Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You have to check she’s alive often.

She breathes so quietly when she’s asleep that when you wake up in the night, like you end up doing for water or the toilet or just to cough, you end up watching her get back to sleep. Watching to see if her lungs are expanding and allowing her to breathe. It’s a tight fit on her single bed, which makes it worse when – for a moment – you are terrified that she has gone and have simply been a bystander and let her go.

Jackie’s pressed against the wall and you watch, her chest rising and falling. You shouldn’t really be here, but apparently, it’s different, with two girls, boyfriends don’t mind, apparently. That promise has fallen hollow since you were sixteen, but you let it persist, you let her say it, even though the two of you know that it’s not true. Friends don’t cuddle like this, they don’t have goosebumps following an ‘accidental’ brush of lips against a bare shoulder. She’s always in your arms, she’s always cold, and you would say it’s an excuse for her to get close to you but you can never tell if that’s ever what she wants at all.

You’re only a month into college, and in that time everything and nothing has changed. Jackie finally dumped Jeff’s ass before the two of you moved here, you finally convinced your mom to let you get a bellybutton piercing, it feels like you’re growing up, growing into yourselves and yet, and yet, you’ll always be in Jackie Taylors bed, and you’ll always be holding her.

She wakes up after you but you pretend to sleep, anything to feel her close for longer, even though you’ve seen her clock glowing on the bedside table and it’s getting perilously close to the time that you have to leave for a lecture. You hear as she yawns into her arm and shuffle slightly, getting comfy despite the fact that she’s awake. She shuffles close into your arms and you’re trying not to smile at the feeling.

“I know you’re awake Shipman.” She says, her lips brushing against the base of your neck in an action that feels entirely too much like something that someone in a relationship would do. It feels good, it tingles down your spine, your neck has always been sensitive, your neck and your thighs, a hand on your thigh and you fold like a plastic lawn chair.

“No, I’m not.” You mumble and you feel as she smiles against you, your own lips fight to smile too.

“Real convincing.”

You open her eyes and look down to her, eyes wide and cloudy from just waking up, her hand resting at the juncture between your neck and shoulder, her thumb pressing against your jawbone and pushing your head down toward her.

“I’m always convincing.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” Jackie teases. “Your hair is always such a mess in the morning.” She chastises kindly.

“That’s because someone is always sleeping on me.”

“Shut up you like it.” She says, finally leaning back slightly, much to your chagrin and you start to become cold when her skin peels from yours. “When do you have class?”

It’s a Friday, one of your emptiest days, only one lecture, which means that you only have to be gone for an hour and a half and then you can come back and you can lie in bed with Jackie again. She’s so bad at getting up, bad in the morning, grumpy and short and so cute that it almost hurts you, makes your stomach twist in jealousy at the idea that a man might be taking your place someday.

“Ten.” Ethics of Journalism, the kinda shit that sends Jackie to sleep, even after she insists on hearing about it.

“Hm, so soon.” Jackie complains and you can’t help but agree, you don’t want to leave this bed, this space, this closeness. But as all good things do, it has to end. You roll away from her despite everything in your body asking, begging, wishing against reason to stay. She groans in irritation, lips pouting. What did you say? Awful, in the morning. “No.”

“Attendance factors into my grade, Jax.” You say, even though you are around two minutes from emailing your professor to say you’ve got the kinda hell-flu that the other freshman have but you’ve somehow managed to dodge because you and Jackie are obsessed with staying around each other.

“Boo.” Jackie frowns, somehow pulling your even closer and it’s getting even harder to say no to her, especially when she looks up to you through her eyelashes. Your heart stutters and you remember that she is not more than a friend, she’s your Jackie, yes, and she’s your whole world but you’re sure that you’re just Shauna to her.

“I have to go.” You give her a short kiss on her forehead and start to leave, she holds onto you for a second but realises quickly that your mind is made up. You stand, cold without her around you, no longer under your duvet. The carpet feels like that too-cleaned kinda rough that implied it was once nice but it’s been so many years since it was originally put into the block. You don’t want to think about what the fuck it’s been through.

“So you’re just going to leave me?” Jackie asks, head against her pillow, hair splayed, jaw sharp but soft all at the same time, you long to brush your lips against it, feel her soft skin, the muscle and bones beneath, feel it clench and tense beneath your lips and-

“Guilt tripping hasn’t worked since I was fifteen.” You say, looking away from her and trying to find a pair of jeans that you’ve left around your dorm.

“Ugh, it was worth a try.” She says, snugging into her pillow.

You find your pair of jeans, the one that make your thighs look good and manage to make Jackie dip below where they normally reign. You should probably change but also, you’ll just shower when you get back, plus you changed boxers before you went to bed.

Jackie’s got this tendency to have her eyes do a lot more than she wants them to. She watches you get dressed, pulling a random flannel that the two of you cropped while drunk once and doing it over the sports bra you wore to bed. You wonder if her eyes take in more than normal, just from their sheer size; they watch over you as you get dressed, rolling up your sleeves until they rest tight on your biceps, your jeans hanging just low enough that when you raise your arms there’s a thin sliver of skin on display. They dance across that skin as you pull your hair into a half-up-half-down, the only real hairstyle you can do with the short cut that you finally got the balls to do the second you left Wiskayok.

“I won’t be too long.” You placate her, leaning over to give her a kiss on her forehead.

“You’ll be like two hours.” She complains and you roll your eyes, moving back to find the rucksack that you threw off somewhere yesterday when you finished another journalism lecture that took hours off your life yesterday; you’d expect doing something that you’re actually excited about would be interesting and yet, you still get bullshit lectures to listen through at least twice a week.

“Like an hour and a half, and you probably have your own lecture by then.” You reply, picking up the plain back rucksack from under your bed and finding your notebook and pencil case still inside, bottle of water still full. Sure the water will taste a little weird, but you kinda like it when it does.

“Nah I got nothing today.” She replies, stretching, the duvet falling down below her shoulder and oh her shoulders, that’s another part of her you want to feel beneath your mouth, your teeth, your hands.

“Really?” You raise an eyebrow and she acquiesces.

“Well, I’m not going to anything today.” She replies, rolling her eyes.

“Jackie.” You say, ever so slightly condemning and her eyes harden slightly, that softness beginning to fade.

“Don’t be like that.”

“It’s just, you’re so much better than jumping from major to major.”

“There’s nothing wrong with not knowing what you want to do.” She says, defensive and guilt crawls slow up from your gut until it begins to choke you.

“I know Jax, just, you’re so fucking smart.” You reply, your foot fitting into the backstep perfectly, you didn’t mean it like that, at all. You have all the English language at your disposal, and yet your foot consistently ends up either in your mouth or you need to backtrack and fix your mistakes; your brain just kinda doesn’t work around her. You’d think after fifteen years, you’d get used to the feeling, and you did for a while, but then it got worse with hormones and coming-to-terms-with-bisexuality and Jackie discovering that she can wear minimal clothing around you. She doesn’t know about that bit, the bi bit, you know what she’s not one of those Wiskayok dicks, but the thought of her knowing is still terrifying.

It's a special kind of hell where you want it to stop because if it goes on much longer you’re going to go on a killing spree or something, but at the same time you can’t help but love it because Jackie doesn’t do things without a purpose, you just don’t know the purpose of that.

“You don’t have to lie.” Jackie’s arms start to fold around herself and you lean onto the bed, one knee at a time, and carefully unfold them.

“I’m not lying. You’re a lot smarter than you think you are.” You promise, a hand coming up to softly hold her cheek.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” You nod. “And taking your time is completely fine, I promise. I’m sorry.” You reassure.

“It’s okay.” She nods, taking a breath. “You mean it?”

“Of course.” You smile and she offers one in response.

“Have a good lecture?” She asks, and it’s your permission to leave. Even now that she’s given it, you don’t want to leave even more than before, but you hold firm, you need to stop being so goddamn obsessed with Jackie Taylor.

“I’ll try but I have Richardson today, so I can’t promise anything.” You joke and she lets out a huff of laughter, easing herself back under the duvet and mashing her head softly into the pillow.

“Wait.” She says and you watch as she plays with the clasp around her neck, offering you her necklace. “In case you don’t have a great day, I’ve seen you be extra mopey recently.”

Your heart breaks slightly, she doesn’t know that, inadvertently, she is causing the mope, because she’s not in love with you. Christ, Shauna, this is getting pathetic. You take the necklace from her hand, purposefully sliding your fingers against her palm just to feel her for a second longer. You attach it around your neck, the weight more comforting than you give it credit. She is just so nice and the things she’s doing aren’t purposefully making you sad, she doesn’t know.

“Thanks, Jax.”

“Just, you know, don’t shut me out, I’m here for you.” Her hand finds yours, a quick swipe of her thumb calming you.

“I know.”

“Good.” She lets go and gets back into bed. “Now go and have a good day, I’ll see you later.”

“Aye aye Captain.”

Jackie laughs, soft and drowsy. You take a breath, and play with the tightening straps of the rucksack. Her eyes close, but as you pull on your shoes and walk out the door you feel them burning a hole into you.

Campus is beautiful. The leaves on the trees are beginning to brown and fall, crunching under your converse as you walk to the lecture. The air is cold but not freezing, just the early morning sun hasn’t warmed the day just yet, and while your skin cools, you walk faster. You wish that you were in bed, with Jackie, not having this lecture. It’s not a long walk at all, and by the time you’re about to finally become heat up again you walk into the Highfield Building, you get blasted by the heat of radiators from the 1950s.

The hall is a standard lecture hall, smelling of classroom, smelling of early-morning coffee, smelling of cologne and reeking of tiredness, everyone dragging themselves outta bed for an early morning lecture. Richardson stands at the front, blonde hair greying, eyes no longer lit with any kind of desire for life or journalism. How the fuck is the class half-full already? You’re fifteen minutes early. You groan to yourself and look around the hall, thank fuck the back row is only half full and that one person is already asleep so at least you’ll look like you’re vaguely interested.

It starts with you actually listening but then you’re quickly distracted by literally everything else in your life. It starts innocuous at first, you realise that you should call Tai, ask about how her and Van are dealing with the long-distance and then it travels from Tai and Van to Nat. With Nat comes Lottie’s unrequited/requited love situation which is almost as confusing as you and Jackie but also makes so much sense. That leads to Lottie and the secret nights you’ve been spending at her place, the afternoons and mornings too; which then – as all roads do – brings you right back to Jackie.

Jackie.

You want her so much that it aches, and sometimes you think she wants you too, and then she’ll do something like wax-poetic about some random guy in whatever class she’s going to. And the worst part is you’re not even sure she really likes these guys, they always come with asterixis which leads to the terms and conditions at the bottom of her compliments: His hair is such a nice colour, but there’s too much product in it, his eyes are nice but they’re not the right brown – they’re not like yours, Shipman (that made you choke on your beer), he’s… but… Has been a part of her vocabulary, ever since, well, forever, every single man has been a victim of Jackie’s pros and cons list.

You wonder if you have a list like that, if she does that to you with other people.

You bite your pen, the clicky part chewed up and malformed from your mouth over the few weeks of term that you’ve been here for.

Would Jackie be malleable under your mouth, your teeth, your lips, your tongue? Would her shoulder bend to your will? Her back, breasts, stomach? This train of thoughts is way too common within your brain, your skull, you’ve long since tried and failed to stop it.

“Shauna?”

You’re ripped from your thoughts, from your untoward fantasy about your best friend by the fucking nerd (you’re a nerd too, you have been made very aware of that from literally everyone in your life) in the front row. You clear your throat. You want to bash his head into a wall.

“Yeah?”

“What do you think about investigative journalism and being undercover?”

This is going to be a long fucking lecture.

--

You open your door hoping to see Jackie still dozing in bed so you can take off your jeans and lay back in the warm and the softness of her. Instead music – Spice Girls you think – plays loudly and you see Jackie in one of your shirts (an old Yellowjackets shirt that you had bought Freshman year, too small but somehow fits, when you raise your arms it shifts up high enough to show your piercing and the line of hair that rests between your belly-button and the band at the top of your boxers) and a pair of flimsy, tiny shorts that means you have to jump-start your brain and close the door behind you.

“Hey.” You say and she turns to see you, excited, smile wide across her face. And as happy as you are to see her joyful, you wish that you were causing such a grin.

“Shauna! Guess who has a date tonight!” Jackie says, swinging her shoulders, her voice sliding up at the end of the sentence.

“Uh, Mari?” You ask, walking past her to collapse onto your bed. She fake pouts as you smile wider. Every time, that happens every time, even though every time she has she has a date it skewers your heart; it’s probably dotted more than not by now, you could perfectly marinade and cook it, delivering it for Jackie to eat for dinner.

“You know that it’s me.” She pouts, hitting your head with a crumpled-up t-shirt.

“Wait really?” You pretend to be shocked, a hand on your chest, shoulders raising and she rolls her eyes, walking toward her wardrobe and thrusting open the doors.

“Shut up.” Jackie replies over her shoulder before peering into the depths of fabric, all neatly and perfectly folded. It’s one of Jackie’s many paradoxes, how neat and messy she is at the same time, her notes, her work, completely all over the place but her wardrobe is immaculate; from summer to winter, colour-coded, it’s perfect. She always tries to convince you to let her organise your wardrobe, an organised chaotic mess that only makes sense to you. You sigh and shift to make yourself comfortable against the wall. You watch for a second as she shifts her hips slightly and you stare at the only part of her visible; an ass and a pair of thighs on display from a pair of very short shorts.

You’ve long come to terms with the fact that you’ll never have her, not the way you want, but you’ll take what you can get, even if it kills you. You sigh.

“Who’s it with?” You ask, and her head pops from behind the wardrobe door.

“Greg.” She says, like you should fucking know who the fuck Greg is. You try to picture it, a man called Greg, you imagine him bald but you know that Jackie once said bald men reminded her of her weird Uncle Sal who always smelt like Vaseline. Her head pops back behind the wardrobe and she comes back, with two dresses, a short black one and a longer flowery one, she pops both of them across her body.

“Who the fuck is Greg?” You ask, you nod toward one of the dresses. “The black one.”

“From my Intro to Anthro class.” She looks in the cloudy mirror – the two of you had tried to clean it during Fresher’s Week but just made it worse, you’re pretty sure it’s allergic to cleaner – with the black dress across her body. “Are you sure?”

“I thought you dropped Intro to Anthro. And yeah, remember how many eyes you caught last time you wore that.”

“I did drop Intro to Anthro but he’s still cute.” You don’t believe her. None of the guys Jackie dates are cute, they’re all the same overgrown fools of testosterone, it’s like she’s choosing the most over-the-top manly men just to prove a point, you don’t know what fucking point could be make but your argument stands. She turns back to you. “I don’t want all the eyes, I just need his.”

“Well imagine how cute he’ll look when he’s getting jealous.” You shrug, that’s the kinda thing Jackie likes, the possessiveness, actually no, she hates it when guys are possessive, she likes it when you are.

“No one looks as good as you when they’re jealous.”

And then she says shit like that and you wonder if you have a chance.

“Then wear the other one.” You say, pulling your pack of cigarettes from where you hide them in your bedframe. Fuck, it’s your last one, you bemoan the thought in your head but light it between your lips anyway. She puts the black dress back and leaves the floral one on handle of the wardrobe.

“Oh my god, you’re turning into Nat.” She moans, dramatically waving the smoke that no-where near her face away as if she doesn’t ask after a cigarette every time she gets two drinks in her. You roll your eyes and step away from her slightly anyway.

“Don’t worry, no powders, no pills for me.”

“So needles are fine?”

“You think I’m gonna say no to coke and say yes to heroin?”

“You are getting closer to the broody, English lit major stereotype every day. Soon you’ll be wearing a beret.” She teases, opening the wardrobe again and looking for something new, you don’t know what but she’s looking at something. You take another drag, closing your eyes for a moment.

“Shut up.” You drawl and you don’t even have to open your eyes or look at her to know the shit-eating grin across her face. Jackie lets out a few grunts in irritation, the noise of some clothes hitting the floor.

“How was your lecture?”

“It was a lecture, a nerd called me out and I had to talk for like five minutes. Richardson looked impressed though.” You shrug.

“Proud of you.” She says, and she sounds it, before she giggles to herself. “But you do know that you’re a nerd too right?”

See what you mean? All your friends just bully you because they can, like they’re not all nerds too, you’re just more prominent about it. Maybe the Verruca Salt and Star Wars posters are a bit much but they also remind you of home enough without making you homesick so they’re perfect in your opinion. Not to mention that Jackie fell and almost broke your bed when you were putting it up, so whenever you zone out and stare at them too long, you remember that, her hitching laughter, even a snort.

That was a good day.

“Yeah but, different kinda nerd.” You eventually answer and you can imagine her shaking her head, you take another drag, hearing the whoosh of more clothes on the floor.

“I didn’t know there were different species.”

“You’re so annoying.”

“No I’m not and you love me. Are these good?” She asks and you open your eyes to see her holding out a pair of underwear, maroon, lacy, flimsy, you kind you’re sure you could rip with a single finger, maybe your teeth, either way it would get ripped the second that you had the opportunity to touch them, if you ever got the opportunity.

“Jesus Jax.” You cough on your cigarette.

“What? You’ve seen mine before.” There’s an edge of coy in her voice, something lilting and goddamn dangerous, the kinda thing that makes Jackie such a confusing anomaly in your life, she’s simply asking, but there’s something so much more in it.

“Not in that context.” You grumble even though, yes, she has asked like this before, she always asks like this, each time it gets more and more brazen, something in it that you don’t quite understand. She still looks at you expectantly. “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll be great.” You continue, another long drag taken, it’s almost done – you always smoke so much faster when she drives you crazy. Jackie smiles wide and puts the pair with her dress, pulling her dressing gown from the back of the front door and pulling it over her clothes already.

“Oh, and I might bring him home so can you kindly fuck off around 10?” She asks, that too wide she has when she knows she’s asking something that’ll put you out.

“Your wish is my command.” You say, heart getting skewered around fifty more times and taking another drag and she laughs at you.

“I’m going to shower, see you later.” She waves, leaving the room with her little cady, and the second the door clicks shut you flop onto your bed.

Jackie is like a virus in your brain, she’s infecting your every thought. It’s difficult to not think about her, especially when the last thought of her in your head is in your shirt, in those tiny shorts and holding up even tinier underwear.

You need to not think about Jackie Taylor on a date with a dude in tiny-little-lace underwear.

--

Lottie looks like she’s about to sneeze when she comes. It’s cute.

You look up from between her legs, watching as her eyebrows furrow and mouth wide open in a silent moan, eyes wired shut. Her hips move against your mouth, thighs tightening around your ears and she’s wet, dripping against your tongue, out your mouth, it’s fucking everywhere – she’s going to have to change her sheets. This is the third time she’s rutting against your mouth today, your jaw is cramping, but her hand is in your hair, tugging, she’s letting out those high little moans and, yeah, she looks like she’s about to sneeze.

This thing started after you and Lottie got wine drunk after Jackie went off with a girl and Natalie hadn’t shown up to the party at all and well, ranting quickly turned into kissing which quickly turned into this. You double your efforts and soon her thighs are clamping hard, she’s reached peak sneeze-face and her hips work in tandem with your mouth. She makes a high-pitched noise at the back of her throat and that’s when you know she’s really close. Lottie finishes with her hips twitching against your mouth before it collapses into her bed, the aftershocks fun to enjoy as you meanderingly lick up and down her wetness.

Her head’s fallen back into her lavish purple bedspread, something with a high thread count, something that costs too much for the mediocrity of the feeling of it against your thighs and knees. Everything in this room is purple, white and black, the standard grey walls of the dorms, Lottie’s black sheets and lavender bedspread, Lottie’s white dress that you almost ripped off in haste earlier (she liked that), your flannel and blue jeans stand out against the colours but Lottie’s never made you feel out of place, not here, not ever, not in Wiskayok, never between her sheets.

You’re never sated – it’s a problem that Jackie likes to tease, that Tai likes to play with in stupid games, that Lottie likes to take advantage of – and you taste away, tongue gliding easily between her, thighs twitching, thighs stutter.

“Fuck you’re good at that.” She pants and you, unfortunately, leave the safe haven between her legs. Your hands still rest under her thighs, your breaths are heavier than normal but you couldn’t give a fuck from how she’s all over your face, from how you can smell her. You feel your lips curling up into a smile.

“I know.”

“You don’t look good when you’re being smug.”

“Yes I do.”

“I hate it when you’re right.” She says, you dip your head down to lick through her one last time, to taste and watch as her hips buck from oversensitivity, you are still not satisfied, quenched, full. “This is actually the last time.” Lottie breathes out, hands on either side of your face as she pulls you up into a tongue-filled kiss. She hums into you, as she tastes herself on you.

“You said that last time.” You say, half into her mouth and you roll onto you back, seeing as she licks around her mouth in your periphery, trying to get every taste of herself out. She says that a lot, you say it too, now and again you decide to stop, maybe Jackie will look at your lips for a little while, maybe Nat will give Lottie her last cigarette and you both get delusional enough to believe you have a chance with them.

“Yeah, but Nat finally asked me out.” She says, handing you her cigarette case, hand-rolled in black paper. The case silver, art-deco, probably costs more than her degree. Well, that is them done then, you take one with a shrug. She’ll miss fucking Lottie, but at least one of them deserves to be happy.

“Well done.” You reply, offering your lighter – a shitty green one from the gas-station that creates a little web of green-stained-light on your palm – which she takes with a nod. Your legs are an intertwined, sweaty mess, in an angle that actually hurts a little but you’re too blissed out to give a fuck.

“Jackie still oblivious?” She asks, exhaling and you do the same, the taste of tobacco and lavender and something else fills your mouth, trust Lottie to make a mixed cigarette like this. It’s nice, calming, but you can’t tell which one is doing which, or whether it’s the taste of her still on your tongue that’s doing it.

“Fucking painfully so.” You breathe out. “Lavender?” You ask, moving the lit cigarette around.

“Yeah and chamomile.”

“So you’re trying to lull me into a thick, dreamless sleep.”

“Did you just quote something to me?”

“How lame do you think I am?”

“Shauna.”

“Okay fine, you’re right. She’s got a date tonight.” You don’t even have to say who, she knows, the unnamed she’s that get said (sometimes moaned and never judged) in Lottie’s single don’t have to be explained, it’s always the same two people.

“Make you pick out the outfit again?” Lottie asks, a hand finding your thigh, slightly cooling and it comfortingly squeezes. You have a weakness for hands on thighs, especially when your tongue tastes like Lottie and her lavender cigarettes and you’re sad and jealous and you need to forget about it for a few hours.

“And warned me that she might bring the guy home.” You say and her hand crawls slightly higher, she knows you so well.

“Don’t think about her right now, pretty boy, just focus on me.”

You’ve never been fingered while smoking before. Lottie commands softly, it’s one of your favourite parts of this, she tells you what to do, voice soft but firm as she tells you when to inhale, when to exhale, what to feel. She’s lying on her side, left hand in you, she watches every single movement that comes her working inside you. The second her hand glanced up, she turned around and put it out in an ashtray she stole from a nice bar the last time you went to New York. She leans on her knee, her right hand holding the cigarette that you were once in charge of, keeping it in your mouth.

“Inhale for me.” And you do, until your head is fuzzy and your lungs ache, she takes the smoke from your lips. “Exhale, pretty boy.” She says leaning down, mouth tweaking to the side before opening and inhaling as you do what she commands. Lottie curls her fingers as she does and you moan against her lips, her own mouth smiling as she kisses you. You’re getting close, a coiling heating mess in your stomach, your back leaving her bed, arching up. She takes a drag this time and you wonder how your lips taste against the black of the cigarette.

Her fingers pump harder, curl harsher, your hips start to work against her and you fight to keep your eyes open, to watch her French it, to watch her lips pout around the cigarette. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She pushes it back between your lips.

You come unceremoniously, you come over her fingers with a cigarette in your mouth and the smoke whispering from it easily, you can’t even inhale from it, the way you’re panting and the way she’s looking down at you.

It worked, you’re only thinking about her.

She takes the cigarette from your mouth and smokes it, taking her fingers from you and replacing the filter with them. There’s still some of her left on your tongue, if you concentrate hard enough you can still feel her wetness between your lips, on your tongue, coating the back of your teeth. Her mouth is curled into a Cheshire-grin, her incisors are sharp, glinting in the light, you want her to bite against your thighs but then, Jackie would see it when her eyes glide across your body before you slide into bed with her.

You’re still getting control of your lungs while she lays on her back, taking another drag, letting the smoke lay dormant into the air. This will always leave your head completely empty, white-noise between your ears, throbbing between your legs, an entire world of fuzz and relaxation at your fingertips and the both of you take full advantage of it. She stubs it out, on that fancy ashtray and leans into you, a head on your chest, a leg over yours and your arms slots around her waist easily.

“So, Nat asked you out?”

“Yeah.” She nods against you, her hair rustling, lips brushing against the tip of your breast. You hum.

“How’d she do it?”

Lottie shrugs, one of her hands ghosting up and down on your upper arm, leisurely and slow, it tickles slightly but you could not care at all. She acts relaxed but you know how she leans her face further into your skin, a small smile across her face.

“She was cute about it.” She admits and you snort, the idea of Natalie Scatorccio being cute makes you laugh, she’s more of a ‘buying-you-a-drink-you-said-you-liked-once-and-tells-you-to-shut-up-if-you-smile’ kinda person, like she punched you after she bought you a Pepsi and tried to thank her.

You suppose that’s cute.

“Didn’t know Nat could be cute.” You say instead and Lottie looks up at you, you look down at her.

“She is when she’s shy.”

“Didn’t know Nat could be shy either.”

Her eyes harden slightly and her hand on your arm stops, a solitary nail digging into your arm in some kinda threat, maybe you should be meaner to her, you like the feeling.

“Don’t act like Jackie can’t be a dick too.”

“Fuck you.” You bite even though she’s right, Jackie can be a dick, but she’s your dick. Lottie looks almost a little impressed, nail lessening slightly, pressing and moving up and down again.

“Already done that.” She jokes, flitting through emotions the way that she always does, an emotion floating and snatched out the air, as quick as a page turning; but it doesn’t lessen the feelings, you know that, you know that she feels them all solid and deep, Lottie is a cavern of emotion, they simply bounce a little and hide behind expensive dresses.

“Don’t talk about Jackie like that.” You continue, harsher, biting more.

“Well, don’t be an ass, Shauna.” Lottie reprimands casually, as if it’s nothing more than lifting a finger, even though it gets the job done and there’s a guilt that grows in your gut. “And don’t apologise, I know you’re sorry.”

“Mind-reader.”

“Nerd.”

“Wow, what an insult Lot.”

She laughs, half into you and you laugh too, it’s so easy too, you couldn’t not laugh. Even though you’re both in love with someone else, this is a good band-aid over the pain. There’s a mottled bruise at the base of her throat – you have a deal, you leave marks because it makes Nat a little crazy in a good way, she doesn’t leave a thing on you because Jackie will go ballistic in a bad way. The mark is the same colour as that underwear, that fated pair hanging from her fingertips. There’s a little something that breaks through the fuzz, and that’s Jackie. Jackie about to be on a date, Jackie who made you chose an outfit, JackieJackieJackie. You think of Jackie with bald-Greg and her maroon underwear and-

“Can I go down on you again?” You ask and her mouth twitches into a grin.

“Do you even need to ask, pretty boy?”

--

You didn’t expect to have such a busy day.

Normally Friday’s are surprisingly dull for you, one lecture, maybe get stoned with Nat, maybe kick a ball about with the others but that’s it. Today you’re been all over the fucking place, not to mention how your emotions have been bounced around your chest like Maradona himself has kicked a ball in there. You know that you can’t be mad at Lottie, her love life might finally get getting itself out the drain but still, it’s good sex and selfishly, you wish you could keep having the good sex in a way that stops you consistently thinking about being in love with your best friend.

The shadows are just getting long when you get back home. You don’t know how long you were at Lottie’s, it felt like half an hour but from the way the shadows of the trees stretch across the pavement, it’s getting more and more apparent that you were there for hours. There are clouds gathering, already a dark grey that means you’re fucking glad you’re not going to the bar tonight because it’s gonna rain badly. It’s not too late, Jackie won’t ask you to kindly fuck off for another few hours so maybe you can get started on your dull Friday after-all, which means: studying for next week.

But, your luck, as it always does, runs out. When you decide for three seconds of rest before you start working on the next chapter of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a book you never thought you’d actually enjoy, but have had to limit yourself otherwise you’ll burn through it like a four alarm fire, your phone rings. You pull a pack out of your back pocket, crumpled and full (for once, courtesy of Lottie Matthews and her habit of pilfering things her friends would like) and put one between your lips, stumbling over your shoes to where you left your phone in your bag, by the front door.

“Hang on, I’m fucking coming, Jesus.” You complain, knowing that the other person on the line can’t hear you at all.

“What?”

“Shauna?” Jackie’s voice is almost overtaken by the noise of the bar, bustling, shouting, the sound of a country rock hybrid song screaming in the background. You stand, cigarette almost falling out of your mouth. She shouldn’t be calling you this early, normally she waits until the walk home, for safety reasons and to complain about the guy’s beer breath or shitty cologne or how they talked with a full mouth. Shit that you’d never do, God.

“Yeah?” You say, lighting it, quickly inhaling and exhaling, scratching your temple with your forth finger after you do so.

“Please can you come to the bar. Bring what’s his name- Adam!”

“Adam?” You roll your eyes, trust Jackie to forget that you haven’t seen that pretentious dick in months. “I haven’t been hooking up with him.”

“Well you’re hooking up with someone.” You know that tone, short, accusatory, jealous, you like it when she’s like that, it makes you know that she wants you, a little. She’s noticed, you wonder what she would do if she knew that it was Lottie you’ve been hooking up with. Not only is it a girl, but it’s someone she knows. You take a long drag while she speaks, the kind that makes you go slightly dizzy, the kind that you like.

“Yeah.”

There’s a moment of silence and you can imagine her expression, that expectant face, eyes wide, hands on her hips. You exhale.

“Well are you gonna tell me who?” She asks, when you give her nothing. You go toward your side of the room and find your pair of converse where the laces haven’t been untied since you bought them.

“No. Why do you want me to go to the bar?” You say, even though you’re pulling on your shoes and going.

“Because this date is the fucking worst!”

“So just say I’m sick, say I’m shitting myself dead or something.” You stand, taking the cigarette from your mouth, talking with your hands so aggressively that you knock her pillow from her bed.

“That’s fucking gross, Shauna.”

“You’re not the one shitting.” You grumble, crouching to pick the pillow up, only to see a familiar pair of boxers underneath that makes you stop stock still.

“Ugh, just get over here.”

“Okay.” You say without thinking and pull the phone away from your ear, hanging up. Navy boxers with a dark yellow band, the pair that you’ve been looking for, the pair that you wore when you went to the gym last week, the pair you’ve been looking for to wash. You remember what pair they are because Jackie complained that they rested too low on your hips, while her eyeline couldn’t stray from the line of hair echoing down to the yellow elastic band.

Oh, Jackie Taylor is going to give you a stroke forty years too early. 

You wonder what would happen if you swapped out your sweaty-post gym boxers for your post-Lottie-hook-up boxers.

You don’t.

Instead you pull on your leather jacket and take another lengthy drag, the thought of Jackie carefully folding your underwear to leave under her pillow, the same pillow that your head rested on when you woke up today. Oh, she’s had you both above and below her pillow and that thought fucks with your head more than it should. You really should ditch Jackie and her date and text Lottie, but Lottie’s got that date with Nat tonight and when can you say no to Jackie?

The bar is just a place that doesn’t ID and has beer that’s vaguely cheap and tastes better than whatever warm keg Randy Walsh used to drag to Lottie’s house. The bouncer nods at you when you come in, you’re a far too familiar face here, you wonder if his wife has given birth yet. It doesn’t take long to find Jackie and Greg, he’s not bald, that’s a surprise. Her face is twisted into her face grin, you’re pretty sure that you can see her eye twitching in irritation at whatever story he’s telling.

“Oh my God! Shauna? I didn’t know you were coming here tonight?” Jackie exclaims, stopping Greg in his tracks and brushing past him so aggressively that he almost drops his beer. She went for the black dress in the end, the one you chose and your heart thuds extra hard against your ribs at the fact she chose your choice, and with how beautiful she looks.

“Yeah, just felt like a drink.” You lie, and she throws her arms around you like she didn’t see you like two hours ago.

“Thank you so much, I love you.”

“Love you too.”

She pulls back and her fake smile drops.

“He just keeps talking.” She says and there it is, that’s the con, that’s the inconsequential thing that’ll be a dealbreaker. Well, that would be a pain in the ass for you too, you’d probably get pissed if t just kept going too. “I’ll be back in a second, Greg, just grabbing another drink.”

You meander up to the bar, Jackie shaking her head at herself. Laura, the only bartender who doesn’t sneer when you order here, leans on the bar, waiting for your drink.

“Can I have a snakebite?” You ask, speaking over the country-rock song that’s too loud to be entirely legible but you guess it could be worse, it could be silent like the other place in town that doesn’t card, or have some kinda other shit music that makes you have to listen to it because it’s so bad.

“You got it Shauna.” She winks and starts pouring beer into the bottom half of the pint glass, Jackie lets out a short noise of distaste and you turn to see her noise crinkle.

“Why do you like such shit drinks?” She says, not in the joking fun way you’d expect her to, in the why-are-you-embarrassing-me-Shipman? way, the way that you thought the two of you had gotten over, you make a fist for a second, a wave of anger rising and falling quicker than a wave-break.

“Hey don’t take your shit date out on me.” You reply and she has the decency to look sheepish. Laura hands you the brightly red drink. “Thanks.”

“Sorry.” She bites her lip. “It is shit though.” You take a long sip, the sweetness of blackcurrant and cider swirling in your mouth, you let out a refreshed ah when you’re done that makes her finally crack a real smile for the first time since you’ve been there. 

“Taste is subjective.” You reply, licking some wayward drink off your lips, Jackie’s eyes track the movement.

“Not in this case.”

“Shut up.” You smile and she rolls her eyes, the tension of her shoulders relaxing. She leads you back to where her and Greg were standing around one of the barrel-tables, right by the speakers. Greg’s face crumples in confusion at you being there.

“Who’s this babe?” He asks, like half an hour into a date is enough time for that kinda nickname, Jackie’s nose crinkles at the name.

“Shauna, my roommate!”

“Oh nice to meet you.” He lies with an uneasy smile and you take him in. Spiked hair that you’re sure making the noise of ripping Velcro if you touched it, a smile that’s the kind of cute that Grandmother’s like and light blue eyes that look like they see right through you, in an uncomfortable way. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, the same build as Jeff, ugh, you hate thinking about Jeff.

“You too.” You reply in the same tone, taking a large gulp of your snakebite, you cannot believe you said you would do this. You clear your throat. “So-“

“Actually, Shauna, this is kind of meant to be a date.” He says and you raise an eyebrow at him. Yeah, no, you’re not going to leave.

“Don’t be rude Greg.” Jackie chastises, an elbow lightly pressing him in the stomach. He winces and yields, nodding in agreement, Jackie Taylor and how power over men should be something studied in a lab.

“Okay, lets one drink together.”

“So, what do you study?” You ask him, leaning onto the table and staring up into those baby blues.

“Maths.”

Your eyebrows furrow.

“Why were you in Intro to Anthro?”

“To pick up girls, duh.” He puts a hand around Jackie’s wait and tugs her toward him in a way he’s sure is charming but is makes him look like a sleezy dude. “Looks like it worked.” He laughs, like it’s funny and you just maintain eye-contact, taking a long drink instead. “It was a joke.” Greg rolls his eyes. “Jesus ladies, tough crowd. Did I ever tell you about that time-“ He starts and Jackie’s eyes almost pop out of her head in irritation. You’re pretty sure that this is the fastest you’ve ever drank a snakebite, you ordered it two minutes ago and you’re already halfway down.

“I’ve got an early class tomorrow so I might head back sooner rather than later, that okay Shauna?” Jackie asks and you’re already nodding your head before she even asks you. You see Greg’s shoulder move and Jackie tense slightly and it doesn’t take a genius to see that he drop his hand to her ass. You’re starting to get fucking pissed.

“So you don’t wanna come back to mine, sweetheart?” He asks, lopsided smile making it look like he’s melting. You’re sure someone told him it was sexy at some point. It isn’t.

“No, not until the third date.” Jackie smiles, fake and slightly hurt and you’re so exhausted and tired of all of this that you are this close to punching him out. Jackie, presses on his sternum and he smiles like her dismissal is funny.

“Oh, so you’re a prude.” He barks out a laugh like it’s a joke, taking a drink of her beer and Jackie flinches. Anger rises up through your systems, your knuckles turn white from how hard you clutch your glass. You slam it down on the table, some liquid sloshing over the side.

“Hey, fuck you man-“ You start and Greg begins to square up in return, standing tall and jutting his chin like it’ll scare you.

“Shauna, leave it.” Her hand is a vice grip against what of your bicep she can hold. He nods at you like walk away, walk away, and that just gets you even more pissed. “Please.” Jackie jolts your arm again and you look at her, eyes shining, lip wobbling somewhat and the anger flies out of your body quicker than a bullet and you give up on your journey to cave in his skull.

You reach to grab her jacket from the back of the chair and give it to her, glaring at Greg the entire time. Her hand finds yours and drags you from the bar.

It’s a very quiet walk home.

--

Jackie’s silent when she pulls the dress from her body, and you see her underwear paired with her bra before she pulls on your shirt, her shorts yet again. You follow suit, ending up in your boxers and your flannel. It’s only when she’s in your arms, in her bed, that she starts to cry, full sobs against your body, tears soaking your flannel another colour. She’s so wonderful, she’s so much better than that man, you can’t believe that he did this.

You’re sure that there’s something more to this, but you won’t push her, nothing good has ever come from making Jackie Taylor speak before she’s ready. You just hold her close, running a hand through her hair and murmuring whatever sweet words run through your mind. You think about hitting him, hurting him, making him pay, there may be more but as far as your concerned that asshole made your Jackie cry.

“I don’t, I don’t know why I’m crying, it’s not even the worst thing a guy has ever said to me.” She sniffles and you kiss her forehead, trying to soothe and relax her as much as possible.

“It doesn’t matter, he was a dick anyway, I mean did you see his hair.” You say, trying to go down an easy route to make her feel better; making fun of the fucker. She feel her smile weakly against your shoulder, good, it’s working, slowly but surely, it’s working.

“It could’ve been fucking bulletproof with all the gel in it.” She laughs wetly and you smile.

“Sorry it was shit Jax.” You lie, you’re not sorry at all, you’re glad that she didn’t end up Mrs. Greg, didn’t have to crash somewhere else while they hooked up and didn’t have to see them kiss.

