Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The story starts with an ending.

At the end of the bar, tucked up against the wall and window, sits a woman.  A finger of liquid in a glass, set in front of her.  Her eyes, skipping across the bar, not searching, not hunting.  Just terribly tired.

Her gaze settles on the glass. 

The woman turns the ring on her finger, once, twice, a dozen times, before she slips it off and studies it. 

Her face, already so still, somehow stills further. 

She drops the ring into the glass, where it sinks down through amber and comes to rest on its side, uneasy, at the bottom. 

The woman peers down into the glass for a long moment, then lifts it, swirling the liquid to make the ring dance.  She sets it down on the bar again, ducking her head to look through the side of the glass, into the distortion of it. 

The woman reaches into the glass and fishes around for the ring. 

Having caught it, the woman glances at it once, before slipping it into her mouth.

She rolls the ring across her tongue, seeming to test the metal between the flats of her teeth, once, then twice.

She sits for several minutes with the ring there, on her tongue, her eyes ticking back and forth between the clock on the wall and the glass in front of her.

At last, she plucks the ring from her lips and slips it over the pinky of her right hand, where it lolls, listless and almost comically dejected. 

The woman picks up the glass, the ring clinking against the side of it.  She raises the glass to her lips but sets it down again on the wood of the bar not a moment later, without a sip taken.

She traces one finger lightly around the damp footprint the glass has left behind on the napkin, then, carefully, sets the ring down in the center of it. 

The ring with all its shine sits stark on the white of the napkin. 

Seemingly satisfied, the woman scoots back on the stool a bit and drops her hands into her lap.  She does not look at the ring again, just lets her gaze go unfocused, settled on the glass and its liquid, which remains untouched.

Against the back wall of the pub leans a second woman, Jamie.

There is a cool glass in her hand and someone beside her, pressing in too close, talking too much, too high, too fast, falling on empty ears.    

She has eyes only for the woman at the end of the bar.  

It starts as a glance, intrigued by the woman who is not here for anyone else, unlike the bodies that press around them both, unlike the bodies that want.

One glance rapidly becomes more.

The woman feels familiar.  The cut of her, the bow of her shoulders and the bend of her brow.  Familiar.

Jamie tries to look away, again and again, tries to go back to her evening.  There is laughter beside her, a hand flitting along her upper arm now, the faint offer of another drink whispered in her ear, but she brushes it all away. 

The bar and all of its occupants accordion down, leaving room only for the woman at the end of the bar and herself.

Her mouth goes dry at the flick of the woman’s tongue, and she swears softly when the ring disappears between lips.

It is the engagement trope, the ring at the bottom of a fizzy champagne flute, but played in reverse through a warped lens, left open to stale and flatten.  There’s something alarming about it, dizzying to watch. 

She has barely touched her drink, but as she watches the woman at the end of the bar, the floor shifts under her feet, disorienting.

Absurd and entirely mesmerizing, the ache of the scene, the ache of the woman at the end of the bar, palpable from across the room.

Jamie is white-knuckled around the glass in her hand by the time the ring finds its place on the napkin.   Her fingers beg to soothe the hunch of the woman’s shoulders, to smooth the furrow of her brow, restless as the moments tick by.

There are rules to be followed in a place like this.  Rules she authored and etched into herself after too many misses among the hits, after too much hurt and too much grief, too much time trapped in her own head.  Rules she has perfected to ease the lonely itch at a safe distance for a bit, to assuage the boredom for an hour or two.

Rules she disregards entirely as she pushes away from the wall, her eyes pinned to the woman at the end of the bar.  She crosses the room without looking back.

“You look as if someone's died,” Jamie says, sliding on to the stool beside the woman.  That’s the opening line she chooses – though choose is a loose term at this point, given the way her head is spinning as she falls off her game completely.  You look as if someone’s died.

It’s flirtatious, her tone, though a bit too soft, she thinks on review.  Dangerous, that softness.  Against the rules for certain.

The woman chuckles darkly but does not glance over. 

“Not yet,” she says.

It’s unexpected.  The chuckle and the answer both.  Jamie raises an eyebrow, surprised and pleased and more taken already then she’d care to admit, though the woman does not look to see it. 

The woman traces a finger lightly over the ring on the napkin, before withdrawing her hand back to her lap.  “I’m getting married.”

“Condolences,” Jamie offers, still playful, still light, but not nearly light enough as the heart of her begins to settle into the familiar weight of the woman beside her.

