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Michael started to suspect his powers weren't going to stop freaking out around Alex anytime soon a few weeks after they started dating.
Learning to cook was more fun than Michael expected. Although, honestly, he wasn’t sure his expectations were based on much aside from none of the people he grew up with wanting to do it. Even Sanders, who did his best to keep Micheal fed and healthy, stuck mostly to one-step things like cut fruit and peanut butter and salad from a bag. The few times he made one of the two recipes he knew, Michael could hear him cursing a blue streak from the next room, and pans being banged around like gunshots.
But Alex treated cooking like Michael did fixing cars, or how they both did music - something that calmed him, quieted him, put his thoughts back in order. Learning from him, Michael started to feel the same way, although whether that was because he loved mixing and measuring and grilling or if it was because he associated cooking with his boyfriend, he couldn’t say.
Either way, he was totally in the zone, stirring the sauce with his telekinesis while he seasoned the chicken thighs, when Alex pressed up behind him and said, “What’s all this?”
Michael shivered at the sudden warmth of Alex and the way his breath felt on his neck, and the spoon that had been stirring the sauce went flying and splatted quietly against the wall.
Alex looked at the spoon as it fell to the floor, then at Michael, his eyebrow raised. “Happy to see me?”
“Always,” Michael said, clearing his throat to cover his embarrassment. “Sorry about the, uh …”
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex said, and he actually sounded like he meant it. Because Michael was dating the most unflappable man on this planet, apparently. “I didn’t teach you to make … whatever this is.”
“Nope. Sanders only knew two recipes, and this was one them.” With some improvements from similar recipes he’d found on the internet, but neither Alex or Sanders needed to know that part. “I thought I’d surprise you. I know how stressed you’ve been with your winter concert coming up and I thought … I dunno. Thought it’d be nice.”
There was a moment of silence, Alex staring into Michael’s eyes as much as he could from the odd angle. Then, in a gruffer voice than usual, he said, “Thank you, Michael.”
He leaned forward and kissed Michael briefly, but it was awkward when he was still standing behind him, so he dropped his head into Michael’s neck and kissed him there instead.
A chicken thigh leaped out of the plate and smacked against the wall right in the middle of the sauce splatter the spoon had made.
“… whoops.”
*
Alex Manes was a damned menace, and that's why his powers wouldn't stop glitching. It was completely Alex's fault.
It was a wickedly cold winter, and Michael’s boyfriend apparently didn’t adjust well to temperature fluctuations. If they kept the thermostat down, he spent the day covered in three layers, including adorable oversized sweaters; if they jacked it up, Alex often ended up in nothing but pajama pants, or underwear and a tank top. And either way, Michael couldn’t keep his hands off of him. Which Alex claimed was actually Michael’s fault, but he could wear a ratty hoodie like Michael did and look like a mess around the house, and he chose not to. That was on him.
It was getting to be a problem. Not for them - it was great for them - but for their stuff. Michael had hoped that his power issues were due to bottling up his feelings for Alex, or maybe unresolved sexual tension. He’d thought that once they got together, he’d be able to get it under control.
So far, that hadn’t worked out. They’d tried to keep sex restricted to the bedroom at first; when that hadn’t worked, they’d ended up nailing down what they could and buying cheap, replaceable versions of the things they couldn’t, and Michael became increasingly grateful for Great-Aunt Winifred's heavy wood furniture. So things broke less now, but not never, and it hadn’t gotten any less embarrassing for Michael when they did.
“Shut up,” he whined, pressing his face into his pillow.
He felt the bed next to him shake slightly with Alex’s laughter. “I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s not funny. We’ll have to get a new lamp. Again.”
“Mm-hmmm,” Alex practically purred; when Michael propped his head up, it was to see his boyfriend stretching out next to him like a cat. “Third lamp this month.”
He scowled. “You suck.”
“Yeah. If I remember correctly, it was during the sucking that the lamp broke.”
Michael barked out a laugh in spit of himself, pushing himself up to hover over Alex on one arm. “What a dirty mind you have, Manes.”
“Didn’t used to,” he said, smirking at Michael, his eyes dancing. “You’re a bad influence, Guerin.”
“Mmm, good,” Michael said with a filthy grin. Then he sobered, running his hand over Alex’s arm. “It really doesn’t bother you? Things flying around all the time, having to get new stuff every other week?”
“It really doesn’t.” Alex smiled shyly at him. “I used to be deep in the closet, remember? You’re only my second serious relationship. So having this very clear sign that you’re as into me as I’m into you, it’s worth a few lamps. You’re worth -”
He cut himself off, gaze shifting away, like he was about to say something too big. And even though Michael wanted to hear it, he didn’t want to push, either.
So he grinned and leaned down and said, “You have no idea,” then kissed Alex slow and dirty.
Half an hour later, they broke the alarm clock, too.
*
It was nearly April before Alex finally found something out about the Caulfield inmates. He was sitting at the kitchen table, Michael hovering over him filled with anxiety and excitement, and Alex pointed to a handful of words on the long document on his screen: “Twenty-two experiment subjects still at large.”
