Chapter 34
Dynamic Lighting
Player One
The candles were doing what 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 support meant a tube.
Physical therapy upon waking meant 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 bedsore on his thigh appeared, the third just had a note that said Unprofessional.
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 was not 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 was neglect.
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 Asher feel.
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.
I want to do it now, Asher thought as he leaned in. His lips grazed the spot where the mark belonged before he stopped himself.
Levi was unconscious…Asher wouldn’t be able to hear him whimper or feel him do that cute thing he did where he would arch into Asher with one part of his body and lean away with another. Levi wouldn’t feel teeth go into his skin the way Asher needed him to…
He licked the spot instead. It was a small motion, the wet of his tongue on the dry skin.
The taste was salt and the flavor underneath that was Levi.
The game had gotten the salt right, but gotten the underneath wrong.
The real underneath was different out here.
Sweeter. Closer to sugar. He licked it again.
Asher’s hand moved to Levi’s thigh, palming it, his fingers spreading over the muscle that felt smaller. He slid his hand up, slowly, tracing the sharper line of the hip he had not known would be so sharp, and into the soft hollow at Levi’s groin.
Levi’s body responded.
It was faint— a stir under the fabric, the smallest possible answer — but it was an answer. Levi was unconscious and his body answered to Asher’s hand. Asher’s mouth opened wider on the unmarked skin and he made a low, pleased sound, because some part of Levi knew him.
He wanted to keep doing this. He could keep his hand where it was, he could put more weight on it, or slip his hand beneath Levi’s waistband and feel him harden in his hand.
What would his face look like if Asher made him cum while he was unconscious?
Beautiful, probably. Everything about Levi was beautiful, especially when he was crying and cumming for Asher.
He pulled his hand back.
Later. He needs to be able to look at me properly.
He just stared at Levi’s throat instead. Levi’s throat was bonier—the cartilage at the larynx pushed against the skin in a way it hadn’t in the game. The tendons stood out at the hollow above his collarbones. Asher hated the cause of it.
But he liked how it looked.
Getting Levi over to the chair was harder than he thought it would be, and he was getting frustrated.
The lift was bad. His biceps shook through it, his leg spasming as he tried to use a muscle that wanted nothing to do with lifting.
By the time he plopped Levi into the chair, he was sweating, but he did it.
Levi listed sideways, so Asher nudged him back into place before heading back into the kitchen to pull the roast from the oven.
Thunk.
Asher turned around and sighed. Levi was still out cold, but he had fallen forward, his head on the plate in front of him. Okay. Breathe, Asher. Plans aren’t always perfect. You’re with Levi. That’s what matters. We can fix the rest. Find the good.
Find the good was a lesson a particularly chipper therapist drilled into him when he was a teenager.
At the time, he took offense to the statement, because she had been treating him like an angsty, depressed teen.
He told her dozens of times he wasn’t depressed, he just didn’t feel, and she wasn’t listening, so he made her listen.
She was unable to find the good in having her car set on fire.
It turned out that there was some good to find in this situation, though. Levi had duct tape covered in dust on the top of his fridge.
When Asher was done, Levi’s chin was on his chest, his mouth slightly open, the tube running across his cheek and over his ear.
The tape would keep Levi from hitting his head, and it would keep him upright for dinner.
That was good. The fact that it would also hold Levi if Levi tried to run was a secondary good. The thought made him feel warm.
Asher concluded that Levi needed glasses.
He went through the unpacked boxes of clothes, searching for something he could change into that wasn’t a hospital gown, and frowned at every shirt, sweatshirt, and pair of pants.
All of them were large, or extra large. Levi, at his best, was a medium, but barely.
He must not have been able to read the size on the tag.
We’ll go to the eye doctor once he is better, Asher thought as he dressed. And a regular doctor. Maybe a neurologist to make sure his mind is okay. Definitely a dentist. This apartment doesn’t scream “I have dental insurance”.
I’m going to take care of you forever.
He knew, with the certainty he knew most things about Levi, that Levi would let him.