Chapter Text
Every man who’s ever loved Natalie Scatorccio is dead.
She never made it to Kevyn’s funeral. She was still in the hospital when Tai had told her he was gone. The wires stuck to her chest had looked like the vines swallowing Laura Lee’s jet. It didn’t want us to leave. Then she’d vomited in one of the pink melamine drinking cups.
If Misty had killed her, they would’ve died on the same day. She’s not sure why that keeps happening: other people dying on days she keeps surviving. It’s almost always Misty’s fault, too.
Tai and Shauna had barricaded the door to her hospital room shut to stop Misty from visiting. According to Shauna, she’d skulked around the ward’s hallways like a less intimidating grim reaper but Nat never saw her.
In the early hours of that first night, she'd watched herself levitate out of her hospital bed, up above the walls to look down on Misty in the waiting room. She was small, sat cross-legged and crying on one of the blue plastic chairs.
It’s only here now, back in her motel room, that Nat realises it must have been a dream.
Papers cover the ashy carpet; witness statements from Shauna about what Jeff saw, the official and the unofficial story; newspaper clippings about the dirty cop killed at a wellness retreat by his partner.
If Misty had killed her, her reputation would’ve been tarnished too. They would’ve had such a similar fate, her and Kevyn, it’s hard not to feel like she’s cheated her way out of death again.
Her vision blurs as she tries to read. They said it would be difficult to concentrate for a while. Expect body aches, gastrointestinal upset, disrupted sleep, and emotional irregularity. As if she hasn’t done all this before.
It not being her fault this time makes it easier. Every stomach cramp and rolling headache is fuel for her anger. She’s always been angry. It’s an emotion that suits her well; it keeps away prying eyes and leaves her satisfied whenever it finds a good outlet.
Walter Tattersall is the perfect one.
Despite Lottie’s claims that therapy can’t help her, the one thing it has provided is the knowledge that she needs a purpose; a project to dig her teeth into. But Lottie’s gone now, carted off to a mental institution, probably somewhere they should all join her, so it can’t be her.
It can’t be Misty. There wouldn’t be any satisfaction in that. It would be like turning out the lights; too final; too flat. She wants to watch her suffer. Keep her alive the same way she keeps making Nat stay alive.
So, she can’t kill Misty. But she can kill Misty’s boyfriend.
That stupid knock Misty came up with is so timid at first, she barely hears it.
“Nat? Are you in there?”
Nat stares at the door. She hopes this is another dream, that she’ll start to rise up above the walls to see Misty on the other side, unable to get to her.
“I can see your light on. Please, Nat. I just want—“
Nat wrenches the door open. “What?”
“Nat.” Misty’s eyes light up. “Hi. You look good. I mean, better than I thought you would. I was worried.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
Misty cranes her head around the doorframe, eyeing the papers on the floor. “I wanted to see you. Check how you’re doing. I was at the hospital but Tai and Shauna refused to let me see you. Can you believe that?” She scoffs.
Nat rubs her tired face. She can’t stand still. It comes and goes, this volatility. Misty’s presence doesn’t help. She’s paces just to burn off the agitation. “Yeah, Misty, I can.”
Misty creeps in behind her and shuts the door. “Are you mad?”
“Am I mad? You injected me with fucking fentanyl, Misty! What is wrong with you?”
“I brought you back!” She argues as if naloxone isn’t the medicinal equivalent of having your soul drained.
The spike of anger makes Nat’s skin hot. She’d wanted to live when she was on the cusp. The taunting apparition from her younger self had made her want to live out of spite.
That’s all gone now. It all drained out of her when she realised that hunger to survive is the reason why Kevyn is dead.
“You almost fucking killed me!”
“Well, I was trying to save you.”
“Fuck you,” she spits.
Misty stumbles two steps back before Nat realises she’s pushing her.
“Fuck you!!”
Her shoulders are boney under Nat’s palms.
“Nat—”
Nat slaps her clean across her face. It sends a perfect clap of thunder through the room.
Misty gasps and cups her pink cheek. “…Natalie!”
Misty’s not like Lottie. There’s no command for her to 'let it out’, no patient yielding. Instead, she trembles with indignity, her top lip curling up into a snarl.
Then she punches Nat, hard enough to bruise, right in her bicep.
“Ow! What the fuck, Misty?!”
There’s a beat where Misty seems surprised by her own violence but Nat doesn’t wait long enough to let her apologise, if she ever would, before she slaps her again.
Only Misty blocks it and retaliates swiftly, flinging both arms in Nat’s direction.
“Don’t hit me!” She squawks, both of them thrashing at each other, two gulls fighting over a sandwich crust.
“You’re insane!” Nat slams her up against the wall.
The framed print of roaring ocean waves falls off its hook and smashes on the floor. Neither of them notice. She has Misty by the throat.
The vein on Misty’s forehead bulges. She claws at Nat’s face, leaves stinging, red stripes across her cheeks and hooks her fingers inside Nat's mouth, nails sharp under he tongue.
“Ew!” Nat garbles around them. With her hands around Misty’s pulsing neck, she bites.
Misty shrieks like a cornered animal: a long, angry screech she might’ve learnt from her bird. She uses the momentum of it to push Nat away.
Rage feels a lot like doing a line. It’s wild and hot. Invigorating and electric. Nat wants more of it.
She grabs a fistful of crunchy blonde hair and Misty grabs a fistful of brown hair and then they’re both bent at the waist, screaming and cursing and watching their feet dance across the stained motel carpet.
Getting in a physical fight with someone wearing green Crocs is humbling in a way Nat didn’t expect.
“Get off me, you cunt!” She growls.
Misty releases the clump of hair, scans Nat’s body for some alternate mode of attack — and stomps on her toe.
“Ow!” Nat’s fist tightens. She dodges the second stomp, shoves Misty’s chest, puts just enough distance between them for her to comfortably punch her in the mouth.
It lands with a dull, wet thud.
Misty barely registers it. Wide-eyed, glasses skewed, she smiles past her split lip. Then lunges at Nat like something feral.
The scuffle must look ridiculous: Nat’s fists in her clothes, Misty’s arms around her waist.
Nat’s blood pumps viciously. The sweat prickles across her forehead as she claws Misty’s skin, white lines turning pink as the blood rushes in.
It doesn’t take much to drag her down. She hits the floor with a grunt. Nat straddles her hips, glass from the broken picture frame crunching underneath them.
Even with her hands pinned above her head, Misty doesn’t stop fighting. She thrashes her legs, bucks her hips, and turns her head to bite the soft flesh on Nat’s forearm.
Skin splits under Misty’s teeth.
“Fuck!!”
Everything turns red. She smothers Misty’s face with her palms. Covers her glasses, her nose, her mouth. She imagines crushing her skull until strawberry sludge bursts all over the carpet.
Misty twists and thrashes, trying anything for a breath of air. She grasps blindly at the front of Nat’s t-shirt.
“No hair and no biting!” Nat grunts. Something, probably her name, vibrates through the bones in the back of her hand. She releases her grip to let Misty speak.
“That’s not fair, you bit my finger!”
“You put them in my mouth?”
Misty huffs and blows the hair off her face. “…Can we go back to standing? I don’t like being on the floor.”
“Yeah, ‘cause you’re losing.”
Her lip curls. She lands an echoey slap across Nat’s cheek.
It stings like snow, so cold that it’s hot. Nat's missed that feeling. “Stand up!” She snarls.
Misty scrambles to her feet. Her hands come up in front of her in a feeble imitation of a boxer. Nat doesn’t wait for a bell to ring.
Everything turns into snapshots: Misty’s stomach before she knees it, Misty’s fist before it hits her nose, her teeth as she bears them in a snarl, the skin at her throat before Nat scars it with her nails, glass sparkling as she puts her elbow through another picture frame.
White flashes of pain intersperse them: hot and throbbing and satiating.
Nat wonders why it is that when everything is on fire, when the world is doused in flames, hot licks of anger crisping up her bed sheets, she feels most at peace.
Misty’s throat is in the crook of her elbow. Her curly hair sticks to Nat’s sweaty cheek.
“Fuck you, Misty,” she breathes against her ear.
Misty is gasps and chokes, balancing on her tiptoes and clawing at Nat’s wrists to let go.
She squeezes tighter and tighter. “Fuck you.”
Misty does the one thing Nat doesn’t expect: she runs her feet up the wall, pushes off with all her strength and sends them both careening backwards.
Nat’s head smacks against the hard floor. Her teeth snap together, brain rattling around her skull. She coughs to try to catch her breath.
Everything fucking hurts.
Misty groans. Nat’s arms are still wrapped around her in what would look like a romantic embrace if they weren’t bloodied and laying amongst smashed up decor. Broken glass crunches as Misty rolls off her.
They’re still for a moment, lying shoulder-to-shoulder, panting and staring at the ceiling fan.
“Do you wanna keep going?” Misty asks.
“No.”
Nat grunts as she sits up. Tracks of blood leak down her arm. Her skull throbs and her cheeks sting and she can taste blood. She’s not sure whose.
It’s nice, the low, exhausted hum that touches everything. It’s the kind of tired you feel after a good workout or having good sex. She grabs her cigarettes and leans against the bed.
