give what you get (get what you give)
It isn’t the time or the place. Isn’t a good idea, even, but as these things go—times, places, ideas—they’ve all sort of abandoned ship on good. Good set sail a year ago, and all that’s left now is necessary.
Some part of her—a part burned to the ground, a part carved open by grandma, what big teeth—might say necessary is subjective, too, but Van doesn’t much care about that part anymore. She cares about the here and now. The gut-punch feeling that leads her by the throat. The assurance that you have to trust something if you want to keep going, and that something lives deep in the recesses of her own ribcage.
Place? Time? Good?
It’s need. Pure and simple, the driving force leading them to the next day. The next table. The next slaughter.
He has to die. She knows that in her bones, knows it the way she knew her mother would never change, knew that Tai could touch something in her she’d never be rid of. He has to die, and Tai has to be the one to pull that trigger.
Not Tai.
The Other One.
The Other One, who hasn’t slipped out in so long. Months of living in their shelter, twined together on a single pallet. Months without needing to tether herself to Taissa, without needing to stagger, shoes half on, through the dirt in her stead. Months and months, and Tai wants to forget it was ever a thing, but Van can’t erase it. How close Tai came to that cliff’s edge. How sharp her teeth had been, drawing Van’s blood to the surface. How she’d looked at Van in the dark, in the cold, her hands savage and her smile frosty.
It was never about listening to the trees, with the Other One. Wasn’t even about Van herself, probably. It was about something neither of them can understand, neither really wanting to discuss in the summer heat, in the pleasure of plenty. Need. It was need.
Van can’t invent new trees etched with that symbol. Can’t map out new paths for a surefooted nightly stroll. But need?
She can do something with that.
Taissa kisses her sweetly, guides the shirt off her shoulders with a shrug. She’s primed for gentle, for slow and easy, for the natural give and take they’ve perfected over the last two years. It’s good. It would be good.
It just isn’t now.
Her eyes widen, clearly startled when Van presses her into a backward stumble against the nearest trunk. It’s too sweet, Van wants to say. There’s a time and a place for that, too, for sweet and laughter and fumbling fingertips. They know each other through and through, inside and out, blood and bone, and still—there is room for sweet. Tumbling into their bedroll after a long night of wine and fire-glow stories. Softly pulling cloth aside, baring skin to the moonlight that drips between the lashed-together branchwork of their roof. Gliding kisses, long and unhurried, secure in the knowledge that what they are now is what they will be forevermore.
But that isn’t for now. Isn’t for her, that one who looks at Van with hollow hunger, the one who punched to the surface of Taissa like a woman bursting through a brittle lake. She isn’t sweet. She is decadence. She is desire. She is following paths only she can see in the dark.
Taissa looks at her now, startled, eyes blown darker than dark. Van presses her more firmly to the trunk, slotting a thigh between spread legs. She spans one hand across Taissa’s ribcage, thumb stroking the ribbed fabric of her tank top. Her kiss is languid, but not sweet. Taissa’s hand slides up to brace against her hair, and she knows, knows this will be good if Tai keeps the reins. Knows it will be muffled giggles and soft sighs, like it so often is these days. They’re good now. They’re hale and strong and good now.
But they need her. They need her steady hands on the rifle. They need her cold eye fitted to the sight. They need the trigger pulled, the bullet loosed, the blood on someone else’s hands.
She urges Tai down, urges her to bend at this awkward angle, until Van is the taller of them. Until Van is decidedly in control. Isn’t the first time, of course—she’s learned so much of herself in these woods, things she’d never considered back home. She’s learned, even, to love these parts of herself, if only because they keep her going. Keep her alive. Keep her fashioning the story in shades they can all live with.
