tighten up !!

edward wasn’t in the mood to sleep, or maybe he was in the mood and just couldn’t. either way, he was sitting on his old couch wide awake and staring at the ceiling. he had thought for a moment, when raphael offered for him to stay, that he might actually be able to sleep. every time he had been laying alone unable to sleep in the past two weeks was a stark reminder of the destruction of his relationship, so he thought maybe for a second that being so close to raphael could lull him to sleep. instead though, the familiar feeling of what used to be his apartment and the knowledge that raphael was tucked away in their his bedroom made him feel father away than ever. so, naturally, edward was unhappily awake when robin knocked at the door. 

he steps into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind him unwilling to give robin an inch. “you shouldn’t be here, can’t you just leave him alone for once?” he glares unhappy at the sight. the urge to punch robin after seeing him kiss raphael certainly hadn’t disappeared, but luckily for the other man edward wasn’t in the mood to cause any more drama until at least the sun came up. he’s tempted to just tell robin he’s right, that he’s back, just to see the look on his face, but then he also doesn’t want anyone to think that they’re back together, so he refrains. “god could you shut up? not that it’s any of your business but no. and what exactly are you here to do? lie some more? make things worse? what is it?”

“see, that’s funny,” robin says, though it’s clear he’s not about to laugh anytime soon, “because if you two aren’t back together, then i don’t see how it’s your concern whatso-fucking-ever who comes to see raphael and why. in fact, hm.” he puts a finger to his lips, as if pondering for a second before he continues. “if i have this right, if you two aren’t back together, then it’s also a little odd that you chose to have your little exposé moment right after raph’s tongue was down my throat. if i didn’t know better, i’d think you were punishing me. actually, if i didn’t know better, i might even diagnose you with a case of the jealous ex.” robin raises an eyebrow towards ed, a little too haughty, a little too cocky. “i hope that’s not the case, though. in my well-versed experience, it never ends well for the jealous ex. they huff, and they puff, and then they just end up embarassing themselves. because somehow, they can’t understand that this isn’t a rat race. there is no competition to be had here - nothing to be jealous about, because that implies that you have some stake in this. you don’t. don’t get me wrong, raph might like the way you always talk like you’re selling something, might swoon at your attempts to understand his artistic references, might even look at you like you’re something he’ll never fall out of love with. but he recreated versions of that with carter, and christopher, and poppy, and trevor.” he names raph’s exes one-by-one, like they’re an easy laundry list to rattle off. “and yet he always found his way back to me. doesn’t matter how badly i fuck up, how certain he is that he’s quit me this time. i haunt him like nobody else because i get him like nobody else. so i’m sorry, really, that you had to find out like this that you’ll always be second-best. but rest assured that you’re just meeting the same fate as plenty of other well-meaning people. you guys should start a club or something.” he smiles, shark-sharp, before gesturing for eddie to move away from the door. “now, if you’ll excuse me, i have an apology to lay out in the other room.”

he’s never been quite so fucked. it’s not like he’s never been the party at wrong before - especially when it came to raphael - but it’s never been quite this bad. here, there’s very little to redeem him and years worth of lies to indict him, creating a situation where it’s hard not to hate him. but at the same time, forgiving robin has always been raphael’s brand - they fight, robin’s mostly culpable, raphael tries to forget about him with some pretty thing, robin talks his way out of it, raphael remembers that nobody gets him quite like robin, they fuck and forgive, rinse / repeat. so he convinces himself that if he can just get raphael alone to speak to him, he can talk his way out of this, just like he always has.

except when he attempts to show up at raphael’s apartment hours after the new year’s eve mess, he knocks on the unlocked door only for someone else entirely to answer it. “oh, what the fuck,” he says as the door swings open and ed’s on the other side. “are you just a mold at this point? festering everywhere people don’t want you?” he considers eddie’s appearance, the fact that he’s answering raphael’s door so late (or at all), and he makes a face. “don’t tell me he’s back to das kapital already.”

closed for @rcbinpenn·

considering how many relationships he’s torn through, you’d think that raph would have mastered the art of breaking up by now. and maybe he has, but this one feels so different, so much worse, and maybe it’s because he had such high hopes that it would actually last. stupid, stupid, stupid boy. so he’s somewhere in the middle of a spiral, and his heart hurts so bad he’s actually a tad concerned he should be seeking medical help. he thinks the least eddie could do is show up at their door again so raph can slam it in his face, but when ed left he really left, so much so that raph hasn’t even heard about what he’s been up to since they exchanged their last words. 

