vecna | ☣️ midwestern mayhem inbox.

[ there's little in the way of rest at Pride, tonight—at least not for Sprezzatura Vaux. what a cruel mistress, sleep... always so cold to her on those nights she longs for her most.

but once the house has fallen silent, and she's truly, truly sure...

she finds herself in Henry's doorway; frozen in Henry's doorway. blue light spills in through the window and bathes the room. her heart throbs painfully in her fingers, ears, throat.

she can't tell from here without her glasses... if he's truly, deeply, asleep. ]

[He is truly, deeply asleep.

He’s been in bed even before he regained his human body, having hopped up here as a baby demogorgon, burying himself into the blankets, and stubbornly going to sleep. He was so worn, so exhausted, his mind filled with unkind thoughts. Sleep is rarely an escape for Henry, but after that wretched game… it was a necessity.

And maybe his transformation mid-sleep is the reason why his sheets seem tangled and lopsided, but at least it affords her a clear view in the pale light. Lying on his side, breathing deeply in only the way a man deep under the thrall of dreams can. At least the transformation back was nice enough to put him in his night clothes, too.

It’s going to take a little more than her standing in his doorway to wake him up.]

[ she doesn't want him to wake.

and for a few minutes, at least, she tells herself (tells herself tells herself tells herself) that this will be enough. he's alive. the game is done. the seams of her shoulders still ooze and throb, Aventurine's taste lingers on her tongue, and she can still feel Henry going down--but it is done. there will be no more.

so just seeing him there should be enough.

it's not enough.

her body moves again. she peels the twisted sheets gently down and, after a few more hesitating moments, settles in the empty spot behind his turned back. she curls in very tight, knees to her chest... forehead barely touched to his nape. ]

[He doesn’t even so much as stir as she slips into the bed with him, not when she pulls and adjusts at the sheets when she settles behind with her legs curled up. Even when her forehead brushes against his nape, he keeps sleeping.

It’s only a few more moments, when the warmth emanates nearby from her body, a sensation that is pleasant but too instinctive to be leery of, his body too used to being changed, that he’s drawn back into wakefulness.

Bleary wakefulness. The realization that he has human limbs now — human senses. Something pressed into the mattress beside him, the faint scent of sulfur. That telltale heat.

What? What’s happening, is that—]

Sprezzatura… is that you?

[What? What what what]

[ her eyes aren't quite closed—heavy-lidded, that's all. she sees the way he stirs and hears the breath he takes and knows she's made another in a string of idiotic decisions.

murmurs, sound but no words. ]

[It is her. He’s not imagining it.

Such a stark difference from how she ran from him in the graveyard, bleeding and naked. Now she comes to him in the dead of the night, and knowing that she has hidden herself away in their house since, he cannot imagine what drives her to slip into his bed now. Is something wrong?

…other than the obvious.

He ventures, again, tone low in this dead of the night-]

Is something wrong?

Don't talk. [ so far down her throat it's almost sub-vocal.

... ] I should not have left you in woods.

[He doesn't speak upon her request, even though his mind is practically spinning with questions. And he wants to turn on his other side, so he can face her, look at her expression, as though he can unravel the mystery of what she's wants to say, what she's feeling, but for now...

He remains quiet, letting her speak more on the matter if she wants.]

[ what does she want to say? that it's agonizing to see the wounds of how they broke her? yes, she wants to say that. she wants to say that she'll kill him, any of them, if it ever came to that again.

she wants to say she's sorry. yes, that word she reviles. and so she won't say it--won't even think it, but instead hug her knees tighter to herself. ]

I loathe this place. [ her voice, when it finally does come, is even softer than the last. Henry will have to strain to hear. ] Only suffering thrives here. There is nothing to be gained from it... at all; nothing. And I cannot sleep and do not want to be alone.

[I loathe this place. How deeply resonating, that and all that comes after it. He had said as much to Vox earlier today, hating what this place has begun to make him feel -- emotions that he doesn't know what to do with, and when they're gone, how everything pains him after.

He lets it all settle, silent. But he finds he cannot ignore the temptation to look at her, and so the sheets rustle, and Henry turns around on his other side to glimpse at her in the shadowed nighttime.

He speaks, too, whether or not she wanted to hear his voice.]

I'm sorry. For making it harder on you.

[For losing his mind. For devouring her. For letting her eat him. All of it. He has no trouble saying the word, not to her.]

[ her face is shadowed and wan. deep lines crease the edges of her mouth, making her look older—or maybe just making her look her age. Sprezzatura allows him only a moment, then slowly sits so that she is above him. so to speak.

once more, clad in her unmentionables. it's a step up from naked and bleeding. ]

I don't want apologies. Live with what you've done.

[He only looks up at her, then, seeming to belatedly notice what she's wearing in the periphery of his vision. This isn't the first time she's been near him wearing only her underthings, and yes, it's better than bloody and naked, but there's something about her lying in his bed next to him that makes it feel-

What?

A bit of a warm physical response, there's that. But mentally, he experiences the ghost of something fond—a very distant and not nearly as all-encompassing relative of that impossibly overwhelming "love" he felt in the game—and Henry finds himself rather dizzy, the paradox between this and what she's saying too stark.

...Honestly, what's happening to him.]

