Chapter Text
“That color suits you.”
It’s such a simple compliment. Nothing very meaningful. That’s what it would be, anyway, if it wasn’t coming out of the mouth of the person (well, not-person) that Martin has a desperate, hopeless, burning crush on.
As if on cue, he feels that familiar spark of heat across his cheeks and is helpless to stop its spread across them when something in Michael’s gaze shifts, ever so slightly, and Martin knows that it sees it. Hopefully, it won’t say anyth—
“Your face,” it says, and Martin braces himself, “is turning pink...?”
The perplexed look on Michael’s face is unfairly cute and isn’t exactly helping Martin’s situation here. He cups his hands over his cheeks (a feeble attempt at damage control) and feels the warmth there against his palms.
“Aghh,” he grumbles, turning away from Michael’s prying eyes of swirling neon blue. Why do these things always happen to him? So damn embarrassing. “Y-Yeah, that’s... Don’t worry, it’s... normal?” (Normal is an interesting way to describe flustering over a little compliment from an otherworldly, demigod-like monster, Blackwood!)
He hopes that’s enough of an explanation for Michael. It is, apparently, because Michael just hums (and oh, the sound is like a page from a collection of only the most beautiful poetry being turned in a quiet library) and dismisses the subject.
Martin has no recollection of it leaving through its door, only the awareness that he’s alone once again with remnants of the encounter gradually fading from his cheeks.
“Your singing is pretty, Poet.”
Martin nearly jumps out of his skin when the voice cuts through the room’s heavy silence like a knife (or perhaps more like a knife-like finger, in this case). He swiveled around in his seat to see Michael standing there, a smile on its face. Of course, his entire facial region hasn't hesitated in transforming into a canvas of rosy pink.
“O-Oh,” he says through a dry throat. “Um, I didn’t know... anyone was listening, actually.”
There’s more than just a hint of insecurity in his voice when he says that. He’s never been very confident in his singing voice—he honestly can’t wrap his head around anyone enjoying listening. Back when he would sing lullabies to his mother, she never seemed to... He always assumed that means he’s a bad singer.
Martin figures his thoughts must’ve been showing on his face because Michael says, “Hm. The pink is gone.”
“The—?” Oh, right. He’d almost forgotten. And now Michael is laughing (and it sounds the way spinning feels) and Martin looks up at it as it gleefully says,
“And now it’s back! How do you do that, Writer of Poetry?”
Martin fights to fend off the array of emotions flurrying in his chest (because lord, Michael looks so stunning when it’s smiling at him like that, and he would like to feel the tingling dizziness of its laughter again, and he would like to—) and takes a breath in.
“Are you a shapeshifter after all?” Michael says, though it sounds much too amused for that to have been a genuine question. Martin clears his throat and readjusts his glasses, even though they were perfectly fine.
“It’s—All people can do it,” Martin says. It’s nothing special, he doesn’t say out loud. I’m nothing special.
Michael tilts its head, eyes resting on Martin’s face with something unreadable in its expression. It blinks before redirecting its gaze to a door on the wall that shouldn’t be there.
“I see,” is all that it says before it turns and slinks away through the wooden yellow, and after a blurry moment that feels distinctly like disconnecting a plug from an outlet, Michael is gone again (along with its door).
Martin lets go of a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He means to get right back to work, but before he gets the chance, he notices a glass on the corner of his desk that he certainly didn’t put there. He reaches for it (which could be a very stupid thing to do, considering the weirdness of these Archives—of this world) and pulls it closer to see what’s inside, noting the radiating warmth he feels against his palm as he does so. He looks down.
It’s a fresh cup of his favorite type of tea.
Michael has been putting on a human ruse more often lately, for whatever reason. Maybe it has something to do with the newest additions to the Archival staff. It doesn’t really matter, Martin supposes. Michael is always the same Michael no matter what it looks like.
Martin thinks Michael looks quite attractive in any form it takes, really.
But, y’know, it is a nice treat to be able to look into its eyes without getting a splitting headache. Though they’re not spinning or changing colors the way they constantly do when Michael’s not pretending to be a human, Martin finds that they’re just as easy to get lost in. Whether this has something to do with the Distortion’s hypnotic nature, or if it’s just a result of how Martin feels about Michael, is unclear.
But Michael notices, and Michael lets him stare for a generous amount of time before it points it out with a giggle. (And its giggling distantly reminds Martin of what it felt like to blow bubbles on the flowery playing field of his elementary school on the last day before summer break began, before everything went downhill. Before he was alone.)
“Is there something interesting to you about my face?”
And Martin’s gone pink again, and Michael smiles at him, and the splash of cotton-candy pink on Martin’s face is deepening to be more akin to magenta, and the laughter that comes from Michael sinks right into Martin and pulls at his yearning heart like a claw machine reaching for a prize.
“W-Well, I—I just... I’m not used to seeing you like this, is all.”
Michael tilts its head and the playful smirk it gives him is enough for Martin to assume that he’s about to be teased. But Michael doesn’t tease him; just hums and looks away. It falls silent for a moment before it asks (in a tone that Martin would peg as almost... insecure):
“Do you... dislike it?”
“W-What?”
“This face.”
“No!” he says, and winces at how loudly the word came out. He mentally kicks himself and says, at a more appropriate volume, “No, I... Um, your—your face is very n-nice, Michael.”
His blush seems to feed on the words as he pushes them out of his mouth, and Martin can feel it spreading across his face far enough to reach his ears. Martin Blackwood is not a flirt by any means, and the bluntness that Michael just managed to coax out of him feels foreign. The embarrassment, however, is all too familiar.
Michael grins at him, and he tries not to blurt out the words you’re beautiful when they automatically pop into his head. (Get it together, Martin, come on!)
And then, because apparently the universe isn’t yet finished punishing Martin for crushing on an otherworldly beast of unnameable terrors, Michael says, “I like your face, too.” Martin’s pretty sure his heart stops. Martin’s pretty sure Michael just murdered him somehow. Martin’s pretty sure he’s in love with it.
“I—I—!”
Michael huffs out a laugh that makes Martin’s head spin, not unpleasantly. Not unpleasantly at all, in fact, and he has to wonder if he’s going crazy or if he’s just growing accustomed to insanity—and then he wonders what the difference between those two things is. Would he even know? Maybe Michael’s... messing with him somehow, screwing around with his head—like it’s supposed to!—and making him feel all these wonderful (horrible) lovely (scary) happy (happy) feelings. Surely, he wasn’t always so comfortable around this deadly thing, this monster. Surely, he didn’t always feel his heart flutter at the mere sound of its laughter. Surely, during sometime that feels so long ago now, that same laughter had struck a chord of fear in Martin.
But now all that its laughter does... is make Martin laugh too.
Ha, he’s probably crazy already, huh?
He must be.