SUGAR FREE

THE COMEDIC THOUGHT OCCURS TO HIM THAT IS THE EASIEST CONVERSATION HE’S HAD IN A WHILE. with a woman who looks outside of time. they aren’t looking at each other, and they aren’t having to talk about things that he’d rather not talk about. there are easier topics for him, like infosec or pretty much anything about tech, but she’s not prying into his personal problems. she isn’t asking him what angela would ask him, the questions he can’t answer like how he’s doing or what he’s been doing with his time. he hates small talk, but it’s useful when you don’t know how to describe what’s happening with you. elliot can’t just tell angela that he’s just going to therapy and not doing much else.

or what he does when he misses the meetings he accepts knowing full well he won’t show up.❝ yeah. ❞ his hands slide into his jacket pockets, bringing his profile down to something even more rectangular. out of the corner of his eye, for a moment, he watches someone in a dark coat, hat pulled low, stop and peer at them. then the figure keeps walking, and he relaxes. ❝ when i first moved here it took me a while to get used to it. couldn’t sleep for a while. things were always noisy. ❞

there’s something. it’s not quite a laugh, but like a small huff of noise from his chest. he doesn’t laugh much. it always feels too open, like you’re throwing open the windows of yourself for a moment too long even if you shut them again. ❝ it’s okay. people don’t… ask me for directions much. but if you’re just looking for the hudson, you can basically walk that way until you reach water. ❞

he just doesn’t talk to people much. but you don’t just say that. he’s learned that lesson by now.

OH. perhaps that’s why she lies awake here night after night, listening to the sound of hundreds of people breathe in the hotel around her and millions in the city around the hotel and hundreds of millions more in the world around the city. it keeps her up. it HAUNTS her, the sound of cars and horns and music and shouting and life thrumming up through the hotel window from the street stories below. constance smiles distantly and nods once. “it’s like the air itself is noisy.”

does that make any sense? she both loves and dreads the noise and the lack of it that will seep back into the spaces between her bones when they return home and mother plucks at the harp and father speaks into the phone in his office. it’s so STAGNANT of late; the blackwoods are the blackwoods and the blackwoods do not change.

HE COULD DO A LOT OF THINGS ABOUT THIS. he could say the river’s not really worth the forty minutes to get there, which is probably true. he could give her a direction through a maze of subways, as natural to him as anything in the world but probably complete fucking nonsense for her. it comes to him as easy as second nature, but it’s just not for everyone. it’s hard to say how to know when someone’s a tourist. it’s the demeanor. it’s the way they look at buildings. sometimes it’s just the way they react to other people.

elliot shrugs after a moment, shifting the weight of his backpack from one shoulder to the other just a little until it sits more comfortably.

❝ a little obvious, yeah. ❞ part of him knows this is making him seem far nicer than many other new yorkers when it comes to tourists. most people try to get them to fuck off. like mr. robot, who would probably have some fun being an asshole about this. everyone’s new to new york at some point in their lives, and it’s not their fault.

a pause. ❝ you could walk straight across, ❞ he says. ❝ i guess it depends on what you want to see, honestly. are you just trying to see the hudson, or are you looking for something specific? ❞ god, he sounds like a fucking tour guide, but he really doesn’t want to just set someone loose in new york without any real direction.

he does not watch her so she does him the same favor, looking across the street at the milling crowd of colors and sound rather than seeking out his eyes. to not be seen is a blessing. maybe he sees it the same way. fingers pinch together in her pockets for a moment before she draws them out and lets arms hang limp by her sides. “i suppose that isn’t very surprising,” lips twist into something nearing a smile and a hand tucks a wisp of hair behind an ear, “it’s much quieter back home. there must be something on the faces of people who aren’t used to all the sound.”

or maybe it’s the way the buildings, stretching impossibly tall, make her feel ill to peer up at. even the ones that are not all gleaming metal and glass seem to pierce holes in the blue expanse of the sky above, like something trying to manage enough height that they might detach from the world all together and leave gaping holes in the sky.