You mean you won't forgive me for it?

No.

[ no, she won't forgive him for it. she'd begged and pleaded and been berated for the chance to determine her own fate, and once she could no longer deny them, he'd taken it from her. all of them. it doesn't matter if he called it reverence—that isn't what it was. ]

And I will not forgive them, either. They will regret giving me that taste of hunger.

[What a strange situation to read, to be in, the timing of it confusing. She won't forgive him, and that should sting, but he understands her reasoning now that he isn't addled with debilitating devotion. She's angry, she wants to hurt the ones who hurt her, and he always appreciates that, loves to see that part of her -- but it isn't what he wants to focus on, not right now.

There's still something lingering, unaddressed:]

If you won't forgive me, then why my bed?

[ she should go. should never have come. ]

To punish you.

[ whether she asked for it or not, now they are connected. he has profaned her and killed her, and she must live with that. her choice to give those rights to a man so unlike the boy she once-never knew...

if there isn't him, then there's no one. ]

It would be easier for you, wouldn't it? For us to never speak again. [ or, if she understood Henry better, it would just be a different pain. bittersweet, ] But as you are always saying... we are team. There is no turning our backs on one another anymore. So you will let me lay beside you, and every time you remember my taste, you will be grateful for it.

[To lose a connection? It would absolutely be an aching pain. He doesn't think it would be easier, but she doesn't need to know that, else she begin to entertain the thought.]

I am grateful for you, you know. I have been.

[Before any of this awful mess with the game.]

You said that we haven't gained anything by being here. That's not true -- I got to meet you, Sprezzatura.

[ it has always been so easy for her. just close the door and walk away. done; forgotten. and yet, she's startled to find—here she is, still here, wishing he would object and twinging with relief that he does. she wanted to control the path of her life towards its end, for once, and while she may not have gotten that, she can control... this.

whatever this is?

slants her gaze away, though not before pulling it slowly over the planes of his cheekbones and the falling curls of his hair. his lips, set in such a troubled expression. like she always does: she thinks it. ]

Of course you did. And very fortunate for you.

[A troubled expression which twitches into a small, tired grin at her remark. Spoken like a universal truth — anyone who has gotten to know her is all the blessed for it. The thing is, he can’t find it in him to argue the point.]

Very fortunate. You’re a good omen, after all.

[As opposed to the self-proclaimed bad luck she thinks she is.

The way she scans his face is mirrored in how he does the same with hers. She looks exhausted, and wrung out, but this close, she’s still beautiful.

Without preamble, he finds himself asking-]

Can I hold you? I want to make this memory stronger: us, here now. Not what we were at the behest of this place.

[ of course he'd like to hold her. did he read her mind, sense that quiet wriggle of curiosity?

brushes her hand against his... ]

Turn your back again. I will hold you.

[He didn’t have to. Maybe in this, their thoughts are starting to align. Where their hands meet, he becomes distinctly aware of the contact.

He examines her face again, thinking to himself that turning around makes her harder to request one more slow-burning want, but that is a what if. This, she promises him.

He turns back around on his other side.]

[ maybe it would be better to slip from the bed now and delay what is about to happen. she isn't so stupid not to realize. this isn't her first turn around the block.

Henry rolls over and she lowers herself down. every motion feels especially deliberate; bend her knees, curl her arms, drape her tail. again, the weight of her legs firms up against his back, and her forehead against his nape, and this time, one hand sliding around his middle. he has... a very slender waist. mmn. ]

...I don't think we lost.

[ for what very little it's worth ]

[Her presence beside him might as well be the only thing in this room. He is cued into all of it: the firmness of her legs against the small of his back, what he believes to be the twitch of her tail, and then... her arm around his middle. Her words fan across the back of his neck.

Henry can't help himself. He lifts one hand up to curl around hers. Strange how he had been so tired just moments before, and now, he thinks it might take some manner of miracle to get him to go back to sleep. A tingle of excitement runs up and down his spine, and though he's entirely inexperienced compared to her, he knows what that means. It isn't his first turn around the block, either.

Uh oh.]

A very small silver lining. But if we can take some good out of a bad situation, we should, right?

Henry Creel, optimist.

[ what a funny idea...

she exhales out a small sighing laugh, too, because it's nowhere near accurate, but he's correct. they need to take what they can from this smouldering wreckage, every single time, or else what comes next and comes next and comes next will destroy them. this game is a new precedent. she isn't so naive as to think things will be better for them going forward. ]

[Optimist? What a funny idea, indeed.]

I guess I'm just feeling more hopeful than usual right now.

[And though he means in ways... not entirely related to the game, he would otherwise agree. They have to grasp onto things that make them happy, instead of always drowning themselves in anger and the need for revenge--

Wait. No.

He squeezes her hand a little tighter. The contrast between what he feels now and how euphoric he had been when his mind wasn't his own threatens to settle in again, ruining the moment, and he refuses to let it.]

Hey, Sprezzatura...?

[ this is what has left him hopeful? he must meant that it's over, or that they are alive, or that he's of his own mind again... it can't be that he feels idealistic about the future here... after that.

for her, the need for revenge burns all the hotter.

tugs her hand. ]

What is it, O hopeful one?

the wee hours of 36

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