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in the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk.
their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun
— madeleine miller, the song of achilles
“Come to Maine with me.”
Jamie looks up, hand stilled over the cash register. She’s closing up for the day, going through the motions, her best friend splayed rather gracelessly across the garden bench in the corner.
“…Sorry?”
Dani’s grinning, though there’s a slight crease between her eyebrows which betrays her awareness of quite how insane this must sound.
“Just— just for a day or two. I read this article about this national park over there, and it’s only a six hour drive.”
Only six hours. Jamie is reminded, now as ever, that she and Dani have most definitely not grown up in the same country — a six hour drive in England, and you’re in the Irish Sea. A six hour drive in America, and you’re likely still in the same state.
“Right.”
There’s something in Dani’s expression. A frenzied sort of look held far back behind her irises, one which Jamie recognises all too well as that pent up desire to get up and go. Somewhere. Anywhere at all.
“Maine? Of all places. Six hours for Maine.”
“It’s that or two day’s drive to Yosemite.”
It’s that finality — the fact that Jamie hasn’t really been given the option to say Dani have you gone absolutely mad — that convinces her. And it’s bizarre, the way this happens, the way that tug in Dani’s gaze hooks her just the same way it always has — but. It’s Dani. As if she could ever say no.
“You’re sure? You… Maine. Us.”
Us. Jamie’s breath catches as she says it, and it holds in the air for a moment until Dani laughs, pushing herself off of the bench.
“Maine. Us. If we leave now, we’ll be there by sunset.”
Jamie balks, slightly, at this. She likes to consider herself a fairly spontaneous person — her whole life, after all, has sort of been based around the inherent lack of any plan — but she’s older, now. Twenty-six and running a flower shop which she (ordinarily) can’t just close up on any given day. Except — this is Dani. Dani, whose lips are dusted with the very edge of a grin, whose eyes are so filled with that please, Jamie, which she’s been putting into practice for years now.
“Right. Okay, yeah.”
Dani lights up. Her entire stance changes, as if she truly thought that Jamie had it in her to decline, a barely suppressed burst of laughter as she darts for the door.
“Yeah?”
“Maine it is.”
One final flash of a grin before the bell’s jingling and Dani’s on her way out.
“Be here in an hour. I’ll pack a bag.”
As if Jamie would ever, ever, be anywhere else.
She’s packed within twenty minutes, three t-shirts and a few pairs of shorts making the cut alongside what Jamie understands to be the very basic camping necessities. There’s a hardware store just across the way — it’d be easy enough to jog across and nab a kerosene stove, a mosquito net, some foldable chairs — but she’s fairly certain that Dani will have it all covered.
Her suspicions are confirmed when, not half an hour later, Dani’s slipping back in through her door, a huge red backpack jostling against some of the arrangements.
“Quite the bag.”
Dani has the grace to look a little sheepish, if only for a moment.
“And you’ve got… a tote? Is that it?”
Jamie grins, flipping it around to reveal the Leafling print on the other side.
“Keeping up the advertising while I’m gone.”
“Right. Looks good on you.”
They’re in the car — Dani’s battered Jeep, which neither is sure will actually be able to get them to Maine — before Jamie can think to second-guess herself, driving past the Leafling’s closed sign onto Stowe’s main road. The tires rumble softly beneath them, slicing through the residual early-morning mist, and — it’s strange — nothing about this feels particularly spontaneous. Slightly impulsive, maybe, the thoughtlessness of it all, but right.
Jamie glances across at Dani, fingers tapping an inaudible tune onto the steering wheel — glances away again, before the pull can become too strong. That familiar a-bit-too-pretty tug that she’s been feeling since the moment they met, stumbling across each other in a coffee shop on her first day in Vermont.
This trip, she realises, could well have been a mistake. Too late now, to turn them around without arousing a desperately unwanted amount of suspicion.
“Pretty day,” Dani murmurs, eyes flitting up from the road to the sky for a moment. She’s right — it’s one of those days where it’s all only half-overcast, where the sun lights the very edges of the clouds on fire. Rainbow weather, Jamie remembers her dad used to call it. As has always been tradition, Dani rolls down the windows as they pass the bay which Jamie knows so well — the same soaked-freshwater smell drifts into the car, and Jamie can’t find it in herself to restrain the childish urge to stick her head out of the open window. She’s thrusting an arm into the air with it, waving hello at all of the shore-front houses, trailing fingers through the damp atmosphere all the way until they’re long past the lake and Dani is dragging her with a gentle grip back into the car.
“Gonna get yourself killed one day,” she laughs, taking her eyes off the road for a moment to glance across at Jamie. There’s a softness in her gaze which lasts for the split-second until she looks back — one which catches Jamie almost by surprise, the tenderness it holds.
“Didn’t stop you from flipping the coming-of-age music on,” she smirks back, nodding her head gently now to whichever Keane song it is echoing from the car’s ancient speakers. They settle, like that, for a few more minutes of the journey, and Jamie doesn’t quite manage to pull her thoughts away from how incredibly domestic it all feels. As if it wouldn’t be out of place for her to just reach across the car, lay a hand on Dani’s thigh to ground them both.
The music is enough for this quietude to be comfortable. Still, though, something catches in Jamie’s chest when she looks again across at Dani — Dani, who’s staring right back. They blink, look away again. A trick of the light, and even as Jamie thinks it, she knows it’s an excuse. Even now, through this languid summery haze, through the way the sun’s heat has saturated the car’s interior, there’s no mistaking the flush which rises ever-so-slowly up Dani’s neck.
It’s quite the journey to the state border — not that Jamie notices (or minds) — Dani’s fingers tapping along to each new song on the steering wheel. The clouds are starting to dissipate, now, and though it takes slightly away from the gilded edge that everything seemed to be bathed in before, there’s a freshness to this light which Jamie adores just as much. There are things she could be doing — there’s a book in her tote bag, a sudoku from today’s paper which she hasn’t yet done, and a magazine which Dani keeps in the back seat just in case — but there’s no trace of any boredom, here. Nothing but staring out at the horizon (America, Jamie knows, is obviously different to England but it isn’t until she’s on trips like these that she realises quite how huge the differences are) and dropping the occasional secret look across at Dani.
