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The box was as far back in the closet as a person could get, all the way back, flush against the corner, buried under other boxes. In truth, Alex hadn’t even known why he brought it with him when he’d gotten the last of his things from his parent’s home. He hadn’t even broken the tape, and yet he knew exactly what was in it.
It took him nearly an hour to unpack the closet, knowing he needs to go through it all anyway so he can make space for Michael’s things. Even if there weren’t many of them, as Michael assured him, but Alex planned on fixing that soon enough. Until then though, he just wanted to go through the one box.
Finally wriggling it out of the closet with minimal pain and bringing it over and setting it on the bed. The tape is so old it’s beginning to yellow, curled and peeling. Unmarked except for Alex’s initials, enough so he would remember which box it is. Not that he needed the reminder. He knew. It was last things that Alex had packed away before he had headed off for basic training.
Dragging his thumbnail along the tape, he ignored as the flakes of tape fell against the bed, tearing back the flaps so he could see inside. Not that he didn’t know every object in it, or so he thought.
His senior yearbook that was signed inside and out, literally, because Maria had taken lipstick and signed the cover. He’d given her shit for using up that much lipstick, and then bought her a tube to make up for it as if he had done it and not her. He was featured in so many pictures, the odd little goth kid with the jock with plans to be a doctor and his science geek girlfriend, but their pictures for their first few years showed them all so happy and smiling.
There were letters he had written and never sent, all of them to Michael though he didn’t move to open them. He knew what they said, and he knew how much of his heart he had poured into them. Shifting where he sat, he put them in the nightstand drawer to show to Michael eventually. Maybe just wait and see if he found them, let him read them on his own. They were awful, as he recalled, full of lyrics by Black Veil Brides, and Him, and Panic at the Disco, and his own poetry that might actually be the fall of their very new relationship.
Not that he truly worried about that, tucking them into the corner of the small table and he’d decide later what to do with them.
The black nail varnishes and dried up eyeliner all went into the trash, definitely too old to use no matter how much Michael and Alex teased about it. Three tiny acrylic round boxes that each held one of his septum pieces, reaching up without thinking about it and pinching his septum, feeling the tiny bit of scar tissue. He still misses the piercing to this day, not having thought about having it redone, though if he does get out and go into the private sector, then maybe he’d have to think about it.
Picking up the stack of photos tucked into the box, Alex has to take a moment. Just for the first one. Staring at that picture of him and Michael with their guitars, utterly lost and charmed by the look on Michael’s face. Hindsight is definitely 20/20, but how had he missed the emotion on Michael’s face back then? He’d known his own love for Michael, but seeing it so open and painfully obvious on his face and it just breaks his heart. Not because he had walked away, but because Jesse Manes had left him with no choice but to walk.
First he had crippled Michael, and then he had ensured through subtle words and not so subtle threats that Alex acted just as he was meant to and signed his paperwork and left for basic training. It was easy once he left Roswell to convince himself it was for the best, that walking away was protecting Michael, doing what was best for him. Staring at that picture, seeing that naked emotion on Michael’s face, and Alex felt more acutely than ever how horrible of a person he’d been, and how much he’d hurt the man he loves so dearly.
Taking that picture and leaving the rest on the bed, Alex headed into the kitchen and used a small cactus magnet to pin the picture to the fridge. It was the first personal thing put up in the cabin that made it their home. Not Alex’s. Not Jim Valenti’s cabin. Theirs.
Heading back to the bedroom, amongst what remained in the box of his rings and chains and the battered leather wallet that still held his student ID, Alex found what he was looking for. Carefully untangling the silver chain from the others, he smiled as he lifted the necklace and secured it around his neck.
Standing in front of the mirror over the dresser, Alex grinned widely, running his fingers over the handcuffs, tracing the edges of them. He’d worn them so often throughout high school that the silver plating was faded in places and likely could use replacing, but it wasn’t about them looking good. It was about that necklace and their beginnings. It was about making Michael smile.
And the likelihood that as with everything else, it was going to make Michael order him to strip down immediately, and Alex was okay with that. Actually, he was looking forward to it.