For the jilytober bittersweet challenge, angst to fluff: I thought I'd lost you.
The place was heaving, barely even standing room left as clusters of people stood around, drinking and laughing and generally getting in the way. He should've expected as much, given the time of year: as soon as the Christmas decorations went up, Central London became an even more desirable destination for a day out than it usually was.
Diagon Alley was the latest 'hip' pub, the place to be seen, having opened at the start of the year and instantly becoming the height of cool. It was, James had to admit, very Insta-friendly—high ceilings cut through with preserved timber beams, furniture all dark green or navy leather, oddities adorning the wall, like stag-antlers fashioned from pastel-coloured roses, or the word 'MISCHIEF' picked out in huge, brass letters across the back wall. Most of the crowd in here were mainly in it for the photo opportunities, as far as he could tell.
Not James, though. Living, as he did, a mere ten minutes down the road, this was as good as his local, and his best mate Sirius—a man who loved a cliche, and especially loved a well-made G&T—had arranged for their group to meet at Diagon Alley for a few drinks and, as he put it, to "see if we can palm James off on any fit birds".
He had such a way with words, his best mate.
James had insisted that he didn't need "palming off" as Sirius so delicately put it, and that he was perfectly capable of finding someone to flirt with by himself. But, as with many occasions, he had been roundly ignored.
Now, amongst the sea of people, he couldn't see Sirius or Remus or Pete at all. It was likely they hadn't arrived yet—they had further to come, and Sirius didn't believe in the concept of 'on time'. Well, then, that left it to James to try to find a table, or risk listening to Pete complain all evening about how his feet hurt.
A swerve around a clump of women (high-heeled, one in a sash that screamed 'BRIDE TO BE'—James made a mental note to steer clear of them) and he found himself in the less aesthetically-pleasing part of the pub. It wasn't hideous, by any stretch, just a bit more run of the mill. Perhaps they'd run out of random knick-knacks to throw on to the walls by the time they'd reached this part of the room, because they'd had to make do with large framed photos instead. Black and white, of course, and entirely without theme or purpose. Less for the Insta-crowd to get stuck into around here.
That was probably why it wasn't quite as busy—more space for standing around, at least—but the tables themselves, round, wide things, with curved booth seating around two-thirds of the circumferences, were all in use.
Well. Mainly in use.
One table, the one furthest away from the bar, only had one occupant: her head was bowed, a curtain of thick red waves falling forward to hide her face as she scrolled through her phone. She sat, resolutely, stubbornly, in the middle of the curved bench seat, a large glass of wine in front of her, her bag dumped seemingly at random to her left, and her coat, spread out to her right.
Intriguing.
He ambled over, watching as she continued to scroll through her phone. She either hadn't noticed he was there, or was pretending not to. "Hi."
A sigh, and then she looked up—and he took a moment to collect himself, because...wow. Bright green eyes stared back at him, an eyebrow arched sceptically in his direction, full, pink lips pursed as if already irritated. "Can I help you?"
Christ, but he was in love already. Okay, well, not love as such—given that he didn't know her as anything but Angry Booth Girl so far—but everything about her seemed to speak to him on a molecular level. And, hey, maybe it was a subject for a licensed therapist, but he quite liked women to be a bit shirty with him. It gave him something to bounce off of. "I hope so," he replied, with what he hoped was a charming smile. "I couldn't help but notice that you're sitting here alone—"
She heaved a sigh so world-weary that it almost made him want to laugh. (Almost. He didn't want to piss her off more than was necessary.) "Gosh, aren't you a perceptive one."
"Ha! Well, quite," he agreed, deciding to take it as a compliment and not as the brush-off it so clearly was. "It's just, my mates are on their way, and Peter—you don't know him, but, that's his name—he has plantar fasciitis of all things, and well, he'll be in agony if he has to stand up—"
"Plantar," she repeated, "fasciitis."
"Yes," he nodded solemnly. "It's a—you know, I've never actually looked into what it is. But I know it's real, because my dad's friend suffers with it too, and it seems unlikely that two people who've never met would make up the same ailment to avoid standing up for too long, don't you think?"
She raised her eyebrows. "Yes, I suppose so."
"So, here I am, doing my part," he added with what he hoped was an air of weary acceptance and just a hint of martyrdom. "Rescuing Pete from his own feet."
A short pause, and then a peal of laughter spilled from her lips: incredulous laughter, but laughter nonetheless. "Christ, that's a new one," she interrupted. "I suppose I should give you credit for your effort."
He grinned in spite of himself. "Thank you, that's very kind," he replied. "But it's sadly true. I was just wondering if we could maybe share your booth, just until another one becomes available?"
