"You knew I'd be here," Tav said.
"Yes."
The honesty was clean and unqualified, delivered without any of the elaboration or deflection that usually accompanied Alistair's more direct moments. Tav absorbed it.
"You've been watching the Dean," Tav said.
"Professionally."
"With access to his schedule."
"Yes."
"And you knew I was also watching him."
Alistair held his gaze steadily, the midnight office dim around them, the city visible through the closed blinds as a diffuse amber glow. The casualness had dropped away. He was precise and direct and more himself, Tav thought, than Tav had yet seen him.
"Yes," he said again.
"You're not surprised I'm here."
"No."
"And I'm not surprised you're here."
"No."
The space between them held that mutual recognition without comment. Outside in the corridor, silence. From somewhere in the building, the distant mechanical sound of the heating system cycling.
"You could have told me," Tav said.
Alistair's expression moved. "Could I?"
Tav considered. Then: "No."
"No." Something softened slightly in Alistair's eyes. "We're both in impossible positions, Tav.
You know that." Before Tav could respond, footsteps sounded from the corridor.
Both of them moved — no signal, no communication, just parallel recognition and response. Tav reached Alistair in two steps. Alistair grabbed his arm at the same moment. They were behind the bookshelf at the office's back wall before the footsteps reached the door.
The door opened.
Dean Voss walked in, humming something low and slightly off-key, carrying a glass of bourbon. He moved to his desk, sat down, turned on a lamp, and began sorting through the papers there with the distracted industry of a man catching up on work he'd postponed.
Tav stood in the narrow space behind the bookshelf.
Alistair stood in the same space.
The proximity was immediate and total. Tav could feel the warmth radiating from him in the two inches of air between them, could hear his breathing — controlled and slow, the respiratory pattern of someone managing elevated heart rate rather than resting. Could see, in the dim light that filteredthrough the gaps in the shelf, the sharp line of Alistair's jaw and the careful draw of his attention as he watched the Dean through those same gaps.
Waiting.
"If you glare any harder," Alistair breathed, barely audible, his mouth less than an inch from Tav's ear, "people are going to make assumptions."
Tav looked down at him. At this distance it was impossible not to.
"There is tension," he said.
