It’s exactly 11:11 p.m. when Jackie glances at the clock radio next to her bed. She decides not to make a wish.
She doesn’t know what she’d even wish for, but based on how her life’s been going, she can pretty confidently say that the universe would flip her off. She could say ‘I wish it were 11:12’ and the clock would skip straight to 11:13. She’s positive.
Hundred and ten, she and Shauna would say. Never ‘a hundred and ten percent positive.’ Just: Believe me, the red looks better. Hundred and ten.
It’s kind of a nonnegotiable at this point that everything in Jackie’s life completely fucking sucks.
No need to argue— it is what it is. She’s accepted it. Everything is shit.
And maybe it always has been! Maybe, as much as she tried to hack away parts of herself to carve out all the ugly bits that the world didn’t want to make herself the perfect daughter, the perfect leader, the perfect girlfriend, in the end, it didn’t matter. It didn’t work.
Maybe the pretty picture she painted over the rotten canvas of her reflection wasn’t as lifelike as she thought. The fucking nightmare lineup of disasters she calls The Last Several Months has made that abundantly clear.
And just to add insult to injury, because why not, if (1) a freak plane crash, (2) a hellish vacation in an evil forest only to (3) freeze your ass nearly to death isn’t enough, Jackie’s also fucking bored. She’s got no real friends, no real life, and no way of reconciling how she even got to this point.
And, yeah— as much as teen dramatics and heart-stomping betrayal suck, being about an hour or two from death by laying down sucks a lot fucking worse. (First of all, it’s lame. And secondly, it was way too close for comfort.) She’s lucky, though. Not for the reasons touted by her parents and doctors, or the rescue team if she had been conscious enough to hear them, but for the merciful fact that she doesn’t remember anything from that night after falling asleep. Unluckily, though, everything she remembers before then goes down as the worst night of her life.
She remembers her fight with Shauna.
She remembers seeing Shauna’s entire body bubble over with anger and pity, so surely spouting all the hatred that she’d—news to Jackie—built up over the entire course of their friendship. She remembers going out into the dirt, getting pissed off at the fire, and trying to fall asleep.
Basically, Jackie remembers Shauna hating her and then she remembers wanting to die.
But she’s learned in retrospect some of the highlights of what happened after that.
They found her sometime in the early morning, unconscious and cold and barely there, and thoughtless, reckless, fearless Shauna set the entire cabin on fire trying to get her warm. Then a plane saw the smoke.
The irony is not lost on her that, despite being undeniably the most useless one out there, Jackie’s kind of the one who got them rescued.
Now, if she were on better terms with any of her teammates, she’d probably be gloating about saving them from a long, hard winter in the middle of hell. She’d earn some eye rolls, but they’d be accompanied by laughs. And thank you’s. And a big group hug that she’d force everyone into. But Jackie doesn’t know what terms she’s on with anyone. She’s sure (hundred and ten) that if she were to lightheartedly joke about being worth something, all in good fun and camaraderie, because she’s part of the fucking team, the eye rolls would be serious. And— though maybe not in the real world—thrown at her along with a knife. Because that was the joke, wasn’t it? That Jackie is actually useless. Actually worthless.
Did they all think that of her already? Or did the “wilderness” make it clear to them? Was Dead Cabin Guy or the fucking forest whispering in Lottie’s ear that Jackie didn’t belong? Or was that Shauna?
Did anyone love her?
Ever?
It’s a fair question. It is! Jackie’s played the part of a sure-of-herself kind of girl all her life despite being so cripplingly unsure that it’s a miracle she ever got out of bed in the morning. But she knew she was loved. Or at the least, desired. Her self, her things, her position.
Now she has nothing.
We all love you, Jackie.
It was never real.
At least getting thrown full speed back into the real world did smack everybody out of their fight-or-flight modes, though. (Which, thank god, because Jackie was apparently the only fucking one who didn’t choose fight.)
So she’s tentatively made up with almost everyone post-rescue.
As soon as she could demand someone wheel her around the hospital, she knew her first stop.
Van accepted her apology with a teary smile and a concessive eye roll, grumbling, “If it had been Taissa running towards a fire, maybe I would’ve done the same thing.” It’s a lie, probably. But Jackie thinks the fact that they’re pretty even on the leaving-you-to-die front is probably more so the reason behind her forgiveness. She got a big sweeping hug at the end of it, anyway.
Mari’s tail curled itself between her legs pretty much immediately. She offered a sheepish apology for the wilderness getting to her, still seeming pretty embarrassed and, honestly, confused by the drugged-up shenanigans of the night before everything. Akilah sat next to Mari and apologized for not speaking up. (“Seriously, Shauna and Jeff? Insane.”)
Misty gave a part apology, part manipulative reprimand about going outside, but whatever. It’s not like Jackie was the only one who was nice to her out there or anything. Sure.
And Taissa. Jackie and Taissa have always had a somewhat rivalrous friendship.
Tai thinks that Jackie’s handed everything without having to try and Jackie doesn’t know how to explain that she actually tries way too fucking hard. But Jackie’s good at talking and Taissa’s good at making sense of her, so they kind of talked everything out.
Tai seemed genuinely distraught by the fact that Jackie had been so close to dying. And Jackie apologized for— well, for being a bitch. And she realized over the course of the talk—the longest she’s ever had with her—that Taissa, more than once, was the only one to really stick up for her. She told her a little bit more of what she had been dealing with, too, and Jackie had to swallow the memory of I’m surprised you’re aware other people even exist clinging to the back of her throat.
“So we were both going through some extra shit, I guess,” Tai let her struggle through saying, as if your best friend cheating on you with your boyfriend is comparable to an evil, sleepwalking, alternate consciousness in the distractions department.
“I think everyone was, Jackie.”
“I don’t know, Gen and Melissa seemed like they were kind of chilling.”
Lottie was the first one to come to her before she could make it to them.
Until the night of the doomcoming, Jackie and Lottie had never, ever been mean to or mad at each other. And even that wasn’t really Lottie, and Lottie wasn’t even the one that Jackie was really mad at. In the hospital, 5-foot-10 Lottie somehow escaped the watchful eyes of her parents, walked straight to Jackie’s room, and wrapped her up in a cradling hug like one would a sick child. Jackie remembers thinking she needed to get ahold of a few of whatever drugs they put her on. All she said was “You do matter,” and didn’t let go until Jackie did first. Which she only did after a stupid amount of tears.
“I don’t think the cabin guy was trying to protect us,” Jackie croaked out in a whisper.
Lottie understood. Somehow. “What did he look like?”
“I couldn’t really see his face.”
“Mm,” Lottie hummed. “Hot.”
They giggled more lightheartedly than they had in a long time, both of them surprised at how easily it came.
The second one of them to come to her showed up with a deck of cards, two swiped chocolate puddings, and ended up never really leaving.
Natalie, despite anyone’s whispered confusions over the years, has always kind of understood Jackie.
The two of them clash and squabble and get under each other’s skin on purpose, but they’ve never not been square. They’ve never hated each other. Jackie was really just not at all good at handling the fact that Natalie’s strengths are her exact weaknesses.
