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“You need to get laid,” Kyle said. Alex looked away from the computer screen and over at his—research partner? Childhood bully? Friend?
“Excuse me?”
“You need to get laid,” Kyle repeated. “I swear, just looking at you is stressing me out.”
“A little busy,” Alex muttered, going back to his notes. There was frustratingly little information about Caulfield, even deep into the records, and Alex was poking around at the edges of what he knew, trying to avoid detection as he hacked past layers of protection he hadn’t even known existed until recently.
“Uh huh,” Kyle said skeptically. “We’re all busy. We’re all on edge. You, on the other hand, look like you haven’t slept through the night once since you started looking into all of this.”
“Your concern is touching,” Alex said absently. It wasn’t touching, it was annoying. He didn’t want to be reminded of all the ways in which he wasn’t taking good care of himself. When he tried to fall asleep, he heard Michael’s voice in his head. I can attach this to a vehicle… the icy cold truth had hit Alex in waves, terror stealing his breath away. He’d run out of there before he could do something absurd like throw himself to the ground and beg Michael not to go.
“Look,” Kyle said with a sigh. “I’m actually not trying to be a dick, here, I really think you need to take a break. Get out of your head.”
“Yeah, well. It’s not fun, being trapped inside here,” Alex said, tapping at his temple. “Haven’t found the exit sign, unfortunately.”
“Come to the emporium reopening thing,” Kyle said earnestly. “Take your mind off all of this just for a couple hours.”
“I don’t know what sort of magical compartmentalization skills you have, Valenti, but I literally cannot get my brain to stop thinking about aliens. It’s kind of like, oh, I don’t know, a fundamental alteration of the entire state of the universe and our place in it. Tends to take up a lot of mental real estate.”
“Please. If it weren’t for Michael Guerin specifically turning out to be a little green man from Mars, you’d be acting far less weird about this.”
“I’m not sure I like this new version of you who feels comfortable making comments about my love life. Can you go back to being a homophobe?”
“Oh, fuck off, Manes.”
“Better, thanks.”
In the end, of course, he hadn’t gone to the UFO emporium gala. He’d have seen people there he wasn’t sure he was ready to see. Not Michael—Michael probably wouldn’t be going, either. They hadn’t spoken since the big conversation, since Michael had not only confirmed his identity, but told him the truth of Rosa Ortecho’s death, the things he’s done and the person he’d been forced to become in order to protect Isobel. Isobel, honestly, was the biggest problem; he wasn’t entirely sure he was ready to stomach seeing her just yet. He didn’t know how to talk to Liz about it either, and didn’t know how to be around Maria without saying more than he should about what he knew. Rosa had been a complicated person, but she’d been a friend. He had loved her. When he’d enlisted at eighteen, he’d been running away from a lot of things, but his grief over Rosa’s death had been one of them, something he’d pushed down so far inside himself that he barely thought of it, which only made him feel more ashamed whenever he did.
But Kyle, loath as he was to admit it, had a bit of a point. Alex was tense all over, all the time; he was pretty sure he was clenching his jaw, grinding his teeth in his sleep, his stress leaking into every minute of his day and night. He hadn’t had sex with anyone but Michael since he’d lost his leg, since he’d gotten through the most intense, painful part of his PT, started to gain some control back over his own mobility, and had remembered that his body was even capable of feeling something other than pain and discomfort. And he hadn’t had sex with Michael since before he’d learned the big fucking secret and had started staying up late into the night digging into conspiracies and impossibilities and literal living beings from somewhere in the great beyond.
He hadn’t really even thought about sex much while he’d been deep in research mode. He got that way sometimes when he had a project, would go weeks without, and then come out the other side extremely horny and restless.
