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"I don't want to smash any of this. Is that bad?" Belle folded her hands neatly in front of her and observed the small box room in the giant rage room warehouse they'd booked. River said it'd be good fun. Belle disagreed but went along with it anyway, because that's what friends are for.
The room had already seen heavy use, with wallpaper peeling like tears down a face, and a handsome scruff of black mold in each corner. A corner of shards littered the poorly laid linoleum, and tech from several decades ago had been bashed to a pulp, chunky TVs reduced to accordion shapes, computer monitors blubbering rainbow pixels and plastic, and so on.
River had actually dressed for the occasion. His hair was up, for one; he never wore his hair up, even when he fought. Not to mention he had long sleeves, boots with platforms so big it was like he was walking on 2 x 4 planks. And goggles. Mandated by the warehouse. The sides of his hands were still smudged with pen ink from the amount of injury clauses they had to sign.
Belle was in a nice vest and a tie. She ditched the suit jacket since it was still getting drycleaned. The tie was her favourite, the one with fractal pattern that River gifted her after they both graduate. She had Doc Martins on that still hadn't been broken in. "It feels like a waste to break everything."
"It's all broken anyway. That's the point." River picked up a broken vase with his gloved hands - also mandated - and tossed it at the wall for demonstration.
"You told me this was a business meeting."
"I lied."
"Demonstrably." She gestures around herself. "I'll get the spreadsheet, shall I? We can crunch the numbers and sit down on those chairs without any cushion slats and sit at that desk with a broken leg."
River threw a beer bottle at it. He was a crackshot. "Two broken legs."
The desk slumped in submission to the ground, bowing. Belle grimaced. "You know how I get about... breaking things."
"I wanted you to try this. Just to see if it helps. Exposure therapy, yeah?" He took her by the shoulders, turning her away from the overwhelm of the rest of the room. "It's junk," he said softly. "It's only junk."
She scanned his expression for any signs of him relenting. He offered none. But his eyes were sincere and held affection that she'd seen in them countless times. He loved her dearly, true platonic love. This was his way of helping. Or trying to help.
She took one of the bottles from the ground. It was a nice bottle. The label suggsted it was at least a decade old, given the archaic design choices of the lettering, and the shape reserved an aesthetic clearly trying to emulate antique brands, but--
"Belle," River urged. "Just toss it. Don't think about it."
She tossed it. The glass sprayed across the wall, as though trying to get away from her. Her hands fizzed. She felt a little bit sick.
"Woo!" River pumped the air and hugged her, pulling her against his side by wrapping his arm around her shoulders. He shook her. "That's what I'm talking about."
The took a slow, steadying breath. "It just fucks me up. That it can't be undone, you know? The idea that something breaks and it's just gone, and it's never the same again."
His eyes flicked down at her arms and he said nothing. Her superpower - a contrapuntal word to use - involved a lot of... breaking. Brittle skin. His gaze landed back on his face, where a big black split tore her expression in two. She preferred keeping her body together. She liked the control of damaging it, and then fixing it.
He knew all this because she'd told him. Several times. He was almost certain she was the only one he ever told about all that. "The glass on the floor is pretty."
Belle scoffed and leaned against the door, a big heavyweight one like they were robbing a bank. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. That sorry had done numbers. Maybe they'd ought to get back into the financial crime scene. That was pretty popular with the anarco-communists of their audience, which was... most of their audience, making fanedits of the cool evil villains over on Tumblr and TikTok.
River snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Hey. Stop thinking about work."
"How'd you know I was thinking about work?"
"You're always thinking about work." He rolled his shoulders back. "Let loose. Come on. The broken glass is pretty. The damaged CRTs look nice. The wallpaper is peeling like... I dunno, like flower petals, or something poetic like that." He shrugged, palms up. "Art is just the destruction of a blank canvas. Breaking stuff is important. We're evil! That's our whole thing!"
She got suddenly very interested in adjusting the cuffs of her long-sleeved shirt and very disinterested in looking at him. "I don't like-- changing things. I don't know. You're the big bad of the city. I just declare all the gold you magic into existence so we don't get arrested for forgery or embezzlement or... alchemy, I guess." She realised halfway through talking that this was what people meant when they described her as cold. "I didn't mean anything by that, by the way."
"I know, I know." He instinctively bristled at the mention of his superpower - again, contrapuntal, a little tonally unkind to call it a superpower - but he forced himself to chill out. Turning everything he touched into gold had its fair share of inconveniences. And emotional snags. But he didn't want to get into that.
She nodded towards the baseball bat leaning in the corner. "I'll just watch for now."