Misty watches the smoke stream from her lips like she’s biting back a statistic about lung cancer. Her cheek is red and her split lip is swelling nicely. The shards of glass in her hair look like raindrops.
“Do you want me to stay a while? I could help you clean up—“
“Fuck no.” Nat rejects the offer before glancing around at the mess they’ve made. She smooths out the frown lines between her eyebrows. “I’m gonna kill your boyfriend.”
“Walter?” Misty scans the papers on the floor again, some of them crumpled from their fight.
“Yeah, unless you have another one who also killed my fucking friend.”
Misty gives her an empty look like she hasn’t picked how to respond yet.
“Is that gonna be a problem?”
“No. I mean, we broke up.” She says it like it gives her a kick, being a person who’s experienced a breakup.
“Do you want my fucking condolences?”
“No, it wasn’t that serious. We only just met.” She laughs and fixes her glasses. There’s a smudge of blood on the left lens. “I haven’t heard from him but I could help you find him. If you wanted.”
Nat feels a curl of repulsion at how easily she gives him up. It’s an obvious lure, Misty has all the subtlety of a starved house cat, but she is at least a decent detective. If anyone could find Walter, it’s her.
“Just… go home.”
Misty stares too long before a polite smile slides across her face. She daintily brushes the glass off her jeans. “If you need anything, medical supplies—“
Nat shoots her a look. The irony goes over Misty’s head.
“Just let me know. You should probably clean that scratch on your cheek. And the… bite. Oh, and check there isn’t any glass still embedded under your skin. That would cause a pretty nasty infection. I could take a look—”
“Just—It’s fine. I got it.”
“Okay.” She lingers. “Well, you have my number.” She laughs. “Okay.” And turns to leave.
She shuts the door on a crumpled piece of paper, then opens it again to kick it out of the way.
“Jesus Christ,” Nat mutters.
“Sorry. Bye, Nat.”
Nat’s head rolls back against the mattress when she’s finally alone. She takes a drag of her cigarette and extinguishes it in the bottom of her glass.
“What the fuck.”
Tai feels guilty about chasing Shauna through the woods with a knife and the ensuing chaos resulting in Nat nearly dying. She hasn’t outright said that yet, but she keeps taking them out for lunch which is weirder than if she’d just apologise.
Things are still icy between Nat and Shauna. With everything that’s happened, they haven’t had a chance to talk about the fifty-thousand dollars. But Tai always picks expensive eateries and foots the bill so neither of them are inclined to say no.
“So, how are you doing?” Tai asks.
Nat pulls the foil down on her extra-large burrito. She won’t finish it. She’ll throw the leftovers in the trash in front of Tai later and watch her bite her tongue. “Fine. I saw Misty.”
“How did that go?”
“We fought.”
“That’s the least surprising thing you could’ve said. What did she say?”
Shauna stabs a piece of avocado. “Let me guess: you should be grateful she carries antidotes as well as poison.”
Nat doesn’t let her know how right she is. “We fought. We didn’t talk. I kicked her ass. She kinda kicked mine.”
“Wait, Misty did that to you?” Tai points to the scratch on her cheek. It isn’t as bad as it felt. Just enough to leave a thin red line from her cheekbone to her jaw.
“Jesus, Natalie. After everything she’s done, we’re adding assault to the list?” Shauna says.
Nat makes a note to ensure they never see the angry, raw imprint of Misty’s teeth on her forearm. She shrugs. “I started it.”
“So? It’s not an excuse, she should’ve…”
“Just taken it? ‘Cause that always works out well for us.”
“Okay.” Shauna huffs. “I just don’t think you should see her again.”
“I didn't meet her, she just showed up. What was I supposed to do?”
Tai puts her fork down with a clatter. “Not potentially attract law enforcement again? The last thing we need is someone calling the cops on us.”
“Us?”
“Please, Nat. Come on. If one Yellowjacket makes headlines, we all do. I just got elected. It’s a miracle we avoided the Lottie shitstorm.”
The mention of Lottie sends a guilty silence over the table. Apparently, she’s recovering well but the chance of her leaving the hospital for at least six months is nil. They’ve been visiting her, Van and Tai and Misty. Shauna says she will soon. Nat says she won’t.
“She said she could help me find him.”
“Find who?” Shauna asks.
“Walter. Remember that guy who covered up your fucking murder by killing Kevyn?”
Shauna all but rolls her eyes.
“Find him to do what?” Tai asks.
Nat doesn’t reply. She lets her silence answer for her.
“You can’t be serious, Natalie,” Shauna hisses. “Walter is the only reason why creepy moustache cop isn’t flipping."
“So, we get whatever he has on him. Do you enjoy leaving that responsibility in the hands of Misty’s boyfriend?”
Shauna looks to Tai for backup.
“She has a point there,” Tai concedes. “But, Nat, you can’t just… take this guy out. He killed a cop, he’s dangerous.”
Nat chews her lip. It is dangerous, she’s aware of that, peripherally. She just can’t seem to muster any fear about it. She shrugs. “So are we.”
There’s a bruise across Nat’s ribcage. It’s almost heliotrope, speckled around the edges. She’s glad about it. Overdosing feels like getting hit by a truck but not having any evidence to prove it. It’s nice to have evidence.
Her investigation so far has consisted of googling ‘Walter Tattersall address’ which didn’t come up with anything useful. She did find the video of him getting hit in the head by a falling steel pipe though, which was quite motivational.
Out of the three detectives she’s ever met, one is dead, one is her target and the other is Misty Quigley.
She scrolls down her contact list until she finds Don’t Pick Up. It rings once before Misty answers.
“Nat. Hi.”
“Where is he, Misty?”
“Why don’t you come over? I have a few things I should probably show you.”
“What things?”
“Oh, just a few leads. I can take you through my investigation.”
“Can’t you just give me his address?”
“He’s not there. It’ll make sense when you get here, I promise.”
“Fine. I’ll be there in 20.”
“Great. I—“
Nat hangs up.
By the time she’s pulling up outside Misty’s house, the air is still and eerie. She’s never been scared of Misty but being at the lethal end of her impulsiveness has made her wary.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickle as she walks up the drive. The rose bush outside her door is dead for the winter. It looks like a pile of barbwire.
Misty opens the door before she can knock. “Nat, come in.” She smiles.
The stillness is in her house, too. Nat gets the sense that something else lives here with her. Something that schemes at night and gets hidden when other people are around. She looks at the porcelain figurines on the shelves. They stand stock still as if they’re covering up a secret.
Misty walks through the house into the kitchen. There’re papers on her dining room table, a manilla case file she must’ve bought herself from Staples.
“Can I get you a drink?”
Nat hangs back in the kitchen doorway as if they might lunge at each other at any moment, despite Misty’s cordial tone.
“Where’s your boyfriend, Misty?”
Misty gives her that vacant look, annoyed by the label but not letting on. Her lip has turned purple in the corner and the cut looks raw. Nat imagines her probing it with her tongue to taste the metallic edge.
“You know, the one who killed my best friend in cold blood.”
Misty’s eyes narrow. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Shame. You two could’ve been so cute together. Like Bonnie and Clyde.”
The floor creaks as Nat steps closer. The violence between them simmers. It’s how she imagines Lottie and the bear only she’s not sure which of the two of them is the animal.
“And Kevyn Tan wasn’t your best friend.” Misty scoffs. “You didn’t even like him.”
If Nat could breathe fire, it would be flooding out of her nostrils like Leviathan.
“How the fuck would you know how I felt about him?”
Misty’s cheeks flush. She scans Nat’s posture for signs of attack.
Nat can see the memory replaying behind Misty’s eyes: her rejecting his touch when he’d offered it, the moment he realised that her sleeping with him was a play. He’d been a good sport about it. Smiling his soft smile and rolling over to fall asleep.
“You fucking creep,” Nat spits.
They’re both stock-still, waiting for the other to draw their gun.
Misty hits first.
Nat plucks her wrist from midair — yanks her closer. “You really wanna do this again?”
Her eyes are almost gleeful, wide at the proximity. Her pulse quickens under Nat’s fingertips. She gives a lopsided smirk before she head-butts her in the nose.
Nat dodges it enough to save herself a rhinoplasty but it still fucking hurts. “Fuck.” She licks away the hot rush of pain from her teeth.
Misty stays low and light on her feet, circling Nat like she’s been watching boxing videos on Youtube.
“What are you doing? You look stupid.” Nat slaps her.
Misty shakes it off. “No, I don’t. This is classic out-boxer technique.”
“We’re not fucking boxing.” Nat pushes her into the table. The legs screech against the floor, papers fluttering off the side.
Misty stumbles back to her feet. “Fine.”
“Fine.” Nat mimics her high voice.
That really pisses her off. Her nose scrunches up and she lunges at Nat’s throat.
Nat swings both arms until the ligaments burn. It’s dull and heavy, each of Misty’s hits blends into the next one. She wants it to hurt more, chasing the pain as if it’ll wake her up.
She grabs Misty by the face — slams her up against the kitchen wall.
“Not my lip!” Misty squeaks through her smushed cheeks. "It’s still healing.”