He couldn’t really imagine going out and finding someone to fuck, here in Roswell where people would talk. Where Michael would be sure to find out. And he couldn’t exactly call the only person he wanted to touch him right now, which left him with the familiarity and finesse of his own right hand. Maybe it was kind of tragic, but there was truth to the idea that nobody knew how you liked to be touched better than yourself. Feeling faintly ridiculous and really wishing it hadn’t been Kyle who’d given him this idea, he went to bed early that night, laying himself out on the mattress entirely naked. This was an indulgence he normally wouldn’t have bothered with, but the night was long and lonely and Alex was very bad at remembering to take care of himself. He figured he might as well chase the impulse when it had occasion to arise.
He slicked his hand up with lotion, touched himself idly, running one hand along his chest, thumb flicking over his nipples. They were extremely sensitive, he’d discovered in recent years. If he could get someone to suck on his chest he could get himself fully hard without even touching his dick sometimes, a trick that had never failed to impress.
He wrapped a hand loosely around his cock and gave it a couple of lazy pumps, fingered the smooth skin, wiped a thumb over the head, let himself feel it slowly fill against his palm, the heat radiating outwards and through all his limbs.
Ever practical, he glanced around the room to make sure he’d closed the door, that his prosthetic was in easy reach on a chair right beside the bed, his crutch leaning against the wall just in case. A glass of water, tissues, lotion. He was a regular Boy Scout, all contingencies considered and prepared for.
He tweaked a nipple and twisted his wrist, then let his hand fall away from his cock, just floating on the feeling of it, stiff along the crease between thigh and stomach. He thought of someone walking in and seeing him this way, spread out entirely nude, no possible way of hiding what he was up to, and took a shaky breath, swallowing audibly, then skidded his fingers along his thigh, knuckles grazing his balls, his dick.
He wanted to draw this out, go slow, build himself up to it so maybe when it was over he’d actually have worn himself out, drained away his tension. He wanted to come so hard he put himself to sleep. And whenever he wanted to take it slow, his brain tormented him with a very specific set of memories from a very specific summer when he’d been equal parts miserable and happy, his emotions a constant roller coaster, some extremity of sensation even being a gay horny teenager with a gorgeous sort-of-boyfriend couldn’t account for on its own.
That summer, it had been so many things, making up the cocktail of who he was and what he felt. It had been his father, and enlisting, and his older brothers with their sneering insistence that he march straight into hell right after them, so as not to bring shame on the family name. It had been Michael, and Michael’s injured hand, and the sound of Michael’s scream when the hammer had come down, and Rosa Ortecho’s death. And Liz fleeing Roswell before graduation, and Maria always talking and moving and making plans, filling up all the space inside her so she wouldn’t crumble in the face of her own grief, and it had been Michael Guerin, and Michael Guerin, and oh god, Michael, and Alex trying to write music but the words never coming out right, and Michael, the taste of Michael’s lips, the way he so clearly wanted to run both his hands over Alex’s body but couldn’t because of the injury, how he’d huff in frustration at the necessity of keeping that hand still as he kissed Alex into a stupor. Michael’s hair, curls scrunching between Alex’s fingers. The look on Michael’s face when Alex had told him he was really joining up, really leaving. The last time they’d kissed that summer, the salt of tears making the taste bitter.
That’s what he thought about when he took himself in hand, when he closed his eyes and remembered the time in his life when his body had felt the most alive to him, the most attuned to the possibility of pleasure.
