#i did spend too long looking up appropriate chemical balances for pools in England in the late 80s

[moonflowerlesbians]

Jamie is trying to ignore the new au pair. She doesn't need to fall for this beautiful and straight girl. But then Flora asks her to clean the pool after months without using it because "it's a perfectly hot and beautiful day and we need to have a pool party. And you're invited too".

Dani. The pool. Bikini. Jamie doesn't know how to react to this, so she decides to keep ignoring her. But she can bet Dani is looking at her... A bit too much.

took me a second but I offer you almost 3000 words as penance. also I sort of extended it because it's apparently impossible for me to write pure fluff.

AO3 link in reblog if that's your preference :)

~~~

“Ah, yeah, it’ll be perfectly splendid,” Jamie grumbles between pants, yanking the tie of the pool cover over one shoulder with a huff. “Sure, perfectly splendid to swim in. Have t’ get it clean first. Can’t just jump in.”

At half eight in the evening, she’d been trying to beat the bizarre heatwave that had befallen the English countryside, but she’s failing rather spectacularly if the moisture gathering at her hairline is any indication. She swipes an arm across her forehead and listens to the faint chatter from the open sitting-room window, where the other grown members of the household bask in the glorious company of electric fans. Meanwhile, Jamie swelters away the evening spraying down pool filters and vacuuming leaves from the tile floor because someone had the bright idea to remind an eight-year-old that she has access to a pool.

“Oh, please, Jamie, please!” Flora had pleaded, practically bouncing out of her seat at the dinner table and coming terrifyingly close to tipping several drinks onto Hannah’s pristine tablecloth. “It’s dreadfully hot and a beautiful day, and we simply must have a pool party.” She had gasped so abruptly that Dani nearly dropped her fork, Jamie noted with a subtle grin. “We’ll all have a pool party! And Owen can make sandwiches, and Mrs. Grose can bring picnic blankets, and you must come, too, Jamie, won’t you please?”

Then Jamie had made the poor decision to lock eyes with Dani from across the table. The desperation plainly written across her face had been enough to convince Jamie to concede with a faux exhale of annoyance.

Thus, the weary gaze of a haggard au pair run ragged by herding two children indoors is the reason Jamie finds herself skimming the pool’s surface for any leaves and algae that managed to weasel beneath the cover when she should be driving home.

“Sorry,” a voice comes from behind her, “I’m the one who planted the idea in her head.”

Jamie turns to find Dani, a glass in either hand, peering at her with the expression of a woman who is half-tempted to change places and take up the skimmer herself simply to have a moment to herself.

“S’alright, needed to be done anyway. Won’t be ready until at least tomorrow,” Jamie sighs, accepting the proffered glass with a grateful nod. “Kids tired of being cooped up?”

Dani puffs out a laugh that says, you don’t know the half of it. “You’d think they don’t have a house the size of my old school to explore.”

“Bet they haven’t even found half the secret passages,” remarks Jamie over the smooth rim of her glass. Dani sips from hers, and Jamie endeavors to ignore the bob of her throat as she swallows.

“The what?” The wrinkles that appear on Dani’s forehead are surprisingly charming. Too charming. Jamie shoos the thought away before it can land.

“C’mon, Poppins. House this size? This old? There at least have to be servants’ tunnels.”

“Have… have you found any?”

Jamie hums noncommittally, noting the way Dani shifts her weight on her heels as if she cannot bear the thought of standing still. “Did you come out here just for this?”

“Partly, yes, but,” she lowers her voice, “I really just needed to get away from the kids for a few minutes. Owen’s got them playing a board game, thank God, and after that, I can put them to bed. I adore them, but sometimes…” she shrugs.

“We all need space,” Jamie finishes, a bit more brusque than she intended, which she chalks up to the evening hour and the heat, and Dani takes a step back. Shit. “Meant to say,” Jamie salvages with a wince, “it’s nice to be alone sometimes.” She grimaces, doing her best to focus on the cool glass in her hand rather than the heat in her face and the flutter low in her belly.

