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Alex pulled back up against him and pressed kisses into him, and Michael thought he could dream here forever, never having to leave this bed.
Michael leaned back half an hour later, watching with awe and wonder at the sleeping dream of a man before him. He’d done that. He’d helped Alex sleep. Michael was so grateful and happy, that he didn’t dare loosen his arms around Alex, and instead used his powers to carefully clean them both off and pull the blanket up to their chins. He pressed as close as he could to Alex’s body, their foreheads together, inhaling his airman’s scent. And he closed his eyes.
*
Alex clenched his jaw against the boots echoing down the short corridor of the airstream. He shouldn’t still be hearing this, he shouldn’t still be doing this to himself. Alex turned his head so that his nose was buried in Michael’s curls, the smell of grease and bourbon only faint, never able to hide the storm always brewing beneath the surface.
He had grasped a small detail- felt the sparks shooting up and down his body at the smell. It transformed from fear to desperate desire to kiss Michael awake, keep him kissing him until neither of them could breathe. Until Alex knew he was awake.
Needles drove up into his cheekbones and his teeth creaked. He remembered the way Michael used to pull him in when he’d gotten back after a decade of being apart. Then the way he always let Alex go without a word. Or worse, if it was a word, it was more of a mockery of what Alex thought they shared. The boots returned as Alex swung to sit up.
“How long until he gets frustrated and looks away, Alex?” Flint crossed his arms, and Alex shut his eyes tight.
“How much do you think you’re allowed before it’s too much again, and he abandons you.”
Alex cringed into himself as the truth of it sings through his every nerve ending, resonating like a violin, helpless but to be played and to crave every second of it.
“You’re the weakest of us, failing to master even this piece of shit,” Flint sneered over Alex’s shoulder, down at Michael.
Shut up, he silently warned Flint.
Stop thinking about what isn’t real, he lied to himself. Hopefully, that would be true of Flint soon enough. Alex straightened his shoulders and turned to stand, repeating those words to himself over and over.
“Stop it,” he breathed, rubbing his temples. “Stop doing this to yourself. This isn’t for you.”
Surely he could leave, just one more time....
Alex eventually managed to push himself up and went to wait outside with the firepit, and all he could see was a sky full of stars. He leaned back and relished the strain, looking for constellations. His friends thought he’d seen stars when he was away, but they were wrong. The sky never seemed to clear of smoke and fire where he was. He’d hated it. All he had ever felt was Michael. What he was doing, was he hungry tonight, was he warm wherever he slept. He wondered if Michael ever thought of him.
The airstream glinted with movement and yanked him away from the constellations down to Michael. He found himself having almost hoped Michael had forgotten him. Well, at least they wouldn’t have to pretend anymore.
*
Before Michael even opened his eyes, he was reaching for Alex. His body yearned to be closer to him, to curl against his warmth and feel him in his arms. But his hand touched an empty bedsheet.
He picked his head up, his vision groggy. He wiped his eyes as he sat up, looking around the small space. “Alex?” His voice was hoarse.
It was stupid to get nervous, but that didn’t stop the panic from rising in his chest. Had Alex left again? Had he gone back to the reservation? Was their day together in bed yesterday just a goodbye?
Michael swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to calm himself. He swung his legs off the bed and stood. “Call him, I’ll call him,” he muttered, reaching for his phone. Then he saw him.
There he was, sitting with his back to the airstream, hunched over with a phone in his hands, was Alex.
Michael put a hand to his chest, and realized his heart had been racing. He heaved a sigh of relief and went to the door only to stop again. He pulled some jeans on without his underwear, and, too impatient to do more than that, stepped out of the airstream, forcing his steps slow and quiet to not scare Alex away.
He reached out, softly touching Alex’s shoulder. Alex’s body visibly relaxed under his fingers, and Michael let his hand run from one arm to the other, his other hand drifting up Alex’s other arm until it could rest on his shoulder. Michael leaned down and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the side of his neck.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Why’d you get out of bed?”
Alex didn’t answer.
*
He didn’t want to remember.
“Is he asking because he wants to spend more time with you?” Jesse took a long drag off the Coors Lite when Alex allowed himself a glance.
“Or does he just want an excuse to go see her again?”
*
Michael came around to get a good look at him, see the rosy blush in his cheeks, his kiss-swollen lips, his dark eyes glimmering in the morning sunlight. But Alex’s brows were furrowed as he scrolled through the messages on his phone from his mother and Nana. There were only two messages, one telling him that Nana was making his favorite roasted chicken for lunch, and the other from his mom, telling him she loved him and that the spare duvet was in the closet.
