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To the Last Syllable (Mr. M & Bathos)

Lyla walked arm-in-arm with T.B. in relative silence, glancing up to follow his gestures when he pointed out something of interest, though mostly she craned her neck around and aimed narrow-eyed glances into the surrounding shadows and access hallways. She wouldn't have described herself as scared, exactly, but nervous, perhaps. Possessing a healthy level of awareness.

Yes, that.

T.B. had her full attention, however, when he pointed out the fourth story window that marked the entrance of his home. She gaped for a moment, chin tipped back as she stared in horror at the climb she was expected to make. It was only then that she remembered what T.B. had said weeks ago, before they had even begun her training. That she would need to cling to his back while he dashed up the wall.

She gulped. "Um, so. What are we thinking here, piggyback?"
 
"Exactly!" He nodded. "I can carry your weight, I just can't do the keeping you on my back. But you can hold on, and you can use your power to keep you tight against me, or at least lessen your weight." He shrugged. "It'll be just like holding up the ping-pong balls, except it's your own body. Change in focus, but essentially similar." He winked. "One day, you'll be able to use your powers to assist you in making the climb yourself. Maybe you'll even just float yourself up."

"But that's neither here nor there." He took a deep sniff, and then tilted his head and looked around, obviously listening. "I don't sense anyone nearby. Do you detect any minds around?" There weren't, and he knew it, but he hoped if she realized her telepathy would give her early detection of anybody nearby, then she'd stop acting so jumpy when they were just walking down the street.

Once they were sure they weren't being observed, T.B. squatted and angled forward, offering his back for her to grab onto. He helped her adjust her arms, made sure she felt comfortable, and then he was off, clambering up the wall like some sort of spider monkey. He moved swiftly, hands finding holds that were invisible to her eyes, feet catching on windowsills and tiny protrusions. It was terrifying in a way, but he was utterly calm and confident the whole time, and his movements were smooth, so the major sensation was kind of a gentle rocking and an upward direction in step-like surges; if she closed her eyes, it would feel like he was giving her a piggy-back ride up a flight of stairs instead of up the side of a building.

Finally, a long few seconds later, he clambered through a hole in the catwalk and found some secure footing next to the boarded-up lower door. He let her recover and rest her arms a bit while he pointed to the door. "This was a three bedroom, two-and-a-half bath row-house style place back when. The coolant spill leaked over into the lower floor, but the upper floor was untouched. It's just nobody could reach it with the stairs eaten away." He grinned. "Except me, of course. The toxins can't hurt me for long; I can get sick, but I get better, unlike the normals. And I can put up with exposure a lot longer without ill effects. Point is, I was still able to make use of the second floor, and so far, it's worked out."

He gave her a few more moments. "Okay, well... are you ready for the last leg?"
 
Lyla clung to T.B. with all of her might, which she noted was pretty much nothing compared to the effortless strength in T.B.'s limbs, which carried her breezily up a building as if it were no more a strain than shaking her hand. Only a second into their ascent, she put her head down, burying her face, eyes screwed tightly shut, against his neck. Soft hair brushed her forehead, tickled her eyelashes and her nose, on every inhalation. Her jaw was clenched, mouth pressed into a thin line and scraping alternately against the collar of T.B.'s overcoat and the fine hairs of his neck.

When he dropped her back to her feet on the catwalk, Lyla felt dizzy and it was only through great effort that she managed not to sway. She listened to T.B., somewhat dazedly, her eyes drawn incessantly back to the ground below, despite her many attempts to look away.

It wasn't that she was concerned with heights. You couldn't live in a megacity and get by with that sort of handicap. It was just that it was so far, and he'd carried her up the entire way and she couldn't see, logically, how he'd even found purchase to climb.

"Are you ready for the last leg?"

Lyla dragged her eyes back to T.B., somewhat breathless with wonder, and nodded soundlessly. Stiffly, when he presented her his back and bent his knees, she put her arms around his neck, gave a short hop, and she was on again.
 
