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They don’t say much once Eve’s closed the distance between them and they’re walking in the same direction. They stay close. Their hands brush enough times that finally Eve reaches for Villanelle’s, or maybe Villanelle is the one who reaches, and they hold hands as they walk, looking like any couple on their way home in the dark and the glittering lights.
+
“So, uh,” Eve says, “this is it.”
“I know,” says Villanelle. “I’ve been here before, remember?”
“Oh, right.” Eve tries to nonchalantly kick the dirty clothes strewn on the floor out of sight. “The teddy bear.”
“Where is she? I worked really hard on that.”
“Uh,” Eve says.
It doesn’t take long for Villanelle to spot the torn up remains of Princess Teddy Bear by the bed.
She gives Eve a deeply incredulous look. “Really?”
“In all fairness, you had just beaten me up on a bus.”
“I said hi on a bus. You are the one who went all fisticuffs.” She notices the heart on the bedside table next to a slew of dirty cups and wine glasses. “What’s this?”
“Don’t--”
It’s too late. Villanelle presses the button.
Admit it, Eve. You wish I was here.
Her face brightens.
“Don’t start,” Eve warns.
“No, I love it,” Villanelle says. “I didn’t even know there was a heart in there. So realistic.”
Eve breezes past the humiliation, heading to the fridge. “You hungry? I’ve got … nothing, but we could order in.”
“No ordering in. No letting anybody know where you are. A crazy person could barge in here.”
“Right,” Eve says wryly. “Imagine that.”
“Most of them don’t bring teddy bears.”
“I guess I’m lucky.” She throws what’s supposed to be a quick glance back at Villanelle. She gets caught up in the look on Villanelle’s face, and for a moment, they just gaze at each other.
Eve finally tears her eyes away and looks back into the empty fridge, thankful for the cool air.
“Plus,” Villanelle adds; Eve can tell she’s grimacing theatrically, “I might have killed a beloved assassin of The Twelve earlier. I really didn’t want to, but I had no choice.”
“So we’re on the run from The Twelve.”
“A little more so than usual.”
Eve slams the fridge shut. “Great.”
Villanelle gestures to the door. “I could go, if you want. To keep you safe.”
“No,” says Eve.
“No?”
“I’m pretty sure they know we’re a package deal by now. And … we decided, didn’t we? On the bridge?”
“Yes,” Villanelle says. “We decided.” Her bottom lip wobbles, just for a second.
Eve nods. She feels wobbly too. “So it’s you and me now.”
“Okay,” says Villanelle, looking pleased. “You and me.”
Eve opens the freezer to distract herself. “Oh, fuck yes. Frozen pizza. We’re dining fine tonight.”
“You sure know how to treat a lady,” says Villanelle.
+
They sit down on the floor to eat, the pizza between them on top of the box and hacked into uneven slices. It’s not worth trying to clear off the table. Eve turns the TV on for some noise and light, then sets the volume low.
“Oh, hey!” Villanelle says right after she’s taken a big bite of pizza. Somehow, this glamorous assassin never mastered the whole chewing-with-your-mouth-closed thing, which Eve finds gross and delightful. “How did you like the birthday cake?”
“Oh,” says Eve, inhaling sharply.
“Was it not good? I told those bastards they had better not sacrifice flavor for presentation. What, have they never seen Bake-Off?”
“No, it’s not that,” Eve hastens to assure her. “It was an exquisite bus cake. I just … threw it off a roof.”
“What?”
“The Bitter Pill roof, to be exact.”
“Why?”
“Why? Remember the razor blade lipstick?”
“That was a joke.”
“Right. Incredibly hilarious.” Eve tries not to look like a woman who's ever been turned on by razor blade lipstick.
“Back then I was still trying to win you. I had to be creative.”
“You certainly were.”
“But now? We are so past that.” Villanelle scoffs. “I’m not going to put razor blades in your birthday cake, Eve. Jeez. What if some innocent bystander ate some?”
“Not really a concern I figured you’d have.”
“It was just a cake. A really good cake.”
“I believe that now.”
“I only ordered it because I tried to make you one and that didn’t work.”
Eve drops her slice of pizza onto the carpet. (Crust down, thank God.) “What?”
