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 Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 5:46 pm
He'd been let go--chased off, really, like the nuisance he was sure he was--some time ago, and he'd split without saying goodbye, because that was his usual habit and habits were a comfort.
The dorm building was a yawning darkness peppered with the will-o-wisp lights of blades and gun barrels and staffs, the silence broken up by occasional shouted orders muffled by the walls and by the occasional sound of sprinting feet, but Taym was without orders and without direction.
It would have taken a tooth-pulling interrogation to get him to admit it, but he'd left his door open for a reason. He was wrapped up in his blankets, propped up on the chair he'd been jolted awake on, his feet on the desk (boots on, ready to go, although the coat hung neatly on the corner of the dresser) and the entire room bathed in the ghost-glow of the fog-diffused light through the window.
He'd heard the portals were down, and so he had made the conscious decision not to pick up a cigarette, although he desperately wanted one. His skinny hands plucked uselessly and nervously at the blankets, anxious for occupation.
He felt helpless. Feeling helpless had brought back another memory, of a time he'd felt still more useless, and maybe that memory had been a comfort to him once but now he'd signed his name on the forms and here he sat in the panicked dark and there was no comfort in that memory any longer.
You left a lot behind, said Fiona gently. Don't be embarrassed.
But Taym felt it was an unmanful thing to cry and the ease with which he was moved to do so was a constant source of shame. So he'd done the next best thing and taught himself to do it silently, to keep a steady voice and a steady face, so that when he was plunged in half-light--as he was now--there was no way to say, from the outside, that he was anything but composed.
The dark of the room was a comfort. If she took the hint of the open door, at the very least she wouldn't catch him out in a moment of intense weakness.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 6:33 pm
When the dust had settled and people had begun to excuse themselves from the posts they had found themselves assigned Peyton had spent a solid five minutes searching the Eastern shore for a certain Death hunter, and had actually started to panic when he was no where to be found. She didn't usually mind his habit of disappearing on her without so much as a goodbye, but there were instances where a little heads up would be nice. Times like now, when there had been crazy s**t happening, and monsters knocking at the door. For all she knew he could have been dragged into the ocean by a thick coil of tentacle, or .. or.. "God damnit, Taym!" Cursing didn't really help, and her voice was a little higher then usual as she left the beach at a jog and headed back to the dorms. Maybe he'd left? Or been dismissed? Enough had been happening, it wasn't completely unlikely that she'd have missed his departure. She really hoped that was the case. < He's a grown man, Halfpint. He can take care of himself..> I know that! But that's not the point.< And what is the point?> She ignored the question, and instead yanked open the door to the dorms with a little more force then was strictly necessary. When Warrick gave an insightful hum she ignored that as well. It was dark inside. The only light coming from the glow of runes on her own weapon or those belonging to people she passed, and the diffused filter of soft grey that floated though the windows. It was eerie, but in an ethereal way that probably would have been pretty in another circumstance, right now the press of darkness all around her just made her feel slightly claustrophobic. When she saw Taym's door open it felt like the floor dropped out from beneath her and she actually slumped against the wall for a moment as relief hit her. When the hell had this sullen, chain smoking b*****d managed to endear himself to her to such a degree that the idea of loosing him was panic inducing? They hadn't know each other that long.. But she hadn't known Gnat or Lucky for that long either before she'd put herself in harms way to keep them safe. She'd been so green back then, but she'd been willing to die to keep them safe. Rolling her lips in, she chewed on the lower one as she moved quietly towards the open door. Open. He never left his door open. "Taym?" She said it before leaned into the frame, pale eyes landing on the bundled up figure half reclined in the chair. She'd make sure he was alright, that was her priority. Then she'd address just how very afraid she'd been at his absence, and maybe he'd understand that a little heads up in a dire situation was just common ******** courtesy.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:10 pm
What betrayed him was that he didn't jump. Taym was always a nerve-jangling wreck--she hadn't known him long but you didn't have to to understand that about him--and he initially barely reacted to her greeting. He'd been expecting her to show up and she hadn't disappointed. Truth told he was double-checking. He was running the mute tests on his voice, pushing air into his throat and making sure he could talk without the words cracking; verifying that his face was a mask. Check and check. He half-turned to glance at her, but didn't stay there. Just returned his eyes to the ceiling and absently, restlessly, crossed his ankles. And perversely, he chose to greet her not with her name, but with a quiet: "Coyote."
