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The soup was warm, hot really. The delicious smell made his mouth water but he should wait a bit before taking a sip if he didn't want to burn himself.
“Oh Potter, you didn’t,” a very muffled-sounding head girl stood in front of him. Her hands reached for his bowl of soup, he automatically handed it to her before his brain started to protest. “I can’t believe you got me soup. James, you really are a hero, thank you so much.”
“I’m not sure… I… Well, a hero?” was all he could stammer.
His protesting brain suddenly filled with fuzzy thoughts. Steam rose from the bowl and tiny drops of sweat stuck on her forehead, maybe it was the soup damp that had landed there.
She was shivering a little bit, and her eyes looked redder than usual but she was still as charming as ever to him.
Even with a nose that was clearly blocked and the smallest hint of red dry skin underneath it. He thought for a second his co-head would take a bath in the hot soup from how she held the bowl almost pressed into her body.
“Not all heroes wear capes, James,” she said and then stood on her tiptoes.
Her face was suddenly closer to him, he held his breath as those soft lips he’d stared at for months, well years really, suddenly almost pressed to his.
He could just about feel their soft touch on his own lips, but then she kissed him on his cheek.
The touch was scintillating and he wondered if she wouldn’t do this again sometime, but then, instead of kissing his cheek, maybe she would kiss his mouth. Touch his lips, taste him and… but he was getting ahead of himself, she was just thanking him for bringing her soup now that she was clearly ill.
And maybe the fever had addled her brain and that’s why she’d kissed him in the first place.
Maybe she wouldn’t even remember. But he knew he would. He touched his cheek, just to make sure the feeling of her lips was still there.
He answered her smile with one of his own, and then stared at her as she made her way to the comfortable sofas in front of the roaring hearth.
He was mesmerised, his hand still touching his cheek, as if he had to make sure it had really happened.
Sweet Merlin, he was such a sap.
A well-aimed clap on his shoulders brought him back from his dreamlike thoughts, filled with Lily calling him her hero, calling him James, - she’d called him James! - and put his two feet firmly back on the ground.
“Smooth Prongs, real smooth. You’re Evans’s hero now.” Sirius said. His grey eyes looked amused but otherwise his handsome face was unreadable, as usual. “Will you bring me some soup when I’m sick too?”
“Erm. Yeah. I guess,” he said, looking at his best mate with a healthy dose of suspicion. Sirius was studying him now with equal intensity.
“You didn’t know she was sick, did you?”
“Erm, maybe…not. Not before I saw her just now, no,” he was a terrible liar and he knew it, there was no point pretending. He shrugged. It didn’t matter, he was still her hero.
“What would you pay me to not tell her that?”
“Padfoot!”
“Look, mate, don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me, just bring me some soup as well,” Sirius’s smile had something predatory to it sometimes.
“ You’re not sick.”
“ Nah, but I’m a ‘soup is good every day’ kind of guy. Oh, and see if they have the crunchy breadsticks, will you?”