not quite according to plan

who: brett and eris
where: her place
when: wee hours
(nsfw)

Brett's world, which had never run to a real timetable that normal people would recognise, had, in the past day or so, completely ceased to run to any timetable at all.

Since he'd met with Jakob and walked out on Eris, he'd lost track. Not that he'd made any effort to keep track. He'd walked out, left his car and simply disappeared into the city's underbelly. Not always the safest of places to be, but Brett had wanted to be anonymous and if that meant risking coming out the other side with a few fresh bruises, then so be it.

As it was, he was left well enough alone. Alone enough to get some of his head figured out, at least. Some of it - not all of it. But as much as he could on his own, as much as he hated to admit that, and was loathe to do so to anyone else.

He knew it was dark, but he had no idea what time it was when he found himself back in the same spot, then climbing the stairs to her apartment once again. In actual fact, it was late - so late that it could just have easily been called 'early', some time in that darkness before dawn.

Eris had been waiting. She really didn't know what to think, basically, and therefore was trying to prepare for the worst, just in case. She tended to think if she assumed the worst, and something slightly better came to pass, at least she could be pleasantly surprised as opposed to devastated and scrambling. The main problem with the current circumstances was she couldn't plan for the worst. The worst was Brett disappeared, never came back, and she couldn't find him. Second to that was he came back, told her he was walking away, and then she never saw him again.

She tried to think of a 'next' in case either of those happened. What she would do, especially considering she'd already told the owner of the One More Round that she wasn't going to be around much longer. She supposed she could tell him things had changed, and she was going to stay. She just was aware of the fact that that would not sustain her. She'd grow not only weary, but her shelf life as a singer would hit sometime. She still couldn't learn new songs, so she was a little fucked, all things considered. However, she had been since the O'Malley's had broken into her quarters at Babylon months ago and irrevocably changed her life.

She was awake, even if it was gone past midnight. She'd not sang downstairs tonight. She was sitting on her bed, indian style as she kept going over notes, trying to piece everything together from files, from her perceptions, adding in information she knew. She was making an attempt to be organized, it just was difficult for a woman with brain damage like hers.

It was possible the wine didn't help either, which she'd been working at all night. The bottle was actually over half gone by now, heading more towards only a quarter left. She heard the footsteps on the stairs and simply looked up, eyes on the door, breath unconsciously held.

There was a light on inside - he hadn't noticed it from the street, but he could see it filtering out from under the door. He was neither surprised nor unsurprised as he opened the door and headed in, stopping just inside the loft apartment and looking at her, sat there on the bed. "Do you have a contact at the Echo? Or do you just mail them information and trust that it'll get where it needs to be?" he asked her, after a moment or two.

Hello to you too. she thought but didn't say. "Not specifically. Generally, I give whatever information I want to get to the right people to one of the boys in the mail room, and smile nicely enough, saying it should probably go straight to the top." she said. "Seems to work just fine. Why?" she asked, sitting up a little straighter, the motion alerting her to the fact that the muscles in her back were tense and tired. Reaching over, she picked up her wineglass and took a drink, eyes still on him.

"Because the only person I trust in this fucking town not to cover something up is a damn journalist," Brett told her. He crossed to the bed and looked down at the papers she had spread out before her, then started to collect them up, one at a time, putting them into order as he did so. He wanted the damn things in order, then maybe he could make up his mind what he'd be handing over.

She didn't try to stop him, sipping more wine. "I'd appreciate if you spoke to me in something resembling coherent statements, as opposed to random seeming ones." she said. "Also, I wouldn't trust what's on some of those--I wrote them. You know I can't keep things straight properly." she tacked onto the end, considering it was true. If he wanted something that actually made sense, didn't have a bunch of random duplication, and wasn't potentially full of holes, he'd need to do it himself. Though the actual files were fairly straight forward and coherent.

He gathered her papers up and, for now, sat down on the space he'd cleared on the bed. She might have trouble putting things in order, but he didn't, he'd go through them later. "I know what you plan was with Jakob," he told her, his eyes on her face. "Provide me with proof, then enough dirt to blackmail the commissioner into making that proof public to clear my name. Well, I don't work like that," he told her, ignoring the fact that he'd been involved with workings just like that for the last few years. That had hardly been his idea. "I won't commit a crime just to show that I didn't commit a crime. And anyway, it'd just leave the bastard in place to carry on doing what he's been doing."

"Technically it wasn't my plan." Eris said first. "I told Jakob what I wanted. No less than your ability to walk away entirely clean. He was the one who put it together this way." she said. "I approved of the plan. It would work." She downed the last of her glass as she tried to assess what to say to the rest of it, and paused to pour herself more wine. It occurred to her that she didn't remember if she'd taken her medication. That and she no longer hat Brett's notes to help her, so she'd been a little patchy with them for the past few days anyways. Oh well. At least the wine wouldn't be mixing with them, right? Keeping her gaze on him, she swallowed a little more wine down, then spoke. "So instead you want to hand over evidence to the Echo?" she asked. "And....see what happens when the chips fall?"

"Then the chips fall," Brett told her, before stopping and actually giving her a proper answer. "Most likely, it'll be chaos. At least, it'll throw a wrench in the works, pretty large one at that. Really, I don't give a damn, I just can't sit on this. I can't go forward knowing this and allowing it to go on." That was the straight cop in him, the guy that Brett had long since thought was dead. But with this new twist, he'd realised that he wasn't, that that guy was still there and that he wanted to be that guy again. Not as a cop - he could never go back. Not now. But he didn't want to be one of the bad guys anymore.

Listening, she drew in a deep breath, and exhaled very slowly. "We don't know nearly enough about the people working at the Echo to know if they've got ties to the police, the commissioner, or if they'd bury it." she said honestly. "It's entirely possible that it gets handed in, and hell, maybe someone brings it upstairs to the editor, or it finds it's way to the top. I took a chance handing over the information that I did before, but it wasn't involving any law enforcement. I'm sure you know what dirty cops can do. How much they can terrorize someone if they want to. And with as crooked as things get in this city, it's even possible they get away with it...like what happened to you. The only reason any of this is coming up is because I had a mission and I know what buttons to push with Jakob." She looked away then, towards the window where frigid rain was falling beyond the glass. "Someone worked very hard to bury you, and we still don't even really know who that was." She was quiet for another stretch of heartbeats. "People don't do the right thing, baby. They look for the angles. Which was why the original plan was set up. People need a damn good reason to go out on a limb. Or hell, even just doing something that might rock the boat slightly. They need the proper motivation."

"So, you want me to walk away entirely clean by doing something dirty - that it? That work for you?" he asked her, his tone cutting. It might work for her, but it didn't work for him. He'd managed to figure that much out.

"I didn't say what I wanted you to do." Eris said, looking back at him. "I don't have a say, I don't get one. I don't factor in, this isn't about me. I'm just telling you what I know about the world. That's all. Nowhere did I give any indication I have plans or desires for you to do anything. I did my part. I got you your way out. I got you your choice. What you do with it is up to you." When she finished speaking, she looked back towards the window again, drawing her knees up towards her chest, and she rested her chin on them. She went to go take another drink of wine after a moment, finding the glass empty, and she vaguely wondered when that had happened. Reaching out, she set it on the nightstand next to the bottle, and then just hugged her legs loosely, gaze back out the window.

"I don't buy that," Brett told her. "That you did all this and now you just don't... You always have a damn opinion," he pointed out, changing what he'd been going to say to something more acceptable to him. "Always. Never stopped you sharing it before."

"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think." Eris said, and some part of her was aware that it was an echo of him, when they'd been discussing issues between themselves. "I did this for you. My part is done. From here out it's up to you. You didn't think it was even possible, so I knew you wouldn't go after it yourself. So I did. Now you have it. But that still doesn't make it about me, it's your life. You're going to do what you're going to do, whatever that might be." A few days ago, she'd been prepared to go through with it herself if he didn't, though at the moment, that stance had altered. Now...she was letting go, because it really was his decision. His life.

"Doesn't mean to say you don't have a damn opinion," Brett pressed. "Hell, you even know that when you do have an opinion, there's no guarantee that I'm gonna be swayed by it anyhow. So now need to go washing your hands of this, Sweetheart," he said, which was really the closest he could bring himself to admitting that he wanted to hear her opinion. Even if it wasn't something he'd agree with, it bugged that she wouldn't even tell him. He'd gone as far as he could with this on his own. He needed a sounding board. And, hell, they needed to talk about where they were going to go from here and they couldn't do that if she just kept cutting him off.

"You haven't asked for my opinion." Eris pointed out, ticking her gaze back to him for a moment, before she looked out the window again. Since it was so dark out, she could see their fuzzy reflections in the glass. "And I know that there's a terribly good chance you'll blow off whatever I say, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm serious. This isn't about me. This is about you. You have to do what's right for you, what you want to do, what you can live with. You've got the chance to do pretty much whatever it is you want. So...do what you want, Trent. You finally have the ability to do so."

He had asked her - sort of, but he didn't bring that up. She'd probably forgotten. She had a tendency to do that. And he was hardly the clearest of people to begin with, he was aware of that. "I want that bastard to pay," he told her. "With someone like him at the top, what fucking chance do the rest of them have? He's setting a fucking example - that's what people up there do. He should be setting the right one, then maybe people in this damn town would stand a chance."

"Technically, considering most of the dirty shit he's pulling is under the table and he's got an exemplary record publicly, he is setting an example. We just happen to know it's a sham." Eris said. "If you want him to pay, you can get what you have on him, and hand it to the Echo and test it. But make sure all you give are copies. Never give hard evidence when you don't know that it'll not get shredded or burned. If that's what you want to do. Or you could make copies of things and pin them up around town, or make copies and slide it beneath every door in city hall, in hopes at least someone down there isn't on the take. You can do whatever you want with it. And if you want more, or need to know who I know is dirty I can tell you that too." But she still wasn't going to tell him to do anything. And she still wasn't going to tell him what she thought, because it needed to be his decision. Unless he asked her. If he asked her, flat out, she'd say, but until then...no.

"We know it's a sham and every other crook in town knows it's a sham - which means that they think they can get away with it with every other cop in this town, and every other cop in this town soon finds out that taking a backhander is acceptable, because that kind of shit filters through. Even if it's never talked about, or even revealed, it filters through - because you can't come down so hard on someone for doing something you're doing yourself. Not unless your goal it to scapegoat them," Brett said, tightly. He was angry, cooly, calmly, really angry about this. It wasn't his usual bright, raging, hot anger that he held before him like a shield against the world. No, this anger was a cold, internal anger, one that reached all the way to his very core.

Eris said nothing as she listened to him, watching him. She could see the tension, and she did recognize that he was intensely, personally offended by it all, angry. And for just a second, a fraction of a heartbeat, the ghost of a smile appeared on her lips before it was gone again. Because she'd told him before. She'd told him that guy he was so convinced was dead wasn't. That she could still see him beneath the surface. The hero he'd been branded before was an accurate term, and even if his situation was fucked and everything had changed, that nature hadn't been bled away. "Then do the right thing, however you decide to go about it." she said, still handing free licence to do whatever. She wanted him to turn more towards himself, but again--none of this was about what she wanted. Reaching out, she filled up her wine glass again.

He watched her pour another glass, noted how low the bottle was getting, but he didn't stop her. He recognised that he only actually stopped her when he wanted something else to be pissed at her about. Right now, as with the other night, stopping her would simply be an unwanted distraction from their subject. "You're better at working out how to go about things than I am," he admitted to her at last. She could see angles which eluded him and, as such, he valued her advice. When it came to this kind of thing, he was realising that he was very much in her hands, even if the direction was entirely his.

Drawing in a deep breath, she let it out slowly, taking a long drink from her glass. Reaching up, she tugged her fingers through her hair to get it away from her face, though she pulled what she had the other night, and let it drape down over her shoulder where it would partially obscure her features from him. "Do you want something dealt with through the authorities, or have it all be a big, messy, public display that'll need answering even if people scramble?" she asked him, eyes shut for a long moment.

"What's the difference?" he asked her, actually not knowing there. He wasn't a guy who did this kind of thing. He'd sat on information he'd collected on the mob for three years and he would have likely continued to sit on it if she hadn't come along. He'd seen how she'd used what he'd given her, supplemented by what she already had, to bring down the O'Malleys, and she'd just known how to do that. He didn't know. And he didn't trust any of the channels that he did know. This was her world, he needed her to guide him in it.

Keeping her eyes shut she leaned back against the headboard, drinking more wine as she thought. "If you go through proper channels, there's always the possibility that favors could be cashed in with people close to the top. People anywhere there's power always have favors to cash in. That's just how it works. So, you'd run the risk of it being in the right place, but it not getting very far due to intricate circles of people owing one another, and we have no way of predicting just how much sway anyone has or what stake they may have in it in the first place. There's obviously going to be public officials who would do anything to keep him in power, because he lets them do whatever they want with no accountability." she said, going through it all without actually having to really think much. He was right. This was her world.

