Chapter Text
Darlene didn’t actually like Tyrell Wellick. She didn’t like how he and Elliot were always whispering or speaking with a glance, as if Tyrell could rub his corporate slimeballiness off onto Elliot with zero effort. She didn’t like that for her, they’d gone to Washington Township together as tense acquaintances and come back best buds slash star crossed fucking lovers, like they’d been brainwashed or something; and yet for them, they’d been gone years. That was weird and hard to wrap the old head around. She didn’t like how manic Tyrell could be, hyperfocusing on work the same way Elliot did, but with more volatility when he hit a roadblock. She didn’t like how much he drank, partly because Elliot hadn’t done morphine in almost a year now, so could that kind of vodka drinking be a good influence? No.
But she did like that Elliot had someone to play video games and chess with. Someone to spend time with who he could tolerate more than he could tolerate her. Sometimes the pair of them would watch and make fun of conspiracism videos for hours at a time, muttering comparisons between what idiots think conspiracies look like and what they actually do. She liked Tyrell’s intelligence; he’d need it if he was going to be anything to Elliot long-term, because even if Elliot could make a little eye contact now and occasionally say something sane, he remained a constant puzzle to everyone around him. She liked that Mr. Robot was gone. She liked how Tyrell was a crybaby, because Elliot had always needed periodic reminders that feelings existed, and Darlene had never been qualified. She liked that Tyrell was as invested as she was in Elliot keeping therapy appointments and, occasionally, eating solid god damned food.
And, of course, she approved of the fact that through Tyrell Elliot had discovered his ability to … love, apparently. She approved of that even though Elliot had stopped confiding in her about it. She approved of it even though he and Tyrell had decided on something else, some weird friendship that involved lingering glances behind each other’s backs and occasional obvious flirting followed by embarrassed departures. She approved of it even though the new, strained phase of their relationship had required them to recruit her to live with them as a 98.6-degree buffer.
Basically, you could say she didn’t approve of the man, but she did approve of the friendship. Elliot had weird ass taste in people, always had (case in point: her ), but his list of flaws was long enough that he’d probably never get to addressing that one. And so what? Tyrell was a good cook when he stopped whining long enough to use the skill. He also fucking loved to pick up bills; he’d quit working at E Corp, but had rental properties and investment income or something, and didn’t seem too stressed about it. Darlene had never been one to pussyfoot around being paid for by suckers and she wouldn’t start now.
And so – after they’d been living together for about six weeks and had just relocated to suburban New Jersey like a pack of middle-aged lesbians instead of a schizoid, his saintly sister, his supervillain, his supervillain's baby, and his microscopic dog – Darlene was fucking dismayed to discover that Elliot was working hard to sabotage his friendship.
But there were no words in the universe that she could find to explain to Elliot her dismay at what she had discovered he was doing. She wasn’t sure Elliot would handle it decently even if she tried. And that’s why she found herself doing something risky on a Wednesday afternoon, while hourly workers unpacked Tyrell’s kitchen downstairs and his Norwegian housekeeper Irma played with Johann outside and Elliot worked on his simulation machine project in the dining room.
She entered Tyrell’s study, where he was alone. He wasn’t doing anything when she opened the door unannounced – just sitting with his head in his hands, actually – but he startled and woke up his mouse in a pathetic attempt at a cover story as soon as she appeared.
“Don’t pull yourself together on my account,” she said.
“I’m not …” He blinked, and winced. Maybe the way he’d whirled in his computer chair had pulled at his wound. “What can I do for you?”
The formality made sense. Whenever they spoke one on one, it was either stilted or an argument. Darlene was both a) pretty sure that was her fault, and b) not bothered.
“I have to tell you something,” she said. “It might make your day worse.”
“You both do this, you know,” Tyrell said, motioning her in.
She closed the door behind her and moved to his uninviting leather sofa. “Do what?”
“Act like sharing information of any kind is the world’s most momentous act.”
She glared. “Elliot’s spying on you,” she said. “I need you to be cool about handling this, because I know he wouldn’t be.”
“He’s … spying on me,” Tyrell said, half consideringly, half skeptical. “His bedroom is on the other side of a wall from mine and we both rarely leave the house. I’m not sure what there’s left to even spy on.”
“Your fucking accounts, Tyrell.” Was he dense? “Emails, bank, all of it. He hacked you.”
