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Even before the crash, Taissa was never a particularly deep sleeper.
All throughout elementary school, she was sleeping in her parents’ bed more often than her own. Now she simply lays awake, staring up at the posters taped to her ceiling. Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Michelle Akers—the collection of soccer players staring down at her is fitting, given that most nights it’s soccer keeping her up. From the minute she started playing, Tai has felt an intense drive to be the best. The truth is that she never stops playing, not really. She’s always thinking about the game. Lineups, set pieces, formations they should try.
Jackie may be the captain, but Tai knows the game better than anyone else on the team.
(If she’s being honest, Jackie being given the captaincy has only worsened Tai’s obsession. She can’t stop comparing her play to the other girl’s, trying to figure out how she can finally make Coach Ramirez see that she was the obvious choice, that she cares so much it might destroy her.)
So she tosses and turns, watching the day’s practice back and relentlessly picking apart everything the team did. Sometimes she falls asleep, sometimes she just doesn’t. She should be exhausted—and she is during the day—but at night she’s somehow reinvigorated.
In middle school, if it got late enough she started going on midnight runs or bike rides. It’s a toss-up whether or not physical activity will actually make her tired, but at least it gives her something more productive to do instead of just laying in bed.
Then in high school she met Van.
And slowly, so gradually that Taissa doesn’t even remember when it happened for the first time, her midnight exercise started leading her to their house.
It doesn’t happen every night. Usually Tai ends up in their room once or twice a week, maybe four or five if she’s really restless. They’ll talk, or watch whatever show or movie Van has on VHS, or sit on opposite ends of Van’s bed and do homework. Until, by some miracle, Tai’s eyes start to droop, and Van will lay her down in their bed and tuck her in.
To this day, Tai has never seen Van’s room in the light of day. But somehow, she doesn’t mind—it helps her keep up the illusion that the redhead’s room is some special place she can retreat to, helps her to think that maybe there’s something about the room that helps her sleep.
Helps her ignore what her gut whispers every time she wakes up just before sunrise in Van’s room: that it’s not the room that lets her rest, but Van. Regardless, her journeys to Van’s room is a habit Tai would never want to quit, even if she could.
Really, at this point she might as well just go to their house as soon as the sun sets to save herself the hours of laying awake. Especially the night before the State final of their junior year. Despite the knowledge that she desperately needs to be rested before the biggest game of her life so far, she doesn’t even get under her blankets. Why would she, when she needs to go over every one of the Yellowjackets’ plays and analyze everything she knows about their opponent?
As she lays there, mind racing, there’s a point where her thought process derails. Instead of thinking about tactics, her inner soccer vision decides to turn to showing her every possible way the game tomorrow could go wrong. Tai gets more and more tense, until finally she can’t take it any more, exploding out of her bed.
She’s practiced this dance enough times that she can get out of the house completely silently. It only takes one pit stop—to grab her bike and helmet—and then she’s on the road, legs burning and wind whipping her face as she pedals the route she knows by heart as fast as she possibly can.
Tai is nearly panting by the time she jumps off her bike in Van’s yard and taps on their window. In the few minutes she’s waiting, she takes a deep breath, shoving down the weird flash of nerves she feels right before Van appears at the window, smiling.
Maybe Taissa looks forward to this moment in particular—the refuge of Van’s smile, shining bright in the darkness—but if she does, well. She has no idea what to do about it.
Van has learned by now how to hoist Tai through their window in one fluid motion, and every time they do it Tai has to grit her teeth and dig her nails into her palm to stop herself from acknowledging the attraction blooming in her chest. In a desperate attempt to find a distraction, Tai turns away from the redhead, moving to rifle through the pile of VHS tapes sitting next to their door.
“Do you want to watch something?” Van asks, in a voice in-between a whisper and a rasp. All Tai can seem to do is shrug noncommittally, which makes Van hum and move closer to her. “I don’t think I have anything new. But I picked up The Addams Family , if you wanna watch that again.” This makes Tai smile to herself—Van has loved that movie ever since it came out, must have watched it a hundred times by now. Still, Tai nods and hands Van the tape; she can’t imagine a world in which she would be capable of denying the redhead this small pleasure.
