"There are many things that I would like to know
And there are many places that I wish to go
But everything's depending on the way the wind may blow"
- Oasis, Acquiesce
The first night, they don't bother to do anything else and James wonders if maybe this is getting out of hand or if it's too much. But whenever he thinks they'll stop or that it's been just enough she'll push him back onto the pillow, lips skirting against his cheek while fingers grip his forearm in an almost death-like vice. When they push into each other it's not at all like it used to be (rough and desperate as opposed to soft and familiar) and when it's over she doesn't move, doesn't speak, just clings to him like he's a life preserver, like she's afraid he'll let go or something.
(Or something.)
They talk a little bit but sometimes they don't talk at all and he thinks she seems fractured, more of the person he saw fall apart and less of the person he helped put back together. She catches him staring one night at dinner, quirks an eyebrow just enough to show she's noticed.
"Look, its just…Humpty Dumpty don't fall off the wall twice."
She flashes a tight smile at the meaning behind words that he knows aren't lost on her and "James, I'm fine." Watches her scrape her plate with the tip of her fork and I'm fine, yeah, I heard that one before because of course she's fine, she was fine the night she drank too much and the night she dreamt of her sister andthe day they all came back.
But he leaves it alone and later they lie in bed tangled together, her breathing light against his skin, his face pressed into her side like they always used to do, like they always will do. He drags one finger over her the side of her face and lets it rest on the curve of her chin, fingers sinking into gentle warmth that feels more real than any dream he ever had when he was alive.
"Not everythin' has to end badly, Blondie."
It's nice, this life.
He wakes up with Juliet, goes to bed with Juliet, they eat dinner together and read together. It feels so damn strange to have time because they never had time, not even when they thought they thought they did, and here it seems that they have all the time in the goddamn world. Eventually it starts to feel like it once was, that period in their life where things were happy and bizarre and settled all at once.
He takes three days off (half-wonders if it even matters anymore though multiple calls to his cellphone alert him otherwise) but in the end, James still has to go to work and Juliet still has to go to work and so he's in before 8 with a smile which causes a grumpy reaction of "what's got you riled up?" James takes his partner's tone to mean he hasn't had coffee or didn't get laid (either/or) and just shrugs because he ain't gonna tell him about Juliet. Besides, he's not even sure what this goddamn thing is. But Miles is persistent and James finally caves, does a song and dance about how he ran into a friend from the academy and hey, maybe he'll date again.
(He knows his lies are crap but at least it shuts his friend up enough to drop the subject.)
He comes home and eats dinner, she reads Hemingway and he reads Steinbeck, he does the dishes and she takes a shower. It feels strange, living a life that he's already familiar with, coming home to another one that feels even more familiar, and somewhere in his mind he thinks maybe they've done this all before.
The irony of the situation makes him laugh when she's not looking.
She asks one night seemingly out of the blue and as nonchalantly as if she's trying to gauge his opinion on whether he'd prefer red or white wine.
"Do you remember?"
"Remember what?" James props himself on one elbow and her voice, already soft, hitches as it somehow manages to find an even quieter tone.
"Dying."
She turns so that they're pressed together, skin-to-skin, and he finds her eyes while his mind works to figure out an answer.
"Yeah. Kind of, I guess."
He knows enough not to ask if she remembers (Jesus Christ can you ever really forget that?) and she knows enough not to push him so she just lies her head against his chest and drops an arm over his body and it's comforting somehow, in a way he can't explain and doesn't care to understand.
It feels like ages before closes his eyes and when he wakes up, everything feels normal again.
It wasn't really a big deal, him promising her mountains once upon a time when things were hippie flowers and yellow houses and blue jumpsuits stained with grease. But James follows through anyway, bribes another uniform to cover his shift for the weekend and buys two tickets to Aspen. It snows the first night and they stand with bare feet pressed against cold concrete just outside the hotel's front door.
He brushes a trail of condensation from her forehead and watches the light flakes dot her hair, thinks with some sick air of satisfaction that this is about as far away from that fucking Island as they can get. When she turns to smile, he realizes that they've never seen snow before. Not together.
The thought makes him sad.
One week and some days later, James and Miles are sitting in the office of the Chief of Police. James is fighting the urge to get extremely, unnecessarily angry and the only thing keeping him calm is a voice in the back of his head that reminds him he can't lash out because that would probably be a really bad idea.
"An' you were gonna tell me about this when?" He feels Miles shift uncomfortably beside him but for once doesn't care what his partner thinks. Let him be reamed out for it later, he couldn't possibly know what a fucking inconvenience this was.