"The upside is investigations may get launched, and it could even wind up taking more crooked people down. The downside is what I just said...people could bury it because they can, and don't want to see their little house of cards fall down." Pausing to kill the last of her glass in one large swallow, she set the glass down, then curled upon her side where she was, eyes on the window again, back mostly to him. "Going the route of the messy public scandal, it means people can't just slide it under the rug and pretend it didn't happen. But it also isn't necessarily in the hands of people who can prosecute, it'd be a war waged in the press, with public opinion serving as jury. It could force people's hands on a lot of things, but in the end it might also mean that he doesn't get indicted for his crimes, he just has to step down from office."

"I considered just taking everything to the DA," Brett admitted to her. "That was my first thought - but I came to much the same conclusion you did there. I don't know if he can be trusted. It could easily just end up in a file somewhere. That's what made me think the Echo - because best case, the city can't ignore it and the DA'll have to pick up on it. But worst case... Well, okay, worst case is that the Echo's in deep enough that they just burn the damn files, but assuming they see a story there, worst case is that there's a scandal and at least the bastard'll pay that way."

"You're missing something." she said, voice a little softer than it had been. "The reason you have the information in the first place is to clear your name. I appreciate that you're unhappy with the way it can happen, but it was there because I want you to be able to walk away without a target on the back of your head. If you just hand over everything to take down the commissioner, if you do it anonymously, fine, but what about you in all of this?" It was a rather large concern of hers, what with that being the main point of everything. She didn't want it to get lost.

"This is more important than that. If I just use this to bribe my way into a clean sheet, that's no clean sheet at all. I won't link the two. And anyhow, if I clear my name, it could screw up everything we have planned," Brett told her. "Might be best just to leave the past in the past there."

She was still for a few long moments, and then she rolled onto her back to look up at him. "No one said we still had to go through with it. This is your chance, Brett. You have it. You can stop being the guy everyone thought you were because you aren't him in the first place. If you let this go..." she trailed off, recognizing that she'd been meaning to not put her feelings into things, that he could do what he wanted, but she couldn't help it. She'd done it all for him to get out, not to just get rid of some crooked people when they would only be replaced by other crooked people. It hadn't been about the right thing to do, or the good of the city, or anything like that it had been for him. He'd saved her life and she'd wanted to return the favor and the idea that he was possibly just...not going to even go there was distressing. To say the least.

"And if we don't go through with it? What will you do?" Brett asked her, surprisingly without any bite or malice. He already figured he knew the answer, but he wanted to know what she'd say, how much she'd lie to him - because he was already figuring that she would do that.

She hesitated, just for a moment, before she answered him, eyes on his. "I have no idea. I kept trying to think of what would come next, but I haven't thought of anything yet. I'd probably keep singing." as long as I'm able. But she wasn't going to remind him that she knew that she couldn't keep that up forever. If he didn't remember on his own, then that was just fine. She wanted to say more, more about why she'd done this in the first place, about how he couldn't just let it go like it was nothing, how people would know then, he'd be cleared, he could stop hating himself quite so much. But she bit her lower lip instead to keep herself quiet.

"You can't keep that up forever," Brett told her, unknowingly echoing her thoughts - he had an annoyingly good memory for facts at times and he knew what she'd said before, about not being able to learn new material. "It was a good plan, Princess - we're already so far down the line with it." Hell, he'd gone shopping. With whores.

"I know that." she said, not letting herself move her gaze from his. Her voice was still a little quieter than usual, something she was aware of even if she wasn't happy with it. "I know we've already started things in motion. But you wouldn't lose anything. The money spent was mine. And it still...it comes down to your life. And what you do and don't want for it. I know that this, all of this, everything you've done, what you've had to do, what was done to you, it's never going to be made right? But it would be better for you. Even if it's just better for you mentally." What she meant was emotionally but she knew he would take that differently than 'mentally'. "The plan was made before you knew this was coming. I was aware when I set everything in motion that it may mean things changed or ended." Hell, when she'd started, she'd really not figured she'd be sticking around among the breathing long enough for them to have plans.

"And what would you suggest that I do? With a cleared name and a whole long list of people who would suddenly know what I'd been? We've already had that whole 'witness protection' conversation. Our plan still gives us the best chance of actually still being alive this time next year. Look, appreciate the notion, Princess, but if I go with your - sorry Jakob's - plan then I'm opening myself up to a whole heap of potential trouble from people out for blood without any suggestion of a reason why they shouldn't come gunning for me. Then, ignoring the whole heaps of issues I have with the morality of what that plan involves, it screws with you and what we had going, blows a total fucking hole through the middle of all our plans and leaves us both really fucking vulnerable. My name gets cleared like that and the whole plan about me being your lacky is gone. No way that survives if I become squeaky clean. Now, maybe it'll be okay if it eventually comes out that I wasn't all I said I was. If it gets out that I had been straight, but I got done over and became what they made me. But not if it's played that I was doing my job all along. Then the tables'll switch up - then it'll look like I was just a city cop doing his job no matter what, and you - well, it'll look like you just got lucky. Cuz of course a 'hero cop' would save the fucking damsel in distress. That's not surprising, that's not striking fear into hearts - that's just some poor sap that couldn't let go. And bringing down the O'Malleys was just my job remit anyhow. Gone is the respect, gone is the fear. You'll be nothing except some girl who didn't die when she was meant to. And I'll be nothing but flavour of the month with the papers and then forgotten like the yesterday's news I'll be. Trust me, Princess - I know how that one goes. It sucks while it lasts, and it doesn't get any better once it's over. I can live without that. So, you know what'd be better for me? Being able to actually make a choice about what I want in life. And what I want is for that bastard to burn and for us to stick to the goddamn plan." He stopped then, looking at her, knowing he'd just said more in the last few minutes than he ever normally did, but all of it was true, and maybe she needed that laid out there.

She listened to him, watching his every move, noticing every twitch, all the lines of tension, the cadence of his words. Everything. And granted, she'd been drinking kind of a lot, but she felt she had a good handle on him. Even now. Her problem was mostly that she really hadn't thought he'd be basically saying 'fuck it, let's just go on as is'. It was his life. And the whole open fucking wound he'd been walking around with for what...three years? He was holding onto the way to heal that, at least in some capacity. Quiet for a few long moments, she kept her eyes on him, and then she pushed herself back up to a sitting position, crawling across the bed closer to him. She didn't touch him at all, and positioned herself as she sat up on her knees by his shoulder, a little behind. Her head tilted to the side slightly as she kept her gaze on him, and she looked like she was assessing. Calculating.

When she spoke, her voice was light, something resembling soft, but there was an odd edge beneath it, even if it was clear it wasn't anger. "You're telling me you're actually going to walk away from clearing your name. Something I know for a fact has been eating away at you since it happened. Like acid in the back of your mind, it's eroded your faith in pretty much everything. Including yourself. I hear it, in your voice. I see it in your eyes, it's there in the way you walk, how you move. You hate your life, and the role you've had to play these past few years. And I know we've had the discussion before about whether or not the hero in you is dead, though I think I've much more clearly won that one at current. But you're telling me that you just want to let that slide. Just let it go entirely, so you can stick to the plan. That that is what you want in your life, now that you've got more freedom of choice. You came up with the plan because you had to. There had to be a next step, and that was pretty much all that could be come up with. It wasn't put in motion because you have the burning desire to run your own business with a bunch of ex whores, myself included. And the people who might want you dead, they're gone. But you could prove to everyone who thought the worst of you that they were wrong. Maybe you could prove it to yourself. Maybe you could stop hating everyone and everything. I could point you in the direction of opportunities, you know I could. With something like that, you wouldn't even have to be the flavor of the month long. You could still ride it, get places." she kept her eyes on his. "Why would you choose to do this? You could do anything." she finished, that part just above a whisper.

"Clearing my name wouldn't clear it of anything I did since that happened," Brett pointed out. "I don't need anyone else to know that I didn't do what they said I did. I know that. I'll always know that. Yeah, I hate my life - but it's what I did after the shit came down that makes me hate it, and this - none of this will take any of that away. Clearing my name, and doing it this way? Clearing my name by doing more of the same as what I've spent the last few years doing? That would be a hollow victory, darling. And so, maybe, if I could do something better with that information, maybe that would help more. Call it atonement, if you want." It was said with a quiet honesty, a different tone than he'd been speaking with a moment ago. And whilst it was a different angle to how he'd come at things previously, it was no less true. It was just a deeper admission than he'd made before.

"Atonement." Eris repeated, looking away, towards the window again for a few long moments. She had to let that sit, had to roll it over in her mind. She bit her lip, assessing for a bit, before she looked back at him. "Would that actually help you?" she asked. "Would that make things better in your mind?" It was an honest question. He'd sounded like that was the case, but if it really, really was, she wanted to know more. she wanted it to mean something. To be something significant enough for him, that the other bit could wait. Because she'd caught that part, that maybe later it could come out, but still. If she was waiting for that to happen, she needed to know it was for a really good goddamn reason.

Brett stood and walked a few paces away, not looking at her. "At least I'd maybe be able to sleep at night," he said, blandly. He couldn't guarantee that, but who knew. Maybe it'd help. Before, he'd not thought there was any help for him, and he couldn't bring himself to hope for all that much more now. But maybe it would help. Make a start at being something different. Figure out what he wanted to be. Right now, all he knew was he didn't want to be one of the bad guys anymore. He didn't know if he'd ever be able to be classed as one of the good guys ever again. He didn't have that much faith in himself to be able to hope that.

Watching him walk away, she was still turning everything over in her mind, trying to understand and she wasn't sure she could, not exactly, not like he probably would need her to. Still, she tried. She tried very, very hard. "What if you did what you could to take him down and handed over the information that exonerated you?" she asked. "It would be possibly more dangerous, but with him possibly being taken down anyways, you could still possibly come out clean on the other side." she said, wanting to walk over to him, but she didn't. He'd walked away, she was assuming that meant he needed distance from her, since she'd been the one that had got closer to start with. So, she wasn't going to be that girl. The one who kept following. Even if the urge was there. It was a little after she'd stopped speaking, but she added on the last sentiment that went along with everything. "I'm not ready to give up on you yet."

He turned back to her. "Don't you get it? I don't give a damn about being exonerated. It doesn't mean anything. It won't change anything," he snapped. It wouldn't, not for him, not in his head. Maybe the way people treated him, but it didn't feel like that was the important thing. And maybe he didn't deserve it anyway, not with the things he'd done. If it happened, it happened, but he didn't expect anything from it. And nothing could take back the last three years.

"No, I don't get it." Eris snapped back. "I don't understand where you say it doesn't matter, when your entire life has gone completely to hell, half of that is just your own mental state on the matter, and what, you've got the proof that you were actually on a job, that you were actually doing what you were supposed to be doing, and whoever did this to you didn't get away with it forever, and--you're just going to walk away. I get the other part. I understand you not wanting to do this in a dirty way. That makes perfect fucking sense to me, knowing you. But not taking the out? Not clearing your name after all of this? That I don't understand. That I can't make add up. The only thing that says to me is you still have a need to punish yourself for everything, and this is the most immediate if fucking twisted way to do it. To have it right in your hands and just do nothing."

"And what about everything else?" he snapped right back at her. "What about the last fucking three years? What about that? Was that 'on the job'? Fuck no, it wasn't - I did all those things, Princess. Everything they fucking told me to do. And that - that file of yours. nothing is going to fucking change that. No fucking public apology, no fucking whatever they want to give me. Nothing is going to change. It's all still gonna be there. That's not going to be cleared from my name. Nothing can clear that from my name."

"You had to! You did what you had to do because you're a survivor, Trent!" She threw back at him, finally standing up because if one was going to have a screaming argument with someone, it was best done on one's feet. She also crossed the room quickly, so she could glare up at him. "If you'd needed to do those things because you were still on the job, then you would have, and I know you fucking still even did your job because you had all that information to give to Jackson on things! You probably still have more of it, lying around somewhere! So even after they cut you loose, you still did your goddamn job because that's who you are. And nothing is going to change that, either." she said, eyes narrowed. "The only thing walking away does is rub salt in the wounds and I'm starting to wonder if it's because you want it that way. Because you need something to keep you the fuck down."

"I wanted off that damn job because I couldn't do it!" Brett shouted back at her, squaring off against her, forgetting everything he'd said previously about staying away from her in fights, because she got sure he'd hit her. That was all forgotten in the moment now. "I wanted out. And when everything came down - I did it anyway. I knew what I was doing and the evidence was out there, wasn't it? That it was all bullshit. I just didn't look for it." Nevermind that he'd decided already that he wouldn't have found it. Now, with the rage going, that didn't matter so much. "And yeah, I kept up the job - but in the balance, Princess, that don't mean shit. It doesn't even those scales out."

"It doesn't matter if you wanted off or not, you did it anyways!" Eris continued, and she didn't even remember he'd said he would keep backed off in a fight, and anyways, if he did she'd follow at this point. "The evidence was out there and you didn't fucking know about it, did you? I've been saying for a while now that I was going to help you and you told me until it was in your fucking hands that it couldn't be done. And maybe you couldn't have got it done. Maybe even if you had gone for it, you wouldn't have found it. So fuck that, you don't get to decide to hold that against yourself. And if that doesn't balance the scales, if that doesn't even matter to you, what does?"

