Building

5 months later, Present Day

The warm sunlight filtered in through the slither of open drapery. The light glittered delicately from the thin particles of dust dancing in the swirling air, a slowly rotating fan above.

Jamie's eyes were the first to flutter slowly open, sleepiness clouding her sight and a hot aching starting to simmer in her joints as she slowly came to. She groaned loudly, stretching her limbs slowly until a sharp pain bit her in the side and she clenched her teeth to bite back an audible sound. It didn't matter however, the warm body beside her started to stir even without much provocation, the man's ever growing intuition about her waking him like a stimulus to a sixth sense. He grumbled loudly and a moment late turned lazily towards the woman, his sleepy face surprisingly gentle in the dim light.

"Good morning," his whisper was faint but sweet like a morning dessert and it made her slowly smile. "How are you feeling?" He didn't need to elaborate on the question.

"Like I got hit by a bus," she confessed as she instinctively snuggled in closer to his body and let one hand rest against his ribs. It was warm in the apartment, even the fan not enough to cool the apartment enough to "comfort" status, but somehow the heat didn't affect the young woman. She just wanted to feel closer to him.

"Should I bother asking?" He finally spoke up after a moment. Her silence was answer enough. "Somehow I always imagine it will be easier next time you leave, yet every time you do I'm proven wrong." His words were slow and deliberate to the point that his accent she was so used to seemed faint in his speech. "By the way," he started again now with much more enthusiasm in his classic voice. "You scared the shit out of me last night."

She laughed, the vibration of her laughter encouraging the man to sprout his own smile and manage to roll over onto his side so he could finally give her a much needed morning kiss.

"I was all alone in bed and fast asleep and I really thought someone was breaking in here and all I thought was 'Jamie is going to kill me.'" His voice was playful and teasing, eyes holding a bit of mischief in them as they fished for another laugh from her.

"I'm sorry," she said with a much lighter, playful tone. "I wasn't supposed to enter the states until Alex gave me the okay. You were fast asleep when I got home, I didn't want to wake you."

"But you were in a hurry to get back to your sexy and very lonely boyfriend?" He asked with a spark in his eye. Her answer was two arms pulling him to roll on top of her so she could give him another more physical answer.

She groaned out audibly but with a playful tone that bordered on a teasing moan. "I hate that word," she complained with a touch of play.

Benjamin Ryan was careful to carry his weight on his arms at either side of Jamie's much smaller body. "Which word?" He matched her tone as he looked down at her with a brilliant and slightly disheveled smile. "Sexy?" His head dipped down so he could press a kiss to the hollow of her throat, and then her collar and slowly up the side of her neck.

"Boyfriend," she swallowed more thickly with the word. "It doesn't seem appropriate for this thing we're doing now." He hovered over her, his body just barely grazing hers, but never letting his weight rest on her sore and injured bones. He knew now, after months of surrounding himself with this incredible human being, when she was hurting and when she was fired up. He knew when she was aching and needed a tender touch and when she wanted something hotter and stronger. He knew when to speed up and where to touch her to drive her wild and when to go slow and soft and where to stroke gently. Even when she kissed him the way she was now, her lips and tongue and taste intoxicating to nearly every sense of his, he knew she was sore and aching and what level he should push and when to hold back. It was something beautiful in how effortless this relationship they shared had evolved, and yet how unimaginably complicated it was all at once. Despite it all however, Ben was convinced he loved her more today than he had any other day he had known her.

"You mean a lot more to me than just a 'boyfriend,'" she spoke more quietly when her kisses subsided and the pair found themselves curled back together in their original configuration. One of his arms was stretched under her pillow like a secondary support, his long fingers starting to draw lazy circles on the soft dip of her spine from under the loose cotton she wore. She half expected him to comment with something light and playful, but when he remained quiet her interest was peaked and she tilted her face up so she could catch a glimpse at his expression. To her surprise he was lost in thought.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked when the curiosity only increased. His smile was ever evident, the lazy circles on her shoulder steady and even, but the way he was watching something invisible on her ceiling was clue enough at the thoughts running through his head.

"I'm thinking about the best way to ask you something without scaring the hell out of you." he paused his circles and looked at her. "I'm coming up empty though."

