I wish that I could let you love (me)

by ViolettaValery

Summary:

Earth, which has been fighting a decades-long war against the Wraith that they are slowly losing, comes to Antar for an alliance. There is strength in uniting against a common foe, they suggest.

According to Antaran tradition, such an alliance must be sealed with a marriage.

Enter Alex Manes, decorated soldier and and military hero, recently injured in battle and struggling to find his place in a war he can no longer fight in.

Notes:

I adore arranged marriage fic, and this one has been in my head, and a work-in-progress, for probably about a year now. A few weeks ago, a bug seems to have really bitten me and I couldn't stop thinking about it, driving me to finally, finally finish it. I am SO excited to finally share it with the world. This fic is personal in a lot of ways, and one where I'm attempting to explore and address a lot of serious and complex issues. I hope I've done them justice.

And yes, I did do some borrowing from Stargate, though you don't need any knowledge of that show to read this fic.

Many, many thanks to @winged-fool for, essentially, putting up with me as I was writing this story: helping me brainstorm, reading over and beta-ing parts of the fic, offering priceless suggestions, and cheering me on. Couldn't have done it without you, my dear fellow darkfic connoisseur.

I've fallen absolutely in love with this world as I was writing it, and y'all have permission to play in this sandbox too. Sequels, codas, prequels, variations, anything you like. All I ask is that you keep Maria out of it.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Antar

The delegation from Earth arrives on an otherwise nondescript day, one that gives no indication that it is the start of Antar going to war for the first time in decades.

Earth and Antar are not allies, their diplomatic relations cursory, nothing more than a non-aggression agreement and the barest of trade relations. So Antar has been content to watch from afar for years as the humans fight a war they are slowly losing to the Wraith.

Now, Earth comes seeking an alliance. There is strength in uniting against a common foe, they insist.

The Wraith aren’t our foe, the Antarians say. They have never attacked us.

They will be, the humans suggest. They will. They have taken Orion; they have taken Andor. The Wraith want the entire galaxy, and with Earth conquered, they will set their sights on Antar. Ergo, an alliance between Antar and Earth benefits both.

Antar’s king listens in silence and gives no other answer than that Antar will consider the proposal.

Once the humans have retired for the night, he convenes with Michael and Isobel to weigh their choices.

“Earth is desperate,” he points out the obvious.

“But they have a point,” Michael argues. “Once the Wraith are through with them, they will come for us.” He shudders to think of it. The Wraith are monsters, who subsist on sucking the very life out of a living being and leaving nothing but an aged husk. His does not want to even imagine losing to them and seeing his people subjected to such horrors.

He turns to Isobel, whose keen and calculating mind he’s always admired. “Back me up, sis,” he says.

“Michael’s right,” Isobel says. “If we do nothing, we’re only delaying the inevitable. They will come for us, and I don’t know if we can defeat them alone, either. This alliance makes our people safer, in the long term.”

Max sighs, looking older than his thirty years.

“You know what an alliance means,” he says wearily. “Who do you propose we marry off to a human?”

“Not you, obviously,” Michael says wryly. “We wouldn’t think of marrying off our esteemed ruler to some human.”

“Michael, you know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know. Look, you have Liz.” Max can’t conceal a small smile at her name. One of Antar’s most brilliant scientists, sharp and kind at once, she had won the king’s heart long ago. “And Isobel has Rosa. I have no one.”

“Michael.” Isobel sounds scandalized. “You could still find someone – “

“Don’t, Iz,” Michael says softly. “If I haven’t found someone yet, what are the chances?” After bedding half the planet goes unsaid. The prince’s promiscuity is a source of common knowledge and delight on Antar. “It’s all right, really.” He cracks a wry grin. “Who would’ve thought, me, Antar’s most eligible bachelor.”

Max snorts, but Isobel just draws her lips into a thin line.

“Fine,” she says. “But according to tradition, you get to meet them first. And if you don’t think it can work, if you think you’ll be miserable – “

“I’ll let you know.”

Earth

“Look, son,” General Hammond says. “We can’t order you to sign your life away.”

Antar’s one condition for the alliance had posed a challenge: Earth had no royalty, only elected officials with fixed terms. To marry one to a prince would be to extend that term, to enable a grip on power deemed unconscionable even in a time of war.

But soldiers are a different matter. The war against the Wraith has raged for decades, so most soldiers end up soldiers for life, until they meet a bloody end. And with Antar a warrior culture, it had seemed appropriate to choose someone already represented Earth with honor on the battlefield.

That’s why he’s here.

“With all due respect, sir, I enlisted,” Alex says. “I already signed my life away, if necessary.”

He’d wanted to make music, once, instead of following in the footsteps of generations of Manes men. But his father had had other ideas, and when the beatings and the threats hadn’t worked, words had. Scathing ones, asking who he thought he was, to indulge himself in something as useless as art when the fate of humanity was at stake.

For all his rebellion, he hadn’t had an answer to that. So, like his three brothers, he’d signed on the dotted line.

“Still,” Hammond says. “Asking you to die for a cause is one thing. This is another. Take some time to think about it.”

Alex inclines his head.

“Yes, sir. I’ll let you know.”

Hammond is kind, but Alex is under no illusion why they chose him. He’s functionally useless now; without a leg, they can’t give him command, can’t send him back to war.

They’d offered him the honor of a position on a war council, where he would help decide the course of the war and its tactics, but his very being rebelled  at the thought of sending others to die on his orders while he hid behind a title.  

This, this is a way to be useful. And he’d have agreed immediately, right there when Hammond asked, but one thought had held him back. What kind of alliance could they hope for, once Antar discovered that Earth had given their prince damaged goods? Alex has no illusions about his own prospects at romance. He’s never thought he’d get to have some great love, but the thought of being a lead weight in another’s life is unbearable. How could he live with himself, knowing an innocent man was forever tied to him, any chance of love taken from him as surely as Alex’s limb?

He forces himself to look at the situation tactically. Anyone of a sufficiently high rank to be a realistic prospect for an Antarian prince is too crucial to the war effort to be sent off, except for him. He’d captained a ship once, won victories. Now, he has an artificial limb, the proper rank, and nothing else to offer.

Besides, he’s spent his entire life pretending to be whole, sailing through the ranks and collecting commendations while shoving all emotion behind a detached veneer. It’s a gamble, but a better one than taking someone Earth needs and shipping him off.

In the end, it’s not really much of a choice. He’d taken an oath, and some distant prince’s happiness pales in comparison to the billions of lives he’s sworn to protect.

Kyle is the only one who protests, but in the end, his friend respects his choice.

Chapter 2

Summary:

Michael and Alex meet.

The day he’s supposed to meet his future husband, his nerves are in a tight knot in his stomach as he stands in front of the mirror.

He wants to make a good first impression, at least. Antar is a warrior culture and he’s a soldier, so it should be simple enough. His father used to tell him he was too pretty for a soldier, with his sharp cheekbones and dark lashes, but that was before. Now, he looks older than his years, streaks of white in his dark hair and wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He’s been told it makes him look dignified, respectable. Worthy of holding command.

But then again, his future husband isn’t a soldier. He’d done his research into the prince, delving into what little intelligence Earth had on the royal family of a planet they’ve had barely any relations with, to find out that he had never served in the army. He is a scientist, so perhaps the martial dignity others insist Alex possesses won’t matter much to him.

In the end, he dons form-fitting black pants and a button-up shirt to match. They’re as formal as he can get without a uniform, and the tightness of the shirt at the very least shows off some of his muscle. All those long weeks of PT have paid off, he thinks.

It’ll have to do.

He’s escorted with the utmost courtesy to the Antaran palace, to what looks like a receiving room in which the prince already awaits him. He’s pacing, and Alex’s first impression is all erratic curls and nervous energy. He glances up as Alex walks in and looks him up and down appraisingly.

He stiffens, bristling at such an overt assessment, and prepares himself for whatever cutting remark Michael will offer. But the prince’s expression has no judgment in it. In fact, he looks rather pleased with what he sees, lips parted, the desire evident in his glance.

It takes Alex aback. Michael is beautiful. Regal, with broad shoulders from which a dark cape falls to his feet. His shirt is almost half unbuttoned, giving Alex a peek of a firm chest with tufts of hair, and Alex’s breath catches with desire. Full lips, sparkling eyes, and a hint of a devil-may-care air about him. It’s startling, to be so obviously desired by a man so stunning, and it throws him off kilter.

He forces himself to pull himself together, pushing away the feeling of warmth the prince’s gaze fills him with. This isn’t why they’re here.

“Your Highness,” he greets, politely.  

“Michael,” the prince corrects him. “Call me Michael. We should be on a first name basis if we’re going to be married.”

“Michael, then,” he agrees. “I – “

“Would you like something to drink? Or to sit?” Michael gestures at two armchairs over a table, with glasses and wine. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“Michael,” he repeats, following the prince’s gesture and seating himself. The name sounds strange, much too intimate, on his tongue. “Perhaps we can drop the formalities and speak frankly?”

“Yeah, uh, of course. Sorry, I have no idea what I’m doing. Kind of my first time in this situation, obviously.”

Michael plops down across from him, running a hand through his curls, and Alex notes the way his leg bounces up and down almost frantically. Alex is reminded of the excited state of an atom.

Michael suddenly seems painfully, endearingly human.

Well, in a manner of speaking.

“Neither do I,” he admits.  “But that is all the more reason to speak frankly and practically. We’re not here for a courtship.”

There is nothing he could say or do in the next hour that would make Michael find him charming, nor would he want to. An hour’s banter is hardly something to build a marriage on, especially since Michael would eventually discover the ugly truth of him behind it. And the higher his initial expectations of Alex, the harder that disappointment would hit. So Alex doesn’t get the luxury of flirtation, the play-acting at courtship. Not here, not with so much at stake.

Michael nods in agreement, though he seems to slump a little at that. Surely he had not expected this to be romantic? It was an arrangement, a formality.

“We’re only here to decide one practical question,” he continues. He had thought how this conversation would go, practiced it in his head, and now he follows his script. “Can we make this work, given the stakes? For my part, I intend to see this commitment through. The fate of my people may well depend on it. You could say I’m motivated.”

“Me too,” Michael agrees. “I understand the necessity of all this. It’s for the good of my people, in the long run. So yeah, you have my word that I’ll see this through.”

“Thank you,” Alex says. “Now, I think there are a few logistical questions we should discuss – “

“Alex,” Michael interrupts. “Do you think maybe I could get to know the man I’m marrying? Just a little? I know this is an arrangement and all, but I want it to feel like it’s more than just signing a contract, you know? We can work out details as we go.”

Alex gapes at him. He hadn’t planned for this at all. How does Michael just expect them to make it up as they go? That’s a recipe to make this whole situation implode.

“What do you want to know?” he asks carefully.

“I looked you up,” Michael says, tentatively. “You’re a rising star. One of the youngest captains in the Fleet, though I gotta admit, you look a lot older than your photos. Distinguished in combat and more commendations than I can remember. Quite the feat you pulled off at the battle of Altair. What were they thinking, marrying you off to me?”

Alex stares, for a moment, trying to comprehend that Michael seems to think he’s some sort of catch. Of course, if he has only Alex’s record to go by, he can see how Michael might make that assumption.

Alex leans down and taps his prosthetic leg. He’d intended to reveal that particular fact later in their conversation, but he won’t ignore the opportunity that’s presenting itself so neatly. “Was a rising star,” he corrects. “And the photos are from before my latest intimate encounter with the Wraith.”

He watches Michael’s reaction closely, but he shows only mild surprise as his gaze falls to Alex’s leg.

“Oh,” he says. Then, stunned: “Holy shit, you fought a Wraith one-on-one? That’s impressive.”

Michael’s awe grates at him.

“That’s what you’re focusing on?” he asks with an edge to his voice. “I just told you I’m missing a leg, why are you looking at me like that?”  

Michael looks at him in confusion.

“How should I look at you?” 

“Antar’s a warrior culture, is it not? Without a leg, I’m useless as a soldier. You shouldn’t be impressed.”

 Michael’s confusion morphs into incredulity.

“That’s not – is that how you think – that’s so utterly not how we think,” he manages, and he sounds just the tiniest bit annoyed.

Great. It’s barely been an hour and already Alex is ruining Earth’s chances at survival.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to offend – “

“Coming back from war injured isn’t shameful,” Michael practically snaps. “It’s a mark of courage. It shows that you went into battle and fought.”

Alex blinks at him. Michael is so deeply, painfully wrong.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he says mildly into the tense silence.

Michael seems to calm at that. “Cultural differences,” he says. “We’ll work them out.”

Alex wonders if he’s reassuring Alex or himself.

“Speaking of cultural differences,” Michael say. His tone is lighter, but Alex’s stomach lurches nonetheless. “Is it true that you keep small tigers as pets? Even though they’re so lethal that they can make you bleed enough to require medical attention just by playing with you?”

Alex bursts out laughing. He can’t help it.

“What?” Michael asks.

“They’re called cats. We domesticated them. They’re really very affectionate once they get to know you, thought I prefer dogs personally.”

Michael stares at him. “But aren’t they carnivorous?”

“Yeah, they’ll kill mice and small rodents and bring them to you as a present if they like you, but – “

He breaks off at the incredulous expression on Michael’s face.

“You keep deadly carnivores that kill things for you as pets?” he asks. “Humans are wild,” he says, in a tone of voice that suggests that by wild he means the coolest people ever.

“Well, if you want to put it that way, yes we do,” Alex says, amused. “Any other myths about humans I can clear up for you?”  

“Yeah. I read somewhere – ” This time Michael hesitates.

“Yes?” Alex prompts.

“That humans inject themselves with diseases to acquire immunity to them? But that can’t possibly be true, I mean – “

“They’re called vaccines,” Alex says. “You don’t do the same?”

“We don’t need to. We have pretty strong immune systems to begin with. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been sick,” Michael says, and Alex’s heart sinks a little bit. How is it that Michael is so uncannily good at ferreting out all his human weaknesses? Then Michael adds, “So you literally inject yourselves with diseases? Doesn’t that make you sick? What if it kills you?”

“They’re usually an inactivated form of the virus, so no,” he explains. Why lie? “It just gives our immune system practice, so it can fight the real virus next time.”

To his utter shock, Michael looks impressed yet again. “Holy shit,” he says. “Humans are so cool.”

Alex snorts in amusement. “If you say so,” he says, though despite himself, he feels lighter on the inside. Maybe their cultural differences could actually strengthen their marriage.

Michael grins back at him. “So, anything you want to know about Antarans before you agree to be stuck with me? Or about me?” he asks.

Stuck. Michael says it playfully, like it’s a joke. Like it’s not even in the realm of possibility that one of them will be stuck with an undesirable partner.

He’d planned on asking this question, but with the moment facing him, his courage deserts him. It’s hard to transition from the levity of a moment ago to the weight of what he wants to ask now, and it takes him several seconds to work up the nerve to ask the question, then to hear the answer. Michael waits patiently.

“Is there anyone else?” he asks finally.

“What do you mean?”

“A man or – a woman,” Alex clarifies. “Someone you’re giving up for this marriage.”

“Nah. I’ve had exes, and lovers. You’ll probably meet some of the at court,” Michael says easily, and Alex’s stomach twists into a small knot as he imagines meeting the people Michael willingly chose to be with, the inevitable comparison that will follow, a comparison where he can’t not be found wanting. “Most of them meant something, but there’s never been anyone I considered making a life with.”

“Okay,” he agrees, relieved that he wasn’t stealing that from Michael, at least.

“What about you?” Michael asks.

The question startles him. Between fighting a war for their lives and his father’s overbearing gaze, he’d never even considered a lifelong commitment, and that was when he was still whole. The very idea of someone wanting him, forever, seems almost laughable.

“No,” he says. “There’s no one.”

“Good,” Michael says. Then he hesitates, his leg bouncing nervously again.

“There’s something else you should know, before you agree to marry me,” he says, tentative.

He stands, focusing his gaze two glasses of wine on the table between them, Michael’s empty, his own barely touched.  A moment later, they levitate, doing a neat cartwheel in the air before righting themselves again, not a drop spilled.

Alex stares, awed. It’s impressive, but all he can seem to think of is how easily Michael could do whatever he wanted with him. Pin him down, hold him helpless, hurt him –

He forcefully stops that train of thought. Not everyone with power abuses it as his father had.

