For musesandlyrics | 1.21 Lasso Lyrics
1.21. Forever is a long long time
When you lost your way
'Lasso' - Phoenix
Co-written with agentfraser | Follows THIS
By the time James and Izzy's conversation eased to an end, James had a slight fuzzy confusion in his head. His hands were shaking slightly, too, the stress clearly throwing off his bloo sugar levels. He stopped at the vending machine in the foyer to get a bottle of orange juice and contemplated booking in to a hotel in Princeton for the night so he could rest and not have to worry about driving all the way back to the city while he was feeling a little off. The talk with Izzy had left him drained and confused.
As he rode the elevator up to the ICU, he flipped his wallet open and pulled out Harri's most recent ultrasound picture at six months, taken about two weeks ago. So much had changed in the last six months that James was stunned he had even retained his sanity. Ironically, it was about a year to the day that Ali revealed she was pregnant, a year since the huge blow up where James found her ultrasound photo and thought it had been Izzy's, and that she was pregnant with his kid. It had all been such a huge mess, and it only happened because Ali had been terrified about what she was facing. A year since James promised her he would be there for her, no matter what. A false promise. A promise that could've have ruined them all. Back then, he had been spooked and horrified at the prospect Izzy was pregnant. He had knew his SS recruitment was pending, sure, but that was one of the last things that had crossed his mind with it all. It terrified him because it threatened to give him hope, and threatened to give him a purpose not to walk away like he had been building up to over a year. When he found out it wasn't Izzy, the disappointment had choked him up. It wasn't meant to be, and he used it as an excuse to convince himself that the SS had been the right move all along.
Without a doubt, the whole thing had just been an avalanche of bad judgment on his part. Not bad judgment in regards to his career, but extremely bad and painful judgment when it came to his personal life, his personal feelings, what he really wanted deep down and was too frightened to let himself admit to. Now with Izzy's revelation that she was pregnant with the footballer, it had forced all the feelings James at tried to lock away back to the forefront. A year ago, he had wanted Izzy to have his baby, and it was something he had never admitted to her. He just slammed his barriers up so he didn't get hurt again. That had been the story of his life since he lost David. He didn't run away like Izzy, he just built walls around himself that anyone else found impossible to breach. Throwing himself into his work was always the answer. Telling people he was committment phobic was a secondary tactic. Those two protective mechanisms had been a bad mix and sent his life into a lonely, fiery mess.
Then Harri infiltrated his new life when he was trying his hardest to remain indifferent to everything to pull off the masquerade. And that is all it had been. A charade. He knew now that he was never going to pull it off forever. He could never survive without the small handful of people he loved more than life itself. He just hadn't been able to see any of that before it was all falling apart around him. Now Harri and Izzy were both pregnant. James wanted to be a father now, and he loved Harri. He did. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake that deep-seated yearning he had unknowingly harboured to have everything Harri was giving him from Izzy. He started to feel a little sick with the discontent, like it was dipping the floor under his world and making him dizzy. He put the ultrasound photo away as the elevator dinged, and he took a long drink of the juice as he exited the elevator. He found Harri sitting on one of the benches lining the stark hospital corridor, looking into a room across from her. As James approached, he could see she was watching Aiden in Pat's hospital room. James swallowed and sat down beside her, the juice cupped in his hands. "Surprise," he told her with a small smile.
Harri was so used to sitting quietly lately, that it was almost a surprise to find James sitting next to her, and talking to her. Isabel was here for Cameron, but she seemed to be avoiding Harri again. It shouldn't have been a surprise. Harri got on a lot better with Ali lately, but James' wife/ex/best friend was a whole other thing. Sometimes she thought she should try harder, other times she wasn't so sure why she should try.
Harri glanced at James, and smiled a little, before her gaze was back on Aiden in Pat's room. "People don't understand how hard it is to wait... They don't understand how draining it is just sitting in a chair and watching someone who's unconcious. All the thoughts that go through your head, all the stress that keeps you from ever really sleeping. I hate that I know how he feels." She rubbed her hand against her swollen belly, and looked at James again. "I always knew doing something like this for Aiden would never be a problem. He's my best friend, and he's my family. I love him no matter what. I didn't think I had it in me to sit vigil by your bedside when you went in that coma, but I did. I didn't think I'd have the patience to stick around through all that spy crap... but I did. I didn't think I had it in me to be pregnant, but I am."
