Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2023-07-26 11:13 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2023-07-26 11:13 pm
Entry tags:
Fanfiction: Burning (The Quarry, Travis/Laura)
Is this sex pollen? Did I write a sex pollen fic? I mean, it's fade-to-black - as sex pollen fics go, there's surprisingly little sex in here - and it's technically monsters rather than pollen, but I think that's basically what this is.
This is the third fic I've written in which Travis locks Laura in a cell after the events of the game. It's possible I have a problem.
Title: Burning
Fandom: The Quarry
Rating: 15
Pairing: Travis/Laura
Wordcount: 4,000
Summary: When the infection is hot in your veins, it's easy to make decisions you might regret.
Warnings: Non-explicit mutual dubcon.
Laura wakes in the forest as the sun rises, covered in a whole lot of blood and very little in the way of clothing. She stumbles back toward the camp, trying to piece together what happened.
The last thing she remembers is falling through the floor. She didn’t manage to kill Chris, and neither did Ryan, she’s guessing; it doesn’t seem like she turned back until the night was over.
Which means Max is still a werewolf, and now so is she.
Fuck.
There’s still next month. Wait, goddammit, there isn’t next month. She’s going to be a wolf, and so is Max, so who exactly is going to take a shotgun to Chris Hackett when the moon is full? They’ll just have to—
There’s someone on the path ahead of her. She freezes.
It’s Travis. It takes her a moment to place him under all the blood; it looks like she’s just interrupted him in the middle of a murder spree.
And he’s not wearing his sheriff’s uniform. In fact, he’s not really wearing much of anything.
“Who turned you?” Travis demands.
“Max,” she says, too confused to think it through. “What—”
She puts it together, a second too late. Travis is covered in blood and pretty much nude, just like her; he was a werewolf last night. And he wants to know her bloodline, which means...
Holy shit. “Did I bite you?”
“We don’t have time to talk,” Travis says, glancing around. “We need to get out of here before anyone sees us.”
He says it with such authority, and she’s so disoriented after spending the night as a monster, that she doesn’t question the we. She follows him to his car, and they’re pulling out onto the road before she comes to her senses.
“Wait,” she says, “wait, Max.” She grabs Travis’s shoulder. “Turn around. Max is on the island.”
He doesn’t react at first, and she’s just about keyed up enough to throw herself straight out of the moving vehicle. But she just raises her voice – “Turn around!” – and he slows the car to a stop.
He leans across her, and in an instant he’s handcuffed her to the door handle.
“You are absolutely fucking kidding me,” Laura says.
-
“Hey, is there a reason I’m back here?” Laura kicks the bars of her cell, pointedly. “You know I can’t exactly kill your brother now, right?”
“You’re a werewolf,” Travis says. “You’re a danger to people.”
“So are you!” Laura snaps. “And we’re dangerous one night a month! You didn’t have any problem letting your brother run a fucking summer camp.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Maybe not,” Laura says, “but wouldn’t it be great if you did?”
He walks away. She lets out a long, loud groan and throws herself down onto the floor of the cell.
-
It’s hard to say if round two of imprisonment is better or worse than round one. The first time around, she had Max in the next cell; he was some kind of company, at least.
But this time she’s somehow on better terms with Travis, in spite of all the complications there. He’s a more reasonable captor, while still, unfortunately, being a captor. She can request showers, specific meals, entertainment; he won’t let her have a phone or, for some reason, newspapers, but she’s got books to read.
He’s still not the greatest conversationalist, but they’re having actual conversations now. About werewolves, about that night at the camp. About their respective families, although it’s hard not to have complicated feelings about that; he’s kept her from her family for months, and she murdered his niece and his mother.
Maybe it’s fitting that she’s behind bars. But, if she’d actually been convicted, at least her sentence would have an end date.
-
“Laura?” Travis asks.
Fuck. She was hoping he wouldn’t see her like this.
She swipes at her eyes, furious with herself. She’s shot people dead; she should be beyond crying. She should be beyond feeling anything.
“Did something happen?” Travis asks.
“Some asshole threw me in prison,” Laura says. “Can you believe it?”
Travis’s concern hardens into something else. “Fine. I’ll leave.”
“Don’t,” Laura says, startling herself. She’s been feeling very alone today, very aware of the empty cell next to her. Travis may be the person who put her here, but he’s still a person, and she needs someone around right now.
Travis frowns at her.
She’s been careful not to mention this thought, not wanting to prepare Travis for a potential breakout attempt. But this is the first place Max would look, right? It’s been three weeks; if he hasn’t come here yet, he might not be coming.
“I thought Max would come for me,” she says. “I don’t know if he’s dead or... I don’t know, maybe he can’t look at me after what I did.”
She didn’t turn back until dawn, right? So Max probably made it through that night, at least. But then why isn’t he here?
