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Tracker wakes up smelling blood.
It’s Fig’s. Pulled awake, it’s all she can think. It’s Fig’s blood and she hates that she knows what it smells like.
Kristen’s asleep next to her, heavy and warm with an arm thrown around her waist. Some small part of Tracker wants to ignore it, the smell, to just stay there in her partner's arms and pretend it’s not real. But she can’t, she can’t because it’s 3am and all she can smell is Fig, bleeding somewhere in the apartment.
Pulling Kristen’s arm off of her, Tracker crawls out of bed, pressing her toes into the soft carpet to pop them. She shivers. Her shirt is… somewhere. Fig sleeping over means sex, which means there are too many pieces of clothing flung around the room.
Grabbing the closest thing resembling a shirt off the ground, Tracker pulls a hoodie over her head. It smells like Gorgug. Not enough to mask the smell of Fig, bleeding, iron and body and not sulfur, nothing close to sulfur, but the ash that it burns off of it.
It’s 3am and Tracker is sitting outside the bathroom door in a too big hoodie. She hasn’t checked if it’s locked. Fig is in there, she can see the light shining under the door, hear her breathing, unsteady in the rhythm of a sob, smell her blood, bright in a way that means fresh.
“Fig?” Tracker asks, head leaned against the door.
Her breath stutter stops. A deep inhale, a shaky release. “Yeah?”
“Can I come in?”
Tracker hears her shuffle, smells blood and sweat and night old sex. Some part of her expects a wave of blood to crash out the door as soon as it’s opened, roiling and all encompassing, but the door opens and it’s Fig. Just Fig.
Her eyes are puffy and her hair is ratted in a half attempt of a braid at the back of her neck. There is blood, but it's small, pooling in dotted lines on top of her thighs. Tracker’s seen worse. Seen her near dead. That doesn’t stop the pit in her stomach from forming, roiling and cruel.
Crawling into the bathroom, too tired to stand, Tracker sits herself beside Fig. Their backs press to the side of the tub, arms press together. Fig is shivering. It’s not that cold, but she’s not wearing pants, legs bare against the cool tile, the thin bathmat. Her blood has dripped onto it, red on light blue terrycloth.
Fig’s holding the offending tool loose in her right hand, the razor blade small in the bathroom's white light. It’s Tracker’s, or it was back in the brief period of time when she used to shave for work. Before now she forgot she even had the pack of blades. She wonders how Fig found it in the first place. Wonders why she can’t find in herself to be upset beyond a hollow guilt.
Fingers careful, she pulls the razor from Fig’s shaking hand, wrapping the bloody piece of metal in toilet paper before setting it in the trash.
A spot of blood has seeped through the white paper, bright and out of place in the wicker trashbin. Jawbone found it at an estate sale, a housewarming present when they first got the apartment in Bastion, the wicker painted a soft blue with a bouquet painted on the front. Look at us now, JB.
Fig’s hand is sitting limp and open beside her. Tracker takes it. Her own hands are clammy cold, Fig’s just a little sticky with blood. It’s kinda gross. Fig squeezes her hand back.
It’s rude to stare, but Tracker finds her eyes trained on the crisscross of lines on Fig’s thighs. She’s well acquainted with scar tissue, maybe that much better acquainted with Fig’s thighs, having spent a good bit of time the last few years between them. She’s not sure when her partner’s best friend became… something to her.
They aren’t good with labels.
She’s slept with Fig more than anyone else besides Kristen. She lives with them half the time when she’s not in Hell. Staring at the drying over blood on Fig’s thighs and the interlocking pink lines on red skin she kissed the night before, Tracker knows she doesn’t love Fig the way Kristen does.
She loves her… in a different way. Her love for Fig is sex and worry and holding her hand in the bathroom at 3am. Maybe that’s enough. Tonight it has to be enough.
Fig’s head thumps onto her shoulder, horns just missing her cheek. Tracker wants to heal the cuts, let the skin sew itself back together, but whether or not Fig will let her rocks back and forth in her head.
“Sorry,” Fig mumbles, sound bouncing off of the tiles.
Tracker shakes her head, tries to hum and has to swallow a lump in her throat. She wishes she could feel anything but tired. Swallows around the odd gladness that she found Fig instead of Kristen.
Kris… Kristen dies and comes back.
Tracker has not died. She hasn’t died, but she knows if she did, she wouldn’t be strong enough to ask Galicaea to come back. The soul must want to return to the body. Kristen dies and comes back. Over and over again, she dies and asks for life again. She is called, and she answers time in memorial.
If Kristen found Fig tonight… Tracker doesn’t pretend to know. She’s only glad she found her instead.
“Have you died before?” Tracker asks, realizing she doesn’t know.
Fig shakes her head against her shoulder. Her horn digs into the cotton of Tracker’s t-shirt. “Have you?”
Tracker huffs out a laugh. “No.”
“That’s good. Kristen’s got enough for the both of us,” Fig says. It’s maybe supposed to be a joke, but the humor is lost in the cold air of the bathroom.
Blood tacky fingers trace against Tracker’s palm, tracing the scar tissue built up under callus. A reminder that Tracker knows what it is to cut and bleed over and over again.
If Kristen had found her, or Sandra Lynn, or the dozen others who care so deeply for Fig, they might ask why. Tracker only holds her, lets Fig call her a hypocrite in the way she holds her hand, and wonders if she can convince her to heal cut flesh. Tries to think of a way to heal her without spilling more blood.
“You know the longest I was clean for?” Fig asks, pulling her head up to look at Tracker.
“Hmm?”
“A year and half. I made it most of the way through freshman year and then some of sophomore.”
