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It would probably never stop being weird, seeing her face on social media. Vic must’ve gotten used to it – pretty quickly if Bianca knew them, which she unfortunately did – but for Bianca, the fact that the algorithm had decided she’d probably be interested in clips from interview shows managed to make a bad experience even worse. She should never have let them get those behind-the-scenes shots. People could... do things with them.
Like putting them to music and interspersing them with clips of Vic looking heartbroken and desperate.
And then putting them on TikTok.
For a second Bianca seriously considered deleting the app altogether. It’d probably be a good thing for the sake of her screen time, but something in her stubbornly refused the idea of essentially letting fans drive her away, even if they didn’t know they were doing it. Whatever. She’d just have to get used to it. People did strange things when they had access to Capcut and Chappell Roan’s entire back catalogue. For the sake of keeping work and private life separate, Bianca went to block the poster–
And she was following them.
Why the hell would she be following a fan?
The profile picture was of Vic, of course. And the handle was eerily similar to the official social account. Oh, and they hadn’t posted it originally, only reposted it. Bianca searched in vain for the spelling error or character swap in the username, only to finally realise: it wasn’t a fan.
It was the actual, real, @veryimportantpeopleshow account, managed by the one and only actual real Vic Michaelis. The caption was in all-caps and followed by a tag that looked suspiciously like hers and Vic’s names mashed together. Bianca channelled the urge to scream into her fingers, tapping the ‘share’ button with as much aggression as she could.
??? she sent to Vic.
The response came immediately. Why are you texting me? I’m downstairs.
“Son of a bitch,” Bianca muttered, and despite hating the idea of being summoned, stood up. “VIC?” she yelled as she headed out to the landing, and the answering grunt from downstairs made her clench her fists. How long had they been there? She hadn’t heard them come in. Had they been hoping she wouldn’t notice?
Bianca tried to use the walk down the stairs as time to gather herself and keep cool, but the clip kept repeating on her phone and that little ‘reposted by’ popup refused to go away. Still, when she burst through the living room door, mouth wide open, no sound came out.
Because there they were.
Just fucking sitting on the couch with the TV on like it was any normal day.
How many times had she walked into this toom to see them exactly like this?
“Vic,” said Bianca. They didn’t look up. “You need to stop coming back here.”
They gestured in a what-can-you-do? sort of manner. “I don’t have a TV yet.”
“Then buy one!” she snapped. “Stop fucking leeching off me and Dad.”
“Actually,” Vic said stiffly, “I bought this TV.”
Bianca winced. All those hours spent binging Netflix on that couch after Vic left suddenly felt tainted. “Take it back, then. I’ll buy a new one. I don’t need your TV.”
‘I don’t need you,’ was perhaps the better translation, the one that kept itching at her, but she couldn’t quite say it and they both knew Vic didn’t want to hear it.
They shrugged. “You can't afford one this good.”
Unfortunately, it was true. The TV was ludicrously fancy: Vic’s big congratulations-to-me purchase (that Bianca had been certain they’d spent her dad’s money on) after finishing season one of the show. Bianca was pretty sure they’d just wanted to be able to see themself in pristine narcissistic detail.
She took one breath in, then one breath out. “What the hell is this?”
“Huh?”
“Look, Vic,” she ordered, and they turned their head just enough to see the phone.
“It’s... me. And you.” Vic made a face, following it up with that stilly little laugh. They were still looking at the phone instead of her. “Mainly me.”
Bianca rolled her eyes and pointed at the bottom-left of the screen. “See that?”
Vic squinted. They probably needed their glasses. “Oh, that,” they said eventually. “It’s good to encourage fan content, I thought. You know?”
She pulled her hand back quickly before she punched them in the face. “They’re shipping us.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Bianca actually couldn’t tell whether they were lying or not. “There’s a hashtag.” Keeping a tight hold, she held out her phone accusingly and started swiping through clips so quickly that the images became a blur of colour broken up by loading screens. Vic leaned back on the couch and returned their attention to the TV, but Bianca manoeuvred herself to get the screen right in front of their face. “Look.” Beige, beige, pink, blue, beige, black, beige, yellow, beige–
Yellow?
With a sinking feeling in her gut, Bianca scrolled up again and stared at the mass of fur making strange faces at the camera.
“Wait. You aired Spencer?” she asked, horrified.
Vic shrugged, eyes glued to the TV now that Bianca had taken the phone away. “You filmed it.”
