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While Vicky is more than a little hesitant to give Michael any real credit at this point, she has to admit, reboot number eight is already off to a good start.
Admittedly, that’s almost entirely due to her own handiwork. It was her idea to have Eleanor be her own soulmate (which is almost the best torture method she’s ever come up with, second only to the perpetual sunburn machine), and it was her idea to be paired up with Tahani so that she could use that relationship against Eleanor, make her good and miserable.
They’re not even twelve hours into the reboot and it all seems to be working like a goddamn dream.
There’s still fifteen minutes before Eleanor is due to give her speech, and she’s already well on the way to being utterly plastered. She’s leaning back against the bar, dress spotted with wayward drops of tequila, sash crooked, unsteady on her feet. There’s a frown creasing her mouth and a smudge of lipstick at the corner of her lips, and she looks nothing less than utterly miserable.
And that’s before Vicky even takes into account the fact that, even though they haven’t been introduced yet, even though they’ve been deliberately kept apart, even though there’s simply no possible way that she could have any memory of their other times together, Eleanor’s eyes are still locked on Tahani. They’ve been that way almost from the moment Tahani swept into the foyer, looking like the closest thing to perfection humans are capable of achieving while still being locked in their messy, sweaty, disgusting meatsuits. Even when Vicky was too busy portraying the dutiful soulmate by pretending to follow along with every last one of Tahani’s insufferable words to actually look over at Eleanor, she could still feel Eleanor’s gaze as they walked around the room.
A few minutes ago, Tahani excused herself to go talk to Michael, and while Vicky has been enjoying just standing off to the side and watching Eleanor wallow (she can literally taste Eleanor’s misery in the air, rich and delicious like burnt meat), she decides it’s time to kick it up a notch.
She sidles up to the bar just in time for Eleanor to throw back another shot of tequila and burp grotesquely.
Vicky just barely manages to wipe the grin off her face before she speaks.
“Do you ever just look at your soulmate and think, damn, I get to spend eternity with that actual goddess?”
Eleanor’s gaze leaves Tahani for the first time in several minutes, and her head lolls on her shoulders until she’s looking at Vicky.
“I don’t have a soulmate,” she mutters, sounding so dismal and pathetic that Vicky wants to laugh gleefully. Instead, she does her absolute best to feign ignorance, screws her mouth up into what feels like a passable frown.
“What are you talking about? I thought everyone here had a soulmate.”
Eleanor snorts and turns back to the bar to pour herself another shot.
“I’m my own soulmate,” she replies, slopping tequila onto the surface of the bar before she manages to get it into the shot glass.
“Wow,” Vicky says, doing her best impression of awestruck. “You must be so enlightened.” Eleanor just laughs, downs the shot and tugs at her crooked sash.
“That’s what they tell me.” Her emotional agony is so strong that Vicky is nearly choking on it, and some of her coworkers are shooting her impressed glances, but she thinks that she can do even better, if she just pushes a little bit more.
“I wish I was that enlightened. Then again, Tahani...” She sighs dreamily and looks over at where Tahani is laughing at something Michael said, fingertips gently resting on his arm. “She’s just so charming and sweet. And beautiful. Like something from a painting. She’s perfect, really.”
Eleanor looks downright queasy now, like she might simply pitch forward and throw up on her own shoes. That would be a satisfying end to the night, but before it can happen, Michael claps his hands loudly and announces to the crowd that it’s time for Eleanor’s speech.
A faint shade of green creeps into Eleanor’s cheeks, and Vicky disguises a pleased laugh as a cough.
“You’ve got this,” she says brightly, patting Eleanor on the shoulder. “Good luck!” Eleanor doesn’t give her a response; she simply grabs the bottle of tequila from behind the bar and weaves her way through the crowd to the slightly raised dais, where a microphone has been set up for her. Tahani has established herself a few feet away, and Vicky joins her, curls her arm in Tahani’s and leans up to press a kiss to her cheek, all the while keeping her eyes on Eleanor.
(And disgusting meatsuit or not, she has to admit, Tahani’s skin is ludicrously soft.)
After a few seconds of stopping and starting, aborted sentences that trail off into nothing, Eleanor turns her back on the crowd and takes a massive swig of tequila from the bottle. When she turns back around, for a moment, it looks like she might actually be okay, that she just needed some liquid courage.
But then the green tinge abruptly returns to her face and in a series of movements so quick that they’re almost graceful, she pitches forward, throws up, and falls off the stage. She lands face-first mere inches away from Tahani’s feet and when she glances up, her mouth crooks into a grin.
“You really are a smokeshow,” she slurs, and while the rest of the room erupts into whispers and gasps that Vicky knows are actually attempts to hide laughter, she turns her face and buries her own delighted laughter into Tahani’s arm.
This is, by far, the best reboot yet, and if Michael does something to fuck it up, she’s going to kill him.