not that it matters. he shouldn’t be thinking about what eddie’s up to, he should be zoning in on the now.

the ‘now’ in question is raph lying face-up on the counter, which he doesn’t totally remember ending up on. he wants to break all the dishes in the kitchen (except for the really nice ones he got at that local open-air art gallery) just to do something with his hands, but he can’t even muster that, so he just stares at the ceiling as tracy chapman’s ‘fast car’ plays on repeat. at first he thought ‘fast car’ was just a really long song, which it is, but about three plays later he realized it was stuck on repeat on his spotify. but changing the song would mean moving, and that also doesn’t seem like the best strategy here, so he just lets the song play itself to death. there are clementine peels on the left side of his face and a half-filled handle of fireball on the right side, which together have made up the majority of his meals for the day. it’s not quite the breakfast of champions, but in this moment, he’s just trying to cope. his head whips over as he hears the door handle turn and open, and his heart skips a beat as he thinks it’s eddie coming back to fight for them - but no, just robin. “oh. hey.” his voice is hoarse, probably a combination of dehydration and the four times he’s cried on the counter today. “what are you doing here?”

he’s fresh from his conversation with aster, which (unsurprisingly) went quite badly. he’s on his way to raph’s now not necessarily to tell him too - because as bad as it was to tell aster, robin can’t even fathom how hurt and angry raph will be considering the years they spent dating - but rather to find a distraction. he tries texting raph to figure out if now’s a good time, but after multiple unanswered messages and calls, robin opts for just showing up and knocking with fingers crossed that he’s not interrupting raph and eddie in something he doesn’t want to see (or does he? he hasn’t fully decided whether or not he’d agree to a threesome in the parallel universe that it’s offered to him).

he tries knocking on the door, but this also yields no results. the thought flashes through robin briefly that raph may be in actual danger, which is what prompts him to jiggle the door handle and find that it was left open. he walks into the apartment, and the sight that greets him is more than a little concerning - raph lying on the counter, booze and scraps of clementine peels around his head. robin could recognize a raphael breakdown from a mile away (considering how many he witnessed in the past, half of which were his own doing), and without eddie around to confront him, robin’s mind immediately jumps to one word: breakup. he tries not to look too giddy, instead adjusts his best concerned act. “i should be asking you that. what the hell happened here?” he says. “is that tracy chapman?”

aster and robin had developed plenty of routines or traditions over the course of their friendship, but there was no doubt aster’s favorites were the lazy hangouts at her apartment. she looked up to robin as a mentor, but she liked it so much more when he was her friend. perhaps she should be a little concerned when he says they have to talk. even more so when he prefaces it with ‘ not to bring the mood down ’ because typically there was nothing good that followed either of those things. especially not when they’re together. was this robin get sick of her too ? would it be better or worse to actually hear it rather than to just pull away like roman did ? then again, when had aster and robin ever been typical ? she did her best to push those negative thoughts to the side as the deck was placed down. fingers lingering over one last card, hoping for some insight of what was to come. ultimately, the fear of what she’d see won out.

“ i know exactly what you’re talking about. ” though it didn’t seem to phase aster. every warning sign from the stars was painted over with a rosy tinge to match the ‘ everything is perfect ’ narrative aster had spun for herself. “ the eclipse season, right ? i know my rising sign is destined to be affected and so is tommy’s, BUT the eclipse can bring new beginnings as well as endings. maybe we’re just starting a new chapter ? like, moving in together ! we technically did that before the eclipse, but i think it could count, right ? i know you’re my friend and you’re just looking out for me. ” she didn’t stop to consider the fact robin wouldn’t have the eclipse season memorized the way she did. or the fact he probably didn’t know her rising sign, much less tommy’s. she didn’t want to think about what more serious conversation he wanted to have out of fear she guessed right the first time. “ but i think everything is going to be good. there’s going to be nothing but positive energy going into the new year. it just all feels so RIGHT, don’t you think ? soph and murph are back together, roman is back in general. ” even if the surface was starting to crack, aster would turn a blind eye. “ you’re gonna have a christmas dinner with me and tommy at some point, right ? ” and as many other’s as she could convince to come. “ and new year’s eve! i’m sure we’ll have some kind of party. you’ll save me a dance, won’t you ? ”

he lets aster ramble on, the knot in his throat growing tighter and tighter with every one of her naive speculations. robin hasn’t ever been the type to get nervous about things he says, no matter how stupid or presumptious or downright self-rightuous those words may be, but the longer he holds out on spitting this out the more he’s worried that he’ll never be able to get it through his teeth. he’s been lying for so long that he can’t even remember what it is to tell the truth, and maybe it’s the uncertainty of this new territory that gets him more nervous than anything else. 

