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He'd arranged a time, which was simple enough given that Lawrence was literally next door and Taym was spending more and more time in front of his desk. Which was where he was now: booted feet propped up on one of the only clear spaces between the meticulously-neat stacks of books, a notebook open across his lap, a pen tap-tap-tapping restlessly against the margin and his door unlocked. Let yourself in, he'd said--because he was in no mood to dispense even small hospitalities to Lawrence, not even getting up to open his door.

The frigid stoicism of Lawr's pale, bony face when he said: I will go to the funeral had unsettled him, but he'd been willing to put it up to a grief-stricken coping mechanism. But somewhere between that and the insistence on the alias, between his ridiculous character-posturing on Twitter and his informing America that Taym had abandoned his daughter--(and what was even his jealousy, his irrational, utterly-unfounded possessiveness over America and his rage at the idea that Lawr, unworthy, had had her, next to the unforgivable sin that had been that statement?)--Taym's irritation at the idea of sixty days in the desert with Lawrence had become active, unsettling dread.

So let yourself in, he'd said, and deposited himself into his chair to wait.

Taym gestured with an elbow at the bed--the only other seat in the place--without otherwise moving.

"Have a seat. Sorry for the lack of chairs. Bit crowded in here as it is."

With its spartan furniture; with its impeccable neatness and white bed linen and scrubbed white walls; with the only personal touch besides the books being the glowing cage on top of the dresser (housing a pair of dozing kitten-shaped creatures which had barely flicked an ear at Lawrence's arrival) and a pair of cheap plastic deer on the windowsill, flanking a perfectly-clean ashtray, the room hardly seemed crowded, even as tiny as it was. Subtract the desk and it was something between a hospital room and a jail cell as seen through the lens of a Swedish interior designer.

Which made Taym, perpetually scruffy, perpetually with his sleeves rolled up to mid-forearm, perpetually bag-eyed and smelling of smoke, look even more out of place than he normally did.

"Got just under a month, Lawrence," he said pleasantly, still without looking up from whatever page he was absently tapping his pen on. "I've cornered all the reading material I could get my hands on but I figured you'd come asking. You didn't. That's fine: got just under a month," he repeated. "But I heard that you've dealt with the Sahara before."

He saw no need in this particular situation to be dishonest: Lawrence would know better, in any case. And there was, besides, a petty, petulant need to say: see, I talk to her.

"Maybe I misunderstood America's comment. She said you claimed to be acquainted with what we'd be up against." He leaned up to put the pen and the book down on the desk, and reached into his pocket. "Do you smoke? Trying to suspend it for a bit since I doubt there's going to be a hell of a lot of 7-Elevens in the Sahara, but no sense wasting what's already here."

He needed to smoke. It wasn't even about the nicotine. He needed to smoke and this was just another item on a long list of why "two months" would be an eternity.

"Well, I'm sure it wouldn't be very constructive, given their aims, if they never strayed out of the desert," he said around his cigarette as he lit it. If he'd picked up on Lawrence's implied judgment, it didn't show. Very possibly he hadn't. Ignored, too, was the little comment about missing things. "Hand me that, please," he added, pointing to the ashtray on the windowsill behind him. "Anyway, I feel like any kind of contact with Famine has bearing. I'm interested. You're smart enough. Surely you gleaned some sort of useful information."

Hook, line, sinker.

It wasn't that Taym trusted Lawrence to tell the truth--he trusted almost no one, and Lawrence certainly not--so much as it was that he had always been more eager to accept an easy falsehood than a difficult truth. Lawrence was a disgusting piece of duplicitous untrustworthy scum, but his stoicism during the debriefing had been a careful mask. He hadn't had any reason to believe otherwise: paternal grief was not the territory of lies.

An easy falsehood.

"Jesus Christ," he said, carefully not looking at him. "I'm ********' sorry." And he was: Lawrence was doling out hollow grief and getting for his pains sincere sympathy, and more than that--and probably more interesting--sincere apprehension. Doubts. Fear.

He had never heard back from Jane. Not a single reply to his insistent texts. Tonight he would send another, more pointed.

"I wish I had some sort of platitude," he said, after a pause, "but I know it wouldn't do any good. Sorry to drag it up. I figured you'd just..." he trailed off.

I came here to protect her, I couldn't fight the monsters I saw

--the monsters Taym had seen, the ones he'd been trying to spare Tuesday from, were almost entirely the ones he saw in the mirror.

"Yeah, I've been--been talking around." He tried to conceive of a situation in which vengeance for Tuesday might have been a concern, but the enormity of the thought and all its implications was too big to hold, and so he set it aside, partly at Fiona's disturbed urging. Focus. "Jesus Christ. I'm trying to treat it like it's just another job, but--" the end to the sentence could have been many things. Finishing any thought right now was difficult, professionalism displaced by his proximity to Lawrence's grief. "We're not out there yet. Don't ******** like it's a weakness. Not 'keeping it together.' I don't know how you're ******** functioning. But I'm sure you don't want me to sit here dwelling on it. We can talk business or you can go, if it's easier. We've got a month to go over s**t."

The line had been crossed. He'd been listening if not looking, obviously following what Lawrence had to say, but at the suggestion that they start divulging personal secrets Taym's face instantly closed down, his body language going rigid. His secrets were no one's but his, if he could help it.

"What, like a ******** safe word?" he suggested, sarcasm creeping in where pity had been.

"I'm not saying it's a bad idea," he shot back, softened and slightly mollified but still obviously very much ill at ease. "I'm just saying there's safer and easier routes than sitting here telling each other our life stories." He paused, wondering how brutal, exactly, he felt like being. He decided not particularly, given what he'd just seen. "You don't wanna hear mine and no offense, but I have no ********' interest in hearing yours."