Work Text:
Truth?
I've been burning
And dousing the flames
I feel the whiplash
Of the backlash on my face
I melt to sleep at night
But I wake to trip the day
Never for you never for me
Would I kiss your feet of clay
I'm still alive and so should I
Soak up the wave of compromise
Am I the victim of youth
Is this the truth
Why don't you tell me
-Def Leppard
Mid May, 2001
Liz fought against the urge to squirm her way out of the arms trapping her. What was once her circle of refuge had now become a constricting band as the earth beneath her feet shook with aftershocks from the ship’s departure.
The best thing he’d ever done? She wondered, running Max’s words over in her head. If the past year served as evidence, Max loving her would surely be his greatest sin. For the first time, she considered the possibility that he had no concept of what loving someone truly meant. Her eyes drifted over to Michael and Maria where they huddled together. In the midst of the chaos, her best friend was clinging desperately to her boyfriend as he shielded her much more delicate body.
Looking at the beautiful couple, who finally appeared entirely in sync, she had to shove down a wave of jealousy so strong it left her reeling, the feeling settling in a sickening tangle in her previously empty belly.
That, right there? What those two had was love.
Turn to Dust
The concentration drifts
In and out of me
Conversation slides away
Turn and face the change in apathy
Take a rise to fall
Won't you save me
Don't you blame me
I got the feel that I'm gone - Turn to dust
-Def Leppard
Late May, 2002
Dropping to the warehouse floor, Liz kicked out, bringing the Skin down hard to the sand-packed earth. She hauled herself up before he could recover, slamming her hand into the seal on his husk.
Remembering at the last minute, Liz snapped her mouth shut and covered her nose to avoid inhaling the bits of synthetic skin which exploded around her in a revolting parody of a pillow splitting its seams. Disgusting.
“Parker,” Michael barked as he made his way over to her, his eagle eyes sweeping her body from head to foot, checking her for any serious injuries, “that was the last of them. Let’s get out of here before anyone gets too curious.”
He was right. The sheriff may have been a good friend, but their little alien conspiracy had already cost the man his position once. No need to make his job harder by getting careless and sticking around after drawing unwanted attention to themselves.
Exhausted, and limbs trembling now from fading adrenaline, Liz struggled to drag her body up from the warehouse floor.
A large hand appeared before her, and she hesitated for a moment before accepting the offer. If Rath and Ava were right, the Skins had been drawn to Roswell by her powers going haywire. Did she really deserve Michael’s help? But Michael never offered anything he did not desire to give, so in the end, she conceded to her own body’s shakiness and clasped his hand, allowing him to help her to her feet.
“Let it go, Parker.”
“Let what go?”
“You think I don’t know what that look on your face means? I don’t care what Rath and Ava said. They would’ve found us eventually, power surge or not. This isn’t your fault.”
Liz did not believe him, but she also didn’t feel up to arguing. She would take the absolution. For now.
Later, when Max had healed Isabel, Ava, and Kyle, and they had found a way to reassure the adults in their lives that everything was fine, she would find a way to make up for this mess. Somehow.
Slang
Slang with me - I don't wanna get my hands dirty
Slang with me - I just wanna get soakin' wet
Slang with me - I don't wanna get my hands dirty
All I ever wanna get is slang
-Def Leppard
Late January, 2002
Michael blocked her again, still looking as fresh as when their sparring session began, and Liz huffed, swiping sweat out of her eyes.
“Come on, Parker. Is that really the best you’ve got?” her opponent taunted.
Huffing again, Liz bounced on the balls of her feet, rising and sinking a little into the blue vinyl mat covering Michael’s living room floor, trying to shake out the fatigue and build up some kinetic energy. She couldn’t wait until Ava deemed her powers stable enough for Liz to introduce them into her sparring sessions. It wasn't as though she lacked the strength. If she could use her powers, she could totally kick Michael's smug ass.
Besides, wasn’t controlling her powers the entire point of these exercises in the first place?
“Not even close,” she growled.
Ignoring the moisture pouring down her back, gathering between her black sports bra, and along the lining of her heather grey yoga pants, pushing through the soreness and exhaustion weighing down her limbs, Liz ducked and ran towards Michael, swerving at the last minute to catch him off guard and ram her elbow into his side instead of bowling him over – not that she believed for one second that she was capable of such a feat. She’d learned that the hard way when Ava and Rath first came back to town and these little bouts of torture disguised as training first started.
Michael’s low grunt of pain brought a small curl of satisfaction to her lips, and she danced away, bringing her arms up to block the oncoming rebuttal, ready for anything he might send her way.
All I Want Is Everything
I don't know how to leave you
And I don't know how to stay
I've got things that I must tell you
That I don't know how to say
The man behind these empty words
Is crying out in shame
Holding on to this sinking ship
When nothing else remains
All I want is everything
Am I asking too much?
All I want is everything
Like the feel of your touch
But all I have are yesterdays
Tomorrow never comes
-Def Leppard
Early July, 2001
Liz eyed Max as he paced back and forth on the shore of the little reservoir, tearing his hands through his hair in agitation and trying, and failing, to reach out to his son across the galaxies and lightyears that kept them cruelly apart.
Her heart sank into her toes, and she knew she was fooling herself to think that she could handle this.
Max had been so sweet when he had called to ask her on this date a few days ago. So determined to make everything right between the two of them. In spite of her many reservations, Liz eventually caved.
For a few hours, it had actually seemed possible that they could work through everything. That they could manage a night spent purely on recapturing that joyful innocence of the start of their long and winding road and even improve upon it, bringing the maturity and strength they had both gained during the time spent apart from each other to their relationship.
Then the inevitable happened: reality crashed back in, coming between them, and Liz found herself wishing she hadn’t switched her shift at the Crashdown for this. She would rather be dealing with cranky customers and trading snarky comments with Maria and Michael than be here, having the last of her illusions trampled upon.
Liz was only seventeen. She deserved to have a boyfriend who could give her his whole heart, all his attention, and if she stayed with Max. If she truly permitted him to become an integral part of her life and her heart again, she would never have that. She would spend the rest of her life playing second fiddle to a murderess’s son.
Not that it was in any way the baby’s fault. He was entirely innocent in all of this, and as much as she wished that night in the observatory had never happened with that woman, she truly hoped that the baby would be safe and happy and loved, as all babies ought to be. She wasn’t sure if Max’s former wife was capable of it, but if she was… well, that was all to the good.
But Liz did not think she could bring herself to be a part of Max’s little family. Not after tonight, and how defeated she found herself feeling.
“Max?”
He didn’t hear her.
His pacing along the dock never slowed. Never even faltered. Nor did his muttering.
“Max?” she raised her voice and took a step towards him.
Nothing.
“Max!”
Finally, his head jerked towards her.
“What?”
“Take me home.”
“Liz-“ Max started, a guilty and self-conscious look creeping into his amber eyes, which were gradually losing their feverish light.
She shook her head.
“No, Max, please don’t try to talk me out of it. You have something important to deal with, and I need to – I just need you to take me home, now.”
She paused and examined him carefully. He hadn’t even bothered to use his powers to dry himself off. That manic energy had yet to fully dissipate, and he was shivering. Liz wasn’t willing to risk them both just because she needed to be wherever he wasn’t.