The woman smiles, though the humor on her lips has a sharp tinge at the edge of it, a bite felt through the skin. 

Invested, already, far too soon, Jamie finds herself helpless to slow it.   Rules crumble beneath her as she asks, “What’s your name?”

“Danielle,” the woman says after a moment, but then shakes off the answer with a shiver.  A physical rejection of the word.  “Dani.”

Jamie accepts the amendment without question, rolling the word across her tongue.  “Dani.  Nice to meet you.  I’m Jamie.”

She ducks her head a bit, to catch Dani’s eye, but Dani’s eyes are fixed to the ring now.

They sit for a long moment, the quiet resting between them, waiting, a bubble of silence amidst the chaos of the bar around them.

Jamie sips her beer slowly for something to do, fingers bearing down into glass in an effort not to fidget, to not prod at the silence, to not reach over and brush the backs of her knuckles across Dani’s cheek.

“It's a kind of death, isn't it?”  Dani says this into the silence, all of a sudden, with no preamble.  “A marriage, I mean.  It’s a kind of death.”

Dani glances up at Jamie as she says it, hands rising to cradle the glass in front of her.   The glance is a question in itself.

“The wrong kind of marriage, I suppose,” Jamie offers, though, upon reflection, she’s yet to see a right one. 

The soft ache of Dani’s face has Jamie sickeningly off-kilter, one hand coming to grip the edge of the bar as an anchor while the world tilts.

“Everyone keeps telling me it's a beginning,” Dani says, “and they're so excited for me.  For us.  But it doesn't feel like a beginning.”

She pauses then and Jamie bites her tongue to force it to wait.  There is more coming and she needs to hear every single word Dani’s lips will offer, but already she wants to take this story and rewrite it, already she’s restless for the edited version.

Dani picks up the ring between two fingers, then sets it down on its side in a divot of the wood, letting it rock eerily for a moment before it stills.

“I look at it,” she says “and I try to see it like they do, like he does.  A beautiful beginning.  Something new.  Something that will grow.”

Dani looks at Jamie again and there’s a storm in her eyes – exhaustion and fear and resignation. 

“But I only see the ending, Jamie."  It's almost a whisper now.  The furrow of her brow deepens.  “Just one long ending, stretching out ahead of me.  I don't feel like there's ever really been a beginning, not for me, anyway.  Just this slow slide towards an end.”

And Jamie knows what she means, knows what a life that’s gone dormant looks like, a life with no growth.  Jamie has lived that life before, is still living it now more days than not, if she’s honest with herself.  And she admits as much.  “I know how that feels.”

“It feels like dying,” Dani says, taking the words from Jamie’s lips.

Dani looks away again, drags her middle finger along the rim of the glass for the hundredth time. 

“So what'll you do?” Jamie asks.  There’s a sick spark of dread in her gut, the kind that looks like hope out of the corner of your eye if you squint.

A shrug, Dani's smile somewhere between terribly amused and terribly sad.  “I’m going to get married.”

She turns towards Jamie now, slowly pivoting on the stool until their knees brush.

“It’s not too late,” Jamie says, and she means it to sound casual, easy, but it's urgent as it leaves her.  She leans in a little closer, and it’s all she can do to stop herself from resting a palm on Dani’s knee, from draping her fingers along the soft skin just there.

Dani chuckles again, low in her chest.  “Not too late?  There’s a white dress in my closet that says otherwise.  The clock is ticking, and everyone is watching.  Feels too late.”

There’s a little spike of desperation that zips up Jamie’s spine at that, a gut punch of panic.  She’s known Dani all of three minutes and shit.  

The rules say easy flirtation, the rules say no names and never stay the night, and the rules can go fuck themselves because Dani.

“I live just upstairs, above the pub,” Jamie says, before she can stop herself, and the thrum of her heart makes the words sound like a plea.  Her hand betrays her and finds the skin it’s been aching for, palm to knee, just under the edge of Dani’s skirt.  “Come up and have a drink.”

“I already have a drink,” Dani says with a little smirk that does not reach her eyes.

She lifts her drink and clinks it against Jamie’s, before setting it back down on the bar.  She doesn’t shift away though, just lets the palm and all its warmth rest against her.

“For all the good it’s done you.” Jamie nods at the glass, still a finger deep. 

