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The floodlights on Alex's porch flared to life as soon as the truck turned into the driveway. The motion-sensors were new, a move which Alex hadn't been sure of until their necessity had been proven beyond doubt in the past few days.
Michael clearly hadn't been to the house since the new additions, and startled as the lights hit it suddenly in front of him, straightening in his seat and wincing against the sudden glare directed into his face. The soft, relaxed posture that he'd spent the whole drive back from the mines sinking into was lost in an instant.
Blinking the sleep from his eyes, Alex stretched as Michael pulled up as close to the door as possible and cranked the handbrake on, but caught himself before reaching out for the door handle.
"Uh," he started, faltering. "Thanks for the ride home. You really didn't need to come all the way out here-"
Michael's eyebrow was rising dangerously in an expression that Alex knew preceded a well-worn argument, so he pressed on:
"- but thank you." He gestured vaguely towards his footwell, the space below his left knee and the mangled twist of metal that used to be his prosthetic balanced across his lap. "I needed the help, and I really appreciate it."
Michael closed his mouth, satisfied, and nodded towards the house.
"Hell of a weekend," he said. "I'm glad you finally got the security system upgraded."
Alex's mouth twisted. "Should've done it sooner. Forrest didn't like the idea; hinted that it was an unhealthy obsession of mine, but in the end..."
He trailed off, and Michael didn't press him. Despite Forrest's nebulous involvement in all their ongoing drama, his knowledge and clearance hadn't quite reached high enough to truly understand the threat. In their latest alien escapades, it was only Alex's extensive security system that had given them any kind of advanced notice that an attack was imminent. Only a notification from one of his sensors at the mines that had alerted them to other aliens at large in Roswell at all.
Even then, the warning had only given them so much time to rally, and in the resultant stand-off at the caves they had only narrowly fought their attackers back into a cell. At the point that Michael had quietly offered to run Alex back to the cabin, Kyle had been triaging minor injuries at the Crashdown while Isobel and Max knocked back acetone shots only lightly laced with tequila.
The drive had been silent, exhausted and teetering on the knife-edge between comfortable and not. More than once Alex had felt Michael's eyes roving over his face, but whenever he risked a glance over at him, he was facing the road, one elbow propped up on the window frame.
And now, sitting in front of his house and knowing that he should really be leaving, Alex felt watched again.
"I'm sorry about your leg." Michael said, his voice low. "I saw what he was doing, and I tried to get to you and stop him, but."
Alex hadn't realised what was happening at first. The sensation of being held by telekinetic powers is difficult to describe, and in the chaos of all the fighting and flying rock he hadn't realised what Jones was doing until the screech of deforming metal. He'd fallen hard, landing on his bad leg at such an angle and with such force that he had almost blacked out from the pain.
Alex cleared his throat. "Yeah, I saw."
As Alex worked to twist his leg free, he could only watch as the boulders tumbled towards him, almost in slow motion. He saw Michael lurch closer with hands outstretched, and the rocks wobble in their course, just enough to sail over his head. The familiar pressure of Michael's TK was wrapping around his bad leg, supporting him as he reached to pull himself back up, when suddenly Michael was hoisted in the air by invisible hands. Alex found himself flat on his back again, powerless, as Michael flew across the cave and crashed into the opposite wall with a sickening thud.
Reliving those long seconds while Michael crumpled to the floor, Alex found himself reaching out. With one shaking hand, he turned Michael's head to face him, and let out a low hiss through his teeth at the sight. On the side of his face which Michael had carefully kept facing away from Alex for the past hour, a huge bruise was gathering like a storm centred on his eye socket, angry and purple-blue. The edges of the bruise faded to yellow as they spread up into the hairline around his temple, and Alex itched to follow it, to confirm with his own fingertips the all-clear that Kyle had given before they left.
"Looks worse than it is." Michael said, a twitch of a smile playing around the uninjured side of his mouth.
"I know that's a lie, I had to watch it happen."