“Unless you’re not up for driving. I could just call Kyle – or Isabel,” she added when Max’s face spasmed at his old rival’s name.
Even knowing that what he’d seen last October had been a ruse, Liz could understand why Max still held no love for one of Liz’s last human friends. She had tricked Max in the worst way possible, and as evidenced by the earlier incident in the water, when he nearly drowned as his little son cried out to him from somewhere far, far away, they would be dealing with the fallout from Liz’s deception for many years to come.
Max shook his head, clenching his teeth and shutting his eyes as though he were still a little boy, blocking out the truth with the force of his own stubborn will. He took several long, deep breaths, and then opened his eyes.
“No, call Kyle. I’m not really ready to face Isabel right now.”
Right. Because things were still strained there, too. Was there anyone left in their group at this point who wasn’t at least slightly at odds with Max?
Valenti, Liz thought. Maybe. It helped that he had finally been given his position as sheriff back, now that Hanson had been deemed unfit for the position, and Philip and Diane Evans had interceded on Valenti’s behalf, helping to clear him of any wrongdoing.
“Okay,” Liz agreed, pulling out her cell phone and hoping none of her thoughts showed on her face.
“I’ll call him.”
Thirty minutes later, Liz could not help but think there was an odd sort of symmetry to this moment as Kyle’s mustang pulled up several paces away. When Max had healed her, he’d pulled her into his orbit, away from Kyle, and now that Max had left deep emotional scars on her psyche, Kyle was the one rescuing her, taking her away from Max, in a purely platonic capacity.
“So, rekindling the flames was kind of a bust, huh?” Kyle asked after Liz had been riding in his passenger side seat in silence for a few minutes.
Liz nodded fatalistically.
“Understatement.”
She bit her lip and tried to push back a wave of tears.
“I think it’s really over this time, Kyle.”
“Oh, yeah? Not to be an asshole about it, but I think I’ve heard that one from you before, Liz, and it didn’t really take.”
“No,” Liz choked out wetly.
“No, this time, I um, I really mean it. He can’t be what I want anymore, and I damn sure can’t be what he needs.”
Kyle glanced over at her, his keen blue eyes sympathetic.
“I’m sorry, babe.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Work It Out
Day and night black and white
You take it all for granted
I'm the one who turns you on
When you don't know where you belong
And nothin' seems to matter
I'm the one who's holding on
-Def Leppard
Mid July, 2001
“Max, no. I think I’ve broken enough laws for you for one lifetime, don’t you? I am not helping you steal a crystal and hold up a convenience store. It’s just not happening, and I really need you to stop asking.”
“But Liz, this could be the only way to get my son back,” Max wheedled ala a broken record.
He had a pleading look in his eyes as he glanced over at her in the passenger side seat of his gently used, horrid blue Chevelle, which he had picked her up in about an hour ago, ostensibly to make up for their ruined date from a few weeks back. Liz had figured out pretty early on that this had been a front so that he could cajole her into helping him with this plan that was extremely low on sanity and extremely high in potential felonies.
Liz remembered when she used to get lost in those eyes of his. When he could melt away her strongest inhibitions with just one smoldering look.
Wasn’t giving into those eyes what had ultimately driven them into the hell their lives had become? She’d been drawn to him on a deep, chemical level, and even though a part of her had wanted to stay her mother’s little girl, another, wilder part of her had cared only about the pent-up desire in those beautiful, soulful eyes.
And because she had given into that wildness, the other aliens came to town, and nothing was ever the same again.
Well, no more.
Not this time, and not ever again. She was not going to be lured into another feckless plan just because a beautiful boy looked at her a certain way.
“Goodbye, Max,” she said, opening the passenger side door when they slowed to a stop at one of the few lights in town, ignoring his increasingly agitated requests to stay in the car.
It was the middle of the day, in a small, midwestern town, and God gave her two perfectly good legs. She could walk home.
“Come back to me when you need something legal.”
Breathe a Sigh
Let me down slow and easy
Cause there ain't nothin' I can do
I hope and pray my faith won't leave me
When it comes down to me and you
Try a little tenderness
I die a little
For a long lost sweet caress
You lyin' next to me
Fulfilled some destiny
I wanna cry
But I breathe a sigh
-Def Leppard
Late August, 2001
Michael glanced over at a strangely silent Maria and tried to quell the rising sense of dread. Slowly but surely over the weeks since the truth about Alex’s death came out and his murderer had been set free, Maria had gradually pulled away from him. He kept reaching out, trying to overcome his natural reticence to protect the closeness they had reached the night before Tess took off, and Maria continued gently but firmly rebuffing his efforts.
Her withdrawal tugged on a wound deep inside himself that Michael generally did his best to pretend did not exist. The gaping maw of emptiness from being left behind by Max and Is that night in the desert. From Hank’s refusal to see Michael as anything other than a source of income. From yearning to understand why they were abandoned in the desert before they even emerged from the pods.
Once again, Michael reached out to place his hand on Maria’s bare shoulder, already steeling himself for the coming rejection, and she sat up next to him in his rumpled sheets, absently dislodging his hand and announcing, “I’m gonna go take a shower and head home. This was fun, but I’ve got the early shift in the morning, and band practice in the afternoon. See ya later, Spaceboy.”
Michael was left with his palm spread out over the space where she used to lie, her rapidly cooling warmth mocking him. Balling up his hand, he thumped it against the mattress and did his best to pretend the overwhelming pain in his chest wasn’t there.
“See you,” he muttered to the empty air as the shower in his tiny bathroom turned on.
The room spun.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
Why did this have to hurt so much? What good was it to give someone his heart if all she was going to do was break it?
Blindly, he reached for his phone, dialing the number by instinct. He didn’t know where she was right then, but after he had come to protect the two of them in Las Cruces a few months ago, Liz had thanked him and offered to be there for him if he ever needed her.
At the time, he nearly scoffed at the gesture. She had clearly lost weight during the weeks spent chasing down leads, forging ahead on that path primarily alone (She may as well have been alone. When it came right down to it, Sean DeLuca might have meant well, but in their world, where aliens were real and the feds were out to get them, he didn’t exactly amount to much.), and her eyes had a sunken, hollow look, along with her cheeks. It was obvious that she could not help herself as she was, let alone anyone else. But he’d restrained himself, thanking her curtly instead, and so far as he knew, the offer still stood. If she’d rescinded it, Liz certainly had not indicated so to Michael.
“Hey, Parker?” he asked when the other line picked up.
“Are you free?”
Deliver Me
I'm tired of feeling hateful
I'm tired and I can't breathe
So tired that I would be grateful
If you close the door when you leave
That's me diggin' my heels in
That's me with the holy ghost
'Scuse me but I don't remember
Where were you when I needed you most
-Def Leppard
Early August, 2001
Max stared at his brother and sister through the bars of his cell, at Liz hovering in the background behind Michael, as though he might be a barrier between her and Max’s anger in the close quarters of the dim holding area.
He’d needed her. He had needed all three of them, and they had not been there for him. Maybe if they had, he wouldn’t be trapped in this cell.
“I could be on Antar right now.”
In spite of her trepidation, Liz rolled her eyes.