She’s beautiful everywhere, is the thing. Beautiful everywhere but especially here, in her element, lips pursed, eyes trained. Jamie swallows. Not those thoughts. Not now.
Instead, she casts her gaze back out to the treeline, the faded mountains beyond, listing in her head how America is what England never really was. Everything just seems more saturated, here, colours twisted up to a higher intensity than they were back home. They’re nearing autumn — the woods are all set aflame, orange leaves burning against the bright blue of the sky, against the sweetened green of the grass below.
“You’re thinking.”
Dani’s voice slices through the mist, tugging Jamie right from what was supposed to be a distraction from exactly this.
“You say that as if having a single coherent thought is a rarity for me.”
It is, Jamie doesn’t add. Around you, anyway.
“Not like that. You just have this look, when your mind’s working.”
So much for a poker face.
“S’just pretty, is all.”
Dani looks almost like she’s been told a secret — she’s grown up here, Jamie is reminded once again. She’s used to these views.
“You’re pretty,” Dani grins, and Jamie can’t help but sit a little straighter. Just a compliment. Oh, how she’s coming to hate this warmth which blossoms in her chest. The moment is interrupted before Jamie can figure out a way to interrupt it herself, the car suddenly slowing to barely a crawl.
It’s — ah. This view, maybe, Dani isn’t quite so used to. This great river which stretches beneath them, still but not stagnant, a sheet of glass which mirrors precisely the sky above. There’s barely a ripple in the water — in colder temperatures, Jamie might genuinely think that the river had frozen over — and every fragment of each tree is reflected in the flow, this unbroken portal to an entirely different realm.
They stay at this pace, for a while, single-digit miles per hour over the tarmac. The trance lasts until Jamie lets out a soft guffaw, nodding over at the Welcome / Bienvenue sign that brings them into New Hampshire. It’s the ridiculously American slogan that does it — ‘live free or die’, all in capitals.
“Reads like a warning,” she grins. “Very American. ‘Welcome to our county! Here’s a thinly disguised death threat.’ Least Vermont’s sign is just a nice little description of the Green Mountain State.”
Dani can only laugh, swat her across the seat — “states, here. No counties.” The correction is something Jamie’s used to (she almost mixes the words up deliberately, now, just to hear that proud little burst in Dani’s voice) and she smiles, resting her head back against the seat.
“Right, well. Live free or die, after all.”
They’re laughing again as they pass through a town called Bethlehem, of all things — “for Jesus’ place of birth,” Jamie murmurs, jokingly, “you’d think it’d be a little fancier,” — and its main road is little more than some peeling barns, bricked offices, and a grocery store which looks more like it could be somebody’s house. There’s a pub-looking building a little further down the road, with Edison bulbs strung out around the front as though to distract from the (Jamie counts) eleven American flags decked up around the place. Even the parasols over the tables are red and white striped, star-spangled blue in their centre.
“Patriots, the lot of you,” she smirks. “it’s fantastic.”
Dani laughs, throws an affectionate glance across at Jamie.
The rest of the state passes in a heat-soaked blur.
Maine has rather less of a grand state-crossing than New Hampshire did — it’s a little blue sign on the very edge of the road, one that Jamie would probably have missed if she hadn’t been looking out for it — but the thrill of being here at all, in sort of the right place, has her grinning.
We’re almost there, she wants to say, if not for fear of sounding all too excited. The blue Maine sign is followed by a variety of reminders on quite how tough the state’s drink-driving rules are, and then another Maine sign (what, Jamie thinks, is the point of having two) though this one has another state-slogan under it — The Way Life Should Be. She looks across at Dani, at the concentrated little frown that she always has whenever she’s driving, at the faint outline of the mountains in the rear-view mirror. This, she can agree with. The way life should be.
“Dani,” she says, without really knowing why — there’s nothing to follow, just that Jamie quite likes the way the name feels as it falls from her tongue
“Jamie,” is the only reply that comes. No question to follow, just a perfectly matched answer to the statement which Jamie isn’t even sure that she’s made.
Nobody, Jamie almost (god, almost) murmurs. There is nobody else in the world who understands me like this.
There’s a silence — a soft one — until they reach Manchester. Manchester. Jamie has to do a double take.
“…Manchester?”
Dani nods, apparently unaware that any other Manchesters might exist in the world.
“Been here before?”
“I mean.” Jamie pauses, deliberating. “I’ve been to a Manchester.” She peers out of the window, at the stretching expanses of grass, the huge parking lots and the single petrol station sat in the middle of a field. “Fairly sure it wasn’t this one.”
They cross another river, then, and the water is fast-moving beneath them, grapefruit-coloured sunlight dripping from the rapids. Here, Jamie’s eyes can’t help but start to droop just slightly, the lull of the rolling tyres enough to very nearly nod her off. Dani smiles, softly.
"You can sleep, if you want.”
Jamie blinks. She hadn’t even realised Dani was watching her.
“I— you sure? Be slightly shit company, passed out.”
Dani shakes her head. “I’ll wake you if I need you. Promise.”
It’s all Jamie needs to go the full mile, rest her head against the side of the car and let the steady passing of road signs drift her into what she assumes will be a quick snooze.
When she wakes, though, the car’s clock reads an hour later, and the sun is significantly lower in the sky. Through almost-closed eyelids, she watches Dani for a minute, grateful to be allowed these brief few seconds in which, feigning sleep, she can keep looking for however long she wants to. The realisation half-dawns, though, after a few moments of this, that Dani — Dani, who thinks Jamie is still asleep — keeps looking back. Keeps drawing her gaze right across at Jamie, and there is something in her expression that Jamie recognises.
Want, her mind whispers, carefully. Hope, even, backlit and soft enough to cast no shadow, this ridiculously raw thing which flits across Dani’s features so delicately that even Jamie knows there’s no mistaking this.
There’s a theory, here. One which she puts to the test as soon as she can will herself to, shifting just once, slightly, as though caught in some sort of dream. The movement alone is enough to send Dani skittering, her hands tightening their grip on the steering wheel as she tears her eyes nervously away.
Oh.
Guilt. Guilt, in the way she’s staring resolutely ahead, now, a slight blush creeping up past her nose. Something twists, bold and deep within Jamie’s chest.
You were looking at me the way I look at you.