Jamie knows, perfectly well, to walk away now, two sentences ago, five minutes ago.  To never approach in the first place.  There are rules and she’s more than broken them, and broken rules have consequences. 

There are a dozen women in this bar who would say yes before the offer is out of her mouth, who would accept the rules without question, who would play the game as it is meant to be played. 

But Dani smiles and it's heavy, too heavy, and the rules crumble under the weight of it.

Dani runs another lap around the rim of her glass and Jamie is desperate, inexplicably, fucking desperate to sooth the sad edges of that smile with any and everything in her arsenal.

“Well?” Jamie asks, nodding towards the stairwell.

Dani looks up slowly, looks her dead in the eye.  "No.”

She swallows thickly as the word leaves her.  It’s firm and solid but it takes all she has to say it.  Jamie watches as the last dregs of bravado slip from her shoulders.  The grim humor goes and all that’s left is grief and weary and sigh.

Without breaking eye contact, Dani picks up her glass and empties it in one with a wince.

Jamie knows then, in that moment, she could ask again, and the answer would be yes.  She knows, in that moment, that Dani would follow her upstairs, would let her fingertips soothe the ache and sorrow for a night, would let her tongue stall the clock, just for a bit.

So, Jamie doesn’t ask again. 

Instead, she leans over the bar for a pen, and writes her number on the napkin. 

Dani says nothing as she does this, just traces a finger over digits then looks up to meet Jamie’s eyes one last time.  There is an understanding there and gratitude, and a grief for the ease and the quiet they might have had.

Jamie’s hands fist at her sides, only just barely refraining from tucking an errant strand of hair behind Dani’s ear, only just barely clinging to her resolve.

“Another night, maybe,” Jamie says.

There’s no bite to the words, no expectation, no disappointment or shame.  Just an invitation for another time, another night, a beginning amidst the ending.

A little bit of hope to be tucked away somewhere safe and glanced at every now and then when all else is lost.

Jamie turns and goes, weaves her way through the pub and up the stairs, alone.  She glances back only once, just in time to see Dani slip the ring back on her finger.

Chapter Text

Dani doesn’t call that night, nor the next, nor the next, and Jamie doesn’t wait by the phone. 

She doesn’t.

That’s what she tells herself, anyway, as she paces from one end of the flat to the other, haphazardly ricocheting around the space, focus slipping through her fingers.  Absolutely not waiting.

But her heart leaps up her throat when the phone rings and she’s tripping across the flat to answer, every time.

It’s usually Owen, calling for a chat or to share a ride.  Sometimes it’s Flora, who likes to ring her when Hannah has her back turned, to tell stories or jokes to a captive ear.  Once in a blue moon it’s Mikey, trying his best to stay in touch as he drifts along.

Jamie has to bite back her disappointment every time.  It’s bitter on her tongue, the loss of that little burst of excitement as she dives for the phone, the helpless hope of hello?

Owen knows her too well and catches the breathlessness in the greeting, the rise and then the crashing fall.  He lets it go for a time, lets her try to steady the lilt of it with practice, repeated brutal exposure.  But it doesn’t steady.

Even Flora hears it.  Did you not want me to call, Jamie?  Did you not want a story?  It’s perfectly splendid, this story, but you sound sad. 

They ask, but what is there to say? 

Met a girl in a bar, a stranger I already knew, fell in love in five minutes.  Barely spoke, barely touched, but I fall asleep most nights now with her name on my tongue, and it tastes familiar.

Not exactly the shining model of sanity, so she says nothing.  Just laughs off their concern and goes about like everything is normal. 

Just her normal, boring life. 

But nothing feels normal anymore, the jump and hitch of her now, however stubbornly denied.

She takes herself down to the bar some nights, to burn away the hours. 

She could take someone home, she tells herself, bleed the restlessness from her limbs for a night.  She could let it be easy again, the give and take and goodbye. 

No names and never stay the night - she could play by the rules.  

But the bodies press in too close and the music is too loud, the laughter is too thin to carry her, and none of it is Dani.  

Each time, she hangs on as long as she can, forces herself to chat up some pretty face for as long as she can bear it, then goes home alone and puts the kettle on.

Sits in the quiet with her restlessness, the ache and the itch, untamed.

It will pass, that’s what she tells herself as she sips her tea and averts her eyes from the sickening drop in her gut at the thought.

Two weeks go by, then three, the phone rings plenty, but it isn’t Dani.

Until one night, it is.

Dani calls from the pay phone outside the pub. 

