Chapter Text
The thing about entropy is, you can change it, but it doesn’t go away. You can’t stop the heat-death of the universe, just like Michael can never stop his life from spinning out of control.
When he gets back to his trailer after fucking Maria in the Wild Pony bathroom, Alex is still waiting for him. He’s wearing a leather jacket instead of one of those stupid preppy button-up shirts, and it looks...really good on him. For some reason it just pisses Michael off. Like, how dare Alex show up at Michael’s trailer in a leather jacket now, after everything that’s happened?
“Have you been here the whole time?” Michael demands. It comes out more belligerent than he intended.
Alex blinks at him, his face soft and confused. “I was worried, Guerin. You showed up covered in blood, told me it was a bad time, and ran away. Are you all right? What’s going on?”
The way he’s looking at him is making Michael’s chest hurt. “I can’t do this, Alex.”
“What do you mean?” He doesn’t understand. Goddamn it, why can’t he just understand and leave Michael alone?
“I can’t do this. Us.” Michael gestures at the space between them. “It doesn’t work. We’ve tried it. It just destroys me every goddamn time. I’m done.”
Alex draws his breath in, sharp and shocked. He looks like he’s been slapped. “Guerin—”
“Don’t you get it? Every time I look at you now, I see what your family did to my family. I felt everything that happened to them. I felt them die. I can still feel it. Every time I close my eyes, I see the explosion. I hear them screaming in my head. I just want to stop thinking about it, and I can’t do that if you’re here reminding me of it every goddamn second!”
There are tears in Alex’s eyes. It’s almost unbearable to hurt him like this. But Michael hurts too, and he’s so, so tired of it.
“Please Alex,” he says. “Just go.”
Alex goes.
***
The twelve hours after Max’s death are a kaleidoscope of horror. Liz holding Max’s body and crying. Isobel holding Max’s body and screaming that this is Liz’s fault. Liz and Isobel screaming at each other. Rosa (Rosa???) standing to the side looking freaked out and demanding to know what’s going on. Yeah, that makes two of us, kid, thinks Michael, as he stares at what’s left of his brother. A numbness is spreading through him, leaving him blank and cold, like nuclear winter after a bomb goes off.
Michael hadn’t realized just how much Max had been doing to hold them all together until he was gone, and they fell apart one by one.
Liz does what Liz does best and bails on the situation. She takes her sister and drives out of Roswell in the middle of the night. Michael doesn’t know where she goes, and he doesn’t really care.
Isobel has a complete fucking break with reality. She shoves Max’s body back into his pod, sobbing, “We can get him back! We can fix this! We can fix this!”
For the first few weeks, she calls Michael over and over again, demanding that he do something, make Liz come back, reverse whatever Max did to resurrect Rosa, figure out how he did it so they can do it to him. Eventually he can’t deal with it anymore and starts ignoring her calls. She shows up at his trailer in the middle of the night drunk off her ass, screaming that he never loved Max the way she did. He drives her home and puts her to bed. Then he takes her car keys away and calls her mom to tell her that Isobel’s fallen off the wagon again. When he goes over to see Isobel two days later, she refuses to even let him in.
It hurts, what she said to him about Max, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. There’s a stabbing, vacant ache in his mind where Max used to be, but he knows it’s nothing compared to the devastation that Isobel feels without her twin, her other self. They were always first for each other, and Michael second.
A long time ago, Alex had made Michael feel like maybe he, too, could be first for someone. But it turns out he was as wrong about that as he was about his dumb childhood fantasy of his parents coming to take him home.
Alex left Roswell the day after Max died. Michael doesn’t know if he transferred to another base or went AWOL or what. He just woke up to find a package lying outside his door with note on it in Alex’s handwriting. I’m sorry. I hope you find what you’re looking for. Inside was the last piece of the ship’s console, shimmering with muted colors where the sunlight touched it. Michael stared at it for a long time. Then he threw it as hard as he could against the side of the trailer, and it shattered into glittering shards.
***
The really stupid thing is that in the chaos of Noah’s death, Max’s death, Rosa’s resurrection, Isobel’s breakdown, and Alex’s and Liz’s sudden departures from Roswell, no one bothered to tell Maria that aliens existed.
So Michael doesn’t tell her either.
He knows it’s a dick move, but he tells himself it’s the same dick move that Maria’s two best friends also made, so that cancels out some of the dickishness. He is maybe not reasoning super clearly at the moment.
Maria can tell he’s a disaster right now, but she figures that Max’s death is an adequate enough reason for that and doesn’t try to make him explain anything.
So he spends his evenings hanging out with Maria at the Wild Pony, which isn’t that different from what he used to do before they were a thing, only now he goes home with her every night after she closes up. He stops going back to his airstream altogether, which is great because his airstream is full of alien crap and places he and Alex have fucked, and he doesn’t want to think about any of that shit right now.
In the mornings, Maria makes him breakfast, and he mows her lawn or cleans out her gutters or fixes shit around her house. She keeps telling him he doesn’t have to, but he can tell she likes the feeling of being taken care of. It’s the least he can do to make up for how spectacularly he’s lying to her. He can remember thinking he maybe had feelings for Maria—that she could be a fresh start for him. He’s still here because he’s hoping maybe he can feel like that again, if he gives it enough time. And because he has nowhere else to go.
He tries really hard to keep it together, to get better, to move on, just like he’s had to do for every other shitty thing that’s happened to him.
But no matter how hard he shoves his feelings down during the day, they come out in his nightmares. Every night he wakes up, sweating and trembling, from dreams of Max dying, his mother dying, his family screaming as Jesse Manes tortures them. He dreams about Alex dead too, blown up in Iraq, or burned up in a car accident, or naked and cold on a metal table with a handprint over his mouth.
He has other dreams about Alex that aren’t nightmares, and those are almost worse, because it hurts so much when he wakes up and they aren’t real.
Then the vomiting starts.
At first it’s just in the mornings. It becomes part of his daily routine. Wake up from another round of nightmares, throw up, brush his teeth, skip breakfast, and go to work. Then it happens more often—twice, then three, then four times a day, and other people start to notice.