Was it gross, Alex wondered, as he tightened his hand around himself and gave a few slow strokes, that he’d spent a literal decade of his life jerking off to Michael Guerin? Not every time, of course, sometimes he didn’t bother to fantasize during the act, just took care of himself with the efficiency of brushing his teeth or shaving, but on the occasions when he was hard up and had nobody to help him with it, if he let his mind drift, it always drifted to the same place. Maybe other people would find it pathetic, maybe Alex found himself pathetic, if he really thought about it, but there was a gift in knowing that Michael would have found it flattering if he’d known. In fact, that first time they’d hooked up in the Airstream, shortly after Alex had arrived back in town, Michael had straight up admitted to using Alex-related memories to get himself off, had requested Alex fuck him so as to furnish himself with new material—
Alex’s dick hardened further in his hand at the thought, an image of Michael laid out in bed, naked or, maybe even hotter, fully clothed with a hand stuck down his pants, too impatient to get comfortable, Alex’s name trembling on his lips as he remembered the best sex he’d ever had…
Now that part was pathetic. What sort of healthy twenty-seven year old would admit that he hadn’t managed to top his high school self’s sexual experience? That no matter how good he got at sex, and Alex prided himself on being pretty damn decent, nobody had ever taken him apart the way Michael had been able to do? Maybe he’d had more athletic sex, maybe he’d developed greater stamina and learned newer, fancier tricks with partners eager to make it amazing, but no sex he’d ever had in his life could hold a candle to sex in the back of Michael’s truck, handjobs in the break room at the UFO emporium, lazy, indulgent makeouts in the old mines outside of town, hidden in alcoves where Michael sometimes spent cold nights, where Alex longed to join him on the uncomfortable, rocky ground, just to hold him, just to keep him warm.
There had been the first time they’d elevated themselves beyond the simplest, most expedient means of getting off, had discovered there was an entire world of sensation waiting for them beyond simple orgasms. They’d been in the truck, and Michael had piled up every blanket and sweatshirt he’d owned, and Alex had brought an old thick quilted blanket his mother had left behind, stored and forgotten in the hollow bench at the bottom of his parents’ bed, so they had enough cushion that the surface actually felt nice beneath them as they kissed.
They’d both been hard already: Alex was practically always hard around Michael, even when they were barely doing anything, and they’d been pressed together head to toe, kissing deep and wet and grinding against each other. Alex’s mind had been racing ahead to what he wanted, trying to decide between getting his mouth on Michael, or else letting Michael fuck him again. He was still sore from the last time they’d done it, but he’d been restless all day waiting for a chance to be with Michael again, remembered with a shiver how unbelievably full he’d felt, like Michael was holding him together, stopping all the bad stuff from infecting his mind as he’d pushed and thrust inside him. All Alex had to do was remember the sound Michael had made when he’d come, a pained, muffled sort of moan, Alex’s name catching on his lips like he couldn’t believe anything could feel so wonderful, and he felt ready for it all to happen again, again, as many times as Michael wanted, until he was used up, a husk of his former self, at the limit of human endurance. There had to be an upper edge, of what a person could feel for another person, there had to be some end to the wanting, but Alex hadn’t found it yet.
“I want to try something,” Michael had said softly, his mouth still pressed up to Alex’s, lips vibrating together with every word. “Trust me?”
Alex had nodded practically before Michael had stopped talking, slid his tongue along Michael’s lips, pushed their mouths back together. “Yeah, anything.”
Michael smiled like Alex had just given him a gift, smoothed his hand down Alex’s chest, pushed his fingers under the edge of Alex’s shirt and stroked the skin of his waist. “Okay. Lay back.”
“And think of England?” Alex said as he allowed himself to be maneuvered, to lie flat on his back with his head cushioned upon Michael’s only pillow.
“Yes, yes, dear, now do be quiet, I’m busy,” Michael said, and Alex laughed, squirming around a little to get comfortable, as Michael carefully rucked up Alex’s shirt, leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss just above his belly button. It made the muscles of Alex’s core contract. The touch hadn’t tickled, exactly, but something in it filled him up inside with a restless sort of tenderness. It tasted of fear. He was used to feeling a little afraid when something was going well for him. He always worried about how long it would last.
Michael kept kissing his stomach, and moved his hands to the zipper of Alex’s pants, pulling it down, cupping his good hand gently against Alex’s cock, like he was testing out the equipment before he made any decisions about next moves.
“You’re so hard for me,” Michael observed quietly.
“More or less constantly,” Alex said breathlessly, as Michael squeezed his fingers, a gentle contraction, one, two, three, an infuriatingly slow rhythm. “It’s actually a little inconvenient.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mhm. I wake up in the morning after dreaming about you, about ten seconds from coming, leaking all over myself like I’m fourteen or something—”
“Fuck, that’s hot. Wish I could see you in the mornings. Wish I could wake you up with my mouth, you’d be coming before you were even fully conscious.”
