NO MORE SHAME / NO MORE FEAR / NO MORE DREAD

“oh! okay.”

fuck, is he ever glad she said it for him.

jules gets caught up in anticipation a little too easily; that moment just before a kiss, when they both know what’s coming, but not who’s going to make the move... he’s never really been the one to take the initiative. honestly, if spirit hadn’t said what they were both thinking, he probably would have slinked back, let himself be gripped by self-doubt, and killed the moment.

but she did, so he doesn’t do that.

instead, jules closes the distance between them. crowds her against the brick wall of the venue until her back is pressed taught to it. the joint he’s been letting burn away to nothing gets swiftly discarded, flicked onto the concrete like an old piece of gum. then their lips meet, equal parts eagerness and urgency, and jules wonders why he didn’t let himself do this sooner. an arm slides around her waist, body pulled close to his own.

She's addicted to begging, to simpering pleas punctuated by baby. Somehow, this gets her what she wants/needs or thinks she wants/needs more often than not.

But deep down, she knows how to take. To demand. She's the only one who's going to take care of herself. She learned that when she was a kid. She learned it again—over and over again—from her older brother. From the men she tried to count on.

She doesn't need to count on Jules, though, not really. She just needs to be held by him—to be backed up against something sturdy by him, and that's as good as him being reliable. She kisses him like she's desperately grateful, which she is.

Her wants/needs are rarely categorized or prioritize. Everything is as critical as base survival. She'll die if she isn't touched, she's sure of it.

He's her hero.

while she talks about meat, he stares at her mouth and wonders if she has herbivore teeth: straight, blunt, lacking canines. he fights the urge to push back her lip and count them, to coax open her jaw and run his thumb along their edges to see if they can cut him—or else if they will. he wants to see if they are naturally dull or if someone had filed them down; if this is what she is really and truly like or if she is playing a part.

you could tell such things if you had an experienced hand, or if you yourself had grown up with herbivore teeth. once. before they'd been filed—not down but into points.

stella's grip goes lax around the cone, but he's distracted. he barely notices that he's now doing the holding, up and in place. when she nudges his knee, he almost drops it on the ground—pulls away from her—fumbles forward—catches the cotton part of the candy in his palm.

because profanity is bad for digestion and they have a dinner ahead of them, he doesn't swear. because he's practical, he tears off a piece and eats it.

' very sweet. ' he says neutrally, making a face. he keeps eating it though, bit by bit, since at this stage he kind of has to—having had touched it. he shifts back to the way they were, close but not touching.

' we'll share veal later. peek-kah-tah. my family and your father, ' he does not call what she has a family, ' all of us. ' this idea seems to delight him. ' and then desert. maybe something else—ah, not this, please. ' he laughs as politely as he speaks: ha ha.

sure, he had wounded her earlier. he regrets that. he knows that it was wrong. but understand: he'd only done that so he could single the wound out later, put his mouth on it, make it better again with promises of dinner and family and togetherness.

this was because he preferred sad women, delicate and breakable, women who'd been messed up and were in desperate need of consoling. he liked to comfort them, reassure them, apologize to them. make them happier, if only for a moment. and himself too, of course. that was the payoff: a grateful woman would go the extra mile. a grateful woman would smile and laugh and tell you you weren't rude even when you were. she would bump your knee. she would offer you cotton candy—and eat it, too, if you asked nicely.

Her eyebrows wrinkle inward when he stumbles over nothing but himself, but the expression does not last.

She nods, understanding and knowing. It is very sweet. His ambivalence leaves much to be desired, but Stella's felt that way all night.

"Oh!"

He didn't like it. He was being courteous. He was trying it because she asked him to. It's always good to do what you're told—to speak when you're spoken to. Things like this. She still feels badly, but she laughs a stilted laugh and does not think too hard about how he has said please to her at least three times in the last one hundred and seventy seconds.