The cut has opened up again. Fresh blood oozes before glistening white teeth. She looks like she just ate. Nat almost licks it before her mind catches up with her.
She shoves herself away, rolls her neck until the vertebrae pop, grabs the polka-dot umbrella from next to the back door.
“You didn’t say we were allowed weapons.”
Nat shrugs. “I just decided.”
Misty steps backwards. She fumbles blindly over the kitchen worktop until she grasps the hilt of a butcher's knife.
Nat’s adrenaline peaks. “Are you fucking insane? No. Only blunt objects.”
She makes a face but switches it for a spatula.
Nat doesn’t have time to comment beyond a raised eyebrow before Misty darts left, out the kitchen.
It’s like a hunt, creeping down the hallway, umbrella a weak stand-in for her rifle. She holds her breath when she gets to the lounge doorway, ready to strike as soon as the floorboards give away Misty’s location.
Only, Misty has the advantage of socked feet.
The floor creaks under Nat’s heel.
Air whistles through Misty’s spatula as she whips the already raw skin inside Nat’s forearm, right over the bite mark.
“Ow!” The umbrella clatters to the floor. “You little bitch!”
Misty shoves her into the stair bannisters. The wood splinters, the sharp edge of a baluster digging into Nat’s shoulder blade. She’s not strong enough to keep her there. She stumbles back into the lounge with one push from Nat, almost tripping over the coffee table.
Her eyes are manic, breath quick.
She tackles Nat’s waist, tugs the backs of her knees, grabs at the bottom of her pants, trying anything to unbalance her. It’s like being attacked by a small breed of dog.
Nat plants her feet firmly. “What are you doing?” She pushes Misty’s head down by the back of her hair.
Misty squawks from upside-down. “You said no hair!” She grabs Nat’s hips to keep herself upright.
Power is dangerously intoxicating. Nat’s breaths are heavy and satiating as Misty struggles underneath her. It’s so easy to overpower her. She picks Misty up by her hips like it’s nothing, flipping her into an ungainly handstand.
Misty screams. “Natalie!”
Her legs flail around like a blow-up inflatable at a car dealership.
“Let me go!!”
Nat laughs. Her back strains, muscles shaking with her weight. She pushes her hips out to lift Misty higher.
“Are you forfeiting?”
No answer.
Nat throws her on the couch. She’s red-faced and missing her glasses, hair sticking to her temples with sweat. Nat leaps on her, pins her stomach flat against the cushions and her arms behind her back.
“Tap out.” She pushes Misty’s face down into the couch cushion, breathless as she talks into her ear. “I win.”
Misty makes a panicked, hopeful whimper like a hunted rabbit scared enough to forget its natural instinct to stay quiet.
The noise sends a lurch of adrenaline through Nat. Misty is so alive underneath her. Her body between Nat’s thighs pulses with vitality, both of them so full of thirst. She writhes but can’t move an inch.
The temptation to lick the sweat from Misty’s skin, and bite the nape of her neck is overwhelming.
Misty’s eyes are shut tight. She pants through her nose like she’s waiting or willing for something to happen.
Nat aches. She wants to grind down against Misty, feel her pulse under her lips, unpick all the threads that keep her together until she’s unravelled. She wants to feel it happen under her fingertips, feast on her prey like she deserves—
What the fuck is she doing?
Nat pushes off her. She slides onto the floor and runs sweaty fingers through her hair. The foggy cloud of desire starts to dissipate.
“I need a fucking drink.”
She leaves Misty face down on the couch, hands still behind her back of her own free will, and stalks back into the kitchen.
The only alcohol she can find is fucking sherry. When Misty reappears in the door frame, she looks sheepish and flushed.
Nat rolls her eyes. Of course, Misty can’t just get a little randy and then forget about it. It excites Nat, though, to see how affected she is. It’ll be good leverage. She pours Misty a glass and watches her take a tentative sip as if to solidify their truce.
“I’ll need time but I can find him.”
“I thought you had news? If you just give me his address I can deal with the rest.”
“I told you, he’s not there.”
“How do you know?”
“Because… he has a boat. And it’s usually docked at Potter’s Island Marina but I went there and it’s gone.”
“Fuck.” Nat rubs her forehead. How do you find a guy with a moveable home?
“But I remember the boat was called Great Expectations so it wouldn’t take much for me to call all of the marinas in New Jersey and see if we can get a location.”
“All the marinas in New Jersey? That would take… years. And who’s to say he’s even docking for longer than a day? Can’t you just text him? Ask him to meet?”
“And leave a digital trail for the authorities? Don’t be silly, Nat.” She laughs. “And anyway, we’re not in contact anymore. It would be… suspicious.”
“Why no contact?”
“Because I broke up with him, obviously.”
Nat waits for a more convincing explanation.
“We fought when you were in the hospital. He tried to tell me that you weren’t a real friend. That you weren’t grateful when I went looking for you after you were kidnapped, so you definitely wouldn’t forgive me for the whole fentanyl situation.” She scoffs. “He just doesn’t understand the kind of bond we have. All of us.”
It’s always a spectacle whenever Misty lets on just how delusional she is. Nat wants to laugh at her and tell her he was right, but it probably wouldn’t be productive. She takes a sip of her drink and grimaces.
“You’re really not gonna try and stop me? This isn’t some elaborate way of putting me off?”
Misty frowns. “No, Nat. I would never stop you from doing what you wanted. Unless it was going to hurt you.”
Nat scoffs. She pushes her tongue against the wobbly tooth next to her incisor. It creeks like an old, dying tree. “Right.”
“We should stay in contact. I’ll keep you updated. And I can keep tabs on his social media profiles, see if he posts anything that might indicate a location.”
“Sure.” She slides her empty glass across the table. There’s a bruise forming on her shoulder blade. The teeth marks on her arm have three perfect red lines across them from the spatula.
Misty’s skin is red around her neck. Her bent out of shape glasses hide a tiny scratch by her eye. Her lip is still oozing red.
“Your lip is bleeding.”
“Oh.” Misty dabs the wound with her fingertips. “It’s okay. I’m a quick healer, really. How’s your arm?”
“Fucked, thanks. How’s your pride?” She smirks at Misty’s little frown. “Don’t text me unless you have something,” she says as she slides out from under the table.
Misty looks so small sitting with her feet up on the chair, bloodied and deflated by the arrangement. Nat almost forgets not to feel guilty.
The diner they’re in isn’t as nice as the places Tai usually picks. This isn’t another apology lunch. She’s wearing her oversized, anonymity sunglasses that draw unnecessary attention, and looking over her shoulder every two minutes.
“Would you fucking relax?” Nat stabs her pancake.
She wants an update on the Walter situation. Or, she wants to lecture Nat about keeping a low profile and not fucking everything up for everyone or some bullshit of that variety.
Nat’s phone buzzes with a text from Misty.
Where are you? :)
Out
“I’m not gonna fucking relax until you tell me you aren’t going full Natural Born Killers with Misty,” Tai leans across the table to hiss.
I know. I mean what table are you sitting at?
What?
The doorbell chimes and when Nat looks up Misty is there, scanning the booths. Her face lights up when she spots Nat across the diner.
“Fuck’s sake, Tai. You invited her?”
Tai shrugs. “I’m not gonna let you get swept up into one of her insane plans.”
There’s a case file glued to Misty’s chest and an overstuffed satchel slung over her shoulder. It makes her walk lopsided. Nat rolls her eyes.
“Ladies.” Misty gestures for Nat to scoot further into the booth.
“Jesus, Nat? Did you do that?” Tai pulls her sunglasses off to look at the bruise on Misty’s mouth. It’s turning yellow around the edges and makes her look like a white rabbit with a carrot juice moustache. “She looks like a battered wife.”
A horrible wave of nausea hits Nat’s gut. It makes her angry and her chest tight. She wants to show Tai the bruise on her back or telepathically implant a sense memory of being hit with a dose of Narcan.
Misty pats the contusion lovingly with her fingertips. “It’s okay, Tai. Natalie’s going through a lot right now but we’re—“
“Shut the fuck up, Misty. Do you have something or not?”
She’s hesitant to show her hand right away, keeping the case file on her knee.
“I’ve been going through all of his Reddit posts and these are the active investigations he’s currently working on.” She picks out three pages from her file, laying them out on the sticky table. “Missing woman in Trenton. A man murdered in Lakehurst. And a cheating scandal at the New Jersey state chess federation.”
“What?”
“We don’t always work on criminal cases. Although, this could be considered fraud.”
“Can you get to the point?”
“Well, I don’t know about the NJSCF, but if he’s in Trenton or Lakehurst, that narrows down our marina search.”
Nat sighs. “This is a fucking waste of time. We should just wait until he comes back from whatever trip he’s on. He has to go home eventually.”
“Or you could just give up on this little revenge fantasy,” Tai says.
“No,” Misty blurts. “I mean, I also found that he’s worked on no less than three cases that ended with a dirty cop getting killed in a shoot-out.” She places three news articles over the other papers, all of them eerily similar to Kevyn’s.
“What the fuck?” Nat picks up the first. Cop dead in parking lot shoot-out. “You didn’t lead with this?”
