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insidious-intent · 4 years

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A Thousand Points of Light

Michael and Alex through the years. Part 1 of 3. Written for the Missing Alex Manes weekend.

(Warning for mentions of violence and war imagery. Mentions of Alex’s injury)

There were days when the world around him didn’t quite fit right. The colors never fit the shape of the things he saw, and he never knew how to describe that cognitive dissonance to anyone.

Michael had tried, only once, to tell Isobel and Max about the way the layers of the buildings and trees around him didn’t sit right on the layers of the land around them. They had both looked at Michael as if he had chugged four bottles of acetone before speaking.

Alex, though, Alex always understood. Michael never even had to tell Alex about the distortion, Alex already knew.

“Do you think there are dreams within dreams?” Alex had asked once, lying in the airstream in the middle of a semi-frigid New Mexico winter. The space heater was set on low because Michael overheated quickly, but Alex snuggled up to him like he could steal body heat. Michael rounded his arm around Alex’s shoulder and pulled him almost on top of him.

“What do you mean?” he had asked, even though he understood.

“Is this all the world that we see?” Alex had asked in return. Alex was the only one Michael could trust to have it figured out. Even at the age of twenty one. Or maybe it was the product of age. Michael closed his eyes and inhaled the whiff of shampoo and cigarettes on Alex’s skin.

“I think I can find the cosmos right here in your eyes, darlin’,” he said, leer in his voice and a smirk on his face deliberate. Mockable.

Alex had chuckled and pushed his face up into his, chasing his lips with his own, a thief and a warrior. Owner of Michael’s heart. It didn’t matter that Alex ran after this, after now, after then, after always. Michael would chase him if he had to, setting fire to the world if Alex wanted, but he’d make sure Alex understood.

Some days the world doesn’t hang right, like a door with broken hinges until Alex walked in and it slammed shut. Alex Manes was the axis of Michael Guerin’s world, and he’ll raze down everything else to keep him.

***

It was another bleak winter the year he found out about Alex’s injury. It was big news all over town, the youngest Manes boy saved his whole unit from insurgents but got blown up for his troubles. Michael had gotten so drunk that week that Max had actually driven the truck away from the junkyard so Michael couldn’t get himself to any bar in town. The world had shimmered in and out of focus for two whole weeks, desert sand layering over desert rocks. He thought he was drunk back then, unable to fit the mould of his view around the knowledge of loss.

There were a few moments of sobriety in-between, but the vertigo was so severe in those moments - vertigo where Michael had both feet on solid earth with the smell of artillery fire in his nostrils and indistinct yells and whispers in his ears. Indistinct but sharp, a mess of contradiction that was worse than being drunk.

He wondered now why he didn’t see it back then, but back then grief had overcast the skies around him. He hadn’t understood why he felt the way he did back then, but he knew now. The world wasn’t always there but Alex was. Michael remembered feeling a brush of skin on skin, a buzzing sensation like a line of fire where their hands had brushed. Or not brushed. But they had. They always will be.

He had coughed blood one night that first week, after a fight with Wyatt Long and his cronies. Mimi had thrown them all out of the bar, but the fighting had continued in the parking lot. Michael had painted those assholes’ skin black and blue, and had been knifed in the side for his troubles. “Michael,” Alex had whispered, kneeling down next to Michael in that dusty parking lot of the Pony, hands slick with blood. Michael’s blood. He remembered how he had hoped Alex appreciated the artistic value of this scene. It felt biblical.

“Okay Guerin, this is not the Bible,” Alex had responded, voice hysterical and urgent as he dialed Max’s number.

Michael stared up at Alex in the dim light of the Pony’s sign and wondered if he’d lost his mind, or maybe just his voice, so he shaped the name Alex soundlessly. “Stay,” Alex had ordered in response, waiting till Michael had nodded, before leaving his side to get help.

He had asked about Alex when he woke up on Isobel’s couch later, and both Max and Isobel had assured him Alex was not there. He had never been there.

The vertigo had been particularly bad that night. Michael kept his eyes closed so he wouldn’t see the fireworks. Or were they explosions? He kept his eyes closed but the lights were bright behind his eyelids.

Another explosion, the floor had swayed under his feet. He’d murmured darlin’ at Alex slumped over next to the couch, lit up by the fireworks (explosions?) and Michael couldn’t help himself, he kissed him.

Alex had kissed him before pulling back, frowning at him with red slick lips (blood slick). “Guerin,” he’d whispered, and Michael wasn’t going to let him talk, he was going to hold him close till the dream was over and he finally woke up. The taste of shared blood filled his mouth, but he refused to let go of Alex.

Alex had run, and left Michael behind. Alex always ran. That one night, in Michael’s arms, he had looked so still, lit up from the fiery lights all around them, brow scrunched in concentration even as his eyes stayed closed. Michael knew Alex was fast, reflexes impressive even outside of all his fancy Air Force training.

Alex was a thousand points of light in Michael’s otherwise dark, unmoving world. And he was the single beacon Michael always ran towards. Alex was running, mostly from Michael. It was annoying as fuck, but Michael hadn’t given up yet.

If Alex ran, Michael wasn’t going to be too far behind.

#roswell new mexico #malex fic #my fic #my writing #missingalexweek #missingalexweekend #michael guerin #alex manes #malex #rnm fic

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