Welcome to Gaia! ::

He was actually grinning again when he arrived in the cafeteria, plucking an MRE out of one of the stacks by the door. The run-in with Rep had done a lot to sully his associations with the place (which were, to be honest, already pretty shitty) but not enough to destroy his mood entirely. He was whistling.

This wasn't actually so much from any particular thing that had happened recently as it was from a general, vicious sense of purpose born of having been repeatedly treated like a human being in the past several days and having been busy. The conversation with Candace had born fruit, he'd insinuated himself into extra perimeter patrols, he'd found reasons to scrape out minipet cages and help Bix and generally to stay occupied. He was absolutely exhausted, and feeling much better for it.

The whistling stopped when he saw Peyton. He had no way of knowing if she'd gotten his text, and he considered turning around and leaving. But a stubborn need to get her forgiveness--because she was always so willing to do him a favor, mostly--drove him to navigate over to her table and wordlessly drop into the seat across from her, despite all the empty ones. He tore open the MRE wrapper and upended the contents on the table, immediately fishing out the flavorless thing masquerading as a fruit bar.

He attributed it to her being pissed at him, still, and he was irritated that she was pissed and guilty that he was irritated. He'd gotten a hoodie somewhere (pulled out of a dusty supply shed by Bix, actually), some sort of general-issue Deus thing, and it was too big for him but it was cleaner and not falling apart. He really, really needed to shave.

He glanced up at her from examining skeptically the item he was supposed to believe was food, giving it a leery sniff. "Hey," he said back, subdued. And then: "You turned your phone on recently?"

Well, didn't sound like they were fine. He shot her an irritated glance before plucking another brown packet out of the pile, turning it over in his fingers.

He was regretting sitting down, already, but he was committed now. He didn't actually believe that they were fine, and he was going to pressure her into sounding more sincere. He tried idle conversation. In Taym, idle conversation translated directly into bitching.

"It should be illegal to call something like this cheese. Or cheese 'product,'" he corrected, with appropriate scare quotes. "I'd give my ********' eyeteeth for some chèvre and figs. With prosciutto," he added, for good measure. "Or feta and honey on a slice of tomato. You ever had fontina and candied hazelnuts? Jesus Christ. I'll shut up, it's ******** torture."

He was staring at her blankly.

Taym was a mess of internal contradictions, and one of the biggest ones was that he'd spent the past couple of years subsisting on things that ought to have made MREs seem like a luxury, but he'd been raised by a couple of epicures with strong feelings about instilling in their children an appreciation for fine food. With Taym, at least, it had worked. Too well. Such was the narrow window of his privileged upbringing that he found it hard to think that other kids had grown up on chicken and rice.

"None of them?" he demanded. "Not even feta and honey with tomatoes? Surely everyone's--and you know what fontina is." He assumed. "I had it with some candied hazelnuts once at a restaurant when I was--what? I guess I was fifteen, sixteen." That was a long time to remember an almost incidental part of the meal, but Taym was serious about food. "I guess I'm a huge sucker for that earthy-sweet thing--I mean I just mentioned goat cheese and figs in the same sentence--but it was... like eating..." he fumbled, trying to find an analogy. And then, perhaps surprisingly, he kept talking. It was more than he'd ever said in one sitting to her, and he coughed into his shoulder from the strain of having more than a couple of sentences to say, but she'd clearly hit on a topic on which Taym felt expansive.

"It was one of those foods," he decided, in a dreamy, abstracted voice, "that you close your eyes for. Partly so you aren't distracted and partly because--well. Like in France they eat this dish called ortolan. They put their napkins over their heads to hide the sin from God. Mostly because an ortolan is a songbird you torture to death, but I think partly it's because eating anything that good feels... wrong. Hedonistic. Concupiscent, even. Same impulse." Taym got a look on his face talking about food that other men got talking about beautiful women.

Perhaps notably, the look disappeared when he looked at Peyton again.

"What's the best thing you ever ate?" he asked her. He asked it like he fully expected to challenge her on her reply.

Another blank stare, and then he grinned and even more, he laughed. It was a hard little barking cough of a noise and, just like when he grinned, he averted his eyes to do it, organizing the mess he'd made into neat rows and pocketing the matches.

"The thing that tasted the best," he clarified, and the laugh was still hanging around on the edges of the words, threatening to break through again. "Just the most delicious. Doesn't have to be--fancy." He grinned around the word.

The grin faded as she hesitated, and he'd made a neat stack of food he'd never eat, so he needed something to do with his hands. He considered and dismissed, painfully, the idea of a smoke--a dismissal he regretted more profoundly when she finally did answer. He decided the situation was dire enough to eat for the sake of occupation, breaking a corner off the bar and forcing it down.

Taym had never actually stopped to consider why Peyton was here. Not since Molly had asked him why he was here had he considered why anyone was. She'd just dropped what he felt might be a big hint.

He didn't know how to answer. He always found himself in this ******** situation: wanting to make someone feel better, not wanting the responsibility or the baggage. If she'd just dropped it into the conversation--when my mom was still alive--he could have glossed it over like anyone would want, but she'd gotten all quiet, gotten all still.

"I know this place," he said suddenly, "this tiny little crappy dive in Atlanta, that makes the best ******** french onion soup. When the portals are back up--" he hesitated. Crucial choice of wording here. "--maybe you can try it."

With some relief he seized on this change of topic.

"You and me both. I smoked through half my ******** cigarettes when I thought it'd be easy to get more."

Caught out on the careful wording, he debated inwardly. It was Fiona who nudged him. Be kind to her. You owe her kindness.

(Because Fiona didn't know that really, maybe, this was the cruelest thing he could possibly do.)

"Maybe when s**t's working we can go. On me, since I owe you." This did not come naturally to him. Taym asking a woman to go anywhere was typically asking someone he was attracted to to go somewhere private, not asking someone like Peyton--whom he was having trouble registering as female, let alone eligible--to accompany him to a dinner he'd far, far rather have eaten alone. He attempted to conceal the fact that this was not a happy friendly invitation, but a grudging attempt to restore him to her good graces, which he thought he was still out of, no matter what she said. He managed to not sound like he was inviting himself to a funeral.

He was quick to add: "Not on my first leave day, though, I've got a ******** itinerary. Some other time."