Jamie watches her from the window, watches her lean her forehead against the metal and suck in unsteady air.  Watches her drag a hand through windswept hair and shift her weight again.  Watches her set her shoulders as she hangs up the phone, and glance, just once, at the ring on her finger.

They drink tea, sitting at the kitchen counter. 

Just one cup.

They talk of little.  Just skim across the pleasantries and nothings, and even that seems too taxing. 

Dani, jittery and pale, vibrates, her eyes skipping to the ring again and again, like the glance over a shoulder on a dark night.  Waves of anxiety roll off her, strong enough to have Jamie’s palms sweating too. 

Jamie fares no better.  Her vision dims a little at the edges, shrinking to a pin when her attention is otherwise consumed.  If the color of Dani’s cheeks is any indication, Jamie thinks absentmindedly when she becomes aware of the darkness pressing in, Dani may be sitting there damn near blind.

Jamie forces in a breath, forces her vision to clear, fingernails biting into her own thigh to anchor herself, to rein back the spin of her head, the words on her tongue, the jump of her palms.

There is something bold to Dani, though, something daring in the way she steadies her shaking hands against the ceramic of the cup and meets Jamie’s eyes, just once.

That one moment, caught in Dani’s gaze, drags Jamie under entirely and she lets the undercurrent sweep her away. 

The restlessness stills, just for that one moment.

Thanks for this.

That’s what Dani says as she goes, her hand on the knob, her cup in the sink.  She doesn’t look back as she says it, but it’s enough.

There are no rules for this, no art to the chaos raging in Jamie’s chest as the door clicks shut.

Jamie passes her days in the garden.  She tends the deep greens and the delicate blossoms. 

The moonflower, new this year, grown under her fingertips, blooms and dies to count the passing time, the nights spent between one phone call and the next. 

Sometimes her mind wanders along the vines as she threads them through her fingers, her thoughts losing track of where the moonflower ends and Dani begins. 

Alive and dying, all at once.

The calls come, sporadic at first, once every couple of weeks.

Tea and stale biscuits.

No touch.  Little talk. 

Just the clink of cup to saucer, one knee bouncing out a frantic beat.

The ring, still on Dani’s finger, every time.

Until, one evening, it isn’t. 

Jamie does not mention its absence, not that night, nor any night that follows.  She does not ask, does not want to know the answer, just cradles the reckless hope its absence bears, tight against her chest.

She does not ask, but on that first night, she does touch. 

She doesn’t mean to, doesn’t plan it, but the impulse hits and her fingers are moving of their own accord.

She reaches over and, just once, drifts her thumb across the bare skin left in the ring’s place. 

She feels the catch of breath in Dani’s chest as she does this, and the temptation to hear it again thunders through Jamie’s veins.  The pads of her fingertips beg to touch and the weight of her aches for movement, but Jamie asks no more of the moment. 

She takes only that one small thing, the hitch and the sigh, and tells herself it’s enough.

Weeks go by and still the ring does not return. 

The physical impression of it fades slowly, the skin seeming to shed the memory of it as time slips by. 

Visits grow longer and more frequent.

Once a week, then twice.  Then more evenings than not.

A second cup of tea. 

A third.

A gradual drift from counter to couch.  Dani, tucked tightly against the armrest at first, now unfurling, limbs slipping from their guard. 

A chapter of a novel, a handful of poems, pages of the almanac, read out loud by Jamie’s lips and Jamie’s tongue, as Dani listens.  Read in a voice that betrays too much the stammer of her, the restless hope rising in Jamie’s chest.

They talk of anything and everything.  Except the ring and all its entanglements. 

Nearly anything, nearly everything.

Dani sits beside and tucks her toes under Jamie’s thigh, lets her hands flight across Jamie’s arm as she reads, as they talk, as they settle in the silence, and it’s enough.

Dani smiles now, more and more as the weeks go by.  The thinness of it deepens to grin and she hides it behind pinched lips or fingertips, but Jamie sees it for what it is, and it’s enough.

They are becoming friends, and it’s enough. 

That’s what Jamie tells herself, anyway.

But it’s been four months now, since that first night at the bar, since the ring sank down through amber and was tested against teeth.  It’s been four months, and the world, inexplicably, now spins on Dani’s axis.

Dizzying.

Jamie takes herself downstairs to the bar some nights, the nights Dani doesn’t call.  But eyes that roam across her skin, hands that want, bodies that used to be enough –

they’re not Dani. 

