Tav was aware, lying in the ambulance's clinical white interior with the countryside moving past the small window and Alistair sitting on the attendant's bench with his hand resting near Tav's arm in the way of someone choosing proximity — Tav was aware that the practicality and the sentiment were not mutually exclusive.
They had been moving north for approximately forty minutes when Alistair asked: "When did you fall in love with me?"
He asked it without preamble, without the usual construction of approach. Just the question, direct and clear.
"I told you," Tav said. "The sketchbook."
"I know when you knew." Alistair watched him with the amber eyes. "When did you fall?"
The distinction was precise, and Tav gave it the precision it deserved.
"The burned butter morning," he said.
Alistair blinked. "That's the same morning."
"Yes." Tav looked at the ceiling. "You handed me coffee you'd made better than you needed to. You had burned the butter, and you'd failed at what you were trying to cook, and you were standing there making good coffee as if — as if the coffee was the one thing you were going to maintain regardless of the rest." "And I thought: this person does things well because they've decided the doing matters. Not for an audience. Because the standard matters to them." He studied the ceiling. "And I thought: that's the most interesting thing I've seen anyone do in a very long time."
Alistair was very still.
"And then I thought," Tav continued, "that I was going to have a very significant problem." "You were right," Alistair said softly.
"Yes."
"The burned butter," he said. Not quite disbelief. Processing.
"When did you?" Tav asked.
Alistair looked at the floor.
"Day two," he said. "You walked through the kitchen at five in the morning without making any sound. I heard you come out of your room — I was awake, which you already knew — and I heard not
one footstep in the hallway. Nothing. And then you appeared in the kitchen doorway, and you looked at me like you'd found a variable you weren't expecting and were integrating it." "And I thought: this person moved through a hallway without sound in their own apartment, in the dark, at five in the morning, without thinking about it. That's not a professional quirk. That's someone who has lived in a very specific way for a very long time."
Tav said nothing.
"And then you gave me back the pan," Alistair said. "You cleaned it and dried it and gave it back without saying anything, and there was something in how you did it — like you were returning something that had value, not dismissing it — and I thought—" He stopped.
"What did you think?" Tav said.
"I thought this is the person." He looked at Tav directly. "I thought about it then. Day two. With the pan and the quiet footsteps and the five-in-the-morning certainty he has always been alone and has learned to be very precise about it." "I knew it then. I spent several more weeks arguing with myself about whether knowing it made sense."
"I love you," Tav said.
Alistair made a sound.
Tav turned his head.
Alistair was looking at him with an expression that was doing several things at once — he had been hoping for something and found its arrival more significant than the hoping.
"Tav," he said.
"I know it's the first time I've said it without—" "I've said it before in other ways. But this is the first time with this specific word."
"Yes," Alistair said. His voice had the rough quality it got when he stopped managing his register. "Yes, it is."
"I love you," Tav said again. More simply. The way you said things the second time, when the first time had established the word was available.
Alistair laughed softly. The real laugh — warm and slightly undone, the laugh of someone who had been afraid of something and found the fear was nothing at all.
