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an evening

He doesn't ask if it hurts, because it most certainly does. Instead, Kostya offers Taym a glass with amber liquid inside.

an evening

Twice he's entered a state of restless motion; twice he's visibly touched the edge of opening his mouth to ask him to go and beg them to change their minds. It's worse now, with the shock gone, with the threat of his own mortality no longer looming, with his various vital systems making room for aches instead of urgent repairs. When he was fourteen his dad had wrecked the car while Taym was in the passenger seat. Nothing major, just a fender bender, and he'd said that his shoulder hurt.

"Wait til tomorrow," his father had said grimly, and he'd been right.

Twice now he's wanted them to ignore the damn file and do something and twice now Bashmet has manifested like a particularly efficient ghost with a glass in hand, and neither time had he needed to say anything at all.

"I'm sorry," he says finally, and he means it.

Nightmerica man you weren't kidding

He'd woken up almost instantly, clinging to the tail end of drunk, but he'd gone very still. What was waiting at the door was not exactly what one wanted to see immediately on waking, and he ran through the possibilities quickly--nightmare, monster, ghost--before a sense of reality settled in and he sat bolt upright, flinching at the pang this caused.

A couple of seconds passed in silence and for once he was looking her directly in the eyes, searchingly and terrified, as one fear vanished only to be replaced by another, less manageable, more insidious.

"Jesus Christ," he whispered. "What the ******** happened?"

Nightmerica

She knew him by now well enough to recognize the careful dismantling of expression that occurred when he read the page, and then read it again, more slowly. It was accompanied, as it always was, by the slow, subtle tremble of his hand.

If this had been a civilian hospital--if he'd been hooked up to the expected wires instead of relying on the bond to do what those machines would have--maybe she would have been treated to an escalation of beeps, a soundtrack to his obvious rage.

He lifted his eyes back to her face, blank, still searching, and with an effort of will he put the anger aside. It could do him no good here and now, and maybe that was a blessing, because if he'd had the means to go and hurt Lawrence he would have. Fiona, tellingly, was silent and dimly approving, just as she'd been with Rep.

"Kostya said something but I didn't--"

He opted not to finish. He leaned towards her instead, reaching for her with his one good arm (now IV-less despite his instinctive move to knock the tube out of the way, already a habit), and in his cast and his infirmary-issue blue flannel too long for his legs and in his threadbare T-shirt hanging loose off his shoulders in a way that emphasized how sharp the body was underneath it he felt sure he'd never looked less like a likely source of comfort, but he tried anyway. He would always try.

Nightmerica

He didn't: instead he hesitated, brushing her hair behind her ear in a distracted way that suggested, startlingly, that Taym was in fact capable of physical contact that wasn't overwhelming--that was, in fact, nonchalant and unthinking. Normal, in a word. The ease of that one small movement drained out of him as he did something else that she'd by now recognize, and let his eyes slide away from her, to roam back and forth sightlessly while he sorted through some tangle of thoughts.

"That looks incredibly ******** uncomfortable," he whispered, not sure why he was whispering except that whispering felt appropriate. "Here."

The infirmary beds were narrow, but Taym was all skin and bone and he shifted to the side, avoiding looking at her while he made her a space next to him, offered her the crook of his arm.

(If she could sleep in the same bed as Kostya she could sleep, he supposed, in this one, and please don't let her hate me for this, he thought, tense and nervous as he'd ever been, ready for the disgusted look, ready for the wounded feelings, ready for the expression of betrayal because trying to reassure her that he meant nothing by it but an offer of safety and not alone would mean acknowledging that anything else had crossed his mind in the first place, here and now of all the stupid inappropriate times and stupid inappropriate places, and he was not ready for the face that would greet him.)

qtext

America checked her phone a lot the following afternoon, half writing messages, erasing them them midway. Only two would be sent in the end. Konstantin hadn't been wrong about making sure at least one person wasn't incapacitated. She doubted he'd appreciate the current context, but still. He hadn't been wrong. Glancing over at Taym, she saw him on his phone as well.

She switched over to twitter and couldn't help the smile that resulted.

Turnaround Time

(ping to Sunny or whoever)

Showing willing, he set his face and attempted to eat the instant oatmeal put in front of him without betraying how much he wanted to gag over it--more from the act of eating for an audience than from the actual dish, given that instant oatmeal had become a staple. A low-calorie, low-fat, bland staple.

They'd put molasses in it. The urge to gag rose.

"I just want to know," he said calmly, giving away nothing, "whether everything's going to be fully repaired before I'm due to go out. My plans haven't changed. They want me in the Sahara, I'm going to the Sahara."