NO MORE SHAME / NO MORE FEAR / NO MORE DREAD

                   she's not aware of her own bias, nor of how quickly she's jumping to conclusions given the day she's had. she doesn't even know this woman.

This kid, this student—he's hardly her friend. He was—is, still is, let's not waste away into pessimistic despair, Margot—hardly more than a mark. A chink in The Organization's armor.

She can't believe he was ever so close to one of its young members. He's recuperating, hospitalized, because he's too sensitive. Cares too much.

Margot never laid a finger on him, and he'd never hurt anybody. Except for himself.

"He wasn't conscious," Margot admits unsteadily. "And I'm not—I can't stay. I'm not from here," Has she already said that? How desperate is she to distance herself from this city, from this tragedy?

"I know that," he says, a little sharper than he intends. "I know I didn't have to come."

He leans forward again, forearms resting on the table now instead of bracing against it, an attempt at being less confrontational.

"I came because Spirit asked me to. Because it mattered to her." A beat. "And because if I'm with her, then the people in her life matter by default. That's kind of how it works. You don't get to love someone and then ignore everything attached to them."

His eyes drop to the last line, brows furrow. He's all too aware of the tempers in this house. Spirit, and Zachary, have said enough for him to paint a decent enough picture.

She can't say this to Charles, of course. What she can do is appreciate his more relaxed posture. She reciprocates, eyes softening.

For a moment. She could do without all the lecturing.

She wonders if anyone will ever have to endure this bullshit mess for her sake. How does Spirit always get so many people to humor her, to suffer for her?

so ask me something

She shrugs.

That's all this ever was to him. Spirit was the freshness. The novelty of the hour. The taste in his mouth of today—one day she will have frizzled grays and he will have been made new, unrecognizable to her outside a knowing look.

It's oddly comforting to know she would eventually take his hand one last time. "The longer it cooks," He begins, stepping forward until her chin's instinctively pressed into his chest. "the more tender it will be. And we're aiming for falling off the bone texture." Granted, he might need breaks to baste the poor pig, but they both also needed breaks.

But for awhile there, she couldn't stand being in her own skin. She was a child in a small white room. She could beg her ghosts to have mercy on her, and there wasn't a damn thing they could do to compel someone to come and save her.

Things are different now! Things are different now. She can appreciate Reaper's meandering indulgence—if not because it often benefits her, which it does, but because getting to know the novelty of him is beautiful in its own way.

Time doesn't have to be scary. Death herself doesn't have to be scary, either. She's learning a lot.

"Falling off the bone," she mutters, muffled but incredulous. She wants it to sound gross, but he's clearly the expert, here, and everything he tells her becomes so sexy that she can't truly scoff at him.

To bed, young lady. Yippee! Off she goes, practically skipping from his kitchen to the bedroom. She effectively jumps onto the mattress, really relying on the springing effect of propping herself on the tips of her toes.

Her eyes follow his brief survey of the apartment, quietly noting the signs of a shared life. It's smaller than she's accustomed to, and a fleeting, selfish thought wonders why they hadn't met at Zachary's place, or even her hotel—but it passes. Inviting her here was a kindness, deliberate and not owed.

"That sounds... settled," she says. The silence is a little uncomfortable. She hopes, distantly, that one day the silence between them might soften into something easier, something that resembles family, perhaps.

But in this moment, in this place, it feels a little less relevant. Any present, legitimate threats to Zachary's safety are not Alexandra's responsibility. He's an adult, and she's usually on another continent. But Cain, damn him, has shouldered some burden—unprompted. Zachary would never demand this. All the same, Cain knows, fundamentally, that he needs to protect the man he loves.

Protect him from people like Charles Hallows—and maybe even people like Spirit Harris. These are not the same sorts of people as each other or as the more familiar threat of Harrison Key, but they are dangerous all the same—uniquely, sometimes sneakily so.

"He—yes."

Cain is not present for Zachary's conversations with Alexandra and Harrison. This is another obligation self-imposed by Cain, onto Cain: respect for Zachary's privacy.

But he shouldn't be so surprised. It's unbecoming—perhaps indicative of something as ugly as a lack of familiarity.

he draws back, shoes dragging, darting. “ i don’t know what to believe. ” the boy spits. something agitated, something lost sinks into his statement.

Or maybe she did. Guilty, she realizes, she thought August might be so decent and so naive that everything terrible about Dafne didn't have to matter.

That's never the case.

