Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The first thing Leah comprehends after the horrific, gruesome realization that motherfucking Gretchen Klein has stranded them on yet another deserted island is the screaming.

Guttural, excruciating, like a throat filled with blood - vibrating her bones at a frequency that turns them liquid, sinking against the constraints of her skin - the fifth horseman of the apocalypse, her brain is the battlefield, and she’s back on the plane as it crashes, she’s pronouncing Jeanette dead, she’s clutching The Nature of Her and dialing his number; she’s back in that ocean, back on that island, back where the people she loves are slowly slipping away–

“Leah.”

The second thing Leah comprehends is Fatin.

She’s now taking up the entirety of Leah’s view, blocking the mocking ocean and miles of sinister trees. Blurry and out of focus; rust-colored hoodie and braided black hair, and skin that looks soft despite its hours baking in the sun. Just like they’re doing now, and like they’ll do again, do forever, peeling off one layer of a time until there’s nothing even left.

“I’ve got her,” she distantly hears Fatin say. “Dorothy–”

“Yeah,” Dot answers quickly. A steady stampede of footfalls around her; a circus where chaos is the ringleader. “Yeah. Uh - fuck - I don’t know who you guys are, but - we should go back inside and figure it out.”

“What the fuck is going on?” one of the boys says. “What’s wrong with her?”

“What the fuck is that music?”

It’s Shelby who steps up to take charge. Fatin’s hands are still delicately stroking her cheeks; Leah realizes she’s sunk to the ground, lower, the core of the earth, and Fatin’s kneeling in front of her, the only thing stopping her from endless falling–

Shelby says, “She is the only one who knows what’s actually goin’ on around here. That’s why she’s–” She breaks off and hardens, steel in her jaw. “Let’s go inside, find a place we can all sit down and…get to know each other. She’ll explain when she can.”

They traipse back down the stairway, one by one. Leah doesn’t know how long it takes or if there’s any further argument, but suddenly she’s alone on the roof with Fatin, who’s murmuring softly in her ear; Leah’s now wrapped up in her arms, sobbing into her shoulder. “Shh,” she’s saying. Voice like ribbon, tying them together. “I’ve got you, okay? And you were right. You were right about everything. I’m sorry, Leah. I’m so sorry.”

You were right.

It’s that idea, more than anything else - like a lifeline, like the bags Gretchen had her operatives deliver to the beach, like an island full of resources that only needed her to discover them - that forges Leah a pathway into her own lungs, lets her breathe and taste the salt without gagging. She’s clutching the back of Fatin’s hoodie so hard she’s sure she’s choking her, but Fatin doesn’t complain or pull away, just keeps whispering. “It’s okay, baby. You’re not alone anymore. It’s okay.”

“I fucking had her,” Leah says. It’s all she can communicate: how close she was to saving them all. “I had her, Fatin–”

“I believe you,” Fatin whispers. “I believe you.”

Minutes, hours, days pass; Leah relives each and every decision she made on that island and after - her theories and suspicions, fruitless searches and half-baked suicide attempts - until she’s fully in the face of their grisly reality, packing it away inside of her like a hand-drawn map of a long, long journey. Fatin’s touch continues to follow, fretting: wiping the tears from her cheeks, brushing her hair away from her face, a turbulent search for an answer to her pain.

“I was right,” Leah croaks. She has her pick of reactions - any of them would be justified, from a wine-dark anger to a bottomless black hole - but the relief of it is what sticks to her, the way oil dries and blood congeals. She was right, and now she’s finally being recognized for it. “I was right.”

“I know,” Fatin answers quietly. She doesn’t hesitate to meet Leah’s eyes. “Shelby and I found something on the island, right before we were”–she somehow creates the effect of air quotes around the word without removing her hands from Leah’s face–“rescued.”

“You found something?” Leah repeats. The adrenaline pulses in strange places, like underneath her tongue and the curves of her thumbs. “What?”

“Some kind of, like, electronic device. A transmitter or something,” she says, and then - adopting a pseudo-cockiness that Leah won’t appreciate until far later - she raises one eyebrow flirtatiously. “I had to scale like a fifty-foot tree. You would’ve been so fucking impressed…and maybe a little turned on.” Sighs; winces. “Fuck. Sorry. I know it’s not the time. Old habits.”

She gently trails her fingers from Leah’s cheeks to the backs of her hands, and Leah flips them over automatically, allowing the twine of Fatin’s fingers through hers like ivy.

This is what Fatin’s best at: gently guiding her towards the door of whatever room she’s inevitably lost herself in. She must know about the beehive swarming in Leah’s head, the violent pressure of the never-ending waves against the walls of her veins. White noise covers her eyes like a sheet; it’s not enough. “You didn’t tell me?”

“I was going to,” Fatin says, and despite Leah’s paranoia, she detects nothing but honesty in Fatin’s voice. “That night, I was gonna pull you away and explain, I promise. I was trying to figure out, like, what to actually say…and how to say it without triggering you. I–” she cuts herself off, but her jaw tightens a moment later, as if fighting with her own words and the importance of conveying them. “I was afraid of losing you again. I’m so sorry, Leah.”

Something glitters in front of her; Fatin’s gaze is a little too shiny, and she comes to the same conclusion, averting her eyes. She’s lightly squeezing Leah’s hands in a rhythm, like an instrument or a heartbeat or a sign from a god. The world tightens its focus. Leah says, “Okay,” and swallows. “Okay. That, that - that might explain why we were rescued.”

“Good,” Fatin says, watching her parted lips and the air flowing between them, substantially less ragged. “Think you’re ready to share that explanation with the class?”

Does Fatin know how many demons Leah’s fighting for her? How many wings she’s clipped and claws she’s cut? Does Fatin know how hard Leah is working to be here, present, grounded in the hell she’d always believed they were in?

Has Leah ever told her? Told Fatin that she needs her, in spite of everything - maybe even because of it?

“Don’t let go of me,” Leah whispers, and Fatin helps pull her to her feet.

–

Calling it complete chaos would be an understatement.

The boys, Leah learns with a lonely sort of satisfaction, had no idea the whole thing was faked. Never even crossed their minds. They’re fractured, too, in a way the girls aren’t, as if they’d formed their own small cliques rather than relying fully on each other; it’s strange to see the first set of Gretchen’s results up-close, see the family she’s built compared to the camaraderie the boys shattered.

She looks at each of the girls in turn and says, “I’m sorry,” a tragic preface to a story of unimaginable success that still wasn’t enough - and for the things she hasn’t told them until now.

She sits with Fatin’s hand in her lap and spills - hunched, overflowing, this is how you drink on a hot day, drain yourself dry to drown the rest - her suspicions on the first island: finding Jeanette’s second phone and her stocked-with-supplies backpack; how she was wrong about Shelby but right about Nora, finding her talking to a camera in the woods, getting trapped in a pit for what should’ve been an extraction; Faber and Young, how she faked a breakdown to steal Faber’s key card, how Young slipped her her phone, how she got in touch with Ian.

“Someone knows,” she says, because she’s learned how important hope is to survival. “Someone knows what's happening to us, and…it has to be enough for now.”

(She still has her phone, but she’s saving that bit of information for the people she knows she can trust. It’s not like she has a signal anymore.)

Fatin adds bits and pieces of context where she can, mostly of the time leading up to their rescue; she explains finding the number on Nora’s jacket, and the same one hidden within a drawing in her journal; the tracing of LEAH IS SUSPI from one of the ripped-out pages; how she found Shelby, and Shelby proved the existence of the pit, followed by recognizing a map in Nora’s journal that lead them right to the device.

If Leah’s hurting Fatin’s fingers with the force of her grip, she doesn’t let it show, only continues running her thumb over the back of Leah’s knuckles. She knows it’s hard to hear - after weeks of telling Leah she was crazy, after she’d watched Leah lose her mind in the ocean and break away to catch it before it could slip underneath the waves - and she’s trying to atone with unrelenting loyalty. Leah stares down at their hands as Fatin speaks, and somehow, it gives her the strength to continue.

Her sneak-outs to the security room, littered with footage of the boys. Breaking into Raf’s, getting whatever information she could under the guise of working for Gretchen. And Nora, still alive. She saves that information for last - because she loves Rachel and fears what it will do to her - but this time, Rachel has no choice but to listen, though it’s clear she’s suppressing her desire to swim. Away, away, away - Leah understands that particular want all too well.

But in spite of it all, being right has given her solid ground to stand on, the type that can support the weight of kindness in devastating situations. And so she says, “That’s what Gretchen does, Rachel. She manipulates people. Nora’s alive, somewhere, and whatever she did - I just - I think she must’ve had a reason already, and Gretchen gave her a few more.”

She doesn’t relieve the blame entirely, and her own anger has certainly not faded, but she’s never tried to be cruel - she’s only ever wanted the truth. Rachel hides her face, an arrow meeting its target, and Leah doesn’t stare long enough to see if she cries.

The boys also didn’t know there were moles. Seth is one, they decide immediately, but clam up when asked about why he’s not with them and what he’d done; all they’ll say is that he’s probably hiding out somewhere, playing as Gretchen’s little pawn, convincing himself he’s a victim getting revenge. The music, they agree, was definitely his way of making his presence known. But there’s only one of him, and historically he’s picked his battles at a decimate - lost all of them, and gotten the shit kicked out of him in the process, so they’re pretty sure he won’t be showing his face anytime soon.

Though they’re at a loss as to the second - and that makes them all dangerous and untrustworthy.

Someone needs to unearth their graves, examine their crime scenes, pinpoint exactly who said and did what, who went where at which time, who spent nights lying awake and choking on guilt versus terror–

Nails digging into the base of her skull, dragging her down, down, down–

And hitting a wall, like a stone cover over a well. She can visualize the bottom, but now she knows exactly who put her there, and how desperately Gretchen wants to do it again.

Leah’s her star, her shining example of a new golden age. She’s spent months studying every single one of Leah’s actions, watching her interviews, following her movements like an artist studying a ballet dancer - she knows Leah’s unhealthy ability to fixate on a problem until she cracks it, knows her drive and determination and perseverance, knows her capacity for destruction when the time calls for it. And that’s what the bitch is angling for: Leah, fully in her element, uncovering the truth one layer of skin at a time.

(Round two! Leah hears, the bell of a boxing match.)

She won’t give her the satisfaction. Not now, not yet; it’s time for someone else to do some fucking work.

“Not to be rude,” she says flatly to the now-bickering group of boys, “but this really doesn’t seem like our problem. We’re going to take inventory. Let us know when you figure it out.”

And she gets to her feet, pulling Fatin with her, who follows with an expression settling on her face that looks a lot like pride.

–

They decide to explore a little. The bunker is huge, and even though Leah’s the one who’s seen the most of it, her knowledge amounts to almost nothing. The offices are swept clean, documents all shredded, television screens and computer equipment destroyed. But there’s one thing they know for certain: they’d been able to get almost any type of food they’d asked for, so they’re not surprised when they open a set of double-doors into a medium-sized cafeteria with a fully-stocked kitchen behind it that looks twice as big.

“Fuck. Yes,” Dot nearly growls, staring around like a child during a sugar rush at a theme park, and Leah can’t help but mirror the sentiment.

Because there’s also a gigantic pantry and walk-in freezer, not to mention a pretty lush wet bar. Fatin cradles a bottle of Patrón against her chest, and when Leah’s biting her lip against her laughter, she says, “What? Jesus, if we’re going to be stuck on another goddamn island, the least we can do is have actual fucking parties. And this is top-shelf shit, baby!”

It doesn’t take that long for order to develop. Rachel and Martha must get an assignment while Leah’s distracted by the vast array of cereal, because by the time she tunes back into the conversation, they’re both gone and Dot’s already scrummaged up a notepad for inventory. She begins diligently sorting through the canned goods, occasionally giving both Toni and Shelby directions, who seem to be working together in a quiet sort of understanding. Toni’s animosity has long since faded, especially after hearing the extent of Leah’s experiences.

(What's the point of a grudge? They now know they were never going to be saved; not by a random pilot, not by a passing boat, not by anyone but each other.)

Fatin’s organizing the boxed section of the pantry somewhere to Leah’s left when the door opens, and two of the boys cautiously step in - Raf, who immediately brightens at the sight of Leah, causing Fatin to straighten her spine - and Ivan, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“Hey,” Raf says. “Can we help?”

“Depends,” Dot shoots back. “Are either of you working for Gretchen?”

Ivan says, “Yeah, because I totally wanted to spend my summer with a bunch of fucking straight guys.” His sarcasm is too thick to be anything other than genuine, and Toni shrugs at Dot.

“I get that,” she says. “He’s probably good. What about the other one?”

“Raf’s fine,” Leah dismisses casually. Fatin tenses slightly, apparently disgruntled. “The only one I feel somewhat certain about, actually, considering the amount of time Gretchen had me spend trying to crack him.”

“And did you?” Fatin asks him anyway, sweet with a threat. “Crack?”

He glances between them uncertainly, aware of a trap he’s unintentionally walked into. “Uh–”

His wide, innocent, tortured eyes find hers - too innocent for the situation they’re in, a cage waiting to trap an animal - and suddenly, Leah’s back in his room, Gretchen’s voice in her ear, cameras blinking down from the ceiling; yes, she thinks of saying, yes, he would’ve cracked, and maybe he would’ve done it again; it wasn’t even hard, and all she did was talk - surely Gretchen has blackmail on all of them at this point, secrets she isn’t afraid to use to control a terrified teenager or two–

“Dorothy, put the boys to work,” Fatin says suddenly, slipping her hand back into Leah’s like it lives there, losing the edge from her voice as she addresses the boys. “She’s our taskmaster. No better woman you want with you on a deserted island.”

