Work Text:
Jamie Taylor was happy for the first time in a while. Her colleague-turned-girlfriend-turned fiancée, Dani, was mostly to thank for that. Things were enjoyable after she’d started work at Bly Manor, but between story-times and manual labour, there wasn’t a lot of time to date. There was Jamie and Owen and Hannah and Miles and Flora (and occasionally Henry), and she was content with that for her life.
Until Dani Clayton, in all her adorable bumbling glory, strolled into Jamie’s carefully curated garden - and life - with her terrible tea and inspiring persistence. That is to say, Jamie was awe-struck from the moment she set eyes on the au-pair, not even addressing her in their first meeting for fear of spontaneously dropping down on her knees and waxing poetic about those beautiful blue eyes.
Tamping down her sudden bout of helpless romanticism wasn’t as effective as Jamie would’ve hoped - over time, Dani effortlessly broke down her barriers and made her fall deeper and deeper in love.
Jamie couldn’t believe her luck when Dani confessed to being equally infatuated. Seven years would seem to be enough to come to terms with it, but on mornings like this, in their shared bed in their shared flat above their very own florist a mile down the road from Bly Manor, she can’t help but watch the sleeping woman beside her and think - how did I get here?
She’s no stranger to karma, and after the shit hand she’d been dealt in her childhood, Jamie potentially deserved happiness (a foreign concept before Dani’d helped her realise that she truly could live the way she’d dreamed of.) But this soft, caring, confident woman, she deserves the world. And damn it if Jamie wouldn’t do everything in her power to give it to her.
Somewhere amidst her internal monologue, Dani’s eyes have fluttered open, and Jamie finds her fiancée looking up at her sleepily.
"Well, hello,” Dani says, her voice slightly gruff from sleep.
“Morning, love.” Jamie softly smiles down at her, still lovesick after all these years.
“What were you thinking about?”
“Just. You,” she admits, unabashedly. Dani blushes and the pink of her cheeks sends a warm feeling throughout Jamie’s body - she feels all the luckier to be the one that makes this stunning woman blush.
“Well, you better stop that or we won’t be ready to open on time, and I know how you value your punctuality.”
“Just let me be a melt, will you?”
“Always.” Dani takes Jamie’s uncharacteristic pause as an opportunity to drop a quick peck on her lips and smoothly fling the covers off them both, sauntering out of bed and out the door towards the kitchen.
“Hey, I’ll get you for that!” Jamie follows the sound of her fiancée’s giggles, arms outstretched to trap her against a counter and lay short, soft kisses across her face.
Somehow, they manage to scrounge up breakfast and get ready, keeping their hands mostly to themselves to whole time. (If Dani brushes against her fiancée a few too many times to be excused as accidental, neither of them care to bring it up.)
Half a day later, Jamie enters the flat to her fiancée talking in the soft voice she usually reserves for very small children - Dani’s not above baby talk. Last time I checked, we didn’t have any kids. With a chuckle at her own joke, Jamie walks towards the source of the sounds, dropping her various items along the way (a problem for a later time).
She finds herself at the doorway to the bathroom, Dani standing over a slowly filling bathtub with two small baskets at her side.
Each basket is filled with what Jamie thinks are socks, but open closer inspection, seem to be breathing.
“Uh - Dani?” Her fiancée looks up at the sound, slightly guilty at being caught. “What are you doing?”
“Baby! I, uh, know this looks suspicious but… I found them all alone on the sidewalk, hiding behind a trash can and meowing, and I just couldn’t leave them there - they’re only kittens! I think someone left them on purpose, god knows why. Just, here, look at their little faces.” Dani then holds up a basket, and Jamie comes face to face with the first kitten - jet black, sleek with little beady eyes.
“Um. Hi. Nice to meet you. I see my fiancée has taken it upon herself to bathe you and your - brother - I assume? Sorry about this, you’re going to hate it.” She turns to Dani. “Love, we can’t keep them. Pets are a huge responsibility, and I can just about take care of myself.”
Dani, damn her, knows exactly how to get Jamie to give in, and it only takes a minute of well-utilised pleading eyes and caresses before - “okay, but only until we can find someone to take them. A few weeks, max.”
Jamie was right - the kittens do not like the bath - her and Dani seem to be getting just as soaked as the little furballs, but they end up clean and her fiancée seems to be enjoying herself, so Jamie thinks she’s okay with it.
Jamie’s quick trip to the nearest pet shop takes longer than expected. Overwhelmed by options of food and toys and care items, she buys more than strictly necessary, wincing as she pays for it all. Fitting it all in her car proves a slight challenge, particularly with the biggest item, a set of three trays stacked on a little wheely unit. Somehow, Jamie manages to get it all up to her flat in multiple trips, helped by Dani who drags it inside and sets everything up.
