Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
THE PROBLEM
Heads lifted when Kassian arrived at work the next day.
Roger cocked his head curiously, and that one eyebrow of Sal’s disappeared under their row of bangs. He got that. It wasn’t like him to be the last one in. Other than Sal, he was normally first in, last out.
Leif watched him enter, take off his coat and drop a roll of material, completely wired up and ready, on the centre table. Inwardly, Kassian squirmed under his attention.
Only Bjorn didn’t so much as stir from his reading. He sat there, feet up on his desk, the long curve of his back and legs a mouth-watering sight. The blond hair on his head, bent over the file in his lap, glinted in the office glare, defying the fluorescent lighting by shimmering as a bit of it fell over his eyes. Absently, he flipped a page with one hand and pushed his hair back with the other.
There was something far too appealing about his bulk, and that relaxed pose, and the reading, the absorption in his self-imposed task, that made Kassian’s skin shiver over his bones and stirred his libido in weirdly uncomfortable ways.
The pages flipping as Bjorn skimmed was the only sound in the room for a moment.
“What?” Kassian muttered at last.
Instantly, everyone went back to what they’d been doing, except Bjorn, who glanced up.
“Hey,” he said, smiling.
Kassian gulped and almost choked himself. “Hey,” he croaked, and pivoted to get to his desk.
Bjorn frowned but went back to his file. “Whatever, dude.”
After another minute, the bounce of Roger’s ball started its rhythmic thudding.
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, he couldn’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?”
“Best friend, not boyfriend, and I don’t control who he has sex with. Just thought you should know we talk about it, so if it happens, I’ll know. Same as he’ll know if you and I hook up.”
Kassian tripped over the sidewalk. “Who says that—any of that—would happen?”
“No one. But if it did, and I wouldn’t be opposed to it, he’d know because we don’t hide that shit. It’s how we work. And by that, I mean we only work when we tell each other everything. Like I said, we’ve had a decade of trial and error. We know what works.”
Kassian held the door open for Leif as they entered Tim’s, giving himself a chance to digest that packet of information.
“You know I never meant to overhear you. I wasn’t trying to spy,” he whispered as they joined the line.
Leif grinned. “I think spying is a little bit of what you do because big-brain people often can’t help ferreting out all the information.”
“Big-brained people?”
“You can try to hide it behind all that lovely muscle, but I see you.”
“You’re pretty much the only one who does. April as much as told me I can play all I want with the computers, but when it comes down to it and they need a bruiser, I’m it.”
“Well, Roger certainly isn’t, and Sal never leaves their desk, do they?”
“They do not.”
“And Bjorn is strong, but he’s not really a fighter. I mean, not at all a fighter.”
“He’d punch someone for you.” Of this, Kassian had not one shred of doubt.
Leif’s grin was fast and radiant. “Oh, he totally would.”
“And you’d slit throats in the night for him.” That was a much more sinister, but equally undoubtable, fact.
As fast as the smile had come, it vanished. “I totally would.”
“You’re fucking scary.”
“No.”
They’d reached the counter, so Leif paused their conversation to rattle off a list of sandwiches and desserts. Kassian recognized which meals were for who because he knew Roger’s and Sal’s usual tastes, but he didn’t remember ever hearing Leif ask them what they liked.
He got Kassian’s order right too, and he knew he’d never told the man what he liked and what he didn’t. He didn’t like chipotle, and Leif made sure to ask for mayo on one of the farmer’s wraps.
“How do you know that?”
“Know what?” Leif blinked at him.
“That I don’t like chipotle?”
He shrugged. “You must have told me.”
“No. I haven’t. You’ve known me three days. My sandwich preferences haven’t come up.”
“Huh.” He paid for the order and shuffled Kassian down the counter to wait for the food. “Maybe Sal or Roger mentioned it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Must have been that day I talked to April when I ran into her here.”
“She just happened to mention I don’t like chipotle while she roped you into delivering our coffee up to us?”
Leif shrugged. “Must have. How else would I have known?”
How else indeed. He filed the observation away for later, because Leif had seen and pointed out to Bjorn the link to SPAM in whatever job posting had led them to apply. He knew better than anyone not everyone’s gifts set off the sparks Bjorn’s did.
He didn’t even want to think about what it meant that he’d had an actual face-to-face conversation with April—who the hell did that?
