How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

Chapter Twelve


Bec pours us some tea and leaves us alone. We sit at the Sunseeker table with Abel’s laptop, twin plumes of steam curling from our Grand Canyon mugs.

There are seventeen members. Sixty-five fics. Dissections of every single one of our vlog posts, starting with the very first one when I joked about the sandstorm CGI in Episode 4-05 and Abel “lovingly” punched my shoulder.

The most recent post is by a_rose_knows. She has a photo of herself as her icon. We recognize her right away from the coffee shop. The tinfoil Xaarg hat, the pink-rimmed glasses.

“A freaking spy,” Abel breathes. “Good. Lord.”

The post says:

*Ahem.* Fellow Abandon Shippers:

HELL BELLS IN ATLANTA.

SPOTTED ~AND~ DOCUMENTED IN COFFEEHOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ear-flicking. Whispering. Sharing of snickerdoodles.

FULL-ON LIP-TO-EAR CONTACT.



[clicky here for photographic evidence!!]

“I might actually die,” says Abel.

“Click it,” I tell him.

The photos under the cut aren’t the posed ones Annie took. They must’ve snapped these from across the room with some kind of evil zoom lens that incriminates the innocent. In photo #1 Abel’s talking to me with his arm draped across the sofa back, leaning closer than I remember. In #2 he’s passing me the snickerdoodle half, and our fingers are brushing each other slightly. Then there’s #3, where‌—‌what?‌—‌I’m making a weird cupping gesture with both my hands. The last one contains the most damning piece of evidence: Abel’s leaning in and murmuring to me, probably about Kade or the stupid cave scene, and the angle makes it look like his lips are on my ear. Like, nibbling it or something. To underscore the significance of this imaginary gesture, a_rose_knows has blown up that part of the picture and circled my pixelated ear in red. This has made all the other usernames dementedly happy.


doomerang: omg you guys. I CAN’T EVEN.



amity crashful: rosey you are a heroic stalker, please have my babies



retro robot: They are flawless. That is all.



sadparadise: MY BRAIN JUST LEGIT EXPLODED



whispering!sage: snickerdoodles. the official cookie of us.



thanks4caring: lol @ brandon’s “cupping hands.” like, “abel baby, back yo ass up into these”



sadparadise: can you blame him? DAT ASS.



lone detective: Question: Is Brandon, in fact, wearing Abel’s shirt?



a_rose_knows: Yes, it looks that way, but I can’t confirm 100%. all I can say is, the convo they were having? INTENSE. You could tell.



doomerang: Rosey what were they doing when they left??



a_rose_knows: They looked close. I mean, Abel held the door for him and kind of put his hand on his back a little. Abel totally smells like cinnamon. Also? Brandon at one point said “we’re just friends‌—‌RIGHT NOW.”



sadparadise: OMG “RIGHT NOW.”



retro robot: right now right now right now right nowwwwww <3



thanks4caring: mamacita? where is our fearless leader??



hey_mamacita: JESUS HORATIO CHRIST ON A MOTORBIKE WITH A DIME-STORE UKULELE AND A RASPBERRY BERET, CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS UNBEARABLE WONDERFUL MADNESS???? ugh, rosey, you are queen of everything. miraculous pics of our boys; they look so effing precious I could eat them both like tiny perfect gingerbread men. BRB, writing fic all night! CURSE YOU.




“Click off.” My mouth is dry. “I can’t‌—‌”

“Let’s read the manifesto.”

Abel’s face is pink. I’ve never seen him blush. Through the fingers over his face, I think he might be smiling a little.

“What manifesto?”

“There was a link on the main page‌—‌here. Oh. God.”

There’s a manip. Of course there is. I’ve seen them all over the Cadsim fanjournal‌—‌horrible fakes of Cadmus and Sim kissing, holding hands, cradling adopted alien babies. This one is like, intergalactically worse. They’ve shopped my head onto Sim’s body and Abel’s head onto Cadmus’s, smushed our hands together, and stuck us on top of a wedding cake. ABANDON is scrawled on the side in blue icing.

“The hell is ‘abandon’?” I say.

Abel smirks. “Our portmanteau.”

I lay my head on the desk.

“Better than ‘Brabel,’ no?”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“It’s just getting good, though.”


THE MANIFESTO OF ABANDON

by hey_mamacita



“True Love is kinda like Xaarg’s Hell Bells‌—‌it comes when you least expect it, and it torments you until you give in!”‌—‌Abel McNaughton, from recap of Castaway Planet, Episode 4-16



once upon a time there were two boys with a vlog. the cute short one loved an android, and the cute tall one loved a space captain. the boys also loved each other in a completely repressed and thoroughly maddening kind of way, but instead of admitting it and having lots of blazing hot toe-curling bonobo monkey sex, they spent all their time bitching about Cadsim shippers and how the android and the space captain should never ever get together, like, JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH ON A UNICYCLE WITH X-RAY SPEX AND SARAN WRAP, could you boys be any more transparent??