It’s hard to meet Travis’s eyes when she’s been crying. It feels like exposing her throat to him.
“It’s not your fault,” Travis says, after a moment. “Max thinks you’re dead.”
Her eyes snap to his at that. What?
“There was a lot of your blood in that house,” he says. “And I’m a cop; I can falsify records. As far as the world is concerned, you died at the quarry.”
Laura needs a few seconds to find her voice. “You didn’t think you could maybe fucking mention this to me?”
“I’m telling you now,” Travis says.
So that’s it. Nobody’s looking for her; nobody even knows there’s anyone to look for. Maybe they’ve already held her funeral.
She’s probably not the only person whose death he faked. The camp was a real mess, and it seems like the investigation would have gotten a lot of Hacketts into trouble. That might be the real reason he’s keeping her locked up.
She runs her fingers through her hair, recalculating all her mental images of what Max might have been doing since they were separated. He’s probably pretty messed up over her. “Maybe it’s better that he’s not coming here. I don’t know if I’m that confident he could plan a jailbreak.”
“If Max came here, I’d kill him,” Travis says. It doesn’t sound angry; it just sounds like a fact. “I’d lock him in a cell, I’d set up a trap to fill him with silver at the full moon, and I wouldn’t be a goddamn werewolf any more.”
Laura stares at him. She’d just assumed his werewolf hunting was over, the same way she had to give up on killing Chris after she turned; you can’t hunt if you’re out of your mind during hunting season. She hadn’t thought about traps: tripwires or timers, some way of pulling the trigger without having to hold the gun.
Maybe that’s the real reason he’s still keeping her in a cell. Keeping the werewolf that bit him close, so, when she turns at the full moon, he can kill her and end his curse. If she’d had the chance, she wonders if she’d have done the same thing to Chris.
It feels like a mistake to say it, but she needs an answer. “You could kill me.”
He opens his mouth, closes it again. There’s a long pause before he finally speaks. “I don’t want to.”
She wasn’t expecting to hear it put so straightforwardly, and she needs a moment to gather herself, to assess what it means. He’s not planning to kill her, and that’s good news, obviously. But what’s the alternative they’re facing? Everyone thinks she’s dead; he could keep her caged forever if he wanted.
“If you care about me,” she says, quietly, “you can’t just keep me here.”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I’m trying to figure things out.”
Okay. Okay, that’s something. That’s a lot more than she was expecting, actually; she thought he’d just leave, avoid the conversation.
She shrugs. “Let me know if I can help. It’s not like I have anything else to do.”
She thinks she might see the twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth, but he turns away too quickly for her to be sure.
-
“The moon was looking pretty full last night,” Laura says. Trying to make it sound casual, although she has no idea why; it’s not like Travis won’t know it’s a statement loaded with silver.
She stayed up most of the night, watching the moon, trying to work out if it was actually full. Telling herself that maybe the curse wasn’t going to come for her again.
“It’s tonight,” Travis says, shattering that particular hope. “I’ll be shutting myself in the other cell.”
“Wow,” Laura says. “It’s almost like it’s okay to only be shut up one night a month.”
He doesn’t say anything to that.
“How are you planning to lock yourself in?” Laura asks.
“Just gonna leave the key under the bed,” Travis says. “Werewolf wouldn’t have the intelligence to find or use it.”
Makes sense, she guesses. From her vague half-memories of being the wolf, she wasn’t really interested in much more than tearing things open with her teeth. The idea of trying to operate a lock seems kind of hilarious.
-
It’s strange to picture Travis in the next cell, where Max used to be. Makes her think of the time she held Travis at gunpoint, locked him up and escaped.
She wonders if he’ll ever give her the chance again. Maybe she’ll get out of here, walk back into the lives of everyone who thought she was dead, like a ghost.
God, there’s going to be so much paperwork. Max might have moved on by the time she gets out. Even if he hasn’t found someone else, she can’t expect him to come straight back to her, after the time he’s spent processing the fact that she’s gone. It’s hard to crawl out of your grave.
It’s getting darker outside. Weird to just be lying here on the bed, waiting to lose her mind. At least, back at the camp, she could distract herself with the search for Chris.
She’s getting close to turning; she can feel it. The heightened senses; she can smell Travis in the next cell, she can tell that he’s like her. The intense hunger: the urge to taste blood, to tear into red meat, to get railed until she can’t think.
Laura stares at the ceiling, biting her tongue. Willing herself not to say anything. It’s a struggle, and with every second that passes it’s harder to remember why she’s making the effort.
“Werewolves don’t attack each other, right?” she calls out at last. “Like, the blood protects you?”
“We’re in separate cells,” Travis points out. “We don’t need to worry about that.”
Laura shifts her shoulderblades against the mattress. She can’t get comfortable, somehow. “Yeah, but I’m saying we could be in the same cell.”
There’s a brief pause. “Why?”
