Work Text:
there is an indentation in the shape of you
made your mark on me, a golden tattoo
— dress, ts
Nineteen’s a strange age. Doesn’t quite fit into the grand scheme of things, caught between the grandeur of a being an adult and the illusion of not being a teenager any more. Nineteen, Dani says, feels like a year that’s going to get wasted, and Jamie nods beside her.
“We’ve only been nineteen for a few weeks, Poppins. There’s time.”
There’s always time, with Jamie, with her nickname that stuck after Dani landed herself some babysitting job, with the one-day-at-a-time attitude that their teachers all used to hate, with the way she splays herself out across the ages as if an entire life is something to be smirked at rather than spent.
“Says you.”
An eyebrow, cocked, though Dani can’t see it — they’re leaning back against her bed, expressions out and invisible to the rest of the not-watching world.
“Says me?”
“Yeah. It’s easy for you. You’re timeless.”
Timeless, and there’s that weight in Jamie’s chest that seems to get slightly heavier with every word that Dani says, nowadays. A sort of fluttering-turned-writhing that’s getting too big to look at without seeing one blaring answer neither of them could really bear.
“Timeless, eh? Rare compliment from you,” and Dani punches Jamie on the shoulder. It’s light, though the contact burns a little. They’re conspicuously distanced, for two people on a single mattress, not one point where either are touching. Barely anything between them, certainly, but enough distance to separate nonetheless. Too dangerous, though Jamie won’t let herself think that specific thought. Not right now.
“Timeless in what sense then? Like a ghost story or an old film?”
Dani shakes her head, now, hair cresting down into her face. Jamie twitches, holding herself back from framing the locks back up where they’re supposed to be. The lines between platonic and romantic have become so blurred, she doesn’t want to try and cross either.
“Neither. Timeless like poetry, I’d say.”
Calling me a poet, Jamie wants to say, except she’s slightly too aware of the fact that that’s not what Dani’s saying at all. She’s calling me poetry, her mind thinks instead, before she can shut it down. Poetry, which Dani once said was the only beautiful thing remaining.
“Sap.” Another punch, though they’re both smiling. Dani’s hand lingers for just a moment, before she pulls away. Delayed reaction. These things always are. They lie there in silence for a minute — could have been two, or ten, for all Jamie really knows — before Dani sits up.
“Favourite line of poetry, go.”
“Don’t have one.” Jamie doesn’t think she does, upon superficial inspection.
“Come on, Jamie. It can literally be a song lyric, a Shakespeare line. Anything at all.”
A beat, then a few more, while Jamie deliberates. There’s a line residing at the very back of her mind, one which she doesn’t try to look at for a while until it’s sort of the only viable option. A line from Sappho’s poetry, though. Would that be too obvious? Any chance that Dani might catch on and Jamie’s out, though this feels careful enough not to settle too heavily on their conversation.
“Someone will remember us, I say,” Jamie starts, and Dani — after another emotion that can’t quite be named flits across her face — breaks into a pleased sort of grin.
“Even in another time,” she finishes — but it’s quiet. Almost a whisper, and suddenly the weight of Jamie’s words has settled onto the conversation, this half-confession that neither of them are going to breach. But the story; it’s almost a cliché. Two girls, and they’ve grown up together, pressed into one another like stamp into wax, memorising the curves and salt flats of each other’s faces — lying ever-so-carefully next to each other on a mattress not quite fit for two. Quoting Sappho back and forth, and the clues make for an easy enough mystery to solve.
“That’s one of my favourite lines, too.” The words are soft, tinged on their curled edges with something between doubt and affection.
“We should tattoo each other.”
Dani — ever the teacher’s pet, the girl who wouldn’t dream of getting a tattoo for fear of being written out of the will — her eyebrows shoot almost to her hairline. Jamie grins as her counterpart stumbles for words, a firm declining of the offer that doesn’t sound like wimping out.
“Not like that. Just — what pens have you got?”
Catching on, Dani leans over to grab her pencil case, knee brushing Jamie’s thigh as she does. Barely anything at all, and yet Jamie arches so far away across the bed that she almost falls off the edge of it. A curious look from Dani, though nothing more arises as she unzips the bright pink Smiggle monstrosity she’s had since she was eleven.
“Uh, gel pens, mostly, some felt tips and a biro?”
