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You half expect to see the curtains and the pale pastels, the soft rose petals framing their high-price mug. That’s how you’re used to seeing ‘em in the café they call home base, after all; pretty on purpose, perfection perfected.
They’re standing in your doorway, silhouetted by the light behind 'em in a way that makes 'em look as holy as the capital-L Light itself; the terribeautiful heaven all your kind lives to serve. Every angle of 'em's sharpened to a point by it, from their broad shoulders to their upturned beak, but your vision blurs 'em all up like a foggy window in the wintertime. Like they’re the vision. Like they’re radiating everything that fills ‘em up; so full of blessing that the stuff’s spilling right out of ‘em.
By contrast, the inside of your room is dark and familiar; done up in the same old teal and red of the rest of the place and cut up by the shadows Swatch’s fine figure casts. You – snotty tear-stained mug and all – are sitting on the floor with your legs underneath you, your receiver tossed away somewhere at the sound of the opened door. It’s not an ideal setup, all considered, but better Swatch interrupt than someone else. Better the devil you know than a stranger you don’t – better to embarrass yourself in front of someone you know already thinks everything you do’s an embarrassment.
You cock your head aside with an easy grin up at them, hands held out in welcome. The grin, you think – the readily-cocked remainder of your dignity – speaks for itself.
“Spamton,” they return, like you’re a particularly messy table they’re tasked with cleaning up. Their head tilts up as they look down on you; assessing you in about the same way. “You don’t look,” they continue – and then pause, letting your imagination fill in the blank with the sort of words they themselves are above saying, “well.”
“DON T [[Eye]]?”
Swatch sighs, one sharp exhale, a flick of their beak. Their eyelids lower. Do you ever look well, Spamton G. Spamton? you imagine ‘em saying.
“C’MER3,” you grunt, inelegant, when said words don’t make the scene. You know, in the back of your mind, that they’re only here because they couldn’t track you down in the usual spot, but you’d be a shame to yourself if you didn’t make the most of it. You rise, slowly, from your lurch; clapping your hands together before spreading them out again.
Swatch, for their worth, follows your lead without so much as a shift in their posture to show for it. “RELA A A X,” you drawl, tossing in a beckoning gesture for good measure. “NO NEED TO ACT ALL [hi] AND [[MIGHTYMORPHIN’]].”
“Forgive me,” they intone, just as formal. There are subtle notes mixed into that tone that make you wanna spit it out like a bad drink. Sure’s hell overfilled glass. “I forget you’re not familiar with the act of keeping up appearances.”
“[not familiar]? CM AA AHN, SWATCHY BABIE. IM [All Appearances].”
“Clearly.”
They make their entrance with a second belabored exhale; though they make sure to toss in an extra grimace toward the mess of bottles and spilled battery acid they’ve gotta keep the company of. Their eyes catch the receiver, then narrow. A part of you wants to grab their face and twist it away – keep your scrap of light away from their inescapable gravity. But that would reek of a desperation you’re better off shaking off – and besides, they know enough about it – about you – already; yet they haven’t made any moves on it against you. They don’t need to, you add, wry.
For a moment, Swatch moves their arms in what you hope’ll end up an approximation of the way yours remain steadily outstretched. But – and you should’ve expected this, knowing ‘em – instead of going in, they fold ‘em stiff across their chest. “And just what might I be coming here for, pray tell?”
You scoff. They really can’t let up for a second. Suits ‘em, at least – they’re not the only one that’s one step ahead ‘round here. This game you’re playing’s one for two, after all. You know ‘em just as well as they know you. “JUST A [Late Night] [HEART-TO-HEART] WITH YOUR OLD P4L; IF YOU CAN [SPARE] IT,” you answer with a cocked brow; as easy as asking ‘em to pour you another drink. “BESIDES [Pretty Bird] it [Seam’s like] YUO WERE THE ONE WHO [attract] M3 DOWN.”
