self_composed | why would you even bother telling someone your secrets before killing them

By the end of Bio, the halls are full of people eager to inform Bella and everyone else within earshot that her friend is a murderer. They have entirely the wrong attitude to have formed the impression because he just now murdered someone, and also her father hasn't come looking for her yet, so this is probably nonsense.

Bella goes to gym.

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From:

self_composed

Bella's not wearing a watch, but she has a phone. She pulls it out and watches seconds blink past. "Go," she says.

From:

edgeofyourseat

"But I don't really know what you're timing me doing," he says, "because I know damn well what I want. If hurting me is what you want to do, you'll do it, and if it isn't, you won't. And there's only one way to find that out. I don't think you will, but maybe I'm wrong. It makes a difference if you do or not, but not the kind of difference that changes how much I want one or the other. So if I have to sit here knowing that for a full minute before you'll buy it, then sure, I'll do that."

From:

self_composed

"It's not quite that simple," Bella says, abandoning the timer as useless for this purpose, or at least this person. "Lots of things I might want interact. As long as anything I want is more important to me than not hurting you, you might be faced with - for example - the choice of whether to be in my way or not."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"...Run that by me again," he says, "because it made no sense the first time."

From:

self_composed

Bella hums to herself, thinking of examples. Finally she says, "Imagine your dad made some asshole move that had nothing to do with you, and also really pissed me off, and also there is no evidence of it sufficient to convict or it is not technically a crime or he buys off the judge on that one. And imagine I go on an overblown crusade to bring him to justice, however oblique, however slim my chance of success, and whatever the collateral damage. I'm making this example up; it's not at all likely that I'd chase messy goals on this scale without good odds of getting what I'm after, not when there are other things to do. But suppose I did. You might be in my way or you might be helpful. And since we're imagining that my crusade is my top priority, you know what will happen if you stand in various places relative to said crusade. What would you want me to do with the power to hurt you?"

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Oh," he says, and smiles, and shakes his head, and touches the scar that runs under the corner of his jaw. "No wonder it made no sense. Yeah, there is one person in the world who can get me to do stuff by threatening to hurt me, and you're not him."

From:

self_composed

"Example-me isn't threatening - isn't bothering to. Example-me will go over or through you if she has to, and doesn't care because there is a higher priority." She pauses. "I would make a terrifying religious fanatic. It's probably good I'm not one."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"So, in this example, where I stand relative to your crusade depends on whether or not I want you to win," he says, "and I still don't get the original question."

From:

self_composed

Bella shrugs and gives up. "Okay."

She picks a new question. "Why do you like getting hurt sometimes, I wonder?"

From:

edgeofyourseat

"...Dunno," he says. "Pretty sure I just do."

From:

self_composed

"The way some people just like strawberry ice cream?" she inquires skeptically.

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Kinda, yeah. What, I can't be kinky?"

From:

self_composed

"Getting beat up by Dave Farber in the middle of the hallway in front of a couple dozen people was a sex thing?" Bella asks, frowning.

From:

edgeofyourseat

"...Kinda, yeah," he repeats, in a slightly different tone. "I mean, there's more to it than that, but I'm pretty sure you can guess the rest."

From:

self_composed

"Several dozen people, such as me, did not agree to be involved in your sex thing," Bella says. "Dave Farber included. Does the more that there is mitigate this glaringly obvious problem at all?"

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Well, it wasn't a sex thing for you," he points out. "Think for a sec about reasons why I might wanna get beat up a lot at school, and then don't tell me the answer when you've got it."

From:

self_composed

Bella obligingly does not say the answer aloud.

"It doesn't work very well," she says. "I demonstrated that the other day." And: "If I change clothes and don't bother to draw the curtains because there's a tree right outside my window anyway, changing clothes isn't a sex thing for me. That doesn't make it okay for some occupant of said tree to turn it into one for him."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"...Well, that's a mental image I didn't know I wanted," he says, blinking. "Anyway. It's different, though, ain't it? I mean, the guy in the tree, you're... part of that. And you don't wanna be, I mean, I'm assuming. The only person who's really part of me liking getting beat up is me. Everybody else just sees the part where I'm getting beat up."

From:

self_composed

Bella scrunches her eyes shut. "In what sense am I more part of an interaction with a Peeping Tom whose presence I might never be aware of, than Farber or someone like him is part of an interaction that involves plenty of physical contact that he's fully cognizant of? You're making up justifications. I think your brain wants to tell you that what you're doing is purely okay instead of maybe-on-balance okay. This is the part where, if you're like me, you make it admit that it's actually sketchy as all get out - and you care about something else more than about not being sketchy."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"I don't really give a shit how sketchy I am," he says. "But I get people to beat me up all the time, and I wouldn't climb a tree outside your window to watch you change, even if I somehow found out that what you're keeping under there is as hot as a kick in the balls."

From:

self_composed

This is completely beside her point. "And?"

From:

edgeofyourseat

"And that kind of means they're different things, don't it? To me, anyway, apparently not to you."

From:

self_composed

"I'm not trying to claim they're identical, or that anyone who'd do one logically would do the other," Bella says. "I was countering your attempt at justifying the one by analogy to the other."