“Thanks for saving me.” She says, voice cracking slightly.

“Anything for you.” You reply, meaning those three words so much that you’re worried the amount of earnestness may indicate how you feel.

“I love you.” She says and it heals and hurts at the same time.

“Me too.”

You pull her closer and a few more stray tears leave her eyes until her breathing eventually evens out and she’s asleep, clinging to you like a koala. You watch as she sleeps again, breaths even, face disturbed by tears, hair still curled, she’s going to complain about that tomorrow, whine and ask you to brush the back because you do it nicely, you know she’s lying, there’s nothing gentle about the way you do most things and since your hair has become shorter than it’s been when you were a kid. Jackie plays with it sometimes, when you’re reading for class and she’s watching you read for class, head in her lap, her fingers spread in your hair, nails scraping your scalp in a way that makes tingles run down your spine.

You don’t really know what you’re doing, the only thing you do know is that your flannel is soaked through with tears and that her eyes are going to be puffy and uncomfortable tomorrow and you have to hurt anyone who could hurt her like that. You wait until she’s asleep to slip out, pulling on those jeans yet again and a large fleece that would’ve made you sweat a week ago but the nights have become more and more cold as summer turns into autumn. You make your way back toward the bar, it’s the only place you’ll be likely to see him.

You were right, the clouds start to gently let rain begin, a few drops at a time as you get closer and closer to the bar. By the time you get there, it’s near torrential and you have to focus to see through the haze. The lights are still on, but it’s the overheads, with Laura nodding her head to some music and wiping down the bar, you’ll leave her be.

Fuck, maybe you won’t be able to find him and you won’t be able to punish him for how he hurt her.

That is, until you hear a curse half-muffled by the rain in the alleyway next to the bar and you see him there, leaning against the wall, pissing. Gotcha you motherfucker. He stumbles away and pulls up his trousers, singing something to himself.

“Hey!” You shout, barrelling down the alleyway, he turns and almost falls over, his eyes furrowing before he notices who you are.

“Shauna!” He waves and smiles, as if you got along this evening, fuck he must be drunk. “Hey! What are you doing here?” He sways on his feet and your jaw clenches so viciously you’re surprised that it doesn’t break. The rain soaks through your hoodie, through your shoes, leaving your hair wet and limp around your face.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“I’m Greg?” He asks, surprised, confused, eyebrows furrowing and head tilting. Even with the rain, his hair is still spiked, it doesn’t even consider moving. You shake your head at him, anger making your hands shake somewhat.

“No, who do you think you are? Making her cry?”

“C’mon sweetheart, it was just a little joke – it’s not my fault she took it like that.”

“You don’t deserve her.”

“Whatever.” He tries to push past you but you push him against the wall, rage carrying you, rage rushing through your veins, righteous rage and forbidden anger, frustration that you keep buried and hidden more often than not, finally coming out your body. “You fucking bitch.”

“You made her cry.” You push him further into the alley-wall.

“She’ll get over it.”

Your fist hits his jaw, blooming pain down to your wrist, his head hits the bricks behind as he stumbles against it.

“You’re fucking insane!” He yells and you hit him again, same fist, same side and kick him next, hard in the balls and he falls onto the ground.

You kick him again, stomach this time. You don’t how much you do that but he starts protesting after the fifth one. You kick his head, hearing the crack of his nose under your foot, the blood spurting across the concrete, he leans onto his back, chest still heaving slightly, uneven and short. Greg tries to get away, hands slipping against the wet floor, you watch him struggle, some kind of sick satisfaction coming over you.

Look at him, big, tall Greg, not even able to run away from you. You’re obsessed with the feeling.

You straddle him and his eyes widen in fear, his face puffy and red. You’re about to make sure he can never make another girl cry again, when you’re done with him, he won’t even want to leave the house. You hit him again and again and again. One fist, two, the other hand, two. Againagainagain. You can’t stop, you’re not sure you ever can and will. His face crumples and cracks and crumbles beneath your fists.

It's impossible to stop, you’re addicted to the feeling of him beneath you, struggling to fight back, struggling to keep his face in a recognisable shape.

You’re sated, finally at some point when the blood from your knuckles begin to bleed and break from the feeling. Your greed starting to finally finish, finally used up, finally finished.

You stand, thighs aching from squatting, knees clicking, you expect to see his chest flutter but it doesn’t, he just lies there. You see his blood run into the drain, the rain helping, his skin slowly fade to become pale and oh, oh.

This could easily become a problem.

Chapter Text

Dread quickly overtakes your satiation quicker than the rain washes his blood away.

You just killed a guy.

You just fucking beat a guy to fucking death.

Greg’s body looks cold, his face looks almost blue, almost white, it’s cold and stiff, it hardly looks like him anymore, his nose is smushed, face swollen, a tooth on the concrete, you keep waiting for his chest to stutter awake but it still doesn’t.

Yeah, he’s definitely dead.

You just killed a guy.

You’re sweating through your flannel, but the rain has soaked through your clothes and you’re a mixture of hot and cold that makes you feel like you have a fever. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Adrenaline fades and your fists starts to ache, the rain stings your bloody and bruised fists, your foot hurts from where you were kicking him.

Should you stay here? Should you leave? You shouldn’t stay too long right?

What the fuck have you done?

You step back once, twice until you end up back in the street, under streetlamps.

Greg may not have been able to fight back when you were pounding into him, but there’s no way you could physically move him. Not to mention, where the fuck would you put his body? The sea is no-where near, he’d be found in a dumpster, and you don’t really wanna cut him up – God even the idea makes you wanna hurl. Shit, you can’t throw up around here, that’s how they’d find you, right? You’re pretty sure that’s how it works.

You walk back toward campus bloodied fists shoved into your pockets as you go, staring at the ground, making sure that you’re not getting recognised by anyone. That’s the right thing to do, right? Jesus fucking Christ, what have you done?

You need some help.

Jackie is outta the question, she can never know that you did that, she can never know you did it for her, she wouldn’t understand, she just wouldn’t get it. You have like five other friends, you have no clue who to go to. Tai has like a massive fucking hard-on for the law so you can’t tell her, not to mention the fact that she lives like two fucking states away, and Van can’t lie for shit, Nat has some fucked up moral compass that you totally get but also not what you need for now so that only leaves one person: Lottie.

There’s a payphone on the corner by the church, Lottie’s the kinda rich that means she has a nice cell phone, you left yours at home. You don’t know why but you did, maybe you had thought about killing him deep in the back of your mind, already covering your tracks. You press your thumbs into your eyes until you see fuzz around the edges of your vision. You have a few quarters from last week when you and Jackie went to an arcade (you annihilated her at air hockey but she got you at any throwing games). The thought of it calms you, the thought of her does, good, you should keep thinking of her.

But then guilt starts to creep in, you killed him, you beat him to death, you watched as the life left his body. Guilt aches. Regret doesn’t filter through. A spark of sickening joy flickers in your systems. You push some quarters through and punch her number in. It rings a few times. You’ve never had a lotta belief in a God, but right now you are praying to him that she picks up.

“What?” She sounds pissed, but at least she’s not out of breath or drowsy so you know you didn’t interrupt anything or wake her up. Okay, you’ve just gotta tell her that you just killed a guy. Not just killed a guy but beat him to death and that you’ll probably need her help to move the fucking body. You don’t say anything and you hear her sigh down the phone. “Shauna look, I’m not really in the fucking mood-“

“I just fucking killed a guy.” You get out. There, you ripped off the band-aid. You stop walking, all you can hear is the rain against the top of the payphone and the two of you breathing down the line.

“What?” She asks, not sharp, not unkind, but surprised, soft; a bottomless well of kindness.

“Please don’t make me say it again.” You somehow manage to murmur out and you hear movement on the other side of the call, maybe she’s sitting up, there’s a rustling.

“Are you okay?” She asks and you blink, did she just? There’s no reason to ask you that. Murder is the kinda thing that everyone agrees on as being a bad fucking thing, and she’s asking if you’re okay. The breath gets knocked out of you, with those three simple words, you screw your eyes shut, the feeling overwhelming you.

“Why are you asking me that? I just- I just-“You start, still not able to work your lungs, your eyes slam open and black spots appear across your vision and you have no idea what to say, what to think, you don’t know what to say.

“Breathe, Shauna, where are you?” Lottie’s voice is calm down the line, soothing, you can almost imagine her hand on your sternum to relax you, her words like honey in your ear.

“By campus.” You manage to say, the back of your throat starting to warm, bile threatening to expel from your stomach. You’ve had a low level of nausea since you, well you, since you killed him. It comes and goes in waves, started at a high and lessened and come back and forth and it comes back with a vengeance.

“Where’s the body?” She asks, a good question, a sobering question, you swallow the impending sick that was about to explode onto the glass wall of the booth.

“I just left him.” You wave your hand at nothing.

“Okay that was maybe not the best choice.” Lottie says, and you lash out toward her in a quick set of words.

“Well this is my first murder, Lottie, I’m not exactly well fucking versed in what to fucking do.” You immediately feel bad about it and hush out a: “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I’m sorry too.” She sighs and it seems like she stands up from something down the line, a short noise leaving her lips as she moves. “We can’t leave the body there.”

“But I’m almost at campus.” You say and it almost comes out as a whine even though you know that she’s right. You just want to get into bed, you want to be next to Jackie, you want to shower.

“Where are you?”

You look around, you’re on the worst hill in New Brunswick, the one with the old-ass church is on.

“By the church.” You say, nodding, even though Lottie can’t see anything.

“Stay, I’ll be there in five, pretty.”

It takes twenty minutes to walk to the church, so that means she’s driving.

“Wait are you driving?” You ask, Lottie’s not meant to be driving, you don’t know why, you don’t pry into shit she doesn’t want to share, but you know that she got driven to school and that you had to give her a ride around Wiskayok a few times.

“Yeah, can you carry a body?” She replies, a little out of breath and well, that’s unfair.

“Maybe.” You say, knowing that he’s almost six foot and two-hundred pounds, and almost impossible for you to carry by yourself. “I thought you weren’t meant to drive.”

“I’ll just flash them my tits if we get pulled over.”

“That’s how Ted Bundy got caught.” You point out. Your mom had always worried about you getting into cars with strangers, you never really understood why, you hardly like people you actually know, let alone, strangers – you’re not going to trust people just like that. Oh God, your mom, you feel sick again, she would be so disappointed, upset, fuck, you reckon she would never even want to see you again.

“Yeah, but Ted Bundy didn’t have tits, he had a monobrow.” Lottie brings you back down to earth, a car door closing on the other side of the phone.

“I guess that’s right.”

“Stay on the line, I’ll be there in a sec.” She commands, in the way that she commands you in bed, self-assured and firm, without being harsh.

 You rack your brain to think about something, anything except Greg lying there on the concrete, you pull your other hand from your pocket and stare at your split open knuckles, half-cleaned from the rain. Your index knuckle is inflamed, almost bursting from the skin and you wonder if you’ve broken it, blood stains the wrinkles across your fist, the excess washed away. You can’t stop looking at it, the dead skin around the open wounds, the bruised and broken skin. Your hand shakes, it is shaking because you’re ashamed, because you’re scared? Or did you like it?

You’re almost afraid that you liked it.

“Shauna?” Lottie breaks that thought off like she’s splitting a chocolate bar in half. You clear your throat and let your fist drop.

“So, uh, how was your date with Nat?” You ask, the only thing that seems safe to talk about, the only thing that will probably distract from all of this.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” She replies, short. You know many of Lottie’s voices but you’re not sure about this one, it’s not coy, not angry or upset or flat, it’s just there.

“Lottie I’ve had your fingers in my ass.” You say, trying to bring the mood up even though you’re sure the mood shouldn’t be brought up, not in this situation. You say it, trying to convince her that you can keep secrets, because you can and you’ve done things to each other that you haven’t done with anyone else. You add another quarter into the machine and lean your head against the wall, the glass cool against your forehead.

“It wasn’t like that; it wasn’t even a date.” Lottie half-acquiesces, and your heart stumbles slightly.

“But I thought she was cute about it.”

“Turns out she was just nervous to ‘hang out’ with me.”

That doesn’t make sense, Nat isn’t afraid of anything, she’s Natalie Scatorccio for fucks sake – maybe you know her less than you thought. You suppose her air of anger always felt brittle, a front of protection that you’ve never taken the time to understand. Maybe you should. You chew on your cheek for a second, toes pressing into the floor of the payphone.

“Sorry Lot.”

“It’s fine.” It’s not fine, if you weren’t so fucked up right you, you would do a better job of making her feel better, maybe you’d fuck her body instead of helping you hide one. “When you haven’t murdered someone, you can fuck the feeling out of me.”

Glad that the two of you are on the same page about all of that. It sucks that Nat didn’t properly ask Lottie out because they are so obnoxiously into each other but, selfishly, you get to keep fucking her, she gets to keep fucking you, and the two of you can be totally copasetic in your unrequited, idiotic shit.

“You got it.” You roll your shoulders, a sudden itch down your spine. “You’re being, uh, kinda relaxed about this?”

“Would you like me to be freaking the fuck out?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

A car pulls up next to you, some kinda sad-rock tune blaring out of the system. Lottie. You hang up your phone and jog across the road, flinging open the passenger door and almost flinging yourself into the plush seats. You wonder how much money Mr. Matthews spent on this car that his daughter shouldn’t even legally be driving. It smells like Lottie’s herb-tobacco cigarettes, a hint of weed and a shitty air-freshener that doesn’t do shit. There’s a cross wrapped around the rear-view mirror and you wonder if Laura Lee gave it to her.

You’ve known Lottie Matthews since you were fourteen and this is the first time that you’ve ever been in her car.

“Where did you leave him?” She asks, like she’s talking about the weather, and you lean back into her seat, crossing your arms.

“By the bar, the alleyway.”

Lottie doesn’t reply, she just nods and starts driving. The music goes, the rain hits and splashes against the windscreen, she hums along slightly, tapping against the wheel. She parks a block away, no explanation but it makes sense, you reckon that the cameras around here don’t work for shit, and no one else is out this time of night, especially in this rain.

There’s a moment of silence where the car is off and the two of you just sit there.

You nod and open the door, she does the same, both of you slamming the door almost at the same time, just off enough for it to bother you slightly. The rain has lessened slightly, no more this drops that make it difficult to see in front of you, instead it’s just thick raindrops that still wet Lottie’s ridiculous fur jacket through. You take Lottie around the back of the bar instead of the front, finding the alleyway and walking around the dumpster to his malformed, broken and bruised body.

You wave your hand at it, at him, awkwardly, a strange feeling of pride that you swallow down, you shouldn’t be proud of this. You feel nauseous again, disgust and pride and guilt and excitement create a repulsive mixture in your gut.

“Holy shit you actually did it.” Lottie says, voice shuddering, slightly aghast, but not angry, not upset or disgusted – just surprised. You can’t tell if that makes you feel better or worse.

“Did you not believe me?” You ask, incredulous and she turns to you.

“Shauna you actually killed someone.”

“I fucking know!” You say, louder than you should and her eyes meet you through the rain. There’s no one around here, no one hears. “I know.” You repeat, quieter this time, shoulder bowing, nausea rising and eyes beginning to sting with tears.

“Okay, okay.” She takes a second, nodding to herself. “So, what are we doing with him?”

You pace a few steps, rubbing your forehead as you do. Fuckfuckfuck. You were hoping that she would come up with a plan. Burying is too obvious and too much work, especially in this weather, no sea, you don’t think you could chop him up or anything, God even the thought makes you throw up in your mouth.

There’s an idea, a good idea.

“The river, right? That’s gotta be the only choice.”

She nods, still staring at him, how the fuck are the two of you going to get him there? You hope Lottie doesn’t mind a little bit of light bleeding in her trunk.

“Okay, okay. There’s a building site near here, we can take some concrete blocks.” You nod your head as you speak, the plan is becoming more and more solid in your mind. Get him in the trunk of Lottie’s car, get some blocks, get them attached to his body somehow and drop him into the fast part of the river. Okay, okay, okay, that makes sense, complete sense. Just like Al Capone used to do, that never did him wrong you suppose.

“Stealing and murder, in the same night?” Lottie teases, it feels too cavalier for it all but you suppose there’s no other way to deal with it, you turn to her eyes wide and everything a little too forced. You lick your lips, there’s no other way.

“I’m taking a page out of your book.” You reply, quick and she shrugs her shoulders, some tension relaxes across you.

“Touché, pretty.” Beat. Silence. “I’ll take his body, you take his feet.” You say and she nods. Lottie’s strong but, you know that you’re stronger.

He’s cold and wet and stiff. It’s almost like carrying a very heavy mannequin, except guilt aches within you and you can only think in short sentences and movements or you’ll implode inside yourself.

Adjust your right arm or he’ll fall. Take a few steps. You see Lottie blow some hair out of her face. You have to make it up to her. Look to the left, the street is empty. Wipe your brow. Drop him into the trunk. Sigh out a tired breath. Look to Lottie.

Okay. You can think again.

Her car smells the same, it looks the same, sounds the same but everything is just so different. Greg is in her trunk, there’s a dead body in her trunk. You killed a man. You beat him to death. You look at your knuckles, split and bruised with some dried blood still meandering.

“Stop. You can’t change it now.” Sometimes Lottie sounds haunted, sometimes it sounds like she knows so much more than she’s letting on, some wisdom trapped between her teeth. You clench your hands; it re-opens a wound on your pinkie knuckle. You suppose she’s right. You nod and let them rest on your thighs, resting your head against the seat with a sigh. You don’t have to look at Lottie to see her head nodding at you doing what she said. “Where is the building site?”

“On Mayflower.” You say, it comes out more as a mumbling whisper, but you hear the indicator clicking so you guess that she heard you.

The car comes to a stop quicker than you would expect and your eyes blink open, maybe you dozed off for a second, you don’t know. You go to open her door and Lottie wraps her long fingers around your forearm and tugs gently.

“Wear this.” She leans over the stick-shift and opens the glovebox, pulling out a recognizable black beanie. You blink as you hold it between your hands.

“Is this Nat’s.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Lottie shrugs and that’s the answer for you, it is. You pull it over your head and shrug off your flannel, leaving you in your shirt from earlier, looking, just maybe, different enough from before so they can’t link you with you from the alleyway. It’s difficult to shuffle through two grated fences, you almost get stuck, but you have to, you have to get rid of him, you have to get this out of your head and your life, you need to fucking forget about the sick, twisted joy that erupted in your gut. Maybe if you’re done with it, you can pretend that you didn’t like it.

The two bricks are dry against your palms, they scrape abrasively against your nails and hurts the same way cutlery against a plate does.

You keep them on your lap, the feeling in your calves beginning to lessen as she drives, Lottie goes past the first bridge to the river, the well-lit one, the one with traffic and cameras. Instead, she takes you to the bridge which the locals say is haunted, with one lamppost that flickers and the only people who go there are the people who want to see the ghost of the bridge.

It’s empty.

There’s a moment after she turns the car off where you sit there. The two of you find each other’s eyes and you stare, you’re really doing this, and then you’re done. She opens her door first, and you follow suit, beanie still low on your head, her own hair is down to hide her face and the trunk gets open.

“We should strip him.”

“Why?”

“Blood shit.” She shrugs and you roll your eyes, you’re pretty sure that this is the blind leading the blind here. You waves your hands around you, the water dripping harshly against your body, your arms dripping wet since you’re only in your shirt now, Lottie’s hair is beginning to wilt from the water.

“It’s raining. That should be fine.” You say and she gives you a look, the kinda look she’d get in her eyes when Nat would get battered by a defender, less violent than yours can get, but still something simmering under the surface.

“Shauna, it’s better safe than sorry.”

“Why the fuck do you know so much about this?” You deflect, and she rolls her eyes flat palm hitting the side of her car.

“Hey I’m helping you with murder, Shauna, don’t give me that tone.” She chastises you proper and good and you hang your head, her hand squeezes your shoulder kindly and you know you’re off the hook. “I’ll do it, you tie the rope to the concrete blocks.”

“Rope?”

“Yeah.”

“Where the fuck did you get rope from?” You ask, before you can stop yourself.

“Sometimes you need rope.” She shrugs, and you’ll take it, you guess it’s an answer.

You hate looking at him, you close your eyes and turn away. You breathe through your nose to calm your fluttering heart, hearing her move around, fabric rustling. You open your eyes, going toward the front to grab the blocks and move to the curb, sitting down. You focus purely on looping the rope around the bricks, making sure the knot is tight and making sure you’re breathing in and out. When you’re done you look up to see Lottie a foot away from the car and staring down at you. You don’t know what else to do but awkwardly wave and a ghost of a smile makes its way across her face.

Maybe this’ll be okay.

You stand and make the few steps back to her, holding the blocks in your hands. His face is covered by a TK Maxx bag and you make a face that you’re trying to make appreciative but you’re sure it looks like you swallowed a fly. You tie the blocks around his naked ankles, you don’t ask about what did with his clothes – all you know is that they’re gone.

You just want this fucking over with, that’s all you need. You lift, straining slightly from the concrete blocks but lifting anyway. Lottie keeps her arms under his armpits, slipping and nearly letting him drop onto the road. A bead of sweat is joined with the rain dripping down the side of your neck. You grind your teeth together, you know you shouldn’t be irritated at her, but you are.

You just want this done.

“Lift from the legs, Lottie.” You snap at her, and she rolls her eyes, almost dropping his body. You’ve got the heavy part, all she’s gotta do is lift him just above the edge and then you’ll do everything else.

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” She replies, groaning slightly.

“I think you’re not lifting enough.”

“Not all of us go to the gym all the time.” Lottie grumbles managing to lift him a little more and you manage to get his legs just over the railing.

“I do not go gym all the time.” You pant out and she directs his torso only just onto the railing, she blows some air out of her face. You go to the gym twice a week, and you think that you’re going to skip the second on this time, this has been enough of a physical and emotional workout.

“Shauna.”

“Just, I wanna get this over with so I can pretend it never happened.” You admit and Lottie gets less frustrated quickly, her shoulders no longer tensing. Greg rests haphazardly on the railing, the two of you are panting. This is hard work. You never really thought about the logistics of getting rid of a body, but it is a lot, if you did all this only to be caught you might kill someone else. You’re starting to regret how careless your train of thought is because you have to swallow some vomit that threatens.

Her eyes find yours, a well of kindness, firm in their intent.

“Then push.” Her hands wrap around his ankles and yours his shoulders, you nod to her and she does in return. “Three, two, one.”

The two of you push at the same time and there are the two splashes of the concrete and the body.

It’s done.

Maybe it never happened.

You look over the edge and see that there’s nothing anymore, the splash evens out and then, poof, body gone. All that’s left of his is on your knuckles, your feet. You turn to her.

There’s a question when she gets to the intersection by campus, she rolls to a stop, smoke escaping from her lips and out the window. Left goes to you and Jackie’s dorm, right goes to hers. You can’t handle showering in the communal bathroom right now, you can’t handle sharing a bed with her – even though you want to hold her in your arms, smell her hair and watch her breathe, but the thought of it makes your chest constrict slightly – you just can’t.

“Yours.” You say and she nods, the clicking of the indicator comforting for five seconds before she turns right.

It’s a blur from her car to her room. It’s just a series of things happening to you, around you, to you, you’re suddenly in her room, converse a wet mess by the door and Lottie is in the bathroom, preparing the shower. You blink. Your whole life has changed and yet it feels the exact same.

You peel the flannel from your body, it drips on the floor, which is thankfully wood and not carpet so it won’t stain too badly. All you can think about is what cleaning products she could use that wouldn’t bleach the floorboards too. You blink slightly and fold it up, your jeans and shoes quickly joining the pile. You keep them folded into an easy pile and walk, almost like a zombie, toward the bathroom, your feet and muscles taking you before you can even think about it.

Lottie’s there, hand under the stream of water, to check the temperature. Her dark hair rests just below her shoulders, tucked behind her left ear. Your eyes shift down until they get caught on the two dimples that rest just above her ass. You like those dimples, you get stuck on them a lot.

“What should I do with these?” You ask her, bloodied and wet clothes in your hands and she turns, eyebrows furrowing.

“I don’t know.” Lottie takes her hand from under the shower and flicks it slightly to stop it from dripping. “Are you attached to these clothes?” She asks, taking them from you, you’re not sure you can think right now, your brain has stuttered and stopped and the only thing between your ears is white noise bouncing in your empty skull.

“Uh.” You blink. Those jeans make your ass look good, but that’s not important right now. You can’t stop blinking. A damp hand rests on your arm and you hadn’t even realised that you were staring where the wall meets the floor.

“I’ll get them dry-cleaned.”

“Won’t you get in trouble?” You ask, almost like a child; unsure and quiet. Lottie looks at you, shrugging and taking them.

“I’ll do it under my dad’s name, he does shady shit all the time.”

All you do is nod and she frowns slightly. You get it, normally you’d be bantering, you’d be pushing and prying and making jokes about Mr. Matthews being in the mafia, but you just can’t right now. She leaves them on the floor by the toilet and holds out a hand.

“Come on, the water is warm.”

You take it and the two of you end up getting warmed through quickly, the shower not too hot to burn, but enough to make your skin redden and you feel like your actions are getting washed away. The noise you let out at the feeling of the rain against your body is almost pornographic, Lottie comes in behind you, two arms encircling your waist and you lean back into her body, the spray of the shower hitting your square in the face in a way that you have always loved.

Her arms are silky and wet against your stomach, her lips kind against your shoulder, soft, for too soft for what you’ve done and you shudder at the guilt coursing through your body.

“Come on, let me make you feel better.” She murmurs into your shoulder, and you nod. Her fingers find you easily, thumb teasingly jolting your piercing before following the trail of hair toward your cunt.

She gently presses you against the wall of her shower, you gasp when the tile is cold against your back and she takes advantage of your open mouth to kiss you with her flickering tongue, sharpened with wit and a life that she hides from everyone else. You kiss her back, the spray of the shower only hitting her spine now, your hands hold her just above her waist, fingers pressing into her skin and muscle easily. She pushes two in easily, probably far too easy for what you’ve been up to this evening, but they glide in without resistance and your head jolts against the tile. Lottie starts slow, almost lazy, dipping her head to softly press her mouth against your neck. It’s only your hips starts to grind needily against her that she starts to fuck like she normally does: on her terms.

You can’t help it, you think back it him, to breaking his nose, his whimpers and grunts of pain, how easy it was in the end just to end him. Her fingers curl against you, mouth biting against your shoulder and you moan out, fuck you love it when she does that. It’s soft and not all at the same time. You focus in on her, trying not to think back to him, but then your knuckles sting as you grip onto her back and you remember it again.

Fuck, fuck.

She adds another finger and three are stretching you out gloriously, the tile is no longer cold against your back, and her body is wet and lithe and wonderful against your own. She curls them and you stutter out another noise, Lottie keeps going and going kissing up and down your neck, biting and sucking, more aggressive than normal but you don’t care, you’re sure she’s leaving more marks than she’s meant too, which is any mark. You’re getting closer and close and closer and-

You fear that you enjoyed it, you’re afraid that you’re still enjoying it, that you won’t stop.

You come against her fingers with the idea of blood against yours and nausea rises in your stomach again.

You finally throw up, its mainly bile, mainly acid, there’s nothing left in gut from dinner, only a snakebite and the remnants of dinner. Lottie’s hand rests in between the shoulder blades of your back, last week it was because she was bending you over her bed, and now she’s holding your hair back after you fucking murdered someone.

“There, there.” She soothes. “You’ve got this Shauna.”

You spit out some more, you’re done.

“Good to know me fucking you makes you hurl.”

“No, no, that was good.” You say, and you’re not lying, you cough and spit again. “Really good, it just, everything hit me.” You lie this time.

“Okay, pretty.” She comforts, rubbing your back. “Let’s get you back in the shower.”

You clean separate but together, handing shower gel and shampoo and trading short kisses and your muscles finally still their tension but your bones ache with some sort of emotion that you can’t understand of describe. You end up sitting cross-legged on her bed, your hands out in front of you while she cleans them up with some witch hazel – something you haven’t heard of since your mom made you watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as a kid.

“Do you think I’ll need an alibi?”

“You came to mine after Jackie’s failed date, you rocked my world and slept over.” She speaks like she’s rehearsed it in her head and your eyebrows furrow. She’s protecting you, she’s nice and kind and looking after you as if you haven’t done something that everyone agrees is bad, morally wrong, atrocious. Your eyes well up, your throat is dry as you attempt to clear it.

“Why are you doing this? You should hate me.” You say, wet and watery and weak, words breaking over each other. Lottie just shrugs and presses some more witch hazel against your knuckles, and it makes you hiss between your teeth, a stinging pain making your fingers flex.

“The crazy help the crazy.”

“You’re not crazy.” You defend, you don’t know what’s going on in her head, why she’s got an orange bottle of blue pills in her cabinet that you never see her take but you see quietly go down each time you’re over, but you know that it doesn’t make her crazy, no one is actually crazy, craziness was invented by the Victorians to make people hate each other.

“Thanks for lying.” She says, through a wry grin and you furrow your eyebrows, shaking your head.

“You’re not, Lottie.”

“You don’t ask about it, so how would you know?”

“It’s not my business.” You lean forward. “I just murdered someone, and you’re helping me.” You remind her but she does nothing but raise an eyebrow at you.

“I’m guessing you had a good reason.” She squeezes some more witch hazel against your hand, harsher this time. You let out another snaking sound “Did he hurt you?”

“He made Jackie cry.” You remember her sobs against you, the anguish in her voice, the deeper pain which she won’t tell you about, even thinking about it makes you angry again. You fist your hands and Lottie calmly pulls your fingers from your palm.

“Okay.” Is all she says, a lip getting caught and then loosened. “Good.”

You blink, you don’t understand.

“Good?” You ask, tilting your head and Lottie hums, wiping away excess witch hazel carefully and kindly.

“You did it for a reason.”

“Did you think I just felt like it?”

She stops and looks at you, eyes looking through you in a way that is comforting and eery all at once.

“Does a hunt without violence feed anyone?” Lottie asks you and you feel a familiar wave of anger falling and crashing against your guts, you jerk your hand out of her grip.

“What the fuck does that mean?” You spit at her but she’s not afraid of you, you just beat a man to death and she’s not afraid of you.

“There’s violence in your eyes sometimes, you get a handle on it most of the time, but you have a temper.” You deflate like a balloon and give your hand back to her, who gauzes it easily, as if you didn’t just yell at her. “Use your temper for good, if it has to be used at all.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’ll show you some breathing.”

“I know how to breathe Lot.”

“No, so you don’t beat a punch a man to death again.” She says, slightly hard and you nod. She lets your hand go and you let it restlessly rest against your thigh. “Okay?” She says softer this time.

“Okay.”

You hate the fact that you did that, you hate the fact that your knuckles are almost begging for another hit, another thud of pain against his face, shuddering through your body. You hate what you did.

So why can’t you stop thinking about it?

--

“Where the fuck have you been?” Jackie’s voice is the first thing to greet you when you open the door to your dorm. You hold back a sigh, you understand why she’s mad; she had a shit night and you left, but she can’t know what happened, she can’t know who you killed, that you fucking killed someone. She stands in between your two beds, hands on her hips, face incredulous, you are fucking in for it.

“Out.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell from how you’ve been fucking gone.”

Your flannel smells like Lottie, it’s all wrong. You pull it off and throw it onto your bed. She grabs something off your bedside table and wiggles it in the air: your phone. You gulp.

“Jackie.” You sigh, too tired to come up with a lie. Jackie drops your phone with your flannel and crosses her arms. Fuck.

“What? Nothing to say?” She uncross her arms and waves her hands about. “I had the worst fucking night and you weren’t there.” Jackie marches up to you, hurt and upset swirling in her eyes. Fuck, you are so sorry, so goddamn guilty. You open your mouth to apologise but her eyes zero onto your neck. Shit, Lottie wasn’t subtle this time. This is about to get so much worse. “You left me to hook up?” She hits you on the shoulder, and you hold up your palms to placate her.

It doesn’t work.

“Jackie, let me explain-“

“Oh, you are such a pillowcase.” Jackie shakes her head, scoffing bitterly, it’s a Heather’s reference, God that makes you feel even worse – she can’t even insult you properly, and you deserve a proper insult. You run a hand through your hair, it’s soft from Lottie’s expensive shampoo, you close your eyes for a second and take a deep breath to relax yourself.

“Jax-“ You start but she stops you before you can even think about formulating the apology that she deserves.

“No, do not Jax me Shauna, you are so- ugh.” She stamps her foot, the way she always does when she is really pissed off and you feel sorry for the people downstairs because it is not as hard as it normally is and that means she’s done it a few times before. You lick your lips, trying your hardest to put together an apology that will do your feels justice and will make her feel better.

“Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve gone.” You take a short breath, remembering that she doesn’t know that about you, she’ll think it’s a guy and you don’t want to do all of that now, your head is too muddy and full and too much. “He was just-“

“And who the fuck is he?” She bites, you don’t want to lie to her anymore, even though it will save your skin, you’re sure that your gut can’t handle much more of it, you’re sure you’re about to empty your empty stomach again. You swallow some bile, shaking you’re head slightly.

“I’m sorry Jackie.”

“Why won’t you tell me who?” She asks, hurt and upset and you caused that. You’re not going to make it.

“Adam!” You lie, before you can even think it through, Jesus you’re making this thing even worse than it already is, but you’ve dug your goddamn grave and you’ll fucking lie in it. “It’s Adam, I just didn’t want you knowing that I was hooking up with him again.” You hold your arms across your body, she’ll probably see you as insecure but you’re just trying to keep your guts inside your body.

Jackie’s face furrows.

“I thought you liked him.”

And through it all, you get the urge to roll your eyes because she still hasn’t remembered how annoying he was, too intense too soon and while he was fun, he quickly grew too tiring; a puppy who needed to be walked twice a day.

“He sang me a song confessing his love for me, Jackie.” You roll your eyes, he was so embarrassing, you cringe slightly at the remembrance, the awkwardness, you thought you were just going to hook up and he was there, petals across a dorm bed, candles lit. You had been sleeping with him for three whole weeks. “While his roommate was still there.” You finish, your lip curling in distaste and she does the same, her head reeling back in the way it always does when men are the topic of discussion, how is she into them, she can barely stand them within a conversation.

“Gross.” She replies and a smile threatens across your face.

“You’re telling me.” You scoff out, eyebrows raised and foot kicking the ground. She lets out a short laugh and your smile finally grows. The moment is quickly shortened by the two of you making eye-contact and you’re reminded of the situation. “Jackie, I really am sorry. I love you and you didn’t deserve that.”

Jackie stands there, chewing on her cheek, eyebrows furrowed. You might get through this, she might let this go sooner rather than later.

“You owe me.”

You would move mountains to make her smile.

“Anything.”

“Well, first you’re getting me lunch.”

Jackie is a surprisingly messy eater.

You chalk it down to the fact that her parents (read: bitch of a mother and doormat of a father) being the waspy fuckers that they are, which means now that she’s away from them, she can do whatever the fuck she wants. It started with more trousers, then she starting eating what she wanted, kept up with soccer – you’re pretty sure she’s going to book in a tattoo at some point.

You love watching it happen, this new Jackie balloon out of this old one, you always knew this version was there, but even you only got to see it in glimpses, in moments.

It’s difficult not to stare as she eats, especially when she dips two grease covered fingers with spots of melted cheese across fingers through the barrier of those two lips and when you really focus you can see the pink swell of her tongue across them before she sucks and you have to take a drink to focus on something other than her mouth. It doesn’t work, you’re enamoured by a set of pink lips, you want to taste them, her lip-gloss and burger and whatever gum she’s steadily making her way through.

Of all the places she would want you to take her, she chooses the greasiest burger place that’s not a chain, it’s not even that expensive. You do have to admit that their food is amazing, she gets the same as you, two chicken parm burgers (yours without cheese) and some fries. She douses them in mayonnaise, like a weirdo, but she’s your weirdo.

This normalcy lets you live on, lets you forget about it for a while, your hands aren’t broken and bruised, Greg is alive and being a creep in more Intro classes, you’re horrendously in love with Jackie. You hope there’s not another boy soon, you selfishly want her all to yourself, even though you know that she hates the idea of you with anyone else too. You know that today was more than you leaving, you leaving was part of it – of course – but to be held by someone else, to be kissed, to be fucked by someone else, well, it drives you crazy thinking of her like that, so it’s the same for her you’re sure.

You’re hungry, starving and you almost choke yourself from how quickly you eat.

“It’s not gonna run away from you, Shipman.” Jackie laughs and you swallow a particularly large bite, feeling it bounce down your oesophagus with finality. Your gut welcomes the food and you start to feel better, you didn’t even know how hungry you were until

“You never know.”

She rolls her eyes and carries on eating, a small smile with one corner coated in marinara. You want to taste it against her lips, you want to lean across the table and wipe it from her lips with your thumb, you want to see how she’d react. You wonder how beautiful it would look against your thumb, against your lips, your tongue, your mouth. God, it aches to want so hard, you’ve ached so long that it’s become a dull, thudding throbbing want in your gut. You quell your desire to do that by wiping your own mouth of whatever grease has dripped to your chin.

(You’re reminded of you and her, age fourteen, before Marilyn Taylor got her claws into Jackie and stopped her enjoying herself, the two of you sneaking fries and milkshakes from the diner on the edge of town. Your bike wheel spinning on the grass outback, Jackie covered in mayonnaise, she would always ride on your handlebars, terrified of learning for some reason, but perfectly happy to let you push her around town).

She’s not caught in a happy memory, not at all, her eyes zone in on your fist and shitshitshit, Lottie did a great job, but they’re still muddy with bruises, stiff and cut open slightly.

Fuck.

“Oh my God, Shauna! What happened to your hands?” Her voice is full of worry. You hide your hands below the table fisting them and teeth gritting together. You don’t want to

“I got mad.” You half-lie, taking a mournful bite of your burger. She looks at you with such disappointment that the low level of nausea that has been ever-present since, since, him churns ever further and you clear your throat.

“Shauna.” She sighs out. “You promised you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

You wince, yeah you did. You promised it tearily after one of the guys on Jeff’s baseball team got handsy with someone and you punched him – with this memory come Greg’s head crashing against the wall, his face battered and bruised and bleeding and-

Jackie didn’t mind you punching the guy, she hated the way you hit the thick, brick walls of Lottie’s house afterward. She didn’t look after your hands like Lottie did – she’s always hated blood – but she gave you a hug and made you promise not to do it again. You suppose you didn’t break the promise, but her thinking that is better than knowing the alternative. You look at the table, guilty and gut turning uncomfortably, there’s a small crack in the plastic coating of the table and you move your fourth finger along it, a small and easy distraction. Her hand, soft and warm and unblemished in any way finds yours and you hold it back.

