come out of the clouds

Jamie wakes early most mornings; Jamie is a morning person, tried and true, good at being awake before most people are willing to condone the action. Morning is when conversation is least likely to sneak up on a person, when someone is allowed to simply be alone with whatever thoughts they please, without explanation. She was good at it before Dani Clayton strode into her life, and she’s been arguably better at it ever since. 

This morning, the morning of the greatest consequence in maybe their entire life together, Jamie wakes earlier than most. The sky is still dark outside their bedroom window, the world still muddled and whispering around the apartment. Birds have not yet taken to their morning rituals. The sun is miles away. 

And Dani is starting to stir. 

Jamie sits up, leaning back against the pillows, and watches as her wife--lips parted in a silent snore, hand tossed across Jamie like it was made to rest there--raises her head. Turns it, ever so slightly, in Jamie’s direction. She makes to whisper something in return--good morning, or go back to sleep, or I love you--but Dani’s face is slack. There’s no sign of activity about the expression, no sign that she’s doing this of her own free will. 

At first, it’s almost funny. Watching Dani slide across the bed toward her, bemused as she drapes a leg over Jamie’s lap and settles her weight like a queen upon a throne. There’s something decidedly not-Dani about the action; Dani laughs when she climbs to a position like this, self-consciousness and delight mixing on her pretty face. This Dani, this sleepwalking variant, moves like something is pulling the strings from a terrible distance. 

And it hurt, Jamie thinks for no reason at all, a parody of an eleven-year-old boy in her still-waking mind. She raises her eyebrows, lets her hands settle on Dani’s hips, watches her wife just...sit there. Astride her in a red sleep shirt and no sign of consciousness. 

It is, if she’s honest with herself, more than a touch eerie. 

When Dani’s arm raises, it’s the slowest thing Jamie’s ever watched. Like a mechanical thing, like an automaton not yet ready for practice, Dani’s arm shifts, elbow bending, releasing, extending. Her hand, Jamie realizes belatedly, is forming a sort of loose claw shape. 

There is a universe, she thinks, where Dani’s hand continues its arc across calm night air and makes its predestined landing. A universe where those fingers she knows so well, the ones that tickle and trace and hold tight to her each day as the world gets harder and harder to occupy, clutch around Jamie’s windpipe. There is a universe where this, this final moment, is where Dani’s belated beast in the jungle finally makes its move. 

“Right, then,” Jamie says, so softly she barely hears the words herself. “We need to talk.”

Dani’s hand...pauses. Mid-flight, stretched out, her other braced against Jamie’s shoulder for balance, and her eyes don’t open. Jamie’s relieved. If Dani were to wake like this, if Dani were to feel just how close to the edge she really is--and Jamie’s the first to insist it isn’t so, but sometimes you just need to know when to say when--things would go differently. Things could go very badly indeed. 

Dani doesn’t wake. Jamie, carefully, stretches out her own hand. The left one, the one honored with a gold band that marks lifelong love, friendship, loyalty. She wraps her fingers around the wrist that does not, in this moment, seem to belong to Dani Clayton at all. 

“It’s you, then,” Jamie says softly. Her voice is raw, deeper than its normal cadence with early morning rasp. “Isn’t it?”

Dani’s head...tilts. Just a little, like she’s listening. Or, more accurately, like someone else is listening from inside. 

“You, waking at last,” Jamie goes on. Dani’s head...nods. Just a little. Barely anything at all, and if Jamie weren’t looking for it, maybe she’d think it was a fit of shadows. 

“You,” she says, “thinking you get to claim your prize.”

Dani doesn’t move. Jamie sits up a little more, shifting Dani’s weight atop her, careful not to jar. She leans closer to Dani’s face, one hand still holding the offending wrist, the other sliding up the side of Dani’s neck with tender care. She rests her fingers along the span of Dani’s jaw, gentle as she’s ever known how to be. This is a moment for gentle. This is a moment for infinite care. 

“I’ve read your story,” she says to the beast in the jungle. She hasn’t told Dani just how far down that particular rabbit hole she’s slid. They've talked about some of it, about the strange dreams Dani feels certain are more than nighttime fabrications. About locked trunks and lost daughters and loneliness. But there’s more to any ghost story than the echoes of misery, and one day, with Dani out on errands, she made a call to an old friend across the pond. And then another. And another, following leads, old voices spinning older stories with just enough sources behind them that they really did constitute history. 

Henry Wingrave will never know the gift he granted, taking her call that day, arming her this way. He never needs to. Jamie’s grateful enough. 

“I know what happened to you,” she says now, her fingers cupping Dani’s face like on a thousand other nights. “I know about your husband.”

Something in Dani’s face seems to shiver. Jamie presses on.

“I know about your sister.”

Something in Dani’s brow seems to harden. Jamie is undeterred. 

“I know you know what love is. No. I know you know devotion. You do, don’t you? That word. It’s everything.”

Dani’s head is still, her eyes closed, but Jamie senses the thing puppeteering her body is listening very, very intently. She nods. She isn’t smiling, isn’t making a game of this. There is such a thing as last chances, and Jamie knows better than most what those look like. 