“I guess meeting the Bad Kids helped?” Tracker guesses, trying not to think what it means if that’s true.
Fig snorts, a funny, ugly sound. Her nose crinkles as she looks at Tracker, then looks down. She has sleep in the corners of her eyes. “Ugh, I wish. I was just… destructive in other ways, I guess.”
Freshman year. The year she met Kristen, and Fig was living in Strongtower down the hall with Gilear. There was a lot going on, only half of which Tracker actually remembers, but Fig… was in a band, smoking cloves, doing the usual wrap-around Tracker herself had done in her own rebellious phase. Sneaking out, kissing guys–
Oh.
Oh. Tracker forgot about Fig’s bizarre St. Owens phase. It’s not like she really knew all that much, just the tidbits she heard from Kristen, the gnawing worry in her voice when she told her Fig was off kissing doctors.
It’s only looking back at it, an adult herself, that she realizes the severity of the situation. 14 year old kid playing pretend by making out with doctors double or triple her age.
“Fuck, Fig,” Tracker says.
She shrugs with a funny smile, and Tracker watches as she shifts, her mask trying to go back up. She knows she’s caught, and Fig’s best defense has always been to hide under her persona. “Had to get my kisses in, you know?”
Tracker kisses her.
It’s rough and awkward, and Fig’s mouth tastes like tears, but it’s all Tracker can think to do. There is nowhere to hide with her lips pressed against hers.
Fig reacts fast, leaning in and kissing her back. The hand not holding Tracker’s comes up to cradle her face, half dried blood smearing across her cheek. She tries to crawl onto Tracker’s lap but she doesn’t let her, shifting to lean over her instead.
The kiss drifts from Fig’s mouth to her cheeks, down her neck till Fig is letting out shaky breaths in the quiet of the bathroom. As she drifts lower, Tracker lets her canines grow longer, lets saliva fill her too full mouth and prays to her goddess, worship in every press of her lips.
Bowing her head over Fig’s thighs, Tracker lets herself kiss scabbed over wounds. She can feel Fig shaking under her. Galicaea is a goddess of sacrifice, healing coming from the spilling of blood. The scars on the palms of her hands ache. There will be no more blood spilled tonight.
Her tongue swipes gentle over razor cuts, the skin knitting closed under blessed humor. Canines careful over sensitive skin, she gives into the methodical task of laving her partner’s thighs in healing.
It’s only after all the cuts are healed, thighs left in various shades of pink and red that Tracker lifts her head.
Fresh tears are rolling down Fig’s cheeks. Tracker resists the urge to lick them off her skin. Closer to her wolf form it’s harder to quiet the animal in her chest that wants to hold her people so close to her, to snarl and snap at first sight of danger. The wolf does not know that the danger lies in the very girl she’s holding.
There is no fixing this tonight, but she can heal her, can hold her close, hope she knows she’s there.
A washcloth run in warm water works in place of a bath, the both of them too tired. Fig is still shivering, skin clean and goose bumped and pressed warm against Tracker’s.
She leaves the wrung out cloth beside the sink, the only evidence of the night being its slight pink hue and the splotch of blood on the bathroom rug. It’ll rust by the morning. She wonders if Kristen will notice it among the dots of bleach and streaks of hair dye that mark the poor rug.
Fig helps her stand, her knees popping too loud. Her joints ache and groan to be something else, her teeth still too big.
“You should brush your teeth,” Fig tells her. She’s holding her hand.
Tracker furrows her brow, the blood in her mouth too natural. Wolves don’t brush their teeth.
One handed, Fig grabs their tooth brushes, Tracker’s electric and Fig’s spare that’s found its home beside Kristen’s. She wets the bristles of hers first, squeezing a little too much toothpaste on each brush before wetting Tracker’s and handing it to her.
They brush their teeth holding hands, Tracker watching as Fig's eyes avoid the mirror. She lets herself look at Fig as she tries to ignore the texture of bristles in her mouth.
There are bags under her eyes, smudged makeup making them more pronounced. Her hair needs to be taken down, brushed out. If she sticks around long enough in the morning Tracker will ask to rebraid it. She’s missed braiding. Kristen’s hair is too short and her shoulders have been hurting too much lately to braid her own.
Tracker knows they aren’t going to talk about this.
Fig spits in the sink, Tracker following suit. The toothpaste has foamed pink.
“Hey,” Tracker says.
“Hmm?”
“Next time you want to like, implode and kiss an old guy?” Tracker starts, words forming odd in her too wide mouth, “you can just come kiss me. I’m old.”
Fig snorts, taking the bait easily. “You’re like, two years older than me.”
“Yeah but it counts. I’m great at disappointing parents. Kissing me’s super self-destructive.”
“My mom likes you.”
It’s Tracker’s turn to laugh. “Sandra Lynn tolerates me at best.”
“She likes you more than Kristen?” Fig offers.
“Babe, the bar is on the floor.”
Fig shakes her head. “You–you’re good. You’re a good thing. Not like them. This. You’re good.”
Tracker pouts to hide the warmth blooming in her face. “I don’t get your old man kisses? Boo.”
Minty lips are pressed soft against hers. There is no rush, only Fig pressed against her, arm wrapping around her waist.
“Wanna go to bed?” Tracker asks.
Fig nods.
She lets Fig crawl in first, tucking her between herself and Kristen. It’s only as they readjust the sheets that Kristen stirs.
“Wassup?” she asks, throwing an arm around Fig to pull her onto her chest.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep,” Tracker murmurs, tucking herself up against Fig’s other side.
“Love you,” Kristen says.
They both echo her in response, and the animal in Tracker’s chest calms enough to drift asleep. There is danger here, but holding them in her arms it is quelled.