It isn’t the first time, but when Tai’s hand grazes her back, fisting her t-shirt and trying to haul it up her spine, Van snags her in a steel-strong grip. Slams her hand back down against the tree. Rears back just enough. She doesn’t shake her head, doesn’t say a word, and the anticipation that flares in Tai’s expression is everything. It isn’t the first time, but it’s enough of a rarity—control instead of partnership, the sublime sense of power she so readily offers up to Taissa without thinking—that she can feel it flooding her with fresh purpose. Can see it flashing fever-bright in Taissa’s eyes, in the part of her lips and the half-stunned desire of her expression.
She doesn’t put up a fight, when Van shifts back on her heels, using the bracelet of her fingers to drag Taissa up and turn her around. There are ways to do this, so many delicious ways—but the gut-deep part of her insists this is best. The Other One appreciates the animal, the core of a person, the basest impulse.
The Other One—and, yeah, Tai, too. Tai, who leans into the tree, her hands braced against silken moss. Tai, who makes a noise of indecipherable indulgence when Van molds to her back, dragging a thigh up to force Tai’s right leg higher. It can’t be comfortable, mashed against the trunk this way, but Taissa doesn’t protest in the least. Van can feel her heartbeat through thin cotton. Can feel the rush of adrenaline in her own bloodstream as she notches her sneaker under Tai’s boot and presses upward.
They fit, as they always have. More so now, even, because there is nothing hidden out here. No secret corners, no private meanderings. They’ve seen each other at their worst and held on tight, knowing the hollows in their own hearts to be just as terrifying.
They fit, and no small part of her snarls its approval as she deftly works open Taissa’s shorts without needing to look. There is no article of clothing she doesn’t know with perfect precision these days. No piece of Tai she could not work open blindfolded. Some distant part of her remembers the beginning, when kissing had turned to the dizzy confusion of bra clasps in the backseat of a car. When she’d laughed herself sick with mingled embarrassment and hilarity while Tai rolled her eyes and reached back to just do it herself.
That person isn’t here. The girl who’d been pink-cheeked and spluttering apologies around gales of laughter, the one Taissa had pinned to the seat and kissed into silence. That person isn’t here, but Van is—working a hand recklessly into an open waistband, rocking her hips against the seat of Tai’s shorts. Van, who doesn’t hesitate for even a moment, her fingers circling lower as Taissa arches. A hand folds around her wrist, guiding her deeper, and then Tai releases and grabs for the trunk instead. As if there’s any chance she’ll fall. As if there’s any chance Van would let her.
The slap of Taissa’s palm against bark echoes, her head twisting in search of Van’s kiss. This isn’t sweet, and that’s better, somehow. Better to leave Taissa searching, to kiss her neck instead. To bite her shoulder as she groans, her tank top sliding up to bare her stomach to the unrelenting stretch of nature holding her upright. Van folds closer, knee braced against the trunk. The skid of cloth is rough on molten skin, the friction of Tai’s every twitch driving her crazy—but this isn’t about her. Later, tomorrow or tonight, Tai will straddle her in their little hut and give as good as she’s getting. Later—tonight or next week—it’ll all come back around, because that’s nature. That’s the cycle. You get what you give, you give what you get, you go on to do it all again tomorrow.
Right now, it’s Tai who needs this. Tai, who should never have been put in this position. Tai, who pulled the fucking suicide king, and Van swears to every god she’s ever taunted with her own prevailing breath she would do it all again if she could change that much. Shouldn’t be on Tai. Shouldn’t be on her shoulders.
But they need this. They need her. And Van needs her to still be able to smile when it’s all over, so—
So she pins Taissa in place, her hips driving, her fingers seeking slick heat. She pins Taissa in place, feeling her squirm and shiver, feeling her trying to lean back into a kiss Van will only keep denying her. The most primal part of her is singing, a symphony of growl and groan. She sucks at Taissa’s earlobe, licking sweat from her skin even as her own t-shirt glues itself to her back. She grinds herself against Taissa’s ass, her leg rising to urge Tai’s higher, to urge her open. Tai lets her forehead fall against the trunk with a thud, and Van lets it happen. Later, she’ll be tender. Later, she’ll drift kisses across Taissa’s face, under the fall of her curls, across the angles of her cheekbones.
