[ Oh, he's that kind of guy - there's an answer to Anakin's question, sure, but he has to draw it out of the man's lecture himself. That's familiar enough, isn't it. With a wry smile, he nods and opts for installing a different spare part - the one in his bag will do just fine, he had a hunch that this might be the problem. Draining his glass of lemonade, its coolness not quite enough to make him feel any less heated, he's about to turn away and get to it when Michel continues.
Don't dare getting better at hiding, he says. Meanwhile, here's Anakin who keeps trying to get his feelings under control, to avoid throwing chairs in the conference room, to avoid pouring water down the front of any co-worker, no matter how annoying they are - to check himself, because there's no one else to do it and he's seen what happens, hasn't he. He knows. He knows.
The issue is, of course, that he's desperate not to hide. Not the rest of him. Sure, there's stuff he can't - that has to stay buried but how do you love anyone properly if you can't show yourself, too? How do you become that close? He looks at Michel for a long moment, frowning. There's no how, he thinks. It's always black and white with you, Ewan would say and then, infuriatingly, he doesn't know how to fix it. ]
I'm Anakin.
[ He scratches the back of his neck, his metal fingers hard, even beneath his leather glove. ]
And yeah, before you ask - I'm named after a character in a kid's movie. My mom's friend was a fan and my mom, I guess, was too kind.
[ He's young, it's obvious. From the heat in his gaze to the way he scratches the back of his neck, awkwardly. I didn't mean to make it awkward for you, he'd told Elio needlessly, he won't make the same mistake again. Michel passes the car part between his hands, a slow evening of the weight of it, smooth movements from hand to hand, as he feels the weight of it. It's heavy. As some things are, like the feelings in Anakin's eyes.
He saw that movie, didn't he? With Denis. They saw it together when Denis was just a kid himself and everything was different then. How much it has all changed. Part of him wants to call him, just to tell him, I met a young man today named Anakin, like Skywalker, do you remember? But Denis would want to know whether he'd slept with him and hang up, before Michel could even say, I wanted to.
This time, if things have to be different, Michel must make them so. ]
Rather too kind than not kind enough. Kindness can cost you, certainly, but the lack of it -- ah, it costs more, even if not for the person in question.
[ That's the thing about mothers, rather one who'd call her son Anakin to please a friend, than a mother who refused to call him Léon because it would please his father. And keep the memory alive.
Michel has begun wondering, after Elio left, whether his father would have opened up to him more, had he truly carried that name. ]
I'm Michel, Anakin. I would be happy if you'd fix my car with whatever spare parts you have. [ A smile, smaller, but genuine. He gestures between the car and the lemonade with his free hand, then passes the spare part back in place there, saying - as naturally as if it was breath, ] And then I'd be happier still if you'd come back in a week's time and have dinner with me.
[ It's not the bistro. It's not the waiters who have seen him with increasingly younger men. It's not the table that's reserved in his name or the well-cooked fish. It's none of that, it's something else. For some reason, that's important. ]
[ A pause. Anakin looks at him for a long moment before taking the alternator. Turning it slowly between his fingers, his eyes finding the damaged part with instinctual precision, he thinks about days spent in Seth's enormous mansion right on the edge of the school grounds, looking out of the floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows and feeling both far away from the world and far above it. Even today, he isn't sure what he'd liked so much about that sensation, only that he'd missed it painfully when things had ended and he'd been back in the gutter, if only for the shortest time.
Even now, the ache remains like a small but persistent hole in his chest, right beneath his sternum.
Breath catching in his throat very briefly, he bites his lip. ]
Why?
[ It comes out maybe a little sharper than he'd intended and he looks up quickly, meeting Michel's eyes and giving him a small smile, shrugging apologetically. ]
I mean, not to be rude. This is a pretty quick job, I definitely won't need two visits to complete it.
[ He glances back at the car. Turns the spare part in his hand again, then squares his shoulders a little, the smile slipping into his voice along with a tint of something brighter, more confident - because if nothing else, he's very certain that if Michel were to ask, he'd probably get unprofessional right here, right now with little thought for whatever heart-attack Ewan would suffer as a consequence: ]
Even without the wining and dining, I wouldn't be opposed.
