Jily oneshots

the road not taken looks real good now

He pulls back from the hug just the tiniest bit, and then he leans down to kiss her.

Now, she's really home.

Lily has the heat cranked up as high as it can go inside the truck, and the fog on her windshield from the cold has been relegated to the far edges of the glass. The inside of the car is still cold, but it's a different kind of chill. This one's not caused by the temperature.

James takes his coat off once he's seated on the passenger side, letting it fall to the floor in front of him.

Part of him is dying to turn and look at her, to study the woman he hasn't seen in six years and whose body he once had committed to memory. He wants to find all the ways she's changed, count all the freckles on her cheeks that weren't there before, learn anything he can about this new person who's somehow both achingly familiar and completely foreign to him all at once.

There's holiday music playing through the radio, muted and just a little fuzzy. The radio service in this town has never been all that great, especially if you want halfway decent music.

He should say something.

His tongue feels as if it's made of lead though, so when he opens his mouth to say something, in the hopes that something clever will just magically form itself, nothing comes out.

Eventually, she's the one who breaks the silence.

"This place hasn't changed a bit, has it?"

He shakes his head. "It never does."

James hasn't stopped talking since they got in the car. He's a relentless stream of enthusiasm, talking all about the places he's going to show her and the things they're going to do over the weekend.

Usually, his excitement is contagious, and she can't help but get sucked into the force of him, but for some reason there's something inside of her that's holding her back, even though she wants to be excited with him, wants to feel that same rush he's feeling.

She's not sure why she can't muster it this time.

"We're not staying in my dorm, obviously, because that bed is barely big enough for me, much less the both of us, but I still want to show you it anyways," he rambles. "But here's a fun fact that I only discovered earlier this week: apparently it was once a madhouse."

She laughs under her breath. "Sounds like it's made for me then."

James gives her a look for that out of the corner of his eye. She makes a lot of jokes about her breakdown junior year, and he's one of the only people who can see through to the well-suppressed insecurities driving them.

He's always been the only person who can tell which smiles she's faking.

"My parents got an offer on the house," she throws out, in an attempt to change the subject now.

"That's great," he replies. "Have they gotten fully moved into the new place yet? I know they were saying it's a lot bigger than your old house."

She forgets that he's almost as close with her parents as she is. Hell, last time she talked to them they'd let her know that her boyfriend had called them more since going off to college than she had.

"They're still unpacking boxes - they're both busy with new jobs, and I'm not exactly in a place where it's easy for me to get home to help them out on weekends."

"And I assume Petunia hasn't been helpful either?"

"Petunia's still pissed off at them for moving in the first place," she answers, rolling her eyes. "So she's refusing to help out of principle."