nobody's found (thoroughbreds | amanda/lily)

[fiachairecht]

nobody's found. thoroughbreds (2017), amanda/lily. after mark's death, amanda and lily take a train trip. 3.9k words, rated m. for scioscribe in multifandomhorrorexchange 2021.

Lily crawls into Amanda's limp arms, and the world expands again.

Now there is the room upstairs, where Mark and all his blood lie spread out over the ergometer. Now there is the room downstairs, where Amanda sleeps with vodka staining her lips and Lily rearranges her, smearing crimson over them both, until it's blurred, where Amanda ends and Lily begins.

It's a small world, and Lily hates it for that. It's not too small for the two of them, though, and Lily doesn't know what to do with that just yet. Embrace, it, probably, but that's not exactly specific.

She lies there in the dark, lets the light from the TV flicker its way across their faces, tracing out some new story on their skin, and considers her options. Their options. Not that Amanda has options beyond what Lily gives her, but. Anyway.

It's a surprise, the way she fits so perfectly into Amanda's arms. Maybe she should've expected this — the plan wouldn't have worked with anyone else, after all, except she didn't really have a plan for this part, not after she told Amanda about her drink and then everything happened anyway. Amanda's Rohypnol-limp and pliant, warm and almost soft.

Lily pulls Amanda's arm around her and Amanda's arm wraps around her. Lily presses open Amanda's mouth and Amanda's mouth falls open. It's perfect.

Lily turns around and reaches up and kisses Amanda, blood metallic and gross and beautiful between their tongues like a promise and Amanda doesn't kiss back. It's—

It's not perfect.

Fuck. 

**

They take a train.

Lily thinks it's not even a decision they mean to make, not really, but there's too much security on planes and cars are too easy to track and Amanda's staring at the picture in the living room saying, what if we just ran, just really really ran like Thoroughbreds and, well, it's the closest thing, isn't it? There was that whole SAT reading comprehension passage on it, the shift from horses to trains.

She does the talking, lets everyone's eyes catch on her Burberry scarf and Balenciaga sunglasses while Amanda stands just behind and to the left of her, waiting, so quiet she's basically invisible. The lady at the ticket counter raises an eyebrow when Lily asks for two tickets on whichever cross-country Amtrak leaves soonest.

"Graduation present to myself," Lily says, tilting her head so her earrings catch the light.

Graduation to murder, she thinks she hears Amanda say, but Amanda wouldn't be stupid enough to say that out loud.

She's right, though, and Lily smiles to herself as she collects the tickets, brushing off the lady's concerns that they've already missed the first two days of sightseeing in New York that the trip offers. New York is for shopping and losers, and they don't want to risk the first and aren't the second.

She loops her arm through Amanda's as they head for the VIP lounge, and it's like being in sixth grade again, but better. Nothing can take Amanda away from her now, not with Mark's blood binding their wrists together, a gruesome kind of superglue that Lily put there because Amanda asked her to. More blood will just make it better.

If Amanda asks for it. Lily's sure she will — sleepy bloody Amanda on the couch was full of questions, was it fun, what did I miss, was it worth it?  And it's such a small step to getting awake scrubbed Amanda to ask the question Lily wants to hear, can we do it again?

Even as she thinks it, Amanda obliges. "So like," she says, voice low under the murmuring chaos of the crowds. "Are we behaving ourselves here? Or is this a 'let's do it again but to someone we've never met so no one suspects us' kind of trip?"

Lily glances over and nearly walks into a pillar, too busy trying to figure out if Amanda's angling for a particular answer. But her face is just as blank as always, like she really doesn't care what they do as long as it's what Lily wants, and maybe that's part of the reason why Lily says, "I mean, what was the point of running if that was really a one-off?"

Amanda doesn't actually smile, of course, but Lily knows she's smiling where it counts, anyway.

In the lounge, they wait. Lily checks their tickets and finds out they've gotten a thirteen day trip, Scenic America by Rail with the Grand Canyon, and she smirks at it. Ending in Los Angeles. Maybe they'll act. Make their own movie, if anyone figures out what they've done before they get there.

"Unlucky thirteen," Amanda says, looking over at the tickets in Lily's lap, and Lily shrugs.

"Unlucky for other people," she says. "That's the, what do they call it in physics? Equal and opposite somethings? We'll be the lucky ones."

Amanda shrugs too, almost like a mirror. "Sure," she says, eyeing the bar across the room. "Do you think they'll card us in here?" She doesn't wait for an answer, just heads over to investigate. Comes back with two gin & tonics and settles in to wait.

Amanda does a lot of waiting, and Lily's starting to get a little annoyed with it, to be honest. Just because Amanda opened up this door for them, just because Lily did the first one, she thinks she gets to just hang out on the threshold forever? She downs half the cocktail in one gulp, sets it back down on the table (on a coaster, she's not an animal) with a thud.