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:35 pm
He didn't jump, did that mean he'd been waiting for her? It didn't seem likely, not really.. But the door had been open, and they'd just been through quite the ordeal. She still wasn't sure what to call the monochromatic hell they'd suffered through. 'Dream' didn't even come close to covering it. Quiet followed the question she'd made his name, and she spent it by rubbing the toe of one worn boot against her opposite calf as she glanced back at her then returned his gaze to the ceiling. When he didn't speak it was that name again. Her name, but not her name. It made her frown, and she dropped her gaze to the floor between them reminded again of the memory that'd come flooding back when he'd said it at the coast. She allowed quiet to follow the nickname, not entirely sure what his aim was in bringing it up again, and unsure how to respond. After a moment she finally moved from where she'd lingered at the door, fingers curling against the wooden frame before stretching open wide as she slipped into the room and walked around the chair he was currently occupying. The only other available seating was the bed, so she took a seat on the end of it before lifting her gaze to his face. "Amity." Amity had been cold and dismissive, more so then Taym, but there had been something.. Flickers of memories and echos of feelings with little context had painted a confusing picture in her mind, and that confusion still lingered. She'd never felt awkward around him before. Annoyed, superior, comfortable, needed, but never awkward. "You disappeared on me again," she said flatly, allowing some of the panic fueled anger to leak into her voice. "I thought that monster thing had eaten you."
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:43 pm
"You seemed busy," he said, just as flatly. No apologies. <******** it. He desperately needed to occupy his hands. He reached a thin white arm (bare, for once, because the power being out hid more than the fact that he'd been crying like a child) out of the blanket for his cigarettes on the desk, and he shielded the sudden flare of his lighter with his hand partly out of habit, out of the necessity of years spent in the wind, and partly to keep the light off his face. "You'll get used to me disappearing," he said, watching her sideways through the smoke.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 8:01 pm
"I was busy, but that's not really the point." Pale eyes followed the motion of his hand as it went for the cigs, and she wondered vaguely how many he had left, and what would happen when he ran out and the portals were still down. "I was worried." No, worried didn't quite cover it. She'd panicked, but she wasn't sure letting him know that was a good idea. She'd never noticed that tattoo before. Then again, she couldn't recall having ever seen his arms bare. It was hard to see well in the dark, but it looked sort of tribal. She didn't know why, but she was surprised by it. A frown followed his assurance that she'd get used to his random vanishing acts. "Walking away at the end of a normal day is one thing, but disappearing when shits going down is different." Again her voice carried that thread of anger. It was more emotion then her words alone conveyed, and gave away just how terribly worried she'd been.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 8:12 pm
Silence, while he weighed her tone against her words, against whether he might actually deserve it. It bothered him, because no one ought to care where he went any more, or whether he disappeared. Not on a personal level, anyway, and it's not like he'd been working with her. Part of the relief of the Island was an end to the text messages and voicemails worrying over his whereabouts and all the guilt that they'd brought with them. "You'll get over it," he said drily. "Pretty sure the world just ended, pretty sure some people died, pretty sure we're all ********. You're not mad at me." And there it was. The tremble in his voice, not of tears because he'd mastered that a long time ago, but of trepidation, of fear. He choked it down with an irate drag. "Too much other s**t going on to be mad about."
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 8:29 pm
Pale eyes narrowed at him as he tried to tell her how she was supposed to handle things, and what she was supposed to be mad at. It set her on edge, and she had to grit her teeth to keep from simply blurting emotionally fueled bullshit all over the place. That wouldn't help anything, And then she heard the fear, and it made her blink, features softening just a little. "I am mad at you. s**t hit the fan, and I didn't know what was going on anywhere but on that beach. I still haven't got a ******** clue what's going on, or what's going to happen to us." She swallowed back a lump of fear, and her voice had picked up that same trepidation. "You're my friend. You might be a grumpy a*****e, but you're my grumpy a*****e, damnit." She didn't want to yell at him, she really didn't, but he didn't understand. She bite back anything else she might have said with enough force to make her teeth clack, and very determinedly stared at the floor.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 8:32 pm
He made a dismissive, almost mocking sound in his throat, sweeping his legs off the desk so he could lean forward and grab up the disgusting bottle of smoked-up butts that was serving as his ashtray until he procured something better. "You make friends way too easily," he told her.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 8:41 pm
He could have smacked her and it would have stung less then the words he spat at her so dismissively. She stared at him, and that hurt was very raw and very obvious on her face before she managed to cover it up with the anger that was quick to follow. "You don't know what you're talking about." He didn't have a clue. No one did, because she didn't talk about her past beyond the fact that she moved around a lot, and even then, she hadn't shared that info with many people. It was the past, it was supposed to be over. But she'd had to relive it. "I don't." She countered, fingers curling into the mattress she was sitting on. There was a difference between people you got along with, and people that were actually friends.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 8:57 pm
He thought of Coyote thinking he was... something. Worth her time, at least; worth her emotional investment.
He twisted to face her, to lean forward with his elbows on his knees, and even in the half-light it was obvious that his haggard unshaven face was twisted up in an expression of sarcasm. It threaded its way into his voice too, all too-slow condescension.
"I don't," he said, "know you. More importantly, you don't know me. And you're welcome to be pissed off because I ditched you and you perceive that as disrespect or whatever else, but if you're already framing me in your head as some sort of boon companion I'm going to be generous and let you down now rather than later as pertains to the sort of reliable ********' company I am. Let me repeat: you make friends too easily." Another sharp, irritated inhale, barely enough time to interrupt himself, flare from the cigarette sudden and orange. "I'll give you this warning once, and it's on your head what befalls you if you try and attribute some sort of quixotic character to me despite it."
