killer queen

Xander took the offered cigarette out of the box, knowing how easily one bad decision could lead to a string of them, but it’s just one cigarette. A few minutes, tops, of hanging out with Silva outside, and then it was Antarctica for the rest of the night. There was no harm in playing along in the meantime, though.

“A distraction… so you came to the library? You do know what this place is for, right?” He grinned a little, the idea tugging at him. Just ditch. It was an impulse he could tamp down most nights but, fuck, it’d been a long week. “I’d think that nearly anything else would be ‘fun enough to justify’ skipping out on ancient greek. Anything specific you have in mind? And make it fucking good because I’m already late on this Econ essay and the teacher has it out for me.” 

He kept his tone light, but a bit of his dread at the idea of plugging away at a dry Economics paper for the next many hours managed to seep through. Damn it. He at least wanted to appear like he had his usual backbone, if only for the sake of his reputation.

     “It’s a place to find the desperate and the lonely. It’s the perfect place for a distraction, fuck you.” 

She grinned back, watching the decision pass across this face -- to slack off, or not to slack off? That was  the question. And for Xander, smarter than she’d ever be, it would be a harder decision than it always was for her. But she knew as well as he did that anything was a good enough excuse to put off a fucking Econ paper, especially if it was the kind of thing that had Gravemaker written all over it. 

     “Anyway, I was thinking about breaking into the art building,” she said, another lie as it left her lips -- she was coming up with all this on the spot, but it was good shit -- “and stealing some spray paint from one of the studios. Then going out somewhere conspicuous and spray painting I SAW THE RED AVENGER’S NUDES on a building somewhere.”

There was a part of the library that Xander privately deemed ‘the hell cube’. It was the study desk furthest in the back, far away from any windows or doors or noise or anything that might be remotely interesting, a dark pit of boring. Worst of all, it was the pocket where the wifi signal was the weakest, too slow to load anything more complicated than Wikipedia. It might as well have been Antarctica. 

That was where he was headed now. The hell cube was always a drastic move, a last resort, but his focus had been lacking with everything happening lately, and he’d do what he had to do to get shit done.

That didn’t mean that he wanted to, though, and when he sees a familiar face it’s too easy to pause. He raises his eyebrows at her question– in general, being looked for had always meant bad news, and it coming from Silva didn’t necessarily mean otherwise. Whatever it was though, it was guaranteed to be more interesting than hitting the books. “For you? Always. What’s up?”

He looked busy, or hurried, like he had a lot of work to do, like he needed absolutely anything but the distraction she was hoping to provide. But smart as he was, focused as he was, she knew if she pushed hard enough she could persuade him to not do whatever work he’d come to the library intending to do, which meant she maybe wouldn’t have to do all the work she’d come to the library intending to do as well.

She dropped her cigarette to the ground as he spoke, put it out against the pale concrete with the toe of her boot, and pulled another one out, offering him the box after she plucked one out with her teeth, her lipstick already starting to stain the filter at the end of it.

     “A distraction,” she answered, with a grin. “I’m fucking drowning in Thucydides, I want to die, please tell me you want an excuse to procrastinate and we can do something fun to justify the fact that I cannot fucking read another word of Ancient Greek.”

Julian had (almost) mastered selective anonymity on campus. He endeavored to be unmistakable from any other nameless body when he didn’t want to be seen. He was billboard sign when he wanted to be, sauntering through the squares, typically accompanied by the usual band of upstarts (even Silva herself, occasionally), turning heads and inciting whispers. These were the days he had energy enough to challenge the unworthy masses that dared to poke at him. Other days, he felt too dreary, underestimated. 

Those days he had to blend in. Tie his hair back, wear other than all black, cover his tattoos. He’d usually kept up a solid system. And usually it meant he steered clear of campus buildings if he could help it. In and out of classes, head never too far down nor up, definitely not sitting in any one place for longer than a moment, maybe a cup of coffee if the day was nearing over. Confident he’d slipped through the whole day unnoticed.

Silva would, of course, be the one to upend that routine. Especially today, of all days, when his professors were too far up their own asses to give him anything but aggravating busy work. Julian watched her enter, and with grave silence he watched her see him, then begin to saunter over here, confident and unbothered.

