Work Text:
Eve peeked over the hedgerow where she’d taken cover once she heard Villanelle screaming.
“AH! Eve, I look like a cartoon!”
“A what?
“A cartoon! Or a… a druggie! This is horrible!”
The blood and saliva pouring from Villanelle’s lips after a nasty tussle with the latest of the Twelve’s goons should have been more concerning to Villanelle than the state of her looks, in Eve’s opinion. The body leaking at their feet was certainly concerning to Eve, considering anyone driving by could catch a glimpse of them and jump to conclusions given that they were alive and the stiffening body below them was decidedly… not.
But what did Eve know?
They were practically stranded in rural Hungary after hopping trains and skirting over this border and that, laying the latest of tracks in their false trail. They’d managed to avoid any confrontations up until this point, but really, it was only a matter of time before they needed to make a much larger jump to shake any tails Villanelle had acquired since her abrupt departure from the Twelve’s employ.
Konstantin was no help, and Villanelle vowed to give him a piece of her shank—uh, mind—once she felt they’d lain low long enough to chance a flight to America, a border crossing to Mexico, and then, a boat ride to Cuba. But all of that planning and evading would be for nought if Villanelle succumbed to blood loss from a gushing head wound, which was kind of currently happening.
“What about your head?!” Eve asked, yanking leaves and twigs from her hair from when Villanelle had pointed toward the roadside bushes and told her to Hide now, Eve.
Eve took her cardigan and balled it up, using the sleeve to swipe at the gash near Villanelle’s forehead.
“‘S just a scratch,” Villanelle grumbled, cracking her back as she stood from her stooped position. She immediately swayed forward, and Eve had to grab her under the armpits to keep her upright.
“Just a second there, Usain Bolt. We can’t exactly dash off to another location, you’re hurt.”
“What’s the knight say?”
“What?”
“Flesh...” Villanelle’s eyelids were fluttering now, her pupils blown to bursting black. “Flesh wound?”
“The reason that’s funny is because it’s NOT just a flesh wound, you idiot,” Eve insisted, struggling with Villanelle’s weight slung over her shoulders. It would take all of Eve’s dwindling strength and the churning cocktail of adrenaline to get Villanelle back into their stolen sedan and far, far away from the dead hitman behind them.
“Eve?”
“Yeah?”
“Please fix my tooth. I want to be able to smile at you properly.”
And with that, Villanelle immediately passed out.
If anyone asked, Eve didn’t drop her.
“Oral surgery?”
“Ja.”
“To remove her wisdom teeth?”
“Ja. If... if you look here—“ the dentist in Graz showed Eve x-ray copies of Villanelle’s skull, her jaw bone more straight and angular than the natural curve of her cheek, all bloated and loose from the deadening agent they’d injected to try to reinsert Villanelle’s lost tooth. “If—she want tooth back we—make room?” the dentist said, in heavily accented English.
“Ja, I understand, danke,” Eve said, wondering how bad this would screw up their travel plans. “I’ll talk to her about it.”
Villanelle was charming the socks (and, Eve wondered, if given the time, other articles of clothing) off the dental hygienist at the front desk, leaning in and complimenting and smirking and flirting, as was her custom. Surprisingly, they’d gotten away with a bullshit story about a mugging gone wrong, posing as a pair of tourists, and Villanelle had lamented the loss of her perfect dental record while also hyperbolizing her own heroics.
“And it wasn’t until I had the attacker subdued, that the police came—“
“Oh, really?!” the hygienist leaned forward, engrossed. Eve had to suppress a scoff, because there was no way you were supposed to be able to see cleavage through scrubs with dancing molars on them. Villanelle was shameless, the hygienist was into it, and Eve was definitely not jealous.
“And that’s when I—“
“Billie?” Eve interrupted, dragging Villanelle away from the front desk. “Time to get back to the hotel. Can you mark us down again for 14:00 tomorrow?”