Tyrell smirked. “And you would know this how? Hypocrisy?”
“Sometimes I discreetly observe what he’s doing on his computer screen when he doesn’t know it. That’s all.”
“Mm. Okay. Got it.”
There was a silence.
“You knew this,” she said. “God damn it. Fucking –” She growled and rose. “What is wrong with the pair of you?”
“I figured he’d–” But Tyrell stopped speaking, because Darlene had stalked across the room and out the door. Distantly, as she descended the stairs, she suspected she was being crazy right now. She had almost no idea why this bothered her so much. That Elliot was trying to destroy the best thing he’d ever built for himself was the only explanation she had, but why would that make her so fucking angry?
She skidded to a halt at the stupidly expensive solid lucite dining room table, which was scuffed now from Elliot using it as a full-time desk, and slammed down a fist. “He knows you’re hacking him,” she said. “Tell me that’s not kind of fucked up. It’s fucked up you did it, it’s fucked up he knows and hasn’t stopped you even though we’re all trying to quit this kind of stuff, it’s–”
Elliot held his hands up defensively. “I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t known he’d know.”
This was getting downright hard to follow. “ What?”
“Yeah.” Elliot pulled out his phone and tapped at it, presumably calling up something else infuriating. “I mean, look.”
The email draft in Tyrell’s personal inbox folder read, “Elliot – get apples on the way home please. The tiny ones that Johann can finish. Thank you.”
Darlene turned her head. Through an archway, amidst the packing materials and the three dudes who were tearing through it, the fruit bowl on the counter could be seen. It was full of Johann’s tiny apples.
“I need to move back to the city,” she said.
Elliot’s huge green eyes turned up to meet hers. Fuck. This was one of the many, many maddeningly new things about Elliot: Sometimes you could see emotions on his face that weren’t pissed or overwhelmed, which used to be his entire emotive range.
“If that’s what you need to do,” he said.
She scoffed. She could not handle this. “Fuck off,” she said. “I’m going to my room.”
***
There had been several crazy-making incidents before that. Like the time the four of them were trying to just hang out on the patio the day they moved in here. Tyrell and Elliot kept referring to houses and apartments they’d never actually lived in, comparing them to this place. It was weird.
“This will be the first time I’ll decorate for myself,” Tyrell had said, bouncing the kid, Flipper at his feet. Flipper liked Tyrell better than anyone else in the household. Tyrell was a popular motherfucker. “I left the first apartment I lived in bare, and once I met Joanna, she wanted what she wanted.”
“Most versions of you liked that kind of thing, if I remember right,” Elliot said.
“I think this one does, too,” said Tyrell with a smile, like it was cute and normal, which it wasn’t. He’d spent seventy-two hours recently sweating over what kinds of beds to put in Elliot’s and Darlene’s rooms, because he wanted to be sure they had “the best of the best.” He’d printed out reviews and highlighted them according to some arcane code. He’d read materials science journal articles on latex. He’d chosen just in time for Elliot and Darlene not to stage an intervention.
“You remember that time you tried to make your bedroom into a ‘princess bedroom’?” Elliot asked Darlene. “And we knew you’d get in trouble for it, so we rearranged my room in a way that made no sense?”
She snorted, scrambling for something suitably nostalgic and interesting to say, something to keep the conversation going down this tangent. “Do you remember when Magda got home that day?”
“She was pissed .” He elided just what exactly Magda had done to them, which Darlene understood. It wasn’t exactly the stuff of after-dinner conversation.
“And then when Dad got home he told her she was being ‘poor of spirit,’” Darlene said. “I fucking loved that.”
She expected a smile. That was classic Dad: Telling Magda like it was. It never changed anything, but it was always nice to hear it.
But Elliot dropped eye contact and grunted. “I forgot about that.”
“That was awesome,” Darlene tried.
“No,” said Elliot. “It wasn’t.”
“I mean …” How did she discreetly ask if he had forgotten more of the day? If maybe this newfound stability she sensed in him was totally imaginary? Maybe he just had some new set of delusions, some new set of filters on the truth. It had happened before.
“He was trying to make her feel bad,” Elliot went on. His posture was still relaxed, but he was once again blank faced. “He knew she was sensitive about how bad she was at being a mom and he said stuff like that to make her feel like shit. It wasn’t to make us feel good. But he also knew we would all think he said it for us.”
Darlene didn’t know where to look. Tyrell didn’t either, and that made it worse.
