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For many years now, Shauna had had countless journals, the very first one (a fluffy pink one she’d gotten as a gift from her mother a few months after the divorce) was her most important one. It was that very journal that taught her the importance of writing. With it, she learned just how well it served as an escape from reality.
By writing down all the things she could not say out loud, she felt relieved, it felt like she had a friend she could confess anything to and never worry about it getting to the wrong people. Her many journals were there for her during the absolute worst times of her life: such as her parents divorce, the beginning of her very complicated feelings towards Jackie, and, of course, the plane crash.
During her time in the wilderness, Shauna firstly began filling her pages with entries about their routine, back in the first summer, when everything was still relatively normal, and they didn’t know the taste of human flesh. Later though, Shauna saw her own handwriting become shakier and more jagged, given just how much she’d been through, from losing her best friend, then her baby, and Lottie’s obsession with him.
Recently, most of her entries are about Melissa. That was something that happened completely out of Shauna’s control (or, at least, that’s what she told herself).
Ever since Melissa kissed her while she held a knife to her throat, Shauna couldn’t stop thinking about her. Consequently, the entries in her journal about the others’ stupid rituals and miracles gave way to retelling of her time spent with the girl.
And just writing about anything else that weren’t the tragedies of her life felt like a breath of fresh air to Shauna. As much as putting words into paper felt therapeutic to her, writing about certain scenarios often meant reliving them. So Melissa made her way into her life as a pleasant distraction.
For as long as Shauna could, that’s exactly what she considered Melissa as: a distraction. However, as much as Shauna wished it wasn’t true, she did feel something for Melissa. Something she couldn’t, or didn’t want to, for the time being, put into words, written or spoken.
That blond girl with her faded backwards pink hat and her sheepish personality had made her way into Shauna’s life unexpectedly. It was truly a stark contrast to the monotony of her life in the wilderness, between butchering animals and reading the same five books over and over again, having an anxious JV girl following her around and yapping about everything felt refreshing.
It took her a while to get used to Melissa’s personality. Shauna’s first impression of the girl was that she was impulsive, acting without thinking and sometimes quickly regretting it, going off of just how much she was shaking after pressing her lips to Shauna’s for the first time.
Second thing she noticed was just how much Melissa loved to talk; most of the time, it was about things that didn’t matter (“Did you know I’ve broken three of my bones? N-Not all at once of course, that would be-”), or her routine in the wilderness (“Laundry duty fucking sucks, can’t believe I got that card again”) and that was something Shauna should find absolutely unbearable, but, for some reason, she just couldn’t help but let the girl go on and on.
To listen to Melissa talk was almost soothing to the many thoughts Shauna had, with the amount of information the girl would spill in a short time, it was better to focus on her than the things inside her head.
They’d often go to the same spot: a small clearing with a hollow, fallen log by the creek, and spend a long time together, either sitting by the log, or laying down on the ground enjoying the way the sunlight shone through the leaves.
(Shauna refused to call it their spot, because doing so would turn whatever they had actually real, or at least more tangible than it was. Still, no one ever bothered them while the two spent their time on that place, quietly understanding that when they disappear together, they should be left alone, similarly to when Tai and Van would leave hand in hand to a specific place in the wilderness only they knew about).
While Shauna would spend most of her time there writing new entries on her journal, Melissa would either chat with her (or rather, Melissa would talk and Shauna would listen), or she’d craft something. That’s another thing Shauna noticed about the girl: she loves to create. It only came to her attention after Melissa gifted her the sheath, a perfectly crafted item Shauna carried everywhere.
Out of the corner of her eye, on particularly quiet occasions during their time together, Shauna had caught glimpses of Melissa working on her projects: brow slightly frowned, tip of her tongue slipping out of her mouth as she examined her craft in deep concentration. She looked… cute, Shauna often would find herself thinking, distracted by the girl sitting near her. And only when Melissa would feel eyes on her and look in Shauna’s direction, that the latter would stop staring and go back to writing, frowning and slightly clenching her jaw, while staring intensely at the page, all in effort to seem disinterested on the other.
(Melissa noticed, though, and after the third or fourth time this happened, she’d purposely slow down her movements and take longer before she turned to Shauna, just to enjoy the feeling of being observed).
On a certain evening, Melissa laid on her back on the ground, hat carefully placed to her side, hands on the back of her head, and her legs resting on the log Shauna sat cross-legged on, so they were turned to each other.
Melissa was surprisingly quiet, the only sounds that could be heard were the flow of the water and the intense sound of a pencil quickly moving through paper. Before she knew it, a question slipped out of her mouth, “Do you ever write about me on that?”
