‘ so kiss me, shy, sweet, eagerly. ’ -mannukiili, should u ever ,, grant me a kiss meme .... pls just one....
e.e. cummings
( accepting. )
ONCE, LUCIFER TOLD HER THAT no good came from the interest of angels, let alone michael. she still doesn’t know if that’s true -- it feels like it is, or like it should be -- but he has dropped into her life so many times and in so many different places that she can’t help but believe, even more so, that whatever it is, it’s far from something she can outrun.
maybe michael’s interest in her isn’t as harmless as she would like to believe, but it’s difficult, when he drops into her apartment with wine and a story that is as unbelievable as everything else about him, to tell him to go. (she likes his company. for a moment, while he sits there across from her, she can pretend he is something else, someone else. she’s never forgotten, not once, but she has built so much of her life around making things into what she wants of them instead of what they are that isn’t much of a stretch.)
when he says it, it feels less like a choice and more like a challenge. she watches him in the half-light spilling from one room and into the other and wonders who will be the one to come closer first: herself or michael. (she knows it won’t be him. they’d stand in this stalemate for centuries, a millennia, before he came any closer to her.) he has always presented her with the choice, and it’s what he’s doing now. it hangs in the space between them and she can’t help but wonder how many others he’s done this to, humans swept too easily up in the dark of his eyes and the gentleness that lurks there.
still hesitant, she crosses to him, hides the tremble of her hands beneath the long sleeves of her sweater. she has to stand on tip-toe to reach him and, when she does, she nearly loses her nerve. the kiss is hardly that -- a brush of lips against the corner of his mouth before it becomes something a little more solid, but even then, it’s fleeting. a moment, maybe two, and her nose brushes against the line of his jaw as she moves away.
after another long moment: “-- -- you could’ve said please, you know.”