"What I do from now on!" he told her. "Can't do shit about the past, but I won't pull the same shit in the future."

"And fine! Don't! You have at least two viable fucking options for trying to take down the commissioner! What I want to know, sweetheart, is why the fuck you won't clear your name while you're at it!" Since that was her main point. All of this, everything she'd done, all she'd strived for and focused on, it was all that. To get this for him, to do this for him. This was the point of offense for her, why she was as worked up over it all as she was.

"And I told you, sweetheart - because it would screw over everything we've been working towards," he shot back at her. And he'd realised over the last day or so that he had no intention of losing that. Reworking it, maybe, but he wouldn't lose it entirely. Especially not for something that didn't mean shit in the scheme of things.

"God!" Eris cried, exasperated, and she turned away, walking away from him. And she kept walking. Towards the door, even. There was a soft string of cursing beneath her breath which included the phrase 'stupid son of a bitch'.

He immediately started after her, moving round her until her was between her and the door. "What bothers you so fucking much about this anyhow? It's not going to change anything - except it'll mean that we can't go forward with the business and it'll fuck you over completely. Is that what this is? Just another way for you to do yourself in?" he challenged, that thought suddenly occurring to him. He didn't think that was all it was, he didn't think that was her only reason, but he could imagine that being involved. She had to see that if he got cleared right now... he'd even laid it out for her. She had to know. And yet she was so fucking pissed about this. "Look, Princess - I don't give a fucking damn about the past, that past. It's gone - long gone. And nothing can bring that back. Not even this. All it'll do is screw things up and give Jackson something to fucking get on my back about. I had a way out. You had a way out - we had a way out and you want me to fucking throw that all away for, what? A meaningless apology from someone who's only saying it because they have a fucking gun to their head? A day or so of front page news, maybe a couple of days buried on page twenty-six, full of crap that nobody gives a shit about in any event and people forget more quickly. Maybe a shiny fucking medal from the city that'll sit in a box and gather dust and rust? What is it about this?"

"I'm not being the fucking masochistic bitch here for once, that's your role, apparently." she snapped, still walking forward, til she put her hands to his chest and pushed his back towards the door, which wasn't that far behind him in the first place. "If you didn't give a damn about the past then it wouldn't fucking haunt you, and it does. You can't tell me all of this means nothing, because I know it does! It matters to you! And I'm aware it fucks over the plans, but the plans were made when there wasn't shit else that could be done! Where you were stuck, and that was it, that was the best you could come up with on short fucking notice! And let's not forget the fact that this entire insane goddamn plan hinges on the ability of a woman with fucking brain damage!" she continued, keeping in close, glaring up at him, well and truly angry. Probably more upset than she'd been in a good long while. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes flashed steel, everything about her screamed it. "And you said it couldn't be done but I had to keep working on it, you saved me, and I got it, I pushed the right fucking buttons to get it for you and you're just going to let it go? This wasn't free, do you not get that? It wasn't a whim, or easy, or anything, and you just want to piss it all away!"

Brett let her push him back against the door, feeling the wood hard behind him, one of the bolts pressing into his shoulder. "I told you - I never wanted anything from you. You didn't owe me anything," he growled at her, though he couldn't deny that spark of surprise and deep gratitude that she'd do this, that she'd go to those lengths. He hadn't fully appreciated it until now - he'd known, he just hadn't appreciated properly. Of course, being unable to deny something to himself didn't mean that he made it clear to her, or showed it outwardly at all. "And it's not pissing it all away - it's taking a choice. It's making a choice. Do you know how fucking long it's been since I really got to do that?" he snapped at her - that part he didn't manage to keep hidden. That part slipped through.

"And your choice is to do nothing?" Eris cried, eyes ticking rapidly between his. "Just that, just fucking nothing, and let it go, and stay with your 'I'm a bullshit lackey' stigma?" she continued. "And yes, I did owe you. Maybe it didn't mean anything to you, because I could have been anyone. It would still have gone down that way because you're still you and there's still that spark somewhere in your fucked up head that wouldn't let you throw someone in the river to fucking drown while helpless. And that's just you, so it wasn't anything to you, it didn't mean anything, and you were just going to wash your hands of it anyways, but it does mean something to me. It means a hell of a lot to me because you didn't do it because of who I was, you didn't do it because of what I could get for you, or because I manipulated you into it, or made you think it was your idea, it was--" she broke off, turning to walk away again, turning more towards the window. "--it was selfless. And it's the only time anyone's ever directed that particular intention my way. Maybe you don't think you're owed, but fuck you, it's not up to you."

"And it's not up to you whether I take the 'payment' or not," Brett shot at her back as she walked away. "You don't get to make that call - wasn't that what you were saying earlier? that I should do with this what ever the hell I wanted? Well, now we know the truth of that one, don't we - I could do whatever the hell I wanted with it, just as long as it met your damn approval!" There was more that he could have said, more about what he'd done, about the way she'd decided that none of it meant shit to him, but it was easier just to be mad at her and leave it at that. Anger was safe, it was secure, it was predictable.

"Weren't you the one who earlier was bitching that for once I didn't have a fucking opinion?" Eris shot back at him, looking over her shoulder as she got to the window, and she threw it open wide, the glass cracking as she did so. Not that she noticed, so much. She was a bit distracted with the bright anger still rushing through her system. "Well, this is it. You're an asshole and an idiot, because you've got exactly what you need to kick the gameboard over and start over with a clean sheet--which no one fucking gets, by the way, not really, but here you've got it, and your brilliant goddamn plan is to just not do that. Just say hey, fuck it, you want to go with the wildly hole filled plan that was pulled out of your ass because it was the only viable option at the time. Well that's fucking fabulous, Trent, that's great. It makes not the slightest bit of sense, and leaves me--" she broke off there, looking back out the window, and she put her hand out it, palm up to feel the rain sheeting down. "Fucking brilliant."

"It leaves you with a shot at a future!" Brett shouted at her, not holding back. Fuck - did she just not see that? Was she really that incredibly blind? That he wasn't going to walk away, just leave her here? Just abandon her. Like he hadn't done time and time again over the last few months. Hell, even that first time - she'd been right in that, he'd been going to wash his hands of it, of her. But it hadn't worked out that way. And the time for doing that was long gone now. He was here, he was staying. She might not think that anything was anything to do with her, but it was, it all was.

She stilled, frozen for an instant, before she turned her face more towards him, even if she didn't fully turn. Her hand dropped back to her side, and she said nothing for a few long, long minutes. "It isn't about me." she said, tone oddly far calmer than she had been during the argument, though it didn't necessarily come off as serene. There was a tight tension beneath it. "And my future shouldn't have any impact on this. On you, or your future, and what you can and can't have in it." She was quiet again for another moment before she finished. "Please tell me that this has nothing to do with me." Lie if you have to.

Her tone cut through his anger, the way it dropped like that, the way she stilled. He realised that she hadn't seen that, that this was news to her. He was silent for a moment, just for a moment, before he headed over to her, reaching past her to shut the window, noting absently the broken pane that would need fixing at some point. "I can't tell you that, Princess," he told her, his tone almost matching hers.

Still staying silent for a long moment, she let her gaze track along the crack in the window, how it split through their reflections. It sliced her across the chest, over her shoulder, then traveled up, cleaving his face in two. She drew in a deep breath, and let it out very slowly, not even sure how to react. Not sure how to deal. It was a little like someone had shut off the lights inside her head, and she was left to wander the dark aimlessly. And while used to that feeling since the brain damage, it was generally associated with general life stuff, not something so terribly specific. "This was never supposed to be about me, it wasn't meant--" she started, breaking off. "You can't base--" she started again, and once more cut herself off. "God, just...couldn't you just come up with a convincing lie?" she finally asked, arms reaching up to hug herself around the middle, and she tilted her head back, more towards him, and he was closer than she expected so she wound up leaning back against him lightly.

"You'd still know it was a lie," he pointed out to her, maintaining the tone. As she leaned back against him, he reached an arm around, encircling her waist lightly, just below where she held herself. It wasn't just about her, nothing was ever that simple, but she'd asked him to tell her that it had nothing at all to do with her - and he couldn't tell her that. And he wasn't going to start lying to her now, either. Honesty was all they really had. So much else was missing, but at least they had honesty. Now she wanted to take that away?

Yeah, but I'd feel better. she thought. He felt warm against her back, solid. But then Brett was an immovable fucking object when he wanted to be. "I don't want you making major life decisions where I'm an influence in there." she said. "This is supposed to be about you, and what's best for you, and...I don't understand why you're not jumping at this chance. Everything else...it was precarious at best, and was just something that was come up with because options were lacking. But you've got them now. So it should change things." she said, voice still softer and quieter than it had been. "It still could fail entirely because I still might not be up to this at all. And maybe you haven't considered this, but what if something gets worse for me? What if something bursts in my head, and I just...drop? Or worse, my mentality drops down to that of a child, or I'm just...breathing but not there." Which was absolutely blood chillingly terrifying for her, even if it was the first time it was coming to the surface. But it was relevant. "We don't know nearly enough about what happened to me or if it'll just get worse, or anything. It's a big unknown. I want you to do what's right for you. It wasn't ever meant to involve me."

He withdrew his arm with that and took a step back. "Told you before, sweetheart - if you want out, I'd prefer you just tell me direct, rather than playing games," he said, his voice cold. Because the way she'd just phrased that, that sounded like that was her end game. That he was meant to walk away - that she wanted him to walk away. That she was depending on that and he just wasn't playing ball here.

Then she looked back over her shoulder, and didn't say anything as she gazed at him. "I don't want out." she said. "I'm being practical. And for once in my life I actually want something better for someone else. I want something better for you. And maybe it's easier for you to think that it'll just be okay with me, that I'll somehow manage to pull things off, or that nothing worse will happen in my head, but I'm the one who looks over things I wrote down a minute from something else, and knows I've forgotten something already. Or hears new songs and I even really like them, but I've probably heard them before, and I just don't remember. You don't have to worry that maybe something random'll happen and I'll cut out, either physically or mentally, and I have no control over it. I didn't want to set all of this up so you'd have a potential stone around your neck. I didn't set this up so later, I could reap the benefits of things with you. If this has anything to do with me it takes away from that. It takes away what I was trying to do in the first place." Which struck a different chord in her, one that she hadn't quite realized played into her own interpretation of things, but apparently did. She didn't want to have this all wind up better for her, because she'd feel like maybe she'd set it up that way in the first place. It would feel like she'd manipulated, even if she hadn't. She didn't know how to reconcile that. "I'm not playing games. I'm trying very very hard not to be doing anything of the sort. And it doesn't have anything to do with..." she made a gesture between the two of them, since she didn't know how to even word that.

"No - Princess. You didn't set this up like that - because you didn't set this up. I set this up. What you did was you gave me a choice. And I choose this. And yeah, maybe it won't work - maybe it'll all go wrong. Maybe that'll be because of you, and your limitations. But I still choose this. I still want to try. Not because we don't have any other option, not because it's the only thing to do anymore. But because I've sat and I've thought about the options, now that I have them. And I've weighed them up. And this is still what I want to do." He didn't go into his reasons for that, didn't expand on it any further. Partly, he knew, that was because he didn't entirely believe that her 'practicality' wasn't just her still trying to walk away.

Eris stayed quiet for another few moments, just watching him, going over what he said. "You've thought it all over, and you still want to go with the plan." she repeated. "I don't understand why. Why, out of everything you could do, do you want to do this?" She wanted to add more, but stopped herself there, so she didn't give him anything more than the question.

He paused for a moment, looking her in the eyes. "I have my reasons," he told her, though he didn't add in what they were. He wasn't going to lie to her. And he wasn't going to skip out on the parts which involved her either, because then she'd simply turn round and bitch at him that his reasons weren't good enough. So, screw her, she could just not be told any of it.

"And those reasons are?" Eris prompted, because no, she didn't think that just 'I have my reasons' was a good enough answer. Not right now. Not in the middle of all of this.

Brett's jaw flexed as she pushed at him - even if she hadn't actually touched him at all. "The green fairy told me to," he ground out, bluntly. She wanted a lie - she could have a really fucking stupid one. She'd already made it blatantly clear that she didn't really want to hear the truth, but if he was going to lie to her, she was going to be well aware that he was, in fact, lying.

And that was enough to head her towards the door again. She didn't say anything, even if her mind was twisting around with all sorts of things she could say. None of them would be especially helpful, and at the moment, she didn't trust herself to really get anything out there. Like how she knew she'd asked him earlier for a lie, but he'd refused to, and now she wanted the truth. Even if she knew she wouldn't handle it especially well. Really as far as handling things well went, she was doing a fairly abysmal job tonight. A drink might fix that.

"You wanted me to lie!" Brett called out after her, though for once in his life he didn't follow her. Not yet. Not for the first time, though, he felt like he couldn't win with her. Maybe he'd given up trying to do that a long time ago. Maybe he'd never tried to in the first place. Who the fuck knew - but he was always wrong, every time. Or so it seemed to him.