Silent, he watched her claim the seat before asking, then ask, and if his mood wasn’t so sour he would’ve chuckled amused. Instead, a moment, then a sigh as he sipped his black coffee (oh, yeah. Never anything but.) “Looks like it.” He watched her move back her silver hair, wondered which direction she’d send his day towards. “You done for the day?”

Julia had his days; she’d grown used to it after two and a half years. Some days, they were thick as thieves and others, they couldn’t be left alone together without the risk of grievous bodily harm. It depended, largely, on his mood. And her mood. And the strange venn diagram of their moods that led to any number of possible combinations as to how their interactions would go. But

     “Mmm,” she answered, nodding around a sip of her coffee. “Just finished up with my hell lecture for the week, so I’m home free til Friday morning. Thank fuck, I was about ready to walk out if it got any more inane.” 

She leaned back, propping the heels of her boots up on the booth across from her, too close to him not to aggravate him if he was aggravated, close enough to amuse him if he was amused, her own private litmus test for his mood. As for her own mood: she could be amused by his frustration or they could be co-conspirators in something or the other. Now that she was here, she felt like getting in trouble, like pissing someone off, and if he wasn’t going to be that person, she knew she could guarantee that he’d at least join her in it. 

     “What about you? Working hard or hardly working?” 

Vulnerability isn’t a feeling Beaux is accustomed to. She isn’t used to feeling shaken apart. All the world is a stage and Beaux has always been quite adept at playing her part, playing someone stronger than this, playing someone who never falters. She’s played her part for so long now that she almost forgot she was acting.

She doesn’t want to falter. She doesn’t want to slide back into being the girl she was three years ago – a girl that Silva barely liked, if she remembers correctly. 

She wonders what Silva would think if she knew that her best friend was a killer. 

     “Okay.” She echoes, thankful that Silva isn’t pushing, that she’s letting this sleeping dog rest. She shifts, blinking back at Silva as she speaks again. “What? What’d he say?” This was good, more comfortable ground. Beaux was starting to feel like she knew Silva’s coursework almost as well as Silva did, as invested as they had both been in helping each other out. “Was it condescending and awful?”

     “It was condescending and awful.”

This was the mode -- the easy mode, the default, nothing easier in the world to do than complain about a professor, a class, school in general, nothing easier for her to do than huff and whine and bitch. It’s all too easy a pattern, and Beaux has heard her complain again and again about all of this; it’s so familiar that it can’t help but clear the air, can’t help but make her feel like everything really is normal. 

     “He thinks my premise is flawed, that I’ve got too much bias for a history paper. As if history is ever unbiased. I mean, okay, I get that he doesn’t want to admit that everything that’s wrong with the world is wrong because men are idiots, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make a goddamn academic argument out of it.”

If she had to translate one more sentence of Ancient Greek, she was going to claw her eyes out. 

There was a corner, in the third floor of the library, behind one of the lesser-used stacks, around the corner from the periodicals, with an arm chair that Silva had, for four years now, called home. Hidden away from the rest of the library, she’d scared possibly hundreds of other students away from her spot with a carefully executed glare. But she’d been in that arm chair since five, and it was going on nine or ten or somewhere around there, she wasn’t sure, and she was starting to go a little bit stir crazy.

So she found herself outside of the library, three cigarettes deep, breath catching in the cold winter air as she wrapped her jacket tighter around her shivering shoulders, when a familiar face made its way past her -- Xander, hurrying into the library for some reason or another this late at night -- and she turned to intercept them

     “Just the person I was looking for,” she lied. “You got a minute?”

She’d never walked into the campus coffee shop when it was busy after classes ended and wanted for a table, no matter how many people were milling around for a place to kill time, because Silva could walk into the coffee shop and recognize at least four faces at any given time. It was a benefit, she thought, of not just being a senior, but of being a senior who made a point of knowing people, who had spent enough time at enough kinds of parties with enough kinds of people to have a little bit of influence anywhere she wanted.

