Chapter 177: Karaoke

#MAEVE

Karaoke had been my idea, obviously because nothing else in the human world made me quite as unreasonably happy as a dim room, a bad microphone and a screen scrolling lyrics slightly out of sync with the actual song.

"This is a worse idea than bowling" Eldon said, surveying the tiny private room I'd booked. All red vinyl booths and a television screen currently cycling through a menu of songs nobody should ever attempt sober.

"Bowling was character building. This is just fun. Actual, uncomplicated fun. Sit down"

He sat, arms crossed, radiating the exact skepticism I'd come to expect. If I was honest, sort of adore watching him perform.

"I don't sing"

"Everyone sings. Some people are just braver about doing it badly"

"I don't do anything badly"

"That's adorable and also completely wrong. You're about to find out exactly how wrong in front of me specifically" I grabbed the little remote, scrolling through optionz. "I'm going first. Watch and learn dear sir"

I picked something loud and dramatic. More for the fun of the performance than any real vocal challenge and by the second verse I'd forgotten to be self-conscious about it at all, throwing myself into it the way I always did.

My one hand dramatically extended, absolutely committed to the bit.

When I glanced over mid-chorus, Eldon wasn't laughing at me the way I expected. He was watching me with an expression I didn't fully recognize. It was quiet and arrested like he'd forgotten that he'd been planning to mock this the entire time.

I finished the song to my own enthusiastic applause, breathless and grinning. I dropped back onto the booth beside him.

"Well?"

"You have a good voice" he said and there was nothing performative in it. None of his usual dry deflection.

"I know. I'm very talented. It's a whole thing"

"I mean it. That was.." He paused, something working behind his eyes that I couldn't quite place. "Unexpected"

"Unexpected how?"

He didn't answer immediately and something in his silence made me actually look at him properly. I caught the way his gaze had drifted unconsciously, to a strand of my hair that had come loose from the rest, catching the low light in a way that turned it nearly gold at the edges.

"Your voice" he said finally like he was choosing each word with more attention than the moment strictly required. "It reminded me of someone"

Something in my chest went very still. "Evea?"

He looked almost startled that I'd said the name outright. For a moment I thought he might deflect the way he usually did but instead he simply nodded, something old and complicated crossing his face.

He knew I heard Valdis talking about her though I’m not sure what they were saying to be honest.

"She used to sing" he said quietly. "Badly, by her own admission though I never thought so. Something in the register. The way you just held that last note" He shook his head slightly like he was trying to dislodge the comparison even as he made it. "It's strange, hearing an echo of something that far gone"

I didn't know what to do with that, sitting there in a dim karaoke room with the ghost of a woman I'd never met suddenly occupying the space between us.

"Was she nothing like me otherwise?" I asked, mostly to fill the silence though some smaller, more honest part of me actually wanted to know.

"Dark hair. Straight, always pulled back" His eyes moved back to mine then tracing over the loose red curls I stopped bothering to tame hours ago. "Nothing like yours"

"Is that a compliment or an observation?"

"Both"

Something in his voice had gone lower now, rougher. His hand came up before either of us seemed to fully decide it should, fingers catching that same loose strand and tucking it back. His knuckles brushing warm against my cheek in a way that sent heat curling low and immediate through my whole body.

"I keep finding myself looking at it. Your hair. I'm not entirely sure why" his deep voice deepened even more. Oh fuck. My kitty just dropped.

"Maybe you just like red"

"Maybe" His thumb traced along my jaw before he seemed to catch himself and pull his hand back. That Goldman familiar restraint reasserting itself even as his eyes stayed dark and fixed on mine. "Your turn again"

I felt my pulse hammering somewhere entirely too obvious. I cleared my throat, grabbing the remote with hands that were doing the most.

"Your turn, actually" I said, mostly to redirect the conversation away from wherever it had been threatening to go. "I sang. You sing now"

"Absolutely not"

"You said that about bowling too"

"I meant it more this time"

"Come on" I shoved the microphone toward him, grinning despite the heat still sitting low in my stomach from thirty seconds ago. "One song. I'll pick something easy"

I picked something slow and ridiculous on purpose. He glared at the screen like it had personally insulted his entire bloodline but when the music started he stood anyway.

His voice when it finally came out was so low and rough and entirely unpracticed. But it did something to me that no amount of teasing could have prepared me for.

He was terrible. Genuinely, wonderfully terrible. He is flat in places, entirely off rhythm in others.

I laughed so hard I nearly fell off the booth. He shot me a look over the microphone that promised retaliation though something in his eyes stayed warm the entire time, competitive and pleased despite the disastrous performance.

By the time he finished, both of us were laughing and he dropped back down beside me.

He was closs enough that our thighs pressed together and I could feel the warmth radiating off him after actual physical exertion, however minor karaoke exertion technically counted as.

"That was humiliating" he said though he didn't sound remotely bothered by it.

"That was the best thing I've ever witnessed"

"I'm never doing that again"

"You absolutely are. We're coming back next week"

His eyes found mine, his hand found my knee, casual at first and then not. His fingers were pressing warmly against my skin in a way that had my breath catching somewhere I couldn't easily disguise.

"Maeve"

"Yeah"

"I don't know what you're doing to me"

The words settled heavier than the playful tone he'd tried to wrap them in. I felt the air between us go thick and charged again. The same unresolved heat from the bowling alley pooling low and insistent, both of us leaning in slightly without either of us deciding to.

His hand slid higher and I felt my whole body respond before my brain caught up. Some reckless, hungry part of me wanting badly to close the distance and finally find out what happened when neither of us pulled back.

Then the door to the room banged open. A group of loud, drunk strangers looking for their own booking and we broke apart fast, breathless. We all chuckled awkwardly at the interruption

#..#

#ELDON

I hadn't expected the hair to undo me quite as thoroughly as it had.

Evea's hair had been dark and straight and always neatly bound in the fashion of her coven. I'd loved it without ever once feeling the distracted pull that Maeve's hair produced in me now.

Hers is all wilf and red and entirely unbothered by any attempt to be tamed.

It should have unsettled me more than it did. The echo of her voice sitting alongside a woman who looked nothing like her, sounded nothing like her in speech, moved through the world with an entirely different kind of chaos than Evea's careful nonchalance ever carried.

And yet I sat in that ridiculous small room watching Maeve laugh at her own terrible song selection for me. Those red curls catching the low light.

I found myself wondering, not for the first time, how much of what I felt watching her was simply attraction. How much of it was something more complicated stirring in the space where a century-old grief had lived undisturbed for far too long.