She looked down at her bump, and sighed. "You've given me a lot, and I can't bring myself to actually regret any of it, because you showed me I'm not just some ice bitch. I have a heart, and I can use it. I don't regret getting knocked up, even if I whinge a lot. And I do love you... I'm just not her, and I never was. I don't want to be someone's placeholder. Waiting's not always a conscious thing. Some of us wait for what we always wanted, and we're not always smart enough to recognise it until it's gone."
James tried to wrap his head around what she was saying. He was trying to follow, but it wasn't really coming clearly. "Not who?" he asked. "I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me," he admitted, watching her closely with a frown of confusion.
"I'm not Isabel," Harri told him quietly. "She didn't wait because she thought you were dead. You didn't give yourself a chance to wait because you assumed you weren't ever allowed to go back to her, or see her."
James wet his lips and went to say something, but he stopped, needing a couple more moments to process what he should say. "Well, yeah..." he finally answered. "I'm not Pat, either, or Aiden. Neither is Izzy. I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me here, babe. You need to give me a bit more to work with. Has something happened between you and Izzy?" Strange, because Izzy didn't mention anything like that.
Harri smirked a little. "Not directly. She just doesn't seem interested in being left alone with me. It's just watching Aiden with Pat, I remember the look on her face when she came to sit with me while you were in hospital. I don't know if I had the same look. I wouldn't even know if you'd have the same look if anything happened to me." Harri reached up to rub her fingers against her forehead. "You do get the same look sometimes when you look at her. Even just hanging out."
"Izzy has... a bit of a little internal, uh, issue right now," James told her, finding himself wanting to offload the news to Harri, but knowing Aiden didn't know could make it really messy for Cameron, and he didn't want to cause the poor bastard more stress. "I don't think anyone really has the same look in situations like this. Everyone deals with it in a different way. You've got to remember that Izzy's sat with me through that twice before. The first time, I nearly died and I got sick on a stakeout with her." He paused and exhaled heavily, rubbing at his own head. Somewhere along the line, he lost the ability to follow a pregnant woman's train of thought, and he had three of them to deal with now.
Harri frowned. "She has a little internal issue?" She just snorted, and reached over for her bottle of water she had on the chair on the other side of her. It was hard to rest things in her lap when she didn't feel as if she had one, or could barely see it. "Are you always going to be waiting for her?"
"Yeah, it seems to be going around." James scratched at his head and then started to pick at the label of the bottle. He felt like a whole conspiracy had been built with everyone while he had been in New York. Why was this all suddenly an issue all at once. "I'm not waiting for her, and have you been talking to Cameron?"
"No, but neither of us are blind. Alright, so maybe not waiting for her, but you still love her and you still want her." Harri took a sip of water, her gaze flicking back to Aiden and Pat briefly. "What's Cameron said?"
James put his juice down and folded his shaking hands together in front of him. "It's not how you think," he told her quietly. "We just haven't had any closure. That's what Cameron was talking to her about earlier."
"What kind of closure?" She reached out to cover his hands with one of hers, and gave him a small smile. "You okay?"
James nodded and cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'm fine, mostly. Maybe just conflicted. My blood sugar levels don't deal well with emotional stress. They never have." He let out a slow breath. "Physical closure, emotional closure, all of it, really. Things were up in the air when I left. When the SS called on my recruitment, I had to go. There was no time to get much closure with anything, not even my family. My brother still doesn't open up to me much anymore. That's a whole other issue. I'm just really confused in general right now, but it doesn't mean I don't love you any less. Or that I don't want to be with you."
"So what do you need to get closure?" She gave his hands a squeeze and leaned over to kiss his cheek. "You were dead, love. I think the movies tend to gloss over the effect ressurections have on family. Your brother's probably still dealing with the shock of everything that happend. Your walking sparked a lot of different reactions, and they were still dealing with fallout when you came back. That's not to say you shouldn't have come back, but you have to realise it'll still take a while for things to settle."
