Chapter Text
Michael puts the truck in park, but doesn't move after cutting the engine. It'd been nice to see everyone for the impromptu get-together Isobel had thrown, but it had felt more like something for everyone else, than for him and Alex. That had been the whole point of just showing up at the courthouse - Michael hated the pomp and flair that normally came with weddings. He had dealt with Isobel's because he cared about her, and he would always be there to support her, but it wasn't anything he ever wanted or needed.
What he needed, all he needed, was Alex.
Alex, who was sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for him. Alex, who was watching as Michael sat there, collecting his thoughts. Alex, who understood what he needed better than any other person on the planet.
Maybe in the universe.
He reaches up, tangling the fingers of his right hand in the chain hanging around his neck, wrapping his hand around the ring and wondering what the story behind it is. When had Alex bought it? What had made him decide? Had there been some moment since learning about Michael's origins that had made Alex want this?
"You're thinking awfully loud."
"I just," Michael pauses, glancing over. "You married me."
Alex laughs, and that sly smile that Michael absolutely adores spreads across his face.
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
It's hard to answer, given what he's already shared about the ring on Alex's finger and how it came to be. Instead Michael pushes open the driver side door and slides out, waiting for Alex before they walk up to the front door of the cabin together.
The cabin has been Alex's for years - left to him by Jim Valenti. Michael is only a more recent occupant, finally giving in when Alex had asked him one night to move in - the two of them tired of switching back and forth between beds.
----
"Move in with me," Alex whispered into the skin of Michael's shoulder.
They were laying in bed, both of them naked except for the sheet that was tangled around their legs. Michael had been spending more time than not at the cabin, choosing to stay the night instead of leaving and heading back to the Airstream. He was getting used to waking up next to Alex, something that at one time he’d believed would never happen.
"I'm tired of waking up alone."
Michael knew words were his thing, knew Alex always understood the significance in what he was saying. Alex was more likely to ask with his fingers, with his hands, with his eyes, with the movement of his body - and maybe that was always what made them work so well, that silent communication. Alex would show Michael how much he loved him by constantly touching him, by constantly maintaining the physical connection. But this was one of those rare exceptions, where Alex was asking for something, something he knew Michael would give. Something he knew the answer to without asking.
With a smile that he couldn't hide, Michael had flipped them so Alex was pinned underneath him, had braced himself on his arms, face inches away from Alex's, and had stayed there a moment - just staring down at Alex.
Michael had fallen irrevocably in love with Alex Manes years before - hell, if he was being honest, he'd fallen in love with Alex when they were seventeen. And there wasn't a force in the world, or perhaps the universe, that could change it. And he'd certainly tried, while Alex had been off in the Air Force, as Michael had drowned himself in alcohol and acetone, wondering why he was never enough.
He'd let his mind wander, back to those weeks after their class reunion, when they'd started, when they still weren't fitting right but oh so desperate to try. To one morning when he'd woken up to Alex's lips on his skin, fingers on his chest, Alex's hair tickling his face.
On the tip of his tongue, Michael had felt the words he'd been desperate to say that one morning in the Airstream all those weeks, months, years earlier, but couldn't - had reluctantly understood at the time that Alex wasn't ready for them.
"I want to wake up next to you for the rest of my life."
----
Inside, Michael flops back onto the couch, watching Alex retreat into the kitchen. He listens to Alex's footsteps, as they travel further away, in the direction of the bedroom. There's the sound of boxes being moved, a dresser drawer being opened, like Alex is searching for something specific, but Michael chooses to stay where he is.
When Alex returns moments later, standing in the archway between the two rooms, Michael notices he's holding something in his hands - a hardcover leather-bound journal that looks like it's been through hell and back.
Michael waits as Alex slides into the empty space next to him, watches as Alex runs his hands over the notebook, as if remembering everything that's written inside.
But it's not what Alex shares when he opens it up to a specific page, and Michael notices a photograph clipped to the paper.
A photograph that Michael knows intimately, one that now sits in a frame on the bedside table. It’s Michael’s copy - the one he kept safe in a box with a stack of pictures of him, Max, and Isobel. Every morning when he wakes up, Michael takes a moment to look at the photo, remembering the good and the bad, and knowing that they're here.
