Heather wakes to the smell of cooking and a pulsing mess of pain. The skin on her shoulders, her neck, her throat feels like one lurid smear, as if a half-full bucket of liquid bruise has been thrown over her head. Her hips ache; for the reason you’d expect, sure, but checking under the sheets reveals fingerprints, blue-green and blooming, dug deep into the flesh. What chest she has is a purple mess of love bites. She sits up, feels the scratches stretch along her back, winces.
“Mornin’, doe.” Red occupies the trailer’s kitchenette, working a panful of eggs and mushrooms, her eartips brushing against the ceiling. Though Red doesn’t look her way, Heather still feels an urge to cover herself, as if there’s anything she hasn’t seen and marked already.
“Um. Yeah.” It’s polite of her not to cook bacon, Heather thinks, under the circumstances. “Thanks.”
Red pauses, pan half-tilted, and cocks an eye at her. “Mm?”
“For last night, I mean. It was.” Heather can’t quite meet her gaze. God. Red’s going to think she’s such a virgin. “Really good.”
“Mm.”
Quiet resumes, broken only by small sounds: the scrape and clatter of the frying pan, the hiss of the stove, Red half-singing something under her breath. Somewhere outside there are birds. Heather curls up in the blankets, takes a deep lungful of residual butch-smell, and drowily considers going back to sleep.
A few minutes later, a plateful of mushroom omelette drops into her lap, starting her out of her doze. “Eat,” Red says.
“Oh.” Heather smiles apologetically, pushing herself up on an elbow. “Thanks, but. I’m not hungry.”
“And I’m not asking.”
“... What, are you fattening me up or something?”
It’s a stupid, sulky thing to say, and Heather regrets it as soon as it’s out there. Especially since Red, six-foot-something Red, looks all the way down at her and says through a mouth that could crack Heather’s skull and lick out the contents, “Yes.”
“Um.” Heather’s bruised, tapped-out body betrays her by getting a little hard. “Uh-”
“I know your type, deer girl. Year, year on a half on estrogen and you feel like shit ‘cause you ain’t growing a figure cause you don’t fuckin’ eat. You wanna do this again sometime?”
“Yeah- I mean, yeah, b-but–” Heather scrambles after the swerve in topic, forgets not to sound too eager because god, she really, really does.
“Then do me a favour and put some fucking meat on your bones.”
