𝙞 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙢𝙮𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙙.

No, not Mary. This woman stinks of alcohol. Her lips are too red, her eyes too devious. James is too tired to be filled with some sense of repulsion but his hands at his sides twitch. An impulse he's afraid to name. Disgusting, I'm disgusting. Lips part but before he can say anything--

@openness says, "Here I am! All alive."

The impulse dies. A moth, belly-up.

Did I faint? I don't remember. Where am I? James wets his lips, his throat dry. His voice is barely audible but it's not because he's not trying to speak when he asks the woman, "Who are you?" and immediately remembers her name as Eva. "...Eva?"

𝗵𝗲’𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀. eva hates him, she thinks, but holds her tongue, loose as it is. instead, she rolls the hate around the inside of her mouth. it presses to her soft palate, knocks the backs of her very straight front teeth, is cradled under her tongue, hot against the sublingual tissue. she can’t let it go. without it, what is she? nothing. anger is a sweet becoming.

fingertips brush over the barely - there stubble on james’s cheek— he’s soft, almost all - over, just like kenzo. but not quite, because his skin is clammy and cold and the eyes that look up at eva are not kind, just dead. is this what she deserves? the ground is freezing under her folded legs and the heel of one scuffed leather pump slips off, exposing a small snag in her pantyhose. she should really buy new clothes. these ones have seen better days, but all that's left at the bottom of her purse are some crumpled bank notes. ‘ and those, ’ she thinks, ‘ are for the bartender tomorrow, or maybe tonight. ’ she is rich in sin alone.

a plum - colored nail, chipped, fingers at the tender skin of the lobe of an ear. “ did you hit your head? ” eva coos. or, he’s strung out. he’s definitely not drunk, that fermented stench is too close, it has to be from her own mouth. his face, too, is bloodless. it’s like he’s seen a ghost. her lips curl into an odd shape, more mocking than fond. “ i can’t leave you alone. ”

As if Jan could confirm or deny. Even sober, he's too infatuated with Anna to do anything other than nod vigorously. Johan might not have to kill Suk, but Anna just might do it for him, and not even intentionally. That would be cleaner, easier, he thinks, the thought as faraway and distant as Anna's eyes. He remembers the tears that poured from those same eyes when he asked her to shoot him in the head. How alive she had seemed at the time, her eyes not distant but wrapped up in the horror of the moment. It had hurt Johan terribly to hurt his sister like that, but the promise of a happy ending had all but been in sight. Anna, who is a nice girl, follows up her comment with: "It's just nice to spend time with you," and let her fingers leave the thin straw and flit just-so over Jan's knuckles.

Men love to talk about themselves. The bar isn't silent but it feels like it could be around Jan and Anna as Johan contemplates his next move. What to ask, what to say--it's not quite the same thing he does when he's dragging someone into a kill, but it's similar enough, and the shared bloodstream, shared heart, makes Johan's chest ache in a familiar way. It's not lonely but simple truth. His hand idly traces dry patches of skin on Jan's hands. Their hands have a thing in common: they have both held guns.

𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗲. he learned this in church. you can neither touch nor look at them. one of these rules is easier to follow than the other, and he had, but then the angel touches him and he is shocked to find that she is, in fact, very cold. no fire. it is only the pit of his stomach that burns, leaving him shifting in his seat. his face, too, is hotter than ever. the eyes that blink up at the center of his universe are doeish. moisture gathers on the surfaces. he’s been caught in the headlights. anna strikes him; she always does. “ why am i lonely? ” repeated, it sounds small and silly.

rolling this way and that, the question collects dust in the corners of jan’s mind. some spots haven’t seen the light of day for quite some time. ‘ i miss my mom, ’ or, ‘ i wish i had a girlfriend, ’ had she asked him a year, or even a few months ago, these would be the answers that immediately leapt to his tongue. but he is a little older now and must not act like a boy who has no worries in life. his knuckles tense under the cool crescent of anna’s nail.

free, a restless hand returns to his hair, pushing it away from his forehead and behind his ear, though this is a losing battle that he fights, because he went in for a trim not so long ago and it is just shy of being long enough to stay put: strand by strand, it falls back into his face. a sharp nose wrinkles in thought. he’s still a child. “ i don’t like being alone,  and this job—,” this job, which jan had dreamt of. his life would be perfect if he had that shiny badge for brandishing, if he was rooting out all the bad apples before the bunch was spoiled, because hadn’t they been through enough?, he’d convinced himself of this. the reality was not so glamorous. it wasn’t the smashed up face of the twenty - something woman that changed his mind so much as having to be face - to - face with the other agents. they had the ability to break his heart, and into countless pieces. peeling back the surface and seeing the insides of this system, which the television set never quite captured— that is making him falter. inside the polished leather, his toes curl in, accompanied by a small shiver that sprints up and down his spine. every part of his hand that she traces feels as though it is being touched for the first time. “ well, it’s … hard,  it alienates people. ” jan says finally.

an index finger rubs the sweating side of his glass. the ice has reduced to a soft - sided fragment of its original shape, its fluid remains swirling in a separate strata from the drips of liquor left at the bottom. he needs another. his voice is a bit softer when he continues, in a self - conscious way. “ it’s not really what i thought it would be.  nobody wants to hear about it,  either,  and i can’t blame them.  not really.  you’re the only one who’s ever seemed interested. ”

