Alistair closed his eyes briefly. Opened them.
"Good," he said.
Outside, the storm continued its indifferent work. Inside the fire burned low and warm. Two people lay on the floor of a stone safe house on the coast of somewhere quiet and looked at each other and were, for this particular hour, not operatives or protocol subjects or Ablation assets or anything at all except the particular thing they'd been since the burned butter morning, which was: each other's.
"We should go to bed," Alistair said eventually.
"Probably."
"In a minute."
"Yes." Neither of them moved.
• • •
• • •
On the fifth day, Alistair drew Tav on the cliff path.
Not with the subject's knowledge — Tav was walking ahead, his right arm free and moving normally, the left in its sling, looking at the sea with someone discovering that the sea was interesting in a way that deserved sustained attention.
Alistair walked behind, sketchbook open, and drew.
Tav's posture on the cliff path was different from his posture in any indoor context. The deliberate precision — he had learned to move as efficiently as possible through any environment — was present, but looser. Not absent. Relaxed. The body's automatic economy doing its work without the additional overlay of managed alertness.
He was simply: walking on a cliff. Looking at the sea.
Alistair drew the posture and the sea and the light on the grey winter coast and the way Tav's coat moved in the cliff-edge wind and the shape of his shoulders and the shape of his attention.
He had been drawing Tav for several months. He had drawn him in kitchens and at tables and in cars and in moments of complete stillness and moments of significant motion. He had a record — more detailed than any surveillance archive — of the visual history of a person he had been paying attention to.
This was different from the others.
The others were observational. Accurate. The product of sustained careful attention directed at something that was worth understanding.
This was the product of sustained careful attention directed at something he loved.
The distinction was visible in the work. He had been doing this long enough to know when the work changed quality — when the attention shifted register and produced something that was not just accurate but inhabited. He had noticed it first in the week six drawings, the ones from the architecture seminar, and it had been present in every drawing since.
He was in love with the person walking ahead of him on the cliff path.
He had been for months.
He was at the safe house with him. He was drawing him in the morning light. He was going to go back to the kitchen and make coffee and bring it to the person who had told him he loved him in an ambulance and had meant it completely and had been meaning it for longer than that.
He closed the sketchbook.
He caught up.
Tav glanced at him.
"You were drawing," Tav said.
"Yes."
"Me."
"Yes." He fell into step beside him. "Is that—"
