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Lottie can still taste blood in her mouth.
The cut above the right side of her lip cracks and bleeds in the cold, her fever doing nothing to prevent the aching chill that wracks through her sweltering body.
Her bones feel heavy. Her body is cumbersome now, swollen with the raw flesh of purple bruises and gashes along the vast expanse of skin. Her clothes cover most of the damage, cushioning tender fractures and creating downy pillows against all the blackened parts of her.
Each day is the same like this, the softness of girlhood made immobile by swinging fists and violent rage. A grieving child grieving a child.
Each morning, Lottie wakes to cold water against open wounds, Misty dabbing at her cuts and cooing over her like an old farmer birthing a two-headed calf. Lottie wakes to a type of gentleness and idolism that is far too profound for so early in the day.
Still, she lets the girl fawn and fret, lets Misty run palms of snow across her forehead to break her fever and fluff her pillow in the afternoons.
It aches to be coddled so much. It makes Lottie flinch under the weight of her own vulnerability, weak and placed into the open palms of the one girl she still doesn’t entirely trust. She’s thankful for Misty, she is, but she must admit that the face with round-rimmed glasses isn’t the one Lottie wants to see.
The other girls haven’t visited, though she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t want them to see her like this anyway, disheveled and broken down; scrap metal after a wraparound car wreck, the kind that strips every piece of recognition from the world. It doesn’t bother her when the only sound from the attic ladder is the familiar, heavy thump of Misty’s sure feet.
Lottie does, however, wish one person would visit.
There isn’t a name for the way she swallows her disappointment like dull knives each time a flume of blonde hair breeches the top of the ladder; it isn’t the blonde hair she’d like to see.
Natalie, perhaps for her own, mysterious reasons, hasn’t stepped foot near the attic. It’s as if there’s a salt ring at the bottom, white iodine at the maw of the other world; the violent one, the cruel one. The one where brutality becomes idiosyncratic.
Lottie isn’t sure if it’s meant to keep her in or Natalie out.
Every morning is the same, but today is different. Misty doesn’t crest the steps for her usual afternoon fussing, and Lottie can’t smell the acrid stench of boiled, bloody rags wafting up through the attic floor.
She has no strength to investigate, no means to pull herself to her feet on her own, but her stomach hisses and strikes in discomfort, a python coiled in a nest of agitation beneath her skin.
Something is wrong. She can feel it, even without the wind; even without the sounds of the Earth around her. She can’t feel the firmness of the ground beneath her fingertips and her chest feels like it’s caving in. A thunder crack, a skipped beat, she can’t breathe.
She frantically pulls the lapel of her jacket away from her chest, exposing her skin to the cool air and rubbing a fist against her sternum vigorously, trying to coax air back into her lungs.
Lottie, so usually steadfast and leveled, can’t help the bubble of panic that swells into the base of her throat. She rubs faster, harder, digging into her skin and desperate to relax.
When she closes her eyes, she sees the glint of an ivory-hilted knife. When she closes her eyes, she sees nothing but maroon pooling around familiar leather boots.
Lottie can’t catch her breath.
________
It’s Travis’ scream that rips her from sleep in the early evening.
It’s devastating, loud, a crescendo that terrifies the trees. It comes from the bottom of his soul and it’s a sound that Lottie’s never heard from him before; the only time she’s heard something with such heartbreak was at the head of winter, with Jackie’s stubborn body frozen to the dirt. Her stomach rolls.
There’s a quiet that comes after. It’s unnerving, perhaps a bit odd, and then there’s the recognizable creak of the front door, yawning on its frozen hinges as it opens and shuts.
Lottie feels the brief gust of air travel up through the floorboards and lies in waiting for Misty’s eager hands to return. She forces herself into stoicism and disregards the ember of panic still glowing in her chest, left over from a much larger fire — the last thing she wants is a barrage of questions about her wellbeing from the one person she feels purposefully isolated from.
As if Lottie can predict the future, Misty rounds the top of the steps and walks over to Lottie’s makeshift bedside with frantic eyes, buzzing and alive and tainted around the edges with something dark.
Lottie turns onto her back, her swollen eyes meeting Misty’s with a flatness; she tries not to let her worry seep into her voice.
“Misty,” she starts, her throat hoarse from misuse, “why was Travis screaming?”
Misty settles down beside her with shaking palms. They’re chilled and blue, the pinkness of her fingernails rotted away into something drastic. Her fingertips are wrinkled, grooves dug from pad to palm, the telltale sign of a human body existing where it isn’t wanted.
Lottie opens her mouth to ask again but is quickly answered without a word leaving her tongue.
“Because,” the girl starts with a shaking breath, “we’re going to eat Javi.”
Lottie feels her heart plummet, a bundle of stones cascading into the pit of her stomach. She feels lightheaded.
“What?”
“It’s okay. We didn’t even kill him, exactly.”
Lottie can barely see. There’s a fog over her eyes and thrumming blood in her ears as she weakly pushes herself into a half-sitting position, the best she can manage, wincing and biting her tongue at the pain that ricochets up her spine.