While Van puts the tape into the VHS player on top of their small TV, Tai burrows under the blankets in their bed. She’ll swear up and down that she’s not usually touchy, but as soon as Van joins her in the bed, Tai’s head ends up on their stomach. Their hands stroke softly through her hair as the movie starts, and Tai can already feel sleep calling to her.
It never seems to matter how much her mind wants to resist sleep when she’s with Van, and the last thought Tai has before slipping out of consciousness is that tonight seems to be no exception.
In the morning, she’ll wake up before Van and climb back out of their window. She’ll bike home, shower, and get ready for school like she was in her room the whole night. The Yellowjackets will leave to go to the State championship before any classes start, which is good because none of them would be able to focus on class anyway.
Taissa will play in the biggest game of her life for the first time, and all her thinking will fail her; the Yellowjackets lose in the final minutes.
But none of that will matter, because when she and Van are the last two players left in the locker room, they’ll lean on each other until there’s no space left between them, until finally Tai gives in to herself and pulls Van into a kiss.
And maybe it gets a little easier to sleep after that.
Because no matter what happens, Tai knows she’ll always have Van to fall back on.
☽☽☽
It turns out that being an unwilling participant in a plane crash can really fuck up your sleep schedule.
They’ve been in the woods for two days already, and the entire time Tai has felt like she’s floating through someone else’s nightmare. It hasn’t quite set in yet that they’re really, actually stuck out here.
It maybe doesn’t help that Tai hasn’t slept since the crash. By all accounts she should be completely fucking exhausted, crashing every night from adrenaline rush of survival like everyone else. But instead, she’s found herself awake while everyone else sleeps, tending to the fire and listening intently to every little sound the woods makes around them.
She needs to feel useful, and if this is the way she helps her team then sobeit. Besides, she doubts she could fall asleep anyway—last night, just as her eyes started to droop, she pictured Van burning in the plane. That was enough to convince her to stay vigilantly awake, paying a little more attention to the redhead than any of her other teammates. Honestly, the best part of staying awake is that she can stare at Van all she wants, can lie next to them and simply be close without having to worry about the possibility of being judged.
She’s doing just that—has been for a while, actually—when the redhead’s eyes open. For a second Tai considers closing her own eyes and pretending to be asleep, but it’s clearly already too late when Van murmurs “What are you doing up?”
Tai avoids looking them in the eye, instead focusing on a point on the ground just below their shoulder, while she tries to come up with an excuse. “Couldn’t sleep” is all she manages to come up with, cursing herself internally.
Van is silent for a minute, giving Tai hope that they’ll drop it—until she feels their hand on her chin, guiding her face up so that her gaze has no choice but to stay on their face. Tai hates herself a little bit for the sadness she sees written in the goalie’s expression, can’t help but think that they should be focused on themself after such a close call during the crash.
“Tell me the truth, please, Tai,” they say eventually, voice breaking on the “please”.
And in that moment, the reality of their situation slams into her. Suddenly it feels real, feels like she’s been shaken out of whatever haze she was in before.
They almost died. Van almost died , and now Taissa has no choice to admit how much that scares the fucking shit out of her.
It’s all too much.
Tears are falling from Tai’s eyes before she can stop them. She buries her face in Van’s shoulder to hide, but not before whispering “ I’m so scared ”. Scared of everything, but especially of the possibility of losing Van. Somehow they seem to understand that, because they tighten their arms around Tai.
“I’m not going anywhere,” they say softly next to her ear. “I’m not going anywhere, Taissa, do you understand me?”
Tai can only nod into the tear-soaked patch of Van’s shirt that she’s using as a pillow. If she knows anything about Van, it’s that they never go down without a fight. Still, so much of the wilderness is out of their control that Tai just knows she’ll always be worried.
Van lets her stay there for a while, until Tai has cried herself out. That’s when they nudge her shoulder, planting a soft kiss on her lips when she looks up at them. “Look at the sky,” they whisper into Tai’s lips, and after one more kiss she does.
It’s breathtaking.
Through the trees overhead, Tai can track the Milky Way’s trail across the sky. The darkness is nearly bursting with stars, more stars than Tai has ever seen in her life. When she tears her gaze away to look back at Van, they’re smiling at her. “If everything about this were different, I wouldn’t mind being out here just for the view,” they laugh, and Tai nods in agreement.
