Chapter 19
Fire in the Water
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The door had been left open – the people once inside clearly having prioritized fleeing into the night rather than securing the living space – and Whitney smacked a palm against the heavy wood to shove it out of her way as she stormed inside. He could hear her muttering to herself from the porch, the clatter of cabinets opening and banging closed.
She was clearly agitated, the swing in her mood hinted by the way she'd snapped at him to move, the terse, shortness of her movements. He knew it was due to a dissatisfaction in how he'd responded to her cautions about the owners of the house and law enforcement and needing to clean far more thoroughly than he ever did as a rule, which had given way to frustration. Far from warding him away, however, it centered something in him.
There was a strange, almost everyday kind of normalcy about it, though it had never been normal for her to be annoyed with him. Perhaps that was it; that she would show annoyance here indicated that she wasn't concealing it in regard to...other situations. Just having her near again cleared his head in a way that didn't fully make sense to him, for her nearness also now drove him to an intense level of uncontrollable distraction. He didn't so much mind her temper. She was never mean, never hurtful. Even when she'd shoved at him it had been a soft thing, more flustered than serious, and obviously not founded on the intent to hurt him.
She had never wanted to hurt him, not even in the beginning. It wasn't in her nature. He was not above admitting that this worried him on occasion.
When she emerged after a moment more spent in a silence broken by a rattle of plastic and a muffled huffing exhale, she emerged, arms laden with a deep cooking pot, a large plastic jug full of clear liquid, and scrub brush that looked like it had come from a bathroom. There was a brand new pack of kitchen sponges stuffed into the pot along with the rags she snatched from him, which she dumped unceremoniously to the grass. She had bound her hair up with one of these, the ragged scrap of old bedsheet folded about her head and tied at the crown so that the copper strands were tucked away.
Hefting the pot in one hand, she followed along the side of the house until she came to the external water faucet meant to attach to garden hoses and the like and began filling the metal dish with water. Once done with that, she returned to the porch and knelt, seizing the jug between her hands and making to open it.
It was either brand new and therefore unopened, or whoever had closed it last had done so well enough to create a hindrance, for she struggled quite a bit, the knuckles of both hands going white and strain pulling all the way up her shoulders until her entire upper body vibrated with a fine tremor.
"Oh for—you motherfucking son of a...shitbiscuit," she hissed through teeth clenched tight in her mouth.
He felt his eyes widen, both amused and fascinated. He'd heard plenty of foul language before, and none of the words she'd used were new to him, exactly, but he'd never heard her curse quite like that before. The odd word now and then, but not so many strung together like that and not the one that began with F. He didn't actually know what it meant, only that it was particularly foul and that to have said it, she must be quite frustrated.
As if privy to his thoughts, she cast him a swift sidelong glance, muttering a sheepish: "sorry" as if in penance for causing him offense, even though the outburst had not been directed at him.
He was not offended. There were far worse things in the word than bad words. Words could be weapons, he understood that, but they were ethereal things, and could only harm if one let them, and there were only a few specific words that still had that kind of power over him.
Once again she wrenched at the cap of the jug. Spots of color had appeared bright and high at her cheeks, a rosy pink flush that seemed to spread down as he watched, creeping down her neck and lower. He felt a curious urge to tuck his fingers beneath the collar of the shirt and pull it back to see just how far down the color reached. Not that he would ever dare do such a thing, and it wasn't just out of fear of drawing her current temper alone.
With a sharp, final twist and a grunt of effort the cap came free with an irritable snap of: "jesus..." His next inhale assailed him with the potent, burning stench of bleach, and he coughed, blinking against the reek. He watched, at once curious and somewhat baffled, as she dashed the liquid over the stains upon the stoop and began to scrub at it with the brush.
It was unnecessary. She shouldn't have bothered, and he should not have allowed her to dirty her hands with the death he had caused. But at that moment the idea of stopping her seemed akin to sticking his hand in the mouth of an extremely aggravated bear.
What experience did she have with cleaning up after corpses? Was it knowledge related to what she knew about anatomy, the way bodies themselves worked, or things she'd learned at her work in the clinic – whatever it was? He surmised so, but it seemed wrong to equate her with such knowledge for all the confidence she seemed to have about it.
"This is going to take a minute."
She did that sometimes; shape her tone so that it altered the meaning of the words she used. Sometimes the changes evaded him, but he understood the terse slant to interpret a minute to mean a long time. He wasn't sure if she said it because she wanted him to remove himself from the vicinity because she was still annoyed or simply to stop hovering, but he took the opportunity to follow her initial suggestion to deal with the body while she was otherwise occupied. Clearly he needn't concern himself with the possibility that she might wander off and get herself hurt. Not when she seemed so intent on her self-assigned task.
He didn't really understand the reason or vehemence behind her frustration. He grasped her aim – to clean up as he usually might, with simply more thoroughness then he deemed necessary – but no one was going to come looking. He dealt with the bodies, the things they carried with them, and the worst of the obvious mess, and the curious or passersby steered clear.
It was that she had made no secret of her disdain for his callus treatment of life, and it was a disdain he respected. She was a healer, after all, learning the ways of preserving life – the utter opposite of himself. So why help him remove and hide a police officer's car? Why tidy up after the carnage she so clearly recognized as such. And why be so meticulous? Why worry so that someone just might come looking? He might have thought it worry on his behalf, that she was doing it to protect him...but that was so unlikely that he dismissed it out of hand immediately, and then reconsidered.
He recalled the way she had observed their handiwork from the roadside, studying the car wedged between slope and tree trunk, and declared it satisfactory. She had smiled, soft lines forming at the outer corners of her eyes and mouth as if in the telling of a joke. Not quite sharing in a game, but something fun. She hadn't gotten defensive until he had dismissed her spoken concern with a shrug, and then she had bristled and snapped like an angry cat.
Was it because she felt protective? He thought it might be. And if that was so, it meant she was setting aside her own moral disapproval of his actions, going so far as to insert herself into them, for the sake of ensuring nothing bad happened to him as a result of them.
How far they had come. A week, two weeks ago her choice would likely not have been the same. Neither would his.
There was a light, delicate flutter high in his stomach, as though several small, winged things had taken up residence in the space between it and his lungs. It wasn't an anxious feeling, as he initially assumed it to be, but rather something else, something joyous. Delight, maybe even elation. At first it felt dangerous, the soaring swell of pleasure at a thought he never would have entertained before, and it wasn't until he made it back to his childhood house that he remembered exactly why such a seemingly positive thing could be a danger to him.
The body he disposed of in the tunnel behind the heavy metal door with the others, and if he was a little more careful about untangling the loose limbs from the burlap than he usually would have been, it was unconscious – unthinking and unintended. He meant simply to head back, or perhaps to stop in the kitchen for anything he could find that might be of help to Whitney's enthusiastic cleaning efforts. He found himself, however, in his own bedroom, standing before the bureau and staring down into the topmost drawer at the wallet tucked between rows of neatly folded socks, untouched for almost two decades.