"I do realise, it just doesn't make it easier for me to swallow. I've got to live with what I did every single day. I see it in their eyes," James murmured, hunching forward a little. "Cameron told Izzy, or rather, gave her his blessing, to sleep with me for closure. He thought it's what she needed, that maybe he wasn't ever going to really have her love him while I was still hanging around in the sidelines."
"I'm sorry, love, I didn't say it to rub it in. I'm only telling you because you should realise it means you have to give yourself time as well. You lost a lot, too." Harri blinked, her face very carefully kept straight so she didn't betray her initial reaction. Truth was, she shouldn't be surprised. It probably was the most logical thing. It didn't actually hurt as much as she thought, either. She assumed to feel like she was getting cheated on, but she didn't. Probably because technically she was the other woman. She didn't exactly deserve to get high and mighty in this decision. "I'll give you a week."
James' forehead creased as he looked at her uncertainly. "You'll give me a week?" he asked, unable to hide the skepticism in his tone. Suddenly, the whole thing made him feel weird, like he had been dumped into the middle of a fucked up version of Indecent Proposal. And it almost made him feel sick. Harri would give him a week. He took his hand from hers to hug himself, trying to brush away the weird feeling crawling over his skin now. "Yeah, I'll pass. Cheers."
"I'm trying to help! I'm sorry," she huffed out as she hugged her own arms around her bump. She was getting a little past the idea of the big bump. She missed her little stylish one. The one that said 'I'm pregnant', and not 'I'm a bus'. Plus she could still work out where to put her arms. "I've never had to deal with this before. I'm just trying to find my way."
James shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I'm not going to do it. I already feel enough like a whore right now. It's a non-issue. Izzy and I are just going to have to deal with it some other way." Why did they both have to be pregnant? Why did everything always suck so much?
Harri looked at him. "Why do you feel like a whore?"
"I don't know. I just know that telling me I have a week made me feel cheap and made me realise how fucked up this whole thing is," James said honestly. He put his hand up to his mouth and bit on his thumb nail, looking down at his pristine polished shoes. "It's tough shit, but we're just going to have to deal with it however. It took me long enough to realise sex wasn't just a hobby. I'm not stuffing around with that now when my head is already fucked up as it is."
"I didn't mean a week like that. Or right now. Just, it's a huge deal. Finding closure just doesn't happen. Even if sleeping together helps, you need time to know for sure, and to do... whatever. Arrange it. I don't know. I'm not trying to make you feel cheap. I'm just saying it's not going to happen over night. If it did, then that would make me wonder about the cheapness thing." Harri reached out to try and take his hand again. "Me and Cameron are just trying to understand. What you and Izzy had was huge. No one's trying to pretend otherwise. But maybe he has a point. No closure, then how does he know he does have her?"
James squeezed her hand, but he was shifting restlessly on the seat. He couldn't tell anymore if it was his blood sugar or just emotional discontent. "She's pregnant."
"Does Cameron know?" Harri found herself asking before she could stop the words spilling out.
James nodded. "Yeah, she told him. But Aiden doesn't know, and neither does Pat. I'm guessing that's probably why Cameron's been so cut up, on top of everything else."
Harri pressed her lips together. She didn't like keeping secrets from Aiden, but she understood. "I won't say a word." She sat and watched James quietly for a long moment. "How do you feel about it?"
"Strange," James admitted quietly. "There was," he began but had to stop and wet his lips, a frown appearing on his face. "When Ali fell pregnant the first time, she hid it. She hid it really really well. Plus, me being completely oblivious to women's feelings in general, I didn't even notice something was off beyond Ali seeming to be in a bad mood twenty-four-seven. Plus, she was sick, but she told me it was food poisoning, and I actually believed her. Threw up all over my Italian leather shoes and I was still oblivious. But at work one day, I found an ultrasound photo in Izzy's draw. I jumped to the wrong the conclusions. I guess this is just dragging up strange memories."
