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rqgnarok · 11 months

Text

more than just a short time — jamie whelan

fandom: law & order organized crime

wc: 2,579

warnings: SPOILERS for the season finale of law & order organized crime, canonical character death, canon mention of hospitals and violence. very self deprecating talk from a disabled character. ANGST. ANGST, ANGST, ANGST. female!reader

summary: Can someone be a widow if their partner only ever planned to propose?

author’s note at the end.

Jamie doesn’t wanna see her.

She’s on her way up, Bobby tells him gently. Jamie wishes the surge of relief that courses through him wasn’t mixed up with the abhorrent need to send her away, be as rude as possible to have her leave the room before she comes to terms with what he’s become.

He doesn’t. Jamie nods at Reyes and licks his lips. He feels his eyes burn when the door opens to (Y/N) walking in, clutching the strap of her purse like it’s a lifeline, eyes wide and terrified and determined all at once. Bobby cups her elbow in silent support as he leaves the room, and Jamie swallows the mean words that try to climb up his throat at the sight of someone else doing what he can’t; comfort her, touch her, be the steadiness she needs in a moment of chaos.

Neither of them speaks as they’re left alone, a bubble of something-not-quite-peace enveloping them and making the outside world a mere blur at the other side of the doors. It’s only them and the ticking clock, the smell of alcohol and disinfectant, and the lack of color and life one expects from this specific wing at Bellevue.

They’d met in a bar around four years ago. Jamie had just made detective and some of his buddies at the four-nine were adamant about at least buying him some drinks in celebration. Just after finishing his first beer, another one had been delivered to the table, the waiter pointing to where (Y/N) was sitting at the bar, smile sheepish and face flushed at being caught.

She’d heard them celebrating and figured there was no harm in inviting the next round. Jamie leaned into her space with a charming grin and said something stupid about being harmed by meeting someone so beautiful and not asking for their name. To this day (Y/N) calls it the worst pickup line she’s ever heard, but it got him a laugh and a date that very same weekend.

It’s been good. It’s been great – the last time Jamie was so infatuated by someone he’d been thirteen and crushing after the next-door neighbor. He fell so hard for (Y/N) and simply kept falling as they moved in together before their second anniversary and started looking for rings a couple of months before he transferred to Organized Crime.

The development of their relationship has been both a whirlwind and the most obvious thing Jamie’s ever lived through. Of course he was supposed to meet her. Of course he fell in love with her from the very first night. He hasn’t been able to imagine his life without her since their first date.

Jamie doesn’t want her here. Jamie needs her by his side. These are two things that have to coexist now, his new reality far from the idea he had for the rest of his life.

He doesn’t tell her to go.

“Hi, sweetheart,” (Y/N) talks first, breaking the silence and the distance between them all at once as if snapping out of a spell. She drops her things in the chair left behind by Bobby and is by his bed in an instant, hands hovering all over him like she’s unsure of what parts of him she can touch without hurting him.

Jamie wills for his fingers to twitch, for his hand to wake the fuck up and reach for her, help her cross those last few inches she isn’t daring to do on her own.

He remains limp against the bed. (Y/N) finally touches him, her fingers against his cheek. It’s enough for Jamie to shudder with a cry, turning his head so he can soak in the touch. She’s warm and steady against his skin and Jamie mourns his situation for the hundredth time in the last hour.

“Jamie,” she says, murmured and weepy. Jamie’s eyes close in agony but it feels too much like being dead already, so he opens them again. The sight that greets him is devastating: his almost-fiánce-never-to-be-wife, asking him for something he can’t give her. The lifetime together he’s been waiting to promise in his proposal has gone up in smoke in the blink of an eye.

It was the right thing to do. Jamie knew– not even the blinding pain that shocked through his nerves had been enough of a distraction to the urgency in Stabler’s voice– that the second Kyle died, the chance to put down Shadowerk would go with him.

There really was nothing he could’ve done. The bullet had reached his spine the moment it entered his body. He was dead the second he walked into that godforsaken camp.

But (Y/N) hadn’t known that when she kissed him goodbye that morning. She’d stood on her tippy toes and wrapped her arms around his neck and joined their mouths together, tasting of toothpaste and languidly using her tongue to make him late for work.

“Hi,” he says, voice dry, trying not to sound as miserable as he is and failing.