“Jesus, Michael,” Alex whimpered, pushing his hips up into the pressure of Michael’s palm. He wasn’t moving his hand anymore, just leaving it there, gripped around Alex’s shaft through his underwear. “Jesus, fuck—fuck.”
“Stay still,” Michael said gently. “I told you, I want to try something.”
Michael had undressed him, maneuvering him around and admonishing Alex whenever he tried to help speed things along, until Alex was almost entirely naked, his pants pooled around his ankles, shirt removed and flung into the corner. At Alex’s insistence, Michael had taken his own shirt off as well, smiling smugly as Alex looked his fill at the man hovering above him, marveling at the miracle of his body.
And then Michael had—he’d given Alex the most thorough, infuriating, mind-blowing hand job of all time. At first, Alex had been confused, when Michael had spit into his palm and begun to stroke him, because it wasn’t like they never did this, in fact, they did this quite often, whenever they were together somewhere that wasn’t quite private enough, or when they knew they didn’t have a lot of time. They’d kiss, they’d jerk themselves off, or each other off: on one memorable occasion Alex had covered Michael’s mouth with one hand and stroked him quick and fast to completion with the other, ostensibly to keep him quiet in case someone heard them in the breakroom at the emporium, but in reality just so he could relish in the muffled groans Michael made against his palm, the way his eyes had fluttered and rolled back in his head when he got close, the low grumble of his voice trying to say Alex’s name through the restriction.
Today, Michael went slow, built Alex up, refused to speed his hand even as Alex started to groan with every stroke, arms and legs moving restlessly against the blanket under him, eyes wide as he looked up at Michael above him. Michael wasn’t taking his eyes off of Alex’s face, seemed to be concentrating very hard on something, and just as Alex couldn’t take it any more, just as he felt the pull of orgasm deep in his gut, his hips twitching up, rutting into the pressure of Michael’s perfect fucking fingers, Michael—stopped.
He pinned Alex’s cock with his hand, flat to his stomach, and held it hard, allowing for no friction.
Alex squirmed fruitlessly for a few seconds and then collapsed back, staring up at Michael in frustrated astonishment. “What—are you doing?”
“Trust me,” Michael said, and he lifted his hand away. On instinct, his toes tingling, nipples peaked, entire body on the edge, Alex made to move one of his own hands to his cock, but Michael caught it and pinned it to the blanket. “Nuh uh. I’m in charge.”
“Oh fuck,” Alex said in realization, trying to slow his breathing, to let the frustrated razor’s edge of near-relief fade back. “Oh fuck me, you’re—”
“I’m going to take care of you,” Michael said solemnly, and they both looked at each other in silence, breathing, until Alex felt the tension ease back just slightly. Michael’s eyes roamed around his face, and then he nodded once, apparently satisfied, and he moved his hand back to Alex’s cock, holding it still in his hands for a few seconds just to make sure Alex wasn’t going to go off, and then he started stroking again.
“Holy motherfucking god, Guerin,” Alex said, hips pistoning up into the pressure. “I’m right—I’m—I can’t do it, I need—”
Michael stopped moving his hand and Alex wanted to weep. “Relax,” he said, and Alex saw spots of red on Michael’s cheekbones, his eyes wide and pupils dilated. He was speaking with every indication of calm assurance, but Alex knew the signs, could see Michael was incredibly worked up from what he was doing. It was—sweet, in a sadistic sort of way, to know Michael was ignoring his own need to try and do something for Alex.
“I’m going to kill you,” Alex informed him breathlessly. “Please touch me.”
Michael did, fingers too soft, motions too slow, bringing Alex right back to the edge in less than a minute, then lifting his hand away, leaning down to press dry kisses across Alex’s face, his nose, the corner of his lips, down to his favorite spot on Alex’s neck. “You’re incredibly pretty like this, you know?”
