Alex had already opened his mouth to answer when Michael nearly jumped into the damn hole. He sighed and followed Michael down the ladder. He'd clearly had practice with the same movements because he was down faster than he probably would have been otherwise. He had to make sure his prosthetic didn't get caught by the rails of the ladder, but because of the climbing he'd done in the cabin, he'd gotten used to the adjustment.
"And I told you," he said, rounding on Michael when he reached the bottom, "that I'm fine. You want to ask your question again or are you going to run away before I get to answer it?"
Michael hesitated at the bottom of the ladder, an arm out for Alex just in case he needed the help, even if he kept his distance when Alex seemed fine. He wasn't forgetting the part where Alex put space between them and while Michael really didn't want it, he could respect that distance.
He tugged his lower lip into his mouth with a bite as he flicked the lights of the bunker on, leading Alex inside. "What's your Dad right about, Alex?" he asked, even if the bunker Alex was in was probably plenty of a confession to answer whatever accusation Jesse had leveled on him.
"He told me there were aliens in Roswell. He also said you've been using me for the last ten years and that you and Max and Isobel are terrorists, but I guess for him, one out of three is a good enough track record." Besides, knowing his father, he absolutely believed all three of them.
There wasn't really any surprise or confusion in Alex's face. Instead, there was just resignation. This only made everything more complicated.
Michael glanced over at Alex, not exactly heartened by the look on his face. His head fell and he tried not to feel that aching stab in his heart that always came right before Alex walked away. Heading inside, he figured in for a penny, might as well get that pound, gesturing to the papers, and moving to tug at the tarp.
"I'm pretty sure barfighting isn't exactly terrorist activity, but I'll alert the Pentagon," he mocked, revealing the ship that he's been trying to rebuild, running a hand through his hair as he gestured to it, feeling more exhausted than he'd ever been. "I've never done anything like use you. I couldn't. You mean too much to me."
Alex was drawn by the plans. He was in the air force. It wasn't his field, but he recognized aircraft blueprints. Only, judging by the piece he'd found at the cabin, whatever ship they'd been on hadn't been in one piece. There'd be no way for Michael to reverse engineer a ship from that. Which meant that the design was his own.
Alex found that his fingers were curling the corner of the blueprint into a ball.
"I never said you did," he snapped. "We were teenagers. The only grand conspiracy you might have had was getting into my pants."
"Hey, careful," Michael said, a touch urgent as he watched as Alex started to press on the blueprint in a way that might damage it. He didn't have that many and he wanted to make sure that Alex wasn't doing it harm.
His anger, though, was something he didn't know how to cope with.
"I didn't even realize I wanted to do that," Michael admitted, reaching over to try and slowly pry the blueprint away. "Until that day in your toolshed, I didn't know...I didn't know what I wanted, then I did. Then it wasn't about manipulating you, I just really, really liked you."
He loved Alex, but that part, he wasn't planning on sharing out loud.
"What are you doing, Guerin. Planning on leaving?" He hadn't come all this way, physically, emotionally, just for Michael to catch the first flight off the planet. And maybe his anger was more than this. Maybe it was for everything that had been taken from them ten years ago. Maybe it was because he felt this connection that was as much based on thin air as it was anything real.
He hardly knew the man in front of him, alien ancestry aside, and Michael didn't know him, not really.
So he shouldn't be angry at anything and that only made him more angry.
He took the plans and shoved them at Michael's chest.
It stung, but he took the plans carefully and set them aside. He did want to leave, but it wasn't like he hadn't anything to stay for. Even with Alex, their connection which seemed endless and universal felt tenuous now. He felt anger radiating off him, and he felt guilty.
"If you knew you had family out there, wouldn't you want to find them? Besides, the ship's not even close to done," he confessed, taking the plans and sagging back against the table to sit, his shoulders slumping.
With a deep breath, he stared at Alex. "I'm not trying to hurt anyone," he guaranteed. "I know everyone thinks I'm this shitty criminal who doesn't give a damn, but so what? So I don't care about humanity enough to change the world, that doesn't make me a...a what, a murderer? A terrorist? Evil? What word did he use about me, Alex?" he demanded.
