by downn_in_flames on archiveofourown.org
One short little road trip, that's all it is.
One short little eight hour road trip in a tiny car with the girl he's been in love with since his first year of uni. Nothing to worry about, really.
It was her idea, actually. James had been all set to just buy a plane ticket from London to Edinburgh - why Sirius and Remus insisted on a "destination" wedding in the same city they'd all attended school in is beyond him, but that's beside the point - and before he'd had the chance to book a flight, Lily had texted him, proposing the idea of driving up there together.
It'd be fun, she'd said. We haven't seen each other in ages and it'll be a nice way to catch up.
Apparently, her idea of 'catching up' involves spending eight uninterrupted hours alone with each other.
James can count on one hand the number of times they've hung out as just the two of them - all of them in uni, and none of them for anywhere near this much time.
He's definitely more than a little freaked out about it, which is, quite frankly, ridiculous if he thinks about it rationally. He's not exactly trying to make a good first impression or anything (he'd botched that one well and good six years ago) and they spent quite a lot of time together at uni, even if they were almost always with Sirius and Remus and Peter. This shouldn't be all that different.
But James also knows that he's got a fantastic tendency to make an idiot out of himself - something he hoped he'd grow out of once he hit his twenties but never quite did - and a confined space with just him and a girl he's fancied for years seems like a foolproof recipe for that idiocy to make a reappearance.
He's probably prepared for this trip a little... too well. His car is immaculate (scarily so, really, what kind of psychopath doesn't have anything in their centre console?), there are snacks and water in the backseat for the both of them, and he's got a playlist full of artists Lily loved in uni (that he not-so-secretly enjoyed as well) at the ready.
So as he parks in front of the address she'd texted to him last week and pulls his phone out to shoot her a quick text that he's here, he continues giving himself a mental pep talk to prepare for the hours ahead.
Honestly, he's going to be fine. Yeah, she's wonderful and brilliant and he spent the better part of three years making a fool of himself in front of her, but he's over that, for the most part. She's just a girl he liked in uni, but they've grown apart since then and surely she's not as -
The front door of her building opens, and whatever rationalisation had been going through James' mind comes to a stuttering halt. He's not sure if he'd just forgotten what she looked like or if she'd somehow gotten more gorgeous since they graduated, but… fuck.
Her auburn hair, which once fell to her waist in loose waves, has been chopped to shoulder-length, and she's got it in that same half-up, half-down style she wore so often at school. She's wearing a shirt that looks like it's from last year's Camden Pub Crawl tucked into high-waisted jean shorts, fully showing off her long, freckled legs.
And there's just something about the way that she carries herself, shoulders back and eyes bright, that projects a level of confidence he doesn't quite think she had a few years ago.
It has his heart doing all sorts of pathetic things all over again.
Maybe he's not actually over her.
She's got a light purple duffel bag thrown over her shoulder and a garment bag on her arm, and James remembers at the last possible minute that he needs to open the boot of his car for her to put her stuff in.
With literally anyone else, he'd get out of the car and help them load their bags - his mother would be appalled if she knew that he wasn't practising the 'gentlemanly manners' she'd instilled into him from the day he was born - but he knows Lily, and he knows that she'll insist on doing it herself anyways.
She's always had a massive independent streak - coupled with a distaste for anything remotely resembling a patriarchal norm - and it's one of the many (many) things he likes about her.
When she opens the passenger door, she's got a cheeky sort of smile that, were his heart not already hammering out a frantic rhythm in his chest, would definitely send his pulse skyrocketing.
Goddammit, she's so pretty.
"You didn't even offer to load my bag for me," she observes as she slides into the seat across from him. "What on earth would Euphemia say about that?"
"Euphemia probably still remembers the last time I tried that and you immediately smacked my hands away," he retorts, a smirk growing on his face to match her own, even though he's already been thinking about the fact that his mum would, in fact, give him a hard time for it.
"She did tell me later that she'd thought it was funny to see you put in your place like that," Lily muses as she puts her seatbelt on.
His mum had indeed gotten quite a laugh out of it, James recalls. She, Remus, and Peter had come to visit him and Sirius for a week in the summer after their first year, and James' mum had immediately become positively enamoured with both Lily and Remus, and proceeded to spend the remainder of the summer telling both James and Sirius respectively how wonderful they both were, in a not-so-subtle 'you would be perfect together and I want them as my child-in-law' sort of way.
Well, she'd gotten her wish with Sirius, at least.
He realises he's been quiet for far too long, and she's still grinning at him and probably expecting him to say something back to her. He runs his fingers through his hair - a nervous habit of his that he's never really been able to break - and asks, almost on autopilot, "Alright, Evans?"
