Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

After that, really, it all goes by pretty quickly. Life has seemed to settle into something normal out here, however strange it might sound. They build up more of the village, including an animal pen, and Lottie’s idea for a sort of holding cell, a little perimeter fence to help keep wild animals out, and they even finish the moat Nat had them digging to keep the place from flooding during heavy rains. 

It all feels like it’s going really well.

Except, as the days pass, Lottie can feel herself growing more and more distant. Not just from the girls, but from the Wilderness. She worries. She visits her tree, but nothing ever happens. She doesn’t hear it. She’s even stopped hearing things, seeing things. All of it. She knows she should be happy about it, god knows Jackie is-- but Lottie, for some reason, can’t be. 

It scares her. Before, when she heard it, she felt it, she knew what it wanted from them. She knew how to keep it happy and keep her family safe. Now? She has no idea. She feels like she’s getting desperate. She tries every day to set aside time to try and meditate, to find a place where she feels the most connected to It, but It never answers. It hasn’t since that day in the cabin. 

She’s trying her best to remain optimistic. After her ribs finally mostly healed-- enough to where she could bend over and pick things up without it hurting too much-- she tends to the garden on a daily basis. Akilah helps her, and they often venture out to find more seeds or plants that they can add to it. Lottie tills the soil methodically, hauls pails of water back and forth twice a day to water them, and cares for each plant like it’s her duty. It helps keep her mind off what she’s missing. That, and the feel of the cool soil between her fingers makes her feel connected, at least, to the earth itself. Providing food and bounty for the girls, so that it’s not just rabbit or deer or pheasant meat they’re eating, but vegetables and fruits. 

They all seem to be doing a lot better. They all smile more, laugh more, they’ve invented silly games, even Travis seems a little happier, joining in on the fun every now and then, like playing telephone with Melissa and Britt and Robin (despite him getting it wrong every time, they keep inviting him back). It’s nice to see. It’s nice to know that the life they have out here isn’t as tragic and doomed as they all thought it was just a few months ago.

Lottie doesn’t keep track of time in hours or even days anymore. She keeps track of time by the moon. Tonight is the next full moon, and even if it hasn’t been that long, she wants to do something special for Jackie. Especially because her ribs are now healed enough that a supervised Misty Quigley has pretty much given her the all clear. 

She’s fixed up a spot in the woods with a picnic for later that night, down near the river where it tapers off into a little pond area before spilling back out in a gentle waterfall and off towards the lake. There’s blankets, pillows, candles she found in the shed, flowers-- the whole nine yards. Lottie’s never actually taken someone out on a date before, but she thinks this might be close enough to one out here, at least.

It’s late in the afternoon when she makes it back to the village and sees Nat inside her hut, scribbling down more on her map. They’ve got a pretty large portion of their surroundings plotted out now, all the way from beyond the plane, to the lake, the remnants of the cabin, and almost as far out as Tai’s crew had made it all those months ago before the wolves had gotten to Van.

They try not to venture that far anymore. Nat has drawn a hard line on the map and in those spots, to make sure no one does. Lottie thinks it’s a good idea.

“Hey,” she says as she approaches Nat, “Jackie around?”

Nat hums, looking over at her. “Uh, think she was over by the animal pens?”

Lottie smiles at her. “Thanks. Your map is looking really good, by the way.”

Nodding, Nat turns back towards it. “Yeah. Thanks to your girlfriend.”

The words still make Lottie smile, and she shakes her head before moving away from Natalie and towards the other side of camp. 

Somehow, it’s gotten easier for Jackie to settle into this place as time moves on. Certain things become routine. As the weather warms, she goes out more and more, helping map the area. Sometimes, she’s with Nat, and they discuss game, tracking, strategies for what to do when the weather cools again because it will cool again. Sometimes, she’s with Van or Travis, and they’ll go check the nets at the lake or cast spears in the river. The first time Jackie speared a fish, she got so excited that she fell in the water, only for Van to laugh loud enough to knock herself in and join her.

Somehow, they manage to find things to enjoy out there.

Jackie helps around the village as well, even in the places where she doesn’t know how to do shit. She’s never had a pet in the house, so, of course, when Akilah starts catching rabbits, she shoves one into Jackie’s arms, only for it to bite her. When she tries to chop firewood, of course Tai takes it from her before she even has the chance to swing, muttering about Jackie not being allowed near bladed objects. She’s terrible at handwashing clothes but good at folding them, maybe a little too particular and meticulous. She’s allowed to help watch the food, but only if Lottie’s not around because otherwise she gets distracted.

Because if Lottie’s around, Jackie’s thoroughly distracted. She can’t help it. She’s a little smitten. Being able to be with someone, openly, that she actually wants to be with has ruined her a little bit. She finds that she doesn’t mind.

“Jackie, can you help me with Mortimer?” Akilah asks as Jackie carries some firewood from storage to the firepit. 

She sets the wood down and jogs over, quickly opening and closing the gate. “Sure, as long as you don’t make me hold one of your evil bunnies again.” She pulls her hair back to get it off of her neck, and recent development that makes her feel a little self conscious about her ear but that no one’s actively commented on yet, so she’s trying to be fine with it.

“They’re not evil,” Akilah says, picking up the duck and placing him in Jackie’s arms. “I think they didn’t like your shirt.”

“What’s wrong with my shirt?” Jackie mutters. She’d been wearing one of Shauna’s–- hers, at this point–- flannels that day, three little bones carefully tucked into the pocket. She doesn’t get what the problem was. “Why, exactly, am I holding a duck?”

“He’s been limping, and I want to see if there’s something in his foot.”

Jackie holds the duck, the two of them making eye contact as he quacks and cranes his neck. “Please don’t bite me,” she whispers. 

Mortimer refrains.

Akilah looks over Jackie’s shoulder and offers up a small smile. “Hi, Lottie.”

When Lottie finds Jackie, she’s in the pen with Akilah, holding Mortimer out like he’s a human child who’s just wet himself. She laughs to herself, though, leaning against the fence and watching in fascination. 

“No, please,” she says with a wave, “continue. Don’t mind me.” She knows Jackie has always been weird around the animals, she hadn’t stopped talking about how one of Akilah’s rabbits bit her the first time she’d held it for at least a week, and she usually tries to avoid being around them alone. 

“Look at that,” Lottie grins, “I think he likes you, Jax.”

Jackie perks up immediately when she hears Lottie’s voice, squeezing the duck accidentally and causing him to squawk indignantly. “Shit, sorry.” She frowns at Lottie dramatically, but she keeps holding the duck as Akilah works. 

“I think he’s alright. You can set him down, now,” Akilah says, giving Mortimer a gentle pet before stepping away.

After Jackie sets him down, the duck ruffles his feathers and waddles off, going to do whatever temperamental ducks with clipped wings do during the day. Jackie walks over to the fence where Lottie leans against it and grins. “Hi.”

Lottie matches Jackie’s grin, leaning forward to press a kiss to her lips from the other side of the fence. “Look at you, turning into a real, life vet.” 

Akilah snorts behind them and Lottie raises a brow at her, to which she just shrugs back at. 

Lottie then holds out her hand to Jackie, heading towards the gate to open it. “C’mon,” she tells her, “there’s something I want to show you.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of, like, super gifted with animals,” Jackie agrees, causing Akilah to actually giggle behind them. Jackie isn’t given any time to comment further, though, as Lottie opens the gate and Jackie walks through, offering up a little wave before taking Lottie’s hand. “Don’t tell me: you found the last Snickers bar that someone had squirreled away, maybe an actual squirrel.”

“So it seems,” Lottie says, “maybe we should put you in charge of the animals instead of Akilah, huh?” She squeezes Jackie’s hand and tugs her in closer to her side. It’s still so strangely wonderful to have someone like this in her life, especially out here. “Man, I wish. Though it would probably be all gross by now.” She shakes her head. “No, not a Snickers, but I’m still hoping you’ll like it anyway. But--” she looks at Jackie up and down-- “you gotta change first. And maybe wash off a little.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ms. Matthews. Akilah has years more schooling than me. I’m just not ready for that level of responsibility with animal husbandry,” Jackie says, grinning as Lottie holds her close. She wrinkles up her nose, knowing that Lottie was right but, hey, a girl can dream. “Honestly, I’ve kind of forgotten what chocolate tastes like,” she admits. It wasn’t like she let herself indulge on it too much back home, and there hasn’t been any here since those few days and snack cakes after the crash.

Jackie frowns. “Change? Into… what?”

“Wow, you know what animal husbandry is?” Lottie teases, grinning down at Jackie. She likes being able to be like this, more open and free and able to sort of manhandle her girlfriend, as she tugs Jackie against her and wraps her arms around her tight. “Yeah, me too. But we’ve got some nice berries growing in the garden now. So not chocolate, but definitely sweet enough for dessert.” 

Lottie pulls back, brushing her hands over the front of Jackie’s flannel, watching some dirt fall off of it. “Preferably something less…muddy.”

“Uh, yeah. I mean, who doesn’t?” Jackie didn’t, until like a year ago. But it was one of those SAT words (or so Shauna said. Jackie’s still not convinced she wasn’t just making her read a dictionary to be cruel) she’d been taught and just hadn’t forgotten. Using it in front of Melissa had been the most amusing. “Berries are sweet,” Jackie agrees. “You’re sweeter, though.”

Jackie stands on her toes, grinning as Lottie brushes her hands down her shirt. “But I thought you liked it when I was… dirty.”

Tai walks by, sighing. “You two literally have your own hut, Jesus Christ.”

Even if she doesn’t pull away, Jackie still has the decency to blush, feeling it creep up to her ear.

“Melissa didn’t,” Lottie chuckles, remembering how confused the younger girl had been, even after they’d explained its meaning. Why the fuck do they call it husbandry? That’s misogynistic. 

Lottie half rolls her eyes at the pun, but smiles back regardless, glancing over Jackie’s shoulder at Tai as the other girl huffs at them. “So do you and Van and yet I still caught you guys half naked by the garden yesterday.”

It’s Tai’s turn to blush, grumbling about going to get more firewood before she disappears behind one of the other huts and Lottie tugs Jackie by her belt loops towards their own. “I do,” she says after a moment, “but I think you’ll want to not be in something you’ve already been sweating in all day. Trust me.” 

Jackie raises an eyebrow but nods slowly. “Okay, that makes sense. Should I go to the river and wash off or just change?”

“You can probably just rinse off in the hand wash bucket.” They’re probably going to get sweaty again, after all, if Lottie’s plans go the way she hopes they do. She pushes Jackie towards the hut. “Now quit asking so many questions and go get changed.” 

“Gosh, so pushy,” Jackie teases, but she listens, dropping by the hand wash bucket and grabbing a rag to wet before heading back to their hut and taking off her top, doing her best to clean off most of the sweat from the day. She changes into one of her sweater vests and fixes her hair in the little mirror they added to their hut, checking it over once, twice.

When Jackie finishes changing and comes back out, Lottie is right there waiting for her. She can’t keep her eyes from trailing over her newly donned vest, the way it hangs loose around her frame, arm holes sagging just enough for the sides of her bra to just barely peek out from underneath it. It’s very not Jackie back in society, but so very Jackie out here in the wilderness. 

“Hot,” is all Lottie says. Underneath her own cloak, which Lottie wears everywhere, despite the temperature, she’s wearing one of her own old shirts, the white one with shorter sleeves and little rainbow stripes on the front, and her little pink shorts that match it. She holds out her arm. “Ready?”

Jackie grins happily, taking Lottie’s arm. “Ready,” she agrees, lacing their fingers together and brushing her thumb over Lottie’s hand.

It’s a comforting gesture, one that Lottie has grown to cherish. Tugging on Jackie’s hand, she begins to lead them off through the trees. Today is a nice day, too. It’s warm, with a slight breeze, the leaves singing with it as it rustles them. Birds sing, and in the distance, the water from the river can be heard babbling over rocks. Lottie thinks it’s kind of perfect, actually. 

“Did you do anything else today, aside from play doctor with Mortimer?” Lottie asks as they walk.

“I went with Travis this morning to the lake to check the nets,” Jackie says. “There were a few. Nat and I were talking about figuring out how to smoke shit. We need to be better about, you know, preserving food. But, uh, that took a good bit of the morning. I’ve hauled some firewood. Was an amazing veterinarian’s assistant, but you saw that. What all did you do?”

“Hauling firewood, huh? Trying to take Tai’s place now, too?” Lottie teases, shaking her head. “Well…we could build some in ground ovens, like some of the natives did. We’d need clay to build them, and salt to help with preserving…but if there’s iron in the ground up here like Misty says there is, that shouldn’t be a problem.” 

Shrugging, Lottie muses on her day. “Mostly garden work again. I made a drying rack for some of the herbs, too, so we can start actually adding spices to our dishes. No garlic, unfortunately, but there’s some wild thyme and rosemary.” 

“No, no, not chopping, just transportation,” Jackie clarifies. “I’m not allowed near the axe.” She considers Lottie’s words before nodding. All of that would be… good. A lot of work, but good. They could do it. They had time. “Wow, spices? And berries for dessert, I feel like we’re going to get a little spoiled out here.”

“Aaah.” Lottie nods. “Yeah, that’s fair. I’d be afraid of you swinging an axe, too.” She feels like a lot of this life they’ve built out here is so much like the one back home. Instead of school and homework, they have chores around the village. Instead of after school soccer practice, they have games they’ve started playing together. Instead of parties with beer and weed, they get drunk on each other and sometimes berry wine. 

“If only there was wheat, then we could actually make, like, pastries and stuff,” Lottie jokes. “Imagine having a scone out here.” 

“I know, I’m so scary,” Jackie says. She hums, leaning into Lottie as they walk. “Scones. God, those would be good.” Just one, with just a little cream, a berry compote. It’d be kind of great. They’re making do, though. It’s not as bad as it was. “So, where, exactly, are you taking me?”

“So very scary, in your sweater vest and short khakis.” Lottie tugs on the sleeve of Jackie’s vest, grinning. “At least we get eggs sometimes, now, thanks to Mortimer.” Her smile grows at Jackie’s question. The sun is beginning to set, the high landscape of the mountains always making it darker earlier than back in flat New Jersey, which means Lottie’s plans are going right on schedule. “It’s a surprise.”

It doesn’t take them long to get there, though, and Lottie stops just before a little wall of bushes, turning to face Jackie. “I um,” she feels a little flustered all of a sudden, worried Jackie might not like it, or that she’d think it was weird. Lottie clears her throat. “I know it hasn’t been that long since we…became a couple, but I just wanted to do something for you. For us.” Swallowing, she then pulls the brush aside and ushers Jackie through, her face feeling warm.

The little alcove is tucked away in a clearing of trees, the sky above visible through the tops of them in a perfect little circle. The blanket in the middle is spread out for them to sit on, with two bowls, two cups, a basket with some food in it (Mari had actually helped her make some pheasant legs into what could probably pass as chicken legs, fresh vegetables, and a berry compote she’d simmered for a while for dessert), pillows to lean on, and, of course, a little bit of berry wine. 

“Surprise?” she says tentatively, but warm.

