Archive of Our Own

Summer 2010

It’s early, so early that the sun isn’t up, the air around him still and quiet. Alex is awake, and for a second he doesn’t quite know why. His body is conditioned to wake early each morning, but this is something different.

There’s a strange awareness, where paranoia meets familiarity. Alex knows, as consciousness filters into his brain, that there’s someone else in the room with him. He also knows, without having to open his eyes, that there is no threat, because it’s Michael. The bed shifts, and Alex blinks into the dim light, looking down to see Michael crawling up the bed towards him.

“Are you wearing my hoodie?” Michael asks, voice teasing as he settles in next to Alex, body warm, warm, warm in the chill of the AC. Max always keeps the central air set colder than Alex would choose himself, but Alex has gotten used to living with aliens. Sweatshirt theft is one of the best means of combating it, he’s found.

“Can’t be proven,” Alex rasps out, voice rough with sleep as he rolls in towards Michael’s body. “I go to school there too.”

He gets a scratchy kiss instead of an answer—a couple days worth of stubble growth aren’t as thick on Michael’s face as they will be in a few years, but it’s enough to make the skin on his face tingle when Michael kisses him, slow and lazy and leading nowhere.

“Does Max know you’re here or did you just break in?”

Michael shakes his head, nose brushing along the side of Alex’s cheek. “Didn’t wanna wake him up. He’s not as nice as you are in the mornings.”

Alex hums in acknowledgement, drawing his hands out of the warmth of the blankets to get them on Michael instead. A sleepy silence settles over them; Alex worms his hand up the back of Michael’s worn-soft flannel to feel the skin of his lower back, silk-soft and hot and private. Michael makes a happy sound, his nose brushing against Alex’s chin, and Alex breathes deep. Writes it all into his memory, the soft sound of his man’s breath, the smell of skin, of the just-opened sky hanging heavy with rain, wet-dust-petrichor and fabric softener.

With gentle fingertips, he traces patterns into Michael’s skin, almost mindless until they start to form themselves into words. Partner. Husband. Lover. Best friend. All the things Michael is to him— Soulmate. Guiding star. Protector. Resurrector.

“W’at are you writing?” Michael asks sleepily, voice a low rumble that makes heat bloom in Alex stomach, makes him want to rub his thighs together or open up. “Can feel it, it’s something. Can’t tell though.”

He turns his face towards Michael, nose bumping into Michael’s temple. “Your name. In Oasian.”

A curious sound, and then Michael’s hand slides across his chest, up the back of his neck, and there’s the slow bloom of awareness, the presence of Michael’s mind pressing up against his like their bodies press together in bed. Undemanding, an invitation, an open radio line. Alex thinks the words again, sending them out in the only way he can; not as clean as the way Michael can, a cohesive single idea, but he can still feel the pleased disbelief that ripples through Michael in waves. “Michael,” he murmurs, and thinks those things, names him, in the best way he can manage, in the way Michael’s people name themselves.

Michael’s hand draws back down his neck and the connection fades, leaving behind it a lingering sense of closeness. Of belonging.

“What time do you have to go?” Michael asks. He already knows, because Alex has already told him; it’s why he’d hoofed it over to Max’s house in the small hours of the morning to climb into Alex’s bed. Get in a little more time before their impending separation. He’s asking because he wants the minutes to last longer, same as Alex does. He wants to drag this quiet moment out into an impossible eternity.

“I should be getting up,” Alex says with the greatest reluctance. “Bus leaves in two hours.”

Michael nods silently, running his hand down Alex’s arm, stopping to squeeze his bicep, before tugging Alex’s hand up off his skin so they can lace their fingers together. Alex just watches him, taking in every little detail he can—the dark shadow of stubble on Michael’s jaw, the bump in his nose, the stubborn curl laying eternally across his forehead. He feels like a man preparing for a fast, taking in as much sustenance as he can to survive the coming month.

“I actually wanted to ask you something,” Michael says, mouth twisting a little. “Before you left.”

He’s nervous, Alex realizes as Michael fiddles with his fingers, full of restless energy. “Okay,” he says, nudging Michael with his knee until he looks up, whiskey eyes dark and wide in the low light. “So ask me.”

“I was thinking about— maybe trying to sell the house, this summer?”

It takes a few seconds for the meaning to sink in. For the space of a breath, he’s confused, thinking—the house they’re in right now is Max’s, the room Alex has rented this summer and last. But of course what Michael means is their house, the house he’s going to wake up in when he falls asleep tonight. The house Alex bought when he decided to put down roots in Roswell for real, half a show of defiance against his father, and half a desperate hope that there might still be a chance to build the life he’d wanted since he was seventeen.

“I’ve told you before that you can,” Alex reminds him gently, pulling his fingers away from Michael’s fiddling to rest his palm against the center of Michael’s chest, then up to cup his neck. He rubs his thumb against the pulse point on Michael’s throat, watching his eyes flutter shut from up close, long eyelashes fanning out against his cheekbones.

“I mean, I’m not gonna get it done in a month, but—I figure I can get things started. Figure out how to sell a house.” Michael frowns, then shakes his head a little. “Isobel’s done it before, I’m sure she’ll help.”

“I wish I could help,” Alex says with a sigh—it’s such a moot point, a circle of logic. If he could be there to help, Michael wouldn’t need to sell the house in the first place.

A familiar ache rises in Alex, an old grief for the life he never got to say goodbye to. That house—that he’d picked out himself and bought with his savings and molded into a shape that fit his needs—had been the first real home he’d ever had. Still is the only real home he’s ever had, not counting the home he’s made in the arms of the man in front of him. And that’s the one that counts, really. Home is wherever Michael is.

So what if he never got a last day to look around it? Never got to stand in the middle of the living room with the knowledge that he’d never come back, never got the easy natural end that came with putting his things in boxes, the awareness of a last meal at that table or a last sleep in that bed. So what if he misses it sometimes? There will be other homes.

“What are you thinking of doing next? Not going back to the Airstream, right?”

Michael levels him an unimpressed look. “Why, worried someone’s going to think I’m cooking meth again?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Alex says, exasperated. “You can live wherever you want, I just—” Don’t like the feeling of you going backwards, but there’s no way to say it without starting a fight, and they have precious few hours left before Alex has to get on a bus. He doesn’t want a repeat of leaving Roswell behind in the rearview mirror stewing in anger and hurt. Some things are best left to the past.

“I dunno, I’m going to be apartment hunting with Isobel up in Albuquerque while you’re gone. Figure I can find something in Roswell, too. Probably try and find something smaller, that fits me better.” He shrugs. “Hell, with the money from the sale of the house, maybe I’ll buy a condo in Valenti’s building, bother him all the time.”

“Isobel would love that,” Alex says with a laugh. She and Kyle, the future Isobel and Kyle, have been living together for just over a year, now. Alex is happy for them, although he wishes, in that private, selfish place he tries to keep to himself, that he could have been around for the housewarming party.

“Izzy might,” Michael concedes. “Kyle would not. But then, that’s half the fun.”

They’re cut off by the trill of an alarm from Alex’s phone, disrupting the still atmosphere of the morning. Alex sighs, rolling away from Michael to silence it. They’ve officially run out of time to hide from the world.

Michael follows him into the bathroom, risking Max’s wrath by joining him in the shower. It doesn’t seem like he’s angling for sex, more like he’s just—unwilling to let Alex out of his sight, and if that means knocking elbows around the conditioner, so be it. Alex stands under the cascade of water and savors the feeling of Michael’s body behind him, strong and solid, tender and gentle. Michael’s lips brush the back of his neck in a kiss, nose against the buzzed-short hair, and Alex breathes. Allows himself this moment of truth in who he is—that he loves and is loved by this wonderful man—before he has to put those parts of himself away.

