Chapter Text
Shipman!
Shauna feels this earth-bending crack in her equilibrium when a voice calls from behind her. She turns around to look at nothing and no one at the shore. In the lake, a girl sits in knee-deep water, shirt pooling and clinging to her wet skin, and there’s no sound at all, not even the ripple of the water as she steps in closer. Before she reaches the girl, there’s a blinding flash of fire in the sky and then a visceral, guttural scream rips out, body heaving and eyes fixed on the hell that has manifested airborne.
Shauna, wake the hell up!
Her eyes slam open and it takes a jarring few seconds to reconcile where she is, but Jackie’s patience evaporates when it takes just a bit too long to remember that she’s in Malcolm’s condo, in Lottie’s fucking bed.
Jesus, do something before she wakes up everyone!
Shauna snaps her head to the side, mind still foggy from the abrupt pull back to consciousness. Lottie, for her part, is still next to her in bed and it would almost be perfect, as perfect as the two of them can be after the day they had, if she also wasn’t screaming at the top of her lungs, somehow trying to break the sound barrier with her shriek while her eyes remain closed. What’s really insane is how relatively still she is given this unhinged reaction to what Shauna’s guessing is a nightmare. She pushes at Lottie’s shoulder roughly to try to jolt her awake to no avail. Fuck.
“Lottie, wake up!” Her sharp whisper is drowned out by the deafening, stilted cacophony of screeching coming from the disassociated body next to her. A couple of minutes go by where the attempts to wake her through rough shaking is clearly not working before she yields to the inevitable erosion of boundaries yet again. Shauna shifts until she’s straddling the unconscious girl in some fucked up level of mental hell that her subconscious has cooked up, because there’s no doubt the depth of Lottie’s ability to spiral in the unrestrained realm of her mind. The entire shift of positions does nothing to pull her back and then, horribly, she hears a steady, loud ring filter through the milliseconds of breathing.
That’s the fucking phone, probably from Lottie’s lovely neighbor that’s losing it over the bloody murder happening next door at two in the morning. Fix this!
What am I supposed to do? She’s knocked out! Shauna snaps back, nerves on overdrive.
It’s the faint wetness on Lottie’s cheeks, like the remnants of tears, she can make out from the slivers of moonlight that spurs her into shifting forward until one of her hands is gripping hard onto a tense jaw and her other muffles the sound entirely as she covers Lottie’s mouth. Her words are so firm despite the rapidfire beat of her heart, “Lottie, you’re having a nightmare. You need to wake up.”
Lottie’s eyes fly open, bloodshot and brimming with unrestrained anxiety. It doesn’t last long though before there’s movement behind Shauna’s hand, then she feels the sharp bite of teeth on her flesh. It’s a testament to the fucked up wilderness that she doesn’t even flinch at the pain. Shauna steels her grip even more, their faces inches from each other as the lock on Lottie’s jaw tightens, voice steady, “Be quiet.”
The black eyes boring into her widen for three long seconds before there’s rough arms pushing at her abdomen with so much force that Shauna falls and slams to the floor. Her nostrils flare as she smothers her grunt.
This is so nostalgic.
There’s a few seconds where she’s more shocked than anything, but there’s no time to linger because she feels the full body weight of Charlotte Matthews drop down onto her just as quickly. Their eyes meet for a couple of stilted seconds when Shauna’s reaction time lets her grip on Lottie’s shoulders in an attempt to still the forward momentum. The look she sees rips her back to the memory of a girl with blood coating her mouth and the intense hunger finally being sated. Then, like she manifested the association into being, Lottie opens her mouth, teeth baring and hot breath hitting her face like a promise, and her head drops down in one fluid motion until all Shauna can focus on is the deep embed of teeth breaking skin. The skin of her right shoulder as it’s being bitten into so hard Shauna swears she can see stars. Heat floods her body. She can’t help it when she moans into the otherwise silent space, silent bar the sound of their struggle on the floor.
The sound triggers something the moment it registers for both of them and one of her hands is moving without her conscious awareness to burrow underneath the soft material of the gray sweater. She sinks her fingernails into the sweaty skin of Lottie’s lower back, scraping it immediately across with so much force she knows it’s leaving its mark as her right hand shifts to grip the soft flesh of Lottie’s throat and force her head back up. When she sees the blood coating lips and teeth, the fingers splayed across her neck dig in hard. Shauna’s thumb presses so firmly into Lottie’s throat that the other woman’s mouth reflexively opens to drop blood directly onto Shauna’s face. Her own fucking blood dripping down until droplets of bloody saliva slip inside her mouth. It tastes so good, because she’s so fucking thirsty.
