhere — an immediate fixation on Lily's part, because she can feel, viscerally now, the need to have his hand on her waist, her hip, her back, her skin — and his hand falls back down by his side.

Lily adjusts her grip on his coat, loosening her fingers a little bit, spreading them out, because she wants to feel more of him against her palm. James looks up then, his eyes tracing over her, and she can feel it, the heat that rises up through her chest, along her collarbone, her neck, and when his gaze catches on hers —

James takes a breath.

'Lily.'

Lily presses her hand a little more firmly into his back, though whether it's an effort to pull him closer to her or steady herself, she isn't sure.

'Yeah?'

James exhales and it sounds something like a laugh. And she expects him to say something, but he looks at a complete loss for words for the first time in the few weeks that she's known him and that, on its own, is enough to shock her into speech.

'You should come walk Radar with me on Friday,' she says. She's not sure why that's what comes out of her mouth, but she means it nonetheless. She can almost see it, actually, her and James getting off the bus at St Paul's, her and James making the walk up Chapel Street.

Radar would lose her mind, probably, meeting him.

And, god, mum.

Fucking hell, he couldn't meet her mum yet. That had to be violating some kind of —

James smiles at her, that bright, brilliant smile that knocks her flat every time she sees it, and his hand comes up, a little more confidently this time, and rests lightly on her hip.

'You think Radar'd let me infringe on your alone time like that?'

Lily nods, swallows. 'But you'd have to — my mum, I —'

James laughs, a soft one this time, a private one. The intimacy of it makes it hard to breathe.

'Are you asking me to meet your mum, Evans?' He's smiling so hard and Lily can't even feel her heart beating anymore, it's beating so bloody fast.

Lily breathes a laugh, lets off a little bit of the feeling clogging her throat — but even still she feels like she might explode — and sort of half shrugs, half nods. 'I've got to keep you on your toes, Potter.'

James laughs, a little louder this time, and Lily feels herself smiling and she knows it's a big, silly, stupid smile à la James Potter himself and she thinks about telling him that he's apparently catching, but then James steps closer to her and slides his other hand up onto her waist, fingers spread wide so that, even through her coat, she can feel his thumb resting against the band of her bra. He's standing so close to her now that he's got to tilt his head down a little bit, and the giddiness in her chest softens a little at the sight of his hair flopping down over his forehead.

'You certainly keep me on my toes.'

'Good,' Lily manages. He smiles at that, at the rickety sound of her voice, but when Lily places her hand on his stomach and slides it, slowly, up over his chest, James seems similarly incapable of speech.

And while part of her wants to be terrified about the fact that she is so clearly out here, like, full on factor fifty, she can't help but register — and enjoy — the way that James is responding to her. The way that he's standing so close to her she can feel the heat of his body against hers, the way that his heart feels like it's beating faster underneath her hand when her palm finally pauses to rest on his chest. She hasn't felt like this in a long time, the swiftness in her blood, the nervous excitement in her chest, and she's out of her mind, because it's James, it's James, and god, she just —

She can't get enough.

She barely even knows what to expect — from him, from this — but, god, she doesn't think she'll ever get enough.

'James —'

'Lily —'

They speak at the same time and the surprise of it shocks them both into laughter. The laughter eases the emotion in Lily's chest a little bit and emboldens her to take still another small step forward.

'What were you going to say?' she says.

James shakes his head and his fingers twitch against her hips. 'What were you going to say?'

Lily swallows — she's nervous, saying this, but —

'I was going to ask if I could kiss you,' she says. Her eyes are on his and her words are steady and, overall, she seems much bolder than, in reality, she feels. James smiles at her, beams, and he slides his hands over her hips and presses his palms into her lower back, bringing her another step closer to him.

'Funny,' he says, though there's nothing funny at all about the look in his eyes as he dips his head down towards her. 'I was going to say the same thing.'

Lily's lips curve up into a smile. 'Oh yeah?'

'Yeah.'