Michael’s not coming to see him off at the bus stop because Jesse is. The summer field training course marks the beginning of Alex’s actual enlistment—the two year grace period is over, he’s got a contract to sign, he’s becoming official property of the US Air Force. Alex has long-since given up on earning his father’s pride, focused instead on tricking himself into the circle of trust. For all Jesse’s bitching about Alex putting on airs with officer training while the rest of the family works for a living, it’s still possible for Jesse to see today as a victory. No backing out now, Alex is officially in his place—even if the sting of him doing it his own way still smarts.

It means Alex has to say goodbye to Michael here instead, in the shaded awning of Max’s patio. In some ways it’s better; Max will be up for work soon, so at least Michael won’t be alone. And at least they have privacy, so Michael can be clingy in a way he wouldn’t let himself be, if other people could see.

He’s doing his best to keep his cool, but Alex knows him far too well for that, coaxes him into a bone-crushing hug, squeezes him tight enough that he can feel Michael’s heartbeat pressing into his own chest. “I’ll try to text you when I get in, okay?”

Michael nods, keeping his face buried in Alex’s neck. His arms are iron bands around Alex’s back, not letting up even slightly as they stand there, swaying slightly as if to music, holding off the moment of separation for as long as they can.

Alex’s phone pings once, a backup alert he’d set to make sure he got out the door in time. He’s never slept through his alarm, but he’s always been paranoid about it, about being caught unawares, not where he’s supposed to be.

“Hey,” Alex says, pulling away carefully, keeping his face blank as Michael’s arms reluctantly relax to let him step back. Alex focuses on reassuring Michael, on making this okay for Michael, ignoring the fault-lines cracking open on his own heart. “It’s only a few weeks, and I’ll be back. It’s only time.”

“Only time,” Michael echoes, and Alex kisses him, holds him tight once again, pretends he doesn’t feel the fine tremor of anguish rolling through his body like an earthquake.

Time means something different to Michael, than it does to the rest of them. Alex can’t let himself forget.

~~~

Alex has never done this before, of course. This specific thing, AFROTC field training in between years of the program at UNM. He hasn’t met these people and followed this schedule and had these experiences. It’s important, living his life the way he does, that he appreciate novelty when it’s available to him. That he refrain from focusing on the fact that all the new music and movies and TV is shit he’s already seen, that he can’t escape hearing about political or international events that to him feel like old news.

So this is new to him, all of it. He has to keep telling himself that, because at the same time that it’s all new, it’s all—exactly the same. He has done this before, the grueling physical effort, the early mornings, the macho posturing as everyone tries to figure out the social pecking order. The yelling and saluting and repetitive, bland food, the muscle fatigue and the too-short showers and the eyes stinging from exhaustion and the missing Michael, aching for him, missing the sound of his voice and the touch of his hands and the texture of his hair sliding between Alex’s own fingers.

He probably should have prepared a little better for what this was going to do to him, to be back in this sort of environment when he knows he won’t be coming home to Michael at the end of each day. His life is made up almost entirely of the familiar, and this all feels too fucking familiar.

For the first couple days it’s like being on the knife’s edge of a flashback or a panic attack at all times. Never enough that he’s in danger of truly shutting down, but enough that he’s never able to fully relax, even when asleep. Because it’s like being eighteen again. Not the eighteen he’d been two years ago, but the eighteen he’d been sixteen years ago, when he was away from home for the first time. He’d escaped from his father. He’d run straight into the arms of the thing his father loved most. He hated Jesse Manes; he worked hard every day to mold himself into someone Jesse wouldn’t hate in return.

And he’d missed Michael, and he couldn’t talk to Michael, couldn’t even pretend to himself that things between them weren’t irrevocably broken. Couldn’t get through a single night without hearing the sound of Michael’s scream when the hammer had come swinging down. Michael wasn’t dead, but somehow he’d still been haunting Alex, a part of a past he’d needed to leave behind, no matter how much it might destroy him to do it.

So this is different. Obviously, it’s different. Michael’s not hurt, he’s safely working a job he likes with friends and family there to look out for him, and Alex’s connection to Roswell isn’t nearly as broken as it had been before. Rare phone privileges means he’ll still have an intermittent tether to his heart; he can call Maria, check in with Isobel, remind himself through these fleeting contacts that he’s coming home again soon enough.

But generally, it’s still the same bullshit. Except unlike at BMT, they’re all here because they’re exceptional. They’re smart and they’re skilled and they’ve been trained as such. They’re heading for officer ranks, they’re the ones preparing to send soldiers to die instead of being sent themselves, and the fucking egos on these guys—

It’s impressive, how much things really have changed between 2008 and what Alex remembers of life in 2021. Not that things had been perfect in his own remembered future, but Jesus, it really does seem like people here are a hell of a lot more comfortable saying the quiet part out loud. The casual use of slurs, the way femininity, girlishness, is tossed around as a synonym for weakness even though there are women here putting the work in too, it’s all disgustingly familiar and also shocking, when he remembers the way acceptable behavior is going to shift over the next decade or so.

He’s sure AFROTC is still a fucking nightmare in the future for everyone who isn’t white or straight, but he’s pretty sure people are slightly less brazen about their hate. It’s fucking with his head, getting under his skin paradoxically worse because he knows it won’t always be quite so bad.

This one guy, Jackson, is maybe the worst offender. He skates a thin line in front of the officers or in larger public gatherings, saying something vile without actually using a slur, then putting his hands up in the air in mock innocence as if to reassure everyone around that he was only making a joke, or an idle observation. ‘Hey, I’m just saying’ is this guy’s catchphrase, and Alex would badly like to punch it out of his smug little mouth.

And the worst part of it is the way other people fall in with him, the bully-pack mentality. He just expects it—and he expects Alex to fall in too, because Alex is still in his old familiar survival pattern: keep his head down, don’t get noticed. It’s what he’s always done, too scared, too much of a fucking coward to risk what comes with drawing attention to himself.

But it’s so much harder to swallow the shit, this time. It turns out Alex doesn’t have it in him anymore to just watch quietly from the back of the room, when Jackson starts messing with one of the other guys in the gym. Torres is doing his level best to ignore it, but their supervisory sergeant has fucked off somewhere, presumably to allow this little bit of hazing to occur undetected, and there seems to be real danger of it escalating into a fight. Alex is pushing into the little gathering of on-lookers before he can think it through, still holding the free weights in his clenched fists.

“Hey, we’ve all got fitness goals to meet,” he cuts in, glaring at Jackson and his cronies. “You might not care about failing out but don’t waste the rest of our gym time with this shit.”

Jackson turns to look at him, sneer in place. “C’mon, Manes, aren’t you from near the border? You know they’re all trying to sneak in here, push out good hard working Americans. I’m just saying.”

“I’m Navajo,” Alex snaps, a flare of anger flashing bright inside him as Jackson tries to push into his space. “My people were here before America, so don’t talk to me about being pushed out.”

There’s a flicker of surprise on Jackson’s face that hardens into disdain. Familiar, a new flavor of bigotry but bigotry nonetheless. Alex shakes his head, turning away first. Let them think he’s weak, what does it fucking matter? Dropping the free weights back into the rack, Alex turns and walks out of the room, letting his feet carry him until he feels fresh air on his skin. He leans back against the outside wall of the building; the sunbaked siding is hot enough to almost hurt against his bare shoulder blades—he’d left his shirt inside, like a fucking idiot. Still, the sensation is grounding, and he lets it pull him back into his body, letting the anger and the tension of preparing for a fight drain out of him.

The door next to him creaks wide and Alex’s eyes snap open, immediately on edge again. But it’s just Torres, giving Alex a measured look, as he holds out the fabric of Alex’s discarded undershirt.

“Thought you might want this.”

Alex takes it with a laugh, settling back against the wall. “Thanks, man.”

“De nada.” Torres leans next to him, a moment of comfortable silence settling over them. “You really Navajo?”

“Half,” Alex admits, not entirely sure why he said it. It’s not something he ever would have said to another Airman, before. Not even something he would have claimed for himself. There have been tentative advancements in rebuilding a relationship with his mother, but that’s not the same as a cultural identity. But... “Enough for it to count, for idiots like that.”

Torres lets out a derisive snort, and Alex looks over at him in time to catch a smile. If Alex ever allowed him to notice such things about other soldiers, he might think it’s a good smile, bringing life to a handsome face. Alex has always been weak for a good smile. A flood of loneliness rises in him in a wave; he misses Michael so much it’s hard to breathe.

“I’m Nico,” Torres says, holding a hand out to shake, and Alex takes it.

“Alex.”