"It's astonishing," Amanda says, glancing over at her, "The way people just leave drinks lying around."

Lily puts a hand over the top of her glass. "I don't." 

"Oh, no, not you," Amanda says. "Him." She jerks her chin over to a man sitting in the corner — had he been there when Amanda went to get the drinks? He looks like Mark, if Mark had ever let his beard go, a businessman and an asshole about it, and Lily hates him on sight. "Do you know that if someone's already a cokehead, it takes remarkably little Vicodin to induce massive cardiac arrest? Like, so little no one would ever know."

Lily watches the man drink, watches Amanda watch her, and her whole body lights up, hungry and violent and so so proud. She wants to kiss her, wants to devour her on the fake-leather-but-nice-fake-leather couch, wants the blood and the knife and everything just like it was in the living room.

But they're in public, so she has to settle for grabbing Amanda's hand instead, can only rest her head on Amanda's shoulder and watch.

It's fast and quiet and he slumps down on his table next to the empty glass, his had still curled around it. Just a tired no-name man who's never going to wake up again, because of them. It's almost perfect. A little too anticlimactic.

"I didn't know it could be like that," she murmurs into Amanda's neck. "Fast."

"I mean, it doesn't have to be," Amanda says, and her voice is still flat, like this didn't matter to her at all, and Lily just feels so, so sorry for her. "But it's good to know it can. Just for, like, insurance." 

Lily presses herself into the crook of Amanda's neck and laughs. "Okay. But next time, let's do it together. And really, really slow."

**

Once they're on the train, the world shrinks down again, just big enough for the two of them. Amanda draws the curtains over the window, Lily locks the door and tosses the bag with all their clothes on the floor, and it feels — fun.

The world's most illicit sleepover, and Lily giggles to herself, flopping down on the bed. Nowhere near as comfortable as her bed at home, but. Whatever. It's a real bed, at least, and she can deal with it, and a moment later Amanda lands next to her, close as they ever were on the couch, and Lily can't help but curl into her.

"Home sweet home, huh?"

Amanda snorts. "Sweet, sure." But she lets Lily pull her arm until it's wrapped around Lily's waist. Even tilts her head a little bit so their cheeks are pressed together.

Maybe it's the technique, but, as the train rumbles to life beneath them, Lily finds that she doesn't actually care. 

From the bed, she can see the passage of New York State in blurred blues and greys through the top strip of the window. The sun flashes against her eyes, there and gone as they weave through skyscrapers and then a more present,  steadying light as they move into the suburbs and the jagged buildings flatten out into the less-ambitious homes that Lily used to walk through every day. She watches the sun and listens to Amanda's heart beat a reassuringly normal pulse against her back, and thinks about the other light: the black and white television light that was the only other witness to what she did to Amanda on the couch.

She likes it, a little bit, knowing someone else saw. Especially a someone else who isn't even something, just a couple of long-dead actors who, hah, already took her secret to their graves — yeah, that's pretty cool.

"Do you want to have sex?" Amanda asks, abruptly snapping Lily out of her thoughts.

Lily inhales sharply and as her chest expands she is suddenly very, very aware that one of Amanda's hands has drifted up to rest over her breast. She squirms around in Amanda's arms so she's facing her again. Amanda's got that same open, blank look that she always has, the one that makes Lily think she could make her do anything, but "Do I what?"

"Want to have sex," Amanda repeats, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "I can feel your heartbeat," like that's the only explanation they need.

Lily can, too, now that Amanda's drawn her attention to it. It's quick and just little bit unsteady, full up with victory and excitement and ... arousal. Amanda's right.

Really, she has no business being this right about things she doesn't feel. But also, Lily doesn't know what she'd do if Amanda wasn't. She says it aloud, anyway, "I thought you didn't feel," but her voice sounds distant to her own ears. Like she's pressed against the window from the outside, looking in at this new Lily who's curled into a too-small corner of a train bed.

Amanda's hand is still at her breast, thumb pressing idly over her nipple. Her other's at the waistband of Lily's jeans, popping the button and sliding the zipper down with more finesse than any boy ever had. "I mean, emotionally, no," she says, as matter-of-fact as ever. "But physically—" 

Her fingers slide under Lily's panties, weirdly gentle, and Lily can't hold back a gasp. 

"Physically, sometimes I think I feel even more." Her hands are everywhere on Lily's shaking body — over her, inside her, and she's finding all the spots that make Lily want to scream faster than Lily herself ever did. "And besides," and is it Lily's imagination, or does Amanda's breath catch just slightly as Lily opens her legs as wide as she can, one foot nearly dropping to the floor. "Celebration sex is a whole thing. You deserve it."

I deserve a lot of things, Lily thinks. She reaches up, presses her hand to Amanda's cheek, and her thumb lands on her chin, right where she placed Mark's blood.

