Chapter Text
Cameron
It’s not that Cam had forgotten how much the hospital sucked, it’s just…he’d forgotten how much being in the hospital sucked. He’d only ever been in once before, briefly, when he’d torn a muscle back at the start of football season. There’d been a panicked moment where they’d thought it would be the end of his hopes for a career, and then…well.
(It had been the second time he’d asked for something.)
He’d recovered just in time for playoffs. Only for playoffs to be cancelled due to a steroid related controversy surrounding the opposing school.
(That’s how Cam had learned about the costs of asking.)
Never mind the fact that his first ask had been help finding a car. He’d gotten his car, (and damn what a car!) except it had been missing some crucial parts (like the fucking engine) and it had taken him pretty much the entire summer just to get it running.
(And then his dad had decided to confiscate the keys until Cam got his grades up.)
So. While Cam is aware of how much the hospital sucked, he knew better now than to ask for a way out.
(And also, this whole thing was entirely his fault.)
He knows Jamie had been blaming themselves, knows how much pain and worry he’d put his group through. But really, it was Cam’s own fault. He’d known better, known the risks associated with having anyone at his house, but especially Jamie and especially on what had then been a school night. His dad was usually always home earlier on school nights, and so his mom was always on high alert and all over Cam and his shit.
And he’d been stupid, and selfish and greedy (and horny, maybe. Just a little) and had just wanted something for himself for once. Had wanted what little play at normal he could get.
(Which is of course, how his mom ended up seeing him and Jamie together.)
Because Cam had been distracted, and had left his door open.
(The look on her face, though. Was kinda priceless.)
And then the panic had set in, because the scandalized shock on her face had quickly turned to that tight, pinched look she got whenever Cam had done something wrong; something for his dad to hear about.
(She’d said as much, after ‘politely’ kicking Jamie out. When your father finds out…)
It’s bitterly ironic that despite…well. Everything. Cam had never truly felt scared of his dad.
Wary, and apprehensive, sure. Mindful of his whims and his anger and his fists, when things got bad. But there were always limits, always a threshold.
The police…That Night. That had been one moment where Cam had truly been afraid.
(And this…hearing that from his mom. That had been another.)
Cam had thought he’d be sick with the force of it, his fear. Because if there was one thing of all the shit teenage things that Cam had pulled…if there was one thing that was going to be the limit, it was this.
“You can’t,” Cam had said, and she’d pursed her lips and given him that look, and he still didn’t know if he hated her or pitied her.
That she’d thought she had no other choice. That she’d cared more about his dad’s shitty opinions than Cam’s feelings. (Than Cam’s safety.)
The funny thing was, his dad hadn’t even believed her at first. Like it was so out there, so surreal that it was impossible to think.
“Cam was kissing a boy.”
She’d said it fast, all but spitting the words. In hindsight, Cam thinks that maybe she’d been just as scared as he was.
He’d been shaking, at the dinner table, such a wreck he couldn’t even enjoy the loaf his mom had made. It was his favorite, a hamloaf vs. the traditional meatloaf, with the pineapple gravy that only she could make taste just like the diner’s. It had taken everything just to sip his water, and even that had been impossible when she’d said it.
And his dad had just paused, blinking over his own plate at her, not even comprehending.
“What?”
And Cam had thought that he should run, he should get up and run right then, but that would have surely just made it worse.
“I caught your son,” his mom had said, then, eyes darting almost desperately to Cam. Like he could go back in time and make it not true. “Kissing…a boy.”
She’d paused, right before settling on ‘a boy,’ and Cam thinks it’s self-preservation at its finest because really, there’s no telling what would have happened if she had said kissing Jamie Wrenly.
As it was, Cam remembers feeling numb, fear undefinable, sheer nausea and adrenaline keeping him afloat and only just barely at that.
As his dad had paused some more, and blinked. And stared, and not understood. Until Cam had whispered “Dad,” and then he’d shot straight up from his seat.
Cam had flown back from his, kicking off from the table in a desperate bid for distance, which had been far too rapidly closed. He’s not sure if he’d managed to get his hands up at all, if he’d been able to spill out more than a few desperate pleas.
(He does remember, about halfway through what he could remember of it, that he had shoved the token from Jamie in his pocket before going down to dinner.)
He’d barely been aware enough to grab it, but he had, and wound it desperately between his shaking fingers, wrenching with barely enough force to snap the leather. He doesn’t remember if he’d screamed Jamie’s name or sobbed it, only that everything seemed to blur around him, like he existed only in this insular bubble of agony.
