Chapter Text
“Carolyn wanted me to give you these.” The folder lands on Eve’s desk with a slap. Eve pauses her typing. She takes a deep breath. She releases it. She reminds herself that she’d had a chance to murder Villanelle months ago and squandered it—stupid of her—and doing it now would cause a huge inconvenience for many people, herself included.
Villanelle is looking down at her, frowning, waiting for a reaction. Eve knows, based on the last week, that the folder could contain anything. Carolyn might not have even given it to her—Villanelle might have just stuffed it with old takeaway receipts for a reason to go down to her office and show Eve that she is, in fact, still angry at her.
She really needs to start locking her office door. She sighs, takes the folder, and tosses it into the pile of admin on her desk that’s beginning to resemble a Lovecraftian horror. “Thanks.”
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
Eve lets her eyes drift over to Villanelle. She lifts her eyebrows. “Is it important?”
“Yes.” Villanelle responds. Her expression doesn’t change. “She told me to tell you to look at it right away.”
“Okay.” Eve puffs out a breath and swivels over to the pile, grabbing the folder. She glances up at Villanelle once more before opening it and finding—yup, it’s takeaway receipts. God damn it— “Villanelle, you know that my time is very valuable, yes? That we are working on something that is very important and very dangerous? You can’t keep doing this.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Villanelle sniffs. “I’m just doing what Carolyn asked.”
“In that case, remember that we have a meeting with her tomorrow at three.” Eve fixes her with a stare that she hopes conveys a sense of sternness. “It’s important.”
She remains standing in front of Eve’s desk, still glowering. “Do you want to have dinner tonight?”
“I’m busy.”
Villanelle makes an affronted sound. “Busy with what?”
Eve puts her head in her hands. “Villanelle—”
“Whatever.” She doesn’t let her finish, moving to leave. “Just let me know when you’re done being an asshole.”
On her way out, she uses her elbow to “accidentally” knock Eve’s pencil holder off the corner of her desk. It clatters to the ground and sends pencils flying everywhere. She slams the door behind herself.
Eve turns back to her computer. She doesn’t care about the pencils or the folder full of takeaway receipts. She doesn’t care if Villanelle is angry at her or not. That’s her own prerogative and has nothing to do with Eve, who has been doing the right thing this entire time. Not having sex with or entertaining the mercurial emotions of a murderer is the right thing. There’s a moral line and Eve is very clearly standing on the correct side of it right now.
She stares at the screen on which she is typing up a report of last week’s evening with Sidney. Omitting certain points, of course, because otherwise it might read more Danielle Steele than government paperwork. Although, maybe the MI6 higher up with the misfortune of reading these might like the injection of color.
Subject invited us to sit in her living room, where we sat an appropriate distance apart (1 person per cushion) and waited for her to return. Yes, that’s fine. Eve hits enter with her pointer finger to begin a new paragraph.
She puts her elbow to her desk and slumps her cheek into her palm, drumming the fingers of her other hand lightly against her keyboard. It crosses her mind that, yes, perhaps she is being a little mean to Villanelle. But she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to just carry on after—all that. She wants to stuff the cat, howling and scratching, as far and deep back into the bag as it will go.
Anyway, how much could this possibly be affecting her, really? Her entire understanding of Villanelle is based on the assumption that she has symptoms of extreme narcissism more than she does feelings. This hypothesis is many things: convenient for Eve, shared by many people, and less and less likely to be a complete encapsulation of the truth by the day.
Not that she cares, and not that she’s worried about how to restructure her life now that she has Villanelle pinned at arm’s length. Not that the idea of it—that Villanelle might have feelings and, further, that they are feelings vulnerable to Eve’s manipulation—makes a line of sweat break out at Eve’s hairline.
She’s a little peeved, too, at how this task forces her to relive that night in small increments. She doesn’t want to think about it. She doesn’t want to go back to the way Villanelle’s thigh had felt under her palm, how plastic she’d felt when dragging that hand upward. The understated eroticism of the way her legs had opened to accommodate her.
When Eve refocuses on her screen, she sees that she’s typed out a narrative version of her inner monologue on the Word document. “Shit—” She murmurs, pressing and holding down the backspace key.
“Eve.” Eve’s head shoots up. It’s Hugo. Ugh, she really needs to start locking her door. “We need to talk.”
“I’m kind of busy right now, actually—no, of course. Take a seat.”
“You have to patch up whatever you’ve got going on with Villanelle.” He says seriously, sitting in the folding chair. Eve looks at his face in a real way for the first time and gawks at what she sees there.
“Is that a black eye?”
“She tripped me while I was walking by her desk.” He hisses. “I never even did anything to her. You two weren’t dating when we—”
“And we’re not dating now—”
“—shagged! She’s mean usually, but she’s even meaner now. And she’s in the office all the time waiting for you to come upstairs.”
“Whatever is going on, it has nothing to do with me.” Eve says, keeping her voice balanced. “You need to take it up with Carolyn.”
“What’s Carolyn going to do about it?”
“Carolyn is her boss
.
”
“Oh, sure, technically. But you’re her boss. ” He looks at her pointedly and Eve scoffs, rolling her eyes. Under the desk, she begins to pick at a loose thread on her sweater sleeve. “I’m serious, Eve. It’s like sharing an office with a feral cat. I just know you did something and now she’s acting like a—word I can’t say because I’m technically the HR person.”
“Hugo, not everything Villanelle does is my fault. Recall that she is a psychopath.” The word feels unwieldy and wrong coming out of Eve’s mouth. Hugo doesn’t seem to be convinced by it, either. “If you’re having trouble with her hanging around the office, tell Carolyn to send her on some sort of—I don’t know—mission. I’m sure there’s somebody out there that needs to be…assassinated. Have their fingers broken. Whatever.”
“I should have known you’d be no help.” He grimaces, standing, shoving the folding chair in. “You’re too deep in it to even get a shag from the hot six foot tall lesbian who’s literally throwing herself at you. I mean, what is that, Eve?”
“Out.” Eve points a finger to the door, but Hugo is already heading to it. “Talk to Carolyn, I’m serious. I can’t help you.”
“Whatever. You’ve got a bunch of pencils on your floor, by the way.” Hugo says as he leaves, then slams her office door so hard that her I want to believe poster slips from the wall and clatters to the floor.
***
Eve goes to see the new Star Wars alone that night. This might be considered, yes, a new low for her in her post-divorce government spy era. But the house is so quiet, and she’s gone through every movie worth watching on Netflix, and perhaps the time has come to adjust to this new reality. Maybe she should invest in a cat or two.
Well, no. She hates animals and she’d almost certainly forget to feed them. A fish, maybe. A turtle. Something the most like Villanelle to fill the ever-widening gap as much as possible; a lizard, probably. No, lizards didn’t like to be held—a rabbit. Something a little mean and difficult to keep happy.