Fuck, he asks too many questions. She doesn’t want to have to think about this; she just wants him to get in here.
“I’m just...” She closes her eyes, tips her head back. Runs her fingers across her throat. It feels like her skin is burning. “I’m just so hungry.” Hungry might not be the right word. “Are you getting the same thing?”
No answer.
“Travis?”
“Separate cells are safer,” Travis says. His voice sounds a little strained. “And I can’t leave your key in there.”
“Yeah, but you’ll only have to clean the blood out of one of them if we’re in the same one,” Laura says. Now that she mentions it— “Oh, shit, I’ll have to take my clothes off before I turn, right?” She reaches for her fly, then pauses. “Any chance you could help me out?”
“Stop fucking with me,” Travis says. It’s wavering, half command and half plea.
It feels like she’s hovering over her own shoulder, begging to know what the fuck she’s doing. It’s easy enough to tune herself out. “I’m going to get myself off either way. Are you coming over here, or are you just going to lie there and listen like some kind of pervert?”
“I’m not a – I’m not rising to this.”
“Rising to this,” Laura says, with a slightly giddy laugh. “Okay.” She slips a hand inside her pants, and there’s a hitch in her voice when she speaks again. “Tick tock. I don’t know if you’ll still be into me after I burst out of my skin.”
“It’s the full moon, Laura.” It sounds like he’s saying it through gritted teeth. “We need to keep our heads on, we don’t have any self-control—”
“Then why aren’t you fucking me?”
It explodes out of her, leaving silence in its wake.
Maybe a minute goes by before she hears the click of a key in a lock.
She sits up sharply, looking at the cell door. Waiting for him to come into view.
He’s not looking at her when he does; he stays focused on the door as he unlocks it, as if he thinks he can pretend he’s not there for her. He’s stripped off already to keep the blood off his clothes, and she watches him with undisguised hunger.
He’s barely got the door closed before she’s kissing him, dragging him deeper into the cell. He kisses back just as urgently, one hand in her hair and one on her back as he pulls her closer.
His palm feels like it’s burning through her T-shirt, and she breaks the kiss just long enough to drag it over her head; she needs these clothes gone, she needs his hands on her bare skin.
The key is still in the cell door, and she doesn’t care. She could get out of here, right now, and she doesn’t care.
Some part of her is aware that she’s going to regret this before long, and she doesn’t care about that either. Right now, all that matters is that Travis doesn’t stop touching her.
-
In the morning, Laura wakes alone in her cell, lying on the floor. She clambers to her feet, holding onto the bars; her legs feel a little unsteady.
Her transformation has really done a number on this place. It looks like the worst of the blood is on the bedsheets, inconveniently enough; they’re saturated, crimson. She must have turned while—
Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.
She’s turned into a werewolf once before; she remembers the weird, intense desire before it happened, the struggle to hold on to any kind of self-control. She remembers biting into Ryan’s arm, his blood warm in her mouth. It was hard not to tear him apart with her bare human hands, or to pin him down and—
Fuck, she should have seen this coming.
She’s shaking a little; she wraps her arms around the bars to keep herself upright.
Travis isn’t here; he must have woken before her and left. Taking the key on his way out, presumably. She’s missed her chance to escape.
Right now, that’s not really her biggest concern.
-
When Travis eventually returns, Laura is sitting on the floor. She’d probably feel weird about being on the bed even if it weren’t soaked with blood.
She’d thought she might try to push last night out of her mind. But she’s been running through it in her head, over and over again, like repeatedly touching a stove in the hope that eventually she’ll get used to the burn of it.
It hasn’t lost its power yet. Thinking about it is kind of turning her on, if she’s honest, but she has very complicated feelings about the thought of trying to get off right now, so she guesses she’s just going to have to live with being turned on.
If she’d been able to take that attitude last night, it would have saved them both a lot of trouble.
She braces herself and looks up at Travis. He’s not looking at her. It’s hard to tell if he’s looking at the bed or just staring past her into space.
“Stand up,” he says.
She stands.
He hands her a pill and a paper cup of water. She stares at the pill in her hand for a long moment, slowly processing what it must be, and then she swears and swallows it down.
Fuck, she hadn’t thought about pregnancy. She hadn’t been thinking about anything.
He escorts her to the showers without a word. For a moment, she hesitates in the doorway, some part of her wondering if he’s planning to come in with her. Maybe last night was just a gateway; maybe the wolves broke a barrier that can’t be rebuilt. Maybe this isn’t over.
But he takes up his post outside the room, just like every time before. Laura swallows and heads for the showers.
Of course he’s not coming in here. He didn’t want last night any more than she did. She’s the one who told him to come over to her cell; she did this to both of them.
She stays in there for a long time after the water stops running red. Travis doesn’t ask her to hurry up once.
