Chapter 4: Not My Type, Definitely Not
1562 Words
- LIAM
The pile of files on Alex’s desk had actually gone down.
I stood at my office window, coffee burning my tongue, watching him through the glass. He was wearing a hoodie under that hideous suit jacket today. He looked like a high-schooler who had lost a bet.
He was currently arguing with a stapler.
"Stupid, plastic, piece of...." He whacked the device against the desk. Thwack. It didn't work. He whacked it again.
I opened my door. "It ran out of staples, Alex. It didn't decide to stop working just to annoy you."
Alex jumped, nearly sliding off his chair. He glared at me, his messy hair sticking up like a bird’s nest. "It’s a design flaw, Kane. Why does it look like it's ready to work when it’s empty? That’s deceptive marketing."
"It’s an office supply. Get back to the archives."
"I’m done with the archives," he said, leaning back and crossing his boots on the desk. My pristine glass desk. "Scanned, tagged, and cross-referenced. I even fixed your filing system. Whoever did it before was clearly a psychopath who hated the alphabet."
I walked over, expecting a mess. I pulled a digital drawer on the tablet. Everything was perfect. Not just perfect, it was intuitive. He’d grouped the acquisitions by tech stack compatibility rather than by date alone.
"Why did you sort them like this?" I asked, keeping my voice emotionless.
"Because why would you want to know what you bought in 1994 unless you’re looking for the specific code-base they used?" He shrugged, picking at a loose thread on his sleeve. "It’s common sense. Unless you’re a robot."
"I’m not a robot."
"Debatable," he muttered. "You have the personality of a firmware update."
I should have fired him and kicked his ass out of the building. Instead, I found myself leaning against the doorframe. "Lunch is being brought in. Don't go anywhere."
"Is it real food? Or that green pond-scum juice you were drinking this morning?"
"It's steak, Alex. Shut up."
The avoidance strategy worked for exactly four days. I stayed in my office; he stayed at his desk, making "clack-clack" noises on the keyboard and humming off-key. But by Friday, the Vertex project was hit by a massive logic wall.
I was in the conference room with the lead devs.
"The bridge won't hold the data load," Marcus groaned, rubbing his eyes. "We need more bandwidth, or we need to cut the UI features."
"We aren't cutting the features," I snapped. "The features are the product."
The door creaked open. Alex walked in holding a stack of papers and a half-eaten bag of chips. He didn't even look at the room. He just walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and started drawing a series of intersecting circles right in the middle of our architecture diagram.
"What the hell are you doing?" I demanded.
"Fixing your bridge," he said, his mouth half-full of a potato chip. "You’re treating the data like a highway. It’s not. It’s a liquid. You don't need a bigger bridge; you need a better pipe. If you shunt the secondary pings through the haptic layer, the thing I told Marcus about on Tuesday, the load drops by forty percent."
He capped the marker with a loud click.
Marcus stared at the board. Then he looked at his laptop. "Wait. If we pipe it through the haptic layer... Liam, the lag disappears."
I looked at the board, then at the "delinquent" in the hoodie. "Where did you learn to map data architecture like that?"
Alex froze. He wiped his hand on his jeans, looking suddenly like he wanted to bolt. "I told you. I studied stuff abroad. It’s not a big deal."
"It's a very big deal. That's a master-level solution."
"Yeah, well, I'm a master-level genius," Alex barked, his voice going back to that gravelly, defensive rasp. "Now, can I go back to my desk? This room smells of old socks and desperation."
He turned and swaggered out, but I saw his hands shaking as he grabbed the door handle.
At six PM. The office was mostly empty. The cleaning crew was somewhere on the lower floors.
I walked out to the lobby and found Alex slumped over his desk. He wasn't working. He was sketching again. I stood behind him, watching his hand sweep across the paper.
It was a sketch of me from the meeting. He’d captured me perfectly with the clenched jaw, the tired eyes, the human side I usually hide.
"You're late for your shift," I said softly.