[ Even without the wining and dining, I wouldn't be opposed. He says. This young man who blushes like Elio blushed when they were touching upon all the things that lay underneath what they were actually saying, because speech is so much more than the words, it's infliction and tone and, especially, omissions. Indeed, the things we say are much more often made up of everything we don't. Michel knows, he's worked in a highly oral field of work for decades. He wants them to meet in this, in the words. With Elio it was in the music, but this language is very different, more direct and maybe it needs to be. So much apparently needs to be different, because the way things were -- ah, it only leads in one direction.
A direction he's going in anyway, with or without wining and dining, yes? Old men like him, they end up in the same place. Ensnared by handsome younger men. And then, they end up in caskets. Michel likes that thought for some reason. It makes him smile, not wide and beaming as when you want to tell the world you've won the lottery. Small, reserved. Like a man who doesn't believe a single word he hears. ]
Without the wining and dining, it would just be a fuck. [ The word comes out completely naturally, no holding back, no hesitation, definitely no shame. ] If you think I haven't fucked enough young, handsome men in my life to last me the rest of it, you'd be very wrong, Anakin. It's that I meet too few people who don't hide, and I like to be inspired.
[ He says 'inspired' like you'd speak of the Ancient Greek gods, warriors and nymphs. For someone who has no stake in the church whatsoever, Michel has placed his religious inclinations in completely different areas of life. You're such a hedonist, his son once yelled at him, you only think about yourself. Michel had told him that's not what being a hedonist means. He thinks that was the last conversation they had in person.
This young man in particular wants to fuck him and that's all well and good! But Michel isn't here to take advantage of that. He's here to make him want it, so they might want each other. Think about each other. Care for each other.
Not just themselves.
Stepping forward slowly, he reaches out and runs his hand up Anakin's gloved, right forearm. It's not flesh, but it's him all the same. ]
[ Oh. Anakin swallows, the spare part feeling almost weightless between his fingers, like in another second it might just transform into nothing, into light and air. He's been hiding for years, hasn't he, from everyone except Seth. It's not that Anakin couldn't have his privacy, he thinks, it's just that he didn't want to, that he needed someone to know what he was, what he is, someone who wouldn't judge or use it against him. In the end, of course, he'd asked too much of the older man - after all, acceptance has to go both ways and Seth was never that kind of person, the type to blindly forgive and forget. He'd had expectations. Demands.
Michel simply tell him he'd like to be inspired and there's no demand in that but perhaps a little but of expectation, gently put, like a brush against his shoulder that he could choose to ignore if he wanted to. It's very different from anything he's known before and maybe that's why he takes a long moment to make up his mind. He looks down, following the motion of Michel's hand as he runs it up his prosthetic hand, forearm. The skin of his upper arm tingles uselessly in response - the prosthetic, of course, is a dead extension of him, though he's learned to use it with maximum precision.
He watches Michel's hand, frowning. Then, he turns his own palm upwards, taking hold of the other man's wrist lightly and shifting it, placing his fingers against his other arm instead by the wrist, the one of flesh and blood. Though his grip remains gentle, he doesn't release him.
Truly, Anakin has never been good at hiding. ]
Think it's only fair to warn you - I'm not so easy to get rid of.
[ He remembers breaking into Seth's house in a drunken stupor, thinking he'd bested him by way of familiarity, because he knew the other man and his house and his home and the world they used to share. Of course, in the end, he'd been allowed to break in - Seth had left him a message, though he hadn't bothered to be at home himself. If you break it, it had said, you replace it.
Anakin had learned, of course. That had been the extent of it. ]
[ Michel expects nothing, he's not the type of person to put his faith in expectations of any kind - unless you're expecting to be let down, you're most likely not getting what you wanted, whatever you bargained for. Elio would call him a pessimist because of this, and certainly Elio isn't wrong, he never is, even the ghost of him is right in everything and all, isn't he? Yet, Michel hasn't shaped his life around normality for thirty+ years now, not to learn that normality is disappointment. It really is. His and others'. How it breaks his heart, even now. The people he's let down. The people he's been let down by.