Over the rest of that week, and the one after, he told himself he walked to Tim’s with Leif every day to try and ferret out exactly what Leif could do. He wasn’t any good on the team if no one knew what skills he had.
Wrangling Bjorn was a skill. Kassian could totally see that. As was having the patience to chase wires through the walls and replace them with higher-quality, better-insulated ones, which was how he spent a good chunk of his days, rewiring each computer in its turn, then starting in on the rest of the office wiring.
But there had to be more to the little man than being a good Bjorn wrangler and a certified electrician. Kassian was determined to find out what it was.
He ignored all of Sal’s raised eyebrows and Roger’s confusion over why the office was springing for so many paid lunches.
“You do realize you’re not being subtle at all, right?” Bjorn said to him out of the blue on a Thursday as Kassian handed over his large chilli.
“I’m sorry?”
“Walking to Timmy’s with him every day. Not so much with the subtlety.”
Kassian frowned. “I don’t know why he’s being so secretive.”
Bjorn snorted. “He’s not. He’s being hella blatant. Even Roger knows he’s flirting with you.”
“He’s not—what? No. That isn’t?—”
“Come’ere.” Bjorn set his lunch on his desk and got up, motioning for Kassian to follow him to the back of the room, and into the storage room.
“What are we doing?”
“Talking.” He closed the door behind them and waved at the lamp sitting on a shelf by the door. “Please?”
Kassian turned it on. “You really would short that out?”
Bjorn narrowed his eyes and pulled in a breath. “Okay, so.” He looked around them. “That an electric pencil sharpener?”
Kassian nodded.
“Plug it in, please?”
“Why?”
“Just—Oh my God. Will you just do it?”
The hairs on the backs of Kassian’s arms stood on end.
“Please?”
The air crackled a little bit.
“Fine.” He did as asked.
Bjorn found a box of pencils and took one out. He shoved it into the sharpener, and it ground down quickly to a small stub.
“So?”
Bjorn handed him the pencil and touched a fingertip to the plastic casing of the sharpener. There was an audible snap, a spark, and the sharpener whirred for a split second, then ground to a squalling stop. Bjorn stuck another pencil in. Nothing happened.
The air around him still felt charged, though.
“I know that,” Kassian said.
“So why’d you ask?”
“It seems like a total pain in the ass is all.”
Bjorn snorted. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“What?” He stepped back, fast, and his shoulders hit the closed door.
“It is a total pain in the ass,” Bjorn said, sounding tired. “For me.”
“You don’t think it bugs Leif, having to follow you around and fix shit?”
“And turn on lights and work elevators, and make me fucking toast? Sure, I think it does. Why do you think I try so hard not to be a complete idiot all the time? It sucks to have this thing I could do, but can’t because I have zero control over it. I don’t want to make his life harder by also being too stupid to live.”
“He actually said you could control it. If you were pissed off or when you’re—” He snapped his mouth shut.
Bjorn grinned. “When I’m turned on?”
“Well…” Fuck.
“Right? So, what kind of power is that, that the only time I have any real control over it is when I’m having sex, right? How stupid is that?”
“No, it’s not stupid.” Listening to him tear himself down like that was awful, and Kassian didn’t quite know why. A week or two ago, he’d said these exact things. He didn’t know what had changed, except watching him, every day, sit down and read his way through box after box of training material, and always, always, check in with his “best friend” to make sure he was content.
“Don’t try and be nice. It doesn’t suit you,” Bjorn said, his low growl drawing Kassian back from speculation.
Ouch.
Bjorn sighed. “Look, I know Leif intrigues you, or whatever. You do the same for him. So if something happens, great. Go for it. You have my blessing. Its not like I own him or anything.”
“You just use him for sex.” Which was unfair, because he’d seen Bjorn’s attention towards Leif on a daily basis, and it wasn’t always about sex.
“No. He and I are a team. The sex is nice, but not the point of us.”
“The friendship is the point.”
“Yeah. Exactly. And part of that is giving each other the freedom to get with other guys when the feeling strikes, because he has to have a life outside of me. That’s only fair.”
Goddam. It was impossible to hate a guy who cared about what his friend needed. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Bjorn looked startled.
“What about if you want a life beyond him?”
Bjorn looked endearingly confused. “But not with you, you mean. You… don’t want… . With me, then? Just him.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to anything with either of you. I just was asking is it only him who gets to play out, but not you?”
