“I wouldn’t recommend slugging me again,” he said after a long standoff.
“I wouldn’t recommend giving me reason to.” Jordan smiled tightly and stepped aside, finally permitting him to enter. “Look, maybe you don’t get this about Niles, but he refuses to believe anything bad about anyone. He’s a modern-day fucking Pollyanna. It’s why he was with you to begin with when I—and everyone else he knew—told him you were absolutely not going to leave the closet for him. So he might be able to forgive you, but I don’t forget that easily.”
Tim remained by the door, closing it behind him but not coming any farther inside. The staring contest was reaching the point of absurdity, but he didn’t think buckling before Jordan was going to win him any points, however much remorse he might feel for what he’d done to Niles back then.
“I respect that you want to look out for him, but Niles is a grown man. I’ve made my apologies to him. I owe that to him. But not to you.”
Jordan’s eyes narrowed. “I’m the one who picks up the fucking pieces when things don’t end up as rosy as he hopes they will.”
“Yeah, I get that. But there’s not a goddamn thing I can do here that’s going to convince you that this time you won’t have to. So what is it you expect from me, Jordan?”
Another moment of heavy staring, and finally Jordan broke eye contact. He appeared frustrated. Like he wanted to do more but couldn’t. “Not a damn thing,” he sighed. “Niles is resting. I’ll go wake him up.”
“You don’t need to,” Tim said quickly, thinking how drawn Niles had been at the meeting earlier. “I just wanted to check in, make sure the two of you didn’t have any trouble getting home. It’s not necessary to disturb him if he’s tired.”
“He’d think it was necessary.” Jordan folded his arms across his chest. Tim couldn’t blame him for feeling helpless. This probably wasn’t even about what Tim had done in the past, so much as it was just a general sense of being on alert. Jordan was probably feeling particularly protective of his brother right now, seeing as how someone appeared to be threatening his life. “And he’s not tired, he’s in shock.”
“He can speak for himself.” Tim glanced past Jordan’s shoulder as he turned to meet Niles’s censuring stare. He was tousled and groggy, and there was something hollow in his eyes. Heartsickness. It had been there since the moment he’d realized that people actually were dying because of the work he’d spent the last seven years doing.
As Tim and Jordan watched, Niles drew himself up, packed all that away somewhere deep. “Rosie made it home all right?” he asked, gazing past Jordan to Tim.
He nodded. “The lawyer, Ms. Muldrake, drove her home. I had a unit follow them. She got there safely, and there’s a doorman and security guard in the lobby. Her building is tight.”
“I’m trying to convince Niles to stay here.” Jordan gave Tim a challenging look. “Since you need a key card to get into the elevator.”
“Not a bad idea,” Tim said mildly. “If he decides to stay at home, though, like I said, we’ll have units checking on them both.”
Niles ran a hand through his hair, scratching his scalp and chest simultaneously. He didn’t even glance at his twin. “Stop posturing, Jordie. Hackles down, alpha dog mode disengaged. Whatever. Go to bed. I’ll be okay.”
Jordan sighed and deflated. Tim couldn’t imagine that Jordan thought he was all that much danger to Niles’s well-being. He just couldn’t menace the actual threat.
“You heading home or staying?” Jordan asked his brother.
Niles never took his eyes off Tim. “Going home.”
“Okay.” Jordan slipped past Niles, brushing a hand along his upper arm in passing and glancing back over his shoulder. His warning glare at Tim wasn’t even so much Don’t do anything to hurt him as it was Don’t let anything happen to him. Tim nodded once in brusque agreement, and Jordan went into the bedroom and closed the door.
Niles was pressed against him in a second, his lips hot and soft and welcoming. He felt good in Tim’s arms. Right. He’d always felt that way, since the first day Tim had met those pale gray-green eyes across the lab table. That had been the day he’d started to realize the occasional flickers of attraction he’d felt toward some of his male classmates—and the difficulty he had convincing himself that he was attracted to girls—actually meant what he feared it had. It would just be years until he was forced to admit it.
What is this, really? A do-over? A chance at redemption?
