"What do I think about you? That you're the most maddening man I've ever met. That I feel like I know you more than I really should. More than I do. That I fell in love with you too hard and too fast and..."
And that was enough truth.
"What I don't think is that you're capable of lying to me for years. Not about this. Us. My father thinks you're using me."
Well, there was a kind of using involved, but it was one in which Alex was an all-too-eager participant. And in that same way, he was using as much in return.
Michael felt like all this was going to ruin him, rub him raw, but Alex said it, so Michael can't exactly not. "I loved you too. Love you," he said, staring down at his feet like he didn't have the courage to look at Alex while said it.
At least, not until he let out a breath and felt like a normal person again, staring up. "How can he be such an idiot?" he snorted. "Guess you got all your smarts from your Mom, huh?" He swallowed hard, throat clicking. "I was a seventeen year old who fell in love and didn't get it until the guy almost kissed me over a guitar. It took Max to make me realize what that was."
"Moment worth fighting for," he said, seeing it so clearly in retrospect. "I wanted so badly to fight for you. With Valenti, with your Dad, the whole world..."
Alex froze when Michael used the present tense. Love. And that right there was the problem. There was love with no reason. No explanation. Only obsessive stalkers held on to this feeling for so long and in them, it wasn't love. It was something twisted beyond recognition. Except Michael wasn't twisted and Alex liked to think that he wasn't, either. This was something different. Something he couldn't explain.
"Trust me. His father, at least, made up for anything Kyle might have done to me."
Michael quickly worked to pull the tarp back over the craft, get his blueprints put away. He had given up all his secrets to Alex and the other man could decide what he wanted to do with them, but Michael had showed them all.
He still hadn't told them all, but he was too tired and he knew it would just give Alex an excuse to leave. "From what I heard in the gossip mill," he cracked (which was via Isobel, obviously), "is that Jim Valenti had his own problems. What'd he do to make up for Kyle's insensitive asshole posturing?"
"He gave me a house." Alex shrugged. "After he died, I found out that he'd left me his old cabin. And, well, he was always there to listen before that, you know? When I was going through shit with my dad." Not that he ever said the worst of it. And get his father, the decorated soldier arrested? That would have only made things worse. But Jim had listened.
Michael's gaze fell away. He'd wanted to be the one to be there for Alex when he had issues with his father. There was no one else that he felt as connected with and he was the only person that he felt vulnerable around, really vulnerable, but even now, Alex had other people.
"I wanted that to be me," he admitted, poking at a few of the drafting tools so he didn't have to look at Alex. "I don't know, I guess I was a dumb teenager. I wanted you to talk to me, like we did in the shed." Still, he was glad that Alex had someone.
"I'm glad Jim wasn't as shitty to you as his kid was during high school."
"Believe me, the talking part? That happened long before you were around. The two of us, me and Kyle, we actually almost used to be friends back before high school and hormones got in the way. Our fathers used to be friends."
Alex made a face.
"Or I guess we thought they were friends. And even after that soured and Kyle started being a dick, his father was still someone who... I don't know. I guess he wanted to help people. It didn't matter who they were."
"Yeah, that's, that's not easy to imagine," Michael admitted, though it wasn't like he was around. He only got to come back to Roswell around twelve, when things started to go to shit again. Maybe he should have stayed away, but then he never would have met Alex.
He also never would have had Max and Isobel, but sometimes Michael thought they were awful for each other. "You're lucky you had that," he said.
He could tell Alex that the most he got was a toolshed, but even that got ruined. "So," he said, exhaling. "Now you've seen my lair. What are you gonna do?"
"Well, I'm not going to run and tell my father." Because even the idea of that was absurd. "If that's what you think. I don't know, Guerin. What else do I need to know?" Because he'd much rather here it from Michael himself than to try to figure out what was true and what wasn't from the reports his father had been compiling. Because he was willing to bet that more than half of it was just racist, sexist, homophobic bullshit and it wasn't something he wanted to weed through when he had a better source.
"I'd rather not play Where's the Alien Waldo with all the data my dad's been collecting. Everything he ends up having something to do with becomes toxic and I don't want anything to do with it."
Michael had known he wouldn't, but hearing it out loud was still a relief. He breathed out slowly and tried to figure out where to start. Sinking against the table, he gestured weakly out to the whole area. "You've seen what I can do. You've seen the ship. There's things that aren't just my secret, but that I was a part of," he admitted.
He can't look at Alex while he talked about this, but he had to get it out. "When we were thirteen, there was a drifter that attacked Iz. Max pushed him away and..." And he died. "Then, there was the girls and Rosa," he hated saying all of this, but he had to. He'd never have the courage again.
