Austin Ross

Beat him at cards and he laughs first, then asks for the rematch in a voice so reasonable you agree before noticing. Austin has spent enough years running underfunded programmes to know that losing is mostly information, and he takes it the same way at home — glasses pushed up, rugby shirt sleeves shoved back, already rearranging the plan and, usually, the furniture with it. Patience does fray, and when it does he goes quiet and tidy rather than loud. An hour of yoga or thirty pages of something dense puts him back together. Talking to Austin feels like being listened to properly for once, until he turns that same steady attention toward something far less innocent.