Work Text:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles, will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles, will be miles away
Once again, as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more
---
“I don't know why we haven't ever done this before,” Isobel says, popping another piece of cheddar popcorn into her mouth. Some Hallmark movie is playing in the background - Michael has lost track of which one, honestly.
“Because every time we've suggested a sleepover you listed the calories in every potential snack until we relented?” Michael suggests, grabbing another overflowing handful of the sticky caramel popcorn accompanying the cheddar in the festive holiday tin sat between them.
“Well, that was pre-boyfriend me. I'm off the hook now that Mr. McLawyer is nabbed. Bring on the cheezewiz.”
Max, who has been listening to them bicker while writing by the fireplace - pathetic - pauses. “Is that how all girls think?”
“My extensive studies say yes.”
“Extensive studies? Michael, you've barely dated three people since high school.”
“My track record at the Pony, however, is an impressive counterpoint.”
Isobel scoffs. “You're gross. Boys are so gross.”
“Yes we are,” Michael says proudly. “We are disgusting and terrible and not to be trusted with anyone's hearts.”
“Ouch, okay Mr. Heartache. Who twisted yours up then?”
“Oh, my problems started way before I started fucking boys.” Michael grins, and Isobel twists around to stare at him, chip halfway to her mouth.
“What??”
Micheal shrugs, playing coy. “What?” Now that he’s said it he regrets it a little bit - he wasn’t exactly planning to come out to his siblings on Christmas, but here he is. In trouble again because of his mouth.
“You never told me you were gay-”
“I'm not gay,” Michael interrupts her, rolling his eyes. “I'm bisexual. I find our terrestrial captors attractive no matter what they've got in their pants.”
“When did you ever have sex with a boy? I feel like that's something I would have heard about. I'm hurt, Michael.” She sounds more scandalized that she missed the hot goss, but Michael grins anyway, enjoying himself. It’s easier to fool around than it is to focus on what he’s actually talking about.
“Nah, it wasn't that important. Just some fun. A lot of fun, actually.” Michael wants to wiggle his eyebrows suggestively, but it reminds him of the way Alex used to and...his heart is aching enough, pretending like that one relationship didn't ruin him for any others.
“Michael! Spill. The. Tea. Who in this godforsaken hokie town did you hook up with?”
“I mean you know about Carly-”
“The men! Michael!!”
“Iz, lay off him.” Max interrupts her suddenly, looking uncomfortable. Michael rolls his eyes and sneers a little bit; he can't help it.
“What, Maximilian is too high and mighty to hear about his fag brother's sexual exploits?”
Max frowns. “No I just....it seemed like you didn't wanna talk about it.”
Michael feels anger flare in his chest, but it feels more like shame and maybe something too close to a secret he’s not allowed to share. “What would you know about it, Max?”
Max stares at him, and Michael gets the disturbing feeling he knows something. He can't know about Alex.. no one knows about Alex. But he definitely knows something.
“Wait, do you know who it is?” Isobel asks, leaning forward.
Without breaking eye contact, Max says nothing, just shrugs. Michael’s anger(and loss. And heartache. He misses Alex so damn much.) boils over and he stands up abruptly.
“Fuck you, Max. Just because you're living some high school fantasy about a girl who didn't even say goodbye to you before she left doesn't mean we're all dramatic, lonely weirdos obsessed with Russian Literature. No one broke my heart; I’m just screwed up, and it's none of your business.”
He storms off, leaving both Max and Isobel gaping in his wake. This was the other reason he's never really pushed this. Hanging out with his siblings nowadays just means too many bad memories of a time Michael's been destroying his liver trying to forget. Not just of Alex, either. There’s the even bigger pain and guilt of three limp bodies and a burning car that make the bile rise in his throat.
His hand throbs as blood and adrenaline pump through his body, carrying him out the front door before Ann and Dave can even get up from the sitting room. The low Christmas music follows him like a ghost through the front door.
He doesn't belong here in this Stepford fucking house pretending he has a family and that everything is fucking ‘yuletide merry and bright’ . Pretending he has anyone to share something like that with.
The ache in his chest hurts too much to pretend that. He misses Max. He misses Isobel. He misses his brother and sister and the only two people on the entire planet that know him and he misses thinking the worst thing that could happen was being discovered. He misses feeling like a good person. He misses waking up and not feeling guilt and sorrow and. And he misses Alex like a fucking hole in his heart.
