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seeaddywrite · 5 years

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bitch, i’m a monster

a/n: this is the start of the vampire AU that’s been bugging me for the last few weeks. it takes place in a mostly canon universe, but ignores max’s death & michael’s relationship with maria. michael & alex still aren’t together, though the reasons are different this time around, & their feelings for each other are still very real.

it’s a little ridiculous, a lot melodramatic, & a whole lot of fun to write. i probably would have given up on it a long time ago if it weren’t for @soberqueerinthewild‘s insistence i do something with it, & her beta-ing, so, as always, she’s the best! i’m hoping to post the follow-up for the last day of Roswell NM Week, & then hopefully that will be the end of it because i absolutely do not want another never-ending ‘verse haha.

also, this is not the real title!! i just grew attached to the title on my google doc & can’t find a good one yet -- soooo it’s temporary haha. hopefully it makes you laugh as much as me.

The sharp, stabbing pain in his residual limb is the first sign. It’s a human pain, one easily avoided if Alex is careful and drains one of the packets in his specialized, hidden cooler on a consistent schedule. But that cooler is in his cabin, safely stashed in the sub-basement that Jim Valenti had kindly left him, and Alex is stranded in the middle of the goddamn desert without access to anything that would help the pain disappear.

It takes several minutes for the severity of the situation to process, though, since Alex is busy blinking the remnants of unconsciousness from his eyes and trying to figure out how he’d gone from reclining on his couch to what seemed to be the middle of the New Mexican desert. He groans and pushes himself up from coarse, brownish grass and gritty red dirt. There’s nothing ahead of him for miles but desert landscape and waves of heat rising from the ground; it’s got to be close to midday, as the sun is still high in the sky and beating down on him. It makes his skin feel too-tight and sore, like he’s got a low-level sunburn, and Alex has spent enough time in deserts to know that it will only get worse the longer he’s outside.

The sun might not reduce him to ash like it does in horror films, but sunlight is still not kind to vampires. The damage it causes will burn through whatever blood is left in his system at twice the normal speed, and leave him starving even faster than he wants to consider. It’s not worth thinking about, not yet -- it’ll only make him panic, and he needs to be focused on getting back to his cabin before he loses himself to baser instincts.

“Fuck,” he mutters passionately, giving himself approximately thirty seconds to acknowledge how miserable he is before forcing his tactical mind and survival training to take over -- but he doesn’t have the chance. A short, wry chuckle from behind him makes Alex jump, and he twists around abruptly to find the source, his body habitually trying to find a defensive stance, even from his seated position in the dirt.

“Yeah. Fuck pretty much sums it up,” Michael Guerin drawls, his achingly familiar features drawn into a pinched scowl as he surveys their surroundings, and Alex’s heart sinks. Stranded alone in the desert is bad enough, but Michael’s presence makes it worse, despite the traitorous feeling of security and pleasure that sparks in Alex’s chest when he sees him. It’s a vestigial reaction from the days when Alex was allowed to think of Guerin as his only port in a storm, and he hates that he can’t shake it even now, with years of one night stands, abandonment, and heartbreak between them. “Whoever knocked us out and dropped us here got our phones and dosed me with pollen. Again.” He shakes his head, hard, and a cloud of yellow dust surrounds him briefly to illustrate his point.

It takes a moment for Alex to remember the significance of the dust. It’s been over a year since Noah’s death and the discovery of the strange powder that nullified the aliens’ powers, and he’s had too much on his mind to spare it much thought in the intervening time. Jesse Manes’ escape from Kyle’s hospital and the subsequent skirmishes with him had taken up all of Alex’s time and energy -- but he knows intimately how much Michael loathes feeling powerless, and that frustration is obvious in the tight pull of his shoulders and the set of his jaw. For a moment, Alex wants to get up and smooth the lines in his face with his fingertips, to kiss away the fury at feeling helpless that burns in his own chest as much as Michael’s, but as always, he holds himself back. Getting close enough to touch Guerin at this point is too dangerous, anyway; every time Alex has allowed himself such luxury since his transition to vampire, the fight to keep his appearance and instincts within human bounds had been nearly impossible to win. He’d been an inch away from burying his fangs in Michael’s neck the last time they’d been naked together -- which is going to stay the last time they were together. Alex isn’t going to allow his love for Michael to put him in any more danger than his alien heritage already does. Especially not danger from Alex.

“You gonna sit there until you dehydrate?” It takes a moment to process the question as Alex looks up at Michael. His jeans are covered in the reddish-brown dirt of the desert rather than the streaks of oil Alex is used to seeing. There’s a sprawling purple bruise across his sternum, revealed only because there are several buttons undone at his collar, and his curls are in utter disarray, matted with dried blood at one temple. Alex does his best to keep the latter as a clinical observation, but he swallows convulsively at the realization, forcing himself to focus on Michael’s scowl instead of the blood. His stomach cramps at the sight anyway, reminding him that it’s well past time for his bagged lunch, and he drags his gaze away.

