Welcome to Gaia! ::

Days before, Taym had traded barbed snipes at Shiloh while they fought down a Titan. And no, he didn't like the kid--or at least he told himself he didn't like the kid--but he'd done an admirable job. So much so that Taym had quietly recommended he be praised for it, on the mission report.

He wondered if anyone had. Because Taym hadn't. And he was feeling the vague stirrings of queasy regret. He tried to channel the feeling into rage at Rep, and failed.

Everyone spoke of death as being a part of Deus's day-to-day routine, but thus far the only personal contact he'd had with it had been with Clerise, and he'd known her only fleetingly. A glancing contact made and abandoned. But even that had brought mementos to show for the association--as he gazed through the screen of his phone and tried to think of what to do he instinctively opened the closet and found himself staring at the red vinyl boots she'd left him.

Red vinyl boots should not have been a trigger to grief and regret. They were. Shiloh hadn't been a friend of his, but he'd been close enough that the news had come as a hurtful shock. He thought of Peyton, and he thought of Gale and most of all he thought of Bix, and he felt like he was going to throw up when the phone beeped again:

This isn't funny anymore.

It hadn't been funny at all.

Taym didn't like Maebe, either, and was in a position to regret liking anyone. But he had four younger sisters and a lifetime of needing to be needed under his belt. He didn't even think. On autopilot, he was in the hallway and realizing he was in front of her door before he had time to form a coherent thought. He knocked. And then, afraid she'd think it was Shiloh--unable to cope with the thought of her hopeful face at the door--he said: "It's Obadiah."

s**t.

That was both exactly what he'd expected to happen and exactly what he'd hoped wouldn't.

Luckily a girl crying became--in Taym's somewhat misogynistic, patronizing eyes--somewhat less of a person and somewhat more of a problem to be taken care of efficiently, and so this particular girl instantly transmogrified into something less than Maebe, whom he strongly disliked, and into something more his speed.

Taym had spent a lot of time with people crying. Mostly girls; mostly women, really. Forty-year-olds huddled under bridges in equal measure with seventeen-year-olds panicking at parties that had gone out of control.

He still felt a little out of his depth this time. The platitudes he was used to handing out weren't in any way related to something as final as death. Bad trips, bad life choices, cold nights--these things passed.

He did what he could instead. He didn't put his arms around her, afraid of what she'd do and not quite sure he wanted to anyway, but he reached for her hand so she could put herself there instead, if she wanted.

Well.

He put an arm around her shoulders and awkwardly scanned down the hallway to make sure no one was around and possibly getting the wrong idea--priorities--and then gently maneuvered her into her room but left the door open, lest she get the wrong idea. With the other hand he unwound his scarf from his neck and offered it to her to snot in as required. He looked a bit grim as he did that. It was still new, still fresh, the symbol of his upstart promotion, and he'd barely had a chance to wear it, and here he was letting some girl sob into it like a cheap hankie.

He didn't know what to say. So what he said was just: "I'm so ******** sorry. If I'd known I wouldn't have broken it to you that way. I'm sorry."

To his credit, Taym didn't bat an eye at her abrupt adoption of his scarf as a blindfold. Taym understood unusual coping mechanisms and the strange things people did in reaction to unusual stressors.

He tried to steer her towards a piece of furniture she could sit down on--chair, bed, desk, he didn't really notice or care--without disrupting her peace too badly. He didn't trust her standing up not to bolt for Shiloh's room, not after that.

"He isn't in his room, sweetheart," he said carefully, as gently as he could manage. He was finding he was taking much less perverse satisfaction in this than he normally did in comforting people, whether it was because it was Maebe or because of the circumstances, and Fiona stirred uneasily in his head. "Sit." This was as firm as it was gentle.

Not for the first time since arriving at Deus, Taym had the instinctive thought: "But it'll be better after I--" before remembering that no, the easy solution was no longer readily at hand. And never would be again. And not for the first time since arriving at Deus nor even for the first time that day, Taym wanted that easy solution as much as he'd ever wanted it before. All he was missing was the shakes and the vomiting, and the shakes were there, in the skeletal hands that were trying to find some way to smooth Maebe's hair without disrupting her weird grief-turban.

He remembered the dull, wood-splintering noise of Tracey's blade landing heavy on the cafeteria floor; he remembered Rep looking like a wild animal in the red glow of the runes; and he remembered, acutely, the way the light from the windows had caught on all those sharpened edges, like a dozen outsized teeth.

Shiloh'd probably come out of that looking like he'd been put through a meat grinder, shield or no shield. Shreds. Ribbons. His brain unavoidably tossed up the image of a human body fanning open like a fish's gills and his stomach turned.

"Not yet," he said quietly. And he didn't. He couldn't be sure. But he could guess. And eventually Maebe would read back, and then she'd know too, but now wasn't the time. "I don't think just one friend is a good idea. Maybe two, at least."

Maybe he hadn't been gay.

Feeling intensely guilty that this was his first reaction to her words--his brain always did wander off in these moments, chasing stupid thoughts down to avoid confronting the more difficult ones--he gave himself a mental shake.

He was scared of how much he agreed with her. Scared of how true he thought all of that was. He'd lashed out at Peyton repeatedly because she insisted on trying to be his friend and against his will it was working. Bix made him nervous, too.

And then there was everything before the Island. Everyone he'd loved. He'd vanished from them partly out of a fear they'd vanish first.

The thought of Tuesday welled up huge and inexorable, a needling pain that sought out the cracks in his stoicism left by helplessly watching Maebe cry, and he fought it back because the last thing he needed was to cry too. It was true: love made you suffer, profoundly, and Amity had told Rojand, in the Tear, that hurting was important, but that was Amity and Taym didn't quite believe it.

What he said instead, lamely, was: "Pretty sure Shiloh'd be pissed at you for that." And probably, going on what little Taym knew about him, he would have been. "Anyway, don't--" but he didn't finish because he didn't know what words to put there.

Thank god for small dorms. He pulled Maebe's chair a little closer to the bed so that he could sit down on the edge of the mattress, reaching out for her hand again nervously, afraid to be too close to her and afraid to make her think she couldn't reach out again.

"Because you only have one friend," he suggested flatly. "I didn't... I'm not a ******** monster. I thought you might need... someone."

He realized despite himself and everything he'd been trying to tell himself that he did. He'd thought it was funny when Shiloh had drunkenly tried to stick up for Maebe at the disastrous Halloween party; he'd been grudgingly forced to accept that he was doing him job well when they took on the Titan. And when they'd fought Shiloh had let his shield break because he'd thought that was the right way to concede defeat, which was stupid (even more stupid, in hindsight), but at least showed some spine.

So maybe Shiloh had pink hair and gave off femme vibes in a mile-wide radius, but Taym couldn't bring himself to muster any real rancor.

"It would have been a relief to see his name next to mine on a mission roster," he said finally and honestly. This was as close to a compliment as he was prepared to dish out. Maebe was entirely too close but he tried not to tense and tried to make his arms function in some reassuring way instead of becoming useless things with still more useless hands on the ends. He felt betrayed by his own body, not for the first time. This was normally so much easier. It was easier to succumb to habitual autopilot, and so he tried, stroking her hair for about two seconds before deciding that no, that wasn't actually something he wanted to do, and stopping.