Chapter Text
Yelling is… surprisingly fun.
Eve yells about everything, within her allotted time, of course. Villanelle just has to sit there and stare and listen and Eve can yell about everything, including the dishes, should she choose to. Dr. Ahktar said they should air all of their insecurities, their feelings, everything they don’t tell each other at home. They’re supposed to be working on the not telling each other stuff thing, obviously, but it is so lovely to save perhaps most petty things for this small, comfortable office.
Therapy feels good. Who knew?
“Not to mention,” Eve continues, after a bit of a small left turn too deep into the realm of household chores, “I still can’t get over the fact that she brought our daughter to meet her literal crime boss.”
“Konstantin was a friend,” Villanelle pipes up, annoyed and cross-armed. She doesn’t like just sitting there, Eve can tell, and it just makes Eve happier.
The other great thing about therapy? Dr. Martin Ahktar comes on recommendation from Carolyn Martens herself, meaning they can talk candidly about everything they’ve ever done. Villanelle talks about killing, what it means to her and how it feels. Eve talks about it in a different way — sometimes, they take individual sessions with him, just to have someone listen and not judge.
Besides, Eve’s a bit afraid of how killing made her feel. Too terrified to think more on that currently.
“This is good,” Martin says, putting his hands up in the air between them. Eve’s standing, hackles raised, and Villanelle sits perched on the edge of her seat, the two of them leaning, craning, itching to put hands on each other.
Not violent hands, per se… Just hands.
The best part about therapy, besides her prescribed yelling sessions at Villanelle (definitely not what comes after those yelling sessions — a play by play with Martin, who breaks down why they’re upset, helps them work through it), is what comes after the session is over. And Eve would relish in just that, sure, if therapy wasn’t actually making them better. They argue less, at home, over tiny things like Antonia’s lunch or what they’re going to do on the weekend. They come to each other with more understanding, now that the whole killing thing is off the table.
Except they haven’t worked together, not yet. Because Eve can’t trust.
“Sit here,” Martin directs, dragging Eve’s chair over so it’s only a few feet away from Villanelle’s. Eve sits, avoiding Villanelle’s eyes, and looks to Martin. He grabs their hands unprompted, putting them together. “Hold. Thank you.” He takes a deep breath; Eve glances at Villanelle, who looks only at the ceiling. Like a pet who knows they’ve done wrong and won’t look you in the eye. “Now,” Martin continues, “Think about the times that have made this—” he waves his hand between the two of them, “--worth it.”
Eve thinks.
Antonia comes to mind, at first. Visions of Villanelle with Antonia on her shoulders, Villanelle fucking around in the kitchen, covered in baking powder and flour, such a mess that Eve has to come and save the day. Antonia’s the better cook out of all three of them, that’s for sure. But then Eve thinks to the small moments — the times when Villanelle wordlessly comes behind Eve’s chair in the den and starts rubbing her thumbs into the tight muscles of Eve’s back as she reads. Villanelle’s kindness, her kiss, her words, all of it. All of it is worth it.
“I made that decision when I decided not to get a divorce,” Eve mutters, wanting to slip her hands out from Villanelle’s. “Obviously, I know it’s worth it.”
“You know, sure,” Martin agrees, “but do you let yourself think about it? Do you let yourself be happy, Eve?”
Villanelle’s thumb swipes across Eve’s palm, and Eve looks at her. “What is worth it for me,” Villanelle says slowly, hardly looking at her, “is having you in my life. I don’t know what I would be without you. And the insect.”
Martin sighs — he’s talked to them at least five times about coming up with a more suitable nickname for their daughter, something not dehumanizing. Eve thinks it’s bullshit.
“You’d be off fucking women in every country,” Eve counters. “You wouldn’t be any worse off.”
“That’s not true.”
“How could it not be?”
It’s Villanelle who slips her hands out from Eve’s. “How could you say that? How could you think that I would even want anyone else, after all of this?”
“Because you can have anyone else!”
“No, I am—” Villanelle flounders. She’s not as good at the therapy thing as Eve is, and Eve would be lying if she didn’t sometimes take advantage of it. “I am making the choice,” she says carefully. “To be with you.”
“So now it’s a choice.”
“All right,” Martin says, stepping in. “Let’s think about that in the larger context. Choice. Eve, what do you feel like when Villanelle says she is choosing to love you?”
