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Darlene could have waited around for Elliot to actually arrive back at his apartment, in the way that a normal sibling would have. She could have even shot off a text to the other to at least warn him that she was coming by, but that was another thing that a normal sister would have done and Darlene had long since proved that she was nothing that could have been considered a ‘normal sister’. But, when it all came down to it, were the Aldersons really a normal family to begin with? No, they hadn’t been for as long as Darlene could remember and they probably wouldn’t ever be again. Not with how much had gone on over the course of the years; the cold and uncaring attitude of their mother, the untimely and sudden death of their father, the slow deteriorating of Elliot’s sanity and eventual forgetting of… everything.

Normalcy was long gone, she’d come to terms with that.

So, what did Darlene the not-so-normal-sister decide to do instead of alerting her brother to her sudden arrival? Break in to his place, of course. Wasn’t that what any good sibling did when they wanted to order pizza, get high and watch cheap horror flicks? What she hadn’t been expecting when she’d finally managed to jimmy the lock open (a new one that Elliot had installed, probably in hopes that it would prevent her from doing exactly what she was doing at the moment.) was to see someone already sitting in her spot on the couch.

Was she in the wrong building?
Was she on the wrong floor?
Had she just broken into the entirely wrong apartment?

No. It couldn’t be. It looked just the right amount of shitty apartment to belong to none other than Elliot Alderson. But the guy that was on the couch… was not the wide-eyed, shifty figure of her brother.

“Uh. Okay... Who the hell are you?” She questioned, kicking the door closed with her foot, a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses pushed up onto the top of her head so that she could look at this mystery person without the dark tint of her lenses obscuring her vision.

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“A little bit of high quality chronic — the medicinal kind of stuff, he’s got some kind of connect straight out of California — a couple pills of Molly, but I’d kinda like to avoid taking those with you, no offense or anything. Some coke, if you’re feeling crazy some night. A little bit of that Morphine stuff that you like so much, a couple of Ambien, a few Xanax, handful of Adderall, you know… The usual stuff. I figured with the kind of money that he had coming in, it’s gotta be some pretty good stuff, right?"

‘Good job’. Good. Job. So, it wasn’t the gracious praise that she had been searching for, but in the language that was Elliot Alderson a ‘good job’ might as well have been the most sincerest thing that he could have told her — he was on edge, and it was somewhat the majority of her fault, so she really couldn’t expect him to go laying on all the praise and compliments for her undercover work disguised as a sleazy one night stand at the moment. “Aren’t you just Mr. Pleasant today? Yeah, there’s something else. Have you gotten a chance to look into you little houseguest, yet?"

She paused, but hardly long enough to allow Elliot to answer, once Darlene started on a tangent, it was usually difficult for anyone to get a word in edgewise.

“I’m gonna assume that you haven’t, since you’re trying to be Elliot the normal or whatever. So I’ll fill you in, he doesn’t really have much online — no Twitter, no FaceBook, no Tumblr, not even a fucking MySpace. I know the kid was homeless, but usually there’s at least some kind of footprint somewhere. It’s weird.” Popping the bag open, she dug out one of the joints from inside of it, placing it between her lips and then rummaging through the pocket of her jacket for a lighter. “Allerdyce. I didn’t try too many spellings; A-L-L-E-R-D-I-C-E didn’t bring up much, a bunch of random guys who don’t look anything like him or even related to him, so… maybe try out a few different ones if you’re gonna go looking.” She shrugged, she’d done all the digging that she felt like doing at the moment — maybe when she was back somewhere private with her laptop she would do a little more, if only for the sake of looking out for Elliot.

And, okay, for the sake of being a nosy bitch.

“Why not? You got something better to do tonight? You and Kid Icarus got reservations somewhere?” She laughed, lighting up the end of the joint and taking a long hit from it.

"I don't..." Elliot didn't really have the chance to say anything. To be honest, he hadn't tried to hack him yet. He still hadn't actually asked him for his last name but he wasn't about to tell Darlene that. She'd really think something was wrong with him then. So he stayed quiet and let her ramble on. She loved the sound of her own voice.

Everyone loved the sound of their own voice, except him. And that hallucination's voice that was also his voice in a way. He hated those voices and wished they'd both go the fuck away.

"No." Literally nothing on the agenda.

"He should be back soon... How long on the food?" Not that he was hungry but if John was and Darlene was then obviously the food needed to get there faster. "give me the coke. You should offer some of the lighter shit to him. He ain't like us though."

