Chapter Two
~ S ~
Tenna seems to be getting flustered more easily after that night. On-screen, on-air, he’s as unflappable and dynamic as ever. They trade quips and jokes like it’s a dance, or a song, pushing and pulling in a rhythm that feels so natural. As soon as those cameras turn off, though, Tenna can’t seem to look directly at Spamton anymore. He and his antennae always seem to be facing straight ahead, only glancing or rotating toward him when he doesn’t think anyone’s looking.
Unfortunately for the TV host, Spamton has never had the patience for this kind of game. After suffering this behavior for all of one day, he knocks on the door of Tenna’s dressing room after hours, cracking it open after waiting a few seconds. “Got a [Prime Time] invitation for you, [[CRT]].”
Tenna jumps at the sound of Spamton’s voice, spinning in his chair. He is sitting at his vanity, but there’s still a bit of dust in one of the corners of his screen. “H-hey, partner! An invitation, huh?”
Spamton holds up a finger. “One [Terms And Conditions]. What is going on?”
Tenna’s fingers dig into the arms of his chair. “What do you mean?”
Spamton sighs, tilting his head and fixing Tenna with his best ‘really?’ expression. “You’ve been acting [Weird Route] all day.” He pauses. While the intrusions into his speech patterns are par for the course, this one… 'Weird Route'? What the hell, benefactor?
“Weird Route…?” Tenna also seems perplexed by the phrase, but only for a moment before he shakes his head and sighs, slouching a bit. “Anyway. I… want to apologize for my behavior at the bar. I don’t usually drink that much, and I certainly don’t make it a habit to act like that when I do.”
Spamton waves his hand. “What, yelling at your [Shoese]?” He has a suspicion that’s not what Tenna means, but whatever. Like he wasn’t high-key flirting after the Three Martini Incident. “Whatever! It happens. Now. [Primo] invitation—party at [Queen-Sized] Castle tonight. I get a plus one since I [Rent Luxury Units!]. Wanna hang with the real [[Big Shots]]?”
Tenna sits upright, his antennae bending in intrigue. “Oh? Well… I suppose it’s been a while since I’ve networked.” The tension eases as he snickers. “Get it?” Spamton snorts, which apparently gives Tenna the courage he needs to turn back to his vanity. “Let me just clean up a bit.”
~ T ~
Tenna has to admit that he’s not quite used to this side of stardom. Queen’s Mansion is luxurious, certainly, but the people here ooze insincerity in a way he’s never really seen before. Tenna is fortunate enough to have his own network, so he doesn’t have to humble-brag to any of his co-stars or employees about metrics and whatever, but here… he hears the subtle jeers and back-handed compliments firing at a mile a minute. Although it’s not all bad; he swears that someone calls him ‘a tall drink of water’ when he walks by the appetizer table.
He’s bigger than everyone here, too, but Spamton told him under no circumstances should he shrink himself down. “You’re literally the [BIGGEST] Star here, [[CRT]]!” Spamton tells him right outside the entrance to the castle, patting him on the leg with a grin. “[Show it off?].” True, being ten feet tall certainly gets him attention, even if most people only really show genuine interest because he’s with Spamton.
Something interesting seems to happen to his new co-host, though. From day one, he’s noticed that Spamton’s voice tends to hitch strangely mid-sentence, almost as if he’s being dubbed over in real-time. He’s started to get used to it, but the longer they stay at this party and the more people ask Spamton about business details, the more he does it, and the more noticeable it is. Like he’s running on autopilot. Even the other guests start to give him strange looks after a while, but his answers seem to satisfy them, so they don’t say anything.
At some point, Spamton leans in and says normally, “It’s a bit stuffy in here. Gonna step out.”
“Oh. Want some company?” Spamton nods and leads him to a wall walk. It’s much quieter out here, and he can see Spamton’s shoulders visibly relax as he reaches into his coat pocket and produces a cigarette carton. He offers one up. “Oh no, I’m a cigar man.” Tenna fishes his cigar case out of his blazer, pausing and offering it down. “Go ahead, Mr. Try Anything Once.” Spamton looks at him with a little bit of surprise in his eyes before he slides the cigarettes back into his jacket and takes a cigar. They smoke in silence, and the party continues in the castle behind them with gusto. “I don’t share these with just anyone, you know.”
“Well, Mr. Tenna,” Spamton says with a soft laugh. “I’m downright honored.”
~ S ~
Spamton locks himself in his dressing room. He still tastes thick smoke on his teeth as he shrugs his jacket off and undoes the top few buttons of his shirt. Tenna’s voice echoes in his head: ‘I don’t share with just anyone’. [Angel, Angel], this stupid television is going to kill him. Spamton’s great at echoing his benefactor, telling people what they want to hear, but Tenna… he can take charge of a room. He has this whole network, this whole world, under his thumb. He hates to admit that he could learn a few things from Mr. Ant Tenna... if only he could stop imagining yanking him down and licking his fangs.