“I did! I spent half a day on it!”
“How did it turn out?”
“Terrible,” Villanelle announces woefully. Noticing Eve’s expression, she asks, “What?”
“Nothing,” Eve says, smirking. “That just ... makes me really happy, for some reason.”
“Well, good,” says Villanelle, lifting her wine glass of tap water. “Happy birthday to you.”
They clink glasses in the glow of the TV screen.
+
Villanelle is wearing a borrowed t-shirt of Eve’s and sweatpants that stop slightly too far above her ankles. Her hair hangs loose like it did when they danced. It’s the most devastating she’s ever looked.
Eve is wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and she’s guessing she looks like a woman who had a long-ass day. (But not a bad one, compared to some of the days she’s had lately.) She’s gonna cling to the way Villanelle looked at her legs when she walked out of the bathroom, though.
They stand by the bed together. Eve really wishes she had made it before she left last. She hadn’t been expecting company. Like, ever again. Maybe Villanelle in murder mode. Not Villanelle in sleepover mode.
“You take it,” she says.
“No, you,” Villanelle protests. “It’s your house.”
“You’re my guest.”
“You have those forty-something bones. Very grumpy without a good night’s sleep on a quality mattress.”
“Wow, all right. How about you sleep outside? Tell The Twelve I said hi.”
“No, I’ll take it,” Villanelle says, bouncing down onto the bed. She pats the free space next to her. “But you have to take the other side.”
“The last time we were in bed together, I stabbed you. Doesn’t that make you a little nervous?”
“Nope. Should I be?”
Eve pretends to consider it, staring up at the ceiling. “Probably not. All my knives are dirty.”
“Good enough!” Villanelle declares with verve, and pulls the covers back.
Eve climbs into bed beside her.
For a moment, they just lie there on their backs, carefully not acknowledging each other, like a couple of nervous 1950s virgins on their wedding night. She wonders why they aren’t tearing each other’s clothes off. There’s something delicate in the air between them tonight. It isn’t new, exactly; it just always got drowned out by the roar of blood before.
“Did the bakery think it was weird?” Eve asks, pulling her hair up for something to do. “You ordering a bus cake?”
Villanelle perks up, seeming glad to have a topic of conversation. “Please, Eve. They are professionals. I could have ordered a cake shaped like your entire head and they would have delivered.”
“Thanks for not doing that.”
“I was tempted. But I knew there was no way they would do justice to your hair.”
Eve smiles a little to herself and lets her hair fall down to her shoulders again. She pulls the elastic hair tie off her wrist and leaves it on the bedside table.
“What do you think the people on the bus thought of us?” she finds herself asking.
“Probably ‘Wow. That’s hot.’ Maybe 'I'm going to get punched.'”
“Do you think it’s on YouTube?”
“We could look.”
“Nah. If it is, I don’t want to know.”
Villanelle sneaks a look over at Eve. “You kissed me.”
“I did.”
“And then headbutted me.”
“Yup.”
“I mean, wow. What a story for the grandchildren.”
Eve laughs shortly.
She looks over at Villanelle and finds her staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Should I have done it differently?”
“I don’t know,” says Eve. “Sure, it was a waking nightmare, but it was pretty cathartic to hit you a lot.”
“I wanted you to see I was powerful.”
She thinks of Villanelle looming over her, holding her down against the bus seats, and even now she feels an inconvenient flicker of desire. “You are powerful.”
“I don’t think so.” Villanelle is silent for a moment. “I was okay with being different from everybody else for a long time. Different meant better. How could I be happy hanging around a bunch of simple losers when I was brilliant?”
“Okay,” says Eve, rolling her eyes.
“But I started killing when I was very young. They found me and they made me even better at it. And I was like … I was like a gun. They could point me at whoever they wanted to. That isn’t power for me. Just for them. No matter how far up I move in their world. I didn’t figure that out for a really long time. Which is funny, because usually I am really astute.”
“And now that you know it,” Eve says, “you can’t just go back to what you were.”
“Exactly.” Villanelle slaps Eve’s shoulder lightly in appreciation. “Dasha didn’t get that. She thought I was going soft.”