“I really don’t think the ship would have worked that quickly, Max. And even if it did, did you have a plan for what to do once you got there? Or were you planning to just wing it? You have no idea what that planet is really like. The political climate. The geography. The language. What if the ship crashed? I’m sorry, but your people’s transportation doesn’t exactly seem to be what I’d call reliable, you know? Believe it or not, this is probably the best possible outcome to your little trip to Utah.”
“Best possible outcome?” Max echoed, stunned.
“My son is still out there. So, you tell me, Liz, how this is supposed to be for the best. Or is that what you want?” he asked, hearing the increasingly horrible things coming out of his mouth and helpless to stop them as the anger continued to burn brighter and hotter in his chest.
“Do you want him to be gone forever? I never thought you could be so cruel.”
“Okay, that’s enough, Max,” Isabel interjected, slicing the air as though to cut him off.
“I may not be Liz’s biggest fan, but we both know she doesn’t deserve this from you. You’re desperate. You made a bad call. Don’t take potshots at the rest of us just because we weren’t stupid enough to go down with you.”
Max pierced his sister with a sharp look, but she shook her head.
“Uh-uh. Not this time, little brother. You don’t get to try and railroad me when you’re stuck on the wrong side of a prison cell’s bars. Like it or not, you screwed up, and you don’t get to shove the blame for this off onto everyone else’s shoulders. This one’s entirely on you.”
“Thanks for the support, Isabel. Really means something.”
Michael snapped, “Oh, cut the crap, Maxwell.”
Max wasn’t surprised Michael had taken a crack at him. Only that it had taken his mercurial brother so long to reach that point. Normally it took far less to push Michael’s many and varied buttons.
“We didn’t come all the way to Utah to stand here and take this.”
“Why did you come, Michael?”
He watched Michael claw at his eyebrow in a clear sign of agitation. He knew how much Michael hated police departments, especially after all the times he’d been hauled in as a kid.
“Because I’m worried about you. We all are. You’re being more of an idiot than normal, and even though I’m not feeling too hot about it at the moment, you’re still my brother, and I need to make sure you’re gonna be okay.”
Max blinked. From Michael, that was practically a love letter, and it shocked him enough that he almost softened towards all three of his visitors, but then he wondered where all of this brotherly concern had been when Max was trying to reach his son. He swallowed the forgiveness down, and it burned like battery acid in his gut.
“Well, thank you, Michael, but as you can see, I’m fine.”
He looked at the two girls he loved most in the world, even if he didn’t particularly like them at the moment, and he wondered at how they had grown so far apart from him – a distance that had nothing to do with the bars between them.
“It looks like you three wasted a trip, coming up here. You may as well go home. Dad’s going to get me out soon, and then I’ll be going back to Roswell.” Back to the drawing board, he thought to himself.
“And will you be better when you get back?” Isabel asked, sounding both dubious and hopeful at once.
“Will you let this go?”
“Let my son go, you mean? I can’t do that, Isabel. I won’t. He needs me.”
“Not like this,” Michael argued.
“This isn’t gonna help him. It’s sure as hell not helping you.”
“Go home, guys,” Max ordered, exhausted by the entire exchange, and by the paltry amount of rest he had been able to eek out since his arrest.
They weren’t parents. They would never understand what he was going through. What he needed to do. They didn’t want to.
“Max-“ Liz started, for once sounding like the old Liz.
The one who hadn’t scooped his insides out with a spoon by pretending to sleep with her ex-boyfriend. They still had not discussed her reasons for that farce, or how she’d even managed to pull it off. How had she known when he was coming over that night? How could she have been so sure that he would see? How could she do that to him and then have the temerity to act as though she was the only injured party here? Sure, he’d screwed up. He didn’t deny it. But whose actions had driven him to that point?
The memory of her betrayal lodged a shard of ice in his heart, freezing him from the inside out.
“Go home, Liz,” he said firmly.
“If you’re so determined to visit someone in jail, go see Sean DeLuca. Didn’t he violate his parole again?” Max was almost certain he’d heard Maria ranting about Deputy Owens catching her cousin out drinking the night after Tess took off in the granilith, carrying Max’s son.
For a moment she shot him a deeply disappointed look, silently letting him know that his little jab had been beyond below the belt, and then her shoulders slumped.
“Okay. Yeah,” she said, sounding as defeated as she looked.
“We’ll go home. Goodbye, Max.”
The words sounded achingly final.
“Goodbye, Liz.”
Gift of Flesh
When all the guilt that's in your head
Turns its back and plays for dead
You scorch the earth and torch the sky
Conscience low with head held high
Indulge and multiply
And sacrifice
As lack of breath chokes underground
Divulge degenerate
The darker side
From windows watch the screaming sky
-Def Leppard
Late September, 2001
It started with the day of Alex’s birthday. Memories of her once-vibrant best friend followed her from the moment Liz rolled over in bed and reached out to silence her alarm clock and realized that he would perpetually be stuck at seventeen.
This was Alex’s day, but there was no Alex to celebrate it. To celebrate him.
She dressed in long black cargo pants and a black long-sleeved shirt and cut class for the day to visit her best boy’s grave. For a good, long while after placing the latest Bush CD on his headstone, Liz simply sat on the grass in front of his body’s final resting place and watched his grave marker in silence.
This may have been where they had buried the shell that once housed her best friend, but Liz could not feel him here. Just the faint breeze passing over her skin and the grass and earth below her, under her grasping fingers.
Finally, Liz sighed and told his headstone, “I miss you, Alex.”
She couldn’t bring herself to wish him a happy birthday. It seemed like such a farce with his body beginning to decay six feet below, his spirit in the ether.
As Liz dragged herself to her feet, she heard a crunching sound, and the grassy spot where she’d sat caught her eye.
Once lush and verdant, soft against her body, the grass had become blackened and brittle, and when she sniffed, a faintly charred scent drifted up to her questing nose.
After sneezing, Liz stared down at the burnt grass in morbid fascination before glancing around to see if the damage had spread or if any of the other visitors had looked her way.
She should have realized they would be too consumed by their own grief and private concerns to worry about what one young truant girl might be getting up to in the graveyard.
Slowly, so as not to draw attention to herself since she’d already made it this far without being scrutinized, she wended through the different rows towards the gates. After walking about a block from the cemetery, her heart in her throat, Liz high-tailed it out to the desert, away from anything and anyone she might be able to damage.
As most would agree, Liz was far from stupid, and long past denial. That grass had been pristine before she showed up this morning, meticulously maintained, and no one had come anywhere near her, so whatever misfortune had befallen those green shoots must have come from within Liz.
As Liz ran further from town, fear and pain built up in her chest, her pulse racing and her lungs becoming bellows, collapsing and expanding outward in her heaving cavity.
Several miles out, when the dunes hid the last of Roswell’s buildings from sight as Liz turned to check behind her path of flight, the unrelenting pressure in her chest beat against its fragile, fallible confines, demanding release.
Liz fell to the ground and thrust her fingers deep into the shifting surface, a scream bursting from her throat as something molten exploded out of her rigid palms. Throwing her head back, Liz stared up sightlessly into the sky as the fury issued forth from her eyes and another scream welled up from the seething pit of grief and anger in her belly, rending the endless blue expanse. The force of the explosion rammed her down into the sand on her back, the hot, gritty mass searing her through the fabric of her clothing, and she tried and failed to move away.