She was almost giggling with her smile. "Just ask me," she stated so plainly.

"I don't know," he teased. "The last time I dropped a bomb on you without warning you ran away and I didn't see you for three years." He watched her frown at the reminder of a much darker time but it only made him smile because he knew after months of talking about it and trying to make up for lost time, they were finally healed enough to tease about it.

"Whatever it is, I'm not going to be doing much running for the next few weeks with my latest souvenir," she commented as she made a quick face of pain as she shifted her position slightly to pull herself closer to him.

She could see the words just begging to be spoken on his expression and felt something change over her before he even spoke them.

"Would you marry me?"

For a second she didn't move, her expression remaining unchanged, body frozen in its spot, not even a breath escaping her lungs and her entire mind and thought process suddenly blank like a cleared erase board. When Ben didn't falter, her eyes grew wider, her mouth fell slightly ajar, and her entire body tensed against his.

"Not now," he added quickly. "Just...one day I want to marry you and I want to know if that's something you would consider."

Her mouth opened as if to speak but the words were lost on her lips, her eyes darting from one of his eyes to the other, looking for any sign of play. There wasn't any however, and as the realization of the real meaning of his question weighed down on her she only grew more alarmed.

"See, that's why I was trying to think of a better way to bring it up," Ben commented in an attempt to lighten the suddenly heavy mood.

"I…" she was still lost for words. "I don't know." She finally settled on those three words. "I don't know," she repeated as if she had to convince herself.

"Well, you can think about it," his voice was much lower this time. His hand resumed the circles it was drawing on her skin and he let his head fall back again into the pillows.

"I mean I'm here only partially legally, I have a job but I'm broke, I somehow manage to remember to drive on the right side of the road, and I'm 10,000 miles from my hometown. Even if you tried to get rid of me at this point there's literally no where for me to go." He said the last part with a bit of amusement, but she knew from his subtler undertones that it was more than a joke.

The pair grew quiet again, the sounds from outside softly invading the space as their silence grew.

"Do you miss your family back home?" She asked him quietly. Her thin fingers in front of her fidgeted with lint on his cotton shirt.

"Some times more than others," he admitted. "But I would miss you a lot more than I miss them right now."

She couldn't help but smile at the words.

"I knew what I was doing when I took that job for my sister's friend to photograph her wedding. Even if I got the ticket half price, I didn't make enough from that job to make flying 10,000 miles worth it. I took that job for the unlikely chance I would run into you."

"Maybe we can go back for the holidays," Jamie spoke up softly.

"Maybe." He smiled a little brighter, reflexively bringing her even closer to his body.

"Why would you want to marry me?" She finally asked after an uncomfortable amount of silence. Ben's initial reply was a ragged, heavy breath. "I'm not a wife." She added the last bit with a sound of distaste and what almost was perceived as annoyance.

His smile was soft and sincere, and even in the pounding deep in her chest and racing panic surging in her head, she felt an easy in his eyes.

When Jamie didn't make another sound or even physical movement and several moments passed, Ben finally took the initiative and broke his eye contact to sit up and out of bed. Jamie stayed in her spot, still frozen in her position, curled at the center of the bed as she watched him silently with tense eyes. He was slow but at ease as he fumbled around the room with purpose but never quite in a hurry. She followed him with her eyes, the tension in her body seeming to fade slowly as she watched him pick up some discarded articles of clothing around the room. Her eyes traced all the curves and lines of his skin as the muscles under his skin stretched and flexed as he exchanged the shirt he had slept in for something clean he'd managed to scavenge.

"Do you think they're going to send you out this week?" His words were still soft and vague, but she knew what he was asking about. After the first few trips she'd been shipped out on since he'd moved in with her, he'd begun to form a sense of her routine, even if she couldn't actually tell him about it.

Not trusting her voice to remain firm, a shrug of her shoulder was the only answer she gave, but it was answer enough for him...for now at least.

Ben finished pulling on some jeans and rummaging through the littered floor to find some shoes. He mumbled something about what happened while she was gone, but it was all fuzzy to her ears. Jamie vaguely understood him mentioning an errand he had to run, and a moment later he was leaning over her for a kiss. His lips were soft and warm, but they barely lingered a moment before he retracted.

