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millie’s long list of malex fics | caught in the moment by prouvaireafterdark / @prouvaireafterdark​​

Michael is digging through his tool box when he hears a familiar voice behind him say, “Hey, Sanders. Wanna take a look under my hood?”

He turns around to see Alex Manes standing before him in all his emo glory: a black band t-shirt tight across his chest, immaculate black denim skinny jeans hugging his thighs, and a messenger bag stuck with pins slung across his shoulder. His eyes are lined in black, like always, and he’s got a beautiful smile on his face, one of those rare ones that are becoming more common by the day. Michael would like to think he’s got something to do with that.

Five times Michael Sanders’ dad almost walked in on him with Alex and one time he did.

comment: if you haven’t read lynne’s whole michael sanders au, you should absolutely go and do that. written in the wake of the sanders-tried-to-adopt-michael revelation, this is a beautiful, much happier version of the teen!malex story. i love it so much. please don’t stop at this fic; read the whole series!

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | chum, and throw me overboard by thepredatorywasp / @usbournejez

Alex has sympathy for them, his captors. He doesn’t have to condone their actions to understand their desperation. They are desperate, that much has been made clear. He has only an opaque sense of what they are truly after, but they clearly aren’t snatching people up for the fun of it. 

He wonders idly if the bootmaker he and Maria visited is connected to them somehow. He was off-putting, certainly. Set every alarm off in Alex’s head and hitch up every red flag, but there is no way to be certain, yet. Everyone he has seen since he was grabbed at Sander's has had their face obscured by a mask or a hood. Usually both.  

Alex is gone for four days before he is rescued.By the time he has had some real time alone to process, i.e. the approximate thirty minutes in the bathroom that he was granted, Alex has landed on his feelings on the matter. On being saved from sure death, on being the rescued part of a rescue mission. He is overcome with earned, rational annoyance.

comment: y’all probably know kieran for her masterpiece scream in there so be warned that there is no cute little baby river included this fic. instead, this is all about an alex-kidnapping, but written more than a month before 2x10. i just love alex’s attitude in this. “overcome with earned, rational annoyance” is my favourite line from the whole thing; i love me some alex-got-himself-kidnapped-on-purpose plot and when you couple it with kieran’s amazing prose, you’ve got 11k+ of brilliant fic. please be mindful of the tags, as alex is a unreliable narrator with some serious mental health issues. kieran notes that it’s “meant to be confusing because he is experiencing intermittent depersonalization” so honestly the fact that she can convey that whilst still maintaining a coherent story and consistent characterisation is why we  love her.

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | When You Walked In (the air went out) by el_gilliath / @el-gilliath

Alex doesn’t remember how it happened. He just remembers red eyes, a pain in his wrist, and waking up the next day in a bunk in Bahrain, a full-bird Colonel and his commanding officer sitting by his bed. It made him nervous then.It still makes him nervous now. 

While serving overseas in Iraq, Alex is infected with a rare local virus labelled VBT-01, whose symptoms include sensitivity to strong UV rays, most notably those at dawn, accelerated cell regeneration and heightened physical capabilities. Oh and a somewhat slightly inconvenient craving for human blood. But this virus isn't a stranger to the military and they help Alex manage his affliction, while using him as a weapon, until he's permitted to return home. Intent on living out a quiet, temptation free extended life in the desert with his suppressants, Alex instead finds his hard earned self control tested by none other than Michael fucking Guerin, the stupidly attractive nerd turned cowboy and the unusual scent of his blood.

tl:dr - Alex is a vampire and, being an alien, Michael's blood is like catnip to him.

comment: vampires! i love em, you love em, and tove writes a fantastic vampire au. focusing in on alex as the vampire-returns-home boy, to whom the alien’s blood (read: michael’s blood) smells particularly good. there’s flirting, some hurt/comfort, a lil bit of that good nsfw stuff, and some cool vampire lore. it all ties up neatly into a really entertaining fic!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | I see sparks fly, whenever you smile by SuchASeeweedBrain / @daffietjuh​

‘It’s my favourite day of the year.’ Liz said as she settled against the wall next to Michael.

‘If I had known this was a yearly thing, I would have moved to Santa Fe sooner.’ Michael said, and Liz laughed.

‘Well that’s why we’ve got to keep this on the DL. Otherwise we’d lose our front row seats to this.’ She motioned at the scene in front of them. There were at least twenty five firefighters on the grass behind the hospital. They were here for a “freshening up” of their medical training. It was partially an excuse to keep the ties between the first responders and the hospital good, and partially actual training. But, because this was New Mexico and it was hot as fuck, all of the firefighters had taken off their heavy fire-proof overcoats and most of them were now left in either formfitting t-shirts or tank tops.