August should know what to believe. Dafne's sisters—they figured it out. Olivia was even younger than August is now when she started to hate Dafne.

"You don't want to hurt me," Dafne pleas. She needs August to say that—even as she steps back, retreats.

A flicker of something passes through him—irritation, or the faintest edge of intrigue. Perhaps both.

"I knew you would say that," he corrects, pulling back just enough to see her fully, water running between them uninterrupted now. "That you would stand here and call it strength."

His thumb shifts against her pulse again, slower this time, more deliberate. Measuring. Testing. She is haunted; he wants to find out why.

"But fear isn't always loud," he continues. "And it isn't always yours to recognise."

Another flash of lightning fractures the sky above. For a split second, something in her seems almost… wrong. Not visibly. Not provably. But enough to unsettle the part of him that has been taught to read signs in chaos.

His jaw tightens faintly.

She shudders. His breath is warm and real and she's never felt so close to someone, never been so close to someone. The fact that it's him—

—she can't be snobby or selective. She's become desperate in her loneliness.

At least he isn't afraid of her. He'd be smart to be, but he isn't—fear isn't yours to recognize aside. She is choosing to be grateful for this instead.

Please, please don't be afraid of her. Dafne looks up at him like it'll keep him from being distracted by the storm. Then, she worries he's going to suddenly possess the perceptive keenness necessary to have him recoiling from them.

It's not Kinloch, she wants to say. It is something older and something that is simultaneously greater and worse than what Harrison's bloodline has ensured for itself and for their sujects.

"Continue to wonder," she implores. "To see me, and know me. I will stay here. I am here."

Sigh. And Ben does sigh, shoulders swelling with temporary relief. Like he won’t be on the hook for a million unsold copies, for the posters that’ll become landfill and the TV spots that’ll disappear. For the marketing they’ll burn in a proverbial underpass trash bin. For Heidi’s bonus.  

Like there won’t be further inquiries. Discourse. Long-form YouTube snuff. More things Cullen will have to shield his mom from. More things that Ben might have to shield Cullen from. But then, 

“I’ve asked for enough, haven’t I?” Remorse edges his voice; remorse sags his shoulders, pinches the corner of his mouth. Mild irritation at the way Cullen's smugness brings him to an IQ of about 80—the gall of him—perks Ben right back up. Shoulders. Mouth corners. Even his voice. Resounding in its genuine desire to do something. For Cullen. Kid genius. 

It sounds like Ben is determining Cullen's ultimate, generalized uselessness. The likes of him—political royalty, corporate bigwig, overall self-sustaining individual—could never need anything from the likes of Cullen Glass.

Cullen sighs, too. He sighs because his feelings are hurt. This is not something he often takes time to indulge in, and he barely does so now. The fact that it's happening at all—any expression of self-pity or manifestation of latent kicked-puppy-disease—is because he knows it will annoy Ben.

Cullen nods. Where Ben's strings pull him taut at the first sign of looseness or limpness, Cullen looks perpetually languid. They're not even in his office; he shouldn't be comfortable here; he certainly looks it.

He needs to call his mom soon. His stomach hurts because he realizes how long it's been since he last clicked on her contact card.

"The story? Generally speaking? I know." This is his life, mind you. "There are cycles to it. You know how that works." Breezily: "Next quarter, it'll be something else. You'll have different goals. People will move on. They always do."

The kiss is returned. Not with the same easy certainty she offers, not with the instinctive hunger that comes naturally to him elsewhere, in quieter shadows he does not name, but with something deliberate, chosen, a quiet act of will that settles into his bones as firmly as any oath he has ever sworn.

When the kiss breaks, he exhales against her, eyes briefly closing, as if committing this moment—not as something reckless, not as something to regret—but as something he will stand by simply because it is hers, and she has asked it of him.

Oh joy. A Thatcher henchman. Dolores makes eye contact with the Homarus gammarus (thanks, helpful plaque) perched on a rock like it somehow shares her sentiments. "Wow." It's a flat note. "Congrats, Mr. Minister." She shifts her weight and adjusts the sleeve of her dress. Off the shoulder, while fun, can be such a pain in the ass to manage. "And how's managing soccer and horse racing working out for you so far?" Hey-- just because she's more familiar with her own government doesn't mean she's completely unaware.

There is an amazing seafood restaurant on this block - a French bistro, really. He doesn't waste time feeling cruel for craving oysters.

He also, notably, does not let his gaze linger on the exhibit. His human company is far more enjoyable to look at.