The sound stopped abruptly, and when Melissa focused her gaze on Shauna, she found the other was not doing the same, her body almost frozen, head tilted down towards her journal, but her eyes seemed unfocused, like she was measuring her next words with care.
“I write about important stuff.”
“So that’s a yes?” Melissa saw the opportunity and took it, a tiny smirk forming on her lips.
With that, Shauna did look at the other girl, though it only lasted a second, before she went back to her original position. She rotated her shoulders, clearing her throat quietly, “I’ve mentioned you, Melissa”.
If they’d known each other for just a little longer, Melissa would confidently say the older girl was nervous, but she couldn’t even recall seeing Shauna nervous during the time they’d been together, so she couldn’t be precise on her reading the girl's emotions.
If she was, she might have dropped the subject, and that was probably the correct thing to do, but Melissa was anything if not impulsive. So she switched to a sitting position, knees brought to her chest and arms hugging her legs, she looked at Shauna with even more interest than before.
“But like… how?”
Shauna waited a second before sighing, but it wasn’t an annoyed sigh, Melissa noticed, it sounded a bit theatrical. Then, she flipped through several pages, trying to find a specific excerpt.
“…that hat girl followed me to my baby’s grave today…” Shauna read out loud, deliberately skipping a few sentences she didn’t think were necessary going over, “…and we kissed, now what I really wasn’t expecting was-“, she cut herself off abruptly, closing her journal, shoulders tense.
“What?” Melissa asked, confused as to why Shauna had stopped, and still taking in the surprise of actually getting to know anything that was written in those pages.
“It doesn’t fucking matter, you asked me if I ever mentioned you, now you have your answer,” her tone of voice was one everyone in the villages had grown very used to: harsh and angry, a frown present on her face. That was when Melissa knew it was time to stop, even though a small part of her still wished to keep pushing Shauna’s buttons, just to see how far she could get.
But for now, it was enough. The blond girl laid on her back again with a smile on her face, now that she had confirmation that Shauna does care about her to write about her, at least a little bit.
That very night, Melissa laid on a few piled blankets and animal pelts they’d gathered on the floor of their shared hut, as close to a bed as they could get out in the wilderness.
She tried to regulate her breath, slowly coming back from a high given to her by Shauna. The other girl was still on top of her, lips against her chest and neck, biting and marking and lazily licking over bruises left earlier.
Their (almost) nightly ritual was something Melissa would never get enough of, it was the perfect mix of euphoria, caused by the arousal and teenage hormones, and disbelief, because it was hard to believe she was often in bed with Shauna Shipman.
The rustling of sheets beside her brought her attention to Shauna, who was now laying on her side, facing Melissa. They stared into each other’s eyes for a couple seconds, and Melissa knew exactly what was going to happen.
“Turn around,” Shauna whispered quietly.
Melissa did so, now facing away from Shauna. Not soon after, she felt the warmth of the other girl’s body against her back, and her arms warping around her waist.
It took Shauna a few weeks of sleeping side by side with Melissa before she was comfortable enough with the idea of cuddling with the girl. Still, she was methodical about it, like Shauna was about most things in her life: she’d always be the big spoon.
That was made clear the first time Shauna held her close before they went to sleep, Melissa could feel how tense she was, noticing the way her hands were stiff and the breath hitting the back of her neck came in short, uneven intervals. For a few other times following that, whenever Melissa tried to turn around she’d be met with a heavy hand from Shauna keeping her in place, when she tried to speak the other girl would shush her.
It’s progressively getting better, though. Shauna seemed to get more relaxed as the nights passed, and it felt as if she was actively seeking those cozy moments with Melissa.
And Melissa couldn’t be happier about it, if anything, she was choosing to believe that she greatly contributed to Shauna being just slightly better overall.
Shauna was getting very used to their routine. In a way, Melissa’s distraction was one of the few good things at this point in her life, and she found herself looking forward to those peaceful moments with the girl, even if they were often filled with yapping.
Right now, though, Melissa was particularly extra fidgety.
Shauna’s knife was annoyingly dull, it was getting to a point it could barely cut through the soft skin of a rabbit. Ideally, she shouldn’t ever let it get to that point, but being out in the wilderness meant the only way to sharpen it was to find a smooth enough stone and pray you wouldn’t spend more than two hours doing the tedious movement of pressing the blade against the stone until it was at least useable.
