Welcome to Gaia! ::

He arrived at H's office, and he knocked, and he let himself in, just like he always did.

He'd almost told America.

The question of what to do with the little tin he'd so carefully hidden away under his sink was growing increasingly pressing. Leaving it there was out of the question. America liked to take refuge in his room while he was gone, and she liked to hide things for him, liked secrets. Imagine her scrounging, equal parts enraged and forlorn and pleased at her own cleverness, and reaching to place some inside joke or sweet little gift for him to find the next time his cleaning binges got him down there under the sink; imagine her fingers closing around the little box, the expression of surprise, confusion, sudden misgiving.

Imagine her opening it.

Taking it with him was an option, but then again he was never sure when he might be subjected to a search, especially here, now, with this mission on the docket. And if he wasn't that left him out there in the world only partially supervised, who knows where, among people and pitfalls and desperate for a moment or two out of his own head.

Fiona was silent and exhausted. He turned the box over in his hands. The only thing between him and sudden discovery was the flimsy bathroom door; he could hear her humming on the other side of it. He'd spent an hour that morning and five minutes just now trying to convince himself to flush the ******** thing, only to find himself unable to follow through. He could put the box into her hands, he could beg her: please don't ask me why I have it, please just get rid of it. Please. I can't.

Instead he put the tin into his pocket, and he left the room quietly, hovering over his phone and reaching for the scarf off the back of his door.

"I'll be right back," he said. "Nothing important, I promise--just need to go clean something up real quick."

And then he left. Because really, the more he played the options over and over, the more he knew that he only had one.

So here he was, at H's office, and he swallowed, unable to quite broach the topic. Not yet.

There was a lull, but it was the fraught lull of someone teetering on the brink of action, and then, abruptly, he reached into his pocket and without a word he put the tin down on the desk.

And for reasons he absolutely did not understand, he waited.

"That must be a ********' hardship," he said tightly, "given that theatrical streak of yours." He looked like he wanted to throw up.

"Oh, I don't know about that," he said, baring his teeth in what could not even charitably be described as an actual grin. "Your ******** melodramatic streak certainly almost got me wasted. ******** you, by the way," he added pleasantly. "And no, there's nothing else, but I suspect you want to get in some clever last word, so by all means feel free, or just smile at me all smug and knowing and think you're being clever by doing that."

As he did almost every time Taym had to resist an overpowering urge to slam H's door behind him.

The anger was a blessing: it overrode everything else until he was halfway back to the dorms when grief slammed into him as forcibly as if he'd just handed over a friend instead of a hit. A hard ache in his throat and a palpable sense of loss and all he wanted to do was turn around and go back and take it back and take it.

Calm-faced, stoic, he fought it down by the time he opened his door, shrugged out of his jacket and his scarf, hung them neatly, and sank down on the edge of his bed, avoiding America's eye. He'd had the rest of the walk to prepare himself for this and wasn't even close to being enough.

"Can I," he said abruptly, quietly, strained, "tell you something that I am not proud of."

Because this, too, was inevitable. He knew it. It would slip out later at some horrible moment if he didn't try to leash it, control it, steer it, to whatever petty ******** extent he was able.

Whatever it was he wasn't ready to say it. He kept making little agitated movements of his hands, opening and closing his mouth, restless prowling tension like maybe he'd be better off pacing the room instead of sitting there taut and wary and miserable trying to find the words for it.

He didn't ask her to promise him she wouldn't be disappointed, disgusted, hate him. He didn't think it was a promise she would make and if she did it wasn't one he wanted her to keep insincerely. The realization that he'd rather have her honesty remain intact even if it meant the worst than have her kindness for him induced two more false starts, this time out of a quiet terror (and these he had, occasionally) of realizing how much he'd come to care about her--not her pride or her approval or her hands but just simply her, as she was: her place in the world, not just his world.

"I went," he said finally, "to H. To give him... to return something. That I'd asked for, after I went to talk to him when I--after I remembered everything. And he gave it to me." He withdrew, pulled his hands into his sweater sleeves and into his lap, incongruously like a lost little boy, afraid that she'd reach for him and afraid that he'd cringe when she did. "And I did ask for it," he said brokenly. "He gave it to me, but I asked. I don't know why I asked." He swallowed hard, a couple of steadying gulps. "I didn't take it, but it doesn't even--I asked him for a hit." And then, dam broken, in a rush: "Another hit. I had one a few months ago, when they were--running tests. When you were gone, on that mission, I was sitting here just--and I lied to you about it."

"No." It was immediate, a little desperate. "I thought it would be, for a long ********' time I thought it would be, but sometimes it's... it comes and goes, I guess. And right now, I don't know. Right now it's in me all the time. I don't know how to make it go away. There's something wrong with me," he said, frustrated and thin and teetering on broken. "And nothing else ever fixes it."

It took him a long, long time to come up with an answer, the I don't know hovering visibly on his mouth, distraught.

"Because I'll remember I need it," he said finally, shaken. "And then I won't--know how to stop. Again." And then, strained and pleading, "If you're going to be pissed or pitying or disappointed or whatever please go ahead and do it."