damnmeatyhands

The revelation of Elliot's betrayal was difficult for Tyrell, to say the least. Who was he even in love with? Mr. Robot? What kind of a name was that? He could adjust, perhaps, but that was going to be a difficult name to work with.

Was he in love with one half of Elliot? One half of his brilliance? Did Mr. Robot love him too? It seemed Elliot certainly did not. And even if he had, he especially would not now that Tyrell had shot him.

God, all of this. It was difficult to bear. When could he see his wife? His son? He'd been in this basement for so long, not nearly as long as the middle-of-nowhere cabin, but there wasn't even sunlight here. No wood to chop. His hands itched for the ax. Irving had been right; it centered him.

Irving. Tyrell wouldn't lie, he'd started to crave the man's presence. His was the only semi-friendly face he saw on a regular basis. And now, in this basement, Tyrell was more scared than ever. It felt like he could be smothered down here, by the darkness. Irving's glib, empty, one-way conversations would be welcome.

Elliot didn't love him. Didn't believe they were gods. And maybe they weren't. Maybe neither of them were.

A bang from the door down the hall and up the stairs startled Tyrell out of his spiral. Irving walked easily down the stairs, brown suit jacket as inoffensive as ever, glasses from the 80s perched on his cartoonishly aloof face. All of Tyrell's attention was inexorably drawn toward him; it felt like Irving drew the very air in the room to billow around him, a distinct yet subtle sense of power and control. Tyrell felt, as he often did, that he truly didn't know the other man at all.

Irving sat himself down on the couch, the one fluorescent light in the corner highlighting them both in a blue tint. Tyrell let all of it come out. His gnawing desire to see his wife and son, safe, in front of him, his frustration with Elliot, his anguish at shooting him. All of it gushed out of him, rushing out of his mouth and shaking its way out of his arms and legs and he paced and gestured.

Irving sat calmly through it all, legs crossed, blithe expression. The light filtered through his glasses, hiding the shine of his dark eyes.

"We were meant to be gods!" Tyrell held his hands out, pleadingly, as if Irving could reach up and place his dream back into his palms, fix what had been broken.

Abruptly, Tyrell thought of what he must look like, yelling like a child whose toy had been lost, stolen by waves at the beach or knocked haphazardly off the platform onto the tracks of a subway. He turned away from Irving, facing the darkest corner of the room where the edges of the walls became blurry and faint, as if he could walk into that half-light world and disappear forever.

"Uh-huh," Irving said after a long pause, but for once, the way he said it almost sounded like he gave a shit. "Well, Tyrell. Maybe the lesson here is not as dire as you're making it out to be.”

Tyrell huffed, but stood frozen, waiting to hear it from him, Irving’s judgment.

“Now from what I can understand, from what you're saying, I'm hearing that we can definitively say that Elliot," He put a derisive emphasis on the man's name, and Tyrell instinctively tensed. "Elliot is not a god.” 

Irving paused to let that sink into Tyrell’s veins. He wanted to deny it, but how could he?

“But you, Tyrell," Irving said, his voice firm and sure. "You are the god."

Irving said it so simply, as if it was the most obvious conclusion, as if he could see the divinity radiating here and now off of Tyrell’s body. And as his words echoed in the dim room, Tyrell's heart and guts and the very fibers of his being glowed. Could Irving really see it? See the vision of his godhood? 

"Yeah.” Irving let out a breath that could almost be a laugh. “Fuck him, you don't need him. You’re the god, Tyrell, always were." 

Tyrell turned, eyes welling with tears, to look at Irving, still sitting prim there on the couch, as if he hadn’t just flipped Tyrell’s world upside down, broken the foundations, and constructed something new and vast and beautiful there inside of him.

Even dressed back up to the nines, Irving’s blood was still rushing hot under his skin, burning him up inside his jacket. The memory of the act kept swirling through his mind: the handle of the ax gripped tightly, the way it had felt to follow through on the familiar motion, familiar until the dull squishing sound had resounded in his ears. The caving in of a chest, rather than a brittle log splitting. 

He knew he was a twisted son-of-a-bitch, but he was still surprised how there was no growing horror, no deep guilt, just an ever growing sense of satisfaction and something primal itching to go back to the corpse and whack into it again.

His hands slid up and down the steering wheel, the stimulation of the smooth pleather surface not enough, not nearly enough to settle him back down. Center himself.

Irving knew where he was driving. What a strange compulsion. But as the ax had landed those last few strokes, he’d known where he would go. First stop on his sabbatical. He knew he would get in trouble if anyone noticed, if Whiterose decided to care. Given the ever-present danger of visiting someone caught in the eye of the media, it was a risk he wouldn’t usually take.

He flicked another speck of dried blood off his thumb. He could just barely glimpse the small blood splatter at the top right corner of his glasses. He left it alone. He liked looking at it.