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Turns out, it’s sort of easy to be Alex’s friend. When you get past everything they’ve ever been to each other, all the times Michael’s been on the verge of tears (or well past the verge, let’s be honest), because of Alex Manes, when you forget about the harsh words and the blinding hot sex that they’re never going to have again, you’re left with Alex Manes being a really kind, smart, funny, good person. It’s the easiest thing in the world to be around him, if Michael lets it be.
At first, Michael had thought they’d have to pretend not to love each other, for it to be even slightly tolerable to be in each other’s presence. And he’d dreaded that, because he doesn’t know how to not be in love with Alex, it’s been the status quo for his entire adult life. But as they walk through the Long farm towards their destination, talking strategy and bumping arms companionably as they go, Michael lets himself feel it.
He loves Alex. So what? So nothing, and maybe that’s a little sad, but mostly it just is, and it can be a nice feeling too. He knows Alex, he appreciates him, he knows how guilty and responsible he feels for all the pain his family has caused. He knows how determined he is to make it right, that he’ll go to any lengths to help Michael, to support him in whatever he wants to do from here. Michael has spent years cataloguing every one of Alex’s different smiles, the way he moves his hands when he talks, what he sounds like when he’s tired or annoyed or gleeful or angry. To know another person like that is a powerful thing, and Micahel finds he can revel in it without needing more, for once. That ravenous greed he’s always felt about Alex, that need to possess him entirely, mostly out of fear of when he’ll next walk away, seems to have left him.
Maybe it’s because he actually trusts Alex to stick around this time. Maybe it’s because the part of his mind not having a good time with Alex on this little investigative venture is busy agonizing over Maria DeLuca, and whether or not he’ll ever be allowed to make things right with her.
They talk about Maria a little bit, Alex passing along a message, and miraculously, it’s not a strained or painful exchange, except insofar as Michael knows they both feel wretched about Mimi, about the lies. They are united in hoping for Maria’s forgiveness, and even in that Michael finds something close to hope for what the future might look like. Maria by his side, his arm wrapped around her shoulder, and Alex there, smiling at them, a part of them.
An insane fantasy, maybe, but it doesn’t feel impossible, somehow.
As they walk, Michael keeps his pace just slightly slower than natural so Alex won’t have to strain himself on his prosthetic, and he knows Alex knows he’s doing it, and neither of them makes a big deal out of it. They make quippy, slightly mean-spirited jokes at each other’s expense and it doesn’t even sting, it feels like talking the way friends talk.
And when he uses his powers to set Wyatt Long’s horses free, he communicates the plan to Alex with nothing more than a glance and a nod of the head. There’s a joy to it, in getting away with trespassing, in investigating private property and hunting answers and tossing theories back and forth, lightning-quick and seamless. They work together as perfectly as any two people who have known and trusted each other for years. Which is, Michael ruminates, pretty much exactly what they are.
When Alex tells him he smells like rain, Michael can acknowledge the automatic pull of want in his gut, the way being around Alex always inspires thoughts of hard muscle and gentle hands and wet, gasping mouths; he can remember Alex burying his nose in Michael’s neck and breathing deep, humming in pleasure at the smell of his sweat-soaked skin, and he can… He can let the thought go. Some pleasant remembrance of a time now gone. It’s a tad melancholy, but mostly nice, to think of Alex in that way without the accompanying and familiar excruciating regret.
And even the painful parts of the day are cathartic, in an odd sort of way. Michael is unspeakably touched by Alex’s vulnerability as he hands over the piece of the console he’d kept from Michael for months. Maybe he should be angry that Alex would hide something like that from him, but Alex’s voice cracks when he says I didn’t want you to go, and Michael understands that so fucking well that he can’t find a place for anger to fit in with all the other emotions he’s feeling. He wants to take Alex in his arms and erase any part of him that blames himself for cruelty enacted long before he was born. But that’s who Alex is, and part of loving him is knowing that.
He remembers the screaming yawning pain in his chest when he realized Alex had really left Roswell all those years ago, that he’d missed his opportunity to be there for him because he was too busy acting out, getting himself in trouble because he knew how badly he deserved to be punished. He’d carried that regret with him, a block of ice in his gut, for so long, that he hadn’t quite noticed when it had thawed. But it has, now. He knows Alex is upset, horrified, by every new revelation they discover about Michael’s mother and her past. He knows the fact that the Manes family name is tied up in this as in so much else is haunting him, that he’ll probably work through the night and forget to eat, that the next time Michael sees him, he’ll have new information and an apology stamped across his face, an apology that Michael can’t accept because Alex isn’t the one who should be offering it. And all of that will be hard to see, hard to handle, of course it will be.
But for the first time since they were kids, Michael isn’t scared of losing Alex Manes, isn’t scared he’ll wake up one morning and find he’s run away again. It feels like they might have time to figure out who they can be to one another moving forward, to weather a storm side by side instead of in isolation.