It had been during his purging of the campsite she and her friends had erected that he'd found it; bright yellow, marred with the odd scuff mark, made from some kind of imitation leather. It had fallen from the pocket of a bag he'd begun to rifle through for items of use, and it would have gone ignored but for the cards that had spilled from its folds in a rainbow of colored plastic slivers. He had grumbled in his silence, irritated by the nuisance. In bending to gather them up he had come upon one printed with the face of the girl he'd chained in the tunnels, realizing that the wallet, and therefore the bag, must belong to her.
He didn't now remember his reasons for keeping it, or for stowing it here rather than with the larger bag tucked under the little bedside table. Or for not disposing of it with the rest of the detritus she and her companions had left, for that matter. He was glad of the decision now. Wallets were important; they contained money – although he had seen none – and other vital adult things necessary for survival in the world outside of the woods. She would need it if she was intent on leaving, which evidently she was.
He had thought...well, Jason didn't know what it was he'd thought. She had been very clear, painstakingly so, and perhaps he could attempt to blame the strain from the rest of the night or the battle he had waged with the demands of the oath he'd made and subsequently broken, but he had heard her well and clearly.
"You know the gas station along the highway? Meet me there in three days and I'll explain."
She had been trying to dissolve the conflict, to separate them so that they didn't keep tearing at each other – so that he didn't tear her brother apart. But they had not been empty words. She had meant every one of them, and just as she had fulfilled her promise to stay with him that night, she intended to keep this one, too. She always had.
So why had her mention of it via the request about the motorcycle elicited surprise in him? Why had it felt like she had struck him over the head with a cudgel?
It shouldn't have.
By his approximation of her count, they were little more than halfway through the second of those three days, which meant the morning after next she would go, find her brother at that gas station, and there was every likelihood that she would not come back.
Oh, who was he trying to fool? She was never coming back. It didn't matter what he did or didn't do – it never had. She had no reason to stay, or else not enough of one. Even if she viewed him fondly enough to want to keep him safe it wasn't enough to tear her from her own world forever. And perhaps that was as it should be. He didn't want to imprison her here like a bird in a cage, he didn't want to cause her sadness or resentment or pain. She had family – living, breathing family – and he would not keep her from them. Such a loss was not one he would wish on any being, her least of all.
For the first time since stowing it away he folded the wallet open, gingerly thumbing through the contents until he found the particular card he sought: the license with her picture. He peered down at it, noting the little inaccuracies which marked it as old. Her hair a bit shorter than it was now, her face a little bit rounder. She looked tired too, as though she'd been shaken awake from the midst of sleep to take it, but she was smiling.
The pad of his thumb smoothed over the tiny plastic-coated photograph as he contemplated. He would give the wallet back to her, along with the bag in which he'd found it. But this...this he would keep. He could not keep her there if she didn't choose it, but he could keep this little piece of her – the image of her face to keep the memory sharp, though he doubted he would need the aide.
Folding the wallet closed he tucked it back inside the drawer, slipping the bit of plastic into the inner left breast pocket of his coat before he turned to the door.
She was still working when he got back. Fine tendrils of hair were escaping from the edge of the rag by her temples, and one leg of her shorts was dark with water. The worst of the stain at the stoop had been washed away until only a faint shadow of it remained. Now she was scrubbing at the door, alternating between pressing bleach into the grain of the wood with a sponge and scrubbing with water from the pot. He was glad to note that she had unearthed a pair of thick rubber gloves from somewhere, which made him less inclined to worry about what the bleach might do to her skin. She didn't appear to be having much trouble with the blood, but that might have been due to her proclivity as a healer, and possibly sheer stubbornness in her drive to conceal the evidence of the carnage he'd wrought.
He had allowed her to come along to ensure she remembered what he truly was, but now, at the likely success of that endeavor, regret was a bitter thing filling his mouth. She probably wouldn't take back her words, but she didn't need to. Not after this.
Deciding it would be better not to disturb her, he circled around the side of the house to the woodpile. He had already dealt with the body of the dark-skinned boy, but having left it untouched for so long had had consequences.
Blood had soaked into a good third of what had been a neat stack of wood before he'd turned it into an executioner's block. He wasn't sure how Whitney would have had him deal with it, but he figured leaving it was not going to fly. Not if she came back and saw it. So he spread the burlap upon the ground and gathered the bloodied pieces into it. He would carry it to a point deep in the woods and leave it there to rot away when the autumn rain came. That should be enough, he thought.
As he added the last few pieces to his pile he eyed the ax where he had left it upon extricating it from the wreckage of the boy's rib cage. It was a good blade, sturdy, well made and with a heft to it that he'd never come across in any of the camping gear was he usually left with. It had thrown beautifully. He decided he would take it with him when it came time to leave, but for the moment he folded up the bloodied firewood and headed for the trees to find a suitable place to stow it. He ended up dumping the lot of it into a caved-in stretch of the mine tunnels close to the edge of the camp border, tossing a good amount of dirt and forest detritus after it, thoroughly masking the signs of anything outside of the completely organic aside from the tunnel itself to any unlikely passersby. Doubling back around the eastern edge of the house, he picked up the ax and carried it back to the porch.
Whitney glanced over at him, pausing ever so slightly in the midst of forcing bleach into the gauge his machete had left in the door with what appeared to be a poultry baster. He experienced a moment of admiration for her ingenuity, yet did not miss the way her eyes followed the ax as he lowered it to the ground until they were ready to leave. It wasn't fear, she knew he wasn't going to hurt her. But he could tell she was studying the weapon and imagining – or perhaps trying not to – in what horrible way he had used it to end another person.
Bringing her gaze back up to his face she said, "I'm pretty much done here."
The worst of her temper appeared to have run its course, for her tone had leveled out. Not that he had taken it personally, he understood she hadn't been truly angry with him, only worried. He remembered his mother behaving similarly when Jason had done something particularly dangerous such as climbing too high, even if he didn't fall, because he might have and might next time and she was afraid of that happening.
"Is there anything else you touched? Did you go inside?"
A chill ran down his spine as if from a brush of icy fingertips, the question sticking in the back of his own throat like black, viscous bile, forcing him to focus on the one body he hadn't been able to bring himself to go near again. Hardly the most violent or gory of the night's kills, but the worst nonetheless.
He hesitated, not wanting to lie, but very much not wanting to answer either. Forcing himself to nod was like snapping a dislocated shoulder back into place, crunching agony followed by swift, painful relief that would continue to ache and fester for days to follow, but he did it.
There were a number of reasons why he didn't want her near the bodies, the primary being that it felt wrong to subject her to them. It was especially so for this one, due to reasons which made his insides squirm to look back on. Killing in general did not shame him, even in the face of her displeasure, but this one...this one did.
By the time it occurred to him that it might be better to retract his answer – though exactly how he might go about that escaped him – she was already moving inside, cleaning supplies gathered in her artificial-purple gloved hands.
"Where?" she questioned, and without even thinking about it he pointed up to the ceiling, only feeling the sharp twist of alarm after she had started off across the cluttered room.