It’s all too much. She turns, over-exaggerates a stretch into waking as though she hasn’t been conscious all this time. Dani’s face is calm as ever, passive as she glances over at Jamie.
“Hey, you.”
She smiles, nonchalant, and Jamie wonders how she does it. How long, maybe, that she’s been doing this for. “Sleep well?”
A nod, on Jamie’s behalf, as she takes in their surroundings.
“We almost there?”
Dani leans over to check the map, strands of her hair falling in front of her face as she does. In her haze, Jamie leans forward, brushes them all-too-gently back behind Dani’s ears. Dani, who almost jolts away, clearing her throat too loudly.
“Five minutes away,” she says on an exhale. There’s this thread between them, now, spun gold which tightens slightly with every one of these interactions. The hair falls in front of her eyes again. Dani looks at Jamie, blinks once, and tucks it back herself.
They’re pulling into a gravel parking lot before she has much more time to consider this — the weight of what this could be, the promise it might hold, the you’re pretty of it all — and Dani grins at her, energy restored as she switches off the ignition.
“Ready?”
The sun seems to be dipping ever-closer to the horizon with each passing minute, and Jamie can’t seem to do anything but nod. What she can do: make a decision. One which is, here and now — she won’t let her feelings ruin this trip. Won’t act on them, won’t entertain a single one of those thoughts which keep coming; will just, at least, let them have this.
(This is made no easier by the fact that Dani, in this light, is stunning. The sunlight catches the very edges of her irises, casting through her hair, setting her lips in this soft, pink, glow. She’s radiant, always has been — and Jamie aches.)
Here they are, though, stood side-by-side next to the Jeep, tote bag to massive rucksack, staring out at the view which awaits them. The tangerine glow of the sun is almost too much to look at — it’s the Atlantic Ocean, Jamie realises, that she can see in the distance. It comes close to being enough to overwhelm her, and when she looks across at Dani, she can see these feelings exactly reflected. Her gaze is up at the hills, though, the way they’re almost utterly black in silhouette but for the summits which shine gold at the top. When she looks back at Jamie, there’s something in her expression, awed enough to burn.
Jamie looks away.
“Where to?” It comes instead of something far more reckless like I’m so glad you’re here with me or thank god you’re here at all, and Dani cranes her neck as if to try and gauge what can be accomplished while there is still enough daylight.
“There’s— the coastline, apparently, is the easiest. I’d want to hike up one of those hills, but. You know.”
Jamie doesn’t know. Nor does she fancy what might be the easiest — with the way Dani’s simpering at that distance marker at the edge of the carpark, there only really seems to be one option.
“Reckon we can do the hike in time,” she says, and when she risks a look over at Dani she’s met with this absolutely euphoric set to her features.
“Really? You’d want to?”
Jamie nods, sincere.
“Long as you’re there to lead me,” she tries. Doesn’t quite have it in her to add: I would follow you anywhere. “Me and my shit sense of direction should be just fine.”
The hike starts off easy. Starts off wonderful, with Dani and her rucksack clanking on ahead as she throws back the occasional plant fact — that’s a saxifrage, she says, pointing to a pinkish clump of small flowers, its name comes from the Latin ‘saxum’, which means rock, and ‘frangere’, which means break, because they’re so easily cultivated that they can actually split stone in their growth — and Jamie (gardener, always, at heart) is entranced. The paths are flat enough, her bag is light enough, and they are high enough up that she can see the entire ocean as it stretches into the distance.
To think, just this morning — come to Maine with me. Jamie never would’ve forgiven herself, if she’d known she was missing out on this.
They march on, though, the sun fracturing through distant pines, and the closer they get to Mount Champlain, the steeper things seem to become. Dani seems unfazed, clambering up any particularly tall rocks with ease that Jamie can’t quite comprehend. It’s beautiful, still, even as the paths get thinner, even as they’re gripping onto iron handles in the rock to keep themselves close to the mountain. It’s almost a vertical climb, now, and the trail seems to have disappeared entirely — one missed step, and you’d be sloping the hundred-metre gap between here and the ground — Jamie understands, now, why this was called the Precipice Trail.
She grips at the metal rungs, tracing up behind Dani, still slightly in awe at how the woman in front of her doesn’t seem to at all affected by the height, the strain. They keep going: Jamie’s fear of heights isn’t exactly helping, but the urge to glance down again at quite how far up they are is quelled just slightly by the way she can’t quite seem to stop watching the way the tendons in Dani’s hands flutter with every new rung.
She’s mesmerising, which comes as no surprise.
Very occasionally, Jamie’ll risk a glimpse back out at the view (the horizon, and not the ground, never the ground) and it sort of just seems to get better every time. The trees are a brighter orange here than they were in the other states, and the ocean holds the sun in gentle reflection as it dips ever-further through the marigold sky. It’s beautiful, though she can’t hold it in her gaze too long (because, oh, they’re so high up, and she’s trembling as she climbs) — the majority of the trek is spent with her head turned staunchly towards the mountain face.
It astounds her, really — that up here, still, there are plants, flowers climbing vertically up the rock, clinging onto withered vines and long-dead hemlock. Astounds her even more that Dani has facts for all of these florae, too: that this species has been around since the Cretaceous period, that that tree’s bark was used as a numbing agent before artificial anaesthetics.
She almost stops Dani, when they reach a small concavity in the mountain about three-quarters of the way up. Almost pushes her into the shadowed stone, away from where the dusk can reach them, almost murmurs oh, god and kisses Dani until she’s finally breathless.
Almost. It’s an awful word.
Instead, she takes the flask of water which Dani passes across, drinks with her lips pressed deliberately to the waxy smear of Dani’s chapstick against its rim. Something of a kiss, and Jamie almost laughs at her own desperation. She screws the cap back on, gives the bottle back, and does not look up at Dani again until the end of the climb.
Before Jamie can really clock it, they’ve reached the summit. A two hour hike which feels more as though it’s been about twenty minutes — even so, her chest is heaving, her shirt is sweat-stuck to her back, and the tote bag is chafing slightly against her shoulders.
Looking at Dani, though, Jamie cannot bring herself to care.
Dani, who has tossed her own backpack down beside her, arms spread wide to the wind which finally blusters up from the other side of the mountain. It casts her hair back, and she’s silhouetted in the dying sunlight, and her shirt is tugged up her torso in the breeze — oh, Jamie doesn’t think she’s ever been quite so in love as this.