“How?”
Misty sighs. “Look, I told them what you said to me. How you didn’t want to go to waste. We need you, Lottie.”
Lottie is bewildered, her expression akin to a limp deer caught in glaring headlights. There’s nothing she can do now, frozen in place, hooves glued to icy pavement and the past already written. She can’t make it across the road, so she simply stills. She simply listens as metal collides with her frame.
“So,” Misty continues, “we drew cards. And whoever got the Queen…anyway, uh, Natalie- Natalie drew it.”
She can’t breathe. She can’t feel her fingertips. She wonders if this is what it feels like to die; a part of her does for a moment. La petite mort , or whatever it’s called. Lottie can’t remember the phrase, nor the disambiguation; she sucks at French.
The aching in her bones gives way to insurmountable panic, sweltering like a fine heat, burning up her throat. The mention of Natalie sends her head into a black hole, void of anything but prepared grief.
She hasn’t seen Natalie in days. During the fight, by some cruel work of chance, Lottie had been able to scan the room around her, searching the faces of the horseshoe of girls swallowing their tongues at the violence spread out before them.
Lottie had found Natalie instantly, as if drawn to her, as if a moth to the sun.
Natalie had stood with an expression unlike anyone else. It was ghastly and sullen, mouth ajar and eyes wide with panic. Where the other girls portrayed shock, fear was carved into the stone of Natalie’s features.
After Shauna had dismounted from her fractured rib cage, Lottie had heard Natalie’s voice call out to the others, urge them to pick her up and clean her wounds and be careful to support her head. She had listened to Natalie’s words become laced with incoming tears, and she had so badly wanted to wipe them away — her arms didn’t move for the next 48 hours, no matter how hard she fought.
Lottie wants to thank Natalie. Wants to sit beside her, wants to understand the root of her care. Lottie wants to prove that she’s okay and, maybe if the stars align, get another laugh out of her like she had so many weeks before, defrosting in a makeshift tub with soft hands around her own.
They’ve come so far, her and the huntress. Their friendship has rekindled with ease, their comfort beside each other returning with grace. She is reminded of what it was like to be children together, knobby-kneed and playing silly games in the locker room. She isn’t ready to let that go again.
Lottie wants to see Natalie one more time. Now, she never will. She wonders how she’s going to make it down the stairs to attend the funeral. She wonders how she’s going to survive the burning pyre of the girl she loves.
The rifle downstairs no longer has an owner. The leather jacket hanging on the door will stay cold with the winter. The flattened pillow on the floor will lose its shape and morph back into something unclaimed. Who will sleep on it next?
They won’t be able to bury Natalie, the ground is too frozen. What will become of her? What fate befalls her, blue and unbreathing? Lottie knows there are things worse than death out here, and bile rises in her throat. She can taste smoke.
Misty’s expression reaches far, heavy in remembrance, looking past Lottie as if watching it all unfold on a television set behind her.
“But then, during the chase, Javi…Javi died, so-”
The relief exists, though it only lessens into a dull ache. “Misty.”
“It’s okay. This is good. We have food now.”
“No, Misty,” Lottie grits from between her teeth, spitting the girl’s name through bleeding gums. “I never meant…I didn’t want this. ”
“Lottie,” Misty nearly growls, her teeth bared like something wild. “You started this. It’s done. And it’s going to save all of our lives, so you better not start making people feel bad about it now.”
There’s nothing left to say. Lottie is stunned into submission, her eyes still wide at the information tumbling around in her brain. Misty seems satisfied with the silence, and that frightens her.
After some time, Misty pulls herself to her feet and retreats down the stairs, mumbling something about returning in a few hours and Lottie needing to sleep.
Lottie’s left alone again in the dimming attic, the sun and moon warring through the windowpane. Her pulse finally regulates but an ache still lingers around her edges.
She doesn’t know if she can trust Misty. She doesn’t know how true the story is, nor does she trust its timidity. Lottie doesn’t know the extent of the violence, or the true victim of this afternoon. She doesn’t know if Javi is truly laying in the meat shed; Travis could have easily been screaming for Natalie, the same way Lottie wants to now.
When Lottie closes her eyes, she’s met with the image of Natalie, still and frozen, stripped and bloodied against the butcher table. She begs Shauna to put down the knife.
Natalie provides them with so much. Who will hold her hand as she provides for them one last time?
Lottie feels her stomach lurch with the thought and she forces her eyes open. As agonizingly tired as they are, nothing is worth reliving that image.
She wonders how long a person can go without sleep. She wonders how long a person can survive in grief.
________
It’s dark when Lottie refocuses her eyes, drifting back into the land of the living with gritted teeth. Her vision is fuzzy around the edges, desperate for unconsciousness, but she refuses to gift herself such mercy.
The steps of the ladder creak.
It’s an unfamiliar sound, lighter than usual, far more timid; it’s amazing how perceptive one can be when other senses are stripped away almost entirely.
