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At the creak of the ladder, Van startles, eyes flying open and pushing up onto her elbows to find Shauna’s doe-brown eyes peering back at her through the darkness of the attic.
“Sorry, Van,” Shauna says quietly. Slowly, she climbs another step, but the ladder still creaks all the same. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Van blinks the drowsiness from her eyes. She hadn’t even realized that she’d closed them. “Oh, you didn't, I was just–”
Taissa stirs to her right. The rope tugs on Van’s wrist.
Shauna, still on the ladder, pauses at the same time Van does. She stares at Tai until she settles again, and then beckons Shauna up with her free hand. The ladder creaks with every step despite how slow Shauna goes. Eventually Shauna makes her way to the top, crawling for a half-moment before pushing herself up from her knees.
After Jackie, Shauna had started sleeping downstairs, in Jackie's bed and with Jackie's blankets, but she still kept her stuff up where it was, all mixed in with Tai’s things. The two weren’t really the same size in anything, but none of them could afford to not share out here. The majority of Van’s stuff have already joined the collection up in the attic.
Jackie’s things, though, Shauna had gathered and packed in a dirty pale pink suitcase with corny, faded Paris stickers, after she snapped and screamed at Misty for using a sweater to wrap Lottie’s frost-raw hands. The suitcase is up here, too, like Jackie might come looking for it when she gets back.
It’s like Jackie and Shauna switched places, or maybe Jackie and Van did, or maybe they’ve all become too indistinguishable from each other at this point out here, with all they’ve seen and done together, and Van should really see if Nat wants one of her sweaters since hers has had that tear in it since last week.
Van watches the dark outline of Shauna creep across the room. The dull sound of a zipper, and then Shauna is rifling through the suitcase. She drags a palm over her face, breathing in sharply when she pulls at the still-forming scar tissue the wrong way. An answering huff leaves Tai, but she does not truly stir.
Van listens as Shauna seals the suitcase again and watches as she stands in the dark, and beckons her over.
With a glance at the ladder, Shauna complies. She creeps back over, and, at first, she tries to lean down to see what Van wants, but she winces at the strain of the movement. Despite the dwindling food, Shauna’s belly continues to grow more and more each day.
“Here,” Van murmurs, gesturing for Shauna to sit. Tai’s leg shifts against her own under the blankets.
Tied like they are, she can’t fully sit up without disturbing Tai, so still half-braced on her elbows, she offers her free arm – her good arm – to Shauna as she lowers herself to the ground. Her bad arm screams, and Van bites her lip.
Beside the head of Tai and Van’s makeshift bed, Shauna settles with her legs crossed at the ankles due to the swell of her belly and her hands half-heartedly fiddling in her lap. Van can’t hold herself up on her bad arm any longer and lays down, her head spinning.
She rolls over as far as she can to look up at Shauna, tucking her good hand under her pillow. “What did you need?” Van whispers.
Shauna holds up a bundled pair of socks; Jackie’s. Baby blue with yellow flower patterns. “My feet are cold.”
In middle school, when she first met Shauna and Jackie, she’d said that Shauna acted like a scolded puppy. Natalie had laughed so hard milk came out her nose.
Now, after Jackie, Van thinks Shauna's like a beaten puppy. All vacant doe eyes and hunched shoulders, spending all her time out in the meat shed.
Van just wants to make it better.
She wants to be able to just reach out and soothe the hurt and ache from Shauna's face. To pull Jackie back in to the cabin. To coax Tai and whatever's inside her to sleep.
Her mom used to always insist that she couldn't just fix people, no matter how hard she tried.
Aching, Van attempts a smile. She wiggles her good hand out from under her head and reaches for Shauna’s. “Here,” she says, “since I made you sit down.”
Between the cold and the baby restricting Shauna’s movements, Tai’s been helping her with her shoes and socks, most days. Van does too, sometimes, but her left hand has been all stiff and clumsy since the wolf attack. Misty has encouraged her to take it on as her daily task, says it’s good physical therapy for her, but Van declined. It takes her two fucking times longer to help Shauna into a pair of shoes than it does Taissa, and if the cold has set in to the cabin too badly, she needs Tai’s help with her own laces, anyway.
