neverlooksaway | Follow Through (for thenewnormal)

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Follow Through (for thenewnormal)

[Continued from TFLN]

Michael wasn't sure what he was doing, driving out to the Valenti cabin because Alex asked him to. It didn't make sense, but, then, nothing had since he'd gotten the misfired text. He thumbed back through the texts to look at them again. hot guy...huge crush... He found himself going back to the "huge crush," piece in his head while he drove. Then? Now? Still? Why was Alex planning to seduce him? What had he learned? Was Michael just setting himself up for more heartbreak?

Probably. Alex did this, though, pulled him right back in, made him believe, and then walked away. So, why, again was he backtracking when he missed the turn, taking the right one, rather than heading back to Roswell?

Because he was stupid for Alex Manes, and probably a little bit masochistic.

It took longer than it should have, with the backtracking, but he finally saw the lights of the cabin and turned off into the drive, pulling up to the cabin and cutting the engine off. He could still turn around, go back, but he knew he wouldn't. He was too curious about what Alex wanted here of all places, too keen to know what it was he was talking about, and too desperate to see just how and why he was planning to seduce him.

Still, he kept thinking about turning around even as he found himself at the door, knocking lightly.

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"Because my father knows," he said quietly. "About you, about Max, about Isobel. He's labeled the three of you terrorists, though the program he's been running is on his own dime and doesn't have any backing from the government." There was that, at least. But because he had to hate everything in Alex's life, everyone in Alex's life, he had to believe that this wasn't the end of it. That just because he'd said 'go' and his father went, that would put an end to it.

"Apparently it's something of a family legacy to keep an eye out for any...unusual activity since the crash. Not that I knew anything about it until recently because my dad only thinks I'm family when I make him look bad."

"I know you've never trusted him, but you needed to know he's been running surveillance on the three of you."

Michael froze, as Alex spoke, whole body going as still as a statue. His face went pale under his tan, and he felt his pulse racing, though he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

After the first sentence, he barely heard Alex over the roaring in his ears. My father knows about you, about Max, about Isobel. As he tried to breathe, unusual activity since the crash filtered in. Running surveillance. But it all went back to my father knows, and Michael felt a flicker of panic and an ache in his hand, a phantom memory.

He was silent when Alex fell silent, processing, trying to make sense of it, because this was nothing he'd imagined Alex saying. Reviewing the text messages, he realized maybe he should have, but he hadn't. If filters in, finally, the realization that this means Alex knows. Other things from the texts start to make sense, the ones that gave him chills, the things about his family, about everyone having died, the things that he thought he was reading into too much, because Alex couldn't know.

But Alex knew. Though the text about beliving the best about Michael could be reassuring, as was Alex running his father out of town, telling Michael, now. But his head was still reeling.

The cabin was too small, too close, and he still couldn't breathe. So, he turned around, opened the door, and walked back out onto the porch. He left the door open, didn't go far, just braced his hands on the railing, trying to make himself breathe, to keep things from rattling around the porch, or sending his truck bouncing backward.

Well, that could have gone better. Alex winced when Michael turned around and walked outside. This was the problem. He had no idea what would set Michael off. And maybe he should have figured that telling Michael he knew his secret would do it. But - and this was really perverse - it sort of felt like he was watching his father with that hammer all over again. He'd never felt so utterly helpless as he felt then except that he felt that same way now.

He leaned against the door frame, fists clenching and unclenching.

"Look, my dad's gone. I threatened to reveal what's going on to the Pentagon and they sort of frown on extra-curricular projects."

That didn't mean he wouldn't come back. But it meant that they would have time to prepare.

They. With the way Michael had his back turned, it looked like there would be no 'they'.

He thought Alex was probably trying to be reassuring with that, and he needed reassurance, but his panic was less to do with Jesse Manes than it was with suddenly having the thing he'd wanted to tell Alex just...out there, after ten years, without him having any control over how it came out. Kyle, maybe. Or Liz. But he didn't think Liz would have told him, not now. He tried hard to pull air in, managed it, only to have to let it out in a shaky breath.

