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charlottedabookworm · 1 day ago

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HAPPY PRIDE!! Could i please get some Jayvik on this blessed day? 💖💖 If you havent seen arcane then dealers choise 😘

It takes him a few weeks to notice.

At first he just thinks it’s stress and lack of sleep. Of course he’s exhausted, he’s dealing with the shitshow of shutting down what remains of Project Shepard and witnessing another round of Guerin’s self destructive bullshit. Considering Caufield, considering the mere moments he’d gotten with his mother before she’d died in the explosion, Alex can’t say he’s surprised.

When Michael stands him up, not coming home the whole day that Alex spends there waiting, he takes the hint.

It’s whatever. In their long line of what they’ve done to each other, telling Alex that they’d talk and to come back tomorrow and then being away from home all day is – it’s whatever. He’ll try again later.

Later never really comes. Michael doesn’t answer his texts, his calls, and Alex doesn’t give up, exactly, but he has other things to focus on.

The fatigue hits him the hardest. Then headaches. All a little out of the ordinary, but what isn’t, these days? What finally forces him to go to the doctor is his leg getting swollen and inflamed for no reason he can figure out and its refusal to calm down even after a day out of the prosthetic.

One blood test turns to two and by the third he’s got a sinking feeling in the bottom of his stomach. By the time they tell him they need to do a biopsy, he already knows where this is going.

Cancer. Late stages, already in his bones, nothing they can do but try and get him a little more time and keep him comfortable. His doctor is more upset about it than he is, saying that this shouldn’t be possible, that she should have caught it long before now, that it doesn’t make any sense that she didn’t find it with how many check ups and tests he gets done for his leg. She’s frustrated and apologetic and near tears, saying that she doesn’t understand how this could have happened over and over again, and he ends up comforting her about it, which isn’t exactly professional, but he feels legitimately bad for her. It’s not her fault. It’s not something she could have caught or prevented. He knows exactly what happened.

Subject N-38.

The alien who gives cancer to anything around it, who killed Kyle’s father this same way, who was in the cell across from them when Michael broke the glass and set the self destruct off.

He’d had hopes. Plans. Things he wanted to do after getting out of the air force.

He reups as soon as he leaves the appointment. The things he needs to do can’t be done by a civilian, not in the time frame he needs to get them done in. There’s no point in trying to live his own life now when he has so little of it left.

He’s been on borrowed time ever since he got blown up in Afghanistan. There’s nothing for him to be upset about, really. He should be grateful he didn’t die in the desert of a foreign country. The desert he grew up in is surely a much better place to die.

If his laugh is too harsh and mean, it’s not like it matters. He’s the only one who hears it.

He sees Michael at Noah’s funeral, a drunken mess, and his heart aches. He saw his worst nightmare happening to all the people still left who were on the ship with him. He saw his mother, knows she endured decades of abuse, and only had moments with her before she’d died. It’s no wonder to him that Michael is a mess and part of him wants to reach out, but the rest of him knows better. The mood that he’s in, Michael will just lash out at him.

Watching Isobel pretend to cry over Noah, or maybe really crying because he may have been a liar and a murderer but for a long time she thought she loved him, he can’t help but wonder about his own funeral. It’s a dismal thought. His father will probably speak, never one to turn down a captive audience. It’ll be a town event, the tragic death of their hometown hero who survived the war but not illness, and the church – because his father will have it be at a church – will be packed full of people that never gave a damn about him, who will use his death as a tragic story they tell new people, and his stomach rolls. He tells himself that it’s from the medication.

He leaves Michael the guitar and almost laughs when he gives it back, when he says he can’t take it from Alex. He has work to do, he doesn’t have time to play. He’ll never have the time to play. It’s better it goes to Michael where it can do some good. Michael had said that music was only thing that used to quiet the chaos in his head and it’s clear he’s got a lot of chaos going on right now.

