Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN
Sal directed them to a small house on the outskirts of town where two off-duty EMTs waited to treat Bjorn’s cuts and burns, poke at Leif’s many bruises to make sure nothing had been broken, wrap up the burns on his wrists from the cuffs, and check over the rest of them.
Bjorn expected them to insist on a hospital, but they didn’t.
“Not their first rodeo, I expect,” Kassian said, sitting patiently while one of them slathered his ankle with an antiseptic cream. The other one was already done and neatly wrapped with gauze. His hair dripped onto his borrowed T-shirt, clean, now, since he’d showered the moment they’d unloaded into the house.
Having another man’s life’s blood all over him was, apparently, more than he’d been able to stand. It had brought the damage the shackles had done to his skin to light, though. Maybe adrenaline had kept him from noticing, even in the van when Gerome had picked the locks to get them off.
“You guys read the fine print too, huh?” Bjorn asked.
The one applying butterfly tape to his feet chuckled and nudged his partner with an elbow. “Kerry did, sure. Told me it was a good gig, so…” He shrugged. “I trust her.”
“Yeah.” Bjorn glanced at Leif, who was sitting on an old couch, also clean and showered, now, head back, eyes closed, Dash’s head in his lap. “Same.” He turned his attention back to the EMTs. “But you’re still ambulance people.”
Kerry shrugged. “Lucky for you, right?”
He could only nod. “Lucky for me.” He had to wonder how far SPAM reached, though, if they had trained medical personnel just hanging out, ready for a call.
By the time everyone had been patched up, the ride back to the office happened in the dark. There wasn’t a lot to see out the window for most of the drive. Trees in the dark didn’t look like much, and the distant lights of isolated houses seemed… fragile.
Bjorn had liked his life before he knew there were assholes out in the world trying to use regular people as tools and weapons.
Next to him, head on his shoulder, Leif snored softly. It was good he could sleep.
“Hey.” Kassian watched him over Leif’s head.
“What?”
“You tell me. You’ve been sighing and growling over there for the past half hour. What’s wrong?”
Bjorn shuddered. “That stairwell, dude. You didn’t see what it did to him.”
“I think we all saw what it did to him.”
“Yeah. And now what?”
“That’s why I kept the laptop. I’ll figure it out.”
“Sure.” He turned his attention back out the window.
“I will figure it out,” Kassian said again, reaching past Leif to take Bjorn’s hand.
Bjorn’s first instinct was to yank free, but Kassian tightened his hold. No sparks flew and Bjorn realized Kassian had a good grip. Warm skin. Strength. Usually, Leif was the strong one, and Bjorn wasn’t at all sure they could reverse roles now. Kassian’s assurance, which yesterday he might have scoffed at, today felt like a lifeline.
So he sat there, fingers laced with Kassian’s in Leif’s lap, for the comfort of it. When Leif’s hand, still too cold, slipped between theirs, they glanced at each other over his head again, and Bjorn sighed.
“You could have just talked to your brother,” Bjorn muttered.
“What would that have accomplished?”
“Saving us a trip into hell?”
Kassian sighed. “You think Rufus would have told me any of his plans?”
“I think your family has a fucking communication problem.”
Another sigh. “I think you’re right.”
“I don’t know what to do for him now. He isn’t that guy in the hallway snapping necks and… and…” He swallowed, because saying “ripping people’s throats out” out loud was beyond him right then.
“We got this,” Kassian promised.
“Sure,” he said again.
Instead of going home, they returned directly to the office.
Sal greeted them with tight hugs, choice words, and a list of things they had to do before their next mission. Most of the things on their list involved making sure their tech survived Bjorn.
Fair.
When Sal realized how strong a pulse Bjorn could emit, they were amazed he’d managed to stay in touch through his earpiece as long as he had, but in the future, they were not taking any chances.
Some of the list involved a full debriefing so they could avoid things like Bjorn wandering around hostile territory in socked feet the next time.
Also fair.
A tiny bit of it was a promise from Sal to come clean to everyone on why they knew the layout of the building so well.
Bjorn wanted their full story, because the details they knew hadn’t come from any blueprints, so that item was not just fair, but necessary. Trust mattered. Feeling like they had been kept in the dark didn’t go a long way towards building it.
“Are we done here, then?” Kassian asked, once Sal’s ranting had died down.
“We haven’t debriefed.” They glared at Kassian.
“Leif’s exhausted. Bjorn’s traumatized.”
“I’m not.”
Kassian lifted both eyebrows at him.
“Much.”
“Plus, you discharged about a week’s worth of charge in one go. Twice.”
“Just the one time.”
“Filling the cuffs counts.”
“Oh yeah.” He grinned. “I did that.” His grin faded slightly. “Sorry we lost those. They worked really well.” And he was sorry. As weird as they had been, he could have gotten used to them. Maybe. Eventually.
Kassian grunted. “I’ll make you new ones.”
“Cool.”
“Frankly, I’m not even sure how you’re still standing.”
Bjorn tightened the arm he had around Leif, who had leaned most of his weight into Bjorn’s side. He was standing because Leif needed him to be.
Kassian slipped a shoulder under his.
“I can manage.” But he didn’t actually try to move Kassian away, and did let him take some of his weight off his brutalized feet. “Thanks.”
Kassian’s only answer was a fast peck to his temple and another grunt, this one softer, accompanied by a little puff of breath that stirred the hair over Bjorn’s ear and made him shiver. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but it seemed promising, somehow.