-
Travis is equally silent when bringing her back to the cells. He opens the second cell for her, the one Max used to be in. It’s a relief; between the blood and the uncomfortable memories, she wasn’t looking forward to going back to the place where they turned.
Travis doesn’t leave after locking her in. He just stands on the other side of the door at first, paces back and forth for a while, goes back to standing. But he’s not looking in at her.
At last he sits down on the floor, his back against the bars of the cell.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a moment.
It’s the least guarded she’s ever seen him around her, if you don’t count the time he buried himself in her with the key in the door. She could get her arms through the bars and put her hands around his neck.
She sits on her side instead, her back against his. Against the bars, really, with the knowledge that he’s there behind her.
“Yeah,” she says. “Me too.”
There’s a long, long silence. It stretches into minutes. Laura quickly gives up on trying to think of something to say.
Eventually, there’s a rustling as Travis stands up; Laura shifts around to watch him. He walks to the cell door, and he turns the key in the lock, and then he walks away.
Laura stays where she is, sitting, staring.
He turned the key in the lock.
She stands up at last. Puts her palm to the bars of the door.
The door swings open a little, just from that gentle touch.
She retreats into the cell. What the fuck is going on?
-
Travis comes by the cell a couple of hours later, visibly tenses up. “You’re still here.”
She’s still here. Honestly, she wouldn’t mind an explanation for that herself.
“You don’t get to just open that door and wait for your problems to go away,” she says. “We need to talk about this.”
Travis closes his eyes for a moment. “We weren’t in our right minds.”
“And that means we get to just pretend it didn’t happen?”
His eyes are open again, but he’s not really looking at her; he’s focusing on some point just past her shoulder. “Ideally.”
“Why did you open the door?” she asks. “I’m still a werewolf.”
“You’re a responsible young lady,” Travis says. “I think I can trust you to take the appropriate measures at the full moon.”
She’s not falling for that. “Why is that any more true now than it was a month ago?”
He goes silent for a long time.
“I’m trying to protect you,” he says at last.
“From...?” Other than silver, there’s not a lot that can harm her these days. Unless he means... “From you?”
“You’re not safe around me,” Travis says. “I think that became clear last night.”
She doesn’t like framing it like that, like she’s the only victim here, like she didn’t do anything to Travis. “We’re not safe around each other.”
“Why did you stay?” he asks, bluntly. “Do you want me to keep you in a cell?”
She shakes her hair back, raises her chin defiantly. “We’ve been through kind of a lot. I just think we’ve earned a better goodbye than me walk-of-shaming out of here and never seeing you again.”
For a few seconds, they just look at each other. It feels like Laura can see straight through his clothes, her memories of last night overlaid onto this moment. She wonders if he’s looking at her the same way.
“Fine,” he says at last. “I’ll drive you home.”
-
The drive is as quiet and awkward as Laura was expecting. She watches Travis’s hands on the steering wheel and tries not to picture them on her thigh.
“Any chance you could come in and explain the whole faking-my-death thing to my parents?” she asks.
Travis half-glances at her. He doesn’t answer.
Laura rests her head against the window. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought.”
It’s getting dark. She looks up at the moon; it still looks too full for comfort.
“So when are we going to meet up again?” she asks.
He drives for a moment longer, and then he pulls over.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
It’s a quiet, dark road in the middle of nowhere; there’s nobody else around. Nobody would see if she kissed him, or if she cut his throat, and she’s not really sure which she wants to do right now.
“I’m just asking about seeing you again,” Laura says.
“I assumed you were going to get me arrested,” Travis says. “You’d need to visit me in prison. I don’t see why you would.”
It’s strange to realise it, but turning him in actually hadn’t crossed her mind. Stranger to realise he’s letting her go when he thinks it’ll be the end of his own freedom. “I don’t know. Seeing you behind bars would be pretty satisfying.” She pauses. “Assuming I don’t get you arrested, when are we going to meet up again?”
He’s looking at her like she’s suddenly started speaking Portuguese. “Why would you want to?”
“I hate to tell you this,” Laura says, “but I think we might kind of be friends. I don’t really want my last memory of you to be sex that neither of us really wanted.”
There’s a brief silence.
“I’m not sure we have any good memories of each other,” Travis says at last.
Laura snorts. “You’re not wrong. But we’re not gonna fix that if we don’t see each other again, right?”
“So what are you suggesting?” Travis asks.
She shrugs. “Just that we meet up. Uh, maybe at the new moon.”
Travis actually laughs, quietly, just a little. “Sounds about right.”
“And we have a meal or something,” Laura says. “Something normal.”
It occurs to her only as she’s saying it that this is a date. She’s suggesting a date.
Maybe that’s what she needs. Everything that’s happened has kind of fucked her in the head; it’s hard to say how she feels about Travis. Maybe she just needs to meet him on neutral ground, when nobody’s being held prisoner or about to turn into a monster, and figure it out.
