That's What Life's About

As Iris applied a Flickendecke patch upon herself she was reminded of the half-finished patch Emilia had given her, long ago. She had needed to return it recently, as she suspected Olivia would not like it if she found it. Yet she tried to feel still that precipice of probability and possibility with Emilia, a slow pour of attraction into all channels but that of Olivia. 

"Not a kill I wanna repeat." said Eva beside, strumming the moisture back into his dessicated body on the sidewalk ahead.

Iris shrugged, scanned, then off they went towards the outlet mall.

"So, how's you and Suki?" said Eva.

"About the same as we were our first day together, which is a fairly miserable predicament to be in." Iris sighed. 

"Damn, dude. She did snap at me a little during swap week, too. Forgot to tell you." Eva rubbed the back of her head. "I wasn't gonna scold her like I would if she was my protege, but I asked her for an electric eel in a fight and she refused to do it."

Iris sighed. She recalled a few days ago, she had suspected Suki of not studying her encyclopedia of animals, and so scanned its past states -- it had not once been opened. By now she could tell Suki had lied about Metamorphosis' abilities, although why she was uncertain, her mind afflicted elsewho for now. "Did you get into any more fights while you were with her?"

"She was mostly fine the other day, actually. I know you've told me about her being belligerent and all, but she isn't as bad as you're saying. At least, not the vibe I picked up from her."

"She doesn't argue with you over the most inconsequential of shit?"

"Nope."

"Disregard your orders?"

"I mean, she comes up with weird reasons to decline some stuff, but otherwise, not really."

Iris frowned. "So it's something specific to me."

"Maybe."

"Something else to figure out once this investigation is done."

"Yeah? How's that been going?"

"Yesterday we had a homeless man who's convinced he isn't homeless tell us about his masturbatory fantasies."

"Wow, and what happened after you left Urasaria?"

"Very funny."

"I know, I've got a great sense of humor. Reminds me of something Violet told me… something about her and Olivia being nice to some homeless guy they ran into once, back when we killed that pedophile singer. You know, she said being nice to a mentally ill person is a test of decency most people fail."

"Or a precursor for a lesbian relationship."

"Oh, yeah, speaking of Olivia... you know I gotta ask." said Eva.

"You know I won't answer anything perverse."

"I'm offended you think I would ask anything like that before you've fucked her on every piece of furniture in your house."

"We usually prefer her house."

"Doesn't she live with Naomi? She doesn't get grossed out by hearing you and her protege- oh, wait, that girl dates men, nothing can disgust her."

"I tend to limit my interactions with Naomi as much as possible."

"Yeah, just the occasional knock through the wall to remind you to tone it down. Although, again, straight, so I dunno if she even knows what pleasurable sex sounds like."

Iris shrugged. "She's not a bad person. Not for her sexuality, at least. I can't imagine how poorly she must've treated Natasha for her to view Viktoria as the better choice, but she never mentions her and I prefer that to Viktoria's constant harassment. Besides, from what Olivia's told me, she won't even let a man touch her unless he makes her orgasm first."

"Boy, what a great system that is. Does she train them to bark and clean up after themselves too?"

"You say it like there aren't plenty of men who'd beg for a student to wrap a collar around their neck."

Eva snorted. "Yeah, maybe one of those cones they put on dogs after they're neutered. Well, okay, whatever. I joke about it, but it's not really her fault. Straight women just get all caught up in that whole fucked up system of gender. I feel bad for them sometimes."

"Right, you certainly sound like a sympathetic person, not someone just shittalking a woman for her sexuality by saying she'll never have an orgasm that isn't self-inflicted."

"Oh, lay off me. I'd be glad to give her a few if she ever wants-- hey, we were supposed to be talking about Olivia, by the way, not her pretty mentor. So, is she as flawless nude as she is clothed?"

Iris was apathetic, but thought that perhaps she could embed herself further into this relationship via masculine word, given physical action had not succeeded in doing so. "She's even more of beautiful nude than she is dressed."

