Work Text:
June 2018:
Alex watches Michael close the door to Nova’s bedroom quietly then nods towards the living room. Silently, not wanting to disturb Nova, Alex follows him down the hall until they are both standing near the door.
“Thank you again for taking her this afternoon,” Michael says, putting his hands into his pockets like he’s taken to doing whenever Alex is around and he doesn’t have anything else to busy his hands with.
“Yeah, it wasn’t a problem,” he says, honestly.
He was happy when Michael texted him this morning to ask if he could take Nova out today. He’d enjoyed having her for some one-on-one time. He was glad to see that Michael feels like he can trust him with her in that way considering it’s only day five of Alex spending time with her.
“Sorry that she didn’t really let you leave after, I’m sure you had other plans,” Michael says, rocking back on his heels. “I’ll try and work with her on that. I swear you’re the only one she does that with.”
Alex shakes his head. “I didn’t have other plans.”
Does that sound pathetic? Alex rarely has other plans apart from work and now therapy, he guesses. He should probably be making more of an effort to see Maria, but the two of them text regularly and Alex is honestly kind of worried that she’ll do her whole psychic thing on him and ask way more questions than he’s ready to answer about Nova and Michael.
“Honestly, I don’t mind staying around for bedtime stuff,” he says when Michael doesn’t respond. “It’s kind of nice.”
Alex enjoys getting to watch Michael read a bedroom story to Nova. He likes cuddling with Nova while getting to see how the two of them interact with each other. It’s only the second time Alex has helped put her to bed, but he’s noticed that it’s the time of day Michael seems the most unguarded. When his smile is bright and natural and so similar to the ones he used to give Alex back when they were kids. He loves being with Nova when she’s all soft and sleepy but still asking questions that are way too advanced for a typical four year old. It’s incredibly adorable to witness and fills the dark untouched places of his heart with light and happiness.
Michael bites his lips and looks like he’s holding back a smile. He clears his throat before saying, “Yeah. It is.”
“So, uh… I was thinking,” he stumbles awkwardly for words to say to ask the question that’s been on his mind since he first brought Nova back tonight around dinner time but has chickened out of asking every time. He’s nervous about Michael’s answer, not wanting to assume anything or cross some kind of unspoken line, but wanting to know.
“Yes?” Michael asks, a teasing tone to his voice.
“Do you think that I, uh, if you were wanting, I mean, if you thought I might be taking Nova more often, do you think I should invest in a car seat of my own?”
He grimaces at his clumsy delivery. It’s a roundabout way of asking what he really wants to ask, which is if Michael will let him take Nova out more often, just the two of them. It’s not that Alex minds having Michael around, it’s been a lot more comfortable than it probably should be being around Michael again given their history… But today when it had just been Nova and him? It was nice. It had been good for them. Alex had been able to see Nova in a new space, watch how she interacted with the world, and try his hand at parenting her through it without Michael stepping in to help.
Michael looks surprised by the question, though Alex isn’t sure why. He’s made it a point to be here every single day since finding out about Nova, even the days when all they could squeeze in with their schedules was thirty minutes to grab a quick breakfast or snack. He wonders how much time it will take before Michael will be able to trust that he’s committed.
“Would you like to take her more?” Michael asks, unsure.
“Yeah,” he says, confused why it’s even a question. It’s only been five days, sure, but Alex is completely head over heels in love with Nova and wants every second he can get with her to make up for lost time.
“Okay, yeah, sure,” Michael agrees easily but a moment later he crosses his arms and does that nervous thing where he kicks at a spot on the ground. “How much more?”
“I don’t know,” he answers though he knows in his head that he’s ready to take her as often as Michael will willingly give her up. “A few times a week? Whenever you’re working maybe?”
Michael nods, but hardly looks sure.
“That okay?” he asks him, worried that he’s somehow stepped over a line.
There are so many grenades between the two of them that sometimes it’s hard for Alex to know which way to step. It feels like every time he readjusts to avoid stepping on one, he ends up accidentally stepping on another. Though Michael will rarely say as much. He tends to just keep quiet and pretend that everything is fine, even though Alex can see how his body grows tense and his eyes sad.
“Yeah, of course,” Michael says with an overly bright smile that Alex sees right through.
“What?” he asks, crossing his arms and trying to remain patient, but it’s hard when Michael will never just say what he means.
“You mean just for the day right?” Michael asks. “You’re not trying to…”
He trails off and Alex can’t figure out where he was trying to go with his question.
“I’m not what?”
“You’re not gonna try and take custody?” Michael says directly to the carpet.
Alex takes several steps back as his hands drop to his sides, dumbfounded.
“What?” He doesn’t understand where the question is even coming from.
“Because I know you’re pissed at me for keeping her from you and that you have a right to her. And I want to honor that. I won’t stop you from seeing her whenever you want, but…” Michael rambles and Alex holds his hand up to stop him.
“That’s not even where my mind went,” he says, trying to make his voice sound reassuring. “I just want to be able to take her places. Build up some memories. I don’t know.”
He shrugs awkwardly. This is why he hadn’t wanted to ask, because it clearly started a whole thing. And Alex has been pointedly avoiding any topics that might cause a fight and end whatever tentative peace they’ve found between them.
“Oh,” Michael says, blushing a bit as he looks back up at Alex, his face a bit sheepish. “Right.”
