A/N: Apparently every fifth chapter will be a Jamie chapter. Enjoy.
"It's a two-year process," Jamie says. "If we start now we'll be done by the time the conservation project is over."
River tucks a little silky nightgown into her suitcase. He stares at the open bag, an abyss of tiled colors. "It's a two-year process to get on the waitlist, sweetie. You don't know how long it'll be before something becomes available."
"All the more reason to apply now!"
"All the more reason you can wait another six months," she says, touching his cheek.
Jamie flops back on to the bed and away from the contact. "I hate waiting."
"People aren't going to stop having babies they don't want." She starts sifting through her closet. "Waiting is good for you. It gives you time to think about what a responsibility it is to have a child."
"I know what a responsibility it is." He's gotten to know every dip and incline of their bedroom's crown-molded ceiling.
"You do?"
She sounds unconvinced, hmph. It's not that hard to understand. You're caring for another little person, he gets it, he's not completely delusional. "If we get a baby three years from now, you'll be in your seventies when she's in her twenties." She's silent and he thinks this may have been an ill-advised comment, but his jaw stiffens, avoiding apology.
Finally, as if he hasn't said a thing, she asks, "Are you excited for Amy?"
"I'm excited to spend time with her." Amy is not a commodity, not a person he gets to have for four months like a toy. Amy is not like the men River will see, and while he wants to inform her of the difference, he fears that caring about the third person violates the rules of their arrangement.
"Will you miss me?" She's flirting now.
"Will you miss me?" He doesn't try to hide his question under coyness, since the answer very well could be no, and that's note cute, though she won't say as much—he's learned this about her. Never take River's flirtations at face value.
"Of course," she purrs, and comes to stand over him, hands on his thighs, smile on her lips. "How are you going to say goodbye to me?"
"Goodbye," he replies, with calculated indifference, looking her straight in the eye. He doesn't know how to be married to someone who isn't there. Marriage demands intimacy, and if he's wrong about that, he doesn't know what marriage is.
She retracts her touch and returns to packing, the irritation in her voice as angry as she ever gets with him. "Don't be a child, James."
"Don't treat me like one." He turns over and presses his face into the mattress. Her footsteps fade as she exits to the hall. She takes a taxi to the airport.
Amy looks nice in the morning. Why does this surprise him?
Perhaps it's more disconcerting than surprising. Yes, that's right. He expects nothing less but it still grieves him, to see her looking nice in the morning.
She shows up in the kitchen in the morning, usually in a baggy t-shirt and what might be men's underwear, less often in a wash-worn nightgown. He thinks he remembers that nightgown, remembers its pinstripes against his bedspread, but he can't be sure.
She is still ginger in the morning. Often her bed head endears him as much as any hairstyle could, apricot and dawn mussed and pinched up in the back.
She still has freckles in the morning, though they're fading as fall progresses into winter. He can't count them without seeming inappropriate. He shouldn't want to count them at all, but quantifying is the habit of his scientific mind. She doesn't wear much make-up during the day, so her face is not all that different before she's dressed and ready.
She sips her coffee the same way in the morning as every afternoon he's brought her a cup. Her wrists remain unbelievably slender, like a doll's, holding her mug. She's been enjoying River's espresso machine.
For the first time in two years and three four-month expeditions, he does not feel his wife's absence keenly. The void she left is filled, albeit with a very different woman. It is delightfully domestic. They cook meals and go to plays and he teaches her chess. They spend weekends making an adventure of the city, museums and bookstores and clothing stores and whatever wacky cultural thing is happening in the park. He doesn't need to see her at work because he sees her at home, but he goes anyway, for the lunch breaks. Trying to be funny, he holds her hand when they walk into the apartment building so the doorman will see. He thinks the doorman tells River everything, and it's for River, all of it.
December arrives.
"This is the best time of year in New York," he muses loudly.
"It's freezing," says Amy, pulling her coat together as they traverse 78th Street.
"But it's magical! It's Christmas time. There are lights and trees and everyone's kinder."
Amy smirks. "You would love Christmas."
"Of course I love Christmas. Everybody loves Christmas!" Amy tosses him what is clearly, definitely a look. Even he can see it, this time. So what could she— "Amelia Pond, do you not like Christmas?"
"I don't not like Christmas. I like the presents. And the food." They pause at a street corner. Today is the coldest it's been, and their exhales fog around their noses.
"Then you've never had a real Christmas," he declares. He recognizes his relative ignorance but ignores the recognition, too. Exaggeration suits him and Amy's well aware. "Christmas brings people together. It's the best time of year."
"You've said that." She sounds annoyed but he spots her smiling.
"Are you going to be in the city for it?" She doesn't talk much about her aunt in Kansas, and he wonders if they spend holidays together. She claimed to have worked through Thanksgiving last week and he didn't question her, but he's never heard of the museum asking anyone to work through a vacation.
"I'm not going anywhere, so yeah, I guess."
"So you'll be with me! Chris and David are coming to visit, it'll be fun." A snow flurry catches in Amy's hair while she's smirking at him, pretending not to care when he knows she does because it's Christmas and everybody loves Christmas, even Amy, he'll show her. "Come to get the tree with me."
