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"Creedy," he said, in the affectionate, distracted way that normally accompanied his using her last name.

Taym was as catlike on the bare stone and concrete floors of the basement as he was in the grass. It should have been impossible to move like that in a pair of boots but he always did, and he'd sort of magically appeared at her shoulder. Or not too magically--he was moving with a businesslike if somewhat exhausted-seeming stride, and it was past her, with a polite and nervy touch of his fingertips against her shoulder in acknowledgement.

He was in civilian clothes, the messenger bag slung over his shoulder obviously stuffed to bursting and another heavy-looking bag in one hand: Death had been off leave privileges since before Wonderland, and Taym had obviously leapt at the chance to escape for a day. He didn't pause for her--just kept moving in the direction of what was currently his room, which was probably immediately recognizable for the fact that it managed to seem sterile and clean in total contradiction of the fact that it had rusted-out steel bars for a door and a concrete floor. He had apparently refused to relinquish his insistence on white sheets, too.

"Chicago," he said, shooing her plucking fingers irritably away and jabbing a finger at the chair. He'd mimicked the layout of his old room as well as he could down here, and he dumped the contents of the bags onto the bed to start rooting through them, immediately plucking out a nice-looking jacket, tags still attached, and giving it a once-over to see how it had held up from being shoved into a plastic bag for the purposes of transport.

There were, in fact, books--some new ones but mostly older, clearly picked up at a used bookstore. And a laptop box, and a frankly-alarming quantity of liquor unless Taym was planning on setting up a rival to the Red Bull. He had spent a lot of money. It still made his stomach hurt to think about it.

"We are not grounded any more. Maybe someone flushed out a turncoat for Caelius," he added bitterly. If only he knew. "Whatever. I'll take it. What do you need?" Apparently the idea that she might just be coming to see him did not occur to him.

"Yes, I got a laptop," he said, ignoring the last part. "Yes, you can borrow it sometimes. No, it isn't runic'd yet. No, there aren't any movies on it yet. No, I don't know how much they're going to charge me. Yes, they'll probably gouge me. I have the money," he finished, sounding more troubled by that than smug. "I have so much ******** money," he added, and, again, there was more despair in it than anything.

He examined the back cover of one of the books he'd brought back before tossing it to one side as she spoke, and then started sorting all of them into two neat piles, setting A Canticle for Leibowitz aside.

"Bang him," he suggested distractedly and without even the faintest breath of a pause.

"Happy Birthday to Noah," he said drily. And then, abruptly changing the subject: "Also, yes, thank you. About the laptop. I'd appreciate that." Even though he apparently had so much money that it gave him a complex every time he considered his bank balance. "Maybe you should look into something like that, too. Some way for you two to--watch movies together, or whatever it is that you do," he said vaguely. Clearly Taym had never considered curling up on a couch or in bed and watching a movie together an appealing component of a relationship.

"I think Rep stocks up on leave," he supplied. "Always an option."

He paused in the task of neatly stacking his cigarettes into the empty drawer of the dresser, and looked back over his shoulder at her, voice carefully neutral. "How's that going, by the way? Pretty good, I'm assuming, if--" the tone became gently mocking, a little bit cruel, a little bit fond "--that was an option."

A little ember of rage flared up, the little suggestion that would never go away that said: do it, take her from him, she'd go to you if you did it right. He didn't even want her, he reminded himself; he just remembered that she used to look at him in a way that made Fiona restless and uneasy and unhappy, a way that he'd ignored at the time, dismissed as unlikely.

And there was, besides, the bitterness that wasn't about Peyton at all but was about the reliability of it, of being in a position to need to second-guess, to be nervous, being in a position to get better about it slowly, the thought of what did Noah to do deserve it that I don't?

Not for the first time he silently hated himself for every time that he'd indulged America. For the fact that he would keep doing it. For the fact that the next bag he upended was full of red-white-and-blue fripperies, a sappy silent nod to a shared moment. He glanced, again, at Peyton, and chose to hate Noah instead of himself, for a while, no matter how irrational it was.

"Good," he said, his voice neutral. "He seems like a good kid. You managed to pry him out of Al's ******** clutches, then? He can do better friends than that."