He’d already canceled a vacation on her earlier that week. A pre-honeymoon, he’d started calling it in his mind, maybe finally the right time to propose. He worries for a ridiculous moment if (Y/N)’s gonna be able to get a refund out of that, fretting terribly for what’ll happen to her after he’s gone.

He knows she can take care of herself but she’s not supposed to have to. Not while he’s alive and breathing.

Jamie’s overcome with how badly he wishes he’d called in sick. That he let (Y/N) drag him back to bed like she almost did and throw caution to the wind, burrow himself in her arms and her laugh, and leave the curtains drawn shut, embracing the safety of the darkness. He was so afraid of letting Bell and Stabler down, of having Reyes go out there without someone that cared for him watching his back, and where did that get him?

Without his body. Without a future with the love of his life.

The love of his life who can never find out what he asked of Bobby. Even if she loves him enough to do it for him– Jamie loves her too much to even ask. He won’t do that. He’s already planning on making her a widow, having her do it is just cruel. He made a promise a long time ago that he wouldn’t let the job make him someone he didn’t recognize and he’s not about to start bailing on it now.

Can someone be a widow if their partner only ever planned to propose? Jamie almost suggests they get a priest in here and use Bobby as a witness, but (Y/N) deserves better than that. And she’ll find it someday, Jamie’s sure of it, with an accountant or a banker or someone with a boring job who doesn’t leave the house to get shot at and get paid too little for it.

“My day sucked,” he jokes weakly despite the inner monologue that’s rushing through his brain, trying to get her to smile and his voice cracking with emotion in the process. (Y/N) struggles with it but she manages an upward tilt of the lips, eyes wet.

His pretty girl, so fucking resilient.

“I bet,” she tells him. She doesn’t stop touching him, which Jamie appreciates as much as he does the effort at light conversation. “Office coffee was that bad, huh.”

Jamie’s laugh turns into a sob so quickly that he reasons it wasn’t really ever a laugh. His fragile good humor is gone in an instant, lip wobbling and features scrunching in agonized despair.

“I’m sorry,” he cries earnestly and without restraint for the first time since his mom died, probably. He shuts his eyes but it does nothing to stop the flow once it's started and (Y/N) can’t wipe all his tears fast enough. “We should’ve gone on vacation, I shouldn’t have gone to work at all, I’m so sorry–”

“Hey,” she cuts him off, equally as devastated. “Honey, it’s alright, it’s okay. You were doing the right thing, there’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”

He keeps apologizing anyway, fervently. Jamie isn’t strong enough to stop when (Y/N) starts to cry, too. She just holds him as best she can while they cry together. “You don’t deserve this, you don’t need less than half a–”

“You’re alive,” (Y/N) insists fiercely through tears. Jamie doesn’t tell her how this can’t be much of a life. “You came home to me, baby. That’s all that matters to me, you understand?”

Jamie hums an affirmative and keeps crying, and (Y/N) keeps soothing her fingers over his cheeks, his mouth, his temple, his hair. Jamie’s tremendously grateful for her, even if the need to make himself small and let (Y/N) hold him will never be satisfied again.

“You’re not half of anything,” she continues to reassure him without room for discussion. “You’re my everything. My whole entire life, Jamie–”

“I kept thinking of you,” he weeps, his breaths coming fast and hurried without the usual feeling of his abdomen pulling with the force of his grief. “All the time I’m out there, all I do is think of you, and I thought this time, I– I– I–”

She says his name helplessly, pressing a fervent kiss to his temple while some of her tears fall into Jamie’s hair, her breath stuttering. (Y/N) wraps herself around him as best she can without disturbing his injuries and the machines that are keeping him alive, leaving her in a most awkward position she doesn’t complain about once. Jamie’s love for her is too strong to be contained inside his body.

“I love you,” he tells her after enough time has passed that Jamie’s almost certain he won’t break into another sob. His voice quivers but that’s about it, and he thinks he’s allowed. (Y/N)’s fingers tremble against his temple. “I love you so much.”

“I love you,” she answers without hesitation, her voice a little shaky, too. She scratches at his hair and Jamie’s shiver is cut down to his neck. “I love you, baby, and we’re gonna be alright. We’re gonna be okay.”

“I don’t think we’ll make it to Alaska,” he tries not to scoff in disappointment because he knows (Y/N) won’t like it, and she proves him right when she purses her lips like she does when trying to convince herself not to slap him in the back of the head.

