#hes so fun to draw. drawing him to shirk drawing on other wips even

[slavhew]

talking to yourself again?

alt + clean before i started playing with layers like theyre dolls

[folkgirlhero]

WIP Wednesday

Ah yes, it's a Michael/OGElias fic that literally no one asked for or wants. But I've put 8k into it, so...

When Jagged Little Pill came out in 1995, 25-year-old Elias Bouchard had just been disowned by his father, walked out on by his flatmate, and dumped by the only boy he’d really cared about since Allan.

Elias spent weeks rattling the windows of his flat with the CD as he tried to dislodge the moth infestation in his pantry or lounged in a lukewarm bath, flipping the cassette back and forth in his Walkman while he wandered the corridors of his dead-end job, occasionally filing something somewhere, but mainly just “shirking all his responsibilities to his family and squandering the education and privileges that were given to him through the hard work of his ancestors.” Or whatever it was his father had said in his last speech. Not like Elias had it memorized.

So when Sarah Carpenter leaned into the mother-hen instincts she harbored towards the younger Institute staff and dragged him and Fiza from accounting and Raul and Denise from the library and Michael from the archives out to karaoke, Elias surprised himself by saying yes. He spent the afternoon mourning the future loss of his aloof persona and debating what to sing (probably “Hand in My Pocket;” it was more aspirational than realistic as far as personal anthems went, but he wasn’t looking to get vulnerable with these people).

What he wasn’t prepared for was Michael.

At least, that’s how Michael heard him explain it six weeks later, sharing a joint on the fire escape of Elias’s shitty flat. Michael had wrapped himself up in Elias’s bedsheet like a nude figure drawing model during a smoke break. Elias had slung on a pretentious silk robe, shrugging it the rest of the way up his arms in a motion that sat somewhere between rentboy and wealthy banker. It had a monogram even, EWB, all loopy and swirling. The late afternoon sun washed over everything, falling on Michael’s curls like they were spun gold, on Elias’s dark hair so brightly that Michael could make out the rich brown tones that looked like a flat black in the fluorescent lighting of the Institute.

“I remember the karaoke part,” Michael told him, exhaling a thick plume of smoke. “I was there.”

Elias just shushed him and continued.

He had been moping back then, even before Alanis showed up for comfort and company. So when Weird Michael From The Archives took the microphone, bracelets jangling against his thin wrists, and nervously announced he would be performing “You Oughta Know,” Elias’s eyebrows raised all the way to his hairline.

And then Michael started singing, gangly movements and stutters left behind for raw, righteous anger. When Michael tugged his hair tie to shake out his curls, Elias leaned in to get closer. He was magnetic, ethereal and raw all at once, emotions swirling across his face like watercolors.

It wasn’t like Elias didn’t know there was another boy his age working in the archives who seemed bent. It was just that Michael wore a lot of lime green and corduroy and his earrings were always getting tangled in his hair and his voice was reedy and nervous and quick to laugh at nothing. Elias, with one very significant exception (Allan; it was always Allan), liked boys who were going to seduce him.

But now Michael was stomping around the bar, eyes flashing, singing about the cross he bore that you gave to him in a raspy alto. It was very quickly moving him onto that list.

The others played along, exchanging suggestive looks with him and laughing themselves into flushed faces and spilled drinks. They were having fun, faking flirtation, sometimes shooting a mocking look or two when Michael looked away.

But Michael himself was utterly in-character. Elias couldn’t take his eyes off him. Moving away from Sarah and Raul, he sauntered to where Elias sat, slightly apart, holding his two fingers of whiskey close. Michael leaned in closer. Elias could smell the sticky maraschino from his fruity cocktail on his breath.

“And are you thinking of me when you fuck her?” He was supposedly singing, but it felt like he was just saying it, conversationally, hands splayed on the table, holding Elias’s gaze with a sneer.

He pulled away again almost instantly to prance and toss his curls and sing the bridge. Elias swallowed, gaze gone hungry. He knocked the rest of his whiskey down his throat as Michael traced a finger down his own sternum, looking at the rest of them through his lashes.

Thirty minutes later, Elias was ushering a giddy, half-drunk Michael into a cab bound for his flat.