a/n: Looked up the Hungarian names for Elizabeth and neither Elizabeta (Slovene/Croatian) nor Elizaveta (Macedonian) was among them. So for the sake of (hopefully?) accuracy, I've simply changed Hungary's name to Erzsébet.
It starts with a night of drunkenness. Erzsébet doesn't even remember how she got here, a glass of alcohol mixed with what she thinks is Coke cradled between her palms. Gilbert's sitting before her and the house is empty aside from the two of them, because Ludwig is gone on a business trip and he won't be back until Thursday.
And yet, it's because it's only the two of them that her hands shake, unsettling the liquid in her glass. She doesn't think that the momentary weakness of a wounded heart, the intoxication of alcohol and a childhood friend to who she is still, in some ways, attracted, will make for a good combination.
If Gilbert notices her unease, he doesn't comment on it. He's unusually quiet tonight, and Erzsébet isn't sure what to make of the silence that has lapsed over them. It's not uncomfortable, but it's filled with an understanding that she hates even more. Neither of them need to ask of whom the other is thinking.
She wonders if it's because she knows that she has come.
Gilbert speaks up then. His voice is slurred, but only slightly and she doesn't know if it's from alcohol or sorrow or lust.
"If he won't fuck you, then just fuck me instead."
—and Erzsébet feels white-hot rage pulse through her (but she'd known this was coming, both of them did, it was in the air tonight, all around them, infectious and poisonous and oh-so tempting and it was just a matter of who made the first move).
She pushes herself violently back from the chair and turns on Gilbert, because she at least has to try to remain loyal. "How dare you?"
She is indignant and her voice carries across the room, but her hands are trembling and she thinks that she is on the verge of tears.
Gilbert pulls her in the moment she doubts and kisses her.
Deep.
Rough.
Passionate.
There's no love at all.
He tastes like alcohol and desire and unadulterated lust and Erzsébet gives in. She's not looking for love (not from him) and they both know that. The feeling is mutual.
There's something in her that urges her to push away and run back home and cry into her pillow instead, as she hadn't done in centuries, but her heart is whispering. It's deceitful as a snake, and it tells her that there's no sin in wanting to forget awhile the man who she loves but does not love her back. It tells her that it's just once (but it's wrong because sex and amnesia aren't only addicting, they're pure toxic), but she buys it now.
She opens her mouth and takes Gilbert in.
Deeper.
Deeper.
He's rough with her. He bites and pulls and pushes, but she doesn't mind. Romance belonged in another bed with another man, who is far more delicate and more gentle and more unreachable than this one could ever be.
But it doesn't matter. She's here to forget, and there's nothing better to aid forgetfulness than a little bit of violence.
So she returns his roughness.
She claws and bites and sometimes she draws blood, but Gilbert doesn't mind either. He likes the violence, the pain, and he likes her (but not as much as black-rimmed glasses and out-of-date clothing).
Neither of them hold back.
"Faster," Erzsébet breathes, and digs her nails into his skin just a bit harder. Gilbert grins arrogantly, red eyes flashing in that way that irritates and scares and excites her, and complies. She groans loudly, pushing her hips wantonly into Gilbert's thrusts, shameless and uninhibited, knowing that no one is around to see. This is just between the two of them; their way of dealing with heartbreak.
Tenderness isn't needed, foreplay is skipped, because those belonged in another bed with another man. A man who has soft, slim fingers, whose touch she craves in the stead of the calloused and battle-scarred skin she feels sliding beneath her hands.
She's torn.
She doesn't know if she wants this delusion, or if she wants it all to slip away into nothing but when he rubs her clit, it doesn't matter anymore. Nothing does.
"Gilbert—" It comes out in a choked cry and she doesn't know if it's desperate or longing or resentful.
He bends down, kisses her ear (no teeth this time) and whispers: "I'm here."
It's not much, but it's enough for her, enough for right now. She closes her eyes and nods.