Once inside, he could more easily gauge the location of the bathroom in conjunction with his recollections of the external layout. He knew at a glance up the darkened stairwell that the bathroom was right at the top of the stairs, which was bad luck, and that by what he knew of Whitney meant it would be the first room she tried. He would not be able to deter her now. Her mind was set, determined to fix the problem laid out before her; and while it might have been based in slightly selfish reasons, he would not have her burdened with the sight of that dead girl.
He lurched after her, taking the stairs two at a time and heaving himself forward to slap his right palm flat against the door jamb just as she twisted the knob and began to pull.
Her chin jerked up at the sound right next to her face, her eyes a little wide, but she seemed more curious than startled and let go, seemingly by reflex. Her eyes dropped to his hand, the rigid set of the bones and tendons there, then flicked to the door.
"Oh," she said on a quiet exhale, stepping slowly back from him and the bathroom, clearly having put together what he wanted and why. "I'll—wait out here."
She meandered a little ways down the hall, giving him plenty of space, and he allowed himself to release the breath he had been unconsciously holding.
The bathroom door didn't open easily, as though it had been barred from inside. It took him some maneuvering to get it open and squeeze himself inside all while keeping the corpse collapsed at its base concealed, but he finally managed, and pressed the door shut behind him.
The girl lay in a bedraggled heap upon the tile; death-white under gold hair and silky blue nightclothes. Gravity and the force of her own weight had caused her flesh to give until she had eventually slipped from the piece of antler upon which he had impaled her. The deep, dragging gouges in her back were evidence enough to confirm it. There was blood on the floor, and some on the rack where he'd hung her, but the room was relatively clean which was interesting. She must have mainly bled internally.
She looked...harmless. So small and weak and insignificant. It was difficult to imagine such a little thing could be capable of instigating the kind of profound terror that she had produced in him. He understood more solidly now that what had happened to him that night had had little to do with her. She had been an indirect catalyst, nothing more. And now as he looked down at the crux of something that had changed him irrevocably forever, he felt nothing. No rage, no disgust, no unease. Just the cold, hollow emptiness he had always felt before.
He wrapped her up in towels first, using the thick, plush ones hanging on the bar adjacent to the tub in the hopes of concealing the shape of her, of more securely containing her limbs and hair. It might have been a bit on the paranoid side, but the burlap occasionally gaped or slipped, and he couldn't risk that happening now, with this body. And perhaps it was a bit strange to think that way, as if a glimpse of this girl would drive Whitney away whereas having witnessed the brutal death of another two nights ago had not. He supposed it was his own shame that drove the instinct to hide it, though he didn't know if he could have pinpointed exactly what the shame was for. Nor did he want to. It was enough simply being forced to handle her again, regardless of whether he was repulsed now as he had been or not.
When he exited the tiny room it was with the blond girl's body slung over an elbow, wrapped so tightly that he doubted tossing her off a cliff-face would do much more than ruffle a few folds.
Whitney was still standing a few yards down the hall, waiting – just as she'd said she would – while giving him plenty of space. He expected her to be wary of approaching, of coming so close to a dead body, but when he propped the door wide and gestured for her, she just hefted her supplies and strode right in, sparing not so much as a glance for the shape he held.
She peered around, taking stock of the blood on the floor as she stepped carefully around it and of the dirty brown smudges beneath the window. He hadn't noticed those before, but once he saw them he knew precisely where they'd come from: the soles of his shoes where he'd dug his feet into the floor in effort to ground himself, separate himself (unsuccessfully) from what had been happening. That he would have removed even before, and he considered inching back inside and doing so had Whitney not planted herself firmly in the center of the space, clearly taking over.
"Did you touch anything? Sink counter, shower curtain? A wall?"
Jason shook his head.
"Anything coming up?" she added, "the banister, or—did you use the handle, or—"
Her gesture toward the doorknob dropped as he held up a hand to interrupt her. He shook his head pointedly, then pointed to the window, watching as she turned her head to look.
"You opened the window?"
She glanced back at him for his answer, and frowned when he shook his head again. He hadn't touched the window itself – not with his hands, anyway, which seemed to be what she was mostly concerned about, next to the blood. He mimed climbing with one foot and his free hand, somewhat amused by the completely blank set of her face as she clearly did not follow. Frowning, she raised an arm to swipe at her forehead with the few inches of bare forearm which showed above the top of the rubber glove, turning back to the window as she did. She stared at it for a few seconds, her arm stilling there, pressed to her brow.
He could tell the exact moment when she put it together; that he meant that he hadn't come in through the door at all. Her spine straightened by an almost infinitesimal amount, her arm dropping back to her side a split instant before the "oh..." left her mouth.
She glanced back, tilting her chin until it nearly brush her shoulder rather than fully turning. For a moment she simply eyed him, worrying her lower lip between little white teeth in a way that seemed almost nervous, but he didn't think actually was. He was strangely captivated by the sight of it and completely clueless as to why.
Well...no, that wasn't entirely true anymore. There was no longer a gaping crevice in the part of his mind but a scaffolding of possibility and idea, the what it was about her mouth that drew his eyes as if he had become comprised of iron filings and she were magnetically charged.
Her gaze dropped, skimming lightly along his form as if taking his measure. She was looking at him as if she was imagining him doing what she'd realized he must have: pulling himself up onto the roof to slip in through the window that should have been too small for him, and there was a strange sort of wonder to it, a hint of curiosity, of fascination.
It was fleeting at first, barely even a cohesive thought, but once it flitted through his head he couldn't shake it. Because he had seen her look at him that way before, brief flashes here and there, and again in the lodge kitchen when he'd been too tense to read and standing too close to catch. Because all of a sudden he had the impression that she was looking at him the way he often caught himself looking at her. Admiring, longing.
He couldn't get her words out of his head – the words she had struggled to get out properly, and not completely – nor the look on her face, the faint flush in her cheeks. Couldn't shake the feeling that everything he'd thought about the encounter next to the sink had been completely wrong, and that she had wanted him to stay for reasons beyond just for the sake of her own kindness or the friendship they had stitched together.
Was it possible that she...
"Ok then."
The words left her slowly, like a breath let out in measured increments to manage pain. To hear it made his skin prickle, a visceral thrum of awareness rippling through his body as if he'd become a piano string and her voice the hammer calling it to sound.
"Well," she added with sudden, sharp emphasis that implied she was giving herself a head-clearing shake, "no one's going to look at that when there's a huge fucking gouge in the door downstairs—sorry," she apologized with a self-chastising grimace, "I like that word today, I guess."
Jason frowned behind his mask, not understanding why she seemed to feel the need to apologize. He could understand that the language itself was impolite – socially speaking – and he was pleased in part that she didn't want to offend him, that was a positive thing to be sure. But he didn't want her to feel like she had to watch her mouth around him if it didn't come naturally. He had always rather liked that she spoke her mind and had told him repeatedly to go to hell rather than do nothing but cower; and for all he suspected his mother might have disapproved, he liked the way she talked, profanity or no. He liked her voice, and whatever she chose to do with it he would absorb and gladly.
