They stood on either side of the kitchen island in the long, warm fall of late afternoon light, and Tav did what he always did: he looked. The rings on Alistair's hands — three of them, distributed with apparent randomness that resolved, on close examination, into something more deliberate. The one on his right middle finger was engraved on the interior face, the text invisible from this distance. Not decorative. Functional, or commemorative, in a way that someone who wore jewellery purely as affectation would never bother with.
He watched the way Alistair stood: sightlines to both exits clear, weight balanced despite the apparent ease of the posture, never fully turning his back on Tav since he'd entered the room.
Aware.
Always aware.
"You watch people," Alistair said, "like you're cataloguing them."
"So do you."
The half-second pause before recovery was small enough to miss if you weren't paying attention.
Tav was paying attention.
"See something you like?" Alistair asked.
"You favor your right shoulder," Tav said, "despite being left-handed."
The silence that followed was brief and very precise.
Then Alistair laughed — genuine amusement, warm and unguarded, the first fully real expression he'd produced since Tav had walked through the door. "Most people lead with a name," he said. "You open with physiological observation. That's distinctive."
"You introduced yourself."
"Fair enough." He leaned back against the counter, arms crossing loosely over his chest. "So. What are we doing about the roommate situation? Because I've already committed emotionally to the left bedroom, and I make very poor decisions when displaced."
Tav picked up the coffee and drank.
It was better than expected.
"You're not touching my kitchen," he said.
A pause.
"That's your first rule?"
"Yes."
Something shifted in Alistair's expression — amusement deepening into something that looked, uncomfortably, like genuine delight. He studied Tav with those amber eyes that observed too much and gave back too little, and then he said, softly, "I have a feeling you're going to be extremely interesting to live with."
Tav set the mug down.
"You used my name earlier," he said. "Before I introduced myself."
Alistair went still.
Not dramatically. Not the whole-body freeze of someone caught. Just a stillness in someone who had been in continuous, calculated motion from the moment Tav had entered the apartment — an absence of movement where movement had been continuous.
"Did I?" he said.
"I haven't introduced myself."
The apartment was quiet. Outside, the city hummed its forty-storey distance below. The amber light shifted slightly as clouds moved across the horizon.
"Hm," said Alistair at last. His voice was perfectly composed. His eyes were not.
Tav watched him across the kitchen island and made a series of quick, quiet calculations.
