Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”

― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

Even when Alexis dies, he’s considerate of Michael to a fault. It’s funny, he thinks as he watches Noa press his fingers to the pale column of Alexis’s neck, sliding them down as if trying to will a pulse back. The gravity of the situation hasn’t seemed to have sunk into his bones yet, that this is about to change his life in a way that he’s worked from the gutters to prevent. Change as a whole is something Michael thinks that, with enough power of mind, he can simply steer in whatever direction he desires. Nobody - not even God - has proven him otherwise, that he cannot simply change fate by wanting it more than anybody else.

Except Alexis has gone and swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills with, Michael notes in detached amusement, a neat glass of half-drained orange juice. He remembers Alexis buying it last week, gnawing on his lower lip while he scanned the lined refrigerators of the grocery store. He’d said something, something that Michael vaguely wishes he could remember now, probably about his grocery budget that Michael had probably ignored. He did that a lot in the last few weeks before this, treating Alexis like a blur in the corner of his eyes - making sure it was there, present, following, obedient, but never turning further to take a proper look.

“The ambulance is downstairs.” Gesner says, somewhere in the room where Michael can’t see him, the words flat against his tongue.

“He’s too cold for them to do anything. It’s probably been a while.” Noa mutters, lifting his fingers gently and then setting them back down, featherlight, against a curl that has slipped over the bridge of Alexis’s nose. It’s a strange act of intimacy from a man who Michael associates with clinical detachment and cruelty in the name of success. It disgusts him a bit, truly, and he has to twitch back an urge to remove Noa’s hand from anywhere near Alexis’s face.

SIlly, stupid Alexis. He’d known that, despite their fall-out and the subsequent unknotting of their lives, Michael would spend Saturday out of his dorm as he did every weekend. Again, he feels that warm crawl of annoyance up the back of his neck, that Alexis had used Michael’s own predictability against him. It’s like being outplayed, outmaneuvered, and even though Alexis is the clear loser, Michael doesn’t like a point being made against him. But it was true, that he’d taken off in the morning to haunt a bookstore for anything new in psychology he could add to his arsenal. Then he’d take his new book to a cafe, where he’d throw back some shots of espresso and pour over the text, willing it to soak into his brain and apply itself. In the few hours that his routine took, Alexis had stolen into his room and taken the sleeping pills Kaiser kept in the back of his cabinet (prescribed by a doctor who had no idea that Michael refused to relinquish control of his body to even medicine) and downed the whole bottle. Then he’d curled up in his bed, no doubt already drowsy and heavy on his feet, looking almost like a newborn lamb resting its downy head for a moment of sunny sleep.

When Noa finally moves, Michael notices that Alexis is clutching that silly ragged puppy he’s dragged around in his suitcase since childhood. It was a part of vulnerability that, despite Michael’s maneuvering, he’d never been able to fully pry out of Alexis. All he knew was that his parents had been given it at the time of his birth, some cheap gift shop brown puppy plush from an extended relative, and that Alexis had shunned all other toys in favor of it. Michael had tried to poke at that wound, see if he could rile him up by pointing out that it was clearly a pathetic fault, a more laughable failing among the many that made up Alexis’s personality. It was, he’d pointed out, perhaps the only gift that Alexis had received from his family that had no intention behind it to change him, to mold him into the type of son they’d tried to create, that they felt their genetics had failed to produce. But Alexis hadn’t flinched, something he did whenever Michael shared a new sly barb at his person, and merely fondled the soft, worn ear of his toy. He’d forgotten to ever ask about it again, so put off by the lack of response that the fun of prying had immediately died out.

The arrival of EMTs is like a herd of bulls, pushing people out of rooms and lifting Alexis’s limp arms, brushing fingers across his parted mouth, pulling back an eyelid (Michael stares, tries to memorize the fuchsia of his eyes in case he doesn’t get to see them again). They run through their tests with a finality that says they know it’s a lost cause, that Alexis hasn’t been Alexis since probably eleven in the morning, falling into an abyssal state of sleep.

“We’re going to transport him to the hospital.” One of them says, clipped and clinical, omitting the word morgue that hangs onto the end of the sentence. “Do you know if his family will want an autopsy?”

“I’m his legal medical guardian.” Noa answers and it’s then that Michael remembers Ness signing the paperwork, shrugging with a smile as they signed with Bastard and murmuring that his family didn’t want to worry about broken knees or concussions. “There was a note so I don’t think it’s necessary.”

Michael’s ears prick, turning sharply towards his coach whose gaze is still lifted in any direction that isn’t Ness. “There was a note?”

Noa lifts his stare back to him and it’s then that Michael sees him holding it, a piece of notebook paper folded in half and clutched in his fist loosely. And when Michael reaches to grab it from his hands, Noa simply lets him, looking unnervingly impassive about it. He recognizes the notebook paper right away, the clean blue lines of the brand Alexis favors for his journals where he scribbles his daily schedule at the end of every night. The ink is familiar too, a shade of dark purple that Alexis favored to the point of buying his pens in bulk.

If magic exists, it must not want me to find it. I’m sorry that I’ve been a weight and a burden that others had to carry my whole life.

Micha can have my things. Whatever he doesn’t want, throw it away. My parents will do it anyway.

Sorry for the trouble this causes.

Michael laughs, sharp and surprised by it, perhaps even more than anybody else in the room. Of course, of course. It’s so like Alexis, to apologize for the burden of his own death, to feel like his passing is one more chore for everybody. The EMTs shift uncomfortably and Noa crosses the room, speaking in low German, to stop some teammate from ripping Michael’s head clean off his neck. He doesn’t mean to laugh because this is terribly unfunny but he can’t help but feel a little proud of Alexis, the proudest he’s been in ages, for getting the upper hand.

“Idiot.” He means it fondly, the way he always does when he degrades Alexis down to a simple name, but it’s enough to have Mensah launch from the doorway to slam a fist into Michael’s jaw. His teeth clatter with the impact, making the laugh taste like acid and blood, and his ears buzz with static, the yelp of the emergency staff, the din of his teammates. He gets the vague feeling that some of them are trying to pull him away from Mensah’s hands and that others are trying to push him closer, encouraging Mensah to rock the nose straight off his face. It’s only Noa’s hand on his collar, yanking him up on unsteady feet, that breaks up the crowd enough for the others to wrangle Mensah in, who thrashes against Gesner’s hand on his chest.

“You did this and you think it’s funny.” Mensah barks and then, to Michael’s amusement, spits on his shoes. “Hell is too good for you.”

“Enough.” Noa yanks a little harder on Michael’s shirt, as if trying to leash him from whatever words he’s preparing to fling back. “Everybody, back to your rooms and don’t leave the dorms tonight. Michael, stay with me.”

It’s only after the rest have filed out of the room that Michael realizes Noa is not doing him a favor, keeping him from getting jumped again in the privacy of the hall. Noa is doing it because now he has to watch as the EMTs slide their hands under the curve of Alexis’s spine, carefully maneuvering him onto the stretcher as if he’s merely a child that fell asleep in the car. Alexis was grown, lean and slim with muscle, but now he looks unbelievably small - so small that Michael can’t believe they ever used to slam shoulders on the field, that Alexis hadn’t simply broken whenever Michael had shoved him away in annoyance. He only vaguely realizes that now is the time to be cataloguing everything - the dusting of freckles across Alexis’s shoulders, the tiny heart-shaped mole on the inside of his left wrist. By the time they’ve carried him out the door, he feels like he’s already forgotten it all, remembering Alexis in fragments like a Picasso painting. It’s only been seconds but he struggles to recall which ear he wore his silver stud in, which finger was a bit curved from a slammed door incident that never properly healed during childhood.

“Back to your room.” Noa says, releasing the fabric balled up in his fist that has kept Michael stationary, his tone infuriatingly still. No, Noa has not done this as a kindness - he’s done it as a punishment, the pinch to his hand that shakes him out of the stupor. Noa has done it to make him realize, only now in the privacy of Alexis’s tiny bedroom and now that they’re alone in this still life, that it’s too late to memorize what matters.

They bury him with his stuffed puppy, despite how hard Michael had fought to keep it. It’d gone along with Alexis, gripped in his hand even after his muscles had softened into relaxation, and the hospital had refused to give it up until they’d finished preparing the body. Even then, Noa had thwarted him by lying through his teeth, letting them know that Alexis had stated he wanted to be buried with it, and by that point they’d stopped taking Michael’s phone calls. He’d sworn out too many attendants, leading to them simply blocking his number, given that he wasn’t the decision maker for Alexis’s funeral preparations. 

So here he is, watching them lower the coffin into inappropriately green and lively grass, stewing with the fact that Alexis is taking the dog with him. It’s true that Michael simply doesn’t like to be denied things he wants but it’s more so that of all the things Alexis owned, that was the one he guarded closest to his heart. Michael had already sorted through his books, fairytales and old Harry Potter tomes whose pages were worn to silk softness, their margins occasionally scribbled in. He’d gone through Alexis’s clothes: the hoodies with their strings eaten by a vengeful washing machine, the plaid scarf he’d bought in France when Michael had commented that it matched his hair, the pair of socks that he refused to throw away despite mending the toe five times over. He’d packed it all up and had it sent to his apartment to fester there, letting it exist in a state where he didn’t have to think about it or cull it down.

But he’d wanted that toy most of all, the only thing Alexis truly treasured enough to find comfort in before a final nap. And now it’s under a shovel of dirt that Noa sprinkles over the grave - looking uncomfortably tight in a suit that was likely meant for red carpets and galas - and then under the pink roses thrown in after it. Michael’s rose is still in his hand, thorns pricking into his thumbs, and he knows that if he wipes his hands, blood will smear starkly over his palm. But he keeps it in his fist, earning him another flurry of dark-lidded glares from his teammates. They’ve been sending them all day, from the church, from the pews, from where they stand next to a freshly cut granite headstone. It’s almost amusingly obvious that they wish he was down there and Ness was up here, breathing in humid air on the type of summer days he loved, eyes crinkled in a smile. But instead, Michael is the one here and alive and wasting space while Ness has been martyred in their eyes.

Alexis’s family is standing closest to the priest, looking buttoned up to their necks in dark clothes. His mother is unflinchingly still, hand steadily holding a tissue that hasn’t been patted against her eyes once. His father rubs at a spot on his glasses, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere but here, running equations through his mind. Alexis’s siblings are similarly mousy, a brother and sister who could switch clothes and look the exact same, visibly annoyed as if Alexis has ratted them out for something and not, to their inconvenience, died. They’re an unattractive family and Michael finds himself wondering, not for the first time, how somebody like Alexis had ended up in a home like that. Perhaps Alexis was right about magic - a changeling situation, a fairy child dumped in a hospital bed and left to wilt in a clan of scientists.