“Do you think I would take her from you?” he asks, confused about where that idea had even come from. Did Micheal really think he was capable of doing that to him?
“It’s stupid, forget I said anything,” Michael says with a shrug.
Alex takes a deep, steadying breath. He doesn’t want to get annoyed by Michael’s passivity right now and start an argument. He wants to actually talk about this — whatever this is — so they can get past it.
“It’s not stupid,” he tells him. He gestures to the table. If they are going to have this conversation, they should probably sit down.
They both settle in at the small table where they’d shared a lovely dinner with Nova earlier. The air doesn’t feel nearly as carefree now as it had then. They both sit in silence and honestly, though Alex had been the one to suggest sitting down to talk, he has nothing to say. Or, nothing he’s sure that he could or should say.
“I’m sorry,” Michael eventually says. “This is all new for me and honestly, a bit weird. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Alex nods. At least that much, they can agree on.
“Me neither,” he tells him. “I just know that I want to be able to build a relationship with Nova. I want to be there for her.”
Michael nods his head in agreement, but Alex can see how the words make him sad and Alex worries that maybe he’s pushed for too much too fast. After all, it has only been five days and Alex has been here every single one of those days.
“I won’t stand in the way of you two building a relationship,” Michael tells him. “Nova adores you. You can see her as much as you want.”
“I…” He’s about to ask him if he’s so sure that he wants Alex in Nova’s life, why he gets so sad whenever Alex talks about wanting to be there for her, but he decides to keep that to himself. “Thank you. I appreciate you making time for me to see her this week as much as you have.”
Michael crosses his arms and leans back in his chair, somehow managing to look significantly smaller than his actual size. “Always,” he says with a sad smile.
And it clicks for Alex. It’s not about Nova at all. He feels like an idiot for not realizing it sooner.
“I know things are weird because of,” he gestures between the two of them because somehow saying the word ‘us’ feels like too much.
Michael sighs, his arms falling to his sides. He looks resigned as he resituates himself in his seat, leaning forward until his elbows are resting on the table.
“I know that you’re pissed at me,” Michael says. “I’ve been trying to give you space to… process or whatever.”
Alex opens his mouth to protest that he’s not angry, but it would be a lie. He knows that Michael had a valid reason for keeping Nova from him. He understands that now even better than before as he continues to learn more and more about his dad’s involvement in Project Shepherd. But even with all of that knowledge, Alex is still upset with Michael. Because he’d been robbed of four years with Nova. Four whole years of memories that he could have had with his daughter — watching her birth, witnessing her first laugh, seeing her first step, hearing her first word — and he has nothing.
The fact is, he is mad at Michael. But the honest truth is that he’s even more angry at himself. He’s been playing their last fight in his head on repeat since finding out about Nova. It’s only natural, knowing that Nova was conceived at some point during those whirlwind few days and that it was their harsh words that had led to the four and a half years of radio silence.
There is a lot he still blames Michael for about how things turned out between them. But the thing that he’s only starting to realize now that he’s got some distance, time, and the perspective that comes from having all the facts to work with, is that Alex hadn’t exactly given Michael any reason to trust him with his secrets. So Michael’s fears were 100% valid. And Alex can see how Michael could have honestly believed that Alex never wanted to see him again, because Alex had honestly believed when he came back from Iraq to find Michael gone, that he’d meant every word he’d said that day too.
So maybe it’s fair that Michael is having a hard time believing that Alex would show up for Nova, when his track record of showing up for Michael is so spotty.
“Thank you for respecting my need for space,” Alex says. “But I think it’s becoming clear that you and I need to talk this out if we’re going to actually attempt to co-parent Nova. We can’t ignore this forever.”
“You actually want to talk something through?” Michael asks, his tone full of disbelief.
“Don’t put this all on me,” he says. “You have been pushing things down for days, refusing to say what you really want to say.”
“Yeah, because I haven’t wanted to set Nova off,” Michael says. “She’s always around and she feeds off our emotions. You saw her that first day. She shouldn’t have to carry all of our baggage.”
Alex doesn’t disagree, which is why he wants to work this out. So that things don’t keep building and building and eventually spill over while Nova is around to witness it all. “Well it’s just us now.”
Michael nods. “Okay. So where do you want to start?”
****
October 2013:
Michael falls into bed, boneless and sated in a way that only Alex can ever achieve. He breathes heavily as he finds his way back down to Earth and reaches behind him blindly for Alex, who is at the other end of the bed, struggling for air as well after the intense sex they’ve just had. Neither of them have the energy to move at the moment, but Alex’s fingertips brush against his and it’s enough for Michael to know that he’s there.
“I’m gonna miss that when I’m gone,” Alex says, still panting heavily.
It takes the remaining energy he has, but Michael manages to roll over onto his back so that he can look at Alex properly. “So don’t go,” he says.
Alex stares at him without saying anything, just reaches out to run his hand up and down Michael’s shin, the closest part of him that he can touch. His eyes look distant and sad, and Michael can feel him starting to slip away from this blissful bubble they’ve made for themselves over the last three days. Alarm bells start ringing in Michael’s head and his heart starts to beat more rapidly as he realizes that this is it. This is the point they always eventually get to. The point where Alex starts to pull away from him. Where he starts to distance himself emotionally and prepare himself to leave without a backwards glance.
