Chapter 11
Tobias
By noon, I had concluded that breakfast had been an unnecessary variable.
Not unpleasant. Neither was it unsuccessful.
But it was simply unnecessary in the context of his employment.
Cove had arrived on time, transported by Ben according to the new arrangement. There were several restaurants within sufficient distance, and Ben was more than capable of procuring whatever food Cove preferred without difficulty.
Mushrooms, carrots, turkey, fish, greasy foods, olives, and Vegemite excluded. I had already thrown out the Vegemite that’d been on the table earlier.
This morning, instead of instructing Ben to procure breakfast for Cove on the drive here, I had woken earlier than required, selected ingredients myself, and prepared breakfast with a degree of attention I rarely gave to my own meals.
I did not cook often. It was not because I lacked the ability, but because the process tended to irritate me.
It required patience for a reward too temporary to justify the effort, and most days I regarded food as maintenance rather than experience.
This morning had been different.
I had cared whether he liked it.
That was the problem.
Not the cooking itself. Not the time spent preparing something he could have easily obtained elsewhere. The problem was the importance I had assigned to his reaction before he ever stepped into the room.
I stood in my private office, one hand firmly holding the edge of the desk, my attention fixed on the live camera feed from the aquarium wing rather than the document open in front of me.
Cove was in the predator corridor.
He had been there for fourteen minutes.
At first, he had been making notes on the feeding schedule.
Then, as often happened with him, observation had overtaken task.
He sat now on the floor with his work tablet balanced against one bent knee, watching the moray system similarly to the way astronomers gaze at distant stars—patiently, reverently, as though the darkness might reveal its secrets if he only waited long enough.
It fascinated me.
Cove in conversation was restless, apologizing, filling space and then retreating from his own voice once he realized he had taken too much of it.
Cove before the water shed all of that. The unnecessary movement disappeared.
His expression went quiet—not empty, never that, but open in a way I’d yet to observe in him anywhere else.
He seemed most himself when he forgot himself entirely.
That was why I had made breakfast.
I disliked the conclusion as soon as it appeared.
I had made breakfast because Cove required proper care.
There.
That was better.
If he was to become part of my collection, then his environment mattered.
His comfort mattered. His routines, preferences, nutritional patterns, rest cycles, and sources of stress all mattered.
Any living thing brought into a controlled habitat required a period of careful acclimation.
Too much pressure too soon, and even hardy specimens deteriorated.
Too little structure, and they failed to establish themselves.
Cove was not fragile, but he did require certain things to thrive.
Predictability. Warmth. Food he liked. Work that respected his intelligence. Space that belonged to him. Access to water, silence, and the animals that pulled that look of awe from him.
The thought settled me.
Yes.
It was husbandry.
That was all.
I had been tending to the conditions of his acclimation.
On the monitor, Cove had scooted closer to the moray tank, his lips moving. The audio was too low to catch the words from this feed, though I suspected he was speaking to them in that low, fond voice he used with creatures most people had the sense to fear.
I increased the audio slightly.
“…I know, I know,” he murmured. “You’re not scary. You just have terrible public relations. How can anyone not love how perfect you are?”
A smile pulled at my mouth, and I lowered the audio again.
The explanation was sound. Cove belonged here. I had brought him here because he wasn’t just a caretaker—he was an exhibit all of his own. The pièce de résistance for my collection.
And yet, the word collection had changed since I first applied it to him.
For months, the idea had been simple enough to examine.
I wanted him here. I wanted access to him.
I wanted the right to observe him whenever curiosity demanded it, wanted him close enough that his movements became part of the house’s daily rhythm.
I had wanted to remove him from the public aquarium, where other people interrupted him, misunderstood him, and expected him to lessen himself into something easier to manage.
I had wanted him in my space.
That was collection.
Selection.
Acquisition.
Containment.
Preservation.
It had always been clean, in concept.
Now he was here, though, and the shape of the wanting had become less clean.
Cove was not like the others.
The ghost shark required dim water and stable conditions. The sea snakes required quiet, controlled access, an exact understanding of risk. The cuttlefish required enrichment, shelter, and attention to subtle shifts of color and texture.
Cove required all of that and more.
He required conversation.
He required reassurance, though he rarely asked for it directly. He required permission to take up space, even when the space had been built for him. He required reminders that his value was not in question. He required the illusion of choice in places where I would have preferred obedience.
That last part complicated matters.
I wanted him to choose this house.
Not merely the job. Not the salary. Not the visa security or the rare animals or the cushy office.
The house.
Me.
That realization remained on the edge of thought, difficult to look at directly.
I preferred direct things.
This was not direct.
If I wanted Cove in my collection, what did that mean in practice? Not simply that he worked here. That was already done. Not that he arrived every morning and left every evening under Ben’s care. That was an improvement, but not enough.
Did I want him housed here?
Yes.
Fed here?
Obviously.
Observed here?
Constantly.
Touched?
The thought came without permission.
I went still.
On the monitor, Cove lifted one hand toward the glass, hovering over the glass near the moray’s line of sight as it emerged from the rockwork to watch him back.
Touched.
The word did not leave.
I had imagined biting him once and dismissed it as an aberrant impulse.
I had traced the shape of his mouth with my gaze, memorized the color that rose beneath his skin when embarrassed, and the narrow, delicate line of his throat when he tipped his head back to laugh visited me in my dreams. I had noticed the way his hair looked bound and unbound, wet and dry, wind-blown and styled to perfection.