She squeezes, once, twice and then it, unfortunately, retracts back to her side of the table and you miss it immediately.

“I got you Shipman, we’re gonna get through this year together.” She picks up her burger and gives you one of her comforting grins, it warms you through and relaxes your stomach. “And without punching anymore walls.”

“Yeah, without punching anymore walls.” You say, a half-promise, half-lie, statement that you makes you feel uncomfortable, you have no idea what’s going on, you have no idea what to say, only to lie when it comes to what you were doing last night.

The problem is, you can’t stop thinking about it. It keeping replaying like a skipping record.

Punch, kit, hit, pain, obsession, addiction, guilt.

It’s a swirling feeling that you can’t stop.

Vomit rises.

“I need- I’m going to, I have to-“ You trip over your words and run from the table as you speak, the sick already threatening to spill all over the linoleum floor. A dribble makes its way down your chin but you manage to get most of it into the toilet. It feels cathartic, almost freeing as your stomach empties out, red, hot heat across your throat, it must be burnt by now. The acid from your stomach blazing through your innards, out through your skin. The bathroom door slams open and that’s when you remember that you didn’t even try to lock the stall’s door, it’s still open and anyone could find you here, leaning over a bowl and spitting into the toiler.

“Oh my God, Shauna, are you okay?” Jackie asks, pulling your hair back with a soothing voice, a hand immediately going to your back.

“I must have eaten something shit.” You lie, spitting into the bowl again.

“But we ordered the same-“ You interrupt her to throw up again, vomit splashing against the bowl, making a wet, slippery noise splattering on the porcelain. You stop and dry-heave slightly.

“Water, please Jax?” You ask, you can’t have her here anymore, she calms and cools but she also brings guilt, heavy, an anvil against your chest almost angry against your crumbling ribs. You can’t see her face, but you’re sure that she’s fighting the urge to stay. “Please.” You almost beg and her hand taps against your back, three kind taps before she stands and you hear the door slam shut.

You lean against the stall’s wall and sigh.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

--

Jackie insists on taking you home afterward and you don’t have the heart to tell her that you’re fine, because you can’t exactly explain that you’re puking your guts out every other hour because of the guilt you feel for beating her date to death last night, so no, you insist that it must be flu, or food.

She doesn’t believe in the food story though, something about her meal being more likely because of the cheese on hers or whatever. You keep saying that you’re fine but you can tell she’s worried so you let her look after you. She drags you home, linking your arms as if you’re some decrepit, sick Victorian child and you would complain but the feeling of her body next to yours, the amount of care that she’s displaying that is all for you, is heavenly.

You know that she has practise this afternoon, you know that she does, and you know that her skipping means a lot to her so you meagrely try to convince her to go. Unsurprisingly it didn’t work.

“Bed, now.” She points to the bed, commanding you like a dog to sit, her Captain voice beginning to come to the forefront.

“It’s 2pm, I have work to do.” You try to push past her to get your bag because even if you get arrested, you’re going to keep on top of your work, you’re not going to jail without a little bit of a college under your belt.

“No you don’t.” Jackie’s hand rests flat against your sternum and you wonder if she can feel the way your heart quickens. The two of you know that you can easily push past her but that you won’t. You take a step back, not that you want to, but you don’t want her to feel the way your body keens toward her.

“Jackie I’m not ill-“

“Not listening Shipman, get in bed.”

She practically strips you, and your head needs a manual reboot by the time you really notice what’s going on. She pulls your sweatshirt from your body and beginning to undo your trousers before you go fucking insane from how relaxed she is about doing it, she even pouts when you gently push her hands away and you gulp, somehow staying firm. If you had let her continue you would have done something stupid like kissing her, which you really shouldn’t so for a fucking plethora of reasons but the only two that really stain your mind right now are the fact that you just beat a man to death for her and that she is straighter than the flag-post in front of your dorm building.

Jackie’s not a hypochondriac, so your dorm room is barren of anything except some old Pepto Bismol and ibuprofen, she tells you to down one with the other which you’re sure you’re not meant to do but at this point you don’t care. You yawn into your hand, maybe getting into her bed isn’t the worst idea in the world. You get in and she clambers over you, pressed against the wall and you wrap your arms around her, tiredness taking president in your mind.

You might not be ill, but you are fucking exhausted. It turns out that killing someone, hiding the body and fucking really takes it out of you, so it doesn’t take too long for you to pass out. You’re not a dreamer, eyes closing and opening quickly with nothing in between but tonight you’re in the bar again. You’re walking into the bar with your leather jacket and flannel and knuckles unmarked.

You’re walking into the bar and Jackie’s not with anyone, she’s sitting at the table, face lighting up when she sees you, rushing to you, arms flying around your body.

“Oh my God Shauna! This date’s going so well, what are you doing here?”

“You called me?”

“No I didn’t silly.” She rolls her eyes at you, biting her lip as her eyes glide to a tall man at the bar that makes your body tense. “He’s really nice and cute and, ugh, I really like him Shauna.” Jackie admits and your heart get skewed once again. You swallow and fake a smile.

“That’s great, Jax, really great.” You nod and she squeals in excitement and you look up and down at her, she’s not wearing the black dress – she’s got the floral one on, you don’t know why it grates you slightly.

“You have gotta meet him.” She smiles wide and shouts toward the guy at the bar. “Greg! Come over here.”

Your body is frozen solid in fear as he turns around and he looks the normal, no bruising, no split skin, no puffing, he looks warm as he smiles at Jackie, a familiar drink in his hand – how does he know what you like? It makes you uncomfortable. Everything is fine – too fine.

And then he starts to walk toward you.

With every step his face contorts to what you did: a bruise across his cheek, a split on his brow, a tooth cracking with an ear-splitting sound that makes you flinch. You can’t move a muscle, you’re rooted in place. By the time he gets to you his face is the mess you’ve made of it, you lift your hands to do something, anything, and they are dripping. Your breaths have become shuddered and scattered and it’s like you’re breathing in nails.

“Snakebite?” He offers, a smile revealing the cracked tooth. You take it, hands shaking, some of it sloshing over and onto your hand, you don’t even really register the cold drink, the

“Oh, you’re so kind baby.” Jackie smiles at him, kissing him on his destroyed cheekbone and he shrugs, he shouldn’t be alive, not with the way he looks, not the fact that you know that he should be dead, that he is dead. It’s uneasy, awful, a mess of emotions stuck swirling in your stomach, churning and burning through your systems. He takes a drink and spills some down the side of his malformed mouth and Jackie wipes away the spill, finally noticing his face a stepping back, turning to look at you, aghast, face upset and disappointed at you, expression too familiar – similar to when you would get too drunk at a party, similar to when you would get too angry on a game, too small of an expression for this.

Jackie’s hand holds his chin and points his face toward you, you bodily flinch and jump back.

“Look what you did, Shauna.” She says, voice saccharine sweet and mad, all at the same time, your head spins double the time of your stomach. “You hurt my pretty boy.”

Those words, Lottie’s words thrown in your face? You drop your glass, bright purple-ish liquid spilling everywhere. Jackie’s face tilts in mock apology and that hurts even more than anything that’s happened in this fucking dream.

“Oh? You thought I didn’t know about that, Shipman?” She shakes her head and advances on you, the second she lets go of Greg’s face, he drops to the concrete? Wait what the fuck, when did you leave the bar? Now you’re in the alleyway? Greg’s bleeding into the drain, the rain washing it all away and you can actually move now, your back hitting the brick wall of the bar, surprising you so aggressively that you jump. “You think I didn’t know about you choosing her over me?”

Her hand is cold as it grips your chin, you try to move back but she holds you in place.

“You think I don’t know that you killed someone?” She scoffs, a hollow sound that sounds wrong from her lips. “It’s like I don’t even know you.”

“Maybe you never did.” You hear yourself say and she-

You wake up, your heart pounding, breathing aching before you stop and letting your lungs slowly, slowly work. Jackie’s eyes are staring at your neck, where Lottie left a mark, her eyes going from an unreadable expression to worry painted easily across her face.

“Are you okay?” Jackie asks, voice scratchy from lack of use. The sun must be setting from the way the low glow is painted over her eyes, dropping to her mouth as she moves to stare you down, check that you’re okay.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine – it was just a dream.” You lie, taking a few deep breaths and letting yourself relax a little, her hand rubbing your arm comfortably. There’s a moment where you focus on breathing and there’s something in the air. Shit, something’s wrong.

“Shauna?” She asks and you try to secretly gulp, you don’t know how successful you are.

“Yeah?”

“How often do you lie to me?”

“I don’t.”

Beat. Silence. She’s still in your arms, her mouth forming a thin line and you know that you lie to her, not all the time, not over everything, but enough that you know it makes sense for her to notice, and get mad about it. But, you can’t stop, she’s already jealous now, let alone if she found out about you and Lottie, not to mention if she found out about, about- Your dream still echoes in your mind and you close your eyes for a second, breathing once more, deep.

“Okay.” She says and you know that she doesn’t believe you.

Another moment of silence and she nods, leaning back onto the pillow and closing her eyes.

You end up watching her sleep again, as you often do, her chest rising and falling in a gentle rhythm and you rest your ear on her sternum to hear her heart beat; it’s soft but healthy, a steady beat that you let yourself listen to fall asleep.

Chapter Text

A week passes quickly. Soon it’s the weekend again and you can’t believe that nothing has come up about Greg beyond a few spots on TV and people asking around campus.

You were sated, for the first two of three days and then it comes back, a slow agonising, oozing something that you don’t want to return. There’s something more this time, an itching ache that you know sex won’t fix.

Your knuckles gradually heal, you try not to pick away at them but it’s difficult when they itch, when it comes back in flashes in class, when you remember the pure elation and satiation within yourself that hasn’t happened in years. The guilt fades quicker than you’d think, that in itself is cause for concern but you do as you do everything and ignore, lie, and bury it deep down and within.

“What did she do this time?” You ask, pulling your shirt back over your body, in Lottie’s haste to pull you inside, you hadn’t been able to pull your sports-bra off, or even ask what had happened this time. You’re honestly close enough to Natalie that you could tell her to get her head on straight but Lottie has pretty much told you not to push it any way, the same way that she doesn’t push it with Jackie.

You’re antsy, this has done what is needed for her and that nestles warmth throughout you, a sort of proud that you feel like you shouldn’t be but you are anyway. It’s done what it needed for her but not what was needed for you. It dulled it, this weird and odd hunger within you, but you need to do something else. The gym has been your home most nights this week, what it’s doing to your bank-account is awful but it keeps it at bay.

Lottie lies on her bed, a darker set of purple satin sheets this time, stretching like a cat in the sun, the same sort of relaxed smile across her face. Her eyes open and she frowns as she takes in you fully dressed.

“Are you leaving?”

“I’m, uh, antsy.” You say, slightly guilty, hands flexing and flinching as you speak and her head tilts against the pillow, long dark hair splayed out. She sits up, covers falling to her waist, marks left at her command dotted against her skin, your mouth salivates at the sight of her, she had felt so good beneath you, at your mercy. No, that’s not right, that’s- no. She had asked you to tie you to her bed-posts, she had asked you to make it hard and fast but drawn out and you took the instruction well, as you always do. So maybe yes, she was at your mercy, it’s not the same as it was with, with him.

“Well, you should get a little less antsy.” She says, leaning back on one hand. There’s a specifically dark mark by her nipple, it’s almost the same colour, she keened into you as you bit her there. “Fuck me again, pretty boy.”

“Pretty please?” You tease and she bites her lip, half-stopping a smile from breaking out.

“The prettiest of pleases.” She mocks back and the shirt you just put on drops to her wooden floor.

The gym can wait.

--

You’re fast, always have been, hopefully you always will. You didn’t like soccer, just another way to stay close to Jackie but you loved running, the feeling of overtaking someone, barging into them, protecting your team. You loved running.

The treadmill shudders as you run on it, the guy that was next to you tried in vain to keep up with you but he gave up after five minutes – he’s now grunting too loud in the weights section. You run and run and run, lungs burning and throat quaking, you can’t stop, you need to get this itch, this desire out of you. If fucking Lottie Matthews into her mattress won’t do it then you’re screwed, you won’t do it again, no matter how much your body is craving to.

You used to be off-kilter more often than not, never sated, never entirely satisfied, but now it’s completely different, it’s a new and hungry beast, lying in the jungle and waiting to pounce. You can hear it purring, it’s stomach rumbling anew. It didn’t exist before last week, now it feels like your entire world rests upon it.

You run faster, your legs pumping fast, arms too, breathing as steadily as you can. Eventually though, you give out, you’ve been running like this for too long, you still have to walk home, gradually you slow down into a walk and then you stand on the hard floor of the gym. You feel off balance like this, so used to the movement, the give of the machine under you, you have to take a breath and steady yourself. Normally you would go to the weights now, a session for your arms and back, but you don’t this time, something calls to you, a lonely punching bag in the corner, no one watching, a set of gloves probably filled to the brim with other people’s sweat but you go nonetheless, as if something is pushing you.

You have never thought of yourself as a violent person, you have a temper that bends and snaps you know, to this day you don’t think anyone has beaten your senior year record of red cards, but you’ve never thought of yourself as inherently violent.

The gloves are cold when you put them on, foreign to your hands, heavy, but you get used to the feeling of them as an extension of your arms. You copy the physique of Rocky, the only thing you know about boxing really, and tap lightly to begin with, watching the small sway of the bag, how it rocks back and forth. The rhythm is soothing, a hunt with no violence and you feel yourself wash away into nothing. No thoughts, no feelings, just your hands against the bag. You start to hit it harder, getting more and more use to the feeling until you’re using everything, your fists smack and whack and hit, it feels so good that you don’t notice someone coming up to you until they speak.

“Hey, do you box?” He asks, tall, handsome, sardonic kinda grin that you admit is slightly charming, floppy hair that moves into place as he jerks his head back. You pant and step away, some sweat dripping into your eyes, you never even noticed how much you were sweating. You pull the gloves off and lift your shirt to wipe some away, you don’t miss the way his eyes dip down and he looks at you appraisingly.

“No.” You reply, shortly. And then, realising that it’s probably rude to cut a conversation like that, you say. “Why?”

“We need more female boxers for the college.” He crosses his arms, muscles tensing and you raise an eyebrow. Is he trying to impress you? You can’t tell, you look behind him to the mirror and see yourself, hair cropped on the sides, longer on the back, fringe split unevenly and half falling into your face, you wonder what he sees in you.

“Okay?” You shrug, wiping your forehead again before mirroring his crossed arms.

“You should join, you’ve got a good form for a beginner, strong too.” He nods to your arms and you feel self-conscious, suddenly too perceived and you clear your throat.

“Thanks.”

“We meet here every Tuesday and Thursday, eight to ten in the evening think about it…” He trails off and you blink for a second before realising that he’s asking for your name.

“Shauna.”

“Shauna, right, I’m Isaac.” He smiles that smile again and brings a hand forward, presumably for you to shake, you don’t want to shake his hand. His eyes dance with a sort of flirtation that makes you almost smile, being wanted is fun, easy. You don’t want him, you want Jackie, but you could like him for a night or two.

“My hands are sweaty.” You say, almost teasing and he retracts his hand, making an ah sorta face, nodding to himself.

“Okay.” Isaac takes a step back. “I will see you on Tuesday? Maybe?”

“Maybe.” You confirm and he turns away, toward the rowing machine, you turn back toward the bag, pulling the gloves back on and starting the same small taps again.

The beast sits in your gut still hungry, but it seems to appreciate the snack.

--

You get back to an empty dorm room. No Jackie chatting away, no music playing, not even the soft sound of her breaths as she sleeps. You let out a sigh, you don’t know why.

Your keys find where they normally go, shoes the same, and you resist the urge to climb into her bed, to nuzzle your face into her pillow and smell her perfume, her shampoo, her. God that would feel so good, but you’re still slightly sweaty from the gym and a shower is just what you need right now. Your bag slumps onto your bed, the water sloshing in the bottle inside.

You stare at the pillows on her bed. Are they still there? You probably shouldn’t check, and yet.

You can’t help it, you lift her pillow up to see a different pair of your boxers, the Spider-man pair that Van got you for secret Santa last Christmas. You wore those yesterday, she must have dug them out your laundry basket. It sends something through you, something you can’t help, a thrill is really only the right word for it. An idea sends sparks down your spine. You quickly take the pair from her pillow and throw them into your basket, pulling down your gym shorts to neatly fold your new pair (plain, black, loose briefs) onto her pillow instead – the pair from last time were from the gym too. Yours are wettened from Lottie, from the gym, you think about if she would notice.

Your gaze finds a pair of her underwear dangling off the side off the side of her own hamper, a wooden wicker one that’s too expensive for the dorm really but Mrs. Taylor gets her way sometimes, your jaw works, teeth grinding together as you think about her. She’s the fucking worst.

The hatred, however, gets stopped in its track as you look at the blue pair of underwear, you wonder what she does with yours, does she press it too her nose, wear them? There’s nothing else that you can imagine in your mind. Two people can play at this game, is it a game? Either way you cross the short space and pull them from the top of the hamper. This must cross some kind of line with your friendship, but she did it first, they’re under her pillow, you’re just copying really. You can’t help it, you smell them, one long sniff that makes you light-headed with the everything about it. It’s husky, beautiful. You’ve overstepped, you feel dirty, you feel turned on. You throw them back into the hamper and shake your head to yourself.

Shower, you need to shower, you need to clean yourself, maybe if it’s hot you can absolve yourself of this sin, whatever it is. The water bubbles at your feet, clear and crisp and you realise that you never stared at the water the other day, you never saw the blood fall from your body last week, you wonder what it would look like against the white tile, in between your toes, dripping down your body. You have a problem, you’re sure of it, an addiction maybe – can you get addicted after a hit? Well, you hit him more than once, you hit him so hard that he-

You turn off the shower, it didn’t help at all, maybe this fucking essay you have to do will empty your mind of it more. You settle down at your desk, paper, books and pencil in hand, hair damp and sweats resting low on your hips, flannel the one that Jackie butchered while drunk because ‘you look hot in cropped shit, Shipman!’.

It works, thank God, and you focus on this stupid essay because you have to get it started before you end up going to your professors office hours and pretend to have gone through an emergency to get an extension. In your defence, you were busy pining and hiding a body, you wince at yourself, joking about it seems wrong. Time flies quickly, you don’t even notice the sun going down, you turn on the lamp automatically, humming to yourself as you steadily start to plan out and write it. You don’t know how long it’s been when the front door opens and Jackie waltzes in, you don’t have to look up from your paper to imagine the shit-eating grin across your face.

“Shauna!” She says, the second she comes in and you know that tone in her voice, you know it very well, it’s the kinda voice she puts on when she wants you to do something. Usually going to a party and not only are you stuck doing this bullshit essay, but you really don’t want to spend the evening in a fucking dress in a goddamn frat house basement, were the walls are sweating and Jackie’s dancing with random man number four.

“I’m working.” You sing-song back and you hear her wardrobe open.

“Well stop working and come to this party.” She replies, the whoosh of a dress or two falling to the floor. She hums to herself, you can practically feel the excitement from her vibrating through the air. You don’t look up from your paper, you are so close to getting this introduction right. This is the messy copy, the barely-legible, scrawled, out of order version that you’ll rewrite beautifully later on, Jackie calls it insane and it might be, but it’s a system that goddamn works.

“This essay twenty percent of my grade.” You remind her, finishing the final sentence and leaning back, holding the pencil between your fingers and letting out a short sigh.

“It’s freshman year, it’s pass/fail now come on.” She encourages and you turn to her, holding a different two dresses to her body. You honestly have no idea how the fuck she has fit so many clothes in the shitty little wardrobe that the collage gave them, it’s admirable, if you’re entirely honest. This time it’s different black one, strapless and shorter than last time, so short that you’re sure her underwear would show if she bent over.

Your pencil makes a short splintering sound as you keep it between your hands. The idea that someone else would see her like that, the idea that you get the privilege but not really, it sets you on edge, a dangerous edge that gets your fist clenching.

“Is it at a frat house?” You ask, to distract yourself more than anything else. Jackie rolls her eyes, a dark green dress, longer, spaghetti straps this time, your favourite colour looks so good against your skin you may turn feral soon. She rolls her eyes affectionately.

“Obviously!” She smiles, jerking the dresses slightly and making them shimmer in the light. “Which one?”

“Then obviously no.” You reply and she pouts, each other dresses going to her waist the green one trails on the floor, the black one hardly touches it. “The green one.”

“Please.” She asks, all doe eyes and slightly pouty lips, your choice entirely forgotten in favour to convince you to go. Damn her, she knows that you give in easy when it comes to her.

“Jackie…” You sigh out, turning and dropping your now slightly bent pencil onto the table.

“C’mon I’ll even get the booze.” You hear her say behind you, wow she is really pulling out the big guns, you suppress a smile.

“We both know that only Nat has a fake.” You point out and you don’t have to turn to see her slightly pouty face has turned into a fully pout. You also can pretty much hear when a new idea pops into her head.

“Then I’ll pay Nat to pay for the booze.” That is tempting, you reckon you could make her go for the full Malibu instead of the shitty stuff that tastes good, but gives you the kinda sugar hangovers that get you shivering in bed.  “I know I’m convincing you.” She says and you roll your eyes because she is right, of course she’s convincing you. You turn again and without even saying anything she knows that she’s got you.

“I get to wear a flannel.” You point at her and she nods, even letting out a short noise in happiness, it’s stupid, it’s such a small thing but the absolute joy that she’s displaying makes your entire being warm through.

“Only if you wear those trousers that make your ass look good?” She says and you short-circuit like an old-timey cartoon. What does she mean she looks at your ass? That she thinks it looks good, you blink a few times, trying to get your brain working again. “You know, the cargos?”

“You’ve been checking out my ass?” You end up teasing and there’s a second, a moment, a flash across her eyes of something that you can’t understand because it’s only been a second and she gives you one of her coy looks.

“It’s hard to miss since you’ve been working out, Shipman.” Jackie replies, nose scrunching and shoulder lifting. You’re sure that she would have smacked your ass if you were standing, you’re glad that you are, in fact, sitting. “The green one you said?”

“Uh, yeah.” You clear your throat. “You’d get cold in the other one.” You say even though you selfishly and possessively don’t want anyone else to see that much of her. Fuck, that’s too much, maybe you should go back to your Catholic phase, Priests have some sort of confidentiality clause don’t they?

“I won’t get cold! I never get cold.”

“You are literally always cold.”

“Ugh, fine you’re right, are you happy?”

“Of course.” You smile and she rolls her eyes, but a smile is threatening across her face, you can see it.

“Let me shower and then we’ll meet Nat and Lottie outside the dorm?”

Okay that’s good, you and Lot can calm each other down when the two of you inevitably get driven crazy by Nat and Jackie. Plus, when Nat and Lottie are around before a party there’s a high chance there’s a joint you can score a couple of puffs on.

“Sounds good to me.” You nod and she lets out a noise in excitement, quickly putting the dresses back in her wardrobe and giving you a kiss on the head. You turn back to your work, attempting to hid the roaring blush across your face – you have no idea how well you’re succeeding. You hear her potter around, getting her caddy ready, humming lightly to herself as she does.

“Shauna did you-?” She asks and you flick your eyes to see her by the top of her bed, the pillows, your heart thunders and your face reddens even further.

“Did I what?” In the end you play stupid, you both know that there is nobody else who would have changed the set of boxers under her pillow, you hear her gulp and readjust her pillow, clearing her throat.

“Never mind.” She says, moving away and you try to carry on looking at your paper but the words just look like scribbles, nothing making sense.

“Okay.”

--

You were right, a joint in familiar black paper gets offered to you the second that you leave the dorm, Lottie’s hands offering it to you. If you were alone you wouldn’t take it from her fingers, just smoke between them but you’re not alone you’re with Nat and Jackie, so obviously you’re on strict friend mode right now. You take it and start, watching as Jackie leaves, slamming the door behind her, she hugs Nat tightly and her mouth drops, a short wolf-whistle leaving her lips at the sight of Lottie.

Oh, yeah, hickeys.

“Wowza Lottie, you been dating a vampire?”

“Not a lotta dating with Lot.” Nat says, laughing and Jackie whacks her on the shoulder in a familiar motion that makes you take an especially long drag, an unbidden jealousy rising inside you. You didn’t know that they were that close, you grit your teeth and hand it back to Lottie when you’re done, who looks especially glad to get it back. She never told you what Nat did that made her want to go so quick and fast and hard the other day, but you don’t find yourself dwelling on it too much.

Jackie chose the green dress in the end, you’re still in the flannel and those cargos she wanted you to wear, cool air glancing against your skin, belly-button piercing shining in the shitty lamppost light. You don’t know why you’re here but here you are. Lottie looks like she’s in the same boat, taking the joint from your hands in such a practised way that you would think that it’s obvious, you’re clearly wrong.

You take her in, lavender docs, short-black skirt, that pink fuzzy jacket that she wears everywhere, she looks good, then again, you think that Lottie is physically incapable of not looking good. Nat takes the joint from her next, bleached hair with the roots coming through, black and purple striped shirt, straight-legged ripped black jeans. You and her looks like a pair of boyfriends being dragged on a date, you shake your head to get out of that thought, that is not the kinda thought that you have about your friends.

“C’mon, you owe me booze Jax.” You nudge her shoulder and she pouts at you.

“Ugh, I forgot I promised you that.”

Her hands link in yours and she starts to drag you toward the main stretch of shops, you put out two fingers and someone – Nat you reckon, from the brush of cold hands against yours – slots the joint between them.

“Thank you.” You sing-song, taking a drag. “A fresh bottle of Malibu.” You tease, exhaling, taking another quick two drags, Nat coming up to your left side and taking the joint from your mouth as you’re about to take another.

“You have gotta drink some better shit than that, Ship.” She teases, undoing her flask and taking a drink, chasing it with a drag.

“Shut up Nat, I know that it’s just Schnapps in there.”

“Bite me.”

“Children, no fighting.” Jackie cuts in.

“Yes Mother.” Nat says, slow, tilting her head with each syllable and Jackie leans over you to whack her in the shoulder again, a grin wide on Nat’s face, dimples deep in her cheeks. The end of the joint gets quickly crushed under Nat’s boots as you move closer toward the row of shops that must get so much money from college students on nights out.

“So what are me and Shipman getting?” She says, hands clapping and rubbing together. You turn to her, Jackie’s hand falling from hers, there is literally no reason for you to go with her.

“Me? You’re the one with the fake.” Nat’s hand waves away your queries like it’ll help you calm down, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t.

“The kids working tonight, I need you to carry the bottles.”

“Why me?”

“You’ll see, don’t worry.” She replies, with that look in her eyes which means that

“Malibu and two bottles of wine.” Lottie says, a cigarette already lit and in her mouth, a plume of smoking leaving a set of lips that you want to taste the herbs on.

“You know the kind we like.” Jackie pushes, a sort of test that you know is designed for you, your teeth grit together as you nod; of course you know, you don’t need to be tested, and yet you suppose this is still your punishment for leaving her the other week. The neon sign LIQUOR comes into view and you all prepare yourselves. It’s so stupid, you could literally buy a gun right now but a bottle of Malibu? Oh no.

“Go down the block, you know the drill.” Nat nods to the two of them, Jackie opens her mouth to say something but she interrupts it. “Malibu and wine, I know.”

“Get me a pack of Nat Shermans?” You ask Jackie, handing her ten dollars and she scrunches her nose as if you don’t find her eyes catching on you while you smoke. Yet another thing that drives you crazy, she drives you crazy in general, but she does those little tiny things that give you too much hope to be dashed away immediately afterwards. Nat lets out a noise of disgust at you.

“Nat Shermans? Jesus you’re pretentious.” Nat says, rolling her eyes and you follow suit.

“Like yours is any better.”

“I smoke a proper brand.”

“Fuck off.” You shove her lightly with your shoulder and she takes a couple of steps to stabilize herself, middle finger lifting as she does so. “You’ll get me some?”

“We’ll get them for you.” Lottie assures, taking the note from Jackie’s hand. You come up to the shop and the other carry on walking as the two of you get inside. This place normally doesn’t make a massive deal about it but you don’t want to get caught out just in case.

Nat goes to the front to ask for the Malibu, the worker (a ginger kid who must be the same age as you trembling slightly as she talks to him, poor guy, he doesn’t know that she’s a total teddy bear under all that eyeliner) reaches to grab it and put it down on the counter. You make a break for the wine, Jackie’s a weirdo who likes white wine and doesn’t mind when it’s warm while Lottie will take any sorta red that’s above $10 – to her credit it’s the only shit that she’s pretentious about, growing up that rich and only drinking over $10 red wine, it could be a lot worse.

You plop them down on the counter, next to the Malibu, maybe you put them down a little harder than necessary but he jumps a bit, gulping as he looks at you. As he turns to ring him up, Nat turns to you, a smirk on her face and you shrug slightly. She hands over the mixed set of bills that Lottie and Jackie handed over, not even checking the ID before practically begging you to leave.

“You didn’t need to scare the guy.” She teases.

“Is that why you wanted me?”

“Lottie’s tall but she’s nice, and Jackie would have had him telling us his life story, you don’t like conversation and half the teams in our district was scared of you.”

“They weren’t-“ You shake your head and she scoffs at you.

“You punched three people when we were in High School, two ended up with broken noses.” Nat points out and that’s only a vaguely valid point, the other teams played dirty because you were winning.

“In my defence they started it.” You raise your wine-laden hands to point at her.

“Did they?” Nat tilts her head, nose scrunching as the two of you jog across the road to where Lottie and Jackie are standing. Jackie has that expression where she was hunting for gossip and Lottie looks like she wants to ground to swallow her whole.

“They almost broke your leg once!” You reply to Nat, because it’s true, they absolutely fucked her ankle once.

“You got the goods?” Jackie interrupts in a gravelly voice, slightly crouched for some reason.

“That’s not how drug deals go down Jack.” Nat says with a fake-patient voice. Who the fuck is Jack? You grit your teeth together, they have nicknames? You have a nickname for Jackie, no one else needs one.

“Here’s your wine.” You give her the bottle of white slightly harshly and her eyebrows furrow before you hand Lottie the bottle of red, the Malibu being transferred from Nat’s hands to yours. “Now let’s go.”

It doesn’t take long for you to find the house, nothing is too far from everywhere else in this town.

You fall into the four across, shoulder-to-shoulder, as you walk, everyone opening their drinks and starting to sip away. Your hands brush with Jackie’s with every step and you start to flush, your stomach warming and you look up to Lottie – over Jackie and Nat’s heads and it looks like she’s struggling with the same thing. Soon enough they stop in front of the party.

It’s a standard frat-house, beer bans crumpled in the garden, someone already throwing up, two guys arguing as a few more people try to hold them back, like you said, standard frat-house. You open your Malibu and take a drink. Jackie happily walks up to the porch, you and Lottie make uneasy eye-contact before following, Nat looking the most pained as she trails behind you. The guy on the door takes a look at the four of your for a second and you watch as Jackie says a few words to him, whispering in his ear and her silver tongue works again as he smirks and lets them in, leering for a few seconds at her. Your fists curl tightly together. Lottie’s hand gently bats at yours and they detach from themselves.

“Jesus Jackie, it stinks in here.” Nat groans and you nod your head, nose already crinkling in agreement. The musk of a million sweaty people, many in stages of undress, many already looking they’re going to throw up. You wonder how much vomit and seeped through the slightly warped and sticky floorboards beneath your feet, actually never mind, you don’t want to know at all.

“Who even invited you here?” You ask, looking as someone throws up in their cup before leaving it on some random surface and running in a direction that must be the bathroom – or at least you’re really fucking hoping that it is.

“This cute guy I ran into at the library, his names Peter.” Jackie replies, dragging you to the kitchen.

Jealousy runs rampant through your veins at you take a deep breath and let yourself be dragged, your teeth chatter against each other, fists working but never completely becoming full.

“Since when do you go to the library?” Nat shouts over the music.

“And date frat guys.” Lottie shudders, you’re pretty sure you’re the only one who hears her and you snort out a quiet laughter at her.

“What about Greg?” You ask and Jackie rolls her eyes at you. You make your way into the kitchen, which is stocked with snacks, a few bottle of liquor, a case or two of beer and even an untapped kegger hidden in the corner: basically, Randy Walsh’s wet fucking dream of a kitchen at a party. Gross, now you’re thinking of Randy Walsh having a wet dream, it’s your go to shudder.

“Since there are cute boys at the library and fuck Greg, he was a dick.” Jackie says, pouring herself a full solo-cup of wine, Lottie following suit.

“Is this the Greg that went missing?” Nat asks, face incredulous and you take another swig of straight Malibu, the sweetness almost sickening as it glides down your throat.

That’s been a problem. Apparently Greg was a pretty popular guy, so when he didn’t show up at his friends place to de-brief on his date with Jackie they got worried, and when he skipped all of their hangouts in a few days, they called the police. Thankfully the police are fucking idiots here who haven’t really done anything about it except a couple spots on local TV. Everyday you wonder if they’ll knock on your door and arrest you, but they don’t, they haven’t even asked to interview Jackie, the last person to really see him alive.

“Yeah.” Jackie shrugs as if it’s not crazy that the guy she went on a date with missing immediately after their date. Lottie’s eyes find yours, calming, and you find yourself relaxing. “But maybe it’s karma for him being such a dick.” She carries on and your heart warms for a second before dropping to your gut. Jackie probably wouldn’t think of your actions as karma working in her favour, more that her best friend is a murderer. The four of you line the kitchen until Jackie gets too warm and you nod to them to head off, each filling up what they wanted to fill up before filtering out.

You take stock of them: Nat has her flask, Jackie and Lottie have filled their cups up. You are hiding the bottles you just procured so that no one drinks your fucking booze, you use the trick that Van showed you Junior year, finding a cupboard and pulling out a box of cereal (Cap’n Crunch, as it turns out) and stash them there – after making yourself a hefty Malibu coke of course. You would have made a Malibu milk but you do not trust frat house milk.

You find the other two in the hallway, in a heated conversation, some random guy walks up to them but a few words from Nat gets him fucking off pretty quick. Lottie is no-where to be seen, you assume that she’s off doing Lottie shit, she always disappears for half the time at a party, just walking around and getting to know the place, you almost admire the way she floats from room to room, seen but not perceived. You saddle up to them with Jackie shrugging and taking a sip from her bottle.

“Shauna, do you know Lottie’s fucking all the time?” Nat asks, seemingly annoyed about it and you blink, choking on your drink. You wonder how Nat would act if she found out that it was you who fucking Lottie.

“Nah, sorry man.” You clear your throat, trying to get rid of any wayward Malibu. “Why?”

Nat shrugs, staring at her flask before taking a long drink, probably the least convincing act of nonchalance you’ve seen. Or at least the most convincing apart from your own whenever Jackie walks around in those tiny shorts of her underwear and asks you want she looks better in and getting caught on parts of your body but saying nothing.

“Dunno.” She lies, looking around, the flask gets put in her back pocket and she starts making her way away from the two of you and pushing through the crowd until that bleached head of hair is gone.

“What was that about?” You ask Jackie, even though you pretty much already know everything about the situation. She looks excited at the prospect of sharing it with you that you feel a stab of guilt in your heart and you try to push it down (it doesn’t work).

“Nat and Lottie are so down for each other but they’re being idiots, I mean Lottie keeps hooking up with this mystery girl and I know it’s driving Nat so crazy that even Lottie probably knows it. They should girl the fuck up and talk to each other, you know?”

“Yeah.” You say, a bit limp and take another gulp of your drink.

“I was plying Lottie for information earlier, you know when you and Nat were in the liquor store, and she was all secretive about it, but apparently this girl is insane in bed, like so good.” You are going to get through this drink a lot quicker than you anticipated. Jackie takes a quick sip of hers but barrels through the story nonetheless, you’re not even sure she swallowed or took a breath. “I asked why doesn’t she date this girl? And they have this thing where they both like someone else but need to get their frustrations out and I said why don’t you two just date and she rolled her eyes! Like she literally said that I don’t get it.” She gasps and grabs your arm, mouth open and eyes shining at the prospect of drama. “What if it’s a Yellowjacket? And that’s why she won’t tell me. Mari’s here!”

Your heart plummets through the gross floor and into the earth’s core.

“Isn’t Mari dating that baseball guy?” You ask even though you know they lasted a week, you are really grabbing at straws here, at least she didn’t immediately suspect that it was you.

“It’s not cheating if it’s with another girl.” She dismisses and you fix her a look, you know that she knows better than that.

“Jackie that is literally not how it works and could you see Mari topping Lottie?”

“I thought no one topped if it’s two girls.” She says, head tilting and you’re about to explain too much considering the fact that, according to Jackie, you are straight, but the music comically changes from the boring background pop to Return of the Mack at almost full volume. Her face morphs from one of confusion to unadulterated joy and you know what’s next even though you hate this song and she knows that you hate this song, you think that’s why she looks so excited, she loves to tease you like this. “C’mon Shipman, drink up, let’s dance!”

“Jackie-“

“No, alcohol, mouth, now.”

You do as she asks, as you always do, the drink too sweet down your throat and you make a face, she downs hers quickly, some of it spilling down the side of her mouth, Jackie wipes it away before throwing her cup somewhere, gripping your hand and tugging you to the ‘dance-floor’.

You’re awkwardly two stepping, giving any guys who give Jackie a look a glare that makes them step away. Good, your glare is aggressive, so are your fists. No, you won’t ever do that again. The itch is making you shiver a bit, your hunger grows for more than Jackie, it’s asking for violence too. You try not to think about it. She’s in front of you, but turns, stepping back and she-

Jackie dances into you.

This place is a sensory overload, the music too loud, light strobing too much, the air is thick from people simply being quickly: sweating, breathing, smoking, existing. There are at least three bodies pressed against you right now but all that matters is her back against your front. Your hands find her waist, her skin sweaty through the thin material of the dress. You’re pretty sure you hear her make a small noise at the feeling and you pull her closer. Too close for friends, but isn’t that how it’s always been? Sharing beds and clothes and being too jealous, obsessive, possessive of each other, getting red with anger at marks left by other people.

She leans into you, her head lulling back against your shoulder and you are so close to giving in, doing what you shouldn’t (you’re starting to think that it’s your specialty). Her hand finds your hair, nails scraping lightly against your neck, making your shiver. You grip harder and you see her mouth drop open, a small noise fall. Your stomach begins to heat, begins to warm, your underwear begins to become uncomfortable.

This is different, and sudden, and unexpected. But she keeps moving and you keep letting her, soon you’re gripping fucking harsh and your hair is getting fisted between her fingers and you can’t not let out a short noise at that.