He was cold, and in the back of his mind, he remembered this feeling, had a sense-memory, an impression, if nothing else, of how he'd felt in the first group home, with people being making sounds that were meaningless and too loud, and pulling him away from Max and Isobel and not understanding them or what they wanted.

This wasn't that--Alex's words, if not his motives, made sense. But the feeling inside was the same, and maybe part of it was the child's terror of Jesse Manes. He'd been hurt before, more than once, but never quite that brutally, never in a way that stripped so much away from him. And maybe it was not knowing what any of this meant to Alex, which meant he should probably turn around and say something, but he couldn't quite manage the first. His mind scrambled for words, at least, and found only questions, and he didn't even know which one to ask first.

"Why?" That wasn't quite right, except it was important. He had to clear his throat, try to speak around the swollen feeling there, and that wasn't much fun, but he thought he maybe kept the trembling out, even though he could see it in his hand, the visible shaking, that made him clutch the rail tighter to make it stop. "What does he--do you--know?" He needed that verification, something certain. "I mean, what did he...why us, and why did you make him leave?"

"Why did I...?" Alex frowned. "He thought you were terrorists. Claimed you've been getting close to me for the last ten years because you somehow knew that keeping the big alien secret is somehow a family legacy. He didn't say how you could have known when I didn't. He was running surveillance on you and Max and Liz. I ran him out of town because he's a fucking bigot and you can be pretty sure that the opinions he has of people are wrong. And when they're about you, they're dead wrong."

Alex felt a sudden stab of hurt.

"In a contest between you and my father, how could you ever think that he would win? I know that you and I don't always see eye to eye." Which was a bit of an understatement. They ran hot and cold. No, that wasn't quite right. They ran hot and hotter. Sometimes they couldn't get enough of each other and sometimes they stopped just short of fists flying. "But I would never choose him or anything he stood for."

And he would always choose Michael, but with the pain still in his chest, he couldn't say that.

You enlisted. Michael wanted to say. You chose what he wanted for you over what we could have had. But this wasn't about that, and Michael didn't have the energy to fight. He wrapped his arms around himself, waited for the relief to come, because Alex apparently knew--or at least knew someone thought they were aliens--and that was a secret he'd hated keeping. The longer Liz and Kyle knew about it, the more ridiculous it did that Alex didn't.

His brain kept cycling, but he made himself turn around, leaning back on the railing, arms still tight around himself, like that would hold in everything pressing to get out.

"That's not what I meant." Alex had known what he was going to say, what this meeting would be about; he'd had time to prepare. Michael was trying to catch up. He looked up Alex, still pale, gaze wary, afraid, even, though he was still trying to get the reaction back under control, not analyze the reasons for it. "Thank you, for not believing the worst. For...protecting us..." If that was the why. "But I need to know what he knows, not just what he thinks. What you know. Who else he might've told."

Whether Alex believed him about any of it--though Michael's reaction probably erased doubts. Whether Manes knew about their powers. Whether or not Alex's dad was the only threat, or if they needed to run. Now was not the best time for that, with Isobel, but they'd work it out if they knew what they were up against.

He was struggling, trying to pull back to himself, to find a smart-ass remark, but this wasn't the time, and he couldn't muster up his usual anger, even if that was his normal response to fear. There wasn't a target; Alex didn't deserve his temper, and it was just throwing it more internally.

Protecting you he could have said. Should have said. But Alex was tired. Tired of caring for a man he hardly knew. Tired of this back and forth that had been going on for ten years that always ended up leaving his heart broken. What he should have done long ago was find someone else and move on, but every time he tried, it felt like a betrayal.

"All I know is that you were the boy I fell in love with in high school. And that my father ruined one of the only things that seemed to make you happy. I barely knew the boy except for how he made me feel and I know the man even less."

Ever single of those things he said was true. It was what he wasn't saying. That he still felt that connection that he couldn't explain. That he still would rush to defend Michael from other people even when shunning him for being a thief.

"That's what I know. The rest...doesn't matter. I've got something to give you and then you can have my dad's keycode and passwords and you can go find out for himself what he knows."

