Chapter Text
It’s not a decision either of them is actually making.
That’s what Michael tells himself when it happens for the first time, that he didn’t decide and Alex didn’t decide and in fact fighting the inevitability of it would only be adding more pain into a world already saturated with suffering.
They’d been at the junkyard. They’d been talking over Project Shepherd notes. Michael had been commiserating about the life with his mother that had been stolen from him, and Alex had been listening, expression solemn and understanding. It’s easy to unburden himself to Alex in a way it’s not with Maria, mostly because Michael doesn’t want to bother her with any of this. He has the instinct not to hurt her. Things with her mother are so difficult, and she’s learning about her powers, and whatever the hell Michael’s got going on in his own emotional landscape, it’s not something he needs to add to her plate.
But with Alex it’s— what the fuck else could Michael say to Alex, that could make things between them more complicated? They’ve already maxed out on the complications. They’ve already twisted each other up as much as any two people can be twisted around one another. There’s a freedom in that.
So they’d talked later into the evening than they’d meant to, and they’d had one more beer each than they’d been planning. And it’s warm outside, and the glow of the fire is throwing strange, hypnotizing patterns across Alex’s face. Alex gets a text, glances down at his phone.
“That’s Forrest. I’m supposed to meet him for drinks.”
Michael nods. This does not sting, even a little bit. Michael has a girlfriend, Alex has a person who might potentially become a boyfriend. It is a world separate from the two of them. Alex had told him about a paintball date, a couple of awkward false-starts, but they’ve been making a go of it for a couple weeks, seeing where things take them.
Michael stands as Alex does, and without thinking much about it he brings his arms up for a hug, and Alex steps into it, squeezing tight. There’s no back-slapping, no safely masculine and platonic distancing to the touch. It’s just a warm, gentle embrace, Alex’s cheek pressed against Michael’s, Alex’s lips mere centimeters away from his ear. And then Alex steps back very slightly, Michael’s arms slip away from his back and land in the dip of his waist, and their mouths are pressed together.
Neither of them had meant anything by it. It’s only a kiss. It’s only Alex’s tongue in his mouth and Alex’s chest pressed against his, and the warm cascade of Alex’s breath on his skin as he pulls back from it before pressing forward for more. It’s Alex’s hand scratching up into his curls, curving strong and steady against the back of his skull, and Alex’s nose brushing against his cheekbone as their lower lips slide against one another’s. It’s only that the gentle drag of the touch is soft enough to tickle, soft enough that Michael has to press forward again and again, harder and deeper, to chase it away.
It’s happened a thousand times before, so how could it possibly matter, how could it possibly really count as anything bad or wrong or remarkable at all, that it’s happening again now?
Michael’s hands tighten on Alex’s waist, and they sway ever-so-slightly into each other, like they’re on the verge of a slow dance. Alex’s fingers move in Michael’s hair, crushing it into disarray as their mouths move together, deep, wet, kisses, each of them pushing into the other’s space, Alex surging forward and Michael inviting him to it, then Alex pulling and Michael pushing to keep it going.
On, and on, and on. A kiss like any other kiss. Michael is thinking about nothing but this. Blissfully, absolutely nothing— his brain has gone entirely quiet.
And then it ends as it had begun, another decision not being made. Just their lips parting, their breathing harsh, too fast, both of them holding onto each other as if they might fall over if they stop.
Alex’s mouth clicks shut and he takes a deep breath through his nose and then releases it slowly, stepping back so he can meet Michael’s eyes. Michael’s hands are still on him. They are still so close together. It might keep happening, who’s to say? It’s not up to Michael, it’s not up to anyone. It’s up to the universe.
Alex tilts his head to the side, his eyes fierce. Not anger or regret or horror or anything specific, really—he just looks like he’s thinking very hard about something.
Then he nods, and his arms drop from around Michael’s shoulders, and he’s stepping back, breaking Michael’s grasp on him as well. “Okay,” he says calmly. “Goodnight, Michael.”
“Goodnight,” Michael says back politely.
And then Alex turns and walks away, and Michael watches him leave. The end.
The end.
The end, really.
~~~~~
The thing is, their lives are kind of crazy right now. Alex is playing some kind of dangerous game with his father and Project Shepherd, hunting down information about the past. And he’s trying to start a new relationship with Forrest Long at the same time. And Maria is learning more about her powers. And Rosa is struggling with her second chance at life. And Michael is learning about his mother’s past, and he’s trying to be a good boyfriend to Maria, and also he still has to go to work and earn a paycheck and buy groceries and stuff.
