Page 6 of Static/Cling

“No.” Kassian jumped automatically to her defence, despite only ever having seen her once, and so fleetingly he wasn’t sure he remembered what she looked like. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, she did, because she let him touch the elevator, and sent him up here without warning any of you what to expect, so.” He shrugged. “Dunno. Elevator needs fixed and Roger needs a new machine.”

“Fuck my life,” he muttered.

“Stairs still work.”

“Right.”

“Listen, until I move the router, let me know next time you need it reset. I’ll crawl under.”

“I don’t need?—”

“I’m smaller.” Leif pointed out the obvious. “Just trying to make myself useful.”

“You a new hire, too, then?”

“I told you I come with Bjorn. We’re a package deal.”

“That so.” Kassian tried to keep his mind from darting around the logistics of them as a “package” because he wasdefinitely not interested in the pretty idiot in the least. “You do everything together?”

“Everything that matters.” He stuffed one hand into his pocket and ghosted the fingers of his other over his scar. “Don’t wait too long to protect the computers.”

“I’ll get on it.”

“Good.”

Kassian watched him disappear from view around the screen, then dumped his ass into his chair. There was something attractive about a guy who spent his time looking out for people. And he wasn’t going to lie, someone who acknowledged Kassian’s brain ahead of his brawn—that almost never happened.

“Right. But he’s a package deal.” He sighed and hit the power button on his computer. “And we don’t think either of them are pretty.” He checked to make sure moving the desk hadn’t knocked any plugs loose.

“He certainly doesn’t think he’s pretty, but he’s wrong and you know it.” As he manhandled his desk back into the ideal position while he waited for his machine to boot up, he recalled Leif’s absent caress of the scar along his jaw.

The computer blinked to life and Kassian growled at himself. “Shut up and get to work.”

CHAPTER 2

AT HOME WITH BJORN AND LEIF

Bjorn fiddled with the rim of his mostly empty coffee cup while he waited for Leif to unlock their apartment door.

“A pretty idiot?” he grumbled, for about the millionth time. “Really? He said that?”

“To be fair, he was only talking to himself.”

“Still. You heard him.”

Leif shrugged and pushed the door open, preceding Bjorn inside. “I mean, he thinks you’re pretty.”

“He thinks I’m an idiot.”

Leif stopped Bjorn halfway into the entrance with a hand on his chest. He went up on his toes and kissed him, quick and light, before whispering, “He’s not wrong.”

“Shut up.”

Leif grinned. “Make me?”

Bjorn growled and shoved him all the way inside so the door could close them off from the rest of the world. He backed Leif across the small, tiled area to the couch, then gently pushed him over the back.

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