He looks at her for a long, heavy moment. She wonders if he’s thinking the same thing she is. Maybe he just wants her out of his life; it’s not like either of them have great associations with each other.
“Okay,” he says at last.
This is the third fic I've written in which Travis locks Laura in a cell after the events of the game. It's possible I have a problem.
Title: Burning
Fandom: The Quarry
Rating: 15
Pairing: Travis/Laura
Wordcount: 4,000
Summary: When the infection is hot in your veins, it's easy to make decisions you might regret.
Warnings: Non-explicit mutual dubcon.
Laura wakes in the forest as the sun rises, covered in a whole lot of blood and very little in the way of clothing. She stumbles back toward the camp, trying to piece together what happened.
The last thing she remembers is falling through the floor. She didn’t manage to kill Chris, and neither did Ryan, she’s guessing; it doesn’t seem like she turned back until the night was over.
Which means Max is still a werewolf, and now so is she.
Fuck.
There’s still next month. Wait, goddammit, there isn’t next month. She’s going to be a wolf, and so is Max, so who exactly is going to take a shotgun to Chris Hackett when the moon is full? They’ll just have to—
There’s someone on the path ahead of her. She freezes.
It’s Travis. It takes her a moment to place him under all the blood; it looks like she’s just interrupted him in the middle of a murder spree.
And he’s not wearing his sheriff’s uniform. In fact, he’s not really wearing much of anything.
“Who turned you?” Travis demands.
“Max,” she says, too confused to think it through. “What—”
She puts it together, a second too late. Travis is covered in blood and pretty much nude, just like her; he was a werewolf last night. And he wants to know her bloodline, which means...
Holy shit. “Did I bite you?”
“We don’t have time to talk,” Travis says, glancing around. “We need to get out of here before anyone sees us.”
He says it with such authority, and she’s so disoriented after spending the night as a monster, that she doesn’t question the we. She follows him to his car, and they’re pulling out onto the road before she comes to her senses.
“Wait,” she says, “wait, Max.” She grabs Travis’s shoulder. “Turn around. Max is on the island.”
He doesn’t react at first, and she’s just about keyed up enough to throw herself straight out of the moving vehicle. But she just raises her voice – “Turn around!” – and he slows the car to a stop.
He leans across her, and in an instant he’s handcuffed her to the door handle.
“You are absolutely fucking kidding me,” Laura says.
“Hey, is there a reason I’m back here?” Laura kicks the bars of her cell, pointedly. “You know I can’t exactly kill your brother now, right?”
“You’re a werewolf,” Travis says. “You’re a danger to people.”
“So are you!” Laura snaps. “And we’re dangerous one night a month! You didn’t have any problem letting your brother run a fucking summer camp.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Maybe not,” Laura says, “but wouldn’t it be great if you did?”
He walks away. She lets out a long, loud groan and throws herself down onto the floor of the cell.
It’s hard to say if round two of imprisonment is better or worse than round one. The first time around, she had Max in the next cell; he was some kind of company, at least.
But this time she’s somehow on better terms with Travis, in spite of all the complications there. He’s a more reasonable captor, while still, unfortunately, being a captor. She can request showers, specific meals, entertainment; he won’t let her have a phone or, for some reason, newspapers, but she’s got books to read.
He’s still not the greatest conversationalist, but they’re having actual conversations now. About werewolves, about that night at the camp. About their respective families, although it’s hard not to have complicated feelings about that; he’s kept her from her family for months, and she murdered his niece and his mother.
Maybe it’s fitting that she’s behind bars. But, if she’d actually been convicted, at least her sentence would have an end date.
“Laura?” Travis asks.
Fuck. She was hoping he wouldn’t see her like this.
She swipes at her eyes, furious with herself. She’s shot people dead; she should be beyond crying. She should be beyond feeling anything.
“Did something happen?” Travis asks.
“Some asshole threw me in prison,” Laura says. “Can you believe it?”
Travis’s concern hardens into something else. “Fine. I’ll leave.”
“Don’t,” Laura says, startling herself. She’s been feeling very alone today, very aware of the empty cell next to her. Travis may be the person who put her here, but he’s still a person, and she needs someone around right now.
Travis frowns at her.
She’s been careful not to mention this thought, not wanting to prepare Travis for a potential breakout attempt. But this is the first place Max would look, right? It’s been three weeks; if he hasn’t come here yet, he might not be coming.
“I thought Max would come for me,” she says. “I don’t know if he’s dead or... I don’t know, maybe he can’t look at me after what I did.”
She didn’t turn back until dawn, right? So Max probably made it through that night, at least. But then why isn’t he here?
It’s hard to meet Travis’s eyes when she’s been crying. It feels like exposing her throat to him.
“It’s not your fault,” Travis says, after a moment. “Max thinks you’re dead.”
Her eyes snap to his at that. What?