The next ascent was marginally shorter, as they were only climbing up to the second-floor window (from the perspective of the catwalk). T.B. was more intimately familiar with the long-worn concealed and incidental hand-holds on this climb, so he had the time, this time around, to enjoy the barely-there press of her weight against his back, the scent of her arms as they gripped over his shoulders and across his chest. He tried not to think too hard about it, but it had been an awfully long time since he'd been quite this close to a woman, and with her arms around him... but no. Not the time, at any rate.

He got up to the loose board, which was actually secretly hinged to slide easily up, allowing him to clamber in without obstruction. "Watch your head," he murmured as he pushed it higher than usual, drawing her past the sill with him. There was only blackness within, but T.B. anticipated her reaction. "Don't worry, this is just an antechamber. A foyer, if you will." He let her down and set about fastening the loose board from the inside. "Tar paper and blackout curtains. Wouldn't do to have anyone know someone's actually living here."

Once the "door" was securely closed, he rustled off to one side, and then drew apart two layers of thick black curtains, revealing a gentle indirect light and ushering her into the much larger space beyond.

Lyla would come to find out the layout, but at first, all she could see was what looked like a hardware store-room, with wireframe shelves attached to the walls, about half full of gear. There was an open closet with a few clothes and some spare trenchcoats hanging, but most of the items here were pragmatic: rope, some digging tools, a battered old hand computer, pipe of both the copper and the PVC variety, boxes of toothbrushes and toothpaste... this former bedroom was T.B.'s utility storage room and entry. Bright light was streaming in from the central hallway, the bedroom door having been removed long ago.

T.B. led the way into the central hallway. The entire ceiling was covered in ancient gro-lights, making the whole place as bright as the summer sky way up on the high levels. The entire stairwell that had once led to the contaminated floor below had been covered over and filled in, and T.B. had spent a no doubt laborious time dragging soil in from somewhere, and now... now it was a full-on vegetable garden, the centerpiece of which was a scrawny tree in the back corner, which nonetheless held several round green fruits. As Lyla was staring about, taking it all in, T.B. sprang up on the railing, took hold of the support framework for the gro-lights, and leaned over the vegetables to snag a couple of fruits. Dropping back to the floor, he smiled at her. "Limes go well with tequila, and you get your citric acid, as well."

A glance into the library showed bookshelves in a variety of styles, even some wooden antique-looking ones, holding books and record albums, a sealed window with releasable catches, and a central desk covered with maps and what seemed like building diagrams. The bathroom was a conventional bath, with a bath heater much like the one Lyla used in her own place. The former master bath had been converted into a kitchenette not unlike her own set-up in the former kitchen downstairs. The master bedroom was still cloaked in shadow at the moment, but seemed largely open. Primary everyday lighting was provided by the garden's ever-present gro-lights shining through open doorways, but the rooms had spot-lamps and the bathroom had its own room lighting for when the door was closed. Everything was fairly orderly, although dust layered many of the seldom-touched areas.

And there were pictures on the walls, little portraits and picture collections, regular holos and old-fashioned 2D images, dusty and faded for the most part. Some were of places, buildings here in the city and a couple of rare countryside images. Most were of people, from long ago or more recently (from the styles of clothing, none more recent than at least a decade, the vast majority much older than that). It was like coming into some random old-person's house and seeing all their relatives and grandkids and antiques all around and about.

T.B. led the way toward the back. "I'm afraid the only place that's really comfortable to relax around here is back here. Please, come in." Again, the shyness had returned, and he turned and went into the back to hide the incipient blush developing on his cheeks under his beard.
 
It took Lyla's eyes a moment to become accustomed to the light, but when they had, she glanced around with a barely restrained curiosity at all the things in T.B.'s home. She found she wanted to rifle through his closet of coats, dig around in his kitchen, muck about in the vegetable garden until she could name every plant and was covered in top soil. She wanted to know everything with an intensity that surprised her, and so naturally she didn't ask about anything, but followed T.B. like an obedient student through the apartment.

