Jily oneshots

it wasn't a pity invite

by elanev91

'Lily? I — uh. Hi.' James was standing there, holding the edge of the front door and staring at her, jaw literally dropped, like he couldn't believe that he was actually seeing what he was seeing.

Which would have been one thing if he hadn't known she was coming or if Lily had been standing on his front step on her hands, a fucking Santa hat balanced on her arse, like some perverse version of those terrifying TikToks Marlene had taken to sending her in the middle of the night because she knew it was the only thing that was going to keep Lily up through a night shift, or, god, even worse, like those TikToks of the Amazon boxes, the 'I smell pennies' boxes, skittering around the floor with their limbs out all crazy like. Even thinking about those, hearing that voice in her head, Lily was this close to making an actual, audible sound.

But so it would have been one thing if she was standing on James' parents' step like that. Would have explained the look on his face.

But no. She was standing on his step in a normal winter coat wearing a normal Christmas jumper and holding a tin of normal, and incredibly delicious, homemade mince pies in her hands.

Not that she'd homemade them, you know — Mary had — but it still counted.

Lily looked at him for a moment, the barest trace of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. He was wearing a deep red jumper today and black, or maybe dark navy, trousers, and she hadn't seen him, really ever, in actual clothes. His scrubs were nice, but there was something about this look that just really suited him.

Like, she knew that he had a life outside the hospital — they both did, though she felt like hers was something she'd made up at this point rather than something that actually existed — but she hadn't really had a way to picture him outside the cool tiles and white walls of the hospital until now.

Not that she was picturing him.

'Hi, James.' She shifted the tin in her hands and James, realising that she was holding something, immediately stuck his hand out. Lily handed him the tin.

'Thanks.' She folded her hands in front of her, feeling vaguely useless now that she wasn't holding anything. 'They're uh — mince pies. Homemade.'

James took a step back so that Lily could come through into the house. There was soft music playing from speakers she couldn't see — it sounded like Ariana Grande's Christmas album, which was really quite unexpected — and she could hear the sound of people chattering away at the far end of the house.

'You didn't have to bring anything.' He looked down at the top of the tin like he'd be able to see through it. 'Make sure you tell Mary thanks.'

Lily shot him a look as she shrugged out of her coat. James just grinned at her.

If you'd asked Lily her Christmas plans a month ago — hell, if you'd asked her a few days ago — she would have told you she wasn't going to do a damn thing.

She was going to sit at home. Wear pyjamas all day, eat gingerbread, FaceTime with her mam (and her da, though mostly just the top of his head and only for a few minutes before he started raging about not being able to use the bloody thing, but still, her da). No, she wasn't going to do a damn thing — she wasn't even going to go to mass, which she wasn't going to tell her mam that because she didn't need the bloody lecture (god love her, but for fuck's sake, Lily was old enough now to decide whether she wanted to go to mass or not) — because this was another year that she couldn't afford the flight back home and, even if she could, she was on call at the hospital on Christmas, working a shift on Boxing Day, and another on the 28th and so she just —

It wasn't worth it. You know, to try to cobble together the flight just so that she could do the grand tour around Derry (because she couldn't just go home and see her family, no, she'd have to go everywhere and see everyone and hear about their Christmases, their cousins, their jobs, the weird thing they saw down the pub last week, the conflict at the bingo, the….)