She laughs at that, no doubt remembering the countless times he'd greeted her that exact way in school. "It's been awhile, hasn't it?" And after a brief pause, "You look good."
He's almost positive he misheard her at first, but the faint pink spreading across her cheeks - at least, he doesn't think he's imagining it - is proof that he heard her right.
"Er, you too," he manages, stumbling over his words and almost immediately mentally berating himself for it. How the hell is he so smooth sometimes and an absolute fucking disaster at others?
If she catches on to his awkwardness though, she doesn't show it. "How's work? Are you still at Sleekeazy's?"
When he'd graduated uni, with a degree in English Literature of all things that he had no idea how to apply in the real world, he'd panicked and taken the first job available to him - which just so happened to be in the marketing department of his dad's massive haircare company.
It turned out he kind of enjoyed the marketing aspect, but working for a hair company was… not his thing, to say the least.
"Nah, I left that about a year and a half ago," he tells her. "Now I'm working as a deputy communications director for a small nonprofit."
"Oh?"
"Yeah," he answers, finally shifting the car into gear so that they can start off on this eight-hour journey of theirs. "It's all about providing resources for homeless LGBTQ youth - I don't know if you've ever seen Albus Dumbledore in a news article or anything, but it's his organisation."
"Wait, oh my god, I read his book last year!" Lily says, almost excitedly. "He's incredible, and the work he's doing for those kids is awesome."
"Yeah, he's a pretty solid guy," he confirms. "I really like it - I feel like I'm actually doing something good in the world, you know? And I just - god, so many of those kids remind me of Sirius as a teenager, except without anywhere to go when their parents kicked them out."
He's still not over the way Sirius was treated as a teenager, the way he'd arrived at the Potter's doorstep one January night during sixth form, shivering from the cold and sporting a massive bruise along the side of his face. He's pretty positive that, if he ever comes across any of Sirius' piece-of-shit homophobic family members ever again, he's not going to be able to fight back the urge to punch them right in the jaw, even though he knows that wouldn't accomplish anything.
But this… doing what he does now, it feels like accomplishing something.
"Hm, I'm surprised Remus never said anything about you changing jobs whenever you came up in conversation," Lily muses.
… They talk about him? Lily talks about him?
"I dunno," he says, flipping his turn signal on to turn left on Hendon. "Are you still working as a researcher for that ecological reserve?"
He already knows the answer is 'yes' - he'd panicked and called Remus almost immediately after Lily had proposed this whole road trip thing, and asked him for basically everything he knew about Lily since graduation - but he figures he'll ask the question anyways. Lily doesn't have to know that he's been a bit of a nervous wreck about this road trip, after all.
"I am," she answers cheerfully. "Still spending most of my day hanging out with frogs instead of humans."
"Well, good to know at least one of us actually found a good way to apply our degree," he jokes.
"Please," she replies, and from the tone of her voice alone, James can tell that she's both smiling and looking at him reproachfully all at once. "Don't tell me you don't still throw random literary references into everyday conversation."
He wracks his brain for an appropriate one to say in response, and goes with the first thing that comes to mind. " 'A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.' "
She laughs brightly. "Some things never change." She pauses for a moment, then adds, "Fuck, what's that from? I feel like I should know it, but…"
"Dickinson." he answers, filling in the gap left by her silence.
"Oh, didn't you write a whole essay on how she was probably a lesbian at one point?" she asks.
"No," James defends immediately, immediately thinking back to the incident she's referring to. "Sirius used find and replace to replace every single instance of the word 'literary' with 'lesbian' in one of my final essays that term, and I only noticed ten minutes before I was set to turn it in."
"You should've kept it that way," she tells him. "I feel like most literature tutors would eat that shit right up."
James shrugs. "Honestly, you're probably right."
They fall into a comfortable silence for a few minutes, but it quickly becomes a bit more uncomfortable when it's just the hum of the car's engine and the sounds of the city around them.
"Do you have any music?" Lily asks finally.
He honestly can't believe he'd somehow forgotten about the playlist entirely - there'd just been something about talking to her, catching up and immediately feeling like almost no time had passed at all, that had completely wiped his mind of everything else. "Oh. Yeah," he replies, grabbing his phone out of the cupholder and unlocking it. "There's a road trip playlist on my Spotify - just turn that on."
"You have a whole road trip playlist?" she asks, taking the phone from him and navigating to his Spotify app. "Oh god, this is brilliant."
She hits play, and is already singing along on the first note. "I promise that you'll never find another like me!"
And he finds himself thinking that no, he definitely won't.
They're less than an hour out of the city, driving along the M1, when James decides to make their first stop of the day.
"I don't know about you," James says to Lily, who's been alternating between singing along to the music playing through the speakers and exchanging stories about their lives since graduation, "but I desperately need some coffee right about now and there's a Costa coming up."