Finding a Gravemaker in the coffee shop, though, that was just sheer luck, a little ray of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy day. She shoved Julian’s bag off the empty chair across from him at the table he was taking up with the toe of her boot, waited a moment for it to hit the floor, and then set her iced coffee down on the table once she was sure she had his attention, putting her own bag in the place of his.

     “This seat free?” she asked, once she was sure he knew she was there, and then she took it anyway, without waiting for an answer. She was running on maybe two hours of sleep -- having Beaux sharing the twin sized bed in her room wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was distracting, and a few days of it had started to catch up with her. 

     “Hm. Fine. We’re even then.” 

She tries not to feel at a loss when SIlva looks away. She doesn’t close her eyes. All she can really do is watch her. Watch the rise and fall of her chest, watch her face move. Its easier sometimes, to look at Silva when Silva isn’t looking back. Its easier not to feel caught out or thrown off her guard without Silva’s eyes piercing back into her. 

     “I almost didn’t.” She admits in return. She knows Silva would have rathered that she didn’t. That she could have spent the night with her favourite person instead of standing in that mess. “I just…couldn’t not, in the end.” Its too honest. She’d been drawn to the vigil like a moth to the many flames of it. Morbid curiosity. The flickering of guilt in her stomach. She wants to spill out every one of her dirty secrets right now, wants to tell Silva every horrible inch of the story, but her skin starts to crawl at the thought. 

She finally rips her eyes away, turns to face the ceiling of the room herself. They don’t close, and she’s feeling a little wound tight again. “I wish I could explain why.” She admits, and that;s too honest too. She’s used to being too honest with Silva. Has spilled every other secret in her life. But she can’t let go of this one, not now. “Its dumb. Lets just forget about it.”

She rolls over onto her stomach, after a minute, turning her head to look at Beaux again. Something about the tone of her voice -- it’s that tightness again, like a string drawn too taut, a slight shake that might snap. She’s not used to hearing Beaux sound like that; even under all of the strain of senior year, of being president, of all of the hundred amazing things Beaux makes time for every single day, she’s not used to hearing Beaux sound like she’s under stress, like anything is a strain.

There’s a piece of her that wants to pick at it like a scab until it bleeds; with anyone else, she would, would press until she knew the source. But not Beaux, she couldn’t-- if Beaux was hurting, all she’d want to do was smooth over it like a salve. 

     “Okay,” she says, and her voice is still gentle, too gentle. It takes a moment longer than it should to come up with something else to say, some other unconnected topic, like everything that has been going on prior to this week has been wiped away from them by the red avenger or whatever he’s calling himself. She’s grasping at straws, thinking of something else to say. “Hey, you’ll never guess what my shit-head supervisor said at our meeting today.”

She’s vaguely familiar. Maybe that’s why he’s paying attention to her. There aren’t many faces that jump out at him around Lovell anymore, but he knows for sure that she must have been around while he was. A few moments of thought bring the answer to mind: A Gravemaker. One he’d never spared much thought for. 

     “I’m laughing out loud, that’s for sure.” His voice is deadpan, bland. It’s all this entire situation deserves, as far as he’s concerned. This shabby memorial, the statement that he’d missed being made. Maybe he would be more excited about it all if he’d stuck around for the actual unveiling. But he hadn’t, and he distinctly wasn’t. All he could manage to do was resent the culprit for not just coming out with the whole story so that Logan could be on his merry way home. 

     He takes a sip of his coffee from the take away cup in his grasp – delicately spiked from the flask in his pocket. “Its all a bit overplayed, you know? Bit cliche. If someone is going to make a show of things, they should at least have the decency to be interesting about it.” 

The deadpan voice is familiar, in that distant, remote kind of way; she can’t place it, but it’s unique enough that she knows she’s heard it before, a long time ago. And yet, all the same, it’s still a surprise when she gives an apathetic look over her shoulder and sees Logan fucking Ainsley, former Pax president, standing next to her with a paper up of coffee in his hand, casual as all that.

Hating Pax had some quickly, and naturally, to her when she was a freshman; growing up on stories of the Gravemakers from her grandfather meant that she’d hated Pax Aurea before she even set foot on campus, hated the idea of them viscerally and instinctively before she’d met a single member. But she remembers being a freshman and seeing Logan Ainsley and thinking, for half of a treasonous, traitorous second, well, they can’t be all that bad. 