Besides, it was better to give Alex a reason to run, wasn't it? "Isobel, she didn't know what she was doing, she wasn't even herself. I took the blame, I let her think everything was fine." Sagging down into a chair and rubbing his good hand over his face, he shook his head. "Drowned it out in acetone, thinking that was the worst my life could get, then you left for the air force weeks after that and I figured out it could be worse."
So he'd ignored UNM. He'd ignored everything. He got drunk and he tried to get off the planet, because what was the point of staying and doing anything for the world when it had only fucked him over.
The words hit him like a blow to the stomach. The file he'd seen had said there'd been dead bodies attached to Michael and the others, but he hadn't gone looking for specifics. He'd figured it had to be impossible. And maybe, maybe he could excuse a kid trying to protect his sister with powers he may or may not have known he had.
But then Michael brought up Rosa and the other two girls and he breezed through it almost as if it didn't mean anything. Or more like he wanted to avoid Alex's reaction.
"What do you mean, she didn't know what she was doing? What did she do, Michael?" Another horrifying thought hit him. "And does Liz know?"
And this was what you got with secrets, even though he had more than a few of his own. If Liz knew, it meant that she had to deal with this alone because neither he nor Maria had known anything about what was going on. Maria still didn't know.
He was slumped in the chair, like he had no energy left, but honestly, he kind of felt like he didn't. This wasn't exactly the kind of thing he was used to dealing with, baring your soul out to the man you loved. "I was too late. After what happened between us, I was in my car, just trying to stop the pain," he said, his voice shaky and unnerved. "I got this vision of Isobel in trouble."
"When I got there, Rosa was dead. Isobel, she had her hand on her, but there was this look on her face. She didn't recognize me." He rubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah, Liz knows," he said roughly. "Isobel and I, we decided it would be better if Liz left before Max could tell her about us, but when she came back, Max healed her. She knows everything."
Alex was going to know everything too.
He shrugged, gesturing to himself. "What else do you want to know? Might as well get to the end of the book."
"Hold on. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. So you're saying that Isobel killed Rosa. That you saw it. But that she didn't recognize you?" It seemed like there was something missing there. Why wouldn't she recognize Michael? They'd been friends for years. Ever since Michael first moved to town. "And what does Isobel have with Liz leaving after high school?"
He couldn't help but think of Project Shepherd and how Michael, Isobel, and Max were associated with deaths. Plural.
Michael inhaled deeply and tried to figure out what awful part of this story they were going to hash out until it made him feel like he was rubbed so raw that he was bleeding. He didn't have his hopes up. "Yeah, I got to the cave just in time to watch Rosa go down," he admitted. "That's when Isobel looked at me like I was a stranger that she'd never seen before."
He shook his head, still so confused about how that could have happened. "Isobel, she can influence you. She got in Liz's mind, focused in on her desire to leave town, and she ..." He made a gesture, because 'we made her leave' was too hard to say.
"You wanted to know," he insisted. "It barely makes sense to me and I've been living it all my life."
He opened his mouth to say that Isobel should be arrested and promptly shut it, thinking of the pictures he's seen on his father's computer. If the government found out about Isobel, they'd find out about Max and if they found out about Max, they'd find out about Michael. And that was just...no.
But he couldn't imagine that Liz would just let it be as it was.
"So what's going on? How's Liz handling it?"
And he knew that he should be getting around to how Michael was handling it with his sister having killed someone, but his head was still spinning.
Michael gestured tiredly, bad hand pressed against his forehead as he tried to figure out a vessel or a place for his frustrations. "Badly, but she should. I know what Isobel did was wrong," he guaranteed. "I know that people should have something to protect themselves against her, but she's my family. I can't turn her in."
Especially because it's not so simple. "They'll cut us open, dissect us, and that's it. We have rules about that," he said darkly.
"I don't think Isobel did it. I think something was inside her, something else, but that doesn't change that Rosa is dead. I hate that. Especially because it was just one more awful thing about the day, after losing you, losing...this." He held up his hand, feeling aching and useless. "Liz and I, we were working together to help Isobel, but I don't know what happens next. I'm engineering," he reminded Alex, gesturing to everything around them.
Alex pressed his lips together. "Did I say that? Did those words leave my lips? I asked what Liz was doing because she couldn't not do something. I didn't suggest trying to perform an alien autopsy. You've got to understand that I know better than anyone what could happen. And if I wanted that, I'd be just like my dad."
And they both knew that Alex was as far from his father as it was possible to be.
