NO MORE SHAME / NO MORE FEAR / NO MORE DREAD

his first instinct was to push aria away. not to hurt her, per se. though that would of course have been the consequence—and justified. his second instinct was to kick her, splinter apart her shin in such a way that would bring her to her knees, or at least to some level below his own. his third instinct, and ultimately the one he acted on—the one he understood to be his own and not some facet of his father that he'd come to inherit—was to stand very, very still.

there was murder in aria's face: the curl of her lip, the crease of her nose, the hot expulsion of her breath, unsavoury. but there was murder in ranta's eyes, and it was not new, it was not novel, it was not reactive. it was there, just the same as it always was. only that most people did not stand close enough to see it.

he did not allow anybody stand close enough to see it. but aria hadn't asked permission. worse: she seemed to believe she didn't need it.

when she finally stalked away, the poster in his palm was a crumpled, strangled mess: a result of some subconscious fourth instinct. he exhaled, brushed off the parts of his clothes that he suspected she might have touched, or had merely gotten too close to, and followed her. on his way past the pump-two garbage can, he threw out the poster.

' mr. wiseman? ' his voice had an edge to it. ' we did. ' well, he didn’t. but somebody else had, and so they all had. or at least anyone who was worth knowing, capable of listening, and allowed to speak. which didn't amount to all that many zen’ins.

' he is ... ' theatrical? entertaining? precisely the sort of man you'd expect to ringlead a circus? ranta settles for diplomacy rather than detail: ' he has a presence. '

as did aria. though the apple seems to have fallen backwards off the tree, rolled down a hill and under some thorny bushes, and started to go bad. or possibly had sprouted that way: already rotten and sheltering a worm or a wasp.

all of this which he also, politely, did not say.

Just a teeny-tiny fuckin' coward who's never had to fight for anything in his short life. Not like Aria has. Of course, any fight Aria has had to engage in, and subsequently win, has ultimately been one that she started all on her own. Even when she was a little girl, this is how it went. This is how it will always go.

And she'll heal, of course. From various batterings and beatings—from having her shin shattered, even, if Ranta were formidable enough to do such a thing.

As far as Aria's concerned, he isn't.

Aria listens to the grating sound of Ranta's voice, to his pathetic footfalls. She still doesn't know where she's going, but she sure as hell appear to have a purpose.

"Don't call him that," Aria mutters, which is what she would have muttered no matter how Ranta referred to Rhett Wiseman. Any reference to the man is completely distasteful—even if it is necessary, as it is here and now.

Aria rolls her eyes. Spectacularly, she rolls them a second time right after. Jaw swinging and creaking where her mandible attaches to her maxilla, she glances behind her so she can follow Ranta's directions. They traverse the block and round the only available corner to round without any further snips or quips from Aria.

She really doesn't like the sound of Ms. Borden, is the thing.

"I cannot fucking believe that guy!" she finally blurts, seething at nobody actually present to experience her wrath. "He's a loser, and his obsession with his fucking—redemption arc is creepy. It's sad. He sucks at it, too! Obviously! 'cause what the fuck are you doing stalking me and stuff?"

She thinks to check her phone for the first time in hours, but she doesn't want to have actual knowledge of Rhett directly reaching out. She doesn't want the distraction around Ranta, either.

"This your ride?" She points, head tilting. The Toyota Century is running—perhaps to provide Ranta's abandoned driver the luxury of air conditioning on a day as insufferably hot as today.

at least she wasn't trying to hit him anymore. for now.

' we have a car. and a driver. ' he maneuvered through the store with great care, orbiting aria in such a way that it never broke his big-eyed owl's stare. opening the door required him to walk backwards, then lean against it until his weight did the pushing on his behalf. he gestured for aria to go through.

' he’s down the … ' to supplement his vagueness, or else to complement it, he pointed with an unerringly steady hand: at the end of the block, around the corner, around another corner, parallel parked to exactness in a no-standing zone, was a toyota century—import, straight from tokyo. ' there. '

outside was humid. the aftermath of a late day thunderstorm filled the air with the vaporous but persistent smell of damp garbage, damp rats, damp clothes. and then there was the gasoline.