“Who better to keep you from sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”
“AND IS THAT WHERE MY [Nose Goes] TO NITE?”
“Evidently not.”
In the quiet that follows, you size ‘em up and they keep on sizing you down. All told it makes you feel even more the miserable wretch to clam up under their withering why’d-I-bother glare, but the night’s been rough enough already and you know they’ll do your secrets due so long as you don’t spill theirs. And you aren’t entirely sure why you bother either – you imagine fractal advice telling you you’re better off kicking ‘em out. It’d be like placing a target on your back to keep cavorting with the only other Darkner who knows the ins ‘n outs of – you can only really call it the body – and on top of that, the Darkner the Light chose to do the deed of making it in its own image down here. But you also know there’s no escaping ‘em. Your benefactor – all clinical clues and disjointed directions – just doesn’t account for that.
It also doesn’t know all that makes Swatch the easiest in you’ve got.
Back to the scene at hand – Swatch is even more the irritating idyll up close. Nothing makes your chest seize quite like the flattering cut of their suit or the way they don’t need a lick of product to keep each black feather atop their head in place. You – on some reflex – run a hand through your own mess of black hair. Some of the loose strands stick back into place, but a lone curl stubbornly remains unstuck, hanging instead at the center of your forehead.
Swatch lowers on their knees. Their hand rises once again and brushes over the stubborn slice of the old Spamton, the tips of their gloved fingers light as Light itself over your forehead.
You shudder and the taste of battery acid rises in the back of your throat. If they notice they don’t show you a scrap of mercy over it – their fingers continue to ghost across your face, down from your forehead to the wet teartracks on your cheeks, and their glare turns to a calculating look that threatens to peel you all but the rest of the way back. Urgency rounds out the holy lil’ trinity of welling sensations under your skin.
“So you’re feeling sorry for yourself,” they declare. Conclude, really – like knowing you means they do so better than you do.
“DOESN’T [Answer] MY [[Hunk’a Burning]] QUESTION DOES IT?” you declare right back. Then, you extend your arms yet again, raising your brows expectantly. A pull of two fingers; “CM AAAAH N. COME TO [Pipis.]”
You take a bit of sick satisfaction in the way that warmifies them – the kind of warm better pegged as an angry heat . It turns the tips of their feathers red where the open door and hall beyond it haloes them. It looks nice on them – you imagine jeering this at them but figure that’d make it overkill – the color pairs pretty damn prettily with their signatures of orange and yellow. Plus – red’s also your color.
But it wouldn’t be Swatch if they didn’t cull your satisfaction where they can – they don’t so much as snip at you. Instead their anger is composed. That ought to be your color too, you think, and try to relax your shoulders a little more. They jerk instead – an odd pitiful motion that you regret as soon as it takes your body. It hangs limply in the air as the silence continues.
Time shrivels and expands over itself in the space between the two of you. Seconds turn to minutes. Time has gone strange since you’d burnt your eyes out – you’ve seen it backwards now, your minutes turned to the split-second click of a key. Their hand leaves your face such that you hardly notice its absence – until all at once they’ve gripped your chin rough in their hand.
You figure for a second that they’re gunning to kiss you. The faint dryness of dusty basement air lingers on your tongue as your mouth involuntarily parts. Kissing Swatch is never an elegant affair – your faces don’t exactly slot together well the way most folks’ do – but in that place it never matters much.
But instead –
Give in doesn’t quite cut it – Swatch wraps their arms around you just as rote as they’ve done everything tonight. A part of you wonders if they’re doing it just to rub it in – that save for their weak spot in high heels, they don’t do comfort unless you’re a paying customer. That at the end of the day, you’re just an average joe who happened to stick his fingers where they’re not s’pposed to go, and they’re just following routine. Another muses instead about the body – if, were it to wrap its own arms around you and lift you up against its angular chest, it would be as mechanical. You figure it must be – it’s a machine. A program. In that it’s not all too different from the one tasked with bringing it into this world – both of ‘em vectors for something warmer than this brand of cold comfort.
