Welcome to Gaia! ::

Bashmet's name was on the roster list, and Taym hadn't even had it in him to welcome him back, although he'd wanted to and felt guilty for not acting on the desire.

He wasn't sure if Bashmet had seen to it that they ended up sharing a roster--it was a thing they not-infrequently did, finding one another's company preferable to most (a shared work ethic, a shared interest in doing things thoroughly and efficiently, a shared comfort level for small talk that wasn't too much nor too oppressive a silence, and Taym had long since learned to interpret Kostya's more esoteric flights into broken English and Kostya would never look at his hands and in some dumbass snot-nosed trainee voice say: hey, man, what's up with your hands?) or if the techs arranging the lists had simply come to anticipate it, and accommodate it.

So he'd showed up early, earlier than Bashmet would think was efficient, so that he could be busy when he got there because he somehow thought, vaguely, that it would make things easier.

(He experienced a fleeting moment of regret that the bond made bruises fade so fast, the marks of America's hands and teeth already effaced, and it was fleeting because of the drained, disgusted, infuriating thought that Bashmet would not care, and because both thoughts were chased with guilt.)

He was deeply involved in the task of scrubbing something horrible out of the bottom of an experimental tank when he heard the door open; heard the distinctive click of steel-toed boots and said, without looking up from his work: "Welcome back."

He startled, looking up, and then spent a few seconds trying to determine whether Kostya was addressing him or the gremlin. Both options seemed equally unlikely, with that tone.

It was easier and less disgusting to assume that he was addressing the minipet although somewhat more alarming, and so he went with that option, giving him a sideways glance as the scrubbing resumed. Taym always cleaned like the object of his attention had personally offended him. He could make slopping out a floor into an act of violence. Maybe this was why his room was always so clean.

"How was Antarctica?" His tone was unimpeachably neutral.

He watched him out of the corner of his eye, weighing the strangeness of his behavior, the odd cheer, the uncharacteristic affection and he wondered, briefly and dully, if he'd gotten laid. Would be just Taym's luck, really.

"Must be nice," he said, trying to keep the selfish, petty jealousy out of his voice: jealousy over America, jealousy that he seemed so unconcerned, jealousy that he'd been given a heap of paperwork to do while Taym had been going through--whatever it was that he'd gone through. He was worse at concealing it than Kostya was at concealing the truth of what he'd done. "Maybe you're Deus's... what's it called? The State of the Union guy?" He remembered, too late, that he was speaking to a Russian. "Designated Survivor," he finished bitterly.

He'd been about to cling to the comfort of a banal, distracting explanation of what exactly a Designated Survivor was, only to be blindsided instead by the question.

The vicious scrubbing slowed, and then stopped as he sprayed out the last of the slurry of soap and worse things. The slop that ran out of the corner of the tank was black.

"I don't remember," he lied, aching for a badly-drawn idol with an altar-lamb slash across its neck, for the the hands reaching, for his name a prayer, and despite himself--despite the stomach-turning loathing of it--for the sobbing of a mother, half-grateful, half-heartbroken, who had lost one child to save another. "It's like--I don't know. I don't remember."

Maybe they rocked back and forth, too: it was a habit he'd only had in altered states before Deus, but one that he'd picked back up underground and one that he'd found himself on four separate occasions slipping back into since returning from the Sahara. The fourth had been in the basement, before he'd remembered that he no longer had a door, and he lived in fear now of catching himself at it after someone had passed by and seen him.

Several minutes passed in silence that a few weeks ago would have been companionable and comfortable enough, while Kostya fed a row of tanks and Taym scrubbed out another, and then, very suddenly, he said: "She's a ******** mess without you."

His tone was unmoved, just as flat and blank as when he'd asked him how the mission had gone. "I ******** hate you for it."

He cherished a fleeting mental image of breaking Konstantin Bashmet's nose against the side of a minipet tank, and then let it go as he mechanically shifted over to the next row.

"That's an easy thing to say," he answered quietly, "for the one who's getting the lion's share of it." He smoothed down the corner of an errant label, frowned distractedly when it failed to stick and smoothed it down again, and his voice was still curiously empty of anger when he continued. It had room for nothing but exhaustion. "I could make her happy, so ******** your ******** spreadsheets and analysis. If someone asked you how the human heart functions your answer would have 'ventricles' in it somewhere."

"Happier, then," he said, but there wasn't any energy behind it because it had pushed the little button in Taym's head labeled feels suspiciously like an uncomfortable truth, abort all further examination.

He didn't dignify the rest of it with an answer, irritated as he always was by Kostya's callous dismissal of his feelings, by the rough way he handled other people's emotions that weren't America's. It hurt every time, and every time reminded him that while he considered Kostya a friend he would never consider him a best friend. Kostya was a friend because the unflappable absence of any passion in him was perfectly matched to Taym's inability to feel anything in moderation: he was a comfortable calmness, a natural foil, all the laser focus and aloof detachment that Taym wished he was capable of. He was not a person with whom Taym could in any way approach the tangled, tail-chasing, exhausting chaos of himself, not unless he wanted a brusque dismissal that never failed to make Taym feel childish and stupid and hurt, made him want to crawl away into some pair of waiting sympathetic arms and lick his wounds.

I'm so ******** tired, he thought, his mantra for days, a huge thought big enough to cast a constant shadow but not big enough to squash all the other ones. He toyed, absently, with the idea that maybe if he harnessed it, if he found some way to stay awake, maybe it could displace the violent, willful hunger he'd given up--

"I have a list," he said after a long, unfeeling pause, "of some books I'd like you to grab for me the next time you leave, if you don't mind. Asking you so you can just put them directly into the library."