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Sebastian stepped forward. “Hey!” He planted his hands on his hips and scowled at Garrett before looking back at Maxwell. “You were taking me to Hess.”
“Right.” Maxwell shot him an apologetic look. “Oliver can take you.”
“Oliver?” Sebastian frowned. “Where’s Oli—”
His jaw dropped, and he spun around as he suddenly realized why the man with the drill looked so familiar.
Oliver fucking Turner stood next to the tent he’d just helped raise, wearing ratty clothes, with dirt under his fingernails and mud on his face, holding a heavy-duty drill in his hand while he spoke to Mal’ik.
Sebastian let Maxwell and Garrett go as he strode over to Oliver and Mal’ik. “What the fuck have I missed here?”
Oliver turned with a sheepish smile. “Honestly? Quite a bit.”
“We’re glad to see you out and about, Sebastian.” Mal’ik nodded at him, and his rumbling voice soothed something in Sebastian’s chest. The man really meant it. And even Oliver’s smile looked genuine.
Sebastian sighed. “It’s a new development. I just woke up a few minutes ago.”
Mal’ik raised his eyebrows. “You must have a lot of questions.”
Oliver chuckled. “Starting with ‘where’s Leon Hess,’ I imagine.”
Sebastian blushed. How widespread was the knowledge of their relationship? Assuming that’s what it was. Assuming they still had one. Sebastian pressed his lips together. Of course they still had one. Leon didn’t camp out next to his bedside to break up with him as soon as he woke up, surely.
“Come on.” Oliver passed his drill to Mal’ik and beckoned Sebastian to follow him. “I’ll take you.”
Sebastian waved a goodbye to Mal’ik and then turned and followed Oliver up a path that wound and snaked through tents and crooked buildings.
“So, normalcy looks good on you, Turner.” Sebastian picked at one of Oliver’s dirty sleeves as they walked. “You’re like a real person now.”
Oliver scowled lightly and brushed Sebastian’s hand off him. “Yes, the humidity and the mud have done wonders for my complexion.”
“Are you the person Maxwell said I had to thank for getting me to Carta?” Sebastian planted a boot in a puddle as he walked and delighted in the splash it made toward Oliver.
Oliver, shockingly, didn’t even try to dodge the dirty water. “You don’t have to thank me.”
“So you did do something.” Sebastian raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“You weren’t the only person stuck in an escape pod up there.” Oliver’s face pinched and lost some of its new color. “Some were from the Barzen, but some were from the Tava evacuation. And the Resistance wasn’t the only group sifting through the wreckage.”
“I can imagine,” Sebastian grimaced. Authorities from Carta and Lewis station would have been there quickly—and those weren’t people Sebastian would have wanted to be picked up by. Then there would have been Klah’Eel and Qeshian rescue ships, scavengers, and a whole host of even more unsavory types ready to pick through the rubble floating in Tava’s orbit.
“Joan and I took a ship up every day searching for stranded citizens, resistance members, maybe a Turner mercenary or two to hold as a hostage,” Oliver continued. “We finally found you by tracking your earpiece. Hess’s was still paired to it.”
Sebastian reached up to his ear as though the fancy military hardware would still be there. “My earpiece?”
“That’s right.” Oliver nodded. “It was mostly fried, but it still sent out enough of a signal to track if we knew what we were looking for.”
Sebastian let out a shaky breath. “Thank you for looking.”
It would have been so easy not to. They would have had so much to do and no reason to believe him still alive. It would have been easy to give him up as lost until he withered away and decayed in a brain-dead body he couldn’t access.
“Hey.” Oliver put a hand on his shoulder, and they both froze. Sebastian glanced at him, then down at where Oliver touched him, and then back up at Oliver’s face. Oliver blushed, and the rigidity in his arm gave away just how uncomfortable he was with the show of affection, but he lifted his chin and pushed through. “I’m glad we found you.”
“Yeah, I, uh—” Sebastian swallowed and smiled at Oliver as the other man blushed harder and dropped his hand. “I am too.”
“So anyway, that’s how we found you and brought you to Carta.” Oliver turned, and they kept walking. “I’m pretty sure Hess still keeps your old earpiece in his pocket.”
“Wait, what?” Sebastian snorted.
