Eva has been acting strange for the last week.
Ever since Charon was shot, she's been watching him closely, shooting unreadable glances his way before each decision, checking in on him after each maneuver. He isn't certain if she's worried or lost faith in his ability to take care of himself but her constant surveillance has begun to drive him up a wall. He's already wanting more space from her, the memory of that fight, the survival-drunken spark of desire he wants so desperately to forget, has left him stiff and unnerved. With her near constant attention and what seems like her steadily growing proximity, it's a volatile mix.
Everything finally boils over one night.
It's later than usual. The sky has been dark for hours and, while Charon can still hear sounds of humanity, mostly drunken voices drifting over from the local bar, Eva is usually already asleep. For some reason, however she's awake tonight, curled into the corner of the couch with a half-filled bag of sweets by her bare feet and a faded book forgotten in her lap.
She's wearing her sleeping clothes, one thread bare sleeve falling away to reveal a sunburned shoulder. Without the burn, she would be paler then the faded shirt she's wearing. With her clear comfort in her environment, the image is oddly domestic and Charon wants no part of it.
He's still upset over that fleeting flicker of lust, though he knows rationally it had nothing to do with her. She wasn't a specific subject, just another warm living thing to project a useless, primitive instinct onto. Still, he makes a wide berth around the couch when he walks towards the stairs. His foot is almost touching the first step when her sleep heavy voice stops him.
"Charon? Can you come over here for a moment?"
Eva is watching him from the couch, darkened bags under her eyes making her gaze more haunting then it should be. Her pale skin completes the image and Charon feels as if he's walking towards a personified omen instead of the exhausted woman he knows she is.
He stops by the back of the couch and grimaces when she pats the cushion beside her. She tucks her toes beneath his leg when he sits, tugging the corners of her lips into a weary smile.
"I keep wanting to ask how your shoulder is even though I know it's fine." She's so painfully honest sometimes, sharing her thoughts with him without a single aspect of them withheld.
"I know you're not…" She stops and toys with a shorter lock of her hair, brushing the charred ends of it against her thumb. Eva was with Moira this morning and while she returned intact, several chunks of her hair had been burned away. Little flakes of black drift down onto her shirt.
"I know you're not exactly here voluntarily."
Charon sits up, turning his head towards her a little too fast to hide his surprise. Other than the first night after she bought his contract, Eva hasn't addressed the actual reason behind his being with her. She tends to ignore it, asking his opinions as if he has any actual say in the matter. It annoys him to no end and occasionally he'll respond with a canned line that sounds more suited coming from a trapped genie then a slave just to irk her. He's unsettled by her sudden change in candor.
Eva's continuing, despite the unusually honest display of emotion on Charon's face.
"And I know the situation I took you from wasn't better but I…" Whatever Eva's trying to tell him is clearly difficult, each word nearly pushed out of her.
"I want you to know that I'm sorry. I don't want you to ever be hurt because of me and I'm sorry." The last words are spoken in a hurry and when they stop, silence fills the room.
Charon doesn't know what to say. Her earnestness makes his skin crawl. He's never had an employer so oblivious to the real situation. She's acting like they're friends despite her immediate admittance to the contrary and he finds himself straightening to his full height when he turns to answer.
"Your apology is unnecessary." She starts to smile but he cuts her off. "You hold my contract and I am bound to protect you. You and I both know this. My safety comes second." He doesn't usually let himself think this way, his pride too strong to say the words aloud, but the rapidly blooming hurt on her face makes it easy. "We both know that's why you bought me."
Charon can still feel Eva's cold toes tucked under his leg, the familiarity if the action now hanging as heavily as the silence between them. Slowly, she pulls them away.
Eva opens her mouth, the red of her tongue standing out like blood, a fresh wound slashed across rapidly paling skin. He watches her struggle for words, watches her shadowed eyes tinge pink and grow wet and something churns unpleasantly inside him.
Charon would not call himself petty but he enjoys revenge, enjoys taking what little power he can. Watching this exhausted woman, hair tangled and burnt and bare feet pink with cold, cry is not enjoyable.
'Watching Eva cry' a tiny treacherous part of him whispers.
One small tear rolls down her face and she brings her hand up to cover it, cupping her cheek as if she's trying to hide the droplet instead of wipe it away. There's a long swatch of red flared out across her hand and it's clear it's a burn.
