Nosy Neighbours and Bloody Bell Peppers
@jilymicrofics June Prompt List 19: Family
Words: 1.7k
TW: brief, non-graphic mentions of blood and accidental injury
When Lily opens the door, she doesn’t find old, nosy Mrs Bagshot trying to snoop again into her private life.
Instead, there’s a stranger on her doorstep. And he’s bleeding.
“I’m so, so sorry,” he breathes out, as soon as she opens the door. His right hand is wrapped up in what seems like a kitchen towel – which is alarmingly getting soaked with blood – and his glasses are askew on his very pale face. “I – I just cut myself with a knife and it doesn’t stop bleeding – Mrs Bagshot told me you’re a doctor, so –”
“Come in,” Lily quickly replies, stepping back to let him cross the threshold. “Don’t worry.”
“Thank you so much, Miss Evans,” the boy exhales, eagerly accepting her invitation. His eyes are suspiciously dull. It seems like he’s desperately trying not to faint. “I just don’t know what to do, I’ve never seen this much blood…”
“Then you’ve come to the right place,” she replies, smiling, and gestures for him to follow her down the corridor. “What’s your name?”
The boy’s voice comes out in a squeak. “Harry.”
“And how old are you, dear?”
“Thirteen,” he quickly replies. When Lily turns around to look at him, clearly worried about him being alone, he almost chokes on air. “Dad’s just gone out for a minute!” he yelps, eyes widening behind his glasses. “He forgot to buy something for this evening’s dinner – he’s not a bad parent, I swear, it’s just my fault – I should have never tried to slice the bell peppers on my own…”
Lily lets out a sigh of relief and hastens to reassure the boy, who now is even paler than before.
She makes him sit down on one of her kitchen chairs and, by the time she has fished out her emergency supplies from their cabinet and inspected the wound, Harry is so white that he looks like a ghost.
“Are you feeling woozy?” she asks, keeping an eye on him, while she delicately cleans the blood from his injured finger.
“A bit,” he murmurs. His words come out slurred. “M’ head’s heavy.”
It’s only thanks to years spent working in healthcare that Lily has the quickness to raise and catch him in her arms before he slumps down on the floor.
When Harry’s dad comes thundering through the door, a few minutes later, his son is sprawled on Lily’s couch, passed out, white as a sheet, legs propped up on a tower of pillows. Lily is carefully wrapping a bandage around his cut, when she hears heavy footsteps coming from the corridor and then a worried, anxious voice booms in the silence –
And then she turns around and her eyes finally meet the father of her very young, very unexpected patient and everything suddenly becomes hot and also weird, because this man is incredibly fit.
He’s tall and lean, and his arms are something that Lily feels should be exposed in a museum – his skin tone clashing oh so nicely against his simple white t-shirt – and he looks almost inappropriately young to be the dad of a thirteen-year-old.
He is also beside himself with worry, pale almost as his unconscious son, wild hair springing in the air as if trying to defy gravity.
“Oh, God,” he yelps, then falls down to his knees on Lily’s carpet, right next to Harry’s head. “What the fuck –”
“He’s fine,” Lily finally says, and she is surprised by how suave her voice sounds, despite her being almost breathless. The man’s wild eyes frantically land on her. “It’s only a small cut. I think he just couldn’t bear the sight of blood.”
“He takes from his dad,” the man whispers and then seems to deflate. His hand jumps up to tug at his hair. “I swear, I feel like I’m going to faint, too…”
“Well, please don’t,” Lily laughs. “I don’t have another couch for you.”
The handsome, worried man in front of her finally manages to smile and his face becomes even more attractive. One cute dimple appears on his right cheek.
“Thank you,” he exhales, getting up as she does, clearly relieved. He gently touches his son’s forehead. “I told him many, many times not to touch cutlery when I’m not home, but he never listens…”
“Don’t worry,” Lily replies, while washing her hands at the kitchen sink. “I’m a doctor. I see things like this every day.”
“Oh.” Harry’s dad’s eyes widen behind his specs. “So you’re the infamous Miss Evans.”
Lily frowns. “Good God. This doesn’t sound good.”
“No, no!” he frets, shaking his head. “It’s just – we moved here only two weeks ago. We’re at 3A.”
“Oh!” Lily exclaims, starting to connect the dots. “So you’re Mrs Bagshot’s new neighbours.”
“Yes,” the man confirms, nodding. “She – well, she is quite a… chatty neighbour…”
“More like a nosy nuisance,” Lily replies and Harry’s dad laughs.