"Yes, I did, at that point, but you were the one who said you wouldn't." Eris said as she got to the door, looking back at him. "So if you aren't going to, fine. Lay it out for me. At least then I'll know what I'm dealing with, instead of not understanding a goddamn thing." Because right now, she felt like she didn't understand anything. That maybe she'd started to, but she was lost again. Her fingertips were on the doorknob, but she hadn't actually turned it. She was waiting.

"We put this together for a reason," he said, after a moment or two. "More than one reason - lots of reasons. A way out for me. A future for you. We both have people that would prefer to see us dead than still breathing. At least - you definitely do, and if I don't have already, I soon will have. And no matter what move I make, that's still going to be true." He spoke calmly, swallowing down his usual tones, affecting a measured, thoughtful pace, laying it all out for her. "Right now, I was an O'Malley heavy. The O'Malleys have gone - if not totally, then enough for them to be a force. And the boys I worked for are either dead, or left town. The only ones I've heard of that might still be around, I had nothing specific to do with. But, I'm known. Which means that in the next few days, or weeks, I'm going to get approaches, from people wanting to employ my 'services'. And most of those people aren't the types that take 'no' for an answer. Not and leave you standing anyhow.

"And you give me this way out - clear my name. And... Then what? Sure, those offers, those demands - they're gonna go away. And in their place there's just gonna be the same people, only now they know that I can't be trusted. That they knew me for all those years and I was a cop. So, whereas before they might have made me an offer before they put a bullet through my brain for turning them down, now they're just gonna skip right to the bullet.

"So, what? I could turn to the cops for protection? Right - the very cops that screwed me over in the first place, headed by someone who I now have proof is corrupt and who would have a vested interest in there being some kind of 'accidental' dereliction of duty going on.

"I'm not seeing a whole lot of rosy options here - and that's just looking at me. So, I think things through and I come full circle back to our original plan. Because that plan was put together to take into account the very problems that are still there, if I go through with clearing my name. Only, thing is, that plan depends up certain things. Ad one of those things is me being an O'Malley. If I'm not, then the whole thing starts to fall apart. Like I explained to you before - you're the front for this whole thing. I can back you all the way, and I will, but we need to create an image around you. Doesn't matter about the reality, but we need people to see certain things. And the most important thing there is for you to be someone not to be messed with, someone to be feared. And the truth about me would kill that. So, if you want to look at this purely from a me angle, this is still, in my opinion, the best way forward for me to have a life. This is still my best chance. You can take yourself out of the reasoning entirely, if that's what you want, and those reasons still stand." At least, he hoped he'd put together a strong enough case for her there. He'd tried to. Wouldn't be the first time that she'd not gone with him on something though.

She listened, turning around and leaning back against the door in the middle somewhere. Her eyes were on the floor in front of her, paying attention even if she wasn't looking at him as he spoke. Part of her was glad that he'd put it all just with the logic for his own case. Another part of her wanted to know what the reasons having to do with her were, even if she knew she wouldn't deal especially well with it. But she didn't ask. She wasn't quite so hot to crash and burn everything that she was going to go there. "I can accept your answer and your reasoning." she said after quite a while of silence. "I still think you could do other things, but if this is what you view as the best course of action for yourself, I can follow the logic." Her voice was quiet, a little smidge off sounding, though not in any clear way. "Have you thought about what you'll do or the consequences if I fail?" she asked, finally ticking her gaze back to him. Because she trusted him not to. He'd be able to play his role...which he'd even admitted recently wasn't requiring that much 'playing' on his end to start with. Him she had faith in. Herself? That was another matter.

You won't fail. He didn't voice that - he'd learned there. She believed in backup plans, he believed in making Plan A work. They were never going to see eye to eye on that. "We'll think of something," he said, instead. A half answer. Better than 'no'. But 'no' wasn't acceptable to him. She wouldn't fail because he'd be there, backing her up, every step of the way. This wasn't just her by herself.

"No, more likely, I fuck up, people realize that there's something wrong with me, and then the wolves close in." Eris said. "And they'll tear both of us to shreds, and enjoy it while they're at it." She sighed, reaching up to thread her fingers through her hair, and she pushed off of the door, and headed towards the cabinet where she had some whiskey to pour for herself. A drink still sounded like the answer. "I can't promise I won't. I don't like where the story ends, if I do. I don't like that you're comfortable with it all, just...relying on me not to fuck up in the first place. That this might seem like the best course of action for you, but to me? It seems like a big fucking gamble." She set out a glass, and looked back at him. "Do you want a drink?"

"I don't want a drink," he told her. "And you've had enough. If I'm gonna be relying on you not fucking up in the first place, then you can help me out with that by not turning yourself into an alcoholic," he told her, still keeping his tone relatively mild. It took more work than being angry, but he didn't want to lose his point right now, not when he had her generally accepting.

"Sweetheart, you're a little late for that." she told him, knowing he probably knew that. She still got herself her drink, and sipped at it, turning back towards him. "You will have to watch me, though. When we're out at parties. If I'm drinking anything, you'll have to get it for me. It'll mean nothing gets slipped in, and I won't be forgetting how much I've had." Closing her eyes, she drew in another deep breath, letting it out in a rush.

"I can do that," he agreed. "You know I'll always be watching you," he added, meaning that on a number of levels, not just for her drinking. He'd need to be - what she did, what she said, who she talked to, what they said to her. He'd need to be watching, he'd need to be remembering, and he'd need to be ready to step in at any point where it seemed things weren't going as planned. But he could do that. He might not be a part of the world they were entering, he might not know how all the games were played, but he knew his part, and most of it was things he'd been doing all his life. Watching, piecing things together, seeing where things were going. All he had to learn was when to step in and what to do to deflect.

She nodded, looking away again. She knocked the whiskey back, then set the glass down, and crossed back over towards him, even if she didn't go directly to him. She actually did more what she'd done when he'd deemed she wasn't paying attention to him. She stood more to his side, just behind his shoulder. "There's another problem." she told him, voice light.

He half looked back over his shoulder. He couldn't see her well like that- she was only a little thing. The top of her head, her hair, eyebrows, an eye, how pale her skin was in the light. "Which is...?" he asked her.

She looked up at him from where she stood. "What I got for you. The evidence, everything that got set up...it wasn't free." she said, for the second time that night. "I still owe on my end. And you've gone and ruined the payoff for him. I imagine still trying to take the commissioner down will be fine, considering he'd never have offered it if it didn't meet his own ends in some fashion. But I'm going and changing the deal now, aren't I?" she asked. Or, he was, but he wasn't the one who'd made the deal in the first place. He'd just been the focus of it all. "He isn't going to be happy. And Hollis isn't a man who's just going to shrug his shoulders and say 'oh well'." She didn't say anything for a moment, then finished. "I may be in a lot of trouble."

That made him pause. That had been an angle that he hadn't considered at all in this. He wondered, for a moment, if she'd be perversely grateful for that. After all, she didn't want him to think about her, right? Well, he hadn't - not in this, at least. "What was the pay off?" he asked her, wondering at that. If he'd ruined it, how was the payoff connected with what he was doing? Surely if she'd had to pay for this, it was paid - his actions didn't have any bearing after that.

"Which part, what he gets out of it, or what I owe?" Eris asked. "I owe information. But because I haven't actually done that yet, and the deal is changing, then he could well change the terms on me. As for everything else...it's just what he does. He sets things up, and likes to watch the results. He's not a man who sets up a series of fireworks then doesn't get to watch them light up the sky. This...it's just not going to go well. That's all." she said. And she really had no idea whatsoever how that was even going to play out. How it would go down, or spiral, or what Jakob would do. How he'd take out his frustrations on her, or him, or anything. Walking past him, she went back over to the cracked window, and leaned her shoulder lightly against the windowframe support, eyes on his dark reflection behind her.

"What information does he want?" Brett asked, following her over to the window. "He doesn't know anything about the fact that there's any change, so - let's keep your end of the bargain, give him the information, let him walk away and then go ahead. He doesn't need to know the deal has changed until the fireworks go up. He'll still get his display."

"You don't get it." Eris said, turning around to face him, feeling the cold from the window on her back. "People like him...this isn't going away. Even if we don't say a damn thing to him about the change in plans, he'll know. What with there not being a big public exoneration like he's set up, it'll be fairly obvious. Plus, he was meant to set up the meet, wasn't he. So he'll need to be told that that isn't happening either. He still was going to be providing a few extra things to go with too. This kind of thing doesn't work like that. And the actual payoff, the point in all of this, was you. You, getting your name cleared. A big show of how clever he is because he pulled it off. You don't go taking away the main point of job from someone. Especially not someone with a temper and ego like his."

Brett looked at her at that, his face clouding over as he finally figured that part out. For a long moment he said nothing as he stared her down, and when he finally spoke, his voice was low. Dangerous. "Don't you ever go making deals with my life, ever again," he told her, coldly. That's what he took from that, a realisation of exactly what she'd done to him. She'd decided that she knew best. Hell, he knew she had those tendencies, but she'd committed him to something with a third party on the basis of that belief, without his knowledge and definitely without his consent. And now, here they were, and that choice that he'd thought she'd given him was no choice at all. It was just, yet again, someone else choosing the direction of his life for him.

"I thought I was doing the right thing." she said. "Plus, when I made the deal, I didn't think I'd be around to see it, either. There wasn't going to be any plan, there was just going to be you." She definitely caught the gone, how everything there changed. "I thought I was doing something for you that you couldn't do for yourself, or wouldn't even try. Something you needed, to help get out from under. I didn't want to leave you where you were at, just...drowning." She kept her eyes on his. "A little like I never asked to live, but you made that decision for me." she pointed out. Because no, she wasn't actually the only person in the room who made major decisions about the other without clearing it first.

"I saved your life - I didn't sell you as part of a deal to somebody else," Brett spat at her, willing to argue the semantics on that one. The familiar anger was back, and it never made him the most reasonable or rational of people. "You know - I thought I had a choice. But I don't, do I? The way you've set it up - that's just the way it's got to be. So, fine - do it. Do whatever you have to. But I want no part of it," he said, turning and stalking off towards the door. He should have known better. He'd thought that she'd given him something worth having, he'd thought that there was that ray of light there, but it had just been another dead end. His life was still being run by other people, he should never expect or hope otherwise.

"Brett--" she started, following. It wasn't something she thought through, really, just something she did. Mostly from the 'I want no part of it' bit. That sounded rather final to her. That sounded very 'and then he left and wasn't ever heard from again' to her. That was immediate, and a hell of a lot worse than her anxiety over what Jakob would do. "I didn't sell you! I sold me. I'll deal with it. I already--" she broke off because she didn't remember if she'd specifically said she agreed to what he was saying or not. "Your choice can be gone with. I'll deal with Jakob. I just wanted you to know it would need dealing with--this is the world you're asking me to wade back into, this is what it's about." she got up behind him about at the door. "...please stop." That kind of thing didn't come out of her mouth very often, nor the tone. There was fear in there, real fear. She was, well and honestly actually begging, even if it was just the two words.

He turned back on her as she reached him, looming over her, anger bright and hot in his eyes. "You sold me. You sold me the moment you made a fucking deal that meant that if I didn't dance to the fucking tune... the moment you made a deal that had my actions worked into the outcome. Without even fucking bothering to damn well talk to me about any of it first. Because 'you thought you were doing the right thing'. You thought you knew best. About my life. About any of it. You know what they say about hell and good intentions Princess. So, this is the world. Your world. You can have your world - this plays out the way it has to, the way you set it up, there's no room in it for me anyway."

When he turned back around and loomed, she took half a step back, instinctively bracing herself for a hit that didn't come. It was automatic, not anything that she even recognized she did. "I'm sorry." she said. Neither one of them did apologies. She could think of only once when he'd said as much, and she didn't know if she'd ever done so. Maybe she had and she'd forgotten. Or maybe it hadn't ever come up. "I apologize. It never even occurred that you wouldn't want that, when I know how badly it weighs on your mind, what it does to you. And I have brought it up, you just shut me down every time because you never ever allowed yourself to even consider there being a way out. Any time I ever brought it up, you just...shut down, shut me out and insisted that it was all over and done with, and that was the end of the story. You never listened to me." she said. Which wasn't surprising since Brett had made a career out of not listening to her, though there wasn't anything resembling ire going on with Eris right then. "You know you want me to go back into all of this, and the single good thing I try to do with it...I don't know how else to do things. I wanted to do something for you, I..." she trailed off there, not even sure how to reconcile the circles going on in her mind at the moment. How to work even through it, let alone out of it. "I'm sorry."

He looked at her, and he believed her. That she was sorry. He just didn't know if that was enough. Not that he could think what more there could actually be. "You were already doing something for me," he told her, the anger gone once more, died down, his tone almost soft, though still low. He didn't want to have to explain that though, so he turned away from her again, opening the door to leave.