He waited until she looked at him to shrug his lack of concern, and she tilted her head in question.
"You don't mind me swearing?"
He shook his head again.
"I guess I just assumed..." She let the sentence fade to its death in favor of staring at him for a moment, suddenly contemplative. "I wasn't actually mad at you before," she said softly, "you know that, right?"
It was his turn to stare, not caught unawares by the question so much as what it meant that she'd asked it. Had she been worrying she had hurt him by snapping? His nod was assertive, hoping to communicate that yes, he understood, and to reassure her. It seemed to work, for a small smile appeared at the corner of her lips as she nodded back.
"Ok. You go on, I'll deal with this." Decisively she pointed down to the floor, indicating the general state of the room.
Taking her cue, he backed out of the doorway and made for the stairs, pausing only when he heard her call out after him.
"And don't even think about touching anything else on the way out, you big moose!"
Was it possible to light up from the inside out? According to the heady mix of delight and trepidation which fluttered about in the pit of his belly just then, Jason rather thought it was.
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Whitney was disassociating.
Big time.
She knew she was: she kept cycling violently back and forth between horror over what she was doing and an almost feverish sense of righteousness in her decision. Honestly, she might have been more surprised at herself if it hadn't been apparent that while she would probably never be ok with murder (she'd held onto that at least), she could find a tolerance of it in Jason's stark distaste for the act he had inadvertently devoted his life to committing. It wasn't so much that she wanted to conceal the evidence of the horrendous events but that she wanted to keep Jason from any potential reprisal.
As abstract and far-fetched as it might have seemed, even the faintest outline of the thought of him caught, locked up in a prison or a psychiatric facility (which, with the amount of death he had dealt out in his day, was the not likely) rendered her lightheaded with worry. He might not be able to die, but if anyone caught him and found that out...would they subject him to experiments? Torture him indirectly to find out the cause? It seemed so dramatic, like something out of a horror sci-fi novel. But it probably wasn't all that unlikely in the event of capture. The thought made her feel like she might vomit up her own insides.
Clearly he didn't fear capture or punishment, and perhaps he had his reasons. But she was not willing to take the chance that he might be wrong, hence the need to disassociate as she doused her latex-gloved hands in blood and bleach.
Not that she actually knew what needed to be done – it wasn't like she had ever cleaned up a crime scene before, or even thought about it. Still, she grasped a little; what could be learned from bouts of insomnia cushioned by late night cold case reruns and logical application of science. She was fairly confident that even if she couldn't clean to the point of perfect sterility, she could at least make it confusing enough for whatever evidence she missed to be useless.
The bathroom was so small that Whitney decided it would be less work just to mop the entire floor; soaking up the tiny pool of blood with a sponge before dousing the spot with bleach and spreading it around until the tile was gleaming wet. She tackled the door next, wiping down the inside surface with a bleach-soaked sponge and eliminating the scattered red-brown flecks marring the immaculate white paint. Then she turned her focus on the piece of raw antler set into it, shaped to form a customized towel or bathrobe hanger – and probably from a kill cousin to the deer head she'd glimpsed displayed in a prominent place above the living room.
This had been the weapon for the murder in this room: a sharp, pronged instrument of death forged from an innocuous piece of decoration. Every prong was bloodied, and she spent a generous moment fretting about how she was going to get it clean. Antler was like bone, wasn't it? And bone was porous. If she set a sponge to it, would the bleach soak in? She wasn't sure, but she couldn't think of anything else to try.
Holding the pot up underneath to catch the mess she pressed the newly-soaked sponge into the prongs, squeezing as she might have around a piece of silverware and hoping it would be enough.
For good measure, she ran the sponge along the window frame, just in case some precocious (or knowledgeable) individual decided to test it. Then she gathered up her supplies and slipped back out and down the stairs.
Back in the living room she tossed some things around, pillows and the like, and relocated the fireplace poker to the couch as though someone had laid it there across the cushions like a small child. She gathered up the dishes left lying about the downstairs rooms and ferried them to the kitchen, neatly stacking them inside and next to the sink – something partying kids would never have done. When she left, she did so through the mudroom, where she spent a few minutes upending a basket of clean towels onto the spotless counter and dumping an entire bottle of liquid fabric softener into the dryer. That last detail she was particularly proud of: let the investigators try and make something of that, if they could!
When Whitney declared herself finished and circled back around to the front porch to make sure she hadn't left anything lying around, Jason was there waiting for her. She had assumed he would leave while she cleaned as he had done before, to relocate the second body to wherever it was he had decided to stow them. But he was right there next to the stoop, body still folded over an arm like he might have carried an overcoat and the double-headed ax cradled loosely in his other hand, masked face tipped up and slightly sideways, as if he had been watching the clouds overhead.
"We can head back now," she said.
Jason's head swiveled, shifting his focus down to her, clearly taking in the pot she still carried, packed with used sponges and the bottle of bleach, the gloves she had peeled off once outside.
"Unless there's somewhere else I need to clean?"
The corners of Jason's eyes creased with his smile at her teasing, and she felt another small stab of relief to see it.
"I wasn't actually mad at you before...you know that, right?"
She had asked because it hadn't occurred to her whether he would be able to tell the difference between general frustration and one aimed at him, and because she had suddenly realized just how snippy she had been with him. He hadn't done anything to deserve it, and she hadn't wanted him thinking that he had.
Evidently he hadn't been bothered. There had been an almost affronted emphasis to his answering nod that almost seemed to say: well obviously. And clearly he knew her better than she had given him credit for, or else was just quite adept at reading her moods. Both implied an attention paid to her that was almost more flattering than any he might have directed toward her physically. Attraction was great and all, but taking the time to truly know another person was a mark of a whole other kind of intimacy. Not that that made her stomach-butterflies any less rabid at the prospect of the former.
Jason tipped his chin in the direction of the tree-line and she followed dutifully as he set them on the route back to the camp.
It didn't take very long for the afternoon's activity to catch up with her. She still hadn't quite recovered from the punishment she had subjected her own body to: her feet, calves, and lower back were beginning to ache from all the bending, reaching, walking, and scrubbing. She positively reeked of bleach, which hadn't bothered her so much in the midst of a cleaning frenzy but now was starting to get to her. Plus, her stomach was starting to pinch with the early pangs of hunger, which wasn't helping anything. All she wanted in the world was food and a bath. The one she could acquire, but the other...mother of god, what she would have given for a bathtub.
As a result of all this, she was not as diligent in trailing his steps as she should have been, but she had a sense that even though she was behind him Jason was somehow still keeping an eye on her and would drop everything else to keep her befuddled ass from stumbling headfirst into a pit-trap. Still, she was relieved when he slowed and turned to indicate they had passed into the safer stretch of woods. He nodded forward, a gesture she followed with her eyes to see the dried-out husk of a fallen tree they had passed earlier on the way out.
With the help of the landmark she knew where they were, and felt no compunction about moving forward to walk beside him.