For a moment, all Jackie can do is stare. The little picnic is set up with so much love and care, fresh food and the blankets and the pillows, the way they’ll have a view of the clear sky as the world starts painting it with a sunset. 

Jackie can’t stop from throwing herself at Lottie, pulling her in for a smoldering kiss. She’s panting when she pulls away, immediately going to wrap Lottie up in a tight hug. “No one’s ever…” She has to swallow, her voice tight and rough. “No one’s ever done anything like this for me before.”

Lottie is taken by surprise as Jackie tugs her down into a heated kiss, one she’s all too excited to return, face flushing and lungs burning by the time they pull apart. She curls her arms around Jackie, heart pounding in her chest. “I’ve never…done anything like it for someone. I hope it’s okay?”

“It’s perfect,” Jackie says immediately. “You’re perfect.” She’s perfect. The fact that she wanted to do this in the first place was perfect. Jackie thinks she would have been happy enough just going somewhere and holding Lottie’s hand. But Lottie put so much work into this. How can Jackie be anything but completely and overwhelmingly in love with her?

“Well, I-- I’m not--” Lottie half stutters, then shakes her head. “C’mon.” She takes Jackie’s hand again and leads her over to the blanket, pulling her down to sit with her. “Surprisingly, Mari actually um, helped me make the food.” She opened the little basket and pointed inside. “Don’t tell her if it’s any good though, we don’t need it going to her head.”

“You are,” Jackie says as Lottie leads her away. She’s grinning and she just can’t stop, that warm and gooey feeling in her chest spreading. “Aw, so she can be sweet when she wants to be,” Jackie teases, sitting beside Lottie and looking at the little space. “Blankets, pillows, food, candles. Are you wining and dining me, Lottie Matthews?”

“Nat kind of made her do it,” Lottie admits, giving a sheeping smile. “But it was nice of her to do it anyway.” She scoots a little closer to Jackie, not really wanting to be too far away from her now that she had her all to herself. She wraps her arms around her, pulling her into her side. “Is it working?”

Jackie laughs because of course Mari had to be coerced into an act of kindness. She can’t keep the smile off her face as Lottie moves closer, both of them unable to be away from the other for too long. “It’s totally working,” she murmurs, leaning in to press a kiss to Lottie’s jaw, her cheek. “Play your cards right, and you might even get lucky.”

Lottie feels rather adored under Jackie’s kisses, nuzzling into her, fingers threading into the fabric of her vest. She hums, only half registering what she’s saying before she blinks, looking down at her, into her bright, hazel eyes, the ones that remind Lottie of the changing colors of the leaves in autumn, or the streaks of color in carved wood. “I already am lucky,” she mutters back, moving in to kiss Jackie fully again, slow and fervent, letting the taste of her linger on her lips.

“You’re so cheesy,” Jackie teases, but she kind of adores it. She loves the way that Lottie looks at her, the way she kisses her, and Jackie puts her hands on Lottie’s cheeks and sinks happily into the kiss, letting her lips part slightly to deepen it. It’s still slow; they can take their time out here. That’s one of the things that Jackie has grown most fond of. They can take their time.

“Just being--” Lottie breathes between kisses-- “honest.” And yeah, maybe it was cheesy, but she didn’t care. She wanted Jackie to know how lucky she felt. How lucky she was. Not only to be alive, but to have her, be with her. She gets to keep her, for as long as Jackie wants her to. 

Her tongue is eager to slide inside Jackie’s mouth, licking against teeth and her tongue as well. It’s still honeyed, patient, taking their time as they taste each other and breathe each other in. Still, she can’t help the way her fingers slip just under the fabric of Jackie’s shirt, finding warm skin along her hip bones and lower back. She thinks she’d stay in this moment forever, if she could. 

By the time Jackie pulls away, they’re both panting, even though their movements have been unhurried. Jackie still feels heat, her heart pounding, her body still shivering at the feeling of hot fingers trailing against skin. “You went through… a lot of effort just for us to spend the entire time making out,” Jackie teases. 

“Well,” Lottie smirks back, “we have to build up an appetite, don’t we?” As if they aren’t almost always hungry out here, even when they do have enough food. She lifts one hand to brush some of Jackie’s bangs away from her face, letting her hand stay pressed against her cheek. “Besides, we have all night. Just you and me.” She leans back in for another chaste kiss, lingering again close to Jackie’s lips. 

Jackie laughs. “Did working in the garden all day not work up an appetite?” she asks. One hand goes to Lottie’s bicep and squeezes, and, god, it’s just so solid. Her eyes are already closing as she leans into Lottie’s touch. “Just us,” she murmurs. A dream. One that was so often true. They have their own hut, their own bed, and they get this, too, a private night away from camp, just for them. 

Lottie just hums. “Maybe.” She hadn’t done too much manual labor around the garden that day, the soil hadn’t needed tilling, she’d just had to water them, pack in some more soil. And then she’d scrubbed her nails clean of the dirt and washed her hair as well as she could, before making all the food, and coming to set up this. She’d been far too excited to exhaust herself or work up any sort of appetite that didn’t involve at least a little kissing. Or more. 

She lets her hands circle around to the small of Jackie’s back, scooping her forward and into Lottie’s lap. She loves that she can do this now without Jackie chastising her about her ribs. Warm hands press flat palms against Jackie’s skin, feeling how smooth and silky it still felt, even after all their time out here. She kisses her collarbone, her neck, breathes in her scent. Earthy and salty and something uniquely Jackie, almost sweet, like strawberries. 

Jackie’s breath stutters as Lottie pulls her close, into her lap, and she wraps her arms around Lottie’s neck, loose and draping. She plays with soft, thick hair, wrapping it around her fingers and feeling those soft strands between them. Soft kisses on her skin and a nose pressed into her neck make Jackie shiver and pull herself closer. Warm hands leave goosebumps in their wake. She thinks this might be the closest to heaven on earth a person can get. 

That’s the thing about this place that has taken so much from them: it can be so fucking beautiful in return. It ripped them open and exposed their insides, but it also stitched them back up and showed them how to take care of themselves. They’re stronger now than they had been before. They’re more a team than they had been before. There’s abundance right now, which is pretty fucking insane. And there’s a beautiful girl trailing kisses over Jackie’s skin, and that’s pretty fucking insane, too.

The hands that slide into Lottie’s hair make her shiver with delight. It makes goosebumps prickle on her arms and up her spine. The breeze that plays with the leaves and flows through their enclosure makes Lottie’s skin feel electric. Her hands move up Jackie’s back, lifting her vest as they do. Touching Jackie feels like muscle memory now, like Lottie’s hands know the map of her body, every curve, every valley, every bump and scratch. And she loves it all. How could she not?

Lottie doesn’t have anything left to go back to. It’s just this place and this person that are keeping her tethered anywhere. And she’s okay with that, and she’s okay if, one day, they want to leave her. She has it now. She has it now and she wants it more than anything. And it’s easy enough to prove, as her teeth graze against Jackie’s neck, before lips close around the skin and she sucks at the saltiness of it.

“Lottie,” Jackie sighs, her head tilting to the side as lips close around skin and suck and make her eyes roll back inside her head, her hands tightening in thick hair and tugging her close. She almost feels silly that she’d bothered putting clothes on when she mostly just wants to feel skin against skin, the two of them moving against each other like they’ve got it down to a science. 

Jackie’s fingers have traced out as much of Lottie’s skin as she can. Her eyes have memorized the map of her. She doesn’t think he’s teenage foolishness that has her believing that this is something she wants and needs for the rest of her life, that this is something she can’t let go of. She won’t. She can’t. 

Lottie’s hands go to Jackie’s hips and pull her in closer, wrapping her arms around her back to press their bodies flush together as she leaves a nice, red mark on Jackie’s neck. She kisses it when she’s done, licking her lips to wet them and taste the salt from Jackie’s skin on them. The sunlight makes Jackie’s hair look like honey and bark, dazzling in its color. Lottie presses a kiss to her lips, a little more firm this time, more needy, teeth prodding gently at her bottom lip. She can almost taste something metallic on her tongue and she just wants more. 

“Tell me what you want,” she exhales into Jackie’s mouth. She wants to give her whatever she wants, she wants to give her everything, the whole world, really. She’d pluck the stars from the sky for her if she could, Lottie knows this in her soul. 

“I want..” Jackie stutters, sighs. She wants to live in this moment forever. She wants to feel like this for forever. “I just want you,” she mumbles against Lottie’s lips before pressing in closer, hungry with how much she wants this. They have this moment to themselves. They have all the time in the world. Jackie just wants to enjoy it.

“You have me,” Lottie says, “I’m yours.” She thinks that she’s only ever going to be Jackie’s. Even in the afterlife. Even in whatever comes next. Even if Jackie’s not always going to be hers. She thinks whatever parts of Lottie Matthews still exist belong to Jackie Taylor and she doesn’t want it any other way. She only knows how to love in full, how to show her devotion in full. 

Lottie kisses Jackie again, open-mouthed and wanting, leaning them back until Jackie is laid out beneath her and she smooth a hand against the flat of Jackie’s stomach and kiss her as hard as she wants.

The fact that Lottie is Jackie’s is so strange and wonderful that sometimes she can barely believe it. She doesn’t understand how it happened. Or, she does, kind of, but that doesn’t make it any less incredible. Jackie’s not supposed to feel like this. She’s not. Not with anyone. But Lottie being there for her when Jackie needed her had changed everything. 

Jackie gets to be happy. She gets to have this. She gets to feel the soft blanket underneath her, Lottie on top of her, lips hungry against her own. This is theirs, only theirs, and her tongue brushes against Lottie’s to confirm it. 

Jackie’s tongue tastes like heaven, Lottie thinks. It’s the only thing she ever wants to taste, actually. Food means nothing when compared to Jackie. And she wants to taste her more, but she wants to take her time. It needs to be right. Still, her fingers drag along Jackie’s stomach, up her sides. They scrape along the bottom strap of her bra, before coming back down the same way they came, nails light against skin. She kisses down the other side of Jackie’s mouth, to her neck, leaving hot breath wherever she goes. Reaching the crook, she bites down again, a little harder, lapping her skin.

Heat shoots through Jackie, a moan dragging itself out of her mouth as Lottie bites down. She tugs at Lottie’s hair before moving her hands down, trailing her fingers over Lottie’s back before slipping them under her shirt. Hot skin meets her fingers, and Jackie takes her time reminding herself of every inch. It’s stupid how turned on she is. It’s barely real. No. It’s the most real thing. Sometimes, Jackie has to remind herself that things are real, too. This is one of the best ways to do it.

Lottie shivers again under Jackie’s touch, the feel exciting her, the sound of her moans making her stomach burn with want. Out here, away from everyone, they can be loud, and she reminds Jackie of that by dragging her mouth lower and biting down on her collarbone, leaving little indents of her sharp canines in the skin before kissing it better. 

Leaning back to admire her work and the way Jackie is looking at her, Lottie realizes she’s still wearing her cloak. She reaches up with one hand to untie it before shirking it off, making it easier for Jackie to touch her wherever she wants. Lidded eyes gaze back down at Jackie and she’s the only thing in the world that matters to Lottie. “I love you, Jackie,” she breathes.

Jackie thinks that Lottie is a little obsessed with making her moan and whine and cry out. The worst part is how easy it is. Years of faking it (tastefully, might she add; she knew what she was doing), and now that she’s with someone that actually makes her feel good, she just can’t stop herself from being loud. It’d be more embarrassing if Lottie clearly didn’t find it so hot. 

“I love you, too, Lottie Matthews.” The words have gotten a little easier to say. They fall a little faster from her lips. It helps that they make her feel so fucking warm, saying them and hearing them. They make her cheeks flush, looking up at Lottie and moving her fingers to unclip her bra under her shirt as she leans over her.

The words never cease to make Lottie feel warm. More than warm, really, like everything on the inside of her is being wrapped in a hug. It’s an indescribable feeling, actually. The closest she thinks she’s ever gotten is sitting on the porch of an old, now burned down cabin, with a blonde girl behind her, braiding her hair. 

Lottie feels Jackie’s fingers deftly undo her bra and she smirks down at her, crooked and full. “Now who’s eager?” She is, too, though, and she ducks her head back down to kiss Jackie, raw and full of all the things she doesn’t say out loud, and all the things she does, too. Like I love you and I need you and I want you.

There’s no way for Jackie to respond as lips crush against her own and she’s pulled into an all consuming vortex of want and need. When they pull away to breath, Jackie’s panting, but she raises and eyebrow and manages, “Who said I wasn’t?”

Her hands slip around to Lottie’s stomach, brushing up and down, up and down, before moving up and slipping under her bra. Jackie palms at her breasts, sighing happily before she lurches up again and reattaches their lips together. 

All Lottie can do is grin, eyes fluttering as Jackie’s hands slide up under her shirt, against her stomach, before eventually she feels her warm palms against her chest and Lottie’s breath stutters in her throat. She can’t resist pressing into Jackie’s touch, meeting her kiss with just as much enthusiasm, tongue already licking into Jackie’s mouth. Her arms brace on either side of Jackie’s head as she leans further into the touch, sliding between Jackie’s legs and rolling her hips against her. She never thought she could want someone so bad, but sometimes it feels like an ache when she’s not touching Jackie and the only cure is this.

“God, yes,” Jackie mumbles against Lottie’s lips, groaning as hips roll against her, her own moving as well. Absolutely, ridiculously horny thoughts that she hadn’t allowed to exist for too long before this place, this girl, flood her, making it impossible to think about anything else. Which, well. Why would she want to think about anything else? Why would she want to be worried about anything that isn’t Lottie, Lottie, Lottie? Lips and tongue and teeth against her own, hands bracketing her head, the weight of her so solid and real that there’s no way that Jackie can be dreaming. Why would she want to think about anything that doesn’t have everything to do with this? Her thumbs brush against sensitive skin, feeling it pebble in her grasp. So beautiful. Jackie thinks that Lottie is so fucking beautiful.

Lottie's breath hitches at the sound of Jackie's voice, how breathy and high and wanting it is, keening from her throat. And Lottie wants to make her feel like this all the time, wants her to make those happy little noises that fill Lottie up with so much fire and joy. She rolls her hips again as she feels the pads of Jackie's thumbs graze against her breasts, skin stiffening under her touch. She moans breathily into Jackie's mouth, one hand digging into her hair, tugging slightly, pulling her head to the side so that Lottie can wrap her lips around her neck again, biting and sucking. She thinks this is the most amazing thing in the world, having this girl, touching this girl, tasting this girl. 

“Jackie,” she sighs out into her neck. Hot breath tickling skin. She drags her tongue along the curve of it, up to her chin. Nibbles on her jaw, before she leans back just enough to slide her hands up Jackie's sides, dragging her vest with her fingers until her stomach is exposed and she can flatten her pains against the skin there, lean into Jackie's hands on her chest, and roll her hips again, watching Jackie's face with the utmost interest.