“You understand. Because you and I, I think we speak the same language, when it’s all on the table. Devotion. It’s the reason we’re here. It’s the engine we, you and I, run on. Isn’t it?”

Dani’s head...nods. A little harder this time. Like the thing inside, hands on the controls, is really beginning to figure out all those little buttons and knobs. Jamie swallows. Faster, then. Time is running shy. 

“You understand, then, why I can’t let you have her.”

A pause. The wrist in her grasp flexes, fingers twitching toward a fist. Jamie twists her grip slightly, lets her thumb run soft along Dani’s skin, and those fingers relax. 

“I know. I know you’ve been through it. I can see that. But she...is everything. She’s my world. And I know you know what that feels like. So, I’m not...gonna beg. I’m not gonna sit here on my knees and plead with you, because I think you and I both know that isn’t worth a whit of your respect. I’m just gonna say it. All right?

“This,” she says. “Her. She stays. S’not me begging. S’me saying exactly how it is. She. Stays.”

Dani’s body sits for a moment, frozen, and Jamie thinks she’s misplayed those cards. That Dani’s hands will shoot for her throat again, and this time, they will finish what they woke this morning to start. 

“I?” Dani’s voice sounds wrong. Distant. Like a sleepwalker mouthing dreamspeech. Jamie doesn’t think she’s imagining the very light tinge of accent--nothing like the silly dialect butchering Dani likes to do when she’s poking fun at Jamie. “What of me?”

“That,” Jamie says through a mouth so dry, she could lean over the side of the bed and vomit, “is between you and yours. I’m not gonna tell you again, though. This one. She stays.”

“Ends,” the voice that isn’t Dani’s whispers. “Everything.”

“Yes.” Tears, pricking Jamie’s eyes, do not match the smile moving to rest upon her lips. “Yes. It does. Eventually. But we have time, she and I. We have so much time. And...when it’s over?”

“Yes,” the voice breathes. There’s something horribly wanton behind the word. Jamie swallows. 

“When it’s over, we go back. Her and I. Back to where it all started. Your place. Your home. You won’t be alone, not anymore, but first...we get this. You give us this. She carried you out of that place without anyone asking, least of all me, and she’ll carry you for the rest of her life because Christ knows she won’t give you up for anyone else to bear. But that’s enough. You hear? It’s enough. It’s you, and it’s us, but not yet. Not until we’re ready.”

“Life,” the voice says, almost scornfully. “Never ready.”

“We,” Jamie hisses, “will be. One day. When we’re old and withered, when my hair’s gone snow-side and her eyes aren’t so good anymore, when we’re all out of beautiful boredom and all that’s left is to go holding her hand all the way to the other side. Then. We’ll sleep at Bly one last time, and we’ll wake together, and we’ll walk. As long as you like. We will. But.”

“Not yet,” the voice says. Jamie isn’t imagining the resolution in the words, she’s sure. “Not yet.”

“And until then,” Jamie adds, leaning forward until her forehead is nearly flush with Dani’s. “Until then, you leave her be. You hear me? No more reflections. No more shaking her loose until she can’t feel me beside her. You go back to sleep, and you stay asleep until you feel the pull of that old house again. Are we of an accord?”

Old-fashioned words for an old-fashioned oath, and oh, if this doesn’t work, Jamie’s got nothing left. She isn’t one for pretty language. She isn’t one for negotiation. 

But she is, always will be, Dani’s. Dani’s champion. Dani’s partner. Dani’s rock. 

“Yes,” the voice says at last, the voice of a Lady so old and so long-buried, it’s a wonder there’s anything left of her at all. Jamie nods, pushing her head against the smooth skin of Dani’s, her hand coming up to cup the back of her hair. 

“Then I think it’s time we said goodnight.”

“Jamie?” The word wavers. Dani seems to fall against her, like whatever was holding her up has finally come loose. Jamie, prepared, holds fast, holds soft, holds and presses their lips together. 

“Just a bad dream, Poppins,” she says. “Just a strange bad dream.”

“I was dreaming,” Dani repeats, waking in a slow rolling wave. “I was dreaming of...moonflowers. Of that night. Of the way you...”

Jamie kisses her again, channeling everything of that night she can into the act, holding her close and praying she can’t feel the way Jamie’s heart careens and crashes inside her chest. Dani, bewildered, kisses back with soft little whimpers, her knees clamped tight around Jamie’s hips. 

They’ll go back to bed soon enough, Dani’s head on her chest, Dani’s fingers fisted tight around the loose-buttoned flannel of her shirt. Dani will breathe in and out, soft, slow, and Jamie will lay awake. Waiting for a sign. Waiting for any kind of sign that this pact was not well enough made. 

But the beast in the jungle will give no sign of life. No sign at all. Dani will sleep, and Jamie will tangle a hand in her hair and hold fast, and when morning comes properly...it’s just another morning. Sunrise and birdsong and plants to water. 

And, she’ll think, when Dani rises and sleepily makes her way toward a hot shower, her eyes will look clearer than they have in months. 

“Good, Poppins?”

Dani, like one granted a reprieve they can’t quite put a finger on, will smile. A real smile, honest and clear, dimples and delight. 

“Feels like a nice morning, doesn’t it?”