#The Guerins

[angrycowboy]

Michael’s heart wrenched at the word sacrifice. He looked down to see their hands locked together and rubbed his thumb across Alex’s wedding band. This beautiful man. His husband. 

Being with him was not a sacrifice.

for @theatrehands from their fic “Looking There, Loving Here” (for @malexsanta)

[notsowrites]

every guitar string scar on my hand

A/N: So I was thinking about this gifset parallel I made for 3x01 & 4x11, and got an idea for a little fic. It’s something of a missing scene fic, I guess. Enjoy! <3

[AO3 Link]

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Alex stood still, chin raised as Maria fixed his tie. There was a crinkle to her brow, a look of intensity that felt like it wasn’t just directed at his accessories.

“What’s that look?”

Maria bites her lip, stepping back away from him with a soft pat to his chest. “I had a vision-”

“I thought those stopped after Liz’s treatment?”

“No, not recently,” she clarifies immediately, shaking her head. “Right after you got back into town. Right when everything with Jones, and the portal all started happening.”

Alex laughs, because that was so long ago. What exactly had she seen that she hadn’t told him and that she didn’t think was important enough to? “But it wasn’t about that?”

She shakes her head. 

“I know you loved mom reading your future, giving you little clues. But I felt like if I told you about this one, if I mentioned it, then it felt like I’d jinx something.”

Well, now Alex is even more concerned about what she saw. But even more curious is why she’s choosing this moment to tell him about a vision that is months old now.

“Maria, out with it.”

“I was standing in the middle of the gazebo. And everyone was there - Liz, Max, Kyle, Isobel, Greg, Sanders…” She pauses, as if considering her words, which he finds so strange. “I saw this day, Alex.”

He smiles, realizing what she’s saying. That she’d seen that he’d get to marry Michael. That they’d stand in the middle of town, and get to exchange vows to one another, in front of all the people they love who love them. And it ignites something inside him, to know that she’d seen it happen, despite everything that had happened over the last few weeks.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels the wetness on his cheek, and reaches up to swipe it away. 

“I didn’t think I’d ever have this. Any of it.”

“You know you deserve to be happy right?

He smiles back at her. “I do now. But for a long time… I wasn’t sure it was in the cards. You know that better than anyone.”

“My offer to elope still stands, you know.”

He thinks of that future they’d planned together as kids, to get married in a time when Alex believed it was the only option that existed. It wasn’t that he would have regretted that life, because he loves Maria. No one ever made him feel safe and loved like she and Mimi did back when being at home meant verbal and physical abuse from his father, and sometimes his brothers. Before he found what it meant to love someone, and to be loved back. 

“Thank you for telling me.”

“You know Isobel planned your honeymoon, right?”

Alex sighs. He’s browsed the itinerary she forwarded to his email, and already plans to call the resort before the reception to cancel most of it. He doesn’t want his days planned like that, and he knows Michael won’t either. There are plans in his mind that are much better uses of their time. 

“Come on, Mr. Manes, lets get you to the altar.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he lifts his hand up, pointer finger up to tell her to hold on a moment and runs off to his study.The paperwork for his name change is on his desk - it’s all notarized and everything he just need to send it off with a copy of the marriage license.

He holds up the paper as he joins her back in the living room.

“Alex Guerin?” Maria asks, sounding surprised before stepping back and looking up at him, as if letting it all sink it.

“Michael has a name that he believes means nothing. And I’ve got a name that has far too much weight and expectations attached to it.” He glances down at the piece of paper, feeling a sense of warmth blossom inside at how different everything is from where they started. “I can give Michael this one thing that he never had, the family he’s been searching for his whole life.”

“You’re gonna tell him that, right?”

Alex laughs, dropping it on the kitchen table. He thinks he’s gotten better expressing himself to Michael, and though he’s sure he’ll fumble his way through it later, he does plan on telling Michael after the wedding.  “I’ll let you know.”

[alexguerinappreciation]

Michael Guerin is the Owner, CEO & President of the Alex (Manes) Guerin Appreciation Club.

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Pierre Narcisse Guerin (French, 1774-1833) Morpheus and Iris, 1811

[missingpucks]

me giggling when my crush tells a joke

[hotcelebeauties]

Florence Guérin

[forbescaroline]

235 FAVORITE SHIPS OF ALL TIME (ranked by my followers) 65. michael guerin and alex manes - roswell new mexico

[sidsthekid]

this moment in pens history will stay rent free in my mind forever but

mostly for this…for them…

[bisexualalienss]

ROSWELL NEW MEXICO - 1.02 "So Much for the Afterglow"

[stigmatam4rtyr]

Morpheus and Iris (1811) | Pierre Narcisse Guérin

[angrycowboy]

Music Of My Heart by @alex-guerin 

For the 2022 Roswell New Mexico Big Bang

 @rnmbb

[notsowrites]

to hide would be so dishonest

summary: snow means different things to alex & michael

a/n: written for the 2023 year of the OTP event

[read on AO3 here]

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Ever since he was a child, Alex has loved the snow. It wasn't something that happened often in New Mexico, and they didn't get a ton of it like he'd always seen in movies - but it was enough to build a small snowman and have snowball fights with his brothers. And there was always something magical about it too, the way it fell from the sky in tiny individual flakes and covered everything as far as the eye could see.

A decade of deployments had made him miss more snowfalls than he cares to think about. And as winter creeps ever closer in the months after the wedding, Alex finds himself getting more and more excited at the prospect of sharing his love of the first snowfall with Michael. 