“Does everyone on your planet have such powers?” he asks instead.

“Just the royal family. It was why we had the right to rule, once, though now that’s based more on tradition. But the powers are in our DNA. Max and Isobel have them too, though their specialties are different.”

“They’re very impressive,” he offers honestly.

Michael gives him a shy smile. “Thanks,” he says. Then, as if reading Alex’s mind, he adds, “You don’t ever have to worry. I won’t ever use my powers on you without your consent, I promise.”

He can’t muster anything more than a “thank you,” and hopes Michael understands how much he means it.

“So,” Michael says as they rise. “I’ll see you at our wedding?”

“Yes,” Alex agrees. “See you at the wedding.”

Notes:

Why yes, I did borrow from the "Earth is Space Australia"/"humans are orcs"/"humanity fuck yeah" meme/trend that's been going around on Tumblr for a few years. I love the concept, and fic is the place where I can put anything, so why wouldn't I take advantage of this opportunity?

Chapter 3

Summary:

The wedding, and the wedding night.

Notes:

Not gonna lie, y'all, this is a bit of an angsty chapter but also one of my favorites.

Their wedding is a star-studded one, held in a vast hall with ogival arches, tall enough to fit several stories. The ceiling is a night sky, stars and galaxies swirling above them through some trick of optics or technology. They stand on a pedestal, in the place where an altar would be if this cathedral-like place were a church, him and Michael and King Max, to whom it falls to conduct the marriage, both because of its importance and because it’s Michael who is marrying. 

On Michael’s side, Isobel the Ethereal stands beside him. The glimmering jewel of Antar, draped in glittering silver and looking more regal than the king himself. Beside her, Michael’s mother looks outright angelic in her flowing white robes. Mara, he’d learned she was called.  

Alex stands alone. Kyle had offered to come, but at the last minute, he had been recalled, his presence needed on the ship Alex had once commanded. There is only the small handful of dignitaries a few steps behind him, sent to witness the marriage in an official capacity.

Alex wears his dress blues, medals glinting on his chest. Michael has donned ceremonial garb, a long clock that matches Isobel’s in color, pooling at his feet where it ends in a hem of blood-red. As if Michael has walked in blood. He cuts an impressive figure, his curls flaming in the light, all silver and gold.

“The union between these two people is a symbol of the alliance between our two peoples,” Max begins into the hushed silence. “And as you two commit to this union, so our two worlds will commit to this alliance.”

He withdraws a knife, its blade and the gemstones in its hilt both catching the light. It is a knife almost large enough to be a sword.

Alex holds out his hand. He had been taught all this, run it through his head a million times so he doesn’t mess it up. Earth had come to Antar for the alliance, and so he offers his hand first.

He glances down at the knife, but is more interested in Michael’s face. His eyes jump to the knife, then back to Alex’s face, concern evident in his features. He’s worried, Alex realizes.

Well, he’s not going to give Michael or the rest of Antar cause for worry, not over this, at least.

He relaxes his features into a serene expression and meets Michael’s gaze head-on as the knife slices open his palm.

Michael’s surprise is quickly masked. He offers his own hand, his gaze not moving from Alex. He winces slightly as his hand, too, starts to bleed.

They clasp hands as Max continues with the ceremonial words. “As you two spill blood together, so our two peoples will do the same in the name of a common cause.”

After, they make vows – not to love, for how could they promise that? – but to commit, to be faithful and true, to fulfill their duties to the best of their ability.

After, there is a celebration. Alex has never seen such extravagance, but then again, he has never before been royalty. At the high table, he sits beside Michael, while two sisters – Liz and Rosa, he learns – join Max and Isobel beside them. There is course after course of food, the finest delicacies from the entire planet, followed by elaborately crafted desserts, sculptures of sugar glimmering in the palace lights and small truffles made to look like gemstones. Michael is attentive, explaining each course and the traditions behind it, if any, and demonstrating how to extract the soft flesh of some Antaran mollusk.

A wine-like beverage flows freely, and the Antarans around him grow swiftly intoxicated as they celebrate their prince’s marriage. They stop by, one after another, to offer congratulations to the two princes – for now, with the marriage official, he too holds the title of prince, and Michael has to nudge him the first time someone addresses him as such.

“They mean you,” he murmurs in Alex’s ear.

When Antar’s two suns begin to set, the dancing begins. Michael invites him for the first dance – a placid swaying, Michael’s hands gentle on his waist. Michael is warm and solid against him, his loosely buttoned shirt giving Alex a tantalizing sight of collarbone, his lips enticing at this close range, and Alex feels the first tendrils of desire uncurl inside him. How long has it even been since a man held him in his arms?

After, they leave the dancing to the laughing courtiers. Max dances with Liz, looking thoroughly unregal, and even icy Isobel lets herself be dragged onto the dancefloor by Rosa. He watches them laugh joyously as they throw their heads back and twirl and suddenly feels very, very alone.

Then, when night falls, there are fireworks.

He is exhausted, having been up since early that morning, holding himself straight-backed and dignified for all those trying to catch a glimpse of their new prince. His leg aches, a pain that creeps into his hip and back. The sounds of talk and laughter and music do not abate, and his ears start to ring. So when the first of the fireworks explodes, filling the sky with a blood-red starburst, he jumps, instinct pushing him to duck for cover, and only an effort of willpower allows him to remain still.

“Are you all right?” Michael’s voice is barely heard above the din, but Alex can’t mistake the concern in it.

“Yes,” he reassures. “I just need – some air. It’s been a long day.”

“Of course.” Michael doesn’t follow him as he excuses himself and sneaks away to where it is blissfully silent, beneath the tall arches of the palace, and he is infinitely grateful for the privacy. Clutching a railing, he closes his eyes, taking long breaths of the night air, cool here away from the hundreds of bodies and the flames of fires.

It is beautiful here, he realizes. Away from the noise and the people, in the quiet peace of this secluded corner, he sees a palace limned in moonlight reflecting in the water, a sky studded with stars. He could learn to love it here, he thinks.

He leans his back against a column, closes his eyes, and breathes.

He realizes that he must have been gone for close to half an hour when he hears a step, and then makes out Michael’s form.

“There you are,” Michael says when he sees him. “Are you all right?”  

Michael had given him, time, he realizes. He’d been concerned, yet trusted Alex, not pushing.

“I will be,” he says. “I just needed – to get away.”

Michael doesn’t press or ask for explanations, and he feels an immense gratitude for this beautiful man, who shows him the exact sort of kindness he needs after knowing him for no more than a day. Followed immediately by an immense sadness, because he can never deserve him.

“Me too,” Michael confesses. “Isobel likes her party planning and it can be a lot.”

“Won’t it look bad, that we’re both missing from our own celebration?”

Michael smirks insouciantly. “People will – make certain assumptions about what the two of us went off to do.”

“Oh,” he says, feeling his blush creeping into his face. “That’s – “

“Not a bad thing,” Michael finishes for him. “It’s good for people to think that the marriage is working out.” He offers Alex an arm. “Shall we return to the celebration, husband?”

He takes it and allows Michael to lead him back. His leg aches, but Michael is a firm, supporting warmth beside him.

“It was the fireworks,” he finds himself saying. “They sound like canons.”

“Shit,” Michael says. “We should’ve thought of that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Alex reassures. “It’s a celebration. Of course there’s fireworks, that’s what people expect.”

Michael stops, pulling him around so Alex is facing him.

“It’s your wedding,” he says. “You deserve to be able to enjoy it.”

Alex shrugs. He avoids retorting that it’s hard to enjoy a wedding when he didn’t exactly have a choice regarding the marriage.

“They’re over now, aren’t they? No lasting harm done.”

Michael looks unconvinced but doesn’t argue with him.

When the two of them appear, arm-in-arm, back at the celebration, a cheer goes up, followed by whispers. Michael’s prediction had been correct, it seemed; people drew the obvious conclusions about where they were.

He ignores the guilt roiling in his stomach at the deception.

…..

Alex pauses once they reach the threshold to their rooms, hesitating.  This part feels more monumental, somehow, than the wedding itself.

“What wrong?” Michael asks, ever attentive.

“Just remembering an old Earth tradition. The husband carries the bride over the threshold to their new home.”

Michael raises an eyebrow. “Well, you wanna carry me over the threshold, oh husband?”

Alex keeps his face blank, but only barely.

“I don’t think that would be appropriate,” he says.

Michael’s face, too, is kept carefully neutral. “After you, then,” he gestures.

Alex enters and stills. He hasn’t seen where he’d be living: time had been of the essence. No one had wanted to lose precious days, because with each day victory trickled away.

Now, Michael shows him around. There’s an anteroom, a sumptuous parlor and a more formal receiving room. Balconies, and a cozy nook by the windows with a table for two. Alex's stomach somersaults at the thought that he’ll have dinner here, and breakfast, with his husband, a domesticity that is painfully alien to him. There’s a study, too, and a library, a door Michael gestures at as the entrance to his lab, and sumptuous bath, its floor and pools inlaid with glittering tile.

And, finally -

“We have separate bedrooms?” he asks, surprised.

“’course. Just because we’re married doesn’t mean you don’t get privacy,” Michael says.

There’s no putting this off now, at the doors to their bedrooms, and Michael looking at him expectantly.

“Are we required to consummate the union?” he inquires. He realizes that despite the negotiations, no one had informed him of that particular detail. He wonders if it even came up, tries to imagine stone-faced military types discussing this sort of thing and fails.

“Technically, but it’s not like anybody will check,” Michael says lightly. “Though,” he adds, that wicked grin on his features again as his eyes rake over Alex, “I wouldn’t be opposed.”

For a moment, Alex’s heart leaps. Michael wants him. Then he feels the weight of reality, pressing down on him like the weight of his body presses down on his prosthetic leg after a long day.  

Michael approaches with a swagger, his gaze still fixed on Alex as he licks his lips. Full, and pink, and oh-so-kissable.

It sinks in at that moment that his husband is an incredibly attractive man.

“Would you do me the honor of gracing my bed, oh noble warrior?” Michael asks, and Alex can feel the heat of his desire in his gaze. What does he even do with that?

“The honor would be mine,” he manages. He hopes it’s sufficient.

Michael expression sobers.

“Tell me you want this, Alex.”

And what does he say to that? But – he knows, at the very least, that he cannot start this marriage off with an outright lie.

“What I want doesn’t matter. You are my husband, are you not?”

“What kind of marriage – no, never mind,” Michael cuts himself off. That looks like anger in his features. Must be anger, and Alex notes it for future reference. “I don’t own you, Alex. You’re allowed to say no.”

“Then I will make use of that right,” he says, and holds his breath.

But Michael only inclines his head, princely and formal. “As you wish. Good night, Alex.” 

He goes into his own bedroom, leaving Alex feeling both relieved and bereft.

He watches Michael leave and almost reaches out to stop him, to say he’s changed his mind. It has only been a day, but he wants Michael. He wants those too-hot hands on his body, sparking a long-dormant fire in him, making him arch with pleasure beneath him, feverish kisses peppered over his skin with that beautiful mouth.  He thinks Michael would be a generous lover, and if anyone can draw ardent cries from him, it would be Michael.

But, inevitably, his mind supplies all the ways it could go wrong. Would go wrong. It has been so long since he has known a gentle touch, and he truly does not know how he would respond to one. The armor he has not taken off in years has left him cold and unpracticed inside, and he can imagine Michael’s disappointment, his frustration, as Alex turns out to be so much less. He imagines himself lashing out, startled by an unexpected touch, waking Michael with nightmares if Michael stays with him, after. He imagines himself in Michael’s arms and immediately, he sees himself waking in terror and hurting the man beside him.

And then there is his leg, and his mind is generous with images of Michael recoiling at the sight.

And after, Michael would look at him with disappointment, pity, embarrassment, not the warmth they’ve shared so far, and Alex thinks it might be like having sunlight replaced by cold night. He can see their marriage fracture as they cannot meet each other’s eyes, the knowledge between them that this is what Michael is tied to for the rest of his life.

He realizes that he cannot have Michael, no matter how much he wants him.

Predictably, after the exhaustion of a day that should by all accounts make him pass out immediately, he can’t sleep. He turns fruitlessly in his bed, his stomach roiling with guilt every time he thinks of Michael, his kind smile and his bright eyes. His bed is too large, and it feels cold and empty, but every time he closes his eyes again and imagines Michael beside him, the thought turns into a waking nightmare.

Perhaps he should take a sleeping pill. He has a long day tomorrow, and it wouldn’t do if he looks like death warmed over. But his pills always make him sluggish the next day, and that wouldn’t do either.

Finally, he drifts off, and blessedly, his mind spares him any more nightmares.

Chapter 4

Summary:

Alex settles in to his new life; Antar prepares for war.

The next morning, breakfast is quiet, but thankfully without tension in the air between them. Michael has either forgotten his rejection from the previous night or is acting like he has. Alex knows this is something they’ll need to talk about – Michael has needs, after all, and Alex can hardly ask him to remain celibate for the rest of his life – but for now, he’s content to sip coffee (or something very much resembling it) in companionable silence.   

Then, they walk together to the first council of war. Mobilizing the Antaran military with the greatest possible speed is of primary importance, and Alex finds that his marriage has come with the semi-official role of liaison to that military. The tactics of the battles themselves would be decided later, but first the Antarians need to be brought up to speed on everything Earth had learned in fighting the Wraith. That falls to him, as well as evaluating the state of Antar’s ships and troops, helping prepare them for battle readiness, and making suggestions on how best to integrate the two fleets.

So, they all gather together: Max, Isobel, Mara, Michael, him, and a handful of generals and admirals. Some of them are much older than him, and he wonders if they realize he’s younger than he looks. On Earth, long years of fighting monsters that age their victims had taught them not to assume that the appearance of age correlated with rank or experience, but Antar was new to this. They listen to him with rapt attention and respect as he tells them about Wraith tactics, the capabilities of their ships, the deceptions they tend to employ.

He reminds them how the Wraith kill, though there’s hardly a being in the galaxy that doesn’t already know. He tells them, too, how the bodies of the dead that they recover may look like the aged husks of the people they used to be, unrecognizable. How soldiers might return to their loved ones looking decades beyond their years. How they should prepare for that reality.

They accept those revelations with stony faces. If they feel the visceral fear Alex had felt, once upon a time, when his father frightened him with bedtime stories of monsters who suck the life out of innocent children, they hide it well. Only Michael stares, mouth parted, horror in his eyes. It is all he can do to ignore the guilt as Michael’s gaze reminds him that he has brought a living nightmare to the people of Antar.

And he tells them about Wraith poison: when they feed, they first inject a poison into their victim to weaken them, make them unable to fight back. At some point, humans had figured that out, extracted the poison and come up with an antidote, though it needed to be administered in the mere minutes before the poison killed the victim.

He has to pause here, force the memories from his mind of that poison spreading through his body.

As a gesture of goodwill, Earth shares the formula for the antidote.

…..

Then, there is the interview.

Isobel had explained it to him, in the kind of neat, tactical terms that had made perfect sense. Antar might be a warrior culture, but it was one that did not believe in war for the sake of war itself. The cause had to be just. The people needed to be convinced not only of the pure, practical necessity of it, but also of its righteousness.

“They need to believe this war protects the galaxy from a race of monsters,” she’d explained. “And for that, we need you. You’ve fought them. You can explain exactly what we face.”

“Must it be me, Your Highness?” he asks. “Surely you can find someone else who would better represent the cause?”

Isobel crosses her arms and looks at him skeptically. “You’ve been fighting this war your entire life, and you’ve got the honors to prove it. You’re a war hero, and we listen to those. And, like it or not, on this planet, you’re the face of this war. So, it has to be you.”

He admires Isobel’s logical mind. No wonder her subjects compare her to a glittering blade, sharp and deadly. He’d been raised to think in terms of tactics, but the tactics he knew were fighting maneuvers and photon torpedo spreads. Isobel’s tactics were more subtle, more insidious.

They require deception, and he hates it.

But he knows that this is part of the war, too, just like his marriage, a necessity to protect the people of Earth, the future of the galaxy, even. So, he reluctantly dons his dress blues a second time, and allows himself to be questioned in front of the cameras.

They ask him about his last mission before the marriage.

It was also the mission when he lost his leg, but he doesn’t tell them about that. Instead, he tells them about how he’d been the last man left on a doomed ship after they’d lost an engagement to superior numbers. Waiting until the Wraith boarded it to trigger the self-destruct after ordering his crew into escape pods.