anyway. the logical outcome of this delicious little story should be abundantly obvious to anyone with an internet connection and a basic knowledge of how romantic comedies work, but until abel smartens up and brandon gets over his tragic religious paranoia as detailed in his sister natalie’s awesome but defunct blog (screencaps here !), we at the abandon community are fully committed to‌—‌*ahem!*‌—‌lubing things up. we send good vibes. we catalog Hell Bells (i.e., indicators of true love). we conduct official events such as our BellFic Challenge (BFC), where NC-17 plots thicken biweekly. and we firmly believe that when the scales fall from their eyes and all obstacles are removed, these boys will GET MARRIED IN SOME WINDSWEPT MOUNTAINTOP PARADISE and roses and unicorns will spontaneously generate and glitter will rain from the clouds and God herself will smile a giant rainbow across the heavens and say “ohh, yeah, baby. It. Is. GOOD.”




Abel pushes his chair back. Ten seconds click by on the wall clock.

“Holy cow,” he says.

I can’t talk.

“I don’t even remember saying that Hell Bells line,” Abel says. “Did you know your sister had a blog?”

I shake my head.

“Go ahead,” I say. “Click the link.”

“Are you sure?”

My hands make a whatever gesture.

He hesitates, but he clicks the screencap link. This page pops up with a blog entry titled “Okay, so my little bro FINALLY came out‌…‌” I peek at it through my fingers. It’s Natalie, no question. Her username is Vashta and she makes halfhearted stabs at concealing identities‌—‌”B” for me, “Father X” for Father Mike‌—‌but the story’s all there. How my mom let the leftover meatloaf sit on the counter and spoil that night. How my dad kept saying but how can you be sure, as if it was a diagnosis that needed a second opinion. How I sat on Nat’s bed and cried about the sermon Father Mike had given two weeks earlier, the one where he held up a picture of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and gently explained the “true definition of family.” Poor little nerdling, Nat wrote. I nagged him into this coming-out drama and maybe he wasn’t ready. He was a Father X fanboy as a kid and now he’s so terrified of his real self I just want to smack him. I think it’s his destiny to be f*cked up his whole entire life unless he gets serious help.

I go lie down on the couch. I think of Sim on the Henchmen’s operating table, his chest pried open and his cold organs clicking and whirring out of sync. Abel takes another minute with Nat’s blog entry, and then he comes over and kneels down beside me.

He’s quiet for a minute. Then he reaches out and pats my hand.

I don’t know what about that sets me off. It’s kind of a neutral gesture, something Sim would do, and maybe that’s part of it. Or maybe it’s just that it’s so unlike Abel, or maybe my nerves are rubbed raw right now and any little touch would have done this, make my sore eyes fill up and spill over.

“It’s okay.” He squeezes my hand. “Seriously.”

I drape my arm over my eyes.

And I tell him everything.

I tell him about Father Mike. I tell him about Put on the Brakes!, my three awkward months trying to date Bec, my parents and the sad looks they shoot me when they think I won’t notice. I even tell him about the Ryan Dervitz kiss and the Dairy Queen freakout. When I lift my arm off my eyes I see him watching me like I’m some TV show about one-legged orphans with Olympic dreams, and it kind of makes me want to smack him but it feels so good to tell him that I keep going and going until the cut on his lip opens up again, and I remember what happened outside.

He grabs three tissues from the box on the desk. One for his lip, two for me.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

“Just forget it.”

“What I said‌—‌”

“Forget it, Brandon. All that shit in your head‌—‌”

“I’m used to it.”

“And I’m such an idiot, I kept shoving boys at you.”

“Only two.”

He glances over his shoulder, as if someone’s watching at the window.

“So‌…‌” He lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “Do they really tell you all that?”

“All what?”

“Like, you have a ‘special calling’ to be celibate?”

“Pretty much.”

“’Cause if you believe that you should totally talk to my dad’s friend Mitch, he’s this Unitarian minister or whatever and he’s on his third husband so maybe he can help you‌—‌”

“I don’t believe it. Not anymore.” I sigh and stick my hands in my hair. There’s no way I can explain this logically. “It’s just hard to turn it off.”

“Why?”

I pick at the hem of my shorts. “There’s still this little part of you that’s like ‘what if they’re right?’ What if there is a hell and you’re like gambling with eternity just because you want a boyfriend, so you get terrified and think it’s not worth it, I’ll suck it up and be alone forever, but then on the other hand what if it turns out there is no God or he’s up there shaking his head because people keep twisting the Bible around, and you wasted your life being alone and miserable for nothing, and then‌—‌” I’m babbling like a freak. “Stuff like that. You know.”

Abel lifts the tissue off his lip and runs his thumb over the splotch of blood. “That Father Mike guy never‌…‌like, tried anything with you, did he?”

“No! No. Never. He just has really specific ideas about God.”

“You believe in God?”

“I’m‌…‌confused.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“I left my church.”

“So? You can believe in God without church. I do.”

I blink at him. I would not be more surprised if David Darras pulled up in a white limo with two dozen blue roses and begged me to elope with him. I’ve consistently shut up about religion around Abel; he talks so much crap about it I 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 f*cking 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.