Work Text:
1998
Jamie sprawls out onto the cool grass with a graceless thud, fluttering her eyes shut as her inebriation leaves her euphorically dazed and nauseous.
“You’re a lightweight,” Dani breathily giggles as she sits beside Jamie, a hint of a slur in her words as she brings their shared bottle of wine to her lips.
“That was more than half the bottle I drank, Dan,” Jamie retorts.
It only causes Dani to snort a laugh before hiccupping—a clear sign of her own intoxication.
Jamie folds her arms under her head, playfully muttering, “And it’s me who’s the lightweight, huh?”
“Oh—,” hiccup, “—shut up.”
Jamie softly chuckles before tranquil silence blankets over them. She watches Dani reverently, and a soft smile tugs the corner of her lips at the sight of Dani entirely enamored by the night sky. Jamie should find the evening equally brilliant with its vivid, golden moon and infinite stars, but Dani is a far more cosmic vision because tonight she’s different.
It seems that time has gradually battered Dani. Slowly, she’s dissolved into her own sorrow, growing weaker as the days pass, and this is the first night in months Jamie has seen her genuinely happy. A sorely missed gleam in her eyes has returned, and the smile she proffers is so beautiful, Jamie thinks she could weep in the sheer relief it bestows. With conviction, she hopes Dani’s contentment will be cast into permanence.
“I’ve never understood it, you know,” Dani whispers, breaking through Jamie’s thoughts.
“Understood what?” Jamie asks.
“How people would want to be a star when they die,” she says simply, her fingers fiddling with the neck of the wine bottle in her lap.
Jamie props herself up on her elbows and peers at Dani curiously, a hint of worry knit in her expression. Jamie knows her reaction is far too ardent, and she blames it on the subtle mention of death. Dani never intended it to be ominous nor was it blatantly said in reference to herself, but even the meager thought casts a heavy shadow over Jamie.
“Whose said that?”
Dani puts the now empty bottle aside, groaning as she lays herself beside Jamie. She faces her with a gentle simper, sighing, “Oh, you know how they say our souls become stars?” She squints up at the sky. “Seems to be such a waste.”
“A waste?”
“Yeah… when the moon is right there.” Dani outstretches her hand to curve around the shape of the moon, suspended atmospheres away.
“You’d want to be the moon, eh?”
“Sure, why not?” Dani confirms with a nod as she nuzzles closer to Jamie.
“You’d be the whole moon?” Jamie inquires, her diction accentuating the presumed impossibility of such a concept.
When Dani nods, Jamie responds with a huff. She assumes this conversation is entirely comical in nature, purely from a sense of absurdity produced by too much wine. Though, Dani is clearly serious, and Jamie cannot comprehend why it is suddenly hurting her so.
Jamie wonders if Dani is feigning blitheness to provide a sense of comfort for her, conditioning her into a state of solace in preparation for what is to come. How Dani could ever think anything could soothe Jamie’s irrefutable dread, is a mystery.
“I would want to be… Think about it. I’d always be there, and—you could always find me,” Dani says.
No matter how harrowing or fatuous Dani’s desire sounds, she pushes herself to entertain the idea and force a sense of amusement.
With a watery smile that she hopes is masked by the night’s darkness, she responds, “Yeah, s’pose I could.” She leans forward to press a kiss on Dani’s forehead. Jamie lingers there, breathing softly into Dani’s skin, “you’ll be the moon.”
2008
Smoke rises in plumes from the cigarette that trembles between Jamie’s lips. She pays no mind to anything around her. Not the sound of swishing trees in the wake of autumn’s evening breeze nor the flicker of one of the streetlamps below her balcony.
Instead, her eyes are fixed on a photograph she has pulled from her coat pocket. Though it has yellowed with time—tattered and covered in strips of tape to salvage it from the few rips it has collected over the last twenty years—its subject has lost no sense of her riveting beauty.
Dani’s delicate smile is illuminated under the sky’s proffered light. Her eyes are bright and full of life. Her features blossom with that familiar peachy and demure flush. She finds this version of Dani the easiest to remember, though, she favors not one more than the other. Any form Dani had taken over the years—no matter how fragile or desolate she had become—Jamie loved each one more than she ever thought possible.
Jamie blinks away the tears that have blurred her vision as her thumb caresses the photo. She sniffles, stringing her jaw tight to avoid breaking down because she finds the whole ordeal exhausting. It’s a cruel reminder that no matter how much time passes, her grief will continue to hover with sustained intensity.
With a final drag from her cigarette, Jamie turns to extinguish it in the ceramic ashtray atop a glass table. Whilst she smothers the cigarette, she looks behind her shoulder to contemplate the rare potency of the moon’s cobalt blue. Though feeling rather heavy, she manages a small smile.
Hesitantly, she places the photo of Dani on the table, and commiseration washes over her when she sees the way the moon’s dull beam irradiates the photo. She lets her own cynicism of spirituality cease in order to allow some hope that Dani’s wish had come to fruition.
Rather than hide this piece of Dani away in her breast pocket as she always has she figures she ought to let her bask in the night’s luster instead, so Jamie blinks one last time at the moon before she retreats to their flat—leaving Dani aglow and glistening under the moonlight.