Tonight, Van’s bad arm is tied. One hand per each of them, it’s a team effort to wrestle a sock onto Shauna’s foot, but it has Shauna giggling, however half-hearted and hollow, and Van takes it as a win.
“So stupid,” Shauna says without bite, smoothing the cuff of Jackie’s sock over the layers under. The second one hangs limply in her hand.
Van grins up at her. At her back, Taissa stirs, curling towards the sounds of Van and Shauna. She sighs against the base of her neck, warm and airy and sound asleep.
Tai’s movements draw Shauna’s gaze. She ducts her head, like she’s remembered another thing to be guilty about. “You’re supposed to be sleeping, Van.”
Exhaustion making her thoughts run all slow, Van furrows her brow. She’s not sure why Shauna would feel guilty about that, because she’s pretty sure she already told her, “You didn’t wake me up.”
Shauna shakes her head lightly. She looks at her with those big brown eyes. “Tai said you aren’t sleeping because of–” She gestures at the pair of them, on the bed, but Van gets what she means.
Right.
Because of course Tai told Shauna. Because Tai-and-Shauna aren’t like Tai-and-Van, and they’re not like Jackie-and-Shauna, because Tai-and-Shauna, somehow, for some reason, actually talk about things.
Van sometimes wonders if Shauna knows her girlfriend better than she does.
Tai-and-Van had a half-fight about it today, after Van nodded off helping Akilah and Crystal dig for roots and grubs out in the woods. She’d woken up to Crystal wailing and shaking her. Akilah had already sprinted back towards the cabin for help.
“I won’t let you destroy yourself for me,” Tai said, after Van was wrapped up in blankets in front of the fire.
Van shook her head. “I can’t lose you.”
“I can’t fucking lose you either!” The outburst took all the anger from Tai’s eyes and replaced it with tears, and she gathered Van and all her blankets in her arms and kissed her face and whispered, “Please,” so Van melted, and promised she’d sleep tonight.
Shauna must sense that Van’s stuck in her head, or maybe Van’s just been silent too long, because she places gentle, cold fingers on Van’s clavicle. Van lets out a shuddering breath.
Sometimes, she wonders if Shauna understands her better than her girlfriend does.
Van drums her stiff fingers against her side and avoids meeting Shauna’s gaze. “I just can’t,” she says lamely.
Last week, when Van was sleeping, Tai got out and almost made it down to the lake before Van caught up with her. Five days ago, after they’d introduced the rope, Van woke up to Tai trying to chew through it in her sleep like a caged animal. The rope left her gums raw and bloody.
She hasn’t gotten out since they started with the rope, but every night, Van still feels on edge, like the knife will drop just after she lets her eyes close.
“You need to sleep,” Shauna says quietly.
Van shakes her head. Tai’s breath ruffles her hair as she shifts behind her.
“I can’t,” she insists again. She finds Taissa’s hand under the blankets with her bad one and grips her fingers tight between her own. “I just keep running through my head, you know? What if I fall asleep, and I’m not watching her. I can’t let her get out and fucking – freeze to death out there.”
Van regrets the words the second before they leave her mouth.
Shauna recoils like she’s been burned, jerking her hand away from Van. A pained animal wince leaves her.
Van releases Tai’s hand and quickly reaches out from under the blankets, to help, to soothe. “Shauna–”
At the sudden pull of the rope, Tai startles awake. She inhales sharply. “Van?” she asks, pushing herself half up. She blinks blearily through the darkness. “Shauna?”
Van’s hand lands on Shauna’s baby blue-clad foot, pulling Tai’s hand on to her ribs. She glances back at Tai, and can’t help but giving her that automatic Tai-smile. “Hey,” she says, before turning back to Shauna, sobered. “Shauna, I’m sorry–”
That gets Tai’s attention. “What?” She scans over Shauna before glancing between the two of them with concerned eyes. “Did something happen?”
Shauna shakes her head. “No,” she says. She looks down at Van. “Van wasn’t sleeping.”
