Page 18 of Static/Cling

“Where’d they go now?” Bjorn heard Roger’s voice from the lobby.

Leif sighed. “Guess we better go help.”

“Don’t you lift any of those boxes. They’re heavy.”

“I know, I know.” He pushed Bjorn away, adjusted his jeans and squirmed past him, muttering about eel soup and grandmas in saunas and other very non-sexy things.

Bjorn felt a little bit bad about that, but only enough to keep his laughter to a low chuckle. When he caught sight of Kassian whirling away from where they had been sequestered around the corner, he stopped laughing. “Voyeur much?” he muttered.

Leif snickered. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”

“Can’t just let me hate the guy in peace, can you?”

“You’re not a hater.”

“Hey.” Bjorn nabbed Leif by one wrist before he got far. “Seriously.”

“Seriously what?” Leif’s gaze sparkled. “You want to hate our coworker? Because that could get awkward.”

“Are you into him?”

Leif shrugged. “I’m not not into him.” The equivocating was new. Normally he had no qualms about saying when he wanted to do some other guy.

Bjorn nodded. “Then I will try not to hate him, but I make no promises.”

“Fair enough.” Leif eased free, but patted Bjorn’s cheek, shivering at the sparks that zinged against his palm. “I will make no moves if it turns out you do hate him. Promise.”

“You don’t have to promise me that.” Bjorn kissed his palm for sincerity, but the spark he let go of, which made Leif moan, might have undermined his earnestness.

Leif blinked up at him. “Don’t I?”

Okay, so maybe he should stop deliberately turning his friend on if he seriously wanted to remind them they weren’t an item. He took a careful step back and stopped touching him. “When have we ever not moved on someone because one or the other of us wasn’t interested? Is that a thing now?”

Leif shrugged. “Maybe? Also we work with him, so it would be awkward, wouldn’t it? If we weren’t both into him?”

“Probably.” The last thing Bjorn wanted was to stop Leif finding his forever guy just because Bjorn wasn’t a fan. Leif owed him nothing. After all, they were friends. Right?

He did notice Leif watching Kassian’s ass as he held the door open for him a few minutes later, though, and couldn’t really blame him. The guy might be a jerk, but that wasn’t his ass’s fault. In fact, his ass was actually pretty nice.

The feeling of being watched made the hairs on the back of Kassian’s neck stand on end. He paused to glance over his shoulder, but there was only Leif, saying something to Bjorn as he held the door for him.

Kassian hurried forwards, because the actual feel of Bjorn’s power in the air in the enclosed stairwell made more than just the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“Stop it,” he growled at himself.

“Hehe.”

“Fuck off.”

More silent snickering from his lizard brain. Then he reached the next landing, just as the box holding the door open slid across the floor like it had been pushed, and the door clanged shut. The ones he was carrying, that he’d been consciously trying to levitate a bit to make them lighter, just as suddenly turned very heavy.

“Fuck my life.” He braced the three boxes he held on the handrail and tried to work out if he could balance them and reach the door at the same time. He could try and use his very weak telekinesis to do one thing or the other, but the problem was the power didn’t always do what he told it to. In fact, he was pretty sure it had been his own power that had moved the doorstop instead of helping him carry the boxes.

“Hang on,” Leif called from below. “I got you.” His footsteps jogged up the steps, and Kassian glanced back to see Bjorn doing the same as he was, bracing an armload of boxes on the handrail.

Kassian could feel the jumping current skittering through the air. His skin tingled with it. It wasn’t a terrible feeling. In fact, it was downright intriguing.

He grunted.

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