Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jackie’s pregnant, and she’s nowhere close to a hospital. Some of the girls suspect that she won’t make it. They think she’ll die during the birth or miscarriage. Jackie’s tempted to grab a coat hanger and do things the old fashioned way. She’d give up a lot not to have this life form growing in her stomach. But Jackie’s also known to be impulsive and jumps quick to rash decisions, meaning Taissa had to grip her by the hand and tell her that her thought process is ludicrous. Whatever. Jackie would find a way to cope. She always did.

It was one stupid fucking mistake one night. She didn’t know what she was getting into when she went for a drive after the party with Shauna. They dropped Jeff home first and the two girls got to have a moment of intimacy. They both had too much to drink. They both were being tormented by thoughts they were ruminating over. Jackie doesn’t even want to replay the memory. She’s sure Jeff would call her a whore if he found out. Jackie’s not even certain that she agrees with that title, but she does feel disgusting about it.

Jeff gave her everything, or so she believed. They were meant to be the highschool golden couple. Both of them should’ve joined Rutgers and attended sorority and frat parties. She should be chugging beer alongside him, cause that’s what a popular girl does with her boyfriend in college right?

Sometimes Jackie questions if she even loves the scoundrel. Does she really adore him that bad? Or is he a necessary accessory so she can be perceived as ‘normal?’ Perceived. It was all about perception from the outside. Jackie acted like she had an audience 24/7 watching her and criticizing her for every little mishap or oddity. She lived in the spotlight and her friends were apart of the shadow. She had to be molded into perfection for the public eye. Jackie was no celebrity, perhaps not even a local one. But she lived her life like the paparazzi could capture one wrong or abnormal move she made.

Was Jeff even a perfect guy? Or was Jackie attempting to appease her own worries? She was fed up with the constant questions. Jackie wanted some fucking answers regarding her identity.

“Why do you look so upset?” Shauna inquires, stepping next to Jackie. The latter is sitting on the grass, hugging her knees and looking at the ground with a solemn expression. She’s contemplating, again. Jackie can’t stop contemplating. Somebody should take her out back and shoot her.

“I feel sick,” Jackie mumbles. “Stomach hurts. I feel nauseous.”

“I know it’s not easy for you out here,” Shauna says. “But once we get rescued, things won’t be so difficult. We might even be able to have you give birth at the hospital.”

“Are we really getting out of here, Shauna?” Jackie looks up at her ‘friend.’ Friend doesn’t feel right as a classification anymore. She’s not sure what to call Shauna. But lover doesn’t sound right on her tongue or in her brain either.

“That’s not even a question, Jax. Of course we are. But, if we’re gonna stay here, you have to stay in tip top shape and help out.”

“Shauna, I’m literally pregnant. Give me a break.”

“Not like you’d help out anyways even if you weren’t.”

Jackie stands up. Now she’s fuming.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you were complaining about getting wood or preparing food or doing anything outdoorsy before you even found out you were pregnant.”

“Well scuse me for wanting you to skin the rabbit.” Jackie rolls her eyes. “I thought you’d like being the man of the house.”

“Okay, now what are you implying with that? Don’t tell me you’re comparing me to him again.”

Him. Jeff. Shauna always got worked up when the conversation began to revolve around him.

“Of course not. He’s not even here right now. Why should I talk about him?”

“I know you miss him, Jackie.”

Shauna grabs a knife from her flannel pocket and jams it into the tree.

“You don’t know that for sure, Shauna. You’re just guessing.”

“I fucking know how you are,” Shauna grumbles. “You’ve probably been dreaming of that scumbag while you fucking sleep, instead of dreaming about me. The one who gave you your goddamn kid.”

“Can you keep it down?” Jackie whispers. “I don’t want the others to hear. They don’t know you yet.”

“Frankly I don’t give a fuck if they find out anymore.” Shauna bangs on the tree and jams her knife deeper past the bark. “I want people to know what I did to you. I want people to know that he’s not yours anymore. He never was.”

Jackie exhales. Here she fucking goes again. She swears they’ve had this argument about 500 times but Shauna can’t seem to move past the fact that Jackie and Jeff are a couple.

“You make it sound like he owned me,” Jackie groans. “I’m still my own person, even when I was with him.”

“Were you though, Jax?” Shauna raises an eyebrow. “Cause last time I checked, there would constantly be a cancellation everytime I wanted to make weekend plans because you had to dedicate time to your dumb boyfriend.”

“Am I supposed to ignore him forever? He’s my boyfriend. Of course I gotta give him attention, y’know?”

“I wish you did ignore him forever,” Shauna growls. “I wish you never fucking met him.”

“Well, I did. And I can’t exactly go back in time, you know? What do you want me to do, Shipman? Get a time machine? Go back to the 1800s?”

“You’re always so dramatic.”

