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"Dude," someone said, flat and unimpressed, faintly disgusted. The voice was familiar, relieved though it was of most of the rasp that had accompanied it in the pod room.

Taym watched Ever going about his scrounging, with his hands stuffed into his pockets and--of course--a cigarette between his lips, burning away half-forgotten as if in mockery of the new kid's desperation. Everything about him, in fact, suggested mockery of the new kid's desperation: the nonchalance of his stance (a practiced bonelessness nonetheless underscored by an unavoidable tension), his lofted eyebrows, and his next comment:

"Seriously?"

He'd apparently been prepared to dispassionately watch him debase himself while calmly smoking a cigarette, but instead Ever's admission drained the superiority right out of him. He sighed, and reached into his pocket for a pack.

"So what happened to the ones I gave you?" he asked, before he made any move to hand any over. "Because I thought I made it clear you'd want to ******** ration them."

"You deserve it," he said immediately. "Who the ******** uses a cigarette case?"

He did not, this time, toss Ever the entire pack. He extended it down towards him instead.

"Actually," said Taym pleasantly, folding himself up to sit on the grass a few feet away--it was companionable; it also seemed like the sort of thing he'd done a lot in his life, like sitting on the ground was as normal as sitting on a chair--and indicating, vaguely, the direction of the dorms with his cigarette. "There's alcohol, there's pot, if you know where to look. The problem is that there's alcohol and cigarettes and pot for people with money and people with leave, and it'll be a while before you've got that. I spent my first month here doing a girl's laundry. Some people will take it on credit, if you promise to pay with interest. It's not like you have rent to pay," he added with a yellow-toothed grin. "And it's better than scrounging in the ******** grass, for ******** sake."

"Jesus ******** Christ," Taym said, wryly theatrical. "Common sense. There's even less of that around here than there is a cheap nicotine fix. I'd offer to help you out, but we're grounded," he said, with another baring of his teeth and an indication of the crossed scythes on the bottom of his coat. "So I'm in the same boat as you, and equally disinclined to piss anyone off. Time to make some friends, Ambrodiel." He said this the way you might say "time to buy some paper towels" or "time to fuel up the car."

Taym's face contorted in an expression of disgust.

"Dude, don't ********. Not even as a joke. Have some self-respect."

Here's the problem with being a twenty-something homophobe who's spent most of his life floating around in social circles on the fringe of mainstream society, engaging with, as the cliche goes, "all walks of life": one rapidly becomes aware that no matter how it's justified, homophobia (not the word he'd use, anyway) is not a position that one can advertise openly and still maintain much of a circle of friends.

To a rational person this would suggest that perhaps the bigoted viewpoint ought to be examined more closely. Taym was in many ways very far from rational. To him it merely suggested that perhaps he ought to keep a lid on any more outright discussions of how he felt, and instead make up new, more socially acceptable reasons for hating people. With Jordan and Shiloh this had been easy--the former was the witless thrall of a sociopathic murderer, and the latter had gotten him shot, and also had a boyfriend that needed his nose broken. With Ever it might be harder, at least without settling on the shameless scrounging and immediately launching himself into hypocrisy so thick that even he could see it.

Then again:

"I'm not interested, and offer again and I'll straighten your ******** nose out for you. No one else is either," he snapped, with the unsettling thought that this probably wasn't true. "For ******** sake. You'll have money in a month or two and you have a job, don't make excuses just because you're chomping at the bit to--Jesus. Have some self-respect," he repeated, unfolding to stand up again.