“Ouch. Guess I had that coming,” Tim muttered, gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. “Well. Funny thing about denial. It doesn’t quite work as well as you think it’s going to.”
Niles tried to rein back the urge to rub it in and settled for repeating himself. “So what happened?”
“Um, tried to have an affair with the wrong guy on the down-low, got outed, Kayleigh divorced me, things with the good ol’ boys in the sheriff’s department got tense.” He rattled it all off in a single, rushed breath, as if he wanted to get it out as quickly as possible and move on. “Then I was injured and I ended up on medical leave and desk duty for several months, and while that was happening, my dad passed away and my brother bought me out of my half of the ranch. I decided it was time for a change, so I left before they found a reason to fire me that wouldn’t result in a discrimination lawsuit. I’ve been up here ever since.”
“I see.” Niles looked down at his hands, clasped on his knees, and didn’t look up again until they reached the restaurant. Tim chose Virginia Cafe, which made sense. It had much more standard fare than Veritable Quandary or Kell’s or some of the other Portland classics. Much more Tim’s type of food.
The wait for a table was short but excruciating. Tim was tense beside him, and it was a familiar tension. It was the same tension he’d felt vibrating off Tim back in college when he’d been fighting to try to keep himself from touching Niles.
Niles made sure to order a Rueben sandwich, confident that he wouldn’t wind up flinging himself at Tim if he smelled like sauerkraut.
“So tell me about this harassment,” Tim urged, finally breaking the game of verbal chicken as the waiter set their food down and left.
Niles took a deep breath and blew it out, then blazed through the explanation the way Tim had done with his own history earlier in the car.
“Okay. Well, here’s the situation: I write scripts and story for video games, specifically a studio run by a woman with a mission statement of making games that are more accessible and appealing to women, people of color, and queer gamers. We’ve got queer and POC characters who actually come out on top, the highest ratio of POC to non-POC characters—and also writers and designers—in the industry, and female characters who are more than just tits and ass.” Niles idly swirled a fry in a pool of ketchup. “Predictably, this means a lot of cis-het male gamers—who are used to being considered the only audience that matters in gaming culture—are interpreting this as a frontal assault on the bastion of their privilege. Which, to be fair, I suppose it is.”
Tim’s eyebrows went up, and his lips twitched. “So you’ve got a bunch of pimply, adolescent geeks pissed off at you.”
“Heinous and incorrect stereotyping of the gaming audience aside, yeah, pretty much.” Niles pulled out his phone and brought up an archive of the text messages he’d been saving. “This is the sort of thing they say. I’ve got thousands more emails, private messages on our social forums, and tweets just like that. I don’t even dare look at Reddit.”
Tim’s frown was reminiscent of Jordan’s as he scanned through the texts. “Jesus Christ.” He set his burger aside as though his stomach had turned. “Do these dudes have no filter at all?”
“Of course they don’t.” Niles shrugged, taking another bite of juicy corned beef on grilled rye. “They’re used to anonymity, so they say just about anything with no fear of being held accountable. If you think those are bad, you should see what Rosena—my boss—has to deal with. She’s got bigger balls than me, because I couldn’t handle that without having a nervous breakdown.”
“Seriously?” Tim’s eyebrows rose skeptically, and Niles could practically hear the thought as if he’d spoken it aloud: how bad could it be?
“Seriously. Death threats. Rape threats. Racial slurs.” Niles gritted his teeth, though he wished the outrage he’d used to have over it all was still as hot as it had once been. Weird how that sort of abuse had become . . . commonplace. “There are memes out there with pictures where people have drawn dicks pointed at her mouth and spooge on her face, or written captions of things she never actually said, imploring some sort of sexual violence. Reading her email has almost made me puke a couple times. It’s bad.”
Tim—always a good ole country boy and raised with that sort of good-ole-country-boy gallantry—began to grow red around the ears. “Sounds like these twerps need a good ass kicking and a few manners.”
“It’s not an isolated case.” Niles set his sandwich down, gnawing on another fry. “Jennifer Hepler, who used to work for BioWare. Anita Sarkeesian, who has a blog called Feminist Frequency that deals with women in gaming. A lot of women in the industry have to deal with it.” He sighed. “I get quite a bit of it too, because they see me as one of the driving forces behind the queering up of their games—which I am—but it’s always worse when it’s aimed at women.”
It took Tim a moment of gritting his teeth before he handed Niles’s phone back. “So, this has been going on for months?”
“Years. It’s been three years since we began PR for the first Phoenix Force game and revealed that there would be characters who would represent the full gender, sexual, and ethnic spectrum, and gameplay that would make a concerted effort to avoid problematic tropes. The hostility waxes and wanes, depending on how recently we’ve been in the gaming news.”
“So what’s changed? Why does Jordan think you need to file a report now?”
“Because of this.” Niles lifted his messenger bag into his lap and withdrew the buff-colored file folder in which he’d stored the problematic note. “He thinks it’s a threat, particularly since it appears to have been hand delivered to my house.”
Tim flipped the folder open and stared at the envelope for a moment before reaching for the coat he’d hung on the back of his chair. He pulled a pair of nitrile—he remembered all too well discovering that Tim had an allergy to latex—gloves out of the pocket and put them on before touching the letter, which he handled carefully by the edges.