Michael is a doctor and Alex is a firefighter. (Can I make it any more obvious?)

comment: daphne is so good at these au fics and we were absolutely missing a fireman au. as well as firefighter alex, this fic has some of my favourite things; dr guerin, michael + liz friendship, first dates, hurt + comfort... if you’re not interested yet i don’t know what to tell you!! the whole first chapter is michael and liz watching the firefighters in their form-fitting shirts as they do their training.

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | In the Bleak Midwinter by aewriting / @aewriting

In the end, none of it had mattered.

Not the perimeter alarm Alex had so carefully installed around his property. Not the favors he’d called in from his decade of service. Not the hours he’d logged poring over Project Shepherd files.

No, they’d gotten him on a normal Wednesday, up in Albuquerque, right before Christmas..

When Alex and Michael are caught by Jesse and imprisoned together, they find themselves facing increasingly desperate circumstances. Will they be able to find a way out when it's clear that Jesse has no plans to let them out alive?

comment: any fic that involves the capture of one or both halves of your ship has the potential to be devastating and boy howdy does this fic deliver. probably don’t start this one if you’re looking for a feel-good fic, but if you’re in the mood to enjoy some angst, hate jesse manes, and get real sad about boys who will endure anything for one another, i can’t recommend this fic highly enough. the emotions in this author’s fics are always so raw, so near to the surface, and despite how much it hurt me, i would read it again a thousand times.

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | A Soft and Elegant Semaphore by InsidiousIntent / @insidious-intent

It was the kind of day that required a solid sartorial armor before venturing out into the world, and Alex had spent the last six months cultivating an entire wardrobe. The neutral oversized clothing he had hid under since his return to Roswell was now solidly folded and packed away in space bags, replaced with deeper hues of navies and burgundies.

He moved to pick the black wool coat, draping it over his arms. While he was never overjoyed about these occasional visits to Master Sergeant Jesse Manes, he had kind of resigned himself to the reality of spending a lot of time around people (and things) who had tried to kill him. 

Roswell New Mexico is moving forward. Alex Manes is not.

comment: this is the kind of spooky shit i like!!! the underlying tension throughout the fic, the way that alex solves the mystery and how michael intervenes... i don’t want to say too much and spoil the way things unfold through the fic but it gave me goosebumps, and then came for my heart with the malex. it’s weird and beautiful and i was really captivated by it.

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | Things That Break by Nestra / @changingthingslikeleaves

As far as Michael is concerned, the competition for the alien with the most complicated love life is now a three-way tie.

Isobel, still mourning her dead husband, or the idea of her dead husband, who'd turned out to be an alien serial killer.

Max, who'd blitzed that serial killer (who had murdered his girlfriend's sister) and still probably wanted to tell Liz that her dead sister's burned body was in a pod in a random cave.

And Michael, who'd managed to fall in love with the son of the man responsible for torturing and killing the family he never knew he had. And who now has to figure out a way to explain his magically perfect hand, because Max couldn't keep his healing powers in his pants.

Sometimes things have to break before they can be made whole.

comment: another amazing post s1, pre s2 fic! there are a million and one things in this fic that i wish had happened in season two, and these little snapshots of michael’s time after the finale paint enough of a picture that you can imagine the days in between. he and alex have some conversations though, and you know that’s what i love to see. their conversation in the final chapter is one of my favourite post-s1 “get everything out on the table” conversations. even with season two almost done, i still go back and read this.

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | The Black Parade by Strangeredlantern, Vague_Shadows / @vague-shadows

"Nobody owns you, Guerin," Alex says.

“Yeah, right, of course not,” Michael agrees without conviction. “No one owns me. My body is just entrusted to the guardianship of the good ol’ Global Resource Alliance for the Care of Extraterrestrials.” With an acronym like GRACE the program couldn’t possibly be an evil, twisted, farce, after all. Michael’s seen the videos from the propaganda campaigns--been featured as one of the haggard faces in the videos of the crash survivors. It’s what made him such a popular request for the Antaran Family Placement program--except of course, the people who saw that terrified young alien on their screens had all been expecting some timid little child who’d lap up their praise and coddling eagerly and be a Good Little Showpiece of how generous and benevolent his placement family was.

Boy were they all disappointed to meet the real Michael Guerin....

A RNM-AU Inspired by District Nine, Arrival, and real-life coverage of UNHCR work.

comment: i know a lot of people are already on this fic but i wanted to highlight just in case there’s people out there who haven’t seen it! the premise is absolutely fantastic; antarians are refugees that came to earth and have been integrated into the system, although that’s going about as well as you can imagine. michael ends up on the manes property for his placement, meets alex, and well... you can imagine. the issues of power, control, and consent are so carefully navigated within the writing whilst not sacrificing any of the narrative or flow, which is so wonderful. the sweetness of blooming young love is explored parallel to the overarching dread of jesse manes, the warden and The Worst.