They get the tree; they decorate it; he puts his macaroni star on top. Amy eyes him.
"What is that?" she asks, as he hops down from the ladder.
"A star!"
"It looks like a five-year-old made it. Like, a five-year-old named Jamie." She has probably noticed his underdeveloped signature at the bottom of the paper backing.
He gives her a big smile. "I made it for my dad."
Her mouth hangs open slightly. "Oh," she says. He would tell her he doesn't care, it doesn't matter, but even the brief explanation is more time than he wants to devote to the subject.
He comes behind her and cradles her elbows, so they can look at the tree together. "What do you think?"
Amy laughs and her shoulders shake. "I think you're ridiculous."
"Is it too much?"
The tree is massive, at least six or seven feet at the widest part, and even with the high ceilings it brushes the top. Every branch—and really every branch, at least the load-bearing ones—carries some kind of ornament, many of them garish souvenirs from places he's visited or crafts made by the children at the after school program where he volunteers or pieces from River's more artistic collection. He's swaddled the tree in lights, too, five strings, each of a different color (blue, red, green, purple, and white), and garlands of popcorn, paper and beads, and a twenty-pack of candy canes hanging variously. It is an eyesore, but a magnificent eyesore.
"It's… I think this defines too much," Amy replies.
"Perfect!" he chimes, and kisses her cheek.
As with past Christmases, he likes to sit by the tree while he's reading papers or drinking tea. It makes him feel zen, sort of, like he's in some kitschy painting you'd find in the pages of a catalogue selling gourmet non-perishables, kettle corn and cinnamon sticks and whatnot. Often he visits the bakery and gets two cups of the best hot cocoa on the Upper East Side, and then Amy joins him by the tree, wearing a garish holiday sweater ("Not because I like it, because it's warm") over her pajamas.
Tonight Amy's not waiting for him so he sets her drink in the kitchen and has just settled on the sofa when she stomps in like her mind has vacated the apartment entirely. With her red-rimmed eyes and her runny cheeks, she clutches her cellphone to her chest. She doesn't even see him at first, and then she shakes her head, trying to jostle herself back into sync.
"Hey," she manages.
Yes, her eyes are very red. "Is there something wrong?"
"No." She sucks in a breath and smiles poorly. "Rory's wife had her baby. Their baby."
"You don't seem all right." He stands and steps toward her. She's shaking.
"I am. I shouldn't be upset. It's really fine." Her voice cracks and she swallows a sob, and she turns away from him. Jamie's heart lurches in his chest.
"Amy." He reaches out but she recoils from his hand, shielding her face.
"Don't," she says quietly, and disappears to her room.
For a while Jamie stands outside with his face pressed against the door, not speaking.
He comes when she calls. He finds her a doctor. He gives her the apartment, the view. But she won't smile and she won't go to the doctor and she's crying now and the only thing he has left to offer is himself, and how is he supposed to make her happy? He's been trying and trying.
It would be Amy, to make him desperate like this, impotent, inadequate. No one has ever confused him so adeptly.
He knocks before he knows what he will say.
"Just go away, Jamie," comes her distorted reply. He palms the doorknob.
"Please, Amelia."
"Leave me alone."
"I just want to know if there's anything I can do." Please, something. Please be better.
Silence, then, "Come in."
She's sitting on the end of the bed with a rumpled tissue in her fist. He sits beside her.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi."
"I'm sorry you're feeling bad."
"Yeah." She laughs dryly, half-sobbing. The noise claws at him.
What looks like a perfume bottle rests on her dresser. "I don't want you to feel bad." He can't smell any perfume on her. "I've been—I've been trying very hard—everything I can, to help—"
"I know," she says, cutting off his stammers.
"Do you want to talk about Rory?" he asks. He does not want to talk about Rory. Jamie doesn't hate people, by his own estimation, and he especially doesn't hate people he barely knows. But Rory always shows up at the crime scenes when something Jamie loves is dead, so he's been classically conditioned.
"Oh," she sighs loudly. "There's nothing to say. Nothing new. It's really dumb."
"It's not," he protests, though he doesn't know what it is. "You never told me what happened."
"We got engaged and then broke up. And then a few years later we got engaged again, and then we broke up. Again." She rubs her eyes on the back of her hands, leaving them streaked with charcoal make-up.
"That's—well, that's not really what I mean. I mean, why." The perfume bottle has eights sides. An octagon.
Amy looks at him with her brows scrunched together and her lip on her teeth. Has he asked the wrong question? She looks and looks. She says, finally, "My heart wasn't in it." He nods, not knowing how else to respond. "I thought it would be better when I was older. That I'd be more ready."
"And you weren't?" An octagon is a strange shape for a perfume bottle.
"Can you be ready to marry somebody who isn't right for you?" It's a good question but not one he takes pleasure in considering. She slumps over, chin on her fist. "Maybe I should've just sucked it up. Nobody's going to be totally right."
"Well," he says. "I think you get a feeling that they're close enough."
