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For all that Taym was a skilled and experienced liar, his face was capable of betraying a great deal if he was caught too off guard to forestall it. This was now one of those times: a flicker of dismay and irritation before the equally-telling stoicism of a face utterly without expression.

It felt wrong, profoundly wrong, that his reaction to seeing a person he considered a friend was a burning desire to turn on his heel and go back the way he'd come. He tempered it with the reminder that if he'd looked up and greeted him at the lighthouse, at a mission debriefing, on the bluffs, or in short damn near anywhere else, his feelings would have been (despite the perpetual resentment) exactly the opposite. Seeing him any of those places was always (despite the perpetual resentment) a relief. It indicated a couple of hours, at least, that would (despite the perpetual resentment) go easier than they would with a stranger or, worse, someone he'd already decided to loathe.

He was normally working at this hour. It somehow had not occurred to even for a second that the same would not be true of Bashmet or, at least, he mentally amended, that work might be something that could also be done here instead of under the auspices of the Death division.

He had Tubadiah's carrier under one arm, and he hesitated.

"He won't shut the ******** up whining," he explained flatly. "She said it might help."

He barely acknowledged it--a sip to be polite, unthinking--before he'd found a counter to rest it on, visibly uneasy. He felt like a trespasser, and to feel like a trespasser made him angry. The anger solidified the lurking inward self-directed taunt, which made him feel still less at ease and more out of place here, and so on, endlessly, on and on.

He choked back the rising irrational fury, juggling the carrier into his other hand and then onto the ground. Kneeling and opening it gave him an excuse to do something with his hands and his face, an excuse not to sit there sipping the b*****d's ******** lemonade (how domestic! how suburban! how normal!), and excuse not to think about, with desperate gratitude, the fact that he hadn't offered him actual food.

The treat crept out with its tiny nose working overtime, and if the intention had been to let it wander around until its anxiety had abated, it derailed Taym's plans (much to his relief) by instead giving him a solid dose of the pick me up face. Taym told himself it was because it hated Kostya. Maybe it did. The thought was irritatingly devoid of pleasure. He scooped Tubadiah into his arms, cradling him against a chest far less reminiscent of a toast rack these days but still dismayingly insubstantial.

"You know," he pointed out as he shamelessly buried his nose into the fluff around the treat's neck, "this is technically my house." A lame joke; the best he could manage. He realized too late that possibly in addition to lame it was unforgivably insensitive, and he changed the subject without pretending he wasn't. "How's work?" And he indicated the gloves he'd just removed. Not that work, the work he didn't know about. This work. Work with scare quotes, maybe.

When Kostya had brought him the cats--tiny kitten-shaped things, then, with the card from the labs still attached to the carrier--he'd witnessed a little pocket of Taym that he normally kept hidden away, helpless and doting, as ferociously protective as it was gentle-handed, fueled by some secret, endless inner spring. He held the treat the same way. Whereas watery-eyed helplessness was met with disdain from Kostya, in Taym it brought him fairly to his knees--literally in this case--with instinctive fondness.

He settled in more comfortably, unashamedly cuddling Tubadiah, who apparently had no complaints. The last few times he'd gotten out of the box it was for exercise; this was a welcome change of pace for Taym and probably for the treat as well.

"You don't strike me as the mancave type," he observed, sardonic as he affectionately smoothed the treat's feathers. "Going to set up the library there?" This, with a dim note of hope.

"So a mancave," he repeated flatly. "Just a really, really ********' Russian one."

Taym adjusted his armful until Tubadiah was resting on its back like a baby, its wings tucked, its single forepaw drawn up adorably against its fluffy chest. It had a little raincloud on its tummy. Goddammit, Kostya, how are you immune to this?

"Probably more practical than finding somewhere to keep the library," he acknowledged. "Very, very ******** practical." A pause.

It was very difficult for Taym not to give in to bitterness; still more difficult was for him to swallow it and act contrary to it in an effort to be mature, to be polite, to be the closest he could come to a good friend. It was especially difficult here, in this house, with Kostya, but he tried. "You need any help?"

"All joking aside," said Taym after a long pause, "it is your house."

He ignored this, uncomfortable, and thus for a moment it seemed as though the conversation was taking an odd turn, until it leveled once more. "Some ********' friend I'd be," he said quietly, shaking Tubadiah's paw as though it were a baby's hand, "if I told you to get the ******** out of your own," slight emphasis, again, "house so that I could come over and sit in the ******** floor for an hour."

This experiment was proving very difficult. Framing the attempts at maturity with self-loathing helped. Of course it would.