How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

“Nah, they don’t look like they want it.”

“They really don’t.”

“Maybe they should show us.”

I don’t know who starts the chant. But it picks up fast:

“Cad-sim, Cad-sim‌…‌”

“Eh, I don’t know, Ed. What do you think?”

“They’re pretty quiet, actually.”

They layer on claps and stomps, rattle the fake-wood squares of the dance floor. There can’t be this many Cadsim shippers here; it’s drunk girls up for anything, fans who want a good story to tell, people who think it’s just fun to shout: “CAD-sim! CAD-sim!”

“Uh-oh,” says Darras. “They’re getting hot and bothered.”

“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 spi

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 du

“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 ca

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 ci