A/N: Title taken from the Blondie song of the same name.
"Did you know?" Dani asks from where she's sitting on the couch, watching as Jamie methodically washes dishes in the kitchen sink.
She'd been banished to this exact spot five minutes earlier after Jamie had insisted she, "put your bloody feet up, Jesus." Since then, Dani's eyes haven't really left the other woman, too busy tracking every miniscule movement, enjoying the sound of her humming along to whatever tune is playing in her head.
"Mm?" Jamie finishes the plate she's working on and then looks up. "What's that?" Soap suds cling to her hands and forearms and the sunlight coming in through the window glints off of the bubbles, catching Dani's attention.
"Did um," she pauses, glances up and finds Jamie eyeing her with a note of amusement. "Did-did you know? That I liked you? Before I kissed you that night?"
It's something that Dani has thought about with some frequency over the last few months. It isn't anything she's worried over, but it is something she's pondered at. Wondered if Jamie would have ever maybe made a move if she hadn't.
The sound of the sink being unplugged and draining is her only answer for a few moments, but she waits patiently while Jamie dries her hands off on a towel that's draped over the handle of the oven door. She doesn't look away though and her expression is one that Dani finds herself unable to garner a clearer answer from; furrowed brow, mischievous glint in her eye.
Jamie slings the towel over her shoulder, still drying the fingertips of her right hand with one end of it, and rounds the island to approach Dani slowly.
"Well... yeah?"
It's isn't really the response Dani had been expecting and the shock of it is sufficient enough that she can feel it etching its way across her face before she can stop it. Can see it in the way Jamie raises an eyebrow at her, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards towards a smirk.
"Was I not meant to?" Jamie continues, musical laughter riding the coattails of her question in a way that makes Dani flustered and embarrassed in equal measure. Dani shifts a little and looks down, chewing absently at her lower lip, still uncertain how to manage the warring feelings Jamie so often brings to life within her. "You, uh, made it pretty obvious, Poppins."
"What?" Lip released, Dani's head snaps up again and she knits her eyebrows together tight enough to score a deep crease into the minimal space left between them. "No I didn't." Said in the same manner and tone that she had once used to deny a very blatant and obvious truth one early morning in a greenhouse back in Bly, twin cups of awful coffee clutched in trembling hands; it lands with similar conviction.
Jamie drops her shoulders and rolls her head lazily to one side, eyes following the same trajectory as her fledgling smirk fully spreads its wings and positively soars.
"Dani," Jamie says, with a low chuckle that sends a shiver ricocheting along the notches of Dani's spine. "The amount of times I caught you starin', I can't imagine-"
"I didn't stare!" Dani snaps automatically, the declaration laced more with mortification than malice. Jamie hums, unconvinced, and steps closer, taking a breath before letting her next words out alongside an airy exhale.
"Oh, you did though." She's a bit cocky now, confident in the fact of the matter, and it has settled into the way she talks and moves, the way she looks at Dani; iridescent eyes boring into her with the kind of pleasant burning intensity that makes her skin prickle with anticipation. "Stared a lot."
And, okay, so. Dani knows she'd stared. Had found it hard - impossible - not to. Every time she'd tell herself to stop, to look away, it would only last until the next time Jamie opened her mouth or walked by, or breathed. It had, at times, driven her to the very brink of insanity, which is saying something considering she'd thought herself legitimately crazy at the time.
"I-I-I wasn't, I didn't mean to-" Dani flounders, stops herself, closes her eyes and mutters a forlorn, "oh god" that just about sums up how she's feeling.
"Hey." Jamie's tone has turned from smug to soft and when Dani opens her eyes again, Jamie has closed the distance separating them and is kneeling in front of her. She rests her hands overtop of Dani's, wiggling the first two fingers of each into clenched fists until they loosen. "S'alright." She rubs her thumbs over the flat space between Dani's first and second knuckles. "Liked it, didn't I?" Smiles, charming and easy.
Dani squeezes her fingers, "Yeah?"
"Well, yeah," Jamie huffs a laugh and drops her gaze, only to look back up at Dani through the curls that have fallen into her eyes a second later. "Not like I didn't do my fair share of lookin' either, you know."
Something flutters behind Dani's ribs, warm and fuzzy, and close to her heart.
"You did?" she asks, lips curving into a bashfully please smile.
"I did." Jamie nods, just once, unflinching and lacking even an ounce of shame. "Was just a lot more subtle about it." She gives Dani's hands a squeeze. "Wasn't sure at first." She doesn't elaborate. Leaves the "about you" and "if you were like me" silent, but Dani hears them nonetheless. "Thought maybe you were just being…."
"Friendly?" Dani supplies, top lip pulling back around a grin to show teeth.
"American," Jamie corrects, teasingly, and pushes herself upright before unfolding Dani's legs from where they're tucked towards the arm of the couch. "Bit weird." She guides Dani's feet to the floor and then descends to comfortably straddle her lap in one fluid motion, strong arms looped loosely around a slender neck, nimble fingers toying with the fine hairs at the nape of it.
"I-I'd never," Dani's hands wander of their own accord as she speaks, sliding around Jamie's hips and slipping beneath the light material of the Ramones t-shirt she's wearing, "met anyone like you before."
Jamie hums, thoughtful, "No lesbians in Iowa?"
"No," Dani drawls with a roll of her eyes, then abruptly frowns. "I mean, yes. Probably." She shakes her head. "That's not what I meant." She hasn't really tried to put this into words until now and she finds herself lacking ones that sufficiently measure up to the feelings she'd experienced at the time. "You were…." she trails off, front two teeth snagging her bottom lip.