But he hadn’t been fast enough. His leg was a bloody mess, caught in an explosion as their ship succumbed to enemy fire, and he hadn’t reacted quickly enough. Before he knew it, a Wraith was on him, feeding, and it took every last ounce of strength and the willpower his father beat into him to fight the lethargy of his poisoned limbs and throw the monster off.

He doesn’t mention how, with his crew safe, he’d been fighting for nothing more than his own survival in that moment. There was nothing heroic in the way he shot the Wraith and stumbled into the last, remaining escape pod seconds before the ship blew and took hundreds of the enemy with it. He’d simply been saving himself, so he could get back to his people and continue to protect them.

It does the trick. They see the calm with which he discusses the horrors of war, and they call him a hero. They see the medals on his chest, and a flurry of reporters, making use of newly established communications with Earth, look up what each signifies and publish detailed articles on it. The palace comes alive with murmurs, which fade into reverent silence every time he passes. Some address him as Captain rather than his royal title. Others invent epithets.

He hates himself.

………

Over the ensuing days, he barely has any time to get to know his new homeland, or to get away from the endless meetings and councils of war, none of which Michael has attended since the first. He’s not by Alex’s side as Alex examines Antar’s fleet, doesn’t come to listen as Alex laboriously explains the weaknesses in Wraith ships and the nitty gritty of successful tactics. But, he is waiting in their quarters each evening when Alex returns, along with a sumptuous dinner and plentiful wine.

“Thought you could use some sustenance, after your day,” he explains with a small smile. It’s so painfully thoughtful and domestic, and Alex wants to cry at how easily Michael makes this marriage seem real.

“Thank you,” he says honestly, sinking down into his chair to share a meal with his husband.

They don’t talk about Alex’s day, and Michael doesn’t share what he’s been up to. Instead, their conversation veers to lighter topics, relatively speaking. Alex tells him about codebreaking, which Michael listens to with rapt, impressed attention. He has an engineer’s mind for numbers, and he follows Alex’s explanations of ciphers, data encryption, and quantum cryptography easily, asking for clarification only of unfamiliar terminology.

“That is so cool,” Michael breathes an hour later as, with their dinner set aside, Alex shows him how numbers can disguise a handful of words into a jumble. “I mean, I play around with math a lot, but I never thought of using it to do that.”

Alex smiles. “It is pretty cool,” he agrees.

The next day, Michael offers to show him around his palace during his free afternoon. He accepts, and they start out in the gardens, walking down winding paths past carefully manicured beds of exotic flowers.  They are expansive, far as the eye can see, and a dizzying variety of colors and textures, no two beds identical.

“Thank you,” he says. “It’s nice to get away for a while.”

“I don’t know how you stand all those meetings,” Michael confesses. “It exhausts me just to think about talking about all those horrors day after day.”

If Alex is being perfectly honest, he’s long become numb to so many of the realities of war that had once struck terror into him. But he can hardly say that.

“Necessity,” he says instead. “It’s simply what I must do.”

“I’m glad I’m not a soldier,” Michael says. “I’m a scientist. I’ve been in my lab the past few days. I’m no use with battle tactics, but maybe I can invent something that’ll help us win.”

And that – is so much more noble than anything Alex has ever done in all the years he’s spent fighting.

“I’m thinking a beaming technology,” Michael continues. “Itt could help save people if their ship is failing – “

“That would be a gamechanger,” Alex says. How many comrades has he lost, because their ship had fallen in battle, and they had no way to get the survivors off of it? How many good men, stuck behind enemy lines, with no way to rescue them?

“Yeah? You think so?” Michael says, brightening. “I don’t want to bring it to the generals until I’ve got something to show them, but I think I’m making progress.”

They spend the next hour lost in conversation, or, rather, with Michael telling him all about the intricacies of quantum mechanics as they wander down the endless paths. Michael is a good lecturer, his explanations clear and his excitement unbounded, and he finds himself enraptured as Michael explains the current difficulty of his project. He also realizes that his husband is not only attractive and kind, but also an actual, bona fide genius.

When they’ve wandered so far from the palace they can barely see it, Michael stops them in front of a bush that looks vaguely like a lilac and plucks a sprig of flowers from it, offering them to Alex.

“Here,” he says. “Smell.”

Alex takes the flowers – their fingers brush, sending an electric jolt through him – and inhales. The scent is almost imperceptible, a hint of sunbaked earth.

“It smells like whatever you think of as home,” Michael explains, looking hopeful as he bounces on the balls of his feet.

“Oh,” Alex says. He’s never thought of anywhere in particular as home. New Mexico comes the closest only through sheer familiarity, but the dark memory of his father looms over any fondness he has for the place. Perhaps that’s why he finds the scent so faint. “What does it smell like to you?” he asks.

Michael shrugs. “I dunno,” he admits. “Never really smelled like much to me, but Iz and Max insist I’m just being stubborn. But I thought maybe you’d like something that reminds you of home.”

It’s a simple kindness, but he’s so overwhelmed that he stumbles over his thank you.

As they return to the palace, the sprig of flowers clutched in his hand, he thinks that the world looks a little brighter in Michael’s presence.

 

The next night, he gives up on sleep after several futile hours. The bed is the most comfortable he’s had in years, the palace silent, his room comfortably dark, but none of those things matter, because his mind keeps him awake.

Sighing, he reaches for his tablet and ambles into the living room. He keeps the lights off as he brings up an episode of Star Trek and settles in. It’s funny, watching an outdated show about how humans imagined aliens, here, on an alien planet, married to one. But it’s still soothing, the hope and humor of his childhood, and he sinks into it easily.

He doesn’t even notice Michael come in and startles when the lights turn on.

“You’re awake,” Michael says.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Michael offers. Alex tenses; it sounds like a proposition; maybe I can help tire you out -

He shakes it off. Michael’s standing across the room from him and there’s nothing seductive about his gaze, though he does look adorably sleep-ruffled.

“Not really,” Alex says. “Watching this helps the most,” he explains. “It calms me.”

“What is it?” Michael asks.

“A dated human show about aliens and space travel.”

Michael’s eyebrows rise. “Can I see?”

He hesitates. Would Michael be offended by it? But in the end, he decides that Star Trek is a better representation of humanity than most real humans. He pats the couch next to him and pulls up “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Michael settles next to him easily. He sits close, and Alex’s heart thunders as their bodies touch. But Michael doesn’t seem to notice, focusing instead on the screen. Alex wills himself to relax.

Minutes later, Michael’s laughing so hard he can barely breathe and a grin splits Alex’s face. He brought this joy to Michael’s face, and it’s one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen. He leans against Michael, whose arm comes up around Alex immediately. They watch the next episode pressed close together, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world. 

Then Michael asks about Klingons, and that’s how Alex ends up explaining Cold War-era allegories, and then he realizes that he’s explaining science fiction to an actual alien, and maybe it’s the lack of sleep, but he bursts out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Michael asks.

“Just. You’re an alien. You know the creator of this show wrote about what the aliens would think, if they listened to all our signals and transmissions and managed to catch Star Trek? He said he hoped they wouldn’t judge us too terribly based on it.”

“Technically, on this planet, you’re the alien,” Michael says wryly. “But no, I’m not judging you. Actually, I think it’s brilliant. How much more is there?”

They don’t get any sleep that night.

Still, there is newfound energy in his step the next day, and he doesn’t have to drag himself through the day as he would after a regular bout of insomnia.

Notes:

Yes, Alex is a Star Trek nerd and they bond over their love for the show. If you thought I wasn't going to insert that somehow into an arranged marriage AU then you don't even know me.

Chapter 5

Notes:

Because canon is disappointing sometimes and actions should have consequences :) Enjoy!

The time comes to send off the troops. It is a large ceremony, all pomp, Antaran soldiers arrayed in orderly rows far as the eye can see, awaiting their king’s blessing for their impending sacrifice.

Alex takes a deep breath and lets it out nervously.

“Hey. I’m right beside you, the whole time,” Michael assures him, squeezing his hand.

“I know,” he replies. Michael is a steady presence by his side, and as they step out together and make their way up to the platform, where Max and Isobel already stand, he’s glad for the reassurance.

A cheer goes up when they see Michael. Then they see Alex, and the cheer turns into a whisper. This is what Alex dreaded; they’re whispering about him, and he’s suddenly back in high school, hushed voices behind his back, no one meeting his eyes, and he knows they’re talking about him –

Then, all as one, the soldiers kneel, heads bowed, like rows of dominos all tumbling down. Max and Isobel and Mara kneel too, and every courtier and dignitary and minister beside them on the platform.

And Michael. Michael, too, kneels beside him, gazing up at him, pride in every feature.

He and Isobel had choreographed this whole thing carefully. They’d planned for exactly this, and he knows exactly what he has to do now, but as he follows the script they wrote together, he knows he’s playing the role of someone he’s not.

He squares his shoulders and gives a nod, dignified as he can manage. Everyone rises, and Michael comes to stand a step behind him, Max flanking his other side, as Alex begins to speak.

“I am asking you today to take up arms for a cause for which I myself have fought and bled,” Alex begins.

Isobel had insisted that he was the most appropriate choice to speak for precisely this reason. The only one of them who had fought in this war was the only one who had any right to ask good men to die in it. He had to agree that it had a sort of twisted logic to it.

“We face a monstrous enemy,” he continues. “The Wraith. In battle, I have looked into their eyes, and I can swear to you that they know no mercy and have no honor. They spread their vile tendrils through the galaxy, sucking the life from all in their path and crushing whole civilizations. They will stop at nothing less than the annihilation of everything that we are. It is a matter of our very survival, so I ask you to find in yourselves the courage to fight in the name of what you hold most dear, and to continue the battle I gave my life to fighting.” (Isobel had wanted him here to call upon the soldiers to fight with the same heroism he himself had shown, but he’d refused to utter those words. Finally, they’d compromised).

The soldiers cheer like he has not asked them to bleed and die while he remains here, basking in royal luxury.

 

With the troops sent off, he spends his time learning how to be an Antaran. While Michael locks himself up in his lab for hours, Alex learns their language. Though his universal translator enables communication, he has spent enough time fighting a foreign enemy and breaking their codes to know that no two words are ever equivalent. Language carries culture, so he painstakingly learns the language of his new homeland, and with it the culture.  

One prominent part of that culture that he discovers is its promiscuity. There is no other word for it: Antarans have no compunctions about publicly recounting the details of their sexual exploits. The names of former partners are rarely kept secret, but rather paraded about proudly, for it is considered no shame to have performed the act with anyone, for any reason, as long as all parties consented with no violation of prior promises. Gender doesn’t seem to matter, either; they don’t even have labels, and he has seen couples and trios of all gender combinations intertwined with each other on the palace grounds, kissing and giggling and sneaking away to somewhere more secluded.

Used to shame, their ease and freedom shocks him. He’d had a brief rebellious phase as a teenager, wearing his difference proudly until his father caught him trying to kiss Kyle Valenti and beat him bloody. After that, he’d hidden himself away, each lover he took a dirty secret behind a closed door. He’d found them through surreptitious glances, through the unspoken words and coded signals that every queer man learns in order to survive, so the way Antarans barely blink at differences that would have earned him broken bones sends him into the occasional panic.

And they talk easily about Michael’s former lovers, too. Apparently the prince’s promiscuity had been a source of delight, and Alex feels a pang each time they mention a former lover and the extravagant gestures Michael had made for them. Not from jealousy – Alex doesn’t think Michael would be unfaithful – but because it reminds him of what he has taken from Michael. He really should broach the subject with his husband, he thinks, and suggest that Michael find elsewhere what Alex cannot give him. But their marriage has been going so well, a blissful domestic peace that Alex is getting used to for the first time in his life, and he simply cannot bring himself to raise the topic and risk the fragile trust they have built.

 

He meets regularly with Isobel. Together, they painstakingly script his numerous public appearances to ensure he remains loved and respected as the reality of war sinks in and news come of the first casualties. This, too, is part of fighting war, Isobel insists to him. It is not all about defeating the enemy; it is also about conquering the hearts and minds of a people who can commit their loyalty or refuse to fight it. So for the sake of the galaxy itself, he plays the role of a hero, and feels like a charlatan.

Kyle and Jenna write to him from time to time, but they have little time for lengthy missives while on the front lines. It feels silly to send them nothing but court gossip and tidbits about Antaran culture in return for their harrowing stories of battles where they survived by the skin of their teeth.

It makes him realize just how useless he is.

 

With the free time he has, he reads Antaran books. Unsurprisingly for a warrior culture, the most significant ones are epics, tales of heroism and war, histories of valiant kings and fantasies of lone fighters taking on entire armies, demons, and mythical monsters. There are poems of eulogy for fallen heroes, ballads of love that survives war and death, tales of lovers on the opposing sides of a war.

Some things are the same no matter the culture, Alex thinks, as he explains the story of Romeo and Juliet to Michael.

What does surprise him, though, is how the stories end. Not with victory or defeat, but rather, with the battles the warriors fight against their own demons once they return home after the war.

The first time he comes across it, in an epic about one of Antar’s first warrior-kings, he nearly drops the book in shock. It’s like holding a mirror, to read of the battered soldier woken by nightmares, haunted by the faces of the people he could not save. Alex reads with disbelief as the poet describes the warrior’s inner struggles with the same gilded words with which he’d painted his feats on the battlefield.

He sets the book aside and stares blankly into the distance for what must be an hour.

If this was the kind of stories Michael was raised on, then no wonder he’d found Alex’s missing leg and military record impressive. But every word of it feels so wrong, even as he aches to believe they’re true.

Weak. That’s what his father had called him. He’d always rolled his eyes at any mention of the word trauma. His disdain for military psychologists was well known. “The only demons a real man needs to fight are the Wraith,” he’d always said. If a man had demons in his head, that meant he was weak. And Earth needed strong soldiers, who didn’t sap their energy fighting imaginary battles.

“It’s all in your head,” he’d said once. “Go fight a real enemy.”

But this poet had been to war. He wasn’t some naïve writer throwing out pretty words. He wrote from experience, his epic held up as one of Antar’s greatest.

He’s distracted the entire following day, trying to understand how a warrior people find truth in the words he’d read. A battle against his demons. That’s what the epic had called his mess. His brokenness. Another valiant struggle.

There’s nothing valiant in the way he wakes up screaming that night.

 

It’s yet another of the seemingly endless court celebrations – how many can there be, Alex wonders, when the planet is at war? He slips away to adjust his prosthetic, which has been paining him after a day of standing tall and imposing. He’s just rolled up his pant leg when a courtier turns the corner.

“Your Highness,” he says, surprised, and gives the customary bow. Then his eyes fall to the prosthetic.

Alex faces him down stoically, but the man sinks immediately  to one knee, head bowed. “Geroi’i,” he breathes.

“Rise,” Alex directs. “The word you just said. Repeat it for me. I am still learning your language.”

The courtier complies, the world rolling off his tongue easily.

“Geroi’i,” Alex repeats. ““Thank you,” he adds, nodding in dismissal. The courtier bows again before departing.

He doesn’t say anything during the celebration. In fact, he only brings it up once they’re back in their chambers. As soon as they get there, Michael sprawls over a chaise in a state of half-undress, legs spread sinfully wide as he starts to tinker with something on a handheld screen. Though it’s late, sleep seems to be the furthest thing from his mind: his brows crease in concentration, while his curls are wild and unruly from a night of celebration followed by Michael running his fingers through them. He must have been bitten by the bug of some new idea in between smiling at inane formalities.

Alex just stands, watching him, filled with a sudden fondness because it’s so patently, painfully Michael.

It takes Michael several minutes to glance up and realize Alex is watching him.

“Hey,” he offers. “Sorry, didn’t realize you were there. You gonna go to bed?”

“I wanted to ask you something first,” Alex says.

“Hmm?”

“I was fixing my prosthetic today when a courtier ran into me and saw it. He called me Gero’ii.” He repeats the word carefully.

“It’s our word for the most valiant warriors,” Michael rushes to explain. “Your military record is well known. When he saw you, he deduced that you lost your leg in battle and gave you the honor you’re due.”