"That's right, baby. I'm happy for you, you know. Maybe I would've liked a chance with her before you got her for yourself, but what the hell, right? At least she goes to somebody that deserves her."

"Deserves her? I mean, I care about her, but I- I don't see what I've done to deserve her."

"Don't try that fake humility shit with me, bro. You know you're attractive. Fit, muscled-up, sexual, abs. Olivia's the same way. Attractive, fit, sexual, uh... voluptuous. People usually end up with their similars."

"I suppose..."

"And I'm sure you two have been fucking a ton."

Iris shifted. "She's absolutely gorgeous, I just don't... we have, but... I mean, she knows exactly where to stroke my ego. She's an absolute princess in bed, and she's sexy, I just..."

"So, she's insatiable, too. C'mon, you're dating the hottest woman on campus. You can brag a bit. And not to remind you, but she's someone you can stabilize yourself against. I'd kill to be dating a woman with a body like her's. I saw when you two were coming back to Urasaria and that dress she was wearing, and the way her tits looked… whew. Or her fucking ass, I mean-"

"Eva, do you ever stop to consider that she doesn't enjoy being looked at like she's just some fuckable sack of meat?" snapped Iris. "Can you not look at a woman without breaking her down into parts?"

"Well, to be fair, my current girl is so thin that if I broke her down any further the nuclear explosion created by splitting the atom might rival Los Angeles." said Eva. "Speaking of, check how she's looking now." She pulled it up on her phone and showed her to Iris. Eva had once said that she was dating a rogue host; her Revenant was that whenever Eva looked at her from the side she disappeared. 

Iris was annoyed, for Eva seemed to not even be thinking of what Iris had said, and had anyone asked her to recall it two minutes from now she would not have remembered. Her identity had already passed a phase of self-consolidation, to where if she was accused of objectification she would only say "no shit". So long as there was mutual satisfaction she saw no issue. She was unpossessed of a desire for romance; at least until sex would be more difficult to come by.

But Eva was able to accept life's gradual dolloping of moment upon the tip of her being, whereas Iris had always attempted to subsume them underneath the rest of herself; it was why her current issue galled her so. She still could not dispel the guilt she felt over her own attraction to Olivia, the feared corrosion of her own gaze. She had felt this same shame with Amelie as well; that her attraction was degrading, that she had somehow manipulated her and should apologize for it. The construct of herself seemed stamped upon by all of her qualities, good or ill, to where she took it as an immanent fact that to tug at this investment would undo all webbing.

She felt again that tight morass of fear and shame, not only for herself but for Olivia for choosing to be with this.

As they approached the photography studio Iris saw a woman outside and on her phone. She was an avatar of feminine beauty, and Iris knew she was likely a fashion model. Her appearance triggered in Iris that earliest memory of Olivia as this beautiful sexual goddess of a woman who she had fantasizes of parlaying for sex, if only for the internal status such accorded herself. But gradually after Natasha's death, she had found much in common with Olivia: vulgarity and politics, temperament and humor. She had felt towards Olivia the complement to her own peculiar sexuality that she had only been able to describe as romantically heterosexual yet expressed as lesbianism, undoubtedly not transgender but desirous in a male sense.

There were her earliest defenses of Iris from Viktoria. After that initial contract she had recalling seeing Olivia sitting in the kitchen, her dolor so perfect that Iris thought if she were to disturb it she would crumble into tears. She had confided in Olivia that occasionally she resented Natasha for having left her by dying, and that it was her idiocy which had caused Viktoria in her life, that sometimes she was weak enough to believe what she said about Iris. This Olivia understood as well.

She had once overheard Olivia, in tears, leaving a message on a civilian woman's voicemail, one of her exchanges of sex for romance that had never turned out well for herself. She had cried a few days later to Iris & Naomi, who had told her that her issue was believing she was enough to make someone different. Didn't seem so long ago. On investigation a few days later Iris had pretended herself a travelling circus strongwoman to a civilian, one of her many skits of lunacy she did to amuse Olivia in other cities. Lately when Iris was late coming home, Olivia would find her in the gym and it would force Iris to show off. The hell of it was that she supported Iris's muscularity with her cooking yet always teased her about the appetite needed to grow it.