“So what does that mean?” Michael asked, even though he knew. But it had been such a long time, he’d hadn’t really believed it was possible, hadn't thought there was a chance that any of the aliens were still alive, let alone free. “Does it -“
“It means some of them got away.”
“They got away?” It felt like something kicked Michael in the chest but in the best possible way, joy and shock mixing into a sudden jolt. He pointed at Alex’s laptop “Well, c’mon, let’s find ‘em!”
“I’ll try, but Michael, I’m not … I don’t do this as much anymore. It took me this long just to hack into the old Caulfield files. It might be months, even years before we track down people who have been hiding from the government for over a decade. I'm not even sure where to start looking.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I wish I could -“
He was cut off when Michael kissed him.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he told him when he pulled away, his voice awed, Alex’s face cradled between his hands. “Now I know some of us are out there. That’s … it’s everything.”
Alex smirked, even while his eyes were soft. “So you’re gonna patient while I look?”
“Probably not. But I’ll try.” He bent down and kissed Alex again, murmuring, “Thank you,” against his lips, and for a few moments, there was nothing but that elated feeling in his chest and Alex's lips pressed against his.
Then Alex broke away, crying out, “Michael, not the laptop!” and grabbing the computer out of midair.
*
“It doesn’t scare you?”
Alex hummed inquisitively, but didn’t move. He was lying on top of Michael, both of them snuggled on the lounge on the back porch on the first warm day of spring, as the leaves on the trees around them started to peek out. His boyfriend was half-asleep but Michael had spent the last week with the same question running through his mind over and over, and now, in this quiet moment, he finally couldn't stop himself from asking it.
“Seriously, Alex. It doesn’t bother you that there’s a bunch of aliens just out there in the world?”
“What?” Alex lifted his head, blinking in sleepiness and confusion. “Why would it?”
“Because they have powers and they probably hate your government and they … I don’t know, they’re aliens. That’s enough to scare most people.”
Alex studied him for a few seconds, then shrugged. “No.”
“How? You know what our powers our like, mind control and reading thoughts and whatever the extent of Max’s electric powers are, plus how out of control my TK can be - it freaks me out sometimes, what we could all be capable of, how the hell are you so calm?”
“You’re seriously asking me that? Michael,” he said with a slight laugh, “because they’re like you. And I could never be scared of you.”
“But why?” he asked, almost desperate for the answer.
“Because you make me a surprise dinner whenever you know I’m having a bad day, even if you had a bad day, too. Because you call Sanders twice a week, every week, and you call your sister three times. We live together, Michael, we have since we met, and I know you. Maybe if I’d found out earlier I'd have freaked out, but I didn’t. I already knew you by the time you told me, and I know you’re a good person.” He dropped a kiss in the middle of Michael’s chest, right above where his heart was pounding away madly. “I’m not saying all of the aliens will necessarily all be good people too, but I’m not scared that they’ll all be evil, either. And given how things have gone for them so far, I’m more afraid for what happens to them if they get caught again than what they’ll do to anyone else. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said softly, folding Alex back into his arms. Alex closed his eyes again, so he didn’t notice that their lounge chair lifted into the air for a few moments.
*
“I can’t believe you volunteered me to help chaperone a school dance.”
“I asked if you wanted to help out and you said yes.”
Michael pulled on his nice button-down, trying to make it sit right. “I thought you meant build something or rig some lights, not hang around watching pimply preteens to make sure none of them stand too close to each other or whatever.”
“Oh, they’re too scared to stand anywhere near each other,” Alex assured him as he tied his shoes. “We’re there in case one of them gets too panicked about asking someone to dance and passes out.”
“Great.” He looked in the mirror and tried rearranging his curls into something that looked respectable.
Alex stood up and walked over to Michael, pulling him close, probably so he’d stop trying to push his hair down. “Is it really that bad? Don’t you have any nostalgia from your first middle school dance?”
“I never went to any school dances.”
“Wait, what? None of them? Not even prom?”
“Nobody ever asked, and I was too scared to ask anyone.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Why? You’ve seen you, right?”
He ducked his head on a bitter laugh. “Yeah, but I was the angry poor kid for years, even after Sanders took me in, not to mention hiding the alien thing. Never seemed worth the risk of someone saying no, anyway. Or,” he added, grinning slyly at Alex, “I never met someone worth risking it for. But I think I would've for you.”
“Flattery won’t get you out of chaperone duty,” Alex said, laughing, but the light blush on his cheeks told Michael it might get him into something else.
So he stepped into Alex's space, angled his head down so he could look up from under his lashes, and said, “So, you’re gonna take me to my first dance, huh, Manes? That’s kinda romantic.”
“It’s a middle school dance in a gym. There’s balloons.”
“Still counts.” He dragged his thumb slowly across Alex’s jaw, then kissed him there, and then nipped at his neck. “I think we should celebrate.”
