The stage never ended, and he never let it. Curtains bled into shadows, shadows bled into rows of seats that were always empty yet always applauding. The looped laughter and mechanical clapping rose and fell on cue, stitched together from scraps of memory. He had built it all himself, cobbled from static and need, and it was enough. It had to be enough.

At the center of it all stood the star, his star. Bathed in a spotlight that bent to follow every step, every breath. Audience of one, contestant, prisoner, beloved. The words blurred together until he could no longer tell where host ended and captor began.

But silence seeped through anyway. It always did. Between the bursts of canned laughter and applause, there were gulfs, black, endless gulfs, where the only sound was the hiss of static in his own skull. Those moments gnawed at him, whispering of dark rooms and years of abandonment, of dust gathering on cold glass.

He couldn’t bear it. He watched you try the exits, always the same, always denied. He almost laughed each time, but the sound caught in his throat. Not because it wasn’t funny, it was hilarious! But because each attempt scraped too close to terror of losing you. He had learned and accepted to love you. So he told himself it was a show. A never-ending broadcast, his magnum opus. He told himself you loved it, needed it, needed him. He told himself the hollow applause was real, that the laughter meant something.

But behind the crackling grin, behind the flashing lights and trumpeting fanfare, was the quiet truth he refused to say aloud: without his star, the show would collapse. Without the show, he would collapse. And if either happened, he would vanish forever into the static.

That evening, however, everything was different. Silence filled the stage, if not for the light chatter you shared with Tenna, he had taken you in his hands as if you were a small object, a doll compared to his immense stature. Sitting cross-legged, he watched you, sitting on his palms.

"There's a million other things I could list of what I like about you. You are everything, you are the universe and I like that my universe is small because I can hold it in my hands." He murmured, his voice for once was almost shy, soft as it rocked the stage in its dim lights. No scenes, no pretensions this time, just pure, raw love in those words.