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Vivienne couldn’t help but smile like an idiot, how could she not? The woman she intended to make her wife was sat on her lap in the delightful warm water of their bathtub, citrusy smelling bubbles and expensive candles making their bathroom especially ambient when the outside world seemed to be crumbling. Under normal circumstances staying home for days at a time would’ve been rather irritating but the fear of becoming an incubus for a viral plague the moment one set foot over the door was so real that the worldly seductress couldn’t bring herself to fret too much at being cooped up indoors with her loved ones. Lots of sex, bubble baths, Netflix marathons, and spontaneous drunken dance parties in the living room at all hours made things far more bearable than they seemed to be for most people.
“I would just like to point out that I have never allowed anyone to do this to me before,” Vivienne smirked, watching in complete and utter adoration as her darling Katerina styled her a dashing beard and moustache made entirely of bubbles. It was such a simple moment that somehow felt just as intimate as their lovemaking did, one where Vivienne felt so complete and safe that she could’ve quite happily lived within it forever. It was one she would look back on when she grew older, she was sure, as every moment happened twice: inside and outside, and they were two different histories.
“I don’t think you ever asked anyone to top you before either... I feel so special.”
Warmth rose to her cheeks and an amused smirk spread across her face. She had always worn her sexuality with a much older woman's grace, and not like an awkward purse like most women in their twenties, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down. So the mere fact that Katerina could fluster her so unduly with only a few words had come as quite the shock. It’d never happened before, but it felt... right.
For so long Vivienne had concerned herself with only her identity and not much beyond that, but so much in her life had changed that she now knew what mattered most; the people she cared about, the ideas that mattered to her, and the beliefs she stood by. Most intelligent people could make those choices with their brains and hearts and they could make them alone, but given her rather unconventional upbringing Vivienne had required the aid of others to make them. The world simply did not deliver meaning to her, she’d had to make it meaningful. She’d had to decide exactly what it was that she wanted and needed and what she must do. It’d been a tough and unimaginably lonely and complicated journey through the world, but it had been worth it. It had been so worth it.
She now lived a life with the full knowledge that her actions would always remain. Human beings are creatures of consequence, and the mere thought thrilled her to no end.
“You,” she smirked, “are the most special person in the world to me.”
Katerina’s eyes sparkled at her and the faintest hint of a blush rose to her cheeks, and Vivienne’s smile only grew wider at the sight of her. Before their meeting she had often seen authors describing the quiet happiness that can exist between two lovers, but she’d never truly felt it or believed that it was something that actually existed outside of popular works of fiction.
Before her world as it was at that very moment existed, before it was populated with the other members of the Gilded Poppy, and before there were heists and enemies and danger and foreign travels — before all of those wonderful things there had only been Vivienne, and a dissatisfaction with the very act of living and breathing. Then after twenty-six years, she had found Katerina; space was made for her in their number, her heart ensnared, and it was as if she had always been there. She did not consider how or why she loved her so much. She was just love, pure love. She was the very first evidence she had ever had of a healthy love, and she would be the very last confirmation of love when her hair turned white and all else was nothing more than a memory.
The young American leaned in and pushed a few wet strands of raven hair out of her face and then she gave her a single kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism. “Do you even know what hearing you say stuff like that does to me?”
Vivienne chuckled. Of course she knew exactly what she was doing to her, making the girl blush had become a favourite pastime of hers. It made her wonder if sex wasn’t of the body at all. Perhaps it was really a function of language. “Honestly, given how intimate these last few days have felt, if I didn’t think I’d be sprayed with disinfectant by someone in a hazmat suit or inadvertently die the moment I breathed outdoors, I’d probably have procured the most dazzling engagement ring by now.”
Katerina’s breath audibly hitched in her throat and her cheeks flushed considerably, which Vivienne took as a gallant victory. “I— You—“
“Having trouble formulating a coherent sentence, dear?,” she teased.
“It’s your fault, baby,” Katerina mumbled. “And for the record, I’d just love to see someone try to spray you with disinfectant. They’d be unconscious within seconds.”
“That is true... but I’d somehow have to find a way to ram my entire tube of lipstick down their throat from afar. Getting close enough to a stranger to use the ring or even get a little of the lipstick on their skin is dangerous these days.”
“Poison darts in a blow pipe?”
A huge toothy smile spread across her face as her bubble beard began to dissolve away from her skin. “That’s an interesting idea. Tell me more.”
“I was totally joking. You’re not getting poison darts.”
“But—“
“No.”
“I—“
“Baby.”
“You can’t call me that when I’m trying to plead my case. That’s cheating.”
“Need I remind you that you tried to toss me my hairbrush this morning and almost broke the bedroom window? Your aim is terrible. You’d literally blind people or accidentally become a serial killer or something.”
Vivienne spluttered, it never stopped amusing her how well Katerina knew her. The real her, beneath the tight dresses and perfectly applied makeup. From the moment they’d met she’d seen her and they had been connected in ways that had once terrified her to her core. She wasn’t sure if Katya had felt it to the same extent she had, but the draw to her had been the strongest thing that she’d ever felt. It had felt as natural as breathing. It had been the catalyst that had made her realise that happiness didn’t have to be such a far away thing, something complicated and hard to grasp. That it was really just little things that made it up; a place of shelter in rain, a cup of strong coffee in the morning, a good book to read — just to be with someone she loved. Those things made happiness.
