So ever since this scene I've been fascinated with the question of Michael's feelings/emotions and his relationship with Becca and whether he can love, and if he does love her. I definitely think he cares for her but even he seems uncertain of whether he loves her. So this is my take on his thoughts during this scene.


"I don't want a good man. I want a great one. The man I love."

But he was not a man. Despite his love for humanity, despite the years of living amongst them -living, for all intents and purposes, as one of them - he was not human. Not a man at all but an angel, a celestial being. He was, and always would be, different, not only in body but in spirit... in mind. Was he even capable of love, in the way that Becca understood it?

Unbidden, that thought escaped his lips, sounding like a challenge. "What makes you think I'm capable of love?"

The question was as much to himself as to his lover. Was he? He felt emotions, certainly, felt them strongly, deeply. And he knew love. After all, was it not his love for the humans that had driven him to sacrifice everything, to turn against his brother, against his fellow angels, in order to protect them?

But the kind of love that Becca meant, the love between a man and a woman... was he, who was not even a man, capable of that? Was what he felt for Becca love? He cared for her, certainly. He admired her, was intruiged by her, even fascinated by her. He enjoyed the sharpness of her mind, appreciated the beauty of her features, admired her caring nature, her moral code. And her body... he could not deny his attraction to her, the allure of the enticing swells and curves of her lithe figure, so different to his own male physique, nor the exhilaration of their couplings, the way she responded to his touch, the sensations she evoked in his own body as she caressed him, writhed beneath him. Laying with her was arousing, entrancing... addictive. Despite the many good, logical arguments against their relationship – arguments that never failed to torment him in the aftermath of their ecstasy – he could not seem to bring himself to end it.

But was that love?

"I know you are." Becca seemed to think so. Or did she merely hope so? Did she truly see in him something of which he himself was uncertain, or had her love for him blinded her, made her see what she wanted to believe was there? It was foolish, he knew, to continue this association with her, a weakness that made them both vulnerable. But was it love that prevented him from walking away from her, or merely lust... or loneliness?

There was a desperation in her eyes as she looked to him for assurances he couldn't give and he saw the hurt cross her face at his silence and something in him ached at having caused her pain. And so he offered her what reassurance he could; if not the certainty of his love for her, then the physical expression of it. Tilting her face to his, he kissed her hungrily, feeling her body respond as he wrapped an arm around her and lowered them both to the bed.

And though his doubts would surely return to plague him, for now this... this thrill of sensation, this aching need, this ecstatic joining, this physical act of love... They could believe that this was love. Or close enough.


Fin.