It’s inevitable so Shauna doesn’t fight it when her thumb releases its pressure, just enough to pull Lottie’s neck forward until she feels the static electricity of wet, bloodstained lips meeting her own. She almost thinks, for one long moment, that she’s trying to make up for the oxygen Lottie must be trying to suck back in. It takes several seconds before the body on top of her, the wet mouth gliding against hers, fully catches up to what’s happening, but once it does, Shauna revels in the intensity of it. Of the rough, fast hands that compensate for how horribly slow their mouths are working. Of her unfiltered groan when her bottom lip is bitten into and sucked on. She feels like they’re not nearly close enough, so Shauna channels the crest of adrenaline coursing through her body to push Lottie up until they’re sitting and moves to push the stupid fucking sweater up from the sides until they have to separate so she can finish pulling it over Lottie’s head.
The moment the cool air hits all of the newly exposed skin, parts of Lottie that Shauna saw not even hours ago but didn’t let herself study, Lottie exhales the filthiest breath in the millimeters of space between them. It smells raw and heady with a deep-seeded need for something . Lottie doesn’t let her parse through what that something could be when there’s two hands clutching onto the collar of Shauna’s—but actually Lottie’s—black sweater, as a slick tongue swipes across the roof of her mouth, before there’s this long, loud sound of expensive fabric tearing. Shauna doesn’t have to see what happened, not when she can feel the sudden shock of cool air touching her bare breasts.
“Lottie, that was your sweater.”
I don’t think she gives a shit.
Distantly, she thinks about how funny it is to have Jackie’s commentary so muted during this really messed up need for release. She almost laughs, but smothers it by pulling and biting on Lottie’s bottom lip. It is not soft, not even remotely, and she’s still tasting her own blood amalgamated with both of their spit when she licks at it a second later.
Lottie’s hands are pushing the sleeves of the ripped sweater off until they’re both fully half naked and Shauna wants to map out everything her survival brain didn’t let herself do earlier, but there is no way she can slow them down. Not with this high speed train wreck they’re on. When she lowers her head to the crook of Lottie’s neck, as wavy brown hair tickles her nose, Shauna doesn’t stop herself from taking a sharp inhale that erupts a primal want so deep inside of her chest. Lottie sits up straight to fan her hair back and it brings her breasts closer to Shauna’s lips—there is six inches between them and she thinks, in this moment, that they’re mostly six inches of thin torso—which incites her tongue to start methodically exploring what she can. Maybe it’s a mistake, but maybe it’s not when Shauna looks up as she’s licking, biting, pulling to look into the dark eyes staring down at her and it’s that look that makes her shove her hand down Lottie’s shorts until she feels her fingers wet and slick.
Lottie’s expression morphs until she’s fighting to smother the moan and that somehow breaks Shauna’s dwindling composure even further, because she feels this overwhelming need to hear Lottie beg. She needs this girl straddling her lap to pathetically plead. So, Shauna does one long stroke to coat her fingers as much as possible before pulling them out, hand shifting until it’s hovering over the stitched, red skin of a collarbone. Shauna is so transfixed by her own handiwork that she doesn’t notice the change until all one hundred and twenty pounds of Lottie is pushing her back down with firm hands on her shoulders. Then, she feels the cold flush of hardwood on her back. It almost makes her shiver— almost —but she’s not going to give Lottie the satisfaction so she digs her other hand, the one not pressing against scarred flesh in the shift, into Lottie’s side just to redirect the pressure.
The pain, Shauna imagines Lottie has to feel something by now, triggers this faint smile to dawn on the other woman’s lips, illuminated like a shadow by the gaps in the curtains. There’s a hand bracing next to her head a few seconds later, inches away as it splays out to support the change of position of the body hovering above her, before Lottie covers Shauna’s hand at her collar with her own. Then, the faint smile crystallizes into a full one with teeth as the tip of Shauna’s fingers are being forcefully pushed into the stitches and there’s this disjointed moment of shock that has Shauna frozen in place.
Never a dull moment with this one, right?
Jackie’s words snap her back to what the fuck is happening, right as the delicate sutures start tearing. Shauna stops breathing when the first split happens, she can’t even see it in the dimness, it’s the overwhelming sensation of blood seeping out to coat her fingers. Shauna’s not immediately sure why her first reaction isn’t to pull her hand away, create distance to halt this unhinged increase of intensity.
Please, you know why.