Van gapes up at her.
“What? ” Taissa asks again, and she’s sitting up to also look down at Van. There’s hurt and anger in her brown eyes, and Van feels sick. “Van, you promised me you would sleep tonight.”
Van sits up, too. She fiddles with the excess bit of rope hanging off her hand. “I tried,” she says honestly.
She can see it on their faces that neither Shauna or Tai quite believe her. “You’re exhausted ,” Tai says, and then says again, “You promised.”
Sat between the two of them, Van feels like a rabbit pinned on a butcher’s table. She squirms. “I don’t know,” she says. She stares at her lap and worries the frayed end of the rope. “I just – It doesn’t feel safe, for you. Me going to sleep. I get too worried.”
It’s nothing Tai hasn’t heard before in bits and pieces, and probably nothing that Shauna also hasn’t heard relayed from Tai before, but the attic is silent for a long moment after Van spills. Van glances up and finds Tai and Shauna sharing a look that breaks when Tai catches her eye.
“Van.” Tai cups her scarred cheek, marionetting her bad arm. “I told you I don’t–”
“I could watch Tai,” Shauna interrupts.
They both look at her; permanently disheveled and wet-eyed since Jackie.
Taissa says, “Shauna–”
“So that you can sleep, Van,” Shauna says. “I can watch Tai tonight.”
Van imagines it. Shauna watching over them – over Tai. Shauna wouldn’t let anything happen to Taissa. Getting to sleep – not through the entire night, it wouldn’t be fair to Shauna to make her stay up the entire time, but even if it's only half the night, Van would take it greedily. Anything more than stolen naps between chores.
She trusts Shauna, and knows that Tai does too. Van sags under the weight of her eyelids, into Tai’s hand.
Still holding her, Tai shakes her head, scowling. “I won’t have you destroying yourselves,” she insists. “ Both of you are sleeping tonight.”
Cupping Tai’s hand between both of hers, Van meets her gaze and holds it, imploring her to understand. “Tai, I can’t sleep without knowing you’re safe,” Van says. Beside her, Shauna shifts.
Tai’s brown eyes are wide, but she’s still resistant. “I am safe,” she tries to reassure Van, but Van’s already shaking her head. “The rope–”
“Is working, but new,” Van says. “It doesn’t feel like you’re safe yet. It doesn’t feel like I can close my eyes.”
Tai quiets. Brown eyes search blue.
Shauna says, “I don’t think I can sleep tonight anyway, so.”
A sigh leaves Taissa’s mouth, and she breaks eye contact with Van to look at both of them. “Okay,” she says.
“Okay?” Van asks.
Taissa nods. Her eyes are wet. She kisses Van’s forehead, pushing her hair back from her face. “I just want you to get some sleep, Van.” Van sags further against her.
Tai reaches across her, to Shauna, and squeezes her baby blue-clad ankle gratefully. She tucks Van closer to her. From Van’s side of the bed, she lifts the edge of the blankets and inclines her head.
“Oh,” Shauna says. “I thought I’d–”
“It’s too fucking cold outside the blankets, Shipman,” Tai says. “Get in here.”
Shauna grips the offered edge of the blankets and slowly shuffles her way under. Whether her hesitance comes from sleeping in a different bed than Jackie’s or not wanting to get under the covers with Van, she’s too tired to dwell. She allows Tai to lay her down and cuddle her to her chest as Shauna slides in behind her.
“You know I’m a back sleeper,” Van complains without bite against Tai’s chest.
“You’re a boobs sleeper,” Tai says. She soothes a hand over her hair and presses her lips to the crown of her head.
Shauna’s belly and breasts press warm against Van’s back. Shauna slips an arm between her and Tai, hand coming to rest at her ribs. Her breath is hot and even on the back of Van’s neck.
Van can feel her body growing sleep-heavy and warm. Her bad hand finds purchase in Tai’s sweater, clumsy fingers twisting in the hem, and her free hand tangles with Shauna’s, over her ribs.
It’s safe, she tells herself. Shauna’s got Tai. She’s safe. You’re safe.
Her eyes slip shut.