Wrung out little piece of human meat, puffy-eyed and visibly up against his will was how Eni found Vanya after near twelve hours of silence. Her nose instantly scrunched and twisted against the dizzying scent of too little deodorant and too much Super Disco laze, struggling to reconcile the glitter and glamour of Donna's voice with the Petri dish Vanya pretended was home.
She knew she'd never get more than a few grunts out of him this evening unless she was ready to be Lady Marmalade in a jester's hat. She'd come prepared.
She shook the aggressively white plastic bag in his face, flashing the logo and its tacky livery for ACE'S PAW 'N' SHOPPE then stared at him so intensely even the fog of his residual slumber parted like the Red Sea.
She heard nothing back except for the faintest hum signifying he was listening, of course he was, but there was no hook for him to swallow, nothing to haul the words he'd scarfed down into his gut acid. She winced, mostly internally, the hinge of her jaw stuttering into the quietest clatter of teeth.
She sighed, or was it the late September wind softening her scoffing into a more noble, tender sound?
She threw the bag in his lap, lost her coat, and crouched by the mirror where she'd watched most of his life unfold from the safety of its smudged reflection. Vanya looked inside and seemed to understand then that this was The Suit for The Plan she'd pestered him about The Entire Month.
He rose from the bed and undressed mechanically, naked and not. There existed no true nakedness between them yet. He was barely there, in his body. So much so that she feared he'd shed his skin with his crust sweatpants, that she would discover USB ports in his chest cavity and miles of rubber cables too entwined to make sense of for a nervous system. But Vanya had never grown claws sharp enough to tear through his grime or his self, too busy dragging himself from one psychological tripwire to the next.
Vanya did not laugh but he was as pacified as he could be by her brand of nonsense, the quests she launched herself into just to get the idea of a grin on his face. He smiled, exhausted and incredibly fond so she smiled back in her secret ways, in a language only they knew.
But their Fridays were meant for business, and Eni's business was sacred ground. The switch in her voice was instantaneous. Gone was hoyden Eni, wrestling rainbows and springtime memories out of him. She'd been hungry for too long, feeding on scraps and the last of her emotions, to let him ruin this for her. She tossed him the actual suit, something blue-black from the local church's clothing bin that she'd hand-sewn down from a triple XL to his approximate proportions. She helped him with the buttons and the cuffs, though most of the fashion niceties for a good presentation extended far beyond her ken.
She'd thought out their next big coup really hard. Some exclusive auction house in the Art District of S.M was hosting its most important night of the year after the passing of some childless European millionaire. And what perfect opportunity for the philistine-miser dyad to get a taste of the greener pastures before they skipped town forever and ever At least this part was easy. Vanya had always been a good little soldier. It was all she had and all she knew and all she could be around him. He had to know too, now. He listened intently, and she explained for an hour, two, how they'd rob Giada Torelli's grave and fly into the sun holding hands.
MEANWHILE...
Waterlogged little piece of cloth, head hung and nearly capsized in the most pathetic puddle of niche French body wash was how Eve found Dante at the summer estate. She'd felt him slipping away all day, inwards, inwards, circulating every thought and every doubt through his entire nervous system. Hours of this, waiting for a ripple across the surface to fish him out with all the strength she'd siphoned out of the skeletons in his closet.
She approached him as a boneless entity, looming over the nape of his neck and immediately considered snapping it. She wasn't sure how but she'd seen his bodyguard do it once and she was nothing if not au-to-di-da-cte. She counted the wet strands curling behind his ears. One, two, three, a gray standout, four, five, and managed to rein it in just in time. He made it so hard to be a kinswoman where she wanted to be coated in angler scales and worshiped for centuries to come for her merciful nature. Her therapist commended her progress daily. Maybe she would go a day without praise for resisting the urge to preside over one's rights for a painless death after they were done with this.
The slur, the drawl, the total absence of the pretty lilt of his Mediterranean forebears startled her straight. She almost asked what he'd taken, how long it had been, did he mix anything, and finally bit her tongue. She dragged him out of the artificial waterfalls and he went willingly, a puppet with loose strings. She wasn't done beating at him, spitting all of her salt and crashing all of her waves at his lifeless body, keeping him up, up, up. Eve tipped him into the scented bathwater, unmoored and drifting, keeping him down, down, down. His lungs filled with the honey milk mixture and he fought it out, sputtering, eyes wide but unseeing.
Ultimately, Eve wasn't and had never been one for the sentimental and the cloying. She'd burned bridges cutting the Gordian knot since she was old enough to form a coherent thought. Dante used to enjoy picturing her gnawing at her mother's umbilical cord to break free of all ties before she'd even cried her way into the human world. He'd barely registered just what had happened before her hand shot forward on its own.
Dante had no recollection of the evening when he stepped out onto the curb and into his mind palace. He knew the time, he knew his skin was dry, and he knew he hadn't drowned after all. He knew the aggressive scent of the pomade Eve always worked through his hair in lieu of smelling salts, he knew it was too cold for the first day of Autumn. He knew he was walking into a three-generations feud over what was rightfully his. He knew there was a detailed script for all the threats he was supposed to unleash upon Giada Torelli's friends, all of which wanted a part of her auctioned goods, goods he needed to figure out just who would rob a child of his mother. He knew people would die again. He knew it would all go to shit. He knew he trusted Eve when it would eventually all go to shit.
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