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To the Last Syllable (Mr. M & Bathos)

She interrupted him, and he was pleased enough to stop, having just realized he was babbling, and he blinked when she took the furry comment back, and he nodded when she asked him to never mention yiffing again. "Okay, done. Agreed."

He chuckled, and as he held her, he dimly was aware of her hand on his back. It felt nice, the warmth of her hand on his back, through his T-shirt, it was pleasant and relaxing. He realized he couldn't remember exactly when the last time someone had touched him like that was. It must have been Tav, of course, but when? What experience? Was it just his current state, or was the memory of the last touch of his lover really gone? And Lyla was so warm and lovely and soft, and she felt right in his arms, and he already knew he would tear down a building for her if he had to, but that didn't have to come from romance, and what was he even thinking, a girl possibly one tenth, one TENTH of his age, and she had no idea what she was getting into anyway, so why was he even rubbing his fuzzy freakin' cheek against the top of her head, nuzzling her?

This was one reason he didn't drink much. He had too much history to avoid getting maudlin.

As if from a distance, he heard her say, "We should always have tequila." And he chuckled again, his reverie broken.

"Oh, no. Ta-kill-ya is a wonderful thing, but there's so many other fine artificially-fabricated spirits we can poison ourselves with. Plus I need to find some mint leaves before I can make mojitos." He paused a moment, and then was suddenly very aware of her position in his arms and across his lap. "So... you're not having a bad evening drinking with old T.B., then?"
 
Lyla laughed, soft and muffled against T.B. "You've always been old and you've never asked me if I was having fun before," she pointed out in a light, teasing tone. "But no, I'm not having a bad time. In fact, I'm having a really nice time. Though I think you should pour us another shot."

Despite her request, Lyla moved not a single inch from her perch in T.B.'s lap. If he was going to heed her request, he was going to either have to dump her on the floor or reach around her to do it. Or he could just tell her no, and she wouldn't put up much of a fuss. She already had a pleasant buzz going.

She suspected part of that buzzing was coming from T.B. She noted with no small amount of satisfaction that he was content, for the most part, a warm, solid presence in the back of her mind the same as he was a warm, solid presence under her hands.

It occurred to her that perhaps that was the reason it felt so good, being in such close proximity to T.B. She was submerged in him, she realized, with him rattling around in her head and pressed against her. Even the smell of him filling up the room, manly and oddly pleasing to her senses, was a comfort. She was safe in all respects, and cozy, and it only made sense, in a very obvious way, that she should want to get closer, sink into the sensation, and she didn't really mean anything by it, except for how she knew exactly what she was doing the moment the thought popped into her head, but actions and consequences seemed momentarily divorced in a very convenient, dream-like way that only alcohol could provide.

Lyla fisted T.B.'s t-shirt in her hand, drew it up just a little, enough that she could get her hand under his shirt and press it directly to his back, and she sighed.

"You're kind of everywhere," she murmured, as if that would make sense to anyone but herself.
 
He beamed when she admitted she was having a nice time, but his smile fell away to a look of concentration when she asked him to pour them another shot. This was a logistical issue of no small import. He could do it easily if he dislodged her, but that wasn't an option he wished to take. There was no real reason, other than he didn't want to move her out of his lap. And he wasn't about to tell her no, so he had to come up with another strategy.

So while he held her, he extended his foot. It wasn't something that came up very often, because he wore shoes, but his hairy toes were long and flexible. As easily as he climbed the wall outside, he would have gone even faster if he'd been shoeless. So he reached out, extended his foot, and snagged his own shot glass as an experiment. He pulled his foot back, and palmed the glass with a sense of accomplishment. He was just getting to the point of inebriation, the tequila really sinking in, where it actually was an accomplishment to have negotiated such a feat of manual... pedual dexterity. It was when he was bringing back her glass when she fisted the shirt, drawing it up his back. He froze as her bare land slid against the skin and hair of his back, a point on which he was still self-conscious, but when she sighed in a contented way, he relaxed a bit. She didn't seem put off by the touch of him, so he let her touch him without complaint, enjoying the feel of her hand on him, and trying not to think of anything more. It would have been awkward if he had; she was already sitting on his lap, after all.