It's like being on the couch again — like breathing in, and in, and in, until all she can do is cry. Better than being on the couch, because all she can see is Amanda's eyes, blank and unblinking, and all she can hear is her own heartbeat, drowning out anything Amanda might say to ruin the moment. And Lily doesn't have to think about knives or blood or running away anymore, all she has to do is give herself wholly over to the pleasure of being touched, shaking against her hands — against Amanda's body. 

Maybe it could be perfect. 

**

The thing is, though, that maybe is a word that can do an awful lot of work, and Lily realises a little too late that it's only almost perfect on the train. The fear that tinged every moment on the couch is all smoothed away in their little compartment, leaving nothing but the two of them. No one on the train pays them too much attention, no one back home could get in touch with them even if they wanted to — Lily had left her phone and all its pictures and bloody fingerprints back on the couch after she called 911. 

It's what they've wanted since they left Connecticut, and Amanda's as perfect as Lily could ask her to be, and it still feels like something's missing.

Even so, when they stop over in Chicago, Lily almost doesn't get off the train.

"You have to," Amanda says, leaning against the door with one of their bags over her shoulder. "It's like, a whole different train for the next part."

Lily knows that, obviously, but that doesn't mean she has to like it. The reality of spending days in the city, the possibility of having to share Amanda with the whole wide world again, that's even worse than the possibility that someone might recognise them.

"Oh come on," Amanda says, reading Lily's whole novel in her hesitation, as usual. "Put on those big sunglasses of yours, buy a hat, and don't pretend you won't just kill anyone who might cause problems."

And maybe that's what does it. The suggestion that she might kill again, no, the permission they suddenly have to kill again, somewhere it won't be obvious that it's them, that's what gets Lily off the bed, collecting the rest of their bags.

"Fine," she says. "I'm starving, anyway."

Amanda's underdressed for the restaurant they end up in, and it has Lily on edge even before they get their menus.

"What did you want me to do about it?" Amanda asks, perusing the wine selection with a nonchalance that makes Lily want to slap the menu out of her hands. "You gave all our luggage to the porter so he could handle the transfer."

"I want," Lily says, glancing around to make sure they're not drawing too many wandering eyes, "You to put the bare minimum into fitting in in public. You've been wearing the same thing since we left my house!"

On the train, it's an Amanda-quirk that she likes. It's actually one of Lily's favourite things about her, how utterly ... Amanda she is. But Lily needs her to be a little more conscious, outside.

And maybe Amanda picks up on the shift in her mood, too, because she lets Lily order for her and then eats in silence, shoveling sullen forkfuls of steak into her mouth while gazing fixedly at a point just past Lily's ear. Lily slides her own steak knife into her napkin and then her purse, and eats half her pasta.

There's no conversation, no anything. It's almost like Amanda isn't there at all.

It almost ruins everything that comes after — the man who looks just like Mark would if he was a politician dropping his hand on Lily's shoulder and murmuring promises in her ear, the way they pay the bill and tip enough to prove they have money but not so highly as to be memorable. The way the man lets Lily follow him to the back alley and the way the steak knife looks sheathed in his belly.

There's less blood, this time. No horrid fancy furniture to smear it across. And she doesn't want to have to buy a new dress before they have to leave tomorrow.

"Nice," Amanda says, chin resting on Lily's shoulder, arms wrapped around Lily's waist. "Very nice. It looks different, doesn't it, after you take your hands off it. Like the two of you aren't connected anymore."

Remember, she isn't saying, and the thrill starts to ebb, leaving a hard, sick knot twisting in Lily's stomach. "Shut up," Lily breathes, thinking about the couch, about the knife handle wrapped in her fists and the knife blade sunken in—

"Shut up."

Amanda does. Swipes a hand through the blood on the knife anyway, lets Lily press her hand against the man's torn chest, against the wall.

They leave quickly, out the other side of the alley. They have hotel reservations to make, after all.

**

It feels better, back on the train. Like they can breathe again. Like Amanda likes her again. They even have sex again, and this time, Amanda lets Lily touch her — lies underneath her and directs her fingers and mouth until she's gasping, and technique or not, Lily loves seeing what she can still do to Amanda, even now. And then:

"The thing is," Amanda says on one of the endless days when the train is rolling through some no-name Midwestern state, golden corn and violently blue sky all blurring together in some sick summer. "The thing is, you need me."

Her voice is right by Lily's ear, her curls — longer now, long enough that Lily could wrap them around her fist if she tried — brushing Lily's cheek. She does this, now, hooks her knees over the top shelf that passes for a bunk and hangs upside down in Lily's face, like some kind of haunting.

"I really don't think so," Lily says, in the carefully blank voice that always pulls the best reactions out of Amanda.

"You really do," Amanda says. "After all, what would you do with all your feelings if I wasn't around for you to dump them in. Don't tell me you'd deal with them."