She'd like to hit him. Just once, maybe twice. Closed fist, open hand—doesn't really matter. She's not particular. What she does know is that she'd like the satisfaction of hurting him with brute force. This prevents her from becoming increasingly agitated that he'd confiscated and pocketed her knife. It calls to her.

Similarly, Aria feels beckoned—taunted—by the flyer in Ranta's hand. He's holding it carefully; when he's in front of her, she sees Raya's hopeful, dazzling countenance with sickening clarity. As she walks through the door behind held open by Ranta's body weight, she casts a lingering, disgusted look to the image of Raya, which has no idea at all that it is being perceived so hatefully.

"We? He? This is so fucking creepy."

Aria's staring as aggressively at Ranta while he stares at her. This isn't necessary for her like it is for him to protect himself, but it feels like what he deserves. The whole thing is quite unnerving.

Aria inhales deeply, then exhales. Her nostrils flare. She squints. She cannot see around two corners, so she'll have to take Ranta's word for it.

We again. Aria's still bitter over his assumption that her leaving the gas station unattended during her shift means that Ranta gets to decide where they go next. She had asked, of course, how he's gotten to her place of employment in the first place—but she was only curious if he could teleport on top of everything else.

"The others?"

Aria steps up to Ranta, not to move out of the gas station parking lot and further down the block but to intimidate him. She looms over Ranta (who is petite, and has awful teeth)—then freezes, purely of her own volition.

"Did you go to Blackwell's already? Did you talk to my dad?"

⚚・・・・・THE SUGGESTION OF SHAME OVER...NOT KNOWING THIS MAN? The demon is posed with an impossible puzzle, because it has no rules and no rulers. She blinks, checks her wrist as if it houses some kind of cheat note about this individual, and then, she returns a blank look with a single crease in her eyebrow. KOSIAX sweeps her eyes over him. What a dreadful sight, quite literally. The diplomat purses her lips. She does not waste time to pretend she is thinking hard about this person; she only manages to play around with an idea that maybe this is someone she should establish a connection with for the purposes of conflict. Just in case there is a country that needs to start teaching a lesson to a bordering assailant. Who is it going to be? KOSIAX shifts her weight. Again, the suggestion of being ashamed.

The demon blinks. She is made of Three Traitors, all who abandoned shame in favor of selfish actions, burying their counterparts into the ground. Shame is what creates her purposes, so logically, yes, it is good that she is ashamed of something. The diplomat discerns that Phil is just some madman with an aura of a miasma KOSIAX sometimes receives in mail in Norilsk from a friendly Fortress. This is a familiar dread. Like the human worship of agony, a Lautréamontian nightmare.

"If you do not matter to my purpose, becoming a parrot isn't going to change that." The demon states flatly. "So, are you going to out yourself as a colleague, or is this a waste of time I have to pencil in an extra five minute consideration for, Phil?"

KOSIAX thinks. She does not speak. She does not do. Phil decides he would like for something to happen. A blink is insufficient.

Oh! There we go.

"Your purpose."

So much for not being a parrot.

"I've never had a job," he admits.

He is not ashamed of this, so he does not do either of them the disservice of putting on a sheepish air. "I wouldn't want us as colleagues. Coworkers. Sitting at a desk and doing paperwork. Following others' orders. Upholding laws I don't care about—don't believe in." Eee-yuck!

Why hasn't she killed herself? Will pencilling in a five-to-seven minute conversation with a harmful entity be her final straw?

“ what, you think i'm some kinda monster? don't answer that. c'mon. ”

he does a push-pull-maneuver on the seat to get it to open, and gets a second helmet out from inside. nobody can say he's not a gentleman, right?

Despite his don't answer that plea: "What I know is that you are, really truly, a bona fide monster, Jeff."

Just Jeff. Not short for much. Not long for nothing, neither.