Alex turned and walked back inside. He'd put the shard that he'd found downstairs in his gun safe in the bedroom and so that's where he headed, letting Michael choose or not to follow him.

The rest...doesn't matter. Michael wanted to believe that, even though he realized that what Alex knew was really pitifully small. He may not have known all the facts of Alex's life, but he could've listed off more than that. But that "doesn't matter" caught in his brain, even as he pushed off the rail and followed Alex back inside.

But there was nothing else hopeful in there. Nothing from the early texts, nothing of the part where Alex was reevaluating and maybe had been wrong about Michael, nothing to hold on to to make all of it okay in his head.

And that sparked his anger, because he'd come out here hoping and now he felt jerked around, wondering what he'd done to fuck it up this time, or if Alex just had bait and switched things, playing on Michael's feelings for him just to...what? Why not just tell him this over texts? Why give him hope for one thing, then just fucking terrify him with another?

Anger was good, familiar, better than the shaking fear, but he was also exhausted and maintaining it was too hard. It got him through the door again, to the bedroom, and then the hurt and anxiety were both there again, but he had his guard up again, his shield. Because it seemed like rejection all over again, and after making it sound like he regretted it before, and Michael was spinning and confused and trying to hold on to the clearer, easier, safer emotion. You didn't show vulnerability like he just had; he knew better.

"What do you mean it doesn't matter?" he demanded. "You knew all this when you sent the first text--and it didn't matter who or what I might be, because you at least know I'm not a terrorist, and I was the boy you fell in love with and maybe you were sorry for walking away again? Or it doesn't matter, because you don't think I'm a national security threat, so don't need or want anything else to do with me, and you brought me up here to give me whatever you have, do the decent thing and warn me, and send me on my way out some kind of sentiment for something you once felt? Or it doesn't matter, because you may not know all the facts, but you actually do know me, and the facts don't change that? Do you even want to know more? Is that why I'm here? Did you send your dad away to give us a head start, or because you wanted to find a way for us to stay?"

And, goddammit, his voice had to go and break at the last part, and he felt like the kid no one ever wanted all over again, except Alex was the one person who had, but then he'd walked away, too, twice, and now seemed ready to do it all over again, after getting Michael's hopes up with those stupid fucking text messages.

The gun safe was in Alex's closet and he had crouched down to open it. At Michael's words, though, Alex felt that urge to hit something again. Instead, he picked up the bag of mostly water now that he'd put down in order to get to the safe and threw it at Michael's head. He hadn't smashed his hand against the wall because he didn't care.

He could just open the safe and write down a few combinations and passwords and be done with it. Be done with Michael. But that was the thing, wasn't it? He felt as if he'd never be done with Michael. Not as long as he was in Roswell. Not as long as he was anywhere.

"It doesn't matter because I'm tired," he said, getting to his feet slowly without opening the safe. "I'm tired of trying to figure out what this back and forth between us is because all we ever manage to do is dance around. One of us takes a step forward and the other a step back. It doesn't matter because you don't know me. Not if you think I'd have left willingly for the military of all places. It doesn't matter because I know. Enough that you can justify talking to me, telling me about you without thinking you've betrayed anything or anyone."

He took a step closer to Michael. "If you want the buzzword for proof, alien. You're not human, Michael, except in all the ways that count."

Because the way Michael looked at him? That was all too human. So was the way it felt to be curled up next to him in the morning in those hours when anything seemed possible before the weight of the day crushed him back into silence.

"So no, it doesn't matter because I'm not going to take anything my dad says as the truth. But I'm also not going to go digging any more than I already have for the truth. You want me to know, you can tell me. So do you want to talk or am I getting that information for you so you can be the one who leaves this time?"

It was pure instinct, even though it was one he was used to stifling. He could've dodged the bag of ice water, but he knocked it aside mentally, instead, on a very different trajectory than Alex threw it, so it hit the adjacent wall. He'd wanted to do that a dozen times in group and foster homes, had before he learned that just got you crosses burned in your skin (but, at least, they didn't say "alien," didn't call in the government, though he wonders now if there were reports and Jesse Manes found them).