“The honor I’m due – I’m not – He actually knelt.” The soldiers kneeling at the ceremony where he’d sent them to war was one thing, but this? A man seeing his missing limb and kneeling like there is honor in it? He stumbles for words as he tries to convey ridiculous the whole situation was. He is hardly some Antarian Achilles.

“You chose to risk your life for something you thought worth dying for,” Michael says, softly, insistently. “You lost part of yourself doing it, but you survived, and now you carry yourself as if it never happened.”

Alex debates arguing, pointing out that he’d hardly been thinking about what was worth dying for as he signed the paperwork under his father’s watchful glare. He thinks about explaining that there’s nothing honorable about missing part of himself, about being broken and having nothing but the shattered pieces of yourself to offer another person. He considers pointing out that Michael has not seen Alex screaming in the night, or the way he’s perpetually ready to flinch at the hint of a threat, or the pain that is his constant companion.

“Good night,” he says instead. “Don’t stay up too late. Even genius princes need sleep.”

After that night, reverent silences follow him wherever he walks, replacing the deep, respectful bows that he’s been receiving up until now. A hush falls the second he’s glimpsed, and sometimes, someone will reverently murmur that word, until he wants to scream.

….

Walking in the gardens becomes his only escape. Somehow, it’s the one place where he’s not followed by reverent murmurs, while courtiers keep a respectful distance. He wonders if Michael had something to do with it, but doesn’t ask.

He’s taking one such walk, exploring a particularly distant and secluded part of the garden in happy solitude, when he runs into Rosa. He’s only met her in passing so far, usually when she was slipping out of Isobel’s quarters, but now she seems to be loitering, for lack of a better word, in his path.

“Oh, there you are,” she says when she sees him.

He raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize my presence was needed.”

“Nah, I just thought I’d show you something, if you happened to come this way.” She gestures towards what he now notices is a rather foreboding locked gate. Taking it in, Alex realizes that there is nothing decorative about it: it’s tall, with dark iron bars close together so that nothing can squeeze through, and, in parts, twisting and tangling into each other. It looks like the metal itself has been poisoned.

Rosa withdraws a key from the inner folds of her cape and moves towards the gate. “It’s a poison garden,” she explains, gesturing him in once she gets the gate open.

“Should we be going in there, then?” he asks.

“Oh, relax,” she says, sounding amused. “Nothing in here will kill you just by breathing it in. Most of these plants need to go through a complicated process before you can get the poison out. Liz could tell you all about it, she finds it fascinating.”

“Most?” he clarifies. Poison no longer frightens him, but that doesn’t mean he’s keen to repeat his experiences of it.

“Don’t worry,” Rosa says breezily. “I won’t let you breathe the really poisonous ones.”

He follows her inside, curious despite himself. The flowers here are just as beautiful as the ones in the rest of the gardens, but now that he knows they’re poisonous, he can’t get it out of his mind. Their  blooms tend towards a dark and bloody red, their stems black, while some of the flowers look like they’ve been literally painted black to match.

“I had assumed a warrior culture such as yours would frown upon using poison,” he says. “Killing someone through subterfuge rather than honest battle doesn’t seem like your way.”

Rosa shrugs. “Uh-huh,” she says. “It’s cowardly, supposedly. Of course, the sorts of people who tend to say that are the ones who know they’d win through sheer force.”

“Hmm,” he says. Rosa wasn’t present at those first meetings, where he’d explained about the Wraith and their tactics. And if she doesn’t know about how they kill, he’s not keen on being the one to enlighten her.

“Isobel figured out a while back that this sort of thing would be …. prudent to have, and had me design it,” Rosa continues. And now that he looks, he notices that there is, in fact, a design to it, the flower beds shaped in curlicues, with the blooms planted so that they shade neatly from lightest to darkest red.  “Now she tells everyone she lets me tend to it to indulge me. Her royal favorite,” she adds with an amused smirk, and Alex understands why: Isobel doesn’t give the appearance of someone who’d have favorites.

Which, he realizes, is probably just as carefully calculated as everything else about her, including this garden. It seems like precisely the sort of card Isobel would put up her sleeve, then pass off as a whim.

While he’s thinking through all this, Rosa plucks a flower and brings it up to her nose to smell.

“Relax,” she says at Alex’s concerned gaze. “It’s harmless. To get the poison out you literally have to boil and distill it. A lot of work to make something so beautiful deadly, if you ask me.”

“You know, on Earth, the flower you’re named after is both beautiful and dangerous,” Alex says. “It’s considered one of the most romantic of flowers to give to a lover, and yet it has thorns.” Not unlike Rosa herself, who, Alex is starting to get the sense, is plenty dangerous behind her beauty.

“Really?” Rosa asks, sounding pleased. “I should look into growing some here, then. It would make for quite a fad, actually.”

“You should,” Alex agrees. Then, steering the conversation away from fads, because he’s had a little too much of the Antarians’ fawning over him and his human ways, he asks, “Why are you showing me this?”

Rosa shrugs easily. “I guess I just wanted you to know that not all of us think the same,” she says. “Not everyone’s enamored of bloody battles.” 

 

He wanders back to their quarters slowly, lost in thought, and walks in to find Michael playing a string instrument. Michael’s so lost in the music that he doesn’t notice Alex at first, and Alex still in the doorway, listening to Michael play the simple chords for several minutes. He notices Alex as the notes slip away into silence, and as always, a smile splits his face when he looks up and sees Alex.

“It’s a guitar,” Michael says in response to Alex’s unasked question. At least, that’s how Alex’s universal translator renders the word. “It makes me feel quiet,” he explains as Alex sits down next to him. “I have all this chaos in my mind, and usually I can channel it into something productive. But I’ve been in the lab all day and I just can’t seem to think clearly today, and on days like that, I need the music to calm the chaos.”

Alex smiles. He knows a little about needing to calm inner turmoil.

“That’s wonderful,” he says. “The way it brings you peace.”

“Do you play?” Michael asks.

“I used to. I wanted to make music, once, before I went to war,” he shares, because Michael had shared with him.

“Oh,” Michael says. He offers Alex the guitar. “Would you like to play?”

Alex shakes his head. “That’s alright. Perhaps you’d play for me?”

Michael nods, and plays a tender, slow melody. He sings, words that his universal translator doesn’t catch, but they sound equally tender. It takes him back to a time when he was young and hopeful, and thought he could make a life out of music. But somehow, with Michael playing, he finds himself relaxing, calm filling his soul as the soft notes flow through him.

The silence startles him when Michael finishes.

“Thank you,” he says. “That was beautiful.”

Michael flashes him a radiant grin. “Anytime.” Then: “Dinner?”

Alex hadn’t realized how hungry he was. “Of course,” he agrees. The table is already set, with a bunch of the lilac-like flowers in a vase in the center. It’s so achingly tender and domestic that for a moment Alex can’t breathe.

“I know you haven’t been home in a while, so I thought you’d appreciate the smell of it,” Michael says by way of explanation when he sees Alex looking. He turns away to call for dinner to be brought before Alex even has a chance to thank him.

Still thinking of poisoned plans, Alex leans over to smell the flowers, but instead of the vague scent of sand and dry air, he smells rain.

Antar is a wetter, greener planet than the desert he grew up in, and he realizes that he must finally be starting to think of it as home.

Chapter 6

Summary:

Alex talks to Mara; Michael gets a cat.

Notes:

This chapter is on the shorter side, but tomorrow's chapter is pretty long and full of Malex goodness, excitement, angst, and softness, if I do say so myself. It's a bit of a turning point in their story, and I can't wait to share it with all of you.

But for now....enjoy the cat, and a little bit of comedy that I think we could all desperately use. And thank you to all the wonderful readers who suggested to me that Alex should get Michael a cat, and then let me use that idea.

Alex stretches, exhaustion from a day bent over reading intelligence reports and battle plans seeping into his bones. He might no longer be going into battle himself or even ordering soldiers into it, but ever since he’d helped send off the troops, the war has felt more intimately his than ever before. He can’t help his perverse need to know the details of battles he cannot fight in himself.

He interlaces his fingers and puts his palms out, trying to will the soreness out of them. Before he knows it, Michael is grabbing his left hand.

“You have a scar,” he says, staring at Alex’s palm.

“Of course I do. It was a deep cut.”

Wordlessly, Michael shows Alex his own palm, the skin smooth as a baby’s.

“How?” Alex asks.

“I guess we heal more easily than you do,” Michael suggests. He frowns. “Does it hurt?”

Alex takes his hand back like it’s been burned.

“I know I’m weak. You don’t have to point it out to me,” he snaps. Michael’s patient attentions had been kindness itself, but today, after endless reports of engagements with an enemy he could contribute nothing to fighting, the very thought of Michael’s kindness grates at him.

Michael’s eyes are wide and hurt.

“I don’t think you’re weak,” he says. 

Alex sighs. He’s too tired for this. He feels like he hasn’t slept in days, only snatches here and there, interspersed with vivid nightmares.

“I don’t want to discuss it,” he says curtly, rising. Perhaps sleep will help.

Perhaps tonight he’ll actually manage to sleep.  

Michael makes a placating gesture with his hands. “All right,” he says, leaving Alex to his thankless pile of communiqués.

He doesn’t sleep well that night, either.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says to Michael over breakfast the next morning. “I was frustrated last night, and I took it out on you. I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s all right,” Michael says. “I get it.”

“It’s really not. I have – my own demons, and I have no right to inflict them on you. So, I’m sorry.”

Michael catches his hand. He tactfully avoids the scar on his palm, instead tracing his thumb over Alex’s knuckles. It still feels like holding a live wire.

“I wish you’d let me help you carry that burden,” Michael says. “You don’t have to do it alone.”

He wants to. Oh, how he wants to take Michael up on his offer.

“I – can’t,” he says instead. “I just – I can’t.”

To his relief, Michael doesn’t press. “Okay,” is all he says, and over breakfast Michael excitedly babbles about the physics of faster-than-light travel. For a few minutes, at least, battle plans are forgotten, and he finds himself smiling.

 

The next day, he’s summoned by Mara. He appears in her chambers at the appointed time, and the guards gesture him in immediately with bows.

Inside, Mara awaits, looking regal. Her blonde hair falls over her shoulders, and with her flowing white gown, she’s the very imag of a princess.

“Alex.” She rises to greet him, though etiquette does not require it. She outranks him.

“Your Highness.” He bows.

“I thought we might talk. We can stay here, or would you prefer a stroll through the gardens?”

“The weather is beautiful today,” Alex acknowledges. And his leg isn’t paining him. A stroll sounds heavenly. “I would be honored to accompany you outside.”

Mara’s security detail follows them at a distance, discreet.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Your Highness?” Alex asks as they walk down the same winding paths Michael had shown him.

“Please, Alex.” Somehow, her voice is both lilting and self-assured all at once. “Let’s dispense with the formalities. I simply wanted to inquire how you’re doing. Michael thought that you could use someone besides him to talk to.”

Alex blinks, startled.

“Your son is a kind man,” he rushes to reassure her. “I had no intention to offend him by keeping anything from him.”

“Alex,” she says kindly. “You married a stranger, and now you live on a distant planet whose very way of life is foreign to you, with no other humans to keep you company. It is no insult to me or my son that you feel unmoored. But you should know that if you do need someone to talk to, you have more than one person who will listen, without judgement.”

Alex sighs quietly, wondering how much he wants to tell her. How much he can tell her. She waits patiently, and they stroll in silence. She is regal like Isobel, beside him, the very image of a princess, and yet she has none of Isobel’s iciness, exuding only warmth. Alex feels drawn into that warmth, compelled to open up.

“I am a soldier, and yours is a warrior culture,” he finally dares to say. “And yet, I don’t seem to fit, and I cannot articulate where the misalignment lies. I struggle to make even Michael understand, though he has been nothing but the perfect husband.”

Mara considers him for a few seconds. He expects to feel pinned and dissected beneath her gaze, but instead he finds himself on the receiving end of nothing more than a careful attention.

“I went to war, once,” Mara says eventually. She smiles at Alex’s shock. “Long before Michael was born. It lasted only a few years, but it was bloody. And I still remember returning home, celebrated as a hero, and yet struggling to talk of it. That was many years ago now, and there are even fewer today who know what it is like to have lived a war. They read of it in books, but that is no way to truly understand the marks it leaves on you.”

Alex stares at her. He had not even considered that the woman beside him might have fought once as he did. She had always seemed to him so calm and collected, and now she appears unperturbed by the memories she speaks of. But despite the coolness of her tone, he finds himself warming up to her.

“I’ve read those books too,” Alex says. “They’re beautiful. But when the poets talk of the battles that come after, they never say how ugly those battles are.”

“They are,” Mara agrees. “I sometimes think the pretty words are a way of making peace with the ugliness of it. That when those poets returned from war, they wrote those things to find meaning in the horror. But the battle is no less valiant because it’s messy, Alex.”

“You truly believe that?”

“Yes,” she says. “I do. And though my son is no soldier, I think he does too. There are things he will never understand, and you do not owe him the details of your most intimate struggles. But he wants to help. Let him. And should you ever find yourself wanting to talk to someone who understands, you are always welcome here.”

“Thank you,” he says, and means it.

He walks back to his rooms slowly, pensive. He finds Michael sitting on his favorite couch, curls disheveled, sucking on a stylus as he works through some calculations on a tablet. He freezes for a moment, struck by how innocent Michael looks. Untroubled. Alex wants to keep him here forever, pure and golden and safe, to protect him from the kinds of horrors that have made up his own life. 

Michael looks up as Alex enters. “Hey,” he greets.  

“I talked to your mother today,” Alex says.

“And?” Michael asks hopefully.

“I didn’t know she’d been to war.”

“Yeah. I thought you two would understand each other.” In a way I can’t understand you, it seems he’s saying.

Alex is hit with another wave of affection and gratitude. He had expected Michael to take offense that there are things Alex cannot share with him. But instead, Michael had taken it in stride, even arranging for Alex to find the comfort he needs elsewhere.

“Thank you,” he says.

“My pleasure,” Michael says breezily. Like he’d done nothing more than pass the salt. “You look like you’ve had a long day. Anything I can do?”

Alex walks over and sits down next to Michael.

“Just this,” he says, and rests himself against Michael. 

Michael’s arms come up around him immediately. He leans back, taking Alex with him, until they’re – cuddling. That’s what it is. Michael settles in as Alex rests his head on Michael’s chest, his heart beating strong and steady beneath him.

“Better?” Michael asks.

“Yes,” Alex sighs, and closes his eyes.

Michael shifts slightly to pick his tablet back up. He continues quietly with his calculations, and for a while there’s no other sound than the light scratching of his stylus and Michael’s breathing.

Eventually, Alex drifts off. He thinks Michael might have planted a kiss on the top of his head as he does, but he must be imagining it.

He wakes up what must be hours later, because it’s dark, and the lights are dimmed. Michael is still working away at his calculations.

He sits up, startled. He’d – fallen asleep. His mind had decided that Michael’s arms were safe enough to fall asleep in.

“Morning,” Michael says wryly while he’s still trying to process that thought. He glances outside, but as he suspected, it’s clearly the middle of the night.

“I – fell asleep.”

“Yeah, I gathered that,” Michael huffs in amusement. “You want to go back to your bed, or am I that comfortable of a pillow?”

As much as he wants to stay here, in Michael’s embrace, he knows that’s a bad idea. It’s sheer dumb luck that he didn’t startle awake and start swinging.  

“You’re a very comfortable pillow,” he agrees. “But my leg won’t thank me if I stay here.”

“Right,” Michael says, shifting to allow Alex to disentangle himself and stand.

“Thank you,” Alex says. “Good night?”

Michael’s smile is soft and happy. “Good night, Alex.”

 

The next morning, Alex gets to work. It takes him two weeks to arrange what he’s planning: supply chains and interplanetary communications are always a challenge in a time of war. 

“I have a present from Earth for you,” he finally announces on a lazy afternoon, one of those rare ones when Michael isn’t buried in incomprehensible equations.  

Michael looks up at Alex, then at the portable cage he’s carrying. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” Michael says. “It’s not even any kind of holiday.” 

“I didn’t,” Alex agrees. “But I never got you a wedding present and I wanted to do something special for you.” He sets the cage down and unlocks it, letting out the kitten inside.

Michael jumps up, backing away from the small fluffball that delicately steps out, meowing softly. It’s absolutely comical, and it’s all Alex can do not to burst out laughing.

“You got me a miniature tiger??” Michael sputters. “One of the deadly ones?”