There’s no doubt that, by the time they head back to the village, they’re both going to be absolutely covered in marks. Both of them with their silly sharp teeth and their desire to leave silly red marks on skin. Jackie would think it’s funny, does think it’s funny. Unfortunately, so does the rest of the team, with as much as they get ribbed about it. It’s hard to be too upset when it feels so good, especially when it’s teeth and hands and rolling hips to accompany them. 

Jackie trembles as hands brush up her side, over her stomach. She groans as hips roll into hers again and again. When she looks up and sees Lottie’s eyes, so deep and dark and endless, she feels lost in them again. Eyes that are soft. Eyes that are hungry. Jackie can’t look away. Honestly? She wouldn’t want to if she could. The moment feels perfect. It’s perfect. She’s so lucky. She thinks she says the words out loud, control over her tongue gone. She doesn’t care. It’s true. 

“You’re perfect,” Lottie purrs back, leaning down to press a kiss to Jackie’s stomach, just above her navel. Her skin always so cool, chilled against her warm tongue as Lottie drags it up her abdomen, to the edge of her bra. She places a kiss in the middle of her chest on her sternum, lets her nails trace gentle red lines into her sides, as if marking Jackie as hers. Because she is, she’s hers, and in this moment, right here, no one else can have her. Not the Wilderness, not a dead girl, and not a society that left them all behind.

But, after a long moment, Lottie moves her hands to tug Jackie’s vest back down, gives her a gentle kiss on the side of her mouth. She cups her face and smiles down at her and says, “Hungry?”

It should be gross, the way that Lottie licks her, tastes he, but it’s so fucking hot that Jackie’s back arches off the ground. She feels like she’s about to overheat, like she’s burning from the inside. Her body shudders as nails leave marks over her skin. She wants more. She needs more. And it’s so close to more that she can practically taste it. 

And then Lottie pulls away, tugs her vest down. “Wha?” Jackie makes a rough, stupid sound that gets trapped in her throat. She blinks up at Lottie, frowning. “What the fuck?” she whines.

Lottie can’t help but chuckle. She pets along Jackie’s face, smiling down at her. “Don’t worry,” she tells her, “we’ll finish in a bit.” But Lottie has plans and she wants this to be more than perfect. She leans over, presses a gentle kiss to Jackie’s lips, as her hands take Jackie’s and squeeze them. “Trust me.” 

Jackie groans, closing her eyes and leaning back. She squeezes Lottie’s hands back. “You did that on purpose,” she mutters, cracking one eye open to look at Lottie’s silly, smiling face. “Fine,” she says, sighing and leaning up on her elbows. “Alright, fine. I’m trusting you.”

Lottie nuzzles the side of Jackie’s face, giving her another gentle kiss before tugging her up with her. “We don’t want the food to get cold,” she tells her, “I worked so hard on it.” Mostly, she just watched Mari cook it while giving little tips and watching annoyance flash over her face before she would smile and then do what she suggested. 

Shifting, she grabs the plates and food, dolling it out and setting a plate in front of Jackie before she stands. She pulls out one of the matches she brought with her and begins to light each candle in turn, until they’re all flickering with small flames. She sits back down, smiling again. “I’m no expert in romance, but I do know candles are like, part of it all.”

“Oh, candles are super romantic,” Jackie coos, watching as Lottie lights the candles before sitting back down again. A candlelit dinner, a lovely date, a quiet night. It’s really all that Jackie could have ever asked for, and she finds herself… smitten as she looks at Lottie. “You’re definitely the most romantic person I’ve ever been on a date with. And I know you’re not just trying to get into my pants, too.”

“Haven’t you only ever dated one other person?” Lottie asks. But if Jeff was really her only competition for best date award, then Lottie couldn’t possibly fail. She smiles, sweet and soft. “I am trying to get into your pants, that’s just not all I’m trying to do.” It’s a tease, because Lottie would be perfectly okay with it just being this, but she can’t deny how much she likes touching Jackie and kissing her and making her moan. She’s happy Jackie likes it, too. 

Picking up their cups of berry wine, she holds one out to Jackie. “I just want you to know that…you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. And the best girlfriend. You make me feel…actually loved.” She feels her face growing hot again, looks away. “You make me feel safe.”

“Yeah, but you blow him out of the water,” Jackie teases. “This is a real homerun. Which he couldn’t manage.” She laughs a little. She doesn’t think she’d mind, if all Lottie wanted was to get in her pants. She’s pretty grateful, though, that Lottie wants more. This started out as more. It started out as comfort. It ended up progressing from touching sweetly to kissing, to more. So much more. Jackie never thought she’d like this so much. She didn’t think she could. Selfishly, she’s glad to be proven wrong.

Jackie takes the cup, returning Lottie’s soft, gentle smile. She’s so soft. How could anyone be afraid of her? Jackie can barely remember the girl from the last time they’d drank berry wine, the girl with black eyes and stained lips, the girl who shoved her away and told her she didn’t matter. That girl isn’t real, not really. She’s certainly not here, telling Jackie that she feels loved and safe. Her heart clenches, love and joy and sadness and grief all tangled up in her chest. “All I want is to make you feel loved, safe. That’s, like, the most important thing to me.”

“You do,” Lottie says, her voice calm but quick. She wants Jackie to know that. She hopes she can make her feel that way, too, even if Lottie thinks she’s bad at that. Making people feel safe, feel loved. She tries but she’s never had good examples. She just does what her heart tells her to do. She’s learning that sometimes she’s wrong about that stuff, though, and so now she’s trying harder. Better. She wants to be better and that’s large in part due to Jackie.

Because she loves Jackie and she wants to make Jackie happy. More than happy. “I’m head over heels for you, Jackie Taylor,” she murmurs, reaching out to brush her knuckles along Jackie’s cheek.

Jackie’s fucked up every important relationship in her life up until this point. The last thing she wants to do is fuck up this one. “Lottie Matthews,” she says, her voice taking on that lofty quality she’d sometimes use when talking to the team, “I have never felt for anyone the way I feel for you.” She’d never let herself. She never thought she could. Now, she’s practically tripping over her feelings for Lottie. She couldn’t escape them if she tried. She never wants to try.

Lottie flushes. She leans forward and presses another heavy kiss to Jackie’s lips, holding her face between her hands. When she pulls away, she stays close, the smile on her lips feeling permanent and plaster. “Thank you.” What else is there to say other than thank you? Thank you for loving her, thank you for giving her the chance, thank you for giving her all the things she never knew she needed. All the things she’d longed for but forgotten about. “Here’s to us,” she murmurs, tapping her cup to Jackie’s. 

There’s nothing for Lottie to thank Jackie for, but she doesn’t get a chance to say that as lips smother her own, and she sighs against the feel of them. She presses another kiss, quick but sweet, as their cups tap together. “To us,” she says, taking a sip. It’s tart, but it isn’t awful. Better than the last batch. “And you made all of the food, right?” Jackie asks, a teasing look in her eye. “I had no idea you were such a chef. I always thought you had someone do that for you.”

“I oversaw the making of most of the food, yes,” Lottie corrects, smiling. At that, she shrugs. “My dad did, yeah. But my mom didn’t care enough to keep the cook on staff once I got into high school. We just had a maid. Ninety percent of my meals were cereal or waffles or delivery. I eventually learned enough to make sure I didn’t die from lack of nutrition.” Her mother was in a sorry state by the time their plane crashed and Lottie disappeared from her life. She sort of assumes her life is probably going a lot better now, without Lottie in it. 

“Well, that sounds very official,” Jackie teases. “That’s, like, head chef, right? The one that oversees it all?” She hums. That sounds like more than she knows how to make. “My mom preferred baking. When she cooked it was… not good.” It’s not like she let Jackie eat much of it, anyway. “She thought I should learn, you know, good wife shit, but I almost set the kitchen on fire, totally on accident, by the way, like three times before she gave up. Again, it’s not like she was teaching me gourmet shit, anyway.” If Jackie wanted food that actually tastes good, she went to Shauna’s on one of the few nights her mom wasn’t working. Not like that’s an option out here, though. Not like it would be ever again.

“I think that’s called being a manager, actually,” Lottie says, chuckling. “I’m not that good at cooking, but I know enough. And like, what goes with what. Guess I prefer more the growing of the food.” She’d kind of always liked gardening, even if there was no room at her dad’s for one, her mom at least let her dig around in the backyard and make a small flower bed. By the time Lottie got older, though, her mother told her to stop and just let the actual gardener take care of it. “I remember your mom only ever brought quiches to the fancy cookouts. She really liked making those, didn’t she?” 

She smiles again, scooting a bit closer to Jackie as she picks up some of her food and takes a bite. “Don’t worry, I’ll do all the cooking for us.”

Jackie considers Lottie’s words. “But head chef sounds cooler. And it’d be funny to tease Mari with.” She’s mostly forgiven Mari for upsetting Lottie, telling herself that’s just the way that Mari is Still, it’s fun to tease her. She makes it easy. “You do like playing in the dirt, I’ve noticed.” She notices the way Lottie’s arms look when she’s digging around. Her face scrunches in disgust. “Ugh, please don’t remind me. They were all as good as they looked, I promise you. There’s a reason we had so many leftovers to bring back home.” Those cookouts were always stupid. She didn’t miss any of that. 

It’s probably important, in this instance, to eat everything that’s on her plate, so, when Lottie starts eating, Jackie joins her, taking a few bites before grinning. She holds her hand over her mouth while she swallows. “My hero. We can live off of cereal and waffles and fresh berries.”

“It would be funny,” Lottie agrees, taking another bite of her own food. “What’s so wrong with that? Can’t a girl play in the dirt while wearing a sundress?” Neither of her parents had ever cared enough to tell her if it was wrong or not, and so Lottie had done it. Kneeling in the dirt in her expensive, pink dresses and getting mud and grass stains on the knees of all her corduroys. 

“You mean tuna quiche isn’t, like, a delicacy?” Lottie scrunches her nose at the reminder of how that one had smelled. She’d never eaten any of them, mostly because her mom would shake her head at Lottie in disgust when she looked at them and at the time, all Lottie had wanted was to make her mom proud, and so she’d passed on it. Now she knew she’d been lucky to not have.

“Hey, I said I can cook more than that now,” she huffs, but it doesn’t last long, a smile trickling onto her lips. “But I’d probably just hire us a cook. You deserve only the best.”

“I mean, according to my mother, no, girls should not be playing in the dirt while wearing a sundress.” Jackie wrinkles up her nose. She hadn’t been allowed to play in the dirt that much. To the point that, even now, she sometimes chafes at feeling too dirty out here. She can’t help it. She’s well aware that there’s no way to reach the same level of clean. It doesn’t matter. Her brain’s just funny. Just like how she can’t escape her mom, even in the middle of the wilderness. She laughs. “Oh, it’s a fucking delicacy alright. Meant to be enjoyed sparingly. Or, if you’re really lucky, never.” She thinks Mari’s a better cook than her mother, let it be known. That’s not exactly a compliment to Mari.

“Well, you didn’t elaborate,” Jackie tells her. “How am I supposed to know what else you can cook if you don’t tell me? I was just going off of the information I was given, you know.” Another bite. It’s actually not terrible. Food hasn’t been terrible in months. The wine is even nice. The berries are sweet. It’s good. It’s actually pretty good. “Aw. My girlfriend, Ms. Money Bags. Wants to get me a private chef and everything.”

“Well your mom is wrong about a lot of things, so.” Lottie just shrugs. She’s always disliked Jackie’s mother, she was shrewd and talked to Jackie like she owned her instead of like Jackie was her child. Not that Lottie had a good example of what parenting should look like, she just knew that wasn’t it. “I’m one of the lucky ones, then. I never had to taste any of her cooking.” She’d avidly avoided it, too, after that one time Van got food poisoning from something Jackie brought to a team party that her mother cooked, and she was the only one brave enough to try it. Lottie very specifically remembers helping Tai hold Van’s hair back as she clutched the toilet bowl and begged for death. It was kind of funny in retrospect.

“I can make mac and cheese. And a mean spaghetti. I even cooked a whole chicken by myself once. Granted it was pre-cooked from the store and all I had to do was microwave it, but, it still counts, I think.” She takes another bite. “And I can make pheasant wings, too, apparently.” She grins, wide. Lottie was never a chatty person, but with Jackie, all she wants to do is talk. She wants to tell her everything about herself, about her childhood, about what she’s thinking. Lottie’s always been afraid of her own mind, but with Jackie, she thinks it all feels just a little bit easier to be nice to herself. “Anything for you.”

Jackie doesn’t need to be told that twice. Or maybe she does. Maybe she needs to be reminded, every single day, that her mom was wrong about a lot of things. Jackie doesn’t need a guy. It’s okay to like girls. She can be happy like this. She can be loved like this. Love doesn’t have to hurt. “Very lucky,” she murmurs, reaching out to tuck some hair behind Lottie’s ear before pulling away and resuming her food.

“God, I miss mac and cheese,” Jackie groans. She misses pasta, period, but that’s not really a new thing. She feels like she’s said something similar around Homecoming when she had to make sure she kept her weight down for her dress, and then she’d just kept going like that for the rest of the school year. She can’t remember the last time she had mac and cheese. She takes another bite, nodding. “Your pheasant wings aren’t bad, not bad at all. Maybe you should try out for head chef. Take Mari’s job, have her working all the menial labor tasks like the rest of us.”

“I’d do just about anything for one bite of cheese, really,” Lottie nods, chewing thoughtfully. The truth is that she misses a lot of things, but there’s not a single part of her that wants to go back. Nothing back there is worth it to her. Nothing. 

Because she knows already that if she does go back, she’ll lose everything. It doesn’t matter if they all killed a young boy and ate him or that they all let Shauna freeze to death-- Lottie is the one with schizophrenia and so Lottie will be the one that all the blame falls on, and Lottie will be the one who gets locked up forever, doomed to a room with white walls and a bed with straps for her hands and feet. 

She pushes the thought from her mind, because right now, she does have everything, and she wants nothing more than to enjoy it. “Oh, Mari would hate. It would be pretty funny, though.” 

“I don’t want it to be good cheese, either. Mac and cheese from a box. A fucking Dorito. Cheese in a can,” Jackie says dreamily. She literally cannot imagine what that last one tastes like. Probably equal parts delicious and disgusting. 

It’s easier to talk about food when they’re actually eating something. The hunger pains are less. Jackie eats, and she watches Lottie, and she gets ready to pull her out when that look comes over her face, but Lottie doesn’t actually need her too. She’s gotten pretty good at pulling herself out. “How long do you think you could last manning the pot before her passive aggressiveness got to be too much?”

“Oh, yes, that gross cheese whiz stuff that’s more grease than cheese.” Lottie remembers getting wasted with Nat and stealing cheez whiz cans from the gas station store, laughing their asses off as they tripped over their own feet and poured mounds of fake cheese into their mouths. She doesn’t mention that to Jackie. 

“I’m pretty good at ignoring people, actually, so probably a while,” Lottie decides, finishing off the rest of her food and taking a sip of the berry wine. It’s so much better than she remembers, which means Mari has learned since last time. Probably a good thing. “I think I’d let her take it back, though. I much prefer not having to be the center of attention like that.”