He didn't even glance at it, once it fell, but kept his gaze on Alex as he explained, and something loosened, a knot he'd had inside him so long it didn't even consciously know it was there anymore. Alex's admission of how tired he was echoed Isobel's from just a few weeks before, and Michael let out a slow sigh, then closed his eyes briefly, rubbing his hand over his face, before moving in closer to Alex in turn, then past him, just a little to drop down onto the bed.

"I'm tired, too. Of all of it. Secrets. Fear. Not knowing where I stand with...anyone, really." He ran a hand through his hair, realized it was still trembling, maybe from the adrenaline of the fight-or-flight response earlier, maybe from something else. "You wanna talk? We can talk."

Though he had no idea where to begin. Possibly with the fact that, oh, yes, the water dripping down the wrong wall. Or not. He wanted Alex to know everything, but everything was a lot, and he was still on guard--less about the secret, more about his heart.

Alex heaved a sign and went over to sit next to Michael. He had no idea what to say either. How could he explain the turbulent emotions he felt any time he and Michael were in a room together? How could he explain this connection he felt that shouldn't have existed? Like he knew Michael down to his soul when all he really knew were the basic facts. Hell, Maria probably knew Michael better than he did.

He wanted to reach over and take Michael's hand, the one ruined by his father. That was something he'd never understood. Why hadn't Michael gone to the ER? Sure, he'd been a kid on his own living in his truck, but someone would have taken pity on him. Kyle's father would have taken him in, Alex was sure of that. Almost sure. Given that the shard of what was probably an alien ship was hidden in his cabin and not with Alex's father's collection of all information alien, even if he'd known he might have helped.

But could they have dared the blood tests that would have happened, not to mention any kind of allergic or toxic reaction where, to a human, it would have been fine?

He kept his eyes on Michael's hands and his own hands to himself. "Why don't you start at the beginning. Three children are found wandering down the middle of the road. Mute."

Michael would've welcomed the touch, but he didn't feel like he could reach out for it himself. Instead, he unconsciously wrapped his arms back around his body, mentally girding himself to talk about the beginning, which was pretty horrible, no matter how you cut it.

"I don't know the real beginning. The ship crashed, and we were in these pods, I guess. I don't know if we were already born, or cloned, or hatched, or whatever the process is and in stasis, or if we were grown in the pods. Stasis was involved, obviously, in some way, unless alien gestation is fifty years." It was a flat attempt at a joke. "But we didn't know any of that, then. We just...woke up, and we clawed our way out and then went looking. For our family. For help. I don't really remember. We were mute, because we didn't have language at the time. I remember it in pictures, but I can't remember what I was thinking. I was scared. We were scared. There were bright lights--probably the headlights, and sounds--horns, maybe--and people. So many very loud people, making noises at us that we didn't understand."

Maybe it was the earlier panic attack, but he felt the fear again now, like it was yesterday, and he tightened his arms.

"We ended up in a group home. I don't remember a whole lot from then, except when they took Max and Isobel away, left me there. I remember screaming, then, but it might've been just in my head. And, then...they were gone. And I didn't see them again for a long time. It's all fragments, y'know? Emotion. I was terrified, and alone, and someone...the people who took me..." He shook his head, exhaled a shaky breath. "I learned to talk, eventually. I don't remember how or when." Of course, a lot of what he'd learned had been the names they'd called him for being too stupid to talk, for being defective, and worse.

Angry, that was what Alex was feeling. Angry on Michael's behalf. Whether it was the people who had adopted Isobel and Max or the adoption agency itself, but someone had made a conscious decision to split the three of them up. Language or not, they must have known each other. They must have known that it was the three of them and then suddenly a lot more people.

But that poked something he'd wondered when he'd first found out about Michael's story.

"Are you three related? I mean, what you went through would pretty much make you family, but do you know if you're actually related? For that matter, how would anyone have been sure that Max and Isobel were twins?"

Unless that was why his father had ended up suspecting that something was going on with them. Unless there was some report out there that said 'other'.