Lily flips the page of her three month old gossip rag and lets herself imagine the way disbelief must be twisting Amanda's mouth. "Obviously not," she says, because new Lily doesn't pick these sorts of fights anymore. New Lily knows how to please Amanda, likes pleasing Amanda, even though of course she would be capable of dealing with her emotions. "I'd pretend," she says instead. 

Lily pretends enough for the both of them, these days.

"Sure," Amanda says, and it's not disbelief in her voice but something — tight. Something almost like a feeling, and it's enough that Lily tosses aside the magazine that she's memorised already anyway and picks up her sunglasses instead.

"I'm going to the cafe car," she says. "Coming?"

Amanda doesn't, usually. Anyone who recognises Lily might be recognising any of a hundred sad pretty Connecticut girls, but Amanda — oh, everyone knows what Amanda's done, and anyone who sees them together will know all about Lily, too. It makes sense, but their conversation has lit something up under Lily's skin, something all about how needing is bad and wanting is good and maybe, maybe they're far enough away now that she wants people to know.

Chicago was so much fun, and so ... anonymous. It's not just killing, Lily's starting to think. Not even killing with Amanda, not even killing with a knife. It's about adding every single body to new Lily's image, and making them matter.

Maybe Amanda's thinking about the same thing. Maybe that's what, this time, she says, "Sure." Swings herself upright and then down to the floor again, and opens the door, leaving Lily no choice but to shove her feet into her shoes and follow.

**

They'd realised on the first day that there wasn't that much space between train cars — too many regulations, not enough ways to push someone off. But as they prepare to roll into Los Angeles, a whole trip's worth of experience and planning their way around that particular obstacle, the man who follows them back from the dining car is drunk enough, saying enough things like you — I know you, the East Coast girl — that he's the perfect finale.

They know the rules, now. The doors lock, if you're clever. Feet get caught in the grates, if they're clad in flat slippers. With the train moving this quickly through the prairie wind, no one can hear a thing. Even Lily and Amanda can't hear each other, but, of course, Lily thinks, as the man's foot slips under the platform, they've never needed to hear each other to communicate.

Lily goes first. A little bit of a faked stumble, because he's stopped abruptly right in front of her, and the pressure of her hand sends his upper body reeling, forward into Amanda's waiting grip. It's a little sad that she's behind him, can't see his face twisted in pain, the tears that must be forming in the corners of his eyes because his foot is still stuck, twisting under the metal.

But it's okay. Amanda will describe it later, and then Lily can tell the story back to her with all the feelings, and it'll be perfect.

It's perfect in the moment too — and, more importantly, fun, pushing the man back and forth between them. "I'll kill you, I'll let you live, I'll kill you, I'll let you live," Lily chants with the swing of his body like a pendulum, and over his shoulder, she can see Amanda mouthing the same words.

"I'll kill you," she's saying, when Amanda misses her catch and the man's head cracks against the wall, neck twisting with the force of it.

There's not a lot of blood, she thinks, crouching down to examine his body. A little by his feet, but most of that's dripping down, lost to the tracks. There's a little on her shoes, but nothing soap and water can't get rid of. The wind sounds just like laughter, in the space between the car's. Amanda's laughter, twisting her higher and higher towards freedom on the back of this modern-day Thoroughbred.

Lily steps over him, opens the door to the sleeping car, and frowns when she doesn't see Amanda. Had she already gone back to their room? Didn't she want to see the body, the first one they'd made together — really together?

Maybe it doesn't matter, she thinks, slipping off her bloody shoes so she doesn't make a mess on the carpet (she still has her manners). It's over, she's won, they're only a few minutes from LA.

Lily pads down the hall, soles of her shoes pressed together, and breathes a sigh of relief when she slips into her room without seeing anyone else. The world rights itself again as the door slides shut behind her: Amanda's on the bed, bloodless, smiling. Her technique is still perfect.

"That was fast," she says. "You missed the best part."

"Best for you," Amanda shrugs, and Lily things about the couch again. About Amanda's lips around the rim of her glass, about the shape of meaningless on her tongue. "You're having fun, aren't you? That's what matters to me."

You're free, Amanda's bloody lips against her ear. You need to run, run like Honeymooner used to. There had been so, so much blood, more than one body should possibly be able to contain, and Lily remembers thinking: Mark was fun, this is—

Necessary.

It's only fun again now, with Amanda.

"Yeah," she says, and "Yeah," again, feeling her confidence grow. Amanda tips her head up, spreads her knees so Lily can step in between them. She dips her index finger in the blood on the shoes, places it against the tip of Amanda's nose. "We're having fun." 

That's almost the best part, knowing that Amanda will always be there when Lily wants a kill whether she likes it or not. All part of Lily's perfect technique.

All Lily's.

Forever.