I beg you to find me on Tumblr gilfoyles-tech and request a fic, talk to me, whatever. pls.
"Are you actually coding over there, or are you just spazzing out all over your keyboard?" Dinesh snapped, turning in his chair. "All I've heard for the past ten minutes is you button mashing."
Gilfoyle didn't even dignify that with the turn of his head. "I finished my section of the code."
Dinesh snorted, secretly pleased that his worried glance at his code went unseen by Gilfoyle. "There's no way you figured out how to unscramble the image from the code. You literally built the code into the image."
"Nope. Finished."
Dinesh squinted at the back of Gilfoyle's head. "Are you playing PC?"
The only sound was the frantic mashing of keys.
Dinesh frowned. "You are! Shouldn't you be, oh, I dunno', doing your job?"
"I'm playing a classic, and once again, I finished my section of the code."
Dinesh hesitated. He looked around. Richard had holed himself up somewhere in his room, and Jared was probably hovering nearby, offering tea and soothing Richard's ego. Erlich had fucked off to who knows where—or he was smoking in the charred remains of the palapa. It was late.
Dinesh looked at the distant few feet to Gilfoyle; it was late, no need to kill himself over code if Gilfoyle wasn't.
Dinesh scooted his chair over to Gilfoyle's desk.
"You're in my space," Gilfoyle said, but it was lower than it would have been if he was actually complaining, so Dinesh promptly ignored him.
"Jesus, what are the graphics on that?" Dinesh grinned. "2004 at the earliest."
"I neither volunteered this game for your scrutiny, nor care for your opinion. I don't expect you off all people to understand the tactical knowhow that Gunz requires."
Dinesh leaned forward, his smile only growing. "I'm sorry, did you say Gunz? Like, with a Z?" Dineh squinted. "Are you holding a sword?"
"It was made in Korea."
"I didn't know they called swords gunz in Korea."
Gilfoyle had been killed, and he leaned back like he wasn't going to respawn. Dinesh kept his face right where it was, trying to see past the pixels to understand how the game was actually played.
"I'm the admin," Gilfoyle offered, raising one shoulder in a shrug that seemed suspiciously nonchalant. "I had to find my backup after Anton's… After Anton."
Poor Anton.
"Did you make it?"
Gilfoyle's eyes were locked on the screen. "No, just saved it. It was a shitty game, with shitty forums, but when it was shut down, I made my own server for some of my buddies and I to play on. I was just booting the server back up when you so rudely interrupted."
Dinesh pointed—though he was resting his hand under his chin, so it wasn't a super aggressive point. "No, you were totally playing."
"To make sure everything in the backup made it over."
Dinesh sat up. "I want to play."
Here, finally, Gilfoyle's eyes flicked over to him. The corners of his mouth twitched up into a smile. "You're going to get destroyed."
Dinesh frowned. "Fuck you."
Once again, Gilfoyle's shoulder rose in a half shrug. "I'm just warning you. My server is k-style only, and even if you're playing with me, all these other guys have been playing for ten-plus years."
"It's a PC game, Gilfoyle."
"Look, this isn't some PS4 baby's-first-blunt piece of shit game; this is the hardcore heroin of PC games. Highly specialized, obsessive players literally broke the game and then made a whole competitive sport involving breaking the game."
Dinesh raised an eyebrow. "You sound a little defensive, Gilfoyle."
"This isn't Halo, Dinesh."
Dinesh's eyebrow arched higher, and he smiled. Gilfoyle threw his hands in the air and rolled over to Dinesh's computer. Dinesh scooted after him, watching Gilfoyle log into the server.
"Dude, I don't want to be a chick!"
Gilfoyle glanced over his shoulder, exiting the character creator. "Smaller hit box. Trust me, you're going to thank me."
"I'm not a chick!"
"I'm not saying you have tits, Dinesh, just that you're going to get shot enough without having a huge hitbox to contribute to the—no, your slaughter."
Gilfoyle kicked the neighboring computer's chair away and logged on to his own account. Dinesh frowned, carefully arranging his fingers over the WASD keys. A controller was so much easier.