“Dasha can fuck off.” Eve says, thinking of ribs cracking under her foot like thin ice. Then she hears herself. “Sorry. I guess that was terrible. She was your ... role model? Your assassin Gandalf?”
“My nothing,” Villanelle says stubbornly. “I got hurt, trying to do my first kill after I--well. After I took a break. This guy, he was nothing special, but my heart was not in it and he managed to hurt me. She fixed me up. By the time the stitches were done, it was like, ‘All better. No reason to hate this. No reason to feel anything. Stop whining. Shoot shoot, little gun.’ She earned what she got. Especially after what she did to you.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Eve says honestly.
Villanelle looks at her, contemplative, and then presses a finger to the exact spot of Eve’s scar. Eve shivers. “When we were in Rome, and you said you didn’t love me, I did the only thing I ever learned how to do. Because I was a weapon. Not a person.”
“You were hurt,” Eve says, catching Villanelle’s wrist and moving her hand away. “People lash out when they’re hurt. Sometimes in really vile ways. Fuck you for shooting me and leaving me to die, by the way.”
Villanelle stares very seriously into Eve’s eyes. “I'm sorry, Eve.”
“I mean,” says Eve, aloof, “I’m over it now.”
(God. Is she? Who knows.)
“I regretted it,” Villanelle says.
“How soon?”
“Right away! As I was walking away from you.”
“But you didn’t come back.”
“No.” Villanelle bites her lip. “I didn’t come back.”
“Did you wish you had?”
“All the time. I pretended not to, even to myself. But I did.”
Eve adjusts into a sitting position, moving her pillows back against the wall. “But that’s not what made you change your mind about killing.”
“How do you know?”
“I was keeping tabs on you at Bitter Pill. I know your style.”
“Aw. That’s really cute.”
“Kind of like strangling somebody with a garden hose.”
“I liked that lady. She was fun. She tried to cure my hiccups.”
Villanelle stares fondly into the distance, apparently remembering the good times she had with her garden hose victim. Then:
“AUGHHHHHHH!” she yells, curling her hands into claws and waving them wildly.
Eve screams and jumps backward, nearly falling out of bed.
“Ha! See!” Villanelle catches Eve’s shoulders and pulls her back up. “There. That’s what she taught me! Isn’t it great?”
“I don’t have hiccups!” Eve reminds her, annoyed.
“I know. But you look so funny when you are scared. You’re like--” She puts on a dramatically shocked expression that Eve hopes like hell isn’t really her scared face.
“Why aren’t you telling me what happened?” Eve asks, irritation turning her brusque.
“Because it sucks,” Villanelle says, sobering suddenly, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Eve feels a twinge of guilt. “That’s okay. We don’t have to. We can just go to sleep.”
Villanelle sighs. “You really want to know, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Eve admits. The word comes out more desperate than she’d intended.
Villanelle nods. She belatedly copies Eve’s pose, sitting up straight, and stares down at her own entwined fingers. “After the bus, I went back to Russia. I found my family.”
Eve's eyes widen in surprise. “Wow. How was it?”
“I killed my mother and exploded her house. I have two brothers. They are pretty cool.”
“Did they … explode?”
“Of course not. They were in the barn.”
“What were they like?” Eve feels an impractical wistfulness that she’d missed a chance to meet Villanelle’s family.
“The older one is called Peyotr,” Villanelle explains, her face lighting up. “He is so awkward. You would not even believe we are related. Nice, though. He works out his rage issues on sofas instead of people. Bor’ka is still a kid. He loves Elton John. Like, a lot a lot. A worrying amount.”
“Who doesn’t?”
Villanelle laughs a little. “I left him money for tickets for the world tour. I hope he goes. He deserves it after having to grow up with our shit mother.”
Eve turns to look at her more closely. “Why did you kill her?”
“I thought it was the only way to stop hurting.”
“Did it work?”
“No.” Villanelle moves, shifting onto her stomach and clutching a pillow to her chest. She doesn’t look at Eve. After a pause: “She was hurting Bor’ka too. Now she can’t anymore.”
“Good,” Eve says.
“I wish that was why I did it.”
Eve reaches over and puts a hand on her back. Her fingers curl over Villanelle’s shoulder blade.
Villanelle glances around, looking for a distraction, and spots the photo of Eve and Niko on the window ledge above the bed. Eve wishes she had thought to turn it face down.