When it begins, Maria just thinks he’s hungover, which makes sense as far as she’s concerned because she’s used to watching him drink an entire forty of tequila every night. But the thing is, Michael doesn’t get hungover. He just pounds a bottle of acetone and goes about his day. But lately acetone makes him feel worse, which doesn’t make any fucking sense. He can’t keep it down. He can’t keep anything down, except maybe like water and saltines, and sometimes not even that.
After a couple of days of watching him run to the bathroom and throw up after every meal, Maria starts to get worried. “Are you sick?” she asks, trying to feel his disgusting, sweaty forehead to see if he has a fever.
“I don’t get sick,” he says, batting her hand away.
She frowns. “Is this some kind of macho bullshit? Like, being sick compromises your masculinity so you refuse to go to the doctor until you fall over?”
“I’m fine, don’t worry about it.” He grabs his coat and heads for the door. “I’ve gotta go to work, I’ll see you later.”
“Michael—”
He turns and gives her his best cocky bastard I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about smile, the one he used to use on Max whenever he tried to get him to pay his parking tickets or talk about his feelings. “Really, it’s nothing. I probably just overdid it last night. I’ll feel better in a few hours.”
As the door bangs shut behind him, he hears her call, “But you didn’t drink anything last night!”
He has to pull over to throw up again on the way to the junkyard. When he’s done, he leans his forehead against the steering wheel and takes deep breaths, trying to make the nausea subside. He has no idea what’s wrong with him, but it isn’t a fucking stomach bug. Michael has never been sick in his life. When the other kids in the group home got the flu or strep throat, he was always the only one who didn’t come down with it.
Maybe his body is just fed up with his brain refusing to think about things and pretending they didn’t happen. His mom. Alex. Max.
Goddamnit, Max. He didn’t talk to Max for ten years except for the obligatory sniping at each other every time he got arrested. It had been a long time since they were close, he tells himself. Why does it hurt so much now that he’s gone?
The vomiting doesn’t go away. Michael manages to get through about another week by choking down Gatorade, but then he passes out during one of his shifts at the junkyard. He wakes up in an ambulance with Brad from high school, who used to be a football douche and is now an EMT, asking him if he can tell him how many fingers he’s holding up and who the president is.
“Stop! Let me out!” he rasps, trying to yank the I.V. out of his arm.
“It’s okay,” says Brad, grabbing his wrists. “You had an accident. We’re taking you to the hospital. Everything is going to be fine.”
Michael, who does not react well to being physically restrained by large, douchey male people, has to clamp down on his initial panicked impulse to throw Brad across the ambulance with his mind.
“I don’t need—” he realizes his voice is coming out reedy and scared, stops, clears his throat, tries again. Does his best to sound calm. “I don’t need a doctor. I just have like, the flu or something. If I go home and sleep it off, I’ll be fine.”
“You lost consciousness,” says Brad patiently, like Michael is an irrational child. “You may have hit your head when you fell over. You need to go to the hospital so they can make sure you don’t have a brain injury.”
If they suspect head trauma, that means a C.T., maybe an M.R.I., and who knows what kind of alien weirdness that will turn up. “No! No doctors! No hospital!” Michael tries to sit up, but he’s hit with a wave of dizziness and his vision goes sparkly around the edges. He rolls over and throws up all over Brad’s shoes.
Brad yells, “Jesus fucking Christ, dude!” then remembers he’s a medical professional and says, “Michael, you’re in real bad shape. You can’t even sit up, let alone walk. You need a hospital.”
Michael squeezes his eyes shut, trying not to panic. “Fine,” he says. “Take me to Kyle Valenti. Just Kyle Valenti. No one else.”
***
Kyle is there to meet the ambulance, with his stupid handsome face looking all professional and doctor-y.
“Dude, what’s the deal with this guy?” Michael hears Brad say to Kyle. “He threw a fit in the ambulance and refused to see anyone except you. Does he not have insurance? Are you treating him under the table?”
“No, he’s just, um...scared of doctors,” says Kyle. “He trusts me, so he gets less freaked out if I’m the one treating him.”
“I’m not scared of doctors, you jackass!” Michael croaks. “And I definitely don’t trust you!” Both of these statements are lies, but he’s not going to give Kyle the satisfaction of seeing how terrified he is right now.
“Shut up, Michael!” Kyle mutters. Louder her says, “Thanks guys, I’ll take him from here.”
Kyle gets rid of the nurses with more bullshit about Michael’s supposed medical phobia and manages to get Michael into a private exam room.
“All right, man, what’s going on?” he asks, feeling Michael’s pulse. “Are you okay? Is this some alien thing, like when Max’s powers made him sick? Do you want me to call Isobel?”
Michael flinches at Max’s name. “Don’t call Isobel. I’m fine. I just need to rest for a while.”
Kyle frowns. “You’re definitely not fine. You’re tachycardic, your eyes are visibly sunken, and you apparently can’t sit up without fainting. If you were a normal person, I’d diagnose you with severe dehydration and prescribe rest and I.V. fluids. But since you’re an alien, I have no idea if this is some kind of weird alien problem that needs to be cured by like, drinking gasoline or something.”
“Acetone, not gasoline, shithead. And I tried that, it doesn’t fucking help.”
Kyle looks pained. “Okay, acetone doesn’t help. Could you tell me a little bit more about what’s wrong?”
“Do you want to know what’s wrong with me, Kyle?” Michael snarls. “My life is shit, okay? My brother’s dead, my sister isn’t speaking to me, and the rest of my family got blown up in front of me three months ago! Everyone who ever cared about me is either dead, or crazy, or gone.”
His voice breaks and he realizes with horror that he’s about a half second away from full on sobbing. He’s not going to start crying in front of Kyle fucking Valenti, he’s not. He swallows hard and tries to get control of himself, but the words keep spilling out. “I have nothing, okay? I mean all my life I thought I had nothing, but now I really have nothing. I’m never getting out of here, I’m never going home, I told the only person I’ve ever loved to go fuck himself, I’m lying to my girlfriend, who will definitely hate me when she finds out, I have nightmares every night, and I can’t stop fucking puking.” He glares at Kyle, breathing hard and shaking. “So fucking diagnose that, Dr. Valenti.”
