Chapter Text
Travis is cool, for a guy.
Natalie knows boys, knows what makes them tick, the shitty ex-boyfriends of her past serving as a handy instruction manual. She’d assumed they were all wired pretty much the same, but Travis is a little different than the rest of them. He doesn’t abide by the same rules, he isn’t as easy to understand, and Natalie likes that about him.
She especially likes the way he acts when it’s just the two of them, when his guard is down and he drops the frustrating swagger of teenage boy-dom and they can just talk like friends do, about how they feel, or what they wish they could be eating, or even what their favorite colors are on particularly unsuccessful hunting expeditions.
It’s refreshing forging a connection with a guy far away from the prying eyes of gossip-mongering high schoolers. There’s no high stakes rumors to worry about, no real need to hide the fact that they’ve grown close. It’s easier out here without the unwanted insinuations everyone has always seemed so eager to place on interactions back home. She sort of forgets sometimes that they’re a boy and a girl at all, and basks in the relationship they’ve created outside of any typical context. It’s refreshing.
And maybe it’s because this thing with Travis feels different, but there’s something a little disappointing about how quickly the two of them go from friends to lovers. Natalie had known it was an inevitability, could tell from the way he looked at her, but a naive part of her had been hoping for a little more time together as friends. Hanging out with no ulterior motives, and no implicit expectations of more.
But soon enough it was the same old story, the hitch of a breath, the press of lips together, and Natalie was going through those same motions again, except this time there was the looming threat of death on the horizon. Maybe that injected some adrenaline into the situation and made the idea of companionship more alluring. It’s cold, and dark, and vicious out here. Best to partner up so there’s no threat of solitude.
As time passes, Natalie continues to get to know him better, and for once in her life, she doesn’t even start to dislike him the more time they spend together. Unlike past relationships, they actually spend time together outside of making out. In fact, Travis doesn’t seem all that eager to have sex with her in the first place, which strangely feels like a gift from God out in this desolate wilderness.
Like, Natalie doesn’t dislike sex, but if she had to choose between touching Travis or talking to him, she’d pick talking any day.
She’s fine to wait until he’s ready. She tells him as much. He tells her he’s never been with anyone before, and his vulnerability elicits probably the most positive feelings she’s harbored for a guy, ever. He asks her about her own experience, and, unwilling to fracture the moment, Natalie lies.
Maybe it’s unfair not to return the honesty in kind, but Natalie’s never gotten much mileage out of telling the truth. It’s not like it really matters how much experience she has. What matters most is trading shitty jokes with him as they wander the woods in search of unlucky deer, or fucking around at the lake trying to dunk each other underwater. It’s those kinds of moments that Natalie is intent on preserving.
And when she sees the blatant relief in his eyes at her dishonesty, it only reinforces her faith in lying.
Still, because nothing can ever go well, Jackie runs her mouth about some hook up Natalie barely remembers aside from the fact that she’d gotten free weed out of it, and, sure enough, Travis isn’t happy with a version of reality that involves Natalie fucking people other than him.
It would’ve been fine, Natalie thinks, if only he wasn’t such a boy.
Because, at the end of the day, Travis is more similar to the rest of them than he is different. She sees his face twist up in disdain when he learns the truth of how many guys she’s been with. It’s an expression she’s overly familiar with.
He’s speaking but the only thing Natalie hears is her own unimpressed voice repeating versions of “I told you so” back to herself. Yet another inevitability. Natalie’s a little ashamed of herself for thinking he might not care like the others did. In that way, their argument is a much needed reality check on what it means to be with Travis. What she has to do to be with him. Who she has to be.
Of course, Natalie thinks to herself when he blows up at her, of course I didn’t tell you. Because you’d react like this.
If only the two of them could exist in some buoyant stasis where nothing would push them further together. But this is reality after all, even out in the middle of nowhere, and there are certain facts of life that Natalie knows to be true. Travis doesn’t only enjoy talking to her, he also wants to touch her. Not only does he want to touch her, he wants her to belong to him. She sees the way he looks at her. She knows that’s what he’s after.
And Natalie figures there’s no harm in giving him what he wants, as long as they can continue to spend time together. She’s lowered her expectations after their spat, and now that they’ve made up, she’s reminded anew how important of a presence he has become. There’s so little that makes her feel okay, and she’d probably finally go insane if she couldn’t rely on his quiet strength, or distract herself with their familiar banter.