He didn’t know, and the gravitational pull of Niles drew him in so strongly it was almost impossible to step back and analyze. Not with those soft moans in his ear and that willing body aligned so eagerly—almost urgently—with his. He could feel the rising pressure of Niles’s cock against his thigh, and the warmth of Niles’s fingers slipping into his waistband at the base of his spine, and it made it so easy to dismiss everything else.
But it was different now. They weren’t simply smitten college kids. Niles was in danger, and Tim had a job to do, and if he even deserved this second chance to begin with, maybe he needed to ask himself where he thought he was going with it.
“Niles, wait.” Tim tried to put a little strength in the protest, but in the end, he didn’t have the conviction, and it came off as more of a plea. “We need to—”
“Not tonight, Tim, please?” Niles pressed his forehead to Tim’s shoulder, hiding his face. He was shaking, Tim realized, and he tightened his arms around him. “Just . . . please. Take me home?”
This wasn’t about Tim at all. He almost groaned at the realization. No wonder Jordan was trying to warn him off. This was about Niles trying to escape, trying to forget. Trying to bury too many confusing and painful thoughts. Fuck. He really did need to slow this down, maybe stop it. Niles would cling to anyone tonight, and Tim couldn’t—shouldn’t—take advantage of that neediness to try to get back something he’d stupidly given up.
But then Niles shivered again, and there was fuck-all Tim could deny him.
“Sure, baby,” he murmured, kissing the top of Niles’s head. He reached for Niles’s jacket hanging on the coat rack. “Let’s go.”
Blunt fingers thrusting and spreading. The scrape of teeth down his throat. Low, growling moans in his ear.
Niles lost himself in it, in the familiarity of Tim’s touch—even after so many years—and the earthy, spicy scent of his skin and aftershave. He was using sex to run away from reality, but he just couldn’t manage to care. He’d practically thrown Tim to the floor the moment they made it into the house, devouring him despite Tim’s halfhearted suggestions about getting to the bed first, until he remembered that the last guy he’d gotten so aggressive with had wound up dead the next day. It had been enough to slow him down.
But then, once Tim was half-inside him and rocking his way toward balls-deep, all the wrongness around them brought his libido to a screeching halt.
“Stopstopstop.” Niles bucked Tim off his back, rolling to look up at the bedroom ceiling as he caught his breath. Every nerve in his body was screaming to keep going, but his brain kept feeding him images of Daniel’s bruised and mangled face. He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to rub the visions away.
“What? Are you serious?” Disbelief and strained arousal sharpened Tim’s tone, and then he managed to pull it back. “What is it? What’s wrong?” He fell off to the side, concern masking any sexual frustration admirably as he propped himself up to stare at Niles.
“What if he goes after you?”
“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” Tim groaned and slipped the condom from his still-rigid dick, tossing it in the bedside trash while Niles sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees.
“Well, why else did he go after Daniel? Why choose him to be Halliday instead of some random stranger? He had nothing to do with this, not until he came down here to interview me and decided to stay an extra night.” The tight, anxious feeling that had been twisting in Niles’s chest since he’d f
ound out Daniel was dead swelled, threatened to cut off his breath. “I got him killed.”
“No, Niles.” Tim shook his head emphatically. “No. Don’t do this to yourself. You didn’t get Fortesen killed. You didn’t get your intern abducted. And if this guy does come after me, he’ll find it a hell of a lot harder to get to me than he did anyone else. I can take care of myself, and I’m not unprepared.”
Niles’s eyes burned as he turned his head, his gaze tracking toward Tim. “I just don’t understand this. Any of it. How can someone want to silence someone else this badly? Over a fucking game?”
“What the fuck does it matter?” Tim flung up a hand. “Unbalanced people are always finding something they’re willing to kill for, to keep others from having it, or changing it, or being part of it. Particularly when they congregate and egg each other on to more extreme measures. So, why not a fucking game? People have killed reporters, photographers, novelists, painters, singers and songwriters, actors and scriptwriters and playwrights in order to stop the message they were putting out. Why not video game creators too?”