It seems that that is what breaks the bubble, too far, you draw in a quick breath as her hand leaves your head cold and she turns around, face blushing, eyes dark and wanting. So much going on but she’s looking at you like that, like she wants you. There’s a beat, a second, a moment. Her head tilts up, yours tilting down and she’s everywhere, the smell of alcohol on her breath, the lingering perfume in the air, her warmth.

And then it’s gone, fizzling into the air, the smoke from a blown out candle.

Jackie blinks hard and fast and steps away from you, no, nonono.

“I’m going to find Peter.”

“Jackie wait-“

And then she’s gone, lost in a sea of bodies.

You need another fucking drink. The way to the kitchen is busy and you scowl at everyone who crosses your path, a couple guys mutter shit under their breath but you don’t trust yourself to stop if you start hitting again. When you get there it’s a mess, bottles depleted and empty and you see a forlorn looking Lottie standing there, bottle of wine in her hand.

“Where’s Nat?” You ask and she jumps, turning to you and shaking her head.

“She left.” Lottie scoffs but it’s sad, almost forced. “Not her scene.” She mocks slightly, kicking her foot along the ground. You open the cupboard with all the cereal in, pulling the Cap’n Crunch out and finding the bottle of Malibu you stashed there earlier, Jackie’s wine looking lonely without it, thank fuck you did that, there is nothing else you’d want to drink right now.

“And she didn’t invite you?” You say, taking a swig of your drink, hopefully you can forget most of the night if you keep drinking.

“No she did, but, you know, it hurts to hang out with her sometimes.” Isn’t that the fucking truth, you take a drink at the same time as her. “Where’s Jackie?”

“With that Peter guy.” You sneer and she nods. This is why the thing between you and Lottie works, you’re both so sad and twisted after the other two that it drives you into some sad dark mess. For a minute or two, you and her just drink in silence, wallowing.

“Wanna make out somewhere?” She eventually says and a set of words have never sounded sweeter in your life, you find her eyes dark and wanting and, well, that sounds even better. You smile up at her.

“You are the best.”

“Yeah no shit.” Lottie smiles, she jerks her head toward the rest of the house. “Let’s find the least shitty bathroom.”

It takes too long, you’re almost surprised about how gross they are but also, it’s a frat house, fucking everywhere is gross. It’s the fifth try where there isn’t grime everywhere, only shitty graffiti across the walls but at this point you don’t care, you need to get whatever the fuck that was with Jackie out of your system. It seems that Lottie is in the same sorta mood because she shoves you against the door to shut it, wine-stained lips pressing against yours on a goddamn mission.

“I’m in charge right now, pretty boy.”

You are not going to complain about that, you keen into her, nodding. You were in charge las time, that’s how the two of you work more often than not. The two of you switch and change all the time, sometimes you need to get fucked, sometimes you need to get fucked, it works perfectly. You thought that you would need to fuck her the way you did earlier but honestly this seems to be just what you need. Especially with the way that your body is reacting to her.

The heat that was warming in your stomach with Jackie is melting into a wet, hot need.

“I need to hear you say it.” She says, in that dark, needing voice, a hand coming up to hold your jaw in place and you close your eyes, okay you definitely needed this, your head thuds against the door lightly.

“You’re in charge Lottie.” You admit and you feel her sharp grin against your jaw, you can’t wait for those incisors against your skin.

“Good.” She kisses your cheek, soft, before moving to your jaw and to your neck. There isn’t much of a warning before you sinks her teeth into your neck and your body shudders at the feeling, a choking moan falling from your lips. “How wet are you?” She asks, you forgot that she’s a talked when she’s like this. A hand lingers down your body, nails digging into the skin on display and another noise leaves your lips. “I saw you dancing with Jackie, let’s see.”

Her fingers dip below your beltline, beneath your boxers and the pads of her fingers slowly drag through the wetness of your cunt. You open your eyes to see her teasing grin as she meanders through you, no pressure where you need, gently pressing in and then out until you’re a whimpering mess beneath you.

“Come on and fuck me, Lot.” You ask, a whining beg and your hand moves from your jaw to your throat and she begins to squeeze the sides.

“You can ask me nicer than that pretty boy.” She almost growls, breath puffing against your lips and you try to move forward to kiss her but she pushes you back against the door. You begin to get the good kinda lightheaded and she stops to give you some respite. You don’t say anything, purely to see what she would do and she pulls her hand from your underwear, you let out a short noise of upset, her face is smug as she pushes her four fingers into your mouth, detaching from your neck and pushing your hips back against the door with a hard thud and fucking hell, Lottie. She dips her head to the side of your neck and continues her attack. Her fingers completely fill your mouth and you’re sure you’re dribbling slightly down your chin and it’s kinda hot in a gross way. You taste tangy against your own tongue, her mouth biting and sucking and pulling your skin in that kind of beautiful pain that you love. You try to grind your hips against anything of her but her hand stays strong, you’re strong enough to get out of her grip but you like the feeling, you like being pushed around and held against something.

When she stops her work you’re sure that your neck is all bloody and slightly bruised and it’s not what you normally do – normally the neck is off limits but right now Jackie is making out with Pete and Lottie is making you feel so good, you forgot how much you love your neck getting touched. Her fingers get shoved from your mouth and you gasp at being able to breathe fully again. Lottie’s eyes are dark, full of want, and entirely in charge, making you a mess beneath her.

“Are you going to ask properly now?” She quietly commands.

“Will you please fuck me Lottie?”

“Well done, pretty boy, now you’re being good for me.” She praises and while it’s not new, it never fails to set your body alight. She takes her wet and spit warmed fingers, leaving some of it against the trail of hair leading to where you want her most before pretty much shoving two fingers into you. Fuck.

Brutal isn’t the right word for how Lottie’s fingers are moving, because they’re pressing punishing but slow, she stares at your face as she moves, watching for how you react. She tentatively presses a third finger and you nod – you want to be full, you want to ache, you want to flush that almost from your body and remember this instead.

Her fingers push and press and curl and your hips work with them, her lips make their way against yours, meeting in a wet slant, tongues flicking and twisting each other’s mouths. That desire, the wet heat coiling in your stomach is reaching boiling point, she knows just how to make you feel good. You moan into her mouth and she nods back, speeding up slightly and you’re getting closer and closer and closer. There’s nothing else in this world apart from LottieLottieLottie, no music, no stink, no alcohol, just her fingers and her mouth and her tall body pressed against you. There’s no Jackie and her almost and her lips against yours and there’s just LottieLottieLottie.

You collapse against her as you come and she slowly works you back down. She keeps you from falling and whispers sweet nothings into your ear. Jesus fuck Lottie is good at that, when Nat gets her head out of her ass, she’s going to be a lucky woman. She kisses you on the temple, you’re sure some lipstick has brushed across your entire face but you can’t find it in your heart to care, not when you feel like you’re floating.

“You okay there pretty?” She asks and you know that face, you reckon it took less than five minutes to work you up and down.

“Now who’s smug?” You reply and she quirks an eyebrow, pushing some of your hair from where it’s fallen into your face.

“Oh so you can be smug after we fuck but I can’t?”

“Now you’re getting it.” You say and she rolls her eyes. “I’m kidding, I’m great – do you want me to?” You offer, she shakes her head.

“Actually no, I just needed to fuck something, you know?”

You think about fists against skin, breaking and bruising and bleeding and rage and-

“Yeah, I get it.” You gently push her away to assess the damage that she’s done to your neck in the mirror, which it – of course – covered in some sorta something that makes everything blurry. It’s not awful, but there’s a few large sports that can’t be hidden with a jumper or hair, you would be angry at Lottie but you like the way they look against your skin.

“Sorry.” She says, sheepish, as if she wasn’t fucking the shit out of you less than thirty second ago. “I got carried away.”

“Don’t worry, I like it.” You press against one of the marks, it’s already pulsing with the blood to fix the wound. “Did you really see me and Jackie dancing?” You ask, looking at her in the mirror and she winces at the question before nodding.

“Yeah.”

“And the, uh?” You awkwardly raise your hand in the air for in some kind of movement that gets her nodding still.

“Yeah.”

“So that actually happened?”

“It really did.”

“Shit.” You blink and shake your head, turning around. “You and Nat okay?”

“I don’t know, I thought we were having a moment but then she said that this place wasn’t her speed and left, she was acting weird though, she lingered on the porch for a second like she was waiting for me to beg for her to stay or something.”

You give her a look, she raises her hands like what the fuck is that for? Even for your standards that’s pretty stupid. You roll your eyes at her, her hands get higher in the air. You cross your arms.

“Lottie, you idiot that was her waiting for you to ask if you could go with her.”

“Then why wouldn’t she just say something?”

“Because you two are idiots.”

“Hey wasn’t Jackie grinding on you fifteen minutes ago?”

“That’s different, that’s Jackie.” You say because it is different, Jackie plays spin the bottle and hugs everyone the same and, it’s Jackie and Jackie is not into you so that must have been some kinda blip in the Universe or you are very wrong about something. Lottie clearly thinks it through and then hesitantly nods.

“It is very Jackie.” She sighs and twists her head. “Do you wanna get outta here? I’ll walk you home?”

It’s only been like an hour, but this party blows and you didn’t really want to come in the first place, you were just dragged by Jackie, who – as always – left to go talk to some guy. You feel guilty being harsh about her, you both got swept up in the moment, and you’ve basically done the same thing as her. You clear your throat.

“Yes to getting out of here, no to walking me home.” Lottie starts to make a noise and you shake your head, raising a hand to silence her. “It’s the complete wrong direction of your dorm.”

“I’ve had half a bottle of Malibu, I’ll be fine.”

“You had a shot of vodka then threw up in my kitchen.”

“That was junior year you dick.”

“Come on, let’s get outta here.” She leans past you to wash her hands while you open your phone to text Jackie your plans, maybe even see if she wants to walk back together, but you’ve already got a text from her waiting for you.

gone back 2 dorm

Looks like you’ll be walking home alone.

--

Lottie leaves you on the main road and you make the journey back to your dorm quickly, you walk fast on a normal day, let alone all by yourself at night with a bottle of booze in your hand, a bottle of Malibu that you are still steadily making your way through as you walk.

She had gotten Jackie out of your mind for a bit but now she’s seeping back, the way she felt against you, her hips in your hands, her hand in your hair, Jesus. You may be drunk but there’s no way that you’re getting that out of your mind anytime soon. The dorm is warm compared to the cooling autumnal air outside and you begin to sweat the second you get inside the building, just excited to climb into bed with Jackie, watch her sleep for a bit and then pass the fuck out yourself. You raise your key to enter and-

There’s a thump from inside.

You wait outside your door for a second, before hearing some giggling from a recognizable source and smile before a louder, deeper voice – not the voice of anyone you know and your clench your jaw. Fucking Peter. Jealousy rises, anger and irritation and upset and hurt in a swirling cocktail of hit something, come on, you know you want to, in your mind, you physically shake your head to make the thought go away. No, you won’t. Maybe you will join the boxing club, maybe it will help you get the anger out in a healthy-ish way that doesn’t involve, you know, murder. Not even a sock on the doorknob, if you didn't know better you'd think that Jackie wanted you to come in and see her with him.

Your hands clench together, fisting harshly, your nails digging into your palms. You could go to the library, sleep on someone else’s couch, but there’s one more person who would be perfect, you’re pretty sure you need to be paying Lottie rent with how much you spend with her. You step back from the dorm, the laughing having started up again, and call her.

“You okay, pretty?” She answers on the third ring, you can hear meandering around her apartment on the other side of the line. You can’t look at the door anymore, you turn and rest your forehead on the cool paint on the other side of the hall.

“Peter’s in my dorm.” You say through gritted teeth.

“Oh, Shauna, sorry.”

“Yeah.” You take a breath. “Can I stay over?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in twenty.”

You hang up before she can reply and make your way downstairs, a cigarette already making its way to your lips.

You try to ignore the hunger of the beast, you could fix your jealousy, it would only take your fists.

Chapter Text

You wake up to the sound of him breathing, it’s too deep, too percussive. His arm is heavy against you, over your body and you feel constricted at the weight of it. You wish that you weren’t sleeping next to him.

No. No you don’t.

Because you can’t want Shauna to sleep next to you, you can’t feel safe in her arms anymore that you should with Peter. He’s sweet, he’s nice, he stopped his hands above your waist when you asked, he smells like he showers often, his face is soft-ish, his hands too large and not calloused enough, he’s too big, he’s not-

No.

He moves and meanders his hand from around your waist and there’s a moment where you feel like you can breathe, long breaths that are completely without him hindering them. You always felt that way with Jeff too, his arms thick and tight around you, breath harsh against your neck, too warm and too much. Peter’s not that overwhelming, thankfully, but you still need to be free from him to be able to feel free. He was a good kisser, had good hands too, he didn’t paw at you like Jeff in his petulant arrogance towards your being and body, he was good and kind and he didn’t make you feel anything. You lay on the bed as he moves in his sleep to get comfortable, a thick, deep, feeling in your gut that you don’t understand. You miss her, he’s not even touching the sides of comfort that she gives to you – not even close.

She’s lying to you. And she lied about lying about it, just like how she lied about what happened to her knuckles, and God knows what else. She never used to lie to you – it’s happening more and more and more often, it’s happening so much that you’re starting to doubt. There have always been two pillars in your life: soccer and Shauna. When there wasn’t one, there was always another, when Shauna got chicken-pox you were able to distract yourself with soccer, when the soccer season was over, you were able to spend all day with her, she always made it better. Your heart squeezes, your lungs forget to work; it’s getting harder to ignore the straight up lies she’s telling you.

Does she stop wanting to be your friend? When did she stop?

Breathing is starting to become a real issue and you slide out the bed, standing still for a second, waiting for him to notice that you’re gone (Shauna would notice, she would wake up and check on you) but thankfully he only turns onto his front with a deep sigh and you’re able to move. You take a second and realise that you’re craving something different, you stare at him, his face smooshed into the mattress, not even touching the pillow, if you were quick you could grab them. You want to grab them, you want to feel her close to you like that and most importantly, you want to feel good.

The way that she dances against you tonight, her hips against yours, her hands - those big, warm, strong, calloused hands, you felt them cling and clutch through your dress - the way you felt her breathing quicken against the skin of your neck, the fucking noise she made as you threaded hands through her hair and tugged. Yeah, you need to feel good.

She knows about the underwear.

You know that she knows, she knows that you know that she knows.

Your hand finds the edge of the mattress and all he does is breathe in and out slowly, you find them – the new pair, the pair that she must have put there because you remember vividly the flurry of motions, finding them deep in her hamper and stuffing them under the pillow, Shauna folded them nicely, she took time, effort. She saw that you kept her boxers under your pillow and instead of freaking out or even fucking talking to you, she gave you a new pair – like a cat offering you a dead bird or whatever. She gave you a new pair, well a new used pair, she saw it and wasn’t freaked out, she’s letting it happen whatever it is.

You look around the dorm, there aren’t many places to hide. You settle on leaning against the other side of your bed. Your back against the wood, Pete sleeping soundly on the other side. You shift and settle into your spot, the wood and floor hard, but the underwear is soft, comforting. You pull it up to your face, the soft feeling of the material brushing against your jaw and cheek before you it meets your nose and you inhale.

It’s like a fucking drug, you haven’t been able to stop since you sniffed a pair to check if they were a clean pair for Shauna and since then you’re hooked, even the feeling of them in your hands gets you more turned on than anything Peter did and when the smell registers in your brain it you have to bite back a noise. They smell like her sweat, a sour and sweet mix travelling up your nostrils, you imagine her in the gym, that face of concentration that makes something hot and wet in your gut bubble, arms pumping, newly found muscles bulbous and rounded and you already begin to keen and curl at the thought. You move them across your nose and find something that’s been creeping in the same time as her lying, a dried white patch at the bottom – tangy and the kinda thing that you’ll never get enough of. You’re huffing them now, almost like glue and your other hand rests at the top of your underwear, waiting.

There is an effort, to not think about her, because you don’t like her like that, you’re sure that all best friends do this at some point or another, but an effort isn’t a certainty and you quickly see her, all you can see is her. At first it’s innocent, a smile, a laugh. You hated it when Jeff would get protective, it always felt like a brittle way to maintain masculinity, but the way she immediately stood up to Greg, her head craning up so her eyes could meet his, hands fisted and ready? God, to watch her hit him would have been the best think you have ever seen in your life. You don’t like violence, you don’t need to be protective, but you like it when Shauna is both.

But then it quickly goes South (literally in this case), to that goddamn trail of hair down below her boxers that you want to touch, taste. You think she’d like to be in charge, you think that she’d be on top of that scruffy guy – Adam? You shake your head at yourself, you don’t know why you pretend to forget him even in your head, maybe it’s so it’s easier to pretend that you don’t hate the idea of them together. That being said, you still imagine it, she would be on top of him, pushing her hips up and down, a hand firmly on his chest and she moves.

Up and down, up and down.

You breathe her in again, hand dipping below your underwear ever so slowly. You used to shave, you thought that it’s what guys would like, plus you saw hair down there at age thirteen, freaked out and immediately got rid of it but seeing Shauna stop shaving (everywhere, from her armpits to her legs, she just stopped and she looks so much happier about it) has given you the confidence to stop too. The hairs are course and prickly, only just growing, but they’re yours and you feel them beneath your fingertips – anticipating weighing heavy across them.

Her, above you, hips moving and grinding and-

You’re soaking, you jut your jaw forward to bite the fabric across your face to muffle the sound that leaves your lips. You still for a moment, his breathing still deep and slow before you slowly shift your fingertips through the wetness, through what Shauna has done to you. You almost want to be mad, she’s your best friend and she’s lying to you and she’s making you wet, wetter than any man has ever made you and that’s fucked up because you don’t even like girls like that.

The vision of her has changed, she’s no longer riding that man with a quiet confidence of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing, no, instead she’s above you. The two of you are laid out against your bed, her hair is pulled back – a few whisps free – and she’s smiling, you’ve always loved her smile, the cocky one she’d get after getting away with a dirty tackle, the one she gets when a guy falls into her trap, as she says. She’s on top of you, a hand holding her up next to your shoulder, the other doing what your hand is doing, her fingers more calloused as they move through you.

“You look so pretty, Jackie.” She murmurs above you, her eyes looking down at your naked body with a hunger that you’ve seen in her eyes before, only to be blinked away or turned away so you couldn’t see. “So pretty underneath me.” She carries on and her fingers (yours you suppose) dip inside for a second before pulling away and you shudder at the feeling. You breathe her smell in deep once again and push a finger in, your hips rising to meet it, fuck you didn’t know you were so needy for it, for this. You’re doing it more and more frequently, almost getting caught a few times, talking and convincing yourself out of it a few times, giving in and leaving the bed while she’s in it, hiding further than you did with Peter and taking care of yourself – when you do it like that, it’s needy and fast and you imagine her so different to how you do now.

Fantasy-Shauna lets out a noise above you (you sank another finger into yourself, two gently fucking you). Her lip flies into her mouth, biting down as she moves and you let out another whimpering noise, this just feels so good.

In and out, in and out.

You’re not going to last long, not with the way that she’s above you, not with her words that are falling from her lips, calling you pretty and perfect, calling you’re her darling, her baby, you melt – the power she has over you, she could ask you to kill and you would, she could ask you to crawl over glass and you would. You curl your fingers and imagine her doing it all, she drops to her elbow glances her thumb across your lip – a small amount of spit covering it and pushes it into her own mouth. She never kisses you in these fantasies, you’re sure that you would implode at the though of it, her plump lips and teeth against your own, the feeling of her tongue in your mouth. No, no kissing, best friends don’t kiss.

You can’t stop.

In and out, in and out.

Her fingers, your breathing – all of it combining, all of it building and building and growing, a thick coil of heat, desire coating your underwear and thighs, your fingers covered and sticky. It’s heaven, the elation of being so close. It’s hell, a fantasy that your mind is cooking up, you’re sure that it’s almost purposeful, something to hurt yourself, something to ache against your code. Her smell is ingrained in your skull now and you curl, push and curl and push and curl.

“That’s it Jackie, you’re so pretty for me – you’re going to come for me baby, aren’t you? That’s it, that’s it.” She keeps saying in a hypnotic chant, voice rasping with desire, with those cigarettes she can’t stop smoking, her voice echoing in your ear, across your brain and body and you’re working with your hips, you’re fucking or she’s fucking and it’s all so-

You finish with her name muffled by her boxers and your hands working quickly under you soaked pair of underwear. You try to draw it out as long as possible, until it hurts to be touched and your hips are bucking, almost humping the air and you collapse against the bed. Fantasy-Shauna is gone and reality sets in.

You manage to school your breathing until there’s nothing but silence.

Peter coughs out a noise in his sleep, moving around until he’s comfortable and you let out a long breath, something that will help the rest of them as they come and go from your body. Right, he’s here, it’s not Shauna, it’s him.

This is the last time, you ball up the boxers and pull your arm back, ready to launch them into her hamper but you just can’t, you need this, you need her close to you as she’s pulling away – she’s your best friend and you need her. They make a soft noise as they drop to your lap and you let out a breath. The door has stayed shut, no opening, no quick and slam shut when she would see you on top of him without your shirt on. You wanted her to see, you wanted her to notice herself without you, you wanted her to burn the same way you did when you saw that mark on her neck. There’s a thud of your head hitting the bedframe but, apparently, Peter’s a deep sleeper and hasn’t woken up to you goddamn touching yourself to Shauna’s boxers, of the subsequent clear-headed overthinking that happens every time.

Her bed remains an unmade mess – she has a problem with doing it, for you it’s a ritual, for her it’s a chore – in her defence, she’s normally in your bed, surrounding you instead; your own personal heater. Something urges you to go there, to look, you peer under her pillow, disappointed at the empty space under there. No, that simply won’t do – you’ll give her a gift now. You almost stand to your hamper and find a pair but, no, instead you pull your still-sticky underwear down your thighs and stuff them under her pillows before you can stop yourself, before you can actually think this through. You hope she finds them, you hope that they go straight to her nose, I hope her hands find herself wet and wanting like you and oh, no, that’s not a best friend thought, you should stop, you will stop, you will yourself to stop.

It works, for the time being, the idea of her doing that falls to the back of your mind. You take a breath and let it fall from your body (you don’t know how well it works). You gently put her boxers under your pillow again. You pull another pair from your wardrobe and carefully snap the waistband at you put them on, sliding into bed and settling to where you’re supposed to be, where you are meant to be, expected.

He welcomes you with open arms and you try to forget how you wish you were in Shauna’s instead.

Chapter Text

You have a problem.

And the problem has the name of Peter fucking Smith – what kind of a fucking name is Peter Smith anyway? Some kinda witness protection name. He’s been at the dorm almost every day since the party, that’s three days in a row where you’ve either woken up in your own bed because oh it’s just too cold to make him walk across campus - the amount of tension headaches you have had has been immeasurable: your teeth grinding and jaw clenching in frustration.

He's taken your space next to her, you wonder if he knows about where your underwear resides.

Your nails are bitten short in irritation, the desire to pull him from where he sits with his back against the wall and legs stretched out and into the space in between the two beds is strong, you would drag him outside the room too (there’s a bit of you begging to slam his head in the door and watch the blood run his skull and see as the life leaves his eyes). The beast is starving, Lottie even told you she needs a day or two – but that might be because Nat’s being extra attentive at the moment and maybe they’ll get their shit together. That would be bittersweet, seeing Lottie happy combined with the knowledge that nothing will help you sate the hunger for more in your gut.

The worst part about it all is that he’s nice, he remembered your name, what your major is, what your essay is on, he cares about Jackie, it’s sweet and gnawing and sickening, you hate it. You make her smile more, you make her laugh more, this guy shows up and suddenly you’re benched. She giggles at something he says again and you’re pretty sure that your pencil would snap if you hold it any tighter. You slam your book shut and stand, you even wish you had lectures today so that you wouldn’t have to be here (you don’t ‘have’ to be here at all, this is all your own fault, you goddamn masochist).

“I’m going to the library.” You say, turning to them with an expression that is probably too harsh to be honest but jealousy screams at you, it aches your body.

“Wait, Shauna – sorry, we’ll quiet down.” She says without meaning it, Peter laughing into her neck a little bit and your jaw clenches – a headache is already brewing. It’s a test, she doesn’t really mean it and you both know it. It’s a test because your neck is a mess, it’s a test because hers is too, it’s a test because her eyes are unwavering and she has that smile across it, the one as fake as the coconut in Malibu. You stand and grab your rucksack from the floor, shoving your notepad and pencil case in with little fanfare.

“I’m sure, but I’ve gotta get this essay done.” You say, in an apologetic tone. Her face changes, a realisation that you’re actually going to leave and you pause in your movements, you analyse her face, different from before, Peter is looking between the two of you, confused.

A realisation dawns on you, actually, it’s not a test, it’s proof. In her mind she’s giving proof that the dance meant nothing, you already fucking knew that, you knew it meant nothing to her. Does he even mean anything to her?

“Shit, I forgot. The librarian has it out for me.” You lie, the librarian working today has actually loved you since you helped her put away a mountain of books away. You stay standing, the desire to sit down not finding you, instead you stand there, right by the door and look at the two of them: leaning against the wall, her leaned out of where she was, his arms wrapped around her. She looks apologetic, wanting, she wants you to stay, and yet he keeps letting him in here. “Do you mind if I stay here?” You ask and Peter nods his head, a nice smile across his face and you want to smack it off, make his hair fall from how it’s perfectly places. You ask and wait for Jackie to answer, Jackie’s answer is the only one that matters, ever.

“Of course not.” Jackie says through a sigh, not a demeaning one, not a sad one, just a kind one, a meaningful one and your hand reaches for her necklace across your neck and fiddles with it. You can’t believe how much it has seen, it saw you kill Greg, it has seen you fuck Lottie six ways to Sunday.

“I have class in ten anyway, I can go a bit early and get a good seat?” He asks, already starting to stand and you hate him, you hate him you hate him you hate him. He’s so nice and kind and you want to tear him apart. You wonder what would happen if you broke a tooth, maybe you could keep him alive and hear him scream as you-

“You sure?” Jackie checks and he smiles wider, easy and content, a puppy dog given the tiniest amount of affection and now he’s always here, scratching up the furniture and shitting everywhere. Your skin scrawls at the sight of him, despite how nice you know he is.

“Yeah, that professor likes to start early – I’ll see you later?” He says, ruining the small moment that you and Jackie were able to curate. You blink, maybe if you try hard enough you can blink away your anger, your irritation, your everything except the beast, you’re afraid that you’ve awoken something that will stay forever.

“Of course.” She turns to him with a close-mouthed smile and you feel vindicated because that’s her oh, you’re here smile. He moves close to her as you look away.

You hear a dry smack of a kiss on the cheek and keep staring at the ground until he leaves with a smiling: bye Shauna, which you give an uneasy grin in response to. The door clicks shut and there’s a slight uneasy silence where you’re not looking at each other but want to. She’s parading him in front of you but you don’t know why she is, why she is proving to you that she’s over it. You feel her gaze on you and you finally turn to look at her, a hand fisting in the strap of a rucksack. You want to tell her that you miss her, which is fucking stupid because you’ve been around her for days, but you’ve also been around him the last few days, you’ve been waking up in your own bed and her necklace has been hanging heavy around your neck.

“Are you, uh, going on a date with him tonight?” You ask, breaking the silence. It’s not an awkward silence, but it rested heavy across your bodies, the two of you waiting for someone to speak. You’re almost surprised that it was you, Jackie normally does that. You shoes make a weird squeaking noise against the ground, one that sent shivers down your spine.

“Yeah.”

“Do you wanna chose your outfit together?” You scuff your feet on the ground and delighting in how she smiles, how she blooms and grows and nods and you smile at her in return. You want to just be with her, around her all the time. He’s in the way of that. You want him fucking gone, you need her to yourself.

“I’d like that.” She nods and you make your way back to the desk, getting your shit back out and attempting to work. It’s hard when you can feel her gaze on you, inquisitive and questioning and you swallow and you get cold when it glides from you and to your pillow. You have no idea why, you’ve been hardly sleeping on it, on a ball and facing away from them. Jackie begins to stand and make her way to the wardrobe behind you, still in those goddamn short shorts and tiny t-shirt and it hurts to even look at her, it’s like staring at the sun; beautiful but painful.

Jackie starts to change behind you and you grip your pencil harshly, your jaw clenching. You want to stare, you want to touch, you want that waist underneath your palms again, you want her body against yours again, hands in your hair, that almost was disastrous, it was everything and awful all at the same time. There’s a noise of a zip of jeans, there’s a noise of her sighing at what to wear, you try to take a deep breath and not look at her, take a moment to not get distracted.

It doesn’t work.

You end up turning and looking at them. She reaches for something at the top of her wardrobe, shirt rising and jeans falling and you see a set of bruises, five to be exact, too small to have been Peter’s hands. Hips, you, dancing, oh. Whatever it is she’s looking for, she can’t quite reach. You want to help her but at the same time, you selfishly like the way the hand-shaped bruises look against her skin.

“You okay?” You ask, pencil tapping on the back of the chair in an uneven rhythm.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She replies even though it’s clear that she is, in fact, not fine. You can only handle her struggling for so long before you sigh, putting down your pencil and make your way across the small room – two steps at most – to help her. “What are you looking for?” You ask, hand brushing her back and she stutters out a breath that you know will stay on repeat. Her throat bobs and she doesn’t move from how close you are, her eyes glance against your neck, the marks that Lottie slathered against you, before they find yours again, just a little bit darker.

“Uh, my shoes – the black ones.” She quantifies but you don’t know if you even know what pair that would be, she has a million shoes all piled up on top of that wardrobe and you have seen her going back and forth on so many that they’ve all blurred into one.

“You got it.” You say but don’t move just yet, you don’t even look away from her, even if you could you wouldn’t want to. “What colour’s the box?”

“Green.” Her voice is low, like she doesn’t want to ruin anything. You are so close, you feel her warmth, smell her perfume, all you have in your systems is her.

“Okay.”

You don’t move for a second, and then you move, slow and steady your arm reaches toward the boxes, you rise onto your tiptoes until the box is above your fingertips and pulling it down. As you reach you feel Jackie’s eyes on you, warm, like fat summer rain dripping down your body, soaking you through.

“Are you in tonight?” She asks, but there’s a secondary question underneath that, the are you going to be here when I bring him home? And you want to say that you will be here but you’re not, you have boxing – you have to try and feed the beast somehow, the beast that’s currently watching as Jackie’s neck pulses with her heart. You clear your throat and look away to clear your head.

“Uh, I’m at boxing until ten?” You start and she tilts her head in confusion. “I can go over to Lottie’s if you want.” You offer even though you’ve been getting nothing but radio silence on that end – you’ll be able to crash at someone’s, or you’ll just come back late enough and drunk enough to pass out.

“I didn’t know you and her were that close.” Jackie says in that voice, the one where she acts like nothing is wrong but everything is wrong. 

“Yeah, we get along.”

We fuck each other until one of us passes out, is said in your head but not out loud and Jackie still looks uneasy as you downplay your relationship with Lottie. You can’t tell if she loves it or not, she had said you look good when you’re jealous, but this isn’t a normal flaunting, this is purposeful, this is making sure that you know that the other day meant nothing – as if you didn’t already know that. You nod once more, an awkward smile making its way across your space as you clap your hands across your thighs. Jackie doesn’t like how close you’ve gotten to her, that much is clear, but there’s something stopping her from telling you about it, something that she would have berated you about not three months ago, her gaze slips from you to the pillow for a split second and you furrow your brows – what the fuck does she keep looking at?

You’re tempted to go over there and rip the pillow from the mattress, to see what has been left to see what she’s left, given you, a votive offering to the God of friendship – or the weird different kind of whatever that the two of you seem to have, a tennis match of jealousy and obsession and love and whatever else is stuck between the two of you. You don’t. Your pillow stays there and her eyes stay on you. The box of shoes stays in your hand and you finally lift it so it stays in her sightline. She takes it, fingers unnecessarily glancing yours but you’ll never complain about that, the feeling of her against you, a feeling that you’ve been missing recently.

“Thanks.” She says, and your hand lays flat against her back for a moment before stepping back, the heat, the smell of her, leaving you. It’s like getting the duvet ripped from you on a cold Winter’s day.

“What shoes are they?” You ask, to try to focus your mind on something other than her.

“The boots that Lottie got-“

“Stole.” You correct, a shit-eating grin on your face while Jackie fixes you with a Captain Jackie-like look, even though you both know that you’re right. She throws the box on her bed and gives you a pointing finger of reprimanding that makes you smile bigger.

“Don’t be mean.”

“It’s not mean if it’s true.” You reply, getting used to the cold and collapsing onto your bed. Two sets of eyes look at an unmoved pillow, one relieved, yours interested. You dip your hand below the side of the mattress to find your pack and take one out. You’ve got a funny feeling you’ve been in this situation before, with her choosing an outfit and you watching, smoking, wanting. “She’s always lifting packs of cigarettes for me.” You shrug, taking a cigarette and slotting it between your lips.

“You should slow down.” She raises her eyebrows at you, joining you on the bed opposite, on the edge of her bed, feet flat on the floor. “Just because you look hot doesn’t mean that it’s good for you.” Your brain malfunctions. The cigarette falls from your lips to somewhere on your bed, she seems to realise at the same time and stops. You scramble to find it as she finds her words. “I mean that’s why you do it, isn’t it? To look hot?”

She sounds like she’s grasping at straws. No, you do it because it feels good, you do it to get light-headed, to get the rush, to leave parties and meet people. But now, now you’ll draw it out, you’ll make it slow, each drag long, each connection to your lips you’ll take your time. Every single cigarette you’ll have will be like that dance that you’re both trying to forget. It doesn’t work for you, at all. You have no idea, Jackie rests like an open book, but there are asterixis and blacked out lines, things that are just for her, secrets. Maybe they’re blacked out for her too, that idea doesn’t even sound too ridiculous: it would be so Jackie to have an emotion, stuff it in a safe and throw away the key.

You light the cigarette and lean back, against the wall, eyes on Jackie the entire time. Her knuckles are white from how she’s gripping the bed-frame. You don’t understand why, but she stares, she looks at you with an emotion you can’t quite decipher.

“Do you want a drag?” You ask as her, every word covered in smoke. Her eyes lift from your lips to your eyes, slightly darkened. You’ve never seen her like this before, this is transparent and it’s almost too much. She doesn’t smoke, only a pull at parties, only with drinks through her system.

Now, however, she seems interested.

She leans forward as you reach out your hand, palm facing her so that she can take a pull. Her lips glance against the top of your palm and bottom of your fingers, they’re so soft against your skin. Jackie’s eyes find yours between the bars of your fingers, they stay as she takes a short inhale and you pull away quickly so you can still taste her on the filter. She takes a second breath and you wonder who taught her that, it must have been Nat. Jealousy aches in your bones awkwardly and you shift, taking a long drag. She must be new to this because she starts hacking away.

You take a step across the room, a hand on her cheek and guide her head up. There are a few echoes of her coughs as she stares up at you, the gaze makes a spark of a fantasy across your brain, a clashing of memories and new ideas taking up your thoughts. You brush your thumb against her skin in a comforting motion, the kind that Jackie leans into. You’ve missed it, you’ve missed being close to her, her skin against yours.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, my love, breathe through it.” You say, low and commanding, the kind of voice that rests in times that tend to involve a lot less clothing. She nods, breathing through her nose and out her mouth. “Good. Well done Jax.” You praise her and there’s a needy twitch in her eyebrow, you can’t help it, something else falls from your lips: “Good girl.” She takes a short breath and coughs aggressively a few times but when she looks up to see you, she tries to calm her breathing. You take a long drag and her breathing quietens down. “Want to try again?” You ask, same tone of voice and she nods, parting her lips and it makes your stomach heat. She takes another pull, not as deep this time, and she doesn’t cough at all. “Well done, Jax.”

“Thank you, Shauna.” You don’t know why but it feels purposeful, the way that she holds her breath before sighing out the smoke on your name. Your knees get slightly weak as she looks up through her lashes, through her lids and you’re surprised that you’re not buckling.

You have to stop giving into this delusion, you’re only hurting yourself with all of this. You take a step back, breaking the moment, if there even was a moment. It’s different than last time, but you still look away from each other

“Here.” You undo the clasp and give her the necklace, her eyebrows furrow slightly but she raises her hand anyway. “It’d look good with your outfit, plus you like him right?” You say, even though all you want is for her to wear it, for those deeds that you’ve done, witnessed by that necklace to be near her, for it to be a part of her. She doesn’t have to know them, but you want them to be there, near. You suppose this is your test, for her to tell the truth.

“Yeah.” She says, nodding, she says paper thin and your heart is skewered once again.

“Well, maybe this could give you luck?”

“I don’t need luck with men, Shipman, they’re easy.” She says, rolling her eyes kindly and finally standing. She stays close. You don’t move. She lifts her hair so you can put it around her neck. Your hands shaking slightly, you’ve been so far away from her for so long. Her neck, her hair wisping away from her skin and how you want, you want to kiss the skin, taste the perfume or sweat or maybe her heartbeat under your lips, her blood against your skin. You take a drag and exhale it near her neck, revelling in the wake of goosebumps that erupts across her skin. She takes a deep breath and you clasp it around her neck.

“What are you doing on this date?” You ask through a breath, dropping onto your bed once more as she does the same. You don’t want to know, not really, but at the same time you hope that it’s shit, you hope that it’s some mediocre slop that will get him out of her life.

“We’re getting a hot chocolate and walking along the river – romantic right?” She says, crossing her legs tightly and leaning onto her palm as she speaks. She knows that it’s nice but there’s also a secondary tone, like she’s asking what you think, like she needs you to be nice about it.

“Yeah, Jackie. It sounds good.” You lie, the river has Greg, she’s there with Peter, all of this fucking sucks. You nod your head and start to get to the end of your cigarette. The filter is wet, you try to let the taste of her overtake the smoke.

You nod and look at each other, it seems like there’s three conversations going on within one.

Your cigarette hisses as you put it out in an old glass of water.

--

“I’m sorry Shauna, you can’t stay over tonight.” Lottie says down the line, apologetic. There’s the noise of music and someone laughing and you hear her giggle too. Ah, Nat’s over. You’re not surprised, you’re not jealous, you’re just tired. You’ll find somewhere else to sleep tonight but you’ll tell Jackie you stayed there anyway – anything to watch the jealousy tingle through her body, something so you know that she cares.

“Nat?” You ask even though you know the answer, you can even hear her giddy smile across Lottie’s face, the way she’s probably swaying in joy and you can’t help but smile at the idea. Sure it sucks to lose out in your misery partner and some great sex, but at least one of you would be happy.

