Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Roswell. Just trying to give my favorite characters a break.
Pairings/Couples/Category: Mostly Max/Liz - will probably be some Michael/Maria and Alex/Isabel content.
Rating: Mature
Summary: Frustrated with being grounded, and pushed to the limit by their mutual attraction, Max and Liz take desperate measures and leave Roswell, their friends and families.
Author's Note: Hope you like this... I've been wanting to give it a try for a while. It's probably going to be a departure from my usual ensemble fics, but I'm not entirely sure how that's going to work out.
The cordless phone rang, and Liz paused a second before answering it, lost in thought. She knew who she hoped would be on the other end of the line, and under the circumstances it was a slightly naughty wish, but that just made the sense of anticipation even sweeter. "Hello, Parker residence?"
There was a second before a response came... a soft, teasing whisper. "Liz! Are you alone in the house?"
A burst of joy hit her and left a wide smile on her face. "Max!! Yes - you?"
"Would I have been calling you in the first place if I weren't?" A familiar, soft chuckle rang over the line, and Liz's knees trembled - it really WAS him. "How much time do you have?"
"Probably almost half an hour, if not more," Max replied. It was now two weeks, less a day, since they had run off to spend a memorable night out in the desert... breaking parental restrictions in the process. The punishment for that had been, among other things, not seeing each other outside of their high school classes for three weeks, and even though the two of them, as typical teenagers in love, had managed to bend the rules a few times without getting caught, (like talking on the phone when nobody was around their houses,) the stolen moments weren't nearly enough for Liz. She longed to spend time with Max when she didn't need to worry about anything else... to feel the touch of his lips on hers and be able to just melt into the kiss forever... or long enough that it almost felt like forever at least.
"Yeah, I don't think my parents will be back here until seven at the earliest." Liz sighed. "It's so great being able just to hear your voice whispering to me, but it doesn't feel like enough. This is *so* not fair."
"No, it... it really isn't," Max admitted. "I... I wish I could confront my parents, threaten them with moving in with Michael or something crazy like that... but that wouldn't really help anything, because you can't do the same. There doesn't seem to be much of an alternative to serving out our sentence like nice little compliant prisoners."
Something about that twigged a memory in Liz. "Max... okay, first off, time to level with me. Valentine's day... the night of the blind date concert, when you got drunk and whisked me away into the night."
"Umm.... what about it?"
Liz laughed softly to herself. Somehow she had no doubt that Max knew exactly what about that night she wanted to ask... but he was going to make her say it. "Do... *do* you actually remember what we did, what you said to me that night? I know you said you didn't after you kissed me... but--"
"No, you're right," Max said softly. "I remembered it then, and I remember it now... every moment, or very nearly. Just... just didn't want to face up to it, and faking amnesia seemed like the easiest way out. I'm... I'm so sorry that I lied to you, about something like that, but..."
"It's okay," she assured him. "Just wanted to make sure." And Liz took a deep breath. "I know... know this sounds crazy, but you talked about running away from Roswell, going somewhere that nobody knows us. I... I think I want to."
There was a long pause, at the beginning of which Liz thought she could hear Max's mouth drop open. "Are... are you serious? I mean... I'm frustrated at the being grounded thing too, obviously, but running away from home seems a bit like overkill."
"It... it's not just that," Liz pressed. "Sure, at some point, my mom will decide that she can't keep me locked up in the room anymore, and I'll be off restriction. But... but I think it'll be a long time before she trusts either of us completely. She's scared, Max. And the simple fact that we're teenagers with two years yet to go before we finish high school... means that I won't really be able to be as close to you as... as I *need* to." Another deep breath. "But anywhere more than an hour's drive away from Roswell, and nobody knows us from Adam and Eve - as it were. We... we don't even have to be high school students, I mean, we look our age, more or less, but we could pretend that we don't. I've got waitressing skills and you're... well, you're clever, pretty strong, and not too proud. We could find jobs more or less anywhere... rent a place of our own and move in together - why not??"
"We'd probably need some kind of proof of majority to rent an apartment," Max put in.
"So... you don't think you could do a kick-ass fake ID, with your special talents?" Liz joked. "Obviously it wouldn't be a good idea to use it for drinking, but to establish that we're nineteen or twenty, for getting jobs and a place to stay..." She sighed. "But getting caught up in practical details is a little premature, maybe. Do you think you can really go through with this? Leave your parents, Isabel and Michael, everybody?? Because if you can't, then we don't need to argue about the driver's licenses."