And she goes home alone.

They are becoming friends, and it’s enough, but –

No, stop that.  Punctuate that sentence firmly.   It is complete in its own right, good and great.  No em dash, no clauses left hanging, waiting.

Waiting.

Jamie tries, resolutely at first, then with increasing desperation, not to wait.

There is nothing to be waiting for, she tells herself.  This is good.  This is great, accepted in whole, just as it is. 

And that’s true.  It is.

But –

that doesn’t stop her heart from skipping ahead to what might be next.  What could be next, if –

If.

There are distracted days and long nights dreamt in Dani’s arms, and every time Jamie startles awake, alone with the fevered ache, she tells herself this is enough.

But her breath is trapped in the cage of her chest,

waiting.

Thanks for this.  That’s what Dani says as she leaves each night, her hand on the knob, her cup in the sink.

When all rules are discarded, things are bound to break.

Jamie tells herself the rules again.

And again.

And again.

But it’s too late.

The rules weren’t prepared for Dani.

Things are bound to break.

Chapter Text

The story ends with a beginning.

It’s a night like any other.

Jamie leans against the counter, weight settled onto her elbows around the seed catalogue spread open in front of her. 

She had a point to make, surely, laced through some little anecdote about the garden, a story she had saved just for Dani. 

She had a point to make, surely, but she’s been talking now for far too long, anecdote morphing into monologue at breakneck pace. 

It’s been minutes since Dani has been able to get a word in edgewise, and Jamie ought to shut the fuck up, she knows, zip it on this ramble and nonsense, her point long since buried.

But the words keep coming because Dani is listening to every one.

Dani, sitting on the couch with a cup of tea cradled to her chest. 

Dani, watching her with that soft smile, the smile, open and warm, that has graced her face more and more in recent nights.

Dani, listening, with a hundred thoughts behind her eyes.

Dani, holding Jamie’s gaze as she sets down her cup of tea on the floor, as she rises from the couch, as she walks into the kitchen.

Jamie is distantly aware of her voice trailing off, not a single breath left as Dani rounds the corner of the counter.

Dear reader,

Let’s pause here for a moment. 

Oh goodness, please don’t look at me like that.  These two will be here, exactly as we’ve left them, when we get back in a few lines.  Promise. 

A bit farther down the page, you’re going to read these words: “a story to be told later”.  And when you do, you ought to know at least a bit of it.

You see, for every story, there is the story told on the page in loud print, and underneath, so faint you have to still yourself to see it, there is another.  One story for everyone, and a second only for those who take the time to look.  Your story is like that, surely, as it mine.  As is Dani's.

That’s the point, as it turns out, of said story.  So, here it is. 

Oh, hush.  I heard that sigh.  Don’t worry - I’ll be brief. 

Dani planned to leave the ring at home. 

She might, she thought, spend the evening without it, spend the evening as the person she’d be if the ring had never been. 

But when she slipped it from her finger, the mark of it stayed behind, imbedded into the skin.  The sight of that mark, this small piece of her that the ring had consumed already, made her stomach turn.  She thought, not for the first time, that she might be sick. 

So she slid the ring back into place, and averted her gaze.  Picked up her coat and her wallet and steeled herself.

The bar was a sea to drown in, which had been a welcome idea when this plan had started, a night without the ring, a night to reclaim herself.  Just one night. 

But as the noise and the bodies crowded in, as the room spun and the faces blurred, she remembered: she was already drowning, had been drowning for so long, and had no need of the bar’s help to drown any further. 

So she tucked herself up on a stool at the end of the bar, tucked herself up tightly to hold the noise and the bodies at bay, and anchored herself with a glass and a finger of amber. 

She slipped her hands around the glass, intent on using it as designed, a tool with which to steady herself against the current.  But with every attempted sip, the ring clicked against glass and made itself known, as if she could possibly forget.

This little band of gold that signaled the death of her, the dirge already sung.

In a weary haze of grief, she took the ring off and let it swim.  Tested gold to enamel to see who might win out in a battle of strength and will.  Set it down in the center of the square of white, a throne for the pretty thing it was. 

A savage, pretty thing.

She let her gaze slip loose and begged her mind to wander from the ring’s rigid grasp.  Begged for a moment, just one.

And then came Jamie.

Jamie, who sat beside her, a stranger but only just.  Jamie, who joked and flirted.  