She felt his blush, although she couldn't see it. That ever present buzz grew warm and small, as if it were trying to hide itself, and Lyla couldn't decide whether it was because they were walking into what she could only assume were his sleeping quarters--not that he'd held any qualms about stomping around hers on a daily basis--or if it was because she was present at all.

"It's fine," she said, meaning it as the truth despite the absent tone. She was watching the walls as they passed, taking in the old fashioned photographs and the dated holos and wondering, not for the first time since she'd met him, just how old T.B. was.

As an afterthought, she added, "Have you got shot glasses?"
 
"Probably," T.B. called back from the shadows. They were entirely dissipated when he turned on the reading lamp in the corner. The back room had many rugs, layered into a wall-to-wall carpet of softness. He had slipped off his shoes near the doorway, and walked to the rearmost left corner, where there was a small square end table in the corner. Along both of the walls abutting the end table were two couches, draped in dark sheets to hide whatever their upholstery must have been. There was a chest of drawers along the wall connecting the kitchenette, and it held an ancient lava lamp (which T.B. turned on next) and a record player, similarly hand-reconditioned like the one in Lyla's apartment. A round coffee table sat between the two couches, holding a crumbling paperback, an empty plate, and a glass with some water still in the bottom.

The walls here were educational. There were still pictures, but fewer. There were a couple of quotations, done in calligraphy and framed, but the light was dim enough they were unreadable until her eyes adjusted again. There was a wall rack with a daisho, a pair of samurai swords, one long and one short, along with a little statue of Buddha and a platform for incense which had a cone of ash sitting on it. There was also a menorah with some candles ready to be lit on a little shelf next to an old-looking leather-bound book. The walk-in closet at the far right of the room seemed to be just more open space; maybe some other items were tucked away around the corner, out of immediate sight. A long wall curtain was pulled to the side of the door, and when closed it could cover both the hall door and the door to the kitchenette, blocking out the light from the garden. The room was otherwise open space.

The place smelled of greenery, and the warm woody muskiness of the incense, and the essential maleness of its only inhabitant. It was lived-in, but clean and warm.

"It's not much, but feel free to sit down. Let me look for those glasses," he murmured, and he gathered his dirty dishes and hustled into the kitchenette, where he rustled and clanked amid whatever random glassware he'd collected.
 
Following T.B.'s lead, Lyla toed her shoes off at the door, hesitating imperceptibly before touching her feet down on the softness of the floor. She stood unmoving just inside the door for a time, allowing her eyes to adjust as she tilted her head to one side, inspecting all that she saw before her.

She studied the pictures on the walls as closely as she could without actually approaching them, which meant she mostly just stood in the doorway and swiveled her eyes left and right before cutting a direct path to one of the couches. She sat down closest to the end table, resting her body sideways against the arm of the sofa and tucking her now bare feet up beneath her.

When Lyla put the bottle on the table and finally released it, she found she'd been clutching it so tightly that her fingers were stiff and ached, and her palm was damp with sweat. She wiped it against her pant leg, mouth bunching up into a perturbed little pucker.

"Uh, this place is nice," she called into the kitchen, not because it was true--although it undoubtedly was, compared to some of the things she'd been imagining--but she was suddenly overcome with the notion that she was an actual guest, a visitor, whereas she'd never once felt so utterly foreign in the ground level apartment she'd claimed as her own.
 
"Aha!" T.B. crowed from the kitchenette. "And they even match!" He came to the door in his T-shirt and jeans, having left the coat and hat and mask on the counter in the kitchenette. In one hand he held a small bowl with sliced up limes, and in the other, two simple tall shot glasses and a battered-looking plastic saltshaker, all of which he set down with a flourish on the table in front of her. He took a seat on the other couch, also on the end close to the table, and paused to look at her for permission before he opened up the tequila.