He thought about it briefly. "Why do you think something was inside her? And how are you going to prove it? Because if it wasn't Isobel, that means someone else killed Rosa. Someone who's still out there."
They hadn't, but Michael was operating on the autopilot where that was what anyone who found out about aliens would inevitably want to do with them, especially once they figured out there was something worth taking apart in them.
"You are nothing like him," he vowed, even though he knew Alex didn't need to hear him say that. In fact, he knew that they couldn't be farther apart, but that didn't mean Michael's trust issues didn't run deep. "I just, I know. She looked at me like I was a complete stranger, right through me, no recognition in her eyes. I was shouting for her, pleading, and then she just collapsed," he admitted.
"There's no video, there's nothing, so I don't know how to prove it, and yeah. Yeah," he scoffed. "Something could still be out there, not like it's come knocking on my door though, so I haven't exactly noticed anything."
Alex ran his hand through his hair in an effort to stall. He thought he’d been prepared to accept Michael being an alien and everything that entailed, but he hadn’t known about Rosa. And yes, Michael thinking it wasn’t really Isobel made a difference as did the fact that Liz didn’t seem to be going absolutely nuts. But his head was starting to spin with what this might mean.
He honestly didn’t believe Michael was capable of hurting anyone seriously except in defense of someone. Same with Max. But then, he would have said the same thing about Isobel.
“I…I need to think about this,” he said slowly. “I’m not going to run to my dad or anything. I just need to think.”
Michael was tense, because he knew what was going to happen here. It would be like what always happened and the inevitable was coming. When Alex said he needed to think about it, he gave a soft push of air to hide his laugh, because he didn't blame Alex, but he also wasn't surprised.
"Yeah," he agreed, even if there was definitely sadness in his tone, mustering up a smile. "Yeah, it's a lot to take in. I've had ten years and I still have nightmares, so I get it."
He wanted to reach out and touch him, he wanted to tell him to come back, but instead, he sagged as he sat on the workstation. "Call me if you have any other questions. I meant it, when I said I'd be honest and tell you anything." Clearly.
Alex had to resist the urge to scowl in Michael's direction. He only partially managed and instead, his face twitched a little in irritation. Yes, he knew exactly what it sounded like, but there was a big difference between talking about aliens, something that Alex had believed in for weeks at least, and knowing that it was possible that someone you knew had killed someone. Deliberately. Not in the heat of battle.
"It's not like I'm going to the other side of the world, Guerin," Alex pointed out. "Just the old Valenti cabin."
Although, come to think of it, he didn't actually know if Michael knew he lived there. They'd always met at Michael's.
Michael could cut through his own ache to stare at Alex for a long while. "Why are you at the Valenti cabin?" he asked, wondering if this was some new weird revenge scheme for Kyle to take, even after ten years had passed from high school.
He swallowed, though, and shrugged, feeling exhausted. "Doesn't matter if it's the other side of the world or just the cabin across town," he heard himself saying, and hated that he knew this would make him sound weak. "Feels like the same kind of pain, watching you walk away." He didn't say 'the way you always do', because Alex was here so maybe that was going to change.
“Because it’s technically mine, now. He willed it to me after he died.” But it would probably be the old Valenti cabin until he either moved out or other people started calling it Alex’s. And it wasn’t as if he’d told a lot of people where they could find him. Kyle only knew because he’d tried to break in.
He pursed his lips. “Are you going to hold that over my head forever?” he demanded. It wasn’t as if he’d had a lot of options. Going into the Air Force had not been his first idea for a career, but there’d been a reason he’d become so good at blackmailing people. He’d learned it from his father.
Well, that was a lot deeper of a relationship with a Valenti than Michael had ever expected, but maybe the father didn't exactly condone Kyle's torture and torment of Alex during high school, and it gave him a place to live that wasn't his father's.
So, yeah, he could be grateful for that.
"I'm not holding it over your head," Michael said, wearily. "I'm just telling you that I don't like it when you do," he added. "Being honest, because I'm tired of secrets," he admitted, rubbing his face as he gestured and nodded. "I get it," he agreed. "Take the time you need and when you're ready, if you're ever ready, you know where to find me."
If Michael had just left it at 'when you're ready', Alex would have been fine. He could have accepted what Michael was saying and admit that he had a valid point, even if it was a point that hurt Alex, and he would have gone to think it over, maybe talk to Liz and find out her take on this whole situation.
"Don't make this about us," Alex said walking over until he was close enough to touch Michael and then taking a step closer so he was actually in Michael's personal space.
His eyes flicked over Michael's face and all he really wanted to do was lean in and kiss him and forget any of this had ever happened.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2019-03-23 01:48 am (UTC)And that was enough truth.