Which is why, a few days after he and Alex had kissed out by the fire just around the corner from where he stands now, Michael is leaning over the open hood of somebody’s sturdy old work truck trying to figure out what’s giving the engine trouble. He’s just sinking into it, puzzling out the truck’s stubborn secrets, when Alex stops by the junkyard to see him.
He assumes it’s more Project Shepherd notes, or maybe news about how Mimi’s doing. Maria sometimes doesn’t remember to tell these things to him, because she likes to keep the different pieces of her life separate, so sometimes Alex passes along messages so Michael will know if Maria needs his support. Maybe that’s weird, but it works for them. It’s part of what they all are to each other.
Michael stands up, leans against the side of the truck as Alex climbs out of his own car.
“Hey,” he says easily.
“Hey yourself.”
Alex isn't holding any official looking folders in his hands, liable to contain devastating new information about Nora Truman or the Manes family business. He doesn’t look nervous or upset, either.
“So uh— I think something’s wrong with my car, was wondering if you had time to take a look.”
Liar, Michael thinks fondly. “Oh really? Sure, yeah, I’d be happy to.”
He comes closer, pretending to study Alex’s car as if he thinks he’ll see the nonexistent problem with his naked eye. The second he’s close enough, Alex reaches a hand out and puts it on his elbow.
“No,” Alex says, shrugging his shoulders. “Not really. There’s nothing wrong with my car.”
So, as if the whole thing had been planned in advance, they go inside the Airstream and have some of the most intense, out of control, brutally fantastic sex of Michael’s life.
It’s like— both of them leave their brains somewhere outside. They’re hardly themselves, Michael and Alex, there’s none of the pain of their pasts or the unutterable tenderness of their connection to one another. They are two bodies who want—need—to crawl into one another, to become something else, something stronger and more complete.
It’s not entirely clear to him, how they decide what’s going to happen and in what order. How they go from standing in the scant empty space next to the tiny shelf of a bed bruising each other’s mouths with the ferocity of their kisses, to lying out naked with Alex on top of Michael, biting on his earlobe and grinding against him, messy and fierce, both of them barrelling towards a release that will come too soon and yet cannot come soon enough. Michael is on fire; he can feel the way his skin is hotter than the man he’s holding in his arms, feel the way he is inhuman, something other; and yet, utterly encompassed in this moment, it seems impossible that he could ever belong anywhere else.
It’s—
They’ve had a lot of sex in this Airstream since Alex first came back to town. Agonized, anxious sex, where Michael had no idea what Alex wanted and what to expect and how he was going to hold his bleeding heart safe in his chest when the love of his life inevitably decided to leave him behind again. Tender, soft sex, all the more torturous for its apparent impermanence, sex where all Michael could think as Alex sighed out his name, kissed him with terrible gentleness, was, it could be like this, it could be like this always, couldn’t it? But it couldn't, it never could. It never can. Playful sex, almost competitive in its ferocity, feral grins stretching their faces into rictuses of predatory delight. No laughter, though, like when they’d been kids, giddy with the joy of every new feeling they could wring out of each other’s bodies. They seem to have left laughter behind in those childhoods, where things had felt simpler, even though they really hadn’t been.
And then of course the last time they’d had each other, the last time Michael had watched Alex’s mouth drop open, head thrown back on a gasp as he’d come, release spilling over Michael’s fingers, they’d been here too. And it had been soft and sweet and kind, and Maria had been there, brushing her hand through Michael’s hair, sighing in pleasure as Alex had kissed the slope of her neck. And Michael had been so relieved, had felt so—settled, with them both there, close to him, safe, and he—he’d pressed the bandage to Alex’s chest, settled his palm over his heart just to feel the evidence of this, of his life, his precious, irreplaceable life, thrumming there against his hand.
This sex is nothing like any of those things, and somehow like all of it all at once, wrapped up into a package that surpasses logic and meaning and any sort of rational ability to think.
They roll around in the tiny space, grasping at each other, breathing hard; Alex presses his muffled moans right against Michael’s mouth, and Michael swallows every sound he makes, greedy for it. Greedy for all of him. He chases Alex’s pulse, finds it against the side of his neck and licks out against it. Bites, like he wants to break the skin and pull the very vitality of Alex’s life into his own body. He won’t do that, of course. In fact, he’s barely started worrying the tender skin between his teeth when Alex is tugging a hand through his hair, pulling him off. “We can’t,” he says gently.
We can’t.
We can’t leave marks, he means. Evidence of this for somebody else to discover later on.
It doesn’t pop the bubble, it doesn’t bring the floodgates of shame and guilt and confusion crashing in on them. It’s just another logistical consideration, like—who has the lube and where’s the condom, and is this position okay, and are you close, and don’t mark me up or the guy I’m dating might see.