He moves his foot to nudge at Alex’s thigh, trying to bring him back to their corner of the world. When Alex’s eyes go to him, he paints a smile on his face, hoping that by going for nonchalance, he’ll be able to put Alex more at ease. “So don’t go,” he says. “I know I’ve got at least a few more rounds in me.”
Alex lets out a surprised chuckle. “Your refractory period is superhuman, Guerin.”
Michael’s heart skips a beat and he has to bite his tongue to keep from confirming just why that is. Because there’s never been anyone that he’s wanted to share his secret with more than Alex. He’s spent so many nights thinking about how different things would have gone down if he could just explain to Alex why he couldn’t leave Roswell and what had really gone down that night when everything changed. He likes to think that Alex wouldn’t see him as wasting his life if he knew the truth. That maybe he’d see Michael as loyal and trustworthy and good . That maybe he’d see Michael as worthy of his attention full time instead of just as some lustful addiction to be kept hidden in the shadows.
But he’s made a promise with his siblings. They’ve all agreed that nobody can ever know about their secrets. The risk of people finding out what Isobel did to those girls and turning her — turning all of them — into an experiment is too high.
So he bites his tongue and he paints on a seductive smirk that he knows always gets Alex going, using the only method he’s ever known to work to attempt to get Alex to stay with him.
“It’s your fault,” Michael tells him, sitting up and moving to whisper into his ear. “You’re the only one that gets me like this.”
He licks at the space behind Alex’s ear until the man shivers, his hand reaching out to land on Michael’s thigh. He turns his head and stares directly into Michael’s eyes. “Me too.”
They lean in for a kiss that Michael tries to turn dirty, but Alex, unlike Michael, actually does need recovery time and Michael knows it’s too soon for Alex to be ready for another round. Alex breaks off the kiss with an amused chuckle.
“You’re a menace,” Alex teases him, scooting to the end of the bed and reaching over to where his boxers ended up, flung onto the counter. He stands up and slips his boxers back on and Michael whines, reaching out with his hands for him to come back to bed. “I’ve gotta go.”
Michael falls back against the side of the trailer and sighs. “Why?” he asks, though he’s asked that question thousands of times before and never gotten a genuine answer.
“I’ve got orders,” Alex says like it’s an explanation, when it’s not. The Alex that he fell in love with didn’t take orders from anyone.
Michael snorts and Alex’s body goes rigid even as his eyes grow soft. Like he expects the fight even as he moves to avoid one.
“I would stay if I could,” Alex tells him.
Michael shakes his head. “Then stay. Nobody can force you to war, Alex.”
Alex laughs, though it’s not amused. “Clearly you don’t know how the military works.”
“What do you care about the military and what they think? Let them give you a dishonorable discharge,” he says, moving to his feet, not bothering with clothes, still hoping he can resolve this quickly and get Alex back into bed with him where he belongs. “Alex, we could be together. For real together. Fuck your dad. Fuck the Air Force.” He reaches up to run his fingers over the new scar that Alex has on his forehead before cradling his face in his hand. “You’re happy here with me. I know you are.”
Alex closes his eyes, nuzzling into his touch as he takes a deep, steadying breath. Michael doesn’t dare move or say anything for fear of disturbing the moment. Because it’s always right at this point that Alex pushes back hard and walks out, but Alex isn’t moving and hope is squeezing at his heart desperately.
When Alex opens his eyes, Michael inhales sharply, taken back by how soft he looks. “It wouldn’t just be a dishonorable discharge,” he tells him. “I could get arrested and put in military prison. And without a good reason for staying, I’d get the maximum sentence.”
Michael sighs, dropping his request. As much as he wants to run off into the sunset with Alex and never look back, he won’t ask Alex to risk jail time just so they can be together. Even if jail sounds a lot better than an active war zone in Michael’s opinion.
“Tell me that you didn’t ask for this post. Tell me that you asked to be stationed nearby and they denied your request,” he says.
Alex sighs and his lack of answer is answer enough.
“Jesus, Alex,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief, hand dropping to his side.
“They didn’t have any experienced guys to send that can do what I do,” Alex argues.
“Yeah, and when you went the first time? When you had no experience and you were being shipped off to war, did anyone volunteer to go in your place?” he asks, knowing the answer. It’s no. He doesn't understand why Alex keeps putting himself in these situations. It’s one thing to be given orders he can’t deny no matter how much Michael wishes he would give the whole system the middle finger and run away with him… It’s another thing to continually sign himself up for this bullshit by re-upping his contract and volunteering for deployments.
Alex reaches out and places his hand on Michael’s hip, pulling him in closer and the fight leaves Michael’s body. “It’s not fair. It shouldn’t have to be you,” he says.
“I know,” Alex agrees, resting his head against his forehead. “But it is.”
“At least tell me you’ll write to me,” he says. “Tell me that you’ll keep in touch. I don’t want to have to worry every day that something has happened to you and I had no idea.”
Alex reaches out, placing his hand over Michael’s heart, his eyes downcast and Michael can tell he’s struggling with what to say. He opens and closes his mouth several times and despite Michael leaning in to try and catch his eye, Alex keeps avoiding looking at him.
“I can’t do this, Michael,” Alex says, shaking his head.
Michael reaches out with his left hand and places it on Alex’s wrist, holding it in place so he can’t pull away from this and run, like he does from every other conversation when things get too real.
“Why not?”
“Because I live in the real world, not some fairytale,” Alex pushes back, defensively.