Admittedly, of course, she does. It’s because that nostalgic carnal desire has ripped through the veneer of composure she’s been fronting for so long and now that the dam is broken, what’s the point in stopping it? Though there’s this sliver of rationality that flashes at the potential blood loss that could create more issues. Without hesitation, she pushes her elbow into the arm bracing Lottie up until her entire body is falling straight onto Shauna once again. It seems they are really making a habit of this. Shauna wastes no time to lick a trail from jaw to ear before she bites on an earlobe, her hot breath hitting Lottie’s temple to cause an undeniable shiver. Shauna’s voice is firm when she demands, “Cut that shit out.”
Lottie, somehow still managing this bizarre silence, slides her body until Shauna can feel their hard nipples rubbing skin to skin, the layer of sweat making the movement so easy. When she fails to close her eyes and take the deepest exhale at the contact, she succumbs to it. Spurred on by the uncontrollable need for Lottie to plead, crumble, break, she slips her bloody—and it’s not her blood for once—index and middle fingers into her mouth and cleans them while maintaining unfaltering eye contact. There’s almost no visible change to the stare transfixed on her, just wordless reciprocation when she’s done as Lottie grabs her wrist to push the same two fingers into her own mouth and sucks. Shauna feels like she’s on fire and the shorts they’re both still wearing need to fucking go.
“Take off your pants,” her command is punctuated with a jolt of hips upwards, though it doesn’t have the same impact because Lottie’s entire body weight is still resting on her. She moves her free hand to scrape fingernails down Lottie’s thigh—something rotten inside of her wants to not only mark but also to cake as much flesh into her nail beds as she can. There’s a shift again as the woman above her splays a hand out to lift herself enough to hover, the grip on Shauna’s wrist tighten so hard to match the sudden sharp pressure when the two fingers inside Lottie’s hot mouth are bitten into. Her eyes widen in alarm, not necessarily from the pain, but from this coiled ache at all of the places they’re not touching.
It’s not fully surprising when Lottie’s decision comes with a superhuman pull of her wrist up until they’re both sitting up once more. She’s pretty sure she weighs more than skinny Charlotte Matthews but it doesn’t seem like any of that matters right now. Lottie rises to her knees and guides Shauna’s free hand to push down her shorts and underwear on her right side in one violent motion, curling Shauna’s fingers until they were digging into the tender muscle of her hip with so much purpose. Even then, the thrum of impatience pushes against her, enough to spur Shauna to finally pull her fingers out of Lottie’s mouth and wrap her arm around a sweat-kissed waist to help push the shorts fully down.
When Lottie resettles on her lap, Shauna’s eyes track the frayed sutures, a thin layer of blood seeping out like a reminder of how many bad decisions are being committed right now, and yet, she feels this gravitational pull to clean up her mess. Her tongue laps a long, firm sweep across Lottie’s collarbone, against the broken stitches, against Lottie’s blood. It tastes metallic and oh so nostalgic. She can feel it. The weight of the knife in her hand. Its heft. How perfect it felt when she made the first cut. Her tongue is still licking, almost glacially, to ground herself in that memory. She’s so desperate to savor it that she doesn’t notice the drastic change of pace, not until she hears this stilted, desperate whine and the feeling of the tense grip on the back of her head.
Shauna doesn’t contain her smile when she says, “Use your words.”
Then, at the command, the single word tumbles out as a sharp gasp, “Please.”
It isn’t enough. Not nearly enough. So, Shauna doesn’t change her position or pace. She swipes her tongue across Lottie’s collarbone again and she thinks about infection, blood loss, contamination. She thinks about how dirty they both are when she closes her eyes, letting herself revel in all of the other sensations now that the urgency has crawled to a stop. The heady smell of blood and heat everywhere. The greasiness of it all. The wondrous taste of human depravity coating her mouth. The absolute silence beyond her lapping. It finally hits her that she thinks Lottie stopped breathing and only in the flicker of that fear does she stop to look up and meet the black abyss gaze staring down in absolute agony.
Shauna asks, tortuously calm, “Well?”
Lottie interlaces their fingers again and guides Shauna to touch her where she wants, needs , to be touched, but those aren’t the simple instructions she gave—of course, Lottie would fail to follow something as concise as use your words—so Shauna pulls her hand back to grip Lottie’s waist and flips them over. She is straddling the psychotic mess underneath her and that feral look being leveled back at her claws into the deep cavity of her chest. For one blissful moment, Shauna sees a half-dead girl lying on a cabin floor, beaten to the edge of life.
At this rate, you two can get there in no time.