But Nat didn’t hold it against her in the end. She showed up later when Jackie had to be there a couple of days longer than everyone else, and she just kept showing up. Even when Jackie was sent home. She’d bring her food, hand it off with a grumbly ‘you’re such a princess, you know that?’ even though Jackie didn’t ask for it. (You can take the hunter out of the wilderness.) She let Jackie paint her nails even though she always added black hearts, she taught her how to play blackjack after much, much trial and error, and she didn’t allow Jackie to be completely digested by the depression that had swallowed her so easily out there.
She made sure Jackie knew that it was Shauna who tried to get her warm.
And yeah, okay. Jackie knows.
It’s Shauna.
That’s why Jackie, and the universe along with her, laughs at the idea of an 11:11 wish. It’s why she’s been handed the figurative hot chocolate with a smile from most of the girls but still feels like she’s lying out in the snow.
Because she doesn’t have Shauna.
That’s been her whole life really, hasn’t it? But Shauna’s different. She can’t even quantify how often that’s been the case— the argument she had to lay out for her parents to let Shauna join their family vacation, the time Shauna was pushed during a game, and Jackie’s usual ‘keep it sportsmanlike, girls’ attitude flew out the window and she wound up with a busted lip herself.
(She let only Shauna tend to her wounds.
Because Shauna’s different.)
In the hospital, Nat let Jackie pretend she wasn’t chomping at the bit for any scraps of information on how Shauna was doing. And she updated her anyway.
The doctors weren’t able to find a heartbeat on the baby.
They don’t know when it happened. Maybe it was all the doomcoming stuff, maybe before then, they said it was pretty impossible to tell, all things considered. Maybe it was when Shauna was running around burning a building down. For Jackie.
Nat cried when she told her. Jackie has zero memory of whether she cried or not— all she remembers is sudden, crushing guilt.
Guilt so thick and so devastating that she could feel it sinking down her abdomen and pressing against her intestines and before she even realized she stood up, Nat was pleading with her to sit back down.
“She’s home, Jackie, she’s already gone,” she had said. She’s home.
Shauna’s home.
After guilt came a dam-breaking flood of relief.
Shauna’s home.
But she’s not with Jackie.
Jackie hates it. It’s not something she knows how to do— something she knows how to be.
They haven’t spoken since the night before the rescue, when Shauna told Jackie she was nothing and Jackie walked outside to die.
The only words between them since Jackie slammed the door were screams. (Shauna’s.) Jackie was nearly dead so she has no memory of it, but Shauna, as Natalie put it, went berserk. Jackie does think she can remember the feeling of being jostled onto a helicopter, the shrieking sound of “be careful with her!” thrown in her direction, but she doesn’t know if that was even real. Maybe she just imagined it along with all the other bullshit wishful thinking she’s done for the last two months— hoping that Shauna cares. That Shauna would protect her.
Maybe Jackie just wants the Shauna that she knows so deep down in her bones to show her face.
She tries not to choke on or maybe you never did.
She tries not to choke on a lot of memories, actually.
In fact, it’s all she does— try to forget. She spent those last couple of months after reading Shauna’s stupid journal just stewing and overthinking and hoping, and all she got out of it was a genuine death wish. So she knows that now, the only way she’s surviving is if she doesn’t think about it.
She spends all her time, all day long, actively not thinking about Shauna.
It’s going great.
Her nails have never been repainted more in all her life, her backlogged magazines permanently etched into her memory. Nobody’s meter for comedy movies has ever been more filled. She’s even gone through her dad’s weird collection of action movies— anything that doesn’t remind her of Shauna.
Which, yeah, you guessed it, isn’t a lot when their entire life experience is tied together, but thank God they never busted out the Krull tape, she guesses.
She’s pretty sure she’s been wearing her same pajamas this entire week and just pulling a new sweatshirt over them in the mornings. Tonight, it’s a comfy blue crewneck with orcas on the front that she got on vacation when she was way too small for it. And no, she doesn’t think about the terrible whale sounds that Shauna makes whenever she wants to make Jackie snort-laugh.
She’s been taking a lot of showers. Never taking that for granted again.
Her parents won’t let her go outside for anything other than her zillion doctor’s appointments, like the one she had today, even though it’s only been lightly snowing some nights. It’s not like she has anywhere to go anyway.
Yeah.
Jackie’s fucking bored.
She’s miserable and self-pitying and she circles the never-ending drain of despair more and more every day, but she’s just plain fucking bored with waiting for Shauna to come to her.
And it’s not that Jackie expected Shauna to call her or anything, but like maybe she expected her to call her. If either of them should call, it’s Shauna, right? She has no idea what they’d even begin to talk about over the phone. She doesn’t want to push about the baby. Shauna probably doesn’t even know that Jackie knows. But maybe if Shauna really did go berserk when Jackie almost— well, surely a phone call isn’t too much to hope for, right?
She looks at the clock, laughs along with the universe at the idea of making a wish, and pads over to look out her bedroom window, feeling very much like a Civil War-era widow with nothing better to do.
She looks past her pink curtains and thinks about how much prettier the snow looks in the light of the suburban street lamps than in the middle of fucking nowhere.
She used to like the snow. Shauna always looked so pretty in the snow.
Fuck me.
Suddenly, in her periphery, she sees what can only be a mirage or a dream or a cosmic prank in the form of a hallucination:
Shauna’s Ford Festiva, parked in her usual spot on Jackie’s street. Lights off, engine off, but definitely a person sitting in the front seat.
The mug of hot chocolate floating towards Jackie’s pleading, waiting hands gets smacked to the floor.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
If, a minute ago, all she was thinking was how bored she was, now all she’s thinking is FUUUUU—
But wait, what is Shauna doing here?
Shauna thinks Jackie’s tragic and boring and insecure so what would she be doing at Jackie’s doorstep—figuratively, but pretty close—if not to just see for herself how miserable and meaningless Jackie is without her?
(She knows that’s not true. But she also knows that Shauna didn’t come out to get her that night.)
(She also also knows that “be careful with her!” wasn’t her imagination.)
Jackie’s nothing if not too curious for her own good.
Which brings us to about 11:13 p.m., when Jackie Taylor carefully slinks down her parents’ stairs, slipping on her (Shauna’s?) Birkenstocks over her fuzzy socks, and bracing herself to walk out the front door. She doesn’t even have the thought in her head to grab a decent jacket. And Jesus, the orca sweatshirt on top of purple pajama pants was bad enough, but now she’s noticing that her fuzzy socks aren’t even remotely close to matching. And Birkenstocks? Whatever, she’s committed.
Before her brain can process anything other than pure fucking instinct and the reverberating oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, she finds herself speeding down the walkway towards Shauna’s car like she’s on a mission. She hopes to God that her brain comes up with something to say before she makes it to Shauna. To Shauna.
Instead of coming up with anything, her brain punctuates that thought with every step. To Shauna, to Shauna, to Shauna.
To— “Shauna?”
It’s dark out, but Jackie can make out a jolt in the car and pale hands tightening around the steering wheel. Wide-eyed, reckless, stupid Shauna takes a quick hitching breath and looks around like she’s debating just driving away. She no doubt realizes that that’d be crazy, and she rolls down Jackie’s the passenger’s side window before adjusting her hands back on the wheel.