“Before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed, I kept this here, in a box of things I asked Maria to hold onto. I thought about bringing it with me, just so I’d have-” Alex cuts himself off, and Michael watches as he places his hand over the page, and gently runs his fingertips over the photograph's creases. From where he's sitting, Michael notices the dog-eared corners, the rip in the lower left. “There wasn’t a day that went by during that time where I didn’t think of you. That maybe someday we could…"
Michael remembers those early years - when Alex would come back on leave, would only show up at the Airstream after dark, would crawl into bed with Michael, hold him close. There were always nights where Michael would wake up, sensing Alex was there, and they'd strip out of their clothes - sometimes in a rush, as if the need for skin on skin contact was as important and vital as breathing, other times it was slow with roaming hands, remapping the already familiar territory of each other's bodies.
Michael knew there were too many times he'd hidden his own tears by pressing his face into the crook of Alex's neck, feeling too much, needing Alex but not knowing how to ask. Not wanting to hear the rejection, not sure he could survive it.
"When the same-sex marriage decision came down, I was sitting in a tent outside Baghdad, and all I could think of was I can marry Michael. And it's so stupid to think of that now-"
"It's not." Michael interjects, reaching out and taking Alex's hand in his own. It's not stupid, it's never stupid - and he needs Alex to know that.
"We were too young. We - we barely knew each other back then. It would have been a disaster."
Alex goes quiet, and Michael waits, watching as Alex drops the journal and the photo on the coffee table, and pulling the hand Michael is holding closer to himself. He follows Alex’s gaze to the ring on his finger, the twisted hammered metal, running a fingertip over it.
“The next time I had leave, I called Maria.” Alex laughs, a little huff of a sound, and Michael can’t look away from him, loves him more in this moment, listening to Alex recount a part of him they haven’t shared yet. “It’s so stupid - I asked her what she would say if I got married.”
The room goes quiet as Alex stops talking, and Michael takes the opportunity to speak.
“What did she say?”
“She asked if this had to do with you - with the guy from the museum, or if I’d met someone new.” Alex is staring straight ahead, not turned to face Michael, and that’s okay, Michael knows. He lets Alex tell his story, tell this story, however he needs to. Michael keeps his finger brushed up against Alex’s hand, needing the contact, letting it ground him, knowing that it doesn’t matter what Alex tells him happened during those years, because they’re both here now.
Michael leans forward, drops his forehead against Alex’s shoulder, hiding the smile on his face. He can’t help it, because he already knows how it ends.
“I asked her, if one day, when I was ready, if she would help me pick out the ring.”
Michael nods, finally moving his hand to slide his fingers in between Alex’s, turning their interlocked fingers over so he can stare at the ring on Alex’s finger, stretching upward and pressing his lips to Alex’s cheek.
“It wasn’t until I came back to Roswell, after those crazy couple of years, that she and I finally went about trying to find the perfect ring.” Alex pauses, shifting away from underneath him, but just enough so they’re facing each other, and Alex can reach out for the ring that’s hanging around Michael’s neck.
“I figured it had to have happened after you found out,” Michael replies, looking down at the iridescence that lines the inside.
“Yeah,” Alex laughs, tugging at the chain.
Michael remembers that time, of showing Alex the console that he’d kept in the bunker at the junkyard beneath the Airstream. Remembers months of miscommunication between them, of Alex showing up one day, holding out the piece - the missing shard Michael had been searching for to make the console whole.
He’d been so angry that night, had stared at Alex feeling some sort of rage, especially once Alex had said he’d been in possession of the piece since that summer after their high school reunion. That summer they’d crashed back together for the first time since Alex’s permanent return to Roswell. That he’d kept it because he didn’t want Michael to leave, had hoped that there was still a chance for them.
It had felt like, at the time, they’d been working toward something, they’d spent so much time talking around one another, and at one another, but never truly hearing, and Michael can still remember Alex standing there next to the fire pit outside the Airstream, the last piece of the console in his hands, tears in his eyes but so determined for it to be the last secret between them.
“After everything, I thought you’d say no if I asked. So I put the ring in a box with some of my other things, and left it there.”
Michael glances up, reaching for Alex’s face, forces him to look back up at Michael and meet his gaze.
“You thought I’d say no?”
The idea is unfathomable to Michael. Even with everything that’s happened. With everything that’s happened. As if in the entire time he’s known Alex Manes, has been in love with Alex Manes, that Alex Manes has been part of his life, as if Michael has ever been able to say no.
“It was before I asked you to move in here. Before I gave you back the-” Alex pauses, his mouth closing, and Michael watches as he takes a deep breath to steady himself. “Before that night I gave you the console piece. The way you’d looked at me, I had convinced myself that I’d really fucked up.”
