INTO HIS HANDS

New arrival

I hear him before I see him.

A voice from the direction of Augustus's enclosure that I don't recognise. Which stops me immediately because Augustus has not tolerated unfamiliar voices since September. He has been at the back of his enclosure for four months. Quiet. Still. A seventeen year old lion who lost the person he was built around and has not known what to do with the absence.

I cross the north lot.

The man crouching outside the fence has his back to me. Sandy hair. Easy posture. The settled quality of someone who has decided this is exactly where they are going to be and is entirely comfortable with that decision.

He is talking to Augustus.

He says: I'm not here to replace anyone. He says it conversationally. Like they have been at this for a while. I want to be upfront about that because I think you deserve honesty more than you deserve comfort right now.

Augustus is at the fence.

Not the back.

The fence.

I stop walking.

The man says: my name is Theo. We were introduced officially but I wanted to do it properly. Without the audience. He settles back on his heels. Take your time. I have nowhere else to be.

I say: he hasn't come to the fence in four months.

The man turns around.

And my brain does something completely unhelpful.

It notices.

Theo Reeves is not what I expected from a lion tamer. I expected someone weathered. Practical. The specific utilitarian look of someone whose job requires them to be physically imposing.

He is physically imposing.

But not in the utilitarian way.

Sandy hair falling across his forehead. Brown eyes that are warm in the specific way that means actually warm rather than performing warmth. A jaw that belongs on someone who does not spend their days with lions. The easy confidence of someone who has never needed to announce himself in any room he has entered because the room has always already noticed him.

He smiles.

It is an extremely inconvenient smile.

He says: you must be Ivy.

I say: you got him to the fence.

He glances back at Augustus.

He says: early negotiations. He's deciding if I'm worth his time. He looks back at me with the warm eyes. I respect the process.

I say: he hasn't done that for anyone since my father died.

Theo's expression shifts.

Warm and careful at the same time.

He says: Rosa told me about your father. He says it without dancing around it. Thomas Calloway. The lion was his. That means something and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't.

I look at Augustus at the fence.

I say: he's been quieter.

Theo says: grief in animals is simpler than in people. It's just the absence and the body not knowing what to do with the absence. He pauses. He'll come back. Takes time and someone showing up every day whether or not he comes to the fence.

He produces two coffees from the ground beside him.

I say: where did those come from.

He says: I made them before I came out here. He holds one out entirely unbothered. I find if you anticipate what people need before they know they need it they're more likely to talk to you.

I take the coffee.

I say: that's either very thoughtful or very calculated.

He says: why not both.

He says it with the easy smile and I think two things simultaneously.

This man is going to be an enormous amount of trouble.

I am very glad he is here.

The company dinner is different from usual.

Theo Reeves has been at the Stellara for twelve hours and the cookhouse feels like someone opened a window.

By the time dinner starts he knows everyone's name. He has made Frank laugh once which is equivalent to a standing ovation and has somehow learned the coffee machine setting that Frank guards with his life.

He sits down beside me.

Warm in the physical proximity sense. Easy. The specific closeness of someone for whom personal space is a suggestion rather than a requirement.

He says: tell me about the act.

I tell him.

He listens with the full warm attention of someone for whom other people are genuinely interesting and he does not perform this. He actually finds me interesting. The specific quality of being found interesting by someone who has clearly found many people interesting is not supposed to feel this specific.

It feels specific.

He asks good questions. The kind that tell you the person asking has been listening to everything and has identified the thing underneath the thing you said.

At some point he says: the catcher.

I say: Zane Wilder.

He says: I saw him on the catch bar when I crossed the lot this afternoon. He pauses. A man who works like that doesn't drop people carelessly.

I say: the industry thinks otherwise.

He says: the industry builds stories around disasters. He says it simply. I've seen it happen.

I look at him.

He looks back with the warm brown eyes and something underneath the warmth that is more serious than the surface suggests.

He says: I came from the Aurelius company.

He says it with weight.

I file this.

He says: I know what it looks like when a story is built around someone to protect something else.

I say: what does it look like.

He says: it looks exactly like what happened to Zane Wilder.

The cookhouse door opens.

Zane comes in.

He does what he always does. Stands in the doorway for a moment. Takes in the room. Goes to the food table. Fills his plate.

Looks at the table for somewhere to sit.

Finds me.

Sitting next to Theo.

The expression that moves through his face is very small and very controlled and gone in under a second and I only catch it because I have been learning the vocabulary of his face for eight days.

It is not nothing.

It is very specifically not nothing.

He sits at the far end of the table.

Theo beside me says nothing for a moment.

He takes a sip of water.

Then very quietly just for me: he found you before he found anywhere to sit.

I say: we work together.

He says: he found you. Registered the situation. Chose the far end. He says it with the warm eyes doing the thing where they see more than they show. He says: and he's been looking at you since he sat down.

I say: he's looking at his food.

Theo says: he's looking at his food in your specific direction with a consistency that suggests the food is not the primary variable.

He says it warmly.

Without agenda.

Like he is simply reporting an accurate observation and finds the whole thing genuinely interesting.

I look at my food.

Down the table the sound of a fork placed down with slightly more precision than eating requires.

Theo picks up his water.

He says very quietly: two completely different kinds of dangerous.

I say: what does that mean.

He looks at me with the warm brown eyes.

He says: you'll figure it out.

He takes a sip of water.

He smiles into the glass.

Mira on my other side turns a page of her book.

She is smiling into it.

She has been smiling into it since Zane sat down.

She says without looking up: the energy at this end of the table is extremely interesting tonight.

Nobody responds.

She turns another page.

She is still smiling.

Down the table Zane eats his food.

In my specific direction.

With a consistency that suggests.

I pick up my fork.

I think about warm brown eyes and the coffee appearing from nowhere and grief in animals is simpler and why not both said with the easy smile.

I think about dark eyes and rough warm hands and always going to be there and the incremental closer and the eye drop he closed over before I could be certain.

Two completely different kinds of dangerous.

He was right.

I am going to need to figure it ou