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Sleep had actually worked, for once. He'd gotten a whole three hours, which was nearly unprecedented in recent memory.

So he was up before most people, then, in the thickest dark. A run around the outside of the dorm building, an exhausted walk back wondering if he'd ever been in shape. Shower, shave, smoke. Breakfast--can of peaches, whatever, good enough--smoke again because now he had an extra carton. It was still early, even after all that, and he ambled around the dorm building with his hands in his pockets trying not to think.

Now what.

His first thought was the computer labs, another day with DIANA; tracking down Gale's leads, making himself, as he kept saying, useful. Scrounging around the library under the guise of research. Ambling down to the minipets labs, which he'd thus far managed to avoid.

But after his success with the Death training course he was feeling remarkably competent, and this was not a thing he was accustomed to. He was feeling cocky. Time for another course. It would be educational.

He owed Peyton for waking him up during one of his precious snatched hours of sleep, and although he wouldn't have admitted it to himself for anything, he was clinging to Peyton for dear life because she was the only thing that even approached familiarity, and he needed company more than he wanted to acknowledge. Give him time and people like Gale and Molly would join that mental list.

And what course? He thought about it.

Life division. That was all smarts, yeah? He thought about Peyton, and he thought about himself, and decided that if there was ever a place he could prove himself her superior, it'd be there.

Poor ignorant b*****d. This is why you do your research, Taym. You're in the intelligence division.

He drew up in front of her door, and knocked. Loudly.

Dammit. All fresh-faced. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

"Retaliatory," he explained roughly. "Training, and misery loves company. Put clothes on," he added, turning his face away in disgust.

Taym lived in his new coat, and apparently had exactly two shirts, both of them with that thin, faded, stain-speckled softness of a shirt that had been worn very thoroughly for a very long time. She had now seen them both. He'd rotated back to the first. The screenprint on it was peeling up in several places, but at least it was clean now.

He eyed her socks and snorted, but had no commentary, setting off down the hall with the expectation that she'd follow. No time to brush teeth, no time to shower. Straight to business. Retaliatory, indeed.

"Life course," he said bluntly. "I'm trying to get a look at all of them for--"

He realized Peyton didn't actually know about DIANA. For some reason he could not understand, he did not want to tell her about it.

"--research," he finished. "I finished the Death course the other night like I mentioned on Twitter, and I've had a go at your division's." Better not to describe how that went. "I know where it's at but I've got no idea what goes on there."

He walked in silence for a while before he felt the need to air a thought, irritable and bitchy and rough: "I'm trying to stay busy," he said, defensively, as though he needed to justify himself. And maybe that was why he didn't want to talk about DIANA.

Any other place he'd ever been he'd followed a predictable trajectory: a fiery work-your-fingers-to-the-bone ethic that persisted for about three weeks while he told himself he could just chip and hold down a normal life, and then the siren call of his various vices, and a backwards tumbling back into missed days and angry phone calls and pink slips and long languorous hours that turned into days, devoid of anything but lying around with his brain turned off. Then stage three, which didn't bear thinking about.

He was in stage one, and the realization that there would be no stage two was frightening. What would he do when he realized no one gave a s**t about him proving himself? Not for the first time since arriving he thought wistfully about what he'd do if he had--

"I just... need to stay busy." He walked hunched, with his hands in his pockets. He always walked like he was walking into a strong wind.

He made a noise that was neither assent nor disagreement, and kept his silence while they traversed the grounds to the ballistics testing area. Apparently this was a 24-hour job. There were ominous rumblings.

He led her down below, past the bored-looking Life tech, through the doors, and into the room.

"They certainly have a flare for the theatrical, don't th--" he started drily, taking in the red lasers and the piranhas and the general Bond-villain atmosphere of the place. The words died on his lips when he realized what he was looking at in the middle.

"Son of a b***h," he hissed, raking his hands through his hair. As if on cue, a tremor shuddered through them.

He stood there hovering over the table, staring at the tower morosely, and he announced to the room in general: "There's more to research than steady hands, you know."

Son of a b***h.

He sat down like a man getting strapped into an electric chair, and stretched out his hands to stare at them, willing them not to shake. They weren't. They hadn't done it much at all, since coming to the Island. It was an odd thing.

"This is unfair," he informed her. "You go ******** first."

It was honestly maybe a little bit wrenching to watch Taym, now acutely self-conscious, rest his hands flat on the table for a long few seconds, staring at them like he was willing them to cooperate.

Even more wrenching, the way he gingerly lifted his fingers and treated them like they were some antagonistic alien being than part of his own body, and the visible relief when they didn't betray him and he gently replaced the block on top of the tower.

"They're expecting you to lose," he said conversationally. He pointed at his own forehead. "You've got a dot."

So did he.