Boxing Day; Pt 1
Dani can’t sleep. Her eyes are wide and mind is racing and all she can think about is the woman lying asleep above her. She wonders if she’s warm and if she’s layered and if she’s dreaming of her. She wonders a lot of things, and she can’t sleep.
It has to be somewhere around two in the morning, she had been laying idle for hours now. She lifts her hands and she studies the way the light from the moon hits it and how the shadows cast along the wall. And it distracts her for a moment, thinking of what it would be like, look like, feel like, for Jamie to thread her long narrow fingers between her own. Her curiosity peaks thinking of how they would mold and curl and anchor her down.
She presses her hand to the bed beside her and she thinks about having her wrists held in place above her head. She thinks about how the weight of it would feel above her, how much lighter it would be than Eddie, how freeing it would be to give up that control. She closes her eyes and lets the way her body buzzes and burns at the image take over her.
She thinks about Jamie’s fingers and how they curled into her hips as her body pressed in tight behind her on the four-wheeler. She thinks about what it would have felt like if Jamie had pulled her just a little harder, marked crescents into her skin with her nails. Dani thinks about the burn, the pain of it all. She thinks and she thinks and she crosses her ankles and she feels the pressure build.
She thinks about Jamie and how hot her breath was on her neck when she leaned forward to give her directions, or instructions, or a quick jibe and Dani rolls over onto her stomach and tries to regulate her breathing.
She’s cold in this bed but she’s hot beneath the sheets.
Dani lets her mind spin with thoughts of before. Jamie had been so close, just at the edge of her reach, and Dani let her walk away. She wishes now that she had reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulled her back and in and through. She wishes she had just leaned forward and let her lips brush against the plump pink ones in front of her.
Dani had never kissed a woman; didn’t need to in order to know she wanted to. But never one as much as this woman. She had never so badly wanted to rip and claw and gorge herself into somebody the way she wanted to now, right here, at this moment, with Jamie. She had never craved somebody like this.
She recognizes it now, Jamie had awakened something in her that had lied dormant for so long. It brewed just under her belly button and it stirred inside her chest and it settled between her legs. She couldn’t lay still, couldn’t not think about the way she longed to be touched and have that touch set her on fire.
So she didn’t. She didn’t lay still. She got up, she walked. She lept.
Dani holds her hand over the door handle, lets it hover. Her courage had dwindled on the steps and she was close to turning around. She could, she knew. She could just turn around, go back to the bed she left and she could pretend that she never tried this at the start. Jamie would never know.
Her hand shakes and her body trembles and she chastises herself. Her breath coming in short pants and the way she could still feel everything, a culmination of her thoughts as they settled deep inside her, was stifling.
Her hands brace gently on the solid oak door and she regulates her breathing. She feels stupid for this - for thinking that this bold intention would ever be received well. She lays her head on the door and let the way the cold wood feels on her forehead wash over her. She closes her eyes in the darkness and she feels herself coming down from the high of it all. She feels her,
Falling forward.
The door swings open with a start and a startled “Jesus, Dani. What the fucking Christ are you doing?”
But Dani’s body is propelling forward and she doesn’t understand how it didn’t hit the ground. Doesn’t understand until she feels Jamie’s arms around her waist, holding her up.
“I’m-- I’m so sorry. I just-- It was cold and I couldn’t--” Dani rights herself back on her own feet, backing up from the woman in front of her just a half a step. Not enough to be out of her arms, not entirely, but enough that the air was breathing was hers alone. “I’m sorry to wake you.”
She takes in Jamie, standing shyly in only a thin pair of boxers and a white tank and Dani’s mouth waters.
“What are you doing up here?” Jamie’s lips play with a hint of a smile and a look that Dani refuses to mix up with hope.
“I--” but suddenly Dani couldn’t find her strength. She had come up here for sex, that’s why she had come up here. But now, suddenly, that sounded absurd. It sounded utterly mad, even to herself. So she settles on, “I got cold. I couldn’t sleep.”
Except it was the exact opposite. She hadn’t been cold, she had been hot. She had been burning up and,
“Well,” Jamie looks behind her, over her shoulder, as if weighing the options. Dani can tell that Jamie is deciding if she wants to offer this, offer what Dani is so hoping she does, and her face contorts up and down and all around while looking for the answer. Until, “come on, then. You can sleep in here tonight.”
It’s dangerous, Dani thinks as she follows Jamie back to the bed. It’s loaded, Dani thinks as she curls back the blanket and slides under. It’s terrifying, Dani thinks as she feels the weight of Jamie get in on the other side.