There’s a wake at a local pub that Michael will skip because he doesn’t care to hear the voices die down when he steps through the door, the glances over shoulders as they size him up - the final straw on Alexis’s back and the one he still adored the most even in death. He knows, between mid-kick photos and Ness’s charmingly awkward headshot, that the news has been playing the footage of their last match together. Michael, mouth split into a feral smile, spitting the venom that had poisoned Alexis in the end, the audio muffled by crowd noise. They didn’t need to hear it because they saw it, the way Alexis’s shoulders had curled in, the lost way he’d trailed across the field for the rest of the game as if he couldn’t figure out which way to go. The way that Alexis had filed a motion to dissolve his contract with Bastard Munchen within the week and then, when that had been on hold with the legal team, swallowed all of Michael Kaiser’s sleeping pills.

He passes Alexis’s parents as they intersect, Michael back to his car and them back to their hearse. There’s a lot of things he could say, honed sharp like daggers and carefully calculated to slide cleanly into arteries. He wants them to feel a pain that they think they’re above, the basics of human feeling and guilt they think they’ve outsmarted. It’s like he’s been training for it his whole life, to take a knife to their ideals and their haughtiness and carve up something hideous. 

Instead, he watches their eyes glaze over him and sees the judgement, the disgust they think they conceal with pursed lips. He is every bit as useless to them and, as far as they’re concerned, the rest of the world as Alexis was - how silly, to believe they’re better than Michael Kaiser. He doesn’t like to lose his temper because something about it reminds him of his childhood, the way rage used to curl the ends of his hair and warm the tips of his fingers. It took nothing at all to set him off when he was younger and he’d kick, scream, throw punches at walls for hours until all the anger had cooked off. The Michael Kaiser of today has no need for those tantrums anymore but it doesn’t stop the lick of fury that rises when Alexis’s parents raise their chins haughtily at him.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” He murmurs, unfolding the sunglasses tucked into his suit pocket, before fitting Alexis’s family with a dazzling smile. The kind of smile that used to knock Alexis off his feet, that drove crowds wild, that infuriated his father to violence. “It must eat at you that Alexis is the only Ness that will ever be worth the world’s attention.”

It’s a beautiful day for a drive, Michael thinks as he continues to his car, leaving the Ness family with their tight faces and clenched fists and eyes boring holes into his back. He’ll take his car into the countryside, let the wind tangle hair around his face and the sun burn the tips of his ears red. Before the rot had set into their relationship, Michael’s first paycheck purchase had been a car and the two of them had spent their rest day following roads into nowhere and everywhere. Now Michael preferred to spend his time in the city, enjoying the way a person could be both visible and untouchable in a crowd, melting away in plain sight. But back then, the desire to be seen and recognized hadn’t been as choking as it was now - back then, he’d had Alexis, and Alexis had always seen him.

Living without Alexis is infinitely more tiring than Michael could have expected. He won’t say he misses him because Michael doesn’t make a habit of missing things - nostalgia is nonexistent in his life and anything he loses can be purchased again, a carbon copy replacement. But it’s a struggle to quantify this unsettling tension between his shoulders, this unbalancing throb in his head as anything besides simply missing Alexis. It rears up like a dormant disease when Michael finds one of Alexis’s hairs in the bathroom, or a leftover bag of the mint tea he’d love to drink shoved in a kitchen drawer. When he spends hours on the pitch, slamming the ball into the goal until the overhead lights burst on, there’s no incessant buzz of praise from the sidelines. His benched water bottle remains empty after he drains it, his practice jerseys remain in a steadily growing unwashed pile, his towels never laid out waiting for him after a shower. It’s strange that Alexis’s presence is far more noticeable in the loss, the blank spaces - Michael hadn’t been aware of all the things he never had to think about anymore until now.

There’s the physical part too that also lacks the satisfaction he used to get from Alexis. He sleeps with men, women, anybody he decides he wants and it leaves him hungrier than it did before. It’s not as if Alexis was particularly gifted at sex but he had made himself into a perfect partner for Michael, pliable and responsive and desperate for a warm touch. Nobody fits in the way that Alexis had slotted against him, how Michael’s thumbs would meet in the middle of his stomach, how his palm would press perfectly against the hollow of Alexis’s neck. They’d grown up together and then grown into each other, their boyish playfulness fading into something simmering, hot under the skin over the beds and showers and years they shared. All of their bodies are lacking the familiar terrain of Alexis’s bruised knees, his scarred ankle, the soft skin that stretches taut over his hard stomach. They are simply, Michael thinks begrudgingly as he washes the last hook-up’s sweat out of his hair, not Alexis Ness.

He remembers the last time they slept together, the way the stunted tension of their football partnership melted as soon as he got Alexis on the bed. One minute Alexis had been blustering about a fumbled pass, fingers trembling as he undid his shoe laces and then he was putty in Michael’s hands, maneuvered onto the sheets. It’s infinitely frustrating that the details elude him now, dripping water from his hair onto the bathmat - was it Alexis’s ears that used to flush first or the apples of his cheeks? When Michael dragged his fingernails down the expanse of his inner thighs, was it a whimper or a jerk of his hips in response? He used to know Alexis’s body like he knew the field, all the angles unfolding in front of his eyes. Now, as he stands in front of the fogged mirror and exhales sharply through his nose, he can’t even remember what Alexis sounded like.

“Alexis.” Michael watches his reflection mouth the words before he yanks at the mirror’s edge to open the medicine cabinet, to look at the tiny empty nook where his sleeping pills used to be. “Alexis, you idiotic dog. Stupid, stupid brat.”

He goes to bed with his hair still sopping wet, the stubble on his chin left unshaven in a way that will bother him when he wakes up. He’s becoming sloppy now, with his appearance, with his thoughts - Michael Kaiser runs his body and his mind like a machine, every joint tightened to function flawlessly. He hadn’t understood until the last few months just how much Alexis had done to work to keep him running, had tightened bolts and oiled hinges with that self-deprecating smile. Instead, he finds himself trying to remember how to work a device when the person who helped to build it is six feet underground. He knows, beyond his personal life, that his career is also teetering slowly into disrepair. Beyond the fact that his teammates treat him like a loathsome feral animal they’re forced to share space with, Michael finds himself trying to adapt to plays that lack Alexis’s careful engineering. When shots misfire and he stumbles over patches of turf, there’s nobody to whip around and snarl at, no Alexis to adapt to his impulses and make him look like the emperor Michael is.

On his bedside table, he keeps one of Alexis’s books that he’d left the last time he’d stayed over. Michael chooses not to notice the fact that he ends each night, drunk or sober or freshly laid or sweaty from the pitch, leafing through the pages. If there’s a tendril, a breath of Alexis left that he’s searching for, it’s not inside this book - stained and waterwarped, it’s almost certainly something he’d picked up at the secondhand store. Even if the cover didn’t have a sage and a crystal ball, Michael knew it would be about magic. Alexis read magic books like he drank water, desperate and parched. Now Michael knows he was searching for something, anything to soak up the dark corners of his mind, a magic that could fix him. A magic that could make Michael’s attention drift back to him, to make his parents call on the weekends with questions about his day, to make Blue Lock disappear from existence.

Michael stares at it a bit longer before ripping the cover straight off, balling it in his fist until it’s nothing but sweaty pulp.

Alexis Ness is in his bed and Michael allows himself to sink into this dream, relaxed and off guard. It’s the most vivid one he’s ever had and the first time he’s been able to properly pull the feeling of Alexis from his memories since he died. Alexis’s curls are tickling his nose, smelling like that expensive rose shampoo he splurges on, and the small of his back is arched under Michael’s palm. An unnervingly strange dream because he can feel the rise and fall of Alexis’s chest against his own, hear the soft whistle of breath from his lips. As a whole, Michael doesn’t dream, and he’s grateful for that. If he doesn’t dream, he also doesn’t have nightmares, and there’s nothing more that he hates than the idea of being a victim to his own mind. But not only is he dreaming, he’s dreaming something that feels so terrifyingly tangible, that feels like Alexis’s lotion-soft skin under his fingertips.

He opens his eyes and waits for Alexis to melt away from his sight but there he is, cheek smashed against the pillow with a patch of drool. There’s a silver light coming in through the window that hugs the curve of Alexis’s face, makes him look as round and serene as the moon itself. Maybe he wouldn’t mind dreams as much if they were all like this, a haunting of the past that feels solid under his skin, where Alexis lives as soon as he closes his eyes.

“Micha.” Alexis sucks in a breath, his lashes trembling as he opens his eyes. Michael had forgotten that color, despite how hard he’d tried to memorize it at that last moment, and it’s so vivid that it chokes him. The purple-pink of a bruise, of the sky when the sun is almost completely under the horizon, the shade that only existed when Alexis turned his gaze towards him. “Micha, what’s wrong?”

Perhaps the reason he hasn’t been able to recall Alexis is because his brain was stealing away memories, storing them for this moment. It’s so vividly his voice, the scratchy whine he’d speak in if he woke up from a fitful night of sleep - Michael had found it charming, the pout it’d carry before Alexis was awake enough to become self conscious of his tone. He wants to grab Alexis by the jaw and tell him to keep talking, talk about the stars, talk about the paint on the ceiling, talk about all the things Michael used to hope he’d shut up about.

“You don’t look well.” Alexis rolls over, unlatches the right side of his face from the silk pillow cover as he fumbles for his phone on the nightstand. “It’s two in the morning. Are you feeling okay?”

Before he can stop himself, Michael’s hands are on his hips, dragging him back with a bruising grip that makes Alexis whimper. He presses his nose back against his hair, envelopes him into his chest, soaks in the warmth of his body and the sharp juts of his bones and Alexis, Alexis, Alexis.

“Micha.” It’s whimpered like a final plea before Alexis stills in his arms like a trapped animal. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Shut up.” Michael murmurs into his forehead, presses Alexis against him even tighter like he can absorb him into his skin. Alexis wiggles again, a futile effort, before he sags limply. “Say it again. Say my name.”

“Micha? Michael?” Alexis murmurs and then gasps when Michael tries to swallow the words from his mouth, biting hard on his lip till a bead of blood wells up. “That hurts, stop it. Do you want me to - we have practice tomorrow, I could–”

“Lay there and let me hold you.” Michael’s teeth are scraping his jawline, pulling his hair up to follow down the vein of his neck. “Be still. Be good.”

