Author's Note: Dear Anonymous (and rather demanding) Reviewer that TOTALLLLLY isn't who I totally know it is: here's your damn fanfic. I said it would be bad. "Compulsive" was a standalone bit. But here it is anyway. Also, I didn't edit the heebie jeebies out of it. Can you tell?
It's a small café, one of those coffee shops on the corner with big glass windows to invite people inside because they only get enough of the foot-traffic customers to stay in business but not quite enough to fix up the cracked and worn wooden floor that keeps getting called a fire hazard. There's a small stage in the back corner for when it serves as a venue on Friday and Saturday nights; one or two bands that have played on that platform made it big time, but the vast majority haven't. Sometimes there's a crappy comedian or a teenager with a guitar just trying to be heard because they're terrified of becoming just another tortured soul lost in the crowd.
Tonight, there's Mello. He sits on the stage with the mic too close to his lips and the wooden stool he's perched on creaks when he shifts his weight. When he booked the time last week-9:30 - 10:00 PM-he presented himself as a comedian and they believed it because anyone who wears leather pants every day in Los Angeles must have some hilarious commentary about the degradation of humanity as a whole. The ones that give off the serious no-bullshit vibe are usually the funniest anyway. They didn't ask for a preview before writing his name down because there are no other names on the clipboard and he didn't ask to be paid, so it's a win-win situation.
He licks his lips to moisten them and scoots his seat back a couple of inches to eye the poster behind him. It's supposed to tell the audience who he is just in case they care, but they don't, and the name's wrong anyway. The lights are in his eyes and he can't see who's sitting in the tables situated in a loose semicircle around him. It's silent except for the grinding of a coffee machine back behind the counter and the uncomfortable cough of some man who's just an outline in the brightness. He didn't bring his cellphone so he doesn't know what time it is, but he can almost feel the tick of the clock as it strikes 9:30. That being his cue to start, he leans back to where the back of the chair would be if there were one and casts his eyes across the people he can't see in an almost predatory manner.
"According to that sign, I'm Michael King and despite the way I look, I am not a prostitute." There are a few chuckles because they think he's trying to tell a joke. He smirks around the rim of his coffee cup but doesn't take a sip.
"You came here for some cheap laughs and to say that you had something to do with your Friday night instead of just sit home and watch fifty-six YouTube videos of people getting hurt. I came here because last week, my best friend told me he loves me and I don't want to be anywhere near him."
The lights are too bright in the awkward quiet. Mello feels the irrational urge to lift up a hand to shield his eyes, but he leans forward and rests his elbows on his parted knees instead. His lips brush the cool metal of the microphone when he moves them. This is so out of character from him that he's not really sure how to act.
"I'm telling you this because I have an IQ of one sixty-two and, apparently, he still thinks I'm a goddamned idiot." The rosary slaps back against his leather with a dull thud as he finally sips the coffee. Still too hot. It's still quiet; people haven't yet processed that they probably don't want to listen to what this strange man has to say.
"Now, I've seen the way he is with people. I know him. I respect his… ability to manipulate anything with a heartbeat. He used it on me once, you know, when we were kids." In the audience, people can almost see the flashbacks reflected in Michael King's eyes. But Mello, he's straining to make out the shapes of the people sitting even in the first row. It's uncomfortable to bear your heart to anonymous shapeless lumps, but maybe it's better that way. "Even as a kid, I didn't deal with that sort of bullshit, so when I found out, I slapped the front teeth out of his face."
He sips his coffee again. This is all coming off the top of his head and he needs a second to think.
"I knew that one of the requirements for getting into that fucking… boarding school we went to was to have 'people skills'-and by people skills, I knew that they really meant the ability to use your observational skills to read people and be able to convince them to do what you wanted whenever you wanted them to do it. Matt, his skill was to get people to think and do whatever he wanted by telling them what they wanted to hear. Basically, he's a goddamned fucking liar, through and through."
Mello interrupts himself with a bitter snicker, just one, and takes a swig of his coffee as though it's alcoholic. He'd actually gotten his drinking done before getting there. It was the only way he could make himself talk and a pickled liver was surely worth getting the weight off his shoulders.
"My specialty is seeing through all that bullshit to get to the good stuff, the reality. We balance each other out, sort of. No one lies to me without me knowing it.
"But I didn't even have to apply myself to figure out that Matt was full of shit when he said it. It wasn't that I'd heard his sighs and pauses and studied his movements a thousand goddamn fucking times, it was that I treat Matt like shit twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He told me he got two girls to fight over who could buy him a drink in a bar and he brought one of them home; I told him that the real great thing to do would have been to do both of them. He got me the explosives to blow up this one building a while ago, and I told him it was his fault I got this scar. He flirted with this auto shop guy to get a new paintjob for our car after I totaled it, I told him the auto shop guy must've been blind or something. Yeah, I'm an asshole, but I like making him squirm."
He hides another smirk behind yet another sip of coffee.
"So I knew that there was no way in hell he could love me like he said he did, what with my dicking him around like that. That dumbass could win Academy Awards for his improvised performance, but he didn't fool me worth a damn. You know, he told me that all that shit he did, he did it for me. To make me happy. To maybe make me love him too." He pauses to blink his eyes a few times because they were starting to burn from the stupid lights. "And obviously, that's a steaming load of shit. Matt doesn't do anything for anyone but himself. He told me that once. Really he's just a compulsive liar.
"I'm going along with it, though. I treat that kid worse than I do that little fucker Near and if he wants to believe he's some sort of evil genius, I'm just going to let him. I'm even helping him out by responding how he thinks I should. He doesn't care enough to look too closely as long as I don't care enough to change things up a bit and confuse him.
"And if he manages to convince me…" Mello pauses again for effect and for consideration, but Michael King looks exhausted and melancholy. "Well then maybe he deserves to. Maybe I should be convinced." He takes another sip of his coffee but the mug seems just as full as the first.
"You know, I don't usually talk like this." He's rising from his stool and his fingers bump the microphone as he stands. "I don't usually talk at all. Matt does. He likes talking because the more he says, the more there is to fall back on if one shitty lie falls through. I guess I came here because, for all the shit that Jackass and I put each other through… Well I guess it's not so bad. I know that he does love me, to whatever extent an abused animal can love its owner, even if he doesn't know it. I love him too, though. That… that wasn't a lie. I wouldn't lie about that." He tugs on his jacket and zips it up halfway. Leather over leather on top of leather. Contrary to popular belief, he may be in Los Angeles but that doesn't mean it isn't going to be cold outside. It's raining now. He can see it through the big inviting windows.
The outside world looks about as uninviting as this shitty café did the first time he went in.
Only about fifteen minutes have passed since he first sat down on stage. He knows this, but the time was free and suddenly he doesn't feel like talking so much anymore. In one hand, he tosses his keys up and catches them. Tosses them, catches them. The noise is loud as anything in the omnipresent silence so he sets his half-filled cup on the counter and turns to leave. But, as an afterthought, he turns back around to see who heard his unholy confession of things that don't matter.
The place is empty.
As he climbs on his motorcycle and kicks up the stand, he reflects that, for a minute there, he was positive Matt was listening.
He's not quite sure what to make of that.