Chapter Text
What will you do? It was a brash question. Had followed an unfortunate predicament where Jamie was standing in the kitchen, hips flush with the countertop and hands diligently slicing the vegetables for their dinner. Dani spouted a joke, and Jamie flung her head back in genuine laughter. It was a rare thing to slip from her Dani; it was one of the few fragments of happiness she had left.
Jamie, in response, was so lost in her bout of joy that she hadn’t noticed the way she curved the knife just enough where it sliced cleanly across the knuckle of her index finger. Not doing so well with blood, all Jamie could do was freeze. A sharp, hissed, “shite,” rung out, and immediately Dani was behind her, pressing up against her and taking the hand into her own. As she surveyed the injury, she cooed and frowned out her concerns for Jamie.
“Oh, baby,” she muttered as she pulled Jamie’s hand under the faucet, letting cold water fountain over her stinging knuckle, washing away the blood to reveal the deep score.
As if that kind of nurturing was second nature to her, Dani managed to lean over and rustle through multiple drawers for a bandage without ever moving Jamie’s hand out from under the streaming water. And Jamie watched her, attentively tending to her like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. A small, crooked simper rose to Jamie’s lips as she gazed at Dani, watching for a split second as the woman she fell in love with returned to her. A woman with determination and love. So much love that it spilled out and warmly engulfed Jamie.
With one swift movement, Dani placed a bandage over the cut and brought the knuckle to her lips, kissing it and lifting her eyes to gaze at Jamie, lips still pressed against her hand.
“What would I do without you?” Jamie smirked and, so suddenly, the air became stale with a silence that battered their eardrums with a vigor worse than a few hundred decibels could.
They simultaneously fell into that stunned silence because there would be a without you, and Jamie knew it. Dani knew it too. Of course, she did because she established it. Made it known that they were living on borrowed time, with a future that was undetermined.
And Jamie knew that end was merely over the horizon. She could see it in the way Dani grew quieter and lost. The vibrant and blushed Dani was slowly exchanged for one that was so greyed and frail. One that stared blankly into reflections and spoke words that were barely her own.
Slowly, both of them were dragged up that hill, a hill they never asked to trek. And soon they would meet the other side, or, rather, Jamie would and Dani would fall away, never making it over.
Jamie could hear the way Dani gulped, watched the way her eyes darted as she contemplated the next thing to say. She recognized that hesitation. It came before something heavy and regretful would leave those lips. Something obtrusive, painful, honest, and…
“What will you do?” Dani asked, voice meek and cracked.
Jamie knitted her brows and tilted her head, pretending not to have a clue what Dani was talking about. It was easier to act naive, to not have to face answering a question like that. It was easier than having to even fathom what life would look like without Dani. Quite frankly, Jamie never thought about it, never wanted to. Possibly, she never could because a life like that wouldn’t be worth living.
“What…?”
“Jamie- when I…”
“No,” Jamie breathed, voice low and warning. She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut as she listened to Dani continue fumbling her words, attempting to stutter out an explanation. Trying to say, Jamie, what will you do when I leave you? What will you do when you’re left all alone? “We’re not doing that, Dani. Please.”
“Jamie,” Dani’s voice practically begged. Jamie felt her name was in the place of a plead for her attention and the recognition Dani so desperately needed. She needed Jamie to know that it was inevitable, but Jamie wouldn’t have it. Could go the rest of her days not having that conversation.
“No,” she snapped.
The pitch and volume of her voice shocked her almost as much as it did Dani. And watching the way Dani flinched back at her voice, face wracked with remorse for ever having brought that up, had Jamie lunging forward and pulling Dani into her.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” she sighed as she buried her face in Dani’s neck.
She received no response, no acceptance of her apology, no words at all actually. Just those hitched, panicked breaths that she was much too familiar with as Dani was further suffocated by the overbearing spirit within her.
With one last, “I’m sorry,” Jamie squeezed Dani’s nearly limp body closer to her, wishing to hold her closer to avoid her crumbling and falling away. They were impervious there; in each other’s arms, Jamie could protect her. Prevent her from leaving — at least for the time being.
That very scene — the cut, the question, the sorrowed embrace — replays in Jamie’s head as she stares blankly into the static of the darkness of her bedroom. She lays there in bed on her back as she stares at the ceiling. The same scene from earlier that day keeps playing, rewinding, then starting again in a cruel repetition that has Jamie pinching across her eyelids until her index and thumb are pressed into the corners of her eyes, flush with the bridge of her nose. She did so with a pressure that garnered her a bit of white, flushed blindness that overpowers the memory for meer seconds. But beyond the clearing white that was encompassing her vision, the scene reappears. Taunting her with each play and rewind, enough to drive her crazy.
