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So, here’s a secret: Kyle has known about Michael and Alex for a long time.
Not since high school: if high school Kyle Valenti had been aware that Alex had some secret boyfriend hiding in the shadows, he had very intentionally not given it a lot of thought. Because it was gross and weird and Alex Manes made him nervous; everything about the choices he made and the person he’d grown into felt scary and overwhelming and bad, so Kyle was a dick to him half the time, and the other half tried to pretend he didn’t even exist.
And then Kyle had gone off to college and that thing had happened to him that older conservatives seemed so afraid of: he’d been on a college campus, and he’d met a lot of actual gay people, and he’d been surrounded by liberals, and he’d—well, he’d gotten over himself. He’d grown up from the guy he was at eighteen, the way he was supposed to.
Sometimes he thought about Alex, but thinking about him made him feel like garbage, so he stopped. Sure, leaving town and getting an education had changed him, but Kyle Valenti was no saint, and besides, maybe it was best to let the past lie. Alex was long gone anyway, off doing the whole Air Force thing like his dad before him.
But then it had happened. He’d been twenty-two, near the end of senior year in undergrad, and he’d been hanging around town with his parents. His dad had been sick at the time, and Kyle was—in denial about it, or something. Thinking about what med school he’d go to, and pretending that his father was going to be around to see him become a doctor. Picturing future moments of his life and ignoring the fact that so much of it would be shadowed by a grief that couldn’t be prevented.
On his last night staying with his folks before heading back to school, he’d gone on a walk around town, letting the nostalgia of the not-so-distant good-old-days wash through him. It was while he was passing near to the corner where the Crashdown was, thinking wistfully of Liz and sadly of Rosa, that he’d heard a noise from around the corner. There was a dark side-street with a single flickering lamp providing weak illumination, and out of it had come the sound of a laugh, quiet but unmistakably fond. Kyle had had every intention of walking past the turn to the street and continuing on his way, but he’d glanced in that direction curiously, automatically, and then froze, his feet halting on the sidewalk.
It was Alex Manes, and he wasn’t alone.
Leaning in close to him, a smile on his face and his hair in wild disarray, was Michael Guerin.
Shocked, Kyle watched as Alex lifted his chin up and Michael bent down, pressed a kiss to the tip of his nose and then knocked their foreheads together, their bodies swaying almost like a dance, pulled into one another’s orbits. Michael said something, low and soft, and Alex leaned in to kiss the edge of his jaw, before lifting a hand to run his fingers delicately over the skin on the spot his lips had just been pressed.
Kyle—
Kyle hadn’t even known Alex was in town.
Kyle hadn’t even known Guerin was gay.
In fact, he’d classed the guy as a degenerate womanizer; could actually remember seeing him drunkenly hitting on women in the bar, the last time Kyle had been around to visit his parents.
So seeing them together, Alex Manes and Michael Guerin, had been more than a shock; it had been uncomfortable, bizarre, a puzzle with missing pieces. And yet somehow Kyle couldn’t quite look away. As he’d watched, Alex had lifted one of Guerin’s hands, the fucked up one with all the weird scarring on the back, and brushed the pads of Guerin’s fingertips against his own bottom lip, before very carefully kissing the palm of that hand, then letting it drop. And Michael Guerin had let him do it, had stood still and silent, eyes fixed on Alex’s face like he’d never done anything more important than stand there on this quiet dark side street in the middle of town, letting another man touch him and look at him with obvious, undeniable, unending love in his eyes.
And, okay, yes, so Kyle wasn’t quite as big of a douche as he’d been in high school, but there was still that part of him that thought of love in terms of a man and a woman, and gay people as this—other thing. Like the kinds of relationships and companionships and intimacies available to Kyle Valenti, heterosexual, wouldn’t actually be on the table for queers, or something.
He’d walked away, then, aware that at any second that bubble of privacy might pop and the two men might notice Known Homophobe Kyle Valenti spying on their gay moment, and he hadn’t wanted to deal with what that would mean.
But he’d carried the image of the two of them, leaned in close together in obvious wanting and apparent affection, and he’d remembered it every time he’d seen Michael after that, wondered at the incongruity of what he’d seen that night when placed next to all of Michael’s public behavior.
See, there are the things you don’t realize are important, until they’re no longer around and you know to miss them.