Instead of getting pissed off for being yelled at when he’s trying to do his job, Kyle just looks really sorry for him. Which is the worst. “Well first of all, I think you’re suffering from trauma-induced PTSD—”
Michael rolls his eyes. “Dude, I’ve had PTSD for like twenty years. It’s not a big deal.”
Kyle winces. “Normally I’d recommend therapy, but I don’t think it would be possible to find a therapist equipped to handle your particular set of issues.”
“Yeah, because I’m just that fucked up. Nice, dude.”
“Because of the alien thing, Michael. But I’m concerned about something else you said. Just how much have you been vomiting?”
Michael says grudgingly, “Like five times a day.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know, three weeks?”
Kyle writes something down on his clipboard, apparently out of habit, then frowns and crosses it out. “Okay, so you’re severely dehydrated because of persistent vomiting.” He checks Michael’s I.V. bag. “I’m going to keep you on intravenous fluids for the next few hours—that should help with the fainting. Has this ever happened to you before?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea what triggered it?”
“You mean other than my life being shit, like I said?”
Kyle writes something else down. “Do you mind if I do a physical examination?”
“Whatever.”
“I need your explicit verbal consent, Michael.”
“Okay fine, Jesus, you can examine me!”
Kyle takes his temperature and frowns at the thermometer. “According to this, you have a fever.”
“What does it say?” Michael asks. He tries to reach for it, but he’s brought up short by the I.V.
Kyle hands it to him. “A hundred point two.”
Michael shakes his head. “No, that’s normal.” A flash of Alex smiling, saying, You do run hot, Guerin.
“See, this is the problem,” says Kyle, shining a light into Michael’s ears. “I have no idea what you’re supposed to look like when you’re healthy, so it’s going to be hard to figure out what exactly is wrong with you. I wish I had Liz’s notes on Max and Isobel. Or even just Isobel to use as a baseline. Are you sure you don’t want me to call her?”
“Don’t call Isobel!” Michael lets Kyle role up his sleeve for the blood pressure cuff. “You’re forgetting that I helped Liz with that research, and also that I’m way smarter than you. If you have a question, just ask me.”
“Oh yeah, genius boy? And what happens if you pass out again? Who am I going to ask then? Open up.” Kyle shoves a tongue depressor in Michael’s mouth. “Well, this looks normal as far as I can tell.”
Michael spits out the tongue depressor. “Look, I probably just need like, rest and a Xanax. Give me some pills or something to stop the vomiting and let me go home.”
“How am I supposed to tell if anti-emetics designed for humans even work on you? And what if I send you home and it turns out that you have alien cancer or something?” He pulls up Michael’s shirt. “I’m going to palpate your abdomen now.”
Michael rolls his eyes. “I don’t have alien cancer.”
“How do you know? You could have like five types of alien cancer and have no idea. Does this hurt?”
“No. And cancer doesn’t make people suddenly start throwing up constantly.”
“Dude, if I’ve learned anything as a surgeon, it’s that cancer can cause basically anything. If you have a tumor putting pressure on your vagus nerve, it can absolutely cause vomiting. Does this hurt?”
“No. You have terrible bedside manner. Doesn’t it freak your patients out when you say shit like that?”
“Sometimes patients need to be freaked out, especially when they’re trying to do dumb stuff like leave the hospital against their doctor’s orders.” Kyle presses down on Michael’s abdomen just above his pubic bone. “Huh.”
Michael squirms. “What?”
“There’s something here. It feels like a mass.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake Kyle, I don’t have cancer!”
Kyle does his concerned doctor-y eyebrows thing. “Well, can you explain to me why you have a mass in your lower abdomen, then?”
“Dude, I don’t know. Stop pressing on it, it feels weird.”
“I’m just going to do an ultrasound, if that’s all right with you.”
He leaves to get the ultrasound machine, and Michael lies there feeling gross and wondering if he’ll end up puking all over Kyle like he did with Brad. That would be satisfying.
Kyle comes back and squirts gel all over Michael’s stomach.
Michael yelps. “Fuck, that’s cold! Warn a guy, will you?”
Kyle ignores him and starts going over his abdomen with the ultrasound wand. After about thirty second of Kyle staring at the screen in confused silence, Michael cranes his neck to try to see what he’s looking at it. “Okay, so what is it? Do I have cancer?”
Kyle is making the same face he did when Alex tried to explain the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek to him. “Um...I don’t actually recognize half these organs.”
Michael groans and flops back on the pillows. “Oh my God! How did you pass medical school? I can’t believe they actually let you near patients with a scalpel!”
“No, I mean you have extra organs that humans don’t have! Like this thing next to what I assume is your liver. What the hell is that? God, I wish Liz was here.”
“Are you sure you’re not just misidentifying my pancreas, doctor dumbass?”
“That’s not a pancreas!” Kyle is starting to look a little hysterical. “I’m not sure you even have a pancreas! Did you know you have extra organs?”
“No! How would I know that?”
“Well I guess you’re not such an expert on your own biology after all—holy shit!”
“What?”
Kyle is staring at the ultrasound image like someone just hit him in the head with an ice pick.
Michael struggles up on his elbows. “Dude, you can’t just say something like that and then not explain. What’s going on?”
Kyle slowly points at the middle of the screen. “I think that’s a fetus.”
***
It takes Kyle almost ten minutes to convince Michael he’s not joking.
“Is this because of the gay thing? Because you’re an asshole and it’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not because of the gay thing. God, you’re never going to let me live down high school, are you? Look, right here. It’s been a while since I did my O.B. rotation, but I’m like 98% percent sure this is a twelve-week-old human fetus. Or some bizarre alien organ that looks exactly like a human fetus. But since it’s inside what appears to be a normal human uterus with associated ovaries and fallopian tubes, I’d guess it probably actually is a fetus? But who the fuck knows! I’m in way over my head here!”
Michael stares at him. “Are you saying I’m pregnant?”
