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"Michael, please," Alex's wrecked voice is nothing but a raspy whisper in Michael's ear. It's the most beautiful sound in the world: his name on Alex's lips. His name encompassing the air in Alex's lungs, swimming up his throat, tickling his vocal cords, passing through those lips that could be so kind. Had been so cruel. Ten years he's waited to hear it. He can't wait any longer.
"Say it again," he pleads, all macho cowboy swagger on hold. It'll be back again tomorrow, make no mistake. Michael is nothing if not a creature of habit. But not tonight. Tonight is all about atonement.
"Michael."
The air in the cab of the truck feels heavy with the weight of those letters caressing his skin. He rubs his face into the crook of Alex's shoulder where it meets his neck. Breathes him in. Feels Alex's essence settle into his bones. He releases a sob of relief. Joy. Regret.
"I've missed you," are the words that make it through a mouth suddenly, riotously full of all the feelings Michael has been swallowing down for months. The angry, sad, and spiteful words that have been careening about his stomach, being doused by acetone but always lying in wait amongst the bile. "So much, Alex." The happy, loving, hopeful words actually scare him more. Scar him more. The risk involved in wearing them on his sleeve has never been worth the reward.
Alex scrabbles at Michael's bare back, hands coming up to clutch fiercely at his curls. "I've missed you, too."
Michael gasps when his heart hears those words breathed into his skin, stripped of all artifice. His body tingles from his head to his toes.
"I'm so sorry," are the next words to fight and win their way out of his mouth, and he doesn't try to recall them. He sniffles once, trying to hold himself together for Alex at least a little bit longer and just squeezes tighter.
"Shh, shh, it'll be alright, Cowboy."
Michael is aware which one of them has powers not of this world, but he is unprepared for the magical soothing effect that the combination of Alex's whispering voice and scalp-massaging fingers have on his body. All of his muscles relax save one.
"I'll make it up to you," Michael insists, voice ragged from fighting off all the old fears, never far out of reach, eating away at his insides the way acetone would if ingested by a human.
"Hey now," Alex tugs on Michael's curls so he can look him in the eye. "None of that. We both made our beds, we've lain in them for long enough, it's time to get up now and start a new day."
Alex traces the tracks of Michael's tears with a thumb, brushing the salt and sadness off his face with a tenderness Michael was afraid he'd never feel again.
He smiles at Alex for the first time since that night in the Airstream when his whole world fell to pieces. Alex cups his face in his hands and smiles back.
"You're mine," he reminds Michael's lips, breath dancing upon his skin as he pulls him down for a sweet kiss.
"You always have been," he touches their foreheads together, breathing in Michael's air, returning it enveloped in his own. "You always will be."
Michael's arms start trembling from the effort to keep him aloft under the intensity of Alex's beautiful brown-eyed gaze. He manages to lift his head up enough to nod and whisper a sated, "Yes."
Michael's heart skips a beat at the mischievous twinkle that suddenly appears. "Make me see stars."
"One cosmic fireworks show coming right up," Michael promises. "Happy Fourth of July, Private."
The real fireworks that shoot out of the bed of Michael's truck into the desert nighttime a little while later pale in comparison to the shooting stars arcing out of the windows.
~ ♥ ~