How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (20 page)

“Sounds like it.”

“Better break out your Chap-Stick, buddy.”

“CAD-SIM! CAD-SIM! CADDD-SIMMM!”

Darras scans the room, taking it all in: the women in costumes and shimmery prom gowns, ignoring their dates to plead with him.

Then he grabs Ed Ransome, dips him to one side, and gives the fandom the first and only official Cadsim kiss.

People must be screaming, because my eardrums hurt. And the flashing lights, I guess those are two hundred cameras catching history, snatching proof. This is how they did it. This is how they made it look real, even though the kiss was in shadow and no one actually saw their lips lock together. How Ransome’s arms flailed around at first, and then settled around Darras’s shoulders. How they gasped and flushed when they came up for air; made a big show of smoothing their shirts, fixing their matching bowties.

“I gotta call my wife,” says Ransome.

“I’ll explain everything,” says Darras.

They crack up, high-five. I lean my head back, let the disco ball paint me with spatters of light like Dad’s St. Christopher medal spinning from the Sunseeker rearview. I have to go through with this now. They made it look easy. For five seconds I’ll get to see how it feels, a perfect easy kiss with someone you trust completely. And afterwards I can smooth my shirt and clear my throat, pretend it was all a big joke. I can even borrow his words:
I gotta call my wife.

I pop a Tic-Tac. Darras and Ransome are plugging ahead with the Q&A, but I don’t hear a word. My head’s ballooning with possibilities. Which way to tilt my head, where to put my hands.

Abel pokes me in the back.

“I gotta go,” he says. “Sorry.”

***

I keep pace beside him. Back through the ballroom doors, into the sallow chlorine-smelling hall, through the too-bright lobby with its throngs of late rumpled travelers.

If I keep up with him, I can tell myself he’s not walking away from me.

“You can stay,” he mutters. “Stay at the ball, Bran. Have fun.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t feel good.”

“Since when?”

“I dunno.” We squeeze through a herd of businesspeople who gape at our costumes. “It just hit me. I guess maybe the sashimi‌…‌”

“Abel.”

“My dad says never to eat in hotel restaurants‌—‌this one time he had a bad shrimp cocktail at this medical conference in Florida and he‌—‌”

“Stop.” We’re at the elevators. Abel jabs the up button. “What’s going on?”

He looks at the floor. I wait for it:
I can’t kiss you, even as a joke. You’re too neurotic. Too short. Too not-my-type-so-what-were-you-thinking-you-idiot.

“I don’t want to do that,” Abel says. “What they just did in there.”

“Okay.” I nod fast. “It’s okay.”

He holds the elevator door open. We step in.

“I know I said I would,” he says, “but‌—‌I mean, it’s just gross.”

I flinch. “It’s fine, okay? I get it.”

“Yeah. Right.”

He punches the button.

Three floors ping by.

“It’s so fucking easy for you,” Abel blurts. “This whole thing‌…‌”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He turns his back on me. “Forget it.”

In bad elevator fics, Cadmus is always hitting the EMERGENCY STOP to pick a fight with Sim, which of course always turns into
their heated bodies hungering in unison
two paragraphs later.

I spot the red button. My hand shoots out.

We grind to a stop.

“What are you doing?” Abel’s voice spikes up an octave.

Crap
. I didn’t think it would work.

“You seriously stopped the elevator?”

Brandon drew in a deep, calming breath. I can do this, he assured himself.

“I want to know what you mean,” I tell him. “Why is this easy for me?”

“Brandon‌—‌!”

I step in front of the button. “We’re not going until you tell me.”

“Fine.”
He backs into a corner, as far from me as possible. “You went from one fake relationship to another, and it’s not fun anymore, and now we need to stop. Okay?”

“I thought you liked this.”

“I do. I
did
,” he says to his white Sim shoes. “But like, you get to play Cute Plastic Boyfriends with me for the camera, and it’s sweet and fun and safe for you and then you get to turn it off and walk away.” I open my mouth but he holds up a hand. “And I mean, look: it’s my fault. Okay? I was the idiot. Because I said yes to this fake-flirting thing like it was a game and I shouldn’t have said yes because I knew this would happen, I knew I was getting this diabolical crush at just the wrong time and I’d be in over my head but I couldn’t say no to you and now it’s gotten too weird and too dangerous and I have to end it because one thing I really really cannot do is have you break my heart, because then we probably couldn’t be friends. And I want to stay friends. No matter what. Don’t you?”