“Not very verbose compared to some of the other messages you’ve gotten. Which means it smacks less of bluster and big talk and more of direct action. I can definitely see why Jordan would consider it a threat.”
“Do you think it’s a threat?”
“I think it’s a deviation from the pattern, and that usually means something’s changed. Maybe someone has hit the breaking point and decided to escalate. I don’t think caution is a bad idea under those circumstances.”
“Spoken like a true detective.” Niles sighed, pushing his half-eaten sandwich aside and scowling at the letter.
“Did anything happen recently that might have prompted it?”
“I take it you don’t watch the morning news shows.”
“I was at a crime scene this morning. What’s going on?”
“We’re being picketed by the Coalition for Responsible Media, who are concerned that we’re trying to turn America’s precious children gay by having queer characters in the games.” He rolled his head on his neck, trying to stretch out the kinks. “There was a petition to have me removed as a writer because some dude-bros thought I was pushing an agenda.”
“But this came before the protest, over the weekend?” Tim asked.
He nodded. “I think so. I’m not sure if it was delivered on Saturday or Sunday; I was busy most of the weekend.”
Tim made a note. “Okay. Any idea specifically who might have left this?”
Niles started to shake his head, then hesitated. “Um, it’s probably nothing, but—”
“Even if it’s nothing, it’s still something we should make note of. Helps with the process of elimination if an investigation becomes necessary.”
“All right.” He licked his lips. “The guys who delivered the petition to have me fired . . . They followed me, Jordie, and Rosie to a club last night.”
“Actually followed you?” Tim’s eyebrows rose and his pen came down. Something in the intensity of his look sugg
ested that he’d just started taking this very seriously.
“Well, I don’t think they did the whole secret-agent ‘follow that cab’ thing.” Niles tried for a smile, but it felt limp. “They probably got my location from one of those social media GPS check-in things and decided to make an appearance.”
“Do you know their names?” Tim asked.
“No, but we have the petition, which has that information on it.”
Tim nodded. “Okay. Make sure I get a copy of that, please.”
“Okay. What else do I do? Do I really need to make this a report?”
“Who all has handled this note? Just you?”
“Jordie and Rosie have too.”
Tim frowned. “I could try getting fingerprints off it, see if anything comes up in the database, but it won’t do us a lot of good unless I print all of you to rule you out. If you get any more of these, don’t touch it with bare hands. Pull on some gloves, bag it, and bring it to me.”
Niles nodded, sobering as he realized it wasn’t merely a case of Rosie and Jordan being overprotective. “Okay, I can do that.”
Tim stared at it a moment longer. “There’s probably not enough here to launch an investigation. We would certainly consider this menacing, but the only indication that it might have overtones of a hate crime is the potential connection to your work.”
“Potential?” Niles frowned. “What other reason could there be?”
“I couldn’t say. Any chance someone unrelated to your work has a grudge?”
“No, absolutely not.” Niles shook his head firmly. “You know me, Tim. I get along with everyone.”
“Yeah, I remember that.” The corner of Tim’s mouth tipped up in a wistful smile before he got back down to business. “I could run it by my captain, but the substance of the threat is vague, and unless there’s an undamaged fingerprint or DNA that is already in the system, we’re not likely to get anything off this that would take an investigation anywhere.”
Niles sighed, his shoulders dropping. “So I was right. This is nothing and Jordie’s overreacting.” Great. He’d just lost a couple of hours of writing time on a pointless errand.
“I didn’t say that. I’m going to keep this, pull a case number, and book it into evidence, on a ‘just in case’ basis. That way, we have it if there are further incidences that warrant starting a full investigation.” Tim shrugged, humming thoughtfully as he tucked the letter safely in the file folder and stripped off his gloves.
“Seriously?” Niles gnawed on his lip anxiously. Damn it, he did not want this thing blown up into a big deal.
“We should at least monitor the situation. If you get any more letters, or if the tone of the harassment seems to shift, so that it feels more immediate and less general, let me know.” Tim pulled a card out of his breast pocket and slid it across the table. “Also, if you can compile a ZIP file of all the harassing emails and texts, along with that petition, send them to me, and I’ll add that to the evidence as well, for future reference.”
“Right.” Niles sighed. “You really do think this could be serious.”
“I think it could go either way. It’s worth monitoring, at the very least.” Tim flagged down the waiter for take-home boxes and their check.
They didn’t talk about much as Tim drove Niles back to the precinct, but as Niles was reaching to open the door, Tim caught his other arm. “Go out with me.”
He scoffed, scowling at the police station where Tim worked. “Good job sneaking that in before we got out of the car, but no. There’s no way I’m going down that road again.”
“That wasn’t what I was doing.” Tim shook his head adamantly. “It wouldn’t be the same. I’m out. I made sure they knew it before I was hired on with the Portland Police Bureau. I didn’t want history repeating itself.”
“Oh, well, at least some good came from that broken heart.” Jesus, when did he become such a queen? Maybe it was easier to flounce than let that spark of interest that tried to kindle in his chest flare up into something hotter.
