Chapter Text
Eve was worried about Villanelle when she called her in the middle of the day and asked to be picked up. She was worried about her when she sat in the car, silent and curled in on herself, long, slender fingers making tight fists against her brightly-coloured suit. Now, as they pull into their driveway and Eve hurries to open the car door for her girl, she is even more worried.
Villanelle shoves the door open before Eve’s fingers even touch its handle and strides towards the house - but there’s something in her gait that’s… different. Clumsy and pained rather than sassy and elegant, something stiff and aching. But Villanelle isn’t wounded, she’d told Eve as much when she’d called. So what’s wrong?
“Vill?” asks Eve, jogging down the driveway to catch up with Villanelle’s blonde figure. “What’s the matter, are you okay?”
"M’ fine,” mutters Villanelle, fumbling with the key in the lock. Eve waits patiently for Villanelle to let them in, but after a while she seems to be struggling. Eve can hear her muttering curses, hear her breaths get faster, shallower. “Here,” she finally offers, “let me do it”. She pushes Villanelle to the side and turns the key with a soft click.
Inside the house, it’s warm and comforting. Eve is about to turn to her girlfriend and ask what the matter is, but before she can even open her mouth, Villanelle has pushed past her and is rapidly pacing down the hallway. “Vill? Where are you going?” asks Eve. “Do you need-?”
But Villanelle cuts her off, her voice raised, “Eve, just leave me alone, I’m fine!”
It’s a poor imitation of anger, the tiny notes of harshness in Villanelle’s voice barely cloaking the much stronger tones of fear. Fear and… something else, a new side of Villanelle that Eve doesn’t think she’s seen before. But she knows there’s no point pushing, no point forcing Villanelle to talk when she clearly doesn’t want to. So she watches her girlfriend’s tall figure disappear down the hallway, hears the slamming bathroom door, the click as the lock slides into place. Eve heaves a sigh. She can wait.
She unlaces her shoes and hangs her coat on the peg by the door. She boils the kettle to make a cup of tea. She adds milk to her own, three sugars to Villanelle’s, just the way they both like it. She may have been raised in the states but her English parents instilled in her from birth the belief that every woe in the world can be solved with a cup of tea. She slumps onto the sofa and starts flicking through the books and magazines that have accumulated on their coffee table, trying to immerse herself in some article or another, but her eyes keep drifting back to the clock. Five minutes, she tells herself, and Villanelle will come out of the bathroom, and drink her cup of tea, and they will talk about whatever has happened so Eve can stop goddamn worrying.
But twenty minutes later, Villanelle still hasn’t come out. Her cold cup of tea sits next to Eve’s empty mug. The silence of the house is loud as Eve strains to hear any noise that might come from the bathroom. The hiss of the shower, the flush of the toilet, the tinkling sound of water from a faucet. Nothing.
She knows she should give Villanelle the space she needs. Being a part of the Twelve since she was so young has meant that Villanelle sometimes needs to process her emotions alone to be able to process them at all. For her whole life, emotion meant weakness, and weakness meant danger. They’ve made a lot of progress on her feeling safe enough to show her less-happy emotions around Eve, but she knows there are still times when Villanelle seeks solitude when she’s feeling particularly raw, and she knows that all she can do is be there for her when she’s ready.
She knows it.
But something about this feels different.
Eve is so deep in thought that she nearly misses the sound that comes from the bathroom - a soft thud, what sounds like a choked sob - but it is all the confirmation needed to send her running down the hallway towards the bathroom.
She knocks first, calls, “Villanelle? Honey, can you let me in?”
No response, but she hears the sound of shifting fabric, as if Villanelle has moved slightly, and another muffled sob.
“Vill?” she tries again, “Will you let me in, please?”
Eve makes a decision. She rummages around in her bush of hair before pulling out two bobby pins and inserting them into the lock on the door, jimmying them around just the way Villanelle had taught her. Silence from the bathroom, and then Villanelle seems to realise what Eve is doing, as she chokes out “Eve, no!”
It’s as if a dam has broken. Villanelle’s voice comes in a torrent of sobs and wails, as if she’s unable to stop. She sounds like a child, a puppy, something broken and afraid. Eve’s heart breaks as she hears her cries.
“Eve, nononono, no, Eve, don’t come in, Eve, nonono, leave me alone, don’t come in, please, Eve, please, Eve, please,”
She sounds like she is begging, which is what scares Eve the most. This is the girl who said to her face that she masturbates a lot about her the first time they ever held a conversation. Villanelle is unrestrained in every aspect of her life - what could she possibly be so desperate that Eve doesn’t see?
Finally the door springs open and Eve lunges into the small space. Villanelle is curled into the corner in the foetal position, her fancy blouse and blazer tangled about her shoulders as if she’d tried to pull them off, the straps on her high-heeled shoes half-undone. Her hair is messy, her face is streaked with tears, red scratch marks line her arms and stomach.