“I’m not a camera operator, Vic, you know that! And anyway, they were only doing camera tests–”
Completely deadpan: “Well, you’re the one who told them to keep rolling when an actual literal demon wandered onto set.”
“I–” Bianca’s jaw dropped. Yes, she had, but not because she’d had any idea what an absolute shitshow it’d become. Just because, well, it was something different, and the kind of thing that could go viral – and it clearly had, but... “You told me you were expecting someone,” she finished lamely.
“What,” Vic snorted, “you think my niece looks like that?”
Bianca no longer trusted herself to speak. Instead, she opened the description of the video. God, he too had an actual hashtag, and not an unpopular one either. She’d been right: the public loved him. But she’d never thought... A clip of Vic kicking open the set door with one beige heel caught Bianca’s eye and she held it out for them to see. “You aired the episode where you had a mental breakdown and quit your job.”
Vic stared at the phone unfeelingly. “I aired the episode where my stepdaughter conjured up a demon from hell to assassinate me.”
Bianca opened her mouth to defend herself, only to immediately close it when Vic finally looked up at her and raised one perfect stupid eyebrow. “And your niece,” she said shortly instead. “And your hairdresser. And–”
“And I,” carried on Vic, “when given the chance to fight him for my life, kindly chose to adopt him instead.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“Chin up,” Vic muttered without looking.
“You aired Spencer as a PR stunt?” she got out. “To – to fucking make yourself look good? To make yourself look like the victim?”
“Yes, well, sometimes your stepdaughter tries to kill you, and you just have to be sensible and make the best of it!”
“Well, sometimes when that many people think even for a second that the world might actually be better off without you, you have to stop and consider that maybe you’re the problem!”
Vic was breathing heavily, each exhale loud enough that Bianca could hear it even over the muffled sound of the TV. “Be quiet,” they said harshly.
“Right,” Bianca responded, somehow unable to shut up, “of course. You’ve been doing all that mindfulness shit, haven’t you? The breathing exercises and the stress balls and the rock towers or whatever. And you thought airing your lowest point would show how far you’ve come when you crawl back for next season?”
“I am not crawling back,” Vic argued. “They were practically begging me to stay on. That show can’t exist without me and you know it.”
She couldn’t argue with that. She wished she could, but from the moment Vic had been cast as host, they’d dug their nails so deeply into VIP that it really wouldn’t be the same without them. Bianca loathed to give it to them, but it kind of was their show, at least in the eyes of the public. Those stupid fucking edits at least proved that much.
“Maybe it shouldn’t exist then,” was the only thing she could say.
Vic didn’t look at her, only tilted their head at the TV screen. Some kind of advert was playing. She was sure they weren’t watching it. But without a camera to direct their attention to, what else was Vic to use to ignore people who cared about them?
Not that Bianca was included in that category, obviously. They didn’t deserve that from her.
Which, after the divorce, left them with... nobody. Nobody who cared about them, that is. Nobody to grab coffee with on a weekend. Nobody to watch a movie with after a long day at work. Nobody to collapse on their couch and tune out from reality for a bit.
Vic was sitting on Bianca’s couch, and the TV was on, and the rest of the world seemed to disappear.
“You’d be out of a job,” Vic said. It took Bianca a moment to remember what they were even talking about, then frowned.
“I’d find another,” she pointed out. “Or the network’d move me to a different show.”
A humming sound from Vic. “You’re too good for those snooze-fests. Imagine if your job was to watch a bunch of nerds play Dungeons and Dragons for six hours straight, five days a week. You’d be bored out of your mind.”
Bianca had never felt the urge to watch the D&D stuff before, but Vic’s condescending tone made her want to give it a shot out of pure stubbornness. “Bet I’d get paid better though.”
Vic rolled their eyes. “Please. You’ve got a speaking role now, remember?”
“Huh?”
“Keep up, Bianca.” Vic gestured one hand at her phone. “Your screen time. You’ve got about five and a half minutes spread across various episodes, plus speaking lines. We’re having to pay you union rate.”
Bianca looked down at her phone. She’d almost forgotten why she’d been mad at Vic in the first place. “That’s why you had me filmed? For residuals?”
They shrugged. “That, and the audience finally gets to see how mean you are to me. I get sympathy, you get a pay rise. Win-win. Maybe you can finally start contributing to the mortgage.”
Dumbfounded, Bianca stared at them and tried to get her brain in gear. Before she could work out what the hell to say to that, Vic sailed on.
