All the Feels Read online

  Liv scanned the Dragon Con panel list daily. Most of the Starveil cast was slated to attend. Mike R. Miles told the press on several occasions that there would be a “big announcement” at the Starveil panel, and the Spartan fan forums were burning with speculation as to what that meant. Interest in Starveil reached a fever pitch. Liv just wished her father—who’d been a fan every bit as passionate as Liv was—had lived to see the series’ resurgence.

  Working twelve hours a day, Liv hardly had time to herself. Her occasional afternoons off were spent helping Xander finish his cosplay ensemble. She sewed braid onto the shoulders with meticulous stitches, adding painstaking embroidered details to the finished garment.

  “Why did we sew the smoking jacket if you wanted to bring the military coat?” Liv complained, rubbing her pinpricked hands.

  Xander preened in front of the mirror. “I wanted both,” he said simply.

  “Then why the rush? We could have finished this after we got back.”

  He twirled around. “You don’t just bring one costume to Dragon Con.” He laughed. “You bring a costume for every day!” He did up the row of mother-of-pearl buttons while Liv tidied the pieces of cloth from the floor. “What are you bringing to wear?”

  “Clothes,” Liv said, stretching her back.

  He came up behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Besides your regular clothes, dearest.”

  Liv shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to?” Xander’s hands slid down her arms, and Liv shivered at his touch. “You would be breathtaking. I could help you sew a cos—”

  Liv spun around. “No way! No more costumes.”

  “But you’d be glorious, dearest!” He spread his hands wide. “I can imagine it now! Liv Walden, secret force behind Spartan Survived is feted at the Dragon Con parade.”

  “Not going to happen.” She giggled.

  “I’d be happy to accompany you anywhere.” He winked. “Even the darkest dens of licentiousness.”

  “But not in costume.”

  “Cosplay…?”

  Laughing, Liv threw a handful of scraps at Xander, who danced out of the way before they could reach him. “No more sewing!”

  He grinned and backed away. “It’s Dragon Con’s loss.”

  “No, it’s my aching back. You don’t even know how to sew!”

  Liv’s nights were spent counting her quickly accumulating money and waiting—praying!—for a seat sale. The prayer was answered the last week of July. Dragon Con, for better or for worse, was happening. And with Arden’s ticket in hand, Liv suddenly realized what it would mean.

  She’d have a chance to meet Spartan … in person.

  * * *

  “For the love of all that is good and kind, Liv, you have got to stop jiggling your leg!” Xander snapped.

  “Sorry.” Liv forced her knee to stop the rapid bounce that had punctuated the flight from Boulder to Atlanta.

  “Just try to relax. Okay?”

  “Relax … right.”

  She peered out the window of the plane to where the Hartsfield-Jackson airport loomed. The tarmac was dotted with jets, the sky a blinding blue. Liv’s heart felt like it was about to explode, and she rubbed her sweaty palms on her pant legs. Dragon Con wasn’t just a dream. It was happening! She stopped breathing as the thought that she was now in the same city as Spartan hit her straight in the chest.

  Her leg started vibrating again.

  Xander gave an exaggerated sigh. He put a hand on her knee. “Liv, dearest, may I suggest a trip to the powder room?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  His fingers tightened. “Then could you just stop? I swear I’ll scream bloody murder otherwise.” He pulled his hand back, crossing his arms on his chest. “You are driving me crazy.”

  The sight of him florid-faced and furious struck her as funny. “Sorry.” Liv giggled.

  His lids dropped to half-mast. “But you’re still jiggling.”

  Liv glanced down, realizing she was. “I … I can’t seem to stop.”

  “Try!”

  Focusing on one body part at a time, she forced her body to go completely motionless, but it felt like trying to rescrew the lid on an overflowing bottle of soda. She had so many butterflies her stomach was alive.

  “Better,” Xander grumbled.

  A small laugh escaped Liv’s lips, and Xander looked over at her.

  “What?”