"You know it's okay to remember, right? You don't have to worry about how I'm going to feel. It's stupid to think you wouldn't be attached to memories, and even the present. I know if I had to go through what you did, I'd still feeling something for the person I left behind. You don't have to just put up with it, though. You said yourself it didn't lessen anything you felt for me, and I believe you. I might draw the line if you ever just start making out with her in front of me, but you don't have to try and hide your feelings. Hiding stuff is what started all this." Harri smiled softly. "And you'd think after Ali and the baby that you'd realise hiding never got anyone anywhere. I still don't know how she hid it so well. I'm lucky if I remember my underwear, let alone what act of espionage I should be keeping up with."
James smirked slightly. "I think it became second nature to her by that point. She wasn't just hiding it from me, it was from her work, from herself. I knew she was messed up, but she was okay by the time I left. She was starting to accept it and she had Izzy." He rubbed a hand roughly over his face. "I'm not purposefully hiding my feelings. It's just that I really can't tell anymore what I'm feeling, or what I'm supposed to be feeling. I'm not sure if any of it can really get resolved either way right now."
"And I guess this time around it's not some love child she's ashamed of." Harri gave a nod, and took another sip of water. "So we just plod along, one foot in front of the other?"
"This time, she's not alone," James corrected. "She was never ashamed of Jamie, she was ashamed of herself for how it came about." He sighed and shrugged. "I don't know anything anymore. I don't know what to think or say or do. It just all gives me a pounding headache."
"Feel free to catch some sleep," Harri offered as she slipped her arm around his shoulders, and brushed her fingers through the ends of his hair. "I feel exahusted, but probably not for the same reasons. I could just borrow Aiden's keys, and we could go back to his and Pat's place here. If it's not confusing taking a nap with me."
James shrugged. "I was going to check into a hotel. You should check with Aiden before you go, at least let him know where you're going so he doesn't freak out. Not to assume he's like me or anything, but when shit hits the fan for me, I'm usually hyper aware of where everyone is and when so I can make sure they're okay."
Harri leaned over to kiss his temple. "I don't think anyone is quite like you, love."
Words: 3279 | All muses referred to with permission and come from the princeton2nyc verse
When you lost your way
'Lasso' - Phoenix
Co-written with agentfraser | Follows THIS
By the time James and Izzy's conversation eased to an end, James had a slight fuzzy confusion in his head. His hands were shaking slightly, too, the stress clearly throwing off his bloo sugar levels. He stopped at the vending machine in the foyer to get a bottle of orange juice and contemplated booking in to a hotel in Princeton for the night so he could rest and not have to worry about driving all the way back to the city while he was feeling a little off. The talk with Izzy had left him drained and confused.
As he rode the elevator up to the ICU, he flipped his wallet open and pulled out Harri's most recent ultrasound picture at six months, taken about two weeks ago. So much had changed in the last six months that James was stunned he had even retained his sanity. Ironically, it was about a year to the day that Ali revealed she was pregnant, a year since the huge blow up where James found her ultrasound photo and thought it had been Izzy's, and that she was pregnant with his kid. It had all been such a huge mess, and it only happened because Ali had been terrified about what she was facing. A year since James promised her he would be there for her, no matter what. A false promise. A promise that could've have ruined them all. Back then, he had been spooked and horrified at the prospect Izzy was pregnant. He had knew his SS recruitment was pending, sure, but that was one of the last things that had crossed his mind with it all. It terrified him because it threatened to give him hope, and threatened to give him a purpose not to walk away like he had been building up to over a year. When he found out it wasn't Izzy, the disappointment had choked him up. It wasn't meant to be, and he used it as an excuse to convince himself that the SS had been the right move all along.
Without a doubt, the whole thing had just been an avalanche of bad judgment on his part. Not bad judgment in regards to his career, but extremely bad and painful judgment when it came to his personal life, his personal feelings, what he really wanted deep down and was too frightened to let himself admit to. Now with Izzy's revelation that she was pregnant with the footballer, it had forced all the feelings James at tried to lock away back to the forefront. A year ago, he had wanted Izzy to have his baby, and it was something he had never admitted to her. He just slammed his barriers up so he didn't get hurt again. That had been the story of his life since he lost David. He didn't run away like Izzy, he just built walls around himself that anyone else found impossible to breach. Throwing himself into his work was always the answer. Telling people he was committment phobic was a secondary tactic. Those two protective mechanisms had been a bad mix and sent his life into a lonely, fiery mess.