“I’m not crazy,” Elliot said.
“I didn’t say you were,” Darlene returned. She never did.
“He just – he wasn’t a hero.”
Never, not once, had either of them ever voiced anything like this. At least, not before. She’d made excuses and gone inside for the night a few minutes later, and now she couldn’t get that incident out of her head.
It’s like they hadn’t even been talking about the same person, like they didn’t share any memories anymore. And more and more, she thought memories might be all they’d ever shared.
***
The problem, Darlene decided, was the machine. Elliot spent all his time now thinking about it. Tyrell helped when he wasn’t reading parenting books, spending time with the kid, being weird and secretive in his study, going to doctor’s appointments, or drinking vodka. The pair of them had gotten all this free therapy from the thing, and even if the results were mixed, you sure as shit couldn’t say it hadn’t changed them both.
It was like Elliot had once, irritatingly, said. She needed to take a trip into the thing to have an opinion on it, or to help with the project to try to understand it. And that meant she needed to take that trip to have an opinion on or understand literally anything that was going on around her.
So she asked that night at dinner. They were eating Italian takeout after 9 pm, baby monitor crackling in the background, because while Tyrell had intended to cook tonight, he’d just continued to stare at videos of cyberbombings victims' families being interviewed until Elliot and Darlene were both hungry and uncomfortable.
The men exchanged one of their damned looks.
“That’s not a good idea,” Tyrell said.
“Uh huh.” Darlene waved a hand. “Elliot? Come on. Tyrell was only in for twenty minutes the first time. Why’s this a big deal?”
“Sure,” Elliot said. He shrugged and gave up on pretending to eat. “You can go. As soon as two criteria are met.”
“Here we go,” Darlene said.
“One, I have literally any idea what we’re dealing with. Tyrell hasn’t decrypted Whiterose’s research, and unless and until that happens, we probably won’t understand the way the machine works.”
“Cool,” she spit.
“Two, you’ve tried therapy, instead of this much more radical step.”
“I don’t want to go in for therapy, ” she shot back. “I want to go in because it’s fucking rad. ”
“It’s not,” Tyrell said, and drank his lemonade. Which probably was not pure lemonade.
So, no go. But where there’s Darlene’s will, there’s a way. Tyrell had gone into the thing on accident, for fuck sake. How hard could it be?
Just after midnight she crept down the stairs. Flipper rose from her bed in the living room and stared, tail twitching; but since she stayed quiet, Darlene ignored her. The machine lived in a repurposed amp case in the dining room. Obviously, she picked the lock. She was taking in that eerie blue light when a voice interrupted her.
“And how are you this evening?” Tyrell asked, accented and for sure kind of slurred.
She turned. He leaned heavily against the dining room archway, arms crossed and body held in such a way that it suggested his wound hurt.
“Did you stake out the dining room?” she asked.
“No.” He looked honest about that. “I wish I could take credit. But I was just sitting up.”
“ Where?” She’d surveyed the whole floor. He wasn’t Batman .
“If someone goes in,” Tyrell said, “we don’t have any control over the mechanism that brings them out. We are also fairly sure that you only can get out if you’ve woken up from your simulation programming. We have no way of knowing who and how and when programming will break. Or – I mean.” This had come a little jumbled, and Tyrell frowned. “I think you know generally what I’m saying.”
Darlene examined him. “How drunk are you?”
“Unjustifiably. Why?”
“You gonna be able to get up the stairs on your own?”
“You can’t bribe me into not telling your brother about this.”
She came around the table. “I believe in a gift economy,” she said.
His answering expression was wry.
But all she said was, “Come on,” and he let her help him.
When she’d briskly deposited his lurching, larger frame on his village-sized bed and was slinking back toward the door he said, “I know what you’re doing. I’m calling him right now to stop you.”
Damn it. He could barely walk straight, but he could infer ulterior motives? “I won’t do it, okay, fuck.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Can you try?”
“Why would I do that?”
“As a favor?”
“I do not believe in a gift economy,” he said.
“Okay, then because …” She flailed her arms. Damn it. She’d fucked up, hadn’t she. “I don’t want him not to trust – me. I don’t want him to …” This was stupid. “Do whatever you want.”
“What do you think would’ve happened if he came downstairs tomorrow to find you unconscious and connected to the machine and we couldn’t get you out?”