“Hindsight’s a hell of a thing, huh Private?”
And finally, for the first time since they got back to the cabin, Michael watches a real smile spread across Alex’s face. It’s infectious, and Michael leans forward, capturing Alex’s lips with his own. It only lasts a moment before Alex is pulling back, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and pulling out a piece of paper, pressing it into Michael’s hands.
It takes Michael a moment to realize what he’s looking at, to see the Final Order to Name Change and he scans further down to see it in Alex’s loopy script.
Alex Guerin.
“When did you-” Michael glances up quickly before looking back down at the piece of paper, and then back up at Alex. And Alex, the asshole , is smiling, and Michael loves him. He loves this beautiful, impossible man who went and filed the paperwork to have his name changed and didn’t even tell Michael, just did it.
“You were so distracted at the courthouse, you didn’t even notice.”
And Michael wants to kiss him, and strip him out of his clothes, and carry him to the bedroom, and take Alex apart bit by bit, piece by piece until they’re both naked and sated and falling asleep wrapped around one another. He wants to get lost in the feel of Alex on him and around him and inside him.
“When?” Michael finally chokes out, can feel the tears in his eyes. Because this name, Guerin, it never meant anything to him. It was just a name he’d been given as child because he needed to be called something. “Why?”
Alex is still smiling, and Michael wants to kiss him. But he needs to hear Alex tell him why, and when. And if he starts now, he knows he won’t stop.
“I’ve hated being a Manes my entire life. To be associated with everything my family, my ancestors, have done - I don’t want that.” Alex ducks his head clearly thinking of Caulfield, of those desperate moments.
“Guerin isn’t anything though, it’s just-”
“It’s yours , Michael. And now it’s ours.”
It sounds like Alex's missing wedding vows, if Michael is being completely honest with himself.
Ours ours ours.
Michael doesn't know what else to do, can't think past needing to kiss Alex, so he does. He carefully drops the name change paperwork on the coffee table, and pulls Alex toward him, reaching up to cup Alex's face in his hands, just staring for a moment before leaning in and pressing their mouths together.
He can feel Alex's smile against his lips, and he knows it probably matches his own. But Michael can't help it as he pulls on Alex's bottom lip, sucking is on it for a moment, and swallowing down the moan Alex lets out in response. He feels Alex's hands on his waist, fingers teasing at the hem of his shirt, trying to grab onto it, push it up to get his hands on skin.
Michael pulls away for a moment, separating their mouths but keeping their foreheads pressed together as he runs his hands down the front of Alex's shirt, watching as Alex struggles to undo the buttons of Michael's own shirt. He laughs at the way they're fumbling with each other in a way they shouldn't be but always are, desperate for contact, needing to touch.
He debates for a moment suggesting they move to the bedroom, until Alex is leaning forward, trailing his lips down the front of Michael's chest as he undoes each button, and Michael can feel himself reacting more and more, getting harder in his jeans. He lets out a string of curses as Alex undoes the last button, pushing the shirt off Michael's shoulders, and leaning forward where their foreheads are still pressed together to capture Michael's mouth with his again. And Michael goes, lets Alex take his bottom lip between his teeth, pulling it into his mouth.
Michael lets Alex push him back, losing that contact of their foreheads pressed together but getting a much better view of Alex in exchange. So Michael goes, watching as Alex runs his hands up his thighs, fingertips teasing along the waistband of his jeans, before meeting at the snap to undo it.
Alex must move wrong, twist something in his prosthetic, because Michael watches the slightest wince that Alex immediately tries to cover up. He reaches up, taking Alex's hand in his, stilling his movements.
Alex nods, leaning back, away from Michael, and breaking contact. Michael hates losing that, but Alex needs this, needs a moment, and Michael will always, always give it to him. He watches as Alex pushes up off the couch, and retreats toward the bedroom, not sparing a glance back at Michael. So Michael takes the moment to gather himself, glancing down at where he's straining against the fabric of his boxers and his jeans, and shaking his head. There's something about Alex, about their connection, that always makes him lose his head.
After a minute, he pushes up off the couch, sidestepping toward the front door to flip the lock, and following Alex into the bedroom.
He stands in the doorway for a moment, just watching as Alex sits on the edge of the bed, going through the careful routine of removing his prosthetic. He knows, has known, that sometimes Alex struggles with feelings of weakness in regards to his injury, but Michael knows for him personally, it has never mattered. And it never will matter. To him, it's a reminder of how close he came to losing Alex, and it's a promise to never let it happen again.