Sebastian Seaver put the finishing touches on the final piece of code, and clicked compile. God, it had been a long morning… or maybe afternoon?

He checked the date and time at the bottom of the computer screen as he reached for the Styrofoam coffee cup on his desk and found it empty.

And huh, maybe that wasn’t a huge surprise, considering somehow he’d been in this room for more than twenty-four hours. Jesus.

As he shifted, every part of his body ached - his neck from holding still too long, his wrists from typing, his back from sitting in the crappy chair that hadn’t had lumbar support since sometime in the last millennium. Even his leg ached, a pain he knew from experience was caused by compulsively tapping his foot to the Motörhead drumbeat coming from his speakers. But all of that faded in the giddy rush that rose up from his belly as the machine finished.

It fucking worked.

He took a second to call up his email, ignoring the thousands of unread messages, and tapped off a quick memo to TJ, his VP of Development. Solved the “impossible” issue with the Pentex software. Someone owes me lunch for a week. He smirked to himself as he hit Send, imagining her face as she read it.

And, frankly, he was pretty fucking excited about winning lunches, he couldn’t lie. At least this way he’d be sure to get fed once a day. He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on Drew bringing him dinner until…

Well. Until he’d stepped back from all the drama he’d caused with Drew.

He rolled his chair back from the desk, dumping the empty cup into the trash because he wasn’t a total slob, and forced himself to a standing position, ignoring the way his joints popped as he moved. He’d sat down a thirty-year-old man, and stood up ancient, the Rip van Winkle of Seaver Tech. Even his fucking head got in on the act, protesting the sudden lack of blue light as he stepped away from the monitor by providing a thumping counterpoint to Ace of Spades.

Unlike his shiny, rarely-used office on the top floor, there was no natural light down here in his lab, and no decoration at all besides a really ugly canvas of a shipwreck that his mom had painted once upon a time. His father had chosen this basement hideout because it removed him from all the outdoor distractions - migrating geese and sunlight glinting off buildings, ships in the Harbor and snow hissing against the insulated windows. Bas liked it because it saved him from noticing how fucking long every day lasted… and from being disturbed by well-meaning individuals who didn’t understand the beauty of focusing on a task for as long as it took to finish it.

He shuffled his way over to the mini fridge on the far side of the room - a setup he’d designed purposely, so he’d be forced to move occasionally, and stuck his hand inside the carton of soda.

Empty. Goddamn it.

The only beverage left was bottled water with vitamins and electrolytes. He made a face even as he twisted the cap. It was like mixing vegetables into baked goods - completely unfair to all parties involved. Probably something Drew, or Cam, or Margaret, his assistant, had brought down for him. But it was either this or tap water from the small bathroom attached to his office.

He kicked the door closed and briefly considered going out for supplies. His candy stash was depleted, and he hadn’t eaten since yesterday. The project he’d been killing himself over was technically done, and it might be a novelty to actually experience sunlight for a while…

But as quickly as the idea came, he dismissed it. Now that his project was done, his real work could begin, and that was way more alluring than weak winter sunlight.

He chugged the water in seconds and tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin, then dropped to the floor by force of habit and executed a series of pushups, hearing his father’s voice ring in his head.

Your mind is only as strong as your body, Bas. Letting yourself get weak in one area means weakness in all areas.

Too bad dear old dad hadn’t dropped any really important knowledge while he was doing the Obi-Wan bullshit, like how to deal with the knowledge that your father was a criminal who’d taken a loan from some Russian mobsters to start his business. Or how to keep your shit together when said mobsters threatened your friends and family. Or how to deal with your messed-up brain when you kissed your drunk best friend right on the goddamn mouth, and he whispered words that both scared the shit out of you and made your dick harder than it had ever been before.

Those would have been some quality Dad-lessons, right there.

Instead, Levi Seaver had left his eldest son pushups and an underground lair.

Bas levered himself up, his heart pumping hard, and took a second to stretch out his arms before walking back to the desk.

