Work Text:
They don’t pick up the first time— or the second, or the third. On the fourth time, they leave her ringing almost all the way to the end, but the line clicks through right before their corporate voicemail. The speaker is dead silent for a long while; evidently, they’re waiting for her to speak first. Which, admittedly, she did call them, but…
“What do you want?” their voice finally hisses, sharp and acidic.
Bianca winces. They’re definitely on something. She hunts for words in her head; there’s a million things she wants to say, but she can’t quite get her tongue to wrap around the syllables. Are you okay dies sour in her throat. “Where are you?” she finally gets out.
They laugh, harsh into the speaker. “Really regretting our decision about Life360 right now, are we?”
“Vic, come on.”
“Nope,” they sing-song. “Nope. You actually don’t get to do that. Crazy, isn’t it? How you never called when we were literally family, and then coworkers. And now we’re neither and you’re suddenly calling!” They slip on their interviewing voice. “That’s just so crazy!”
“Vic…”
They continue like she hadn’t even spoken. “I know you think I’m insane. But sweetie,” they say the word with a bite, teeth sinking straight in the jugular. “I’m not you. I can move on.”
The thing about Vic is that they always know just how to hurt people. She thinks they do it on purpose, honestly— they’ve never quite learned how to accept safety. Like a kicked dog nipping at ankles just for some normalcy. It’s that thought that just barely keeps Bianca’s teeth gritted shut. She breathes in slow; exhales long. “Vic. Everyone’s been trying to reach you all day. I just need to know where you are.”
“No.”
Bianca has to physically move the phone away from her ear. She kicks the bottom of their empty chair. It moves all of two inches, and mainly just serves to send a throbbing pain through her foot. Teeth gritted even tighter, she moves the phone back up to her ear. “What do I need to do to get you to tell me?”
Vic hums, fake and high-pitched. “Well, not wishing on my death would’ve been a great start. So.”
Bianca sighs. “I did not wish on your death.”
“Okay,” they do a tittering laugh. “Don’t lie to me now. I think we’re well past that stage of our relationship.”
Bianca amends her statement. “I did not request for a demon to kill you.”
Vic is silent for a moment, like they’re weighing the truth of her statement. Which hurts a little, before Bianca remembers that within the past two years, they have both been cursed by malicious other-worldy beings because of their weird, fucked-up relationship. So. She guesses that is in fact where they’re at right now. Finally, they speak up. “Still wanted me dead,” they say, and the cheery tone of their voice is starting to make Bianca feel sick. Physically; she can feel the black bile start to creep up through her throat.
She swallows hard, tasting the sour twang of hate. Considers pointing out that Vic has quite openly discussed their death wishes for her on-air, and is the sole reason behind her current curse. But there’s something about the manic tone in their voice that stops her.
She sighs. “Vic, I never wanted you gone.”
It’s true, unfortunately. Despite all of it, despite every seething thought she’d had, despite every stony-cold car ride home, despite the million of reasons why— they’re right. She will never be able to move on from them. She always finds herself crawling back.
Their tone shifts. Sharper. “Right.”
There’s some shuffling in the background of their call. Bianca can’t even begin to guess what it is. “Please let me come get you.”
“Just tell Tamar to find another fucking host,” they finally snap. “No one ever wanted me there anyways, so should be great for you all—”
“I don’t give a shit about the show!” Bianca screams.
Her voice explodes through the call like shattered glass. Vic abruptly cuts themselves off.
“I need to know you’re not high in a ditch somewhere!” she shouts. “I need to know that I’m not going to wake up to your face in the fucking obituaries!”
She sees it every night, burned into the back of her eyelids. Them face-down on the dining room floor, auburn hair pooled around them like blood. They were still in their work clothes, that brown suit that they loved so much, the stupid brooch laying clattered beside them. Empty pill bottle still on the table. Glass shattered across the floor, the stench of whiskey potent in the air.
Dragging them out to the driveway, because she didn’t know what else to do, and she was panicking. Hearing her phone clatter against asphalt, because her hands were shaking too much typing in 9-1-1. Seeing the blue-and-red lights flashing off her car. Saying something, anything to the paramedics, words tumbling out of her mouth without pause.
Asking, desperate and exposed, if she could ride with them to the hospital. Sitting cold and numb on the side of the ambulance. Looking at them on the gurney; laying so still, body tucked under that white sterile blanket and a slow trickle of blood creeping down their forehead. Thinking that it wasn’t right, because Vic didn’t sleep like that. They slept like a wild animal, limbs thrown out wide and sheets tousled. Wanting, irrationally, to re-position their extremities like a doll until they looked correct.
Telling the nurse at the hospital: don’t call their husband. He won’t pick up.
The nurse asking Bianca if she thought this was an intentional attempt. The lie tasting sour on her breath: I don’t know.
When they woke up, she didn’t ask, and Vic never answered. Neither of them told David about any of it.
The next day, Vic showed up at work like nothing had happened.
“Bianca,” they say finally, voice flat, and Bianca realizes it’s the first time in the conversation that they’ve addressed her by name. “I’m fine.”
The sirens echo in her head.
“Really?!” Bianca explodes. “Because that’s what you said last time, too!”
“You know that was an accident,” Vic whispers harshly.
“It wasn’t an accident!” she cries. She slams her foot into their chair, again; relishes in the throbs because she needs something to feel that isn’t two-month old January air biting at her cheeks. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Vic!”
Silence. Just the sounds of her breaths, fast and angry.
When she speaks, her voice is shaking. All her hostility has been stripped away, leaving her request bare and exposed for what it is: begging. She sounds just as desperate as she feels. “Vic, please. If you can’t do it for yourself, find it in yourself to do it for me. Whatever dredge of care you have left for me, I don’t care— I can’t do that again.”
Just when she thinks maybe she hadn’t gotten through to them, they speak. The words are completely flat. There’s no more host-show Vic Michaelis. Just Vic. Mean, tearing at the seams, but them. “I’m at the new apartment. I’ll send you the address.”
Then they hang up.
And she is left alone on the silent set.