"I don't believe anyone's ever called me madam in all my life. Who're you tryin' to impress?"

houston looks around, to spirit behind her, pash beside her, trying to gauge what either of them might be thinking. fuck, if she only actually had powers.

she doesn't look away from the general direction of the others when she says, "okay. so hurt him."

see, this is all well and good and benevolent of pyotr. it's lovely that he wants to help these girls, and pash gets to benefit from it. she's a realist - she knows it's more about spirit and houston. she understands her place in this lineup. but at the end of the day, a gangster is a gangster, no matter how warmhearted he appears.

pash has been around the block, no matter how much people opt to forget that. she hasn't survived this long off the back of dumb natured naivety, and she's at the end of her fucking rope being spoken to like she has.

dead people tell tales they've been bumped off for knowing, and it's useful when it's useful.

a gangster is a gangster. business is business. she doesn't trust that favors from people like pyotr come with no strings attached, so she's making what she believes is an even trade. word is that the chechens are a weak bottomed operation - most notably down to their sloppily aggressive trafficking, both in drugs and in humans, which she and spirit have witnessed firsthand - and they are in direct competition with pyotr's associated outfit.

"he's not the only one in there."

do the fuckin' math.

"whatever you do with the rest, that's your business. we could get into it, but it's comin' up on rooster time." for the first time since she's sat down, she glances to spirit. "anything you wanna add?"

Deep down, or perhaps more urgently, Spirit does know there's something wrong with Pyotr. Dead-undeadness aside, she knows enough about the work he does and the murdering he's accomplished with brutal efficiency to believe wholeheartedly that he's the sort of man who'd knock you around and demand an illegitimate debt of thirty thousand dollars. The more she accepts this, the less she stares at him in that way that was genuinely starting to freak him out.

This is the sort of thing Harris has always tried to keep himself out of and urged her to avoid, too. Pash says whatever you do with the rest, that's your business to which Pyotr remains ambivalently inscrutable but Spirit slumps like she's relieved.

"Okay."

Pyotr smiles, again, at Houston blandly when he says this. She's the one who's been kind and sensible enough to give him a clear command. It's one of the easiest for him to follow. Pash is always always unrepentantly delivering nonsense.

The transactional nature of all of this, however—it's easy enough to understand, arithmetic not required. Thank god for that.

"Are they all going to die?"

Pyotr shrugs. He's not happy this one's speaking to him. He looks pointedly to Houston for an answer. Hurt him, admittedly, could be more specific. It's good to know when to stop, sometimes. It's good to be told what to do.

which wasn’t much.

her voice cut through his self-allotted introspection like a knife. he opened his eyes and frowned—frowned because she was making demands. ( was and making and demands were not the troubling operative words here. )

he held aria’s blurry silhouette in his peripheral but stared at the honey buns, at the spot where his blood was beginning to seep into the cardboard. he wiped his thumb over the stain, smearing it up and across little debbie’s petrified, dimpled face.

' this, i guess. ' he returned to the counter and slid the box under the plexiglass, further than was helpful for scanning. after a moment of fumbling blindly with his wallet, he added a fifty-dollar bill to the mix.

' you can keep it. okay? here. ' the money and the pastries. because he had a moral compass, he could not let somebody else eat the tainted honey buns. because his moral compass did not point due-north, he did not extend these standards to aria. ' for you. '

a curt, practiced bow. ' i apologize, ' said ranta, beaming at her with his wide, reproachful i-forgive-you gaze. he felt bad; he also felt that her behaviour had been unacceptable and was, therefore, in need of forgiving.

He won't, of course. Her hope is a powerful thing because it is fueled by vitriol, but it is also uninformed. Ranta won't die as a result of some measly eye blood—a weakness Aria can barely perceive while she does her job. Anyway, that's—collateral. It's nothing. She knows this. She's experienced it herself.

Also, she has to focus a little on helping this customer, lest he go so insane that he call the cops and irreparably throw off the rest of Aria's day more than it's already been ruined by this nosy freak.

Aria scans the blood-smeared honeybun. She doesn't need to look as she does it; she remains staring at Ranta, like this will somehow prevent him from paralyzing her. She's still trying to figure out how he does what he does—and she does genuinely need to know. She isn't willing to let it happen to her again.

Ranta gives her cash. Her unwavering stare becomes inexorably annoyed. There's barely any change left in the register—

—she decides she can pocket the bill, the whole fucking bill, independent of Ranta's placation. Oh, you can keep it. Oh, yeah, well, she will, and she was going to anyway, so there. The gas station will not benefit from this sale. Aria leaves the system running, and she doesn't care at all.