And then the bubble had shattered, not popped, and dimly he recalled Jamie being there, without warning and without explanation and absolutely with no inhibition.
(He’s still not sure he wants to know what Jamie had done.)
After that, Cam’s memory goes blurry. He can’t bring himself to focus in on the details, on the police or the ambulance or the hospital.
(He can feel the details; in every shift of movement and wrong intake of breath, just what had been done to him. What his dad had done to him.)
But he can’t hate him.
(Cam thinks maybe that’s what’s the worst of all, about this.)
He thinks maybe the cops are disappointed in him, for that. Knows that Sasha is disappointed and Aff is furious and Jamie is…resigned. But the cops…they’re disappointed and there’s a pity in it, like they just know, and Cam thinks that that’s not fair. That they can’t just come in here like this, not when he’d just gotten Jamie back, dammit. They can’t just come in here and give him those looks and ask him things that are just gateways to picking apart his entire life.
Because he knows that’s how it’s going to go. Knows that’s what they’re aiming for, more than that, knows that they’re probably just as eager to see the Solomon name brought down as it is that they actually care about what had happened to him.
(Cam almost asks, when the cops show up, is the thing. Almost asks the Infernal to make them go away.)
It’s so stupid, and childish.
Instead, Cam had held himself back, and endured the looks and had answered “I don’t know,” to everything.
(‘Do you have any idea why he might have done this?’)
That one, though. That one had been harder to say 'I don’t know' to. Because Cam thinks that he does know, on a surface level, but also…he’d been kind of hoping to ask his dad that, himself.
Sasha
Sasha will be the first to say that she knows how to handle situations, when they come up. Knows how to manipulate and twist and pull. Had been doing it even before the Other had come into play, had been taught the fine art of working people since she was a child.
She’d be the first to say that something as simple as changing a mind shouldn’t be a difficult task.
Unless the mind is Cam’s.
(Or Jamie’s, but…that was an entirely different sort of situation.)
This, though. This, Sasha just can’t understand.
“What do you mean you didn’t tell them anything?”
Cam looks at her and then skirts his eyes away again with a wince. He’s looking better, at least. The worst of the bruising around his face is gone, all the breaks and fractures sealed up neatly. The doctors had been impressed and relieved with the healing, and hadn’t bothered to question it too far outside their normal parameters.
(She doesn’t know whether to curse their human stupidity or be thankful for it.)
(Doesn’t know how much any of them count for human, anymore.)
“I just…I couldn’t,” Cam says lamely, and Aff growls softly from the window and Jamie presses their lips tightly together by the wall. “It felt like….”
“Only you could be concerned about it being a betrayal,” Jamie snaps, and the words are harsh but their tone is not entirely unkind. “Cam…he doesn’t deserve that from you.”
(The thing is, she should have seen it.)
She had known from the start that Cam’s dad was…far from ideal. Knows that even that is putting it lightly. Knows about the anger, and the bruises that Cam had, at the time, been able to pass off as merely fights with one of the guys on the football team. Or a slip in practice. Or any number of things other than the truth, that Sasha believed only because to consider otherwise was unbearable.
(But she’d known, too. That was the thing. She’d known.)
“You have no idea how badly I want to break into the police station right now,” Aff says darkly, and Jamie looks over with a slight twitch of their lips.
“I know the best times we could do it,” they offer. “I have a key.”
“Guys,” Cam says softly. “That’s not…you don’t have to do that.”
“And you don’t have to protect him, yet here we are,” Jamie retorts, and Cam flinches slightly.
“Look,” she says, because she has to say something. Has to do something. “I understand the whole ‘family obligation’ thing, really, I do. But Cam…he broke that the first time he hit you.”
Cam’s expression twists sharply in misery, and Aff growls curses under their breath, and Jamie hums thoughtfully and twists their bracelet around their arm.
“Not only that, but you only have a few days,” they say bluntly. “It’s not going to stick without you, never mind what they have.”
“What do you mean?” Aff asks, and Jamie sighs heavily.
“I mean, that the police are going to let Mr. Solomon go at the end of the week, probably before that, and the hospital is letting Cam out next week, and there’s nothing that I can do about it.”
They sound furious. (They sound terrified, and Sasha can’t say that she blames them.)
“Can we talk about something else. Please?” Cam says from the bed.
