there’s some things that just aren’t worth worrying about. like, yeah, he could get hit by a meteor falling from the sky or he could have his leg bitten off by a shark when he dips his toes in the ocean, but those are such rare and improbable occurrences that michael has never wasted energy worrying about them. he has more immediate fears; will this monster he fights be the last? is there a card waiting to stab him in the back? it’s a strange life he lives that he worried more about magical creatures causing his demise than a car accident.
elevators are another thing that he expects to work just fine. he’s never had a problem with them before, not in his old apartment in austin and certainly not in this new place he now lives in. michael mashes the button to go up, checking emails on his phone idly. nothing important there; he pockets the device as he furiously taps on the button to close the doors. there’s nothing worse than the awkward half a minute with a stranger on the elevator. apparently the button does not work, because the doors are in no rush to close.
love — write a drabble of your character realizing they’re in love with mine.
– THIS IS A FIRST TIMELINE LOVE STORY !
[ tw; blood and death ]
a study in behavior could be proposed on what happens to a person when something new comes into their lives. once, years ago, michael had lived with a roommate who brought home a kitten one day. he noticed the changes in his friend’s behavior then. little things, thoughtless things; the cat liked to follow his roommate around, and so doors were left open, just a little, just enough for a cat to slip through. michael’s own habits had to change; he started to watch around his feet for a small furry body rubbing up against his shins and started to avoid walking past his friend’s room in the dark, when a playful cat would most likely jump out from the darkness to grab at his ankles.
so michael jones’s habits changed again when he met gavin free.
it was practical adjustments at first, or even small ones; summoning his card rather than fight alone when monsters challenged the wellbeing of the world, calling him up when some unusual flashes of light were disturbing the neighbors to make sure he wasn’t up to no good, yelling at him when his seemingly illogical actions make michael so angry he thinks about running the card through with his sword for the second time.
slowly, more habits change. michael starts to take revenge on gavin’s playful nature, summoning him when he knows it’s most inconvenient, not letting him leave until he kicks his ass in some violent virtual world where the fight isn’t even remotely fair; michael is sure to pick games he knows he will win. gavin decides to just move himself into michael’s apartment someday if he’s just going to summon him all the time anyways, and perhaps was the catalyst of it all. they share the space, they learn each others habits and idiosyncrasies.
michael learns to watch out for the middle of the floor in late afternoon, when gavin dozes off in patches of sunlight that turn his skin soft gold. gavin learns that michael yells at even the most minor frustrations and how to tell an angry shout from a casual one. at some point he’s able to tell which shouts directed at him are affectionate rather than frustrated. at some point they grow past the partnership of card and hero and into the camaraderie of friends.
maybe they dance around it, maybe they’re just so dense that they don’t notice that the fire that burns inside of michael mirrors the sun in gavin. the heat, the passion, the warmth associated with both comes out in casual touches, words, bickering and banter. they’re good friends, best friends, they don’t notice that fingers rest a little too long on the other when they’re joking around. they laugh when michael’s viewers ask if they’re in love.
“we’d probably kill each other if we were,” michael guesses, shoving gavin out of frame when he starts wrapping long limbs around his friend like some weird octopus creature.
a hero’s work is never done. through the close calls and the almosts and could have beens, michael has stared death in the eye and come out on top too many times to count. perhaps the conscious risk he takes so often makes him blind to the small risks of every day living. the crosswalk shows him it’s safe to cross, and so he does. he doesn’t see the van with the broken brakes until it’s far too late, until red splashes against the asphalt and his vision goes as black as a sunless sky.
when michael opens his eyes again, he knows he only has moments. this is his death, his familiar slain and the last scrap of his humanity hanging on for mere minutes before this world will close forever to the real one. gavin is there, all red-eyed and splotchy with unabashed cries.
“stop fucking crying,” michael says, irritably in the way that gavin knows to mean that he cares. “you have to get out of here, you’ll be trapped forever if you stay.”
michael, numb to the pain that must be wracking his body, thinks that forever with gavin free might not have been such a bad thing. but not like this, stuck somewhere between earth and hell in a void where no one will ever find them again. it’s a moment of clarity among the numbness and fear, as if something that had been there all along finally makes itself heard. he thinks gavin hears it too, with the way he brushes blood-sticky fingers through michael’s hair and lets hot tears drip down the end of his nose. they’re cold already when they splash against michael’s face.
“i don’t want to leave you, michael,”
he wants to argue, to send gavin away. gavin knows exactly what he’s doing, he must know. michael wishes for more than the handful of seconds he has left, he wishes for another lifetime with gavin where he had been able to realize and say all the things he feels now. a lifetime of sunshine and warmth and love.
michael jones dies with the words “i love you” on his lips.