“Don’t be stupid,” she says, but it’s so, so soft it sounds like a term of endearment. Idiot, like honey, sweetheart, baby . “I don’t care about that. We can get shitfaced and take pictures with your thumb on the lens at home, you know.”

“Hey,” he says, trying and failing not to think about wedding rings at the bottom of champagne glasses or hidden in chocolate mousse cakes. He’s always made fun of people who think proposing with a choking hazard is a good idea but Jamie now aches for that stupidity, that normalcy that won’t ever be for him. He refuses to propose in a hospital room when he can’t even put a ring on her hand himself. “We probably won’t get a refund out of that.”

“That’s okay,” (Y/N) soothes. Nothing is, but Jamie lets her try. Maybe she’ll have better luck at pretending than he did. “I don’t mind.”

They fall into silence and he almost goes to sleep under her hands, pacified to unconsciousness half due to exhaustion and half due to her presence: the calm in the middle of the storm. Jamie isn’t mad anymore, can’t be when she’s got him wrapped around her finger.

“I love you,” he can’t tell her enough, sleepy and quiet. The rush of air she lets out is the only indication that (Y/N) heard him.

Breathing’s getting harder, already a chore, and now the thought of the device running out of batteries or accidentally disconnecting from where it's keeping him alive makes him anxious. (Y/N)’s worried, he can tell even if she almost never voices it because she refuses to make him feel guilty about doing the job he loves. Jamie wishes she’d tell him off, scream and cry at him and not bottle it all up. It’ll only be worse when he–

He says, "Want every day with you," with sharp breaths between each word because he's too exhausted to say I want to spend the rest of my life with you. There's a ring in my locker at the station that I've been waiting for the right moment to give to you. He doesn't say, every moment is right when we're together and I'm sorry I'm only realizing that when I’m unable to breathe on my own.

(Y/N) smiles, shaky and watery, and the most gorgeous sight Jamie’s seen in his life. She knows, and Jamie knows she does. The knot that had built up the whole time he'd struggled to stay awake, waiting for her in this hospital bed, loosens.

It’s gonna be okay. She’s gonna be alright, even if she’ll miss him. She’ll grieve and move on knowing, without a doubt, that Jamie loved her like he’s never loved anyone before. It’s enough for him. He can only hope it’s enough for her, too.

“Honey,” she rouses him gently from an accidental slumber hours later, the sun that gave little light to the room now gone behind the horizon, (Y/N)’s fingers still caressing his face. She looks exhausted and worried and the most beautiful Jamie’s ever seen her. Her smile is brittle and shaky. “Your dad’s here. I didn’t want to wake you up, but–”

“‘s okay,” he tells her. “Can you give us a few minutes?”

“Sure,” she says softly, hesitation clouding her features only for a second before she’s leaning in for a kiss, firm and lingering. Jamie exhales into it, something in his chest unfurling at the touch. He hadn’t realized they hadn’t kissed yet. “I’ll bring him in.”

“Wait,” he says, managing a boyish grin with lidded eyes. “Do that again.”

(Y/N)’s smile is bright, and Jamie’s glad to taste it when she goes in for another kiss on his mouth and then moves on to his cheek, his nose, his chin, his forehead. “Insatiable.”

“You love it.”

“God help me, I do,” she pats his chest carefully. “Let me go get your dad before he wonders what we’re doing in here.”

“Okay,” he says quietly, and once last time because he can’t help himself. “I love you.”

(Y/N) turns from where she already had one foot out the door, expression tender. “I love you back. See you in a minute.”

Later, after crying in the safety of his dad’s presence like a little boy and saying his goodbyes, Jamie closes his eyes as his breaths begin to recede. The shrill sound of his heart monitor, the panic that takes over the room when he stops breathing, he’s aware of none of it.

Behind his lids isn’t death, but the Northern Lights and (Y/N) underneath them, showered in colors and smiling at him like she did that first night in a bar, young and unknowing. She offers him her hand and Jamie takes it. Nothing hurts.

________

this fic snuck up on me ngl but the season finale fucking wrecked me. i’m still thinking about writing a fix it.

short (considering my standards lol) and somewhat sweet? hope you enjoyed and if u want tell me what u think!

masterlist / ao3 / buy me a coffee