Michael’s smile dimmed. “You’re going back?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed and sighed as he put away his phone, running a hand through his hair.
“Hey,” Michael knelt in front of him, keeping his voice light despite the heavyweight that was settling in his chest at the thought of Alex disappearing again. He cupped his jaw, and Alex leaned into the touch. “When’d you wake up?”
“About an hour ago,” he muttered. He took Michael’s other hand between his, kissing his fingers. Michael’s heart stuttered in his chest as Alex kissed his palm, his wrist.
He bit his lower lip to keep his grin from widening, to keep from hoping. He moved closer so that his forehead was almost pressed against Alex’s. He could feel his warm breath now, his eyes falling to Alex’s lips.
“You missed me that much?”
*
Everything fell, and his body rushed along with it. Should he bring it up?
It could be like pressing a bruise. He shouldn’t open old wounds. He shouldn’t try to punish himself like this. But then, he was never that good at protecting himself anyway.
“More,” Alex breathed without hesitation, covering both of Michael’s hands on his jaw now with his own. “I can’t breathe without you, Michael.”
Michael faltered. Every time Alex expressed how he felt, it left him speechless. It shouldn’t have surprised him, shouldn’t have made him feel so much that he was afraid his heart would jump out of his chest.
“I couldn’t protect you,” he said as if Michael would want to know after all this time. “I was terrified, and then terrified every day after.” Alex was blinded by the light and the burn of trying to see Richards’ face through the flames. Smelling the sear of their flesh as they lay on the ground together, he refused the temptation of leaving for the constellations.
Somewhere under the cruel, burned reality, he was now facing the ugly truth in the mirror and Alex felt despair in his heart, overriding any anger. He hated to struggle for words like this, but he could remember moments – in the airstream, on the patio, at the Pony . . . at Caulfield – moments where he had struggled to say what he wanted but forced himself. The strength that had taken.
“And when has that ever been met with kindness?” Flint demanded.
Alex shook his head and wiped his face roughly enough to turn his skin red.
“He put up with that fear of yours for a long time. You finally beat it away, but you were too late. He was already so sick of you that he did the one thing I never thought he would do. The one thing you couldn’t. He chose someone else. And he cared for her. And he told her he loved her. If a few weeks with her was all it took to bring your walls down, then maybe you’re not as special as you think you are to him.”
He looked to Michael and his heart clenched and raced as it grasped and reflected Michael’s devastation.
But the longer Michael stayed silent, the darker Alex’s eyes turned. Alex tried and tried, but couldn’t say the words that waited on his tongue. That he loved Michael more than he could ever say. That he loved him so much he would’ve sold his soul for him. That he loved him so much he would stay on earth for him.
Slowly, Alex looked away, lowering his hands from Michael’s.
He glanced Michael and softened. “Don’t look like that, Guerin. I – I deserved it. I was living in a fantasy, pretending I was something more to you than what I was. But... you get it now, right? I’m scared again. And I think you would put up with it fine for a few days. But this, what I have to live with –”
“Really can’t let your cowboy doll go, can you, little boy,” Jesse resigned himself to crunching the Coors. Alex felt it around his neck nonetheless.
“Um,” Alex cleared his throat. He muttered, “I – I didn’t . . . I shouldn’t have . . .” He exhaled sharply, scrubbing his face.
“Don’t look like that, Alex. You deserved it. You were living in a fantasy, pretending you were something more to him than you were. But . . . you get it now, right? You’re going get him killed –”
Alex flinched as Jesse and Flint turned to each other, conferred among themselves and Alex suddenly saw Michael once again. Jesse and Flint and Richards disappeared. Michael’s hands did not move from Alex’s jaw.
“Alex,” he said. He caressed Alex’s cheek with his thumb and Alex tried to take comfort in his soft, warm skin. Here, and so close.
“Please look at me.”
Alex wanted to cling to Michael’s wrist tightly. He wanted, more than anything, to surge forward and kiss him. He wanted to hold him close and never let him go again. But would he be allowed? What if he screwed up again? What if Michael tried to love someone else, and succeeded?
He could speak again, his voice was steady. He was a very good pretender.
*
“It’s okay,” Alex shook his head. “You don’t have to – I mean, you’ve done enough, humoring me.” He tried for a weak laugh, but the sound only broke Michael’s heart.
“A-Alex, yesterday wasn’t –”
“Just tell me one thing,” he said, his voice so quiet as if he was terrified of frightening himself. He seemed unable to look at Michael. He opened his mouth and closed it again several times. Finally, he managed, “M-Maria said you – you used to make her breakfast, and . . . and you’d have to go see her every night, and you fought like hell to keep her from using her powers. Because you were that scared for her. Is it true?”
