sugar〻oneshots

lost chance

OH MY GOD HI IT'S BEEN SO LONG BUT I WAS GOING THROUGH DRAFTS AND I HAD INSPIRATION FOR THIS SO LIKE.??? idk if any of you still care about me 😕😕 but like. here LMFAO helenahides28 here u go thanks for the headcanon. i like to think my writing has improved despite the fact i still suck ass at endings... idk leave constructive criticism PLS

Lily is nervous.

She's probably never been this nervous in her life. Not her first day at Hogwarts, and not during exams, and not even when her parents told her and Petunia they needed to talk. Like, so nervous she's going to throw up.

There's no reason to be, probably. He's going to say yes. He has to. But she is, and it's not even about the outcome anymore. It's her own stubbornness and the fact it feels like admitting defeat.

It's not, of course. She wants this.

James is sitting alone at the table when she gets there. He always comes down early. None of his friends (or anyone in Gryffindor house, really), is as much of a morning person as he is. She likes that about him. She likes him. She likes that his eyes are still hazel. They're still full of light and gentle and soft when he looks at her, and jeez, even when she rejected him she never felt as loved as she did when he was looking at her.

So she ignores the way her stomach hurts and sits across from him.

"Morning, Potter," she says, and she winces at the way it comes out. She sounds rude. Is she always that rude with him?

If James hears the dryness in her voice, he ignores it, just looks up at her with those eyes. Her heart flutters at the seams.

She doesn't wait for him to respond, couldn't if she wanted to. She can't wait any more. "So-I wanted to ask you something, actually. Your friends aren't going to be here anytime soon, right?"

James furrows his eyebrows, and merlin, he still looks cute- "No, they're not. What, need help with schoolwork?" He's teasing her. Her heart squeezes.

"No," she huffs curtly. "It's-god, I really can't believe I'm doing this..." She brushes back her curtain bangs (she's starting to regret cutting those). "Will you go out with me? On a date."

Now, Lily isn't exactly sure what she expected. She hasn't thought about it-much, at least-just kind of expected James to jump up and maybe do some celebratory dance, and then grab her face and brush her bangs back and kiss her, maybe he'd run his thumb over her jaw too and he'd taste like cherry lip balm and-Okay, yeah, she thought about it a lot, but what she really did not expect was for him to frown.

But he does. She nearly laughs, because it's so absurd-who the fuck frowns when the girl they've been chasing for five years asks you on a date? James, apparently. He knits his eyebrows together and it doesn't give her butterflies this time, because the corners of his mouth turn down too.

She's getting anxious. Her stomach hurts even worse. She's about to walk away and-

"No, um-No, thank you. I'm sorry, Lily."

She does laugh, this time, because he has to be joking.

James isn't smiling.

"I thought this was what you wanted," she says flatly.

"Yeah, but it's not what you want, is it?" James gives her a little smile. She doesn't know if it's real or not. Why doesn't she know what his smile looks like?

"What? I-I spent days making myself ask, you can't-you can't just say no," she says with an incredulous laugh.

James just grabs his bag and stands. "What, like you did to me for years?"

"Yeah, but that's... different," she says desperately. He can't just be done with her now. Not when she finally wants him. Not when-not when she loves him so entirely. She can't have missed her chance.

"You don't get to do that to me, Lily."

He's walking away. And wow, Lily is a major fucking asshole.

In another life, she says yes when he asks her and right now they're eating breakfast and Lily has his kiss on her neck and his hand in hers. She aches for it.