She fixed him with an almost-stern gaze. "What's your name?"
He blinked. "James."
"James, then," she nodded. "I don't know if you think I was born yesterday, but I'm not falling for your clever ploy to get yourself cosied up next to me. So, jog on, will you?"
He laughed, surprised. "I'm not—bloody hell, that's a bit presumptuous of you, er—what's your name?"
She huffed another sigh, dropping her phone to the table so she could take a swig of wine. "Lily," she replied.
"Well, 'Lily'," he said, "if you can't believe in the genuine foot-based problems people suffer with today, then what can you believe?"
"All sorts of other things," she told him, quite cheerfully—a fascinating juxtaposition when paired with her steely gaze. "And my friends will be here any minute, so, as I said before—"
"Yes, 'jog on', I remember," he rolled his eyes. "Fine. It was delightful getting to know you, Lily. I'll be sure to send Pete your way later when his feet are ready to fall off."
"I look forward to meeting your imaginary friend," she replied brightly, and returned her attention to her phone.
He turned around, irritation rippling through him. What was the world coming to, that a bloke couldn't go up to a woman sitting on her own and—
Oh, right. No, that made a lot of sense, now that he thought about it.
Time for a drink, and a regroup: his friends still weren't here—his phone showed a message five minutes ago from Sirius to the group chat: a simple, infuriating, 'Just leaving my flat!', as if he wasn't already monstrously late—and it was still easier to circulate on his own on the hunt for a table. He'd get them somewhere to sit or die trying. It was a point of pride, at this stage. For England—for the Potter name—for king and country and so on.
Beer in hand, he set out on another circuit of the pub, weaving in and out of the crowd. No tables to be found: in fact, in the main seating area, there seemed to be queues forming (or rather, groups, loitering) near the most visually-pleasing tables. James paused to take a swig of his drink, and wondered why he hadn't just suggested the nearest Wetherspoons instead. Cheap, cheerful, and you could enjoy a side of onion rings with your beer. Diagon Alley looked like the sort of place that served strange, vegan bar snacks. What was the point if it wasn't battered and deep fried?
Actually, were onion rings vegan? He made a mental note to ask Remus later. He'd know.
Glass half-empty (no, half-full), he made his way back around to the quieter end of the pub, finding the situation there exactly the same as it had been before.
No, wait. Almost exactly the same as it had been before.
Angry Lily, as he had decided to call her from now on, was no longer alone—but she didn't look happy about it. A man with dark hair, a parting so severe that James could see the white of the bloke's scalp, had slid onto the benched seat next to her. One arm was draped behind her, his body twisted towards her in a way that she clearly didn't appreciate: not that the man seemed to notice, or perhaps, care, what she appreciated, because—in spite of the look of quiet disgust on her face—he leaned in closer to run a long, bony finger down her bare upper arm.
A flare of something, there in her eyes; she looked up and found James, and for a moment, all that had come before seemed forgotten. He wasn't fluent in minute-eye-movement communication, but he was fairly sure she was saying: a little help, here?
He didn't think. (That was one of his finest qualities.) Just stepped forward.
"Lily! There you are!" he declared, sliding into the booth from the other side; Lily looked around with what looked like a mixture of relief and mild alarm. "Sweetheart, I thought I'd lost you—this place is like Piccadilly Circus!"
The other man sat back a little, a sneer on his face. "And who the hell are you?"
James took Lily's hand in his, and she let him, still looking slightly dazed. "I'm the boyfriend," he replied cheerfully. "And who might you be?"
The man shot Lily a suspicious glare. "You didn't mention a—"
"What, in the long and detailed chat we've had in the few minutes since you sat down and started talking at me?" Lily asked.
"She would've got there," James assured him, giving Lily a fond squeeze. "She can't stop talking about me. Says I'm the apple of her eye."
Lily cast him a quick, caustic glance. "Sure."
"It was a place like this where we met, wasn't it Lil?" He sighed and stared off into the middle distance with a look of rosy-eyed nostalgia. "It's a great story, actually—sorry, I didn't catch your name."
Creepy Man blinked, thrown off course. "Severus."
James raised an eyebrow. "That's...unique," he noted. "Anyway, Sevvy, as I was saying—it was a place just like this, and I wandered over and asked if my friends and I could share her table, since my pal Pete—salt of the earth type, a dear lad—suffers with his feet."
"Plantar fasciitis," Lily added with a solemn nod.
"A real bane to the chap," James agreed. "And the next thing we knew—we were head over heels."
