"Since week two."
"Yes." His voice had changed register. Lower. The warmth more present, less managed. "I draw things I'm trying to understand."
"And?"
"I haven't finished understanding," Alistair said. "I don't think I'm going to."
Tav moved his hand — from the jaw to the angle of his neck, the warmth of him — and Alistair's breath changed in a way that Tav took in with the full attention he brought to things that mattered.
"Tav," he said.
"Yes."
"I need you to be sure."
Tav looked at him.
"Im sure," he said. "I've been managing it for weeks. Those are different things."
Something broke, very briefly, in Alistair's expression — the careful professional surface giving way to something thatwas not managed at all. He reached up, his left hand finding the back of Tav's neck with the warm certainty he had been thinking about exactly this, and pulled him down.
The kiss was not tentative.
Tav had memorized many things about Alistair over seven weeks. The way he moved, the way he spoke, the way he held things. He had not been able to catalogue this because he had not had the data.
He had it now: Alistair kissed with the same precise attention he brought to everything — complete, present, the full weight of his focus applied to the person in front of him. There was nothing performed about it. This was entirely, devastatingly real.
Tav kissed him back.
He had not been close to someone like this in nine years and that absence made itself known in the first thirty seconds — not painfully, as information. His body registering the relief of proximity that had been withheld for a long time. Alistair's hands moving through his hair with the focused attention of someone learning the shape of a thing they had been considering from a distance.
"You're thinking," Alistair said, against his mouth.
"I'm always thinking."
"Think less."
Tav held his gaze — the close look of a man who was approximately four inches from someone's face.
"That's not—"
"I know." He pulled him back down. "Try anyway."
Alistair's hand found his hair and tightened and the sound he made was entirely unmanaged — low and rough and nothing like his public register — and Tav filed it in the category of things he intended to be reliable about.
He was thorough.
Alistair, when he recovered the ability, was not passive about returning the attention. His hands were specific and unhurried, learning in return with the focused quality he gave his drawings — the full weight of his attention applied to its subject, which was now Tav.
Alistair made a sound against his shoulder.
"What are you doing," he said.
"Paying attention," Tav said.
"Tav."
"Yes."