"I was using the driver's license stuff to buy time while I tried to let my heart sort out how it felt about leaving," Max pointed out.
"Oh, sorry. I didn't realize. We can go back to it if you like, I guess."
Max laughed softly. "No, that's okay. Um... what my heart feels... is confused definitely, but strongly drawn to your madcap plan, Liz Parker." She sighed slightly in pleasure... there was something about the way he said her name like that that put a shiver down her spine. "What... what you feel about needing to be... to be *intimate* with me, I feel it all too... that is, I think that what I feel is the same thing. And... and the fact that we've hardly had a chance to even see each other or talk except in the middle of full classrooms, ever since we spent the night together, out there in the desert, just amplifies the feelings and urges to a ridiculous extent... to the point where I'm willing to consider something that I'm not sure I'd ever have soberly thought I would."
Liz smiled a private smile again as Max's rant came to a ragged halt. "Well... so you're considering it. That's fair. Anything I can do to help you make up your mind?"
Max gave her a very nervous laugh. "When... when you were talking about getting a place of our own together, umm... does that mean, or mean to imply..."
Liz laughed herself... she couldn't help it. "Oh, so it's sex that makes the difference? I have to admit, Max Evans, I thought you were *different.*" She ladled the affectionate teasing into her voice with a metaphorical shovel, hoping that he'd realize she was just having fun and not get offended. "That you were a *sensitive* guy..."
"C'mon, c'mon," Max muttered, sounding not offended but very embarassed. "You know that I'm not some horndog who's only interested in one thing... but I think expecting full disclosure here isn't too unfair."
"Alright, alright," Liz agreed. "But... but to be honest I'm not entirely sure. Everything that my mom tried to get me to promise because she's scared, and because she has a bit more experience, is fighting a war with what I feel inside when I think of you." She took a deep breath. "I think I want to push the limits - go beyond what we've done so far. Actually making... making love, I'm not so sure that I'm ready."
"That... that's fair," Max admitted, and then muttered "gut check" under his usual speaking voice. Liz could hear him taking a deep breath and then said. "Yes... I'm up for it if you are... and we probably won't get a better chance to split than right now. Are you... ready? Are you serious about going?"
Liz did a small 'gut check' herself. "Yes. Let's leave town tonight."
"Alright, then here's step one in the plan," Max said. "You head off to the Tilden corner grocery, pick up some snacks for the drive. I'll snatch a few things and pack them into the Jeep, and meet you in the store parking lot in half an hour."
Suddenly the whole thing seemed terribly real to Liz... the fact that to run away from home they'd have to break restriction and leave their houses when they weren't supposed to hadn't occured to her as such. "Okay... but Max, I'll need to pack some things from here too. Clothes and toiletries, if nothing else."
Max smiled. "Right, of course... I nearly forgot. We'll probably go shopping for some new threads along the way... the better to not be recognized easily if my dad puts our pictures on the milk cartons," Liz laughed slightly, but there wasn't much humor in the notion. "Can you get anything you need in a backpack or something else that won't seem too unusual for a girl to be carrying while out shopping?"
"Yeah, definitely." Liz was already, in her mind, emptying all the school stuff out of her bookbag - she wouldn't need chemistry and biology textbooks where they were going - and trying to figure out how many of her favorite clothes she could fit into there. It certainly wouldn't seem unusual for anyone to see her carrying it around town, she was rarely without it... though some people might know that she wasn't supposed to be around town at all this week. "I love you."
"I love you too," Max said. "Synchronize watches." There was a bit of a fuss as Liz got into a position where she could adjust the buttons on her digital watch, which involved holding the phone in hte crook of her neck. "I have four oh-seven in four, three, two, one, mark." Liz made the necessary adjustments. "I'll try to be there by twenty to five, sound good?"
"Yeah, definitely," Liz agreed. "I can't wait."
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Liz had finished her shopping and was waiting at the edge of the parking lot when Max pulled the Jeep in. He jumped down from the driver's seat and the two of them hugged tightly. Liz would have kissed him, except that she was worried getting herself started like that at the moment would swiftly, unavoidably, lead to completely inappropriate 'public displays of affection' and attract more attention to them... which was something they really didn't want. So after embracing him for only a few seconds really, far TOO few, she maneuvered free, tossed her two bags into the back of the Jeep, (one backpack filled with clothes and other essentials, one grocery bag filled with snacks and other good food for eating on the road,) and at the same time evaluated the gear that Max already had packed. There wasn't as much as Liz had been expecting, and it was all well packed in about three large suitcases and travel bags. "Is that all you took?"