She makes her cautious way over to Dani, silent except for the thump of her bag against the rock, joining her at the cliff’s edge to look out over the view — and properly, this time. Fully and entirely, because Dani will not let her fall. To the left, the ocean, thin strips of white fading to salted blue as the waves roll into the shore. It’s boundless, is the thing, stretching until it blurs to mist, melting into the sky’s dying light — England lies across the way, and for the first time Jamie can entertain the thought of her old country without that familiar pang of grief.
All there is, is this.
To her right, the forest, and Jamie can say with absolute certainty that she has never seen something so beautiful. The trees are all so alive, colours saccharine and dripping from the branches, pooling in the clearings between. Greens and reds and golds and the sun is on all of it, taking every shade and hurling it with utter recklessness into the flame. It stretches, and stretches, and stretches, and Jamie cannot help but feel slightly like a god. As if she could cast her hand out into all of this, palm a soft bed into the ground where forest meets shore — as if all of this is hers.
Hers, she realises, and Dani’s. Dani, who has always been a goddess — this, Jamie is certain of — who truly does look as if this is simply her kingdom, her return to the throne after all of these years. The ground seems to ache for her, blades of grass curling up around her boots — welcome, it all says. Welcome home.
When Jamie glances across at Dani, there are three things which she notices, each after the other like little pinpricks to the plane right in the centre of her torso.
One: that Dani is looking at her.
Two: that Dani is looking at her, like that, again.
Three: that there are tears in her eyes.
In her eyes and streaming down her face, heavy enough that they don’t slide down the column of her throat but drip instead from the edge of her chin — and Jamie knows that nothing, necessarily, is wrong. She gets it. Understands the overwhelm. Doesn’t say a thing as she takes a step towards Dani, remains silent as she wipes a gentle thumb at the spot where the tears have pooled. Takes the same thumb, strokes it in an arc up Dani’s cheek — this is it, she thinks. This is all I’ve ever known to want.
There’s a sort of unspoken agreement between them, as they both press in simultaneously, with an eagerness that speaks only vaguely of the tangible softness which had soaked the air before. Jamie’s wrapping her arms around Dani, and her actions are mirrored second for second — she feels the weight of Dani’s forehead pushing into her shoulder, feels the exact place on her back where Dani's hands come to rest. They’re moving as one, now — their measurements are so similar that Jamie honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they did just meld into one entity — swaying in perfect little increments across the top of the rock.
It feels almost like a slow dance (feels like a lot of things, Jamie knows, and she’s struggling to slap the same old ‘platonic’ label onto any of this) as they drift, slowing to a stop right in the centre of it all — and even then, neither makes the move to pull away. It’s starting to look as though neither ever will, locked here in an embrace which really just doesn’t seem worth breaking apart from — but it’s Dani who shifts first, sniffling slightly as she does.
“Let’s stay here forever,” she murmurs, her lips still a hair’s breadth away from Jamie’s collar. Jamie, who can feel the breath as it leaves Dani’s mouth, spreads softly against her skin.
“Wouldn’t mind,” she replies — but it’s too close, all of this, too close for her to keep her promise of I am not going to let my feelings get in the way of this trip — and it’s dangerous. If Dani were to just tilt her head upwards, now—
Jamie can’t afford to think about it.
So it’s her, really, who backs away, taking a deeper breath than she needs to, leaning down to pick her bag up off the ground. Something slips in Dani’s countenance (and Jamie hopes to God that it isn’t disappointment, because she just doesn’t know what she’d do with that) and she looks away, casts her eyes once again out to the sea.
“Wanna watch the sunset?”
They’ve been near wordless until now, and Jamie’s question seems stilted, obvious. Dani only nods, still peering at her with that curious expression, reaching down to rifle through her own rucksack for (because of course she has a bastard picnic blanket with her) a picnic blanket.
She settles it down in a safe little dip, pats the edges out until they’re near pristine, motions for Jamie to come sit — something about the intimacy of this feels dangerous. About the way Dani’s looking up at her, that expectancy, the way her eyes seem to be asking the questions that her voice will not.
“Alright,” Jamie says, under her breath enough that Dani can’t hear her — and then again, louder: “alright.”
The rock beneath them slopes up just a little, enough to be a good back rest for Jamie as she sits, a deliberate spot on the blanket which isn’t too close, isn’t too far away. There is one small mercy, to this: that they do not touch. Jamie doesn’t think she’d have it in her to make it through, otherwise.
That familiar glare — the one which, Jamie knows now, comes with Dani’s gaze — settles warmly on the side of her cheek. It heats, and heats, until the burn is so tight that Jamie has no option but to give up, to look back.
Dani doesn’t look away. Face half-silhouetted by the sunset — one eye is blue, one almost brown in this light — she just stays, stares unabashed with a depth to her gaze that Jamie is careful not to hold in her hands for too long. It’s not something she can afford to expect. Not now. Not like this.
“Sunset turns your hair electric,” Dani says, a dazed half-grin on her face as she draws tentative hands up through Jamie’s hair. It’s tangled, tousled, as curly as ever — and still, her fingers find a path through, so tender that Jamie can’t quite stop herself from leaning into the touch. From closing her eyes. From drifting forwards, just slightly, just barely, tangibly aware of the feeling of Dani inching closer, too.
“Dani,” she says, though it comes out a whimper. Comes out: I’m scared.
The admission is enough to send them both skidding backwards, Jamie’s elbow thunking against stone as she darts away.
“We—”
“Sunset.”
A collision. Minor, a bare scrape on the edge of a new paint job, but still there.
“Right.”
For all of the world’s gracelessness, it has at least given them this: that the coming of night is genuinely a pretty enough distraction, that the silence which settles isn’t quite so empty as to be awkward.
They watch, the both of them, eyes on everywhere but the other as the sun finally hits the line of the sea. Its reflection is breathtaking, shimmering across the water’s entire surface, reminding Jamie just a little of all of the rivers they’d crossed to get here. The faint watercolour clouds seem to catch its light, bathe the land in it, cast this aureate glow across all that there is to see.
Starts orange, gleams red, fades, slowly, softly, to a purple which settles like mist into the treeline. Jamie doesn’t know how to pinpoint the exact moment when the sun’s light dies at last — only that at some point, within the hour, it has finally been flooded through.