If she’d been anyone else, Logan Ainsley would have been her hero. But as it was, he was just a rich prick with a good sense of humor and a terrible kind of decorum that fascinated her, just a bit, in passing. 

     “If it were me, it’d be a little less Gossip Girl and a little more Se7en, but, hey, apparently not everyone can have an impeccable flair for the dramatic, hm?” 

Kara dropped her hands to her side in defeat. She was trying to get Silva to go with her, but it didn’t feel like there was anything more she could do. Silva was tough and Kara was nothing in comparison. If Silva wanted to stay, there was entirely nothing Kara could do about it. 

Kara was used to being useless. A painting on a wall, always watching but never the one participating. Tonight was different. She had dragged herself out of bed. She had made a conscious effort to be a better human being. 

“Alright, if you insist.” Kara pressed her lips together. She looked at Silva, then the door. “Are you alright?” she asked, leaning against the door frame. “Obviously, I don’t have to go. If you want some company, or something.” 

     “I just have some work due tomorrow,” she answered, gesturing down at the book in her lap. Work was a strong word for it; she had a pretty good grasp of what she was doing for her thesis, just needed to sit down and write it, and she knew, knowing herself, that she wasn’t going to do any of that until four or five days before the shit was due; she wasn’t one to work ahead, or prepare, didn’t see a point to it when she could have a few cans of Monster, stay in the library all night for a few days, and get the same grade she would’ve gotten otherwise. 

But it was as good an excuse as any, an easier explanation than the weird complicated and vaguely nauseated feeling the whole Abernathy bullshit was making her feel. She hadn’t been able to articulate it to anyone, hadn’t even tried. Because she didn’t want to think too hard about why a guy who’d been killed three years ago, who she’d never particularly liked in the first place, was making her feel like her whole damn life had been knocked off its axis. 

     “Look, go have fun. Laura’s there, anyway, and I think Jack went as well. Dunno who else will show, but it should be a good time. Don’t let me stop you.” 

     “You buy me booze so I’ll drink with you. S’different. Its its own transaction.” The words are soft, a fight they’ve had a thousand and one times in the past, familiar waters. 

She fixes Silva with a soft smile, almost against her own will. She can’t help sometimes the way she smiles at Silva. Just like she can’t help the way her head tilts into the small touch of her hand. Can’t help the way it makes her feel just a little bit flayed open. 

     “Oh. Moderately bitchy.” A teasing lilt. “I suppose that’ll have to do.” 

She worms her way into a more comfortable position, a little bit closer, her feet tucking under the heavy blanket. She wants to board up the door and never let someone in. Wants to bring her books and her candles and her incense up here and fill the room up with her belongings and never leave, never let Silva leave. 

With a small sigh, she blinks at Silva. “You would have liked this whole vigil thing. It was bullshit. There was –” A deep breath. “You missed all the drama. More secret messages from Lovell’s resident grave-robber.” She wets her lips, feeling the dehydration of the day setting in. She should go drink a glass of water, but she doesn’t want to get up. Never wants to leave. 

     “In fairness, you make the breakfasts so I’ll eat with you.”

She leans back, looking up at the ceiling from where she is, letting her eyes drift shut for a moment while she listens to Beaux talk about the vigil. Of course, the one time she decided not to tag along there was drama -- she’d heard about it from the others when they got home, just before Beaux, but hopefully Yaz or someone had filmed the whole ordeal so she could watch it all later and see what she’d missed.

     “I figured you weren’t going,” she admits, not quite wanting to admit to being annoyed she’d missed it. “Thought you’d feel the same way I did about the whole thing, which is, you know, that it’s stupid as fuck. I don’t know why anyone actually wants to dig up shit that happened three years ago just because some dick went from being presumed dead to, like, confirmed dead.” 

She lets out a sigh; she isn’t sure why the whole ordeal is bothering her so much. Normally, Beaux would have been right -- she lived for drama like that. And everyone seemed to believe she would’ve thought it was all a blast. But something still felt wrong, about it all, a low discomfort in the pit of her stomach she doesn’t understand. 

