#baaaaabies

The first time Elliot kisses Diana, John thinks about it for three days after.

He’s known. Of course, he’s always known, because Elliot made it perfectly clear why she wanted the deputy from the get-go. I like her, she’d said, a phrase normally reserved for the most puzzling of obstacles. It’s not a game, isn’t fun if she doesn’t have to work for it, and on that front he and Elliot differ entirely—he would prefer Diana Baker’s complete and utter submission, in written and verbal form, handed over in a glass frame so that he can hang it on the wall in the bedroom to admire as he pleases.

In a way, he does. Each time there is a violent collision, each time their mouths and teeth meet, he holds onto it for a while—keeps it for himself, even though his wife is pacing herself, even though she reprimands him for rushing, for pushing Diana too far too fast.

Conversely, Elliot wants to work for it. She wants to get her hands dirty, elbows deep in the gore of Diana, the filthy fucking carnivore that she is, and normally John would love it; normally, it’s one of his favorite things about his wife, that she’s so willing to get the blood up to her elbows, no gloves required. Normally, he likes watching her sink her teeth in—but it’s different, now.

Diana is different. 

She has always been different. She is the exception to every one of their rules. They had taken lovers, before, to share—this was not new—but they had never taken someone permanently, not the way that Elliot wants Diana (and the way that John wants the deputy, too). They would have never tolerated this kind of blatant disrespect from anyone, not even a pretty little viper skittering through their garden.

But they do; whenever she takes something, Elliot will just go out and take it back. She’ll go out and build a new silo—it doesn’t replace the product, but what can you do—or she’ll pay the viciousness back, in turn, another way. Hit them somewhere else. They’re incapable, nearly, without Diana—so if she’s all the way in the Henbane, who’s going to pay attention to poor Fall’s End?

It goes like this, on and on, vicious cycles before Diana eventually finds herself back there. This evening, John expects no change of pace, but when Diana enters the room, Elliot’s eyes fix on her; he feels like the outside party, the interloper, because the blonde clicks her tongue and brings Diana, bloodied and bruised, to her with delicate fingers.

“Let me see,” Elliot says, the pads of her fingers tilting Diana’s chin up, smoothing along the pillar of her throat. John can only watch—memorizing the way Elliot touches her, different than the way Elliot touches him, both because he wants to covet the image in his mind for as long as possible and because, like watching a car crash in motion, he cannot look away.

And he cannot look away when his wife guides the deputy’s face to hers and kisses her, either. 

It’s not even a particularly enticing looking kiss, really. It’s nothing more than a chaste brush of lips, with all of the desexing of a kiss from the Pope, but the intent and the message behind it is clear, because Elliot’s eyes look to him pointedly.

See? The kiss says, his wife’s thumb coming up to drag on Diana’s lower lip, making the brunette’s breath hitch in her throat. See how good she is for us?

So yes, he can’t stop thinking about it. Not that night, and not the morning after, when Diana has left in their sleep—a shorter visit than usual, perhaps spooked by the physical intimacy, strange and alien in comparison to the way that John and her have locked lips before—and there is a whole conflict of emotions occurring in him for another two days after that.

I do like that she’s good for us, he thinks, watching Elliot at the vanity, pulling her hair back from her face. He does like it, he does like that Diana Baker comes back to them time and time again, but Elliot is their bridge—she’s the go-between, and this slow progress means that John has become the interloper.

“What is it?” Elliot asks, watching him through the mirror. She’s given up trying to put her hair up in a ponytail and instead now sits, cinched in a silk robe, chin in her hand as she gazes at him.

His mouth twists. He shifts back against the pillows. “I can’t stop picturing you with her.”

The blonde’s eyes don’t flicker, not even a little bit. Not a sliver of softness in her expression. She doesn’t move to comfort him—and she wouldn’t, but he wishes, sometimes, that she would come to him more readily; but any emotion, any feeling, makes her feel deranged, makes her feel seen, and one of those is worse than the other—but rather watches him.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Elliot smooths a strand of hair from her face. “For you to think about your girls? Together?”

John’s mouth plants itself in a frown. “I’m not being funny, hellcat.”

“What’s so different?” she says at last.

“What do you mean?”

“Well.” It’s her turn to shift carefully moving some items on the vanity out of the way—trinkets, kept from her childhood. “What’s so different this time?”

“It’s—she’s yours,” John posits.

“Noelle was mine,” Elliot says plainly. “You loved Noelle. You called us your little wolves.”

“Yes, well—” He sits up, swallowing. “It’s different.”

Elliot turns in her seat so that she’s looking at him now, and he can see it—the brows furrowing, the defiant tilt of her chin in his direction. “So I’ve gathered.”

“Elliot—”

“But I’m asking what makes it different.”

“It’s different because you picked her!” John snaps, finally, the hot spike of emotion flaring in his chest. “You singled her out. She’s your—”

“Our.”

“She’s not mine,” he manages out, voice bridging on strained. “She’s not, and you know that. And you want her for longer. It’s always just been a little while, and you want to keep her, don’t you?”

Elliot stares at him. “Don’t you?”