When Michael pushes him away, says they’re not good for each other, Alex has nothing to say. Nothing he can say. He’d wanted to make this thing with Michael work for once, wanted to spend the rest of his life with him. But with the rest of his life being so short, it’s not worth it. What would he achieve by finally fighting for Michael now? Nothing more than breaking his heart. It’s better this way.

But he’s selfish too.

He legitimately wants to help Michael find out more about his people, his mother, but he also wants an excuse to see him now that all their normal excuses are gone. He’s going to be dead by this time next year and he just wants a little more time with him, even as friends, even as colleagues, even as a man that Michael hates. Alex is used to subsisting on crumbs.

Michael dating Maria is an unexpected pain. In other circumstances, he’d be furious. Another betrayal, one more person who’s placed their own wants above him, just like his brothers never defending him or his mother leaving him behind or Jim Valenti caring more about his job than Alex’s safety or Kyle more about his reputation than Alex’s friendship or –

It doesn’t matter.

He’s dying anyway. What good does getting mad at Maria do him?

He’ll be gone and they’ll have each other and if each breath hurts a little more than the last, it’s not like it actually matters.

It’s not like he’ll have to put up with it for long.

Michael calls him for his help out at the Long farm and even as Michael goes through the list of people he’d rather be here with him right now, letting Alex know he’s literally at the bottom of it, Alex can’t help the warmth, the giddiness he has to bite down on.

He’s here with Michael and he’s looking at him, smiling at him, talking to him. Alex flirts a little because it’s not like it matters, Michael’s with Maria and he’s a dead man walking. Michael doesn’t react at all, neither a smile nor a flinch, and if that breaks his heart a little, well.

Michael’s been doing that for a long time anyway.

He arranges for their lab in the abandoned American Indian boarding school, he rescues Noah’s body and delivers it, he uses his badge and his influence as a Captain to clear out the hospital and give them the chance to save Max and against all odds they actually do it.

He wonders, just for the span of a single heartbeat, what it would be like to be loved that deeply. Then he moves on.

He has a lifetime of experience telling him he should know better. He’s no one’s first choice, no one’s priority, and it’s a sad story, but so what? There are lots of sad stories out there.

Sleeping with Michael and Maria is a mistake.

He knows it while it’s happening, a sick feeling in his gut that he can’t quite ignore even when Michael is kissing him. He’s exhausted and hurt and sick and dying and as much as he likes Maria when he can work his way past the betrayal of it all, she’s still a woman and as comforting as he’d found her touches moments before, they feel different now. Beyond that, he’s never so much as kissed Michael in front of someone before. Sleeping with him in front of his girlfriend, Alex’s sort of best friend, is enough to make him nauseous in a way that has nothing to do with his meds.

But this is probably his last chance to touch Michael, to put his hands and his mouth on him, and Alex is willing to pay any price for that.

He keeps the prosthetic on the entire time. It’s the only bit of armor he allows himself.

The next morning, he can’t quite hide his shakiness, the utter wrongness of it all even if he still can’t quite bring himself to forget it. Michael can tell something is off but doesn’t get it and that makes Alex angry even if it shouldn’t. Alex wouldn’t have agreed to something he didn’t want, not under normal circumstances, and Michael doesn’t know that these haven’t been normal circumstances since Caufield. It’s not his fault that he doesn’t get it.

Alex walks away and Michael goes to Maria and nothing between them has changed at all. That’s a good thing. This is for the best.

He’ll be out of their way for good soon enough.

Kyle finding out is an accident. No one was supposed to know.

Someone tells him about the light stabbing – his money’s on Maria because even though Michael has moved on from him and Kyle saved his brother’s life, Michael still sort of hates him – and he insists on checking it out. Alex tries to refuse and Kyle doesn’t listen and he pulls up his file and –

“It’s too late,” Alex says, watching as all the blood drains from Kyle’s face. “There’s nothing to be done.”

“You’re not even getting proper treatment,” he says, voice angry but weak, barely above a whisper. He’s still reading Alex’s file. “You’re just managing the symptoms.”

“There’s no point,” he says. “I’m dead either way. At this point this is more an issue of quality than quantity.”