"Please, allow me; you're the one who bought it, I should be the one to pour the shots." Which he proceeded to do. "Now, if we're going to do tequila shots, we ought to do them traditionally. Are you familiar with the process?" He grinned at her as he prepared his hand with the salt.

When they were ready, he raised his shot to her and said seriously. "To you, Lyla, for facing your fears and pulling through. Several times tonight," he added, winking. Then he raised the glass again, and, in unison with her, downed it.
 
Lyla, actually, did not know the traditional style of drinking tequila. This was perhaps because she'd never had a fresh lime before. They weren't exactly flooding the market and she had never before made a habit of seeking out new things. She had enjoyed a quiet life, up until the Incident.

However, she was able to follow instruction--that much had become abundantly clear during their many lessons on hand-to-hand combat--and she watched T.B. prepare the salt. With one dubiously raised eyebrow, she licked the thin webbing of skin between her thumb and finger, salted it conservatively, and downed the shot.

Following T.B.'s lead, she bit into the lime wedge-

-and immediately screwed up her face and started rapidly licking her lips.

"Oh, wow," she said, and then coughed. "That's just." She licked her lips again. "Sour. And harsh."

She let out a deep breath, sucked in another, and coughed one more time, the faintest hint of moisture springing to her eyes. There followed a long silence, during which she contemplated this new taste, categorizing the flavors and the sensation of tequila heating its way down her esophagus and into her belly.

At length, she put her shot glass down heavily on the table between them and offered T.B. a sheepish smile. "Another?"
 
T.B.'s own eyes were watering as well, as the familiar but long-ago burning settled into his belly. "Sure, we can have another. Whuf. But if this is turning into a real celebration, we ought to have music."

He hopped up and ambled to the door, then paused and looked back at her. "Come on, you can help me pick something out," he said with a grin.

In the library, he switched on an overhead light, which flickered a bit before it steadied and cast an even illumination on all the shelves. There were hundreds of albums, the jackets in widely varying conditions, and several bookcases worth of books. Most of them were how-to books: carpentry, agriculture, nutrition, martial arts, electronics. All were ancient and out of date, but that was more a judgment of reflex, because if they worked and were relevant, how "out of date" could they have been? But there were other tomes, of history and psychology and much fiction, even poetry. There weren't nearly the number of books as were found in her place, but they were carefully selected.

Inside the library, she could see the doorless closet, which had been out of view from the hallway; it contained a couple of tall filing cabinets and a big wall map of the city, several buildings of which had been colored by hand in color, though there was no index as to what the colors meant, and several points of which were identified with tiny round-headed pins of different colors. The maps on the desk were indeed city maps and building diagrams, some of which were immensely old from the looks of them, but which were correlated with more modern maps. Their purpose was not clear at the moment.

T.B. directed her attention to his record collection. "All right, you've demonstrated that you're not a very large fan of classical or jazz, so we can ignore those shelves there. I don't think it's entirely time for showtunes. So let's look at the Rock/Pop area. I've got roughly 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and here at the end is 1990s and after, what little there is. I know you've found a few things to like in the 70s and 80s; do you want to fall back on a favorite, or are you feeling experimental?"
 
Lyla followed T.B. into his library, applying the same facade of mild interest to this room, the same as she had done in the others, despite the alarming fascination that prickled just beneath her skin. She looked around the room, face impassive while her eyes memorized the lay of the land and swept almost lovingly over the many volumes of books and music, until T.B. drew her attention to the real point of interest.

"Let's get experimental," she said, fingertips ghosting along the paper and cardboard covers of the vinyls. At random, she pulled a few records free, glanced fleetingly at their covers, and put them back. That was until she pulled free an album depicting a beautiful, dark skinned woman with the title "Bad Girls" emblazoned across the front.

Lyla smirked and pulled the record all the way free. "I think we have a winner," she said, flashing T.B. a cheeky grin before spinning and heading back into the bedroom, her red hair twirling and bouncing against her jawline as she did so. She cast one last glance behind her, more out of reverence for his massive library than to look at her mentor, but she found her gaze flickering over him, as well, smile still in place.