“Cheese should not be that texture,” Jackie says fondly. She laughs a little, thinking about Mari growing more and more annoyed as Lottie just doesn’t pay her any mind. “You’re so kind. And I think you should have all the attention, be adored, but if you don’t want that, then I guess that’s okay.” Jackie recalls someone saying that Lottie wasn’t a god. Maybe Jackie thinks she should still be worshiped, though. She eats her food. She takes a drink. She thinks about other places she’d like to put her mouth.

“God, it really shouldn’t.” Shaking her head, Lottie gazes sweetly over at Jackie, still enthralled with her and the idea that she’s hers. “I really don’t like all that attention. Just yours.” She only needed Jackie’s, anyway. She was the one that made Lottie happy. She reaches into the basket to pull out the bottle of water she brought with them, too, rinsing down the berry wine and cooked bird. Jackie is looking at her with something akin to hunger, but Lottie knows it’s hunger for something that isn’t food. Smiling, she holds out the bottle to her. “So…you liked it all?”

Selfishly, Jackie wants to be the only one that gives Lottie attention, too. She thinks Lottie deserves all of it, all the good thoughts and attention and being worshiped, not just because she hears forest gods but because she’s Lottie and she’s amazing. But she wants to be the only one that gives Lottie that attention. She takes the water bottle and drinks quickly before handing it back. “I did. Of course I did. My compliments to the chefs.”

It makes Lottie preen, something she doesn’t do often. Sure, she was good at a lot of things, and great at a few of them, but people didn’t really pay her genuine compliments the way they did other people. Her parents never looked at her grades and said “good job” or her soccer skills and said “I’m so proud”. So she took what she could get, and Jackie’s compliments always made her feel the best.

Taking the water bottle back, Lottie sets it aside before she cleans their plates up and also sets the basket aside, off the blanket and out of their way. She presses a soft kiss to Jackie’s lips, and as she tugs on her to lay back with her, she can see the inky sheen the sky has taken on above them, telling of the coming night. The moon is already full and bright above their heads, and she pulls Jackie into her, gazing up at it with a nostalgic fondness. 

“I’ve always liked looking at the stars,” she muses, wondering if it made her sound even more weird than usual. “It’s nice to know there’s something out there that’s so much bigger than all of this. That…the universe just keeps moving no matter what happens down here.”

It’s easy to let Lottie lay her down, and Jackie curls into her arms, content as she looks up. “They’ve always been pretty.” She knows what a few of them are, even. Some sort of Shauna osmosis, a transfer of knowledge just from being around her for so long. She forgets the names a lot. “It makes us seem… pretty insignificant, she murmurs. “Do you know the different constellations?”

“Some of them,” Lottie tells her. “Different cultures have different ones, though. Most of the ancient people of the world used them to tell stories.” She points up at the sky. “Like Orion and his dogs, hunting through the stars to find their prey. Or Casseiopia, the most beautiful queen who was damned to push the sun across the sky because of a jealous mother.” Sometimes, as a kid, the only friends Lottie had were the stars and the stories they told. She sighs. “My favorite was always Ophicuis. The serpent-bearer, he was an old healer who was said to have learned how to bring people back to life, after he watched a snake bring special herbs to another to revive it.”

Jackie listens to Lottie’s voice, letting it wash over her soothingly. “I remember Orion,” she murmurs. “Big Dipper and Little Dipper.” What would she do if she could bring people back to life? The answer is immediate. Shauna. She’d bring Shauna back. But this… Jackie snuggles a little closer to Lottie. Would she still have this with Shauna here? At the moment, she wants to say yes. She loves Shauna, but she loves Lottie, too. She wants this, too. She needs it. “Did he get in trouble?” she asks. “Bringing people back to life doesn’t seem like something people would be too happy about.”

“He was banished,” Lottie answers, “for being different. For going against the natural order of things.” She looks up at the stars with a bittersweet nostalgia. “They sent him to live among the stars forever. A sick joke on his gift.” It was probably why she liked it so much, she knew how Ophicuis felt. She, too, had been banished, once upon a time, to live among a place that made sick light of her differences. Her gift. She turns on her side, wraps her arm around Jackie’s waist. She presses a kiss to her cheek and pushes any thought of getting lost among the stars away, because she wants to stay here now, with Jackie, forever.

“Must be kind of lonely, only having the stars,” Jackie says softly. She turns on her side as well, facing Lottie. The stars are pretty, but she has more, now. And she wants it. She thinks she’d want this in any life, if she knew she could have it, if she knew how good it felt to not hurt all the time. She moves closer, pressing her nose against Lottie’s collarbone as she pulls their bodies flush. She wants this. Every part of this. The closeness might be her favorite, though, something she thinks about as she brushes a hand up and through Lottie’s hair.

“It is.” Lottie nuzzles into the side of Jackie’s head, sighing as hands play in her hair. She wraps her up tighter, intertwining their legs. It was lonely growing up, it was lonely in high school-- but she’s not lonely anymore. She has Jackie and that’s all Lottie needs. 

She unravels enough to look into Jackie’s eyes, sparkling under the full moon and its light, before she moves in to press their lips together, savoring the moment and the flavor of Jackie’s skin. She tastes of berry wine and Lottie thinks she can get more drunk on Jackie than any sort of fermented fruits. 

If Lottie tries to pull away from her again, Jackie thinks she’ll actually cry. They don’t have to do anything more than kiss (she’d really like to do more than kiss), but she needs them touching as much as possible, as close as they can be, lips sliding against each other as they breathe the same air. She laps at the way the wine lingers on Lottie’s lips, and she pulls herself closer, bracketing Lottie’s head with her arms as she leans in a little more, not quite in Lottie’s lap.

There won’t be any pulling away from Jackie this time. Lottie thinks she couldn’t even if she wanted to, at this point. Not that she would ever want to. She’s already lost in the taste of her, the feel of her, and her hands resume their position from earlier, sliding against the silky skin of Jackie’s hips before moving up her sides, fingers trailing intentional lines to her back. She kisses her, deep and longing, tongue licking against Jackie’s lip, into her mouth, asking for more, always wanting more. She sighs happily against her, fingers playing with the underside of her bra.

Jackie wastes no time letting Lottie in, shivering under the feeling of fingers on her skin. Soft, hot fingers, leaving trails of heat everywhere they go. She decides to go ahead and straddle Lottie, pulling herself into Lottie’s lap, settling against her hips. It’s easy to slip her hands back under Lottie’s shirt, under her still loose bra. She hums happily as she touches skin, Lottie’s tongue in her mouth and her warm body underneath her. It makes Jackie burn. She wants more. 

Lottie inhales sharply as Jackie moves on top of her, hands sliding under her own shirt. It seems she’s more eager than Lottie thought, to pick right back up where they were. She’s more than happy to oblige, quickly unhooking the clasp of Jackie’s bra with one hand while the other tugs at the bottom of Jackie’s vest. She pulls away just enough to grab the bottom hem of it and pull it up over Jackie’s head, tossing it aside as she moves to strip her bra off quickly, too, hands wasting no time in going to her chest, fingers brushing over already taught and sensitive skin. 

“Yours, now,” Jackie breathes, leaning into Lottie’s touch even as she tugs at the bottom of Lottie’s shirt, trying to pull it off even from her position. She helps Lottie sit up enough to get it off and makes sure it doesn’t land on one of the candles before pushing Lottie’s bra out of the way, too. She just wants to touch. She can’t get enough, actually. She looks down at Lottie with dilated pupils, unfiltered desire. How could she not want more and more and more of this? The words come easier, now, tumbling from her lips without her even thinking about them. “I love you.”

They make Lottie shiver. “I love you, too.” And it’s so easy to say back. Her hands circle Jackie’s waist, caressing the small of her back, as she pulls her back down to her, smashing their lips together, teeth and tongues. She kisses her with a wanting greed, like she can never get enough. 

It takes so little effort for her to flip them, tumbling Jackie onto her back and staying between her legs as she looks down at her with hunger, eyes wide and heady. She licks her lips before she’s moving her head down to kiss Jackie’s mouth, her cheek, her chin. To her jaw and her neck and down further, leaving hot trails of open mouthed kisses and indents of teeth.

Jackie moans as Lottie flips them, liquid heat pooling low in her stomach, between her legs. It makes her heart start pounding, especially as a hot mouth starts trailing over her body. Her hands are still gripping Lottie’s chest, massaging soft skin. Her eyes roll back at the feeling of teeth biting into her, leaving another mark as Lottie moves down her body. She rolls her hips. Between the slight floaty feeling from the wine and just how turned on she’d been earlier, Jackie already feels like she’s on fire in the best way.

Humming, Lottie kisses down Jackie’s chest, between her breasts, sighing happily against her skin as she feels Jackie’s hands on her own. It’s the most wonderful feeling, the most wonderful taste, and she’s already drunk on it, rolling her hips down into Jackie’s. She knows how wound up Jackie is already but Lottie is here to take her time, to make sure Jackie knows she doesn’t just love her, she worships her. She wants her to know this has a meaning beyond just flesh and blood. She wants the idea of their love to become ritual, because it already is for Lottie, and she  plans to prove her faith with her head between Jackie’s legs as she cries out into the night.

But first, she kisses across to one of Jackie’s breasts, wraps her lips around it, sucking. Her tongue brushes against stiff skin, puckered from her touch while her hands hold Jackie’s hips in place and grind against hers in turn. 

Jackie’s hands flex, and she moves them up, one going into Lottie’s hair, the other wrapping around her back, nails scraping along skin. She’s moaning quietly, her breathing heavy. Her heartbeat thuds. She looks at Lottie, head buried in her chest, and she looks at the moon, glowing bright, and she thinks this is perfect. It’s perfect. She tries to move her hips, but Lottie’s got her pinned, and it doesn’t matter because Lottie’s grinding against her anyway. Okay, maybe it matters. She just wants to feel Lottie, too. 

Lottie agrees that this is just perfect. Jackie doesn’t need to say it because Lottie can feel it in the way she struggles to move, can hear it in the way she moans. It fills her ears like music and makes her muscles tense and tighten and snap with want. She kisses back across Jackie’s chest, to her other breast, lavishing it just as much as the other, this time letting her teeth bite down gently on the hardened nub of sensitive skin, before soothing it with her tongue. She moans against Jackie’s skin as she feels nails raking down her back and the muscles between her shoulder blades twitch with it. She gives in to Jackie’s want and rolls her hips again, feeling the heat between her legs. Her heart races, she wants to taste her; she almost feels as if she’s salivating for it. 

When she pulls away to breathe, panting heavy, she gazes down at Jackie in reverence, cheeks flushed and pupils wide with want. The way the moonlight makes her skin glow makes Jackie look like something holy and its swallowing Lottie and all her inhibitions whole. 

Jackie’s panting just as hard as Lottie is by the time Lottie pulls away and looks down at her, and Jackie thinks her skin has turned into a live wire. She’s buzzing. She feels electric. The way that Lottie looks at her would make her blush if she wasn’t already, from her ear to her chest, sweat beading at her hairline. Still, she’s gentle as she moves her hand from Lottie’s hair to her cheek, brushing against it as she stares into fathomless eyes, dark and sweet. 

Leaning down, Lottie places a soft, lingering kiss to Jackie’s lips, before she begins to lower herself down her body again, this time leaving the gentlest of kisses and touches as she goes. Her fingers trail down skin until they reach fabric, lips pressing a line down the center of her chest, to her stomach, to her navel. Below it. As Lottie moves, she tugs Jackie’s pants down, lowering herself with them. Lips trail along her exposed thighs, leaving hot breath wherever she goes, until she’s pulling them from Jackie’s ankles and setting them aside. 

Hands smooth up the sides of Jackie’s legs, then, taking their time, slow and measured, making sure Jackie can feel every movement of her fingertips as they graze against cool skin. She feels Jackie’s skin form goosebumps under her touch, kisses the tops of her thighs, lingering a warm tongue against them. Her eyes glance once back up to Jackie’s before she’s hooking her fingers into her underwear and tugging those down, too.

It gets harder to hold onto Lottie as she moves, so Jackie’s hands grip the blanket underneath her, fingers flexing and tightening as she shudders. She leans up on her elbows, watching Lottie as she moves, as the trail of goosebumps prickle to the surface everywhere that Lottie touches her. Her lips are parted, her eyes are taking everything in. She lifts her hips just enough for Lottie to strip her bare.

Jackie sits up and leans forward, not stopping Lottie but resting her hands on her hips. One moves to the button of Lottie’s shorts, playing with it. “Yours, too,” she murmurs, pulling Lottie up just enough to look at her. “Please.”

Once Jackie is fully undressed, Lottie moves back up at her beckon, her fluttering just at the sight of her naked form beneath her. She nods, then, shifts enough to help Jackie remove her own shorts, her underwear, placing them next to Jackie's on the blanket. She wastes little time in reconnecting their lips, feels the heat between Jackie's legs against her own, groaning into her mouth hungrily. She moves her hips, a gentle roll at first, teasing slowly as her hands move to massage at Jackie's chest, languid and purposeful in her movements, like a holy rite being performed. 

Jackie almost expects heated, greedy touches and getting tangled together as soon as they’re both undressed, but instead it’s slower than that. Still greedy. Their mouths are hungry, and Lottie’s groan rolls through Jackie’s body like fire. But each touch is slow, thought out, and Jackie leans into every single one. Her hips roll up to meet Lottie’s, her chest arches into her touch. She brushes her hands over every exposed bit of skin she can find, so all of it, palms seeking out Lottie’s warmth like she just can’t get enough.

Jackie's hands move almost frantically over Lottie's body, and it makes a shudder room through her, moving her hips into her a little harder. She lets each roll of them grind slowly together, wet heat between them both making her legs feel taught. Fingers pinch delicately at the skin of Jackie's breast, rolling it between forefinger and thumb as she leans down once more, capturing her mouth in a searing kiss. It doesn't linger as long as the others before Lottie pulls back. She sinks lower, lips pressed to her collarbone, then lower, to just between her breasts, then lower, to her stomach. Lower, against her hip bone, teeth grazing the landmarks there. Lower, to the inside of Jackie's thigh, and Lottie kneels between her knees like she might an altar, hands coming down to hold onto her hips. 

She lingers, mouth hovering over Jackie's pelvis, and she can smell her wet heat and she wants to taste her so bad. But she waits for Jackie to make eye contact with her, smiling from between her legs. She reaches one hand up, takes Jackie's in it, squeezes. “Grab the blanket,” she tells her.

“You don’t…” Jackie breathes, looking down at Lottie as she stares up at her from between her legs. She’s twitchy, reeling from the kiss, those fingers, soft lips trailing all over her skin. She wants to tell Lottie that she doesn’t have to do that, but…

It looks like Lottie really wants to do that.

So Jackie does as she says, squeezing Lottie’s hand back before she grabs the blanket, still leaning up on her elbows as she watches Lottie, her eyes curious, heady. And Lottie looks hungry, like Jackie’s a meal, and Jackie wants to be devoured, maybe as much as Lottie wants to devour her. Another thing that Jackie wants that she never thought she would.