He plunked into his seat and checked his email - more from force of habit than because he expected anything urgent. He purposely employed people who could handle almost every aspect of his job for him. He winced when he saw one from Margaret.

Mr. Seaver… several emails, attached below… old friend of your father, Michael Paterkin… progressed to phone calls… please direct me on how you wish to proceed or I will escalate this to Mr. McMann. The woman who’d been his father’s assistant and now handled things for both Bas and Cam knew exactly how to motivate him to take action: threatening to tattle on him to Drew McMann. Drew had always been able to coerce or cajole Bas into doing the right thing, without ever having to speak a word. There was something about the force of those deep brown eyes that could break Bas out of his mental deadlock.

Until now, anyway, when those eyes had become the reason for the deadlock.

Had he ever really noticed Drew’s eyes before Halloween? If he had, he couldn’t recall. Like so much about Drew, they were just an accepted, necessary part of his existence, like the air around him. Something he hadn’t noticed until it had changed.

Warm lips, cinnamon-spiced and yielding. The mad surge of adrenaline pumping through his veins. Drew’s leg against his, excitingly firm when it should have been soft and rounded. The prick of light stubble on a jaw that should have been smooth.

Stop it!

Bas knew that his brain was wired a bit differently than most. That, if left unchecked, he tended to obsess about things nearly to the point of madness, to the point of distortion. It was then that he was often able to tap into something beyond himself - something instinctive and vital that gave him his very best ideas. It was also the point at which he stopped being a capable human and became almost self-destructive.

It wasn’t healthy, he’d been told time and again, by his mother and his brother and some lovely therapists. It was a risk he took when it came to his work because his alternative was… mediocrity. And that was absolutely not acceptable.

But there were also the times when it happened in his personal life, like it had after the crash when he’d become a zombie attempting to fuse his body to his couch. That was clearly what was happening now.

What other explanation was there for him thinking about Drew and… wanting?

His heart thrumming in his chest just at the fucking memory, Bas forced himself to scroll down Margaret’s email and view the attachments - emails that Bas hadn’t bothered to read when they’d been sent a few weeks ago. A man wanted an opportunity to chat with Sebastian, to remind him of the great work he’d done for his dear friend Levi Seaver, to get Bas’s assistance with a project that would be mutually beneficial.

Bas rolled his eyes. The trouble with his last name was that it brought so many dear friends out of the woodwork when times got tough.

He wished, for about the millionth time in the last few weeks, that he could talk to Drew about this. Drew - the Drew who was his friend, and not this weird phantasm in his head, taunting him with kisses - would understand perfectly and know just how to handle it. But he’d pushed the real Drew away, and the longer the silence between them lasted, the less he knew how to get out of it, or how to explain it away.

Yeah, sorry for the dead radio silence, bud. I just couldn’t stop thinking about kissing you, and I was worried that if I saw you, we’d end up doing more than just kissing. I think about your neck a lot, you know? And your collarbone, which has somehow become sexy. And since I have always been one-hundred percent straight, that would be crazy. So… Game of Thrones marathon?

Cursing himself for the idiot he was, he sent Margaret an email asking her to refer the Paterkin-person to HR. What Bas needed was to focus on a problem that he could actually solve.

Then, ignoring the rumble in his stomach, he shifted his attention to the second-largest monitor, waking the sleeping machine with a click. A photograph of his nemesis appeared in living color.

Alexei Stornovich, son of Ilya Stornovich and current head of the Russian crime syndicate known as SILA, which happened to be the Russian word for power. Fucking pretentious.

Ilya had been the one to bring Bas’s father into the SILA fold in the very beginning, but it had been Alexei - ruthless, power-hungry, and by most accounts, literally crazy - who had called Levi Seaver’s bluff when Levi wanted to get out of their arrangement.

