Title from Under Stars by Aurora ✨
Fic inspired by Jeanine Mason's season 3 Malex / Echo parallel pic, found on her twitter: /itsjeaninemason/status/1438259507713376256
Set vaguely after season 3, I guess, but let's just say Alex is still in the Air Force and Malex are living together.
Michael's footsteps echoed down the empty corridor.
The late hour could easily have been blamed for the lack of personnel around, but the Air Force never slept. Alex had taught him that much. The late-night calls, the too-early mornings. He'd practically begged Alex to swap his job to one that more closely matched Michael's sleep schedule.
As if that was the real reason he had wanted him out of the military life.
The harsh white lights flickered overhead as they paved his way and he almost wished one of the many doors he passed would suddenly swing open to reveal an angry sergeant or maybe a swarm of new recruits who could see clearly through his pitiful charade. Just someone eager to drag the imposter off their highly classified base.
Anything to delay what he had come all this way for.
It felt wrong, donning the uniform again, the camo doing little to disguise how out of place he felt in a building full of soldiers. The bold-lettered Reese was still stitched into his name badge—a character he was having to play, yet again, if they wanted their jailbreak to work.
And there was no reason to believe it wouldn't, the circumstances were virtually indistinguishable if you squinted hard enough.
It had almost been a game last time. He and Isobel playing dress up as they joined Alex in their carefully constructed three-man performance. With no lines to rehearse, his presence alone had been enough to fool the poor women on the hospital's reception desk into releasing a comatose Maria into their care.
Comatose, not—
As he turned the corner—head peering around first to check for any unwanted company—he spotted it. The room that the lieutenant at the front gate had directed him to after Isobel had successfully mindscaped her unsuspecting brain.
The door was heavier than he expected and the click it made as it shut behind him was barely audible over the rush of blood in his ears. The familiar, unwelcome ache crept back into his chest and he rubbed his knuckles roughly down his sternum, the action so forceful he was practically tracing the ridges of his ribs.
It wouldn't work though. It wouldn't make it disappear. The pain that had been clawing at his insides since the phone call.
He looked down at the hand still white knuckling the door handle. Maybe if he stayed holding on, he wouldn't have to turn around. In fact, maybe he could just walk straight back through the door and declare it all one huge mistake.
Maybe Greg had gotten it all wrong.
The whole mission had been as shady and secretive as usual, Alex being called away at short notice with practically no details provided. And though he could never normally reveal the specifics of his work, this time it had felt different.
He had been gone for days with no contact. Complete radio silence.
And Michael hadn't been worried. Of course not. No, he definitely hadn't been spiralling out, staring at his phone like a lovesick teenager begging it to ring.
Only, when it had rung — when the wrong Manes man had flashed up on the screen — his heart had sunk.
There hadn't been any real reason for his hand to shake as he answered the call. They might not be on casual texting terms, but it wasn't completely out of the ordinary for Alex's brother to get in contact. Greg was just as involved in the alien situation as the rest of his friends and with his unfortunate upbringing he probably knew more than he had ever really wanted to begin with.
But part of him, the always on alert when it comes to Alex part of him knew he was going to regret praying for the phone to ring.
When silence had greeted him at first. When faint sniffles could be heard down the line instead of anything remotely useful.
When Greg had finally found the words to tell him that—
It should probably have worried him how easily the time had blurred between the phone slipping through his fingers and his friends gathering in their living room to formulate a plan.
As Alex's emergency contact, Greg had been the first to receive the news. And with the added bonus of being an ex-service member, it had also meant he was the most likely to cut through the bureaucratic red tape that neatly tied up the Air Force's secrets and track down his brother's location. From then it had taken twenty-four hours, a trip to the Project Shepard bunker, several desperate phone calls and a mindscape from Isobel to get Michael into the room he currently stood in.
Now all he had to do was turn around.
His fingers loosened their grip around the handle before he could talk himself out of it and slowly, he turned away from where he was facing the door. He barely made it all the way around as the sight in his periphery was enough for a whimper of despair to be drawn from his lips.
His hand clutched his stomach as any semblance of breath was knocked from him in an instant, a wave of grief so powerful striking him square in the chest. His shoulders hunched as his body forced itself forward, any strength he had left sucked straight from him, his other hand grasping at his knee the only thing keeping him upright.