The sound doesn’t move fast, each wincing sigh coming after a brief intermission from the last. Lottie holds her breath, forcing her bones into rigidity, unwilling and unready to face Misty again.
Blonde hair is highlighted by the cool glow of the moon. There’s overgrown roots, ashy chestnut melting into box-dyed platinum.
Natalie .
Lottie feels the air leave her lungs with a swiftness. She tries to sit up, pushing herself into a sitting position with the minimal strength left in her upper arms. She bites back a groan as her cold muscles protest and heaves a breath of relief when she’s situated, finally upright and looking towards the steps.
Natalie stops with her abdomen sliced in half by the two worlds. Beneath her hips, she stays on the first floor, her feet frozen on the second to last step. Above, she scans the attic with blinking eyes, taking in the new universe, entirely separated from the other.
When her eyes meet Lottie’s, she visibly relaxes and pushes herself up the final stretch of steps.
“Natalie,” Lottie sighs with relief, a smile cracking along the dryness of her lips.
Nat hurries over, ignoring the protesting creak of the antiquated hardwood before sinking to her knees beside Lottie, hands on her thighs. Lottie covers one with her own, rubbing a thumb along the skin.
“I’m so glad to see you. Misty told me everything, but I… Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Natalie smiles, lowering her chin. She lets Lottie hold her hand, trace along her knuckles. It’s scriptural, what they are now; how far they’ve come. The unspoken bond swelling between them.
“No, not really.”
Lottie raises an eyebrow with worry, ignoring the tautness of dried blood that protests around the area.
“Not really?”
Nat lifts her neck, using her free hand to pull down on her tattered collar, exposing her neck.
There’s a red line drawn across her jugular, cracked and dark, as if embroidered with maroon thread. It sits heaviest just before the carotid, now thumping with Natalie’s anxious heartbeat.
Shauna’s handiwork. The ivory-hilted knife. Lottie’s eyes widen in panic.
“Fuck, Natalie, what happened?”
Natalie releases tension on her collar and drops her hand back to her lap, letting her fingers brush over the back of Lottie’s absentmindedly, as if trying to gather courage to speak without crying.
“We were starving. I haven’t been able to catch anything for weeks, Lot.” Her throat bobs with the heaviness of self-imposed blame. “So we drew cards, and I…I lost.”
There’s dirt around Natalie’s temple, her hair is damp at the tips. Her gaze is unfocused and drifting and Lottie’s heart stumbles over itself, remembering what Misty told her. Remembering the chase. If she tries to imagine the fear Natalie felt, she would surely drown beneath the weight of it.
Nat doesn’t tell, and Lottie doesn’t ask. She won’t; they both know this.
“Natalie,” Lottie murmurs, raising a thumb to wipe a streak of mud from above Nat’s eyebrow. She can’t help but let her fingers linger around the softness of Natalie’s cheek, the warmth of life thrumming beneath her skin. Though often kept secret, their tactile comfort has blossomed since the competition weeks ago. Neither of them seem to mind, especially now; it’s the only way Lottie can convince herself that Natalie is real.
“I-I saw…I saw you-”
Natalie interrupts with wide eyes, knowing exactly what Lottie saw; knowing what should have happened.
“It was supposed to be me. It was supposed to be me, and it wasn’t. I promise I’m here. I promise I’m real.”
Lottie can’t survive the loss of another love. She won't be able to breathe through the tearing of her heart clean in two; Natalie lets Lottie touch as much as she needs.
“I’m okay,” Natalie reassures again, “I promise. It’s okay.”
Lottie shakes her head, dropping her hand back down to Natalie’s lap.
“It’s not okay, Natalie. I thought…I thought I lost you. You’re my best friend, Nat, and I-“
Natalie brings two hands up to cautiously cradle Lottie’s tender cheeks, forcing their eyes to meet, wide in the nighttime.
“I’m right here. I’m okay, I’m not going anywhere. Okay?”
Lottie nods between the palms around her features, biting the inside of her cheek to force tears back into her throat. She tastes nothing but salt.
Static seems to sit between them like a telephone wire, stretching on forever and charging the atmosphere with intense electricity. Natalie’s thumbs reenact Lottie’s prior motions, a perfectly memorized performance, rubbing gentle circles along the swell of Lottie’s cheekbones, her eyes never looking away.
“I’ve missed you,” Nat finally says, her rough voice a dull whisper, lowered and meant only for Lottie’s ears. The rest of the world is excluded from their solitude and Lottie basks in their comfortable privacy, especially when it has become such a rare commodity as the months stretch languidly on.
Lottie’s burning question rages on inside the echo chamber of her chest, smoking and gaseous like a wildfire. It’s only smothered when pressure is folded against her lips, a soft pillow of a taste so familiar, so divine, so surprising and yet so longed for.
Lottie didn’t know how badly she needed to kiss Natalie until it happened. She didn’t know how badly she needed it until Natalie was almost gone.
It’s gentle, kind, a whisper that has its own pulse, beating: I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay . Lottie can taste its truth on her tongue, honeysuckle and menthol, the leftover smoke from Natalie’s contraband hidden somewhere in the floorboards.