  “The thought of you getting carted off the plane does sound kind of fun,” she said.

  He glared at her. “We’d miss Dragon Con if I did.”

  “Might be worth it,” Liv teased.

  “Are you sure? If you were stuck bailing me out, you’d never get to meet Tom Grander in person, and your mother would have you locked up until you were thirty.”

  At the mention of Spartan, Liv felt her nerves bounce back into panic mode. “Oh God,” she moaned. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, dearest,” Xander said with dry good humor. “It is.”

  She turned back to the window, breathing in shallow gasps. The plane was almost at the terminal. She and Spartan were in the same city now. He was seeing the same blue sky. Breathing the same air.

  “I still can’t believe I’m going to meet Captain Spartan!”

  “You’re meeting Tom Grander, actually,” Xander said gently. “Why are you so freaked out about this? Grander is just a person.”

  “He’s not ‘just’ anything. He’s Spartan.”

  “He plays Spartan. There’s a difference.”

  The seat belt sign flicked off, and the plane’s occupants surged. Liv looked up to discover Xander pulling their carry-ons from the overhead bin. “How can you hate actors so much when you’re studying drama to become one?” she asked.

  “I don’t hate them. I just don’t worship them the way you do.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense.”

  He handed Liv her bag and pushed his way into the teeming aisle, leaving room for her to follow. “But nothing,” Xander said. “In my experience, most actors are self-centered jerks.”

  “Not all of them.” Liv laughed. She dragged her bag up the aisle a step at a time, waiting as people jostled and shoved their way out of the plane.

  “Not Tom Grander is what you mean.”

  “I’ve watched all his interviews,” Liv insisted. “He’s so earnest … so funny. He really seems like he cares about the audience experience. He wants his fans to be happy.”

  “He’d be stupid not to,” Xander snorted.

  “Say what you want. I just don’t believe Tom is pulling off some giant lie about who he is. My mom can’t stand Starveil, but even she likes him. She says he’s approachable.”

  Liv reached the ramp into the airport and began to walk faster. It reminded her of the windowless hallways of a star freighter, and Liv had the odd thought that perhaps that was where they’d filmed those scenes.

  “Look,” Xander said, pacing her, “an actor is a professional liar. He’s a paid busker.”

  “You’re mean, Xander!”

  “No, I’m not. I’m honest. Everyone puts them on a pedestal, but we shouldn’t. Acting is a service industry, as much as waiting tables. An actor works for us, not the other way around.”

  “Us?”

  “The people in the seats. If we don’t come, the actors don’t get paid. It’s simple economics.”

  Liv stopped, and the people behind them swirled past like leaves in the wind. “I can’t believe you think that lowly of actors when you are one.”

  Xander straightened his stiff upright collar, brushed his hands down his doeskin coat, and smirked. “I’m hardly just an actor, dearest.” He offered his arm. “Now, shall we disembark, m’lady?”

  Liv grinned and slid her fingers into the crook of Xander’s arm. At the end of the hallway, the open door beckoned. A wall of people filled the space. When Liv saw them, her stomach flip-flopped, panic making her woozy.
<
br />   “I feel like I’m going to be sick,” she moaned.

  “You will.” Xander laughed. “But that’ll be as a result of nonstop partying and the subsequent con-crud, not from meeting Tom Grander.” He dragged her into the crowd. “Hold on tight. This ride doesn’t slow down for anyone.”

  And with that, Dragon Con began.

  * * *

  Liv had spent her entire life feeling like a nerd. The social outcast. The freak. In middle school, she’d tried to hide her differentness, keeping her online activities completely anonymous and wandering through fandom as a lurker. But no matter how hard she tried to appear normal, there was some invisible mark that kept her apart from her real-life peers, like they could sense she wasn’t one of them. Liv wasn’t invited to football parties or asked out on dates. She hovered at the edges of social events, looking in and wishing she could join. By high school, she’d made the jump to visibility—at least online—creating vids, reading fic voraciously, and even wearing the occasional Starveil T-shirt to school. But living in Boulder, a city of mountain climbers, sports fans, and activists, she’d always known she was an outsider.