“There was a lot of your blood in that house,” he says. “And I’m a cop; I can falsify records. As far as the world is concerned, you died at the quarry.”
Laura needs a few seconds to find her voice. “You didn’t think you could maybe fucking mention this to me?”
“I’m telling you now,” Travis says.
So that’s it. Nobody’s looking for her; nobody even knows there’s anyone to look for. Maybe they’ve already held her funeral.
She’s probably not the only person whose death he faked. The camp was a real mess, and it seems like the investigation would have gotten a lot of Hacketts into trouble. That might be the real reason he’s keeping her locked up.
She runs her fingers through her hair, recalculating all her mental images of what Max might have been doing since they were separated. He’s probably pretty messed up over her. “Maybe it’s better that he’s not coming here. I don’t know if I’m that confident he could plan a jailbreak.”
“If Max came here, I’d kill him,” Travis says. It doesn’t sound angry; it just sounds like a fact. “I’d lock him in a cell, I’d set up a trap to fill him with silver at the full moon, and I wouldn’t be a goddamn werewolf any more.”
Laura stares at him. She’d just assumed his werewolf hunting was over, the same way she had to give up on killing Chris after she turned; you can’t hunt if you’re out of your mind during hunting season. She hadn’t thought about traps: tripwires or timers, some way of pulling the trigger without having to hold the gun.
Maybe that’s the real reason he’s still keeping her in a cell. Keeping the werewolf that bit him close, so, when she turns at the full moon, he can kill her and end his curse. If she’d had the chance, she wonders if she’d have done the same thing to Chris.
It feels like a mistake to say it, but she needs an answer. “You could kill me.”
He opens his mouth, closes it again. There’s a long pause before he finally speaks. “I don’t want to.”
She wasn’t expecting to hear it put so straightforwardly, and she needs a moment to gather herself, to assess what it means. He’s not planning to kill her, and that’s good news, obviously. But what’s the alternative they’re facing? Everyone thinks she’s dead; he could keep her caged forever if he wanted.
“If you care about me,” she says, quietly, “you can’t just keep me here.”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I’m trying to figure things out.”
Okay. Okay, that’s something. That’s a lot more than she was expecting, actually; she thought he’d just leave, avoid the conversation.
She shrugs. “Let me know if I can help. It’s not like I have anything else to do.”
She thinks she might see the twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth, but he turns away too quickly for her to be sure.
“The moon was looking pretty full last night,” Laura says. Trying to make it sound casual, although she has no idea why; it’s not like Travis won’t know it’s a statement loaded with silver.
She stayed up most of the night, watching the moon, trying to work out if it was actually full. Telling herself that maybe the curse wasn’t going to come for her again.
“It’s tonight,” Travis says, shattering that particular hope. “I’ll be shutting myself in the other cell.”
“Wow,” Laura says. “It’s almost like it’s okay to only be shut up one night a month.”
He doesn’t say anything to that.
“How are you planning to lock yourself in?” Laura asks.
“Just gonna leave the key under the bed,” Travis says. “Werewolf wouldn’t have the intelligence to find or use it.”
Makes sense, she guesses. From her vague half-memories of being the wolf, she wasn’t really interested in much more than tearing things open with her teeth. The idea of trying to operate a lock seems kind of hilarious.
It’s strange to picture Travis in the next cell, where Max used to be. Makes her think of the time she held Travis at gunpoint, locked him up and escaped.
She wonders if he’ll ever give her the chance again. Maybe she’ll get out of here, walk back into the lives of everyone who thought she was dead, like a ghost.
God, there’s going to be so much paperwork. Max might have moved on by the time she gets out. Even if he hasn’t found someone else, she can’t expect him to come straight back to her, after the time he’s spent processing the fact that she’s gone. It’s hard to crawl out of your grave.
It’s getting darker outside. Weird to just be lying here on the bed, waiting to lose her mind. At least, back at the camp, she could distract herself with the search for Chris.
She’s getting close to turning; she can feel it. The heightened senses; she can smell Travis in the next cell, she can tell that he’s like her. The intense hunger: the urge to taste blood, to tear into red meat, to get railed until she can’t think.
Laura stares at the ceiling, biting her tongue. Willing herself not to say anything. It’s a struggle, and with every second that passes it’s harder to remember why she’s making the effort.
“Werewolves don’t attack each other, right?” she calls out at last. “Like, the blood protects you?”
“We’re in separate cells,” Travis points out. “We don’t need to worry about that.”
Laura shifts her shoulderblades against the mattress. She can’t get comfortable, somehow. “Yeah, but I’m saying we could be in the same cell.”
There’s a brief pause. “Why?”
Fuck, he asks too many questions. She doesn’t want to have to think about this; she just wants him to get in here.