"Still addicted to caffeine, are we?" she teases.
"Not as bad as I was in uni," he replies. "I don't get four espresso shots in my lattes anymore, at the very least."
"Probably for the best," she agrees.
"Do you still only drink those Belgian Chocolate Frostinos in the summer?" he asks, remembering just how many times he and Sirius had ribbed her for her 'wimpy' taste in coffee beverages.
"Don't say that with such a tone of disdain," she shoots back. "They're basically a coffee milkshake - how could you not like that? But also, I can't believe you still remember my coffee order."
He's not sure he could forget anything about her - even something as simple as her (terrible) coffee order - even if he tried. But he tries to play it off without acknowledging just how many little details about her that he's got memorised. "Your shit taste in coffee is pretty hard to forget."
"Those are fighting words, James Potter," she replies playfully. "And here I was about to offer to pay for your coffee since you're the one driving - but now you've come for Frostinos in a way I can't accept."
"They're not bad," he retorts. "They're just a weak drink."
"Ah right, because you're the expert on strong drinks. It's not like you were too scared to shoot tequila until our third year or anything like that."
He doesn't point out that he still hates shooting tequila to this day, and will only do it when he's already sufficiently plastered as to not remember his distaste for them. "Yeah, well, if you recall correctly, there was one night our first year where I was the only one who didn't do three rounds of tequila shots, and coincidentally was also the only one who didn't end up puking in the bushes in George Square Gardens."
"And you missed an important rite of passage in that moment," she informs him seriously, just as they're pulling into the Costa Coffee.
"Somehow, I don't feel all that deprived," he replies, parking and turning the car off.
She laughs. "Well, you can't miss what you've never had."
They both get out of the car, falling into step on their way into the café. And he's kind of surprised, in that moment, to realise just how easy all of this has been. The way they've fallen into conversation and good-natured teasing so easily makes it seem like it's only been hours since they last saw one another, not years. Being with her is almost effortless - sans the few times she's nearly made him forget how to breathe - and he's…
Fuck, he's not even a little bit over her.
One hour in a car is apparently all he needed to go right back to being head over heels for her, which is only slightly alarming; at this rate, he'll probably be ready to propose marriage by the time they get to Edinburgh in seven more hours.
Which is nothing short of ridiculous - honestly, he doesn't even know if she's seeing someone, for heaven's sake. Remus had said she wasn't, but those things can change at the drop of a hat, and Lily's an absolute fucking catch, so he really wouldn't be even a little surprised if she's somehow in a committed relationship that Remus doesn't know about.
"Okay, but seriously," Lily says, looking up at him, "what do you want to drink? It's my treat."
"You don't have to," he answers automatically.
"You're literally sitting behind the wheel of a car for eight hours while I fuck around on my phone because we both know I hate driving - let me buy you a damn coffee, Potter."
He doesn't actually want to fight her on this - and she'd win anyways - so he surrenders pretty easily. "Fine - I'll have a flat white."
They get their drinks - James' in a tiny cup and Lily's in a much larger one complete with whipped cream and chocolate syrup - and set out on the road again.
The drive itself is pretty nondescript - they're just driving down the same freeway for an absurdly long amount of time - so they have to come up with other things to pass the time. At one point, Lily just starts scrolling through a list of Shakespeare quotes to see if James can give the play they came from - he only misses like two or three, and one of those was from Titus Andronicus, and he fucking hates that play so he feels like that one's an acceptable miss.
And then somehow, they end up in a super nostalgic conversation of some of their most notable shared moments at university.
"Do you remember the day we met?"
If James could bang his head against the steering wheel without putting both him and Lily in serious danger, he would. "Unfortunately."
Then he quickly corrects himself, lest she somehow interpret that the wrong way. "Not because of meeting you - just because of the fact that I made a total arse of myself."
"Yeah, I was pretty convinced I was going to hate you," she replies, amused. "And I'm pretty sure I told Remus that multiple times the first time the two of us went over to hang out with you and Sirius."
"Well, I fucking deserved it."
He'd been a first year, in a starting position on the football team and far too hyped up by the university population than any eighteen-year-old ever should be, and that newfound popularity had completely gone to his head. He'd thought he was on top of the world, that he could get anything he wanted, anyone he wanted.
It had been some freshers party that he and Sirius had pregamed just a little too much, and by the time they'd shown up to the actual event, James felt fucking invincible.
"You must've tried to hit on me… what, five separate times? All worse pick-up lines than the ones before?"
He groans. "Yes, I was a drunk asshole who thought you were the prettiest girl in the room and that as a result we were obviously a match made in heaven. I clearly made some pretty shitty decisions that night."
"So who was the prettiest girl in the room that night then?"
