"Yes."
"Which is?"
Alistair looked at him with the particular honesty of someone who had made their decision far enough in advance that saying it now was simply reporting rather than risking.
"That I have been in this kitchen at five in the morning since the second day because I wanted to be near you," he said. "And that I drew your face because understanding you seemed important and you made yourself difficult to understand by conventional means. And that when I watched you across a café and manufactured a situation to see what you'd do—" He stopped. "I already knew what I hoped you'd do." Tav held his gaze.
"And did I?" he said.
Alistair held his gaze with the warm sharp eyes.
"You came back," he said. "You always come back."
The apartment was warm and the coffee was getting cold and the morning was arriving regardless, and Tav looked at this person who had been watching him since the first morning and had made a habit of making the coffee good and had drawn hisface with the attention of someone who wanted to understand rather than possess.
"Yes," he said simply.
Alistair smiled.
• • •
• • •
The next morning was Sunday.
Sunday in the apartment had a different quality from weekday mornings — the absence of coveridentity requirements, the city outside moving at its reduced weekend pace, the permission of a day that had no operational obligations.
Tav woke at five, and stayed in bed until six.
This was unusual.
At six he got up and went to the kitchen and found Alistair already there — also unusual — sitting at the kitchen table with a coffee and the sketchbook, that was open.
He was not drawing.
He was looking at what he'd drawn previously, as someone reviewing their own work from a slight distance.
He looked up when Tav appeared.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi," Tav said.
He made coffee.
He was aware, with the deep awareness of someone who had processed significant information overnight, that the apartment was different. Not the apartment itself — the physical space was unchanged. But occupying it was different. The weight of what had happened the previous night sat in the morning with the permanence of things that had been decided rather than discovered.
He brought his coffee to the table and sat.
Alistair closed the sketchbook without comment, which was itself a comment — the deliberate act of closure, of one register giving way to another.
"How's the shoulder?" Tav said.
"Fine," Alistair said. "You taped it well."
"You should see a physician."
"Eventually." He held his coffee with both hands. "How are you?"
