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Sebastian shook his head. He knew Hess had been with the Resistance longer than most, but he hadn’t realized he had been with the Resistance longer than almost anyone. He was barely older than Sebastian. It hadn’t occurred to Sebastian he’d been with the Resistance since he was a damn child.
He looked at the pictures on the other side of the shelf. These were more recent. Hess looked like the man Sebastian knew him as.
There was one of him and Farlon again, smiling at the camera.
One where he and Joan looked to be in a heated discussion but with beers between them rather than a map.
Him and Garrett, with Garrett’s arm swung around his neck and a giant grin on his face, with Hess looking nonplussed but with just the hint of curl around the corner of his lip.
Sebastian scowled at that one. He had never understood their closeness. Garrett had joined not much before Sebastian, but he’d already wheedled his way into Hess’s good graces by that time. Considering that Garrett was a colossal dick, Sebastian had always taken that as a sign that while Hess knew his way around leadership and the cause, he was clearly a poor judge of character.
“What do you see in Garrett fucking Twal anyway?” Sebastian turned back toward Hess and motioned to the picture.
Hess snorted and didn’t look up. “He asks me the same thing about you.”
That sent a surprising spike of uncertainty through Sebastian. “Does he know about…”
Hess looked up when Sebastian trailed off, and Sebastian waved vaguely between them. Hess furrowed his brow. “About how I feel about you?”
Sebastian’s heart jumped into his throat and choked off any attempt at a reply.
Before Sebastian could unstick his heart from his windpipe, Hess looked back down at his desk. “No. I don’t think so. He just doesn’t trust you.”
“’Cause he’s a dick.” Sebastian scowled. That unnecessary sentence could get out, but he hadn’t managed to force out a question about what exactly Hess meant by how he felt about him.
“Because he doesn’t trust easily and because he hates deception.” Hess set his pen aside, blew on his writing, then tucked the pieces of paper away into a bag on the floor beside him.
Sebastian put his hands on his hips. “I am not deceptive.”
“No.” Hess chuckled as he stood. “No, that’s what I keep telling him.”
Sebastian watched as Hess unfolded himself from his chair and set his desk back to rights. Having him fully dressed and Sebastian completely bare reminded Sebastian of Hess’s office back in Kaston, and he twitched at the memory. Maybe they had a little time…
No, if they had any time at all, Sebastian wanted to find out more about how Hess felt about him. “Wha—”
“We should get going.” Hess spoke just as Sebastian had finally managed to start the question. “There’s a war room meeting we’re both expected at.”
That jolted Sebastian out of his thoughts. “But breakfast!” Sebastian felt his face crumple and didn’t even try to stop it because his stomach growled at the same time. This body had been in a coma for weeks; its stomach contained nothing but acid.
“I’m sorry.” Hess gave him a suitably pained look as he picked up his data tablet. “I wanted to let you sleep.”
Sebastian sighed and moped back to the bed. “It’s okay.” Someone—Hess, presumably—had folded his clothes while he’d slept. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“It shouldn’t be long.” Hess waited until he’d pulled his clothes on, then opened the door for him and motioned him out into the hall. “The mess will still have breakfast by the time we’re done.”
“It’s fine, like I said.” Sebastian waved his hand. He’d been hungry before, and he’d be hungry again.
They left the room together, and Sebastian let Hess take the lead. He didn’t actually know where he was since he’d never fully familiarized himself with the capitol building in the first place.
They didn’t say anything as they walked down the hall, turned a corner, and walked down a new hall… The longer the silence went on, the harder it became for Sebastian to figure out how to break it.
For a while in that room together, things had felt easy, but now they were out of that room, so Sebastian didn’t know what they were out here. Not that he’d known what they were in there either, but it also hadn’t seemed to matter quite so much. Whatever they were, Sebastian was free to be himself, but out here…
Wait, since when had he ever been anything but himself, even out here?
Since when did he worry about offending or upsetting Hess? Well, that was easy. Ever since he’d realized that whatever was simmering between them wasn’t a mutual loathing but something a lot more complicated and something that Sebastian wasn’t ready to compromise or throw away.
Sebastian finally screwed up his courage enough to open his mouth, but then Hess spoke up at the same time, and he popped it closed again.