She very much wanted to reach for his hand. The compulsion bit at her, a sweetly sore and nagging thing. She would have obeyed it, too, had the hand in question not been occupied with the ax which gleamed just a little too brightly to not have been quite recently used. Instead, she let her fingers graze his sleeve, pot of used cleaning implements balanced in the crook of her other arm as she gripped the fabric lightly. It was a poor substitute, but it allowed her just a hint of the closeness she'd sought. That she quite desperately wanted.
She had been doing her best not to think too hard about the veiled offer she had made him earlier. There didn't seem to be much point in bringing it up again – she was about eighty-five percent sure she had only managed to perplex him – and that was assuming she could get over her own mortification in order to ensure clarity of intent. At the same time, part of her felt as though she was hovering in the midst of a window that was rapidly closing. Every minute another grain in the hourglass of her life that she would never get back, torn between the fear of wasting it and the terror of action that seemed...beyond her. She was struggling with it, and it was easier not to think about. Easier, safer, yet left her feeling listless and frustrated. And more than a little empty.
Though she wasn't sure if he noticed either way, she held on to his sleeve for as long as she could – until the awkward weight of the pot started to string an unpleasant coil of tension in her shoulder and forced her to let go. After which she trailed along next to him, the ache in her feet and shins dragging at her already sinking mood. She had planned to accompany him to wherever he was headed, but the idea was seeming less and less practical by the second. She needed to eat something, to rid herself of the stench of bleach that was making her head fuzzy, get out of the clothes that were starting to stick to her back and crease uncomfortably under her butt.
Mind made up, she turned to him.
"I'm going to..."
But he was no longer there beside her.
Pivoting, Whitney glanced behind her and found nothing but trees. He had vanished, just like that; clearly having other things to see to. Maybe the things he'd been dealing with before all the chaos of her not-quite-rescue, when he'd reluctantly left her. Or else just didn't want to be around her just now.
Had her putting her nose in his business been off-putting? Probably. And maybe that was for the better.
She stopped by the lodge just long enough to drop off the cleaning supplies she'd liberated (read, stolen), hork down a can of cold ravioli because she was just hungry and didn't give a damn, and to grab a change of clothes before heading straight for the showers. She didn't linger, hopping beneath the spray for no more the brief few minutes it took to wash off the dirt and sweat and chemicals. The heat had rendered the natural curl of her hair to something of a hectic frizz even under the protection of the rag she'd used to protect it, and to keep from shedding. It was too soon to wash it again, but she had unearthed some baby powder from a box not completely integrated into the anthill-esque puzzle-sculpture that was the tunnel interior, and she made sure to rub some into her scalp to absorb out the excess of oil from working in the heat, all the while shifting her weight from foot to sore foot, bemoaning the lack of a bathtub in which to soak them. And Epsom salts.
Yet while she might not have had either of those things, she did have access to something else: a body of water.
Slipping on the pretty yellow cotton dress was a stark improvement from her sweat-soaked clothes. While not as hot as it had been in the days prior, it was warm beyond her comfort level. Warm enough to make the idea of dunking her feet in the lake seem close to heavenly.
She hadn't set foot on the dock, hadn't even really thought about doing so after those few minutes spent sitting in the shade of one of the nearby trees and looking out on the water as her appreciation of the beauty soured with sad and awful realization. Yet somehow even after that she felt no unease as she slipped her feet from her shoes and set them to the side. No ill-settled hint that the touch of her bare toes to the sturdy old wood of the planks was in some way disrespectful, that she was treading on a grave. The only person who had died at this dock, in this water, had been Jason. And if Jason was up and walking, breathing, feeling, then there could be no grave to desecrate; and if there had been, she suspected Jason would care more that she had put herself within the grasp of his mortal enemy than that she'd set foot on the spot itself.
The grain of the planks was worn smooth and almost satiny, but even the little imperfections there were felt like pebbles wedged into the sole of a shoe. An off-kilter comparison could be made to the Princess and the Pea she thought bemusedly as she held out her arm to balance in compensation for the slight lilt and bob of the dock between her steps and the ebbing, sloshing shift of the water below. She sat at the far end, folding her knees over the side and lowering her unhappy feet into the water with a strangled whimper. Even while warm from hours soaking up sunlight the lake was cool. It was an instant relief, a balm to the sore skin and throbbing tendons whose grumbling subsided within seconds.
She lost track of how long she spent there: feet churning lazily, her head lolled back, eyes closed as she turned her face up to the sun like a flower might have to drink in the light.
Somehow she hadn't really expected to see Jason until maybe the evening, though she had no reason to think it or anything else. But in the moment when she turned her head and happened to see him at the shore, sinking slowly to a cautious crouch just inside the rim of shade provided by the surrounding trees – so close to the thing that had been such a source of pain and terror – it took her more by surprise than perhaps it should have.
He was just watching her, yet she could tell even from the distance that he was remembering the day at the stream and trying to determine whether or not he should be concerned. Would he come after her if so? Would he if she fell in? Judging by the swift, unthinking action he'd taken at the stream she thought she knew the answer, and the idea of the stress it would cause him – whether she fell or not – was enough to encourage her to move.
She had probably spent more than enough time in the sun for the day anyway, considering her lack of sunscreen and the redhead genes from generations not too long past which caused her to burn both quickly and rather badly. But really, she didn't need much excuse to go sit with him.
She traversed the dock more slowly this time, her caution entirely for his sake. It did not escape her notice that he didn't fully sit down until both her feet were completely settled on the silty ground, and that only when she plopped down beside him did he appear to fully let go of the tension he'd been carrying.
"Hi."
He gave the tiny nod she liked to think of his version of hey in reply – the one which never ceased to send a happy little trill through her nervous system. Stupid body (brain?). He didn't seem to have come for anything in particular, didn't seem to want anything other than to be near her, and she found herself smiling at the prospect. It was such a little thing, to be sought after simply for company. Just company, not even conversation or activity. A little thing, but it made her...happy wasn't the word. She wasn't sure if there was a word for it, the at once vague and quite specific intertwining of happiness and contentment and pleasure, both comfortable and the best kind of unsettling
With a sigh, she leaned back until she was lying on the patchy, scraggly summer grass, warm and relaxed from the time spent lazing in the sun like a lizard. She blinked, taking in the lacy green silhouette of the pine branches against a sky so blue that it almost looked fake, as if a filter had been cast over the world around her. One of her own making, perhaps.
Jason was a solid, steady presence beside her, the rhythm of his breathing too quiet to truly hear, but she seemed to feel it all the same. It was soothing, having him there. She felt safe. Truly safe in a way she didn't think she'd ever really felt at any point in her life outside of early childhood, before she'd started to realize just how dangerous the world could be and that parents were not the all-powerful shields she had thought them to be. She knew that were she to close her eyes and drift off to sleep, nothing bad would happen. Nothing would hurt her. Nothing would dare.
Feeling warm and more than a bit sleepy her eyes drifted closed, and she considered doing just that – just for a moment. A nap would definitely not do her any harm, certainly not with Jason there.