  Arriving to drop off their bags at the Marriott, the feeling disappeared.

  While Dragon Con took place in a number of downtown Atlanta buildings, the Marriott hotel was the epicenter of the event. The entire atrium floor of the gigantic building swarmed with a melting pot of nerd culture. Stormtroopers chatted amicably with aging television stars while waiting in line at Starbucks. Bewigged anime cosplayers posed alongside pro wrestlers and Game of Thrones characters, the lines for panels filled with teenagers and seniors alike. At least ten variations of Captain Matt Spartan had spied Liv’s Spartan “Only One Man Calls Me Darlin’” T-shirt and had made a point of shouting out a “Hello, darlin’!” to her. She stared wide-eyed as glass-walled elevators shot up fifty-two floors like pods in a launch tube. Everything—from the glaringly bright carpet swirling with psychedelic lines; to the hotel’s open ceiling ringed by story after story of balconies, the distant roof so high it made her head spin; to the people decked out in cosplay—was torn from a science-fiction novel. It seemed Liv had spent the last eighteen years in search of her people, and in one sudden explosion of fate, they’d all been brought together in this place in time. Her eyes filled with tears as a sudden awareness hit her.

  They were all nerds.

  * * *

  Xander’s friends had a room on the ninth floor. With their bags dropped off in the empty hotel room, Xander and Liv took the elevator down to the atrium. Xander scanned his phone for the Dragon Con itinerary while Liv people-watched. “Badge pickup is over at the Sheraton,” he muttered. “We’ll need to bring our blue confirmation postcards.”

  “Confirmation,” Liv repeated. A group of young men dressed as Disney princesses flounced past, laughing and smiling.

  “You brought the postcard, right?” The sharpness of Xander’s tone brought her attention back.

  “What?”

  “The lost postcard line is the worst,” he said. “We’ll be stuck there for hours if you don’t have it with you.”

  “I’m sure I’ve got it here somewhere.” Liv dug through her purse and pulled it out. “See? Right here.”

  “Good. Just don’t lose it.”

  And then they were off into the streets. It was odd to step outside into the bright sunshine after the party atmosphere of the Marriott. It was, Liv realized in surprise, still daytime. People who worked in Atlanta’s downtown core were going about their usual lives, but among them surged a tide of convention attendees, rushing through the crosswalks, shouting out greetings to fellow fans, and slowing traffic to a near standstill. Liv and Xander followed the river of convention-bound humanity down the streets.

  “You were right,” Liv said, grinning.

  “About what?” Xander drawled. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “This,” she said. “It’s amazing.” The smile on her lips grew by the minute.

  With badge pickup in full swing, the Sheraton was shoulder to shoulder with people. A Dragon Con volunteer guided Liv and Xander to the door of a massive ballroom, where they stood in line for what felt like hours. Liv stood on tiptoe, marveling at the switchback line that spread across a space the size of a football field.

  “This is just for badges?” she said, awestruck.

  Xander grumbled something under his breath.

  “I thought that the lines were only for the panels,” Liv added.

  “Oh, there’ll be those lines, too.” Xander pulled his pocket watch from the pocket of his waistcoat and peered at the face. “We’re supposed to be meeting up with the rest of the crowd at the red couches in the Marriott in half an hour. We’re not going to make it.” Xander had yet to explain to his two roommates that Liv—a complete stranger to them—had taken Arden’s place in their room. “Honestly! I don’t have time for this nonsense.”

  “I can hold our place,” Liv offered, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. “You go ahead and meet up with your friends. I’ll find my way back to the Marriott.”

  “You can’t pick up my badge and I can’t pick up yours. It’s all done with ID.” He looked behind them. A sea of faces, many of them in cosplay, stared blindly forward.

  Suddenly Xander grabbed Liv’s hand. His fingers were warm and sure, and Liv had a moment to think how right it felt before Xander spoke.

