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Laura’s hands are useless. Trapped behind her back in a pose familiar with handcuffs, and the tickle of imminent numbness is setting in. When she flexes the tips of her fingers to stir some feeling into them, Travis’s grip on her wrists tightens. He knows how to hold her in more ways than a cell.
“Still.” He reminds her, his breath at her ear. Be still and comply.
Only when she settles into submission does he begin to fuck her properly.
He keeps her legs spread, framing them with his own, their knees making a harsh divot in the mattress beneath them. He’d first had her on her hands and knees, pistoning downward into her cunt, keeping his hands full with the globe of her ass until he felt like dragging her arms behind her back and keeping them there, holding her there. Laura feels herself unfurl like a shadow cast in sudden spotlight.
The little air between them is shared and silent, broken to the first spill of her orgasm that he soon follows. Travis hums the consonants of her name against her collarbone in blissful rhythm as he slowly comes back to life. Unbidden, the reminder of laundry pops into his head. The domestic pile of things, with these sheets between them added to the list alongside their winter gear and other things they intend to keep bloodless.
Laura and Travis are currently slanted in the upper shelf of Vermont, having followed tips strung together from Bizarre Yet Bonafide, Travis’s best laid plans, and Laura’s stubborn intuition. What started as a brief detour of her winter break after her first semester at Landis turned into an extended leave after learning that there were more creatures out there–like Silas, like the living thing she shot and killed.
They’ve been doing this–the killing–for over a month now.
They’ve been doing this–the sex–for just over a week.
It has become something of a habit. To fall asleep by the fall of his mouth and to wake by the rise of his cock, she feels more attuned to Travis Hackett, a once-enemy, than she does the cycle of the moon they track so fastidiously. He’s in her nature. She is his nature. On his right arm, the scars from Laura’s teeth wrap around his skin like a leash. He does not stand now, though he wants to, he does not rise to meet the wave of what he is about to say next, the risk and heat of it.
“I think,” Travis starts, sat upright but turned away from her, the bedsheets he was about to take to laundry pooled around his hips. “I think that for very practical reasons, we should be married.”
Laura, propped against the headboard and previously focused on the feeling of cum slick between her thighs, freezes.
Travis hastens, “I’ve thought about this, Laura. If one of us gets injured and we have to go to the hospital, it would help to have a story. We can’t be two strangers, in the middle of goddamn nowhere and not knowing anybody.”
She can imagine what inspired the thought. On the night before the last full moon, they had been setting out bear traps along the perimeter of the rental property they’ve taken up when the leg of her jeans got caught on an upturned stump and she was spent sprawling. Missed the bear trap by a couple inches. Travis carried her back to the cabin as though she had been snared, and it was the closest she’d ever been to him aside from the moment she’d held him in her mouth. It was before they started fucking. Ever since then, even after the fucking, she could tell he’s been thinking about her dying.
The death of Laura, the death of him, or maybe one day it will be both of them, taken simultaneously or in defense of the other, bleeding out on the rental cabin’s timeworn wood floors. Left for dead, to be found by the owner of the cabin–a sweet, older woman named Magdalene. Or, of course, they could be turned. Become the animals they despise. These are all things Travis considers.
"I have an estate, Laura." He continues to explain. He feels old, suddenly, more so than when he ignores the groan in his knees before he goes down on her. One hand outstretched like a promise, the other twisting the bedsheets beneath his thigh. "Guns and ammo and money and the things you would need to keep doing this. Not-not that you have to keep doing this, I--" He pushes his open hand through his hair, further tousling the strands not unlike she had done earlier when her thighs had been wrapped around his neck.
“So you’re proposing to me.” Laura says as a statement rather than a question. She looks down at herself as though to confirm her own nakedness. She recalls the vague Pinterest board of marital plans she’d conjured in her youth. Is this what she always imagined the moment would look like?
Really, Travis is more relieved than anything that she has not flat out refused him. Laughed in his face. Called him names again. It emboldens him, slightly.
“Yeah, I am.” He again raises his hand, palm up and empty, offering her what feels like nothing and everything at the same moment. But he has always had something to give her, from the moment that she should have gone to the Harbinger Motel–the knowledge that she was right to have always been a little bit suspicious of the world around her, that if she sought out secrets she would be rewarded rather than disappointed, though not in ways she could anticipate.
It serves a reminder to check her assumptions. She imagines that if they were caught trespassing on a neighboring property on one of the full moon expeditions, that Travis would slip into Sheriff Mode and charm his way out of the situation. It nearly worked on her, way back when he advised she head to the motel and resign from her dogged pursuit of Hackett’s Quarry.
“You’re right.” She says to him. Marriage. Lines on a sheet of paper, but also protection, guarantee; like the centermost piece of a puzzle that won’t be needed until later, until much more progress has been made. Does it hurt to have it early? She cannot shy from the practicalities of the situation herself. They are not two ships passing in the night, and she has only one more year on her mom’s insurance plan.
There are benefits to being tied down. Having someone to rely on, if only legally. She does wonder if the sex plays a role. When she’s used to Travis being on his knees for her, is a proposal truly such a surprise?
Laura almost laughs; she smiles ruefully. "Not the birthday gift I was expecting, but I'll take it.”
Travis turns on her as though she was the one who asked a sudden question. “It’s your birthday? Today?”
His mind replays the day’s events in silent film. He rose before she did, which was not unusual, and set a pot of coffee on the stove before doing a slow lap around the cabin to check the bear traps that had been laid the night before. The next full moon was only one day away, and it calmed him to see the standing order of things. When he returned, the coffee was ready and he could hear Laura starting to stir in her room. Their room. The lines were getting blurry.
When he saw her again he was dismantling their guns at the kitchen table to set aside the components that needed to be polished. Laura had made a comment on how well he works with his hands, and he felt inclined to give her a practical demonstration of the fact. Leading to where they are now, in his--their--bed and the sheets a tangled thread between them.
Where are her excuses? Excuses for why she is not at Landis and free for drinks with her classmates, free for a phone call to catch up, anything, really, that twenty-somethings did on their birthday. He should be asking where she is now, not why she is here.
Her mom had texted. So had Max. Short, perfunctory things that did not beg for an immediate response. She's sure there are some messages on her Facebook wall.
If Travis could think of anything to say in response, it would be the wrong thing. But his face says it. I didn't know you were as lonely as I am.
Laura meets his gaze before he turns away as though in shame and smiles slightly, shrugs as if to reply, well, now you know.
They are separate from the world, together in it; tomorrow is the full moon. Laura and Travis and the space between them, shooting distance.
They may make the most of it. Laura rises to a kneel, allowing the bed sheets to drop between them. She folds herself over Travis, but pushes her smirk into the side of his neck. "You don't think we'd pass for father and daughter?"
"Not with the way I look at you." Travis leans back in her arms, folding his hands over the cross of hers over his chest. His shuddering exhale meets her cool, still breath. It's like she recycles those parts of him that are scrapped from a shell and left behind. She makes him new again. Next in line, not thrown away but made something better.
"I could buy you a ring." He continues now, near dizzy on this new breath she's given him, this reminder of life. His lips pull against her neck. "Gold. Not silver, though I'm sure you wouldn't mind the irony."
She laughs, and she takes him to bed, and the laundry becomes another item on their endless list of things to do together. The passing time swallows them. They kill together in summer and winter and by spring, they will be married.