“Whatever,” Dot says. The pad of paper she’s writing on seems to involve a grid system. “Can’t hurt to have more hands on deck. But I will know if you steal anything, got it?”

They mumble their agreement, and then Leah finds herself being pulled away, through the cafeteria doors and down the hall, into a bedroom where the door shuts firmly behind her - and then, again, Fatin, her hands cupping Leah’s cheeks, holding her eyes like an anchor. This is their island, in the sense of refuge and solitude; nobody else can touch Leah here. “Leah,” she murmurs, “where’d you go, pretty girl?”

She’s in a room, but it isn’t with Raf, and Gretchen is long gone - to Leah’s surprise, so are all the cameras, their broken bits scattered across the floor and wires dangling loose. A type of exorcism has taken place here.

(Fatin’s order, Leah'll find out later; she’d sent Martha and Rachel - Martha with her lethal aim, and Rachel with an obvious need for distraction - armed with various weighted objects to destroy any and all technology that might be observing them. Dot finds a ladder in one of the storerooms but doesn’t tell them; it'd been awhile since they'd had this much fun.)

“Breathe with me,” Fatin says. “It’s okay. You’re with me. Just me.”

“Fuck,” Leah exhales unsteadily, forehead sinking into the crook of Fatin’s neck. Lifeboats on waves. “Fuck. This is real, right?”

“It’s real, baby,” Fatin says, short nails scratching gently at the back of her head. “The bad parts are real, but the good ones are, too.”

“I started thinking about - Raf. I trusted him, but you’re right - he would’ve cracked, if I hadn’t stopped him. And I just - I started thinking - what if he did?” The explanation’s rough and thready, but nobody knows the winding roads and sudden twists of her brain like Fatin does; it’s easy to pick up, put it back together, return it to Leah in a way that feels logical and sensible and true. “What if he did crack, and it just wasn’t to me? You don’t - Gretchen, she’s–”

“You, more than any of us, know what that vile bitch is capable of,” Fatin says, and Leah lifts her head, hanging onto every word of reassurance. “So you’re probably right; she could’ve gotten to any of them, and we don’t know who we can trust. But you can trust me, okay?” She waits for Leah to absorb the words, body feeling porous and hollow. “This is real. You aren’t crazy, and you never were, and I’m so sorry I ever made you believe otherwise. And I swear on my fucking life that I’ve got your back from here on out. No matter what. Like, if you tell me the Earth is flat, I’ll find a way to prove it.”

“I’m so tired,” Leah whispers, and she’s equal parts frustrated and ashamed to feel the prick of hot tears. She presses her palms against her eyes, trying in vain to keep herself from fraying at the edges. “Fatin, I’m so fucking tired.”

“Then here’s what we’re gonna do,” Fatin says, carefully peeling Leah’s hands away from her face and linking their fingers together, as if trying to make a habit of it; take my hand instead, she’s saying, hold me instead of hurting. “I’m gonna run the shower for you. I’ll wait right here. And then we’re gonna lie down and take a nap until someone comes to feed us.”

It gets a watery smile out of Leah. “Okay.”

Fatin turns on the water for her, tests the temperature, presses a kiss to her cheek. “I’ll be right out here,” she says. “I promise.”

And she is, even going so far as to lay out a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. Fatin averts her eyes as Leah dresses, despite the fact that she’s not thinking about the implications of it at all; she’s just going through the motions, holding onto her only semblance of peace in yet another frighteningly new world.

–

(She barely remembers falling into bed with Fatin, but it’s hours later when she wakes up, held tightly in Fatin’s arms, ear pressed just above her steady heartbeat.

She thinks it’s the safest she’s ever felt in her entire life, and simultaneously, finds herself on the very edge of a cliff, just about to fall.)

–

When they’re summoned to the cafeteria for dinner, Dot’s ready with a schedule and a hot bowl of chili for all of them, complete with a couple loaves of bread she’d sliced and toasted. The boys, apparently, have decided the only way to proceed is to live and die by the buddy system, meaning the remaining mole won’t have an easy way to get in touch with their fucking kidnappers. It’s a tense truce, but it’s a truce nonetheless.

In the interest of fairness, Dot’s schedule pairs a team of girls with a team of boys for certain activities - the entirety of the bunker needs to be canvassed, she says, and as she’s not expecting a miracle stored somewhere feet away from them, the island probably needs to be explored, too. There’s kitchen duty for breakfast and dinner; their bodies aren’t likely to handle three full meals well, and they’d rather not waste resources. Laundry duty; not a single one of them complain about it, considering how long they went without clean clothes. Henry’s a former boy scout - he’s like, the Dot of their group, Martha jokes shyly - and he talks a lot about electricity and satellite signals, and his potential ability to repair any damaged technology they may find. Aside, he rectifies, from the shit they destroyed purposefully, like the cameras and microphones.

Slowly, Leah relaxes; Fatin keeps occasionally dropping her hand to Leah’s thigh, as if a physical tether to the earth, like a satellite hooked by a lasso. And by the time she’s out of her head, it’s just enough to notice the way Shelby focuses on her shirt - Fatin’s shirt - before her gaze darts away with a short smile.

Leah doesn’t have the capacity to examine the strange feeling that creeps up her chest at the recognition, and so she doesn’t.

–

The girls all have a meeting, piling together in Dot’s room; Rachel and Shelby drag their mattresses in, spreading across the floor, intentions clear. After weeks separated and imprisoned behind thick concrete walls and little sunlight - if any at all - they’re never leaving each other alone again.

(This sentiment will extend far beyond their time in the bunker. Years and years, bound safely together as they heal.)

Leah sits on the edge of Dot’s bed, trying to keep her head attached to her body; Fatin’s behind her, leaning against the wall, the bewildering epitome of casual and cool. She says, “Since Leah was right from the very beginning, I think we should start this little pow-wow by saying ‘I’m sorry, Leah.’”

“Cultural appropriation,” Toni calls out.

“It’s fine,” Martha answers, half-smiling with a roll of her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Leah,” Dot starts, mostly to move the conversation along.

A chorus of other I’m sorry’s follow, like an echo of ringing church bells. Leah looks at them - her friends, her family - and says, “No. I’m sorry. I couldn’t - I couldn’t save us. I was so close. I was so close.”

“Don’t you dare fucking apologize,” Fatin says sharply. Leah swears she feels the words pierce the back of her neck. “You - you did everything you could, and you did it completely alone. Do not apologize. I’m fucking serious.”

“You should hate us,” Shelby says. She’s staring at the floor, knees pulled halfway to her chest.

Maybe Leah should. Maybe she should be furious with them, should channel her anger and hang over them like the wave of a tsunami, full of bitterness and distrust and blame. But she doesn’t - she’s not even close.

So she tells them the truth. “I love you. All of you. That’s why I did what I did.”

Dot rests a hand on her knee. Fatin scoots closer behind her, rests her head against Leah’s shoulder blade. And then everyone’s touching her in some form or another, tangling together, Shelby’s fingers around her ankle, Martha nearly toppling her over in an embrace, Toni’s hand in hers, Rachel’s arm around her calf. It’s the strangest group hug she’s ever been a part of, but also the most sincere.

“I love you, too,” Dot says. “All of you. So much. And if you ever repeat this, I’ll kill you, but - you guys are like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Yeah,” Toni says. “Me, too.”

Leah thinks of doom. Stories where love is present and real and tangible but doesn’t have the power to change anything. The ending is fixed and the tragedy is inevitable. She’s never related to anything less, never seen the futility of such a tale until this moment.

Because the love between them changed everything and will always matter, no matter how their stories end.

“Okay,” Fatin says. She’s back against the wall, sleeves of her hoodie wrapped around her hands, trying to pretend like she wasn’t just wiping subtly at the corners of her eyes. “Enough of this mushy shit–” (“You started it,” Dot points out) “–and back to business. I think we should clear the air. If you’re keeping any secrets - though I’m not sure how that’s possible anymore - now’s the time to spill. Speak now or forever hold your peace, or whatever.”

Silence sifts like sand. Shelby says, “The night y’all sang Home - I was on fire duty, and I saw a boat in the distance, but I hesitated - just for a split second - because I…I don’t have a life to return to anymore. Not one where anyone wants me. The real me.” She drags her knees closer to her chest, rests her chin between them. “It was enough time for the boat to vanish.”

And Leah says, “The first night I found Jenette’s phone, it didn’t die right away. I called the only number I had memorized. He answered, and…once he realized it was me, he didn’t let me - I couldn’t speak. He told me it was fucked up to call him, and I needed to stop contacting him, and then it died.” She remembers it so clearly - the smell of salt and death, the sound of a man who only wanted her when he wouldn’t be caught. These things take time to reconcile. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d–”

“Stop.” Fatin’s voice comes from behind her again, this time low and deadly. “Stop apologizing. We all fucked up out there, okay? And from what you’ve told us, it…it wouldn’t have fucking mattered. They’d have blackmailed him to keep him quiet, paid him off, whatever.”

“Same with the boat,” Toni says softly, and Shelby meets her eyes - briefly, and then away. Still, it’s progress.

“And that’s probably why that pilot who saw us never turned it in,” Dot says, bitterness lacing every word. “We’ve been pawns in her fucking game this entire time. She kidnapped, what - fourteen teenagers and staged a plane crash on at least two separate islands, while also working the operation from this one? That’s fucking money.”

“Fuck,” Rachel says. Punches her fist against her mattress. “Fuck. I don’t know how I - I can’t believe I didn’t know. Nora - and she’s still fucking–”

“You can be happy that she’s alive,” Martha says. “Whatever role she played, I think it’s clear she didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t make excuses for her,” Rachel rebukes dully. “She - she lied to me, and just let us suffer–”

“Gretchen has a lot of power,” Leah interrupts. Hands tucked under her thighs. She’s afraid of where they’ll go if they’re loose - in search of Fatin’s, probably. “Rachel, she owns at least three islands. She sank two private jets. She has blackmail on probably every single one of us, thanks to all our fucking testimonies, and whatever research she did on us previously. You can’t think of anything Gretchen could use against Nora to manipulate her? Can’t think of a single thing she could say to make this all seem…like the right thing to do?”

Rachel doesn’t speak. Leah wonders if she does know, or if she’s realizing she never really knew Nora at all to begin with, the lengths Nora would go to protect her.

“Anybody else?” Fatin says. “Anything at all you’d like to get off your chests? Dark family secrets? Freakiest kinks?”

“I have something else,” Shelby says, “but it’s too embarrassing to say out loud. Does anyone have a notebook?”

Leah flicks to her quickly, assessing her expression. Her tone is shy, but her face opposes it; the pieces easily come together in Leah’s conspiracy-minded hands: Shelby thinks they’re still being watched, and whatever she’s about to share she doesn’t want overheard.

Dot tosses her a pencil and the inventory notebook, and she scrawls, in that same, loopy handwriting that she passed to Leah reading YOU WERE RIGHT–

I’M THE NEW CONFEDERATE

I’M PLAYING HER GAME

–

(Dot promises to burn the page after. They have a thousand questions, but none they can communicate then and there without suspicion. Trust her, Fatin tells them quietly, and they do.)

–

Time passes in snaking turns and vertical drops, a windmill constantly changing course at the whim of a breeze or a clock with its hands on backwards - minutes are days and hours and seconds, and all of them last forever - but she lives in Fatin’s room, finds solace in her bed; it’s the only place she can escape the nightmares, the deadly whispers of whatever kind of psychosis she developed on the first island. Whenever she’s lost, she presses her nose into the crook of Fatin’s neck and breathes, wraps herself up in Fatin’s arms and finds her way home.

She can’t stop her mind from wandering, as much as she can stop herself from acting on it. She can’t help analyzing every move the boys make when she’s in the same room as them, assigned to the same tasks; can’t stop dissecting the way they talk to each other, cataloging the tensions and bonds. She spends her time methodically sorting through every hurriedly-cleaned office, reading scraps of paper as if a shredder is simply another box to keep a puzzle in. Gretchen claws at her back like a sentient shadow, daring her to look back, give in.

But Fatin’s always there. Someone had discovered their confiscated luggage the day previously - apparently the bunker extends in tunnels that cover nearly the whole island, according to - someone - she can’t remember, her head’s cracked on the concrete, drying out in the sun - what was she - where was–

“You know,” Fatin starts conversationally, “I meant it when I said you aren’t alone anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Leah tries to apologize, sitting on the edge of the bed and white-knuckling the blankets. She’s back in that pit, lungs gravelly, dirt pouring out of her mouth. “I’m still such a fucking wreck–”

“Oh, like being stranded on two separate deserted islands to survive some bitch’s idea of an experimental escape room fucked you up a little?” Fatin retorts dryly, painting a picture in a matte, flat finish that Leah can visualize. “We’re all fucked up from this forever, Leah. My future therapist is gonna be getting her money’s worth, that’s for damn sure.” She waits for Leah’s lips to curl at the corners, unspooling one of the threads that has her so tightly bound. “And this is as much for me as it is for you. I haven’t slept this well since - shit, ever. Don’t ruin this for me, okay?”

And Leah fully smiles against her will, tugging her bottom lip into her mouth. “Okay,” she agrees, following Fatin’s instructions and stretching out, hand falling into her lap, playing with the hem of her blue shirt. Yes, they’re sharing clothes - it’d seemed ridiculous not to, when their lives are now so intertwined Leah often wakes up unsure of whose limbs are whose.

Leah says, “I get scared. Like I’m missing something. Like someone’s shining a light in my eyes and it’s all I can see, even though I know there’s something in the periphery.”

“I know,” Fatin says, and gently runs her fingers through Leah’s hair. “But you’ve done enough, Leah. It’s our turn.”

She watches Fatin’s mouth a little too intensely; it’s one of the few ways she can focus on what’s coming out of it. “What’s that mean?”

