Michael watches her drink like someone might listen to their favorite song, half-awake and so quiet he cannot hear himself breathe. He wonders when this happened. He cannot quite name the moment. Michael is watching her tip her glass back (he notes that the strand of hair he had so carefully tucked back is dislodged by the motion), watches her squint and purse her lips and cough. He wonders. And when her eyes float back up to his, when she sets her jaw and grins like a challenge, it is like the look never happened at all.
It could be both, if you'd like.
Michael laughs again, something low in his throat that sounds a little more like choking, something too desperate to be entirely normal. He wants to be just one more drink in, wants to blame it on a head full of fog and and a stomach full of alcohol but he isn't and he can't.
Michael wishes he could work like Moira, like a spider pulling threads of light from thin air. He wants to hold the strands of the earth in his shaking hands and fold them over, one by one, until even one small thing rings with the voice of things that are true and good and holy. He wants to unravel himself and be put back together in an order that makes sense. He wants to be more than a disjointed series of parts that cannot align even centuries later.
He wants another drink.
Behind him, a glass shatters. The bartender says 'you've got to be kidding' but it sounds far away, on the other side of some wall of some room where there is only Michael and Moira and her tapestry of light and he is trying to swallow around a knot in his throat.
"Consider me threatened." He says with a smile.
(He wonders again when this happened. He wonders how, and why, and always when. He wonders if it even matters.)
Moira shifts closer, rounding the table like a cat, and either she purrs or the space around her purrs, he can't tell. Do I? She asks. Make you weak, that is? And Michael draws in a trembling breath and exhales a silent prayer to every god he's ever known. Oh no, he thinks for the thousandth time, oh no, oh no, oh no.
Then she is beside him, and Michael wishes again for just one more drink, just one better excuse for the way he touches her like an answered prayer, the pink of his muzzle on the curve of her neck where the thick, dark mane turns to fire, hot and red and sharp. He breathe against it, in then out, either a sigh or some vague attempt at being anything but what he is.
"Everyone has horror in them," he says, almost too quiet to hear. "I'm not going anywhere." He doesn't know if it's true. He hopes. He wonders. But he doesn't know.
It could be both, if you'd like.
Michael laughs again, something low in his throat that sounds a little more like choking, something too desperate to be entirely normal. He wants to be just one more drink in, wants to blame it on a head full of fog and and a stomach full of alcohol but he isn't and he can't.
Michael wishes he could work like Moira, like a spider pulling threads of light from thin air. He wants to hold the strands of the earth in his shaking hands and fold them over, one by one, until even one small thing rings with the voice of things that are true and good and holy. He wants to unravel himself and be put back together in an order that makes sense. He wants to be more than a disjointed series of parts that cannot align even centuries later.
He wants another drink.
Behind him, a glass shatters. The bartender says 'you've got to be kidding' but it sounds far away, on the other side of some wall of some room where there is only Michael and Moira and her tapestry of light and he is trying to swallow around a knot in his throat.
"Consider me threatened." He says with a smile.
(He wonders again when this happened. He wonders how, and why, and always when. He wonders if it even matters.)
Moira shifts closer, rounding the table like a cat, and either she purrs or the space around her purrs, he can't tell. Do I? She asks. Make you weak, that is? And Michael draws in a trembling breath and exhales a silent prayer to every god he's ever known. Oh no, he thinks for the thousandth time, oh no, oh no, oh no.
Then she is beside him, and Michael wishes again for just one more drink, just one better excuse for the way he touches her like an answered prayer, the pink of his muzzle on the curve of her neck where the thick, dark mane turns to fire, hot and red and sharp. He breathe against it, in then out, either a sigh or some vague attempt at being anything but what he is.
"Everyone has horror in them," he says, almost too quiet to hear. "I'm not going anywhere." He doesn't know if it's true. He hopes. He wonders. But he doesn't know.
"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us."
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