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The night Alex had asked him to move in, the two of them were sitting on the couch together, watching an episode of Deep Space Nine. One of Alex’s favorite shows, and Michael had surprised himself by getting into it, looking forward to seeing what happened next. They’d made an evening ritual of it, dinner on the couch and a new episode, laughing at Quark’s antics and teasing each other over their respective fictional crushes (Michael had a thing for Kira, of course, and Alex liked Julian Bashir, which he said was because of his known preference for exceptionally annoying geniuses). That night, they’d been watching Kira and Odo have some sort of fraught exchange, and Michael had been focused on the show, but aware that Alex was less so; he kept looking over at Michael and then away, jittery, shifting restlessly on the couch. He’d been rubbing his hand restlessly against his thigh, and then in a movement so quick it was almost like he was trying to act before he chickened out, Alex reached over and grabbed Michael’s hand, tangling their fingers together.
Michael looked over at him, pleased but confused, squeezing Alex’s hand and tilting his head in question. Alex didn’t look upset, exactly, but he was clearly unsettled, bracing himself for something.
“You okay?”
“I—” Alex shook his head slightly as if to dislodge distracting thoughts, then took a deep breath and met Michael’s eyes, squeezing his hand like an anchor. “I have a question for you. I wanted to ask—I think we should move in together.”
Because Michael is Michael, there had been this moment right after Alex said the words where he’d wanted to push back, deflect, run from the promise of so much happiness. He hadn’t quite become accustomed to the idea that he might actually get to have the things he’s always wanted, some part of him holding on to this image of the Alex Manes who loved him but couldn’t see past the complications of that love in order to give them both what they wanted.
But then Michael had looked at him, the small nervous smile on his face, the way his brow was creased over his eyes, anxious, waiting for Michael’s answer, and he’d realized that that version of Alex was gone. That this was the Alex who’d gone out to get his ear pierced, and hummed Panic! at the Disco to himself while he did the dishes; this was the Alex who would do anything for Michael, and who was also getting better at doing things for himself.
So he’d squeezed Alex’s hands and he’d said, “yes. Yeah. I’d really like that.”
And that’s what Michael thinks of, as he paces aimlessly around the bunker, mind racing and heart in his throat, his knuckles smarting from contact with Max’s face. He’s thinking of Alex, the hope on his face, the way he’d been so ready, so sure. Nervous to ask, but confident that asking was the right move, that what they were working towards was going to work. God, even at the time, Michael had known that for the miracle it was, had seen how fucking hard Alex had worked to get to that place where he could look forward to a life that once would have seemed impossible. They’d celebrated that night, they’d gone to bed and touched for hours, neither of them able to stop smiling, both of them reveling in that shared space of profound joy, of relief, that after all the pain they’d been through, together and apart, they were actually here, and on the same page, and ready to step forward into the next thing with clear eyes and united purpose.
And then Alex leaves for a week, and what does Michael do?
Well. Michael spends their time apart daydreaming about some other future, some future entirely incompatible with all the plans Alex had wanted them to make. Going home. What a joke. Stepping onto a spaceship and fucking off from this planet that had raised him, that had knocked him about and hurt him terribly, that had isolated him and scarred him and taken from him so much of what should have been his. This fucking planet, that had given him Alex Manes.
God, the guilt is—so fucking debilitating, almost as bad as the panic. He’s failed Alex profoundly, and in the process of discovering the monumental impact of that failure, he’d gone and punched his brother in the face, he’d screamed at Maria and Rosa, who had been out there trying to look for Alex, worrying about him, a hell of a lot more than Michael had been doing, because—because nobody had told him.
And also because, he hadn’t fucking noticed.
“I’m sorry,” Michael says out loud, feeling enormously foolish and also on the verge of tears. “Fuck, Alex, I’m—look, I’m listening now, okay? I’m listening. Please.”
There’s nothing. No vibrations in the air, no glowing orbs of light, no phantom ghostly whisper in the back of his mind.
Of course there’s nothing. Alex has been reaching out to Maria, not to him, and while Michael is sure there’s an explanation for that, sure it’s because Maria is open to that sort of psychic contact in a way Michael isn’t, he still can’t help but feel it like a rebuke, a condemnation of his own distraction.
“Nothing matters to me more than you do,” he says to the empty air. “I swear I’m not going to forget that again, you just—you have to be okay. I need you to be okay.”
He presses his hand to the alien glass console piece, staring into the rippling light, wondering with a terrible, squeezing pressure in his chest if Alex would somehow have been able to return home, if Michael had let him take this with him when he’d left. It’s irrational, he has no reason to suspect it would have made any difference at all, but guilt is a strange thing, warping all his thoughts around one central point, this central momentous failure, all the things that might have happened differently if he’d been better, if he’d been more worthy of Alex’s trust and love.
