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Sam was so confused that it took him a while to realize that Dominic was heading to Sam’s room in the training facility. It made sense. The living quarters were the only place they were afforded some modicum of privacy.

“Hey, man,” Patrick, his roommate, said when he saw Sam. “Good to see you back.” He glanced uncertainly at Dominic. “Are you—”

“Out,” Dominic said. “You may return in an hour.”

“Unbelievable,” Sam said when Patrick actually got up and left the room without any complaints.

Sam plopped down on his bed, buried his face in the pillow, and closed his eyes. “You shouldn’t have told Patrick to come back in an hour. There’s not much to talk about. Amanda just tried to make me accuse you of sexual misconduct. I told her you didn’t do anything I didn’t want. End of story. You have nothing to worry about.” He just wanted Dominic to leave him alone so that he could be miserable in peace. “Bye. Don’t you have a rich heir to seduce?”

“For fuck’s sake, Sammy—”

“Stop calling me that!” Sam snapped, rolling onto his back and glaring at Dominic. “The mission is over. You don’t have to be sweet to me, or touch me, or talk to me—” His voice cracked and Sam glared harder, hating himself and hating this man, because even now all he wanted was to be wrapped in Dominic’s arms and told sweet lies.

“This has nothing to do with the mission,” Dominic said. “I thought it was obvious you weren’t just a mission to me. I really care about you. Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Why?” Sam repeated incredulously, sitting up. Was he serious? “I don’t even know your real name! How am I supposed to believe anything you say when I don’t know a single real thing about you? I’ve never met a person who was such a chameleon!”

All anger seemed to fade from Dominic’s body. He sighed, running a hand over his face. “My real name is Dominic.”

Sam stared at him, confused. “What?”

Dominic walked over and sat next to him. “It’s kind of a long story.”

Sam eyed his profile.

“I have time,” he said softly, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Dominic was actually Dominic.

Agent 11—Dominic—was quiet for a while.

“My father died when I was eleven,” he said at last. “A car crash. My mother remarried a year later. I hated my stepfather.” There was something self-deprecating about Dominic’s smile. “I was constantly angry as a teenager. I thought I hated my mother, too. I felt betrayed, felt like she betrayed my father by remarrying so soon after his death and marrying my father’s best friend to boot. I got it in my head that she must have been cheating on my dad before his death.”

“Was she?” Sam said quietly.

Dominic shrugged. “I don’t think so, but back then, I was sure of it and didn’t want to live with them. I ran away from home four times before my mother finally gave up and asked my father’s relatives to take me in.”

“So you grew up at your relatives’?”

“No,” Dominic said. “My father… He belonged to an impoverished branch of a very old, very influential family, so all his relatives were a bunch of rich snobs. They all looked down at me.” Dominic looked almost amused. “You can probably guess what happened.”

Sam cocked his head to the side. “You couldn’t stand your snobbish relatives and ran away again?”

Dominic nodded with a snort. “I think I fancied myself something of a rebel. That time around, I lived on the streets for a while, getting into trouble and barely getting out. But by the time I turned fifteen, I grew up a little and realized that I didn’t actually hate my mother and had been wrong to treat her the way I did. I missed her.” Dominic paused. “But it was too late. She had died while I was gone. Complications during labor.” Dominic’s face was completely blank. “I hadn’t even known she was pregnant.”

Oh.

Sam winced inwardly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, touching Dominic’s hand uncertainly. He’d thought it would be awkward, but the moment he touched Dominic, their hands immediately rearranged themselves, their fingers lacing. They had gotten used to holding hands.

Dominic looked down at their hands. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

They fell silent for a while, with Dominic playing with Sam’s fingers absentmindedly.

When Sam started thinking Dominic wasn’t going to continue, he did.

“After that… you can probably guess I felt like shit,” Dominic said. “I became a bit of a loose cannon. When I was sixteen, I ended up in jail after stabbing the leader of one of London gangs, but MI6 got me out and cleared my record.” He smiled sardonically. “They were recruiting. They wanted someone young and capable, someone they could shape in any way they wanted, and it didn’t hurt that I was from an old family and they could use me to infiltrate the upper class if they ever needed it.”


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