Traces of Fall
Title: Traces of Fall
Author: ardvari
Rating: PG
Pairing: Original (Lindsay/Jamie)
Beta: princessklutz04 :)
A/N: This is part two of the tetralogy of stories explaining how Lindsay and Jamie met. Part one can be found here.
Traces of Fall
The first time Lindsay had gone out with another woman had been right smack in the middle of her university career. She still remembered how she had stood in front of her closet, wondering whether the place they were going to was called “Cosy’s Bar” or “Cozy Bar” because her footwear hinged on the difference between the “s” and the “z”.
In the end the footwear hadn’t mattered much and Lindsay had learned that someone who took her to Cosy’s Bar in pleated pinstripe pants on a casual first date was probably not someone she’d miss vanishing from her life an hour after having entered it.
Curling her toes against the hardwood floor, she smiled as she stared into a closet that was removed from her previous one by roughly the width of an entire country. The ceiling fan circled above her head, a welcome breeze that stirred her hair. Jamie wouldn’t show up wearing pleated pinstripe pants. She probably didn’t even own a pair of pinstripe pants, if their coffee date had been any indication. Jamie with the pixie hair had waltzed into the café on the tail end of a hot gust of wind, sat down across from her with a toothy grin, and had announced that, in this weather, she found it an act against human rights that clothes were required to be worn in public at all.
Jamie and the things she said with the absent-minded grace of someone who usually expressed her feelings through paint and charcoal weren’t quite what Lindsay had expected to find down here. Not in this part of the country, so steeped in hard-headed tradition and beliefs that went beyond anything she’d experienced before.
In another part of town, Jamie slammed the door of her car, green and dusty, and tried to rub the charcoal stain on her thumb off on her jeans. She didn’t know that there was another streak of charcoal on her cheek, following the delicate line of her cheekbone like a battle scar, identifying her as the artist she was.
“Damnation,” she muttered under her breath as she clambered up the stairs to her apartment. She was late, something she usually avoided being. Unfortunately she couldn’t simply kick any customers out of the book store. Not even when they spent an hour discussing the attributes of romantic comedies in the war history section. Not even then because business wasn’t exactly great and if she started kicking customers out, she would be out of her job for sure.
She burst into her apartment, dropped her notebook and a few sticks of charcoal that broke as soon as they hit the floor. At least she’d been able to draw while waiting. Small blessings…
Working the black coal dust into the cracked hardwood floor with her sock-clad toe, she held the phone to her ear and listened to the dull, jerky ring. She hoped, prayed even that Lindsay hadn’t left yet.
“Hello?” Lindsay’s voice held the slightest bit of contempt for whoever was calling her right this second, of all the possible seconds to have called her.
“Hey, it’s me. Jamie,” the blonde replied, slightly out of breath and with her stomach in knots.
“Oh, hey. I was just on my way out the… wait. Are you canceling on me?”
“No! No, definitely not. But I’m going to be unconventional, since I seem to remember that you aren’t too fond of conventions either. Come over to my place. I’ll cook you dinner. I bet my cooking skills are better than the cook’s at the restaurant anyways. And we can always go back to that place later. To check, y’know?” Jamie broke off, holding her breath as the silence stretched across the phone line.
“Are you going to tie me to your bed and tickle me with a feather?” Lindsay asked, amused by Jamie’s babbling and oddly at ease with this woman she’d only known for a few weeks.
“What? No!” Jamie said, her voice climbing a few octaves before she realized Lindsay was kidding. “Not unless you’re into that sort of thing and even then I’d most definitely wait until after I cooked you dinner,” she countered, glad to have her equilibrium back.
“Well, in that case… how can I resist? It’ll take me 45 minutes to get to your place, is that enough time for you to impress me with your cooking skills?”
“Definitely,” Jamie said.
Cooking was something else Jamie did with a passion. It was something that gave her a creative outlet without leaving black dust in the crevices of her life, marking her as someone that hadn’t quite grown into herself yet.
She spent the next half hour in the kitchen, dicing and boiling, marinating and steaming. She changed her clothes, swept the remains of her charcoal sticks into the trash and managed to pour just enough white wine into her sauce to make it perfect. 45 minutes gave her just enough time to prepare everything without getting too nervous. It left her some time to breathe and not enough for her stomach to do flip flops.
Lindsay, on the other hand, had enough time to think about all the things she’d been taught were appropriate on a second date. High school rules, college rules, the things her mother had told her. The rules she had broken a couple of times, cringing at some memories and smirking at others. Either way, given the right opportunity, some rules were meant to be broken.