So, what does he expect of this man, of Anakin, who shifts his weight to his other hand, the one of flesh and blood and lets him feel him for a moment, feel the pounding of his pulse, the flow of blood underneath skin that caused him to blush just moments earlier? Does he even believe this will be anything else than another disappointment out of many?
Michel looks the other man in his bluer than blue eyes, the fair complexion and the blonde hair very different from Elio's curls, his dark eyes, pools of opal and onyx - this is like Vesuvius versus the sky. The volcano has to erupt to reach those heights.
Ah, but he's talking nonsense now, isn't he?
Anakin is very pleasing to the eye, there is no denying it and Michel would never try, and besides he seems to know it, too. Dangerous. Dangerous but attractive. Well, if a man is going to die anyway...! Michel closes his fingers around his wrist, a soft, unassuming hold. Say, 'you're not hurting me', he'd whispered, with Elio, the first time, and Elio had. But Michel doesn't say that. He says, ]
You're welcome to the last twenty years of my life. If people your age understand such sentiment.
[ And with that, Michel steps closer yet, reaching up with his other hand and cupping Anakin's chin, thumb running over it, angling him softly upwards. He has an open face, it doesn't shield itself from anything. His eyes are truly very striking.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Don't dare getting better at hiding, he says. Meanwhile, here's Anakin who keeps trying to get his feelings under control, to avoid throwing chairs in the conference room, to avoid pouring water down the front of any co-worker, no matter how annoying they are - to check himself, because there's no one else to do it and he's seen what happens, hasn't he. He knows. He knows.
The issue is, of course, that he's desperate not to hide. Not the rest of him. Sure, there's stuff he can't - that has to stay buried but how do you love anyone properly if you can't show yourself, too? How do you become that close? He looks at Michel for a long moment, frowning. There's no how, he thinks. It's always black and white with you, Ewan would say and then, infuriatingly, he doesn't know how to fix it. ]
I'm Anakin.
[ He scratches the back of his neck, his metal fingers hard, even beneath his leather glove. ]
And yeah, before you ask - I'm named after a character in a kid's movie. My mom's friend was a fan and my mom, I guess, was too kind.
no subject
He saw that movie, didn't he? With Denis. They saw it together when Denis was just a kid himself and everything was different then. How much it has all changed. Part of him wants to call him, just to tell him, I met a young man today named Anakin, like Skywalker, do you remember? But Denis would want to know whether he'd slept with him and hang up, before Michel could even say, I wanted to.
This time, if things have to be different, Michel must make them so. ]
Rather too kind than not kind enough. Kindness can cost you, certainly, but the lack of it -- ah, it costs more, even if not for the person in question.
[ That's the thing about mothers, rather one who'd call her son Anakin to please a friend, than a mother who refused to call him Léon because it would please his father. And keep the memory alive.
Michel has begun wondering, after Elio left, whether his father would have opened up to him more, had he truly carried that name. ]
I'm Michel, Anakin. I would be happy if you'd fix my car with whatever spare parts you have. [ A smile, smaller, but genuine. He gestures between the car and the lemonade with his free hand, then passes the spare part back in place there, saying - as naturally as if it was breath, ] And then I'd be happier still if you'd come back in a week's time and have dinner with me.
[ It's not the bistro. It's not the waiters who have seen him with increasingly younger men. It's not the table that's reserved in his name or the well-cooked fish. It's none of that, it's something else. For some reason, that's important. ]
no subject
Even now, the ache remains like a small but persistent hole in his chest, right beneath his sternum.
Breath catching in his throat very briefly, he bites his lip. ]
Why?
[ It comes out maybe a little sharper than he'd intended and he looks up quickly, meeting Michel's eyes and giving him a small smile, shrugging apologetically. ]
I mean, not to be rude. This is a pretty quick job, I definitely won't need two visits to complete it.