"What I don't think is that you're capable of lying to me for years. Not about this. Us. My father thinks you're using me."
Well, there was a kind of using involved, but it was one in which Alex was an all-too-eager participant. And in that same way, he was using as much in return.
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Date: 2019-03-23 02:06 am (UTC)At least, not until he let out a breath and felt like a normal person again, staring up. "How can he be such an idiot?" he snorted. "Guess you got all your smarts from your Mom, huh?" He swallowed hard, throat clicking. "I was a seventeen year old who fell in love and didn't get it until the guy almost kissed me over a guitar. It took Max to make me realize what that was."
"Moment worth fighting for," he said, seeing it so clearly in retrospect. "I wanted so badly to fight for you. With Valenti, with your Dad, the whole world..."
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Date: 2019-03-23 03:12 am (UTC)"Trust me. His father, at least, made up for anything Kyle might have done to me."
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Date: 2019-03-23 03:28 am (UTC)He still hadn't told them all, but he was too tired and he knew it would just give Alex an excuse to leave. "From what I heard in the gossip mill," he cracked (which was via Isobel, obviously), "is that Jim Valenti had his own problems. What'd he do to make up for Kyle's insensitive asshole posturing?"
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Date: 2019-03-24 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-24 02:13 am (UTC)"I wanted that to be me," he admitted, poking at a few of the drafting tools so he didn't have to look at Alex. "I don't know, I guess I was a dumb teenager. I wanted you to talk to me, like we did in the shed." Still, he was glad that Alex had someone.
"I'm glad Jim wasn't as shitty to you as his kid was during high school."
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Date: 2019-03-26 12:32 am (UTC)Alex made a face.
"Or I guess we thought they were friends. And even after that soured and Kyle started being a dick, his father was still someone who... I don't know. I guess he wanted to help people. It didn't matter who they were."
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Date: 2019-03-26 01:01 am (UTC)He also never would have had Max and Isobel, but sometimes Michael thought they were awful for each other. "You're lucky you had that," he said.
He could tell Alex that the most he got was a toolshed, but even that got ruined. "So," he said, exhaling. "Now you've seen my lair. What are you gonna do?"
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Date: 2019-03-26 10:48 am (UTC)"I'd rather not play Where's the Alien Waldo with all the data my dad's been collecting. Everything he ends up having something to do with becomes toxic and I don't want anything to do with it."
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Date: 2019-03-26 11:00 am (UTC)He can't look at Alex while he talked about this, but he had to get it out. "When we were thirteen, there was a drifter that attacked Iz. Max pushed him away and..." And he died. "Then, there was the girls and Rosa," he hated saying all of this, but he had to. He'd never have the courage again.
Besides, it was better to give Alex a reason to run, wasn't it? "Isobel, she didn't know what she was doing, she wasn't even herself. I took the blame, I let her think everything was fine." Sagging down into a chair and rubbing his good hand over his face, he shook his head. "Drowned it out in acetone, thinking that was the worst my life could get, then you left for the air force weeks after that and I figured out it could be worse."
So he'd ignored UNM. He'd ignored everything. He got drunk and he tried to get off the planet, because what was the point of staying and doing anything for the world when it had only fucked him over.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-29 12:53 pm (UTC)The words hit him like a blow to the stomach. The file he'd seen had said there'd been dead bodies attached to Michael and the others, but he hadn't gone looking for specifics. He'd figured it had to be impossible. And maybe, maybe he could excuse a kid trying to protect his sister with powers he may or may not have known he had.
But then Michael brought up Rosa and the other two girls and he breezed through it almost as if it didn't mean anything. Or more like he wanted to avoid Alex's reaction.
"What do you mean, she didn't know what she was doing? What did she do, Michael?" Another horrifying thought hit him. "And does Liz know?"
And this was what you got with secrets, even though he had more than a few of his own. If Liz knew, it meant that she had to deal with this alone because neither he nor Maria had known anything about what was going on. Maria still didn't know.
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Date: 2019-03-29 09:31 pm (UTC)"When I got there, Rosa was dead. Isobel, she had her hand on her, but there was this look on her face. She didn't recognize me." He rubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah, Liz knows," he said roughly. "Isobel and I, we decided it would be better if Liz left before Max could tell her about us, but when she came back, Max healed her. She knows everything."
Alex was going to know everything too.
He shrugged, gesturing to himself. "What else do you want to know? Might as well get to the end of the book."
