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Vic wished they could care enough to do something about it, but it'd been following them everywhere for so long they didn't have it in them to avoid it anymore. Bianca noticed, she always did.
They had fought all their life to hide from the thing that chased them, find solace in people blind enough to give it to them. But the very same thing that made them seek refuge had been driving everyone away since they were a child. That's how they learnt the thing wasn't invisible in the way they wanted it to be, no matter how much they practiced in front of the mirror as a kid. Maybe inconspicuous to the eye, yes, but not to the instinct.
And truth be told, they hadn't tried hard enough to get rid of it, maybe because sometimes it felt like part of their insides. Like ripping an organ out with their fingertips, scratching with their nails like a feral creature on a hunt. Other people had, like Nana. She was brave enough to try while others just ran the second it was too obvious. They weren't sure if she had just made things worse or if it was bound to happen anyway, but they still admire the attempt.
Bianca tried a different approach, one that gave them the best years of their life. Then she realized what everyone eventually did, but she was foolish enough to think Vic was going to let her go. They couldn't even if they wanted to, its claws were in too deep. They were as trapped as she was, both of them caught up in the eye of the storm. She could only go so far without being blown away by their circumstances.
That entity was always behind their back, threateningly pressing a hand between their shoulder blades. It didn't want Bianca gone either. Its touch made Vic numb and aggressive in a way they didn't necessarily enjoy but that made them feel protected. Maybe another reason to keep it around: they were invincible because of it, like they could do anything and it wouldn't matter. Ironically, this also pushed Bianca away from Vic, but they were confident it wasn't enough to get her out of their life. The rusty chain tying them together neck to neck was stronger than the poison of their tongues.
Still, being at home since David left hurt more than the sting in their spine every time they were away from Bianca. They'd rather gnash their teeth and keep on going than go back to the deadening restraint of their empty bed. It wasn't because they wanted David differently than how they wanted everyone else —stationary, timeless, abiding— but because this time his departure seemed to have broken something in Vic. Maybe this was the pebble that shattered the glass and poured out what they had been carefully keeping behind it. It tainted something inside them and sucked the air out of their shared bedroom like a black hole. Being there was suffocating in a way they couldn't even enjoy.
They were immune to death, possibly too out of reach even for its tenacious embrace. They had it figured it out by the time they were fifteen, when they made a habit of falling asleep with coins on top of their closed eyes after playing Russian roulette with their Nana's medication. The feeling of the coins sliding down their face at some point during the night still remained and resurfaced from time to time. No, what kept them spending days and nights at the studio avoiding that place wasn't fear of dying, it was something else, something maybe worse. They had corrupted their own house beyond repair and now they felt haunted everywhere except their work place.
But God, did their heart ache for a different kind of pain, one with a brown ponytail and bitten nails…especially that day. Of course they were expecting everyone to either forget or ignore their birthday, but what they weren't expecting was to take it as hard. The whole day felt like a neverending nightmare, spent simply waiting for it to end so they could find comfort in whatever substance they could spot first.
Despite their best efforts, none of the PAs accepted their invitation to go out for drinks after work. Some of them were better at hiding their disinterest than others, but it wasn't like Vic cared. Of course they all had other priorities, even David had them. They were already desensitized to rejection, it couldn't affect them any more than it already had so they kept facing it again and again. Somedays they thought it was their only way of feeling something real. Without it, all they had nowadays were chemical reactions.
When everyone left the studio —early, probably because Vic was even harder to deal with than usual— they finally had room to stop containing their misery and let it run free, find the nooks and hideouts of the place and occupy them all. They grabbed a bottle of alcohol they had hidden in a closet, preserved there for special occasions. They couldn't think of a better moment to open it. There was no need for a glass because they had no one to share it with, it was just them and their crystal bottle filling the space with the sloshing sound of the liquid moving inside it.