It’s like Fatin crashes, praying to a god in a storm. Hunched over Leah as if in protection, I won’t let it take you, nose to nose, forehead to forehead, word to mouth: “I finally got the story from Shelby - she’s been trying to figure out safe spaces here, where we won’t be overheard. Gretchen tried to blackmail her into working for her. Used her relationship and breakup with Toni, and how it’d affect her family if they found out - fucked-up shit about how she might not have a home to return to if she didn’t.”

Leah swallows her breath. If it were anyone but Fatin conveying this information, she would’ve been ripe for consumption, some too-sweet fruit meant to tempt demons. But she can’t spiral, not when Fatin’s so close and dancing her fingertips against Leah’s cheekbones, not when she’s an atom away from knowing what Fatin tastes like, not when her senses are so invaded by Fatin that they’re near-useless–

–Which, she realizes, is probably the point. “Gretchen tried?” Leah repeats, and wonders what this looks like to anyone watching them, though she knows the cameras have long since been destroyed. Like Fatin’s kissing her, maybe, long and drawn-out like worship.

(It’s not the first time she thinks about it; it’s not even the second or the third or the fourth. Fatin’s far too flirtatious and beautiful for Leah to ignore, and her lips have become an intrusive thought, something she’d indulged in when the rest of it became too much. Bigger, better, different - she thinks Fatin counts as all of those.)

Fatin half-smirks, triumphant. “I guess it’s a perk of you being her favorite. She doesn’t realize how much the rest of us have changed - as if Shelby’s going back to her bible-humping, conversion-camping family after this, anyway. She’s taken over for you. She’s, and I quote, ‘fucking incredible at escape rooms.’” Her breath knocks at Leah’s lips again. “She only has access to one-way communication through some kind of radio frequency.”

(In the split second before Fatin straightens up, Leah almost does it - almost tilts her jaw and finds Fatin’s lips with her own, alchemizes the air between them into something golden, weaves her fingers through Fatin’s hair and tugs her closer - bigger, better, different - but she blinks and sees herself as if from far away, all the rubble and ruin, and nobody deserves that, least of all Fatin.

Has Leah told her yet?)

“Why?” Leah asks blankly.

“You’ve done enough, honey,” Fatin says, so soft and tender it pierces through her like a bullet - when all you’re used to is the threat of needles and knives and sedatives, gentleness can feel a lot like violence, laying in wait. “You’ve done enough.”

The ceiling turns to static, the mouth of a television. Dirt under her nails as she grasps at the walls of the pit. The weight of the ocean settling overhead like a blanket. Ben Folds and the plane crash and Fatin’s voice, calling for her.

“I have to tell you something,” Leah blurts out, before the darkness drags her away.

“What?”

She says it bluntly, without pretense or sentimentality. She states it like a fact, as if she has sources to cite, dictionary definitions and encyclopedic knowledge of the topic. She says it like it’s her right to (and maybe it is - after everything, maybe it is).

“I need you.”

Barely a pause in the movement of Fatin’s fingers, tracing carefully along her hairline. The color is draining from her irises, all that blue belongs in the sea, whirlpools and riptides dragging her like a ghost to the edge of her bed - or it would be, if Fatin weren’t there in front of her, dark brown eyes vibrant and skin flushed, eyebrows pinched together in concentration. So real she’s impossible to dismiss, trying to open Leah piece-by-piece and read the pages inside of her.

“Okay,” Fatin replies simply, like it’s nothing, like it’s everything, like it isn’t such a terrible fate to be the one person Leah needs. “Is that all?”

Leah shifts herself up onto her elbows, trying to convey the urgency, the seriousness of the situation. Doesn’t Fatin understand? Understand what she means when she says need, all the hooks and bruises of the word, all the existential terror that comes with needing?

“No, I–” Stops. Digs her teeth into her bottom lip, lets the throb of blood give her purchase. “I need you. Like - like sometimes, you’re the only reason I’m alive.”

She knows what she’s professing, what she’s admitting to. On the first island, they all needed each other to survive, no matter what lines were leapt over or which boundaries were torn down; Leah sometimes thinks of the seven of them in shapes and angles, intersecting and colliding until their beginnings and ends become indistinguishable. Brutalist and beautiful.

But this - this–

Fatin half-smiles, and Leah recognizes it as a mark of sincerity held back; Fatin’s still afraid to lower her cards away from her chest, lay them flat out on the table. But she settles her own hand over Leah’s and says, “Yeah, baby. I know.” Then, after a moment’s hesitation, an uncharacteristically nervous flutter of words: “It just so happens that…I…need you, too, so.”

This is a declaration and a promise and a weapon and an accident. All their bullshit social circles, their various traumas, their neighborhoods - if they’d never crashed, they’d have never found each other like this, two desperately lonely teenage girls killing themselves for love and approval, only realizing it was for all the wrong people when they met the right ones.

Leah hasn’t thought about Jeff in a week as anything other than a plot device, used effectively to fool Gretchen’s team.

But Leah is also tremendously, inarguably fucked in the head. She’s probably a chore on her best days and a black hole on her worst; what is left of her to love when the things she’s lost take up so much space, and the things she’s gained are just dead weight–

“Why?” Leah says, not sure what kind of answer she’s expecting. The shock of it all keeps her on the precipice, hovering instead of falling. “You don’t have to like, pity-need me or something–”

“I’m not - I don’t.” Fatin shakes her head, and then emphatically gestures out to the world she’s barely lived in. “I had all these fucking ideas, you know? About what I’d do when we got out of here. Move to LA, get an apartment, maybe defer a year. But if you’re staying in the Bay…it makes the whole thing seem a hell of a lot less exciting.”

“I don’t–”

“You’re the most important person in my life.” She isn’t just losing face; she’s offering it up as a sacrifice. “I wish I could tell you why. I wish I had an explanation. But I don’t. I just…feel it.” She rubs her fingers against her forehead, agitated. The sincerity of the action makes Leah smile fondly. “And I haven’t before.”

Nonsensical and serendipitous - she can’t even point to the thin red line that ties them together over and over again, only that when she pictures her life back in the Bay, Fatin’s there. In her room, at her school, in her clothes, blowing up her phone.

And, miraculously, Fatin seems to have a similar concept of her own future.

(Theirs. Leah won’t say that part out loud. Not yet.)

“I feel like I should apologize,” Leah says, but the absurdity of the situation is starting to creep up on her, and it battles the darkness back. She falls back against the pillow, arm thrown over her eyes because staring into Fatin’s feels dangerous. Something will happen if I do, she thinks, like she’s hiding from the Boogeyman under the covers. If I can’t see it, it can’t see me. “That’s shitty luck.”

“I don’t think so,” Fatin disagrees, and when Leah peaks up at her through the crook of her elbow, Fatin’s biting back the biggest grin she’s ever seen. It can see her. Oh, it can see her. “I’m feeling pretty fucking lucky.”

Warm blood spider-webs its way beneath Leah’s cheeks, and her lips crack as she smiles; I think my heart is missing, she wants to say now instead, or maybe, I think you should put your hands on it, I think you should pay me back in fingerprints, I think we should both get lucky–

“And she’s off,” Fatin says dramatically. “Stay with me. I’ll never let go, Jack, I’ll never let go–”

“I’m right here,” Leah says with a laugh, but she says it like I’m right here with you, and when Fatin slips underneath the covers and Leah curls against her chest, her pulse is reminiscent of the sound of drums. Not for a war, but an awakening.

–

(As she was saying–

Someone recovered their suitcases - phones all missing, of course, as that’d just be too easy - but they’re reunited with their clothes again, their shampoos and lotions, their games and books; tiny, unsettling bits of humanity from the people they were before any of this ever happened.

Fatin’s in a weird place. Her stuff had been used to hell and back, and though she’s delighted to be reunited with her makeup case, not much else of home remains. Or, rather - the notion of home is what remains, some far-off fantasy centered around the person she used to be and no longer wants any part of. Martha’s gotten her suitcase back, too, adding another layer to the levels of whatever operation they’re trapped in; clearly the ground team had been tasked with dredging the waters for their belongings, as well as sweeping the island for anything they’d left behind.

Evidence, Leah thinks. They collected all the evidence - or tried to.

So when she’s going through her own suitcase and pulling out shirts and pants and dresses and shorts, she glances at Fatin - who’s watching with a mild interest - and says, nerdily, “Help yourself. If you want to.”

“What would the Leah Rilke wardrobe do to my image?” Fatin asks, fingering one of her old The Smiths shirts she’d bought to impress a distant crush. “Indie music snob? Librarian on the brink?”

“Shut up,” Leah says, lazily rolling her eyes. She’s studied for this. “Like anything even exists that you’d look bad in.”

“Leah Rilke,” Fatin repeats her name, this time a little too gleefully. “Are you calling me hot?”

“Am I the first? You sound surprised.”

“You are, actually.”

“Shut up,” Leah says again. Her lips twitch without her consent, smile breaking out. Their entire student body practically worships Fatin and they both know it.

“Who cares about other people?” Fatin asks rhetorically. “It means more when you say it.”

Dry mouth, heart out of tune. “And why’s that?”

“Because you’re not saying it to fuck me,” Fatin says, and then smirks. “Not yet, anyway.”

Point being, Fatin shows up to dinner that night in Leah’s flannel shirt, and there’s a joke to be made here somewhere if the peel of Toni’s laughter is anything to go by.)

–

One thing Leah does notice is Fatin’s obvious dislike of Raf.

She doesn’t really give any of the boys the time of day, but she’s at least cordial when they’re working the same shifts; she’ll banter with Ivan, chat amicably with Scotty and Bo, but doesn’t really offer much to Kirin (which…is not really what Leah expected, if she’s being honest) and actively ignores Raf, who always chooses to talk to Leah anyway.

Truth be told, Leah doesn’t think about Raf all that much, but giving him any time at all leaves Fatin prickly and on-edge, like some defensive animal ready to strike if the opportunity presents itself. But as far as she’s aware, the only interactions Raf and Fatin have had boil down to that first day in the cafeteria, when Leah was still too fractured to keep the pieces of her mind in a functioning order; anything else has been in passing. She’s not sure where the animosity comes from - protectiveness? - only that it’s there, and seems to rear its head whenever Raf fights for Leah’s attention.

Which is exactly what’s happening now, as the four of them - Ivan’s always Raf’s buddy, apparently due to process of elimination; they tend to leave Henry to his own devices, as the most trustworthy of the bunch - are canvassing a storeroom full of medical supplies. Raf’s asking her random, meaningless questions about her life back home, and she answers dutifully while watching Fatin’s expression shift from blank to annoyed to openly irritated.

Raf asks, “So, do you have a boyfriend back home?” and Fatin stiffens, spine straightening as she turns to face them.

“I’d like to finish this as quickly as fucking possible,” she bites, “so maybe you can save your interrogation and marriage proposal for later.”

He blanches. “I’m - I’m not asking her to - I was just wondering–”

“Save it,” Fatin says shortly. “It’s not like it’s any of your business, anyway.”

She won’t meet Leah’s eyes. Ivan’s brow is furrowed as his gaze darts between them, but his mouth is curled slightly - like he’s hiding a realization in the corners of it. Leah doesn’t know what that might be; she wonders how much of history is apparent between them, if everything they’ve gone through together has left its physical marks, if she and Fatin orbit each other like gravity, if they speak in a language foreign to everyone else.

“Yeah, we should probably finish this,” Leah says, and Fatin’s tense posture fades, even as Raf continues babbling his apologies. Not like Leah cares - she’d have just said no and moved on - but something about him breaks spines from Fatin’s skin, turns her teeth into fangs.

So Leah catches her by the wrist as they’re heading back towards the west side of the bunker, tugging her to a stop, and says, “What’s your deal? With Raf?”

“Do you like him?” Fatin asks, loaded to the point of having its own countdown clock.

“No,” Leah replies truthfully. “I mean, he’s fine, but - I don’t really think about him.”

“Okay,” Fatin says. Her eyes are hard and unreadable, but Leah knows her, can infer meaning even when Fatin probably doesn’t want her to. And she seems to come to the same conclusion, because she continues before Leah gets the chance to drag it out of her. “He just…fucking annoys me, okay? He’s always all over you, like he has some sort of claim over you or something - like he’s marking his territory. It’s really fucking irritating. He doesn’t even know you.”

Leah pulls a face, disgusted by the simile. “Yeah, I guess,” she says. “But nobody knows me compared to you, anyway.”

Fatin blinks, torn between surprised and mollified at the sentiment. She purses her lips briefly, gaze darting between Leah’s eyes; somewhere along the way, their fingers had automatically intertwined, and now Leah’s rubbing the back of Fatin’s thumb with her own.

“I’m not jealous,” Fatin says jealously.

“You can be whatever you want,” Leah says. It won’t occur to her until much, much later that they’re having two different conversations; in her mind, telling Fatin she needed her was the same as saying I’m yours. The details aren’t important. “I’d be annoyed if, like, Kirin or someone was trying to take up all your time.”

“You would?” Fatin says. Peers at her curiously, like she wasn’t expecting it.

“Yeah,” Leah says. Doesn’t realize what she’s admitting to. “I like having your attention.”

Something shifts between them, right in that exact moment - the earth tilting off its axis; the moon pulling the tides a little farther out. Fatin’s eyebrows raise, knit together again; her fingers close around Leah’s, tight and warm. And Leah isn’t sure why she does it, but she glances at Fatin's lips, except she doesn’t have the excuse of speech or focus, because Fatin isn’t even talking.

“I like having yours, too,” Fatin finally confesses. “I guess I was jealous.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Leah teases. “It’s not like it’s a competition.”

