city glacier (law & order | claire/jack)

[fiachairecht]

city glacier. law & order, claire/jack. claire's a vampire instead of dead, and everything and nothing is different. 3.5k words, rated t. for iomixit in waybackexchange 2020.

Claire looks like she's sleeping by the time Jack gets back to the office — curled in the corner of the couch, bare feet tucked up under her and an open binder spilling papers over her chest. Her shoes on the floor and the glass of whiskey on the side table both look abandoned, and affection twists in his chest at the familiar sight.

The too familiar sight.

He knocks lightly on the doorframe, though he doesn't actually think she's asleep, and Claire sits up immediately, stifling a yawn. Papers scatter everywhere, and the old furrow creases between her brows. "Hi, Jack," she says. Her voice is hoarse.

Months ago, he would have gone over to help her gather them, would have knelt and smiled up at her as their hands brushed over the jury instructions or court transcripts. Today, like every day the past two weeks, he hesitates in the doorway of his own office, feeling almost like a stranger to the woman in front of him.

"Sleeping?" Jack asks. "Thought you were above such human things now. "

Claire sighs. "I am. Turns out Hamilton v New York is a special type of boring that transcends death."

"Do, um." He clears his throat, runs a hand through his hair. Steps inside his office, shrugs off his jacket and plops down in the chair — just because it is different doesn't need to mean that it feels different. "Wait, I thought it was un-death."

That gets a real smile out of her, even if it's a shadowy thing. "Legally, metaphorically, medically, socially, or spiritually?"

"Well." He hadn't thought that far ahead. "Does it matter?"

Claire props her elbow on the sofa's arm, rests her head in her hand. Her eyes are soft in the lamplight, he thinks — it's almost enough to wash out the red, let him selfishly pretend she hasn't changed at all. "Sometimes. I don't know. It's not like there's five hundred years of vampiric case law to help me out here."

"If there's anything, you'll find it," he says, and he's aiming for comfort but he can tell as soon as the words leave his mouth that he's landed well short.

"Right, because I have so much free time now." She rubs her eyes, reaches for her glass and downs the rest of the whiskey before narrowing her eyes at him. "Which you would know, because you've spent so much time with me." She frowns down at her empty glass. "God, I wish that did anything anymore."

Jack flinches at the rebuke, which he knows he deserves, but still finds himself saying, "I've been busy. Trying to prosecute the man who—" It's hard to say even now. "Who did this to you." He reaches for the bottle she's left on the desk, pours a glass of his own. Doesn't offer her any, even though she's right that it can't affect her anymore.

"And it's either driving you crazy or making you avoid me, and I don't like either of those options," Claire snaps. "Rodgers says I'm not dead, Olivet says I'm not insane, Schiff says I'm not working, and you're not saying anything at all." She crosses her arms, all traces of tiredness gone from her face now. He can see the sharp tips of her fangs digging into her lip, the only other outward sign of her distress.

Jack sighs. She's right, of course, but the odd knife's edge they've fallen onto, where normal works perfectly until it doesn't, and then they wrench it back, is taking its toll on both of them, even if it always seems to be him that ends up with his palms bloody from the blade.

She hasn't mentioned leaving the DA's office since the night of the — accident. The night that neither of them are calling her transformation. He almost wonders if she's forgotten, like she's forgotten most of her last week, but he doesn't want to say it, to risk losing her again when he hardly knows how much of her he has back.

So, "Sorry," he says, as she slumps back into the couch. Rubs a hand over his face and loosens his tie, reaches for the phone and then hesitates. It seems rude, to keep reminding Claire of what she can't have or enjoy. "Do you, uh — I was gonna get dinner."

"Yeah, sure." She waves a dismissive hand, and Jack gets the distinct impression that she's not exactly pleased with it. But she's silent as he orders their usual Chinese, and it's not until he hangs up that he realises he didn't think to tell the man to halve it. He'll find space for it in one of the cramped kitchen fridges, or maybe give the leftovers to Jaime if she's still around on his way out.

There's a comfort to the ritual, Claire on the couch with case files, him on the phone, even the open bottle. All they need is Adam to poke his head in the door and scold them for still being around this late, and it'll be just like it was before. But they've outlasted him tonight, and the building's late-night quiet seems empty.