And so they talk about the Winter Formal, and how the school had tiptoed around the idea of banning them from attending due to the controversy surrounding That Night before ultimately deciding it wasn’t worth the backlash that might come about. Instead, they’re able to go ‘with supervision’ which essentially just means that Jamie’s mom gets to tag along “in the field”- Jamie’s words- and ultimately make them all uncomfortable. They talk about coordinating colors, maybe, which would be fine except it also brings up the inevitable ‘what even are we to each other’ that they still hadn’t properly addressed.
(Which, really, is an entirely other thing that Sasha should be able to handle except, well. She can’t.)
What she can do is drop Aff and Jamie off at their respective houses on her own way home, and so she does. She’s not sure what it is that drives the domesticity of it, how a part of her wants this, wants to hold onto all of this with everything she has. If it’s that strange wanting that has her trailing after Jamie when they get to their house.
Jamie quirks a brow but doesn’t question it, flips on some lights in the homey kitchen that sits in such stark contrast to Sasha’s own polished, pristine (empty) one.
“You’re making coffee?” she says, unable to keep the skepticism out of her voice.
Jamie’s hands shake, but their every movement is precise and intentional as they scoop out the grounds into the machine and retrieve a mug from the cabinet, cupping it as if there were already something hot inside.
“Do you want some, or are you just judging?” they chirp, eyeing her over the mug.
She glances at the clock on the microwave behind Jamie’s shoulder, the neon blinking slowly past ten o’clock.
“It’s late,” she notes, shifting back on her heels casually.
“I have projects to work on,” Jamie chirps, nonplussed.
The way they hover over the word ‘projects’ tells Sasha exactly what she needs to know. It also sparks the thought in her head, that she can think of some other projects that Jamie could work on, instead. She nearly says it, nearly gives into the urge to shift forward and pin Jamie against the wall there, in the tiny kitchen.
Jamie snorts, and Sasha blinks and realizes that she had, in fact, said some of that out loud.
“You just don’t stop, do you?” they murmur, and when they bring the mug up to their lips it’s actually filled with coffee, this time.
(Well. Sasha thinks. In for a penny, and all.)
She surges forward, and the sharp noise of surprise Jamie makes is overtaken quickly by an even sharper hiss as Sasha adjusts their position and pins them to the wall. One of her hands goes up to cup the side of Jamie’s face, fingers just trailing the edge of their lips. The other wanders lower, the pad of her thumb just teasing along the soft waistband of Jamie’s pants.
There is a soft click, of the coffee mug startling from Jamie’s hands and to the counter. Sasha's fingers shift as Jamie swallows hard, lips parting ever so slightly and eyes flickering behind their glasses. She takes the opportunity to replace her hand with her mouth, and the noise Jamie makes when she kisses them is wonderful. She lets her hand wander down to join the other, and is just starting to slip towards the clasp at Jamie’s waist.
Jamie flinches, and the kiss is broken with a sharp upward jerk of their chin, a shaky shove, and an even sharper pull that has Sasha taking an extra step back to catch her balance again. She feels it as a cold tingle at the back of her neck and then a white hot burst that stabs straight through her skull.
(And, if she’s being honest, low in her gut, as well.)
“That,” Jamie pants, eyes bright and solid gold. “Was entirely uncalled for.”
“I could say the same,” Sasha snaps, unable to hide the wince at the fresh spike of warning that meets her words. “You didn’t exactly stop me, though, did you?”
(It’s true. Or, at least partly.)
If Jamie had truly objected to the kiss (to her being there), they would have certainly done something by now. They’d never hesitated in the past to make clear at every opportunity just how disinterested they were whenever Sasha would attempt even the slightest bit of flirting.
Jamie laughs, and the sound is short and sharp, accompanied by another white hot pull. “At the risk of sounding utterly pretentious, you underestimate my power.”
Despite the still very present warning of the ethereal in her ear, Sasha can’t help but smirk, just a little.
“And I suppose next you’ll say that you have the high ground,” she murmurs.
The grin Jamie shoots her is thrilling in just how dangerous it is, and it takes everything to keep from moving forward again.
“Jamie,” she says with a pout, drawing their name out in a whine.
Jamie shudders hard and glares with the weight of the ethereal in their eyes.
“Say my name like that again,” they snarl lowly.
The warning helps, still white hot and fierce in the back of her mind.
(She still tenses, ever so slightly. Still inhales in preparation.)