"You don't mind me breaking a bunch of stuff?"
She did mind. He could sense it, in her hunched shoulders and tense jaw. "No, I don't," she said. "Have fun."
He did.
There was calculation to his madness, of course. This was River - Aurum, his stage name in lights, master of villains, lover of evil. He was commended for his clean choreography, smooth interviews, and coherent plot threads. So here, bashing an old TV with a baseball bat, he was sure to aim for the middle, since the corners wouldn't crumple as satisfyingly, and he also made sure to loose it up with a few bumps before really trying to gut the poor machine.
He controlled his breath and kept serial killer levels of focus. It wasn't just Belle that liked to keep things together. River also liked order. Just... order that was on his terms, rather than on a spreadsheet.
His terms today involved levelling the entire rage room into a sharp pins-and-needles blanket. Like a hydraulic press compressing junk into a neat cube of garbage. That was a kind of order, right?
Belle pushed herself off the door, making a gimme gesture with her hand. "Can I have the bat, please?"
River's eyes gleamed. He got so excited that the bat flashed gold in his hand. Heavier to wield, but hey, solid gold brought a nice gleam to the otherwise miserable room. "Really?"
She damn near snatched it out of his hand and cleaved the old TV in half.
It was almost impressive.
It built in her slowly, of course, the quiet envy. Watching her friend destroy something without worrying. The ability to throw things away. Her hoarding had been getting bad in the recent months, mounting stress manifesting in mishmash trash that made her nauseous to even consider throwing away.
The trigger was when she realised she could see her reflection in the broken glass of the TV. And she could see that she looked scared.
She hated looking scared. When she was six, a kid had bullied her for crying at Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and she'd chipped his tooth on the playground tarmac. Another kid, this time in high school, made fun of her for refusing to go on a rollercoaster during a school trip, and she'd broken his nose. She didn't take shit. Not from anyone.
And especially not from her own fucking brain.
She cleaved the TV in half until her reflection stopped looking at her. She smashed it until the glass was dust and until her arm burned with a hairline crack, and she kept going until she felt the telltale rip of a breakage along her forearm, and she kept going until River grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the TV. The golden bat clattered to the floor and dented.
She caught her breath, even though her lungs didn't seem to agree with her heart or her throat. Her windpipe tangled into a knot.
She was so fucking scared. And of what? Rubbish. Trash. Garbage. She got sick at the thought of throwing away literal junk.
"Jesus, is your arm okay?"
"I can fix it," she tried to say, but she couldn't get her lungs to push out the words.
River hugged her. "Jesus," he said.
She almost laughed. She wiped her face, her expression stoic despite her eyes watering. "God, I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm crying--"
"You did good," he says, his voice softer than she'd heard it in a while. "You did amazing. You should be so proud of yourself."
"Have I told you how bad it's getting? Because it's getting bad, man."
He pulled back to look at her. "I shouldn't have brought you here."
"You were just trying to help. It's fine. It's... I liked it. I think. Breaking stuff. Low stakes." She swiped at the few tears escaping. She closed her eyes for a moment before looking at him again.
"If you need help clearing anything out at your apartment, let me know."
"I don't know if I'm ready."
He shrugged, but he meant it empathetically. "I'm ready when you are, Belle."
"You should see my apartment. You'd hate it." She laughs dryly. "Everything's everywhere." She swallowed. "You've got glass in your hair, by the way." She picked it out and flicked it to the side. She rolled up her sleeve to show the large crack running down her arm. "Least it didn't fracture. Everything's still in one piece."
"...You sure it won't get worse?"
"I'll fix it at home. I have all my glue and caulk and bullshit there."
They both looked at the room. Not quite flattened, but close.
"I feel better, weirdly," Belle admitted.
"Really?"
"Maybe I do have pent up anger."
"I definitely do," River conceded. "Okay, maybe not anger, but... frustration, I guess."
"I know what you mean." Then, "...The broken glass is pretty. I'll give you that."
He squeezed her to his side. "We don't have to do this ever again if you don't want to."
"I think a pottery class would be better, next time. You know. Throwing the clay and crushing it if we fuck it up."
"...That's actually a way better idea."
They spent the rest of the evening at the vending machine outside trying to get a stuck packet of crisps to fall down, until the warehouse owner told them to stop loitering. Standard Belle and River stuff. River gave the guy an autograph.
And even later that evening, when they split up with a hug and a "text me when you're home safe", Belle threw out some of the glass bottles and jars she'd been hoarding. River fell down a rabbit hole of pottery throwing YouTube videos.
Everything felt marginally better. Marginally.