Re: carriage house - michael and atticus
Michael felt sort of bad for Atticus. He never signed up to be the only adult in a gang of thanatos-worshipping teenagers, hellbent on flirting with death until death flirted back, and his job duties never should have stretched this far into the future. But he liked to think that they were friends - that Atticus was his friend. He liked the man, for all his lethargy. He was a comfortable presence without actually comforting.
The song playing in the house almost felt like a joke, and he glanced to the boombox with half-acknowledgement. His thoughts, as usual, were already a mile ahead of his mouth. Beer helped with that, not that he drank often. He felt sure that if he drank more often he might lean on it too much - call it a hunch - so he saved it for company. "Who still has a boombox?" he asked, by way of greeting.
He picked up the unclaimed bottle by the neck, and his eyes fell on the open book. "How're you doing?" he asked. It was as if their long conversation about his bizarre origins and Atticus' ghosts had never happened.
He sat down in one of the little red chairs. This didn't feel like Atticus, not anything in his room. Maybe his mother decorated it, her of the pretty journal. He wondered, much too late, if he should have taken his shoes off at the door. This cozy place made him feel like he was visiting a friend back at school, like he might get yelled at for tracking mud in.
He took a short swallow from the bottle, then picked the journal up, carefully, hesitating for a second before he leaned back into the chair with it. Even though Atticus was right there, this felt wrong, reading his mother's journal in front of him. He didn't open it right away. He let his hand rest on it instead, folding it closed, keeping the obviously intentional place Atticus had left it open to marked with his finger.
Whatever hints and revelations there were about where Michael came from, he still looked just the same. He was tired after a week trapped in a psychotic basement nightmare, but that didn't make his stubble any less corporeal, or lighten the hollows under his eyes from catching sleep in snatches for a week. "This is nice," he said, looking back toward the stairs. "This place." He studied Atticus. "Did you read the whole thing?" He tapped the book with his fingers.