“I dunno. I ordered a whole lot, but it shouldn’t take too much longer, that place is usually pretty quick, fastest bike delivery in the whole city, the kid delivering probably does speed or something. That guy is gonna go fucking insane when he starts checking his bank account. ‘I remember all the hookers, but when did I order 300 dollars worth of Greek delivery?’ I wish I could see his face, it’d be fucking priceless.” Darlene laughed, once again sounding far too pleased with the havoc she was going to end up causing on some man’s life. It was all for the greater good though, wasn’t it? Just another one of the many steps in the larger plan — at least that was how Darlene rationalized all the petty crimes that she committed along the way. After all, the company that they were taking down had done far worse things than she could have been doing, she wasn’t murdering people by the thousands and then covering it up like it had never even happened.

That was real crime. Stealing a couple thousands from someone might as well have been child’s play in comparison.

“Atta boy. That’s what I like hearing. Just don’t take it all, okay? I actually want to try some of that later.” Deft fingers dug through the bag, retrieving a small vial of finely ground cocaine and gently tossing over to Elliot. “And, look at you. Taking in some kid off the streets, and letting me fill him up with illegal substances, we’re really just a shining example of responsible adults, aren’t we? This is probably why we never had any kids… that and I can’t stand those noisy little fuckers.” Another laugh echoed out of her, examining the substances inside of the bag once more, as though trying to decide which one would be the best to give to John once he finally arrived back with Flipper.

“I’ll let him have his pick, and make sure that he stays away from the hard stuff. I don’t wanna be held accountable if he ends up trying to eat your face off or something later."

As if he'd been called by their discussion, John came back in mere seconds later, throwing the door open and strolling into the apartment like he'd hadn't just left it in a thick overcast of tension. Peering around the doorframe wasn't his style, even if he was having to smother a bit of apprehension.

Things looked fine, though. Elliot and Darlene seemed to be getting along again. Siblings were weird, he'd always known that in a distant way, even if he had no real life experience to know what that weirdness looked like. Knowing his family, he would've gotten a fucked up picture of it if he'd had a sibling anyway.

"No shit on your pillow tonight, man. You're welcome. So what did we - whoa." The bag in Darlene's hand stunned him to silence, jaw dropping as he squinted at the contents. That was a very, very large assortment of drugs. Cocking his head to one side, he glanced at Elliot, then lifted a hand to point at Darlene. "Just checking, don't wanna cause any more offense: she's not a junkie either?"

Elliot was staring at the coke intently, weighing the pros and cons in his head about whether to do it or not. If it was just once in a while it was okay.

"She's totally a junkie and a deviant and other things that a brother can't say about his sister," there was a hint of a smile though because she wasn't any more a junkie than he was so clearly not a junkie. They were both completely functional human beings who just had shit for pasts.

"There's some light shit in there if you want any. You'll need it with the god awful movie she's going to make us watch."

Darlene nodded earnestly at Elliot’s explanation, playing along with him for no other reason that she truly enjoyed fucking with people sometimes, and John had made himself the newest addition on that long list — there was only so much that she could shock Elliot with anymore, and even then it was territory that she had to tread lightly in. The guy was a little high-strung on most days (doing too much morphine on top of a variety of mental issues could do that to a person.) and could fly off the handle at even the slightest joke. “Don’t worry, he’ll say all of them once I’m gone, though. But, I’m a changed girl now, found Jesus and seen the light and all that bullshit. Today is just my cheat day.” At that she laughed and took another hit from the joint poised between her fingers, tilting her head back to blow out a few rings of smoke, watching them dissipate into the air above her head a shot moment after.

“Yeah, go ahead, take you pick.” She held the bag up for John to have a closer look, shaking the contents around inside of it in an attempt to spread them out a little within their confined plastic space. “Word of caution, if you don’t know what is it, then you probably shouldn’t go asking for it. I’m not being blamed if you start tripping out and thinking the floor is lava or something."

Darlene paused, looking over at Elliot with an all too amused expression. “Listen to me, I almost sound responsible. And Prophecy isn’t that bad… It’s a classic 80’s Frakenheimer cyborg bear horror. You gotta give it a chance."

Yeah, she was really selling it with that description.

Okay, so Elliot was positively goddamn jovial compared to what John had seen of him thus far. Darlene taking the piss already didn't surprise him because they were the same breed of smartass (other than John being decidedly more mean-spirited) but Elliot... siblings were really, really weird. They'd gone from what felt dangerously like the makings of a future murder scene to cheerful and chummy in the time it took a dog to take a dump.