It’s hard to be too pissed at Liz when he can see how worried she is too, and while having his powers back might not entirely make up for the hours where his friends knew Alex was missing and he did not, it’s at least a big step in the right direction. He feels awake, now. Awake to Alex’s absence, all the pain and fear of that, but awake also to the potential of action, of having a concrete goal to achieve. Everything happening with the dark triad had left him swimming in uncertainty, eager to learn everything he could about Oasis, anxious about their ultimate plans and loyalties.
This, by contrast, is simple. Powers at least partially restored, Alex in trouble. Simple variables, only one solution. There are no paths open to him now, save the one that leads him back to the man he loves.
Maria is gracious about his little temper tantrum, as he’d known she would be, and with her help, he gets the first concrete sign of his own, that Alex is really there, somehow, reaching out through the ether and asking for help.
Maybe it’s stupid, but when the song starts playing, the keys shifting on the keyboard across the room, for a moment Michael is disappointed. There had been this part of him, a sliver of skepticism hiding alongside all the fear and anger, that had thought perhaps Maria and the others were overreacting, that coincidences and paranoia and Maria’s grief over Mimi’s death had combined to create a problem where none existed.
Alex, for all the many things Michael loves about him, is not perfect. One of his mixed blessings is his ability to hyper-focus, to shove all other considerations aside in pursuit of a goal. It’s gratifying, to be the focus of that kind of intensity. It’s less gratifying when the focus is elsewhere, when you feel yourself fading to the background of Alex’s list of priorities while he’s trying to solve a problem. Michael hadn’t been too worried when Alex hadn’t texted him back the first day, or the second, or the third. Hadn’t given much thought to him not calling after Mimi’s death, given the lack of reliable reception. Because Alex did that, he forgot about the rest of the world sometimes, forgot to answer when you were speaking to him, forgot that other people needed him around, and attentive, and present.
And maybe Michael had been working on not being too overbearing, on trusting that when Alex went somewhere inside his mind, or spent long nights at Deep Sky working on some new mystery, that he’d always come home again when he was ready. Maybe Michael hadn’t wanted to be that needy guy who couldn’t stand time apart from his boyfriend, who needed constant reassurance that he wasn’t alone anymore.
All of that is to say, it simply hadn’t occurred to Michael over the past week that anything might be seriously wrong. God, if anything, he’d just been vaguely annoyed that Alex wasn’t making more of an effort to check in with him.
And that’s the part that twists him up inside, that sets his hands shaking when he picks up the guitar to play along with Alex’s song: this sense of profound shame, in his lack of faith in Alex. He should have known, at the end of the day. He should have goddamn known that the Alex who had so gently and carefully shepherded him through the stress of moving in, who had noticed his insecurities and soothed them with the touch of his hand, his soft, steady gaze, with practiced words of comfort and affirmation, that that guy, that Alex Manes, would have been checking in with Michael, if he were at all able.
Michael should have given him more credit. Michael should have known. Fuck.
There’s no denying it now, of course. There’s no part of him that thinks this is just Alex being Alex, disappearing into his work and forgetting to maintain his relationships. It’s not just that it’s their song, the one Alex wrote for him, permeating the quiet stillness of the bar. It’s not just Michael’s pendant, glowing around his neck, moving across the map. It’s more than that. He knows in his bones that it’s Alex. He can feel him, his presence, in some way impossible to describe, and he can hardly breathe under the weight of that certainty, that Alex is in serious trouble, that Alex could be—that he could be—
Michael doesn’t even let the word form in his mind. In the truck, following Alex’s instructions, he focuses on what they’ll do when they find him, how fast they’ll be able to get him to a hospital if he’s hurt. And then the things he’ll say, the apologies he’ll make, the fucking declarations of devotion already building up on the tip of his tongue. So much to make up for, so much living they both have to do. The life he’d fantasized about when he was seventeen and kissing Alex Manes in the bed of this very truck, making promises in his head he’d never thought he’d get the chance to keep.
He can see it in Maria’s eyes, that she fears the worst, but he can’t think about that too hard or he’ll scream at her again, and what good is that going to do? Michael cannot for one second allow himself to contemplate the possibility that Alex is gone, and using some sort of otherworldly ghostly abilities to lead them towards his body. That the end of this road might be the end of Michael’s entire world.
They still have two seasons left of Deep Space Nine to watch. There’s a carton of Alex’s almond milk in the fridge that Michael isn’t going to drink, and perishable ingredients that Michael bought just two days ago at the grocery store, for meals he plans on making for the two of them. They’ve got ideas for updating the house to make it easier for Alex to get around sans-prosthetic, and more general home improvement projects to argue over. Dinner dates with Max and Liz to keep, nights out at the Pony with the whole gang. Work projects to finish, trips to plan, dogs to adopt, kids to raise. A life to live. Michael’s done considering his options. He’s putting all his eggs in one basket, and he’s counting them before they hatch, he’s throwing caution to the wind because caution has never made one ounce of a difference when it comes to how he feels about Alex Manes.
Alex had opened his heart to Michael, had invited him in, had built a safe space for him to call his own. It’s time for Michael to return the favor. This time, Alex is counting on him, to bring him home.