“I hadn’t gotten that far.” Actually, suddenly, Darlene could make no sense at all of her own behavior.
Tyrell sighed and slipped bonelessly back against the pillows. “ Fan .”
This, she had gathered over the last few weeks, was a curse word in Swedish. “ Fan yourself.”
“Do you mean it? You won’t go back down there?”
“I’m going straight from here to watching Netflix like a good consumer.”
“I’m going to trust you,” he slurred.
This entire conversation was ridiculous and Darlene was ashamed to be part of it . “Okay. I don’t care either way.” Even if Elliot didn’t want to talk to her anymore, so what? She didn’t know what they were doing now anyway. And she didn’t need anybody. She could do whatever she wanted to.
“Thank you for helping me upstairs,” Tyrell said.
“What trick are you playing?”
Tyrell curled up on his uninjured side and put a pillow over his head like he was the aggrieved party. Again: Insane.
Darlene got him a glass of water and a pair of Advil before she left, though she kind of threw things around as she did it, and his parting shot to her was, “You are so weirdly like him.”
“It’s not weird, I’m his sister. ”
“It was a compliment,” Tyrell whined.
“Great.”
“Wait. Don’t go.”
She stopped, exhaling audibly. “What?”
“If you go back downstairs and Flipper asks for a treat, refuse her. She should have barked at you.”
“I live here.”
“What kind of guard dog couldn’t sense your ill intent?”
Darlene would have slammed his bedroom door if it wasn’t for the damn baby.
***
A few nights later, after days of Darlene stewing and feverishly contacting old but living friends in the NYC area to have a reason to leave Summit, New Jersey, she was huddled on the twee window seat in her bedroom. She was looking out over the empty garden that Tyrell had hired a crew to prepare, but which no one had ever planted in. And there came an ominous sound from the stairs.
“Are you kidding me.” She looked at her phone. It was almost one in the morning. So it wasn’t Elliot. Elliot kept normal human hours now because his kitten-heels wearing therapist had told him to, and also Elliot was capable of easily walking up stairs. So Darlene knew who had just made that late-night stairs thumping. A raccoon crossed the empty garden plots as she listened to Tyrell make his halting way into his room. She rested her head against the cold glass. The sounds did stop eventually, so at least he made it. Well, either that or he was dead.
He did this a lot, this drinking until late and then crying until later. Darlene had heard evidence of it often enough that Elliot, whose room was closer to Tyrell’s, must have heard even more. Moving in together, the Aldersons and the Wellicks, had seemed like a good idea at the time. Two months later, things having settled, Darlene was less sure. Tyrell was a mess. She felt like screaming half the time out here, far from the city. Elliot never did anything except work on his precious machine. Tyrell and Elliot spent time together, but it wasn’t clear whether they ever actually talked. Hence the weird consensual hacking, she figured. Idiot boys.
But then again, what did Darlene know? Maybe they were fine! She could be totally projecting. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with her damn life now, and she was imagining the same thing in them. She had less in common with Elliot than she’d ever thought she did, it turned out, and that made sense. When Darelene had started high school, Elliot moved out. But she already idolized him hopelessly. If she hadn’t been as extroverted as he was self-contained, she might have done a better job of following in his footsteps. But they weren’t the same. They maybe didn’t even have anything in common. She’d mostly only ever known the idea of him – the college kid who visited when she was in high school, the NYC older bro who became increasingly disinterested in hearing about it when she visited town … it was the previous year of closeness that was the anomaly, not this distance. Hell, sometimes he forgot who she was. She was the one with delusions if she thought they were close.
Twenty minutes later she stood up. Fuck it. It wasn’t that she gave a shit about a murderous former executive. She was not now and would never be any kind of a sell out; it literally wasn’t in her blood, even if it was in Elliot’s. It was that the bedroom Tyrell had furnished for her use was weirdly like a hotel room, with its quality latex mattress and its expensively framed shitty painting prints. She was just bored and it was in Elliot’s best interest for Tyrell not to be dead. She could go in there and explain to him that he was bullshit. Explain that he was going to hurt Elliot one way or another eventually if he kept being this level of mess. Maybe tell him to just fucking kiss Elliot already. Elliot would never tell Tyrell any of that himself.
In the hush of a suburban house at night, she crept to Tyrell’s door. Her hand stopped, though, a few inches from the knob.
