Neon Hearts Collide

The first time Jevil told me he was going to fuck me, I laughed so hard I nearly dropped my microphone.

We were in the green room of MTT Brand Studios, that windowless box of beige walls and craft services nobody touched, and he was sitting cross-legged on the folding table like it belonged to him. Which, technically, nothing did. He'd just appeared there, the way he always did, a glitch in the shape of a man.

"You're insane," I said. I was adjusting my cufflinks. They were shaped like little stars. I'd had them custom-made.

"I'm *free*," he corrected, and his grin split his face wider than a face should go. "There's a difference, darling. A big one. The kind you can't see from inside your pretty little cage."

I should've walked out. I had a show to tape. I had three segments, a musical number with the Glambots, and a monologue I'd spent six hours polishing. Instead I stood there, one cufflink half-fastened, watching him swing his legs like a child on a swing set.

"You're not supposed to be here," I said. "Security has your face on a list."

"Security has *everyone's* face on a list. That's what makes it so funny." He hopped off the table. His boots clicked on the linoleum, an off-rhythm tap that made my teeth ache. "You know what else is funny? You. Standing there. Pretending you don't want to ask me what I meant."

I didn't answer. That was an answer.

He circled me. I let him. There's a thing I do on camera where I hold perfectly still and let the silence stretch until the audience squirms, and I did it then, because it was the only weapon I had. Jevil didn't squirm. He orbited, close enough that I caught the smell of him, something like burnt sugar and cold air, and stopped directly behind my left shoulder.

"Your shoulders are up by your ears," he said. "That's tension, Mettaton. That's a body that's been holding something in for a long, long time."

"You have exactly thirty seconds to say something useful or I'm calling for the bots."

"Call them." His breath was on my neck. "I'll be gone before they open the door. Then you'll spend the rest of the day wondering what I would've said. And the rest of the week. Maybe the rest of your life, if you're the type."

I was the type. We both knew it.

I turned around. He was shorter up close, which I'd forgotten, and it threw me. In the tabloid shots and the grainy security footage he looked enormous, a chaos god in a jester's hat. Standing a foot away, he barely reached my collarbone. It should've made him less threatening. It didn't.

"Fine," I said. "Talk."

And he did.

He talked for four minutes, and in those four minutes he told me things about myself I'd never said out loud. He told me about the way I check my reflection before every take, not out of vanity but to make sure the performance is still holding. He told me about the way I laugh at my own jokes a half-second before the punchline, because I need to hear it land before I can commit. He told me about the way I sleep, or don't, and what I think about when I'm lying in the dark with the cameras off and nobody watching.

"How do you know that," I said. My voice came out wrong. Lower than usual. Not the voice I use on air.

"I know everything, darling. That's the whole trick." He tapped his temple with one gloved finger. "The whole world is a game and I'm the only one who read the rulebook. And you, Mettaton, you're the most interesting piece on the board."

"I'm not a piece."

"Everything's a piece. You just don't like knowing which square you're standing on."

He was close again. I hadn't seen him move. His hand came up, slow, and I could've stopped him. I should've stopped him. His fingers touched the lapel of my jacket, traced the seam, and I stood there like a statue in a museum while a vandal ran his thumb along the marble.

"You wear this armor everywhere," he said. "Even when you're alone. Even in the shower, I bet. Scrub the chrome, polish the smile, make sure the product is camera-ready at all times." His eyes came up to mine. They were the color of old blood. "When's the last time somebody saw you with the armor off?"

I grabbed his wrist.

I don't know why. I told myself it was to stop him, to reassert control, to remind him who he was touching. My grip was tight enough to bruise a normal person. Jevil just looked at my hand, then at my face, and his grin got wider.

"There he is," he said softly. "There's the one I came for."

"Get out."

"Make me."

I could have. One call to the Glambots and he'd be dragged out through the loading dock, tossed into the alley with the trash and the rats. That's what I should have done. That's what a smart man does with a lunatic who shows up in his green room and starts talking about the armor.