"Right," he muttered to himself as he sat cross-legged on the floor, snatching up the bag on his way down. "Now this is happening. I dunno what any of this is, the people where I sleep smoke shit or shoot it right into their veins, not this." Wait - he shook it all to one side, then arched an eyebrow. "Except weed. Obviously I know weed."

He glanced from one of them to the other like he kept finding himself doing since Elliot had gotten home, like he was constantly watching a tennis match. "So? Recommendations?"

"I'll let Darlene handle that," Elliot said and he was relaxed, almost normal even though setting out a line of coke wasn't exactly your typical definition of normal. He was calmer the loud voices in his head subdued and he wasn't constantly thinking of what he needed to be doing and why he needed to be doing it.

The switch very temporarily switched. It'd probably hit him ten times as hard soon enough. He probably wouldn't sleep much tonight. The price you pay for moments like this.

He kept his eyes on the other two except when he leaned to snort the line he'd set out carefully. He cleared his throat slightly before leaning back again. "And that movie still sounds even more awful now, Darlene."

“Well, we don’t shoot shit into our veins anymore, we save that for Thursdays.” Darlene’s face remained completely serious, leaning over in her chair so that she could tap a few ashes off of the end of the joint into the ashtray on the table before taking another hit — and being careful not to accidentally let any of them float their way into Elliot’s line of fresh white powder, snorting ashes probably wasn’t something that he wanted to be doing that evening.

“Okay, listen and listen good, because this is the kind of shit they don’t teach you but they really should. Those colorful little pills are Molly, they’ll make you feel pretty good, but it’ll probably get kinda weird and you’ll keep asking us to touch you and that’s not really a road I wanna go down today — we just met. There’s a couple prescription meds in there; they’ve all pretty much got the names on them; Xanax and Ambien will knock you out, unless you can stay awake and then you’ll feel pretty good. Adderall will keep you up, kinda like speed. The white powder stuff is for Elliot. He’s got some coke there if you wanna try that. And… there might be a tab of acid in there, if you’re feeling like really tripping balls."

Darlene rattled off the drugs without a moment of hesitation — proving that this was in no way her first foray into the world of illicit substances, which could both be seen as a good and bad thing. But better to have someone well versed in the world of recreational drug use than someone who knew absolutely nothing, right? “Well, too fuckin’ bad. I brought it and unless you got anything better lying around here, then Prophecy it is."

Since Darlene was apparently giving the lesson, John shifted his attention from Elliot to her, listening just as carefully as she'd ordered because he didn't want to completely freak out and make an idiot of himself. He was sure he'd never live it down in this company. Molly, definite no if he was taking it alone; Xanax and Ambien, possible; Adderall, sounded fun for the future but probably not great for a movie night, where he'd just be antsy and bouncing off the walls; and then there was coke, which he just wasn't that sure about. It reminded him of crazy dudes in suits thanks to American Psycho.

"I'm not dropping acid," he snickered, imagining how he could react if he hallucinated the wrong thing - the apartment building would go up in seconds, and that'd be a promise to Elliot broken and him back out on the streets. Or in jail, since they'd probably collar him for arson at long last with so many potential witnesses. "Trust me, it's a bad idea, at least indoors."

Even if he was starting to loosen up with Darlene, he wasn't quite ready to tell her he was a mutant yet. He was still quite surprised by how quickly he'd revealed it to Elliot; something about Elliot's blasé reactions to everything made him seem very trustworthy, or at least like he wouldn't even remember for longer than a few minutes.

Finally, he fished out the tablets of Xanax, eyeballing them curiously. Well, he fell asleep without warning his first night here, it wouldn't be that embarrassing if he did it again. Probably the least embarrassing of all the options. He just really didn't want to make an ass of himself in front of what were obviously experienced drug users, make himself look like even more of a child.

"You could just get him a joint," Elliot muttered, knowing from one of their first conversations that was the only drug John seemed perfectly comfortable with. Elliot'd settled against the corner of his couch, smoking a cigarette by the time the drug lesson was done and he could kind of see the gears in John's head working.

Even without hacking him he'd slowly started to figure him out. Not as thoroughly as he could with a hack but enough.

"I still have the Matrix movies," yes, it'd taken him that long to think of something better than the Prophecy but honestly were those movies that much better? Maybe not.

“Yeah, if you wanna be some boring asshat and take the normal road,” She said while simultaneously waving her joint around in the air, not bothered by the hypocrisy of it all because Darlene found herself to be anything but a boring asshat, “then go ahead. The joint in there is yours. I was just giving the kid some options, Jesus Christ, Elliot. I’m trying to be a good host.”