Lottie just smiles back. She presses one last kiss to Jackie's stomach before she sinks back down and finally lets herself indulge. 

And she tastes divine, holy, like what Lottie thinks how pure ecstasy must taste. It sends shivers down her spine, into her stomach, her toes, her fingers. She flattens her tongue against Jackie, licks in long, purposefully stripes. She's wet and slick and hot and Lottie can't get enough of it, fingers curling into Jackie's sides, holding her hips down so she can't move too far away. She eats her like she's starved, lips and tongue working together to pull out every last bit of her she can, moving between the folds of her center and up to the sensitive bundle of nerves that makes Jackie moan in the most wonderful way, music and angels singing to Lottie's ears. 

Of course it feels that good. That’s the first thought Jackie has as Lottie’s mouth moves between her legs. Then, it’s the only thought she has that’s even remotely coherent as she gets lost in the way that Lottie feels. She can’t help how loud she gets. Her fingers dig into the blanket, her back arches off the ground. Jackie was going to try and watch, taken at first by how pretty Lottie looked between her legs, but she can’t hold herself up. She can’t keep her eyes open. 

“Lottie!” Jackie cries out, her hips moving but not enough. She’s held in place. There’s nowhere else she’d want to go. 

Lottie moans at the sound of Jackie's cries. She thinks she might have died and gone to heaven with her. Her tongue slides against Jackie as her hips try to move into her mouth and Lottie sees stars. Not just the one in the sky. She wraps her lips around Jackie's clit and sucks. Her nails dig into her hips before her arms move, wanting a better angle. They hook under Jackie's knees and lift her hips up ever so, and Lottie slides her tongue inside of Jackie, desperate to taste every inch of her.

Jackie feels Lottie’s own moans vibrating through her, and it only makes her louder. She can’t fucking help it. Between fooling around before dinner and now this, she’s so close that it’s like she’s dying from it. She actually does think she dies from it a little bit as Lottie sucks before digging her tongue into her. Her eyes roll back as heat coils tight and releases. Jackie moans through her pleasure, feeling like she’s sinking into the blanket underneath her. “Fuck,” she manages, panting as she feels Lottie still between her legs. 

As Jackie comes into her mouth, Lottie moans, too, savoring every moment of it, of the divine taste of her. She pulls away to take in a breath, wipes the back of her hand across her mouth as she licks her lips. “You're so beautiful,” she murmurs, one arm staying hooked under Jackie's leg as the other drops, scratching down the underside of her thigh. It hovers near Jackie's still soaked entrance and Lottie grins, leaning over enough to press a heated kiss to Jackie's lips, open and teething, inviting her to taste herself on Lottie's tongue. 

It's all too easy to slip two fingers inside of her as Lottie has her leg held down, pressed all the way up to her chest. “So flexible,” she mumbles against her lips. 

“Oh, my god. Holy fuck,” Jackie whimpers against Lottie’s lips, her arms moving to wrap around her neck. She can taste herself as Lottie kisses her, and she thinks it should be a turn off, she believes it should be a turn off, but it’s not, it’s amazing, and Lottie’s inside her again, and Jackie gasps. Her hips jerk. “I– ah,” she tries, but sentences are hard, her eyes rolling back again. She nips at Lottie’s lips and pants into her mouth. “I do a lot of, fuck, stretches.”

Lottie's throat vibrates with a happy noise as she starts to move her hand, slow at first, letting Jackie come down just enough from her last high so she can build it back up again. She wants to hear Jackie shouting her name to the stars and she wants to see how many times she can make her come undone in her hands, her mouth. She can feel her muscles already clenching around Lottie's fingers as she curls them ever so, knuckle deep and reaching that sweet spot she already knows drives Jackie crazy. 

“I can tell,” Lottie exhales, moaning against lips that seek her own like a moth to a flame. She wants everyone and everything to know that Jackie is hers, and that she is something holy and perfect and divine. Lottie moves her fingers in and out of her in an agonizing, rhythmic pace, watching her face with reverence and wonder and counting each star she can see reflected in her pupils.

Jackie wonders, for a brief second, if maybe Lottie is trying to kill her. This would be a pretty great way to go, even if it’s a little silly that the girl who worked so hard to keep her alive for months is now the one to do her in. It’s worth it, though. It feels worth it. The way that Lottie moans against her lips pulls a similar sound out of Jackie, and she tangles her hands in Lottie’s hair. 

“Please,” she says. She doesn’t even know what she’s begging for, but she’s begging. She thinks she’ll beg Lottie for the rest of her life. Her eyes are fluttering, unable to stay open for too long, but she meets Lottie’s gaze as she watches her, and that’s a look that Jackie thinks she can get lost in. She clenches around Lottie’s fingers, but her hips move up in time to greet each thrust. Her breath shudders, and her heart pounds. Lottie is something holy as she touches her. Jackie feels worshiped and worshipful. Maybe religion isn’t a church or an alter or even a forest but a girl with eyes so dark they put the night sky to shame.

It's a beautiful thing to watch, a girl getting lost in the feeling of Lottie inside of her. It's what people look for their entire lives, that deeper meaning, that need to know what it's all for. It's all for this, this girl, this place, this person. It's all Lottie needs, all she wants, all she can think about. She moves her hand a little faster, thrusting into Jackie a little harder, watching her body move with each one, hips rolling up to meet her hand. “Hold onto it,” she whispers against her skin, “hold on for as long as you can.” She wants to show Jackie what heaven feels like, with her mouth, her fingers. They curl inside her once more and she pauses, lingers, looks down at Jackie the way a prophet looks at their goddess. 

She can't stop herself from kissing Jackie again, harder, rougher, feeling slightly animal, something wild and feral for the girl below her. Her mouth moves down and teeth dig into skin wherever they can, until she's wrapping her lips around Jackie's breast again, and biting down on the sensitive skin there. 

Jackie manages to nod at Lottie’s words, a request, a command, an ordinance from god. She could hold on, though now it definitely feels like Lottie’s trying to kill her. She closes her eyes, digs her hands into soft hair, tugging as they kiss and Lottie’s lips and teeth mark up her body. She cries out again as Lottie bites down, feeling that familiar burn and coil in her stomach, and she’s panting, trying to hold on as long as possible, clenching again around Lottie’s fingers. 

“You’re good,” she says, her voice higher than normal, a whine pulling itself from her lips. “You’re so good. You’re so fucking good, Lottie.” She’s eating up Jackie’s brain, consuming it, consuming every part of her. The leg that isn’t pinned wraps around Lottie’s waist and tugs her even closer as her hips move in time with the way that Lottie touches her. 

“Perfect,” Lottie mumbles, a little incoherent as she gets lost in the sound of Jackie’s moans, her babbling, her cries. “So perfect.” She moves her hand a little faster, then, keeping up with Jackie’s hips, pressing in a little more. Jackie’s leg traps her against her but Lottie isn’t going anywhere. This is the only place she wants to be. God, she loves this. This girl, this moment, this feeling. She’s panting, moaning, doing whatever she can to feel as much of Jackie as possible. She feels her muscles clenching around her fingers and she curls them again. 

 This is perfect. For as long as Jackie can remember, she’s tried so hard to be perfect. She’s felt like she had to be, like it was the only option for her. She had to do everything just so. Perfection looked like good grades and gentle smiles, perfectly curled hair and clean dresses. This is messy. Both of them are sweaty. They’re loud. They’re moving together and a little out of synch, trying to keep up with each other. This is perfect. The way that Lottie touches her makes her shudder. She tugs at Lottie’s hair, trying to bring her back up, back close to press their lips together once again.

At her prodding, Lottie brings her face back up, kissing Jackie hungrily. She moves her hips with the thrust of her hand, tongue lapping at Jackie’s mouth. This feels like something holy. Divine. Like Lottie is leaving her body and becoming something more than herself, connected to Jackie in a way that she’d never thought possible. “Jackie,” she sighs, panting, moaning. “You can let go.” She wants to hear her call out her name, wants the trees and the wind and the moon to know that Jackie is her’s. No one and nothing else can have her. Not a dead girl and not the Wilderness. 

Like this, Jackie thinks she’d do whatever Lottie asked her to. Whatever she’s capable of, at least. Her throat is choked up with moans, and she doesn’t think she’s going to be doing a lot of moving after this, so maybe she can’t talk or run a mile if Lottie asks her to immediately, but she’s been given a much easier task. She cries out Lottie’s name, loud and uncontrolled, again and again, and that coil inside of her tightens until it snaps, clenched around Lottie’s fingers as that liquid heat rolls through her. 

It's so beautiful, the sound of Jackie's release. It echoes through the trees around them and bounces off the jealous bark. Lottie can hear Jackie etching her name into the stars themselves and she wants to be up there with them, with her, holding onto her as tight as she can for as long as she can. And Lottie can feel Jackie's muscles tensing around her and shuddering through it all, as she grasps at Lottie's body like a buoy in a storm. 

She holds her through it, coaxes her down, lets the pounding sound of their hearts rattle through her chest and in this moment Lottie feels something she hasn't felt in so long-- she feels It, and not from the trees or the ground or the whistle of the wind, but from Jackie, inside Jackie, as she comes undone again in her hand. 

Lottie's arm shakes when it's done, still planted next to Jackie's head, elbow locked to keep herself from collapsing. She pulls her fingers out from between Jackie's legs, slow and languid, before she brings them up and prods at Jackie's lips with them, urging her to put them in her mouth, to taste her own ecstasy and arousal slick on Lottie's fingers.

Jackie doesn’t know if feeling this way is the answer to all the problems in the universe, but maybe it’s pretty damn close. She feels like she’s floating and sinking at the same time. She feels hot and cold, solid and liquid, completely and utterly malleable, like clay. Lottie can do whatever she wants. Jackie’s eager for it all. 

When Lottie’s fingers prod at her mouth, Jackie takes them, letting her eyes slip closed as she hums. She cleans them thoroughly, taking her time, meeting Lottie’s gaze before biting down. By the time she pulls away, Jackie feels like she’s licking herself off of her own lips. It’s strange, but not horrible. It’s made better by the taste of Lottie’s skin. “You…” she manages, but she can’t get out anything else, sighing as she tilts her head back. Lottie is so wonderful. Jackie squeezes Lottie’s hand once more.

Lottie shudders at the feeling of Jackie’s lips and tongue wrapped around her fingers. Breath hitching as fingers scrape against her skin. A smile spreads onto her face as Jackie tries to speak, but she seems like all of her words have disappeared. It’s what Lottie had been hoping for. She grins down at her, leaning in to press a chaste kiss to her lips, running her tongue along them to taste Jackie on her own lips. It’s so fucking delightful. It makes Lottie shiver. “You’re so beautiful,” she murmurs, lips still against Jackie’s.

“You… you’re even more,” Jackie mumbles, feeling drunk on more than just the wine. She moves her hands all over Lottie’s body, heavy pets and gentle brushes of fingers against soft skin. She squeezes Lottie’s hips, her ass, scrapes her nails up her back just to feel her shiver. Lottie’s a goddess, Jackie thinks. She understands why the others thought so, even if she thinks they were going about it wrong. They worshiped the wrong way. Jackie’s determined to do it the right way until she gets it perfect. Or, she will. As soon as she can feel her body. She laughs, breathless. “Twice?”

Shivering again under Jackie’s frantic touches, Lottie leans into it, into her, pressing her head into the side of Jackie’s, sighing. She feels so fucking happy, her entire body warm despite being completely bare, wind licking her skin. After a moment, she laughs, too, soft and sweet into Jackie’s neck. “Only twice,” Lottie murmurs back, “maybe next time we can do more.” 

“Fuck,” Jackie breathes. More. She doesn’t know if she can do more. But she’d do whatever Lottie wants. Just whatever in the world she wants. “I want to know what you taste like,” she whispers in Lottie’s ear, turning her head slightly. And she does. God, she does. It sounds like heaven, nothing like feeling obligated to give Jeff a blowjob after his half-assed attempts to get her off. “I want to make you feel that good.”

Just the words alone send a shudder through Lottie and she feels her arms prickling with the sensation. She lifts her head enough to press a kiss to Jackie’s nose, her lips. “Only if you’re sure.” She knows that some people think it’s gross, to eat a girl out. She’s encountered her fair share of gay girls who thought that, though it was mostly boys. The double expectation was truly astounding. Still, she didn’t want Jackie to do anything she didn’t want to. It always came back to that. She’d learned to stop fighting it. She’d ask once, to give her an out, and then she’d stop. 

“I want to,” Jackie says, bringing one heavy hand up to Lottie’s cheek and brushing her fingers over it. She likes the way Lottie tastes off of her fingers; she can’t imagine it’s that different straight from the source. She wants to know what it’s like. Maybe she won’t like it, but if it makes Lottie feel even half as good as Jackie does, then she kind of wants to try. And maybe it sounds kind of fun. The fingers from her other hand tap gently over Lottie’s ribs. “I can’t move, though. Like, I don’t think my legs work. So you’re going to have to… come here.”

Lottie chuckles. “That good, huh?” It had sort of been her goal, she’s not afraid to admit that. And she’s glad Jackie feels so good she can barely walk. She hums, sitting up and looking down at Jackie with lidded eyes. She truly doesn’t think there’s anything as beautiful as this, pale skin shimmering in the moonlight, eyes reflecting the stars billions of lightyears away. It left Lottie a little breathless. 

A cheeky look flashes through her eyes as she moves to straddle Jackie. “Here?” she says with an innocent grin, sitting on her hips. 

“Yeah, yeah, you’re good at all of that. Don’t be smug,” Jackie grumbles, looking up at Lottie and rolling her eyes. She can’t stop smiling, though. As Lottie moves, she lets her legs rest, still twitching a little. She’s still hot, sticky between her legs. Lottie’s being coy, and Jackie wants to kiss that look off her face. She would, too, but moving is still just really hard, okay? She tugs on Lottie’s hips. “Higher.”

Lottie does as Jackie says and moves a little higher, hovering above her chest now. “Here?” she asks, tilting her head as she looks down at her. She can’t help but be smug, really. She’s made Jackie come so hard her legs don’t work and she thinks that’s a perfectly acceptable thing to be smug about.

Jackie huffs, but she ends up laughing, too, looking up at Lottie before her head flops back down on the bedding, a fresh blush staining her cheeks. “Will you hurry up and just… sit on my face already?” she asks, looking up at Lottie and raising her eyebrows.

Well, when Jackie puts it that way, how can Lottie refuse? Before she moves, though, she leans down and presses a hot kiss to Jackie’s lips. “As you wish.” She moves herself all the way up, then, hips above Jackie’s head, letting her initiate when she’s ready, though one of Lottie’s hands is already tangling into Jackie’s hair, fingers curling in anticipation.

Once Lottie’s actually on top of her, Jackie feels her brain short circuiting a little because, actually, she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing, and there’s so much Lottie that it’s overwhelming. But it’s in a good way. Her mouth waters. Lottie is wet. Jackie can see the way her arousal glistens on her thighs. She leans forward and licks at them, first, like she’s cleaning her up, like it’s going to matter shortly. It’s good. It’s best not to plan this out, she realizes, and to just fucking go for it. Jackie starts with a long, slow lick to Lottie’s center, and then again, and again. It’s just a new way of mapping her out, she thinks. Just a new way of learning every piece of her.