Eve has always sort of assumed that she’d end up lonely in a permanent way. There were a few people that she’d genuinely liked—Bill, Kenny—and it’d made sense to her, sort of, that they died in the end. Even Niko had only worked out for as long as it had because he’d required almost nothing of her, not even sex. She just isn’t a people person. She’s Eve; singular, independent, stubborn.
It’s just all so much worse now that she knows that she and Villanelle get along. That they have something going that’s their definition of companionable and probably nobody else’s.
It’s just—of all the other billions of people alive and sucking in air on this God-forsaken planet that could really look into Eve and see her on a fundamental level, her? And Eve is increasingly sure that yes, it is just her. They make such a perfect and deeply upsetting match that Eve can’t picture another person who could do it for her like Villanelle does.
That had to be some sort of fucked up past life retribution, didn’t it? Another monkey’s paw type of thing—you have a person tailor made for you, they’re a homicidal lunatic.
Villanelle is a lunatic, but one that makes her laugh. One that has also been making a sincere-feeling effort to patiently wait for Eve to come sniff around at her own pace. And she knows that there’s a solution to this problem that is within her dominion: she could give in. It probably wouldn’t have to be even very much. Any small acknowledgment of her feelings could probably sustain Villanelle for months.
Loneliness, at least, wouldn’t be a problem. She’d probably never have another moment of peace. But Eve has put so many of her chips in on the idea that, when given those two choices: to give into Villanelle, or to be lonely—deciding to be lonely was the right thing to do in the moral calculus of the world. Maybe that’s correct. Maybe it’s not. More and more, Eve is feeling like it’s not actually her choice to make at all.
Her stomach lurches and she blames it on whatever technically vegan toxic sludge they put on the popcorn. She sets the bucket to the side because she’d gotten the big one out of habit and it’s too much for her to finish on her own.
People were always talking about finding somebody who understood and liked you like some kind of reward—but it isn’t, is it? It’s one of life’s great human miseries. Eve feels surer of that now, sitting alone in the theater, too-big bucket of popcorn next to her, an ache pinched in her heart that won’t go away, than at any other point in her life.
***
Eve arrives at Carolyn’s office at 3:10 PM. She’s only faintly surprised to see that Carolyn is the only other person there.
“Eve.” Carolyn’s glasses are riding down to the tip of her nose. She looks at her over the tops of them. “Where’s the rest of you?”
“She’s, uh—” Eve clears her throat and curses herself for knowing exactly what Carolyn is talking about. “—I don’t know, actually. I asked her to be here at three, but…”
Carolyn glances up to the wall clock. “Shall we carry on without her, then?” Anger begins to simmer in Eve. She’d asked her to be here at 3—the dickish attitude is one thing, but interfering with their work? “We’re still processing through Grady’s hard drive, and we will let you know if we find anything of significance…”
Eve leaves the meeting fuming. This is so typical of her, and she isn’t sure why she expected Villanelle’s brief flirtation with doing her job to last for any significant amount of time. Everybody in the cloister of desks outside of Carolyn’s office avoids eye contact with her when she strides out.
She barely takes note of their nervous avoidance, stomping into the stairwell and making her way the two floors down to the basement. When she puts her hand on the handle of her office door and jiggles it, she feels resistance.
Eve sighs, forehead falling to the wood of the threshold with a thump. If the door is locked it means that somebody is in her office, and there’s only one person, really, who that could be—unless the janitor was taking a nap in there again, which, unlikely.
She slaps both open palms against it. “Villanelle, open the door.” She calls, voice sharp with aggravation. “If I have to do it myself, I swear to God—”
The door opens without warning. Eve almost falls, catching herself right before she crashes into Villanelle’s chest.
The only thing she feels when she looks at her face is anger. It’s bright and whetted and she can taste it in the back of her throat like bile. She feels angry at Villanelle for things that are her fault—for missing the meeting, for wrenching Eve’s life to maximum difficulty over the last week—and for things that aren’t—being something that Eve covets but can’t have.
Villanelle always gives her the most of everything—the most fury, the deepest pain. Knowing this just drives the knife deeper into Eve, up to the hilt, twisting it.
“Where the hell were you?” She spits. “I told you we were meeting Carolyn at three.”
“I didn’t feel like it.”
“Oh, congratulations!” Eve laughs, throwing her hands up in the air. Her voice is tinged with hysteria. They’re still standing in her doorway, Villanelle still almost a head taller than Eve, and Eve thinks about pulling out the folding chair and standing on it just so Villanelle can look her directly in the eye during the ass-ripping she’s about to receive. “I didn’t realize that we were just not doing the things we didn’t like this week, what a fucking relief!”
“I am not doing anything for you,” Villanelle says, “until you apologize to me.”
This makes Eve so angry that she actually, paradoxically, can’t feel it anymore. Like when water gets so hot it almost feels cold. “Fine, I’m sorry. Are you going to start doing your job again now?”
“I’m not—that’s not—that’s not a real apology.”
“Then tell me what I’m supposed to be apologizing for. Is it because things got out of hand at Sidney’s? Because I am sorry for that. I wasn’t thinking straight. It shouldn’t have happened.”
Villanelle’s face pinches, transforming into something stung. Eve can feel herself begin to landslide into another emotion—-a softer, more pliable one—and draws faster from the well of anger to stave it off.
“How many times do I have to say I don’t care about that? I want you to apologize for avoiding me.”
“I’m not avoiding you. I’ve been busy.”
“Busy with what? Eve, we only do things together.”
“That doesn’t mean I owe you my time.” Eve avoids Villanelle’s eyes when she says it. She knows it’s unfair. But Villanelle chases her gaze, dipping her head down to try and catch it again.
“You only really believe that when it’s convenient for you.” She insists, “I’m tired of you pretending like you don’t know exactly who I am. You know me and I know you. I’m sorry if that’s humbling for you, Eve. You know but you still act like you can just walk away from this and I won’t be upset.”
“You don’t know me. You don’t understand me at all.” Eve bites. “You’ve been acting like movies and lunch and whatever are going to make up for everything that’s happened between us.”
“At least I’m trying. Do you know how many American movies about high school I’ve watched to figure out how dating is supposed to work?”
“I—” Eve takes a deep breath to deliver her next comeback but finds she has none. The anger well is drying quickly. She’s starting to feel endeared again, fuck—“What movies?”
“I don’t know.” Villanelle’s mouth turns downward. “The one with the scarecrow man. You know, alright, alright, alright— you’re laughing.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just—Villanelle, wait.” Villanelle has shouldered past her and is now stomping toward the stairwell. “We’re not done here.”
“ I’m done, okay? I’m going home.” She looks back at Eve for half a second as if she has something else she wants to say. In that moment, picturing Villanelle sitting on the couch in her flat, watching Dazed and Confused, eyebrow tight with concentration, Eve feels like she could apologize. She has to physically swallow it back, a horse pill.