This time, Alex can’t help laughing. “Relax,” he says, picking it up. The kitten scurries up his arm and onto his shoulder. “It’s completely harmless.” As if in assent, the kitten meows plaintively, digging its small claws into Alex’s shoulder for balance.

“It’s – it’s – “ Michael is clearly panicking. “It has claws, Alex, you’re going to bleed to death, get it off.”

“Michael,” Alex says, still thoroughly amused. Michael’s panic is strangely endearing. “I’ve literally fought Wraith. I’m not going to be killed by a kitten.”

He takes the fist-sized ball of fluff into his hand and pets it. The plaintive meowing quiets as the kitten curls into a little ball in his palm. “Look, it’s completely harmless,” he says. “Here, hold it.”

Michael looks at him like Alex had just suggested he climb into a pit of vipers.

“It won’t hurt you, I promise,” Alex says. “I wouldn’t give you something that would hurt you.”

That, at least, seems to convince Michael.

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees, holding his hands out gingerly. Carefully, Alex hands over the kitten, which meows again. Michael jumps at the sound.

“Why is it – “

“He’s just trying to communicate with you. Think of it as him saying hello.”

“He’s not mad?”

Alex smiles. “Trust me, if he was mad, you’d know. Here, hold him closer.”

Michael obliges, bringing the kitten to this chest. Immediately, it clings to Michael’s shirt with its claws, scurrying up until it climbs into one of Michael’s chest pockets and curls up. Michael stands very still, staring down at it.

“See?” Alex reassures. “It likes you. It just wants to be somewhere warm, and you’re kind of a space heater.”

“It is kind of cute,” Michael admits.

“Like you,” Alex says.

It just slips out, but Michael’s too preoccupied with the baby monster attached to his person to really notice Alex’s words, apparently.

“What are you going to name it?” Alex asks quickly, before Michael notices what he’s said.

 “The Terror of Antar,” Michael says with the utmost seriousness.

This time, Alex’s giggles turn into hysterics. They seem to be contagious, because Michael follows suit. Their fits of giggles only stop once The Terror wakes up and starts meowing at the noise.

It’s in that moment that Alex realizes that he and Michael might be able to have – something. Not some grand romance, of course; he’s under no illusions that he’ll ever get to have that. But – a partnership of sorts, built on mutual fondness and trust. A comfortable arrangement where they can be each other’s anchor.

That’s already more than he could have ever hoped for.

Chapter 7

Summary:

Intrigue and conspiracy and BAMF Alex and tender Malex goodness, oh my....

The Terror of Antar also makes a brief appearance.

Notes:

Not gonna lie...this is one of my favorite chapters, y'all. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that there's plenty of Malex in all their cosmic, loving, glory, and also high stakes. I hope you love it as much as I do.

The first casualty reports arrive.

That night, Michael is uncharacteristically silent. He sips his wine gloomily, downing glass after glass.

Alex has seen them too. Tactical reports, a victory for human and Antarian forces. The losses relatively small for the size of the engagement. He has long taught himself to think in those terms.

But as always, there is also the list of names, at the end. Many of them alien names, but they are still lives, each and every one. Forever lost.

“You were a captain, when you served,” Michael says, breaking the silence. “Did you order men into battle?”

“I ordered them to their deaths, if I had to,” he replies. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

“How did you do it?” Michael asks, his eyes wild and haggard as he searches for the answers in Alex’s face. “How did you live with yourself, after?”

“I told myself they made a choice. They knew what they were getting into when they volunteered, knew the costs like I did. I rationalized it to myself until I figured out how to lock up what I feel and stow it away,” he says, and awaits judgment.

“I don’t know how to do that, Alex. Tell me how to do that.” His eyes plead as much as his words, and when Alex says nothing, he rises in frustration and stalks to the balcony.

Alex rises and follows him out into the cool night air. Here, the silence is almost complete, broken only by the soft whispering of the tree leaves. It’s hard to imagine, in this evening calm, that good men are dying elsewhere.

“I’m not made for this,” Michael says, staring out into the night. “I wasn’t born to rule and hold men’s lives in their hands. I’m a scientist, and I thought I could at least help that way, but even there I’m useless. Some genius I am, I can’t even figure out the problem with my beaming technology.”

Alex reaches out, placing his hand on Michael’s shoulder. Michael’s eyes snap to him immediately.

“Don’t blame yourself as if you were the one to spill their blood. You’re not.”

Alex expects a protest, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Michael just stares at him. Blinks. Blinks again. He’s becoming slightly disconcerted by the unyielding gaze, when Michael says, with clearly forced calm, “my powers are gone.”

“What?”

“My powers. I can’t feel them. They’re – “ A chill runs down Alex’s spine, and he thinks it’s the reason for the prickling at the back of his neck, which is the reason he loses a crucial second before he realizes it is his body alerting him to danger.

He turns in time to see a cloaked man, his knife glinting in the moonlight as he lunges for Michael.

Alex moves on instinct, placing himself between Michael and the assassin. He blocks the attempted blow, and they struggle. The man’s movements are lightning-fast and snakelike. Whoever he is, it is clear that he is skilled, but Alex’s commendations are not empty honors. In the end, he ends up with the knife, straddling the man and holding it to his throat.

Isobel’s guards arrive moments later. He spares no time wondering at their perfect timing.

“Secure him,” Alex orders, and the guards obey immediately, dragging the assassin away for an interrogation Alex does not want to contemplate.

He rises, and the world spins. He glances down at the knife in his hand and the cut on his arm.

Of course. Poison. An assassin would not have wanted to take the chance that he did not strike a killing blow.

The ground beckons, and he stays upright through sheer willpower.

“Alex!” He turns to see that Michael’s next to him, looking concerned. His senses must be even more addled by the poison than he thought. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

He sways in place until Michael’s arms catch him, and he wants to do nothing more than to stay there and forget the world.

“You’re hurt.” Vaguely, he hears Michael ordering the remaining guards, demanding medical attention and ordering them to summon Max. With Michael’s help, they stumble back inside, where Michael deposits him on the couch and kneels beside him. With a sigh, he lies back and fights the exhaustion pulling him down like lead.

“What did he do to you?” Michael sounds frantic, but Alex doesn’t have the strength to calm him.

“Wraith poison,” he says tiredly, and Michael curses colorfully. Alex just wonders, absently, how it had ended up on a poisoned blade on Antar, but that doesn’t seem all that important right now. All he wants to do is close his eyes and forget.

“We’ll get you an antidote,” Michael promises.  “I’m not going to let you die, I promise.”

“You have twelve hours to do it, then. That’s how long my immunity will give you, more or less. Don’t worry, your people have the formula.”  

“How do you – “

“Know?” Alex smiles weakly. “Not my first rodeo.”

He watches hazily as Michael gives orders; he thinks he might be demanding that Liz be summoned, or perhaps Max, but the sounds all blur together. All he can make out is Michael kissing his hand. “I’ll save you,” he promises. “I won’t let you die for me.”

Alex smiles weakly. “I know.”

His last conscious thought is how beautiful Michael looks, and then he has no more strength to stay awake.

The pain wakens him hours later. He can feel the poison killing him slowly from within, so unyielding that he can’t tell whether he’s hallucinating the gentle hands carding through his hair; he thinks it might be Mara whispering soothing words into his ear. Of course they wouldn’t have left him alone. 

It’s all he can do to squeeze his eyes shut and work his way through the breathing exercises he uses when his leg pains him. Then, when they don’t work, he imagines Michael, golden eyes and golden hair. 

And, like a vision, Michael appears, Liz beside him.

“We have the antidote. You’re going to be all right, Alex,” Michael says. Alex doesn’t have the strength to answer; he merely squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on holding back his whimpers.

Beside him, Liz kneels and injects the liquid in the syringe she holds. The pain eases marginally, and he recognizes the icy feeling of the antidote spreading through his veins, each drop of it rendering inert a drop of deadly poison.

“Is it working?” Michael asks worriedly. “Did we give him enough?”

“Yes,” Alex reassures him, and Michael almost falls over in relief. “It worked.”

“Thank God,” he whispers. Then -  “What do you need now? Should we get a doctor? There aren’t any human ones, but maybe one of ours – “

“I just need rest,” he says. “Give my body time to recover.”

“Do you want me to carry you to bed?” Michael offers.

The thought is enticing: the idea of walking to bed on his own sounds like a gargantuan task at the moment.

“Help me walk?” he asks instead.

He leans on Michael – he’s not sure he has the strength to hold himself up, with a crutch, right now – and, slowly, they stumble towards his bed. By the time they reach it, he has to catch his breath. How strong a dose was that poison? They must have wanted to ensure it would work even on Antaran physiology.

Michael makes his bed for him, untucking the blankets and even – fluffing his pillow.

He’s too exhausted right now to know how to feel about it.

“What can I do?” Michael asks, hovering.

“Nothing, I’ll be fine,” he says automatically.

“I still think we should have a doctor to watch you overnight, or – something. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“The poison’s been neutralized,” Alex says tiredly.  “I’m fine, Michael, really.”

“Well, I’m going to stay. I’m not leaving you alone right now.”

Alex shrugs, too tired to argue. “As you wish.”

“Good,” Michael says, and turns aside tactfully.

Right. Of course.

He undresses slowly – the buttons seem to slip through his fingers – and undoes his leg. It falls from his hands with a clatter, and he can’t be bothered to pick it up. The softness of the bed beckons, and his limbs feel like they’re made of lead.  

He passes out, his body simply shutting down after hours of fighting the poison.

He wakes to beams of sunlight and Michael asleep in a chair beside him, his curls aflame around his head like a halo, smelling faintly of rain that the breeze from the open window carries over to him. He’s breathtaking and Alex is hit with a wave of adoration for this beautiful man who saved him. Oh, he thinks, there is nothing he wouldn’t do to protect this man he loves -

His pulse skyrockets with the realization. He loves.

It had seemed like the obvious thing to do, last night, to step between Michael and the blade. He’d have done it for anyone on his side of the war; he’d simply seen the knife and acted on instinct, protecting the helpless as he’d been trained to do.

But Michael isn’t just anyone. Alex didn’t shield him from the blade purely from instinct and duty. He shielded him because it’s Michael, and there was nothing Alex wouldn’t do to protect him.

He’s gotten used to coming home to Michael every night for the past few weeks, and every night, come to love it, even, because it felt like coming home to somewhere safe, and warm, and welcoming. Walking through the doors each night and seeing Michael was relief, and calm, and how could he not have noticed this earlier?

He lets out a shaky breath, glad that Michael isn’t awake to see his turmoil. He needs to compose himself, lock these feelings up, because Michael can never know. Michael is kind, generous to a fault, more affectionate and caring than Alex deserves. Alex cannot burden him with the expectations his love would inevitably place on a man like Michael.

He’s managed to school his features by the time Michael blinks his eyes open.

“You’re awake,” Michael breathes. He looks disheveled, but still gorgeous, and Alex is filled with another wave of adoration.

Michael reaches for Alex’s hand, squeezing it. “How are you?”

“Fine,” he says, which is true under the circumstances.  “Alive, thanks to you.”

“Good,” Michael says, but he doesn’t look relieved. Instead, his handsome features remain troubled.

“What is it?” Alex asks, concerned.

“I almost lost you, Alex,” Michael says.

“But you didn’t.”  

“Through sheer blind luck. He could’ve killed you, Alex, because of me.” Michael’s eyes are wide, pleading – full of guilt. 

Alex wants to wipe that guilt from his brow. He doesn’t deserve to feel it, not over Alex. Michael has to know that he deserves to be protected, whatever the cost.

“It would have been worth it,” he reassures.

“No.” Michael shakes his head frantically, curls bouncing. “You are never an acceptable sacrifice, Alex. Never.”

“Any soldier is an acceptable sacrifice, to save lives.”

“No,” Michael shakes his head adamantly. “Not you. Never you.”

Alex smiles at him sadly. Michael is so wonderfully loyal, and caring, and naïve.

He tries to sit up, and winces. Despite the hours of sleep, he’s exhausted and he aches everywhere. The poison is gone from his system, but his body is still remembering how to function properly and letting him know that fact with pangs of sharp pain. 

“Alex?” Michael asks warily.

“I’m fine,” he reassures. “I just need more rest. They used a stronger dose than I’m used to.”

Michael’s lips pinch together.

“I’ll stay with you. You shouldn’t be alone.”

“You really don’t have to,” Alex says. “I’ll be fine by evening.”

“I want to,” Michael insists. “Let me?”

And, well, he’s only human. He knows he should start building his walls, but those can wait a little until he can at least stand on his own two legs. Or, well, leg. It’s not a weakness, to let Michael stay a little longer.

“I’d like that,” he says, and Michael’s face lights up in a grin.  

“Stay here,” he says, as if Alex is capable of sneaking away right now. “I’ll be right back.”

While Michael fetches his guitar, Terror pads into in the room. It’s a testament to – Alex doesn’t even know what, at this point, and he’s too tired to think about it – that Michael lets the cat jump up onto the bed and curl against Alex, warm and soft and purring.

Then Michael starts to play, though these aren’t the soul-rending melodies he’d played this time. They’re soothing, languorous chords, letting Alex close his eyes and lose himself in the music. Between Michael’s playing and Terror’s purring, he can almost ignore the insistent, lingering pain and sink into some modicum of peace.  

The next time he opens his eyes, it’s evening, and the suns have set. Michael hasn’t moved from his spot beside Alex’s bed.  

“Feeling better?” he asks.

“Yes,” Alex agrees. This time, when he sits up, he doesn’t wince.

“Do you think you’re up for a debrief? My mom and Isobel want to talk to us.”  

He nods. “Yeah, I think I can manage that.”

 

They debrief in a guarded, soundproofed room. Isobel presides, with Rosa by her side. Max, Michael, Alex, and Mara gather around the large round table. They don’t expand the circle beyond these trusted few. On the way there (Alex still leaning on Michael), they’d already been accompanied by extra guards, and Alex sees more of them than usual posted throughout the palace, too.

Together, they piece it all together.

The wine had been dosed with a pollen that nullified Michael’s powers. After that, everything clicks into place: Michael without his powers, unable to fight back, and a skilled assassin with a blade.

And a human, helpless, powerless to stop it.

“The royal family are the only ones with powers, so the means to nullify them is a tightly guarded secret, obviously,” Isobel explains. “There’s very few ways anyone could have gotten their hands on it, which means that there’s very few suspects.”

“We can narrow it down even further,” Alex suggests. “They used Wraith poison, which means either a human or someone who wanted to make it look like a human.”

“And with me dead, there’s no marriage,” Michael finishes for him. “Add to that a poison only humans have and the alliance falls apart.”

“And a human husband they assumed would fail to protect you,” Mara adds, wrinkling her nose in distaste, like she’s upset at the slight to Alex. “You two were alone, and with my son dead, they could convince anyone that their beloved human hero stood by and let it happen.”

“But it’s Alex,” Michael interjects, like Mara had just suggested that stars orbit planets. “Who would think that he’d just let it happen?”

Alex can think of a few people. They happen to share his last name.

“Not everyone was taken in by the stories we’ve spun. That’s inevitable,” Isobel says. “But we will find out who it is, and they will be punished, I swear. I will not permit this kind of offense if I have anything to say about it.” She turns to Rosa. “You know what to do.”

Rosa nods and slips out.

“In the meantime, we’ll take precautions, in case they try anything again,” Isobel continues. “We’ve already posted extra guards, and we’ll have your food and drink tested before each meal. Don’t argue,” she says, fixing a glare on Michael.

Michael raises his hands in a placating gesture. “I wasn’t going to!” he says. “You think I want Alex getting hurt again?”

Isobel looks slightly taken aback, but all she says is “Good.”  

After, as they depart, Mara holds Alex back. “A word?” she asks quietly. “It’ll just be a few minutes,” she adds to Michael. “I’ll return him to you safe, I promise.”

Michael nods and departs, though with obvious reluctance.

“You saved my son’s life,” Mara says. “I have no words to thank you as you deserve, so all I can say is simply thank you, for showing us once again your courage.”

Alex shrugs.

“I did what anyone would’ve,” he says.

“Perhaps. But he is still my son, and you are still the one who saved him,” she says. “And I am relieved that you are safe as well. It would have pained me to lose you.”

“Thank you,” he says.