You want her to do that, said Fiona. You didn't mean a word of that. Sabotage, sir. And maybe Peyton would see the spasm of irritation and anger in his face when he spontaneously turned away, as if he could block out the voice in his own head.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 9:15 pm
He leaned forward, and she actually leaned back and away, lavender eyes going wide and vaguely fearful in regards to the look on his face and what he was about to say. There was nothing promising in that face, nothing reassuring, and she she could feel the lump in her throat forming before he'd even started to speak. < Why do you care about him, Peyton. He obviously doesn't give two s**t about you...> She swallowed and it was audible in the silent stretch that followed the venom kissed reality check he'd just tossed at her. < He doesn't care.> But he'd left the door open, he knew she'd take that bait. < You're a convenience for him. Until he can get off this rock himself he needs you, because he knows you'll go out of your way to be kind.> She kept her eyes very wide, because if she blinked he'd see just how upset she actually was, and after what he'd just told her he didn't deserve to see it. Her fingers tightened against the mattress until thin arms trembled with the effort, and had to fight to keep from taking a swing at him. But he drifted to her. Over and over again, no matter how many times he disappeared on her he always came back. < Because he want's something..> She saw the spasm because she was very determined not to blink, but that didn't mean she understood it. He turned away, and she took that opportunity to swipe the back of her hand against her eyes, erasing any evidence that she'd been on the verge of tears. Peyton didn't cry, she was too proud. And he didn't deserve that satisfaction.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 9:39 pm
Beejoux  ... :T Silence. He finished the cigarette, his hands picking up their shaking once again, and he stuffed the butt into the bottle angrily and unsteadily. He couldn't make himself look at Peyton because he imagined he knew what kind of expression was on her face, and he'd seen it enough-- -- seen Bird, frail and benevolent, slump limply in his hands while he pressed his thumb into the white curve of her throat, pressed as hard as he could, while she looked at him with sad and unafraid eyes-- and Peyton didn't cry but he wanted to, again. He wondered how many more times he'd do this and how many more times it would make him tear up. Fought it down. Killed it. Buried his face in his hands in a gesture of sudden naked exhaustion. "Jesus Christ," he whispered, to no one and about nothing in particular. He'd left a red and blue bruise on her neck and people would think it was where he'd kissed her too hard, sunk his teeth in with animal affection. The last thing he'd ever wanted to do to her."Thank you for worrying about me," he said finally, roughly. Elbows on his knees again, hands dangling uselessly. They always seemed naked without a cigarette in them. "Even though I don't deserve it. You do make friends too easily. I just--everything is..." he didn't finish. The world had just ended, what did she want from him?
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:28 pm
As much as she wanted too she couldn't look away. Couldn't just get up and walk out of the room. It was the wise choice, the one that would, in the long run, save her so much pain and frustration, but she couldn't move. She sat there, wide eyed, fingers molted to the bed, and struggled regain some fragment of control over the betraying vulnerability that was so naked on young features. --Things would get better. They had to get better. She had to believe that. --It was long enough for him to bury his face in his hands. Long enough for that exhausted whisper. Long enough to reel her back in. Wariness dominated her expression as he thanked her, but there was that glimmer, that kernel of hope that said that she wanted to believe him. And because that was what she wanted, that's what would happen. An inch at a time the tension seemed to leak away from her until she was sitting normally again, even leaning ever so slightly forward as the hurt and betrayal gave way to concern and compassion. "I know.." Things would get better. This wasn't the end. "It'll be alright." Warrick had gone quiet in her head, but his disapproval was washing over her in waves. She ignored it, because it wasn't his choice. She didn't touch him, because she knew better, but she bent enough that she could put her face on level with his, and she offered him a small, reassuring smile. "When the senior Hunters start to panic then we know there's something to worry about. Until then, let's just ride it out, okay?" People had died, tragedy had befallen them, but oddly enough people were going along as if what was happening wasn't that unusual. It didn't exactly bode well for the future, but it was strangely comforting for the present.
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Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:47 pm
In another situation he'd have found condescension in that compassion and superiority-driven hostility in that reassurance. He didn't have it in him at the moment, too wrapped up in guilt and fear. He'd signed up convinced he'd die, but he'd expected it to happen suddenly and not after a nerve-fraught period of paranoid waiting, sitting in the unorganized silent dark not sure what was going to happen. He told himself (and believed it) that he could have dealt with anything better than he could deal with the waiting. And being accused of being a hero. Being accused of saving the world. Exactly the thing he'd always wanted to do, and it didn't feel like he'd done it. Felt like someone else had. Where were the accolades? He didn't return her smile, just gave her a searching look. He gathered the blanket around himself again, slumping down on the hard and uncomfortable chair and propping up his feet once more, turning back to the wall so he didn't have to look at her. Fiona's disapproval prowled around on the perimeter of his thoughts. "Just sick of waiting," he said flatly. "Anything's better than the ******** waiting."
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