She feels the heat of the other woman’s body as she pulls the blankets up tight around her chin. Jamie is beautiful in the moonlight, her features sharper with the shadows and Dani has to tuck her hands under her body to keep them from reaching out and just taking what she wants.
But then, Jamie turns to her and catches her eye and just for a brief crackling moment, Dani thinks maybe Jamie wants it too.
She holds her there, rooted in her gaze. She feels it, the spark, as it travels from her fingers to her toes and she can’t stop her foot from sliding over the cool cotton bedspread and grazing the bare leg she finds. Jamie’s breath hitches and Dani feels bolder. She feels bold enough for her hand to splay across the sheet and wait, just wait so patiently, to see if Jamie takes the chance.
It feels like hours, a lifetime, waiting. But when Jamie lifts herself, just slightly, to lean up on her elbow, Dani thinks the waiting was worth it.
“Better?” Jamie’s voice is low, so low that Dani almost doesn’t hear it and she doesn’t trust her own so she only nods in response.
She’s lost in the dark waters of Jamie’s eyes. She’s counting the seconds, wondering how long she can hold her breath, afraid of breaking the spell. Breaking Jamie’s motion as she inches closer in the darkness.
She closes her eyes and focuses on the way she can feel Jamie’s hot breath on her face. She can taste the mint from her toothpaste and she wants, she wants. In a way that she has never wanted anything before.
“Thanks for sharing your warm bed,” is what she says and what she means but she also means I want you. She also means take me. She also means make me yours.
And she thinks Jamie hears those thoughts too because her breaths are getting labored and her free hand finds Dani’s hip the blankets and her touch is so gentle but also so loaded as it delicately traces along the bone between her shorts and her shirt and Dani thinks if she were to look down she would see sparks.
“Anytime.”
The air is combustible. It’s heavy with implication and Dani can practically hear the way the anticipation crackles and Jamie is practically leaning over her now, her hair cascading around her delicate features and Dani feels it all. Feels the way the ends of her curly brown hair tickle at her chest and she reaches up and takes the locks between her fingers and pulls lightly.
There’s time to go back, Dani thinks. They haven’t crossed any lines, there’s been no action, and she could go back. She could run back to Iowa, to Eddie, to her life. She could but at the same time she couldn’t because just three days with this woman have showed her what she could have if she just leaned up and,
She pulls at the ends of Jamie’s hair harder and suddenly,
Jamie’s lips are warm as she slots her bottom one between Dani’s. It’s hesitant at first, just pressure, as if Jamie isn’t sure she made the right move and Dani is terrified to move. She’s terrified because her chest is about to explode and her skin is on fire and she can’t help but thinks that if she starts moving now, she’ll never stop.
And Dani can feel the way Jamie tightens and starts to pull away in fear so the only thing she can think to do is pull at the hair between her fingers again. She pulls and she wonders if maybe she pulls too hard but then she can feel the way Jamie smiles into her mouth and opens her lips and really, truly, kisses her.
Her tongue is warm and her breath is hot and Dani’s head is spinning so fast that she grabs at Jamie’s shirt to ground herself. She isn’t sure who makes the sound, but somebody, one of them or both of them, moans so slightly that it's barely audible over the rustle of the sheets as Jamie lifts herself up and over Dani completely.
Dani pulls at the shirt, needing Jamie closer, needing her body pressed in against her like she needs air. And Jamie laughs, open- mouthed and cocky, into Dani’s throat and Dani doesn’t think she’s ever wanted anybody more. She wants to crawl under her skin and be taken over in a way that’s animalistic and raw and she can’t understand why nobody told her it could be like this.
And when Jamie lifts her hand from Dani’s hip and puts it on the other side of Dani’s head as she smoothly lowers her body down on top of her, she thinks she doesn’t want it to be any other way. Not ever.
Her lips stings as Jamie bites down on it, it calms when she smooths it over with the tip of her tongue. There’s urgency in the kiss, like neither of them can dig in deep enough, fast enough, hard enough.
She’s ready, she thinks. She’s ready to give herself completely over to this feeling as she wraps her ankles around Jamie’s calves and locks herself in. It feels like a lot at once and it feels so fast but Jamie’s tongue keeps coaxing out breathy moans from her throat and she can’t think of stopping.
She can’t. But Jamie does.
“Wait.” Is what Dani hears as she lets her hand trail softly up Jamie’s bare stomach under her shirt. “Wait, wait.” And Dani is thinking no, I’ve waited long enough. “We should-- we should stop.”
And stopping is absolutely the last thing Dani wants to do right now and her fingers curl and dig into the skin of Jamie’s toned stomach just to grab on to what she can.