Then Harri infiltrated his new life when he was trying his hardest to remain indifferent to everything to pull off the masquerade. And that is all it had been. A charade. He knew now that he was never going to pull it off forever. He could never survive without the small handful of people he loved more than life itself. He just hadn't been able to see any of that before it was all falling apart around him. Now Harri and Izzy were both pregnant. James wanted to be a father now, and he loved Harri. He did. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake that deep-seated yearning he had unknowingly harboured to have everything Harri was giving him from Izzy. He started to feel a little sick with the discontent, like it was dipping the floor under his world and making him dizzy. He put the ultrasound photo away as the elevator dinged, and he took a long drink of the juice as he exited the elevator. He found Harri sitting on one of the benches lining the stark hospital corridor, looking into a room across from her. As James approached, he could see she was watching Aiden in Pat's hospital room. James swallowed and sat down beside her, the juice cupped in his hands. "Surprise," he told her with a small smile.
Harri was so used to sitting quietly lately, that it was almost a surprise to find James sitting next to her, and talking to her. Isabel was here for Cameron, but she seemed to be avoiding Harri again. It shouldn't have been a surprise. Harri got on a lot better with Ali lately, but James' wife/ex/best friend was a whole other thing. Sometimes she thought she should try harder, other times she wasn't so sure why she should try.
Harri glanced at James, and smiled a little, before her gaze was back on Aiden in Pat's room. "People don't understand how hard it is to wait... They don't understand how draining it is just sitting in a chair and watching someone who's unconcious. All the thoughts that go through your head, all the stress that keeps you from ever really sleeping. I hate that I know how he feels." She rubbed her hand against her swollen belly, and looked at James again. "I always knew doing something like this for Aiden would never be a problem. He's my best friend, and he's my family. I love him no matter what. I didn't think I had it in me to sit vigil by your bedside when you went in that coma, but I did. I didn't think I'd have the patience to stick around through all that spy crap... but I did. I didn't think I had it in me to be pregnant, but I am."
She looked down at her bump, and sighed. "You've given me a lot, and I can't bring myself to actually regret any of it, because you showed me I'm not just some ice bitch. I have a heart, and I can use it. I don't regret getting knocked up, even if I whinge a lot. And I do love you... I'm just not her, and I never was. I don't want to be someone's placeholder. Waiting's not always a conscious thing. Some of us wait for what we always wanted, and we're not always smart enough to recognise it until it's gone."
James tried to wrap his head around what she was saying. He was trying to follow, but it wasn't really coming clearly. "Not who?" he asked. "I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me," he admitted, watching her closely with a frown of confusion.
"I'm not Isabel," Harri told him quietly. "She didn't wait because she thought you were dead. You didn't give yourself a chance to wait because you assumed you weren't ever allowed to go back to her, or see her."
James wet his lips and went to say something, but he stopped, needing a couple more moments to process what he should say. "Well, yeah..." he finally answered. "I'm not Pat, either, or Aiden. Neither is Izzy. I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me here, babe. You need to give me a bit more to work with. Has something happened between you and Izzy?" Strange, because Izzy didn't mention anything like that.
Harri smirked a little. "Not directly. She just doesn't seem interested in being left alone with me. It's just watching Aiden with Pat, I remember the look on her face when she came to sit with me while you were in hospital. I don't know if I had the same look. I wouldn't even know if you'd have the same look if anything happened to me." Harri reached up to rub her fingers against her forehead. "You do get the same look sometimes when you look at her. Even just hanging out."
"Izzy has... a bit of a little internal, uh, issue right now," James told her, finding himself wanting to offload the news to Harri, but knowing Aiden didn't know could make it really messy for Cameron, and he didn't want to cause the poor bastard more stress. "I don't think anyone really has the same look in situations like this. Everyone deals with it in a different way. You've got to remember that Izzy's sat with me through that twice before. The first time, I nearly died and I got sick on a stakeout with her." He paused and exhaled heavily, rubbing at his own head. Somewhere along the line, he lost the ability to follow a pregnant woman's train of thought, and he had three of them to deal with now.