She was feeling spun before, and that just made everything worse. While she didn't want him to be angry and shouting at her, turning it around and still going for the door just made her feel like she didn't know anything. That, along with what he'd actually said, she couldn't get it to work in her mind. Taking the step forward again, she grasped his wrist, not hard, but she did pull back on it a little. "Please." she said. "Don't go, not...not yet." she said. "I'm sorry. I don't understand what you just said." she said as well, so he'd know she didn't. There wasn't any click of revelation where it all made sense to her, no moment of clarity. Just more muddied waters flooding in.

"Doesn't matter - it won't change anything anyway." Nothing ever could, it seemed. Or, at least, he couldn't. Changes got made to his life, but they always came from other people. Other people directed where he was going, what he was doing. He had no control over his own life. He'd thought, just for a few moments there, that maybe he'd gotten that back. But now - no, he'd just been blind. He'd just been a fool, to even hope. To even try. It was just an illusion. All of it and that deep dark well of depression was opening up beneath him once more, except this time, right now, he felt like maybe he'd let it swallow him whole.

"It matters to--" she started, but she cut herself off. "I'll talk to Jakob. I'll do whatever you want me to do. However you want to do things, it'll...I'll find a way, or...I don't know, I--" she said, still holding onto his wrist, though it wouldn't have been hard for him to pull away from her. "I'll fix it." Though he wasn't the only one feeling that blackness spread out and blanket everything. The one good thing she'd tried to do, and this was what was happening with it. She'd never been cut out to be a decent person, and while she'd wanted there to be that one thing, she'd fucked it up. Not all that terribly surprising, really, but still. It made everything worse for her. Made her question everything about herself. "I didn't understand how this would be for you." she said, that thought getting vocalized even if it was entirely unconnected to everything else, and was just something random in her head making it through.

"Stop it," he told her, pulling his arm away. "Stop begging - it doesn't suit you." He'd never liked women who did that - one of the things he did like about her was the fact that she stood up to him. And now, here she was, being a woman about things. Just caving, giving it all up, for what? So he didn't walk out the door? And the worst thing about it was that it was working - he was still here. That in and of itself made him want to turn heel and walk. Nevermind anything else. Just to prove something. But yet, he was still here.

"I'm not begging, I'm telling you it'll get handled." Eris said, not going to touch him again, and being he pulled away, she walked farther back, not turning away from him at all, but taking a step or two backwards. She'd been begging before, though, that was certain. But she wasn't just this second, and she was going to stick with that distinction. And she also recognized that this was very very far off the point, but if he was breaking into everything to make it, so was she.

Brett wasn't entirely sure that he bought that distinction right now, but he let her off with it, partially at least because it made the situation more acceptable. "I am sick of people running my life for me," he told her, after a long silence. "Just because you did that for what you thought were 'good' reasons. That doesn't make it any different than them. You wanted to give me my life back? Then it's my life. I decide. Me. Not you. Not anybody else. And I don't fucking care whether that life is good, or bad, or long, or short or whatever the fucking hell else at all, but it's my life. For me to screw up. For me to decide. Not you. Not Hollis. Not anybody else. You, of all people, should be able to grasp that." After all, she'd spent long enough telling him that she wasn't a doll to be pushed around, that he couldn't order her about, or tell her what to do.

"What I did wasn't an effort to control your life." Eris said. "And I see now where you get that. But that wasn't my intention. It was never my intention." she told him, feeling that was an important point. "And I even already said that I'd go with your decision. It was why I hadn't wanted to have an opinion on things in the first place, remember? On what you should do? I didn't want a say. I wanted you to do whatever it was you were going to do. It never occurred that you wouldn't go through with things, or that the fact that this is going to backlash on me would impact things either. And that's something to remember. It'll come back on me. My actions, my consequences. I'll deal with whatever comes down because of it. That shouldn't sway your decisions." At least she felt a little calmer. Not any less sick, but calmer. For the moment, it wasn't like she didn't know she was just in the eye of the storm.

"It shouldn't sway my decisions?" Brett questioned, his tone tinged with disbelief. "Do you really believe that? Do you really believe that I would, could, totally ignore consequences for you? Just... Go with whatever, regardless? That you have absolutely no bearing on things?" After all that had happened, after everything. But, thinking about it, he could believe that she would want to think that. Want to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary. After all, it wasn't the first time that it had come up.

"Whether you can or will isn't really the point, it shouldn't. Especially if you really are wanting to be a master of your own destiny right now. Be it. Do what you want to do, and do it for yourself. What does or doesn't happen to me because of my own errors here, that's my problem, not yours. Don't make it yours." Unless Jakob decided to take it out on Brett as well, but she was going to be selling it to the man that it was all on her. Not that she was going to be telling Brett that. She knew it was slightly off the point he was making, but she thought it was the right point for her to make. Or try to make.

"But it is my problem," Brett pointed out. "Because you know I would choose to go ahead with what we planned. Which means that your problems, are my problems. It can't be any other way. Unless that's over. Is that over, Princess?" he asked her. She knew where he stood on the subject, even if she didn't entirely understand it. But it seemed that at every turn, it was all going to fall apart, and there were times when even he questioned why he was still clinging to the idea. Maybe he should simply give up, give in. Let go.

Eris didn't answer him right away. She wanted to go pour herself another drink, or maybe just grab the bottle and start killing the whiskey. She didn't because he could walk out, and could disappear and she wouldn't be able to find him. It wouldn't be difficult for him to do that. And it might have been an entirely irrational conclusion, but it was there. "Not if you don't want it to be." she said eventually. She'd said it earlier, and she still had her doubts. She was always going to have her doubts, probably. Then she wondered if she should articulate better what was going on in her mind. "You know I'm--" she stopped, then looked away, because her admission wasn't one she was comfortable with. "...scared. That all of this is going to be too much for me and I'm not going to be able to do it. You know that. But I never said I wouldn't try." Just that you should think through a little better on what happens when I fuck things up. Or the wisdom of relying on someone who's very likely to.

"Do you want to try?" he asked her. He'd been railing on about wanting choice in his life, he felt he had to give her that in hers, even if he was concerned that the answer would be 'no', simply because she found it easier to just give up. He knew that streak she had in her, that masochistic streak. That part of her that was just waiting for the axe to fall and that wouldn't do anything to move out of it's path.

When she answered, it wasn't actually an answer to his question. "I don't want everything to fail, and have your life crash and burn because you believed in me when you shouldn't have." she said, since that was one of her main issues, put plainly. She still wasn't really looking at him. But there was that pressure, that huge weight that his wellbeing was going to be directly related to hers, and she knew she wasn't up to par. "I wanted to help you, not be responsible for your downfall. Especially not after you got out from the O'Malleys and things are actually looking up. I--do you know what that feels like for me?" she asked, wondering if he'd ever tried looking at it from her point of view. She looked back over then.

"You are helping me," he told her, though he only meant it specifically in relation to them going forward with this. The rest - well, he'd made his position there pretty damn clear. "As for my downfall - I've already fallen, Princess. The worst they can do to me is kill me." he paused. "Torture, then kill me," he amended, because he knew the truth of that. He'd seen a lot of the worst parts of what was out there over the years, from both sides of the fence. His tone, though, was accepting of the possibility. He knew the risks, he'd always known the risks. "You think things are looking up? For me, it looks like this is just a lull in the storm." He knew he hadn't answered her question, but he didn't really know how to.

"Death isn't the worst thing that can happen to someone." Eris said, intimately familiar with that. The O'Malley's had fucked that up. If she was dead, it would just be game over, but no, she had to hobble through an existence where she wasn't even herself anymore. There were a lot of things worse than death. "And how am I helping you." she said. "Just...maybe being able to play pretend long enough in public?" she asked. Thought it brought up what he'd said earlier, too, so she brought that back to the fore as well. "You said earlier that I...something about my doing something for you. I still don't understand that."

Brett didn't answer straight away. Firstly because he wasn't sure he wanted to answer, and then because he wasn't entirely sure how to. But, in the end, eventually, he tried. "You gave me my life back," he told her. "Not some piece of paper, some evidence from the past. My life. This life. Now - and in the future. That's what you gave me. Before all of this." Before you took it away again.

Eris frowned, because she still wasn't sure she understood. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Is it because I represent a turning point?" she asked, though it was clear that she didn't know if that was the right answer, it was the only thing she could come up with. She still sometimes thought that, that what she was to him wasn't Eris, or even Julia. She was just an ideal. An idea. Something that proved something to him, but not because of her or who she was, just that he'd done what he considered the right thing when he hadn't had to. It proved he was better than he'd thought for a long time.

Brett frowned a little, uncertain with the way she put that, what she meant and whether that's what it was. He wasn't sure. "I don't know how to explain it," he admitted to her, eventually - and very reluctantly. Brett hated to admit weakness of any kind.

She nodded, actually accepting that. It wasn't like she could come up with her reasons for a lot of the bullshit in her own head, so she could very much understand not quite knowing how to explain it. "Sometimes I think that's what I represent with you. You had a choice, when you recognized that I wasn't actually dead. And maybe you did something that proved to yourself that you weren't the bastard you'd come to think of yourself as." she explained, taking a step closer to him but she didn't actually close the distance. "Maybe it really is what it is. I prove that despite this city's best efforts, that even with everything done to you, and all you've had to do, it didn't really kill out that last spark of decency in you. The light inside that made you a hero."

"Maybe," Brett agreed, but he didn't think that she had it quite right. "I know you gave me a choice. Or... You were a choice. Didn't get a whole lot of those. Until you. You made me - you made me feel like I could actually do something about my life. I hadn't, before you," he told her, knowing that he hadn't managed to express just quite how important to him that was.

"It's something I like about you." she said, looking him in the eye from where she stood, close just not as close as she could be. "That you've been put through the wringer, you've had all of this horrible shit done to you but there's still that thread of something good in you. Lesser men would have succumbed. Just...not you. And with me, even if it was against better judgment, and I know I was...difficult, you stepped up for that too." She was quiet for a moment. "I know we've both said before that we've not done whatever it is we're doing with one another before." she said. "But for me there's more there, too. More to it. I've flat out never even met anyone like you. And if you'd have asked me before, I'd have said it wasn't something that would happen. It wouldn't be possible."

It crept up on him, that realisation that they were on emotional ground, approaching actually talking about subjects usually avoided - like feelings. True, they weren't entirely there, they weren't right into that discussion, but alarm bells were going off in the back of Brett's mind, telling him to get himself out of this subject before it went any further, because then he wouldn't have to deal with it, but he wasn't entirely sure where the exits were, and he wasn't desperate enough to simply crash and burn everything to escape. Not yet, anyhow. "I thought I had done," he admitted to her, going with what appeared to be the safe route. "I thought that that guy was dead, had been dead for a long time."

"I know you did." she said. "I occasionally tried to address that." she added. And she'd come up against brick walls, which played into what she'd said earlier, about trying to talk to him about ways out. She just wasn't currently up for going back into the mess. "I suppose to me it was just always very clear." She turned then, to head back towards the cabinet, not feeling the need to drown out everything in her head, but the necessity for a drink was still there in some capacity. Plus, she was aware she'd confessed something there, and wasn't entirely certain how it was going to be taken, or if he was going to do anything with it, or ignore it, or what. Maybe she was taking the pressure off of responding by walking away. She didn't know.

He followed her, as soon as he realised where she was going. Stepping silently between her and the drink. After all, he'd acknowledged to himself earlier on that he called her on her drinking when he needed a deflection. And, right now, he needed that, to keep them away from that discussion of emotions, of feelings, to stop her saying more that he wasn't entirely sure how to deal with.

She pulled up short and took a step back when he got into her way, and after a moment, she turned, and went to sit on the loveseat instead. She didn't say anything. Not furthering the conversation, but also not giving anything else to latch onto, either. She felt at a loss, like she didn't know which way to turn now. She didn't know what was and wasn't happening. She didn't know where she stood, or he did. It was all up in the air, and there was little she even felt she could do to remedy the situation.

He waited to see if she was going to say anything else, and when she didn't, he did. Though it wasn't much. "So, what now?" he asked, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the side of the drinks cabinet.

"You tell me." she said. Since she wasn't getting back into the territory of giving her opinion, when he had been so very very clear that he wanted to make his own choices. So, she felt like it would be a bit of a trap if she said anything now. She leaned her back against the armrest of the loveseat, resting against the back of it lightly. Her eyes weren't really on him, more off on a middle distance as she tried to get her mind to either line thoughts up properly, or settle down, or something. Not that she had a lot of hope for that, at the moment.

"What will be the damage with Jakob if things don't pan out the way that he wants them to?" he asked her, since no matter what she said, that would affect his decision. Or, at least, he would take it into consideration. He knew she'd told him earlier, but he hadn't really been listening - he'd been far too angry to do that.

"I don't know." Eris said. "There aren't set rules. I just know him well enough to know that he's going to be pissed. There'll be some form of payback. What that is, could be anything. Depends on what he's capable of, what he can pull off without it splashing back onto him again, and how offended he is in the first place, and I can't answer any of that. All I know is there'll be something."

"Anything we can do to stay one step ahead of him? Or cut him off before he gets to whatever? You've dealt with him in the past - how dangerous does he get?" Brett asked her. Jakob he'd known as a name in the force, but he didn't actually know the guy. Not like that.