And so these memories would continue, until they simply snapped at the fright of her own displays. Usually she had avoided such feelings by placing the fault in another and not herself; that she did not allow such feeling until a certain threshold was achieved, one impossible in physicality yet nonetheless appeared as rational in self-conception. It was a pity, she had been thinking lately, wishing she could have kept Olivia just as attractive as she had been before they had begun dating. At the apex of these feelings there was hope and idealization again, but at the sight of it did she need to close herself off from such, though she still heard the whistle of that ghastly visitant under her door.

The woman glanced to them and hung up. "Oh, are you looking for Nathaniel? Is he doing some sort of student catalog?"

"We might be. Why?"

"Well, he's not in today. I was trying to call him. I screwed up the day, since he switched it up on me last week and had me come in Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Silly me, I'm living right up to the stereotype."

Iris frowned; Tuesday had been the day the woman's body came ashore. "He might be involved in an ongoing investigation. Do you mind telling us what you know about him?"

"Oh, jeez. Well, I'm not close with him or anything. They just send me here to get a few local photographs done, something they can use in advertisements. Honestly, I always feel he's a little sexist. Like, I'm not one of those girls who goes around accusing every guy out there, but he'd berate me for not being in proper position, grab me to force me into the angle he wanted, stuff like that. Felt a little weird."

"Any particular models he dislikes? Ex-girlfriends or spurned lovers?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that. He's just stiff and sterile as soon as he's taking pictures. He's really particular about his composition. But, I mean, maybe I could find out for you? Do you want me to call him for you? I can ask." She took out her phone, and as her hand moved Iris reached out with the speed of a host to grip it, causing her to gasp. "I- sorry-"

"-no, it's -- not yet." Iris relaxed her grip and the woman set her phone back in her purse. "Sorry. I don't want him knowing about this. Maybe eventually, but not until I tell you to."

"Okay. Jeez, I think you left a mark." She rubbed Iris's forearms. "Must be because of those big manly muscles of your's."

"Uh, Kronos is a woman." said Eva.

Iris nodded. "Sorry to disappoint you."

Eva stepped up. "But you know, I'm a manly man."

"Oh, that's cute." The model smiled and ran her fingers over Eva's shoulder, who was visibly growing excited. "I support you."

Eva grinned and rubbed the woman's shoulder. "I support you too, beautiful."

She giggled. "Aww, thanks! I know Urasaria students are all gay, and it's tough being a gay man in this country. I think it's even tougher than being a lesbian, honestly."

Eva was aghast. Her mouth moved, yet no sound seeped from her lips; Iris asked for the woman's number if she needed to talk to her further for investigation, and unsurprisingly got it, pulling Eva away before she could get herself into deeper shit than she already was.

Once she had managed to pull her away, Iris turned to Eva. "I swear you couldn't attract a woman if I covered you in magnets and dragged you through a jewelry store."

"Sorry that not all of us get a beautiful goth girlfriend dropped into our lap." grumbled Eva.

"I thought you already have a girlfriend, by the way."

"I have a girl, which is different than a girlfriend."

"One I'm sure would be thrilled to hear about you trying to hook up with a fashion model."

"No, she'd be pissed. Good thing I had a change of heart at the last second there." nodded Eva.

Iris sighed, and her phone vibrated. It was Olivia, as she had said she wanted to hear Iris's voice later. She considered not answering it, but as Eva had seen who was calling, she could not, so she did so. "Hey."

"Hey. Are you busy?"

"A little. Just finished meeting up with a woman who knows the culprit."

"Mm. Amelie's on the contract with you, right?"

"Amelie and Eva."

"Have you talked with her?"

"Nothing besides checking if Delinquent can transmit red lightning and leaving Suki with her for a while. I haven't had much reason to speak with her otherwise."

"No, um, I was talking about Eva."

"She's right here with me, and I'd ask her to say hello if I thought she wouldn't say something crude."