So, they make up, and in turn, they keep touching each other.
It’s not like he pressures her into anything, no. Natalie’s happy enough allowing his clumsy hands on her body if it means he’s there next to her.
Besides, it isn’t like she hates it or anything. Rather, it’s a little endearing, bearing witness to his inexperienced fumbles, though she knows he’d be deeply hurt at the idea of Natalie thinking such a thing, so she keeps it to herself.
Boys are sensitive about those sorts of things.
Being with Travis is nice. It’s familiar in that she knows what he wants from her, and on top of that she truly enjoys his company during their hunting treks, and those slivers of vulnerability he allows himself to show to her. And there’s something so gloriously human about the moments of physical intimacy they share, like flickers of reminders that they are still alive and breathing. It’s not exciting, but it’s warm, and that’s what matters most.
One chilly night teetering on the edge of winter, Mari sidles up to her with a giddy expression, and Natalie feels her entire body tense in trepidation. Nothing good ever comes from that sort of look, and as the other girls surreptitiously lean in to catch the conversation, she’s reminded of vultures circling a carcass.
“So…you and Travis, huh?” Mari says.
There it is.
Misty squeals and claps her hands over her mouth as if that would turn back time and render the sound inaudible.
“....yeah,” Natalie grunts out through a mouthful of raggedy bear meat. “Me and Travis.”
“You love him?” asks Mari with rapidly wiggling eyebrows.
Natalie pauses, chews the meat, chews it more since it’s just that fucking tough. Then she nods. Mari shrieks delightedly and claps her hands together, and Natalie thanks God that Travis had left to take a piss a minute earlier.
Later that night, Natalie lies awake inhaling moldy wood and wonders if she’d told the truth. Does she love Travis? She definitely cares about him. She likes talking to him. But love?
She frowns into the darkness and wonders when she’ll finally fall for him.
An invisible weight presses down on her chest and she urges it to happen soon.
Sometimes Natalie catches herself watching Van and Tai out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t mean to stare or anything, it’s just that ever since the two of them went public with their relationship, she’s been kind of…interested.
Not in a weird way. Just, like, she’s curious about their dynamic, that’s all.
Sure, she’d always noticed there was a different energy between the two of them and figured there was probably something going on, but somehow it was different actually seeing it play out in front of her. Not bad different, just like, oh yeah, that’s something girls can do too.
She’s not even trying to notice these things, it’s just that whenever Natalie has a moment to pause and glance around at her surroundings, her gaze inevitably catches on Van and Tai suspended in a short, tender moment. A peck on the lips as they pass each other through the tangled brush, a gentle hand brushing over scarred skin, a whispered promise of a midnight rendezvous.
Natalie can’t help but cringe remembering the last exchange, overheard one evening after dinner when she jostled her way past a gnarled tree trunk on a quest to find a quiet place to piss, and was immediately confronted with a red-faced Van pushed up against the peeling bark, Tai’s hands flying out from under her shirt at the interruption. She’d sputtered out an apology and stumbled her way out of the clearing, not quite fast enough to miss Tai’s frustrated sigh and Van’s ensuing suggestion that the two of them continue after dark.
Since then, Natalie hasn’t quite been able to shake that recent tableau from her mind. She’d fumbled into an intimate moment that hadn’t been hers to witness, and there she’d found a concrete visual depiction of the relationship between her teammates. It’s just, something about the scene struck her, dug its nails into her skin and refused to let go.
Maybe she was just reeling from the newness of it. On some level Natalie hadn’t quite believed that Tai and Van did the same things she and Travis did. Like, she couldn’t conceptualize how two girls could do something sexual, until she was presented with the reality that it really isn’t all that different from how it is with a girl and a guy.
She isn’t sure why the concept had felt so amorphous before; Tai and Van are dating and they make out and fuck like people who date. Obviously. And why does this even matter to Natalie? Why does she keep thinking about it? She feels like a fucking creep, forces herself not to think the memory over any further, and most of the time she’s successful.
But sometimes, when her self control wears thin, she allows the images to flick through her brain, kaleidoscopic along the backs of her eyelids.
She remembers the way they kissed each other like they were drowning, like they couldn’t get enough of it, barely even bothering to come up for breath. It looked almost painful, the want sparking between them, the jerky movements like they couldn’t last another minute without having each other. It was a type of uninhibited passion that Natalie had never known existed, and, in that moment, witnessing that boundless energy, Natalie’s own interpretation of sex and romance seemed to cleave. She hasn’t been able to fit her ideas back into place since then.