The hygienist smiled bright and large with perfect pearly whites, and wrote BILLIE in bold letters in the appointment book. Villanelle at least had the wherewithal not to question the second booking until they were outside again.
“What do you mean we have to go back?”
“Do you want your tooth back or not?”
“Of courssse,” Villanelle paused, and Eve snickered at her slight lisp. “My face, my fortune.”
“That was never really your MO,” Eve checked her. “You’ve gotten by on more than looks in the past.”
“I’m retired now, remember,” Villanelle said. “With a limited ssskill ssset.”
“Say that again?”
“Abssssolutely not,” Villanelle retorted, turning on her heel down a side street. “You’re making fun of me.”
“You sound like an 8-year-old excited about the tooth fairy,” Eve smirked. “Even more so than usual.”
“Fine. Next time, I won’t ssssave your ass when the Twelve ssssend a big ssscary hit-person after usss.”
“Hey, come on,” Eve said, grabbing her by the sleeve and tugging her to a stop. “Listen, obviously I’m grateful you stepped in, but you’re still pretty beat up. And with your surgery, we’re going to be cooped up here for a couple of days.”
“Wait a sssecond,” Villanelle said, drool dripping over the corner of her lip. The deadening agent hadn’t worn off from her initial appointment, and Eve was doing her damnedest not to point it out or crack a joke. “Ssssurgery?”
“They’re going to have to remove your wisdom teeth,” Eve said as she rummaged through her massive bag. “To get your front one back in.”
“What, why?!”
“Well, it’s either get them out now, and make room for your new front tooth, or get some sort of fake tooth that will be all twisted in the future when your wisdom teeth start pushing on the front ones.”
Villanelle stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and Eve had to stutter-step to turn back to her. Extracting an old handkerchief from her bag, she took the liberty of wiping at Villanelle’s chin to get the drool off. Villanelle just blinked, taking a moment to process it all. No innuendo. No joke.
Eve wondered if she was okay.
“Will they give me drugs?”
“Yes,” Eve said. “They are literally pulling bones out of your head to make room for other bones. You’re not going to want to feel that.”
“I don’t want them to put me to sleep.”
“That might not be an option—”
“In case we need to get away fast,” Villanelle amended. “They can… if you’ll be there, they can give me—what is it?—the happy gas?”
“Like Berlin?” Eve asked, thinking back to the bloated photo of Fat Panda and Villanelle in her fake nurse's uniform.
“As long as no-one sticks a clamp up my skirt,” Villanelle shrugged. “But really, Eve, I can’t be knocked out. If someone else comes—”
“No one else will come,” Eve reassured her. “And of course I’ll be there.”
“Hmph,” Villanelle swiped at her chin again, pulling away a sleeve-full of drool. “Because you have no where else to go.”
“No, because someone’s going to have to look after you, high as a kite, puffy-cheeked, and hurting.”
Villanelle’s eyes grew round. “It’s going to hurt?”
“You’ve literally been stabbed before!”
“I had the rush of adrenaline to ease the pain!” Villanelle argued back. “This is different. I am willingly submitting myself to this torture, and will be regrettably conscious, remember?”
“Well—your face, your fortune. right?” Eve asked. “Isn’t that what you said?”
“Ugh,” Villanelle responded, finally pressing forward. “Sometimes I wish it wasn’t such a beautiful face. Less maintenance.”
Eve rolled her eyes, and reminded herself that choking Villanelle while she was incapacitated in a dentist's chair was probably out of the question, mainly because she was the one who knew how to forge their passports and IDs.
“And I’ve seen the movies, Eve, I know how this goes.”
“How what goes?”
“Wisdom teeth. You have to let me eat all the ice cream I want.”
“That’s tonsils,” Eve corrected. “You’re really not supposed to eat foods with extreme temperatures—”
“Ice cream,” Villanelle reiterated, pointing out a shop at the end of the road. “I like raspberry.”
“Noted,” Eve sighed, resigning herself to playing nursemaid for the foreseeable future.