The sound that Lottie immediately makes is between a whine and a moan as she feels Jackie’s tongue against her. Her stomach muscles clench with the pleasure of it, legs shaking as she tries to keep herself propped up enough to not suffocate Jackie at the very least. But god it feels good. This has always been her favorite part. It’s always felt more intimate to Lottie, being like this with someone, letting them taste her and tasting them back in turn. She lets out another high pitched moan. “Yes,” she sighs, “like that.”

The words mean the action is worth repeating, and Jackie’s always known that practice makes perfect. She’s just never really wanted to practice at all that much if she wasn’t already good at it. But Jackie wants to be good at this. God, it’s so much better than she expected. Lottie’s hot, and she’s soft, and the taste of her is addicting. Jackie’s tongue flicks before she sucks Lottie’s clit into her mouth, her hands gripping her ass. She takes a breath, panting, before tugging Lottie closer. She wants to be smothered. She wants to make Lottie feel good as she digs her tongue into her, enjoying the taste.

“Jackie!” Lottie gasps, legs trembling as she feels her lips wrap around the most sensitive part of her. It’s hard to stay up right and she collapses over, using her free hand to keep herself aloft. She’s panting, eyes rolling into the back of her head, hips grinding down onto Jackie’s face involuntarily, but it seems she wants her closer anyway. Lottie can do that. She can get closer. “You feel so good,” she moans, hand gripping tighter in her hair.

It’s kind of nice that Lottie’s the one talking more. Granted, Jackie can’t really talk like this, though she hums and moans as hands grip her hair. But it’s nice to see Lottie like this, to hear her like this. She’s so beautiful that it’s not even fair, and she’s all Jackie’s. This is all Jackie’s. Hips roll, and Jackie can’t quite breathe, but that’s okay because she totally doesn’t need to like this. She’s actually perfectly, happily content to not breathe at all when she’s between Lottie’s legs like this, licking and sucking at her like she’ll die without it.

Lottie’s head is swirling, heat pooling between her legs, and she knows she’s being loud, she sort of can’t help it-- but she doesn’t care. She kind of likes being loud for Jackie. It seems to make Jackie happy, too. Another loud cry tears through her, thighs squeezing before unclenching. “Jackie,” she whines, her voice high and keening. She thinks she might be seeing stars again, or maybe the face of god. Her eyes roll up into the back of her head as she moans, feeling as if her body were being raked through coals, burning in the best way possible.

That is the prettiest way that Jackie’s ever heard anyone say her name, and she just wants Lottie to keep doing it. She moans as thighs squeeze her, and she turns her head just enough to breath for a few seconds (it’s really hard to keep going if she can’t breathe, shockingly) before she’s diving back in. It’s kind of addicting. Her nails scrape over Lottie’s skin, one hand going up and scratching at her lower back while the other trails over her thigh, feeling muscles move beneath her fingertips as hips grind against her face. 

With the feeling of Jackie’s mouth between her legs, the only thing Lottie can think or do or say is her name, over and over again like a mantra, like a prayer. Likes she’s begging god to have mercy on her because this is probably what dying in bliss feels like. She can feel herself building and building, heat wrapping itself up inside of her, diving to the pit of her stomach, stretching across the expanse of her body. She’d already been so worked up from before, from tasting Jackie’s pleasure, it comes faster than Lottie expects, her own orgasm ripping through her like a heat wave. She’s crying out, hips bucking into Jackie’s mouth, both hands braced on the ground now as she fights not to just collapse while her legs are still shaking and she’s still sitting on Jackie’s face.

Jackie thinks maybe she’s died and gone to heaven as Lottie comes in her mouth, and she pulls Lottie closer, as close as she can, holding her through it as her hips jerk and stutter, her own stomach clenching tightly. She keeps moving her tongue into her as she comes down before she starts moving to clean Lottie up because she’s actually really fucking content to be between Lottie’s legs like this. 

Lottie is breathing hard by the time she comes down enough to open her eyes without feeling too dizzy. Sweat is beading on her forehead and her chest and she shivers at the feeling of Jackie’s tongue lapping her clean.

Once she’s done, Lottie has just enough energy left to move down from Jackie’s face, flopping onto her back next to her. “Wow…” she murmurs, turning her head to look at her, “for your first time eating a girl out that was…amazing.”

Panting as she catches her breath, too, Jackie preens at the compliment, turning her head to offer Lottie a sloppy smile before she wipes her face off. “I mean, you were pretty loud,” Jackie teases. “So it was easy to figure out what you wanted.”

“Mmmm, yeah,” Lottie sighs contentedly, “I was, wasn’t I?” And normally Lottie would feel a tad embarrassed about that, but with Jackie, she’s not. With Jackie, she wants her to know she drives her crazy, crazy enough to scream her name in the middle of the woods while coming in her mouth. 

Rolling onto her side, Lottie drapes an arm across Jackie’s midsection. “So…our first date was good, then?”

Lottie is so, so fucking hot, in every single way, and Jackie savors the feeling of an arm draped over her, even if it’s not particularly cold outside. The air still has a slight chill, especially as the night goes on, and she’s happy to have Lottie right there beside her, sweaty and naked as they both are. She faces Lottie, grinning brightly. “Knocked it right out of the park, babe,” she says, eyes twinkling. “Best first date ever.”

“Glad I could beat out the competition,” Lottie grins back, “cause that was a really low bar to hit.” The most Lottie knows about Jackie and Jeff’s dating life is what Jackie would gripe about in the locker room with Shauna and Lottie, being a professional eavesdropper, would always listen in casually. She never understood why Jackie had always gone back to him, but she thinks she knows why now. He was safe, back there. 

She doesn’t need him out here though, because she has Lottie, and Lottie isn’t going anywhere anytime soon if she can help it. Which, she’ll try her damndest, but sometimes there’s things that are out of her hands. More and more lately, the longer she goes without hearing the Wilderness, without knowing what it wants from them.

Lottie reaches up and pets down Jackie’s cheek with her knuckles. “I never thought I’d get to have something like this,” she mumbles, “which sounds really pathetic, I know, but I just…never saw it happening.”

“I kind of figured I was going to spend the rest of my life stuck with your very stiff competition,” Jackie admits. “Or, well. Not him. Someone a lot like him, though. Maybe a little smarter, a little more ambitious. My parents liked Jeff just fine for a high school boyfriend, but my dad liked to talk about long term potential and hoped I’d get with a doctor or lawyer or someone in the private sector. I don’t know. But this… I never thought I’d have this.” She leans into Lottie’s touch, and her voice gets quiet. “I never thought I’d really get to be happy.” 

Jackie thought, maybe, the closest she’d get is happy enough. Four years of bliss and torture with Shauna in college, the two of them roommates, so close but so fucking far. Maybe a few more makeout sessions over the years before she had to get serious. Engaged by the last year of college, married that summer. A house, a picket fence, hopefully a Shauna Shipman next door once she got back from being worldly and cool and decided to settle down to teach literature or write her novels or poetry. She’d be there, right there, close enough for Jackie to be okay. And she could be happy enough. Not happy, but close enough to pretend, and Jackie has always been so good at pretending.

“Spending a lifetime as Jeff Sadecki’s wife sounds like torture,” Lottie jabs, scrunching her nose. He was an alright guy, but there wasn't much to him. He was what he was and that was mediocre. Just okay. Lottie definitely didn't think he deserved someone like Jackie. She softens at Jackie's words. “Yeah, me neither.” 

Her face draws into a contemplative furrow, though, as Lottie recalls why, exactly, she never thought she'd get to be happy. She spent so much of her formative years keeping people at arm’s length that she'd never considered being with someone in this way. And she'd spent so much time worrying someone might find out about her illness that Lottie never really thought about the future. It didn't make sense to. Sometimes, she has the thought that she likely wouldn't have a future, either locked away or dead by her own hand. 

“But this is real,” Lottie says, her voice quieter now. She brings one of Jackie's hands up to her lips and kisses it. “This is real.”

Jackie laughs quietly. “It’d probably suck,” she agrees. God. He slept with her best friend. Jackie was planning on sleeping with him, and he slept with her best friend. More than once. He said he loved her. He could be alright, but, god. What a fucking asshole. But she doesn’t have to worry about him. Honestly, she’ll likely never have to worry about him again. The chances of her seeing him seemed to dwindle by the day. Instead, she has this, and Jackie moves herself even closer, sighing contentedly. “This is real.”

Lottie wraps her arms around Jackie, pulling her flush against her, their bare chests pressed together. Her legs extend down fast beyond Jackie's, but she still manages to tangle them up together as she lets out a long breath of relief. “I love you,” she says again, and she'll keep saying it, again and again and again, for as long as Jackie will let her. “So much.”

“I love you, too.” Jackie whispers, and she lets herself feel the words in their entirety. She loves Lottie. She means it. It doesn’t hurt. There’s guilt there, over all the times she’s wanted to say it to others but couldn’t manage it. She lets herself feel that too for just a moment before she pushes it away. She doesn’t want to think about that right now. She doesn’t want to think about it too much around Lottie. Lottie deserves as much of Jackie as she can give. She deserves the good parts, the happy parts, the hopelessly in love parts. Jackie smiles at her and sinks into her arms, enjoying the way they feel pressed tight against each other. 

Lottie thinks she'll never get tired of hearing those words. She's okay if Jackie doesn't say them, but she does, admittedly, really like it when she can. Because they're so true, it feels like the truest thing Lottie has ever been told. It's unbelievable and infallible all at the same time. Someone loves her, actually loves her. And not just the good parts, not just the pretty parts or the pretend parts-- she loves all of Lottie, flaws be damned. 

And Lottie loves all of Jackie. It's as true as the moon is full. She presses a kiss to Jackie's forehead before nuzzling in, fingers drifting along Jackie’s arm in a shooting motion.

“So, maybe you did wine and dine me to get in my pants,” Jackie teases after a moment, enjoying the content feeling being with Lottie offers her. “Consider it a success. Feel free to wine and dine me anytime. Or just get in my pants free of charge. I’m kind of game for whatever.”

Lottie chuckles. “Damn, am I that transparent?” Really, all Lottie had wanted was to spend some real alone time with Jackie, though the sex part was pretty great. She just thought Jackie deserved a real date, something nice, even if out here their options were limited. Lottie would still take this over anything else, because back there, none of this would be possible. “I'll keep that in mind next time.”

“I’m afraid so,” Jackie says with mock seriousness, pressing her face into Lottie’s neck. Her lips brush against it, tasting salty flesh, and Jackie thinks this is heaven. Just being in Lottie’s arms is heaven. “Really, though… Thank you for this. It’s perfect. This is the best date.” She’s starting to believe that being with Lottie anywhere would be the best date, but this is perfect, and it’s theirs. In the quiet, she can hear the wind rustling through the trees, feel its gentle touch against her heated skin. It’s everything.

Lottie shakes her head. “I’m glad you like it, I just thought…I just wanted to do something for you.” Something nice, something to show her how much Lottie appreciates her, because words are often so hard for Lottie. She always second guesses herself, even more so for things she’s never done, like date and be in a relationship. “You deserve nice things.”

Jackie presses a kiss to Lottie’s jaw. “You did, it’s wonderful,” she murmurs. Her fingers reach up to play with Lottie’s hair, wrapping the strands around her fingers and combing through the tangles as she goes. “You deserve nice things, too. I want to give you nice things.” From the way that they tangled with each other, Jackie can feel the metal of the necklace around Lottie’s neck against her skin. She wants to give Lottie more than that. She wants to give her everything. Everything she has. Everything she can.

Moving into Jackie’s touch, Lottie just sighs. She’s still trying really hard to believe that, to believe that she does deserve nice things. It’s just hard. It’s really fucking hard when she doesn’t even like herself. Fuck, she’s trying though. For Jackie. Lottie burrows her face into Jackie, holding her tightly. “Just having you is enough,” she mumbles.

Jackie just hums. She doesn’t think so. She’s not enough, or she’s too much, and they’re in that really great stage right now where everything’s new and amazing, and Jackie seems perfect. She remembers that. But eventually she’ll need to be supplemented with other things. Or Lottie will grow to resent her. She’ll start to hate her. Maybe she won’t cheat on her or write in her journal about it, but she’s going to start seeing Jackie, really seeing her, and she’s going to be able to find something she doesn’t like. Jackie doesn’t want to give Lottie things, pieces of herself, that she won’t like. Just the good things. “You just wanna outdo me,” she jokes instead. “I get it. It’s fine. You can try, but I’m gonna knock your socks off, Matthews. Just wait.”

Lottie laughs a little. “You always were competitive,” she murmurs, “I look forward to it.” And she knows they’re definitely in that place where everything is wonderful, but Jackie has seen the darker sides of Lottie and she’s stuck by her and so Lottie has already decided she’s going to stick by Jackie no matter what. She would have even if Jackie hadn’t done that for her. Lottie doesn’t think she knows how to devote herself in halves or pieces. It’s all or nothing. She’d never know how to be anything but this. 

“You know you don’t have to, right?” Words Lottie says often to Jackie. She just wants to make sure, she doesn’t want to force Jackie to do anything she doesn’t want to. It terrifies her. There’s so many things in Lottie’s life that she’s been forced to do because she has to. 

“I want to,” Jackie says immediately. She wants to give Lottie nice things. She’s told her that before, and she’ll keep telling her as long as it's necessary. Despite being rich, Jackie doesn’t think Lottie’s gotten a lot of nice things in her life. Certainly not much affection, definitely not from her parents, but Jackie thinks she can understand that, even if her parents hovered and put on a front. She just wants Lottie to know how much she cares about her, and the best way that Jackie can think to show that is through things. She’d be able to plan it better if they weren’t in this place, but she’d figure something out. 

“Okay.” Lottie is okay with that, she just wants Jackie to know she doesn’t have to do anything more than this. Just hold her, be there for her. Help Lottie distinguish between real and delusional. She brushes her lips against Jackie’s neck, pulling her in closer. “Thank you.” She can’t stop thanking Jackie, just for being there, for choosing her, for loving her, somehow. Through all of this, she loves Lottie. She’ll never be able to thank her enough for that, for seeing who Lottie really was or wanted to be.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Jackie tells Lottie softly, petting gentle fingers through dark, thick hair. She’s with Lottie because she wants to be, because it feels like the most natural thing in the world. A natural progression of where they started to where they are now. How could Jackie not fall for Lottie? They became attached to each other after that first snow, whether Jackie wanted it or not. She hadn’t wanted much of anything at that point, except to fall asleep in the quiet and the cold, and Lottie wouldn’t let her. She made Jackie start caring about things again. She made her want to start caring. Of course Lottie would be what Jackie cares about most in this world.

“I know I don’t.” But Lottie wants to. She needs to. There weren’t many people in her life who wanted to take the time to be nice to Lottie, to understand Lottie, to care about Lottie. She wanted the people who did to know she was grateful for them. Everything out here had changed so much for Lottie and she couldn’t help but be thankful for it, despite the horrible things they’d been forced to do. Right now, it seems so far away. All the bad things. Except for Lottie, the bad things are always there, in her head. 