Charon hates that he noticed that detail, hates that he sees the tremble in her fingers and recognizes it. He's seen that shaking behind a fallen billboard, hurriedly applying a stimpak to a fresh stab wound, seen it raking through a curled tight body tucked away between a dresser and an old rickety chair, seen it in her hands as she struggled with his shoulder strap on the second floor of a crumbling building.
Charon hates it all.
He stands to go and Eva doesn't stop him.
He hears the couch creak as he walks up the stairs but as to why, he doesn't know. He doesn't look back.
Something is warring within him, an unpleasant mixture of frustration and disdain. She thinks she can just apologize and pretend, that he'll join her in the lie. It's revolting. It's childish.
Yet with all the anger directed at his employer, there is something else as well. As he crawls into his bed, pushing the blankets she's provided to the floor, there is just a touch of guilt. It's seeping into every other emotion, poisoning them until it feels like they have begun to turn inward, stabbing into his stomach lining like thorned vines.
It's never been difficult to hate whoever is holding his contract. They were always monsters, addicts, psychopaths, too fixated on how Charon could aid them in their goals to notice the danger of his ire. They were all too blind to his disdain to see the inevitable betrayal when his contract eventually changed hands.
Eva may not be the first one to be fully aware of his anger but she is the first one to let it affect her. Yet somehow Eva is the first employer in a long while who has managed to ignite the deadened distaste inside him into fury.
Charon rolls to his side, kicking his heavy boots to the floor. He has had his fair share of practice sleeping in unpleasant situations. Sleeping through psychological distress has always been one of them.
He closes his eyes, pressing the rest of the world away, letting all his feelings, his fury and bitterness, his disgust, drain out of him.
Sleep takes him just as he identifies one last emotion, the only one still weighing down his chest.
Pity.
…
Charon does not have dreams often but tonight he is plagued with them. They are messy, muddled things, flashing too quickly from one topic to another to leave more than a fading impression upon waking, burnt into his mind like blurry after-images on the back of his lids.
He is in bed and it is soft, gloriously soft. He twists, rolls into a more comfortable position and inhales a swirl of burnt hair. The bed is made of the stuff and he is handcuffed, shackles descending into the silky strands. The scent is overwhelming, coating his throat like dust.
Concrete dust.
He is in the abandoned building, stretched out on the cement. Blood is seeping into the stone, staining it until it looks more like burned flesh then an office floor.
He is inside the building and he is inside Eva, buried to the hilt and stroking skin softer then the hair he was drowning in. His ruined lips are against her neck and the heat of her hurts. Charon pulls away and she is nothing but paper, sparks burning through her, devouring her.
He thinks she might be crying, he knows he can hear her laughing.
Suddenly he is alone, pressed against the ancient wall and fumbling with a stimpak. The needle keeps slipping, piercing his fingers and immediately healing them over until everything feels like braille. The Mister Handy keeps buzzing around him, cleaning up endless debris as it crumbles down from a ruined ceiling.
He is in the living room, eating snack cakes with Eva. She's holding his contract, turning her head back and forth as if she's reading the words that have long since faded. He wonders what it says. She catches his gaze and smiles at him, holding the paper up in front of her like a shield.
He's so angry. He tears the paper away, he wants to see her face but she's gone. He's alone on the couch though he still thinks he can feel her toes, cold through the fabric of his pants. The paper sparks up and burns away, old ink melting the contract into his skin. It runs down his wrists, drips to his thighs in damning words he can't make out.
The heat spreads down his legs and Eva is back, straddling him. She is what is scorching him. She leans in, kisses him gently right where his nose used to be.
They are in his bed together now and he's whispering into her ear, timing each word with an agonizingly slow thrust. Eva smiles up at him, blissful, and he hears what he's been saying.
His scratchy ruined throat, moaning over and over again, like they're sweet nothings.
"I hate you. I hate you. I hate you."
...
He wakes with a sharp inhalation, too light to be a gasp but enough sudden air to leave him dizzy and the room spinning. It is still dark outside, though the town is quiet now, late into the night.
Charon twists onto his side and lets the dream fade from his memory. When he finally returns to sleep, it is nothing but black, soothing emptiness.