Spamton sits down at his vanity and faceplants into the wood with a groan. What the actual hell is wrong with him? Usually, he’s pretty good about keeping business and pleasure separate (although it helps that he has precious little experience with the latter), but something about Tenna just makes him so… [Ant]sy. He huffs a laugh at the internal pun, takes a deep breath, and ends up locking eyes with the poster on his wall. His thoughts fade into the background as he stares. His dressing room is pretty nice for something that was whipped together from a spare room; Tenna had been downright anxious when he’d revealed it.
But anyway: the poster. When they realized that he’d be sticking around for a bit, Tenna had pitched the idea of them coming up with promotional material, and this poster was the first thing they’d set up. Both of them are front and center, beaming at the camera while a big font declares “Big Shot Autos Presents Mr. 'Ant' Tenna’s Marvelous Mystery Board: TV Time!” under them. Now that he’s taking the time to really look at it, he’s a bit surprised. Tenna is almost dead center, standing in a spotlight with a microphone in his hand and a dazzling smile on his face. But standing right beside him, Spamton has his share of the spotlight as well. There’s a microphone wire twisted up in his hands as he poses like a rock star with an equally bright smile. They’re color-coordinated, too—Tenna went out of his way to get Spamton his own bright red blazer so they’d look cohesive.
It’s the first time he’s really ever seen himself as a star. He’s done promotional images before, sure, but seeing someone else with him… honestly, it stirs up some complicated feelings. Pride. Abandonment. A stark reminder of how lonely getting [Big] has made him.
Spamton stares at himself in the mirror. At the end of the day, he can see the other Addisons staring back. “Your loss,” he says to them through gritted teeth. His reflection’s eyes grow hard. “Good riddance.”
~ T ~
The party ends up being a boon. Tenna has managed to set up a few interviews with some other prominent people in Cyber City while they still have access to each other, so views are starting to spike again. Still, while he spends the next few days running around to make sure everything goes right, he also makes time to check in with Spamton and often finds himself dragged along to bars and grills after shows. Or, sometimes, they play games in the Green Room. Even more frequently, though, Spamton joins him in his dressing room and they just talk. “My first big special guest deserves a bit of special treatment, right?“ Tenna rationalizes to Lanino backstage.
“Sure, Tenna,” Lanino says, staring at him for a second. There’s a suspicious look in his eyes that slowly shifts to something almost smug. “Although—star to star?”
“You’re not a star, you're a sun, but go ahead.”
Lanino crosses his arms with a tick of a frown at that. “Well, when the weather really started taking off, Elnina and I certainly started spending a lot of time together. So much that now, it feels wrong not to have her with me. The sky isn’t complete without the clouds, you know.”
Tenna glances down at his watch and swirls his finger in a circle. “Your point, Lanino?”
“My point is, he’s been here for well over a week and you two are never apart. There’s no shame in admitting he might be your Elnina.”
Tenna snorts. “Please! You really can’t compare us. You fell in love with her, after all.” Lanino just looks at him pointedly again before a Pippins nudges him to head on stage. Tenna stares after him, an uncertain feeling in his chest.
~ S ~
Elnina’s body seems stiff as she brushes the dye into Spamton’s hair. He hadn’t asked for her help; she had noticed that his hair was slowly starting to fade into gray and offered. Although her offer had been somewhat begrudging. “If you go out there looking like that, it looks bad on all of us,” she’d said as she practically threw him at his vanity. He has to admit that, even if she seems to view this as a chore, she’s pretty good at it. She’s thorough, pulling sections out and thoroughly saturating it with professional-grade black dye, most of which has stayed on the brush and in his hair rather than dripping onto his face.
Box dye is cheap and plentiful, but when he’d told her about his stash in his dressing room, her eyes had nearly shot out of her head. “Is it really that [Big] of a deal?” he mutters, staring at their reflections.
She pauses, lips pursed in disdain at the question as she meets his eyes. “For the biggest salesman in Cyber City—and Tenna’s favorite guest star—it comes across as cheap.”
“I’m his favorite, huh?” Elnina rolls her eyes and pulls back to scrutinize the application. She turns the chair slightly and gets to work on the last section of his hair. He kicks his legs and sighs, doomed to stare at a blank wall instead of their reflections now. “So hey. What’s his [Deal or No Deal]? Married to the job or what?”
Elnina hushes him, leaning in to carefully work on his roots. Only once she’s sure that he doesn’t have any on his face does she pull back and answer, “To put it lightly. I don’t think he ever left the studio before you showed up. We’ve all told him that new material keeps us on the air, but he’s not the most creative person.”
“He’s just gotta rebrand.”
Elnina puts the brush down, looking him over one last time before nodding. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Let it sit for half an hour. Clean out the shower when you’re done, dye is a nightmare to get out of the tiles.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” She rolls her eyes and takes the dye bowl with her as she leaves. Spamton does one lazy spin in his chair before he settles back down to stare at his reflection. The black hair had been a serious point of contention with the others; he’d started dyeing his hair well before he made the call that catapulted him into fame. They’d been concerned he was trying too hard. Maybe all that teasing had been their way of trying to protect him. He glances back at his phone. Some part of him misses them; Addisons were meant to stick together, and is there really any reason why he can't call them? But then he remembers the teasing, the laughter at his expense, the way that he’d see them at the grill without him once the clicks started rolling in, and his chest tightens. “Good riddance,” he repeats. It doesn’t have the same bite to it this time.