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The lack of a real door meant that he'd seen her pass (awake already, gathering a will to get up and shave and force himself into a creaking and hateful lap around the fields), oblivious to the newly-occupied room, and this was an uncomfortable confirmation of the fact that perhaps he was needed here. Every ******** threshold seemed to present some lurking danger, as far as he was concerned, and he'd already found ways to assess each doorway without turning his head. One might charitably term his condition "paranoid," but better overly safe, he figured, than very, very sorry.

Maybe, if she was alert, she'd smell him before she saw him: the stink of cigarette smoke with nowhere to go in the closed-in basement. Or, probably, she'd see his shadow stretched across the hall in the dim rectangle of a newly-lit candle. He was leaning with one arm stretched up to rest on the lintel of the doorframe, which was low-slung in front of a cavelike little room where his pristine white sheets looked as out of place as they possibly could. The cigarette dangled. It was the sort of posture that on another man might have had some pleasing effect of emphasizing the shape of his arms, but there was nothing to emphasize with Taym, and it lost the air of affectation it might otherwise have had because no one was more painfully aware of the most flattering (or at least least-unattractive) way to arrange himself in a doorframe than he was.

He was dressed, already, but then again he slept in his clothes, even when he wasn't alone in his bed, and she knew this where few did.

"Morning," he said, and he turned his head to cough, a worrying tendency when he smoked that hadn't yet subsided, whether because his throat was well and truly wrecked or because he simply thought that it was.

"Haven't even checked on the new arrival yet, no vetting the move-in, no scoping it out, no hello," he chided. "Just breeze right on by. Some president." And then, distractedly: "You're up awfully ******** early. Or late?"

That last only made him grin. He was grateful for this, as it covered the fact that he'd just realized that Bashmet hadn't told her he'd be here--he'd taken it for granted that he would--and that if Bashmet hadn't told her, he'd kept quiet for a reason.

So he shouldered the blame that he felt ought reasonably to be the Russian's, buoyed somewhat by what he chose to interpret as her petty jealousy. But first, he prevaricated.

"Would it piss you off if the answer was yes?"

Another grin, this one generously suggesting the descriptor "s**t-eating" in the split second before it became sincere and was, accordingly, hidden away with a turned head. He dropped his arm, opting instead to cross them over his chest and lean against the frame--ah, there it was--with his ankles crossed.

"Afraid there's a coup in the works?" he asked, turning aside again, this time to exhale a laugh and his last drag simultaneously. "I don't think she's got her sights set so high as that. If she did I'd ask you if you'd do me the honor of appointing me your double agent, anyway. Even if your approval ratings are slipping, I remain loyal. Cross my heart," he added, demonstrating.

The playful grin gave way to irritation almost instantly. "Not that it was on my list of considerations for the relocation, but I thought you'd be happy to ******** see me. Or did I manage to piss you off again? Please enlighten me as to what I've done this time, because usually I can guess but this time I remain baffled."

The grin resurfaced, but it so slowly and silently and when it finally fully reappeared it was twisted up with wry incredulity and a little bit of ugly derision. The cigarette burned away forgotten, threatening to ash on the floor.

"What do you think I did before I came to Deus?" he asked finally and very quietly.

He rolled his eyes in a way that would have made a high school sophomore jealous. "I was never in prison," he said. "For ******** sake. It's not that bad. It's not like anyone's locking me in." A pause, and then: "If you hate it down here so much," he said flatly, "I'd offer to trade you, except that I wouldn't, because I don't want you living next door to him." The pronoun was dropped as though they'd already been talking about him.