~~~

It sucks.

It really sucks, it’s fucking miserable, they’re all fucking miserable. Alex knew more than anyone else here possibly could have how much this was going to suck, and he’s still not entirely prepared for it. Like his brain had blocked it out, the constant physical exhaustion, the way humiliation flung around by drill sergeants piled on top to make it feel like a crushing weight beating you down. The sleep deprivation of being woken up in the middle of the night for surprise drills compounding with the ache of your body learning to meet new demands.

There are some things Alex is more prepared for than others—he’s well versed in staring into the middle distance at crisp attention while a drill sergeant screams in his face, insulting everything from his capability down to the way he ties his boots. He can disconnect, let his brain observe the scene from a distance, not taking any of it in.

And he finds he can use that ability to step in when he finds some of his squad mates harassing a female cadet—throw a punch and make a report and deal with the screaming and dressing down and extra kitchen duty it earns him. Those cadets get moved to a different squad and that’s—not fucking justice, but at least it’s something.

And when he falls on his ass in the mud the next day, another girl, her dark hair in tight braids across her scalp, hauls him up with a nod, and a quiet— “For Kayla.”

Nothing about the training is designed to facilitate deep friendship, and he certainly hadn’t made any lasting bonds when he’d gone through BMT the first time. But they’ve still got to eat meals, and Alex finds himself eating with Nico and Marc and Leron and Kayla and Erica most nights. An old instinct keeps telling him to separate himself from them, to go back to blending in with the pack. Absolutely nothing can be gained from marking himself as different.

Except.

Except people listen to him, when he offers input during group exercises. Even the people playing the role he’d occupied before, the ‘fade into the background, don’t stand out from the crowd’ types listen to him. Sure, there are the meatheads like Jackson who will always stir shit, but there’s something like respect in the way the others look at him. Alex knows how to lead, and maybe it shows.

Fixing broken systems from within vs. opposing them from without—it’s something he and Maria have debated a lot over the last two years. Alex isn’t sure it matters in the bigger picture, isn’t sure that his presence here is moving the needle in any direction at all, but he can look at real people, human beings who deserve his consideration and respect and effort, and see that he’s making a difference for them. That maybe their lives are fractionally better for his presence among them, that maybe he can guide them and teach them the good parts, the occasional lessons he’s learned from the military that he’s not ashamed of.

He tells himself he wouldn’t be doing any of this if it weren’t for the larger goal of stopping his father, ending Project Shepherd, saving Nora Truman and her fellow prisoners. And it’s true—it’s true he wouldn’t be here without that higher goal to work towards. It’s also true, as he’s said to Michael before, that the experience is not a uniformly bad one for him.

He likes running. He takes pleasure in pushing his body to physical limits, feels a somewhat satisfying ache in his muscles as he lies in bed each night, body humming in tune with the universe, with all he knows he can make of it. He doesn’t like being screamed at while he’s running, but he likes running.

He likes rules, systems he can dissect and understand and master. Being told exactly what needs to happen, and being able to make it happen perfectly. He doesn’t like some of what those rules imply, doesn’t always like the way they’re enforced, but he likes rules.

He likes the camaraderie, likes knowing people with a strange sort of intimacy that comes from going through hell together, even when you know hardly anything personal about the people next to you at the table or in the showers or at the gym. He doesn’t like the way that camaraderie is shaped for purposes of blind loyalty, dedication to each other at the expense of any who might oppose them; he doesn’t like the propaganda of the whole goddamn United States military, he doesn’t, but he still likes the camaraderie.

He never let himself think about any of this before, the first time he’d enlisted. All the contradiction in it.

He’s working so hard, his body run down, his mind taxed with keeping a grip on his own tumultuous emotions, that even through the ache of missing Michael and the rest of his friends, the month goes by quicker than he’d expected it to. He finds himself sitting alone the night before they’re all due to leave, watching the last few stragglers depart the dorm for dinner, wondering how he’s going to disentangle the version of himself he’s forced to be here, from the one he wants to be when he gets home to Michael. All the tangled strings of him, all the forces pulling him this way and that.

“You heading over for some food?”

Alex looks up as Nico approaches. He’s not in the habit of being caught unawares, and does an instinctive sweep of the room, looking for any other hidden occupants. But it’s just the two of them, Alex trying to muster the energy to head out, and Nico ducking his head inside.

“In a second,” Alex says. “I’ll walk with you.”

Nico nods, but instead of heading back towards the door, he comes over and sits on the empty cot across from Alex. “You know,” he says, voice quiet, “I learned more about being an officer from you than the first two years of ROTC combined.”

Alex raises an eyebrow, a little surprised, a little touched.

“I mean it,” Nico continues. “You look out for people, you—care about them. You put them before yourself, and it makes them want to follow you. Even the people you haven’t had to stick your neck out for, they’ve seen you do it for others, and know you’d do it for them if they needed.”

Alex smiles a little, dry humor. “I’ve got friends who would tell you that’s a problem of mine. That I never prioritize myself.”

“Military friends?” Alex shakes his head mutely, and Nico nods. “Yeah that’s the thing other people don’t get, right? We watch each other’s backs. You put everyone else first and trust that they will do the same.”

“They won’t always,” Alex says, too real before he can stop himself. “Out in the shit, once there’s bullets and blood everywhere—we have no idea how we’re going to be until we’re in it.” I didn’t know who I was going to be until I was in it.

“Eh, you’re not gonna have to worry about that, computer boy,” Nico teases, smacking Alex’s knee with the back of his hand, and Alex rolls his eyes, batting him away. “I’m serious though. You protect people, and they’ll protect you. That’s what I learned here.”

“That’s why I signed up,” Alex says, around the lump in his throat. “To protect people.”

He thinks about Max and Isobel at the kick-off-summer barbecue, Isobel in a sundress and Max showing off his new tattoo. Thinks of Nora Truman, those few fleeting moments he saw her in another lifetime, wizened and frail, reaching out for her son through the glass between them. He thinks of Michael—

Nico doesn’t ask.