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | The Lost Decade by irolltwenties (Shenanigans) / @irolltwenties​

Late August in New Mexico sat like a wet wool blanket over the mesa, weighted and uncomfortable heat leeching the color from the world. It was narrowing down to the points of contact, the bright notes of near pain where his bare skin touched the metal of the truck bed. The blanket was thick, rumpled, and necessary under them. The sun had set an hour ago, taking the lancing white rage of the desert with it, leaving the heat like an afterthought, like a kiss after a kiss. It lingered and pressed against him where he lay, panting and slick with sweat.

Alex Manes had grown up in Roswell. He knew the heat. He knew the way it would burnish him in the summers, crisping him golden with the paler tan lines around his hips. It was an old friend.

They weren’t going to talk. They weren’t going to talk about this. There wasn’t time. 

Alex and Michael had a decade to fill in. [Meagn] took some liberties.

comment: the lost decade haunts me, and meagn’s take on this in-between time is seared into my brain. with a range of soft, angsty, devastating malex chapters, alongside the exploration of alex’s various (non-canon but i wouldn’t mind if they were) love interests throughout the decade. and even those chapters are interspersed with devastating malex crumbs. meagn’s fic fills the holes in my heart that the idea of the lost decade left in it. i must have read this a thousand times. this is sort of hopeful, and it fits into the greater narrative of Til the Night, but be aware that it’s not a fluffy malex fic!

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | I Won't Hesitate (for you) by bichaelmanes / @bichaelmanes

Alex Manes, renowned Private Detective, is resting board the Orient Express, after solving an open-and-shut case in Istanbul, when tragedy strikes and one of the passengers is discovered murdered in a locked cabin. Knowing he might be the only one who can solve this locked-room mystery, Alex takes it upon himself to solve this - seemingly - simple case.

Things quickly take a turn for the complicated as a 10-year-old murder case becomes connected to the current victim, the passengers might not be as trustworthy as they seem and Alex runs into a few old acquaintances.

The case may not be as simple as Alex first assumed, and soon he is faced with an impossible choice.

Will Alex solve this case, or does a murderer walk free?.

comment: if you’d told me this time last year that i’d be reading an rnm murder on the orient express au, i would’ve called you crazy. and yet here we are! this fic does a magnificent job of immersing you into the time and place, while maintaining the characters we know and love so well. i loved following along and piecing together the puzzle while alex did, and the history between him and michael is interwoven into the narrative so seamlessly. if you’re a fan of malex, agatha christie, or people getting murdered on trains; this fic’s for you.

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | How can I keep from singing? by JoCarthage  / @jocarthage

By the middle of the third verse, Alex’s heart was racing; it felt like a fight. Not the music -- they were twining together perfectly, Michael’s honey baritone with Alex’s brassy tenor, mixing and swirling.The fight was the control over his instrument. He kept wanting to smile and the Es got musical theater bright until he got them under control. Michael glanced at him during a repeated chord and Alex gulped, his entire throat getting tense, the next note coming in sharp. He fixed the next note, but barely. Once Michael got to the “Amazing Grace” descant at the end, Alex felt -- free. Falling. Full..

Alex Manes moves to Roswell for the first time at age 27. He joins the Queer Chorus of Roswell and meets a stunning baritone with a secret that might blow-up his whole world.

comment: there’a a tone to @jocarthage‘s fics that gets me every time. she tackles insanely sensitive and real topics in her fic, though they never feel convoluted or heavy-handed as a result. there’s always a strong theme of music, though that’s a little more obvious in this fic, and i always feel a sense of comfort at the last chapter, like she’s written something i needed to read but didn’t know i needed. if that isn’t enough to convince you to read this fic, i don’t know what would. join me in being a blubbering mess by chapter 23!

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | Fade Into You by sailorchiron / @sailorchiron

There had been a lot of bad times in Michael Guerin’s life. Some good times, sure, but not a lot. Checking into his dorm room turned out to be an unexpected pleasure.

When the RA opened the door, he was staring straight at the very nice ass of a guy hanging up a poster on the wall above his bed. Of course, he jumped a mile and almost fell off the bed, but hell, that was one fine ass.

“Hey, Alex, meet your roommate, Michael.”

Michael watched as his roommate jumped down from the bed with a slight wince to shake his hand. “Nice to meet you.”.