“I’m hardly asking for a fairytale here,” he argues. “I’m asking for a fucking letter. Maybe a phone call here and there to tell me that you’re alive.”
“I can’t have people finding out about us, Guerin.”
Michael shakes his head, frustrated beyond belief. “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone.”
“That doesn’t mean shit,” he says. “It doesn’t change anything.”
Michael’s eyes start to water and he blinks back tears, so sick of having the same argument over and over.
“Why don’t you just say what you mean,” he says. “You won’t let yourself have this because you’re terrified of your dad.”
“Stop,” Alex says, he tries to pull his hand back but Michael doesn’t let him. His voice might be firm but his eyes tell another story. Michael can see how much Alex wants this, that he’s not just making this up in his head. And fuck, Michael has never fought for much, but he will fight like hell for Alex. To keep him from turning into this mindless grunt that the military is turning him into.
“Can’t you see what he’s doing to you? What the Air Force is doing to you?” he asks. “When was the last time you did something you loved? Took a moment for something you wanted? Have you played music at all? Ridden a skateboard? Dated? Anything?”
Alex looks away in shame and Michael’s heart breaks for him. He hates Jesse Manes so much for what he’s done to Alex.
“Alex—” he starts to say, but Alex’s eyes snap back up to meet his own, face full of fury. “I can’t do this, Guerin.”
“You can,” he says, trying to assure him. “I know you want to… just let yourself have something for once.”
Alex opens his mouth and Michael thinks he’s about to give in, but then his eyes travel to where Michael is holding him and there’s a sharp inhale of breath once his eyes land on his damaged hand and the way his hand can’t even hold onto Alex’s wrist firmly.
Alex drops his hand from Michael’s chest, pulls it out of his grip, stepping away from him. Michael’s own hand is left hanging out there between them, yearning still to touch and be held. Alex crosses his arms as the vulnerability in his eyes slips away, his expression growing cold and closed off.
“I don’t understand why you always have to push this,” he says coolly.
Michael throws his head back and laughs at the absurdity of the statement. “Really? You don’t understand why I might care about what happens to you? Why I might want to keep in touch while you’re going off to war?”
“I’ve been ‘going off to war’ for years now,” Alex says using obnoxious air quotes. “You can’t keep making this into something it’s not, Guerin. What you and I do? It’s fun and it’s enjoyable. But unlike you, I actually have a job and responsibilities that I can’t just blow off.”
His argument doesn’t even make any sense. Alex could do his job and still write to Michael and have a real relationship with him. Plenty of men in the military have relationships with people back home while deployed. But that’s not what Michael’s mind latches onto, because Alex has decided to push a very old button.
Michael scoffs. “I have a job.”
Alex rolls his eyes. “Doing what? Working at a junkyard?”
It’s Michael’s turn to cross his arms. He knows that Alex feels like he’s wasting his life. He’s made that perfectly clear on numerous occasions over the years, but Michael is sick of it. Sure, he didn’t go to UNM. And maybe he’s not the agricultural engineer that he thought he’d be when he was in high school. But being a mechanic and a rancher are real fucking jobs. And at least Michael is the kind of guy who actually stays around for the people that need him. At least he’s not a runner.
Alex had told him once, early on, in the heat of passion, that he’d never wanted to leave. That his dad had basically forced him to enlist. And Michael had held onto that knowledge tightly for the four years of his initial enlistment, assuming that Alex would get out as soon as he could. But then DADT had gotten repealed and Alex still wouldn’t do the long distance thing. And when Alex had willingly re-upped, Michael started to see Alex in a different light.
“At least my job cares if I live or die,” he argues. “Seriously, what the fuck are you still doing this for? If your dad was ever going to love you, he would by now.”
The moment the words leave his mouth, Michael knows that he’s gone too far. The air in the room grows tense and Alex shifts from flight to fight. Michael takes a step back. He could take it back, but he doubts Alex would let him. And he’s not sure he even wants to. If Alex is going in for the kill, then at least Michael won’t have gone down without a fight.
Alex doesn’t yell. Instead he gets quiet, which is infinitely worse in Michael’s opinion. He leans in and yanks his shirt off of the counter next to Michael, the action harsh.
“You keep blaming my dad like he’s the thing that came between us,” Alex says. “But you’re the one that destroyed us. You’re the one that started drinking all the time and getting into fights. You’re the one that never said goodbye that day.”
Alex starts to put on his shirt and Michael takes that moment to get his jeans pulled on so he’s not standing here naked. His heart has already been laid bare and trampled on, he doesn’t need to make himself even more vulnerable to Alex, thanks.
“You can use that as an excuse all you want, but let’s be honest, you were always going to run,” he says. “If I didn’t give you a reason, you’d have found one on your own.”
Alex’s eyebrows shoot up and a nasty smile takes over his face, making him look cruel and too much like Jesse for Michael to be able to handle it.
“So you admit that you did it on purpose?” Alex says. “God, you are a fucking child, Guerin.”
“I was a child!” he argues. “I was 18! What the fuck did I know about how to handle shit appropriately? I never had parents or anyone to teach me that shit. So I’m sorry if how I managed to survive the system wasn’t up to your privileged little standards, but you don’t get to stand here and act like what we had wasn’t real and that it was stupid of me to expect you to stay.“
“I told you that I wasn’t going to be your medicine,” Alex says. “I told you that I wanted to be with you, but not if you were wasting your life. And here we are, 6 years later and what are you even doing here?”