"We need to travel light," Max whispered close to her ear, playing with the hair in that vicinity. "We'll need to carry it all by ourselves at one point in the plan."
"Oh?" Clearly Max had been writing stages into the plan that hadn't occured to her... which was probably good, since this time she had the big picture but not as many of the details worked out. "I hope it's not anytime soon."
"No." And Max turned her around so that they were both facing the car, his arm draped around her shoulders, and Liz had one arm reaching around his waist - it had gone there more or less automatically. "Right now - we drive." Liz laughed softly, kissed him quickly on the cheek, and rushed around to the passenger side seat. Max quickly peeled out of the parking lot and started heading west along Tilden, which was really not a bad way of going, except for the occasional stop sign. (If he'd gone up to Second avenue, there'd have been both stoplights, and more chance of a friend of their parents spotting them.) Soon they were through that little stretch on Tilden, from South Kentucky Avenue to South Missouri, where it split up and had a wide island between the eastbound and westbound lanes, and then they had to wait for the red light at South Washington to turn.
"Where... where are we going?" Liz asked Max breathlessly. "I mean, once we get out of Roswell? Do you have any idea?"
"Yeah, the sketch of an idea at least," Max assured her. "To Socorro first, and then up to Albuquerque that way... we'll probably stop at a motel for the night somewhere on the I-25 before getting in to Albuquerque... that is, if we can sort out fake IDs or find a motel that won't give us a hard time for being so young." Liz smiled. "In Albuquerque, I want to sell the Jeep and buy new wheels... that's why we'll have to carry our own gear... and we can probably do some other shopping while we're there... get a little bit more luggage and some new clothes. After that... well, it was my notion to head for the northwest corner of the state, opposite from Roswell. I'd rather not cross state lines, or get particularly close to them, but staying well away from Roswell sounds like a good idea."
Liz shivered a bit... there was something about the matter-of-fact way that Max was talking about this that jarred against her expectations just slightly. "You... are you worried about our parents finding us?"
"I know my father will look," he said in a low voice. "And there's no point in going if he'll be able to find us easily." He looked over at Liz - already they were starting to get close to the west end of town, and he had left Tilden street for Alameda, which would let him get further without having to join the main road. "Are... are you freaked out by the idea of trying to hide, like this?"
"A... a little," she admitted. "Guess I hadn't realized how hard it would seem, emotionally." She sighed. "But... but I do want to go through with this, and if that means doing what we can to make sure that nobody can find us, then I'll do that." Liz jumped a little in her seat. "But our friends, Isabel, Maria, Michael and Alex... are we going to be able to let them know that we're okay, and that we don't want them looking for us?"
"Yeah, probably," Max agreed. "Drop them letters or postcards, as long as the postmarks won't lead them straight back to us." He sighed heavily. "I have to admit, I'm a little worried about Isabel trying to find me in my dreams."
"In your dreams??" Liz asked, shocked. "What does that even... ohhh. Maria mentioned that she had a creepy dream about Isabel, a few weeks after she found out about you guys... and that Isabel seemed to know about it the next day."
"Yeah," Max agreed. "I think it was probably a creepy dream to start with - she can't change what people are dreaming about... at least, she says she can't. But she walked into Maria's dream to observe her, to find out what was on her mind. I think she's probably done it to Alex too, though he might not remember. And... and if she wants to find me, she might try to dreamwalk me... or you. I'm not sure what the range of that little trick is, though... I don't think she's ever done it on someone who wasn't in town."
"Well.... what if she does?" Liz asked. "I mean... oh, right, our dreams might have images from our waking lives, or other clues to where we've gone." Max nodded. "Well, I guess we'll worry about that situation when it comes up... if we happen to remember the dreams that she goes walking in." She looked around a bit. "By the way, is there any particular reason we're going through Socorro?"
"Not... not really," Max admitted. "I didn't want to go the most obvious way to Albuquerque, the north way out of town... not entirely sure why." He sighed. "It'll take a bit longer, but not much."
"Hey, that's okay," she insisted. "I was just curious whether you knew there Socorro is the other major hotbed of UFO rumors in New Mexico, besides Roswell."
"Hmm... I think I'd heard some kind of rumors, yeah," Max agreed. "Someone was asking Milton about them once... he said it was just bored college students playing jokes on passers by."