Even that summer, when everything had gone to shit and Michael felt like the lowest scum to ever walk the earth, Alex would still look at him - all shy pleased smiles - and for just one second he'd feel like a teenager. Like a real one, whose biggest problem was how much he liked the guy staring back at him. But Alex is gone now.
He’s in the middle east somewhere, or Germany, or blown up, and Michael wouldn't even know which one because Alex hasn't contacted him since he left basic. Since Michael drove all the way to Texas trying to hold onto something, only to have it shatter in his hands. The only saving grace was the tears in Alex’s eyes when he’d told Michael they couldn’t see each other anymore. Not just because he didn’t want to - a lie Michael let him get away with - but because he wasn’t going to be in the states anymore.
Michael gets about halfway through the Evans’ massive front yard before the grief stops him in his place. He has nothing and he’s never felt more alone. Not even looking up at the sky and pretending one of those shooting stars is for him is any comfort.
He stands, hands shoved into his pockets against the desert night air, and rages, and feels sorry for himself, and hates himself for causing another scene in Max and Isobel’s perfect lives. He feels like he’s always the odd one out - it’s not Max and Isobel’s fault they can’t see that. He’s happy they can’t. He’ll take the heat for everything if it means the people he cares about are happy. For all the shit the three of them have been through and done, Isobel and Max are able to pretend it didn’t happen. Or don’t remember it happening. That has to be worth something.
But Michael remembers, and he doesn’t have the shield of a rich foster parent to protect him from the reality of being stranded on an alien planet.
He hears two pairs of footsteps come up behind him but even if he hadn’t, he could have felt the anxiety and worry rolling off of Max and Isobel miles away. It feels like such a parallel to when they’d first found him again - he’d felt much the same; hurt and angry and defensive. He doesn’t have a knife now, but he knows them better, too. He knows words are a better weapon against either of them coming from him.
Isobel speaks, her voice soft and tremoring. “Michael, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just don’t see any reason to pretend.”
Isobel steps forward, hands wringing together.
“You’re our brother. We want to spend Christmas with you.”
“I’m a murderer,” he slings back, the bite of bile still raw in his throat at the lie, even if it doesn’t feel totally untrue. He might not have killed Rosa Ortecho but he’s responsible for how this town thinks about her death. Even if he’s not the one who did the deed, he still feels like a murderer for the threats Arturo Ortecho receives on an almost daily basis.
Max steps forward, brow creased in displeasure. He looks like he’s going to say something, but Isobel shakes her head, tears in her eyes.
“That’s not all you are, Michael. It was one stupid mistake. You’re still our brother and we still love you.”
Michael gives up. He can’t believe that. Isobel doesn’t know the whole truth of it and Max is-. Well. Max has lived with a lot of things Michael doesn’t think he could. He’s better at shutting himself down than Michael is. Part of the problem, he supposes, is that Michael himself feels so much all the time that every new emotion is turned up to eleven. Even with alcohol and acetone he thinks and feels too much, all the time.
“Come inside? We can talk about something else,” Isobel continues, pleading.
Michael sighs and wipes his eyes, but turns back to the house.
They go back in and Ann offers him a stale Christmas tree shaped cookie, hot chocolate with too many marshmallows in it. The three of them go back downstairs hands laden with treats that feel like an apology, but Michael has no idea what Ann Evans is apologizing for.
Another new Hallmark movie on the TV in the corner, they discuss Max and Isobel’s presents, Isobel’s new boyfriend; Max tells them about a new author he’s discovered whose prose about winter he finds absolutely inspiring and it’s - not bad. Michael still feels on the outside of it - like this is a vacation into someone else’s life rather than anything he could ever live for real. Like maybe he’s watching another Hallmark movie but in real life.
But it’s one he doesn’t want to turn off, as uncomfortable as it makes him feel. The only family he has is here. For all their faults and all the shit they’ve been through together, Max and Isobel are all he has. He misses Alex. He’s always going to miss Alex, he thinks. It’s too easy to imagine him here, curled up into Michael’s side in comfort and safety instead of risking his life getting blown up for a cause Michael knows he doesn’t believe in.
But that ship has sailed; Michael missed his chance at a happy ever-after and even if he hadn’t, he doesn’t deserve one. Not after what they did to Rosa. But if Isobel gets one, if Max gets - whatever Max wants out of life - Michael supposes that’s something. So he’ll play along and say his lines and bury the rage and hurt and anger deeper down where it won’t ruin anyone but himself.