So now Shauna was stuck doing a task that was a necessity but an absolute pain in the ass to get done, and because of that she wasn’t in the best of moods. And to top it all off, Melissa just wouldn’t sit still. Which was distracting, the bad kind of distracting, the kind that only worsened her mood.
The blond was clearly looking for something, based on the sounds of leaves being shaken and twigs snapping coming from behind her. It got to a point where the incessant noise was enough for Shauna to snap, she turned to face Melissa:
“What are you doing?”, her voice expressed clear annoyance, something Melissa has become quite used to, it’s just rarely directed at her nowadays. The girl made her way to sit beside Shauna with something similar to a proud smile on her face.
Instead of answering right away, she lifted her hands in a hardly noticeable movement towards Shauna, her fists were clenching around… something.
“I just… We’ve been coming here often and I noticed these bushes… They’re pretty full of berries, a-and… how long has it been since we ate berries?”, she opened her hands, revealing a large amount of small, very ripe berries.
Melissa wasn’t exactly wrong, months ago, during winter, they barely had anything to eat, besides all the meat they’d rather forget the origins of. But then, when the lake unfroze, snow on the ground thawed and plants began to grow again causing game to slowly come back, the girls silently decided they’d rather eat regular meat more than anything else. They had, of course, eaten berries during the summer, but, at this point, all the bushes around the village had been picked clean. That’s probably the reason why Melissa was excited about this, and it was during times like this that Shauna (almost) envied the other girl’s ability to get thrilled by such small things.
“Those don’t look like the ones we’ve been eating”, at that, Melissa followed Shauna’s gaze to her own hands. “How can you tell they aren’t poisonous?”
Deep down, Shauna didn’t actually believe what she just said, but at that point, she just wanted to oppose what the other girl was proposing, partly because of her mood and largely due to an involuntary urge to stay away and ignore whatever feelings she definitely had towards the girl.
(It was on times like this, when she was stuck in a particularly bad frame of mind, that Shauna became the most aware about her feelings regarding the hat wearing girl. Her over aggressive attitude in times like this was a great contrast to Melissa’s kind way of treating Shauna, and that almost made it all worse. Because Shauna knew that one day she’d let the bad parts of herself overcome the good ones and she’d eventually hurt the girl.
So yes, the best way to avoid that scenario is to ignore her feelings towards Melissa. And she’ll continue to lie to herself and believe she’s succeeding at it).
“Well…”, Melissa picked one of the berries out of the bunch, holding it in between them as an idea formed in her head. Before Shauna could even react, she put the fruit in her mouth, quickly swallowing it.
“Melissa!”, Shauna exclaimed, hands instinctively reaching for the other girl’s face. Though her panic quickly dissipated when she noticed Melissa’s muffled laugh which came from her closed mouth, causing a little bit of juice to slip out. Shauna should have found that disgusting, but all she did was find herself fixated on Melissa's lips, now tainted slightly red.
“It tastes amazing!” Melissa picked another berry, holding it up to Shauna’s mouth, mimicking her prior movement, “Here”.
Shauna knew she should probably not eat it and stick to what she said before, or at the very least she should take the thing with her own hands. But something about the look in Melissa’s eyes made her reconsider, staring deep into her eyes, Shauna slowly opened her mouth and took the berry out of her fingers, all while never breaking eye contact. At that, she could hear Melissa suck in a breath, then her eyes fixated on Shauna’s mouth.
Shauna decided to ditch the knife sharpening process all together, mindlessly securing it back in its proper place inside the sheath and tossing the stone aside, this berry thing Melissa started much more interesting.
It was then her turn to hold a berry in between them and take it to Melissa’s lips, silently waiting for her to eat it. The latter did so with a pleased expression on her face. Then, they continued to share the food, alternating between whose turn it was to eat.
By the time they were done, both girls sat still, slightly turned to each other, just enjoying the silence for a couple seconds, that was until Shauna noticed something.
“You have something on your…”, she made a move to touch Melissa’s chin, “Here, let me…”, the little bit of berry juice that had made its way to Melissa’s chin earlier had turned into an actual small red spot on her face, just below her lip. How it’d gotten to that point, Shauna wasn’t sure, at some point, she might have pressed a berry a little bit too hard against the girl’s lips and it could have ripped and spilled.
Shauna tried to clean it up with her hand, only to notice her thumb was also stained, and she was making the situation worse. Before she could think better of it, Shauna held Melissa’s face by the jaw, lightly pulling her face towards her own, and licked the stain. She heard the shocked sound that escaped the girl's mouth, and that only incentivised Shauna to go further, bringing her lips up towards Melissa’s and finally sealing the space between them.