Alex was stacked - maybe in his mid-forties, broad and muscle-bound as any bar bouncer, and with the same fuck-off scowl. He was a handsome guy, if you liked them tall, older, and wearing a smile that was borderline-insane, which would not have been Bas’s type even if he was into guys. That was more up Cain Shaw’s aisle, considering he was currently shacked up with Damon Fitzpatrick. Or maybe… maybe Alexei was Drew’s type?

Which begged the question, did Drew have a type? Was he attracted to the soft looking guys who needed protection? Or the brawny guys who could bend him in half and hold him down?

His brain helpfully superimposed a picture of Drew next to the picture of Alex, his tall, lean frame dwarfed by Alex’s bulk…

Gross.

Bas scowled as he shook his head to clear it. He had no clue what type of guy Drew went for, but he was reasonably sure it wasn’t Alex. Was it weird that in all the years they’d been friends, he wasn’t sure what Drew’s type was?

And Jesus Christ, since when did he sit around thinking about which guys were fuckable?

He forced his mind back to studying Alex’s picture, and then pulled up the list of crimes he’d been charged with, scrolling and scrolling until he reached the bottom. Decades of charges - weapons offenses and murders, thefts and conspiracies - none of which had ever stuck. And these didn’t include the thousands of other crimes he’d never been charged with in the first place, like instigating the murder of Sebastian’s parents and his fiancée, Amy.

His hands clenched into fists and he forced them to relax. He knew that Drew and Cam, Cort, Damon, and Cain, thought he was being an idiot for pursuing his own investigation into the Stornovich clan. Let the authorities handle it, they said. Stay out of it. This isn’t for you to solve, Sebastian. But how the hell could he leave this to the authorities, when Alex Stornovich had skated on every charge he’d ever been nailed with?

This was Bas’s job, uniquely his. The crash was ultimately his fault, and so it would be his job to make sure Alex was put behind bars – or fucking killed outright. Maybe then the ghosts that haunted him would allow him a little bit of peace.

He cracked his neck from side to side and called up a new screen - one that was never attached to the Seaver Technologies mainframe, nor registered under his name in any way - and began his real work.

For weeks, he’d been building a botnet - a web of computers around the world that he’d managed to, er, conscript into service, so to speak, by installing an unobtrusive little piece of software that allowed him to control them all remotely. Yes, theoretically the owners of said computers weren’t technically aware that the gaming cheat program they’d downloaded had also contained this hidden string of code, but Bas figured it was karmic payback for them attempting to cheat in the first place. And, he consoled himself, unlike most hackers, he had no desire to keystroke-log the users’ credit card numbers and passwords. His plan was far more white-hat… and unfortunately, just a little less easily controlled.

Most people were only peripherally aware that their computers - and the servers that housed their sensitive, personal information - were constantly under attack. Oh, there was a massive outcry in the media anytime someone managed to make a huge breach, of course, but most of the time, software companies were able to make patches within hours after a new virus was launched into the world, and the average user was none the wiser that some unsung programmer had saved their ass once again. But during the time between the release of the virus and the creation of the patch… that Zero Day time… there was a flurry of activity happening online, with computers from all over the world trying to exploit weaknesses and occasionally succeeding.

And the easiest way for Bas to hide his search into SILA’s servers was to wait until computers all over the world were also launching attacks, losing himself in the crowd.

Tracking fake invoices that Cain and Damon had stolen from Senator Shaw’s office, Sebastian had located at least one of Alexei’s servers, and yesterday he’d hit the jackpot, using his botnet to attack Alexei’s servers for that vulnerability. He’d managed to access the fucking root directory… and he’d found a whole lot of nothing. Legitimate businesses - or so they seemed - through which Alexei no-doubt funneled his blood money… but not a single shred of evidence Bas could use to tie them to any crime.

And not a single hint of where Bas could look for another server.

Coming up against a brick wall this way was maddening, if only because it so rarely happened. It wasn’t cockiness to say that Bas was the best of the best. He’d learned everything he knew at Levi Seaver’s knee, after all.

He rubbed his stomach, like he could ease the pain of grief that lodged itself there.