He just nods and burrows his face in Alex’s neck, the safest place in the universe, and takes both their cocks in hand, stroking hard and fast and just perfect, like they had when they were kids and this simple act had felt better than anything had any right to.
And Alex cries out, louder than he’d usually be; he bucks forward into the pressure of Michael’s palm, he runs his hands up and down Michael’s back, he groans and gasps and says Michael’s name, kisses him sloppy and good and agitated and ruinously thorough all at once. All Michael wants is to make him come, all Michael needs is to make him feel as good as Alex is capable of feeling, and Michael knows, in a way that nobody else could ever hope to, how hard he has to work for happiness. How inaccessible he finds it, after everything. That Michael can give him this is somehow proof positive that what they’re doing here is right, is only natural. Alex needs this. Alex needs Michael, and for fuck’s sake, in what universe is Michael capable of denying him anything?
Michael comes first, which catches him off guard, everything gathering to a white-hot point of pressure, spilling out of him as he shakes and shudders and pushes up, up, trying to sink into the body above him, trying to melt and become a piece of Alex, trying to belong to him so thoroughly that no piece of himself is left outside of that. Alex licks at his mouth, along the side of his jaw, something almost animal in it, a soothing gesture, as his own orgasm overtakes him, come splashing hot down onto Michael’s stomach. It’s salvation. It’s more than Michael can find words to express.
In the aftermath, Michael’s heart beating too fast against the front of his throat, his skin sweaty and his limbs heavy, he runs an arm idly down Alex’s back and he asks: “are you and Forrest officially together, then? I knew you had that date with him, but—”
“I don’t know,” Alex answers easily. “I got a little spooked on him when he wanted to go out somewhere in public. But he’s a good guy, we’ve been— we’ve been seeing where things go.”
“Good,” Michael says, without thinking through whether he means it. “Good, you deserve someone good.”
“So do you,” Alex says.
And it’s not until he’s disentangled himself, put his prosthetic back on, kissed Michael goodbye on his way out the door like it’s something they do every day, that Michael hears the words for what they must secretly have meant. You deserve someone good, which is why I need to get the fuck out.
Michael wishes he had the words to explain to Alex that he is good, and that anyway, that’s not the point. They both know it by now. They’re going to want each other until the end of the world, and it doesn’t matter who they hurt, it doesn’t matter who’s a good person and who isn’t. It doesn’t matter what anybody deserves. He has Alex, and Alex has him, and there’s no going back on it now.
~~~~~
They always pretend it’s not going to happen again. Without discussing it, every encounter is an intended last, a goodbye, the end of a mistake.
And then they’re in Michael’s Airstream again and Michael’s on his knees and Alex is fucking his mouth, hands fisted in Michael’s hair hard enough to hurt, head thrown back and voice hoarse from how loudly he’s calling out Michael’s name and Michael is moaning around him like a porn star. And he thinks while it’s happening about how nice sex can be with Maria and how she gasps his name in breathless astonishment when he goes down on her and how nothing in the fucking universe could ever, ever, come close to how it feels when Alex chokes out on a final groan and pumps his hips up faster and comes down Michael’s throat.
And then they’re at Alex’s place and Alex is kissing dizzying, slow patterns down the length of his spine, is fingering him open with endless, devoted patience until Michael is weeping for him, and Alex is inside of him so deep and he goes so slow; he thinks of Maria’s soft skin and lovely bright eyes and he doesn’t feel guilty because Alex belongs inside of him, they belong here together, and this is a truth bigger than anything else could ever hope to be.
And then they’re making out like teenagers in the cramped cab of Michael’s truck, Alex in his lap and sucking at his neck, mashing their mouths together hungrily. Grinding up against one another, their clothed dicks rubbing together and sending cascading sparks of sensation through Michael’s limbs, and he’s holding Alex to him with bruising strength and hoping this can go on forever and ever. And Maria is working a late shift at the Pony, she’ll have him over later, they’ll watch TV or something, and maybe they’ll have sex, and while it’s happening, he’ll think fleetingly of Alex, the same way he’s thinking fleetingly of Maria now.
When he’s with Alex, he doesn’t feel guilty. When he’s with Maria, and she smiles at him and kisses him hello and wraps an arm around his waist as they walk together, he doesn’t feel guilty either.
When he’s alone, it’s—
He tries not to be alone. He tries not to think too hard, to study his own justifications, because the second he examines his behavior too closely he knows every excuse inside his head will crumble to dust. Basically all he’s got is: it’s Alex. It’s just Alex, and Alex doesn’t count. There is no set of circumstances, no condition his life could be in, where he will not be helplessly, hopelessly, enthralled to the very fact that Alex Manes exists in this world.
