Page 33 of Static/Cling

Kassian breathed out a calmer breath.

When he sat down, he discovered a cup of coffee sitting next to his keyboard, on a desk mug-warmer plugged into an extension cord that led back to a wall plug near the door. It sent steam innocently up towards the tiled ceiling.

Fuck. He glanced again at Leif. Who else could have put those there? Neither Roger nor Sal had ever given any indication they knew he liked black, very hot coffee, and obviously, Bjorn hadn’t plugged anything into the wall.

The little, annoyingly pretty—very fit, he remembered—blond man had the audacity to grin at him.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he grumbled.

“You’re welcome.”

“And the warmer.”

“Of course.”

Bjorn glanced up at Leif briefly, but quickly went back to his training materials.

This was fine. He could sit here and pretend nothing unusual had happened yesterday as well as they could. Booting up his computer, he focused on finding that inconvenient file that had nearly burned his ass the day before.

An hour or more of fruitless searching later, he gulped down the last of the still-warm coffee and threw himself against the back of his chair. “It’s got to be somewhere.” But where, hecouldn’t figure out without risking going back into the system that had almost sniffed him out once already.

“Why does it matter?” he immediately asked himself. “Anyone comes looking, you just pop their head off. Simple. Doesn’t take a brainiac for that.”

“There are subtler ways.”

He snorted at the whole exchange. His brute brain didn’t go in for subtle.

He felt Leif’s presence behind his chair a moment before he tapped lightly on the baffle, but that didn’t stop him jumping almost out of his seat.

“What?” He spun, face heated at being caught talking to himself again.

“Going for coffee. You want to walk with me?”

“Busy.” He tried to dismiss him by turning his chair back around, but doing so brought the empty cup and mug-warmer back into view. He shouldn’t be an ass to someone who was just… nice.

“Walk with me,” Leif said, and yeah. There it was. A bit of steel under the soft, like the honed body under the loose jeans and ever-present plaid.

His brute brain snickered at the intrusion of that memory.

He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

“Fine.” He locked his computer, turned off the mug warmer, and followed Leif silently out to the street.

“He liked kissing you” was the first thing out of his mouth.

“Fuck my life.”

Leif snickered.

“He just… told you?”

“A decade later, and we’ve learned to be upfront about that shit.”

“It was… spicy. It never hurts?”

“I told you. That’s when he can control it the best. Maybe try it sometime.”

“Was that permission to try having sex with your boyfriend?”

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