"Not really, unless we had someone close to him who could tell us what he's up to. Which we don't have, and I'd say doesn't actually exist." Eris told him, glancing back over. "He was like me in some ways. No one close. Not really. Plus, he's a cop. Cops can make lives miserable, depending on how bad you cross them." she added. "As for how dangerous he gets...depends how angry he is. Right now, he's puffed up on his own ego. I've never actually seen him like this. He is well above and beyond catering to his own ego. He's getting to the point where I think he's getting too big for his britches. I've seen it before. People so wowed by their own cleverness that they get brought down when they aren't looking because they start thinking they're god. But right before that fall, they become some of the more dangerous people you'd ever run across, too. Believing your untouchable does that." She shrugged one shoulder. "It all depends. I won't be able to avoid it, I don't think. Or if I do, I'm not sure how long I'll be able to. We can try to keep a step ahead, or make ourselves a position in things that would be detrimental for him to directly fuck with."

Or we can just give him what he expects. That was the unspoken choice, because it wasn't one that Brett wanted to make. He'd looked down that path and all he could see was the short term, then nothing. Maybe it would be fine, but he didn't think so. He would be back out into the unknown, and he'd be there alone. At least down the other paths he'd have a measure of knowledge of what to expect, and he'd have her. He knew he should say something, but he didn't, thinking things through.

His silence had her looking back over at him. She didn't say anything either, she just remained quiet, waiting for him to put his next thought process out there. After all, she was filling the role of the sounding board at the moment. she really wanted to stick to that. Especially in light of his main issue with what she'd done, and she hadn't seen it, so she didn't want to fall into another bout of that, not knowing it for what it was, or what it was to him, anyways. It was really odd, dealing with the realization that you couldn't trust yourself. She'd dealt with levels of that since the brain damage, but this was a whole new level of it. She'd not even considered that he'd think about it like that. She'd simply done what had come naturally to her, hadn't for a second stopped to think about how it would look to him, how it would feel. Apparently, even when she wasn't trying to manipulate, when she was actively trying to do something good...she did things her way. It was something she very much needed to know about herself, but at the same time, it was a harsh way to get that particular lesson. It was all to do with the single thing in her life that was truly important to her.

"Have you considered making him believe that you're going to screw me over?" Brett asked her, eventually. "That what you really wanted the information for was so you had a hold over me? He knows I know you have it, but he's never actually seen me with it. Could we make him think that, for now, you're going to dangle it?" He considered that for a moment. "Course, that doesn't answer the commissioner angle," he acknowledged. Everything was so tightly linked together, events depending on other events. Was there even a way through this one intact, or was it bound to bring everything down, one way or another?

"Yes." Eris said. Because it had crossed her mind, even if she hadn't sat there and put serious consideration behind it. It had just been a passing thought in the myriad of all the others she'd been having since Brett dropped the 'naw, let's not do that' bomb. "I could tell him that I'm holding it over you. He may still decide that means I need to pay for not telling him that in the first place, but I never did tell him why I wanted it or what our connection was if any." You didn't go telling people like Jakob someone was important to you. Especially if it was on a personal level. "The commissioner angle can still go ahead, and I can just tell him I'm keeping the file held over your head. It's not the only way to go about things. Hell if I really wanted to clear you without your permission, I could still hand it over to the Echo. They'd love it." She looked at him for a long moment. "They'd love you." Then she smirked, the faint amusement on her lips, in her voice. "Until they started hounding you for interviews, and wanted to put that handsome mug of yours on the front page." Her smirk got a little more pronounced. "I'm fairly confident you'd not deal with that very well, Baby."

Brett thought back to the first time the Echo had been on his heels or photocalls and interviews. She still didn't know about that, but he could tell from her tone, and from the look on her face, that she wouldn't be surprised if he told her how that one had gone down. He let her have her fun, for once - after all, it was just an acknowledgement of the truth. That he didn't suffer fools, and reporters like that were the biggest fools going, far as Brett was concerned. He wasn't just going to be a pretty boy face for their story, and he wasn't into the publicity. He didn't think she'd follow through with her little 'threat' - no, after tonight he was sure that she wasn't going to be doing anything without his permission again. Not when it pertained to him, anyway. Everything else was fair game, but she'd keep away from his own life. "How would you run it?" he asked her, concentrating on the other matter. "If the commissioner angle went ahead? "He gave you the commissioner information so that you could make sure that my file got restored. By going ahead with one without the other... He'll wonder at that, won't he?"

"Of course he will." Eris said. "I'd have to change things up. I'd have to 'let him in' on my reasons, possibly tell him what 'game' I was running, which would probably involve sticking it to the O'Malleys, and all that. Whatever I can come up with when I've got slightly less alcohol in my system." she said. "If I really wanted to play the bitch card, I could tell him I wanted to see if he could do it. Play it off as a grander game than he thought it was. He likes games. Not that he'll like being a part of a game he wasn't in on the rules for. That still won't go over well. I don't actually think there's a way to come out on the other side of this without pissing him off to some extent. And I have no real way of predicting just how much offense he's going to be taking. Or how much it'll needle him in the first place. I'll just have to take the chance, and hope he hasn't gotten so callous as to just, say, shoot me for spoiling his fun. I don't think he would, though. Not because I don't think he's capable of murder, but I don't think he'd be satisfied that I'd 'paid'."

"You could always tell him that if he shoots you I'll hunt him down and gouge his eyes out with a spoon," Brett told her, his tone unreadable. It wasn't entirely clear whether he was joking about that or not, and, in fact, he really wasn't. He just knew it also happened to be a particularly bad plan, in the scheme of bad plans. Still, if Jakob hurt her, then he would pay - no matter how clever the man thought he was.

Eris took his tone as not being serious, because she didn't actually figure he'd do something like that. He was smarter than that, or so she thought. They'd even had that conversation before. About him, and how he did things like not go rushing head first into something stupid. It was a quality she rather depended on with him. "I don't think he'd believe that." she said, tone giving away that she didn't either, but she thought it was a joke in the first place. Or, as close as Brett got to joking. "Besides. If I told him that, he would be even less likely to buy that I was really playing you, holding things over you. It's hardly something someone would do if someone did them a favor by taking out the bitch who was holding his freedom over his head."

"Blame it on Stockholm Syndrome," Brett said, deadpan, but he shrugged anyhow. "I know you can't say anything. Still. I take it you don't want me there. Assuming you're going to tell him - or are you just going to wait for him to call you on the change of plan?" he asked, though he personally thought the latter was a bad plan. Still - it would be her plan. Not his.

"Stockholm Syndrome. Cute." she commented. "You can't be there." Eris confirmed for him a moment later. "It would just make things more precarious, and I'm not sure what he will and won't do. I don't especially trust the situation. You can be nearby...just not there directly." Thinking, she stood up and headed back over towards him and her bottle of whiskey. "If we're doing this, it's better to look like I'm snapping the punch, rather than just getting round to it later. If we wait, it gives the illusion that there's no control." Then she rolled her eyes a little at herself. "Not that there is any control." she added.

"Princess, way I see it, it's the illusion that counts," he told her. He put his hand on her arm as she neared the drink, not actually making any move to stop her, not yet, simply touching her, leaving his hand there.

"It is. We'll have to present a decent one to him." Eris said. She still had no idea what he might pull. If he'd try to hurt her, or not, if he'd wait til later to do that. She could definitely see him biding his time, waiting til some other moment to do it. But who knew. She'd just have live very paranoid. "I deal mildly better with my world feeling terribly uneven beneath my feet if I have something to distract my attention." she told him, since he was making it known he didn't want her going for the bottle. Not that he'd done more than just touch her, but she was allowing that to stop her.

He didn't let her go, and he knew what she was talking about. "You can be distracted by other things," he pointed out to her, pulling on her arm very slightly, towards himself. Part of him was still unhappy with her, but then when had that really been any different? It wasn't like they generally enjoyed an even keel or anything. In fact he considered that they generally did better when there was something not quite right between them.

She took a step closer, not fully as close as she could get, since he'd only given a slight pull, so she didn't overstep that. There was a moment of unreadable flickers behind her eyes for a moment, before she ticked her gaze away for a moment. "I can be." she agreed, watching his eyes when she said it. Then she took a step off to the side of him, her intention to walk past him. "However I don't want to be distracted in certain fashions if all the goal was was keeping me from drinking." she told him, because that was true. As much as she enjoyed things between the two of them, she didn't want it to be about anything else beyond what it was. She didn't want there to be some ulterior motive. Eris had made her decision on that before, how anything she was doing in that sense was going to be choice, desire. Not just some ploy to alter her behavior he didn't like. She stopped, not turning her face towards his, eyes straight ahead. "You don't touch me unless you mean it." she told him, then she started to walk back into the room.

His hand tightened on her arm. Not enough to hurt, but enough to stop her walking off. "I wouldn't," he told her. "Unless I meant it. I'm not - I don't do that sort of thing," he added, amending what he had to say there as he thought better of it.

She caught the switch there, but for once didn't call him on it. Ticking her gaze down to his hand on her arm, she let it rest there for a moment, wondering how hard he'd try to keep her there. She also wondered how hard she would want him to try, and didn't have an answer for that one. "You have spent a whole lot of this evening rather upset with me." she told him. It wasn't necessarily a directed statement, just one that was true, and she was going to see what he did with it. And while she didn't try to walk away again, she also didn't turn back towards him.

"Wouldn't be the first time - won't be the last," he told her. He would have walked away. At one point, he knew, he would have walked out that door, if she hadn't stopped him. He just didn't know if he would have stayed gone. That was a frightening thought, and a new one. Before, whenever he'd come back, or followed her, or tracked her down, whenever he'd stayed or returned, or whatever he was doing, he'd always had a justification for it. Even if it had been no more than the fact that he wanted to give the bitch a piece of his mind. But now, standing here, thinking about it, he realised that there was at least that possibility that he would have come back anyhow, whether he really had a reason to or not. Simply to come back, no matter what she'd done. Maybe she wasn't the only masochistic one here.

Looking back up at him, she watched his eyes. "No, it won't." she agreed. Wouldn't be the first or last time they'd have a screaming argument, either. The subject would change, but they'd always be the type of people who were dominant generally speaking. Not really willing to back down, especially not to save someone's bruised feelings. She still didn't move. Didn't step back into him, or untense her arm, where he held it. She was waiting to see what he'd do, unsure what course of action he might take. Unpredictability wasn't something she was all that used to, but she didn't mind it when it came from him.

Brett met her eyes. "In fact," he said, slowly, uncertain whether he wanted to admit to this or not, but figuring it would hardly be something she hadn't noticed in any event. "I believe I tend to do better when I am rather upset with you," he told her, using her wording to take some of the edge off for himself. He didn't think that they were quite the right words, but it was easier to mirror her words than try and properly put his own to it. To use his own words to admit that he needed that extra level to be able to get where they both wanted to go.

She was aware. She most certainly knew. Hell, even if the sentiment of things between them got softer, which it did upon rare occasion, and she still wasn't even quite sure how that occurred, it couldn't sustain him. He'd start thinking. And all those issues he'd built up for ten years, all the self conscious anxiety, it would rise up and drown him. Unless he was pushed. It was probably a good thing she liked pushing. Tilting her head to the side, she let her hair fall down over her shoulder, leaving the other clear. It was the side that he'd left the dark bruise on her neck. It was deliberate, very clearly so. "I had noticed that." she agreed with him.

His gaze ticked to the bruise and he couldn't help smiling very slightly, just for a moment, as the memory flickered across his face. He'd have to stop that soon, which was a pity, but then he knew that that had been why he'd put that one there in the first place. Because he'd known that it was only a matter of time. Couldn't have her all bruised up like that in public - but she'd been so damn obsessed with being perfect that day. So he'd given her an imperfection. It looked good on her.

She caught the smile. Smiles were exceedingly rare on Brett Trent, though she'd seen a few. She did appreciate the fact that he was smiling about something he'd done to her. She'd tilted her head so he could admire his handiwork, and he was. "Still," she said, watching his expression. "I do require that anything you do to me is purely for the sake of it. That it's about me, or you, or both of us. Nothing else." she finished, and she tried again, to take the step away, pretty much hoping he'd stop her.

He didn't so much stop her as not move an inch and, since he still had hold of her and since he was inevitably stronger than she was, that meant that she wasn't going anywhere. "Always is, Princess - don't you worry about that," he told her, his voice purposefully dropping slightly to a tone that he was aware she seemed to quite like.

She, as expected, didn't get far. Which she enjoyed. Noticing the way his voice dropped that little bit, she wondered when exactly she'd become the one who needed to be seduced. And when he'd picked that up. She'd spent her life being the seductress, so having the tables turned on her even in tamer ways was interesting for her. she was also aware that he'd already managed to distract her from getting herself something to drink, but he was claiming it wasn't about that. She wondered if it had been, if it was changed now. Either way, in response to his tone, she tilted her ear more towards him. Turning her arm slightly, she looked at his hand on her again. "I may need convincing of that." she told him, tone light. "Planning on keeping me held all night?" she asked. "I seem to recall the last time that proposition came up, there were threats of tying me to a chair." And she still maintained he'd probably like it if he did something like handcuff her to the bed. She even had a good frame for that. Not that she was going to suggest that.

