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Dani hasn’t stopped shaking since it happened. At first, Jamie thought it was simply a matter of cold night air and colder lake water, soaking into Dani’s sweater and shoes and skin. A matter of getting her inside the house, of getting her out of those wet clothes, wrapping her in a thick blanket and setting her up in front of the fire until the warmth eased back into her bones. Everything feels better, Jamie is sure, if you can only get warm.
Except the kids are shaking, too, and Henry looks like he’s just been hit by a car, and Owen keeps repeating, “Hannah? Where’s Hannah?” with increasing alarm. It’s all too much to take in at once, so Jamie--who knows it’d all be better if they could just get inside--settles for sitting in the dark with the rest of them. She’s in the grass, Dani propped against her chest, her arms locked tight around Dani’s shivering body; she’d tried to keep them both upright, but Owen had moved away, calling Hannah’s name into the creeping shadows, and Jamie simply hadn’t been strong enough. Down they sank, down onto the damp lawn, and Dani hasn’t looked at her. Dani has just been...
Staring.
Staring fixedly at nothing at all.
“You're okay,” Jamie murmurs against her hair, trying to scrounge all the patience and sanity the night has to offer. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Except she isn’t. She so plainly isn’t, and it’s scaring Jamie badly to feel the way her bones rattle--suddenly so thin and so fragile under that sweater--against Jamie’s body. She’s got one arm tight around Dani’s stomach, the other around her shoulders, holding her with desperation made flesh. Come back to me, she chants silently, kissing the side of Dani’s head, pressing her nose against Dani’s hair and inhaling the stomach-churning scent of stale lake water. Come back, please.
If I hadn’t gone, she thinks, unable to stop herself. If I had stayed like she asked. If I’d been there--
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t, and maybe in another universe that would play out differently, but all she’s got in this one is the next step. All she has is Dani’s breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps, her hand groping along Jamie’s arm and grasping so tightly, there will be perfect impressions from her fingertips in the morning.
“You’re okay,” Jamie breathes, trying to keep one eye on the chaos around them. Henry is hugging the kids, but his eyes are on Owen, and there’s something wrong with his expression. Something so much more human than she’s ever seen him look. And Owen, for his part, is ten feet away, hands cupped around his mouth, yelling now. Yelling in a pitchy, wild way she’d never have expected of him before tonight. Her heart slams itself against her ribs on every syllable--Hann-ah! Hann-ah!--until she thinks she’ll go crazy right here, right here in the grass.
“You’re okay,” she repeats, a mantra for them all.
Henry, eventually, is the one to get them all moving. Henry, leaving Flora clutching Miles like she thought she’d never see him again, her face dirty and tracked with tears. Henry, walking to take Owen by the shoulders. Whatever he mutters, they’re too far off for Jamie to hear, but she sees Owen recoil. Sees him, unbelievably, raise a hand like he might actually strike Henry--and then presses it to his mouth.
“I don’t,” he says, muffled. “I don’t understand.”
“Tomorrow,” Henry says, gently, his voice pitched for them all to hear. “Tomorrow. Tonight, we need to get them inside.”
“Inside,” Dani agrees, the first thing she’s said apart from it’s us in almost half an hour. “Inside. Inside.”
Jamie hugs her tighter, feels the way her free hand gropes along the leg of her trousers and grips just above the knee for purchase. Is this really the same woman who watched her with hopeful, nervous energy earlier this evening? The same woman who splayed a hand across her ribs like she wanted nothing more than to push Jamie against the wall, hold her there with lips and tongue and soft giggle, until there was nothing left in the universe but the pair of them? That Dani had felt like rebirth burning hot in her hands, like some mythical readiness rising from the ashes of a past she’d finally been able to bury. This woman feels so small in comparison. So brittle.
Should’ve stayed, Jamie thinks again, as she pulls Dani upright. Should never leave her again.