he can’t entertain aster’s fantasies (at least, not these ones) for much longer, so when she finally pauses to ask him something or another about new year’s, he takes a deep breath and lets it all out. “ast, babe, no. it’s not any of that,” he says. his voice is soft but rushed, though it’s not like aster not understanding him in this instance will be any help, even if it’s what would make this easier. “what i wanted to say is that i’ve, um.” and he isn’t the stuttering kind, isn’t the hesitation kind, barely has ‘uh’ or ‘um’ in his vocabulary, but fuck, this is hard. “i’ve been lying to you. to everyone. i’ve been lying to all of you about my past, where i’ve come from, who i am. and i’m really fucking sorry, but that’s the truth.”

on the surface, he’s the poster boy for cool as a cucumber. he lounges on aster’s couch just as he does on many weekday nights, holding a joint between his fingers as he inhales and exhales with a practiced ease. usually, his mind is at a perfect peace when he smokes, but it runs amok today, replaying thanksgiving and the weeks that have followed it. he’s waited and waited to see what edward was going to do with his newfound information, his nerves only intensifying with each week that nothing was done. he thought that ed was playing chess with him, but perhaps it’s more like jiu-jitsu, and edward’s feeling out the right moment to attack all at once. 

so he sits on the couch, and his fingers twitch a bit as they hold the joint, mind spinning all the while. aster sits in the room with him, commenting occasionally about the tarot cards she’s sorting through. before she can make another quip about how the cards says either doomed or destined for great things or maybe something in between, he speaks up. “yo, not to bring the mood down, but i’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. maybe the stars have already given you some hints.” he doesn’t sit up, but he does look over, facing aster instead of the ceiling in his lied-down state. “you tight with pausing the tarot for a hot sec?”

just like the hangover that follows all the shots she did last night, aster emotionally feels even worse the morning after. the new ( almost domestic ) routine that usually followed spending the night with tommy was definitely not happening. even if she woke up with him in her bed. wearing his shirt until he had to leave was replaced with aster picking it up from where it had been discarded on the floor and tossing it to him without meeting his eyes. instead of spending as much time together as his schedule would allow, she kicked him out first thing in the morning. so she could focus on robin. bullshit. if anything, tommy had a better idea of what to do after a bar fight. both because of his job and the concerningly high possibility he had been in one or a few himself. surely, she could google it or text alex. robin always looked after aster, she made sure she was going to do the same. although, she didn’t expect him to be up quite so early. in fact, he was almost met with ‘ tommy, i said you should go ’. luckily, aster caught herself in time. “ good morning, sunshine. ” as she pushed herself out of bed. she didn’t put it past robin to pull her up on a technicality of ‘ only allowing her the first one ’ if she tried to rattle off all the questions in her head. now didn’t seem like the time to push him, so she actually listened to him. for the first time in what seemed like forever. it didn’t take very long for aster to settle on what she deemed the most important. “ are you okay? ” robin acted like a dick last night. that was undeniable. however, that didn’t mean aster wouldn’t care about him or that he wasn’t her friend. 