Shauna clenches her jaw at Jackie’s sarcasm and the gravity of the situation hits her like a freight train. She glances between the frayed sutures on Lottie’s collar and the blood everywhere on their bodies before she closes her eyes and takes a deep inhale, channeling any sliver of rationality left in her brain because the last thing Shauna has the capacity to do is clean up after things spiral any further.
It takes an absurd amount of willpower for Shauna to finally say, “I have to go.”
Lottie’s expression has morphed to something placidly blank, so Shauna shuffles onto her feet and grabs Lottie’s sweater, the one not destroyed, to pull it over her head. When she turns on the light, it’s hard not to see how pathetic Lottie looks on the floor, unfocused and just staring blankly at the ceiling. She sighs as she goes into the walk-in closet to find a shirt which is impossibly easy to find given how meticulously organized the space is. There’s a passing thought on whether Lottie even has enough agency to pick out her own clothes for the day. She debates just throwing the shirt down and leaving, but decides she’s not giving Lottie a choice.
Shauna ends up crouching down to pull Lottie into a sitting position, voice firm when she commands, “Raise your arms.”
There’s numb compliance that allows her to put the shirt on before Shauna stands again and pulls Lottie up with her. She pushes Lottie down to her bed and says resolutely, “I’ll make our running date. You better be there.”
Then, Shauna turns off Lottie’s light, walks off to the kitchen, grabs the bloody pile of shit on the counter and leaves, letting the door close behind her with a loud click, just so Lottie knows she left.
So, was that more cathartic than the fight?
It’s not like there’s any point to lying to Jackie. Shauna feels the overwhelming hum thrumming through her body as she walks back to her apartment—arms clutching onto the suspicious bag of bloody clothes and eyes cast to the sky, scratches and scars all over her body—when she finally admits: It wasn’t enough.
Charlotte wakes up five minutes before her alarm and she’s alone. It’s not a surprise, but when her memory of yesterday’s events play back in a technicolor slideshow, her body tenses up in debilitating stasis: Shauna, the stalking, the fight, blood, stitches. Her hand moves up to carefully touch her collarbone, two fingers tracing the neat sutures underneath her sweater. She stares at the ceiling exhaling as slowly as she can into the cavernous silence until her alarm goes off, the default staccato beeping spurring her into movement. There’s no note, not that she expects one.
She does her perfunctory routine: bathroom, closet, kitchen. Charlotte chooses a black turtleneck shirt to conceal the stitches that she has tucked in a gray skirt. It’s half of the outfit that Veronica set out yesterday. In the kitchen, there’s nothing to clean as promised. She doesn’t take any coffee to go and heads to the stairwell immediately without any hindrance, but when she passes the elevator, she feels the resonance of Shauna’s firm voice. When she walks down to the floor six landing, there’s this distinct, high pitched cry that squeezes her heart tight. It’s such an undeniable whine that Charlotte knows can only come from a baby that causes her to pull the door open to check the sixth floor hallway, but she’s met with nothing and no one, just the ding of the elevator signaling its imminent opening so she steps quickly back into the stairwell and runs down the last five floors.
In the lobby, Thomas gives her a polite smile, “Good morning, Miss. Matthews.”
She nods, as always, but before she can head out, there’s a white floral blanket being extended towards her, “Please take this, so he doesn’t get cold.”
It’s a weird interaction and something in her stomach feels so unsettled as her eyes make out a black symbol stitched into the corner. She asks, cautiously, “So who doesn’t get cold?”
“Of course, you.” She doesn’t understand what he means, but the blanket is being forced into her hands so she takes it quickly and leaves before Thomas sees her stitches somehow hidden beneath her shirt. Except before the heavy front door opens, she hears him add, “Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s evil.”
Despite the fact that it’s summer, Charlotte feels wholly unprepared for the blistering cold that hits her when she steps outside. It wasn’t this cold yesterday. She reasons that maybe it’s only the morning, so she braces the ten minute walk to the library, arms crossed and hot breath visible in the biting air in front of her. Charlotte is shivering by the time she passes by the alley.
Then, her eyes make out the plums of smoke billowing out of the building ahead of her, torrential swells of flame shattering the city like a dropped mirror, and Charlotte suddenly can’t feel anything besides fear. Her legs are taking her forward in a long strided sprint and there’s already a small crowd gathering. As she gets closer, the eerie silence eases back like her hearing muffles out the volley of screams and shouts, all of them except one piercing cry that spears through her glass castle. She knows there’s a baby inside the burning building and no one is helping. No one hears it. Before reason can stop her, Charlotte runs into the plume of smoke. The door starts opening before she reaches it and there’s just blinding white on the other side. When she steps through, the shearing void of white shifts until she’s in a nondescript cabin. Her heart sinks as the cacophonous cry morphs until it’s a very familiar voice calling her name, jolting her back.