But if he thinks about it— he knows he’s the bad guy here. He’s not an idiot, he knows, in the parts of his mind still operating in the realm of the rational, that there are no excuses good enough for this behavior. He knows he’s causing harm, and he doesn’t want to stop. Hence the not thinking about it.
He and Alex don’t really talk about any of it either, but they also don’t—not talk about it. As fucked up as it is whenever he examines it in an objective way, and as much as it makes no sense, he and Alex are actually more comfortable with each other than they’ve ever been. They’re in a really good place. They’re—happy, in a way that seems almost simple, almost true and real and good. They’d never managed that, not after that first night, not after everything good and golden and pure in the world was sucked out of the room by the entrance of Alex’s father.
But they lie together, Michael and Alex, sated after sex, and they talk idly about their lives, up to and including their actual official relationships; Michael mentions plans with Maria, Alex discusses the strangeness of trying to start something with Forrest, who’s so different from anyone Alex is used to. And both of them are able to selectively delete the wrongness of what they’re doing from the conversation. When they’re together, Michael can have Alex’s naked body pressed up against his and can genuinely feel as if they’re just two friends chatting casually about life.
Like—maybe, and he knows it’s fucked up to think it but he thinks it anyway, maybe they’ve actually figured it out. Maybe this is good. They can be healthy, be normal, find ordinary relationships that might be fulfilling and beautiful in their own ways with other people. And then on top of that they can have—whatever the fuck this is. This soul-rending, life-destroying intensity, the kind of sex he’s never been able to replicate with anyone else, that sense of his body being flipped inside out just at the gift of being able to touch, to feel. To know someone like Alex, to be known by him in return, it’s a beautiful thing, it’s a precious thing, it’s—an impossible thing. It feels like it might not even be real in the light of day, that if they tried to expose it to the outside world it would turn in on itself and disappear.
He thinks Alex has been right all along. Everything else in the world is the problem. The two of them, carefully hidden at the center of their own private universe, don’t need to let the rest of it touch them. Maybe their only road to happiness is to shut the door on all of it, and take what they both need from each other. There were fantasies he’d once harbored, fantasies about belonging and love and some conventional happy ever after, where he and someone (he and Alex) could have a home and children and daily routines, picking up coffee for one another, kissing goodbye in the driveway as they head off for work, holding hands on a stroll through town.
And maybe Michael has finally, painfully, closed the door on such childish things. A victory for them both.
*****
So then he and Alex get in a fight.
It had probably been inevitable, but the whole thing still takes Michael by surprise. They’ve been so solid, so in sync, making joint decisions about their batshit insane behavior without even needing to discuss it, dancing the dance of denial and desperate stolen joy in perfect harmony.
But the thing is, there are a lot of things they simply don’t agree about. Alex is never going to understand, never going to actually understand, what it is to be an alien, a displaced refugee, a person who doesn’t belong. A person for whom any given information breach might rain down disaster and pain. Alex isn’t stupid, and yet somehow even so, he wants to give over a piece of alien tech to his alien-hating, abusive father. He’s willing to give the motherfucker who kicked him around and sent him to war another chance. And maybe it’s jealousy, resentment, maybe it’s the absurd feeling that Alex sure is willing to give a piece of shit like Jesse Manes as many chances as he needs, but god forbid Michael ever make a mistake, god forbid Alex cut him some slack when he—
But none of that is fair. Alex keeps coming back to his father again and again, but he keeps coming back to Michael too.
Maybe the problem is, he shouldn’t be doing that either. Fuck his whole stupid life.
Down in Michael’s lair, a place that’s supposed to be safe from all the shit he doesn’t want to deal with, he and Alex yell at each other. Michael says some things he definitely means but still shouldn’t have said, he throws the past in Alex’s face in a way that Alex doesn’t deserve, and Alex snaps back just as ferociously, and he thinks about—just a couple days ago, Michael and Alex had come down here and Michael had dropped to his knees and Alex had leaned against the wall and he’d braced his hands on Michael’s shoulder, and Michael had nuzzled his head into his stomach, breathed him in, stayed down there for a long time before he’d even bothered to start anything. He’d been content, sheltered, in a place where the only people who are allowed to come in are the ones he invites. The ones he wants.
He thinks about all of that, and Alex promises to protect him, and Michael lets him leave with the piece of his consul, because he is a fucking idiot who has long since lost the power to say no to Alex about anything whatsoever.
And then just days later, the world shatters around him.
