Welcome to Gaia! ::

It's not exactly that he was a fixture--he's far too new for that and far too quiet, anyway--but it didn't take long for Taym to become, at least, familiar, especially to someone like Borr.

When he'd first rolled in it had been in a shirt so faded its I GAVE BLOOD logo was almost imperceptible, and it must be said that he looked more like he needed a transfusion than qualified for a donation, as there was a whiff of unhealthiness hanging off his papery, spidery body. He'd been sun-dark and freckled and remarkably soft-spoken and sporting a three-week beard and a smattering of tattoos obscured by road dust and smelling--well, charitably, not the best, but also like baby wipes, so perhaps an effort had been made--with a backpack that was held together with duct tape and hope, accompanied by a mutt-looking spaniel that had ignored the excited dog noises within and taken up station by the door like she'd spent a thousand evenings sleeping there.

He'd loved the dogs. He was a quiet, frail-little thing, but he lit up whenever either Dummy or Knucklehead favored him with attention, and he called them by their names in that murmured nasal voice that didn't match his face at all--a face that suggested gravel and snap that didn't come save in a smoker's cough and, if an evening wore deep enough, in an irritated crack at being interrupted by anyone who wasn't behind the bar.

By the third trip he was clean-shaven and showing up in an oversized shop shirt with PEDRO embroidered on the pocket, spattered with grease and smelling like Gojo and cigarettes, and it was also by the third trip that a routine had been established: sit at the very end of the bar, if it was open, ask for the cheapest s**t they had on tap, open a book and bury himself in it, and drink like a fish for an hour or two. Pay cash, small bills. Lavish a goodbye on the dogs, and then sail silently back into the night.

He showed up tonight, sat at the end of the bar, asked for the cheapest s**t they had on tap, opened a book--

--placed it facedown on the bar next to his elbow, pulled out his phone and went through the obvious motions of a man composing an extremely delicate text and rethinking it several times, before abandoning this task for the book again, leaving his phone face up.

He did not, this time, glance nervously at Borr, and he was proud of himself for this, because--quite frankly--Borr scared the hell out of him, as loud, masculine, large men often did.

There was a distinct sense of hackles raised, even if Taym lacked actual hackles to raise, and despite his--well, everything--there was always that underlying feral sense to him that suggested he'd be happy to at least finish a fight, even if he didn't start one. He looked like the kinda guy that went for the eyes.

"Most places'd just go for a punchcard program," he pointed out flatly. "Too commercial?"

The impression left a trace of discomfort despite Taym's immediate and sincere snort of approval, because the only thing saving him from matching it--and he knew it--was the saving grace of the shop shirt, and the fact that his beanie was more the practical kind than the fashion statement kind.

Nonetheless, the answer didn't help.

"Ah... Anna Akhmatova," he said, quietly enough to avoid Statler and Waldorf over there. "Russian poetry. Not really--feeling this translation," he added, out of the stupid need to say something. "I should probably get around to finding the library out here. Or a decent bookstore, if you guys have one."

He did not think that Borr looked like someone who knew where to find a decent bookstore, but then again, neither did Taym.

"The good ones," he felt compelled to add, "always have a cat in the window." This was, in his experience, true. "Generally speaking any place that keeps an animal around is better than one that doesn't."

This was almost flattery, but was also true.

For a second it seemed like maybe Borr's newest regular was going to shut down there, but after a moment he spoke up again, absently pushing his phone across the bar with the tip of his finger.

"There's always someone in little towns who knows everyone and everywhere. Like a--" --he tried to think of a good word, remembered where he was, and corrected himself "--a hub. I figured Ashdown was just a little bit too big for that, but I guess I was wrong." And then, same flat tone that suggested a barely-contained sarcasm: "There's nothing actually wrong with a coffee shop in a bookstore."

Oh, a nerve had been hit.

"Ahh, the fabled integrity of law enforcement," he deadpanned. "Imagine that."

Which was a lot of high talk for someone who'd directly benefited from a lack of integrity in law enforcement, but a little hypocrisy was never going to stand between Taym and shitting on things he didn't like, and it certainly didn't here.

"What kind of a thing are you getting breaks from? Or can I ask without getting my knees broken?" The faintest breath of a pause. "Since I had the impression this was a stand-up joint."

This was a pun. A very quiet pun.

Taym, solidly of the opinion that "police" and "good guy" did not belong in the same sentence, politely let that observation slip by uncommented. He also made a mental note about the underage serving girls and then promptly made himself forget about it, for two reasons: a) the only job-seeking eighteen-year-old he knew around here would probably jump at it from what little he knew and, also from what little he knew, probably shouldn't be risking her neck, and b) the other reason he might want to know that the servers were under 21 was irrelevant due to his involvement with the aforementioned eighteen-year-old.

"Thankfully no," he said, too distracted by the train of thought to keep the grim little statement from tumbling out. He sounded like he meant it, too: the gratitude for being ignorant. "Although I'm staying at that dump on the corner ********, I can never remember--across from that dodgy gas station with the all-night chicken counter--and it sounds like whoever is in the room next to me has got the ********' market cornered on something--got those desperate late-night door-hammerers," he finished, again somewhat grimly. He'd desperately late-night door-hammered more than once himself. It was the frenetic pace of the custom and the general preponderance of rotten teeth and picked-at skin that suggested someone else's poison that were keeping him where he was--all the wrong kinds of danger sign to be a danger to someone like him.

He had not said this much to anyone--discounting text messages--besides Tim, not since he'd arrived. Maybe not even Tim. But he was--he had realized--growing a distressing propensity for desperately clutching at little strands of humanity and socialization. Look at me, I'm a person. It just usually didn't work, and now it was, and he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself, besides accidentally volunteer information for the sake of some kind of human interaction.

He felt, to his incredible shame, gratitude for Borr's attention. For anyone's. For the fact that he hadn't run him out when he'd showed up like he had. For having dogs around. Even if the guy did have ******** up views about the police force--well, no one was perfect.

He felt charitably inclined, and he felt--more wretched desperate misery--like he wanted some sort of approval.

"What've you got on tap besides horse piss for cheapskates, anyway?"

No one would have guessed it from looking at him, both from superficial appearance and because he was as thin as a praying mantis, but Taym had a decidedly refined palate. For food, anyway. The problem was that it all went out the window when it came to alcohol, which to Taym was about the same as a cigarette, or something worse: purely functional. A way to get from point A (sober) to point B (varying degrees of not sober). So while he might have had Opinions about the rest of the menu, he had exactly none for the drinks, and didn't want to offend the old man by saying so, especially with when my wife passed hanging uncomfortably in the air. He hadn't thought of April in a few days; he did, now.

"Get me one of whatever you'd get yourself," he said eventually, a safe bet for nearly anything. And then: "I'm pretty sure hipsters--" and Taym's toss of the head was both more convincing and, somehow, eerily accurately an impression of Borr's impression "--have moved on from coffee shops to craft beer. You're really getting the demographic nailed down."

He was a little too aware that most of the reason he'd aced that impression was because he looked the part, and thus refrained from saying any of the many things that crossed his mind to say in that moment, opting for a non-committal noise of refusal.

(Then again, looking the part was more comfortable than the part he'd looked when he'd rolled into town. Small comforts.)

He pored over the label for a second, glancing up towards the door where Ivy was still patiently camped, as she was whenever he visited. She was either remarkably well-trained or one of those loyal-shadow type of dogs. When he finally cracks it open it's another polite non-committal noise because, as aforementioned, to Taym pretty much anything with alcohol in it is merely a vehicle for said alcohol.

"I'd have thought you were a native," he observes, a half a question.