Author's Note: This was meant to be a oneshot but it got too long and I really hate letting them run over 12,000 words, so I've split it into three parts. Apologies to all of the Tumblr users who have been utterly messed around by my indecision on this front.

This work is dedicated to two awesome, beautiful, talented people - firstly, to Lily (alrightsnaps), who gave me the idea for the story and is just generally the best, and secondly, to Bee (BCDaily), who gets what I mean about the forearms (AKA we're both dying of thirst over here).

a beginning

Lily only goes to the bookshop because of the wedding, and the gift card, and Mary in HR, who won't shut up about the place.

It's a strange jumble of events that conspire to see her there, each one disconnected from the other, yet somehow, they come together to work as one propulsive, synergistic force (Kingsley will say that it was fate, perhaps, but Kingsley is a maudlin Power Gay who bathes in good fortune and dines on solid gold success, as easily as some might breathe—she'll tell him to shut up).

First, there is Mary, and her unexplained boner for this one particular shop. She's been hounding every reader she knows to visit (it simply must be seen to be believed) for a really long time. It doesn't matter that Lily can't justify taking a half-hour drive to Stamford for the purposes of buying a book when there's a perfectly good Waterstones around the corner from work. A half-hour, according to Mary, is pocket change, and Shelf Awareness is a real-world Narnia.

A nice Narnia, she claims, without eternal winters and ritualistic animal slaughter, just one employee who looks like that bloke who played Prince Caspian, only Lily's not supposed to point that out because he doesn't like it.

Then, there's the gift card, which was a present from her boyfriend. Ian hasn't met any of her colleagues yet, otherwise Lily might suspect that it was Mary who suggested it. It's more likely that he forgot about her birthday until he was halfway home from work and stopped in for a hasty panic-shop. He swears otherwise, but he's got a head like a sieve, and she's smart enough to know a last-minute purchase when she sees one.

In any case, she's got £50 to spend, and gets a chance to do so on a Saturday in April, when Beatrice—who is scoping out wedding venues while her fiancé films a travel documentary on the Trans-Siberian Express—asks Lily to go with her to Burghley House and lend her opinion. Stamford is a matter of minutes away from there, so she figures she might as well pop in and do some shopping, while she can. She's been so busy kicking ass at work that she hasn't read a decent book in ages.

She gets to the town with an hour to spare before Bea's appointment, parks near the river and swings by the shop for a gander. It's an old, timber-framed building on one of the many honey-stoned Georgian streets that make the town so desirable to tourists, and to the upper middle class, and to Joe Wright, when he filmed Pride and Prejudice there. Being the working-class girl that she is—bricklayer father, nursing aide mother—she would be more inclined to scoff at the whole damn town for its visible pretensions, if that weren't her favourite movie.

Still, Lily can be contrary about these things when she wants to, and she decides, as she pushes open the door, that she's not going to love it.

She loves it immediately.

It's quaint. It's old-fashioned. It's a veritable fairyland. And it sells books.

In an instant, Mary's obsession with the place becomes quite clear. Every bookshop will attain some level of perfection by default—there are books present—but this one feels distinctly magical, and in a hushed, emotive kind of way.

The shop is full of light, but not the average, prosaic light of a ten-a-penny place. Pretty glass lanterns dangle from the wood-beamed ceiling, varying in size and colour, kissing the spines of neatly shelved books with unexpected shafts of red and gold and emerald. The huge stone fireplace is unlit, but draped in gorgeous creeping ivy, and houses a collection of shiny copper kettles. Two proud pewter cauldrons stand sentinel by the register, close to overflowing with colourfully-wrapped sweets.

Most diverting of all is the floor, which in its entirety is a vast, exquisitely-detailed, hand-painted map of many worlds, fictional and otherwise, and draws from her an audible gasp.

She's standing on Neverland, just a hop, skip and a jump away from the lost city of Atlantis, and it's incredible.

"Holy shit," she says, as awestruck as to be practically silent.