"That depends on whether you're gonna keep trying to walk away from me when I don't want you to," Brett pointed out to her. He almost said 'without permission' but he wasn't quite there, but it was left unsaid, hanging between them, if she picked up on it. And anyway, it felt almost like a bigger thing, allowing want to slip into there. She made such a big issue of 'want' and 'desire' after all, so he could give her that.

Eris leaned back, not quite going for the step back, but dropping her weight backwards, enough so if he was going to keep hold of her, he'd have to try harder. "What if I did?" she asked. Not that she truly had plans of walking away, but seeing how far he'd take things? That she was interested in. She really wasn't sure, so she wanted to test the boundaries, see how far he'd let himself go. After all, he had trouble with that sort of thing, but she was more than happy to provide him with proper motivation and outlets.

He pulled her then, sharply in towards him, a hard tug and then trusting to momentum to bring her in the rest of the way, fast enough to shock. "Then I'd have to stop you," he told her, seriously, an arm ready to go round her waist when she was close enough.

For a second, when he pulled her in, she smiled. Just a second, then it was gone, but it existed for a heartbeat. She also didn't fight against it when he did pull her in that time, having to take a quick step to keep her balance properly--even if she was pretty convinced that if she lost it, he'd catch her. What was it he'd said in the basement? That there'd always be something to catch her? Apparently, at least part of her believed him. She looked up at him, that dark little amusement twitching at the edges of her expression, but just that little bit. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she looked up at him. "How would you go about that?" she asked. "How hard would you try?"

His arm fastened around her waist. She was a slim little thing, and he could encircle her with one arm, which he did as he turned them both, so that she was trapped between him and the drinks cabinet, even if he wasn't holding her tight, his other hand still fastened onto her arm. "Oh, I don't think I'd have to try very hard at all - you're not going anywhere and we both know it," he told her, teasing since she was going to be all innocently questioning like that.

Her hands grasped lightly at his biceps, and she felt the cabinet against her back. "Do we?" she asked, pushing a little at his arms, though all that really did was push her back into the cabinet more. "Because you're not going to let me?" she asked, letting her nails dig in a little on his right arm, expression not changing as she did so. Almost like it was an accident, even if it wasn't, and he'd know it wasn't.

"Right. Because I'm not going to let you," Brett said in a knowing tone. Knowing because it was bullshit. They both knew it was because she didn't really want to go anywhere, but that wasn't the way this went, and it would be no fun if she just fell into his arms like some swooning woman. That wasn't want he liked, what he wanted. So, there was always this - they both always had to work for it.

"I could always scream." she told him, knowing full well if that was going on it wouldn't be for help. She pushed at his arms more, with more force this time, the glasses from the cabinet clinking together as she did so. She twisted a little too, not that she had a whole lot of room or anything, but she did need to fight, of course.

"Who's going to hear you?" Brett asked, tightening his hold on her. "You live above a club - and anyway, people run the other way from screams in this city," he pointed out to her. But still, for good measure, to make sure she couldn't, he kissed her.

Letting her nails bite in on both of his arms, she kissed him back, or, she did after she put up just enough resistance that he had to work a bit to kiss her in the first place. But then she gave in, put her all into it, pushing against him roughly, using her back pressed against the cabinet to help. She wanted to see what he'd do with it, how he'd react. Right now she was fully of a mind to test things, and she wasn't entertaining the notion of curbing that impulse.

The cabinet rocked, the glasses clinking against each other loudly as she first levered herself and he then pushed her hard back, pressing her into the wood of the cabinet and the cabinet itself hard back against the wall with a bang. As usual, there was nothing gentle about his actions. He'd tried that a couple of times and it only led to problems. He could learn from his mistakes, especially when learning was a much more pleasurable experience.

She appreciated that, too. She supposed they both really generally liked the idea of getting reactions out of each other. And natural reactions at that. Hers was as she gave a little sound, something to do with both the kiss and getting shoved hard back into an object that wasn't about to give. She did push one foot up though, against the cabinet at her back. It would give her more leverage for if she tried again. Which she wasn't ruling out. She just didn't for the moment, letting herself enjoy the kiss for a few.

He pushed her knee to the side as she brought her leg up, taking the opportunity to step inside her leg, pushing up against her, his hand dropping from her wrist to her thigh, pushing her dress up enough for him to be able to run his hands along the stocking underneath.

She scratched her nails down his arm, resisted a little, even if she was still kissing him more than willingly. But she wanted to see if he'd stop her, or try to stop her. No. Not really 'probably'. She wanted to see how he'd do it. How he'd take what he wanted, if he wanted it bad enough. Of course, she certainly wanted him to. That just didn't mean she was making it easy for him.

He broke off as he felt the deeper pain of a harsher scratch down his arm. As usual, his shirt sleeves were rolled up to just below his elbow and a glance showed that she'd managed to draw droplets of blood in places, marring the dragon tattoo that entwined over his lower right arm. he let out a noise that was almost a growl and grabbed her wrist, bringing her hand up and back, pinning it against the cabinet with one hand as he pushed her skirt up around her waist with the other, skipping ahead faster towards what he wanted.

She tried to pull her wrist free, but couldn't manage it, though it was possible she wasn't trying her very hardest, either. She'd liked the sound she'd gotten, that growl like sound. Maybe it was something that she always appreciated about Brett. That dark little caged animal that lived just beneath the surface a lot of the time. Because as honorable as he was, as much as the inner hero wasn't dead, all of the shreds of virtue that still held true in him...there was the other side too. There was a darkness that had crept in over time, and settled there. It was something she didn't think he'd lose, even if he wanted to. But it was also something that could have a positive outlet, it didn't have to be just blackness. She reached across with her free hand to grasp his wrist, like she was going to try and get herself free.

He actually let her pull, not trying to pin her other hand as she struggled against him. He liked it when she struggled, and that showed in his expression as he pulled at her panties, ripping them away without a care.

That's twice. went through her mind when he tore her clothes. She rather thought he enjoyed it. Possibly just ripping her clothes in general. She would admit to herself that she enjoyed being on the other end of it, having him not bother with niceties, like it'd be far too much effort to do anything slower. She let her nails dig into his wrist as she pulled, though her eyes were on his. She also stopped for an instant there, when he made the tearing motion.

She stopped, he didn't as he left her and went for his belt, pushing his hips back enough to let the slip of material that had formerly been her underwear fall to the floor and to be able to work on the fastenings to his pants. The rest of his body, though, he kept pressed against her, still trapping her where she was.

Eris let her nails dig in on the inside of his wrist, and she let them rake down a little. Not a lot, not very far, but enough that she drew blood again. A tiny bit, really. But he'd left that impressive bruise on her, She was feeling like returning the favor, in some regard. Plus, she wasn't ready to quit fighting yet, even if she was anticipating the game closing. She gave one last push, a hard one, not that she had the leverage for it, but she tried. Something inside the cabinet fell over, she heard that much with the glasses clinking together again.

He smiled at that, a dark, almost wicked smile as he finished his fumbling and reached to bring her leg up, hooking it around his own and holding it in place as he pushed forward, looking into her eyes as he did so, purposefully ignoring the pain - and it was pain. It cut through, pleasurable only because it meant she was still fighting him, still keeping up that game. And it was good because he knew it was a game - he could see that in her eyes. That she wanted this just as much as he did. It wouldn't be good if she didn't. He wanted her to want it and yet still to fight him for it.

In that moment, Eris decided if they didn't get themselves killed with everything they were pulling, with Jakob, with high society, the city in general, she was going to enjoy this. Whatever they were doing, playing back and forth, the constant fight, the high emotions running throughout, the force of their personalities, and the games. If they didn't crash and burn, if they didn't fail entirely, it was going to be one hell of a ride. It was in the look in his eyes, that expression on his features. That was the moment where everything clicked for her. She was in this, til it ended, however it ended. It had her digging her nails in deeper, actually feeling tacky blood beneath them now, before she abruptly released his wrist, and reached up fast to grab a handful of his hair to pull him down to kiss him, if he'd let her. "Come here," she said, voice rough. That was it, hell with it all, she was throwing herself into all of it with abandon.

He didn't need telling twice - he liked the fight, but there was that tipping point when that need for it went out the window and they were past that now. Now it was just all real as they sent the cabinet banging repeatedly back against the wall and he returned the kiss with every ounce of feeling he had, clutching her to him as they moved.

She left other scratches on him, the back of his neck, the back of his shoulder, in farther towards his spine. Not too many places, due to his being clothed as he was, but she made due. It wasn't her full concentration, though. That was in everything else. The scratches were just little reminders. It was clear though that he had her. Her full attention, her all. She didn't hold back at all on noise, especially considering the continual noise of the cabinet against the wall and the glass clinking inside. Her whiskey bottle and glass crashed to the floor at some point, not that she paid the slightest bit of attention.

Finally, he let go of the hand he'd kept pinned against the cabinet, but only so that he could lift her other leg, hoisting her further up and completely supporting her weight now, breaking the kiss so that he could pull back slightly and look at her. He felt an overwhelming need, right now, to watch her, to take all of that in.

Eris had her head back against the cabinet, hair tossled around her, skin flushed. And while she could school her expression to whatever she wanted it to, if she wanted to, she made no effort to change it from whatever it happened to be at the moment. For a while her eyes were shut, but eventually she opened them, caught his eye. About the only thing she was doing to help was she had one hand on his arm, to keep herself steady, but really, she was just letting him take entire control there. He was trusted not to let her fall.

He had no intention of letting her fall, and he kept one muscled arm wrapped tightly around her, even as he used the cabinet for support. There was the sound of breaking glass from inside it as something decided that it had been rattled around too much, but he didn't give a damn as he gave himself over entirely to the moment, feeling everything building, watching her, the looks playing over her face, the darkness of her eyes, watching her looking at him now, it all played in.

Eris really didn't care if they broke every bottle she owned--Brett might like that. She absolutely could not care right then, though. She was too wrapped up in him. In everything else. How he watched her did as much for her as her watching him did for him, and she felt everything rushing towards the end.

His breath was coming hard and fast now and he felt the burning in his arms from supporting her so, but it just spurred him on all the more as he felt himself peak, audibly falling over the edge there with a guttural moan as he pinned her hard against the cabinet, pressing her back with all his weight as he collapsed against her.

She wasn't far behind him, hers a sharp sound against his moan. She reached up, one wrist loosely up against his neck, fingernails lightly resting against his spine. She had to remember how to breathe, and she could feel her heart thudding hard in her chest. She turned her face in towards him, just a little, even if her goal there was unclear, even to herself.

Her goal might have been unclear, but as she turned to him, he completed the move and kissed her. It wasn't anything he thought about beforehand, it just felt natural as he pulled back, lifting her away from the cabinet so that he was holding her entirely, his arms wrapped around her at waist and shoulders, keeping her up.

And there was a part of Eris that was a little surprised with that. Maybe because it was what she'd wanted, something she recognized after she got it, but the other part was just that generally...they kind of didn't do that. Or, they hadn't til just now. She shifted and put her arms up around his neck so she wasn't just dead weight or anything anymore. And she took the moment just to kiss him, and not think about anything.

A few long moments was all it lasted, all he allowed it to last before he drew back and let her down, slowly but firmly, though he didn't bend, meaning that she had the choice to either let him go, or to end up stretched against him with her arms still around his neck.

Eris opted for the latter, standing on her tiptoes for a few moments as she stood there, against him. She only let it last for a few seconds, a brief moment, before she let him go, only to lean her back against the cabinet again, feeling slightly unsteady on her feet. Just a little. Or possibly more than a little, but she was only owning up to a slight case of it, even to herself. Exhaling, she reached up to thread the fingers of both hands through her hair, eyes on his the entire time. Her mind was in a bit of an indescribable place. And part of her was a little preoccupied with the kiss. Which really, of all things, shouldn't be standing out, even if it was.

Brett always hated this part. In the moment, he was fine - and, apparently, he was getting better at the incredibly immediate aftermath. But the coming down? The afterwards part? he never knew what to do with himself, which meant he generally had to fight the urge to run - which wasn't helpful considering his pants were down around his ankles. So, in the end, he just stood there, returning the gaze, waiting for her to make the move.

She smiled at him a moment. "You're going to need to give me a minute. Walking might not work out for me for a few." she told him, to break into the sort of 'what now' vibe he was giving off. They both had their issues, but his were deeper, and a whole lot of them were related to physical intimacy. Hers weren't, so much. For her, she just had very firm ideas about what she was and wasn't willing to be doing, and she was happy to play it by ear with him, and not overthink too much. She did glance down, noticing her foot was wet, and saw the whiskey was creeping over, and there was alcohol of some description leaking out the bottom of the cabinet.

He took a step back, both because she'd asked him to give her a minute, and also because she'd glanced down. It was instinctual, even if she hadn't actually been looking at him, but at the floor. He bent, pulling up his trousers that were now slightly whiskey-damp, covering the burn scars that ran up his legs. Then he went down again, this time to pick up the bottle, the bits of broken glass. They really had made a mess - he just wasn't at all sorry for it.

