Title: I've Been Dreaming of a Future that Looks Like Our Past

A/N: Some very, very random O/J future fic vignettes. Enjoy. :) Thanks to Broods for the title inspiration.

She keeps her hair cut short. He does not ask her to grow it out, though sometimes she thinks he wants to. When he runs a hand through her hair absentmindedly, it sometimes falls down to her neck too abruptly, as if he'd expected his fingers to be tangled up in her dark locks for longer. It reminds her of the way she sometimes walks down the stairs in the dark, thinking she is at the bottom, only to find herself tumbling through space before hitting solid ground.

She thinks he is like that, now. She can feel him falling, between the past and the present.

But he's adjusting.

And she's adjusting.

It is slow and sensitive work, but they are managing.

He slips every once in a while.

Sometimes he calls her by the wrong name. Or he wonders why she isn't laughing at some old joke the used to have. Or he looks at her, and stares, as if he doesn't recognize her.

Most of the time she lets these things slide. She knows he isn't perfect—neither is she—and she knows how hard it is, to start this life over from scratch, with nothing but a half-erased blueprint to work with, and conflicting memories to reconcile.

Other times, there has been enough sliding, and she asks him to explain himself.

Sometimes, he does so without her prompting. Apologizes, even.

Time passes, and the slips become less and less frequent. He does not stare at her in the mornings, or during the nights, thinking of an earlier time. When he is surprised or scared or happy, hers is the first name that comes to his lips. And, somehow, they find ways to make new jokes to laugh at, just the two of them.

She asks him one night if he thinks she should remove any of her tattoos. She says it casually, as she pretends to try to rub one off the back of her hand, but they both know what she is getting at; they both know which tattoo in particular she is offering to expunge from her body forever.

He doesn't say anything at first. She watches him, as he lies beside her, and as his face grows very tender. Finally, he shakes his head. He kisses her cheek. They each lie back and wait for sleep.

Later in the night, when she can't sleep and she asks him why he shook his head and brushed away her offer, he shrugs. He reaches out a hand to touch her neck, and he tries for a smile as he brushes his fingers lightly against the birds inked there. It is a sad look he ends up giving her, but it is a true one nonetheless.

"You wouldn't be you without them," he says simply.

The words are more beautiful than any I love you he has ever, or could ever, say.

It takes her longer than he expected to find his second tattoo and to comment after it. She brushes her fingers against the three little black birds inked onto him, touching each very gently, as if the skin underneath were still sensitive, the ink still new.

She traces the first, the second, the third, and then finally looks up at him, her eyes wide with questions.

"We match," she says in wonder, reflexively lifting her other hand to touch the three birds inked onto her neck.

He nods in silence, not trusting himself to speak.

He thinks perhaps she senses this, for she does not say anything more. She does not ask. She simply presses a kiss to each bird inked onto him in slow succession, and then the tree tattooed on his inner arm, and then his lips. He waits, all night, for the question to surface. He waits the next morning, and for days afterward. But she graces him instead with patience, and trust.

In return, he promises her silently that he will explain. Out of all the mysteries between them, this is one of the few that truly still matters. It deserves its due, but at the right time.

They find a different ring, when the time comes again. He keeps his, what used to be theirs, on that chain around his neck. He does not offer to give it to her, and she does not ask to try it on. Some things are only his, she knows. Just as some things are only hers.

The wedding is a quiet, practical affair. After all the heartache and the confusion and the waiting, neither wants to waste any time over flower arrangements or white dresses or photographers. A civil ceremony is enough, more than enough, and when it is over and they head outside, it almost feels like too much.

The entire walk home, his left hand is continually curled in on itself, so he can keep his thumb on his ring. He rubs the side and top of it with his fingertip, and brushes the underside and far side with his thumbnail, as if he is blind, and is trying to gauge its shape on feel alone. As if he is addicted, and may not survive if he stops touching it.

His eyes dart between it and her as they walk, as if he expects one or the other to disappear. She holds on tight to his right hand, and smiles whenever he meets her eye. When they have to stop at a corner before crossing, she leans into him, and presses her cheek against his shoulder. Below the blare of the car horns in traffic and the ruckus of people on their cellphones and the endless construction all around, he hears her whisper, "I love you a lot."