Dani eagerly catches her up. In Jamie’s absence, she has taken it upon herself to name the kittens - Graf (short for Grafite, with an f for uniqueness) and Quinn. The latter is a little too close to Quint for Jamie’s liking, but she’ll put up with anything that keeps that smile on Dani’s face.
The kittens have been settling in quite nicely, it seems. In the time it took Jamie to come back upstairs with the last of the stuff, they’d claimed the trays already. Jamie’s not the biggest cat person, but she’ll admit the sweetness of a sight like the two little furballs squished into one tray, despite there being two others and countless items of furniture around them.
They settle into a routine, the four of them. Dani and Jamie spend much of their morning together, having settled into years of each other’s company. The cats slot into the equation neatly, Graf following Jamie around like the adorable nuisance he is, his orange brother neatly nestled in Dani’s arms as she reads with her tea (made by Jamie, of course. Dani’s still not there yet.)
Jamie quickly learns that when Dani says “take the boys to school,” she doesn’t mean Jamie’s travelled to an alternate reality where they have two school-aged children, and instead wants Jamie to take Quinn and Graf their (definitely not school-aged) cats downstairs to the shop for a little “vacation,” as Dani likes to call it.
She doesn’t know why a nice relaxing vacation for the cats, who don’t do anything anyway, means she has to watch over them all day during work where she earns money to keep them alive, but she does it anyway with minimal (maybe a little more than minimal) complaining.
Admittedly, the children are well behaved and essentially just laze around the shop enticing buyers into petting them and somehow buying more flowers. Jamie’s okay with that - in fact, she encourages it.
As she’s ringing up a customer, she sees Quinn out of the corner of her eyes doing just that. On closer inspection, her cat seems to be eating something out of the customer’s hand. What, Jamie doesn’t know, although he seems to be enjoying it. She does know exactly why, and this wouldn’t be the first time.
The menaces have developed the habit of following certain customers - ones that, for whatever reason, Jamie doesn’t like to judge, happen to carry little cat treats on them.
This means war, though. They know what they’re doing. She knows what they’re doing. They know that she knows what they’re doing and she knows that they know what they’re doing. Everyone knows this.
So, naturally, Jamie takes it upon herself to expose her little menaces for who they are.
Dani seems more amused at the whole situation than incensed as Jamie rightfully is.
“Baby, what’s this?” She holds in her hand Jamie’s masterpiece.
“It’s a sign. It’s the truth.” She’s proud of it, she’ll admit.
“You’re a dork.”
Dani drags her by the hand into the back room, and Jamie doesn’t quite know how to react.
Abandoned on the counter lies a sign that reads, in all capital letters: “The cats are not hungry. They are liars and are trying to trick you!”
One day, they lose them.
It’s not strictly anyone’s fault - they’re definitely (hopefully) somewhere in the flat, but Dani and Jamie cannot, for the life of them, figure out where that would be.
Usually they come when they’re called. The brothers are immensely attached to Dani, and when she calls them it typically comes with lots of attention that they just love to bask in - Jamie can relate.
Jamie’s starting to get a bit worried - Dani’s long gone, even though they’ve only really checked the bedroom - when she hears a sound from under the sofa.
A little sneeze, to be precise. And then another.
Twin kitten-sized sneezes from her twin kitten-sized idiots.
Jamie didn’t even realise that it was possible to get underneath their sofa, but her little menaces have somehow managed to lodge themselves right in there.
“Dani!” She calls towards the other room, where her fiancée is without a doubt opening drawers and upturning carefully folded clothes.
“Yeah? Did you find them?”
“Uh, you could say that.” Jamie says as Dani emerges, flustered, to join her in listening for the sneezes that don’t seem to stop now that they’ve started.
“In there?” Dani asks, brow furrowed. Jamie nods, having followed to same thought process. “How do we get them out?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I guess we wait?” She’s not an expert at this whole pet owner thing, but if these cats have taught her anything, it’s that they usually figure things out. (Except mirrors. Curiously, they keep jumping at them as if they’re open windows. It’s not clear how long it’ll take before they learn their lesson.)
The couple mill around a bit, doing the dishes and getting in an inevitable splash fight, occasionally declaring transient peace to listen for meows and/or further sneezes.
At one point, the sneezes just stop. Dani pulls Jamie over to the sofa to lay her eyes on two very dusty cats, each curled up on a sofa cushion with a hair tie in their mouth.
“No wonder they were fucking sneezing, look at them!”
Dani giggles. “Okay, you take Graf and I’ll take Quinn. It’s bath time again.”
Jamie outwardly curses her fate and inwardly thanks her lucky stars for her beautiful soon-to-be wife and her beautiful silly little children.