Kyle throws his hands up in the air. “Yeah? I guess so?”
“But I’m a guy, Kyle! How can I be pregnant?”
“Well, you appear to have a fully functioning set of female reproductive organs—or, I mean, like, the kind of reproductive organs that are associated with a double X-chromosome in humans, so I’d assume that you probably became pregnant when semen was introduced into your reproductive tract—”
“Jesus Christ, Kyle!” says Michael. He could have happily lived the rest of his life without ever hearing Kyle Valenti say the words “semen” and “reproductive tract.”
Kyle’s eyes widen. “Have you been having unprotected sex?”
“Oh my God, I am not having this conversation with you!”
“Michael, when you have unprotected sex, you put yourself and your sexual partners at risk for H.I.V., hepatitis B and C, herpes, syphilis—”
“Those are all human diseases. I don’t catch human diseases.”
Kyle now looks totally horrified. “You may be asymptomatic, but how do you know you’re not a carrier? You could have been spreading some mutant form of alien hepatitis all over Roswell!”
“‘All over Roswell?’ Are you trying to slut-shame me, Kyle? That’s real professional of you.” Not that Michael isn’t a slut, because he definitely is. But Kyle seems like the kind of performatively woke asshat who gets worried about things like being accused of slut-shaming.
“I am having-casual-sex-with-no-condom-shaming you! Did you fail high school health class?” Kyle waves his hands in the air. “Oh my God, and what about pregnancy? Have you impregnated someone with an alien baby? Are there tiny little Michaels with telekinetic powers running around that we have to worry about now?”
“I haven’t impregnated anyone, Kyle, calm down!”
“How do you know?” demands Kyle, gesturing dramatically at the screen. “Cleary it’s possible!”
“Look, I use condoms when I have sex with girls, okay! It’s easier than trying to explain that I can’t catch chlamydia because I’m an alien.”
Kyle crosses his arms. “And what about when you have sex with guys?”
Michael looks down and scrunches himself back against his pillow, unconsciously picking at the sheets with one hand. “Alex is the only guy.”
“So you had unprotected sex with Alex?” Kyle groans and puts his head in his hands. “Oh God, I’m going to have to have this talk with him too.”
“I had unprotected sex with Alex one time!” snaps Michael. “And if you tell him about this, I swear to God I will fucking kill you!”
“All right! All right!” Kyle holds up his hands. “I won’t tell Alex! Legally I can’t tell him, actually, unless you give me permission, because of doctor-patient confidentiality.”
Michael snorts. “Oh good, I can sue you for malpractice if you tell anyone about my alien pregnancy. That makes me feel so much better.”
“Hey, just because you’re an alien doesn’t mean I don’t take the Hippocratic oath seriously.” Kyle stares at the screen. “Wait—twelve weeks ago. Weren’t you and Alex broken up then?”
Michael suppresses a surge of irritation at this evidence that Alex has talked to Kyle about what he and Michael had or had not been doing together before he left Roswell. “It was the day we went to Caulfield.”
“What? But I was with you guys the whole time! When did you have time to—oh.” Kyle’s face is comically dismayed. “It was when we stopped for gas on the way back, wasn’t it? And you went to the bathroom, and you were gone a really long time, and he went to check on you, and then you were both gone even longer—” he cuts himself off, looking mortified. “Okay this is really none of my business.”
“No, it isn’t,” says Michael through gritted teeth.
“Nope, you’re right. I’ll shut up now.” Kyle makes a visible effort to get a hold of himself. “Well, the good news is, I think we’ve figured out why you’re throwing up.”
“Why, because I’m pregnant?”
“Well ideally I’d like to do some bloodwork and take some other samples to rule out other causes—”
“No fucking samples!” Michael interrupts.
“Yeah, great, okay! I get that!” says Kyle. “I’ll take your word for it that you can’t catch human diseases and you don’t like, have meningitis or whatever. There’s a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum that’s characterized by excessive vomiting during pregnancy. If you were a human, that’s what I’d diagnose you with.”
“Awesome,” says Michael, only slightly sarcastically. “And if I were a human, how would you treat me?”
“I’d give you anti-emetics and prescribe fluids and a bland diet.”
“Okay, great. Do that and let me go home. This fucking hospital is giving me hives.”
“Well...” Kyle looks uncomfortable. “I can give you prochlorperazine for the nausea, but that won’t take care of the underlying problem.” Michael looks confused, and Kyle says, “I mean, the pregnancy. You’ll still be pregnant.”
Michael groans and pulls the pillow over his head. “God, this is so fucked up.”
“You know, you’re not the first guy to be in this situation,” says Kyle. “There are lots of trans men and intersex men who have uteruses, and some of them get pregnant. There are probably even like, internet support groups for it.” He appears to think this will cheer Michael up.
“Yeah, I get it Kyle, you’re down with the LGBT community and whatever. I don’t care. What the fuck am I going to do?”
“Well, if you decide that you don’t want to, um, keep the pregnancy, I could probably give you an abortion.”
Michael is just about to ask what the fuck Kyle means by “keep the pregnancy” when he hears a familiar voice echoing down the hospital corridor outside.
“Michael! Kyle! Where are you? Michael?”
“Oh shit,” he moans, hugging the pillow over his stomach like he’s trying to hide the evidence. “It’s Maria!”
“Michael!” Maria barges into the room, looking pissed as hell. “What happened? Why didn’t you call me and tell me you were in the hospital?”
“I—what?” says Michael, staring at her. “How did you even know I was here?”
“Brad came into the Pony after his shift ended. I knew you were sick! This is why adults go to the doctor when they don’t feel well instead of ignoring it and fucking passing out at work! What’s wrong with him, Kyle?”
“Um,” says Kyle, who is clearly low-key panicking.
“I’m fine, Maria,” says Michael. “I just got dehydrated. Kyle checked me out and he says there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Dehydrated my ass!” says Maria, rounding on Kyle. “Did he tell you he’s been throwing up five times a day?”
“Uh...yes,” says Kyle. “I believe it’s, um, stress-related. I’m going to prescribe him some medication, and hopefully he’ll feel better.”