"No." Michael shook his head. "I mean - we don't know if we're actually related. We don't even know if our DNA would show a blood relationship in the same way--if the same tests would work to find out, and. I've never...wanted to know, for certain." Because he was pretty sure he wasn't really their brother. "I don't know why everyone assumed Max and Isobel were twins rather than us being triplets." Their eyes were all the same color. "Max and Isobel think they're twins, because they've got this psychic bond. They can feel each other there, all the time, like just this low-key presence. I can't feel them that way." But that wasn't something the group home would've known.

"We've always said we were family, though. They call me their brother, and we've always celebrated our birthday as being the same--the day we were found. But I've never been as sure as they are. Isobel got really pissed the one time I said that, though."

Their childhoods had been so different; he couldn't feel them in his head; he always felt a bit outside of them.

"Something I learned after I got away from this town? Family is whoever you want it to be, not necessarily the one you're born with. Do you think they'd have your back if you really needed them? Not, like, a morning after in the drunk tank need. I'm talking life or death kind of thing."

His eyes stayed firmly on Michael's hands as he said, "Heartbreak kind of thing. Something that really matters."

He'd met guys like that in the service and not always the people he was teamed up with. Sometimes it was just someone who would let him talk about anything or nothing. Those were the guys who stayed in touch as best they could after he was injured.

"Yes." As much as they'd fought these last years, Michael had no doubt that if he needed them, they would both be there. Isobel had been, all this time, thinking he'd killed those girls. Max had gotten him out of most of the major trouble he might've gotten into.

"It's not them. It's me, not feeling like I belong. But I know they have my back, like I have theirs. It's not their fault, what happened to me, and Max has done his best to try and make up for it through the years."

"Then Isobel is right. You're family." Alex didn't know what to say about Michael not feeling like he'd belonged. He'd always been on the fringes a bit in school. Popular enough with the girls and never an outright enemy to anyone in school, but not really a part of anything, either. He just always seemed to be wherever Isobel and Max ended up.

"All right, so then you and I met and I'm pretty sure I know how that story goes." Down to the busted hand and Michael's inability to play the guitar ever again.

Damn. He should have hit his father harder.

"Why did you stay in town? I thought for sure you would have gotten out of here, first chance you got."

"You skipped a few years," Michael said quietly, mainly because they were important years, if Alex really wanted to know him. They were the years he didn't talk about to Max and Isobel much, the pieces that formed the foundation for everything else.

"I was gonna leave, you know. Had a full ride to UNM. But why I didn't is...complicated."

Alex swallowed. "I wasn't sure if you'd want to talk about that." Alien things were fair game, but Alex knew Michael had a past that was just about having a shitty childhood. In a lot of ways, Alex could relate. The one moment of violence that Michael had seen from Alex's father had been unique in that it had been the most brutal he'd ever been, but raised hands had not been a new thing in the Manes household.

Maybe that's why knocking him out with his crutch had been so satisfying.

"But I'll listen if you want to tell me."

"I don't, really. Not in detail." He never had. Maybe he should, maybe it would release some of the constant anger that always simmered underneath his skin. But he couldn't, today, not with fear still swimming so close under his skin. He knew Alex could understand, Alex just telling him things were bad at home, and then seeing what Jesse Manes was capable of, let him know they'd probably gone through a lot of the same things. But it was less the violence, more the...being lost that was important.

"No one in Roswell would take me, after Isobel and Max were gone. The people who finally did--they took me away. That's why I wasn't around when you all met in elementary school." So, he hadn't just been separated like in different households from Isobel and Max. He'd been gone. "It...wasn't good there. And I got sent back here, ended up in a group home again a couple of years later. Which was...better, I guess. 'Cause I found Isobel and Max again, and could at least see them at school. I kinda bounced from family to family to group home. No one wanted me for long, and I guess I can't blame them. I was angry, a lot. That chaos I told you about. And then--" He glanced around, held out his hand and called a book into his hand from the nightstand. "My powers started manifesting."

His gaze dropped to the book. "I didn't have control, though. So, mixing anger with out-of-control telekinesis? You've seen Carrie, right?" It's a rhetorical question. "I'd get mad, and furniture would go flying. I learned to control it before anyone ever got seriously hurt, but. The lady at the group home I was living in when I was 13 called in an actual exorcist. For the record--exorcism sucks."