"Right," Severus frowned. "Well, I—"
"Heels!" James chuckled in delight, giving Lily another squeeze. "Pete's feet—head over heels—"
"Very clever, dear," Lily replied drily. She shifted her body so it was tucked into James'; he tried to ignore the rush of something, something heady and intoxicating, just at the nearness of her, at her soft scent, at the warmth of her skin against his. Thus settled, she turned back to look at Severus: James might've felt sorry for the poor, baffled-looking sod, if he wasn't such a colossal creep. "You can go, now."
The man frowned, apparently unused to such blunt instruction. "But…" Evidently, Severus wasn't a man who liked being told what to do. "You're a tease, you know that?" he spat at her. "Stringing blokes along—"
"Yes," she agreed coldly. "Because sitting whilst being a woman is the exact definition of being a tease."
"Babe," James said, and she tilted her head to look up at him; her smile caught him off-guard for a moment, and he had to take a second to regroup. "Want me to show this chap out?"
She paused, apparently considering something of great importance. "No need," she replied, sweeter now, softer. "I think he'll see himself out, somehow."
And that was when she closed the gap between them and pressed her lips to his.
He'd kissed his fair share of women. Not an absurd amount, of course—a respectable number, befitting a gentleman who was genetically gifted with what his last girlfriend had deemed an "attractive but punchable face" and "abs you could eat your dinner off of"; a gentleman who had a decent number of brain cells to his name, and a passably winning personality. He was no Sirius—model good looks and a way of reducing women to a simpering mess—but he did fine.
Still, in his time, kissing a perfectly normal number of women, he'd never had a kiss quite like this one. At first, it was tentative: understandable, given they barely knew each other. Her lips, he found, were as soft as they looked, and he couldn't help lifting his hand to cup her cheek, skate his thumb along her jaw. They had to sell this kiss, after all.
But then the tentativeness shifted into something much more interesting, something heated and languid and truly intoxicating. Her hand found its place at the collar of his shirt, and her lips parted, a soft "oh" that sank from her to him and deep, deep down to the depths of him—maybe the singularly most intriguing, enthralling word he'd ever heard.
They didn't notice the man leave, despite his grumbling and clattering against the table as he went. They didn't notice much of anything at all, really, until finally the need for oxygen overtook anything else, even the raw, bare want that had set up camp in his gut as soon as her lips had found his. They pulled back simultaneously, their gazes locked. Breathing heavily, he found himself lost for words—not normally something he struggled with—and all he could do was stare at her, at her kiss-swollen lips, at the surprised roundness of her eyes.
How was it that she was even more beautiful now than she'd been before? What strange magic was this?
"Well," she said, her hand still at his collar. He never wanted her to move it. It could stay there for the rest of time, as far as he was concerned. "Um. Thanks."
He laughed, then, a soft, disbelieving sound. "Oh, well—you're welcome?"
Pretty pink flushed high on her cheeks. "Not—for the kiss," she replied, dropping his gaze a moment before being pulled back in; he wondered if she found him as magnetic as he found her. He really hoped so. "For rescuing me from that creep."
He couldn't help his smile—wasn't sure he'd ever be able to stop. "Happy to help," he assured her. "And not just so I could sit down."
Her laughter was addictive: he wanted to make her laugh, every day. Was that too full-on for having just met her? Probably, but he didn't do anything by half measures. "I suppose you'd better stay sitting then," she said. "As recompense, for the rescuing and all."
"I don't know…" he sighed. She looked surprised, uncertain, at the expression of doubt on his face. "I'm a bit worried that—well, that you won't be able to resist kissing me again."
Uncertainty washed away with another peal of laughter. "Is that a challenge you want me to take on?"
He gave her a grin. "Not really, if I'm being honest."
"And I appreciate your honesty." Her gaze drifted briefly, enticingly, to his lips. "I suppose you should tell me a bit about yourself, if we're to keep kissing."
"I'm sure we can come to some arrangement," he agreed. "How about, for every kiss, we each share a fact?"
A playful smile, lower lip dragged between teeth for a moment—a very distracting moment. "James," she murmured, "that's going to take all night…"
His phone buzzed on the table; he ignored it, slipping his arm around her shoulders. "You know, you might be right," he replied, tilting her chin up with a crooked finger, drawing her into his lips. "But I'm willing to put the time in if you are."
And by closing time, she knew twenty-five things about James Potter, including the fact that Pete was not, in fact, imaginary (he spent ten minutes detailing his struggles with his feet); and he knew twenty-five things about Lily Evans, and at least one of them was that she had agreed to go to dinner with him.
He couldn't wait to find out more.