Single Player (19 page)

Maybe he really could get through all this.

He was not going
to be able to get through all this.

Sitting in front of his computer screen, Silas ran both hands through his hair in frustration. Stupid noncompete clause. He had just been sitting down to search for freelancing work when he remembered the contract he'd signed at Wayscorp five years ago and every year since, the contract that he'd read cover to cover each time since he always read contracts, the contract that said he could not seek alternate employment that used the same skills as his Wayscorp job. This clause applied to the term while he was employed there as well as for six months after he left the position. He had even logged into the employee resource database to scan that contract one last time, but his memory was infallible as usual.

Well, damn. He tried out the mild swear, which wasn't nearly strong enough to describe his emotions. How was he supposed to find something to do in these few weeks if he wasn't allowed to freelance in his field? That's all he knew how to do. He'd been planning to find some sort of CAD-based job, or another small engineering task, which surely someone was looking for. Dismayed, he browsed the craigslist ads for Tampa and looked for something else that he might do for work.

Most of his options involved either teaching English overseas, some questionable scams paying him less than a penny a word to write blog content for an undisclosed website, and photographers looking for “models” that generally required him to take his clothes off. He suspected he wasn't the target audience for those advertisements. When he closed that tab, the employee resources website from Wayscorp remained on the screen. He opened up the link for “Health Services,” and then, after a pause that surprised him, clicked on the link for “Mental Health Services.”

His own internal resistance to doing so was quite unexpected. He knew therapists were helpful for many people. He knew that anxiety and depression were serious. He also knew that he hadn't been acting like himself lately—well, for quite a few months now—and that indicated more problems than just “stress.” Objectively, he could see that his parents' philosophies weren't healthy and had driven him into some fairly self-destructive habits. Intellectually, he knew he would be better off if he could strike a healthier work-life balance. Emotionally, though, he had a hard time shaking the feeling that he was betraying his parents' memories. By talking to a therapist, was he basically telling his parents that they'd screwed him up somehow? The guilt swept over him all at once and intensely, leaving him breathless and emotional.

All right. If that wasn't enough of a sign that something was wrong, he didn't know what was. He searched the list of mental health professionals listed as part of his plan, then began to research each one on the Internet to examine their patient reviews. When he narrowed down his list to the best possible option, a doctor named Nancy Hillwater, he grabbed his phone and dialed before he lost his nerve.

The secretary on the other end of the phone sounded friendly enough. “Dr. Hillwater's office,” she answered.

“Hello.” His voice sounded weak, so he tried again. “Hello,” he said with more authority. “I'm looking to make an appointment with Dr. Hillwater. I'm a new patient.” Figuring he should give context, he added, “I work for Wayscorp and I saw her name on the resources list for employees.”

“Of course, sir. Can I please get your name and date of birth?”

Silas gave the requisite information and listened to her type it into the computer.

“And what is prompting your appointment, Mr. Benson?”

Silas hesitated.

Perhaps hearing his reluctance, the secretary said kindly, “Something general is fine. All calls to this office are confidential, but if possible, Dr. Hillwater would like to know a bit about your reason for visiting before you arrive. If that makes you uncomfortable, I can write that you declined to provide the information, and she can ask you on your initial visit.”

“No, no, it's fine.” Silas exhaled. “I've been having increasing anxiety about work and it's inhibiting . . . well, everything, actually.” That was only a small bit of his issue, but it was a start.

More typing on the other end of the phone. “Thank you. Dr. Hillwater has actually had a cancellation this week and is available on Thursday at one if you'd like to come in then.”

Silas felt a surge of relief and anxiety all at once, an odd combination. “Yes, thank you. That will be fine.”

“We'll see you on Thursday then, Mr. Benson. Have a nice day.”