Immediately, she feels ashamed of herself. This bookshop was clearly fashioned by elves and fairies, and the floor painted by the hand of an angel. She may yet find a unicorn roaming among the shelves. It deserves much better than a profane exclamation.

"First visit?"

There's a man standing at the register—not Prince Caspian, she can tell at a glance—who is roughly her age, with sandy brown hair and a tweed jacket that gives him quite the scholarly air, complete with elbow patches and a gold-and-scarlet crest.

"Yes," she admits, "hence, my stunned expression."

"That floor is something else, isn't it?"

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," she says warmly.

"I'll pass your compliments to the artist." The scholarly man smiles at her. "Do you need any help?"

She tells him that she's here to browse for now, and he bids her to feel free, so she sets off on an adventure.

There's a rolling ladder in the Classic Fiction aisle, and Lily almost loses her shit.

It's affixed to a track that runs the length of several packed-out shelves, moving freely when she pushes with the flat of her hand. She feels as if she's Belle, or something. Like she could burst into song at any moment, and none of the other customers nor the scholarly man would bat an eye.

Perched beside it is a free-standing sign that bears the notice, 'Caution: Do not climb without adult supervision and/or appropriate health & safety training. I am 26 years-old and have fallen off twice - James.'

She loves this place. She loves this place. She loves this place. It's bricks and mortal and pure contentment.

Like other bookstores she has seen, there are placards dotted about the shelves which display handwritten reviews, though unlike those commonplace stores, most of them are bordering on ridiculous. In front of one of Paige Toon's many romance novels, she finds, 'I hated this mushy, formulaic piece of trash, but I lost a bet and was forced to write a blurb for it, so here we all are in hell together - Sirius,' written in an elegant cursive, and finds the same hand has penned a more positive review ('Drama. Romance. Cheating spouses. Those Russians knew how to live. Heavy book, great for throwing at your housemate's head. 10/10. - Sirius') of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

Lily wants to work at this place—to hell with her legal career—and walk this gorgeous floor every day. Scratch that, she wants to live here. Get married here. Raise her kids here.

She picks up Tolstoy, and it becomes one in an eventual stack of books, balancing precariously in her arms. Perhaps she'll throw it at Kingsley.

She's rambling freely through her ink-and-paper vortex when she remembers, with a jolt, that she should have left to meet Beatrice already, so she hurries to the register and dumps all of her finds in a tumbling pile on the counter, whilst simultaneously trying to text her friend a lie about the traffic.

"I got so caught up that I totally forgot I had to be somewhere," she tells the scholarly man, while she types a one-handed message, her attention caught by her phone. "Just these, please."

"Just these?" says an amused voice. "You've practically buried the counter."

Lily looks up, and finds that the scholarly man has been replaced by another, taller and thinner, with dark-framed glasses, the cheekbones of a model and the thickest, blackest, most unfathomably windswept hair she's ever seen in her life. He grins, revealing a set of perfect teeth and one—just one—adorable dimple in his left cheek.

She's standing in magical, mystical, awe-inspiring bookshop, but the most beautiful thing in it is a bloody boy, and how is that fair?

"Where'd the other one go?" she says, feeling supplanted.

"What other one?"

"The bloke who was just here, with the elbow patches?"

"Oh, nowhere," says the very attractive guy, and picks up one of the books to scan into the register. "That's me. I'm a shape-shifter."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah, but don't tell anyone."

"And I suppose you shape-shifted your clothes, too?"

"Alright, you got me," he admits, and smooths down the front of a plain white t-shirt that works in beautiful harmony with his caramel skin and sinewy forearms. He's lean, but looks as if he could sweep her into the air, bridal style, without shedding so much as a bead of perspiration. "I'm not the same bloke—sad story—he was reading a book about black holes and got sucked in."

"Was that a pun just now?"

"Where?" he says, and looks over his shoulder to locate the source. She intends for her snort to be derisive, but that doesn't quite go to plan, and he smiles at her when he turns back around. "If you're looking for a boring explanation, the other guy's gone to the loo."

"Ah."

"More importantly, are you buying all of these for yourself, or starting a rival business?"

