executable | open rp post.

Trust no one. Elliot doesn't say it, because he doesn't think it's the answer Tyrell wants, and because there's another, more challenging question rising towards him.

He has no plans. No exit strategy. Unlike Tyrell, he's covered his tracks. Doesn't need one.

"Go back to work I guess. And watch." Probably, all things considered, still not the answer Tyrell wants. They probably could run away and make new lives together somewhere. Between them, they probably do have the resources and the skills to make it possible, but that's not the plan. Elliot doesn't want to leave his shitty box apartment. To leave Flipper and Querty and Darlene. It's not part of the plan.

"But even if they get you? Even if they get us both they can't make us undo it, right?" He offers a crooked little half smile, like this is consolation "I mean, fucking us won't un-fuck them, right?"

"A hacker without a backdoor."

Now that eye contact is locked in, Tyrell seems reluctant to break it. Or. Reflexively refusing to do so. He hasn't so much as burned his bridges as he has helped set the river on fire.

And he has his ties too. His banalities. His wedding ring is still locked in place and occasionally his mind strays to the tiny pink baby he hasn't gotten to hold enough, loving more the love making soft Joanna's eyes than he has yet to cultivate his own. Maybe the world really will change, and it'll be the only one his son will ever know. What a concept, removed in abstraction.

(Family. Not the world changing. That's beyond abstraction.)

"I thought you might disappear."

I thought you might disappear.

That's not a question. Maybe that means he doesn't have to answer it. Elliot doesn't break the eye contact between them, but his eyes widen fractionally, and his face twitches, like he wants to break it.

Thought you might disappear.

He means go off the grid. He means go start a new life. He doesn't mean that he literally expected Elliot to fade into a mist, but right now they feel equally likely. Feels insubstantial.

He needs to answer. The gap in the conversation is becoming gaping and awkward and that means Tyrell expects him to answer even though it wasn't a question. So, after great consideration, Elliot shakes his head a little.

"Mm. No." This time he does break eye contact, just for a moment, just long enough to swivel his gaze madly around the car, then back to Tyrell. He should ask what Tyrell is going to do, but if Tyrell is thinking of disappearing himself, he probably won't tell. And if he isn't disappearing, then he'll tell without being asked.

There's a twinge at Tyrell's pale brow as he waits for Elliot to answer, and it's not because he isn't accustomed to that halting awkwardness from the younger man. Just something in the nature of that gap, as if his own words had more weight than he'd expected to attribute to them.

Ultimately, he feels the same way. Like Elliot could just vanish.

What of his own plans-- surely, Tyrell Wellick has plans. At the eventual answer, he just smiles, though, shadows at the corners of his eyes. "It must be so dissatisfying," he says, his voice emptied out a little of tone. Quieter. Probing. "For something so terrific to be over so quickly. A few lines of code into the void, so uneventful. Terminals can be lonely places. Silent, and cold."

And just like that, in those last few words, Tyrell manages to run his fingers over all of the insecurities that Elliot's been able to neatly set aside to deal with later. Because this is later, and Tyrell's words paint his plan, his life, his small apartment with qwerty and flipper, into a small, empty box.

No more allsafe. No more fsociety. The few tendons of his life that gave him cause to leave his room all are slowly atrophying, and yes, he will be alone. Finally, truly alone.

He's looking back to Wellick now, mouth hanging ever so slightly agape. His gaze no longer edgy and fleeting, but fixed. Hungry. Like the solution is going to be written into the lines of the other man's face, somehow.

"It's the same for everyone." He finally says, even though he isn't sure that's true, "What are you going to do?"

How are you going to stand it.

There's a cynical thinness to the smile Elliot gets in return. Finding falsehood in platitude, not even dignifying it with response. In fairness, mostly because there's a question being levelled his way.

If Elliot has certainty in his loneliness, Tyrell has chaos. Falling into his own void.

"Land," he says, more to himself than for Elliot's benefit. But there's still a certain amount of conviction to it. They should probably get out of here so can make good on that, but instead, he reaches across them -- his palm mapping to Elliot's jaw-line, a sudden broach of intimacy that he hadn't quite broken before now. His thumb hooks up against Elliot's chin to still any immediate jerk away.

This can't be over, tonight. Elliot might not be disappearing any time soon -- and Tyrell still might be -- but sinking back into anonymity, ordinariness, detachment, isn't an option. "I'm in your world now, Elliot," Tyrell says, each word making an impression. "One of us had to make the leap eventually. It was me."

Edited 2015-11-19 14:42 (UTC)

Elliot flinches reflexively as Tyrell palms his face. His gaze does a quick zig zag up and down, looking between Tyrell's expression and his hands, searching for something that might send him scrambling for the car door behind him (the locked car door, he remembers, not that that would have stopped him.) but happily, he doesn't find it.

He doesn't understand Tyrell. There are some things he can grasp, that the other man is proud, controlling, intelligent... but his motivators, his background processes... the internal machinery that he seems to see turning in Elliot so clearly, Elliot can't fathom in return.

Maybe that's the advantage of plunging into someone else's world. Perhaps if Elliot had gone to work in Evil Corp, he would have figured Tyrell out and remained enigmatic in return.

"Uh," he says eloquently, eyes swivelling to look as far to the left as he can without actually shaking his head free. What does he say to that? Thanks? You shouldn't have? Sorry about the state of things? He doesn't imagine his world to be a particularly hospitable place. Instead, he finally goes with, "You need somewhere to stay or anything?"

Not a permanent offer. Possibly not an offer at all. An invitation not to immediately abandon him to solitude.

