might as well be dreaming
There is something about sharing an apartment with Jamie that Dani hasn’t quite gotten used to. Even three years in, the novelty has not worn off. Seeing the things they’ve picked out together—the duvet in their bedroom, the lamp beside their bed, the television and the rug beneath the bed. In the living room, it’s the couch, the stools by the island counter. The coffee table and the VHS case next to the television. The coat rack and the framed photos of them scattered across the walls.
But then there’s her things. Jamie’s things. Mixed together in the space, sharing it. Her books and Jamie’s books. Her records and Jamie’s records. Their shoes on the shoe rack by the door. Her sweater draped over the desk chair, Jamie’s typewriter on the desk.
This is: home. Their home. The one they’ve made together.
It’s comforting to think about. To be in. Dani never quite knew what home was before Jamie, and now she carries it with her everywhere she goes. Even today. Especially today.
Three days after Jamie’s injury, Dani wakes up curled around her girlfriend’s body to a dreary-sky morning outside their window. She’s tired, dragged into consciousness by the late hour. Her eyelids are thick, filled with sleep still, and Dani blinks it away, snuggling into Jamie’s warmth beneath the covers. Messy, brown hair tickles Dani’s nose and she has to turn her head to keep from sneezing.
“G’morning,” Jamie breathes, voice slow and honeyed-bright. Slowly, she turns in Dani’s arms, careful to keep her injured hand raised so as not to crush it. Eyes still closed, she turns her head as she lies on her bed, puckering her lips out in offering and Dani laughs. Sweeps in to press a kiss against them.
“You sleep okay?” Dani asks and Jamie nods, fluttering her eyelids open.
“Alright,” Jamie says. “Considering.”
She raises her splint-covered wrist for emphasis, shaking it gently.
“Oh, poor baby,” Dani coos, lighting bending Jamie’s arm so she can press a kiss to the tips of her fingers, sticking out from the split. “Do you need anything? Aspirin?”
Jamie shakes her head. Hums again. “Just you. Come here.”
Dani does, lifting herself up and leaning over to kiss Jamie again with an insistency that’s uncharacteristic for the hour. Jamie doesn’t seem to mind, kissing her back immediately. Lifting her good hand to brush some of Dani’s hair behind her ear as she flicks her tongue into Dani’s mouth, making her groan.
“Morning breath,” Dani sighs, pulling away.
“Don’t care.” Jamie pulls her in again. “Kiss me anyway.”
With a little difficulty, they manage to kick the blankets down so Dani can adjust herself on top of Jamie as lightly as possible. Jamie bends her knees to press them into Dani’s hips and kisses her and kisses her, making Dani sigh and hum, head filled with cotton at the ease of each sensation Jame lights aflame within her.
Dani dips her fingers beneath Jamie’s shirt, rolling it upwards as she slides her palm up her skinny ribs, her warm, soft skin. Against her mouth, Jamie growls, reaching down to coax Dani’s hand higher, to cup her breast as she nibbles Dani’s lower lip and then swipes the sore spot with her tongue.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Dani whispers, pulling back to rest their foreheads together.
“You won’t.”
“You’re—”
“It’s just my hand,” Jamie says and when Dani gives her a look she blushes and rolls her eyes, trying to make light of it. “Okay, yeah. Pretty important, but...it’s not like I can’t—”
Dani has an idea then and she pulls away. “Give me a sec,” she says as Jamie reaches out, trying to keep her where she is. On shaky legs, she goes to the dresser by the window, opening the top drawer and rifling around her folded underwear to find what she’s looking for. She can feel the heat of Jamie’s curious gaze, watching her from where she’s still lying on the bed and, when Dani turns, Jamie’s lips part a little. Shocked.
“Is that…?” she asks.
Dani nods, leaning her back against the drawer to close it and then starting towards the bed again. “Is that okay?”
Jamie nods dumbly. “Yeah. ’Course. Did you want to…?”
The rest of the question sings unspoken in the air. Did you want to wear it. Did you want to fuck me. Did you want to pin me down to this mattress and have your wicked way with me while I can do nothing but clutch at you and pull you in tighter and tighter. And never let you go.
But Dani shakes her head. Doesn’t say those things.
Says, instead: “I want you to.”
Heat flashes in Jamie’s eyes. Dani’s knees hit the bed and she holds the toy, the harness, in her hands, waiting for a confirmation.
That ever-important yes.
“I can’t—” Jamie begins, lifting her injured hand up as a reminder of her current limitations.
“You don’t have to,” Dani tells her. “Let me.”
So Jamie does.
She lets Dani undress her slowly. Carefully. Watches as Dani undresses herself next. Lets herself be pushed back down onto the bed. Lets Dani lift her hips to slide the harness on. The toy. Lets Dani straddle her thighs and look down at her and kiss her, her fingers twitching at her sides, wanting to touch and grab and take control.
“I wanna touch you,” says Jamie, and Dani pulls away, dots kisses up and down her neck and chest.
“Just be careful,” says Dani.
Jamie slides her good hand up, running her fingers up and down Dani’s arms and shoulders. The crook of her thigh and her calf. Her neck and her breasts. Pauses at her nipples. Makes Dani moan into her neck. Presses a kiss to the crown of her hair.
Clumsy fingers between her legs, then. Loose and unpracticed but so very determined. Dani moans and presses down against them, grinds herself into the touch while Jamie watches with parted lips. Wide, disbelieving eyes. Green and huge and piercing, making a shock of lust flare right between Dani’s legs.
“I love you so much, Jay,” Dani whispers, pulling her hand away so she can sit back. Lift herself up to align the toy.