“I wouldn’t. Not without him there. It’s too dangerous. I’m too dangerous.”
“Even though you kissed me?”
“I was tired. You looked… hungry.”
Well, hell. Ouch. Again.
“And I was barely carrying any charge at all, so it wasn’t like I could have actually hurt you by then.”
“So if you wanted to,” Kassian clarified, “he would have to be into the guy too.”
Bjorn pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead. “You know what? Forget it. You’re confusing me. I just was trying to tell you, if you wanted to see if there was something there, with him, for you, to go for it.”
Much to his horror, Kassian’s heart cracked a little bit, at the look in Bjorn’s eyes, even though his expression was otherwise stoic. “I wouldn’t,” he whispered, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t do that to you. And you should tell him how you feel.” Hurriedly, he backed out of the room and scrambled for the safety of his pretend four walls.
Within seconds, Leif was standing next to his baffle. “You’re driving him a little bit nuts.”
“What did I do?” He swivelled his chair to face Leif, meeting his luminous gaze, and for a moment, he forgot basically everything.
“You know.” Leif stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Most guys are not this dense.”
“I—” Kassian frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I’m not anything, you know. And you don’t seriously expect me to act on a physical attraction I may or may not feel when the two of you are so obviously—” He waved his hands stupidly in the air, like that conveyed any meaning at all.
“Obviously?” Leif tilted his head, like a curious cat. “Obviously what?”
“Obviously the two of you.”
“We will always be us, him and me. What you end up being is up to you.”
The way he walked away this time, resolute, back straight and stride purposeful, did not encourage any more of his questions.
Why the hell was the beefy side of his brain not arguing with him? Was he sulking? Gloating because both Leif and Bjorn obviously agreed with the side of him that kept telling him he was full of shit?
“Because you know what I think,” he whispered. “No point in saying it over and over if you don’t want to hear it.”
He scratched at his temple, as if that could dig out the annoyingly smug lizard-brain voice. “I just think it’s a bad idea.”
“You’d be wrong.”
“What do you know?”
“You.”
“Fuck off.”
“You know that’s not how you work.”
He knew. He could hardly pretend half of him didn’t exist.
Thankfully, the clanging alarm on his computer sounded off, snapping his attention to his screen and banishing his hedonistic half to silence.
Roger made an unhappy sound as he and Sal hurried across the room to stand behind his chair. His knuckles were white around the tennis ball, which had popped a seam in his grip.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Fuck!”
“Problem?” Leif asked, so mild Kassian had to take a second to scowl at him, because even that quiet, his cool tone had made him jump and because where the fuck had he come from?
Kassian had seen him walking away.
Bjorn had risen and come to look too, though if he understood what he was looking at, it didn’t register in his expression.
“Yes, there’s a problem.” He should have tried harder to find the file. He should have stayed and traced it. He should have just gone back into the server, found it, and attached another sniffer to it, getting caught be damned. Now it might be too late.
“Tell me,” Leif demanded.
“Quiet.”
Leif’s reflection in the monitor pursed its lips.
Bjorn put a hand on his shoulder.
Kassian refocused on the information flitting across his screen and not on its reflection. As if he needed a reminder how together those two guys were, no matter what either of them said about friendship.
“Should have followed it,” he muttered.
“But you know where it is now,” Leif said.
“Yes, and we’re fucked.”
“Just get it back,” Bjorn offered.
“Not that simple.”
“Can you corrupt it?” Sal asked.
“Tried. It’s like it’s iron-clad against that.”
“Impossible.”
“Apparently not.”
“So you can’t retrieve it, and can’t corrupt it.”
“No.”
“So burn it out,” Bjorn said.
Kassian turned to look at him. “Excuse me?”
“Fry the whole system.”
“You want me to take down the military’s computer system? And maybe the MNR?”
Sal blanched and he wished he hadn’t said that. They knew, like Kassian did, what damage the military could do to the people named in that file. And how much worse it could get if the MNR had it.
“Well, okay, that could be dangerous,” Bjorn conceded. “Maybe not all the military. Don’t want to accidentally set off any nuclear rockets or anything. But maybe just that one?”
“One what? Computer? Sever? Building?”
Bjorn shrugged, apparently at the end of his suggestions.
“Leave me alone.” Kassian turned back to his computer. Somehow, he had to neutralize that file before anyone else found it and looked at it.