She presses a kiss to his forehead and he finds himself blinking very, very fast.

“Go, before my son gets too worried and starts a search for you,” she says with amusement.

 

He returns to their chambers in the company of two guards, while several more stand outside their doors. He sighs. Their permanent presence behind him grates on his nerves, but he’s also grateful. He can’t be there every minute to protect Michael. Next time, he could fail.

“You’re back,” Michael says with obvious relief as he enters.

“Michael, I’m alright,” Alex reassures. “I was only gone for a few minutes. Besides, you’re the one they tried to assassinate. You should be more worried about yourself.”

“You’re the one who nearly died,” Michael insists, approaching him. His hands hover, like he wants to draw Alex into a hug and is uncertain that he’s allowed to. “Because of me. Letting you out of my sight is going to take some getting used to.”

He preempts Michael and pulls them into a hug. “Well, I have no intention of going very far,” he says.

“Good,” Michael agrees.

The hold the embrace for several minutes, Michael clinging to him. His leg makes the discomfort of the position known, but he ignores it. Michael needs this.  

“So,” Michael ventures after a few minutes of silence. “Are we going talk about why you have an immunity to Wraith poison?”

He disentangles himself from Michael’s embrace.

“I spent my life fighting the Wraith,” he says. “Why is that surprising?”

“Fighting them isn’t the same thing as building up an immunity to their poison,” Michael says. “Was that – did they do that to you, as part of your training?”

“Something like that.”

Some soldiers used illicit ways to get their hands on the poison and develop an immunity to it, give themselves a better chance at surviving. The military had never required it – the optics of poisoning their own soldiers as a training method weren’t particularly good – but had happily looked the other way if any of their soldiers did it themselves.

He never liked to talk about how his father, bent on his sons joining the military, had started their training early.

“They poisoned you on purpose? That’s –That’s horrible.” Michael looks like he didn’t actually expect Alex to confirm his suspicions. Alex thinks that he really shouldn’t be surprised; if Michael had been shocked at the prospect of humans injecting themselves with harmless pathogens to develop immunity, then of course he would be this shocked by an acquired immunity to poison.

“If they hadn’t, I’d be dead now,” he points out. “So it’s rather difficult to be upset about it.” He had spent years hating his father for the beatings and the harsh trainings, but the first time it’d saved his life during an engagement, he’d been forced to reorient his thinking on the matter.

“I don’t – Fuck, Alex. I saw how much pain you were in last night. They did that to you? Over and over?”

He can’t help being touched. Of course Michael is concerned; that is simply who he is. How can it have taken him this long to realize that he loves this kind, generous man?

“Michael.” He puts his hands on his husband’s shoulders. “Look at me,” he orders, and Michael obeys so easily, like he’s used to being commanded. “I’m alive. After everything, I’m alive. That’s the part that matters. I try not to think about the rest.”

“Okay,” Michael agrees, though he looks reluctant to let it go. “I’m glad you’re alive.”  

Alex gives a half-hearted smile. “Me too.”

 

Alex isn’t present for the interrogation, but he learns the name the assassin gives them: Zan. An Antaran who hates humans almost as much as every other Manes has always hated any and all aliens. The humans had no right to ask good Antarans to die for them, he spat at the interrogator.

He doesn’t name his human co-conspirator, and they refuse to use less principled methods to make him talk.

Alex learns, too, that as he recovered, Isobel had crafted and disseminated a charming tale of what had passed. She’s left out the part about poison and Alex’s immunity, lest another assassin tried the same means. But she’d announced in no uncertain terms that there’d been an attempt on their beloved prince’s life, who survived only through Alex’s bravery. And she’d added with a carefully calculated spontaneity that Alex was even now recovering from the injury he’d received while protecting his husband’s life.

If Alex was loved before, he’s revered now, with a fierce adoration taking the place of the hate and discord the assassination meant to sow. They start writing poems about him, weaving that distant first interview and the records of his commendations into pretty words, calling him a man of steel and fire in homage to his artificial limb, and embellishing the official account of him saving Michael’s life.

He reminds himself that if he’s loved, the alliance holds.

He wants to cry every time a whispered couplet followed his passage through the palace.

Chapter 8

Summary:

Alex talks with Noah; revelations are had.

Notes:

This one's going to be the darkness before the dawn. You know all the warnings in the tags of this fic? Yeah, they apply to this chapter in particular.

The latest victory in the war coincides with Antar’s annual holiday of the two suns, and the celebration rivals his wedding in size and splendor. The palace fills to the brim, a cacophony of music and laughter echoing off the walls of its vast hall. He and Michael preside over the affair, alongside Max, Isobel, Liz, Rosa, and Mara. Terror also makes an appearance, striding proudly across the long table they’re seated at, tail swishing and knocking over the occasional goblet.  Alex has to stifle his giggles at the shock, consternation, and guarded delight of the revelers. But Michael just smiles proudly, telling everyone that his hero of a husband tamed this beast, and Alex feels much too fond to argue with him that cats domesticated themselves thousands of years ago.

The man appears just as the food is finished and the dancing begins. He gives the cat an amused glance, thoroughly unperturbed, which already endears him to Alex. Then Michael sees him and laughs with joy, standing up to draw him into an embrace.

Michael introduces the stranger as Noah, who bows deeply to Alex. “Your Highness,” he says. “it is the greatest honor.”

Alex inclines his head.

“Dare I ask for the honor of a dance?”

To Alex’s surprise, he’s the one being addressed. His eyes flit to Michael, but his husband seems unperturbed, so he acquiesces.

The dance is a slow one, almost a swaying, not too hard on his leg.

“I must congratulate you,” Noah offers. “His Highness is a remarkable man.”

“He is,” Alex agrees.

“And talented in bed,” Noah adds, and Alex almost trips over his feet. “Does he still do that trick where you can’t tell if he’s using his fingers or his powers?”

“I – I don’t – “ What does he even say to that? Damn Antar and its incomprehensible sexual mores. He must be dancing with one of Michael’s former lovers, Alex realizes. Or maybe – something more? A former flame? Michael had said that there was no one he ever considered making a life with, but that’s not quite the same thing as never having loved.

But Noah sees his flabbergasted expression and just laughs. “I get it. It’s new enough that it feels like this beautiful secret that you don’t want to share with the world.”

Alex nods with what he hopes is a credible expression of agreement.

The music is just starting to fade away, and Alex feels relief flood through him when Noah leans forward, close to his ear. Alex panics, wondering if Noah plans to try to seduce him in front of his husband, but he just opens his mouth and purrs “Lick the pads of his fingers. It drives him wild.” Then, perfectly timed to the end of the song, he gives Alex a graceful bow, pivots away, and disappears into the crowd.

He sees Michael making his way toward him, but he’s not ready for any conversation with him right now. Turning, he flees.

Michael finds him in their quarters that night. He wants to say he’s not pouting, but it feels like he’s pouting, even though he knows it’s childish. It’s not like Michael did anything.

Michael approaches him, though keeps a careful distance. “Hey,” he says softly.

“Hey,” Alex greets him.

Michael says nothing else, waiting for Alex to speak. So he takes a breath, gathers his courage, and asks “So Noah is a former lover?”

“Yeah, a few years back,” Michael answers nonchalantly. “It was passionate, but exhausted itself pretty fast. We parted on good terms, though, obviously.”   

“He gave me advice. On what you like in bed,” Alex explains, blushing furiously.

Michael frowns. “And that’s what’s got you so upset?” he asks. “Alex, whatever I had with him, it’s in the past. You have nothing to worry about, I swear – “

“You think I’m jealous?” Alex interrupts. “That’s not – I – He thinks we’re sleeping together. He thinks what we have is real.”

Michael looks hurt, and Alex regrets his words immediately.

“Isn’t it?” Michael asks. “I care about you. That’s real.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he says, frustrated. Words are so unwieldy sometimes for the complicated jumble of emotions inside him. “I just mean that everyone keeps making assumptions about what’s between us, and I know that was the whole point. We worked to make people think what they think. But I hate that they believe I’m something I’m not. I hate that they think I’m making you happy with something I can never give.”

If that is a flash of sadness that Alex sees on Michael’s face, it’s masked quickly.

“Alex, it doesn’t matter what they think you are or aren’t giving me,” he says gently. “You’re not deceiving them about you. You’re everything anyone could ever want. Hell, I bet you have scores of former lovers who’d back me up on that, back on Earth.”

Alex just stares at him.

“Scores of former lovers? Where did you get that idea?” It’s not like he hasn’t had any, but he’d draw the line at a dozen. If that many. He doubts any of them would be able to give his husband advice on what he likes, years after the fact.  

Michael frowns at him.  

“You’re a decorated warrior, brilliant and brave,” Michael says, like he’s stating the obvious. “Strong, and kind, and good-looking. Men would be falling over themselves to be with you if you weren’t married to me.”

“Here, maybe,” Alex says quietly. He sighs, sinking down onto the couch. “Earth isn’t like Antar. Back home, when my father found out I liked men, he tried to beat it out of me,” he confesses. “Between that and the war, well, not a lot of people want someone who’s damaged goods.”

Michael stares at him. The silence stretches on as his face contorts itself into shock, followed by sheer horror. The window explodes, and Alex just barely represses the honed instinct to dive for cover. When he looks back at Michael, he’s livid, and suddenly, Alex remembers what it’s like to see anger on the face of a man who calls himself your family.

The Michael he knows, the man whose anger he has never thought to fear, wars with an instinct beaten into him over decades, and he recoils on instinct.

Michael’s change is immediate and complete. The anger dissipates like so much air from a balloon, leaving nothing but uncertainty.

“I’m sorry,” he says, holding his hands up. He keeps his distance, Alex notices.

He opens his mouth to reassure Michael that it’s alright, but realizes he doesn’t want to lie to his husband.

Michael approaches slowly, hands in front of him, palms up. When he’s close to Alex, he sinks down to his knees, until he’s unthreatening below him, hands splayed out on his thighs.

“I should have made you a different promise when I married you,” Michael says. “I promised you to never use my powers on you. I should have promised to never hurt you, with my hands or my powers. I swear it now. I’ll never hurt you, Alex.”

What had he ever done to deserve someone so good? Someone who sees Alex’s broken pieces and only gives kindness in return?

“I know,” Alex says. “I know. But my damn brain doesn’t, sometimes.”

“Trav’ma,” Michael says, a word Alex recognizes from the epics he’s read. It sounds sharp on Michael’s tongue. “It means the weight of battle. Soldiers carry it back from war. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Alex scoffs. “It’s nothing to be proud of, either. It just makes people broken.”

Michael shakes his head incredulously. “Is that what humans believe?”

“It’s the truth.” 

“You’re not broken, Alex,” Michael says softly.

Alex wants to believe him, but he knows, in his heart, just how wrong Michael is. He has never known war, and Alex will never be able to make him see.

And he’s not even sure what would be worse: Michael continuing to think he’s someone he’s not, or Michael realizing the truth of him and turning away with distaste.

 

He’s early to his meeting with Isobel, and he hears voices as he approaches her chambers – the guards recognize him and nod him into the anteroom easily. A few seconds later, he places the second voice. Michael.  

“So how are things with your husband?” Isobel asks.

It’s not that he’s trying to listen, but it’s impossible not to overhear, this close.

“You read the gossip, Iz. We’re Antar’s golden couple,” Michael responds, clearly amused.  

“Which is a fairy tale I helped write. Seriously, Michael, did we do the right thing here? You could have had anyone you wanted and now you’re tied to him forever. Just…tell me you’re not unhappy.”

Alex’s heart beats faster.

“I’m not unhappy,” Michael says. “Alex is a good person. It’s just – it’s hard, sometimes. I try, and sometimes I feel like we have a connection, but other times….”

 “O-oh.” Isobel stretches the syllable into a diphthong, understanding creeping into her voice. “And would the times you feel a connection be when your husband is fulfilling his marital duties?” she asks, snickering.

“Iz!” Michael raises his voice. He sounds both angry and horrified, and Alex’s heart sinks. He turns to flee before he has to listen to more of the same. He catches only a handful of Michael’s next words – “I would never want – “ before the blood rushes into his ears as he practically runs down the hallways of the palace.

He makes it back to his chambers and breaks down into sobs.

He knew, of course, that Michael could never love him. Since the moment he realized how he felt about his husband, he knew it was a love that would always be unrequited. And it is no surprise that Michael doesn’t want him, either. It has been a long time since their wedding night. Long enough for Michael’s desire to be replaced by disgust, thoroughly masked by Michael’s infinite kindness because his husband is so deeply and completely good.

Still, it is one thing to know it, and another to hear it yourself from the lips of the man you love. The human soul has a way of hoping, in a rebellion against all it knows to be true. But now that hope that he hadn’t even known he carried inside him, withers and dies.

And the even more difficult realization – that he has tied Michael forever to a man he could never love. It had seemed like an acceptable bargain, back when Michael was only an alien prince he’d never met, while the humans dying were all too painfully real.

But now, he’s taking away a chance at happiness from the man he loves, and as that truth stares him in the face, he realizes he cannot live with it.

His thoughts are interrupted by the ring of his communicator. He smiles when the screen tells him it’s Jenna. How long has it been, since they spoke? He thinks it must have been sometime around the time he departed for Antar. She’d been on the cusp of becoming an admiral, then. And he’d, been – well. Getting ready to marry a man he’d never met.

He schools his features as best he can and answers.

“So,” she says without preamble. Jenna’s not the sort to waste time on niceties, and sometimes, like now, it’s so pleasantly refreshing to not have to pretend he’s fine. “I have news.”

“Do tell.”

“We figured out who’s been working with Zan to make the alliance fall apart.”

“Who?”

“Your brother.”

“Flint?” he asks, because there’s only one brother capable of that kind of betrayal. Only one brother who, when learning of Alex’s impending marriage, had sneered with disgust. Who’d told him it was better that humanity lost bravely than allied themselves with any aliens.

“Yep. He’s being court-martialed and probably executed for treason. Serves him right, he nearly cost as the alliance,” Jenna says, and Alex knows he should disagree with her, feel something about his brother’s impending death, but he simply can’t find it in himself.

“You want the good news now?” Jenna asks.

That, he certainly could use right now. “Go for it,” he says.

“We have the location of the Wraith homeworld. Their shipyards, their central command, their everything. If we could get close enough to take it out, it’d be a winning strike. This war could be over.”

That actually is good news.

“What’s the catch?” he asks, because he’s spent long enough at war to know that there’s always one.

“Based on our intel, the right person can hack past their shields and make their central power core blow. It’d take the whole planet with it. But we’d have to get close to do it. Whoever went, there’d be no chance of them coming back.”

“A suicide mission,” Alex says. “That’s your good news?”

“If it wins the war, yes. They’re arguing now over who they can send, because there’s a very small number of people who can pull off the hacking involved, and any one of them is too valuable to lose if this thing goes south,” Jenna says. “But think of how many people don’t have to die if we manage to end this now. In my book, that’s an acceptable sacrifice.”

And Alex knows all about being an acceptable sacrifice.

The realization hits him that instant.

“Tell them I volunteer.”

“Alex?” For the first time, Jenna’s voice wavers. She doesn’t sound like an officer anymore. She sounds like a friend.

“You heard me,” he says. “You said they don’t want to risk losing anyone they’d miss if this fails. They won’t miss me, and I volunteer.”

“Alex – “

 “You just said this is an acceptable sacrifice, to end the war. You changing your mind now that it’s me?” he challenges. “You know every time we say goodbye, one of us might not come back.”

“Dammit, Alex. That doesn’t make it any easier to know you won’t come back.”

“So that’s a yes, then?” he presses.

“I’ll talk to the other admirals, but I don’t think they’ll refuse you.” She sighs. “I don’t want this, Alex.”

“But you know it’s the right thing to do.”

“I get so tired of doing the right thing, sometimes,” she confesses. “The right thing always means losing friends. Ordering good people to their deaths and calling it a victory. I’m tired, Alex.”

“Well, if I pull this off, you won’t have to do that anymore. No more saying goodbye to friends.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Jenna says crisply, and signs off. It’s her way, to forego the formalities, and it’s one of the things Alex appreciates about her.

 

The mission takes two days to plan. Two long days that he spends avoiding Michael. It’s not hard, because Michael locks himself up in his lab from morning until night, insisting he’s on the verge of a breakthrough.

