Welcome to Gaia! ::

There was only a split-second's pause before the door opened, and when it did Taym was in the half-light in his short sleeves again, and his attention was diverted to his phone, which was making the power-down sound in his hand. He was grinning at it, around a toothpick which was helping distract him from the fact that there wasn't a cigarette there instead.

He'd assumed it'd be Peyton, partially because he'd heard her open her own door moments before and partly because no one else bothered, and so he was talking almost instantly, sounding like he was teetering on laughter: "Everyone on this Island is ******** then he was looking up and the words died in his mouth. The phone went into his pocket, and he was reaching to take her wrist and pull her into his room--a strong instinct to lock her away from potential danger, an instinct to go to ground and hide, rooted in him from years of having no other options. "Jesus Christ. What happened?"

He was on autopilot. Taym needed to be needed. This made him a bad fit at Deus, where he was useless, inept fresh meat even compared to the rest of the useless, inept fresh meat; it had made him a bad fit in most of life because he was frail and lacking in backbone and prone to making bad decisions that left him incapable of taking care of himself, let alone anyone else. He coasted through life on the bitterness of being someone to be taken care of, instead of taking care of someone.

This he could do. In a sick, perverse way, this he took pleasure in. What little he could see in the blinds-dimmed evening light was enough to turn his stomach, but coupled up with the way she spoke it reduced her in his eyes to something like a fragile baby bird, and he acted accordingly.

He led her by the wrist to the edge of the bed, drawing up his chair to sit across from her. "That looks like more than a ******** spar. Who the ******** did it?" He reached out as if to gently touch the edges of the bruises, but withdrew--both to avoid contact and to avoid hurting her, and interrupted before she could answer. "Is that--are you drinking?" he asked, suddenly aware of her full hands and derailed entirely by the unexpected manifestation of liquor. It seemed remarkably out of place.

Evan. He filed the name away for later, not that he'd able to do anything about it. He never could.

At the words "they didn't give me any painkillers" Taym actually physically felt the urge to go and break out the stockpile he no longer had; names on a contact list on a phone he no longer owned scrolled past in his head for about two seconds. The realization that he had no backup was uncomfortable. He was spared from thinking about it too much by her sudden procurement of cigarettes, which he took into his trembling hands mutely. He stared at the box.

After a couple of seconds of baffled silence, he reached out and gingerly, avoiding her hurt side and touching her like she might break--like he was afraid, not of breaking her, but of cutting his hands on the pieces--he pulled her into a hug. It was as much a move to buy time as anything, his eyes open and staring over her head at the wall while he sorted out his thoughts.

This wasn't actually the first time, or even close to the first time, that Taym found himself in this situation. Given his old circles, being in the presence of people on the brink of a breakdown was more or less an every day occurrence.

And Taym hated taking other people's emotional baggage--he never wanted to know what was wrong with them; he didn't want detailed breakdowns or to talk things over. The idea of actually discussing anything like feelings was repugnant to him.

But what wasn't--what was, in a sick way, enjoyable--was being a shoulder to cry on. That felt important. It felt good. Felt solid; felt reassuring. She made that little broken-up sound and his foot was in the door.

Putting the cigarettes down, he got up to sit gently next to her on the bed, pulling her into his shoulder and resting his chin in her hair. He didn't say anything, and felt positive he didn't need to. Which was a relief. His arms, bare, were too thin and too fragile, he'd always felt, to be much of a comfort to anyone, but he offered them anyway, hungry for validation.

While she cried he thought about Rep and Tracey; an abstract, unemotional assessment of what sort of shape he'd have been in if Jordan hadn't intervened. His hands made the expected motions against her hair; his mouth made the expected meaningless noises of comfort.

After he'd left the confrontation with Rep he'd thrown up against the outside wall, and then he'd crawled into his bed and cried like a child and hated himself for it, because he'd realized that he didn't want to die--because Rep was just a human being, just a man, and that was more understandable and more real than any monster ever could be--and had left all his reasons for living stateside. Fiona had been a comforting touch in his head, a hollow, unsatisfying mockery of a mother's hand stroking his hair back and murmuring, and he'd submitted to it despite the self-loathing.

The relief of being the one doing the soothing was knee-weakening: vast and intense and immediate.

When she spoke he gently untangled himself, putting her at arm's length and searching her face, and then, wordlessly, leaning over to pull that worn-out button-down off the back of his chair and using it to wipe her cheeks. He then obligingly and pragmatically did the same for her nose, without a hint of disgust or judgment. He'd done worse for people he knew even less.*

He didn't want to talk about it, though. "Don't sit here and analyze it while you're still this worked up," he suggested, partly out of an effort to avoid it and partly because he genuinely felt that not thinking was the best solution to nearly every problem. He leaned down to pick up the bottle she'd abandoned, examining the label and refraining from asking where she'd gotten it. If he didn't ask she couldn't tell him Rep. Unthinkingly he occupied his free hand with hers, thumb running back and forth across the backs of her fingers.

* I have this major squick about snot and just writing this made me gag. :T

"This is swill. Good decision. Probably best not to waste anything decent on a first-time drinker."

He let go of her hand to open the bottle, and gave her a flat look as he did so. "I remember you saying you've never been drunk. I swear to god if you throw up in my room I will never forgive you." And he was serious, but the corner of his mouth twisted up. The smell was an instant beckoning--it was almost transportive--but he disregarded it to hand her the bottle. "You gonna take a shot right out of the bottle?" It was a dare. She'd do well to be distracted over trying to choke down the stuff, and he'd be entertained by getting to see it. Everyone won.

He grinned at her, a huge s**t-eating wide grin of enormous amusement. Of course he had.

He'd have called anything she'd brought swill. It made him seem cool, and knowledgeable, and worldly. Like smoking did, or so he privately suspected. And like this did, again or so he suspected: he tipped the bottle back without breaking eye contact, and as if to rub in her face her spluttering downed an enormous swallow without so much as batting an eye. He wanted to bat an eye--doing that s**t never actually came easy--but he didn't.

"Lightweight," he accused with another grin. He motioned the bottle at her shoulder. "What's the damage?"