Some days, it felt like his father was still in the room with him - like he should be able to lift his head and see his father, busily and silently working on his own projects on the other side of the lab the way they’d done countless times. The instinctive understanding of complex code, the ability to navigate beautiful logical labyrinths, were traits that he and his dad had shared for as long as Bas could remember, and it hit him every single day that he hadn’t just lost his dad when that fucking plane crashed, he’d lost the one person who understood the way his mind worked.

But then, Bas couldn’t understand how his dad had been stupid enough, reckless enough, to get involved with the Stornoviches in the first place, so maybe they weren’t as similar as Bas had thought.

He ran a hand over his head, trying to steady his thoughts. God. He had to laugh at himself. Emotions were a bitch. He’d a thousand times rather bury himself in code, in problems that had logical solutions.

As evidenced by the fact that he’d all but checked out on his best friend after the fallout from that stupid kiss.

Ugh. Not thinking about Drew’s lips, or those loaded words. Not thinking about how he’d taste when his lips weren’t flavored with cinnamon.

Focus, Seaver.

He pulled his chair closer to the desk and set to work, ignoring the growing hungers that clawed at both his stomach and the back of his mind, and lost himself in the simple, serene grace of clearly defined parameters that allowed his imagination to flourish.

Sometime later, the scent of vinegar and spice began to penetrate his concentration, and his stomach gave an almighty growl. Shifting back to reality was like surfacing from a long spell underwater, and he blinked as he looked around. There was a can of diet root beer unopened on the desk beside him, along with a large brown paper bag, stapled shut, which was the source of the delicious smell. And on the far side of the desk, slumped back in a chair with his nose buried in his phone, was Drew McMann.

Hungry as he was, he couldn’t help but stare at the man, drinking him in, nearly giddy just to be in his presence after all these weeks. Shit, Bas had missed him.

Drew had cultivated a reputation for perfection - his clothes were always immaculate, posture straight, smile polite. He was punctual, prepared, and never at a loss for words…

Except, Bas realized, that wasn’t really true. Not when it was just the two of them. Right now, Drew’s tie was askew and his collar unbuttoned, his jacket missing entirely. His elbows were braced on the arms of a rolling chair, his ass on the edge of the seat, and his long legs spread out before him. His face was puckered in concentration as his thumbs moved across the screen, and Bas knew, just knew, that Drew wasn’t sending some critical text message, but lost in one of the dozens of mindless jewel-matching games that were his dirty little secret.

He was so fucking happy to see Drew sitting there, Bas forgot any awkwardness existed between them, forgot they hadn’t spoken in nearly a month, and grinned.

“Can McMann make the four-ruby combo that will take him to the next level?” he queried the room in his best sportscaster voice. “The audience is holding its breath…”

Drew glanced up and scowled. “Dick,” he said without heat.

Bas opened his mouth to fire back with a very middle-school retort, but he thought better of it.

Drew didn’t seem to notice. “Pad Thai in the bag.”

“Oh! From Sweet Lime?”

“Obviously.”

Bas opened the bag and pulled out a container. “Is it…”

“Crispy, with no shrimp and extra peanuts,” Drew said, his focus back on his game.

Bas groaned appreciatively. “Fucking awesome. Drew McMann, will you…” Marry me. That would’ve been the throwaway end of the statement anytime over the past decade, but now his tongue tripped over that, too. He cleared his throat. “Uh… will you hand me a fork?”

Drew didn’t even look up. “Plastic fork’s in the bag.”

Right, of course it was. Bas grabbed the fork and dug into the noodles, and holy fuck. Better than sex. He couldn’t remember being this hungry in… ever.

“How’d you find me?” he asked, though it came out garbled.

Drew did spare him a glance then. “Where the hell else would you be but hiding out in your cave?”

So Drew was angry.

Bas gripped the fork tighter and shoved more bean sprouts in his mouth. Suddenly all the reasons he’d started avoiding Drew came rushing back. Ever since Halloween, Drew’s sarcasm had gotten just a little too pointed, the tension between them a little too thick. And Bas hadn’t known how to handle it, because what he wanted and what he should want no longer seemed to align.