Alex waves around the airstream laughing like it’s a joke. Like Michael didn’t work his ass off to have this home for himself. Like buying a trailer that would be his to keep no matter what happened in his life or where he ended up wasn’t a conscious choice on his part.
“What am I even doing?” Michael asks. “I have people here, Alex. People that actually care about me. I have a life. I have responsibilities to them I won’t just walk away from. I don’t leave the people I love behind.”
Alex takes several steps backwards, his face stricken. It takes approximately 2.5 seconds for Alex to strike back, much harder and sharper than Michael ever could.
“There’s nothing here for me in Roswell. Never has been,” Alex says sharply.
The words crush his heart, shattering it into a million pieces, each one sharp and excruciatingly painful, but he holds himself together. He wants to believe that Alex is lying. That he’s just speaking out of anger, but he doesn’t. Alex doesn’t see him as someone worth staying for.
Michael bites the inside of his cheek to keep from crying. He refuses to show Alex a single tear. He learned long ago that tears never win him anything but more tears. The weaker he was seen growing up, the more of a target he became. And the only way to get people off of his back was to fight back. Hard. With everything he had.
“Yeah? That why you keep vying for your father’s affection so hard?”
Alex’s eyes grow murderous, and Michael could feel bad about it. It’s certainly a low blow, but it’s hard to feel bad about much of anything when he’s standing here bleeding out for the simple crime of wearing his heart on his sleeve.
“Stop bringing him into this,” Alex says. “This is about me and you.”
“I have to bring him into this. He’s what this is all about,” he argues. “He’s the reason you’re too terrified to ever take what you want.”
“You are what this is all about,” Alex says. “I told you that I couldn’t deal with you when you were like that. I asked you to get your shit together. For 6 years, I’ve asked you to get your shit together. Fuck, Guerin, I’ve made repeated offers to help you figure out a way to go to college and get a decent job and act like a grown up, but yet here we still are. Your life is a mess and I don’t understand it. You are the smartest person I know! Don’t ask me to fight for you when you don’t even fight for yourself.”
The words land hard because Michael knows they are true. He might have issues with Alex’s idea that he needs to go to college to be worth anything, but he’s not wrong about Michael never fighting for himself. He just doesn’t understand that Michael doesn’t have the same luxuries as Alex does. He can’t leave Roswell without a glance back. He has people here. Responsibilities. Actual responsibilities, not some misplaced sense of duty to his country that’s been brainwashed into him by his father.
“Just go, Alex, it’s what you do best,” Michael says, exhausted. He sits back down on the bed, the fight leaving his body completely.
Alex moves to grab his pants off the floor and gets dressed in silence. He pats his pockets, searching for the keys that have fallen out, and Michael bends over to grab them off the floor to hand them to him. Alex then grabs his shoes and sits down at the tiny table to pull them on. All the while, Michael wants to say something. He wants to reach out. He wants to beg him to stay, but he’s already tried that route and look at where it got him.
Alex stands up and gives him one last disgusted look before he heads for the door.
Michael’s heart is already shattered. He feels like an idiot because he’s somehow made this thing between them more than it probably ever was. He’s been sitting here waiting around for Alex, naively thinking that they’d end up together someday if he just had enough patience. But the reality is stunningly obvious to Michael right now because it’s reflected in every one of Alex’s actions over the last 6 years. Michael has been in love with Alex, and Alex has only ever viewed him as the kid who wasted his life. Unworthy of being loved.
Alex pushes the door open and Michael stands up desperately. It feels like his entire insides have been ripped to shreds and there’s a giant Alex-sized hole in his heart, and it’s probably stupid to think that he could change Alex’s mind, that he could get him to stay, but he has to try.
“If you leave now, I won’t be here when you come back.”
Alex looks momentarily stricken by the words and Michael considers walking them back, but he doesn’t. He can’t.
He can’t keep doing this. He can’t do this back and forth with Alex anymore. He’s sick of being pushed away and pulled back in. He’s sick of going wherever Alex wants him and not getting a single say in the matter. He’s sick of hoping for more, hoping for better, hoping that this time Alex will stay.
“Nobody has ever asked you to be,” Alex says, looking equally as exhausted.
“No, but you expect me to be all the same,” he says and Alex snorts like it’s the craziest thing he’s ever heard. “You expect me to be waiting around for you to come back and have never had an ounce of regard for what I might need or want.”
“Then go, Guerin!” Alex yells. “I don’t want you waiting on me. Go live your life! Stop waiting for whatever the hell you think I’m going to give you, because I can’t.”
“You could, you just won’t,” he argues.
Alex throws his hands up in frustration, stepping out the door. Michael panics, moving after him, but Alex keeps walking without a backwards glance, like so many times before.
“Yeah, run along, Manes,” he calls after him. Alex’s back goes rigid at the use of his last name. “I won’t be here when you get back.”
Alex looks over his shoulder, his eyes colder than Michael has ever seen them.
“Good. I don’t ever want to see you again,” Alex tells him as he unlocks his rental car and gets in.
Michael watches as Alex peels out of the lot, dust and dirt flying everywhere and partially blocking the view of Alex driving off. Michael falls backwards, sitting on the steps of his airstream and begins to sob uncontrollably. He would take every single word back if he could, if it meant that Alex didn’t leave in such anger that Michael is convinced he’ll never see him again… But the problem is, Michael’s positive that Alex had meant every single word.