“Yeah.”

“Going well?”

“I don’t know, it’s nice, it’s not weird.”

“Is it normally weird?”

“Sometimes. You know how you say you don’t know if Jackie likes you more or not? Like she says shit and it’s crazy as fuck?” Lottie says, hushed and quick and excited and you nods your head even though she can’t see you. Jackie fucking did that this morning, you’re starting to think that you should attempt to get over her. No, that’s impossible, you are fucking sure that you’ll never get over her, you’ll die and be buried far away from her and you’ll crawl to her, you’ll find her even when you’re dead and gone.

“Yeah.” You reply, wishing that you hadn’t left your cigarettes in the dorm as you make your way across campus to the gym.

“Well she’s not saying that shit, it’s real.”

“Nice one Lot.”

“She’s not going to kiss me anytime soon, but maybe we’re getting there.” You open your mouth to answer but are cut off by her again. “Okay, I gotta go, sorry again pretty, I’ll see you around.”

You phone clicks and you’re tempted to kick something – you don’t, but it’s getting harder and harder to ignore.

--

“Woah, you got a punch on you.” Isaac nods, impressed, hands crossed over a muscular chest. The bag swings in front of you and you stop it, clearing your throat. You haven’t been here too long, you did a warm-up that didn’t make you too warm, spending an extra five minutes doing some burpees and running on the treadmill during the time that they let everyone have some water and stretch. You do chug some water but the goal of this isn’t to make friends, the point is to feed the beast.

“Uh, thanks.” You reply, panting. Since you’ve been interrupted, you might as well take a drink of water. He stands there, compression shirt tight against his chest, you stand there in an old Yellowjackets shirt and a pair of basketball shorts, a band pushing your hair back. They went through the safe way to punch, what to do and when to block. Around the gym there are a few people with practise pads, working on ducking and rhythms, some people who have clearly been here a while are in a makeshift ring. You almost cordoned yourself off from the others, Isaac wasn’t lying; they need more girls, although that might be because you are the only girl here.

“Where’d you learn to punch like that?” He asks and you swallow a massive gulp of water, slightly unseemly you’re sure but you don’t particularly care if he finds you attractive in any feasible way.

“Mom was sure on me being safe.” You explain, Mom always had to deal with drunken idiots in A&E, after they got more and more violent she made sure you knew how to punch, break a nose, kick in the balls and most importantly when to run. You have almost never run, though, much to your Mom’s chagrin, you’ve hit more people than she’d like you’re sure, you didn’t hold the red card record in Senior year for no reason. “And I have a lot of anger.” You shrug, admitting that you can’t stop more often than not. You used to get sent off the pitch, now you kill people, you shuffle your shoulders to get comfortable.

“I can see that.” He smiles, nodding his head. “Bad break-up?” He asks, conversational and as if that’s a question you want him to ask, a question that you want to answer. You suppose he doesn’t know you, your set of friends, he’s a stranger. Sometimes strangers are important.

“Into someone who doesn’t feel the same.” You say and he nods his head in understanding, tapping against the bag slightly.

“Ah, even worse.” His voice is one of understanding and maybe it’s not the worst thing. Lottie gets it all, she knows every single thing about you and Jackie, she knows it all, but telling someone who knows nothing, well you suppose that it’s not that bad. Sometimes telling strangers is the only thing that can help, they’ll tell you to do the harsh thing, and you’ll ignore it – but you’ll try.

“Yeah.” You say because you can’t think of anything else to say. He takes a step away from the bag and puts his hands on his hips, suddenly looking serious. His face severe, eyebrows furrowed and hair bouncing as he nods his head once more.

“You should lean into your punches more.” He says, almost distractedly as he looks at you up and down, checking you out but not in a leering, mannish way, no, like he’s trying to figure something out.

“Huh?” You grunt and he stares at your arms, they twitch at the feeling of his gaze.

“You’re strong, how much do you lift?”

“Hundred bench, 25 for curls.” You admit, proud, you’ve been working hard at your body, becoming strong and looking the way you’ve always wanted to look.

He lets out an appreciative whistle, a smile across his face. You can’t help the small smile across your face – you’ve worked hard on going to the gym, you’ve worked hard on going up pound by pound until your muscles begin to grow. Well, the gym and having the kind of sex with Lottie that makes your muscles ache.

“Very strong, but your arms can only take you so far, arms can get tired too, if you use your weight, you can punch harder for longer.” He explains, moving his body in an over-exaggerated manner that makes you give him a look.

“What do you mean?”

He clocks your stare and he stops, tutting at himself, making a few more clicking noises before his hands reach out to you, stopping around a foot away from you.

“Can I touch you?” He asks, scratching his head. You suck and bite on your cheek, watching him as he thinks about how to explain whatever it is he is trying to explain.

“How?”

“Just your hips.” Isaac reassures, palms facing you to relax and you believe him; there’s nothing harsh in his eyes.

“Fine.”

“Okay.” His hands are slightly cold as they touch you, through your shirt and shorts. “You need to use your hips as you punch, put up your fists.” You do as he says. “Good, now run through a punch slowly.” As you move, he pushes on your hips and you’re starting to get it, push through your legs and hips until they help you move, until you can hit without tiring your hands. He lets go and nods his head. You start moving full speed and the bag moves more ferociously. “You really do have one hell of a punch.”

You nod your head an continue moving, expecting him to walk away, but he doesn’t, instead he just watches you, your movements, he eyes your muscles and your stance and it’s almost like he’s making a list in his head.

“You didn’t seem too interested in the club. Why did you come?” He asks, head bending slightly as he looks at you. You stop your punches again, wiping the sweat from your brow and turn to him again.

“I’m antsy, uh, needed to hit something.” You say, not entirely lying but not entirely telling the truth either. “So I figured I would join.”

“As long as you’re healthy with it.” He shrugs, his eyes moving over your shoulder and you turn to follow his gaze to a shorter, stockier man across the gym. He punches like he’s holding back, like there’s something that’s missing. You turn back to see him looking back at you.

“What do you mean?” You ask even though a red hot memory, dripping in guilt crawls its way up your spine.

Does a hunt without violence feed anyone? Lottie’s words echo in your head. Use your temper for good, if it has to be used at all. You clench your fist again, a phantom stinging across your knuckles from that witch hazel she pressed against your hands. Isaac looks at you like he understands and the beast whispers in your ear: it could be him, he would be a good fight, such a man would fall so hard against your fists. He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t have the beast on his back.

There’s something on your back, in your gut, across your body, taking you from the inside out.

“Using your anger is good but you know, you could hurt yourself or more importantly someone else.” He explains, but isn’t that the point here? To hurt someone? Or is the beast further into your head than you’d like to admit.

“Isn’t that the point?” You ask and he shakes his head, his face sincere, honest, like it’s something he has seen before and doesn’t want it repeated. 

“The point is to win, being hurt and hurting are by-products. Going in with the objective of causing pain is unsportsmanlike and dangerous.”

You want to feed the beast, you want to harm, but at the same time, you don’t. It’s a paradoxical pain in the ass. You’re doing everything to not hit anyone, not kill anyone, you’ve fucked Lottie and have been fucked by her, you’re here. Your head is fighting against itself.

“You speak like Hermione Granger.” You reply, instead of really replying. He’s right but you’re not going to tell him that. He scrunches his face and shakes his head.

“I don’t like Harry Potter.”

“Neither do I but I still read the books.” You shrug and he crosses his arms.

“As long as we both agree that Lord of The Rings has better world building and, well, everything.”

“Well, that’s- yeah, it is a hundred times better.” You blink, surprised by how quick he replied with that, by how much you agree with him. Isaac looks proud of himself, a self-satisfied smile across his face, but it’s friendly this time.

“I passed your test.”

“I don’t have a-“

“You have a test on people.”

“No I don’t.” You hastily try to defend yourself even though he’s not entirely wrong, you do hold people to a high standard before you properly get to know them.

“But if you did, have I passed?”

Beat. Silence. A moment. He smiles at you, you narrow your eyes at him.

“I guess?” You shrug.

“Score.” His hands come together into a clap, he jerks his head toward a set of free sparring pads, and you are already hating the idea. “Now come on, you’re doing some sparring with me.”

“What? No-“

“Come on, you gotta get better somehow.”

“I thought I was already good.”

“You can always get better.”

Okay, maybe boxing will be fun.

--

The beast hasn’t been fed, despite the sweat that covered your body and the way your muscles ache from boxing today. Everything hurts as you sit at the bar, sipping a snakebite. Lottie hasn’t been texting you back, you wonder if she’s actually doing her college work instead of fucking around and being in love with Nat, even though you already know that she’s fucking around with Nat. Okay, that was harsh, you take a sip of your drink and apologise to her in your mind. You shut your phone with a click, your last messages going ignored and thrust it into your jacket pocket. Laura’s not behind the door today, it’s Harry with his spiky hair and emotionless stares, he never puts enough blackcurrant in the drink. You had thought that if beating up a bag didn’t work maybe you could drink enough to pass out and feel nothing for a bit.

You let out a sigh and wonder if you’re ever going to feel full again, full and satisfied and sated and content. Harry rolls his eyes and it takes everything in you not to throw the drink at him.

The TV plays the break in some baseball game for the local news and Harry turns it up, arms crossed and shakes his head as a familiar face makes his way onto the screen, a face that was bloody and bruised and bloated the last time that you saw it. You take a gulp of your drink this time. It doesn’t help the beast, not one bit.

“Greg Dimone was last seen at The Bar, on Friday 15^th of September and hasn’t been seen since, if you have any…”

You tune out the rest of the sentence and finish your drink without any fanfare, letting the glass thud onto the table.

“Bummer huh?” Someone says, saddling next to you and you blink in surprise, turning to see a woman, around your age, a look in her eye which makes you think that she’s been scoping you out for a while. You had planned to pass out but maybe this could help, Lottie’s busy anyway and it’s not like you’re exclusive anyway.

“What?” You ask, trying not to get caught on the fact that her hair is the same shade as Jackie’s, even if it’s not curled like hers, instead in straight lines that flow either side of her face.

“That guy, it’s a bummer he’s missing.” She jerks her head toward the screen and you nod in understanding, starting to wish that you hasn’t finished your drink. You clear your throat. Not really, he was a piece of shit, you want to say.

“Yeah, hope he’s still alive.” You say instead, nodding your head, trying to come across as caring. Her eyebrow quirks in amusement and she tilts her head, speaking out of a slanted smile that you can already see yourself kissing off her face. Maybe this is a little desperate but it’s better than fucking murder.

“You think he’s dead? You think someone’s going around killing asswipes?”

“You never know, maybe it’s a new kind of vigilante.” You tease despite the fact that your heart is thundering against your ribs.

“Who kills people like Greg?” She asks and that familiar concoction of feelings makes your stomach clench.

“We shouldn’t really joke about this.” You shake your head and she shrugs, looking so much like Jackie that you are really going to struggle to keep yourself from saying her name instead of this random girl’s.

“Joking isn’t going to make him any more missing, besides I knew him, he cheated on my friend.” She explains and you nod, that makes complete and utter sense. He was a dickhead. Even then, you’re sure that he wasn’t meant to die so soon, your fists just wouldn’t stop moving. You lift your glass before forgetting that you finished it and let it clatter onto the bar uselessly.

The girl’s cute, really cute and you need a cute distraction instead of a 5’10 gorgeous distraction. You should probably get her name, that’s a thing people do.

“My name’s Shauna.”

“Are you always this bad at conversation?” She asks, amused and cocking her head to the side and your tongue bowls the side of your cheek as you tap the bar, uncomfortably perceived and at the same time into it. You lift your hand and wave awkwardly in response, as you speak.

“I just realised that I didn’t get your name but I didn’t, uh, whatever.”

“It’s Alice.” She puts an end to your misery and you smile, that lazy, lopsided one that makes Jackie call you a dude for but stares at you extra when you do, the one you do when you’re finished fucking Lottie and she kisses off with a panting kiss.

“Pretty name for a pretty girl.” You say, even though it’s lame, because it’s the only thing that came into your head and because it makes Jackie laugh extra hard when you end up being lame about something. She gives you a look, raising an eyebrow, asking really? And you would take offence but she’s still here after all your stumbling words, so she must like something about it all. It gives you confidence.

“Does that normally work for you?” She scrunches her nose teasingly as she talks, leaning in a little bit as she does so.

“No.” You shrug. “Just telling the truth.”

“Oh, so you think you’re a smooth talker?” Alice teases, and you shake your head, fingers tracing the lines in the wood swollen from drinks being spilled throughout its tenure as a bar. A self-deprecating smile makes its way across your face. You look up from the bar and back up to her, she stares at you, waiting for an answer with a slightly dark look across her face.

“Not one bit.” She bites her cheek and looks away, you see her cheeky become slightly rosy. You can’t help the slightly smug smile across your face. Alice turns back to you, eyes narrowed slightly and she shakes her head. “It’s working, isn’t it?” You ask, tilting your head and she rolls your eyes, softly pushing your shoulder. It doesn’t move much, and you see her eyebrow twitch at the movement.

“Shut up, I don’t normally find losers hot.” She grumbles, even though her gaze looks over you appraisingly.

“Is that what I am?”

“You’re totally doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

“Being a loser? I hate to break it to you babe but I’m born and bred lame.”

“Oh my God, you are totally coming back with me, aren’t you?”

“If you want me to.”

“I want you to.” Her eyes shine and look over you. You recognize that look, it’s the kind of look that Lottie gives you sometimes, when she wants you to tie her up and utterly wreck her, fuck the heartbreak out of her, just like how you need to get the pain out of you by making forgetting yourself, burying yourself into another. “Let me tell my friends where I’m going.” She explains and ends up walking back to a group of people who look at you with an appraising gaze.

“How did you swing that?” Harry asks, a raised eyebrow as he grabs the glasses in front of you. “You sounded like a doorknob.”

You splutter slightly, you know you weren’t the smoothest but a doorknob? You smack your hand on the bar in a questioning way and Harry sticks out his tongue.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Are you coming?” Alice shouts from the doorway and you nod your head, grabbing your jacket from your stool and following her outside.

The air is cooling, your breath doesn’t quite linger just yet, it’s too early in the year for that, but you close your jacket around you but it doesn’t fit, you’ve gotten bigger the last few months. On a reflex, you pull your pack of Nat Sherman’s from your pocket and put one between your lips. She’s leaning against the brick wall of the outside of the bar. Just around the corner is where you and where Greg- you snap out of it and saunter over to where she stands. You light it and inhale, exhale quickly, her eyes following the movement.

“We haven’t even kissed and you want me home?” You say after another inhale, she holds your jacket and pulls you close, taking the cigarette from your hand and copying your movements.

“Well we can fix that.” She smiles, the grey of smoke stuck beneath her teeth and you get pulled in, your lips finding hers. Her lips are soft, they taste like your own cigarettes – you wonder what it would be like to kiss Jackie after she inhaled like she did earlier. Except Alice’s lip-gloss tastes like apple, Jackie prefers strawberry flavoured stuff and Alice’s hair is different beneath your hands. You hold her close, your tongue lacing her lips and her teeth and her joining in kind. She pulls away first, taking your cigarette for another taste.

Alice’s apartment isn’t too far from the bar (the deep dark well of the alleyway near the bar calls you but you heed it’s call and allow yourself to get dragged to desire), a carefully curated bohemian mess, complete with broken overhead lighting and rugs galore. It’s been a quick excursion, a quick choice and now you stand, staring at each other, shoes thrown in the hallway. You look at her, up and down, as she looks at you the same. There’s something in her face, a desire she’s waiting to unleash, something that she wants from you, something that she needs. And if there’s anything you’ll do, it’s give a girl what she needs in bed.

“So, how do you want me?” You ask and she shifts, throwing her jacket onto her couch, you do the same.

“What do you mean?” She asks, coy, a shoulder raising.

“You want me in a way but you’re not saying it.” You continue, taking steps toward her until you’re back in her space.

“I want you in control.” She admits and oh, that’s more like it, that’s something that you could really, really like.

“Oh?”

“Complete.”

“I can do that.”

She takes a step into your space but you hold up a hand, stopping her in her tracks and her eyes darken, she wets her lips in anticipation.

“Did I say you could?” You ask and her breath deepens.

“Are we starting now?”

“What do you think?” You say, bringing a hand up to fist roughly in her hair, she lets out a choked moan. “What is off limits and what names do you want?” You ask, low and soft and there’s an understanding between the two of you, you get each other.

“Don’t touch my feet and we’re all good.” You nod and she continues. “You can call me anything, sir.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“You want to be my slut?” You ask and she nods, you grip her hair again. “Say it.”

“I want to be your slut sir.”

Oh you are finding out things about yourself tonight. You gently pull her backwards until one of her hastily-painted walls meets her back and you push her against it with her hips harshly.

“Good.” You growl before kissing her aggressively, your lips and tongue finding each other quickly, you pull at her shirt but don’t want to stop kissing her. It’s a thin, flimsy thing and before you can think it through, you rip at it until it falls to the ground in tatters. She gasps out a curse into your mouth, it fills you up whole. You kiss against her lips once more before dotting against her cheek and hastily biting her neck. Alice’s body shudders against yours, a moan that will probably get her in trouble with her neighbours. She hasn’t worn a bra, and you quickly palm against her breasts roughly, fingers finding her nipples and twisting and pulling. You’re leaving large, red marks down her neck; wanting to dislodge your jaw and swallow her whole, you want, you want, you want, the beast craves and you’re trying your best to fulfil it. You make your way down her neck, across her collarbones, hands gripping her hips and holding her in place.

You dip your head and suddenly you’re right under her arm and smell, an earthy, sweat-driven scent that drives you crazy, it makes the beast growl in anticipation. Before you can think too much about it, you dart forward and press the flat of your tongue along the skin of her armpit before travelling down, the heady taste of sweat against your tongue as you suck a nipple into your mouth.

“I knew you were-“ She starts to groan out, you let go of her nipple and hold her jaw in a firm grasp, bringing your face in close.

“Did I say you could talk?” You say, low and quiet, and you feel her gulp, face turning immediately apologetic and the power, the control that you have over her, makes you almost dizzy with desire.

“Sorry sir.” Alice speaks low and apologetic and it washes over you.

“You taste good.” You throw her a bone and her mouth drops open slightly, a short noise leaving between those red lips. It tasted really good, you want it in your mouth forever, pooling on your tongue, coating the back of your teeth.

“My sweat tastes good?” She gasps out, disbelieving and turned on all at once.

“Everything about you tastes good.” She lets out a noise, head falling back against the wall, a ghosting smile across her face. You admire the marks you left earlier and wonder how long they’ll last, if you could make them there forever. She likes to be praised, you like praising her, you like making her feel fucking good. You join her, more with a shark-like grin rather than anything kind. “You like to be told how good you are?”

“Yes.”

“All good and just for me?” You continue, pressing your knee between her legs and pushing up, shuddering into you. She nods against your body and you press into her harder, another small noise falling from her lips. “You are, when you’re not being bratty you are.” You tease darkly.

“You like it when I’m bratty.” She says, breathless and teasing and it fills you with some kind of anger – not the kind that got you killing Greg, no a lilting fun kind of anger; more like a frustration. Her eyes flicker and spark with desire when they find yours.

“I like it when you do what I say.” You command, your hand dropping from her chin to her throat and begin to squeeze. It could be easy, to break her neck right now, your hand easily wraps around her throat, and as you hold her neck tighter, she makes more noises. Alice moans and holds you closer, her nails digging into you and you love it, you love every single second of this – you should do this with Lottie when she’s back from her emotional excursion to Nat.

“Okay sir, I’ll do what you say.” She whines and you start to let go but she shakes her head and you grip once again. Her eyes stutter shut, falling deep into the abyss of bliss.

“I want to fuck you.” You almost snarl and finally let go of her neck, she lets out a whine from the loss of your hand mixed with a moan because of your words. “Have you got any toys?”

Her eyes widen, dark and desired, she moves her head toward a dresser in the corner and you smile, excited at the prospect of everything.

“Third draw down.”

“How big? How much do you want to be filled? Stretched?” You ask, getting as close as you can without crushing her against the wall. You want to tear her apart, no, you want her to beg you to tear her apart, you want her to whine and ask in a gasping breath for you to take her apart piece by piece and put her back together.

“I want to feel you tomorrow.”

“Then get naked and get on the bed.”

You take a step away from her, loving how quickly she complies, clothes flying everywhere and she lies on the bed, waiting. You make your way across the room, still staring at her. Her skin is pale against the navy sheets, her face wanting and watching. You peel off your clothes slowly, keeping her eyes as you strip. You watch as she almost touches herself but stops and you breathe out a good girl, that makes her whimper.

You step into the strap and tighten, ready to feed the beast.

--

You get back to an empty dorm with a sigh, that didn’t even sate the beast, the hunger inside you, if anything it made it even more ravenous. The door clicks shut behind you, even though you want to slam it shut until it falls off its hinges.

There’s a scrap of paper shoddily ripped from a workbook, you quickly read it through, explaining that Jackie’s staying at Pete’s tonight.

You rip it in two, the anger bubbling through your body, through your everything, a simmering rage that’s now boiling over. For fuck’s sake. You just had a fucking fantastic evening and now it’s all ruined, from a simple letter. Your fists clench and uncoil and repeat and repeat until your forearms begin to become white hot and cramped. Your body has already been through the ringer these past few days. Your heart has been beating and beaten on a loop, your fists have been healed and destroyed, and have wanted to hit and hurt and more, and your arms ache and your back has been scratched and your thighs held and it was not enough.

You pull off your shirt, revealing in how naked you can be in your empty dorm, the cold hair makes the cuts against your back sting slightly, she did not fuck about, and you loved every second. You loved it and yet your stomach twists and turns in knots, your stomach is empty and hungry and wanting. You pick up your pillow and scream into it, the noise muffled, spit getting stuck at the bottom right as you keep going until your throat is raw. You throw it back onto your bed, chest heaving in irritation, in a greedy desire for oxygen. You close your eyes and let your head fall back, you almost feel like you’re free-falling, letting the emption was over you. God that was good, the feeling of Alice’s body against yours, her once pale skin getting reddened as she counts your hand coming down on her ass. It had reminded you of him, a stinging palm against a broken knuckle, a painful gurgle and choked moan. Even remembering it makes your underwear uncomfortable again, it makes you want to shuffle and press your hands down your front and get off again. You need to get out of this memory, this remembrance. Nothing has fucking worked, you need it to work, if you don’t get it to work then you might as well turn yourself if for him.

After a few minutes you open your eyes and look away from the popcorn ceiling, back to your bed and you’re finally starting to understand why Jackie was staring there earlier.

Because there’s a pair of underwear that rests under your pillow.

Lacy underwear that is not yours.

Worn underwear with stained white.

Oh. Oh.

You pick them up and let them lie against your hand.

She put it there.

There’s no other reason, there’s no other way, Jackie left a pair of her underwear under your pillow. Your head reels at the information, fucking spins, you’re surprised it’s still attached to your body to be honest. This is an offering. She must have noticed that you changed the set under her pillow and have done the same. The beast growls to smell, to taste, to have her close. This is desire splattered across underwear, and now given to you. You wonder what gave her such a desire, and if it was Peter, oh how you wish it was you, oh how you know it was him.

You scrunch the pair of underwear in your hand, and bring them to your nose, allowing yourself one long inhalation. It’s old, the scent isn’t as strong, but it’s there – the smell of Jackie’s want, across your nose and inside your head. You held back last time but not now, now you’re starving, you’re hungry, you’re wanting.

He needs to go, you need to have this for yourself. He needs to be gone. You let the underwear fall to the floor.

You’ve hit, you’ve been hit, you have fucked, and you’re still hungry, it’s unsated. The only thing you need is to kill again and you know just who.

Peter needs to go and the beast needs to be fed. You’re going to do this but if you’re going to do this, you have to plan it properly.

Chapter Text

You don’t particularly know where to start. You were lucky the first time, that Lottie picked up the phone, that Lottie understood, you don’t think that she would get this now. Or would she? Your thumb hovers over her name in your phone but you decide against it – last time was an accident, a messy one, but an accident nonetheless. This time you plan on, well, planning. You should feel bad, you should feel an impending doom of hell or whatever, you never really believed in all of that but it’s the kind of thing that would still rest heavy on your mind in the middle of the night for no reason.

Where does one start when planning a murder?

You can’t beat someone to death again, no matter how much your fists beg and the beast growls for blood; fresh, hot, red, blood, yours and his mixing across your knuckles, the sweet pain of death inflicted from you once again. No, you can’t beat him to death. It can’t be something incidental, no poison, no hit-and-run; no. It has to be satisfying, you have to feel the life leave his body. The thought hits you suddenly, a knife. You imagine a knife through his abdomen, the blood dripping down your hands, down the blade, a pool on the floor. You can feel your body react to even the thought of it, your tongue wetting, your underwear joining it. It makes your stomach turn slightly, queasy, a familiar guilt spreading across your systems; guilt at taking a life, guilt at the way your body wants. There’s no regret, someone has to go and it has to be him, you need her to yourself, you need to have her, he doesn’t get to have her.

A knife, you need to choose a knife. You need to plan more than that though, you need to plan where and when and what to do with him. Well, you’re going to kill him, you’re going to slice him open and watch him bleed. There’s a new knife that your mom got for you for college, it’s been too nice so far for endless grilled cheeses and ramen but perfect for killing an asshole (a completely harmless man) who has taken your best friend from you for weeks (a few days at most) and the beast is so hungry that your sight is starting to become blurry with starvation, desire, pure, want (okay, that one is true).

Your phone rings and you drop the knife, jumping back from the counter as it clatters against the ground, barely missing your feet. You bend down and pick it up, slamming it on the counter, the name shining on the screen reading Tai, and you flip it open.

“Shauna! It’s Tai, what’s in a snickerdoodle?” She says, slightly out of breath and harried and yet completely in control of the situation. You blink at no one and rear back somewhat.

“Why the fuck are you asking me? It’s my Mom’s recipe.” You reply, slightly pissed off at what she was interrupting despite knowing she didn’t mean to. You stare at the poorly painted and stained wall of kitchen. It has the splatter of many-a pasta dish readily created by hungry students, a few reheated soups and you don’t even want to imagine the amount of ramen being consumed in this room, this whole building really. Tai tuts and you start to regret the way you talked to her.

“Just because you’re in a mood doesn’t mean you can be a dick.”

You sigh and start to rub your forehead in irritation at yourself, at the way your life is starting to intersect, starting to melt together. She lets out a short noise, the kind of noise that means that she’s getting frustrated, the kind of frustrated which means she’s about to get angry and break something. Tai’s patience gets her far but when it breaks, it breaks.

“Sorry, uh, I’ll call her and fax it to you.” You clear your throat. “Are you still in the dorm at Howard?”

“Yeah, yeah, I am. Thank you so much.”

“It’s nothing.” You lean against the counter and turn your back from the knife, getting comfortable despite the fact that literally everyone else on your floor can come in. “Why do you want the snickerdoodle recipe?”

“Van loves them, it’s her favourite sweet.”

“Ah look at you all in love.”

“Shut up. How’s your ‘situation’?” You can practically hear the bunny ears she’s putting around the word and you make a face at no-one. You could tell her the truth and explain the dance, the compliments, the underwear but you don’t. Those are just for you, they’re between the two of you, no-one else could understand how it makes sense.

“It’s the same.”

“Really?” She sounds dubious and you roll your eyes, forgetting that on Lottie’s side of the you and Lottie equation, that there is Nat and with Nat there is Van and with Van (obviously) there is Tai. It’s like a twisted phone-line, like a four-way call, like kids whispering secrets who become misconstrued and changed to fit people. You pinch your nose and close your eyes, turning back around to face the knife.

“What did she tell you?”

“Just what Nat told her, which is ‘shit’s getting weird’.” Tai makes her voice all deep and breathy and you let out a snort of laughter, it’s a shit impression of Nat but also makes complete sense.

“Your Nat impression needs some work.” You tease and she lets out a short, throaty laugh.

“Fuck you.”

“I don’t know what Nat meant.” You admit because you have no idea, Nat had left before she saw you and Jackie dance, and no one has seen the way that underwear gets tossed between the two of you like it’s nothing.

“Yeah, no offence but the two of you have always been weird.” She says like it’s nothing, like it’s a simple thought and isn’t something that would theoretically piss you off.

“Thanks Tai, totally not taking offence to that.”

“Please, you know exactly what I mean.” She scoffs and you hate the fact that she’s right, you do, Tai has a habit of being right, sometimes it gets goddamn annoying.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” You reply, wishing you had a cigarette but the kitchen has an unofficial no smoking rule and you’re a little anti-social (murder aside) but you’re not going to be the dickhead who breaks the first unofficial rule of the dorm. You think about Tai always being right, it itches at you, there’s something that you’re missing. It takes a second but it comes: lawyer. Tai is doing law shit, law shit that you can take advantage of while planning a murder. You lick your lips and clear your throat.

“Tai?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s the difference in jail time between meditated and pre-meditated murder?” You ask. You were planning on slowly asking her instead of letting it fall out your mouth like the sick that normally vacates Jackie’s stomach on a night out, but of course you didn’t. It can’t be taken seriously, you suppose, and it’s not like Tai’s going to immediately assume you’re planning on murdering Jackie’s current boy. You hate that he’s a boy. She likes a boy, and you’re not a boy, you like her, you like a girl and she doesn’t like you.

If you can’t have her then no one can. It sounds obsessive you know, you suppose that it is, but she is too. She left her underwear for you, she takes yours for herself, you can’t think about it for too much, for too long or you’ll get completely possessed by the thought.

“Well first off there’s no such thing as mediated. It’s manslaughter, secondly, I study goddamn house law, and thirdly, why?” Tai asks and you sweat slightly behind your ears, you keep the phone between your ear and shoulder and hold the knife firmly in your palm, the tip gently against your thumb. The cool metal of it shimmers in the luminescent light, sharp enough to prick slightly, but not enough to pierce your skin on touch alone.

“You still knew it, didn’t you?” You can practically picture her rolling her eyes down the phone. “It’s for a story.” You lie, voice unwavering, voice firm and while Tai just hums.

“A lot, and it depends on state to state but in some you get the death penalty for murder. What state is it set in?” She continues, interested and your stomach drops. The death penalty. It’s all fun and games until there are consequences for your actions you guess. You square your shoulders and take a breath, rapidly coming up with a story on the spot, something quick and easy and something real, something based on reality, something-

“This one.” You say, slightly gasping and if Tai notices then she doesn’t say anything. She intakes a breath. “New Jersey.” You reiterate for no reason really, Tai gets what you’re saying.

“Then death penalty is a go. What’s it about?”

“What’s what about?” You ask, blinking, your mind completely blanking, completely forgetting your lie – they’re starting to pile up, you might have to start writing them down at some point. That’s a good idea, until Jackie finds it and you end up in jail and about to die and-

“The story.”

Oh, yeah, you’ve already forgotten the lie, the prospect of the death penalty had almost turned you off the plan. The knife pierces the skin of your thumb and you let out a short noise of pain, pulling your thumb and putting it into your mouth. The taste isn’t as satiating as before, but it’s certainly moreish.

“Someone planning a murder.” You say and Tai lets out a laugh.

“Classic Shauna.”

“What does that mean?” You feel your face furrow into a frown, into one of those reproachful glares that Jackie pinches you about to stop doing at people because they actively walk away when you do it in their direction.

“It means it’s the exact kinda shit that you like to write, the dark stuff.”

You hear some material rustling and you assume that she shrugs, probably moving her hands in a way that you can’t see. Your face relaxes slightly, less aggressive glower and more slightly put out puppy with a slight anger issue. You look at your thumb, slightly distracted by the way your skin rips away from itself, the way the blood starts to pool slightly along the grooves of your fingerprints. It drips slightly from the way you squeeze the small wound and taste it again.

“Wow-“

“Come on now, you know you’re obsessed with that shit.”

Bleeding him dry, pooling at your feet, maybe the taste of blood in your mouth, maybe watch him die slowly on the floor. Okay, maybe she’s right, maybe there is a slight obsession (there’s only one obsession that takes up more of your brain than anything else; one that you know the smell and the feeling of but not the taste, oh you want to taste Jackie’s lips against you, feel what left her underwear like that beneath your pillow).

“Okay maybe a little, whatever.” You reluctantly admit, your hand dropping to the knife on the counter, thumb brushing along the handle – the anticipation making your stomach warm through with desire, with the growling beast in your stomach.

“Yeah yeah, I already knew that.” She says in that classically Tai way; all at once dismissive and understanding. It’s comforting to fall into old relationships that aren’t hideously unrequited love or consistent fucking to get over said love. You should call her more, you make a mental note to call her more.

“Shut up.” You reiterate, starting to sound petulant and she thankfully starts to take pity on you.

“Anyway, thanks for sending the recipe.”

“It’s nothing dude, serenade Van with your baking.” You scratch the back of your neck.

“I don’t think that you can serenade someone with food.”

“Don’t be pedantic.”

“Like you’re any better.”

“Shut up.”

“Do you know any other words?”

“I’m an English major.”

“And? I haven’t seen any indication of that in our conversations.”

“Oh my God you are such a fucking lawyer.” You laugh at her, rolling your eyes. You can hear her start to defend herself (lawyer strike two in your opinion) but she gets cut off by the sound of a door slamming. Some chatter comes through and there’s commotion of something going on down the line. You take a much needed breath.

“Fuck okay- okay! I’m on my way.” She says, slightly muffled and she comes back to the phone with a chagrined tone in her voice. “Something stupid has come up, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yeah, see you – I’ll send that recipe over.”

The line clicks and you push it into your pocket, picking up the knife once again. The shine makes the light glints into your eyes for a second until you change the angle. You push your thumb into your mouth again, it feels good. You have to plan it properly and thoroughly and feed the beast so that it can leave you alone. It’s awkward to carry the knife back to your room, but thankfully you don’t run into anyone so no one asks why the fuck you’re carrying a knife from the kitchen to your dorm. Actually, knowing college students they would just assume that you needed a knife for something instead of killing someone with it.

You stand in the middle of your room and just hold it, taking a breath. You don’t have Lottie this time, you have to plan it perfectly, you have to-

The turning of a key in the lock gets you to move quicker than you have in months.

“Shipman!” Jackie comes into the dorm. The second she turns to shut the door you throw the knife into your desk draw, shoving so hard the whole thing shudders. She doesn’t even flinch, used to you doing random shit. Her smile is wide and carefree and for a moment you wonder if you’re doing the right thing, because she looks so happy, but that happiness is directed at you, not him and you know it’s not about him either, not from the way that she’s positively beaming.

“Hey Jackie.” You smile in return, because how can you not when she’s looking at you like that? She stops for a second, a lip sucking into her mouth and biting, shoulders rising and you know what’s coming. You lift your arms and she runs across your small dorm into them, pushing the air out of you, her lean arms gripping you tightly as she spins the two of you around. “Woah, woah! What’s going on?” You ask, regrettably pulling back from the cacophony of warmth and smells and closeness that drives you crazy. She has your underwear under her pillow, you have hers. And yet you’re best friends.

“I know what I want.”

Your heart skips a beat for some reason, you’ve had a few dreams that started like this. Your dreams are realistic but not realistic enough for all of that with Tai. It’s been a second too long and Jackie starts to look like she’s going to talk to you shuffle the feeling from your body and instead smile at her, joking in a way that you know she likes – the kind of like where you’re never sure if she likes it likes it or just likes it.

“That’s not vague as shit or anything.” You tease, loving the way her mouth changes into a lilting smirk, her eyes rolling and her pushing your shoulder as if she’ll move it far.

“Shut up.” You smile wider at her irritation. “In life, Shauna, in life.” She jumps slightly in joy, her hands linking with yours and rising up and down in a relaxing motion.

“Oh yeah?”

Jackie nods, you wait in anticipation. Jackie cycled through degrees at the beginning of the year, each one with a new smile and new face, a small ball of dread is created in your stomach, just in case this isn’t the one – you don’t want her to have some even more heartbreak, especially on top of a newly murdered boyfriend coming on the horizon. This smile though, this joy that is reverberating through her body and onto yours it new, it’s not a simple happiness, it’s more than that, it’s like something new has erupted, like a blindfold has been taken off and her life has been changed.

“Teaching.”

“Teaching?”

“Yeah.”

“Wha-when did you get that idea?” You think this is the first time she’s brought it up – have you really been so evasive and with Lottie all the time that you’ve missed this? Some fucking friend you are. You can barely shelve the guilt because it’s been clogging up your body the last few days. This isn’t just a whim, you take in her body language, her smile, the joyous nature of her – this is something big and you missed it. Fuck.

“In a sociology intro-“ You blink in surprise, you’ve lost count of how many Intro courses she’s taken but you should at least know that she started it. Did she tell you? Shit. Or maybe she told Peter, he has – after all – been taking up your stop in her life as of late. “-they talked about how important teachers are to a kid’s development and shit and I- I want to be there for them.” She looks like she’s being seen for the first time, properly, and it breaks your heart, this is Jackie Taylor: captain extraordinaire and your best friend, if anyone can make this dream happen it’s her.

“Yeah?”

“I am gonna be a teacher, and they’re gonna call me Miss Taylor.”

And oh, doesn’t that just make perfect sense? You can see her now, at the front of the class, engaging them with every word, hands moving. You can imagine her being the teacher kids go to with their problems, you can see her loving her and loving them back. Jackie Taylor, a teacher, it’s perfect. Your whole body lifts, for a moment the beast’s head droops and there’s nothing that you want, her happiness is your happiness. You squeeze her hands in three quick pules, an I love you, that can be said without being said, and lift them high before letting them drop.

“Miss Taylor? I like it, I can see you now.”

“Yeah?” Jackie asks, you can see the anxiety drifting into her bones, a sheepish tug of her lips. Reluctantly, you let go of her hands and bring them to either side of her head, a thumb brushing along her cheek, it’s smooth and supple beneath your slightly calloused hand.

“Yeah.” You reassure. “I haven’t seen you get this excited over anything since soccer, you are going to be Miss fucking Taylor and you are going to teach those kids.”

“You really think?”

“Gross cardigans and all.” You tease and she drops her jaw in false outrage that honestly might be real. Her eyebrows narrow and she points a finger in your face that makes you laugh, shoulders shuddering and noise coming straight from your gut.

“You take that back right now, Shauna Shipman.”

“No, I don’t think I will.” You shake your head and she rears back, grabbing her pillow. You close your eyes and take a step back, hand clutching your own pillow as you wait for the blow but nothing happens. You open one eye and see a carefully folded pair of boxers slightly crinkled and lying on the floor.