“Are you sure?” If anything, Kara was always on the defensive, always afraid of hurting people, always afraid that she was going to lose friends. Silva was someone she looked up to. But Kara became more insecure around her, she was all confidence and knowing how to be, Kara was nothing but insecurities wrapped up in black clothing. 

Kara often didn’t know how to act. She wanted to toughen up, to learn how to take other people’s shit. But it was hard, she had grown up getting beaten down year after year after year. She was stuck in a cycle of not knowing what to do with herself. She wasn’t sure if that would ever go away. 

“I don’t know.” Kara shrugged her shoulders. “But I’m going to go. We should be there for the people who did choose to go. I mean, societies are all about being there for each other. If everyone else is going to go and be miserable, I want to be miserable with them.” 

She was beginning to feel a little bit like she was being lectured. She was sure Kara probably didn’t mean it, was just justifying the inexplicable need to go that she was feeling, but all the same, it felt a little like an accusation that she wasn’t a very good friend. 

She wasn’t a very good friend; she didn’t try to be. For Silva, yeah, the Gravemakers were about loyalty and supporting each other just like it was for everyone else. But she’d always believed that one of the most important things about supporting each other was being able to call others out on their bullshit, to tell them when their ideas were shit and to let them know when they were being a dumbass. It wasn’t ever going to be about endless support, and it definitely wasn’t about suffering through something like this just in the name of being there for each other, when no one of them was really involved. 

     “Well, have fun with that,” she said. “I’ll have the booze ready for when the rest of you get home and need to wash away the stink of university politicking.” 

The detritus of the vigil was... honestly laughably. Flower arrangements still sitting around, half melted candles. There were more cigarettes on the ground than campus usually saw, too, and pieces of paper and flyers littering the area. The infamous vandalized portrait had been moved, much to her chagrin -- she would’ve liked to see it, couldn’t believe the one time she decided not to go to something because it was fucking stupid, it had turned out to be a dramatic shitfest that she would have loved to be there for. 

She’d swung by on her way back home from her Ancient Greek History seminar, just to see the wreckage of it all, just to get an idea of what she’d missed, and honestly, it didn’t disappoint, very nearly lived up to the stories the rest of the Gravemakers had told her when they’d all made their way back home late the night before..

      “This is fucking hilarious,” she remarked, half aloud, more to herself than to any of the other people milling about, and dropped her own half-smoked cigarette onto the ground to join the rest, putting the embers out with the heel of her boot and lowering her sunglasses back onto her face.

     “Apparently he’s the best lead they’ve got.” She says, quieter than she usually might be. Until they get to me, she thinks. It’s hard to balance the relief that they don’t suspect her yet with the guilt that they think it was Nathan. “Be nice, okay? It’s stressing him out.” 

A relieved smile crosses her face, finally genuine, finally actually feeling some of the stress course out of her body. Being around SIlva was the one good thing in her life right now, the one thing that wasn’t stressful. 

She moves up the bead, situating herself in the space made for her, back against the soft poof of a pillow. She didn’t mind the mess, or the clutter. It was all so very Silva. It was all perfect. And it all smelled like her, an added layer of familiar comfort.

And now she was being a sap.

     “I guess we can think of it as payment for the breakfast I’ve made you every morning for the last…what is it now, three years?” Her smile turns teasing. She just wants to marinate in this, wants to forget how exhausted and stressed out she is and just somehow trick Silva into playing with her hair for a while.

The way the pillows are arranged, Beaux sinks into the bed next to her, close and comfortable and just the way Silva wants it. She looks a little less tired, a little more herself, now that she’s off her feet and Silva lets out a silent sigh without thinking, feeling a little comforted that maybe whatever’s eating her best friend isn’t all that bad. Silva lays down, too, turning on her side to face her, returns the teasing smile.

     “Hey, I think I’ve bought you enough booze to make up for the breakfasts, in fairness.”