"Dude, get up."

Aria rolls her eyes, then crosses from the cashier's sanctuary to the main convenience store.

"No—fuck. No help. Just—we're going." She makes a scram gesture. If he follows, they'll exit. She doesn't even bother to flick off the lights, as she has no concern for the landlord's utility bill or the city's overworked power grid.

"I look like I need to rob?

But that doesn't negate the inherit risk of her company.

Electra by Sophocles (tr. Anne Carson)

Industry S04E08 “Both, And”

would he sink down her body, ease friction in the tape-stickiness of their flesh rubbing together with the tongue glossing over her neck, mark up his knees in the - forget that, actually. the marble floors of the bathroom are seamless. there's no griddy grout separation.

"i'm a little mad, i'm a little - "

water fills the tub and pash decides she wants two things; her leg shucked over gojo's hip so she can get a hard press on something to relieve the ache past the pair of lips that isn't moving, and a fuckin kiss on the mouth.

"AGHSHIT!"

"Noooo!"

Don't be mad don't be mad! Here he goes! He could start flailing and pleading his case, but he wants this instead: her hooked on him, her wanting him, her flexible and impressive and mouth-wateringly sexy.

"Whoa!"

He feels her weight shift, senses the space where she is supposed to be and calculates the space she will soon occupy: namely, the bottom of the tub. In real time, he steps back, throws his arms up— this is completely out of his control!—and Pasha tumbles.

She's fine, of course. There's water. That slowed her down. She won't bruise, probably. Instead of soothing her with any of this, or defending his lack of intervention, Gojo damn near dives down with her. His knees end up wedged against either side of the tub. His boner's become increasingly impolite; her hip might register this first.

Water wastefully sloshes all over the tiles and their lack of grout.

"What happened!"

He cups each of her breasts with each one of his hands, massages them or perhaps uses the hold to relieve his own stress. He's worried they might have been hurt worst of all by the whole ordeal.

and that didn't make him better than luke. at night, every night, when he stared at the bottom of the bunk above his and imagined that the knot holes in the wood were stars, he actually thought that it made him worse.

even with all of his blind spots, luke seemed to know who he was. or at least who he should be—needed to be—to get the job done.

adam stumbled backward and fell, hard, onto the ground. the force of luke's palm burned his chest like a brand and sent blood rushing to his ears. katoush katoush katoush.

he scrabbled to his knees, then into a crouch. he held his hands up, but it wasn't a resignation—don't hurt me, don't hurt me—it was an overture: i don't want to hurt you.

he didn't even know whether he could. ( luke was his teacher, and he had always been an inferior student. ) he just knew that he didn't want to.

' —nothing, man. you're right. i'm sorry. i shouldn't have—i shouldn't have said that. ' he got up, slowly, slowly, his hands still raised, his sword still on the ground. it lay between them like a landmine, one of those bombs they used to rig no-man's-land with during times of war. the thing was of no use to him anymore: it wasn't what had hurt luke, and it wasn't what would protect adam now. ' that wasn't fair. i know you're not waiting around for … ' for what? ' anything. ' nothing, man.

Luke does not know to fear this yet. His nightmares are frightening, sometimes viscerally nauseating, but they do not compel him to fret over losing his sense of self. He knows what will happen to him, to the world, once the gods are no longer ruling it. And this brings him rare, admittedly fleeting peace.

Luke, his mouth a skeptical slant, his eyes cruel and calculating, looks down at Adam. He is deciding if it is worth keeping Adam down but, again, remains aware of the potential for spectators. There's got to be a point to this. For the optics.

His foot decisively stomps down on Adam's training sword: a compromise with who he must appear as and who he is. It requires one to maintain the delusion that Adam was ever going to pick it up and retaliate against Luke, but that's a delusion Luke is comfortable with.

Luke's spiked adrenaline fizzles and splatters and doesn't know where to go in the wake of Adam's de-escalation. Luke's steadiness becomes a soft, vulnerable bewilderment.

"—yeah."

Luke stretches his hand out for Adam to take. This is what you do.

"We should go eat. Like you said, right?" Cocksure smile—the Luke that would make Annabeth proud. Thalia'd roll her eyes, but when wouldn't she?