Page 105 of Static/Cling

GETTING TO KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU

Once inside, Kassian barely had time to glance around the tiny, one-room apartment before Leif stumbled to the bed, fell onto it, and crashed again.

Bjorn sat on the edge of the mattress, stroking his head and looking bereft.

“Hey.” Kassian laid a hand on Bjorn’s shoulder. “You should get cleaned up.”

Bjorn nodded, but made no other move.

“I’ll be here,” Kassian promised.

Again, Bjorn nodded.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know.”

Kassian grinned. “So go take a shower, then come to bed.”

“Come to bed.”

Kassian shrugged. They’d invited him in, and somewhere between coding the destruction of all of General George’s hopes and dreams for villainous tyranny and human experimentation, and sending nails through the asshole’s brain—not all under his own power, he highly suspected—he’d given up his resistance to the idea.

If he could let berserker-Leif into his head to help him commit gruesome, telekinetic murder, maybe admitting he’d been attracted to the guy from day one wasn’t such a big leap.

“Yesterday this was all very… theoretical.”

Kassian nodded.

“I know we’re always insisting Leif doesn’t have any powers.”

Another nod.

“And he never talks about it.”

He was beginning to feel like a bobble-head.

“I think he’s always been scared of what he can do, so it was easier to pretend he couldn’t do anything.”

“Maybe before yesterday he couldn’t. Before Albert Lewis.”

Bjorn shrugged and looked back at his sleeping lover. “Maybe.”

“We’re not going to figure it out tonight, so go shower. You’re exhausted.”

“Yeah.”

Finally, Bjorn kissed Leif carefully on the mouth, then got up and went to the bathroom. A minute later, the shower came on.

He came out a very long shower later to lean in the bathroom doorway, a towel around his hips, his hair standing out in all directions, and his arms crossed. “Does it matter to you?” he asked.

Kassian blinked at him. He’d been dozing on the couch and now he was having a hard time keeping his brain from shorting out, watching the light gleam off Bjorn’s bulging arms. “What?”

“What he can do. Does it matter to you?”

“Why would it?”

“It does to some people. I think the love of his life left him, back when he was in college before—us—because his power wasn’t something spectacular.”

---