"Charming?" Jamie offers, ducking her head to brush her nose against Dani's and murmur the next suggestion against her mouth. "Dashingly handsome in my dungarees?"
"Brash. Aloof," Dani corrects with a wry smile. "Captivating. You gave off this air of wanting to push everyone away, but everything else about you did the exact opposite. And you… you just carried yourself in a way that was different to anyone I'd ever met." She ghosts her fingers along Jamie's sides until she's rewarded with the resulting shiver she's looking for, then curves her hands around her ribcage. "Like you knew exactly who you were."
"Had a lotta time to figure it out though, didn'I?" That Dani did not is the unspoken message behind Jamie's words and she brings her hands up as she speaks, running her fingers from Dani's temples to the back of her head. They thread through golden strands and pull free a soft sigh. "'Spose bein' in lock-up was good for a few things. Time to reflect an' all."
"Put you on the not-so-straight and narrow." Dani grins like she's pleased with herself; she is. Jamie narrows her eyes like she's judging Dani for the pun before making a small sound of affirmation.
"That it did. Set me on the road to Bly, the Wingraves." She lightly scratches the base of Dani's skull with her nails before bringing her hands back around to cup her cheeks. "Road to you."
"Mm, sweet talker." Dani's eyes flutter shut as Jamie gently brushes her thumbs along the rise of her cheekbones and the last thing she sees before they close is Jamie's smile. Wide in the way smiles are when you can't control the spread of them.
And while they haven't perfected the art of kissing while grinning like idiots, they also haven't really tried to. There's something exhilarating in the accidental click of their teeth as they come together. Something so warm and loving in the way they spill breathy laughter into one another's mouths, unable to properly seal their kiss.
Dani's arms stretch out Jamie's shirt a little as she wraps them around a slim waist, urging her closer, and Jamie moves herself with her hips, grinding down into Dani's lap, slow and teasing as she winds the fingers of her right hand into blonde tresses. Dani's smile falters then and she lets out a soft gasp that swiftly turns into a low moan when Jamie uses the opportunity to slip her tongue past Dani's lips. She strokes it against Dani's, firm and thorough, chuckling lightly when Dani all but mewls into the kiss and flattens a hand against the small of Jamie's back.
"Like when you stare," Jamie says, almost gasping, once they part after a long, long few moments. She presses her forehead to Dani's and Dani can feel eyes on her even though her own remain closed. "In case I didn't make that clear."
"Sometimes I…" Dani pauses to lick her lips and exhales slowly through her nose. "It still feels strange. That I'm allowed to." She doesn't look at Jamie, that feeling of vulnerability brought on by the shame that still leaks through from the life she led before rearing its ugly head. Jamie makes a noise that's caught somewhere between sympathetic and disgruntled and then sighs.
"Guess you'll just have to keep doin' it 'til you get used to it, then." She makes sure each word lands with careful precision and presses a kiss to Dani's brow.
"Such a chore," Dani laments, with all the feigned sincerity of someone who loathes the task they've been handed. Jamie drops another kiss onto the bridge of her nose, laughter rumbling like overturned gravel in her chest.
"Mm." She bumps her nose against Dani's. "Maybe," holds her mouth just a hair's breadth away, "I can make it worth your while." Pulls back when Dani tries to catch Jamie's lips with her own and tightens the hold she still has on blonde hair to keep her in place. Dani's stomach swoops and she whimpers.
"What did you have in mind?" And she sounds as breathless as she feels, the forever-heady mix of Jamie's voice and hands interacting with her being at the same time tossing her off balance and making her dizzy. But it's a fun kind of dizzy, a kind Dani didn't know existed before Jamie. It's the kind that follows you as you disembark one of the more thrilling rides at a theme park; the kind that makes you giddy and giggly. Makes you want to go again.
"Why don't you follow me to the bedroom and I'll show you?" Jamie's smile is always evident in the way she speaks, Dani can always hear it, and it's there now. Bright and brilliant; confident.
Begging, Dani thinks, to be knocked sideways.
She drags her hands over Jamie's body, grabs her hips, and jerks them forward roughly enough that Jamie's hands fly to Dani's shoulders in order to keep herself steady against her surprise.
"Too far away." There's no need to be coy. No need to be anything other than perfectly clear about what she wants. "You can show me here." Finally opening her eyes, she finds Jamie's hooded gaze already fixed on her. Staring. "Show me now."
And there's probably something to be said for the art of subtlety. Flirtatious glances that are over so quickly, the person being observed is left wondering if their eyes are playing tricks on them.
There's probably something to be said for the scintillating thrill of barely-there contact. The brush of fingers, an elbow, a thigh.
For words spoken with double meanings and in suggestive whispers.
Dani wouldn't know, not really. With Jamie, the only thing she's ever been able to do is speak loud, even when her voice is quiet. Has only ever been able to grab and grasp, and clutch.
Has only ever been able to stare.
With Jamie, Dani's an open book; a book that isn't capable, it seems, of being closed. A book that has been misunderstood and mistranslated since its inception, dogeared and worn, but that is finally being handled by someone who takes the time to read between the lines. Who wants to spend hours unravelling the truth printed onto each page.
And for all her embarrassment earlier, there's no trace of it lingering at the borders of this moment. No room for it between them. It's been left to stand in the shadows, alone and forgotten, watching.
Dani just lets it stare.