Oh. Do you pretend you don’t see them? Do you act surprised? This is almost as bad as planning a murder, actually no this is definitely worse, much, much worse. The thought of going to the station and admitting to killing Greg hits you, it’s starting to look like a good idea – but you’re starting to think that your ‘good ideas’ aren’t exactly good at all. The pillow is in her hand and you see as her eyes dart between the boxers to you and then to the boxers. The colour starts to drain from her face; slowly and unevenly like a blocked drain. You hear as she lets in a shaky, shuddering breath. You should say something, right? This is the time where you’re meant to say something but your mind draws a blank. Her pillow falls to the floor and she runs a shaky hand through her hair, strangled and high-pitched and laughter gets strangled out her throat.

“Look at the time.” She looks to a watch on her wrist-less hand and shrugs, smile so wide and forced you’re afraid she’s going to cramp her cheeks. “I have a class.” Jackie takes a step back, nodding, and you find yourself returning the motion. “I’ll see you later?” You open your mouth but she bulldozes onwards, not letting you get a word out. “Yeah? Okay, bye.”

The door closes again and you sigh. What the fuck do you do?

You end up folding them and leaving them where they were, picking up her pillow and smoothing it over. You don’t know what comes over you but you lean down the smell her pillow, you’ve been amiss of her smell since being stuck in your own bed the last few days. Her perfume and shampoo linger and you breathe deep a few times, waiting and wanting before standing.

You have a man to find.

--

Campus isn’t exactly that big, it feels like finding a needle in a haystack – looking for a mediocre man in a haystack of mediocre men – but you remember something about his dorm-building. There was a complaint about a dripping tap on his en-suite and there’s only two dorms with those. You feel like a detective, maybe you should write about someone planning a murder. You would certainly get a good grade for it. Switch yourself with a man, change the motive and bingo, a story. A good fucking story. 

You’re risking the death penalty for this. You could not do it. Spending your life in spiralling agony and hunger and wanting instead. Spending your life in pain and unsated and so fucking empty. Or you could risk it and feel full, you won’t hurt anyone after this, hopefully. That’s the goal, right? You are almost sure that the beast is laughing at you from deep in your gut.

The attempt to dress inconspicuous is there, dark clothes that you don’t wear often, the knife wrapped in cling film and safely concealed between your jeans and your back, with your hood pulled low and an old pair of sunglasses on your face. They’re Jackie’s, but she’s long forgotten the Summer party where she dropped them on your nose with an easy smile before running off to dance with the others. Life was simpler then, wanting was simpler too.

Your bag is filled with water bottles and lighter fluid, you don’t know what Lottie did with Greg’s clothes but you have to do this yourself. The only problem is how to make sure he sinks to the bottom, with Greg missing he can’t just show up. You know that there’s a bend in the river where there’s a set of rocks. Maybe with all of the ragged sides, the movement of the waters with slowly sand his features down until he is nothing more than a body with no identity or self. You know he runs near the river, you know a stupid amount about him because of how he fucking lived in your dorm for half a week. You lean against an old, gnarled tree, watching the people come and go from the dorm. Soon there’s a collection of cigarette butts surrounding your feet as you sit and wait and wait and wait. Anticipation stretches the hours until they’re sticky like toffee and catching on your teeth with every inhale. It’s long past lunch, getting into the afternoon and evening with every single agonizing second.

And then, finally, after a few hours have gone by, you see him. Him, with his boring haircut and boring face and mediocre everything, white shirt and gym shorts because honestly, could he be any more like a stereotype. He flips his hair as he leaves, dopey grin and a few books held under his wrist loosely. You end up following him, hoping that he doesn’t have too many classes. You walk slow and keep your head as far down as you possibly can without losing sight of him. He walks with a weird lilt, shoulders jerking up and down unevenly and hips moving as he goes. Peter knows a lot of people, he high fives them and smiles and hugs them and makes his way through like a veritable celebrity. Inside you the beast wails, it begs for you to kill, now, to draw blood to feel it again. The more rational side (if you even have one of those anymore) reminds it that you need to take your time, that this isn’t the way.

Your phone rings as he stops with a group of people who look like they’d be on the front of the College brochure. You lean into an alcove on one of the main pathways, red brick and crumbling and you open to hear Lottie’s voice. It’s a little late, if the two of you had fucked maybe you wouldn’t be on your way to murdering someone. That’s harsh, you promise to make it up to her, most likely later.

“Are you free?” She asks, that means two things: she’s wants to fuck you or talk to you. Well, actually it means three because it could be both, most likely both. You wouldn’t be opposed to both, just not right now. You look over to where Peter is sitting with his friends and you have to physically stop yourself from sighing too hard, he is just so goddamn boring and he has friends that he could have been hanging out with instead of Jackie. Maybe if he did, you wouldn’t be out here murdering him.

“Yeah – what’s up?” You reply, his head falls back in laughter and you can only imagine how much of a mediocre joke it was. Maybe you’re being rude, maybe you don’t mind at all, maybe you should – you’re not sure anymore. There’s a lot going on your head, but your stomach is insatiable, and the beast is hungry and it’s taking more control than any rational part of your mind.

“Sorry for not picking up yesterday, gotta get what you can, you know?” Her voice is earnest, and slightly breathless. You stare at Peter, not really thinking beyond how much you want to kill him, how this will bring Jackie back into your arms.

“Oh believe me, I know.” You murmur, low and dark and you let out a noise in irritation at yourself, followed by a short sigh. “Fuck I wasn’t meant to say that out loud.”

Over the crackly line, Lottie laughs lightly, lilting before clearing her throat, a short sighing noise leaving her mouth. It’s one that you’ve heard before, one that you’re intimate with. A chuckle leaves your lips in return. Peter stands from his table, slapping one of the guys on the back as he does.

“So,” She starts and you already know where this it going, there’s a slightly desperate gasp of breath from her and you lick your lips, taking your eyes of Peter to focus on her. “Do you want a distraction?”

You let out a short laughter, more of a huff of breath to be honest. The beast growls at you to take, kill, bleed but you take a step back, being with Lottie again would be fucking fun. Peter’s going to be busy for a couple of hours anyway and you need to get rid of some energy, you’re about to tell her that you’re going to be over in twenty minutes. You stare at the red brickwork that lies opposite you in your alcove, there’s a cracked bit that you lean across to run your finger along.

“Is this your way of telling me you’re horny and you want me to fuck you?” You ask, quiet and low and wanting, you’re guilty of many things – wanting being the chiefly one – but wanting Lottie has never felt like something you should be guilty of. It’s a two-way relationship of friendship and using and lust all rolled up in one. You brush your thumb against the brick next, your cut from earlier catching and re-opening. You stick it in your mouth, a morsel of brick joining the warm blood that’s shining through. The brick dusty and

“Do you not want to?” Lottie teases, and the combination of her and the tinge of metallic on your tongue shouldn’t do what it does to you but it does nonetheless. You crane your head around the corner to see that Pete’s gone. You curse under your breath, Lottie takes it as a sign of failing restraint, you can tell by the way she makes a smug little sound that drives you crazy. If the beast didn’t want to destroy him so badly you would run to her dorm and take her back for a noise like that but the panic quickly rises through your stomach. Fuckfuckfuck. You don’t have to kill him today, but you certainly want to. Jackie’s out all day, the underwear incident of this morning hanging over your head like the Sword of Damocles, just a hairs width from killing you. You blink, looking around for him. No, thankfully it doesn’t take long, his jaunty walk easy to pick out from the crowd. 

“Sorry Lot, I’d love to but something came up.” You push yourself off from the wall and begin to stalk your prey. Lottie is still breathing on the other side, a small, slightly upset noise reaching your ears. “You should totally touch yourself while thinking about me, though.”

“You are such a tease.” She says, the words hitched in her lungs, followed by a short and low moan that you know comes from tugging at her nipples, you tug a lip into your mouth, it would be a lot nicer to feel that moan in your mouth, you’d like to make her make those noises instead too.

“You love it.”

“You’re going to be missing out.” She says, letting out a short, breathy noise that sends some heat across your body. You don’t doubt it, you don’t doubt it at all, but you’re about to get that insatiable feeling gone, at least for a few days. Although, the idea of even having his blood spill is getting you ready and coiled and warm, there’s a high chance you’ll be in that lavender scented room later on. Desire thrums with every step, Lottie and him working through your veins.

“I sure I am.” You say, low and steady.

“You sound sad.” Lottie replies even though you’re sure she sounds a little pleased about it. You roll your eyes and duck through a crowd of people to  I could- fuck- I could fix that, pretty.”

“As enticing as that offer is, I’ll call you later?”

“Boo.” She says and you laugh to yourself. “Have a good time doing nerd shit.”

You’re not sure stalking someone to murder constitutes as nerd shit but you suppose that it’s close enough.

“Have fun fucking yourself.” You reply, though you must say it too loud because someone turns around to you with a sort of grimace on your face and you find yourself making some sort of half-smile-half-apologetic-wince-thing that makes them turn right back around. “You are going to be the death of me, people are going to think I’m a perv. I said that so loud.” You grumble and she lets out a snort down the line, you can see the way she’s smirking at you. Peter’s head shines in the wintering sun, an easy target to follow.

“You are a perv, I should know – I’ve fucked you.”

“Aren’t you meant to be a little busy?” You tease even though you actually like it really, and she sighs out a moan that makes you shiver as you step. You’re outside of campus now, with the sun beginning to set, the afternoon transitioning into the evening, into the night.

“No, this is working for me.” She says, teasing and breathless and you can see the smirk that she’s whispering out of right now.

“What is?” You ask, gripping your phone, the plastic making a cracking noise and you let go of your aggressive grasp on it. 

“Thinking about you being a perv, pretty boy.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Talk to you later.”

You hang up with the smack of the plastic of your phone, he’s walking toward the river – which actually makes it a lot easier for you. You thank whatever God had once made you like this, that he has made this a little easier. He never once turns around, he never once looks afraid, he just dallies about his day – it feels good to be so unknown, to be invisible.

You should be getting bored, this is the kind of thing that would make normal people bored, but you’re starting to realise that maybe you’re not normal. The trees are starting to lose their leaves and crunch beneath people’s feet, there’s a rustling of winter-jackets and breath beginning to cloud in the air. There’s a sense of something in the air, not just the cold and the haze and the rain threatening to fall at any moment, but something just for you. You’re salivating, your stomach is warming and haunting and waiting, the beast doesn’t yell anymore, it’s starting to understand what you’re doing, finally.

He starts to jog when campus empties out, the trees becoming thicker either side of the road. It’s more conspicuous when you jog behind him but seemingly no one notices, apparently it’s totally normal. You’re thankful for the beast for a second, the amount of running you’ve done has made you follow his steps with ease, your breath deepening and quickening but you won’t lose him. You think how lucky you are ass his way toward the old bridge – it’s like he wants to get murdered, he’s practically inviting it at this point. You stay in the shadows as he climbs down to a half-abandoned path along the side of the river, watching as he runs up and down. When his back is turned you drop down and make your way into the overgrown side, even with the weather beginning to freeze and plants starting to wither and fade away, you’re still able to stay hidden as you move metres away from the bridge and closer to where he runs. 

You long to butcher him, you long to pull him apart, muscle by muscle, bone by bone until he’s nothing but a pile of nothing on the floor. His shadow is difficult to make out from the clouded sky but he’s the only one around. He runs past you for the second, third time, stopping for a breath. This is it, this your opportunity. You whistle and his head jerks toward you, you can’t see his face but you’re sure he squints to see you.

Adrenaline starts to hum, your lungs open and you breathe.

“Uh, hey?” He yells, slightly confused.

You whistle again, a second one that makes his head move to the side. He takes a step forward but you don’t move, he can’t see you, you know that he can’t. You breathe deep, heady from the anticipation, from the wait. He is your prey. You smile, wide, and you wonder if your teeth have started to sharpen and grow. He moves again and you crouch, starting to stalk in the long grass, a hunter through and through. Peter is just an animal; a stag with shedding antlers, shivering legs and heavy breaths. He steps next to the tree, he’s only feet away and your grip him, hands strong and forearms twisting as you hold him face first against the tree.

“I don’t have any money on me.” Peter groans, struggling against your grip, one arm pressed against his back, but he can’t get out of this. He gets the message and lets out a heavy breath. You can feel his sweat through his shirt and you can’t help the disagreeable sound that leaves your lips. “Look, I won’t look at you, I’ll just go back to my dorm and leave you alone.”

He’s just so nice, you pull the knife from your back and turn him around, his head thunking harshly against the tree as you do.

“Hey, wait-“ He starts but gets cut off by you shushing him. His eyes widen in realisation, your hand clamps over his mouth before he can shout for help, your knife pressing against his stomach. You feel the shirt ripping under your blade, you wonder how easy it would be to split his skin. There’s so much choice; to press slow, feel it go through his body, or quick and watch the blood spurt out. You shouldn’t let yourself do this. Last time was by accident,

you could have gotten away with it, say he provoked you first, this is purposeful, pre-meditated.

“She is mine.” You spit out against him and he flinches. You push the knife further into him, his epidermis getting pierced by your point. He cries out in pain behind your hand and you push down harder until you can feel his teeth pressed against your palm, his spit and tears mixing into the creases and crevices of your skin.

“I’ll stay away, please let me live, I’ll-“ He starts to beg, muffled behind your hand and the beast loves every second, you love every second.

“You’re not even going to fight for her?” You shake your head and tut at him. “Peter, Peter, Peter.” You take your hand away from his mouth and he gasps dramatically, a small whizzing sound finds your ears and you look down to see shorts start to darken with piss, leaving a small puddle at his feet. You give him a look, if he’s got pee on your shoes you’ll really draw this out. He looks embarrassed, good, as he fucking should be, you don’t mind the begging, you do mind the piss.

“Let me live, please.” He whimpers, a pathetic sound that is music to your ears. You lick your lips, eagerness running through your veins, you normally hate expectation, people tend to let you down – but this, this is good.

“You took her from me.” You start, shaking your head at him. “And you have to pay.” You shrug, a smile starting to make its way across your face, a Cheshire type, the kind that stretches your skin and makes your lips start to ache.

“What would Jackie say?” He tries to appeal to your humanity, something  he should have done that before he starting dating her. It’s too late. You’ve made up your mind now and besides what would you even do if you let him go? You can’t trust that he’ll just let him all go – he pissed himself for fucks sake. 

“Jackie isn’t here.” You remind him, grabbing his chin, he could easily overpower you but you’re praying that he’s too scared. He sniffs and blinks a few times, schooling his face into a sneer, suddenly strong.

“You won’t get away with this.”

This is it, you’re going to do it, you’re going to kill him and watch him die.

“Maybe not, but you won’t get to see it.”

You plunge your knife into his gut, the sound of his flesh ripping apart beneath your knife. You swear your underwear is ruined from it. The knife leaving his stomach and fresh, warm, blood spills. He begins to fall, sitting in the puddle he created earlier – you shouldn’t enjoy the sight of him looking so pathetic as much as you do. It spills from him fresh, your knife dripping too. He watches helplessly from the floor as you bring the side of the knife to your nose, you inhale the warmth and the tang before licking along the blade, oh you like that, the beast loves that. His skin is starting to pale and you crouch, watching the life begin to leave him. Peter lifts a hand, mouth moving but nothing coming out. You love to watch as he slowly drains of his existence, his eyes losing their spark, his skin paling even further, lips changing hue, body beginning to fall and limp. You long to see him bleed even more, bringing the blade high and pushing it higher this time, just above his collar bone and he lets out a choked noise of pain. You stab him again and again and again, the feeling better than any punching back, better than any kiss, he stops moving at some point but you stab a few more times, panting. Your hands are soaked, blood splattered across your clothes and face. It feels beautiful.

That’s that then.

The blood begins to dry against your skin, the pin-pricks of splattered blood across your face, in your hair. You’re painted and you adore it. Jackie is all yours, the beast is fed, and you have a body to get rid of. You pull your finger along the blade and put it in your mouth, it tastes so good. You hum at the taste, at the feeling, and try to ignore the red hot dripping desire running through your body.

You start by wrapping the blade in cling film once again, shoving it in your bag. Your plan comes into action perfectly. You strip him down, throwing the clothes into a plastic bag inside your back. There are three bins around here, you’ll meander around and drop off the ripped up piss-stained parts and burning the blood soaked ones. That should work, theoretically, without Lottie’s oddly calm demeanour it feels a lot more real. You try not to let it all get to you before you get caught, you can feel guilty later. God, you want to touch Lottie now, you want her writhing and moaning under you. You close your eyes and roll your head, revelling in the way that your neck clicks and you look to him once again. His stab-marks have started oozing more than pouring, against the tree and naked he almost looks like St. Sebastian, saint of soldiers, archers, athletes and the plague-stricken, you remember reading about him, liking the way they drew him. Maybe that’s where all of this came from. The bend is half a mile away, just out of sight from the bridge. Before you pick him up, you look around, with no lights around it’s eery, the old bridge lifeless as always – you wouldn’t be surprised if the last people to drive over it were you and Lottie.

You roll his body to the side of the tree. You pour two water bottles into the puddle of piss and blood he left behind, the slope makes the mix of liquids drip toward the shore, pouring is a neat line. It doesn’t take long until all that is left is a line of mud left behind. You bring your gaze to the sky, the clouds greying, you’re eighty percent sure that it’ll rain soon – that’ll help. They’ll probably find the body, but hopefully it’ll be later on enough that it won’t be linked to you. You think that you’d survive in prison, obviously not the death penalty, but you reckon you would be okay in an orange jumpsuit. You would keep to yourself, fight if needed, but just hideout and read. Hopefully the beast wouldn’t be hungry, then you would have a one-way-track straight to the electric chair. Do they even still have electric chairs? Never mind, you have to get rid of this body before you know how you’re going to die because of it.

You take a few steps and lean down to wash your hands in the river, it’s cold against your warm skin and you already miss the feeling of it against your skin. You pull some against your face, washing off the rest of it, it stings in coldness, it would wake you up if you weren’t already bursting through with adrenaline. You stand and wipe your wet hands on your jeans, crouching once again to stare at your creation. He’s so pale, Greg was puffed up and bruise. Your fist clenches in memory, a few scabs still remain and stretch and almost break at the motion. Feeling him bleed out, watching him die, that was one hell of a gift. You can’t tell what you liked more. Greg was vengeful, Greg felt right, while Peter was a choice, a conscious and planned choice; it’s impossible to choose. You lift him onto your shoulder, fuck he’s heavy. You’re thankful that the night is dark and that the ground isn’t muddy beneath your feet so you can use your legs to keep him held tight. They really weren’t joking about dead weight being fucking heavy. You sigh out, focusing on your breathing and steps, to stop now would make it harder to start once again.

One. Inhale. Two. Exhale. Three. Hold. One. Inhale. Two. Exhale. Three. Hold.

It takes much, much longer than you’d like to, but you finally make it to the bend. There’s a set of rocks that look like a pretty good place to roll him onto. You drop him to the floor as quietly as possible, stretching high and tall, your back popping as you do so. Your muscles start to feel pulled like taffy at the feeling; the kind of ache that comes with stretching like this. You can’t help but get excited while staring at him. Peter is gone. Jackie is all yours now. You’re coiled in heat and desire, you’re ready to tear someone apart with your teeth and tongue and fingers and listen to them moan as you do so. You crouch next to his body, looking at the way he lies (limp and lifeless) and pull your phone from your pocket.

It doesn’t take Lottie long to answer, sometimes you forget that she’s borderline nocturnal, she lets out a heavy inhale as she answers; you can already smell the lavender and tobacco on her breath.

“Hey Lot?” You clear your throat and she hums in ‘hello’. “Sorry about earlier, I’m free now.” You say, slightly out of breath, it’s late, far too late, she might say no.

“Hm, I’m not sure you get to touch me now.” She teases but you want, you need something sweet, you need something now, you need to make it up to her. You need, you want, you-

“Lottie.” You say, teeth clenched and low and dark and the implications of her face in a pillow and your hips moving fast and hard and she sighs out a slightly wheezing noise, a short moan and you smirk.

“Oh you’re in that mood. Come over pretty boy, the door’ll be on latch. Oh and we have to be out early, Malcolm's coming over tomorrow.”

Lottie hangs up with a resounding click of the line and you straighten, a foot on his body, you push your phone into your pocket for what feels like the millionth time today. He’s dead. Peter is dead. You killed Peter and you feel good, you don’t feel hungry for the first time in days. A small feeling of guilt begins to trickle up your throat but you clear it and push it down.

“Goodbye.” You say, more apologetic than you intend. His head jerks side-to-side as you start to push him off the edge of the path, he rolls into the water with little fanfare, his body dropping to the bottom. You stand, desire echoing through your body, red-hot desire, dripping down the back of your throat.

He’s gone and you’re fed – what’s a little dessert as a treat?

Chapter Text

Something is dripping on you. Sleepily and without thinking you wipe it from your face. It doesn’t wipe away like a tear or a raindrop, it marks your skin in a recognisable way – sticky and warm and your eyes spring open. Lottie’s room always has a recognisable dark to it, the big light never on, the lamps orange and low, setting the room in a Baroque-painting-like imagine. Your eyes take a second to focus on your fingers, they’re covered in something dark. It drips on you again. You flinch as it drops.

“Lot are you-“ You trail off when you finally get just what is dripping on your face. You try to sit up but two sets of hands push you into the mattress, both recognisable, both you’re intimately familiar with, both too close to you to see what’s dripping.

Blood. Drip. Blood. Drip.

The hands keep you down which isn’t right, you’re stronger than Lottie and Jackie. You should be able to push them off but it’s like two dead-weights have been pressed onto your shoulders. The big light turns on and you blink, wince, you’re not sure you’ve ever seen the top light on in this room. You glance at them, Lottie in that ridiculous night-dress that you pull off her more often than not and Jackie in her short-shorts and your t-shirt. You almost ask them to let you go but there’s a dripping once again. He’s there, Peter, on the fucking ceiling. Bleeding onto you once again, it doesn’t turn you on this time, it makes you goddamn sick. He’s in his underwear, face gaunt and lifeless, arms held behind his back, knees knocking together. His wounds are weeping. Saint Sebastian once again, that goddamn painting by Sodoma that has invaded your brain since you opened a book of art as a kid. Of course a throwaway thought from yesterday has now invaded your brain like a parasite and festering into this nightmare You know that it’s a nightmare, but of course you can never wake up from a nightmare once you’re aware of it, it has to engulf your being and overwhelm you before you can gasp for breath in reality.

You blink as he drips a little more but then he’s gone. He’s gone and Lottie’s ceiling is empty but you’re still here, you should be awake by now. The guardians of your dream still stand on either side of the bed and you look once again but they’re fucking horrifying now. Fear takes a hold of your entre being, paralyzing from the neck down. Your bones shudder to a standstill and a cold sweat begins to break out across your body.

Lottie’s face is beaten and bloody and bruised, she smiles and a tooth falls to the floor. You hate that the beast whimpers a familiar tune in your gut at the sight. You could never, this is Lottie, you would never, but it likes the sight. It’s quickly drowned with a growing, acidic bile that begins in a steady wave throughout your stomach. I shake my head and turn to Jackie, hoping, begging and maybe even praying for a second of respite, only to be greeted with her slashed and stabbed and bleeding through your shirt. Your knuckles hurt. The knife is cold in your hand.

Jackie leans over you, blood from her shoulder dripping onto your face, she opens her mouth to speak and-

You spring awake, gulping for air, Lottie beside you, room dark. She stirs and your stomach whirls with nausea. The duvet gets thrown back with an expensive whoomph, as you stumble over yourself in a rush to get to the toilet. You feel it in your gut, the guilt, the guilt of it all. It burns like the bile that lines your oesophagus as you spill your guts into the porcelain bowl. There’s something else in your stomach, something that makes you throw up, not the guilt of it all but something hasn’t agreed with you. Fuck.

Why do you have this hunger if it comes with guilt all at once? Why does it want so much only for you to reject it after the fact?

“Did you drink last night?” Lottie calls, voice raised as it wafts through her walls, steps coming toward the bathroom. Your sick is tinged with red. Fuck. You flush so she can’t see the blood that lines your insides, Peter’s blood. The noise is unwelcome and you wince. She wafts into the room casually and kind, you turn your head to watch as she turns on the light, eyebrows furrowed in care. You shouldn’t accept her help, you don’t particularly deserve it but you reach out an arm anyway and she quickly holds it, leaving a kiss on your bare shoulder before rubbing your back with her other hand. You spit again and shake your head.

“Think I ate something funny.” You mumble in explanation, a half-lie, half-truth and lean back from the toilet. Her eyes dart all over you, checking you for anything really serious before her mouth twists into a teasing smirk that makes you feel better.

“Well thanks for not throwing up on my pussy.” She nods sagely, fake-appreciative and pulling you to your feet. You snort, your stomach starting to settle slightly, it grumbles for something – you hope it’s not after any more blood. You open her mouthwash and rinsing your mouth out. Lottie checks you out as you lean down to spit it out. The blue has mixed with any remembrance of blood that’s been kept between your molars, creating an uncanny purple that swirls down the sink.

“Maybe that’s what I ate.” You tease in return, spitting once more, and she rolls her eyes, soft hand pulling you in close.

“Jerk.” She whispers into your mouth and kisses you once. You pull back and take into account what you did to her last night. You’ve fallen back into your old habits, her covered in marks and bruises that she will strategically leave half-covered lest she see Nat today. On the contrary your neck remains untouched but your stomach and chest are littered with small bites. She hums as you pull her close again for another kiss.

“How are you going to ignore your dad all day?” You ask, a thumb pressing against the skin of her cheek. It’s so soft, in your dream it was so tough, rough, ruined from your fists.

“Well, I was hoping that it could me and you and your dorm-room.” She says and while there’s the blaring alarm of JackieJackieJackie in your ears, Lottie being stuck with her dad all day would be fucking awful – that man is the fucking worst. It’s a delicate equilibrium, Lottie would immediately understand if the answer was no, but she’s your friend. She’s been really fucking good to you (hiding a body and many, many orgasms) and you’re trying in return to her – the operative word being trying there. You wonder if Jackie even noticed you were gone, she was probably hung up on Peter not calling her or something. You curse yourself, no, you’re being rude – she likes- liked him, it’s only fair that she would miss him. Lottie deserves a day without Malcolm Matthews being Malcolm Matthews so you smile at her.

“Hmm, I’m sure I can swing that.” You nod and she smiles. “What times he here?”

“Around midday?” She shrugs, you nod. Jackie has practise today but you should call her anyway, you need to apologise for being awol the past day. It was worth it, though you may get some strays from her. You give her a friendly tap on the ass – she pinches you back – and look for your trousers. It doesn’t take long for you to find it, eyeing your bag in the corner. As it rings you think about the fact that there’s still a blood-soaked knife in that bag, thankfully Lottie isn’t in invasive type, she takes you as you are. Lottie can see more than she lets on, she sees everything and understands more than you’ll ever see. Jackie picks up but there’s nothing except some breathing. You lick your lips, suddenly afraid to upset her, suddenly unsure of it all.

“Jackie?” You ask down the line, there’s a moment of silence before she finally speaks.

“You keep disappearing on me Shipman.”

You’ve disappointed her. You can hear it. Shit. The guilt festers and bubbles in your gut, you’re starting to feel like that all the time around her. You’re stuck between love and remorse in a heady and nauseating mixture that gives you a headache more often than not.

“I know, I’m sorry – some shit happened and I had to, sorry.” You clear your throat, guiltyguiltyguilty. She doesn’t reply. Her silence speaks volumes. “Look Lottie’s trying some evasive manoeuvres on her dad, can she hang at ours today?”

There’s a heavy moment of nothing that makes your stomach harden. She’ll be mad at you but she won’t feed Lottie to the dogs, that’s just not in Jackie’s nature at all.

“Of course yeah. I’m at, uh, practise all day today so the dorm’s all yours.” Her voice has gotten tight in the way it does when she wants to help someone but it still upsets her and you hate how well you know her at this point.  

“Thanks. And sorry Jax, I promise I’ll make it-“

“Look, I gotta go I’m going to be late. Have fun with Lottie.”

“Ja-“

She hangs up. Your heart beats against your chest in an unrhythmic beat. So that’s that then. She doesn’t even know what you did for her, getting rid of that mediocre man, she can do so much better- no, no no no. You won’t go down that path, this is for you, this is all for you. You turn to Lottie, watching as she takes throws two pills back and swallows them with little fanfare through the ajar door. She turns to you and waves, a small smile across her face, an incisor digging into her lower lip.

“Jackie’ll be out, so it’s just us in the dorm.” You nod to her, pulling your boxers (getting flooded with the imagery of your underwear residing under her pillow so beautifully) on and doing the same with your jeans. Lottie leans against the door, still absolutely naked and crosses her arms over her chest. It’s a testament to your will that you don’t immediately get on your knees and eat her out right there, you suppose you may have seen her naked so many times that you’re immune to the power of Lottie Matthews’ tits.

“There’s something more.” She says, tilting your head and you pull on your bra. Lottie makes a little frowning motion at you putting it on and you resist a smile at her shamelessness.

“She’s mad at me.” You admit, sighing and stretching, carrying Peter last night was one hell of a work out and you didn’t exactly warm down or anything. Your shoulders pop and your lungs open wide, it’s like you’re breathing for the first time. Your hands drop against your sides with a small smacking noise and you shrug. “I keep coming here and lying about it and she, she knows I’m lying Lottie.”

Lottie looks at you with those eyes that are much older than a nineteen year old. She stares and she watches and suddenly you feel like she knows everything about you. You can’t look for too long, instead feigning looking for your shirt even though you know that you threw it into the corner by Lottie’s desk (which is more like a rolling station rather than anything else).

“Do you want to stop?” She asks and it’s not really what you expected. That’s a lie, you have no idea what you were expecting, maybe a cross-examining single sentence that would have set your entire body on fire. You shake your head, running a hand through slightly greasy hair. You are in need of a haircut, you like it when it’s cropped short rather than the way it used to be.

“No, no. I don’t know about you but I need this to stay sane.” Lottie snorts and walks across the room in few steps. Like you predicted, her neck is expertly half-covered and she brushes past you with the kind of eyes that make you want to take your shirt back off.

“I’m not sane, you’re not either, pretty.” She says, casually referring to when she was washing Greg’s blood off your hands and you blink. For a second it sits heavy on the edge of your tongue, you almost spill your guts, tell her why you were so turned on yesterday, why your hands were shaking, why you tasted metallic. But you can’t do that to her, she was already an accomplice for him, you don’t need to extend her jail time. Actually, you’re pretty damn sure that the Matthews can afford the top lawyers that make jailtime non-existent.

“I don’t like it when you call yourself that.”

“You murdered someone, I hear voices.” She tilts her head for either one in a potato-potahto motion and it makes you grit your teeth. Lottie isn’t crazy, it’s not her fault that her head does stuff sometimes. You on the other hand, well, you clear your throat.

“Can we not make that a casual topic of conversation?” You say, moving your shoulders and hope that it will take the eternal itch from your body slightly.

“Only you know I hear voices.”

“You know what I mean.” You roll your eyes, walking past where she’s pulling on underwear that is lacey and purple and practically disappears as she pulls it up her long, long legs. You turn your back, hearing her meander around and put together a bad that you’re sure is mainly full of herbs and papers and tobacco to smoke later on.

“What will you tell her?” She asks, pulling on some kind of sundress that she will definitely be too cold in but knowing her she won’t but a jacket on because it doesn’t go with the outfit. You make a mental note to remind her that you have a set of sweatpants that should be long enough for her at your dorm. Your dad tries to be nice now and again, but every time he gets you something it’s either outrageously too big, too small or something you’ve never shown any interest in liking. All it reminds you is that it’s what his new daughters probably like.

“I don’t know, I’ll lie about something.” You say, with a forced nonchalance that probably hits Lottie like a ton of bricks. She shuts the wardrobe with a gentle slam and raises her eyebrows as she looks at you.

“Lying’s the problem though – isn’t it?”

To be seen is to be understood and you hate how transparent you are around her sometimes.

“Are we walking or taking your car?” You change the topic of conversation and while you can see that Lottie doesn’t agree with the 90 degree turn that the chat has taken, she doesn’t push too hard.

“I want to make my dad go around in circles for me.” You smile at the sentiment, exactly what the fucker deserves. “Let’s walk.”

You hold out an arm that she readily takes.

“Your chariot awaits.” You offer, crooking your arm to her and she rolls her eyes but takes it nonetheless.

The walk to your dorms is brisk, just as you expected Lottie’s skin is covered in goosebumps as you elongate your steps to keep up with her. Neither of you speak but you enjoy the silence with her. You’re racked with guilt but it’s not as pervasive as earlier, it begins to filter out of you with every step. And then you feel guilty about the lack of guilt and then it comes back up once again. You take a deep breath to alleviate it. Lottie definitely notices but she doesn’t say anything about it. The two of you stay arm and arm as the cool breeze whips through the air. Your dorm building looms as you get closer and closer to it. You wonder if you’ll run into Jackie as you get there but the idea instils more fear than expected within you. Finally you put the code in and start the three story trek to your dorm-room. No one is there when you get inside, the air stale and unmoving when you get there. It doesn’t even feel like anyone’s living there. Her side of the room is so perfectly made up it’s like a show-dorm, specifically chosen so that freshmen get seduced into choosing your shitty block to live in. You sigh and put your keys on your desk.

“Home sweet home.”

“So this is how the 1% lives.” Lottie drawls, taking off her shoes and walking to collapse on your bed. It speaks volumes how she knows the unmade mess is yours, she really must know you. Sometimes you hate how well you can be known, you hate it and you love it. You love how she knows how to take you apart, but hates how well she can see through you. At this point she might know you better than Jackie and, quite frankly, that won’t do at all. She pulls out her phone and starts clicking away at something. You drop your bag and kick it under the desk, hoping that no one gets especially nosey. As you make your way toward her you linger at Jackie’s bed, at the pillow that rests there, the pillow that hides so many secrets. Before you can stop yourself you lift Jackie’s pillow to see if they’re there, if she changed them, you have to know. It’s like an itch that has to be scratched.

They’re gone. You blink. Your boxers are gone. Why? Is it because Lottie is over? For some reason it makes your stomach bottom out, it makes you feel hopeless. Is it because of yesterday? Your fists clench and a familiar hand wraps around you and makes your fingers unfurl from your palm. Lottie knows you too well at this point, she holds you close and tips your head up by a set of fingers under your chin. When did she even get up? You let the pillow drop back to the bed.

“You wanna let something out, pretty boy?” Lottie says, low and dark and appreciative and you lick your lips. You wonder what Nat has done to make her so wanting, you’re not going to complain. You know she finds you attractive, that you work together in bed real fucking well but Nat is the root of it all, the same way that Jackie is the reason you do anything. She knows you. You’re a mixture of emotions at it.

“You want me to.” You reply and she smiles. She knows you want her.

“Don’t think about her.” She says, tilting her neck down to you. Lottie flicks her tongue against your top lip in that intoxicatingly teasing way that she always is. Lottie kisses you hard and wide, tongue pressing and lips working and you immediately hum into her.

It works slow at first, you lazy drag your tongue against hers. Last night was fast, hair-pulling and muttering orders into each other’s ears. Her hands rest either side of your face, your stay on her waist. Slowly but surely you begin to bring her closer, arms wrapping around her body and hand finding the zip in the back of the dress. She smiles against you and nods. That’s when things start to speed up. The second her dress hits the floor she pulls you close and starts kissing you with an intensity that means your head is going to be buzzing on empty for the next few hours. Her hands grip at you and your hand finds her hair, fisting and pulling and revelling in the noise she makes into your mouth. You stand there lips against lips and hands against bodies and noises and moans and whispers in each other’s mouths, worming into each other’s ears.

“Wait one second.” She says and you almost pull her closer to stop but there’s a lilt of excitement in there that makes you stop. Lottie gives you a short kiss and making her way toward the small leather rucksack that she brought with her. You furrow your eyebrows and wonder what she could possibly have in there that could be needed right now, but then she pulls something very recognisable out.

“Did you- did you bring it?” You ask, incredulous and surprised at the strap that hangs off her two fingers. It’s the big one, the one which means she doesn’t want you to be gentle at all and the implication of it all.

“I thought it would be fun and it’s no loss if we don’t.” She shrugs but offers you the strap anyway.

“I like the way you think.”

“You always do.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“Give me a second.” You take it off her fingers, pushing down your jeans and underwear all at once. In the corner of your eye you see as Lottie pulls the sundress from her body and sits down in a set of underwear that is absolutely devastatingly beautiful. It’s a difficult choice of whether to appreciate her or tear it off her so that she’ll have to walk home without any underwear on.

You start by kissing her neck, the tang of her perfume against your tongue while invading your nostrils. Lottie’s fingers wrap locks of your hair around them and clenches it in her fist, you smile through a moan against her skin. Jesus it feels good. You continue on your excursion down her body, a palm against her breast harshly, a hand pulling the cup down so your fingers can pull and twist at her nipple. Her hand brings you in closer, arching into you. You know her so well by now, she knows you. Your hand makes your way under the side of her underwear, gently pulling the material away until the threads begin to slowly rip. The motion of it makes her nod her head, letting out a short, keening moan and you stop before wrapping the elastic around your hand and tugging it off her. For a moment you wonder just how much that was but her reaction is totally worth it.

At this point in your relationship you would almost expect the sex to get boring but it never is, you never get sick of watching her face as you gently push in, at feeling her nails against the naked skin of your back, at the way noises drop from her mouth easily. She holds you close murmuring sweet nothings, you rest on your hands and move your body to make her feel best. You’re good at that, making Lottie feel good, you enjoy it. The last few times you’ve been doing it, that normally means that next time you’ll be on your back and begging and you wouldn’t mind that at all.

It isn’t long before sweat begins to build on the small of your back, behind your ears, just by your temples. It isn’t long before her nails grip harder and harder and you watch as her chest rises and falls in a harsh melody that you love to hear and feel against your face. You’re so caught up on your hips, on watching her, on feeling her under you that you don’t notice the click of your door, she’s so close, so close, so close, you can tell from her keening moans, from her hands and nails on your shoulder, from everything.

“Oh fuck pretty boy.” Lottie moans – she looks like she’s about to sneeze. “Fuck me.”

You lean down so your head rests just by her shoulder, muscles hurting from staying in place up there but hips still moving and pumping as fast as you can go. Your head is completely empty, the only action is move, making her feel good. There’s some sort of itch in your back, the weight of two eyes but you’re so focused that all you can think about is LottieLottieLottie.

“That’s it, come on Lot, come for me.” You say into her ear and she lets out a loud moan, face crinkling into a face that you know well at this point.