There’s no strain in this, the being here with Dani. Not really any sense of purpose at all as they sit there, long past the fall of night — not until Jamie shivers, once, the onset of cold finally making itself known. Dani (because of course she is) is quick to notice, to nod in unspoken agreement that while the day has been good, it’s been extinguished, too.
“Wanna get back to the car?”
Her question is less than ambiguous, asking and expecting a rather obvious yes. Something, though, deep and tired and entirely hopeless — it kicks at the inside of Jamie’s ribs. Something which she can only really give in to, the jarring twinge of it. It’s late. Dark. The trek back down to the Jeep would be dangerous at best. Can she really, truly be blamed for what comes?
“We could— chance it. Out here, I mean. Maybe one of the flatter bits further down the mountain.”
She’s stumbling over her words as they come, dodging very very carefully around any select words which sound like ‘sleeping’ or ‘together’ or (and this one, the killer, the most awful of them all) ‘us’.
The moonlight catches in Dani’s eyes as she blinks, the very edges of a smile ghosting at her lips.
“We could,” she says, slowly. “There was a grassy bank a few minutes down. Reckon my tent would fit there.”
“Yeah,” is all that Jamie can say, really. Her mouth is dry, her throat only drier. She swallows, and it rasps a little. For the third time, now, between both of them: “we could.”
Other than a few tight scrambles, the clamber back down to the knoll isn’t too difficult. Jamie’s not quite sure how she didn’t see this before: it’s secluded, almost a cave, cut off from the rest of the mountain by this rocky ledge which reminds her a little bit of a front gate. The wind is softer, here — barely there at all, now that they’ve Mount Champlain to shield them — and without it, the temperature is noticeably warmer than before.
“Reckon we’ll even need the tent?”
It starts as a joke — except. It’s been a long day. A long drive. A long hike. Jamie, frankly — and Dani, too, judging by the resigned look in her eyes — cannot be bothered to fiddle with tent poles and grounding sheets and metal pegs. Instead, as though in agreement, Dani just rustles out her sleeping bag, presses hands along the area of its whereabouts to check for any rocks which might stick up and jab her during the night.
Jamie’s stomach drops.
She— fuck. She didn’t bring a fucking sleeping bag.
This much should have been made clear by the stupid little tote she’s been carrying for the whole day, too small to even fit a sleeping bag into at the best of times. Dani, who knows Jamie’s shit at packing, who on an ordinary day would absolutely have run through a checklist of necessities — she surely would have noticed.
“Dani,” she says, now, cogs beginning to whir — softly — in the back of her head. Dani looks up. “I don’t, um. Forgot to pack a sleeping bag, is the only thing.”
The cogs whir faster as Dani tilts her head, opens her mouth just slightly — a rather poor show of acting shocked.
“Oh,” is all she says, scooting a little further to one side—
(and something is beginning to click, here, mechanisms sliding into place as Jamie thinks about all of these little coincidences, and maybe Dani knew this would happen, maybe she prepared for this, even)
—“this one’s a double, if you… want to share. A double sleeping bag, like. Fits two.”—
(and maybe she wanted this, Jamie dares to think, wanted Jamie to forget her own head and a sleeping bag with it, wanted to come to this conclusion of ‘oh, how terribly inconvenient, looks like we’ll have to sleep together’)
—and the worst part is that it does look inviting, does look like a better way of spending the night than wrapped up in a picnic blanket, and Dani’s eyes are almost pleading—
(but the rules, the rules Jamie set for herself, the ones which say Do Not Fall In Love in bright red letters, which she promised to follow for just this trip)
—and Jamie thinks: fuck the rules.
Fuck the rules.
“Okay,” she says now, half-whispers, watches as Dani’s expression lights up. She shakes as she approaches, this skin-too-tight emotion which she doesn’t remember feeling since before Dani, even. That her life, now, has been split into two segments — before Dani and the subsequent after — it says a lot. Says, probably, more than it is supposed to.
Here she is, though — here she’ll never be again — setting herself down above the sleeping bag and opting for a final are you sure? before she slips in. Dani’s nod is firm, final — there’s no getting out of this.
Jamie doesn’t mind.
She’s in, though, in and slipping further down, letting the warmth envelop her in a way that is — admittedly — not the worst thing in the world. It’s big enough for the both of them, is the thing, to be lying separate if they wanted to, and yet—
(and still)
—Jamie think she’ll have to turn to worship as Dani presses into her without cease, an achingly mortal glimpse of all that is divine as they curve into each other. It’s ridiculous, how well they just fit, how easily Dani’s hands come up to cradle Jamie’s shoulder blades, how familiar it is for Jamie’s arms to snake up around Dani’s back.
They lie there — lie here — intertwined as stone and sea, fitting even their legs together to the point where Jamie does not know where she ends, where Dani begins. Every movement is so terribly felt, though, each shift in tired muscle bursting through the both of them. There seems to be an acceptance, now. That this is happening, that there is absolutely no use in turning back.
Jamie could stay here forever, could rest even still under the apoplectic rage of a tempest, drenched through skin and bone as she clutches onto Dani. Wouldn’t mind, is the thing. At all.
“See that one?” It takes a moment for Jamie to realises that Dani’s talking about the stars. She reaches up, threads a delicate finger into the sky, points right at Polaris with immovable certainty. “The really bright one right above us, at the edge of the little dipper.”
Jamie reaches up with her, drifts her nails up the length of Dani’s wrist as she goes, pausing finally at her palm to wrap her fingers around Dani’s until they’re both entirely interlaced again.
“What about it,” she asks, tracing her thumb back and forth across the reachable stretches of skin.
“It’s you,” Dani murmurs, as simply as if she’d been announcing tomorrow’s weather. “I don’t care about all of the other stories. You’re all there ever was.”
Jamie’s breath catches, right in the back of her throat. Kiss me, this seems to translate to, roughly. Or, even (is this a grasp?) — have me, instead.
I’m so in love with you, Jamie whispers, though it comes out: “I’ve always loved the stars.”
God, I would follow you to the ends of the earth, Dani replies, though it comes out: “me, too.”
It’s soft, this space around them. This sacred place which they’ve discovered, together.