She had enough experience now that she could put the record down herself, sliding it gently from its cover and blowing gently at the collected dust before she put it on the turntable. She put the needle down at random, rather than carefully locating the initial groove, and her head jerked up in surprise when the song began to play.

She turned to T.B., now filing into the room, and couldn't contain the urge to sway as she returned to the sofa. "This should have been the first one you shared," she said, only mildly chastising, and settled back into her spot, head still bouncing along to the upbeat tempo.

"Okay, hit me," she said, rolling her head on her shoulders as if doing tequila shots was an activity that required warming up.
 
"How could I know you were a disco girl?" he chided. "It's not like I keep up with the musical fads upstairs!" He sat down and poured them another shot apiece. "Okay, ready? Remember, it's lick, shot, suck. At least, that's how they did it down Mexico way!"

He did another one with her, and bobbed his head to the music. He had good rhythm, and though it had been years since he'd danced where anyone could see him, he did enjoy moving in time to music. That's why he kept such a wide variety of albums around; it wasn't just because they were all he could find, he had actually grown to enjoy all of the ones in his collection.

"If you like this, I have several other albums you can enjoy. Have you ever heard of a band called 'The Bee Gees'?"

And he poured them another shot...
 
Upon hearing the words 'lick' and 'suck' pouring out of T.B.'s painfully correct and articulate mouth, Lyla suddenly found something very interesting to focus on: her hands. She stared at her own fingers for a long moment, heat flaring to her cheeks because-

-T.B. just wasn't supposed to say things like that. He was appropriate to a fault, and though it was Lyla's own (possibly depraved) mind that was supplying alternate connotations for his words, he still should have known better.

"The Bee Gees?" she echoed, sometime later, and looked up at T.B. again only when she had her delicate fingers wrapped around the shot glass and a lime on standby. "Nope, never have," she said, and tossed back the shot. Third time must have been the charm, because this one slid down her throat like water and the lime, rather than tasting harsh and acidic in her mouth, was complementary to the flavor of the liquor.

The fourth shot went much the same, this time without the unnecessary instruction from T.B., though Lyla found herself watching him take his shot, chanting the words mentally as he hit each step: lick, shot, suck. In the background, nearly forgotten, the tracks changed and Donna Summer brought the tempo down a notch or seven.

Out of the blue, as if Lyla had been worrying over this subject and waiting for the appropriate time to ask and was only now getting fed up and impatient--which was entirely the case--she blurted more than asked, "What does T.B. stand for?"
 
He was starting to feel the buzz, getting relaxed and yet animated at the same time, loosening up, which he usually thought of as a problem, for the potential damage he could cause, but right now he was feeling fine and loving life. Her question caught him as surprising, but it didn't throw him. Instead he just arched an eyebrow.

"Well," he demurred. "Normally, when people ask that, I tell them it stands for Throw Back. Because, as you may have guessed, I'm usually very sensitive about such things." He sighed and settled back on his couch, the pleasant buzz washing over him. "But it's just my name, really. Timothy. Blaustein. What's your last name, Lyla? What were your parents like?"

His tone was honestly curious, as that's what he was.
 
It was an odd notion, living in the constant company of a man for weeks and never having known his real name. It left Lyla feeling disoriented, like the time she discovered that T.B. had a place of his own--only clearly more subdued.

"Timothy," she repeated, softly and to herself, as if hesitantly sampling the taste of it. "Timothy," she said again, the last syllable pitching a little higher, like a question mark. "Tim," she said, somewhat gravely.

Something like triumph crossed Lyla's features, and her mouth quirked up into a smile that was soft and far less smug than her usual brand of mirth. "Tim," she said again. "I like it."

She glanced away then, eyes rolling so far to the side that her lids fell shut with the strain, eyelashes fluttering delicately against her cheeks before she opened them again, looked square at T.B. and said, no small amount of terseness in her words,

"My mother did her best. My name is Montgomery."