“Try. It.” Jamie says, enunciating sharply.
(Try me.)
“Tell me to stop,” Sasha says instead, and the white fades abruptly from her subconscious.
“What,” Jamie says, blinking the gold from their eyes.
“Tell me to stop,” Sasha repeats, softer but no less intense, stepping forward into Jamie’s space again.
Their mouth curls like they’d tasted something sour, face twisting sharply with the force of their disbelief. Sasha lets her hands wander on their own again, and her fingers play at one of the buttons on Jamie’s shirt, just skirting the edge of their hips. Jamie jerks again, their tongue darting out to skirt across their lips.
“Stop.”
It’s hoarse, and almost desperate.
(Nowhere near convincing, the Other tries to whisper in Sasha’s ear.)
She stops, hands stilling at Jamie’s sides. Jamie, for their part, startles almost as badly as if she’d kept going. They pull away towards the counter once more, and Sasha lets them.
(Wants, desperately. To pull them back, to—)
“Fucking shit,” Jamie hisses, and Sasha looks up to see that they’d gotten their hands around the coffee mug again, and made no attempts to actually drink it. “You’re something, you know that?”
“I’ve been told,” she purrs, and Jamie swears hoarsely again before setting down the coffee with another sharp click.
“Upstairs,” Jamie rasps, and then they’re on the move.
Jamie’s room is somehow everything Sasha had been expecting and yet, also not. She’s distracted from the insistence of the Other by the dreamcatcher hanging from one of Jamie’s bookshelves. She feels her breath catch in her throat, and is clenching her hands into tight fists even before Jamie snaps
“Don’t touch it.”
“Are you seriously telling me?” she hisses back, eyes wide and taking in the intricate patterns along the edge of the weave. “How the hell do you even have this, Jamie?”
“You…know what it is,” Jamie says blandly, surprise evident in their face.
She shakes her head in disbelief, and even the Other is stunned enough into silence. She leans closer, hands firmly clenched to resist the surging desire to touch it, taking in the patterns and the colored beads and noting the very specific way they seem to be weaving together to cover a gap near the very center.
“Is this Cam?” she whispers, gesturing without touching.
Jamie’s lips purse tightly, their jaw clenched, and she takes it as confirmation. She sees her own pattern, surprisingly not too far off the center. Aff is closer; not as close as Cam, who is all but encompassing the center. But she’s not on the fringes, where she’d been expecting, more than that, not simply a colored dot on the elaborate pattern.
(This, she knows with certainty, was Jamie’s project.)
“How?” she asks again, and Jamie grins that dangerous grin again.
“I may or may not have tampered with the general course of things,” they say lightly. “There was nothing saying I couldn’t, so…I did.”
(Sasha thought it wasn’t possible for her to want any more than she already did and yet, here she was.)
She glances back at the dreamcatcher, and the still-healing space where all the threads making up Cam should have been.
“You know you can just resolve this the easy way?” she says, and Jamie loses that pleased look and glares tightly.
“I don’t want to do it the easy way,” they say, and Sasha wants to protest, but decides better against it.
“And anyway,” Jamie continues, only slightly less stiffly. “I’m sure you can think of something better to do than criticize my fucking with the fates.”
“Only if you’re offering,” Sasha replies, as coyly as she can manage with the Other stirring excitement in her stomach.
(Or maybe, she’s just excited. It’s always hard to tell, these days. They’re nearly one and the same.)
Jamie huffs a sharp noise of exasperation, but they slide their rings off their fingers and the hat from their head and the cloak from their shoulders, and Sasha absolutely can not stand to simply watch anymore. She moves, and Jamie makes another startled noise before her hands go over theirs, halting the progress they’d been making on their shirt.
“Let me,” she whispers, and Jamie sucks a sharp breath and looks like they’re going to protest, so she kisses them to convince them otherwise.
(She regrets it, immediately.)
“Sorry,” Jamie murmurs, not looking it at all. “Force of habit.”
“You could have said no,” she snaps tightly through her teeth, barely keeping herself from retaliating in kind.
“I did,” Jamie says cheekily, and they have the nerve to smirk at her.
Sasha gives in to that base urge and shoves Jamie back against the wall. The dreamcatcher brushes lazily across their cheek before she kisses them again sharply, hands moving of their own accord to divest Jamie of their shirt, fingers undoing buttons faster than Jamie’s hands can move to slow her.