The quick reminder of those high heels isn’t a bad one, at least. Your pride swells back to life a bit when you think of her; of Swatch sitting in the backseat of one of your cars as the city flashes by, her riding shotgun. You slide your hand across her thigh and she grins at you with cocky abandon – never was she the bashful type, instead matching your boldness measure for measure – and Swatch’s eyes narrow, so much like bullets that you can practically hear them firing off in your direction. But instead of land a blow on you they’d only bolstered said boldness – you practically glow in the wake of their jealous leer; the city windows haloing you in lemonade hues as you cruise past.
Those simple facts – that even without their status as the Light’s prized possessions, you can earn Queen’s favor and make Swatch jealous doing so – give you back some needed ground. There’s your footing back , you think. They’re gonna have to try a lil’ harder than that to knock you any further down than tonight’s already got you.
All your exhaustion hits you at once as your whole weight falls against ‘em. It’s strange nowadays to need the feeling at all – though for tonight you’ve not got the mind to wrap your head around it – but it persists: heaviness in your limbs and behind your sockets. You’ve left yourself running all night long for a few too many nights now, you realize belatedly – in the moment you’re always too wrapped up in the body’s small window into the Light to feel much of anything at all. The physicality of your own – diminutive and sacrilegious in its wake – leaves you then; as you hang in the space between it and the instance of it you see translated in that pale glow.
You bury your head. Your footing’s rocked again by how nice they smell – no trace of sweat or grime despite the rigor they put into all that being Swatch requires of ‘em. They smell of the roses you’d expected ‘em to come in with – and, faint enough that you’d only be able to catch it up close, basil and tomato too. They smell of nights where you’d ask ‘em to explain the secret that made the spaghetti code taste so good just to memorize their pronunciation; clear and free of interjections. Put together for continued use – not thrown together; persisting only off a lucky stroke of life support.
“Well?” they mutter. Wryly you think that even their crisp accent and dulcet tones can’t cover up those nasty lil’ underlying notes you’d spat out earlier – but despite yourself you stir to attention. Your fingers tighten against the silken fabric of their vest. “Make it quick.”
“EASY [[SpeedRacer]],” you mutter back, but the traitorous tremolo of your voice betrays you. You’ve got something you gotta get off your chest and only Swatch can take it off of you. Further your fingers tighten. “LEMME PULL MY [[thots]] 2GETHER.”
“I suggest you do,” they nod, and one of their hands comes up to fuss again with your hair. You know better now than to assume it’s a doting gesture – and you sure’s hell don’t want for it to be – but your head still falls lopside against the touch.
There’ve been nights where you’ve slumped with your back against Swatch’s chest, watching Queen and the rest of the evening’s revelry from a distance. The two of you always ended up drawn to each other out of a cocktail of convenient proximity and begrudged familiarity. Neither of you make any passes at conversation, those nights – they’re the kind where you both come itching for some quiet anyhow. Your own chest rises and falls in tandem with theirs; taking in the same air. The same electric currents coursing through the same mass of tangled wires.
You stay like that as you collect yourself; feeling the rise and fall of Swatch’s chest against that of your own, vainly attempting to match its steady calm. The silk you’re still digging your grippers into and sticking your snout against is smooth; and you regain a bit of your ground again in knowing now you can get ‘em just as mussed as you are. Not so different from the basement, you repeat.
You fumble for an elegant way to start off. After some trouble you opt to just rawdog it – if only because you find there isn’t much of one.
“WHEN’LL THIS [Limited-Time Offer] BE UP?” you begin. Even the folks you pass on the street have heard the rumors; even if Swatch wasn’t Swatch, they’d know. The sudden rise, the success story, the interviews and hastily-updated billboards; the new year ringing out as it rose up from what remained of the old, a choir of angels welcoming you by way of fireworks burning bright across the sky. Your words are spurred on by the memory of it lingering on your tongue; the aftertaste of battery acid. “WHEN’LL IT ALL TURN TO [nothing but garbage noise]?? YOU KNOW WHAT I AM. [[There’s no future for a Darkner]] LIKE. LIKE.