Jackie can’t help but just look at her for a second. She takes in the unkept hair falling out of a ponytail that was clearly made multiple days ago, the dark circles under darker eyes, the anxiety rolling off of her in waves. God help her but even after everything, Jackie looks into this beat-up car that they both love and thinks oh, yeah. My Shauna.
She still looks beautiful in the snow.
But also, “Shauna, what are you doing here?”
Her big brown eyes blink for the first time since making contact with Jackie’s. “I, uh—I don’t—it’s nothing. Sorry.” She’s still gripping the steering wheel like it could float away. “You should go inside.”
Jackie, never one to back down from a challenge, crosses her arms and furrows her brows. “What are you doing here?”
“Nothing, Jackie, can you just—“
“Don’t tell me what to do, Shauna, what are you doing at my house in the middle of the night?”
Dammit if it isn’t deliciously easy to fall back into old habits.
From there Shauna takes a big breath. Jackie can tell that she’s trying to figure out her next move.
She goes with shaking her head and staring straight ahead, eyes fixed on the dashboard and hands still stuck to the wheel. She flexes her jaw, “I was just checking on–on—,” another head shake. “I’ll leave, okay? Just go inside, Jackie, go away.” She looks almost like she flinches at her own words. Jackie’s just imagining it. Shauna didn’t flinch in her cruelty that night, why would she now?
Why is she here?
If she showed up to finish their fight, which Jackie so pitifully tried her best to win, she could at least give Jackie the courtesy of telling her so. Of giving Jackie a fair fight. Even if her knees are buckling and her hands are tingling with the need to just reach.
The need is too great, too big.
She takes one step closer to the car.
“Jackie,” Shauna, sighs. Jackie can’t help but notice how tired she sounds.
Jackie’s hands come up to the edge of the freezing cold car roof and she leans her weight against it, tilting her head in the demanding, bitchy way she knows will piss Shauna off.
“Jax—”
“Shauna, are you seriously not gonna tell me why you’re sitting in front of my house in the snow, because—“
“Jackie, please!” And there it is. Shauna exploding at Jackie when she’s the one doing crazy shit. “Please, just—just go inside okay? You’ll—,” her voice cracks and she rips her gaze away from the dashboard to Jackie, and Jackie finally sees a look in those goddamn sad brown eyes that she knows well. She’s trying not to cry.
Her next words aren’t as full of frustration or annoyance— they’re a desperate plea.
“It’s cold.”
They stare at each other for a few seconds. Or maybe hours, maybe years. Shauna trying not to cry and Jackie trying not to cave.
Shauna looks broken. And everything snaps into place.
She came here because it’s snowing.
She’s as tired and as scared and exactly as empty as Jackie feels. She’s here because it’s snowing.
The part of Jackie’s brain that’s learned anything since their plane fell out of the sky is screaming that Shauna doesn’t care about her— that Jackie’s actually useless, actually worthless, and Shauna can see it clearer than anyone, so why would she possibly care about her in the snow?
But. Again. Jackie’s nothing if not too curious for her own good.
“I’ll go in if you come with me.”
Shauna looks at her like she was just slapped but it’s too late because Jackie’s made up her mind. She steps away from the car but never turns around, taking a couple slow steps backward. She quirks her brow questioningly (bitchily) before standing still. “Or I’m happy to stay out here. Maybe build a fire.”
The car door swings open.
Shauna’s nervous to be in her room. Jackie’s never seen Shauna nervous to be in her room ever in her whole life.
She wishes she could just see inside her head.
(Taking a glimpse into Shauna’s head for just a moment, besides the nerves, there are unusually few thoughts happening.
She knows she should be thinking about how absolutely stupid it was not to keep her eye on Jackie’s front door while she was busy trying to figure out how to breathe. Or even how batshit crazy she is to blindly agree to go into Jackie’s house and walk all the way up her stairs. But instead, she’s thinking— well. You know how no one really knows what their house smells like? How everyone is so used to their particular house-smell that they never really smell it the way other people will, even if they’ve been gone for a while?
That’s what Jackie’s room used to be like.
Sure, there were parts of it that Shauna could always smell. Three parts— her pillows, the soap in her en suite bathroom, and the drawers of her dresser, but specifically the bottom pajama-y drawer where Shauna always grabs a sleep shirt from. In general, though, Jackie’s room didn’t smell like anything to Shauna. And even now, walking in after months, it still doesn’t.
She’s so relieved she could cry.)
Whatever Shauna’s thinking in that beautiful, stupid head of hers, all Jackie knows is as soon as the door closes behind them, she feels finally— finally like she’s come home.
She’s so relieved she could cry.
But.
But.
The unsureness that Jackie’s so used to drowning in very quickly kills the wind in her curiosity sails, and all she feels is fucking terrified that she read everything wrong— that Shauna wasn’t on her street because of the snow, that she still believes every awful thing she said to Jackie that night, that the only good thing to come out of Jackie not dying was everyone else getting rescued.
Maybe she’s here to egg her house.
Shauna stands awkwardly in the center of the room, arms crossed over her chest holding herself as tightly as possible, fingers fidgeting with her flannel. It’s one of Jackie’s favorites—brown and green and so so soft. Shauna doesn’t usually wear a lot of green but Jackie likes it when she does, so she compliments this flannel every time it appears. Usually.
“Look,” Shauna blurts out. “I was just gonna drive by and see if your light was on or something. I-I didn’t really have a plan.” She’s looking anywhere but at Jackie as Jackie sits herself down at the foot of the bed. God, she can’t even look at her— is she still that resentful?
(And just— if we can take another look into Shauna’s brain: not that Jackie knows this, but all Shauna can focus on is trying to take in this non-smell that is her home just in case she never gets to not smell it again.
But, also. She just can’t look at Jackie without wanting to throw up and die.)
She picks at her cuticles and adds, “I wasn’t gonna bug you.”
Jackie doesn’t respond but leans back on her bed, resting her weight on her palms and crossing her legs like she’s done a thousand times, holding her body a little more awkwardly than she used to. Shauna still won’t look at her, but her gaze does shift to Jackie’s (her) Birkenstocks before flitting away quickly. Jackie narrows her eyes, trying to figure out the stranger standing in front of her who she knows better than anyone in the world. But she’s just shifting her weight back and forth, left and right, clearly unnerved by how relaxed Jackie’s trying to look right now.
And that’s on purpose, the whole trying to look in control thing. It always has been— the only bit of pathetically thin armor she’s ever had.
If Shauna weren’t looking anywhere but at her, she would notice that Jackie only leaned back because her hands were shaking in her lap.
Almost on cue, Shauna’s eyes finally meet hers. Jackie gulps in one short breath, her brow quickly furrowing and unfurrowing to (unsuccessfully) play it off as nothing. You’re still in control. Shauna’s looking her over, eyes wide and scared. You can still be in control.
“Have you…” Jackie starts softly. “Have you come here before? Like since we got back?”
Shauna looks at her like if she dares move, Jackie will throw her right out the window— like she thinks that Jackie only invited her inside so that she could kick her out the way she failed to that night.
Shauna hugs her waist tighter, rubbing up and down her arms a couple hasty times, and bites the inside of her lip. “Just a couple times. I saw you through your window.”
Jackie’s eyebrows raise slightly at that. She wasn’t expecting honesty.