Unfortunately, they follow that up with “Do you think you could try to get some sleep for me?”
“I—” Tai starts to protest, but she’s cut off when Van cups her cheeks with their hands.
“I’ll be right here, I promise. You need to rest.”
Despite all of her fear and the adrenaline of the past few days, Tai feels her shoulders finally starting to sag towards the ground. She rubs her eyes, and thanks God when she closes them and all she sees is darkness. “Hold me?”
Van nods, scooting closer so that their arms are fully wrapped around Tai’s torso once more.
She finally falls asleep like that, safe in the knowledge that Van would never willingly let her go. And true to their word, when she wakes up they’re still right there, still watching over her.
For just a second, with the pink of the sunrise tinting the trees and Van right next to her, Tai can believe that maybe they’ll all be okay.
☽☽☽
The séance was stupid, all just some elaborate prank or illusion.
The séance was stupid.
The séance was stupid , Tai yells at herself, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s paralyzed in fear, watching a dark figure approach the end of her bed in the attic.
Join me , it whispers, beckoning to her with a gnarled hand. When it passes through a beam of light, the face of a young man is revealed, handsome in a strange kind of out-of-date way. A tug in Tai’s gut screams at her to run, tells her that any minute this man will drag her into the darkness and make her into a skeleton just like him.
That’s when it instinctively clicks. There’s no logical way for Tai to know who this is, but in some sinking part of herself she knows that it’s the owner of the cabin.
What was it that Lottie said? He wants blood?
It was a prank , Tai repeats to herself, but it’s sounding less and less convincing the closer the man gets. Especially when chunks of flesh start peeling off of his body with each step closer, exposing the very bones Tai discovered earlier.
He gets closer and closer, his call louder and louder, until he’s kneeling down next to her, holding a knife to her throat—
Tai jolts awake, heart pounding in her ears and her whole body shaking. Before she can process anything else, her body drives her to get out of the attic, and she scrambles out of her bed and down the ladder as fast as she possibly can without eating shit.
She’s hit with an immediate sense of relief when her feet hit the floor of the closet, but she vaguely registers that she’s still shaking. It’s not like she can sleep there, so she continues out to the main room, where she immediately zeroes in on Van’s sleeping body.
Gingerly, Tai starts to step over the other girls’ bodies to reach Van. She can’t wake up anybody and have them ask why she’s awake, because her mantra that the séance was all made up is still running on repeat through her head. If anyone finds out the real reason she’s awake tonight, nobody will ever take her seriously again.
Anyone except Van, that is.
When Tai finally reaches their bed, she lowers herself to the floor and slides under their blanket without hesitating. They’re usually a heavy sleeper, so she’s not particularly worried about waking them as she maneuvers herself as close as she can possibly be to the goalie.
Finally, her heart starts to slow down.
Little by little, the tension starts to seep out of her muscles. She’s not eager to close her eyes, but when she does she focuses on picturing Van. Their glowing smile, hair that Tai loves to brush her fingers through, the lean muscles of their deceptively strong goalie arms.
Then, without her permission, Tai’s brain does something it’s never done before: it jumps into the future, showing her dreams she hasn’t even acknowledged she has. Van in a dapper suit, hair tied up, for what must be their wedding day. Van with two kids hanging off of their arms. Van laying with her in their shared queen-size bed, smiling sleepily.
Tai forces her eyes open, heart speeding up for a different reason this time. Studying Van’s face as they sleep, she finally realizes that she might be a little bit in love.
Nightmare completely forgotten, Tai’s eyes drift closed once again. She burrows further into Van, surrounding herself completely with them.
This time, as she’s falling asleep she knows that she’ll be dreaming of a future with Van.
☽☽☽
After the wolf attack, Tai doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to forgive herself.
Every time she sees Van’s face, all she can think is that it’s her fault. They could’ve died, and it all would’ve been on her.
The weight of the guilt might crush her.
So she fixes it the only way she knows how: watching over Van constantly to make sure nothing can hurt them ever again.