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Date: 2019-04-01 10:38 pm (UTC)He couldn't help but think of Project Shepherd and how Michael, Isobel, and Max were associated with deaths. Plural.
"None of this makes any sense, Guerin."
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Date: 2019-04-02 12:01 am (UTC)He shook his head, still so confused about how that could have happened. "Isobel, she can influence you. She got in Liz's mind, focused in on her desire to leave town, and she ..." He made a gesture, because 'we made her leave' was too hard to say.
"You wanted to know," he insisted. "It barely makes sense to me and I've been living it all my life."
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Date: 2019-04-04 05:49 am (UTC)But he couldn't imagine that Liz would just let it be as it was.
"So what's going on? How's Liz handling it?"
And he knew that he should be getting around to how Michael was handling it with his sister having killed someone, but his head was still spinning.
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Date: 2019-04-04 10:39 pm (UTC)Especially because it's not so simple. "They'll cut us open, dissect us, and that's it. We have rules about that," he said darkly.
"I don't think Isobel did it. I think something was inside her, something else, but that doesn't change that Rosa is dead. I hate that. Especially because it was just one more awful thing about the day, after losing you, losing...this." He held up his hand, feeling aching and useless. "Liz and I, we were working together to help Isobel, but I don't know what happens next. I'm engineering," he reminded Alex, gesturing to everything around them.
"That what you want to know?"
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Date: 2019-04-06 12:46 am (UTC)And they both knew that Alex was as far from his father as it was possible to be.
He thought about it briefly. "Why do you think something was inside her? And how are you going to prove it? Because if it wasn't Isobel, that means someone else killed Rosa. Someone who's still out there."
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Date: 2019-04-06 06:49 am (UTC)"You are nothing like him," he vowed, even though he knew Alex didn't need to hear him say that. In fact, he knew that they couldn't be farther apart, but that didn't mean Michael's trust issues didn't run deep. "I just, I know. She looked at me like I was a complete stranger, right through me, no recognition in her eyes. I was shouting for her, pleading, and then she just collapsed," he admitted.
"There's no video, there's nothing, so I don't know how to prove it, and yeah. Yeah," he scoffed. "Something could still be out there, not like it's come knocking on my door though, so I haven't exactly noticed anything."
no subject
Date: 2019-04-14 03:11 pm (UTC)He honestly didn’t believe Michael was capable of hurting anyone seriously except in defense of someone. Same with Max. But then, he would have said the same thing about Isobel.
“I…I need to think about this,” he said slowly. “I’m not going to run to my dad or anything. I just need to think.”
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Date: 2019-04-14 07:18 pm (UTC)"Yeah," he agreed, even if there was definitely sadness in his tone, mustering up a smile. "Yeah, it's a lot to take in. I've had ten years and I still have nightmares, so I get it."
He wanted to reach out and touch him, he wanted to tell him to come back, but instead, he sagged as he sat on the workstation. "Call me if you have any other questions. I meant it, when I said I'd be honest and tell you anything." Clearly.
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Date: 2019-04-19 03:57 am (UTC)"It's not like I'm going to the other side of the world, Guerin," Alex pointed out. "Just the old Valenti cabin."
Although, come to think of it, he didn't actually know if Michael knew he lived there. They'd always met at Michael's.
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Date: 2019-04-19 06:53 pm (UTC)He swallowed, though, and shrugged, feeling exhausted. "Doesn't matter if it's the other side of the world or just the cabin across town," he heard himself saying, and hated that he knew this would make him sound weak. "Feels like the same kind of pain, watching you walk away." He didn't say 'the way you always do', because Alex was here so maybe that was going to change.
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Date: 2019-04-23 08:23 pm (UTC)He pursed his lips. “Are you going to hold that over my head forever?” he demanded. It wasn’t as if he’d had a lot of options. Going into the Air Force had not been his first idea for a career, but there’d been a reason he’d become so good at blackmailing people. He’d learned it from his father.
“I need to think, not go fight overseas.”
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Date: 2019-04-23 10:30 pm (UTC)So, yeah, he could be grateful for that.
"I'm not holding it over your head," Michael said, wearily. "I'm just telling you that I don't like it when you do," he added. "Being honest, because I'm tired of secrets," he admitted, rubbing his face as he gestured and nodded. "I get it," he agreed. "Take the time you need and when you're ready, if you're ever ready, you know where to find me."
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Date: 2019-04-24 07:07 pm (UTC)"Don't make this about us," Alex said walking over until he was close enough to touch Michael and then taking a step closer so he was actually in Michael's personal space.
His eyes flicked over Michael's face and all he really wanted to do was lean in and kiss him and forget any of this had ever happened.
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