"You're kind of everywhere," she murmured as he managed to snag the bottle. They had already consumed a fair amount of it, so it wasn't hard to pick up. He had the glasses in his left hand, and he maneuvered the bottle until he could grasp it with his right.

"Yeah," he murmured in that amiable way he could get when he was intoxicated and didn't really know what was going on, but was willing to go with the flow, anyway, "I do get around like that." The next sound he made was actually made by the bottle as he poured two more shots, feeling somewhat smug at his accomplishment, and the fact that, since her face had been buried against his shoulder, she'd never really know how he managed it, if he so wanted to keep the secret.
 
The sound of clinking glass brought Lyla's attention back from where she was idly moving the pads of her fingers against T.B.'s back. Following a short debate with herself, she let her hand fall away, deliberately casual despite the distinct chill she felt afterward. She worked her head out from under T.B.'s and took one of the two shot glasses he held.

Once again, she didn't bother with the salt or fruit, past the point of needing them. She put the rim of the shot glass against her lips, glanced at T.B. and, just before she tipped it back, said, "Weren't you going to eat something?"

She tossed the tequila back then, the world seemed to quiver on its axis, and she nearly toppled backwards off his lap.
 
"Woah-ho!" he cried, supporting her with his arm. He nearly spilled his own shot, but managed to salvage that. as well. "I've heard of drinking till you fall down, but when you're already sitting that's an accomplishment. "I should eat, yes. I haven't eaten much all day, and it's starting to show. But on the other hand, if I get up to cook, you could very well freeze to death, what with me being your major source of heat and all."

He chuckled as he helped her back into balance, then took his own shot, wincing a little at the burn. He was trying to be very precise in his movements, because he was at the stage where a lack of attention might make his actions more flamboyant, and he never wanted to accidentally break something. He'd worked hard enough to get all this stuff salvaged and hauled up here in the first place; he had no desire to have to replace any of it. Plus, he had Lyla here, and she was breakable, too, and he certainly didn't want anything to happen to her.

"But I'm afraid there's a different problem than my empty belly and our swiftly-emptying bottle," he said with a serious voice. "I'm afraid the record has stopped." And indeed, there was the soft, regular thump-thump of the needle at the end of its grooves. Donna was done singing at the moment, and needed assistance to lift her voice again.
 
Lyla's head swiveled slowly around until she was looking at the record player, eyelids lifting and falling slowly as her brain made sluggish sense of what she was hearing and seeing. "So it has," she said at length, and swung her legs down to the floor.

She got to her feet, intending to flip the record over and start the music anew, but when she swayed precariously to one side--noting that she was indeed colder when she wasn't wrapped around T.B .--she decided that she probably wasn't the woman for the job. She'd end up destroying something and then T.B. would put her out the window in a fit.

Or something like that.

"I think maybe you should take care of it," she said, turning to look at him with a smile that was very faintly sheepish, but mostly just amused. "I cannot be trusted around antiques at present." She paused, her smile bloomed into a full grin, and she added, "Well, except for you, of course."
 
"Oh, is that how it's going to be?" he groaned, struggling to his feet next to her. His arm somewhat automatically went to encicle her waist as he stood, and brought their bodies back into contact. The warmth of the connection was more than just the heat radiated through their clothes. "I open up you you, and all of a sudden it's age jokes. All right, you whippersnapper," he affected an elderly quaver to his voice. "Sit yourself down, I'll handle things. Age before beauty, after all," he chuckled, and guided her to sit back down on the couch.

He couldn't stop grinning as he crossed to the record player and, with a practiced series of motions that were unaffected by his inebriation, eased the needle away and flipped the record. If only to himself, he admitted that it wasn't just the booze that made him giddy just now; he couldn't help but be warmed by the sense of closeness he'd been picking up from Lyla. Just having her nestled against his neck was, he had to acknowledge, heavenly. He wasn't even thinking of anything else; he was just pleased she was here, had seen his lair, knew many of his secrets... and yet accepted him. Was willing to touch him, no less. That was... that was not insignificant.