Lottie’s never been kissed this way. She’s never been kissed at all, for that matter.
Her facade at school is simply that, nothing more. Assumptions are easily made, though she never lived up to them. Sure, she had friends. Sure, she went on a few dates out of pressured kindness and situational uncomfortability, though none of it ever meant anything; not when a tattered t-shirt blonde tied her beat-up cleats next to Lottie in the school locker room.
The kiss lingers somewhere between desperate and revolutionary, toeing the fine line between faith and promise. Natalie’s lips move slow and firm, as if trying to speak truth without any words at all. As if trying to comfort Lottie, slow her heart, envelop her in reassurance.
Natalie kisses the way she lives; giving everything she has and taking nothing in return. Lottie likes that about her — too bad eternal devotion is already hardwired into Lottie’s system.
Lottie swallows every sigh with grace, echoing back her own, bringing a tentative hand up to the side of Natalie’s face. Her fingers tremble but Natalie doesn’t mention it, nor seem to notice it at all.
When breathing becomes a necessity, Lottie makes a difficult decision, one that tears her apart from the inside.
“Natalie,” she breathes, pulling back with a stuttering breath, trying to hide the smile that teases her lips. “What are you doing?”
“I’m proving that I’m real.”
Lottie doesn’t know who it’s meant to convince, her or Natalie. Lottie finds that she doesn’t particularly care, as long as Natalie's lips find hers again. The world feels right like this, no longer lopsided on its axis as long as Natalie is pressed against her. As long as Natalie's heart mimics her own like a natural-born affinity.
Natalie's hand lingers over Lottie's face as if she’s afraid. She doesn’t touch and her weight isn’t firm. It feels as though she’s holding back, gritting her teeth like a leashed dog and maintaining chastity.
Lottie pulls away, gnawing on her lower lip to capture Natalie's shadow between ivory bars.
“You can touch me,” she whispers, trying to avoid eye contact. Typical shyness creeps back into her. She feels thankful for dusk.
A finger finds home beneath her chin and tilts upwards. When hit just right, Natalie's eyes look like the ocean in the moonlight, salt water on the beach where she used to go as a child; when they were starry-eyed best friends with two left feet.
“I don't want to hurt you,” Natalie murmurs back. There’s a softness in her features that only comes out around Lottie. The little known fact makes Lottie blush.
“You won’t hurt me, I'm not glass.”
Natalie laughs. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“What, this?” Lottie gestures towards the healing gash by her temple and the cut above her lip. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”
“Oh, I did. Believe me, you’re not winning that contest.”
Lottie laughs a bit, soft and slow, smiling at Natalie's quick-witted antics. The banter is nice. It's familiar.
“Here,” she finally concedes, taking Natalie's warm hand into her own and pressing the blondes palm against her flushed cheek with an intentional firmness, letting calloused fingers cradle the softness of her youth. “You can touch me. Please”
The length of Natalie’s throat bobs and moves as she swallows her thoughts. She nods like something breaks inside of her. She leans forward to kiss like she has nothing left to lose.
Lottie is consumed by hunger in an instant. It’s harsher this time, though not unpleasant. If anything, it’s what she’s been craving for an unmentionably long time.
Natalie lets a soft moan slip from between her teeth as Lottie’s tongue drags against her lower lip. They’re charged, atomic, vibrating with an energy so pent up it’s ready to explode.
Lottie recognizes the lingering shadow of timidity. Although Natalie is holding her face completely now, fingertips digging into her brown curls, she’s still holding back.
Lottie is anything if not persistent.
Taking charge, Lottie breaks the kiss, hiding a smile at Natalie’s desperate whine in the face of such catastrophic loss. Instead of returning, Lottie lies back until her clothed spine hits the makeshift bed beneath her weight — a hard decision to make when Natalie’s eyes are wide and pleading for her return.
“Lot?”
Natalie is out of breath, panting her question, her voice cracked and flushed. Lottie smiles.
“Kiss me,” she whispers, her hands at her sides, looking up at Natalie who slowly inches forward. “Please, Natalie, kiss me.”
Natalie doesn’t need to be told again; she rarely does when it comes to Lottie.
Tentatively, the blonde leans over Lottie, left palm bracing against the floor beside her shoulder. She’s nestled tightly against Lottie’s right side and Lottie burns with the fire of insufficiency. It roars and blazes inside of her chest, and it sets her limbs into motion without thinking.
With shaking hands, Lottie fists Natalie’s leather jacket and pulls , dragging her down, closer, closer still, until Natalie has no choice but to swing a leg over Lottie’s abdomen to balance herself.
Lottie gasps against Natalie’s lips at the newfound weight against her midsection, though she doesn’t make a sound of pain.
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
Natalie’s voice is firm and fearful as she sits up straight, terrified that Lottie will shatter into a million unrecognizable pieces beneath the small pressure of thighs around torso. As if she hasn’t had much, much worse.
