Dinesh was just trying to do a hard restart on one of the test servers. He entered the garage nonchalantly. "Hey, Gilfoyle, I'm restarting B-Dev ..."
He heard an odd sniffling noise that didn't belong in their makeshift server room. Gilfoyle was hidden behind a rack of dusty old machines, knees up, his arm covering his face. He pulled it away, revealing red, puffy eyes.
"Gilfoyle?" Dinesh asked softly, crouching down beside him, a switch in his heart having flipped at the sight of his longtime frenemy in tears. "What's wrong?"
Gilfoyle avoided his eyes. "Nothing."
"Your eyes are red," Dinesh pointed out with a sudden and novel gentleness.
Gilfoyle folded his arms. "Allergies," he said defiantly.
On the pretext of standing up, Dinesh touched him on the shoulder. Then, he was gone.
What was Gilfoyle even doing, he wondered, pretending to be human like the rest of them?
At the end of the day, Dinesh stopped by Gilfoyle's work station. "I'm going to make some tea," he said. "Do you want some?"
Gilfoyle hesitated a moment before saying, "Okay."
In the kitchen, he texted Gilfoyle: "Meet me in my room in ten minutes."
If anyone was paying attention, they would know something was off, but it was the best he could do. Hopefully no one was paying attention.
Dinesh made a pot of tea and got a couple mugs. He wasn't sure if Gilfoyle would show up. But he did, closing the door carefully behind him, bewildered like he wasn't used to hurting where other people could see.
Dinesh patted the bed beside him and Gilfoyle shrugged and sat down.
Dinesh poured them both a cup of tea. For a few minutes, they just drank it in silence, getting used to being parallel.
"Did something happen?" Dinesh finally asked.
"Nothing important," Gilfoyle replied bitterly. "Just feeling sorry for myself."
"If it made you cry, it's important," Dinesh told him.
Gilfoyle wrapped his hands around his elbows.
"You can tell me," Dinesh reassured him, eyes warm.
Gilfoyle looked raw with pain, but afraid, too.
"Not much to tell," he said uncertainly.
"Just ... general dissatisfaction with ... career, personal life, appearance, everything about myself."
Dinesh nodded in understanding. "I can relate to these things. Anything in particular got you thinking about them?"
"Video chat with Tara's parents last night," Gilfoyle admitted. "They were ... not impressed with me."
Dinesh had never thought of Gilfoyle as someone who would be affected by such mundane things, but there you go. His arm went around his friend.
"Fuck them," he suggested.
Gilfoyle looked at him with something like gratitude.
"Want to watch Back to the Future on my laptop?" asked Dinesh.
Gilfoyle nodded, his old self already half returned.