Tyrell was speaking in Swedish, quiet. Was he on the phone? Darlene hadn’t thought he knew anyone in Sweden anymore. Actually, honestly, he didn’t seem to know anyone, anymore. Who could–
But then Elliot answered him. Right. Darlene kept forgetting Elliot was bilingual suddenly. Or, Mr. Robot was. Darlene wasn’t totally clear on how that worked.
“Well, what are you listening to?” Elliot asked. An answer from Tyrell in Swedish, and Elliot went on. “Wasn’t he a Nazi?”
“ No, not this question,” Tyrell groaned, laughing, though Darlene thought it sounded like his nose was stuffed up, like he’d been crying before this. “He died in the nineteenth century.”
“Okay, give me a headphone.”
So Darlene had overreacted in Elliot’s defense. Again. It was half of what she did these days. Elliot was fine, and if he was in there, Tyrell was clearly fine too.
Darlene settled on the carpet by the door. The silence stretched, and she almost got up to leave, but Elliot spoke again.
“That was terrible,” Elliot said.
“You don’t get to call one of the greats of opera terrible.”
“Mmm – let me pick a song?”
“Sure.”
Darlene should go back to her room. Or she should move out. Her rib cage was starting to tighten and she had to breathe deliberately. Cisco’s grave was in Pennsylvania, where his dad lived, and she’d gone a few times. Dom had never returned a phone call or text message yet. Most of her New York City friends had been hackers, so they were dead or afraid of her. She should go back to San Francisco. That’s what she should do. She had living friends there. Sane people who didn’t make her feel like she was a lonely five year old who was terrified of not being good enough with computers, because that would put her in a category alone with her mom, away from her brother and dad.
“I liked that song,” Tyrell said. “What was it?”
“You liked that,” Elliot said in clear shock. Occasionally these days, and only with Tyrell, he could be as emotive as anybody. He reminded her of who she’d thought he was when she was tiny and he was an older kid, someone lively and genuine. Over the years she’d decided she had imagined that Elliot. Maybe she hadn’t. But where had he gone, why was he back, and why was he only back for Tyrell ?
“I did like it,” Tyrell answered. “What is it?”
“It’s Radiohead.”
“Oh! Irma likes them.”
One of the most irritating and objectionalabe things about Tyrell was that he was one of those neoliberal types who thought it was possible to be a ‘good’ boss or employer. He gave bonuses and time off and, at least in Irma’s case, talked to her like a person most of the time. And if and when he flew off the handle at his staff, he generally apologized later. The whole thing was creepy.
“I know you’re drunk right now,” Elliot said. “I feel like I need to say that.”
“ Nej, ” Tyrell said. Darlene didn’t need to know any more Swedish than that to understand that what followed was defensiveness. Interesting. Trouble in paradise after all?
“You’re really trying to lie to me?” Elliot asked.
It took a second. But Tyrell answered, “ Okej. Fine.”
“You’re drinking a lot nowadays. And this time it’s not a simulation.”
“Presumably, but who knows?”
“ Tyrellen. We’ve talked about this.”
“I know, I know. I don’t know why I can’t get a hold of myself. What kind of useless idiot–”
“No. None of that.”
“Right.” A sniff. “I’m sorry.”
There were obvious undercurrents to all this that Darlene couldn’t see or infer. But she for sure had the gist. Her cheeks were wet and she was having trouble being silent, and it wasn’t because of anything Tyrell might be going through.
After some rustling, Elliot spoke again. “If you tell me vodka isn’t just making it worse, then I believe you.”
Elliot was being tactful. He was being emotionally supportive. What the living, breathing fuck? Darlene found herself listening for Tyrell’s answer.
And then, listening some more. There had been no more words. Tyrell’s answer had been silence.
“Okay,” Elliot said. “Okay, come here. I’m still bad at this stuff, okay? But – I want to help.”
That was it. Enough. She’d heard enough. Darlene stood up, mindful not to make the tiniest creak – if she could hear them talk, they could hear her creak – and fled back to her room.
And the moment she did, she made a snap decision. She’d been thinking about this for the last couple of days. Longer, honestly.
She did a line of her emergency cocaine and began to draw up plans for a YouTube channel. Elliot hated YouTube, and he would hate this channel.
Darlene was so excited.
***
“You did not fire that woman,” Elliot was saying the next day when Darlene came in the kitchen for breakfast in the afternoon. At this hour it was weird to see Elliot not in the dining room, bent over the machine. When she’d passed it, in fact, the amp case had still been locked.