“I mean I wasn’t— like, I wasn’t like watching you or anything. I literally just drove by. It’s nothing creepy or weird or whatever.” God, she looks like a guilty puppy. “I just— tonight I didn’t, or, I couldn’t…” she cuts herself off with a shake of her head.
Jackie tries her best, for a second, to look weirded out, but she knows Shauna can see right through it to the genuine concern and patience—and feeling flattered at the stalking, whatever—radiating from every bit of her. So she instead tries to coax Shauna into comfort, speaking softly. “Tonight you couldn’t what?”
It clearly doesn’t come across as soft as she meant it so.
“Jackie, I said that it sounds weird, okay? I know—”
“Shauna—,” Jackie tries to interrupt, but Shauna doesn’t stop freaking talking.
“—so just let me go, okay? I don’t wanna do whatever this is.”
Jackie huffs out a bitter laugh at that and tilts her head back to look at the ceiling. As if that’ll give her patience. Shauna gets palpably more bristled. That at least feels more familiar to Jackie than anything from the last half a year.
She closes her eyes. She’s gotta look at the facts.
Shauna basically said that Jackie wouldn’t be missed by anyone who actually knows her well enough.
That’s looking pretty bad for Jackie no matter what spin she puts on it. More than likely, Shauna came here to get a good look at Jackie and how pathetic she’s become and feel better about her own life choices.
But Jackie knows better. She knows deep in her bones that she’s here because of the snow.
Hundred and ten.
“Tonight I couldn’t see you.” Shauna’s voice breaks through all the unspoken thoughts swirling around the room. It sounds caught in her throat.
Jackie’s eyes flutter open and jerk downward from the ceiling to find Shauna’s, shiny and sad and staring emptily past her, directly at the same window she looked out of earlier.
Jackie’s voice is suddenly a little shakier, too. “You…” Please, please, please be right about this. “You couldn’t see me, so you— you parked?”
Shauna, eyes still fixed past Jackie’s shoulder, nods. About 100 times faster than could be considered casual, bursting at the seams with anxiety and shame and guilt and regret. Jackie can see it all clearer now than she let herself before.
Jackie shifts to lean forward, uncrossing her legs and grabbing the edges of her bed on each side of her thighs. She tries to think carefully about what to say next. If she doesn’t go slow, Shauna will probably get scared and panicky— definitely defensive, which, with Shauna, can be pretty brutal.
Jackie stares up at her with way too much hope and speaks barely above a gravelly whisper.
“Shauna. Have you come here whenever it’s… snowed?”
Their eyes meet.
Suddenly the breath that Shauna’s been holding for the last minute or maybe years shoots out of her throat in a garbled, miserable sob, and hot tears rush down her face before either of them even see them form.
“Jackie,” she cries. She sounds about seven years old and more heartbroken, more scared than Jackie’s ever heard her. Before Shauna can even attempt to catch her breath, she falls to the floor on her knees in what feels like slow motion, gasping through these huge, wracking sobs. She doesn’t at all register the hurried mess of blue and purple-clad limbs rushing to the carpet with her.
Jackie isn’t functioning on anything other than pure panic and instinct at this point, but this much her brain can recognize: Shauna’s losing it. She’s a mess of tears and snot and the actual saddest sounds Jackie thinks anyone’s ever made— so primal and pathetic that neither of them is even sure they’re hers. Her eyes are shut tightly, her mind swirling, as it has been since that morning, with images of Jackie.
(Jackie cold.
Jackie freezing.
Jackie dying.
It repeats like a mantra in her head and in her bones.)
“Shauna, Shauna, hey, I need you to breathe,” Jackie’s strained voice breaks through the cacophony of cries. Neither of them has any idea when she ended up haphazardly in Shauna’s lap, her knees straddling Shauna’s hips and her hands flat against her chest. “Hey, hey, I’m okay, I’m right here.” She cups Shauna’s jaw, her fingers cold against warm skin. Shauna sobs harder. “Shauna, Jesus, fucking breathe.”
Shauna’s eyes open but she doesn’t stop.
Jackie’s worried face is inches from hers, tears caught in her eyelashes. (At least they’re not snowflakes.) Her hands are on either side of Shauna’s face, thumbs swiping hard back and forth across her cheeks. (At least they’re moving.) Shauna finally gasps in a breath.
Jackie’s whole body floods with pure relief and she nods in response, letting out a shaky exhale herself. “Okay, good, that’s good. Just breathe for me a little, okay?” Her thumbs swipe hard and fast at salty wet cheeks.
But Shauna’s still heaving and overflowing with tears and, now, breathing too fast. Her hands come up to cling onto Jackie’s wrists, zero space between them, completely intertwined and connected. The way they’ve always been.
The way Jackie’s been empty without.
Shauna’s voice is squeaky and small when she finally gurgles out, “Jackie, I’m so. Sorry.”
Jackie’s eyes squeeze shut. She lets herself breathe now, too, because that is the last thing she could ever allow herself to hope for and the only thing that could fill her with this much fucking relief. She knows the satisfaction flooding over her is shameful. It shouldn’t feel good that Shauna’s sorry, and Jackie’s definitely going to hell, but the thought of her wracked with guilt, or even just very slightly, annoyingly burdened, like guilt is a fat fly buzzing around her head— it’s more satisfying than any food Jackie’s indulged in since getting back home.
But, also. Shauna’s broken. And that feels more like a sinking, burning, rot deep down in Jackie’s stomach that almost overtakes any sense of relief she might be feeling. Almost.
Shauna keeps whispering apologies that sound like they’re fighting their way out of her mouth. Jackie doesn’t even notice that any tears have made it past her own eyelashes until Shauna moves one of her hands from its vice grip on her to wipe them away. She doesn’t have to look down to know that pink finger-shaped imprints are blooming against her skin in its absence.
Shauna breathes a little steadier.
(Jackie’s tears are warm.)
They sit like this for another minute. Or probably ten billion years. Gripping onto each other and crying and breathing— Shauna’s eyes flitting all over Jackie’s face, trying to catalog every proof of life and warmth, Jackie’s eyes stuck completely on Shauna’s, trying to both convey and somehow hide all the love and all the sadness she holds for the only person she’d ever let look her over like this without squirming under the scrutiny.
After who knows how long, long enough that her leg is starting to fall asleep, Jackie leans in and rests her forehead (her warm, not at all blue forehead) against Shauna’s. Barely above a whisper, she pleads, “Will you come lay down with me?”
Shauna doesn’t even nod, she just moves her hands down to Jackie’s waist to keep her steady as she pulls her up and off of her lap. Jackie mentally thanks the universe for the first time in months that her tingly leg doesn’t give out before reaching for Shauna’s hands, pulling her up gently.
The trek to the bed is a quick one, and it isn’t until they lay down that they both can take a big, slow breath.
Jackie’s caught Shauna smelling her pillow a few times over the course of their lives— usually when she was drunk, sometimes when she hadn’t been in Jackie’s room for longer than a few days, always when she didn’t think Jackie was looking.
But now, right in front of her, Shauna nuzzles her nose into what they both know is the only pillow Jackie sleeps with and takes a big, deep breath in.