Minutes pass, and there is a silence which settles, a lack of movement entirely but for the drawing of hands back down from the sky. They don’t let go of each other. Refuse to, now.
“Think it’ll rain?”
Dani’s voice slices through the air between them — and oh, god, because Jamie can feel the movement of her lips brushing against the hollow of her throat. Jamie blinks, swallows, peers over at the clouds leaking over the furthest mountains.
“Might do.”
“You like the rain.”
She does — she remembers telling Dani, in fact, a passing comment which must have been months ago. They’d been wrapped up inside the Leafling, blankets and towels working double time to dry Jamie’s hair out before she could catch a chill.
“Teaches us a bit about falling, doesn’t it? Writes it into the clouds. Onto your clothes.”
If she turned her head, now, even just a fraction — she knows Dani would be looking up at her. Knows, also, that to turn her head would be an inescapably terrible idea, if only for how close it would leave her lips to Dani’s own.
There’s an awful pull to this, to the way their bodies are separated by nothing but the empyrean leap between what is and what could be, the half-lit moon casting shards of empty static through Dani’s hair.
“Like to think I know quite a bit about falling.”
Jamie’s not too sure what to do with that. The sky, at least, is a wide enough canvas that she can cast her gaze far away from Dani, stare instead at the stars which spill out across the ink. She could press, at that response, the string of syllables which could either mean far too much or absolutely nothing at all — but she can feel herself veering unsteadily away, head pressing back into the earth.
The more she looks at the words, though, (and oh, how they’ve burned themselves across the horizon) the louder they seem to get, liquid heat which spills out from the boundary that her hands can’t quite provide. This seething sort of overflow which scalds her wrists as it twists on down, drips past the crook of her elbow, floods right into the ground until—
“You do?”
And here, with the stars curving like celestial wounds between them, with the sky which falls and the moon which refuses to collapse alongside it all — here. Here, at the end of the world. Jamie can only press her eyes shut, leaving just the blur-blue imprint of the constellations behind her eyelids. She can still hear, though, can still feel Dani’s invisible silhouette as it shifts beside her.
“Jamie,” comes the soft, shattered whisper.
Jamie, and Dani’s breath casts out onto foreign lips, setting all that is left around them ablaze.
“Dani, you—” there’s something to be said, here, about the way Jamie can barely open her eyes. The way she can only so much as gasp when she does open them, because the look on Dani’s face is so terribly wanting that Jamie thinks breaking this reverie might tear them both apart.
“Christ, Jamie,” she murmurs, and it’s not quite enough — not quite I keep thinking I’m going to wake up, not quite I forgave the world for what it did to me, when it gave me you. It does, however, seem to relay a part of the intended effect: Dani’s still pushing into her, ghosting lips against the shoulder-seam of Jamie’s shirt, not-quite-touching, never-quite-kissing. And Jamie — here’s the desperate thing, the final thing — she whimpers, carding into Dani, almost tugging the other woman on top of her in that ridiculous need to be close and to stay ever-closer.
The noise sends Dani reeling, and for a moment her head drops, nose brushing against the line of Jamie’s jaw in a way which Jamie doesn’t think she’ll ever recover from.
“Tell me,” Dani whispers, her voice shattered, syllables crumbling at their edges. “Tell me you feel this too.”
“Dani,” is all that comes, all that can, splitting the ground apart beneath them, holding the sky entirely still.
“How long?”
Jamie doesn’t even need to work it out.
“Long as I’ve known you. Longer, still.”
With it — with longer, still, and all of its implications — comes we must have loved each other, in a life before this.
“You—” Dani doesn’t sound as though she quite believes it. “All this time?” She’s almost on the verge of tears, almost angry at these wasted hours, breaths shaking as she exhales.
“Dani,” Jamie says again, though the word is stronger, now. Fully formed, bursting from her ashen lips in a way which feels significant. And then, the unstoppable force which crashes into this entirely moveable vessel: “Dani, please.”
And that’s all it is, really. All it is, as finally, finally, Dani shifts forwards, this desperate gasp which sends her reeling into Jamie’s lips.
The image of it all is near-deific, holy in all of the ways that it shouldn’t be as Jamie lets the heat build into hopeless little whimpers set out against Dani’s mouth. Her hair falls in a curtain over them both as she shifts to a place above Jamie, shaking slightly with the newness of this as her thighs come to bracket Jamie’s hips.
There’s no trace of regret, here, no trace of holding back at all as years of desperation take mere seconds to build to this feeling, the one which slips heavily into Dani’s chest, pools ever-lower as she opens her mouth into Jamie’s, as the breaths they take fall into this utter synchrony which Dani didn’t think she’d ever find with anyone else.
Jamie can barely breathe at all, can hardly think, either, can just about move — and even then, only to cup Dani’s face in reverential hands.
She can, however, find it in herself to do one thing, and this, with absolute certainty: to kiss Dani back, with all that she is. To press Dani against her, tangible desire which spreads like a storm between them, sliding one hand down to grip hopelessly at Dani’s hips. Dani jolts, at this, at the mark of clutching fingers into the space just above her thigh, tightening her grip ever so slightly on Jamie’s hair.
The pull of it is thrilling — electric, even, as Dani pushes Jamie further down into the earth. They’ve wanted this for so long, is the thing. All of these years (god, years) of waiting, of needing, and the feeling has nowhere to go but here. Here, where it spills out across Dani’s lips as Jamie licks into her, breaking away only to press her open mouth to Dani’s pulse-point, gasping as Dani draws her roughly back up.
“Keep,” she says — firm, breathless, wild — “kissing me here.” And their mouths are sliding against each other again, and Jamie gets it, gets the desire for this exact action, this precise moment in time which she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to truly get away from. Her chest aches with the sheer rawness of it all, the fact that it has never, ever felt like this.
She can’t quite stop herself from slipping a thigh between Dani’s legs, regretting the suddenness only until Dani grinds relentlessly down, chasing the friction with a movement that rolls through her entire body. It’s stunning, the feeling that overcomes her, then, the realisation that this is what the poets talked about, this supernova-shattered feeling of oh, and oh, and holy shit.
It’s too much, simultaneously not enough as Dani grinds down again, aware that this is only the half of it, that it can only get better from here. Somehow. It’s almost unbelievable, that it gets better than this.