Jamie, with her hands clenched and her knuckles white. 

Jamie, who got it exactly right, the first words out of her mouth cutting straight to the heart.

You look as if someone’s died.

Someone had, or was, or had been and would be. 

You see, there was a ring, and there was a man. 

A man, who was good and kind and earnest. 

A man who loved Dani, the bits of her he could hear and touch and see. 

A man who could not hear or touch or see anything beyond that. 

A man who was missing all the things that mattered, all the things she was too tired and too afraid and too burdened to be. 

A man who could not hear the full story of her, the parts quietly told, who could not see the faint text of it, written at length across her brow.

And all those things, the things that mattered, the secret heart of her, the things he could not see, they were dying.

He asked, ring in hand, and, back to a corner and exhaustion deep, she said yes. 

Slipped the ring on her finger and let it consume all those things she was and could have been. 

Watched in grieving horror as it bled away the quiet story of her, the faint text and the pages not yet written. 

She was dying.  And Jamie saw.  And that mattered.

First glance, and straight to the heart. 

Jamie saw and touched and heard the quiet story. 

(Given the chance, Jamie would have tasted too, Dani was sure, had Jamie asked once more. 

But she didn’t ask once more.  And that mattered, too.)

Dani picked up the phone a hundred times.  On her lunch break at school.  In the shy hours between the end of her day and the end of his.  In the late nights and early mornings when she roamed the house, restless and a little reckless.  She picked up the phone but the ring caught her every time, her fingers on the dial.

Then came the night of the engagement party, when the world crowded in on her.  Love and smiles and the thud of the dirt as it hits the coffin. 

Crawling out of her skin, her feet carried her to the bar late that night.  The payphone was in her hand before she could stop herself, before the thoughts and the ring and its weight could catch her.

Jamie asked nothing of her.  Not that first night, nor the ones that followed.

Week after week, Dani called and Jamie saw.  And it mattered. 

She was dying, and then, she wasn’t.

Dani placed the ring in his palm over dinner.

He was angry, this good, kind, earnest man, who hadn’t seen that she was dying, who still couldn’t read the quiet story, even after all this time. 

She didn’t have words enough to soothe him, to tell him it wasn’t his fault.  Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.

The ring was gone, and Jamie saw.  Saw and touched, the pad of her thumb light across the skin, not to replace the ring but to take awe in the living body the ring had left behind.

It would have been a relief, to crash into Jamie.  Jamie with her fisted hands, restless and soft.

But the years of dying, that slow relentless ending, had left Dani translucent, nearly gone.  The break, the crash and the shatter of the ring pressed to his palm took all she had left.

She could barely see herself after, even with eyes that were her own. 

The faint outline, scavenged from the dying, took time to find its fill and its colors, time to find the strength and the heft enough for the next break, for the crash and the shatter the heart of her craved.

And Jamie saw.  Jamie waited.  Jamie stayed, and asked for nothing.

And time passed.

And Dani lived and lived and lived some more, until the day came when she had finally lived enough to break what needed breaking.

Okay, reader.  That’s enough of that, I think.  We had better get back.  Jamie’s about to combust.

xo,

Z

Steady and deliberate, gaze held tightly, Dani’s approach comes slowly, but still, somehow, it catches Jamie off guard. 

One moment, Dani is across the room on the couch, soft smile and a hundred thoughts behind her eyes.  Then, no space between one moment and the next, she is right here, pressing in, gentle and sure. 

Four months. 

Four months of breath held, trapped in Jamie’s chest.

Four months of mounting desperation, trying not to waiting for what could, would, should come next. 

Four months telling herself this is good, this is great, this is enough, just as it is. 

She had punctuated a hundred thousand sentences, cleaved the ifs and the buts.  Firmly bound the ends of moments that begged for more.

And now, suddenly, the moment is more.  Suddenly, it is almost too much.  The closeness, the soft smile, almost too much, too good, too much to bear. 

Good and great and enough and –

Jamie’s resolve begins to unravel at an alarming rate, em dashes abounding.

She shoves herself back against the counter to put a bit of space between her body and Dani’s, cramming her hands into her pockets to hold them at bay.  Frantic.

But then there are two fingers, light on the underside of her forearm, just below the rolled cuff of her sleeve, and the whole world

stops.

The fingers trace down along skin at a maddening pace until they come to rest on the inside of Jamie’s wrist, just over the pulse. 