“I know what you meant,” Dani says softly. Then, after a moment’s pause spent glancing from Jamie to the pool and back again, “You need any help out here?”

Jamie raises an eyebrow. “Lookin’ for excuses to avoid work, are we?”

“No, no, I, um… No?”

“Relax, Dani,” Jamie chuckles, setting her empty water cup down in the grass. Dani visibly settles. “If you’d like to drag the garden hose over, we’ll need to rinse the filters.”

“Got it,” Dani says seriously, and she practically marches to the nearest hose rack as Jamie watches with a quirk of the lips. The au pair completes tasks as if the world will fall apart if they remain incomplete a moment longer. It’s a quality Jamie admires in her, the passion and fervor with which she undertakes the seemingly mundane tasks in her life. Jamie also finds herself mildly amused by the way Dani stalks across the property like she might break into a run at any moment, always on high alert. Always tense.

Might be nice to see her take a full breath for the first time in her life.

Might be nice to see her at ease.

Might be nice to see her relax.

Very nice, indeed, it turns out.

Almost too nice, two days later, the way Dani lounges on a patio chair she’d dragged to the poolside, with a book in her hand and one leg propped on the seat.

Too nice, the way her hair looks beneath a sun hat, casting dappled shadows over the tip of a tongue poking out between pursed lips as she turns a page.

Too nice, the way she lowers her sunglasses over her nose to keep an eye on the children splashing and shrieking in the water.

Too nice, in fact, far too nice for Jamie, who tries and repeatedly fails to keep her gaze off pale, freckled skin and eyes as blue and clear as the water. She can’t sit still. Can’t seem to cease the bouncing of a leg or the rote twirling of hair between twitching fingers. Can’t seem to stop flitting from superfluous task to superfluous task long enough to catch her breath, stolen against her will each and every time she catches a flash of exposed skin dancing in the midday sun.

But the worst part, by far, is when she looks at Dani… Dani is looking back. Four times now, Jamie has cast a fleeting glance at the lazing au pair only to find her peering at Jamie with equal intensity.

Odd, Jamie thinks, fiddling with the stem of a bush a few meters away from the pool, to catch Dani staring so often. But coincidences have been stranger, she decides, chalking it up to amicable concern. She can’t allow herself to dwell on the occurrence. Too many possibilities that open doors to too much trouble. Far more trouble than Dani is worth.

But what if… a niggling voice at the back of her head chides.

No, Jamie reminds herself with a mental kick and an outward shake of her head. She had a fiancé.

Hannah sits with her trousers rolled to her knees, ever one for modesty, with her legs dangling in the shallow end of the pool, while Owen and the kids do everything short of pulling the poor housekeeper in the water to utterly drench her. Hannah, to her credit, is taking their antics in stride, no doubt due to the mustachioed mastermind currently huddled with two overeager children.

The promise to Flora had been a pool party, and, never one to give up on her goals once they were set in her mind, the girl had hounded the adults with unrelenting chipperness until, one by one, they had been worn down. Which is surely the only reason Jamie hovers at the edge of the pool deck in an oversized t-shirt tied at the waist and old running shorts--the only sort of swimsuit she could throw together on short notice.

“Thought I might get in. Care to join me?”

Slender legs enter Jamie’s field of vision, then Dani is only paces away, a hand resting on one hip. She’s removed her hat, left to save her empty seat, and her sunglasses rest atop her forehead, pushing her hair out of her face and onto her shoulders. Her cornflower-blue swimsuit hugs her figure, and Jamie forces her eyes up, her throat terribly dry. She swallows thickly.

“May as well.”

Dani leads the way to the water’s edge, dipping one painted toenail into the water and producing a satisfied noise. She turns to Jamie standing a few feet behind and sweeps the sunglasses from her head, shaking her hair out. “Hold these for me?”

