[Hey, you busy?] says Ripper, sounding uncharacteristically diffident.

[Talking to the book person. Why?]

[Eh, nothing. Well, something, but nothing urgent.]

[We're done for the day in twenty minutes, and after that nothing time-dependent. I can talk to you while I talk to her, she's not sped up or anything. What happened, are you okay?]

[Y...es,] he says. [Er. You might not want to talk to me while you talk to her...] He trails off, then adds unhappily, [Rayne came round for a drink last night.]

[Well, that sounds... awkward.]

[You have no idea,] he sighs.

[But nothing urgent, I can just come by when I've wrapped up for the day here?]

[Yeah.]

She comes in. "You don't look so good. What happened?"

He stands there for a moment, opening and closing his hands as though trying to pull the right words out of thin air, and then gives up and says, "I slept with Rayne."

"I didn't plan on it or anything, it just sort of... but I should've known it was going to happen, it always does," he says helplessly. "I'm sorry. I should've told you. At some point in the last four months. Not that I've been - I haven't even seen him since he moved out of our place in London. I just." He rubs his face with both hands. "Sorry."

Bella still has not produced anything to say.

"If you'd mentioned this when I originally asked for no surprises it wouldn't upset me now," she murmurs. "I had no idea."

"I didn't plan on ever talking to him again, let alone fucking him," says Ripper, throwing up his hands. "I have no idea how he found me. I suppose I should've expected it, though, God knows he'd be incapable of just leaving me alone."

"The problem is that he found you?"

"Well, yes and no," he says, "the problem is that I make bad decisions where Rayne is involved, but if he hadn't found me it wouldn't have come up."

"What I mean is, should my first order of business be arranging for him not to be able to find you - is that a thing you would like me to do, is he harassing you or stalking you in such a way that he should be obliged to stop - or is the primary issue at hand the bit where you cheated on me?"

"Let me know when you figure it out. I can bar him from Saturn, or from this bubble, or whatever."

"In the meantime - I cheated on you. I'm sorry. Now what?"

"I don't know." Bella slumps into a chair. "How did it happen? If you wanted to, it would've taken ten seconds to warn me."

"I was just going to talk to him," he says, "the thought of fucking him didn't cross my mind until much later in the evening - I told him I should tell my girlfriend first, he said I'd never done before so why should I start now, I told him his logic was terrible, and he... did something distracting." Ripper sighs.

"And you didn't tell me simultaneously with telling him you ought, or simultaneously with critiquing his logic, because -?"

"I was much too drunk to have two conversations at the same time."

"...The fact that he got you drunk first is lending support to the 'he should not be allowed on Saturn' hypothesis."

"Isn't it just," says Ripper.

"Were you drunk enough that I shouldn't be holding you responsible for the event at all?"

"Yes. I don't really know what being drunk is like, I don't partake - please help me figure out how to factor that in."

"It... makes it easier to do things I'm going to regret without realizing how much I'm going to regret them," he says. "Then again, so does Rayne."

Bella sighs.

Ripper shrugs.

"I clearly don't understand the effect this person has on you, and that's clearly key to understanding what happened well enough that I can process it."

"I don't think I understand the effect he has on me," Ripper admits. "We were friends for... a long time. He never got me into any trouble he couldn't get me out of, but he did get me into plenty of trouble. We've had our fights before, but he always came back and I always let him. This time... I don't think I want to let him." He sighs. "He obviously has a different plan."

"What does he want with you? Why would he even object to you notifying your girlfriend?"

"I have no idea why he objected to me notifying my girlfriend. With Rayne, it could be anything from 'part of some elaborate plan' to 'didn't want to wait five more seconds'."

"How worried should I be about the elaborate plan possibility?"

"But now he knows."

Bella sighs again. It appears that this is a sigh-inducing topic.

Yes. Yes it is.

"I'm still not clear on whether or not you were sufficiently impaired that I should maybe be considering this an instance of rape instead of an instance of voluntary cheating."

Ripper winces.

Bella reaches for his hand and squeezes it.

"Done," says Bella, adjusting the enchantment with a tilt of her head and an eyelash-flutter.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

She squeezes his hand. "That helps."

Squeeze.

Squeezeback.

"Is there anything else in this general category of things that I should learn now rather than later?"

"...Which general category? People I've slept with since we started dating and not told you about? No," he says. "People I slept with before we started dating? Plenty, but none of them is Rayne, they're not going to come looking for me."

"Were you expecting Rayne to come looking for you?"

"I wasn't, but I should've been," he says. "It's something he'd do. It's not something most people would do."

"People do just sometimes move to Saturn. You could run into any number of them that way."

"Yeah," he says, "I've run into an ex in a pub before, it can be awkward, it doesn't result in this. Rayne is the only person who results in this."

"Okay." She shakes her head, sighs again. "Why does he result in this, what is it about him?"

"He knows me, he knows how to talk me into things, and I keep falling for it," says Ripper, frustrated. "He's mostly benign about it, but you saw his definition of benign when you met me."

"Yes, harmless, killing a man to make you think he was dead so you'd get my attention."

"Exactly. He means well, but it's a very special kind of well. And he doesn't care about anyone but himself and me."

Bella shakes her head. "Well. He can't get in here anymore. If you run into him the next time a beach visits your bubble, or something - then what?"