“Oh.” She feels the way it’s slipping out of her reach and she doesn’t want this to stop but Jamie is already moving up and away and Dani feels the absence of her body.
She doesn’t move far, not yet, she’s just hovering over Dani and Dani wants to grab her and pull her back because her lips are addictive and she doesn’t think she could ever get enough.
“You’re-- you just-- you almost just got married and maybe this is just a-- I don’t want to take advantage of you.” Jamie’s words are labored and desperate and Dani can see the way she’s begging her to hold on tighter. She moves back, her hips shifting and she’s sitting now, sitting on Dani in a way that has her unconsciously bucking her hips up, looking for something, anything, but Jamie’s running her hands through her hair in a way that says she’s frustrated and Dani loses her words.
She should say you’re not, she should say take advantage, she should say I want you. But instead she says nothing. She just watches as a litany of emotions play across Jamie’s face and she can’t think of the words to change her mind. She can’t say I’m falling for you and I need you to catch me to somebody who is a stranger but fuck me seems like it doesn’t mean enough.
But she can’t find the words she needs and her mouth opens and closes like a guppie searching for air. Jamie looks at her and it’s pointed but still, the words don’t come and Dani is achingly desperate to find them.
And so, in the absence of anything, any words to keep her there, she goes. She lifts her hips and her legs and she moves back to the other side of the bed and Dani is cold.
Jamie isn’t in the bed when Dani wakes up. She’s not in the shower or the kitchen either and Dani can’t help but feel like it’s something she did. She plays over the night before and she doesn’t think she made it up, she doesn’t think it was one sided or misplaced, she thinks it was exactly where it should have been. But Jamie hasn’t said a word to her since she rolled away and Dani feels hollow.
She finds her, eventually, in the garage. Which - if she were level headed in her temporary panic - should have been the first place she checked.
Jamie doesn’t turn to acknowledge her when she walks in. Doesn’t make a noise or a peep, just leans deeper into the engine cavity and Dani props herself against the door, content to just watch her in silence.
It’s warm in here. Far warmer than the house and Dani furrows her eyes in confusion as to how that is until she notes the electric heater in the corner of the room.
Jamie is feeling the heat from it, Dani notices fairly quickly. She’s in a similar white racerback tank to the one she was wearing last night. The one Dani had fisted in her hand. The one that Dani wanted to rip off her back and burn in the fire and,
Dani clears her throat.
Jamie lifts her eyes and nods ever so slightly in her direction before putting her head back down. She’s got dirt and oil running down the sides of her face and sweat running down her arms and Dani can’t help but feel like she wants everything from her.
But mostly, she just wants to talk to her, wants to hear her voice. Wants to know that she didn’t totally wreck everything in a moment of want.
Dani shuffles nervously on her toes and pulls at the strings of the hood around her neck. Back and forth and back and forth like if she does it hard enough, maybe she would feel it burn the way Jamie burned her skin last night.
“I, uh, borrowed some clothes,” Dani looks down at the oversized gray hoodie hanging from her thin frame. “I hope that’s okay.”
“S’all right.” Her voice is clipped and Dani can’t tell if it’s directed at her or the car when she groans audibly.
Her arms are flexed and Dani stares at the way they twitch under the strain. Dani can’t help but wonder what those arms would look like holding her up against a wall or a bed or that car. She can’t help but think about how they would tighten and pop while they would anchor her to whatever surface Jamie pleased.
“Are you a big Northwestern fan or…” She lets the question trail off while her eyes take in the curve of Jamie’s breasts under the tight cotton. Her mouth waters.
“I went there for University. Or, tried to.” She groans again and Dani notices how her accent gets thicker with frustration. “So I guess if you consider giving them a hundred thousand dollars and only getting half an education and a shitty sweatshirt as a fan, then sure.”
Dani hums in understanding. She looks around her and thinks about what in here she could be bent over and she shakes her head.
It occurs to her when she can’t see far into the back of the garage due to darkness, “I thought you couldn’t do anything without power?”
“I can do some.” There’s a clank of metal and Jamie stands suddenly, hitting her head on the hood. “Fuck me.”
Dani thinks, please. But instead offers, “Do you want some help?”
Jamie wipes her hands off on a towel and Dani takes in how disheveled she looks. Her hair poking out from the bandana on her head, sweaty and sticking to her face. Dani wants to wipe it away, wipe all this tension away.
“Do you suddenly know about cars?” Her arms cross and her smile widens in a most devious way that makes Dani want to slap her and kiss her at the same time.
“You could show me?” And it’s not that she cares about the car, but she cares about Jamie and she wants to find any excuse to be near her.