She reaches across, brushing a stray lock of hair away from Beaux’s face, more to get her attention and keep it there than to actually fix her hair -- Beaux’s hair is, as always, a damn sight closer to perfect than Silva’s has ever been, the bleach-damaged strands going whichever way they please around her face, like they haven’t seen a brush or anything more than a bottle of dry shampoo in at least three days. 

     “I can’t promise I’ll be nice, but if you insist, I’ll try my best. Tone it down to moderately bitchy instead of the levels I normally reserve for a tool like that.”

“Yeah, Silva, I do,” He says, giving her his best puppy dog eyes, then taking it over-the-top—his favorite place to be—with a couple bats of his lashes. He’s pretty sure that she wants him to beg, and he’s definitely not above it: clowns don’t have dignity, and so he’d left his beyond a long time ago, that is if he even had any to begin with.

If it’s a game between them—him cajoling and flattering, her denying him just to see how far he’ll take it—it’s a game that he’s well-poised to win. He’s a natural flatterer, when he wants to be: there’s that aforementioned lack of dignity, and then there’s also his loose relationship with the truth.

And, in this case, it isn’t even untruths, just blatant exaggeration—delivered with the most deadpan, sincere expression he can muster—in the name of making Silva laugh, and then hopefully cave. “I will literally die if you don’t come with me. You don’t want me to die, do you? Come on, I know I’m your favorite after Beaux.”

He doesn’t know that, actually, but as far as he’s concerned he’s everybody’s favorite—placing Beaux ahead of him is just a concession to the exceedingly obvious. And, besides that, he’s banking on the fact that if Silva takes the opportunity he’s offering her to insult him straight to his face, she’ll at least get a kick out of it: “I am, right?”

She’s got a fondness for Jack that she doesn’t know how to explain, to herself or to anyone else. It’s the way, she thinks, that he plays fast and loose with the truth, the way he says whatever you want to hear and says it so you know that’s what he’s doing. It’s the way he knows her buttons and, more importantly, knows which ones he’s allowed to press and when, takes great glee in pressing the right ones.

     “I love all the Gravemakers equally,” she says, thick with sarcasm, and they both know it’s a lie. She can’t help but play favorites, and he knows damn well he’s one of them. There aren’t too many she shares her booze with, or stays up late shooting the shit with; he’s the kind of person she doesn’t mind having around even when she’s sick to death of everyone else in the house, even when all she wants is some peace and fucking quiet. Even tonight -- she doesn’t want to go to the fucking vigil, but that doesn’t mean she wants to get rid of Jack. 

She grits her teeth a little, sucks in a sigh.

     “But you’re right. I don’t want you to die. You still owe me a drink. Should I dial the ambulance now, have it pick you up when you get there, all alone?”

The second she heard Silva’s voice, Laura stopped in her tracks. 

Hearing her almost made Laura embarrassed that she was going. She should've guessed that the blonde would opt out of the vigil, but that didn’t stop her from turning around and trying to convince her to go. “I’m going for Beaux. If none of us show up it doesn’t exactly look good. Plus, I haven’t updated my Finsta in, like, two weeks. It needs new content.” She had voiced her opinion about the whole vigil and how stupid it was that they were even holding it in the first place. 

Laura had better things to do that included a paper, a presentation, and a half empty glass filled with a smoothie that was begging to be finished. “You’re not going to let me go alone would you?” She crossed her arms as she made her way towards the girl. “I thought we were friends, Silva.” If there was one thing Laura was good at, it was guilting others into doing something with she wanted; it usually included something fun like a concert or a hockey game. Not attending a vigil for some dead douchebag. 

     “We are friends, Laura,” she said simply, pursing her lips a little and not looking up from the book in her hands. “And friends don’t let friends go to shitty vigils for dead assholes, no matter how badly your Finsta needs it.”

She looked up, finally, pulling herself up to sitting, swinging her legs under her to sit up a little and get closer to eye-level with Laura. She knew Laura could convince her to go, if she set her mind to it, and Silva didn’t want her to get so set on the idea that she wouldn’t stand a chance. Laura knew there was no one Silva would rather bitch with, even if it meant going to a dumb fucking vigil in order to do it.

