How to Repair a Mechanical Heart - By J. C. Lillis Page 0,39
just assumed he was like Bec. “You do?”
“I believe in something, yeah. I just think the world’s too complicated and amazing not to.” He’s folding the tissue into a lopsided rose. “I mean, I don’t believe in a big bearded badass on a cloud throne, but I can buy a loving creative higher power that wants everyone to be happy. Something that roots for us. Like, the anti-Xaarg.”
I shake my head. “I have no idea how to think that way.”
“Why not?” He lobs the tissue rose at me. “I mean, if no one knows for sure what God’s like, then why don’t you just believe the people who think he’s all rainbows and sunshine and loves you no matter what?”
“Because it’s too easy.”
His eyebrows steeple.
“Suffering’s supposed to be valuable.” Abel opens his mouth but I cut him off. “I’m just saying. That’s what they teach you. They tell you when you suffer you share in the passion of Jesus and so God doesn’t save us from suffering because…” I glance up at him and let out a long sigh. “Forget it.”
Abel leans forward, elbows on knees. Probably trying to gauge the depth of my mental disturbance, so he’ll know how far to sit from me.
“I totally want to hug you,” he says.
“You do?”
“We wouldn’t piss off Worst-Case-Scenario-Angry-God if we hugged, right?”
“Nope.” I gulp. “Probably—”
His arms are around me before I can finish. He still smells like popcorn and cotton candy and he feels so warm it’s like diving under an electric blanket after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. I try to melt into the hug, the way Cadmus and Sim are always melting into hugs in Cadsim fics, but my nose is running and leaving horrifying wet spots on his army-green t-shirt and I’m positive I smell like sweat—not the clean I’ve-been-working-out kind but the toxic nervous kind I specialize in. It figures. My first lingering hug from a cute guy, and I’m too screwed up to enjoy it.
“God…” I murmur.
“I know. I’m a great hugger.”
I pull back, hold him by the shoulders. “Abel.”
“Brandon.”
I take a deep breath. “I am so fucking ready to be normal.”
“Fun normal or boring normal?”
“Fun normal.”
“Congratulations. How can I help?”
I just look at him. My lips vibrate from spitting out the f-word. He freezes in the Empathy Position, head cocked and one hand resting on my knee, like an action figure of a perfect boyfriend. I know exactly what I want. To be able to hug him over and over again, to sling my arm around his waist in public, to feel his warm reassuring hand around mine on a regular basis, without any real sex stuff ever getting in the way. I know that’s about as realistic as Cadsim fic.
And then a second later, I know how to make it happen.
I sit back down at the desk, in front of the laptop screen with its orderly selection of Brandon/Abel makeout fantasies. Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus lie flat on their backs in a scatter of cinnamon jellybeans, like they’ve both been struck dead from secondhand embarrassment. I stand them back up. Scroll through the fic titles. “Whispers of All Our Tomorrows.” “Anatomy of a Saturday.” “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart.”
“Uh, Brandon…?”
“Hm.”
“What are you thinking?”
I tap the wedding cake manip. I blurt it before I lose nerve.
“You want to have some fun,” I say, “with the Church of Abandon?”
A complicated smile flits across his face. I get a nervous thrill, like when Cadmus got Sim to jump into the Red River with him to escape the Henchmen. C’mon, Tin Man, he’d shouted above the wind, the two of them clutching arms on the cliff like a romance-novel cover. You haven’t lived till you’ve done something really stupid!
Not the best philosophy, bud, says Father Mike.
Shut up, I tell him simply, and turn back to Abel.
“What’d you have in mind?” he says.
CastieCon #3
San Antonio, Texas
Chapter Thirteen
Abel and I sit side by side on the concrete edge of our campground pool, dipping our feet in. He is shirtless. Leaning back on both arms, he holds his pale soft stomach taut, trying to forge a six-pack. He grins at the fake hickey on my neck, courtesy of some blue and purple eyeshadow we bought on the road in an Alabama dollar store. I held still while Abel brushed it on, his breath tickling my cheek and smelling of cinnamon. It was safe, and incredibly fun.
The San Antonio sun breathes biblical heat on us. My Castaway Planet shirt roasts