"I don't need somewhere to stay," Tyrell says. Quietly, a glint of tooth visible between consonants. Maybe that's not true, but there is a certain quality to that question that has him reject it immediately, like it implies everything he's saying is leading up to crashing on some guy's couch, and Tyrell doesn't crash on couches. He takes a little bit of the steel out of his voice when he says, instead, "I wouldn't mind somewhere to be."

More direct, aiming for the heart of it. The distance between them seems less defined by intimacy as it is decorum, and, well, it's the kind of barrier Tyrell is adept at kicking down when he wants to.

He doesn't drag Elliot over the threshold, tempting as that might be. He keeps him still and leans in to press their mouths together, firm enough to stifle protest, his hand a steely cage with thumb bracketing chin to suppress fluster, but it's not the same as the doors locking in tandem. Just, in Tyrell's experience, people kiss him back.

Edited 2015-11-20 06:47 (UTC)

And what does that mean? Not for the first time in the conversation, Elliot finds himself trying to decipher Tyrell's weird internal code. What's the difference between somewhere to stay and somewhere to be?

Be somehow sounds more permanent. But Tyrell's going to run, isn't he? Has to run.

Then he leans forward, and-- yeah, okay, so Elliot kind of saw this coming, but he's not been so sure of his ability to pick up on those kinds of signals lately. Warm soft lips pressed just hard enough against his to make it hard to talk, and Tyrell's hand still holding him in place, and Elliot keeps his eyes open, even though that's the least attractive thing that you can do in this situation. He opens his mouth, and for a moment they're accidentally frenching, before he says:

"How long have you known me?" It's muffled. forced awkwardly out into Tyrell's mouth, "We only met three times, right?"

Because the last person he kissed turned out to be his fucking sister, and he's pretty certain that Tyrell is different, but Tyrell is strange, and from now on he's always checking.

Mmf-- talking. Tyrell withdraws when muffled words hum into the kiss just as it begins to open up under him, and his hand gentles if only out of sheer confusion. He remains close, at a hover, a glacial tolerance in pale eyes as he goes silent at that question, stemming any urge to reply with the immediate confirm or deny.

As if it's interesting that Elliot is asking at all.

But not so much that he knows what the hell to do with it save for set it aside for later analysis. His study flicks down to Elliot's mouth, then back up to his eyes. "How many times would make this okay?" is desert-dry wry. No times, probably.

Elliot has no idea what it would take to make any of this okay. It's too big and strange a question for him to answer. What he does know, is that Tyrell being his long lost brother, or uncle, or something, is a hard deal breaker. So he stares into Tyrell's eyes, and presses his question:

"We met at AllSafe," he says, like he's trying to lead Tyrell along with him, half waiting for confirmation, "Then you were there for some of the meetings, then you got me in Steel Mountain, and then..." Tyrell had met with his Dad. With Mr Robot. With him, again, in secret. Elliot just has no idea where or when or what they said to each other, "...there was that one other time, and then you came to my apartment, That's how it was, right?"

He's watching for a reaction even as he asks. For any indication of Tyrell realising that he knows something Elliot doesn't. Watching for the decision to lie to flicker across the other man's expression. He doesn't pull away from the hand on his face though, even as it's grasp on him softens.

Tyrell isn't easily led along, something about him remaining fixed and stubborn, an observer who assesses and does not react.

"I took you to ECorp," he adds. Elliot isn't backing up, and so Tyrell does not either. "You told me no."

He follows the line of Elliot's jaw with his thumb. "And that's how it was," he says, of the rest. There is a deliberate reticence to his affect, as if Elliot is going to have to work harder for more beyond a simple level-voiced confirmation with unwavering eye contact. Ice that needs cracking.

Elliot wants to nod, but Tyrells stillness, the hand still light on his jaw, makes him hesitant to do so. As if the moment has been set in glass and too much movement will break it. Instead, he exhales, relaxing ever so slightly, and his gaze flicks down for a moment.

"Yeah, that's how it was." He remembers that. Vividly. The men in black suits crossing from paranoid fantasy into reality. He almost nods, stops himself, then lets his gaze flick back up to Tyrell, "I'm not... not telling you no now though. Just-- Uh, had to think about it."

Just like he'd needed to think about it at ECorp. He gives thorough consideration to all your suggestions, good Sir.

"Of course."

That twinge of generousity in his tone might be making fun, a flicker of it behind the ice, a subtle shift in Tyrell's white face. He could use eighty naps.

Or never sleep again, one or the other. He sees Elliot relaxing by that incremental amount, and this time, Tyrell doesn't repeat himself by leaning in. His hand leaves Elliot's jaw only to slide back, fingertips gliding over shaven hair, past his ear, settling at the back of his neck. There are times when he'd simply manhandle the object of his desire into position.

Instead, there's his other go to: the gentle and persistent application of pressure. Ushering Elliot in the form of a gentle push from the nape of his neck.

And this time, Elliot relents. Braces one hand on the dashboard, and moves forward with the pressure. He still feels a prickle of electrical discomfort in the touch, but Tyrell... as formidable and unreadable as he is, they're in this together. They're bound by their own actions, and by the strange thread of the familiar that runs between them.

So Elliot pushes down his discomfort, pauses a fraction of an inch away from Tyrell, then sinks into the other man's gravity. Kisses him, slow and soft, and chaste.

He feels like kissing a man should be harder, rougher than kissing a woman, but Elliot isn't. His lips are soft, and he's clean shaven despite looking like he's been drawn so thin he could split at any moment. Perhaps the strangest thing about the kiss, is that it's no so different from kissing anyone else he's ever wanted to do this with.

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