She wordlessly pulls the comforter up to cover them both, still anxiously looking Jackie over like she’s too cold. Their legs slot together and Jackie doesn’t even think to be self-conscious before scooting forward to tuck her head under Shauna’s jaw, Shauna’s hand instinctively coming up to run through her hair and scratch at her scalp.
They lay intertwined like that for a long while. Just breathing. Holding.
Every so often, Shauna presses her lips to Jackie’s head and inhales her warmth. One of Jackie’s hands glues itself against Shauna’s sternum, the other gripping Shauna’s flannel at her waist. Shauna’s got one arm slung across Jackie’s hips and her other hand tangled in Jackie’s hair. She runs her fingers through it languidly, methodically, almost like she’s picking out snowflakes. Jackie presses her lips lightly to Shauna’s collarbone at the thought, just once, and then smooshes her cheek into the same spot, quick enough to hear the way Shauna’s breath hitches.
Jackie feels more in her body than she has in months.
So she doesn’t think too hard about it before murmuring, “I used to like the snow.”
“Hm?” Shauna answers dazedly, almost happily, like she’s been in a trance since they laid down and even Jackie’s musings won’t be able to pull her out.
Jackie smiles against her collarbone. “I always thought you looked so pretty.”
Shauna, thankfully, lets out a tiny chuckle at that, part surprised and part grateful that she doesn’t have to answer for herself just yet. “You always said it made my eyes stand out,” she mutters and sounds more like herself.
“And your hair,” Jackie sounds more like herself, too. “I’m not backing down on that, I don’t care if you think it doesn’t make sense.”
“No one cares about my hair, Jackie, or-or brown eyes, they’re just. Brown.”
“Shauna, how many times do I have to—”
“I’m just saying,” Shauna laughs. “No one ever compliments my eyes.”
The space or lack thereof between them is lighter, more familiar, even if just for a moment. Jackie pulls her head back to get a better look at the relaxed smile on Shauna’s tear-stained face. Pretty brown eyes are lazily locked on Jackie’s lips as Jackie states more than asks, “Except me.”
Shauna’s smile quirks up on one side, just the way Jackie likes. “Except you.”
Right now, Shauna’s eyes look sleepy and heavy with the weight of the world.
And she still looks so pretty.
Jackie could be content to just float in this state of tranquility and comfort that she had resigned herself to never feeling again— she could try! But if there’s one thing about her that she can’t help and that she knows Shauna’s always absolutely hated, it’s that she can’t not talk about something.
And there’s a lot of somethings that need to be talked about.
Jackie maintains eye contact, the grip on Shauna’s flannel tightening to keep her in place as if she could run away. As if she would.
“I’m sorry about the baby,” she doesn’t mean to whisper.
Shauna’s gaze doesn’t falter. Not even imperceptibly.
“It’s okay.” Her fingers continue stroking through Jackie’s hair. “Really, I’m…” she mutters back, the same serious look back on her face. Her hand stops moving and her eyes plead with Jackie to understand. She repeats, solemnly, “It’s okay.”
Jackie takes it for what it is. Relief.
She swipes her thumb at the dip in Shauna’s collarbone. “You were already home from the hospital when I heard, but I would’ve been there.”
“I know.” Shauna, again, doesn’t falter. A beat goes by before she speaks again. “It… it worked out, you know. If we had still been out there, they don’t know if I would’ve—”
Jackie inhales a sudden, small gasp and shakes her head quickly. It’s like a reflex. Tap her knee, her leg juts out; make her think about Shauna in danger, and her whole body rejects it like an immune response.
Shauna clearly understands, mumbling, “I just mean maybe it all happened the way it was supposed to, or something.” She strokes her thumb over Jackie’s ear.
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
Shauna lets out an amused puff of air that could almost pass as a laugh. Her eyes shine with tears again but they don’t spill out. “Yeah, okay, everything sucks.”
Jackie smiles back at her. A tear of hers does spill, but Shauna catches it. “Everything sucks,” she nods.
There’s more she wants to say and ask. She wants to curl into Shauna tight enough to bruise. She settles for tucking her head back where it belongs.
“Will you tell me what happened that morning?”
She’s met with silence. And a tensing underneath her grasp.
She tries again. Her words are a little smushed from her cheek being basically plastered to Shauna’s chest. “The morning you guys found me outside.” She feels the hand in her hair tighten.
“You didn’t—um,” Shauna’s words are also smushed from her lips’ spot on the crown of Jackie’s head. She moves to rest her chin atop honey-blonde hair instead. “You didn’t get any details from the lawyers later? Or the doctors?”
Jackie’s thumb makes little circles against Shauna’s sternum just underneath the lapel of her flannel. She shakes her head as much as she can without disconnecting from Shauna’s skin. “The lawyers just asked me about the crash and-and some stuff about our conditions. Nat told me a little bit but I… I guess I didn’t really wanna know. At the time.”
It’s a half-truth. She pathetically waited to hear it from Shauna.
“Yeah, I guess they wouldn’t really be able to tell you what we said,” Shauna concedes. The hand resting atop Jackie’s waist smoothly finds its way under the bottom of her sweatshirt to draw circles against the small of her back. “You talked to Nat?”
Jackie arches her back the slightest bit to lean into Shauna as she starts to draw stars and squiggles that Jackie can’t quite make out. You’re like a kitten. Shauna said that to her once. “We talk a lot now, actually.” That shape was definitely an X.
Jackie continues, “I think what happened would’ve scared her no matter who it was, but she and I weren’t doing so hot up until then, so I think in a weird way she got extra scared. Like I’d, like— die with her mad at me.”
Both of Shauna’s hands stop moving, flattening in place, just holding onto Jackie for a second. “Yeah.” She pulls at the small of Jackie’s back and the nape of her neck. “Yeah, I don’t have to try that hard to imagine that feeling.”
Jackie lets herself be held tighter and just nuzzles her face higher, further into Shauna’s sternum, breathing through her nose against the soft skin there, I’m here, I’m here, I’m alive. I love you, I’m alive.
Shauna’s grip doesn’t loosen one bit, but her fingers go back to tracing shapes and looping around baby hairs.
“Will you tell me what happened?” Jackie tries again, softly, and snakes her hand underneath the familiar fabric of Shauna’s flannel, rubbing her thumb back and forth across Shauna’s ribs. Jackie hates when Shauna touches her ribs— she’s so ticklish on her sides that she once flailed her arms and back-handed Shauna right in the mouth. Shauna laughed about it but Jackie sobbed, then made Shauna pinky promise not to tickle her on purpose ever again. But Shauna likes it when Jackie touches her there, so she does it. (And she doesn’t investigate why she feels suddenly drunk at the feeling of Shauna’s skin under her fingertips again.)
“Okay,” Shauna’s voice shakes. Jackie realizes oh, Shauna might actually do the thing I’m literally begging her to do and she’s instantly terrified to hear about that night.
Even though she doesn’t remember anything after falling asleep, she’s not exactly unfazed by the whole ordeal. It’s fucking traumatic. Like. Yeah, she had given up pretty much all will to live by that night, and like— yes, okay, she didn’t super care if she lived anymore. But she didn’t really want to die. She just wanted Shauna to apologize. To come back to her. She wanted the entire five months (she knows it was closer to four, but she needs the win) before that night to never have fucking existed.