Like I don’t want to answer the question. But she’d tried that the first five sessions. “Like shit,” Eve sighs, sitting back. “Like it’s hard for her or something.”
“That’s not—” Martin silences Villanelle with a finger raised. Why can’t Eve do that?
“Love is a choice,” Martin explains. “Plain and simple. Eve, you chose not to stay with your ex-husband, just as you could’ve chosen to try and make it work. You chose to try therapy with Villanelle, and here we are. Choices are all we have, as people, and choices define us. One does not simply sit there and let love guide them — we make choices informed by that love, by any kind of feelings.”
Makes sense, sure. On paper. In reality, it feels like every lingering hand on Eve’s hip is Villanelle thinking about someone else she could possibly have. It’s insecurity at its finest, rearing an ugly head and ruining Eve’s marriage. If finding out her wife was a psychopathic assassin (jury still out on the psycho part, if she’s being honest) wasn’t enough to do it, surely self esteem and the fact that Villanelle is thirty-something and could get anyone she wants is.
Martin prods at her, gently. “Where are you, right now, Eve?”
“I don’t trust her,” she admits, wringing her hands in her lap. “I don’t know how.”
“And we’ll work on it.” Martin puts a hand on Eve’s shoulder and squeezes. “But today we’re out of time. Same time next week?” Standing, he heads over to his desk and flips through his calendar.
“Actually,” Villanelle says, glancing at Eve. “We’re out next week.”
That’s news to Eve. “Oh?”
“A surprise,” Villanelle offers, ever the charming one. She gives Eve a smile that Eve can’t match, not with how annoyed she is.
It’s never good, leaving these sessions feeling like this. But maybe it’s good for Villanelle — neither of them say much of anything as they leave, but Villanelle buzzes with excitement. Of course, they end up on the backseat of the new Aston Martin, Eve in Villanelle’s lap with her hands in Villanelle’s hair. Her hand slides down to Villanelle’s neck, squeezing, thinking about cutting off life the way she would pinch an oxygen tube. Easy, effortless, certainly not at all like choking someone to death.
“Eve,” Villanelle whispers, as she shoves a hand into Eve’s slacks, works against her between her legs. She whispers Eve’s name again and again, against Eve’s lips, Eve’s throat, using her name as a cushion for Eve to land on. Eve lands hard, breathless, rocking mercilessly against Villanelle’s hand and pushing for more, wanting more.
“Harder,” she pants, and Villanelle obliges.
They argue. They go to therapy. They fuck. Maybe this is their new normal.
“Therapy is fun,” Villanelle comments, after, when they’re still lightly panting, Eve at the wheel of Villanelle’s new Aston. While not their thriftiest choice, Eve couldn’t argue with Villanelle’s need to replace the car with something even nicer, especially when she blew half her sign on bonus with MI6 for it.
“So are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“I told you,” Villanelle replies, stretching out in the passenger seat. “It’s a surprise.”
“I didn’t get work off.”
“You don’t need work off. It is work.”
“A surprise that’s work.”
“I thought you liked work?” Villanelle tilts her head at Eve, genuinely confused. “You are such a workaholic, I thought—”
“I do, I love work, I just… How is a surprise work?”
“You need to stop guessing.” Villanelle’s eyes flutter closed, her head leaning back.
“What about Antonia?”
“Stop guessing,” Villanelle replies, half sing-song.
Fine. Eve can stop. She tightens her grip on the wheel, ignoring the flash of yellow on the traffic lights, zooming through an intersection. The car is kind of nice, if she’s being generous. Truthfully, though, she is wondering about Antonia. Does she know they’re leaving? Is she coming with? A work trip with a daughter is very different than a work trip.
Then something occurs to her.
“Wait,” Eve says, accidentally pressing on the brake.
“Eve, you are holding up traffic.”
“Shit, wait, okay—”
“You are such a terrible driver,” Villanelle groans. “Keep going, stop being so defensive.”
“As opposed to your offense?”
Villanelle leans into view, grinning. “Are we going to have sex again? That tone is really doing it for me.”
Eve rolls her eyes. “I was going to say , is this a work trip, or a work trip?”
Villanelle doesn’t immediately respond. “And the difference is…?”
“Are you going to kill someone!”
“Oh,” Villanelle responds, sinking back into the passenger seat. “I don’t know yet.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“It is not a specific mission where I am prescribed to kill someone, Eve. I don’t know.”
