don't be scared (killing eve | anna/villanelle)

[fiachairecht]

don't be scared. killing eve, anna/villanelle. anna buys a gun and oksana figures out why. 1k words, rated m. for madeinessos in WDLF 3.

Anna has bought a gun. Oksana knows this, because Anna is a very smart woman but she is also very naive, and she buys the gun very close to school. And Oksana knows all the people by school who sell those sorts of things.

In truth, Oksana is more than a little wounded, when she finds this out. She would have protected Anna from anything that needed a gun. And if that hadn't been enough, she would have bought Anna any gun she wanted — better than any street gun, and much less easy to trace.

Anna does not want to talk about the gun. She pretends it doesn't exist, bats Oksana's hands away from the drawer when they get too close and brings them to her breasts instead, and Oksana lets her. There's no harm in letting Anna think she has her secrets for now — it's only fair, really, when Oksana has so many of her own. She'll draw the reasons for the gun out of her, eventually, same as she draws soft cries from Anna's throat when she sucks at the curve of her hip, wrings hot tears from Anna's eyes when she pushes her whole hand inside her.

One day, she tells herself, one day Anna will slip, one day she'll get tired of not talking, or one day she'll be brave, and then the gun will be their secret, just like their home is a secret, on the days Maxi is out. Anna loves her, takes her home and wears the jewellery and lingerie Oksana brings her, and it's the best life Oksana could ask for.

One day doesn't come until after Maxi. Oksana has just finished putting the cake in the icebox — it will keep, she thinks, until after Anna has calmed down, and they can celebrate properly — and when she returns to the parlour Anna is sitting on their chair, face streaked with unhappy tears and blood all over the dress that Oksana had bought her last month, and the gun in her lap.

It's black, so very black against the white and red that is Anna now, and Oksana thinks she's the most beautiful she's ever been, even as she sinks to her knees and rests her cheek against Anna's knee. She kisses the skin right beneath the lacy hem, tastes the iron alongside the familiar scent of Anna's sweat and jasmine perfume, and licks the blood from Anna's knee.

She's changed, since the school — changed out of the frumpy flowered dress that Oksana hates and into—

"Give me the gun, Anushka," she murmurs. Her heart is twisting with an unfamiliar nervousness — what if Anna hurts herself? "I should have asked, I know, but this ... you don't want to do this."

"I didn't want any of this." Anna's hands are shaking over the grip, so desperately that Oksana is sure she wouldn't be able to hold it long even if she did manage to pick it up. "I didn't — I don't. How could you, Oksana, after everything?"

"You set me free," Oksana says, rubbing comforting circles into Anna's calves. The muscles are all knotted up, poor thing — maybe she shouldn't have made this a surprise. "I just wanted to do the same thing for you. You deserve it, don't you know?"

One of Anna's trembling hands comes to rest on Oksana's head, and she can feel it — all the life of her shivering through her skull. "This isn't freedom, Oksana," she whispers. "We have to know this forever, now. I don't want that, you shouldn't have that."

And Oksana knows, then, what Anna plans to do with the gun. What she's planned, maybe, since she bought it, and she'd known her Anna loved her but, oh, how — she'd never expected this and she's so, so proud.

But it's not necessary. Oksana takes Anna's hand gently between hers, presses down to stop the shaking. Anna's breathing is unsteady, in and out like a tide pulled to someone else's whims, and Oksana places Anna's hand over her heart, covers it with her own hand. "It's a sin, Anushka," she says. "Your heart is too beautiful for a bullet when it already has my hand." She cannot reach Anna's face to lick her tears away, settles for catching one in the palm of her free hand.

"Everything we've done has been a sin, Oksana," she says, her voice wavering like it hasn't since the early days. Like she's trying to convince herself, more than Oksana, more than anything. "Why shouldn't I?"

Oksana smiles up at her, open as can be. "Because we should go back to doing those things instead. I still love you, even though you didn't like this. I'll do better, I — I promise."

She's made so few promises, has intended to keep even fewer. But this one, she knows as she stands up to climb into Anna's bloody lap and press their lips together, this one she'll die before she breaks. "I won't let you, Anushka," she continues, pressing their foreheads together and ignoring how Anna's whimpering . "You are too pretty to die, and you don't want to leave me all alone."

The metal is digging into her thigh, the ridges of the gun marking red stripes into her skin and she knows without looking that they're not nearly as pretty as the ones Anna's nails have left against her back. She takes Anna's hand, guides it between their bodies so her fingers can press between Oksana's thighs, feel her hot and wet and wanting. "You do this to me," she says. "You always have, and now there is no one to tell us it is wrong so please, please just kiss me before anything else."

Later, Anna won't protest when Oksana leaves with the gun. But now, Anna kisses her back, the gun trapped between their thighs. Anna kisses her back.

That's the part Oksana will always remember.

It's the best part, the time when she kisses all the fear out of Anna's mouth and feels it sharp and bright in her own instead. She winds her fingers in Anna's beautiful hair and licks all the sadness away from her cheeks and all the blood from her neck.

And Anna kisses her back.