🚛😵👻👍

a postcard arrives — macchiaioli art stretched around reams of packed card, or giotto's lamentation fit with its own brush strokes and sun-wilted colour, and a delicate wishing you were here! slogan scrawled across the back, and a first class plane ticket appears not long after. a date, a time, a location, and the rest is up to her.

there are patterns in each kill — influential diplomats with deep pockets, lecherous consuls with wandering hands, UN members — she holds their faces when the light flickers out in their eyes with a satisfying rasp before they shit blood or it froths out in little trickles down the side of their mouths.

"do you?" they are two sides of the same coin. cat and mouse, from one end of europe to the other. (viIIaneIIe doesn't care much for the over-processed, plastic-sheened american trite that screams best place on earth wrapped in burger grease and the star-spangled banner. europe is more boutique. it suits her just fine.)

there is a hint of fear that hums through eve's voice which feels so incredibly alien to her — it's not a case that things tend to work out for her, because bruised knuckles and mottled, dark rings around her eyes tell another story, but she knows, in an instinctive, base way, how to kick back against the wall she's pinned against. they're close — perhaps too close, and perhaps eve will curl the lower part of her lip when they take little more than a moment to look back on this — but viIIaneIIe touches over the sharp arch of eve's cheek and nods.

it's an invitation, if she's ever heard one — a pressure point in each wound where it doesn't feel good any more and just hurts. (but just before that point, there's a sharp hiss of contentedness. the precipice where euphoria blends into the sluggish gnawing hurt — that's the edge she lives in.)

"i will keep you safe, eve." a promise, an i-do, a cheap thrill wrapped in chanel and coursing through her entire being as she unfolds herself from under the desk and reaches for the sharp edge of the letter opener.

the next few minutes are unspoken, quiet as she slips through the creaking, half-ajar door. two thuds, hard, like the shattered weight of a slumped body jams it shut, and she returns wearing a subtle spattering of blood and a heavy scowl.

what she would like is for villanelle to loosen her grip on the knife that is still kissing at the fabric that resides over her abdomen  -  if dinner prevents that,  so be it.  “ sure, i’d like dinner.  i could definitely eat. “  that’s a lie.  she feels sick and the thought of eating isn’t all that pleasing right now,  but needs must.  “ what do you want?  italian?  i could go for italian … “ 

she isn’t sure whether or not that’s a rhetorical question,  mostly because she doesn’t know how to answer it herself.  she doesn’t think that she wants to see villanelle sad but she isn’t sure she wants to see her happy either.  it’s  -  confusing;  the way that she cares.  it all feels a little backwards,  a little unusual.  but she has to say the appropriate thing for the situation and so,  with a very brief shake of her head, she responds. “ of course i don’t want you to be sad. “  she isn’t sure villanelle can even feel that level of emotion but she won’t test it.  she’s seen mad villanelle,  bad villanelle   -  she isn’t sure if sad fits in with the mix. 

“ are we good now?  we’re friends again? “ the word ‘ friend ‘ doesn’t fit, she knows that.  she won’t ever know what her and villanelle are to each other.  she knows for certain that friends don’t fantasise about the other  -  that they don’t share sordid thoughts.  still,  she won’t vocalise that in avoidance of fuelling villanelle’s fire even more.  “ can you drop the knife now? “ 

they’ve had dinner before — a microwaved, orange-stained tupperware of her husband’s shepherd’s pie that’s sat in the fridge for a couple days before being stabbed at with a twisted fork. and that ended the exact same way. there’s an  avoidance  in eve that she’s been trying to pick away at. there’s something that means their eyes follow from across the room, and a thread that leads them to the same place. same objective. the same  side. (that  one  is  new. there’s no need for cat and mouse when theres a billionaire-psychopath that sits between the two of them with nothing more than an  opportunity.)

“don’t be like that, eve.”  friends?  friends never quite work out for her. mostly, they end up with a bullet in their skulls, and villanelle off to the next mark.  normal  rots in her. nice boys with clean hair or wide-eyed girls with office jobs and housemates... it gets old quick. it’s not like that with eve.

          “— wowwww, eve. so  demanding.  does niko know you have problems with your manners?”   maybe it says something that she gets under eve’s skin so easily, or maybe the  subtext  sits in the way she slowly eases the pressure on the blade at her stomach. 

                    so apologising wasn’t the right thing to do?  jesus christ.  she’s quick to stiffen when villanelle is standing with the merest gap between the two of them,  blade pressed against her abdomen.  she supposes this is fair game,  an eye-for-an-eye,  one might say.  but still,  it doesn’t stop the expression of utter shock from pulling at every feature on her face.  “i can tell you a lot more things that are more romantic than her-and-her stab wounds … “  she knows that villanelle will catch the wobble in her voice,  the waviness of her tone.  she knows the assassin well enough to know that she misses  nothing.  she’s a predator with ridiculously adapt senses.   “roses,  for one.  and long walks on the beach. “  not a knife to the gut.  anything but a knife to the gut.  

“ i wouldn’t find it very romantic if you stabbed me, villanelle. “  would that stop her?  a disapproval?  “ in fact, i’d find it the opposite. i’d find it unattractive. “  she’s trying her hardest to loosen the stiff stance but she’s worried that one wrong move of her body and the blade will meet with her insides.  “ i’d rather you took me to dinner. “  she’s lowering a hand  -  the action slow,  calculated.  fingers wrap around villanelle’s wrist and she holds it there,  fingers clenched as she tries to keep the knife from piercing her skin.  

“ if it makes you feel better, i rescind my apology.  fuck the apology.  i’m not sorry for stabbing you.  you deserved it. “  the shake in her voice is still present but she’s trying her best to hide it.  is this was villanelle wants?  no remorse.  “ you were a real ass. “ 

                    long walks on the beach, kissing in the rain — she’s stared into the soulless core of as many romcoms as she can remember growing up, and has turned off just as many without even trying it. (there were english ones, french ones, german ones that anna dusted off out of a vhs player before she could call her older than the sun itself. she said it was the best way to learn, even if the better way was between her legs after a fight with her husband.)

         “you would like that? dinner?”

there she is. there’s something that lights behind villanelle’s eyes as eve curses, and she tightens her grip on her waist as eve quivers out under the stress of the blade. her skin is warm under its polyester-prison (i mean, really — would all mi5 agents go up in flames if you lit a match?) and eve is so close she can practically devour her.

                     “you should be. it made me very sad.”   it’s a quip that slowly coaxes a smile out from the corner of her lip. painful, maybe — she still remembers the sting of vodka as she launched herself in front of a car to end up in urgent care, but as far as she cares with eve, it was passion. it was a reaction. eve is more like her than she wants to admit, and villanelle wants to thread her fingers through that and hold it flush against her.