“Therrrrrre!” Villanelle moan-called, flopping her arm over the dental seat towards Eve. “There’s my... Eve—”
“Shhh,” Eve said, trying to pay attention to what the oral surgeon was telling her about the pain killer dosage. “The more you talk, the more you’ll hurt your jaw,” Eve hissed.
“Hmmm,” Villanelle replied, grasping hold of Eve’s hand, and, well… not really letting go.
“Sorry, she’s—”
“It is okay. The drugs, ja?” the surgeon said. “Two in morning time, two before bed. With food. Uh… soft? Soft foods? Not too hot, not too cold. Soup. Yogurt. Smoothies… no straws. Will make healing harder.”
“You hear that?” Eve called down to a blissed-out Villanelle. Her pupils were large and glassy as stars, just like yesterday when she’d sustained the blow to the head and the knuckles to her jaw. “Not just raspberry ice cream, okay? We’re gonna mash up some peas or something for you.”
“Nnnno.”
“Here, open,” the dentist said, removing bloody, soggy gauze from the back of Villanelle’s mouth. The dressing was quickly replaced with more cotton-ball looking tissues, which only made Villanelle’s cheeks round further. Eve did not think it was cute, because there was an unsettling amount of bruising that accompanied the swelling from their previous attack. But the whole affair was a little funny, if she was pressed to admit it; but she was not going to be filming Villanelle for blackmail as they walked out of the dentist’s office and back to the car.
That would just be mean.
But Eve was not a very nice lady, so…maybe she did pull her burner phone out of her pocket. Just in case a golden opportunity for humiliation struck.
“Ice packs when you have her settled,” the dentist finally said as they guided a shuffling Villanelle down the hall to the lobby. She handed over a plastic bag full of pain killers and gauze to Eve, who was still fighting Villanelle for possession of her hand back.
“Yes, yes of course, thank you for all of your help,” Eve said, trying to guide a clingy, listing Villanelle away from the doorjamb. “Billie, did you hear that? We’re gonna need ice—”
“Icccce cream?!”
“No, ice packs, for your cheeks.”
Villanelle brought a hand up to her face, her pointer finger extended, as if to poke at the cheek in question, but Eve snatched it away. “No.”
And then Villanelle’s lips were moving, pained, trying to tilt upwards into a smile, Eve supposed, because now Villanelle was swinging their hands together. She kept squeezing her fingers and sort of—leaned into Eve for the duration of their complicated exit. She even slurred “Takennnnnn” to the hygienist she’d been brazenly flirting with the day before, which made Eve's cheeks go hot. Thank god Eve had the foresight to call them a taxi, even if it was only five blocks back to the hotel.
Once they finally made it back, all Eve had to do was maneuver a deadly assassin who also happened to be high as fuck up one flight of stairs.
“Eveeeee—”
“Not yet, stairs.
“Eveeeee,” Villanelle mumbled again. “My mouth hurts.”
“I know, I’ve got your medicine, and I put an ice pack in the mini-fridge before we left. We’ve just got to get up the—”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to.”
“No.”
“Please don’t be an eight-year-old right now,” Eve grumbled.
“Hurts worse than when you stabbed me,” Villanelle mumbled, sniffling.
“She’s a little out of it,” Eve explained to the older couple passing on the stairs. Their eyebrows rose and they hurried away. “Dental surgery!” Eve called after them.
“EVEEEEEE!
“Hey, seriously, be quiet, come on, you’re drawing attention to us.”
“Do I look ugly?” Villanelle asked, and dammit, she started up with the waterworks. Apparently Eve didn’t quite know how to handle a distressed assassin trying to climb the stairs with a mouthful of cotton and a system flooded with nitrous oxide.
“What?” Eve said, trying to appeal to Villanelle’s vanity. “You are eight feet tall. Your boobs are perfect. Your hair is down to there. If I was you I’d just walk around naked all the time.”