Fatin rolls her eyes - a short, dramatic flick to the ceiling - but she’s smiling. “I might make it one.”

“Okay,” Leah says nonchalantly. “You win. I’m yours.”

She definitely doesn’t mean to say that out loud. But she’s historically bad at keeping her thoughts inside of her head when it comes to Fatin, so she can’t be too surprised by what manages to slip by.

Fatin stalls, hums softly in her throat. Her eyes flick to Leah’s lips and back again, and Leah knows - with complete certainty - that Fatin is going to kiss her. And she’s going to allow it.

(Allow is doing a lot of work here. More like enthusiastically reciprocate.)

But then Fatin murmurs, “You’d better watch what you say, or I might get the wrong idea.”

And Leah says, “Or the right one.”

It builds less like a wave and more like a tsunami, towering overhead, casting sunlight through murky water. The question isn’t if it will crash, but when and how - the where is now, Fatin’s hand in hers, standing too close together in a bunker on their second deserted island, breathing each other’s air like they’re about to run out of it–

“Leah! Fatin!” Ivan’s voice comes echoing loudly down the hallway. “Where the fuck did you go?!”

They don’t spring apart, but Leah definitely jumps a little, startled by the suddenness of his voice as if she’d forgotten he existed at all. He can’t see them - these hallways are fucked, narrow to wide with edges and angles that take up space seemingly at random - but he will if he comes looking, and so Leah tears her eyes away from Fatin and calls back, “We’re coming!”

The boys are waiting by the big set of double-doors that lead back to their wing of the bunker, and Ivan gives them both a strange once-over when they arrive. He says, “You know Dot’ll have our asses if we return without you. We have to like, fucking check in or whatever.”

“Yeah, yeah, Dorothy’s very efficient,” Fatin waves away. “She stole that system from me, though.”

They give Dot their inventory list, and she gives Fatin a cursory look in return - like she knows something’s up, but can’t quite put her finger on it - and any chance they had of talking about what almost occurred between them flies straight out the window, rises to the sun, disintegrates into dust.

–

(Fatin doesn’t run from her problems, so it’s not like she abandons Leah to the recesses and graveyards of her mind, where she’d previously spent her time methodically digging up the dead - she just doesn’t bring it up again. All throughout the afternoon, she smiles and bickers like she always has, as if a near-kiss and almost-confession aren’t even remotely enough to rattle her. It’s far from the truth, but it’s Fatin; if she’s good at anything, it’s compartmentalization. Leah tries not to let it get to her.

But their hands brush as they’re walking to the cafeteria for dinner, and Fatin hesitates before interlacing their fingers, and that alone is enough: that whatever she feels is far too big for thoughtlessness.)

–

Toni, Martha, Shelby and Rachel have decided to finally get drunk.

They’re feeling more secure, stable, able to let loose without glancing over their shoulders or under their beds or knocking down their walls. So when Shelby hands Fatin a shot, her eyebrows raised high, Fatin knocks it back immediately without a word. Leah follows her example, and it takes two, three, four, five shots until she feels the buzz, pleasantly invasive in her head.

And Fatin starts touching her. Takes another shot. Stops touching her. Starts again, like she can’t help herself. Leah’s not even sure how many she’s had, but she’s now drinking straight from her own bottle of tequila and giggling, resting her forehead against Leah’s shoulder.

Someone turns the lights off, strikes a flare instead and throws it into the center of the room, drenching the walls in red. Martha’s doing some kind of dance around it as Toni hollers; Dot seems to be checking the room for fire alarms, which is extremely like her.

Fatin leans into her ear and slurs, “Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?” Leah asks, fighting against a shiver.

“That you’re mine,” Fatin says. Her expression sits seriously against her face as she pulls away, meeting Leah’s eyes. “Did you mean it?”

This isn’t the time for a joke or an invitation to ruin the moment. Fatin’s asking for an answer because she wants it, even if she’s afraid of it - or maybe a combination thereof - afraid of how badly she wants it.

And Leah can’t lie to her, anyway, so she says, “Yeah. I meant it.”

Fatin nods. Her hands are wrapped around Leah’s upper arms, holding herself steady. She says, “Good.” And then: “You could ask me.”

“Ask you what?” Leah says, not quite following and more than a little drunk.

“If I’m...” Ending on parted lips, the final word silent but implication clear.

Oh. Her arm tightens around Fatin’s waist, and - she’s - she’s not actually sure when her arm got there, or why her other loops to join it - she can’t really think through the alcohol and closeness, can’t remember why it’s such a bad idea to acknowledge this thing between them, if it’s even a bad idea at all–

Their noses bump; Leah’s not exactly steady on her feet. So before she can do something stupid like kiss Fatin for the first time, right here in front of everybody, she steadies herself and swallows. “If you’re mine?”

“Yeah,” Fatin breathes out, eyelids fluttering, flare catching in her eyelashes, casting shadows against her cheek. Lips still parted, but barely, as if in a whisper. Leaning so far into Leah their bodies are flush, holding each other up.

(On a different day, months from now, Dot will call her a simp over FaceTime, and Fatin will have to strongly consider either killing herself or accepting that everyone else is too stupid to see how world-shatteringly incredible her girlfriend is; she’ll opt for the latter, and Dot’ll say, Yeah, dude, exactly.)

“Are you?” Leah asks, and somehow she’s caught Fatin’s chin in her hand and she’s running her thumb across Fatin’s bottom lip, entranced by its softness underneath her touch, and the pad of her thumb comes away damp. “Mine?”

“Fuck,” she says, nodding involuntarily. “Yeah. Yes, times like, a hundred.”

Her want is strong, but its grip on her spine is weak. Leah thinks of pressing her fingers harder against Fatin’s lips, deeper into her mouth, and almost flushes at the vision.

She shouldn’t say it, shouldn’t push, but god, they’re so fucking wasted, and Fatin’s wearing one of her white v-neck shirts and a pair of black sweats with her hair in a messy half-bun and she’s gorgeous, and Leah wants her in every way you can want another person, covets her like she should be the new dictionary definition of it, and–“Say it,” she murmurs. “Tell me.”

“I’m yours,” Fatin says, strangled, and Leah is ninety-nine percent certain that if they were alone right now, this would absolutely be considered some sort of foreplay, because they are totally about to kiss. “Fuck, Leah, if you don’t - I might–”

The door bursts open, most of the boys piling into the room after following the sound of commotion, and Leah can’t even begin to guess how that sentence was going to end.

–

(In the morning - or whenever the fuck she wakes up - she barely remembers the previous night, and so she assumes Fatin doesn’t, either, as she’d consumed probably double the amount of alcohol Leah’d had; her head is shoved in the crook of Leah’s neck, blocking out the little amount of light they have, and she’s grumbling about her hangover.

“Never drinking again,” is all Leah makes out before Fatin crashes once more, snoring against her skin.

Leah repeats it in her head until she closes her eyes and sees it like it’s tattooed there. You’re mine. Mine. Mine.

Some things are impossible to forget.)

–

Rachel is the first one to break the group stalemate and ask her about it.

It’s Fatin and Leah’s rest day, which means Fatin refuses to get out of bed and sends Leah to the cafeteria for ‘any kind of fruit, Jesus Christ; my whole fucking body needs a detox.’

Scotty and Bo are on breakfast duty, which means there are pancakes waiting for her in the kitchen, but the smell of them kind of makes her want to vomit. Bo says sympathetically, “Yeah. You guys went pretty hard last night.”

“And I have the hangover to prove it,” Leah says, squinting against the bright fluorescent light. “Can I just have two of the fruit cups?”

“Yeah,” Scotty says, and hands them to her along with two plastic forks. “Just mark it down. Don’t need Dottie coming at us for stealing.”

She hums in acknowledgement, too exhausted to respond with anything else. She thinks she’s going to make it - only half the boys are there, laughing at each other as they eat - but the girls are all definitely either passed out or at Dot’s door, begging her for the ibuprofen.

All of them except Rachel, who strolls in like she’s completely fine despite the night’s activities, and brightens at the sight of Leah.

“Perfect,” she says, throwing her good arm around Leah’s shoulders before she can get to the door. “Let’s talk, Leah.”

“About what?” Leah asks flatly, allowing Rachel to drag her to one of the many benches, far enough away that they won’t be overheard.

“You and Fatin,” Rachel says cheerfully. “I saw you last night. You were like, all over each other. So. Spill.”

Leah looks at her, blinking through her hungover haze. “I don’t know how to answer that,” she says finally.

“Have you hooked up?”

“No.” Not yet is more apt, but it’s one extra word, and her tongue is too tired to form it.

“Do you want to?”

Leah says, “Can I plead the fifth or whatever?”

Rachel grins victoriously. “I fucking knew it. You’re totally into her.”

“Fuck off,” Leah says, resting her forehead in her palm. She might actually die. Surviving a deserted island with only natural resources and their own skill, fine, but drinking like, half a gallon of tequila - she’s on the brink. “It’s…complicated.”

“Is it?” Rachel asks. “Or is it actually like, super simple, and you’re just overthinking it?”

“Dude, I don’t know.” Her crossed arms hit the table; she leans her chin against the backs of her wrist, entirely slouched over. She might be sweating a little, and she knows her pores are leaking alcohol - this is so not the time for this conversation. “We’ve been having, like…these moments, where something almost happens, and then it doesn’t. Or something else happens instead. I don’t know.”

“Like you get interrupted, or…?”

“Sometimes,” Leah sighs. “Mostly we’ve just…said shit to each other. Like, serious shit. I don’t - I don’t really want to tell you, no offense.”

“Hey, none taken.” Rachel holds up her hand. “I’m just checking in, because it looked kind of intense last night.”

Leah says, “It was, but not in a bad way.”

“Okay.” Rachel nods to herself. “Well, good luck. And your secret’s safe with me.”

Leah rolls her eyes, standing up from the table. “No it’s not,” she says. “If we’ve learned anything by now, it’s that nobody can keep a single fucking secret like this on a deserted island.”

Rachel’s still laughing as she leaves.

–

Now that they’re all settling in, becoming more comfortable with one another, some of the boys - Kirin (mostly towards Fatin) and Raf (entirely towards Leah) - start shooting their shots, a tactic Shelby seems to find exceedingly hilarious for reasons she still refuses to disclose. But sometimes Dot coughs suspiciously into her hands, as if she, too, sees the hilarity in the situation, though she’s making an active effort to hide it. And Rachel’s the worst of them all, staring blatantly at Leah with a shit-eating grin on her face.

Maybe it’s because of Fatin’s broadly-documented distaste for Raf - how she clenches her jaw when he leans over the table to talk to Leah, or when he tries to pull her aside during shifts they share, or every other pathetic way he attempts to grab her attention. Sometimes it feels like an exorcism, Fatin’s teeth barred and Raf holding up a cross, and Leah as the demon inhabiting them both.

Or maybe it’s because Fatin - notoriously sex-obsessed - has seemingly done a one-eighty in the past few weeks. She used to talk about going to parties, getting fucked, finally feeling like herself again; now, with the opportunity (several opportunities, Leah assumes, as she can’t imagine anyone ever turning Fatin down - and yes, she does fully get the irony of the statement) dangling deliciously in front of her, she isn’t that inclined to take it.

She doesn’t even talk about it anymore, Leah realizes vaguely, watching her rebuff Kirin with a smirk and a comment Leah only catches the tail-end of, something about not worth whatever sexually-transmitted jungle disease you’re probably carrying, and Scotty brings his fist to his mouth, making a sharp ooooh sound.

“Your loss,” Kirin says, and turns his attention to Leah, right beside her; he’s clearly trying to get under - someone’s skin, but Leah’s suddenly not sure whose. The boys have been drinking since two in the afternoon, as if jealous of the fun the girls had a few nights previously. “What about you, Leah? Maybe a good fuck’ll get your head on straight.”

The energy shifts considerably. Raf seems to want to object, though his mouth stays shut; Fatin goes stock-still, eyes now narrowed and jaw tense. Leah grips her fingers under the table, wordlessly telling her to relax, and she squeezes back but doesn’t - can’t - won’t do what’s asked.

So Leah says, “I’m mentally unstable, not fucking brain-dead.”

Most of them laugh, the boys included; Kirin scowls and it reeks of entitled frat bro on the verge of a temper tantrum, but he deflects a moment later.

“Whatever,” he says easily, as if he hadn’t really wanted to have sex with her. “Probably better not to fuck a crazy chick, anyway.”

Before Leah can even process what he’s said - and the apathy lacing it - Fatin’s on her feet and smashing the rest of Henry’s carefully prepared dinner (rice and curry) directly into his face; his mouth hangs open in shock, arms now up at his sides as bits of vegetables drip into his lap.

“What the fuck?!” he sputters. “What the fuck is wrong wi–”

“Don’t you ever,” Fatin hisses, leaning close with her palms flat on the table, “talk about her like that again. And if you do, I’ll cut that dick you’re so fucking obsessed with clean off. Got it?”

It’s been a long time since Leah’s felt silence like this, unwieldy and trembling under the weight of all the tension poured into it, the low-growling dynamics between them emerging as a roar in the face of a threat.

“I said,” Fatin repeats dangerously, “do you fucking get it?”

Nobody else even dares to speak, waiting for Kirin’s lesson to be learned. He stands up abruptly, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Whatever,” he spits out, and stomps out of the room, trailing bits of food behind him as he leaves. Josh glances uncomfortably between them all before stammering something about the buddy system and following.

When Leah interlaces her fingers with Fatin’s in plain view of everybody sitting at the table, not a single one of them comments on it.

–

(“He’s a fucking dickhead,” Fatin says after, when it’s just the two of them alone. “He wasn’t there. He doesn’t get to fucking talk about you that way. Nobody does.”