And that was all the commentary she had to offer on her youth. It wasn't that there was anything particularly traumatic about her childhood--in fact, compared to most, she had it pretty good--but there was a strong current of defensiveness, whenever that subject came up, that Lyla had yet to master.

It was a long moment before she realized she was uncomfortable because her spine was so stiff, and then she finally relaxed. "Anyway, your turn." Because yes, in her mind, this had definitely turned in a game of questions. "How old are you?"
 
“Lyla Montgomery,” he intoned soberly. “That's something of a patrician name, these days, though once they'd have declaimed your Scottish roots.” He glanced at her. “Not that your hair doesn't do that already.”

He was still chuckling when her question about his age struck, and his gentle laughter cut off like a switch. “That's something of a tricky subject. I'm older than I look; it seems the fast healing I do, the general hardiness, extends to my telomeres, the parts of my genes that influence aging. You know those rejuvenation treatments the top-levelers pay for? I get that as part of my natural system. It's a great gift, but I can't say I haven't had problems with the wrapping paper.” He held out his hands and looked at them, then grinned at her.

All while he was talking, he kept looking at the wall over the dresser, at the two frames hung there and illuminated by the lava lamp. If he didn't have a few shots of cheap tequila hitting his empty stomach in short succession, he might have been more circumspect about it. As it was, when his reverie was broken, he clapped his hands together and leaned forward.

“You know what we need? Food! That'll help this booze go down better!” He hopped to his feet and only swayed a little bit. “Tell you what, let me see what I've got on hand, and you pour us another couple of shots, hm?” He stepped smartly into the kitchen, not really showing his intoxication when he was in motion. It was the standing still that did him in, so he kept moving, going from cupboard to container to the refrigerator, trying to see what he had that sounded good.
 
Lyla narrowed her eyes on T.B.'s back as he made his escape. And that was exactly what it was, an escape. For the second time he had avoided the question, which pissed her off to no end. Not that T.B. didn't deserve his secrets, of course. Lyla fully recognized his right to privacy and his age was none of her business.

What got under her skin so thoroughly was the fact that the more he avoided, the more she just had to know.

When T.B. was safely in the kitchen, digging around for God-knew-what (and Lyla wasn't even hungry but T.B. hadn't given her the chance to say so), she jumped up from the couch and went over the wall where she'd seen him direct his gaze multiple times. There had to be something important in those frames.

She moved quickly, shuffling across the sea of rugs as stealthily as possible, knowing that T.B. could hear her at any moment interrupt her snooping.
 
There were two framed items on the wall above the lava lamp and record player. One was an old-fashioned 2D family photograph of two parents and three children at the beach, the mother and daughter sitting on a beach chair, laughing at the father and two boys who goofed in mock bodybuilder poses. The photo was a little faded and wrinkled, but the glass of the frame kept it pressed flat.

The other was a clipping of some sort. It wasn't a newsflimsy, it was actual paper, yellowed with age and as wrinkled as the photograph. Some of the text was too faded to read, certainly not without taking the frame off the wall, but the title, "Suburban Boy Demonstrates Functional Mutations" and the pull-quote printed in bold and framed by the text of the article, "This kind of regressive mutation, or 'throw-back', may become more common in the future," stood out. As did the picture, an image of a very hairy adolescent boy, his face still in the process of painfully growing to cause his mouth to jut forward, his eyes already pale and slitted in the black-and-yellow photo, staring at the camera with a sad sullenness. It was unmistakably a young Timothy Blaustein. Snatches of the article stood out: "successful medical practice in the city", "suspected environmental contamination leading to genetic defects", "only known expression of it's kind, but it may only be the first," "not known how the physical effects will affect the boy as he grows up, but the social effects are already making themselves apparent", and so forth.

