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Jack is instagramming when it happens.
It was stupid; he knows that straight away—he let his guard down, and that’s his own stupid fault, because at this point there isn’t any excuse. True, he was exhausted after the flight, and yeah, if would follow that they’d both be exhausted… But no, there isn’t any excuse. Jack should know better. That’s it; end of story.
The sheets should’ve gone up as soon as he arrived.
But instead he had to take a selfie, and he’d leaned against the countertop to caption it, back to the mirror, practically asking for trouble.
Really, what else did he expect?
“You fuckin’ cheated,” Jack says now, his voice echoing off glass and tile. It’s a really nice bathroom, spacious and spotless, with lights around the mirror’s edge that give his irises a rectangular glow. The mirror itself is smudge-free and clear, unlike the speckled pane in his apartment—and ugh, how stupid could he have been? He’d practically unfurled the welcome mat and set out a complimentary breakfast.
“Yep,” says the man across the counter. “But look at what you did to my face.”
Jack scowls and lifts a hand to his neck, feeling the throb of his own ring of bruises. The bastard went for the throat this time, pulling him backward through the glass. Jack’s voice is slightly raw from the pressure; the angle made it impossible to breathe and even more impossible to aim. Still, he managed to land a few strikes—there’s a black eye blooming on the other man’s face, along with a split lip and a bloodied nose. All in all, he could have done worse.
He could have done better, too, of course. He could have actually won the fight.
“This isn’t gonna work, you know. We’re at a convention; people will notice. Hell, my friends are gonna notice.”
“People find logic in everything, Jack. They’ll come up with suitable explanations.”
“Like what? Your eyeballs look fuckin’ infected.”
“This isn’t an uncommon venue for cosplay.”
That shuts Jack up for a fraction of a second; he rasps a cough to fill the silence, wincing as it tears through his throat. Despite the twinge of unease in his chest, he scoffs a skeptical sound across the glass. “And what the fuck am I supposedly cosplaying?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Jackaboy?” The other man’s voice is barely a murmur, confidence lacing the soft, lilting syllables. Whereas Jack’s bravado bolsters his volume, his opponent favors a subtle approach, forcing listeners to lean into his sphere. It’s a trap that Jack has fallen prey to, himself. “You’ll be spending this weekend cosplaying me.”
The man flicks out the lights as he exits the bathroom, leaving Jack blinking and disoriented. An icy sensation floods through his limbs that he cannot wholly blame on the air-conditioning.
There’s perhaps more gravity to this situation than Jack would really care to admit.
-
It’s not that the convention hall lacks reflective surfaces.
On the contrary; the entire place gleams with glass and metal, modern and sleek and streaming with sunlight. Even the elevators boast mirrored ceilings. Jack’s adrenaline spikes at each opportunity, but thus far he’s been thwarted by circumstance. Too many witnesses, too many smudges. Often, a nerve-grating mixture of both.
There’s a moment in the men’s room when Jack thinks he has a shot—there’s a full-length, unexpected mirror just inside the door—but then Felix strolls in right behind him, followed a second later by Wade. Jack loves his friends, he really does, but he’s never had such a desire to throttle them. It’s an urge bested only by his desire to strangle his smirking counterpart, who bestows an iodine-colored wink at the glass before sauntering off toward the row of urinals. Jack grits his teeth and counts backward from ten, the syllables interspersed with curses.
The con-floor is far too crowded to be viable, and the upcoming panel is out of the question. Jack seethes from his vantage point on Mark’s darkened iPhone, and then from the curve of a camera lens, watching a sound tech compliment his irises as she wires his double with a mic.
“It’s a great shade of green. Very septic,” she says.
The man grins a backward variant of Jack’s grin, his accent ever-so-subtly inverted. “Thanks! I never really cosplayed before. Just trying to get the full effect, y’know?”
“Nailed it,” says the tech, flashing a thumbs-up. “Creepy but not too over-the-top. I love that you totally ran with the character.”
“Well, what can I say? He’s a good-lookin’ bastard.”
They laugh, and Mark leans in to join them; Jack’s gaze flashes briefly against his friend’s glasses. Even in the muted backstage lighting, it’s easy to pick out the evidence of Jack’s handiwork. The bruise has blossomed into one hell of a shiner.
Explain that to the entire internet, Jack thinks, although—and if not, he’s incredibly fucked—by the time he’ll have to record again, he should already be back on the right side of the mirror. His double can’t keep his guard up forever. Nor can he stretch out the cosplay excuse, so unless he has plans to record in sunglasses…
Which, okay, that might actually work. For a few days, anyway. Til the jokes run out.
Jack fidgets from one shiny surface to the next, searching for even the slimmest opportunity. The closer they get to the start of the panel, the more he considers an act of desperation: for a big enough mirror and a clear enough shot, he’d almost be willing to give up the secret.
Mark, Bob, and Wade are trustworthy guys. The tech crew, who knows, but Jack doubts they’re all douchebags. As long as nothing gets captured on camera, he’s pretty sure he could get away with it.
Well, kinda sure. Almost sure.
It’s probably more of a fifty-fifty.
Two minutes before they have to go on, Mark leans into Jack’s counterpart’s space to ask if his fangs will be fine for the panel. “It’s not really noticeable; you just sound sliiightly off. Just wanna make sure you won’t need to adjust ‘em.”
“Nah, it’s all good. I’m a cosplay pro.” Jack’s double bares the teeth in question, shooting Mark a huge, crooked smile that doesn’t quite tilt in the right direction. Jack detects a hint of hesitation, a miniscule pause tucked between sentences. They’ve never been called on this before.
Good. Let the bastard squirm a little.
With mere seconds to go, Jack levels a glare from the face of his watch: a single blue eye, unblemished and overlaid against the blinking, mirrored numerals. “Break a leg,” he requests. “Or both, if you want.”
The other man laughs with his microphone covered, dropping his wrist against his side. “Go fuck yourself,” he mutters faintly, and then Jack is jumping from surface to surface as his double trots out from behind the curtain.
The audience bursts into applause.