In the aftermath of Alex’s kidnapping, of Crash Con and all that happens there, it will be difficult to construct a precise timeline for everyone. Isobel will ask if he’s okay, Liz will want to know exactly what happened, what Jesse did, what Helena said. People will try and sort out the science of it, the two bombs, the master plan, how Jesse found the console piece, how Michael had discovered his deception from the back of a napkin. Greg Manes will have his father’s blood on his hands, and so, so many questions that need answering. But all Michael can construct inside his head is how it had felt. That glowing ember of anger and the ice cold dread and despair, the two sensations so powerful as to have a neutralizing effect, leaving him a numb, passionless void. Alex is gone, Alex is gone, Alex is gone.
There had been nothing else in the world but that.
He’d hit Jesse Manes with his own cane, he’d used his powers to slam Flint’s head into a car door, he’d grimly and meticulously created a weapon designed to destroy himself and his siblings.
He doesn’t think he takes a single deep breath until he sees Alex alive and lucid and really fucking annoyed, there on the floor in front of him.
“Do you know where they put your prosthetic?” Michael asks after he’s explained the situation, put his hands on either side of Alex’s face, studied him, looking for signs of harm. He glances around the room fruitlessly for some way to cut the chain on Alex’s leg. “Or you can probably use me as a crutch, at least just out to my truck.”
Alex shakes his head, grimacing. “I don’t know. We can worry about my leg later, I’m more worried about what we’re going to do. About the bomb.”
“You’re not doing anything,” Michael says. “You’re staying the hell away. If that thing goes off and you’re anywhere near…”
He doesn’t even want to think about it. He’d been sick to his stomach while he’d been working on the bomb, knowing he was creating the potential means for his own destruction. His, and Max and Isobel’s, too. Even Maria.
But if he helped in a chain of events that leads to Alex’s death, he’ll—
There are no words for something like that.
“Well I’m not going anywhere unless you can get this thing off of me.”
And then Alex freezes, jaw clenching as he looks over Michael’s shoulder. Michael whirls around, hand already stretched in front of him. He’s expecting Jesse or Flint, he’s preparing himself to force his powers to come back online against all logic in the universe, push the danger away from Alex’s body or else use his own body to take the brunt of whatever may come. He’s given every piece of himself to Alex already, he’d give his life too without blinking an eye. But it’s not somebody here to hurt them, at least not physically. It’s Helena Ortecho standing in the doorway.
“Time’s up,” Helena says, tapping her hand against the door frame. “You need to go, Michael.”
“I can’t—” he says, fruitlessly, to his kidnapper. He can’t. He can’t leave Alex here, he— can’t let him out of his sight ever again, maybe. He wonders what Alex would think of that plan, wonders if he should take the Airstream and park it in Alex’s driveway, the way he’d brought it to the Wild Pony for Maria. He hasn’t talked to Maria, Maria doesn’t know where he is, nobody does, he’d come here without taking a second to think through the consequences. He’d come here without so much as a text message to Izzy or Max.
“Now,” Helena repeats. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”
“Michael,” Alex says, a tight and anxious little sound. His hand comes up and curves around Michael’s elbow, squeezes. “Just go, get out of here. I need you safe.”
I need you safe. What the fuck is that even supposed to mean, coming from Alex? What a goddamn hypocrite, what an asshole, how is he supposed—
But then, of course, there’s the fact that Michael needs Alex safe, too. Needs to know he’s safe, even if uncomfortable and captive, more than he needs to be able to keep his eyes on him.
He can leave Alex there, it turns out. He can, actually, stand in the doorway and promise to come back for him and then leave. He even feels a little bit relieved about it, knowing that Alex has absolutely no self-preservational instincts.
So honestly, he shouldn’t be surprised that Alex finds a way out of his imprisonment anyway, and runs straight into impossible danger. He thinks, as Jesse Manes points a gun at him and Alex shouts in fear and Greg Manes, sprawled on the floor, pulls the trigger that ends a monster’s life, of how very little control he has over anything.
And how it’s only been recently that that thought even… bothered him. Or, not bothered him precisely, but— became something he thought he might be able to change. Everything that’s happened to him his whole life has been because other people made the decisions. His mother, to stick him in a pod and leave him to wake up half a century later, alone and weak and without a clue. The Evanses when they took the good kids and left the broken one behind. The foster system, putting him with people who blamed him for their own problems, who took out their anger and dissatisfaction with the world on a kid who had nowhere else to turn. Max and Isobel, their whole damn lives. Alex. Alex, who had been making de facto decisions for the both of them from the second they’d started this whole thing, because Michael hadn’t known how to take back any of the control. Had wanted him bad enough that the thought of doing anything that might decrease his chance to be in Alex’s presence had seemed like self-sabotage in and of itself.