Alex, Alex, Alex. Where are you? Where did you go? I’m hurt and lost and I just need you. I need you.
She couldn’t move. Oh, gosh, she couldn’t move. Why could she not move?
By the time Liz had spent the last remnants of her energy fighting against her immobility, the world around her grew hazy. Her limbs gave out bonelessly as her eyes rolled back into her head and consciousness slipped form her grasp.
~’~
Something patted ever so lightly against her cheek, dragging Liz inexorably toward the surface of her own mind. She tried to open her eyes and hissed at the agony, giving up almost as soon as she’d begun.
What had happened to her? Why did everything hurt? She inhaled deeply, at least hoping to get the scent of her companion, since she had no voice to go by.
Motor oil, cinnamon, chili powder, the faintest trace of frying oil, and a masculine musk. She’d know that scent anywhere.
“Michael?” she croaked.
“You disappeared on us, Parker,” Michael observed as he brought something to her desiccated lips.
Cool water trickled into her mouth, and she swallowed gratefully, the liquid soothing her aching throat.
“Sorry,” she whispered once he pulled the water away.
“Maria’s freaking out. Thought you’d been kidnapped. We were all looking for you. The others should be on their way since I called them as soon as I found you.”
“Not Max.”
Things were still too weird between them. She didn’t think she could handle the strain of their dead relationship on top of everything else.
“Uh, yeah, Max. I can heal small stuff, but I have no idea what all’s going on with you, and based on the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, I’d say it’s probably not anything we can explain to anyone with a medical license. That was you I felt earlier, wasn’t it?”
“What’re you talking ‘bout?” Liz slurred, her mouth already dry again.
Michael gave her more water but refrained from explaining further.
“Michael? Seriously, what’d I do?”
“Just – wait for Maxwell, alright? Pretty sure this is something you need to see to really understand.” He was silent for a long while and then he told her, “You are the most exhausting pain in the ass, did you know that?”
“Yeah, well, um, you know, you’re not exactly what I’d consider a picnic either,” Liz retorted, stung.
Here she was, feeling like she had been driven over by a semi – a few times – and scraped over by a cheese grater, and Michael was giving her grief. Not that she should really expect anything different. She did actually know him after all.
“How’d you find me, anyway?”
The how did I get so lucky? went unspoken, but she was fairly sure, from Michael’s huff, that he heard it regardless.
“Heard people talking about some kind of lightening striking out this way late this morning, and I’d felt something that I just knew was you around that time. Don’t ask me how, ‘cause I’m still sorting that one out myself. Figured once we realized you’d been missing in action all day that you probably had something to do with the light show. No one gets into more alien crap than you do, Parker. You’re like a homing beacon for trouble.”
Now that she was feeling more cogent and capable of listening more carefully, Liz could hear the worry Michael tried to conceal behind his usual gruff demeanor.
“Tell me about it,” she grumbled, deciding not to call Michael out on it.
He never did appreciate being accused of having an emotion, no matter what that emotion might be.
“It’s a gift,” she tacked on in a lighter tone.
“Seems like more of a curse from where I’m standing,” Michael noted grimly.
“More water?”
“Please.”
Liz’s ears perked up at the sound of a motor growing closer, and then Michael’s, “Took her long enough.”
“Maria?”
“Maria,” Michael confirmed, his tone inscrutable.
“Okay, what is going on with you two?”
They’d been dancing around each other for weeks, but it wasn’t their usual ritual. It lacked… fire. There was a frigidity to their interactions that seemed to Liz to have come from nowhere. She thought after Michael chose to stay for Maria that things in their relationship were good. Solid.
And now they seemed to be headed straight for a precipice, and she wasn’t at all confident they’d survive the fall.
“Nothing you need to worry about right now, Parker. You’ve got bigger issues.”
“Liz! Oh my G- chica! What happened? Who did this to you? Was it that little asshole, Nicholas? Was it Lonnie and Rath?”
“Maria? Maria, stop it, okay? I am fine. Just take some deep breaths for me. Maybe sniff some lavender or sage oil if you have any.”
“You’re fine? Liz, you are so totally not fine, okay? You’re so sunburned you’ve gone right past red and you’re turning purple. Purple! And if that wasn’t enough, you’re, like, trapped in some bizarre kind of glass-thingy, like someone made some kind of psycho cage. And your clothes are just – let me get the blanket out of my mom’s trunk, alright, petunia? I’ll be right back.”
Wait. What did Maria mean? What had happened to Liz’s clothes?
Maria came back, presumably with the blanket, though Liz couldn’t feel it. She did, however, hear the slight whisper and flap of fabric and smell the slight must and incense she always associated with the Jetta.
“Why didn’t you cover her up with your jacket, Michael? It’s not like you need it out here.”
“I was a little more worried about getting her hydrated and keeping her calm and lucid, Maria,” Michael bit back, irked.
At the approach of another car, the squabbling couple fell silent.
Liz did not have to ask who was coming. She’d grown unfortunately familiar with the sound of that Chevelle.
Two doors opened and then banged shut, the car engine still running.
“Liz!” Max cried, his previous animosity at her perceived abandonment set aside in the face of her plight.
“Michael, why didn’t you try to get her out of there?” he asked after the cloth rustled, his tone censuring.
“Wasn’t sure it was safe for her, Maxwell,” Michael replied, his own voice carefully neutral.
Max said nothing in response, and no one else spoke either. Beyond frustrated, Liz opened her mouth to demand to know what exactly was going on, and then she felt it. She felt the energy shift around her as Max’s powers went to work, transforming the strange cage into a soft pallet beneath her.
She jolted slightly as her body slipped several inches down, and she couldn’t stop a soft whimper from making its way past her gritted teeth and clenched lips.
“Sorry,” his whispered, his voice full of genuine remorse. “Sorry.”
Then his hands lifted to rest just above her eyes – she could see a darker spot where he shielded her from the sun’s harsh rays, and his powers washed over her.
Liz wailed, her back arcing and her hands forming into stiff claws.
Blazing trails of pain flowed from her eyes to the rest of her body, and she writhed and then screamed again as her abused flesh shifted further against the already heating pallet.
The pain seemed to last for an age, and she wondered if there’d ever been a time when she felt anything else, would she feel anything else again, or was there only this?
“Stop it! Stop! Max, it sounds like you’re murdering her, not healing her,” Isabel shouted, raising her voice over Liz’s tortured keening.
“I’m not doing anything – not like that. I’m just trying to help,” Max argued, his voice weak and frazzled.
“M-Michael,” Liz whimpered.
“What is it, Liz?”
She swallowed convulsively and then winced, her throat shredded by her shrieks of pain.
“More water?” Michael guessed.
“F-fix me,” she begged.
“You have to fix me.”
He let out an aggrieved sigh.
“I already told you, I don’t know if I can,” he reminded her, his voice horribly gentle.
She had never heard him sound that soft before, and it scared her, that infinite softness. She must truly be in bad shape for him to sound like that now.
“You can do it,” she panted, not sure if her certainty stemmed from faith or sheer desperation, but she knew, in that moment, as surely as she knew her own name, that he could heal her.