Lottie shakes her head furiously and tugs at Natalie’s jacket again, a silent prayer to return. Her lips are lonely with a craving, her body sweltering with something other than a fever. The sight of Natalie, straight-spined and mounted across her stomach, makes Lottie dizzy with something unnamable.
Natalie surrenders, bowing her back again and curling into Lottie, their lips reuniting with a symphony of satisfied humming.
Lottie is delirious as soft hands roam across her, tracing the softness of her features and the hardness of her edges. Fingers are careful to avoid the gnawing wounds, and the sentiment alone makes Lottie’s stomach flutter.
“Lottie,” Natalie murmurs, breaking away to kiss a hot line down Lottie’s throat, “you’re so beautiful.”
Lottie laughs. “I’ve definitely looked better.”
A soft bite against her jugular makes her hiss.
“You have no idea how…how much I- God , I don’t know what I would’ve done if…Shauna could’ve-”
Natalie’s voice is cracking. Lottie knows what’s coming, even though the shorter girl has conveniently hidden her eyes in the dark cavern of Lottie’s neck.
“Natalie,” Lottie interrupts with a firmness, “Nat, look at me.”
The girl is stubborn, they both know this. However, she’s never been much of a fighter when it comes to Lottie; her face lifts immediately.
There are dewy tears in the corners of Natalie’s icy eyes. She’s fighting them back with an obstinacy so infuriating it’s almost endearing. Lottie brings up a thumb to brush the freckled skin of Natalie’s cheek.
“I’m alive, okay? I’m here, I’m okay. We’re okay. We’re both okay.”
Natalie seems to breathe for the first time tonight. It comes out in a rushed wave, as if it had been weighing down on her lungs for some time. She turns her head to place a kiss against Lottie’s palm.
As if trying to prove Lottie’s words, ascertain her presence, Natalie resumes her handiwork against Lottie’s flushed neck, kissing down to the jutted edge of her collarbone, fighting against Lottie’s coat to reach it.
Cold hands move up Lottie’s sides, inching beneath the layers of tattered cotton and fur. She winces at the sudden temperature but soon relaxes into Natalie’s touch against her bare skin, thrumming with an unnamed energy. She pants as Natalie sucks a mark against her collarbone.
“Natalie, please,” she whimpers, ignoring the feeling of smiling teeth against every corner of her. She slides her hands beneath the collar of Natalie’s jacket, dragging it from her shoulders until the blonde takes charge, leaning back to strip herself of intruding leather and leaving her in a sleeveless t-shirt, heather gray and frayed.
Natalie returns as if she never left, settling back into the grooves of Lottie’s body as if they were designed to fit together. It’s holy, the way they were created, the way they match.
“Is this okay?” Natalie asks with raised brows.
Fingers tug experimentally at the edges of her clothes. Lottie nods so quickly that her neck aches.
The world seems to move in slow motion. Lottie has never been so desperate for seconds to climb forward, to pass, to change.
Her jacket is unzipped, the growl of metal teeth filling the otherwise silent attic. Natalie prolongs it with a look of sheer teasing, her lips contorted into what someone might call a shit-eating grin. Lottie whimpers but otherwise maintains her composure, unwilling to begin frivolously begging so early.
Next, her shirt is inched up the tan expanse of her abdomen, slightly bruised around the sides but otherwise untouched. Her ribcage flutters with each shaky inhale and Natalie watches the skin stretch with hungry fascination. Natalie can’t seem to help herself when she steals a kiss against the warm dip just before Lottie’s belly button, making Lottie stifle a giggle.
Lottie is left in her bra, dirtied white and no longer considered a holy, innocent thing. There’s blood along one of the straps and there’s a tear along the back. She is no longer who she once was. But neither is Natalie; none of them are. This, their descent into other people and their connection to each other, made deeper by time.
Natalie runs her hands along the outer curve of Lottie’s covered chest, fingers trailing along the tattered fabric. She opens her mouth to ask again, but Lottie interrupts her with a kiss.
Pushing herself up onto her elbows, ignoring the burn that sings in her joints at the movement, she captures Natalie’s unsung words into a heated lapping of tongue and swollen lips, nodding her head to the question that sits between them. Natalie smiles against her lips.
Soon, her bra is undone. The hooks don’t make any noise as they come apart, there is only the bite of cool, winter air against the usually-hidden skin of Lottie’s chest.
Natalie urges Lottie back down with a gentle hand before straightening her back to look at the image in front of her. Lottie feels utterly devoured and Natalie hasn’t yet shown her teeth.
“So fucking beautiful,” the blonde murmurs with a cockeyed smile, lips pulling up on one side before she dives down once more, exploring the newfound skin with a ferocity.
Lottie can’t help but move at the sensations flooding her. She writhes against Natalie’s lips, whimpers beneath her tongue, tangles her fingers in bleach blonde tresses when teeth graze the firmness of her nipple. She tugs at the base of Natalie’s scalp and the resulting groan makes Lottie lightheaded.