Maybe that’s what he’s been trying to do these past few months. Since he’d seen his mother and then lost his mother all within the same sparse handful of minutes. Since he’d pulled Isobel away from Max’s cooling body on the ground of that cave. Since Alex had tried to ask him, again, to put himself at risk for the chance that this time would be different, this time wouldn’t hurt so bad.
Who is he kidding? He and Alex are always going to be painful. The most painful part of a painful life. It’s who they are, it’s who they’ve been since Jesse Manes opened that shed door and took things into his own hands.
Given the chaos of that night, all the other horrors it presents to him, he’s not even surprised when he hears Maria’s been rushed to the hospital. His body is at its limit, there is no more stress or fear it could possibly contain. He’s terrified, but the terror hovers outside himself, something abstract and numbing and far, far away.
Once it’s clear that Maria is going to be okay, Michael gets the idea that she’s gearing up to have a serious conversation with him. Maybe in the back of her brilliant, insightful mind, she’s already put together the fact that Michael loving her isn’t enough to matter in the face of everything else they have going on.
And maybe it’s true, but—
But.
He’s aware this makes him a terrible person, but when he’d heard Maria was in the hospital, that she was sick and hurt and maybe even dying, his fear had been— survivable. Nameable.
He’d been worried, of course. Desperately worried. He’d felt how badly it would hurt to lose her, how much he wanted her to be okay, how much she matters to him, how deep his love and affection and admiration truly go.
But he’d—when Alex had been—
There aren’t words for it. There aren’t words, and as much as he knows that he can’t ever let Alex go, he also can’t quite bear the thought of placing all his hopes for a survivable future on someone like him. On someone whose loss has the power to blot out the sun, leave incurable desolation in his wake.
So he makes yet another selfish choice. He takes Maria’s hand and he holds on tight. She lets him get away with it.
*****
Maria’s not even out of the hospital and already talking about how to learn more about her visions, and Flint Manes is alive but not yet out of the woods according to Kyle, and there’s a skeleton under the floorboards of the shed where Michael and Alex first came to love one another, and Jesse Manes is dead and the whole town is calling him a hero, and—
And there’s a fucking mystery alien trapped in a cave with Max’s face.
Michael can’t sleep. He can’t sleep, and it’s not because of any of the aforementioned catastrophes, the fact that he’d had a gun held on him and had watched Alex at the mercy of his father, it’s not Maria’s dangerous behavior, it’s not Liz fucking off and leaving Max a broken wreck yet again.
It’s just that he feels like a lying piece of shit about the Alex situation. A mundane, shitty, stupid person who has a whole laundry list of creative and unique problems and traumas to address, and has decided to add cheating bastard onto the top of the disaster sundae, a bitter cherry on top of melting ice cream.
For the past month every time it’s occurred to him that he should feel guilty, he’s put the feeling on hold. Saved it up for future Michael to deal with. Well. They seem to have arrived at future Michael, and it turns out, he fucking hates that guy.
It had taken the very real prospect of losing Alex for good to make him face up to reality. All the careful boxes, where conventional happiness with one person could remain separate from unconventional, desperate, unending need with another, all of it splinters to pieces and reveals the depth of his own hypocrisy.
Because—it’s not even a contest, really. None of it.
When he tries to imagine a future with Maria, getting married, buying a house, having kids, his brain keeps interrupting him. But what about Alex? Where’s Alex? He should be with me, he should always be with me.
Ever since he was seventeen, he’s kept a space open inside his heart. Waiting for Alex to come back. And now Alex is… he’s here. Maybe he’s been waiting on an answer he’s already been given. Maybe Michael needs to grow the hell up.
And what if he discovers once and for all that he’s not strong enough to do the right thing? What if every voice in his head telling him he’s worthless and weak and doomed to hurt and be hurt by the people around him, is true?
Hasn’t that been the whole point of all of this? Proving to himself that that wasn’t true? That he could decide to make something better of his future? Because whatever that space is that’s open and raw and waiting for completion inside of him, he’s not sure if the jagged edges can actually be filled by Alex’s love. He’s not sure if the ways in which he’s broken can be healed by someone caring about him, holding him together with the strength of that care. He wants that to be how it works, fuck, he wants that so bad, his whole life he’s thought of it like that, thought that if he couldn’t find the person who could fix the emptiness here on earth, it was only because he didn’t belong here. And if he could find his people, the pain wouldn’t matter. The pain would be gone.
He’s smart enough now to know that he’s not a fuck-up because he’s an alien, trying to plant roots in soil foreign to him. He’s smart enough to look around at all the born and bred human beings who belong on this planet, and to know they’re just as lonely as he is, for the most part. The actual lesson he’s still trying to learn is that he’s not actually fucking special, at all.