Tyrell’s face was smushed into the kitchen table. “Yes. I did.”
“That’s the fourth one. How many ways are there to get changing gauze wrong?”
“It’s not fair. When I shot you, Mr. Robot was smoking and flirting with me not a week later.”
“Well, blame yourself for that. You’re too good at shooting me.”
“Hilarious.”
“Hire that woman back, Tyrell.” Elliot was drinking Mountain Dew again. It was a new habit, and Darlene did not approve. She made her way straight to the coffee maker. One good thing about living with Tyrell? There was always coffee in the coffee maker. He drank it black, and constantly.
“She was incompetent,” Tyrell said.
“You’re just hungover and pissy.”
“I thought you made me come in here to tell me something,” Tyrell said, still speaking into the table.
“Yeah. Darlene?” Elliot asked.
“I’m not here.”
Elliot put a palm on her head. What the fuck is this? She eyed him.
“Are too, you’re right here,” he answered. “Can you hang out for a minute?”
She stepped out from under his hand. “I said I’m not here.”
“I made a schedule, though,” Elliot said, gesturing to a whiteboard on the fridge. “We’re always forgetting who’s supposed to get groceries or not reminding each other when we said we’d make dinner. And I can’t keep track of when all Tyrell’s people will be around. And a schedule is just generally a good thing to have. So I thought–”
Darlene exited through the hallway to the stairs. “Not here!” she called over her shoulder.
***
Much later that night, when the coast was clear and Darlene had finished a bunch of her YouTube-related to-do list, she went into the kitchen for a snack. Tyrell kept the fridge stocked with things both she and Elliot liked, and while it was annoying, it was also great.
And, of course, she couldn’t help herself: She paused to look over Elliot’s whiteboard, still magnetized on the fridge.
It was an untidy jumble of times and names and tasks, but there were a few clear features. For one thing, Darlene’s name appeared as much as theirs did. It seemed, for example, that she was being asked to watch Johann on Thursday nights. So that was interesting. And for another thing, every day at the top of the column was “Ex. - E&T,” which was mysterious.
At the bottom, under the schedule, were two lists. One was labeled “Elliot,” the other “Tyrell.” The Tyrell list included native plants and contracting. The Elliot list included, in neater handwriting than anything else — Tyrell’s, it had to be — leave the house for literally any reason min. x2 per week. And under that in Elliot’s lettering: Yoga.
Yoga! Yoga? Yoga. Elliot Alderson was considering yoga.
Darlene took her snack and cigarette outside to keep from laughing and waking someone up.
Absolutely ridiculous. He’d die first.
***
“I’m dying,” said Elliot at dinner a few days later. “I’m going to die. I’m going to – vibrate to death or something.”
He was chewing on a thumbnail as Darlene violently set the table, and Darlene knew exactly what that kind of chewing meant.
“Go smoke, Tyrell’s not even downstairs yet,” she said.
“I don’t smoke.”
Darlene let the butter knives clatter onto the tabletop. “You don’t smoke. Since when? ”
“A few nights ago.”
“Are you trying to live forever?”
“Don’t fucking at me.” He took out his phone and, before it had even had time to ring, said, “Hey, get down here. I’m fucking starving. Also, I am going to kill someone.”
Darlene made the conscious decision not to think too hard about any of this, because if she did, she’d yell. She forced the dinner conversation, this time, to be about TV shows. That worked okay.
***
“This cannot be real,” Darlene said when she arrived in the kitchen one morning later that week to see Elliot, through the window, on the back deck, pulling shapes on a yoga mat.
Tyrell wiped Johann’s cheek clear of sweet potato glop. “What can’t? Did that war break out in Asia?”
“What? No. Elliot.” She pointed.
“Oh, sure. Krista’s been on him about doing something like that.”
“Like what?”
“You know.” He waved toward the ether. “Mind-body connection. She says he doesn’t feel his body or something. I don’t know.”
And yet, he knew more than Darlene did. She tried not to look directly at him. Tyrell had been going through a shleppy phase, wearing sweats and going days without shaving, but he was pressed and neat again today, packaged in designer jeans and cool-smelling aftershave she got a whiff of on the way to the coffee pot.
“It’ll never last,” she said of Elliot’s attempts at bending as she retrieved a mug. It couldn’t.