That he had to heal her.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“W-won’t.”
He hesitated for another moment and then sucked in a deep breath before ordering, “Move, Maxwell.”
“Michael, I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Max cautioned.
“I mean, if I can’t do it…”
He let that part hang, ugly and rotten between them.
“And she’s in a lot of pain. It might be making her delerious.”
Michael scoffed.
“Parker, you off your gourd?”
“Not y-yet.”
“Well, alright, then. You heard her. She’s still got all her marbles. But if we leave her like this for much longer, she might lose some of ‘em.”
“Michael…”
“It’s what she wants, Max. And you said it yourself; she’s in a lot of pain. Pretty sure she’s the one who gets to decide how we handle it.”
“Fine,” Max conceded, shifting out of the way.
Michael’s distinctive scent moved closer, and his hand blotted out some of the oppressive light and heat.
Cool energy washed over first her eyes, then down her neck and onward. The relief in the areas he treated was instant, and it helped to clear her head a little. The only downside to this was the self-consciousness that cropped up, knowing now as the desert air wafted over her gradually healing skin that she had not been so exposed since she was a toddler.
“Alright, Liz. Gonna have to turn you over. You ready?” Michael murmured.
Nope. Not even a little bit.
“Uh-huh.”
His large hands, whisper-soft, reached out to turn Liz’s body over. Most of her back had been spared, but some areas like her shoulders still needed a little attention.
“Maria, help me sit her up,” Michael directed.
Her best friend came to sit behind her, wrapping her arms around Liz’s newly healthy flesh.
“Here,” Isabel said, draping the blanket over Liz and partly over Maria, who’d spread her legs out on either side of Liz’s.
“Thank you,” Liz said, gratitude welling up within her for the normally stand-offish young woman.
Michael’s hands came up to cup around Liz’s eyes, still closed even after he healed the delicate skin of her lids.
“Alright. Time to open your eyes, nice and slow.”
Liz didn’t want to.
She remembered the electricity that had burst out of her. What if she had blinded herself? But no, she could differentiate light from dark. So, she couldn’t be too badly off.
Like a caterpillar inching along a leaf, she eased one eye open, bit by cautious bit.
Michael’s face was a blur. She opened her other eye and then blinked them both; the image of him cleared somewhat, but not enough.
“Michael?” her voice quavered.
“Yeah?” he asked carefully.
“I can’t see.”
Maria gasped.
“I mean, I kind of can, but it’s really out of focus,” Liz hastened to clarify, not wanting to send her best friend into hysterics.
“Okay. Let’s see what we’ve got,” Michael said, his voice deliberately calm.
Moments later, her vision sharpened entirely, and Liz heaved a huge sigh of relief. Other things felt better now, too: her throat, her lungs, her head.
Liz breathed a fervent, “Thank you,” allowing her head to loll against Maria’s shoulder.
Maria’s arms squeezed her gently around the middle.
“Don’t mention it,” Michael replied, his words tired and brusque, though if Liz wasn’t much mistaken, the brusqueness was more an attempt to conceal the disbelieving awe she could sense lingering under the surface of his curt demeanor.
Michael healed her. Really and truly, from the inside out and from her head to her toes. His hands and his powers had wrought something miraculous and wonderful, not as weapons of protection or destruction, but as tools for a balm.
She had a feeling he would be mulling over the implications of this for a while.
“I don’t understand,” came Max’s bleak plea.
Liz was starting to think, now that the pain was eradicated and her head was mostly clear, that she did. She was not about to offer up her supposition, though. She’d just been healed. No need to scrape open the still tender emotional wounds from her failed relationship with Max on top of what she’d already been through today, and truth be told, she didn’t actually like causing Max pain, in spite of the body of evidence to the contrary.
“What’s there to understand? Michael healed me. It’s really not that complicated,” Liz told him curtly in the hopes that she could derail the discussion, even though she knew there was significantly more to it than that.
She should have known better.
“But then why couldn’t I-“
“Max?” Liz said, halting him.
“Don’t worry about it.”
A futile wish, but she could at least put it out there.
“Look, um, thank you, guys, for coming out here to get me. But I’d really like to get home now, if there’s nothing else.”
“Here,” Isabel said, stepping forward.
“Let me do this.”
She waved her hand over the blanket a few times, first dividing it into two larger pieces and two smaller ones. The first two pieces became a basic pair of jeans and a soft black cotton t-shirt. The smaller pieces became a black sports bra and underwear.
Maria helped Liz slip the clothes on after Liz thanked her alien seamstress, Liz still too unsteady to manage dressing herself unaided.
“Why don’t we just sneak you up through your balcony, huh, babe?” Maria suggested.
Since Liz was in no mood to try and have a conversation with either of her parents, Liz agreed easily, “Sounds good. Thanks, ‘Ria.”
“Any time, chica.”
She looked at Michael and thanked him again.
“No problem. You sure do know how to show a guy a good time, Parker,” Michael joked.
“That’s me,” Liz concurred with a sardonic twist to her lips.
“Liz Parker, life of the party and all-around good time girl.”
Michael snorted so hard that Liz thought he might have broken something.
“We’ll talk later?” she mouthed.
His head rose and then fell almost imperceptibly, and then he and Maria ushered Liz over to the Jetta, Maria hovering beside her as Michael carried her so that she would not have to walk barefoot on the hot sand. Once they reached the car, Maria yanked open the door and made way for her boyfriend. He bent down with Liz still securely in his arms before easing her into the passenger seat.
She pulled on her seatbelt, a bit rueful over the fact that it was the first time since this debacle started that she could actually help herself. In the wake of Alex’s murder, she’d grown accustomed to being largely self-reliant. This was an aberrant setback to her hard won independence, her earlier silent calls for Alex notwithstanding.
“Later, Parker,” Michael muttered before shutting the passenger side door.
“Bye, Michael,” she replied, knowing he could hear her even through the raised window, his Antarian genetics at work.
Blood Runs Cold
I heard this line one time 'bout tryin' to save the world
But have you ever tried to save yourself
A wide-eyed suicide drive
Remains a fake
As if you'd ever
Ever go and make the same mistake
Strung out as the night comes crawlin'
Your halo of thorns is fallin'
Blood runs cold
I feel it in my bones
But you don't know your time is up
Blood runs cold
-Def Leppard
Mid May, 2001
The night after a ship bearing the murderess and her unborn babe tore the sky and left the cave behind a crumbling ruin too symbolic for Liz to even begin to describe, Liz borrowed her dad’s truck and drove back out to the wreck of the pod chamber.
Detritus from the ship’s egress laid all about the rocky remains, even gathering down at the base, and Liz fell to her knees in the gritty sand and pebbled earth as the full impact of the devastation drove home in her breast.
Nothing of what the caves once housed within could have survived such utter destruction.
Grimly, Liz considered that she ought to pray that the thing she’d been thinking of as nothing more or less significant than a spaceship was in fact the granilith itself, even if that meant the murderess delivered it straight into the hands of Khivar, because the other possibility, that the granilith had been destroyed by their inept and ignorant blundering, was too terrifying to contemplate. The fate of worlds hinged upon that artifact, and Liz could not help but wonder if in allowing its use, Liz had doomed her own planet.