“I was getting to it,” Misty mutters.
Tai turns one of the other articles. “You’re telling me this guy is a serial cop killer? Nat, this is fucking insane.”
“Well, we don’t know that for sure,” Misty says. “He might kill other people as well as cops.”
“Oh my God, this is… beyond insane. This is stupid. He’s dangerous. He has a whole criminal career. We couldn’t even get away with one murder without his help.”
“Tai’s right. Whatever we do has to be under the radar. Undetectable to law enforcement and the citizen detective community,” Misty says.
“That is literally the opposite of what I said.”
Nat feels the injustice bubble in her chest. “So, we just let him get away with killing Kevyn because it works out for us? He inserts himself into investigations and then kills innocent people so his psycho fucking friends, the real murderers, don’t get the blame.”
“My God, Natalie. When do we just move on with our lives?”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Oh, fuck you, Nat. I’ve lost just as much as you. I lost my wife. I lost my fucking kid.” She says it like they’re dead and not just in Boston, starting a new life without her. Maybe that is worse. At least she has Van now. All Nat has is anger and Misty.
A cool silence covers the table.
Nat looks at the papers. Everything feels futile and small. Even if she kills Walter, Kevyn will still be dead. So will Travis. And everyone else. There is no rebalancing the scales of justice.
Maybe this is just what she does: hunt. Whether it does anything for the greater good is beside the point. Maybe she was born to kill and live in other people’s places.
“I think if we do kill him, we should make it look like an overdose,” Misty says.
They both look at her.
“…Really, Misty?” Tai gestures to Nat.
“What?” The faux pas goes over her head. She adjusts her glasses. “Fine, a suicide then. He fits the profile.”
“Jesus Christ, I can’t be here.” Tai puts her sunglasses back on as she gets up. She turns to Nat before she leaves. “Don’t do anything fucking stupid.”
Her heels clack against the diner floor as she goes, head down as if everyone isn’t already looking at her.
All except Misty, who stares up at Nat, big brown eyes magnified by her glasses.
“What?” Nat asks when she looks around.
She smiles. “Do you want to share a slice of apple pie with me? It’s the best in town but the portion sizes here are ridiculous.”
Nat snatches the other article from her hand and nods her chin to the case file. “Show me the rest.”
Misty has always been weird. She was weird long before the crash. A part of Nat is soothed by this. Looking at her isn’t like looking at a ghost the way it is with the rest of them. Misty was always going to be Misty.
It’s the lack of guilt, Nat assumes. She can’t imagine Misty ever lying awake at night, condemning herself for the things she’s done. Nat hates her for that.
Misty’s world must be so clean, so organised. She has a ritual for everything. Even the way she eats; always going for the crust on her pie first, saving the superior bite until last, worshipping it, Nat assumes, to prove to herself that she has enough meal to honour.
They’re all weird about food in some way. Misty is possessive. Not unlike the way she is with people. Which makes sense, really, when those two things are so entwined. She reveres whatever or whoever keeps her alive.
The simplicity of it is alluring; the idea that you could eat and be grateful and call that a life. Worship and stay alive and fuck everything else. No guilt, no reflection.
Maybe that’s why hurting her feels so inconsequential. Everything will always just be water under the bridge with Misty. Her unbound capacity for violence also means a never-ending vat of forgiveness.
“What do you think?” She sits on the floor at the foot of Nat’s bed, the rest of the papers covering the mattress, and searches Nat for signs of approval.
“I think you’re an idiot for getting caught up with this guy.”
She deflates. “About the evidence.”
Nat rolls her eyes. “It’s good, I guess. It’s convincing. But it doesn’t help track him down. I need a location, not a legal case. There’s not gonna be a fucking trial.”
The time flickers, illuminated in neon green on her bedside table. They’ve been at this hours, trawling through Misty’s findings. She runs her fingers through her hair.
Misty seemingly senses the shift. “I have more we can go through. I found his old employment records.”
“No, I—“
“He used to work in Cape May.”
“How is that relevant?”
“Or we could fight.”
“What?”
Misty shrugs. She looks embarrassed but stands her ground.
“No. This is so fucking weird.” Nat rubs her tired eyes. The apple pie and two glasses of whiskey haven’t put her in a fighting mood. She moves to get up off the bed.
“There’s something I need to tell you. This is hard for me to admit but I feel like you won’t trust me if I’m not honest. I…” Misty sighs, feigning some great struggle with herself. “I slept with Walter. When you were still in the hospital. I knew what he’d done but I just... I needed someone to feel close to, you know? To make me feel like it was all going to be okay. That you were going to be okay.”
The performance is melodramatic, as Misty’s often are. What Nat can’t figure out is what the purpose of this one is.
“Why would I care if you fucked your boyfriend, Misty?”
Her posture stiffens. She seems affronted by the idea that Nat wouldn’t care. Like she’s created a narrative in which Nat would be jealous and angered by the concept.
“Well, I thought you should know. Just in case someone tries to convince you that I’m not on your side,” she speaks roughly, facade slipping. She’s not a good liar, not to Nat anyway. She shifts under Nat’s glare like she’s retracing her steps, searching for a hole in her story.
Unpicking the thought process behind Misty’s actions is a skill Nat’s been honing as of late. She’s found so far that outright asking is usually her best option.
“Are you fucking lying?”
The question stumps her. She frowns behind her glasses. “No, I—“
“When?”
“That night—“
“Where? In your bed? How?” Nat gets up. Out of all the ways Misty could try and cajole her into a fight, she chooses this? As if Nat would give a fuck.
Misty blushes. She stutters as she tries to come up with a sellable story. “He, he—“
“How did he fuck you, Misty? Were you on your back?”
Misty seems confused and thrilled all at once. She looks up at Nat from the floor the way she’d look at a tsunami coming her way: awed and unafraid.
It excites Nat. She thinks Misty might be the only person who sees her for what she is and doesn’t turn away.
“Yes?”
Nat almost smiles at the hesitancy. “You’re a shitty liar.”
“No, I’m not.”
“So you are lying?”
“No!” Her eyes flick down to Nat’s ankles as if she’s considering biting them.
“Get up.” Adrenaline starts to pump behind Nat's eardrums as Misty climbs to her feet. “No face hits. Or scratching. We look stupid enough already.”
The wild look in Misty's eyes thrills Nat. She finds herself smirking back.
Misty hops where she stands and then leaps at her. She wraps her thighs around Nat’s waist, grabs her head, and yanks.
“Misty!!”
The sudden extra weight drags Nat to her knees. She body slams Misty, satisfies at the grunt she makes on impact, and presses her forearm against the front of Misty’s throat.
“You’re not good at this.”
Misty smiles and her breath is warm against Nat’s cheek. She licks her lips, looks hungrily at Nat’s mouth, and shoves her hands up the back of Nat’s shirt.
Nat recoils at the intrusion. She slaps Misty’s hands away as if they were poisoned and sits back on her knees.
It’s dangerous territory. The violence feeds something deeper, something ravenous and desperate to emerge. She can feel it hot in the air between them.
Papers flutter to the floor as Misty scurries up onto the bed. She lets out a girlish laugh as Nat fails to grab her leg. She’d laughed like that in the wilderness after one of them, Nat can’t remember which, fell into a skewer pit.
She’s armed with a pillow when Nat climbs up onto the mattress.
“Really? Pillow fight seems kind of reductive—”
Misty hits her over the head with it.
The soft landing between throws is a pleasant respite from glass and floorboards. If the idea of prearranged pillow fights wasn’t so humiliating, Nat would think they’d discovered a new way to fight.
Misty pants and laughs like an overexcited kid, climbing on top of Nat to wring her neck.
Nat realises she smiling too. It’s hard not when she knows how easy it’ll be to grab Misty’s throat and flip them.
She has her hands pinned above her head within seconds.
Misty gazes up at her from the pillow, breathless and eager. The pale skin at her neck pulses: a blank canvas, begging to be marred.
“You can bite me. If you want,” she blurts.
Before Nat reconciles what an odd thing that is to say, she’s already sunk her teeth into Misty’s warm flesh, overrun with the echoes of how good it feels to feed.
Two things happen then: Misty lets out a desperate, almost pornographic moan and the motel room door swings open.
“Holy fuck.” Tai stands stock-still in the doorframe. “Van!”
“Whoa.” Van appears behind her. “What the fuck is going on here?”
“We’re just fighting,” Misty says, arms still pinned above her head. The bite mark on her neck is turning bright red.
“Sure. Me and Tai fight all the time.”
Nat rolls her eyes. Her body is on high alert, humming with pent-up energy. She slides off Misty to sit on the edge of the bed. “We’re not fucking.”
“Honestly, it would be a lot less weird if you were,” Tai says. “This is what you guys do now? Wrestle and plan murders together?”
Nat looks at Van. She doesn’t know how much she can trust her.
“I don’t give a shit about your little Walter plot. I don't wanna know anything,” she reassures her. “This, however,” she gestures between her and Misty, “I’m intrigued by.”
“There’s nothing to know.”
Misty observes from where she’s been abandoned on the bed. She looks like she wants to dispute it, feed the rumour mill somehow.
“Why are you here?” Nat asks.
