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They sway together as Nat King Cole croons and their little world of Neighborhood 12358W begins to crumble. And yet somehow he doesn't mind. He tells himself that this is better than torture and damnation in the Bad Place (inexorably fixed in the eternal timelines of the four people now trying to slow-dance without stepping on any feet) or his own premature retirement (being shredded and burned to a crisp on the face of a thousand suns isn't so bad; he could have been placed in their core, after all). But even as he twirls Eleanor (when did her name begin to rip agonizingly slow through the fiber of his being with each syllable?) Michael feels like they have already, each of them, begun their own private hell.
Eleanor. He thinks back to this morning. The balloon. Glinting (fake) golden in the rays of the (fake) sun, a shiny ticket. A coda. I'm not mad... just disappointed. She'd said it like she truly didn't expect anything more from him, now that he'd betrayed their trust yet again, and somehow the knowledge of that feels worse than any anger she could have shown.
She smiles into his chest, faint echoes of eight hundred and two reboots in the curve of her lips reverberating through his body. His chest tightens. Her impertinent grin in the face of certain demise is a very human thing and one that he treasures, much like the paperclips and the little yellow one-eyed toddler.
Probably that's why he failed at this psychological torture thing. Why the others, no matter how insane the Neighborhood drove them, would take the sound of Tahani's shrill voice or Chidi's stomachache neuroses or Eleanor's tantrums or Jason's ramblings over the melodies (none of that now, he was good) of corkscrews piercing pupils or skin being peeled back to reveal raw ivory bone. It was because he, an ageless being of insurmountable sadism and cruelty, did not have the capacity to watch himself inflict real pain on humans day after day.
It might not have worked out anyway, he reminds himself. Humans were just drawn to one another. That was the way it always was. They sought solace in each other one day and there was murder in their eyes the next. It was a cruel, arbitrary and perfect order, the way it had always been as far as he knew.
In #579 Chidi, hands clutching his head, had stumbled over his words: So soulmates-- they aren't real? They're not-- I mean-- they-- they don't exist. Michael had seen the look on Eleanor's face when Chidi blurted that out, which slightly lessened his regret about snapping his fingers. They had actually fallen in love that reboot, a love borne out of the instict for survival. He knew that Eleanor needed Chidi to become a better person (that was the whole joke, after all). But Chidi had surprised him time and time again with a surprising instinct for finding Eleanor and needing her to improve himself. They had always found each other.
Later when dancing gets old, they forge ahead, drinking like the world is going to end (ha ha ha). They present him with an honorary human starter kit made out of a lunchbox Jason found somewhere, and he nearly weeps with joy at the sight of the corporate logo stress ball. Eleanor looks at him like she knows what he's thinking. Like she understands. He smiles at her and immediately feels something well up in his throat (maybe he's somehow got the stress ball stuck in there). It strikes him that if he were in (im)mortal pain and she smiled at him, he would smile back always. So he swallows hard and moves his eyes away quickly, pretending. He doesn't know what exactly his falsehood is supposed to be, though.
The picnic is slow and languid, and he tastes the malt liquor on his tongue and remembers #305, when Eleanor had held his hand as he guided her across stepping stones of a river to her outdoor camping 'couple's getaway' with Glenn. Jason convinces Tahani to try a drink that is dyed an alarming shade of purple, and to her credit, she downs it in one gulp. Chidi recounts a story about an elevator, a turtleneck and a beach ball. Eleanor confesses, without much prodding, to her juvenile crush on Sam the Eagle from the Muppets ('Moppets?' 'No, Tahani, muppets'), and everyone laughs (and for the record, Michael may be a demon, but he isn't desensitized enough to not feel any revulsion at the idea of a patriotic blue eagle with a unibrow).
When Eleanor looks at him with a strange brightness in her eyes, he gives up avoiding her gaze once and for all. Everyone else has gone back home to sit on the whole insane plan, and it's just the two of them on the striped blankets, looking up into the nothingness. (Also his fake stars that were spaced out too far apart and now just look like holes in the atmosphere, but he won't dwell on the small imperfections.)
"Do you think it's gonna work?"
"What?"
"Going to the Judge." Her eyes are misty, but they pierce all nine dimensions of his vision nonetheless, pinpricks that widen into gentle hazel pools.
"Sure," he says nonchalantly. It's a stupid plan, and he's already ennumerated all the reasons why, so he knows what she needs right now. Not to be told that it won't work in a million years, or that too much is being left to chance, or that he's heading straight for the flaming ladles and sizzling suns anyway so there's no point in doing literally anything at all.
No, what she needs is reassurance. He wants to give it to her. It's an alarming instinct he's not supposed to ever have, but then again, Michael has always been a bit soft.