(Not that she would have been slowed, at that point.)
She can feel the cold tickle at the back of her neck again, but she wraps the influence of the tether around herself and pulls back. Jamie shudders hard and relents, (not like she’d given much of a choice) and Sasha indulges in running her hands across Jamie’s chest, dragging her nails down their sternum with just enough force to make them hiss, before working further down once more. Her mouth is on the juncture of Jamie’s throat, and so she feels the whimper before she hears it, high and plaintive, even as Jamie’s own hands come up to grasp for the back of her neck.
“Sasha,” they gasp, short and desperate. “Sasha, please.”
It’s the please that catches her attention, or, no. It’s the please that drives the Other’s attention, has it all but purring with exhilaration and spurring her ever onward. It’s the way that it comes out of Jamie’s mouth that catches *her* attention specifically, because for all that Sasha has known them, Jamie never begs.
“Please,” they say again, and she shifts back with only a slight hesitation.
(It’s almost a shame; she’s pretty sure that spot on Jamie’s neck had been about to bruise beautifully.)
As it is, she pulls back, and it’s as she does that she notices Jamie is shaking. More than that, can feel it, can see something bright and panicked in their eyes and a twist almost like pain on their face.
(And fuck, that’s not right. This was supposed to be fun. Jamie’s not doing this right at all.)
“Jamie?” she says, and they inhale sharp and shaky, and she can feel their hands fumble for her own.
“Just,” they bite out between breaths. “Not there…I…not there, please?”
She realizes where her hands are, but she can’t quite make sense of the problem.
(It is, objectively speaking, very hard to make someone orgasm without touching them.)
Not that Sasha didn’t have her ways, of course. But that was beside the current point. The current point being that one of her hands had found the inside of Jamie’s thigh, while the other had been stabilizing on the edge of Jamie’s hip.
(And that one was the problem, according to the tight pain/panic on Jamie’s face and the tremble in their hands as their fingers finally curl around Sasha’s wrist.)
“Not…not there,” they say again. And then it hits, and Sasha feels like a terrible human being again.
(She is also entirely and unfairly aroused, and it takes effort to force perspective when she wants nothing more than to—)
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs quickly, letting Jamie guide her hands back to safer territory. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
“Fine,” Jamie says tightly, then exhales sharp and tries again. “It’s fine…I wasn’t expecting it either, just…give me a second?”
It comes out like another plea, and the fact that Jamie thought that they had to beg permission from her—
(That’s not right. That’s not how this is supposed to go at all.)
“Take your time,” Sasha murmurs lowly. “I can wait.”
The surprise on Jamie’s face is worth the pang of guilt and regret it brings. Worth it, definitely, when Jamie finally catches their breath a few moments later and nods, and Sasha brings her mouth back to that spot on their neck and sucks hard enough that they nearly lose it again.
“Not fair,” Jamie breathes in her ear, their fingers grasping tightly to the back of her neck. “It’s not fair how good you are at that.”
“Just you wait,” she replies, reveling in the way they groan when her fingers pinch at their chest.
“Is that a promise?”
(It was.)
They end up on the bed, somehow.
(Or maybe it’s less the somehow as it is the fact.)
Sasha kisses her way down Jamie’s neck, sucking hard at the hollow of their throat until Jamie whines and their nails dig into the base of her skull.
“Stop that,” they pant, entirely breathless as she moves further down. “My collars only go so high.”
“That’s a shame,” she murmurs lightly, nipping at their collarbone.
Jamie groans, and it’s exasperated for all of the two seconds that it takes Sasha’s mouth to reach their stomach.
“Wait, wait,” they manage, and she pauses on her way further down, trying to figure out the problem.
There shouldn’t be a problem, the Other hisses, impatient as ever. Shouldn’t be any hesitation, any obstacle to getting what they wanted.
Sasha tells it to shut up. This is more important than that. Jamie is more important than that. She waits, and Jamie shifts on the pillows and flushes slightly, dropping eye contact as they mumble out
“I don’t…that uh…that’s never really been my thing.”
And that is a shame, because it’s definitely something Sasha considers her thing, but she can work with that. She tilts Jamie’s head back up for another kiss and hums softly in reassurance when they pull away uncertainly.
“I think I can live with that,” she says with a smirk. “But just in case…why don’t you show me?”