Silas hung up the phone and exhaled, low and shaky, feeling like he'd just finished a monumental project. Leaving the desk, he got up to pace the house. It felt like he was pacing the house a lot lately. He had set up a home office in the back room of the two-bedroom home, which he left to walk out onto the screened-in porch. The day was Florida-hot, even for this time of year, the low drone of cicadas constant in the afternoon heat, and he could feel sweat beading on his forehead while he stood and looked out at his yard. While he enjoyed being outside, the weather precluded his doing so in the midst of the afternoon, like now. Storm clouds were already gathering on the horizon for a late-afternoon thunderstorm, and the air had an unsettled, charged quality to it that he'd come to associate with this kind of weather. The sky was as restless as he was. He couldn't stay outside for long before the humidity drove him back inside, and he shut the sliding glass door against the approaching storm. The cool waft of central air refreshed him after the sweltering outdoor temperatures.

For a few minutes, he sat down on the couch and looked around blankly, at a loss for what to do next. Immediately, he remembered Matthew last night telling him he had to practice loafing, and he smiled despite his mood. Matthew was quite good at getting him to relax.

So how did Matthew relax? He played games. As a child, Silas had friends who were into games, but he only had the opportunity to play when he was at their houses. Those days were so distant, they seemed like they might have happened to another child as equally as they'd happened to him, like he'd watched someone else's life. He tried vaguely to remember what video games were popular back then, but came up blank. Aside from some general comments about gaming to Matthew, he didn't even know what Matthew played.

He did, however, know where Matthew worked, and he could find out what games they made. He returned to his home office and his computer desk and searched for PI Games, reading through the descriptions of their games. At first glance, it was all inane, and his impulse was to put it aside. But no, that was his mother's voice in his head, telling him to find something more useful to do with his time. He would try to keep an open mind. The company had put out a number of games, and all the descriptions ran together in his mind, so he picked one at random:
Bump.
The cartoon protagonist of the game looked odd, with a bulbous head and abnormally large hands and feet, set against a brightly colored cartoonish landscape, but the trailer for the game looked simple enough. It was some kind of puzzle game. He clicked and downloaded the free trial from the website and set about installing it.

The game had a built-in tutorial, but he swiftly grew impatient with the pointing arrows and cheerful text boxes, so he exited. He didn't need a tutorial on CAD; surely he didn't need a tutorial on a cartoon game called
Bump.
He loaded the first level on normal difficulty and started to navigate his way through.

At first glance, the game seemed ridiculously simple. He just had to pass through the forest and find the crystals or eggs or whatever—the quest-giver at the beginning had described them, but he'd clicked through the whole conversation without reading it—and solve the puzzles along the way. He played through a few minutes before something attacked his character, some kind of large jungle snake, which he tried to attack back and ended up falling into a river and dying.

Well, that was just stupid.

The game started him over, and he tried again. And again. How was he supposed to attack the snake? He tried a few key combinations to no avail. Annoyed, he started over and actually read what the quest-giver said at the beginning, hoping it would give him some clues. Apparently the things he was looking for were in fact eggs, but there was nothing about how to attack. Why did he have this sword if he wasn't supposed to attack anything? He felt his irritation growing and exited the game. This was ridiculous.

If Matthew called this relaxing, he had another thing coming. Silas didn't have time to waste getting
more
frustrated on something that didn't actually matter to any large-scale issues whatsoever. No, instead, he'd go run an errand or something. He needed groceries, so here was a ready-made excuse to get out of the house. As he got ready to go, he tried not to be angry at himself for getting upset at the free trial of an animated computer game, looking instead for the humor in the situation. At least he'd have something new to talk to Matthew about when he saw him again.

Seeing Matthew at the end of the week was the bright spot in what otherwise looked like a gloomy week. He wasn't sure when Matthew had begun to become important to him as more than a sexual release, but it had definitely happened, and he didn't know how to bring it up with him. What if the other man didn't feel the same? This wouldn't be the first time he'd misunderstood the tenor of a relationship. Throughout his life, he'd become increasingly more adept at reading nuance in facial expressions and tone, but he still occasionally misread people. He knew Matthew was his friend, and they both enjoyed sex, but that didn't mean Matthew wanted to have a relationship.