"And one other question," Liz continued. "Just because we'll be buying a new car, or you will be anyway... why does that mean we'll have to carry our luggage any distance WITHOUT a car?"
She blinked in surprise when Max told her.
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"Okay," Max said. "You'll let me know if you see a place you want to stop for dinner?"
"Oh, let's not stop someplace that we can see from the interstate," Liz chided. "Go off the interchange and into Socorro. Come on - we need a bit of a change of pace after driving all this way."
Max stole a split second to take his eyes off the road and look at her... and nearly forgot that he had to look back to where they were going again. It was at times like these that he could hardly believe that Liz really loved him too... and that they'd made their way through all of the crazy angst and uncertainties of the past six months to be together. Even when he was staring down his lane, the image of Liz Parker, radiant in the evening twilight and the white overhead highway lamps, remained clearly visible in his mind. "Umm, okay. My dad always said that you needed to be careful in Socorro or you wouldn't be able to find your way back out, but I think we're up for the challenge, eh??"
It had been a long drive from Roswell already, more than three and a half hours... mostly west by northwest along US 380. About ten minutes ago he had turned onto the interstate that let up from El Paso and Las Cruces into Albuquerque, and from there it turned back east, passing through Santa Fe before heading back north towards Denver. Max kept his eye out for the last interchange that would let them escape the Socorro bypass and get onto local city streets. "Socorro means help or refuge in Spanish, right?" Liz asked out of the blue.
"Umm... yeah, I think so," Max agreed. "Comes from the same latin root as the english word 'succor.' Socorro in New Mexico was named by explorers... who were almost dying of hunger and thirst when they arrived and were helped by homesteaders who had settled in the area... or something like that."
"Well... we can do with a little help and refuge," Liz decided. "Would be nice and fitting if this could be our permanent refuge, the place that we settle down to be by ourselves... but it isn't far enough away, small enough, or unlikely enough." She sighed. "'Socorro in New Mexico' -- are there other places named after the same word, Max?" Her voice was teasing - an invite to show off his useless knowledge, if he had any that was relevant.
"Umm... yeah, one in Texas definitely. Maybe another in Central america or something, I dunno."
"Oooh... flame-grilled burgers!" Liz exclaimed, pointing out a distant restaurant sign. Max had been shocked for a second that she'd been able to read such a thing... no, she'd probably just guessed by the little neon animation, the licking flames and the flipping patty. He chuckled and drove the slightly two more blocks, to turn into the parking lot. The sign read 'WELL DONE GRILL - Home of the KaiserBurger.' Max jumped out of the driver's seat, spread a tarp over the luggage in the back seat so it would be a slightly less appealing target, and stared at Liz as she came around the back of the car to meet him. Neither of them were wearing jackets, though the spring desert night was kind of cool, and they were both wearing the same clothes that they had put on for school that morning... Liz in a simple red t-shirt and blue jeans, Max wearing a white buttoned shirt and black dockers. They probably wouldn't attract too much attention at a place like this, even ordering farily big dinners at nearly eight pm.
Liz stole a kiss from Max before they walked in - not that he minded, of course.
There were some other young people in the dining room, but they didn't pay either of the Roswell teens any attention - at least, not at first. The restaurant seemed to be set up on an odd kind of hybrid system between a regular full-service sitdown place and a fast food, get your grub at the counter joint -- the two of them lined up to place their order at a counter, paid for it, and also selected a table from a map of the restaurant where the arrivals and departures were being marked as they occured. Then their table number was matched up to their order, and they went off to wait for a server to deliver their food when it was ready. (Drinks they took with them.) Once they were settled -- sitting together on one side of the booth, because sitting side by side seemed better than staring into each other's eyes at a distance -- Max pulled out a map of New Mexico and spread it out on the table.
"Okay, once we're done in the big city, any idea where we should head?" he asked her, and Liz blinked. "If we're trying to head north and west... well, there's just no roads heading directly out of town in that direction. We could keep going north on the I-25, and turn left onto the 550 at, um, at... Bernalillo, or go west on the I-40 and head north on the, urm, probably the 371."
Liz perused the map for a moment. "Looks like the 550 probably gives us the best choices for where to stop." She sighed. "Probably shouldn't go terribly near Bloomfield - Alex's grandparents live there, and I spent a month and a half with him and them, two years ago in the summertime. My parents just might think of looking for me there."