Just a few days after Crash-Con, and Michael feels like one big bruise on the inside, overstimulated and achy and like he still can’t catch up on his sleep. He feels like there’s something he’s forgetting to do, queasy guilt and hesitation filling his throat with acid every time he sees Maria. Things have been off with them since that talk in the hospital. It’s like he’s watching a building collapse, or an airplane crash, all in slow motion. It’s like they both know they’re holding onto the tattered, ragged remnants of something that never had a chance to really blossom or grow strong. Which makes it all the more inexcusable that Michael is still holding on at all, doesn’t it?
He makes excuses not to see her, and she accepts them without question, and honestly as much as he’s always craved company and belonging, he’s also gotten used to having his own space. Somewhere he can be utterly and safely alone with himself.
But it’s not like he’s disappointed when he pulls into the junkyard and sees Alex’s car. In fact, the squeezing hand around his heart relaxes. His skin feels less tight against his bones. He wants— god, he wants coming home to Alex to be the same as coming home to an empty house. Ordinary, comforting. A sanctuary he might get used to, and accept as his normal.
“Hey,” he says when he swings the door to his Airstream open. Alex is sitting on the narrow bed, but he stands up as Michael enters.
Michael comes forward to kiss him and Alex allows it, but he pulls back quickly, keeping the touch chaste and simple.
He frowns. “You okay? How’s—everything with—”
“Greg’s okay,” Alex says, his face turning down into a frown even as he says it. “I mean—as okay as it’s possible for him to be.”
“And are you?” Michael says. It hurts, how badly he wants Alex to be okay. Michael’s never been able to take care of him the way he deserves.
“Am I okay?” Alex asks, and he sounds exactly as incredulous and disdainful as the question deserves. “I’m—” he pauses to sigh, leaning back against the door of the Airstream. “We need to talk about something.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“It’s not,” Alex says. “It’s just—the inevitable. We have to stop this.” He waves his hand between the two of them, the gesture vague and yet impossibly eloquent. There’s no way not to know what he means.
Michael bites his bottom lip, so he won’t say the first thing that comes to his mind, which is are you fucking kidding me?
Instead he takes a deep breath through his mouth, releases it through his nose. It’s something he’s seen Alex do a thousand times, when he’s trying to organize his thoughts, trying to remain calm. “Why now?”
“It’s wrong,” Alex says bluntly.
“It’s been wrong this whole time,” Michael says flatly, although he wants to argue. It’s not wrong, it’s us. The rest of the stupid world is what’s wrong. “So why now?”
“It’s too much.”
They’re standing with hardly more than a foot of space between them, and Michael wants to erase it, wants to lift a hand. That’s all it would take, and they’d be touching. His arms are heavy. There’s heat, crawling up his neck and onto his face. There’s numbness, rooting his feet to the ground.
“So it’s just—what, we just—live our lives, pretending this isn’t…” he manages to lift a hand, gesture it weakly between the two of them. “I don’t know how to do that, Alex.”
“I’m in love with you,” Alex says with a shrug. “And it doesn’t really bother me when we’re together but the second I’m alone, I’m bleeding out over it, Guerin. It hurts too much. And I guess when we started this I didn’t care, it was worth it because I needed you, and I still need you but I can’t— I’m trying to do a good thing here. I’m trying to do what I need to survive.”
“What do you want me to say?” Michael says hoarsely. He’s terrified. More than he’d expected to be. All the lies he’d been telling himself have fallen utterly away. He’d never thought this would end, because he’d known he wouldn’t survive it again if it did. The thought of Alex leaving him just one more time had been so absurdly, grotesquely debilitating that he’d ignored it as a real possibility. “What’s the thing I say to you right now that gets you to change your mind?”
Alex sighs, shakes his head. “I don’t know. Break up with your girlfriend, for a start?”
“I—will,” Michael says mechanically. “Of course I will. I don’t—what about Forrest?”
“I’m not in love with Forrest,” Alex says simply. “You’re in love with Maria, okay? And she’s better for you than I am. Let me try and be the bigger person here. Let me just walk away—”
“That’s all you’ve ever done to us. From the start. Every fucking time, you’ve walked away. I thought you said you were sick of it.”
“I told you I was ready to stay and fight for us, and you told me no,” Alex says, and he’s not bothering to hide the quiet devastation in the words. “I waited too long.”
“You didn’t,” Michael says. “Are you kidding me? You could walk away right now and turn up again in thirty years and I’d drop to my knees. Don’t pretend you don’t know—”
“Michael,” Alex says, and he swallows, his eyes misting with tears. Michael kind of wants to die about it. Alex crying is not something he’s strong enough to endure. “You said you wanted to be good for somebody. You told me what you wanted, and it’s not this.”