And just like that Jamie’s face is entirely red; but despite the groan and the ‘you are absolutely too much’ that they give her, it doesn’t take a lot of convincing for them to adjust their position on the pillows and guide Sasha’s hands where she had been hoping they would. And they tap at Sasha’s wrist when her hands wander too close to their waist again and even then it’s not a problem. It is absolutely not a problem, with Jamie beneath her like this, hissing breathless curses in her ear and their nails dragging sharp lines down her back.
“Tell me you want me to stop,” Sasha says, because she has to be sure. Wants to be sure.
And Jamie chuckles breathlessly beneath her and says “I don’t want you to stop.”
(And she thinks she could never get tired of this.)
She’s not sure where it goes wrong. Only that she can feel how close Jamie is, and the sounds they’re making are wonderful, and she wants nothing more than this, just this, just a little more—
Jamie swears, and it’s sharp and ragged and desperate in an entirely different way than the recent events had given them cause to swear and—
“Wait…wait.”
And there’s words now, that Sasha doesn’t want to hear (that Sasha needs to hear) that the Other tries to ignore because they’re so close! and—
“Sasha, stop. I need…I need you to stop.”
And they make it through anyway, short and pleading and punctuated by swears and Sasha dismisses the Other entirely out of her mind because this was important and she has to stop.
“Shit,” Jamie hisses when she does, carefully. Shoving back and away like they want to burrow into the pillows at their back. “Fuck.”
“See, you were saying that a second ago, but it sounded so much nicer then,” Sasha tries through the lump in her throat and the rapidly dwindling pleasure in her gut.
Jamie shoots her a glare through their fingers, and it comes through in slivers of grey and blue and gold. They're trembling again, faintly, and Sasha bites her lip to keep from commenting on that, too.
(Too keep from asking if this was her fault, specifically, or just par for the course.)
“Fuck,” Jamie says again, miserably, voice thick and muffled by their hands. “I really thought I could do this.”
(Her fault, then. Understandable, given her habit of ruining the things she cared about.)
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and hates the way her voice breaks over it. “I—”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie says, at the same time, and then falters, blinking. “What?”
She starts, meeting the confusion and misery in Jamie’s face with a mirror expression of her own.
“I said, I was sorry,” Sasha repeats carefully. “If I pushed too hard and ruined it before you were—”
“No, wait. Shut up,” Jamie snaps, and their hands lower from their face enough that Sasha can see the sharp twist of their mouth. “You’re not…this is all me and my…you didn’t do anything.”
(Well. That’s a first.)
“Jamie,” she starts, but they flinch away when she tries to reach for them again, and the sharpness around their mouth twists even further.
“Fuck,” they hiss, eyes flickering. “Sorry, just…I can’t, I’m sorry…fuck!”
(It had definitely sounded much nicer when they’d been saying it a few seconds ago, Sasha decides.)
“Ok,” she says, instead of any of the other things digging through her mind. “Ok, alright. I’ll be downstairs.”
Jamie makes a low noise, not looking up from their hands this time, and Sasha takes a steadying breath before climbing carefully off the bed. The movement makes Jamie look up, then, and their brow furrows, eyes wide.
“What?”
“I’ll be downstairs,” she says again. “I’ll…I’ll heat up your coffee for you. When you’re ready….”
She lets it hang there, lets Jamie decide what to make of her offer. And she adjusts her clothes and buttons her own shirt back up and goes back downstairs. The neon numbers of the microwave blink steadily, telling her that it’s not quite 11.
(The whole disastrous thing had happened in less than an hour.)
Sasha thinks it must be a personal record, and wonders if next time she can ruin something in forty-five minutes. Just keep going and going until everyone she cares about flees at the very sight of her.
“You…you actually heated up the coffee.”
She blinks, and looks up to see Jamie hovering at the entryway. They’d changed, now wearing a much softer and flowy-looking pair of pants and a shirt with loose sleeves that gave off the illusion of being sheer. They’re not wearing their glasses or rings, either, though Sasha just catches a glimpse of bracelets when Jamie moves and the sleeves shift.
“Yeah, I did,” she says, and Jamie’s face does a complicated flip before settling into something deliberately neutral. “I also made myself some, I hope you don’t mind.”
She slips a little of her signature cheek into it, and Jamie smirks, just a little, and accepts their coffee cup from her hand. They perch in one of the chairs at the tiny kitchen table, and Sasha debates a moment before taking the only other chair across from them.
She wants to apologize again, but Jamie ends up beating her to it.