Yes. Darlene was attempting to be a good host in a house that wasn’t hers. But that was just Darlene, wasn’t it? She tended to take ownership over whatever place that her body currently occupied and in that moment it was Elliot’s apartment.

Once more she leaned over in her chair to reach the table a short distance away, tossing what little was left of the end of her joint into the ashtray before scooping up a generous amount of the cocaine onto her index finger, and then immediately rubbing it along her top gum line — her entire mouth beginning to tingle in a way that sent a shiver through her body. Her movements already feeling lazy and slowed thanks to the weed that she’d burned through in what could have been considered record time, and she knew that the newly added stimulant would make for a kind of concoction that she was craving at the moment. A paradox that would have her heart and body racing at top speed, but her mind steps behind trying to catch up.

“Whatever, they’re all shit movies. Where are they?” In one fluid motion, she pushed herself up out of the chair, hands poised on her hips as her head turned on a swivel to glance around the apartment — as though the movies would have had some kind of neon sign above them that indicated their location.

"Didn't I just tell you not to talk about me like I'm not here?" He snapped irritably, with that imperious tone he could take on with no warning and absolutely no justification for it. Jesus, he felt like they were babysitting him, like a little brother they'd been forced to drag along to a party who might as well be turned into entertainment so the night wasn't a total loss. "And don't call me The Kid either, Darlene, my name's fucking John."

As much as the flash of temper probably looked ridiculous, there was also very real, very irrational and dangerous fury behind it. Elliot knew a bit of what he could do. Darlene didn't, but she was used to a certain kind of madness with him as a brother, so maybe she could sniff out John's madness as well. He was mollified by the kindness that had already been shown to him here, but only so much; he could still turn on a dime, and in that moment it definitely showed, like a tamed stray dog suddenly showing too much teeth when someone got close.

He swallowed the Xanax dry, then pulled his lighter out of his pocket again and started to play with it. Not the incessant clink-clank, because he didn't trust himself to open it, just turning it around and around in the fingers of one hand.

Elliot didn't like seeing John pull out the lighter after that altercation but he didn't really want to point it out and instead took a longer drag off his cigarette. "I don't fucking know. You're the one that had them last. What'd you do with them?"

He rolled his eyes, rubbing his forehead with his free hand and glancing at John again.

"can you two cut the shit out though. I'm having a good night for once," he might've been a bit petulant himself but good nights like this were few and had gotten fewer with how things had changed in recent times, before even John showed up on the doorstep.

For all their cursing between one another, Elliot and Darlene were actually a pair of loving siblings — they’d both do anything to protect one another, and that was something that had even been proven when Elliot was completely unaware of their relationship with one another. It was instinct, Darlene liked to think. “I left them lying around, just like everything else in this damn place.” Pursing her lips together in thought, she turned and began to search through Elliot’s things, privacy having been something that was tossed out the window long ago between the two. There couldn’t exactly be much for Elliot to keep hidden from Darlene when she had made a habit of breaking into his apartment on the regular.

“Look, John. It’s not meant to be an insult or something, calm your shit down a little bit. I get it, you’re a big boy and you tie your own shoes and everything. Don’t take it to heart, got me?” She raised her voice a little, but simply because her back was now to the both of them and she wanted to ensure that she was heard — because if there as anything that Darlene wouldn’t stand for it was talking and not being heard. As though every word that came out of her mouth was of the utmost importance and couldn’t be missed.

And, hello. It was.

“Geesh. You think you’d be a little nicer to somebody who so graciously let you have your pick of their drugs. You dunno the kinda shit I had to do for those.” Darlene tried to sound as ominous as possible, like she had risked life and limb for the little goodie bag that John had been searching through, when in reality she had actually done next to nothing for it. “A-ha! I think these are it.” She called from where she was ducked down and searching through a stack of DVD cases in one corner, most of which were unlabeled bootlegs they had downloaded and burned themselves.

Being doubly scolded like that just made John sink into sullen silence. If he'd been challenged, he probably would've snapped and turned Elliot's smoke into a Molotov cocktail by accident, but Darlene had kind of sort of acknowledged him and Elliot had just sounded exhausted. Neither was worth keeping up a fight. Instead, he flipped his lighter open and lit while Darlene was facing away and concentrated on shaping the flame into a smooth, shining coil that spiraled upward, the kind of precision work that always soothed him.

When she called out that she had found the movies, he slammed the lid of his lighter back down way too fast before she could turn around and pocketed it again.

"Never seen the Matrix movies before. Are they any good?" He sounded a bit more amicable now, at least.