“Shut up.”
“I don’t think I will.”
“Michael—”
“This is okay, isn’t it?” he asked, not uncertain, exactly, but thoughtful, like he knew Alex’s body well enough to know the answer, but wanted to hear it anyway.
“Feels like dying,” Alex breathed. “In a good way.”
“I wish I could do this to you for hours,” Michael said, and his hand was back where Alex needed it, gripping with firmer pressure, stroking with a bit more speed. Alex’s toes curled, a spurt of come leaking from the tip of his blood-hot cock, his hips and shoulders pressing down hard to the bed of the truck as his body attempted to levitate itself firmly into the press of Michael’s touch.
“Please, god, please.”
“But I don’t think you’ve got hours in you,” Michael observed. his voice had gone quiet and deep, in a way Alex had never heard it before. “At least not this time.”
This time. Oh, god. Alex was going to die at the hands of Michael Guerin, and he wasn’t even sorry about it. Michael lay down full length next to Alex and nudged him, flipping them so they were facing each other side by side, so Alex could squirm up and press his body along the line of Michael’s, the rough denim of Michael’s jeans sending shivers through him, so much skin in front of him he didn’t even know where to start. He was helpless in Michael’s grip, completely and wonderfully at his mercy.
Michael had done it twice more, bringing him to the edge and backing him off, before finally letting him come, and by the end Alex had been non-verbal, his face mashed up in Michael’s bare chest, fingers gripping so hard on Michael’s arms that later they’d discovered he’d left faint bruises, making hopeless mewling sounds until Michael finally hitched him closer around the waist and moved his hand faster. “That’s it, I’ve got you, come on—” and when Alex had come it had been a lot, so much, Michael had watched it coating his fingers and spurting up against Alex’s stomach with awe and fascination, had licked some of it off his fingers when Alex’s hips had finally stopped twitching forward into the pressure.
“Holy shit,” Alex had said as soon as he could form words, and Michael had laughed helplessly, rubbing his face into Alex’s throat. Like a cat, Alex thought with impossible fondness. People think he’s aloof and uncaring, but I just want to make him purr. He made himself laugh at the thought, love and orgasm reducing him to a soup of self-indulgent affection.
“What?” Michael asked softly, opening his lips so he could press feather-light kisses against the underside of Alex’s jaw.
“Nothing, just—I feel so good right now. Like you took my brain entirely offline.”
“Hmm. Good. You think too hard.”
“All I think about is you,” Alex confessed, filter obliterated. “Whenever we’re not together, doing this, I’m just waiting for the next time. I swear to god, Guerin, everything hurts when I’m not touching you.”
“Fuck,” Michael said breathlessly, his arms tightening around Alex, bringing them even closer together. “You’re a goddamn romantic when you’ve had your brains fucked right out of you.”
“That a problem?”
“Yes,” Michael said at once. “It means I’m even more screwed than I thought.”
Alone in bed, years away from that perfect moment, Alex bit his bottom lip, lifted his hips off his bed so he could brush a thumb under his balls, pressing to find his prostate from the outside. His dick jumped in his hand. He could almost smell Michael’s sweat, the hot summer air, the pollen of the trees, the slightly dusty blankets beneath them.
“Fuck,” he said out loud, his voice cutting through the silence of the room and making Alex remember exactly where he was, when he was. Alone. God, so alone. He closed his eyes tight, pretended Michael was lying beside him in the bed, watching, waiting for him to get desperate before he’d finally touch him. God, god, nobody had ever driven Alex so crazy, nobody had ever, nothing could ever—
He’d started moving his hand faster, rougher, unable to help himself as the pressure mounted. He thought about Michael’s voice, rough in his ear, breath causing the hairs to stand up on the back of Alex’s neck. Look at you, fuck, you’re so beautiful like this, I wanna touch you, want to make you scream for me, just for me, you’re mine, Alex, you’ve always been mine—
Michael had never been that way with him, never possessive. He wasn’t the kind of guy who held onto the things he wanted. He was too afraid of people running away, to ever put real effort into making them stay. But Alex wanted him to stake a claim, to yank the decisions right out of his control, to grab Alex’s face between his hands and kiss him goddamn stupid and helpless, to tell him this is us, now, and if you ever leave me again I will track you down and make you pay for it. He wanted Michael to want him enough to fight for him, even though nothing about that was fair.