“Working, Drew. I’ve been working not hiding,” he said. And it wasn’t a lie. He’d finished his project earlier, after all.

Drew gave a pointed look at the monitor where Alexei Stornovich’s photo was still displayed. “Yep. So I see.”

“You got something to say?”

Drew’s eyes met his and softened slightly. “Eat first, Sebastian.”

“Great,” Bas muttered. “Suddenly feels like my last meal.”

“Could be because it’s dismal as fuck down here. Like a prison cell…” Drew pointed to the painting on the wall. “A prison cell with really depressing art.”

“Mmmhmm.” Bas turned to look at the painting, his mouth full of noodles, and swallowed. “It’s a copy of a Rembrandt painting called The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. It’s s’posed to be inspiring - Jesus does a miracle and calms the storm or something.”

“It’s inspiring like Jaws was inspiring,” Drew said. “It inspires me to never go in the water again.”

Bas chuckled. “Yeah. My mom did it during some art class, and my dad hung it up, even though it’s seriously gloomy. He was kind of a sap.”

“And you’re the sap who keeps it.”

“Hey!”

Drew smirked at his phone, while Bas rolled his eyes and shoveled more food in his mouth.

“What are you playing?” Bas demanded, when several minutes had passed in silence. It wasn’t like Drew to ignore him this way.

“Hmm? Oh, it’s called Dragon Puzzler.”

Bas frowned. “No jewels?”

“Uh. No, there are jewels,” Drew admitted, rolling his eyes when Bas snorted. “But it’s not just jewels. There are levels and upgrades and…”

“Dragons?”

Drew shot him a glare. “Yes.”

Ah, there was nothing like provoking Drew. Even after weeks apart, they had resumed their usual banter with the ease of two people who’d been halves of a whole for most of their lives. Bas finished his meal in a much better humor.

“Alright,” he said, leaning back in his chair and cracking open his soda. “I’m fed. Would’ve been better if there’d been dessert, but I can’t complain. Is this the point where you give me the blindfold and last rites?”

“So dramatic. Maybe I came to see if you had made any progress.” Drew waved a hand at the computer set-up.

“Sure you did. Well, as it happens, I managed to get into Alexei’s server yesterday. Or one of them.” He sighed in frustration. “I hit a dead end.”

“I’m not even going to ask how the hell you accomplished that, because the less I know, the less I have to pretend I don’t know,” Drew said with a long-suffering sigh. “Does that mean we can’t get at them online?”

“It might mean he has another server, in which case I’d need to find its physical location. Or… I guess there’s the possibility that he’s air-gapped all his sensitive data.”

“Air-gapped it. Of course. I mean, pfft. Doesn’t everyone?” Drew drawled.

Bas rolled his eyes. “Air gapping means keeping it on a server that’s not connected to the internet, ever. Even I can’t hack a server that’s not online, believe it or not.”

Drew frowned. “Is that likely?”

“It’s possible.” Bas shrugged and shook his head ruefully. “Actually, it’s good business practice, especially with the completely illegal shit he has to hide. I don’t want to give the asshole credit for being that smart, but maybe he is.” He pulled up the picture of Alexei again and swept a hand at it. “Does this look like a criminal mastermind to you?”

“This is him?”

“Yep. Alexei Stornovich,” he said, as Drew came around the desk and leaned over his chair. “I won’t bore you with the laundry list of things he’s been accused of…”

“Convictions?”

“None,” Bas returned, tapping another key. “Just a list of charges that haven’t stuck. And there’s this.”

Drew perused the list of names on the screen. “His known associates?”

“Former associates. All of these people have gone missing.”

“Missing doesn’t mean he had anything to do with it,” Drew reasoned. “Correlation versus causation.”