"Eleanor."
"Yes, Michael?"
"You're a good person," he says. "I really mean it this time when I say you deserve to go to the Good Place. Even if the Judge rules otherwise."
He's not wearing the angelic perpetually-terrified-of-his-boss Architect face now. The angles of his face are unusually sharp as he gazes into the blank distance and his bowtie is undone, hanging loose around his neck. Not at all a comforting image. But he somehow knows, without so much as a glance, that she trusts him.
So when she sits up, leans over and kisses him, he tries not to misinterpret it as a crush of any sort (or, non-existent God forbid, love).
Before Chidi and Eleanor, he had never seen anyone fall in love before. In the real Bad Place with the wasps and the nostrils, everyone had always been too focused on their own pain to move beyond the periphery of their blurry vision (if it wasn't the tears, it was invariably the hot sauce). Demons did not fall in love, because they didn't need to procreate; they had all been around since the beginning of time. So he had watched, with an awe shoved beneath the mean curl of his lips, as they had gone feeding the ducks at the lakeside, reading stupid French poetry on the lake, swimming in the lake (Eleanor) or being shoved into the lake by Janet yelling 'Bortles!' on Jason's instructions (Chidi).
To this day he still tells himself that he manipulated it to be this way, that forcing them in such close proximity would be tortuous for both parties even as they caught feelings. But sometimes there are twinges of something in the place where his heart is supposed to be, when he looks at them together. Janet would say it's actually happening in his brain.
But right now? His all-knowing brain has descended into pure static. Eleanor just has that effect on him. Hooray.
He threads a few fingers through her hair, releasing a wash of springtime scent, and down, down along her warm neck, down her spine. Feels, rather than thinks, the ridges and the arched curves. His eyes flutter fully closed, and he grasps her shoulders. The fragility is beautiful. She is beautiful.
And then she presses closer and grabs the lapels of his blazer, and reality throws a bucket of cold water onto him.
Michael jerks away from the kiss with Eleanor (never thought he'd be doing that, heh) and says breathlessly, "Eleanor."
"Hm?" She's only registering his absence now, and he can see the exact moment when her dreamlike state of mind is lifted, like a curtain. And then her eyes become sad again, and he thinks, shirt.
"Why'd you do that?"
"We shouldn't-- we can't-- you shouldn't have done that." He looks away, with great difficulty. "It's inadvisable."
She frowns. "Dude, what's that supposed to mean? You should have told me right away before I started actually making out with you."
He says nothing, expecting her to continue. At last, the silence becomes a great yawn. He turns to her, a little thrown off.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she says automatically, and he feels like telling her that saying you're fine when you're not is a human thing, and you're dead and you don't have to do that anymore. But truth be told, he feels more human than at any point ever in 2000 years. So there's probably some element of reality to her dismissal. "It's cool, man. You just seemed to be enjoying it too, is all." Her voice is small and fragile, and that's when he realizes.
"I did," he protests. "I really did. It's just..." He flounders miserably. Eventually he settles on "you didn't mean it," which even in itself makes him uncomfortable because of the truth it could reveal.
Eleanor blinks at him. "Sure I did. I like you and I think you're hot and probably also happen to like me." As if it's that simple. As if it's just him liking her. God. When she notices his inability to respond, she smirks and nudges his knee with her foot. "What, smashing food holes is too much for you?" And just like that, best bud Eleanor is back.
"N-no," Michael manages, cheeks tinging pink. And then he says, "I just don't think I should be taking advantage of your, uh, emotionally compromised position." (A wonder that he manages to string that many words together, because holy fork Eleanor is a good kisser. The fact that they're all going to literal hell tomorrow doesn't change that.)
She considers that. "Because it's not ethical behaviour?"
"Because it's not right," Michael responds swiftly. That much he knows.
"Glad to see Human Turtleneck is finally getting to you." She smiles a little up at him.
"He's a good teacher." Michael swallows, even though it is the truth. Then:
"Hey, Eleanor."
"Yeah?"
"I'm not going to let anyone take you to the Bad Place."
"You promise?"
"Promise."
The words feel heavy on his tongue and he thinks he might get to experience a hangover for the first time tomorrow and the grass is really starting to itch because he took off his socks at some point, but he knows what a promise is. And more importantly, he knows what a promise to Eleanor is.
So when it's all gone south in HQ and Jason has managed to whip up a molotov cocktail in an alarmingly impressive 3.496 seconds before racing them all out the back door and there are 4 ugly minted copper pins deciding the fate of their 5 eternal souls, he knows what he has to do. What he wants to do.
"Hey, boss." A feline grin.
The words feel light on his soul.