And Alexis is obedient to a fault, allowing Michael to outline the curves of his shoulders with his tongue, press the divot of his back hard with his thumb like he’s trying to bore a hole straight into his body. Michael would if he could, break Alexis open and live inside him, intertwined with the veins that circle his heart. He wants to carve a space for himself so that Alexis can never leave, never live a moment without knowing that Michael is there, a parasite under his skin. He forgot how Alexis’s sweat and skin tasted, the tang of salt from sex and the vanilla soap from his post-practice shower and something that is simply just Ness. His hand slides up, spreads his fingers across the warm expanse of Alexis’s stomach and then presses, harder and harder, as if waiting for him to dissolve into the sheets. Instead, Alexis gasps then coughs, kicking a leg out and catching Michael’s elbow with his foot out of reflex.

“Michael.” Alexis is pushing him away and then, when Michael makes a wounded noise that surprises even himself, pulls him back softly. “You’re hurting me. Just lay back down, I’m not going anywhere.”

Yes, you are, is what Michael wants to say but then Alexis is cupping his face, maneuvering his head so that it rests against his navel. Then there are Alexis’s fingers, always capable and reliable, combing through his hair as if trying to settle a fussy child. He’s not ready for this dream to end but he’s exhausted, his mind overloaded trying to commit this all to memory so that he can draw it out of nowhere when he needs to. Alexis is still talking and Michael is actually trying to listen now but it’s underwater and he’s so tired, even more so because he’s trying to fight off the curtain of sleep that’s falling.

“I’m sorry.” Michael breathes into the dip of Alexis’s belly button before he falls back asleep and Alexis startles, his body stiffening in surprise before it eases into a slouch.

“You say the craziest things in your sleep.” Alexis leans back against the pillow, lets Michael’s hair spill between his fingers like water as he laughs. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say those words.”

Chapter Text

“I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.”

― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

Alexis Ness is alive. Michael has been trying to figure out if perhaps the real dream was the months he lived without him, ever since he woke up and Alexis was still there, bathed in morning light. He’s here, still here, and Michael knows he’s awake, he really is, pressed a hand to his own throat and squeezed hard to ground himself. Somehow, Alexis was dead and now he’s not, in Michael’s bed with his back curled towards him, showing all the fragile knobs of his spine. Even when he tries to unravel it in his mind, tries to overcomplicate it, the actual truth is simple enough - Alexis Ness killed himself, killed a part of Michael Kaiser when he did it, and then somehow the universe had decided to unravel itself in a different way. His skin itches at the thought of it, being at the mercy of something greater than him. He’d cut his own puppet strings years ago when he’d started playing soccer professionally but now something higher up is yanking on them, pulling him back into place for another act. Michael wants to be furious because it’s change against his own will, there is somebody controlling him when he said he’d never let that happen to him again, would not bow to even a God.

But then Alexis rolls over, sighs into the sheets, and the fight leaves his body, the despair over a higher power, the fear – this is happening. Alexis is here and now Michael has to figure out how to relive his life with him when all he can remember is the stillness of his body in the coffin, the I’m sorry scribbled onto a ripped note, the little stuffed puppy toy disappearing into the back of an ambulance. It’s one thing to grapple with the ghost of something that once lived but Michael doesn’t know how to stop seeing the ghost of what could be, the omen that hangs over him.

Alexis’s phone blares out a tropical jingle that shakes Michael out of the stupor he’s sunk into, flashing a cheery looking alarm clock with a cheshire-like smile. Some cute app Alexis had downloaded at some point, trying to make it easier to coax Michael out of bed on the days he stayed over - they had a habit of arriving, bedraggled and half-dressed, to practice late on account of his sleeping in. He moves to swipe it quiet, to stay in this limbo for a moment longer but Alexis’s hand is already creeping across the sheets, swatting to silence his phone. He uncurls his body from the ball he’s made himself into, unfurling as softly as flower petals and rolling over to face Michael.

“Morning.” It’s cut off in the middle from a yawn that makes Alexis arch his back off the sheets before flopping back down. “Are you going to practice today? You seemed like you weren’t feeling well last night.”

Michael realizes, words heavy on his tongue, that he doesn’t know how to act now. He doesn’t know how to be him but not him; he doesn’t know how to separate the decay, the part of him that rotted Alexis from the inside out, from the parts of him that are simply Michael Kaiser. He uses toys and then breaks them once they’ve worn out their worth – he’s not sure how to do anything else with them. He cannot let Alexis break again, especially in his hands, because it will almost certainly break him too.

“Michael.” Alexis is checking his phone, glancing over his shoulder with furrowed eyebrows. “Do you want me to tell them you’re not coming? Maybe you just need a few more hours of rest.”

“We’re not going.” Michael answers, plucking the phone from Alexis’s hand before manhandling him back onto the mattress, pinning him by his hips. Right now, he wants to be inside Alexis in all the ways he can, wants him in a way that’s half desire and half desperation, like a man starved. They could live like this, he thinks as he rucks up Alexis’s sleep shirt impatiently, completely intertwined in bed for the rest of eternity. He covets Alexis in a way he didn’t think he could feel about people, about things that weren’t soccer and his own path to success. He wants, wants, wants Alexis in such an entirely, all-consuming way that burns in his muscles more than the day he left jail and decided he would begin to conquer.

Any protest Alexis makes is swallowed into a moan and then by Michael’s mouth, his tongue running over the tiny scar he’d bitten onto his lip last night. He tastes as good as he remembers, as he dreamed of, and he’d swallow him whole if he could. The only thing stopping him is three sudden sharp raps on the door, then Gesner’s voice muffled like he’s pressing his lips directly against the wood.

“Whatever you two are doing in there, stop it. If you’re late again, Noa is gonna make us do fucking push-ups and I’m sick of that shit.” There’s another loud bang on the door, Gesner’s fist pounding it hard enough to rattle the frame. “I’m not kidding! I’ll jump your ass in the locker room, Kaiser!”

Alexis shoves him away with a maiden-like bashfulness as if Michael hasn’t seen him in every stage of disarray, at the mercy of his hands, a million times before. The usual annoyance that would have flared in him is dulled and he can’t help tangling his fist in Alexis’s hair, yanking him in one for one last playful nip to his mouth before easing off the bed. Alexis flushes as pink as the ends of his hair, scrabbling off the comforter and mumbling about getting dressed back in his bedroom. Michael watches him leave, doesn’t try to smother the half smirk that creeps up his face – still such a wonderfully skittish puppy, just as he remembered.

Easing back into life, one where Alexis Ness lives and breathes, is harder than Michael expects it to be. There’s still these sparks of anger in him that lash out before he has the chance to understand what he’s saying, who he’s hurting. Perhaps he shouldn’t have expected that he’d be a changed, perfect person after the experience - in the end, at his core, he’s still the same person he always was. The only thing now is the regret, the choking feeling after he snaps that reminds him of before , the life where Alexis’s bed was empty and cold and his jersey retired in the rafters.

He can’t help it because in the end, he is a flawed person - impatient, brutal, a megalomaniac according to all of his teammates. Those flaws have made him into what he is now because emperors do not rise on the back of kindness and a soft touch - he is the greatest soccer player because of all his ruthlessness. Except it hurts , like a twinge of his throat, something swallowed a bit wrong, whenever he snaps at Ness. He’s not sure how it didn’t sting before, that minute widening of Alexis’s eyes and pursed lips and shoulders curled inward whenever he lobs something vicious his way. Before all of this, Michael would have registered those reactions as a fucked up trophy, knowing his comment hit at whatever armor Alexis put up. Now, all he can see is that his words are chipping away at a mass inside of Alexis, one whose size he can’t ascertain - how much more is there left before somebody pierces straight though?

Michael doesn’t know how to act now, which is something he’s used years of psychological study and sheer will power to learn. But ever since Alexis woke up in bed next to him, living and breathing and soft with flesh on bone, he’s felt like he’s constantly looking over his shoulder for fate to pull the curtain back again. At this point, he knows no dream can possibly drag out for this long, that a dream can’t feel like grass under his cleats and Alexis’s hair tickling his nose. But once he starts thinking about it, he begins to think about his old life too and the application of dream theory to that and then his temples begin to throb with stress. Perhaps it’s better to simply accept that something cosmic has shifted, a railroad track diverging from its original route, and that he is merely a test subject, an experiment, a lesson from something greater. Accepting that whatever reason is beyond human comprehension goes against every single tenant Michael has built his life around but there is simply nothing to do except accept it.

Especially when it ticks into one month, then two months, then three. They make it through the match that had started off the other series of events, the first domino to take down the whole structure - this time, he’s so void of the original seething anger and rage and hate that had led him to lash out. Instead, when Ness fumbles a pass to him in an effort to be helpful, he merely snips something like you absolute idiot and jogs back up the other side of the field to reset. He can’t very well do what he really wanted to, which is drag Alexis in by his collar and kiss his apologies away and tell him to pass to him forever, terrible after terrible shot. Instead, he fakes an attitude that dissolves at the end of the game with a cinched victory and Alexis is still there the next day, smiling over his little glass of orange juice in the morning. That same day, he tears his medicine cabinet apart and dumps all of his pills - sleeping, pain, even Vitamin B tablets - into the toilet, jamming the handle down and watching them whirl away.

It’s impossible to avoid being scrutinized though. Michael can’t help himself, the way he hovers around Alexis each day, how any blows he lobs at him are softened at the edges. His teammates eye him with reluctance after occasional bouts of patience from him towards Alexis, which he can only shrug off. How is he supposed to explain that there is another Kaiser somewhere else, living a purgatory life without Alexis Ness because of his own wickedness? Alexis, on the other hand, lets it all happen warily, like a dog who is used to getting smacks across the nose instead of the occasional treat. Whenever Michael slips into the chair next to him at dinner, rolls over to bury his face against Alexis’s night shirt in bed, he can feel his muscles tense for a minute before relaxing in acceptance. He’s so happy to be the recipient of Michael’s attention and kindness that his caution erodes quickly, a kind of trust Michael continues to undeservedly earn back, given the amount of times he has destroyed it in the past.

On the weekends, Michael prefers to hole the two of them away in his dorm instead of going out anymore - it reminds him too much of the past, where he used to do anything to deny Alexis the pleasure of his personal time. Instead, he lets Alexis play Harry Potter movies on his television and eat an entire bag of pretzels that he continues to replenish weekly and spends his time reading old books, always keeping a careful eye on Alexis’s profile. At night, he wraps himself around Alexis like he’s trying to keep him sealed away, even though it’s too hot most of the time and too uncomfortable and Alexis is a bony thing with pointy, lethal elbows. There’s also the Herculean strength that he displays whenever he goes a night without taking Alexis fully, fucking him into the mattress and drinking up his tears, all salt and skin and sweat. He has to exercise a bit of self-control, given the physicality of their careers and how dependent it is on the health of their bodies, but if he had it his way, he’d pin Alexis down by his hips and have him all day. He has missed Alexis in every way possible and no amount of time, proximity, or touch seem to quench that ache and he hates that he’s able to feel that amount of desperation.