“I… I remember waking up from a weird, bad dream”—couldn’t have been—“and being re-really cold. I don’t know what time it was, like if the sun was even up. I looked out the window of the attic and I saw—I–I um,” Shauna stutters, voice wavering and breaking off in the saddest possible way. It’s only then that Jackie realizes Shauna’s facing the window again, no doubt watching the flurry of snow outside.
How awkward would it be if Jackie just flipped them around? Too awkward?
She opts for pulling back from Shauna’s neck to get a look at her, moving the hand between their chests up to hold onto Shauna’s tensed jaw. Brown eyes don’t budge as Jackie swipes her thumb back and forth across her cheek, right along her still-protruding cheekbone, her fingers itching to thread through soft brown locks behind her ear. “Hey,” Jackie tries softly, her voice coming out hoarser and sadder than she expected.
Shauna’s eyes are huge and blinking and spilling out tears that might’ve been flowing freely this whole time as she stares up ahead at what Jackie assumed was only her worst fear until now. So Jackie tries again.
“Shauna.” She feels Shauna’s jaw tense underneath her hand.
Scared brown eyes pull down, probably unconsciously, to meet soft hazel ones.
(Jackie cold. Jackie freezing. Yeah.)
Before either of them can get lost in the contact, Shauna closes her eyes, sending more tears rolling down pink and pale cheeks, brows furrowing almost in pain as her forehead falls forward to meet Jackie’s own. She takes in a big shaky breath and Jackie knows not to linger too long on it, that Shauna’s trying her best, so she gently prompts, “Then what happened?”
Shauna keeps her forehead attached to Jackie’s and her eyes closed. Her next words are so quiet and heartbreaking and full of something so completely not Shauna.
“I saw the snow.”
Jackie can’t help but gulp as she tries to hide the way her body tenses.
She’s not even close to healed, to falling asleep unafraid or eating more than a few bites of food at a time without feeling sick.
But—and again, she knows she’s going to hell—it does feel really fucking good to know that Shauna’s not healed about it either.
“And I um, I–I ran down the latter. I don’t… I don’t remember everyone waking up but I think I must’ve— I think I was screaming,” Shauna’s voice breaks.
And then Jackie feels like a complete dick for feeling good because that image is like taking a fucking meat cleaver to the chest.
She imagines, for a split second, how it would feel to wake up to snow knowing that Shauna was out there, cold and alone and nearly dead, and her entire body fills with this sick dread that she’s only felt once. She wonders if it’s even possible that Shauna could’ve had a weird dream that night too.
Jackie grips tighter than she probably should at Shauna’s waist. The thought of Shauna so panicked, so scared—
“I ran over to you outside. You were— Jackie, you were covered.” Oh god, Shauna’s really, really crying again now, her voice scratchy and strained and 9 years old, wailing on the playground as Jackie chased after Billy Kaufman for throwing a rock that smashed her bestest friend’s ankle.
Jackie scoots impossibly closer, their bodies melting into each other somehow even more. Shauna’s sobbing like she was before, the way that she doesn’t usually allow herself to. Jackie’s whispering small shhs through her own tears and shaky breaths. Their noses are nestled against each other—neither knows when that happened—along with their foreheads. Their wracking breaths flow in and out of each other and Jackie thinks that she could live here and never move.
Shauna sniffles one choppy breath in and moves her hand from Jackie’s back to wipe at her own tears. Her eyes are still closed when she brings the same hand to cradle Jackie’s face. (She could lose all of her senses and still know exactly where to reach out to.) She exhales another wobbly breath right into Jackie and continues.
“I started, like, shaking you. I was yelling a-and I think I hit someone. I mean, I know—I know I hit someone, I just don’t know who.” She swipes at her tears again before bringing her hand back to the side of Jackie’s face. “And not even, like, an accidental shove, Jax, I like— I punched someone.”
At that, Jackie lets out a short and wet (ew) snort of laughter. Her nose pushes into the side of Shauna’s, her lip just barely grazing Shauna’s as they breathe. Shauna’s eyes open finally. She wipes at Jackie’s tears with her thumb, pulling back the slightest bit so her eyes can scan all over Jackie’s face, taking in the tiny moment of levity like a raindrop in a drought.
Jackie has no thoughts in her head other than god, her eyes really are pretty, and no plan other than grazing her hand higher and higher up Shauna’s waist when Shauna continues. “Tai or–or maybe Misty? I can’t remember— realized you were breathing. So I got you inside. With Nat.”
Shauna shifts her gaze down between them to look at the soft little smile Jackie gives at that.
(And, taking another glimpse into Shauna’s head, all that’s in there is just screaming, until she focuses her eyes on the heart-shaped pendant sitting just below Jackie’s clavicle, rising and falling with each breath Jackie takes. Her collarbone isn’t protruding as much, she thinks. That’s good.
She has to squeeze her eyes shut to banish the next thought out of her head: Maybe Natalie got her to eat.
The thought doesn’t linger long though, because Shauna looking down allows Jackie to press her lips ever so gently to her brow.)
It might be surprising, but Shauna and Jackie have never been this touchy before.
They’ve always shared some unspoken awareness of each other, sure. Whether they were in a room with a dozen people or on a field with twice as many, they just always kind of knew where each other was. They never needed to look for each other in a crowd. Never needed to reach out to be caught when one of them tripped. Jackie somehow always knew when Shauna’s car had made it to the curb at the end of the Taylor’s walkway— obviously, if tonight was any indication. It was instinctual, this quiet awareness.
And of course, they’re always physically attached somehow.
But this.
Shauna’s thumb stroking along Jackie’s jaw.
Jackie’s index finger drawing a heart or maybe an infinity symbol in between Shauna’s ribs.
This is pushing the instinct.
(Maybe it’s giving into the instinct.)
“Then what happened?” Jackie prods as she forces eye contact again.
Shauna takes a big breath. Her eyes turn from teary and Shauna-like to intense and unwavering, shifting their focus back and forth between Jackie’s. She says it like a confession. “Then I set the cabin on fire.”
Jackie’s throat goes dry as Shauna looks into her eyes in a way she never has before. It reminds Jackie of this story she used to bug Shauna to read to her, one with those raunchy cover drawings that they’d steal from Mrs. Shipman’s nightstand. It was about a knight and queen, or maybe an outlaw and a princess, Jackie doesn’t know, but she does remember that the man slash scoundrel did something dangerous and dumb, and when he was brought to the woman slash what-the-fuck-ever, he looked up at her with these eyes that she wasn’t expecting. Like he was ready to do it again.
Jackie had thought back then, curled up in Shauna’s tiny bed with a flashlight and this terrible book that she loved, that she could picture thatlook in certain big brown eyes. She thinks of that, now, and knows she was right.
Shauna still hasn’t blinked when she continues lowly, “I… I was just trying to get the fire bigger, it wasn’t on purpose.” It’s mostly a lie. Jackie’s fingers continue their little patterns on Shauna’s side, hearts and swirls unknowingly becoming a triangle. And a circle. And some lines.