Those were observations, but they had become something else without my permission.
Possession was simple in theory. Ownership had rules. Care had methods. Husbandry had measurable outcomes.
But Cove was not an animal, no matter how often my mind attempted to place him into categories I understood. He could not be acquired in the ordinary sense, only encouraged toward the enclosure until he mistook the open door for an invitation rather than a trap.
For reasons I did not yet wish to examine, it mattered to me that Cove himself chose to step closer.
The office door opened behind me.
I did not minimize the feed as Ben entered with a tablet in one hand and a paper bag in the other, the scent of warm food following him in.
“Lunch,” he said.
I glanced at the bag.
“No mushrooms?”
“No mushrooms, no carrots, no turkey, no fish, no olives, no Vegemite, nothing greasy.” He shook the bag lightly. “I do listen.”
“Good.”
Ben’s gaze moved past me to the monitor, where Cove had returned to making notes.
“He’s doing well,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Have you been watching him all morning?”
“More or less,” I replied.
Ben set the bag on the side table and approached with the confidence of someone who had long ago stopped being intimidated by me.
“He’s keeping you distracted,” Ben hummed.
“I am not distracted,” I corrected, scoffing. “I am focused.”
Ben grinned at me and chuckled, “Focused on him.”
“Yes,” I said. “That is what I just said.”
“No,” Ben replied, still wearing that irritating expression of amusement. “You said focused. I clarified the subject.”
“The subject was already implied.”
“To you, maybe.”
I looked away from him and back to the monitor, where Cove had stood again and was now walking to a different tank.
Ben set the paper bag on the corner of my desk and came to stand beside me, his attention on the screen rather than on my face.
“You know,” he said, voice quieter now, “I’m actually glad.”
“That Cove is competent?”
“That you’re this focused on him.”
I glanced at him, finding him no longer smiling. Or rather, he was, but not in the usual way.
“I haven’t had to clean up any messes lately,” Ben said.
A statement that could have referred to broken equipment, failed negotiations, difficult people, or any number of tedious complications that occasionally required Ben’s discretion.
It did not.
We both knew that.
The room went quiet around us.
“I do not create messes without cause,” I said.
“I know.”
“You say that as though you disagree.”
“I don’t disagree,” Ben replied. “Not exactly.” He looked at the screen with a thoughtful expression, before adding, “I’m loyal to you. You know that.”
“I do.”
He wouldn’t be in my orbit if I thought differently.
“And I’m not suddenly developing a conscience at this late stage, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I was not worried.”
“Good.” His mouth curved faintly. “Because I’d hate to ruin our working relationship with personal growth.”
I let out a quiet breath that resembled amusement.
“I mean it,” he continued, and the levity drained again. “Whatever you are, whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ll do later—I know where I stand.”
“With me.”
“With you,” he confirmed.
Ben had entered my life as an employee. Efficient, personable, somewhat overconfident, but useful in ways I had not anticipated.
He handled people better than I did. He remembered birthdays, smoothed offended egos, knew when to offer coffee and when to offer silence.
At first, his loyalty had been transactional because all loyalty was transactional until proven otherwise.
Then years passed.
He stayed.
He adapted.
He learned when to look away.
He learned when not to ask.
And, perhaps most importantly, he learned who I was without making the mistake of believing he could fix me.
That kind of loyalty was rare.
I also found myself undeserving of it, but I suppose that doesn’t matter.
“I appreciate your consistency,” I told him.
Ben turned his head and looked at me, brows raised. “That might be the most emotionally generous thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t make it unpleasant,” I grunted.
“My point is,” he said, casting a quick glance back at the screen. “I’m glad he’s here. I’m glad you have something to put all of that”—he gestured loosely toward me, as if my entire existence were an inconvenience he could not be bothered to define—“into.”
“All of what?”
“Mate, if I knew how to describe it, I would.”
“Well, that’s not helpful.”
“Look, I just wanted to say that you’ve been calmer recently. Not normal, obviously. But calmer. Since you first saw him, there’s been less… overflow.”
Overflow.
That was one word for it.
There had always been pressure inside me.
A restlessness that gathered beneath the skin, quiet and patient until something irritated it enough to require resolution.
Most people created noise simply by existing.
Too many voices, too many assumptions, and too much incompetence were set loose in spaces I was expected to tolerate.
Occasionally, that pressure required an outlet.
Ben had been useful in the aftermath of such outlets.
“You prefer me preoccupied.”
“I prefer not having to lug bodies to the car and drive around trying to find a good dumpsite while worrying about the cops being on my ass.”
A reasonable preference.
“So yeah, I like having him around. It’s not even just that he distracts you. He redirects you.”
“Redirected,” I repeated. “That feels right.”
Cove had not removed the pressure.
He had simply redirected it.
Before him, the restlessness had scattered. It attached itself to irritants, to problems, to people who became unfortunate by virtue of being inefficient, dishonest, invasive, or simply present at the wrong moment.
Now, that attention had narrowed toward one subject with such completeness that everything else seemed less worth touching.
“I don’t know if that’s better.”
Ben sighed. “It is for everyone else.”
I studied him for a long moment. “You are encouraging this.”
“I am.”
“Despite the risks.”
“Because of the risks, Tobias.” Ben then pushed away from the desk and picked up the lunch bag again. “I’ll take this to the kitchen. Invite him in when you’re ready.”