“That would be just like me, wouldn’t it?,” she huffed, waving her hand absently. “To inadvertently become a serial killer when I really just want to rob rich people blind. My father would be so proud.”
“I can see it now. Dean coming to yell at you, you attempting to shoot him in the arm with one of your poison darts—“
“But I hit him in an artery in his neck instead and he falls to the ground cursing the day I was born.” She raised her fist in the air and shook it, “Vivienne!”
“Dark.”
“Technically speaking, you’d be my accomplice. We’d both be serial killers.”
“That’s reaching but okay. Whatever floats your boat, baby.”
They both started giggling like a pair of immature children, sloshing some of the water over the sides of the bathtub by accident as they laughed. It was such a morbid thing to find in any way amusing, yet neither of them could stop their laughter. Vivienne had never had that before, someone with whom she could be herself with so unapologetically. It was exactly what she’d needed for a long time. She’d needed to hold somebody so close and be held in turn. She’d needed someone who understood exactly what she was thinking and feeling as the world went mad — and that understanding was part of the holding.
“Perhaps we really should get me one of those blow pipes and poison darts, for health and safety reasons. That way, if any of us actually catch the plague I can put them out of their misery.” She smirked. “Wouldn’t you like me to blow you to death, my darling?”
“If I get sick I’m coughing on you first.”
“If you get sick I’m gagging you.”
“Good doctors don’t ball gag their patients,” Katerina scolded, playfully swatting her arm.
“That’s not what you said last night.”
Katerina spluttered and buried her face in her shoulder. “You are incorrigible.”
“You love it,” she whispered, nuzzling her face into her damp hair whilst suppressing her laughter.
If someone had told her when she’d first spotted Katerina in New York that there would ever come a time when they’d be so close, she never would’ve believed them. She’d never have believed that something so extraordinary could happen to her. Besides, the biggest things in life do not ever present themselves as such. They came in the quiet, ordinary moments — the two seconds it took to spot an attractive young artist dazzling everyone who so much as glanced in her direction in an overcrowded city street, that was what nobody realises. Two seconds were actually huge. It was the difference between something happening and something not happening. One could take one step too many and fall over the edge of a cliff. It's very dangerous. Life changing things that took only two seconds to happen came when we are not looking, without clues, without so much as a warning, and that was exactly why they floor us. And it could take a lifetime, a life of many years, to accept the incongruity of things: that a single small moment could sit side by side with a big one, and become part of the same.
For a few moments they held one another in a comfortable silence. Vivienne cradling the back of Katerina’s head, Katerina stroking slow lines with her fingertips across Vivienne’s spine. It was hard not to lose herself completely in the feeling of finally having a home.
“What’re you thinking about?,” Katerina whispered.
“That my life became very different when you walked into it,” she confessed. “One minute I was just doing my job and the next...”
“The next?”
“I found everything that I never knew that I wanted but deep down always knew that I needed.” She kissed her cheek. “It’s like... like I was trying to force myself in the familiar direction and discovered that what I needed all along was to move in a different one. The way forwards was not forward at all, but off to one side, in a place I didn’t notice before.”
Katerina tightened her embrace and Vivienne melted into it. She knew better than most others that sometimes it was easier to live out the mistakes one has made than to summon the energy and imagination required to repair them — and something as instinctual as righting wrongs never had been very easy to her at all. To most people, Vivienne’s entire persona was like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, one could quite easily forget all the dark and twisted parts of her were there and they could keep falling into the abyss. After a while, it’s still there, but they’d learn to walk round it, never challenging it or drawing attention to it. Katerina wasn’t like that, though. From day one she had challenged her, encouraged her to be her best self... set her free from the prison that was her own mind. Loving another person the way Katerina loved her and being so kind to her was about the best thing that anyone had ever done for Vivienne.
“Thank you for always being so patient and gentle with me,” Vivienne whispered. “It is a hard thing, this learning to love someone in a way that isn’t destructive. But it is an even harder thing, I think, to learn to let the mask drop and be ordinary. When I first met you, I was ready, but I was terrified. I had a space for you, but I was too frightened to tell you that I did. Anyone else would’ve left me long before now, I’m sure.”
“People are idiots.” Katerina leaned back and pressed a kiss on the bridge of her nose. “Nobody is so frightening once you stop and listen, baby... not even badass internationally wanted criminals such as yourself.”
Vivienne chuckled. “Is that so?”
“Mhm.”
“I could’ve just lured you into a sense of security as part of my wicked scheme to keep you forever.”
“Whatever you say, baby,” Katerina smiled, fluttering her eyelashes.
Heat rose to Vivienne’s cheeks, that goddamn glorious pet name would be the death of her. “Red! Red! Red!”
“Yeah, you are bright red.”
“I despise you,” she giggled, though it sounded more like the grandest confession of undying love that she’d ever heard than an insult.
“I hate you, too, my love.”
- fin.