“Yeah, well, she is really set on us making new friends, since we just moved here from London,” he admits. Then, a shy smile tugs at his lips. “She mentioned a young, single, beautiful doctor living in 4C.”
Lily feels herself blush. “Don’t mind her,” she sighs. “Mrs Bagshot is trying to set me up with awful men since forever and I think she’s going to stop either when she dies or I finally decide to tell her that I’m a lesbian –”
Lily doesn’t know if she’s just too hopeful, but she thinks she sees a bit of disappointment on the man’s face.
“Well, no, not really,” she admits. His grin widens. “But maybe it’s the one thing that’s going to finally make her stop.”
“Or maybe she’ll just try to set you up with a woman.”
“Well, that’s a risk I never contemplated.” Lily shrugs. For reasons she can’t begin to comprehend, she has the uncontrollable urge to keep making smile the gorgeous man standing in her living room. “Anyway, don’t mind her. She believes she has the obligation to find a spouse for every single person in their thirties she knows. I’m sorry if she made you feel uncomfortable.”
“Not at all,” Harry’s father replies. He’s still looking at her with a soft, pensive expression in his eyes. Then, he grimaces. “Maybe I’m just starting to regret telling her that I’m also single, since I guess she’s going to try and set me up, too, but –”
“Oh,” Lily exhales, completely taken aback. “You…?”
The man smiles again and Lily can’t help but think that that dimple is simply begging to be kissed.
“Yeah, I – I mean, it’s just us,” he says, sending a fond glance to his still-unconscious son. “Harry’s mum’s not in the picture. Never has been, really.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lily shamelessly lies.
“Don’t be,” he gently replies. “We are a family, Harry and I.” His eyes linger on his son’s face, before he fondly ruffles his hair. “We’re good.”
The man gently strokes his son’s cheek one last time and then gets up from the couch. “I’m James, by the way,” he says, stretching out his hand towards her. “Nice to finally meet you.”
She gladly accepts it. “I’m Lily.”
Their hands stay in each other’s grasp for a beat too long.
And then, Harry’s faint voice interrupts them and James jumps away from her to rush to his son.
“How are you? How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t want you using the knife when I’m not home –”
“I’m sorry, dad, I just wanted to help…”
“You gave me quite a scare, young man.”
“Oh, please, don’t say young man, you’re not sixty.”
“I’m still your old dad. I have the right to do as I wish.”
“I just think you want to embarrass me in front of other people.”
They’re so alike, Lily thinks, now that she sees their faces close together. They have the same elegant features and inky hair – which both of them evidently like to tug and torture in a gesture that’s so uncannily similar that it makes her smile. They also seem to sport identical pairs of glasses.
She’s never seen a cuter father-son duo.
“Thank you again, Miss Evans,” says Harry, brusquely distracting her from her reverie. She blinks and finds out that the two of them are now looking at her. “And sorry, too. I didn’t intend to pass out on your couch.”
He seems so embarrassed that she just smiles.
“Don’t worry,” she replies. “I’m glad to have finally met you.”
“Why don’t you come and have dinner with us?” James asks, so out of the blue that Lily almost does a double take. He’s grinning and he’s decidedly less worried, now that his son has woken up. “We were going to have chicken wings tonight. If you’d like to join us, we would be delighted.”
“Yeah, we also have bell peppers,” Harry adds. Then he frowns. “I didn’t spray blood all over them, so I think they’re good to eat.”
“Let us thank you for saving my son from a very premature death.”
“See? You do want to embarrass me in front of other people!”
“What can I say?” James sighs, sending her a complicit glance. “He makes it too easy for me.”
“So?” James asks her. “What do you think, Miss Evans? How do chicken wings and hopefully not-bloody bell peppers sound?”
Lily doesn’t even need to think about it.
“It sounds lovely,” she replies and when a big smile opens on James’s face she feels something curious – something like butterfly wings – fluttering around in her belly.
“Wonderful!” he exclaims. Then, he winks. “Let’s make Mrs Bagshot proud.”
A few years later, the most heated argument takes place during James and Lily’s wedding reception.
“It is my doing!” Harry hotly protests. “If I didn’t cut my finger on those stupid bell peppers, this would never have happened –”
“Don’t be ridiculous, darling,” Mrs Bagshot patronizingly replies. “I made this match as soon as I saw you and your dad get off the car the very first day. You didn’t even know about Lily’s existence until I told you to go ring her bell…”
“But it still wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t convince him it was time to date again!”
“You can’t even begin to know how much work I put into your beautiful stepmum to make her understand she wasn’t a lesbian –”
Lily and James share a look and then just burst out laughing.