“I…uh. I’m sorry, again,” they say, biting at their lips between words and avoiding her eyes. “I didn’t mean to…ruin the moment.”
“Was it me?” Sasha asks, giving into her selfishness for just a second.
“Hm?” Jamie says into their mug, eyes focusing somewhere past Sasha’s shoulder. She’s almost grateful for the lack of eye contact, if only because she doesn’t think she’d be able to handle the intensity of those eyes right now.
“Was it me?” she repeats, gripping her own cup tightly and ignoring the prickling warning the heat of it brings. “Did I….I mean. I know you and Cam…is it me?”
“Oh,” Jamie says blandly, eyes flickering to hers for an instant before darting away again. “Oh. No, that’s…I could honestly not care less about that. That’s not…that doesn’t matter to me.”
(It’s not because she’s female, then. Which is good, but then it also means it’s just because it’s her, and Sasha thinks that that’s far worse than her initial fear.)
“Ok,” she says lamely, because what the hell else is she supposed to say to that?
“No…shit,” Jamie says, and when Sasha glances up it’s to see they’re fidgeting with the midnight blue bracelet around their wrist. ‘Jamie, They/Them’ flashes and twists in and out of the starry pattern and Sasha feels guilt wrenching her stomach apart even further.
“This is...just like the party,” she manages hoarsely, and Jamie blinks over at her. “That Night…when I kissed you.”
(When she’d manipulated them into kissing her. She’d pushed, then, too. And now…)
“You know I wouldn’t have if I truly didn’t want to, right?”
It’s her turn to look up in surprise, and she had been right about the eye contact because Jamie is staring at her and the look they’re giving her is almost too much.
“It’s not you that I have a problem with, Sasha,” Jamie says firmly. “And it wasn’t that tonight, either. I just…it was a little too much all at once and I thought I could manage it but sometimes it catches me off guard and I couldn’t…I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”
That’s a lot. It’s a lot and so Sasha picks it apart carefully and slots each bit of information away carefully. First, Jamie wanted her, too. That was…phew that was a lot. Great but. Wow. Second, it wasn’t her so much as her method which, she understood. She’d been working on it, at least. Trying to. So that was…that was good. That was manageable. (The Other disagreed, but well, that was their problem, not Sasha’s.)
And third….
“It catches you off guard?” Sasha repeats, hoping for some clarification. “What—?”
Jamie clears their throat pointedly, and then sighs, expression twisting again as they say “Dysphoria’s a bitch. And most of the time I can deal with it, but it varies and is horrifically inconsistent and it doesn’t help shit at all when this comes into play and uh…yeah. It’s uh…it’s great.”
Sasha realizes that the gold had leaked back into Jamie’s eyes again, overtaking the usual coloring brought about by the grey in their eyes until all she could see was the influence of the ethereal.
“I’m sorry,” she says again, and means it with far more certainty than her doubts had let her before. “I didn’t…I had no idea.”
“Yeah, well, that’s kinda the point,” Jamie says tightly. “I don’t really make a habit of advertising my shitty brain days and anyway, I usually have enough of a handle on it. Usually.”
But of course something so intimate would bring it about, and Sasha should have thought about that, should have asked if there was anything she could have done. Or should have not done. Or any number of things other than just straight up pinning Jamie to the wall.
“What can I do?”
Jamie was frowning into their now empty mug, but looks back up at her words. “What do you mean?”
“Differently,” she clarifies, fingers spreading from the sides of her cup. “Or to help. I don’t…I want to do things differently than before.”
Something softens in Jamie’s eyes even as their jaw tightens slightly, and they tent their fingers beneath their chin.
“I have no idea what to say to that,” Jamie says lowly. “Because I know you really mean that…I know that’s entirely you and it’s…unsettling.”
“Thanks?”
It’s enough to get Jamie to smile, actually smile, and Sasha thinks she might do anything to see that directed at her more.
“Ok,” they say, finally. “Ok sure.”
And so they sit there together at the kitchen table in that tiny space so vastly different from Sasha’s own, and they talk about sex. And it’s not in the slightest bit glamorous or arousing but with each point brought up Sasha could feel the void between them growing less and less, and leaves with a far greater understanding and balance than she’d ever had before.
(And, when she finally steps into the stillness of her house at well past twelve, she could feel a tether that hadn’t been there a moment ago.)
And she decides that it was definitely worth it, and that maybe she kind of likes this version of herself a lot better.