Julian looked up from the desk.
He had been in the particular focused state she had learned to recognize several windows open, documents arranged in the specific order of someone cross-referencing multiple threads simultaneously, the stillness of deep concentration. He looked at her face. Then at the laptop. Then back at her face.
He did not speak. He waited.
She crossed to the desk, set the laptop down, turned it toward him, and pressed play.
He listened.
He listened the way he listened to everything that mattered, completely still, completely present, nothing in his face that gave away what was happening underneath it.
She watched him listen. She watched the moment the recording reached it was Sebastian's idea, watched the specific, microscopic shift in his expression, there and gone so quickly that someone who did not know his face the way she knew his face would have missed it entirely.
He listened to the end. The recording stopped. The study was quiet.
