Chapter 35
Haptic Feedback
Player One
Levi came back slowly without gasping, and that made Asher uncomfortable for reasons he couldn’t name.
Asher watched from across the table, the dinner he plated before them still steaming, as Levi’s head lifted and dropped, his brow furrowed, his fingers twitching on his thighs. He had watched Levi come back dozens of times, but never like this.
He hadn’t thought about this part. He thought about the reunion as a continuation — Levi looking at him the way Levi looked at him when the world was vanishing around them, sending them back to the exit that terrified him because he forgot that it was the exit.
He did not think about how new Levi was going to be.
Every sound, every motion, every shift of muscle was a thing Asher hadn’t yet experienced in real-world physics, and he was already tracking everything — that’s how his finger moves when he’s coming back, that’s his breath returning to a waking rhythm, that’s the sound he makes before language — and his hands wanted to be on Levi for every one of them.
He set his fork down. He cut the meat to keep his hands busy and put the napkin in his lap to look like a man having dinner, but he did not eat, because Levi hadn’t been awake to eat with him, and the rules were the rules. He folded his hands on the table and waited.
Levi’s eyes opened in increments, a frown on his face as his eyes drifted around the space, only half aware.
They went to the ceiling. They went to the candles.
They went to the tape across his chest and the tops of his arms holding him upright in the chair.
His hands flew to it, fingers scrabbling at the edge, and his eyes kept moving — the table, the plates, the wine glasses, the napkins.
Then Asher.
The recognition was on his face first — his eyes landing, pupils widening, the quick sharp intake of breath. Understanding was next—Asher knew this one well because Levi’s hands dropped to his lap as he stared. Then the fear itself rolled in behind the understanding, filling everything.
Asher felt his cheeks heat as Levi looked at him like that again.
He didn’t realize how much he missed that look until right now — the way Levi’s eyes went wide, the particular way his throat worked when he swallowed against the panic, the way his whole body went rigid against the tape.
The last time he saw fear like this on Levi’s face was in the forest. That first night.
Asher had caught him and Levi had looked at him the way he was looking at him now.
In the game, Levi’s fear always had a frame around it — the loops, the resets, the knowledge that death wasn’t permanent. Levi could be scared and still be thinking, fear and strategy running side by side on his face.
This face had no strategy in it.
This face was just afraid.
There you are.
The warmth Asher felt was the warmth he didn’t know he had been chasing.
He spent his whole life disconnected and hollow — those were the parts Marianne spent thirty-five years trying to fix with pills and appointments and locked bathroom doors — but suddenly, just like that moment in the forest, he wasn’t hollow.
He wasn’t disconnected. The air had more oxygen in it when Levi looked at him like that.
He could breathe.
“Don’t pull at the tape again,” Asher said softly, picking up a glass of water and taking a sip. “It’s not coming off. You’ll just hurt yourself.”
This is what water should taste like. This is what breathing should feel like. This is what was missing.
“I made dinner,” he continued, his eyes moving to the tube in Levi’s nose and the warmth in his chest flickered into something harder. “I have a lot to tell you. And I need to know who’s been taking care of you. Because whoever it is —”
He had to stop himself. Levi’s eyes were welling with tears and he was starting to breathe faster, a flush creeping up his face, and Asher felt his cock twitch.
Levi’s I’m scared face was remarkably similar to his I’m about to cum face and Asher was running through a lot of memories very quickly. He took a longer drink of water.
“— they haven’t been doing a very good job.”
Levi opened his mouth, his lower lip trembling, as the first tears slipped loose from his eyelashes. Asher wanted to follow the trails those tears left on his cheeks with his tongue.
“I’m sorry — Mr. Kane, I-I haven’t — I didn’t violate the NDA —” The words came out fast and shaking, tumbling over each other, and Asher heard every one of them and understood none of them because Levi had just called him Mr. Kane.
“— I haven’t t-talked to anyone, I haven’t turned on my computer, I’m going to my appointments, I’ve been d-doing everything she told me, I followed all the rules, I —”
Mr. Kane.
Levi had never called him that. Levi called him Asher and very, very occasionally, dovey, which was his favorite. Marianne called him Asher and Paul called him Asher and…he was just Asher. This — this was not right.