LIKE.
Like surfacing after too long beneath the waves. The sudden warmth brought on by that burst of light – the sudden attention of the Light directed squarely on you – you dig your fingers in further. The white fabric of their vest is indistinguishable from the white of your gloves. You wonder if – that you could just hold as tight to your benefactor when it decides to be capricious – it would be as soft to the touch. Or maybe it’d slip in and out of your grasp still – like its whispers; formless as smoke.
You exhale; a shaky huff. The strings of your hair fall between Swatch’s fingers; the tips of them running up and down along the back of your head.
“I NEED MORE THAN [[basement praying]] PRETTYBIRD.” Sometimes, in the basement, it feels like only Swatch can hear you. They’re the one who lifts their head in pride as you plead for mercy; the one that nods and shifts their mouth in response to every word that leaves yours. They’re the one who warmifies at each one with a heat too searing to be the loving kind. Maybe – you think – that warmth is where the Light is, tuning in.
Your chest seizes. You need [[Bigger Than Big]]. YOU NEED TO [rev the engine] [hit the gas] [[FAST, FAST]]ER–
You gasp. You can almost hear the low hum that cools the CPU – its foot slamming against the pedal. Easy, speedracer. They turn your words back on you like a deflected ring of bullets. The continued motion of their holy hand joins in – steady, now.
Steady, now. That’s to say – Swatch’s hands keep on carding through your hair. If only you could screw ‘em off and fix ‘em on your wrists, twist your own apart at your joints. Would they pop right off ‘n on with a flick of [[DARK]] magic? Or would you have to fix physical wires back together to keep ‘em on right?
And so you know in some instinctual part of you that it is their hands which deliver unto you the coming revelation. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. You press a kiss to the palm as you tug it out of your hair and towards your mouth. The things you’d do with ‘em –
Only the two of you can see it; their shame, your fixation. Whatever you call it – it glitters in an eye that hangs low between clumps of dark hair. (That you do have a name for; your Galatea. Your God.) Sometimes, it’s green, sometimes sickly yellow, sometimes that pale glow. The you waiting there still’s inanimate even now. It’d be so easy for you to slip out of the Light’s notice looking like that – no hands to hold their gaze on yours. No voice to cry [[COMMUNICATION ERROR… PLEASE CHECK ALL CONNECTIONS]]. No voice to cry [[COMMUNICATION ERROR]] – NO VOICE TO CRY [[ERROR]] – NO VOICE TO CRY.
Wish it’d come out smooth. Smoother than it does for even Swatch – to be all the Light sees you need all of ‘em in your shadow. You need Swatch to remember that they’re one too. Would do ‘em some good.
[[I’ll never be a star the way I am now.]]
They hum; an inscrutable response. The hand they had in your hair is trailing down the side of your face now, pulling it away from where it rests against their vest. They run their thumb over your closed mouth.
“I NEED A [[HOT NEW summer body]],” you mutter. Swatch’s thumb stays at the corner of your mouth as you speak. You stay at the gesture; your next words halted and your eyes flicking up to meet theirs, automatic and stupid.
Always a stupefying feeling, hatred.
“I NEED [[your HOT NEW summer body]].” Your hands flatten out on their back before they move to their sides; stocky with fat over muscle. You watch their face intently, waiting to see the minute way their expression shifts in kind.
At least you have a voice for them to hear. Hands which even they – for all their Light – can be moved by. For want of their strings in your hands, this’ll do.
“Which one?” they ask.
You laugh. “EITHER’D [Work].”
It would be so easy. Just a couple’a clicks. Now who’s the one in the trash?