Alex slammed the sketchbook shut and spun around, nearly falling out of his chair for the second time that day. "Dammit, Kane! Why don't you wear bells? No, wait, you don't wear bells because you're a freaking ghost."
"I was wrong about you," I said.
"About what?" he demanded, standing up and dusting off his jeans. "That I'm a complete screw-up? Because I'm not."
"I was wrong that you're just a screw-up."
He looked at me, and for a second, the arrogant mask of Alex Jones fell away. His eyes, wide and dark, flickered with panic. "What do you want?"
"You're good," I said, ignoring the insult. "The sketch. The architecture. Why are you pretending to be a disaster?"
Alex stood up, pulling his messenger bag over his shoulder. He looked smaller in the dim light of the office. "I'm not pretending. I'm a real disaster. Ask anyone in the Moonstone Pack. I'm the disappointment. The rogue. The one who couldn't even stay in the country."
He stepped closer, and that scent hit me again. It wasn't just the cheap gin he used to hide his smell. Underneath, it was that sweet, clean scent of expensive paper and something floral. My wolf sat up, ears twitching.
"Fine," I said, shaking the thought away. "You're a disaster. But you're a useful disaster. I see you're good at the tech stuff. Better than most of my men. I need you on the Vertex team. Full-time. Not as an intern. As a junior tech-consultant."
Alex gaped at me. "You're kidding me."
"I do not kid, Alex," I snapped. "You'll report to me. You'll do your work, and you'll keep your mouth shut about your 'studies.' If you pull this off, I'll consider your debts paid."
The panic in his eyes turned into outright alarm. "No. Absolutely not. I'm not interested in being your little tech monkey. I have a life. Or at least, I'm trying to get one."
"This isn't a request," I said, stepping closer. "This is a strategic necessity. You have a talent that my company needs. And I will not have you wasting it on filing systems and doodling my face."
"I don't want to work for you!"
"You'll work on the project," I said, my patience thinning. "You'll have a new title, a new desk, and a salary that will make your head spin. You'll be a consultant."
He didn't say anything for a long moment. He looked at the floor, at the ceiling, anywhere but at me.
"I want my own office," he said finally. "And I don't want to see you unless I have to."
"Deal," I said. "Ditch the mustache."
"What?" He clapped a hand over his face.
"The mustache," I said, trying to keep the smile out of my voice. "It's absurd. And get a better suit. You're a consultant now. Act like one."
"You want me to get rid of the mustache?" he asked, his voice rising in a squeak. "It's my brand!"
"Your brand is being a pain in my ass. You can manage that without the facial hair," I said. "I'll see you Monday at your new office. And for God's sake, find some shoes that don't belong in a dumpster."
Alex looked down at his beat-up sneakers, then back at me, looking genuinely offended. "These are vintage, Kane! It's called an aesthetic."
I rolled my eyes and looked him up and down. "It’s called looking homeless. There's a difference."
I checked my watch, signaling the end of the conversation. "If I see that mustache or those shoes on Monday, I’m locking you in the server room until you find a razor and a website that sells adult footwear."
He huffed, kicking at a loose thread on the carpet. "Fine. The stache goes. But if I lose my 'rogue charm' and your productivity drops, don't come crying to me."
"Go home, Alex."
"Gladly," he snapped. "See you, Boss-man. Try not to miss me too much."
He started walking toward the door, then stopped and looked over his shoulder with a sharp grin. "And for the record? My new office better have the good snacks. If I’m losing the facial hair, I’m gaining premium jerky."
He walked toward the elevators, his gait a little too wide. I watched him walk away, his shoulders suddenly slumped, as though the promotion had somehow broken him.
I turned and walked away, dumbfounded. I had to get out of there. My wolf was whining, and I couldn't understand why. This was a good thing. I had found a way to make a liability into an asset.
And as I rode the elevator down, I couldn't help but wonder why the thought of him being my problem made me feel more alive than I had in years.
- Writer