It's only now that he's scanning her books that Lily realises just how many she picked up, and how unlikely it is that she'll find the time to read them all. Work is far too hectic, she and Beatrice are planning her wedding together in the wake of Karl's travels, and Ian can feel more like a full-time job than a boyfriend at the best of times. It's a fine collection of books—some of which she's been dying to read for ages—but while she could have breezed through this stack as a teenager, these may just last until she's thirty.

"I've got a gift card," she replies, and raises an eyebrow. "Should you really be questioning your customers about why they're willing to buy a lot of books from you?"

"Probably not, but how else am I going to scope out competitors?"

He's so fit that she can't look him directly in the eye without a tell-tale, inconvenient, irrepressible smile that screams, 'I want to wear you like pyjamas,' which makes her feel guilty for looking in the first place—she has a boyfriend, after all, and she's never been the kind of girl to flirt about when she's with someone—so she shrugs and buries her nose in her phone while he scans in the rest of the books.

The total comes to £126.86, well above the gift card's limit and over double what she intended.

Perhaps the shop is enchanted, she thinks, watching the cashier's hands—once she's paid and he's bagging up her loot—to compel innocent shoppers to overspend. It would explain why she's felt entirely bewitched from the moment she walked through the door.

He's got lovely hands, she thinks, deft and brown and long fingered. Capable hands. Strong, perhaps.

Not a wedding ring in sight.

What is she doing?

Lily looks, instead, at the name badge on his chest.

"Adrian Mole?" she reads aloud. "I'm going to assume that you don't share a name with a fictional diarist?"

"You'd be right," he agrees. "Why be myself when I can be Leicester's most famous failed poet-slash-divorcee-slash-celebrity offal chef? Though I am pretty brilliant, to be fair."

She shoves her phone into her purse and picks up her new purchases, which he had to split into two bags. "Normally, I'd call you out for that little bit of arrogance, but I bloody love Adrian Mole, and I'd rather talk about that."

"I think they're the funniest books ever written, and I read a lot, so I feel like I'd know."

"I crack up, and I mean, laugh-crying, every time I read the poems about Norway."

"Land of difficult spelling?"

"Hiding your beauty behind strange vowels," she finishes, smiling. "I was gutted when the author passed away."

"Tell me about it, I was distraught," he seconds. "You know she was working on a new one when she died, right?"

"I know! And just when he was about to finally get with Pandora!"

"Well, that's just Adrian's luck, isn't it? He spends thirty years madly in love with Pandora, finally gets a chance to be with her, and his creator only goes and bloody dies," he says, and seems pleased by the laughter he elicits from her. "But look, don't let me waste your time for the sake of being polite. Didn't you say you had somewhere to be?"

"Oh, bugger," she breathes, her eyes widening. "Yes. Yes, I do. I have to go, like, ten minutes ago if I want to avoid being stabbed."

"Let me guess, you've got a mob meeting to attend to?"

"Worse than that, a very impatient bride-to-be whose fiancé pissed off on a work trip to avoid wedding planning," she says dryly, and he pulls a face in response. "Wish me luck, yeah? And thank you so much."

"Good luck," he says. "And have a nice weekend."

With a grateful smile, Lily spins on her toes and dashes off towards the exit, the magic of the place broken—almost—by her haste to get to Beatrice, and her absolute certainty that her friend is going to beat her over the head with a tasteful bridal bouquet.

"Bye, Adrian!" she calls out, as she pushes the door open with her elbow, taking the opportunity to enjoy one last look at him.

He grins at her again—in a smug, cheeky, pulse-quickening kind of way—and raises one hand in farewell. "Bye, Pandora."

Lily's heart flips over.

She's in a funny mood for the rest of the day.

It's not sadness, exactly, but some distant relative of the feeling, accompanied by a healthy dose of shame, which makes very little sense from any reasonable standpoint. She didn't do anything wrong, merely feels as if she did. Three jam-packed hours of someone else's wedding plans do not help matters much.

Bookshop boy helps matters even less.