In that time, Alex prepares. It’s been months since he’s been on a mission, and he runs through protocols in his head, closes his eyes and remembers command. He records a message for Kyle, and another for Jenna.

And, immediately before his departure, he goes to find Mara. Her guards recognize him and show him into her chambers within minutes; since their first conversation, he has never needed an appointment.

“Your Highness,” he bows, but Mara waves at him.

“Standing on ceremony as always,” she says fondly. “What brings you here?”

“I find myself called away to Earth on an urgent matter,” he says. “I must leave immediately, and I was hoping you would pass along a message to Michael for me. I want to make sure he receives it, and I have no time to spare.”

Mara cocks his head, examining him.

“Are you alright, Alex? Has something happened?”

“Nothing that endangers either your family or Antar,” he rushes to reassure. “You have my word. I’m afraid I can’t say more. But I hope I have earned enough of your trust, over these past few months, that you could simply accept that.”

“Of course we trust you, Alex,” she says warmly, but then her brows draw together in concern. “But if you are thinking of doing something rash – don’t do something you would regret, Alex.”

“I’m not,” he assures her, and it’s the truth. His choice is logical and calculated. And he has no regrets.

“Then I will pass on whatever message you wish to Michael,” she says. She approaches, drawing him into an embrace and kissing the top of his head. “Come back to us. We’ll miss you.”

He squeezes his eyes shut to keep the tears at bay. His own mother has not held him since he was seven. He wonders if she even knows what kind of life he’s lived. If she cares.

“I’ll miss you too,” he says, and that’s not a lie either.

In the ship, he looks fondly back once at Antar, a glimmering jewel hung between two suns. It is the place where he was the happiest he’s ever been, and he wishes he could have said goodbye in person. But Michael would have tried to stop him out of an overabundance of selflessness, and that was precisely why Alex needed to spare him the opportunity to do it.

 

That night, when Michael finally leaves his lab just as dawn peeks over the horizon, Mara hands him a message:

“Michael,

I’ll be direct, to spare you the pain of uncertainty. By the time you get this, I will be either dying or dead.

You once said that I was never an acceptable sacrifice. But in this case, my one life is a laughably low price to pay.”

(here, he explains, as clearly and calmly as he can, the cold logic and practical necessity of what he’s doing)

“So you see,” he continues. “I can both give you your happiness and bring peace. No more of your people or mine have to die, and you can be free. All it will cost is my life.

I love you, Michael. I know you don’t share that feeling, though you have shown me nothing but kindness since our marriage. Now you will no longer be tied to me. You can find someone to love you, who will love you in return. You can be happy.

I love you enough to want your happiness. I hope you will find it, even though it will not be with me. I hope they love you as you deserve, because you are remarkable, and meeting you, knowing you, loving you, was the best part of my life.

I ask only that you think of me from time to time – not to carry the burden of guilt, but to remember, fondly perhaps, that you were loved, more than I have words to describe.

Goodbye, beloved.”

The very ground upon which the palace rests trembles that night.

Notes:

I don't do major character death or unhappy endings, I promise.

Chapter 9

Summary:

A resolution.

[Chapter 8]

He feels at peace.

Several of his bones are broken (his ribs definitely among them) from when the inertial dampeners had failed. His lungs gasp desperately for what little air remains as the life support system fails around him, and the stars in his vision are definitely not those on the viewscreen. His body should be afire with pain, but instead, all he feels is numbness and relief as the life seeps from him

He’d succeeded. He’d piloted a small, well-armored craft straight to the heart of the enemy, used those vaunted hacking skills that had helped him advance so quickly through the ranks to get through the firewalls, and started a chain reaction in the power core, all under a hailstorm of enemy fire.

The planet blew, bright and blinding as a supernova, and the majority of the Wraith fleet with it.

But now, his lone ship hangs in the void, splitting apart slowly from both the enemy fire that had rained down upon it and its close proximity to the explosion itself. Too far from the small contingent of human and Antaran ships that had provided cover fire, he knows there is no hope of rescue for him. But they are safe, humans and Antarians both. It had only cost his one life.

He only wishes he could see his husband before his eyes close for the last time.

And, like an answer to his wish, like a mirage, Michael’s face appears above his. His curls are a halo around his head, lit from behind by the fires of distant explosions.

“I guess my mind doesn’t entirely hate me,” Alex murmurs.

But Michael’s features are drawn with worry and pain. Alex tries to reach a hand up, to wipe it away from Michael’s face, to see his smile again, but his hand won’t move. His limbs – the ones he has left, anyway – are numb.

“What are you talking about?” he hears Michael ask, his voice distant, as if he’s underwater.

“I get to see you….one last time,” Alex manages.

“No no no. You’re not dying. You’re not. I’m here to save you.”

Maybe, Alex thinks, his obstinate mind was making up for all the nightmares, the flashbacks and sleepless nights, by giving him this last final vision, of Michael, here, concerned about him, caring about him, even while his husband was far away, on Antar, safe.

“I love you,” he manages before his eyes flutter closed.

 

When he opens them again, he’s no longer on the bridge. Instead of the viewscreen he sees screens displaying medical data, the details of it hazy, and there’s beeping and murmured instructions, but Michael is still there, his face over Alex’s, utterly panicked.

“Save him, damn it! That’s an order!” Michael shouts, and Alex wonders idly why his brain has conjured up this particular version of Michael, worried and desperate, commanding and so unlike the gentle scientist he’s come to know.

“We’re doing our best, my prince,” an Antaran in medical garb says mildly, “but his human physiology is different, and his injuries were too numerous when you brought him back.”

She’s not saying anything Alex doesn’t already know.

“He’s not dying!” Michael practically roars.

Even if he’s a vision, Alex wants to tell him that it’s alright. He’d accepted this fate when he got on the ship. But his mouth won’t move, and his lungs are lacking air, and when his eyes close again he knows it’s for the last time.

 

He opens his eyes and tries to move. Nothing hurts. Looking down, he can see his bloodstained uniform is ripped open, but beneath it, there are no injuries, and he feels whole. He frowns, searching the room for answers, and his eyes fall on Michael, unconscious on a bed beside him. He looks exhausted, his curls cascading over his face as he leans it on an outstretched arm.

“Michael?”

His husband’s eyes snap open immediately and he sits – jolts – up. “Alex,” he breathes, relieved. In a bound, he crosses the space between their beds while Alex pulls himself to a sitting position, noting with surprise as he does that not a single part of his body protests the movement.

“You’re awake,” Michael says, his hands hovering around Alex’s face, unsure of where to find purchase.

“You saved me,” Alex says, because that’s the one thing he does understand about what’s happened.  

“Of course I did. I told you, you’re never an acceptable sacrifice.”

“Why?” And how? He wants to ask, but that question is less important.

“Because I love you, Alex,” Michael says. “Do you really not know that?”

Alex wonders if this is some strange, warped afterlife. Or maybe he did somehow survive, and they’ve pumped him so full of drugs that he’s hallucinating an alternate reality. Because this – this isn’t real.

“You don’t. You can’t,” he says helplessly.

Michael hangs his head in shame.

“I’ve been a pretty shitty husband if you think that.”

“No,” Alex hastens to reassure him. “You were the perfect husband. It was like something out of a dream.”

“Then why’d you go off to get yourself killed?” Michael demands.

“Because it wasn’t real,” Alex says, and Michael makes a pained sound. “I heard you with Isobel, telling her you would never want me. You were kind because you’re a good man, but you deserve better than having to pretend for the rest of your life, when you could have so much more than that.”

Michael’s face is pure devastation, and Alex hates himself for putting it there.

“Fuck, Alex,” Michael says, tears brimming in his eyes. “You really thought – “ He shakes his head, and one of the tears slides down his cheek. “I told Iz that I’d never want to take advantage of you,” he explains. “Not when you’d made it clear you didn’t want me.”

Alex stares. He thinks back, and it dawns on him how easily his words must have sounded like rejections to Michael, when all he’d been thinking about was how undesirable he would be to Michael.

And then he’d d run off before he’d even heard the rest of Michael’s sentence, because he’d thought he knew exactly how it ended. One sentence – half of one, really, and his treacherous mind filling in the blanks, and now Michael is weeping in his arms like someone had tried to cut out his heart.

He wants, more than anything, to make those tears go away, so he does the only thing he can think of.  He kisses Michael, who turns pliant under his hands and kisses him back with the passion of a man who has seen what it’s like to lose everything. He kisses with desperation, like he fears that Alex will turn to ash in his hands. He kisses like a man who has been denied, then granted, the deepest desire of his heart.

He kisses like a man in love.

When they break apart, Michael bites his lip. “I can show you,” he offers. “My memories, how I feel about you. So you’ll believe me.”

“How – “

“I kind of…. left a handprint on you,” Michael confesses. “I know I promised never to use my powers on you, but, uh. You were dying,” he explains sheepishly, like he expects to be scolded. “It was kind of an extenuating circumstance.”

Alex chuckles weakly. Extenuating circumstances is one way to put it.

“Show me,” he says.

Tentatively, Michael reaches a hand to where Alex’s uniform had been torn open. Glancing down to his exposed chest, he sees a shimmering handprint over his heart. Michael glances up at him abashedly, and after Alex’s quick nod, places his hand over the mark.

And Alex feels it. Michael’s love, so much of it that Alex is drowning, desperately seeking purchase as it consumes him whole. He is adored with every fiber of Michael’s alien being, and he can feel all of it. It’s so much more than he had dared to hope for.

And then he sees -

Michael volunteers to be the one to marry – he’s the only one who doesn’t have someone, even after years of searching.

He’s nervous, the day they meet. Alex is a rising star, brave and distinguished in battle, honored and decorated and much too good for him. In person, he’s drop-dead gorgeous, and he carries himself as if he has not lost a part of himself in fire and blood. He mentions, nonchalantly, some of the harrowing ordeals he’s been through, and Michael has never felt so inexperienced or so lacking, like a young boy trying to measure himself against a respected warrior.

Michael hopes with time, Alex will pull down some of his walls for him.  He wants to be worthy of Alex, and vows that he’ll be good for him. Take care of him, whatever that means.

Their wedding, and Michael’s concern that marrying him requires Alex’s blood and pain, but Alex doesn’t even flinch and Michael wonders how he can ever measure up to a man who faces the world the way Alex does.

Their wedding night, and Michael wants him, but Alex thinks Michael has the right to just take and he vows that he will never make Alex feel like he has to give himself against his will.

Michael falls more and more in love each day, as Alex learns to fit himself into life on a strange planet of unfamiliar customs. He does all that’s expected of him without complaint, with an unyielding courage, while behind closed doors, he opens up like a shy flower in response to Michael’s patient coaxing. They build a life that’s soft, and sweet, and domestic. It has all the hallmarks of a true partnership, and Michael deeply, desperately hopes that at least some part of it is real.

But Michael also hears Alex wake screaming from nightmares, notices the sleepless nights, the weight Alex can’t always hide. He learns to read Alex, and reads the way he searches for the exit in every room he walks into, the way he never seems to be entirely at ease. And although Alex never mentions it, Michael longs to help. But knows his offers of it would never be accepted, so he vows to become a man Alex can trust enough to help him carry the burden. He cares for Alex in every way he knows Alex will accept and hopes it will be enough.

Then Alex saves his life. There’s no antidote on Antar, every ounce of it on the ships that have gone into battle, but they have the formula. The time it takes them to put together the antidote is the worst twelve hours of Michael’s life. He keeps imagining a world without Alex, his wit and laughter and smile gone forever, and he nearly doubles over with the pain of it. He keeps imagining Alex lying deathly still, his breathing shallow, and wonders if his calculations are off, if they’ll be too late. What if they return to find Alex laid out cold and still, the life gone from his body? How will he face the world without Alex by his side?

He saves Alex in the nick of time, and vows that he will never lose him, whatever the cost.

The night Alex meets Noah, he tells Michael in no uncertain terms that are were things Michael can never have from him, and even though he’d always known he would never be enough for Alex, it hurts to have it spelled out so clearly. But even if Alex will never be his in the way he wanted, they’d always have their partnership, the comfortable rapport they’d established, the shared laughter and long nights together. It would have to be enough.

He goes to meet Iz, who has always wanted to know everything, even before she became a spymaster, and she jokes about Alex performing his marital duties and Michael is ill at the very thought –

“Iz!” he practically shouts. “I would never want to take advantage of him.”

Iz just raises her eyebrows. “He’s a grown man, Michael. He agreed to marriage,” she says. She doesn’t understand and Michael has to make her understand –

“On our wedding night, he thought I owned him. He thought I could just take,” he says, and Isobel is appropriately horrified. “I’m not going to touch him.”

“Maybe you should talk to him,” Isobel offers. “Tell him how you feel.”

“No.” Michael is adamant. “He’s already working so hard to be everything we expect. I’m not going to do anything to make him feel like he has to, not when he made it clear he doesn’t want to.”

He feels more than sees the memory of Michael seeing his final message, the slow dawning horror as Mara recounts Alex’s strange departure and Michael’s realization that Alex isn’t planning on coming back. The onslaught of all-encompassing pain and guilt as he feels like he’s reliving the worst night of his life.

It’s followed immediately by obstinate resolve. He didn’t let Alex die before and he won’t now. He’s just finished perfecting his beaming technology, he can beam onto Alex’s ship and get him off of it before it explodes. He just has to get there, but Max and Isobel are protesting –

“It’s a suicide mission, Michael,” Max says.

“I’m planning on saving us both, not dying with him,” Michael retorts.

“Michael – “Isobel begins.

He rounds on her. “He’s my husband!” he snaps.

“It’s an arranged marriage –“ Max insists and Michael’s patience snaps; he should already be going after Alex, not wasting his time on useless arguments.

“It’s real to me!” he practically shouts, and the windows shatter. Neither Max nor Isobel jump, but they know not to argue.

“Please, be careful,” Isobel begs with her hands on Michael’s shoulders. “Come back. And bring him back.”

By the time he reaches Alex, his broken body is laid out on the bridge while around him, consoles explode, fires rage, and the ship blares warnings with the last of its waning power. In that instant, Michael understands war. Seeing Alex lying still, bloody yet beautiful beneath the flying sparks of a doomed ship, he relives his own personal nightmare and understands why Alex wakes screaming in the night.

He won’t let this become another nightmare, he decides. Except Alex acts like he isn’t real, and tells him I love you and Michael’s wanted to hear those words from Alex’s lips for weeks, but not like this. Never like this.

They beam back to the ship, but all of Antar’s best doctors can’t save Alex, and in a fit of love and fury, Michael finds in himself a power that isn’t his. He puts his glowing hands on Alex’s body, whose injuries knit together until he’s whole.

It’s too much; drained, Michael passes out on the bunk next to Alex, with his final I love you ringing in his ears.

Alex surfaces. He looks at Michael, who meets his gaze from under his eyelashes, tentative.

“It’s not your fault,” Alex says, because beneath all of the memories, beneath the love and the pain had been another constant. “I was so busy telling myself I was worthless than nothing you could have said would have made me believe otherwise.”

And now, Michael’s grief is like a slap to the face.

Michael looks like he wants to protest, and Alex rests a hand over his heart. “You showed me that I mattered again and again, but no matter how many times you did, I couldn’t believe you. I wasn’t ready to.”

“And now?” Michael asks.

“Now, I realize I have a new battle ahead of me. But,” he says, twining their hands together. “This one, I think you can help me fight.”

Michael brings their twined fingers to his lips, kissing Alex’s knuckles.

“I would be honored,” he says.

Michael’s smile is as brilliant as a star going supernova, and Alex has seen a few of those in his day.

He finds himself feeling – happy. For now, at least, it is a high he has not known in months.

“Can we get out of here?” he asks, glancing around and realizing that the medical bay is strangely silent. Royal prerogative, he supposes. He would still prefer to be somewhere more comfortable for what he’s thinking of doing next.

Michael grins. “Definitely.”

Notes:

I want to be clear that what Alex did here is, essentially, attempt to commit suicide because he thought the world would be better off without him. There may have been a military victory involved, but his choice is rooted in some very, very deep-seated issues stemming from his abuse and trauma. So it was really important to me to show that Michael's love, and Michael's love confession, don't magically "fix" Alex's underlying issues. Instead, Alex realizes just how much his unaddressed issues hurt the people who care about him, and he makes a commitment to work on himself - with Michael's help, and with Michael's love bolstering him and giving him the strength to do so. But Alex needs some serious therapy, and no matter how much Michael loves him, he can't "fix" Alex's problems just by loving him. He can only love him and support him through this journey - which is what he commits to doing. It was really important to me to show, rather than utilizing the familiar trope of love magically fixing trauma.