Michael had always given Alex whatever he wanted, had touched him and held him however he’d asked. He’d never been so good at asking for anything in return, though, and with hindsight, with everything Alex now knew about who Michael was and what he’d been through, it made perfect sense. It made him want to commit several murders, the thought of Michael growing up unloved, unwanted, at best ignored, at worst left at the mercy of cruelty and greed.
On other occasions during that summer, they’d tried Michael’s little experiment the other way around. Michael lying still while Alex touched him, brought up up to the brink and then back down from it, controlling his every gasp and twitch and orchestrating the moment of release with exacting patience and precision. Alex found he was good at it, the command, the control, but Michael was terribly impatient, reduced to begging in no time at all as Alex moved his hand slowly, gently, never quite enough to tip him over. He made Michael cry like that sometimes, and they loved it, they both loved it, in a way Alex would later feel shame about, lying in his bunk at night surrounded by the other men, wondering if Michael would have found him sexy in uniform. Everything about his enlistment had been yet another nail in their coffin, and yet Alex liked so many things about being in the Air Force, he liked the predictability and the strictness of the rules, he liked knowing exactly how he’d be punished if he stepped out of line. There was a power in knowing that, in making your own choices about the kind of pain you were willing to take, and willing to inflict.
The memory of having Michael Guerin shaking and begging in his arms was still enough, well over a decade later, to make Alex bite his lip and plant his foot against the sheets, limbs twitching and breath coming hard and fast in ugly, loud panting. They’d been so young, they’d been playing around with shit they didn’t understand, they had never really talked about it, just wrung themselves out in every way they could think of to try, going from clumsy hand jobs and messy make-outs all the way to tying each other down and giving orders, all in a matter of months.
Alex had never—with other men, sometimes they played around with power, and Alex enjoyed it, liked putting that edge of soldier-like authority into his voice as he told a partner what he wanted from them, but it had never felt the way it had with Michael, back when he’d had no experience and had gone red in the face, stuttering and breaking into giggles, ruining the mood entirely the first time Michael had looked up at him, eyes glassy with want, and said please, sir.
Now, here, it’s like he’s a different person entirely. Michael Guerin is a faded memory, some impression of perfection that Alex can’t access even when they’re standing right in front of each other. The sex since he’s been back in Roswell has been different from how it was when they were kids. Despite the fact that now they both have less real reason to be afraid of discovery or consequences, Alex hasn’t allowed himself much in the way of indulgence and exploration. He wouldn’t call anything they’d done over the past several months perfunctory or hurried or basic, but they certainly hadn’t luxuriated in it as much as they’d done when they were still learning each other.
(They didn’t laugh during sex anymore. Once upon a time, there had been a lot of laughing.)
If anything, sex with Michael lately, before the whole Alien Thing (Alex always imagine it with capital letters in his head) had put a stop to their deranged and frantic hooking up all over town, had been something of a competition. A series of one-upmanship as they both demonstrated all they’d learned in the time they’d been apart. They never once talked about the people they’d been with, but they didn’t have to: Michael did this thing with his tongue, now, when he was blowing Alex that he certainly hadn’t known before, and once, that time Michael had come over to the cabin and they’d had uninterrupted hours in the isolated nowhere, Alex had given Michael a prostate massage that had literally knocked him out when he’d finally come, and then Alex had watched him sleep for half an hour, just staring at his face in the dim light and wondering how such a person could possibly exist, a man designed on every level to unravel Alex’s composure, to turn him into some tender, aching, raw version of himself, the same vulnerability he’d had the day his father had told him his mother had left, and then had yelled at him and shaken him by the shoulders for crying about it.