She thinks—she can't stop thinking—of his hands. Of his arms. Of the way his t-shirt hugged his shoulders. That hair, and that smile, and the way he'd looked at her when he bade her goodbye. No self-respecting woman should remember such things so clearly after just one meeting. Lily's better judgement despairs, while her traitorous, tingling flesh makes welcome. It had taken her a month to remember that Ian's eyes were blue.

The thought of her boyfriend makes her stomach twinge with guilt, and fills her with a surge of penitent affection, so she calls him when she and Beatrice return from Burghley House—trying, as she listens to the dial tone, to hold a mental picture of the soft, brown curls that droop over his forehead, despite her mind's insistent efforts to morph his face into another's—but he's in a rush to say goodbye as soon as he picks up. The match is starting soon, and he doesn't want to miss the line-up announcement, unrelenting even when she tells him that she's had a weird morning, and would really appreciate a chat.

He'll come over tonight, he promises, once he and the lads finish up at the Draper's Arms.

She tells him not to bother, because he'll only be drunk and looking for one thing.

He tells her not to be so bloody condescending, and hangs up angry, so she texts him an apology at once. He replies back, 'K.'

Lily is forever telling people that it suits her to the ground to be with someone so independent. They do their own thing at weekends—he has football, and golf, and the pub, and his mates, while she's usually catching up on chores that she let slide during the week—and they're not in each other's pockets, like Kingsley and his boyfriend tend to be. Her friends struggle to understand it, but as she has explained, many times, when faced with blank looks and questions that start with, 'um, not to be rude, but,' what works for other people doesn't necessarily work for them.

They get along so well, mostly.

Other times, it's really fucking hard to like him.

Ian comes over the next day to apologise for his behaviour during their chat. With a bunch of lilies in one hand and a frothy cappuccino—he always forgets that she prefers a simple tea, but she appreciates the gesture, all the same—in the other, he makes for a perfect model of contrition, and resolves to make amends by spending the entire day together.

It's nice, and charmingly domestic—him and her on the sofa, taking it in turns to play with Stella, Kingsley's beloved Maine Coon, ploughing through most of a season of Mad Men and laughing when Netflix judges them for watching still after several hours—and she starts to forget why she was angry in the first place. It was just a silly thing, she supposes. Every couple has them. Her mother always told her that relationships were work.

"Maybe we should spend more time together," she suggests, once their pizza has arrived, and she's consumed enough of hers to feel uncomfortably full, "at the weekends, I mean."

Ian looks at her, apparently puzzled, and hastily wipes some sauce from the corner of his mouth. "You think?"

"I do," she admits. "I mean, not every weekend—"

"Yeah. No. Yeah, 'course."

"—but every once in a while." She twists to face him on the sofa, tucking her legs beneath her bottom. "We're both so tired after work on weeknights, you know? It'd be nice to see each other without both of us falling half-asleep by 9pm."

"It would." He nods his agreement. "I miss you at weekends. And hey, footy's almost over for the season, so..."

"So, you'll shortly lose all will to live?"

"That means more Saturdays free," he continues, with a laugh. "The lads and I were talking about starting a rugby league, but I'll work something out so that I can do both."

"Sure. I mean, whatever works."

"Maybe we'll book a weekend away somewhere, yeah? Not next weekend, obviously, 'cause we've got Paul's stag do in Dublin, but some time after that. Just you and me."

"Yeah," she agrees, and she's not particularly hungry, but she reaches for another slice. "Yeah, that sounds really nice."

When he leaves—later that night because he's got an early start in the morning—she throws the lilies in the bin. They're poisonous to cats.

She has no reason to go back to the bookshop—she hasn't even had a chance to start one of the novels she's bought already—and with Ian having spent every weeknight at her flat, seemingly determined to prove just how reliable a presence he can be, Lily finds herself quite pleased to be alone when he leaves for the airport on Saturday morning. She decides, in an uncharacteristic move, to spend the day relaxing, and resolves to start reading I Capture the Castle right after breakfast.