That smooth, polished lawyer-voice of Drew’s had always been provoking. In the past, it made Bas want to push Drew’s buttons, if only to show that he could rile Drew up. But now, it made his stomach clench uncomfortably with something like… something like… arousal. He wanted to throw the man against the wall and kiss him until his eyes crossed.

He swallowed hard, uncomfortable and now fucking annoyed. This wasn’t the way things with Drew were supposed to be.

“Right, of course,” he snapped. “I’m sure these guys all decided they wanted to run away and join the circus. Maybe start a commune for retired crime lords somewhere in Alaska?”

“Or they moved back to Russia, Bas. Or they went into witness protection, which we would never know about. Or they were fake names to begin with, and now they go by other names.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that this guy is a murderous shithead!”

“Whoa! Chill, Sebastian. In what realm am I saying that he’s a good guy? He’s a fucking crime boss, and I doubt he offers a retiree pension plan. I’m just saying, he doesn’t have an unlimited reach, right? So these associates could have chosen—”

“He’s dangerous, and the authorities can’t stop him,” Bas insisted.

Drew shut his eyes and sighed. “Ah.”

“Ah? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means now I understand why you were eager to show me what you were working on.” Drew walked back around the desk, flopped back into his seat. “And it means Cam, who specifically asked me to track you down today, was right.”

Bas narrowed his eyes. “Right about what?” He was unreasonably annoyed that Drew had sought him out because Cam told him to, rather than because he’d been missing Bas the same way Bas had missed him.

Their friendship had never been like that, ever. But now suddenly everything was fucked up.

“Right about you being on a quest to do everything yourself,” Drew continued, drumming his fingers on the arms of the chair. “I mean, not that it came as a shock to me that you’re in this up to your eyeballs. I just don’t think I really understood just how far you intended to take this on your own. Riding off to save the day. All by yourself.”

Patience. Patience. Bas’s foot tapped restlessly against the floor, and he belatedly realized that the pounding heavy metal he’d been listening to was gone, replaced by Classical bullshit. So fucking like Drew to just come in and take shit over.

“We can’t all be like you, counselor, biding our time. Some of us make leaps, take risks.”

Drew regarded him with a smirk that Bas wanted to kiss — no, punch. Obviously, punch — right off his stupid face. “You want to talk about taking leaps and risks suddenly, Sebastian?”

Bas looked away. Did he? Given the way his heart pounded at the very thought, he was pretty sure he did not want to talk about it. Not yet, anyway. Not until he’d figured out why he was suddenly looking at Drew in a whole new way, not until he’d categorized things properly and found a logical solution.

“And that’s what I figured,” Drew said, throwing up his hands, his smile smugger than ever. But after a second he leaned forward with a sigh. “Listen, I didn’t come here for a fight.”

“Yes, you did,” Bas grumbled.

“Fine. Maybe a little,” Drew admitted. “But only because I knew you weren’t going to like what I had to say.” He shook his head. “You promised — you fucking promised — back in my kitchen a month ago that you would not go off half-cocked. You agreed that you wouldn’t do this on your own.”

“As I recall, you threatened to inform on me to the FBI.”

“Whatever. In any case, you agreed.”

Turning his neck to the side, stretching his cramped muscles, Bas acknowledged this. “I did. And I’m happy to have everyone help. Problem is, no one else seems to give a shit.”

“Not even a little bit true,” Drew countered. “Cort has his FBI contacts, Cain has been talking to his father, who might have more info on SILA. Damon’s friend Eli has law enforcement contacts. And all of them are ready to help, but they want to have a plan.”

Bas blinked. “I didn’t know.”

“Because it’s hard to stay on top of things when you’re living in a fucking bunker.” Drew threw up his hands indicating the windowless lab. “And especially when you’re avoiding me and anyone who might mention my name.”

Bas looked into Drew’s eyes, golden brown and simmering with impatience. “I…I…” Didn’t, he wanted to say, but that would be a lie, and they both knew it.

Drew sighed again. “I seriously didn’t come here to fight,” he said again, like he was reminding himself as much as Bas.