“Come here then.”
Dani moves into the space that Jamie shows her and looks down into the engine.
“See this knob right here?” Jamie points it out and Dani nods but isn’t sure if she’s looking at the right thing.
“I need it to turn this way while I reach down there and loosen that one. But it’s a bit hard to do it with only two hands.” She holds out her arms in showing and Dani smiles at how playful it all feels. She’s grateful that Jamie is smiling at her again.
It feels like hope. It feels like a lot more when Jamie steps in behind her and pushes at her shoulders to square her up.
Dani bristles when she feels Jamie push against the length of her back. Jamie is warm; the heat radiating off her and through Dani’s spine. It takes all in her not to spin around and meet her lips and beg her to show her everything she’s been missing. She pushes her hips back into the body behind her and hears how Jamie takes in air between her teeth; the way it hisses sending shock waves through her body.
Dani feels bold, bolder than she ever has, as she rotates her hips, just ever so slightly, in a way that could easily be written off as an accident. But when Jamie drops her head in between her sharp shoulder blades and blows a thick puff of air out of her mouth, Dani knows she doesn’t care.
“Dani.” Jamie’s voice is muffled, both a warning and a plea, into her coat. Dani feels the way the word travels down her spine and into her toes and she presses back more - meeting the resistance as Jamie’s hands drop to her waist.
“Tell me what you want me to do.” Dani whispers it and she feels the way Jamie sighs into her, the way her breath comes out in sputters along the nape of her neck.
“I want you,” Jamie squeezes at her hips once, twice, “to make sure that’s tight,” she squeezes again and then lets go, “so I can get this one.”
And Dani isn’t sure if she’s doing this right, doing anything right, when she closes her eyes and lets Jamie reach around her to get to where she wants. She decides she doesn’t care. Decides that she will give herself to the count of 10 to turn around and take what she wants.
But when she gets to 8, her back is cold and her body is shaking and Jamie is gone.
She’s standing at the door and she looks hungry and feral and she’s wiping her hands on her shirt and she just says, “It’s snowing again,” and the moment is gone. Dani doesn’t know that she can wait much longer.
The snow turned to rain by the time Jamie was finished. It wasn’t delicate like the snowfall, but harsh and hard and loud. The powder on the ground turned brown and slushy and the beauty of it all melted away.
Dani watches it with a frown on her face. It feels symbolic somehow; a missed opportunity to take in all the beauty of a moment before it’s washed away. She had cooled, tremendously so, as she wrapped her arms tight around herself. She reached her foot out, right into the path of the rain, and watched how it slapped at the leather boot [a borrowed leather boot] and then rolled off.
Dani dreamed to be the snow, but she often felt like the rain.
“Ready?” The voice washes over her like a wave and she turns to see Jamie standing there, eyebrows lifted and looking outside; a litany of unanswered questions swirling between them.
It feels heavy, like the water as it fell. Was she ready? She thought so. She really did.
She looks out into the dark sky. She watches the way the clouds bend into themselves, angry and screaming. Their ominous presence like a warning, growling for change. Bring in the storm, for when it passes, there is beauty. She looks out into the dark sky and she counts. On 10, she’ll leap.
“It’s pouring.” She looks at Jamie but it’s not in protest, it’s in excitement. Excitement for the unknown, for the beauty after the storm.
And when Jamie reaches a finger out and brushes lightly against the back of Dani’s hand, she can’t stop herself from lacing it with her own. Latching on and praying that when she leaps, Jamie will catch her.
“We better make a run for it then, Poppins.” There’s a tug and then she’s wet. She’s soaked. The storm is here.
It doesn’t take long to get to the house, no more than 30 seconds, but she’s soaked from head to toe, from skin to soul. A crack of thunder echoes in the air and Dani feels the way her feet vibrate underneath it. It’s coming down in sheets and Dani can barely see in front of her but she can’t keep her feet moving. Because suddenly, she doesn’t want to run. She’s tired of running. She wants to be chased and caught and conquered.
So she stops and she looks to the sky and she just lets it all wash away. It's freeing, entirely. It’s freeing the way the water [freezing as it may be] rinses everything away, every single minute of every year she spent running away from who she was and what she wanted. The droplets are falling hard onto her face and with each one, with each small bullet from the sky, one more piece of her leaves and floats away in the flood.
She laughs. It’s exhilarating. It’s entirely exhilarating to throw away Danielle and pick up Dani and just stop.
She feels a tug on the hem of her sweatshirt and she looks back down at Jamie, wet and waiting, with a quirk on her face. And she’s done, she’s done running and waiting and stopping and going. She’s done, she's leaping.