“Is The Moustache okay?” she asks diplomatically.
“He’ll recover,” Eve says, pulling her hand away. “Which is a miracle. I was there. He should have died.”
“What did you do?”
“I froze. I thought there was no way he could live through it. And I didn’t go to him. I couldn’t. There was blood gushing out of his neck -- this neck that I’ve known for ages, my husband’s neck -- and all I could do was … watch. It took me forever to realize that he was still breathing.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah,” Eve says grimly. After a moment, she adds, “He told me to piss off forever.”
“He could talk?”
“No. It was one of those …” Eve waves her hands, trying to find the words. “... robot-voice things where you type. You know, Stephen Hawking style.”
“That is such a sad way to get dumped,” Villanelle says. Her pitying expression barely masks her amusement.
“I know,” Eve says, and starts laughing. Suddenly, it seems hilarious. She reaches up and puts the picture face down with a satisfying thud.
They cackle together. Villanelle takes advantage of the moment, reaching across Eve for the heart on the bedside table. She clutches it triumphantly in her hand, pressing it again and again.
Admit it, Eve. You wish I was here. Admit it, Eve. You wish I was here. Admit it, Eve--
“Okay,” Eve says impatiently, grabbing it from her.
“You know, when you make one of these, you go into this booth to record. Like Adele or something.”
“I’m sure it’s just like Adele.”
“It took me forever to choose what to say. And I didn’t say what I wanted to. Because of the whole power thing. Trying to assert your dominance can really fuck you up.”
“What did you want to say?”
“Oh, you know. Stuff like ‘It’s so annoying that you are alive. I should have shot you in the head.’”
“So, your standard Princess Teddy Bear fare. Nice.”
A little softer, Villanelle adds, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Eve closes her fingers around the heart, and thinks about clutching it to her cheek alone in the dark. Drowning in the sound.
“I would have liked that,” she says.
“Yeah?” Villanelle answers so faintly Eve can barely hear it.
Eve nods.
They shift into mirroring poses: lying down facing each other, staring into each other’s eyes the way they’d done before Eve stabbed her. The way Eve had dreamed of doing on that morning after in Rome, drunk on Villanelle’s voice in her ear, when she’d forgotten it was Hugo she would turn over to find.
But then, Villanelle would have been sleek and smug and sexy and terrible about it. Now, she’s staring at Eve with a raw gleam in her eyes.
“You can let go of that now,” she says--gently, for her.
Eve does. She places the heart on the windowsill above them, on top of the face-down picture frame.
When she settles back down, it’s to find Villanelle still watching her with that gleam.
“Why didn’t you walk away tonight?” she asks. “I would have let you.”
“I know you would’ve.”
“Then why did you turn?”
Eve doesn’t know how to explain it, exactly. She hadn’t been capable of thought at the time, she hadn’t been capable of anything except putting one foot in front of the other, feeling like she'd been blessed and like she was walking to her own execution. The last thing she’d been in the frame of mind to do was actually think about the future, or imagine what it would mean to quiet her monsters, to be good. But the feeling was there, the sick lurching feeling of a life without the promise of Villanelle whirling into it. It was worse, walking into that feeling, than any pain Villanelle had caused her. Worse than the bullet. Maybe even worse than Bill.
She doesn’t know how to say I can’t live without you in a way that doesn’t make her sick with how trite and true it is. Or I can’t go back to being that lonely again, or I can’t live with no one really seeing me, not after you. She hates every good person she might have ever found to love in a life where she’d kept walking; it would have been infinitely more monstrous, somehow, than turning around. But if there’s a way to say that, she hasn’t found it yet.
Instead, she entwines her fingers lightly in Villanelle’s hair. It looks red in the glow of the lights outside the window. Her thumb brushes Villanelle’s cheek.
“Who wants to get old, anyway?” Eve says.
Villanelle’s eyes shine.
“Are you tired?” she asks, leaning into Eve’s touch.
“Not really,” Eve says. “Are you?”
Villanelle shakes her head slightly, her shining eyes fixed on Eve’s as Eve tugs her hair gently, pulling her closer, close enough to kiss.
“Wide awake,” she says.