****
June 2018:
“I shouldn’t have told you that I never wanted to see you again,” Alex says, figuring it was the easiest place to start because it was the biggest lie.
“Oh, so we’re just gonna dive right into it then.” Michael lets out a big breath, then nods his head like he’s mentally talking himself up to this conversation.
Alex shrugs. “May as well, right?” he says.
Michael makes a gesture with his hands that Alex takes to mean he accepts that to be true, even if he’s not overly excited about it. Alex can hardly blame him. There is a lot of baggage and a mountain of hurt feelings between them.
“I didn’t mean it,” he says. “Not even in the moment.”
“Then why did you say it?” Michael asks, his eyes trained on the table between them.
Alex sighs and bites down his temper, reminding himself that they need to talk this out and that’s not going to work if they both have the same old hairpin trigger responses to everything the other one says.
“You kept bringing up my dad,” he says, which isn’t a lie, but it’s not entirely the truth. The things Michael had said about his father had hurt, but it wasn’t what had pissed him off the most, and if the way Michael is raising his eyebrows at him is any indication, Michael knows it. “You were looking at me like I was still that 17 year old boy that used to play music with you out in the desert.”
“Is that so wrong?” Michael asks. “That boy was a hell of a lot closer to the real you than the man you became in the Air Force.”
Alex shakes his head. He doesn’t know how true that is. He doesn’t know who the real Alex is but he’s also not positive that he ever did. His entire life, his entire being has been informed by his father. In high school, it was about doing all the things that would piss his father off. Once he enlisted… Well, when he looks in the mirror these days he doesn’t see himself, he sees his father.
“I just couldn’t deal with it,” he admits, not knowing how to better explain it. He doesn’t know how to explain the person he had to become in order to survive his deployments. How he got through it by shutting off every part of him that still had desires for himself. Because what he wanted didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was power and getting more of it than his dad. It was the only way to stay safe. “It wasn’t what I needed to hear as I was shipping off.”
Michael eyes him carefully, not judging or critical, just… considering. Like he’s having a realization about Alex.
“What did you need to hear?” Michael asks, his voice full of sincerity.
Alex doesn’t know, honestly. “I think I just needed you to be there,” he says.
Michael lets out a sigh of frustration. “I was there,” Michael says. “I was always there. You can’t tell me that I wasn’t—”
“I know,” he says, raising his hand to stop him before he can truly get going. “But you had all of these expectations. Even when you weren’t asking me for anything, I could see it in your eyes and it was too much. I think I needed you to be there but not to expect anything more than I could give you in that moment.”
Michael runs his hands over his face and then through his hair before letting out a heavy breath. “Okay, but you do understand how that’s kind of shitty for me, right?”
Alex sighs. He does, but that doesn’t change the fact that he couldn’t give Michael what he wanted back then as much as he wishes he could have.
“What pissed you off the most?” Michael asks. “Because I always assumed that it was that I brought up your dad… Which… I should have never done. I mean, he was always the elephant in the room between us and I knew he was the thing that always had you running from me, but I shouldn’t have brought him up the way that I did. I was an asshole.”
Alex thinks about the words that Michael said back then. Hurt words. Angry words. They’d hit hard back then, because Alex knew they were true. And he hated that Michael knew that. That Michael saw through him. Alex likes to pretend that he has never cared about what his father thinks of him, but the truth is, a part of him will always be that scared little boy desperate for his daddy’s love and approval. And he hates that.
“You were.” Alex doesn’t bother disagreeing with him. After all, if they are going to do this, they need to be honest about their feelings. That’s what his therapist told him yesterday, right? Not to hide from his true feelings? “But you weren’t entirely wrong.”
“No?” Michael’s voice is doubtful. He reaches out to grab a napkin that was left on the table and starts to fiddle with it, a nervous habit that Alex has been noticing more and more the more time they spend together. “I thought you blamed me for why we didn’t work out.”
“That’s not fair,” he says, defensively. “I didn’t have all the facts.”
“Which were?” Michael asks, looking at him like he doesn’t know exactly what Alex is talking about.
“That you were an…” he tries to say the word, but for some reason it won’t come. A part of him still can’t wrap his brain around the truth even though he has all of the evidence to support the claim. “You know,” he says, gesturing with his hands.
Michael raises his eyebrows in what looks like amusement, but there’s a guarded look in his eyes. “An alien. You can say it. It’s not a dirty word.”
He lets out a frustrated breath. “I didn’t know that you were an alien.”
Michael nods his head as he tears the napkin in half, his eyes purposely trained on the task while he refuses to meet Alex’s gaze. “And if you had, that would have changed things?”
“Yes,” he says, so sure of himself that Michael has to snort.
“Really? If you’d have known the truth you wouldn’t have thought I was throwing my life away?” Michael asks, his eyes rising to meet Alex’s own in challenge.
Alex is about to say yes. To tell him that the issue between them remains the lie. That if he’d had all of the cards, he could have made a better decision. That it was the lack of information Michael gave him, that put Alex at a loss. But as Alex’s eyes travel to the UNM sweatshirt that Michael is wearing, he remembers the endless arguments they had over Michael refusing to leave town. The drunken nights, the theft, the fights… If he’d known that Michael was an alien, would he have looked at the man Michael was becoming that summer any differently?
Alex deflates, because the truth is, he doesn’t know.