But by the time she thinks anymore about it, Villanelle is gone, swallowed up by the stairwell.
***
Eve has never been to Villanelle’s London flat. She doesn’t keep its location a secret nor has she ever outright prevented Eve from coming there, but she’s never volunteered it for their activities either. Eve hasn’t asked because she feels comfortable in the home court advantage of her own house, a place where she knows every corner and every exit.
She strides into the building on the heels of another tenant and climbs to the third floor. Something about a walk up has always felt a little pedestrian for Villanelle. Eve tries to imagine her hefting up the stairs, grocery bags hanging from her elbows, sweaty and cranky.
The image makes her less nervous when she knocks on the door. Villanelle opens it only a half second later.
Eve needs to start figuring out the times of day when Villanelle isn’t looking absolutely radiant and planning her visits accordingly. She’s fresh from the shower, hair wet, robe tied at her middle.
“Eve.” She says, looking gently but sincerely surprised.
“We weren’t done, back there.” Eve says. She doesn’t wait for an invitation in, just busts past Villanelle, shedding her jacket and dropping it on the floor. She runs a hand through her hair, barely noticing the way Villanelle takes it from the ground and places it on a wall hook.
“Did you really come here to fight more?” Villanelle asks. She looks subdued, moving around Eve to stand in front of her in the living room, hands on hips. The flat isn’t very different from Sidney’s except that Villanelle has a more intuitively comforting style of decorating. There are tchotchkes of an unknown origin on her windowsills, a fat knit rug on her floor.
“Yes.” Eve says. She leaves out the part where she needs to fight more, where she feels mortal terror at what happens to them when they stop. When their bare knuckle struggle for dominance, akin to the two of them wrestling and throwing punches on a hardwood floor, eases into an embrace. What becomes of her then?
Villanelle looks for a second like she might protest but she doesn’t, moving instead to the kitchen. “Do you ever think about the things we could be doing if we weren’t doing this?” She asks, standing on her tiptoes to retrieve a glass from the cupboard. “Tormenting each other?”
“No.” Eve says, and it’s the truth. If she started thinking about it, she’d probably never be able to drag herself up from the depths of the fantasy.
“Hm.” Villanelle flips the faucet on and fills the glass with water, walking softly back into the living room. She takes a moment to take a long gulp from it. “Okay.” She says when she’s finished. “Let’s fight.”
“Well, I—” Eve glances down at her hands, then back up to Villanelle. The other woman is looking at her with a laid-back sense of expectation. “You have to give me something.”
“Me? You came to my flat!” She clicks her tongue and shakes her head. “Fine. Why are you avoiding me?”
“I’m not avoiding you.”
“Come on, Eve.” Villanelle is doing that thing where her eyes search Eve’s face and Eve is trying to keep herself neutral, but—“Is it because you’re jealous of Sidney?”
“No. I’m not jealous of her.”
“No, you are.” She leans in and squints like a dog trying to catch the scent of something. “I just can’t figure out why.” Eve rocks back, trying to maintain some sort of distance between them. It might be a lost cause, because once the unraveling starts it’s usually a fool’s errand to try and stop it. She has to try anyway. “She has something you want. But you already have me.”
“I don’t
have
you.”
“You do.” She shrugs, taking another sip of her water, looking really casual about it. Eve doesn’t feel casual, and maybe she’s actually never felt casual in her entire life, but right now she feels a lot like she’s on the verge of self-immolation. “I’m me and I’m telling you you do.”
“Well, I don’t—” The words want you get stuck in Eve’s throat. Villanelle tilts her head, watching her, sighing.
“You don’t want me?” She prompts. Eve’s lower lip trembles and she nods in confirmation. “No, say it. If that’s what you mean, say it.”
“Fine, I will.” Eve shakes herself out a little, squares her shoulders. She takes a deep breath and exhales it, willing her brain and body to cooperate with each other. “I…” She licks her lips. “...need some fresh air.”
“The balcony is through there.” Villanelle gestures to the french doors off the living room and Eve turns, practically running to them. She can feel Villanelle on her heels as she pushes the glass-paneled gateway open, stepping out into the frigid evening.
It’s too cold to be standing outside without a jacket, but they do anyway. The balcony is small. It has a chair and a potted plant and is otherwise just big enough for the two of them to stand, shivering.
“I am not jealous of Sidney.” Eve says again. Villanelle rolls her eyes. “It bothers me that you think I am.”
“Then why wouldn’t you let me kiss her?”
“It would have been weird and unprofessional.”
“And it would have bothered you.”
Their voices are increasing in pitch and intensity. Villanelle is losing some of her cool edge, which Eve is grateful for. She doesn’t know where her feet are if she’s not driving Villanelle insane. Part of her wonders if she’s not denying it just because she knows better what to do with her when she’s just as out of her wits as Eve is.
It draws them closer, too, in that same way that it had tangled them together in Sidney’s kitchen. Eve feels like she could reach out and touch her again—hand on hip, hand on her cheek. She settles just for leaning her body in until they’re a hair’s breadth from each other. Her heart is hammering.
“What is it, Eve?” She asks again, her voice supplicant but touched all over with irritation. “Is it because she almost kissed me?”
“No.”
“Or,” Her gaze tapers, zeroing in on something. Eve wonders what her tell is; the twitch of her mouth, a more-avoidant-than-usual gaze? “Is it because she could’ve and you can’t bring yourself to do it at all?” Her little gasp immediately following the sentence tells Eve that it’s game over. She’s smoked her out. “Oh my God, that’s it. Eve, that is so stupid.”
“It isn’t stupid.” She regrets the words as soon as they come out of her mouth, because Villanelle’s expression colors with delight in being proved correct. “Like I said, I don’t care who you kiss.”
“You do. You just said you do!”
“God, why does it matter?”
“Because maybe, if you could just admit something, we could get unstuck from this.”
“There’s nothing to admit.”
Now their faces are close and Villanelle looks peeved but her eyes are flicking all around Eve’s visage—her ears, her cheeks, her mouth. Eve tries to hide the unevenness of her breath, keeping her lips pinched together in a stern line.
“Okay.” Villanelle says, her voice even. “How about I call her, then? Invite her over?” Are they still fighting? Eve can’t actually tell. Villanelle is talking with a low, precarious tone, one a person might take when making promises to a lover. Only she’s not making a promise, she’s threatening Eve, eyes hawkish and observant. She’s watching for any tell, any give. Any weak spot to dig the nail of her thumb into. “You were right, I do think she’s hot. She’s probably a great fuck, too.”
“Do it.” Eve says before her face can give her up again. “I don’t care.”
They stand like that for a moment. Abutting each other, toes at the point of the ledge, each daring the other to jump. Then Villanelle scoffs, rocking back, and she moves to go back inside the flat.
“Where are you going?” Eve calls, trailing after her. She watches Villanelle set her glass of water on the windowsill and take her phone from the couch.