"I'll tell you when I see him," Ripper promises. "And I'll try not to get drunk with him again, that seems like a bad plan."

"I know technically all I asked was that there not be surprises, but - Rayne in particular seems like a bad idea whether I wind up literally surprised or not."

"He is a bad idea," says Ripper, "but he's my bad idea."

"I know, it's terrible, isn't it? I can and will do my best to stay away from him for my own sake, but I just don't have it in me to promise not to go near him again."

"Why not?"

"It's been a habit for years," he sighs. "I'm trying to break it."

"Isn't there anything I can do to help besides keep him out of this one little bubble? I could keep him off the entire planet. The ground rules would allow you to block him."

"How do I..." he says, and trails off, and shakes his head. "My problem is that I can't trust myself around him. If I lock him completely out of my life with magic, that's not solving the problem. What I want to do is stop making such bad decisions when Rayne is involved."

"...That's fair. Do you have a plan on doing that, though?"

Wryly, "That'd be the hard part."

"I think - sometimes the best way to not make bad decisions about something is to make them in advance, in a way that doesn't invite later changing of mind."

"Meaning...?"

"Well, in this case, if you want to not make bad Rayne-related decisions, and have no idea how to do that while he's actually in the room, you could decide to not be in the room with him, till you have that figured out at least."

"How am I going to figure anything out without trying it? Not that I'm going to go looking for him, but..." He sighs.

"Well - the way I'd do it if it were me would be by thinking long and hard about exactly how he got to me. But I have perfect recall and when I didn't have that I had notes I'd taken about everything. Do you want perfect recall?"

"Does perfect recall help that much?"

"It replaces notebooks, for me. I can remember what I was thinking, and figure out what made me think it. But then, figuring out what we think and why we think it is a Bell thing and I don't think anyone else has successfully adopted our techniques."

"I think I'll try it my way first."

He squeezes her hand.

"I know I don't. I hope I figure it out," says Ripper.

"What does he even want with you still, besides the obvious, or is that it?"

"He wants me back," says Ripper. "We were best friends, and if you ask him, we still are."

"It's not the sex, if that's what you meant by obvious."

"That's just the icing on the cake?"

She, too, sighs.

Ripper squeezes her hand.

"Are you okay?"

"If you look at it one way, I just cheated on my girlfriend, and it you look at it the other way..." He shakes his head.

"Well - which way it is, is pretty much up to you, isn't it?"

"I don't really like either of the options!" he exclaims.

"Yeah. They both suck."

"I'm so tempted to conjure a ridiculously tiny violin just to lighten the mood."

She squeezes his hand, then sighs and floats into his chair and wedges herself in beside him.

"I'll be okay."

He sighs and hugs her some more.

Hugs hugs hugs.

"I suppose me locating him and telling him off wouldn't accomplish anything."

"Well, it might make you feel better."

"Eh, that would probably depend a lot on his reaction. I know that I can locate him and tell him off with effective impunity; the only satisfying part would be if he acted suitably told-off."

"Not bloody likely."

"Yeah, I didn't think so."

He sighs and hugs her.

Hugs.

Yes. Hugs.

"Well, I suppose if he hadn't exercised his particular brand of awful we wouldn't have met."

"There is that. Maybe you should track him down and thank him."

"I don't think I will be doing that. He knows now you have a girlfriend - does he know it's me? Actually come to think of it you've still got that non-disclosure geas on you, don't you."

"Yeah, I still do." He looks at her quizzically. "Why, would it have stopped me from telling him who my girlfriend is?"

"Nnnno, because strictly speaking I didn't ever tell you who your girlfriend is. It just made me think of it."

"...Have I been going around all this time not being able to tell anybody anything you tell me? And if so, can I stop?"

"I relaxed it some a while ago - I imagine you would have noticed if you couldn't discuss certain things with the Jokers and the relvant information isn't secret from them - but yeah. ...If you run into Rayne again are your bad decision-making habits likely to extend to making poor choices about what to tell him?"

"I'm not going to tell him magic things," he says. "I don't know what else I shouldn't be telling him."

"Personal stuff about me. Possibly I should not want him to have my identity at all, I'm not sure what he'd do with it."

"Nothing good, I'm sure. But look, I meant it about the geas, can you get rid of it?"

"I can make it less restrictive along any dimension I like, or abolish it altogether, at will, that's built in."

"Right. Will you?"

"- you just want it completely gone and even if you run into Rayne on a beach-bubble I'm not going to regret it?"

"I don't mind not being able to tell anybody about the stuff from that one conversation, I guess," he says. "It's not my favourite thing, but I agreed to it. I didn't agree to never be able to repeat anything my girlfriend tells me to anyone who's not a Joker. From anybody else, that sounds like a horror story waiting to happen. I don't think you're going to be that horror story, but I shouldn't have to trust you that much, d'you see what I mean?"

"Yeah, I get it." She waves a hand. "All gone."

He sighs and hugs her. "Thanks."

Hugs. "You're welcome. Please don't make my public relations department run around like chickens with their heads cut off."

"I won't, I promise."

"Thanks. It's not a good look on them."

He giggles.

Snuggle.

Definitely snuggle.

Prolonged snuggle. And brainphone multitasking, but not of the sort that interferes with snuggle.

Good, because he could really do with some snuggle right now.

Both of them could, it seems.

Bella chuckles softly.

He smiles.