“...Vill?” croaks Eve, her voice barely more than a whisper, her mind somehow unable to fathom the image of the ruthless former-assassin so vulnerable.
Villanelle’s lips are pressed tightly together, and she is quivering with the effort of holding in the sobs that wrack her body. She raises her hand as if to slam it into her forehead, but Eve gets there before her, grasping her wrist and holding it tight, gently stroking Villanelle’s knuckles with her other hand. She tries to look into the assassin’s eyes but Villanelle cranes her neck downwards, steadfastly avoiding eye contact. A sob seems to rise in her throat, but again she pushes it down.
“Vill?” Eve’s voice is soft, trying to hide the panic that courses through her veins as she searches for the right words. “You… whatever this is, you don’t have to hold it in around me, okay? I’m here for you, and I love you, and… and you’re not going to scare me away, okay?”
Villanelle’s bloodshot eyes finally meet Eve’s, who squeezes her hand comfortingly. Her lips move, and it takes her a few attempts to form the words.
“P-promise?”
“I promise.”
Villanelle forces out a choked exhale that comes out sounding more like a whimper. She seems marginally calmer than when Eve had first entered, but it’s still clear from her hunched posture that something isn’t right. When she speaks again, it’s barely audible.
“Eve? Will you h-hold me? Please?”
Eve rushes forward and Villanelle falls into her arms.
- - -
With her head tucked under Eve’s chin, feeling Eve’s strong arms around her, smelling the lingering scent of Eve’s coconut shampoo, Villanelle waits to feel okay again. Usually all it takes is for Eve to be there for her, or for her to be there for Eve - they’ve comforted each other through many bad days or nightmares like this. But the peace she craves doesn’t come. Instead, she feels as if she is falling down, down, down, despite the fact that she sits firmly on the bathroom floor. Her limbs ache like someone has replaced her blood with cement. Her body vibrates with a strange energy, desperately trying to hold back wave after wave of emotion in an effort not to cause a scene. She doesn’t want to cause a scene for Eve.
It’s as if the smaller woman has read her mind. She shifts position slightly, tightening her hold on Villanelle, and begins to slowly rock the two of them to a steady, soothing rhythm Reaching up to stroke Villanelle’s blonde hair out of her face, she murmurs as if she is trying to lull a fretful child to sleep.
“Let it out, Vill. You’ll feel better. Promise,”
There is silence for a few moments as Eve and Villanelle rock backwards and forwards on the cool tiled floor. Two women, fused into one being. One holding the broken pieces of the other as she valiantly tries to put herself back together. And then the first cry rips itself from Villanelle’s throat.
She is not a pretty crier. Her pale skin turns blotchy and her eyes go swollen and red. Her face contorts into a twisted grimace as she shakes and heaves. She’s always tried to hide it - it doesn’t exactly fit the image she’s built for herself. Villanelle is elegant, sexy, ruthless. But it seems that Villanelle has abandoned her, and right now she can’t stop herself - it feels like a yawning chasm has opened in the centre of her chest, and no matter how hard she tries she could never make it go away. She feels like she could cry forever, like she will never be okay again.
At some point her consciousness seems to detach from her body, and she is no longer aware of Eve’s strong arms, or the soft words she murmurs into the delicate shell of Villanelle’s ear. She is no longer an assassin or a lover or a woman at all, she no longer has a body, the only thing she feels is the strange heaviness, the pain, the sensation of falling.
Scenes from throughout her life flicker and flash in the forefront of her mind, because hasn’t she done this before? Hasn’t she done it so many times, been reduced to a sobbing mess on the bathroom floor more times than she can count - and all for something tiny, something ridiculous - the bright lights and incessant bleeping sounds of the supermarket, an outfit that rubs and chafes. This is an ugly part of her. This is something that she must hide from everyone, if she ever wants to have a chance of being tolerated, let alone liked. Let alone loved. She has learned this since she was a child, from her Mama’s harsh words to Dasha’s slaps about the face whenever she worked herself into a frenzy over something that they did not understand. But she has never really been able to quash the part of herself that hoped. That hoped that one day someone would see, would understand, would stay.
She drifts back to herself in pieces. Slowly she becomes aware of her surroundings once more. The cold, smooth tiles beneath her thighs. The sound of the faucet dripping. The soft yellow light of a fading autumn evening. Her own laboured breaths. And Eve.
Eve is there. She is still there and she is still rocking Villanelle softly, as if she is soothing an infant, whispering soft words like breathe and I love you and it’s okay.
It’s okay.
- - -
Eve is beginning to worry about Villanelle again. For a while it seemed like they were making progress - at least she wasn’t holding it in or suffering alone. But she notices the way Villanelle’s eyes have glazed over, the way she doesn’t respond to the soft pet names that would usually bring a rosy blush to her ivory skin. Villanelle is here, at least physically, but her mind is far away. Somewhere Eve can’t reach her. All she can do is be there, so she keeps rocking Villanelle, keeps holding her, keeps whispering to her, in the hopes that her words reach her girlfriend wherever she is.