As he pulled out onto the street, the rain started. First large drops, plunking down on his car as harbingers of what was to come, and then the steady all-over Florida deluge that required full windshield-wiper power. He drove carefully through the storm, navigating his way to the grocery store, the thunderstorm crashing down around him. Lightning struck nearby, thunder cracking loud and making him jump. Between that and the thunderous drone of the rain itself, he couldn't hear anything else, couldn't even hear his own thoughts in his head. The sound whited out everything. He knew these storms, having grown up here, and knew that this one would blow itself out in fifteen minutes or so. Once he arrived at the grocery store, he stayed in the car and watched the storm roll over the parking lot. In the moment, it felt overwhelming, awe-inspiring in the sublime kind of way that must have inspired the great painters and poets, some terror mixed in with the beauty. He had always loved the thunderstorms, how they came in like destruction and yet left everything washed clean in their wake. Okay, yes, sometimes they actually left street flooding and wind damage, but he wasn't thinking about that right now. Right now, he was considering the way the wind was starting to diminish, and the raindrops were letting up from a solid sheet to a steady stream and then a light patter. Finally, the storm blew itself out, fading into the distance, the clouds still darkening the sky but the electricity in the air burned away.

Storms always passed, he considered, as he gathered his reusable bags and got out of the car. They felt insurmountable in the moment, but they always passed, and the world afterward was refreshed. Feeling minutely better, he went into the store.

Matthew's original desire had
been to call Silas every day that week to check up on him, ever since he'd driven him home on Monday night, but he had quelled that urge. People needed space, especially someone as introverted as Silas, and he didn't want to infringe on that space. What he couldn't deny, though, was his desire to see Silas again. A couple weeks ago, he'd found him neurotic and fun to tease, a potent combination that aroused Matthew and made Silas a great sexual partner for him, but somewhere in that time, he'd started to actually care about Silas's well-being, and that caring was paired with a genuine enjoyment of his company. Work had been great that week, busy with plans for DiceCon coming up next weekend, but Silas had been on his mind more often than not. Now it was Thursday night, and he was sitting by the phone like a teenager anxious to ask out a prom date.

Matthew rolled his eyes at himself, telling himself to get a grip, and resolutely pressed Silas's name, watching the call connect.

Silas picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hey.” Matthew felt himself smile just hearing Silas's voice on the other end of the phone. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

A slight pause. “I'm . . . I'm pretty good, actually.” Silas sounded surprised at his own statement. “I had my first appointment with a therapist today.”

Well, that was surprising, but not in a bad way at all. For all his admissions that therapy would be beneficial, Matthew had thought Silas was giving lip service to the idea rather than genuinely planning to go through with it. “Good. I'm proud of you.” He meant it, too.

“Thank you.” Silas sounded relieved. “I'm proud of me, too. She seemed to know what she was talking about. She listened to what I had to say, and while I have some things to work on, she seems to think I have a good prognosis. I feel better already having gone.”

“That's really good, Silas. I think this is a positive step forward for you.” Matthew wasn't sure he'd have been as willing to go as Silas was, which was ridiculous, but he had a hard time fighting the stigma of mental illness. At least Silas was getting the help he needed. “How often does she have you coming in?”

“We're going to start with every week for now, at least until my leave of absence from work is over, and then probably go to every other week. She's given me some cognitive behavioral strategies for dealing with my anxiety.” There was a pause where Matthew could almost hear Silas deciding whether or not to share something else. “I, uh, told her about you.”

Matthew smiled into the phone, even though he couldn't be sure it was good. In fact, Silas might have told his therapist that he'd gotten into this relationship that he had no interest in continuing, and asked for feedback on breaking things off. His smile slipped a little. “Oh yeah? What about?”

“She'd just finished talking to me about finding strategies to inject some more pleasure and enjoyment into my life, and I mentioned that you'd been saying the same thing. She said you sounded like a very smart gentleman.” Silas was smiling as he said the last few words; Matthew could hear it in his voice.

“I am indeed a very smart gentleman.” Matthew preened. “So you're going to take my advice then, and cultivate a loafing practice?”

He heard a stricken sigh on the other end of the phone. “I just don't think this loafing thing is for me. I actually tried one of your company's games on Tuesday, and it was the most frustrating thing I've ever played.”