Edited 2016-08-24 07:02 (UTC)

Elliot was still quietly smoking as the other two continued their exchanges though at least they had been less combative than before. He relaxed a bit more against the side of his couch. He could almost go for some food now. Hopefully darlene had actually ordered some good stuff within that ridiculous $300 order.

"Not all that great but Darlene completely loves them. She made me go to every pawn shop in the city until I found the second one."

"Are you really being serious right now?" Darlene had to use a quite a bit of skill to wiggle the DVD cases in question from out of the middle of the pile where they were lodged without knocking the entire thing open -- because then she would have felt obligated to actually clean them up, and that wasn't a road she wanted to travel down at that particular moment... or ever. It was Elliot's damn apartment, why should she go around cleaning up any of the messes that she made like she was some kind of polite houseguest? "You haven't seen any of the Matrix movies?" She turned to face John long after the lighter had been closed and the coil of flames had disappeared, only catching him suspiciously shoving it back into his pocket, but she couldn't really be bothered to delve any deeper into the weird actions of the other.

It wasn't by far the weirdest thing that she'd been presented with in her life. And, besides, Elliot was weird, maybe he just naturally attracted just as weird people. Like some kind of beacon or bat-signal.

"The first one is actually pretty good, but they turn to absolute shit by the end ." She smiled, her head tilted to the side as she batted her eyelashes at Elliot, as though it was some kind of form of appreciation for her brother. And, in Darlene's own special way, it was. "I didn't make you, you're just so sweet on your precious little sister that you couldn't help but want to make me happy by searching until you did."

Yeah. That was a complete lie. She'd forced him to 100%.

Watching the two of them interact wasn't so bad when they were doing something other than mocking John. It had a weird sort of charm to it, and Elliot got chatty enough around Darlene to share random stories like that, which was a pleasant change.

John had given up on the idea of family being worthwhile so long ago that he couldn't quite work his way up to jealousy or envy. Maybe there was something a bit wistful in his expression as he watched them banter, but - that also could've been the drugs slowing him down already. He didn't really know.

"How old are you two?" He asked suddenly, because Darlene calling herself little sister made him newly curious. The tiny details he didn't know about Elliot were kind of incredible, if not as incredible as how little Elliot knew about him compared to what he could've with a solid hacking session.

"What about you is precious?" Elliot asked Darlene, though he was near to cracking a smile again as he tapped the ash off his cigarette into the ash tray beside him.

"28."

It was a simple answer and he brought the cigarette to his lips again. "Darlene's actually 3 years old. Pretty tall for her age."

“Everything about me is precious, stop acting like it isn’t. I know when I’m not around that you refer to me as your precious baby sister.” Darlene laughed, a giggling sound that bubbled out of her thanks to the mixture of coke and weed whirling around in her system. She was starting to feel it now, and she couldn’t have felt better about deciding to steal the stash from someone who was far less in need of it than the three of them — and in Darlene’s mind there was no one more deserving of illegal feel-good drugs than herself, Elliot and John.

“It’s true. The doctors were all amazed at how fast I matured. I’m a real miracle case, they’re gonna do a Discovery Channel special on me soon.” She laughed, moving to where Elliot’s television and DVD player were, turning both of them on and plopping herself on the floor in front of them both, waiting for the DVD player to finish the process of actually turning on — for some reason, the more advanced that technology became the longer it took for things to be usable. — finding a stray piece of trash on the floor and tossing it blindly over her shoulder at Elliot.

Likely missing him. She wasn’t some kind of athlete, after all. Nor was she actually looking where she was throwing.

“25."

28 and 25. So 11 and 8 years his senior. When they were all goofing off like this, the idea seemed surreal; even if he'd never been to one, John imagined that high school house parties must've been a lot like this, albeit with more people and less privacy.

He liked it better this way. He'd never been one to let many people into his circle of esteem, to put it very mildly: more accurately put, he hated pretty much everyone. But the Aldersons were alright.

God, he was relaxed. The information that had scrolled constantly across his mind like a news ticker since he'd turned 12 years old - temperatures and potential combustion rates of everything in range, hot spots he could likely manipulate, actual points of ignition like Elliot's cigarette standing out as white-hot pinpoints in his awareness - all of that suddenly seemed to be moving through molasses. A distant smile twisting his lips, he turned around so that his back was facing the couch and leaned back against it, quite close to Elliot's legs but not actually touching them. He was unusually quiet, and had been for a little while aside from his odd questions.

"This is fucking awesome," he finally said in a low, sleepy monotone, not really clarifying just what was so awesome, but it was pretty obvious. Compared to his usual aggressive, probing energy, the air John gave off now was nearly comatose.

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