it felt a little wrong, aster being the one to ask him if everything is okay. robin hasn’t exactly had the best twenty-four hours as far as physical injuries go, sure, but it hasn’t impacted his emotional well-being. if anything, he’s feeling pretty good, the high of surviving multiple fists to his face a new and not totally unexciting thing (maybe those guys in fight club knew what they were doing after all). aster, however, clearly wasn’t at her happiest last night with tommy, and judging by how early she kicked him out, still isn’t planning their wedding anytime this morning either. and surprisingly, robin’s concerned about that. raphael can testify that robin’s never been the best at picking up on when people are unhappy with a situation or just playing the role of shoulder to rest on in general, but his friendship with aster gets him close to it sometimes. now, for example, when he’s furrowing his eyebrows at her with worry, walking forward to take a seat at the end of her bed. “yeah, i’m fine. thought i might have a concussion last night but apparently i wouldn’t have woken up this morning if that was the case, so i think the pain in my head is just, you know. more of a general side-effect of getting punched.” he brings his feet up to the bed, sitting criss-cross as he regards aster. “i’m a lot more interested in you, though. any boy troubles i can be let in on?” and no, robin never thought he’d ever say the words ‘boy troubles’ unironically, but apparently he’s the star of a 90′s coming of age comedy now. 

he shouldn’t be shocked to see robin, but he is because it’s murphy and nothing should surprise you about him or his brain anymore, and his eyes instantly calculate the damage ed caused. and though he can’t deny that robin deserved it at least a little, he’s glad that the other man is still in one piece even though murphy is decidedly and thoroughly team edward (pun fully intended). he gives robin a tight grin, “don’t mention it. i’ve, uh, seen,” and assisted, “ed in way too many fights to think that that would end well for you…” he shoves his hands in his pockets, “and i have money and benefit from the capitalist establishment or whatever the fuck, but i don’t think i could get my friend out of prison for your murder… plus,” don’t tell ed he’s saying this, “i don’t hate you, for what it’s worth. do i think you were out of line? yeah. but there was a lot of alcohol and a lot of weird shit goin’ on and, like, you’re cool but not cool enough to be the sexy villain everyone secretly roots for- like shego or billy loomis- so, someone had to do somethin’… and i’m just big enough for the job.” 

it’s not that robin hates every rich person. like yes, murphy nailed it, he definitely benefits from the capitalist establishment, but robin thinks that as long as people are conscious and proactive about their wealth it doesn’t need to be an absolute detriment. billionaires may be irredemable, and eddie may be the kind of rich person that’s proud of their unethical earning habits and about capitalism in general to the point that it’s all-around irredeemable, but murphy seems both innocent and willing to learn enough that he’s sympathetic to robin (plus, if robin cancels every rich person he’d eventually have to accept that he’s gotta cancel his family too, and then who’ll pay his rent?). 

“that must been very exciting for you. maybe you start having popcorn ready, just in case something breaks out.” he wants to say that he really wasn’t all that out of line, that edward shouldn’t work in a field that warrants criticism if he can’t take it, but he knows murph isnt the guy to plead his case to. instead, he just shrugs it off, says, “i didn’t throw the first punch. if i would’ve known he’d be so offended i would’ve left the marxist commentary at home, scout’s honor. won’t happen again.” he’s almost ready to move on, but then he falters on murphy’s last words. “wait, what do you mean i’m not cool enough to be the sexy villain? are you kidding? i live my life surrounded by smoke, i speak in big words, i’m incredibly good at arching my eyebrow. you’re saying none of that is sexy? are you trying to tell me that a slowed-down version of nina simone’s ‘feeling good’ wouldn’t play in slo-mo when i walked into the room in the timeline where my life is a movie? i mean, who would be the sexy villain in our friend group? eddie? throwing a punch doesn’t automatically give him dibs, you know.”

                    alex was expecting to sleep in until the lingering effects of the endless shots she drank wore off and she could get back to being a ( somewhat ) functioning adult in society. twenty six and alex still couldn’t handle a shot or two of tequila, the taste of it was a mix of gasoline and a reminder her the first time she ever got blacked out. the femme crawled out of her clothes from the night before and into the biggest and warmest sweater and pair of grey sweats she could find laying around. alex forcefully dragged her feet out to her cramped kitchen, shoving some dirty pots into the sink and switching her kettle on. 

                    the sound of rapping from her front door rang through alex’s ears, a tragic wince leaving the sound-sensitive woman. sliding her feet over, alex lazily pulled the door open, just a crack. if it was different circumstances, robin would’ve been greeted with a honey sweet smile and the extra muffin alex was convinced to buy every time by the sweet barista down the street. however, all she could muster was a sigh and the power to suppress an eye-roll. “ you’re meatloaf after he gets smothered by the massive statue. ” still, alex’s arm pushed the door’s crack open and silently invited robin in. as robin stumbles in, alex quietly closes the door behind them as she tries to direct the other to her crappy couch. “ what were you thinking, robs. who was that guy ? he looked like he was about to beat you into a pulp. ”

more so than sights or sounds, robin has always responded strongly to smells. as he’s let into alex’s apartment, he recognizes the familiar whiffs immediately, the surroundings enough to elicit a bit of peace in him after such an eventful previous night. robin grew up in a house that never quite managed to turn itself into a home, or even something he could feel genuinely comfortable in, and so being able to take solace in various spots across new york to claim a landscape that’s finally just his feels refreshing. alex’s apartment, of course, being one such spot. 