“I look like a hippopotamus,” Villanelle tried to poke at her jaw again and Eve only barely succeeded in pulling her hand away in time. With one hand round Villanelle's waist and the other tangled in her naughty fingers, it looked like she was carrying home a completely-pissed Villanelle from a haywire episode of day-drinking.
“You do not look like a hippopotamus,” Eve said, urging Villanelle up the first step. She didn’t budge. “And even if you did, it would be Fiona, the hippo who stole the hearts of millions, even though it happens to be the species that kills more folks in Africa than like—lions, I think I read that somewhere—”
“Eve, I look ugly! My tooth is gone!”
“They put it back!”
“And took the other ones!!!!” Villanelle cried, gripping harder onto Eve’s shoulders, quite close to full-on sobbing. Eve desperately needed to get the pain killers into her system so she would be able to sleep while Eve hit the shops for soup.
“Well, it’s not like you needed them,” Eve said. “You’re pretty beat up but you’ve bounced back from worse.”
“Wh—what?”
“Villanelle,” Eve sighed, juggling the meds, her purse, and a hundred and thirty pounds of assassin, in one burdensome, awkward grip. “If you can make it up to the room, you’ll see how beautiful you still are. Swelling notwithstanding.”
“You think I—I’m beautiful?”
“Yep, 100%, runway ready. Beautiful, pretty, pain-in-my-ass who needs to walk up the stairs, okay?”
The praise sort of worked, because Villanelle was still woozy but at least Eve had inspired some forward momentum. They were on the second to last step near the landing before Eve was able to redirect, spin behind Villanelle, and push her whole body into the wall ahead of them.
“OW!” Villanelle cried.
“You’re HEAVY AND UNCOOPERATIVE!”
“You said I was PRETTY!”
“Yeah, pretty heavy.”
“EVE!”
“What?!” Eve twisted around from the door where she was poised with the room key. Villanelle was facing the opposite wall, nose-first in the wallpaper, slowly pressing her pointer finger against her cheek.
“Jesus, okay, okay, come here…”
Getting into the shared room was a small blessing. They had twins beds that Eve took the time to push together, trying not to think about where the hell she was going to sleep, considering Villanelle liked to starfish wherever she decided to catch her z’s: train station, first-class air travel, hammock, sofa, California King. Villanelle was a swarm of muscular arms and legs and loud, angry snores, which were sure to worsen now that she had drugs in her system.
Eve was finally able to finagle Villanelle into their smushed-together beds after drying Villanelle’s actual tears from when she caught her reflection in the mirror. Being on the run hadn’t left much time for discussing other... uhm, things, like dedicating one’s life to the general constancy of the other, and all of that not-walking-away-from-each-other-on-a-London-bridge stuff, because, well, they were also being chased by a criminal syndicate with assassins for hire, lest Eve forget.
It was becoming easier and easier most days, since Villanelle was treating this entire escapade like a holiday, never really keeping her head down, laughing loud, smiling at Eve like she had something to be happy about.
So, while Eve was rightfully preoccupied with losing life or limb to another assassin, she still kept her marvelous sense of compartmentalizing in tact, which meant she could be terrified for her life while also caring for a loopy, sore twenty-something who’d just had her jaw shattered for major oral surgery. Eve didn’t think about the sleeping arrangements; and she didn’t think about how her stomach dropped just a bit knowing she’d have to leave Villanelle drugged up and alone to go get adequate post-surgery food; and she also, definitely, 100%, did not think about how warm her cheeks got when Villanelle slurred her name and clutched at her shoulder blades on the stairs.
Instead, she was thinking about… beef broth. Or veggie soup. Or mashed potatoes. Raspberry ice cream, for tomorrow, maybe.
Right.
At least, Eve would’ve been thinking about these things, if Villanelle didn’t have her in a death grip, her head resting on Eve’s thighs while Eve ran a single, soothing finger along the part in Villanelle’s greasy hair. Her jaw was so swollen and dark from the bruising and her head looked big as a hot air balloon.
Eve glanced at her phone... 16:30. She didn’t have much time, the shops would be closing soon.