“Lottie.”
Shipman!
Shauna jolts awake, eyes opening so quickly there’s a mild sting as her body rises with the rapid acceleration of her heartbeat until she’s sitting up, a hand fisting the duvet. She takes a deep inhale as she realizes where she is, affirmed when she turns to see Lottie asleep, curled in a ball on top of the blanket, facing Shauna, and looking so vulnerable. She can almost still taste blood on the tip of her tongue. Fuck.
Enjoyed that dream too much, didn’t you?
She needs to get out of here, just so she can breathe without being in the nauseating proximity of Charlotte Matthews. The sutures are slightly peaking through the gray sweater and they look as neat as they were last night, no blood and tearing to make her cringe. There’s a mild glow of the rising sun illuminating the sterile bedroom in a warmth that makes it feel just a bit less clinical. A layer of nausea is still anchored in her throat at the sight of all the white, but maybe that’s actually from Lottie’s hair tickling her arm. Hair that looks so insanely soft, like the rest of the body next to her. She does know how soft Lottie is now from all of the places she’s been able to touch. On cue, her mind rears back the dream: It wasn't enough.
Shauna pulls herself out of bed before the rest of that thought pieces together, bare feet touching the cold hardwood as she quietly heads for the bathroom. The cold water is not nearly cold enough to reign her mind back from that spiral of a dream when she splashes it on her face, but it does help with planning the next five steps to getting out of Malcolm’s soulless condo. Though she does recognize that it’s a nice mini-prison with amazing water pressure. Shauna settles on waking Lottie up, because she probably needs to borrow a pair of pants too before making the long walk back to her own apartment to shower, dress, and get to NYU in time for lecture and office hours.
Lottie is still curled in the fetal position, looking appropriately like a fragile child, when Shauna sits down on the edge of the bed, “Lottie.”
There’s no deafening screams, so she takes that as a good sign.
I think the dissociation pills probably help.
When Lottie stirs a few seconds later, without even being physically spurred, Shauna thinks that’s probably true. Brown eyes blink open carefully, as if even waking up requires intention. Shauna feels this knot coil in her chest, especially as she sees the hands flexing into tight fists as the realization of what happened and where she is slots together piece by piece.
Shauna braces for shock and fear, instead, she’s greeted with a soft, “Yeah?”
“I have to go to class today, so let me check your stitches and borrow some clothes, then I’ll be out of your hair,” Shauna replies when unfocused brown eyes meet hers.
For now, anyway!
Shauna ignores Jackie’s snark as she punctuates her statement with a small smile. Lottie closes her eyes for a second before sitting up, straining with zero forced effort to fight through the grogginess that Shauna always feels in the morning.
“Okay.”
She’s in a pair of jeans, one of the two pairs Lottie owns that kind of fit, but it’s better than wearing her own sweaty, blood-spotted shorts. All of the effects from last night’s adventure have been tucked inside a black duffel bag with the New Amsterdam’s library branding stitched to the front and she leaves before Lottie even makes coffee.
At the door, Shauna turns to look at the other woman, still in the gray sweater and shifts her gaze up quickly before any inconvenient thought can take shape. She tries to sound light when she says, “I’ll see you later, Matthews. Do not fuck up your stitches.”
Lottie replies, voice neutral, “Bye, Shauna.”
She makes it home within thirty minutes and it’s almost perfectly fine until she’s showering off yesterday that Shauna’s dream plays back way too vividly. It’s impossible to stop so she ends up touching herself until she comes. It’s close to cosmic, because it’s so easy to remember the feeling of Lottie’s teeth embedded into her neck and that unfiltered look when bloody saliva was coating her mouth. Shauna comes with a loud moan muffled by the spray of cold water.
At least, you’re not in denial.
What’s the point? You’re in my head anyway. She thinks, fingers slick and like that, the memory of Lottie sucking on hers after she already cleaned them destroys her sense of urgency. The shower lasts a bit too long and when she’s finally toweling herself down, it finally dawns that her hand looks pretty bad.
It should be fine. It’s not your dominant hand anyway. Just don’t accidentally wave and make it obvious.