Matthew thought he couldn't be surprised by Silas more than once in a conversation, but he was wrong. “Yeah? Which game?”

“
Bump.
I couldn't get past the snake.”

Matthew hadn't played
Bump
since he was helping to program the sequel over a year ago, and he tried to remember where the snake came into play. Which boss monster was a snake? As he scanned back through his memory, no snake came to mind, except for one. “Do you mean the snake in level one?”

“Yes, the snake in level one.” Silas sounded irritated. “Are there more?”

“No, that's the only snake. But you aren't supposed to fight him.” Matthew wanted to laugh, since Silas seemed so peeved about something silly, but he didn't think Silas would appreciate being laughed at. “Did you do the tutorial?”

A long pause. “I thought the tutorial looked stupid.”

This time, Matthew did laugh. “You are a piece of work, you know that? Tell you what.” He was hatching a plan in the spaces between sentences. “Tomorrow after work, we're going to hit up Caleb's workshop and build some things for Zuul. Then you're coming back to my place and I'm going to take you through some classic games. Just enough to keep you well stocked for the next couple weeks.”

He heard a pause as Silas considered, but the pause was brief. “That sounds fine. I think I would like that.”

“Good. Come by about five thirty?”

“All right. I'll see you then.”

---

After Silas arrived on
Friday night, Matthew drove them to the address Caleb had given him. Sure enough, it was a storage facility, rows upon rows of cement buildings with garage-style doors in front. He followed the signs until he came to unit 354, which was noticeable, because unlike the rest of the storage units, this one had an open front door. Caleb was sitting in the middle, surrounded by an odd assortment of metal piping and machine parts that Matthew was not technically savvy enough to recognize, since none of them seemed to have come from computers. He pulled into the parking lot next to Caleb's Subaru with its new-looking Florida plates, shielding his eyes from the hot late-afternoon sun. Caleb pushed his welding mask up when he saw them and smiled in greeting. “Hey, come on in.” He was wearing heavy gloves that he took off to shake Silas's hand. “Hi,” he greeted Silas. “I'm Caleb. I work with Matthew.”

“Silas.” Silas shook Caleb's hand, pausing as he clearly thought of how to introduce himself. Matthew went to help him, but Silas said, “I'm helping Matthew with the project. I'm a biomedical engineer. I'm . . .” He paused, looking at Matthew for confirmation.

Matthew hadn't defined with Silas what they were to each other, but in the moment like this, it seemed like he had to. He tried out the label he'd been considering, the one he wasn't sure fit yet, but the one to which he kept returning. “He's . . . my boyfriend?”

Silas's eyes widened.

Matthew shrugged. “I . . . guess?”

Silas shrugged as well, obviously taken aback. “Yes, I suppose I'm his . . . boyfriend.”

Caleb grinned at them. “Well, nice to meet you, Silas. Can't help but notice you've got a weird old biblical name like me, so I think we'll get along fine.”

Silas smiled. “Yes, when I met Matthew, he said my name sounded like an Amish farmer.”

Caleb laughed openly at that.

Matthew grinned affectionately at Silas. His boyfriend. Maybe he could get used to that. “Well, turns out I was wrong. There's nothing Amish at all about Silas.”

While Silas blushed red, and Caleb laughed harder, Matthew looked around the storage-locker-turned-workshop. Now that they had stepped inside, Matthew could feel the central air cooling the space. “So this is your workshop? Don't they get mad that you're wasting all the air-conditioning?”

Caleb shook his head. “Nah, as long as I keep my bill paid each month, they don't really care what I do with the space.” Caleb pulled his mask all the way off and set it down on the stool where he'd been previously welding some kind of sculpture. Matthew couldn't tell yet what it was going to be.

“Matthew says you're an artist.” Silas looked around. “I've never met someone who does metalworking before.”

“It started as a hobby in art school, and then it grew from there. Now that I've got this workshop and a steady job, I've been able to invest in a lot more equipment than I had up north. When Matthew told me what he wanted to make, I figured I'd be the guy to help with it. I wasn't expecting to have an honest-to-god biomedical engineer here.” Caleb's smile was as warm toward Silas as it always was to Matthew, which Matthew appreciated. He'd liked Caleb from the get-go, even with his “will they, won't they” thing with Isabel that had gone on for way too long.