It’s a Saturday morning, one of many since he first woke up in this new world, and Alexis is not in his bed. It’s pathetic how quickly the panic catches in his throat before dissolving at the sound of clattering in the kitchen, a wafting smell of burnt coffee because Alexis doesn’t drink it and has no clue how to make a proper cup. It doesn’t stop him from trying because when Michael finally rolls out of bed, he finds a mug of coffee - somehow both over brewed and watered down – set out for him on the kitchen counter. Alexis is nursing his usual cup of orange juice and flicking through the sports page of the newspaper, socked feet knocking their heels together underneath the table.

“Apparently they’re thinking Singapore for the next world cup location.” Alexis flicks to the next page because, to the actual players, it’s not like it matters to them where they play as much as what they bring home. “How is the coffee?”

“Swill.” Michael’s tongue burns from the first sip but not enough to disguise the particularly acrid taste of this morning’s mug. The tips of Alexis’s ears flush in embarrassment and Michael takes another long pull of coffee, half attempting to make Alexis feel a bit better about it and half attempting to drain the mug fully so he doesn’t have to nurse it. “Keep trying because you can’t be spending the night and unable to make a decent cup of coffee. Just stop using my nice coffee beans until you can make something that isn’t too poisonous.”

“I’ll pick up some cheap grounds at the grocery.”  The tips of his ears are still red but now he can see the smile he’s biting down, the barely concealed joy at being told that he can keep spending the night and Michael wants to keep drinking his shitty coffee. “Unless you want to? You haven’t gone out in a while.”

That had been the old weekend routine, Michael thinks as he drops his mug into the sink with a clatter and gives it a good spray with the sink nozzle. In the past, part of that had been driven by wanting to torture Alexis a bit, deprive him of his time and presence, for reasons he can’t even recall. What had it been back then about wanting to make Alexis hurt simply to see him bleed? Perhaps it was because it’d all seemed like superficial cuts and he’d never realized that one of his little mind games would eventually leave a lethal, gaping wound. Before, he craved control over Alexis and now he simply just craved Alexis himself, the very sight and scent of him always present.

“I haven’t been to the bookstore in a while.” Michael turns, leans against the cold metal rim of the sink. “Maybe we should go this afternoon.”

He watches Alex’s shoulders tighten at the word we and stay there, waiting for Michael to follow with an of course I’m kidding , before they ease into a slump. His fingers start to tap out a little melody against his juice glass, a clear tell he’s trying to stifle his excitement, and his heels click together a bit more rapidly under the chair. “Sure, if you don’t mind.”

Still the same Alexis, second guessing a kernel of kindness because he would rather not be a burden than do the things he truly wants to. Michael rolls his eyes, scratching at a strip of exposed stomach under his sleep shirt and ambling back into his bedroom to get dressed. “I don’t care either way. Come with me or don’t but I’m leaving after my hair is done.”

They walk downtown because the weather is too nice to pack themselves into a subway car and it tends to be a bit easier to evade the public when you can walk at an unbothered, brisk pace. They make an unusual pair – Alexis swimming in a too-big practice sweatshirt and scuffed sneakers while Kaiser picks lint off his own cashmere pullover – but it seems to work in their favor because the crowd of people out enjoying their weekend pay no attention, their gaze sliding right off the two of them. There’s a larger crowd than usual at Saint George’s bookstore and Michael touches shoulders with people far more often than he would like. As always though, the faint drone of lowered conversation scratches at his brain like classical music, just steady enough to drain any remaining tension.

Alexis hovers by the doorway, meekly letting people push him around before Michael takes pity on him, hauling him by his arm towards a stack of paperback Agatha Christies. “You’re going to get trampled, idiot. I’m going upstairs to non-fiction.”

“Sorry.” Alexis mumbles, leaning into Michael’s hold and smelling like lavender fabric softener, a bit of Michael’s own Yves Saint Laurent cologne as an endnote. “Okay, I think fantasy is across this floor so–”

“We’ll find each other eventually.” Michael raises a flippant hand, half a dismissal and half a wave goodbye, watching Alexis stumble through scattered clots of people towards the back of the store. Non-fiction tends to be less crowded and the upper floor is audibly quieter than downstairs, most customers lingering around cookbooks and 1000-piece puzzles adorned with photos of Berlin landmarks. The psychology section is completely empty and he relishes in it, pulling books out and creating stacks around his feet, cultivating his own little library.

There’s a decent collection of newer releases that have accumulated since the last time he came here, enough to keep him reading each night for a while. If he was a child again – god forbid – he’d never believe that one day he’d be able to spend hundreds on books, that he could sleep in a warm bed each night and spend all the time he wants paging through chapter after chapter of how the mind works. When he was younger, even snatching an hour of uninterrupted sleep under a dingy blanket before his father stumbled in had been a gift. Now he has silk sheets, a queen sized bed, musings on Freud, and Alexis almost always curled against his side – he’s not a sentimental person but it’s hard not to feel a pang of it.

After an hour or so, he has a nice pile of purchases to make that seems somewhat minimal compared to the dozen or so books Alexis is struggling to carry, looking precariously close to tumbling down along with them. Michael huffs through his nose in amusement, striding forward to slip a few volumes into his own armful before Alexis can tip over and make a scene. With his face uncovered by book spines, Michael can watch the flush across his face when he realizes who his rescuer is, the smile he barely tries to stifle.

“Sorry. I got a little carried away.” He looks sheepish and Michael has the sudden urge to pinch his cheek so hard that he yanks it off. “Oh, you got some stuff too!”

“I got a few things. You have a traveling library.” Michael huffs, fumbling everything in his arms until nothing is threatening to slip free. “What is all of this? I swear you own some of these already.”

“Oh, I know but they just came out with a special edition of Inkheart with new illustrations and gold leaf.” There’s a hum of excitement to Alexis’s voice as they make their way to the cash register, brushing shoulders. “Then I’ve completely worn out my original copy of this – the pages are literally falling out of the–”

“Alright, I get it.” Michael rolls his eyes, dumping his books onto the counter and gesturing for Alexis to follow. “Let me pay so this is less of a headache. But you’re carrying these damn bags by yourself.”

Alexis nods dutifully, fiddling with his hands behind his back as he watches Michael swipe his credit card. It’s not as if Michael is particularly stingy with his money but he never has much of a reason to give gifts – birthdays, holidays, anything important on a calendar takes up no room in his mind. He catalogues people by what makes them tick or dissolve under pressure, not the little things they enjoy or bring pleasure to them. Alexis is different from the others, having learned everything about him by force of proximity, of late nights and early mornings and twisted ankles spent together. He pretends not to notice the way Alexis gnaws on his lower lip to suppress a smile and lets him take the bags, even though his body almost crumples as soon as they’re hanging off his wrists.

They decamp at the coffee shop up the road that Michael usually frequents after shopping, the kind of place where plants spill over the tops of bookshelves and the owner hardly looks up when people walk in, silently walking their same path from the cash register to the espresso machine with each order. Alexis looks immediately relieved to drop the book bags to the floor, rubbing the red marks that have already indented into his wrists like scarred bracelets. Michael decides to cut him another break and order for the two of them, since Alexis has had the same exact coffee shop order since they were teenagers.

“Hot chocolate with whipped cream.” Michael drums his finger on the counter – the owner seems unfazed that one of his regulars has returned and with a guest who has the palate of a kindergartener. “And an iced Americano for me. Oh, and– one of those twist pretzels.”

This time, Alexis doesn’t try to stifle his excitement when Michael returns, dumping plates and cups onto the table top. “Is the pretzel for me?”

“Who else eats them?” Michael snorts, shoving his hot chocolate at him and watching a bit of melted whipped cream slosh over the edge. “Here’s your milk. You know, if you go to a coffee shop, the least you can do is order a coffee drink.”

“It’s not milk . And you know coffee makes me want to throw up, it’s so nasty.” Alexis grumbles, sliding the ends of his sleeves over his fingers so he can grasp the mug without burning himself. It’s far more endearing than it should be, making him look like he did when they first met – a kid with scabby knees in clothes too big because his family didn’t bother to buy anything more practical – and he has to turn his gaze away towards the street. It’s becoming very hard to not just simply press his hand to Alexis’s head and ruffle his hair until he resembles a dandelion.

Alexis reaches for a shopping bag, dumping the contents onto the table next to him as he chews on a pretzel half. “Do you only read psychology stuff?”

“I could ask the same about you and your little magic books.” Michael lifts the cover of one, adorned with sparkling silver ink and a man of indiscriminate age casting what looks to be a spell. “There’s only so many ways to write about dragons and shit, right? The human mind, on the other hand, never stops evolving.”

“Well, as long as the human mind doesn’t stop evolving, it’ll never stop coming up with new stories about magic.” Alexis mumbles against the rim of his mug and Michael can’t stop the laugh that barks out of him, surprising the both of them.

“Surprisingly clever, puppy. Okay, I’ll bite. What’s this one about that makes it so different from– Harry Potter or that absolute brick of a book you tried to get me to read with the little hobbits?” Michael jams his straw down the cup a few times, trying to break up a clot of ice cubes.

Alexis ignores the jab, something he’s extraordinarily practiced at now, and reaches to stroke the spine of the novel Michael has just touched. “In this one, there’s a circus that happens at night and two magicians are training to duel, except they don’t know it’s one to the death so they fall in love and– Micha, how does that even sound like Harry Potter? Doesn’t it sound so… wonderful?”

Michael doesn’t think it sounds very wonderful. It sounds familiar in a way that clutches his lungs in a tight fist – two people training to become the best until one eventually shines more brightly, leaving the other to fester into nothing at all. He knows how that story ends and he’s gone to great lengths to prevent it again. He has half a mind to spill his entire drink over it, watch the words bleed off the front and the sentences soak away into nothing, but there’s a peace to this shared day that he doesn’t want to alter. Instead, he knocks it aside with his elbow and reaches for the other half of Alexis’s pretzel.

“It sounds like you’re bad at describing books.” He watches Alexis’s lower lip wobble in annoyance at having his food stolen. “I didn’t think you were a romance novel person.”

