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If he was being honest with himself it was a relief to see a name on the roster next to his that wasn't "Bashmet, K." The fact that it was instead "Graves, O." managed nonetheless to be accompanied by mixed feelings, not least of which was the fact that he wasn't sure if Otto would be willing to turn Bashmet's blind eye to the fact that he liked to smoke on duty.

He'd wanted to talk to him more about his former division; wanted to inspect in more detail the motives besides "flee Caelius" that had prompted it. He'd wanted to consider prodding the open wound that was Maebe's existence, but after a few more Twitter exchanges was beginning to suspect this would be unwise. And more than that, he'd long forgotten the art of carrying on a casual conversation with a stranger, inevitably finding himself awkward, fumbling, hateful. Lighthouse duty nearly always implied someone attempting to strike up a conversation no matter how hard he pointedly shoved his nose in a book between rote searches of leave-returning belongings, between the expected clipboard loggings (nothing unusual, nothing unusual, nothing unusual, all the boxes checked), and the fact that he'd met and spoken to Graves suggested that this would be no different.

He had brought a book. He left it in his bag, and he fell back on one of his usual comfort mechanisms: showing up ridiculously early, which lent him a hollow, meaningless feeling of control and besides this saved him from the spotlight-feeling necessity of having to walk across a room while someone watched. Fiona made a frustrated, subvocal response to the worry, but it was half-hearted: she liked that he showed up early, liked that he stayed late.

When Otto showed up Taym would be comfortably ensconced in the uncomfortable chairs, distractedly attempting to fold a paper crane out of squared-off sheet of notebook paper. His hands were shaking violently: he was not having the most success.

He shot him a look, and thought about returning the question with has your voice broken yet or how many times have you jerked it in the past week or something similarly insulting and to Taym's mind personal (food being, as it was, so tangled up in strange and complicated problems that a casual "have you eaten," especially accompanied by a comment about his hands, felt like a horrible invasion of privacy).

"Yes," he said bluntly instead, in a tone that suggested that no further details would be forthcoming. He resumed attempting a particularly tricksome fold with a jaw-set determination. It had been an idle passing of time before. Now it would be a ******** point to make and he'd throw it at Otto when he was done, maybe. "Didn't know they made full hunters do this kind of b***h work," he added, "unless you're in Life."

He watched Otto from under his eyebrows, scanning him, eyeing said shoulder, refraining from scowling at his blaring headphones because it was a little too "old man" even for him.

"What happened to your shoulder?" he asked finally, fighting a tremor long enough to crease a wing. "Get ******** up on that last mission?" As they all had, of course--Taym had come back generally aching, the paper-thin skin of his back over his ribcage one solid, striated black-and-purple bruise that made any movement hell, but he'd been lucky enough to escape any lasting damage.

He resisted the urge to touch his fingertips to the ugly scar burned into his throat, or to the spot on his hip where under his clothes a coiled shape rested.

After a lull during which he managed to finish fashioning an inexpert paper crane, his chewed-on, yellow fingernails sharpening the creases, he said suddenly: "How's Sun treating you? Speaking of scars, I mean."

"Gone soft?" he echoed, skeptically. "Didn't think Sun was the division for that."

The analogy made him grin, a sudden flash of yellow teeth, as he attempted to square off a second sheet of notebook paper without a pair of scissors.

"Maybe I haven't been here long enough to say accurately, but between you and me I don't think I'm ever going to let Caelius be the arbiter of my success. You coulda gallumphed back from the Tower with Medea's head in one hand and a freshly-reincarnated Excalibur clad in a Deus coat holding onto the other and Caelius would have done that thing--" and here Taym does a startlingly accurate impression of Caelius's narrowed-eyes, disgusted, post-mission assessment face "--and asked you--" the voice was good too, uncanny really "--what the <********> do you think you are doing? Waiting for a <******** head pat?"

He snorted, gingerly tearing along a crease. "Smarter to figure out what success is to you, because it's imaginary, to him."

"Pretty comfortably, I bet," he answered cynically.

He fell silent for a minute, watching Otto from under his eyebrows again, consideringly, appraisingly. "Did he really make you do that? The personal assistant s**t, I mean."

A hard sixteen hour shift sounded like absolute bliss to Taym. He could probably sleep after that. It was the Caelius side of the equation that made the situation sound distinctly unpleasant--not the menial labor. When he and Peyton had failed the "supply run" mission (as they'd insisted on calling it) they'd handed him an extra toilet-scrubbing roster and it had felt like Christmas coming early.

"So what do you now? In Sun, I mean? Not sixteen hour shifts making coffee, I assume."