#and balancing being thirsty as fuck and falling in love with all that repression is high on the list

[novelconcepts]

I’ve always wanted a first real date after bly scene. Light and right.

Where Dani is thirsty AF bc Jamie wore a dress

Where Jamie feels like she’s in an oven under Dani’s 👀.

Where Jamie wants to remark on Dani maybe using that weapon *👀👄* sparingly, but remembers her complete lack of autonomy in the past and is just like ~yes love, look. It’s for you.

Does it count as a date, Jamie wonders, when we’ve not been apart in four months? Hard to imagine, but it’s true--the time has very much gotten away from her in Dani’s company. Not that she’s complaining. Not that she can find much at all to complain about, with Dani at her side.

Nervous, Dani may be. Uneasy about planning for the future. Sometimes, she turns her head and finds Dani gazing back with a chillingly blank expression, and thinks, She’s going. She’s going already. 

And then Dani will blink, and she’ll smile, and Jamie can’t fathom how she’d ever thought the worst. Even for a second. There is so much life to Dani--different now than the woman who had pulled her close in a hallway, maybe, but full of life all the same. Dani’s eyes are different these days, beyond her newfound heterochromia, and her dreams are darker, but she is in all other ways the most alive person Jamie’s ever known. 

Particularly the way she tends to stare.

“What?” Jamie asks, grinning. There’s a certain steady pleasure to this moment, how Dani’s eyes snap to her the second she enters a room. “Why are you looking at me like...”

She hesitates. Like you want to take a bite. She doubts Dani would respond well to that phrasing. Four months in, Dani still tends to dart away from her when caught staring, her posture tightening up. Blatantly pointing out exactly what her face is doing just now is sure to send her into a mild tailspin.

And yet--hard to deny the truth of it. Dani, perched on the edge of the couch they’ve only recently hauled up the stairs to this very-new apartment, is gaping at her like she didn’t expect Jamie to even be home, much less stepping out of the bathroom. The surprise is etched into every angle of her, partnered with something Jamie is inclined to call naked desire. 

Bit much, she thinks, heartbeat increasing tempo, but if it walks like a fuckin’ duck...

“Like what?” Dani is shaking her head, smoothing out her skirt, fingers tightening around the fabric like she doesn’t entirely trust her own hands. “I’m not lookin’ at you any special way.”

She’s right about that much--if only because Dani has a tendency to look at her this way always. Doesn’t matter where they are, or who’s around, or how Jamie’s dressed. Turtleneck, battered jeans, or this, her eyes always darken the exact same way. Her jaw tenses, her tongue flicking out to wet her lips, and every single time, Jamie thinks, No one. No one has ever looked at me like...

Like it’s second nature. Like she’s been doing it all her life. Like Dani has forgotten how to even begin to tame her own expression, so long as Jamie is standing in front of her.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t like it.

“I didn’t even know you kept a dress,” Dani says. She’s still staring just over Jamie’s shoulder, as though the only thing holding her in check is the blank wall.

“Didn’t,” Jamie says. “Recent acquisition.”

To see what would happen, she doesn’t add. To see if it would make a difference to the way Dani looks at her like she can’t get enough. A part of her can’t forget how Dani had lit up the day of the funeral, as though the sight of dress and lipstick and flirtatious little grin had been powerful enough to keep the monsters at bay.

Truer than Jamie could have realized, then. Still true now, she thinks, as Dani slowly rises and allows her gaze to take in the full picture once more. Dani is, she can tell, being as careful as she can. Dani is trying not to be too much. Like they haven’t been spending endless hours together, strolling through states, watching the seasons change. Like they haven’t spent all these weeks learning one another in motel rooms, and--as of very recently, in this flat. Like Dani is still, somehow, embarrassed by her own inclinations. 

It’s okay, she wants to say. You can look. You can do anything you like. Dani believes it, in the dark. Dani believes it when it’s Jamie at the wheel, guiding her hands. She believes Jamie wants her then--naked and pressed into a mattress, under the pulse of a hot shower, even in the backseat of a car. There are places, Dani seems to think, where she is allowed to want and be wanted.

But Jamie has to start it. Jamie has to expressly grant permission. Somehow, Dani still hasn’t quite realized it is her want--wherever it comes, whenever it comes--Jamie most prizes. 

Look, she thinks. Touch. Do what you want. No one’s ever told Dani that before. No one’s ever been able to make her believe it. Understandable; some things can’t be resolved a few months in. Some trunks have been locked too long.

She offers her arm, pleased when Dani hooks a hand through the bend of her elbow. “Shall we?”

Dani glances at her, glances away again, swallows. For a moment, Jamie wonders if she might tilt them back against the front door, taking the date off the table entirely. Wouldn’t be so bad. Would, in fact, be a glorious way to spend an evening with this woman.

But date was the plan, and date Dani seems committed to. Even as her fingers trace the soft skin of Jamie’s wrist. Even as her hip presses lightly to Jamie’s own. Even as they make their way to the restaurant, to a table near the back, and order. 