“I was full of shit!” Michael says. “Or—I don’t know. You’re right, I wanted to make a healthy choice, whatever the fuck that even means, but it doesn’t matter, okay? Maybe I don’t care that we’re fucked up messes. Maybe I love you too much to care about the rest of it.”
“But I care,” Alex says hoarsely. “I can’t ruin your life any more than I already have.”
“I’m breaking up with Maria,” Michael says. His voice comes out all shaky and weak and he can’t control it. “I’m doing it, Alex, just—I’ll call her right now if that’s what you want. And you and I, we can do this the right way, we can make this right—”
“We’ve already done this the wrong way,” Alex says helplessly. “We’ve already done it the wrong way a million times and we can’t walk it back. We can’t go back to being people who aren’t cheaters. I can’t go back and unbreak your heart all the times I left you because I was too much of a coward to fight for us. I can’t stop belonging to the family that took you away from your family. I can’t stop being the guy who told you I had a safe place to offer you when you were a scared teenager without shelter, and then let you get hurt anyway because I wanted you, and I’m a selfish stupid idiot who thought—”
“None of that is true,” Michael says. He’s scooped out, hollow, still living in the disbelieving crash of this insane conversation he’d somehow deluded himself into thinking he’d never have to have. “Your family isn’t your fault.”
“It doesn’t matter, because neither of us can see past it,” Alex says.
“This is just— so fucking typical of you, there’s always a reason, there’s always some excuse why you walking away from me again is actually the right thing, and I’m not—”
“Well look what standing still’s got me,” Alex says coldly.
It grinds the gears to a stop inside Michael’s roiling, churning gut. “What is that even supposed to mean?”
“I told you I was sick of walking away. And so I stayed. I’ve been staying, I’ve been—trying, here. To show you that you can count on me. But it’s clear to me by this point that even if you love me, I lost the chance to make things right a long time ago. So I can’t keep—I can’t live in the in between.”
It occurs to Michael that his delusion had gone even deeper than he knew. Not only was he lying to himself that what he and Alex have been up to was okay, forgivable, excusable because of the circumstances. He’d also been lying to himself that he and Alex were somehow magically on the same page. That after half a lifetime of utterly failing to communicate with one another, they’d finally gotten it right. Words were beyond them, because they had each other. And they each knew, each instinctively knew, why it had to be this way. Why it had to be a sacred hidden thing they both protected from the corrosive dangers of reality. Michael finally getting on board with Alex’s preference for secrecy.
And the whole time, Alex had been—trying to tell him something. Trying to prove himself. And Michael responded to that by doubling down on Maria every chance he got, and then kissing Alex into a stupor, holding him close, only where nobody else would ever see.
Talk about a fucking role reversal.
“I’m not a good person,” Michael says. “I’m not—all that stuff about wanting to be good for somebody, maybe it’s time I accept that I can’t have that, that—that I’m not built for it. And maybe you’re not a good person either, I don’t know. Maybe nobody else deserves either one of our sorry asses.”
Alex smiles, and—god, it’s a horrible smile, something defeated and gentle. A smile of someone who didn’t come here to be convinced. Alex, as always, as made up his mind without giving Michael a chance.
“You are a good person,” Alex says quietly. “And it’s my turn to—try and become one, okay?”
Michael can’t think of a single thing to say to that. Alex has done a lot of things that Michael’s not sure how to forgive. Alex has hurt him immeasurably, is carving the knife even deeper right now, as they speak. But the reasons Alex hates himself—Michael can’t agree with him. Can’t dig down into the core of him and pluck the swinging of that hammer out of his soul. It’s buried in Alex maybe even more than it’s buried in Michael, in some ways. Michael’s always known that, but he hadn’t quite appreciated the way it still steers him, directs his behavior, all these years later.
“I think keeping things the way they are is hurting us both,” Alex continues, filling the silence where Michael should have been arguing his case. “And I think with everything else going on… my dad, Greg, I just—it’s for the best that I go. At least for a while.”
He walks forward and he stands directly in front of Michael. Michael thinks about words he could say. Feels a pressure on his chest, squeezing the breath out of him, all the words, every articulate argument he could make. His hand moves at last, a jerky, inelegant lunge forward, like his fingers are seeking the press of Alex’s skin, something to sustain him. Alex lets Michael touch him, fingers brushing along the side of his face. He stands there and looks at him and he doesn’t say anything else. Just leans in, presses a kiss to his lips. Terribly gentle, like he’s afraid Michael might break under the proof of his love at last, after everything. He steps back and is already out the door by the time Michael gathers the wherewithal to decide to kiss him back.