“Villanelle,” Eve said softly, but, now that Villanelle was horizontal once again, it seemed that she was well on her way to drug-induced dreamland.
Eve carefully slipped out of Villanelle’s sleep-heavy clutches and stooped over to the duffel bag with a truly obscene amount of cash they’d partially hidden behind the bed side table. She grabbed a few bills and left a corner lamp on before shutting off the overhead light, taking an extra pause at the door to note, that in sleep, Villanelle almost looked peaceful.
“You’re going to feel like shit if you don’t eat something.”
Later that evening, Villanelle rolled over. Her puffy, swollen jowls were covered with an ace bandage and ice packs, resembling a mottled pear-shape. Her hair was flat and tangled. Her shirt was stained from an aborted attempt to slurp a bit of smoothie Eve had tried to fix with some sparse appliances in the downstairs lobby.
The once fashionable woman looked the worst Eve had ever seen her, even after her stint in the Russian prison.
And it was new, and kind of… nice? Because Villanelle wasn’t masking her misery with bravado, instead leaning into the pain and all but confirming she was a whiny, attention-seeking woman-child just as Eve assumed she would be. Eve was ready to pull out the big guns and give Villanelle her present even though it was only day one of recovery.
“Hurts,” Villanelle muttered, tipping her head back over the pillow and shutting her eyes.
“You’ll feel much better if you eat something. You’re nauseous because you took all those pain killers on an empty stomach.”
“I know—mmmh!—I know how medicine works, Eve.”
“And yet here I stand, with a pint of raspberry sorbet, and no one to eat it.”
Villanelle perked up. “Raspberry sorbet?”
“The kind you buy at the second-hand store.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I forget you are an actual child sometimes.” Eve plopped down on the bed and tossed the pint top across the comforter, much to Villanelle’s disgust. She dipped the spoon into the carton and emerged with a bite of icey, magenta sorbet. “Here.”
“No plane noises?” Villanelle muttered. “Since you keep calling me a baby?”
“I will eat this myself and leave you in pain.”
“Par for the course,” Villanelle sighed, looking away.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” Eve argued, looking down at the melting pint. “I’m trying.”
“Yeah, you keep trying, and I end up bleeding out or with bones yanked out of my head.”
“You literally shot me.”
“I apologized!”
“When?”
“...it was implied.”
Eve ate the first spoonful of drippy sorbet so it wouldn’t get on the bed. It was tangy and cold and a decent distraction.
“Do you really want to get into this? Now?” Eve asked, stabbing at the pinkish ice with the edge of her spoon. “Because we’ve been doing a decent enough job of avoiding it the past few weeks.”
Villanelle took the pint from Eve’s hands and shoved a spoonful into her mouth, wincing a bit at the temperature. Fine, Eve thought. Let her learn from her mistakes on her own.
Yet Eve couldn’t really find it in herself to move, hanging out at the bedside until Villanelle had slowly eaten half the pint, then carefully placed the sticky top back in its place.
“Thank you,” she managed, wincing against the bandage on her cheek, moving up to cup the ice pack that had fallen out of the wrapping.
“You’re welcome,” Eve said, putting the sorbet back into the mini-fridge while Villanelle readjusted her bandage wrappings.
“This is not an invitation to get ‘into it,’ or... whatever, but... I’m sorry I shot you.”
Eve hovered over the mini fridge across the room, a little too weary and concerned (yes, she was concerned, and the voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Carolyn could take a long walk off a short pier for all Eve cared) to sustain their usual combative rapport.
“I’m sorry you got bones pulled out of your head,” Eve said.
“Right.”
“Right. You know,” Eve confessed, “you didn’t look all that bad with a missing front tooth.”
“Bullshit.”
“No really. Very hillbilly chic.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“I used to think globe-trotting assassin evasion wasn’t a thing, but here we are.”
“Hmm.” Villanelle said, curling up on her side. “I think I’m going to try to go back to sleep now.”