James falters, and it's a good thing the car's set on cruise because his foot might've just fallen off the gas pedal otherwise. "What?"
"You said you made some pretty shitty decisions that night, one of which was that I was the prettiest girl in the room," she answers, sounding nonchalant in a way that James thinks might be forced. "If it wasn't me, who was it, in your much-more-sober-now opinion?"
What the fuck kind of question is that?
He grapples with what she's just asked for a moment - is she somehow trying to gauge who he thinks is the fittest bird they went to school with? And why does she even care about that? And how on earth is he meant to answer this in a way that doesn't end with her getting upset with him?
Eventually, he just decides to go for honesty, but he keeps his eyes steadfastly on the road ahead of him when he answers. "Actually, that was perhaps the only non-shitty decision I made that night. You were easily the prettiest girl there - in both my drunk and sober opinions."
It's silent between the two of them for a few moments. "Oh."
And then a second later, "So you're not seeing Emmeline Vance?"
That might be an even weirder question than the last one. Emmeline had been on the women's football team, and they'd been close, but his feelings towards her have never been anything even remotely more than friendly. "No," he tells her immediately. "Where'd you get that idea from?"
"I… I don't know," she replies, and she sounds almost… nervous? "You posted a picture with her on Instagram a few weeks ago and I just… I don't know, I just thought maybe - "
"We were just catching up over dinner," he explains. "We're definitely not, you know, anything close to… that."
"Oh. That's… good, I guess."
That's good? Honestly, how the fresh hell is he meant to interpret that?
For some reason, the thing that comes out of his mouth next isn't a request for an explanation. Instead, it's a stilted "Are you? You know, seeing anyone?"
"I'm not."
"I… good to know."
Fuck, for all that James had been thinking that they were so good at not being awkward just an hour or so ago, they're sure being whole ass disasters right now. And honestly, 'good to know'? Were they not just talking about the time he'd drunkenly hit on her despite her not showing any interest? And his response to finding out that she's single is to say something that… practically implies he plans on using that information later?
Foot, meet mouth.
They settle into a slightly uncomfortable silence, and it's just John Mayer coming through the speakers.
I want to know the real thing about you, so I can see you in a new light…
The tension doesn't last much longer, because James' stomach starts growling and it becomes apparent that they'll need to stop for lunch soon.
"Do you want me to look up some good places to stop?" Lily asks, fishing her phone out of her bag.
"Yeah, that'd be good."
She sits back up in her seat. "Oh fuck, mine's dead - I completely forgot to charge it last night. Can I use yours instead?"
"Go for it," he replies. He unlocks the phone for her and hands it over, letting her find some random little sandwich place near Leicester that looks decent.
They decide to sit and eat instead of trying to eat on the road, and sitting across from her in a little two-person booth unexpectedly feels very much like they're on a date.
He feels his hands start to get clammy as they sit down with their food - despite the fact that his brain knows full well this isn't anything resembling a date and that they're just eating here together out of necessity and a need to stretch their limbs, he still can't help but feel something between them - some sort of energy that he can't quite put his finger on - that makes this seem like perhaps there's more to it.
But he's definitely just thinking too far into things. Lily's shown absolutely no signs of getting a similar vibe from, happily chatting with him as she eats.
The topic of Sirius and Remus suddenly comes up - fitting, really, as it's their wedding that they're headed to at the moment.
"How does it feel, knowing that your two closest friends are going to be getting married this time tomorrow?"
James just shrugs. "Honestly, with the way they act, it's basically like they've been married for a while. I just want the actual ceremony part over with so that mum can stop frantically texting me about it every five minutes."
"Oh yeah, I saw that," she tells him. "You had a few messages come in from her when I was changing songs."
James takes that moment to thank his lucky stars that his mum doesn't know he's driving up to the wedding with Lily; otherwise, he's sure she would've texted him a million times today about her, which would've been… awkward to explain away, at the very least.
"None of it was all that important though - she just likes having someone to report everything back to, and apparently that's my job in this case."
"Somehow, I doubt she'd be pleased to know you were calling her texts 'unimportant'," she teases, taking a sip of her drink.
"And you better not tell her," he warns, but he can't even keep the grin off his face as he does so.
"Fine, I'll keep quiet, if only to save your head," she replies after a moment of thought.
Then she changes the subject entirely. "But man, I'm thrilled for Sirius and Remus. Meeting the love of your life in the first month of uni is basically the dream, isn't it?"
Well yes, James wants to reply, but only when they also feel the same way.
But he doesn't voice anything even remotely close to that - they've only just gotten over their last bout of awkwardness, and he'd quite like to avoid any more of those if he can help it.