“If it’s in the book already and– it adds to the story sometimes, you know, if it’s written well…” Alexis turns his head towards the window, but he can see it, the shy pink of his cheeks as he stutters it out. “I just think magic and love go together well. They usually enable the other in some way. People only go to lengths to wield and understand magic for somebody else, don’t they? Kind of like you and I, when we work together and we get that magic– not that it’s like love , we’re not… I mean, that’s only one small part of some books. I tend to just skip it but sometimes, when it’s good, it’s– well, it’s like a different kind of magic.”

In the past, he would have pressed his finger on this exposed wound, prodded a bit harder at it to see how much he could make it sting. Instead, it just makes his throat hot and his mouth dry and he feels like all of his nerve ends are exposed to a cold wind. Alexis is so full of belief in things unknown, in people that have hurt him, in relationships that have ruined him. He is supposed to hate hearing that, to know somebody is so weak to emotion, but instead it sits in his stomach like a warm drink, spreading through the tips of his fingers and toes and ears. After all this time and all these grievances, Alexis still thinks of them as magic. And there’s that word love , one that terrifies and exhilarates him no matter how much he denies it, hanging onto the mention of their partnership like an afterthought. Michael realizes, in that moment with his mouth on a straw and Alexis’s cheekbones lit by afternoon sun, the privilege of existing together in this time and place. Perhaps the only thing more miraculous than football is being somebody who gets to be the recipient of Alexis Ness’s attention and love, as undeserving as he is, as unable as he is to return it in full.

“Well.” Michael finally says, the corner of his lip curling up in a crooked smile, watching the light glow golden on Alexis’s eyelashes. “Maybe you’ve convinced me a bit.”

“Let’s go for a drive.” Michael swings his keys around his finger, watching Alexis’s curls bob as he looks up from a book. It’s a Saturday, unusually hot autumn day, and for some reason, Michael had been thinking about those teenage drives they’d take in his convertible. It was a stupid purchase but he had been young and flush with money for the first time and driving on an open road meant freedom, meant being simply uncatchable by anybody or anything. Then Michael had realized that having a car when he spent fifteen hours a day in a practice field attached to his dorm was a little bit useless. It’d been sitting in the parking garage of his old apartment since then, covered in the same layer of thick dust that Michael was sure all his old furniture was sitting under. 

“You still have that thing?” Alexis eyes his key fob. “Does it even run?”

“I start the engine and let it sit for a couple of minutes every few months. It’s probably just a little…” Michael’s nose wrinkles in distaste, “stale smelling.”

“Well, if you want to…” Alexis trails off, worrying his lip with a half smile that belays how much he hopes Michael truly does want to. He’d enjoyed their drives the most - Alexis was from a smaller village, one whose border was made of vast farmland, and he always felt the most at home with a broad expanse of trees around him. The city was fine - busy, anonymous, easy to find a decent meal - but there was something about the countryside, even a quiet suburb that smoothed the tension right out of his body.

The car is a little more than stale but the air conditioners on full blast eventually do away with the musty odor and then they’re off, on the highway watching the city disappear behind the rearview mirror. Michael can’t deny that leaving downtown sets an itch in his throat but then he looks at Alexis, pressing his fingers against the window in delight, and the tickle goes away with ease. City melts into neat, boxy suburbs and then eventually into sprawling pastures, thickets of trees hanging their leaves exhaustedly over tiny ponds. Alexis digs out an old jewel case with an Eagles CD inside and they listen to the tinny sound of guitar until homes are gone and it’s just the occasional dot of a farm in the horizon.

Michael lets Alexis roll down the windows, sticking his hand out to wiggle his fingers and feel the air between them like a silk cloth. As much as he’d rather be in a far more populated place, he can’t deny that the air here is like a tranquilizer, heavy with the scent of alpine rose and wet soil. It wills the body to relax, pulls the tension out of his shoulders and neck like his laces have been undone.

“Micha, look, cows!” Alexis hefts almost half his body out the window, pointing at a pair of spotted calves meandering across the grass. “Kids at school used to say that if a cow is lying down, it means it’s going to rain. Although my parents ended up telling me that was just made up.”

The flatness in Alexis’s tone tells him that it hadn’t been a gentle correction from his parents, a fond ruffling of his hair and a reminder to not believe everything he’s told. Michael has no doubt that the Ness family had let Alexis know just how absolutely naive and foolish he was for believing it, as if they were never a child parroting tall tales they heard from friends. Every mistake that Alexis had made growing up, every flight of fancy, had been struck down with an iron fist. For somebody who desired the joy and magic of childhood so badly, Alexis never really got much of one.

“What would your parents know about cows anyway?” Michael huffs, taking a turn a bit harder than he means to. He’s trying to avoid looking at Alexis, knows his face has probably lit up at being defended by him. “Just because they know a bunch of shit about one kind of bacteria doesn’t make them the fucking thought police.”

Alexis laughs next to him, bright and twinkling. “I’d love for somebody to tell them that.”

I tried, I did, is what Michael almost says – he can see them, at the funeral in his other life, dour and pinched. The way their practiced stoicism hadn’t been enough to cover the flinch when Michael’s words had hit home, the satisfying piercing of an arrow into its target. He wishes he could show Alexis this, hand the memory over like something tangible, so he could finally understand how deeply gratifying it to watch your enemies crumble. Instead, he pushes his sunglasses back up the slope of his nose and twists his mouth into a sneer.

“Your success speaks for itself. You’ll keep passing to me, I’ll keep winning, they’ll have to see it every fucking day on the news.” Suddenly, Michael has a craving for a cigarette, something he hasn’t smoked since he was a gutter rat and it tasted better than going home for dinner. “Christ. Stop talking about them, you’re ruining the peace.”

Alexis mumbles a soft apology, the lightness in his tone dampened and now Michael is angry again – angry at how quick he is to put Alexis down, angry at Alexis for folding so easily to any cruelty, angry at every single part of their past that has led them both to become such broken people. The gas station ahead, stark against the wheat fields and looking like it hasn’t been painted in a century, is like a welcome lighthouse and Michael finds himself making another rough turn into a parking spot whose lines have long faded.

“I want a smoke.” Michael slams the car door behind him, ignoring Alexis’s soft plea of Micha, and yanks the gas station doors open. There’s an old man behind the cash register listening to the horse races on the radio and marking up a newspaper, either unphased by customers stopping by once in a blue moon or perhaps just too hard of hearing to have caught the bell. It’s probably the former, given the fact that he barely moves when MIchael sets down the first bill in his wallet and asks for a pack of Camels. Instead, he keeps his eyes on the crossword he’s trying to fill out and reaches under the counter, sliding a tan box back across. Michael doesn’t wait for his change, which is fine since the old man doesn’t look like he’s too eager to start counting out bills, and shoulders his way back out the dusty glass door.

Alexis is still sitting in the front seat, eyes cast down at his lap like he’s been scruffed at the neck. Michael beats his fist against the window and waves a hand to signal for him, taking a seat on the bumper of his car. A moment later he hears the car door open and then click close, the car groaning a bit under the weight as Alexis takes a seat next to him.

“I’m sorry.” Alexis mutters and Michael inhales harder to quiet whatever it is he wants to snap back.

“It’s worse when you always apologize. You don’t have to apologize for fucking everything, especially if I’m being a dick.” Michael blows smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “You’re such a pushover.”

Alexis forces a smile, kicking his feet to make circles in the dirt. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re fucking sorry .” Michael snarls and then throws his cigarette to the ground when Alexis flinches next to him, grinding it under his boot. Alexis doesn’t answer and Michael wrenches another cigarette out of the pack, lighting it and nearly crushing it between his pinched fingers. At this rate, he’ll be done with this whole pack by the time he finally gets an actual word out of Alexis besides a stuttered apology. “Why are you always apologizing for no damn reason?”

“It’s not for no reason.” Alexis answers softly, reaching down to scratch at his ankle. “I just want people to… I want to be useful. You don’t know how it feels when people are upset at you, when you stop being interesting to them.”

Michael barks out a laugh that spills with cigarette smoke. “Of course I do, people are always upset with me. People hate me, people want me dead, people talk online about all the ways they wish I’d suffer. I don’t care because I’m the best in the world and no matter how much shit they talk, they want me to be that. They want me to make those goals, they want me to win these games – they hate me and want me so bad because I never stop being interesting. You can’t be liked by everybody and stand out. The most successful people in history are the ones people despise the most, and I’m going to be the most loathsome emperor they’ve ever seen.”

“I know that. I know you will be.” There’s a plea in Alexis’s voice as he looks at Michael, who refuses to meet his gaze halfway. “Because you’re you. But I’m me. Even if I had the attitude, I don’t have the skill. But I have – I have enough skill to help you get there. If I’m useful and you’re happy, then I’m happy too. I want to stay interesting to you most of all.”

It makes Michael’s stomach twist so sharply that he almost gags on his next inhale. They’re never gotten this far under the surface before - of course he’s known since day one that Alexis hasn’t had an ounce of self confidence since he was a child, that he fills that empty space by being Michael’s sidekick, by being somebody who anticipates and delivers. But when he thinks about Alexis, his happiness dependent only on Michael’s happiness — Michael, who is only happy when he’s hurting and breaking things – it makes him unfathomably queasy. Michael used to be happiest when he was eroding every inch of Alexis, and somehow that made Alexis feel more fulfilled than the kindness of leaving him alone.

“Look at me.” Michael grabs him by the chin, yanks his face closer and watches Alexis flinch at the smell of tar on his breath. “Are you telling me that if I ever stop having a use for you, you’d just – give up?”

Alexis whimpers and he lightens his hold, knowing already he’s made bruises. “When I joined, I was losing faith in magic. And then you were there, showing me it was real. And not only that, you wanted me to help you make it.”

“You wouldn’t do that. Even if I told you I didn’t need you anymore, I had no use for you, you wouldn’t give up like that. You’re not that cowardly, puppy.” Michael watches Alexis’s eyes dart to the side, as if trying to simply will himself away from this. “Tell me that. Tell me you wouldn’t give up on everything if you thought I didn’t need you anymore. Tell me you’re not pathetic enough to leave.”

“Of course I’m not, Micha.” Alexis says and then his eyes curl shut into half moons to hide the dullness in his eyes, his smile so flat that it betrays every word he says. And even if he couldn’t see it written across his face, Michael knows it’s a lie because he’s lived to see it.  “I’d never leave.”