The slinky beats started up again, and Ms. Summer's voice rang out once more, and all was right with the world for a short while longer as he turned back to the couch. "Well, that's in order. What's next on the agenda?"

This was not an idle question: he so rarely drank, he didn't have any sort of routine. And his whole point here was to celebrate Lyla's accomplishment, so the course of the evening really ought to be up to her.
 
Lyla fell breathlessly to her seat on the sofa, wide eyes trailing after T.B. with something like shock. It was a small thing, him putting his arm about her waist, but it'd taken her by surprise, if only because she'd been the one to initiate all previous contact that night.

She'd stood up, just to put herself out of his way, and then there was that comforting heat around her again, the dizzying strength in his arm waiting only for an excuse to be put to use. An unmistakable shiver went through her, her heart thumped loudly in her chest, and when Lyla dropped onto the sofa, it was a struggle to remember to breathe evenly.

More so than all of the casual touches, the easy familiarity, that reaction was-

Well, it was a lot harder to ignore than the other signs. A lot more cut-and-dry. Lyla, for some insane reason, liked being touched by T.B. A lot more than was strictly platonic, and come tomorrow morning she knew she would be blaming it stubbornly on the tequila.

"Agenda," she echoed tonelessly, still partially trapped in her daze. "Um ... I don't know. Generally drinking is a prelude to"--she gestured vaguely with her hand--"you know, dancing or socializing or something." She chose not to elaborate further on the many potential meanings of 'something'. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do now."
 
T.B., it had to be said, was a cheery drunk. He was generally so dour, wry and sarcastic, and physically stand-offish in his everyday life, that when his self-control was lifted, he became almost bubbly, silly. For anyone who dealt with him regularly (a list of people that could be counted on one hand, even with a missing finger or two), the result was a bit disorienting, if not creepy.

At the moment, he was noting a few items; her increased pulse rate, the quaver in her tone, a shift in her hormonal balance as it sluiced off her skin; all these things added up to something, but he was long out of practice in determining what it might be, and he was in no condition to put a lot of thought into it, anyway. Not when there were other things he ought to think about. Such as what to do with their drunkenness.

"Well," he said slowly. "There's not much more socializing to do beyond the two of us. We could try dancing! Or, oh! Drinking games!" He grinned. "Are we at the point where it's fun to come up with excuses to drink in an organized schedule? I have at least one deck of cards around here someplace..."

Despite his occasional wandering thoughts in that direction, many of them this very evening, he wasn't intending to overstep his bounds with her. She was a lovely young woman, and he was a misshapen and hairy old, old, old man, he knew better than to try to put the moves on her, even if he remembered any moves to put. So he tried to keep it festive without it getting too "festive." Soon enough they would devolve into babbling about hopes and dreams, and after that he would probably forget most anything else he said.

"Oh! And buckets!" He turned and tottered off at a quick pace to the utility room, to get buckets. He didn't want to be unprepared if his intoxication actually went as far as his youthful experimentation had. It had been many, many years since he'd gotten sick, but he wasn't about to mess up his lovely carpets.
 
"Cards?" Lyla repeated, confused, and only a moment later went on, "Buckets?"

T.B. was all over the place and she couldn't really keep up, which suited her just fine for the moment. She was still reeling, watching T.B. as if he'd grown another head, which should have been just as likely as her poorly timed discovery that she-

That she what? Wanted T.B.?

Ridiculous. Tequila was a ridiculous liquor.

"Drinking games!" Lyla finally exclaimed, when she'd sorted through her thoughts enough that she had the extra brain power to apply to what was actually going on. A drinking game was the surest way to drink herself into unconsciousness and forget any of this had ever happened. It was the perfect plan.

"I don't know any, though," she called after T.B. "You'll have to teach. And on your night off and everything!"
 
"Teaching doesn't stop on the clock," T.B. said, coming back in the room. "Just like learning doesn't." He nodded sagely, and then spoiled the effect by hiccuping. With great solemnity, he handed Lyla her own bucket. "This is just in case the tequila doesn't want to stay down like an obedient liquor. It is notably rowdy, as far as liquids go."