And for a moment, all Jamie can do is wonder what on earth Dani could possibly feel there, beneath the skin, because her heart stopped pumping four months ago.  Despite her best efforts, it has been waiting.  

Of course, it has been waiting.

The seconds tick by, maybe five, maybe five thousand, and then Dani is slipping her fingers between Jamie’s and, suddenly, Jamie's heart remembers what it's for and it is THUNDER in her chest.

Dani.

Jamie breathes out the name with no conscious thought behind it, halfway to a prayer.  The air in her lungs is, for a moment, Dani.

"Thank you," Dani murmurs, gaze still unbroken, as she steps forward, all the closer. "Thank you for this."

Jamie feels the words everywhere.  Two fingers on her wrist and she is on fire.

Thank you for this. 

There's a question, a question Jamie needs to ask, but the words have all abandoned her.  All she has is the shudder and sigh now, the stammer of breath and the thud in her chest, but there is a question she needs to ask.

Dani sees it, the question, sees it because her eyes have already drifted down to Jamie’s lips, where the question rests unspoken.

"For being so patient, for waiting," Dani answers, the why and the what for.  “For seeing me.”

Dani shifts, her weight pressing Jamie into the counter, gentle and sure.  "I needed to see if it would feel like dying, being with you.  I needed to see if it felt like an ending."

"And does it?" Jamie asks, the words catching in her throat as Dani leans in to brush her lips to the pounding pulse tucked just under the jaw. 

“No,” Dani hums against the skin there and Jamie’s hands are fucking desperate, one still held in the gentle trap of Dani’s fingers, the other clawing at the countertop for fruitless purchase as the world spins.  “Not even a little.”

Dani leans back, the fingertips of her free hand tracing, featherlight, down Jamie’s throat. 

Jamie watches Dani's gaze track them as they go, and it is dizzying. 

They pause at the notch of her sternum, and every fiber of Jamie’s being holds its breath. 

Then Dani’s warm palm is spread and steady against Jamie’s chest, slipping sideways across ribs to settle just left of center, her thumb keeping absentminded time with the thump and the thud it finds there.

“It doesn’t feel like dying at all,” Dani whispers, her eyes drifting up to Jamie’s lips again.

Jamie’s head is an absolute riot, her heart a stampede. 

Until Dani meets her eyes, and everything goes still.

“Are you sure?” Jamie asks, and though the words shiver as they leave her, and she means them.  

Months spent telling herself this is enough as she lived the fever dream of maybe and more.  And now she has it, the could and the if, right here, pressing against her skin and wound in her fingertips. 

But, truly, two steps back in time and palms empty, it really was enough, and, at Dani’s word, it would be still.

Two steps back and palms empty, Dani was still enough.

Jamie asks, and she means it.

Dani meets her eyes again, smiles softly and swallows hard. 

“Jamie,” she breathes, the catch of something warm and full of wonder in the word.

Dani takes the captive hand and tugs Jamie’s arm around her waist, squeezing a little before freeing it assure it of its welcome in this new home. 

Then one hand rises to fist in Jamie’s collar and the other to cradle the base of her skull.

There’s a story on Dani lips then, a story to be told later. 

Hours from now, well past midnight, when the sun is only just starting to lift the darkness, Dani will sit cross-legged on Jamie’s bed in Jamie’s favorite flannels and worn wool. 

Cups of tea, long grown cold, scattered on the nightstand.  Dani will thread her fingers through the well-mussed curls of Jamie’s sweet head, resting in her lap. 

And she’ll tell the story of the ring and all of its entanglements.

It is a story, bold and quiet both, sad at points, and triumphant at others.  It is a story with a beginning, a middle, an end, and then, a beginning again.

But the story can wait a bit longer.

Are you sure?

“Yes,” Dani says, as Jamie’s face splits into a grin, mirroring her own.  “Yes, I’m sure.”

Things are bound to break.

There is a beat between them, one final beat before the stillness breaks, before the crash and the shatter.  One final beat before Jamie’s hands come unleashed at last and Dani presses in, all desperate tongue and shuddered breath and urgent fingertips.

One kiss bleeds into two, bleeds into twenty, hearts battering against the walls of their cages.

Dani stays the night, and every night thereafter.

Some things, some rules, some stories are better broken, cleaved in two by force of will. 

Some things, some rules, some stories are better as rubble, with the tender shoots and daring leaflings creeping up through, the start of something new.