Jamie leans in, tugs the case from her grasp, flutters through the endless cascade of worn-down pencils and inked-out pens, finally coming to rest on some fancy looking fine-liner that looks like it’ll do the job best.
“This works.”
Dani’s looking at her, at her hands as they move, nimble fingers coming to flick the cap off of the pen with the ease of someone who isn’t actually shaking with nerves. What possessed you, Jamie thinks, distantly, to do this. Of all the things.
“You up for it?”
Blue eyes shift up to meet Jamie’s, a sort of curious look clouding most of the gaze. Curious. Just curious. Dani nods, another fluff of hair flopping down in front of her face, and this time Jamie’s instincts are too far behind her to tell her not to reach out. The edge of her index finger traces Dani’s brow as she smooths the hair back behind her ear — the touch is almost awkward, clunky in a way that Jamie never is, leaning across her own crossed legs so far that it starts to hurt her back. She does her level best not to think about the way Dani’s eyes shut for that single moment of skin on skin. Does her level best not to think about Dani at all, actually.
“Sorry. It — kept flopping.”
A rush of laughter from Dani that saps the room almost entirely of the tension, twisting around to face the window so that Jamie’s free to take in the curve of her back without speculation. She tears her gaze away anyway, though, guilty as she feels to be staring at the way Dani’s muscles tense slightly when she leans down.
“Can you do it on my back? Just,” an outstretched arm contorting itself to press against the stretch of skin between her jeans and her top. “Here.”
Oh, fuck. Jamie clenches her fist for a moment, well aware that backing out now would ultimately be the more suspicious thing to do. She scoots forward, not quite sure how to get into a delicate enough position without actually straddling Dani, which. Which wouldn’t be a great idea. She leans, leans across the chasm she’s been sprinting away from for as long as she can really remember, presses a featherlight touch to the small of Dani’s back and closes her eyes until the fear has risen and fallen back down. Her breaths are shaking against Dani’s skin, washing over the expanse as she leans in to try and close her attention around the detail of the lettering itself. Dani giggles, actually fucking giggles, shifting inadvertently away.
“Your hands are cold.”
Jamie’s surprised they’re not burning. The rest of her body certainly is.
“Sorry.”
The second time she’s apologised in this one conversation, though she realises the room has been a lot quieter ever since she’s been holding herself against the arch of Dani’s spine. Focus.
Her fingers press, featherlight, against the flat of her best friend’s skin, the tip of the pen steady against the rest of the tilting world. The curl of an s, as careful as Jamie knows how to be, as if this is a real tattoo and not something that’ll wash off the next time Dani showers. The thought of Dani showering sends the next letter tilting slightly. Focus, again.
“You’re holding your breath.”
Dani shifts, laughing as she releases the air, a grand old sigh that shatters the unfamiliarity of the silence.
“Didn’t realise. Trying not to move too much.”
Talk, Jamie thinks, because it’s the only thing which could possibly take her mind off of the weight that this whole encounter holds above her head.
“What’s your favourite line of poetry, then?”
Dani, breathing (unsteadily, Jamie notes) now, cocks her head against the pillow it’s resting on.
“This one’s definitely up there. Do Taylor Swift lyrics count?”
Jamie grins, shakes her head.
“You and your bloody Taylor Swift songs. Which ex is it about now?”
A faux gasp from Dani, and Jamie has to bring the pen up and away from her skin. She’s reaching the edge of the word someone, now, can’t risk fucking up yet. She’s concentrating so hard it’s a wonder she’s able to hold a conversation at all, though this is a replay of a chat they’ve had over and over again. Jamie’ll never actually admit to her steadily growing fondness of Taylor Swift, not so long as they can carry on with this light banter that always comes when her songs breach the topic.
“Her new album’s the least auto-biological one so far, actually. Most of the songs are about other people.”
“You mean autobiographical?”
A smirk, and a threat from Dani to lob a pillow at Jamie’s head.
“And risk messing up the tattoo? You wouldn’t.”
“I would if I could see the shit-eating grin on your face.”
Dani’s head, Jamie’s reminded, is turned away. Good thing, because she’s blushing so hard she doesn’t know how she’d cope if Dani could actually see her. A pause, and someone needs to carry on the conversation, because otherwise it’s just Dani’s erratic breathing and Jamie’s mind telling her not to think about the way Dani tenses under her every touch. Reflex, but it’s one of many words that she’s fed herself across the course of this conversation which feels a little too much like a lie.