They drive the hours back in silence and Michael smokes the rest of the pack, his fingertips stained yellow and a hole burned straight through his chest. When they’re back, even though the sight of Alexis makes Michael’s blood burn like poison, he refuses to let him out of arm’s length. They sleep curled up against each other but now his arm around Alexis’s waist is more like a ball and chain, collaring him to this time and space. Each time Alexis rolls out of his grip in the middle of the night, Michael is awake to drag him back into the curve of his chest, to make sure that his skin is warm and solid under his fingers. All he can think is that he got exactly what he hadn’t intended, all the things he never wanted again.

He’d forgotten that at the very center of it, there are many parts that make up Alexis, many people who have left chips in his walls and eroded his heart and broken his stride. A bit of whatever brand of kindness Michael is capable of offering is not enough to save him in the long run, that perhaps there will be another catalyst, another seismic experience that will send Alexis away again for good. Just because Michael has gone to great lengths to avoid the one that broke everything in his past life doesn’t mean there isn’t another one, waiting behind Alexis’s parents or Blue Lock or perhaps Michael himself once again. There’s also the fact that Michael finds it impossible to believe he cannot just fix things by himself, can’t reach inside Alexis and rearrange his wires and make him better again.

At the core of it, they’re both broken people. Michael works against this by being as present as possible, by being something that will never disappear no matter how badly people want it to. He exists and succeeds out of spite and the idea of being unwanted only drives him to grow the monster that is Michael Kaiser. Alexis, on the other hand, wilts at the mere suggestion he’s more hindrance than help. He’s always been too eager to prove himself as a tool, giving away more and more of himself so by the time they discard him, there’s nothing left to stand on. At some point, he will become so wane, so hollowed out that Michael may not have to say anything for Alexis to convince himself he’s worn out his worth. Michael may wake up one day months or years from now and see it all again, the threadbare puppy with its matted felt, the headstone with the Ness family crest.

Chapter Text

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

― W.B. Yeats

Something has unaligned itself between Alexis and Michael - not a seismic amount but enough that Michael can feel it twinge like a stubborn headache. They’ve always been push and pull, except he’s always been the pusher, creating space between him and others to see who scrambles to fill it in. And Alexis is always there, trying to slot himself in, to be the one who fills in the cracks even if it means getting his fingers pinched most of the time. The result of their conversation has left them reversed, Michael trying to capture an Alexis who seems to now constantly be floating on the peripheral, just barely out of reach.

Their teamwork is stunted and noticeable to even his most oblivious teammates, who wouldn’t know a decent play set-up if it hit them in the face. They don’t read each other as well as they used to, stumbling over familiar text and words, all of their passes and shots a few steps off from the tight lines they usually ride. Noel Noa watches them, nostrils flared because they’re letting him down in a way he can’t quite express – there’s no way to tell them that everything about them is just off , shifted one degree to the left, somehow both inconsequential and monumental. Michael leaves every practice game feeling like there is a fire in his veins that is burning out of control, never quenched, and Alexis doesn’t look any better – there’s a twitch to his body, like he’s constantly trying to reboot himself.

Alexis had never meant to share how deeply darkness hollowed him inside, that he was fine being pathetic in front of him but never pitied. Things continue as they do, but they feel tainted, a scent of rot to them – Alexis smiles a moment too late, laughs a bit too loud, like an actor who is always one second behind on their lines. In the mornings, Michael wakes up to find Alexis already staring blankly at the wall, eyes clouded and empty. Then Michael will stir and Alexis flickers on like an android, rolling into his grip with a soft good morning and a barely-there tremble under his skin. It’s like living with a facsimile of Alexis Ness, one who is too painfully aware that he is being seen and tries to act the way it’s expected.

Michael has to wonder, with a disorienting buzz in his ears, whether he has set gears in motion again. It’s one thing to live constantly with a shadow, to adapt your life to living in partial darkness, always seeking out light. It’s another to be made painfully aware of how much your life is shadowed, how little light there actually is to guide you through. Something has surfaced in Alexis, a poisonous awareness of what little he has to make him care and breathe and laugh and love. It’s just Michael Kaiser and then one day there may not be a Michael who needs him and it seems to have made Alexis wonder if he should just prepare for the inevitable, to accept a fate he’s become aware he’s bound for. He doesn’t know how to save him again, when Alexis seems so sure that nothing is wrong, oblivious to how brittle he is becoming in front of Michael’s eyes.

“Hey.” Mensah’s palm slaps down hard on Michael’s shoulder, almost jostling him from the bench where he’s lacing up his cleats for their match. “Listen, you and Ness gotta get your shit together before we go out there. I don’t know what kind of cat fight you two had but he’s barely able to put a pass together and you’re shooting way too wide.”

“What the fuck do you know? Have you even scored a goal in the last century?” Michael shrugs his hand off. “Ness is just being Ness. He’s worked up about something and taking it too personally and I don’t know how to coddle him through it. Worry about saving your own salary.”

“Jeez.” Mensah whistles, exchanging an exasperated glance at Birkenstock and Gesner. “Sorry for trying to instill some comradery on this team.”

“Your comradery is shit and you’ll always be shit if you keep trying to play your bullshit buddy-buddy feel good soccer.” Michael hefts himself off the bench, ignoring their shared eyerolls and the smirks they barely attempt to conceal. “I’ll meet you out on the pitch. Get lost.”

He hears Bachman murmur get lost in a mocking falsetto under his breath, listens to the rest of his teammates stifle chuckles - it doesn’t matter because in the end, they always follow his orders. Noel Noa as a coach is merely a formality. Michael’s the one that gets plays and the team knows they’re better off following Michael’s reign, no matter if they laugh behind their hands. That’s why they’re making themselves scarce anyway, hightailing it to the benches and pretending it’s on their own initiative, not because Michael is the one calling the shots here.

Mensah isn’t wrong though, which is perhaps the thing that prickles at him more than anything. Since the day he and Alexis took that drive, they’ve done a terrible time of pretending everything is okay. Michael is possessive of his toys but he’s never clingy, not like this, not like when letting Alexis drift away from him throbs like a broken bone. When they sleep together, it’s like Michael is trying to absorb him fully, press their skin so close that it has no choice but to melt together. There’s a gnawing feeling in his stomach that if he lets Alexis drift again, even for a second, he’ll fade into the dark again. He’s not sure anyone, not even untouchable Michael Kaiser, can survive losing his other fractured half in two different lifetimes. That’s what Alexis is, something he’s unable to deny anymore, the jagged other part that slots into the seams of Michael’s own sharp edges.

There’s a clatter in the locker next to him and Michael raises his face from where it’s buried against his palms, watching Alexis cram his gym bag into it. He turns to give Michael a smile, that paper-thin expression that does nothing to reassure either of them that they’re fine. Alexis doesn’t seem to know how to cope with this, having that vulnerable part of him pried open and inspected so gently. It’s one thing to allow Michael to know just how easily he falls prey to his thoughts of disappearing and then another to have him treat Alexis like he does now, something he has to guard with a watchful eye. It is one thing to be vulnerable with Michael, a risk whose consequences he understands, but it’s another when his vulnerability is treated with gentle hands.

“You’re not on the bench yet?” Alexis hums, busying himself by shaking an electrolyte drink mix into his water bottle. “You’re usually the first out there.”

“Waiting for you.” Michael sits up, watches Alexis hold back a flinch at the raw admission.

“You don’t have to wait around for me, I’m not going anywhere.” Alexis gives him that gentle smile again, like trying to pacify a child. “Did you want one of these? I made sure to bring some of the green grape ones, those are your favorite.”

“Stop with this shit.” Michael’s mouth tastes like iron and he watches Alexis’s shoulders tense up, powdered drink packet squeezed in his fist. “I don’t care about a fucking drink.”

“Micha, let’s not do this before a game.” Alexis sounds small as he clatters around, desperate to get his jersey on and onto the field before Michael can corner him in a conversation he’s done well at avoiding for weeks. “We can talk later.”

“You keep saying that shit and then you never do.” Michael stands, pressing Alexis against the metal lockers hard enough to knock the breath out of him. “You can be really fucking evasive when you want to be, can’t you?”

Outside, he can hear the crowd ramping up, sounding like the roar of a wave about to crash. It buzzes in his ear but not loud enough to distract him - for once, the game has no draw for him, the pull in his blood dimmed to nothing. In fact, he can think of nothing he wants to do less than go kick a ball around with some halfwits who play peewee soccer compared to him. Alexis is under him, flesh and blood at this moment, and Michael never wants to risk that again. Noel Noa will rip his limbs straight off for what he’s about to do but his whole life has been led on instinct and it leads him to right now, pulling Alexis out of the locker room and back towards the dorms. Alexis wiggles and then yanks hard to free his wrist but Michael has always been stronger than him in every sense.

“Michael, I promise we can talk about this later.” Alexis pleads but he’s limp in his grip, allowing himself to be dragged back through the halls of the stadium. “Noa is gonna freak out on us if we’re not down there in a minute.”

Michael has never given a damn about Noel Noa, and he especially doesn’t in this moment. Instead, he yanks at Alexis harder which finally quiets his pleading, but he can still feel it, the butterfly trembling under his skin that gives away how nervous he is. He knows this is torture for somebody like Alexis, who follows rules like a religion, but if he doesn’t grab him now then he will continue to slip away, smoke between his fingers. He closes the distance from their locker rooms back to his own dorm in record time and slams the door behind them, pushing Alexis forward with a hand on the small of his back.

“You. Sit.” Michael points at the bed, and like an obedient pet, Alexis does, worrying the hem of his jersey in his hands. “And shut up about the game. I don’t care about that. I’ll take the flaying for it.”

“I just don’t understand why you’re upset.”

He barks out a laugh, sharp as a knife. “You don’t understand? You’re vapid but you’re not completely stupid, Alexis. You’re going to sit there and pretend you didn’t lie right to my face. Telling me that if I ever stopped needing you, you’d be absolutely fine? Right after you told me that the only reason you do shit to stay alive is to be useful?”

Alexis’s cheeks flush in surprise. “How can you just say I’m lying? You don’t know that. I don’t know why you’re still hung up about that conversation.”

“Really? I don’t know when you lie? You think you’re really so unreadable?” Michael’s lip twists up into a nasty smile. “After all these years, that’s a little insulting. Let me tell you some things about yourself. When you lie, you tilt your head away for one second and then bring it back because you’re too self conscious about making eye contact. When you’re nervous, you pick at the skin on your thumbs and make your way down all your fingers. When you’re angry, the tips of your ears get red and you dig your nails into your palms. When you’re angry at me , you don’t want me to know but your smile gets too tight, your left eye twitches a bit. You’re so pathetically obvious in everything and then you’re going to sit there and pretend like you’re a mystery to me? You’re lucky you don’t play poker, puppy, because your tells are so obvious it’s laughable.”