She ends up ordering two extra shots in her Americano at the cafe before making it just in time for lecture. It’s not like the class is boring, this is her discipline after all and Shauna does know most of these books by heart, but whenever something happens, her mind just seizes in place. One of the students at the front, less than five feet away from her, is chewing gum obnoxiously and for some reason, the sound keeps triggering her to look over just in time to see the girl’s tongue peek through her open mouth. Her rapid heartbeat is the only telltale sign of her frustration, because her face is still in graduate student Shauna Shipman mode. When the lecture ends, she has to sit through office hours and two students actually come to ask her for guidance on this week’s assignment. It’s fine or it would be if one of them didn’t have on a black sweater that looks so similar to the one Lottie tore to bits in her dream, but in reality, Shauna ended up wearing it on her trek back home this morning.
When there’s a moment of stillness, Shauna’s curiosity wins out so she ends up asking, “Your sweater looks really nice. What material is that?”
The sophomore looks up and smiles, “Thanks, this is cashmere. My dad’s only form of parenting is gifts, so I got this for my birthday.”
Shauna’s heart squeezes at the admission.
Wow, what a coincidence.
Shauna doesn’t acknowledge Jackie’s snark when she returns the smile. The hour crawls by as Shauna’s mind plays devil’s advocate every time she notices the sweater again before torturous office hours are over. When black sweater and her friend leave, Shauna exhales such a weighted sigh. Somehow, she doesn’t even remember their names.
How long is it going to be before you snap?
Shauna’s jaw clicks as she replies, I’m fine.
Yeah, okay. If you’re fine, then I’m still alive.
It’s too early in the day for Jackie’s guilt tripping, so Shauna instantly counters, It’s almost like you like reminding me that I’m the reason you’re not.
Don’t be more delusional than you already are, because it took both of us being stubborn to get here.
Shauna looks up to the paneled ceiling of the shared TA office and sighs. Okay, then, I’m not fine.
No shit, Sherlock.
There’s a few hours of work including grading she has to do and prep for next week’s lecture and she manages to focus enough to get it done. It’s three when she finally has a few minutes of uninterrupted silence. Then, Shauna decides she’s going to get her favorite cheesecake from Magnolia Bakery to calm down, as well as maybe stopping to restock her first aid supplies. When she’s at the bakery, it takes a few minutes of hesitant deliberation before Jackie decides for her.
Jesus, just buy it, Shipman. Boring Lottie Matthews probably likes vanilla bean given that bland place she calls home.
She doesn’t stop her smirk after she orders two slices of vanilla bean cheesecake and stands off to the side to wait. Are you actually supporting this?
It’s not like I can stop you. Plus, this is definitely more entertaining than your other avenues to de-stress.
By the time she’s walking to Lottie’s library, cheesecake box in hand and a bag of supplies from the pharmacy tucked in her crossbody, Shauna feels like her stress winds down enough to be a normal person. She hopes so anyway.
On the scale of fake-it-to-you-make-it to beating-a-certain-someone-to-almost-death, I’d say you’re currently at lying-to-your-best-friend-about-being-pregnant-with-Jeff’s-baby.
Shauna rolls her eyes. So a seven?
I was going to say six and a half, but rounding up sounds fine.
It’s not five yet, but she thinks maybe she can catch Lottie near the end of her shift so they could put the cheesecake in the fridge before their run. Or something. Shauna has enough self-awareness to reason that it’s probably not good to just show up to Malcolm’s mini-insane asylum without notice. Lottie’s coworker from the other day, the one clearly harboring a strong crush, levels her with one of those expressions teetering between exhausted and annoyed like she can’t decide at that moment how she should feel about Shauna’s repeat appearance. Maybe a tiny part of her wishes she gave a shit, just because Lottie has to interact with this woman everyday. Unfortunately, Shauna’s patience has been awfully non-existent as of late.
I wonder why.
Shauna wastes no time when she asks, “Is Charlotte here?”
“How did you know Charlotte again?” Karina, according to her name badge, gives her such a forced, fake smile that almost incites a laugh. Faux politeness oozing like body armor.
Someone’s jealous.
Shauna leans forward, conspiratorially, and answers the probing question with casual confidence, “Oh, I’ve known Charlotte for a while. We grew up together. Just reconnecting with my friend now that I’m in the city. Not that it’s your business though, right?”
Karina scoffs, reigning in a sliver of smugness when she replies, curt smirk and all, “That’s too bad that she didn’t tell you she had to head out early today. You actually just missed her.”
“You know what? I wanted to double check if I should catch her at home,” Shauna returns politely, not giving Karina the satisfaction of having a reaction to something she clearly didn’t anticipate. Shauna makes a very clear glance at Karina’s name tag, as a reminder of her place in Lottie’s life, and adds, “Thanks for letting me know. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
Shauna watches Karina force another smile before turning to walk out of the library. When she’s on the sidewalk, she feels a thrum of anxiety as she looks around for a tall, brown head of hair. There is a small part that almost doesn’t trust in the reliability of that information, because it’s clear Karina doesn’t like her. But then she spots Lottie’s distinctive figure a few blocks down as she’s crossing the street.