She’s wearing the cutest scowl for the most noble reason, and Leah thinks of mapping it with her lips, wondering what a feeling specifically for her would taste like.)

–

Fatin’s a good distraction, but she isn’t a cure. Leah’s problems still exist, no matter how they wane and waver; the black hole sits neatly at the bottom of her skull, waiting to drag her down. And she hears Kirin’s words on a loop - followed by Fatin’s response - and she wonders if this is one of the many things she’ll be for the rest of her life: a crazy girl with her head stuck in both heaven and hell simultaneously; tasting the clouds while braiding fire-singed hair. And isn’t that exhausting for Fatin, and doesn’t that make their mutual need unhealthy, when Fatin’s giving so much more than she’s taking - when all Leah can do is pull her closer, tug her in by the front of her shirt, wrap her arms around Fatin’s waist, ghost over the first breath of a kiss–

“You can take it back,” Leah says suddenly. Fatin looks up from the dresser, where she’d been methodically sorting through their (their) wardrobe, trying to figure out what to wear to bed, towel tucked firmly around her body.

“Take what back?”

“Everything,” Leah says, trying extremely hard to keep her eyes trained on Fatin’s face, rather than the water droplets rolling between her shoulder blades - rather than the hem of her towel - rather than her bare legs, damp and shining. “Needing me. Being…”

She trails vaguely off, waving in place of the word. They hadn’t talked about it since that night. Mine hangs like a planetary display, rotating around them.

Fatin’s brow furrows, bemused half-grin playing on her lips. “Why would I do that?” she asks, and she truly - seemingly - has no idea.

“I mean, I’m not exactly a walk in the fucking park,” Leah says bluntly. “More like a haunted hayride.”

“I love those,” Fatin says, slipping on a loose green Henley (one of the shirts provided to them, in various colors) and a pair of black sleep shorts (Leah’s), and Leah averts her gaze - there’s a tiny crack in the concrete she’s never seen before. It’s suddenly scintillating.

“That’s not the point,” Leah says. “Also, seriously?”

“Yeah,” Fatin says, pulling her hair out of her collar. “I like an adrenaline rush. What’s the point?”

“I don’t want you to feel like we made some kind of blood oath,” Leah says. Hand raising slowly to her eyebrow. “I feel - just, like, too much. All the time. I’m exhausting to myself - there’s no way I won’t be exhausting to you, too. I mean, I already was–”

And then Fatin’s hand covers her own, pulling it gently away from her face as she sits beside her on the bed, successfully interrupting her self-destructive spiral. “Okay, I really don’t have a lot of practice at…talking about feelings”–she says it charmingly, self-deprecatingly, but there’s a sadness underneath–“but I’m not, like…this bitch who has it all together or something. I got sent here, just like you, and it wasn’t because my parents loved me. This trip wasn’t a reward for good behavior.”

Leah looks over at her, gauging the legitimacy of the invitation to ask. “What’d you do?”

“I caught my dad cheating,” she admits quietly. “With, like, half the fucking Bay Area. And I was so - so fucking angry that he could do that to me, and to my mom, and our whole fucking family that I - I sent his nudes to like, his entire contact list, basically. And that’s how my mom found out.”

“Holy shit, Fatin,” Leah whispers. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Yeah, that’s not even the worst of it,” Fatin says, obviously bitter. “Guess who got punished for exposing him? Me. She punished me because her fucking manwhore of a husband couldn’t keep his dick dry for five fucking minutes. They sent me here, told me I’d be going to Muslim boarding school in the fall. Teach me real values or some stupid shit.” The laugh she releases rings hollowly and stabs at the slots of Leah’s ribcage. “So the point is - I’m not a walk in the fucking park, either. I don’t even know what I am, but I know it isn’t always easy to deal with.”

“You’d be like, a night in the desert,” Leah says, because she’s easily distracted and also a writer, and since she’s not currently writing about Fatin, it feels imperative to capture her aloud rather than lose the thread forever. It comes to her very clearly, Fatin with her hair up and standing under the Milky Way, heat settling her bones. “Late spring. Where there’s no light pollution or clouds and you can see every star, and it’s warm but not oppressive, like you’re carrying something weightless. One of those nights that you don’t really plan for, but becomes like…a paradigm shift. Like you walk away with your world wide open.”

Fatin stares at her with a look Leah’s never seen before - or has seen only flashes of under a certain slant of light, quickly and then gone, the shadow of leaves in the wind against a pale cream wall - and so she works to decipher it, lets her eyes linger on how one of Fatin’s eyebrows dips in lower than the other, how her lashes glitter, how hard her teeth are digging into the inside of her bottom lip.

When she exhales, it’s unsteady, like the action itself is brand new. And she says, throat bobbing: “Okay, now I get why you’re on the Writing Track.” Swallows. “I think that’s, like…the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me in my entire life.”

“Also, your dad’s a fucking asshole, and your mom is - like, I get she’s a victim too, but she’s also an asshole for siding with him,” Leah adds as an afterthought, only processing Fatin’s words after. She frowns. “That’s kind of sad.”

“No, it’s not.” Fatin rolls her eyes, prepared for the eventual response. “I wish I could have your brain. Just long enough to figure out what I could say in return that would like…convey how I feel in a way you’d understand it.”

Leah shifts to face her, tucking one foot under her thigh. “I don’t really know what you mean,” she says sheepishly, “which I think is the point? The new point. Not the one from the previous conversation.”

Fatin mirrors her position, adjusting their hands in her lap. “Sometimes I feel like…I can’t make words mean as much as yours. I’m not a writer, honey. I can’t just like spout poetry, and I don’t have The Selected Works of Virginia Woolf memorized. I can only tell you the truth and hope it’s good enough,” Fatin says. She’s staring at their joined hands, at Leah running her thumbnail against the knuckle of Fatin’s ring finger. “I do need you. I am yours. You just - you have me, okay? I can’t take it back because it’s true.”

“Oh,” Leah says. She blinks against the light, which is suddenly brighter, and also - maybe it’s her imagination, but the colors (few though there are) seem a hint more vivid. Fatin looks incredibly good in that shade of green. “Oh. You’re, like, in this with me, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, dipshit,” Fatin replies. “That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time. You started out as a choice, Leah Rilke, and I kept choosing you, and now I can’t stop. I don’t even think I’d know how.”

“That was pretty poetic,” Leah says, blushing enormously and wondering if butterflies can kill you, though that sounds too lovely for whatever’s growing inside of her.

“Don’t humor me,” Fatin says, smiling in a way that seals anything malleable left of Leah’s fate. “It’s cringe as fuck, but it’s all I’ve got. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it,” Leah says, not even sure of what exactly she’s taking and coveting it anyway. “I’ve chosen you too, you know. And I’ll keep choosing you. Every time.” Fatin’s on the verge of shatter; it’s too heavy and too soon. Leah adds, “Unless you’re really pissing me off.”

“Fair enough,” Fatin says, and she breathes a little easier. Leah thinks she knows the feeling: the holding-in, the fear that the words you want to say and the words you can’t say are the same. “You can drop me off at Dorothy’s door. She’ll set me straight.”

Leah squeezes her hand one last time. The watch on Fatin’s wrist says the lights’ll go off soon. She says, “Fatin. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Fatin says, in a gentle tone that suggests it doesn’t help, but it’s nice to hear regardless. “My dad…he used to say I was just like him. But I’m starting to think that was never true.”

“I think we all have the potential to hurt each other,” Leah says, “but you care too much about other people to be as callous as he was.”

“You think I care?” The surprise is genuine, but not in the way the structure intends. She blinks and clarifies, “I do, but I meant - I don’t think anyone would’ve described me like that before. Also, keep it to yourself. My street cred–”

“Most people don’t get to see what I see,” Leah says. “You care about us so much, it’s like - astronomical.”

The overhead lights shut off abruptly. Fatin’s eyes shine in the dark as they both struggle to adjust.

“I guess that’s our sign,” Fatin says, far too airy for the loose grip her voice is hanging on by. “We can’t make a habit of this. Then we’ll really start to drive each other crazy.”

Leah obeys, pulling back the sheets and scooting under them, waiting for Fatin to do the same beside her. “Of what? Talking about our feelings?”

“Yeah,” Fatin says softly, and follows up with the most romantic sentiment Leah’s ever heard– “because I’m running out of words.”

She rolls it over and over on her tongue - the idea of lacking language, because she’s a writer, it’s all she does and it’s how she thinks - but here’s a girl who makes all her points primarily through her body, where she stores words as something finite, and she’s using them all on Leah.

And maybe she remembers Jeff and the way he always had them ready in his pocket; bits of poems and inside jokes and lines from classic novels, and his own words, which he’d fail a little too easily at deflecting from the spotlight as though desperate for recognition. And maybe she falls a little more in love with Fatin Jadmani, the polar opposite of everything she thought she loved before, because she’s realizing that a paragraph designed to look pretty is worthless unless it’s also saying something honest.

“That’s funny,” Leah says aloud, after it’s been far too long. She watches pinpricks of light dance across the ceiling. “I’ve never thought of it like that before.”

“Your brain is a wonderland,” Fatin says. “And I sincerely mean that.”

Leah doesn’t doubt her for a second.

–

Sleeping with Fatin is the only time Leah feels truly, completely at peace. Or it was, before they began toeing the line of friendship and trauma-bonding to something less platonic, because now–

Now she lies with Fatin in the dark, pressed together down to the atom, and she burns. Molten at the core of her, blackened bones, veins carrying the fires of Pompeii. She wants to run her hands underneath Fatin’s shirt and feel the valleys of her spine, wrap around to the front of her ribcage, trace the hill of every rib. Lower, and lower, to the peaks of her hips and the canyon between them, and then–

Basically, she’s incredibly, unrelentingly horny.

It’s not that she’s never felt it before, or felt it directed towards Fatin - but it’s different this time, tangible and palpable, infecting the air around them, giving it a weight and tension and heat that’s impossible to put out - Fatin keeps shifting, molding her body further into Leah’s as if fanning the flames, and then–

“Fuck,” Fatin says. She’d obviously felt Leah awake, too. She turns abruptly onto her back, linking her fingers across her stomach.

“Yeah,” Leah says, letting her arm rest in the space between them. “Fuck.”

“I’ve been fine, you know,” Fatin says. She’s staring determinedly up at the ceiling. “Like, it’s fine. I’m not some - I don’t actually need an orgasm to function.”

“I know.”

And then she says: “You’re…really hot.”

Leah feels her brain go haywire, channeling rogue electricity through her nerves. She says, “So are you.”

Fatin laughs, covering her face with her hands. “Don’t let me kiss you,” she says, muffled, and Leah might actually pass out at the acknowledgement of whatever’s going on between them. “Not like this.”

“Not like what?” Leah asks, because she’s pretty sure Fatin could kiss her whenever, wherever she wanted, under any circumstances at all, and Leah would thank her - no, that’s pathetic, she’s evolved - Leah would kiss her back, say are you sure, it’s me, pin her down, drive their bodies closer.

“Like this,” Fatin emphasizes, and her arms fall flat against the mattress. “Like, crazy turned on in the middle of the night. That’s not - that’s not fair to you.”

“Even if it’s mutual?” Leah murmurs. Lets it invade the darkness; the idea of it. Her knee brushes Fatin’s thigh.

“Especially then,” Fatin says, but she’s grinning in a wild, manic sort of way. “I’m trying to be a respectable woman, Leah Rilke, and you’re making it extremely difficult for me.”

“Oh, I’m making it difficult,” Leah says sarcastically. “Sure. Okay. You’re, like, the personification of sex and sensuality, and I’m the one making it hard.”

“Do not compliment me right now, I’m serious.”

“No. Fuck off.”

“You fuck off.”

“Or you could fuck–”

“No,” Fatin interrupts loudly, and Leah laughs. “No. Nope. You’re not finishing that sentence.”

“Fine,” Leah says, all this bravery crawling inside of her from the dark. “But let the record show that I would’ve been a perfectly willing participant.”

“Damn straight,” Fatin says. “Doesn’t make it the right time.”

“So when’s the ‘right time’?”

Fatin tilts her head, meeting Leah’s gaze in the darkness. Her eyes glitter like half-moons and there are stars sewn into her skin. She looks ethereal, like something that can’t be touched at all, only observed from a distance.

“You’ll know,” she says softly. Somehow, the tension eases, pulled out like gravity tugging on the tide. “When it’s right, you’ll know.”

“Okay,” Leah says, mirroring her tone. She’s content to let it go; the burning lessens. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Good,” Fatin murmurs, and extends an arm towards Leah. “Now c’mere. We’re sleeping.”

She swears she feels Fatin drop a kiss against the crown of her head, along with a small string of words she can’t quite make out; whatever it is, Leah drifts off again with a vision of an open kitchen window and the smell of coffee wafting in the breeze, and Fatin, smiling.

–

(There’s always so much to do. Shredded bits of paper with words she can barely process about things she doesn’t understand; a whole island traversable both above and below ground with a cacophony of secrets. Following electrical lines to their cutoff points, wires hanging loose and frayed and dead. Running through plan by plan by impossible plan, stranded with people she’d die for and people she wouldn’t trust with her life.

And among them, one person she’d do the craziest thing for of all:

Live, and look forward to it.)

–

So it’s an accident that Leah hears them at all, really.

The girls are all aware of Shelby’s role and her and Fatin’s overarching plan, passed through hastily-written notes that get burned soon after or hidden corners where they’re free to whisper quietly. Shelby’s task is to communicate progress and information more than it is to sabotage - that’d count as too much interference, which they can’t have if they’re looking for valid results; Gretchen’s team allegedly removed all the bugs before fleeing, but Shelby doesn’t trust that she’d even been told the truth. They stage conversations in private rooms, discussing theories, survival tactics, the boys and their dynamics; Shelby continues to act terrified of being outed to her family - and then she and Fatin meet secretly to discuss their real plans, their genuine day-by-day observations and strategies.