Everyone but Leif wandered off.
“My ball broke,” Roger murmured.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Sal told him. “There are more in my desk.”
A minute later, Roger’s bouncing ball gave Kassian’s brain a steady cadence to follow in the background as he typed. He had to at least find a location. If he knew that, Bjorn’s suggestion might have some merit.
Less than an hour later, while Bjorn pretended to read the contents of the file in front of him, Kassian ravenously wolfed down a cold wrap Bjorn had gone to get him. Fetching food had seemed like the best use of his time. What else was he going to do while computer shit was happening? It had been so long since he’d even touched one, he wasn’t sure he’d remember what to do anyway.
The rest of them sat around Sal’s desk watching and waiting while Sal double-checked Kassian’s results.
Bjorn, sandwiched between Leif and an acid-orange office divider someone had moved next to Sal’s and Roger’s desks to cut down on the draft from the opening and closing main door, glanced over his office mates’ faces.
Everyone had looks of worry, mixed with varying degrees of anger and panic.
Bjorn didn’t quite get why.
“Am I right?” Kassian asked, peering over his meal at Sal, who was tapping away at their keyboard.
“Yeah.” They frowned. “I thought the military moved out of North Bay eons ago.”
“Obviously, they wanted the world to think that,” Leif said.
“So.” Bjorn frowned. “What does it mean? I don’t understand.” His gut churned, because he didn’t understand, and he hated admitting it, but if he was going to be of any use at all, someone had to clue him in.
Leif took his hand, which he never did outside of sex. “It’s a list of names and personal info.”
“Whose?”
“Ours,” Kassian snapped. “Among others,” he added when Leif shot him a dangerous look.
That look should not make Bjorn tingle in unmentionable places like it did. It was scary, and Leif meant it to terrify whoever he levelled it at. It worked for most people, including, it seemed, Kassian, which was a surprise, considering Kassian was twice Leif’s size.
Bjorn had given up pretending a long time ago it didn’t turn him on. “We don’t want the military to have our names,” he guessed, because that seemed the obvious takeaway, given how upset everyone was.
“We do not.” Kassian’s hard features went putty-soft and undefined for a split second before his scowl got so dark Bjorn’s chest constricted painfully. He wanted to reach over to take the big man’s hand, as Leif had done for him, or maybe rub between his shoulder blades. Anything to calm him down. But he would not only have had to stretch past Leif, sitting between them, to do it, he’d have to let go of Leif’s hand, and weirdly, he didn’t want to do that just yet. Instead, he tightened his fingers into a fist in his lap.
When Leif pressed a shoulder against Kassian’s and left it there, Bjorn’s chest loosened a little bit. At least he wasn’t the only person who’d noticed that the mean scowl was only mean to cover something else less hard and more hurt.
The glimpse was brief, and if he hadn’t been focused on Kassian, he would have missed it as the curtain of sharp self-defence fell into place. Whatever was motivating Kassian to stop this information getting out, it mattered. A lot.
Kassian took a deep breath and Bjorn felt the pressure of Leif pushing into him, as if Kassian had leaned into the touch offered, and pushed Leif against Bjorn in the process. He couldn’t hate the connection. As much as the man annoyed him, he obviously needed it.
Finally, Kassian picked up his wrap and went back to eating as Roger spoke.
“You know who Ward Sullivan is?” he asked.
Bjorn thought for a moment, because yes, the name had come up in the files he’d been reading, but a lot of it had been redacted, including the name in all but one forgotten place, so he had no context. “Should I?” he asked at last, because it was just faster to get them to tell him.
“Firefox,” Leif supplied. “I think we were in, like seventh grade when he?—”
“Oh. Yeah. I remember.” Though as a kid, he’d never known Firefox’s real name. “What ever happened to him?”
Kassian grunted. “The fucking government is what happened. Military ops. Missions they sent him on because he had powers, and not because he was the best person to get the job done. They didn’t care if he got hurt, because we’re a dime a dozen, and they’d just get someone else when he was burnt out.”
“He’s dead?”
Roger shuddered. “Worse. He lost most of his powers.”
“That can happen?” Bjorn ran his hand over the office divider, gathering the static into his fingertips, then touching one to the metal frame, setting off a shower of sparkling static. Leif’s hand in his tightened.
