“It was the most expedient option.”
“Expedient.” Mia looked at Ava, one eyebrow raised. “He called your relationship expedient. How romantic.”
“Fake relationship,” Ava said.
“The arrangement,” Victor said at the same time.
Their eyes met across the table. Heat crept up Ava’s neck, and she looked away first.
“Right.” Mia stood, collecting plates with theatrical efficiency. “Not real. Totally fake. I definitely believe you both.”
Victor insisted on washing dishes while Mia dried, moving through their cramped kitchen with unexpected ease. Sleeves still rolled up. Soap suds on his forearms. Each plate received the same careful attention, like he’d done this a thousand times before in a thousand different kitchens across six thousand years.
Ava leaned against the doorframe and watched him work. Tried to reconcile this, the domesticity, the dish soap, the comfortable silence, with what she knew he was. What he’d done. What he’d survived.
“You know,” Mia said, studying him over a wine glass, “for a demon, you’re pretty domestic.”
“I’ve had practice living among humans.”
“But you don’t need to eat. Or sleep.”
“I don’t require food or sleep, no.” He rinsed a glass, held it up to the light to check for spots. “But I can enjoy both.”
“What else do you enjoy? Besides terrifying first-year associates and cooking with hellfire?”
Victor considered the question, hands still in soapy water. “Good wine. Literature, though the modern publishing industry leaves much to be desired. Classical music.” He paused. “I’ve developed an appreciation for jazz, actually. The improvisation. The way it breaks rules while still following structure.”
“What else?”
“The smell of coffee in the morning, even though I don’t need the caffeine.” He set the glass in the drying rack. His eyes found Ava across the kitchen. Held. “Unexpected challenges.”
“Is that what Ava is?” Mia asked. “A challenge?”
“Mia.” But she barely managed the word.
“Among other things,” Victor said quietly. He didn’t look away.
The kitchen felt smaller suddenly, the air going thick between them. Mia’s gaze bounced between them like she was watching a tennis match, and then she grabbed the wine bottle with both hands.
“More wine. We definitely, absolutely need more wine.”
They movedto the living room, where the ancient couch waited with cushions permanently molded to the shapes of a hundred movie nights and a thousand conversations.
Mia and Ava took their usual spots, muscle memory folding them into familiar positions. Victor sat in the wobbly armchair that Ava had rescued from the sidewalk two years ago, the one that creaked ominously whenever anyone over a hundred and fifty pounds sat in it.
It creaked under Victor’s weight. He shifted. It creaked again.
“Don’t worry,” Mia said. “It’s never actually collapsed. Yet.”
“Reassuring.”
“So.” Mia tucked her feet beneath her, wine glass cradled in both hands. “Forty-nine days left.”
“You’re counting?” Victor asked.
“Ava is. She’s got it marked on the calendar. Little X’s through each day, like she’s crossing off a prison sentence.”
Ava sank deeper into the couch cushions. “I like to keep track of things.”