Her eyes close against fingers running through her hair. It’s easy to let the feeling chase away her dark thoughts. 

Jackie presses a kiss to Lottie’s jaw and snuggles a little closer. She tugs on Lottie, resituating them to pull Lottie on top of her halfway, sighing contentedly at the pressure. They can move in a minute, or if Lottie gets too warm, but the heat and weight of her body on top of Jackie always makes her feel solid, real. She keeps a hand in soft hair, twirling a strand of it around her fingers before letting it go and doing it again. 

Lottie is more than happy to move closer to Jackie, shifting to lay partially on top of her, knowing how much Jackie likes feeling her warmth, her weight. Lottie will eagerly give it to her. She’d give Jackie whatever she wants. Lottie burrows her face into Jackie’s neck again and stays there, content, breathing gently against her skin. There’s something so soft and calm about lying here with Jackie, naked under the stars, listening to her breathing, her heartbeat, feeling the way her fingers curl up in Lottie’s hair. It doesn’t feel like it’s something that should be possible here, but it is, and it only makes Lottie want it more.

It feels a little strange to be so exposed, but Jackie can’t find it in herself to be upset about it. It’s nice, really, being under the stars with Lottie in this way, the breeze against bare skin, the two of them pressed flush against each other. The light of the moon keeps them from being fully shrouded in darkness. She can see the outlines of the trees, the stars in the sky, the different constellations. It’s beautiful. She doesn’t think she ever wants this moment to end.

If she’s not careful, Lottie thinks she might be able to fall asleep like this. She doesn’t want to fall asleep yet, though, she wants to enjoy the rest of the night with Jackie, and she’s perfectly content to just stay right here. She knows eventually it will have to end, whether that’s tonight or in the morning. She doesn’t want it to end.

Sometimes there’s thoughts in her head that she wishes she could unthink. Sometimes she wishes she could stop her mouth before it moves. “What do you think things would be like, if we’d never crashed?”

Jackie pauses, her fingers still in Lottie’s hair before she goes back to soothing, repetitive motions. “I think they’d be so very different, and yet not that different at all,” Jackie says quietly. “I’d be at Rutgers. Or, fuck. I’d have just finished a year at Rutgers. Maybe I would have… accepted some shit about myself. I don’t know. I wouldn’t be with Jeff. Shauna…” would still be alive– “would be at Brown. She got accepted to fucking Brown and never said a word.” She tries not to come off too bitter. It doesn’t really matter anymore. “Where would you be?”

Lottie hadn’t known that part, that Shauna had gotten into Brown, that she hadn’t told Jackie about it. All she knew were the angry parts they spewed at each other before Shauna went outside. Either way, it seems like Jackie at least had a general plan of what her life would be like, what it was supposed to be like before all of this. Lottie didn’t. She reaches out to trace shapes with her fingers on Jackie’s stomach. “I don’t know,” she finally answers, “I never thought about it.”

Eyes closing as Lottie’s fingers make patterns on her skin, Jackie can’t help but ask, “What would you like to be doing? If we’d never crashed?”

It’s kind of pathetic, really, but the only answer Lottie has is, “I don’t know.” She lived day to day, too worried about staying normal and being normal and seeming normal. “My dad wanted me to get a business degree. Maye I’d do that.”

“Where did you apply to college?” Jackie asks. She wonders if this helps Lottie to think about what they would or wouldn’t be doing back home. Jackie can’t stop thinking about the past regardless. Sometimes, it’s interesting to think about what could have been. 

“NYU,” Lottie answers. Both her parents had encouraged her to go there. She figures it was so that she'd be out of her mother's hair but close enough for her father to keep an eye on her, make sure she didn't do anything crazy. She'd never even considered what degree she'd go for, she'd been hoping to just skate by for as long as possible until she absolutely had to pick. Maybe by then she'd have something figured out.

“New Brunswick isn’t that far from the city,” Jackie muses. Would they have kept in contact? Jackie hopes so. She hopes so. They can think about would have beens, could have beens, but Jackie doesn’t want to think about a life without this. Or something similar to this. Maybe she doesn’t get Lottie in every life like this, but she thinks she wants her around in some way. She’s always thought of Lottie as her friend. Maybe not particularly close, but neither of them seemed to get close to anyone, did they? Just a small, exclusive few.

“From Wiskayok?” Lottie asks. She hadn't considered who she'd stay in touch with, if anyone. She didn't think too many of them would want her to. But she'd known Jackie longer than most of the others. And whether Jackie did it out of pity or because she was their captain, she'd always tried to stay friends with Lottie. At least as much as Lottie would let her. “I guess, yeah.”

“From New York,” Jackie says. “I just mean– I mean, if that’s where you’d gone, you know. It wouldn’t have been far, like an hour. We could’ve… visited, or something.” Not that Jackie thinks she’d be great company. She wouldn’t have Shauna for completely different reasons that what happened out here. Shauna would be in Brown. She wouldn’t miss Jackie at all. She wanted to be done with Jackie. Plus, she would’ve still slept with Jeff. Maybe Jackie wouldn’t know about that, but it’d still be there, between them. No wonder Shauna was pulling away.

“Would you have wanted to?” Lottie wonders about it all the time. If anyone would have even wanted to visit her. It wasn’t like any of them knew much about her, or her relationship with her parents. They teased her about her family’s money, about her dad’s propensity for buying her expensive things (“Thank you, Mister Matthews!”) and she just let them. It felt better to just let them. At least that felt normal. 

“I’d like to think so,” Jackie whispers, “but I don’t really know. I don’t… really know what kind of person I’d be if we’d never crashed.” Someone unlikeable and lonely, she thinks, but in different ways than she feels unlikeable now. She’s not lonely now, either. She has a person. She has someone who wants to be her person, and she has someone that she wants to be honest with. 

“I don't think I would have tried,” Lottie admits, “I kind of figured no one would want to hear from me, really.” She doesn't know who she would be, either, if they hadn't crashed. But she doesn't know who she is now anyway, even after the crash. “I think a lot of things would be the same, though.” She thinks a lot of the things that have happened out here would've happened back there, too. 

But not this. Not them. It's why, on some level, she's happy they crashed. A thought that often makes her feel all the more guilty.

“I would have,” Jackie says. “I would have wanted to hear from you.” She liked Lottie, even back then, even when Lottie didn’t take a lot of time to get to know other people. At first the standoffish thing seemed like a rich girl trait, like maybe she was just too good to really want to be close to the rest of them, even Jackie, one of the few people on the team close to her tax bracket. But Jackie knows better now. She knows how afraid Lottie’s been her entire life, how afraid her parents made her. “What all do you think would be the same?

Lottie doesn’t think Jackie would lie to her but she’s not sure she quite believes it. She wishes she could. Maybe one day she will. She doesn’t say that, though. “Mari would still be a bitch,” she says, instead, giving a little grin into Jackie’s neck. “And…I think Tai and Van would still be hiding. At least until Tai left home. I think…you’d still be friends with Shauna, even if she went to Brown.” Because Lottie knows that Jackie would forgive Shauna for anything, really. Just like she might for Lottie, even if Lottie doesn’t think she should.

The Mari comment makes Jackie smile, even if the rest of it is sad. Tai and Van were able to be so happy out there. They were able to be together freely without any sort of worry about what the rest of the world would think about them. Her hands tighten around Lottie because, in a lot of ways, that’s what they have, too. Jackie’s not sure how long it would have taken her to accept this part of herself out there. She doesn’t know how long she would have let fear rule her life. And as for Shauna… Is Jackie that weak willed? Is she that spineless that everyone knows she’d just roll over for Shauna Shipman except for Shauna Shipman? She sighs. “Things would have changed, though. With… the distance.” She’s only joking a little as she adds, “I think people would also be less inclined to take her side if I’d outed that she slept with my boyfriend back when I was still relevant as opposed to when I’d been useless for months on end.”

“Yeah,” Lottie says, “they always do.” Change was inevitable, really. It didn’t matter how much someone feared it, it would come. Things always changed. Even in Lottie’s life, nothing stayed the same, it didn’t matter how hard she tried. “I think we all had other things on our mind.” Lottie didn’t really know if she was on anyone’s side about it. It was pretty fucked up what Shauna had done and Lottie couldn’t even imagine how much it hurt Jackie. But Jackie hadn’t even had time to contemplate that hurt, because it was so quickly replaced with grief. They were all just kids. 

“I think Shauna should have told you sooner. I think that’s the only way things could’ve gone better,” Lottie admits after a moment. “Or just…not slept with Jeff.” 

Jackie laughs softly. There’s not much humor in it. “Not sleeping with Jeff would have been great, honestly. I think it would have done wonders for our friendship.” She doesn’t talk about Shauna much. She doesn’t know how. A part of her is worried that this is going to conjure her up, have her intrude on something that Jackie wants to just be for her and Lottie, but so far she’s not there, not watching them and writing in her journal and staring at Jackie with those wide, dark eyes everytime Jackie tells Lottie words that choked her up only months before. 

“Reading her journal, I– I know there was shit I did wrong. Like, I get that. I wasn’t a good friend to her,” Jackie admits. She wasn’t a good friend to anyone once they got out there. Abandoning Van to die, popping off at Nat, letting Laura Lee get in that plane. She hadn’t been worthy of leading any of them since they got out there. She didn’t think she ever would be again. “I wish she would have just told me all of that. Maybe it wouldn’t have helped. Maybe I would have, like, gotten pissy at her. But I don’t know. I thought I knew her. I thought she knew me, too.” She guesses they were both just liars in the end.

“Jackie,” Lottie says, unfurling from her enough to sit up and look down at her, “none of us were good friends. We were in high school. We were teenagers. Maybe…obviously, whatever shit Shauna had going on was worse than other stupid, petty squabbles we all had but…Tai was lying to all of us about herself, Mari started shit whenever she could and talked behind peoples’ backs. None of us cared enough to learn anything about the juniors, like Melissa and Akilah until we were out here.” She shrugs. “I never told anyone about my illness, Nat never talked about her dad, she ditched us all the time. My point is…yeah, maybe you were a bad friend, but we’re supposed to be, right? So that we can learn? Get better at it?”

“I was supposed to be,” Jackie says, sitting up as well. “I was supposed to be–” perfect, “-- good. I was supposed to be good. And Shauna… I’ve known Shauna my entire life. I know when she goes to sleep. I know when she wakes up. I know where she wants to go eat after practice, how she takes her coffee, the only brand of cigarettes she’ll even consider smoking, but only after at least three of those nasty Malibu and milks and maybe a beer. I know she has a scar on the knuckles of her right hand from punching a tree when we were eight. I know she hates when I pick out her clothes but likes when I do her makeup, but she lets me do both because I complain otherwise. I–” she feels tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. “I was supposed to be a good friend. If to no one else, then to her.” 

Lottie can’t relate and it feels a little sad to admit that. But this isn’t about her right now. Lottie reaches up with one hand and puts a hand on Jackie’s face. “Jackie, you were a good friend. Maybe there were things you should have done differently, or maybe there were things that got out of hand, but Shauna’s inability to communicate that wasn’t your fault.” Lottie knows that much, from watching everyone else. She knows how to be a good friend, she knows when people are hiding secrets from each other, she knows when someone’s upset-- she’s just never let herself get close enough to let it be real. 

Clenching her eyes shut, Jackie still finds herself leaning into Lottie’s touch, even as she swallows back the tightness in her throat. She wants to believe what Lottie’s saying, but she can’t quite overcome the hurdle that is Shauna Shipman. Her words, her actions, her death. Jackie doesn’t get closure. She’s not allowed. She doesn’t deserve it. She’s meant to remain in limbo forever over it. She leans in, pressing her lips to Lottie’s. 

Lottie really hadn’t meant to make this sad. She’s sort of always messing things up that way, opening her stupid mouth and saying all the stupid thoughts that run through her mind. She wishes she could just learn to shut up. On her medication, it was so easy. She always felt so out of it, never fully inside her own head. Out here, it’s impossible to escape. 

She draws Jackie into her, wrapping her up in her arms. She kisses her back, as if to prove with the action that Jackie is a good friend. That she’s a good girlfriend, too. That’s she’s a good person, because Lottie knows without having to hear it that Jackie also thinks she’s a bad person. Which just isn’t true. Lottie will work the rest of her life to prove that.

When they finally pull away, Jackie is quiet. She murmurs, “I don’t… want to repeat the same mistakes. I’m trying really hard not to.” Could Lottie tell? Could they all tell? Could anyone out there tell how fucking hard Jackie’s been trying? Because she’s been trying so hard. She’s cut herself into pieces and tried to reform herself in a way that can fit out here because it’s that or death, and she’s trying really hard these days not to die, too. Be better, don’t die. That’s the mantra she’s working with.

“I know,” Lottie tells her, keeping her close. She tucks Jackie into her chest and holds her tight in her embrace. “And you're doing so well.” She wants to encourage Jackie, she wants her to know Lottie notices. She wants her to know that Natalie notices, and Van and Tai and even Mari. They all notice. If it's because of Lottie, then that's okay too, for now. She just wants Jackie to stay because Lottie thinks she might actually lose her mind if she loses Jackie, too. “And I'm here for you, even when you aren't, even when it's hard.”

It’s really stupid how much the praise means to Jackie, to be told that she’s doing well. Even if Lottie’s the only one that notices, she thinks that would be okay, but it seems like the others notice as well. She doesn’t get those sharp looks anymore, the eyerolls, the scoffs when she fucks up. At least she’s trying. That’s enough for most of her more glaring screw ups to be excused, if only because they’re all screwing up out there. “Thank you,” Jackie murmurs, sinking into Lottie’s arms. “I’m glad you’re here. I couldn’t do this without you.” Not anymore. 

The sentiment is pretty handily returned, but Lottie knows Jackie is aware of that. They've both sort of fallen into this situation where one can't get by without the other. Maybe somewhere back in their little town in New Jersey that would be bad, but Lottie thinks it's one of the only things keeping her alive out here, so it can't be all that horrible. “You don't ever have to thank me for that,” she whispers to Jackie, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, remembering the first time she held Jackie like this, the first time she'd kissed her head like this, had also been after something involving Shauna Shipman. 

It's taken Lottie a bit to accept it, but she knows now that being in love with Jackie Taylor also means being just a little bit in love with Shauna Shipman. She thinks she's okay with that.

“I know,” Jackie says, but she thinks she does. She thinks she needs to. She thinks she needs to let Lottie know how grateful she is to still be there with her. Perhaps she wasn’t always, but she is now. She needs this as much as she needs air or water. She needs Lottie, just like she needed Shauna. Maybe more because, if something happens to Lottie, there’s not going to be another person to come along and take her place. Jackie’s not going to be able to recover from losing them both. She wouldn’t even try.