Alex doesn’t tell.

~~~

On the bus back to Roswell, Alex doesn’t let himself think about if he’s ever going to see Nico again. He stares out the window of the bus at the flat planes of the desert rolling by—whole lotta nothing, Liz would say—and tries not to think of bodies coming home in pine boxes. There’s an ache in the shin of his right leg that isn’t real, that he knows is just his brain trying to make sense of nonsensical things. So he pulls his knee up to his chest, tapping his shin along with the rhythm of the drums rolling out of his earbuds:

But I will never end up like him

Behind my back, I already am

Keep a calendar, this way you will always know

The last time you came through

Oh darling, I know what you're going through

If someone had asked him, hypothetically, what he’d want to do with a second chance at life, he never, ever would have said join the Air Force again. It wasn’t until he was presented with exactly that choice that he was forced to come to terms with the fact that to leave this behind would be to give up some part of himself, a piece of who he is, who he’s been shaped into being. If he’d had a truly clean slate, like Liz and Maria and the twins have gotten, then maybe it would have been different. But for better or worse, Alex carries the years of his first life with him still. He was raised a soldier, and that didn’t end when he outgrew his father’s shadow.

Even so, sometimes he thinks about what the fuck he’s doing and he loses the forest for the trees and he wants to scream, wants to run, take Michael up on an offer he’d made back at the start of all this. Take their shit and leave everybody else in the dust. Carve something brand new out of their future, take the blank canvas and paint something unexpected.

And these past few weeks have been—

Not the worst of Alex’s life. Not the best, but not the worst. He knows what he’s fighting for, and he’s content in the choice he’s made, at least for now. It’s hard to ride the middle like this. Hard to live in a space between misery and ecstasy. He likes to understand how he feels about things these days, has gotten better at naming his emotions, but right now he’s not sure there’s an easy answer. Luckily it’s a long bus ride, and there’s not much else to do but think.

Michael knows what day Alex is getting back, of course, but they hadn’t actually made a concrete plan. Alex sends a text when he’s still an hour out, and figures Michael will be there to pick him up, assuming he can get the afternoon away from Foster’s. He’s been very strategically avoiding thinking about this moment of reunion. When he thinks about the fact that he hasn’t seen Michael’s face in four weeks, that he hasn’t been able to touch him or smell him or feel the heat of his body, his hands start shaking.

So he’s expecting Michael. Maybe his truck, parked at the curb, Michael’s fingers drumming impatiently on the steering wheel as he waits for Alex to emerge from the bus and hop into the passenger seat.

What he’s not expecting is—

There’s a crowd waiting at the bus stop when it squeaks to a stop in the center of Roswell—the whole mess of them, all of Alex’s people. Liz and Max with their arms around each other, Maria and Rosa holding hands and jumping up and down, Isobel with her long blonde hair loose in the wind and Michael—

Michael, in dusty jeans and an overshirt open at the neck and his brand new black Stetson. Alex can’t look away, he can’t, he knows he needs to—get his duffle from under the bus, stop staring like a lovesick idiot, but he’s had a hole in his heart bleeding slowly for a month and Michael’s here. Alex can’t run to him and be swept off his feet, he shouldn’t, he needs—

Isobel’s hand closes on one of his wrists and Liz grabs the other, and he’s being pulled in before he can do or say anything, pushed into the center of a crush of bodies as they all pile in to hug him. A big family group all holding on, and if he ends up crushed against Michael at the center of it, nose pressed to Michael’s shoulder with Isobel and Maria and Liz and Max and Rosa all pushing them together as they chatter and laugh, well—that’s not Alex’s fault.

He breathes in the smell of rain in the desert and lets it make him dizzy for a moment. He’s in no danger of falling over, held safe in the middle like this.

“Hi,” he says weakly, keeping his face pressed to Michael’s body.

“Hi,” Michael says back, and his voice cracks on the single syllable.

They have to disentangle to walk to the diner, where apparently Alex is being treated to a welcome home lunch. He can’t stop smiling as they enter the Crashdown in a tangled, over-excited blob; everyone keeps reaching out to clap him on the shoulder (Max), or kiss him on the cheek (Liz), or hip-check him (Rosa), and it’s like being reintroduced to his natural habitat, thrown in the deep-end and remembering just how easy it is to swim. Still, he looks around at all of their happy faces, the weekday lunch crowd just picking up around them, and he has to ask: “Don’t any of you people have jobs you’re supposed to be doing?”

“Summer break, baby,” Liz says, as if she hasn’t been working feverishly on a research project for almost the entire holiday from school. The rest of them, ostensibly, do have jobs, but none of them seem to care, as they pull extra chairs up to the end of their usual booth so the seven of them can all crowd in together. They’re all smiling at him and asking him about his time away, welcoming him home with obvious affection and, in most cases, poorly concealed concern. They all know where he’s been, and they all have at least some idea of what it might have cost him.

Arturo pulls Alex into a hug as he comes up to take their orders, and Alex thinks about the fact that he’ll have to see his father soon, that it will be expected, as a good son and a good soldier, to check in at his childhood home now that he’s back in town. And he thinks about how badly he doesn’t want to do that, how badly all he wants is this instead, Liz and Rosa’s dad calling him mijo and rushing behind the counter to make him the milkshake he hasn’t even had a chance to ask for.

Pleading a five hour long bus ride, Alex manages to disengage from the crowd after they’ve ordered their fries and milkshakes, and slip away towards the men’s room at the back of the Crashdown. He barely has to wait a minute before the door swings open after him and Michael steps in, and Alex is reaching for him the second the door falls shut, the audible click of the lock ensuring a small measure of safety as Michael falls into his arms.

He doesn’t know what to say—weeks of wanting to talk to Michael, missing him so much it felt like an open wound, swallowing back on all the words he wanted to share with him, and now they’re together, and Alex has no idea what to say. His hands fist in the back of Michael’s shirt, hauling him in tight enough to hurt.

“God, you smell so good,” is what falls from his mouth, stupid, thoughtless, but it makes Michael laugh, the vibrations of it rocking all down Alex’s front where they’re pushed together chest to thigh.

“You sure I don’t just smell like shit?” Michael asks, muffled against Alex’s shoulder. “That’s been my whole summer. Cow shit and horse shit and goat shit.”

Alex pulls back enough to look at Michael, really look at him. He looks—still handsome as all hell, but sharper, the cut of his jawline and cheekbones more prominent than Alex is used to seeing. There’s a hollowness around his eyes, like he hasn’t been sleeping well or eating right, and Alex feels a twinge of worry that he doesn’t know how to express. Like a couple weeks playing soldier has stripped him of everything he’s learned about how to talk to Michael.

Cupping Michaels face between his hands, Alex pets his cheeks with his thumbs, feels the tickle of curls against his fingertips. “I love you,” he says, because that’s what’s at the root of it, always.

Michael’s eyes well up with tears, and that pulse of worry grows a little sharper. Michael’s voice cracks when he says, “I love you, too,” and he pushes back in to hide his face against Alex’s neck. “You’re really real.”

“‘Course I’m real,” Alex murmurs back, smoothing his hand in a long easy arc down Michael’s spine, twisting a little, rocking as Michael clings to him, halfway to a dance. They’ve got limited time, seconds ticking down for how long they can reasonably hide in this bathroom, and too much to say to each other, too many things he’s got to find words for. But his body knows Michael’s body, knows how to make space and give comfort. Their first and best language will always be the ways they fit together.

“I want to kiss you,” Michael confesses quietly into the side of Alex’s neck, “but if I do, I won’t be letting you leave the bathroom. So.”

Alex laughs, and it’s not until he’s here and Michael’s here and he’s laughing that he realizes he has a different laugh when he feels safe. When he’s here with the man he loves. It’s just slightly higher, louder, and he recognizes in that moment that he hasn’t made this exact sound, that huff of fond delight, in weeks. Since the last time he’d had Michael in front of him. It’s like looking in the mirror and noticing a change for the first time, really consciously taking in the shifting shape of who he is when he’s where he most wants to be.

“We won’t stay long,” he says, stepping back with true reluctance, keeping his hands on Michael’s back. “I want you all to myself.”

Michael’s jaw clenches, something pained and urgent flickering across his eyes. He pulls Alex back in to hug him some more, and Alex lets it happen. Would stand here just like this, feeling their heartbeats steady into perfect synchronicity, until the diner closes for the night, and Arturo turns the lights off. They won’t, though. They’ll go out, and Alex will see all the other people he’s missed so terribly this summer, and he and Michael will sit next to each other but they won’t touch. Not in public, not yet, not yet. Soon, but not yet.

Michael sighs, his breath hot on the skin of Alex’s neck where he’s hiding his face, the place in the world Alex knows he feels the safest. Alex tightens his arms. They can hold each other for a few minutes before the world cuts back in.

And he’s missed the rest of them too, he really has. It’s especially good to see Rosa and Maria looking so solid and content; their road to happiness has been challenging in a way Alex finds deeply relatable, but he can see the glow of joy, of triumph, in them both as they sit side by side in the booth across from Max and Liz, sharing a plate of fries. Everyone talks over each other, filling Alex in on the events of the past month, Max’s boring job that leaves him time to write, the summer classes Isobel’s taking to make up for the year of college she missed, Rosa helping her dad with his citizenship stuff. Michael fills Alex in on what’s been happening in the future, too, the familiar and yet still bizarre dance of Michael passing messages through the decades, telling the Liz in front of him advice from older-Liz about which professor she should try and get for O-chem next year in school.

Everything’s exactly like Alex had left it a month ago. The mix of world-bending strangeness and just… ordinary life, trucking along. Sitting in a diner eating comfort food with a group of friends, half of whom are literally from another world. Trying to figure out how to get out of here as quickly as possible so he can be alone with his boyfriend, who’s been missing him for twice as long in lived time.

He’s gotten used to it, for the most part.

“So, uh,” Max says as the meal starts to wind down, people checking the time as they all prepare to go back to work or studying or whatever else is occupying their summer. “We’re doing a family dinner at my parents’ place, so I’ll probably just stay there tonight.” He speaks with such an air of showmanship that Alex almost wants to slap a hand over his mouth in secondhand embarrassment. “But I’m sure Michael can help you get settled in back at the house.”

“Gee,” he says dryly, “Thanks.”

Max’s eyes sparkle with mischief, and Alex kind of hates him, except he really doesn’t at all.