“Oh, Tai left her phone at the diner. I had to text Van to let her know but I’ve got it.” Misty hops off the bed to dig around her giant satchel. Her weird tone and the fact she didn’t mention having it before kind of implies she stole it but Nat doesn’t let on.
Tai snatches the phone from Misty’s hand and then turns to Nat. “Just be careful. She almost killed you once already.”
“Yeah, well, so did you.”
It stings them, Nat can tell. She takes some satisfaction in it but she’s not sure why. She doesn’t like Misty enough to be defending her like this.
“Let this go, Nat. I’m serious.” Tai sends Misty one of her lethal glares but it seemingly bounces right off her. Her skirt billows out as she turns to leave.
Van looks between them and raises her eyebrows. “You need any wrestling tips, Misty, just let me know.”
Misty, not getting the joke, smiles. “Thanks, Van!” She frowns when Nat shoots her a look. “What?”
Nat sighs. She shut the door behind them and then collapses against ruffled bedsheets. “You should go, too. It’s late.”
“It’s 8 pm.” Misty sits down in the spot next to her. She tries to put her hand on Nat’s knee but recoils at the last second. “You know, I would never hurt you on purpose, Natalie.”
Nat laughs at the outlandish claim. “What?”
“I mean, not enough to threaten your life. That was… the worst mistake I’ve ever made. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I couldn’t have brought you back.”
Nat almost feels sorry for her. Which is insane. Maybe she’s just burnt through all her anger for the day. She sits up to look at the bruise on the side of Misty’s throat. It’s speckled with burst blood vessels and she touches it with her thumb.
“Does it hurt?”
Misty grins sweetly. She nods. “Yeah.”
Nat goes to Potter’s Island Marina that Friday. She’s drifting again, losing her grip on her purpose. There’s been no progress in days.
Misty’s back at work so her texts are less frequent. Not that Nat misses the fluffy check-ins and requests for meet-ups she knows will be useless.
What she doesn’t expect is for Walter’s boat to be docked there, bobbing in the water as if it had never left.
He’s back in town
How do you know???
Attachment: 1 image
This is his right?
Is he there??
Don’t do anything without me!!! I get off at six
We should stake him out
Pick me up at 8?
I’ll bring snacks!
She pulls up outside Misty’s house at 7:24. She’s not sure why she even waited but it’s become habitual, doing things with Misty instead of alone. Plus, if she does kill Walter, she’ll need Misty for the clean-up anyway.
The house is quiet again, that eery feeling still so off-putting. She doesn’t ring the doorbell. She makes eye contact with the security camera. Maybe Misty is already watching her.
The back window opens easily.
Her feet land on the kitchen floor without a noise but she doesn’t creep around. There’s no point. She wants the violation to be arrogant and thoughtless the way Misty always is. She considers making herself a sandwich but she’s not hungry. She helps herself to a can of soda instead and lets it fizz on the hardwood floors.
Caligula squawks when he sees her. “Help! Down here! Hiiiii, handsome boy!”
“Creepy fuck,” Nat mutters.
The stairs creak as she climbs them. There’s a pile of clean linen and a grey one-piece folded on the top step. The smell of steam and shampoo drifts from the bathroom and there’re wet footprints leading to Misty’s bedroom.
Nat takes a sip of soda. She reminds herself that this is no worse than anything Misty has ever done to her. She’s just early.
The paint-chipped wooden door to Misty’s bedroom is ajar. What Nat doesn’t expect to see when she pushes it open all the way, is Misty laying naked on the bed with her hand down between her thighs.
Nat freezes.
Her eyes are closed. Her face is red and screwed up with concentration, hand flicking back and forth over herself in rapid, instinctual movements.
Nat’s ears ring at the sight. Her mouth turns dry. She sees the bruises on Misty’s ribs and the one on her thigh, almost black, not healed like her lip. It must be from their most recent fight.
It’s as if she’s touching her, despite being six feet away. It makes Nat sick and hungry. She swallows.
“This is why you can’t answer the door when I knock?”
Misty jumps. Her eyes fly open. Her hand recoils.
“Nat. I didn’t hear… I—“ She freezes, propped up on her elbows.
The room gets smaller and smaller, the walls closing in the longer Nat stands there. She keeps her face stoic, her eyes flicking over Misty’s body: her flushed skin, her breasts, her knees bowed together in shame, the bite mark on her neck.
It would be easy to go over there and touch her.
“Were you watching?” Misty asks.
Nat doesn’t answer. Her jaw tightens. The familiar anger, maybe the familiar arousal, burns hot in her stomach.
Misty blinks before she realises she won’t get an answer. Or, maybe takes Nat’s silence as the one she wanted all along. She lays back down against the mattress, eyes on Nat as her hand slinks back to where it was.
The room tilts on its axis, gravity dragging Nat towards her. The unstable ground makes her dizzy.
Misty’s gaze bores into Nat’s skull. Nat can’t look away. Misty strokes herself. It’s different from before: all languid movements, trepidatious and slow, as if she’s trying not to offend.
There’s no way of knowing how long Nat watches. Long enough that Misty’s breath starts to catch, her hips roll up to her own touch, and her eyebrows pinch together.
The weight of it becomes unbearable, the air unbreathable.
Misty makes a small sound and it cuts through the humidity like a blade.
“Take your time.” Nat’s voice is foreign and dry when she finally speaks. “I’ll wait in the car.”
She hears Misty sit up as she leaves but she doesn’t turn back to look. She keeps her eyes on the floor, watching her feet move and ignoring the sphere of want in her stomach.
Fucking her would be a bad idea. Fighting her is stupid enough.
The cool air outside contrasts how hot Nat’s cheeks are.
The voice in her head, the responsible one, sounds like Tai. Worse, it sounds like Shauna. Maybe she should fuck her out of spite. She leans up against her car to smoke and rolls her eyes at her own pettiness.
Whatever happens, happens. She’s survived plenty of bad ideas before. That’s kind of her whole thing.
She’s not even done with her cigarette by the time Misty is walking down the drive, her posture a little stiffer than usual.
“That was fast. Finish already?”
Misty opens her mouth but cuts herself off before she embarrasses herself. She adjusts her glasses and pulls open the passenger door. “Are you coming?”
Nat smirks. “I asked you first.” She flicks her cigarette butt onto Misty’s front lawn and laughs at the way she blushes.
The tension in the car is thick and difficult to breathe through. It gets worse with every hour they don’t talk.
They’re parked across the dock, lights out, a pair of binoculars between them. Nat doesn’t ask Misty what she usually uses them for. The boats in the harbour bob around unaware. The lights on their masts almost make for a romantic view.
Nat can’t look at Misty without remembering where all the marks are under her clothes. She still smells like shampoo and it puts Nat’s senses on high alert. She might be able to hear Misty's heart beating if it weren’t for the sound of her rustling through the snack bag.
Misty is stress-eating. She started an hour ago and still hasn’t stopped. She keeps glancing over, opening her mouth to speak and then stuffing it with jerky.
It’s starting to get annoying.
“What?” Nat snaps after her thirtieth attempt to talk.
“I really don’t see why you’re mad at me. You’re the one who broke in. You know, if anything, I should be mad at you. But I wouldn’t do that to you because I actually respect you.”
The sudden clarification as to why fucking Misty would be a bad idea is actually kind of helpful. Nat rolls her eyes. “Not every unfilled silence means someone’s mad at you.”
She swallows her last bite. “You’re not mad?”
“No.”
The wrapper crinkles in her hand. “So… you liked it?”
Nat rubs her forehead. “I didn’t say that.” She keeps her eyes on the dock, wishes hard that she wasn’t here.
Misty deflates. She looks out her window as if to hide a lip quiver. “You probably thought I was ugly.”
The sudden lurch of unwanted sympathy in Nat’s chest puts into perspective how little she’s felt for the past few months.
Misty is manipulating her, that much is obvious. She also knows Misty is the only one the wilderness never freed of that teenage fear: ugliness. Even by their second summer, she still kept herself under wraps. Maybe nobody ever heals from the cruelty of teenage girls.
Nat sighs. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Well, if you thought I was pretty, you would’ve stayed to watch.”
Her sad doe eyes are big enough to drown in. The weight of the confession hangs heavy between them: the fact that Misty wanted her to. If Nat didn’t hate her so much, she’d lean over and kiss her.
“What’re you— You’re not ugly. You’re hot, you’re just…”
Misty is instantly glittering with pride at the compliment, unable to keep the elation off her face.
Nat feels like an idiot for falling for the bait.
“Oh, fuck off.” She flicks the cartilage in Misty’s ear.
“Ow! Natalie!” Misty rubs the sore spot. “That hurt!”
“Is everything that comes out of your mouth bullshit?”
“You’re bullshit!” She rustles in her lap for a second — then throws a piece of jerky at Nat’s face. It bounces off her eyebrow and lands in the cup holder.
“Give me that fucking jerky!”
It’s like stealing a bone from a dog. Misty all but growls as they wrestle for it, anger turning to fury when Nat rolls down the window and chucks it.
“I was eating that!”