He sat down on the other couch, now, and put his bucket on the floor between his feet. He took out a deck of cards. "Well, these are cards. You may have seen their images on some of the games on your computer." He showed her the suits and images, rolling and fanning the cards like a Vegas street magician; he'd had the time to practice, after all. "Now, there are a number of games we can play, including the simplest: hi-lo. We shuffle, draw cards, and whoever's card is lowest has to drink. Or we can play something more competitive, and whoever wins gets to pick something for the loser to do. Depends on how drunk you are, or want to get."
 
Lyla arched one red eyebrow at T.B. as she accepted the bucket automatically into her hands. She looked at it, expression obviously dubious and mildly put off by the idea of having her very own personal vomit bucket. Finally, she set it on the floor and nudged it with her toe as far to the side as it would go.

"I think simplest is best. Hi-low," Lyla voted. After a short pause, she added, "Bets. High card sets a bet, the penalty for refusing is ... tequila."

The flaw in drinking games, Lyla mused, was that the penalty was always something you wanted to be doing, anyway. But she got that these kinds of things were fueled more by people's natural proclivity toward competition than any actual fear of the liquor itself. Bragging rights were a perfectly respectable reward for a job well done.

Lyla realized she was lapsing into some kind of thought loop that was probably going to end in her using the bucket out of sheer horror that she'd come to think so much like T.B. So she shook the haze of intellectual grandeur out of her head and forced up a smile.

"Let's play the game."
 
He grinned and nodded to her terms. He shuffled a couple of times, a crisp ripping of the cards between his fingers.

"Yes, let's."