"Jack," Claire says, when he's hung up the phone and still found himself unable to meet her eyes.

He glances over to see she's picked up most of the scattered papers. The pile they're in on the side table is precarious, and she looks smaller, alone on the couch with just the single Westlaw book in her lap. "Yeah?"

"You could at least come over here." She pats the couch next to her, and, when he still hesitates, smiles with perfectly normal teeth. "I'm neither breakable nor dangerous, promise."

He laughs, surprises himself with it. "You're absolutely dangerous. I've seen you cross-examine people."

She looks for a moment like she's going to protest, to clarify — I'm not going to bite you, kill you, turn you — but she can't know that, no matter what reassurances Rodgers has tried to provide, and she lets his deflection stand.

Maybe it's that that makes him get up, or maybe he's simply tired of these fights that aren't even fights, just the two of them with too many words to actually use any of them properly. Claire curls into his side as soon as he sits down anyway, her head solid and real on his shoulder.

He could have lost her, not just their certainty, and the thought turns his stomach, like it always does.

"This is better," Claire murmurs as if she'd heard his thoughts, lacing their fingers together on his thigh. "Isn't it?"

"Solidly middle of the list, if we're actually taking all possibilities into account," he says against the top of her head.

For the night, it's enough.

**

The night's comfort feels very far away when he returns to the office in the middle of the afternoon the next day. It's barely past three but the clouds have kept the city in twilight all day, buildings and pedestrians alike drowning under the pouring rain. 

Jack shoves his bent umbrella in the container by the elevator and heads down the hall, sure he's leaving damp footprints on the carpets.

He hears Claire before he sees her, her voice spilling out from Adam's open office door. "— me the file," she's saying. "Adam, the defence has a lot of precedent on their side and all I'm saying is I think—"

"I'm not paying you to think right now," Adam cuts her off, the sort of clear grumble that's almost worse than yelling. Jack slows down, trying not to make it too obvious that he's hovering. "Jesus, doesn't medical leave mean anything to you people?"

"Not like this," Claire argues. "I'm fit to work, I can read and write and recite more case law than I could when I passed the bar. This indefinite — thing, is, it's just—"

"It's what you have!" Jack can hear the dull thud of a glass against Adam's desk blotter. "You might be adjusting to this just fine, but you tell me how we're supposed to explain to the good people of New York that the responsibility for getting them justice now rests with a vampire."

Jack flinches. His back is pressed against the wall now, and if either of them come out it'll be obvious he was eavesdropping, but he can't bring himself to care.

Inside Adam's office, Claire falls silent, for long enough that Jack starts to think she might just leave. And then she says, "I wasn't expecting you would have to," with such ice in her tone that he freezes. He's still contemplating his next move when she appears in the doorway, staring directly at him.

"I'm going out," she snaps, voice sharp as her fully extend fangs, and he's sure the only reason she doesn't slam the door behind her is that it's Adam's office, not her own. "There's no point being here anymore."

Claire storms past, heading for the elevator bank, and it takes Jack more seconds than he'd like to admit before his brain catches up to what she's doing, caught up in the beauty of her anger. "You — Claire, it's the middle of the day!" He heads after her, trying not to run, a million worst case scenarios tripping over his tongue.

"You looked out a window lately?" she asks. Doesn't raise her voice, doesn't look back over her shoulder at him, just assumes he's following and it feels like the only right thing in the past few weeks. Jack catches up just as she stabs the call button with enough force to send a thin crack spidering along its plastic covering. "We're not gonna see the sun for days. I'm taking advantage of it."

"It's—" He stops, suddenly aware that a good ninety percent of ways he might finish that sentence make him sound like an asshole. It's not an unfamiliar feeling, he'd just rarely cared, before Claire. "Raining?"

"Look, Jack, I may not have this entire vampire thing down, but I am pretty damn sure I'm not suddenly made of sugar."

He laughs, shoves his hands in his pockets, and tries not to think too hard about how red Claire's eyes are as she glares up at him. "What if I am?"

