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“Maybe it’s an alien thing,” Michael says.
He doesn’t mean to say it, the idle thought slipping out before he can give it real consideration. That tends to happen a lot around Isobel, and Max sometimes too when he’s not being a dick. They’re the only people with whom an unfiltered thought can be safely received, and Michael needs that more than he wants to admit.
“Maybe what’s an alien thing? The blackout?”
“Well, we know that’s an alien thing,” Michael sighs, looking up at the stars. He and Iz are waiting for Max to arrive. Cell service has been spotty but it’s started to come back, and he’d texted them that he had more news. Probably not good news, if the past several days are anything to go by.
“So then what?”
“Max and Liz. The way he feels about her. Maybe it’s like… inhumanly strong love. Something beyond what anyone else could feel. Maybe that’s why he’s been so worked up.”
He can feel Isobel’s eyes on him, the skepticism and amusement. “Really?”
“I mean, come on, Isobel. You go ten years without seeing someone, and you hold a torch for them that whole time? How many high-schoolers would still be that desperate over a teenage crush?”
Isobel shrugs, staring up at the stars and nudging Michael with her shoulder. “I don’t think it’s an alien thing. I think it’s a Max thing. He’s always been so broody.”
“Ten years is a long time to go on loving someone you haven’t spoken to or heard from at all. He doesn’t even really know her anymore.”
The thought stings, for obvious reasons. Michael is starting to wish he hadn’t brought it up.
“So we let him off the hook for all of it because his alien DNA made him love harder? Please. I think some people are just—” Isobel waves a hand. “Extra, like that.”
“He is a dramatic son of a bitch,” Michael admits, trying for a sardonic grin. “True enough.”
“And anyway,” Isobel continues, “it’s a sample size of one. Unless you know any other secret aliens still madly in love with someone they haven’t clapped eyes on in a decade.”
Michael should have a prepared response to that, but he doesn’t. He pauses a beat too long, and Isobel’s eyes sharpen, her head tilting in renewed interest. “What? Michael?”
“Nothing,” Michael says, rubbing a thumb along the side of his jaw. “It’s nothing, I just… do you ever wonder if we do feel things differently from them? What if what we think love feels like, or sadness, or anger, what if it’s not the same as everyone else?”
“Is there someone?” Isobel asks, completely ignoring his questions. “Michael, are you—”
“No,” he says emphatically. “No.”
Isobel is quiet, which is a nasty trick she likes to pull when she wants Michael to spill. It often works, but Michael would rather jump off of a building than say Alex’s name right now. Besides, Alex had made it pretty clear he didn’t want Michael talking about it with anyone.
He sighs, and speaks with reluctance, because he’s in this now and he has to give her something. “When we were in high school, and we thought Max was going to tell Liz, I was so pissed at him. And now, now that he has told Liz, I’m still pissed. But it’s not because he told the secret, it’s because what if I wanted to? Or you? Hell, why does Max get to make Liz the exception? What about Noah, what about…”
Isobel pounces on the pause, too perceptive for her own good. “What about who? Who would you have told back then? Or now, for that matter?”
“That’s not the point. I could have had somebody to tell. I could have.”
He’s been thinking a lot about what Max did, saving Liz in the diner, telling her the truth, making that call without permission from the others. He’s been wondering about the kind of love that can short out the electricity of a whole damn town. He doesn’t want to let Max off the hook, doesn’t want to think of excuses for his selfishness, but there’s the obvious unavoidable truth walking through his life day in and day out of late, yanking Michael around, fucking with his head at every turn. If Michael had Alex Manes in front of him, unmoving, life snuffed out, fucking dead on the ground, and there was something he could do to fix it?
Fuck. What kind of hypocrite would he have to be, to hold something like that against Max? What wouldn’t he do, if he thought it was the only way to keep Alex safe?
Ten years sounds like a long time, but he supposes if you walk through life day after day thinking of the same eyes and hands and mouth, the sound of the same voice, the way that one person could say your name or touch you—suddenly it doesn’t seem so long after all. Funny, to think he and Max could have had this touchstone all these years, something maudlin to talk about over beers, share as brothers. Hey, do you feel like you’re bleeding dry from the inside, missing someone who left with no goodbye? How are you breathing through it? How do we make the pain stop, now that they’re back?
“Maybe I will tell Noah,” Isobel says, and Michael blinks, brought back to the moment. “Not right away, of course. Not until we figure out our next move, but if we can’t get Liz away from town, if we… I don’t know. Maybe there’s a future where we can trust some people. My husband. And you’ll find someone someday, who you’ll want to share your whole self with, and then we can tell her too.”
God, he loves his sister so much. He loves her enough that even though he’s pretty sure the path they’re on leads nowhere good, he hopes somehow she’s right. He hopes she gets to have the solace of a loving spouse who knows exactly who she is and wants her anyway. He can’t imagine that happening for him, but he’s used to setting his own wellbeing aside if it means Iz and Max can have a taste of peace.
He looks up into the stars, brighter than usual without the light pollution of Roswell in the way.
“I used to look in the sky, when we were kids, and hope something up there would save me.”
“I used to look around at the people of this town, and hope the same thing.”