Friendship is Magic

Elijah
There was no getting rid of him now. Samir had revealed that he had a treehouse and Elijah, having always wanted for a tree house, was living his dream vicariously through Samir Lakhani (Lakhani? Lah-kah-nee? Fuck.) It was a tree house, as in a platform amidst the trees and he could see things without having to actually get into them.

He'd brought a case of beer, some pot lemon squares (because brownies are so last year), and a kaleidoscope.

Elijah wasn't sure what Samir would do with a kaleidoscope, but he'd given it to him anyway, wrapped (I swear to God I did not give you a dildo) and presented as a housewarming gift because he hadn't actually done so before. So, there he was, laying on his back and staring at the sky and-

"I have no fucking clue how to tie a tie," he admits, despite the fact that he is actually wearing a tie today.

Samir
He probably should have known this would be the end result if he told Elijah that he had a tree house. The kid about lost his shit over the fact that he could conjure a love seat out of thin air. At the rate they're going he might as well just move that love seat out of his apartment and into the platform up in the tree.

Beer and pot lemon squares and a kaleidoscope are acceptable housewarming gifts. He washes the ever-loving hell out of his hands after he unwraps the thing but at least he handles it without too much in the way of tooth-pulling.

This revelation about the tie makes Sam frown.

"So... is that a clip-on, or..."

Elijah
"Nah, I talked Jenn into doing it for some bullshit reason. I can usually con someone else into tying it," he tells Samir, "basically, I'm not-so-secretly hoping you know how to do this and can impart your wisdom before I have to break down and tell my dad that, despite having told me that one time, I still have no fucking clue how to do this. I'm kind of afraid he'll think he failed as a parent if his son plays the harp and can't tie a tie."

Ah, there is a reason now. He takes another bite of lemon square, sits up long enough to dust the crumbs off of himself and let them fall away onto the ground far, far below, and thinks briefly of the second Creepshow movie. Imagines a man eating oil slick beneath them and-

Ugh. He reminds himself that he is glad they are on land.

Samir
"... do you want me to find a Youtube video?"

If anyone looks as if he has less experience tying ties than Elijah does it's Samir. He wears t-shirts and leather jackets and calls it a day. The most tying he does is to lace up his Doc Martens and make sure the twist on baggies of weed are secure. That's a long shot compared to tying a tie.

Even if he did know how to tie a tie he wouldn't be able to show Elijah how to do it. That would involve. You know. Touching him.

"Hang on. They have videos for everything on Youtube."

They don't have a tie readily available either but that could change in a few moments.

Elijah
"Can you find out what the fuck a half windsor is? Like, is there a whole tie etiquette thing I'm missing?"

He leans over without having to actually me touching Sam, just presumes that he has his phone and that the tree house has wifi because what else would one do in a tree house but watch Youtube videos while you're kinda getting a little stoned?

A beat passes, then?

"Do they seriously have videos for everything on youtube?"

He is suddenly reminded that you can't google technocrats.

Samir
"Dude, do I look like I know shit about tying ties?"

For the time being Sam tolerates Elijah's sliding closer. They've already had the most awkward moment of their fledgling bromance. At this point the more Elijah invades his personal space and reminds him of the time he offered to give him a handjob the better he's going to get at tolerating it when complete strangers do it.

In theory. He hasn't ever seen behavioral therapy in action. There's probably a Youtube video for it though.

"They have videos for pretty much everything. Anything that violates copyright law or basic human decency tends to get taken down pretty fast. You have to go on Liveleak or other sites to find the nastier ones."

He's seen some shit on the Dark Web.

"Okay. Half Windsor." Full screen. Rotate. "Go."

Elijah
"The fuck is Liveleak? Is that where the Mister Hands shit originated?"

Oh Elijah, you have no idea what horrors lurk on the internet.

Samir
"I think 4chan is responsible for that one, actually. Liveleak wasn't around in 2005."

If Elijah doesn't know what 4chan is then Sam isn't going to be the one to tell him. He'd like to assume that Elijah knows what 4chan is because Elijah knows what the Dark Web is and also Elijah asked Google what the Technocracy is. But you know what happens when you assume.

Elijah
"Man, fucking 4chan," is all he has to say for that one.

In the mean time, he has carefully extricated himself from his tie, loosened it to the point that it came free and he looks a little warily at the screen, as though he is fairly certain that he has made a right and terrible decision and he could have gotten out of having to tie this until he came back from Boston.

"So, like, what kind of shit is on Liveleak?"

Samir
Sam has found a way to prop the phone up against the side of the railing so that Elijah can look at a somewhat steady screen instead of the shakiness of Sam's hands on top of the shakiness of the cameraman.

It also means he gets to light a cigarette and judge Elijah as he waits until the week before he goes on this Very Important Apprenticeship Trip to learn how to tie a fucking tie.

"Executions, mostly. A lot of political and war footage. Beheadings, a lot, lately. Sometimes people post videos of car versus pedestrian aftermath or, you know. Dead babies and shit. Nothing illegal."

Elijah
And he's going through the motions, and he's not... adept at this. He fumbles through, yes, but he does stop the video, looks down and undoes the knot and scoots the video back, just enough to start over again. This is a skill that he is going to have to practice... a lot. He's getting there, of course, because he can write the world into his whims so of course Elijah is going to fucking learn how to tie a tie.