The pace picks up again and they continue to fuck. There's passion in it, but no love. Only the understanding that neither of them will ever love one another like they love him.
They've fucked before, but it's the first time they'd fucked like this. It's fast and careless, speed and pleasure and pain tricking them into believing that they can actually forget the strains of Chopin. God enjoys screwing with them in cruel ways, Erzsébet thinks, and the cruelest is forbidding them to forget. But that is a lie, isn't it? The ones clinging to what thin strands of memory that remain are themselves. God may screw with them as much as He wants, but they don't need Him to create their vices and to choose their sins, or to provide them with delusions to escape their own unhappiness. They were good enough at fooling themselves—they were the best.
She feels her orgasm building. She pushes her hips up and rakes long trails of red down Gilbert's back. "Hurry the fuck up!" but she doesn't know if Gilbert hears her over his own groaning. (She had realized at some point or another, that he was louder than she; not by much, but he'd always been a shameless one, hadn't he?)
He comes first, and his elbows give so that he nearly collapses on top of her, but he manages to catch himself. She gives him a frustrated kick on the back, urging him on. She's close, so close, and she tells herself nothing else matters to her but reaching her climax. Gilbert bares his teeth at her and complies, but instead of using his fingers, he pulls out and uses his mouth instead. She gasps and digs her fingers into his hair (it's so white compared to her skin and suddenly her hands seems a lot darker and she isn't used to how dark they look).
Gilbert's red eyes flicker upwards to meet her own—flashing in that way again—and she can feel his smirk against her sex. It suddenly strikes her how dirty this is, his tongue down there and his fingers twisting inside of her and she's being so loud she swears the entire world can hear and Roderich would never—
Her entire body tenses and for a moment, she doesn't know anything other than bliss. She's dimly aware that she'd bitten her lip to keep in the scream, and that her fingers have slipped from the sheets and her nails are digging hard enough into her palm for it to bleed. She's also dimly aware that she'd just fucked the man who had been her childhood friend (and is, perhaps, still a friend), and that they'd done this because the one they really love is beyond their reach now.
She's disgusted with herself.
When her mind clears, she sees that Gilbert is sitting up and licking his lips, looking at her with an arrogant expression that she feels the urge to slap off his face. She gives him a dry stare instead, then pushes herself off the bed.
"I'm using your shower," she tells him and walks out of the room without looking back. It would be a lie to say that she didn't appreciate him, didn't like him, didn't—to some extent—love him, but she had always loved classical music and the smell of edelweiss better.
She steps into the shower and turns the knobs. Steam begins to rise into the air as she raises her head into the stream and lets the water wash away her sins (and yet the dark bruises remain, the scratches and the bites, and the toxin begins to take a hold of her). Later, when she brushes her hair and slips into her clothes and stares calmly at the sleeping figure laying tangled in the soiled sheets, she says to him: "Let's forget about this," she says, "let's never do this again." And she walks out of his house with his smell in her hair and his taste on her lips and his marks on her skin.
Later, much later, maybe a couple weeks or a month—regardless—when Roderich next has guests over and she sees him smile with love in his eyes, all she can do is stare down at her empty hands and a band of gold that glints around one finger. She goes up to him and smiles sweetly and says: "I think I'll pay Ludwig a visit, maybe drop off that candy you wanted delivered," and he nods, and she walks out of her own house with candies in her hand. She rings the doorbell at Ludwig's and Gilbert opens the door. She just holds his stare and doesn't say a word but he gives her a knowing look anyway, then yells into the house that he'll be out for awhile and leads her away.
And later still, she finds herself standing in a small German street whose name she can't remember, surrounded by small buildings whose colors she can't identify, and Gilbert leans down to kiss her. She meets him halfway and, slowly, barely, the toxin begins to envelope them as they stand in this nameless street with colorless buildings, engrossed in a love that isn't really love at all.