The funny thing was that the whole group of them had circled around each other for years. Alex had mainly been friends with Maria and Liz. And then there'd been Michael. Liz had dated Kyle until he finally showed off his asshole colors - and thank god he was over that phase. But you also couldn't help but see that Max was head over heels for Liz. And then, of course, there were Michael and Max and Liz.

But there'd been combinations that had never really happened. He'd never been anything more than passing acquaintances with Max and Isobel and so he didn't know their parents. But right at that moment, he was cursing them in his head. For giving up on a child who was clearly attached to the ones they'd adopted. And they had no way of knowing if they were related or not.

He'd been trying to keep himself detached, trying to keep a distance between them so that Michael could tell his story, but at this he found himself reaching out to grab Michael's hand and hold it in his.

"People suck," was his succinct response to the entire situation and he squeezed Michael's hand.

"Yeah. That's generally been my theory, with few exceptions." Michael wrapped his fingers around Alex's, holding on tight. "I said 'fuck it' when I was sixteen. Got a job at the junkyard, and figured my truck was better than where I'd been." And despite that, he'd managed the grades and test scores for a full scholarship.

"And, then...I met you. And you were nice to me. Pretty much the first human ever to be." Not that they'd all been cruel. He'd had teachers who'd encouraged him, obviously. And Sanders had given him a job, let him park and crash in his truck in the junkyard. But that simple kindness, looking and seeing something so simple as that Michael might be cold at night. That hadn't even occurred to Max, let alone any of his teachers or his boss or the adults surrounding them.

Was it any wonder he'd fallen in love so hard and so fast? That it had lasted so long? That he just wanted to shift and wrap his arms around Alex and hold on forever--fuck everything else going on around them? But he didn't do that; just held onto his hand fiercely, like the anchor it was.

"You were..." Alex sighed. He didn't know how to explain Michael. What he'd thought of Michael. Cute, sure. You couldn't see Michael smile and not see that. But with a handful of words, he'd seen something of a kindred spirit, too, and he couldn't not make the offer. And every moment they spent together after that, however brief, just sharpened that conviction. "You just were, I guess."

Everything Alex hadn't known he'd been looking for. A part of him he hadn't realized he'd needed.

He almost wanted to say the hell with it. He didn't need to know more. He wasn't sure how much else he could handle. At least after this. Hell, exorcism. Because there was definitely more. There was whatever reason Michael had used not leave the town, the state. And there were other things he didn't want to think about, like why and how his father had connected bodies to Michael and his...well, family, he supposed.

He leaned back until his back hit the bed and he was staring at the ceiling.

"I wasn't going to seduce you," he said. It hadn't been his intention, at least, although with them who knew. Things always seemed to begin and end in fireworks and that was definitely how tonight had started. "I just thought it might be...easier to talk with something to drink."

Michael was glad Alex didn't just launch into more questions. He was still trembling a little from the adrenaline--or whatever they had in its place--rush of the panic attack, and curling up next to Alex sounded far better than talking more, going into more hard stuff.

He quirked a half-smile at Alex's explanation that wasn't really, but was, tied to who and what they'd been and maybe who and what they'd become--he wasn't sure.

But he stretched out on the bed, in turn, still with his fingers wrapped around Alex's before giving him a look. "That's a cruel bait-and-switch, Manes." Especially since he had to know Michael still wanted him. Alcohol wouldn't go amiss, but he also didn't want to drink too much if he was supposed to head back home after he spilled his guts about the alien stuff.

Alex glanced over at Michael and chuckled. "That text wasn't supposed to go to you, remember? I was going to say that I needed to show you something and--" He stopped, thought about what he'd just said, and shook his head. "Never mind. You would have taken that the wrong way, too."

If it was really the wrong way. Here he was, lying next to Michael, and it was a sheer effort of will not to do anything but hold his hand. He wanted to wrap himself up in Michael and forget their shitty childhoods.

"I just wanted to get some real answers. To...know who you are."

Follow Through (for thenewnormal)

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