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Then he turned back to the other man, who Leon could now see was covered in soot.
“Thanks for checking the fireplace, Jason. I owe you one.”
The man—Jason—laughed. “Oh, don’t you worry. I’m gonna collect on that one.”
Sebastian saw him to the door with a ringing laugh of his own. “Try to not have any nightmares.”
“Fuck you!” Jason called back down the hall without any heat.
Leon looked up at Sebastian quizzically, and for a second, it looked like Sebastian was just going to scowl at him, but then his expression broke into a little smile.
“There were spiders,” he admitted with a face. “A lot of spiders.”
“Ah.” Leon nodded in grave understanding, and he saw Sebastian try to fight the grin and then turn away just before it overtook his face so that Leon couldn’t see it. So Sebastian didn’t want to share his smiles with Leon. Fair enough.
He took out his data tablet, intending to use the next few hours as productively as possible. He had to go through the defense plans Mal’ik had drawn up and the intelligence reports from Joan. If he was lucky, he might even get through all the supplies reports from Martha. Apparently, there was even some good news in those. The Ralsdi family had managed to smuggle them quite a cache of “donations,” and Leon was curious to see what they’d been given.
He heard Sebastian move about the room, then flop into one of the arm chairs across from him.
“About yesterday…”
Leon’s heart jumped into his throat.
He looked up from his data tablet to see Sebastian looking torn. Sebastian at a loss for words and looking unsure, even insecure, was unusual and distinctly unpleasant. Leon waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, he unstuck his own tongue from the roof of his mouth.
“What about it?”
And which part of it? The early morning when Sebastian had woken up in his bed, content and naked and still smelling of sex? Or the meeting when Sebastian had looked at him like he was a monster? Or the evening when he’d used a picture of Leon’s face for target practice?
The need to know gripped Leon, and he fought against the urge to grab Sebastian and shake him and demand to know which part of yesterday he wanted to talk about and what he wanted to say.
“Never mind.” Sebastian shook his head and pulled out his own data tablet from his pack
Leon about exploded.
He bit back the demands to know more and forced himself to look coolly back down at his own work. Sebastian had said never mind, so Leon wouldn’t mind it. Leon had made his position as clear as he could.
Leon cared immensely, absurdly, for Sebastian and adored every single thing about him, and Leon would also continue to put the cause of the Resistance first.
If Sebastian didn’t want to talk about it, Leon didn’t get to make him.
So he stared at military drawings from Mal’ik and tried to make himself pay attention to them instead of the man across the table from him and the soft sounds he made as he read something interesting.
* * *
“Hey.”
Leon wrinkled his nose, mumbled, and pulled away from the thing shaking him softly.
“Hey, up and at ’em, Hess. You’re almost up.”
The sound of Sebastian’s voice, more than the words he said, finally got Leon to open his eyes. He sat up and scrubbed at them and swallowed around his dry mouth.
“We’re about twenty minutes out from the start of this little show.” Sebastian left his side to move a curtain aside and peer out one of the windows. “You should get ready.”
Leon dragged himself up, shook himself awake, and scratched at the stubble on his jaw. “How long was I asleep?”
“A couple hours.” Sebastian eyed him as he let the curtain fall closed and checked the gun at his hip. “I think you needed it.”