  “Screw it,” he growled, heading back the way they’d come. “This is no time for being sheep.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Just follow my lead.”

  Xander swung back through the crowd at the entrance. A knot of volunteers were directing people into the queue, which led up to the front of the room, where ten tables had been set up with badges. Others herded attendees who’d lost their receipts for badges into another, equally long line. Once the con-goers reached the desks and had picked up their badges, they exited through the side door, again policed by members of Dragon Con’s volunteer community.

  “Where are we supposed to—”

  “Shh!” Xander hissed. “Just look like you know what you’re doing. Have your blue card and ID ready to go.”

  Liv’s hand grew sweaty as she and Xander wove their way to the exit hallway. At the door, a weary-faced man in a Dragon Con T-shirt watched the multitudes pass through the exit, pointing them up the hallway toward the street.

  Xander leaned down to Liv, his mouth brushing her ear, and she shivered. “Wait for it…”

  “For what?” Liv asked, distracted by his closeness.

  She felt Xander tense beside her. His fingers tightened.

  A young man dressed as a Pikachu came up to volunteer, lifting his badge and asking the man a question. The volunteer turned away from Xander and Liv, pointing to the other end of the hallway. The door was open, the guard distracted.

  “This!” Xander jumped forward. “Get inside and get into that crowd. Don’t stop!”

  Xander was already moving, so Liv had no choice but to keep up. The two of them pushed through, emerging in the chaotic front of the crowd. The line disintegrated at this point; knots of people milled around desks. Xander sprinted to the first one, leaving Liv to follow. Liv had never broken the law in her life, and she kept expecting the volunteer from the exit to shout at her or an alarm to sound.

  Xander gave the table attendant a half bow, his hand resting over his frothy lace tie.

  “Alexander Hall,” Xander panted, pulling out his driver’s license and a blue Dragon Con receipt card. “Esquire.”

  “Your first name’s Alexander?” Liv said. “I never knew—” Xander gave her a sour look, and she swallowed the rest of her words, fighting down a foolish grin.

  “You’re in the wrong line,” the woman at the desk said in an exasperated voice. She pushed her glasses up with an ink-stained finger. “H through M is the fourth line. Over there.” She reached out her hand toward Liv, snapping her fingers. “Blue card and license, ma�
��am.”

  “Here,” Liv said, pushing them into her waiting hand. “L-Liv. Liv Walden. We transferred the card from Ard—”

  “Walden,” the woman said with a tired sigh. “You’re over in the last line, W through Z.” She pointed. “Way down there.”

  Xander gave the woman a warm smile. “You’ve been most helpful, madame. If there’s anything I can do to assist you in the future, please let me—”

  The volunteer ignored his thanks, then leaned around him and bellowed: “NEXT!”

  Her shout released them. Xander nudged Liv toward the far side of the tables. “I’ll meet up with you out in the hallway.”

  “Hallway. Right.”

  Before Liv knew it, Xander was off at the H-to-M table, and she was standing at hers, picking up a laminated four-day pass with her name—Liv Walden—across the top. It was done: Her first foray into a life of crime was a success! She looked out the exit door to see Xander lounging against the wall in the hallway. One hand was tucked in the center seam of his waistcoat, the other spinning the pass on the end of a lanyard, a pose of Napoleonic contentment. Liv sprinted to meet him, crossing paths with a seven-foot Wookiee. He roared at her, and Xander stifled a bout of laughter behind a handkerchief.

  In the hallway, the crowds of con-goers were twice as bad. Liv stumbled through, finally making it to Xander’s side. “I can’t believe we just did that!” she panted, her grin so wide it hurt her cheeks.

  “Did what?” he said, tucking the silk handkerchief into his pocket. “I stood in line the whole time. Didn’t you?”

  Laughter bubbled from her throat. “So what now?”

  Xander draped the lanyard around his neck and pointed back down the hallway where they’d sneaked inside ten minutes before. “Now we go back to the Marriott to meet our roommates.”