“I’m calling her.” She says. Her face briefly goes aglow with the white light of the phone screen as she scrolls over to her contacts. “Unless you have something else you want to say about it.”
Eve has about a thousand things she wants to say about it. She realizes that the power to put a stop to the madness is sitting squarely in the palms of her hands, and she also realizes that she’s the last person on earth who should have it. Between the two of them, Villanelle would probably be the person most able to make an uncatastrophically stupid desicion right now, and that’s saying a lot about Eve’s mental state.
Because she did come here, tight as a ball of rubber bands, and prod Villanelle until she did something. She wants Villanelle to do something. Maybe it’s not for her to call Sidney, but Eve isn’t even certain of that.
When she doesn’t respond, Villanelle shrugs and hits the screen with her thumb. She puts the phone to her ear and wanders off into another room. Eve can hear, behind the door, the muffled sounds of a one-sided conversation.
She stands in the emptiness of the living room, surrounded by all of Villanelle’s things. She tries not to let herself linger on them too long; her choice of couch, where she’d gotten the items that litter her windowsills, the neatly lined-up spines on her bookshelf. Eve finds that when she does that—lingers on Villanelle—it becomes harder to simplify her, and harder to stay angry at her.
Because she had chosen all the things in this room, hadn’t she, because she liked them? Had many tabs open on her laptop of many different couches, held a small figurine in the palm of her hand at a thrift store and dithered over it. It’s those crackles of mortality that hurt Eve more than anything else—that she’s stood in a store, that she’s decided privately that she likes something enough to take it home with her—she can’t compartmentalize that into a person with no recognizable emotion. It makes the supposed monstrosity of her feel more like a tragedy.
It feels safe somehow, in that room, to admit to herself that she does care. That she would not like to see them kiss; that she didn’t before and she doesn’t now. That she’s having trouble coping with the implications of that truth. There’s nobody there to judge her—just some figurines and herself.
Villanelle strides from the other room, robe billowing behind her. “Sidney’s coming in twenty minutes. When she gets here, do you want to stay and watch, or should I call you a car?”
Luckily, Villanelle doesn’t really let her dwell for too long on the things about her that are mysterious and good. Eve drops to the couch and crosses her arms. “She’s coming here for a threesome, isn’t she?”
“I guess she is.” Villanelle settles next to her, arms also crossed. Eve can’t see her own face, but is sure that their peevish looks are mirror images of one another.
They sit in silence, stewing over their self-inflicted wounds. “Can we agree that this is stupid?” Villanelle says after a few minutes of it, shifting her body so she’s facing Eve. “It’s a waste of time.”
“You were the one who suggested it.”
“Come off it. I was serious when I said I’d do anything. I just don’t understand why everything you want is so stupid.” Eve scoffs. “Yes, it is stupid! You always want to do everything the hardest, longest possible way.”
“There is no easy way!”
“Oh, yes there is.” Villanelle slopes toward Eve, arm draped over the back of the couch. “We could be in bed right now, just you and me. I could be spending the night kissing my way up from your toes.”
“That sounds awful,” Eve says, heart fluttering and adolescent, butterflies in her stomach. “I would hate that.”
“Would you? It takes a long time. I am very thorough.”
“Do you ever stop with this?” Eve gestures weakly between them. “It’s borderline pathological.”
“No. And I never will.” Villanelle scowls. “I think that we are the only two people that could possibly tolerate the other. It is not my fault that you also happen to be the most difficult woman on earth.”
“Yeah, well, I got a serial murderer. I didn’t exactly win the lottery.” Eve spits, watches as Villanelle throws her hands up.
“You are being a crybaby.”
There’s a knock at the door and both of them turn their heads in tandem, then look at each other. Eve sees that Villanelle is breathing hard, a blotchy red springing up from the edge of her robe. Her eyes are dark and challenging. They play a game of chicken for a moment—a silent dance of are we doing this or are we not doing this— and then Sidney knocks again.
“Coming.” Villanelle calls, rising from the couch and going to the door. Her eyes only leave Eve when she twists the handle to let Sidney in.
“Hi.” Sidney says. Her shoulders are up to her ears and her cheeks are pink from the cold. “It’s a horror out there, isn’t it? Hi, Eve.”
Eve is on her knees on the couch, watching over the back. Her arms are folded on the edge and her chin rests on them. She tracks Villanelle as she reaches to divest Sidney of her jacket, hanging it alongside Eve’s. She then steps in front of Sidney and runs her hands down her arms, coming to a stop at her hands, squeezing them. “Poor thing, you must be freezing.”
Eve scoffs at her trilling, saccharine tone of voice. They both turn to her and she schools her face back into coolness. “Sorry, I’m getting over a little cough.”
“Can I get you a drink?” Villanelle asks. She hasn’t taken her hands from Sidney’s, and she’s tilting her head, gazing at her from under her eyelashes. Eve feels completely normal about this.
“Ah, no thank you. I was actually just at the pub.” Sidney’s still looking at Eve. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“You just sounded urgent on the phone, and the energy in here is a little…” Villanelle’s hands run up her arms and go to cup the back of her neck. Eve sees her fingernails scrape against the skin, pulling a little at the baby hairs there, and shifts on the couch. “…thick.”
“We were just having a disagreement. I was hoping that you could settle something for us.”
“Ah, okay.” Her eyes drift back to Eve. “What’s the disagreement?”
“Not important. Eve changed her mind about seeing us kiss.”
“Oh.” She squints. “Are you sure you’re alright, Eve? You look…angry.”
“That’s just her face.” Villanelle murmurs. She tilts her head downward. Eve’s hands grip into fists so taut that her fingernails dig into her palms. She’s biting her cheek hard enough to draw blood. She’s fine.
Villanelle noses at Sidney’s cheek, and Sidney seems to be enjoying it at face value, but Eve sees it for the performance it is. Playing to an audience of one, dragging the interaction out for as long as possible to induce Eve to be the first to tap out.
She wouldn’t kiss like that, really. She wouldn’t drag her nose along Eve’s jaw, up her cheek, ghost her mouth along the shell of her ear. Her breath wouldn’t be hot, her tongue soft, her teeth sharp on Eve’s earlobe.
And it doesn’t matter anyway, because Eve is not calling Uncle. “Sidney, do you want a tour of the flat?”
She is , however, going to pump the breaks a little.
Sidney and Villanelle break apart and look at her—Villanelle with an insufferable, knowing expression, and Sidney seeming about as dazed as if Villanelle had just spun her in a circle ten times.
“Er, sounds great.” She says, blinking rapidly.
Eve hates that this turn of events seems to have renewed Villanelle’s energy. She also hates the way she takes Sidney’s hand and leads her deeper into the flat, almost skipping with joy.
One thing she hadn’t really thought about, when she suggested it, is that Villanelle’s flat is really only three rooms—and one of them is the bedroom. Villanelle seems aware of this too, if the grinch-like smile tacked to her face is any indication.