I blink at him. My Abel-to-English decoder spits out the results.

Holy Saint Peter on a hoverboard.

Hot chills wash over me. I take a step closer.

“What do you mean,” I say, “break your heart?”

He closes his eyes. The mechanical heart blinks slow and steady.

“Don’t make me say it,” he whispers.

The rough draft of tonight’s story was set in my head this morning, but now it’s rewriting itself into something ten times better. It makes a weird kind of sense. It’s not going to happen in some expected place like the dance floor, while “Such Great Heights” tweedles in the background and the disco ball bathes us in generic starshine. It’s going to happen in a stopped elevator, like the worst, hackiest Cadsim fic on the Internet, only now it’s for real and it’s going to be amazing, just like if hey_mamacita had stayed up all night to get every detail just right.

I kiss him.

Brandon’s blood sizzled as his lips met Abel’s: his body sang an anthem of strength and softness, of celebration unshackled from fear. I’M KISSING A BOY, he silently shouted. They conjugated the verb with rapture and wonder and cinnamon-flavored bliss. Kiss, kissing, kissed. And kissed again.

We break apart, the scent of cinnamon jelly beans tickling my nose.

“You don’t have to,” he mutters.

“Abel‌—‌”

“You just think you like me,” he says to the floor. “That’s all this is.”

“That’s all it ever is.”

“You think you do, because you told me all those private things and we like, bonded, and maybe you think you owe me‌…‌” His eyes are filling up. “Or maybe‌—‌”

“Abel.”

He looks up. “What?”

“I think I love you,” I tell him.

It slips out soft and quiet, and so easily I think maybe I didn’t say it out loud. But then I see his face, and I know I did. He tilts my face in his warm hands and kisses me back, and it’s like one of those perfect TV kisses they save for May sweeps, the ones the previews tease you about all season until you swear it won’t happen, and then when it does the forums blow up and the fans add eighteen exclamation points to everything and swear they’ll never ask God for anything else for as long as they live.

Abel rests his forehead on mine.

“That is most welcome news, Captain.”

I don’t call him
Tin Man
. I exhale, for the first time in five minutes.

I hit the elevator release, and we’re on our way.

Chapter Eighteen

Sim washes off him fast, like the cheap makeup Bec and I bought for past Halloweens to magic ourselves into little suburban vampires. I watch his hair and face reclaim themselves, the blue hair gel and silver greasepaint streaking the white shower tiles and swirling down the drain.

“Bran,” he murmurs.

“Mm.”

“Can I open my eyes now?”

I take a deep breath.
It’s okay.

“Yes.”

I feel good when I say it, but when his eyelids actually open I back up a step, clutch the washcloth against me. The hotel shower stall feels smaller, stifling. Am I too hairy? Not hairy enough? Did he imagine I was cut like a marble statue underneath my big t-shirts? Why didn’t I do crunches this week at the campground after he fell asleep?

His eyes trace the droplets branching down my chest.

They stop at my waistband.

“Brandon. Cutie.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re still wearing your boxers.”

“I am.”

“Is there something you need to tell me?”

“No.”

“Are you
actually
a Ken doll?”

“Nope.”

“Is your dad a secret superhero and you have a bionic penis and you make up this big religious-paranoia back story because it shoots laser beams and has the strength of a bulldozer?”

“Yes.”

“I knew it.”

“I’ve never done this.” I watch water whirl down the drain between my feet.

“Showered in boxers?”

“Been naked‌…‌
with
someone.”

“Well, obviously. However, when you said
let’s take a shower
, I naively assumed‌—‌”

“I know I know!” I draw my arms across my bare chest. “I’m sorry. I felt great and then‌…‌It’s new. You know?”

“Look, if you want to wait more‌—‌”

“I don’t.”

“But maybe you’re too‌—‌”

“No! No, listen.” I shove my wet hair off my forehead.
I can’t screw this up. I won’t let bad thoughts in. I won’t.
“It’s just, when I think about‌…‌sex or whatever, it’s kind of like on TV.”