Their kiss deepened quickly, turning just a little more breathless. Melissa brought her hand to Shauna’s cheeks, no doubt stained them red as well, since she was sure Melissa’s hands were just as stained as hers. Shauna’s hands found Melissa’s waist and she pulled the girl closer, trying to feel as much of her as she could. Melissa broke their kiss only to climb on Shauna’s lap and connect their lips again.
Melissa tasted so sweet, sweet like ripe berries, which brought an involuntary smile to her face, and Shauna could not recall the last time she felt like this with someone.
That felt new to her. They had, of course kissed and made out and done so, so much more than that. But still, that felt different, because they were out in the open, not confined to the safety of the darkness inside their hut. Even though she knew no one would actually see them on this spot, it still felt weird to be so… public about it. Shauna made it clear to Melissa that she’d rather avoid showing any kind of affection in public, and that their first kiss would be the last time they had done anything under the broad daylight.
But right now, just having Melissa so close to her, and being able to take her as a whole, observing every detail of the girl now sitting on her lap, was seemingly enough to shut any concerns Shauna might have about exactly what they were doing and where.
Even her mood was undoubtedly getting better, the tension of the day slowly fading away as all Shauna could think was about Melissa’s lips on her, Melissa’s soft skin under her hands, Melissa, Melissa, Melissa…
Later, they walked side by side back to the village, both of them with red stained lips and hands. Melissa had this dumb smile on her face, she looked like she’d just accomplished something and couldn’t actually believe it. She turned her head to her side, now staring at Shauna, who had her usual expression on, tight lips and a sharp gaze.
If anyone had come face to face with Shauna right now, they’d be quick to assume she was pissed about something, or at least very much annoyed. But Melissa would like to believe she knew Shauna better than any other person in the village, so she could tell by the way her shoulders weren’t tense or the softness of her steps that Shauna wasn’t in her usual mood.
And just to prove a point to no one but herself, Melissa reached to Shauna’s hand and interlaced their fingers, only to be met with a soft squeeze from the girl. Melissa’s smile grew even wider.
Back inside their hut, Shauna almost immediately began to tiredly remove a few extra pieces of her clothing to get more comfortable to go to bed: her flannel, her sheath, her shoes and socks.
It wasn’t late enough for them to go to bed, it wasn’t dark yet, though the sun would soon set. But both girls were tired, and they knew they didn’t have the energy to do anything else today.
Shauna laid down on their bed, letting out a satisfied breath, as if this is what she’d been craving for a long time. Then she turned her attention to Melissa, who was still standing, now with a different shirt and without her hat.
“Come here”, Shauna said softly as she mentioned with her head for Melissa to get closer.
Melissa did what she was told, half expecting what was going to happen. She laid on her stomach between Shauna’s legs, head resting comfortably on her belly. Seconds later, she felt Shauna’s fingers on her hair, lazily interlacing them between Melissa’s golden locks.
That was a somewhat recent addition to the list of things Shauna likes to do when she’s alone with Mel: playing with her hair. Shauna could spend hours just twisting a few locks of hair around on her fingers.
It was at times like that Melissa felt she was in heaven. Shauna’s repeated movement was almost therapeutic, and it’d quickly make her fall asleep.
This time though, she noticed Shauna’s hand on her hair slowly coming to stop, she carefully turned her gaze upward only to notice Shauna had fallen asleep, eyes closed and she was letting out steady, regulated breaths.
She looked as relaxed as Melissa felt. And the latter wasn’t far from falling asleep as well. However, before Melissa could fully shut down, something caught her attention: resting against the wall of the hut, just inches away from her, was Shauna’s journal. If she just stretched her arm a little bit, she could grab the item and have a closer look at the inside of Shauna’s head.
It was wrong, in a way, Melissa knew that, and doing so could change their relationship drastically. But she shouldn’t risk it, but she was curious and an idea formed in the back of her head.
Many days later, it was late at night, and Melissa couldn’t sleep, that would usually happen when she put her mind to something and didn’t get it done quickly. Thoughts bounced around her head with a plan to do something she might regret.
She carefully removed Shauna’s arm from around her waist, detaching herself from the girl. Luckily, Shauna barely noticed the change, still deep in sleep.
The hardest part was done, now for the second hardest:
With shaky hands, Melissa reached for the wall behind Shauna where her journal sat. She made an effort to be as quiet as possible, moving very cautiously.