Slowing down her car, she looked for a house that matched Jamie’s description. Turquoise, two story, white trim, jazz club. She found it quickly, aided by its bright color and the music pouring out of its open doors as she parked her car. Oddly excited about the fact that she would get to see where Jamie lived, Lindsay climbed the iron stairs, a bouquet of flowers in one hand. She knocked, cleared her throat, leaned back on her heels and rolled her eyes at herself for feeling so amusingly awkward.
“Hey!” Jamie pulled open the door a little too forcefully, the rush of air scattering the loose pages out of her notebook across the floor; black and white landscapes in an ocean of wall colors that had never heard of the notion of pastel.
“Hey!” Lindsay was slightly startled by the grass green walls, the pallid furniture, the slice of royal blue that found its way around a corner and, apparently, into the next room. “I brought you flowers,” she stammered.
“Thanks,” Jamie smiled, a smile that reached her eyes and made them sparkle. She took the flowers and, throwing caution to the wind to make the butterflies in her belly dance, leaned forward to kiss Lindsay on the cheek. Blushing slightly, she took a step back and dipped her head to invite Lindsay inside.
“You’re welcome. I thought you might like them. Plus, I didn’t know what you were cooking, so I didn’t want to bring red wine if, say, we’d be having fish,” the brunette babbled, her arms accentuating everything she said.
Jamie nodded and grinned. They were still standing across from each other, caught by their own awkwardness and momentarily at a loss for words. Swallowing, Jamie finally took a step forward, dropping the flowers on a side table and moving towards Lindsay until the tips of their toes touched.
“I think we need to get this out of the way,” she whispered, her breath warm and sweet as it tickled along Lindsay’s jaw. Before Lindsay could reply, Jamie moved in, stroking her lips across the brunette’s.
They stayed like that for a moment, connected only by the fragile touch of their lips sending tingles up their spines. Lindsay’s hand eventually found its way up Jamie’s arm to cup the back of her head and pull her in closer. It felt sweet and right, the way her tongue mapped out the curves of Jamie’s lips, the way Jamie’s arms circled around her hips.
When they came up for air, Jamie smiled gently at the flush in Lindsay’s cheeks.
“Well, that certainly cleared the air. Are you ready for some food?” she asked.
“S-sure. Food would be great.” Lindsay stammered, holding on to Jamie’s hand as the blonde led her to the kitchen.
Author: ardvari
Rating: PG
Pairing: Original (Lindsay/Jamie)
Beta: princessklutz04 :)
A/N: This is part two of the tetralogy of stories explaining how Lindsay and Jamie met. Part one can be found here.
Traces of Fall
The first time Lindsay had gone out with another woman had been right smack in the middle of her university career. She still remembered how she had stood in front of her closet, wondering whether the place they were going to was called “Cosy’s Bar” or “Cozy Bar” because her footwear hinged on the difference between the “s” and the “z”.
In the end the footwear hadn’t mattered much and Lindsay had learned that someone who took her to Cosy’s Bar in pleated pinstripe pants on a casual first date was probably not someone she’d miss vanishing from her life an hour after having entered it.
Curling her toes against the hardwood floor, she smiled as she stared into a closet that was removed from her previous one by roughly the width of an entire country. The ceiling fan circled above her head, a welcome breeze that stirred her hair. Jamie wouldn’t show up wearing pleated pinstripe pants. She probably didn’t even own a pair of pinstripe pants, if their coffee date had been any indication. Jamie with the pixie hair had waltzed into the café on the tail end of a hot gust of wind, sat down across from her with a toothy grin, and had announced that, in this weather, she found it an act against human rights that clothes were required to be worn in public at all.
Jamie and the things she said with the absent-minded grace of someone who usually expressed her feelings through paint and charcoal weren’t quite what Lindsay had expected to find down here. Not in this part of the country, so steeped in hard-headed tradition and beliefs that went beyond anything she’d experienced before.
In another part of town, Jamie slammed the door of her car, green and dusty, and tried to rub the charcoal stain on her thumb off on her jeans. She didn’t know that there was another streak of charcoal on her cheek, following the delicate line of her cheekbone like a battle scar, identifying her as the artist she was.
“Damnation,” she muttered under her breath as she clambered up the stairs to her apartment. She was late, something she usually avoided being. Unfortunately she couldn’t simply kick any customers out of the book store. Not even when they spent an hour discussing the attributes of romantic comedies in the war history section. Not even then because business wasn’t exactly great and if she started kicking customers out, she would be out of her job for sure.