Silas pulled some papers out of his pocket and unfolded them. Matthew moved closer to see what they were, and saw that they were printouts of Zuul's adaptive cat wheelchair. Silas handed them to Caleb. “So this is what we want to try and make. Matthew, you said you picked everything up at Home Depot?”

“Sure did.” Matthew jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the car.

Caleb rubbed his beard. “Well, go ahead and start unloading things, and give me a chance to look these over.”

When Matthew and Silas finished moving the odds and ends and pieces from the trunk into the workshop, Caleb had laid out the plans on his workbench. “This seems straightforward enough. I'm happy to weld whatever needs welding.”

“That's why we're here.” Matthew was looking forward to getting Zuul hooked up with some new gear.

“I might even have some supplies that'll be handy.” Caleb pulled his gloves back on, then excitedly started moving piles of scrap metal. Over the noise, he said, “Isabel always gives me shit about collecting this stuff, but she told me as long as I keep it in the shop and don't try to bring it home, I can do whatever I like. This is like my scrap metal bat cave.”

He emerged with a few items to add to the pile of goods, which he then surveyed. “Okay, this is a start.” Caleb nodded. “Now let's figure out how it all goes together.”

Matthew had never done this kind of construction before. There wasn't too much he could do with the technical equipment, the welding and all that, because that was Caleb's area of expertise, but he was surprised at how adept Silas was with construction. He wasn't sure he'd really understood Silas's job before this. Frankly, it was pretty damn sexy to watch.

As Silas fit two small parts together, Matthew commented, “So you actually build things. You don't just design them.”

Silas nodded. “That's correct. I put together the components that go into my designs.”

“That's pretty cool.” Matthew felt a new kind of respect for him. “I'd thought it was all computer simulation and CAD, but it's neat that you're really in there.”

“I like this aspect of the job.” Silas nodded. Faced with a project, he was all seriousness. While he worked, his look of concentration turned into a frown, and then he paused in his task. “I miss this aspect of the job.” After that pause, he was back to work again.

Matthew felt a pang of sadness for Silas, understanding a bit more what he was going through. While he loved his job, he couldn't imagine it forming this much of his identity, and so he hadn't really understood Silas's loss. Seeing it firsthand, though, no longer the aftermath of grief but the slow recovery, he saw the way Silas clung to this tiny project like it would be his greatest achievement. Matthew felt something tender in his heart at the realization. Tonight wasn't about distracting Silas through games and (probably) sex, but it needed to be about helping him find some joy in other areas of life, not just when he was working.

Maybe finding joy in a new relationship, for example.

Caleb turned on floodlights in the storage unit when it started to get dark, washing the area with brilliant illumination and making it possible for them to continue working. That was fortunate, since nothing had come together yet and they still had a ways to go. Matthew was able to help with a few smaller pieces of work that he pretty much had to force Silas to delegate to him, but otherwise, he just hung out with Caleb and watched. Silas seemed happiest when he was doing all the work himself. He kept referring to the plans, making minute adjustments, and then returning to construction. Every so often, he asked Caleb to trim or bend something with one of his machines, which Caleb completed easily. Matthew also kept waiting for Caleb to ask him more about his relationship with Silas, but his friend was conspicuously silent on the subject, talking about some recent games and media but not bringing up anything personal. Maybe he just wasn't interested, or maybe he was being polite.

After a little while, though, conversation came back around to work. “So I saw the internal job posting from Will about the technical manager position,” Caleb said, setting a piece of welded framing aside and grabbing two more parts. “You gonna go for it?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Matthew saw Silas perk up, setting down the wheel he was screwing into place.

“I don't know.” He had stared at the job posting all week, keeping the email open, even checking his résumé to make sure it was up to date, but hadn't been ready to pull the trigger. “It's a lot more work.”

“There's a possibility for you to get a promotion at work?” Silas moved away from the bench to come stand next to Matthew. “Why didn't you say anything about it?”