She leads Sidney to the terrace and opens the doors, letting her step out onto it. While she’s taking in the view, back turned to them, Villanelle faces Eve and grins. She raises her eyebrows and sticks her tongue to her cheek as if to say your move and Eve boils over, reaching out to—-pinch her? Punch her? Grab her and hold her? She isn’t sure, and she doesn’t end up finding out because Villanelle takes her by the wrist and stills her, her hand hovering just at her hip.
“Don’t be naughty, Eve.” She whispers. “We still have to see the bathroom.”
Villanelle conducts the rest of the tour gleefully and with flourish, gesturing to the living room with a wide open arm, describing her tchotchkes and the make and model of her television, showing off the tiny bathroom like they’re visiting Versailles. It’s irritating because she knows and Eve knows and Sidney, if she’s thinking about it at all, knows where they’re going to end up. She’s just drawing it out, rubbing Eve’s misfortune in her face.
She saves the bedroom for last. Eve watches her press the door open and follows Sidney inside, glaring at Villanelle as she brushes past her body.
Villanelle pulls the chain of the lamp beside the bed, bathing the room in light. There’s not a lot of furniture, but it takes up most of the room—a king sized bed, a nightstand, an exposed clothing rack and a small dresser. All of it looks slightly yellow under the glow of the bulb.
Eve thinks of the night they were in her own bedroom together. Eve, drunk, and Villanelle with unexpectedly shy hands. Pulling her shirt from her body, undoing the button of her pants. This second time is headier for some inarticulable reason. Eve knows Villanelle feels it too because when she comes to stand with them, she’s focused only on Eve.
The three of them are close, standing at the bottom corner of the bed, but it might as well just be Villanelle and Eve. Eve loosens a little, not for the first time that evening, but it’s the first time that she feels it in the exact moment it happens; something in her gut coming unfastened, some of the insistence on defiance ebbing away.
Her and Villanelle are always assholes to each other until they aren’t. Until it feels like they can’t be anymore.
It’s something about being in her apartment and seeing her things. Something about Sidney being there, about Eve’s possessiveness over their relationship. Maybe most of all, something about the fact that Villanelle is in front of her and she’s beautiful and her bed is right there. And she’s about to inflict on Eve a very specific sort of pain that Eve has asked her for, a quality that Eve finds unbearably attractive.
“Beautiful room.” Sidney says. She’s peering at the clothing rack. “Is this building pre-war?”
They both pivot toward her. Villanelle shakes her head a little, as if relieving herself from a trance, and reaches out to catch Sidney by the hand, to tug her a little closer.
“Okay.” She murmurs, looking at Sidney, body relaxed. She takes Sidney’s other hand and places it on her shoulder, until they’re half embraced.
“How is this going to settle your disagreement?” Sidney asks. She’s smiling, something Eve hates. “Was it about kissing?”
Eve watches this happen with the curiosity and helplessness of an onlooker to a car accident. She tries to think if there’s another out—there isn’t, except to tell them to stop, which she could but then Villanelle would—
Villanelle would what? Kill her? No, she’d just know that Eve is bothered by the idea of her kissing another person. That is feeling more and more like a liveable scenario by the minute. And it wouldn’t be giving up everything, would it, to admit something like that? It isn’t a proposal of marriage. It isn’t even sex.
She watches Sidney’s face as Villanelle winds up to the kiss like she’s readying herself for a punch. She looks so relaxed, so pleased, and yes, it makes Eve angry. And jealous. She’s bothered by it.
It should be her , shouldn’t it? It should be them. Sidney doesn’t need to be there at all. Eve doesn’t have to be feeling this way, either—slighted and awful. She could be getting kissed. She could be sinking into a moment of warm, syrupy oblivion.
A kiss is not everything and it doesn’t even necessarily have to be a betrayal of the things she thought she knew about herself. It can just be a kiss, if Eve lets it be.
Right as she thinks it she sees Sidney and Villanelle’s mouths collide. It’s hard and tight-lipped. Villanelle’s eyes are pinched shut and she has her arms looped around Sidney’s shoulders and Sidney’s hands are still right where Villanelle had left them.
Once she decides on it—that she’s going to do it—there’s really nothing left to be angry about. Eve understands as she watches, for probably for the first time in this entire disaster series of events, exactly what is coming next—can see it playing out as if it’s already happened. It’s that certain; certain enough that it almost has already become the future.
She sees Villanelle open her mouth a little and lick into Sidney’s mouth—rude, but probably fair play—before they part. She turns to Eve, removing herself from the embrace just enough to face her. Sidney is still pitched forward, eyes closed, as if she hasn’t realized that the kiss has ended.
Her face is wide open. For the first time that night, she looks a little unsure. It’s as if she didn’t think the kiss would actually happen. Neither did Eve.
They look at each other. Villanelle half in Sidney’s arms still, half leaning out of them. The lamplight makes it look like the corners of the room don’t exist. It’s as if they’re on a stage.
Eve has made so many selfish decisions in her life. Kissing her might be the most out of all of them—but she’s watched Villanelle go through cycles like the phases of the moon. She’s evolved into a beast of another nature, something hideous and loveable at the same time.
Eve never stood a chance against that, probably. It’s the Orpheus thing. The monkey’s paw thing. You can’t lean out of a car crash, stop the wheel spinning when it’s already spun, unmake the wish. The same is probably true of falling in love.
All Eve has been doing, at the end of the day, is delaying the inevitable.
Eve reaches out to her and takes her—hands to arms to hips, and pulls Villanelle against her. She comes easily from Sidney’s embrace. Villanelle looks startled, flushed. Close up, Eve can see down the front of her robe.
“Are you not wearing anything underneath that?” She sighs. Villanelle has caught on to the moment and is running her hands along Eve’s cheekbones, her shoulders, her back. She’s burying her face in Eve’s hair and inhaling.
“Just underwear.” She breathes, and Eve shudders when she feels her lips wet against her neck. Villanelle pulls back just enough that her face is visible. She kisses Eve’s temple and Eve’s hands tangle in the back of her robe, pulling it off one shoulder.
Villanelle’s mouth opens against her skin, a silent gasp—every action provoking a new and larger reaction. “You caught me off guard. I didn’t expect you to come tonight.”
“Granny panties?” Villanelle’s lips leave her temple and drag softly along her cheek until their mouths ghost against each other. She scoffs.
“I do not own granny panties —”
Eve’s hands slip between the flaps of her robe and grasp at the band of her underwear. She feels the fabric between her fingers, the downy hairs of Villanelle’s stomach against her knuckles. Villanelle’s mouth goes agape again against hers and Eve feels her breath hot against her face.
“Feels kind of like granny panties to me.”
“They’re just cotton. Very—” She swallows hard, then runs her lips back and forth against Eve’s—a gentle graze. “—expensive cotton.”
“I bet everybody with a Primark multipack says that.”