“I don’t really remember how it happened, I don’t even really remember the fire, I-I-I just…” Shauna tapers off before struggling through one big breath in. And then—
“I needed to get you warm, Jackie, you–you were so cold, you looked like you were— and I didn’t care about the cabin or-or anybody else and I know it could’ve gone, like, insanely badly, I just– I needed to get you warm, because… because, Jackie, you’re the only person—,” her eyes suddenly squeeze shut and Jackie squeezes her side in return. “You’re my best friend. You–you’re the only thing I care about, you’re my best friend, and the thought of you— I mean, you were out there because of me and-and I just needed to fix it, I needed to get you warm, Jackie, you were so—” Her breaths start to pick up speed and tears make their encore appearance down her ruddy red cheeks and, all at once, she’s a complete mess again.
She’s a complete mess but Jackie is whole.
Because before even conceptualizing what it is that she wants from Shauna, she’s given it. All of the feelings of doubt and wrongness and no no no she’s felt from the moment their plane fell from the goddamn sky finally go away, and she gets the confirmation she so desperately needs that it felt all wrong for Shauna, too.
It feels, to Jackie, more like waking up than when she came to in a hospital somewhere in Canada.
“Shauna, Shauna, Shauna, hey,” Jackie reaches up to thread her fingers through Shauna’s hair, pushing it behind her ears and holding it there. Her hands are delicate (and warm, they’re both reminded) as she strokes Shauna’s cheeks and jaw and tears, not at all like the desperate grip that Shauna’s hands have on Jackie’s face right now, but etched with just as much love.
Shauna’s whole body shakes with these desperate, wracking sobs and Jackie starts whispering everything she can think of to calm her down. Variations of I’m here, I’m here, I’m alive, I love you, I’m alive reverberating past her lips and straight onto Shauna’s.
It’s a promise to Shauna and a revelation to herself.
“Shauna, babe, shhh shh. I’m okay, I’m right here.”
Their hands are clutching at each other’s faces, wiping tears, scratching hairlines, pulling each other closer, closer, closer.
Shauna’s losing it. Her breaths aren’t even breaths— too shallow and too quick. She can barely enunciate her repeated plea, but they both still hear it:
Too cold.
“Jackie, you’re too cold,” finally rings out clearly. “Your lips— they’re–they were blue.”Shauna’s hands are running all over Jackie’s face, thumbs desperately trying to memorize every feature that’ll never be warm enough.
Jackie does the only thing she can think of to prove her warmth and starts pressing her lips all over Shauna’s face, her forehead, her cheeks, her eyebrows, again and again and again.
“Shauna,” she pleads against her skin. “I'm okay.” A kiss to her cheek. “I’m okay.” Another closer to her ear. “I’m okay.” Back to her other cheek.
Shauna chokes out a particularly pathetic sob.
“Your lips were blue.” She heaves. Jackie’s not-at-all-blue lips kiss the corners of her mouth, her eyelids, the space in between her brows— they smudge tears all across Shauna’s cheeks, her forehead, her nose. A tiny promise with every touch. But it’s not making any difference.
“Shauna, Shauna, shhh—,” she presses her nose against Shauna’s.
“They’re too cold.”
And then Jackie doesn’t know what else to do.
Their lips make contact.
Shauna’s still crying and Jackie’s still desperate. And it’s still snowing.
And Jackie holds Shauna’s face to hers like she can breathe life into her.
Salt. Jackie tastes salt. She doesn’t breathe, doesn’t move a single muscle aside from one thumb slowly swiping back and forth across Shauna’s cheek. Shauna pulls in a sharp breath through her nose, a shaky exhale quickly following suit and landing on Jackie’s cupid’s bow.
Jackie pulls back to whisper, “I’m okay,” before Shauna’s lips follow to reconnect them. “I’m okay.” Reconnect. “I’m okay.” Reconnect again.
Now, if either of them were asked when it happened, they wouldn’t be able to give you anything resembling an answer. But at some point, these clumsy, rigid, almost non-kisses turn soft. They go from simply a promise of see, my lips are fine, to, well— still a promise. That’s kind of what a kiss is, isn’t it? Or maybe Jackie just still desperately, stupidly wants to be a romantic.
But at some point, Shauna’s breathing steadies. Her lips push back. One of her hands snakes its way from its death grip on Jackie’s jaw to the back of her head, gently keeping her close, as the other hand shakes ever so slightly against Jackie’s cheek. Her head quirks to the side to bring their faces impossibly closer, pressing, pressing, pressing.
And as for Jackie, well.
Jackie wasn’t super thinking about it when she pressed her lips to Shauna’s. She definitely wasn’t thinking yeah, that’s what a fucking kiss is, but it clicks right around the time Shauna slots their lips together just right rather than smooshing hers against Jackie’s closed mouth. Jackie’s brain catches up to the taste of someone’s salty tears and the rapid pounding of someone’s heart and someone’s sigh into her mouth and she realizes she’s kissing Shauna. For the first time in her life, she realizes—
A kiss feels right.
It feels more than the just empty nothingness of every other kiss she’s been unlucky enough to share.
And it feels more than I’m alive, I promise, I’m alive.
Shauna pulls back for just a split moment to suck in a breath, her nose stuffy after so much crying. Her eyes don’t even open before she’s pulling at the back of Jackie’s neck and plunging in to capture her lips more firmly, more sure. The thought to stop her itches at Jackie’s brain. The thought that Shauna doesn’t really want this, that maybe it’s doing more harm than good, and that there’s got to be another way to prove that Jackie’s not frozen.
But it’s Shauna. She tastes like something Jackie will spend her whole life trying to describe and she smells like home. Her hands tangle wildly through Jackie’s hair, scratching and tugging her closer, and Jackie lets her.
Almost instinctively, after a particularly sad, shaky whimper from Shauna, who’s still crying, Jackie opens her mouth in a decidedly not innocent-pressing-of-lips way. A gargled whine makes its way out of Shauna’s throat instead and she pulls her hands out of Jackie’s hair to wrap her arms completely around the back of her neck. There’s no space for Jackie’s arms now either and she’s forced to do the same, wrapping around Shauna’s torso and gripping the fabric of her flannel across her back.
They couldn’t be together closer than if they were a single-cell organism, legs intertwined, hands clutching each other with white knuckles and straining muscles. And their lips—
Shauna’s lips.
Jackie, up until an hour or so ago, felt like a ghost. Like a corpse who was stuck waking up in a loop for no other reason than to feel the weight of her deadness. In the forest, in the cabin, in her house. But now, with Shauna’s lips attached to hers, Jackie finally feels alive.
Shauna, without detaching her life-saving lips, pushes up on her elbow so that she’s just slightly hovering over her. If Jackie finally feels alive, Shauna must feel invincible with how hard she’s kissing her now. She mumbles a quick but effective, “Okay?” against her.
Jackie nods quickly. “Mhm,” she pulls back and licks her lips. “Yeah,” she tilts her head to press her lips more firmly into Shauna’s. She can’t help the hum that vibrates from her throat.
Shauna pulls her knee up to throw her leg atop Jackie’s hips. There’s a desperation to her, now, for more than just reassurance. Her breathing has quickened again and her hands are still shaky, but neither for the sake of nervousness. It’s for Jackie. Not Jackie’s totally normal body temperature or not-at-all frozen fingers. Just Jackie.