It was a clinical room. A makeshift morgue of sorts with its science equipment and pale walls devoid of all life. There were three tables spaced out evenly along the centre of the room, two of them empty but the third—
The third held the body of Captain Alexander Manes of the United States Air Force, still proudly dressed in a uniform that mirrored Michael's own, face pale as he lay silently and so, so still, so—
Dead.
Michael let out a slow breath through pursed lips as he mustered up the strength to move closer. The sight alone made him lightheaded, like his brain refused to register what was right in front of him. One final attempt at denying reality.
But his heart knew the truth, drawing him closer as it loathed to be apart from its other half for a second longer. Even if its counterpart had long stopped beating.
Raking his eyes over Alex's body, he took in every inch of him as if seeing him for the first time. The way the soft hair that Michael loved to run his fingers through rested against the table, leftover gel still clinging to some of the strands, the way his long lashes fanned out over closed eyelids, the way his hands lay unmoving by his side.
There was no sign of injury— no sign of anything to explain how the love of his life had ended up cold and lifeless and alone in a top-secret Air Force base. Greg had been unsuccessful at pulling any more information from those that knew the truth, their only response being that the nature of the death would delay the release of his body. And seeing him now was enough to prove to Michael what they had all suspected, that something suspicious, something alien, had occurred and Alex had paid the ultimate price.
No bruises marring his skin, no blood staining his uniform, it was almost enough for Michael to fool himself into believing that he was simply sleeping. That Michael could kiss him awake and everything would be okay.
And in a way that was worse.
Because his heart did know the truth and he could feel it splintering within his rib cage, its shards piercing his insides with every breath.
This wasn't supposed to happen. And it wasn't fair.
After all the wasted years, the long unnecessary dance of denial between them, they had finally gained the courage to admit what they had both known all along. The courage to open up their hearts to each other. To allow themselves to be happy.
And without warning, that had been snatched from their grasp. Because of the Air Force, again.
Four days ago, Alex had kissed him goodbye with a promise to be back soon. And now here he was, lying in front of him, there but not there.
A stifled sob pushed past the lump in his throat and the world blurred around him as the tears pooling in his eyes threatened to spill over. Ever since the damn phone call, a tiny desperate part of him had stayed in denial, locking a sliver of hope away in his heart as he begged the universe to have made a terrible mistake. But there was no denying this.
Taking a shaky breath, he bent down closer to Alex. Hands cupping either side of his head, thumbs hovering just over his ears, Michael's eyes squeezed shut as he placed a gentle kiss atop Alex's forehead. The action was so familiar yet so hauntingly far away from normal, the cold skin beneath his lips solidifying the truth.
The sudden opening of the door broke through the silence of the room and had him jumping back with a gasp. The sight of the intruder enough to calm his racing heart, his hand came up to thumb away the few tears that had escaped.
"Hey, are you ready to—" Isobel started before the remainder of the sentence caught in her throat. Her eyes widened as if she'd forgotten what awaited her in that room.
She swallowed hard as she approached, her eyes not straying from Alex even as she gathered her brother into a hug, her arms wrapping tight around his shoulders. He relished the warmth of her touch and the contact was enough to bring everything crashing down. The tears ran freely and without restraint as he wept into the collar of her uniform, his shoulders shuddering with each sharp inhale and in that moment, he couldn't focus on anything but the agony that was hell-bent on consuming him alive.
To her credit, Isobel didn't say a word, her palm rubbing a soothing up-and-down motion into his spine until he was ready to pull away. Even then, she didn't let him move far, her hands gently cupping his face.
"He's gonna be okay." She whispered reassuringly and the conviction in her voice was almost enough to have him believing it. Their plan was half-baked at best and they had zero proof that it was going to work, but their alternative was—
Well, the alternative was that Alex stayed as he was and that wasn't an option.
It was going to work. And he was going to be okay. And they really needed to leave before someone caught them.
Michael moved to the cupboards at the back of the room and rummaged through until he found what he was searching for. The white sheet fit perfectly as he placed it gently over Alex's body and he swallowed down the sickness that settled in his stomach at the sight of his boyfriend's outline under the material.
He kicked up the lock keeping the table's wheels in place, and the pair set off before they could be stopped. Back through the secret military base, back to their car sitting just outside the compound and back to the waiting team of self-appointed alien scientists ready to bring Alex Manes back to life.