“Yes,” I said quietly.
His pupils expanded as we stood there, surrounded by his personal ocean.
“Yes?” he questioned, watching my facial expressions intently.
“Yes,” I repeated, my heart thumping against my chest in an effort to escape my body and sink into the water where it had always belonged. “I’ll do it.”
6
Tobias
From the moment he stepped through my front doors and began moving through the house as though it already belonged to him as much as it did to me, I had recognized the inevitability of this outcome with a clarity that bordered on certainty. Still, hearing him say it aloud—seeing the decision arrive in his posture, in the steadiness of his voice, in the way his gaze remained fixed not on the filtration arrays or the glass walls or the sweeping architecture of the collection, but on me—produced a distinct and unfamiliar warmth somewhere beneath my ribs.
“I’m pleased,” I replied.
It was not an adequate sentence.
It was, however, the most appropriate one available.
Cove laughed softly under his breath, as though he had expected something more elaborate in response, then turnedback toward the tank nearest him with an expression that was already shifting from decision to curiosity again.
He stepped closer to the glass where the ray had passed moments earlier, lifting his hand again in that unconscious hovering gesture he seemed unable to prevent himself from making whenever he approached water.
“You’ll need to adjust the feeding schedules slightly if you’re running this many predator rotations through the upper levels,” he said, already thinking ahead, already inhabiting the role he had just agreed to accept as though it had been waiting for him. “Otherwise, the activity spikes are going to stack.”
“They have been,” I said. “And please, feel free to make any changes you feel are necessary.”
Cove then turned again, moving deeper into the corridor of tanks, his steps slowing as his attention moved from one system to another with a familiarity that would have taken most professionals hours to develop. He tracked the current direction without checking the pump placement. He noticed shadow behavior in midwater schooling patterns. He adjusted his path through the space as though he instinctively understood how the animals perceived motion beyond the glass.
I followed him, not because he required supervision, but because he was exuding such radiance that I felt I couldn’t stand to miss.
He paused beside the larger reef system midway down the corridor, leaning forward a bit to examine the branching structures near the back wall where circulation shifted subtly between zones.
“You’re running alternating gyre patterns here,” he hummed, smiling at the tank. “That’s why the coral extension is so even.”
He stepped sideways to observe the tank from another angle, pushing his hair back behind his ear absently as he adjusted his line of sight along the flow path.
“The return placement must be hidden behind the secondary rockwork,” he murmured.
“Yes, it is.”
“That’s clever.”
It was.
But the satisfaction I experienced hearing him say that was disproportionate to the statement itself.
We continued walking together through the wing, moving quietly enough that the rhythm of the pumps became almost indistinguishable from the sound of the ocean beyond the glass walls of the house itself.
Cove asked questions sporadically, showing how his thoughts moved through systems rather than around them.
“How long did the cycling take on this structure?”
“Longer than expected.”
“Did you seed it from wild substrate or cultured stock?”
“Both.”
