Tav watched him.
At the careful composure and the honesty beneath it and the fact that he had, for reasons Tav was beginning to understand completely, chosen to stay.
"You should have told me earlier," Tav said.
"I know."
"Any of it. The placement, the Protocol—"
"I know." He didn't defend it. Absorbed the accuracy of the criticism without building a case against it. "I was afraid of what you'd do with it."
"You thought I'd leave."
"I thought you'd report." He watched the window. "I thought you'd make the logical decision and dissolve the situation, and I—" He stopped. Looked back. "I didn't want that."
Tav absorbed the weight of that.
"What did you want?" he asked.
Alistair looked at him with the expression he wore when he'd dropped every defense.
"This," he said simply. "Exactly this. Whatever this is." He smiled faintly — not the warm performance, not the practiced charm. Just a small, real curve of mouth. "Even though it's obviously catastrophic."
Tav pushed away from the counter and crossed to the island and stood in front of Alistair, who didn't move back. They stood in the kitchen at three in the morning and looked at each other, and Tav felt
the full complicated weight of what the last three weeks had been — the lies and the truths and the mornings and the genuine warmth and the very fear, newly named, of what it would mean to lose it.
He reached forward.
Cupped Alistair's jaw in his hands.
Alistair exhaled.
"This is going to be complicated," Tav said.
"I know."
"Ablation is going to—"
"I know."
"We need to think about—"
"Tomorrow," Alistair said. "Think about it tomorrow."
Tav found his face.
Then pressed his forehead against Alistair's, and they stood there in the kitchen, and for a little while neither of them thought about Ablation at all.
• • •
• • •
— NAOMI —
Naomi Reyes had been a journalist for eleven years, long enough to know the shape of a story before it had fully shown itself.
This story had the shape of something large.
