Unspoken Love

Chapter 4

Michael didn't know when he fell asleep, amid the chaos and questions, the unsubtle invasion of Alex's home as his siblings argued, Liz and Kyle debated and Maria tried to make soup. He thinks it might have been somewhere between Max brooding in the doorway, talking about moving him to another location and Kyle talking about how his core temp was lower than usual.

With the turmoil and anxiety in the house, the churning worry he could feel from Alex, Michael thought he really should be on edge right now, not drifting off. But the bed smelled of Alex, lime shampoo and cedar and he knew he was safe. If anything he was anxious about breaking something in the house that Alex had made his own, something that to Michael made it a sacred space.

And it might be unfair, unkind, deeply distrustful and mean, but he really doubted that Alex would want Michael in his house. He's never been invited. It's Alex's territory. Only entered once and that was because Alex was missing. Now he's on the bed, bundled up so he's warm and no one argues because its so matter of fact, so decided that Michael belongs there.

Out of all the people here, he truly understood what this place meant to Alex. For it was one way their fragmented pieces aligned.

He would have liked to have had this longed for experience, be a little closer to his fantasies involving this bedroom he'd had in Colorado....without the core of their complex family jostling for space in Alex's house and without the embarrassing drama featuring himself.

...And Alex would be in or on the bed with him, not hovering in the doorway, or lurking in his own living room with that tight stressed look.

He felt ridiculous lying here, as limp as a grease rag. Not really contributing anything once the big questions and obvious medical tests were out of the way. He had blood taken, his temperature checked, his blood pressure...nothing was reading normal.

Alex came over once, beautiful in his soft woolen sweater. The expression in his dark eyes was very similar to that day at the junkyard when he asked to know who and what Michael is. When the words 'I want to know who you are Guerin." passed into the air between them, fundamentally changing everything. His eyes ever so slightly reddened, irises pools of dark chocolate, vulnerable and hopeful and...troubled.

Michael wants to kiss Alex really badly, to kiss away all that's hurting him, wants to just tug him down onto this nice orange blanket Alex tucked around him, Alex's weight grounding him. But he's the reason Alex is like this. Wants the world to just go away, to forget about alien devices, Flint and whatever sick plan the fucker had, that said fucker is too far gone to tell anyone about. But he can't because Alex is worried about him and his house is filled to the brim with the Pod Squad, who are currently trying to work out if Michael is dying again or not.

He wants to ask him desperately how he feels about 'I have an alien bond with you, yeah totally alien, 100% telepathic, how do you feel about it really?' Because Alex seemed okay with it, but surely this warrants a bigger conversation. And what now? Alex wants to date him, wants a relationship with him which is cloud-nine territory...but...

Michael isn't sure about this, what it means. What if this bond is...affecting Alex's thinking, his choices? What if what Michael wants is bleeding over the bond, manipulating Alex?

He wants to panic over that rather than potentially dying, because this a entirely new...he doesn't even know what the word is. Chapter, era, they all make it sound like this was planned, as inevitable as riding a river and eventually finding the ocean and it wasn't. Experience seemed lame. Crisis just made it sound bad. Maybe he thought staring Alex's ceiling, it was more of a 'entirely new territory, we going to have figure out." And damn if that didn't sound like Alex.