A smile sprouts wide on his face, and he presses a firm kiss to her hair. And then to her forehead. And then he ducks down to kiss her properly on the mouth, so slow and long that they end up missing the light changing, and have to stand and wait again. She laughs aloud when she realizes and, for once, he does not try to mentally bottle the noise in order to save it for later. If he is lucky, and if he does his part, he may potentially spend the rest of his life listening to her laugh.

She already has her keys out when they reach their apartment building's front door, and so he lets her open it. He lets her go first, lets her lead the way up the two flights of stairs to their home. He lingers behind her as she moves forward to unlock it, one hand resting comfortably on the small of her back as usual. He waits for the lock to click open, waits for her to push the door open and then yank her key out, before making his move.

Before she can step into the apartment, he ducks down and hauls her up into his arms, cradling her to him with a laugh as she shouts in surprise. She clutches at his shoulders and back tightly as she loses her balance, and he grins at the surprised look on her face as he crosses the threshold of their home with her in his arms.

When she demands to know what the hell he's doing, he simply shrugs. "Tradition," he tells her, and kicks the door closed with a thud. His eyes are bright, happy. "Plus," he adds, a little sheepish, "I've always really wanted to do that."

She shakes her head. "You're an idiot," she says. But she's grinning, too.

When she's late, she tries to think nothing of it. This sort of thing happens, sometimes. Her period isn't always regular, and she's had small scares like this before. But when a one-week delay turns into two, and then into three, she knows this time is different, and that she has to tell him. They've been married for over a year and a half, and yet in all that time, they have only ever vaguely discussed kids. It is a topic is he oddly still mum about, and she has learned not to press him. She knows what his quiet means; she knows the pain that likely hides behind it. But there is no way to avoid the conversation any longer.

She waits until the afternoon, on a Sunday. She thinks it an auspicious time—or at least, she hopes so. It is spring, and the sun outside is bright but not hot. At this time of day, it illuminates the main room of their apartment, casting a wide glow of warmth and light around where he is currently lying on the couch, reading a book. He's got it balanced on his chest, one arm cupped around the spine to hold it in place, the other tucked behind his head, and she smiles as she approaches from behind him, watching him turn a page in studious concentration.

She walks over to the far side of the couch, and reaches down to pick up his legs so she can sit, before letting them back down to rest over her thighs. She rubs her hands absentmindedly over his bare shins, mentally working up the courage to speak, and the grace to say the right thing. She does not want to mess this up, not for him.

"So?" he says finally, minutes later, when she still hasn't spoken.

She glances over to find the book flat on his chest, and his eyes peering at her from the pillow of the couch's arm.

"You want to tell me what you're freaking out about over there?"

"I'm not freaking—"

All it takes is a raise of his eyebrows to silence her useless protest. She closes her eyes, blows out a breath, and clutches his legs tightly. Of course he senses her nervousness; he's always been able to. It's like his sixth sense. Or seventh. Or eighth.

"I have something to tell you," she says finally. She can hear him shift beside her, can sense him straightening up even though her eyes are still closed. When he draws his legs away from her, and sits upright by her side, she knows she has to open them, has to face him. Has to tell him.

She says, I think I might be, but really what she means is, I know I am.

He stares and stares. She is scared he isn't breathing. She reaches for his hand, his chest, touches his neck. She feels a rush of relief when she feels his pulse. It is a little fast, but it is there.

The tears come so fast from him that she does not know what to say to them, does not know how to handle them. They pour from him, as if he had been holding them in for years and only just now found a way to let them all go.

He wraps his arms around her tight, crushing her shoulders to his, pressing their heads together. She finds herself smiling, and burrows her face into his neck. She runs her hands through his hair, across his back. He kisses her neck again and again, and then his head falls to her chest. Then her stomach. His hands slide down, following the small hills and valleys of her ribcage until they center on her lower back.

She whispers his name, again and again, but he does not reply. He does not look up. He keeps his face pressed close to her abdomen, and whispers soft words that she cannot hear. She gives him his time, and bends over to kiss his head, and hug him tight. She holds him too, and burrows her head into him. She presses her face into his hair and breathes him in, long and deep. As the minutes pass, she finds herself wondering if their baby will smell more like him, or more like her, when it is born.

When he finally manages to surface, he takes her hand, but he does not hold it in his. Instead, he guides it with his and presses it against the trio of birds tattooed onto his skin, and even before he starts talking, she thinks she understands. She knows why they match.

Nonetheless, she lets him speak.