Johan shifts, the fine blonde strands of the wig moving over his arm as he moves a bit in his seat, pulling his cardigan lower over the arm that he had used earlier in the day to test swabs of lipstick, their creams staining the inside part of the dark fabric. Does Anna wear red? Does she wear nudes? Does she wear soft pinks or corals? Eventually he settled on a cool nude pink which now lives somewhere in the bottom of his bag: Anna likes things that make her look more like a person of this earth and not someone sailing in the skies above. This is some of Johan coloring his interpretation of Anna: if he is to be a monster he will wonder what it's like to be human. He's sorry to Anna for projecting some of himself into his portrayal of her, but then again he supposes that's inevitable after they were split in the womb. Still, there's no resentment in his voice when Anna asks: "An angel? Really?" and she takes a sip of her drink, now careful to keep the wig out of his face when he leans forward just so, heels carefully poising her delicate posture on the stool.

𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱. this, he’s sure of. there is an axis on which all things rotate and she, lovely beyond words, is at the very center. jan is just a body in her orbit. heaven and earth are skewed and he slips further into his warm buzz. he leans towards her a little, almost close enough to nudge her elbow with his own, but he’s careful to not touch her, even as drunk as he is. she sounds so far off when she replies in that soft voice, that one that keeps coming to him as he stumbles into taxis and into the stairwell of his apartment.

languid, his head raises, and the face that peers up at anna is flushed and hot to the touch. his eyes are big and drooping at the corners, sopping wet, like posies after spring rain. “ are you lonely? ” it spills out before he can stop it.

inhaling quickly, he continues, as if to cover his tracks, “ i mean, i am,  sometimes.  more often than i’d like. i think everyone is,  not just the angels. ”

the lip of the glass is cool against jan’s lips. it’s what he needs; dampness is conjuring below his arms, and beads at his temples. the night itself is not that hot, he doesn’t think, but the air in the bar is closer than ever and reeks of stale smoke and something sweeter. this second scent is powdery in an antiquated way, like something he’d catch in the hallway when his mom would leave in the early evening and would spend the time before shut up in her room. anna didn’t strike him as old - fashioned, not at first. but if he leaned in and pressed his face to the soft curve of her neck, would that powder room smell wash over him? what he wouldn’t do to push her hair aside, and die there. the glass is returned to the bar with an uneven thump, and jan’s hand, now free, pushes his overgrown bangs back. she’s going to kill him.

At being called for, Satoru only belligerently replies with: "Haaaah?" He raises his head from where he's stooped a little ways behind his companion, his hand extended to a resident stray cat who had sniffed his hand demurely only moments before, only for the thing to scamper off into purple-hued shadows at the sound of his raised voice. "Hey! You scared it off, Suguru!" Oh well. He's already getting back to his feet, the very bottoms of his ankle bones peeking out beneath the cuff of the pants that are already too short for him as he rises to his full height--Satoru Gojo is going to be a very tall man. it's a good thing the Gojo budget is more than plentiful right now as Satoru comes into his own, deciphering power far beyond anyone could ever imagine.

𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝗱𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝘂𝗴𝘂𝗿𝘂’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗮𝘁. his face is big and bright and burning. is this what she meant? she watches satoru draw up to his full height, or rather, the shadow that he casts, which stretches itself thin and makes its way over to where she’s stopped. her own is blacker than black. in her eyes is a vast sea of emotion with his approach. this is lost on satoru. he is more concerned with the white - footed cat, straggly and underfed, who scampered away upon her own arrival, albeit briefly. the lower half of his face is already broken in two, and beneath his glasses, he can imagine those eyes: glittering, blithe, unconcerned. nothing seems to stick with him for long. this is one of many differences between them, because any of her attempts at indifference are poorly thought of and executed.

their shoulders brush; not quite flush like they once were since satoru’s is an inch higher than her own, or maybe less if she stands up straighter; a recent and grating development. they resume their walk, loose gravel dislodged from the aging pavement and gritting beneath their feet. his demands are those of a child and his bag nudges suguru’s shoulder blade. she falls on her sword. there’s no resistance. “ do i really have a choice? ” the corner of her mouth twists up into something like a smile, though it is neither as effortless or big as his.

a stray strand of hair falls into his face as his head tilts down towards the sun - streaked ground, the upper half of her body shaking a little with a forced and silent laugh. “ unlike you,  i have to study. ” he says, but doesn’t really mean it. satoru is right. they are the strongest. things have come easily to suguru for as long as she can remember. when he sits down at the small desk in his dorm, he flips through notes and textbooks not to commit anything to memory, but to check off that box: fulfilling the duty of a good student, and a diligent sorcerer. it is always a mere going through the motions. as a child, shadows opened their mouths and shared secrets unbidden. now, they put their fingers in his mouth and force themselves down his throat. they leave her stomach heavy and her limbs stiff, with swollen joints and an unrelenting nausea, and still. still. he is better than the rest, present company excluded. suguru is no fool. he has her beat at every turn. all she has is her resolve. she makes more of an effort than he ever has— and ever will.