They’ve been asleep most of the time since the attack, but none of the other Yellowjackets have tried to bother Tai to make her do something more useful. They all seem to sense that they have to work around her and Van in their corner of the cabin. Tai will forever be grateful for that fact, because while Van’s been sleeping she’s gone between crying and needing to punch something, needing to kill anything that even looks at her partner the wrong way.
To say it hasn’t been pretty would be an understatement.
But what’s important is that Tai has been there. She’s been changing Van’s bandages and washing the wounds like clockwork, glaring at Misty every time the other girl tries to intervene. When Van is awake, Tai feeds them soup by the spoonful. If she’s not doing one of those things, she’s tending to the fire, making sure it doesn’t go out and leave Van cold.
What she doesn’t do is sleep.
Even three days after the attack, Tai still feels like she’s running purely on adrenaline. She hasn’t fully relaxed since she woke up to find herself in the tree, hasn’t even tried to sleep—both because she knows she wouldn’t be able to and because she’s terrified of what she might find waiting for her in her dreams. The third reason is that now, she doesn’t know what she might do when she’s asleep, and that’s the worst fucking one.
The good news is that Van has been more conscious every time they wake up. Last time they tried to say a few words, but Tai hushed them and fed them more soup, not wanting them to strain themself. And with the periods between when Van is awake getting shorter, Tai finds herself looking forward to each one, watching an imaginary clock to keep herself occupied and awake.
She’s doing just that when a noise startles her out of her own mind. She immediately registers that Van must be awake and trying to talk again, because it’s a strange kind of gurgling noise at first. But when she looks down, Van is looking back at her, and Tai finally understands what the noise is supposed to be: “Ta… issa”.
“Van, baby,” Tai responds, pressing a kiss to their forehead (carefully avoiding any wounds, of course). “You don’t need to talk. Just let me take care of you.”
Through the bandages, it’s clear that Van is glaring at her. “...No,” they manage to whisper, grasping Tai’s hand, and the contact is enough to make her want to sob. It’s the first contact Van has initiated since the attack, the first sign that maybe they’ll be okay. “You need… rest.”
Tai is quick to shut that idea down, shaking her head. “What I need is to make sure you’re okay.” For a second, she swears that Van rolled their eyes, but it’s too hard to tell under the bandages. Regardless, it seems like their eyelids are already drooping again, so Tai keeps holding their hand until they’re back asleep.
She makes it another full day before she can feel the lack of sleep really getting to her.
Misty has had to remind her several times to change Van’s bandages, and she’s getting slower to respond when Van wakes up. Which isn’t ideal, since they continue to spend less of the day asleep. Their voice is getting stronger, too, which means it doesn’t take long for them to try to resurrect their previous conversation about sleep.
“You have to sleep at some point,” they tell Tai in between bites of soup, voice still hoarse. Tai just shrugs it off, but they remain insistent. “Taissa, you know you can’t stay awake for much longer.”
This is where they go wrong, because Tai has never been one to turn down a dare. “I might not know if I can stay up until you’re fully healed, but you better believe I’ll sure fucking try,” she retorts, only feeling a little bit bad when Van’s face hardens into a frown. Luckily, they drop the subject after that.
Until the fifth day.
Tai would be lying if she said she wasn’t completely exhausted. All her adrenaline has worn off, leaving her down five nights of sleep and desperately trying to cope with what’s happened. She almost drifts off a couple times, but always manages to shake herself out of it.
Of course, Van has thoughts about this. “You need sleep” , they hiss at her at one point. They’ve been awake for several hours at this point, voice steadily getting stronger. And they’re not afraid to tell Tai to fuck off and go to bed (in those exact words).
“I’m fine,” Tai says, but anyone in the cabin could tell you that she’s lying through her teeth. Especially Van. She watches the goalie’s mind working towards a solution, but they surprise her when all they say is:
“Do you remember when we watched The Addams Family together for the first time?”
Tai nods, smiling at the memory. “You were so excited to watch it with me.”
At this, Van laughs, or at least gets the closest to a laugh that they can get right now. “You came over in the middle of the night like always, but I didn’t have anything good, so we rode your bike—”
“I pedaled, you took the seat,” Tai cuts in, “and when we got to Blockbuster the worker gave us the weirdest look, but we didn’t care. They had The Addams Family out in a display, and you basically squealed when you saw it.”
