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He let her. He managed, somehow, not to cringe although he inwardly steeled himself, willed his breathing instead of the sharp suspended inhale, and he let her, for once not picking up her wrists or shepherding her hands, instead wrapping his arms around her and avoiding, somehow, the overpowering urge to kiss her when he pressed his face into her hair. For a breath or two he forgot that this was a goodbye, forgot that she was leaving; any emotional outpouring was unrelated to her impending absence and had everything to do with what he still, still wanted and was for once not trying to take.

"It's just a month," he reminded her quietly, although as he said it he tightened his arms around her. "Four weeks. Four Thursdays. Just a month. Do not make me get emotional over a month or I swear to god I will never forgive you and I will also tell everyone you got all weepy."

I wish I could have made you miss it more. The thought arrived, predictable, bitter, hollow, desperate, full of craving, jealous and petty and shallow: I don't just want to be a thing you miss. I want to be the thing you miss. He was outclassed, outmatched; he had lost and Konstantin Bashmet without even trying had won.

Taym often felt old, but more often than that he felt young, horribly insecure; if someone had hissed grow up at him he'd have recognized it as deserved. He was also a connoisseur of self-denial, of course, of punishments large or small exacted against his own person.

"You remember when you told me," he murmured against her hair, "that you wanted to make a home here, and you thought I was being sarcastic when I said I hoped you did. I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm glad. I'm glad you have a life to miss even when you're only gone a month, for ******** sake, America Jones."

This self-denial, though, felt different, and maybe, Taym thought, this is what it was to be an adult: he did what he felt was kindest, the thing he was best at, and assembling the ugly bricks of half-truths into a larger story, he lied to her.

He held her as long as she'd let him, as long as she could stay, greedy for what of her he'd allow himself he clung to her and buried his face against her neck, unashamed despite how childish it seemed, until she had to go, not just to leave but to get to her real goodbye--the one that would be less wrought with emotion because the thread of that relationship was so much more resilient, so much stronger, so much less wracked with insecurities and restraint.

Another teenage hug interrupted them on the way to the door--he couldn't seem to stay away from her, drunk on his greed but mostly on hers--and then another when she opened it, and he was reluctant to let her fingers slip out of his but he did. It felt like more than a month. It felt like the last flimsy excuse he'd have to indulge his hunger for contact and all the approval it represented. The words I don't want you to go were a lump in his throat that had been there for weeks now, since before he'd known she was leaving. His weakness was this: the thought of her absence was the thought of being invisible again. He had become too reliant.

"Just a month," he reminded her, murmured through a forced grin into the hollow between her jaw and her ear.

And then she was gone and his room was silent and empty. Dry-eyed, hollow, apathetic, he teased Tubadiah through the bars of the cage, watching the treat's worried eyes search for her and then, wounded, gaze at him beneath twitching, anxious eyebrows.

He did not sleep again. He found a book, lit a cigarette, and after a long time--enough time to be sure that she was gone, through the portal, goodbyes all behind her and some indefinite amount of time before she'd have any contact with them again--he reached for his phone.