“As for Spencer, don’t worry, I made him sign all the paperwork. He needed an income for the apartment anyway, so it all works out.”
Bianca’s brain was too full to bring Spencer back into the equation. “No. Back up. Are... are all the behind-the-scenes clips of me?”
Vic made a ‘well, duh’ face. “Nobody else was even remotely interesting enough, so...”
“Neither am I!” Bianca cried. “All I do in these clips is, like, roll my eyes and look moody and hold a clipboard! You’ve portrayed me like a - like an angry teenager! I’m thirty years old!”
“Maybe if you don’t want to come across as a teenager then you shouldn’t act like one,” said Vic, and Bianca shook her head in incredulity. This, this was why they didn’t have anybody. Because they acted like this.
“I thought you were going to show interesting technical content about how the show was made. An appreciation of our crew and the whole team. That’s what you pitched,” she reminded them bitingly. “And it’s just... a fancam. You’ve made a fucking fancam. Of me.”
“You signed off on it,” said Vic mildly. “You’re a producer, you could’ve vetoed.”
In all honesty, despite signing off on them, Bianca hadn’t actually watched the finished episodes. She’d been... busy, thinking about other things. And if she was going to be real with herself, spending hours staring at Vic on her screen had sounded like a particularly personal form of torture. She was starting to regret not having sucked it up and done her job.
“How did you even get the network to sign off on it?” she demanded. “People are here for the interviews, they’re not gonna care about us having an argument.”
Vic just nodded towards the phone. “Clearly they do.” Horrifyingly, they smiled at her. “People always like you.”
Bianca couldn’t tell whether that was a compliment or a threat.
“But you couldn’t have known,” she said through gritted teeth.
A shrug. “I told you,” Vic said, turning back to the TV again. “They really wanted me back.”
She didn’t need any more detail than that. She could just imagine it, Vic laying out their demands. Giving them power was never a good idea... but not everybody knew that as well as Bianca did.
Looking at them now, settled comfortably on the couch in the house they didn’t live in anymore, Bianca suddenly remembered how easy it was to turn the tables. She folded her arms.
“How’s the apartment?” she asked pointedly. “All settled in yet?”
Satisfyingly, Vic’s legs stiffened a bit. “Bad,” they said with surprising honesty. “I hate renting. The landlord painted everything orange and won’t let me put wallpaper up over it.”
“Orange is close enough to beige, right?” She jerked her chin at the wall behind them. “If you want it to look like here.”
“No.” They didn’t elaborate on which part they were disagreeing with, and Bianca decided not to ask.
“Anyway, you could just get temporary stuff. Peel-and-stick. Didn’t you think of that?”
One side of Vic’s mouth quirked upward into a half-smile. “No. You’ll have to come and show me how to put it up. Maybe we can go to Home Depot.”
Bianca almost laughed before she realised they were being serious. “I’m not going to Home Depot with you. I don’t know if they even sell wallpaper.”
Too late, she realised she hadn’t refused to come and help apply it. Vic was already nodding, like they’d agreed on a plan. “I’ll let you know.”
For a few seconds, Vic’s attention returned to the TV and Bianca was free to just watch them. They were so... still.
“Why do you keep doing this, Vic?” she sighed. “You quit your job and go back to it. You say I’m mean to you then basically engineer giving me a raise behind my back. You divorce Dad and you keep coming back here so you can, I don’t even know, stare at the TV and pretend you still live here? Enjoy sitting on a couch that’s not off Craigslist? Freak me out ‘cos I think you’re halfway across town and you’re in the living room?”
Vic paused for a second, face somehow bare of pretence and yet still unreadable, mouth slightly open. Then it settled into an eerily two-dimensional smile, like the kind a kid would draw onto a stick figure.
“Fine,” they said, getting up and grabbing their bag from the floor next to the couch. Weird, that they hadn’t hung it up on the rack like normal. Like used-to-be-normal. “I’ll leave. Since that’s what you want. I’ve got a hair appointment anyway.”
“I didn’t–”
“I’m going to text you about the wallpaper.”
Bianca could only watch as they picked up the remote and switched the show off, then slipped their feet into their shoes. She wanted to say, ‘And don’t come back.’ She wanted to say, ‘Take the fucking TV with you.’ She wanted to say, ‘Give me your keys so you have to ring the bell next time.’
She wanted to say, ‘The guest house is empty. If you wanted to stay.’
But she didn’t.
And they left.
And the house was just as quiet as when Bianca didn’t know they were here.