salute ➳ 〚h.s.〛 〚a.u.〛

chapter 17: weighty worries & amenable accomodations

"I've been in a slump," Piper said as she sighed, leaning her elbow on her crossed knee and letting her chin drop onto her hand. "I used to code all the time, just for kicks. Now I barely have time to do what they want me to do at work, never mind play around with my own stuff."

On the computer screen, Ashton grimaced sympathetically and then shrugged his shoulders. "I get you, Piper," he commiserated. "I wish I could say something like it gets better but that would be a load of bullshit. If you think you don't have time for anything now, wait until you start working for One Direction – you'll never have a moment's piece."

"I just didn't see my life going this direction, you know? When I graduated from MIT, I thought I would get a job at a software company or I would try to get in on a start-up or something. I never imagined that MI6 would want anything to do with me. Don't get me wrong, I love it. But I miss the coding. I never get any time to just play around on the computer anymore, especially since – Bertie! Bertie, get out of the way."

Ashton's laughter rang through the tinny speakers of Piper's laptop as she tried to drag the big dog away from the screen. He didn't understand the concept of Skype apparently because he had been staring at Ashton's face on the screen since it had popped up there and had just made a lunge at it, dragging his wet tongue up the screen as if that would fix anything.

"Oi, stop being so ruddy stupid," Piper snapped at the dog as she pushed up out of the way. "It's a laptop screen. That's Ash. We're trying to have a conversation."

"Hi Bertie," Ashton called out as he waved toward the dog. Bertie tilted his head sideways as his doggy brain tried to figure this out.

"Now can you go sit over there please?" Piper asked the dog, pointing to the corner of the bed. He shuffled slowly like he might move that direction and then flopped down beside her instead, his head resting on her knee. "Oh for goodness sake, why are you so clingy today?"

"He just loves you, babe," Ashton said with a grin, his eyes trained on Bertie. "He's so cute."

Piper rolled her eyes at Ashton's cheesiness and waved in the direction of the screen erratically. "Enough Bertie talk. I'm not skyping with you because of your deadly good looks. You told me you have something to show me."

"Eager," Ashton chuckled, teasing her a little. He could do that because the two of them, in the short span of time they had known each other, had become very good friends.

It started with a simple call that Piper made to Ashton, asking about logic bombs. It had been one of the questions on her module test that day and she hadn't even remembered how a logic bomb worked. So she called Ashton and asked. Maybe it was cheating – well, it was cheating but MI6 didn't need to know that and she hardly thought One Direction would care if she knew what a logic bomb was anyways.

It had quickly escalated from there. In her free time, Piper had skyped with Ashton, getting to know the other analyst who was now halfway across the world. They had very compatible personalities. Ashton, while being a total sweetie, also had sort of a raunchy sense of humour and Piper found herself laughing at even the crudest jokes when he was the one who said them. They talked about literally everything, from code to coffee to cacti. Nothing was off limits.

"I've been working on a little something," Ashton began, his eyes drifting down to the keyboard as he began typing something in the dialogue box. "Louis set me onto this a couple of weeks ago and then when you called and brought up logic bombs, it just sort of clicked." He pressed a key with finality and then looked up at the camera just as the dialogue box on Piper's screen filled up with code. "Tell me what you think."