Shiver

Preface

Long, freckled legs are trembling as the woman hides in the shadows of her closet. She's eight months pregnant, it's hard to move and she tastes blood where the boy beside her clutches her mouth shut- desperately trying to keep them silent.

She wants to cry- but he says they'll smell it- or hear it, if they don't find a way out of the tiny trailer soon.

The people outside, one woman and two men, are tumbling out laundry hampers as if she was hiding beneath a pile of clothes. One of them drops to the ground, cheek aligned with the wooden floor as he searched beneath the full sized mattress- she wouldn't have been able to fit underneath it, she'd already tried.

They can't hear them- at least, not now- not yet.

"Thanos?" She whispers, turning to stare into the eyes of the man- the love of her life. She had dug him out of the garbage, dragged him into her apartment three states away from where they are now, and nursed him back to health. At the time, though- she had believed him to be an abused, over-sized mutt mix.

Thanos watches her, dark eyes transfixed onto her- they never strayed long whenever she was in his presence.

"Rowena," his voice practically runs into her skin- leaving goosebumps as proof that this man has been here- that Rowena hasn't imagined the last year of her life. "Rowena, they're going to hear us soon."

They will. The whistle Rowena had blown was now in the backyard- or, at least, what passed off as a backyard- a huge molt of mud and a fire pit that Thanos would light on summer nights. The ear damager only lasts a few minutes for beasts like them- and even if this feels like an entire lifetime- Rowena knows her last few seconds are winding down.

"I love you," she whispers- her voice is thick, and her hazel eyes are blurry from tears because this is it. She knows one of them won't be breathing by the end of the hour- and she knows Thanos will die before it's her. "I love you so much," the words sting in her throat- because... because it's goodbye.

It was the impending goodbye that has been looming over their heads since the first time they met- it was the goodbye that fate had planned long before Rowena understood fate existed.

Thanos's hands, those scarred, calloused fingers of his, are trembling over her cheeks, pushing away the long trails of salty tears. His lips are trembling, and his thick eyebrows are crinkled together- lines forming on his forehead like a secret language Rowena hadn't known existed.

He's scared.

He's fucking terrified, and he doesn't want to die. He whispered it into her hair sometimes, when he thought she was asleep. Thanos would bring his hand to her stomach, his expression almost stoic as he listened to the two, tiny, fluttering heartbeats safely tucked inside Rowena. He promised them, Rowena and their children, that as long as he was around- nothing in this world would have the capacity to hurt them.

And he fucking hated breaking promises.

"Rowena," he whispers. Her name is strangled with thick emotion, and the hands on her cheeks tighten as her own fingers wrap around his wrist to steady his touch. "Run when I open this door," he doesn't say he loves her. He doesn't need to. Not in the way his lips hover close to hers, and his eyes stare straight into hers- terrified of death because he's leaving her here. "Run and don't look back."

Rowena feels a hot, fresh tear roll down her cheek, and she can feel her ruddy red cheeks burn with heat from crying. "Didn't you tell me never to run from wolves?"

They both laugh, watery and stuffed with involuntarily snot. Thanos kisses her, and for a moment she doesn't taste the blood in his mouth but the sweet tang of Thanos- the wild tangible on his tongue as their lips parted like petals to slot together in a less-than-perfect last kiss.

"You were always too smart for me," Thanos breathes into Rowena's mouth.

She feels his hand leak onto her stomach, caught on the curve of the swollen, stretched skin. His chest rises as he takes in one last shaking breath, trying to regain composure before he finally changes his attention to the closet door.

His hand presses on the cheap wood, stained with wet blood and old dirt, before the tiny closet is flooded with fluorescent lights.