“How far in are you?”
An innuendo, because of course it is. Jamie clears her throat before replying, hopes it isn’t too glaringly obvious that she’s forgotten how to breathe.
“Coming up to the end of remember,” and the words pass like folklore between them. Dani relaxes further into the pillow, inhaling quietly.
“You’d better not just be drawing dicks on my back.”
“No way for you to know ’til I’m done,” Jamie retorts, though she’s well aware that something about this whole faux-tattoo is so ridiculously significant that neither her nor Dani would want to fuck around with it.
Another lapse of quietude descends, but this time it’s not so fumbling as the last few. Just peaceful. There’s a bird — a pigeon? — cooing somewhere outside, and the sun has dipped just low enough to be turning pale, ink-strewn skin into shards of shattered gold.
“There’s one line,” Dani starts once a few minutes have passed of this — Jamie’s almost at the word another, and it’s cautious enough that her movements stop. A pen hovers, suspended, above yet-untouched skin.
“One line I didn’t really think about before.”
There’s a shake to her sentiment. A crack, threading the second syllable of that last word through with doubt. Before as in — when? Jamie’s thumb still rests just above one of Dani’s belt loops, doesn’t dare to shift. One wrong move and this whole thing comes apart.
“My lips and fingers were pens on her flesh,” Dani whispers, and Jamie stills entirely. That’s… topical. Even the pigeon’s gone quiet. Keep going, Jamie wants to say — doesn’t. Doesn’t make a single noise at all.
“I memorised her in every alphabet, and memorised my memories until they multiplied.” The words fall into the air with the force of a burden, scattering themselves across the pillow for Jamie to look, and look, and see. Dani shifts, carefully, head tilting from one side to the other until she’s looking at Jamie. Jamie, who looks away. The strength behind that gaze, the heat that edged itself into a non-negotiable — it burned.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” Jamie blows the question onto pale skin, watching the goosebumps rise and fall in the wake of her whisper. Her forehead comes to rest against Dani’s back, and she’s breathing, steady as it’s possible to, in and out as if the world hasn’t just stopped turning. Silence, again, as Dani stares, as Jamie hides. This can’t happen. They can’t cross this boundary, so readily as they set it up in the first place.
“Jamie—” her name, her name, and it’s so desperate that she turns to leave, slides off of the bed with the practiced grace of someone who has played this scenario out in her mind over and over and over again. Jamie, she hears again, though it’s a commanding sort of thing she has to get away from before every one of her thoughts breaks loose—
Except there’s a hand on her wrist. Fingers curling around the planes of skin and bone, tugging so sharply that Jamie stumbles, throws an arm out to catch herself, and oh.
Except this isn’t how things ever turned out, in her head.
This is Dani, arching into her even as Jamie’s still tripping, lips colliding in a first-time mass of gasp and teeth and tongue, Dani pulling Jamie so close to her chest that it’s a shock they don’t both just fade into each other, two souls so irreparably intertwined. It’s Jamie who breaks away first, though, mere moments passed, chest heaving, pupils so dilated it’s like they could swallow the sun.
“Dani, wait—” she pulls back further as Dani leans hopelessly in again, pausing only when she senses Jamie’s hesitation.
“Jamie?” A question. As in — what’s wrong, don’t you want this, do you want to stop? Jamie can only shake her head, fingers threading through Dani’s already-mussed hair.
“Not that. Only,” she pauses, now, and there again is the reminder that they’re young enough to be naïve, that there is a world of a difference between I want this and I want you. “You’re sure?”
“Are you?”
Her mouth dries, because of course she is, she’s been sure for as long as she dares remember.
“Dani.”
There’s no quiet build-up this time, no delicacy to the way the crash back into each other, hands roaming as Dani whimper’s against Jamie’s lips.
“Your tattoo—” Jamie starts, and stops, as Dani grins into the curve of her neck, fingers already curling into the hem of her shirt.
Someone will remember us, I say, even in— that’s how it reads, currently, the unfinished version of events so raucous as this.
“Another time,” Dani murmurs, completing the line without even realising it, clutching Jamie’s body to her own with a hunger that speaks of months of yearning so desperately as this.
Another time, Jamie thinks, as they sink down together into the mattress, and again, minutes later, when Dani comes entirely apart beneath her.
Someone, she is sure, will remember this.