Now, she drags her free hand up to cup roughly at one breast, kneading Tai through the thin fabric until she makes a sharp sound into the wood. Van angles her head against the slope of a shoulder, her fingers rubbing a frenetic tattoo against hot, swollen need. Tai’s nails dig into moss, scoring vivid green with scratches she will—later—replicate across Van’s back. Later, she will return every favor. Later, she will make Van bite clean into her own hand in an effort not to howl.
Now, her breath is juddering the way it does when she’s trying to be quiet, and Van nips at her shoulder again. She can’t hit the angle she wants, not entirely, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The reckless thrusts of Taissa’s hips are spiraling rapidly toward breaking. Beads of sweat trace down the column of her throat, and Van licks at each with a supplicant’s deliberation. She feels Tai trembling. Feels the muscles in her own arms drawn tight, her wrist cramping, the heel of her hand merciless even as her fingers trace and tease.
“Come on,” she realizes she’s saying in a rawboned whisper. “Come on, Tai. Let it out.”
Let her out, she means, and she’s thinking of every time over the course of the winter. Every time she thought she was kissing Taissa, only to find teeth in her throat. Every time she thought it was Tai gazing up from between her thighs, only to realize how vicious her tongue had become, how violent the impending orgasm.
It wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t frightening—not the way it might have been, if they hadn’t already seen and done so much worse. It was just necessary. Just pure, whittled-sharp appetite, and does she miss that? Does she?
Does Taissa miss the old Van? The one who was always a spark away from laughter, the one who sang at the top of her lungs in the showers, the one who hung her head out of the window on the freeway and let the wind whip her hair into unresolvable tangles?
You become someone else in the woods, she’s realized. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Always for her. Always to protect her.
To protect all of them.
Taissa is bucking under her, swearing under her breath. Van crooks her fingers deeper, sucking a mark into the back of Tai’s shoulder. She’s thinking of blood when she does it, thinking of that first time she said those hallowed words. Thinking of Taissa rolling her over, slipping a hand into her pants, making her gasp.
Thinking of the Other One, too, and how badly she needs, needs, needs Taissa to survive this shit.
“Come on,” she chants. Her legs are shaking, her own underwear soaked through. “Come on, Tai.”
There’s no one around to hear them, no one who would give a fuck about them even if they did. Maybe that’s the reason Taissa lets her voice pitch to a savage cry; or maybe she just can’t help it. Van would like to think it’s the latter. Would like to think it’s proof that this is working, that this is going to protect them both from the aftershocks.
And still, even knowing why they’re doing this, even knowing what will come next, a part of her doesn’t care. A part of her simply thrills at this being her life. Their life. No matter what Tai says, no matter how she tries to push Van away in moments of abject horror, it is and will always be them. Their story. Their team.
It's love, she understands, and it’s horror, and the two knot together so inextricably, she can’t imagine pulling them apart.
Taissa is shuddering, clawing at the bark with one hand, clawing back for Van’s hair with the other. Van lets her find purchase, lets her drag until their mouths are a crush of whimper and triumph and release. Her own body bucks, her fingers clenched between trembling thighs. She wants to spin Tai bodily back around. Wants to hit her knees and clean up after herself. Wants to turn this from savage to sweet.
That’s instinct, she reminds herself, and that’s fine—later. Tonight, or tomorrow. Another time.
Now, she sinks her tongue into Taissa’s mouth even as Tai is sinking her orgasm right back into Van’s. There is no calculation in her as she rides out the shocks, fucking Van’s fingers with painful force. There is no calculation at all; only the deepest tread of desire-desire-desire. Van clings to the front of that tank top, to the rocketing heart between Tai’s breasts. This has to work, she tells herself. Has to.
They’ll do it again, if need be. Again, again, again, until repetition becomes ritual. They’ll do it again, and she’ll grin up at Tai, who will pretend not to see the avid light in her eyes. They’ll do it—and whatever else is necessary—until something works.
This is them, she tells herself. This is them.
This is necessary.