It’s rare to see her anger so vivd. Nat makes a note not to come between Misty and food. Or do — if she really deserves it. Her nose scrunches up as she breaks their first rule and grabs a clump of Nat’s hair.
“Misty!!” She grabs a clump of Misty’s in return. “Stop!”
“You stop!”
Her nails cut against Nat’s collarbone as she lashes out. The car’s quiet, apart from petulant grunts and dull thwacks, both of them with their claws out, aiming for the other’s face.
“Don’t stretch my shirt!” Nat climbs over the middle compartment, dodging strikes and vicious scratches.
They haven’t fought without rules for a while. It makes her feel alive, hungry. Like for a moment she’s justified in wanting to survive — in wanting to win.
She pins Misty’s flailing arms to her sides, revels in her success the way she never usually allows herself to.
“Does this turn you on?” She hisses.
Misty’s cheeks flame. She squirms underneath Nat but she can’t move.
Nat squeezes her wrists harder. “Does it?”
Misty nods.
Nat feels something in her melt. Blood is hot under her cheeks. It’s suffocating, all that desire, destructive and magnetic. She leans down until she can feel Misty’s breath on her lips and watches it catch in her throat.
“Do you want me to fuck you, Misty?”
The feeble sigh Misty lets out is muffled by the sound of someone tapping on the window.
A wraithlike face, gaunt and pale, looms behind the glass.
“Excuse me?” It says.
Nat jumps. “What the fuck—“
“You can’t park here!”
It takes a second to process the old woman craning her neck down to gawp at them.
Misty looks just as stunned, jaw hanging open in a mimicry of the old woman’s face.
“We were just driving through!” She wriggles her hands and Nat realises they’re still pinned to her sides.
“Shit.” Nat, all elbows and knees, climbs back to her seat. She hits the ignition before the old woman wakes up the entire marina.
“This is private property!”
“Just got a little turned around, clearly!” Misty laughs.
Nat puts the car into reverse.
“We won’t have any of that funny business here—”
The wheels skid as they pull out. They leave her on the curb like some kind of apparition, her cadaverous frame blowing in the night wind.
The cocktail of adrenaline and arousal makes Nat skittish. She keeps her eyes on the road as trees fly past. “That was fucking creepy as shit.”
Misty can’t hide her smile. Overjoyed, Nat assumes, to have been caught fooling around in a car late at night.
Nat rolls her eyes. She fights her own smile as if laughing with her would be more intimate than fucking her in the front seat.
It’s late by the time they get to Misty’s. Or early, depending on how you look at it. The adrenaline still hasn’t faded. All she can sense is Misty’s body and all its violence.
“Are you coming inside?” Misty asks as the engine dies.
It would be a bad idea. “I’m tired, Misty,” she lies.
“Well then, you shouldn’t drive.” She bats her eyes. “It’s dangerous.”
Nat stares. She's hungry for it, whatever it is. She wants to feel Misty lose. She wants to feel herself win.
“Fine.” She unclips her seatbelt.
There’s a photo of her hung on the wall in Misty’s hallway. A group photo, to be marginally less creepy. The Yellowjackets after a game, Nat can’t remember which one, smiling with their trophy. She hates Misty’s house.
“Can I get you a drink?”
Nat wonders if this is what she’s like after a date as she follows her through the house. “Sherry again?”
“I have bourbon.”
“You don’t like bourbon.”
“You don’t like sherry.”
Nat narrows her eyes. She takes a seat at the dining room table. “Alright.”
It’s strange being here without a reason. It’s hard to gauge whether it’s safe to let her guard down — whether she even wants to. Combativeness is a kind of language they’ve begun to speak fluently.
“Was his boat really gone?” Nat asks. She fiddles with a padlock left on the table, twisting the number dials back and forth, feeling them click under her thumb.
Misty gives an airy laugh with her back to Nat as she pours her drink. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you fucking with me somehow?”
She puts the drink down in front of Nat and plucks the padlock from her fingers. “No, Nat. I promise. You can trust me.”
“I don’t need to trust you. I just need you to not fuck this up for me.”
Misty smiles like that might be the sweetest thing she’s ever heard. “I won’t.”
Her posture looks rigid and nervous. She shifts where she stands, watching the drink in Nat’s hand, her Crocs squeaking on the linoleum floor.
“What?” Nat asks.
“I’m going to check on Caligula for the night but why don’t you go upstairs? Make yourself at home. There’s a spare toothbrush in the bathroom. The blue one. Mine’s pink.”
There’s something off about her delivery. Nat can’t tell if she’s having second thoughts.
“Alright.” She finishes her drink in one gulp, letting it burn the way she likes.
Misty doesn’t move until she does. She ushers her out of the kitchen and lingers at the bottom of the stairs until Nat’s well on her way.
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
Nat imagines her whispering sweet nothings to her bird in the dark and snorts. “Whatever.”
Her bedroom looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the 90s. Nat snoops around, opening jewellery boxes and top drawers, finding alarming amounts of lace underwear and handkerchiefs and vials of prescription drugs.
“What a freak,” she mutters to herself. She squints as her vision blurs with fatigue. Her arms suddenly feel like wet spaghetti.
The bed creaks as she sits down. Is she really doing this? Fucking Misty Quigley of her own free will? The thought that she should probably leave bubbles up and then disappears. She kicks off her boots and lets herself sprawl out across the mattress.
The sheets smell like Misty. Like floral detergent and antiseptic and hair products. She buries her face into the pillow and—
Nat wakes slowly and then all at once. She’s alone in Misty’s bed. Still lying above the covers, still wearing her leather pants and t-shirt.
Sunlight leaks through the lace blinds. She hasn’t felt this well-rested in years. Which is suspicious considering Nat hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since… maybe ever.
There’s music playing from the kitchen, drifting up the stairs along with the smell of scrambled eggs and fresh coffee.
“Is… Dolly Parton?” She rubs her sleep-filled eyes, yawns wide enough that her jaw pops. “What the fuck.”
Her head is stuffy as she sits up. Whatever sedative Misty slipped into her drink last night must still be in her system. She can’t seem to conjure enough energy to get angry yet.
The music gets louder as she makes her way downstairs.
Misty, in a pink night slip with a house coat to match, is plating up a feast of pastries and coffee and orange juice. It’s like waking up in an episode of Gilmore Girls.
It’s hard to gauge whether this is intimidation or seduction.
“Hey,” Nat says from the doorway.
Misty jumps and drops a glass in the sink. “Nat. You scared me.” She laughs. “How did you sleep? You were out like a light. You must’ve been exhausted.”
Her audacity is ludicrous. Nat studies her for a minute, trying to let the jigsaw pieces settle themselves into a clear image. Maybe she got nervous and didn’t know how to say no. Maybe she’s just insane.
“I should go.”
“Oh.” She glances at the elaborate breakfast spread. “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”
The lack of a fight is suspicious. Why go to the lengths of drugging her if she’s just going to let her leave?
“I just… I have stuff to do,” Nat says.
“Of course. You don’t have to explain.”
Obviously, Nat isn’t disappointed. It just doesn’t make sense.
Walking down the drive to her car, she half expects to get hit with a tranquilliser and dragged back in by the ankles.
Things make more sense when she tries her engine. It splutters and coughs but refuses to start.
Nat almost laughs. “Crazy fucking bitch.”
Misty’s still sitting at the breakfast table when Nat barges back inside.
“Engine trouble?” She asks with false naïveté, elegantly sipping her coffee.
The anger Nat couldn’t conjure first thing blossoms like a blood-red Petunia. All the things she could scream at her clog up the back of her throat: What the fuck is wrong with you? What is your fucking problem? Why would you fucking drug me when I was going to fuck you anyway?
Chair legs scream against the floor as Nat takes the seat next her.
Elbows on the table, she picks up Misty’s pastry and eats it in three bites, scattering crumbs across the floor.
She gulps down all of Misty’s coffee, slamming the mug hard against the wood and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Misty’s jaw tightens with annoyance. “I would’ve got you your own.”
Nat glares. She pulls her cigarettes from her pocket, doesn’t break Misty’s gaze as she puts one between her lips and lights it.
The smoke billows up towards the ceiling. Misty watches the grey stream like she’s envisioning it leaving a yellow stain on the wallpaper.
“I would really rather you smoke outside.” She grasps her glass of OJ.
Nat flicks ash into the juice and takes another leisured drag.
Misty huffs, getting more and more vexed as her dreamy breakfast fantasy turns to dust.
The cigarette hisses as Nat extinguishes it in the juice.
“Are you done?” Misty asks.
Like fuck is she done.
Nat picks a banana from the fruit bowl, peels it halfway as if to eat it, then breaks its head off and dumps the fruit on the floor.
Misty gasps as if this is a worse crime than spiking someone’s drink. “Stop!”
Nat throws the other half of the fruit over Misty's shoulder. It hits the wall with a wet thud and sticks there.
“Natalie!”
Nat can’t help but smile, elated at the chaos she’s free to spawn. She holds a croissant hostage above her head, flakes of it drifting down like snow.
“You’re being rude!” Misty snaps, lunging for the pastry.
“You fucking wanted me here.”
Misty doesn’t have anything to say to that. Her mouth curls the way it does before she strikes and then she bites Nat’s lip.