After what could be anywhere between thirty minutes and thirty years, Villanelle’s sobs start to slow a little, hoarse keens rather than choking wails. Eve looks down and sees the woman in her arms looking just slightly more alert than she had previously, the glassy sheen in her eyes replaced with a look of bone-shaking fatigue.
"Hey,” smiles Eve, and Villanelle’s hand worms its way out of their tangle of limbs to stroke Eve’s face curiously, as if checking that she’s still there. Eve waits to see if Villanelle is trying to tell her something, but the younger woman seems content to observe Eve’s face, using the sight and feel of her girlfriend to ground her as the anxious energy slowly ebbs out of her limbs and the last few strangled cries leave her throat.
Finally, Villanelle collapses against Eve with a deep sigh, her whole body limp. A few seconds pass before Eve speaks again.
“That was a lot, hey, darling?”
Villanelle is too exhausted to speak or even nod, but she quirks her lip to fashion her face into a shadow of the signature Villanelle smirk. Eve seems to understand anyway.
She’s not really sure where to go from here. She knows she and Villanelle ought to have a proper discussion about everything that has happened tonight. She wants to understand what Villanelle has been experiencing and how to help her through it, but one look at her girlfriend’s pale face tells her that Villanelle is far too emotionally and physically drained to even attempt a conversation.
Bed, she thinks. Bed solves a lot.
“Villanelle…” she murmurs gently, “I’m going to have to move you, sweetheart, I think you need to rest now.”
- - -
Villanelle lets Eve half-carry her to their bedroom, mercifully just a short walk away, where she flops like a ragdoll onto their double bed. The soft blankets call to her aching bones, and she wishes she could fall asleep right then and there. She thinks she could sleep for centuries, millennia, aeons.
But Eve is rummaging through their chest of drawers and pulling out an oversized band t-shirt she bought years ago, one that she knows Villanelle loves because it smells of that special Eve smell - a mixture of coconut and petrichor and something indistinguishable, something that means home. Eve crosses the room to Villanelle to help her undress, brow furrowing in concern as she takes in the clumsy attempts at undoing buttons, the twisted fabric that tells of Villanelle’s desperation to be free of it. There are deep red welts carved into her arms and stomach by frantic fingernails in her attempts to rid herself of the feeling of the material on her skin. She eases off Villanelle’s blouse and bra and lets the faded cotton of the t-shirt envelop her girlfriend’s figure. The trousers are next to go, along with the high-heeled shoes.
Eve wants to help Villanelle shower and wash her face clean of the make up she had so painstakingly applied that morning, but she can see the blonde woman’s drooping posture, how it screams for rest, for peace. So she decides to call it a night. She pulls back the covers and is about to get in herself when she feels a hand grasp her wrist. She looks back to Villanelle - only to find her eyes brimming with tears once more. Eve kneels in front of Villanelle. “Baby?” she asks, using the pet name reserved only for moments like these, where the utmost softness is needed.
Villanelle looks down, then back at Eve, then down again, nibbling on her lip as she tries to muster up the energy to force the words out.
Finally, they come, cracked and barely intelligible, but Eve hears.
“I’m sorry,”
She looks at Villanelle, registers the genuine horror and remorse written all over her features. Her heart breaks for the umpteenth time this evening. She takes Villanelle’s face in her hands, looks deep into her hazel eyes, wishes she could take her pain away.
She can’t - she knows that - but she can sit with her whilst she feels it, remind her over and over again that she is not a burden, that she is not bad. She tries to imbue her response with as much love as she possibly can.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” she states, tracing Villanelle’s jawline with her thumb. “I’m sorry that you were in so much pain. I know you like to always seem okay to other people, but you are allowed to feel all of your emotions with me.”
Villanelle makes a small sound, but seems unable to form the words to reply. Her hand forms a loose fist and beats weakly at her thigh in frustration. Eve grasps it gently with her hand, squeezing reassuringly.
“I promise you, we will talk about this tomorrow - or whenever you’re ready - but now, you need to rest. You look exhausted, babe.”
Villanelle lets herself be guided into bed by Eve. They end up lying in a tangle of limbs, Villanelle’s head resting in the crook of Eve’s shoulder and neck, Eve’s arm wrapped around Villanelle’s torso. Eve strokes her girlfriend’s long blonde hair with her free hand, a gesture that she knows brings her the most comfort when everything comes crashing down. A lot has happened this evening. Eve has been introduced to a whole new side of Villanelle, and her heart aches to know that her love has been concealing so much pain, battling emotions so intense on her own. But as Villanelle’s breathing finally evens out into the steady rhythm of sleep, as the hand clutching Eve’s pyjama shirt slowly begins to relax, Eve tells herself that these things can be problems for another day.
In this moment it is enough to simply exist.