Lyla had stared at it for a little while, looking for a nonexistent publication date or something, when a clue of import sunk in: the very title mentioned "suburbs," and since the prevalence of the megacity construction, there were no such things: the city grew outward, and at its edge, there was nothing, just wilderness and abandoned ruins and massive farms. The city just stopped, like it hit a wall, until the next megabuilding was constructed, pushing that wall out a little farther. There were no suburbs, and there hadn't been for at least a century and a half.

"Aha!" called T.B. from the other room. "How do you feel about spaghetti? I found most of a box, and it's been months since I've had pasta!" He appeared in the doorway, grinning. "I do have some home-made sauce in the vacuum box; care for a plate?"

He really was famished, and swiftly getting light-headed, between the booze and not having eaten much all day. He seemed completely oblivious to the looking around Lyla had been doing.
 
Lyla felt, as her eyes went over and over the article before her, the peculiar sensation of her throat going raw and her heart plummeting into her stomach. Peculiar, because there wasn't any reason for it.

So, T.B. was old, over a century and possibly two. There wasn't anything distressing about that, not really. People lived a long time, longer every year, and it was probably only a matter of time until regular, non-mutated humans were climbing into lifespans close to his. Only a matter of time. Lyla looked again at the picture of the beach.

But all of those people were dead. And all the other people on the walls, she was willing to bet, were dead or dying, excepting the very few modern holos he had placed sporadically throughout the place. Lyla's own family was gone, she had outlasted them just like T.B. had done his, but this was different. Lyla wasn't guaranteed to outlast every single person she met, to know upon meeting that there would come a day when she had to come to terms with a world without them.

Like T.B. would do, most likely, when Lyla died. Old as he was, as young as she felt in the face of this new information, he'd outlast her, too.

When T.B. appeared in the doorway again, Lyla was staring blankly at the record player. She couldn't move, but she couldn't look at that picture, anymore, either. She was stuck.

"I'm not really that hungry," she said, not daring to look at him just yet. Not when he was so agonizingly cheerful and she was only just managing not to burst into tears on his behalf. "You go ahead."
 
There was something in her tone that penetrated even his somewhat dulled senses. He lost his grin, and lowered the box of pasta. "What's wrong? This is supposed to be a celebration, and what's more celebratory than starch?"

He looked at the record player in confusion, following her gaze. "Do you... want another record?" But before she could answer, his gaze traveled up to the frames hanging there. "Ah. So my clever evasions were insufficient in the face of your investigative technique of 'looking around.' Ah, well."

He put the pasta on the counter behind him, and sighed. "You know what? This calls for another drink. I'm pouring!" He crossed over to the couches, and sat down. "If you don't join me, I'm gonna have to drink yours, too. At my age, who knows what that could do to me? Come on, save my life, come have a drink." He winked and grinned at her as he said it, and offered her the shot glass.
 
When Lyla turned to T.B. she was smiling again, but it was a mirthless expression, plastered across her face purely for his benefit. Obediently, she crossed the room again and folded herself onto the spot she'd claimed for herself on the sofa. Automatically, she licked and salted her hand, took the offered shot, and went through the motions of downing it.

She left the lime wedge where it sat on the end table and pushed her shot glass toward T.B. "I think I need another," she said, despite the burning in her belly and the gentle rolling that came over the room now and again.

She looked again at the frames on the wall across the room, and at T.B. "Tim," she said again, and this time the word was loaded with layers of meaning that even Lyla could not begin to decipher in her current state.

She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and sighed. "I'm sorry," she said, quietly. Lyla could tell T.B. didn't want to talk about it, the way he smiled and avoided, but she couldn't not bring it up.

"I can't begin to imagine- I mean, it's just so ..."

On slightly unsteady legs, Lyla got to her feet, stepped smoothly around the end table, and fell into T.B.'s lap. As if that alone was not far enough out of character for her, that freely offered kind of affection, she slid her arms around T.B., dropped her head on his shoulder, and whispered again, now directly into his neck, "I'm so sorry."
 