He was going to have to learn to speak Kassian. If he’d managed to become fluent in Leif’s grins, surely, he could learn to interpret Kassian’s wordless sounds.
Kassian turned to Gerome. “You’re coming back here after today.”
Gerome lifted an eyebrow, and the resemblance to Kassian’s own exasperated expression gave Bjorn a warm feeling in his gut, like it was, in fact, going to be okay. Eventually.
“Meaning?” Gerome asked.
Kassian glanced to Sal, who was weirdly letting Antony support them with an arm around their shoulders. Standing together like that, size difference—which was substantial—aside, he could see a certain resemblance in their soft brown eyes, the ski-jump tilt to their noses and the freckles across their very pale cheeks.
“We need you,” Kassian said, bringing Bjorn’s attention back. “Sal’s awesome on comms but being in charge is too much.”
Sal nodded. Lines of exhaustion etched what were normally smile lines deeper into their face around turned-down lips. They looked a lot like Bjorn felt right then.
“I thought you had a boss,” Gerome said.
“One who didn’t even bother to show up and make sure we all made it back in one piece. She’s—I actually don’t even know how to end that sentence.” Kassian huffed. “It doesn’t matter. We need you.”
“Fine. But doesn’t someone have to approve that, or something?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Sal said. They glanced around. “For all of you, yeah?”
Rufus nodded, clearly relieved, like having a purpose was necessary, and now that he’d accomplished his original goal—sort of—he’d been worried about what came next.
When he nodded, Randolph followed suit.
“You don’t have to,” Rufus said quietly, mouth close to Randolph’s ear.
“You need me to keep you from doing anything else so dumb people think you’re the bad guy.”
“Shut up.”
Randolph grinned, and the transformation took Bjorn’s breath away. Kassian was handsome, for sure. But Randolph, and presumably Rufus, if he ever smiled, was stunning.
“Hey,” Kassian snapped, smacking his arm.
“What?” Bjorn looked at him, and the absolute mix of annoyance and fear on his face made Bjorn’s heart skip. “Oh.” He returned the kiss Kassian had planted on the side of his head.
A spark—the first one since he’d released all that energy into the server bank—snapped and sizzled between them.
“Ow!” Kassian jerked, then shivered and grunted softly. “What was that for?”
“He’s pretty, but he’s not you.” He kissed his cheek this time, lingering, letting a low, slow release of static zing between them. “Take us home,” he whispered.
He was really going to love hearing these inarticulate grunts from Kassian, even more, seeing how many ways he could drag them out of him.
“Thought Leif was the bossy one.”
“He’s busy in his head, so I’ll have to cover for him.”
“You don’t sound all that concerned.”
“Trust me, if he’s still like this tomorrow, you will see the full force of my freak out. Right now—” He pulled in a breath. “—I’m it.” He leaned more heavily on Kassian. “But I can’t?—”
“You don’t have to. Come on.”
Between Kassian and the handrail, Bjorn didn’t have to put much weight on his feet at all, and still, settling into the van was a relief.
Leif roused enough to strap himself into the seatbelt, but flaked out again even as Kassian started the van’s engine. He was about to drive away when Rufus appeared, opening his door.
“What?” Kassian glared at him.
“Just move over. I’ll drive. We need the van back.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” They rearranged themselves, and Bjorn tuned them out as the van pulled away from the curb.
The next thing he knew, Kassian was shaking him awake in front of the apartment building he and Leif had left what felt like a lifetime ago, but in fact, had been less than twenty-four hours before.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “That was a day.”
Kassian snickered. “They aren’t all like that.”
“I should fucking hope not. I thought I was a janitor.”
Kassian laughed out loud.
“Help me.” Nudging Leif, Bjorn leaned down and kissed his hair. “Babe. We’re home.”
“Mmm.” Leif snuggled against him.
“Hey.” Bjorn nudged him a little harder. “Need you to push the elevator button.”
“Yeah. Okay. Fine. I’m up.” He stirred, righted himself, and yawned.
Kassian took some of Bjorn’s weight as he lowered himself to the sidewalk.
“You seem recovered.” Bjorn noted for the first time that Kassian himself was no longer hobbling and limping.
“I was stiff from not being able to move, but I’m good now. Probably be hella sore tomorrow, but nothing some stretching and yoga won’t cure.”
“You do yoga?”
“Sun salutations at dawn. Every day.”
“Really?”
Kassian grunted. “You try living with an argumentative asshole in your head all the time. You’d need some Zen therapy, too.”
Leif peered past Bjorn to Kassian. “I’m in.”
Kassian stared at him a long moment.
“What?” Leif frowned.
“Sunrise?”
“Did you think you were going home alone?” Leif asked. “After everything?”
“I—”
“Don’t,” Bjorn warned, nudging him yet again, “be dumb.”
“Dumb.”
“Yeah. For a supposedly smart guy, you have your moments of absolute thick-headed opacity.”
“He’s not wrong,” Rufus muttered from the driver’s seat. “Can I go now?”
Bjorn leaned past Kassian. “Thanks for the lift.”
“Always. Take care of my little brother.”
“Always,” Bjorn echoed.
Kassian stiffened slightly, but Bjorn only tightened his hold. “Let’s go in.” He didn’t look back as the van eased away from the curb.