What if Michael hadn't gotten back to Roswell? What if Alex got a full ride to UNM too? What if they ended up roommates? What would happen?.

comment: this has been on my to-rec list for a long time but i have to say, it is probably the most requested fic in my inbox. people are wild about this fic and tbh, i understand why. it’s a college au that imagines michael and alex meeting there, instead of in roswell. they’re roommates and they connect immediately, slowly building on their relationship, and their friendship with other characters (like maria!!) it’s a slow burn, mutual pining, communication bonanza, that tells the story from the pov of both boys. it’s sweet, has some very realistic and wonderful dialogue, and doesn’t ignore the alien-shaped elephant in the room. also, don’t forget to check out the extra (future) content located in the series And the Reason is You.

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | a star-sent sign that i’ll be alright by couldaughter / @dotsayers

“Don’t worry about it,” said Michael. “I’m glad someone doesn’t think I’m fucked up.”

“You’re not.” That’s all me, Alex thought..

Michael and Alex talk at graduation. Things go a little differently..

comment: i dearly love these aus where things go differently for the boys after highschool, whether because they run away or end up going to college despite the circumstances. this au series is both! two parts at the moment, the first set during their graduation, in which they have a much needed conversation. the second part involves their time at college and can best be summed up with the author’s tag: and they were ROOMMATES. i mourn what could have been for them, but that’s why fics like this are so wonderful to have!!

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | prettiest thing i ever stole by haloud / @haloud​

No one blinked an eye the day Manes turned up dead on his kitchen floor, a bullet in the back of his head. They turned up at his graveside and said he was a hero, then they turned up at the bar and said it was only a matter of time.

Michael shot Alex's daddy dead, and it felt good, felt so good he knew he couldn’t do it again or else he might never stop finding men with loud voices and heavy hands to put down in the ground.

prettiest thing (the fever dream remix) by christchex / @michaels-blackhat​

Michael wasn’t sure where they were. He knew what happened, the hell of his hand was hard to ignore and the shake in his body told him the adrenaline was winding down. Shaking in the passenger seat of his own truck, he tried to look out into the night. He tried to focus on anything besides the burn of his hand the press of Alex’s hand to his thigh and just how damn good it had felt to pull a trigger and watch a demon fall.

Michael Guerin got his hand smashed and then shot Jesse Manes. He's not entirely sure what happened after.

comment: with sign-ups for the remix event closing today, i thought it might be a good idea to feature a really spectacular fic + remix combo we are luckily enough to have. hal wrote the haunting prettiest thing i ever stole, a human au look at what could have happened if michael had a gun in the toolshed and used it. it’s got this fantastic outlaw vibe to it that instantly drew me in, a vibe that is emulated in christi’s remix of the fic, which focuses on what michael was feeling in the direct aftermath of the toolshed. it’s a great little piece in it’s own right, and both authors have provided extra snippets into this verse. remixes don’t have to be pov switches, of course. they can be reimaginings, aus of aus, and all manner of things. this is just such a brilliant example of a remix that i wanted to highlight the work of these two.

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | just like home, not alone by Nielrian / @nielrian

Michael can tell by the rigid set of his back that he’s slept badly. Even with an arms length of bed between them, Michael knows. He’s radiating a visible, nearly tangible tension. The kind of tension that moves through your body and leaves you cramping and stiff for hours after you wake. The kind that means Alex will revert to relying on his crutch all day. The kind that warrant the not-so-hidden bottle of muscle relaxants in the nightstand drawer that Alex thinks he doesn’t know about.

Michael comes awake in the hazy, pre-dawn hours of the morning and knows instinctively that something isn’t right.

comment: continuing in the spirit of non-angsty fics for your week, here is, in the author’s own words, “2200 words of semi-sexual intimacy”. it’s sweet, it’s domestic, it’s a little sexy without being smutty. the way it’s written feels so intimate and established, like they’ve had nights like this before and will have them again. it is the nebulous, well-adjusted future we all deserve, so you should love yourself and take a read. 

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!

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millie’s long list of malex fics | words echo out yesterday by estel_willow / @hannah-writes

He keeps telling himself ten more minutes. He’ll wait another ten minutes and then he’ll leave, go back to the cabin and think very carefully about his life choices. He never quite knows what to do with himself when he’s waiting, sitting and hoping for the sounds of Michael’s truck to rumble into view. He’s not good at waiting when there’s no military payoff but here he is, regardless, sitting and waiting for someone who may never come. He checks the time again.

Ten more minutes, he thinks. Ten more minutes.

In the aftermath of the season finale, Alex waits, and he takes care of Michael.

comment: this is another wonderful post-season one fic that goes through the process of michael spiralling and alex dealing with the interim. everything that hannah writes is beautiful and poetic, and this fic is no different. the ending is sweet and happy, and by the time you get to it, you really feel like it’s an ending well-earned. i love the progression that’s represented in this story, i love the sweet domesticity at the end. love every bit of it!!

have a fic you’d like to see on the list? let me know!