     “Come on, you know it’s gonna suck ass. It’s gonna be all frat boys pretending to have emotions and freshman girls crying their makeup off. And Pax will be there. I’ve already had enough of them for the semester and we’re only, like, a week in.”

“Silva, at the risk of stating the obvious: the motherfuckker is dead. Why do you even twist that wonderful little brain of yours into wondering what he would want or not. Fuck him.” If there was one thing Silva brought out in Nat it was her bluntness. Usually she would try not to be to harsh or direct, she’d keep everyone else’s feelings in mind before she opened her mouth but when met with someone like Laurel Silva who was unapologetic to a fault, it was hard to keep a lid on it the way she usually did.

“But hey if you feel like smoking some blunts with me when I come back then you know where to find me.” She continued picking the bomber jacket she had thrown on the couch on her way there and putting it on then marching right back to Silva she bent down to smack a too loud kiss on the girl’s forehead.

“Please, keep an ear out for Morticia though. She rips shit up in my room when I’m gone and I can’t spend a single dollar more on clothes just because this cat is a brat, alright.” She says, crossing her arms and looking at Silva in a more serious way then she had all night. “She can be a great study buddy, I swear.”

     “If you think the lengths of my spite don’t extend beyond the grave, you’re fuckin’ delusional, or at least more naive than I took you for, Nat. I would go to such great lengths to inconvenience someone like him you couldn’t even comprehend.”

She half watched as Nat got ready, getting their jacket, and fake-winced, over dramatic, at the kiss, rolling her eyes a little at the display. In all honesty, she didn’t give  a fuck what Abernathy thought, even beyond the grave, but it was a convenient enough excuse, and believable coming from her -- the bit about spite was true; she’d been known to go much farther than that to piss off people she hated. Spite was her primary driving force, ninety eight percent of the time, at the very least.

     “But I am going to take advantage of Morticia being unoccupied. Teach her a few tricks, see if I can get her to steal some shit for me. Cats are great at that, right? I’ll send her on little missions.”

The door hitches open with a push of her shoulder, and she leans against the door frame for a moment as she looks into the room. It’s one of her favourite places in The Morgue, so completely and utterly Silva. She clears her throat softly.

     “Vigil. For Abernathy.” She tries to sound wry about it, but the weigh has been heavy on her since she walked through the door, and she isn’t sure how to shake it. She tugs at the sleeves of her cardigan, pulling them down around her hands and eventually crossing her arms over her sleep shirt. 

     “I was wonder if – Well, St Leger is back in town. I don’t know if you ran into him. For the investigation.” She wets her lips. “He needs to crash here for a little while, so I gave him the basement.” A hopeful smile. “I was wondering if I could…bunk with you? Until he leaves?” 

She takes a step into the room then, perching at the bottom of her bed. “I’ll be a good houseguest. Quiet as a mouse. You won’t even know I’m here.” 

It’s hard, looking at how tired Beaux looks, and trying to connect that with the vigil. She hadn’t even thought Beaux would be at the vigil, or she might’ve accepted any of the several offers to tag along that she’d come across over the course of the evening, just to spend it drinking vodka out of a Nalgene by her side. She’s sure that’s not it, though, why Beaux looks like she’s maybe ten minutes from collapsing or shaking apart. But--

     “St Leger is here? Well fuck me sideways, my rival returns at last. What, do they think he’s got the balls to have murdered someone? I thought they ruled that one out, last time.”

It’s not great news, but at least she’s more notorious as a Gravemaker now than Nathan St Leger even was, even when he was president. It feels like the small victory she’s been working her way towards ever since he refused to tap her, and she certainly won’t mind making matters worse for him if he’s stuck crashing here. Not to mention, the side effect isn’t something she can frown at.

     “But, shit, yeah Beaux, of course. It’s a fuckin’ mess in here but you know there’s always room for you. Mi casa es su casa and all that, literally. C’mon, get up here, I’ll clear off the rest of the bed.”

She pats the bed next to her, where there’s space, and then moves to shove some of the clothes off and onto the floor. There’s not much she can do without dedicating some time she doesn’t have to cleaning, but she can at least move the mess onto somewhere it’ll get trampled instead of somewhere it’s directly in the way.