“God, Dani,” Jamie breathes. “I love you.” She laces their fingers together, Dani’s other hand coming out to rest on the flat plain of Jamie’s stomach to steady herself.
Dani sinks down then, taking the full length of the thing inside herself. It pinches a little, but she doesn’t stop until she can feel the cool harness touching her. Jamie’s face has paled considerably and she looks like she might as well be dreaming. Dani knows the feeling. Squeezes Jamie’s fingers a little.
After a moment to get used to it, eyes closed and steady breaths as she relaxes her muscles, Dani begins to move. Slow at first. Easy and soft. She opens her eyes at the touch of cool fingers to her hips on her left side. Jamie has lifted her bad hand, now, trailing what she has use of across Dani’s skin.
“Careful,” Dani says, but her voice sounds wrecked, lips raw from being bitten at.
“You look incredible,” Jamie tells her.
Dani moans at the compliment. Moves her hips a little faster. Can’t get over the idea of it, really—Jamie being inside her like this. So completely. Hands free to roam and touch, no space between them. Not really.
It spikes heat through her chest, pools it in the low of her belly. Makes her feel like throwing her head back and losing control. Just riding Jamie as hard as she can until they’re both gasping for air and clutching at one another, mindless and fevered and caught.
Dani brings one of her hands up to curve around Jamie’s breast, pinching her nipple between her forefinger and thumb and rolling it. Jamie slams her eyes closed, the hand holding Dani’s squeezing, and she huffs out a laugh.
“Gonna kill me if ya’ keep that up.”
Dani pinches again. Trails her fingers up and presses them into the soft of Jamie’s lips until the other woman opens her eyes. Blinks up at her, understanding filling her expression. She parts her lips and takes Dani’s fingertips into her mouth, flicking her tongue over them until Dani gasps. She pulls her fingers away and goes back to Jamie’s breast, slicking her nipple up. Pinching again. Doing the same to the other.
Below her, Jamie’s hips begin to thrust up in unsteady beats. The sharpness of her hip bones dig into Dani’s thighs in a way that should be painful but just makes her feel a little closer to losing her mind.
“Fuck me,” Dani says in a voice that is not her own.
It makes Jamie’s eyes blaze with a hunger she’s only seen a few times before. And then Jamie is pulling her good hand free, gripping Dani’s hip with it and thrusting up into her with a little more force each time.
“God, Poppins. Fuck.”
She rests her bad hand against Dani’s other hip, but doesn’t grip her. Doesn’t hold onto her. Somehow, it’s this light touch that makes Dani’s eyes roll back into her head.
The sound of their bodies slapping together fills the room, the air, Dani’s head, the sounds they themselves make serving as a staccato beat to play along. Even injured, Jamie is strong and incredible, pressing up into the friction created by the harness and thrusting in little circles that spread white heat through Dani’s veins.
“Mm, Jamie,” Dani moans, muscles tightening with each move, electricity twitching under her skin, trying to claw its way out. Jamie uses the fingers of her bad hand—that thumb sticking out of the side of the splint—to press into Dani’s clit, circling it loosely. Making Dani gasp out, “Close,” as she tries to press into it without hurting Jamie even further.
“There you go, baby. C’mon. Come for me.”
Dani huffs out a breath, forcing her eyes open so she can look down at the woman beneath her, drag her nails down her stomach and make her shiver. “Come inside me,” she says and Jamie’s eyes look black as she says it.
“Shit, Dani,” she sighs, her rhythm stuttering a little, thumb pressing against Dani’s clit hard. The muscles of her stomach quiver beneath her skin. “God, yeah.”
It’s only a couple seconds later that Dani feels it—that love and power and forever—crashing over and over inside of her. Making everything inside of her tip sideways. Images of Jamie—smiling and laughing and writhing beneath her; saying I love you and Dani and you and me—flashing through her mind lightning quick, boiling her breath in her lungs, making her toss her head back with a shout of Jamie’s name as she finally, finally comes.
Beneath her, Jamie grinds upwards, each panting breath ending with a high-pitched whimper as she shudders and shakes. Falls off the edge to land in the cool sea where Dani is waiting for her.
Afterwards, it is quiet, each of them doing their best to catch their breath and settle back down to earth as the fog of sex and desire begins to dissipate. Dani lifts herself up, whimpering a little at the loss as she goes, and flops down on the bed beside Jamie.
“Dani,” Jamie breathes. “Dani, Christ, that was—”
Dani nods, staring up at the ceiling. “I know. It…”
She feels Jamie shift, turn her head to press a kiss to Dani’s sweaty temple. Her splinted hand comes up to rest on Dani’s bare stomach and Dani wraps an arm around it loosely.
“You’re ridiculously sexy, by the way. I just...It’s completely unfair.”
Dani huffs out a laugh, a quizzical note at the end of it. Curious. Disbelieving. “Glad you think so,” she says.
“Poppins, if you were any sexier, I think I’d explode.”
Jamie snuggles in closer, presses her lips to the side of Dani’s head again, sliding down a little to be closer. The toy wobbles a little, glistening in a way that makes Dani flush hot with embarrassment.
“You’re ridiculous,” she says.
“You love me.”
Dani hums, closes her eyes. Remembers Jamie standing there in the bar, fist cocked, the man who’d been so aggressive toward Dani sprawled out on the floor. If Dani hadn’t already been head over heels, that would have been the moment that she knew.
Whatever forever means for her, for them, her home will always be Jamie.
“I do,” she says, not even a moment’s hesitation. She presses a kiss to Jamie’s shoulder, sighing as she shifts—that delicious ache between her legs settling in—and says it again:
“I do.”
..