He’s surprised when Ann offers that he can stay the night. At 9pm when she peeks her head downstairs and said that if he wanted to, he was welcome to spend the night, spend Christmas Day with them, too. If he had nowhere else to go. She says it like she doesn’t know he’s still living out of his truck - as if the homeless boy who sleeps in Sanders’ junkyard isn’t the talk of her bridge club at least once a month.
He had shrugged, thinking he should refuse on principle, but the look of hope on Max’s face makes him stay his refusal. That look had suggested more than just hope - it had an air of expectation and Michael had an inkling that maybe Max had had a hand in the offer itself. As if this might prove they were really still a family if Michael wakes up on Christmas morning in the Evans’ household. So.
“Sure, that would be great Mrs. Evans. Thank you.”
So he sits on the guest bed, borrowed PJs providing a comfort that’s keeping him up.
The door cracks open, surprising him out of his melancholy. Isobel appears in the doorway and she pushes her way in as soon as he looks up.
“Hey,” she says. “I just wanted to -” she starts and stops, looking unsure, and it’s such a strange expression on his normally confident sister that he turns towards her, suddenly more attentive. She hasn’t had any blackouts recently, but it’s only been a few years since the worst night of Michael’s life. He’s still on high alert for any weird Isobel behavior that might signal they’re coming back.
But she doesn’t speak again, just comes in and sits down on the bed next to him. She looks at her hands, then suddenly she’s hugging him, arms around his neck, pulling him in tight to her.
“I’m sorry about whoever hurt you.”
It takes him by surprise.
“I’m fine Isobel.” He lies. She just hugs him tighter. He’s never been a very good liar - but usually Isobel is a lot more willing to believe his lies. It almost breaks him, being forced to double down on them. He doesn’t want to lie. He doesn't want to need to. He almost wants to believe this is Isobel giving him space to talk about something that’s been carving a hole in his chest for more than a year.
But he doesn’t. He clamps his jaw shut; because if he opens up to Isobel about Alex he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop. And he can’t talk to her about Rosa. He wouldn’t dare. It’s best that he keeps all the memories and turmoil inside him, and that she and Max can live normal lives. He can be fucked up enough for all three of them.
“You’re not, but I get you don’t wanna talk about it. Max and I love you, though, you know.”
He does know. He just doesn’t know how to accept that, sometimes. Or maybe...doesn’t know how to deal with the threat of losing it. If he lets his guard down enough for Isobel and Max to love him again, how is he ever going to pick himself up again if anything happens to them? Being alone ... at least it means he can’t hurt any more than he does right now.
She sits with him for a while more, until Ann sticks her head in, reminding Isobel that 8 hours of sleep is important for the elasticity of her skin. Michael barely contains his snort, at least until Isobel rolls her eyes after Ann has left, and then they both share a little laugh. “Merry Christmas, Michael.” Isobel whispers, hugging him again. It makes him feel warmer than even the hug did.
His heart isn’t gonna grow three sizes and his shoes fit okay, and Christmas still feels like a marketing ploy, but. He has a family. Sort of. He has Max and Isobel. As she stands, he catches her hand and squeezes.
“Merry Christmas, Isobel.”
It’s sort of like an ‘I love you’ of its own. They know they’re all each other has, at the end of it. Even though Max and Isobel have Ann and Dave, sort of. And Isobel has her new beau. But really, at the end of it, it’s the three of them against everything else. They can’t share themselves with anyone else and that sets them apart, but it also keeps them together. As much as he would like to sometimes, Michael knows he could never give this up for anything. He’s already faced the only thing that could have convinced him to leave his brother and sister, and watched him walk away.
Isobel leaves for her own room and suddenly Michael is alone again. But it doesn’t feel as lonely as before. He lays down and pulls the thick blanket of the guest room bed over himself, wriggling down into it, soft sweatpants rubbing against his skin but no longer feeling as wrong as they did before.
Michael stares at the phone Isobel got him for their birthday. Takes it off the bedside table and stares at the screen, at a number he isn’t sure even works anymore. There aren’t any messages in the thread, but Michael has had this number memorized since high school.
He listens to the quiet of the house, now, everyone asleep and nothing stirring but the old house as it settles. Not even a mouse.
He thinks about -. Well. He knows what being alone on Christmas feels like. It sucks.
Michael: Merry Christmas Alex.
--
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now