She burns and burns without the grace of smothering, though she isn’t sure she wants it. She isn’t sure she wants to be put out, as long as Natalie’s mouth is on her.
Lottie is reminded of those never ending candles, the ones that burn bright and long and never seem to snuff out.
Her mother produced an infomercial for them once, it aired on Channel 7 when she was about waist high. The next day, her mother received promotional material at their doorstep, a large cardboard box filled with the things.
Lottie spent years staring at the flame, letting it burn forever and never once watching it die.
She feels that way now, surrounded by heat that never ceases, by flame that never ends. It burns and burns and devours every piece of her in the process. She wouldn’t have it any other way, especially when she can hold the flame in the palm of her hand. Especially when she can feel its heartbeat, kiss its skin, call it hers.
A particularly hard suck against her breast rips Lottie from her haze with a gasp, her fingers pushing Natalie’s head harder against her chest.
“Fuck, Nat,” she moans, arching her spine, looking for more.
Natalie laughs and bites at the underside of her right breast. “Language,” she chides before giving in to Lottie’s requests.
Lottie’s chest is lavished, a grandiosity bestowed upon every inch of skin, bruises of violence and marks of love interconnected across her body. She feels disconnected from her body, her soul projected above them, her mind swimming in delirium.
Natalie inches further down Lottie’s stomach and pauses her hands above the loose waistband of pink silk pajamas, tied into a bow and still too big. They’re dirtier now than they were so many months ago, but Lottie doesn’t care. Especially now, when the only thing she can think about is the soothing circles Natalie’s fingers are brushing against her hip bones.
“You can,” Lottie admits, unwilling to look down between the valley of her breasts to witness Natalie between her legs in fear of a sudden breakdown. She would like to maintain some control for later. “Please.”
“Are you sure?”
“Natalie, please. I need you.”
And she did. She does . She needs Natalie in ways she doesn’t understand. In terrible, intangible ways, ways that set her body alight and drown her beneath the surface all the same. She needs Natalie beside her, touching her, existing with her. She feels incomplete any other way, a dockless lighthouse in a storm of fog, an uncollared stray. This way, with Natalie’s warmth against her own, Lottie feels complete.
Natalie doesn’t argue, nor does she tease. Instead, she hooks her fingers into Lottie’s waistband before tugging both the pants and her underwear down the long expanse of her legs, rolling them over the cliff of her bony knees and pulling them from her entirely. Natalie throws the intruding clothes somewhere next to them in a haphazard fashion before settling comfortably between Lottie’s parted thighs.
Weight is delivered against the most sensitive parts of her and Lottie bites down around a whimper, her hips twitching at the pressure. A thumb reaches up and teases at her bitten lips.
“Don’t do that,” Nat whispers, looking up at Lottie with blown eyes. “I was worried I would never hear your voice again. Don’t let that be true.”
Lottie, ignoring all reasonability, meets Natalie’s eyes with a feverish look, flushed and wanting. She nods her understanding, releasing her bottom lip from its snare, her lips parting as it becomes difficult to breathe right.
Satisfied, Natalie smiles and thanks Lottie with a kiss against the swell of her ribs, just beneath the final bone. Lottie’s heart stutters as the girl between her legs moves back down, inch by inch, biting into the soft skin at her hip and massaging her thighs.
She prepares to beg again, wetting her lips to speak out against the incoming teasing, all modesty thrown to the wind. Her typical facade of heartfelt stoicism is abandoned in stride when a soft tongue buries itself against her cunt without any preemptiveness, lapping tentatively at her clit.
“Oh fuck,” Lottie moans, throwing her head back against the floor, her stomach curling and twisting into delicious knots. She feels a smile against the wetness between her legs and she knows she’s dripping onto the wood. The things Natalie does to her; the things Natalie does for her.
“You’re so wet,” Natalie murmurs teasingly, her voice gruff and low. She returns to her motions with a firm stripe licked up the slickness of Lottie’s core, ending at the top of Lottie’s clit before swirling in tight circles.
“For you,” Lottie manages to breathe out, barely able to form coherent words, let alone full sentences.
She wants to tell Natalie that this is what she does to her, that this is how Lottie feels about her. She wants to tell Nat that it is, it is for her, the way everything is. She wants to tell Natalie that she would give her even more if she could, that she would give Nat the entire world if it fit into the palms of her hands, but she feels as though she’s about to swallow her own tongue in this moment. For now, this will have to be enough, and Natalie seems to thrive beneath its loving simplicity regardless.
Lottie’s fingernails claw at the hardwood beneath her, water damaged and breakable. She claws against the ground as she moans, arching her back like a feral animal, letting the ache of life moving through her battered body devour her muscle by muscle.
“ Shh ,” Natalie whispers, lifting her head again and placing a tender, wet kiss against the inside of Lottie’s exposed thigh. “Stop, you’ll hurt yourself like that. Hold onto me.”
“I- I don’t want to hurt you,” Lottie pants, refusing to open her eyes; if she does she’ll surely ascend this time, or perhaps melt through the floor. She can’t bear to see the mess she caused around Natalie’s swollen lips, and for her own sanity she doesn’t.