“— I’m not going to be a problem, I promise, I just want to go to my appointments and come home, that’s all I —”
“Stop.”
Levi stopped.
“You called me Mr. Kane.” Asher’s voice had gone somewhere he didn’t like — smaller, younger.
He could feel his eyebrows doing the thing they did when something didn’t make sense.
He tilted his head at Levi, trying to roll the utterance of Mr. Kane out of his skull.
“You don’t call me Mr. Kane. Where did you get that? Why would you call me that?”
Levi stared at him, and the panic was still there — the fast breathing, the beautiful way his eyes shined when he was scared— but something was being recalculated.
“Asher?” Levi squeaked out.
“There you are,” Asher breathed, and he let the smile come — too wide, he could feel it being too wide. He didn’t fix it. “I was worried you forgot me. Say it again, baby. Will you say it again?”
“Asher.”
“Better.” Asher let the sound of his name on Levi’s lips wash over him.
He never got tired of it. He reached across the table, because Levi’s lower lip was still trembling and he wanted to feel it, but Levi’s entire torso jerked in the chair, hands coming up between them.
Asher looked at his own hand in the air, then at Levi’s face behind it. “Why...why did you do that?”
Levi swallowed. The tube shifted on his cheek. He did not say anything.
“Dr. Kane said you didn’t want to see me,” Levi said finally. “That you didn’t—”
“Marianne told both of us the same lie. She lied to you about me and she lied to me about you. I’m trying not to be angry about it because, because she’s dead now,” Asher said simply. “But she left you all alone here and you’re not doing well—”
He moved his hand again, slower this time, and Levi flinched again.
The second flinch was worse than the first. The first could have been a reflex. The second was a choice. Levi saw his hand coming and chose to pull away.
No. You don’t get to do that.
“Don’t do that,” Asher whispered. He stood slowly, his muscles still weak and tired, and took two steps towards Levi.
“Don’t pull away from me ever again, Levi.
I came all the way out here. I left her on the floor.
The only thing I have been thinking about for —” he scoffed “— hours, baby, hours, I have been thinking about putting my hands on you, and you flinch?”
Levi was breathing too fast, his fingers curling in the fabric of his pants.
“I’m going to touch you,” Asher said gently. “I’m going to put my hands on you tonight. I’m going to do it slow, because you’re scared, and I’m going to do it gentle, because you’re hurt. But I’m going to do it. You don’t have to lean in yet. You just have to stop pulling away.”
He reached out and smirked as Levi didn’t flinch this time. He went still. Asher’s fingers found Levi’s hand on his thigh and closed around it. “There,” he said. “See? Not so bad.”
He could feel Levi’s pulse racing as he traced the new shape of Levi’s hands and wrists. His wrists would be easier to hold still now.
“Did you actually kill your mom?” Levi whispered, staring down at Asher’s hand on his wrist. “Out here? In…in real life?”
Asher looked down at the blood under his nails. He changed into Levi’s clothes, but he hadn’t washed up properly. He just nodded and shrugged. Why would Levi care about Marianne?
Levi’s shoulders fell as a whimper escaped his throat.
Part of you is glad. You don’t know it yet. I do.
“She was in my way,” Asher said. “She lied to you. She kept me from you. She put you in this apartment alone with a tube in your face and nobody helping you and she thought that was enough. It wasn’t. So I took her out of the way.”
Levi’s throat worked. He didn’t speak.
“You don’t have to feel anything about it. It’s not your problem. It’s done.”
Levi started shaking and his panicked breaths became a sob.
“Here’s what’s happening,” Asher murmured. “I’m going to stay here with you. I’m going to help you get better. We’re going to get our strength back together.”
Levi started shaking his head, his lips forming words Asher couldn’t make out.
Maybe he’s worried he’ll get in trouble? Why isn’t he…? He should be happier to see me. I thought he’d be happier…
It’s shock.
That made sense to Asher. Levi was so sensitive. He needed time to process, and he probably had a million questions.
“I’m also going to give you something,” Asher said as the idea formed in his mind.
“Two questions a day. Anything you want to ask me. I’ll answer honestly.
One hundred percent. I’m not going to lie to you.
You need information to be okay, I know that.
So that’s the deal. Two questions, every day, about anything. ”