With that PSA out of the way...thank you for making it this far! This chapter was one of the most important of the story to me for the reasons outlined above, and I truly hope it resonates with you the way it does with me. There's one more chapter, where the two of them get to make up for some lost time, have that wedding night they never got to have, and also catch up on some conversations. Smutty goodness with patented Malex tenderness is coming up in the next installment, with just a tiny sprinkling of angst. Again, thank you for your enthusiasm, your comments, your ideas, your passion, and your inspiration.

Chapter 10

Summary:

Michael and Alex get to make up for lost time and have that wedding night that they've been overdue for. Confessions and intimacies and vulnerabilities abound.

Notes:

Look, I know the point of a slowburn is that at the end there's a rewarding payoff, so I kinda really hope this satisfies.

Michael isn’t gentle with him.

Michael’s desire is ravenous. Alex revels at the force with which Michael throws him onto the bed and starts to tear the clothes off his body, frantic for the touch of skin against skin. He seems to realize instinctively that Alex isn’t fragile, that after everything, it won’t be his fevered hands that break Alex.

He doesn’t want Michael to be gentle.

“Use your powers,” Alex whispers as he sprawls on the bed beneath Michael. He expects to be questioned, but instead, he feels those powers snaking around his body and ripping the rest of his clothes off while Michael’s lips devour his. He doesn’t remember to spare a single thought for how much older his own body looks, a sharp contrast to Michael’s despite the equivalence of their ages. He can only gasp into Michael’s mouth, breathless at the onslaught of frantic kisses and roaming hands.

“Fuck, Alex,” Michael breathes as he pulls away just as Alex feels like he might suffocate from the intensity of those kisses. “I want you so much.”

“You have me,” Alex whispers, at once reassurance and a giddy secret they share.

Michael laughs, also giddy, tracing Alex’s lips with a thumb. Remembrance is a flash, and then Alex darts out his tongue and licks the pads of Michael’s fingers.

Michael’s reaction is immediate, the way he goes completely still, almost not daring to move. “Fuck,” he breathes. “How did you – “

“Noah suggested it,” Alex replies. “He said it’d drive you wild.”

“Fuck,” Michael says again, and Alex simply can’t resist rendering Michael so completely incoherent. He does it again.

Michael curses, squeezing his eyes shut. He looks almost pained.

“Alex, I can’t – “  

“Let go,” Alex coaxes as he sucks one of Michael’s fingers into his mouth. He’d not expected Michael to near the edge so fast, but he doesn’t mind. They have all night. There is no need to be miserly with their pleasure.

The explosion that follows is not one he expects. Instead of Michael’s climax between them, it’s the light fixtures that explode, though Michael immediately covers Alex with his body to shield him.

“I’m sorry,” Michael whispers against his skin. “I’m sorry, I promise you’re safe.”

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” Alex says. He’d flinched on instinct, but, held safely beneath Michael’s warm, solid body and remembering a promise from days ago, he knows it’s true.

It’s intoxicating to be able to say it and know it’s true.

“Never,” Michael agrees.

Alex grabs him by the curls and drags him in for a kiss, biting his lips and forcing his tongue inside even though those lips part willingly for him. “Fuck me,” he orders. Or maybe begs. He’s not sure.

“Yeah,” Michael agrees, looking dazed. “Yeah.”

As if on cue, he leans back, allowing Alex to sit up and removed his prosthetic. Michael floats it over to rest beside the bed, then returns his attention to Alex. He glances down at the scarred limb, tracing with his fingers the surgical scars of the amputation. Alex’s first instinct is to hide, but he can feel Michael’s adoration through the bond, and it keeps him still, his heart in his throat.

Michael captures his mouth in another kiss. Then, sliding down, he presses another to Alex’s chest, over his heart.

“I’ve wanted you since the day I met you,” Michael confesses. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to have you.”

“All that time?” Alex asks incredulously, even though he can feel in the core of his being the truth of Michael’s words.

“Always,” Michael says softly, reverently, leaving Alex dumbstruck.

But Michael takes the silence as a cue to continue his attentions, settling between Alex’s legs and pressing a trail of kisses to the inside of his right knee and thigh.

“I never thought I could have you,” Alex confesses in return and Michael makes a pained sound.

“I don’t want to waste any more time,” Michael says.

In a swift move, he takes Alex into his mouth, and Alex’s head falls back with a cry. How long has it been since someone pleasured him in that way? Months, maybe years. But it could have been yesterday and it still wouldn’t compare to the feeling of Michael’s mouth on him, the sensation amplified by the love that pours through their bond.

It feels like ecstasy, and he’s miles from his orgasm yet.

“Fuck me,” he asks again, and this time Michael doesn’t dawdle. He slides his mouth off Alex’s cock with a pop and sits up, summoning lube with his powers (a handy trick, Alex thinks). Michael isn’t gentle while opening him up, either, adding each finger just as Alex has barely adjusted to the previous one. Alex curls his hands into the bedspread, attempting to spear himself on Michael’s fingers and speed up the process, and Michael laughs in delight at his enthusiasm.

He’s waited long enough. He wants more. He wants everything.

Finally, finally, Michael hitches Alex’s legs around his waist and slides inside him, and Alex exhales shakily at the fullness. He has almost forgotten what this feels like.

But it’s also like nothing he’s ever felt before, with anyone. He doesn’t just feel full. He feels complete. Whole.

Then Michael starts moving inside him. He’s not gentle here, either, thrusting deep into Alex with each movement. But he also presses their foreheads together as Alex clings to him, the two of them caught in what feels like a perfect, world-stopping stillness even as Michael drives desperately inside him. But his desperation feels not like he’s chasing his own orgasm, but rather Alex’s; his hand finds Alex’s cock, stripping it frantically, and all the while adoration pours through their bond.

“Come on,” Michael coaxes. “Come for me. Let me make you feel good.”

Alex climaxes with a cry, his nails digging into Michael’s back where he clings to him. He worries he may have even drawn blood, but Michael only grins down at him delightedly and keeps going.

Alex doesn’t stop him. He likes that, too, that almost over-fullness, his own body spent and yet still so open and willing for Michael.

“How do I show you what I feel?” he asks. He feels as much as sees Michael’s surprise, pleased yet disbelieving.

“I have to – “ he says, and then he must do something, because he feels Michael inside him, in a way just like and yet so much more intimate than their physical coupling. It’s tentative, as if Michael expects rejection at every turn, and Alex looks into himself and finds the core of everything he feels for Michael and focuses on it, hoping Michael will find his own way to it.

And Michael does. Alex can feel the moment Michael discovers it: first the disbelief, then wonder at being loved, then the awe at how deep that love goes. Alex feels flayed open, vulnerable like he’s never been, and his instincts tell him to run, to hide. Instead, he clings to Michael and lets the solid body above him shield him from his fear as it had shielded him from exploding glass, because Michael deserves to feel that he, too, is loved.

Michael comes with yet another explosion – this time, the glasses and screens throughout the room - and Alex stares, enraptured, at the pure bliss on Michael’s face as he lets go and feels complete and perfect satisfaction for the very first time.

After, lying spent on silk-soft sheets, Michael curls up beside him and rests his head next to Alex’s.

“You’re like a cat, you know,” he says. “My own adorable Terror.”

Alex raises an eyebrow. “How so?”

“You’re all claws and bite until you let someone in, and then you’d kill for them. And demand snuggles after.”

Alex turns toward him, until they lie facing each other.

“I’ll have you know, I could still make you bleed,” he says. “After the snuggles.”

Michael chortles, reaching back to where Alex had dug his nails deep into his back. “I think you already have,” he says, snuggling even closer.

And just like that, some of the spell breaks.

“I can’t sleep with you,” Alex says.

Michael shifts, propping himself up on an elbow to look down at Alex. His face is nothing but concern, but Alex can also feel, through their bond, the pang of rejection.

Alex bites his lip. Even now, naked beside Michael, the other man gazing down with love at him, with so many of his weaknesses already bared before him, it is agonizing to put yet another one on display for the man he loves.

“I have nightmares,” he confesses. “Sometimes, I wake up from them, and if there’s someone near me, I hurt them. I got lucky last time.” Or maybe it wasn’t luck; maybe his subconscious felt safe enough in Michael’s arms not to startle him awake in terror. But he’s not particularly keen on the idea of using tonight as an experiment to find that out.  

“Do you want me to sleep somewhere else?” Michael asks.

Alex sighs. He doesn’t want Michael far away from him right now, not in another room, not on the couch. He doesn’t want to wake up alone from a night terror, the darkness his only companion. He wants him here. He wants to lie with his husband in a tangle of limbs and wake up to his skin and his lips.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he says. “I want you, beside me, in our bed.” Michael’s bed, technically, but if they’re married, doesn’t that make it their bed?

Michael nods. “You can have the bed,” he offers. “There’s a couch in the next room.”

Alex nods unhappily.

He’s so tired of being alone.

He surveys the bed. It’s gigantic, a thoughtless luxury on a ship with limited space. There’s enough room for them to sleep with three people between them.

“I think maybe – we can share, if you sleep on the other side,” Alex says tentatively, and is rewarded with Michael’s smile. “Just…don’t try to touch me. Please. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Okay,” Michael agrees. “But there’s something I have to do first.”

Before Alex can open his mouth to ask, Michael catches him in a kiss, soft and sweet. “I love you,” he says. “I’ll never let you doubt it again.”

Alex’s heart swells with love for this man who accepts all his broken pieces and sees only the fragile whole that he makes.

“I love you too,” he says.

Michael grins at him, then starts to turn to his side of the bed. Without complaint, like everything else Alex has asked of him, and Alex knows he has to do this now.

“Michael,” he says, grabbing for his hand.

Michael looks back at him. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Michael frowns. “What for?”

“For not believing I was loved, when you did everything you could to show me,” he says. “For going off to get myself killed and leaving you behind.” He knows Michael is angry about it, he can feel that anger simmering below all the love and relief, just as he knows Michael would never actually bring it up. “For hurting you like that.” He’s still processing that his death would actually matter to Michael, in any kind of personal way, and it’s only the love he can feel through their bond that gives him the strength to acknowledge it.

Michael doesn’t tell him it’s okay. He knows it’s not.

“I forgive you,” Michael says instead, “if you promise not to pull this sort of self-sacrificing schtick again. Fuck, Alex, do you have any idea what losing you would do to me?”

“I’d still step between you and a poisoned blade,” he says, because that’s a truth that will never change. “But I promise I won’t needlessly throw my life away and leave you behind.” 

“Okay,” Michael says. “Okay.”

He brushes a lock of hair out of Alex’s eyes with infinite, aching tenderness.

“I’d do the same,” he says. “If there was a bullet coming for you, I’d throw myself in front of it. You don’t get the monopoly on protectiveness, and you’ll just have to live with it.”

And that – is harder to accept than the very idea of being loved. He’s lost soldiers before, ordered them to their deaths, seen men he cared about sacrifice themselves to keep him alive because he was the captain, the commander.

Losing them pales in comparison to the thought of losing Michael. He can’t even contemplate it, panic threatening the edges of his consciousness.

“Hey,” Michael says. “Hey, look at me.” He must be able to feel Alex’s panic through their bond, Alex realizes, and in the next second, he feels calm soothing the turmoil within him.

Alex looks at him. Michael’s kneeling in front of him, and he presses their foreheads together, his hands cradling Alex’s face. “It’s okay. We’re both here. We’re both safe.”  

Alex closes his eyes, and lets himself feel Michael, and lets the waves of calm lap at his soul as Michael repeats “we’re safe” like a mantra, until he can breathe evenly again.

When he opens his eyes, Michael’s smiling at him.

“There you are,” he says. “We should sleep.” But he keeps hold of Alex’s face. “I’m right here,” he reiterates. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Thank you,” Alex says, even though the words don’t feel big enough. But Michael understands. Alex can feel that he does.

He settles into bed as Michael makes his way over to his own side of it. It’s strange to share a bed after so many years, but also comforting to feel Michael’s presence there. Not close enough to smother him, and perhaps what he feels is not the physical closeness but their bond. But either way, he knows that he is not alone.

When he wakes up, he’s turned on his side, away from Michael, and he can practically feel Michael’s stare on his back. Or maybe it’s the protectiveness he can feel through their bond.

He turns onto his back and meets that gaze. “Good morning,” he offers.

“Morning.” Michael doesn’t ask about the scars on his back, so old now that he almost feels like he was born with them, but Alex can feel – literally – how much he wants to.

“My father,” he says simply in explanation. “I was never the son he wanted.”

“I’ll kill him,” Michael vows, though thankfully no windows shatter this time. But through their bond, Alex finally understands why Michael had shattered glass the last time the topic had come up. He has seen by now how free Antarans are in their love, without shame; for Michael, his preferences for men and women both are as unremarkable a part of him as his curls or his knack for engineering. The idea of Alex’s father trying to destroy with violence a part of Alex as natural to him as breathing is utterly incomprehensible, and also as infuriating as if someone had decided to rewrite the laws of gravity themselves. It makes Michael see red, which clouds Alex’s vision equally.

 “Too late,” Alex says, hoping it’ll calm Michael. He’s still not entirely used to not fearing anger, though the adoration he feels through their bond tempers the fear somewhat. “The Wraith beat you to it by a few years. Sucked all the life out of him.” It would’ve been a slow and painful death, but Alex doesn’t like to dwell on that. Doesn’t like to think what kind of person it would make him, if he dwelled on that and took pleasure in the thought.  

“Good,” Michael says with fury. “Anyone who does that to you deserves a painful death.”

Alex turns away. What they have is still too new, too tentative, for him to know what to do with those words, especially since he can feel the depth of love they spring from as it pulses over their bond.

“Alex – “ Michael reaches for him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t.” He forces himself to turn around and face Michael. To have this conversation with him, like an adult, although it’s the last thing he wants to do.

“You’re prefect,” he tells Michael. “You’re always so perfect, for me. I’m just not used to being loved. Or protected. I don’t know how to accept it.”

He expects Michael to be perturbed. He doesn’t expect the smirk or the twinkle in his eye, like Michael’s just found a challenge he can’t wait to tackle.

“You’ll learn. Don’t worry, I’ll give you lots of practice,” he says, all the brazen confidence that Alex has come to love.

“I’m still not sure I deserve you.”

“We can fix that too.”

“There’s really no getting rid of you, is there?” he asks, hope blooming in his soul.  

“Nope,” Michael confirms. “I’m stuck to you like a fungus and I’m not going anywhere, no matter how much you try to pry me off. Promise.”

“Okay,” he agrees, although flying into his first battle was less terrifying. “Okay.”

Chapter 11: Epilogue

They win the war.

The news of Alex’s feat reaches Antar before they do, and everyone clamors for a sight of their hero the second they step foot on the planet. Mara embraces him like her own son, tears in her eyes, and even icy Isobel presses him close and whispers “I’m glad you’re back.”

The poets are already starting to write epics of the Wraith-Killer.

“You single-handedly won us the war, Alex,” Michael points out when Alex protests their monikers. He beams at Alex with pride. “They’re not wrong about you.”

This time, he tries to believe them.

The Terror of Antar figures prominently in the poets’ songs, for who could doubt that the human who tamed such a beast could also end a war that had ravaged a galaxy for decades?

But they leave the poets and their stories behind for the time being. The war may be over, but their marriage is just beginning, and a long-overdue honeymoon awaits. Antar is a vast and wondrous planet, full of marvels for them to discover.

And besides, they have another battle to fight. Together.  

Notes:

And that's all, folks! Thank you so much for reading. I know it got super dark in places, so I hope the payoff was well worth the pain, and if you've gotten this far, thank you for sticking with Alex through this rollercoaster of a ride. This story has been deeply close to my heart, and I've loved creating this world, living in it, and sharing it with y'all. Your enthusiasm, your passion, and your comments have made it an absolute joy of an experience.

Notes:

I love comments, thoughts, responses, and analyses - the more details the better!

Also, if this story touched you in any way, have permission to play in this sandbox too. Sequels, codas, prequels, variations, anything you like. All I ask is that you keep Maria out of it.