Maria narrows her eyes. “Stress-related? Really? You’re sure?” Michael hopes she isn’t trying to do her psychic thing, because if so they are definitely fucked.
“In my professional opinion, yes,” says Kyle, trying to hide behind his most doctor-y facial expression.
Maria looks at Kyle, then at Michael, then back at Kyle. “Uh-uh. There’s a weird vibe in here. Something else is going on.”
Kyle shoots Michael a pleading look. Goddamn it, this useless asshole is going to crack under interrogation.
“Nothing’s going on, Maria,” Michael says. “I just opened up to Kyle about how messed up I’m feeling about Max, and...other stuff. Like childhood trauma and my abandonment issues. It made him uncomfortable because he sucks at talking about feelings. It’s kind of a problem, you know, because he’s a doctor. He really needs to work on it.”
Kyle glares at him.
Maria eyes the two of them dubiously. “Yeah, okay. Whatever. Are you sure he’s going to be okay, Kyle? Shouldn’t he see, like, a psychiatrist or something, if stress is making him sick?”
Kyle somehow manages to convince Maria that Michael will be fine without a psychiatrist and gets her to take him home with the promise that they can explore other options if he doesn’t improve in a few days. She fusses over him, trying to make him drink 7-up and Gatorade, and pestering him to take his medicine. Michael is frustrated with her hovering, and then feels bad about being frustrated, because it’s sweet that she’s worried about him.
It’s just that it’s not Maria he wants, as he lies curled around himself in the middle of the night, feeling small and scared and still vaguely nauseated. She’s right there next to him. He could wake her up. She probably wouldn’t even mind. But it wouldn’t help.
He wants Alex. Wants him helplessly, like a little kid wants his mother. Like he should want the mother he can’t remember. There’s some stupid part of his brain that still thinks of Alex as safe and home, despite the fucking mountain of evidence to the contrary.
That’s what made him reach for Alex in that gas station bathroom three months ago, with his nerves on fire and his dead family screaming in his head. He’d kissed Alex like he was trying to disappear into him, and Alex had said, “Wait, Guerin, I don’t think we should—” and Michael had held onto him and said, “Please.” So Alex, the stupid sap, had given him what he asked for. And the insane thing was, it had worked. For those few minutes when Michael was pressed up against the wall with Alex buried inside him, Alex’s arm around his waist, Alex’s mouth in his hair, Alex murmuring over and over, low and urgent as he thrust into him, “Goddamnit, don’t you ever do that again, Guerin, do you hear me, don’t you ever do that again—” he’d forgotten everything else. His brain had stopped screaming and that little stupid part of him had whispered safe and home and loved. But when they were done, the horror of what had just happened had come crashing back, and he’d slammed out of the bathroom with his jeans unzipped and his shirt half unbuttoned, ignoring Alex’s confused, worried, “Michael—”
Alex can’t make anything better. In fact, he usually just ends up making Michael feel like shit. But because Michael is a fucking idiot, he still wants him.
***
Whatever meds Kyle prescribed him do not work. Michael throws up at three in the morning, then at five, and then again at seven.
At 7:05 Maria says, “That’s it, I’m taking you back to the hospital.”
“No! I’m fine. Really, I’m fine!” Michael thinks he would probably sound more convincing if he wasn’t lying curled on his side on the bathroom floor, but he feels like he might puke again if he moves.
“You’re not fine. You look like crap.”
“It’s too soon to go back. Maybe the medication just needs more time to kick in. Let’s wait.”
“Kyle said it would start working in an hour.”
“Well, Kyle’s a dumbass. He probably read the label wrong. Or gave me the wrong prescription by mistake.”
Maria shakes her head. “There’s no point in waiting. You’ll just get worse the longer this goes on. Come on, get up. I’ll drive you.”
There is no fucking way Michael is going back to the hospital. “Just call Kyle and ask him if he thinks I should wait.”
“Call Kyle? You just said Kyle was a dumbass.”
“Yeah, but he’s a doctor, right? So we should probably listen to what he says.”
“Or we could go to the hospital and talk to a different doctor, and I won’t have to worry about how I’m going to get you into my car if you pass out again.”
“I don’t want to see another doctor. Kyle’s good. Just call Kyle.”
“Michael, I don’t get it. You hate Kyle.”
Michael glares at the cute-but-practical ankle boots Maria’s wearing, because they’re the only thing he can see without moving his head and risking another vomiting episode. “I don’t hate him. He’s fine. We’re fine.”
“Last month when he came into the Pony you called him a quote “douchenozzle” unquote and tried to get me to spit in his drink.”
“Yeah, but I like, trust his medical opinion.”
“Michael, what is going on with you and Kyle? You’re being super weird!”
Michael tries to think of a plausible explanation that isn’t, Yes, Kyle is absolutely a douchenozzle, but he’s the only doctor I trust not to dissect me. “I don’t have health insurance. Kyle sort of agreed to treat me under the table. I guess because he feels bad about being such a dick in high school or something.”
Maria groans. “Oh my God, Michael! How can you not have health insurance? That’s really irresponsible!”
Michael agrees that it is definitely really irresponsible and meekly promises to apply for benefits as soon as possible until Maria relents and agrees to call Kyle.
Kyle, it turns out, has just started a twelve hour shift, but he says he’ll come by when he’s done. He doesn’t sound thrilled about it.
“You know,” says Maria, as she hangs up, “Kyle was never a dick to you in high school.”
“Huh?” Michael has started to doze off. The cool bathroom tiles are surprisingly comfortable.
“I mean he made Alex’s life hell, but he never bothered you. I think all those football jocks were scared of you. There were these crazy rumors that you’d like, stabbed a guy in an Arby’s parking lot or something.”
“What?” Michael never heard that one.
“Yeah, I know. It’s nuts, right?” Maria sits down next to him with her back against the tub and starts petting his gross, sweaty hair. It feels nice. “Even though I’ve seen you get into probably a hundred bar fights, you’ve never actually really hurt anyone. Like, sure, you’ve punched a lot of guys in the face, but they all walked away afterwards. Most people don’t notice that about you.”