Michael’s eyes were wide. They burned in the cold morning air. How had Alex known that? Michael imagined him finding out at the bar or the Crashdown, as either Liz or Maria talked casually about it, as if Alex wasn’t there, as if it wouldn’t have crushed him to know.
One thing on top of the other. It was no wonder Alex broke in the end.
“I –” he came closer, held Alex tighter. “Yeah, but – but that’s what boyfriends do, right? That’s what they’re supposed to do. Alex, I just did what I was supposed to do.”
Alex scoffed, a tear falling down his cheek. Before Michael could wake from his shock and wipe it away, Alex reached up instead. “Guerin, I’m not mad at you for taking care of her. I’m mad because I built up this stupid fantasy in my head all these years. That I was – I was different. I was special to you. That if you ever cared about somebody like that, that . . .” he bit his lower lip and shook his head, as if ashamed of thinking it. He shrugged a shoulder. “That it would be me.”
*
To his surprise, his vision blurred in an instant, and he reached up slowly to find his face streaked with tears. He wiped them away, looked down from Michael, and carefully pushed himself out of Michael’s hands. For once, Alex prayed that Michael could find a fallout shelter in anyone else.
He remembered Michael once telling him that his thoughts were pretty loud, but everything quieted down when he was playing music. Alex had never confessed it to Michael, wanting more than anything to embody safety for him, that his thoughts never quieted. Music only ever helped focus his thoughts, help him think more clearly. It usually worked. But then, hadn’t Michael Guerin always been the exception?
He sniffled, wiping his face roughly. “But I know I’m too – too messed up. Everything about me is too hard, it – it’s too much.” His lower lip trembled despite himself. “And I know that what we did yesterday . . . in there –” he turned his chin toward the airstream “—that’s all you’ll ever want me for.”
*
“Alex,” he breathed. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Alex had always seemed so proud of his abilities, so sure of his intelligence, his strength.
That’s what he can do , a voice in his head warned. Not who he is. Who he is to you.
But that couldn’t be possible, could it? That Alex honestly believed Michael thought so little of him?
*
Alex hid his gaze as his eyes burned. Why didn’t he believe him? Why couldn’t he believe Michael loved only him? Why couldn’t he believe Michael would always love him? Alex exhaled softly and gave Michael a weary smile.
“Better than nothing, I guess,” he said.
Didn’t you sleep with Maria? Alex thought bitterly and shoved the thought down to pile on the darkness building in his chest. He could feel it, pushing at every inch of his skin, suffocating his heart, demanding to be released. His lungs ached.
*
The worst thing of all, Michael thought, was that he sounded like he meant it.
“It helped though,” Alex huffed a laugh as if any part of this conversation was funny. “It turned down the noise a little bit. Being around you usually...”
*
Hurts? Jesse whispered against the shell of his ear. Alex sank into the truth of it, the rightness of it, the familiarity in running from it. His smile wavered, but in the end, it stayed resolutely in place. “Right. I’m not going to talk like that anymore. Sorry.”
Alex took Michael’s wrists gently, but firmly.
“He can’t forgive you for being me. He’ll never have to worry about you now. He’ll never want you once he knows about me,” Jesse laid his hands upon Alex’s shoulders. The darkness all the closer, all the easier to succumb to. Alex lowered Michael’s hands. He grabbed his jacket and threw it on.
“Thanks for yesterday, Guerin.”
He stood, and Michael, panicked, followed. “W-Wait, where are you going?”
Alex put his hands in his pockets. Michael saw, once again, his fingers curls to fists before he could hide them away.
“Home,” he said, and winced slightly at the words.
Airman? Jesse’s tone betrayed nothing of the smoldering rage at Alex’s lie.
“My dad’s house.”
Michael frowned. “Why’re you going back there?”
“Flint’s staying there,” he said, glancing behind Michael. “Thought I’d stop by and see him. He doesn’t talk to mom much anymore,” he scoffed, “but I know he wants to check up on her.”
Michael said nothing for a long time. His eyes filled with tears as he watched Alex, and Alex wondered yet again if this was it. This was the last straw. He’d disappointed Michael again and would be left for someone else. Alex hesitated. Michael moved close enough that his next words couldn’t have been heard outside the space between them. “We don’t even have to make it to the bed. I can take you right here.”
*
Michael took Alex’s wrist, pulling his hand out of his pocket, and pressing it against his naked chest. “Later,” he said, hoping Alex couldn’t feel his heart hammering against his fingertips. “Go later.”