He tells her about the baby, the lost one. The one that was sacrificed, along with everything else, from before. He begins in fits and starts, and then he hits some sort of rhythm, and it all comes out. He tells her everything—even things she's certain the earlier incarnation of her never got to hear. When the memories get too hard, but the words won't stop, she shifts until she's curled up in his lap, so that even if he can't have the two he misses most, he can still have her, and what will be theirs.

When he finally finishes speaking , and wipes his face roughly and hugs her hard, she only has one thing to say. She wraps her arms around his back and smooths the tension there gently, until he relaxes, until his breathing slows. Then she asks.

"Are you sure you want it?"

The careful question is hardly out of her mouth before his decisive reply hits her ears:

"I have never wanted anything more."

He worries.

Every time they have to go to the doctor, he worries. Every time she so much as grimaces and touches her abdomen, he worries.

He has nightmares about miscarriages and stillbirths and freak birth complications. He reads, endlessly, about horror stories and miracle births and everything in between.

When they go and see the doctor, he is the one that knows everything. He is the one that knows what week she is in, always. He is the one that knows if she's been sleeping regularly, and eating well, and taking all of her supplements. He is the one that asks questions at every appointment, and writes down the answers. He is the one that, when the doctor is at the door, jumps in to say, Oh, one more thing before you go...

She would be annoyed, if it were anyone else. She would feel suffocated, if she were ignorant of the point of origin of his concern.

But he is not anyone else and she knows the history now. So instead of feeling annoyed or suffocated or otherwise overwhelmed, she feels calm, and safe. She lets him take care of things, lets him worry for them both, and she is there for him when all the worries become too much. She is always there.

She watches him sometimes, when she wakes in the middle of the night for some reason or another, and she takes comfort in the way he sleeps. He is turned towards her, always, with an arm spread out to her growing abdomen.

When she had been thinner, they used to sleep curled up, arms and legs and elbows and knees tangled. Now, with her more than two-thirds of the way through the pregnancy, she is too big for them to be so close anymore. But always, there is his hand, spread out towards her. Always, there is his face, turned in her direction. Always, there is him, right within reach should she ever need him.

She lies still and watches him in the night, and tries to think of something to say that goes beyond the usual I love you or the simple Thank you.

When the labor is finally over, she half-expects the doctor to hand her a newborn covered in tattoos. She actually braces herself for it. But when the screeching baby boy is placed gently in her arms, he is pale and pink-faced, and there is not a mark on him. She is crying before she knows what's happening—or perhaps she had already been crying; she can't remember much, now that the labor is over. She is crying and she is kissing her baby's face, and she is whispering that he is beautiful and perfect and tiny, oh, so tiny, and—

"Hold him," she whispers to her husband, pushing their baby into his arms. "Hold your son."

He is shaking as he stands beside her, actually trembling from head to foot, and she leans back against the pillows with a smile. Out of all that they've been through...

She loves that this is what terrifies him now; she loves that they have both lived long enough for this.

"Go on," she whispers gently, scooting closer to him, and all but pressing their crying baby into his shaking arms. "Watch his head," she instructs, supporting it herself until he has calmed down enough to hold their baby properly.

Her face hurts from smiling so much, but she can't help it, her mouth splits in a happy grin again as she watches him cuddle their baby against his chest, and then lift him to his eyeline. "Hey there," he whispers, and his voice is so hoarse with joy it cracks, but it is still the best sound she has heard all day.

She rests back against the bed then, and watches as he adjusts their baby in his arms, learning the feel of him, learning how his tiny body can fit against his chest and over his shoulder and right into the crook of his arm. It takes a couple minutes, but soon enough, his touch is familiar enough that their baby stops crying, and simply gurgles quietly, looking up at his father.

When the tears start coming again, and he can't hold them in and their baby at the same time, he gently passes him back to her. He kisses her temple, and buries his face in the crown of her head, in the mess of her dark hair. She is sweating and exhausted and she hasn't had even a moment to clean off, but he holds her tight and breathes her in deep, as if she is the purest creature on earth.

He whispers something into her hair, but she can't hear it amidst the sudden crying of their baby, now parted from his father, and the chatter of the nurses, and the heady beat of her own heart. When he finally pulls away, and wipes his eyes, and bends down to watch her cuddle their crying son into a blissful silence, she asks him to repeat his words.

He says nothing for a minute, simply staring at their baby. Then he looks over at her.

"It's all been worth it," he whispers.

Not one atom of her exhausted, depleted body disagrees.