Had everything she did in the fall hastened the desolation of her home rather than beaten it back? Had she broken her heart and ravaged the soul of a sweet, earnest boy only for all her efforts to come to worse than nothing?
Gazing dully at the blast site, Liz knew that all she could do now was wait. Wait and hope.
She’d had the vague notion, for the past several months, humming at the back of her mind, that if things grew too desperate, she could simply learn how to modify the granilith and head into the past to fix what she’d knowingly – though with the best of intentions; not that anyone who knew what she had done would consider her intent worth a damn when weighed against Alex’s life: Maria (Would her only remaining best friend ever be able to forgive Liz? Would she deserve it if Maria did?) – razed to ash.
The promise of it, of a chance to still somehow get things right, even when it seemed as though everything was going to hell on a speeding subway, had soothed Liz, comforting her during the seemingly endless months of loneliness and guilt eating away at her spirit. Now that promise was gone, in all likelihood never to return, and Liz found that she did not know how to live in this new world that she and Future Max had wrought.
A burning ember in her chest began to spread and grow, warming her in defiance of the desert night’s chill. Through all the pain and self-denial of this past year, never once had Liz allowed herself to feel angry or bitter towards the remnant of that averted timeline. Future Max had been desperate and alone and completely excoriated by loss. His only desire had been to set things right. To save their world. She could never argue with such an aim, even if she wished with her entire soul that there could be another way and could certainly argue about his methods.
Future Max had been adamant. His plan was the only possible way.
She’d known even then that he must be missing something. How could the fate of an entire world rest on the presence or absence of one petulant hybrid girl? Liz had been more right than she ever suspected at the time, as their “fourth” had proven she was of no help to them at all. A vicious slap in the face to everything Liz had tried to accomplish.
Stark, undeniable proof that Future Max’s blinders had been thicker and more firmly set than she’d known, and he’d been determined to drag her along through his madcap scheme anyway, truly heedless of the consequences.
For the first time, Liz allowed the bitterness to flow through her, the first seedlings of hatred towards Future Max taking root. He had completely rewritten the course of her life – of all their lives – and then simply disappeared, insulated from the changes his presence in this timeline set into motion by his own obsoletion.
The bastard had birthed a whole new reality and he didn’t even have the decency to stick around and deal with it.
And Liz – Liz had been so right. So horribly, presciently right. She was alone. She did not think, kneeling at the base of the excavated pod chamber, that there was a single soul in the entire universe as alone as she in this single, endless moment, as the dust from her actions finally settled all around her trembling form.
Alone, alone, alone, her wretched heart wailed, and she sobbed and snarled, slamming her palms into the sand as she’d fruitlessly, frantically, beat them upon the entrance to the pod chamber hours ago. Harsh, guttural, choking cries clawed their way out of her throat as she railed against the hand she and Future Max had dealt.
She did not know how long she raged, but eventually, her strength gave out, and she fell onto her face, snot and tears mixing into the sand and caking her cheeks and nose, her lips and chin, and there, curled up at the bottom of the end of her own, personal world, Liz Parker fell into an exhausted sleep.
Her dreams were vivid and harrowing, no respite from reality, and she was grateful when someone wiped gently but insistently at her face and then strong arms scooped her up off the desert floor and carried her away.
The scents of motor oil, cinnamon, Tabasco, diner grease, and male hybrid musk were comfortingly familiar, as well as the abrupt, “Come on, Parker,” as her seeker shifted her around in his arms to open the passenger side door of her father’s truck and gently place her into the seat. The soft click of the seatbelt fastening and the dull slam of the door shutting were the last things she heard before drifting back off into dreams much more peaceful than their predecessors.
Safe.
Not alone.
Where Does Love Go When It Dies?
Could you bite the hand that feeds you and then ask for more
Could you kiss the wound that bleeds spit it on the floor
Could you open up your heart then close the door
And would it ever be enough
Every word you whisper
All the tears you hide
You die for love when it's alive
But where does love go when it dies
If you came across your dream would you walk on by
Hold a candle to the wind and just let it die
And is there room inside your mind for one more try
And would it ever be enough
-Def Leppard
Late October, 2001
He had spent so long keeping the world at a distance. He’d had no frame of reference when one, tiny, tenacious blonde chick kicked and shoved and squeezed herself into his life and his heart, no sure defenses. He certainly tried and held out longer than most would in the face of the force of nature that was Maria DeLuca, but in the end, he caved like a sea wall crushed by a tsunami, and while it had been terrifying and bewildering, in a way, it was also a relief. Michael hadn’t done so well on his own as he would have liked people to think. A strong body that could take a beating and still keep kicking wasn’t worth too much when the soul inside was torn and withered down to the quick by indifference, violence, and neglect.
For some reason Michael still could not fathom, Maria had seen something inside of him that she deemed worth saving, and she coaxed his battered soul back into healing, growing – even thriving.
Come what may, Michael would always be grateful to her for that. But that gratitude was almost overshadowed at the moment as he listened to Maria explaining that she was suffocating in this town, and that she needed to get away from this place that reminded her of her lost best friend at every turn.
There was a good bit of irony in Alex’s old band becoming the vector for Maria’s escape. This past summer, when she and the rest of The Whits bonded over their mutual loss, they also bonded over their shared love of music. And now here she was, telling him about her shiny new record deal, gouging acrylic-nail-shaped holes into Michael’s secretly tender heart.
As Michael sat staring up at the whirling dervish in his apartment, who was gathering items she had left lying around over the course of their time together, he took mechanical sips of his Snapple. It was more to give himself something to do than out of any real desire for the drink he usually savored. He would go on sipping anyway, or else he risked ossifying on his couch, because the thought of moving from this spot and trying to behave like a living, breathing, functioning person was just too much in conjunction with Maria’s high-pitched twittering and his most vital internal organ fracturing.
“Promise you’ll be there for Liz?” Maria asked, breaking off from her overly cheerful rambling to pierce Michael with a look that was at once pleading and fierce.
“She’s trying to act like this whole turning green thing isn’t getting to her, but it’s pretty obvious that it is, and since she and Max, like, can’t hardly even look at each other now, and since Isabel’s off embracing the college life, you know, as much as the Ice Queen ever embraces anything, she can’t go to either of them. So, basically, you’re all she’s got, and I, like, need to know that she’s gonna be okay after I leave, or I’ll just feel like I’ve completely abandoned my best friend in her time of need, which I would never even do, except it’s really my time of need too, and I’m just no good to my sweet little petunia like this.”
“Fine,” Michael grunted, more to stop Maria’s rapid-fire explanation than out of any desire to honor her wishes right now, because he loved her, and she was just leaving him.
And had she asked anyone to look after him while she was off breathing and living her dream? Michael was going to go with ‘no’ on that one.
Michael wanted her to be happy. That was ultimately all he had really wanted for her throughout this entire mess of a relationship. He just wished she could find it in herself to be happy with him, the man she’d cajoled into opening his heart and arms to encircle, rather than hundreds of miles away, with strange people and new experiences Michael would never be able to share. His place was here, in Roswell, with his brother and sister and the rest of the humans whose lives they had indelibly altered.