The color is drained from Alexis’s face, leaving his eyes looking watery and too big for his face. He moves to stand, but Michael’s hand is there again, pushing hard on his shoulder to keep him in place.

“No, I’m not done.” Michael shifts to his knees so he can take a proper look at Alexis, his fingers gripped so hard around his jersey that they look bloodless. “When you’re lonely, you sit in the common room watching match highlights because you know somebody from the team will always join in. When you want my attention, you’ll pretend you were watching my favorite show or going out to my favorite cafe anyway and it’s just good luck that I caught you. When you want me to fuck you, you’ll touch my hair, my neck, any skin you can find and pretend it’s just a slip of the hand–”

“Stop it!” Alexis’s eyes screw shut and then fly open with a whimper, a defeated exhale. “Stop it – stop, I get it. I just don’t understand why it matters besides the fact that you need to know everything. Why does it matter if I lie to you about it? If you don’t need me anymore, then you won’t care what happens next. If you get rid of me and I want to fuck off out of soccer, out of– it doesn’t concern you anymore. And it wouldn’t anyway because you know you wouldn’t give a shit.”

“It matters because I need you, even when I tell you I don’t, even if I lie through my fucking teeth and say I never want to see you again, I will need you.” Michael’s teeth are clenched so hard he thinks his jaw might break in two but it’s swelling in him, crawling up his throat, all these things he wished he’d said when they buried him.

“I don’t understand you.” Alexis brings the heels of his hands to his cheeks, wipes away the tears that cling to his skin like glass beads. “I spent years learning how to be perfect for you because I wanted so badly… I wanted to be part of something great and I knew you were going to do it. I never minded the cruelty, the way you treated me because it’s the only way I’ve been able to succeed. Of course I’ll give up if you don’t want me anymore. Nobody else is you, Micha.”

They’ve touched in a number of ways over the years - high fives on the pitch, tangled legs in bed, elbows bumping in the shower. This may be the first time that Michael has ever properly hugged Alexis, gathered him against his chest and pressed his damp face against his shirt. He finds himself wondering why he doesn’t do it more often, why he waits till sex or the middle of the night to pull Alexis closer towards him. He should have been doing this every day, every moment, drawing Alexis into his space and savoring it - the feverish heat of his skin and breath, the rose scent of his body wash, the thrum of his pulse through his chest. Alexis goes limp against him, making a soft keening noise when Michael’s fingers thread through his curls, down the nape of his neck.

“You’re such a goddamn crybaby, Lexi.” He can’t keep the exasperated fondness out of his voice, pulling back to push the hair from Alexis’s forehead, smooth thumbs over his flushed cheeks. “I’m not a good person and I can’t change that, not when it made me who I am. I will say things that hurt you, I will tell you to leave, I will do so many things that might make you want to give up on me. But I’m here - on my literal fucking knees for you - so believe when I say that I need you and I’ll always need you. I need you to wake up next to me, I need you to wash my hair, I need you to leave your books all over my room. If you want to be used, I can do that - I can use you for the rest of my life.”

Alexis looks up at him and he’s so beautiful and such a mess, runny-nosed and dry lipped and crusted with tears. “I’m something people throw away and when it was my parents, I survived that, but you – Micha, if you do it– you have to promise–”

“I promised you when we first met that if we were partners, we’d make it to the fucking top - you’d help me become the greatest fucking player on Bastard Munchen, in the goddamn world. Look at us now – I’m many, many bad things but I keep all my promises.” Michael pinches Alexis’s chin, keeps it centered and focused so he has to look back, red-rimmed eyes and all. “If I promise you this, it’ll be true.”

And then Alexis is folded in half, the breath punched out of him and his eyes dripping so many tears that he can hardly believe he hasn’t been wrung dry. Michael slips his arms back over him and Alexis falls against him, shaking so hard that Michael has to tighten his embrace to keep him still. Alexis has always been an easy crier, claiming weak tear glands, but nothing like this - like a catharsis, like a purge. He’s already soaked through the front of Michael’s shirt and is now mouthing at the dampness with each inhale, clawing for purchase across his back but his fingers keep slipping down. It scares him a bit, Alexis so feral with grief and exhaustion, that he pulls back a bit, but then Alexis is pulling him in tighter. Michael can do that instead, be something to anchor him while he cries himself raw, exhausted and slowly falling limp.

It feels like hours before Alexis finally lifts his face where it's been buried against Michael’s chest – face puffy and red, eyes swollen shut with salt and tears, worrying his lip between his teeth so hard that a bit of blood pricks up. Michael reaches to wipe his cheeks with his sleeves and doesn’t have to pretend that getting snot all over his shirt isn’t a bother because for once, he doesn’t mind. Alexis looks so pitifully small in his hands, letting his face be maneuvered while Michael scrubs all the mess off of him, a dutiful puppy even at his lowest. Once he’s looking a little better for the wear, he smooths down Alexis’s unruly hair, slides his hands down his cheeks to cup his jaw again.

“All dried out now, liebling?” He tries the word on his tongue and decides he likes it, even if it’s a little cloyingly sweet. But it’s worth it to see Alexis’s lashes flutter in response, the soft pleased sigh he makes as he nods. “Good, because you can’t start crying once Noa finally tracks us down and threatens to crucify us.”

The smile wobbling on Alexis’s face drops and Michael can’t help but huff out a laugh, gathering him back against him. “I’ll take the blame. It’s not like he can cancel my contract. He might as well write the eulogy for Bastard while he’s at it.”

“Micha.” Alexis sounds hoarse, all the emotion worn away by exhaustion. “Micha, do you really promise?”

“I would promise it on my life, and you of all people know how much I value that.” He breathes into Alexis’s hair, smoothing it back from his face. “I will always need you and I will always come back to you, even if I’m the one who walks away. You just have to believe that I’ll return, no matter how long it takes me. Believe in it the same way you believe in magic.”

“I can do that.” Alexis threads their fingers together, squeezes so hard that Michael swears he hears the bones crack. “You’ve always been magic to me, Micha. Since the day I first watched you play. I can believe you. I will.”

“And you’ve always been a sap, puppy.” The corner of his mouth twitches up in a smirk, pretending like he didn’t say something just as soaked in emotion because acknowledging that will make his skin crawl. And Alexis doesn’t call it out, just tilts his head to the side and smiles so beautifully that it almost knocks the breath out of him – everything about him rosy and blurred at the edges, a sight that feels like finally stumbling into an oasis. 

There were so few times that he ever smiled so truly at Michael in the past, before he realized that Michael’s kindness was few and far and nettled with barbs. Then it was just the same half-assed simpering he doled out to everybody else, so drained of making the effort for him. This is what he missed the most about Alexis, even more than the pink of his eyes and the fan of his lashes and the cotton-soft skin along his inner thighs, because it’s the one thing he hasn’t seen since he came back. He’s mapped out all the treasures he lost in the past except for that and now it stands in front of him, dazzling and blinding, waiting to be discovered again. Michael leans in, traces the shape of his smile with his own mouth before dragging him in closer by his hips, lean and curved under his palms.

Alexis exhales against his lips before slumping forward, burrowing his head into the crook of Michael’s neck. “I really don’t want to deal with what happens when we leave this room.”

“Leave the negotiating to me - you just stand there with your eyes big and your tail between your legs looking pitiful.” Michael pats his shoulder, feels Alexis stifle a tired laugh. “Why are you laughing? You sell the pathetic kicked dog thing very well.”

At any other time, Alexis may have flinched at the words but he can hear the mirth in Michael’s voice, the fond fingers trailing along his nape. Instead, Alexis curls in tighter and breathes it all in - Kaiser, Kaiser, my Micha - and Michael pretends not to hear him speak the words out loud, as soft and alluring as a spell. He likes it, the sound of his name on Alexis’s lips, how he says his name like a prayer and a promise and a plea - how wonderful it is to be so desperately and hungrily wanted by somebody.

“I don’t mind being a dog for you but I’m not doing that for Noa.” Alexis mutters, nails combing through the end pieces of Michael’s hair.

“What a loyal puppy.” Michael sounds almost charmed by it. “Then let me take care of it and save any future prostrating for me, got it?”

“Yes sir.” Alexis answers dutifully and Michael has to tamp down the desire that invokes in him because he still has a coach to talk out of manslaughter. Instead, he eases Alexis onto the mattress and trails his lips down the lovely slope of his nose, punctuates it with a kiss that Alexis leans forward to chase after.

“Needy, needy.” Michael laughs, casting a look over his shoulder at the front door before rocking back up onto his feet. “I’m going to go do some hostage negotiation for our careers.”

“I’ll be waiting.” Alexis says softly, tilts his head up to show those eyes - so full of undeserved trust in Michael that it stops him in his tracks. Alexis, his Alexis, blood in his veins and color in his cheeks and so much love for him that it turns his stomach in sickly delight – he is here, alive on the tousled sheets of his bed. Alexis, who is magic and life and his , his to keep and treasure and hoard for the rest of his life. He tries to tamp the smile down but it rears up, so blissful that it almost looks feral and wild, when he remembers what he’s wrangled back from fate.

“I know, pup.”

Noel Noa must be carved from stone, the way he manages to betray not a single emotion besides blank apathy when Michael shows up in his office. Perhaps if he looks close enough, he can see something boiling in Noa’s eyes – perhaps spite, loathing, all logical emotions to feel towards Michael Kaiser – but then he blinks and it’s gone in a flash.

“I don’t need to tell you about the fine.” Noa unfolds his hands onto the desk, slides a piece of paper across it with a startling amount of numbers on it. It seems a little excessive, even for league standards, but he has no doubt that perhaps his teammates goaded them into adding a few more zeroes to get the point across.

“I’ll pay Alexis’s while I’m here.” Michael signs his name pleasantly, ignoring the stare Noa is trying to drill straight through his skull, as if trying to obliterate his brain using only mental power. “Anything else? You shouldn’t be too mad, I have the feeling me and Alexis’s future collaborations will be even better than before.”

“Yes. Your teammates have kindly requested that I lock you in a room with them for an hour and cover my ears, but unfortunately that’s not a league regulated punishment.” Noa turns back towards his computer, clicking a tab to resume watching highlights from what Michael assumes is the game he bailed on. “You will be watching these, by the way. I’ve sent them to your email. You can tell me your thoughts on them when you’re in early tomorrow - about an hour so you can get some extra laps in. Make sure Ness knows as well.”

Michael forces down his grimace, keeps the irritating smile on his face and baring his teeth in such mock patience that it almost looks more threatening that way. “Fine. We’ll be there. I’ll watch the damn clips but I don’t know how watching a bunch of sheep run around on a field without me is going to help.”

