"The personality." Alistair gestured vaguely with his reclaimed coffee mug. "You hide it under the serial killer energy. I've been wondering."
Tav looked at him flatly. "It's not yet six in the morning."
"Time is irrelevant to observation." He seemed genuinely pleased with himself. "You glare like that naturally, or is there a warm-up routine?"
Tav dried the pan and put it back. Behind him he was aware of Alistair moving through the kitchen — openingthe fridge, retrieving things, navigating the space with the particular efficiency like he had already quietly memorized it. The movements were light and controlled and fractionally too deliberate in their apparent carelessness.
Then the presence of him shifted: closer.
Tav turned.
Alistair stood directly behind him, close enough that Tav registered warmth before he registered the distance. He was holding out a fresh cup of coffee, steam rising into the early-morning kitchen air, and he watched Tav with those amber eyes that saw more than they admitted to with an expression that was almost — almost — guileless. Neither of them moved.
"I'm not poisoning you," Alistair said.
"That reassurance came unusually quickly."
"You were giving the mug a very peculiar look."
"I'm naturally suspicious."
"Of everyone?"
"Yes."
Something passed through Alistair's expression — not the amusement Tav had expected, but something quieter. Recognition, or its close relative. Gone almost immediately, replaced by the easy surface he seemed to wear the way other people wore clothing.
"That sounds exhausting," he said. He said it lightly, but lightly in the way things were said when the observation underneath them was real.
Tav took the mug. Careful, deliberate contact, the pads of his fingers brushing the ceramic without touching the hand that held it.
Alistair stepped back.
The space between them expanded. Something in Tav's chest did not correspondingly ease, which he knew and filed away as a variable requiring monitoring.
Annoying.
"Normal roommates ask questions," Alistair said, moving to the island and settling onto a barstool with the proprietary ease that was apparently a fixed characteristic rather than a temporary affectation.
"Basic ones. Where are you from, what are you studying, do you have strong feelings about the dishwasher. That sort of thing."
"I prefer useful questions."
Alistair lifted both eyebrows. "Ask me something useful, then."
Tav regarded him across the kitchen. The morning light was shifting toward the pale grey of early dawn now, the city beginning its gradual lightening outside the windows.
"You're left-handed," Tav said. "But you favor your right shoulder despite that. The tension pattern suggests an old injury — or conditioning against a natural instinct."
Alistair was very still for a beat.
"Okay," he said.
"The left ear is slightly higher. You tilt your head to compensate when you're listening carefully, but only when you think no one is watching."
"Jesus," Alistair said softly. Not upset. Something closer to delighted in an unsettled way, like a man who had just noticed the floor was glass.
"You said you did martial arts."