Seth’s been located in one of the war-rooms across the island, where he seems to have access to some kind of working broadcast system; apparently he’s been using it to fuck with the rest of the boys, who spend more time outside than the girls do. (Fifty days; that’d been enough to last them a lifetime.)

He’s barely under Gretchen’s control, Fatin relays, because he seems to be like, actually, legitimately out of his fucking mind, something Leah doesn’t question despite her experience with insanity; she remembers the look in Raf’s eyes whenever he came close to discussing whatever it was Seth did. He’s barricaded himself in, but Henry and Dot are diligently building a small bomb.

Yeah. Apparently, they’re in some kind of World War II military bunker, left abandoned and converted to pass as believable in Gretchen’s sick roleplay fever-dream - but it also means they have some absolutely bizarre supplies from, like, the dawn of time; not to mention dangerous. (Like a crate full of unexploded C4 that Bo discovers. Yeah.)

Fatin also thinks they’ve pinned down the other mole, after pulling a particularly clever trick in which each pair of girls told each pair of boys a different theory and waited to see which of them snuck off to report it after, fueled by Shelby’s knowledge of the process. They’re pretty positive it’s Josh, after a series of tests and trials, which makes sense; Kirin would never suspect him, as he’s clearly overprotective of the other boy - it’s probably been easy for him to get around, undetected.

If it didn’t slightly freak Leah out to think about, she’d be pretty impressed with Shelby’s performance as a double-agent; but then again, she’s been playing pretend for years now. She’s likely a better actress than Leah is.

(Especially considering Leah caught a glimpse of her with Toni on the beach an evening or so ago, closer than they’ve been in weeks.)

What she’s trying to say is that she doesn’t mean to eavesdrop; Fatin’s off with Shelby somewhere, and Leah decides to take a walk to the roof, get some air. Every day the earth feels a little stronger underneath her; the shadows recede deeper into the unseen corners of her mind. Not being in charge makes her restless, but leadership is what Gretchen wants from her, and so she settles for the unease of lone observation.

There’s a couple watch points throughout the bunker, decks high up and overlooking the island, and she’s passing by the door to one of them when she hears Fatin’s laugh. It’s kind of embarrassing how fast she stumbles to a halt, like some sort of Pavlovian response to the sound, as if Fatin’s voice is for her and her only.

“Have you told her?” comes Shelby’s distinguishable drawl. “How you feel about her? I saw you together the other night…”

“When we were drunk?” Fatin says. “Everyone saw us. Pretty sure when the bunker goes live on Google Earth, we’ll be there.”

“I’ll take that as a no.” Shelby correctly reads the deflection.

“Okay, not in as many words,” Fatin answers back. When Leah peaks through the tiny window, she sees the two of them facing each other, Fatin leaning against the wall and Shelby against the railing, and she hurriedly dips off to the side. “Or - not in as few words, I guess. I’ve told her a lot about how I feel.”

She hears Shelby’s contemplative hum, decoding Fatin’s answer. “Romantically speakin’?”

“I mean, I think it’s romantic.”

“Fatin.”

“What am I gonna say, Shelby?” Fatin retorts. “Tell her I think she has, like, the most gorgeous eyes in existence and I imagine staring up at them while I go down on her? Tell her I think she’s brave and brilliant and way more forgiving than any of us deserve, let alone me? We’re stuck on our second fucking island halfway into month three. I spent almost all of O.G. Island telling her she was fucking crazy, only to end up proving she was right. She was right from basically, like, the fucking beginning, and I did and said horrible shit to her, and I probably fucked her up worse, so - no.” She finishes her rant with a hard edge and a much shakier conviction. “No, I’m not going to tell her how I feel, because it doesn’t fucking matter what I want. I’m trying to be there for her the way I always should’ve been, and I’m not going to…fuck it up when I don’t deserve it anyway.”

Oh.

“Lord Almighty,” Shelby says, as if she’s talking to herself. “I didn’t realize we were throwin’ a pity party. I would’ve had Toni make some pathetic excuse for a cake - bless her, but she can-not bake. You should’ve seen the french toast she tried to make the other day.”

“I think going bald has made you a little bit bitchy,” Fatin says. “Ouch.”

“I think a lot of things have contributed to that,” Shelby replies flatly. “Forget about need. Forget about survival. What if she wants you? What if - in spite of everything that’s happened to you, and everything you’ve done - you deserve to be loved anyway? What then?”

They both fall silent, and for a moment, Leah’s certain that her heart - now everywhere inside of her at once, unlocking doors and throwing open windows to the light - is what will give her presence away. Beating, pounding - adjectives too weak to describe whatever creature has taken residence in her chest - rattling the bones of its cage, begging to be fed, blood screaming like the ocean.

And then Fatin says: “Like I said: It’s not about what I deserve. I want her to live, and I want her to be happy about it. I know what she needs from me.”

Leah almost bursts onto the deck right then, ready to grab Fatin’s shoulders and shake her and tell her oh, I guess my original assumption of you was correct after all; you are a fucking idiot, but Shelby beats her to it - in her own subtle, southern way.

“You sound mighty certain of that.”

“And?” A pause. “Don’t smirk mysteriously at me, asshole.”

“I wouldn’t be, is all,” Shelby says. “If I were a bettin’ woman - and the longer this goes on, I might just become one - I’d be bettin’ against you.”

“Whatever,” Fatin says, and sighs again. “Fuck me. Leah fucking Rilke.”

She thinks Shelby snorts, but it’s a difficult sound to decipher when her brain is busy re-contextualizing every word she’d heard so far with their stalemate as the context. Because she’d wondered why Fatin kept holding herself back, like a dog chained to a fence post with only twenty feet of give. Crossing every line but the final one, even when Leah was all but begging her to do it.

Shelby asks, “When did you know?”

The silence stretches further, snake-like, as if Fatin’s searching for a way out of the conversation and hitting dead end after dead end. Finally, she says - quiet enough that Leah has to strain to hear - “It wasn’t one moment,” and then a reluctant sigh. She’s limited, stuck between who she’s been and who she wants to be. “It was a lot of moments, you know? I always cared about her a little more than the rest of you - shut up, bitch, you know I love you - but I never understood why. I’d reason with myself like, oh, it’s probably because she’s from home. Or…she needs me to care about her more, because she doesn’t care about herself. Shit like that.”

“And then?”

“And then I couldn’t reason my way out of it anymore,” she says. “Everything I felt for her, about her, whatever - it was so fucking intense! Man, the idea of losing her terrified me and pissed me off, because I couldn’t imagine being there without her. And when she smiled or laughed, it made my fucking day, like - best feeling in the world, not even an exaggeration. Nobody else has ever made me feel like that. Nobody.”

“Yeah,” Shelby says. “Sounds like love to me.”

“Loving someone doesn’t mean you won’t hurt them,” Fatin says. “Sometimes it means the opposite. Sometimes it’s all you do.”

And Leah knows, in that exact instant, that Fatin’s thinking about her father, and so many pieces of her come together at once: her hesitancy and reluctance, her deep desire to receive love but her carefully-shuttered fear of giving it as if it’s tainted. Fatin loves her and doesn’t think she deserves to, because she thinks she’s loving wrong.

“Sometimes,” Shelby agrees. Low and despondent. “But not you, honey. When you hurt people, you apologize. You take responsibility for it. You didn’t hurt her back then just to hurt her again now.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve hurt people.” It’s almost eerie, sinister, the way Shelby says it. Not like a threat, but like a haunting. “Because I’ve been selfish and scared, and I’ve hurt people in the worst ways you can imagine, and I’ve never seen that in you. Not even on your darkest days.” She smiles tentatively. “I think you’re exactly what Leah deserves.”

–

The rest of the day is a wash, because instead of putting that - brilliant, she hears in Fatin’s voice - brain of hers to good use figuring out a way off the island, she fixates entirely on the girl in question, absorbing every moment between them and assigning it meaning. It reads something like this:

Fatin, smiling widely when she finds Leah waiting in their room, scribbling out the mess of her feelings onto an empty page of a random notebook. [All the love letters and poetry and novels I wrote to him - why? I can’t even remember now. I used to write when I was hurting and heartbroken and I’m not anymore. But I still want to write. About her.]

Fatin, hooking her arm through Leah’s and leading her to dinner; sitting so close their thighs press together and their elbows knock. (“Eat your green beans,” Fatin says. “Vegetables are good for you, babe.” Leah burns like a sunset and can’t even tell her why. Babe feels different, now. Better.)

Fatin, ignoring every single one of the boys as if she doesn’t even notice them, but tensing when she catches Raf staring at Leah, or rolling her eyes when he speaks - it makes actual, complete sense now. (“Sorry, what?” Leah has to ask. “I wasn’t listening. Sorry.” Fatin grins into her potatoes; Leah hears her, always.)

Fatin, touching her, touching her, touching her: tangling their hands together, resting her head against Leah’s shoulder, wrapping her arms around Leah when they collapse into bed. (They’ve always felt safer together, after the first island and the traumatizing quarantine of the second. It’s the only way any of them can sleep anymore; Toni and Martha in one room, Leah and Fatin in another, and Dot and Rachel and Shelby with their mattresses on the floor, close enough to reach.)

Fatin, the small spoon in the middle of the night, curling further into Leah as if wishing she could live inside of her. (Leah presses a kiss to the back of her head, and Fatin settles in her sleep.)

The bunker is quiet, and the lack of white noise leaves Leah alone with a girl in her arms and her brain and potentially - possibly - definitely her heart, and even that isn’t enough space to contain the complexity and magnitude of whatever emotion (love) she’s spilling across the bed, dripping to the floor. It’s always been this way, she supposes, but giving a name to feeling makes it tangible, makes it weighted, a blanket of dark matter and stardust, and Fatin is everywhere, growing overhead like some canopying willow, or enveloping the room like some monstrous shadow; but Fatin is also so much smaller than her personality projects, powerless in her sleep, her fingers curled around Leah’s wrist in a comforting habit that makes her ache.

It’s not like Jeff, who brought about the end of Leah’s world, which was so small back then, anyway - narrow corridors with tiny windows, and a door at the end she could never quite reach, the walls lengthening like some House of Leaves-esque nightmare. With Fatin it’s wide open, that desert night sky, that pleasant evening heat, that freedom - to go anywhere and be anyone and still be loved for it.

Maybe if the islands have taught her anything, it’s that a home doesn’t need a concrete foundation or a Spanish-style roof or a white picket fence. Home can be as simple as Fatin’s hand in hers, their fingers interlaced.

They both live in the Bay, go to the same pretentious prep school; they’ll live in each other’s bedrooms, and Fatin’ll drive her in the mornings, and everyone will talk but neither of them will care. She’s never seen her future so clearly before, fueled by all the knowledge she shouldn’t have.

(But she does. And one day - months from now, when Fatin’s pretending she isn’t wrapped around Leah’s finger and leaning too heavily on her pseudo-arrogance - Leah’ll say, You’re the one who’s been truly, madly, deeply in love with me since like, day thirty on a deserted island, and, well, Fatin won’t have much to say to that.)

Her future exists, she thinks, and it’s right here with her, safe in her arms.

–

It’s strange how the idea of never truly having Fatin to begin with is what brings her so strongly back into herself. She knows they’ve been protecting her - knows they’re all trying to get underneath Gretchen’s skin, drill down into her bones - but inaction isn’t helping, either, and they need to get the fuck off this island.

She doesn’t want to work on the sidelines. She wants to go.

But it’s like four in the fucking morning, and the curve of Fatin’s spine is pressed against her chest, and Leah can’t risk leaving her to the nightmares. She’s grown up enough to know that wandering around by herself in the dark isn’t the smartest idea, either. She buries her nose against the back of Fatin’s neck and breathes, counts to ten over and over again until Fatin’s heartbeat feels like it’s her own, and she sleeps.

–

In the morning, as she’s sitting on the edge of the bed and pretending not to watch Fatin pull one of Leah's t-shirts over her head, she says, “I don’t know how much longer I can do nothing.”

“Okay,” Fatin says, turning around to face her; Leah catches the thinnest line of bare stomach and hopes she doesn’t hyperfixate on that next. “What d’you wanna do?”

Honestly, Leah hadn’t expected to get this far with so little resistance; she blanks for a moment, unprepared to respond. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m not, like, having a fit or something. I just thought you were going to argue with me.”

“I think you’ve earned the right to do whatever the fuck you want forever,” Fatin says, unable to curb the slip of guilt that rounds out the sentence. They’ll need to address that soon; an elephant growing steadily in the corner. “What d’you want to do?”

“Anything,” Leah admits. Being on the sidelines has left her unchained and unfocused; she thinks it’s been a week and a half - maybe two? - but she can’t be sure. “Whatever you’re doing, I guess. Beauty needs brains, right?”

“Bitch,” Fatin says fondly, and steps closer, fully invading Leah’s space. Arms dropping to her shoulders, lips near the crown of her head; as if on instinct, Leah palms her hips. Fatin whispers, “I met with Shelby yesterday. Seth’s…been asking about us all. He knows our names, but not what we look like.”

Maybe it should be alarming, but Leah recalls the thick manilla file with her now-unrecognizable face in Gretchen’s office, remembers seeing several just like it sitting behind her on a desk - Gretchen never would’ve left the files themselves, but she’s sure the basic details had made their way to Seth. Know thy enemy, the playing field, and the weather - something about cardinal rules of survival. Those, at the very least, they’ve all picked up on.

“Okay,” Leah says, sounds it out like seaglass. “So what’s he want?”