Because sometimes, when Natalie is particularly weak, she thinks about if she’s ever felt like that with Travis. If she’s ever wanted him like that. If she’s ever needed him so fiercely. And it’s frightening to admit that she hasn’t. She tells herself it will happen someday, probably when she falls in love with him, but it haunts her that it’s taking this long. She can’t help but wonder if it’s something she’s doing wrong.
Either way, the sight of Tai and Van pressed close together that night, soaked in moonlight, in a world of their own, had torn at her chest a little and left something wanting behind. Natalie isn't quite sure what to make of that ache, or the fascination with which she relived the memory, and thinking about it further only ever inspires confusion.
So, eventually, she decides on the interpretation that she’s just still curious. About Tai and Van, about how they seem so wrapped up in each other, about why Natalie has never felt that way about Travis. She just wants to know more. She’s curious. That’s it.
(That’s pretty much the only explanation she can think of, after all.)
A week and a half later, Van seeks her out and offers to come with her to help gather wood.
Natalie can tell her teammates are weirded out by the scene, considering she and Van had never been super close. They talk, sure, but it isn’t like Van has ever gone out of her way to accompany Natalie on shitty lumber runs before.
“Watch out, Van! Tai’s gonna get mad!” Akilah yells out at their retreating backs.
Van just sticks out her tongue and throws up a middle finger in response, following Natalie to the nearby grove they’d taken to sourcing sticks from.
A few seconds of silence pass, the two of them wandering around the clearing in search of loot.
“God, this sucks,” Van says, kicking the toe of her shoe into the snowy earth.
“For real,” agrees Natalie. She bends over to grab a promising looking twig, and Van speaks up again.
“Hey, Nat?”
“Hm?” Natalie straightens up again and looks at her.
“I wanted to, like, ask you something…” Van starts.
She’s tapping one foot on the ground, and Natalie is struck with deja vu at the sight. She hasn’t seen it in months, but it used to be a fairly common scene during particularly tense games back home.
“You always do that when you’re nervous, dude,” Natalie points out, tossing her chin in the direction of Van’s foot. “What’s up?”
“Okay, so like…I noticed that you’ve been looking over at us a lot recently. Me and Tai, I mean.”
Natalie’s back stiffens at the words. She’d known something was up, but hadn’t expected to be confronted so directly. It makes sense, though; this was Van, after all. She didn’t tend to beat around the bush.
“Oh, fuck. Listen, I’m not-”
“Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re being an asshole about us dating or anything,” Van interrupts with a flash of a grin. “That’s so not your style.”
Natalie lets out a relieved breath. “Yeah, totally not my style. You guys are cute together.”
“That’s what I told Tai! I was like, Nat wouldn’t be weird about this! But she was still worried, so I figured I’d make sure.”
Natalie winces. “I’m…I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to make either of you feel that way.”
Van elbows her in the shoulder good-naturedly.
“Dude, don’t even stress about it. I think Tai and I are both just a little on edge still, even though we don’t need to be. Gotta break that habit.”
“Mm,” Natalie grunts in response. Then, as if possessed, another sentence flies out of her mouth.
“So like, when did you guys start dating?”
Van looks a little surprised at the question, but takes it in stride.
“Oh, I guess around the middle of sophomore year? I’d been flirting with her since we were freshmen, though. Guess my charms were too much for her to resist.”
“Suuuure.”
“Hey, fuck you, man,” laughs Van. “I don’t see you with a hot girlfriend!”
“Yeah, but the ladies love me,” Natalie replies jokingly.
“Wait, seriously? Oh my god, I fucking knew it!” Van fist-pumps despite her armful of sticks.
“Wait, knew what?”
“That you were into girls too!”
Natalie just stands there. Her brain stalls, dead leaf blower style, like she has to yank on a cord to start it back up again.
Whatever expression she’s making gives Van pause. She slowly retracts the fist pump.
“Whoops, my bad. Sorry, forget I said anything.”
Into girls? Too? Natalie was?
Huh.
“Am I?” mutters Natalie confusedly.
“Are you what?”
“Into girls? Wait, but I’m with Travis. That doesn’t make sense.” Natalie scowls in confusion.