"People really like tiramisu. It's—sweet." Obviously. She cringes, grimaces. "It's coffee cake, but not coffee cake—there's layers. It's good. I like panna cotta, too," she tells Ranta, who, again, did not ask.

She likes that Ranta speaks plainly and optimistically. He seems, now, to eagerly accept that a family meal is in their future, because the Romanos are a family, and Blackwell's is part of that family. He didn't explicitly say any of this, but it's easy to convince herself of.

He can sit where he would like. He can do anything he would like, really. But she should tell him:

"You don't need to call me Miss Romano." People often do call her this. It always makes her uncomfortable. Ranta in particular has this effect—he can't be much older than her. "Um—I'm Stella. Just Stella. You're—Ranta." She hesitated, sure, but ultimately pronounces his name correctly. Rahn-tah.

"Our parents are doing—work stuff? I guess?" She doesn't know. Does he know? Is she allowed to ask?

" only on occasion? " cassie lets a heavy exhale shove her shoulder blades against the metal bracing of the doorframe, the force of the sigh shuffling the copper strands curtaining her brow. fatigue rings thick circles under each eye. the raw undersides of her lids prick & sear. whether it's because of the loss, or the ponderous hours of the shift getting to her ...

Samira grimaces, cringing inwardly at her own poor decision-making. She blinks away such self-involvement and focuses her attention on Cassie.

"I don't mean to apply we should have anything less. Or that we should lose that emotional response at all."

"What you're feeling—what we're feeling—it's normal, and human."

Now—is this the right thing to say? Samira's fingertips flutter by her sides; she has to consciously compel them to still.

"I know where you're coming from, is—do you want to sit down in the break room?"

                   kinda the point of asking though, is what he's trying to remind himself: to have your needs accommodated. he wouldn't have had to say anything otherwise.

                   still, he's looking a little stiff following her. blame the long day on his feet. feeling rusty in more ways than one, meanwhile she's looking as sprightly as ever.

                   it's not that he's not comfortable around her, far from it. but it hasn't quite been long enough yet for samira the girlfriend to replace dr. mohan the resident entirely. so when he sits, there's boundaries he's wary of crossing, while at the same time wanting to prove they're on the same page.

He asks how tired she is. He looks too thoughtful to be placid, too self-aware to be nonchalant. Maybe he'll be able to sense the vibrantly expressive confusion that overtakes her features. Being so reactive to his question means she doesn't have to acknowledge the simple physical intimacy—the way it begs to be intuitive, the way it already seems so right.

Samira scoffs nervously. She debates explaining that she's incapable of feeling tired when her sympathetic nervous system's been so actively engaged. She knows from experience the comedown is inevitable—and acknowledging it now counts for something.

"I'm glad you're here," is what she ultimately says, which isn't an answer. She shifts, re-learning how to lounge comfortable on her own furniture.

"I wanted to host, but—are you asking because I could stand to be more entertaining?"

but then there’s the knife's edge, and with the knife’s edge comes the fear: has he gone too far? and if he has, what comes next?

STELLA HADN’T MEANT TO HURT HIM, BUT HE HAD HURT STELLA—which is of course what he’d wanted to do. only that now that he's done it, he regrets it. and not only that: he promptly convinces himself that he hadn't meant to do it at all, that it isn’t like him—he wouldn’t do that!—and all of this is a horrible misunderstanding.

the strangeness of his expression turns to dismay. he has the decency to look horrified, if not about his own actions then about stella’s, and the way that her stammering makes him feel. shh, he wants to say. it’s okay. i’m not mad. trust me, i’m not mad. i’m not mad and so you can trust me. it’s okay! it’s—

the cotton candy bobs between them. to reward stella her penance, he tears off a piece with one hand, holds the cone steady with the other. now they're both holding it, which is strange and unbecoming. and also her hand feels very warm. or maybe that’s his.