“I never squealed ,” Van protests, but they’re laughing with Tai. “I made… excited noises, and said we had to watch it, and then we bought so many M&M’s to go with it that I bet there’s still candy stuck under my bed to this day.”
“And you were so mad that I fell asleep halfway through,” Tai says softly. She can feel that her brain is starting to shut down, a haze of exhaustion finally taking hold over her body.
“But you were tired,” Van says, “and I’ll never truly be mad at you for being tired or taking care of yourself.” Tai knows they’re not talking about that night so far in the past anymore. When they scoot over and pat the space they’ve made next to themself on their makeshift cot, Tai simply climbs in, absorbing the closeness she’s missed so much since the attack. “It’s not your fault,” Van whispers into her hair as her body finally starts to relax. All of a sudden she’s so, so tired.
Even in Van’s arms, she knows she won’t be okay for a long time after this. But maybe a good night’s sleep will be the first step to getting there.
☽☽☽
Van feels like they’ve been laying in their makeshift cot, staring up at the grimy cabin ceiling, for hours.
At first, it might have been the itching that was keeping them up. The cloth bandages are too rough, always rubbing against the stitches in their cheek. It’s fucking maddening, a constant itch that they can never scratch. Sometimes, for fleeting seconds, they entertain the thought of reaching under, simply tearing back their skin until they can finally fucking scratch.
Or maybe that’s it—the thoughts that have been appearing more often, whispering to them that they should run their finger along the edge of a knife or jump off the ladder to the attic. Logically, Van knows the woods have been doing things to all of them, but no logic will make the fact that their brain seems to be turning against them less scary.
Speaking of—it feels like the fire has been getting hotter and hotter, until Van is sweating under their blankets. They can’t face it anymore, not after too many close calls, even if they’re only by it because they’re healing. The fire has to be growing; Van can picture it in their mind’s eye, consuming everything in the cabin, engulfing each of the Yellowjackets one by one. Even though their eyes are squeezed shut, trying to block the vision out of their mind, it feels like the fire is licking along their skin. Reaching out, calling to them.
Howling.
Four things happen then, all at once: Van sits up in their cot, yells “ Fuck! ” before they can think better of it, claps their hand over their mouth, then lets out a muffled scream as a flash of pain reminds them how fragile their face is right now. They grit their teeth, but that only makes the pain in their cheek worse, and they can’t stop the tears that are rushing to their eyes.
Which is unfortunate, because even through their blurred vision they can see that Taissa has woken up, is now sitting up on her blankets next to Van’s cot. “Van?” she whispers sleepily, and the redhead curses themself for waking up their girlfriend.
“It’s nothing, Tai,” they grunt the best they can, ignoring the way the pain flaring through their face only creates more tears. “Try to go back to sleep.” But just then, they swear they hear wolf paws thumping on the cabin’s porch, and the frightened whimper that slips out all but guarantees that Tai won’t be laying back down any time soon.
The thing about Van is that they raised themself, prize their independence and self-reliance. So when Tai immediately stands up to comfort them, some deep part of Van’s brain urges them to recoil back, to push Tai away and simply deal with it.
A much deeper part of their brain, however, just wants comfort. And as soon as Tai approaches the cot with their arms held out, Van collapses into her torso, doing their best to muffle their sobs into Tai’s sleep shirt.
“I’ve got you,” Taissa whispers, and it’s all just too much. Sometimes Van almost manages to convince themself that one day they’ll wake up to find this was all a dream. High school feels like decades ago, all of their childish hopes and dreams now consumed by nothing except an almost feral need to survive.
When they catch a glimpse of their reflection in a puddle or the lake, they don’t recognize themself anymore. Even before the wolf attack—the crash and the woods have changed them in a way they don’t know how to express, except that it’s fucking terrifying.
“Hey.” Tai’s voice brings them back into their body, and the sharp pain that comes with it is almost a relief. It reminds Van that they’re still alive, not yet floating in the void. “I have an idea. Are you okay going to the attic?”