At some point, Vic couldn't tell when, they searched inside their purse for nothing in particular and their fingertips skimmed along the only thing that could bring out a smile in a moment like this: a small plastic bag with one pill inside it. Smooth, round, labelled only with two capital letters that meant nothing to them. They doubted it would affect them in any way but they loved the mystery, the game of being a teen again rummaging through their Nana's bathroom cabinet. They were already drunk enough to not have second thoughts about anything anyways, so they swallowed it dry to feel it make its way down their throat. They stopped for a second, feeling dumb enough to check if they felt something right away. They didn't.
After a few minutes, maybe seconds or hours —they had never been that good at telling the passage of time anyways— they got up and paced around in front of the door, looking for an excuse to leave. And like summoned from the deepest parts of them, from somewhere in between their intestine and their liver, a text popped on the screen of their phone that laid forgotten on the ground.
Next thing they knew they were in the back seat of a car, hopefully one ordered to take them home. They were still in their suit, sitting tight and careful to not get too many wrinkles on it, although they would probably have to take it to be dry cleaned anyways. Looking out the window they scrutinised the street, relieved to recognize it as their own and not some random location their ghost could've given the driver. Wouldn't be the first time.
As they stepped out of the car, the driver wished goodnight to a casket of a person, while Vic tried to collect all the pieces of themself that still floated above their head. Thankfully, the keys were in their right pocket, unlike their missing phone that probably was abandoned on the studio floor. The familiar click of the key unlocking the door and the immediate temperature drop welcomed them home. The entity behind them grabbed them by the shoulder and they repressed a shiver. Once the door was closed behind them, they pressed their back to it trying to crush something that wasn't actually there, as they'd tried many times before.
They stood there, with the stilettos already hanging from their hand, taking in the weighted atmosphere that poured through the cracks of the house and into their veins like a curse. Their eyes wandered around the entrance, stopping at the sight of the vase that rested on the dresser. The piece they bought for David, that stupid ungrateful bastard, at that antique store they found during one of their vacations. Before they could process a single real feeling, the ceramic was all shards smashed around their bare feet, only inches away from harming them.
Something —the pill, the alcohol, the house or maybe even the presence of a non existent entity drooling down their neck— took a toll on them the moment the echo of the pieces gliding across the floor vanished from the room. They leaned against the now empty and cold marbled surface, burying their face on their hands and fighting the urge to dig their nails in. Their make-up department wasn't good enough for them to just show up with any kind of imperfection.
The moment they heard that familiar voice their body reacted on its own, jumping like a child hearing a scream for the first time. The room spun around them when their head left the stability of their own hands. The view of Bianca standing on the staircase right in front of them was the only thing there to ground them. Unfortunately that had only served as a one way ticket to space and beyond, lately.
"Jeez, you scared me." Vic tried catch up with what Bianca just said even though they weren't sure what it was. Their eyes instinctively moved down, to the shards. "It was an accident. I just- I tripped."
With almost —almost— no hesitation, Bianca got down the few steps she had left and grabbed them by the arm to pull them out of the mess. They could smell her now, a long time had passed since they'd been this up close. Vic got this weird urge to grab her back but contained themself.
"What have you taken?"
Hello to you too.
They weren't expecting the regret of being there to hit so soon but it was so damn clear that their presence bothered Bianca deeply, it was impossible not to feel it. Of course she was annoyed, she must've been so happy lately with David gone and Vic miserably keeping their distance from the house. They could tell this was what she wanted all along, the best thing that could happen to her. All her wishes coming true. Who could blame her, though.
I suppose I can, actually.
"Relax, B. Only alcohol. It's my birthday, give me a break. I was celebrating," they replied, not willing to tell the truth. They weren't even looking that bad, and if they were it certainly wasn't because of the pill.
They walked towards the stairs, trying to shake off the feeling of the two entities behind them being so indistinguishable. Especially when they weren't deliberately looking at the only one that actually had a face; a face that seemed to exist alone in every room they shared.
"You're not supposed to take the suit out of the studio," said Bianca, suddenly right by their side at the stairs, an illusion of time fragmenting around them both.
They looked to the sleeves, the brooch, the shirt hanging from their hollow body like a second skin they had to shed everytime they took it off. They thought about how nothing felt as right as the suit, how everything else was not enough to cover what was wrong as the beige tone of that jacket. They hated it.