Lottie squeezes Jackie tight, not missing the echo of her own earlier response. “I love you, Jackie,” she murmurs, “all of you. The good parts, the bad parts, the parts you hate…and the parts of you that are Shauna. I love all of it.” And she knows she always will. Even if one day Jackie looks at her and decides she's too much, Lottie will always love her, just like she knows she'll always love Laura Lee, and she'll always wonder what that would've looked like.

Jackie does actually tear up at that. How much of her is Shauna? How much of her is dead, nothing more than bones that have been picked clean by hungry, starving teenagers? How much of her will she never get back? She doesn’t even really know the person that’s left. She’s never tried to know her. We’ll get through this together. But there is no together anymore. There’s only Jackie, and Jackie doesn’t know how to exist outside of a together. 

“I love you, too.” Jackie can say it back. She tries so hard to always say it back. Shauna’s ghost haunts her without even needing to be there. Meaning the words doesn’t always mean that she understands the depths of them, but she’s not going to relive the tragedy of waiting too late. “All of you. Every part.” 

Lottie brushes a hand soothingly through Jackie's hair. She knows she does, and it's still amazing to Lottie. She'd been convinced her whole life that no one could ever love her if she was sick, if they knew about her illness, about how her mind was never really her own. It still feels like a dream sometimes, realizing that it wasn't true, that she is something lovable and worth loving, despite her illness. And that, somehow, she'd found that out here of all places, with a girl who she'd never thought would ever look at her as anything more than a distant friend. It makes her tear up a little bit, too, as she holds onto Jackie and breathes her in. 

“We’re a bit of a mess, Lott,” Jackie mumbles, sinking into warm arms, a warm body, a cool night. 

Lottie hums, low on her throat. “I like being a mess with you,” she murmurs back, chin tucked against the top of Jackie's head, caressing her much like the ocean does the earth. “It beats being a mess alone.”

Jackie smiles, pressing her face into Lottie’s neck. “I agree.” She’d rather be a mess with Lottie than be a mess with anyone else. It feels safer with Lottie, like she’s understood. Because Lottie does understand her. Not in a way that Jackie would have expected, but then again, she’s never really tried to understand anyone other than Shauna. From the moment they met, there was just something about Shauna that fascinated Jackie in ways that she couldn’t let go of. She wanted to follow Shauna around like a puppy, but somehow she ended up tricking them both into thinking it was the other way around. 

But Lottie understands her. More than that, she understands Jackie and loves her anyway. All the parts she’s gotten to see, she’s loved. It makes Jackie ache in the best way, like she’s slowly able to relax after years of being tense.

It's because of Jackie that Lottie can say she now understands the difference between knowing and feeling. As an outside observer for most of her life, Lottie thought she understood what it meant to be friends with someone. She thought she knew what it meant to feel and love and laugh, but it was all fake. She'd just been playing pretend, so well that she'd even ended up fooling herself. 

With Jackie, though, none of it is pretend. It's so fucking real it makes Lottie burn sometimes. And she loves it. 

Eventually, she shifts enough to reach down and grab the second blanket she'd grabbed, pulling it over them and tucking Jackie back into her arms. “We can stay here tonight,” she tells her quietly, “or we can go back. Whatever you want.”

Jackie presses a kiss to Lottie’s collarbone. “We can stay here,” Jackie murmurs. “It’s nice being out here with you. It feels… I don’t know. Right.” She’d never do something like this back home, but there’s something about this moment that makes her feel so connected that she doesn’t want to give it up. Connected with Lottie, connected with the world around them. It’s beautiful, and she doesn’t think that she ever wants it to end.

Lottie is happier than she probably should be that Jackie wants to stay here. She’s right, it feels…right. It feels nice. Lottie nods. “Okay.” She holds her a little tighter, tangles their legs together. “I picked a spot near the river, too, so we can wash off in the morning without having to worry about, you know, anyone around.” She’d done it with the express hope of getting to stay here. She liked how quiet it was, how it was just them. 

Jackie hums, smiling against Lottie’s skin. “I see how it is. You were planning for this. Wanted to have your wicked way with me and then keep me out here under the stars?” It’s nice, though, being out here with Lottie, the two of them tangled together. She likes the way their skin feels pressed together. They might wake up sticky, actually stuck together, but Jackie doesn’t care. 

“Maybe,” Lottie gins, “you don’t seem to mind too much.” Really, she’d just wanted Jackie all to herself for one night. She wanted a place where they could just be together, without having to worry about someone overhearing. While it was cute, sometimes, to hear the teasing of their friends, Lottie wanted some time alone where they could just be them. Where she could be Lottie and Jackie could be Jackie, instead of whatever they’ve made themselves into to fit in with the others.

Grinning, Jackie shakes her head. “Nope, not a bit.” She’s pretty content to let Lottie have her wicked way any time she likes. It’s kind of nice to not have to worry about Mari or Van or anyone else teasing her about being too loud. It’s nice that the only other things that can judge her out here are the animals. Not Lottie. Lottie likes her. All the parts of her. Even the loud ones. “How long have you been planning this, anyway?”

Lottie gives a little noise of contemplating. “Umm, about a week or so? Maybe more?” She’d been tracking the moon phases for longer, the idea to treat Jackie to something special longer, but she hadn’t known the right time until she’d just felt it. “I was kind of surprised Mari could keep it a secret that long.” 

“Wow, she kept a secret a whole week?” Jackie gives a low whistle. “Pretty impressive, I’m surprised you risked telling her at all.” She’s impressed Lottie managed to plan all of this in an entire week. It’s just a picnic, but she still had to find the spot, get the food, make sure they could get away with it without someone hunting them down. “What made tonight so special?”

“Well, I kinda had to,” Lottie says, “it’s not like Natalie can cook.” Though Natalie had insisted on helping Lottie find a spot, as if she were worried Lottie would get lost and never come back and then Jackie would probably kill her. That’s fair of her, really. Lottie thinks the opposite would be true, if Jackie ever got lost. She pauses. “I…it’s the full moon,” she answers, “it feels…magic, I guess.”

Jackie snorts. “I guess that’s fair. Though I’d probably trust her cooking more than some people’s.” She didn’t even mean Misty– she was thinking about Mel’s cooking, actually– but the thought of bad food and trust immediately brings the blonde up, making Jackie frown slightly. But she pushes away all thoughts of Misty Quigley. She wants to be happy tonight. “Well, this has definitely been my favorite full moon ever. Is that a thing? Are we gonna make a thing out of this?”

Lottie chuckles. It was true, somehow, there were quite a few of the girls who couldn’t cook to save their lives. They were lucky they had someone like Mari, who did know how to make the food more edible. “We can,” Lottie says, brushing her fingers through Jackie’s hair, “if you want? The full moon is supposed to be…spiritual and stuff.” 

“I don’t care. It can be the full moon. It can be whenever,” Jackie says, leaning into Lottie’s touch. “Just, you know. A night for just us sounds pretty nice. Especially while it’s so warm. “Do you want to?” She thinks Lottie might, if she planned it special for this. It’s something that could be just theirs. A much nicer full moon than the last major one they all tried to celebrate, if the Doomcoming could be called a celebration. More like a swan song before their inevitable starvation. This is different, though. This is better.

“I would, yeah,” Lottie answers immediately. She thinks there’s something naturally wondrous about the full moon. Its light helps connect her to the land, she thinks. It makes the world seem liminal, like everything is closer to the Wilderness. “I’d like that a lot.” 

Jackie nuzzles in closer. “Then it’s a date.”

“Perfect,” Lottie murmurs, closing her eyes as she breathes Jackie in, holding her happily in her arms. “Any day is perfect with you.”

“Yeah, well, any day with you is pretty great, too,” Jackie says into Lottie’s skin. Quietly, she asks, “Are you sleepy?”

“Only pretty great? Do I need to try harder?” Lottie teases, smiling. “A little. Are you?”

“Hmmmm.” Jackie lifts up her head. “Really great?” She presses a kiss to Lottie’s lips. “I’m definitely tired. It was a busy day before you decided to, you know, twice.”

“I'll take it.” Lottie sighs happily into Jackie's lips. “I know, only twice. I'm pretty disappointed I couldn't keep going.” She gives a cheeky grin, before kissing Jackie again. 

“I don’t think I can do more than twice,” Jackie says, laughing against Lottie’s lips. But that’s a lie. She’ll do whatever Lottie wants her to. Even now, both of them tired and sleepy, Jackie still kisses Lottie as needily as that first night, always unable to get enough.

“Don't knock it till you try it,” Lottie mumbles back, words muffled against Jackie's mouth. She moves in a little closer, bare skin against Jackie's feeling warm and sated, and yet always wanting more. 

“You can try it whenever you like,” Jackie sighs, one hand brushing against Lottie’s cheek. “But if I can’t use my legs afterwards, that’s on you, and I totally expect you to come up with an excuse for me.” She presses a kiss to Lottie’s jaw before attaching her lips to a spot high on Lottie’s neck, kissing and licking at the skin before she starts sucking a mark there. It’s kind of lazy, but she still hums happily as she works.

“I'll think of something,” Lottie mumbles, eyes closing at the feel of lips on her neck. She shivers as she feels Jackie suck at her skin, giving a soft sigh, rolling her head to the side to give her more room to work with. “I'm good at…thinking on my feet.”

Jackie hums against Lottie’s skin, pulling away with a pop and looking at Lottie’s neck. Even in the darkness, she can see a noticeable redness starting to crop up. Pleased, she says, “You’re very good at that.” She moves further down to Lottie’s pulse and starts repeating the motions. Soft kisses, a gentle tongue, and then attaching herself and sucking, feeling a heartbeat between her teeth.

Lottie can only hum, her mind already falling back into the feeling of Jackie’s lips on her skin, making her forget what they’d been talking about at all, really. She doesn’t mind. Her breath stutters when she feels teeth against her skin, on her neck. Digs her hands into Jackie’s hair. There’s really nothing that feels better than this, holding Jackie, feeling her lips and tongue and teeth on her skin. Lottie thinks if she died like this, it’d be the happiest moment of her life.

When Jackie pulls away again, she smiles wide down at Lottie. “That’s going to leave a mark. Or two.”

Lottie’s eyes meet Jackie’s, her head haloed in moonlight, and it’s hard to think of her as anything other than divine. “I hope so,” Lottie grins back, smoothing her palm against Jackie’s cheek. “You can put as many on me as you want.” She was her’s, after all, and Lottie wanted the world to know.

The words make Jackie feel warm. She wants to paint Lottie. She wants to paint on Lottie. She wants to cover her until everyone knows who she belongs to. Suddenly, Jackie doesn’t feel quite as tired. She moves a little bit closer, her legs only a little shaky as she straddles Lottie’s waist. Her hands gently adjust Lottie’s neck so that she can lean in and start marking up the other side.

Sighing, Lottie’s hands go up to Jackie’s hips and hold onto her as she straddles Lottie. Lets her move her head wherever she wants it, eyes fluttering closed as lips went back to her skin, lavishing the other side to match. It’s strange to think about how much Lottie likes being marked by Jackie, how much she likes being known as someone else’s. She thought maybe it would make her feel owned or wrong, but it doesn’t. It just makes her feel wanted and loved.

When she feels satisfied, Jackie presses a kiss to Lottie’s jaw and lays back on top of her, their skin flushed together. She pulls up the blanket that had slipped down back around them before relaxing. “Is this okay?” she asks, and she tucks her head under Lottie’s chin. There’s this need to be close that itches under her skin. She needs everyone to know they belong to each other, and she needs to constantly feel Lottie in her blood. Jackie supposes this will just have to do.

Lottie nods, wraps her arms around Jackie’s shoulders and holds her close. “Yes.” It’s more than okay, really. It’s perfect. Just like her, just like this night. Well, mostly. Maybe not the part where Lottie accidentally made Jackie cry about Shauna. 

But this moment is perfect, and so was the rest of it. She gives a heavy sigh of relief, letting her body deflate and relax, the weight of Jackie on top of her a comfort she never thought she’d crave. Now that she has it, she needs it.

Old habits die hard, and Jackie can’t stop herself from asking, “And your ribs are still all good?” Her own body starts to relax against Lottie’s, feeling a little like she’s sinking into her everywhere they touch. 

Lottie huffs, half rolling her eyes. “Yes, they’re all healed, I promise.” Even if sometimes they ache a little, like when it’s going to rain, or if she pushes herself too hard during the day, lifts something too heavy. She doesn’t think it’s really anything to worry about, and she’s certainly not going to tell Misty about it. “No permanent damage,” she murmurs, except for the scar on her ribs where the sharp end of the poker had cut through her skin and between her bones. She can still remember exactly how painful it was.

No permanent damage but the scars. The firepoker, the wound from the knife where Jackie had to relieve the pooling blood under Lottie’s skin. The scar on her palm is fading, but the wound must have been deeper than Jackie thought from the way it lingers around. She moves her hand to Lottie’s side to feel the raised skin she’d caused. She’s becoming familiar with Lottie’s scars. Jackie takes care to be gentle with each one. “I just want to make sure,” she whispers, nuzzling closer.

Lottie shivers when she feels Jackie hand brush over the healed scar on her side. She doesn’t remember much about that night after the cabin burned, she’d been so out of it and feverish. She knows at some point Jackie kissed her, and she knows at another point Jackie cut her open, because she had to. She’d saved her by doing it and Lottie would never blame Jackie for the mark it left behind.

She lifts one hand and lets her fingers drift up and down Jackie’s back, over the ridges of her spine and to her neck. “I know,” Lottie whispers, “thank you.” It’s sweet that she’s still worried about it, really. It makes Lottie truly believe she cares, even though she did anyway.

“You don’t have to thank me for that.” But it’s nice to hear all the same. Jackie sighs at the feeling of Lottie’s fingers against her skin, along her back. She knows Lottie’s better. Of course she does. It’s clear to see. But sometimes she closes her eyes and sees Lottie on the floor of the cabin bleeding, or she sees her in that attic suffering, or she sees her stumbling through the snow, blood leaking out of her side, coating her hand. She doesn’t think she’ll ever forget any of it, not really.

As Lottie continues to run her fingers along Jackie’s back, she looks up at the sky full of stars again, and at the moon, full and bare and staring back down at them. Sometimes, she thinks she can feel its raw energy baring down on them, filling them up, connecting them to not only the world, but each other. Sometimes, she closes her eyes and hopes she’ll hear something, but every time she does, there’s only silence and her own thoughts. 

Eventually, her eyes begin to droop. She places her hand on Jackie’s back and presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Get some sleep,” she murmurs. Tomorrow is another day and who knows, maybe something good will happen, too.

“You, too,” Jackie mumbles, already half asleep in Lottie’s arms. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so comfortable. A part of her thinks she should feel guilty about that. A larger part tells her that she’s warm, and she’s happy, and she should fall asleep.

Lottie smiles, nuzzling against Jackie’s head as she nods. She thinks she could fall asleep like this instantly. It almost feels like she does, her eyes and body ready to slip into a comfortable, warm sleep, the kind that wraps around your mind and lets you sink away from the world and all your troubles. She doesn’t even dream, and Lottie almost always dreams.

But being here with Jackie is better than any dream, so she doesn’t, and she feels peaceful and soft.