“You won’t.” You can’t is unspoken, is silent, though it’s heavy enough to bring tears to Lottie’s eyes.
Natalie’s voice has a smile that Lottie can so clearly picture without ever bearing witness to it.
“Here,” the blonde says, moving her hands from Lottie’s thighs to take hold of her fingers, tangling the two of them together before pulling Lottie’s hands downwards and placing them against the flume of Natalie’s tangled hair.
Lovingly, Lottie uses her fingers to comb through the blonde tresses, scratching at the scalp, smiling as Natalie’s contented hum reverberates through the attic at the motions.
Gentleness doesn’t last long, however, when Natalie returns to her previously abandoned task with renewed vigour.
Reactively, Lottie pulls at the hair between her fingers, sharp and rough, clawing at Natalie’s head with a gasp.
Natalie doesn’t seem to mind, simply moaning against Lottie’s clit, the vibrations running up Lottie’s body like a live wire.
She feels untethered from this Earth, no longer anchored by the bones beneath her skin or the soul inside her chest, weighing heavier than anyone else’s.
Natalie makes her feel weightless. Natalie makes her feel free.
She wants to feel like this all the time, electrified and cosmic and happy , so fucking happy. For now, she’ll hold tight to the girl between her thighs and pray that it’s enough.
“ Fuck, Natalie, right there ,” she whimpers when the blonde runs a curled tongue along the underside of her clit, jagged front teeth brushing the top as an afterthought. It makes Lottie see stars.
She feels fingers drift lower on the inside of her thighs and the thought of what could happen next is enough to make her breathless.
“Nat, please ,” she whimpers in anticipation, combing through Natalie’s damaged hair with shaking fingers before letting go and dropping her arms to her sides, still not strong enough to look down at the show unfolding before her.
“What do you need?” Natalie asks, separating with a kiss against the heat of her cunt, teasing the sensitive skin of Lottie’s thighs with the very tips of her fingers like a ghost. “Tell me what you need and I’ll give it to you.”
“Please,” Lottie begs, her voice cracking like glass, “ please- inside, please fuck me .”
As if to prove her point, Lottie rolls her hips, trying to entice the blonde back down, back against her throbbing clit, back to where she needs pressure most.
Though not entirely unusual, the request tastes weird on her tongue. Lottie is no stranger to cursing, something completely unknown by anyone other than Natalie. No, instead it’s the want that is strange. The carnality of it, the way it lingers on her teeth, sticky and wanton. She isn’t used to being so brazen with her requests, more likely to give and give unendingly rather than take and ask for more, but she’s also never been kissed within an inch of her life before; today is a day of firsts.
Natalie seems to enjoy it, if the hitch in her breathing is anything to go by. She doesn’t make Lottie wait long before she resumes in fervor.
Lottie sighs contentedly at the first swipe of a warm tongue against her center, dipping through her folds and drinking her with desperation.
She resists the urge to grind down when fingers dance closer to her entrance, slipping through her wetness. Lottie blushes at the sound, her cheeks inflamed with the thought of Natalie coated in her want, but she’s quickly put at ease by the girl giving her the world.
“Fuck, Lot,” Natalie groans, teasing the first finger inside, “I want you so bad.”
Lottie gasps at the intrusion, feeling put together and torn apart, something brilliant igniting behind her eyelids at the pressure.
Then have me. Then have me forever, take what you want and leave me with nothing, give me everything and I’ll show you devotion akin to gods.
Lottie opens her mouth to speak, to beg, to plead, before a second finger slides inside, rendering her speechless.
“Good girl,” Natalie whispers softly and Lottie keens at the praise, her hands grasping against the floor for something to hang onto once again.
Natalie crawls up her body, her thrusts slow and calculated, until she finds herself chest to chest with Lottie, pressing open-mouthed kisses against her bared neck.
With Nat’s warmth pressed fully into her again, Lottie finds solid ground with ease.
As slender fingers move inside of her, in and out, she brings her hands to Natalie’s cheeks, splayed palms on either side, stretching possessively from ears to nose.
“ Please ,” she begs, bringing Natalie’s face up to hers so their foreheads can rest together. “ Fuck, you feel so good .”
“You’re so gorgeous,” Natalie smiles, kissing the raised, white scar on her forehead and thrusting harder, faster, ripping broken moans from Lottie’s throat.
Lottie quickly finds that roaring heat covers her eyes as she steals a glance at Natalie’s bared arm, watching enraptured at the muscles contracting and pulsing beneath pale skin. It makes her cry out, tightening around the fingers inside of her.
Lottie lifts her hips and wraps her legs around Natalie’s waist. The newfound angle proves to drive the eager fingers inside of her deeper, stretching, reaching places she could never imagine brushing on her own.
“ F-fuck, keep going, fuck Nat .”