She felt him shift next to her, felt the brush of his sleeve against her elbow, eliciting a very faint tingle in the adjoined hand which rested flat against her rib cage. She thought he might have moved a bit closer. Jesus, he smelled good for an undead zombie-ghost: leather and earth after rain, plain, good soap, and the faintest hint of sweat.
Her thoughts stilled, caught and tangled on that last little detail, so insignificant until she really considered it.
She had never seen him sweat before. She had noted the absence of it more than once; that he never seemed to overheat even during the fiercest of hot spells. She had assumed he must just have a strong tolerance for it or that he kept himself cleaner than she had ever given him credit for, but neither had really properly explained away the lack of the particular odor of a man that was quite so active.
After the rapid-healing discovery she might have put it down as a perk of being semi-undead (or whatever). But now she caught it; the unmistakable salt-and-musk tang far more pleasant than she recalled – which was probably more to do with that elusive concept of chemistry she had thought she understood but clearly hadn't than anything else. She had always thought it fascinating how some people could perspire and yet never seem to smell unpleasant, and that there were those who actually seemed to smell nice. It had never occurred to her that the two things might be correlated. But all this was irrelevant. That she could smell it on him was decidedly odd. The heat had never bothered him before, and if it wasn't that, then why...
Something brushed her ankle, the back of a finger skimming tentatively along the faint depression just above the bone, and her eyes snapped open, guided by her surprise. Jason had moved closer. He had angled his body toward hers, leaning his weight into the hand planted against the ground near her shoulder, his face turned down to the place he touched.
A tingling awareness spread through her like ripples upon the surface of water, as though he had put a live wire to her skin, and suddenly all hints of sleepiness had vanished.
It was her ankle for fuck's sake. But it felt like far more than that, far less innocuous. Or innocent. And considering the conversation (stilted though it had been) they'd had earlier in the day, she did not think it unreasonable for it to have struck her that way.
As she turned her head toward him she saw his face tilt, his eyes flicking to her face – gaze seeking hers as if to gauge whether the touch was unwanted. She made the concerted effort to relax, and to be obvious about it, even when every muscle, every inch of her skin tried to pull tight. She had no doubt that if she gave him any fragment of a reason to doubt he would retreat. A good quality, she reminded herself, and admirable one; the mark of a man who was decent, not simply inexperienced.
He swallowed, drawing her eye to the subtle gleam at the base of his throat above the ragged shirt collar. He was sweating, but she would have bet every cent she had ever had to her name that it was because of nerves, not the heat, and that was almost more flattering than even a respectable hard-on had been. Sure, she could elicit that, but to make him sweat? She didn't even know why, but that was a completely different level.
His gaze faltered, and for a moment she thought the nerves had gotten the best of him, that he was going to pull away. Yet as she waited she felt his wrist turn, felt fingertips brush the base of her heel, and something other than worry flooded her – the same breathless anticipation that came right before a kiss.
When he touched her again it was with more surety, confident that he had not misread, and maybe she hadn't confused him before. Maybe he'd understood better than she thought he had. Fingertips slid up along the line of her shin, rough with callus, but so gentle.
How long had it been since he'd touched someone out of something other than anger, before she came along? Was that why he was always so careful with her; not because he feared to break her, but because he was relearning how? It was something of a sad thought, but it was a fleeting sadness, one quickly countered by the fact that regardless of the necessity, he was apparently determined to do it.
His palm curved with the shape of her calf, the back of her knee, seeming completely oblivious to the hair that dusted her skin. She hadn't seen a razor in a month, and the last time she'd shaved had been a week before that. Mike would definitely have teased her about it, but Jason had not been raised on the expectation of beauty standards that required maintenance. He clearly cared about nothing other than that her legs were bare and she was allowing him to touch them.
Thank god for small gifts.
He leaned very slightly closer, and for whatever reason the position was a very stark reminder of just how big he was: literally twice her size with interest. Doing so caused a single strand of fine wheat-pale hair to slip over his jacket collar. It looked oddly stringy, as though it were partially air-dried after having been wet, and suddenly two things stood out to her: the smell of soap was also more pronounced than usual, and he was openly putting his hands to her, not concerned as he had been last night about dirt or grime.
Had he just bathed? Had he made it a point to do so, after having spent so much time handling corpses and cleaning up blood? Was that why he'd vanished so abruptly on the way back? Had he…had he planned this?
A swift pang of delight hit her just as the soft graze of his fingers reached the space above her knee, and she couldn't stop the tremor that passed through her like the heat shimmering over asphalt. She had managed to maintain her stillness up until this point, but no longer. Her other knee bent, unconsciously trying to press her thighs together on some weird, not-entirely-defensive reflex.
It was, unfortunately, enough.
Jason shied back, instantly lifting his hand as though the tiny movement had been alarming as a screech. Yet he was still staring at her, and it took her a second to realize that the reason for the abrupt retreat might not have been solely due to the fact that she'd moved at all, but partly because said movement had caused the hem of her skirt to ride up a few extra inches.
Whatever possessed her in that moment she might never know. But next she knew she was gripping his wrist, drawing his hand down to press his palm back to her skin and holding him there – and while he could have easily broken her grasp if he chose to free himself, she hoped she managed to convey how much she didn't want him to. Then she released him, letting her own hand fall deliberately to the ground and out of the way.
She didn't know how to be any clearer than that.
At first he remained stiff, hand held flat and tense as if waiting to be bitten. He glanced to her face, a lightning quick flash of wary eyes and an uncertain crease of what surely indicated a furrowed brow. Then, after a long moment he let his palm curve, his fingers spread.
His thumb traced a slow, shallow arc along the outside of her thigh. Her neck arched helplessly, her eyelids fluttering. He had no idea the effect it would have, no idea how starved for this particular kind of contact she was – hell, she hadn't even known. It hadn't actually been that long; two months, maybe a little less, she couldn't fully remember. Ellen's illness had put a damper on both her enthusiasm and her short-term memory. All she knew was that it felt like years, and god it felt good to be touched this way again.
His knuckles brushed cotton, pushing her skirt farther up her leg by a fraction of an inch and she bit the inside of her cheek to choke back her whimper at the visceral impact of something so small.
It took everything in her to remain still. To keep breathing. To keep from sitting bolt upright and either shoving out of reach to maintain her own dignity or else pouring herself into his lap like the liquid she seemed to have become.
He could just keep going: drag the hem all the way up until it reached her throat and she would lift her arms to help him slip it over her head.
Wouldn't she just.
There were quite a lot of things she would let him do, and just as many she wanted to do herself. She wanted to shove the coat back from his shoulders, run her hands down his arms, his chest, tuck her fingers under his shirt and feel the heat of his skin against hers. She wanted to hook an elbow around the back of his neck and pull him down over her, or, better yet, push him onto his back, set her knees at either side of his hips and press down.
Her breath left her on a choked half-sigh and Jason went still, hand tightening ever so slightly against her skin. When he drew back, smoothing the soft cotton back down across her thighs, she thought she might cry. But she was not so distraught that she failed to notice his throat work with his swallow as he did, or the way his hand lingered after.