With anyone else he would've tried to soften the edge to those words, to conceal the anger in them, but not tonight. There had always been chasms between the things they said to each other and what they really meant, trading off indifferent statements and casual barbs to better protect themselves for when it all fell apart, but Alex was too raw to play their usual game this evening.
He made himself carry on, efficient. "It was a direct blunt-force head injury - I didn't know if you were going to get up again."
On the edge of his consciousness, Alex was aware that his fingertips were still on Michael's chin, stopping him from turning away. All the logic centres in his brain screamed at him to drop his hand, lean back and exit the vehicle as soon as he could, but Michael's eyes were searching his face again, and he felt pinned in position.
"Well. It was a close one all round." Michael's voice rumbled against Alex's fingers now. "'M just glad it turned out okay in the end. We're okay."
Alex nodded, blinking slow and realising as he did so that with every second he was tipping closer and closer to Michael. And Michael, too, was coming closer; they were falling together as if magnetised, finally meeting in the middle at the forehead, noses bumping.
Michael's hand came up to cup the back of Alex's head, and Alex opened his eyes. Michael was watching him in a way that only Michael had ever looked at him - open and honest and infinitely soft. He let his fingers skim up from Michael's chin, floating with as much gentleness as he could muster over the bruising on his cheek, until they tangled in the hair at the back of his head. He felt Michael mirroring him, hands sliding to frame his face and press their foreheads together even more firmly.
"We're okay." Alex heard his voice start to crack, and without knowing who moved first, his lips were on Michael's in a deep kiss.
The angle was wrong, and since they were both unwilling to relinquish even an inch where they were touching, their noses were pushed together painfully, but it didn't matter to Alex. The only thing he was aware of was the hot, slow slide of Michael's mouth on his, and his thumbs tracing the shell of his ears, and - distantly - either his heartbeat or Michael's in his head, thrumming: finally finally finally.
With a gasp, Michael tipped his head downwards, wrenching his mouth away. Alex swallowed back a hurt noise, breathing hard and placating himself with the rub of their noses, and the fact that Michael hadn't moved away from him even an inch. To the contrary, Michael's hands were tightening in Alex's hair, as if trying to fuse them together like this permanently.
"I shouldn'tve done that." Michael muttered into the dense space between them.
Alex blew out a long breath. "No, probably not."
"Not because -- not because we don't want to," he said. "Jesus, no - but, that's not -- the whole just-because-we're-alive thing -- that's not how we're going to do this. We're past that, now."
Alex blinked at him, breathless, but Michael was unfazed. His hands were roving across Alex's cheeks now, tangling in his hair and then fluttering down to cup his neck, as if he couldn't decide where they most belonged.
"It's not how it's going to happen, next time. Because next time will be the last time we do the falling-back-together thing." Alex's eyes had drifted closed, all his focus on the sound of Michael's voice, calm and rational and certain. "Because I swore that when we do this again, we're going to make sure it's for good, so there'll be none of this rash decision-making and last-chance desperation shit. What do you think?"
Alex felt Michael's eyelashes flutter open against his cheek. He took a second to clear the lump in his throat to speak, and Michael waited patiently.
"I never wanted for us to always be grasping for whatever we could. We just never had time and I just wanted to be with you while we had the chance and-"
Michael made a low noise which cut Alex off, and slotted their noses side by side - so close now that their lips brushed together when he spoke. "I think we can be past blaming each other now, too. Got all the time in the world, right?"
Alex nodded as vigorously as he could within Michael's solid hold.
"I've got some things I need to sort out, and I need all this shit with Jones to be finally over. But once it is, trust me: we're going to be so good for each other, Alex."
Alex watched in awe as a smile spread across Michael's face, tickling at the corner of his mouth and hurtling him back through the years to a darkened exhibit room, where that same satisfied grin had made his 17-year-old heart float in his chest for days. It had much the same effect over a decade later; this time reinforced with the steely edge of the years they had fought for this, and tempered by his unwavering trust in Michael.
"Yeah." He grinned back. "I know we are."
Next time will be the last time.