"I love you," he spoke much more softly this time, and without a second thought, briskly made his way out of the room and a moment later, out of the apartment.

Jamie could only blink. She knew she loved Ben, and she was fairly certain she loved Ben with all of her being and in such a way that other couples could only dream of loving one another. He was her rock and her foundation when everything seemed to crumble, and the paste and tape that managed to keep her together when she felt like she was shattered and falling apart. All of this, however, did little to settle the uneasiness deep in the pit of her stomach.

Her phone dinged crisply through the air, successfully attracted her attention. It was a reminder that had thoroughly served its purpose now - she had long forgotten about her lunch plans.

Feeling a violent whirl in her gut, Jamie Elizabeth Anderson finally gained up the courage to carefully make her way out of bed with as little jostling of her injuries as possible. After All, people did not usually keep Auggie Anderson waiting, and right now, she really felt like she could use some insight from her sightless father.

Deep in the stuffy bar, the hushed voices and sounds of feet and stools filled the large and only slightly crowded space. When Jamie Anderson had entered the establishment, the first thing she had noted was that he father had yet to arrive, which honestly was to her benefit. She sat in a stool at a small table to the side but close enough to the front that she could keep an eye on the door. Even as impressively well established as Auggie Anderson was, she wasn't about to test her father's capabilities now.

She watched the minutes pass as she waited, but she didn't notice the time, her mind swirling and clouding her concentration. Through the voices and sounds of the stuffy room, Jamie's mind replayed the conversation and abrupt proposal from earlier that morning and her stomach gave and nauseating twists just thinking about it.

The opening of a door abruptly cut her concentration and her eyes were instantly on the entrance of the establishment. When a very familiar grey head popped up from the front step and open door, Jamie's smile burst through her much more solemn expression and she immediately jumped up from her perch in excitement.

"Dad!" her voice was almost unrecognizable to her own ears, but she didn't dwell on it much. She watched her father smile sprout as soon as he heard her voice and it somehow calmed her own self.

"I was worried your taxi would take you to the wrong place," the young woman mused lightly as she wove past a man in her path and finally reached for her father's arm and let him hold her elbow as she guided him back to her table in a way that seemed so familiar, it was second nature to her.

"Well you're mother's meeting me later on when this is over," her father spoke casually as Jamie flagged down an order for a beer. "...So eventually one of you would notice I'd vanished if that were the case." Though his words were light and casual, Jamie Anderson knew for the look in her blind parent's eyes that he was picking up on every sound and movement she was making.

"So," her father started after an uneasy silence between the pair. She knew just from the syllable that he was fishing. "Are you going to tell me why you dragged your poor, old, and blind father to a bar across town, or am I going to have to guess?"

She couldn't resist the smile she sprouted at her father's voice, even if he was inviting her to cut to the chase. "You know how a read-in works, right?" She didn't even bother masking the abrupt change to seriousness.

"My daughter is finally reading me in on her real life," he said much more quietly. "Never thought I'd see the day." A sly smile broke his unmoving expression and Jamie couldn't help but smile in turn. "Figuratively speaking of course."

"I got offered an interim head position, but I'm not sure what I want to do with the offer." She attempted to start somewhere simple, but the words felt falsified and strangled in her mouth and she was well aware that her father was picking up on that small detail just as well. Her eyes followed her father's hand as it slowly reached for hers and she concentrated on her breathing and stillness of her hand, but as soon as her father's larger and warmer hand held her much smaller one, she felt her resolve crumble and disintegrate around her like she was a child all over again, telling her daddy about her problems at school and most recent heartache. He didn't even have to say anything, the air between them saying all the words she knew he was speaking through his hand and giving her a reassurance and warmth that just made her want to be ten again and let her daddy reassure her that everything was going to be alright. Before she realized the effect it played on her, the words were spilling out of her mouth like a goop of senselessness.

"I've been in therapy." She shook her head. "That was probably the worst place to start," she confessed. She didn't admit that it was also irrelevant to the actual reason behind her meeting her father here in the first place, but by her father's next reaction, it seemed he knew already.