“I’m just trying to see what you want from me, since I can’t just cast a magic spell to make Jeff dissipate.”

Shauna steps closer, dropping her hands to her sides and staring at Jackie with a feral glint in her eyes.

“Jax.”

“Shauna.”

“Do you love him?”

Jackie gulps. She feels like either answer she picks is going to send her to the doghouse. If she says yes, Shauna’s obviously going to reprimand her and may even kick her ass. But, if she says no, she runs the risk of Shauna believing she’s fibbing. There’s no correct answer. There’s no answer that won’t cause Shauna to lose her composure. Her composure’s already fading as is.

Jackie doesn’t want Shauna to be her executioner. She’d hate to have to walk on eggshells around the girl who bred her, the father to her soon-to-be child. She doesn’t wish to be between the top of Shauna’s blade or her hand on Jackie’s throat. But, leaving isn’t an option for tranquility either because Jackie knows she’s just as dependent on Shauna, just as Shauna’s dependent on her.

It’s a yes or no question. There’s no what ifs or buts. Jackie has to answer directly.

“It’s a simple question, Jackie. Yes or no?”

Jackie chooses to dodge the question altogether.

“You’re not going to like whatever answer I pick anyways.”

Shauna huffs, hands balling into fists. She digs her nails so deep into her skin that she nearly draws drops of blood. Jackie steps backwards until her back hits another tree, the one lacking a knife inside it.

Like a prophecy foretold, Shauna snatches Jackie by the throat. She slams her into the tree, making the branches shiver. Some of the leaves fall slowly onto the grass, painting the forest floor.

“I don’t want you to hate me, Shauna.” Jackie sniffs. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“You’re insane if you think I’m leaving,” Shauna growls. “In his hands? In his fucking hands? To leave you in Jeff’s care?”

“I don’t want you to leave, Shauna. P-Please, don’t leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You better learn that sooner or later.”

“Shauna, don’t act like I want you to leave. I-I don’t…I don’t know what I’ll do if he found out.”

“So it all comes back to him,” Shauna chuckles sarcastically. “It’s all about him in the fucking end, isn’t it?”

“It’s not. S-Shauna, it’s not.”

“It is. You love him more than me. Even after everything we’ve been through, you still love him more than me. We’ve known each other since goddamn elementary school. You met him in senior year. And you still care about him more than me.”

“That’s not true,” Jackie defends. “You know that’s not true. He’s—he’s not as important.”

“He’s temporary is what he fucking is. I’m getting rid of him. As soon as we get back to civilization, I’m making sure this bastard never steps near our family. Or you. Again.”

“Shauna, it’s not like that. Why can’t I care about you both? I-I don’t want anything bad to happen to Jeff, but we’re still friends!”

“Friends!?” Shauna snaps. “You don’t even have the heart to stop calling us friends!? I got a baby in your damn womb and you can’t stop calling us friends. Is this all we are? Is this what I am to you?”

“You know what I mean. You do. Please, I don’t wanna fight.”

“Tell me you love me more than him.” Shauna tightens her grip around Jackie’s throat. “Say it. Say that you love me more than him.”

“We’re not doing this right now.”

“I need to hear you say it, Jackie. I need to hear you say how much better I am than him. Admit it. Admit that it felt better when my cock was inside you compared to his.”

Jackie’s eyes pop open in shock. Her jaw goes slack and her palms are sweatier than a bodybuilder after working out in the sun for 4 hours.

“You’re not doing this right now, Shauna. I-I…what if I tell the others what you said, huh? What if I go up to Taissa and tell her our little secret? Huh? Then what?”

“Go ahead,” Shauna says nonchalantly with a smirk on her lips. “Let everyone know. The only bothered by it is you.”

“Do you know how bad it looks for me to be known as the ‘teen pregnancy victim?’ Let alone to you?”

“Would it be better if it was Jeff?” Shauna’s tone goes back to being accusatory. “When you moaned my name in the car, was Jeff on your mind?”

He wasn’t. And Jackie knows that all too well.

“N-No…No, I wasn’t.”

Even though Jackie knows that Jeff wasn’t on her mind during the intercourse, she answers like she’s held at gunpoint.

“Why do you keep mentioning him?” Shauna asks, even though Shauna was the one who brought Jeff up as a conversation topic first. As she usually does.

“I don’t care about him as much as you think,” Jackie admits. It’s one of the few times during this conversation where her honesty might be blatant and upfront.

“Do I scare you?” Shauna rests her head on Jackie’s shoulder, whispering into her ear with a voice now of honey instead of molten lava. She withdraws her hand from Jackie’s slightly bruised throat.

Sometimes. But Jackie would still appreciate herself more if she should pick Shauna among thirty other amiable folks. Jeff might be perfection. Some would go so far to say that he’s sculpted like a Greek God. But perhaps Jackie isn’t striving or searching for perfection. Maybe it’s better that Shauna’s unstable, unhinged to extreme lengths, envious to a major fault.