"A controller is so much easier," Dinesh muttered.
"Take your baby-blunt complaints out into the living room, Dinesh. Alright, we're going to be playing two v. two, so I want you to try not to fuck up as long as possible. I put in standard controls for switching weapons—"
"So you're not entirely stuck in 2004?"
"—but your melee weapon is your most important." Gilfoyle reached over and showed Dinesh the keys, eyes glued to his own screen. "You can glitch out the animation and essentially bounce off the walls as long as you have your sword out."
"You mean my gunz." Dinesh smiled.
"I mean don't make me replace your teeth with your computer keys. Switch to your gun and then back to your sword so you can keep dodging as fast as possible."
"Sounds easy." Dinesh settled into his chair.
It wasn't easy.
The first three rounds, Dinesh couldn't get the glitch to work. He would just hop around, frantically waving his sword around, and then get shot in the head. The fifth round, he managed to bounce off the wall—
"Gilfoyle, I bounced!"
—only to get shot in the head a second later.
So most of Dinesh's time was spent watching Gilfoyle play because the stupid fucking game wouldn't let him respawn until the next round.
"This is fucking stupid." Dinesh threw his hands in the air and swiveled to watch Gilfoyle.
"Team deathmatch," Gilfoyle said, fingers flying across the keyboard. "It's a bitch."
"I bounced again," Dinesh said, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. "Though I have absolutely no fucking idea how you do it."
"I'm thirteen years in the making. I'm pure heroin, baby."
Gilfoyle picked off a player, switching back to his word and glitching away before the team mate could kill him—but only almost. He had almost died, just then. It was the first mistake Dinesh had noticed; Gilfoyle pretty much was pure PC heroin.
"This is how I got into coding," Gilfoyle said. Volunteered, even.
"Really?"
Gilfoyle nodded, eyes on the screen, fingers moving on their own accord. "I'd track down people's IP addresses and fuck with them. When this fuck sent a letter to my house after my clan beat his, I had to figure out how to protect my own shit."
Dinesh's gaze had moved to Gilfoyle's face. It was as impassive as ever, but Dinesh caught Gilfoyle's eyes dart to meet his, then back to the screen.
"And then I got into figuring out statistics for firing, got into how the glitch actually worked, how to perfect it, take advantage of it." Here, again, their eyes met, just for a second. "I won a Wii."
Dinesh made a face. "What?"
"We had competitions. There would be clans, and a point-system. We came in first one year and won a Wii, and my team decided I should get it." Gilfoyle dropped his hands into his lap. "My parents weren't very pleased."
Dinesh didn't move back to his keyboard, still hunched over, face close to Gilfoyle's arm. Gilfoyle looked at his hands.
"Who wouldn't be pleased with their kid winning a brand new Wii?"
"My parents. And it wasn't anywhere close to brand new." Gilfoyle shrugged. "Anyways, I'm tired of carrying your ass in this game." Gilfoyle stood and closed out the game.
Dinesh blinked and watched him, sitting up and crossing his arms. There was an awkward silence that Dinesh's dumb little brain needed to fill. "Yeah, well, it's late, and this game is a piece of shit, anyways."
Gilfoyle's who posture stiffened, shoulders hunched, fists clenched. "You asked to play," Gilfoyle shot back.
Dinesh's head jerked back. Jesus, what was with the attitude? "Oh, I forgot I held a gun to your head and forced you to make me a girl character."
Gilfoyle snapped around to face Dinesh. "Smaller hit box." Gilfoyle shut off his other computer. "I shouldn't have even shown you," he said, heading towards his bedroom.
Dinesh sank lower in his computer chair.
Sat there in the dark, arms crossed, stewing.
For a second, Gilfoyle had…
He couldn't even be nice for…
What a one-eighty in attitude…
He had probably meant for Dinesh to see his stupid game, and make him feel stupid for sucking at it. Or something.
Or something.
Gilfoyle was fucking weird, and that was that. Dinesh stood, switched his computer off, and walked to his bedroom. Fucking weird.