Shauna wonders, Where is she going?
Let’s not repeat the incident from yesterday.
Shauna doesn’t repeat that embarrassing fail, at least, there’s no signs of suspicion as the other woman weaves up several blocks, easily over two miles until they’re closer to the East Village to get to a random diner. A diner that probably serves nothing Charlotte Matthews would eat, but when Lottie looks around for someone, Shauna’s heart drops at the sight of the short blonde that stands and waves her over. When Misty fucking Quigley crushes Lottie in the world’s tightest hug that’s clearly not reciprocated, Shauna has to force herself not to bolt across the street into the diner and sock someone in the face.
Calm down. Let’s figure out why she’s even here.
What. The. Actual. Fuck. Shauna clenches her jaw as she leans against the wall of an alley that’s just out of view from where they’re seated. She can’t see Misty’s face from her spot, but she can make out Lottie’s expression as they talk. Lottie rejects all offers to order anything besides coffee and there’s very little actual dialogue coming from the girl in her sight. Just periodic short sentences that exist between long bouts of gesturing and over explanations from Misty. She imagines that’s what’s happening anyway.
Why is she meeting Misty?
Jackie shoots back immediately. She’s not yours. She’s allowed to socialize with the others too.
That’s not answering the question.
Well, Shipman, if I had to take a wild guess in the dark using the context clues that our beloved cult leader has a really bad case of amnesia and that her reality is being manipulated by darling dad while a very motivated grad student is trying to remind her of all of the trauma she went through but can’t recall, I think she probably doesn’t remember anything about her relationships with everyone from the life-altering plane crash. So Misty Quigley might be just a name in a list of names of the people that made it out. Jackie parses out so logically and yet it’s undercut with a thick layer of condescension.
That doesn’t explain why she’s talking to Misty at all. If she has questions, why wouldn’t she ask me?
You’ll find out soon, because we both know you’re not going to let this go.
Obviously, Jackie’s right and Shauna stays rooted to her spot for the next hour and a half that it takes before Lottie slides out of her booth, letting Misty hug her one more time unreciprocated. It would almost be funny if there wasn’t an avalanche of something dark cracking at her civility. Misty walks in the opposite direction as Lottie heads back the way she came, but right as she passes by the alley, Shauna fists the collar of another expensive shirt and shoves Lottie against the wall. Their six inch height difference is very apparent in this position as she has to look up at Lottie’s momentary stunned expression that morphs into a smile upon recognition.
Lottie speaks first when Shauna spends a second too long trying to see if she can see the stitches through the other woman’s shirt. Spoiler: she can’t. “Hey Shauna.”
Her frustration doesn’t know how to decipher that tone when she asks, sharply, “What was that?”
Lottie answers, matter-a-fact, “I was having dinner with Misty.”
“Because?” Shauna prompts.
“Because she was in town and said she would love to meet up with me,” Lottie continues, like she doesn’t understand what Shauna’s actually asking. The small vestiges of patience, rekindled from the Magnolia Bakery visit, starts eroding.
It’s impossible to keep her voice modulated—so she doesn’t—when Shauna snaps back, “Why her? She’s fucking crazy!”
There’s a moment where Lottie flinches at that, but she thinks it’s not really from what Shauna says but from the intensity that it is basically screamed out to echo in the alley they’re in. Luckily, it’s still NYC and the city swallows her frustration like it’s just white noise. Shauna slackens her hold on Lottie’s shirt and starts to pull back, creating distance so she can try to have the rest of this conversation with mild civility.
I think that ship sailed when you called Misty fucking crazy.
The surprise, though, comes in the form of Lottie Matthews shoving her back so hard Shauna stumbles on the asphalt and loses her balance. Her eyes widen in alarm of this sudden shift and deliberates in the millisecond whether it’s worth it to catch her fall with her hands. Shauna settles on that it isn’t, given how messed up her hands are after yesterday’s altercation with the pocket knife. Though, before her body collapses to the floor, Lottie is pulling her forward with the same force until cold hands are gripping her biceps to hold her up.
Lottie’s voice is still so neutral when she says, “She let me know that we were all kind of crazy. That being out there made us crazy. That it came back with us.”
Sounds about right.
Shauna actually laughs as she shifts her hands up until they’re gripping Lottie’s sides, immediately feeling the indent of ribs through the fabric. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. Did she tell you what she did?”