He shrugs, playing way cooler than he actually feels. "Yeah, I guess. At the very least, it's convenient for all those themed parties - they always went in some sort of couples costume."
"Says the bloke who wore basically the same costume for like half of them."
"Hey," he argues, "if the theme fits, why not go with an old standard?"
She laughs. "You really did get a whole lot of mileage out of those reindeer antlers."
He reflects back on that fondly - he honestly might still have that same pair of reindeer antlers somewhere, probably boxed up at his parents' house with some other memorabilia from university. "I really think my favourite was that pun party though, where I did the whole toga thing as well and called it 'deer god.' "
She gives him a look like she can see straight through him. "You just liked that one because you got to walk around shirtless and make all the girls in the college swoon over you."
"All the girls? Does that include you, Evans?" It's overly cheeky - and exactly the type of shit he would've pulled the first night they met - and he worries briefly that he might've gone too far this time.
She coughs, and it takes her a few seconds to answer him. "Obviously not. It takes a lot more to sway me than a bloke wearing a bedsheet as clothing."
He's strangely disappointed by that response, but he doesn't really know what else he was expecting either. That she was somehow magically swept off her feet by the mere sight of him?
No, Lily requires much more than appearances to be wooed, something he perhaps knows better than anyone.
"Sounds about right," he replies, and there's definitely a little bitterness in his tone that he wishes wasn't there. "At least mine was better than Pete's costume that night."
"Oh god," she laughs, "that was when he wore the nightstand, wasn't it? He was dressed as a 'one night stand' or something like that?"
"Yep. Seemed to think it would get him laid, for reasons I still don't fully understand."
Lily shakes her head. "Honestly, not his best plan. I'd rather go home with a bloke in a bedsheet than a bloke wearing a literal table."
James almost chokes on his sandwich at that. It probably means nothing, but god, the casual implication of going home with him almost does him in entirely.
He maintains that she really might be the death of him before they even make it to Edinburgh. Sirius is just going to have to find a new best man, because James is going to be fully out-of-commission by that point.
If he had maybe just the tiniest bit more courage - and, er, wasn't going to be stuck in a car with her for another four hours or so - he might say something about that comment. Or about a lot of her behaviour today, really.
But he stays silent, their conversation giving way to the song playing over the café speakers, Lily absentmindedly humming along with the lyrics while she waits for him to finish eating.
And I'm on my way, driving at ninety down those country lanes -
He makes a mental note to add more Ed Sheeran to their playlist.
They're more than halfway there now; after lunch, Lily had fallen asleep for what was honestly less than half an hour, but somehow seems like the end of the world to her.
"I'm supposed to keep you company, not fall asleep and leave you to fend for yourself," she says, in the middle of what must her fifth apology.
"I can handle driving alone for a little bit - it's fine, Lily," he tells her.
He doesn't mention that, when she'd fallen asleep, elbow resting on the centre console and head in her hand, she'd practically been resting against his shoulder, and he hadn't really minded that one bit.
"I'll be awake for the rest of the drive though," she insists. "We're only, what, three hours away now?"
"I've not got a map open, but that sounds about right," he replies.
Truthfully, he's just been driving along the A1 without paying much attention to their ETA - he figures it'll be awhile before any driving directions become relevant again.
"Well then, I've got three hours left of not taking any more naps," she answers simply. "Here, let me put on some good hype-up music."
He unlocks his phone and hands it to her again. "I've got no shortage of that."
She scrolls through the playlist for a little bit before finding something she's satisfied with. They start talking again - Lily tells him some story about the bar her roommate Marlene works at that somehow involves a low-level celebrity, a rubber chicken, and a real chicken; it's so absurd that, if she didn't swear up and down that she's got pictures of the whole thing that she'll show him when he's not driving, he'd definitely think she'd invented the whole thing.
"How do you somehow confuse those two?" he can't help but ask.
"I mean, it's a bar. Alcohol makes idiots of us all."
"Somehow I don't think I've ever been so drunk that I put a rubber chicken in a carrying pen and let a live chicken loose in a bar," he replies with a snort.
"Yeah, okay, that part was particularly stupid," she concedes, and the music suddenly shifts to a slow ballad. "Okay, we're definitely changing this."
She picks up his phone. "Shit, it's locked again."
He takes a hand off the wheel and holds it out to her. "Here, hand it to me, I'll unlock it."
"Just tell me your passcode," she replies. "I promise I'm not going to steal your phone or anything."
He lets out a short laugh at that. "Yeah, okay, it's not like you can make a run for it with my phone while I'm going seventy down the freeway. It's Lily: 5-4-5-9."
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her freeze like a deer in headlights, and it's only then that he realises the magnitude of what he just said.
She's his fucking phone password - granted, she has been since uni and he's kept the password for so long because that pattern of screen taps is just automatic at this point, but still.
