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Eli considered him. “I’m not leaving you here alone.”
Victor stared past him to the sink, the edge still dusted with cocaine.
“I’ll meet you downstairs,” he said, gesturing to his shirt, the sink, the phone. “I have to clean up.”
Eli didn’t move. (Vicious chapter 9)
His gaze seemed to pierce right through Victor’s lie.
And it was so typically of Eli, the way he moved through life with the confidence of someone fighting a battle they had already won.
“No.” he said simply and Victor wanted to ask him how he could expect him to comply with this implicit request, to swallow it and just give up.
“What do you mean no?” Eli fixed his hair and smiled. He smiled like this was a normal conversation to have. Victor had to grip the ceramic bowl of the sink to keep himself from breaking something.
“I’m not leaving” he repeated “I know you”
Victor wanted to laugh. Eli didn’t know him, not as much as he thought anyway. That was the difference between them, both were observant but, where Eli watched to assess the situation and use it to his advantage, Victor watched to study, to learn. He noticed patterns and details.
Victor knew Eli, because he knew no one could. Despite his great game of pretend, Eli didn’t even know himself.
“I know how stubborn you are. The minute I leave you’ll throw yourself out of that window in the hopes of gaining some sort of flying powers” Victor wouldn’t have given Eli any points for this incredibly easy deduction, but his friend was looking at him like he’d discovered his biggest secret.
The air in the bathroom felt like fuel for a fire that Victor knew, if started, could destroy the both of them. He chose to strike the match.
“And I know you Cardale. I know the rotten thing that hides in your bones and I know what your problem is” Victor moved closer to Eli as he spoke, cornering him
“It’s that you think you’re better than everyone else, you think the rest of us don’t understand things like you do. You think I don’t know the real reason you don’t want me to do this is that you’re scared that I might be better than you at something. You want to keep me as your pet, your loyal sidekick.”
Eli was still smiling, but it was different now. His mask was slipping, and behind it Victor could see all of the anger threatening to spill out. How he wanted to see Eli crack, to see him be honest for once, and show the ugly and the bad that Victor had learnt to find in his eyes every time he thought no one was looking.
“You’re being ridiculous” Eli said in a low tone that Victor knew was telling him not to push it. So he pushed it. And he did it with the full force of all his lingering feelings from years spent watching Eli get whatever he wanted, knowing he didn’t deserve any of it.
“You’re not special Eli, but I gave you the chance to be, with epinephrine and an insane amount of luck. It wasn’t your God's hands pushing your heart to start beating, it was mine” Victor knew Eli, and that included knowing exactly how to push his buttons.
At this, Eli finally lost his smirk and tried to push Victor off of him. Victor had expected this and retaliated by grabbing Eli’s perfectly tailored jacket and ramming him into the tiled wall.
They stood still for a moment, breathing hard and looking at each other.
Victor wanted to leave a mark on Eli to give him a permanent reminder of what he’d created. Ironic how that was physically impossible now. But physically wasn’t the only way you could scar someone.
Victor looked for words, but for the first time his mind was failing him. He stared past Eli’s glasses, into his contorted eyes.
His body moved before his thoughts had. He crashed his lips on Eli’s who seemed to accept this surprisingly quickly.
It was the antithesis of what a kiss should be. There wasn’t love, at least not the kind that gives you butterflies in your stomach. This was a knife twisting in your guts. It was hunger, animalistic and raw.
They kissed like they were fighting to see who could steal the air out of the other’s lungs first.
They kissed like they wanted to leave a bruise.
And then it was over. Eli pulled himself away with such force that Victor had to catch the wall to not lose his balance.
Eli didn’t say anything, he just moved to leave. He wasn’t wearing the expression of someone who left knowing he’d won the argument but he didn’t look like he lost it either. It was an expression Victor had never seen on Eli before. He looked confused, but not like he did while answering a particular philosophical question. Eli was lost.
He walked out with the face that a criminal might wear while leaving a crime scene.
“Five minutes,” he called as he left.
Victor listened to the party flood in as Eli opened the door, then cut out again when he slammed it behind him.