#ogelias/michael

[folkgirlhero]

The Unbecoming of Elias Bouchard (M, ao3)

After about 1,000,000 years (10 months), my Michael/OGElias fic is finished! Hooray! Enormous shoutout to @blindbeta for doing a sensitivity read (and more, tbh) for me! Check it out here

Excerpt (from Chapter 4):

Some days it was like this:

“You’re too old to sit like that now, surely.” Michael commented, dropping two tote bags of groceries on the kitchen island and shaking off his coat.

Elias grinned where he was sat at the dining room table, chair turned the wrong way ‘round, chin resting on the chair back. “Counterculture ‘til I die, baby.”

Michael laughed and leaned over Elias where he was now frowning at his Perkins Brailler, trying to remember what his teacher had said about telling the difference between “i” and “e”.

“And how goes the memoir?” Michael teased. Really, tell the man you feel like Hemingway on the machine one time…

“It will be earth-shattering, so long as I can learn to spell my name right. Check for me?”

And Michael did, and then started chopping vegetables for their dinner and Elias turned on the record player and went back to clacking away with his tongue between his lips in concentration. The quiet between them was comfortable as a warm quilt, patchworked with the worn scraps of who they were before, and when Michael walked by Elias to go to the pantry, he trailed a hand over his shoulder and Elias leaned into it, easy as anything.

Elias dug his socked toes into the carpet and inhaled the smell of onion and garlic sauteing in a pan and the soft sound of Michael singing to himself and it was perfect.

Then, other days were like this:

The sounds of Michael pacing his bedroom, rambling to himself, his manic bursts of laughter. Elias knew better than to go in and try to talk to him—these dark moods were just another part of their life now. Sometimes Michael was still his ray of sunshine, bright and eager to please and then a switch would flip and his laugh would turn mocking, or he would have a short burst of meanness, like a raincloud passing by, there and then gone. It was a small price to pay to get Michael back, to be allowed to keep him. But that didn’t make it any easier.

There was a crash that suggested broken glass and Elias huffed out a sigh and flipped to his other side, resisting the childish urge to stuff a pillow over his head. Michael—the old Michael—would have been much better at this than Elias was, if their positions were reversed. Michael had been much better; how many times had he held and soothed away Elias’s frantic energy?

It’s just. They weren’t—well, Elias wasn’t sure what they were and weren’t, exactly. They certainly weren’t in a relationship, at least not the kind they had been in when they were in their 20s. Elias would say “roommates,” if the thought wasn’t so depressing he wanted to fling himself off the roof, but, honestly, that wasn’t quite right either.

It felt like living with a total stranger, in many ways, except the total stranger knew a handful of the most important things about you and also you were still, inconveniently, in love with him. Also he was a little bit of a monster.

An enormous thud let Elias know that Michael had flipped over the guest bed again. He should really get up and go to him.

Instead, he groped around the bedside table for his earplugs. For all his growth, he was still a coward.

[don't worry, this has a happy ending :))]

#my fic #tma fic #michael shelley #michael distortion #og elias #ogelias/michael

[izzyliker]

dsdfsd i have general disdain for og!elias for primarily petty reasons (my deadname was literally a word for a type of weed so i have an arbitrary grudge against people with Weed as a personality trait, and a couple posts essentially touting michael/ogelias as a "less problematic" alternative to gerrymichael that were really high and mighty and insisted on putting IN THE GERRYMICHAEL TAG) but i honest to god dont get the need to like, shame people for liking characters you don't like and come up with stupid reasons why its problematic like who the fuck cares just don't engage with content of that character if they annoy you

this rabbithole just keeps getting deeper and deeper no condescension intended but i am so glad i don’t care about literally any of these characters

#disk horse #michael og elias i’m crying WHAT

[spooky-catboy-angel]

the magnus archives AU where Gerry is okay and Michael (Shelley) is okay and Helen is okay and martin is okay and Tim is okay and sasha is okay and daisy and Basira are okay and Melanie and Georgie are okay and the Admiral is okay and ogElias is okay and Jonah magnus is NOT okay

#the magnus archives

[folkgirlhero]

The Unbecoming of Elias Bouchard

Read the first chapter :)

OG Elias/Michael Shelley, rated M, 1 chapter of 3 finished

A story of two boys falling in love, becoming monsters, and what happens after.

“You’re telling it wrong,” Michael protested.

“How could I possibly? It’s my recollections.”

Michael rolled his eyes inwardly at the pretension of ”recollections,”—it was a month and a half ago—but forged ahead.