“I’d like to think I’d have at least understood your connection to this town a bit better,” he says, because that is at least truthful. “You didn’t want to go to UNM because you didn’t want to leave Max and Isobel, right?”
“They needed me here,” Michael says, the challenge in his eyes drops and what’s left for Alex to see is a vulnerable look, begging for him to understand.
He doesn’t understand. He’s never had great relationships with his own siblings. He can’t comprehend sacrificing his future for one of them or giving up on his dreams and staying around in a town that has never been kind to him. But Alex has given up on his own dreams before. His eyes drift to Michael’s left hand, mentally tracing the scar tissue that wraps around the mangled, mishealed bone. He knows what it’s like to place the needs of somebody else above his own. He likes to think he would have understood that .
“You could have told me,” he says. Michael starts to argue but Alex holds up his hand. “Not the alien part. I get why you couldn’t trust me with that even if I don’t like it. But you could have told me that they were your siblings and you were staying for them.”
“Would you have understood?” Michael asks.
He thinks about it. Thinks about all the promise that Michael had and how desperately Alex needed him to be free of this town and far from his father’s grasp. Thinks about his own view of familial duty as a chain to imprison rather than an anchor to ground. “No, probably not,” he admits.
“Yeah,” is all Michael says in response.
They fall into silence, both of them lost in thoughts and memories. Alex replays their fight that night over in his head, viewing it from Michael’s perspective. He can see how easily Michael had resorted to attacking him about his father, because it was an enemy they both shared. But what Michael never understood, despite his own abuse growing up, was that the transient life he lived as a kid in the system allowed him the emotional distance to be able to escape his abuse once he turned 18. Michael can’t ever understand how deeply personal his own abuse was, nor that his father was never going to leave him alone.
The only way Alex was ever going to escape, was to find leverage, and that is why he didn’t run away when his father forced him to enlist. That’s why he continually re-upped his contract. That’s why he volunteered for tours repeatedly, despite the danger. He was desperate to gain his stripes and the support and respect of his fellow airmen. He was seeking the kind of power his father couldn’t take from him.
But Alex had always planned on getting that leverage then getting out. On coming back home to Michael. He’d always thought the two of them would end up together, even after their fight. He’d believed he’d been fighting for something real right up until the moment that he came back from Iraq to find Michael gone. Moved out of town with no forwarding address.
He thinks about the other parts of their fight. The wounds he’d left on Michael as well. He couldn’t see it at the time — how the ways that he was trying to be helpful were pushy and hurtful.
“I don’t think you threw your life away,” he speaks up, his voice startling Michael out of his own thoughts.
Michael doesn’t respond right away, he looks at Alex with careful, critical eyes before he finally says, “You say that now because I have my degree and no longer live in an airstream.”
“There is nothing wrong with living in an airstream,” he says. “I don’t know why I treated you like that.”
“Because you didn’t want to be seen with the town deadbeat,” Michael tells him.
Alex shakes his head, but Michael raises his hand before Alex can protest.
“You grew up privileged — and before you get mad, I know that doesn’t mean you grew up happy. Your dad is a piece of shit and deserves to burn in hell, okay? — but you grew up privileged in a way that I never did. So in your world, trailer homes are for people who are too irresponsible to lay down roots anywhere. Blue collar work is for people too lazy to put the time and work into learning ‘real skills’ or whatever. You heard a kid dream about changing the world then watched as he settled for fixing cars and herding cattle. People already looked down on you for being gay, you didn’t need them looking down on you for choosing to be with somebody beneath your station or whatever.”
“Beneath my station?” he asks, because it’s easier to latch onto that than examine the possible truth behind Michael’s words.
Michael blushes and shrugs, “I may have let Isobel convince me to watch Pride and Prejudice one too many times.”
“I only ever wanted what was best for you,” he says, because despite knowing he went about it all wrong, it’s the truth.
“Having a home was what was best for me,” Michael says. “Owning something outright that nobody could take away from me. Having jobs that I was good at and enjoyed, was what was best for me. Yes, I wanted to go to UNM and couldn’t. But that doesn’t mean that my work at the ranch or my job with Sanders was any less important. Being a mechanic contributes just as much to society as anything else does.”
Alex nods, because it’s true and he’s embarrassed that he ever implied otherwise. But the truth is, he knows why he brought it up all the time. Yes, it was because he wanted what was best for Michael, but as the years went on between them, there was always a more sinister reason as well.
“I knew what I was doing that day, bringing that up,” he admits.
“What?”
“When I brought up your job and everything?” he clarifies. “I knew it was going to piss you off and that’s why I did it.”
Michael scoffs. “Why?”
Alex drops his eyes to his hands. “Because I was scared.”
“Of what? Me?” Michael asks, his voice confused with a hint of anxiety as he sits up in his chair.
“Of what I was feeling when I was with you.”
They both look up at the words and Michael’s eyes are full of confusion. Alex takes a few grounding breaths, because he’s never been good at expressing himself well, but this is something Michael deserves to hear.
“Every time you would ask me to stay, you’d look at me with this… look in your eyes and I would feel things that I couldn’t afford to feel,” he says, his voice shaky as he fumbles for the words to express the love that Micheal used to make him feel.
He doesn’t get why he can’t just say that. Why his mouth can’t ever form the words to show what’s in his heart. Michael never seemed to have that same dam up. The words that came from Michael were always open and honest. It’s what made them so special when they were loving and so painful when they were biting.
