“I got it right?” Asher said as he pulled away.
“You got it right.” Levi was still crying as he laughed at the stupid look on Asher’s face, the one that happened when Levi would randomly tell Asher he loved him. “You got it so right, you — Asher, you idiot, you got it so right.”
They sat on the floor of Asher’s office for a while. Levi held Asher’s hand and Asher held Levi’s hand, and Levi looked at the seven figures in the grass and the red meteors above them. Ethan was a part of this, in a strange way, in the only way that was still available — by being the material Asher Kane had used to try to be kind.
Levi wiped his face. He looked at Asher. Asher’s reading glasses were a little fogged from the closeness. His mouth had Levi’s snot on it.
“You’re going to hang it up there?” Levi asked.
“If you want.”
“I do.”
“Okay, baby,” Asher murmured and kissed Levi’s cheek. “Should I hire someone else to do it? I don’t know if they would want me in there.”
Levi laughed. “You’re so weird.”
“I know.”
“You’re so weird and I love you so much.”
“I know. I love you, too.”
They sat for another minute, then Levi wiped his face again with his sleeve and the two of them stood up. Levi leaned the painting carefully back against the side of the desk, image-side facing in this time, the way Asher had had it, because the image was for the room upstairs. Not for visitors and it wasn’t for the lawyers Asher met with and it wasn’t for anyone but the six people who couldn’t see it yet.
“Come on,” Asher said. His hand on the small of Levi’s back. “Let’s go home.”
They walked toward the elevator.
In the elevator, Asher rocked back on his heels and then forward onto the balls of his feet. Back and forward. Back and forward. Levi recognized the motion — Asher did it when he wanted to do something and was running a check on whether the timing was right. Asher had once done the same motion with his feet while laying down in bed, asked Leviwhat is the appropriate length of time between someone crying and an unrelated topic. Is it minutes? Hours? The next morning? I keep guessing and I can’t tell if I’m guessing correctly?Levi had saidyou’ll get a feel for itand Asher had saidI would prefer a numberand Levi had not been able to give him one.
He was guessing now. Levi could see him guessing. The heel-toe, heel-toe, the small click of his shoes against the elevatorfloor, the visible mathematics ofLevi was crying and I have something new and unrelated.
“Spit it out,” Levi said.
Asher’s hand went to his jacket pocket.
“I have something else for you,” he said as he pulled out a small dark jump drive — the kind that plugged into a USB port, compact, nothing special. Except the casing. The casing was familiar. Black matte polymer, contoured, with an etched triangular symbol on the side that Levi recognized because they had spent hours staring at identical symbols inside Dr. Faine’s sanitarium.
The building had been collapsing around them and Asher wasted time grabbing it because it had—
“You didn’t,” Levi said.
“I had the casing 3D printed from the game’s render data. Exact replica. Same dimensions, same weight, same finish,” he said excitedly, turned it over in his fingers. “There’s an actual drive inside. I put the rendered footage on it. It’s a full reconstruction — both headset perspectives, third-person composite.”
Levi stared at the drive. Stared at Asher’s face. The elevator was descending and the numbers were counting down and Asher was holding a replica prop from a VR horror game with a sex tape on it and looking at Levi with the expression of a man who had just given the most romantic gift in the history of human courtship.
“You 3D printed the hard drive from the game,” Levi said slowly, trying to make sure he understood correctly. “The one you almost died retrieving?”
“Yes!” Asher did that thing where he nodded too many times, grinning.
“And it has that video the insane doctor showed us before trying to kill us?”
“Levi,” Asher’s tone dropped, becoming deadly serious. “It was our first time together. It’s the most important object that has ever existed. I wanted to hold it.”
Levi laughed.
The laugh came out whole and loud and it echoed in the elevator even as the doors opened. He pressed his hand over his mouth and the laugh came through his fingers anyway.