And yet…

She puts a reasonable effort into reading until she bends to the inevitable, and so it's slightly later in the day when she arrives in Stamford, telling herself that it's fine because she feels a genuine pull towards the shop and would have come back anyway—had she never met him—with none of the self-consciousness she carries in there now.

If he thinks she's here for him…

But there's no reason why he would, except for that which she knows to be almost, barely, closing in on—true, but her feelings aren't projected from her chest for all to see, and her fears have roots in nothing but awareness of herself. She'll be fine. She doesn't even know the bloke. She's been with her boyfriend for close to a year, and it's perfectly acceptable to appreciate—from a distance—an attractive man. Ian is obsessed with Megan Fox, and Lily has never had an issue with it. This, in principle, is exactly the same.

It's busier than it was last week, with a few dozen people browsing the shelves, taking photos of the floor and helping themselves to sweets from the cauldrons. One corner looks as if a children's hour has recently finished; there are squishy bean bags scattered all about, while some lingering youngsters make crayon drawings of colourful pirate ships. The Prince Caspian of whom Mary had spoken—Lily can tell immediately that it's him—is the one manning the register today; and cuts a handsome, somewhat waxy figure, with a number of leather straps tied around his skinny wrists, tattooed arms, and long black hair pulled into a silky ponytail.

Her guy—Adrian, or whatever his real name is—isn't there. Not as far as she can see.

She can't tell if she's relieved or disappointed.

It looks as if a fresh batch of reviews have been added to the shelves, and Lily decides to conduct a treasure hunt of those which have been hitherto unseen. She traverses a slow, meandering path through the store, moving up and down the rows in a precise and orderly manner, pausing often to stop and read, and laugh, and read again—until she rounds a corner between Westeros and Camelot, and almost collides with him.

"Oh." She turns as red as a poppy in bloom and takes a sideways step to cut around him. "Sorry."

He'll have forgotten her, she thinks. He must see so many customers in a week; her features will have blurred into an unsteady memory.

"Hey!" he says, spinning on one foot as she passes by. "I knew you'd come back to see me!"

He looks as thrilled by her presence as she is by his, and isn't that a shameful state of affairs? Lily should make her excuses and leave, but it's like he's cast an invisible line out to sea and snagged her dress, catching her neatly on the end of his hook; she turns around to face him before common sense can catch up with her body to remind her that it's not a good idea.

"Actually," she retorts, "I only came back for the floor."

"You and the floor have something going on, do you?"

"The floor and I are exclusive, as it happens."

"Funny, because it never mentioned anything to me."

"You assume it tells you everything."

"This floor and I go way back, I'll have you know," he says grandly. "Plus, I know the artist personally."

"Do they work here?"

"Sort of. He owns the place, so he's more of an all-seeing, omnipresent entity than an employee," he explains. "Think Wizard of Oz, but less of a hack—"

"—and more of a cartographer?"

"He prefers 'artistic genius,' but that's a fair assessment," he says, smiling at her in a way that makes her feel like her secrets aren't her own. "He'll be very happy to hear how much you like it."

"He will?"

"Oh, definitely," he agrees. "In fact—totally unrelated point—he told me to tell you that you look especially fit today."

That catches her in an uncomfortable crosshair between jubilation and guilt, two forces battling for dominance, and she hesitates for a moment before saying, with an apologetic wince, "I actually have a boyfriend, so..."

"Oh." His eyes widen slightly. "Did you think I was—no, don't worry about that," he says, and laughs, and doesn't seem too bothered. "That was a sales technique."

His quip saves them both from something desperately awkward, and she's saved herself from danger. She mirrors his laughter. "A sales technique?"

"I'm a salesman," he says simply. "A salesman sells. It's what I do. Dunno if you've noticed, but I'm quite a looker myself—"

"If you say so."

"—and I find that a little bit of charm here and there encourages people to dig a little deeper into their pockets."

"I'll remind you now that I had already committed to buying far more books than was necessary last week, before I even knew you existed."

"You did, that's true, but think of how many you'll buy today."

"If only I were made of money," she sighs, "alas, I'm not a wealthy baroness, merely a person who has to work their ass off to pay their bills."