Van manages a shaky nod, and when Tai separates their bodies the redhead is depressingly proud that they manage not to whimper again. Instead, they wipe their eyes so that they can watch as Tai picks up her blankets from the floor, then grabs their hand to guide them off the cot. Van’s blankets are grabbed, too, and they let themself be pulled gently toward the attic entrance. They manage to climb the ladder with shaky limbs, and Tai emerges shortly after them, then immediately sets about doing something with the blankets.
“...What are you doing?” Van asks, confused, after watching her for a second. Tai is draping some blankets over chairs, throwing others on the floor in a pile, and it’s not until she’s finished moving that it clicks.
“Making a blanket fort,” Tai grins, and Van can’t help but smile back at her. They willingly oblige Tai when she gestures them under the blankets, making themself comfortable on the pile Tai made. “The wolves can’t get to us now,” Tai whispers once she’s joined Van in the fort, and Van has to admit that she’s right—with walls of blankets around them, and Taissa so close that their knees are touching, Van feels pretty much invincible right now.
“Thank you,” they whisper, leaning further into Tai.
“Any time,” she whispers back, pressing a kiss to Van’s forehead so softly that they think they might melt. Already the goalie can feel sleep starting to take over again, but this time they have no worries of wolves or nightmares. Not when they’re enclosed with the person they love most.
When they lay down, Tai follows, so that their bodies are directly against each other. Van turns to bury their head in Tai’s shoulder, while one of her hands rubs their back.
Like this, Van knows who they are, because like this it’s enough for them to be in love with Taissa. They recognize themself in the way her chest rises and falls, the breaths they know so well, the little noises she makes as she starts to relax. They don’t feel quite as lost when she’s next to them, and maybe that’s enough.
Maybe, Van thinks as their eyes start to close, maybe the end doesn’t matter quite as much as long as they know where they are right now.
☽☽☽
It’s a clear fall day, warm but not hot and with a breeze to cool them down. In the back of her mind, Tai knows that this is likely one of the last warm days the Yellowjackets will get, but she can’t find it in herself to care—not when she and Van are sitting by the lake, throwing stones into the water and watching the way it ripples.
They’ve so rarely had time to just sit since the plane crash that sometimes Tai forgets how good it feels. But now, with her head on Van’s shoulder, she never wants to leave this moment.
“I had a dream last night,” Van says, breaking their silence.
“Yeah? Was I in it?”
Van laughs. “You were, actually. It was weird… I think we were in chemistry, and Mr. Smalley was doing some kind of demonstration. Except nothing happened, and he thought it was because there was a gas leak for some reason, so the whole school got shut down. And then while we were outside on the soccer field you turned to me and showed me that you had taken one of the chemicals he used in the demonstration and replaced it with something else.”
“Damn!” Tai fakes offense, but she can’t help the smile that creeps onto her face when Van laughs harder. “Honestly, I can’t say I haven’t thought about doing something like that. If there’s one thing I’m glad we’re missing, it’s Mr. Smalley’s slow-ass demonstrations.”
“Tai!” Van scolds her, though it’s not very convincing through their laughter.
“I’m only telling the truth.”
When Tai makes eye contact with Van again, she puts all of her love for the goalie into her gaze in hopes that they can feel it. “Can you imagine how our freshman selves would react if they saw us now?” She murmurs, pressing a kiss to Van’s cheek.
Van shakes their head emphatically. “I would never believe anyone who said I had a chance with you.”
At this, Tai scoffs. “Are you kidding?! I don’t know how every girl on the soccer team wasn’t falling in love with you. Especially when we were freshmen. You were always so confident.”
“You’re one to talk,” Van chuckles. “You played every practice like you owned the field.”
“Maybe we’re both a catch.”
“Definitely.”
Tai lets out a yawn when Van finishes speaking. “Are you tired?” They ask, shifting slowly so that Tai’s head ends up on their thighs.
“A little bit,” Tai mumbles. “Didn’t sleep great last night.”
“Well, now’s your chance,” Van says, and Tai doesn’t need to look up at them to know that they’re smiling that maddeningly beautiful smile. “We have all the time in the world, baby.”
And for once, it feels like they do.
So Tai lets her eyes drift closed without a fight, surrendering to the rhythm of the redhead’s hands stroking through her hair. “I love you,” she whispers, right before she passes out, and “I love you too” is the last thing she hears.