It's Been a While

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael gave silent thanks that Dare left the subject alone and started flipping through. His eyes sparked whenever he saw one of himself then suddenly got to one of Emilian. He had known what happened in the Cafe, Emilian had said that he had sat down in Dare's view, but Michael didn't know there was one so close up. He turned away from it only to see Emilian and himself on the next page. It looked so very much like the Emilian he knew that he had to pause and look at it more closely.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare was watching Michael, and when Michael's gaze stopped, Dare leaned slightly to see what drawing he was at. He recognized the moment he saw it what had given Michael pause, and he wondered what Michael was thinking. Was he unnerved at having been grouped like that? Emilian had looked much the same when he'd seen it; intense. He knew what he'd been thinking when he'd put them together, but the fact that he'd gotten the same reaction from both of them told him he'd seen more than he'd fully recognized. Dare didn't say anything, but watched and waited for Michael to react or move on.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"This one's really good," he said, after a few moments, and glanced up. "That's how I remember Emilian." It was only after he had said that that Michael turned his gaze to the half of the drawing that was him. He looked calm in it, something he didn't feel very often. A few moments later he turned the page, dragging his eyes from it only to see yet another picture of Emilian, it was the original one.

He didn't linger on it but continued to flip back, his nearly uncomfortable feeling leaving as he found more pictures of himself. When he finished with it and handed it back he remained silent a bit longer before sitting up and meeting Dare's eyes. "If all of your pieces of him is as good as those three were," he said, taking a breath, "Then it will be time well spent." He licked his lips, nodded slightly, and looked away.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare's chest tightened, at the emotion in Michael's voice, and at everything he must be feeling to have said that. "Thank you," Dare said simply. He looked down at his sketchbook a moment, then set it aside, thinking over everything that had changed with those three pictures. Dare reached for Michael's hand, something subtle but meaningful, something easy between them, wanting the assurance of their comfortable connection. He didn't know what to say, so he said nothing, but let Michael sort his thoughts.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"Do you know when you're going down there?" Michael asked, curling his hand around Dare's. It was better, he supposed, to face the uncomfortable problem than to avoid it altogether, at least since he had seen what Dare could do with Emilian. He would support Dare, more actively now that he had thought about it and sorted things out, instead of passively accepting what he was doing. Talking about it, he hoped, would make it easier to live with.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare shook his head. "I was going to go down last week, but I wanted to wait, see if I ran into you first." He hadn't just wanted to go and do it, then hurt Michael later when he found out. His lips quirked. "You can come with me if you want, protect me if he decides I'm looking too intently at Adara," he suggested, the words a light tease. He wouldn't mind if Michael came, and he didn't think Emilian would mind either, but he couldn't see Michael wanting to come.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael wrinkled his nose, "I was down there before the club meeting," he said. "The second you were mentioned it was like I was getting the third degree." He could only imagine, Emilian would know the second they walked in the door that something was up. He would rather stay away, at least for a little while, even though they had gotten on fairly well other than the tension from conversation about Dare.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare let out a long breath. "He kept trying to grill me, too," he said. "Did we spend a lot of time together and stuff. I kept giving him the runaround, 'cause it's not his business unless you want it to be. I guess he picked something up anyway." Dare neglected to mention that Emilian had more or less hit on him when he'd sat down at Dare's table. If Emilian was as close to Adara as it sounded, he'd probably just been entertaining himself. Even so, the obvious result of that was that Emilian knew from the beginning that Dare wasn't straight; he could have come to his own conclusions.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"He'll pick up on things. Like, if you don't make eye contact then he thinks you're lying or hiding something, he likes eye contact." Sometimes to an almost creepy extent. Michael himself would rather look away from someone, but that was just him. "But, you know, that's how we grew up. Kind of figured out how to read people," he shrugged. He should have known going into it that Emilian would have picked up on something.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare looked down at their hands as he listened to Michael. Dare tended to read people, too, but for different reasons, and through slightly different means. Still, he thought about Michael's words and thought back to that day in the cafe. Despite all the time he'd spent looking at Emilian, he really hadn't made much eye contact. Yes, he'd been hiding something, but if Emilian hadn't figured it out beyond that, then Dare would just be happy with things as they stood. And Emilian would just have to put up with not getting the eye contact he wanted, because Dare wasn't giving him a chance to read anything off him if he could help it.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael smiled at Dare and squeezed his hand lightly. "He'll figure it out, eventually, I'll probably get all kinds of hell because of it, too." Emilian would ride him hard about it, partly because Michael had finally switched over, and partially because he'd want to know why he'd chosen Dare. "It'll be alright, though. He'll get over it." Michael surely didn't plan on telling Emilian right out, he'd have to find out on his own.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare looked up again to see Michael's smile, and his assurances were at least a little bit of a relief. If Michael sait it'd be all right, it'd be all right, at least for the two of them. Dare just hoped Emilian didn't manage to get anything out of him. He couldn't see himself saying anything unless he got worked up, and he couldn't see that happening as long as he was drawing. And he was just going down there to draw.

"So you're really cool with all this," Dare asked, though he knew the answer. "It's just...surprising. I wasn't really expecing it any more than you were." His mind had jumped back to them, away from the unanswerable question of Emilian. Dare leaned closer to Michael, his free hand sweeping long, deep red hair back away from Michael's face.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"Us?" Michael asked, that simple word feeling odd in his mouth. "If I weren't cool with it, I'd have run off long before now," he said, grinning. He took Dare's free hand and lightly kissed the back of it before letting it go. "I really wasn't expecting it, I mean...I knew I liked being with you. But seriously never thought about anything more. But when Anna was here..." he trailed off. He didn't know how to explain what had went through his mind.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare had returned Michael's smile, incredibly happy with the moment, and with that subtle kiss to his hand. At the mention of Anna, though, he felt a light stab of tension. It had only been today that Michael had seen her again, since you couldn't count the masquerade. It had only been today that Michael had broken up with her, for this. "It's okay, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Dare said. He brought his free hand around to trace against the back of Michael's as he held it.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"No, it's just..." Michael trailed off, thinking. "I hadn't realized how much I liked being with you until there was the chance of not seeing you." Not that they would never have seen each other again, but it would have been so very different. "I noticed that I was only considering being with her because I didn't want to see her hurt, not because I really wanted to be with her." It was a hard confession, considering he couldn't honestly say he still didn't have feelings for her.