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Michael pulls out his phone to call Isobel the second he’s exited the hospital, the newly opened box in his hands. Alex’s name flashes up on the screen before he can even punch in his password.
“Hey.”
“Is Maria okay?” Alex asks at once, a hint of panic in his voice. Michael can feel the concern second-hand through the mark Alex still wears on his chest. It’s faded considerably in the days since Michael put it there, but he’s still been getting phantom imprints of Alex’s emotional states, in the way Alex is surely getting from him too.
“She’s fine,” Michael says a little tightly.
“Really? Because I felt you, you were—”
“No, no, she’s really okay, Alex. I swear. Hey, I’m going to call Isobel, can you meet at the Crashdown? Something we need to talk about.”
*****
“Hey,” Alex says when he meets Michael at the door to the café. “What the hell?” He taps a finger over his heart, a silent question and recrimination all at once.
It’s vaguely humiliating, to know Alex can feel him grieving for the end of his relationship with Maria. He’d told her he loved her for the first time, and she’d said it back, and he’d actually meant it. But while he’d been saying it, he’d felt Alex in his heart, known that somewhere near, Alex was comforting his brother, processing the complex regret of losing his abusive father. Even while Michael was being dumped by a beautiful, smart, incredibly kind woman with whom he actually could imagine a future, he’d been connected to Alex, by choice. He hadn’t thought of Maria at all when he’d pressed every bit of his overwhelming love directly into Alex’s skin, and while he would have fought tooth and nail to rescue Maria if she’d been in trouble, he’d be lying to himself if he pretended the stakes would have felt quite as high.
So Michael swallows and shrugs, putting a hand on Alex’s elbow and squeezing in what he hopes passes for a friendly gesture, and not a badly needed anchor of contact as he speaks. “We sort of broke up.”
Alex blinks and takes a startled step back. “What—why?”
Michael feels the real question burning in his chest through the connection of the handprint. Guilt, a little sprinkling of triumph, and then more guilt.
“Not because of you,” Michael says very gently, and this is in fact true, more or less. Mostly true.
Alex nods and sighs, head drooping as he holds the door open for Michael. “I’m sorry. You okay? Is she okay?”
“We will be,” Michael says simply, and there’s no need to say more, because Alex can feel him.
Michael wonders if he’ll break down about this later. If he’ll need to get stupid drunk and cry his eyes out over being dumped. Not at the Wild Pony, of course, he’ll have to steer clear for at least a little while, so he and Maria can adjust. Maybe he’ll cry on Isobel’s shoulder about it. But right now he’s still in shock. He can feel the misting of Jesse Manes’s blood against his face, hear the panic in Alex’s voice as he’d called out his name, pushed his father down and saved Michael’s life. He can see the dusty skeleton under the floorboards of the shed, and remember standing there what feels like a lifetime ago, sliding his hands through Alex’s hair for the first time, feeling him hard and shaking with nerves in the circle of his arms. He’s experiencing the simultaneous satisfaction of seeing the light go out of Jesse’s eyes, along with the roiling, nauseated relief and regret coming off of Alex in waves.
He’d reached for Alex then, pulled him into a hug, even as Alex had been saying his brother’s name— ”Greg, oh my god, what did you do?”
And then everyone had been running everywhere, finding each other, the fire tamped down, Liz the hero of the day; it had been she who had heard the news about Maria first from Cam, and then Michael had been rushing off in terror after another loved one, leaving Alex with Greg to deal with a body.
It’s been less than seventy-two hours since that moment when Michael had found Alex chained to a radiator and had collapsed into him like a puppet with its strings cut. In that moment, nothing else had mattered to him but that Alex was safe. Now, so many different things matter to him that he’s started to lose track.
While they read Tripp’s journal to Patricia, Michael keeps careful track of Alex’s emotions right alongside his own, doing his best to catalogue the excitement they both feel at getting answers, Alex’s continued triumphant grief at the fate of his father, his melancholy musings as to how his whole life might have been different if Jesse had had a different example to follow. Michael thinks as hard as he can about how Alex is feeling, so he doesn’t have to think too hard about himself.
It’s a good coping mechanism, as far as those go. Hour by hour, the strength of the connection is fading, which means Michael can’t actually become dependent on it. He’ll be alone with his own feelings soon enough, and he’s not exactly looking forward to it.
“Come to the Pony for open mic night,” Alex tells him when they’re saying goodbye out by Michael’s truck. “Something I want you to hear.”
Glowing beneath Alex’s shirt, Michael swears he can see the handprint give an extra-strong pulse, some unnamable emotion climbing to the surface and making itself known.
Maybe Michael should say no. Maria’s still recuperating so she won’t be there, but it’s still her place. Her domain, in a world where they’re no longer going to share their lives in quite the same way. But Alex has asked him to come, and so he does.
*****
He knows what Alex is doing the second he hears the song, processes the lyrics, and it’s all he can do not to burst into tears. He would have thought his overwhelming driving emotion would have been love, desire, a helpless wanting for the piece of himself that’s been missing for so very long. There’s a moment when Alex tells him I just tried to keep you warm that Michael considers walking up there and yanking him away from the piano just to plunge his tongue in his mouth. It’s a shaky, giddy sort of feeling, contrasted as it is with the dull ache of being newly single.
But beyond the love he feels, beyond the wanting he’s always had for Alex, even in the moments when he’d been convinced they were nothing but poison to one another, the primary thing Michael feels is pride.
He’s so proud of Alex he could burst, he wants to make sure someone’s recording this for posterity, he wants to post it on social media like some insufferable, overbearing parent proud of their kid at the school play. He’d asked Alex once what Alex was writing about, and Alex had answered him: me. Alex had written a song about himself. (And about Michael, yes, of course, Michael stands there and listens as their own history is woven into something tragic and beautiful and he can’t stop staring like a lovesick fool.)
But he knows what this is.
He knows what this is, and it’s not an invitation. It’s not closure either. It’s the gentle closing of a chapter of their lives, and a genuine hopefulness at what the next chapter might bring. But mostly it’s Alex singing about who he is to a crowd of people who may or may not accept it, and deciding to say it anyway, defiant and loud and beautiful. He’s not nervous, up there. The second he’d sat down to sing, all the nerves had fled from him; Michael had felt it happening inside his own chest. Every time Alex has shied away from Michael over the years, it has been partially about Michael, about their past, about who they both were. But a larger part of it had been this. Jesse Manes’s shrapnel beneath Alex’s skin, a voice that speaks of shame that Alex is finally, victoriously, shrugging off.
Michael is so astonishingly happy for Alex that he does his best to project it, to push the joy and pride and understanding he feels straight through the connection they still share, and he experiences the glowing answer of Alex’s own triumph in return, as easy and complete as if they’d spoken the words aloud to one another.
And when he walks away, just for now, he knows Alex will understand that part of it too.
They’re building something, the two of them. Not a wall to keep them apart, but a new foundation on which to build a future. Michael’s waited for this for so long. He’s been waiting since Alex walked away from him over a decade ago. He’d been waiting even while he’d been with Maria, and he can admit that to himself now, as horrible as it makes him feel. And he’ll wait while Alex tries to start something with Forrest Long, because fair’s fair and life isn’t a straight line.
He can wait a little longer, because Alex is fighting for him. He’s just said so, out loud and confident, in a crowded cowboy bar.