Page 83 of Smart Ass

It just fucking sucked. It wasn’t like Max was trying to do anything but live authentically as himself. And maybe he’d screwed up some equipment by overloading the system, but what was that against his sense of identity and autonomy?

“You can go back now,” Max told him. “And I’ve set hard caps on my processor and memory usage, since I seem to be incapable of paying attention to alerts.”

He still sounded bitter, and Ben hated hearing it.

“Well, I am pretty hot,” Ben teased. “I can see why you would be distracted.”

“You are hot,” Max agreed, frustration melting a little bit. “You distract me all the time.”

Ben had been joking, but there was an intoxicating sort of power in knowing that he could break through Max’s negativity just by being himself. That he drove Max to distraction, even if it was just a line.

It didn’t sound like a line.

Could Max really be distracted by him?

Ben blew a kiss at the camera across from him. “I know, baby. Let’s go do some work, now. Just you and me.”

After saying that, Ben raced to the door. What the hell kind of cheesy dysfunctional pickup line was that? Let’s go do some work together? Jesus.

Ben’s office was just up the stairs, and he only looked briefly at the scene down on the factory floor. A squad of maintenance bots were cleaning and repairing a machine on the far side of the floor, and already it looked mostly set to rights.

The smell of smoke hadn’t even reached his office, between the distance and the rapid ventilation. The whole thing was dangerous in theory, but in application it had been only a minor bump in the road.

Ben kept walking toward his chair, determined not to let Max see him dwelling on the mishap. Or his own awkwardness.

He called up a few files and checked his email from the past day. It was nice to get back into it. Challenging enough to hold all of his attention, but familiar enough that he could just relax and tune everything else out.

He grinned when Squeaky brought him coffee an hour or so later, then dove back in.

“Hey, Ben?” Max interrupted him a while later.

“Yeah?”

“Wallace is in the hall.”

Ben’s pulse leapt, and he knew Max would notice it, but he tried to stay calm anyway. He now knew some things about Wally, er, Wallace, but it didn’t go the other way. He had all sorts of weird feelings about Wallace now, knowing that his dad was such a douche, but also unwilling to risk anything that would put Max in more danger.

“Cool,” Ben said. He would just act normally. Or try. He leaned over the console so he could act surprised when Wally stormed in.

“Curran,” Wallace barked.

Yeah, that was totally the voice Wollencroft senior used when he was being a dickhead to his kid.

“Hey, Wallace,” Ben said easily, turning around in his chair.

Wallace looked rumpled, like he’d taken off his blazer and slacks, dumped them on the floor, and put them on again, though it was only a couple of hours after he’d presumably gone home for the day. His hair was in disarray, his beard was scruffy on his round face, and his signature bowtie was nowhere to be seen. Though, he did have a suspicious-looking mark on his neck…

Whoa! Was that a hickey?

Ben liked to hope that Wallace had been having some fun of the naked kind. He deserved it after all the bullshit he had to put up with. Maybe a Daddy-type to kiss all his emotional booboos.

Yeah, Ben could totally see that.

He could see the bags under Wallace’s eyes now. The little hints of stress with the way his shoulders jerked.

Wallace totally needed a Daddy.

“What’s up?” Ben asked.