' i apologize. i was rude. we will have dinner together, all together, and i will pay, and you can eat veal. ' he still hasn’t let go of her; he still doesn’t eat the tuft of cotton candy. his eyes have turned to rabbit’s eyes, dark and imploring, darting across her face in search of anything that he might interpret as forgiveness. but forgiveness for what, exactly? he can’t place it now. and shouldn’t he be the one doing the forgiving?

two flightless birds sit on a wire. they seek absolution from each other rather than from the sky.

' i don't ... i don't know what that ' veal ' is. will you explain it to me, please? ' something in the way he says this, so lame and wanting, makes him sound his age.

' and will you have some of this too, please? ' he offers her the piece of cotton candy.

"You weren't rude!" The cycle threatens to solidify itself. Stella, by some grace of her God or something even more compelling, manages to overcome it by smiling—genuinely.

Now they're both holding the cotton candy. The tube supporting the cotton candy is made of paper—paper only slightly more durable than what you or I might put into a printer. It does not crumple beneath the pressure of Stella's frantic hold because she does not do things, ever, in a manner that would cause such injury or threaten the integrity of anything, anyone.

Stella's hand is very warm. Or maybe that's his. What's most likely is that it is both of their hands—sweaty, too feverish to be truly clammy.

"You don't have to pay," she says, and when she says it, she's giggling girlishly; she's briefly, loftily amused by Ranta's complete and utter lack of awareness of how things go.

Stella is under the impression that neither she nor Ranta truly know what his family at large and her father currently discuss in the privacy of Daniel's office, but in this moment, Ranta seems even more delusional and optimistic than she is. Among other blind spots he possesses, he must not know he won't be able to pay for anything; Daniel has already taken care of it. He will provide what must be provided for anyone who needs it.

Ranta looks like he is on stimulants. Stella looks so kind that it tires her.

To accept the cotton candy offering, she decides to let go of the tube, since Ranta's still holding it above her lap. She takes the piece from his hands and eats it from her own fingers. The sugar melts against her tongue quickly. She smiles, close-mouthed. Finally:

"Veal is, um," This isn't the sort of thing you discuss so frankly—not in public, not with people you barely know. This is because most things, when you think about them, are better off unsaid. "It's like beef. Like steak?" She doesn't know how to make that more relatable or applicable to his experiences. What she does know is that her explaining that veal can only ever be a cow killed when it was still a calf, when it was still young, won't happen willingly. "You can eat veal piccata?" It comes out like a question. She already knows what she said doesn't make sense.

"Try it!"

She nudges his knee with her knee, then regrets it. Her palm is still warm from her own nervous blood flow, and his palm is still wrapped around the cotton candy tube. She can't move away. It's not his fault she can't—all the same, she's stuck.

ranta says nothing for some time—not to restrain himself but rather to demonstrate what restraint looks like to someone who seems to lack it.

around them, hawkers hawk; music drifts through rippling tent flaps; circus-goers amble through the dust in their unreasonable shoes.

' and what do people eat, miss romano? ' when he finally speaks, he keeps his voice kindly but remote: a cross between a pedagogue, soothsayer, and benevolent patriarch. that should be the tone for conversations like this, where he doesn't want to directly acknowledge his disappointment with her. only imply it. which he does by keeping his eyes lowered, his expression pensive.

' you're family, right? you must know. ' having shed the cardigan, he has no sleeves to pick at and settles, instead, on clasping his hands together. ' you spend dinner with them, yes? because you're family? '

it's important to him that she knows that this—this ragtag abomination of the weak and the exploited, who must surely be victims of exploitation because they are weak, and not due to some delusion of love and loyalty that keeps them together, keeps them happy, keeps them placid—isn't family. and that if it is, she isn't part of it. she can't be. because this isn't family. this is not a family. this is not what it means to be a family.

which is also to say: because the hei share their meals, and the kukuru can name his favourite meat, and the zen'ins allow him to sit at their table, he knows that they—unlike stella and her circus—are.

but she sounded so familiar just now, didn't she? he's heard it said. he's said it himself. he's thinking it now, as he does any time he thinks of home: of course i like it here. i love it here. it's nice. this is a great place, and we are family.