"I know that." Damn it. This wasn't going any way he'd thought it would. Not that he had any idea how it would go. Better was what he'd hoped. He'd wanted to be able to move on, either separately or...together.
"Does it really matter what he thinks, Guerin?" Of course it mattered in terms of what his father knew about Michael and his friends, but he wasn't talking about it in those terms. He was thinking of himself. He didn't give a damn what his father thought.
"I don't...I can't believe that."
His heart was too involved for him to believe that.
Michael was always so unsteady around Alex. Honestly, he had no idea what to do, and when he talked about not believing his father's lies about him, he was off his rhythm. He honestly figured he was just going to go to bat for himself and defend whatever he could.
"If you believe him, it matters a whole lot," he confesses, setting the blueprints down. He wandered over and revealed his ship under the tarp fully, glancing back to Alex as he leaned against the table with his hip. "What do you think about me, then?"
"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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
momijizukamori
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Date: 2019-03-20 12:04 am (UTC)"And I told you," he said, rounding on Michael when he reached the bottom, "that I'm fine. You want to ask your question again or are you going to run away before I get to answer it?"
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Date: 2019-03-20 01:11 am (UTC)He tugged his lower lip into his mouth with a bite as he flicked the lights of the bunker on, leading Alex inside. "What's your Dad right about, Alex?" he asked, even if the bunker Alex was in was probably plenty of a confession to answer whatever accusation Jesse had leveled on him.
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Date: 2019-03-20 05:30 am (UTC)There wasn't really any surprise or confusion in Alex's face. Instead, there was just resignation. This only made everything more complicated.
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Date: 2019-03-20 09:02 am (UTC)"I'm pretty sure barfighting isn't exactly terrorist activity, but I'll alert the Pentagon," he mocked, revealing the ship that he's been trying to rebuild, running a hand through his hair as he gestured to it, feeling more exhausted than he'd ever been. "I've never done anything like use you. I couldn't. You mean too much to me."
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Date: 2019-03-20 11:30 am (UTC)Alex found that his fingers were curling the corner of the blueprint into a ball.
"I never said you did," he snapped. "We were teenagers. The only grand conspiracy you might have had was getting into my pants."
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Date: 2019-03-20 05:29 pm (UTC)His anger, though, was something he didn't know how to cope with.
"I didn't even realize I wanted to do that," Michael admitted, reaching over to try and slowly pry the blueprint away. "Until that day in your toolshed, I didn't know...I didn't know what I wanted, then I did. Then it wasn't about manipulating you, I just really, really liked you."
He loved Alex, but that part, he wasn't planning on sharing out loud.
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Date: 2019-03-21 08:07 am (UTC)He hardly knew the man in front of him, alien ancestry aside, and Michael didn't know him, not really.
So he shouldn't be angry at anything and that only made him more angry.
He took the plans and shoved them at Michael's chest.
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Date: 2019-03-21 10:45 am (UTC)"If you knew you had family out there, wouldn't you want to find them? Besides, the ship's not even close to done," he confessed, taking the plans and sagging back against the table to sit, his shoulders slumping.
With a deep breath, he stared at Alex. "I'm not trying to hurt anyone," he guaranteed. "I know everyone thinks I'm this shitty criminal who doesn't give a damn, but so what? So I don't care about humanity enough to change the world, that doesn't make me a...a what, a murderer? A terrorist? Evil? What word did he use about me, Alex?" he demanded.
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Date: 2019-03-22 02:27 am (UTC)"Does it really matter what he thinks, Guerin?" Of course it mattered in terms of what his father knew about Michael and his friends, but he wasn't talking about it in those terms. He was thinking of himself. He didn't give a damn what his father thought.
"I don't...I can't believe that."
His heart was too involved for him to believe that.
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Date: 2019-03-22 02:48 am (UTC)"If you believe him, it matters a whole lot," he confesses, setting the blueprints down. He wandered over and revealed his ship under the tarp fully, glancing back to Alex as he leaned against the table with his hip. "What do you think about me, then?"
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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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