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He wasn't acting that much different, but maybe those secretive smiles were Taym being drunk. Then again, maybe they were because he felt sorry enough for her not to be a cranky douchebag.

He watched her sideways for a long couple of seconds, then reached out to get another cigarette, with a sort of "well, ******** it" wastefulness that he tried to tell himself he wouldn't regret later. Drinking without a smoke felt profoundly wrong and unsatisfying. Watching him fumble with the matches in the throes of another tremor was pathetic; he knew this, and was glad that it was at least short-lived.

Resettling, head tipped back and eyes closed, he tried to make it obvious that he was enjoying a momentary silence, the preternatural stillness of the powered-down Deus facilities wrapping them up in quiet. Already what little light made it through the blinds had dimmed to grey, his arms white ghost-shapes in the dark.

"If you need to crash somewhere," he said suddenly, without opening his eyes, "feel free. I know how it is," he added grimly, without clarifying what he knew or how. And that could probably have been taken the wrong way, except that he immediately continued, oblivious: "I never sleep in my bed anyway. Fiona doesn't appreciate being used as a flashlight, so I'm sure she'd appreciate having an excuse to tell me not to stay up til the wee smalls huddled over a ********' book."

He put an arm over the back of the chair and watched her distractedly through the haze he was generating, the poorly-ventilated, tiny room not being the best choice ever for smoking in.

"I'll take it that's a yes," he said drily. "I obviously haven't been able to do laundry, so sorry about the ******** stink. Like I said, I almost never sleep in the bed, so maybe it's not too bad." He gestured meaninglessly, the cherry of his cigarette a firefly in the gathering dark. "You ever use Warrick as a flashlight?"

"Fiona says he ought to be more stringent about his standards of employment." A sudden laugh bubbled up on the last word, startled out of him. "She also said I needed to tell you I made that up. Fine."

Apparently some strides had been made to closing up the obvious gap that had existed between them during his first conversation with Peyton although, truth told, they were still standoffish, still aloof and far from friendly. He rarely heard anything from her--could forget about her for several hours at a time, actually--besides vague stirrings of disapproval. What communication they had was decidedly more often emotional than verbal, and so detached was Fionnghal from her wielder that he didn't even know, yet, that the possibility of communication on the level of images was possible.

"Give me another drink," he said, making a demanding, beckoning motion of his fingers, barely visible. "You're holding your liquor disappointingly well."

The giggle made him grin, and even if she couldn't see it she could probably recognize that habitual duck of his head when he did.

She was right about the whiskey--he took it and settled back, crossing his ankles, like he had no intention of returning it. With his smoking-hand dangling off the back of his chair he took an absent swig.

"You didn't bring any water. You're gonna be hungover as hell," he informed her, after a long pause. "I'm just repeating my warning about throwing up in my room." And it wasn't exactly that he was slurring his words, but a certain lazy slowness had descended on the way he talked, a certain expansiveness in the movement of his hands, that had been creeping up for several minutes now. "I could go get you a drink," he offered, a distracted afterthought.

"Tough s**t," he said drily. "Maybe you'll get lucky and be one of those people that don't get them, but you're probably ********. You'll live." He hauled himself to his feet, and he was, again, not unsteady but moving very deliberately.

"I need to take a piss anyway. You'll need to do that too at some point. Probably repeatedly," he added with a grin that she'd be able to hear even if she couldn't see it. He was shrugging into his white coat, even just for this short trip, but he was, at least, not obnoxiously popping his collar. "Don't fall asleep, I'll be back in ten. Provided I'm not mauled by a werewolf or something."

He was as good as his word, returning with a couple bottles of lukewarm water after a leisurely if somewhat nervous amble to the cafeteria. It was startling to realize how early in the evening it still was; it had felt so late. He'd expected to step out into the quasi-deserted dark of the Island after dinnertime, interrupted only by the flicker of graveyard-shift patrols, and instead had found himself not the only person in the hallways, an oddly reassuring turn of events.

He closed the door behind him and said, as he perched gently on the edge of the bed to hand over a bottle after opening it for her: "At least you're not so drunk you're gonna piss the bed." This was delivered in a neutral tone. Maybe Taym didn't actually think pissing the bed was particularly noteworthy.

"Don't knock it til you've tried it," he said wryly, adding: "But not in my room, thanks. I'm cutting you off." Absently, unthinkingly, he reached to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. A hollow movement of reassurance. If he'd realized everything she was thinking he'd never have done it, but he was thinking of Bird and all the other strange and broken girls that he'd ever felt the need to shelter, poorly. It was the way he would have touched Bird, oblivious, or his sister, or an old woman crying silently beneath the overpass. "You're gonna be fine," he said suddenly, quietly. Whether he meant the hangover or her arm or something bigger still was impossible to say.

He said nothing but pulled her into another hug, hand smoothing over her non-injured shoulderblade, and then he was disentangling himself, pulling away, just like he always did. He bent to pick up one of the books stacked beside the bed and flopped into his chair, feet propped up on the desk, with a gracelessness that suggested he was more buzzed than he was acting, although that didn't stop him from picking up what was left of the whiskey, too, and putting away a hefty mouthful. He evidently planned on finishing it off.

"Go to sleep," he said, and Fiona was in his hand, runes the color of sunlight casting a pale circle over the page and up onto the sharp hollows of his face. The point of the blade rested on his knee, and he glanced up. "If it bothers you let me know."

He read until the words started swimming and when he glanced up and realized Peyton had fallen asleep he leaned back, Fiona disappearing, and he lit another cigarette--that was three, and he promised himself it would be the last time he ran through three in one evening until the portals were back--and smoked in the dark and slowly finished off the last of the bottle.

Drunkenness was low-level misery, which had never stopped him from seeking it out anyway. It kept him from thinking straight, a boon enough to balance the ills, and he was grateful for it, especially now, in the troubling silence and the uncertainty of whether any of them would survive another day. Everything had seemed balanced on a knife-edge, and somehow Peyton showing up with her arm damn near off--and at the hands of one of their own, no less--had seemed portentous. An ill omen.

When his eyes adjusted to the dark he stared blankly at the shape of her body in his bed and he absently contemplated the sort of base questions he always did when presented with a woman. There was a certain cold analysis, a comparative weighing-up against real women and imaginary ideals; he let his mind wander guilt-free and reined it back in, finding the images it tossed up unsatisfying. This was, in its own way, a profound relief. There were women here--he'd met several--that he would have made slow slinking grins at on the Outside. Peyton wasn't one of them. Fionnghal gave him his space, pragmatic enough not to judge a man for doing what came naturally; forgiving enough to know that there was no intention, only idle curiosity and old, old habit.

It was good to have just a friend. It was a relief to have a safe place to lay what little trust he had; a boon to have a person willing to do him favors. It was better still to have someone to occasionally take care of. She looked pleasantly fragile in the darkness--like her tiny ankles could snap between his thumb and his finger--and even though he knew that to be a lie, he let himself enjoy it.

What sleep came lasted only in brief, torturous bursts; fitful hours spaced by long nodding silences. He was up before the sun, cotton-mouthed and head aching and nauseated, stripping off his shirt in the grey light to replace it with one of Bix's cast-offs, moving quietly and carefully to avoid disturbing her. The half-drunk second bottle of water he left on the corner of the desk closest to the bed, and then he was gone, leaving her to wake up to an empty room and silence.