“It’s not like it has to be all or nothing. Some people date guys and girls.” Van replies with a shrug, looking a little relieved that she hadn’t been the catalyst to spiral Natalie into a crisis of sexuality.
“Oh. Yeah, that’s true.”
Natalie had known that, of course, but she’d never really connected the fact with herself. In fact, she’d never given much thought to her sexuality at all. She’d just kind of been with guys because that was normal. But it wasn’t like Tai and Van weren’t normal. They acted just as cringy and in love as every other couple Natalie had cursed out in Jersey. Though, Natalie didn’t mind it as much with the two of them, for some reason.
All of a sudden, the matter of who she was into seemed like a pretty big thing to gloss over. Like, how had she not thought about this before?
“Don’t worry, dude, you don’t need to figure it out right away. I mean, we’ve got all the time in the world out here after all!” Van adds encouragingly, perhaps sensing Natalie’s line of thinking.
“That’s some unfounded optimism you got there.”
“Unfounded? I’m living proof that shit works out! I almost died twice! My face is all sewn up, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah, your scars are cool as fuck, we know.”
“Hey, Nat, I’m flattered, but I’m already seeing someone.”
“Oh my god you’re such a dick!” Natalie lunges at her in mock rage, but Van just takes off running back to the cabin with a shout of laughter.
“And quit fucking on tree stumps where anyone can see you!” Natalie yells after her through a burst of her own incredulous laughter.
“Just be glad you caught such a hot show!” Van replies over her shoulder with a wink.
Natalie spends the following week analyzing everything she knew to be true about herself. Sort of like a mental checklist of crushes and miscellaneous thoughts.
For example, ever since she watched Heathers for the first time a couple years back, she’d thought she had a thing for Christian Slater. But, incidentally, when she’d seen him in magazines outside of the context of the movie, she’d been pretty unimpressed, and more than a little disappointed by the mag’s lack of a Winona Ryder feature.
She figured that could mean three things:
Either she was solely into Christian Slater as a nihilistic murderer, or she was solely into Christian Slater when he stood next to Winona Ryder, or she wasn’t particularly into Christian Slater at all, and sort of just wanted to be him so she could make out with Winona Ryder.
But when it came down to deciphering which of the options were true, Natalie was sort of at a loss. Because wanting to make out with hot girls is just kind of a natural part of life. Same with hating Pre-Calc, and being constantly plagued by the lack of bleach out here because her roots are coming through way too much.
Like, these are just universal facets of human nature. Right?
Similarly, another worldwide phenomenon is the eye’s tendency to wander when sharing a dusty pantry with another girl as one changes out of snow-soaked clothing, Natalie mentally asserts to herself.
“You’re acting weird,” Lottie’s voice breaks the quiet of atmospheric wooden floorboard creaking.
She’d escorted Natalie and Travis outside early that morning after the ritual, which Lottie had kindly cut down in minutes at Natalie’s behest after their recent unsuccessful hunting competition, and bade them good luck in that knowing sort of tone that she often spoke in these days.
Hours later, when Natalie stepped back into the clearing around the cabin, empty-handed as Travis had decided to take the gun and hunt a bit more himself, she was shocked to find Lottie shivering on the porch in nothing but a soggy nightgown.
“Why were you outside earlier?” asks Natalie, determinedly ignoring Lottie’s comment.
“There was something off about the air today,” replies Lottie vaguely.
“That’s not ominous at all,” Natalie says as she balances on one leg to pull off a waterlogged boot.
“It’s okay now,” assures Lottie. “So, why are you acting weird?”
Natalie grimaces as the boot finally slips off, landing on the floor with a damp thud.
“You’re just reading into things, Lot. I’m acting the same as always.”
She wrangles the other boot off as well, and begins to divest herself of the many layers that make up their hunting uniform now that the weather is certifiably freezing, shrugging off the oversized camo vest first.
“You say that, but why have you been staring at the green beans from hell for the last two minutes?”
Natalie snorts at the wording. “From hell?”
“Yeah. That, or aged slop in a can? Either one works.”
“God, that’s so fucked up.”
Natalie laughs, pulling off a fleece, and then a flannel, then a long-sleeved shirt, and dropping them in a pile on the floor. She’d be grossed out at the idea of wearing them again afterwards if she hadn’t abandoned all sense of propriety months ago.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out earlier. I just had to check something in the snow.”
“It’s cool.”
Lottieo offers no further explanation, and Natalie hardly notices, too relieved that attempts to ward off suspicion seem to be working.