“Well,” Fatin says, and Leah feels her muscles involuntarily tighten, shiver rolling through her like thunder. Purses her lips. Says: “You, mostly.”

“What?”

“He wants to talk to you,” she says. Stiff and short. Fingers massaging the base of Leah’s skull, soothing herself more than Leah. “Which is obviously not gonna happen. No. Shh. Zip it. I don’t want to hear any arguments. He’s a psychopath, Leah.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Leah says, amused.

“Oh,” Fatin says. “I thought you were going to argue with me.”

“No, I’m not really in the habit of giving Gretchen’s pawns exactly what they want,” Leah says. Nuzzles into Fatin’s stomach, exhaling, and doesn’t register the action until after she’s done it. “Or…any of it, really. I’m content with causing trouble.” There’s a definite crack to her voice; she’s so cool and smooth, probably the top two ways she’d define herself–

But Fatin doesn’t seem to notice nor mind; perhaps her attention is diverted by the larger elephants in the room. She moves to carding her fingers through Leah’s hair, working through a knot. “You know how they’re blowing Seth’s door open today?” she says. “We don’t want to be anywhere near that action - I won’t be surprised if it gets violent. Whatever the fuck he did, they’re all pretty convinced he deserves it.”

Leah’s eyelids flutter closed; even at the height of her oblivion, she thinks being pressed into Fatin’s chest under the guise of sharing confidential information would’ve probably done the trick. When she speaks, it’s grout-like and hoarse. “Okay. Then–?”

“Kirin’s making Josh stay behind,” Fatin continues, so casually devious she could fool a polygraph. “Why don’t we offer to keep him company?”

Leah should have more to say - like great idea or how much do you think he knows or you’re so fucking hot - but she’s trying to stop her mouth from doing what it wants to do, which is chasing Fatin’s lips like a game of tag, you’re it, you’re it, you’re it for me, and so she keeps it shut, a feat in and of itself. Fatin had taken up the mantle seriously; she’s so much more than anyone ever gives her credit for - ninety-nine percent of her sits hidden under the surface like some buried treasure, waiting for the right time to make itself known to those who are deserving of it - and she belongs to Leah.

(That part’s still a little hard to comprehend: that Fatin loves her back. Need is one thing, easily explainable and far less surprising; want is another, and could’ve been chalked up to boredom, loneliness, curiosity; if love were their natural extensions, maybe she’d be able to quantify it, plot her feelings like a star chart - but it’s a different map entirely. The way she loves Fatin has nothing to do with the way she needs or wants her. It’s independent of the islands, which feels contradictory, but love is nothing if not completely paradoxical.

Wrong place at the wrong time, they’ll joke wryly later when asked how they fell in love.)

Leah is so, so fucked, but at least she’s shooting for the right age range this time.

–

Maybe getting information out of people has kind of become her specialty. Or maybe when the lives of the people she loves are on the line, she has no issue smoothly manipulating a conversation.

Honestly, she barely has to put in effort with Josh; he’s already so strung-out and on edge she can’t believe he made it this far without capturing suspicion. They spend some time talking around him, dipping in at random intervals; what was his life like before the island, how has he been managing, it’s great that he’s got Kirin to look after him–

The last one strikes a nerve.

“He’s not that bad, you know,” Josh says. “He’s always been the nicest to me. He looks out for me.”

So Leah says, “I wouldn’t be alive without her,” and catches Fatin’s eye. It’s all a little bit of a game, but that part is very true. “You need to be able to count on each other out there. Out here.”

“Ditto,” Fatin says, more affected by the concept than she’s letting on. “Leah’s the best of us.”

“Yeah, but you have to say that,” Josh replies, one corner of his mouth pulled up a bit awkwardly. “She’s your girlfriend, right?”

(In the distance, a bomb goes off.)

“Guess they did it,” Leah says, smoothly moving past the remark despite the flush of her cheeks and irregular heartbeat. Knowing that’s what they look like from the outside - to people who don’t understand them or their intricacies - leaves her noticeably prideful, something she attempts to shove underneath the surface. It’s not the time or the place. “I don’t hear any screaming, so I’m assuming nobody got hurt.”

“Henry’s smart,” Josh says. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“Same with our Dorothy,” Fatin says proudly, though she’s now having trouble meeting Leah’s eyes, and Leah fights the wild urge to laugh; Fatin Jadmani, the cello prodigy and queen of popularity herself, flustered by the mere concept of dating Leah, notorious bookworm and loner. Well, they’ll play those parts. “This one might’ve saved me, but Dorothy kept all of us alive.”

“You guys really care about each other, huh?” Josh asks, gaze averted to the floor of what’s passing as his and Kirin’s bedroom. “I wish we were like that.”

It happens: a flicker of a flame, igniting at the bottom of Leah’s skull. The smallest crack in a plaster wall, daring her to pick up a hammer. Fatin zeroes in, shaking off her earlier uncertainty, recognizing the signs of a hunt hidden in Leah’s expression.

“Even if you’re not as close as we are,” Leah says, “I’m sure you don’t want anything bad to happen to them. You seem like a good guy, Josh.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure about that,” he says, and shifts uncomfortably. “While you were out there, did you…did you ever realize you don’t know yourself as well as you thought you did?”

Even though they’re on a quest for information, talking about their experiences is no simple ask; the gap between their groups is too wide, too dissimilar - even the amount of time they were tasked with survival doesn’t compare. Not to mention the betrayal, the suspicion, the hallucinations, the vindication–

Surprisingly, it’s Fatin who replies first. “Yeah,” she says, fading into something weirdly close to sincerity. “I thought I knew a lot of things. What I felt, what I wanted, what I was capable of…but when you’re fighting for your lives, the important things become really clear, and they’re not what you think they’re going to be.”

“Yeah?” Josh asks, perking up at the idea of being understood. “What were they? For you?”

It’s a heavier question than he realizes, packed to the brim with implication and expectation. Fatin takes it all in stride, though Leah’s the only one that clocks the miniscule vibrations of her voice that suggest she’s not as composed as she’s pretending to be.

Leah could rescue her, but she kind of wants to hear the answer, too.

Fatin bites the inside of her lip thoughtfully. “Love, mostly,” she offers, shrugging one shoulder. “I didn’t know shit about it before this. I love my brothers, but they’re kids. At one point, I loved my parents, but they didn’t love me, not really - they loved my potential, and my talent, and the pride I could bring them. That’s what I realized…that the people who actually love you will love you whether you deserve it or not. And sometimes that’s enough.”

She holds Leah’s stare this time, black holes in her eyes that threaten to drag Leah in, beckon her to jump - an event horizon masquerading as a line to cross, rather than an entire fucking reckoning - but she can’t look away, and maybe that communicates enough; I love you, I love you, I love you.

“And Leah?” Josh probes, throwing dynamite into a wildfire; he probably thinks he’s teasing. “What about her?”

She doesn’t waver, gaze just as intense. There’s so much more she wants to say that isn’t under the guise of exposing a con, but she offers the most she can. “She taught me the most about it, actually. I don’t think I was doing it right…before her.”

Dry mouth; sinking ceiling. Leah can’t stop herself from asking, “Doing what right?”

The tension rises; the air pressure condenses. She’s back in her space metaphor - in this oxygenless room, void-like walls expanding outward and bursting like balloons - she feels a thousand miles away in this moment, staring at her own sun.

“Feeling,” Fatin releases in a single breath, as if she’d been clutching it tightly to her chest for a long, long time, almost to the point of imprisonment. “You feel things with this, like - single-minded determination. You feel something and listen to it and act on it. You don't bury it or pretend it isn’t there. That’s what I used to do, you know?” It’s as if they’re in some sort of confession, Josh as the mediator between human and god. “All the parties, all the boys, all the drinking…I had fun, sure, but I was pretty bad at feeling before I met you.”

“I don’t know that I served as the best example,” Leah says, stunned by her honesty. “Some of my feelings got me into some pretty fucked up places.”

“But you got out,” Fatin says. “And when you couldn’t, we were there.”

“You were there.”

“Yeah.” Fatin briefly drags her bottom lip into her mouth. “I tried to be.”

“No. Fatin.” It’s imperative that she understands this, current mission be damned. “You were.”

They lock eyes again. Josh has gone quiet once more, stare trained on the edges of the fraying rug. At last, Fatin nods slowly; she isn’t a person who sees only what she wants to see, and Leah’s conviction is impossible to misinterpret.

“Okay,” she says softly, and slips her hands underneath her thighs, like she’s afraid of leaving them free, letting them wander. Like all she wants to do is reach for Leah but can’t. The situation is too delicate; the emotion fueling it too earnest.

Josh says, “You’re lucky,” and his shoulders slump. He’s trying to escape himself, a stow-away inside of his own body. “People…take advantage of me, I think. Because I’m weird. I’m not like the other guys.”

“It doesn’t matter what you are or aren’t,” Leah says, returning to the situation at hand, though not without significant effort - all she wants to do is be alone with Fatin, anywhere else. “You’re still a person, and you deserve as much respect as anybody. Being different doesn’t make you weak.”

“What if it does?” Josh’s hands are balled up in his lap; he’s beginning to rock slightly. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth. “What if I was weak?”

“Josh,” Fatin says, slow and soothing, “why do you think you’re weak?”

Nails digging into his palms; chest heaving with a sob. She and Leah exchange glances, and Leah swears she can see a neon sign flashing above Fatin’s head that says MOTHER-FUCKING-BINGO.

–

(Josh’s role is the same as Shelby’s, but with a focus on the boys; he’s a victim in their eyes, rather than a perpetrator. And there’s something about the way he lingers around the outside of society that reminds Leah of Nora, how she never quite fit in but never quite stood out, either.

Everything they tell him is the truth; they just don’t tell him all of it. Who Gretchen is and how she manipulates; how he isn’t the first and won’t be the last.

And then he says: “I think she’s studying social hierarchy development. With our basic needs met and the lack of immediate danger, she’s curious about how we’ll coordinate ourselves as a group. Like, who leads, or whose authority is respected; stuff like that.” He wrings his hands together nervously. “That’s also why she kept Seth on - to see what kind of justice system we’d invent.”

“This is so fucking Lord of the Flies,” Leah mutters under her breath. “Can’t she at least be original?”

“Does it help, at least?” Josh asks, and Fatin slaps him on the back, beaming.

“Josh, my man,” she says, “it absolutely does.”)

–

She’s riding high again, feet on the clouds all throughout dinner despite the gravity of the Seth situation. He’s apparently been locked in some far-off empty bedroom; they don’t have any other options but to keep him under surveillance. Searching the room he’d barricaded himself in had yielded few results; the security controls are an important find, but the built-in comms station is ancient, and only linked locally. There’s an old boombox, a mic, some other random equipment with no discernable or practical use. And, importantly, no type of phone, or walkie-talkie, or whatever the hell else he could’ve used to communicate with Gretchen’s team.

They’re not even trying to talk information out of him - his head’s so far up his own ass the only thing coming out of his mouth is shit, Kirin says - and Leah wonders what Gretchen makes of that approach.

“I feel like - like some kind of overcharged battery,” Leah says as they’re traipsing back to their room. “Or a kid who just ate all their Halloween candy and needs to run off the sugar rush. I have too much energy.”

“Oh, yeah?” Fatin looks impressed. “Well, it’s your first day back on the job and you are crushing it - Leah Rilke: Private Detective. I’m fanning myself.”

“No you’re not,” Leah says, snorting. “I can see both of your hands. I’m holding one of them.”

“It was more of a vibe.”

Outside is too much of a risk; it’s all ocean and sand and rocks and trees, a grim reminder of their circumstance. Inside is dull and drab, walls of concrete and no imagination. Leah pulls her to a stop. “Let’s do something.”

“Anything for you, honey,” Fatin says. “Want me to steal Martha’s Uno cards? I bet we could come up with a fun strip version–”

“Teach me how to play the cello,” Leah interrupts. It comes to her suddenly; a link between her and Fatin and the life they once lived so separately it’s almost unimaginable now. Leah wants to know her, the loose bits and pieces she couldn’t carry to the island, wants to roll them around her palms like marbles.

“What?” Fatin says, as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing - but she doesn’t outright reject Leah’s idea, either. “How am I supposed to do that? My whittling skills haven’t made it that far, tragically.”

“Just like, a few chords, or something,” Leah implores. “You must’ve loved it at one point - take me there. The beginning. When it didn’t come with all the shit it comes with now.”

Fatin appraises her for a moment, chewing on the inside of her lip. There’s some sort of test Leah’s passing. And then, lacking her usual teasing lilt: “You’re the only person I’d ever do this for. I hope you know that.”

A bigger confession than she intends it to be, but Leah knows what’s driving it anyway; no risk of miscommunication or misinterpretation when love is so present between them. Even if Fatin doesn’t know - even if Leah hasn’t said the words, like I’m in love with you - it’s impossible to miss once you’re aware it exists.

“I know,” Leah says.

“Get me a flat piece of wood - like a thin board or something. And a marker.”

–

Thankfully, it isn’t hard to find either of those things; there’s rubble everywhere from Gretchen’s hasty extraction job and they have markers by the dozens. They’re back in their room, Leah sitting on the edge of the bed, Fatin on the floor with an adorable look of concentration on her face as she attempts to draw straight lines.

“Okay, this isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough,” she says, standing the plank up; she seems to be measuring its height against Leah’s posture, and she follows it up with a nod. “Spread your legs, feet on the floor, and don’t make a sex joke. That’s my thing and I’m nobly sacrificing it for this.”

“You’re extremely strong.”

“I’m aware. Hold this with your left hand, like you’re gonna rest it on your shoulder; the bow would go in your right hand.” Fatin’s expression is so sweetly serious it makes Leah’s fingertips pulse, as if she’s really pressing down on the strings without having the calluses for it. Fatin tilts her head, resting on her knees, and examines Leah’s clumsy attempt at placing her hands in the correct places.