“This feels strange,” Dani says quietly. “Being out like this.”

“We go out all the time,” Jamie points out, knowing what she means. Knowing there’s a difference between lounging in a booth for dinner and going out like this--hair up, makeup done, Dani trying so hard not to take her in with hungry eyes. Is it really a date if you’re always together anyway? It would appear the answer is very much yes.

And it would appear Dani is just as out of practice with the whole idea as she is. Her hands are twining on the tablecloth, her head bent. Every so often, her eyes flick up to Jamie’s face, and it’s like having a campfire turned directly against her skin.

“You can do that,” Jamie says after the third or fourth time. She can feel herself grinning--the old flirtatious good humor, which has grown to encompass so many private moments. She may not be able to resist Dani’s big doe eyes, but Dani’s never been good at turning away from this particular breed of smile, either. Well-matched. And fucking lucky. 

 “Do what?” Dani isn’t feigning innocence, she’s sure. Dani is genuinely trying not to do this very thing. Dani is trying to be polite, and proper, and in public, and Jamie’s heart clenches a little to think of how often she’s done the exact same thing with any number of women she’d felt she couldn’t even glance at.

“Look at me,” she says. Dani’s eyes rise, her lip pulling between her teeth. “You can do that. However long you like.”

“We’re in--”

“It’s just looking.” Jamie smiles. “No one can stop you.”

Dani shifts in her seat, fingers knotting together. Jamie would bet her life she’s gripping her own hands that tightly to keep from reaching across the table.

“I don’t mean to.” Dani pauses. Smiles a little. “I don’t mean to look at you like--like I--”

“Want me?”

Dani makes a small noise under her breath, something Jamie suspects might be a groan. She laughs. 

“Poppins, you do know the idea of a date.”

“Yes.” Dani has this predictable way of huffing words out in irritation when she’s embarrassed. It’s entirely distracting in its own right. “But you’re--I’m not--”

Jamie waits. Things like this take time, she reminds herself. Things like this are not instantaneous. What Dani is comfortable doing--being--in private might never quite look the same out in the world. That’s all right. What matters is that Dani gets to choose. That Dani knows she’s allowed to.

“I don’t own you,” Dani says in a low voice at last. She’s looking Jamie in the eye now, and there’s so much happening on her face--an embarrassed pull of her mouth coming up hard against the heat of her gaze. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m always ten seconds from...from...”

“Tearing my clothes off?” She can’t keep the amusement out of her voice, and suspects it’s the only thing holding Dani here. That, if she were to say the same sentence with no humor at all, Dani might actually burst into flames right over the nearly-full wine glasses. “Can’t see a problem with that.”

“Jamie.” It’s nearly a whisper. She sounds so ashamed, even as her eyes flick from painted mouth to the low cut of the dress’ neckline. 

“It’s not ownership, wanting the person you’re with,” Jamie says, as gently as she can. “It’s...welcome. Very.”

“We’re in public,” Dani repeats in a strangled sort of voice. “And you’re wearing that, and I...”

“Do you like it?” 

Dani nods, very quickly. Jamie glances around, and, finding the waiter absent, slides a hand beneath the table to cover her knee. 

“I like that you like it. Might surprise you, but I did put it on because I hoped you’d like it.”

Dani swallows. Her leg is rising and falling in an unsteady tattoo under Jamie’s palm, the skirt riding precariously up her thigh. Jamie smiles. 

“You are allowed,” she says, “to look. And to tell me what you think. And, shocking though it might be, to respond according to what you want. I like that you want me.”

“I know,” Dani says, in the kind of voice that says she doesn’t entirely believe it, even now. Jamie shakes her head. 

“No, don’t think you get it. It is the best goddamn part of my day, watching you watch me. Knowing you’re thinking what I’m thinking. It’s...” She hesitates, her thumb stroking along Dani’s kneecap. “There’s nothing wrong with it. Or you.”

Dani is breathing a little less sharply with every pass of her thumb, her cheeks pink. She closes her eyes--and then, with the air of a woman turning a particularly stubborn key, opens them again. It is the memory of the funeral dress turned up to eleven. It is the moment she’d stepped out of the bathroom doubled, tripled, almost too much to stand in the middle of a populated restaurant. 

It is perfect. 

“See,” Jamie says, taking her hand back and settling it beside her fork. “That. With me, you never have to tone that down.”

“I do,” Dani mumbles. “I really do.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Dani says, leaning across the table, her voice pitched dangerously low, “we haven’t even been served yet, and I want to drag you home already.”

Jamie grins. “Going that poorly, would you say?”

She’s a little surprised Dani doesn’t kick her under the table.

She’s not surprised at all when Dani’s hand appears on her own thigh, intentionally driving her dress up. Dani is, she’s pleased to find, grinning. 

“Ah,” she says breathlessly, “now you’ve got the idea.”