“Maybe not.” Tyrell stole a glance at Elliot and pitched his voice low, pouring milk into his coffee and stirring conspiratorially. “Just between us, he’s going to hurt himself and I don’t know how to tell him.”
“It’s okay,” Darlene said, arching a brow. “You can say he looks ridiculous.”
Tyrell whispered, “I say this as someone who values him above my own life: He looks like a sentient sculpture trying to give itself joints.”
And just for a second, they had a secret little laugh.
Then Johann reached for the spoonful of sweet potatoes and gripped it hard so it popped like a burnt-orange firework; Flipper yipped and started licking it up; Tyrell controlled his amusement, chucked Johann under the chin, and began to clean; and Darlene felt weird. She retreated with her coffee back up to her work.
***
Briefly, one day, Darlene considered telling Elliot about the YouTube channel she was brewing. He would hate it; he would never approve; but, maybe, if she explained to him the extensive-ass precautions she was taking to make sure there was no risk to anyone she cared about, it didn’t have to be something they fought over.
But if she tried to tell Elliot, If there’s anything I have ever learned in my entire life, it’s not to endanger people I love, she almost feared he would try to talk her out of that bit of positive self perception.
This was just hers.
***
When she came through the living room one day, she nodded at where Elliot and Tyrell were sitting with Johann on the couch, but tried to keep moving. Because Tyrell sort of glared at her in between bouncing the toddler and speaking a mix of English and Swedish to him while they both looked at a tablet, and Elliot was curled up on the couch nearby with his eyes hidden in the cushion. It could’ve been an ad trying to look cooler by showing an LGBTQ family, if Elliot was even an inch closer to Tyrell. His head on the sofa was the minimum distance away required for Darlene not to just fucking congratulate them on finally getting together.
But the weirdest part? The weirdest part was how when Elliot sniffed, Tyrell first handed him a tissue, and then put his hand in Elliot’s hair. And Elliot covered Tyrell’s hand with his own. So not only was Elliot being sad in front of people, he was letting someone help him. Darlene had never met this person.
Also, Darlene had had no fucking idea that Elliot was sad, either today or lately. He’d been fine. Weirdly fine. Too fine.
“You want to help me make dinner in a little while?” Tyrell asked Elliot as Darlene made it into the kitchen.
“All you said I had to do,” Elliot replied as Darlene paused just out of their sight, “was leave my room for an hour. Are you changing the terms of the agreement?”
“Don’t you think it would be more fun to help me cook than to lay in a sad ball?”
“It’s not a sad ball. It’s an I am invisible ball.”
“Would you come in the kitchen if I pretended you were invisible?”
“Tyrell. Don’t be cute.”
There was a pause during which Darlene could hear the baby game on Tyrell’s tablet. “Do you want to wear my hoodie over your hoodie?” he asked finally. “It’s big enough that I might actually not be able to spot you in it. I’ll look at you and assume I’m looking at laundry.”
Elliot considered, then said, "Yes."
At least this was one moment Darlene understood better than Tyrell did. Tyrell, who didn’t know Elliot was in love with him, would have no idea how offering him his hoodie would really play in Elliot’s mind. Elliot was probably dying inside.
“And do you want to see my most recent attempt to decrypt Whiterose’s research?” Tyrell went on. “I used that ensemble method we talked about.”
A similar pause. Then again: “Yes.”
“Then sit up, Elliot.”
“Fuck. Fine.”
Darlene popped some popcorn, staring into the microwave, brain playing out a memory even as she tried to stop it: Can't we just be a normal couple that … fights about the water bill? She’d told him they’d talk about it later. Instead, his head had become hamburger meat in front of her. Elliot had saved Tyrell from the brink of death, twice. That alone must feel incredible. Simply not being dead was a great quality in a person orbiting the Aldersons. Of course, it was a quality embodied by one Italian-American with a red dye job, but that Italian-American with a red dye job had clearly and tragically lost her thumbs and therefore the ability to reply to text messages, so the point was moot.
She poured herself a whiskey and cola while the kernels crackled, and noticed – as she had a few times before – the recent and sudden absence of any clear liquors on the liquor shelf in the pantry.
When he timer dinged, she bolted for the stairs with her drink and a bag of popcorn she didn’t really even want anymore.
“Darlene, would you like to watch a movie later tonight?” Tyrell called after her.
“What movie?” she asked without pausing on the stairs.