“Do you miss classical music?” Leah asks. Simpler stairs to climb. Nothing about playing the instrument and all its weight, but the beauty produced from it.

“Yeah,” Fatin says, reaching for Leah’s fingers and repositioning them. “It’s not like something we can replicate with our voices, you know? I don’t really have a way to recreate it. But I miss hearing it, even if I don’t always miss playing it.” Confident and assured touches guide Leah’s thumb, pressing down against the flat back of the wood; her index hits a line, between some other lines (frets?) and her middle trails just behind against another line, and Fatin says, “Congratulations! You just learned C Major. You’re a pro.”

Leah tries to commit it to memory, but having Fatin so close with her hands so carefully directing Leah’s makes the task near-impossible. She’s wearing one of Leah’s shirts, her hair in a messy bun, eyeliner tastefully blended, and she’s the most stunning thing Leah’s ever seen in her life.

“Watch out,” Leah says. “I’m coming for your job when we get back.”

“You can have it,” Fatin says, but she’s smiling. “Okay. Now move your index finger over a string, and remove your middle”–despite her instructions, she keeps her hand ghosting against the back of Leah’s–“and that’s G Major.”

“Is this a fret?” Leah asks, attempting to be a decent-ish student.

“For the purposes of this lesson, yes,” Fatin says. “But cellos don’t have frets. That’s why having an ear for pitch is so important.”

Embarrassingly - humiliatingly - seeing Fatin so self-assured in a way that directly relates to her skill is kind of a turn-on; it’s easy to forget she’s a prodigy with a guaranteed spot waiting for her at Julliard until she’s kneeling in front of Leah, explaining the differences between each note and how to achieve vibrato.

“Are you listening, Rilke?” she prods, and only then does Leah realize she’s been staring intently at Fatin’s lips for the better part of a minute. Fortunately, she’d done that before realizing she was obsessed with the girl they belonged to, making it far less incriminating. “I’ll be quizzing you on this later.”

“I’m listening,” Leah lies, because the reality is far worse; she’s mostly plotting ways to bring Fatin’s mouth in-line with hers, arrange a set-up. “Show me, like, a really hard one.”

“I don’t think you’re at that level yet, babe.”

“Try me. I’m a fast learner.”

A smirk grows across Fatin’s face. “Okay,” she agrees, and doesn’t realize what dice she’s rolling or why; Leah’s fingers are stiff and uncoordinated, forcing Fatin to get inventive. The pad of a finger here, a reminder to straighten her spine, Fatin shuffling closer on her knees until she’s basically between Leah’s legs, eyebrows pinched in concentration.

“I don’t even think fingers bend that way,” Leah says, allowing herself to be manipulated. “Are you double-jointed or some freaky shit–”

“Just good with my hands, baby,” Fatin replies breezily, working Leah’s pinky down a fake string. She leans in, trying to observe from a more natural angle. “You, however–”

“I have totally normal hands,” Leah says. “I mean, I’m not going to pretend to be coordinated or anything, but I don’t think I should have to pop my shoulder out of its socket to achieve the perfect finger balance or whatever–”

“I am graciously sacrificing my extremely valuable time to teach you this, so if you don’t shut the fuck up–”

“What?” Leah challenges, finding her opening. Fatin looks up in muted surprise, as if hearing the shift in tone but unable to immediately place its meaning. But life never goes quite as it does in her imagination, because the moment she comprehends just how close their faces are, she loses several abilities at once–thinking and speaking, for example, which are vitally important to her current goal.

Fatin’s eyes dart to her lips involuntarily, and Leah watches her tongue sneak out to lick her own in anticipation. Her hands fall to Leah’s knees, steadying herself; their noses just barely miss the brush. The air between them is warm, thick, honeyed.

“What are you gonna do?” Leah murmurs, because she needs an answer.

This is not a perfect moment. They’re trapped in what’ll probably make Dante’s expanded tenth circle of hell after nearly dying several times; they’re actively trying to manipulate a woman whose entire job is literally manipulating them; they don’t know when or if they’ll ever be rescued; they’re keeping an active psychopath prisoner several bunker-blocks away. Their bodies ache and itch with healing; they have scars that’ll never fully fade.

But their fake cello clatters to the floor, her breath paints Fatin’s lips, and Fatin’s gaze keeps darting between Leah’s eyes and her mouth, fingertips tensing against Leah’s skin. She knows where they’re going - she wants, which is bad, or she hopes, which is worse - and she’s too uncertain of herself to go there, an admission in itself, because Fatin doesn’t do timid, doesn’t run away from the things that scare her, and yet–

Leah can’t plan this. She has no idea how it’ll turn out. Doesn’t know why she tilts her head fondly; why her smile pools in the corner of her mouth, reassuring as she catches an index finger beneath Fatin’s chin; why she whispers baby like she’s stirring sweetener into coffee. Taking chances just seems like the thing to do, really.

But to Fatin, this must be biblical, some sort of revelation. “I know I’m not misreading this,” she says, somehow both rhetorical and not. Uncertainty wars with her voice anyway. “Right?”

Leah smiles wider. Skims her thumb across the curve of Fatin’s chin. “Right,” she agrees. “Unless you’re reading this as platonic, in which case, yes, you are definitely misreading this, which is super awkward for me.”

“Shut up,” Fatin breathes out. “I’m not. I know. But”–her eyes flick down to Leah’s lips–“are you sure?”

“Sure of what?” Leah says. So close Fatin’s soft at the edges, colors and light blending together against a backdrop of dull grey. She looks miraculous like this, art coming out of the walls. “I feel like I’ve made my intentions pretty clear.”

“But it’s me,” Fatin presses. Touches her forehead to Leah’s like a flat palm against a gravestone, eyelashes fluttering. “I know what I did to you. You deserve–”

Leah doesn’t wait for the end of her ridiculously untrue sentence; she tilts her head and leans in, catching Fatin’s lips between her own, and Fatin responds immediately, her other hand coming to rest on Leah’s waist, fingers closing around the hem of her shirt. Leah doesn’t have nearly the experience she does, but it hardly seems to matter; like the first fire, the first plane, the fake rescue - something inside of her is alive and hungry, desperate to kiss Fatin until she forgets - forgets the island, forgets the bunker, forgets the sky and the sea and the sun devouring the atmosphere - forgets what it’s like to wrap her fingers around the things that hurt her most.

Because this doesn’t hurt at all. Kissing Fatin is like a sedative; not in the way where someone’s forcibly injecting some cocktail directly into her bloodstream, but like something that sinks into her gums, makes all the edges and corners of the world look like around, not through; around, not over. Kissing Fatin is the opposite of smoke and mirrors, the opposite of gunpoint, the opposite of pressing her thumb against the sharp point of a knife just to see if it’ll cut.

Kissing Fatin makes every moment after something to look forward to. It’s so simple, so miniscule, so inconsequential: Life can be good again, if she lets it.

“I know I haven’t always picked the things that are, like, good for me,” Leah murmurs, breaking away, “but I feel pretty confident about you.”

“How?” Fatin says. Overwhelmed by the moment, saltwater in her eyes. The plane crashes again; somewhere, it’s always crashing. “Why?”

“Because we were being manipulated?” Leah offers. “Because you were trying to protect everyone, and sometimes they needed to be protected from me?”

“I was a complete fucking cunt,” Fatin says plainly, and Leah laughs, skitters her fingers through the baby-soft hair at the nape of Fatin’s neck.

“That sounds familiar,” she says, prompting a smile. “Let’s call it even?”

“It is not fucking even.”

“Fatin, I literally don’t care,” she says. Well; she’s all about taking risks these days. “I want to kiss you. Do you want to kiss me back or waste more time arguing moral theoreticals?”

“I mean, when you put it like that,” Fatin says, leaning back in; Leah’s lips slot easily against hers, as if well-practiced and lived-in - it’s the least awkward first kiss she’s ever had, and Fatin seems to be lost inside of it, not like a labyrinth but like a book, turning the pages of Leah’s lips without a designated ending. Her hands twine through Leah’s hair; Leah’s exhausting the space between them like something molecular, bridging atoms and physics, and where is she going with this, anyway–

She says breathlessly, “Come here,” and Fatin doesn’t need to be told twice, climbing into Leah’s lap. Thighs settling on either side of Leah’s, imprint of her knees into the mattress, the bed as a pulpit and Leah as her god; oh, there’s so much power in being wanted–

“Um, hold on,” Fatin says, dazed as she pulls back; Leah’s hit with an immense amount of pride. She could do anything, be anyone. “I’m just - I don’t think I’ve ever been this turned on in my entire life, so–”

Or not a god but a devil, stretching uncomfortably inside of her and taking up her skin. Smiling with her mouth and beckoning. She’s possessed; too much empty space to fill, not enough to fill it. “Yeah,” Leah echoes. Storm-slick eyes that say, come on back to shore now, sweetheart, I don’t like the look of those clouds. “Same.”

But there’s more, an unanswered curiosity rounding out Fatin’s expression that stops Leah from darting back in, re-claiming what’s already belonged to her for awhile now. She waits, lets Fatin find the words, lets her taste them on her tongue. She’ll understand the addiction then, when all their lines are pulled from the page and laid out on the table with a rolled-up bill.

“So you’re, like…actually into me?” Fatin says, the most vulnerable question she’s ever been brave enough to pose, though she tries not to let it show. She doesn’t have Leah’s exact certainty; doesn’t know the depth of love or its boundlessness, how Leah’s heart expands like its own Big Bang. Stars in the veins, and other such drugs. “Like, for real, not - I - I don’t know what I’m asking.”

“Yeah, Fatin,” Leah says softly, understanding exactly what she’s asking. Do you like me for me - will you like who I am when we’re free - and do you promise? “I’m definitely ‘into you,’ if that’s, like, the most effective way to phrase it.”

“Shut up,” Fatin says, but she’s smiling widely, kind of like she wants Leah to talk to her forever. “God, I can’t stand you pretentious bitches on the Writing Track–”

“Oh, really? Because it seems like you have a major thing for one of them–”

Fatin kisses her again, relief palpable in the way she slips her tongue across Leah’s bottom lip; Leah catches tight on the inhale, lips parting, and Fatin takes full advantage, licking into Leah’s mouth. Her hands become more exploratory, thumb tracing the line of Leah’s jaw, other settling against Leah’s chest, just above the thunder taking place there; Leah’s arms cradle her lower back, all her curves and dimples. Her shoulder blades extend sharply underneath her skin like they’ve been smoothed against diamond, lethal to the touch.

Love is a weapon, sure. But it’s also the weapon saying, you’re the only one I trust enough to cut.

“Fuck,” Fatin murmurs, and cracks into a laugh. Just one, packed to the brim with ironic disbelief. “Have I truly, finally fucking lost it, or are we seriously doing this?”

“That’s my line,” Leah says, euphoric like she’s conquered the whole world; she gets those wars, now, the stories where a princess’s laughter was enough to flood the entire land with uncontainable jealousy, have all the king’s men tear out each other’s throats, leave all the king’s women left to clean up their blood. “Or like, a version of it.”

In her story, it’s like the princess said, Oh, but I love you, and do not wish for you to die for me.

“Shut up,” Fatin says again. Mouthful of pearls and satin. “Tell me again.”

Here’s the problem: Leah is nothing but novels. She thinks of poetry, thinks of letters, thinks of Virginia Woolf probably still resting on her nightstand; yes yes yes I do like you, I am afraid to write the stronger word - and then she decides, fuck that.

“I love you.”

Fatin stills, her weight settling more firmly against Leah’s thighs, like she’d been distracted from the act of holding herself up by the sudden declaration. “What?”

“I love you,” Leah repeats, quiet enough to hear Fatin’s catch of breath against her lungs, hook, line, surface; it’s not as beautiful to sink as she used to believe. “I have for awhile, I think.”

“You think?” Fatin asks, a stilted sort of shock.

“I don’t think I could process it until recently,” Leah confesses. “I was too - too deep in my own head.”

“And now?”

Fatin hasn’t said it back yet, a mark of inaction that would’ve been marred by self-doubt and uncertainty had Fatin not been the most sure fucking thing in Leah’s life. Sure like the strike of a match or at a bowling alley. Sure like a gunshot. The insecurity comes from the absurdity of it - here they are, trapped in a bunker on their second deserted island, and Leah is in love with her. Leah loves her back.

“You’re here with me,” Leah says, “so I’m here with you. And I realized it’s pretty much the only place I ever want to be, anyway.”

Another kiss cuts off anything further she’d had hovering on her tongue; Fatin spreads her fingers against Leah’s neck, the angle of her jaw, thumbs at her earlobe. Leah understands the desire: now that I’ve had your lips, I want the rest of you.

Fatin whispers, “I think you’re incredible,” with a tenderness so sincere and innocent it presses against Leah’s chest, a pulsing, throbbing bruise. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, kiss-stained like she’s wearing a new shade. “I love you. I’m - I’m in love with you. And I want that, too. To be with you.”

“Good,” Leah says, and though she doesn't speak it aloud - too conceptual and ridiculous and almost naively romantic–

She adds the word forever.

–

(Has she learned nothing? Or is this an evolution? Fatin’s different, and Leah’s grown up enough for the revelations to take hold - so much love inside of her, stemming from soils of vastly different compositions. Jeff, she thinks, had been something barren, a child drawing the image of a rose in the dirt, a poor imitation of the promise of the real thing.

With Fatin, her chest flowers and blooms and becomes. Bones like stems and skin of softer petals. You’re the sun, she wants to say. You’re the sun and the sky and the soul of me. Here I am, in hell with you, and all I can feel is warm.)