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You feel it fester. You like it better that way.
You like it better like sinew and blood and slick and come. Nerves ripped out, tendons tangled. Hunks of flesh between your fists, squelch through the gaps in your fingers. You’ve always left it beneath your nails. Picked it out later with your teeth.
Because you like it better that way, copper rivulets down your chin. Burgundy in the ends of your hair. Pink skin, white muscle, red and burning and red—All of it yours, for you to take, like plump peaches and too-bitter grapefruit.
This isn’t the first time infection has made a home of your veins. It’s the first time you haven’t been able to force your own fingers into the wound. You like to peel it back, a segment of you to pinch and squeeze. Juice yourself like an orange. Let it all out and hope it fills up again; repeat repeat repeat.
You’re on your belly. Your belly is so soft. Your belly is the place where it happened last time, the only place it could have happened. So soft and full and everything else. You used to pinch it between your fingers until she split it open. You didn’t mind, not really.
All of it is yours because all of it is hers.
And you’re on your belly now, and the wound is hot. You make a good sound, really let it fold out of you. It’s a whine like a fox with its leg caught in a trap. If she leaves you any longer you might gnaw it off. You want and want; oh, how you ache for it.
Eve is beautiful in agony, crouched by the bed, an image you’ll be happy to die with imprinted behind your eyelids. She watches you writhe and hovers her hands over that damp heat and you sob and spit into the mattress, words over words, things you never want to say like—
“Please, Eve, please, please, take it out, take it, it’s too much, Eve, please.”
“It’s out,” Eve says. Stupid, stupid Eve. “It’s gone. It’s out.”
So you cry some more. Rub your face against the mattress. Feel snot and tears and saliva stick in your eyes. God, you’re a mess. You think it could be messier. Would she like it like that, too?
“It’s out,” she says. Again, hovering. Wanting, too. Her lips quiver with it. “I can show you.”
No, you’ve already seen it. You don’t care about the arrow. You don’t care that Pam had to yank it out or that Eve held your hand. Why would you, when that doesn’t taste like anything. There’s no metallic tang pooling in your canines. No peaches or grapefruit to fill your cheeks.
“Eve,” you rasp. “Do it.”
“Do what,” Eve asks, hand dropping. All that heat trapped beneath her palm. You shudder, gasp, come apart a little more. “Do what, Villanelle?”
How many days since the arrow, anyway? All this time filling up with it, letting it consume because it feels good, flush on your forehead, sticky behind the knees. Has she noticed? That your cheeks burn, that your skin swims?
“Eve,” you whine. “Eve, Eve, Eve—”
One finger against one stitch. One nail plucking, pulling. Release is tight in your belly. You always feel it there first, hidden behind the softness. Eve tugs, she takes. A part of you pours out, like orange juice, like sickness down the curve of your spine.
“Infection,” Eve whispers. She notices now that it is everywhere, more inside than out, more her than you. No surprise there, you think. She’s inside you, too. Curled into that scar on your belly.
You can move in spurts. Cogs spluttering and catching, a stubborn zip halfway done up. You get arms beneath you, knees next, curl inward like a seed burrowing deep. Then, push and push, raising up, and it bursts out of you like something violent. You like it better that way.
“You shouldn’t,” Eve says, and does nothing to stop you.
“Eve,” you say. That’s your word, your name. It means everything. It means what she wants it to.
And now, she wants it to mean—
“I’ve got you.”
She does. A fistful of your blood. Red and burning, slick like the point where your thighs touch. Where did she get it from? Oh, right, you’ve been bleeding for a long time. But she’s got you.
“It hurts,” you tell her. “I can’t reach.”
“Oh,” Eve says, and, “Let me.”
Her fingers, again. Going in this time but only a little. Only as much as you like. She knows because it is hers and yours and ever since that knife went into your soft belly it has been like this. She takes and it burns. You sag, wilt like a flower, let her red-stained palm hold your chin up to the sky.
“Better?” She asks.
You think of the body and how it breaks. You think of the heart like a muscle to be torn. You think of fingers for reaching, for curling, for ripping apart. You think of knees and sweat, lips and tongues, nipples and belly buttons. You think of the tip of an arrow buried deep, and you think about Eve.
Eve is yours. Really, truly, she is yours. You want her inside you, five different ways. You want inside her, shifting organs to fit. Eve’s eyes crinkle, looking down at you. Two fingers against your wound, keeping the pulse inside. She is stupidly beautiful. When you kiss her you think you’ll taste persimmon.
Your hand anchors her wrist. You help her hold you up. The two of you, bloody bodies, fever and whatever is not fever. A torn stitch snagged on a nail. Pam will be unhappy, even angry, maybe. The new thread will sting until it all fades away.
You’d let Eve do it again, though. Isn’t that the important part?
Her thumb presses into your jaw. “Is it better?”
“Yeah,” you breathe, and think of thick, impossible love. “It’s better.”