She rolls her eyes, that same ghost smile that he's getting all too familiar with playing at the edges of her mouth, slow and tentative and he wants nothing more than to kiss it into place more firmly, make it real. "Then I would appreciate you coming out with me even more."

The elevator's arrival saves him from having to answer immediately, and his hand hovers helplessly above her lower back as he follows her in. He's never felt so out of step with her, not even on her very first day when all she wanted to do was fight.

They had found their way forward from that with surprising ease, had become something good — great, even, he's just proud enough to think sometimes. And it wasn't enough.

They're outside the courthouse before he realises neither of them have umbrellas, and Claire doesn't have a coat. She doesn't seem to care, even though her hair is plastered flat to her skull in seconds, just turns her blank gaze to the sky. Jack undoes the belt of his trench, half meaning to give it to her, but she just shrugs.

"Adam won't let me work," she says with resignation, before he can ask if she wants to talk about it. "Not even — shit, Jack, not even research. Not even the kind of filing that means I won't see a human soul for weeks. Nothing that's not about ... this." She gestures at her twisted face, fangs receding as she talks but her eyes still blank and red, the skin of her forehead pinched into a harsh V shape.

He should say it. This, he knows, he owes her — has owed her since they determined where her memories stopped. "Maybe it's a good thing," he says instead, and the selfish thing wrapped around his heart smiles. "You have so much to learn — research, thinking that no one's done before—"

She snorts in disgust. "Research about what? Exsanguination as a preliminary step before disposing of a body? Teenagers trying to use belief in their own vampirism as an affirmative defence for homicide, because they needed to eat?"

"Well ..." He trails off with a shrug. "I'm interested." Risks reaching out, resting a tentative hand on her forearm as the blast of a cab's horn does its best to swallow his words.

She grimaces, but doesn't pull away. Through the thin silk of her sodden blouse, her skin is freezing beyond anything the rain could account for. "Yeah, well. It's you, and you're only one person. And I'm gonna have to do this for ..."

Ever. She hasn't been saying it, but it's not hard to hear the echoes of it every time she talks about work. He can't imagine what it's like, going from thinking you have no more time left to knowing that you have more time than you ever wanted.

"You don't have to," he says. Feels the tendons in her wrists tighten as she curls her hands into fists. It's odd, not feeling her pulse. "Adam will come around. And if he doesn't ...." 

"There's always the flower shop?" Claire's lips twist in a wry smile. "Think I'd have to stop ducking Margo's calls if I wanted that."

Thunder rolls overhead, and he has to resist the urge to draw her into his arms. "She'd understand," he says, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. "But it doesn't have to be that. You could be — could do anything."

She laughs, but there's no humour in it. "You sure about that? I'm not alive anymore, Jack. But I'm not dead, either, so it shouldn't matter, but it does, and—"

"You were leaving the DA's office." The words are out before he's consciously decided to say them. Claire goes still, her flood of words halted, and it feels like the whole of the city stops with her. Jack freezes too, caught in her gaze. He's suddenly very aware that they've been out long enough that the rain dripping down from the awning has collected into a puddle around his right foot.

"What." Enough moments have passed that as the sounds of the street fade back in he's not sure if she speaks, or if he just reads the words off her lips. For the first time he can remember, she looks ... small.

"Thinking about it," he clarifies. "I — The execution was hard on all of us—"

"That's the kind of understatement that gets you dinged for tax fraud," she mutters.

"— And I thought the routine you were getting into might be — I didn't know for sure that you didn't remember." Every excuse sounds worse aloud than it did in his head. He tries to pull his hand back from her wrist, meaning to give her space, but her free hand darts out and closes over his to hold him in place, grip stronger than it ever was — before.

Claire shakes her head, steps closer into his space. Jack glances around and, seeing no one he recognises among the few pedestrians and loiterers who've braved the rain, draws her back with him under the scant cover afforded by the courthouse wall awning. The cold might have joined alcohol on the list of things that didn't affect Claire, but it's seeping into Jack's bones.

Not that he has any right to complain.

He almost leans back against the wall. Pulls his coat tighter around himself instead, waiting for Claire to decide what she wants.

"When were you gonna tell me?"

When you asked. When I knew you didn't remember. When you were ... sad. All of them part of a truth, none of them quite fitting together into the answer she deserves. He settles on, "I don't know."