“Did you bring me here just to be an asshole?”
“I brought you here to ask for a compromise.” Their lips are brushing when she talks. Any air between them feels like a technicality. “Just kiss me, okay? One kiss. No funny business.”
“You’re the one with your hands in my pants.”
“Jesus, could you give it a rest for two seconds?”
“Maybe,” Villanelle murmurs, “if you can admit that I was right.”
“Now you’re being an asshole.”
“I’m serious. Eve.”
“God, fine. You were right. I didn’t want to see you kiss—” Her words get subsumed into Villanelle’s mouth. It almost doesn’t feel like a kiss—their mouths are open, their teeth clack, Villanelle stumbles forward. It’s more of a mauling, of a desperate pawing to get closer to one another. Eve’s hands stay clenched in Villanelle’s panties, gripping them so hard that she’s surprised she doesn’t tear them.
Villanelle bites her lower lip. Her robe slips down and gets caught in the crooks of her elbows but it doesn’t matter because there’s no negative space between them.
It’s a good kiss. If Eve had any blood left in her brain, she’d probably be mad about that. How weak in the knees she feels from it and how little she’s thinking about it. Villanelle pulls her in and begins kissing along her cheek, down to her neck, and at the same time she pitches her hips forward into Eve’s hands.
“I said no funny business.” She gasps, feeling teeth scrape at the skin between her neck and shoulder.
“What is funny business ?” Villanelle mumbles, muffled by Eve’s hair and skin. “Can you just tell me when we’re there?”
“We’re definitely there.” Eve pants. She rocks back, taking her hands with her. Villanelle whines, reaches out and lays ahold of Eve’s shirtsleeves.
“Don’t stop touching me.” She blinks, lower lip twitching. She puts Eve’s hands on her hips and holds them there with her own. “Please.”
“Erm.” Oh, right. Sidney. She’s still standing off to the side of them. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—” She looks at a loss for words. Stunned. “Did you…did you resolve your disagreement?”
They look between each other. Villanelle inclines her head slightly toward Sidney— want her to stay? And Eve shakes her head vehemently.
Villanelle takes the hands she’d been holding and kisses them before releasing Eve. “Oh, yes.” She pulls her robe back up around her shoulders and tightens the cinch. She has an easy smile affixed to her face, gliding over and pressing her hand to Sidney’s back, navigating her toward the bedroom door. “You’ve been so helpful, Sidney. Thank you. I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ll be taking you up on that threesome—”
“That’s alright. I’m just not quite sure what I did, to be honest.”
Villanelle looks over her shoulder right before she ushers Sidney through the threshold and winks. Eve doesn’t know how to react, so she doesn’t overthink it. There’s time for that later, probably. Instead, she lets her body do what it wants to—her heart gallops, her gut mangles itself. She doesn’t let herself get stuck in the mud.
The bedroom door shuts after them. Eve lowers herself to the edge of the bed, taking a moment to look around while she listens to their muffled conversation in the living room. Her body is still a hot, throbbing mass of nerves. She can’t quiet it down as much as she tries.
The door opens again and Villanelle steps in. “You know, she is actually really nice.” Eve says nothing. “Eve, don’t start.”
“I’m not starting, I promise.” It comes out of Eve’s mouth sounding breakable. Villanelle swallows hard. Eve can see her throat flex. “You have to put on something else.”
“You are really obsessed with slut shaming me.”
Eve rolls her eyes. “Please. For my own sanity.” She knows it will please her, the implication that Eve can’t focus when she’s not wearing much of anything. Stroke her ego. Villanelle simpers like she’s right.
She goes to a small chest of drawers at the far corner of the room and grabs a t-shirt. Eve turns away before she can get them in further trouble. She focuses on the lamp, trying not to let her visual imagination take over when she hears the robe slump to the floor.
“Alright, you can look.” Villanelle is in front of her in an oversized purple t-shirt that says Ilysa’s Bat Mitzvah in big bubble letters.
“Where did you—”
“Charity shop, don’t worry.” She sits on the bed next to Eve. “I have never murdered a child at a bat mitzvah.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
She grins, shrugs. Eve notices that she’s sitting probably a purposeful distance away from her on the bed. They’re not touching at all. “Does this mean you’re done avoiding me?”
The words I wasn’t avoiding you, sharp and reflexive, sit on her tongue. Eve swallows them back. “I wasn’t even doing a very good job before. We saw each other every day.”
“You’re lucky I’m persistent.”
“Lucky isn’t exactly the word I would use.”
“I’m still waiting for my apology.”
“Ugh.” Eve grimaces. “Do we really apologize to each other now? You shot me and I still haven’t heard anything about that.”
“You hurt my feelings!”
“Is that really what happened? Be honest.”
“Yes, of course.” She tilts her head. “You think because you don’t understand the feelings I have that I don’t have them. I think it makes you feel better than me.”
That’s true. “The idea that your feelings are real worries me.”
Villanelle snorts like it’s not a big deal at all. “You’ll learn to cope. I don’t understand yours either, you know, but I try.”
“I don’t think movies about American high schools are going to get you very far.” Eve says, “I never liked that stuff very much. Dates, movies, whatever. I only like it now because we do it together.”
“What about making out in the backseat of a car? That is also a very popular theme.”
“I can’t just—do that, you know? With you. Not yet. Not now.”
Bill’s name is unsaid but as present as if he were in the room. So is everything else—it clutters around them, pressing them closer together. Villanelle looks like she’s listening. Or like she’s processing this information through her brain like laundry through a mangler.
“I’m not worried about it.” She says, “I think it will just make it better when we get there. But you have to try, too. I try, you try.”
“It would have to be slow. I mean, absolutely glacial.”
“Limited funny business.” Villanelle says, her brow set and stern. Eve wants to laugh. Her upper lip twitches with effort.
“ No funny business.”
“Mild to moderate funny business.” She offers. Eve shakes her head. “Eve, this is a democracy.”
“It’s definitely a dictatorship.”
Eve tries to imagine leaving and can’t. She can’t really imagine staying, either, but can admit that staying has a better ring to it. “Can I stay here tonight?”
Villanelle is ecstatic but trying to hide it, which only makes it more obvious. She spends an entire twenty minutes deciding on what t-shirt to give to Eve to sleep in, standing at the dresser, scratching the calf of one leg with her other foot.
The shirt rides up when she bends to get something from the bottom drawer and Eve sees the very expensive not-Primark cotton underwear. What was the word she had used—glacial? Well, what did that even mean, anyway? Glaciers could move at a lot of different paces. Global warming. Et cetera.
“Here.” Eve takes the shirt, big and with something that looks like a spaghetti sauce stain at the collar. Maybe this whole thing is a mistake, because she’s still thinking about the kiss. And it’s making her feel—something. Stupid, maybe.
Actually, yeah. It’s making her feel really stupid.