He winced when she called him "Tim," but let her continue. She started to apologize, and at first, he was confused before he started worrying that she was about to vomit, and he didn't have a bucket or anything to catch it with. But then she continued, and he realized it wasn't about that.

"What, that I'm old? It's not bad; my body stays... well, reasonably young. I don't get arthritis, any of that, there's nothing..." he looked about the room, at the photos, all old and dusty, and caught a clue. "Ah."

His arms came up awkwardly to cradle her against his chest. He sighed and laid his cheek against her temple. "I won't lie... it's not easy. But there are ways to deal with it." He patted her back gently. "You don't have to feel sad for me, Lyla Montgomery. It's fine."
 
Lyla knew she didn't have to worry about T.B. She was better off letting him worry about her. She wasn't in any shape to be offering comfort or solace to anybody. She barely had a grip on her own reality.

But T.B., in a couple short weeks, had become the one she turned to. He was the center of her world, if only because there was nothing else in it. And while a sober Lyla, in full command of her mental faculties, would give the issue a moment of silence, take a deep breath, and move on, Lyla wasn't remotely sober.

"I know I don't have to worry about you," she said, because with the additional lubricant provided by tequila the transition from thought to speech was instantaneous. "You worry about me. But it is sad and I can be sad about it if I want to be, so let me. Be sad."

Then, as if the two thoughts went hand-in-hand together, Lyla continued, "You're really warm. And not as soft as you look. The fur is misleading. Shoulda guessed, though, what with you being so strong, that you'd be ..."

And she didn't really know what word she wanted to slot into that space, so she left it to remain a space.
 
"Okay," he said, agreeably, "Okay. Be sad."

And then she continued, and his brow furrowed. "Um, it's not... you know... fur. Not really. People don't get... furry. Unless you're one of those subculture people who get the temporary genemods to get all... they used to call it 'yiffing' actually. Which, I don't know why it needs its own term, I would have thought existing terminology would have sufficed, but then, despite my appearance, I've never been into that scene, but I don't judge. But it's weird, because for all those folks wanting to be all furry, if they came face-to-face with me they'd probably scream and call the cops..."

Where his emotions weren't particularly loosened by the alcohol, it was evident his tongue was. He cradled her against his warm t-shirt, his strong, hairy arms wrapped around her, holding her gently while she was sad and just rambling in a kind of stream of consciousness leap from subject to subject.
 
Lyla smiled, openly and happily, confident in the knowledge that T.B. wouldn't be able to see it. She should be getting up now, she realized. She was fine, T.B. was fine--older than dirt and most of his friends long dead, but fine--and there was no longer any call for this-

A spade was a spade and a cuddle was a cuddle. She was cuddling T.B. She was not so inebriated that this fact escaped her. It felt nice, though, and she noted that she was drunk enough to pretend that this fact had escaped her, so she resolved to stay put until T.B. inevitably dumped her on the floor.

Scratch that. T.B. was too nice to dump her on the floor. He'd probably put her on the sofa. And she'd probably end up sleeping there, considering there was no way in Hell she was letting him carry her back to the surface in his current state. She was steadfastly against drinking and climbing.

"T.B.," Lyla said suddenly, because now he was rambling and she was kind of losing track of what he was saying. "I take it back. You're not furry. You're hairy. You're a fur-less, hairy man. Also? Please never mention yiffing ever, ever again."

Which she sort of regretted, once she'd said it, because she liked the rumble of his voice and the way she could feel the muscles in the side of his face moving against hers. And the warmth. She could doze here, she thought, if not for the way she wasn't even remotely relaxed. A sourceless energy was seeping into her consciousness, and she was suddenly hyper-aware of all of her limbs and exactly what they were doing.

She flexed her hand against the shirt on T.B.'s back, experimentally, and then pressed it flat again. She got the oddest little thrill out of it, heart leaping up into her throat briefly before settling back into her chest where it belonged.

As if from a distance, she heard herself say, "We should always have tequila."
 
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