“i–” he hesitates. people don’t like when you speak ill of the present. the past can be bad, the future can be uncertain, those are allowed. but when you speak of the now, you better show respect. david scrapes his tongue against his upper teeth, furrows his brows in concentration. and then decides to go ahead: “i sometimes hate being here. not with you– !! no, just, in the moment. when the clock is ticking and i hear every sound it makes even though, i don’t, i don’t want to.” 

the boots in his hand swing wildly when he twists his torso to address constance properly, staring at her with wide open eyes: “i don’t hate your now, i promise. your present is– it’s nice.” he doesn’t want to offend. stepping onto the grounds of this estate is dangerous, yes, but it also brings silence david rarely gets to hear. 

maybe he’s being selfish. maybe he’s here only because the blackwood estate is like a pocket of air to him. but when he nods at constance, he means it: “we should burn something then. for them. like a viking’s funeral.” it seems fitting. he knows the past davids had to fight like hell– and he feels like past constances know something about that as well.

he sounds like MERRICAT sometimes. burning something for them. constance does not know all of merricat’s rituals, why she buries things and nails them to trees and always goes to the woods on certain days at certain times. perhaps that’s why merricat dislikes david - though she dislikes all company. “i don’t want to, either,” she replies and settles down on the ground from her kneel. garden-glove clad hand pats the ground beside her, just once, in an open invitation for him to come sit somewhere on the lawn. “sometimes.”

it isn’t ALWAYS. it isn’t as though she drifts through each and every moment full of dread. it is more like the moon behind clouds, flashes of it peering through intermittently, whenever the breeze is strongest. always there, sometimes HIDDEN. constance doesn’t smile at david and thinks quietly on his words. “some days i imagine just lying in bed until i have wasted away to nothing,” it’s said like a secret, like words pressed into a diary rather than spoken into the soft wind as she watches him and his boots. “but then i remember.” UNCLE JULIAN AND MERRICAT AND THE HOUSE AND THE GARDEN AND THE PRESERVES BENEATH HER FEET AND THE STORY ABOVE HER HEAD. it’s all there for her to care for. what would it do without her? besides, she would have to make merricat waste away, too. constance couldn’t just LEAVE HER.

a  moment  passes  between  the  two,  gaze  slipping  across  to  her  companion  with  curiosity.  “  sometimes  a  lovely  thought  is  enough  for  the  universe  to  decide  to  be  kind  for  a  change.  ”  positivity  was  perhaps  the  only  thing  keeping  her  broken  exterior  bandaged  together,  she  couldn’t  let  that  go  even  now.  “  tell  me,  what  do  you  dream  of  ?  when  your  thoughts  turn  to  the  future,  what  do  you  see ?  ”

OUT OF PLACE, AND EVEN LOOKING SOMEHOW OUT OF TIME. he knows the feeling. elliot notices her presence right away – of course he does. he takes different routes home from the arcade every time. it’s part of the rules. right? thinking of it, he doesn’t remember anyone telling him that in particular. maybe mr. robot mentioned it at some point in passing, and it ground into his brain. so he’s loitering for a while outside of this coffee shop with a black coffee clutched close to his body, as if fortifying him against the outside world.

( i like new york because you can disappear. but it makes it hard, sometimes, to know who’s following you. but this woman doesn’t look like a fed. i know what feds look like. she looks… almost disoriented.

she’s a tourist, i think. )

he barely hears her voice. the only reason he does is because he’s paying attention. he listens to everything. so elliot blinks. he finds the words after a second, gaze refusing to fully meet hers. ❝ it depends on how you get there. forty minute walk, maybe, but you could cut it down if you took the right subways. ❞ a pause. ❝ you’re not from new york, yeah? ❞

forty minutes. these shoes are not meant for walking so far, but constance has long stopped listening to the complaints of sore feet after hours on them. the man does not look at her and it is almost COMFORTING to not be seen. constances likes these visits to the city for that very reason; the village is too full of eyes and mouths. here no one cares about her. no one knows father and his unkindness. no one knows about their staircase and picture frames and they do not change the subject when she walks into a room. hands stay in her pockets and she blinks at him.

“i was planning on walking,” she replies, “no. it’s so obvious?” it’s not truly a surprise. these people do not look like her or anyone else from town or the village, or even mother and father’s friends who live in these cities. there is something different behind the eyes. constance finds herself JEALOUS. “i’m visiting for the week.”

@notberried​  liked  for  a  starter.

    ‘  how  much  do  you  wanna  bet  that        this  place  is  haunted?  ’

@notberried​ asked : ‘ i beg your pardon, sir. i thought i heard a strange voice. ‘ [ … ]

            “A strange voice??” His tone is meant to sound inquisitive, though it might fall slightly flat, and his intention certainly isn’t to invalidate her, so he quickly follows this up with, “I think I heard something, too.” His voice is a low murmur now and his gaze doesn’t quite meet hers, but he’s not lying. He did hear something. R wouldn’t call it a voice, though. It was too disjointed and distorted to call it anything at all, really.

“Did you hear what it said??”