Welcome to Gaia! ::

If the text hadn't come, he'd have had to invent a reason to get off-island anyway.

America had a thing about holidays. He knew it by now. To that end he'd been making himself busy and scarce, trying to avoid an invitation to sit down (in front of food, no less) somewhere with Kostya or whoever else she might see fit to invite. America kept a guestlist that was mostly composed of people Taym had no desire to interact with, and the potential presence of Peyton (and possibly Noah) and Ever wasn't enough to erase the rest of them.

(Or Kostya himself. It was a realization that made him uneasy. He'd been finding excuses not to interact with him, either, and had been successful to a degree he hadn't anticipated.)

And then the text arrived, and it delivered him from the responsibility, and he had something to be thankful for. Fiona made an offhand comment about preferring the teeth of unknown dangers to a couple of hours in front of a laden table and colleagues, and he ignored her while he rested in front of the portal, composing a text at the last possible second and smoking a cigarette and waiting for his partner to show up, because he'd been early, as he always was.



It kept him from thinking about the rest of it: the abstract he'd been given, that he'd glanced over, that had included the words "transient population" and made him pause, queasy.

He paused, staring at her with a gently baffled expression before he pocketed his phone and reached for her hand.

And another hesitation, then. They didn't have to rush right out, not yet, so instead he said something that at first, maybe, seemed apropos of nothing.

"My dad," he said, "used to have this philosophy that the only weekdays you could miss work were government-mandated Mondays and Christmas. Every year he'd drag himself into the office on Thursday on principle. And Friday, of course, Mom and Ros and Harley wanted to go do that Black Friday bullshit. So we had Thanksgiving on Saturday just about every year." He paused and then, more gently: "Never thought I'd say I was sorry to see you."

He stomped out his cigarette while he looked, dispassionate and expressionless, at the house.

"Apparently," he said finally. "And of course no one noticed til it was--anyway, no one cared enough to do anything for a long time."

Another hesitation, and he fell behind several steps before loping to catch up, and abruptly, unprofessionally, childishly, demanding her hand like this was a walk in the woods and not the two of them attempting to work.

"It's impossible to ********' strategize with no information," he pointed out. "Might as well flip a ******** coin for all the good it does. Maybe we ought to poke around the exterior before we make any decisions." We. "It's a house. It's not going anywhere. Maybe," he added skeptically.

"Squatter's paradise," he said, in the tired tone of expertise. "I bet this place is hopping after the first of the month. Watch your step," he added, a broken bottle in the leaf litter, as though she'd shown up wearing strappy sandals or something.

It was, of all things, the intact windows that finally made him uneasy. Finally, reluctantly, with a final squeeze, he let go of her hand so that they could split up the work of seeing what it was that could be seen, whatever little that was through the filth.

"I wonder if there's anyone in there right now," he said absently as he passed the first impenetrable window for a second, slightly clearer one. "I bet I could get them to talk. Probably not, though. We're superstitious people."

We.

He paused, alert and still as a pointer on the scent, but his patience went unrewarded and after the movement refused to manifest a second time he answered her. "No, you're right," he agreed quietly. "Not sure who or what, though--didn't turn around fast enough to catch it. You having any luck? I'm not sure I wanna go in through the basement even if we find an entrance," he added flatly. "But now we know that something's on the first floor. Or might be."

The hunting dog metaphor held true and Taym abruptly bolted to cut him off, reacting almost before the door had time to close and lifting his voice to call after him.

"Hey! s**t, man, sorry--we need somewhere to crash, would anyone care--"

Unhesitatingly he reached out a hand to help the stranger up, unless he just wanted to lie there miserable, and he glanced back to take in America's face, as if it would be possible to read what she'd seen.

"Sorry if we scared the hell out of you," he said amiably, turning his attention back to the misery heap. "Why's it not a good place? Seemed pretty snug. Empty. You were there," he added, faintly accusing in an unspoken undertone: you need three whole floors to yourself old man?