What will you do? Jamie thinks about it, deeply ponders it and the only things that come are horrifying. A life of loneliness is a life she no longer wants. Sure, she had grown content with it when it was the only life that was handed to her. She never knew devotion, never knew this kind of affection and adoration. This love, this life that she built with Dani was something she couldn’t have even comprehended when she was younger. How could she if she hadn’t experienced it before? She didn’t know love; she didn’t know partnership; she didn’t know security like this. And now that she has it, all she wants is to indulge in it and keep it forever. Lock it so tight within her and hold it there. Pushing away any thought, any person that would dare try and take it. She feels guilty about that supposed selfishness for wanting to keep someone so tight to her and never let go.
She carefully sits up, as not to wake Dani beside her, and swings her legs over, so they’re dangling over the bed; she puts her face in her hands, resting elbows on her thighs. A deep, exhausted sigh escapes her and she drags her palms down her face and stands. She looks behind her at the sleeping blonde, furrowing her brow as she realizes how close to the edge of the bed she is. Most nights they’re tangled, holding each other so close that their own muscles are straining at the grasp. Jamie takes their distance as a sign that the previous conversation affected her just as it did herself.
With one more thought of the conversation and the ensuing argument that took place afterward, she knows she’s got to get out of here. The very feeling of being here, in this silence and darkness is so suffocating that she nearly loses the ability to breathe. Her chest is slowly tightening, and her head is beginning to throb.
She pads out their bedroom door, eyeing the dark kitchen. One cup and I’ll go back to bed.
She walks through the kitchen, hands gripping the kettle when she sees her boots and her black, wool coat by the door. Could use some air. Then I’ll go back to bed.
Then, she’s out the door, her boot-clad feet sauntering down the stairs of the building, and her body huddles into the coat as the chilled air bombards her. She is out on the snowy commons of the building when the pack of cigarettes in her pocket feel like they’re burning a hole there, begging her to just slip one out and indulge. Just one smoke and I’ll go back to bed.
Before she’s even aware of her movement, the sidewalk and its path pull her along it, urging her to keep going. Reminding her that the distance, the time away will clear her mind and keep her sane. A small walk, nothin’ more. Then I’ll go back to bed.
Half an hour later, she’s still absentmindedly walking, the fourth cigarette between her fingers. Her body halts just before their shop; she looks up with a bit of surprise as she hadn’t really planned on ending up here.
She looks up at the banner. The Leafling. The shop they built together. What will come of it when their time is up? Jamie’s mind is blank. Her mind decides for her that that thought is for another night.
Jamie, at the ungodly hour of three in the morning, trudges through the door of their shop. She looks at the store counter, whipping her head away as if the scene she remembers is too harrowing. Dani, behind there, glowing and smiling at all of the people who came in and out, charmed by Dani’s exquisite demeanor.
She looks at the opposite wall, a little cove there where both of them could fit perfectly and steal a kiss where no one could see. The memory has Jamie gulping and looking down at her feet. She pushes through the back-of-house door.
She stops in her tracks as she sees the office. She realizes now that this is not hers; it’s hers and Dani’s together. The awareness that it will soon become only hers is painful in the same way as being smacked across the face and punched in the gut feels.
Not even having the ability to remain in the office, she pushes herself out the back door where she is greeted again by the nipping cold air that pinches and bites at her hands and cheeks. She sits down atop the asphalt alley ground and pulls the pack of cigarettes back out. She counts them and takes the remaining eleven as a challenge. She lights the first one, the first drag an embrace that envelops her body with a mode of warmth and placidity that she so desperately needs. The burn of the smoke in the back of her throat jolts her to attention as the events of the day had sucked every feeling from her.
As the cigarette dissipates between her fingers, Jamie’s elbows rest against the knees that are pressed against her chest. Her thumbnail ghosts back and forth over her bottom lip as she stares in front of her, looking at the puddle on the ground that is reflecting the lights above her. Her eyes are lost in it as she thinks of the years that have passed. Ten years she has woken up beside Dani, spent the day with her, kissed her, held her, loved her, and closed each night tangled in her warmth as they both fell asleep. Each night they are cautious with their feelings. Cautious in their enthusiasm to live the next day and cautious in their sorrow of the unexpected that could gather Dani up without warning.
Ten years. More than she thought she’d get but still not enough. She prays for more. Hopes that maybe all of this hell will end and she will get to grow old with Dani. Watch their hair grey, bodies slump, and faces become sculpted with deep wrinkles and lines. She reckons Dani would still be breathtaking even when they’re eighty and can barely make it around on their own.