“I wasn’t trying to seduce you! I mean, look at you.” He waved his hands, encompassing Elias’s aristocratic nose, his wavy dark hair, the artistic line of him perched on the fire escape, like a figure from a Leyendecker, slumming it. “I was just having fun.”

Elias preened, taking a long drag on the joint and tilting his head to let out the smoke in a thin stream, lip curled.

“And yet,” he murmured, watching Michael from the corner of his eye. And Michael, bold from the version of himself Elias had created, put his cool fingers against the side of Elias’s neck and kissed him.

Michael had this way of never pulling you to him when he kissed you. Endlessly giving, he always came to you.

#my fic #tma fanfic #michael shelley #michael distortion #og elias #ogelias/michael

[folkgirlhero]

The Unbecoming of Elias Bouchard

Chapter 3 of 4 posted!

Ft. an angry Post-Distortion Michael, an effervescent Helen, and a scheming Elias

--

“Michael?” someone’s voice said his name, but it was far away-sounding, like being underwater.

Michael reached out, short stubby fingers tapping against the glass. His fingernail clicks sounded wrong, not echo-y at all.

“Michael, can you hear me?” Only it sounded more like bubbles, the fizzing of a soda.

Michael took the picture frame in both hands and snapped it, cracking the glass all over the carpet.

Martin let out a frightened cry when he did it and Jon threw his hands up in irritation.

“Oh!” Michael looked down at the glass and then up at Jon’s eyes. “I didn’t know it would do that.”

“What else would it do, Michael?” He sounded exhausted and sick of his shit and part of Michael felt very guilty and wanted to apologize. He did not.

“What do you expect, Archivist?” he said instead. “I was merged with a piece of the Spiral for nearly a decade.” His voice was flat but the Archivist and Martin both heard the anger running through it. They exchanged a glance and both watched him nervously. Good. They should be nervous.

#my fic #tma #tma fic #michael shelley #og elias #ogelias/michael

[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.

#my fic #tma #tma fanfic #og elias #michael shelley #ogelias/michael #wip

[folkgirlhero]

Chapter 2 of 3 for The Unbecoming of Elias Bouchard is up :)

Excerpt:

When Elias had been a kid, he suffered from sleep paralysis. He would wake up from a nightmare, eyes flying open, to find his body fused to the mattress. His eyes would dart back and forth, his body rigid and tense under his quilt, while he listened to the faint sounds of his parents moving around the house, getting ready for bed.

This is what it’s like to be dead, he’d thought once, when he was seven, and, even after it had happened several times and he knew it would go away eventually, a part of him always believed that no, this time, this time he had actually died in his sleep.

He was sure he was doomed to haunt this horrible, too-big house, floating from empty echoing room to room, trailing behind his parents in the hopes that one of them might someday turn and see him again. Or maybe he was a ghost, only he was stuck in his body, and his parents would find him in the morning and think he was dead and bury him and he’d be trapped like this in the ground, still wearing his Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas, banging dull thuds uselessly against the top of his coffin. Inevitably, he’d terrify himself long before he could move again, salty, stinging tears flowing down the sides of his face and tickling his neck.

This was worse.

The thing that wore Elias’s body was called Jonah; he heard a man say it on the phone once during those terrible, vivid first few days. The only Jonah Elias had known was the one he learned about in school as a kid, the one who was swallowed by a whale. But if anyone was living in the belly of a beast, Elias thought bitterly, it was him. He decided to continue calling it “the thing.” After all, it didn’t want to use the name Jonah either.

It told everyone to call it Elias.

#my fic #tma #tma fic #michael shelley #michael distortion #og elias #michael/ogelias

[folkgirlhero]

I woke up in a fervor months ago at 4 am and wrote this down and completely forgot about it when I started writing my actual Michael/OGElias fic so I'm putting it out into the universe here bc I like it:

Elias had always had an easy carelessness, born from abundance, with his things. Sometimes that took the shape of extreme generosity, like Father Christmas benevolently distributing nugs of dank weed or drams of whiskey to his uni friends. Other times, it looked much more like an impatient child kicking an ant hill out of boredom.

Michael had very little of his own. Lost in the middle of a big family, toys and clothes were ephemeral, passing through his ownership and moving on too soon to the next in line. Friendships, too, were difficult, with him often finding himself on the 3rd or 4th tier, first choice of no one.

When Elias carelessly signed off a postcard "Yours" from his summer holiday with his family, Michael knew he was just following social writing conventions. It didn't matter. The idea that Elias could in any way, however small, be Michael's was intoxicating, filled him up to the brim. Michael looked at that little word every day until Elias returned and he could look at him instead.

#my fic #tma fic #michael shelley #og elias #drabble