Michael waves a hand in front of Alex’s face in silent offer to help him up, and he takes it without thinking. As always, the contrast between his extreme body heat and Alex’s undead cold is shocking, but Michael doesn’t seem to notice. Everyone feels considerably cooler to him, Alex imagines, so the difference must not be as noticeable as it would be to others. Still, he’s careful to release Michael as soon as he’s found his balance on both feet, and to mask the wince that threatens to contort his face as he does so. He’s never really had to deal with aches or pains in his residual limb, even immediately after the amputation, because he’d healed with miraculous speed after he began to feed on a consistent schedule.

It wasn’t actually that simple, of course. Alex had woken alone in a military hospital with limited memories of the explosion that put him there. The blast itself was still a blank spot in his mind, but if he tries, he can picture the tall, broad-shouldered Sebastian Erickson leaning over him, his ABUs torn and bloodied though there were no visible wounds on his body. Alex remembers trying to look at him, to focus and tell him to go get the others to safety, but Sebastian had only smiled sadly and rested a cold hand on his forehead. “This is going to hurt, I am afraid,” he’d said, in the same old-time accent that Alex remembered from nights at the bar with his squadron and countless training simulations. “But it is the only way you will live.”

Alex remembers the words, but no accompanying panic. He hadn’t even felt pain at that point, just a vague sense of disconnect from the world around him and the sudden, overwhelming certainty that he was about to die. He’d always imagined he would fear death, would fight it with everything in him, but it had seemed a relief, then. No more war. No more guilt. No more anything. But the moment he relaxed into it, allowed himself to accept his fate, Sebastian’s familiar visage was in his line of sight, twisted into something … other. Something monstrous. And while the thought of death wasn’t enough to make Alex panic, blood-red eyes and fangs, it seemed, were.

The flash of fang, the burning pain that started in his neck at the site of the bite and spread through his entire body with alarming alacrity, are crystal clear in his shoddy memory. Alex remembers screaming for help, clutching at Sebastian’s hand until it was just gone, along with Sebastian himself, as if he’d never been there in the first place.

The next foggy memory Alex has is from days later, after his amputation. He was high on pain medication and barely lucid, but there’s no forgetting Sebastian’s sudden presence in the tiny, sterile room. After the initial burst of fear, an instinctive panic that comes from two predators in a room together while one is weak and vulnerable, Sebastian had begun to explain. It was the first time Alex had heard the word vampire outside bad pop culture references, and even high on painkillers, he’d believed it too fantastical to be true -- until Sebastian had snarled, fangs flashing in his mouth beneath fluorescent lights, and bit into his forearm. Blood streamed crimson over his pale skin, and from feet away, Alex could smell it. His mouth watered, his gums throbbed, and when he blinked, his vision was suddenly too good, taking in every detail of the hospital room before he even looked in that direction.

Then, the bloody wound was shoved beneath his nose, and Alex loses the thread. He remembers sensations, feelings -- the way his entire body thrilled at the first drop against his lips, the first impression of his tongue against elongated teeth, the pure euphoria his first swallow. He’s been high on weed and drunk off his ass, but nothing else compares to that initial rush of fresh blood in his mouth. And at that point, there was really no denying the truth of it any longer. Alex was a vampire, and it did no good to pretend otherwise.

When it was done, Sebastian disappeared, sliding through the tiny window with inhuman grace and without a backward glance. He left a phone number for his contact at a blood bank in Sacramento, California, behind, and tucked a tiny cooler full of blood packets beneath the bed, where the doctors would have no reason to look -- and Alex never saw him again. He’d been forced to learn most of what he knows of vampirism on his own by trial and error, and he’s lived in constant fear of what he’s capable of ever since.

“Alex? Alex! Did you end up with a concussion or something? Hello?”

The increasingly anxious voice pulls Alex back to the present, and he blinks, shaking his head and taking a step back, far enough away that the temptation to touch Michael eases. “No, I’m fine,” he says with a tight smile. In all honesty, he may have had a concussion, but it’s long healed by now. “I don’t remember anything about how we got here, though. You?”

It doesn’t matter, really; the course of action is still the same. Get the hell out of the desert, find a way back to town, and hopefully manage to do it all before he ends up revealing his less-than-human side to Michael. But Alex isn’t the sort of person to be hit over the head and dragged out into the middle of the desert without wanting to know who’d done it -- if they didn’t get what they were after the first time, there’s too high a chance that they’d try again. Plus, whoever had done this has to know about Michael and his siblings’ secret to have used the pollen. That alone is enough of a reason to find and stop them; there are too many ways that information could be used against them, and Alex won’t let it happen.

It turns out, Alex needn’t have worried.

“C’mon, Manes, think about it. Who are the only people who know about this shit that aren’t on our side?” He brushes another waterfall of the yellow powder to the desert floor, scowling at it furiously. “Plus, you and me? Not Max or Isobel? Not Valenti, or Liz, or the half of the damn town who knows what we are? It’s gotta be personal. Who’s the only guy you know who’d want to take you and me out first?”

Alex sucks in a sharp breath, ignoring the scent of Michael’s blood that it drags into his lungs. It’s impossible to deny that he’s right -- even though Alex very much wishes he could, because the insinuations are terrifying.