They pull into the garage then, already home. If she’s being honest, Eve does kind of want to have sex again. She’s held up talking about this sort of thing with Villanelle outside of therapy, for her own measure. Her requirements for Villanelle joining MI6 meant that only she wanted to be Villanelle’s handler, if it came to that. She asked Carolyn to find Villanelle another job that wasn’t killing, or wasn’t solely killing, but Carolyn had merely looked at her, a look that said What else is she even good at?
Because the truth of it is — Villanelle is really fucking good at killing.
But Eve can’t handle it. Not yet. So they haven’t actually worked together, since everything went down, and Eve knows Villanelle is anxious to get back in the thick of it. Whether or not she’s anxious to kill remains to be seen, but if her fervor in the bedroom (and the car, and the living room, and multiple public places) is any indication, Eve knows she’s holding her back.
“Look,” Villanelle says, as they sit in the garage, quiet. She reaches over and grabs Eve’s hand. “I promise it will be okay. We will work together, there will be a kill or there will not be a kill, I could not care less, but we will have fun. That is what matters, yes?”
They fuck in the car again. And a little bit against the door from the garage into the house. And on the floor just inside.
Eve forgets about the trip until they’re leaving.
.
“I don’t even get the briefing?”
“I did all the reading for us, I have it covered.”
“You don’t even read receipts,” Eve grumbles, walking at pace to keep up with Villanelle’s longer legs. Villanelle had forced her to stay near the door at the airport, just to check in on the tickets when she went to the counter. Villanelle checked a bag in each of their names, but mostly for her own belongings. All of Eve’s stuff fit neatly in her fantastic carry-on, a perfectly practical gift from Carolyn Martens after taking down a major player in the Twelve. Talk about a bonus.
It’s inevitable that Eve will find out where they are going before they get onto the plane. She resists the urge to point out this fact, or even to run, tail tucked between her legs out the door. She doesn’t like surprises, okay? And she thought Villanelle knew this.
They’re almost through security now, and Villanelle looks at Eve sternly. “I am going to hand you your ticket now.”
“Okay.”
“Do not look.”
“Okay.”
Villanelle holds the ticket out. Right before Eve reaches it, she snatches it back. “Don’t look.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Eve mutters, snagging the ticket right out of Villanelle’s hands. She doesn’t look, despite herself. Despite how much she really, really wants to.
At least she knows it’s international. No cozy getaways in buttfuck England in their future, not that Eve would totally mind that. Cold and dreary is definitely more her speed, rather than Villanelle’s.
Eve presents the ticket to the counter agent, who grins at her. “Warm weather, huh?”
“Excuse you,” Villanelle interrupts, stepping in. “The location of our trip is a surprise for my wife. Do not spoil it.”
“Right,” the counter agent says, shrinking back a bit. “Sorry about that.”
Eve gives him a placating smile, hoping that mutes the absolutely feral look on Villanelle’s face right now. “Come on,” she grumbles, grabbing her wife by the underarm and half pulling her through the rest of the line.
“He was going to spoil it,” Villanelle argues, but follows nonetheless.
Of course, it doesn’t take long for Eve to realize where they’re going. It’s on the wall, for fuck’s sake, and repeated over and over again through the loud speaker. Valencia, somewhere in Venezuela. Eve doesn’t make the full connection until they’re almost landing, after swatting away Villanelle’s hands that get a little too handsy, and she’s looking out the window and spotting several tiny islands right off the coast.
Where they first met. A tiny speck of land. Years ago, Eve’s post-divorce vacation.
“How did you manage this?” she asks, when they’re stepping off the plane onto a tarmac very different than the one they’d left. The air is thick with heat, and Villanelle is a vision, as beautiful as that day they met on the beach. Sunglasses, just missing the tropical shirt.
“I asked Carolyn if there was anything tropical coming up.”
“You just asked her?”
“When you are a professional killer for the government, you can ask for anything, Eve.” Villanelle doesn’t seem to notice the weird looks tossed in their direction, but Eve does. And Eve laughs, shaking her head, taking in the mountains on the horizon, the breeze shuffling through her hair.
“Eve?” Villanelle calls, grabbing their suitcases. She wanders back over, taking Eve’s stillness as something else entirely. “If this is not okay, we can just head in and book a ticket back.”