“I wish I could’ve been in your life during all the moments he was there,” Shauna breathes. “Why did you have to shut me out? Why didn’t you pick me first?”

“Maybe the beauty of this is the fact that this was all sort of unplanned.” Jackie shrugs like a dork, hoping to sprinkle some optimism onto the current predicament.

“There’s no beauty in you still being with him, and me not knowing if you’ll leave him when we get back.”

“Will you leave if I stay with him?” What’s the point? She doesn’t even know if she’s got amorous feelings for the fucker anyway. Why must she be so desperate to preserve an image? For what? So she can be the girl that peaked in high school and never recovered from her teenage years?

“You’ve got no obligation to stay with him, no reason to. Is he the father last time I checked?”

“No Shauna,” Jackie responds obediently. “He’s not the father.”

“But I bet you wish he was,” Shauna hisses. “You’d have a reason to get rid of me then. You’d have an excuse to stay with him your whole life and go live that white picket fence lifestyle with your stupid nuclear family and dog.”

To some, that lifestyle sounded more than adequate. But, to Jackie, it makes her stomach churn. And she wants to hurl at the idea of spending her whole life with a man of all people. She’d rather claw her eyes out and eat them for supper.

“Shauna, I’m feeling sick.”

“I am too, makes me nauseous knowing you’d still pick him over me.”

“No Shauna,” Jackie coughs. “I-I mean it. I might throw up.”

“Go duck by a tree,” Shauna says calmly. “If you don’t want the others suspect anything is wrong.”

“Shauna.” Jackie grabs onto Shauna’s arms and clings to her. “Please…please don’t tell anyone. Please. I promise if you don’t tell anyone, I’ll stay with you for as long as you need. I don’t want you to go.”

Jackie will take Shauna’s roses with thorns over Jeff’s bland daisies. She wants the baring of canines and diabolical remarks over Jeff’s cocky grin and combed hair. Shauna could smack Jackie across the face and leave a mark. But Jackie will return home, awaiting someone who isn’t a man. Maybe Jackie could bear to love Jeff earnestly if there was a woman of him out there.

Who is she kidding? Jackie’s confusing herself again like she always does. It’s just the pregnancy worries getting to her. God, she doesn’t even know who she is anymore.

“You shouldn’t worry about Jeff,” Jackie murmurs. “He…he couldn’t even make me cum.”

“Why are you bringing up the fact that you guys had sex around me?”

“He…he didn’t penetrate me. We just…I only sucked his dick, okay? And he didn’t even eat me out. He just like…used his fingers.”

“…I know.” Shauna responds after a pause, staring off into the distance.

“What do you mean? There’s no way you could’ve known. Don’t tell me you were stalking me before we hooked up and you spied on us!”

Now it was Shauna’s turn to tell somebody to relax. How deeply ironic.

“You were tight, Jax. I could feel that you haven’t let anyone inside you before. You were…impossibly tight, like insanely snug around my dick. I was afraid I would break you to be honest.”

“I don’t wanna talk about this right now.” Jackie wipes her forehead and shakes her head.

“Like it or not, it happened. And there’s nothing you can do to reverse it. I’m always gonna be the one who took your virginity. I’m always going to be your first dick.”

Jackie chews on her lower lip. She paces back and forth, wondering why the hell she still holds affection for Shauna. But Shauna restricts her further movements by pinning Jackie up against the tree, her chapped lips hovering above Jackie’s.

Jackie’s throat is dry and the world is spinning around her. There’s a headache that won’t stop punching at her forehead and Shauna keeps trying to find an open spot on Jackie’s hips to place her hands. She squirms against the tree, powerless to Shauna’s whims and powerless to the corners of her mind that won’t stop shouting about her relationships with men and how they burden her. With Shauna, despite her yelling and need for control and possession, Jackie’s free. The chains are detached from her arms and fall to the floor, never to strangle her again. Shauna’s hand around her throat felt less constricting than the insistent on living a truth that Jackie remained doubtful about.

“I’m always gonna be better than his dick, aren’t I?” Shauna inquires with a look of pride.

Jackie’s close to hurling.

“Of course you are, Shipman. I…”

“I know.” Shauna pats Jackie’s head. “You’re a little confused. You can’t accept that I’m better than him. Don’t worry. I’ll be sure to remind you in the nights coming up.”

Jackie’s cheeks turn a tint of red.

“And that’s a threat, Jax.”

The vomit’s coming up.

“You were made for me.” Shauna strokes Jackie’s cheek. “You’re mine and nobody else’s. And one day, people are gonna learn that once they look at the way our perfect little life blossoms.”

Jackie pukes on Shauna’s shoes. Life’s never came up more roses.