“Elliot’s pick,” Tyrell said. “He hasn’t decided yet.”
“Our tastes don’t match up lately,” she said loud enough to make it down the stairs, because she was already in the upstairs hallway, and so she never heard Tyrell’s answer.
***
As always, Darlene lost her nerve halfway through movie night and eased down the stairs until Elliot spotted her.
His eyes lit up and he paused some horror movie. He and Tyrell were sitting two feet apart drinking and drinking cocoa. The bag of Sour Patch Kids sat unopened on the coffee table waiting for her.
She snatched it up and tore it open.
“What’s thi’ about?” she asked with candy in her mouth as a kind of shield.
“Being murdered by the angry future ghost of yourself,” Elliot answered. He wiggled his fingers spookily. “ You killed me. Now I’ll kill you!”
“Normal!” said Darlene, trying not to look at Tyrell beaming between her and Elliot as she flung herself down on the far end of the couch.
***
The idiots left each other “encrypted” notes around the house, like they thought Darlene couldn’t solve a simple substitution code.
On Tyrell’s laptop one morning: If you watch those victim interview videos again today, I will know, and I will move back to the city over this. I’m not exaggerating. Don’t fucking do it. Do something else. Almost anything else. Also, never mention to me that I said this. I’ll deny it.
On the box of plastic straws in the silverware drawer, in Tyrell’s handwriting: You can do it. Take two if you need to (one for Robot). Actually, come to think of it, take three (two for Robot).
Barf.
On the same box of straws on another day, this time in Elliot’s writing: You could try it too, you know. Remember how annoyed you were with the hospital regulations? It only takes about a week to feel halfway normal.
Darlene didn’t know what that one meant. She’d been annoyed with the hospital’s no smoking policy, and chewed on straws, but Tyrell didn’t smoke. Inscrutable. But she was getting used to being lost.
On a water bottle in the cabinet, also in Tyrell’s neat print: To my favorite Matthew Broderick, Have a wonderful day. P.S. Go outside today. That is all.
On the whiskey bottle, in Elliot’s scrawl: Who is drinking this? I can see that someone is.
Darlene wrote the answer: No one important, because she was pretty sure it was just her.
She added a winky smiley face so it would sound less overdramatic.
***
The YouTube channel launch took place on a Tuesday. Apparently, according to her niche research, there was no best day for a launch. Tuesday would do fine. She had five videos in the chamber, filmed when Elliot and Tyrell were both downstairs. She wasn’t using the F Society mask, but the mask she was using didn’t not resemble it.
That in particular , Elliot would hate. She was looking forward to it.
For an hour, she watched her traffic. She was hopeful because she’d invited people from various corners of the internet to come check it out – Mastodon servers, some international chans, that kind of thing. She knew where to go to drop the word. So she thought maybe she wouldn’t be speaking into the void.
And she wasn’t. She watched the traffic begin to tick up. She watched it continue to tick up. She started to read comments. A lot of them were about the probable existence of her boobs, but not all of them were like that! A lot of people were actually engaging with her message.
Her message, which was about how you might go about hacking a small local municipal or county government, theoretically, or if you were writing fiction. With reality-perfect details. But not because you would ever use them. The commenters understood. They were sharing their own tips. Fuck, this was actually pretty fun.
The knock at her door made her jump. She shut her laptop, because there was no one in this house she wanted to show the channel to yet.
Elliot’s face, when she opened the door, was pinched. His shoulders were rounded forward. It was that look she knew, that look that said he was upset and it would take her monumental effort and at least an hour to figure out what was even wrong.
Wonder why he wasn’t going to Tyrell, then.
“What’s wrong?” she asked anyway.
“It’s Tyrell.”
Well, that explained it. “Tyrell how?”
“I need your help.”
She didn’t dare to hope. At all. “With what?”
Elliot glanced around the empty hallway. Then he leaned forward.
“You and I have to fabricate back-dated text messages in two cell carrier servers and then send the messages anonymously to the NYPD.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I bet it’s not.”
“Why?” she asked. “I mean why do we need to do that?”
“I’ll tell you at some point.”
Right. “Some point is now.”
“I can do it without you.”
“Then you already would have.”
Elliot paused. He took a breath. “Can I come in?” he asked.
As Darlene stepped back to let him through the door, aware it was the first time she’d done so since they moved here, she did her best to pretend she didn’t feel …
Better than she had since Christmas.