It's honestly a miracle he doesn't somehow crash the car right then and there.
The silence between them lingers for a few moments longer, the only sound coming from the One Direction song still playing through the speakers.
"Your phone password is… me?"
Much to his surprise, Lily doesn't actually sound entirely repulsed by this revelation; instead, she just sounds genuinely stunned.
"It's nothing," he replies, his words coming out in a rush instead of the cool, casual way he'd hoped they would. And really, if he were panicking slightly less right now, he might've come up with a good cover - some other Lily he knew, or literally anything other than a clear acknowledgement that yes, she is his phone password, but alas.
"No, it's not nothing." She's back to her normal tone again. "And if nothing else, I'd like to at least know why - maybe not necessarily while you're driving, but at the very least, at our next pit stop."
He… yeah, he supposes owes her that much.
But how does he even explain that away without revealing exactly how he's felt about her for all these years? And while they've seemed perfectly friendly for this whole trip - and for a few brief moments, maybe even more than that - he's not sure how confessing that he's basically been in love with her for five years now will affect that comfortable camaraderie of theirs.
"Okay, yeah, that's fair," he concedes, tightening his grip on the wheel and vowing not to look over at her, not to reveal anything just yet.
"We'll stop at the next rest area then?"
"Sounds good," he answers, and an awkward silence settles over them again. Lily obviously doesn't want to type her own name into his phone to unlock it, so the radio continues to play the same slow One Direction love song. And as soon as the chorus starts, he has to fight off the urge to outwardly cringe, because god, what the fuck was he thinking, putting a song that hits quite so close to home on this playlist?
I have loved you since we were eighteen, long before we both thought the same thing...
Luckily (or unluckily, he's not entirely sure which), there's a rest area just a few kilometres away.
It's good that he's saved from spending too much longer stewing in the aftermath of his own stupidity, but not-so-good in the fact that he now has very little time to figure out just how to express all of this.
He's still mentally running through his options - does he tell her the full truth? part of it? a bold-faced lie that he hopes she doesn't call him out on? - when he pulls into a parking space. He takes as long as humanly possible to put the car in park and turn it off, entertaining the vague fantasy that maybe if he stalls just a little bit longer, the perfect way to handle this situation will just pop into his head.
He doesn't get that massive epiphany, but his prolonged silence does result in Lily being the first to speak. "I'm going to tell you something, but in exchange, you have to promise to be totally, one-hundred percent honest with me."
That seems like a massively risky gamble, but James honestly doesn't think it's actually possible to dig himself into a deeper hole than the one he's already dug himself - so what's the harm, really?
"Okay."
And if he thought he even had an inkling of an idea of what she was going to say, he's very swiftly proven wrong. "I've fancied you since our second year at UoE."
She's… "What?"
"Do you remember the night of that pun party we were talking about earlier? When you were dressed up in those reindeer antlers and a bedsheet?"
"Er… yes," he replies slowly, entirely unaware of where this is going.
"That was the night Petunia uninvited me from her wedding, do you remember that?" she adds, and when James looks over at her, she's looking at her hands folded across her lap.
He does remember that, actually, although he'd never thought much of it having any deeper significance until now. He'd found her outside the college bar, sitting on one of the steps and staring numbly at her phone, and he'd just… he'd done what any good friend ought to do.
"You found me outside and just… dropped everything. You left your friends and that girl you'd been flirting with all night and took me to that greasy chippy that we both know you hated and went back to my place with me and watched Heathers with me for maybe the hundredth time and didn't leave until it was almost three a.m. even though you had an early morning football practice because you wanted to be sure I was okay."
She looks up, meeting his eyes. "And it's a little ridiculous that it took Petunia's cruelty to make me realise it, because I mean, that wasn't like the first time I'd realised you were capable of being nice or anything - I'd known that, and I'd known I liked you as a person and thought you were fit and all that, awful first impressions be damned, but something… when you left that night and it hit me that you'd magically replaced all that hurt and betrayal with something better, something just clicked."
He's silent for a few moments, processing everything she's just said. "Why didn't you say anything?"
It's the most hypocritical question in the history of hypocritical questions, given his own silence on his feelings for her, but it comes out of his mouth nonetheless.
"I don't know," she answers, looking away from him again. "I didn't know how you felt about me, and I didn't want to do anything while we were at school that was going to mess up our friend group, and then we'd graduated and I'd never said anything and it felt too little too late at that point."
"You… didn't know how I felt about you?" he asks dumbly. "I spent the first night I met you just constantly hitting on you - I feel like that's pretty damn obvious."
"And you were completely plastered and apologised for it profusely afterwards and avoided the subject any time it came up again - it didn't exactly seem like it was a feeling you maintained while sober."
