Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
GETTING TO KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU
Once inside, Kassian barely had time to glance around the tiny, one-room apartment before Leif stumbled to the bed, fell onto it, and crashed again.
Bjorn sat on the edge of the mattress, stroking his head and looking bereft.
“Hey.” Kassian laid a hand on Bjorn’s shoulder. “You should get cleaned up.”
Bjorn nodded, but made no other move.
“I’ll be here,” Kassian promised.
Again, Bjorn nodded.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.”
Kassian grinned. “So go take a shower, then come to bed.”
“Come to bed.”
Kassian shrugged. They’d invited him in, and somewhere between coding the destruction of all of General George’s hopes and dreams for villainous tyranny and human experimentation, and sending nails through the asshole’s brain—not all under his own power, he highly suspected—he’d given up his resistance to the idea.
If he could let berserker-Leif into his head to help him commit gruesome, telekinetic murder, maybe admitting he’d been attracted to the guy from day one wasn’t such a big leap.
“Yesterday this was all very… theoretical.”
Kassian nodded.
“I know we’re always insisting Leif doesn’t have any powers.”
Another nod.
“And he never talks about it.”
He was beginning to feel like a bobble-head.
“I think he’s always been scared of what he can do, so it was easier to pretend he couldn’t do anything.”
“Maybe before yesterday he couldn’t. Before Albert Lewis.”
Bjorn shrugged and looked back at his sleeping lover. “Maybe.”
“We’re not going to figure it out tonight, so go shower. You’re exhausted.”
“Yeah.”
Finally, Bjorn kissed Leif carefully on the mouth, then got up and went to the bathroom. A minute later, the shower came on.
He came out a very long shower later to lean in the bathroom doorway, a towel around his hips, his hair standing out in all directions, and his arms crossed. “Does it matter to you?” he asked.
Kassian blinked at him. He’d been dozing on the couch and now he was having a hard time keeping his brain from shorting out, watching the light gleam off Bjorn’s bulging arms. “What?”
“What he can do. Does it matter to you?”
“Why would it?”
“It does to some people. I think the love of his life left him, back when he was in college before—us—because his power wasn’t something spectacular.”
“You are the love of his life.”
“I don’t know.”
“Shut up.”
He snapped his mouth shut.
Kassian got off the couch and went to him, pulling his arms out of their cross so he could get close enough to touch him. “Maybe he is afraid of what he can do. The same way you are.”
“What?”
Kassian slowly and gently laid a hand on Bjorn’s chest.
Bjorn’s muscles twitched and his posture tightened. He gritted his teeth as a snap of electricity stung Kassian’s palm.
“You’re afraid your power will hurt someone.”
“Because it can.”
“So can his.” Kassian studied the snaps of blue and white light as they flowed over Bjorn’s skin. “At least what he did in that compound?—”
“Yeah.” Bjorn cut him off. He pushed away from the wall and traced his fingertips along Kassian’s jaw. “I was there.”
“So you use him to make sure you’re in control.”
“I don’t use him.”
“It’s not a judgement. Just a fact.” He gasped when Bjorn’s spark changed from light snaps to a sharp zing along his throat that tightened his skin and made his cock twitch. “You ever think he’s using you right back?”
“For what? Good sex?” Bjorn grinned, a wicked tilt to the expression that Kassian was more used to seeing on Leif.
“Let’s not dismiss an excellent side-benefit.” He pulled in another sharp breath as Bjorn’s fingers wrapped around the back of his skull, snuck up into his hair, and the static-electric pulse danced over his scalp. “Fuck, that is…”
“Hot?” Leif’s voice, directly behind him, made him jump and he turned.
There was nowhere for him to go, though, as Leif kept moving towards him, effectively backing him into Bjorn’s hard body. Bjorn might not be as big as he was but he was slightly taller, and his chest offered the resistance of the wall of muscle that it was.
“Sure,” Kassian panted.
Leif yanked his shirt out of his waistband and started hauling it up. From behind him, Bjorn grabbed the hem, too, and together, they dragged it up and over Kassian’s head. Between the scrape of Bjorn’s knuckles down the soft skin of his under-arms, and Leif’s lips and teeth on his chest, for a few minutes, Kassian couldn’t think.
He might be happy to never think again, if this was the other option.
Then Bjorn’s lips closed on the side of his neck and sparks—real, hot, scarily addictive sparks, flashed down the bare skin of his side, and his cock filled.
Leif’s cock was hard, too, and he ground it into Kassian’s, while Bjorn pressed his against Kassian’s backside.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
Leif chuckled against his skin. “Just you wait,” he promised, as he fumbled with Kassian’s pants. He finally got them open, and dragged them down, kneeling in front of him as his cock bobbed free.
“Holy fuck.”
Leif’s hands had thankfully, finally warmed up, so when he grasped Kassin’s dick, his touch was warm and pleasantly rough. He bucked into his grip.
Behind him Bjorn growled, and then his towel was gone, and his cock returned to press between his bared cheeks.
He stood no chance, with Bjorn’s leaking cock rubbing at his hole and Leif’s hot, wet mouth closing over his dick. The electricity that pulsed with each stroke as Bjorn rutted against him lit up his skin and fell in showers of sparks over Leif’s hair.