She’s just not used to changing in the same room as the other girls. Even back at school she always changed in a bathroom stall out of paranoia that she might accidentally look at a teammate weird. She didn’t even really know why it was something she was so anxious about, just that it absolutely couldn’t be allowed to happen.
Natalie wonders if that’s another universal experience.
At any rate, she’d had to abandon the habit after the crash, considering they’re all living in such close quarters, but she’s been unsuccessful thus far in her efforts to get used to the lack of privacy. She always feels like she’s taking up a little too much space, or taking a little too long to grab socks out of the communal pile, or any other number of things.
It’s fucking stressful. And ever since her conversation with Van a couple days ago, the endeavor feels even more fraught. She’s hyper aware of Lottie’s presence behind her, the faint sound of rustling fabric, everything.
Natalie takes a breath, strips out of her sweaty tank top and unclasps her bra in quick succession, letting both garments drop.
“Hey, Nat?”
Lottie’s voice grows louder, her weight creaking under the floorboard as she takes a couple steps towards Natalie, who’d purposefully set up shop facing one of the walls and remained that way while Lottie got changed.
“Mhm?”
Natalie opts to mumble something in response. She feels more than a little cornered, hunched over topless and experiencing a freakish bout of shivering and sweating in some bizarre combined reaction to the circumstances.
Her heart is beating out of her fucking chest, too. All for absolutely no reason. She grits her teeth.
Calm the fuck down. Lottie’s just doing normal Lottie things. She’s probably getting closer to grab something she left on the floor over here.
Natalie grits her teeth and steadies her breathing.
“Do you need something?” she decides to ask after a few seconds of silence. “I can move.”
Maybe Natalie’s sweaty fucking body is in the way, and that’s why Lottie’s made the decision to just wordlessly stand directly behind her?
“It’s kind of cute how shy you are,” says Lottie, a smile audible in her voice.
Before Natalie can react, a soft, scarred forehead comes to rest between her clammy shoulder blades. She swallows down a sound of surprise that surely would have decimated her dignity, but the victory is short lived as she processes the situation.
“Whaaat?” Natalie murmurs with a nervous chuckle, eyes darting around the shelves of expired food.
“Seriously, I never would’ve thought you cared about this stuff,” Lottie continues. Her warm breath tickles Natalie’s spine, goosebumps surfacing in response.
“It’s not like I care about it. I was just trying to be polite,” Natalie answers.
She’s pretty sure if she checked her own pulse it would be hovering somewhere around incoming cardiac arrest.
“I bet.”
“Wh-Lottie, what the hell? Why’re you being all-”
Flustered, Natalie forgets herself, whirls around to confront Lottie, who stumbles back a bit to avoid getting smacked by a shoulder.
“What’s your deal, dude?” Natalie asks, breathless and utterly baffled.
“Sorry, Nat, I was just kidding around,” replies Lottie, looking a little abashed. “My bad.”
Natalie notes with relief that Lottie’s fully dressed now-also, is that Natalie’s shirt she’s wearing? It looks good on her-and blows out a breath in an effort to abate some tension, slapping a palm against her sweaty forehead.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’m just stressed, or something. Fuck. I don’t know.”
“Y-yeah.” Lottie says, but the uncharacteristic stumbling over words has Natalie dropping the hand from her head and studying her in confusion.
Now that she’s calmed down, Natalie notices an itchy sort of nervousness crawling along her collarbones, then her sternum, then a little lower, almost like someone is-
“Whoa!” Natalie yelps without thinking, crossing her arms over her chest in panic.
She looks at Lottie wildly, but Lottie just stares back, her gaze now having flicked upwards to Natalie’s face. She looks spaced out as usual, eyes wide, but there’s a flush creeping up her neck and over the tops of her ears that affirms Natalie’s suspicions.
“Dude! Were you just checking me out?” Natalie finds herself whispering as loudly as possible.
“No! I mean, like, not really!” Lottie quickly responds. She leans back on her heels looking incredibly guilty. “I mean…um…sorry?”
And now she’s staring down at the green beans from hell, and in a sudden, decisive blow, Natalie is struck by a wave of…something, like a sledgehammer to the chest.
“Uh. Okay. No, I mean, that’s fine! Like-”
Natalie abruptly realizes that she isn't capable of constructing sentences right now and abandons the effort entirely. She spins back around, throws on the t-shirt she brought, and rushes out of the pantry in the span of three seconds.
