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When Taym answered it he had his attention turned to a book in his hand, and he only glanced at her, at the food, and at her face before waving her in silently, reading to the end of the line while distractedly chewing a thumbnail before he deigned to put it down and actually acknowledge her presence.

"Insufficient data set on round one?" he asked with a grin that was equally toothy, collapsing into his chair, putting up his feet, and folding his hands over his stomach. He wasn't exactly rushing to remedy the shortfall, bundled up in coat and scarf as if he might be called on a mission at any second.

The room was as starkly clean as ever, the sole change the faint glow of a barred cage on top of his tiny dresser, from within which four golden eyes stared intently and somewhat unsettlingly.

No America their names are Quint and Jessel, deal with it.

He hesitated, giving her a long and skeptical look and wondering if maybe he should have showered and brushed his teeth. Fionnghal informed him drily that she had never heard a thought so optimistic enter his head, and so it was that irritation ended up flickering across his face before he gave in, getting up to pull open the dresser. The drawer selected was meticulously organized into a series of makeshift dividers--apparently his obsessive cleanliness extended to the unseen parts of his room as well--and he procured a box of plastic forks and spoons with a sarcastic "look, see?" face at her.

(He'd bought it so he could eat blackberries in his hotel room, but she didn't have to know that.)

He paused to let the kitten-shaped-things chase his fingers through the bars for a second before folding himself up onto the foot of the bed and offering her the food before he touched it. "I traded the whiskey off to Mark," he apologized, "or I'd offer you a drink. Go ahead," he added, in a tone that suggested he was braced for a requested favor or bad news.

He'd fished a piece of apple out of the crust and was chewing on it, and he gave her a level stare until he'd finished.

"That's a pretty shitty joke."

He ducked, but there was really only so far to go when you were sitting cross-legged on a bed with a pie and ice cream in your lap.

"I don't have ******** not sick," he said, the struggle to keep his voice level obvious. "Pretty ******** presumptuous of you. So what is this?" he indicated the food with rising indignation. "Thanks for your ******** concern and for letting me know I look so much like s**t that people are--Jesus Christ."

Well, he wasn't eating any more, so there was that.

"And I ******** love food," he added, with a vehement sincerity that possibly could not be faked. He pushed the offerings back at her like he'd just found out they'd been poisoned. "If you came here to throw pity at me and bribe me into curing a problem I don't have you can go ahead and show yourself right the ******** out."

There were certain triggers he could rely on: cold rage was one of them. Too pissed to even fully register her bare foot on his knee, he lifted a hand with a defiant stare and sure enough, it was trembling a faint and constant tremble.

"They've done this," he said, his voice leashed and straining in an effort not to lose his temper, "since long before the Island. It's not constant. It comes and it ******** goes and mostly it goes but I can't stop it sometimes. They knew it when they recruited me. It has nothing to do with anything I do or don't do here."

He'd asked why, once, during an upswing, during an exhausting and humiliating physical he'd subjected himself to under his mother's worried insistence, and they'd run tests and all they could say was unspecified nerve damage (unspecified, unspecified; like they didn't know; like they hadn't read his charts and seen his history and fumbled for twenty minutes trying to take his blood) with the gentlest suggestion that maybe it wasn't completely physical at all. The referral wasn't for a neurologist; it was for a therapist.

"But thanks for the reminder. Do you know," and his grin was sudden and vicious and violent, "that sometimes I forget for almost a whole day at a time. Tell Konstantin to keep his ******** mother-henning to himself."

The contact of her hand brought with it instant tension, his entire body going as rigid as if he were bracing himself for a physical shock. Like being touched hurt. It wasn't that he drew away from her--he didn't--but there was nothing casual about the contact.

"Please," he said finally, after a long and steady silence. Humiliation rendered him quiet and pleading, all the false bravado drained out of him, and although there was still a feral violence in the way he held himself, braced for the fight that never came, it was muted. "Don't do this to me, please." Touch him. Accuse him. Try to force him to do something difficult. Make him think. "If you don't want to talk about my problems then don't."

So this was it. He hadn't been prepared for the feeling of loss, but he knew the beginning of the end when he saw it. He'd sustain it as long as he could but the inevitable guilt trips and sideways glances were an old litany, intimately familiar to him; he would within days be able to recite the arguments. They'd grind him down until he was forced to admit--whatever it was that he was admitting.

(What was he admitting? That he enjoyed depriving himself? That he was desperate for some sort of autonomy, for some stupid ritualistic expression of control of his own life?)

It should have mattered. He wasn't hurting anyone (this time).

"There's nothing wrong with me," he said roughly, and he tried to take his hand back. Which was answer enough.