Wordlessly, Jamie delicately grasps one temple of the white plastic frame as Dani steps forward, her arms over her head, hands meeting in a V-shape. The hidden muscles in her back ripple, and she executes an elegant plunge into the pool, emerging with a gasp and a whoop of elated laughter. A smattering of applause rises from the opposite end of the pool, the others having apparently stopped their scheming long enough to watch Dani’s flawless--at least in Jamie’s opinion--swan dive.

“Oh, Miss Clayton, that was splendid!” Flora’s shrill voice chirps.

Hannah remarks, clearly impressed, “I had no idea we had a professional in our midst."

“I’d hardly say professional,” Dani says with a modest roll of her eyes. The water swirls where she treads. She pushes water-darkened hair from her eyes. Then, to Jamie, she explains, “I was on the community pool swim and dive team for a few summers before I could get a job.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Jamie replies. She passes the sunglasses to Dani’s outstretched hand and takes a seat on the sun-warm grey concrete at the edge of the pool. Dani swims up and places crossed arms beside Jamie on the deck, resting her chin on the intersection and looking up at Jamie. Lean legs kick out behind her into crystalline depths, and golden sunlight refracts in the water, bathing beneath the surface in an ethereal glow.

“You’re not getting in?” Dani asks.

“Not the biggest fan of water, if I’m honest,” Jamie confesses nonchalantly, as if by some miracle this admission will end the conversation.

No, Dani’s desire to learn, to understand, is far too intense for that. It’s another quality of hers Jamie admires, even if it feels as though she’s laying herself bare by sharing the tiniest details under her scrutiny.

“I knew plenty of kids afraid of the water back in the day,” Dani says easily, tracing lines in the small puddle that has formed from the droplets on her skin, “it’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“‘S not that. I just,” Jamie searches, somewhat defensively, struggling to convey the message without saying the words that reveal a weakness she is loath to expose. Her silence evidently speaks volumes.

“Jamie,” Dani says quietly, a furrow forming between her brows, “can you swim?”

Damn those observant eyes, that sharp mind.

Jamie looks away, shrinks just a little, scoffs with false bravado, “‘Course I can swim.” Then, “Can paddle… float….” Heat rises in her already flushed cheeks, and she picks at the skin surrounding the cuticle on her thumb.

“It’s… You know it’s okay if you can’t, right?” And Dani’s voice is soft, so soft, a murmur really, a whisper that makes Jamie’s heart ache. It keeps the sound from carrying across the pool as it does hold Jamie in her destitution.

She thinks back to a childhood of coal dust and dirty sofa beds and scavenging for food. Thinks of summers spent doing odd jobs to pay the rent, of sleeping on the porch because it was cooler out there than in the house. Thinks of covering herself with as much clothing as she could despite the rising temperatures to fend off roving eyes, to appear a larger threat than a scrawny eleven-year-old girl actually was. Thinks of boiling pots and scalding showers spent scrubbing her skin clean, as though maybe if she rubbed hard enough, the memories would wash away with the grime. Circle the drain once, twice, and disappear forever.

“Never really learned, I s’pose,” Jamie forces a weak laugh. “Didn’t have anyone really keen on teachin’ me.”

Dani is quiet for a moment. “I could.”

“Could what? Teach me? ‘S not your problem to worry about, Poppins.” The thought nearly sends her mind into overdrive. Nescience of an essential life skill is ignominious enough, but to have Dani bear witness to the reality is unthinkable.

“Well, sure it is,” Dani shakes her head, affronted at the mere notion. “What would we do if you fell in and drowned? Someone needs to keep Owen in line.”

Jamie notes the ‘we’ in her statement. We need you. Not I. Distinctly not I, Jamie repeats to herself. She fidgets with the knot in her t-shirt.

“Already told you I can paddle. I’d be fine.”

“Still.” Dani is staring up at her with a pointed look. She has the glint in her eye that Jamie recognizes from the instances Dani deems it necessary to hold her ground with Miles or persuade Flora to clean up her dolls at the end of a long day. She will not give in.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Jamie raises an eyebrow, approaching Dani’s determination as one might a chest of buried treasure, hesitant, disbelieving, a bit curious.