Eve knows instantly what Villanelle is referring to — this is where they met, yes, but it’s also a memory so saturated with Bill . She can almost hear him now, shaking his head and saying Don’t you dare get back on that plane, Polastri.
“No,” Eve says. “I’m okay.”
She takes Villanelle’s hand, and they walk toward the airport.
.
“Surprise!”
Two faces she wasn’t expecting to see even remotely meet them on the docks of Curacao, after Villanelle argues passionately in Spanish with several boat vendors. After acquiring one, they’d taken to the ocean, speeding over the waves and through almost crystal clear blue waters. Eve had asked eventually where Antonia was, a little worried when Villanelle didn’t immediately tell her Elena was watching her.
That’s because Elena and Kenny are here, instead. Kenny, already red-faced, in his typical khaki shorts and a tee, with Elena throwing her arms above her head in a frantic wave, dressed for the weather.
Eve throws herself into Elena’s arms, unable to stop smiling. She doesn’t miss the way Villanelle watches them, proud of herself.
“It was so hard to keep up with this whole surprise thing,” Elena says, frantic.
“I can imagine. Hey, Kenny.”
Kenny lifts a hand up. “Hi, Eve.”
Villanelle waltzes up, throwing an arm around Eve’s shoulders. “Let’s get drunk!”
They make their way to the hotel, going straight for the hotel bar as soon as they drop their stuff off. It’s the same hotel that Villanelle took her to that first night together; Eve remembers the slight discomfort she’d had as she walked up to the bar, pulling at the skirt of the dress Villanelle had bought her. She wonders if she still has it, tucked away somewhere in their closet back home.
This time, however, Villanelle leads them all to another bar attached to the hotel, half outside half inside, with a fantastic view of the water and the sand and just —
“This is fucking amazing,” Elena comments, as they all find a table somewhere away from the rest. She has what looks like the largest cocktail glass Eve’s seen in her hands, using both of them to gingerly set it on the table. Kenny looks at her adoringly, hands in his lap, ankles crossed.
“A toast,” Villanelle offers, once they’ve put in an order for some food. “To…”
Eve waits for it — it could be anything. To them. To Antonia. To this crazy, stupid life they’ve somehow managed to settle down in.
“To Eve,” Villanelle says slowly, making eye contact. “Without you, I…” She shrugs, half smiling. “I do not know what I would be doing. Killing people, sure. Sleeping with every stranger who looked back at me. Maybe.”
“Hey,” Eve warns.
“I am just saying!” Villanelle grins, slightly shaking her head. “Without you, I would not be happy. All of that, I thought it was something I could do forever. But then I saw you standing on that beach and everything changed.”
Elena pipes in, “Because Eve’s hot as fuck.”
“Yes,” Villanelle agrees, as Eve covers her face, laughing. “But also because it marked the beginning of me wanting something… substantial. For myself. I never really thought I could have something like that. Like this. So. To Eve.”
“To Eve,” Kenny repeats, looking over at her. “Because I would not have a job without her.”
“To Eve,” Elena agrees. “Who, I will say again, is hot as fuck.”
“I’m not toasting myself.”
“Eve,” Villanelle whines, batting her eyes. “You have to, it’s impolite.”
Putting on her best faux annoyance, Eve clinks her glass with the rest of them, and they all take some sips.
“At the risk of sounding doubly sappy,” Villanelle continues, leaning back. “Elena, if you would.”
“Right, yeah!” Elena scrambles to reach for her purse, pulling out a piece of paper and squinting at it. Eve attempts to see what it is, but Elena pulls the paper back, offended. “No looking! Okay, so, the first time you guys got married, you said the stuff you needed to say, yeah? Like, til death do us part, yadda yadda, that kind of shit.”
Villanelle groans. “Elena.”
“Right, sorry, this is supposed to be romantic.”
“I feel like I’m being ambushed,” Eve says.
“You totally are,” Elena confirms, nodding. She returns to the paper. “Anyway, all that was shit.”
“Elena,” Villanelle juts in.
“Sorry! It was a lie. Basically. For both of you, not just the psycho-killer in our midst. Neither of you guys knew what was actually going on, and still, somehow made it work. Lots of lying. Lots of late nights, jobs where you guys went across the world… Man, how did you guys make this even work? Eventually, of course, you guys went and had a kid, can you imagine? Which made the lying worse, and then—”
“What Elena is trying, and failing, to say is that I want a fresh start.” Villanelle snags the paper out of Elena’s hands, rolling her eyes as she skims it, before returning her gaze to Eve. She crumples the paper up, then stands, offering a hand. “Eve, will you walk with me?”