Even Isobel, who’d known him all his life, had been willing to believe for ten years that he’d murdered three people. What Maria’s saying should make him happy, but it doesn’t. Because Maria doesn’t know shit about him. She doesn’t know what he’s done, or who he’s hurt. And if she did know, she’d hate him.
***
By the time Kyle finally arrives, it’s dark outside and Michael has thrown up fifteen more times. He knows the exact number because Maria started writing down all his symptoms in case Kyle asks about them. He’s at the point again where his vision goes sparkly if he tries to sit up and he feels too awful to even sass Maria when she tries to make him drink something or take his temperature.
Kyle looks exhausted. He says, “I’m sorry I’m late. I got stuck in surgery.”
Michael would never say this out loud, but he has to admit it’s pretty decent of Kyle to come take care of his sorry ass when he’s clearly desperate for a shower and eight hours of sleep. He crouches next to the toilet to take Michael’s pulse and listen to his heart and lungs, then hooks him up to an I.V. bag he’s apparently stolen from the hospital.
“Look, buddy,” he says, sitting back on his heels, “I’m getting concerned. Your symptoms are escalating and it’s starting to get dangerous. You’re already severely dehydrated again after just 24 hours. And when was the last time you ate something and kept it down?”
“I don’t know,” Michael rasps. “A few days ago?”
“More like a week,” says Maria.
“Yeah,” says Kyle. “See, that’s not good. I’m running out of ideas here. Admitting you to the hospital isn’t an option, and there’s only so much I can do for you while I’m treating you on the fly like this. I think it’s time to call Liz.”
“Liz? What can Liz do?” Maria demands. “Why can’t you take him back to the hospital, if he’s that sick?”
Kyle gives Michael a “How the hell am I supposed to explain this?” look.
“I told you. I don’t have health insurance.” Michael tries to push himself into a sitting position in a bid to convince Maria he’s feeling better, but he just ends dry-heaving into the bathmat.
Maria wraps her hand around his upper arm, squeezing tight. Her voice is tense and worried. “I’m not going to let you die because you don’t have health insurance! If money’s an issue, I’ll help you pay.”
I am such an asshole, thinks Michael.
Kyle jumps in, obviously feeling like it’s on him to rescue the situation, since Michael is fucking useless right now. “I’m not sure the hospital would actually be that helpful,” he babbles. “Michael has, uh, a genetic condition. It’s rare. Like, really rare. All the treatments are pretty experimental. I don’t think the other doctors could do anything for him. But Liz happens to be pretty much the world expert on it. This genetic condition. That Michael has.”
Maria’s expression is a weird combination of suspicious and hurt. “What genetic condition? Michael, why didn’t you tell me?”
Michael glares at Kyle and croaks out, “I, um, don’t like to talk about it?”
“But you told Kyle about it and not me?”
“Believe me, I did not tell Kyle.”
“Liz told me,” says Kyle helpfully.
Michael hisses, “Shut the fuck up, Kyle,” under his breath.
“Liz, huh?” Maria narrows her eyes. “Fine. I’m calling her.”
“Wait—” says Michael, but she’s already dialing.
A sick sense of inevitability settles over Michael as Maria says, “Hi Liz...I’m good, how’s San Diego?....Good, good. Listen, Michael’s sick and Kyle said I should call you...I don’t know. He’s been throwing up a lot. Kyle says it’s related to that genetic condition he has?”
“Dude, I’m so sorry,” whispers Kyle, frantically typing on his phone. “I’m texting Liz right now not to say anything—shit it’s not sending. I don’t have any reception in here!”
Maria pauses at something Liz has just said, her eyebrows going up. “What do you mean, ‘what genetic condition’? Kyle said you know all about it. He said you’re like the world expert in it or something.”
“Fuck,” moans Michael softly.
Kyle puts his head in his hands.
Liz says something else and Maria frowns. “The alien thing? What alien thing?”
***
It’s not the worst breakup he’s ever had, but that’s only because his worst breakup involved Jesse Manes and a hammer.
“I mean, I get why she’s upset,” says Kyle, “but I think it was a dick move to kick you out of her house when you can barely stand up.” He’s got Michael’s arm around his shoulders and is half-carrying him down the sidewalk to his car while trying to juggle the I.V. stand and the trash bag of Michael’s stuff that Maria threw out the door after them.
“I think Rosa was the last straw,” gasps Michael. He feels like he’s about five seconds away from losing consciousness. He has to lean all his weight on Kyle to stay on his feet. “She’s not going to forgive me for covering up her best friend’s murder.”
Kyle sighs. “Yeah, maybe so. But still! This feels pretty cruel and unusual.”
Michael had expected her to scream and throw things. Maybe take a swing at him. Instead she’d just gone...cold. And silent. Like a door slamming and leaving him outside in the snow, unable to get back in where it was warm and safe. He’s glad she threw him out. He couldn’t stand for her to look at him like that anymore.
He pukes twice in Kyle’s car, but he feels too horrible to get any satisfaction out of it. Kyle is really nice about it, which is annoying. It’s only when Kyle parks and opens his door to help him get out that Michael realizes Kyle hasn’t taken him back to the junkyard. “Where are we?” he slurs, as Kyle tries to manhandle him to his feet.
“We’re at my apartment,” says Kyle. After several unsuccessful attempts to get Michael to stand up, he resorts to wrapping his arms around Michael’s torso and hauling him out of his seat. If it were any other guy, it would be kind of hot that he can just toss Michael around like that, but it’s Kyle, so ew.
“Why are we at your apartment?”
“Did you think I was just going to abandon you on the side of the road?” Kyle eyes the flight of cement stairs in front of him, then looks at Michael, who is only being kept upright because he’s propped between Kyle and the car. After a second he mutters, “fuck it,” then picks Michael up I.V. and all and starts goddamn bridal-carrying him up the stairs.
“Jesus, put me down!” Michael flails weakly. “I don’t need this! Just take me back to my trailer!”