In fact, she remembers the moment she first saw Dani, the most breathtaking woman she’d ever seen. It wasn’t in that kitchen, which was the moment Dani saw her for the first time. No, it was from the greenhouse as she watched a blonde woman cross the green grass in her olive skirt, pointed boots, and a jean jacket. Her hair falling in loose, golden curls against her shoulders and back, perfectly half-tied with a blue scrunchie. Jamie was so taken aback by the sight, as presented by lips that were partially agape in astonishment. So much so that she hadn’t noticed herself overpouring the watering can until the water was splashing over the sides of the ceramic pot and wetting her trousers and boots.
No one was around then, but for the first time in years, she felt her cheeks blush in embarrassment. Her ears and face grew hot, her mouth dry. And she’d never felt that. So timid and amazed by another human being. Jamie despised it too. No way was someone going to peel away her tough shell that easily. No way.
So, Dani never knew that the day she saw Jamie for the first time — still doesn’t know for the sake of Jamie’s pride — that she stood outside of the kitchen entrance for a few seconds, fully aware that a certain blonde was sitting in there. She took a composing breath before instilling her characteristic stoicism and swagger before she walked in. No way was Dani going to see her swoon. No way.
The smile at the memory is so slight against the cigarette between her lips that she barely notices it, and the fondness of the recollection soon disintegrates as she drowns once again in her distress and sorrow.
Jamie never knew love. Sure, as a small child she’d feel the subtle kiss on the head here and there as she was being half-heartedly tucked into bed, or the little squeeze she and her brother would receive if her father would return home in just the right mood.
Mostly, though, Jamie was ignored. Left to her own devices to run around the old mining town with her older brother. With an absent mother at home, or, rather, a mother who was knocking on a particular bloke’s door, a bloke who was certainly not her father.
Jamie never felt a genuine hug or kiss. Never heard a genuine affirmation of love or praise. Never really saw a smile from her parents. In fact, when she was small and once saw a mother proudly grin and kiss her son on the cheek at the market she scrunched her face in disgust and confusion because it was so foreign to her. Little Jamie didn’t know love.
But Jamie, at eight years old, knew love when she saw her little brother Mikey for the first time. Knew love when she felt the urge to kiss his tiny forehead and hold him tight. Two years later, she'd know the fears that were brought on by that much love when she returned home to see him abandoned and terrified. Felt it immerse her as she made a promise to him, to protect him and care for him. And she did and went truant to do so. Jamie didn’t expect that the school would notice her absence. She also didn’t expect the stool she kept in the kitchen — the one she used to reach the cupboards as she was still a child herself — to be accessible to Mikey who climbed it and reached for the boiling pot of water, pulling it down. Jamie had no clue that her first instinct would be to topple over him, shielding him as the hot water draped over her back until she was letting out blood-curdling screams that were loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Jamie most certainly knew the fears of love when the consequences of her and Mikey’s burns meant Social Service advocates had to raid their home and rip them out of it. Tearing her from the only semblance of a family she had left. The love and commitment she felt were brief, but it was powerful enough to close her off once it was stolen from her. That was the last time Jamie knew love.
As years passed, Jamie would get so close. Would somehow turn up on the doorstep of a promising new family. Tricked by the smiles of the couple who would take her in only to face the truth on the other side. Beyond closed doors, no one knew Jamie was used as a tool to release the bitterness and anger they held. Through the verbal battering and the acts of a tense and perverted patriarch, Jamie knew this couldn’t be love.
So, Jamie would run. Advocates would round her up, call her ungrateful, then tell her to pray for another family to take a chance on her. Another family always would. Like a neverending cycle, Jamie was put on the doorstep of a family who grinned and nurtured to the public as their façade. Each time, Jamie wished she could be like the other children in the group foster home who never got lucky. It would have somehow been easier that way. To not be wanted.
Once, Jamie did get set on the doorstep of a heartening family. At fifteen she was handed over to a kind woman and an equally kind man. They were distant, but they never hurt her, never dared. They were actually quite proud of her even through her struggling studies or lack of social skills. They cared even when she would lash out or hide away. The concern, the attention, and support were things that were foreign to Jamie. So much so that she grew skittish and uneasy, and after a year she ran. Ran and never stopped.
When she was eighteen, as settled as she could get herself as a broke young woman in London, she thought she fell in love. With a woman, much older than her, twenty-four to be exact. She was named Beth. Tall, muscular, and intimidating. One second Beth would shower her with love, with gifts, and affection. The next it was like Jamie was a criminal in her own home. She would be buried within rounds of insults and abusive words about her weakness, her stupidity, her naivete. And Jamie would take it because she depended on Beth. Thought she spoke to her and treated her that way because it was love. Had to be because she was certain she loved Beth, and she was sure Beth loved her.