“Okay,” Eve said, moving to turn off the overhead. “I uh... got you something else.”
“I don’t want any soup.”
“No it’s not food, it’s, uhm—“ Eve pulled the plush hippo out from its hiding place in the closet, and presented it to Villanelle with an awkward flourish. “Your twin.”
Villanelle turned over and eyed the toy, her brow furrowed. “What?”
“Since you said you look like a hippo.”
“Eve…” Villanelle groaned, but she did so as she snatched the plushie from Eve’s outstretched hands. “Is this you answer to the Princess Bear I brought you after our fun little bus ride?”
“Yeah,” Eve rolled her eyes, trying not think about the cloying smell of Villanelle’s perfume mixed with the distasteful odor of public transit. She especially didn’t want to linger over thoughts of Villanelle coming at her, and her pressing back, and Villanelle hovering, and looking down at her with clear skin that wasn’t bruised and coiffed hair that wasn’t tangled and a grey suit that wasn’t stained and perfect, pink lips that weren’t swollen…
“If you press on her chest, you can hear me calling you an idiot,” Eve redirected, looking down at the toy.
“What?!” Villanelle asked, as she dug her fingers into the stuffed animal.
Of course Villanelle would find the insult endearing.
“I’m not serious,” Eve said, smiling in spite of herself. “You should sleep, though,” Eve continued. “I want to try to hit up the cafe down the street, see if I can use their wifi and check emails. Carolyn’s still—”
“Trying to clean up the mess with Paul, I know,” Villanelle said softly.
Eve watched her close her eyes and began gathering her things, thinking Villanelle was lucid enough that, in the unlikely event a break-in did occur, she’d be able to reach the pistol she’d been tucking under her pillow each night they’d been on the run that she thought Eve didn’t know about.
Some old habits really do die hard.
She was on her way out the door with the keycard in hand when Villanelle called her.
“Eve?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for taking care of me,” she said. “And for Fiona.”
“Fiona?”
“The beautiful hippo who kills people?” Villanelle grinned. “We have so much in common!” she said, wiggling the stuffed animal in her grip.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Eve said, moving through the door again.
“Eve!”
“Gah, what now?”
“Come here,” she directed, and as Eve crossed the room, Villanelle reached under her pillow. Eve paused. Villanelle looked up abruptly, wincing at the turn of her neck. “You… knew about the gun?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t say anything?” Villanelle asked. “Even after… after—”
“Rome? Yeah,” Eve cut her off. “I… didn’t feel like I needed to, this time.”
Villanelle nodded, gripped the piece by the barrel, and held out the handle to Eve. “Take it. I don’t want you going out there without… protection.”
“What about you?”
“I will be fine,” Villanelle said. “I have Fiona.”
“Who is ferocious, sure, but—”
“Take the gun, Eve,” Villanelle said. “And let me sleep. Trust me, I will be fine.”
“Okay, if you’re sure…” Eve paused, studying the bruising, thinking back to red under her hands, her balled-up cardigan against Villanelle’s temple, the bloom of a bruise on Villanelle’s forehead where Eve had smacked her on the bus. So many little hurts that Eve had borne witness to, and Villanelle, nonchalant in her pain, responding with an airy, I will be fine.
How many times had she told that to other people?
How many time had she said those exact same words, knowing they weren’t true?
“Eve?”
Before Eve could stop herself she knelt, her bag in one hand and a gun in the other, and pressed her lips to Villanelle’s forehead. Her eyes drifted shut as her lips made contact with Villanelle’s smooth skin, but she didn’t linger. She pulled away, moved the bottle of painkillers and glass of water closer to Villanelle on the bedside table, and then stood to take her leave. Villanelle didn’t say anything, but she did smile, and Eve tried really, really hard not to match that smile with her own when she thought about the score: 2-0.
They might be tied on the stuffed animal front, but Eve had a pretty big lead with the kissing.
She walked out of the hotel with a spring in her step, a gun in her pocket, and one infuriating ex-assassin wrapped around her finger.