“Wait, Nat, I’m-don’t you need to change your pants?” comes Lottie’s voice, sounding just as bewildered and embarrassed as Natalie feels.
“Gonna do it later!” Natalie replies without turning around.
Her baggy cargo pants are muddy and damp and she didn’t even get to strip off her wet socks, but all that can wait.
For now, she just needs to get the fuck out of here.
That night, Natalie stews.
What the hell had been up with that interaction earlier? Was that kind of vibe just something that occurred naturally in girl’s locker rooms, and Natalie has just never been present for it? Like, was it just normal platonic teasing that she’d way overreacted to?
She has a feeling that was probably it. She’d probably just fucked up by taking it too seriously.
But, that still didn’t feel like a good enough explanation for Lottie pretty blatantly checking out her boobs and panicking when Natalie noticed. That moment had seemed distinctly impromptu rather than a well-worn joking routine. And Lottie really had looked ashamed of herself afterwards, refusing to make eye contact with Natalie the rest of the day and night, even when Natalie showed her a cool feather she’d found.
And Lottie loves cool feathers.
It’s not like there’s any real reason she should feel bad. Like, Natalie doesn’t particularly mind if Lottie wants to look at her tits. In fact, her looking at them earlier was sort of a little bit nice, for whatever reason. Lottie not being able to help herself and Natalie catching her in the act; there was something that felt good about it, and Natalie can’t say she’s ever felt good being ogled like that, which makes the situation all the more weird.
After all, she’s been leered at enough to know intimately how bad it usually feels Whether it be middle-aged douchebags at 7-11, or lanky classmates eying her in gym class, she’s trudged through a lifetime of this sort of thing. It’s an experience that Natalie is hellishly accustomed to. Even Travis, who Natalie genuinely thinks is a good guy, can’t seem to help himself sometimes when it comes to stealing glances at her chest. Usually, she does him a solid and pretends not to notice, but there are times she wants to scream at him to just look at her face for a second, to just pay attention to her and not what he wants from her.
Teachers and parents and adults of all kinds have told her that it’s just boys being boys, always tacking on a patronizing suggestion for her to adopt a more conservative wardrobe at the tail end of their speech. As if there’s any way she’d abandon the clothes that make her feel a modicum less inclined to jump off a bridge.
She’ll wear whatever she wants, and they can all go fuck themselves.
But it’s not like standing firm in her clothing choices ever changes how awful it is. She’s tired of dealing with unwanted eyes on her, has been since she was 12 and got cat-called for the first time, 14 and started carrying her keys wrapped in her knuckles after a senior followed her home, 16 and realized she’d have to worry about this forever. There’s no feeling quite like it; this invasive, icy dread dripping down her spine when a leer crawls down her body without permission.
Natalie wonders why she hadn’t had that same feeling when she’d caught Lottie doing it.
Maybe because they’re friends? She’s known Lottie since freshman year and she’s never been made uncomfortable by anything she’s done. Back in the real world they never really hung out one on one, but there were plenty of celebratory pizza parties and boring days of monotonous drills that fostered conversation between the two of them. Lottie had never been overly talkative, which Natalie appreciated, and when she did speak up it was almost always with something interesting and/or wildly unexpected.
She was a solid player too, a trustworthy teammate, and an eerily talented impersonator of pretty much every teacher in school. Thinking back, Natalie probably enjoyed her company most out of everyone on the team.
Things are different now, of course. All of them have changed, but Lottie perhaps most of all. Ever since the plane crashed, she’s been slowly evolving into this other version of herself, and Natalie isn’t really sure what to make of it. She can see that this newer iteration of Lottie is more grounded in herself, less self-conscious, but it’s at a weird cost that involves smearing dirt on people’s faces and making Natalie drink her blood.
Oftentimes, the Lottie post-crash seems straight up unhinged, especially since everything that happened with Laura Lee.
Laura Lee. Jackie. Laura Lee. Jackie. Laura Lee. Jackie-
No, no, no. Later, Natalie will think about them later. If she tries to think too much too late at night she never falls asleep.
Think about them in the morning, Natalie instructs herself. Remember what Lottie said.
Lottie, who Natalie had spoken with the day after everything…happened, with Jackie. She’d assured Natalie then that they hadn’t done anything wrong by doing what they did. She’d told Natalie to thank Jackie for it, and move on. Daily since then, Natalie has done just that. She thinks of Laura Lee too, thanks her as well, remembers how important both of them were, back then and now.
