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In every other version he had given her a human soul mate, or a resident of the town.
This was the same.
They paddled out to the middle of the lake, drank wine, read poetry. He ignored his vivid memory of her and Chidi doing this once before. Just because Michael could remember it didn't make it real- didn't make it true.
His nervous hands tightened around the slim volume, and he stumbled over the words, clumsy in his adoration, the way leaves spill dizzy to the earth in fall.
'Everything carries me to you...'
Eleanor reclined, lazy in the sun, glass in hand. Drink and something else had worked a flush into her cheeks, and her eyes on him sent a hot wave of pleasure unspooling from his stomach. Pooling low.
This was different.
Her mouth is skillful and warm, soft against the stubble on his cheeks, and the hard line of his jaw. His own lips, he is ashamed, are dry and inexperienced.
This entire time he’s played up his eccentric, naïve, Architect role, but there’s no artifice here. He’s a mess of uncertainty. His hands flutter over her looking for the right place to land, but they never do. He can’t seem to get his face angled right, and his nose, he thinks, (his nose!) is in the way. (How can it possibly be in the way? Is it in the wrong spot?)
He reaches up to his face and rubs it as if to check. It’s definitely in the right spot.
Eleanor’s eyes are hungry as she reaches between his legs and then-
The change is instant, like a bucket of cold water. She’s sitting back, her eyes clear, and now she’s embarrassed, and lashing out.
‘What the fork, dude! You’re with a bomb-ass chick that, if you were human, would be forty years younger than you. That usually gets most guys hard.’
He’s not human and the relationship between her body and his is still foreign. He remembered being aroused, in the boat- aroused by the being of her. He had looked at her, and seen her differently than he ever had before; like there was a tenth dimension he had never noticed and it only contained her. And his human body had responded to that.
The physical stuff is difficult though; it’s a sort of instant gratification he can’t quite translate. It feels good, he just doesn’t know how all the pieces fit together yet. How a mouth on his jaw is supposed to make the rest of him feel. There’s a disconnect he realizes, between the feeling and the response. He doesn’t know how to voice this though so he stares at her, stupidly, until he can’t. Then he struggles with his shirt, and apologizes, though he knows he doesn’t sound terribly sincere.
‘No.’ She says, ‘Look. Chidi said,’
He watches her closely. Even in this round he hasn’t managed to keep her and Chidi apart, though he has cut into their class time significantly.
‘Chidi said that sometimes heaven isn’t going to be perfect, right? Because we’re all still people. Aaaand people aren’t perfect, even if we want to be. We still sometimes… kind of suck. So, what I’m trying to say is: I’m sorry. I’m sorry I pushed you into something you’re maybe not ready for, or like, maybe you’re not interested in, or won’t ever be interested in. Like, ever. And if that’s the case, if you’re my soulmate and you never wanna do, you know, this stuff? That’s okay. I won’t pretend that isn’t going to be really hard for me, mostly because you have this really hot silver-fox thing going on, but like, that’s okay.’’
He isn’t sure what to say because Eleanor is looking at him so open and earnest it makes something in his chest ache all over, and with it comes a strange, frightening compulsion to tell her everything.
He takes that feeling and shoves it down, down, down. He is ruthless and terrified.
Over the next week he puts her through the most miserable things he can get away with, and then, later, once he’s stopped feeling so afraid, he kisses her, though it never goes much further than that.
_______________________________________
Eleanor’s eyes flash. Her hand slides back, then hard forward, and it snaps across his face in a sharp surprise. In 673 reboots it’s the first time she’s slapped him.
His glasses skew.
Michael’s first reaction is to grab her shoulders. It’s seems natural, and the rounded edges of her are small in his hands. Then he shoves her deliberate, and down into his office chair.
He feels the human body he occupies betray him. He’s crying, he realizes. Mortified.
But it’s not just the slap.
This is torture.
‘You used me! You used me and you made me lo-‘ she shoves her fist to her mouth to stem whatever she is about to say.
But he knows. He knows. He planned it that way, after all. He just never planned on this.
The word she didn’t say is so loud in the room he feels compressed by it.
He raises his arm. Her eyes go wide.
Snap.