Leif fumbled his own jeans open and dug out his cock, reaching up with his other hand to find Bjorn’s. Their fingers clasped somewhere around Kassian’s navel as Leif stroked his own cock, sucked Kassian’s, and hummed in pure pleasure as the tenson built.
Bjorn’s hips rocked them all to a steady, inexorable rhythm driving them all towards release.
Kassian shot first, hard, with white noise buzzing through his head, blinding and deafening him. Bjorn’s come shot between his cheeks a moment later, and finally Kassian could see again.
Leif grinned up at them, his fist flying over his cock.
“Up,” Bjorn barked.
Leif tried once, stumbled, and Kassian caught him, pulled him to his chest, then spun him, so his back, sweaty and tight, clamped against his chest.
“Stroke him,” Bjorn ordered.
“How did I ever think he was the bossy one?” Kassian wondered, still a bit dazed.
Bjorn gripped his wrist in a hard, sizzling grip and guided it to Leif’s cock.
“Yes, sir,” he muttered, but really, he wasn’t complaining. He closed his hand over Leif’s, and Bjorn flattened his palm over Leif’s chest.
Leif arched at the snap of electric bliss that skittered over his skin, and there was no need for Kassian to stroke him at all. His come spurted into Kassian’s fist in thick pulses.
In seconds. Leif was sagging against him, and Kassian wrapped an arm around his waist to keep him up.
“Bed,” Bjorn told them. “Come on.”
With Bjorn’s come dripping down his legs and Leif’s all over his hand and wrist, Kassian would have liked to go clean up, but Bjorn’s hand on his back didn’t offer him the option. His touch was warm, rough where some of his burns had left angry skin, and strong. Notably, it was also completely devoid of static electricity.
Leif all but collapsed onto the bed, and Kassian had to manhandle him into the middle to give himself enough room to also lie down.
“Be right back.” Bjorn kissed them both on the forehead and hurried back to the bathroom.
Kassian watched him go.
“Nice view, isn’t it?”
Kassian grunted. His words were lost somewhere behind his meat-head’s gloating.
“You’re not wrong.” Leif yawned. “About me using him.”
“It was a guess.” Kassian turned his attention back to his smaller lover. “I have no idea what for.”
“Clarity.” He rolled and draped a leg over Kassian’s, resting his head on Kassian’s shoulder. “He’s so quiet in his head. The static is all in his body. Mine.” He tapped the side of his skull. “All in here. And being around him, and you, sometimes, like now, it’s peaceful.”
“And yet you shy away from it when it’s the most soothing.”
Leif rolled back onto his back. “He has way better control over what he can do that he thinks. Way better than me.”
Kassian traced the line of muscle along Leif’s arm. “What can you do?”.
“I know I have powers. Some kind of powers, anyway. I’ve never been able to use them. Not like my people.”
“Your people?”
“Family. They can read minds, a lot of them.”
Kassin’s eyebrows went up. “Really?”
“They keep it well hidden. Wouldn’t want any of their marks to catch on to what they’re doing. They could be out in the world looking for people who want to hurt other people, and instead, they’re the ones doing harm.”
“Your family are villains?”
Leif snorted. “Hardly. They’re petty criminals and con artists. They could be searching out the real super villains, and instead, they’re using what they can do to steal banking passwords and troll for blackmail material.” He sighed. “Bjorn is the very best person I know, and when he said we were going to be friends, I went with it, because who doesn’t want to be friends with a good, kind person like that?” He turned his head on the pillow to look at Kassian. “Right? Is it wrong that I use him as my guide?”
“To what?”
“Being good.”
“You are good.”
Leif shrugged. “Not so good I could avoid being possessed by a murderous ghost.”
“Good enough to save my life. And Bjorn’s. And the murderous ghost’s.”
“Can you save a ghost’s life?”
“I don’t know. What does the ghost think?”
“Nothing gets past you, huh?”
“Not a lot.”
“The ghost doesn’t want to be dead.”
“Which he might be if he leaves your head.”
Leif shrugged.
“Well then.” The bed dipped and Kassian looked over at Bjorn, who continued, “Guess it’s a good thing you have both of us. I might be a helpful guide to the good side of the force, but I’m hardly smart enough to figure out how to take on a ghost.” He nudged Kassian’s legs apart and stroked the warm cloth he’d brought back with him over his balls and ass to clean up his spunk. He looked at Leif while he worked. “Just because a slightly deranged berserker hitched a ride in your brain doesn’t change who you are. And you were a good person before you ever met me.”
Leif smiled at him. “I love that you think that.”
Bjorn leaned over Kassian to kiss Leif. “And I love you.”
“Same.”
Kassian glared at the ceiling.
Finally, Bjorn straightened, gazed down at him, and then, with a sigh, leaned down to kiss him too.
The man was no shabby kisser.
Leif had fallen back asleep and Kassian was halfway there when Bjorn finally crawled onto the far side of the bed, wrapped an arm over Leif’s waist and let out a groan of satisfaction. He met Kassian’s gaze over Leif’s sleeping form.
“He’s going to be okay.”
Kassian nodded. “He is.”