Harri frowned. "She has a little internal issue?" She just snorted, and reached over for her bottle of water she had on the chair on the other side of her. It was hard to rest things in her lap when she didn't feel as if she had one, or could barely see it. "Are you always going to be waiting for her?"
"Yeah, it seems to be going around." James scratched at his head and then started to pick at the label of the bottle. He felt like a whole conspiracy had been built with everyone while he had been in New York. Why was this all suddenly an issue all at once. "I'm not waiting for her, and have you been talking to Cameron?"
"No, but neither of us are blind. Alright, so maybe not waiting for her, but you still love her and you still want her." Harri took a sip of water, her gaze flicking back to Aiden and Pat briefly. "What's Cameron said?"
James put his juice down and folded his shaking hands together in front of him. "It's not how you think," he told her quietly. "We just haven't had any closure. That's what Cameron was talking to her about earlier."
"What kind of closure?" She reached out to cover his hands with one of hers, and gave him a small smile. "You okay?"
James nodded and cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'm fine, mostly. Maybe just conflicted. My blood sugar levels don't deal well with emotional stress. They never have." He let out a slow breath. "Physical closure, emotional closure, all of it, really. Things were up in the air when I left. When the SS called on my recruitment, I had to go. There was no time to get much closure with anything, not even my family. My brother still doesn't open up to me much anymore. That's a whole other issue. I'm just really confused in general right now, but it doesn't mean I don't love you any less. Or that I don't want to be with you."
"So what do you need to get closure?" She gave his hands a squeeze and leaned over to kiss his cheek. "You were dead, love. I think the movies tend to gloss over the effect ressurections have on family. Your brother's probably still dealing with the shock of everything that happend. Your walking sparked a lot of different reactions, and they were still dealing with fallout when you came back. That's not to say you shouldn't have come back, but you have to realise it'll still take a while for things to settle."
"I do realise, it just doesn't make it easier for me to swallow. I've got to live with what I did every single day. I see it in their eyes," James murmured, hunching forward a little. "Cameron told Izzy, or rather, gave her his blessing, to sleep with me for closure. He thought it's what she needed, that maybe he wasn't ever going to really have her love him while I was still hanging around in the sidelines."
"I'm sorry, love, I didn't say it to rub it in. I'm only telling you because you should realise it means you have to give yourself time as well. You lost a lot, too." Harri blinked, her face very carefully kept straight so she didn't betray her initial reaction. Truth was, she shouldn't be surprised. It probably was the most logical thing. It didn't actually hurt as much as she thought, either. She assumed to feel like she was getting cheated on, but she didn't. Probably because technically she was the other woman. She didn't exactly deserve to get high and mighty in this decision. "I'll give you a week."
James' forehead creased as he looked at her uncertainly. "You'll give me a week?" he asked, unable to hide the skepticism in his tone. Suddenly, the whole thing made him feel weird, like he had been dumped into the middle of a fucked up version of Indecent Proposal. And it almost made him feel sick. Harri would give him a week. He took his hand from hers to hug himself, trying to brush away the weird feeling crawling over his skin now. "Yeah, I'll pass. Cheers."
"I'm trying to help! I'm sorry," she huffed out as she hugged her own arms around her bump. She was getting a little past the idea of the big bump. She missed her little stylish one. The one that said 'I'm pregnant', and not 'I'm a bus'. Plus she could still work out where to put her arms. "I've never had to deal with this before. I'm just trying to find my way."
James shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I'm not going to do it. I already feel enough like a whore right now. It's a non-issue. Izzy and I are just going to have to deal with it some other way." Why did they both have to be pregnant? Why did everything always suck so much?
Harri looked at him. "Why do you feel like a whore?"