“fuck it, i’ll just opt for helena bonham carter, then.” he slides past the doorway as alex closes the door behind him. “i like today’s sweater, by the way. looks very cozy.” he takes his place happily on the familiar comfort of alex’s worn-down couch, a raft in murky waters. “to be clear, i wasn’t rubbing my hands together the entire night waiting for the perfect time to land a jab. he punched me after i called him ignorant and maybe a few other colorful things. i was just practicing self-defense.” which is like, mostly true, but robin’s definitely hiding the fact that it still felt pretty good. he’s always romanticized those anarcho-communists that punch capitalists, even if he’s also adamently anti-war. these far-left ideologies could get awfully contradictory, huh? “that was edward seong, raph’s boyfriend. don’t ask me why raph settled for that after me, because it genuinely leaves me at a loss. the concept alone of them engaging in financial fellatio? unfortunate.”

alleo: would you ever date someone from your childhood?

“no way. that would be way too regressive for my tastes. i think it’s important to leave the past in the past, to clearly define different chapters of your life instead of letting them blur together.” which is ‘bullshit excuse’ for no, he doesn’t want to date the epitome of the ignorant wealthy conservatives that he fights against in his political life. except maybe cassandra - she was the only person in his eleventh grade history class to know who che guevara was, that was pretty hot.

murphia: do you believe labels are necessary for a relationship? 

"oh, absolutely the fuck not. if anything, i think labels are what kill a relationship. capitalism,” and it’s a talent really, the way he can bring everything back to america’s flawed economic system, “has produced an environment where we want to put names on everything, put everything into neat little boxes that’s easily digestible for a consumer. the only reason we so desperately crave labels for our connections is because that’s what we’ve been taught, but to allow fluidity into a relationship rather than strict boundaries? that’s an act of protest in itself.” 

tevward: how bro can you go?

“i’m trying to go for none. have you not heard my take on overt displays of masculinity yet? sit down, this is going to take a sec.”

days after the august babies’ birthday party, the dust finally feels like it’s settling on all the conflict that took place that night. not just emotionally, but physically too - even robin’s black eye is starting to look more like a light purple, which can actually pass as a pretty decent fashion statement if he styles it right. the one thing that hasn’t gotten totally resolved in robin’s mind is the side-conflict that he got a taste of during the little cigarette break, and he’s fairly determined now to get a follow-up. sure, maybe robin isn’t the best at listening to problems and giving advice, but that’s not his fault. he’s simply a person that’s always been good at dealing with big-picture problems (climate change, systematic racism, political corruption), so when faced with smaller issues (getting stood up on a date, having a bad day at work, whatever exactly is happening with riley and nico now), he’s less adept. it’s just a different skill set, is all. 

he sits across from nico now at the asian brew, methodically swirling around a spoon in the oat latte he ordered. after they exchange the typical pleasantries, robin’s ready to cut to his main curiosity. “you know, i’ve been meaning to ask about what ended up happening with the whole tommy and riley and you situation. is it looking like tommy’s gonna be in the market for a new couch?”

arthritis is a silent killer, not just of drummers’ joint coordination across the city but also of robin’s evening plans. however, while he has to accept the cancellation of that night’s basement concert, that doesn’t mean he’s also totally ready to accept spending his first friday night in since he had an actual medical condition keeping him bed-ridden (and even then, he’s pretty sure he managed to at least slink down to ginger’s for a drink). so when he shows up at lucy’s, he’ll admit that his intentions aren’t completely in line with the netflix-and-wine-and-chill concept that he promised her. instead, when she answers the door, he’s got a knowing smirk on his face, and before she can invite him inside robin is the first to speak. “i’m not half bad at picking a lock. you wanna break into the roof? the skies are pretty clear today, we’ll probably have a stellar view.”