Lottie lets go of her entirely, resigned, “She told me about some of the things that happened out there.”
“Like?” Shauna replies, fingers pressing deeper.
“Like there was a lot of suffering, but also hope, because some of us made it back,” Lottie’s gaze is unwavering when she admits.
It’s so vague. Shauna probes, “That’s it?”
“We talked about you.”
Oh boy. Only good things I hope. Jackie’s sarcasm is palpable and Shauna quelches her need to return the snark with a deep exhale. There’s a prolonged moment of silence where Lottie’s eyes are just staring through her, as if they’re dissecting her for study. It makes her body ignite at the intensity of attention. Shauna holds her breath when Lottie finally picks out what to say.
“Misty mentioned something that happened between us.”
Shauna feels her heart seize up, that feeling from earlier today cascades back like it never left. She sees a girl with blood-coated lips and dark eyes. She smells the smoke of the fire snaking up from the floorboards. She feels the weight of the knife in her cold hands. She tastes the endless anticipation. But ultimately, she hears the resonate sound of Lottie’s voice: “Let it out. We need you, Shauna.”
Misty is a bitch.
Shauna’s tight hold releases instantly and she shuffles back like she’s been burned. It’s sickening how much the desire coalesces with this deep seeded fear.
Lottie chuckles and the sound almost feels as jarring as the surge of confidence when she states, “So, she really wasn’t lying.”
Shauna forces air through her nose and out her mouth to desperately slow down her erratic heartbeat as Lottie takes a step closer to bridge the gulf of space she’s made in the shock of those three words. Let it out.
“What do you actually want, Shauna?” Lottie takes another step.
She backs up and the reality of how claustrophobic this alley feels suddenly hits all at once. There’s really no where to go and Shauna doesn’t need Jackie to spell out how little time she actually has to evade.
Another step. “What do you want from this?”
I’m enjoying this flip of the script. Misty must have really gotten to her in that one conversation. Bravo.
Fuck you, Jackie. Shauna takes her last step back and she knows it’s the final one when her back presses into a cold brick wall.
“Why are you so interested in me?” Lottie’s six inches from her now.
Shauna takes a deep inhale and channels the frustration she’s felt all day—all week, all year, all of this time since they got back—into her reply, “I need you to remember.”
There’s an expectant look that flashes across Lottie’s expression as she counters, “Then what?”
“Then maybe I can fucking breathe,” Shauna admits like a plea, voice breaking.
Lottie smiles and she swears it’s the only genuine one she’s seen since they reconnected. “Fine. Let it out. Breathe.”
The smile transitions into a smirk and it just floods Shauna with so much…anger. An abounding surge of frustration pushes out of the deep chasm of her chest until she feels the tension in her fingertips. Shauna grabs Lottie’s shirt again, so violently that two buttons tear, and pulls the other woman forward until their mouths are colliding. It’s everything she imagines it to be, mirroring the same intensity of her dream: aggressive, abrasive, overwhelming. Shauna feels this insatiable need to eat Lottie up, swallow every part of her until there’s nothing left. She moves her other hand to grip the back of a familiar neck, the pressure intensifying the charged energy between them.
At the touch, Lottie breaks their kiss to push Shauna against the wall hard, head burrowing into her neck as she feels hot breath whispering, “Let it out, Shauna.”
Her nostrils flare as she releases Lottie’s shirt to move up until her fingertips are resting firmly against the stitches. She presses in, borderline gentle, just enough to trigger that filthy breath Shauna remembers from her dream hitting her mouth. Her fingers stop to snake up until she can cup Lottie’s cheek, thumb immediately pushing into her parted lips until there’s a wet tongue covering and sucking on it. Shauna’s body burns so white hot.
“Let’s go before I start another fight,” Shauna breathes out, gaze so transfixed on Lottie’s mouth and the sensation of how slowly it’s lapping at her thumb.
She revels in the feeling for another minute before disentangling them but doesn’t fully let go when she interlaces their fingers, her cut up hand curling into Lottie’s cold one, as she pulls them out of the alley.
“I can’t do this in Malcolm’s sterile ass place, so do we need to stop by to get your meds?” Shauna asks when they’re walking side by side.
Lottie doesn’t even hesitate when she answers, “No, I’m fine.”
Shauna doesn’t insist otherwise, as horrible as that is, because she really isn’t a fan of the disconnected, panic-ridden version Lottie is now.
But you’re a fan of the feral, unmedicated one from out there? You know what she’s capable of.
I don’t fucking care, Shauna admits.