“My dad,” he says tersely, rubbing at his temples in a futile attempt to stop the ache building behind his eyes. Of course it was his father. Jesse Manes is the only addition to this fiasco that could possibly make it worse, and that’s the way Alex’s luck has been running, lately. “Remind me to call Kyle as soon as we get back to town. He’ll need the heads-up to make sure no one shows up behind him with a gun again.”

Michael stares flatly back at him, incredulity glowing in his eyes. “That’s what you’re worried about right now? Seriously? Look around, Alex!” He spreads his arms wide, encompassing the expanse of desert surrounding them, touching the horizon on all sides. There’s no sign of the way they’d come, no way of knowing for sure in which direction home was, and they’d been left with no supplies or methods of communication. Just the two of them, with Michael’s powers muted and Alex’s useless without a steady source of blood.

In short, they’re screwed.

Alex presses his lips together tightly, then nods curtly, conceding the point. “Yeah, okay. Valenti’s on his own for now,” he agrees, and tries to organize his thoughts, filtering out the voices in the back of his head that are screaming that he’s going to either starve in the middle of this wasteland or end up fang-deep in Michael’s neck before he can stop himself.

“As long as this isn’t all a diversion, I think everyone else will be fine until we get back and show we ruined the grand plan … whatever the hell that is,” Michael muses thoughtfully, and Alex’s shoulders slump in relief when he keeps talking. Not because his thoughts bring good news, but because it gives him something else to focus on, anything else, besides the steadily growing panic in his chest and the hunger that’s beginning to gnaw ruthlessly at his insides. “Any ideas? Kidnapping us and leaving before we’re dead isn’t exactly Jesse’s style. He’s usually into more hands-on stuff: torture, gunshots to the head, fiery explosions, all the classics. So why’d he dump us out here when there’s a good chance we’ll be able to find our way back and come after him?”

Alex calls on years of military discipline to keep from squirming at the questions. He knows the answer, of course. His father has been his nemesis, his war, since he was eight years old, and Alex believes in knowing thy enemy. Jesse Manes is a sadist. He gets off on watching others hurt and always has -- especially when it comes to Alex, who has managed to disappoint him in every way a son can. He’s gay. He’s unalterably in love with an alien. And three years ago, when he should have died in an IED explosion, adding to the family legacy, Alex became something inhuman instead. It’s the perfect trifecta of sins, in his father’s eyes, and being dumped in a sun-scorched desert at midday with nothing and no one around besides a powerless -- and therefore defenseless -- Michael Guerin is his idea of a fitting punishment.

Even after discovering all of Jesse Manes’ secrets, Alex still has no idea how he found out about his condition, but that doesn’t matter. He knows, and at least thinks he knows how to kill a vampire. And Alex has to admit that this is a good way to do it. Eventually, instinct will take over and he’ll end up attacking Michael to stay alive. And afterward, in time, Alex will begin to dessicate from lack of blood. At least, he assumes so -- no one has ever actually told him what happens when a vampire goes too long without blood, but movies and literature all seem to agree that the consequences are unpleasant.

Not that it particularly matters. Alex isn’t naive enough to think he’d care about what came next if he lost control of himself and murdered the love of his life. He’s a vampire, and maybe a bit monstrous, in the right light, but his heart still beats faster when Michael looks at him, and he doubts he’ll ever be able to shake the warmth that infuses his body when their eyes meet. Together or not, Alex loves Michael, and while he may have managed to forgive himself for a long list of sins, killing him isn’t one that Alex could ever recover from. And a world without Michael isn’t one that he wants to exist in, even if the guilt wasn’t enough to kill him instantaneously.

None of that is information he plans on sharing with Guerin, at least not yet, not until he’s absolutely sure they can’t make it back to Roswell before the situation becomes critical. They don’t even know how far out they are -- maybe they can hike back in a few hours with no worse repercussions than dehydration and a sun burn. They both tend toward the pessimistic, both looking for the worst-case scenario as a direct result of the ways they were raised, but Alex doesn’t have any choice but to hope for the best, this time. Hope for the best … and prepare for the worst.

“I don’t know,” Alex lies, leaning down to hide his face under the guise of adjusting his compression sock. Even with all of the unpleasantness and recent distance between them, Michael knows Alex too well, and the last thing Alex wants is for him to read the falsehood in his expression. “But it doesn’t really matter now. We have to get back to town as soon as possible.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “No, really? I thought we’d stay and take a nice vacation,” he snarks, head cocked to one side as he rakes agitated fingers through his curls. Yellow powder again coalesces into a cloud around his head before falling to the sand, and Michael’s lips tighten angrily. “This stuff is literally choking me. I can’t reach Iz or Max until it’s gone, so we’re on our own, unless Daddy Dearest was nice enough to leave you a phone?”

Alex sighs heavily, eyeing the horizon with displeasure. It’s going to be a long fucking day. “We’d better get a move on, then,” he tells Michael, and points them north, toward what he hopes is civilization.

#rnmweek19 #roswellweek19 #my fic #malex fic #vampire AU #day 5: AU

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