“Can— Dani, Dani wait.” The pause comes as Dani reaches down to the hem of her own shirt, aiming to tug it off, press herself completely and utterly into Jamie. She stops, now, though, this sudden terror that she’s been moving too fast, doing too much.
When Jamie looks up, she’s near-shocked at the sight that awaits her — Dani, silhouetted by the stars, lips swollen and parted, pupils swallowing up the ordinary blue of her eyes. This entire embodiment of lust, and it’s not an emotion Jamie ever imagined seeing written into Dani’s features — it’s so, terribly beautiful. She could cry. Still might.
“You… you’re sure? That you want this. Here. With— me.”
Dani almost laughs, is the ridiculous thing. Almost bursts out giggling at the thought that, in this state of hers, she could want anything but this, here, with Jamie. As if she’s ever wanted anything else.
“Jesus, yes,” is what comes, and it’s such an eager burst of consent that Jamie really can’t help herself from reaching up, completing Dani’s earlier task of drawing her shirt up and off, and—
“Thank fuck.”
Dani’s a vision, here, skin glowing in the moonlight as Jamie tugs her back into a kiss. She moans into it, threads her hands once again through Dani’s hair, cupping the back of her head and drawing her closer, closer, closer still.
Jamie presses her face into Dani’s neck, stationary for just a moment, taking this all in as best she can with Dani’s breaths coming hot and heavy against the top of her head.
“Can’t believe you’re real,” she murmurs now, trailing awed fingers up and down Dani’s torso. “Can’t believe I’m not imagining this all.”
“Not imagining,” is all that Dani can confirm, pulse jumping now as Jamie’s hand slides beneath the fabric of her bra. “Promise,” comes next, on the back of hapless moan pressed deep into Jamie’s shoulder. She arches into Jamie’s touch, whimpering down from it as Jamie passes a thumb over her nipple, kissing down her neck, leaving an accidental mark just below Dani’s collarbone as she goes.
(Fuck the rules, she remembers, nipping again at more exposed skin.)
This, she realises, is happening. Really and genuinely, and Dani’s fingers are playing at the hem of Jamie’s shirt, and she’s ripping it off with desperate abandon, and Jamie doesn’t think she’s ever wanted anything more than this, and this, and this.
Dani mutters something into the kiss — something which sounds like fuck, you’re so beautiful — head tipping backwards to allow more room for Jamie’s lips on her neck.
“Dani,” Jamie whispers again, and it sounds like it’s going to be another request for confirmation. Another are you sure, and oh, god, Dani’s never been so certain.
“Yes,” she breathes, without waiting for the rest of the question. “Please.”
It’s all Jamie needs, to flip them over until she’s on top, sleeping bag rustling as she kicks it away, pressing chaste kisses over and over again to Dani’s lips, her jaw, her neck, her throat. She’s back at Dani’s mouth, though, now, grazing her teeth across Dani’s bottom lip in a way that has her groaning again, fingertips pressing into Jamie’s nape as if to say more, as if to say don’t ever stop. Jamie traces across as much of Dani’s skin as she can, wanting to memorise this all in case she wakes up from this dream. Wanting to take it all in, hold it so close that forgetting simply doesn’t present itself as an option.
There’s something, though, a break in the movement, a sudden stillness in them both right as Jamie’s hand starts to slip down to the line of Dani’s jeans. Not hesitation, necessarily, just surprise. That they’re here. That this, finally, finally, is happening. Dani shifts, grasps at the wrist of Jamie’s moving hand, pushes it just slightly further down with such gentle certainty that Jamie doesn’t really know what to do with herself.
She remains, for just a moment, motionless, staring down at Dani — because nothing, she knows, is ever going to compare to this.
“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” she says, and Dani has a feeling that there won’t be much convincing her. An idea forms, led onwards mostly by the gathering softness between Dani’s thighs:
“Would you believe me,” she murmurs in response, hooking an arm round to the clasp of Jamie’s bra — “if I did this?” It comes undone in seconds (and, oh, Jamie comes undone with it) as Dani reaches around to her own, undoing hers, too, so that in terms of this, their upper bodies, what matters, here — there is nothing between them at all.
Jamie laughs, soft.
“Flirt.”
“Sap.”
And they’re kissing again — they were, at least, until Dani shifts further down, taking a nipple into her mouth and grazing its very edge until Jamie’s squirming above her, making eye contact right as Jamie drags in a gasp. It’s seraphic, this burning feeling of lips on skin, and Dani can’t seem to get enough, pressing in over and over and over until Jamie has to pull away for fear of getting too distracted.
Dani bucks up a little, hips following Jamie’s contact, her legs sliding ever so slightly apart as Jamie leans back down into the space between.
“Dani,” Jamie murmurs, breathes the name like a prayer.
“Jamie,” Dani replies, the single shared response enough to warm the stretches of her body which have been strung tight by the cool night air.
“You’re so…” Jamie loves in acts of service, is the thing. In fond touches beyond the day’s shadow, gentle caresses where nobody else is there to see. She’s never been a wordsmith, doesn’t have the vocabulary at hand to truly get across to Dani quite how radiant she is.
Instead, then, she presses in, watching Dani’s lips part as their breasts brush against each other. “God,” is all, god, come here, and Dani’s hips jolt upwards again, so desperate that Jamie has absolutely no hold on the hands which come down to fiddle with Dani’s belt buckle. It’s off, tugged from the denim loops with an eagerness with Jamie’s never seen in herself, shaking fingers coming to tug at the zip.
There is, she knows, no going back from here. Again, she looks up, waits the painstaking seconds between the eye contact and Dani’s firm nod of yes, please, please Jamie, stripping the jeans gently from her legs. She’s laid almost entirely bare, now, staring up at Jamie with those eyes, wide open, so focused on the here and the now that Jamie has to lean forward again, pressing her lips to Dani’s as she pulls off her own jeans.
Almost as before, she curls into Dani, warming them both with the contact, the comfort of it all. Almost as before, Dani responds to the touch, cradling the line of Jamie’s jaw in reverent hands. Almost as before, except — there is a heat, now. A building one, as Dani grinds once again up into Jamie’s thigh, accidental and yet repetitive still as she etches further into a rhythm, eyes shutting, mouth opening, and Jamie can only watch, entranced. Can only watch, that is, until Dani presses properly down, drags her wetness up the length of Jamie’s skin, and oh, god.