It’s not really a kiss, more of an attack. Nat fights back. She lunges at Misty, hard enough that her chair keels backwards onto two legs.
Misty gasps, grabs Nat by the shirt, and they go careening over onto the hard floor.
It must hurt. Misty grunts at the impact, her head bouncing off the floor, but she doesn’t break their kiss. She grabs Nat’s face and forces her tongue into her mouth.
All the rage, all the pulsing violence, slips down into Nat’s abdomen. It throbs with an urgent need, a hunger she hasn’t felt in years.
The banana squelches under her knee. She bites Misty’s neck, the same spot as before, but soothes it after with the flat of her tongue.
Misty whines. She scrambles out of the overturned chair and pushes Nat’s shoulders against the kitchen floor.
Having her on top feels like losing. She shoves Misty back and grips her hair the way you would pick up a disobedient kitten by the scruff of its neck.
Misty has always felt indestructible. In the wilderness, it was like she’d spent her whole childhood practising the concept of survival.
It’s strange to realise how human she is, how desperate. She claws at Nat’s arms and grinds her hips down against the fastening on Nat’s pants. It occurs to Nat to leave her like this: panting on the floor, marred with smashed fruit.
“Please?” She squeaks.
The submission makes Nat squirm. It’s uncomfortable and enthralling like standing too close to the edge of a cliff. She prefers it when Misty fights. It’s safer that way. It gives her something to rage against.
“You’re pathetic.”
“Don’t say that.” She frowns.
Her small voice makes Nat feel ugly. Like one of those people who think Misty’s strangeness gives them a free pass to hurt her.
“You want me, too.” The petulance in her tone is grating and childish.
“I just want you to shut the fuck up.”
Misty’s expression turns to ice. She lifts her hand and her fingers are covered in smushed banana paste. She wipes them on the front of Nat’s t-shirt.
“Don’t fucking—What the fuck?”
Her sadistic smile, shimmering with glee, is somehow kind of endearing. “I can wash that for you. If you want.”
Nat peels the t-shirt off over her head and Misty’s eyes bulge at the sight. She puts her hands on Nat’s ribs, warm palms against her skin, and brushes her thumb over their matching bruise.
Nat kisses her before she can start writing poetry about it — hard enough that her back hits the floor. She knocks the silk off Misty’s shoulder and bites the fleshy part of her arm.
The straps on her night slip rip like they’re made of paper. Misty gasps at the sudden exposure. She smells like floral perfume; it’s bitter on Nat’s tongue as she puts her nose between Misty’s breasts.
Pressing her lips to the apex of Misty’s ribs, Nat pushes away the image of her lungs split apart, flayed and hung up to bleed.
Misty is too eager and too rough. Nat’s bra strap slaps against her skin like a rubber band as Misty claws at it. Her hands are everywhere, pulling at Nat’s skin as if she could tear pieces off to eat.
She inhales against Nat’s throat, licks the salt off her skin, scratches her chest, pinches her nipple between her fingers.
“Ow—Fucking calm down.” Nat pins her hands against the kitchen floor.
Misty, panting and disoriented, only cranes her head up to chase Nat’s lips.
With all the horrible things her mouth has done, it shouldn’t taste as good as it does.
Nat holds her skull in her hands — keeps it firm against the floor as she feels Misty’s teeth against her tongue. She kisses the fight right out of her, licking the faded bruise on her mouth, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth.
Her jaw hangs open like a fledgling’s when Nat pulls away, utter disbelief covering her expression. Her breath sits high in her chest and for a moment Nat forgets not to be gentle — she looks fucking beautiful.
Dragging her teeth down Misty’s sternum, she keeps a hand on her throat as a lingering threat. She bites the side of Misty’s breast, finds her wet through her underwear, trembling in anticipation.
“I don’t want you this much,” she mocks.
Misty’s cheeks flame but she can’t talk. She never cries out when she gets hurt, always goes quiet and turns in on herself.
It’s the same now when Nat’s fingers slip inside her underwear, she doesn’t moan or sigh. Her jaw tightens and she holds her breath, lips flattening into a straight line. Nat imagines her biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself from making a sound, trying to prove, in some way, that she can take it.
There’s no resistance to Nat’s fingers. Fucking her is like cutting through melted butter. She clutches Nat tighter, closing her eyes and letting her head roll back against the floor.
A guttural sound echoes from Misty’s throat as she curls her fingers inside her. Nat feels it vibrate across the pad of her thumb.
It’s been a long time since she felt so much like a creature. She can almost smell the forest, hear the howls of her pack behind her, feel the damp moss under her knees. It reminds her of sinking her teeth into a live fish, hunger eliminating any other sensation.
But they’re not there anymore.
Misty’s face is twisted up, spinning wildly between euphoria and frustration, landing briefly on pain. She won’t ask for what she wants. Either out of a desperate need to please, to take whatever Nat gives her, or because she's physically lost the ability to speak.
Nat slows her pace. She watches Misty’s expression remain unchanged as if she’s disappeared somewhere.
“Misty.” She pulls her fingers out and tugs Misty's hips closer.
Misty’s eyes flutter open. Nat pushes her knees up until she can lie on the backs of her thighs. She strokes circles over Misty’s clit and looks down into her eyes.
“Look at me.”
They’re hazy and blown out. The overwhelmed expression starts to fade as she looks back into Nat’s eyes.
“Nat…” Her voice is wispy like she’s forgotten how to use it.
The rhythm of Nat’s fingers, light but fast, like how Misty had touched herself, makes her hips writhe. Her breathing changes: gets deeper, more hurried, as her pleasure switches to a sudden incline.
“Better?”
“Oh, Nat—“ Her sentence is swept away as her head tilts back again, hands going limp against Nat’s shoulders.
Once she’s on the right track, it doesn’t take much. Misty keeps her eyes open, staring at Nat as if just looking at her is what’s getting her off.
The veins around her eyes change; her mouth opens, letting out a cry that Nat swallows; her body shudders as if caught out in the cold.
It’s like watching a pink sky over frozen trees, seeing so much beauty in a place you hate.
Nat keeps her fingers still as Misty comes down. She kisses her like a real person might: soft and honeyed, their heads on the floor next to the radiator pipe, feeling Misty’s breath return to normal against her cheek.
The room slides back into focus: upturned chair, smashed fruit, the smell of coffee and smoke.
Nat rolls off her onto the floor. Like a magnet, Misty follows. She curls into Nat's side, laying an arm over her chest, looking at her like they’re on their honeymoon.
The gentleness was unexpected. A part of Nat wants to take it back but it wraps itself around them like vines, dogged in its persistence. There’re probably still Benzos in her system, she reasons. There’s definitely smashed banana in her hair.
This is all so fucked.
There’s a red mark from the chair back across Misty’s shoulder blades. It’ll look like the one on Nat’s back in a few days. Another insignia they’ll share.
Nat puts her palm over it and the skin is hot. She wants to erase it. Make Misty blank so she can pretend this never happened.
“Do you actually like this?” She asks.
Misty tilts her head up.
“The… pain?” It’s hard to speak about. If Nat vocalises it as something they do to each other, it might change the meaning of it.
“Oh, sure. I like it after,” Misty answers easily.
“After?”
“After you leave.” She tries to look over her shoulder to see the damage. “The worse it is, the longer they last.”
Nat closes her eyes and tries not to react the way she wants to. “That’s fucked up.”
“Plenty of people like it a little rough, Nat.” She laughs. Her simple acceptance of things can be liberating sometimes but it often makes Nat feel alone. “Why do you like it?” She asks.
The rush, the pump, the aliveness. Danger has always been where Nat feels at home. That feels too romantic to say out loud. She curses herself for starting to think like Misty.
“I don't know.”
Misty scans her expression for more detail but won’t find anything. She kisses Nat’s lips the same way she’d land a hit: a quick smack and then retreating before Nat can punish her for it.
Nat studies her: the way she fidgets, body brimming with urges she knows to subdue, eyes wide as if to take in as much as Nat as she can while she has her here. It’s difficult comprehend she’d feel such glee at Nat’s presence. It makes her want to run before she does something insane like enjoy it.
The buzz from Nat’s phone vibrating on the floor distracts them. Misty reaches over Nat’s chest and decides to read the notification herself.
“Tai invited us to lunch again.”
“Us?”
“With Van. I guess it’ll be like a double date.”
Nat frowns. “Give me that.” The text has no mention of Misty.
“We should probably get going. I can lend you a clean T-shirt.”
“You gonna give me my battery cable back?”
Misty looks almost shy, eyes darting to the side before she nods. It’s cute. Nat fights that thought with everything she has.
Misty definitely wasn’t invited to lunch.
That becomes clear when Nat spots Shauna across the restaurant, who loudly turns to Tai and asks, “You invited Misty?”
Tai looks over her shoulder to watch them approach. “I didn't.”
Nat’s not sure if Misty heard them but it rubs her the wrong way.
“What is this, family dinner? This is getting weird, Tai,” she says as she takes the empty bench opposite them.
“You’re telling me.” Tai wipes her mouth on a napkin as she shoots Nat a questioning look. “Misty.”
“The gang's all here! This was such a nice idea, Tai.”