With a look at Elena, Eve takes Villanelle’s hand and together, they walk hand in hand to the beach, slipping off their shoes in the sand.
“Sorry about that,” Villanelle says quietly, once they’re a distance away.
Eve looks at her. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Probably.”
Nodding, Eve waves her on.
“Elena was right. This, us, it’s been built on lies. I lied to you the moment I met you. I almost gave you a fake name, you know? And how would we have even done the marriage thing with that?”
“Villanelle is a fake name.”
The gears turn in Villanelle’s head. “Right.” She winces, shaking her head. “I am doing this so badly.”
“No, no! Please, sorry, I’m just giving you shit.”
“You are an asshole, actually, I should’ve remembered that.” Eve swats her on the arm, and Villanelle smiles. “See? Asshole.”
“Continue with the sappy shit, idiot.”
“Okay, so, I want to renew our vows.”
Eve blinks. She thinks back on their wedding, and sure, Elena was right. They had said all the right stuff, with a few addendums added in. Nothing like Eve’s first wedding, which was big for Eve’s standards, mostly for Niko’s family, not so much for Eve’s. Back then, she’d said the right things when she’d needed to, filled in the right blanks. With her wedding to Villanelle, she’d been more personal, but she remembers the guilt… Even Niko had known what her actual job was, and look how that turned out.
“I told Niko about my job,” Eve admits, hand still in Villanelle’s. “I thought it was one of the many reasons why things ended so badly with him. I didn’t want that to happen again.”
“And I lied because…” Villanelle lets out a laugh. “Well, I think that is a bit obvious.”
“So what’s a renewal look like?”
“I have never done one.”
“Did you Google it?”
“Sure, of course, but I thought it should be more personal, so…”
“So you did nothing.”
“I just told you I wanted to renew them, so maybe we just repeat what was said back then? Mean it more or something.”
Eve stares at her. “This is the least romantic moment of my life.”
Something flashes in VIllanelle’s eyes and she cracks a smile. “You think I planned this whole trip and didn’t actually write something to say to you?” Slowly, Eve watches as she pulls out another piece of paper, this being faded notebook paper folded into four sections. She stands in front of Eve and clears her throat. “I am not good at writing.” She looks up. “I wrote that, this is the beginning of the thing—”
“Just keep going,” Eve urges, feeling her heart jump in her chest.
“Right. I am not good at writing, and I am not good at talking. At least, not when I am telling the truth. All the time, I tell lies to people. Fake names, fake lives. Even when we are together, to the people around us I am lying. I don’t want to lie to you ever again. That’s the point of doing something like this—” she gestures between the two of them. “So I could tell you, honestly, that you are the best thing that has ever happened to me. And I want you to continue happening to me for as long as we both shall live.” She folds the paper up again. “That last part was the vow thingy.”
Eve feels something well up behind her eyes. Totally not tears. She definitely don’t wipe them away. Villanelle stands before her, hands clasped together. Finally, Eve says, “I didn’t write anything.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, it’s—” Of course, now a stray tear manages to slip down Eve’s cheek. She wants to kill it. “I mean, everything you said… applies to how I feel.”
“You cannot steal my renewal, Eve.”
“I’m not! I’m… Okay, fine. You’re…” How does she even begin to describe it? “When this all started, I thought you were cheating on me.”
Something shifts in Villanelle’s expression. She goes from hopeful to torn, quickly saying, “Eve, I didn’t—”
“It’s okay, it’s just. That’s what I think of myself, you know? I feel like this whole life that I’ve managed to build, I’ve just barely managed it. You, the insect, all of it, it’s more than I ever could have asked for. I gave myself to Niko, and I gave myself to work, and he didn’t want me. At least, that side of me. And this younger, sexier, professional, amazing woman did? The first year, I constantly questioned when you’d get bored of me.
“And then you said you wanted a baby. With me. You wanted me so much you wanted two. I thought about telling you, then, actually. When we started the in-vitro process. I wanted to tell you all of it, because I thought, or I knew, that you’d, I don’t know, appreciate it? More than Niko ever did, but you’d see me doing something I loved and being really fucking good at it.”
Eve sighs, smiling. “You see me, and you’re still here.”