“Stop that!” Kyle tightens his hold on him. “There’s no way I’m leaving you alone. You need medical supervision, and since you can’t go to the hospital, this is the best I can do.” He carries Michael into his apartment and lays him down on the couch.
“Why are you doing this?” Michael mumbles. His whole body hurts and the room is spinning. He stares up at Kyle’s ceiling. It has water damage. He should get his pipes checked.
Kyle kneels down and starts taking off Michael’s shoes. “Because I’m a doctor, and you need help.”
“I still don’t like you,” says Michael. He’s so tired.
Kyle snorts. “I don’t like you either. But Alex does, and I owe him. So. You’re stuck with me.”
Fucking Alex, Michael thinks, and slides down into unconsciousness.
***
He dreams about his mother. She’s calling his name, but the name isn’t Michael. It’s the name she gave him, eighty years ago on another world. In the dream, he remembers what it is, but when he wakes up, it’s gone.
***
Liz shows up at noon the next day with Rosa and a car full of stolen lab equipment.
She looks...good. Put together. Definitely not like her heart has been ripped out of her chest and shredded, like he’s felt for the last three months. He knows that’s just because Liz’s response to trauma is to bottle all her feelings up and pretend she doesn’t have them. It doesn’t mean that Max’s death didn’t affect her, he tells himself. But he can’t help resenting her for it, a little.
When she sees him, she says, “Holy crap, you look terrible.”
“Thanks,” he mutters. He feels terrible. Kyle tried a new anti-nausea med on him when he woke up and then made him eat a bowl of applesauce. He’d promptly puked it up all over his jeans. He’s now wearing a pair of Kyle’s sweatpants, which is the worst. He doesn’t even think they’re clean. On the plus side, Kyle gave up trying to make him eat or drink and put him on a permanent I.V. drip, so he’s back to just throwing up tiny amounts of bile every hour or so. He has to take what he can get.
“Look, Michael, I’m really sorry I told Maria you were an alien.”
Michael does not want to get into this. “It’s fine. Whatever.”
Liz bites her lip. “It’s just that I honestly thought she knew already.”
“Why would you think that? You didn’t tell her either.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been living with her for three months. I kind of figured it would have come up.”
“Well if you’d called anytime in the last three months, you’d know it hadn’t!s”
She grimaces. “Okay, yeah, I’m a shitty friend. To you and Maria. But you’re still a shitty boyfriend! She’s really pissed at you.”
Michael sighs. “I know.”
Rosa is hovering behind Liz in the doorway. She’s apparently decided the best way to disguise herself from the townsfolk of Roswell is to dye her hair blond, chop most of it off, and spike it up in an aggressive alternative lifestyle haircut. She’s also wearing an enormous pair of purple hipster glasses.
She gives Michael a little wave and says, “Hi, I’m Liz’s cousin Helena Ortecho. We have never met before. You definitely didn’t go to high school with me, witness my death, and then frame me for vehicular manslaughter.”
Michael is really unsure of the etiquette of this situation. “Um...I’m sorry about that. About you getting murdered, and...the rest of it. I didn’t think about how it would look, to put you in the driver’s seat.”
She shrugs. “You were a dumbass and you panicked. I’ve been there.” She goes over to the kitchen table and starts fiddling with her phone.
Liz turns to Kyle. “So where are those ultrasound scans you promised me? When you told me what was going on over the phone, I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced you weren’t yanking my chain.”
“Believe me,” says Kyle, “I really wish I was yanking your chain.”
Liz is way too excited about getting a closer look at Michael’s jacked up insides. She spreads all the pictures out on the living room floor and starts frantically scribbling notes.
“You were right, Kyle, he has two completely separate sets of functioning sexual organs!”
Kyle grimaces at Michael and mouths, “Sorry, dude.”
Liz doesn’t notice. “I was wondering how he managed to go twenty years without noticing any of this, but now I see. The vagina’s completely hidden inside the body. This anatomy is similar to what we see in women with cloacal malformation, only the urethra’s not involved, and it’s obviously not a birth defect. I bet he could even give birth naturally! Look at the shape of his pelvis here—” She gestures at the grey blobs in one of the scans. “It’s effect on the way he stands and walks is really subtle. In fact, I don’t think I’d have paid any attention to it if I hadn’t seen this...”
Michael wants to dive out the window, or maybe just disappear. He feels weird and exposed, like Liz has peeled off his skin and is poking her fingers inside him. He knows she means well, but this is way too similar to his nightmares about being vivisected by scientists.
“Liz, you’re freaking him out,” says Rosa. “Stop it.”
“Huh?” says Liz, turning around.
Rosa rolls her eyes. “How would you like it if someone started talking about how weird your vagina is in a room full of random people? It’s not classy behavior.”
Michael looks over at her, surprised that she would notice—let alone care—how he’s feeling, but she’s gone back to her phone.
“My vagina is not weird!” says Liz, and then winces because she’s the older sister now and that’s the most younger-sister thing she’s said in a while. “Okay, I take your point. I’m sorry, Michael. It’s just—science like this doesn’t come along very often! It’s awesome! You’re awesome! But I’ll shut up about it. Let’s focus on the baby. Kyle, how’s the baby?”
“Uh...it seems fine,” says Kyle. “Like I said on the phone, it looks like a completely normal 12-week-old human fetus. Except that it’s half alien and has two dads, and I have no idea how to explain any of that genetically.”
“God, I’m so mad I’m never going to be able to publish any of this,” Liz mutters, taking out her laptop. “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. Clearly the alien DNA is somehow able to recombine with human DNA across the species barrier.” She starts pulling up files. “Do you think that’s what’s making him sick? Some sort of immune response to the baby’s human DNA?”
“Uh...” says Kyle.
“Why are you asking him?” says Michael. “I’m the one who helped you with all your alien research.”
“God, yes, you’re right,” says Liz, turning to Michael. “You’re right here. We shouldn’t be talking over you.”
“Also I’m smarter than Kyle.”
Liz smiles. “Yes, okay, you’re smarter than Kyle. I have some ideas of tests I can run on you. I still have a lot of the data I collected on the three of you here, minus what got destroyed in the lab fire. Don’t worry,” she says, when he shoots a disturbed look at her laptop. “It’s encrypted. But I’m not sure that’s our best option.”