Yes, John thinks, furious, mouth dry. Yes, I do. I want her for-fucking-ever, the same way I want you, until the cold black fucking end. I want her forever, just like you, and she won’t fucking have me.

“I thought you only had eyes for me,” he says instead.

The blonde sighs, coming to a stand finally—at last—coming to him, crawling onto his lap.

“I have eyes,” she murmurs, draping her arms around his shoulders, “for us.”

John exhales through his nose. It’s more complicated than that. It’s more complicated because Elliot so easily fits with Diana—even in the beginning. Elliot’s strange juxtaposition between Diana and John afforded her a comfortable advantage on both playing fields, as it does now; and maybe he’s jealous of that, too, that his wife, beautiful and charming and deadly in equal parts, is somehow reeling Diana in better than he could. With less carnage.

It should be him. He should be the one winning Diana over, drawing her to them, presenting her to Elliot as his conquest, his gift, for them to both enjoy. And no matter which way, she always bucks against him.

“Honey,” Elliot says, her voice soft. “I’m your wife. And she’ll be our wife. Don’t you want that?”

Dropping his head against her shoulder, he lets her card her fingers through his hair. “Yes,” he manages out. “I do.”

“Then let me get her for us, baby.” The blonde’s words are light. “What’s mine is yours, so if I get what I want, then we get what we want.” Her lips brush against his temple as his arms wind around her. “You’re always doing everything for me. Trust me to do this for you.” Another pause, and then: “For us.”

His chest feels tight. He thinks, no, I have to do it, you asked me, and he thinks, I don’t like sharing my wife, and he thinks, I want her too, I want Diana too.

And he thinks, yes, please, do this for me.

“I do,” he says, into the crook of her neck. “I trust you.”

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It’s late; the sky is speckled with stars and dark clouds, promising a storm on the way even amidst the humid summer heat, and John is exceptionally tired.

This isn’t the first time he’s stayed late at the compound, listening to Joseph’s furious whispers, and it certainly won’t be the last. But now he’s home, and his shoulders ache and burn with the tension of having driven himself home, and the last thing that he wants to do is think about anything.

However, as he enters the bedroom, he’s surprised to find not one viper in his bed, but two.

“You’re home,” Elliot says, her voice sweet; thick and syrupy and laden with what he can only assume are the remnants of red wine from the empty glass on the bedside table. “We missed you.”

He looks at Diana. She seems less pleased at his presence, but there is a tenuous curiosity; Elliot’s said something to her, done something, but there’s no reeking floral scent of Bliss, and there’s clarity in both of their eyes. No games here, he thinks, even as he tentatively crosses the distance between the doorway and the foot of the bed.

“Did you, now?” John asks, shrugging out of his jacket.

“One of us, anyway,” Diana says, the bite in her voice not at all lessened by the humidity of the room.

His wife smiles at him, and she tilts Diana’s face towards hers and kisses her—long and languid and open-mouthed, and he watches her pearly teeth dig into the deputy’s lower lip. A rebuke. She’s done it to him plenty of times; seeing her do it to Diana spikes something wretched and desirous in him.

Against the brunette’s mouth, Elliot says, “Don’t be cruel, honey. John’s been working hard.”

She beckons John with a crook of her fingers, and of course, he obeys, slides onto the bed and lets Elliot hook her fingers into the front of his shirt so that she can undo the first few buttons.

“Diana’s been working hard, too,” Elliot murmurs. “But we’re going to take care of her, aren’t we?” She looks at Diana, lips kiss-reddened and gaze hungry—and he can tell that the deputy’s in a mood, like maybe she can’t quite get the taste of blood out of her mouth, and he likes it. “Do you want that, baby?”

The brunette’s eyes flutter. She swallows thickly, hesitating. “I—” Diana begins, and she looks like she wants to say yes but that stubborn, obstinate nature of hers, purposefully obtuse for the sake of raking up his ire, is rearing its head.

“John.” His wife’s voice is saccharine. She moves lithely, sitting behind Diana, letting the brunette lean back against her a little. “Are you going to show the deputy how nice we can be?”

His chest is pleasantly tight, at the vision of them—his vipers, perfectly entangled, eyes fixed on him. Not so much an interloper, anymore.

John leans in, tilting Diana’s chin up; there’s a second of hesitation where he thinks maybe she’s going to balk, throw nails and teeth to get out from between them, but Elliot grazes her mouth along the brunette’s neck and purrs, “Let us take care of you,” and the brunette’s body relaxes, just a little, just that much where he can lean in and kiss her.

And kiss her, and kiss her, in a way that he’s never been able to before. Luxuriating in it. Tasting the ash and blood and red wine in her mouth, and liking it.

“So good,” he hears Elliot praise silkily, when their kiss breaks. “We have the loveliest little viper, baby.”

“Yes,” John agrees, and his voice is rough as it comes out of him, the electricity palpable. “We certainly do.”

Diana watches him for a moment, her fingers knotted in Elliot’s hair, before she leans forward and captures his mouth in a kiss more punishing than the last, with more teeth and heat; he can hear his wife sighing delightedly into the brunette’s skin, and for the first time, it feels most apt to say we have and not you have.

Ours, John thinks, mind fuzzing pleasantly in the static aftershock of Diana’s kiss.