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“Being with you was never an option.”
“Only because you never let it!” Sebastian yanked his feelings back, but he’d already thought the damn thoughts.
Hess uncoiled from his corner of their mind, expanding and stretching and pressing on Sebastian.
“Do you want it to be an option?” Hess loomed closer, and Sebastian backpedaled. “Do you want to be with me, Sebastian?”
Sebastian physically stumbled and mentally tried to hunker down behind a practically nonexistent psychic wall. “I didn’t say that.”
He wasn’t ready.
He wasn’t ready because every fiber of his being wanted to fall into Hess’s strong and adoring arms. He wanted the driven, stern, handsome man for himself. He wanted to feel all of that intensity turned to him.
Which meant somehow he had forgotten that Hess was also dangerous, callous, and cruel. He had been cruel to Sebastian. He had betrayed their men at Kaston. He was poised to wage chemical warfare across the continent he claimed to love.
Sebastian cringed away from Hess’s overwhelming presence, but then Hess fell back again.
He didn’t press Sebastian; he just sat back down in the corner of his mind, something a little like sadness and a little like regret dripping out of him.
Sebastian crept tentatively back out from behind his wall and was only then struck by how odd that was. How the hell did Hess have all the power here? Sebastian was in his body with his claws poised right over Hess’s very existence.
Even in the rare times that Sebastian allowed the other consciousness to exist, he was always in control. But not with Hess.
In some ways, it was a relief. Sebastian hated the draining sense of guilt and responsibility that came with controlling someone else. But with Hess, the fact that Sebastian was in control seemed more like a technicality than an actuality.
They walked on and the better part of another hour dragged by.
Their pace slowed from brisk stride to dogged slog.
Sebastian stared at the gray walls sliding past. And then stared some more. And finally broke when he could no longer take the lack of stimulation. “So why did you come to the cantina the other night?”
“Hm?” Hess’s consciousness turned back to him after a delay. Sebastian had been able to feel him curled into some sort of introspection, thinking, thinking, thinking. It was almost impressive how absorbed Hess could get in his own mind. Though Sebastian supposed that was one reason they had been so effective in the Resistance together over the years. Hess thought; Sebastian acted.
“The other night. You came to the cantina.” Sebastian was not going to bring up exactly what he had been doing in said cantina when Hess arrived, and he was certainly not going to apologize. “You never come to the cantina.”
“Oh. Right.” Hess heaved a sigh through their mind.
Embarrassment. Shame? Sebastian felt for the emotions intently. No doubt they’d have been invisible on Hess’s face if this were a normal conversation.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Do we have to do this?” Hess’s mind twisted. “Haven’t we talked enough?”
“No, because I want to know what you wanted to talk about then.” Sebastian stamped his foot as he walked. “I want to know what you would have said if you hadn’t found me frothing at the mouth and throwing darts at your face.”
“You weren’t frothing at the mouth…”
“No, but I was throwing darts at your face.” And he was still not going to apologize for it, Sebastian resolutely decided. Even if the pain from Hess inflamed his guilt.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me!” Sebastian snapped out loud, and he jumped at the sound of Hess’s voice reverberating back at him in the stone hall. “It matters to me, and you’ve spent the last decade or so lying to me, so you owe it to me to come clean now.”
Hess felt like he might push back against Sebastian, but instead, he retreated into something like a defensive position. “It was foolish.”
“Tell me.”