Video games were the fastest-growing form of mass entertainment—Niles knew that. He’d even told Tim that. Knowing it, knowing the impact swaying video game culture could have on society in general, why was it so unthinkable that privilege-protecting reactionaries would resort to violence? Was he—despite his lip service—as guilty as the rest of society of deriding the actual significance of games?
How could he be so naive as to think he could use his artistic medium as a vehicle for change without people reacting the way they always had to such vehicles?
He gave Tim a disillusioned look. “It’s just— It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to make people feel good, not—” Niles broke off, shaking his head in disgust. Weak, that’s what such thinking was. At best it made him irretrievably gullible, and at worst it made him a hypocrite. He couldn’t have it both ways. Either he was doing important work and could expect to be treated the way people who did such work always had, or he was just supplying mindless entertainment to a generation of drones incapable of critical thinking.
He sighed and stared up at the ceiling, willing answers to fall from it. “Never mind.”
Tim drew back the covers they had twisted and rumpled and slipped into the bed. “C’mere.”
“I’m sorry.” Niles managed a chagrined smile, but Tim waved the apology off. He drew Niles into his arms and pulled the blankets up over them.
“Don’t worry about it.” He pressed a kiss to Niles’s temple. “I get it, y’know? It’s kind of surreal, isn’t it?”
“What, the idea that someone out there is taking aim at me? Me? I mean, I’m just some gamer geek writing stories about animated characters for a living.”
“Yeah, that.” His arms tightened around Niles. “He won’t get to you. I’m not going to let that happen. And with us, you take all the time you need. We’re rushing this, I know. I’m rushing it. But we’ve got time to deal with it later.”
What if we don’t? Niles wanted to ask, but he’d been maudlin enough already.
The room grew silent and still, except for the omnipresent sounds of the old house and the occasional gust of breeze outside. Tim was still awake; his fingers tracked up and down Niles’s back in soothing strokes. He could do it, he realized with a sigh. He could fall in love with Tim Wyatt again. Maybe he’d never even really fallen out of love with him. Whether or not it was a good idea, whether or not he could trust Tim again, didn’t seem all that important right now. Tim’s nude body was warm, the arms around him firm and sheltering, and that was really all that mattered. Was he using Tim? Maybe. But that didn’t mean all the old feelings weren’t still there and in very real danger of being resurrected.
It was ridiculous to feel disloyal for thinking about Tim right now, when Daniel was dead. But then, there was a bitter symmetry to it too, wasn’t there? He’d used Daniel to escape thoughts of Tim, and now it was the other way around.
He lifted his head as a thought occurred to him. “If Patrick and Daniel are both victims, they can’t have been the ones to leak the spoilers.”
“What about the rest of the writing staff?” Tim pressed.
“Everyone would have access to the information if they really wanted it, but only the writers involved with the Phoenix Force titles would be intimately acquainted with it, and none of them would say a word.”
Tim licked his lips, nodding slowly. “Tell me something. You said your ex worked at the studio where you recorded dialogue. Would he have access to it?”
“Anthony?”
“Answer the question, Niles.”
“No, this is ridiculous!” Rolling away, Niles flung the covers back and got out of bed, hunting for his clothes and jerking them on.
Tim sat up, running a hand through his hair. “Baby, sooner or later you’re going to have to accept that someone did this, and it’s probably someone you know. How else would they have privileged information about a game that hasn’t been released to the public yet? That’s how we’re going to crack this. Who has access to those sorts of details?”
“Anyone could know about the beta, providing someone breaks their NDA.” Niles pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, where a headache was beginning to blossom between his brows. “But not everyone knew about the DLC. But why would you even think of Anthony?”
“Jealous lover? Please. It’s the oldest story in the book. He has motive to wish you—or the people you’re intimate with—harm. One of the bodies on the ground is a guy you slept with.”
“I certainly didn’t sleep with Lakshmi, or Charity, or that other girl, Keilana!”
“You spoke to at least two of them. Were you kind? Did you smile? When you were with him, was he jealous of the time you spent at work? Did he resent your relationship with your brother?”