She watched him picking up the glass. "Careful. Wouldn't want you to cut yourself." she said, as she turned her nails up towards her eyes so she could look and see the bits of blood beneath them. "How is your arm?" she asked, looking past her hand towards him. She extended her hand down so he could see his blood there, not sure what he'd think about that. If anything. Her mind was in a strange sort of place at the moment, ticking along in calmer circles than usual, turning towards things and viewing them in different ways than she'd been doing. She was still deliberately changing the game in her head, and was working on that.

He looked up at her, glancing at her fingernails, but mostly looking at her face. "Now you're worried about me getting cut?" he asked her, his voice gruff, but there was something behind it that was almost amused. He was in a good mood right now, more relaxed, buzzing slightly - he just showed it in his own particular way.

"Of course I am." Eris said, smirking at him in a dark little way. "Glass cuts aren't any good and they'll be on your hands. I like your hands undamaged." she told him. "Besides, if you are going to bleed at all, I'd rather be the cause." She finally stood straight, feeling a bit steadier than she had been. "Like I imagine, if I'm going to be bruised, you'd rather it be from you." Looking towards the kitchen area, she figured she go get him a towel to mop up the spilled whiskey...and whatever else was dripping from the cabinet.

He turned back to picking up broken glass. "You would be the cause," he told her, raising his voice slightly so she could still hear him. "You knocked the bottle off the side." Okay, possibly she only did that because he made her, but still, he could say it was her.

Eris laughed, gasping a little as she crossed to the counter. "You're blaming this on me?" she asked. "Oh, I don't think so. That was all you. I was an innocent bystander, caught up in the whirlwind." she claimed, getting a few little dish towels, then walking back over to drop them down to the floor, one beneath where the cabinet was leaking, before she opened it to survey the damage. There were two bottles in there that were very obviously broken, and one that wasn't shattered, but was cracked enough that it was leaking everywhere.

"Innocent, you?" Brett asked, actually snorting a laugh as he used the towels to clean up the rest of the glass as well as the alcohol spreading across the floor. It left everything damp, but at least it was relatively clean and neither of them would cut themselves. He stood and headed to throw them into the kitchen, the glass into the trash.

"Relatively innocent." Eris amended, watching him as he moved around. Then she headed over towards the window, and she wrote 943 in the frost. Moving directly up behind him, she turned him around. "I'm going to teach you something." she said. "Something we'll need for later. A play. Now look at me. My eyes or my lips, whatever, doesn't matter, no one'll be able to tell anyways. I wrote something on the window. Without looking at it, tell me what it says."

Brett took a step in, putting his hands to her waist and roaming his eyes over her face as he did as instructed. He actually looked like he didn't have eye for anyone but her, though the move and the position just made it easier for him to concentrate on his peripheral vision, and the look he figured gave him an excuse not to be saying anything. "Nine four three," he told her, after a moment or two, raising an eyebrow in enquiry to check he was correct in that. Observation was, after all, something he'd been trained in.

Eris smiled. "Ooh. Very good." she told him. "Your position is good too. The only thing you'll need to change, is this." she said, sliding her hands to his. "We'd do this at a gathering, go off by 'ourselves' even if there'd be more than enough of a view for anyone watching. You pay attention to if they're paying attention by watching but not. But what you do, is you almost put your hand on my hip. Don't quite complete the movement. Stop yourself before it's done, and hesitate, before opting not to. It's low enough that I could miss the gesture since I'd be paying attention to you, but everyone else would pick up on it. Half the people seeing it would assume that it's something you want to do, but are aware you can't. The other half will assume that you started to do it because if we were in private, it'd be natural for you. It'll give them something to whisper about."

"And whispering's good?" he asked, figuring it was, but wanting for her to expand on that. She knew the rules, after all, and whilst he could use his intelligence to guess at some of them, you got further in life by not assuming that you knew everything and actually being willing to listen to someone who knew better. That wasn't something Brett tended to bear in mind all the time, but he managed it when he was out of his comfort zone.

"Whispering is good. And since people'll see it differently, they'll get to discuss that too. Basically? It'll make sure they're talking about us. And even if it isn't in the business capacity, we'll be on their minds. We will be anyways at first just due to my not so permanent death and all, but we want them to have things to think about." She smiled at him. "Plus, it'll make them wonder about you and I specifically and what kind of relationship we have. We want them wondering about that. The best way to get that out there and in people's minds is to make them think they're seeing something they shouldn't."

"I can do that," he told her, finally stepping back a little more. "I'm used to making people see something that's not real." he'd been doing it for years now. His job, his personal life. It had all been an illusion, at one point or another.

She nodded, watching his eyes. "I know." she said. After all, it was the single most prominent thing he'd gotten annoyed with her over since they'd met. She saw through a lot of the pretenses he put up, that most people didn't even so much as question. "I'm proud of you though. You barely needed any instruction there. You might be a natural at this." she told him, because she was pleased with that little display, and she wanted him to know that. "There's really only one last thing for you to think about." she told him, smirking faintly as she reached up and adjusted his collar. "By the way, when we're 'talking', I'm going to adjust your tie, and tighten it a little too much, just for a second. It'll be read as a show of dominance. Don't react to it."

Brett's face clouded over for a moment as she called him a natural, but only for a moment as he made himself relax into that. This was his choice, he reminded himself, he wanted into this world and it was better that he could be good at it. And, really, she was right, he got this - he didn't always get the deeper meanings behind things, but he could imagine the need for some things. Like guessing that if she wanted him to see something without looking that the best excuse would be her. He hadn't clued into the additional parts she told him about, but he could grasp the basics. He nodded. "Okay," he agreed.

She caught the twitch there, but didn't comment on it. He wasn't commenting, so she was leaving it for once. She got herself a glass of water, and took a drink, hip resting against the counter as she regarded him again. "You're going to get hit on." she told him. She didn't know if he was aware of that. Now they both knew she was going to be propositioned, but she was wondering if he hadn't thought about that possibility for himself.

Brett looked over at her, giving her a slight look. "Believe it or not, Princess, it wouldn't be the first time," he said, dryly. He just generally didn't think they knew what they were doing - Brett had always had a tendency to think more in the long term than the immediate. At least, he had since the fire. In his youth he'd been happy to flirt right back, live in that moment, enjoy it all. But since the fire, if a girl hit on him, all he could think about was the end result. He was, himself, an illusion. A lie.

Eris smiled at that. "I didn't think it would be. But I also know that you tend to dismiss yourself." she told him. "But you'll be hit on. Bored wives, people wanting to find out more about us, yourself, me, people wanting to break into whatever it is we're doing, people wanting to get to me through you, there'll be a lot of different reasons." she said. "How're you going to handle it?" And her tone indicated she wasn't talking emotionally. She was talking what kind of plan did he have for it.

Brett considered that for a moment, factoring in the changes that he figured they'd have to make, the latest plans in regards to Jakob, trying to seal some of the holes he could see appearing. "Depends on who they are," he said, after a moment or two. "Generally, I'm nothing if not loyal - and totally yours. On occasion, in the right circumstances - that you'd have my balls if I strayed. Both cases, doesn't matter how you are about it. There are certain things you expect of me. With a suggestion that it's not totally reciprocated, but no confirmation of that. That way for Jakob there's the suggestion that those files aren't the only hold you have over me; for everyone else there's that question hanging over everything, but you don't look like you have a weak spot. Or a heart. People expect you to be a cold bitch, and a manipulative one. That would play into that."

Nodding, she took that in. "Good luck." she said. "And Brett," she said, setting her glass down, and stepping closer to him. "Don't stray." She knew he wouldn't, considering he'd gotten offended by the idea of cheating on imaginary girlfriends, but she wanted to say it herself. So he knew she had a personal stake in it, that it wasn't just something she was assuming, or something that would go without saying. He could put out whatever ideas he wanted with people, but she still wanted to keep her own claim on him.

He didn't feel the need to tell her that he expected the same from her. They'd already talked about that. He expected her to be faithful, and she wanted him there to help enforce that very thing against men who might decide to have other ideas. "Good luck?" he asked, instead. Does that mean you think it won't work?" he asked, lightly. Though, she'd nodded. Still, he wanted to check.

"I think it'll work if you sell it. But you were the one who told me that you weren't a very good actor. Still. I have faith in you. Mostly? Good luck against the maneaters. You may find yourself pushed into closets and groped aggressively by women twice your age." she warned. Which actually she thought she might like to see, just for the amusement factor, but she didn't say as much. She'd just seen it before. Women who were just so ungodly bored with their entire existence that they would most certainly take the opportunity to do something like play with Brett.

A flash of something that could have been deemed to be fear or maybe just extreme surprise passed across Brett's face at that. "You're kidding, right?" he asked her, really hoping she was. He was aware that the position he was putting himself into, as what could be viewed as merely her bodyguard, her lackey - as hired help, possibly. He could be viewed that way by high society, he thought. Which meant that some of those women - it wasn't like he could just push them away and not risk alienating god knew who. He'd been counting on there being a certain level of decorum expected from them that would mean that he could sidestep a lot of situations.

And this was why they were having this conversation. "No." she told him. "We're talking about women who have nothing better to do. They've got the social standing, and with that comes a certain amount of freedom. They're bored, and can more or less do whatever they want. Some of them would want to do it to get attention they otherwise won't fetch anymore, some would do it because you, baby, are quite the good looking, solid man. And all those other reasons I already cited, but one thing to understand about some of the people we'll be rubbing elbows with...they're bored. Seriously. Keep that in mind. Some of them will do anything to just feel something."

"...Any suggestions?" he asked her, still trying to stop reeling from that unexpected piece of information. He could imagine it - he just didn't really want to. He hadn't thought about that side of things at all. He'd expected that maybe he'd get approaches, because, well, that was the way of the world. But he had expected very much that people would take 'no' for an answer.

"That's up to you." Eris said honestly. "I could probably try to walk you through plays, but you're...a reactive sort of personality, so you might want to go with what would come the most naturally to you. Just try not to look repulsed." she told him, watching his eyes. "That'll go down badly, even if a deflection'll possibly be seen as a game." Repulsion, though, that was hard to mistake, and people would take it personally.

"I'll work on that," Brett told her, knowing that that would need to be work. He'd spent the last decade mastering the art of pushing people away, usually in the most immediately effective ways possible. One of the most effective ways of doing that was to make people grasp, and grasp quickly, just how little esteem you held them in. Repulsion was a stock-in-trade expression for him.

"You'll have to." Eris told him. "If you need something fast, go for pissed, since you do that one especially well, but it'll take revulsion out of the equation. You could even say you're pissed because of the way it takes you from your job, or that I'll be angry with you over it. Whatever you want to tell people is fine, just don't look at any of them like you'd rather be knee deep in shit than anywhere near them. Like I said, most of them will probably view it as a game, and then might attempt to 'pursue' you, but it'll cause less damage than an outright 'you're disgusting, get the hell off of me'."

"Your girls have been trying that for years," Brett reminded her. "Just probably more blatantly, and it didn't matter so much if I alienated them. Which - is there anyone I need to know about? Anyone who's too important to piss off?" he asked. Not that he had any intention of giving in to them if that was the case, but it would be good to know ahead of time so he could avoid getting into that situation in the first place.

"I know, but here it matters if you piss people off, if you bruise some woman's ego. You never know what happens in that case. Things could get vicious." she said. "As for too important...I'm not sure. I'll have to play that one more by ear, see who's even still in the game since I last checked." There were always changes, after all. "You should be safe for a little while, anyways. I don't want you wandering off on your own for a while. I want you right with me." Her tone gave away that she wasn't saying that because she thought he needed a babysitter, but because she knew she would. And she was still very aware of a whole lot of people who were going to be trying to jump straight back into an 'arrangement'.

"And I will be with you," he told her, seriously. Not only because she'd need him for defence, but because at first they'd both be needed to make this work - him to supplement what she was lacking these days and her to show him how this whole thing worked. He'd have to learn fast and it was fine and dandy her showing him bits here, but Brett knew that the real learning curve would start the first time they went out in public.

"Right." she said, keeping her eyes on his. He'd be there, and she was going to keep looking at this like it was their game. And she wasn't going to let herself look at the bigger picture, where there were all those holes in everything, because this was personal. Or, it was now. She couldn't quite get her head around it any other way, but that one, she could deal with. Hopefully it worked. Hopefully it didn't all crash and burn.

Brett knew that he was nervous - and he didn't like doing nervous. It annoyed him. "In the meantime, we should get some sleep," he told her, pushing that all away, his tone betraying that he was doing that - it tended to turn more gruff when he was ignoring issues, that wall coming up in defence.

"We should." Eris said, not saying that immediately, but she did after a long moment. Normally she'd dig, right now, and start trying to untangle whatever was going on in his head, but after the night they'd already had, the screaming argument, everything else, she opted to let it slide. They could talk about it later. She started killing the lights, then headed towards the bed, tugging her dress off as she did so, climbing into bed. It was going to be an interesting ride, this whole thing. Hopefully they'd survive it.