Page 15 of Static/Cling

At some point, the office door opened and closed and then another, bulkier presence loomed behind him.

“What’s going on?” Bjorn joined them to watch over his shoulder, and an itch started between Kassian’s shoulder blades. His fingers faltered and he lost the train of his coding for half a second.

“B,” Leif said quietly, and then Bjorn’s hulking presence at his back was gone.

A phone rang, but went ignored.

He forced his concentration back, quickly tracing the snake of his own coding through the labyrinth of traps being set to catch it.

Leif’s low, gentle voice lilted in the background. Sal murmured something. Roger’s ball bounced once, then went still.

Kassian glanced over to see Roger gripping the ball, every line of his body tense. He turned back to his work, but the silence was unnerving. “It’s fine, Rog,” he said, and the bouncing started up again.

After a minute, his fingers took up the steady cadence of hisbounce-catch-bounce-catchand he settled back into the liminal headspace of computer languages.

The opening he needed appeared in the code, and he took it, frantically typing the necessary lines to turn his snake around and slither out of the trap just before it snapped shut.

He threw himself back in his chair, scrubbing his hands through his hair. When he glanced around, it was to see Sal with their headset on and fingers poised to make calls. They raised one eyebrow to disappear under the straight line of their bangs.

Kassian shook his head and they relaxed.

Tension also flowed out of Roger’s shoulders. He bounced his ball on his desk in a series of short, rapid bounce-and-catches, letting his nerves dissipate more with each bounce.

Kassian shut out the sound and glanced to the two new guys.

Leif was just motioning him away from his crouch by the wall plug.

“What are you doing?” Kassian jumped to his feet. “What are you doing?”

“If you couldn’t get out, he was going to pull the plug,” Leif explained.

“Brick my computer, you mean, and effectively burn everything on it!”

Leif shrugged. “Make sure there was nothing for—” He waved a hand in the general direction of Kassian’s machine. “—whoever—to find if they managed to follow.”

“That—” Fuck. That hadn’t been a terrible plan, actually. He huffed.

Bjorn straightened and stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. “You’re welcome, asshole.” He stumped away and slumped into the wooden chair that had its back to Kassian’s desk.

Which was when Kassian noticed his socked feet. The boots were strewn near the wall outlet, and Bjorn’s shoulders hovered around his ears.

Leif went to him, about to touch his shoulder, but Bjorn flinched away. “Don’t,” he whispered.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Just leave it.”

“It’s a lot,” Leif said.

“It’s fine.”

“What’s a lot?” Kassian asked.

They all glanced everywhere but at Bjorn or him.

“What? What did I miss?”

“He—” Roger waved a hand around the room. “Shuffled around on the carpet in his socks.”

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