“Why did you come, then?” Bas’s stomach clenched in a way that had nothing to do with the food he’d just shoveled in. He was invested in Drew’s answer to this question. He was thinking of Drew’s lips.

Drew’s voice was warmer when he answered. “I came here to bring you food, since I figured you’d be starving, and to stock your fridge with soda, so the cleaners wouldn’t find your desiccated husk hovering over your computer.”

Bas grinned, shaking his head. “Like One-Eyed Willie with his jewels in Goonies? When we were kids, I always felt a kinship with that dude, hunkered over his treasure for centuries.” It was his treasure, for fuck’s sake. Nobody else’s.

“Yes, I remember. How many times do I have to tell you, the possessive dead pirate is not a role-model, Sebastian?” Drew said severely, but he shook his head in exasperation, and for the first time in a while - a month, at least - Bas felt like maybe everything was gonna be okay. Maybe they could get back to normal.

“You came to shut off my rock music and replace it with this piano bullshit,” Bas said, rolling his eyes as the concerto coming through the sound system swelled to a crescendo. “Hoping I’d fall asleep? Or just being a control freak, per usual?”

“Right. You caught me. This was all part of my cunning plan to keep your ears functional and your brain from melting. Truly, I’m evil.”

Bas laughed, and Drew continued, “I came to tell you that we are having a meeting on Saturday at my place. I’m not sure on the timing yet, but Cam, Cort, Damon, and Cain are coming. It’s non-negotiable,” he said severely, when Bas opened his mouth.

“I wasn’t going to negotiate, counselor,” Bas said, hands in the air. “That’s your line. I was going to ask if I could bring anything.”

“Bring anything?”

“Like… a cake, or something.”

Drew hooted. “Would you be making the cake?” The tease in Drew’s voice made Bas feel lighter than he had in a while.

“Hey! Rude. I can make cake. How hard is it? Crack eggs, stir shit?”

“Bas, you don’t do well with anything that requires you to follow a plan, and baking a cake is just the smallest example of that,” Drew chuckled.

Once again, Bas had no retort, because Drew wasn’t wrong. It was annoying to have somebody know you that well.

Annoying and kind of awesome.

And it made him want, very badly, to wrap his arms around Drew, to lock them together so that neither of them could ever fuck things up again.

“Seriously, man, don’t work too late, okay?” Drew said, pushing to his feet. “We will talk about it all this weekend. I promise.”

Bas nodded. “I’m going to head out in a few. I’m… actually pretty exhausted.” He hadn’t realized just how true it was until he said it. “I put in a long day.” It had been a long fucking month, missing his best friend like his lungs would miss air.

“And a night. And another day,” Drew corrected. “I checked your key card log earlier. I know exactly how long you’ve been here.” He stood to leave, grabbing his long wool coat from the chair and wrapping it around himself. “Oh, hey!” He reached into the pocket and pulled out a candy bar - the kind with the caramel center that was Bas’s absolute favorite - and laid it in the middle of his desk. “Forgot I, ah…got you this.”

“You brought me dessert?”

“Yep. It’s almost like I know you or something.”

Bas blinked, staring up at Drew - at the dark stubble on his jaw, the flush that tinged his cheeks, the light in his eyes that Bas could read like a freakin’ road map, the way his bottom lip was just a tiny bit bigger than the top, that impending sense of something that hung like ozone in the air before a lightning strike. “Thanks,” he said, his voice raspy.

Drew shrugged. “Of course. And I’m not kidding about Saturday. I will hunt your ass down if you don’t show.” He pointed a threatening finger in Bas’s direction, and Bas nodded woodenly as he watched him walk out the door.

Bas sucked in a breath, filling his lungs more deeply than he had in weeks, like Drew was oxygen and his brain had been half-starved. Whatever that meant for their future, whatever doubts were fucking with his head, however freaked out he was by the changes he couldn’t seem to stop in their relationship, Bas knew for certain he couldn’t stay away from Drew again.