"I didn't feel like changing, I'll return it tomorrow," they replied aridly.
The touch of a hand startled them. Thinking it back, it was highly unlikely that it had just popped out of nowhere, and far more possible they had already grown too used to the feeling of living in a cheap supercut to process things at a normal rate. Truth be said, their nervous system never fully understood that the spectrum wasn't tangible in the way Bianca was. When their reaction made them trip to the point of falling over, their priority shifted from getting away to making sure Bianca didn't notice how their body was betraying them.
They ignored the stabbing pain on their elbow and snapped at Bianca before she could try holding them again.
"I don't need your help. I'm perfectly fine on my own, okay?" they sharply said. That gained them a few more seconds to get up and take a couple more unstable steps before Bianca grabbed them again. This time they kept their cool and sighed, refusing to admit that it was actually helpful and soothing to feel physical contact again when they were aware that it was human.
A bed appeared behind them just in time to catch their falling body. The room that materialized around them like a kaleidoscope was the one they once called their own. It still smelled like David but it was mostly eaten away by the scent of humidity and something else they couldn't quite recognize. If they had to guess, they'd say ruins.
The judgemental whispers coming from all of the clothes on the bed, the clusters of junk in the corners of the room, the content of the drawers emptied out all across the floor, came to life just to spread the word about their comeback. Boiling blood rushed through their veins when they realised Bianca was still there to hear and pity their pathetic existence. By the face she was making and the abruptness of her movements as she went through the motions of removing their clothes, Vic could tell they most likely had already pissed her off, but couldn't remember.
They were now wearing a t-shirt they had taken from her long ago, and whether it was an accident on her part or not, they breathed a little easier when they realised. David was no longer there to tell them it was weird of them to be wearing his daughter's shirt to sleep.
That night the almost faded smell of the t-shirt wasn't remotely enough to keep them from falling into a spiral, and they only realised the moment their hand was already seizing Bianca's arm to keep her in place. The look in her eyes confirmed to Vic that they had gone too far multiple times over the last few minutes, and it didn't matter that Vic wasn't really in control of their actions and that those long fingers made of mist were clasping the steering wheel like their life depended on it, because it was still them. That set of only slightly colder hands, that empty voice using their throat as a channel, that curtain of wet hair obscuring their vision, it was also theirs. They were theirs as much as their skin and bones, and even though they couldn't get to know everything they did under their influence, they didn't need to. They condoned it.
A sting on their cheek and Bianca wasn't under their grasp anymore. Instead, the hand they had been using to hold her arm was now covering the surface of their own face, victim to her open palm. Yeah, they probably deserved that.
"Call me if you need to throw up. And sleep on your side," said the girl with the killer gaze.
The pain woke them up enough to understand that the ways of this creature inside them —outside them, holding them, watching them— didn't matter, because it was right. They couldn't let Bianca go that night, they couldn't be left alone for this room to finally devour them. They should've wanted that, but they didn't, they wanted something else instead.
As she turned to leave, they reached for her arm again, trying to keep the shaking at a minimum. This time, the difference in the temperatures of their skin when they finally touched her in all their consciousness, didn't feel like burning. It felt more like a bridge they could use to meet midway. Bianca appeared to see it too because she stopped and looked at Vic with her other eyes, the ones that weren't ice cold and sharp but focused and hazel in the way they were supposed to be. That was the gaze that had met theirs the very first time they shared a look.
They probably pleaded next. For all they knew, they could have even gotten on their knees, they were willing. They liked to believe, though, that it hadn't been necessary. That Bianca had gotten into that bed in her own terms, that she had done it because the bridge wasn't yet that long to not be crossed. They wanted to believe that Bianca didn't care that much about the third presence weighting that bed, that she had never cared. At least not enough to make it count. When she put her arm around Vic and let them grab her hand, the thing no longer had space to linger behind them. It was replaced with Bianca's warm breath down their neck, with the brush of her eyelashes against their skin. Replaced with a feeling so strong that after such a long drought, it put them to sleep almost immediately.
Eventually, they met in the middle.