"I'm sorry, Detectives, but it's court's orders. We're re-evaluating the precinct and territorial reassignments are a necessary must. You start on the 6th and that's final."
That's final. He leaves the room wanting to punch a wall, settles for kicking his trashcan instead and thankfully, the pen has pretty much emptied out save for a few random uniforms who could care less about someone housing an apparent attitude problem.
"Man, this sucks," Miles mutters bitterly as he drops into his chair and James feels bad but only for a moment. Because yeah, it's gonna suck when Miles complains about having to move but he's got a hell of a lot more to worry about than just leaving his apartment.
Son of a bitch.
He tells her that night over dinner and she just looks at him in response, eyes moving up and down while her face stays blank. It should make him angry, this unemotional nonverbal stare thing that she does but he expects it, it's what he's used to, a reaction that seems to say everything and nothing all at once.
"Long distance." The monotonous tone hits at something inside him and he rubs a hand across his mouth.
"Yeah."
Juliet regards him carefully, chews on her bottom lip. "Well, we'll be okay." She carefully spoons another strand of pasta onto her fork with almost meticulous precision and he suddenly wants to snap at her that she's eating dinner, not performing a goddamn C-section. "I'll quit my job and we'll figure something out."
He shakes his head roughly, pushes hands against the table. "Ain't quittin' your job," he mutters sharply and she looks up, eyebrows arched in apparent surprise.
"Excuse me?"
"You ain't quittin' your job," he repeats, raising his voice. "Gonna say I can't go and they'll send me somewhere else. Hell, maybe I'll make it to Palm Springs for real."
"James." She puts down her fork slowly, braces herself on both elbows. "If you do that, you'll be fired."
"What the hell does that even matter?" He kicks back in his chair, knocking a glass onto the floor and promptly hisses in pain as an errant shard embeds itself in the bottom of his foot.
"James."
Her voice isn't getting any louder, it just stays at that same goddamn tone that once upon a time (a long, long time ago) used to drive him crazy. He sighs, stares at the thin river of blood dripping down his skin.
"Look, I just got you back. I can't be runnin' around knowin' you're not here at the end of the day." He closes his eyes, opens them at the hand that presses against his cheek.
"I'm not going anywhere."
She bandages his cut and that night they're back to making love the way they've been doing most every night, tangling with each other in a manner that's aggressive and feral and maybe a little too rough but this time he's the one clinging to her as if she's a life preserver, as if he's afraid she'll let go or something.
(Or something.)
He buys a cheap hammock and strings it between the trees in the backyard, tells her it's "just for kicks" (as if buying a hammock is a normal thing that normal people do, which is laughable in of itself since their lives have been anything but normal) and sometimes he feels like they're constantly trying to find ways to even out the weirdness of this universe with moments from their old one, though James isn't entirely convinced it's working.
He talks to his boss, buys himself (themselves) some time on the reassignment situation, cringes internally when his partner reads him the riot act about abandonment. This James, the one with the job and the badge listens as Miles references that James, the one who selfishly stabs people in the back, and, well, there's irony for you. He comes home to find her lying in the hammock, bare toes tangling between the white-knotted rope, hands lost within the mess of hair she hasn't bothered to tie back (she chastised him the other day for cutting his too short but hers is longer than he's ever known it to be.) Dropping a stack of folders onto the deck he stands there, just fucking stands there, watches her with a feeling like he's done this once, sometime a long time ago.
"Bought us two weeks."
One hand drops against the grass. "Is that what we're playing at again?"
"Ain't ever playin' in the first place." The hammock dips slightly as he lowers his weight, fingers gripping the thin cords and she moves closer, her head dipping into the space between his shoulders.
"It's different this time," and he knows she's not just talking about the fact that instead of sitting on the planks of a dirty dock, she's lying in a backyard. James sighs.
"You ain't talkin' about two weeks."
"I'm not talking about two weeks," she repeats, drawing her legs up as far as she can. He catches a glimpse of the light scar that dots across her ankle ("tripped over my own shoes," she had told him ruefully) and finds himself wondering what else is different about this life that feels so similar except for things like scars and bruises, marginal reminders that it's all different this time around.
"Ever think this is weird?"
"Which part?" Juliet raises her heard slightly. "The part where I'm wearing a sweatshirt from L.L. Bean or the part where we're both dead?" There's a hint of cynical dryness lacing her voice and James huffs out something that sounds like a laugh.
"All of it." He finds her gaze, concentrates on the way her pupils dart back and forth, the film across her eyes a little glassy and slightly sad. "It's just. What the hell are we supposed to do?"
Her face rubs against his shoulder, one hand trailing across his skin and she presses her lips against his neck in silent response.
He reaches out and threads two fingers through her hand.