“I’m just...” She closes her eyes, tips her head back. Runs her fingers across her throat. It feels like her skin is burning. “I’m just so hungry.” Hungry might not be the right word. “Are you getting the same thing?”
No answer.
“Travis?”
“Separate cells are safer,” Travis says. His voice sounds a little strained. “And I can’t leave your key in there.”
“Yeah, but you’ll only have to clean the blood out of one of them if we’re in the same one,” Laura says. Now that she mentions it— “Oh, shit, I’ll have to take my clothes off before I turn, right?” She reaches for her fly, then pauses. “Any chance you could help me out?”
“Stop fucking with me,” Travis says. It’s wavering, half command and half plea.
It feels like she’s hovering over her own shoulder, begging to know what the fuck she’s doing. It’s easy enough to tune herself out. “I’m going to get myself off either way. Are you coming over here, or are you just going to lie there and listen like some kind of pervert?”
“I’m not a – I’m not rising to this.”
“Rising to this,” Laura says, with a slightly giddy laugh. “Okay.” She slips a hand inside her pants, and there’s a hitch in her voice when she speaks again. “Tick tock. I don’t know if you’ll still be into me after I burst out of my skin.”
“It’s the full moon, Laura.” It sounds like he’s saying it through gritted teeth. “We need to keep our heads on, we don’t have any self-control—”
“Then why aren’t you fucking me?”
It explodes out of her, leaving silence in its wake.
Maybe a minute goes by before she hears the click of a key in a lock.
She sits up sharply, looking at the cell door. Waiting for him to come into view.
He’s not looking at her when he does; he stays focused on the door as he unlocks it, as if he thinks he can pretend he’s not there for her. He’s stripped off already to keep the blood off his clothes, and she watches him with undisguised hunger.
He’s barely got the door closed before she’s kissing him, dragging him deeper into the cell. He kisses back just as urgently, one hand in her hair and one on her back as he pulls her closer.
His palm feels like it’s burning through her T-shirt, and she breaks the kiss just long enough to drag it over her head; she needs these clothes gone, she needs his hands on her bare skin.
The key is still in the cell door, and she doesn’t care. She could get out of here, right now, and she doesn’t care.
Some part of her is aware that she’s going to regret this before long, and she doesn’t care about that either. Right now, all that matters is that Travis doesn’t stop touching her.
In the morning, Laura wakes alone in her cell, lying on the floor. She clambers to her feet, holding onto the bars; her legs feel a little unsteady.
Her transformation has really done a number on this place. It looks like the worst of the blood is on the bedsheets, inconveniently enough; they’re saturated, crimson. She must have turned while—
Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.
She’s turned into a werewolf once before; she remembers the weird, intense desire before it happened, the struggle to hold on to any kind of self-control. She remembers biting into Ryan’s arm, his blood warm in her mouth. It was hard not to tear him apart with her bare human hands, or to pin him down and—
Fuck, she should have seen this coming.
She’s shaking a little; she wraps her arms around the bars to keep herself upright.
Travis isn’t here; he must have woken before her and left. Taking the key on his way out, presumably. She’s missed her chance to escape.
Right now, that’s not really her biggest concern.
When Travis eventually returns, Laura is sitting on the floor. She’d probably feel weird about being on the bed even if it weren’t soaked with blood.
She’d thought she might try to push last night out of her mind. But she’s been running through it in her head, over and over again, like repeatedly touching a stove in the hope that eventually she’ll get used to the burn of it.
It hasn’t lost its power yet. Thinking about it is kind of turning her on, if she’s honest, but she has very complicated feelings about the thought of trying to get off right now, so she guesses she’s just going to have to live with being turned on.
If she’d been able to take that attitude last night, it would have saved them both a lot of trouble.
She braces herself and looks up at Travis. He’s not looking at her. It’s hard to tell if he’s looking at the bed or just staring past her into space.
“Stand up,” he says.
She stands.
He hands her a pill and a paper cup of water. She stares at the pill in her hand for a long moment, slowly processing what it must be, and then she swears and swallows it down.
Fuck, she hadn’t thought about pregnancy. She hadn’t been thinking about anything.
He escorts her to the showers without a word. For a moment, she hesitates in the doorway, some part of her wondering if he’s planning to come in with her. Maybe last night was just a gateway; maybe the wolves broke a barrier that can’t be rebuilt. Maybe this isn’t over.
But he takes up his post outside the room, just like every time before. Laura swallows and heads for the showers.
Of course he’s not coming in here. He didn’t want last night any more than she did. She’s the one who told him to come over to her cell; she did this to both of them.
She stays in there for a long time after the water stops running red. Travis doesn’t ask her to hurry up once.
Travis is equally silent when bringing her back to the cells. He opens the second cell for her, the one Max used to be in. It’s a relief; between the blood and the uncomfortable memories, she wasn’t looking forward to going back to the place where they turned.
