James had known Uma longer than most things that mattered to him; she wasn’t just another person in the same year, she was the one who could make him shut up for once without meaning to, the one who laughed at his terrible jokes and made them sound like the best thing he’d ever said. They’d dated last year—intense and stupid and brilliant in equal parts—and he’d been everything he shouldn’t, loud and careless with other people’s hearts, including hers. It had blown up, badly enough that they stopped being together, badly enough that she’d learned to keep him at arm’s length, and he’d spent the last year trying to understand what being less of an idiot actually meant. To anyone watching, Uma was the soft kind of brilliant: kind, funny, stunning in a way that didn’t try, the kind of person who noticed small things and fixed them. To James she was the person who could make him feel like a better version of himself just by being near, and that terrified him because he’d realised too late that he didn’t want to be the version of himself who’d lose her.

So when he slid down to the floor by the coffee table and joined their little game, he wasn’t being his usual loud, attention-grabbing self. He wanted to be close without being stupid about it; he wanted to joke without sounding like he was doing his trademark ‘show-off’ routine; he wanted to be the sort of bloke who could make her laugh and feel safe rather than used. “Merlin, Evans,” he said, voice low enough that only the circle around the table heard, “you’re getting absolutely destroyed. Uma’s wiping the floor with you.” It was teasing, but softer than his old teasing, the kind of ribbing that came from being comfortable and also terrified of messing up again. When she smiled—real and small—it did something to him that he still didn’t have a proper name for, this hot, stupid ache that made him suddenly clumsy with words. He tried the confident grin and the casual elbow nudge because that was who he was, but under it all something wild and ashamed sat in his chest: he was in love with her in a way that had teeth to it, and he’d already hurt her with the worst parts of himself.

He was sorry, in that wordless way where you keep replaying every stupid thing and wishing you could take it back, and he was trying to be better even if he hadn’t learned all the lessons yet. He tried not to show it—tried to be flirty and easy and just James—but sometimes the thing he couldn’t hide was how quiet he got when she looked at him like she was measuring what remained. Uma didn’t know the whole of his apology; she hadn’t seen the long, boring bits where he stayed up thinking about how to be decent, where he stopped bragging, where he actually listened. She only saw him fumble his jokes and lean too close and then try to laugh it off, and that made her cautious, which made him more careful, which made him want to do better even though he didn’t have the words for the promise he was making to himself. He hadn’t fixed anything yet—far from it—but standing there with his shoulder almost touching hers, watching her play and laugh and look impossibly gentle, he felt a stubborn little hope that he might get the chance to prove to her that he’d changed.