In her admittedly limited experience, men did not tend to be very subtle. They didn't stick around if they weren't interested – and Jason was. He had initiated this, not her. Frankly, that he'd touched her at all had been interestingly assertive after the shock the encounter last night had been. And when she had moved his hand back to her leg he had taken it as permission to do something he'd already wanted to do on his own, through no suggestion of hers.
She had considered that he might decide he wasn't interested in this, that he might not want to engage in this way. This brief exchange had proven that was not the case.
So, why stop? Shyness? More fear of doing something wrong? Or was it that he simply didn't know what to do, either in purpose or possibility. Just because he might have witnessed the occasional pair of idiots fucking in the grass didn't mean he'd taken in the particulars of what precisely was being done. Real sex wasn't like porn; a real voyeur wouldn't be able to see worth shit unless they were really up in the thick of things, and that would have been the farthest thing from Jason's priorities.
Well, he might not know how to go about it, but he wanted to. Maybe this had been his way of telling her that.
And she…she was leaving in little more than a day.
With a smooth, rolling ease Jason stood. He reached for her, intent clear; she put her hand in his and allowed him to pull her to her sand-encrusted feet.
She spent the walk back to the lodge deep in thought. If she went through with this, if she encouraged this, was she leading him on? Was it only that if she intended to leave? Did she intend to leave? She still had no real answer, and for that reason alone she should be putting a stop to this – take her doubt as a sign from the universe to let go, to move on with her life and let him move on with his.
But then, there were a lot of things that Whitney Miller should have done in her life, and the proportion of those should-haves to her have-dones was, well…a bit skewed.
He walked with her until the trees thinned, giving way to the sight of the building – the clotheslines still strung along the western end of the clearing – at which point he stopped, indicating that she would go the rest of the way on her own.
She turned to him, tucking windswept hair back behind an ear to keep it from sticking to her cheek.
"This was nice. Not the—you know. This afternoon. It was nice."
She didn't expect to see the shadows cloud his eyes when she looked, nor the lines of concern which formed, indicating the frown she could only suspect and not see, and something in her went cold at the sudden realization that maybe the reason he had stopped hadn't been due to nerves or ignorance, or not entirely. What if it had been something else – some inner demon dripping poison in his ear, hissing that he wasn't enough, that he was undeserving, that he shouldn't allow himself the liberty out of some misguided need to repent for the less than wonderful things he'd done. Not unlike the way he'd extricated himself from her in order to proclaim his hands too dirty, even when it had never mattered before.
If that was in any way true, she couldn't let it stand.
Swapping her shoes to her left hand, she lifted the other, laying her palm against the mask where it shielded his cheek, hoping he could somehow feel her body heat through the neat row of holes. His eyes rose, lovely and wintery, and she smiled.
"See you tomorrow?"
She felt the subtle hitch in his chest, the faint rush of his breath a soft burst of warmth against her wrist. He nodded, slowly, as though in effort not to dislodge her, and the awful chill inside her thawed, hopeful. She'd give him some space for now, but the second he gave her another opening like this she was going to make damn sure he understood that she wasn't just being nice and that he was not undeserving.
"Good night, then."
He was gone by the time she got to the porch and looked back, disappeared like a specter into the early evening.
~/~
Jason barely remembered ridding himself of the blond girl's body. He knew consciously he must have, knew he must have done so in the tunnels as he should have, since the tunnels were where he kept the soap he used to bathe. It was just that it had been so difficult to focus on anything but how fiercely his skin had itched.
Not a tangible itch, not a real one. It had been as though he could feel every individual layer of dirt coating him, and the subsequent, rather ferocious compulsion to be clean had overtaken everything else. So much so that it had all but driven him from Whitney's presence, unable to stand being so near her in such a state.
Only rarely had he ever wished for clothes other than the ones he had. The only reason he had then was that it occurred to him while scrubbing himself down in the middle of the stream that if he had been dirty then they would be too, and washing them now would mean either walking around in wet clothes or else foregoing them altogether. Neither was a viable option, and it was with a pained grimace that he donned his sole set of clothing; better, but only marginally improved.
When he found her again it was at the lake, where she sat out on the far end of the dock, face turned up to the gradually sinking sun and dipping her feet into the water.
He didn't like it. Everything in him was screaming to get to her, to drag her away from the dark, deadly water and to safety. But he didn't. The threat was in his mind: a product half of bad memory and avoidance, and half whatever it was inside him so determined to see her safe whatever the cost to himself. Besides, she was happy there. He wasn't going to disturb her.
He would, however, keep watch. Not because he thought the water was going to suddenly reach out with vine-like tendrils and drag her under, but because…well, because.
He hadn't needed to.
As if having heard him approach she twisted, planting her hands against the dock's edge and pushing herself to her feet – which gave him an unpleasant surge of panic when she leaned slightly forward to do so. She made her way back toward the shore, illuminated by the light reflected from the mirrored lake surface like something not quite real – a piece of sunlight herself in the buttery yellow dress.
"Hi," she greeted as she sat next to him, her skirts pooling around her hips, her face soft and open as if he'd woken her from sleep.
She smiled faintly, arching her spine with a sigh before falling gracefully back onto the grass, her hair wild and gleaming and haloed by the tiny white flowers scattered around them, and oh, but she was beautiful. It almost hurt to look at her.
Her eyes fluttered closed, dark lashes a feathery fringe that didn't quite graze the crests of her cheekbones. He found himself shifting closer, propping himself above her with his left arm to better study her face, the line of her neck interrupted by the faded ribbon, the way the dress draped the softly curving shape of her all the way down to her legs – long and sleek and strong.
It had been his fascination with her legs that might have alerted him to the powerful draw he had developed toward her body were he a little less ignorant. And it had been the precise proportion of her hips and backside which had made it clear that he had looked at her enough to distinguish her from another woman's shape at a glance. Yet somehow for all the looking he must have done to result in that, it seemed he would never be able to look enough to satisfy the craving he had to look still more.
She was so warm. The heat called to him, drew him in, but he didn't know what to do with it. All he knew was that he would swear his hands ached for the want to touch her.
With the caution of a man reaching for a snake he extended his hand, slowly, so slowly the moment seemed to last an age. The back of his index finger brushed her ankle, the smooth spot just above the faint protrusion of bone, and though guided by his own will he nearly startled at the contact.
Reflexively he glanced at her face, yet if he had expected her to shrink or start at the sight of him hovering over her she did neither. Rather, she seemed to relax even further into the earth at her back. Her eyes were liquid bright, half-lidded, lips ever so slightly parted as if in expectation. Though expectation of what he didn't know.
But he knew what it made him think of.
He could still recall it – not with the clarity he might have, since at the time he had only noticed in passing rather than actively watched – the backward tilt of her head, the way she had risen up on her toes to make herself taller as the man's body curved down and into her.
He hadn't paid enough attention to recollect details; knew only that their mouths had touched. He was both grateful for and annoyed by this. The more detail he had the more he could learn about her, what she liked, what she might have wanted…which was a truly ridiculous thought to have. As if he were ever going to remove his mask and try to mimic what he'd seen. Even if the idea didn't terrify him as much as it made the skin of his misshapen lips burn with the wistful phantom of a touch not there, it was something he could never do.