It was unfair. It was not what Alex wanted now, not after what he’d confessed. It was, Michael knew, cruel to some extent. But it was all he knew. The only way he knew to keep Alex here, keep him close. The truth was that Michael would’ve been even happier to go back to bed, put Alex in one of his sweats, and just have him curl up against him and fall asleep.
Alex’s words suddenly claimed foreground, and for a moment Michael remembered his pod, the surrender to space and time. They were too lost to say anything more, and ready to die for each other.
You’re trying to leave . . . the planet.
How had he not realized it then? That Alex had been asking him to stay?
“Never again,” he breathed. Everything – planet alignment charts, numbers and equations, tools and spaceship pieces saved; a lifetime’s cumulation of work, a hope he carried when he’d had nothing else, when he’d wanted nothing more – it all began to rise.
He wanted to hear Alex talk about his Air Force team, how he’d spent his past few days at the reservation with his mother and grandmother, what his favorite homemade meal was.
But there it was, beneath it all– the fear of being rejected, of not being good enough for Alex, of having that taste just for a second only to lose it. It would be enough to kill him.
*
He could hear Michael calling him home. All this time, Alex thought Michael had been the only one walking away. All this time, he’d been wrong. And now Alex was suffering alone, wanting Michael more than anybody and unable to have him because he was terrified of being abandoned. Alex raised his hand to brush away a stray curl from Michael’s brow, and Michael’s eyes fluttered. Michael wanted to follow Alex’s hand and kiss up his arm to his mouth, but Alex had already tucked it away in his jacket pocket again.
Alex considered Michael again, for he found it very difficult to consider anything else as of late. Michael’s eyes, his lips, his warmth – and his heart jumped. Alex gasped and pressed a hand to his chest. The gound became foreign, but the imbalance was an old companion.
“I blame myself for yesterday,” he said with a small smile. “But I don’t want to use you like that.”
“But I want to –”
“Not if I can’t have the rest of you.”
Michael fell silent. Alex had the horrible fleeting memory of being pulled into Michael by his uniform and having to remove his hand. The airman patted his shoulder, as Kyle might’ve done, and walked past him to his car.
*
Michael thought quickly. “I – I want to come with you,” he said, and Alex stopped. He looked at Michael as if he thought he must’ve heard wrong.
“What?”
Michael swallowed. “I want to come with you.”
Alex rubbed his eyes, the same way he’d done a week ago when he’d been hearing voices in his ear. Michael took a step closer to him, his nails carving into his palms. Alex was too far away. If Michael could just hold him . . .
“You want to go see Flint? At our old family house?”
Michael opened his mouth and struggled with his words only until he met Alex’s dark eyes.
Michael shrugged as if to say If you’re going . . .
Alex seemed to consider it. Then the truth poured out of Alex like it had been begging to be said for years. He nodded.
“Okay,” he said, his tone unreadable. “If you really want to.”
Michael hated that. He hated not being able to read Alex.
“Just – uh –” he gestured back to the airstream “—let me get dressed and we can go together.”
Alex nodded. As Michael turned, he saw that Alex had taken a hand out to rub his thigh. Michael wondered if his prosthetic had been causing him any pain.
*
Michael’s turn revealed Jesse just beyond his shoulder. You’ll never get him to say ‘I loved you’ . You could always pretend he would say it back. I thought... if he turned you down, you might finally kill yourself. So I never mentioned it. I should’ve, but you were useful ...
“Hey,” Michael jolted through Jesse’s anesthetic with surprising force, “Do you need me to take a look at your leg?”
*
Alex seemed to just realize he was rubbing his thigh, and he returned his hand to his pocket. He mustered a smile that did not fail to hide his embarrassment. Michael frowned. Had Alex always been so ashamed of his disability? Or was it just around Michael? The thought left another fracture in Michael’s heart.
“No, I’m good,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“Alex, you were just –”
“I haven’t used my prosthetic since . . . well, in days. It takes a little getting used to every time.”
“But maybe if I checked it?” he offered. He wanted to do something for Alex. If he couldn’t tell him how much he cared, he wanted to be able to show him. “M-Maybe I can help –”
*
There was every chance Michael had been delusional last night, saying things he didn’t really mean.
“Finally grasping the legacy, so far past your expiration. I see you’re finally about to pay out and respect yourself.”
Alex pushed Jesse aside. It’s too horrible , he thought. It's too horrible to think that Michael had meant every word.