~~~

Impatience crawls up Alex’s spine the moment they climb in the truck. He doesn’t want to wait the length of a fifteen minute drive to get his hands on Michael, he wants to touch him now. He’s forced to content himself with resting his hand on Michael’s thigh, feeling the flex of muscle beneath body-warm denim. Michael passes the time talking about the apartment hunting he and Isobel have been doing, the place they found—a three bedroom on the edge of campus, reasonable rent of which Isobel’s parents are willing to pay half, leaving the two of them to split the rest. He is excited about it, excited not to be living in the dorms this year, excited that Isobel’s transferring from community college to join them at UNM.

It’s just hard to focus on that when the cab of Michael’s truck smells like him, soaked in the scent of rain. It’s fucking Pavlovian, it makes Alex’s mouth water, he’s fucking starving and the drive out to the house feels like it takes forever.

Alex hadn’t spent a lot of time in Max’s house, back in their old life. He’s kind of glad of it now, doesn’t have a lot of pre-existing associations with the place— it’s the same house, bought for cheap from the same buddy of Dave Evans’s he bought from the first time, with his parents’ help, same as before.

He knows it weirds Michael out sometimes, being here—Michael does have a lot of associations with this place, and some of them are bad. But Max had been willing to rent his guest room out to Alex for the summers, and that means Alex can come back to Roswell between school years without having to go back to his father’s house.

It takes all the self control and paranoia Alex has not to back Michael up against the truck as soon as they hop out. Instead he heads towards the house, letting Michael haul his duffle out of the truck bed while Alex fits his key in the lock of the glass front doors. The bag gets abandoned on the floor immediately, Michael grabbing Alex’s waist and pulling him in, nose brushing against Alex’s neck as he plasters himself to Alex’s back.

Michael’s hands are glued to him as they make their way through the house, tugging impatiently at his shirt, hunting for skin underneath, and as much as Alex is tempted to turn around, tug him in close and kiss him in Max’s living room, fall to the floor or the couch or slam him against whatever wall or door is convenient, he’s also fairly certain once they’re kissing for real, neither of them is going to have the coordination or wherewithal to relocate.

So it’s Alex’s job to steer, Alex’s job to be the responsible one, even as Michael’s hand skids against Alex’s stomach, his breathing already going a little fast, and fuck, it’s been a month, a month, and he’s had very little privacy for even his own hand, and it’s Michael: every one of Alex’s senses are attuned to him, have been since the very beginning—the timbre of his voice and the warmth of his skin and his scent; he can’t really understand how he’s lived without any of it for so long.

And for Michael, it’s been even longer.

They finally reach Alex’s room, and he swings the door closed quickly, spinning around to meet Michael’s eager embrace. They kiss each other for the first time in far too long and it’s like the world tilts: not sideways, exactly, but in fact back to level, back to solid, sturdy, flat and dependable beneath his feet. As if without quite knowing it, he’s been living in a reality just slightly off-kilter since the last time he’s had this, and only now is everything back the way it’s supposed to be. Michael’s mouth opens under his, hot and inviting, even as Michael pushes up on his toes in that way that he does, always full of kinetic motion. It’s like all of Alex’s nerve-endings are coming alive at once, his skin sensitive and hungry everywhere Michael’s hands brush.

Michael tugs at his shirt— “Off, off, wanna see you—” but his eyes are closed, their mouths hardly parting as Alex moves to comply, tugging his own shirt off and then reaching for Michael’s. There’s a bed just a few feet away and Alex tries to steer them towards it, but Michael’s kissing him like he’s forgotten how to stop, and Alex is almost helpless in the face of it, it’s all he can do to get his arms around him and cling, hold tight, stop himself from collapsing entirely.

There’s no slowing down, just Michael tearing at them both, discarding clothing in the scant seconds their bodies are disconnected, then the slamming back together, chest to chest, Michael’s barely-there stubble scratching against Alex’s clean-shaven face, Michael’s hands trailing down Alex’s arms, like he’s feeling the shape of him, trying to remember the boundaries of his body.

“God damn,” Michael says with a strangled little laugh, stepping back slightly and putting his hands on either side of Alex’s shoulders, shaking his head in bemusement.

“What?”

Michael’s eyes drag down Alex’s chest, tongue darting out to wet his lip unconsciously, and Alex can’t help but preen a little. He’s packed on new muscle, these last couple weeks. He’s always been in pretty good shape, but his preference is for calisthenics; left to his own devices, he’s not much of a weightlifter. But he has very much not been left to his own devices, recently, and he knows it shows—in his arms, in his chest, in the cut of his abs.

“Just—wow. Hello.”

“You’re such a dork,” Alex says, but he’s grinning, and Michael’s eyes snap up to his face, tracing the smile, seemingly as hungry for this sign of Alex’s happiness as he is for the rest of him. Alex’s stomach clenches, heat pooling between his legs. He’s been halfway to hard since before they’d even gotten to the house, and he can see that Michael is too, standing there shirtless with his chest heaving up and down as he studies Alex like he’s some fine piece of art he can’t wait to ruin with the touch of his hands. Michael’s put on some muscle, too—a summer of hard work shows in his body, the golden glow of his skin. The hair on his chest has started coming in too, finally, and Alex could just fucking lick him from head to toe, he looks so good.

It’s not until they're on the bed, Michael beneath him, whining and clutching at Alex hard enough to bruise, pants discarded and bodies rubbing against each other in wonderful abandon, that Alex senses the smallest note of discord in the frantic energy. Because frantic isn’t the only word for it: they’ve been apart for weeks, they’re desperate for each other in all the best ways, but something in Michael’s touch seems to go beyond normal desire, feeling almost anxious in its intensity. There’s a recklessness in Michael’s face that puts Alex in mind of starvation, of grasping on to something necessary to your existence in the face of deprivation.

Way too fucking familiar, in other words. How many times have the two of them touched each other with no promise of tomorrow between them? Times when what they were to each other existed only within the bounds of sex, and Michael fully expected Alex to run away the second it was over?