"So... it's like the Faces of Death stuff they had on Rotten dot com awhile back?" he shakes his head, "I mean, when Rotten dot com was a thing. I'm kinda glad that... y'know... I have no idea how to find half this shit. I kinda want to know more? But, like, I really... really don't."

Samir
"You really really really don't."

Spoken like someone who lives on the Internet. He was the one who stayed up all night the night before the raid on the Artist's minions' home. He saw some shit that night that might have made him vomit if he hadn't seen awful things done to children on the Internet.

Granted the shit he saw that night was enough to make him never want to see another person naked ever again in his life but the only person who saw a fraction of what he saw was Grace. They could just leave what they saw between the two of them.

It did not cause him an undo amount of mental anguish to set that building on fire. That the person who had made them zombies or vampires or whatever the hell they were in the first place wasn't in the building didn't matter much. They were monsters in their own right. Too far gone for redemption even if they had been innocent before the Nephandus did whatever she did.

Sam shakes his head hard and blinks as if his mind had wandered. It had. It does that sometimes.

Elijah
He looks at Sam for a second, between trying to figure out this half Windsor thing (which he actually did manage to do, and he looks down as if he isn't entirely sure that he did this right, but we digress) and his attention turns to Sam. He doesn't know what is out there on the internet, or the dark web. Elijah grew up in an age where he'd never not had technology.

Then again, he'd been offline for most of his formative years. The seedy people he'd found he'd managed to find in person. Has no idea the number of close calls he has had in his life time, doesn't think of the countless other things that could have gone wrong. Elijah does a lot of things, but in his core there are just realities that he doesn't think about because he doesn't think to think about them. Thought that To Catch a Predator was just a thing that happened on Dateline and that it could get so much worse.

But, Sam blinks and shakes his head.

"Dude, did you just have a 'nam flashback?"

Samir
"Had a 'your mom' flashback."

It's worth mentioning that Sam did eat one of the pot lemon squares that Elijah made. He wants to believe that Elijah isn't the sort of person to change a dirty diaper or jerk off a subway-dwelling heroin addict and then prepare food without washing his hands first. Until he can work organic data arrays into his paradigm he just has to trust people.

Woe and agony.

Back in the present he frowns at the lack of progress Elijah is making with that tie.

"Jesus Christ, I thought white people had to know how tie a tie before their first confirmation. Let me see that."

He drags the phone closer to him so he can refresh it and see what Elijah is supposed to be doing.

Elijah
"I can't be Catholic if I can't tie a tie?!"

Nope. That's noose. Like a tiny, formal way of killing himself. He's got to be getting a little closer. He lets out a little sound, a sad whine, because he has had more than one lemon square.

"Aw, my grandma's gonna be so mad now..."

Samir
[mind 1: learn the shit out of this.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Samir
All the Mercurial Elite appears to do is sit and watch a two-minute video in rapt silence. Takes him shushing Elijah at one point to really appear as if he is watching it. Even without sound he could watch what is happening and sort out what he's supposed to do.

"Alright," he says after about the halfway point.

Then he narrows his eyes in a sidelong glance at the Hermetic apprentice. Thinks about what he's doing before he does it.

"Just because I show you how to tie a tie doesn't mean we're getting married or anything, alright? I just... I can't watch you keep sucking at this, it's making my skin itch."

Elijah
[Dead serious! Manip+sub, +2 diff because I'm high as balls)

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Samir
[perc + empathy: shit, dude!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]

Samir
[I didn't mean to spend WP. He only got three successes. YOU WIN THIS ONE, POIROT.]

Elijah
"No way, dude. If we tie a tie together, that's a thing. It's stupidly significant in the Order, it's like a tiny hand fasting. We've made a fucking pact."

Dead. Fucking. Serious.

Samir
At that he springs to his feet and holds up both his hands. Nope. Nope nope nope. More important than leaving his phone in the possession of a fellow crazy person is not tying a pact with said crazy person.

"You're on your own, man," he says as he backs towards the ladder.

Fucking pot lemon squares.

Elijah
It's too much. It's all too much, Sam springs up and Elijah falls over. Croons, crows, laughs hard enough that his ribs hurt and his face hurts and he forgets, for a second, that one of his friends is in mortal peril and is at home painting... uh... something. He didn't know what Jenn was painting, and at that moment he was too busy laughing his ass off.

"No, wait-" he can't stop. Can. Not. Stop. Laughing.

"Come baaaaaaaack I'm sharing my worldview with you, we need to be a- fuckin- cabal or something! You understaaaaaand meeeeee."

He had not stopped laughing, though, and probably about halfway down the ladder he responded with.

"Owww, get your phone."

Samir
I'm sharing my worldview with you--

Sam makes a noise like Elijah just flicked a booger at him and starts down the ladder. It is not a sincere sound. The fact that Elijah is laughing is kind of a giveaway that he just got got. He still screams like a little girl and continues along the escape sequence.

"Fuck my phone!" he calls up from the grass. "I'm gonna go take a shower and rethink my life!"

Elijah
"I'm totally not looking at porn while you're gone!"

He's totally going to look at porn while Sam is gone.

Samir
"Don't make me drop a couch on you!"

Friendship truly is magic.