Tav studied him.
At the honest asking quality of his expression — no management, no deflection, just the direct want of something real.
"Yes," he said.
"Good." Alistair kissed him then — gently, with a decision that had been made before the moment and was now simply enacted. His thumbs were still at Tav's jaw and his grip was light and Tav put his right hand on Alistair's shoulder and held himthere, and the corridor was lit by the clinical fluorescence of a medical facility and outside a winter morning was arriving over flat countryside and none of that was what either of them was paying attention to.
When they separated Alistair stayed close — forehead almost against Tav's, eyes closed.
"The safe house," he said.
"Yes."
"Four hours."
"Yes."
"And then we stop," he said. "For a while. We actually stop."
Tav looked at him.
"Yes," he said.
Alistair opened his eyes.
"Are you in pain?" he asked.
"Yes."
"How much?"
"Manageable."
Alistair held his gaze with the expression he'd been cataloguing since week two — the one that meant he had an opinion about Tav's use of the word manageable and was choosing not to deploy it immediately.
"Come on," he said.
He stood and offered his right hand — unhurried, certain — and Tav took it.
• • •
• • •
After the clinic, before the road north.
The car park of the medical facility at four-thirty in the morning had the deserted feel that places that exist for purpose rather than presence — the empty spaces waiting for the day shift, the amber security lights, the absence of anyone who didn't have a reason to be there.
Alistair stood beside the car and studied the sky.
The sky was the deep color of the last stage of night.
Tav was in the car, in the back seat, already reclined slightly against the headrest with the tired agreement to rest and was encountering resistance from the body that had been in sustained operational mode for sixteen hours.
Alistair stood beside the car and breathed.
This was something he did when the managed competence had been sustained long enough to require release — the practice of stopping and breathing, not meditation and not processing, just: release.
He had done it outside clinic rooms before. Outside the rooms where people he cared about were being assessed by physicians who would tell him what damage had been done.