Tim looked unmoved by Niles’s glare, so he spun on his heel and left the room. Tim followed him, thundering down the stairs without even bothering to get dressed. “You don’t know the sorts of things that can go through the heads of stalkers when they see the target of their fixation do even the most innocuous of things with other people. Even a friendly word can seem like a threat to someone that unbalanced.”
“Well, obviously you would know! Funny how your potential suspect is someone who could be considered a threat for my affections!”
“You think I haven’t been asking myself that?” Tim crossed his arms over his bare chest, leaning in the archway between the living room and the dining room as Niles opened his liquor cabinet and dragged out the vodka. “Hell, I probably shouldn’t be with you at all, and the odds of me having to recuse myself from this case are mounting by the minute. So you can be damn sure that each time it occurs to me that the perp might be someone you fucked, I ask myself what evidence I’m basing that theory on. Now answer the question. How much could Anthony have known about the Gairi DLC?”
The vodka scorched its way down his throat as Niles threw back a shot, then poured another. “All of it, all right? Fuck. He listened as I brainstormed the damn thing. It was pillow talk. Happy now?”
“No. Not really.” Tim stomped over to the breakfast bar and thunked his elbows down on it, scrubbing his face with his hands and hanging his head for a moment. “In the morning, I’ll be explaining to my captain why I’m taking myself off the case and letting Payne know we need to take a good look at Anthony.”
Niles set the vodka and glass on the table. They felt too heavy to hold any longer. “Shit. I’m sorry.” It hadn’t occurred to him until Tim gave him that resigned look how important the case had been for Tim. “Fine. I believe you. I can’t really believe it could be Patrick or Anthony or anyone I know, but I believe you.”
Tim shrugged. “That’s something, at least.”
“Okay, look. If you need to stop seeing me so you can work the case—”
“No.” Tim shook his head before Niles could finish the thought.
“You don’t n
eed to choose me over the case just to prove something. I get it.”
“That’s not it.” Tim’s rueful smile was gentle and sweet, and Niles found himself drawn toward it like a lodestone. “I would have had to do this even if I’d never touched you again, just because of our history. It wouldn’t be enough to get a strong case thrown out, but it could muddy the waters.”
“I’m sorry anyway.” Niles stopped, near enough to see gooseflesh on Tim’s skin. He still stood there nude, and they hadn’t bothered with a fire or turning up the heat in their rush to get to bed.
“It’s worth it.” Tim reached out, hooking a hand around the back of Niles’s neck and pulling him close. “Can we go back to bed now?”
“Yeah.” Suddenly, nothing sounded better than falling asleep beside Tim and putting this whole day behind them. He took Tim’s hand and led him to the stairs. “Let’s go.”
The atmosphere in the studio felt different when Niles came in to work the next day. Jordan had tried to urge Rosie to close the office, but Niles had protested. He needed to work. He needed things to be normal again. In the end, Rosie had sent out a mass email to all their employees, giving them the option of working from home until the investigation ended and they were sure no one else associated with Third Wave would be harmed.
Unsurprisingly, considering the dedication of the people Rosie pulled to herself, most people had shown up, their attitudes almost defiant. But everyone was tense, and the sense of relaxed camaraderie they usually enjoyed seemed to have disappeared overnight. The art department, writing staff, programming and design people, all did their work—grim, quiet, speaking only when necessary, and then only in hushed tones.
Niles was supposed to be preparing notes for a preproduction meeting for the DLC that would follow Gairi’s, but he found himself staring at the concept art pinned to the wall across from his desk. Issis, Gairi, Halliday, Marc—they were all there, all the characters he’d helped bring to pixelated life, whose words and voices he’d crafted. But now his mind’s eye kept superimposing other faces over the familiar characters. He saw Lakshmi Agrawal’s sweet, quiet smile eclipsed by a sickly gray pallor as they pulled her from the river still wearing her Gairi costume. He saw fiercely brave Charity Anspach falling under a hail of bludgeoning blows, Daniel crushed by a car, Patrick abducted and terrified . . .
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