Michael had woken up eventually and kissed him slow, indulgent, perfect, until they were both hard again and then had fucked him, gentle at first and then rough, exactly how Alex wanted it without needing to ask, groaning and biting Alex’s chest and neck, tangling their fingers together and pressing Alex’s arms above his head, pinning him there, and far from feeling helpless Alex had felt like the most powerful man in the world. He’d thought, even while it was still happening, this is a mistake, I can’t let myself need him, I’ll never survive it.
But it had been too late. It had been too late since high school. Alex was going to need him until the day he died. He would have scoffed to hear anyone else describe love in the way he was experiencing it, the all-consuming passion, the endless yearning, the way he resented the rest of the world for existing sometimes, resented any piece of himself or his job or Michael’s secret or their friends, for daring to impose on the time they could spend alone together, where everything was golden and even the pain felt amazing. But it was true, and he couldn’t pretend otherwise just because it was some sort of sappy cliché. He loved Michael Guerin the way people loved in movies, in sweeping works of enduring literature. And he knew Michael loved him that way back, and that despite this, it might not actually be enough for either of them to get through this and find each other on the other side.
Fuck, and now he was going to cry, which was just a level of pathetic Alex wasn’t prepared to concede to, even in the privacy of his own bed with nobody to see. He thought of Michael wherever he was now, maybe at the gala all dressed up, maybe at a bar, surrounded by a crowd of humans who had no idea what he was—not the alien part, but the Michael part, the truth of him, and Alex knew it, Alex was lucky to know it, the ugly, insecure, irritating and smug parts of him along with the generous, unendingly patient, charming side, all of it a part of Michael Guerin, the man Alex loved, had loved all his adult life, would always love, even if he never got to touch him again.
He didn’t want this anymore. He didn’t want to be thinking about any of it. He wanted Michael’s hands on him so bad he was trembling, aching for him everyhwere, lips tingling to be kissed, chest tight and face hot, angry at himself for being so fucking predictable and basic. He closed his eyes, bit his tongue, moved his hand faster, wrist cramping slightly, but he ignored that, swiped around the head of his leaking cock, and said Michael’s name out loud just to hear it, as he finally came, coating his fingers and jerking himself through it, rough and punishing, until it hurt more than it felt good.
The second the aftershocks had stopped, a heaviness pressed against the back of his eyes, and sleep tried to tug him into its embrace. He cleaned off with tissues on the bedside table and wondered if Michael ever used telekinesis to throw away used materials after sex or masturbation, lying in the afterglow and using his mind to avoid the tedium of physical motion. He hoped, with a pang, that one day they’d have that. They’d never once had sex with the truth existing between them, Michael had never been able to use his powers in a moment of simple, domestic intimacy, not just with Alex, but with anyone, as far as Alex knew. Nobody outside of Max and Isobel had ever seen Michael exist as his full self, even in the privacy of his own space.
Alex had never been particularly good at hope. He knew he hadn’t been fair to Michael lately, and maybe in some ways Michael hadn’t been fair to him either, and there were so many elephants in the room whenever they were near each other that Alex worried about the collateral stampede damage more or less constantly. Still, as he let sleep take him at long last, he hoped he’d dream of Michael. He hoped when he woke up, things would be clearer, that he’d find a way into a future that was nebulous and complicated, unclear even to himself, but better than the present. He hoped Michael never found a way to fix his consul, to build a ship and fly away. Or maybe he hoped that even if he did, Michael would choose to stay, and he’d do it for Alex.
He hoped that one day, he could buy Michael a milkshake at the Crashdown, and they’d hook their ankles together under the table, and make cheeky jokes about the alien decor, and pretend that they were kids again, on a date where neither of them could stop smiling for their happiness and relief at being together. He hoped not to fix the past, but to step forward into a tomorrow with Michael at his side.
He hoped he was brave enough to fight for it, when the time came.