[ He glances back at the car. Turns the spare part in his hand again, then squares his shoulders a little, the smile slipping into his voice along with a tint of something brighter, more confident - because if nothing else, he's very certain that if Michel were to ask, he'd probably get unprofessional right here, right now with little thought for whatever heart-attack Ewan would suffer as a consequence: ]
Even without the wining and dining, I wouldn't be opposed.
no subject
A direction he's going in anyway, with or without wining and dining, yes? Old men like him, they end up in the same place. Ensnared by handsome younger men. And then, they end up in caskets. Michel likes that thought for some reason. It makes him smile, not wide and beaming as when you want to tell the world you've won the lottery. Small, reserved. Like a man who doesn't believe a single word he hears. ]
Without the wining and dining, it would just be a fuck. [ The word comes out completely naturally, no holding back, no hesitation, definitely no shame. ] If you think I haven't fucked enough young, handsome men in my life to last me the rest of it, you'd be very wrong, Anakin. It's that I meet too few people who don't hide, and I like to be inspired.
[ He says 'inspired' like you'd speak of the Ancient Greek gods, warriors and nymphs. For someone who has no stake in the church whatsoever, Michel has placed his religious inclinations in completely different areas of life. You're such a hedonist, his son once yelled at him, you only think about yourself. Michel had told him that's not what being a hedonist means. He thinks that was the last conversation they had in person.
This young man in particular wants to fuck him and that's all well and good! But Michel isn't here to take advantage of that. He's here to make him want it, so they might want each other. Think about each other. Care for each other.
Not just themselves.
Stepping forward slowly, he reaches out and runs his hand up Anakin's gloved, right forearm. It's not flesh, but it's him all the same. ]
no subject
Michel simply tell him he'd like to be inspired and there's no demand in that but perhaps a little but of expectation, gently put, like a brush against his shoulder that he could choose to ignore if he wanted to. It's very different from anything he's known before and maybe that's why he takes a long moment to make up his mind. He looks down, following the motion of Michel's hand as he runs it up his prosthetic hand, forearm. The skin of his upper arm tingles uselessly in response - the prosthetic, of course, is a dead extension of him, though he's learned to use it with maximum precision.
He watches Michel's hand, frowning. Then, he turns his own palm upwards, taking hold of the other man's wrist lightly and shifting it, placing his fingers against his other arm instead by the wrist, the one of flesh and blood. Though his grip remains gentle, he doesn't release him.
Truly, Anakin has never been good at hiding. ]
Think it's only fair to warn you - I'm not so easy to get rid of.
[ He remembers breaking into Seth's house in a drunken stupor, thinking he'd bested him by way of familiarity, because he knew the other man and his house and his home and the world they used to share. Of course, in the end, he'd been allowed to break in - Seth had left him a message, though he hadn't bothered to be at home himself. If you break it, it had said, you replace it.
Anakin had learned, of course. That had been the extent of it. ]
no subject
So, what does he expect of this man, of Anakin, who shifts his weight to his other hand, the one of flesh and blood and lets him feel him for a moment, feel the pounding of his pulse, the flow of blood underneath skin that caused him to blush just moments earlier? Does he even believe this will be anything else than another disappointment out of many?
Michel looks the other man in his bluer than blue eyes, the fair complexion and the blonde hair very different from Elio's curls, his dark eyes, pools of opal and onyx - this is like Vesuvius versus the sky. The volcano has to erupt to reach those heights.
Ah, but he's talking nonsense now, isn't he?
Anakin is very pleasing to the eye, there is no denying it and Michel would never try, and besides he seems to know it, too. Dangerous. Dangerous but attractive. Well, if a man is going to die anyway...! Michel closes his fingers around his wrist, a soft, unassuming hold. Say, 'you're not hurting me', he'd whispered, with Elio, the first time, and Elio had. But Michel doesn't say that. He says, ]
You're welcome to the last twenty years of my life. If people your age understand such sentiment.
[ And with that, Michel steps closer yet, reaching up with his other hand and cupping Anakin's chin, thumb running over it, angling him softly upwards. He has an open face, it doesn't shield itself from anything. His eyes are truly very striking.
Like that, he kisses him. ]