Work Text:
Michael Guerin has been building a wall.
He’d started its construction the minute he’d stopped a man in uniform from messing around with his Airstream, and discovered that man in uniform to be Alex Manes. The sight of him had been a searing pain in his gut, a deep, bruising blow in the chest, and he’d instinctively put up a shield, had spoken coldly, grappling desperately for some measure of distance.
It hadn’t worked very well, and Michael had found himself hopelessly entangled with Alex in no time at all, the waking moments of his life taken up with waiting and wondering, his body pathetically attuned to Alex whenever they were in proximity, aching for him when they were not.
Still, he has to do something to defend himself. He can’t actually be the guy who waits around with his fingers crossed, hoping the man he’s loved since he was seventeen will decide to give him the time of day. So he and Alex keep crashing into each other. They keep having blindingly hot sex everywhere they can snatch some privacy. Alex unravels under his hands, says things he’d never say if he weren’t worked up and barreling towards orgasm. Things about regret, and longing, things about what he wants now, what he wishes he could have. And Michael lets him take, and take, and take. He gives, and gives, and gives, easily, even though he knows Alex will be a different person when it’s over, when they unwind from one another, stop touching, and wake up to reality.
Michael learns to leave, before Alex can kick him out. He learns to walk away before Alex does, and it still hurts, but it hurts less, maybe. He adds a brick to the wall.
It’s not as if he doesn’t have other things on his mind, and as he focuses on helping Isobel, on working out the new reality where people know their secret, where Liz Ortecho and Kyle Valenti have questions and Max seems willing to answer them, he’s able to keep his focus where it needs to be, to pull away from Alex bit by painful bit, to guard himself from unexpected blows.
He demands closure, asks for a real breakup, something to cut the cord that binds them, and Alex won’t give him even that much. Alex walks away that day in the bar with a stormy look and leaves Michael alone and weakened, on the receiving end of yet another rejection. And Michael is disappointed, wants Alex to be better than he is, to be kinder and more thoughtful. He adds another brick, fortifies himself behind the growing wall, doesn’t let the heartbreak pull him under.
Maria DeLuca is several rows of bricks all unto herself. Michael surprises himself with his willingness to be drawn to her, to smile when she speaks, to look forward to coming into the Wild Pony just to see her behind the bar. He’s spent his entire adult life with only fleeting connections, holding no love inside him for anyone other than Max and Isobel, because the one time he’d tried for something more, it had nearly destroyed him. Loving Alex had scarred him, both physically and mentally, and he’d had to walk through life for a decade with a frighteningly large piece of himself missing. He’d learned to stop handing out those pieces, but Maria is…
Maria is funny, and confident, and thinks he’s kind of a low-life which isn’t great for the old self esteem at first, but honestly, he enjoys the challenge of untangling her real opinion of him, of getting to something softer and sweeter beneath. He touches her and while it’s happening, he does not think of Alex at all.
He wakes up, and the wall is stronger still.
When Alex sees Maria’s necklace, Michael feels guilt, but not regret, exactly, and it’s good to be able to tell the difference. He offers Alex a different kind of vulnerability that day, tells him the truth of his origins, of his past, and receives Alex’s gentle acceptance as a balm. But he keeps the wall in place, climbs to the top of it and speaks from up high, bringing Alex into the secret from a safe distance.
By the time Caulfield happens, the wall is strong enough that he’s able to tell Alex no, although not strong enough to make Alex leave. And he’d never blame Alex for the actions of his family, but it’s easier to keep that distance when he remembers that Alex’s father is the reason he’ll never know his mom.
Michael will never be indifferent to the love of Alex Manes. It will never be easy to look at him and to remember what they had, what they might have had if things had gone differently. When Alex had come over to apologize for leaving him behind, Michael had been so proud of him, so fond of him, that despite the blood staining his skin and the image of his mother’s time-ravaged face and Max pointing a gun at him and all the rest, he’d wanted to pull Alex into a hug and tell him they’d find a way to be okay after all.
But there hadn’t been time, and the wall had held firm.
In the aftermath of Noah’s death, he goes to the place he wants to go. He goes to Maria DeLuca, because he knows it won’t hurt. The secrets of his origins will never let him rest, not entirely; he bitterly regrets everything he still does not know, and may never know, the answers stolen from him at the last possible second.
But he’s stronger than he once was, fortified behind his wall. Maybe now he can build a door, and choose, for once, what gets to come inside.