Villanelle turns and pretends to be interested in something on the nightstand. She scratches her nose.
“It’s okay.” Eve says, standing. She holds the shirt in one hand and starts on the snap of her pants with the other. “I think you’ve pretty much seen it all before, anyway.”
Villanelle looks. She reclines against the headboard of the bed and fusses with the bottom hem of her shirt. Her hair, now dry, is frizzy and has little kinks in it. It makes her look younger.
Eve disposes of her pants first, then her shirt. This is familiar territory—or, it might’ve been, in a different context.
“Aren’t you going to make fun of my underwear?” She asks. They are from a Primark multipack. They’re lavender and have a quarter sized hole on the hip.
“Um.” Villanelle clears her throat. For all her usual bluster, sexual assertiveness, brute force—she looks really nervous. Like she’s trying to focus up but can’t. “That color is really ugly.”
“Not your best work.” Eve says, privately feeling herself swell with pride. It’s a little fun. It could be fun, sometimes, between them.
Eve puts the shirt on without taking off her bra first, something Villanelle looks relieved about. She removes it from underneath, pulling it out of a sleeve and tossing it on the floor before slipping into the other side of the bed.
For a few beats, Villanelle mirrors everything Eve does. When Eve pulls back the duvet and slides underneath it, so does she. When Eve turns on her side to face the middle of the bed, she reaches to turn off the lamp then matches her.
They’re nose to nose, hands tucked under their heads. Eve’s body is still alive, its nerve endings trembling, refusing to let go of the memory even if she herself is trying not to think about it. “You didn’t even ask me if I was tired.” Villanelle points out.
“What time is it?”
“9:30.”
“If you’re going to date an old woman, you have to get used to having a strict bedtime.”
“You are not old.” Villanelle huffs, sounding affronted. “And I’ve seen you in the office way past 9.” She wriggles in, nosing at Eve, sighing. Eve sighs too, some parts of her satiated by the contact, some parts of her starving from it.
“Villanelle—”
“Do you want to get up and watch TV instead?”
Maybe the most complicated thing about this is that allowing herself a small taste of intimacy has carved open a hunger in Eve for all intimacy. She wants them to pace themselves so that they don’t end up murdering each other and burning the entire city of London away in their wake. She also wants to put Villanelle in her mouth like a hard candy and suck on her until she disappears. “Not really.”
“I promise no funny business.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Eve just wants to let their closeness be what it is without her libido getting in the way. She knows that once they go there—the kissing and the touching and everything else—it’ll become complicated again. There will be feelings that probably, in reality, she’s not ready for yet.
Villanelle doesn’t seem to share any part of Eve’s inner conflict. She’s shifting closer—moving herself, waiting to feel resistance, and then moving again—until her body is snug against Eve’s. Eve can feel her forehead on her collarbone and her breath moving against the front of her nightshirt, periodically warming the fabric.
“You feel really nice.” She says, tangling her legs with Eve’s. Eve gasps quietly into the dark of the room when Villanelle drags her face up to bury it in the crook of her neck. “But you’re tense.”
“There’s a lot going on.”
“Just to clarify,” Villanelle sighs, “we’re not going to have sex?”
“No, we’re not.”
“So just touch yourself.” Eve feels Villanelle’s feet on top of her feet, toes curling against her ankle, knees bumping into hers. She feels the scratchy patches on her calves that the razor had missed. She says it like she’s just come up with the most brilliant idea in the world. Which—maybe.
Eve thinks about it because on one hand, she’s right. On the other—“That feels like getting away with it on a technicality.”
“It’s an orgasm, Eve, you’re not robbing a bank. Here.” There’s a brief moment of loss and the feeling of the bed depressing as Villanelle shifts. Then, the sensation of the back of Villanelle’s thighs against the front of Eve’s and her backside tucked into the cradle of her hips. “I’m not even paying attention.”
“Is this the logic your brain operates on every day?” It’s a compelling idea though. Eve hasn’t masturbated in an amount of time that she’s afraid to quantify. And right now she’s so wet it’s probably soaked through the fabric of her underwear. And, yeah, maybe this doesn’t have to be all or nothing. There are a lot of different ways to be close to somebody. Also, a lot of different ways to have an orgasm.
Eve reaches and pulls up the fabric of Villanelle’s t-shirt and then her own, just to establish more skin-to skin contact. The room is dark but she can still see Villanelle turn her head into the pillow and the fingers of one of her hands grip at the corner of it. Almost experimentally, she presses her hips forward into her ass. She just wants to see how it would make her feel.
The friction pulls her underwear tighter against herself. She keeps an ear out for any reaction from Villanelle and hears only the suck of breath into her nose and the other, quieter exhale of it though her mouth. Eve suppresses a smile. She does it again, the rocking motion, using one hand to hold Villanelle by the hips and pressing her body sloppily forward. It’s not experimental anymore, really—she does it because she knows it feels good.
Villanelle does make a sound this time, a strangled little gasp that comes from somewhere deep in her throat. This is enough to take Eve’s hand from her hip and send it sliding down the front of her underwear. She makes an astonished sound when she feels how wet she is and digs her front deeper into Villanelle’s back. Villanelle kicks one leg back to wrap around Eve’s, tugging her closer.
Eve knows that if she goes for it she’ll be finished in about thirty seconds. Even the slightest glance over her clit with her fingertips is enough to make her shudder and her hips jerk. Maybe a quick finish would, in some ways, be for the best, but she’s not ready to untighten her grip on the closeness they’re sharing. So she slows it down, ghosting her fingers over herself instead of really rubbing, jogging her hips against Villanelle’s ass just enough to be present but not enough to create any more pressure.
Because it’s quiet and dark, Eve is going only off of the feeling of Villanelle’s skin, the sound of her small, quiet groans, the smell of her. She bends her head forward, kissing an exposed part of her shoulder, then biting it gently. Villanelle cries out and her whole body shudders.
“Can I take my underwear off?”
Eve pauses, realizing how out of breath she’s become. She swallows against a dry throat. “Yeah, okay.”
“Will you do yours too? I promise I’m not—I just want to feel you.”
Eve wants to feel her, too. She wants it badly in a lot of ways, some physical and some not, none of which are achievable to her at that moment. But skin to skin contact is and so she nods against Villanelle’s shoulder blade, feeling her hasten to drag her panties down around her ankles and kick them off somewhere into the bed. Eve does the same.
Instead of putting her hand back where it was, she reaches out to grope at all the newly revealed skin. She feels sixteen again, intoxicated by the ability to just do this to somebody else—to run her palm against the cheek of their ass, then scrape her nails against the skin of their upper thigh. To know that doing that makes them whine and involuntarily kick a foot against the sheets.
Unable to bear it any longer, Eve squares herself back against Villanelle. She doesn’t use her hand this time, wanting to experiment again with how it feels. It’s just her cunt pressed against the skin of her backside, nothing between them, and it feels, unsurprisingly, gorgeous. Eve grinds into her a second time with such force that it rolls Villanelle half onto her stomach, Eve following against her, not willing to sacrifice an inch of contact.
