Nancy startles awake, her heart pounding. All around her is blood: its scent in her nostrils, its taste in her mouth, its cold, clammy touch on her back. If she shut her eyes she would be able to see it there too.
Breathing heavily, she forces herself upright. From below she can hear shouting, Charlotte and Mags raising hell by the sound of it.
She staggers to the door, heaves it open. As Mags looks up at her she attempts her usual languid lean against the frame, but lurches dangerously and has to grab at it to stay upright. Dark spots swim in front of her eyes as a surge of pain grips her.
Footsteps pound on the stairs and then Mags is in front of her, close enough to touch but not yet doing so.
“Charlotte brought gin,” she says, her lips twisting on her daughter’s name. “To clean out the wounds, she says, but it has other uses.”
Nancy holds out her hand from the bottle, tries to disguise the wince as the simple arm movement sends another spasm of pain through her back. From the flicker of sympathy on Mags’s face, she does not succeed.
“Save some for the wounds,” Mags warns as Nancy drinks long and hard. She’s used enough to gin that even this quantity should have little immediate effect, but all the same she feels light-headed when she lowers the bottle and has to grasp even more firmly at the doorframe.
“Come on you silly cunt, let’s get you back to bed,” Mags says, half-fond, half-exasperated. She holds out her arm for Nancy to lean on and with a great effort they manage the ten or so steps across the room. Nancy returns to her previous position, face down in the pillows where the tears pooling behind her eyes can drain away unnoticed.
She can hear Mags uncork the gin, splash some into the basin of water, and then take a healthy swallow herself.
“Thief,” she says quietly and Mags chuckles.
“We used to share everything,” she responds, and then, quieter. “I would have shared this too.”
“Still got my rod,” Nancy deflects, though her voice comes out thick and hoarse. “When I’m back on my feet I’ll hold ya to that”
There is silence for a long moment, and Nancy imagines Mags hauling her emotions back under control, the way she has seen her do a thousand times. Then the sound of the gin uncorking again, and finally the splash of the cloth in the basin.
“This will hurt,” she warns and Nancy laughs bitterly in response.
“Just get it over with,” she grinds out.
Neither of them speaks as Mags cleans and dresses the wounds. She is as quick and as tender as she can be, but it still feels as if the flesh is being torn apart anew and Nancy bites her lip until she tastes blood again.
“It’s done,” she says at last. “If you’ll sit up for a minute I can bandage them.”
Nancy struggles upright, every movement an effort now, and despite her usual iron control she sways slightly in place as Mags wraps the bandages around her torso. She catches Mags’s hand as she slumps back into the pillows, unable to ask with words but unable to let her go either.
“If you’re wanting me to stay the night you should know I cost more than you can afford,” Mags teases, though she doesn’t let go.
“Consider it advance payment for the whipping I offered you earlier,” Nancy bites back.
“We may have a deal, Miss Birch,” Mags agrees, and gently pulls her fingers loose. “But first I need to unburden myself of some of this clothing.”
Nancy closes her eyes, listens to Mags shuffling out of her clothes, fiddling with the drapes, checking the lock on the door. Finally the bed dips with Mags’s return and she blinks them back open. Mags is on the other side of the bed, a gaping hole between them, but her hand is stretched out across the gap.
“You don’t expect me to come to you in my condition?” She asks, seizing her hand again. “Get over here!”
Mags slides towards her and suddenly she is overwhelmed and has to turn her face to the pillow again to hide her tears. She doesn’t know if it’s the release of fear from earlier, or the still-raw sting of her back or the renewed pain of knowing that this is all she wants, all she has ever wanted, and she could maybe have had it if she knew how to ask (and if Mags weren’t such a damned cock-loving whore).
She feels the pressure on her hand tighten and then fingers threading through her hair. This is a familiar refrain for them, one of them sobbing out the injustice of the world while the other looks on powerless.
She must fall asleep like that because when she wakes again it’s dark and Mags is still holding her hand. She waits until the snores confirm that she is deeply asleep before whispering into the darkened room:
“I don’t want to be a secret from you.”