Yet not even the bittersweet reality could lock the daydream out of his head, not with the smooth skin behind the bend of her knee under his fingertips.
His hand slid upward still, wrist bending to follow the intricate pathways of tendon connecting the delicate bone of her kneecap. He didn't know what happened then, only that where she had been so still and calm she was suddenly drawn tight as a bowstring, slim figure trembling with a single visceral shudder. Her other leg bent, pressed inward, and he could think of no way to define it but as a curbed reflex to shake him off.
He jerked back, trying to put together what misstep he had made but completely unable to force his brain to work when all he could focus on was that her skirt had slid back, exposing generous inches of skin he had never seen bare before.
He couldn't look away. He knew he should, but it was if he'd been hypnotized and he couldn't.
Not until he felt her slender fingers wrap around his wrist and pull.
It was not tentative. She was firm, decisive as she pressed his hand back where it had been, her gaze steady on his as she let him go.
Stunned as he was, it took him only an instant to understand that she had very deliberately taken his hand and laid it against her own bare skin, and even he in his self-admitted ignorance and naivety and caution wasn't sure it was possible to misread such an action. And all of a sudden he understood in the space of the single, clarifying glance he shot her that the strange not-quite-fear that had so confounded him was not, in fact, fear at all…but anticipation.
Had it always been? It must have, because little about it had changed since the first time he could remember noticing it. Maybe there had been a tiny bit of genuine fear there at first, but by the time he could remember catching her watching him with that almost expectant edge, as though she wanted something, the fear had long gone.
He knew right then that he had been right: she had wanted him to touch her in the kitchen last night, just like this. It seemed so obvious now, so blatant, and he might have felt stupid for not having seen it but for how utterly in the dark he had been. Now he was just shocked, and thoroughly captivated.
She was just so impossibly soft, warm and smooth beneath the roughness lining his palms. Not that she seemed to mind it. He stroked experimentally, delighting in the faint shift of muscle beneath his touch, the barely-there twitch of awareness. The way her eyes shuttered and her chin tipped up as if she were baring her throat to him; vulnerable, but with intent, the expression across her face having crossed the elusively-defined anticipation and right into something else. Something that flushed her cheeks and quickened her breath in a way that was entrancing beyond his ability to understand.
He had never been able to grasp the purpose of dresses before; they didn't appear to have any particular function and left the wearer vulnerable. But he thought he understood now, as his hand slid up the supple curve of her thigh. He could follow the skin all the way up to the hip beneath the skirt, completely unobstructed. At least until he got to her underthings.
The thought was a passing one, but his body seized it and clung before his mind could catch up, remembering unbidden how she had looked in the bathroom, skin beaded wet and clutching the shower curtain to her chest – knowing full well she was naked underneath. The desire struck like a rock to his skull. Suddenly all her wanted was her, naked as she had been then. Wanted it so sharply that he was next to dizzy with it.
His hand flexed, an unconscious side-effect of the effort it took to fight the burning in his belly, the coils of greed scraping down the inside of his lungs like claws.
It was too much, too fast. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think.
He forced himself to pull away, to fold the skirt back down over her legs to cut the temptation, trying to reconcile the intensity of his gravitation toward her with the part of his mind currently struggling to remind him just how wrong this was.
Why in the name of everything good was she letting him do this? Didn't she know that a creature like him didn't belong with something like her? All he would do was soil her, and all she would do was leave him.
But it didn't stop him from wanting her anyway, damn him.
She was quiet as he escorted her to the lodge, thoughtful, shoes dangling from where she held them hooked on her fingers. He tried to do as he had done earlier in the day, maintain a safe distance, try not to let himself linger on the subtle sway in her walk or the fall of her hair, the way it tumbled down about her shoulders, framed her breasts.
Just don't look at her.
But he didn't want to stop. He was weak, and he didn't care. If he could have nothing else, he just wanted to look at her. While he still had time.
And yet when he drew his line in the earth and she turned to bestow a smile and a soft word the cloying taste of bitter self-disgust dissolved upon his tongue. And when she stepped toward him, lifted her hand to the face that was not his face, he knew that he had truly – finally – stopped fighting.
He could reject the tangled, knotted mess he had become, reject the powerful, terrifying feeling he had for her, but it would mean rejecting her, too. And he found that while he could live with them, live with the questions and the lack of control, he could not live without her. Not anymore. Could not, and did not want to.
He loved her.
Jason hadn't been sure what that meant beyond the vague memories, but looking down at her now, he knew it with a certainty he had possessed about anything else. Not even his mother. He was a creature of nightmares, of Hell, and he loved her. If she wanted his company, what right did he have to refuse her?
He would take whatever she would give him and when she was gone he would survive on the memory of her, the recollection that there was more in the world than emptiness and death.
Even for him.
NOTES:
Before anything else, I need to give a shoutout to ghost_chance on Tumblr.
Out of a mix of laziness and sneakiness (I was doing this at work...ahem) I was getting to my own Ao3 page via Google rather than logging in or searching the site because it was faster and I needed to look up some dialogue from the last chapter to remember what the hell I'd written, and by absolute random I stumbled - literal internet stumble - across a tumblr post giving a reading recommendation for this story. Which in reality was basically the longest, most thought-out, deeply considered, and praise-filled monster of a comment/review I've ever had in my life. I shit you not, it made my goddamn MONTH. I have never received such high praise about my writing EVER and I essentially cried in the backroom at work because it was lovely and I needed it so badly and I just...holy crap, you guys.
So, ghost_chance, if you're still reading: BLESS YOU. THANK YOU. I LOVE YOU.
Ahem.
I didn't plan on this chapter ending on this note and it feels really negative, but I promise everything's ok! For fear of saying too much, we're nearing a breaking point so the angst is kind of a counterbalance to that? I don't know, my brain is strange and I have a thing for making my male protagonists suffer. Sorry not sorry. I also wrote this really fast so pardon any mistakes. Did anyone catch the so subtle you'll break your teeth on them Beauty and the Beast references? I promise that was actually accidental until I caught it, and then I kept it because fuck it. It tracks, ok.
Also…I'm starting to feel like this story might end up a bit longer than originally planned because I'M WORDY AS FUCK. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. :/ -sigh-
It occurred to me recently just how many fandoms I've stumbled into via fanfiction knowing only bits of the actual media they were based in – Silent Hill and Predator are the two that come primarily to mind since they're recent. I know the slasher community is quite healthy and sizeable (out-of-place pun?), and that there are plenty of Jason-loving folks out there, but I am curious as to whether I've managed to lure anyone into this particular corner of insanity. Also curious as to how much of that would have been due to the way I tagged this thing. Have I mentioned how much I adore Ao3's tagging system? Because I do for all of the reasons.
Anyways. I'm going to get started on the next one. For now I will simply add that every single one of you readers makes this worth doing. Kudos give me serotonin and your comments give me actual life. I swear to god. Thank you.
Until next time!