He slammed the deck down on the edge of the end table between the couches upon which they were lounging, and then, his eyes not breaking their locked gaze with hers, he slid his fingers down and made the cut...

~~~~~

The record player was repeating it's endless thump-thump noise, signifier of the end of the record, the only noise in the room besides soft breathing. The empty tequila bottle lay on its side, and T.B. lay on his back, shirtless, not that one could really tell with the thick thatch of hair all over his chest that got marginally thinner at his shoulders and down his arms. He reclined as he usually did, and even had pulled out his brightly-colored sleeping pillow to cushion his head. Lyla, on the other hand, lay mostly on her stomach, and was cushioned primarily by T.B., nuzzled gently against the soft hair on his reasonably hard but pliant muscular chest. Their legs were semi-entangled, and his outer foot was resting on the edge of what had been crudely labeled with marker as "Lyla's Bukket," complete with a shaky smiley face and hearts.

Somewhere in the top of the doorless walk-in closet, an ancient alarm clock, misfiring on a couple of its LEDs on the number read-out, nevertheless reached its appointed moment and began to beep shrilly. This startled T.B. enough that he jerked awake, clutching Lyla against him reflexively and kicking his foot enough to send Lyla's (thankfully empty) Bukket careening across the room, bonging loudly off the far wall. His eyes glanced about wildly for about half a second, then he relaxed, realizing where he was. Then he winced as the aftermath of the "ta-kill-ya" earned its nickname. That's when he glanced down at Lyla and smiled gently (in part because smiling broadly would have hurt too much).
 
Lyla stirred, due in part to the trilling of the alarm clock as well as T.B.'s sudden jolt and kick. She was slow in surfacing to consciousness, however, still drowsy and fuzzy with the hangover that threatened to knock her upside the head the moment she opened her eyes. She felt it looming in the periphery of her senses and decided to screw her eyes shut tighter and burrow down further into the warmth beneath her cheek.

She reached out with the hand not currently buried under her own weight--and painfully asleep by this point--to gather her pillow up closer to her, but found in the course of her blind search that she was not actually resting on a pillow, but on something harder and warmer. And hairier.

Lyla's fingers carded through the hair experimentally, until the pads of her fingers brushed the soft skin beneath it. It was warmer there, and she followed that silkiness sleepily with her hand until she found something small and kind of naked--more naked, compared to the rest of that broad expanse of what she was only now starting to realize was a chest--and softer still, and growing more pointed by the moment as she drew her fingers back and forth across it.

"Mmph," she said, softly, and burrowed her nose into T.B. like she could just hide from the impending pain of overindulgence.
 
T.B. was quietly gratified to have Lyla nuzzling into him. He entertained private fantasies of closeness and cuddling, which, in his current mindset, seemed more appealing than cuddling, while Lyla's hand slid across his ribs and up his chest.

And then she started playing with his nipple.

He grimaced with the effort to keep himself from either laughing or pushing her violently away. The intensely ticklish pleasure/pain radiated from his nipples and seemed to send jolts directly to his spine, making him stiffen in more ways than one. He found himself whimpering as he tried to gently reach up without fully disturbing her and pry her hand away from his nipple. Or at least clasp it so she wasn't goddamn playing with it!

He finally took hold of her hand and held her fingers in a gently affectionate way, effectively killing two metaphorical birds with one hand. The braying alarm clock stopped itself, finally, timing out, and he sighed a little in relief. Then he sighed again, realizing today was the day they were going to meet with the telepath. He debated just letting her rise on her own, but given the nature of their drunkenness, he wasn't willing to wait as long as it could take.

So finally, he just kind of squeeze-nudged her, not wanting to disturb her but feeling like he had to. "Hey. Lyla. Hey! Time to get up! Gently, now, but time to awaken!"
 
Lyla lifted her head, opened eyes which refused to focus on any on particular spot, and instantly regretted it. She dropped her head back down onto T.B.'s chest and groaned.

"Mmph," she said, and that single non-syllable was filled with a mixture of pain, despair, and general incoherency.

And, God, it was slowly coming back to her, where she was and what had happened and how she had a face full of non-fur and T.B. was gently cradling her hand and in any other situation, she may have had the decency to blush or fidget or reacted on any level, but at that moment there simply wasn't room inside her demolished brain for anything but the momentous effort to keep perfectly, gloriously still.

After a while, when her stomach had stopped its rolling and her head had stopped screaming at her to just put a bullet in it and end both their suffering, she cracked one eyelid, glanced around, and said, voice dry and hoarse, "Shower."
 
“Nothing but cold water here, just like your place,” he murmured softly, trying to be sympathetic to her head. His voice still rumbled through his chest, though, even when he half-whispered. “But you're welcome to it. Do you want me to walk you there?”

He himself was thinking he needed a large glass of water, and perhaps a nosh, to settle his own lingering headache. It was all about the dehydration, he knew that, but doing something about it would involve actually moving, which... other than the pain his headache was causing him, the one positive thing about the morning was the girl half-lying on him, the warmth between their sleeping bodies still trapped in their clothes.

