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Within two weeks of arriving at Deus Taym had a careful mental map of the hours of most and least traffic in the public showers. The erratic schedule of everyday Hunter life meant that no hour was truly safe, but some were safer than others.

It was just a hair after three AM and he was making his way back to his room, damp hair clinging to his temples, clean shaven--maybe three AM showers were partly why he had a five o'clock shadow by nine AM--and as close to relaxed as he ever got, which was to say not particularly. And even now, here, just post shower, he was bundled up in a jacket layered over long sleeves. If he could have showered fully clothed he would have.

He detoured through the common room, and barely took note of the fact that someone was sleeping on one of the couches, basement refugees remembered as the storm raged on against the walls and windows even if America's tweet had been forgotten, but he saw no need to conduct himself with particular concern for their beauty sleep. He had a midnight sweet tooth, and Taym being Taym felt bent on satisfying it with a diet soda instead of actual solid food, while thoughts of Kostya's dead-eyed disapproval played in the back of his head.

The sound of the can clattering into the dispenser was a comparative thunderclap in the rain-brushed quiet of the common room. He cracked it open and turned to survey the displaced basement nation citizen before he went back to his room, to see if it was anyone he recognized; partly to see if it was the new kid, because the thought of him already being banished to a couch gave him vicious satisfaction.

He remembered who it must be in roughly the same instant that she made it obvious, and his face shut down from idle curiosity to total lack of expression. "Hey," he said.

He watched her warily, like she might decide at any moment to embark on another lecture, and he crossed his arms and leaned his shoulders back against the vending machine: a skinny, pathetic James Dean with a can instead of a cigarette. He would much rather have left, but it felt somehow like backing down from a staring contest. He wasn't sure exactly what he had to prove, but he was going to if it killed him. "Couldn't find a bed to sleep in? Maybe you should add hospitality ratings to your notes."

For answer he drank it, eyeing her over the can before tipping it back to inspect the label.

"I'm from Atlanta," he informed her. "This is sort of blasphemous. But what's not to like?" This was tinged with a note of sarcasm.

Taym slept and woke like a wild animal: when startled out of a deep sleep he woke up quickly or, if he couldn't, he faked it out of raw survival instinct. Drowsy predators were eventually preyed on. America's sleepy slurring and lazy movements were disarming and they were cute, which was almost enough to make him forget that he was busy being pissed at her. Almost.

"Since when do you rely on other people's hospitality? Not really a term I'd use to describe Deus on the whole."

He probably should have apologized for waking her up, but all he felt was a dim and petty satisfaction. If anything, he wanted to childishly say "good" and sulk around for a bit, but she'd sucked any pleasure out of it by refusing to sulk herself. And now she was making coffee and he'd gotten himself stuck in a social situation with someone (he told himself) he was still angry with. At three AM.

There was an easy familiarity to that, though: to sleeping on couches and to waking each other up, to piles of blankets and a packed bag that passed for a home, the odd hours. It was lulling and calming despite his desire for it to be anything but. It made him desperately want to light a cigarette.

If he could not escape with dignity he would at least make himself as peevish as he could, and to this end he crossed the room to shove her things off half the couch so he could collapse bonelessly into a slouch.

(And maybe, if he'd stopped to self-examine, he'd have realized with a thread of shame that he wasn't leaving because he wanted the company; because it was quiet here and safe and he was still stinging from Kostya's recent betrayal and craving a friendly word, even if it was from Kostya's co-conspirator and the source of so much indignity.)

"I thought you were the queen of self-sufficiency. Or president, whatever," he amended, distractedly reaching for what looked like the corner of a book under the edge of a blanket, out of habit and instinctive attraction. "Totally in control of your life and everyone else's too," he added drily.

Of course he did. Even cheap hot chocolate was hot chocolate. But he just lofted his can of soda in rejection, turning the book over in his hand. The feel of the pages, the spare back-cover copy, even the typography: it reminded him of his brief stint in New York where the company had lost the sad, desperate air of desolation of the junkies of Atlanta and Miami and instead had the sad, desperate air of wannabe beatniks: aspiring John Updikes convinced of their own vast self-worth shooting up in the backs of clubs instead of the backs of truck stops, claiming they didn't want recognition but jumping at the chance of a New Yorker commission check.

("What are you doing out here?" people would ask him after they'd talked to him a while, and he had a rote answer, sarcastic: "Researching the next Great American Novel.")

He fanned the pages gently, careful of it. "What's this? Didn't take you for the type." Jones was a common name; he didn't even notice it.

Probably, Taym thought, he could have held his own with any of those delusional assholes. But he'd never really tried. "Aspiring poet" did not dovetail into the image he'd spent so long cultivating.

Which of course did nothing to deter him. He'd opened it more or less at random, and he was skimming the pages.

"How do you know what does or doesn't interest me?"

Whatever she was drinking smelled intoxicating. He willed his empty, clamorous stomach not to growl loud enough for her to hear it and tried to pace his way through his suddenly-lackluster soda.

"Any good?" He indicated the book with a vague motion of his hand and flipped the page. Give him a few minutes and he'd doubtless offer his own opinion on the matter.

He glanced at her sudden stormcloud-face and back to name on the cover of the book, and he thought about asking her: "Someone you know?" But he didn't, partly because the answer now, for all of them, could at best be "someone I knew."

So instead he paged through a couple of poems in silence, awkwardly searching for something to say that didn't betray his sudden curiosity, and he settled on giving her his unsolicited and distracted opinion, brought out in bits between bouts of skimming: "They're not bad. Little bit Galway Kinnell, maybe. Given some of the content--" he indicated vaguely a page of verse about the American highway "--he's done a good job of avoiding the Jim-Morrison-Americana-Drifter-Trap. Maybe a little bit Simic-y if Simic had ever managed to get his nose out of his own a** long enough to realize everyone could see right through his pretentious--" He'd flipped back to the first few pages, to the dedication and to the first poem, and gone suddenly silent.

He leaned forward to put the can down on the floor, folded his long skinny legs up onto the sofa, and didn't finish his sentence, instead hanging over the book with his chin in his hand and actually reading it, instead of skimming over the shapes of the lines and the cadence of the phrases.

It took him a second to look up from what he was reading, having apparently transitioned into genuine interest, and he seemed a little startled to see her there, like he'd been sitting alone when she'd suddenly appeared.

He stared uncomprehendingly at the hot chocolate before he shook himself back to the present, and his bewildered expression was switched for one of deep suspicion. Maybe he would never, now, be able to accept food from America without that look crossing his face. But he took it, after a pause, and he allowed himself an expressionless sip before replacing it on the floor without so much as a thank you, thumbing over another page and cringing at the crackle of the water-damaged pages.

He'd been inclined to politely let her have her privacy, but the offer of the hot chocolate and his inability to read her motives for it made him feel spiteful, so he held the book up again at her. "So why do you have it?"