Instead I let go of his wrist. Slowly. One finger at a time.

"After the show," I said. "You're gone after the show."

"Sure." He hopped back onto the table and crossed his legs again. "After the show."

The show was a disaster.

Not visibly. On camera I was perfect, as always. The monologue killed, the musical number brought the house down, the Glambots hit every mark. But the whole time, through every beat, I could feel him watching. He'd found a spot in the wings, just past the edge of the light, and he stood there with his arms folded and that grin on his face, and every joke I told felt like I was telling it to him. Every wink felt like a confession. When I sang the last note of the closing number I held it a half-second longer than the arrangement called for, and I knew, I *knew*, that he noticed.

Afterward I found him in my dressing room.

He was sitting in my chair. My chair. The one with my name on the back in gold letters. He had his boots up on the vanity, right next to the framed photo of me and the Glambots from the anniversary special, and he was eating my strawberries.

"Those are for my throat," I said.

"They're delicious." He bit into another one. "You want one?"

"No."

"You want me to feed you one."

I closed the door. I don't know why I closed the door. There were a dozen people in the hallway who could've walked in at any moment and seen the most famous face in the Underground standing in his own dressing room with a known terrorist sitting in his chair, and I closed the door anyway.

"You've been watching me all night," I said.

"All night, all week, all year." He dropped the strawberry stem onto my vanity. "You're a hard habit to break."

"I don't know you."

"You know me better than anyone. That's the part that scares you." He stood up. Slowly, this time, no tricks. His boots hit the floor one at a time. "You know what I am because you're the same thing, Mettaton. You just wrapped yours in sequins and called it a career."

"I'm nothing like you."

"You're everything like me." He crossed the room. I didn't move. "We're both performing. We're both lying. The only difference is you need an audience to do it, and I don't."

He stopped in front of me. This close, in the low light of the dressing room, I could see the seams in his face. The places where the grin didn't quite meet the eyes. The exhaustion under the manic. He was tired. He'd been tired for a long time, maybe longer than I'd been alive, and he was standing in front of me because I was the only thing in this whole world that made him feel awake.

I recognized it because I'd felt it too. Not about him. About the camera. About the red light and the countdown and the moment before the show starts.

"Say it," he said.

"Say what."

"Whatever you're thinking. The true thing. The one you'd never say on air."

I looked at him. He looked back. Somewhere down the hall a Glambot rolled past, and the sound of its wheels faded, and the room got very quiet.

"I'm thinking," I said, "that I should've had you thrown out the first time you showed up."

"You should have." He reached up and touched my face. Just his fingertips, light as paper, along my jaw. "But you didn't. And you won't. Because I'm the only person in this whole Underground who's ever looked at you and seen the machine underneath the man, and didn't look away."

His hand was warm. I hadn't expected that. Everything about him was cold, the laugh, the eyes, the air that followed him around, but his hand was warm, and it was on my face, and I was standing there letting it happen.

"After the show," I said. My voice cracked on the second word.

"The show's over, darling." His thumb moved across my cheekbone. "It's been over for years. You just kept the cameras rolling because you didn't know what to do with the silence."

He kissed me.

It wasn't gentle. It wasn't a question. It was the kind of kiss a man gives when he's been waiting a very long time and has decided he's done waiting, and I kissed him back because my body made the decision before my brain could file an objection. His mouth tasted like strawberries and something older, something like rust, and his hands came up into my hair and pulled, and I made a sound I'd never made on camera.

When he pulled back, we were both breathing hard. His grin was gone. In its place was something raw and open, a look I'd never seen on him, and I understood, suddenly and completely, that I was in trouble.

"One night," he said. "That's all I'm asking."

"You're lying."

"I'm always lying." He touched my mouth with his thumb, wiping away nothing. "But not about this."

I should have said no. I should have called the bots. I should have done any of the hundred things a man with a career and a reputation and a future would do.

Instead I reached past him and locked the door.