But again, he had to admit, he was rather the fool for even entertaining such an idea. Despite how affectionate she'd been the night before, he was old enough to recognize when the booze was talking, and he also knew not to substitute one kind of affection for another.

She'd needed a friend for a long time (for if she had any further up the buildings, she'd be hiding out with them rather than with him), and she needed a mentor, a father figure, and he'd been both of those, and hoped to continue. Adding another dimension to it was problematic. Exquisitely tempting, of course; he'd been without any sort of meaningful female contact in literally decades, and Lyla was not only female, she was lovely, and had a wonderfully challenging and sweet personality as well, which he found equally enthralling. But he knew part of the affection she might have felt for him was due to there being literally no other options available, and that was another element he didn't feel sanguine about.

There were many things he'd do out of desperation and loneliness. Taking advantage of Lyla was not one of them.

“If you want, I'll run you a bath with the heater in it; it'll be hot faster that way. But if I do that, you gotta drink the water I'll be bringing you, first.”
 
With an effort bordering on miraculous, Lyla managed to sit up, careful not jar T.B. or herself overly much in the process. She disentangled their legs and leaned back against the sofa while the room settled itself and stopped pitching back and forth.

She put her head back, shut her eyes, and said, as if she were agreeing to something particularly foul, "Deal." She wasn't sure she could keep down her own saliva at this point, never mind foreign liquids, but she was willing to give it a shot if it meant T.B. would be the one doing the leg work. Her own legs were definitely in no state to be doing work at the moment.

She lifted an arm weakly, gestured toward the open doorway. "Go. Now. Before I change my mind."
 
He was only a little staggery as he came back with a large plastic tumbler full to the brim. "I got your favorite flavor of puri-drops; thankfully, I had those, mango, and passionfruit. Drink up." He went back to the kitchen to get his own tumbler, and then ducked out to run the bath. The bathwater rattled and splashed around the tub as the heater hummed, and he took long sips off his tumbler, staring meditatively at the roiling water. His headache was already fading, one of the advantages of his superior recovery capabilities, so he was getting clear-headed enough to consider... well, to consider Lyla.

Her attractiveness, both objectively and to him, was not a factor; it was assumed, a fact. The question, then, was how to react to... whatever she felt for him. Yes, she cared for him, he knew that already, and the tequila allowed her outside of her psychological armor to demonstrate that. And he was admittedly morally weak enough to enjoy that demonstration -- it had been so LONG, really, even for him. But then Tav was not easy to get over, so that didn't surprise him. But what to do with Lyla? She had been affectionate, and part of him had longed for that, but he couldn't let himself indulge his own wishful thinking. It's not as if...

Wait. There was something, some part of his memory of last night, fuzzy but present, some sensory stimuli he hadn't placed at the time, but which tickled his recollection just a touch. It was something just on the tip of his brain, just out of reach, but there was enough he instinctively realized without being able to consciously summon it forth that made him hesitate on completing his previous thoughts.

But now, but now, the bath was deep enough, and the heater was glowing merrily. The water was warm, and would get warmer; it was time to see if Lyla was ready to actually take the bath.

"Knock, knock," he said, walking much steadier as he appeared in the living room doorway. "How are you doing? The bath is just about ready, if you are."
 
Lyla sipped cautiously at her watermelon flavored water. She wasn't entirely convinced it wasn't going to surge right back up the moment it hit her unsteady stomach, and she cast her attention around the room for her bucket and spotted it, now overturned and labeled, "Lyla's Bukket."

She had no recollection of that happening, she realized. She had no recollection of most of the night, in fact, and the handwriting was so shaky she couldn't recognize whether it was her own. She decided to give herself the benefit of the doubt and go with not, and then busied her mind with carefully avoiding any memories that might crop up of the previous evening. She could only imagine what she might have done or said while blackout drunk.

Only it was too late, because she'd woken up wrapped around T.B. and it was pretty much impossible not to notice that. She'd burrowed into his chest like she belonged there, and she recalled, despite her greatest internal prostestations, the sensation of T.B.'s firm back against her palm, his arms around her, and her own face buried in his neck.

If she hadn't been so pale and clammy with hangover, she might have blushed. As it stood, her dehydrated system just didn't have the juice, so she sat there, dazed, staring at the picture frames hung above the record player. Timothy, she remembered.

When T.B. returned, she nearly spilled her water everywhere with her startled jerk. She dragged her mind back to the present, looked up at him, and offered what was quite possibly the weakest smile in the history of the world. "Uh, yeah," she said, and struggled to her feet, careful of the tumbler in her hand and the unsteadiness in her legs.

