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Now that the power was online and the library had lost its luxury status as an occasional place of air conditioning and indoor lighting, Taym found it much emptier, the sweating Sun trainees and exhausted Moon hunters no longer haunting the stacks and trying to look busy: instead a sparser crowd, mostly Life and Death, mostly absorbed in silence, combing through stacks of records or poring over literature.

This was, of course, how he liked it: he didn't go to the library (or anywhere else) to socialize, he came to work, and if he was being honest with himself, to escape. It wasn't exactly pretending to be busy, in that he was in fact busy, but it was self-assigned, largely invented work, focused on the things he found interesting at that particular moment in time.

Still, even Taym could be swayed if the company piqued his interest enough, and when he glanced up from the tiny, ancient, dog-eared pages cradled open in one hand as he leaned against the stacks, he found his attention arrested by a familiar face.

He deliberated his approach, and then closed the book gently but kept it in his hand, an easy and convenient focus away from anyone's eyes, and he approached a certain Life hunter with purpose, getting his attention in a library-approved quiet voice that was, truth told, not unlike his usual mode of speaking: "Need help finding something?"

Taym obliged him, tipping it towards him, and the title suggested that it was in fact a work of fiction. FEAR being what it was, a certain type of fiction could at times be a valuable resource, or at least relevant to certain types of research. They were also a refreshing break from long dry volumes on--well, on interpreting and drawing runes, for example. Who knew what obscure corner of some neglected antique store or secondhand bookstore the book had been dredged up from? It was obvious at the glance that it had already been in rough shape before it had arrived here.

(Taym, an avid collector of marginalia, was hopelessly drawn to tiny old books that looked as though they had been much-loved. Turn of the century trashy supernatural fiction was no exception.)

"Andersen, right? From the tournament," he added. "Friend of Peyton Creedy's? How are you settling in?" Pleasantries did not come naturally to him, but he could fake it, if he needed to. And he did.

"The shorthand's rough and I don't think it originated with Deus, but they've glossed a lot of the French and I was running on freshman year French, so that's handy--" he answered automatically, taken somewhat aback by the question before realizing that Noah was asking about the book and not the notes in the margin, and correcting himself, looking back up from the volume: "No. It's ********' terrible," he said with a grin. "Lots of exclamation points. And I'm Thompson. Obadiah Thompson," he clarified, putting out an alarmingly skeletal hand of bruised knuckles and nicotine-yellow nails. "Taym, if you've been talking to Peyton."

(Fish, fish.)

The tiniest pang of irritation, of jealousy. Mentioned you, I think.

He opted to lie, leaning back against the shelves with his arms crossed, book conversation discarded.

"She's told me a lot about you," he said. "Said you're a friend of Al's."

"Al's a slimeball," Taym said pleasantly, "but you're obviously doing something right anyway, since she loathes him but seems fond of you. Saw she took you to the--the thing. With the pumpkin." He'd been about to call it sensitivity training until he'd realized how ridiculous it was to refer to it that way. "She must have forgiven you your past transgressions. Or maybe she thought you needed the lesson we were allegedly there to receive."

He paused, and wished he had a cigarette because he always felt much more impressive when he had a cigarette, and got to the point, very suddenly: "She's pretty hot, yeah? I mean, little bit gamine for my tastes--don't tell her I said that--but definitely has a thing going for her, or several."

"Listen," said Taym, taking pity on the poor guy, or at least a strange Taymish brand of pity. "I'm going to cut the bullshit: there's a rumor mill here. It runs, often very inaccurately, day and night. And there's grist about me and Peyton in there, and some of it's true and some of it isn't. The last guy she put eyes on was a certifiable jackass. So: we're friends, at least. Me and Peyton, I mean, not me and you: I don't know you yet. So it's in my interests to keep her segregated from jackasses because I've already roundly filled that role in her life. You don't strike me as a jackass, but your friend sure as hell is, and he really upset her. You know?"

Taym was not an especially intimidating physical presence, but something of the high school bully, the cool kid, the smoking delinquent, still hung around behind the wreck that he was. Some people could see it; others couldn't.

"So here we are: I am aware of what people say about us and I am equally aware that you'd have to be blind not to appreciate what she's got--" even if he didn't, not especially "--and I'm telling you that she likes goldfish and strawberries, if you want any pointers. I'm not saying you do. But if you do."

The unspoken hung in the air: and there are things she doesn't like, and if you are one of them, I will act accordingly.

(An act he'd never have tried with most people but that he was willing to gamble on Noah, shy and quiet and squeaky.)

Nobody had asked him to encourage anything, not least of all Noah, but Peyton was a weight around his neck: a temptation he grew increasingly close to taking, one that he knew beckoned down an awful and very short road. The sooner he could shelve her away with someone who didn't make him want to go break noses--someone he felt was deserving--the better.

Someone like a squeaky little Life trainee ballsy enough to peek at a girl in the shower but not ballsy enough to come up with the plan on his own.

"Yeah," said Taym, abruptly sober, suddenly a little tired. He turned the book over in his hands. "Yeah, she's really nice. Very sweet." And she was, of course.

(Was that enough? Probably not; not for Taym. It was enough, paired with admiring eyes and a voice that always had time for him, to make him think that it was enough for a length of time sufficient to ruin everything before he realized it wasn't, and on some inarticulate instinctive level he was aware of this. It hurt, because she would let him, if he wanted, and he desperately wanted.)

He'd been inclined to linger, but now he was itching to leave, to crawl back into his silence. He thrust out his hand a second time, the once not enough, apparently, or perhaps to suggest that they were sealing some sort of formal deal. "Good to actually talk to you. Let me know if you need anything," he added in a show of generosity that was mostly, in truth, a show of superiority. "And good luck with your--" he glanced at the book "--rune-related work. Interesting," he added distractedly.