The image of Liz, trapped and ravaged by the powers his brother unwittingly gave her seared his mind’s eye, followed by a memory of a coffin weighing down upon his shoulder, and he flinched.
His place was here.
So, when Maria asked, “So, you’ll do it, then?” he was wholly committed in his confirmation.
“Yeah, Maria. I’ll take care of her. You go to New York. Don’t worry about anything that’s going on here. We’ll be fine.”
Maria bit her full, pink lower lip, a guilty look creeping into her jade eyes.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She beamed and then squealed, launching herself at him, barely giving him enough time to set his Snapple bottle safely out of the way.
“Thank you, Spaceboy! You don’t know how much this means to me.”
He squeezed her gently, helpless against her, even now that she was leaving him, and murmured, “Don’t mention it,” before finally pulling away.
After a quick peck on the cheek, which smeared fruity-smelling lip gloss he told himself he wasn’t going to miss, Maria straightened up and retrieved the box of forgotten treasures, hefting it.
“I’ll be seeing you, Michael. I’ll miss you, you know,” she declared.
No, he didn’t know.
If she’d truly miss him, then why did she have to go?
This thought ached to be let out, but he crushed it down and kept his mouth shut, knowing that he would not have to fight it back for long.
Once Maria set herself on a path, no force on this world or any other could stop her or slow her down.
One single heartbeat passed, the thud of it dull and throbbing with unspoken pain.
Then she was gone, light footsteps dancing their way out of his apartment and his life.
When the front door closed behind her, Michael finally allowed himself to frown. He buried his face in his hands, pressing his palms against his eyeballs to ward off the hot pressure building there, and held his shoulders rigidly, guarding against the gathering sobs.
He was fine. He loved her, and she’d said she loved him, and not to be a complete girl about it, but he’d given her his body in addition to his heart, and now she was leaving, and she was a liar, but he was fine.
Sometime later, when someone opened his front door and then curled up next to him on the couch, enveloping him in a warm, pleasant cloud of vanilla and strawberries, he barely noticed, lost in the crying storm that broke out, defying his every will.
Liz said nothing, choosing to simply nestle her slight body closer and place a small, comforting hand upon his thigh, assuring him that she was there. That she wasn’t going anywhere.
That not everyone would leave him behind.
Pearl of Euphoria
Feed the demon, kiss the flame, feel your desire
Empty room, turn the key
You're never alone
When you're with me
-Def Leppard
Mid March, 2002
As Liz’s hand snapped up, a lime green bolt of energy already pooling in her palm, Michael grabbed her wrist and whirled, pulling her arm behind her back. Kneeing the back of her leg, he bore them both down to the mat spread out in the middle of his living room floor.
Absorbing her power harmlessly into his own skin, he leaned down, panting, “Yield,” into her ear.
The bucking, feral thing that had taken Liz Parker’s place as soon as she realized she was trapped actually growled at him, and he chuckled, incredulous. It never ceased to amaze him how absolutely savage she grew whilst they sparred with each other.
“Parker. There’s nothing you can do, and I’m starving. Just concede already.”
But he’d underestimated her, letting his guard down and then taunting her like that. Before he could use his own powers to take the sting out of it, Liz released a barrage of shocking power, forcing Michael to let her go or else risk getting fried.
Michael swore, hissing at the sharp spike of discomfort all along his front.
Damn. Didn’t she realize that some parts of him were delicate?
She rolled and then pinned him, leaning down to stare straight into his wide, butterscotch eyes.
“Yield,” she demanded, just barely containing a smirk, though he could hear it in her voice, so the attempt was rendered sort of moot.
Michael swallowed, his breath speeding rather than slowing, and he watched Liz track the motion of his Adam’s apple, licking her lips as her pupils dilated, her already coffee brown eyes growing almost black.
The flush from their sparring match darkened along her cheeks and traveled down her neck, and Michael had to force his gaze to flick back up and not to try to discover if the blooming redness went down even further.
“And if I refuse?” Michael asked, his voice strangely hoarse.
“I guess I’ll just have to persuade you,” Liz husked, and Michael’s entire body shuddered.
They had been doing this dance for weeks, hovering over the edge of something but always easing back into safer territory at the last minute.
As frustrating as it had been, it had also been strangely enjoyable, and in a way, it was… safe. If they crossed this line, there would be no going back, and unlike Maria, Liz had no ticket out of what his ex had once termed the Alien Abyss. Liz was a hybrid like the rest of them now, in this for life. She needed them, and they needed her, and it was only now, months after she and Max had broken up for the last time that she and his brother were working towards a comfortable friendship. If she and Michael tried and things blew up in their faces, he didn’t even want to think about what that could do to her. To him, either, because he had come to need her in his life just as much. Since Maria had left him, Liz had become his rock, even though he had tried not to rely on her too much in the beginning, not looking to have his heart demolished a second time.
He didn’t want to risk their friendship, but he had a feeling it was already too late. If he didn’t do something, they might just fall apart anyway, and Michael couldn’t have that.
Liz’s eyes cleared a little, losing their heated glint, and she leaned in closer, her breath brushing over his face.
“Hey,” she crooned.
“Michael, it’s okay. We’re gonna be alright, okay? This doesn’t have to be something to be afraid of.”
In spite of his very real concerns, Michael bristled at this. She wasn’t actually supposed to acknowledge that this whole thing scared the piss out of him. Did she not realize that pointing that out was just about the most emasculating thing she could do to a guy?
“Who said anything about being afraid, Parker?” he demanded.
Her pomegranate lips twitched, and Michael’s nostrils flared.
Oh, she’d done that on purpose.
Well, he’d just have to make her pay for that little indiscretion, wouldn’t he?
Before she could say or do anything else to dig herself into a deeper hole, Michael reared up and took her pretty, taunting mouth, reveling in the silken feel of her, in her soft sound of surprise before she let out the faintest of moans and melted into him, tilting her head for a slightly better angle, her dark eyes sliding closed in bliss as the flashes took hold, a connection bursting into life between them.
A tiny, precocious Liz Parker gazed at the new boy in the ratty once-white t-shirt and scuffed up jeans as he silently dared any of the other students on the playground to try and approach him, and she hurt for him. He must feel so scared, being around so many kids he didn’t know, and he couldn’t even bring himself to let anyone help him. Everything about him just made little Liz incredibly sad.
A newly teenaged Liz flipped another page in her magazine, still listening to Maria going on and on about Corey Fletcher, the cute boy in her creative writing class, and Liz couldn’t help it as her mind wandered to a quiet, tall, angry boy who’d recently taken to spiking his hair. He’d worked on a project with her in her honors English class last week, and his insights into To Kill a Mockingbird had just blown Liz away. She wished other people could see how smart he was. She wished Michael would let them.
His shoulders had broadened since Liz last allowed herself to really look at him, Liz realized as she stared him down in the alley, silently urging him to trust her. To not leave. She couldn’t even begin to explain it, but she just couldn’t stand it if he ever really decided to go.
Max was gone and everything at the carnival was too close and too bright and too loud and she was scared and this was all her fault and Max was gone, they took him, but then there Michael was, his strong arms holding her together even though she felt certain she was falling apart.