Then when Jamie grew vulnerable enough to be coerced to do Beth’s dirty work, she was trapped. Trapped in a situation of mock love that would fuck her over. Fuck her over so badly she was forced into taking part in a scheme so awful she got put away for it. Love, the wrongest kind in the world, fucked her over, and she was sure she’d avoid it forever. She loathed the idea. Never wanted it again.
When she discovered the life, the dedication, and the beauty of plants, she realized it was all she’d ever want. She could delve into the effort it took to perfectly bloom a certain flower. She reckoned the reward of witnessing that would be far better than wasting a moment on another person. Better than falling in love, better than raising up a couple of kids, better than any person that could come her way because a plant would never hurt her, would never cross her. And Jamie’s nurturing would only end in sanguine growth. Jamie could live with that. Jamie could love that.
But then she saw that particular flower. A much bigger, breathing, and beautiful flower. One that was blonde, blue-eyed, and pure. Dani.
Upon seeing her, Jamie buckled as the air in her lungs was sucked from her, her stomach flipping and turning. She was falling. Falling so hard for the woman that it scared her.
It would make her heart pound so fervently in her chest that she was sure a person miles away could hear it. It made her body tense in skepticism and fear. Because Jamie had not felt that before. Jamie had not known love like that.
Had not known love like that until there was Dani.
“Jamie,” she hears and it rips her from the boundless self-reflection she has just put herself through. The voice is cracked, panicked, and shaking. And as she feels two trembling hands on her shoulder turn her, she is jolted with a shiver back to reality. She looks up at Dani whose tear-stained cheeks are glistening under the lamps surrounding them. Her blue eyes are wide with terror and worry.
“Jamie, why did you do that?” Dani stammers, voice still wracked with fear, and Jamie is overcome by her foolishness. She hadn’t even thought about Dani.
While Jamie was sitting in that alley, she had no idea that Dani would turn over and reach out for Jamie, half-asleep, only for her hand to fall onto a cold, empty mattress. Jamie didn’t even stop to think that Dani would suspend in a panic looking around the room for her. She also wouldn’t have known that Dani, heart beating with purpose against her sternum, would frantically search the apartment for her. Only to fall into tears when she realized Jamie was gone. She’d stand there for a moment, so scared and alone because that had never happened. She had never woken up like that, alone in the chill and silence of the night.
Jamie wouldn’t have expected Dani to hectically pull on her sneakers and coat to go find her. Dani didn’t have it in her to wait for her to turn up again, not after the remorse she felt over their conversation and conflict from earlier. In seconds flat, she was down the steps, into their Jeep, and driving off to where she hoped Jamie was.
And that leaves both of them meeting here. Dani’s warm hands holding the sides of her face, looking deep into her eyes as they twitch back and forth from each eye as they search. Desperately looking for something as Jamie can’t speak because she doesn’t know what to say. How does she possibly explain that somehow, almost on auto-pilot, she just got up and left?
Jamie just sighs and turns her head which releases her from Dani’s grasp, but hands still find purchase on her body. Fingers wrap around her bicep and another set of fingers urge her to turn her chin until she’s looking at Dani again.
“Talk to me, Jamie,” she softly pleads, lip trembling as fearful tears are coming on in response to witnessing Jamie begin to crumble. Her knuckles softly caress Jamie’s cheek and she places a soothing kiss on her forehead. “Talk to me.”
Jamie sucks in a breath and gulps down the forming lump in her throat. She won’t dare disintegrate in front of Dani. Not after being her rock for all these years. Jamie can’t let herself break because it’s the last thing Dani needs. Dani, who is breaking herself, can’t have another thing to worry about. Jamie won’t have that.
Jamie shakes her head. “I just... couldn’t sleep,” she sighs in a shiver, pulling her head away and grabbing the box of Marlboros back out of her pocket and lighting a fresh one. She inhales deeply, holds onto the burn for dear life, and exhales.
Dani takes the cigarette from Jamie and lets herself take a drag of it, a nice dose of short-lived courage, before flicking it away.
“Jamie,” she begins, voice slow and resolved.“Why did you walk all the way out here at three in the morning?”
Jamie bites her lip to prevent her tears, and the strength she had built up for most of her life is suddenly tumbling as she feels the lump in her throat grow; the overbearing fear coats her chest and buries her heart in it.