James closes the distance between them and Lily hums softly when his lips find hers. They're tentative at first, a little hesitant, and it's a little clumsy, too, as they try to figure each other out. They both shift at the same time, trying to change the angle, and their noses bump softly. Lily laughs against his lips, and James swears into her mouth.

'I'm not normally this nervous,' he says. His lips are brushing against hers as he talks and Lily can hear the nerves in his voice as he's talking, can feel it in the way his hands are flitting around on her lower back, like they can't quite settle down enough to still.

'Me either,' Lily says. She slides her hand up over his chest to the side of his neck and turns her head so that she can change the angle of the kiss, and kisses him softly, once, twice, drawing his bottom lip between hers and, on the third kiss, tugging just slightly on his lip with her teeth.

And, finally, all hesitancy goes out the window.

James' hands settle firmly on her lower back, pulling her so that she's completely flush against him now. Lily brushes her thumb along the underside of James' jaw and he groans, the sound deep in his chest, and he moves to deepen the kiss, but Lily pulls back a little, her lips hovering over his, their breath lingering. Lily smiles a little to herself as she moves to kiss the corner of his mouth, his jaw, and James groans before he turns his head and his lips find hers again.

She's near to forgetting herself completely — forgetting, you know, that they're out on the bloody street — when someone whistles behind them and Lily immediately pulls away, a hot blush creeping up onto her cheeks. James is breathing hard and his hands are still on her lower back, but he picks his head up and looks around them, his eyes scanning.

'Oi,' he's raised his voice so that he can be heard and it's almost shockingly loud when Lily is stood this close to him. 'Uncalled for.'

Lily wants to turn her head to see who he's talking to, because he's looking right at someone, but she finds herself staring at the underside of his jaw instead. Tracing the columns of his throat. The stubble there.

Lily hears someone laugh and say, 'Sorry, mate,' and then James turns to look at her again, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes again.

'Sorry,' he says. He spreads his hands out over her back and ghosts them up and down her spine.

Lily laughs and brushes her thumb, almost absently, over the fabric of his shirt, right overtop his heart. 'What are you sorry for? You didn't do it.'

'I don't know,' James shrugs, still smiling. 'He ruined a good kiss, though.'

Lily gasps at him. 'Just good?'

'Great,' James chuckles low in his chest and gathers her against him. 'Brilliant. Best I ever had.'

'I heard good,' Lily says. She's smiling, smiling so hard it hurts, but she also loves the way that he's clearly sweating a little bit. 'How will my ego ever recover?'

'I'll make it up to you,' he says. And she can tell, from the heat in his eyes, that he absolutely means that. 'Friday night, I'm all yours.'

Lily smirks at him and raises an eyebrow at him. 'Oh yeah?'

'Yeah,' James says. 'But I reckon,' he slides one of his arms up her back and his glance shifts just beyond her shoulder. 'Fuck. I've got three minutes until my train leaves.'

'Oh, christ.' Lily laughs and presses herself swiftly up onto her toes to kiss him one more time before she pushes her palms into his chest and steps him backwards. 'Go. I'll see you tomorrow.'

James bends down, resisting the pressure of her palm against his chest, and kisses her again, his mouth lingering a little over hers so he can kiss her two, three, four times. 'I'll text you,' he says between kisses.

Lily laughs again and pushes harder on his chest. He doesn't have to move — she can feel the resistance building up in his chest even as he takes a step back — but he complies with her obvious order and smiles at her as he takes another few steps backwards towards the train station.

'I'll see you tomorrow morning,' he says. His smile is a mile wide and Lily's not sure, honestly, how it isn't lighting up the whole of South Yorkshire.

'Tomorrow morning,' she says.

He walks backwards, eyes on hers, until he's near to the door and then, with one final wave, he walks into the station. Lily watches him jog off to the ticket machine — the bloody fool, she can't help but laughing a little to herself, might miss his sodding train — and, once she sees him disappear beyond the barriers onto the platform, she turns on her heel and pulls her mobile out of her pocket as she starts off towards the bus stops.

Chat with: Marlene McKinnon and Mary MacDonald

Lily Evans: so you're never going to believe what happened tonight