"Because I felt like a twat!" he defends. "And you'd very clearlyshown me you weren't interested, so I wasn't about to keep flirting with you after that. But honestly, I'm not great at being subtle - Sirius, Remus, and Peter were constantly giving me shit for acting like an idiot around you. I'm not sure how you never noticed."
"So this is… oh god, this is why Remus was so keen that I drive up to the wedding with you," she says, sounding like she's suddenly had an epiphany of sorts.
He's entirely thrown off-guard by her once again. "What?"
"I was… god, this is embarrassing to admit out loud, but I was talking to Remus a few weeks ago and I started asking about you... and Remus, er, knows about my feelings and he gave me the idea that maybe I should use their wedding weekend as a chance to catch up with you and… fuck, now that I think about it, he was definitely giving really heavy hints that you fancied me back in uni as well."
"Oh my god," James says, realisation suddenly dawning on him, "that dirty double agent."
"Double agent?"
"As soon as you texted me about driving up together, I panicked and called Remus, and the fucker acted entirely oblivious to the whole thing," he explains, his eureka moment entirely outweighing any potential embarrassment he might've felt about telling her that. "Said you probably just wanted to 'spend some quality time with me' or… oh."
That was definitely meant as a hint.
"So all of this was Remus playing matchmaker," Lily concludes. "Or, not even matchmaker really, just…"
"Apparently he came to the conclusion that putting us in a car together for eight hours would be the only way one of us would finally pluck up the courage to say something," he finishes.
"Although I suppose neither of us actually did that… at least not on purpose."
Now that the initial shock has worn off, it starts to sink in that oh my god, she actually has feelings for him - that she's had them for five whole years now.
She looks at him a bit mischievously, and he realises that they've somehow leaned in towards each other over the course of the conversation. "You still haven't told me why my name is your phone password."
Instead of telling her why, he shows her, because they've got so, so much lost time to make up for. One of his hands comes up to cup her cheek, delicately, as he takes in the feeling of her skin against his hands and commits it to memory, and he closes the remaining gap between the two of them and presses his lips against her own.
It takes them a second to get things right - on Lily's part because it takes her a second to realise what's happening, and on James' part because he can't stop fucking smiling and it's making the kissing part difficult, but once they find their rhythm… holy fuck is it a rhythm.
One of her hands curls around the collar of his T-shirt as she deepens the kiss, and they're at such an awkward angle because they're literally in the driver and passenger seats of a car, but none of that even matters because he's kissing Lily Evans and she's kissing him back and it's quite literally everything he'd ever hoped it would be and more.
Everything he has, everything he's felt for the last six years, he's pouring into this. And maybe he should be nervous about that level of intensity of it, nervous that it's too much for a first kiss after she's only just told him that she likes him too, but he… he's never had much self-control when it comes to her, and this seems to be no exception. He doesn't think he could tone it down even if he wanted to.
One of his hands slides down her side, and she makes a soft little moaning sound into the kiss that practically does him in. When he'd thought to himself that she was going to be the death of him, he hadn't exactly pictured it happening this way, but he's quite okay with it.
Although then again, he'd actually like to do quite a bit more of this before dying, so maybe scratch that. He can't snog the girl of his dreams if he's dead.
Her hand slides from his collar and down his chest, and he's hyper-aware of everywhere her fingers touch, and -
BEEEEEEP.
He jumps back immediately, removing his offending elbow from where it had accidentally collided with the car's horn. "Shit!"
Lily laughs, and when James looks at her, she's flushed and her lips are a little swollen, and he did that. "Cars are perhaps not the best place for impromptu snogging sessions," she says, smirking just a little.
"No, not really," he agrees. "Not sure why there are so many songs about it."
"I think those usually involve making use of the backseat instead."
He glances at the backseat of his car, which doesn't actually have all that much stuff in it, but at the same time...
He's pretty sure that, if they keep going, he's not going to want to stop. And while shagging in the back of a car may be another one of those things that people like writing songs about, he'd much rather prefer, say, a hotel bed for that type of thing.
Lily must notice his apprehension, because she laughs again. "I'm not proposing we start snogging in your backseat," she tells him. "We can wait until we get to the hotel."
"How far away is that again?" He knows he asked that question not too long ago, but he's honestly completely forgotten the answer in the time since then.
A lot has happened in that time period, sue him.
"A little under three hours."
A little under three hours. That's practically no time at all. He can do that.
When they finally pull out of the rest area parking lot and get back on the road, James turns the music volume back up again, and it's a rather fitting song for the way Lily's hand is currently reaching over the centre console and resting on his thigh.
Can't keep my hands to myself - I mean I could, but why would I want to?
