Page 47 of Steam

Part V

A Rational Man

There’sno one thing in the end that clues them in and it doesn’t happen all at once.

Like most sinister things, what happens with Owen over the summer is an erosion, slow and natural-feeling. But like the opposite ends of a gradient, Owen at the beginning and Owen at the end might as well be an entirely different person.

Owen himself couldn’t tell you himself why he started restricting what he was eating.

Maybe it was the total environmental change more than it was any one thing. Adjusting to the acquisition by the new company. Moving offices. A new fanbase.

Some things stayed the same: the flow of the days and nights and commutes and lunches together with his two boyfriends, Reese and Trey, and the other people he worked with. The environment changed, though. There was a new office location that came with new restaurants for lunch, a new gym for the four of them who worked out every day—Reese and Trey and Aaron and Cash.

Life has become an endless stream of packing, unpacking, commuting, recording, eating, and falling into bed together.

* * *

Six years ago, they had just been a group of queer nerds reporting on video games at a bigger company together. "Video game journalism" hadn't even been a real job back then—but they'd been young enough to try and make a career out of anything. The big company had grouped the six young men together, put them in charge of a web series online… and the rest had been history.

Their online show was so much of a hit that a new company had stepped in and poached them this year, offered them better salaries and new offices and a new audience and the chance to stay together—all of six of them.

It was the last part that was the most important.

Over the six years that they had known each other, plenty had changed. Video games had changed. The way people consumed content online had changed. And their relationships to one another had changed drastically.

Their friendship bled over into something more when Cash and Trey hooked up secretly in the first year that they all worked together.

Privately, the two of them had a relationship that ran its course. When they came to the rest of the group to let them know what had happened--and that it was over--they were shocked to learn that they weren't the only ones who had been experimenting.

Levi and Aaron had had a thing, too. And Owen and Reese had been harboring crushes on each other for months.

Once the seal was broken on dating in the office, it was like there was no turning back. They got together in a variety of polyamorous permutations until, finally, they'd found an arrangement that they liked: Trey, Reese, and Owen in a steady relationship and the other three men dating casually.

Trey, Reese, and Owen moved in together two years ago when they’d realized that they worked best as a committed trio. The others have their own living spaces but sleep over often enough that some weeks it feels like they all live and work together.

Sometimes Levi shares a bed with Trey and Reese. Sometimes Cash likes to take Owen out on a date by themselves.

They're flexible. It seemed impossible that they could transition from being friends to being something more--but they just work together. And things are good.

Until they aren't.

Cash is the first to notice that Owen isn’t initiating anymore.

It doesn’t matter if they pair off or end up in some other combination, because by August, if someone wants Owen in bed they have to pull him there. And more often than not, he just abstains—finding something else to do.

It had happened with Aaron before (and even Trey once)—pulling away for a while, needing some space to sort something out. It was easy to feel oversexed when you shared your time—all your goddamn time—with six other men. And Owen gets moody.

Cash chalks it up to needing space, and he doesn’t mention it to the others when he notices that more and more Owen is physically absent.

* * *

Their new coworkersjoke that the group of them are like video game journalism world’s answer to a boy band.

There’s Levi, the sweet baby of the group with his innocent smile and curly head of hair. There’s Reese, with his romance-novel-cover good looks and washboard abs. Then Cash, Trey, and Aaron—the three of them looking every bit like the wholesome type of guy you’d want to take home and introduce to your parents.

Every group needs a Brainiac—even a group of nerds—and for them, that’s always been Owen. He looks the part with his jet-black hair and stylish Clark Kent glasses. He’s always happy to play the brain on camera, too, loudly disagreeing with the others and pretending to be hopelessly pedantic.

When they’re off-screen, though, Owen never argues. In the six years that he’s been a part of their group, he’s been a quiet source of strength for the other men. Even though he’s moody, it’s simply not like him to pull away.

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