They’ve come so far since then. But if anybody knows how bad it can get, the insidious phantom of memory, it’s Alex. He pulls back, ignoring Michael’s protesting groan, the way he tilts his neck up, seeking Alex’s lips. His eyes pop open when he’s not given what he’s asking for, flickering across Alex’s face as if searching for something. And yeah, there it is, that desperate need he’s not even trying to hide.

“Michael,” Alex says, and he concentrates on softening his touch, unclenching his fingers so they rest gently on the slope of Michael’s shoulders, up around his neck to cradle the back of his skull, lifting it just slightly from the pillow. “Hey. It’s okay. I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.”

He hadn’t been sure as he was saying it if it was the right thing, but Michael nods, some subtle pinch at the corners of his eyes smoothing out, throat bobbing as he swallows. His own hands rub a soothing line down Alex’s spine until they’re pressed into his lower back, and he arches his body up, one leg sliding between Alex’s own, and presses their foreheads together. He takes a deep, slow breath. “I know. It’s just—I missed you. It feels like it’s been forever.”

“It does,” Alex says,. “I missed you so fucking much but I know you had it worse—”

Michael shakes his head so their noses slide together. “Not a competition, Alex. Just—come on. Don’t stop. Don’t let go of me.”

That, Alex knows he can do. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

Michael nods, hands grasping again, pulling Alex back down into a kiss. “I’m okay now,” he says, mushing the words right up against Alex’s mouth. “I want you so much.”

Alex has never been able to deny the truth of that. Not from the very start, no matter whatever else has happened between them—Michael has always wanted him, wanted him close. Alex makes it his mission, the best one he’s ever been given: touching Michael not gently but firm, slow, thorough, hands tracing over every inch of his body, mapping it, a silent promise. I’m here, I missed you, I’m here now. This is real, and I want you too.

And god, he has, he has missed Michael, so damn much. It hits him all over again, how gorgeous his man is, the sharp line of Michael’s jaw, his strong arms, his fucking tiny waist, god—Alex has to make a plan of attack or he’s going to freeze in the face of all the possibilities, all the ways he wants to touch him.

“I want to fuck you,” Alex murmurs against Michael’s mouth, their lips brushing with the words. He can feel Michael’s responding shiver, the way his hips arch up into Alex’s in invitation.

“God, yeah, want you in me.” Michael’s words are a groan, low and dirty, hands coming to grip at Alex’s ass and tug, pulling him in even tighter between Michael’s thighs. They’re both still wearing their jeans, Jesus Christ.

Alex pulls away to try to fix that, not getting very far before Michael’s pulling him back down for another kiss. Alex laughs against Michael’s lips, endeared and indulgent, and winds his fingers through Michael’s curls. Kisses him, sweet and then filthy, fucking his tongue between Michael’s lips until Michael groans and lets him go. They finish the business of getting undressed, and Alex moves towards the bedside table, only for the lube to meet him halfway there, floating in midair. Michael is sprawled out on the bed when Alex turns around, hand curled around his own dick almost mindlessly, and fuck—Alex wants to watch him jerk off later, just because he can. Because Michael’s so generous with his body and with his pleasure and he’s Alex’s. Every part of him.

“Just—open me up with your dick, please,” Michael asks, begs almost, as Alex climbs on the bed to kneel between his thighs. He’s so sweet and so pretty Alex’s head is spinning, a tumble of protectiveness and possessiveness he’s just learning what to do with. It used to scare him, the intensity of that feeling, how unworthy he deemed himself to be of it.

He knows Michael likes it this way, when they have the time for it—they both do, honestly. It takes patience on another level from Alex, to go slow, to ignore the burn of his own body, to work with precision and finesse to coax Michael’s body open around the blunt head of his cock. He’s let Michael open him up like this before too, and knows it to be a wholly more intense experience than opening for fingers. It’s not his preference, but Michael—

Michael loves it.

It is intense—Alex’s arms are shaking by the time he’s seated fully inside, and Michael’s every exhale is half a whimper, a soft little vocalization of desperation. His brows are drawn tight, an expression that could almost be mistaken for pain if not for the slack open gasp of his mouth, lips bitten blood-red and shiny wet.

Alex won’t move until Michael tells him to, and Michael knows Alex won’t move until he opens his mouth and asks for it, and he wants it so much, they both do, but Michael waits. He waits, shaking ever so slightly, hands grasping the sweaty skin of Alex’s lower back. Eyelids fluttering, trying to keep them open, to focus, to vocalize his own desire. It’s suspended animation, it’s a certain kind of power they share between them: Michael pinned down by Alex’s body, and Alex pinned in place by his overwhelming need to do whatever Michael wants him to, now and always.

“Move,” Michael says finally, eyes wet and wide as he blinks up at Alex. “Please move, please fuck me.”

Alex does. They’re still so young, in these bodies. There’s still so much wild, untamed wanting inside of him, that simple, clean, animal urge to thrust and take and let it all explode, wash away every bad feeling he’s ever had, at least for a few crystalizing moments. This body, the one he’s using right now to fuck Michael, to touch him and kiss him and tell him he’s being so, so good, this body has never touched or been touched by anyone else, like this.

It’s not something he thinks about very often. He tends to think of himself as the person that carries memories of other times, other experiences, other hands and mouths and voices rough with desire, urging him on. It’s never mattered to him in any real way, the idea that he and Michael both had other options before they came back to each other. Of all the ways in which they’ve broken each other’s hearts over the years, sex with other people has never really factored in.

But in some small, ridiculously sentimental part of his mind, Alex likes this. The simple knowledge that this body knows Michael and only Michael. That there is nobody else for him, and there never will be. They’ve gone back to the start, and at least in this one thing, Alex is able to get it right from minute one. No detours, no hesitation, just straight to where he belongs.

And he’s good at it, god, he’s good at fucking Michael, Michael’s good at being fucked, so open for it, the expression on his face and the give of his body, the sounds he’s making and the eager grasping of his limbs as he pulls Alex in as close as he can go. “Fucking needed this,” Michael gasps, jolting up the bed as Alex accelerates, pleasure coiling low in his gut, spurred on by the simple truth of Michael’s obvious enjoyment and appreciation. One of Michael’s hands flies up over his head to brace against the headboard, giving him leverage to push back on Alex’s thrusts.

“No kidding,” Alex says, laughing, his rhythm stuttering as he staves off release. He wants Michael to get there with him, wants to let go at the same time. It’s not easy for them to do—broadly speaking, Alex’s body tends to give him more warning, a slower ramp up to the breaking of the dam, whereas Michael’s orgasms sometimes sneak up on him. But Alex is feeling—he wants this to last, he wants it to be good, and special. It’s been too long for both of them but instead of giving into it and chasing the relief, he wants to prolong it. Live inside this moment of reunion, connection, for as long as they both can.

“Alex,” Michael gasps, voice high and tight, and his name sounds like a prayer on Michael’s lips, this feels—fucking holy, the way they are together.

“Come on, I got you,” Alex coaxes, hardly knowing what he’s saying as the words tumble from his mouth. “I got you, I—love you, god.”

The ramp-up is starting, he can feel it, feel himself hurtling towards the edge. Michael groans as Alex starts to lose his rhythm, fingers tightening on Alex’s waist, pulling himself up to rub his cock against Alex’s stomach, a hot hard line and it’s all so much—there’s sweat dripping into Alex’s eyes from his limp hair and he can smell the thunder-crack brightness of rain on Michael’s skin. Michael’s body tightens down on him, a harsh sound punching out of him as he grinds forward, starting to come in the space between their stomachs, and Alex can’t hold back anymore. Pleasure breaks inside him and he pushes in deep and lets go, face buried in the crook of Michael’s neck as he spills inside.

