Chapter Text
Several minutes and several tissues later, Eve finds herself still standing in the blanket puddle.
Villanelle isn’t happy. Eve can tell because she has a great big pout on her face, which also happens to feature a very kissable looking bottom lip. For Eve this creates great inner turmoil. On the one hand she wants to be there for Villanelle, to make her feel better, and on the other she wants to forget the whole thing and go back to kissing her. And the second hand is a hell of a lot more distracting than the first.
“I’m not happy,” Villanelle breathes out on a shuddering breath.
“No,” Eve decides to play it safe. She’s recalls a tactic she read in a book about calming witnesses: describe what you see. “You look very upset.”
Good. A solid start.
Another shuddering breath from Villanelle, and a cough this time, her pout deepening.
“I’ve had a really terrible few weeks.”
Okay this is progress, definite progress...
“You’ve had a really terrible few weeks,” Eve winces. It’s describe what you see, idiot, not repeat what you hear!
“A lot of bad things have happened.”
“Okay,” Eve steps out from the crochet web cautiously, taking a seat again beside Villanelle on the sofa. “I have to admit I’m not quite sure how we’ve got here from where we were ten minutes ago but...oh God, are you crying?”
“No,” Villanelle sniffs, and then starts to nod as a few tears betray her and leak down her cheeks. “Yes.”
“Shit.” Shit, shit, shit.
“It’s like everything I touch,” Villanelle makes the sound of something combusting and then cries harder.
“Oh, come on, I’m sure it’s not been that bad,” Eve attempts weakly. “I mean technically you didn’t kill that Rhian girl, right? If a train hit her...” Eve frowns to herself. Awful example. “And, and you got me that lovely bus cake for my birthday, remember? That was nice.”
“I made you another cake too,” Villanelle sniffles quietly, tears still falling. “It had cherries. But it was too disgusting to send.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Eve instils confidently. “See? That’s two nice things already.”
“I killed my whole family, Eve.”
Ah.
“Really? All of them?” As though only slaughtering half of her family would make it somehow less horrific...
“Not my two brothers,” Villanelle wipes at her tears and grabs another tissue for her running nose. “I got them tickets to see Elton John.”
“Also a nice gesture...”
“But,” Villanelle tears up all over again. “I filled their house with gasoline and blew it up. With our mother inside.”
“Yeah, that’s not so easily overlooked I guess...”
“I stole a baby.”
“Um...”
“And I killed his mother, too. And his nanny.”
“That’s...not great...”
“And now I’m sick. So sick I can’t even kiss you properly,” Villanelle starts to full on sob and Eve places an uncertain but comforting hand on her back.
And that’s the part that makes her sob uncontrollably?
“Ssh, ssh,” Eve soothes, pulling Villanelle into her chest. She expects some resistance; but to her surprise Villanelle melts into her, spilling more weepy, warm tears that smear onto Eve’s skin and bleed black into the dark blue of her shirt. “It’s okay,” Eve finds herself whispering, which on the face of it seems to be insane: to be comforting someone who just confessed to multiple murders, who’s literally killed hundreds of people. But Villanelle is so much more than her monster, Eve reasons to herself. “You’re so hot."
“Are you serious?” Villanelle’s voice is hoarse and her breathing ragged, hiccuping every so often from all the crying. “I told you I’m in no fit state for sex, Eve.”
“Oh my God,” Eve throws her head back, on the cusp of a laugh. “No! I mean you have a fever!”
“Oh,” Villanelle’s shoulders drop a bit, her expression tired. “I do feel a bit weird,” she sniffs before adding: “Emotional.”
“It’s good to feel things.”
Villanelle shakes her head.
“It doesn’t feel good.”
“Not always, no,” Eve sighs, stroking a few stray hairs from Villanelle’s flushed face. “But sometimes it does. Sometimes it can feel really good.”
“Maybe,” she settles, dipping back into Eve’s side. “By the way, thanks for before.”
“Hmm?”
“You know, for fixing my nose.”
Eve chuckles.
A comfortable silence settles over them then, and Eve welcomes it. Cuddling up with Villanelle feels like the right sort of conclusion to all the angst, lust and tears they’ve been through. And she isn’t just talking about today. There’s been months and months of it, all building up to this big, exhausting crescendo.
Villanelle yawns hugely, as though on cue, her head growing a little heavier against Eve’s chest.
“Don’t you dare go to sleep,” Eve interjects. “I’m trying very hard to do better at this whole looking after you thing, and you need medicine.”
Villanelle makes a small, displeased noise before murmuring: “Can’t you just suck at looking after me for five more minutes?”