Lottie is different now. She talks about things in that sort of roundabout way that Natalie’s mom sometimes talks about God, but Lottie does it in a way that sounds less out of obligation and more out of love. She insists on weird shit like pre-hunting rituals and tells Travis that Javi is alive and makes Natalie want to tear her own half-bleached hair out sometimes. Natalie can’t say she believes in everything Lottie seems to know for certain, but it’s undeniable that she is powerful in an untameable kind of way, and she’s appeared to have shepherded in veritable miracles that Natalie still can’t wrap her head around.
A lot of the time, Lottie seems practically otherworldly. Some of Natalie’s teammates have taken it upon themselves to obey her word like she’s a sort of god, looking to her for divine intervention.
Natalie knows better.
Lottie is human, disgustingly so, just like the rest of them. She’s human in the same way Natalie is, in the way neither of them brought back any new food the day of the competition, in the way both of them shivered in the same metallic tub, bathing one after another in hot water that practically felt holy. She’s human in the way her hand felt in Natalie’s after the whole thing had ended, she’s human in the way she offered up a good game like they were out on the field again, a little too caught up in something that didn’t actually mean a whole lot.
Natalie thinks that Lottie being human is probably the best thing about her. Even when she leads others through prayers, or slices open a bear, or maybe even conjures fucking birds from the sky, she’s still gloriously human the whole time. Natalie can tell, because she can always see the fear in Lottie’s eyes while those things are happening. She can always see how hard Lottie is trying, how much she’s hurting, how deeply she’s wishing.
Natalie’s worried about her. She has been for a while. She’s worried Lottie’s going to forget about that beautiful, intrinsic core of her that is undeniably human.
So, she’s honest about what she doesn’t believe in, she doesn’t hold back when she gets pissed at Lottie and challenges her to a childish contest, and she apologizes when she realizes how stupid she’s been. She participates in the rituals, but with the amendment that they don’t last quite as long, and Lottie agrees to the conditions.
She comes back from a fruitless hunt to find Lottie sitting on the porch, wet and miserable, and drags her inside to change. She doesn’t think twice when Lottie protests that she can wait until Natalie’s done.
Natalie doesn’t want her to catch a cold.
And then, in some wacky turn of events, she inadvertently gives Lottie a full frontal view of her bare chest. And Lottie does not look away. In fact, she blatantly stares all the way up until Natalie realizes the errors of her ways and covers up.
Where does this last entry fit into the story of them?
Natalie has no fucking idea.
All she knows with certainty is that Lottie’s gaze on her chest hadn’t felt bad. And it’s weird, because Natalie has hated people looking at her like that in the past.
But Lottie’s not the same as those people, not in the slightest. She’s herself, and Natalie knows her, has watched her lick up her own blood as it drips down from her forehead, stall a hungry bear with no more than a glance. The eyes that flutter closed as she smudges a streak of dirt across Natalie’s skin every morning, those are the same eyes that studied Natalie’s body so intently. Almost like Lottie believed her gaze could paint that earthy mixture along Natalie’s chest and keep her safe that way as well.
Rather than feeling slimy and self-serving, her stare had reminded Natalie of the way Natalie looks at her sometimes. Wide-eyed, expectant, awed. Natalie knows that expression well. She feels it on her own face, slack-jawed and staring, whenever she can’t quite wrap her head around something incredible Lottie has done or said. At a certain point, all there is left to do in the presence of Lottie Matthews is just stand back and watch. Surrender to the inexplicable, and marvel in her strength.
Wonder. Intrigue. Speechless fascination. Natalie has felt all of those things, looking at Lottie.
And in that moldy pantry, Lottie had looked at her like she felt the same exact way.
Natalie feels a tingling light in her chest at the realization, waits as it spreads up her neck and over her cheeks and burns all over, delicious and biting. She smiles into the darkness, teeth and everything. The same sparks she’d felt from Lottie’s gaze emerge from wherever they’ve been hiding and multiply, dancing across her skin. Maybe they’ve been there for ages, just waiting to be woken up and reminded of their existence.
The feeling is new and old all at once. It relaxes and invigorates her. It’s everything around her.
And when Natalie’s eyes finally slip closed, the emotion swells so high it leaks out her eyes.
For the first time since they crashed, Natalie feels full.