there had been many bennington residents passing in and out of edward’s day the morning after gingers and none he wanted to see less than robin. part of it was pride, he didn’t want robin to realize that he was in fact just flesh and blood that could be wounded by his punches, the other part was it turned out punching robin hadn’t actually knocked any of the unbearableness out of him. he should have expected to see him, but he didn’t. he knew raph had gone over there, and he didn’t say a word about it even if he hated it ( although if the night before had proven anything it was that raphael was solidly team edward ). so, dealing with raphaels evil ex boyfriend he could at least take solace in the fact that he was secure in his relationship regardless of how much robin tried to convince him otherwise. 

opening the door he made no attempt at welcoming robin into the shared apartment, although eddies level of welcoming never seemed to sway the other in any particular way. he couldn’t deny that robin looked worse for the wear than he did, a boost eddie’s ego didn’t need whatsoever. but still, having his god complex good and full eddie stood a little bit taller. he didn’t want an apology from robin, if anything he wanted a postcard from siberia where all the good marxists get exiled to. still, he knew if raph had sent him over here that was eddies signal to be at the very least civil ( although it felt like the very most he was capable of ). “wow great apology robbie, they teach you how to do that in film school ?” he couldn’t imagine anyhting that could feel better than punching him again but restraint was the word of the day, “no feelings hurt on my end. do you really need to be told to have good manners though ? you really aren’t capable on your own, huh ?”

he wonders briefly if eddie will punch him again and, if he does, whether or not robin would actually die without murph there to hold his frat brother back. it’s all very metaphorical, the thought of dying at the hands of the physical representation of capitalism. he thinks marx would be proud. “no, can’t say apologies were on any syllabus. is it something you learned in school? was that the economics department’s idea of teaching ethics?” he brings the sunglasses he’s wearing up to his hair, allowing him to get a better look at eddie but also revealing the black eye he was covering up underneath. “to be clear, i don’t think i need to be apologizing. i wasn’t exactly the one who clobbered your face first, and any clobbering i did engage in was purely out of self-defense. but apparently my words were too harsh, and if that’s the case, i’m sorry.” 

he wants to light a cigarette just to blow the smoke in eddie’s face. god, he hates this prick. “if i really think about it, it’s not you individually that i have an issue with but the financial system that you pray at the alter of, and then at that point that’s not your fault so much as it is the fault of the values you were raised and brainwashed with. and if that’s the case, it’s not very nice of me to pick on you just because you’re naive enough to buy what the nice capitalist man in the sky is selling. you’re just not immune to propoganda, i should really be in favor of educating you instead of tearing you down.” he says it all with the illusion of sorrow, as though he actually deeply pities eddie like an adult pities an ignorant child. “but in the meantime, i’d appreciate you not beating me up, at least until the existing injuries have healed. if i need to do something to make that happen, just say the word."

unlike the 90 percent of smokers who try their first cigarette by the age of eighteen (and yes, he googled this, because he wants another reason to remind everyone that he’s simply built different), robin only started smoking in college. it was less a real itch for nicotine than it was a social thing he did with all the other film bros, who seemed to live a life surrounded by smoke, and to this day, he’s maintained a healthy-ish relationship with cigarettes that mostly sees him doing it around friends without any actual addiction behind it (or so he swears, as long as you never ask him to quit). today, however, he’s standing on a street corner and blowing smoke rings all on his own - his way of destressing after a particularly irksome phonecall with his parents regarding the money he needs from them to pay this month’s rent. he doesn’t want to think about it and sure as hell doesn’t want to talk about it, so he’s opted for cooling down in the form of a cigarette break, until he spots kyle down the road at the brew. 

it looks like she’s putting a key into the coffee shop’s lock, which robin deduces to mean that she’s locking up for the night. his time to shine. he finishes off his eco-friendly cigarette and digs around in his pocket for a mint, popping and swallowing the watermelon-mint one he snagged from trader joe’s before going over to greet kyle. “hey ky, finishing up for the day?” he asks, though it’s obvious that’s exactly what she’s doing. “what’s next on the evening agenda? knowing you, you’re juggling between arson and armed robbery, both of which i guess i’m gonna have to talk you out of.” it’s all teasing - he can’t imagine kyle raising her voice at someone, let alone committing a real crime.