“Alex!” Kyle snaps, and fuck, he looks like he’s about to cry.

This is what Alex had been trying to avoid.

“I don’t want to go through what your dad went through in the end,” he says as gently as he can. He’s not planning on ever getting to that point, but staying far away from radiation and pointless surgeries is part of it. Maybe it would buy him a few extra months, maybe not, but it’s not worth it to him.

He still has so much work left to do.

“My dad,” Kyle repeats, sudden understanding filling with his face. “Is this – the alien, N-38, did he–”

“When the building starting to collapse,” he says, the lie smooth on his tongue. It’s almost not a lie at all. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it. He was scared. And I’m a Manes man.”

If he can manage to dismantle the terrible, generations long legacy that Manes men in Roswell, he'll consider his short life to be well spent.

“Alex,” Kyle says again, a lost expression on his face that makes him look about two decades younger than his actual age, that makes Alex’s chest tighten in a way that has nothing to do with the illness ravaging through him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kyle is a good guy. He’s been there for Alex a lot recently. He was his best friend for a long time.

If he were sticking around, maybe he could be his best friend again, considering the recent opening, but thoughts like those don’t do him any good. The best thing he can do for Kyle is the best thing he can do for everyone, what he has so much practice in.

He just has to stay away.

Spending time trying to get closer to people who he’s just going to leave would be cruel. He grew up in cruelty and he’s tried so hard not to let it seep too deeply into him.

“You had to watch your father go through this,” Alex says. “I don’t want to put you through that again. It’s not fair.”

“You dying isn’t fair!” he snaps.

Alex shrugs.

Fairness is a concept he let go of a long time ago.

Michael enters the lab and finds it occupied, which isn’t too unusual considering Liz’s desire to perfect and double check and look at everything from every angle. It makes him uncomfortable even on the best of days, but he’s well aware of the fact that if Liz was an ounce less brilliant, they’d probably all be dead and Max definitely would be. That’s gets her just a little bit leeway.

Except it’s not Liz hunched over a microscope.

It’s Valenti.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. Kyle is a surgeon, a good one, admittedly, but he’s been fairly uninterested in the alien science so far. It’s one of the few good marks he has in his favor.

“Research,” he says, voice flat.

Michael feels his irritation go up another notch. “Don’t you have a whole hospital’s worth of labs to do research in? What are you doing here?”

“Looking at some of Noah’s regenerating cells,” he answers.

There’s strange note to his voice that Michael can’t place. He’s not sure if it’s better than the strange note he’d had to it a moment ago or not. “Why? Max is fine.” Well, fine-ish. For now. He’s alive, anyway, and that’s all that matters. They have time to figure out the rest.

Kyle’s shoulders hunch. “Oh well, if Max is fine, then that’s all that matters, right? So glad we could all cheat and steal and lie and break the rules of ethics and law and life and death to save Max fucking Evans!”

“What the hell’s your problem?” he demands, grabbing his shoulder.

Kyle turns and shoves him away. “My problem? What the hell’s your problem? Do you have any idea what we could do with this, how many people we could save? We could cure cancer!”

Michael shoves him back, suddenly furious. This sounds like the shit Liz says when she’s high on the power of discovery and science and her own genius and forgets that he and siblings are people. “Well, I don’t give a shit about curing cancer. Sorry to all those dying people, but they’re not my problem.”

He’s not expecting it when Kyle grabs him and slams him against the wall, chest heaving and eyes wild. His eyes red and filled with a grief that Michael had been too busy bitching at him just then to notice.

“Kyle,” he says, a terrible sort of apprehension sweeping through him. “Do you have cancer?”

He closes his eyes.

“Does someone you know have cancer?” he presses. How fucked up would that be? First his dad, now – “Is it your mom?”

Kyle shakes his head.

He still won’t look at him.

Michael gets the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff, of the great yawning blackness stretching out beneath him. “Does someone I know have cancer?”

Kyle flinches.

He can feel his heartbeat in his ears.