Michael’s TK comes in handy again in the aftermath; he actually uses his powers to nudge gently at Alex’s body, which makes him laugh through a groan as he forces himself to roll over instead of resting his full weight on top of Michael. And then there’s a box of tissues floating through the air, coming to rest politely above him so all he has to do is reach up to grab a couple out. He’s missed this part too, all those little post-sex domestic rituals, getting clean and comfortable, slipping their naked bodies under the covers, holding each other close in contended satisfaction, the other side of the coin from the anticipatory ache before release.

Alex has always liked the way his body feels directly after sex. Not merely the flood of endorphins or the relaxation of his muscles, but something else, something specific to the temperature of his skin and the way it feels to let his body come down from the inferno, growing chilled in the air-conditioned house even as he’s still covered in sweat. Like a factory reset, a simple sensory experience, his body regulating itself without effort. Vanishing heat and a settling coolness, like flipping over a pillow and resting his cheek against the cool side.

At the moment, his face is resting against Michael’s equally sweaty chest, listening to the thump thump thump of his heartbeat fade into something sated, lethargic. Michael takes a deep, exaggerated breath in, then out, and Alex grins, turns his face slightly to take his own inhalation, smelling the sweat, the skin, the lightning and rain.

“Feels like I can breathe again,” Michael says, hand trailing up and down Alex’s back, aimless and gentle. Then he seems to hear the words that just came out of his mouth and he sighs, shaking his head back against the pillowcase. “Sorry, that was sappy.”

“I like it,” Alex says. It’s true, and it’s so easy to admit, that in moments like this he can’t remember why he’d once had trouble with it. Why admitting his own feelings, and even more, hearing Michael express his, had filled him with such intense discomfort, almost panic. It’s strange, to have to relearn it again, after weeks of wearing old armor. Except—it’s not quite the old armor, not really. It’s something new, the pieces that fit best from before, added to other protection forged in different places. It fits better. It’s easier to take off.

“Tell me how it was,” Michael says. “Really.”

Alex had answered everyone’s questions at the diner, of course, but this is different, this is Michael asking for a deeper truth. Alex braces himself, tries to figure out how to go about telling it. “I… don’t know. There were things about it—I don’t know. Being there put me back into a headspace I haven’t been in in a long time. It also reminded me…”

Michael hums in encouragement when Alex doesn’t continue, and Alex swallows. He’s not sure how much to say to Michael, even now. The fact that he hates the Air Force and hates Alex in the Air Force, hates everything it stands for and everything it means for them personally, it’s always there in the room with them. Michael’s been a saint about it for the most part, but Alex knows how he feels. He tries to always keep it in mind whenever his service comes up in conversation, tries to honor the way Michael feels. And sometimes talking about the program, the people he meets there and the things he experiences, feels disrespectful of Michael’s needs. But he did ask.

“I think me being there, knowing what I know, with my perspective on things, I think it helped some of the other kids. And that felt—it was the good kind of power, it was like, I knew how to be helpful and I knew what I was doing mattered. Holding onto that felt good.”

Michael doesn’t flinch or freeze, and Alex knows it’s not quite fair that he sometimes still expects him to. He still remembers every disastrous attempt to talk about Alex’s enlistment and training and deployments, back in their first life. It had never gone well. In fact, Alex is pretty sure they never managed to have a single decent conversation about Alex’s time in the military until after he’d gotten out of it.

“You’re good at it,” Michael says.

“Good at what?”

“Having power. Some people aren’t worthy of it, but you are.”

All Alex wants is to be worthy of this, of Michael’s good opinion of him. There have been so many times in his life when he thought he’d sacrificed that for good.

He shifts, rolling onto his back, and Michael moves automatically to follow, keeping their bodies close. Some of the restless, frantic energy from earlier has burned away from him, but Alex can still sense the remnants of it roiling under his skin. Something desperate and clingy, something beyond the simple joy of reunion. Something that only Michael must suffer.

It makes the guilt worse. That guilt that Alex tries so hard not to feel, because it doesn’t help him and it certainly doesn’t help Michael, circling around in his brain in a quiet, persistent whirlpool. They’ve already had this conversation, this fight, so many times. Alex feels guilty for wanting to do something Michael doesn’t want him to do. And no matter how much Alex stands by that choice, parts of it are hard, parts do hurt. Michael might not agree with his decision, but he also doesn’t want Alex to suffer for the choices he’s made. He’s never wanted that.

So where does that leave them?

“I missed you every second,” Alex says. He tries not to plan it out, to speak the truth and not worry so damn much about how his wonderful, supportive, loving partner is going to react. “And there were a lot of dickheads running around playing top dog that I had to deal with. Racists and homophobes and every flavor of bigot imaginable. And the food sucked.”

Michael doesn’t say anything, just holds him tight, so they’re touching all along the lines of their bodies, Michael’s hand tracing up and down Alex’s side.

“And I—made some friends,” Alex says cautiously. “I cracked the top ten in distance running. I’d forgotten my body had that kind of endurance in it, so that was fun. Gratifying.”

“I have no complaints about your endurance,” Michael says, because of course he does. Alex smiles, pinches him in the arm. It’s easier to keep going, now that he’s started.

“The worst part is always the shit that gets hurled at you by the drill instructors,” Alex admits, closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch Michael’s expression. “Demeaning shit, usually calling you weak so you’ll push yourself to prove that you’re not. Sometimes it seems like humiliation just for the fun of it. I dunno, I can take it, but I have to leave my head a bit, and coming back from that is always hard.”

Michael makes a soft noise, his fingertips rubbing light, loving circles on Alex’s back. “Hits the Jesse stuff?” he asks, quiet, and Alex nods.

After he got shot, after the amputation, he’d gotten set up with a psychiatrist at the base, who had said that it was important to acknowledge that you’d experienced trauma, that admitting it makes it easier to deal with the consequences. Alex had never liked the man much, and had never gotten much out of the sessions, because so much of it had been oriented towards preparing Alex for what PTSD symptoms he might experience. He hadn’t admitted, at the time, that he already knew—that the sound of a garage door opening unexpectedly was enough to send his body into shutdown, or that a specific combination scents—cologne, stale beer—would send him on an emotional tailspin of shame so deep he worried he’d never claw his way out of it. He’d listened, and nodded along, and lied his way through the psych eval well enough that he’d been spared a medical discharge.

Later, after Jesse was cold in the ground and Alex was determined to learn how to be a person who could love Michael the way he deserved, he decided to try again. He spent the better part of a year rooting out the rats of Project Shepherd and dating Forrest on and off just to see if he even could, but the real project of that year had been the work he'd done on his own trauma. He found a psych he liked, who would be willing to work with him in person or over video call depending on where he was, who didn’t flinch when he very clearly outlined what he understood to be his own trauma history, and what he wanted to get out of their work together.

Talking about his time in the service had been easy. Talking about everything else, well... The only time he’d ever seen a break in her composure was when he described the night of the shed. He’d felt vindicated by her shock, validated in the external confirmation that yes, actually, this was a fucking horrific thing he’d survived, and now someone else knew. But she’d gotten up to get a cup of water for both of them, and then very calmly recommended changing his diagnosis to C-PTSD, and adjusting their work accordingly.

He wonders what she’d think, of how he handled this month.

“The Jesse shit’s always the hardest,” he says, opening his eyes, watching Michael watch him.

Michael nods without judgment. He’s gotten better at biting back his anger: if Alex didn’t know him very, very well, he almost could have missed that brief flash of it in his expression. That ever-present promise, repeated often during their second-chance high school days. I’ll kill him, just say the word.

“What about you?” he asks quietly. “What’s the hardest for you?”

Michael quirks up the side of his mouth, shakes his head. “Oh, you know. Take your pick.”

Alex won’t push, if Michael doesn’t want to talk about it, but he suspects that Michael will, if he lets the silence linger. They lie there side by side and Alex thinks of a future filled with this, just this simple togetherness. How much he’d be willing to sacrifice, how hard he’d be willing to work, to get what he already has.