Her lips part as she attempts to speak, but all that releases is a strained cry as her face falls to her hands. For the first time in front of Dani, she is enveloped in a fit of wretched sobs. Cries that shake her shoulders and release bellowing sounds from her lips.
Dani grabs her swiftly and pulls her into her chest. She hushes her and softens a hand over rustled and tangled curls.
“Jamie,” she sighs as she rocks the brunette and grips her tighter with every prominent tremble she feels against her. “Jamie. Oh, Jamie.”
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Jamie weeps as she nuzzles her face into the comfort of Dani, gripping at her shirt with a heavy fist to keep her close to her.
Dani places pacifying kisses against her temple and scalp before resting her cheek atop her head. Dani can’t manage any words so she continues with her soft hushing.
“I want, Dani...” she sobs, voice catching in her throat.
The words make Jamie cringe because she hates that she wants. She learned to never want throughout her entire life. She accepted whatever was handed to her, and she grew content within the mundane nature of that lifestyle. She was cautious about wanting because that kind of longing only ends in heartbreak. Jamie knows that because she endured it.
And now she is being punished for wanting. Through her greed of wanting Dani to stay right there with her forever, she is being punished and now Dani is being taken away.
Jamie is being punished for every moment she found herself envisioning different desires with Dani. When she’d see the way Dani’s eyes would grow wide in amazement at the farmhouse just across town, she wanted to give it to her. When she’d watch the way Dani would coo and smile at the many babies and children who made their way through the shop, she recognized that longing in Dani’s eyes, and she wanted to give that to her, a family. Every time she felt their invisible hourglass release every granulated second, she wanted to fill it back up again. She wanted to give them more time. More time to have every single thing they wanted.
In return, the only thing she ever truly wanted, ever wanted any kind of life with, is being taken away from her because she asked for too much. She knew better, and she kept indulging in the love she had for Dani. And now she is being punished.
“What do you want, Jame?”
“A life with you, Dani. More time to live a life with you.”
Close to her ear, Dani whispers, “We have. For longer than we imagined Jamie.”
She shakes her head and peels from Dani’s clutch, gazing at her in the darkness. “I don’t want it to end, and I know I’m selfish for that,” she stammers as she bites her lip in shame. “I know I am, and I know I signed up for this,” she says. Realizing those words could come off wrong, she gives Dani a stern, reassuring look before continuing, “and don’t you ever think I regret it.” She softens with a gulp and a shudder, “I just want to grow old with you Dani. I want to have a- we could- fucks sake I sound so stupid.”
“No, you don’t, Jamie,” Dani assures with more kisses coming down to line a path along Jamie’s face. She presses their foreheads together.
“I just want you here,” Jamie whimpers, a shaky breath raining from her lips. “I want that more than anythin’. I’d let it be me instead if I could have that,” she stutters over Dani’s protests towards Jamie’s new proposal. That it should be her instead. The shaking of Dani’s head and her desperate, quiet no’s are almost enough to make her stop, but she huffs in determination to make her point. “I’ve done every fucked up thing in the book, Dani. You haven’t.”
“Stop that, Jamie. It shouldn’t be you. I did what I did.”
“But, Dani,” Jamie mumbles as she looks down, her face scrunching together into another look of anguish as more tears form. “God Dani. Please don’t go,” she begs, sounding like a meek child, so helpless and miserable.
Jamie hears Dani’s breath turn ragged and harsh, and she’s being gathered up into her arms again.
“I won’t go,” she determines, nodding her head against Jamie as if to instill that idea into the universe, instill that idea into the demeaning spirit within her. “You fought, you protected. And you’re so tired, Jamie. I see it, Jamie; you’re tired. And it’s my turn. It’s my turn,”
Jamie cries against her and holds onto her, knowing that Dani is giving her what sounds like an empty promise, but she’ll take it. It’s enough for her. Enough to hold onto so she doesn’t dissolve completely.
“It’s my turn to take care of you,” she says, voice so sweet and genuine. “I don’t know how, Jamie. But I will.” She rocks Jamie and lifts her head so they’re gazing at one another. Her lips softly press against Jamie’s, so tender and gentle. Almost just a comforting brushed touch, but it softens Jamie enough to where she can relax into Dani.
Pressing their foreheads together, Dani holds Jamie close by the crook of her neck and brushes a thumb against her jaw. “I love you, Jamie, and I’ll be right here. Right here.”
Jamie lets herself quench within the gift Dani has given her. A vow to remain, and it’s the most beautiful hymn to her ears. Jamie, her entire life, never knew love, learned to never want. She forced herself to be content in her humbleness and temperance, but now she yields herself completely to everything she ever wanted. That everything, well it’s all Dani.