“This is work, Guerin, I can’t be late,” Alex warned, but he threaded his fingers through Michael’s curls while he said it, so he had trouble taking him seriously.
“You won’t be,” Michael lied, as his hand trailed down to the button of Alex’s pants.
It wasn’t much of a lie, as it turned out. And Michael hadn’t messed up their clothes too much or made anything fly around the room, so he was smug as hell, and a lot more generous to the nervous baby teens than he might’ve otherwise been. The night practically flew by, when he could make Alex blush just by grinning at him from across the room. Even if Debbie, the woman who had been Alex’s great-aunt’s friend and who was the most no-nonsense person he'd ever met that also wore novelty sweatshirts, glared at him every time he did.
He was ready to book out of there the second the last song ended, but evidently Alex had signed them up for cleanup duty, too. Not a big deal, given Michael’s powers, but they did have to wait until everyone had cleared out for him to use them.
As he was starting to levitate deflated balloons off the floor, he was surprised to hear music start playing again, and this time a song he recognized, the lesser known Flock of Seagulls single. He turned to see Alex holding out a hand towards him. “Do you want to dance?”
He let the balloons fall, taking Alex’s hand. “What happened to ‘middle school dance, gym, balloons?’”
“Maybe I saw the romance in it after all.”
Alex pulled Michael close and wound his arms around his neck. With an unsteady breath, Michael put his hands on Alex’s waist.
It was very middle school, their shoes squeaking against the floor, the music echoing against the walls, the colored lights obscured by basketball nets. He wondered if it would have been like this if he’d ever gotten up the courage to ask someone to dance; or if he’d ever gotten to live in Roswell, if he and Alex could’ve had this. That year Alex lived with Ortechos, maybe. He could picture a senior prom, Alex in a skinny tie and eyeliner, him in his only good jacket, getting in a couple awkward dances before he dragged Alex out to his truck. Maybe they could have been there for each other back when they were both so lonely and lost.
But teenage him was an idiot and too scared to let anyone in, and Alex had been traumatized, and he could see them crashing and burning just as easily. They had each other now, and that was all that mattered.
It was kind of cliché to say, “I love you,” for the first time at a school dance, but Michael did it anyway.
And Alex only lost his step for a second before a beautiful smile took over his face, and he whispered, “I love you, too.”
Balloons and glitter and streamers all lifted up and swirled around them, and Michael barely noticed, because all he could see was Alex.
*
By the time Halloween rolled around again, Michael had accepted that his power glitches were probably there to stay, because as hard as he tried, he couldn't always keep control of himself around Alex. And what he and Alex had was starting to feel like forever, so probably the power glitches were, too. It seemed like a fair trade to Michael.
At least putting together a haunted house was a lot easier when Michael could use his powers. He hung skeletons and bats and a really big spider from the highest branches to the lowest in every tree on the property, and he carved pumpkins out in spooky shapes while sitting nestled on the couch with Alex. When the kids came to their door, he rustled the nearest decorations a little and made a couple candles float. The kids were delighted while the parents and big siblings were all suitably impressed. He had more than one person subtly check for wires, which made Alex say with a completely straight face that he’d taken up amateur magic.
When Debbie stopped by with her grandkids, she looked almost relieved when the jack-o-lantern started quaking. “Finally, she told you.”
“Uh, who told us what?”
She rolled her eyes. “Nothing.”
When little ghosts and goblins stopped showing up, he and Alex collapsed onto their couch, Alex petting Michael’s head to soothe his pounding headache. “You did great tonight.”
“I barely did anything, I’m just out of practice. I spend more time trying not to use my powers these days.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I think the way you made the giant spider run up and down the tree was pretty cool.”
Michael twisted his neck so he could frown up at Alex. “I didn’t do that.”
“Ha-ha, very funny, it’s a little too late to be pretending the house is haunted now.”
“No, Alex, I’m serious. That spider took way too much power to get up there, I wasn’t moving it around.”
“Huh.” Alex looked genuinely worried for a moment, then went back to petting Alex’s hair. “Must’ve been the wind.”
“Yeah. I guess.” But Michael’s head hurt too much for him to worry about it, so he let himself sink into Alex’s hold. “Happy Halloween, baby.”
“Happy Halloween to you, too.”
*
Winifred winced, feeling a bit guilty. Deborah was right, probably; it was getting ridiculous how long she was taking to tell them. She spent most of her time in the attic or basement or wandering the grounds so as not to spy on them, but she was sure they still wouldn’t be happy if they knew how long she’d been around, not letting them know.
But they had their own burdens already and had managed to find happiness with each other. What good would it do to tell them they had a permanent third roommate? Especially since she’d caught both of them shopping for rings on their personal computers. And tomorrow was their anniversary.
No, she decided, wandering upstairs to give them privacy, better to keep them in the dark a little longer and avoid awkward conversations. They probably wouldn’t notice her again, at least not for a while. Not with how in love they were. And how often they were the ones making things move around.