Henry takes the kids, never once looking at Dani, and Jamie is grateful. If he’d stepped back and made this yet another one of Dani’s problems, she thinks she couldn’t be held accountable for her actions. Henry Wingrave has been distant for too long; it’s high time he pulls some weight around this house, too.
Owen strikes off on his own into the shadows, hands in the pockets of his coat, no longer shouting. His face is all Jamie needs to see, to know company is most unwelcome. Tomorrow, she decides, she will catch him. Tomorrow, they will handle whatever he’s carrying together.
Tonight, Dani needs her.
She keeps an arm anchored around Dani the whole way into the house, up the stairs, shoes sliding over muddy prints Jamie can’t quite bring herself to look at too closely. Dani is staring straight ahead, swallowing hard, eyes barely blinking. Ask, something in Jamie whispers. Never, something just as fierce responds. There are questions you can ask, and questions that will explode on contact, and it’s up to Dani to let her know which this is. When she’s ready. When she’s back.
“Here,” she says into Dani’s ear as they reach her door. “Here, you--I’d like to stay, if you’ll have--”
Dani grips her sleeve so tightly, Jamie imagines the threads tearing loose under her fingernails. Her hunted expression never wavers, her eyes finding Jamie’s in the warm hall light, and Jamie sucks in a breath through her teeth. She knows these eyes so well already, knows how they widen with delight when she enters a room, knows how they dilate with open, hungry want when she moves close. Dani’s eyes, blue as the saddest song in the world, the kind you never want to stop humming under your breath.
One of these eyes staring at her now is Dani’s.
One is a deep, startling brown.
“What--Dani, what--” Happened.
Dani shakes her head. “Not--can’t--not yet. Please. Just...”
Jamie takes her face gently between her hands, stretches up to press a long kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be here,” she says, the words barely a whisper. “As long as you want, all right?”
Dani doesn’t say all night, or the week, or forever. Dani just falls forward, head pushing against Jamie’s, hands trembling on her shoulders like if she lets go, she’s sure Jamie will vanish on the spot.
“C’mon.” Jamie nudges the door open with her foot, eases them both into this space she remembers so keenly from barely twenty-four hours ago. What a different lifetime that was: the two of them stumbling into the house, unable to stop touching, unwilling to go four steps without one of them pressing the other into the nearest surface and kissing with such idiot abandon, it’s a wonder no one came running to check on the racket they’d been making. Pure luck, she’d thought then, with Dani nibbling her earlobe and trying to work the doorknob at the same time. Sensible behavior, she thought in the morning, recalling the way Hannah and Owen had looked at them as they left the kitchen.
Now, none of that nervous scalding electricity lighting the room. Now, there is only the solidness of the shadows, of gray seeping into all the corners of Dani’s space. Jamie guides her to the trunk at the foot of the bed, eases her down, lets go just long enough to switch on the lamp.
Relief, for a moment, as Dani leans her head back and exhales a long breath heavenward. Relief, as her face is bathed in the same warm glow from the night before, when she’d let her hand hover over the switch with palpable nerves.
I’ve never--I mean--should it be dark?
I’d like to see you, Jamie had told her then, with such gentle eagerness she’d thought Dani would crack apart in response. She’d kissed her, kissed her, laughed into her mouth.
Hard to imagine this Dani laughing.
“Jesus, Dani,” Jamie breathes. Her neck, she can see for the first time, is a lattice of bruises. Her mouth is ringed and swollen, her skin chapped red in places, a dark, horrible purple in others. Jamie kneels before her, hands on her thighs, holding steady as Dani just sits there and stares.
“Bad night,” Dani whispers at last. The left corner of her mouth crooks up, just a little. She leans forward, arms wrapped around herself, rocking slightly. “Bad night.”
“No shit,” Jamie says. Can’t help it. She’s trying her absolute best right now, her absolute best to be the strongest person in the room, but Dani looks like she got into a fight tonight Jamie can’t even fathom. It’s not even the bruises; it’s the miles of misery in her suddenly-mismatched eyes, the far-flung expression that says she’s left, she’s gone, and she maybe isn’t ever coming--
“Back to me,” Jamie realizes she’s saying, pleading. “Dani. Come back.”