“I never said it would help you. Maybe I just want you to realize there are consequences to your actions, which you seem to still not believe.” Noa exhales sharply through his nose, the first real sign of anger he’s shown before he blinks and he’s back, the paradigm of neutral expressions. “Make sure you bring your ankle weights tomorrow as well. You haven’t done a run with them in a while.”

“Bastard.” Michael hisses through the smile that’s wobbling on his face and a muscle near Noa’s eye twitches minutely. “Fine, I’ll bring them. Anything else I should know?”

“If you ever do that again, rules be damned, I will crucify you and Alexis with my bare hands. I don’t care if you’re able to win the World Cup with blindfolds on, I will ruin your career before you ever get a chance.” Noa has turned back to his computer, watching a miniature Ali sprint down a long patch of green turf and dragging the timestamp back a few seconds to replay it. “Understood?”

“Crystal clear.” Michael pivots back towards the door, thinking already of Alexis on his bed, Alexis flitting around his room, Alexis filling his space and life and air. He could positively care less about running laps tomorrow or subjecting himself to Noel Noa for mercy, which he’d never do anyway even if he had a knife to his throat.

“You and Ness.” Noa’s hand hovers on the mouse, Gresner paused mid-kick on the screen. “That’s all sorted?”

“Perfectly.” Michael turns his head a bit so Noa can’t see the smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “In fact, I think our plays are about to get even better if that’s possible.”

“Good.” Noa clears his throat then lifts his gaze from the screen, aims it at Michael’s profile and then gives him a look so hateful that it feels like ice on his skin. “Get out of my office.”

Michael grins, slipping out the door and slamming it before Noa can launch something heavy from his desk at his head. “See you tomorrow, shitty coach.”

a few weeks or months or years in the near or distant future

“You used up all the hot water.” Alexis whines, scrubbing his head with a towel and leaving a halo of puffy curls around his face. “I’ve never washed my hair so fast in my life.”

“I told you to get in with me.” Michael lifts a hand in mock exasperation before adjusting the glasses slipping down his nose. “But you were insistent.”

“That’s because when we shower together, we never end up – actually showering.” Alexis’s face is scrubbed pink but Michael can still see the blush under his freckles at the insinuation. He’s seen Alexis’s body in every state of undress and almost every position but he’s still endearingly shy about being desired to such a degree, that he’s something practically irresistible to Michael. In his defense though, he thinks anybody would find it hard to resist – Alexis’s bare legs, soft with lotion, peeking out from the hem of Michael’s club pullover that has been reconstituted as sleepwear. He reaches out, grabbing a handful of fabric and tugs Alexis closer to the bed, watching him stumble like a foal.

“If you didn’t want me feeling you up, you should have probably picked a different pair of pajamas.” Michael sits up against the pillows, letting his hand trail down the curve of Alexis’s waist, thumbing along his inner thigh. He can hear Alexis’s breath hitch before he’s slapping Michael’s hand away with a cry of Micha! and turning back towards the bathroom.

“Can’t you ever think of anything else?” He hears Alexis huff, fumbling around with the skincare bottles lined along the sink, almost certainly still blushing. It’s a little ironic given the fact that Alexis is just as notoriously touchy with him when the mood allows for it, but he lets him have this bit of dignity for now.

“You’re strutting around my bedroom in my clothes half undressed. If you’re trying for subtle seduction, you’ve done a terrible job.” Michael sighs, setting his book down - some fantasy that Alexis made him swear he’d give a passing glance at - and removing his glasses. “If you wanted me to fuck you, you could have just said so. I like direct communication.”

“You’re so crude!” Alexis shrieks, followed by the clatter of a bottle falling to the ground. No doubt he’d fumbled whatever he was holding in embarrassment and now it's probably spilled all over the tiles – Michael hopes it’s not his nice toner that he knows Alexis steals because even if he’s rich as hell, he doesn’t much feel like replacing a two hundred dollar bottle of skincare. 

Alexis slinks out of the bathroom, giving Michael a glare that fails to be anything except for harmless, before slipping under the covers on his side of the bed. They have that now, their sides of the bed, which is disgustingly domestic but it’s one of many new things that Michael doesn’t mind too much anymore. There is a warmth to walking into his bedroom and seeing the sheets tangled on the right side in that fitful way Alexis tends to sleep, a pile of books and his favorite water glass printed with a cartoon momonga , the only souvenir he brought back from Japan. He likes, god forbid, finding Alexis’s hair on the pillow and his pink toothbrush next to the sink and the fact that everybody on their team knows that Alexis’s room is really just a storage closet for the both of them now. If they need to find him, they go to Michael’s room – there’s nowhere else Alexis Ness would ever be.

“So is that a no? What a shame. I had some terribly debauched things I wanted to do to you.” Michael clicks his tongue, listening to Alexis squeak in response and punch at his shoulder. “You’re a little ice queen.”

“Shut up.” Alexis snaps, no anger behind it, before sliding across the sheets into Michael’s lap, bracketing him between his thighs. What a lovely place to be, Michael thinks, between Alexis’s legs with the smell of his jasmine soap clinging to every nook of his body. In another life, he used to dream of this after hook-ups, flat on the sheets planning an escape from his one night stand and thinking about how life used to be. How warm and moldable Alexis was in his grasp, desperate to shape himself into something Michael needs. But Michael needs him in any way he can get him, so he pulls him in by the collar of his shirt, tastes the sharp mint of his toothpaste along the inside of his teeth. Alexis is such a lovely little thing to kiss, responds so well to a thumb stroking along his pelvic bone and fingers creeping up the knobs of his spine. 

There is nobody so perfectly made for him as Alexis - he’s tenderness and comfort and all the other things Michael lacks, filling all of the emptiness he carries. It’s nothing that he can ever say, the kind of platitude that burns in his mouth each time he tries to say it, but he knows Alexis is aware of it. He’s always hated the term other half , the saccharine romanticism of it, but he has lived a life without Alexis and felt the loss to know that living without him was like bodily mutilation, missing all the organs he needed to function. They are intertwined completely, as tangled as the thorns that climb his forearm, and so perfectly that Michael knows they will never unbind. Every piece of Alexis is a piece of him – the column of his neck speckled with bruises, his ribs pressing through the thin skin of his chest – and tearing it away would be like wrenching his own limbs out of their sockets.

“Pretty thing.” Michael lowers his voice, palm slipping up the front of Alexis’s shirt, spreading his fingers across the tautness of his stomach. “But you know that, don’t you?”

“I like hearing it.” Alexis murmurs back, a brief and vulnerable moment of frankness, but they can have that now. What a relief it is, Michael thinks, for both of them to not drown underneath things unsaid anymore.

“Good.” Michael praises, swiping a thumb over a pebbled nipple and feeling Alexis shudder against him. “You know I don’t lie.”

“I know, Micha.” He exhales once Michael drops his hand, situates them on the curves of Alexis’s waist. “But– we have a game tomorrow so I can’t–”

The desperation in Alexis’s voice is precious, how badly he wants Michael, and if he didn’t know how much they both care for their careers, he’d just shuck his shirt off and do it anyway. But instead Alexis rolls over, off of Michael’s waist and next to him, hair spilled on the pillow like furls of ribbon. They’ll have to make do with this, slotting their legs together under the mess of sheets and fitting Alexis against him perfectly like nesting dolls.

“After we win the game tomorrow, then we can properly celebrate.” Michael reaches to play with a stray lock that flops over Alexis’s eyebrows. There’s no doubt they’ll win tomorrow anyway so it’s not too optimistic to promise it – all they’ve done is win, innovative play after innovative play, leaving their teammates to play second fiddle to the show. That’s how they are, two machines perfectly tuned and oiled to bring home victory. “How about that, puppy?”

Alexis’s nose wrinkles a bit in trepidation. “I’ve always wondered why you call me that. I don’t think I look that much like a dog but I never got a chance to ask.”

It’s more likely he’d been too timid, too afraid of the answer to ask but now, Michael realizes warmly, he’s far more willing to share. “I’ve mentioned before, haven’t I? You have those big eyes, always wet because you’re crying.”

“Micha!” Alexis beats a fist against his shoulder, his cheeks flushing the pink of his eyes.

“What, what? Don’t you want the truth?” Michael rolls over to look at the ceiling, shifting so Alexis can rest his head on his stomach. “Sometimes your hair makes it look like you have puppy ears. And you’re eager like one too, always wanting praise and attention and compliments. Sometimes I can see your little imaginary tail wagging when you make a good pass. Luckily I’d much rather keep you around than a real dog.”

“You’re an asshole.” Alexis huffs, breath warm and humid against Michael’s navel, trying to roll away but being dutifully shoved back into place. “If I’m a dog, then you’re absolutely a cat. Always hissing and skulking and sharpening your claws.”

“You wound me.” Michael fakes a hurt tone, but Alexis can feel the laugh he’s holding back against his cheek. “Being a dog is not a bad thing. There’s a reason people like having dogs around. Especially loyal and affectionate and cute ones.”

That quiets Alexis for a bit. Michael keeps staring at the ceiling, looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars that Alexis had stuck on one day, recreating his favorite constellations. He’d told Alexis they were ugly and childish in that tone that denoted the exact opposite - he quite likes staring at them when he can’t sleep, tracing their patterns in his mind exactly how Alexis taught them to him ( Gemini, Canis Major, Orion ). It’s hard to see the stars in the city and so Alexis has made his own, cast a bit of magic in Michael’s room so they can always look up to the sky.

“It’s funny though. When I was younger, the only toy I ever really played with was this little stuffed puppy.” Alexis’s eyes are glassy in the lamplight and Michael can feel his own lungs seizing, his heart in a chokehold. Soft brown felt, clutched loosely in a hand whose color has been drained of blood, following that hand down into the dirt and ground . And then Alexis is speaking again, talking through the static in his ears. “It’s embarrassing but I actually still have it in my room.”

“Is that right?” Michael asks softly because his mind is still floating, up there with the glowing stars, trying to ground himself back to earth. This is now, this is real, Alexis as his tether and his chain and when he wakes up tomorrow, he will be there again, solid and breathing and crawling into his hold.

“Yeah. Have I ever told you about it?” Alexis tilts his head up, smile a bit shy and unsure. “It’s a bit silly, I guess.”

“No, no.” Michael closes his eyes, tightening his grip around Alexis’s frame ( small, breakable, fragile but real, so real ) and sinking into the mattress. “No, it’s not. Tell me all about it, liebling.”