She’d always known that underneath all of his bluster, Michael was actually far gentler than his brother, and this proved it, she thought, his hand upon her arm unyielding but oh, so careful not to harm, but she didn’t have time for his worries, for his dogged protection. She was so close to finding Alex’s killer, she could feel it. She couldn’t, wouldn’t stop for anyone. Not even this gentle giant.
Exasperated, Liz nearly nudged Michael out of the way as he stood between her and Rath, his hand outstretched. She knew he cared about her and wanted to keep her safe, but damnit, he was blocking her own line of sight. Didn’t he remember she wasn’t a liability anymore? She could and would protect herself and the rest of the group, just like he did. Besides, Ava was with Rath, and she would never be with him if Rath was truly evil. There had to be something else going on here.
No man should look that good in a sweaty t-shirt and an apron. That had to be criminal, Liz thought as she carried away the order for table five. Had to be.
As she curled up against Michael, her eyes glued to his TV screen, Liz decided Maria didn’t know what she was talking about. Braveheart really wasn’t that bad. Besides, Liz could put up with a lot more than watching Mel Gibson running around in a kilt for the excuse to snuggle up to the young hybrid man who was rapidly becoming her best friend.
Liz finished closing out the till, keeping one eye and ear on the two favorite men in her life as they discussed new ideas for the Crashdown’s menu. She always got a kick out of watching Michael and her dad together. Somehow, their similar personalities didn’t result in the two of them butting heads with each other, and it satisfied something in her to see them getting along like a house on fire. No, she would not examine the reasons why.
As their kisses gradually wound down from deep, consuming caresses of each other’s tongues to soft, gentle pecks at each other’s swollen lips, the flashes slowed and then faded away, and at last, they pulled slightly apart from each other, their gazes catching and holding.
“I’ve got something to say to you, Parker,” Michael rasped, his voice barely louder than a breath.
“But I’m gonna wait a little while. That okay with you?”
Liz shifted slightly so that she could press her lips against his forehead.
“It’s okay with me,” she affirmed, her own voice equally hushed.
“I have something to say to you, too.”
She sighed softly then and rose up until she sat against his hips, looking down at him.
“I’ve actually gotta go,” she said, regret clear in her tone and in her dark doe eyes.
“It’s getting pretty late, and my parents are gonna start wondering where I am.”
“’Kay,” Michael sighed, sitting up, which proved to be a bit of a mistake, his cheeks heating at the intimate contact.
Swiftly, he helped her up and then rose to his feet, deciding to walk her to his front door. Normally he didn’t bother, but he wasn’t quite ready to let her out of his sight just yet. Not after what had just happened, and what they had both vaguely admitted.
They reached the door too soon, and he reached up to cup her cheeks in his hands, his fingers and palms dwarfing her delicate features. He couldn’t kiss her on the lips. Not again. Not if she actually wanted to make it out and reach home before curfew tonight. He settled for kissing the tip of her nose, and he cursed himself for a sap as her nose wrinkled and she let out a light giggle, which was oddly fascinating. Liz wasn’t normally one for giggling. Laughing, snorting, chuckling. Those were all fairly standard where Liz was concerned. But not giggling. He’d made her do that. It was kind of gratifying.
“Goodnight, Michael.”
“’Night, Parker.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Count on it.”
Michael definitely was.
Move With Me Slowly
So do me a favour
Won't you
Move with me slowly
Get too close to me
Move with me slowly
Just like we're meant to be
Just like we're meant to be
Hey say sister
You're dreaming
You got stars in your eyes
-Def Leppard
Early May, 2002
“No,” Liz said sternly, wiping down the front counter.
“I am not going to prom with you, or anyone else. I’m still recovering from the last one.”
“Is anyone gonna point out the irony of Jolly Green, here, being the one so dead set on the two of them going to prom?” Kyle asked, glancing between the couple in mild fascination, still nursing his third cup of coffee.
Liz had switched him to decaf after the first, but Kyle didn’t need to know that. What he didn’t know, couldn’t hurt him. He’d been strung up pretty tightly since Brody had warned Max about what looked like a heavy cluster of aliens heading towards Roswell a week ago. His powers still had yet to show up, and Liz knew he didn’t like feeling useless.
He wasn’t useless. Not in the slightest. But try telling him that.
Ava swatted him lightly up the backside of the head, and he let out an indignant, “Ow!” even though her tiny hand couldn’t exactly do a lot of damage - unless she added a little alien mojo, which she would never do.
Especially after how close the two of them had grown in the time since she'd moved in with him and the sheriff, seamlessly taking the murderess's place in their lives and helping to heal some of the damage her counterpart had left behind.
“Aw, leave ‘em alone, Kyle. I think it’s sweet he wants ta go. Totally cornball, but sweet.”
Michael huffed as he continued cleaning the grill.
“Thank you, Ava. I think.”
“Guys, no,” Liz insisted, glancing around at each of them.
“It’s just not happening.”
~’~
“I cannot believe this is happening,” Liz muttered to herself as she dropped the smile she’d faked for the prom photographer, blindly following Michael wherever he led her, his hand gentle but firm around her slender wrist.
She felt ridiculous in her golden heels and silky, shiny, lime green dress, the skirt’s hem swishing against her knees as she walked. But it was as far from her last prom dress as possible, and at the time she’d bought it, once she finally accepted that Michael, for whatever reason, was not going to let this whole prom thing go, that was all she’d cared about.
“Deal with it,” Michael told her, stopping and turning around to face her.
She had to admit, he looked extremely dapper in his suit; a green so deep it was practically black, that complimented his skin tone and contrasted handsomely with his blond, shoulder-length mane of hair. While she studied him in open appreciation, he gathered her into his arms, holding her close, and her jaw dropped as she realized what was happening.
“Who are you, and what have you done with my boyfriend?” she asked as she brought her arms up to drape around his neck.
Michael Guerin wanted to dance.
Michael Guerin wanted to dance.
Michael Guerin wanted to dance.
Michael Guerin wanted to dance.
In public.
This was it, ladies and gentlemen. After changing the future and losing Alex and gaining powers and fighting evil aliens, this was how the world actually ended.
“Look, I know you’ve still got some lingering trauma from how our junior prom ended, so just let me give you this, alright? I wanna make some better memories of this place for you before we graduate. You used to love school and all the social stuff that comes with it, and I think getting dragged into our lives kind of ruined that for you, so. Here we are.”
“Here we are,” Liz echoed, unable, for the moment, to come up with anything more coherent.
A slow song came on, and Michael started swaying from side to side, his careful hold encouraging her to move with him, which she eventually did, her reluctance fading as his words finally began to sink in.
She stared up into his gorgeous butterscotch eyes, wondering how she’d been so lucky to gain the affection of such a quietly thoughtful, unobtrusively kind man. He was incredibly sweet, and most of the world would never even know, he hid it so well.
“Michael?” she asked, deciding that now was the time.
She didn’t think there would ever be a more perfect moment than this one, and she’d definitely been on the lookout for one.
“What?”
“I love you.”
Quiet, reserved, laconic Michael Guerin beamed down at her, completely, beautifully, undeniably incandescent.
“Love you, too, Parker.”
Even after the slow song ended, and a more upbeat one came on, Michael and Liz continued to sway, caught up in their own little world.