Alistair's eyes moved to his. Something darkened in them — heat, or its precursor, moving through the amber like light through glass. "Yes," he said. "I noticed that."
Eleven minutes passed.
Voss gathered his things, turned off the lamp, and left.
The door clicked shut. Neither of them moved.
Then Alistair exhaled softly. The sound of someone allowing something to decompress that had been held under considerable pressure.
"Well," he said quietly, into the sudden dark. "That was—"
"You're bleeding," Tav said.
Alistair blinked.
Tav's gaze had found it in the dim light — the darker stain spreading through the black fabric at Alistair's right side, low against his ribs.
"It's fine," Alistair said, with the flatness of someone who has made a habit of calling things fine when they are not.
"That stitching is uneven," Tav said.
Alistair looked down at himself and then back up with an expression caught between indignant and reluctantly impressed. "How did you see that in the dark?"
"Come back to the apartment," Tav said.
A pause.
"Why?"
Tav watched him steadily. At the too-careful way he was holding his right arm slightly out from his body, the old professional instinct overriding the performance of ease. At the blood he was either unaware of or had chosen to ignore.
"You need proper treatment," he said.
"You offering?"
"Yes."
The word came fast and certain, and something in it — the lack of qualification, the absence of the usual careful distance — made Alistair go still.
He watched Tav.
Then, very quietly: "Careful. You're starting to sound like you care what happens to me."
Tav said nothing. Which was its own kind of answer.
Interesting, he thought, looking at the ceiling. Very catastrophic indeed.
• • •
• • •
— Alistair—
Week four was the week Alistair stopped pretending not to notice things.
He had been noticing them from the beginning — this was honest; he was not a person who missed things and he had not missed a single significant thing about the apartment or its other occupant since day one. But the first three weeks had involved a performance of not noticing that was now, in week four, becoming unsustainable.
The performance was: he was here for the cover identity and the cover assignment. Voss was the target.
