as long as those days are with you.

She is, each time, quiet. So quiet, Dani almost doesn’t notice the way she shifts along the mattress, pushing out of Dani’s loose grasp, edging toward the last measure of safety the bed has to offer before dumping her out onto the floor. She makes not a sound, save for short gasps, as though she’s been trying to hold her breath for too long. As though she’s been trying to make herself invisible to whatever monster might have crawled out from under the bed. 

The first night, Dani made the mistake of touching her--of tracing a hand up her back with well-intentioned gentleness, just to remind Jamie, I’m here. It’s me. It’s all right. It was a trick that had always worked on Flora, on kids she’d babysat for as a teenager: You aren’t alone; nothing is going to get you. 

Jamie, to her surprise, had jerked so violently away, she really had fallen out of bed. Landing in a sprawl on the hotel room floor, she’d curled herself into a ball, arms wrapped around her knees, and shivered there for almost two minutes before Dani could coax her back to waking. 

“Sorry,” she’d mumbled, so heartily humiliated, Dani hadn't had the stomach to ask. She’d only helped Jamie to her feet, eased her back into bed, assuming they’d talk about it in the morning.

They didn’t. Jamie, come sunrise, had been out of bed and dressed before Dani could wake. Her face had been all bright, all smile, all didn’t happen, Poppins, and I’ll deny it if you bring it up. Dani hadn’t dared.

Now, when it happens--maybe once every two or three weeks, when rain lashes the windows and the winds outside are high--she doesn't try to touch Jamie. She only waits, perfectly awake, perfectly separate from Jamie’s huddled frame in a small bed, for the shivers to level out. Waits for the moment, usually defined by Jamie rolling onto her back, when Jamie will come to her. Jamie’s hand groping across the blankets to grasp Dani’s shirt, or fingers, or the band of her underwear. This moment, silent and desperate, is the first sign Dani is allowed back in.

“Do you...” Her voice is too loud, even at a whisper. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Jamie winces, brow tightening, eyes stubbornly closed. Her grip tightens. 

“I think--think you should,” Dani presses softly. “Jamie. This happens--”

“S’all right,” Jamie mumbles. “S’nothing.”

It isn’t. Dani can tell nothing from a private violence, maybe better than anyone. It isn’t nothing, because this is the only time she ever sees Jamie like this. The only time Jamie ever hunches into herself and shakes like a child in a thunderstorm. 

“Can I do anything?” she asks, when it becomes clear Jamie isn’t going to open up. Not yet. Maybe she will, someday--when there are more than a couple of months, a handful of rented cars, the precious novelty of exploring something utterly fresh between them. Jamie will tell her, maybe, in the same way she’d told the rest of her story: at a moment unexpected, a moment designed by Jamie’s hand, when she’d been able to bear the strain. 

For now, Jamie simply stretches out on her back, eyes shut, fingers grinding the bones of Dani’s hand together. 

“Just--remind me,” she says at last, in a voice too sturdy to be sleep-addled. 

“Of what?”

“That I'm not--” Jamie stops, clenching her jaw in the dark. Dani rolls toward her, hesitant, laying a hand on her cheek only when Jamie leans toward her touch. “That I’m here. That no one else is.”

“No one,” Dani confirms. “C’ept me. I can--I can do a sweep, if you want--”

Jamie pulls at her with graceless fingers, pulls until Dani is holding her flush against her own body. Each shaky drift of Jamie’s breath is haggard, just this side of a sob. 

Later, Dani thinks, she’ll have stories--of foster parents, or unvarnished childhood monsters, or prison. Stories of girls who cut her open, of men who kicked at her ribs, of a life painted with too many bruises to count. Later, Dani thinks, she may hear them all, one by one or in a single dose, a reckless retelling of an old play whose lines Jamie can’t forget.

Now, in a hotel room, with Jamie’s skin under her lips, Jamie’s trembling soothed by her hands, she doesn’t think it matters. Nightmares don’t care to be explained away. Their only resolution is this: the reminder that the daylight can burn away even the darkest shadows. The reminder that a hand held tight can ward off the worst of the fear. 

They won’t talk about it, come morning. Jamie already believes she is meant to hold Dani up, to fend off Dani’s shadows. Jamie has not yet figured out what Dani has: that this battle will only work long-term if they stand united, back to back, equal in support of every kind. 

Jamie, for now, thinks she has to play hero. That she has to keep her demons to herself, her gaze fixed firmly on Dani’s. Jamie, for now, can believe that.