“You know me, Guerin,” he said with a smile that did not reach his eyes, and Something behind his eyes flickered, a light breaking.
“Details are what matter,” Alex said. “You can’t change the details. Big things are easy, but those small moments . . .” He leaned back against the frame of the explorer with a sigh, running a hand through his hair.
“I never need help.”
*
Something about his tone cut off the rest of what Michael was about to say. Alex handled things on his own, pushed past the pain every time to help everyone else with their sufferings. Because it was Alex, and Alex was the hero, and heroes never needed help. Heroes never broke.
But this one did. This one was shattering before Michael’s eyes and there was nothing Michael could do to save him. Michael touched his back, feeling the tremors beneath his fingers as he peeled Alex away from his escape. Michael wondered how he’d never noticed what was becoming of the man he loved.
*
Am I that pathetic? Alex asked the stars, his voice hoarse from the suffocation of Michael’s embrace.
*
Alex tapped a finger on his lap as he watched the desert plains rolling by outside. Michael had insisted he’d take him wherever he needed to go. Alex wished he could’ve told him that there was no need for the guilt, there was nothing to make up for. But he wanted to stay with Michael for a little longer. The longer the cowboy was there, the less Alex wanted to leave.
He wanted Michael to pull up to the side of the road now, to cross over the short distance between them and curl against Michael’s side. They never stopped talking, not really, but it dimmed when Michael was there. It was more at the back of his mind, muffled background to Michael’s steady heartbeat against his ear.
But Michael wasn’t his. He had wanted easy, and nothing about Alex was easy. Alex loved him too much to make him suffer for him again. So he sat there in the passenger seat, his hands curled to fists on his lap to keep from reaching out.
He tried to remember the feeling of Michael’s hands on his body yesterday, his mouth on his own, his hazed I love you . . .
He hadn’t meant them. He couldn’t have meant them. Michael always said things like that when they fell into bed together. Never those words exactly, but always something so intimate, so loving. And then morning would come, and the vicious cycle would start all over again. And Alex couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t pretend that Michael was just keeping his guards up anymore. He couldn’t pretend that he was special to Michael anymore. It had been years. Michael had proven that he could easily say the words to someone else. Could clearly care for someone else. The bitter truth was that Michael just didn’t love him as he hoped he did. It was time to accept that.
“And can you?” a voice said from the backseat.
Alex didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. He clenched his jaw, trying to remember his mother’s soft voice and his Nana’s warm quilt. That was reality. That somewhere, as far away as it was from Michael, he still had a family and a home.
Small things, Alexander, he could hear his mother saying. Small details were what saved him.
“What’s your favorite song?” he asked suddenly, before he could help his own words.
“What?” Michael looked surprised that Alex was even talking to him.
“Your favorite song,” Alex said, leaning down in his seat and trying to make himself comfortable. Small things. “I want to know what it is.” He could hear his father chuckling behind him and closed his eyes, trying not to flinch at the malicious sound.
It seemed, however, that he had because Michael’s eyes on him turned unreadable. Alex was worried a question was coming. He didn’t want Michael to know that he was still seeing things. He didn’t know how much the cowboy would take, and he didn’t want to push his luck.
Please , he prayed to the stars. I just want a little longer with him .
Finally, Michael’s lips quirked up. “Dust and Gold,” he said. “Arrow to Athens. That’s my secret favorite.”
Alex, startled and relieved, chuckled. “Arrows to Athens? That’s so . . . Percy Jackson.” His head fell back against his seat. “I love that.”
Michael’s smile widened. “Yeah?”
He hummed, allowing himself these few minutes to stare at Michael’s profile. His stubble, his pink lips, his amber eyes, his caramel curls beneath the brim of his black hat.
“He’s not yours, son,” Jesse reminded him from the backseat.
Alex’s smile dimmed despite himself. He tried for something else.
“What about your favorite movie?”
“Lone Ranger.”
Alex laughed, and something in Michael’s smile turned warmer, fonder. “That makes sense.”
“Underrated.”
“Agreed,” Alex said, rubbing his eyes. “And Armie Hammer’s just gorgeous, so that helps.”
Michael glanced at him. “I’m your cowboy though, right?”
He smiled softly, watching the way Michael’s lashes curled against his cheeks, the way his curls rested against the nape of his neck, the way his strong hands handled the steering wheel. It was quiet, except for the engine taking them to his cold and empty street.
Thoughtlessly, with his eyes fluttering shut to the peace of the truck, the comfort of the seats, the reassurance of having Michael here next to him, Alex said, “Yeah,” as he was lulled off to sleep. “You’re my cowboy.”
*