"Um," she said, because she had no words in her mind, except ones that ought not to be said out loud. "Yes," she said again, and awkwardly sidestepped T.B. and headed in the direction of the bathroom.
 
"Don't forget to turn off the heater when you take it out," he said gently as she passed. He knew she was used to doing that in her own place, but he didn't want her to neglect something in her current state and hurt herself.

When the bathroom door shut, he sighed. He had no way of knowing how long she was going to be, and he was feeling much better. He drank more water, and then moved to the chest of drawers, finding clean clothes. Then he wandered into his utility room.

There was work to do, of course. Ever since Lyla had moved into the ground-level space, he'd moved his archaeological finds up to the utility space, but given his work with her, training and providing supplies, he hadn't done very much with his most recent finds, much less mounted an expedition to find anything else. So while he waited for Lyla to make herself clean as she wanted, he busied himself with examining and opening up his latest finds. After a while, he brought in a record player, and put on some background music.

By the time she came out of the bath, he was fully absorbed in digging some kind of dirt out of a locking mechanism on a box, singing along absent-mindedly with a strange song on the record player, but keeping up with every lyric.
 
Lyla took her time in the bath, and though she knew it was petty and ungrateful and completely beneath her, the entire time she was mentally lamenting the lack of a proper shower. A bath just couldn't beat the hangover out of her body the way a shower could, but she wouldn't be airing this particular grievance with T.B.

Who she was very carefully not thinking about as she dried and dressed in her same clothes.

She emerged from the bathroom with her hair still wet, but mostly neat, hanging down around her chin in one sleek red curtain. Her eyes were still a little red and the skin around them was thin with exhaustion, but she looked better and, more importantly, felt better.

She followed the sound of T.B.'s voice to the utility room. He was singing along to some song, and the closer she got to T.B. the more clearly she could make out the words. He was listing, in order, the elements on the periodic table. Set to music. She managed to contain her laughter, but not her smile, as she propped herself in the doorway to the utility room and watched him work.

"Science nerd," she said, softly because she knew he'd hear her, whatever the volume. And then, without waiting for a response, she went on, "I'm human again, I think. So whenever you're ready to head down, so am I."
 
He looked up as she spoke, interrupting his recitation of the lyrics, and he smiled, less guardedly, showing a flash of teeth, even, which was rare for him. "Elocution is important, you know. And there's only so much actual Gilbert and Sullivan I can stand before I run the risk of breaking the damn record." He put his tools down, blew gently on the lock, and then gave the latch a push. The mechanism clicked and the lid of the box popped open. "Ahhh... let's see..." He flipped through. "Liberace, Liberace, Basie, Goodman... lots of jazz in this one, big band, easy listening." He sighed. "I had hoped for something new, but what are you gonna do?"

He stood and rubbed his hands together, brushing them free of any leftover dirt. "All right, I have fresh clothes on, let me get my outerwear." He rose and moved over to the closet area, selecting the day's coat and hat. He tried his best not to think too hard about how she'd feel against his back, her arms around him. He already was going to miss the scent of her in his house, in his room. But she was still around, and she'd be back, he was sure. Well, he hoped, at least.

A thought struck him as he shrugged on his coat. "And you're wrong. You've always been human. No matter what they say."
 
Lyla couldn't contain her smirk. "Don't be so sensitive," she chided around that smile. "It's just an expression."

She paused and her mouth puckered into a little frown. She'd been very carefully not thinking of T.B. and the downward descent, especially with her stomach in its presently precarious state, but there wasn't any way around it. They had a psychic to meet.

"Okay," Lyla said, voice firm, and she approached T.B. with quick, steady strides. She opened her arms, as if she were after a hug. "Time for another piggy back ride of doom?"
 
"Unless you're ready to try a bit of flight," he said wryly. "You'll be able to do that eventually, but... let's not push it." He turned and let her grip him around the neck. Even through the layers of clothes, he could feel the softness of her body pressed against his back, smell the freshly-washed skin so close to his nose. He hefted her on his back, and moved immediately to the vestibule. He pushed the cover wide open to the dim, wet day; it was more rainy than usual, suggesting some actual precipitation was mixed in with the dripping condensation. He poked his masked face out, leaving enough room for Lyla to peek out as well, and made sure there wasn't anyone around to see them. Then he moved quickly, easing out of the window and clambering down quickly, first to the balcony level then to the street. He let her off his back, then, onto the slick pavement, and felt a little less warm in a way that had nothing to do with body heat.

"Plenty of time before your appointment. Go home and relax. Would you like me to ... " he trailed off, unable to complete the thought. What could he do? They weren't training that day, he didn't have anything else planned to do. So he just trailed off, then tilted his head and shrugged. He was smiling slightly, but she couldn't see that under the Phoba mask.
 
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