“Just—” Michael says eventually, coughing a little to clear his throat. “These past few weeks, I—the whole time I’ve been doing this, living the two lives, it’s been hard for all sorts of reasons. But it’s never been as hard as it has been this past month. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, trouble keeping things straight. I mixed up which version of Max or Izzy I’d been having a conversation with a couple times. Every morning it took me longer than it should have, to remember where I was. What—what body I was inside of.”

Sounds a little like what Alex remembers of those first few days post-op, when he’d woken up every morning and had to remember all over again about his leg. It doesn’t seem like the moment to say that, though.

“I guess it made me realize how much I separate the two timelines based on whether you’re there or not. One is the world with Alex, and one is the world without Alex. So it’s been—tough on me. Both worlds, being alone.”

Not alone, Alex wants to argue fiercely. Michael has a community. He has friends who support and love and nourish him, whether Alex can be there by his side or not. But he does know what Michael means. He’s spent the last month living in annoyingly close quarters with people who in some cases he actually found himself liking quite a bit. It’s just—there’s no way not to be a little lonely, whenever he and Michael are apart.

“So the worst of it,” Michael continues quietly, like a confessional. “It’s time travel bullshit we can’t do anything about. But if I’m being completely honest it’s also—you know—textbook abandonment issues. Same shit I’ve been dealing with since I was seven years old and Max and Isobel walked away with new parents and didn’t take me with them. Had a lot of people hurt me when I was a kid but it was—being hurt was better than being left alone, I guess.”

A thesis statement on Michael Guerin if Alex has ever heard one. It’s not fair, how much it hurts to love someone the way he loves Michael. He’d go to war with the universe to protect him from harm, and here Michael is, brave enough to say the thing that hurts him the most is being left behind. By his people, by Max and Isobel. By Alex. Again and again, and he’s still doing it—

He breathes through the guilt, pushes it aside. Presses a hand against Michael’s stomach and feels the expanding and contracting of his breath.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Alex says. It’s breaking his heart a little, how every time he promises that, it actually seems to calm Michael down. Like he still needs the verbal confirmation that Alex is here for good. “We’re going to stay in for the rest of the day. We’ll order food. I’ll unpack my stuff.”

“We’ll have more sex,” Michael says solemnly. “Wouldn’t want to forget to put that on the to do list.”

“And have more sex,” Alex promises. His body feels very warm, and content, and safe right now, pressed against Michael’s. He thinks about slithering downward and taking Michael in his mouth, feeling him grow hard against his tongue. His stomach jumps, heart rate ticking up. He’ll give it a few more minutes; he’s comfortable like this for the moment.

They spend the rest of their day and late into the night in blissful, simple togetherness. The kind of day they haven’t been able to have many of, living in the dorms. Space to spread out, opportunity to take a shower together, to sit at the kitchen table and eat grilled cheese and kick playfully at each other’s shins under the table, laughing and talking, filling in the blanks of all they’d missed of each other’s lives in the past few weeks. Alex is excited all over again, for what Junior year is going to bring for them—even more privacy, living off campus, and space, a kitchen and a living room to spread out in. No more carefully managing how their dorm is arranged to match the just-good-buddies appearance Alex is forced to maintain, while also keeping the space functional enough that they don’t end up wanting to kill each other. He’s looking forward to living with Isobel too. He likes hanging out with her, but moreover he likes what she brings out in Michael. He’d never gotten to see how they were with each other in their twenties before—he’s excited to get that chance now.

It’s a good day. They talk as much as they want and also interrupt each other for more sex whenever the mood strikes. And they’re still just kids, really, willing of the mind and able of the flesh, which is pretty awesome. Each time Michael reaches for him, the balance shifts closer and closer to equilibrium, the last of the cobwebs of grief and loneliness fading away for them both. By the time they’ve had dinner, and Michael has him pinned to the bed, mouth working sloppy and quick on Alex’s sensitive cock, it’s a gesture of pure, exuberant joy and relief, intense and overpowering in all the best ways for the both of them. Alex returns the favor, and Michael laughs when he comes, that sound of happy surprise, like between this orgasm and his last one, he’d forgotten what it felt like. Alex’s favorite sound in the universe. One of them, anyway. There’s a list, and Alex makes it his mission to draw out each and every example with his hands and his tongue and his body.

“What time do you have to be at work tomorrow?” Alex asks sleepily after round three knocks them both semi-conscious. Another of Alex’s favorite things about sex; he always sleeps better after. He forgets that, sometimes, how much Michael can act as a cure for insomnia all on his own.

“Foster told me to take the next couple days.”

“Seriously? Really?”

It’s dark in the room now, curtains pulled and lights turned off, Michael’s TK flipping the switch for them so nobody had to get up. So Alex can’t see Michael’s smile, only hears it in his voice. “Seriously. Really. I know you gotta go see your dad tomorrow, but the second you can get away, I’m here. I’m yours.”

“Thank god for that,” Alex says, as sincere as he’s ever been. He’s rewarded with a small, pleased laugh, and Michael turning in the bed so he can press a clumsy kiss to Alex’s temple.

“The girls are probably going to want some of your time, too, but I figure we can hang out with them together.”

That’s another thing Alex hadn’t known to expect or even to want, from this second pass at life—how nice it is, to let Liz and Maria and Rosa see how fucking loved he is. He’d always, always kept those pieces of his life apart, Michael in one hand and everything else in the other. He understands better, now, how unfair that had been to Michael and to his friends; he’s so much closer to them, now that he’s not keeping the very best parts of himself hidden.

They’ve still got a couple weeks here in Roswell, before they’re heading back to Albuquerque, and other than the extremely unpleasant chore of pretending to be on good terms with his father, Alex has absolutely nothing to worry about for the span of those two weeks. He’s got time to spend pestering the Ortechos at the diner as they pick up shifts Arturo never asked them to, just out of sheer habit and the comfort of the family routine. Time to talk about class schedules and the best places to get coffee near campus with Isobel, imagining all the little routines they might develop now that they’ll be living together. Time to ask Max how the writing’s going. To lie in this bed with Michael, naked, for as many hours of the day as he can get away with.

Sometimes it’s hard for him to take a break, but he’s trying really hard to let himself have this. To let it feel good, the brief lull in the hefty weight of his many responsibilities and fears.

“What time is it?” Michael asks. There’s an alarm clock on the bedside table right next to him, but Alex looks over to see that Michael’s eyes are closed, his mouth slightly parted as he breathes slow and even. Half asleep already.

Alex smiles when he sees the time. “Not even ten.”

“God, really? You tired me out.”

“Mission accomplished,” Alex says, and then ruins the effect of his own smugness by yawning. “Fuck. Okay. Let’s be old men and go to bed at 9:30.”

“Good practice for when we’re older,” Michael agrees. Alex’s heart twists, in the very best way. They’re going to get there this time. They’re going to keep holding onto each other until they get to the part where they’re actually old men. Alex is so fucking excited.

“G’night,” Michael says as he shifts to make himself comfortable, pulling Alex’s arms tighter around him. They’ll probably end up moving around in their sleep, but Alex loves this, the simplicity of it, getting to hold Michael as he drifts off. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Their definitions of the word tomorrow are different from one another, but Michael still says that to him all the time. Like a mantra, a promise he’s making to Alex and to himself. Tomorrow, even if he has to take a slight detour before he gets there.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Alex echoes, and he closes his eyes, and he pushes away thoughts of the future. Thinks fleetingly of Nico, and some of the other new friends he’d made this summer, thinks of the men and women he’d served with before, and those he’ll serve with this time. The life he’s choosing for himself is going to put distance between him and the man he’s holding in his arms, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it.

He’d promised Michael he wouldn’t go anywhere, that he’s here to stay. And he’ll keep that promise. Tomorrow, anyway, he’ll keep that promise.