It turns out that three hours actually feels like an endlessly long amount of time when faced with a newfound impatience to get to one's destination.
They're just as chatty as they were before - the only thing that's changed from the first half of their trip is that there are noticeably fewer weird moments between the two of them… which, in hindsight, all suddenly make a lot of sense now. Well, that, and the way Lily's hands will occasionally reach over and rest on his knee, his shoulder, his bicep, and linger there for just a few moments, like she's trying to confirm that he's still real, like all of this is still real.
He doesn't fully blame her; he still can't really believe it's real either.
But after approximately one hundred and eighty agonising minutes in the car, they pull into the hotel where everyone's rooms for the wedding are booked. His parking job is… definitely not his best work, but he's not spending a single moment more in this car than necessary.
He opens the boot and retrieves his own bag, and just like on the way here, he lets her pick up her duffel bag herself. But as soon as the car's locked, he can't stop himself from sliding his free hand into her own, because he's no longer in the driver's seat of a car anymore and he's finally free to do something with his hands besides hold onto a steering wheel.
"I'm assuming… did you book a hotel room with Pete?" Lily asks him, as they fall into step.
"Nah, I got my own room," he answers. He hadn't had a specific reason not to share a room when he'd made his reservation, but god is he grateful for it now.
"So did I," she replies.
He almost wants to ask her to just stay in his, but he's not sure… maybe it's too soon for that? Or too forward?
So he bites his tongue, content to just run his thumb along the back of her hand as they walk into the hotel lobby and up to the desk.
"Hi, we need to check into our rooms?"
The concierge looks up from her computer at the both of them, almost disinterestedly. "Last name?"
"There's two separate rooms," James clarifies. "One under James Potter, one under Lily Evans."
The woman starts pulling up their room details, and James can't help but look over at Lily while they wait. He's spent three whole hours waiting to kiss her again - which isn't that much time, in the grand scheme of things, but they're making up for five years of lost time - and now they're so close. All he needs is their damn room keys, and he can invite her up to his for a little bit before dinner, and -
"It looks like you two are booked in the same room, actually."
James' head snaps up to look at the concierge again. "I didn't - "
She scrolls a little. "It looks like the change was made by the wedding party who owns the block of room reservations."
The... wedding party? That means -
He and Lily come to the same realisation at the same time. "Remus," they both say aloud, almost in unison.
"Yes?"
James whirls around to find both of his best friends, sitting on a couch in the lobby with drinks in hand. How he missed them when they walked in is a mystery, but he supposes he might've been a bit preoccupied with other things.
He blinks at the two of them, trying to form words. "You - you changed my hotel reservation?"
Remus smirks at him. "No, that was all Sirius."
"And technically," Sirius chimes in, "I didn't change your reservation at all. I just cancelled Lily's."
"I - why?"
"Because Remus here had to listen to not one, but both of you go on about each other in the weeks leading up to this weekend, and there was quite enough of you two being mutually pining idiots in university for it to still be continuing to this day," Sirius explains, throwing an arm around his fiancé. "So it felt necessary to take matters into our own hands… although, from the looks of things, you two have managed to sort things out already."
Sirius' eyes drop meaningfully, and James follows his gaze to realise that Lily's hand is still in his.
James opens his mouth to respond, but Lily beats him to the punch. "Finding out a bloke uses your name as his phone password mid-drive tends to do that, yeah. But if you'll excuse us, we've got a shared hotel room to take advantage of, so…"
She flashes the room key at the two of them - James isn't sure when she managed to collect it from the woman at the desk, but she's got it nonetheless - and he feels his heart fill with affection for her all over again.
And he also very, very much wants to follow through on her plan.
"We'll see you tonight," he says hurriedly, and he's quite positive that his friends are going to have a nice laugh at how quickly he drags Lily over to the elevators.
Does he care? Absolutely fucking not.
It's practically a mad dash to their room after that - it seems Lily is just as impatient as he is - and they've only been in the room long enough to set their bags on the floor before Lily has absolutely eliminated even the slightest breath of air between their bodies, rising up on her tiptoes and wrapping her arms around his neck.
"So, what do you say? Worth the drive?" She's got a sly smile on her face, and her green eyes are positively sparkling.
"Without question," he confirms, his hands settling on her hips almost automatically as he drops his head down, resting his forehead against hers.
There's a beat, a breath, and then her lips are on his all over again.
His reaction is instantaneous, one hand tangling in her hair while the other wraps tighter around her waist, and god, it's even better the second time - although that's likely at least in part due to the fact that they're not at some weird angle in James' tiny car this time around.
It's safe to say that absolutely none of this was what he was anticipating when he picked Lily up from her apartment in Camden Town this morning, but he's more than happy with the results.
One short little road trip, that's all it was, and it got him this.