“Vanilla and hetero?”

“No, like, there’s some kissing I guess, and then it fades out.”

He gets this stupefied look. “That’s all you picture?”

“Kind of.”

“
Ever?”

“Mostly.”

“Even your dirty robot dreams?”

“Especially those.”

“Oh-kay. Wow.” He weighs the full pathetic horror of my PG-13 dream-life. “So is that‌…‌all you want, or is there‌—‌”

“No no. I want more.” My eyes wander down past his waist and
oh my God I saw it crap crap don’t freak out it’s normal it’s beautiful it’s

“Eyes up here for now.” He tips up my chin and kisses me lightly. “Let’s not frighten you further, darling.”

“I’m not.”

“You are, but it’s fine. We can work with this.”

“Okay.” I’m starting to shake. A good shaking. I think.

“So what do you think you’d like?”

“I don’t know.” I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Don’t freak. I won’t judge.”

“I know. But it’s like, I don’t even have the words.”

He pauses. Long pause. Then I hear the shower door creak open, and I feel him slip away.

I twist the water off and scramble out of the stall. He’s pulling on a white bathrobe, raking his hands through his wet hair with purpose.
I’m losing him.
For crap’s sake. I can’t even take a half-naked shower with someone without‌—‌

“Come on, Bran.” He throws me the other robe.

“What are we doing?”

He peers at me over his shoulder and grins.

“Imitating art.”

***

I follow him into the bedroom. He flops onto the first bed and grabs the open laptop.

“Um‌…‌”

“So you know this happens in every fandom, right?” he says. “Especially real-person shipping?”

“What?”

“Here, sit here.” He pulls me down next to him and kisses my cheek. “There’s always that fic where they
find
all the fic their fans wrote about them, and they pretend to be all shocked and horrified at first, and then they read it together‌—‌”

“In some fancy hotel room.”

“With cute matchy-matchy bathrobes. And then they get drunk on cheap champagne, and as
their inhibitions melt away
they end up‌—‌”

“‌—‌acting out their favorite scenes,” I sigh.

“Exactly.”

“Oh my God.”

He hits his bookmark tab and scrolls down to the bottom. “I think this one was kind of hot. The one where we do it in the bowling alley‌—‌”

“Abel!”

“It’s
useful
, Bran. Trust me! This way you just point to the stuff you want to try‌—‌oh. Except that.”

“What?” I hide my eyes.

“Right, I bookmarked this fic to laugh at it. Sorry.” He giggles. “This
sorcha doo
person needs an anatomy lesson. Did you read this one?”

“I skim the sex scenes.” I uncover one eye, see the word
slick
, and re-cover fast.

“Yeah, in
that
position, your first time, in a bathroom stall? I think
dizzying heights of ecstasy
are out.”

I cringe. “I figured.”

“And honestly‌—‌I hope you’re not disappointed when I say this.”

“What?”

“I don’t think I can unbutton your shirt with my teeth.”

“That’s okay.”

“Here, this one’s pretty good, though.” He clicks on
retro robot
’s “You Can Drive My RV” and scrolls down. “The part that starts
Abel’s back hit the wall with a thud?
Definite possibilities. Just look.”

“Yeah, I can’t.”

He leans over and nips one of the fingers that cover my eyes. I grin. He nips another one, and another one, until I smack him away and coax my eyes back on the screen.

I make myself read the words this time, instead of skipping to a safe part. The first few lines are like medieval torture, but then the shock wears off and it’s pretty okay, not much different from the Cadsim fanfic I used to sneak. It’s creative. Ridiculous. Funny. Sort of hot, if I ignore the fact that they’re straight-girl masturbatory fantasies about us. We spend the next half hour taking our time with it: laughing at the bad scenes, poring over the good ones. I go through my backlog of embarrassing sex questions, all of which Abel answers with casual directness, like a wet and sexy stranger giving directions to the post office.

“Okay.” Abel stretches and cracks his knuckles. “So definitely that bit from the steampunk AU except minus the brass goggles and mechanical claw, and then we mix in some ‘Three Little Words.’ And‌—‌what else?”

I scroll down shyly to “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart.”

“Chapter 18,” I say. “I’d like to start here.”