She grabbed the journal and stood up, hiding it beneath her clothes. She made her way to the hut’s entrance, looking over her shoulder and double checking to make sure Shauna didn’t wake up. She didn’t.
Melissa found herself walking at a fast pace towards where they kept their makeshift candles, grabbing one and heading to the fire. She gave Britt, who was charged with fire watching tonight, an awkward nod as she lit her own candle and made her way out of the village.
She shored against a tree not too far away, sitting down on the ground. She tried her best to balance the candle in one hand and the journal on the other. Melissa was, unfortunately, very aware of how clumsy she was, and there was a non zero chance she would just accidentally set the thing on fire.
Melissa chuckled at her own thought, if that truly happened, she’d rather be burned alive than face whatever Shauna would become if she ever found out her journal had turned to ashes.
Melissa flipped through the pages, deliberately skipping over most entries, after all, she just wanted to know Shauna’s thoughts about her, not anything else.
(At least that’s what she told herself, just to make herself believe that what she was doing wasn’t that bad).
She found the excerpt Shauna read to her days prior: ”…we kissed, now what I really wasn’t expecting was just how much I liked it. It felt refreshing and new, it filled me with a rush I haven’t felt in a long, long time.”
Melissa felt her face getting hotter while reading that, she could have guessed Shauna liked it by just how intensely she’d returned her kiss, but having a confirmation only made it better.
She continued to flip through pages, looking for her own name.
“…Melissa gave me a sheath, one she crafted herself, a very well made one. It was like she could read my mind, I needed one of these…”, “…carrying the knife around in my pocket was a pain in the ass…”
Melissa couldn't help but feel proud of her ability to read Shauna and figure out what she needed. After helping the girl with her butchering many times, she noticed how awkwardly the knife would hang from Shauna’s back pocket after being used, and how much she would rather have it always with her than by the butcher’s table or at her hut.
“She’s been following me around, but it doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would, I’ve noticed she’s still a bit nervous around me, or maybe it’s just the way she is always. It’s kind of cute”.
Melissa was surely given a lot of entries, much more than she was expecting.
“…Melissa didn’t even hesitate to cut Ben’s ankle, and I can’t even describe the look she gave me after, her hands were covered in blood and Ben was screaming loudly, still, Melissa smiled at me, it was truly a memorable moment, that girl is much more than I thought…”
Melissa tried to erase that night from her mind, or at least, the bad parts of it. She’d never want to forget the night Shauna took her into her hut then took her virginity, even though it was all to the sound of a man screaming in pain.
“…now that we’re sharing this hut, my relationship with Mel feels actually real…”, “… I think I’ve forgotten just how much I missed sleeping with someone to hold, and Melissa is perfect for it. I like her so much and having her there makes me feel safe and warm, now I don’t ever want to have to sleep alone again…”
Like. Melissa’s heart skipped a beat as she read that, this was such a different perspective from what Shauna actually let her know when they talked.
“She talks a lot, and I actually love to listen to her, there’s something about her excited tone that makes everything seem way more interesting. She’s mentioned her life before the crash a lot. She has five brothers; she’s broken her arm while trying to do tricks with her brother’s skateboard; she still wants to learn how to skateboard, for some reason. She hates math and loves history…”, “…she talks about her future too, as if at some point we’ll make it out of this place. She wants to live in a nice house, two dogs and a kid. A girl, she’s even picked the name for her. Lilah…”
Melissa was shocked to learn Shauna actually listened to everything she said, not only that, but she deemed it important enough to write down in her journal. It made Melissa’s heart flutter in her chest.
“…its fucking scary and I try not to think about too much… Melissa is cute, and beautiful and almost too perfect for me. Sometimes I try to be harsh with her, in an effort to push her away, but it doesn’t work…”, “…I know some day I’ll fuck this up like I did in the past, just like I always do with people I love. But, for now, I just want to hold her close and hope that day is years ahead…”
She knew it was time to stop, Melissa read too much, and the mention of the word “love” had made her freeze for a bit. Now she felt she was getting into dangerous territory.
She made her way back to their hut. Luckily, Shauna was still in deep sleep, barely moving an inch. Melissa placed the journal in the exact same spot it was before, and laid beside Shauna.
Thoughts about what she read wouldn’t stop flowing quickly in her mind. Shauna actually liked her.
Shauna loved her.
Shauna was scared she’d lose her.
Melissa felt Shauna instinctively reach out to her in her sleep, an arm warping around her waist. The blond grabbed it, interlacing their fingers and giving her hand a light squeeze.
Melissa decided then she’d try her best to make sure it would never happen.