Dani shakes her head again, the ghost of a smirk upturning the corner of her lips.

A beat, during which Jamie’s thoughts wage war amongst themselves. One team screams at her to take the opportunity to spend time with the woman that another batch reminds her is not interested in the least. Another group acknowledges the practical benefits of developing a skill beyond aimless paddling, while another still acknowledges the persistent flutter in her stomach.

At last, “Reckon you’ll be putting that fancy teaching degree to use again,” Jamie acquiesces with a sigh. “Doubt this is what you signed up for, though.”

“I know exactly what I signed up for.” There’s a mischievous lilt to Dani’s words that sends a bolt of feverish perplexion through her. Dani pulls back from the side of the pool and holds out her hands. “We can get started right now.”

Jamie must look as if she’d rather snip off a finger with her garden shears than get in the water because Dani laughs.

“Or not,” she says with a sincere smile, and she ducks back under the water before popping up at Jamie’s feet, wiping the water from her eyes.

“I’d rather not embarrass myself in front of the kids,” Jamie says with a chuckle. “Lord knows I’ve never done that before, and I don’t intend on starting now.” It’s a half-truth. The real issue stems from the moderately disconcerting realization that breathing on land is hard enough with Dani so close, and Jamie really isn’t keen on finding out what will happen if she tries to slip underwater.

A brief flash of her sputtering to the surface, limbs flailing in all directions, crosses her mind, and she shakes it away.

A whooping from the opposite end of the pool catches her attention, and she looks up.

It seems whatever Owen and the children plotted had worked. Hannah is, much to her presumed consternation, sopping wet from head to toe, though she merely wrings out her blouse and kicks a lighthearted splash back at the children, who, having completed their mission, slink out of the pool and wrap themselves in paisley towels.

“Finished already?” Dani calls, and Flora nods from the deck, a yawn splitting her face despite the clock only reading three in the afternoon. “I’ll be right there!” She turns back to Jamie, says softly, “Another time?”

Jamie nods. “Another time.”

Then, Dani is off, gathering her things and herding the children back across the stretch of grass and into the house, leaving Jamie to watch in delirious bewilderment as her heart pounds far faster than it ought to, given the situation. And yet, Jamie cannot fault it, nor can she calm her racing pulse, though she tries.

Dani is the cause, she knows. Dani is always the cause, and no amount of fervent internal reminders seem to dull her effect. No incalculable quantity of mutterings about ex-fiancés will stop Jamie’s breath from catching when Dani settles down for dinner. No collection of whispered slim chanceswill convince a weak heart to cease its clamant pattering at the sight of a column of silky skin. No platitudes can dissuade Jamie’s longing soul from going against her better judgment, from going against her learned experiences that say this will only lead to heartbreak.

Love is sink or swim, she has learned, and Jamie has been treading water, head just barely above the surface, for far, far too long. Dani has offered to hold her hand, quite literally, to guide her through the risk, if only Jamie will make a move to reach out. Perhaps… Perhaps, Dani can guide her to shore to rest among sand beaches and good company. Perhaps, Dani will not let go along the way.

Another time, then.

Another time, yes. But soon. Soon, because Jamie is rapidly growing weary of condemning her wayward heart to fruitless excitement, of shutting a thing down before it can even begin, like cutting down a sapling before it emerges from a seed.

It’s sink or swim, and, at last, Jamie chooses to swim.

#no beta we die like dani #the ending is questionable because fuck it why not #vibes only #i did spend too long looking up appropriate chemical balances for pools in England in the late 80s #and then scrapped it altogether so #also dont imagine jamie swimming to the middle of the lake to find danis body knowing dani taught her in the first place #also I love not being able to come up with titles for shit #fic #ficlet #my writing #the haunting of bly manor #damie #dani clayton #jamie #jamie taylor #jamie x dani #dani x jamie #damie fanfic #thobm