Nat can’t tell if she’s oblivious to the icy reception or just immune.
“Jesus, Misty.” Shauna looks more horrified than usual by Misty’s face. “You look like you got in a bar fight.”
Tai looks from the old mark on Misty’s neck to the fresh one poking out above her neckline. “What the fuck,” she mutters to Van.
“Oh, these?” Misty laughs. “Don’t worry, these are… you know, sex injuries,” she stage whispers the last two words.
“Ew,” Tai says.
Van snorts.
“Misty.” Shauna grimaces. “That Walter guy is such a creep. Not that I’m not grateful. No offence, Nat.”
“Oh, no, me and Walter broke up. I just couldn’t forgive him for what he did to Kevyn, even if it was to save you, Shauna.” The ease at which the claims the moral high ground is kind of impressive. “I’m actually seeing someone new.”
Nat stares at the napkins. She can feel Tai glaring at her across the table. If she keeps her head down, maybe it won’t matter.
Shauna is oblivious, already digging into her salad. “Where did you meet him? Kickboxing class?”
Misty does her weird, fake laugh as she picks up the menu. “No, no. We’ve actually known each other forever.”
Nat pushes the heel of her ankle boot into her toe as hard as she can. She hears Misty gasp but doesn’t look at her.
“Well, be careful. Anyone who gets off on beating you to a pulp probably isn’t very stable,” Shauna says.
Nat’s just about to dispute that before the waitress interrupts.
“How are we doing over here? Ready to order?”
“Do you wanna split a pizza with me?” Misty asks. She’s sat closer than she should be, looking up at Nat from behind her glasses.
Nat senses the group's baffled expressions. Arriving with her was already weird enough. She plucks the menu out of Misty’s hand. “No. I’m getting a burger.”
Apart from the occasional look from Tai, the meal passes easily.
Shauna and Tai talk endlessly about the woes of motherhood, neither of them acknowledging how the rest of the group doesn’t really give a shit.
Misty chimes in every down and then with a parenting statistic. Usually about something horrific.
“You know, every 40 seconds, a child goes missing or is abducted in the United States alone. I don’t blame you for being over-protective. Especially after what we all went through.”
They mostly ignore her. Which means she gets bored after forty minutes.
Her hand slides up the back of Nat’s shirt and Nat, with her hands full of a Monterey Jack cheeseburger, can’t stop her. She runs her fingers up Nat’s spine, nodding along to whatever Tai is saying, leaving blistering tracks in her wake.
Nat’s going to fucking kill her later. She tries to stomp on her foot again but she crosses her legs and turns her knees away.
The scuffle draws Van’s attention. Nat takes another bite of food as if nothing’s wrong.
“Oh, you would know this, Van,” Shauna says. “That movie about a mom and she’s getting a divorce?”
It gives Nat time to grab Misty’s wandering hand. She digs her nails in hard enough to leave crescent moons in her wrist.
“Mrs Doubtfire?” Van offers.
Shauna tuts and rolls her eyes. “Never mind.”
When Nat chances a look over, Misty is blushing.
The fact Nat can paint her in shades of red, have her swallow her tongue and abandon her meal with a mere squeeze of her fist, makes her a little smug, if she’s being honest. She puts her hand on Misty’s thigh, unable to resist torturing her.
Beating Misty at her own game is kind of their thing. As Misty reaches for her drink, Nat moves her hand up and presses her fingers against the seam of her jeans.
Misty’s glass clatters against her plate. “Oh, shoot,” she curses as she grabs at the napkins to soak up spilt water.
“Careful, Misty,” Nat says, eyeing the stream headed for her lap. “Don’t get wet.”
Misty scrambles to stop the flood in its tracks. She’s flustered, cheeks turning deeper pink at maybe the first innuendo she’s ever understood in her life.
Nat can’t help but smirk. She gives her thigh a squeeze and catches Van’s raised eyebrow a second too late.
Tai, on the other hand, clocks it straight away. “Oh, fucking ew, Natalie. Really?”
“What?” Nat feigns a kind of ignorance that just makes her look dumb.
“Shauna is eating her Cobb salad.”
“I’m not doing anything?”
Shauna looks between them with her mouth full. “What is going on?”
“Natalie and Misty are sleeping together.”
“What the fuck, Tai?”
Shauna swallows in a hurry. “Excuse me?!”
“You brought it to lunch!” Tai gestures between the two of them as if the sexual tension were an object they carried around with them. She turns to Shauna. “They fight each other. And then have weird, fucked up sex.”
Van at least tries to deescalate the situation. “Okay, Tai, I don't think that’s really our business—“
Shauna looks more alarmed now than she did when Lottie offered her a glass of phenobarbital. “Is that true?”
Nat answers “no,” at the same time Misty says “yes."
“Jesus, Natalie, this is sick. I mean… Misty? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Misty frowns. Adjusts her glasses.
It’s not so much an urge to defend Misty than it is anger at Shauna’s hypocrisy that makes Nat lean across the table and hiss: “Are we forgetting which one of us fucking kills the people they’re screwing?”
“Okay!” Tai raises her hands as if to cut them off. “Can we keep it down? The last thing I need right now is ‘Yellowjackets reunion brawl’ as a headline.”
“Especially with these two looking like Punch and Judy,” Shauna says.
“Fuck you, Shauna. Your husband owes me fifty thousand dollars.”
“At least he hasn’t almost killed me.”
“Who the fuck do you think you’re having lunch with?”
That seems to shut everybody up.
They’re all still kind of embarrassed about the hunt. Explaining it away as a trauma response only made them all feel worse. At least back then, they had the wilderness as an excuse.
It’s quiet, apart from the sound of Van slurping her iced coffee through a straw.
“For the record,” Misty pipes up, “I would never hurt Natalie more than she wanted.”
“Oh, wow.” Van fails to hide her smirk.
“Okay.” Shauna takes a steadying breath. “I have to go. Callie needs a ride and… I don’t have time for whatever the fuck this is.”
“Tell Jeff I said hi,” Nat says as she stands.
Tai rolls her eyes at the comment. “I’ll walk you out, Shauna.”
The silence returns as they leave. Misty keeps her hands in her lap.
“Thanks for that,” Nat says.
Van makes a sympathetic face but can’t hide her smirk. “So, who knew you guys were so fucking freaky.” She pops a slice of celery in her mouth and crunches. “Least surprising thing I ever heard.”
Misty doesn’t do guilt but she is seemingly aware that Nat is pissed. She’s quiet for the whole drive back to her house. Right up until they pull into her drive.
“Are you embarrassed by me?” She asks quietly.
It pricks the soft spot that’s started to develop for Misty in Nat’s chest. Or, maybe the one that was always there that’s seemingly metastasised over the past few months.
She’s tempted to say yes. It would be the truth. Maybe this is how she can end this. But hurting Misty only ever seems to draw her in closer.
“I won’t be upset. I know they don’t like me, Shauna and Tai. And probably Van but I can never really tell with her.”
“I don’t know if any of us like each other, Misty.”
Misty frowns. “I like all of you.”
That might be the saddest fucking thing Nat’s ever heard. She sighs. “I know.”
“Tai likes Shauna. And Van, obviously. And I don’t see how she couldn’t like you.” She’s looking out the window, towards her front door.
Nat kind of wants to cry. She hasn’t done that in a long time, not since being in hospital. She’s not sure where the feeling comes from. Maybe the realisation that this all has to end now everyone knows. If she keeps going, it’ll become a thing. She’ll have to define it. Misty Quigley will become a barnacle on the underside of her grief.
“Are you coming inside?”
“No. I have stuff to do.”
“What stuff?”
“Stuff. It’s none of your business.”
Misty stares. Nat gestures for her to get out. She doesn’t budge.
“Did you enjoy it? The sex?”
Nat huffs. “I don’t enjoy whatever this is.”
“We could do it again. If you came inside.” Misty looks at her with all the pent-up longing she couldn’t express at lunch. It’s hard to tell if she’s actually turned on or if she’s pretending in order to get Nat to stay.
It works either way. Nat’s nostrils flare and her body churns with the same need as before. She did enjoy it. More than she’d ever let herself admit. The sense memory of Misty’s cunt under her fingertips, the smell of her perfume, the look in her eye as she came, circle through her mind.
“You could hunt me.”
Nat’s breath catches in her throat. “What did you fucking say?”
“You could hurt me. Or tell me what to do,” Misty says. Her face looks so open, this might be the first time Nat is certain she’s being honest. “I could… I’d do anything you wanted.”
Nat’s stomach twists with guilty desire. The power is intoxicating. She imagines herself commanding Misty. She pictures what she would look like on her knees, bowing down into a curtsy, kissing the tops of Nat’s feet. She can feel antlers growing from the top of her head, heavy and hers.
“Don’t do that,” she whispers.
“Do what?”
“Obey.” Her voice gets louder. “I’m not your fucking queen.”
The adoration on Misty's face melts away and turns back into petulance. Nat misses it almost straight away.
“Fine,” she snaps.
The one time Misty listens, the one time she follows Nat’s command is the only time Nat is asking her not to.
She unclips her seatbelt and leaves without looking back.