Work Text:
The last forty eight hours had been insane.
Kim could remember clearly, two nights ago, pacing in her apartment, debating just how much of her savings she would be willing to part with to save her career. She remembered the cigarettes she had smoked out on the balcony, running through her options and trying to justify them.
Despite having these memories, it didn’t feel like it happened to her or had happened in a past life.
The life she was currently leading was warm and safe. Reality and all of its problems were firmly locked outside of her bedroom door as they so often were these days. Some nights she worried they could never make the barricade strong enough. Other nights, she thought it was the world that was trying to keep them trapped inside.
Tonight, she curled around her husband and wondered how the hell she had ended up with one of those.
“It’s weird.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Some people have loads.”
“And I have none.”
“That Judge thought it was weird.”
“He was weird.”
“A witty rebuke from the defence.”
Kim kicked Jimmy under the covers. The husband part was going to take some getting used to even with the nature of their marriage, but marrying Jimmy had been as natural as breathing.
“You… you knew I don’t have a middle name.” She said it as a statement but she frowned.
“No.”
“No- how- you definitely knew.”
“Seriously!” Jimmy shifted against the pillows slightly so she was forced to lift her head. She arched an eyebrow but he kept his face straight.
“Okay. What did you think my middle name was?”
“Berly.”
Between the hectic couple of days and Jimmy’s sincere expression, it took Kim a second longer than it should have done to fall against him laughing. He wrapped his arms around her and pushed her hair out of her face. They had known each other well over a decade but it was as if Jimmy still needed extra proof that she was really laughing at his jokes. That it wasn’t just a trick of the low light or an echo from a happier time.
“Honestly. All these years. I had no idea.”
“I can see why you were confused.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s all my fault.”
“Big of you to admit it.”
Kim traced a finger along his clavicle. “So… Berly? What is that? Is that French?”
“I believe it is Latvian.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. So… Kimberly? Am I pronouncing that-”
“Oh - no - it’s Kim-Berly. Hyphen.”
“You’ve got a hyphen?”
“All the best people do.”
Jimmy shook his head. “I barely know you. At all.”
“How do you think I feel? All this time I thought your name was Jimothy.”
While Jimmy seemed to love to see her laugh, when the situations were reversed, she preferred to feel it. Everyone got to hear James McGill laugh. He did it constantly and loudly. She was the only person who could feel the vibrations as he let out one of his great belly laughs. It felt as though it would run right through her as she lay against him, reaching the darkest places inside of her. Places that she hadn’t even let Jimmy see, but he had a way of worming his way into anyway.
It wasn’t that he was unwelcome there. It was just that the idea of opening the door to anyone - even herself - scared Kim more than she could say.
He met her eyes with a smile and sighed.
“Kimberly Wexler.”
She reared back. “Oh - not okay-”
“What?”
“It’s too weird. You can’t call me Kimberly. Not unless you want to be very divorced very quickly.”
“Sorry. What’s the difference between divorced and very divorced?”
“Oh - divorced,” Kim explained, raising herself up on her elbow so she could her right hand to gesture, “is where you would hire a divorce attorney and I would hire a divorce attorney and they would deal with everything-”
“With you so far,” he said, biting his lip and nodding in an expression so serious that Kim nearly broke.
“-and then very divorced is where you would hire a divorce attorney and I would represent myself and completely ruin you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh shit.”
“You would not be able to work in this town again,” she informed him sadly.
Jimmy gulped and Kim traced his Adam’s apple with her finger. He considered her words for a moment before she felt him hum. She glanced back up to see him smirking at her.
“Sounds like it might be worth it,” he said in a low rumble and pulled her into a slow kiss.
As Kim straddled Jimmy, letting go of any doubts that still lingered, she knew she had made the right call the night before. For years they had only been hurt by hiding things from each other. When they were completely open with one another they could do or be anything they wanted. They could take on the DA’s office and win. They could carve out a home for themselves in an inhospitable desert they had both fled to. They could leave their masks at the door and strip down to the bones of who they were, the decades old scars, dented hearts of gold and the ugly imperfections they concealed from the light of day, completely on display.
And maybe, Kim thought, smiling as she felt Jimmy chuckle against her neck, even if they never left that room or if ended up drinking wine on the back patio of a bungalow in Corrales or even a ranch in Montana, just for those moments all of it would have been worth it.