“Shauna?” Jackie gasps and Lottie comes beneath you, falling apart, your hips still moving as you look up to see Jackie standing in your doorway. Her soccer bags have fallen to the floor, jaw joining them and her keys still dangling from her fingers. You feel like you should say something but Lottie’s clawing at your shoulders and still shuddering. You look down to see her face and body relaxing, only to be distracted by the shutting of the door. Oh so now you hear that fucking bit of wood. You slow down your hips and lean down to kiss Lottie on the side of her head. She hums at the feeling, her hand moving to the side of your neck and thumb gently rubbing just under your ear.

“Lot, are you-“ You start but she shakes her head and interrupts you, a face of ridiculous knowing across her face, the kind that you would find insufferable but honestly it’s part of her charm at this point.

“Go, I’m okay, pretty.” She assures, panting, giving you a quick and sloppy kiss before pushing you toward the door.

You awkwardly leave the strap on the floor, pulling an uncomfortably wet pair of boxes and gym shorts left on the floor of your room on. The final layer is your hoodie which you’re half pulling on as you leave the dorm. You’re barefoot but you don’t care, you can’t lose her. Surely she doesn’t hate you because of this? She never said anything about Tai and Van – she can’t hate you can she? Your heart gets close to shattering as you run down the stairs.

Thank god or whoever the fuck is around for you to thank, she’s pacing just outside the front lobby – if you’ve ever seen someone in need of a cigarette it’s Jackie right now.

“Jackie?” You ask and her head snaps up toward you. There’s a moment of silence before she finally speaks:

“Lottie?” Jackie asks, loud enough to echo but she starts to quieten down. “You’ve been fucking Lottie?” Her face is hurt and you’re scrambling for an explanation. I love you so I fuck her and she loves Nat so she fucks me, but Jackie doesn’t need to know that you love her, especially not when she so clearly doesn’t love you in the same way. Her arms are crossed over herself tightly and you blink, wanting to lean forward and relax her but you hold steady.

“Jackie, I can-“ You start but she quickly cuts you off.

“Did you think that you couldn’t tell me?” She says, quick and devastated and finally you get it, you finally get it. Oh. Oh, it’s not the Lottie of it all, it’s the girl of it all. Your heart is racing and your veins are thrumming with something, you don’t quite know what.

“What? No, Jackie-“

“How much do you lie to me Shauna?”

This isn’t the first time she’s asked you but it stumps you even more than the first time. You blink and she waits, arms raising and head moving. God you are still fucking this up, somehow.

“I don’t-“ You say but it’s like she was waiting for you to reply because she laughs and interrupts you, hands pointing toward you, palms upward and shoulders raising and you’re sure you’re about to be so perceived and seen through that it’s going to destroy your very being.

“I just caught you in one!” Her voice echoes in the small courtyard and you wince slightly. Jackie lets out another small and hollow laugh that makes your organs collapse inside on themselves. “Did you ever hook-up with Adam?”

“Yes!” You shout – trying to tell her with such a small word that you’re not the worst friend ever, that you haven’t lied to her at every turn. 

“But the night Greg went missing you were with Lottie?”

The reminder of Greg makes your heart skip a beat and stomach bottom out. You gulp and nod.

“Yes.”

“And you’re gay.”

“No, I like, I like both, anyone.” You try to explain, the words caught in your throat and stumbling on your tongue. You’re afraid to tell her. You know she won’t care, you know it and yet you can’t stop shaking. You move your hands out of sight so she won’t notice. You can’t explain the fear dripping down your spine right now, it’s more terrifying than the prospect of getting caught and sent to jail. The worst thing is you know that she will be fine about it but she is your best friend and no matter how fine she’s going to be about it your life is still going to change.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She asks, quieter, her anger morphed into upset, into quietness and you clear your throat suddenly struggling to look her in the eye. You look down at your bare feet, arms crossing over your chest before finally telling her the truth.

“I just, I didn’t want you to think of me any different.” You admit and Jackie steps toward you, hands on your arms.

“I don’t care about Tai and Van, I don’t care about Lottie or Nat.” She says and you shrug off her hands. You can’t look her in the eye, can’t see another sliver of her emotion through those large, large eyes, it might just dismantle you completely.

“It’s different with them, you don’t share a bed with them.” You unfurl your arms and gesture your arms around to make the point but all she does is shake her head and hold your hands.

“Shauna, I don’t care about anything like that, I care that you didn’t tell me but were happy to tell Lottie of all people.”

“It’s not like that, look, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had and that’s what made it hard. Telling you and my Mom that’s, that’s the hardest thing because I could stand if anyone else hated me but not you guys.”

Beat. Her eyes shine and lip quivers and her grip of your hands tightens slightly.

“You thought I’d hate you?”

“I knew you wouldn’t but, you know, I was still afraid.” You confess and one of her hands finds your cheek.

“I will never hate you Shauna Shipman.” Jackie says so vehemently she might as well have promised it. If only she knew you’ve killed two of her dates. She takes a breath, slightly shaky on the inhale and long on the exhale and you know that face; that’s the same face she makes when you hang out with people who aren’t her. Once you helped Van cross the road after she broke her leg during practise, she made you laugh and the look you got could have made your stomach drop to the centre of the Earth. That was an extenuating circumstance of mid-Senior-year-post-Jeff-break-up-one-thousand-and-during-exam-season but still, it’s the same look; only slightly more fearful this time. Last time it was angry, it was frustrated, but there’s a look of desperation that she gulps down and hides but you still see it in the corner of her eye.

“Is she why you keep disappearing on me with those shitty lies?” She asks and you almost lie for the millionth time. You don’t and consider it more growth than it actually is.

“Yeah.”

The revelation doesn’t do what it was meant to, you’re sure.

“Okay.” She clears her throat. “Shauna I don’t hate you for being you.” And despite it all, you actually believe her. Jackie’s eyes are honest and true. “I am mad at how much you’ve lied to me.”

“I’ll be better. I promise.” You pledge even though you know you can’t really promise anything of the sort. You won’t lie to her about being with Lottie anymore, but there’s nothing you can tell the truth about your extra-curricular activities with her dates.

“Swear on the necklace.”

Oh, so she doesn’t believe you either, that makes you feel a little better. That’s a lie, it’s doesn’t make you feel any better at all. Jackie thumbs the necklace and the golden heart dangles in your vision.

“Jax-“

“Swear on it.”

You lean down and kiss the necklace softly, lips pressing the cold metal, breath misting it up. Behind where it lies there’s a flutter of goosebumps across her skin, the open polo shirt of the Rutgers Scarlet Knight’s shirt against her body. It’s red, the white trim contrasting against the tan of her. They haven’t assigned her a number yet, you know it pisses her off but she doesn’t say anything, she’s biding her time before she can prove herself and get a captaincy. And when she plays her first game you’re going to be up in those stands cheering her on louder than anyone else.

You look up through your eyelashes at her as she watches you. Her eyes flutter half shut then open, pupils darkening slightly as she looks down at you.

“I swear on the necklace that I’ll be better.” You murmur and you nod.

“Good.” Her praise makes your shiver somewhat. She takes a couple of steps toward the building before stopping and turning back. “Wait, are you the girl who’s insane in bed?” Jackie asks, a grin across her face that means all is forgotten but maybe not entirely forgiven and that’s the best you’ll get so it’s what you’ll take. You shrug, going along with it, acting modest even though you’re sure that you’re pretty good with Lottie.

“Well I wouldn’t say insane but…” You start, letting it trail off and Jackie laughs, boisterous and cackling and slightly scratchy.

“Oh my God you’re a total dog aren’t you?” She smiles, pushing you slightly and you roll your eyes.

“Shut up.”

--

Jackie says that the two of you are fine but she’s acting very decidedly not fine. You’re making it up to her without her asking to make it up to her.

The first move is listening to her without any interruptions as she goes through practise. This isn’t exactly out of the ordinary, you’re sure that you spend most of your days listening to Jackie and you wouldn’t have it any other way but there’s something different about it this time. She checks on you, she gives you little pop quizzes in between segments just to check that you’re paying attention. You almost ace it, you would have gotten an A- if you were still in school.

The second is letting her chose your outfit for the bar (there’s a small one-point-five where she asks you if you’re going to the bar, which of course means you have to go no question) and your jaw clenches as you stand in her gaze, half-naked and not cold at all but there’s a set of goosebumps across your body from her fucking eyes.

“No, no – why don’t you wear those jeans?” She asks, with that look in her eyes, one of the ones which swallow you alive. You know the pair she means, you like them, you wear them all the time except they’re the pair you wore when you beat up Greg so they’re wherever the fuck Lottie put them. So much for you getting better, it’s been less than three hours and you’re already lying to her again. You blink a few time, an uneven beat.

“Pen exploded in them.” You shrug, mumbling slightly. “Had to throw them out.”

“What? But you looked so good.” She frowns, and you have to stop yourself from physically reacting to the words. To Jackie that’s just five words ‘but you looked so good’, but to you it means the world; it kills you bit-by-bit but the glorious pain that it delights in you is almost too much. Who needs murder when you can get complimented by your muse? Jackie watches you upside down from her bed, striped to her underwear like she knows that it will drive you insane. Her ribs press through her skin, her muscles lean, her hips only just covered. She claims it’s because she got too hot after her shower, but you know better, you know that look in her eye where she dares you to challenge her.

“I know, it was a red pen, like I bled through.” You continue on your lie, it’s only humorous to you though. Jackie rolls over and off her bed, making her way toward you. The golden heart glints in the sun. You’re pretty sure your sternum is physically moving from how hard your heart is beating, she would probably see it, just above the lining of your sports bra, maybe she would see the way your stomach quivers from your quick breath. Jackie stands next to you, perfume lingering in the air, and you hold your breath. The beast murmurs to you and you quickly shut it down, not her, you can take anything but not her. That seems to placate it somewhat and it disappears back into the lining of your stomach.

“What about your black ones?” She asks, a chin on your shoulder as she stares at your mess of a wardrobe. Oh, those ones, you wore them a day where smoking took point – they stink of cigarettes and spilt snakebite. You suppose that it could be worse, she could be pushing the ‘boob dress’ on you. You pull them from the hanger and she watches, leaning against the foot of her bed. Jackie’s eyes follow the path of the trousers as they rise up past your calves and thighs, fluttering and lungs catching as they rest of your boxers. You were purposeful today, after your own shower you pulled on the first pair you found – you’re guilty but you want her to notice you all the same.

“Happy?” She nods. “What next, princess?” You ask, the pet-name leaving your lips without much thought, arms rising and her body has the same reaction that it did to the boxers. You do not know what is happening, you just know that you think you should keep going.

“Hm, I think you should look hot tonight.” She says, mouth pushed to the side, and she tries to figure out what shirt is what inside the mess of your wardrobe. You can’t really respond when you feel like your tongue is expanding within your mouth and your throat is getting drier by the second. She pulls a shirt, grey and tight on your shoulders before gripping a green flannel and pushing them into your arms. She watches, again as you get dressed, looking over you with a growing smile. When you’re all done up like one of her dolls she had as a kid (she always wanted a G.I. Joe but Marilyn Taylor would rather drink a robust red wine instead of a dry chardonnay then let her daughter have a ‘boys’ toy – she borrowed yours, a good memory) she nods, appreciative and instead of shuffling under the attention you preen.

“My turn.”

The next half an hour is a the kind of hell that makes you think you must have died already because she stands tall and proud and takes on and off clothes while talking you through her thoughts with ease. Your throat is almost bone dry by the end – heart skewered and tongue wanting to taste and hands wanting to touch.

Giving into the beast meant relinquishing it’s control on you, but it also brought something back – you gave in, what’s in it to stop you from giving in again? Much, so much. The sane part of your brain, no the real part of your bran jolts you back to reality. You can’t do that, it would ruin you and Jackie, it would take apart the one constant in your life.

She ends up on a pair of jeans that hang low enough for her to pull her the edges of her underwear above the waistline in a whale-tale motion. She’ll get cold, you pull up on a hoodie that will make you overheat slightly but will warm her through perfectly. Jackie leans over to apply some lipstick, her shirt riding up and you have to steady your breathing so she doesn’t notice how you crave her.

“What do you think?” She asks, moving her lips together to make sure it’s even. Some of it drifts just below her lower lip and you take a step toward her (perfume and hairspray and lipstick that’s red and blood bloodblood), using your thumb to press away the excess. She’s been looking at you different since this afternoon, not afraid, not concerned but intrigued, interested, something glimmering in her face and eyes and body, she keens into you differently, you don’t know what to do about it, what to think.

“Beautiful.” You reply and she nods.

The third thing you do to win her affection back (despite all of that, you know that there’s more you need to do) is go to the bar – which means buy her drinks for the evening.

You physically react to walking past the alley by the bar. You trip over your feet and almost collapse into her, the beast jolts at the wall (fist, brick, blood), at the drain (teeth, crack, break), at everything (killkillkill). Jackie just calls you a space cadet through a laugh and the feeling fades within your stomach and in its stead is the blooming love for her. You put a hand on the small of her back to steady herself and relish in the warmth through her shirt, it distracts you from any other feelings that rise from the idea of blood against your body once again.

The bar is warm and full of the fuzz of conversation over the buzz of rock music echoing throughout the room. It’s surprisingly busy, with people meandering around, talking and laughing and dancing. There’s a few people on their phones, trying to shout over the noise into the speakers and you smile slightly – sometimes you really don’t mind people. You see the garden half full of students, laughing, dancing, rolling cigarettes and smoking straight and your hand immediately goes to the pack in your leather jacket’s pocket. You drop the movement, Jackie wouldn’t appreciate you immediately going for one even if you crave it, plus you should probably cut down a bit. There are people dotted around that you recognise from lectures, from around campus and Jackie waves at a few girls who you reckon are on the team with her.

“I’m going to get us some drinks.” You lean down to her ear and she nods, an easy smile across her face. It feels almost like old times, Jackie finding everyone to talk to, you waiting on her; the only saving grace is a lack of Jeff fucking Sadecki hanging around and waiting to act like he was sucking the soul out of Jackie with his tongue. You cringe, even thinking about it makes your stomach turn.

The bar itself is full of people standing shoulder to shoulder, leaning over the wood, all clamouring for the bartenders attention. You almost wish that you and Jackie just got drunk in your dorm, or maybe headed to a random party, that way it would just be you and her instead of a room of distraction. Thankfully being a vague regular gets you Laura’s attention quicker than most. She blows some hair out of her face, a shirt with the sleeves torn off and bottom jaggedly cut to show just above her belly button. She hits the shaker with little flair, the motion making the muscle or her arm echo the movement. As she does so she nods at you and you nod in return. Laura serves up the drink and makes her way toward you.

“Heard about the other night.” Laura leans over the bar and you blink in surprise. What did she hear? Was it about Greg? Peter? Your heart begins to beat double time, your hands begin to sweat, the fear grips you deep. You tilt your head and speak, because there’s not much else to do except ask in a low and slow drawl of pure confusion.

“What did I do the other night?”

“Alice.” Laura replies, the kind of smile across her face that makes you blush.

(Jackie).

“Oh, yeah.” You chuckle out, awkwardly, a hand coming to the back of your neck to scratch it. The sudden urge beginning to swallow you whole. She gives you a once over, a tongue coming to wet her lip.

Jackie.

“I also heard good things.” Her voice is morish, she’s asking for more, she’s asking for something you can actually give her. You tilt your head and let an inviting grin spill across your face. Distractionsdistractionsdistractions. It’s the only thing you can do to let the beast purr in your stomach, to let your brain think not of Jackie Taylor for every second of every day.

“Oh, yeah?”

It’s simple and easy and so stupid but she nods her head slightly, a hand coming next to yours, a sparking heat between your to pinkies. This could be good for you.

“My shift ends early today.” She offers and it’s tempting but-

Jackie.

She suddenly hits you again. You’re making it up to her, this evening is for her, if you go with Laura then you’ll just drive her further away. You drag your hand off the bar, the sticky wood slowing down your movement and she gets it.

“Maybe.”

“So not tonight.”

“I-“ You sigh. “had a long day.” That is a goddamn understatement, a nightmare, Lottie and Jackie and a piece of silicone between your legs and then this. There are no words to describe how your emotions have been pulled and stretched and glued and shattered. Sated. You’re sated but your heart still thrums in an unsteady beat because of it all.

“I can make it a long night, that’ll make you forget your day.” She has one last stab at it and you shake your head with a smile, she returns it with an understanding. A familiar set of steps, a familiar smell enters your space and you don’t have to turn to see who’s next to you.

“Shauna, everything okay here?” Jackie asks, that expression across her face again. Jealousy. You think, you’re not sure at this point. You may be lying all the time but she’s omitting too, she’s letting her emotions hide more than she used to.

“Jax-“

“Let me guess, snakebite and vodka cran?” Laura pushes off the bar to start your drinks and you quickly rectify the order, you need something stronger tonight.

“I’ll have a Malibu coke today, Laura.”

“Double?”

“What else?”

Someone falls into Jackie and you steady her, taking a step toward him with purpose. He raises his hands in apology, wavering on his feet and nods his head in sorry. You take it as it is and move back toward her. Jackie looks through you. Two drinks drop onto the bar and you give Laura the appropriate cash with a smile, she answers with a wink, Jackie says nothing.

You finish your first drink quickly, watching as Jackie talks to Anna and Vickie – two midfielders on the soccer team who are holding hands. Jackie doesn’t mention it but she quirks her head toward them as if to say ‘look, I told you I wouldn’t care’ – you finish the final gulp of the sweet and cold mixture. She finishes her own and you get the second lot. Laura raises her eyebrows as you ask for an extra shot of tequila on the side but says nothing. You wonder how they see you and Jackie, if they know that you’re twin flames burning together, a set of trees that were planted separate but who’s roots and branches are no unable to let go of each other.

Two turns into three into four and you’re blissfully warm, Jackie’s left a smudge of lipstick across your cheek after you made the right joke and just the right time and your stomach flips in such happiness. You pay for all of them and you can tell that you’re starting to get forgiven, slowly but surely, bit-by-bit. Anna and Vickie leave after your second, citing work, but you notice their dark eyes even if Jackie doesn’t and she pouts at them, you nod over her shoulder and they smile back. They’re nice, you hope to see them again at some point.

The evening’s going good. Your skin is prickling with something, with the buzz of being surrounded by people, by having Jackie all to yourself. All it took was for Peter to be gone and she’s all yours, maybe you should have started with Jeff, high school would certainly have been much better but then again Wiskayok High School may have had to send your SATs to prison. You doubt that Rutgers would send any exams of yours to any prison you would be inhabiting. Despite the way you killed Greg, you’re sure that high school you would have even less control over the life of another. The evening’s going very good. Jackie dances near you to some random rock that your mom would like. Fuck, you have to call her about the snickerdoodles for Tai, you tuck that into your brain for tomorrow, that is tomorrow’s problem. Jackie is all you need right now. Jackie is invading all of your senses, it’s overwhelming in the best possible way.

Your worries flitter away as you finish your, fuck, fifth? Drink of the night and Jackie shows off that she can tie the stem of a cherry with her tongue. You’re elated, the kind of happy that you had almost forgotten about being but the kind that is like a drug. It dissolves on your tongue and filters throughout your body. You watch from a distance as you chose the next song on the jukebox – making the important decision between Billy Joel and David Bowie – as Laura gives her the $5 for the bet regarding the cherry. She watches you watching her and you smile, Jackie pulls the knot from her mouth and places it in an old glass, making her way toward you.

“You okay?” You ask, in the end choosing Zanzibar with a press of your thumb and turning to her.

“I need to go to the bathroom.” Jackie says, not answering your question at all dragging you along with her. She pulls you with speed, your feet stutter and stumble over each other with the movement. She presses the door with a flat palm, a slapping noise deafening against your ears. When she lets go of you your hand is suddenly cold, the effect climbing up your arm.

You pace as the door locks and you bring your hand to your nose, hoping to get a single molecule of the scent of her, letting your tongue press slowly against your tips in case you can get a taste of her – there’s nothing there, of course, and you sigh at your own obsession. The stall clicks open and she comes out, moving to the sink and turning on the taps. You can’t help it but watch as her back moves with every breath. In and out. Inhale, exhale. You imagine her lungs unfolding inside her chest. In and out. Inhale, exhale. She’s alive, she’s here; Jackie is still here.

What the fuck are the two of you doing? Why do you have her underwear under your pillow? Her used underwear. Why does she have yours? Or rather, why did she have them?

“Why- why did you move them?” You ask, words slurring and mouth moving before you have a chance to think about it too much. Jackie stills, you see her eyes glance up to meet you in the mirror for a moment before looking back to her hands.

“What are you on about, Shipman?” She forces a laugh, turning of the tap, shoulders tense. You watch as she dries them on a towel and you hold her shoulder, pulling her toward you. Jackie doesn’t fight it, if anything she keens toward you. You forget your train of thoughts until you shuffle on your feet for a moment and get reminded of the wet heat resting between your legs.

“My boxers.” You say, low. Your hand is still on her shoulder, it’s lithe and soft beneath your hand and you let it drift to just above her elbow. Her hands reach to your ribcage, gently pressing. Her eyes are hard, irritated with you but her body stays close. Her fingers gently pull you closer, until you can feel her heat through your clothes, until you can smell the booze on her breath.

“I didn’t want them anymore.” She lies and you clench your jaw – is this what you’re like when you lie? Is it always so obvious?

“You’re lying.” You reply, through a set of gritted teeth that makes her mouth drop open for a moment before it clicks shut and she looks at you – through you more like and a shiver runs down your spine. She’s angry, but her pupils are getting larger and it’s not because the light has changed.

“No more than you do.” Jackie replies, bitter and anger starts to seep out of you, guilt replacing all of it.

“I promised on the necklace Jax.” You sigh out and one of her hands moves from the side of your chest, lilting against your arms to rest on the side of your neck.

“I know.” She replies, her thumb brushing against your lower lip and you shiver completely. Her eyes darkly glimpse to your mouth before coming back to your eyes.

“Why did you move them?”

Jackie blinks, her mouth opening and closing. Just when she looks like she’s settled on something to say the door opens and she jumps away from you. The girls who entered don’t notice anything, too busy smiling and laughing to each other. You close your eyes and look away, afraid of everything changing, of you ruining it all. The stall doors begin shut and lock and you open, looking back to where she is.

Jackie is gone.

Chapter Text

Life moves like a morphine drip, monotonous and slow and with Morpheus himself resting on your shoulder and watching as the hours tick by.

The practise pads thud in a dull motion. Isaac’s face in the middle as you follow the pattern he set. Jab, cross, defend, uppercut, duck, jab, jab, in a steady, repeated, motion. Your head stays blissfully empty as all you focus on is jab, cross, defend, uppercut, duck, jab, jab on a loop. Sweat beads down the side of your head, across your body, Isaac’s arm shudder with every hit, his smile growing.

Jab (Greg), cross (Peter), defend (Jackie), uppercut (the beast), duck, (kill)jabkilljabkill.

Isaac has been a menace this session, pushing and pressing and plying you into hitting faster, harder, making sure that all you’re a machine with your fists. You pour everything into it, all your guilt and grief and all the love that isn’t returned, you hit and hit and hit. By the end your arms are jelly, your legs ache with every step as you leave the gym. Jackie and you have been doing what the two of you always do and ignore everything. Which is fine for her you guess but not for you, because you are stuck on how close she was, the way her thumb glanced against your lips, her closeness, her lying.

Is this how she feels when you’re caught in a lie? You feel sick and twisted and turned inside out and it fuels you. It’s fucked up how it fuels you.

It ends sooner than you’d like it too, your body still thrumming with adrenaline as you pack up your shit and decline the drink at the student union bar that they’re all going to instead you take the long way home. Every step long and fast, you hope that it’ll burn your excess energy away but it does nothing of the sort, if anything it makes you want more. You’re always wanting but never sated and the only way that you ever feel relaxed, the only way that makes you feel full is after killing somebody, after tasting their blood and letting it fuel your veins. It makes you go insane, you want and want and want, you need it at this point. It’s only been a few days and the beast is nipping at your heels, it’s pricking at your spine, hungry and needy and loud. You neck clicks as you flex it. You make your way across campus, excited to see Jackie despite how much the desire to talk to ask and get to the bottom about it even though you fear that it will unravel you both; revealing the sides of you that are hidden from the eye, hidden from the rest of the world and maybe unknown to yourselves.

You’ve always loved the way that the lights flicker and shine from the ground of the dorms, from your space as you walk up to the your building. People are milling about in their rooms, laughing, reading, on the phone; you can see all of that in all sorts of places. It’s crazy what you can get away with when people can’t see you, it’s crazy what people do when they think you can’t see them. You look up and see shadows moving behind a set of curtain nearby – alone? With someone? What are they doing? You scan across the building until you find your room, seeing if Jackie is there.

She is.

Just the thought of her makes you smile, maybe she’ll look down and you can wave, it’s some kind of romantic, maybe just a little bit, a French New Wave film Van would make you watch when you’re high. Nat comes into sight. They’re standing close. Jealousy begins to rear its ugly head. She nods her head every-so-slightly as Jackie’s hands make their way into Nat’s hair. What the fuck are you watching? You begin to breathe deeper, face contorting into a painful expression. Confusion burrows deeps and you can’t look away no matter how much you want to. Their foreheads meet. Your breath stops. Jackie rolls her head down to capture Nat’s lips and your fists clench, prepared to ache and hit. Jealousy begins to burn through you, it fills your veins and arteries with fire, it makes your stomach boil and lungs flare.

The two of them stop for just a moment before they seem to engulf each other. Even from down here you can see how Jackie’s hands grip and grab at Nat’s hair with a purpose, with a vendetta. You’ve felt her hands through your hair before but never like that. Nat’s hands grasp her waist, fisting into the material, dragging it up slightly from the movement.

How dare she? Jackie is yours. Your nails dig into your palms.

Nat needs to get punished, she can’t just do that. You have to take a breath before you let your anger out ever so slightly. The beast growls but you can’t give in, it’s a different sort of rage from it, you don’t want blood, you don’t want it to stick against your tongue and line your gut, but you need a little something. You don’t want to hurt her like you’ve hurt them but she has to know. She needs to know. Jackie is yours, only yours. You shouldn’t but you will.

You can’t be you. To punish Nat, you cannot be you, otherwise she’ll know and she’ll tell Jackie and nothing with good will come from that. That has to come is threefold, you can’t sound like you, you can’t smell like you and she can’t see you. She lives on the bottom floor, you can sneak in through the window or wait for her to get through the front door. You move quickly to the stores by campus, going to the slightly pricier drug store that you don’t usually go to. Lying is starting to fit you like a second skin, starting to plan things out instead of flying off the handle like you used too. Senior year you would have run up those stairs and pushed Nat down, making sure she would miss a tooth or two. Now you wait, you prepare; your rage lasts long enough, you know that even if you wait an hour it will still be bubbling and simmering under your skin, waiting and needing to expelled.

You’ve never been happier that you showered at the gym so that people don’t particularly notice you. You need to smell different. Nat knows you well, she was your winger, she is your friend, she’s got the girl you’re sleeping with so riled up that you’re sleeping together. You’re stuck between choosing something sickly sweet or the kind of gasoline cologne that Randy and Jeff would convince themselves smelt good. You end up getting both, starting to spray the sweet one as you leave the store so it fades, as if it’s a girlfriends perfume and has gently faded.

Nat’s dorm is on the other side of campus, one of the older and cheaper buildings with asbestos warnings except it’s not airborne so it’s just a ticking timebomb until it fucks people up. You spray the cologne across your body, probably too much but it’s important nonetheless. You gradually make your way across campus, the clouds starting to create a thick and overcast day, the air humid and sticky and ready to crack open the sky at any time. The campus is surprisingly empty, the weather must be warning people to stay in. You find her building quickly, thankfully Nat lives on the ground floor so you can spy, camping out near her window so you can spy without being obvious, without someone seeing you in a black hoodie, pulled low over your head, pacing in one place.

It doesn’t take long for her to stumble into her room, littered with clothes, posters across the walls. She throws her keys onto her desk, and runs a hand through her hair. You watch as she stumbles in and stretches, stomach on full display. At moments like this you understand Lottie, her body is muscular and lithe and her skin is borderline translucent. She is a witch of the Arthurian tales, glowing in the moonlight and bewitching all those who take sight of her. Her mouth moves but you can’t make out what she says, her lips hardly move at all. A hand makes its way into her hair, getting caught on a knot before slapping to her side before she turns to the kitchenette at the back of the dorm. With her back turned, you sneak in through the window, for a college dormitory it’s far too easy to get in, any number of creeps could make their way into the building. She doesn’t hear you as you get in and you crouch on her floor. It doesn’t creak, thankfully, as you slowly walk to her. Your hands begin to sweat, fear that she’ll know it’s you echoes but you persevere. She sighs and leans against the counter, shaking her head.

“What the fuck are you doing Nat?” She says to herself and it almost makes you stop, maybe she didn’t mean to take what’s yours, maybe she was being nice. Besides, her and Lottie being her and Lottie, she wouldn’t jeopardize that, at least you don’t think you would. It’s too late now though, you’re already here, not to mention the fact that you want to. Despite the way your brain works against you wanting you to turn and run and hope she doesn’t notice, you want to tell her who she can’t have, she has to know that she’s yours.

You can’t be too obvious though, she can’t know that it’s you. That’s the point of the cologne, of changing your voice, so she doesn’t know. She starts to turn but you grip her wrists and push her against the cracking-painted wall of her dorm.

“Woah – what the fuck?”

“Don’t try to struggle.” You say, deepening your voice and trying to put a small twang in your voice, it doesn’t have to be good, it just doesn’t have to sound like you. It’s easy to hold her still, boxing may have fucked your arms, but they’re still stronger than hers. The lithe muscle of her arms jumps in the light as they resist. You get her hands against the wall with one hand. She tries to turn her head but you press her forehead against the wall with enough force for a short thud but not harsh enough to really, properly ache.

“What do you want? I haven’t got any fuckin’ money.” Nat grumbles, trying to get a look at you and you push her forehead again, your palm large and harsh against the back of her head.

“That’s not what I want.” You reply, grumbling and tumbling and twang. She sinks against the wall, slightly defeated but then it’s like a chord on a chainsaw has been ripped from her spine and she roars to life once again.

“Touch me and I’ll-“

“I don’t want that either.” You interrupt her and push her against the wall once again, pushing her even harder.

“Then what the fu-“

“She’s mine.” You growl, finally getting to the point. You see her shoulders shrug in confusion, her shaking while you hold it in place. You feel her body sweat against yours as she stresses out. A part of you feel bad, but the beast, it roars, the fear that she’s feeling makes your stomach warm slightly. God, you shouldn’t feel this way, this is Nat, but at the same time she had her lips on Jackie, she was touching your girl.

“Who? Is this some fucking joke?”

“Does it seem like I’m joking?” The accent slips slightly and you blink harshly, restarting the voice and your mind. “Stay away from her.” You reiterate, pushing and gripping her wrists harsher than before, her pale skin getting even paler from the grip.

“Okay.”

“Say it.”

“I’ll stay away from her.” She groans a little in pain. “Whoever the fuck it is.” You knee her in the back and she lets out a short grunt at the sting.

“Don’t.” You start to twist her hand slightly backward, it won’t do any long term damage but it will certainly hurt. “You leave her alone, she isn’t yours.” You twist it further, she groans even louder, forehead resting against the wall without your input this time.

“Fine, fine. Fuck.” She says low. “I’ll leave her alone.” You press even harder. “I’ll leave her fucking alone.”

“Good.” You growl out to her. “Good.” You repeat to yourself as a whisper. You pull her from the wall and shove her to the floor as you vault out her window and run as fast as you possibly can from her building.

Your heart is pounding, your stomach feels a little heavier and your underwear is decidedly more wet than when you initially left the gym. Guilt, for the first time, makes its way through your systems, you’re tempted to call Lottie to look at her, to touch her, to taste and feel and hear her moan the words ‘pretty boy’ until she has to push you away. You don’t though, you call Lottie, but not for yourself. The guilt almost chokes you whole as the line rings.

“Yeah?” Lottie answers, lazily and bored, the kind of tone you’d hear while you pant from your sprint. You need to come up with a lie, you just go Hey Lot! I threatened the girl you’re in love with because I saw her making out with the girl that I’m in love with – maybe go check on her!

In the back of your mind you can’t help but bitterly think that you’re doing Lottie a favour, that she gets to be the knight in shining armour to comfort Nat after you just broke into her fucking apartment and threatened her.

“Lot?” You ask, trying to keep your voice steady and calm, not thrumming with adrenaline and guilt.

“Pretty, hey.” There’s a smile in her voice, you can almost hear the lazy curl of her lip, they creak of the bed behind her as she moves, she’s probably expecting a fun night where you could tie her to her bed and really make her wait for it but you’re about to dash those thoughts, making it worse.

“I just walked past Nat’s and I saw some creep looking through the window and shooed him off.” You rush out and you feel Lottie move down the line again, an urgency creeping into her voice that quickly borders on worry.

“What? Is she okay?”

“Yeah, yeah – I think she’s fine but I think she’d probably want some company.”

Beat. Silence. The way you word it seems to be a mistake as Lottie intakes a heavy breath.

“What did you do?” She gets out through what seems to be gritted teeth and your stomach drops like an anvil is getting released right through it.

“What makes you think I did anything?” You say, feigning innocence, feigning a slight irritation at the idea that you are the cause of her current misery, even though you definitely are. 

“Shauna.”

Just the tone makes a tonne of lead drop into your stomach and you hold the phone closer, the plastic cracking in your grip a little.

“Does a hunt without violence feed anyone?” You remind her of her own words and she lets out a disapproving sort of groan at them.

“Did you hurt her?” She doesn’t beg, doesn’t implore but her voice is pressing.

“No.”

Not technically you didn’t, you just pushed a little, a little bit of a grab – she got hurt more in a game then she did from you. You have to fight the urge to roll your eyes.

“Did you at least have a good fucking reason?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be over in a few minutes but we’re fucking talking about this later.”

You know it’s impossible but you’re pretty sure that the click of her hanging up is a little more aggressive than it would normally be. Fuck. There’s anger that feels stuck between your teeth, Jackie is yours but in the back of your mind you know that she kissed Nat, you can tell Nat to fuck off but you can’t tell Jackie too, not when you had to promise her the other day to stop lying to her. The clouds start to crack and fall apart. It starts with a few drops before it completely erupts. Fuck. You start to jog home, the hood falling from your head and rain starting to soak you through. Just as you open the door to your block your phone vibrates.

we need to talk

Fuck. Lottie.

You let the door close behind you and make your way up the first flight before you get a second text.

don’t ignore me pretty boy

Looks like you’re going to Lottie’s.

--

Lottie looks unimpressed as you drip on her building’s carpet. She cuts an imposing figure in her doorway, arms crossed and standing tall. Sometimes you forget just how much taller than you she is, but not today. Guilt curls and swirls in your gut as you swallow excess saliva nervously, the urge to defend rises in your throat like bile, you haven’t done anything wrong (you did, you did, you hurt your friend she doesn’t feel safe-), you were just defending your girl (not your girl, she only likes men like Peter, poor Peter has been carved and dumped like the animal he was-) – you did nothing wrong.

She opens the door further with a roll of her eyes and turns on you, leaving you to close the door, take off your shoes and put your wet jacket and bag on the hook by the door. You clear your throat, unsure of where to start, scared to start, but ready to hold your ground.

“D-did she know?”

Bad start, really bad start. That was a bad idea. Lottie scoffs, her face turning into a sneer, lip curling and nose crinkling and head shaking a little bit in frustration.

“No, Shauna, she didn’t know it was you who fucking scared her.”

“Lot-“

“I don’t know how to feel about you right now.”

“I feel guilty.” You admit and she rolls her eyes, you’re starting to think you shouldn’t talk. You’ve seen Lottie say words that make grown men fall apart, you’re not sure how you would react to that, you wouldn’t cry or sink to your knees you don’t think, anger has always been your worst trait.

“You should, she doesn’t feel safe, she doesn’t understand. I should tell her that you were the one who did it.”

“Then why didn’t you?” You quickly bite back, quick-temper making it’s way through your system, regret starts to make it’s way through you just as quick. You sigh as she stays silent, shame washing over her features. “I get it. I shouldn’t have done it but-“ You blink a few times, shaking your head and letting out a fluttering breath. “-they kissed.”

“Who? Why does that-“

“Jackie and Natalie and I saw them and I just had too.” You try to explain and Lottie just looks confused, unsure about why they made out, why is was them, but mainly pissed that you did something afterward. You would lie and say you weren’t thinking but you think that’s the problem, you didn’t stop, you’ll never be able to stop. 

“You had to?”

“You didn’t see it, the way they were kissing it was-“ You throw your hand between the two of you, frustrated and irritated and confused and guilty and ridiculous. Lottie runs her own hands through her hair, getting more and more irritated with you.

“You attacked her in her own home, Shauna.”

“Was I meant to attack her in the street?”

(Dumb move, again).

“I can’t defend you for this.”

“I’m not asking you to, I’m asking you to understand. Imagine it, think about Jackie and Nat making out, they didn’t even close the curtains, I saw them from the street.”

“Knees.” Lottie’s voice is close to a growl but you don’t move just yet, you’re meant to just bend to her whim when she would understand why you did it – she understood murder but she doesn’t understand this. Her face twists in anger.  “Get on your knees, pretty boy.”

This could be a stalemate, you won’t let it be one, not when you’re starting to crave absolution from her. You start your descent and she presses on your shoulders, so you collapse into her floor. A hand threads through your hair and tugs painfully hard, a short, yelping and moaning noise leaves your mouth. “You can’t make it up to Nat, but you can make it up to me.”

“She’s not yours.”

“And Jackie is?”

You sneer at her and she tugs on your hair, the pain sifting through your body and making way to pleasure. You look up to find her, tall and imposing and wow, you’re turned on. You shouldn’t be turned on. You’re pretty sure that you’ve been turned on since you threatened Nat (you really should not have been turned on by that and yet the power makes you feel good, unbeatable). You're starting to realise that she might need this as much as you do, it is typical Jackie to take what isn't hers, Nat is Lottie's the same way Jackie is yours; the thought of them kissing mixed with you being fucking unbearable catalysed it all.

“Take them off.” Lottie nods her head toward her jeans and you do as she says, revealing a pair of, of course, lavender underwear. You wonder how many pairs she has, they literally never change. She starts to caress the back of your head a little and you hum at the feeling. You pull her trousers down her legs before tugging down her underwear. “Good boy, I didn’t even need to tell you to do that.”

You shiver at the praise, her hand tugging your hair harshly so you look up to her, where else would you look? Where else would you want to look? She keeps your head steady as she spreads her legs just above your head. Her dark curls are slightly wettened, getting more and more slickened by the second. You can feel your face contort in desire, you want to taste, you want to touch and feel her against you but she holds you there. Her other hand slides down her body and a pitiful whining noise leaves your throat, jealousyjealousyjealousy. You’re used to jealousy, it’s your home, it’s a hole in your side that will never heal.

