Finally (CC, I/J, teen) 1/1 -12/28/2006

[Lou]

Title: Finally
Genre: CC
Pairing: I/J
Rating: teen
Part one of one.
Summary: Three years after the end of the series, Jesse is still waiting for Isabel to come back home.
A/N: Well, here we are. My very first fic that I've ever posted. I wrote it a couple of years ago and just found it, and thought it could use dusting off and posting.
12/28/2006


Jesse Ramirez smacked the button of his alarm clock and sat up after yet another night of restless sleep. He glanced around the bedroom of his one-bedroom apartment, and cringed. If Isabel saw me living like this, she’d flip out, he thought, a half-smile lurking at his mouth at the thought of his neat freak wife. The room was a mess, with clothes spilling out of the drawers and all over the floor. A few beer cans and the odd pizza box adorned the few spare spaces. Jesse stood up and pulled out a fresh suit out of his wardrobe. His work clothes were the only items he bothered to keep in order these days. They were necessary to keep up the façade he had built for work, where they all believed that he lived a normal life with a human wife who was just frequently away on business. He never went out after work with his colleagues, he didn’t track down his old friends, he just worked and slept. The working part was easy. It kept his mind off his personal situation and gave him a reason to actually get up in the morning. It paid well, too, and with all the over time he put into every case, he was getting noticed, and not just by his own bosses. More than one job offer had come his way, offers that any other young lawyer could only dream about, but he had turned them all down. He simply couldn’t leave, not until he had heard from Isabel. She contacted him sometimes, whenever she was near enough to dreamwalk him. He looked forward to those few hazy hours every now and then, and he slept better after them, knowing she was still ok, knowing she still loved him every bit as much as she always had, but it had been at least six months since the last dreamwalk. It was more than three years since she had left, three years of loneliness, but still he remained completely faithful to her. Several of the administrative assistants had offered their phone numbers to the handsome young lawyer, but they all paled in comparison to his Isabel, and he hadn’t blinked before politely declining. Jesse sighed, glancing at the empty bed, and sent up his hourly prayer that the woman he loved was still alive and well.

Later on that day, a tall, slim woman in her very early twenties pushed open the door to Jesse’s law firm, and approached the front reception.

“Excuse me, could you please tell me where I could find Mr. Jesse Ramirez?” she asked.

“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist asked, glancing up from her work.

“I… no, I don’t, but I need to see him.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but if you don’t have an appointment…”

“Could you at least ask him if he’ll see me? Please?”

Something in her tome of voice and the sad look in her brown eyes made the receptionist pause.

“Alright, I’ll ask, but if he says no, will you promise to leave without causing a scene?”

“Of course.”

“What’s your name?”

“Isabel Ra… Isabel Evans.”

The receptionist picked up the phone and pressed a button.

“Mr. Ramirez? I have a lady at my front desk to see you, she doesn’t have an appointment, she’d just like a moment of your time… …Isabel Evans…” there was a long pause “…Mr. Ramirez, are you still there? …Certainly…” She hung up the phone and turned to Isabel. “He says he’ll see you,” she said, and gave directions to his office.

Two minutes later, Isabel knocked on an office door, right above the sign that said Jesse Ramirez, her other hand flexing nervously at her side. A voice that she hadn’t heard in a very long time invited her to enter. She took a deep breath, and turned the handle. Jesse was leaning back in his chair behind the great desk that dominated the fine room. She slipped quietly into the room and shut the door.

Jesse had dropped his pen when the downstairs receptionist had given him Isabel’s name. He was thankful he hadn’t been meeting with clients at that exact moment. He was completely unable to think of anything, except that she was here… finally here… in the same building as he. His first instinct had been to rush down to the lobby to find her- he’d even walked halfway across his obscenely large office to the door before he’d paused. If he went down there, he’d probably pass her in the elevator. Besides, did he really want the reunion to take place downstairs in front of everyone? What if she had come because she was in trouble? She couldn’t talk about it in public. Or worse… what if she had come to break it off for good? What if she’d found someone else while she was on the run? He took a deep breath and sat down at his desk, clasping and unclasping his hands nervously. How long does it take to come up an elevator? He forced himself to lean back in his chair and take another breath. Just as he was letting it out, a knock sounded on his door.

“Come in,” he called, surprising himself with how calm his voice sounded. The door opened slowly, and a tall blonde woman quietly entered the room. She shut the door silently, and stayed where she was as if awaiting permission to come closer. She still hadn’t met his eyes, and Jesse knew then that she was scared… of him. Or at least of him rejecting her. He stood slowly, unable to comprehend that the beautiful woman standing before him was really here. She watched him stand and come around the side of his desk, where he paused.

“Isabel?”

All his hope, all his love, all his loneliness came out in the single word. She finally lifted her eyes to his and saw that she had had no reason to be afraid- that he would never, could never, reject her. Unexpected tears welled up from deep inside of her, and she suddenly ran forward to him. He opened his arms, she threw herself into them.

Finally, they each thought, and simultaneously pulled back just far enough to look into each other’s eyes.

“I’d begun to think you weren’t coming back,” he said gently, his eyes taking in her beautiful face.

“I’ve missed you so much it hurt,” she replied.

“You have?” he asked.

“Of course I have! You’re my husband! I love you!”

“It’s been so long…”

“Three years, two months, a week and four days since we saw each other, and five months, three weeks and five days since I last dream walked you.”

He smiled as she rattled off the dates. Trust her to know. Then he frowned slightly. “Why did you drop Ramirez then?”

She blushed and looked down. “It’s been so long… and I’d come unexpectedly… and I wasn’t sure if… I mean, I don’t mean to imply you’d be doing anything here, but I thought… just in case… I mean, if there was someone who you were… well… plus it’s not like I’ve been the world’s best wife, taking off for three years and all that… I just didn’t know if you… well… if you wanted me back. So I wanted to make it easier for you if you didn’t…”

He stared down at her in disbelief. “Isabel, I have waited for you. I have been completely faithful to you, this whole time. I’ve never even looked twice at another woman- not just because I’m married to you, but because even the memory of you makes every other woman out there look second best. I have lived for this moment for three years, Isabel. And even if you turn around and leave this office right now, and don’t come back for another twenty years, as long as you are out there I will wait for you.”

“You really want me back?”

“What can I say, Is? I swore to love you until death do us part, and it seems I’m destined to live by that oath.”

She smiled then, the first genuine, confident, Isabel-like smile that had crossed her features since she had arrived. He laughed, giddy with happiness, and pulled her towards him again. She lifted a hand up to his lips to stop him kissing her though, her expression serious.

“If I kiss you now, I’ll forget the other reason why I came here. The others are in the van downstairs. We think it’s finally safe for us to begin rebuilding our lives. It’s time to stop running and stop fighting. And we were wondering… if you don’t mind… if five of us could crash on the floor of your home, at least for a night or two, until something more permanent can be sorted.”

“Five of you? You’re welcome as long as you like… but… five of you? What happened? Who’s not there? Did one of the others… not make it?”

Isabel looked up at him, confused for a moment, before her face cleared and she laughed.

“What? No! No, nothing like that!! Goodness, that would have been an awful way to tell you. No, I only said five because I was hoping you wouldn’t make me sleep on the floor. That is, I assume your bed will be big enough for two…?”

He smiled at his wife. His wife. His smile grew wider at the thought. “There’s plenty of room for two.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she replied, raising her mouth to his. She sighed as their lips met.

Finally, she thought. I’m home.