“Dani, you—” Jamie doesn’t have it in her to finish the sentence, words trailing off into a moan as Dani rises up again. Did I do this, Jamie wants to ask, cut off only by the fear of sounding obnoxious in her joy, until—
“Jamie,” Dani whispers, breath hot against Jamie’s ear. She knows what she’s doing. She has to. “It’s all— all for you.”
All for you. And that — that’s the thing that does it. Sends Jamie spiralling, makes her physically shake as she trails a hand down Dani’s sternum, follows the pathway with her lips, in turn. Dani’s hands are in her hair, tight, tighter still as Jamie trips lower, uses gentle hands to slide Dani’s legs apart.
“Fucking hell,” she murmurs — it, truly, is the only thing that she can think to say. Gently, ever-so-gently, she’s sliding Dani’s underwear down her legs, taking absolute care to go slowly, to make sure Dani’s on board the whole way. She falls forward — can’t hold herself up anymore, is too weakened by all of this to be able to rest her weight on two feeble arms — drawing a finger up between the apex of Dani’s thighs.
“Jamie—” a request, from Dani, shifting into the atmosphere that all of this seems to hold. “You — fuck — inside, please. Please, just—” she’s cut off by a groan as Jamie obliges, leaning ever further down, sliding two fingers into Dani without a single second thought.
She’s doing her best (her best) to take this all slow, a step at a time, not to rush anything past the point of comfort — but as the pad of her thumb brushes across Dani’s clit, as Dani cants so far up into her touch that Jamie has to use her free hand to anchor her hips — maybe she doesn’t want comfort.
The thing is — this is Dani, open and wanting beneath her fingers. Dani, who (Christ) is so wet, legs already trembling from Jamie barely having done much at all. She wants, and she wants, and there is nothing to stop her wanting, really. No barriers here, at least. Again, now, she pumps her fingers, curling just slightly, finding a rhythm which has Dani pressing little whimpers into Jamie’s shoulder with every thrust.
“Don’t stop,” she manages, pushing up into Jamie, wrapping an arm around her neck to keep her grounded, dragging nails down Jamie’s bare back to keep them both from just slipping away entirely. “Don’t— god, please don’t ever stop.”
Jamie’s body can only respond to the scores trailing the edge of her spine, inspiring this new energy that pushes past the ache in her wrist. She gasps into Dani’s lips, closing her eyes if only because this all just sort of overwhelms her. That Dani is here, and writhing beneath her, and here, (and here, Jamie’ll say it again because she really genuinely cannot believe it) it’s too much to look at, all at once.
“Only—” Dani’s speaking again, though her words are clipped, faster spoken as she tumbles towards the precipice. “I imagined this. With,” she curses into Jamie’s skin, here, right as Jamie crooks her fingers in that way she already knows that Dani likes, “with you.”
And oh, fuck. Jamie doesn’t quite understand the shock which takes her in startling grip — is it really such a surprise that Dani thinks about them, like this — but she collapses into it anyway, lets the news wash through her like storm into floodgates. The thought of that (of Dani, always) is enough to tear her apart almost entirely, and all she can do is duck her head to Dani’s pulse point, taste the machine-gun-fire heartbeat as it bites at the hollow of her skin.
“It— I,” she tries, going at this harder, faster still as Dani calls out her name, “did— I don’t—” fuck, god, Dani’s tightening around her, the edge is here and they’re both falling — “me, too,” is all she can bear to say, breaking away, looking down at the woman beneath her right as Dani gasps out, stiffens, arches up into Jamie with a silent, trembling cry. I’m right here, Jamie murmurs, I’ve got you, baby, and Dani hadn’t realised quite how much she needed that.
The confirmation: that she is seeing the entire world for the first time, and Jamie is seeing it with her.
She shakes, and she shakes, and she shakes, and there are stars — not the ones above her, but these huge pinwheeling things right in the centre of her vision — and this, Dani realises, fluttering gently down from the climax: this is what it’s all supposed to be.
Finally, she exhales, releasing a breath that she hadn’t even been aware of holding. Tears, though — they follow, and instantly, Jamie is back by her side.
“Hey,” she whispers, letting the tears fall, catching them just before they reach her hairline. “Was— are you alright? Was I too rough?” Dani blinks, looking across at her, and oh, god, because the concern knitted into Jamie’s eyebrows is enough to break her heart.
“No, god no, Jamie, just…” a sigh. “You’re so perfect. This— I didn’t ever think, you know.” Jamie seems to relax, at this — that Dani’s okay, still here, still her — and Dani curves into her with a soft sigh.
“Me neither,” is all that comes, whispered confessions from Jamie’s lips. “God, me neither, Dani.”
“We’re here, though, aren’t we?” Dani smiles. Jamie can only nod, her own eyes misting just slightly over. “Got here in the end.”
I love you, Jamie almost says, worries still that it’s slightly too soon, might sound slightly too much like just pillow talk and not something she means with her entire soul. Instead — speaking in actions, just as loudly — she draws the sleeping bag back up around them both, doesn’t bother with putting any clothes back on, just lets herself be lain entirely bare.
She slips an arm under Dani’s head, for her to rest on — a pillow, of sorts — and for a while, there is a silence. The silence, and the stars.
“Don’t want to sleep,” Jamie mumbles, sleepily. Dani grins, her own movements just slightly fatigued.
“S’okay,” she murmurs back. “I’ll stay here, with you.”
Jamie opens her eyes, just slightly.
“Promise?”
She knows it’s too late in the evening to be asking for a commitment like this. Knows that she’s probably overstepped a mark or two, holding Dani to words she might not be able to keep. Except — there’s a light, behind Dani’s eyes. It outshines the moon, and oh, Jamie realises, she’s fallen just as far as me.
“Always,” is what comes, and something about this is so perfect that Jamie worries she might genuinely be dreaming. Half-asleep already, she leans forward for a final time, kisses a single stray tear from Dani’s cheek.
“We found each other.” A final thing, from Jamie — sounds stupid, sounds almost obvious, but it’s right. Of all of the people, all of the planets, there is here, and there is this, and it is the only solid thing which Jamie has ever had to grasp.
“Yeah,” Dani grins, dazed with the warmth of it all. “Yeah, we did.”