“I can’t really apologize enough for what I did back then.” Tim drummed a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel. “It was completely unfair to you, and Jordan was absolutely right to slug me for it. But I’d like a chance to get it right.”
Shit. Niles held his breath in a futile attempt to deprive the spark of oxygen and extinguish it. “Thanks, I appreciate the gesture, but I really don’t want to go out with someone who just feels guilty for crap that’s in the past.”
The gaze Tim slanted at him from those blue-gray eyes might as well have been wired straight to his balls for the way it tugged at them. “Niles, come on. Do you really think the only thing going on here is guilt?” There was something hot and a little raw in Tim’s eyes, and it made fluttery feelings happen in Niles’s stomach. “You’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. That hasn’t changed, not even in ten years.”
“Jesus.” He didn’t have to hold his breath now; he couldn’t have drawn a lungful of air if he wanted to. It really, really wasn’t fair that after ten years and a devastating breakup, Tim could still make his blood rush and his body sing with nothing more than a look and a few words. He groped for sanity, struggling to remember how much it had hurt when Tim had decided his perfectly planned, straight life back in the farming and ranching community where he’d grown up had been what he really wanted. He tried to recall how crushed he’d been when the relationship that had come to mean the world to Niles in no time flat had been dismissed as nothing more than a curiosity on Tim’s end.
Finally, he found the wherewithal to stand his ground. “Yeah, no, I appreciate the invitation, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I just broke up with someone last week, and it’s probably not a good time to get . . . confused.”
“What’s there to be confused about? I’m asking you to have dinner with me, maybe see a movie or a show or go dancing. That’s all.” Tim gave him a lazy smile that had once turned Niles’s knees to Jell-O.
“Like hell that’s all.”
Tim tipped one shoulder up in a cocky shrug. “It’s a good start, at least. Give me back that card I gave you.”
Frowning, Niles pulled it out of his coat pocket, still trying to put into words why going out with Tim was a bad idea. Or at least put it in words that didn’t boil down to, “I don’t want my heart broken again.” Because that was just pathetic.
Tim laid the card on the steering wheel, scribbled something on the back of it, and handed it to Niles again. “There. That’s my home phone. And my personal cell. And my address. You ever want to talk or stop by and have a drink, whatever, you’re welcome to do so. I’m not seeing anyone; I’m not even hooking up all that frequently. There’s nothing in my way. So, think about it.”
With a too-perfect smile that flashed too-perfect teeth, Tim opened his own door and stepped out of the car, leaving Niles staring at the digits and address on the back of the card.
Jordan rapped on the door of his brother’s office after the sky had grown dark and most of the staff had already gone home. “Hey, staying late? Wanna order takeout?”
Niles nodded, staring at the monitor. “Yeah, sounds good. I really need to get the dialogue for this scene done.”
Jordan knew that expression. That was Niles’s I refuse to let myself be pulled away from this, so I’m not going to make eye contact until you realize you’re interrupting and leave look. Unfortunately for Niles, Jordan prided himself on having immunity to it and had no qualms about breaking his brother’s focus on whatever he was obsessing over.
He withdrew his phone from his pocket and turned the browser on, calling up the website of their favorite pizza joint and thumbing in an order for the combination pizzas they had saved. As he ordered, he glanced between Niles and the touch screen. “After you’re done with that, what does the rest of your week look like?”
“Pretty packed until I leave on Friday, but I can make room.” All of that without ever breaking his concentration
on the screen, but Niles’s hands were motionless on the keyboard. “What do you need?”
“I got a call from Daniel Fortesen at The LEET News. He heard about the protests today, wants to arrange an interview. He’s willing to come down from Seattle for it, or if you don’t have enough time to actually meet up, he’s happy to do it via video chat.”
Niles frowned and finally glanced up from the computer. Jordan ducked his head to cover his smile. It was impossible for Niles to write when someone was in the room, much less talking to him. He got flustered and lost his train of thought. Strangely, though, Niles didn't seem as irritated with the interruption as he normally would be, which made Jordan wonder just how much writing he’d been getting done to begin with.
“I’ve been too busy to keep up on the trades. I feel like I should know that name.”
“He’s the first editor of a major gaming news mag to come out, and a large portion of why he did so was because of Phoenix Force and the entire first generation of games that now include queer characters.”
“Ah,” Niles said absently, his attention drifting back to the dialogue on the screen as if he wished Jordan would go away and let him get his concentration back. If he hadn’t actually been writing, what was it he was trying to get back to, though?
“So do you think you can make time?” Jordan debated with himself, then eyed Niles and made himself at home in Niles’s office.
“Yeah, go ahead and tell him to come down. Any day except Friday.” Niles sighed and closed the laptop. “We’ll show him around the studios, give him an exclusive peek at Gairi’s story in the DLC. That should make his day.” Niles laid his computer glasses on his desk and rubbed his eyes, leaning back in his chair.
“How did things go with the police?” He frowned. Niles looked exhausted. Of course, they had all been up late last night, and he and Niles had gone to breakfast early that morning, but every one of his senses was pinging an alert that something was eating his brother.
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