“It’s okay to touch yourself.” Eve says, stabilizing herself with her free hand and moving her other back between Villanelle and her soaked center. It feels rude to work yourself to what is sure to be an explosive, brain-melting orgasm using somebody else’s body and not let them do the same.
Villanelle is face down on the pillow. She turns her cheek to respond. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Eve’s hand starts to move again, rubbing with purpose. She feels one of Villanelle’s knees pull up and then a shifting in her body that she presumes is Villanelle’s hand going between her own legs. They move in a breathtaking tandem, Eve pressing down, Villanelle pressing up, the bed shifting and them panting.
And Eve was right, before. It only takes a minute of this before the coil in her stomach is tightening to an unbearable degree. It’s a headrush, knowing that Villanelle is touching herself also, knowing that she’s about to come directly against her and leave the evidence of it on her skin.
“I’m gonna—” Eve cuts herself off. Underneath her, Villanelle presses her hips up further and more firmly against her, keeping them there. The tension is enough to send Eve toppling over the edge, all the muscles in her stomach contracting and releasing in quick, hard pulses. Her body slackens in the aftermath but she keeps one elbow pressed firmly into the bed to keep herself from collapsing entirely into Villanelle.
It only takes Villanelle half a second more to follow her. Once Eve feels her body stop quaking she does let herself relax completely.
They lay stacked. Eve’s cheek is smushed between Villanelle’s shoulder blades, her head rising and falling with her breath. They’ve kicked the blankets off the bed and her lower body is chilly with all the drying bodily fluids. She’s too boneless to do anything about it.
The thing about orgasms that Eve has always appreciated is that it’s hard to think about anything after you’ve had one. Maybe it’s the endorphins. Maybe it’s just the fact that she’s not exerting all of her energy into denial anymore. But she feels relaxed and thoughtless and gooey.
Villanelle must share this sentiment, because the next thing Eve hears is a gentle snore. She lifts her head slightly. “Are you really falling asleep right now?”
“Shhh.”
“You are such a boy.” Eve says, so overwhelmed by devotion that she can hardly get the words out. She realizes that this must be what she was afraid of all this time; not that things were complicated, but that she could feel a tenderness this easy. Villanelle grunts and Eve moves to roll off her, only to be stopped by a hand on her wrist.
“Don’t.” She mumbles. Eve rolls her eyes. “Stay there.”
She thinks about being an asshole, but it feels a little like they’re having a truce. She pulls the comforter up around them instead and resumes her previous position.
***
“Eve.” It’s way too early to be dealing with Hugo. Eve reaches for the styrofoam cup of coffee on her desk and takes a long, noisy sip, glaring at him all the while. He’s standing in the doorway of her office. His black eye looks less swollen than before. “I just want to say thank you for whatever you did—your girlfriend has been much tamer today.”
Eve opens her mouth to say not my girlfriend before realizing that there’s no accurate description of their current relationship that doesn’t involve the words ‘mutual masturbation’. She drops it.
The woman in question comes to her doorway at just that moment, a dopey smile on her face. Eve doesn’t mind exactly—not her presence, not the smile—except that Hugo is there and he picks up on it immediately, his mouth dropping into an o shape when he sees Villanelle.
“Hi, Eve.” She says, leaning against the other side of the door frame. “Do you want to walk to Carolyn’s office together?”
“Why’d she say Hi Eve like that?” Hugo asks, eyes darting between them. Eve groans and drops her head into her hands. He gasps. “Eve Polastri, you dog— ”
Carolyn has called an all hands that they reluctantly pile into her office for. Eve and Villanelle sit where they always sit—the only two other chairs in the office, jammed next to each other, right in front of the desk. Eve keeps her knees angled away but can’t escape the way Villanelle’s gaze lingers hot on her cheek.
She pinches her thigh through her pants to keep the smile off her face. The last thing she needs is Carolyn noticing.
“Alright.” Carolyn says when they’re all present, folding her hands on her desk. “I’ve gathered you all here with an update on the Grady case. Thanks to the tireless—” Eve coughs and Carolyn’s eyes go to her “—efforts of your colleagues, we have managed to uncover evidence from Ms. Grady’s hard drive that indicates that she is, in fact, deeply involved with the Twelve and their finances, and may in fact be directly implicated in several assassinations—Eve, are you quite alright?”
“Fine.” Eve’s eyes are watering and she has her hand over her mouth, elbow leaned on the arm of her chair, to mask the expression on her face. She doesn’t look at Villanelle but knows she probably looks roughly the same. “Just thinking about something I saw on television last night.”
“Right.” Carolyn’s eyes narrow. “I suggest you both pull it together because the camaraderie radiating off of you right now is, frankly, chilling.”
“Sorry, yes, I’m fine.” Eve clears her throat and sits back in her chair, still keeping her eyes deliberately off of Villanelle.
“Hugo is going to take over bringing her in for questioning as a next step. I’d like to say well done, but something is telling me that would be a folly.” She says. “That is all. Everybody is dismissed except for Eve.”
Everybody in the room except for Villanelle rushes for the door. She doesn’t rise from her seat. “What do you want with Eve?”
“I promise I’ll return her to you in a few minutes.” Carolyn responds in a voice that leaves no room for argument. Villanelle turns to her and they have one of their voiceless conversations in which Eve tries to convey that yes, it is okay for her to leave. Villanelle shrugs, not looking pleased about it, but stands and goes to the door all the same.
“I’ll be waiting right outside.”
Once she’s gone, Carolyn reaches into her desk and fetches a file. She slides it over to Eve. “I have another task for you. We managed to pull quite a few other names off Grady’s hard drive. People of interest. We’re not sure how they connect up quite yet.”
Eve opens the folder. It contains several one page printouts with pictures attached. “Right now, we’ll just need simple surveillance. Stake outs. It will likely be tedious—long hours alone in a car with one other person, nothing to do—Eve, are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“You’re red as a tomato.”
“It’s warm in here, isn’t it?”
“Not particularly.” Carolyn frowns. “Anyway, you can pick whoever you wish to take along with you. Hugo or Elena or…” She raises her eyebrows. “...Villanelle.”
“Hm.” Eve takes the folder and puts it in her lap, nodding, trying to hold a contemplative look on her face. “Yes, I’ll have to think about it.”
She finds Villanelle leaning against the wall opposing the office door when she leaves. Eve slaps the file to her chest and she grabs it, not taking her eyes off her face. They look like little cartoon hearts. Eve shakes her head.
“Are we getting lunch?”
“Sure.” Villanelle says. She glances down at the folder. “What’s this?”
“A new job.” Eve is walking toward the entrance to her office, jacket on, Villanelle at her heels. “What were you saying yesterday about making out in the backseat of a car?”