“Sorry,” he muttered as Sal yanked their cell phone out of range of the electric vibrations wavering through the air. He pushed his free hand between his knees and let the rest of the static snap its way down his leg instead.
“It can happen,” Kassian said, his voice a low, unhappy growl.
There was a story there beyond one faded and ancient, fire-tossing super no one had heard from in a million years. Bjorn wanted to know what it was, but Sal jumped in to change the subject.
“So, what are we going to do about this?”
“Shouldn’t someone talk to April?” Bjorn asked.
Sal and Kassian both snorted. Roger’s ball bounced wildly off the corner of Sal’s desk, and he missed catching it. They all watched it hit the window with a resounding thud, then ricochet off a post, off the wooden divider by April’s vacant desk, to land in one of Bjorn’s open boxes.
Roger scrambled after it, diving around the post and practically into the box after it. He shouted in triumph, then paused, ball in hand, as he looked back into the box to pull out the file on top. He returned to his seat next to Sal with the file in his other hand. “Guys, check this out.”
Sal took the file from him and read “Special Protocol Assignment Mechanics – Local Solutions – Fast, Accessible, Timely – Far-Reaching Extracurricular Evaluation.” They glanced up. “SPAM – LO SO – FAT FREE. Are they kidding with this shit?”
But Bjorn laughed, because that shit was funny as hell. “So, what does it say about getting this show on the road?”
They all looked at him.
“What?” Roger asked at last.
“About quickly and locally evaluating the mechanics of our upcoming extracurricular assignment.”
Roger cocked his head and stared.
“What does it say about making a plan to go to North Bay and get this file back before the wrong people see it,” he tried.
“We don’t make those plans,” Roger apprised him. “We’re told the plans, then we execute said plans.”
“That’s what April’s for,” Sal agreed.
“Gimme.” He took the file and glanced through it while Roger bounced his ball and Kassian finished his sandwich.
“Okay.” Putting the folder down, Bjorn looked around at them. “So basically, it says that lacking contact with our field supervisor—I guess that would be April—we just, like, make a plan and do the shit.”
“Do what shit?” Kassian asked.
“Go get your file, I guess.”
“We can’t just—” Roger glanced from him to Kassian to Sal and back again. “There has to be a mission. A plan. Someone has to set out the plan. Give us our assignments.”
“Yeah,” Bjorn agreed. “Us.” He looked over at Sal. “Unless you can get April on the phone to do it?”
“That can’t be right,” Kassian growled, snatching up the file and taking it back to his desk. “You must have read that wrong.”
“Well, it is.” Bjorn muttered, gathering up Kassian’s discarded lunch wrappers and sorting them into trash, blue box and compostable piles. “And I didn’t.”
Twenty minutes later, Kassian emerged from his cubicle, file in hand, looking less stressed than he had since they’d found where the file had landed. “He’s right.”
“Of course I’m right. I can read.”
Leif patted his hand. “You read really fast, babe. No one expects it from you.”
“Whatever.” He deliberately focused on opening a new file to read over past mission logs involving electronic espionage. They didn’t want his help planning, they could do it themselves.
“They’ll get used to you.”
Bjorn grunted, then glanced at the shirt—one of his—spread open on Leif’s desk. “What are you doing?”
“Lining a shirt for you.”
“With what?”
“Kassian made a bunch more of that liner he put inside the overalls. I thought it might be a good idea for you to have an outfit you can wear to, you know, not kill car batteries and shit. If we have to go somewhere too far to walk.” He winked.
“Like North Bay.”
“Yeah. Like that.”
“That’s what he brought in with him that morning.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re putting it in my shirt.”
“Yes.”
Bjorn looked over to where Kassian was scrubbing at the back of his neck and scrolling through what looked like a supplies list. “That must have taken him most of that night.”
“I expect so. I probably should have done this a long time ago. If he’d known I would take so long, maybe he wouldn’t have let it keep him up.”
Bjorn curled a lip. “Can’t just let me hate him, can you?”
Leif grinned without looking up. “You know I don’t make you do anything.”
“No. You don’t.” He kicked Leif under their desk, a bit of a spark passing between them despite the rubber-soled boots Bjorn wore.
Leif grinned a bit wider. “Zap me harder, baby,” he whispered.
“Dude. We’re at work!”
Leif snickered.
“Rude,” Bjorn muttered, squirming in his seat, because yeah, Leif had a filthy grin and wasn’t afraid to use it.