Amy grins, but her amusement is self-effacing. "I didn't get that." She licks her lips. "I guess you did." Sure. He must have. But it wasn't like lightening; he didn't wake up to find the feeling sitting on his nightstand. It grew up at the bottom of a drawer, he's sure it did, and if he looked he knows he'd find it. He just doesn't want to look, not now.
"I'm worried about you, Pond." Amy's hand is on his arm. "If there's anything, something I missed." He looks at her and she's very close. Should he kiss her? Would she smile or cry? He doesn't want to make matters worse.
Amy brings their foreheads together. He should tense up, but the touch relaxes him, her breath tickling his nose. She says nothing.
"Please don't cry anymore, Amy," he tries. At some point he started running a hand up and down her arm, which may reassure him more than it reassures her, but the gesture is visceral and there's no stopping it. "Or do, cry if you need to, but please tell me why you're crying so I can fix it." He lowers his voice. "I'll fight whoever did this, tell them to met me at the flag pole after ninth period." When Amy laughs, her nose nudges his.
"You're an idiot," she says, and kisses him.
It's a quick kiss, like she thinks it needs to be fleeting, but she drags her mouth away in an effort to prolong it.
He's missing something, something big. But he can't remember how to remember or how to speak. A thought has escaped him, maybe driven away by the ideas about kissing Amy swarming his brain. His hands are still on her forearm. She watches him and bites her lip. "You taste like chocolate."
"I got us hot cocoa. Yours is in the kitchen."
"It can wait," she says, and leans in.
He kisses her this time, but it's just his mouth against hers, he can't part his lips, and he's sure he's trembling, so his power of movement has abandoned him here in this pivotal moment when he's got yet-another maybe-last chance not to mess this up, to kiss Amy Pond properly. But Amy, he's so thankful for Amy, who pushes back his hair and strokes his jaw, and relaxing, he opens his mouth so she can really kiss him. Despite his chastity he's been kissed by a decent number of people, he has one of those faces, you know, but no one—and he wishes he'd realized this seven years ago—no one kisses like Amy. She is an artist. She leads him through the machinations of her tongue and teeth, her confidence is a safety net for him of the shaky hands, and gripping the hem of her shirt he forgets his worst days and his crutch of activity, now a pinball in her machine, free and powerless. She pushes his jacket from his shoulders, toys with the collar of his shirt. Somewhere on some other temporal plane, where he's capable of panicking, the phone rings.
They kiss through the first two rings, until war cry trilling and the vibration of the receiver against its dock jostle him from reverie. He pulls away and there is Amy looking terrified, and her terror scares him too, since he'd seen this coming, since he'd considered that to kiss her might only aggravate the problem, and oh god, he was right, he was stupidly right. The sight of her distress in such candid color reminds him of a documentary he once saw where they showed photographs of car accidents to the drunk drivers who caused them, except now he's the driver, and he wants to run away.
So he gets up and answers the phone. River tells him about a procedure they're developing to slow the erosion of the ruins. From here he's standing in the hall, he can see Amy sitting on the bed with her head in her hands. Before he hangs up he says, "love you too," a force of habit, and Amy shuts the door.
When he comes into the kitchen the next morning, Amy smiles at him, the most genuine smile he's seen on her in a while. She tells him she put the cocoa from last night in her coffee to make a mocha, gets him to smell it, laughs when he wrinkles his nose. The incident sets a trend for the next few days, and then the week, a trend of not kissing and not talking about previous kissing and not thinking about kissing not even for one second, not even in the dissident night while he anxiously awaits sleep and writhes and kicks all the covers off the bed, not even then, McCrimmon, because you're not that guy, though the abundance of not between them makes his head hurt, and then it's Christmas Eve Eve and he gets another, very different phone call.
After he hangs up he goes into the library, where Amy beams falsely at him, a blanket curled around her feet and a mug of something hot between her palms. Her face falls when she sees him.
"What's wrong?"
Jamie opens his mouth to speak, but he can only think how terrible he must look if she reads the catastrophe in his features. "My mom," he says.
She shakes her head, puzzled. "Is she okay?"
"She had a stroke and crashed her car. She's gone, she's passed away." He grips the phone with both hands and it crushes lines into his skin. "Will you come to Portland for Christmas?"
At their graduation Amy wore a white dress. If they'd said more than three words to each other that day, Jamie would've teased her about it. How many white dresses did she have, he hopes she's saved one for the wedding, it's like she's marrying her future! Tying the knot with a life minus their friendship, which was okay, which was for the best, he knew. But he kept glancing over at her and Rory, smiling and holding hands, with their parents and everyone stopping to look at the ring, even though that was sort of odd since they'd already been engaged for nine months and how could anyone spend nine months looking at a ring? A ring was just a band of metal, an ornament of affection, a mocking symbol of commoditized love. Jamie didn't want to see the ring for a second. He resolved he would never get married. He resolved that love was not jewelry.
"Congratulations. Good luck," he told her at the refreshments table.
"You too," she said, and walked off with her lemonade.
A/N: The Anne giveth and the Anne taketh away.