If it was Liz or Rosa, then Liz would be here, probably with Max. He knows it’s not Maria.

They don’t have that many humans in common.

“What kind?” he demands, hearing his voice break and not giving a damn. “How far along? Has he started treatment already? When did he find out?”

Kyle covers his eyes with his hand and answers the one question Michael can’t bring himself to ask. “Eight months. If we’re lucky.”

He was on the edge and now he’s falling over it. He can’t feel his body. “No.”

“It was N-38,” he continues, misery and grief and rage now all too clear. “Alex says that when the self destruct sequence went off, the glass cracked.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “You’re an alien, so you’re fine, but he,” he cut himself off, shaking his head.

No.

He’d cracked the glass.

He’d been trying to get to his mother and he’d set off that self destruct sequence. He’d cracked that glass and because of it – “No.”

“Guerin, please,” Kyle says, letting his hand slide off his face. “Human medicine couldn’t save my father and it can’t save him. Please.”

Michael turns and leaves without another word.

This can’t be happening.

Why is this happening?

He tried to save his mother, and he killed her. He left Max alone, and he killed himself.

He left that prison because his mother told him to run, yes, but also because if he’d stayed then Alex would have stayed too. He’d left that prison to save Alex’s life.

And now it turns out he’s the reason that Alex is going to lose it.

His thoughts are so loud and desperate, climbing over each other in their fear that all he’s able to process is silence, a strange mental breakdown version of white noise.

He doesn’t have the key to Alex’s new house in the center of town but he can pick locks in his brain.

He storms into the kitchen and sees Alex release his hand from his firearm. He’s in uniform. It’s early, Michael remembers. Alex is probably on his way out the door to go to work. He has no idea what he would have done if he’d shown up here to Alex gone.

“Guerin,” Alex says slowly, a guardedness there that he’s not sure he’s noticed before. Is it because he can tell that Michael knows? Or is this just a result of the threesome that had sent Alex running faster than pretty much anything else Michael had ever done? “You could have knocked.” His looks him over and his eyes narrow. “What’s wrong? Is Max okay?”

“Were you going to tell me?” he demands. He sounds angry. That’s good, he thinks.

He feels like his entire world is collapsing around him. Maybe it is.

Alex goes entirely still then curses. “I’m going to kill Kyle. Whatever happened to doctor patient confidentiality?”

“He’s not your doctor,” he says. Part of him wants to smile but the rest of him is too busy being destroyed at a cellular level. “You should have told me. Max can heal you.”

He sends him a flat look. “Max can’t heal so much as a papercut right now without putting his heart at risk and we’re all out of viable donors if he shreds this one too. If he can even do anything for this to begin with. Cancer isn’t exactly a bullet wound or a broken hand.”

“He brought Rosa back from the dead, he can cure you,” he snaps, ignoring the small voice telling him that Alex might be right, that Max hasn’t really healed something that wasn’t straightforward before. Maybe it doesn’t work that way. But if he can bring back a girl that was dead for over a decade, he can save Alex.

“And it killed him,” Alex points out. “Considering all the effort we just put in to saving his life, I’m not all that interested in ruining our hard work.”

Michael’s eyes burn. For months Alex has been working to shut down Project Shepeard, to help him find information about his mother, and he’s done everything he could and pulled every string he has to help Max. All while he knew he was dying and none of them knew it. He’d watch them move heaven and earth to save Max and said nothing about his own illness.

He doesn’t understand why. They could have been working on a cure for him too, this whole time, they were already spending so much time in the lab anyway.

“He’ll get stronger,” Michael says. Somehow. He and Liz can figure something out, a way to boost his powers without it hurting his heart, something.

“I’ll be dead by then,” Alex says, dismissive, almost mocking.

Michel rubs a hand over his face. Is he crying? He doesn’t think so. He just – he just needs to hold it together for this one conversation, just needs to get figure out how to save Alex, and then he can fall apart later. “Then we’ll put you in a pod. As soon as he’s strong enough, we’ll take you out, and he’ll heal you.”

“No.”