"Oh, you don't need to do that. I'm just glad you're with her. How's Suki?"

Iris sighed. "I don't know how to deal with her yet."

"Is she still acting the same way?"

"She is. Same belligerent little bitch as usual, which would pain me some to say if I knew it wasn't a wholly accurate assessment."

"Well, but you might have to analyze her a bit too, right?' Maybe she's just lonely and doesn't know how to express herself. I mean, you said she didn't even have a last name on her registration, right? Maybe she's ashamed of something."

"Would be one hell of a way to show shame."

"Yeah, but emotion doesn't seek logic, just expression. She thinks everyone views her as bad as she views herself. What do you think it is?"

"Is naturally bitchy an option?" said Iris. "Most likely she's just learned that exerting herself is the best thing to keep herself from being harmed emotionally. Everyone else is superfluous to that calculation of emotion. Like you said, it isn't logical, but it isn't logic that expression is seeking."

"Maybe. I just noticed when you two were on campus, she wouldn't even talk with anyone else. Just kept sullen and to herself, like she was scared."

"Bitchiness explains that as much as loneliness."

"Okay, c'mon, stop." laughed Olivia. "You have to mentor her for the rest of the year. You're the one who's with her every day, so maybe figure that out? I don't know, I just think of that time we were out in Utah, and I saw that woman sitting in that park, how alone she looked."

"As I remember, she turned out to be a lunatic."

A few seconds of silence, after which Olivia realized and laughed: "Oh shit, you're right, she was. Yeah, I went up to her because I thought she looked so lonely, but she was in some transcendental state of fucking meditation and started talking to me about the glory of-"

"I was there watching it and I swear you couldn't have looked more uncomfortable than if you were watching a loved one being autopsied."

"Yeah, I remember how you just stood there and watched as she gave me this whole lecture."

"No, and then she saw your pentagram tattoo and went off on you about the demonic powers of lesbianism-"

"Yeah, the demonic power of lesbianism, where women have orgasms instead of children."

"She was getting properly heated at you, too. She was working up a sweat. But you know I didn't just stand by, you know, once you two started yelling at each other."

"I do remember that."

"I went up right to her and I stuck my finger in her face just like this, and I said-"

"I'll send you to meet your maker right now, you undercover fucking-"

"-lesbophobic cunt!"

Olivia laughed. "You scared the shit out of her, too. I wasn't going to show her I was a host."

"You vomited on her."

"Yeah, but only after you had shoved a cloud in her face."

"Some bully you are. I used to be a bully. You don't have that excuse."

"Yeah, you're still a big bully."

"Well, worse than a bully, but to what extent I'm guessing my memory is tamping down a bit. Sometimes I wonder if it's worse that I feel guilty over who I was or worse that I'm starting not to care."

"Mm. Maybe." said Olivia. "Hey, before I forget. I was thinking, you know... we're out in Chicago. If you wanted to come here for tonight. We're at a hotel, but you and me can spend the night somewhere else."

Iris rubbed the back of her neck. "I'd just be worried about something happening to Suki while I'm out."

"There's a daycare across the street."

"I think they would return her due to lack of house-training. I've still got some things with investigation to review, too."

"We could... well, okay. I just don't want you to over-exert yourself. But come see me soon?"

"I will. Once the investigation is done."

"Do you think it'll take long?"

"I... I don't know. Maybe a few days."

"Mm. Okay. I guess I'll see you then, okay?"

"Okay. Bye."

"Bye."

Iris hung up. Eva again had that grin at her for bagging such a babe, but Iris did not reciprocate such. She had lied to Olivia about talking to Amelie, yet it was not this she felt guilty for. Since their relationship began she had been attempting to sheathe herself from Olivia, for she could not understand Olivia's seeming attraction to her personality, and so she sought to hide her core consciousness so that Olivia could not catch it in sight and be harmed by it. And so she had come to dread these conversations with Olivia, for no matter how happy she felt during them, afterwards in reflection they would morph into her own personal torturer in her skull. Her emotions had become the artificer of what she had experienced, rather than experience as the artificer of emotion.