Dark and cold or bright and warm

[forthedog]

There are innumerable bars in the city. Some of them, Mike is familiar with; the ones between the Dollhouse and home are well known to him by now and he to them. Some of them he hasn't met yet, simply by virtue of rarely going into the parts of the city where they are. And one of them he won't go back to, though the glass and the blood are long cleaned up and the bullet is picked out of the wall.

The one he's heading toward isn't really any of these, not entirely new to him but not close enough to be all that familiar, not exactly upscale but also not the kind of dim, smoky dive that he usually goes to when left to his own devices.

He doesn't know what this is about. He feels like he should. Because it's definitely about something.

Meet me at the corner of Haight and Beacon at 9.

It's a cold night and not as crowded as it had been in early fall, and Neil's the only one standing on the corner. Mike moves closer, not hurried, allowing himself the intervening time to just... look. Because naked or clothed, that's another thing he's not anywhere near tired of.

When he stops he looks from Neil to the bar and back again, one eyebrow slightly raised. "Hi."

Comments

[likeaplanet]

"We're already married, stupid," I laugh, batting his hand away only to catch his wrist and press a kiss to his palm.

"I miss him like fuckin' crazy," I admit, "I've never known anybody else like him." He could make me angrier than just about anyone ever could, and could turn around and make me happy like just about nobody else.

[forthedog]

"All-purpose romantic fucking gesture. Gimmie a break, I only know so many."

His fingers linger on Neil's face, one fingertip finding the scar again and tracing a small fraction of its length.

"I know. Me too." Half a smile tugs at his mouth. "But I gotta think we'll see him again, y'know?"

[likeaplanet]

"I wonder where he is now," I murmur, even though I'm beginning to understand that there is no right now. Every place, every time overlaps and what seemed to be in the past might not be at all. We keep meeting over and over, and the only reason it seems like it's all happening one after the other is 'cause we can't make sense of it any other way.

[forthedog]

"Somewhere him and me are probably back in the Realm. Fighting about fucking everything." And the thought shouldn't be comforting, really, but somehow it still is.

He finally reaches for his beer but doesn't immediately drink, watching the light turn the color of honey in the glass. "And somewhere none of us probably ever left."

[likeaplanet]

"And someplace, I never even left New York," I say with a snort of laughter, but according to Wendy, that was true.

"And maybe some universe, I'm there in the Realm, with you."

[forthedog]

"Everything's true somewhere." He shakes his head slightly. "Head'll fucking explode, you think about it too much."

He picks up his beer and finally takes a sip. He doesn't remember what he ordered, but it's good. "So what would this be, anyway? Two years? Three? It's three, right?"

[likeaplanet]

"Yeah, three. Counting that year you were dead," I say, offering up a crooked smile and taking a sip of my own beer. "Four, if you count the year we were together, before we got married."

[forthedog]

"Four. Jesus," he breathes. A small eternity, by his standards. Even though a year of that doesn't really count.

But. "Feels longer. Dunno why."