He drops his hand. “What do you mean no?”

“I mean no,” Alex says, cool and resolute. They’re talking about him dying and they might as well be discussing the weather. “That could be years. I’m not doing that, not missing years of everything and waking up to a world I don’t recognize. That’s a nightmare. Look what it’s done to Rosa.”

“At least you’d wake up!” he shouts. “If you die, then you miss everything!”

He shrugs.

Michael can feel the tears building, threatening to spill over. Alex gave him faith in humanity when he didn’t have any. Alex made him feel like he could belong on this strange, fucked up planet. Alex is the person he’s loved longer than anyone besides Max and Isobel.

Alex can’t leave him.

Not for good.

He swallows. “He said – the glass –”

Alex softens for the first time. “It’s not your fault, Michael. It was an accident. These things just happen sometimes, it’s not anyone’s fault.”

It’s his fault. He did this.

“Please,” he says. He’s not above begging. He’s not above anything if Alex will just let them help him. “Please, Alex, don’t – don’t do this, we can figure it out, okay?”

“There’s nothing to figure out,” Alex says, that softness draining away. “You’ve been on this planet long enough to know that sometimes humans get sick and die. It’s not anything that needs fixing. It’s just how life on this planet works for the people who are from here.”

It’s exactly like something he’s had to bite back from yelling at Liz at dozen times, a hundred, but he always held back because it felt too terrible a thing to rub in her face from a guy that had never had so much as the sniffles.

“I can’t lose you,” he whispers. Liz had said that she was surprised he hadn’t saved the world by now and Max had replied that Michael didn’t like the world enough save it. Well, fine, whatever, he’ll save this whole miserable planet if only it means saving Alex too. “Please. I want you – I want you to–”

To live. To fight. To never leave. To stay. He doesn’t know. All of it. None of it.

“No,” Alex says, a hard curl to his smile. “You want Maria, remember? That’s what you told me.” He breaths in too sharply like Alex has punched him. He thinks he would have preferred that. Alex’s mouth shifts to something a little more genuine, a little less mean. “You don’t want me. You just feel guilty and you don’t want me to die. You’ll get over it.” He swallows. “It’s good that you have Maria. You’ll take care of each other.”

After I’m gone, he doesn’t say, but he might as well have screamed it.

Anger sparks in the middle of the sea of devastation and he grabs hold of it to keep from drowning. Alex hadn’t seemed to care he was with Maria, offering nothing more than a shrug and sad smile, like Michael choosing someone else was just a mild disappointment, easy come easy go. But he’d shrugged over his own death too, and if he’d known that he was dying since sometime soon after Caufield –

“Were you ever going to tell us?” he asks.

“No,” Alex says, unapologetic, unrepentant. “Once it got bad, I would have left. I don’t want the fuss or the pity. I would have had left instructions to tell you all it was an accident. Those do happen sometimes, you know.”

He wishes he wasn’t a genius.

He wishes he knew Alex a little less well.

“You wouldn’t have trusted anyone to lie like that,” he says. The tears are spilling over and he doesn’t care. “You wouldn’t have waited to waste away.” Alex hates the loss of control. It’s why he won’t go in the pod, why he didn’t want anyone to know in the first place, when their reactions were so far out of anything he could manage. “You wouldn’t have had someone lie about you dying in accident. You’d have left us all and gone somewhere where no one knew you, made sure you had your wallet and phone and dog tags on you, and you would have arranged an accident.”

Alex’s face tightens. “Well, you know all about arranging accidents, don’t you?”

The barb doesn’t even sting. Everything else hurts too much for it to matter.

Alex isn’t even bothering to deny it.

He glances at the clock and sighs, as if this whole conversation has been some petty inconvenience. “I don’t have time for this. I have a lot of work to do and only about six months left to do it in.”

Alex brushes past him on the way out the door and Michael wants to stop him, wants to touch him, wants to hold him.

Instead he slides down to the cold floor, pulls his knees to his chest, and sobs alone in the middle of Alex’s kitchen.

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