Dani lifts her gaze, refocuses with obvious effort on Jamie’s face. “Aren’t I here?” she asks, so forlornly it nearly breaks Jamie’s heart. “Aren’t I? Feel like...feel like maybe...”
She slides a hand up Jamie’s chest, up the side of her neck, touching gentle fingers to Jamie’s cheek. The shudders running through her body are still coming, but lighter now, less volatile. Jamie shuts her eyes for a moment.
“We should get you out of these clothes,” she says. It’s a good thing to say. A sturdy, simple, solution-oriented thing to say. Dani smiles like shattered crystal.
“What was it? Blimey.”
She’s not really groping for the accent this time, not really trying to make Jamie smile, and it hurts. It hurts to see her like this. Jamie shakes her head.
“You’re soaking wet, and the last thing you need’s a summer cold on top of all this--” Steer left. Angle away to something safer. “C’mon, let’s get you into a bath.”
Dani lets her pull the sweater over her head, lets her ease her out of the rest of her clothes in gentle, methodical motions. There’s no seduction to it tonight, just the infinite care of Jamie knowing her hands are not built for such fragile things. Just Jamie knowing she’s never handled something so precious in all her life, and she cannot bear to get this wrong.
With every article that comes away, she finds more splotches of terrible color embroidered into Dani’s skin. The backs of her knees are especially bad, blooming almost black. The bruises run down her calves, her ankles, wrap grotesque fingers around the small of her back and the easy slope of her hip. Jamie, looking at her in the small bathroom, fingers each spot like it’s made of finest-spun glass, watching Dani’s face for any sign of flinching.
Nothing. Dani just looks steadily back at her, even as Jamie--out of ideas, heart twisting itself bloody in her chest--presses a kiss to the back of one leg. She sits on the closed seat of the toilet, a towel around her body as Jamie fills the tub. Doesn’t say anything. Just sits, gazing off into nothing again.
“Want me to--,” Jamie begins, and Dani’s already nodding, even as she sinks into the water. It isn’t a big tub, not for this kind of house, but it’s big enough. Jamie slides in behind her, lets her lean back, allows the too-hot water to drain away the last of the chill from her own skin. She hadn’t even realized she was cold.
Not how I imagined this going, she thinks, chin resting lightly on Dani’s shoulder. The water sloshing gently around them on every breath is strangely focus-inducing. She feels for the first time all night like she understands--something, anything at all. Not what happened to Dani, certainly, not her bruises or her horribly haunted gaze, but the sensation of Dani’s body against hers. The sensation of skin on skin, of steam drawing sweat from the back of her neck, of Dani’s fingers clenched around her own.
She traces sigils into the smooth plane of Dani’s stomach, trying to make her hand into something large enough, strong enough, to hold Dani present. Her palm can’t cover enough ground, her fingers unable to extend across the whole of Dani, all the little splintered bits that had been whole earlier in the evening. It doesn’t feel like nearly enough, but Dani’s breath is coming easier now, no longer galloping out of her like she’s still running. Her breath comes slow, her head tipped back against Jamie’s shoulder, and Jamie realizes she’s actually starting to fall asleep right here in the bath.
Fine enough, she thinks. Let her sleep. Get the feeling it won’t be so easy a thing, for a while.
When the water begins to lose the last of its heat, Dani turns and looks up at her with exhausted eyes. “Can we go to bed now?” Like a little kid, Jamie thinks. For the first time, she sees a glimpse of how Dani might have been once upon a lack of responsibility. Weary and sad, a little fearful, but trusting Jamie. Trusting that Jamie will scare off any monsters from the door.
I can carry this, she thinks firmly. I can carry us both until you’ve got your legs back. You’ve done things I couldn’t dream tonight, Poppins; I can do this much.
She tries to offer Dani pajamas, but Dani just sleepwalks past her and slides between the sheets. For a moment, Jamie hovers, helpless, beside the side she’s already started to think of as her own. Dani reaches out without looking, pats the pillow with a clumsy hand.