But when it happens, when those first flakes of the season fall from the sky, it's the middle of the night. It's a surprise change in the forecast, weather that was only predicted to be rain and ice turns into a full fledged snowstorm without warning.

And in the morning, Alex wakes up, and he knows it has snowed outside. Even before he looks out the window. He turns under the covers towards Michael, wanting to bury his nose against his husband's skin, kiss him awake and share the excitement of the first snowfall of the season. Relish in the fact that he can share these kind of little details with Michael, knowing that each time they've done so in the past it's only strengthened their relationship.

But Michael isn't there.

Eventually he finds Michael sitting outside, footprints from his boots leading out to the truck parked in the driveway. It's not where he's expected to find Michael at all - mornings when Michael does wake before him, it usually meant he was making coffee and breakfast, wanting everything ready for when Alex does wake up.

"What are you doing out here?" He asks, sliding onto the tailgate, and slipping their fingers together. 

There's a solemn look on Michael's face, as though he's lost in a memory, something long ago that's been pulled to the surface. 

"Just… thinking."

"About?"

Michael shakes his head, dropping his head forward and staring at their hands. Alex follows his movements, watching as Michael slides his other hand over top, something that Alex is pretty sure is happiness exploding inside him as Michael presses his lips to his knuckles. He doesn't know what's going on inside Michael's mind, and can't know unless he shares, but there is something in that simple gesture that tells Alex he will.

And so Alex waits as Michael keeps his hand pulled against his chest, holding on right to it as if needing it to ground him against something.

"Feels different now," Michael finally says, attention trained on him. "The first snow of the year."

"Because we're married?" He asks the simplest question, because he wants Michael to share with him, doesn’t want to push too hard like he’s done in the past.

Michael shakes his head. "That first winter after we came out of the pods, I was in the group home, and I didn't have any memories, so snow was - snow was new. It felt magical somehow, watching it fall."

"It is magical."

"Yeah," Michael continues, still not looking over at him, but Alex hears the way this isn't a happy memory for him. "It was for Max and Isobel, anyway."

Not for the first time, Michael speaks of the difference in how he had to grow up versus how Max and Isobel were allowed to grow up because they had simply gotten adopted. Two parents who absolutely loved them, who probably didn't let it bother them their children had no memories of snow before, and simply rolled with it, making it a happy experience as much as possible. And how can he argue with that when his own childhood, those happy years before his mom left were something of the same? He's held onto those memories so tight sometimes, afraid to ever lose them or let them be overtaken by all the years afterward.

But that isn't all Michael wants to say.

"I'd spend as much time as possible not in the group home or the foster homes. But winter meant - it meant more time stuck inside. And then when I started living out of my truck, it was just survival, one day at a time during the winter."

He wants to ask about Max and Isobel, but he knows now, better than perhaps anyone else, how much Michael abhors feeling like a charity case, that he'd have to repay the debt if they were to let him stay over. It wasn’t something he’d understood at first, or even for years afterwards. He’d had to learn the hard way how much Michael hated receiving gifts from others, as if marking them down in his mental ledger, how much he would then owe someone in the future. An old guitar is shoved into the further corner of the closet in the bedroom, tucked behind some storage bins and out of sight, and Alex hopes that someday he can give it back, and that Michael will believe there are no strings attached to it.

The cold starts to nip at his ears, and Alex can feel it settling against his nose as well. He pulls the blanket tighter around him, but doesn't dare move. Not yet.

"By the time I got the Airstream I was so used to the cold, the fact that the heating sucked didn’t bother me,” his voice stays quiet, and it begins to make sense why Michael would spend so much time around the firepit outside at the junkyard. “Isobel would always tell me it was an improvement over my truck.”

“And now?” He tries, hoping that maybe Michael will be open to making a new memory for himself about the snowfall, and this new life they’ve started together. The future he believes that both of them have wished to come true, but didn’t dare hope for because of so many other things in their lives that kept trying to get in the way.

Because now there are matching gold rings on their fingers, and beautiful vows they’d said in the middle of the gazebo in the town square; they’d had two amazing weeks together alone in California for a honeymoon and Alex had watched the child-like wonder on Michael’s face at seeing the ocean for the very first time. And this house that he’d bought after returning to Roswell after his injury, when he’d been reassigned to desk duty, no longer feels like it’s just his house anymore - it’s their house.

Finally, Michael turns towards him, a hand sliding up to cup his face, pulling Alex towards him as their lips brush together.

“This morning I got to wake up in the arms of the man I love, and it felt like-” Michael pauses, pulling back slightly, his fingers still brushing across the skin of his face, causing Alex to lean into the touch. “Like maybe I didn’t hate the snow anymore.”

He pushes forward again, capturing Michael’s lips with a smile.

“Thank you for sharing that with me.”

Michael stares back at him as they separate, confusion written in the way his brow is crinkled, but Alex can’t stop smiling at how much Michael has opened up to him this morning. It’s been six months since they got married, and a year since they finally decided they’d both had enough of not being together. And yet every day, he feels like he learns something new about the man that he loves. This man that stole his heart at seventeen, and never let it go. Who changed his entire life’s plan to protect Isobel, because she needed to be looked after. 

Giving Michael happy memories now, being able to make new ones together is all he can ask for. Because both of them have their share of the bad ones, and he’s more than aware of his own that will rear their ugly head when the time comes, but he knows that when it happens, Michael will be right there beside him waiting until he’s ready to share.

[cull3nblaze]

Bucks reaction to the kiss is just everything to me. LOOK at him. He is so overwhelmed and just.....

You know what that reminded me of?

This one ♥

[castalianspring]

Malex + unhinged AO3 tags, pt 4