The thought alone feels a little like a drug.
Jackie uses her fistful of Shauna’s flannel to pull her all the way on top of her. Shauna pushes her into the mattress and Jackie suddenly, God help her, is fucking open-mouth kissing Shauna Shipman. Her body can’t help but wriggle, her back arching and chest pushing up into Shauna’s.
“You’re okay,” Shauna says into her mouth.
Jackie nods, fast, “I’m okay.” She brings one hand up to thread through soft brown hair at Shauna’s scalp as the other digs its nails into the small of her back.
“You’re warm?” Shauna pulls back just enough for them to finally finally look at each other. Her eyes are deep and dark and pleading, begging.
She looks beautiful.
Jackie leans up to kiss her again and Shauna lets her. “I’m warm.” She surges up to flip their positions. Shauna lets her.
Shauna lets out a shamelessly whiny moan at Jackie’s weight on top of her and Jackie puts at least a dozen mental pins in that little bit of information. She rests her hands on either side of Shauna’s head. Shauna’s hands are everywhere. Stroking at her neck, tugging at her hair, pressing at her shoulders. It’s when they slope down her spine, under her sweater, and pull at her waist that Jackie can’t help her entire body fucking shuddering, her hips pressing down of their own accord.
The gasps they both allow out of the depths of their beings near obscenity. Shauna’s fingers dig into Jackie’s sides. Her head lifts off the pillow as she presses her lips as hard as she can against Jackie’s open mouth.
“Jackie,” she whines, pulling Jackie’s hips down desperately to get her to do it again. Who is Jackie to not oblige, you know? (And also practically whimper in response. Whatever.)
The next time her hips roll down into Shauna’s lap, Shauna’s hands help them along the way. The two of them move frantically, desperately together. Pressing and pushing and grabbing— the breathing and the sounds between them ramping up. There’s a fervor to them now that Jackie guesses has been there this whole time, maybe their whole lives.
The instinct to move onto Shauna’s neck is very much calling to her, but Shauna’s lips are too persistent to let her leave. So they keep just kissing— the entire length of their bodies crushing against each other again and again as Jackie repeatedly fails to fight the urge to sink her hips down, their hands discovering and rediscovering, and their lips fighting each other’s for dominance. One of Shauna’s hands starts making its way frontward from her hip across her stomach, while the other runs down her arm, clutching desperately at her muscles.
And then suddenly there’s a sharp and deep fucking pain running through Jackie’s forearm, and she’s brutally reminded of the ginormous needle that was shoved into her vein at her today’s check-up. She lets out a pitiful hiss and jerks back.
Shauna yanks herself backward like she’s just been burned.
“Are you okay?” Her eyes are big and crazed and filling with tears again as her hands shoot out into the air as if a cop just yelled hands up!
Jackie winces. “I’m fine, I—”
“What is it?” Shauna interrupts and god the pain is still reverberating up Jackie’s arm. Shauna sits all the way up, forcing Jackie upright in her lap.
“I’m okay, I prom—”
“Did I hurt you?” Soft hands that were bruising just a second ago find their way back to Jackie’s face, cradling and pulling her to meet her gaze.
Jackie grabs at both of Shauna’s wrists but makes no move to pull them away. “Shauna, hey,” she tries to get frantic brown eyes to focus. It doesn’t work.
“I’m okay, listen,” she speaks calmer, leaning forward to pull their foreheads back together.
Shauna gives in for a second but pulls back quickly again. “What happened?”
“It’s my arm. I had bloodwork done today and they stuck me like a million freaking times—”
“Is everything okay?”
So much for trying to convince her that everything’s fine and dandy. Hey! I’ll prove that my lips are fine but the jury’s still out on my essential fucking organs!
But no, Jackie knows that’s not true. She truthfully didn’t need another round of bloodwork, but her mother insisted. “Everything’s okay, I promise.” She rubs up and down Shauna’s arms. “Heart is good, lungs are good, everything’s good. I just forgot about my arm.”
Shauna takes a huge breath in and nods her head, her eyes rapidly surveying Jackie’s face. “Okay… okay.”
Shauna’s eyes land, yet again, on Jackie’s lips: still not blue and, in fact, definitely more pink. And swollen. Her thumb swipes across them and a small smile breaks out under its touch. Shauna’s eyes flick up to meet Jackie’s and she can’t help but return the smile.
They lean their foreheads together and breathe each other in again. After a minute, they both start to laugh. Or rather, they wheeze out happy, teary sounds of loopiness that are probably as close as they can get to laughter considering the exhaustion. They’re happy. Right now, in this moment, they’re happy.
“I’m okay, Shauna,” Jackie whispers for probably the millionth time tonight, stroking the soft skin of Shauna’s wrists.
Shauna takes in a big breath and nods.
Jackie’s head is still floating up above the clouds as she adds, “More than okay.”
Shauna barks out a real laugh and then Jackie’s being pulled into a melting, languid hug. Her legs wrap around Shauna’s middle like a koala, just how she ended up earlier on the floor, trying desperately to get Shauna to breathe. She could live like this, she thinks. Being carried around by Shauna— no say in where she’s going, no other cares in the world. Just little kisses to the side of her head like she’s being given now and strong hands rubbing up and down the length of her back.
“I don’t think I know how to live without you,” she admits.
“Me neither,” Shauna whispers into her hair, not missing a beat.
Jackie smiles and clears her throat. “You believe I’m not too cold, now, right?”
Shauna lets out a breathy chuckle and adjusts her chin against her shoulder. “Can’t debate with hard evidence,” she tries nervously. Jackie can tell she’s smiling, too.
“Jackie, I—,” Shauna suddenly (but delicately) pulls back to get a good look at her. “You know it was always about you, right? What I did?” She pushes a stubborn tuft of hair back behind Jackie’s ears and strokes her ear a few times. Her eyes are brimming with tears and something that took Jackie a long time to admit to herself was ever there— was always there. Love.
There’s also fear. Which might’ve been there just as long.
Jackie strokes her cheek to quell it. “I know.”
“Did you always know?” Shauna sounds like a little kid in the why phase of her life.
“I…” Jackie starts. “I don’t think I knew knew, but I don’t— I don’t think it’s a normal response to go outside and wait for you to come get me.”
Something like hurt flashes across Shauna’s face at the reminder. “Please,” she blurts out too loudly before she can stop herself. Her next words are spoken solemnly, gravely. “Please never almost die again.”
Jackie gulps. Shauna loves her, she’s reminded. Shauna loves her and is here, holding her and kissing her and trying to remind herself that Jackie loves her too. “I promise.”
Shauna’s soft but so serious when she opens her mouth that it could make Jackie cry. “I might… need to be reminded again— that you’re not cold. Sometimes.” It’s not a line, not a flirty suggestion. It’s complete honesty. And she looks so scared to even ask for it.
Shauna loves her, and so Jackie doesn’t think twice before leaning in and pressing her lips softly to hers. There’s no desperation, no insistence or pleading— just a kiss. Again, Jackie thinks of what a kiss means. If it’s always a promise.
She thinks of what she would’ve wished for at 11:11 if she’d been as alive as she is now to make one.
She pulls back just enough to speak.
“Anytime.”
Neither of them notices that it’s stopped snowing.