Villanelle grabs Eve’s hands, pulling her close. “We see each other, and we are both still here.”
Nodding, Eve kisses her. It’s everything that first kiss after I do was supposed to be. Arms wrapped around each other, lips pressed together, ocean breeze buffeting against them both.
It’s home.
.
It’s all consuming, this need she has for Villanelle. To envelop, overtake, somehow become one through skin on skin, touching, grasping, holding. They stumble down the same hallway they had that first night, barely making it to the door. “Eve, Eve,” Villanelle gasps, back pressed against the wall. “We will give everyone a show.”
“Fuck it,” Eve mutters, pressing another frantic kiss to Villanelle’s lips.
“Yes, yes, yes, of course, fuck me, but you don’t—”
Annoyed, Eve pulls back, staring daggers at Villanelle, who nods, turning and immediately heading down the hallway. They manage to keep their hands off each other, and it’s only when the tiny green light on the hotel door blips up does Eve touch her again, shoving Villanelle across the threshold.
Villanelle laughs when Eve pounces on her again, and Eve presses kisses to Villanelle’s neck, she says, “This is like our second wedding night. The one without the lies.”
Eve lifts her head up. “Don’t remind me that you were full of shit back then.”
“No, it’s poetic, yes? You and me, clean slate, back where it all started.”
“Since when have you gotten sentimental?”
“Since I got married again,” Villanelle murmurs, and the franticness of it all fades. Villanelle rests her head against the wall, stares at Eve with what can only be love, and Eve stares back.
There’s something about every single moment leading to just a single scene, something like fate that Eve never really believed in. Would they have even met if Villanelle hadn’t been on this island, years ago, for work? Would they have even met if Bill hadn’t encouraged Eve to come on a vacation, something she never did before and rarely does now?
She presses her hand flat against Villanelle’s suit jacket, smoothing it out. “I love you, you know that, right?”
“I know.” Villanelle reaches up and grabs Eve’s hand, holds it. “I love you, too. More than anything.”
“More than our annoying kid?”
“She is a close second,” Villanelle clarifies, smiling lazily. “Kiss me again.”
Eve backs off, lifting up her dress, pulling it until it gathers around her hips. “Only if you’re good,” she says, turning to the bed. “Unzip me.”
Villanelle is there in an instant, cool fingertips against Eve’s back. The dress falls to the ground, pooling at Eve’s feet, and for a brief instant, she revels in Villanelle’s presence behind her. She sinks into her, lets Villanelle hold her, pressing kisses against Eve’s neck. They fall into the bed, messy lips sliding against skin, breathing hard, the soft hum of —
Vibration?
“Wait, what is that?” Eve asks, half sitting up. Villanelle’s almost between her legs, lips pressed against Eve’s thighs.
“What is what?”
“That— the sound. The vibrating.”
Villanelle wags her eyebrows, but then it’s there again. Louder, more insistent.
“Oh shit, it’s my phone,” Eve says, scrambling up. “Could be Antonia.”
“Eeeve,” Villanelle whines, but lets Eve slide off her. She lays on the bed as Eve grabs Villanelle’s suit jacket, sliding into it. She finds her phone in her purse, quickly opening it.
Antonia’s little face grins back at her over Facetime. “Umma!”
“Hey kid,” Eve says, sighing in relief. “Everything okay?”
“Oh shoot—” a voice off camera says, before it’s revealed to be Bear, their new hire at MI6. “Sorry Eve, she got my phone, I didn’t—”
“That’s okay. You can let her talk a bit.”
Bear hands the phone back to Antonia, while Villanelle comes to stand behind Eve and rest her chin on Eve’s shoulder. Antonia grins at them, missing a tooth right in the front of her mouth. “Umma look!” She grins wider. “The tooth fairy is coming!”
“The tooth fairy isn’t—”
Eve elbows Villanelle before she can continue the sentence. “That’s great, honey! Be sure to ask for lots of money.”
There’s a groan in the background. Bear, probably. Eve grins at her daughter as Antonia rambles about school, lisping a little around the gap in her teeth. Villanelle presses a kiss to Eve’s cheek as Antonia talks, whispering in Eve’s ear, “We did that. She’s ours.”
It’s only after they bid Antonia a goodbye that they fall back into bed, much slower than before. Eve kisses Villanelle and thinks about everything they’ve made, not just the kid. This life, this love — their home. Somehow, they’ve made it through.
And that’s enough.