“Please. Please stay.”
She leaves the this time unsaid, but it jerks at Jamie’s heart all the same. It pains her a bit, how easily Dani winds against her body, how little self-consciousness is present when she moves a leg over Jamie’s hips and clutches at her shoulders. They should have so much more time on the doorstep of this brand new thing, she thinks. So much more time spent nervously undressing, laughing awkwardly as they get to know one another--every freckle, every stretch mark, every scar.
And yet...here’s Dani Clayton, behaving as though they’ve been like this for a lifetime. Dani, too tired to second-guess, with her face pressed into Jamie’s skin. This is such a married thing to do, Jamie thinks without fully understanding the gravity of the thought. Such a married act, to climb into bed and hold one another without question, without fear, without any sort of boundaries between them.
One night, she thinks wonderingly. I’ve had one night knowing this woman. One night learning the map of her, and now it’s like...like she’s always been here.
There’s a sort of loss to this feeling, but something far more grand rises to take its place. A certainty Jamie can’t bring herself to look in the face. She’s never felt its like, not with any woman, not with any human being in her entire life.
Dani breathes in, out, in, sweeping arcs across her collarbones, and Jamie gazes at the ceiling. She’s never felt less like sleeping, has never felt more ready to stand sentry for another life. Dani’s falling asleep like a stone, weighing heavier by the moment, and Jamie suddenly can’t imagine falling asleep alone ever again. Can’t imagine not being by her side as the bruises fade and the distance leaves her eyes, as the smile returns to her lips and her hands begin again to search for Jamie.
She will, Jamie thinks. A woman like Dani Clayton isn’t broken by even the worst kind of night. She’ll be here in the morning, a little more than tonight, and a little more with every day that follows. Jamie has to believe that. Can’t stomach anything less.
She doesn’t know what happened out in the lake. Doesn’t know what Dani did, what Dani gave up--and Dani did give something up, she can see it all over her face. Dani will tell her, she’s sure, when she’s ready. Dani will sit and take her hand and maybe she’ll shiver all over, maybe she’ll cry, but she will walk Jamie down this path. Someday. Jamie can be patient until that day comes.
Dani moans in her sleep, a nightmare on her lips, and Jamie kisses the top of her head until the tension slides from her limbs once more.
I’ll be right here, she promises silently. Long as you’ll have me. Long as you want me. And if there are monsters under the bed, if something followed you out of that lake tonight, well...
She can’t find the words to say as much, not to Dani’s face. In the morning, when some of the fear has been scrubbed away and Dani’s maybe a little more embarrassed, or--worse--a little more ashamed, Jamie won’t be able to say it this way. She’ll only be able to pull Dani close, to kiss her eyelids and her cheeks and her lips with every ounce of tenderness she can muster. She’ll only be able to say something foolish and wry, voice sleep-roughened, pretending she didn’t stay up all night listening to Dani’s strong heart beat on.
And maybe they’ll kiss again, slow and deep, and maybe Dani will move against her with the desperate need to feel something other than terror, and maybe they won’t leave this bed again for a day. Or maybe it’ll go the other way; maybe she’ll wake again to find Dani already gone, off to take charge of the day the only way Dani knows how, with Jamie lingering after her as she waits for the adrenaline to fade. Either way, Jamie’s good. Either way, she can wait.
For now, she holds Dani close and tries not to let the melody of it’s us, it’s us, it’s us tap out its unnerving rhythm inside her head as she lays in this house that feels so...quiet all of a sudden. So quiet, so still.
Jamie lays all night, keeping vigil, and Dani Clayton--bruised and worn and carrying something Jamie will strive her very hardest to understand just as soon as Dani’s ready to share--sleeps on.
It has no name
No guarantee
It’s just the promise of a day
I know that some may never see
But that’s enough
If the bottom drops out, I hope my love
Was someone else’s solid ground
-”Orpheus”, Sara Bareilles