' so ... ' ranta turns to look at her, ' what do they eat? ' he is speaking so, so gently now, and his eyes are very, very wide.

' what do you eat? ' and why isn't it the same thing?

—none of that was to inflict pain.

So, politely: What the fuck is Ranta Zen'in's fucking issue right now?

"Yes, I—"

Ranta's disposition and posture are briefly so reminiscent of Daniel's (at times when he has endeavored to show her right from wrong because she was too confused and naive to figure it out herself) that Stella can't finish her sentence. She's better suited to cutting herself off.

"I'm just—maybe—"

Maybe what? Stella blanches as it occurs to her what must have happened here: it was rude of her to speak so severely when Ranta merely wanted to know more about how the performers at Blackwell's live, how Stella lives, because he lives across the ocean and eats different types of food and does not relate to his family as wholly, as intuitively, as Stella relates to hers.

"This," The cotton candy once more must be jostled, "Is something you eat when you go to—I don't know. When you come here, or a carnival, or a festival, or something like that? It's sweet. Did you try it? It's really sweet, and—"

Surely he knows you can't eat dessert whenever you want. He's an adult. He must know that.

"—you should try it. It's good." An offering.

"And maybe later, after the show, my dad will cook something for you guys. Something we like to eat." We as in herself, Spirit, and occasionally Vincent. She does not know what Rhett and his friends and coworkers eat when they're exhausted to the bone and haven't been able to make it to the grocery store. That version of reality does not occur to her. Her stomach does sink, however, as Ranta's interrogation has an effect that surely was unintentional: Stella must accept that the performers at Blackwell's are not her family. Her family is the three people who sit in stilted silence while their forks clatter against expensive bowls and everything around them grows colder, colder, colder.

When Daniel cooks for the performers, which he has done, in his life, Stella can't figure out how to make that sort of communal meal align with the dinners she's eaten since she has memories of them.

#dealing with family be like

choso does. dante appreciates it, though he keeps that truth very close to his chest. he doesn't understand everything that is going on with choso; the magic that surrounds him, the darkness that simmers. he could ask. perhaps he would be given an answer.

but choso hasn't asked too much of him. so maybe he can do the same thing, and keep his curiosity to himself. there are things to learn, anyway, if you're smart enough to glean the pieces of information: the way he speaks of the world, the way he stands. like right now, arms around himself, protective over his own body like he expects someone to throw a punch. dante finds it so very ironic that a decade ago, more or less, he would have been the kind to take advantage of such knowledge.

"nothing really makes sense these days," he admits, the flat line of his mouth giving up nothing more than the words spoken.

So he does not know everything he could about Dante's father, his family. He does not know whether Dante was passively complicit or eagerly, enthusiastically helpful to his father's strategy. What Choso has decided, however, is that Dante loved his family, and this was the right thing to do even if it did not go the right way.

Choso does not have a father he would do anything for. Whatever distorted, blurry memories he's retained of Noritoshi Kamo aren't about Noritoshi Kamo at all. They are about something far, far worse than whatever man he would have turned out to be had he been allowed to live the rest of his life without Kenjaku's interference.

"Mm." Choso gets confused, too. There is a lot to see and feel and accept about the world in a way that he did not have to bother with for the first one hundred and fifty years of his existence.

"Even if what happened," what you and your family did, "Was unforgivable—yes—because it was—unforgivable, you should not resent the people who are left. They can teach you how to be better. They can show you who you need to be."

He shrugs. His arms slacken slightly, but not to reach out for Dante in any meaningful way. The balcony is cramped enough as is; they are as close as they need to be. (Choso lives simply, almost monastically, and he prefers small spaces. Even being outside, exposed to the sky, can occasionally leave him twitchy.)