Asher’s smile did not change while Levi looked at any of this.
There are no resets.
But the man standing in his apartment was the same man from the game. The same smile. The same stillness. The weight of two weeks of telling himself none of it was real all came down at once into the small space behind his sternum.
“Hey, baby,” Asher said cheerfully. “Did you miss me?”
It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not —
34
Dynamic Lighting
Player One
Thecandlesweredoingwhat he’d wanted them to do.
Asher stood in the kitchen with one hand braced on the counter and looked at the shoebox Levi lived in from the doorway. The mismatched pillars and tea lights were a problem when Paul came back from the drugstore — he bought too few, so Asher sent him back for more. Now they were all lit and the room looked right.
He could see it the way Levi would see it when Levi walked in the door, and he was positive this is what people meant when they talked about needing romance. Mood lighting. Wine, open and breathing. The triangles of the napkins he folded twice, because the first folds were uneven. Levi was going to look at the napkins and Levi was going to know they had been folded for him. They had to be perfect.
Levi was going to cry.
Asher decided this on the drive over, in the back of Paul’s car while Paul drove and didn’t speak. Levi was going to cry and Asher was going to wipe the tears off his face with his thumbs, the way he always did, because that was what good boyfriends did. Levi was going to step into his arms and cry, and Asher was going to hold him, and the ache that had been growing behind his sternum since he woke up was going to go away because Levi was going to be touching him.
He refined the fantasy in detail. What Levi would say first. The order of the things he would let himself want. He made notes in his work laptop, which now sat closed on the counter where he’d set it. He used it for exactly three things, other than his notes, on the drive over.
The first had been the schedule. Levi’s PT center billed Virtual Vice every week; the appointments were logged, the car services were logged, the pickup and drop-off times were logged. Today’s session ended at five. The drive across town would be a half hour in evening traffic. Levi would be home any minute.
The second had been the medical records from when Levi was in the system and the weeks they were both sedated. The line that mattered most was the one near the end of the discharge order:Mr. Mercer received standard nutritional support during inpatient stay. Physical therapy initiated upon waking.Standard nutritional supportmeant a tube.Physical therapy upon wakingmeant Levi laid in a bed for three weeks and nobody moved his legs.
The third had been his own records, though he already knew the shape of what he would find. Robotic assistance to keep his muscles moving in the absence of nurses. NMES on the quadriceps and the gluteals. Blood flow restriction protocols on the upper extremities. Three different physical therapists, all replaced inside the first three months— Marianne fired the first when his calorie count dipped, the second when the bedsoreon his thigh appeared, the third just had a note that saidUnprofessional.He retained sixty-eight percent of his pre-game muscle mass with full passive range of motion in every joint.
Asher didn’t open anything else. He saw the records, all the research saved in files that included Levi’s stream archives and chat logs, and the psychological profile someone built of him. He wanted to learn Levi out here. He wanted to be told things. He wanted to make Levi tell him.
He went to the oven and checked the roast. It needed a few more minutes. He turned the heat down two degrees, then went back to the table and rotated the wine glass at Levi’s place a quarter turn, because the curve of the bowl had been catching the candlelight wrong. Levi truly had some terrible dishware, but that could be remedied. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting this moment right.
There was nothing left to do but wait.
Levi was supposed to cry. That was the version he decided.
That version was not happening.
Asher was on the floor with Levi unconscious in his arms, and that version wasnot happening,and for one second the not-happening flared hot in his veins. Then he was moving again.
He laid Levi on the floor on his side. He checked his airway — clear; he checked his pulse with two fingers in the spot he memorized the first time he wrapped his hands around Levi’s throat.He fainted. He didn’t die.
Asher’s right knee ached where it hit the floor so he could catch Levi, but the ache didn’t matter. Levi was breathing. Levi was in his arms again and the pain in his thigh had gone so quiet he almost couldn’t feel it.
But Levi’s face was wrong…and it wasn’t the hollowness of his cheeks or the dull pallor of his skin. This was the body Levi had right now and bodies changed; he was going to love this body the same way he was going to love the body Levi had at sixty and the body Levi had at eighty and the body Levi was buried in.
The wrongness of it was because it wasneglect.Marianne spent six months and an undisclosed dollar amount keeping Asher’s body in functional condition and in a matter of weeks, she let Levi turn into this. A shell of the man he loved, kept alive with a temporary tube that was quickly becoming long-term. Asher’s fingers brushed the edge of the tape on Levi’s cheek, curled and yellowed. Whoever had been helping Levi with this must have lost interest in him within days...
How could someone do this?
The rage was a small, bright thing low in his stomach. He was going to use it.
He turned Levi’s head a fraction and pulled down the collar of his shirt—he knew the marking wouldn’t be there, he knew that, but seeing its absence still made Asher’s mouth dry. The rules his team built into the game meant the player’s body would always reset, but Levi’s body defied a hardcoded rule. The mark always came back when they reset, and it made Asherfeel. It stayed on Levi’s body when nothing else did, and that meant something. Now? Anyone could look at Levi, they could want him, and they wouldn’t know he belonged to someone.