"I don't know. I just know that telling me I have a week made me feel cheap and made me realise how fucked up this whole thing is," James said honestly. He put his hand up to his mouth and bit on his thumb nail, looking down at his pristine polished shoes. "It's tough shit, but we're just going to have to deal with it however. It took me long enough to realise sex wasn't just a hobby. I'm not stuffing around with that now when my head is already fucked up as it is."
"I didn't mean a week like that. Or right now. Just, it's a huge deal. Finding closure just doesn't happen. Even if sleeping together helps, you need time to know for sure, and to do... whatever. Arrange it. I don't know. I'm not trying to make you feel cheap. I'm just saying it's not going to happen over night. If it did, then that would make me wonder about the cheapness thing." Harri reached out to try and take his hand again. "Me and Cameron are just trying to understand. What you and Izzy had was huge. No one's trying to pretend otherwise. But maybe he has a point. No closure, then how does he know he does have her?"
James squeezed her hand, but he was shifting restlessly on the seat. He couldn't tell anymore if it was his blood sugar or just emotional discontent. "She's pregnant."
"Does Cameron know?" Harri found herself asking before she could stop the words spilling out.
James nodded. "Yeah, she told him. But Aiden doesn't know, and neither does Pat. I'm guessing that's probably why Cameron's been so cut up, on top of everything else."
Harri pressed her lips together. She didn't like keeping secrets from Aiden, but she understood. "I won't say a word." She sat and watched James quietly for a long moment. "How do you feel about it?"
"Strange," James admitted quietly. "There was," he began but had to stop and wet his lips, a frown appearing on his face. "When Ali fell pregnant the first time, she hid it. She hid it really really well. Plus, me being completely oblivious to women's feelings in general, I didn't even notice something was off beyond Ali seeming to be in a bad mood twenty-four-seven. Plus, she was sick, but she told me it was food poisoning, and I actually believed her. Threw up all over my Italian leather shoes and I was still oblivious. But at work one day, I found an ultrasound photo in Izzy's draw. I jumped to the wrong the conclusions. I guess this is just dragging up strange memories."
"You know it's okay to remember, right? You don't have to worry about how I'm going to feel. It's stupid to think you wouldn't be attached to memories, and even the present. I know if I had to go through what you did, I'd still feeling something for the person I left behind. You don't have to just put up with it, though. You said yourself it didn't lessen anything you felt for me, and I believe you. I might draw the line if you ever just start making out with her in front of me, but you don't have to try and hide your feelings. Hiding stuff is what started all this." Harri smiled softly. "And you'd think after Ali and the baby that you'd realise hiding never got anyone anywhere. I still don't know how she hid it so well. I'm lucky if I remember my underwear, let alone what act of espionage I should be keeping up with."
James smirked slightly. "I think it became second nature to her by that point. She wasn't just hiding it from me, it was from her work, from herself. I knew she was messed up, but she was okay by the time I left. She was starting to accept it and she had Izzy." He rubbed a hand roughly over his face. "I'm not purposefully hiding my feelings. It's just that I really can't tell anymore what I'm feeling, or what I'm supposed to be feeling. I'm not sure if any of it can really get resolved either way right now."
"And I guess this time around it's not some love child she's ashamed of." Harri gave a nod, and took another sip of water. "So we just plod along, one foot in front of the other?"
"This time, she's not alone," James corrected. "She was never ashamed of Jamie, she was ashamed of herself for how it came about." He sighed and shrugged. "I don't know anything anymore. I don't know what to think or say or do. It just all gives me a pounding headache."
"Feel free to catch some sleep," Harri offered as she slipped her arm around his shoulders, and brushed her fingers through the ends of his hair. "I feel exahusted, but probably not for the same reasons. I could just borrow Aiden's keys, and we could go back to his and Pat's place here. If it's not confusing taking a nap with me."
James shrugged. "I was going to check into a hotel. You should check with Aiden before you go, at least let him know where you're going so he doesn't freak out. Not to assume he's like me or anything, but when shit hits the fan for me, I'm usually hyper aware of where everyone is and when so I can make sure they're okay."
Harri leaned over to kiss his temple. "I don't think anyone is quite like you, love."
Words: 3279 | All muses referred to with permission and come from the princeton2nyc verse