"Just tell me everything you think you need to, Jamie." And she did. The words just started to spew. She started talking about how hard it was thinking of all the accomplishments her mother and her father had in their "family business," and how she couldn't pinpoint why it was so difficult for her. She avoided labels and names, and stayed broad on subject. She mentioned some incidents and unrelated details, and that time Alex had to get her out of the tank when she broke some stupid bastard's nose for insinuating she was an object existing for his pleasure. She talked about the first time she went to Australia; she tripped over that damn tripod, and quite literally fell for Ben. She hadn't intended to spill all the details, but before she had a moment to think about it, a half dazed thought of that man that was plaguing her heart still today turned into the confession she hadn't intended to divulge.

"I was pregnant."

The room almost felt to physically drop by ten degrees. Jamie didn't dare look at her father, but by the way he suddenly went rigid and the way she could almost feel the breath freeze in his throat, she knew her confession had done something.

"I didn't even know I was pregnant until I miscarried," she spoke with a tiny voice like some tearful child in attempts to remedy the situation she had created. Unfortunately, the additional information only steered the conversation in the direction of Ben, and before Jamie had a chance to find her footing in the exchange, Auggie was questioning the very reason as to why she fled Australia and left Ben behind those few years ago and created this whole mess.

"No!" Her voice rose in startle as the accusation turned to her loveable Australian in question. "He was…" her voice began to drift off. "He was wonderful...he didn't want me to go." It struck the woman then that this was the first time she had admitted the fact.

"Jamie," her father's abrupt voice broke her haze, and when she looked him in those sightless eyes, she saw something in them that she'd never seen before. He didn't need to say anything else; she knew. Like it or not, she knew what he was saying and what he was asking, and that was what was surprising her the most. She didn't need to tell her father how she'd run into Ben again because he was currently in the States under contract with an advertising agency, or that her possible promotion was on the rocks because of Ben. Just as she had, Auggie Anderson just knew.

Auggie Anderson just knew, and somehow, she knew too.

Time blurred. She didn't remember leaving the bar, saying goodbye, or racing back home. She was simply sitting with her father one moment and then everything clicked and the next thing she knew she was pushing open her apartment door with more than necessary force, her frantic eyes searching for the unlikely chance that he was already there because she couldn't wait to tell him.

And he was. Her eyes fell on him almost instantly and her heart thudded thunderously in her chest. It was all in slow motion. She saw him there, or at least the back of him. Large, overstuffed headphones over his ears, hair sticking and curling in every angle and direction, focus completely engrossed in the screen in front of him. It was a scene so strangely ordinary and domestic she couldn't imagine it being part of her life...and yet, she didn't want to lose it either.

She didn't run, she didn't fly, and she didn't even rush. Her eyes locked on his form like he was the answer to everything she'd questioned the past handful of years, she took one step after another, who body slow and her focus unfaltering. She didn't ask permission as she turned him, his eyes catching hers silently as she sat in his lap, her body facing his and took two small hands to the sides of his face and pulled him in for a kiss. It was electric and explosive all at once, a kiss so deep and powerful that it made the entire world stop spinning on its axis.

"Now that's not something I get all the time," Ben spoke out breathlessly with a chuckle when they finally parted. She wanted to melt into his body or absorb him in through her skin.

"Yes." It was only a single word she managed to breathlessly let out.

"Yes?" He cocked an eyebrow in confusion and question.

"Yes," she repeated with a fluttering heart and racing pulse that left her soaring into something unimaginable. This was the beginning of something new, and with him there to be her sturdy foundation, she had the courage to break her own rules. "Yes I want to marry you."

Author's Note:

I am so sorry. There isn't even excuse for how late my update is. A million thank you's to MarieKing for even reaching out and asking me what I was doing with this. (And I am so sorry I didn't get it up by last friday like I had promised.)

So...not sure what I'm going to do with Jamie and Ben now. I'm thinking this little tale is over...maybe.

I do have a Time Frame update coming up. Its almost done, and its pretty cute. Involves Annie and Jamie but mainly Annie reminiscing on her and Auggie's relationship.

I'm always looking for new ideas, and I wouldn't be apposed to starting a brand new Covert Affairs fanfiction (even one away from the "Timeline" universe) so if you ever get an idea and want someone to brainstorm with, my inbox is always open. =]

Lots of Love,

-Liz