Travis doesn’t leave after locking her in. He just stands on the other side of the door at first, paces back and forth for a while, goes back to standing. But he’s not looking in at her.
At last he sits down on the floor, his back against the bars of the cell.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a moment.
It’s the least guarded she’s ever seen him around her, if you don’t count the time he buried himself in her with the key in the door. She could get her arms through the bars and put her hands around his neck.
She sits on her side instead, her back against his. Against the bars, really, with the knowledge that he’s there behind her.
“Yeah,” she says. “Me too.”
There’s a long, long silence. It stretches into minutes. Laura quickly gives up on trying to think of something to say.
Eventually, there’s a rustling as Travis stands up; Laura shifts around to watch him. He walks to the cell door, and he turns the key in the lock, and then he walks away.
Laura stays where she is, sitting, staring.
He turned the key in the lock.
She stands up at last. Puts her palm to the bars of the door.
The door swings open a little, just from that gentle touch.
She retreats into the cell. What the fuck is going on?
Travis comes by the cell a couple of hours later, visibly tenses up. “You’re still here.”
She’s still here. Honestly, she wouldn’t mind an explanation for that herself.
“You don’t get to just open that door and wait for your problems to go away,” she says. “We need to talk about this.”
Travis closes his eyes for a moment. “We weren’t in our right minds.”
“And that means we get to just pretend it didn’t happen?”
His eyes are open again, but he’s not really looking at her; he’s focusing on some point just past her shoulder. “Ideally.”
“Why did you open the door?” she asks. “I’m still a werewolf.”
“You’re a responsible young lady,” Travis says. “I think I can trust you to take the appropriate measures at the full moon.”
She’s not falling for that. “Why is that any more true now than it was a month ago?”
He goes silent for a long time.
“I’m trying to protect you,” he says at last.
“From...?” Other than silver, there’s not a lot that can harm her these days. Unless he means... “From you?”
“You’re not safe around me,” Travis says. “I think that became clear last night.”
She doesn’t like framing it like that, like she’s the only victim here, like she didn’t do anything to Travis. “We’re not safe around each other.”
“Why did you stay?” he asks, bluntly. “Do you want me to keep you in a cell?”
She shakes her hair back, raises her chin defiantly. “We’ve been through kind of a lot. I just think we’ve earned a better goodbye than me walk-of-shaming out of here and never seeing you again.”
For a few seconds, they just look at each other. It feels like Laura can see straight through his clothes, her memories of last night overlaid onto this moment. She wonders if he’s looking at her the same way.
“Fine,” he says at last. “I’ll drive you home.”
The drive is as quiet and awkward as Laura was expecting. She watches Travis’s hands on the steering wheel and tries not to picture them on her thigh.
“Any chance you could come in and explain the whole faking-my-death thing to my parents?” she asks.
Travis half-glances at her. He doesn’t answer.
Laura rests her head against the window. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought.”
It’s getting dark. She looks up at the moon; it still looks too full for comfort.
“So when are we going to meet up again?” she asks.
He drives for a moment longer, and then he pulls over.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
It’s a quiet, dark road in the middle of nowhere; there’s nobody else around. Nobody would see if she kissed him, or if she cut his throat, and she’s not really sure which she wants to do right now.
“I’m just asking about seeing you again,” Laura says.
“I assumed you were going to get me arrested,” Travis says. “You’d need to visit me in prison. I don’t see why you would.”
It’s strange to realise it, but turning him in actually hadn’t crossed her mind. Stranger to realise he’s letting her go when he thinks it’ll be the end of his own freedom. “I don’t know. Seeing you behind bars would be pretty satisfying.” She pauses. “Assuming I don’t get you arrested, when are we going to meet up again?”
He’s looking at her like she’s suddenly started speaking Portuguese. “Why would you want to?”
“I hate to tell you this,” Laura says, “but I think we might kind of be friends. I don’t really want my last memory of you to be sex that neither of us really wanted.”
There’s a brief silence.
“I’m not sure we have any good memories of each other,” Travis says at last.
Laura snorts. “You’re not wrong. But we’re not gonna fix that if we don’t see each other again, right?”
“So what are you suggesting?” Travis asks.
She shrugs. “Just that we meet up. Uh, maybe at the new moon.”
Travis actually laughs, quietly, just a little. “Sounds about right.”
“And we have a meal or something,” Laura says. “Something normal.”
It occurs to her only as she’s saying it that this is a date. She’s suggesting a date.
Maybe that’s what she needs. Everything that’s happened has kind of fucked her in the head; it’s hard to say how she feels about Travis. Maybe she just needs to meet him on neutral ground, when nobody’s being held prisoner or about to turn into a monster, and figure it out.
He looks at her for a long, heavy moment. She wonders if he’s thinking the same thing she is. Maybe he just wants her out of his life; it’s not like either of them have great associations with each other.
“Okay,” he says at last.