*****
Alex Manes has been breaking down a wall.
It had been a solid barrier between him and the rest of the world for so long, he’d hardly noticed the weight of carrying it around any longer. But being back in Roswell brings it right back to the front of his mind, all the careful construction it had taken, the way he’d had to box up parts of himself he genuinely liked, in order to protect the remainder from harm. He can’t escape his father, when they’re both stationed in Roswell. He can’t escape Michael Guerin, either.
Being with him again is the most exquisitely painful thing that’s ever happened to him. Every time he sees Michael, pieces of the wall fall away from him, little chips off the stone. Not enough to make him brave enough to do this for real, not enough so that it’s easy, but enough so that he can feel things he’d very purposefully forbidden himself to feel for such a long time. Michael’s got stubble now. He’s a man who works out in the sun, with his hands, and he’s the best thing Alex has ever seen when he’s laid out against the sheets, body lifting to Alex’s touch, mouth falling open, eyelashes fluttering against his cheekbones.
Alex wants to keep him. But it’s so dangerous to want things. He’s not sure he remembers how, anymore.
His father’s presence makes him squirm, the constant pressure of those expectations weighing him down. He can talk about it rationally, knows his father is an abusive monster, knows that therefore he shouldn’t care what he thinks, but he does. Maybe he always will.
Every time he goes to Michael, he lets more of the wall fall away. Every time he leaves, he tries to cram the pieces back into place, but they won’t quite fit, the fortification weakening the longer he tries to keep it whole.
And then he finds out about aliens, Project Shepherd, his father targeting Michael, Max, and Isobel, and he starts to claw through the wall with his bare hands in sheer desperation. It becomes a strained balancing act, a race to an undefined finish line. He needs to keep Michael far enough away from all of this to keep him safe, but he needs to talk to Michael too, needs his help, needs him to know that he’d do anything and everything to keep him safe, that what he’s fighting for so desperately is not only Michael’s life, but potentially some version of tomorrow where they’re happy, too.
So he sends his father away, and punches a hole in the metaphorical wall. He dismantles Project Shepherd, and tosses the stones away, widening the gap. He talks to Michael, he asks to know him, and he is at the mercy of whatever Michael wants to say, ready to accept the whole of him at last. He hopes it’s the start of something, hopes he’s not too late.
He goes to Caulfield, and he shouts down his doubts, he tells Michael the truth of his heart, he tries to hold him through his grief in the aftermath, tries to explain how he feels, what he now finds himself able to want. He doesn’t know, he can’t tell, if any of it is enough, but it doesn’t matter, he has to try.
Michael had promised they’d talk the next day, but when Alex arrives, he finds no one at home.
He sits there for so long his leg starts to ache, a terrible pain that grows and grows, worse than it has in a long while. The strain of too many days without proper rest, too busy to take care of himself the way he should. He considers going inside the Airstream, he knows where Michael leaves an extra key: he could take off the prostphetic and make himself comfortable, while he waits.
But something prevents him.
The last time he’d seen Michael, he’d had blood staining his skin, he’d been wild eyed and frantic. He’d run off, and Alex trusts him to look after himself, he knows that Michael is strong and capable and brave and all the rest, but knowing something like that doesn’t stop him worrying.
Liz had called Alex, Liz had said Noah was dead and everyone was safe, so it’s probably pointless to be afraid, but Alex is anxious, excited, his nerves getting to him, and his heart filling with a kind of quiet dread. Michael has been the center of his thoughts since the day he got home. Even government hush-ups and the existence of aliens haven’t been enough to expel him from his mind, and in fact his single-minded determination to find out all he could about the topic had only been a further part of that, of the desire to make Michael safe, to make things right, so that whatever future they might be able to build, it would be one where they wouldn’t have to be afraid.
He’s starting to realize it doesn’t work like that. He’s stalled for ten years, waiting to stop being afraid, and it’s only now, sitting there waiting with his leg throbbing and his pulse beating slightly too fast at the hollow of his throat, that he understands at last that love and fear will always go hand in hand.
Michael never shows up, and later Alex will learn that he’s made a different choice.
Alex’s wall is down. He’s ready to fight for what he wants, he’s ready to be happy for once. But wanting something, being ready for it, being willing to work at it, doesn’t actually guarantee an outcome. Michael hadn’t come for him, he’d gone to someone else.
Alex’s wall lies at his feet in pieces, nothing more than rubble for him to trip over. No protection at all.