She narrows her eyes, lower lip sucked under her fangs as she searches his face for all of the tells he knows she's memorised over the past two years, and he bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from interrupting.

"We fought about it, didn't we?" It's not really a question, but he nods anyway. "That was the second thing I knew, when I saw you at the hospital. That I was mad at you." There's a strange, distant look in her eyes, and Jack reaches up to cup her cheek. "And the third thing I knew was that ... it wasn't gonna be permanent."

She's calmer now, the red bleeding out from her eyes and her wet hair clinging to her cheeks, softening the edges of her bones under her too-pale skin. Her gaze flickers down to his mouth, and he swallows hard.

"I'm sorry," he says, and he means it, even though all he wants to do is ask what the first thing she knew about him was. He's not going to give in to the same bad temper that had led to their last fight on the drive back from Attica, not when there's a chance to make it — better, at the very least. "I was ... I said some things I shouldn't have. And didn't say others that I should have."

"So you're saying you're a lawyer," Claire smirks.

Jack can't help but laugh. "I guess," he says, and then Claire's laughing too, bright and so close to alive that he thinks maybe, maybe they really are gonna come away from this fine. Even if Claire has permanent needle marks from her daily blood transfusions, even if he ends up with a rotating team of second chairs instead of the woman he trusted with his life—

His hand is still on her cheek. Claire turns, her lips brushing against his palm, and Jack shivers. They never used to touch so much in public. "God, you know what the actual funny part is?" Claire asks, laughter still bubbling under all the words.

There's no breath against his skin, and Jack's good mood dissipates. "What?" He asks anyway, pulling his hand back from her mouth. "Sorry," he mutters, slipping it into his pocket. "Cold."

She blinks, but lets it go, and Jack wonders if he still deserves that kind of trust from her in return. "I was so worried about the state's right to execute people," she says. "I still am. And all the time there was ... this whole other space. And I never would have guessed it existed, and I don't ... know what to do with it." Her brow furrows, like it always does when she's reading a particularly opaque piece of case law, and Jack's heart swells with affection.

"I think we should be glad no one in Albany's figured it out yet," he says with a tentative grin. "I don't know if Manhattan's big enough for more than one vampire."

She doesn't smile, but she doesn't turn around and leave him alone in the rain, either. "I think it would depend on the vampire."

It's not an invitation, but Jack doesn't know what it is. Doesn't know if Claire knows, and he decides to redirect the conversation back to mildly safer territory. "Adam didn't know. That you were thinking about leaving. So if you did want ..."

"I don't know if I want," she admits. "It's odd, you know. I feel like I've gained as many opportunities as I've lost. Or at least like I should have. Is that odd?"

"No. I think," he says slowly. This kind of reassurance isn't his strong point. "I think that whatever you do, you'll be astonishing."

That does draw a smile from her, and it's closer to real than he's seen in too long. "Astonishing, huh."

He gives a one-armed shrug. "Yeah. But if I don't get out of the rain soon I might not be around to see it."

Claire shakes her head with mock severity. "Can't have that," she says. "Think you can survive long enough to walk to a bar not full of cops?"

Thunder cracks overhead, and Jack raises a skeptical eyebrow. "Please," Claire says. Turns her hand in Jack's grip to lace their fingers together. "I really don't want to think about being in a car right now."

Her tone is even, but Jack feels like an ass all the same. "Yeah. God. Sorry." He can't remember the last time he's apologised so much in a ten minute span, but it doesn't feel as odd as he expected it to. "Lead on?"

"Yeah," Claire says. Leans up and, for a wild moment, Jack thinks she's going to kiss him. But at the last moment her lips land, chaste and awkward, at the side of his mouth. It's her turn to apologise when she pulls back, she adds, "I wasn't sure. If it would be different. I don't think I wanted to find out, until now."

He lets out a relieved breath. "I get it," he says. "And you know I — I only want you to be happy, Claire."

"I know," she says, tugging his hand as she heads north towards Mulberry Street and a drink. "This isn't over. It's just different. Does that sound okay?"

It sounds, Jack thinks, like the best thing he's heard in months.