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And maybe Taym had forgotten he was there; it wouldn't have been unlike him. As tense and wary as he normally was, in an environment he deemed safe--the basement was not entirely safe, but this part of it was--and with a distraction in hand, he uncoiled. He was a stray cat let into the house tentatively stretching in front of the heater and assaying a hesitant purr. Kostya might well have become background at this point.

He was hiding here, because no one who might want to seek him out--Peyton came immediately to mind--was going to look for him here. Even the thought that America might have commentary if she knew he was hiding in Bashmet's room wasn't enough to chase him away. Kostya was as safe as the room was.

He hadn't forgotten, though. His eyes wandered to Kostya over the top of his book, to Kostya's highlighters and notebooks and expression of puzzled concentration that came and went, and he took a drink right out of the bottle of Evan Williams he'd brought and tried not to feel guilty.

Jungle Outpost:

It was too hot for a turtleneck, scarf, and coat, but Kostya wore all of the above anyway. The idea of wearing a short sleeved shirt where all could see was more terrifying than heat stroke. Syntax chirped a disagreement, something about CPU fans needing to stay cool even when they're not over-clocking, and it was all expressed in a series of crude command line entries.

"Much less tiger than there used to be," Kostya mentioned, reading a simpler book. The Little Prince. "But, now, there is also much bee."

Jungle Outpost

He'd noticed the book but he hadn't commented. He remembered April's sometimes-hesitance over speaking to strangers at drive-thru windows and pharmacy counters when he was there to do it for her, his irritated snap that she could do it, the shame on her face when she had to repeat herself or, worse, they had to. Sometimes Taym's demonstrations of faith were a blunt instrument.

He was breaking a twig into pieces and absently chucking it at a gap between two branches, mentally awarding himself points for every success and deducting for every miss. He was well into the negatives.

"They didn't say a damn thing about tigers," he informed him. "Only the usual. You know. Hell-creatures from the unspeakable deeps of the jungles. Vampires. No tigers."

He wanted to see a tiger. At this rate he'd have paid money to see anything, for something to shake up the silence. It was too still and too quiet, but at least it was warm. He wasn't as bundled up as Kostya, but he'd seen no need to shed his coat or scarf, either. He almost never did. Seeing more than a few square inches of Obadiah's skin below the neck was not something Kostya would ever have to worry about.

Jungle Outpost

"I don't know who it was," he said, in truth somewhat grateful. He would have been more so, if he'd known what was going through Kostya's head.

"They told me," he said after a lull, "that I'd die here. I thought they meant sooner. Didn't realize it was just a threat about never leaving." He didn't seem fazed to divulge this, or ashamed. There was no reading his flat tone. He chucked another piece of twig with no more or less malice than he had been. "I need a pile of rocks. Not very aerodynamic."

Jungle Outpost

Kostya mentally began to card through all the past mentions America had made, either in vague, abrupt outbursts, or in more direct mutterings.

"Some," he replied, after an uncomfortably long silence, and Kostya looked about as uncomfortable as the silence had been. He began counting off the references on his fingers. "Being more talk than valk, something about not having magic cancer, complicate-- that one several time, something about you being cute vhen preen, goading," the Russian switched to his other hand. "Has good taste, vord I do not understand, sound similar to pre-variable, lots of eyes to roll, too, she does that very much."

Abruptly, Kostya stopped, eyes narrowing behind his glasses, a pinched look spreading across his face. "Vould ask vhy, but am not vanting to know."

Bluffs

If anyone had been around to see it, even sitting on the cliffside and eating a piece of candy would have been enough to make Taym bristle defensively. But no one was, and he'd long since stopped doubting Kostya.

He imagined it was easy to think up here, in the quiet. He hated being here in a situation where politeness demanded he not drown out his head with a book or his cellphone screen, but he kept the notion to himself and accepted the offering, tearing off a tiny piece at a time and eating with deliberate, cautious slowness. Taym could make a square of chocolate last an hour.

Here as always he asked more questions than he talked, and was silent more than he asked questions: questions about how much Syntax talked, about what Kostya wanted for the basement library (commentary about Dostoevsky, about Asimov), about Otto's food and about Edith and about Moon's work, broken up by the long stretches of quiet. There was sometimes a sense, talking to him, that he was examining the words he'd been given, poring them over and turning them around in his head before tucking them away. He accepted answers without needling, without digging for more information; he remembered Kostya's flash of irritation at being interrogated over his decision to change divisions, and carefully framed every inquiry with an air of casual curiosity, pacing them enough for politeness.

The Bluffs

He was good at making himself innocuous. It was a survival skill that he had not had time to use in any sort of situation outside of how to navigate friendships. Kostya laid his bag next to him, and it was open: full of various things, sectioned off into ziploc bags for easy access and organization. (In fact, each bag was labelled in sharpie with its contents.)

Kostya explained, slowly, often with assistance in finding the right words. He told Obadiah about how Syntax spoke in code and command lines. He hand-wrote the mental image he received whenever the weapon talked, as if Kostya were a terminal and Syntax was the root user. He explained that Syntax Error had a USB slot, and he was looking to get a runic capable USB to mini-USB cable so that he could interface with the phone.

They talked of books, and Kostya quickly learned that Obadiah was far more learned than he was, and more well read. He spoke of food he could tell Obadiah didn't approve of entirely, it was evident in the crease of his brow and the almost-pinch around his lips. He explained Edith and her habits in mixing foods in unconditional ways, and how he had a plan to help reconstruct the town, if only he could get it organized.

It was more than he'd ever really explained to anyone, save for America. They asked in two very different ways, but both of them had a simple curiosity. They wanted to know him, and to Kostya, that would never stop being a strange novelty.