“Is that why you volunteered to go on deployments and never tried to get stationed close to home? You didn’t like the way I made you feel?” Michael asks, his own voice weak and Alex is sure if he were to look in his eyes, they’d be wet.
“I loved the way you made me feel,” he says, needing to make sure that much is clear. “I just… I couldn’t .”
“You couldn’t be with me,” Michael says. “You couldn’t afford to love me or be seen with me.”
“It was never about you, Guerin,” he says, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “I had a job to do and I needed to do it.”
“And you couldn’t do it closer to home?” Michael asks, his tone a bit too familiar. The pain in his voice pushes at his fight or flight response like it used to.
“No,” Alex says, a bit harsher than he means to. He takes a deep breath. “This isn’t home.”
Michael doesn’t say anything, but the way his body tenses up tells Alex he hit a nerve.
“This town? I couldn’t be in New Mexico,” he explains, needing Michael to see. Not understanding how Michael doesn’t get it already. He knows what Alex was dealing with. “Even now, it just brings up a lot of bad memories for me.”
Michael tilts his head and a look of realization crosses his face. “When you said that there was nothing for you in Roswell… You weren’t talking about me.”
“What? No,” he says, confused. “Wait, is that what you thought?”
Michael shrugs, moving his hands around helplessly. “When we were in the middle of having an argument about our relationship? Yeah.”
Alex sputters, baffled that Michael could possibly think he meant him. Sure, Alex didn’t have a great track record of using his words, but his actions should have counted for something. Would Alex have continually come back to Roswell on every leave if Michael wasn’t worth it? Michael was the only reason to come home apart from Mimi and Maria, both of whom were more than willing to use their vacation time to visit him on whatever base he was stationed at when he wasn’t overseas. He came home for Michael. How could he not know that?
“You immediately brought up my father, I thought you understood what I meant when I said that,” he argues.
Michael shakes his head. “I understood that you were telling me I wasn’t worth coming back for and lashed out with that comment about your father because I was hurt.”
“You are such an asshole,” Alex says, because that comment had fucking hurt. Of all the people in the world, Michael was the one who knew intimately about the kind of pain that his father was willing to unleash on him, and for him to stand there and make any comment about his dad was a dick move. To find out that he only said it to get back at Alex, even if Alex had always suspected as much, pisses him off.
“I know,” Michael says with a sigh. “I’m sorry.”
The words are genuine and any fight Alex has in him leaves his body, because the truth is, they’d both hurt each other purposefully that night by saying things that they knew would sting. And at the end of the day, the biggest hurt Michael had caused, hadn’t happened that night. It happened ten months later…
“You told me that if I left, you wouldn’t be here when I got back,” he says, blinking back tears.
“I didn’t mean it,” Michael rushes to say. “I was saying whatever I needed to say to get you to stay.”
“When I got back from Iraq, you were gone and Sanders told me you’d moved out of town,” he forces himself to maintain eye contact with Michael, even when it makes him uncomfortable to be this vulnerable. Which is why he sees the moment it clicks for Michael. His eyes grow sad and fill with tears of his own.
“You came back for me?”
Alex hates that it’s a question rather than a statement, but he figures he deserves that.
“I was always coming back for you,” he says, reaching his hand out across the table.
Michael eyes his outstretched hand, hesitantly, but doesn’t immediately take it. Alex has to fight the urge to pull it back, to leave it out there between them as a peace offering, hoping Michael will meet him in the middle.
“You told me not to wait for you,” Michael says, his voice cracking.
“Maybe I’m an asshole too,” he says with a shrug. “I came back, Michael.”
The use of his name has Michael reaching out, placing his hand in Alex’s and instantly, they both cling to each other as if letting go would cause the other to slip away for good.
“And I don’t know that I would have been ready for something then. Or anything. But I came back and I was ready to say sorry and you were just… gone,” he says, not being able to stop the tears that fall down his cheek. “I guess it sunk in that you actually meant the words you’d said that night.”
“No,” Michael says firmly. He stands up, not letting go of his hand, but walks around the table to kneel at Alex’s feet. “No.” Michael reaches out with his free hand to wipe the tears from his face, as he starts to cry himself. “I didn’t mean it. I left for Nova.”
“I didn’t know that then,” he says with a helpless shrug.
“You told me that you never wanted to see me again,” Michael cries. “I always thought you meant it.”
Alex shakes his head. Of course he didn’t mean that. He could never mean that. Did Michael honestly believe him?
“That’s why you kept Nova from me,” he says.
“It’s… It made it easier to keep her from you,” Michael admits with a shrug, his hand falling from Alex’s check to his lap. “But no. I kept her from you because of the reasons I already told you. Because I had to protect her.”
Alex gets that. The more he digs around on the dark web, the more completely he gets it.
“She’s part alien and the world wouldn’t be kind to her if they found out,” Michael continues to explain until Alex puts his hand on his shoulder and he goes silent.
“I know,” he says, thinking about his father and Project Shepherd, and how even though Alex still doesn’t have any answers, how he knows in his bones that his father is responsible for overseeing the military response to aliens.
“I should have trusted you,” Michael says, his voice full of regret.
Alex shakes his head. “No.”
Michael looks up at him in shock.
“I’m not sure you should have.”
When Michael continues to look at him in confusion, Alex lets out a heavy breath and decides that it’s time to share what he knows. “What do you know about Project Shepherd?”