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Michael wakes up with a jolt, making the truck move and squeak loudly in protest.
He swallows hard and blinks up at the night sky, breathing rapidly as he tries to remember what he was dreaming about, but he feels the truck bed move again, and looks around and spots Alex.
He’s sitting on the open tailgate, staring up at the stars, the soft light coming from the porch of the cabin that definitely wasn’t on when Michael had parked his truck earlier in the evening, illuminating him enough that Michael sees the way he shivers in the cold air.
Michael sits up and drags the sheets with him as he stands and then drops down right next to Alex, making the truck move and groan some more, as he settles himself, before he unravels the sheets from around himself and throws them around Alex’s shoulders.
Wordlessly, Alex grabs the edges and tucks them around himself, moving closer to Michael until they’re both cocooned in the warm sheets.
Alex keeps looking up at the stars, and Michael presses in even closer, pressing their thighs together, and staring at the side of Alex’s face.
“Are you okay?” He asks when Alex stays silent.
Alex turns to him a little startled as though he wasn’t expecting the question and furrows his brow in confusion.
Michael swallows hard and looks away, up to the stars to see if they’ll tell him what to say that won’t make Alex avoid him.
“I’m fine,” Alex answers, voice stilted, and when Michael turns to look at him, he’s still staring with his brow furrowed as though if he concentrates enough he’ll be able to figure out what Michael is thinking.
“I heard about what happened with Bradley,” Michael says, and Alex face clears as he reaches an understanding, and shuts down.
He licks his lips and looks away from Michael, back up to the sky, “I’m fine,” he repeats, voice just a little shaky.
Michael wonders if maybe he should leave well enough alone, but when it comes to Alex he’s never been able to just leave a bleeding wound alone.
“When Maria and I broke up,” he says, and sees how Alex clenches his jaw, and hurries through the rest. “You were there for me, and I just wanted to let you know that it’s the same for me too. If you need to talk about what happened, or anything else, I’m here for you.”
Alex rubs his hands over his face, dragging his fingers back into his hair and messing it up even more. The sheets fall from his shoulders and he tugs them even lower as his hands fall to his lap.
He doesn’t look at Michael as he starts to speak.
“The first time that Bradley kissed me, I closed my eyes and all I could see was your face, and so I shut them even tighter, and ignored that he smelled nothing like you, and dragged my fingers through his hair pretending that he was you.”
Michael swallows hard, gaping at Alex as he continues to speak.
“The second time it was the same thing, and the third time, and the tenth time, and it was the same the first time that he fucked me, and it got to the point where I knew that I should’ve just broken things off, but he wanted me, and then you announced that you were going to buy a house with Maria, try to do the whole white picket fence thing now that the alien threat was all over and done with and for the first time that night, I forced myself to think about him instead of you.”
Alex inhales deeply and shakily, but still doesn’t look at Michael as he keeps talking.
“And it worked for a while, I tried really hard to move on and be happy with him, and I managed to convince myself that it was working. Even when you and Maria broke up and I was trying to be a good friend, I thought that I was finally over you.”
Michael looks away then, feeling the bile at the back of his throat and he swallows hard and tries to convince himself that being jealous is ridiculous when he tried to do the same thing that Alex just described.
“And then, Bradley proposed, and it was so fucking weird,” he says on a huff of incredulous laughter and Michael’s gaze snaps back to him.
“He planned a lovely romantic candle lit dinner, and he took me on a walk to a spot he’d picked where we would have a perfect view of the meteor shower, and he kneeled down and asked me to make him the happiest man in the world. And I realized that he had no fucking clue who I actually am. That for over a year, I was in this relationship that seemed so serious and grownup and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced and he didn’t know the first thing about me.”
Alex turns to him then, and blinks at the look on Michael’s face.
“I said no, obviously,” Alex confirms, and Michael feels the tight feeling in his chest, loosen, allowing him to actually breathe.
“He didn’t take it well?” Michael guesses, which wasnt that difficult when Bradley had let everyone know what an asshole Alex was on his way out of Roswell.
Alex shakes his head, looking away again and down to his lap, fingers playing with the edges of a sheet.
“He told me that he wanted us to be closer, that he loved me so much and wanted to be with me forever, but he felt like there was something blocking me from being completely there with him, and he’s in this relationship one hundred percent and just wants the same from me, and I can’t give him that, and when I said that, he accused me of still having feelings for you.”
He stops speaking and inhales deeply, and Michael cant stop staring at him, feeling like his heart is about to jump out of his chest.
“I tried so hard to deny it,” Alex says raising his head to look up at the sky. “To tell him that it was long over between us and that whatever feelings I have for you are all in the past, and that if I did have feelings for you I wouldn’t still be with him, but I couldn’t say the words once I realized that if you had been the one to propose in that same ridiculously romantic way, I would’ve said yes.”
He turns to Michael then, and his eyes go a little wide at Michael’s face, and he swallows hard and his eyes dart away as though he can’t stand the way Michael is looking at him, and Michael doesn’t know how he’s watching him exactly, but he does know that he feels hopeful about the possibility of him and Alex for the first time since the first time that Alex spent the night.
“The point is, Guerin,” he says, looking back at Michael. “That I really am fine. My heart isn’t broken, and you don’t have to help me put the pieces back together, and you really don’t have to sleep outside of my cabin, I’m not going to try and follow Bradley and tell him that I made a mistake and I want him back. Or drink my liquor cabinet dry and then try to drive to get more liquor. Or-”
“Okay,” Michael says loudly, feeling a little embarrassed. “I get it. You’re not me.”
Alex snorts, and shakes his head a little. “I just meant that, my feelings for him were nowhere near your feelings for Maria. And-”
He stops and swallows hard, looking back up at the stars with a furrowed as though he can’t look at Michael and continue talking.
“And they can’t even hold a candle when it comes to my feelings for you.”
Michael feels the words punch him in the chest and spiral through him, a heady warmth chasing the chill away.
“I never really understood what you meant when you told me that you don’t look away, not really, but I think that now I do. No matter how hard I tried, or how much time passed, you’re still the only one that I actually want to be with.”
Alex stops speaking, and when he doesn’t say anything for a few minutes and just continues to look up at the stars, fingers wrapped tightly in the fabric of the sheets, Michael realizes that he’s waiting for an answer.
Michael swallows hard, and tries to figure out a way to tell Alex that it’s the same for him, even though he did actually love Maria, but he can’t find the words to say.
He inhales deeply, exhaling slowly, and reaches for Alex’s hands, detangling one from the sheets and slotting their fingers together.
Alex exhales all in a rush, and slumps down beside Michael, pressing in even closer as he tightens their fingers together and cups the back of Michael’s hand with his other hand.
Michael leans even heavier against him, leaning his head on Alex’s shoulder as he looks up to the sky.
Alex inhales shakily, and lies his head down on top of Michael’s and Michael closes his eyes and within minutes, he’s asleep.