"What do you do for work," he says, one hand combing through his dishevelled hair, "when you're not breezing in here and breaking my heart?"

"I thought that was just a sales pitch?"

He shrugs. "I'm an unreliable narrator. What's your job?"

She knows—being so pale and so decidedly redheaded—that she can't hide a blush to save her life, so she breaks eye contact, dropping her gaze to linger on another review card that sits quite neatly between their two bodies.

"Something boring," she says, and touches the placard with her index finger. A laugh bubbles up from her chest. "This person is mad."

"What?"

"Him," she clarifies, and taps the placard with her fingernail. "Every single review I've seen from this person is like, 'not enough cats,' or 'cats weren't accurately represented,' or 'sorely disappointed by the lack of cats in Android Application Development for Dummies,'" she quotes, recalling a few of the blurbs she's seen around the place. "Then this one just says, 'title misleading.'"

"The title is misleading," he counters.

"How so?"

"Well, I've got a cat named Algernon, yeah?" he begins, and Lily splutters out another laugh at once. "So I picked up this book thinking, brilliant, finally, some feline representation in the literary world, but the Algernon in the book is a bloody mouse!"

"So you're James, are you?"

"That's what it says on my birth certificate."

"Which makes you the same bloke who keeps falling off the ladder?"

"I fell off the ladder twice—"

"Twice is one time too many to get a pass."

"I'll tell you what," he counters, with his head cocked to the side, "how about you try climbing that ladder when you've had three double espressos and your mate's just spun you round for thirty seconds, and see if you can stay upright, tough guy."

"Tough guy?!"

"I said what I said," he replies, feigning loftiness, as a dark-haired girl in a lemon yellow dress appears from the other end of the aisle and comes to a halt next to him.

"Sirius says can you help me get the box of mid-year diaries from the stock room?" she says, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder. "I tried doing it myself, but they weigh about a tonne."

"Yeah, it's fine, I'll get them myself," he says, then points to Lily. "Francesca, can you give... er, what was your name, again?"

"Lily."

"That's a nice name."

Somehow, the presence of a third person makes Lily feel exposed, as if she caught them snogging against the bookshelves, rather than having a perfectly cordial conversation. She is acutely aware that her face is glowing. "So is yours."

For a moment, he looks as if he might say something else, then he clears his throat and nods to his colleague.

"Fran," he says, in a firm, professional tone that he seems to have pulled from nowhere, "can you tell Sirius that Lily can have whatever she wants at half-price? Consider it an apology," he adds, looking at Lily again. "Trying to ask girls out on the shop floor is generally frowned upon."

"Oh," she says, a thrill shuddering through her spine, as disconcerting as her tone is flippant. "I mean, if it's going to get me discounted books, you can ask me out whenever you fancy."

"Don't tempt me," he warns her, backing down the aisle, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, quick and grinning and gorgeous. "I'll see you around, yeah?"

"Yeah," she agrees, and gives a half-hearted wave,, "see you around."

Then he disappears from her line of sight, leaving her and his colleague in a silent, vaguely awkward stand-off.

"Did he really ask you out?" says Francesca, after a very long moment, staring at the space he's just vacated. "Seriously?"

"Well, not really..."

"But he just said—"

"It was more of an, um—more of a flirty, jokey kind of thing," Lily explains. "It's not as big a deal as he made out."

But her cheeks are burning, and her heart is pounding in a way she isn't used to—in a way it never beats with Ian, or with anyone she's ever met before—and this should be absolutely nothing at all, but it feels so big, and she can't understand why.

It feels so natural, being around him. Like she's known him for a really long time.

But it shouldn't, and it can't. She has a boyfriend, and has done for a year, and what is she supposed to do now? Dump him for the whisper of a chance with a total stranger just because he thinks she's fit? Discard a year of effort and hard work because she thinks she might have feelings?

Coming here again was a terrible idea.

"You are so lucky," Francesca tells her, with an unexpected burst of longing.

'Lucky' isn't quite the word that Lily would apply to this situation.

Trouble.

She thinks she might be in trouble.