“What do you mean?” Michael demands. “How can you figure out how to fix this if you don’t do any tests?”
Liz looks uncomfortable. “I mean...that while I’m busy trying to figure out what’s wrong with you, you’re going to keep having these symptoms. And maybe develop new ones. Kyle said that you couldn’t stand up yesterday before he put you back on the I.V. That’s...scary. I think our safest option right now would be to terminate the pregnancy immediately, if you’re not interested in keeping it.”
Terminate the pregnancy. Kyle had said that too. So far, Michael has been in deep denial about the pregnancy even existing. He’s been subconsciously thinking about this as just some weird glitch in his biology that needs adjusting.
But it’s not. Obviously not a birth defect, Liz had said. This is apparently...normal. Something his body is designed to do.
If he were a woman, he would probably have already put some thought into what he would do in this situation. It’s just occurring to him now that he’s going to have to make a decision.
“Which one is the picture of the baby?” he asks.
“Here.” Kyle hands him one of the grey blobs.
Michael stares at it. It’s actually...pretty easy to tell that it’s a baby now that he knows what he’s looking at. It’s got a head and arms and legs. And it’s inside him, which is so weird. He looks up at Kyle. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
Kyle shrugs. “It’s usually too soon to tell at this stage.”
Michael looks back at the baby. “But you said it’s healthy, right?” It’s lying on its back with one arm up by its head and its legs in the air. It’s...cute. Out of nowhere, the thought comes into his head, Alex and I made this. It makes him feel hot and shivery in a way he doesn’t want to analyze.
“I mean, as far as I can tell?” says Kyle. “We’ll know more once Liz does some bloodwork on you.”
The idea of this thing floating inside him like a little parasite that’s going to feed on his blood and grow and make his stomach huge and then get squeezed out of—what? His ass? Is deeply disturbing.
But it’s also...his baby.
“I don’t...want to terminate,” he says slowly.
“Are you sure, Michael?” says Liz. “We don’t know how bad this is going to get.”
He nods. “Yeah. I’m sure.” His mom shoved him into that pod in 1947 because she wanted him to have a chance. This kid deserves a chance too.
He expects Liz to argue with him, but she surprises him by reaching out and touching his arm. “Okay. If that’s what you want, I’ll do everything I can to help you.”
She looks at him with her giant Disney princess eyes, and he realizes she means it. He knows it’s just because she thinks it’s what Max would want, but it makes him feel a little better anyway.
She says, “We can start by trying to alleviate your symptoms. Do you have any ideas, Kyle?”
Kyle spreads his hands. “The anti-emetics I’ve tried on him don’t seem to have done much. The glucose drip is keeping him hydrated and giving him some nutrition, but it’s not a long-term solution. The next step would be to figure out what’s causing the vomiting and try to treat the root cause rather than the symptoms.”
“All right,” says Liz, in the tone that means she’s about to go kick science’s ass. “Let’s do that.”
“Uh, there’s one more thing,” says Kyle, looking embarrassed. “I have to go back to work tomorrow. I called in sick today, but the chief resident is going to have my ass if I don’t go back in. We’re short-staffed because one of the other residents is on maternity leave...” He rubs the back of his neck. “Anyway, Michael needs someone to stay with him during the day. And you can’t do it if you’re in the lab, so...”
“Why don’t we just call Isobel?” says Liz. “Where is Isobel, anyway?”
“Don’t call Isobel,” says Michael.
Liz frowns, confused. “Why not?”
“We kind of...had a fight. After Max died. We’re not talking.”
Max’s name makes Liz flinch a little. It’s subtle, but Michael notices. “What happened?”
“She thought I wasn’t trying to do enough to bring Max back. She got upset and...said some things.”
“Bring Max back?”
“Yeah, she’s obsessed with the idea that since Rosa came back, Max can too. Never mind that Max fucking killed himself to do it.”
“Shit.” Liz sighs. “Okay, well, unfortunately we don’t have a lot of choice here. I mean, I guess Rosa could stay with you...”
“No, Rosa couldn’t,” says Rosa. She gets up and heads for the door. “I am definitely not going to spend my first night back in Roswell cleaning up Michael Guerin’s puke. I’m going to the Wild Pony. Don’t wait up.”
“Rosa—”
“Bye!” Rosa blows a kiss and slams the door.
“Fuck,” Liz mutters, massaging her temples. “Okay. Well then I guess we’re calling Isobel.”
Isobel does not answer her phone. Michael is secretly grateful.
“Sorry, Kyle,” says Liz. “It looks like you have to call in sick again tomorrow.”
“You could just leave me here,” says Michael. “Really, I’m fine by myself.”
“Absolutely not!” snaps Kyle. “I had to peel you off of Maria’s bathroom floor last night. What if you fall again and you can’t get up? What if you aspirate your own vomit? I’m not coming home to find you dead in the hallway!”
“Jesus, okay,” Michael mutters.
***
He dreams about his mother again, but it’s different this time. He realizes slowly that in this dream, he is his mother. She’s nursing a baby. He feels it’s little mouth tugging on his nipple. He feels what she feels, as she holds this baby in her arms, a love so intense it’s like he’s drowning in it. He’d do anything to keep it safe, even kill. Even die. But it’s not his baby, it’s hers. It’s him.
***
Michael is woken up by someone pounding on the door. “What the fuck?” he mutters, flailing at the blankets tangled around him on the sofa bed. He peers at his phone. It’s two in the goddamn morning.
Kyle skids into the living room in his boxers carrying a fucking loaded gun.
“Jesus Christ, why do you have that?” Michael hisses.
“Because I put Jesse Manes in the hospital three months ago and no one’s heard from him since,” Kyle hisses back. “If he comes for me, I’m going to be ready for him.”
“You put Jesse Manes in the hospital?” says Michael, shocked and grudgingly impressed.
“Kyle! Let me in!” says the person outside.
Michael freezes.
“Oh, it’s you,” says Kyle, and opens the door.
It’s Alex.