Lips break from her forehead and descend to her neck, biting and sucking soon-to-be blackened marks down the soft skin. Lottie’s stomach tightens at the thought of them being in the shape of Natalie’s mouth, wearing her devotion in lingering scars.
“You’re doing so good, baby, taking me so well.” Natalie hums against Lottie’s sternum, kissing patterns absentmindedly against the taut skin.
Baby. Baby, baby, baby. It lingers in Lottie’s head, rings in her ears. It pounds in her chest and sinks in her stomach like a stone, satisfied and hungry at the same time. She loves it.
Without much warning, as Natalie’s thrusts grow deeper and faster, Lottie’s legs begin to tense and shake with something inbound.
Her stomach knots and quivers and her breathing becomes static and she arches her back, ignoring the sting, ignoring the way her shoulders drag and burn against the thin sheet beneath her body.
“ Oh my G- oh my God, I’m gonna- fuck, Natalie I’m- “
Everything combines into a big bang.
The heat of Natalie’s ragged breath against her neck, the sound of her arousal slick and rhythmic between her legs with each thrust, the tingling that stretches down into her toes like a rooting tree.
“Come for me,” Natalie whispers, stretching her neck to capture Lottie’s lips into a heated kiss.
Lottie has never been one to deny Natalie of anything, especially not now. Especially when she needs it so terribly, so cruelly; both of them do. It’s proof that they’re alive.
With digging fingers and clawing nails down a clothed spine, Lottie comes with her lips intertwined with Natalie’s, silencing the glass-shattering moans that threaten to rip their way from her chest.
She vibrates and trembles in Natalie’s embrace, the aftershocks exploding through every vessel like a burning sun. She’s sore and spent, deliciously satisfied and perfectly atoned. Natalie brings her down to earth with a gentleness, pecking soft kisses at the corners of her mouth, scattering them across the bridge of her nose, against her wounded eyebrow.
Fingers retract from inside of her and Lottie whines at the loss, so used to the feeling of being filled with someone who wants to give her the world.
She wants to repay her debt. Lottie is overcome with the desire to give, to provide, even though she has no idea what she’s doing. Her mouth is too dry to beg, her tongue swollen against her teeth, her lips kiss-stained and wet.
“I-I want- I-”
Natalie hushes her, peppering kisses across the swell of her cheekbone to her ear, pressing lips just beneath Lottie’s earlobe.
“Another time.”
“Promise me.”
It isn’t an ask, it’s a demand. It’s firm and confident, exhaustion starting to dissipate from her throat.
“I promise,” Natalie reassures, rolling off of Lottie and instead curling into her side like a housecat, content against the warmth of the naked girl.
Natalie pulls a discarded blanket up and around them, covering Lottie in a charcoal afghan that feels scratchy against her bare skin. She decides that she doesn’t mind, as long as Natalie’s hands continue doodling absentminded patterns against her sensitive stomach -- and Natalie does.
With Natalie’s head against her chest, Lottie finds that she can easily reach the peroxide hair splayed across her sternum. She drags her fingers across Natalie’s crown, scratching lightly and brushing through it, releasing any tangles she may have left from her previous, not-so-gentle behavior.
Natalie hums, dragging her index finger up the length of Lottie’s abdomen before descending again, repeating in a circuit that makes Lottie shiver.
“Why didn’t you come to see me? After everything.”
Lottie’s voice is timid again, like she hadn’t just blasphemed the cabin attic.
“I couldn’t,” Natalie answers honestly, her voice a cracking whisper. It’s solemn, even in its lowness, and Lottie’s heart begins to crack apart like an untended sidewalk.
“I didn’t know if you were even still…I couldn’t see you like that. Not after what she did to you.”
Natalie was there for the fight. Natalie was there when Lottie drifted from consciousness. Natalie was there, delegating life-saving responsibilities, yet unable to look at the beaten face of the girl she cares so much about.
They’re the same, her and Natalie. Cut from the same cloth, two sides of the same bloody coin. The same could be asked of Lottie, who didn’t try to crawl to the ladder after the hunt, didn’t try to witness Natalie’s steady heartbeat firsthand. Didn’t demand that Misty bring her up, nor demand that she be taken down.
She didn’t ask for the same reasons; she couldn’t bear to see Natalie in that light. She wouldn’t have survived if Natalie hadn’t either.
“And now?”
Natalie lifts her head, brushing her nose beneath Lottie’s chin.
“They’ll have to drag me away from you.”
Lottie laughs at the image, the sentiment, removing her hand from Natalie’s hair to run her fingers up the blonde’s spine instead.
At some point, after every square inch of each other had been touched and proven, they fall asleep. They drift off beneath the shadow of moonlight, disengaged from the world beneath them, tangled in each other’s arms as if they were designed to live that way.
Lottie is serenaded by Natalie’s soft snores against her neck and finds that it’s easier to fall asleep with the weight of her lover against her body, heavy and drowsy, eyes fluttering with dreams that aren’t so terrible anymore.
Neither of them have bad dreams this way. Both of them are alive, both of them are warm, and for now it’s enough. For now, it means everything.