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What the hell were they going to do now?

Sean looked anywhere but at him as Aidan turned around. “Report tomorrow afternoon. There are more exercises to run through.”

Aidan couldn’t find it in himself to throw a quip at Sean, though doing so might have helped his nerves. Instead, he nodded, silently giving Sean the permission he needed to run. Sean glanced at him, his eyes meeting Aidan’s and lingering for what felt like an eternity. Aidan read fear, confusion, and worry in them, all before Sean darted away, never once looking back.

“Well, shit,” Aidan muttered.

SEAN

Sean wasn't sure how long he’d been standing outside the door to Aidan’s barracks room. The only blessing was that no one had come out of any other rooms or entered the barracks since he’d taken up his impromptu vigil. Sean had no idea what the hell he would say if someone found him standing there like some stalker.

Sean didn’t want to stand outside like an idiot, but he knew he needed to talk to Aidan. He wasn’t sure if Aidan would take the incident and run with it, but it was possible. As Aidan’s commanding officer, Sean’s ass could have been grass if Aidan reported him, and Sean didn’t want that to be a possibility. He needed to talk to Aidan and do it as calmly as he could before things got out of control.

Well, more out of control than they already were.

Forcing himself to take a calming breath, he raised his hand to knock and hesitated. What the hell was he going to say? They had both been there, and both knew what happened. There was no mistaking it, and Sean could still feel the press of Aidan’s hips beneath his grip and around his?—

Then the door swung open.

Aidan started forward, stuttering to a halt and lurching backward when he saw someone in his way. Dark blue eyes widened, catching the light and looking like the sea at twilight. Then a shadow crossed Aidan’s face as he recognized who it was, and some part of Sean cringed from the anger he saw there.

“Oh. You,” Aidan said, looking him over.

“Uh, hey,” Sean began.

Aidan continued to stare at him for a long, drawn-out moment. “Need something?”

Sean cleared his throat, saying the best thing he could think of, “You got a second? I think we should talk.”

Aidan’s eyes were wary, but he didn’t make a smart comment, and he backed away from the doorway to let Sean in. Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, Sean hurried into the room. It was set up like most of the rooms in the barracks, with two desks, a bunk bed, and a light fixture overhead. Aidan hadn’t bothered to decorate it with any posters or pictures, and from the looks of it, he didn’t have a roommate either.

“You could probably request being moved into one of the apartments, you know. There’s usually a free spot or two on base that General Winter keeps open just in case.”

“Just in case of what?” Aidan asked.

“Just in case someone...special rolls through,” Sean finished.

And that was the point, wasn’t it? Why Aidan was on his team in the first place. As much as Sean wasn’t sold on the general’s vaunted niceness or honor, Sean knew the man didn’t make a decision just for the hell of it. General Winter had always put thought behind his choices, and he wasn’t going to throw Aidan onto his team simply because he had to.

Which left Sean wondering what he was supposed to do knowing that.

“My mommy always told me I’m special,” Aidan said wryly.

Sean looked around. “But you don’t have any pictures of her.”

“My mom was a drunk who was pissed off that she had me in the first place and liked to remind me that I was unwanted my entire childhood. My dad took off before I was born, so who the hell knows what he thought other than he didn’t want me either. My mom didn’t tell me I was special, Sean. I was being a smartass,” Aidan said, sounding uncharacteristically tired.

It was, Sean thought, the third genuine emotion he’d seen from Aidan. First had been the anger, and then had come the lust. Sean had been prepared for the anger and had even wanted to see it. The lust had hit him around the side of the head and dragged him along for the ride before he’d known what he was doing. Just hearing Aidan sound tired, right down to his bones, maybe even his heart, was something Sean didn’t know what to do with.

“Oh. So you…” Sean continued, realizing he didn’t know how to finish.

“Don’t have any family, no. Don’t have any friends either. Kind of hard to make them when your job shunts you all over the place,” Aidan said, now sounding irritated.

“Shunts,” Sean repeated, frowning.

Aidan sighed, walking past Sean to flop on his bed. “You didn’t come here to get my oh-so-very sad backstory. You came here because you fucked me against a building.”

Sean cringed. “Jesus.”