Her fingers spread herself apart, gently pressing through her cunt, gathering her wetness with the tips of her fingers. Your mouth opens and shuts wordlessly, you want, you want, you want, you will always want, you’re sure you’ll only want and never be filled, never be sated. Lottie lets out a short, sighing noise at the feeling of her own fingers and you let out a short growl. Give it to me, you want to beg. She takes her hand from herself and leaves it in front of your mouth, teasing you not close enough for you to taste but close enough that you can see the glisten, smell her, and it drives you even more insane. The next time you open your mouth, tongue starting to leave your lips she finally presses her fingers onto your tongue and you greedily suck as much as you can from them.

Just as quick as she gave them to you, she pulls them away and you whine needily at their loss.

“Look at you, pathetic.”

Your breath catches, this is knew. Lottie’s been rough before, but even when she’s in charge there’s fun, there’s a push and pull. This is fun in a different way, you’re going to be her fucking dog. Your mouth goes dry at the idea, all of your fight starts to drop, starts to droop, you’re starting to become a thing in the palm of her hand and you don’t dislike it at all. It’s been so much, you’ve been so much, your head can’t stop spinning, can’t stop thinking, your stomach craves violence in a way that makes you feel sick. Maybe if you slip away and just make her feel good it might make up for all the wrong you’ve done.

“Yes.” You breathe out and she smirks down at you, her hand grips your jaw aggressively, making sure that you don’t look away.

“My pathetic, pretty boy.” Her nails dig into your cheeks, painful and beautiful and you groan a little at the feeling. You feel yourself slipping away, your head starting to fog, all you want to do is make her feel good. You try to nod but you can’t in her grip, your helplessness makes her grin at your neediness. She lets go of your jaw but you stay still, not knowing what she needs from you, not knowing if you’re meant to do. Lottie makes her way toward her bed, sitting on the side of the bed. You breathe deep and ragged, panting and uneven. Wantwantwant. You feel like prey, is this how Peter felt before you plunged the dagger into him? No, no, he was scared, you’re not scared, you’re just being hunted, caught in her bear-trap around your shin, a snare, stuck in place and you love it.

She spreads her legs open again, wetter than last time, glistening in the light or her room, you need, you have to.

“Wait.” Lottie tells you and you clench your hands together behind your back to stop yourself even though you never would disobey her, not when you’re like this, not when your head is consumed with her, not when all you can do is watch. “Good boy.”

She starts touching herself. Fuck. Her fingers glide easily through herself, soft little moans leaving her; it might be a little performative but you’re too focused on her fingers. Her hips jump into her touch as she keeps going. Her other hand pulls her shirt from her body before twisting her own nipple, pressing her palm into the flesh of her breast too. It should be you, you should be touching her.

“Please.” You end up begging, eyebrows tied tight together, head tilting and breath deep. Lottie tilts her head, a pout to make fun of you across her mouth.

“Oh, you think you deserve to touch me? After what you’ve done?”

“I- I know I wasn’t good but please, please.” You get close to whining.

“No you weren’t good at all.”

“Please, please.”

“Stand up. Take off your clothes.” You bounce to your feet, pulling your shirt off, pulling your shorts off. Leaving your clothes in a pile next to where you stand, they smell like that weird shitty perfume you got to not be noticed by Nat and the rain. Lottie’s eyes train down your body. She only saw you the other way but it’s animalistic, the way she looks at you.

“Make it up to me, pretty boy.” You start to step toward her but she shakes her head. “Crawl.”

You stop in your tracks and get to your knees, the floor hard against your knees as you make your way over toward her. You greedily lick up her thigh, trying to get as much of her as you can before you get to your destination. You always love how wet Lottie gets, how it feels like she’s spilling into your mouth, you barely get a chance to move before she basically starts fucking herself on your mouth. All you can do is hold her thighs against your ears and let her move, her hand grips your hair tight, you’re pretty sure that you’re dripping onto the floor with how turned on you are but this isn’t about you, you just need to touch her, you need to make her come, you need to drink every drop of her that you can. All you can do is touch her, all you can think is her, LottieLottieLottie, it’s all about Lottie, it’s all about her, she has bewitched your mind. It’s only her.

“That’s it.” She moans out, looking down at you with demeaning eyes. “Don’t stop.” Lottie punctuates her point her an especially hard hit of her hips. “You’re luck you’re so good with that mouth, or I wouldn’t- fuck – I wouldn’t let you in, let you here.”

You grip her thighs harshly, letting yourself almost get chocked out by her. You don’t know how long you stay there, all you know is that you need this. Soon enough her face twists and contorts and she looks like she’s about to sneeze before she moans, shudders and drops to the bed. She takes a few breaths before releasing you from her thighs and crawls up the bed to flop onto her pillow, you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and drops next to her. The two of you settle into a silence.

“You did well.” Lottie’s voice drawls kindly, a hand slinking through your hair, her other one pulling you to rest on her chest. Your eyes flicker shut, brain beginning to slightly unfog, the lines and shapes of your brain starting to straighten and you start to become yourself again. You don’t know if you like it. When Lottie sees you blink into focus again she rolls you off her chest with a little bit of distaste across her face.

The two of you lie next to each other, silence permeating the room too harshly to be comforting. One of you has to break the silence. You’re afraid of it to be you, and yet it has to be you – you have too, you fucked the fuck up, you made the mistake – it has to be you. Your lungs are filling and emptying unevenly, panting and wheezing, the goddamn sex almost getting the best of you.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think…” You fall off, unsure of what else to say. Lottie gets a hold of her breathing, always so self-assured, always so aware of herself and she stills, almost unnaturally. She clears her throat and your hands start to get clammy, nothing every ends well from Lottie taking a second to prepare herself – and by extension you – for what she’s about to say.

“She needs a place to stay for a while.”

You fucked up big time. You did something real fucking bad. You’re not sure if you would take it back though, she touched, she tasted your girl, her tongue pressed against Jackie’s in a way that you never could imagine. Your stomach turns and twists in a nauseating way that is upsetting and makes bile start to crawl up your oesophagus in preparation for the following acid but you swallow it back down.

“Okay.” Is all you can reply with – how else are you meant to fucking reply? Nat’s about to take your place next to her in this bed, you’re not sure if she’ll have Lottie’s cunt under her tongue but you never know – maybe Lottie will grow some balls and make a move.

“She’s staying here.” She unnecessarily elaborates and you nod, also unnecessarily.

“So this is the last time, finally?” Lottie doesn’t reply, just looks away with her jaw flexing. You clear your throat. Your friendship with her might never be the same. “Right, got it.”

“You crossed a line.” She reminds you, the words clinking around your head in a way that makes you flinch. You can never take it back, you can never stop, you will never be able to stop, not after this.

“I know, I know.” You say, secretly wanting her to stop reminding you from it all, the piston that normally presses your feelings down isn’t fucking working anymore, the beast biting straight through it. You watch her as she watches the wall, watches as her chest quickly rises and she turns her head back to you.

“But maybe, when Nat’s back in her building, I might need you again.”

Oh. That makes sense, Nat’s great, Nat’s fantastic, Nat is terrified of anything in regards to her own emotions and you can’t even be too mad about it, not when you do the exact same thing. Except Nat’s afraid of rejection that won’t happen, you’re afraid of killing someone again. Well, not afraid, you would give anything to feel someone die under your hands again but the guilt, the fact that you are killing someone stops you. It needs to be the right person, it has to feel right.

You understand why she needs you, it’s the same reason you need her, you get each other in such a way that no one else ever will. She helped you dispose of a body, you make her come a lot, really it’s an even ground.

“Stress relief?” You joke a little and she lets out a snort, the tension that had filled the air waning a little. Lottie smacks you on the stomach, you know you’re not forgiven; not sure that you’ll ever get forgiven, she’ll always have her eye on you, always make sure to look out for you, and not in the good way.

“Don’t make me laugh, I’m mad at you.”

“I just made you come.”

“I can come and still be mad.”

“I am sorry.” You say, a deep breath coming and going from your system as you look to her ceiling. She doesn’t reply but you feel her gaze on you. “I just, there’s this beast in me Lottie and it calls for blood.”

It leaves your lips far too quickly, in Lottie’s mind you just got a little too violent, you lost control, she doesn’t know that you need it, that – even worse – you want it. Your breathing speeds up, afraid that she’ll turn on you, afraid that she’ll look disgusted, afraid that she’ll leave. She probably should, she definitely should, but her hand rests on your sternum, warm and kind and you turn to her and she doesn’t look afraid, she just looks serene.

“How many?” Lottie asks, quiet and low and you don’t need for her to explain further, you know what you’re watching.

“Two.” You admit and she nods, the room is so quiet, the room is so calm. You’re talking about murder, and you’re calm, you’re relaxed, your breathing is under control, her hand a sweet weight against your chest.

“Two?”

“Yeah.”

She takes a second and you’re about to tell her that she should forget this, that you should go home, that you should leave and she should stop but she looks determined, her eyebrows furrowed low over her eyes as she nods to herself, thoughts running through her brain.

“If it calls for blood, then we should give it blood.” Lottie shuffles off the bed crossing the room easily, she pulls a draw from her wardrobe open and reveals a long, thin, blade. A kitchen knife in her t-shirt draw, it’s clean, it gleams in the light and your heart quickens for a second.

“Why the fuck do you have that there?”

“Some people are into knife play, I like to be prepared.”

Sometimes you think the more you know about Lottie, the less you understand. She pulls her long hair over one shoulder and bores her eyes into you. You gulp, unsure of what she means, what she wants from this.

“I’m not killing you.” You rush out, slightly nervous and she chuckles lowly.

“No, you’re not.”

“Okay, so what are you doing?”

“You need blood.” Lottie says, as if it’s a simple thing to say, as if needing blood isn’t something that only vampires in fucking books need, and not fucked up and murderous women. She brings the knife to her tongue and fear grips you, before you can stop yourself you pull her hand away from herself – you’ve always been stronger than her – with a furrowed brow and a lump in your throat and a throb between your legs that you should not be feeling.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping you.” Lottie says, earnest and as easy as breathing, places her hand on your sternum and presses you into the mattress. She straddles your waist, your hands immediately going to steady, one on her waist, the other on her hips. “Let me help you, pretty boy.”

The whine that leaves your mouth is involuntary, and slightly embarrassing. She seems to like it though, from the way her mouth tilts up into a smile, she brings the steel of the knife against her tongue, wincing when it makes contact but then a drop of warmth falls onto your stomach.

“The tongue is the fastest healing part of the body.” Lottie explains as she bends at the hip until she’s above you. Her mouth is stained red, drop of the stuff falling against your face, against your mouth and you’re warm, uncomfortably wet, uncomfortably turned on, uncomfortable because this should not be doing this but it is, she looks so beautiful above you and the thought is terrifying.

(Would Jackie like you like this? How divine would Jackie look hovering about you with a bloody mouth? For the taste of their lips together, their tongues-)

Your hands tangle in her hair and pull her against you. It’s warm and wet and slippery and you moan needily into it; the taste of blood across your tongue, metallic and sticky and you can’t get enough. You gather enough strength to push her onto her back and you over her. You, regretfully, leave her mouth to bite and suck along her throat. The knife clatters to the floor as her hands grip against your naked back, nails pressing and pushing into your skin and you groan against her. You pull back, seeing her blood smeared against neck from your mouth and your body aches to touch her, to be touched, you’re on fire, you’re alight for the first time.

“Get it- get the knife.” Lottie pants out and you loathe to leave the warmth atop her but go anyway, you pick up the blade and press it into her palm. A part of you is scared, terrified to know what you would do if you glanced the knife across her skin, feeling the blade pierce it and- no, no. This time she pushes you back slightly and you watch as she brings it to her sternum and creates a thin line in between her breasts. You watch with greedy fascination as trickles of ruby red make their way across the tan of her skin, you hear the hiss of pain as the blade makes contact with her and you dip down to lick the freshness from her. She moans and groans and swears all at once.

The beast watches in the corner, you can feel it’s pride at what you’re becoming but you ignore it and focus on the little mewling cries that Lottie keeps making. You try to pour your thanks, your devotion into the way you’re kissing down her body, you’ll never be able to say just how much this will mean to you, how it will save a life.

Lottie’s hand fists in your hair to pull you to her lips and all thoughts of your extra-curriculars flee your mind, it’s all LottieLottieLottie.

--

Jackie’s sprawled across your bed when you get home, her back to you as you walk through the door, a song you don’t recognise blaring from her headphones. Her feet dangle to where her and Nat would have been kissing, right in front of the window. You shake your head to rid yourself of the memory, you’ve already done too much because of that – nothing will come from berating Jackie about it. Even if you need to know, their kiss is a splinter in your skin that won’t fucking leave unless you rip It off. You run a hand down your face with a sigh, dropping your bag and kicking it under your desk – like you always do. Your hands smell like Lottie’s shower gel, your fingers like her cunt (you might have gotten distracted saying goodbye) and Jackie jumps at the noise of your bag, turning around with a smile.

“Where have you been? You went to the gym hours ago.” She languishes, pulling her headphones from her ear, dropping whatever book she was reading to the floor. Her smile is easy. Easy as if the last time you spoke properly wasn’t when you were drunk and talking about underwear under fucking pillows, easy as if she wasn’t kissing Nat today and you weren’t feeling Lottie’s blood and beating heart under your tongue. Well, she doesn’t know that you know about the kiss and she doesn’t know about the Lottie of it all.

“Just, you know, around.” You shrug and she rolls her eyes, there’s a tension in her shoulders that you see when you round the bed and can see her properly. She’s hiding something, badly but she is, it’s probably the fucking kiss. You take a breath and try to calm down a little. The beast is away, even if it is only for a little while, sated and struck and still in your bones but not the corner of your eye.

“Real insightful, Shipman.”

“Using an SAT word a little late, Jax.”

“Get over here.” Jackie holds out a hand and you find yourself crawling onto your own bed, resting upright against the backboard and her balling into your chest. There’s a moment of peace settled between the two of you, maybe you can forget everything, maybe she can, maybe you can go back to the way you normally are. If the two of you are really normal. You watch her chest rise and fall, slow and steady, her eyes gently falling shut. She’s here and she’s in your arms and she’s alive. She’s alive. You drop your face into her hair and breathe in deep, all of the sweat and grease and all the Jackie into you – maybe she’ll stay in you forever. Jackie turns her head into your shoulder and replies in kind, instead of relaxing like you, she stiffens.

Your stomach drops.

“Were you with Lottie?” She asks, moving out of your grip, her hair falling into her face a little and she pushes it behind her ear in irritation, a little jealous, very annoyed and mainly hurt.

“What? Why?” You try to add a little bit onto your time, the moment was fine, it’s not like you lied to her, you didn’t say you were with Adam, you didn’t say that you weren’t with her. Her nose crinkles as she leans back, getting onto her haunches on the other end of your bed. You know this isn’t going to end well.

“You smell like sex.”                                                                                      

You can’t take the vitriol in her voice, the look on her face something you can’t quite describe, all you know is that it turns your stomach and brings your stomach to a simmering rage. Your own envy starts to rise, why does she know what sex smells like? Who was it? Probably Jeff with his fumbling hands and tongue that barely fit in his own mouth when they were kissing. You would remember watching them from across the room, unseen and unnoticed but seeing the bring pink of their tongues meeting – you always threw up on nights like those, because of the alcohol or them you never knew.

“I didn’t lie to you, Jackie.” You reply, irritated, standing from the bed. It feels a little too similar to a lover’s quarrel, a little too like an accusation is getting thrown your way for something that isn’t even a problem. (You’re being a hypocrite, you killed someone in cold blood because he was hers and she can’t even get mad at you for fucking Lottie? HypocriteHypocriteHypocrite-)

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Oh my god.”

The simmering starts to become a boil as you roll your eyes and scoff bitterly, Jackie’s eyes shine with hurt but you’re starting to become that apathetic and pain-pressing beast that comes out when confusion gets the better of you and you don’t quite understand why something is happening.

“I just didn’t realise our friendship meant nothing to you, when did you stop wanting me to be your best friend?”

Your heart skips a beat, you have never not wanted to be her friend, never not wanted to be in her life.

“You are my person, Jackie, my best friend, please never think that.”

You have killed for her, you have done horrific things to make her happy, to make sure that you are hers and all of this just so you can get an orgasm now and again? So when she asks you to choose what underwear would make her date want to fuck her, you won’t lose your goddamn mind. Jackie’s hands fly around, a tear starting to make its way down her cheek as she desperately starts to make her case known.

“But you’re spending all this time with Lottie and-“

“The time I spend with Lottie is-“ You cut yourself off and try to think over the right way to explain it, you pull a lip between your teeth. “-it’s different, you know that right? We don’t exactly braid hair and tell each other secrets.”

“But you do, she knows you in ways I will never know you.”

This is hurtling toward unknown territory, it’s getting closer and close out of the bounds of what friends should be – you’re starting to think that you and her aren’t really friends but something more but something unknown, something that should be talked about but won’t be talked about ever. You let out a bitter laugh, you would let her know everything about you if she wanted, but she doesn’t she’s just possessive, she just needs you but she doesn’t need you the way you need her, you’re afraid she never will.

“So will Jeff, so will Peter, why is it different because it’s Lottie?”

Jackie is grasping for words, trying to pluck them from your brain but you’re on a roll, you’re frustrated, angry, sated from the sex but this is different, this is Jackie dragging something deep in your core, something too known and too painful, it cuts the inside of your mouth as you speak but you don’t care.

“Because- because-“

“Is it because she’s a girl?”

“No, no Shauna I would never.” She says so vehemently that the bubble of fear that was trapped in your throat bursts. “It’s just it’s-“

“Why Jackie?”

Jackie drops back into the bed, her face crumpled, something new is going leave her mouth.

You don’t know what the fuck it’s going to be.

Chapter Text

This isn’t going to plan.

Not that you really had a plan, Shauna had come back, smelling of sex and Lottie fucking Matthews’ fucking shower gel and shampoo and everything and she had a mark behind her ear in the shape of a mouth and it hurt, it sucks and you just wanted to scream.

And then you argued and by God she looks beautiful with her teeth bared as she seethes above you, frustrated and angry and she’s waiting for you to respond. Shauna’s chest rises and falls, heavy, even, grounded. She used to unleash when she got mad, when you used to get tackled unfairly, when a foul wouldn’t be called, when Tracey Spencer would call everyone names, but this isn’t a burst of anger – a red card or broken nose, it’s steady, thrumming.

You like it. More than you should.

“Because-“ -watching you fuck someone made me more turned on than anything else in the world, because I want you in ways that I shouldn’t and she’s opening a door that needs to be fucking slammed shut. “Because I’m jealous!”

Hypocrite. You shout at her because she lies to you all the time and now you’re lying right back up at her. Well, less of a lie and more of an incomplete truth. Jealous, yes, but not in the way that she’ll take it. You wanted to be Lottie, to have your nails against Shauna’s skin, to feel her words against your neck, swallowed by your mouth. She’s your best friend after all. She’s your best friend and she lied to you about it. And it shouldn’t bother you as much as it should but it does because you have never felt the way Lottie did, and how fucking dare Lottie get to feel that way because of Shauna?

Her face twists in confusion, as if the thought never occurred to her.

“What? Why?”

“It looked- you looked-“

“I looked what?” Her tone is accusatory, eyes squinting as her head bobs with every syllable.

“Good.” You yell out, sudden, and her stance changes from frustration and irritation to one of waiting – waiting for you to tell her more. Her head tilting down as she steps toward you. You’re breathing a little deeper, remembering how she looked, her back muscular and strong, the fat surrounding her hips spilling over a harness that was distracting and the way she was speaking, you’ve never heard her sound like that. You swallow a dry throat. “You looked good and Lottie sounded-“ You cut yourself off, feeling a familiar heat rush through your body, the kind that makes you reach under your pillow for her underwear.

Until you punished her for lying to you, the round-robin of knowledge of the underwear under pillows was stolen in the night in a mixture of jealousy and hurt and confusion. She’s not just looking at you, it’s through you, a full, intense stare, the kind that she has when she’s listening so intently you’re sure she can see your bones or something.

You’re prey under her gaze, her eyes dark and starting to sheen over a little. A thrill runs through you. Her hand shakes a little as she raises it to your face, the tips of her index and middle finger gently grazing your chin.

“I’ve never felt like Lottie did.” You admit, the closest is with your own hand and you want to feel it, you want to feel it from your best friend and you shouldn’t because she’s Shauna and she’s a girl and it ruins it. Her hand drops and she turns away, your heart drops.

“Okay.” Is all she says. It feels wrong to leave it like this. You lean forward and grab her hand, it’s warm and slightly dry, fingers brushing softly against each other before dropping, it makes her turn back to you even when her hand lies limp at her side now.

“I’m sorry.” Shauna blinks at your apology. Your heart beats hard and against your sternum. “For shouting and getting jealous and everything. I just…”

“You just?”

A brainstorm hits you, one that shouldn’t. This is your best friend, you hot best friend who has been screwing another one of your friends and is apparently amazingly good at it. And, like you would for her, she would do anything for you. It twists in your gut a little, it feels manipulative but you want and she would give – but would she give you this? Would she touch you? God, you’re getting turned on thinking about it. You’re lucky to have a best friend like her, lucky how much you like and get along with her.

“I’ve never, you know, felt that way with someone else.” You start, fumbling over your words, hands starting to flail a little. “Only with, uh, myself.” You end up pointing toward yourself with one hand and doing an awkward movement with the two fingers, swirling and jolting and Shauna gets it, her face reddening, eyebrows stuck in a raised position as her mouth opens into a small ‘O’, nodding slightly. You want to know what’s going on in her mind, you want to read as much of it as possible.

“I’m sorry Jax that’s- it sucks.” She says, voice cracking and she clears her throat, shaking her head slightly.

Oh. She doesn’t get what you’re asking from her. That’s your Shauna you suppose, ace an exam but won’t get your implications.

“Shauna…” You trail off, tilting your head, wishing for her just to understand. Instead her face twists again, misunderstanding again.

“What? I’m not apologising again, Jackie-“

“That’s not what- would you, show me?” You interrupt her, giving up and just telling her what you want. You suppose it would be too much for her to ready your mind, although she’s already pretty good at that – always at the least convenient of times.

“Sh-show you?” Shauna stutters, but she doesn’t immediately freak out, she doesn’t say no she just, stands there.

“How to feel like that.”

Beat. Moment. Her breath catches. Her fists clench then unclench, jaw following suit, thinkingthinkingthinking. You’re starting to think this was a bad idea, that you should have never have let the thought leave your mouth, never should have let it happen in your head in the first place. Your palms start to sweat in anticipation at her answer. Eventually her eyes rise to meet yours again, predator eyeing prey.

You’re almost sure she can see the steady thump of your heart through your shirt.

“How?” Shauna eventually replies and you would let out a sigh of relief but you’re starting to feel like you’re dreaming, like you’ll wake up at any point.

“You will?”

She nods.

“Just, no kissing; it’s just so you can, you can see what it’s like.” The words seem to pain her a little but they come out smooth and easy and you find yourself nodding before you can really understand that you are. You agree with her, even though her lips look so plump and soft to the touch, apparently the inside of your mouth is as sensitive as the inside of your thighs – how sensitive would her lips be? You do agree with her, you shouldn’t be kissing her, this is just a demonstration, not the real deal.

Not the real deal.

“Lips.” Shauna blurts out and you blink, confused.

“What?”

“No kissing on the lips, anywhere else is fine.”

“Anywhere else is good.” You nod and she gives a singular nod in return, a small, teasing grin coming across her face – is this what Lottie sees when they fuck? Does she see these lips? Slightly smug and eyes darkening with anticipation?

Lottie fucking Matthews.

“Good?” Shauna asks, slightly teasing and you’ve never seen her like this. She teases and makes fun, but with a roll of the eyes, with a small but knowing smile, not like this.

“Ye-yeah.”

You watch as she thinks, eyes darting between the beds and nodding to herself. You just stare, leaning back slightly as you do so, you want it to be here, on her bed, but she sits down on yours and takes a deep breath.

“Are you sure?” She asks and you nod. “Say it.”

“I want to know what it’s like.”

Shauna looks nervous for a moment. She looks at you with those deep brown eyes of hers becoming soft and sweet and anxious before her chest rises and falls one more heavy time and the nervousness fades.

“Come over here.”

You stand on shaky legs and make your way over to her, she shifts her legs wider so you fit between them and you get the overwhelming need to never be seen, that she’s going to properly see you and it’s too much. Your hands grip onto the jersey material of your shorts, your eyes focusing on how her forearms rest on her thighs, wrists obeying gravity and falling in between. Shauna’s hands slide through the outside of your thighs and intertwine your fingers together, with a little tug your body becomes less than an inch away from her. Her head cranes up, eyes meeting yours.

“If you don’t like anything, if you want to change anything, if you need to stop, all you have to do is say, okay?” She says, casual and kind and you won’t deny that your knees buckle a little the words, before a spike of jealousy fills your body.

“Do you ask Lottie that?”

Shauna stills before shaking her head and tugs you with your intertwined hands again.

“Don’t think about her right now, focus on me.”

“I normally- I used to have music on with them.” You reply, it would be something that Jeff would insist on so you wouldn’t be ‘too loud’, but you faked everything with him anyway and Peter would have done whatever you asked but at that point music was ingrained with this so much that you would put it on instinctively and he would agree but Shauna shakes her head.

“No, I want to hear you - is that okay?”

“I’m not that loud.”

“I don’t believe that for a second, if you’ve never felt like that, then how do you know?”

Before you can even think about what to reply with, she pressed her face into your torso, her nose pressing into your sternum, mouth glancing just about your belly button.

This is really happening, it’s actually happening.

She untangles your hands, bringing one of her hands presses against the inside of your thigh and you gasp, chest rutting into her slightly and you’re about to apologise when Shauna lets out a small laugh at it, she pushes it until her knee is in between your legs, pressing the other leg until you’re straddling her. Your body is on fire from how close you are, you’re this close a lot, you cuddle, you dance, you stand in crowded elevators together but this is different. Her arms are two steel bars somehow wrapping around your back sweetly to hold you in place, you’re already overheating, your underwear already sticks to you uncomfortably.

“All good?”

You nod.

“Jackie…”

“All good.”

“Perfect.”

Shauna removes an arm from your back, lifting her hand to gently push your head to the side, it’s so soft, you almost want her to be harsher, this is dreamy, this is nice, this is rose-petals on a double bed and kisses that taste like champagne but come morning you’re not sure that you’re going to believe this really happened.

“Shauna?” She immediately removes the hand from the side of your head, worried eyes find yours and you pull the deadweight hands from either side of your body over her shoulders, tucking a stray strand of hair as you do so. “You can be rougher.”

“Are you-“

“I want you to be rougher.”

She nods and pulls you closer, her breath fanning hotly against the side of your neck before she opens it wetly against your skin. Immediately you let out a low noise of desire and clutch onto the closest thing – her hair. Shauna jerks and moans into you and you hold onto her tighter, the hand still around your back grips harder and you find yourself actually groaning at the feeling, your body responding instead you wishing you be anywhere but here, if the fire alarm went off you’re not even sure that you couldn’t move from this spot.

Her teeth scrape against you before sinking in for a slight bite, sucking your skin into her wet mouth then soothing the beautiful pain with her tongue. Jesus, this has never felt so good, you understand why Lottie was taking her from you, but that doesn’t mean that you want her to, or necessarily that you like it. She pulls away, the saliva making your neck feel cold and you let out a noise of discontent, looking down at her with furrowed brows.

“Marks?”

“What do you-“

“This is about making you feel good.”

“Do it.”

Shauna’s grin is borderline feral before she moves to your neck again, she bites and sucks and soothes and you feel your eyes shutting, losing yourself to the feeling, At some point her hand moves from your back to your hips, her thumb slipping under your shirt, a question that you needily nod at and her hand starts to venture up. Jeff pawed at your chest, Peter was nice but a little clumsy, Shauna you can’t quite describe just yet, all you know is that it feels good. She rolls your breast before palming it and you let out this loud, mewling sort of noise that you would be embarrassed about if you didn’t feel her smile against your neck before sinking her teeth in again. You’ve never been happier that you forwent wearing a bra.

“Oh fuck-“

Her mouth dips to the base of your neck, using her chin to pull down your shirt and start pressing her wet lips against your collarbones. You twist your hand in her hair again and actually get to watch her mouth drop as she lets out a grunting moan before kissing against your skin again. You get to see as your skin begins to darken at her touch and you’re borderline panting. Fuck. Your hips start to roll against her, needing some kind of friction that doesn’t feel like it’ll ever be enough. You pull her back via her hair, which she protests at this time before you pull your shirt off and her eyes zero in on your chest, her hand releaser your breast but her mouth descends, her hands finding your hips and helping them in your grinding movements.

You want her closer, no, you need her closer, you let go of her hair and start to drag the material up her back. She draws back, pulling it off from the back like you watched Jeff do a million times before leaning forward to pull your nipple into her mouth. You moan harshly and grip to her back, nails digging into faded marks from Lottie that get your jealousy flaring up. You rut against her while dragging your hands down the pale skin of her back that get her hips bucking into you and you start to understand why guys like this so much, why they like girls so much, you’ll do this to the next guy you date because it seems to be a winner. Maybe this is beneficial in more than one respect. The though of doing this with a man feels wrong though, because Shauna has moved to your other breast and has abandoned your left hip in favour of palming at your other one and Jesus, it’s so-

You need more, need her on top of you, need the weight of her between your legs.

“Bed- let’s, shit, lie down-“

She holds under your thighs, standing and twisting to drop you onto your mattress, and then Shauna’s half naked and on top of you, her hair creating a canopy around you and you get to see her face, her beautiful face as she looks at you like you’re the only thing in the world. She leans back onto her haunches and you can properly see her now, her chest has always been bigger than yours, nipples paler and larger, her stomach with that slight roundness that you want to sink your teeth into, and thick-cut arms. You lean up onto your elbows to stare right back at her.

“What to do with you.” She says, slightly breathless, pushing her hair behind an ear. You can’t reply because you’re too bust being tugged of your position and pressed into the mattress by a familiar weight, her thigh pressing between your legs, pressing right where you need it and it’s overwhelming how good it feels. It doesn’t even feel this good when it’s your hand and Shauna’s underwear against your nose.

What to do with you.

Her thigh presses into you, rolling and you try to grind against it and you shakes her head, you see as she releases her teeth around your nipple and looks up at you, hands holding your hips harshly in place.

“You can wait.”

Shauna says it patiently, like you have time, this is already longer than half of the half-hearted blowjobs you gave Jeff and his attempts at touching you before he didn’t notice you squirming and faking it as soon as would be humanly possible to come. Shauna says it because she knows but you want to be touched, now.

“But-“

“Trust me.” She says and dips her head back against your skin. You’re a liar, you almost say but you don’t you let it go to focus on her, focus on her mouth and how it glides down your stomach before coming back up with softer kisses, she comes up your chest, comes up your neck before finding your ear and sucking the lobe into her mouth. You gasp and dig your nails into her back again, harsh and she nods against you. You take it as a sign to continue pressing and digging and let her thigh rock against you.

Eventually she rests above you, forehead against forehead, panting into each other’s mouths as you move together. She’s looking like she’s trying to keep this in her memory forever, you can’t stop staring into her eyes. Those eyes. Fuck. Best friendship ever. You scrape your nails down the small of her back and she shudders against you a little harder and you smile, she responds in kind, rolling her eyes slightly. You didn’t know this could be fun, that it could take time, that you can just exist without performing. She presses into you a little harder and you moan, loudly, she grins smugly and you squeeze her ass. It’s a game. You like games, love them, and this is quickly becoming one of your favourites.

There’s that tight coil in your gut that begins to tighter, it’s not quick, it’s a slow bubbling build that you have the feeling could very quickly be addicting. Her ass is soft in your hands, you can feel the muscle but you can also see how it jiggles a little when she pulls on jeans. You follow what she was doing with your chest but with her ass and she keeps grinding into you harder.

At this point you’re practically squirming against her.

“It’s better when you need it, isn’t it?” Shauna speaks low and confident and you hold onto her shoulders. You can’t think beyond moaning incoherently and she chuckles, normally it would make you shrivel up inside but you like it, you like the way it rolls down your spine, how it felt a little like teasing. Your hands slip a little against her back, sweat beginning to form across your body, it’s almost unbearably hot but you don’t care, you can’t care – you’ve never felt like this. A sudden fear grips you – what if you never feel like this again? What if you spend the rest of your life chasing this high?

But then she gives you a sloppy, open mouthed kiss against your cheek and her hands release their vice grip against your hips to hook fingers over the waistline of your shorts.

“Okay?”

“Please.”

She manages to bring broth your shorts and underwear with one fell swoop, bringing them completely from your body, throwing your shorts on the floor and your underwear a little further to her bed and you chose not to think about the implications of all of it, instead you focus on how she splays you open with two of her knuckles, gliding her thumb through you; shuddering, moan, legs opening wider, grabbing the back of her neck to bring her closer, you need her closer. You catch a glimpse of that mark below her ear and press your thumb into it, she probably didn’t even notice it; the marks are new, considering how long her and Lottie have been doing that without having marks until you found out, or maybe they just got lazy, all you know is that her hand slips a little at you bringing her closer.

She leans on your thigh before using three fingers to glide through you, you’re probably dripping onto your mattress but you don’t care about how much you hate changing your sheets, you don’t care about sleeping through a wet patch, you just want to be touched.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, I got you princess.” She reassures you, forehead against yours as she keeps gliding, gently pressing in two fingers before she moves up to circle your clit before repeating the motions. Her words echo through you, you want to kiss her, you need to kiss her - It’s better when you need it, isn’t it? This is a demonstration, not the real thing. Her words, her voice, it’ll stick with you forever.

And then, she presses a finger inside and your head jolts back, it feels good, then she presses a second inside and you think you almost come right there on the spot. Shauna starts slow, gently thrusts, her eyes scanning your face for any discomfort, you hold her close, you hold her tight, you hold her as close as possible. Her fingers curl between thrusts, her palm maintaining an even pressure against your clit that you start to grind against.

“Oh- fuck, Shauna-“

She nods and you keep working. You can feel her drip a little sweat against you and you don’t care, can’t care. It feels good but you need more, you want her voice again, you want those sweet nothings that she was whimpering to Lottie, you need it, you need it you-

“Tell me I’m yours.” You manage to moan out, her fingers stutter for a moment before pressing against you harder, and you keen into her. She gasps at your words, shoulder starting move as she thrusts.

“You’re mine, my perfect girl.” Shauna’s almost growling, lips brushing against your as she speaks and you nod, eyes squeezing shut even though you don’t want to look away, there’s nothing worse than looking away but it’s so-

“Yours- fuck, all yours.”

“Say it. Tell me what you are.” She commands and it shatters you a little further, you’re getting closer, you can feel it, the warmth in the base of your body, your calves threatening to cramp.

“I’m your perfect girl.” You gasp out and she looks so smug and so impressed as she nods-

“That’s it, that’s it.”

Coiling, tightening, wet red heat that’s spreading throughout your body. It’s too much but it’s perfect, it’s perfect- you need her even closer, you want to wear her skin as your own, you need to, it’s hungry and there and you need-

Fuck it.

You twist your hand in her hair, swallowing the moan that leaves her mouth with your own.

Everything stops for a moment before she kisses back, slightly sloppy for a moment before she pulls back and dives in herself. There’s lavender on the edge of her tongue that you hate, knowing they’re from Lottie, but Shauna is here now, her fingers are in you and her back is marked by you, by you. You can feel your body pulsing from her mouth, her hands, her teeth, the bruises littering your body feel so good.

More, more, almost- fuck¸ almost-

You push her mouth from yours.

“Look at me, look at me.” You chant and her eyes fixate and focus on yours, her lips red and slightly bitten from your attacks, her arm moving steadily and you’re so close, you’re-

“That’s it, Jax, that’s my girl, come on-“

You cut her off with a moan, breaking their perfect eye-contact by falling into oblivion. You snap, freefalling from space and hitting the ground, breaking every bone in your body. It’s never felt this good, never, not ever. You vaguely feel how wet you are, her weight a perfect way to steady you as come too, her hand gives you through, gentle and kind before pulling out but you shakily grip her wrist to keep her inside. A small window to that day reminds you of how Shauna filled Lottie, how you wouldn’t mind being stretched properly like that, the idea of Shauna above you like that.

“Not yet.” You tell her and she nods, staying inside, peppering kisses across your face.

“You did so well princess, so so well.” Shauna gently speaks into your skin, lying completely on you, like she knows how close you need her. You breathe deep, starting to regain yourself once again.

Now what? She’s still inside you. Now you know what it felt like, but it doesn’t feel like enough.

You lie there, drawing patterns in her back, still filled, you never want her to leave but she has too, unfortunately. How long would she stay here if you asked? How long would you remain? You tap her shoulder and she pulls out, finally, you shudder at the emptiness. There is definitely a wet patch. Fuck. That’s tomorrow’s problem. She pulls her fingers which were just inside into her mouth and sucks it dry, needy and thorough and you can’t look away, she doesn’t even notice that you’re staring, just humming at your taste. Your mouth goes dry. You are going to make the next guy who touches you do that.

She collapses next to you, which is hard when you’re on a single bed.

“So, what did you think?” Shauna asks, a hint of insecurity seeping into her tone but she definitely doesn’t need too, Jeff swaggered into school the next day, Peter was kind but you could still see that he was impressed with himself – even if he didn’t really need to be.

“I don’t think I can feel my legs.” You reply, chest still heaving, her hand rests just below your belly button, short spirals being drawn into your skin, it tickles slightly but it feels nice, grounding.

“Finger-blasted into paralysis.” She says – it’s an attempt at teasing that falls slightly flat but the two of you pretend that it’s real. You do smile slightly, but only because it’s kind of a funny thing to say. 

“Shut up, Shipman.”

You turn to her, Lottie’s mark and your nails, you look down at your body and back to her.

What do you do now? There’s only one thought in your head: more, but you can’t take anymore from her, you really, really can’t.

“You’re such a good friend.” You tell her instead. Hurt shines in her eyes before she nods. You’re confused, you thought that’s what she wants, she knows you only like men, even if Shauna might just be the most perfect looking person in the world. “I mean it.” You press and Shauna nods.

“You’re my best friend.” She replies and your smile comes naturally. “Let’s sleep?”

Her hand feels perfect against your hip, pushing you onto your side as she wraps around you, naked chest against your naked back, you probably should get dressed but you’re so comfortable and it feels so right.

You breathe in time with her until you fall asleep, it doesn’t take too long.