She burst into her apartment, dropped her notebook and a few sticks of charcoal that broke as soon as they hit the floor. At least she’d been able to draw while waiting. Small blessings…
Working the black coal dust into the cracked hardwood floor with her sock-clad toe, she held the phone to her ear and listened to the dull, jerky ring. She hoped, prayed even that Lindsay hadn’t left yet.
“Hello?” Lindsay’s voice held the slightest bit of contempt for whoever was calling her right this second, of all the possible seconds to have called her.
“Hey, it’s me. Jamie,” the blonde replied, slightly out of breath and with her stomach in knots.
“Oh, hey. I was just on my way out the… wait. Are you canceling on me?”
“No! No, definitely not. But I’m going to be unconventional, since I seem to remember that you aren’t too fond of conventions either. Come over to my place. I’ll cook you dinner. I bet my cooking skills are better than the cook’s at the restaurant anyways. And we can always go back to that place later. To check, y’know?” Jamie broke off, holding her breath as the silence stretched across the phone line.
“Are you going to tie me to your bed and tickle me with a feather?” Lindsay asked, amused by Jamie’s babbling and oddly at ease with this woman she’d only known for a few weeks.
“What? No!” Jamie said, her voice climbing a few octaves before she realized Lindsay was kidding. “Not unless you’re into that sort of thing and even then I’d most definitely wait until after I cooked you dinner,” she countered, glad to have her equilibrium back.
“Well, in that case… how can I resist? It’ll take me 45 minutes to get to your place, is that enough time for you to impress me with your cooking skills?”
“Definitely,” Jamie said.
Cooking was something else Jamie did with a passion. It was something that gave her a creative outlet without leaving black dust in the crevices of her life, marking her as someone that hadn’t quite grown into herself yet.
She spent the next half hour in the kitchen, dicing and boiling, marinating and steaming. She changed her clothes, swept the remains of her charcoal sticks into the trash and managed to pour just enough white wine into her sauce to make it perfect. 45 minutes gave her just enough time to prepare everything without getting too nervous. It left her some time to breathe and not enough for her stomach to do flip flops.
Lindsay, on the other hand, had enough time to think about all the things she’d been taught were appropriate on a second date. High school rules, college rules, the things her mother had told her. The rules she had broken a couple of times, cringing at some memories and smirking at others. Either way, given the right opportunity, some rules were meant to be broken.
Slowing down her car, she looked for a house that matched Jamie’s description. Turquoise, two story, white trim, jazz club. She found it quickly, aided by its bright color and the music pouring out of its open doors as she parked her car. Oddly excited about the fact that she would get to see where Jamie lived, Lindsay climbed the iron stairs, a bouquet of flowers in one hand. She knocked, cleared her throat, leaned back on her heels and rolled her eyes at herself for feeling so amusingly awkward.
“Hey!” Jamie pulled open the door a little too forcefully, the rush of air scattering the loose pages out of her notebook across the floor; black and white landscapes in an ocean of wall colors that had never heard of the notion of pastel.
“Hey!” Lindsay was slightly startled by the grass green walls, the pallid furniture, the slice of royal blue that found its way around a corner and, apparently, into the next room. “I brought you flowers,” she stammered.
“Thanks,” Jamie smiled, a smile that reached her eyes and made them sparkle. She took the flowers and, throwing caution to the wind to make the butterflies in her belly dance, leaned forward to kiss Lindsay on the cheek. Blushing slightly, she took a step back and dipped her head to invite Lindsay inside.
“You’re welcome. I thought you might like them. Plus, I didn’t know what you were cooking, so I didn’t want to bring red wine if, say, we’d be having fish,” the brunette babbled, her arms accentuating everything she said.
Jamie nodded and grinned. They were still standing across from each other, caught by their own awkwardness and momentarily at a loss for words. Swallowing, Jamie finally took a step forward, dropping the flowers on a side table and moving towards Lindsay until the tips of their toes touched.
“I think we need to get this out of the way,” she whispered, her breath warm and sweet as it tickled along Lindsay’s jaw. Before Lindsay could reply, Jamie moved in, stroking her lips across the brunette’s.
They stayed like that for a moment, connected only by the fragile touch of their lips sending tingles up their spines. Lindsay’s hand eventually found its way up Jamie’s arm to cup the back of her head and pull her in closer. It felt sweet and right, the way her tongue mapped out the curves of Jamie’s lips, the way Jamie’s arms circled around her hips.
When they came up for air, Jamie smiled gently at the flush in Lindsay’s cheeks.
“Well, that certainly cleared the air. Are you ready for some food?” she asked.
“S-sure. Food would be great.” Lindsay stammered, holding on to Jamie’s hand as the blonde led her to the kitchen.