Now, things are different. Kyle and Alex are friends again, and hell, Kyle would even go so far as to consider Guerin a friend, too, although he sort of doubts Michael would condescend to agree. Alex and Michael aren’t stealing moments of connection in dark streets whenever Alex is able to get away from a life in the Air Force: they’re a couple, living together and walking around town with their hands clasped tight; they’re happy, and Kyle is happy for them. And then he’s off chasing alien mysteries in Mexico, and he gets this phone call, and Alex is missing, and everything in the world feels off-kilter. Like a piece of foundation Kyle hadn’t even known he was counting on has suddenly vanished, and he can’t keep his footing anymore.
With Alex gone, Guerin is on edge, a restless, bordering on frantic energy buzzing beneath his skin, and it’s familiar, from what little Kyle has known of Guerin over the years. He has this tension to him, the way he holds himself, a bite of something in his words, and it’s easy to assume it’s anger, a chip on his shoulder. But it’s not, really. It’s… anxiety. It’s someone with a lot of gifts to offer and nobody to give them to. It’s the energy of a man who feels bereft of purpose.
Bereft of Alex. That’s been a guiding tenant of Guerin’s whole personality for their entire adult lives, and Kyle is only now starting to realize what a stabilizing influence Alex and Guerin are on one another, how much better and smoother they function as a unit than either of them can manage apart. It’s setting Kyle’s teeth on edge, seeing Guerin this way. It’s wrong, like going back in time to a point where something that has since been repaired, is still inexplicably broken.
He remembers grabbing drinks with Alex a couple months back, after a day working at Deep Sky on their various projects, and Alex had been relaxed, smiling, looking more like the kid Kyle remembered from middle school than Kyle had seen in a very long time. And Michael had joined them a little later, still sweaty and grease-stained from a day working at Sander’s Auto. He’d strolled into the Pony with those cowboy boots and that signature Guerin swagger, and he’d seen Alex before Alex had seen him, and Kyle had watched the smile bloom over his face. He’d known to find them there, had come on purpose to meet them, and yet even so it was almost like Michael was relieved, had been missing something and had finally discovered it, the pieces all clicking together. Kyle had seen the way Alex had relaxed back into Michael’s touch at once, tilting his head up to say hello. Michael had bent forward and kissed him upside down, and Kyle’s heart had clenched, he’d been so jealous of them in that moment, wanted so badly for that casual intimacy, that bright, happy relief at being together after only hours apart, to be a part of his life too.
If they can get Alex back from wherever he’s gone, Kyle kind of hopes he gets to be there to see it. To watch the moment the tension bleeds out of Michael’s shoulders, the muscles in his jaw relaxing into a smile of relief. He wants to see the moment Alex knows his home has returned to him, to bring him back where he belongs.
Kyle wants a lot of things, really, maybe more than his fair share.
He wants Isobel, with an ache that has become so familiar and well-worn it’s almost bearable. He wants, in a more general way, to help people. He wants a happy life, he wants kids, a house, he wants to be the kind of doctor that patients feel safe with. He wants his friends to be happy, he wants to be around to be Uncle Kyle if Liz and Max decide to start a family, he wants to go to the bar after work and catch up with Maria, laugh over inside jokes and reminisce over shared hard times. He wants to catch up with Rosa in New York, become brother and sister the way they never had the chance to when they were kids. He wants to be around to watch Michael and Alex continue the life they were always meant to have together. He wants to go over to their place to watch the game or have a barbecue; talk nerdy with Liz and Alex about alien tech and biology, compliment Michael on his cooking just to make him uncomfortable, watch the way Isobel’s whole face transforms when she laughs, crowd together around the TV and then be so busy talking with his friends that he forgets to care about who’s winning the game.
He wants Alex to pull him aside at work one day and tell him the big news, that he and Michael are getting married, he wants to be asked to stand up there with him, he wants them to share a look as they remember where they’d started, kids wrestling in the mud and climbing trees and playing make-believe, all the way to where they are now, brothers in all but blood.
He wants to clap Michael on the shoulder in congratulations next time they see each other, wants Michael to roll his eyes and pretend they’re not friends and then finally break and smile because he’s just so damn happy he can’t help but share it with everyone around him.
Kyle wants to dance at their wedding. And he’ll work as hard as he’s ever worked at anything, to bring that future to pass.