"Hmm." Max thought about that. Bloomfield was pretty much slap bang in the area he had been thinking of. "Then maybe stop short of Bloomfield? Say, umm, around Nageezi?" Liz laughed at the town name of Nageezi, and then their food arrived, and Max folded up the map and they tried to distract themselves by talking about less serious stuff.
Once they had both started in on their burgers, a tall blond guy, about their age, stepped up to the table, completely ignoring Max. "Hey, beautiful," he said to Liz. "Are you new around here?"
"Umm... just passin' through, actually," Liz replied, putting a bit of a western twang into her voice for no particular reason. "Just grabbing a bite to eat, and then we will be hitting the highway again." She snickered softly. "Don't want no trouble."
The blond guy seemed a little off-put by her cliched dialog, but continued on. "Drivin' up the Interstate?"
"That's our business, and not yours," Max mummbled in irritation. He didn't like the idea of locals finding out what they were up to, even if it was a million to one against anybody from Roswell happening to find these particular locals. (And it probably was better than a million to one against, considering that his parents would only need to talk to two people in the State, outside Roswell to get up to that level.)
"You're awfully touchy, for somebody who doesn't want any trouble."
Max thought about that a second. "Yep. Have a nice evening."
And there wasn't much the blond guy could say to that, or maybe he just didn't think that trying to hit on a pretty girl was worth this much trouble. Liz and Max focused on their food, sitting even closer together to send a nonverbal message to anyone else watching them, and talked in hushed voices about their plans.
Soon the burgers and fixings were done, and a waitress had picked up their dirty dishes, and the two Roswellian lovers went back up to the counter to get ice cream cones and take them out into the parking lot. "Do... do you suppose that maybe we could just stay in Albuquerque?" Liz asked wistfully. "I've always had a bit of a yearning to try out life in the big city... or reasonably big compared to Roswell, anyway. We'd be two needles hidden in a pretty darned big haystack."
"Hmm." Max thought about that. "Maybe. But if there's a serious attempt to find us, then the big city means a lot more people who would see us, who might lead our parents to us, or at least into the right area. I think that a small town is probably a better bet... a really tiny place, much smaller than Roswell. Lost in the vast distances of the desert."
Liz paused a moment, then nodded, accepting what he said. "Yeah, plus I guess it's a bit of a cliche - teenage runaways heading off to the big city to try their luck." Max nodded.
They ate their cones in silence for a little while, and Max realized that he was starting to stare at the way Liz was using her tongue, darting it out of her mouth, licking and teasing the gooey white stuff... "Hey, what?" she mumbled, noticing Max's intent gaze on her face. He couldn't bring himself to reply, and Liz went to lick up a stray drop of melted vanilla that had started to escape down her sugar cone... and something about Max's expression when she did that must have given her the hint. "Ohhh..."
"Umm, yeah I guess so," Max mumbled awkwardly, not sure what else to say.
"Classic oral fixation," Liz whispered throatily, and made an even bigger show of licking something off the head of her mound of ice cream, and then sticking the entire 'head' of the cone into her mouth and sucking on it. Max heard a soft, slightly high-pitched moan escape from it, and Liz convulsed into giggles... which made her nearly choke for a second until she took the ice cream cock out of her mouth.
"I... I'm gonna have to remember that one," she said sexily, and then used her lips to pull off a chunk of mostly melted ice cream. "You'd better worry about your chocolate though, mister." Now that the metaphor had been established, Max was having a bit of trouble putting it out of his head... including the slightly disturbing implications of himself licking at something dark brown... or when Liz bit into the sunken remains of a sugar cone. Come on, boddy, he reminded himself suddenly. Sometimes ice cream is just ice cream.
"You... you remember those stupid oral history questionnaires we had to fill out for class last semester?" Liz asked, and Max nodded. "Isabel seemed to be personally affected that I could like anything as... as boring as vanilla ice cream."
"Yeah, that'd be Isabel," Max agreed. "When we started high school, I think that she was keeping a list of all the things she was convinced I just did or liked because I was on a quest to drag her down in the popularity rankings." He sighed. "Don't worry, baby... I like the vanilla too, some of the time."
Liz immediately broke out laughing again, and Max shot her a puzzled look. "Umm... um, I'm sorry - it's just that... well, vanilla's also a term, for, well, bedroom preferences, and I'm not quite sure exactly why my mind went there first."
Max considered that. "Were you more amused by the notion of me liking vanilla in bed," he probed, "or by the implication that a lot of the time I *wouldn't* prefer vanilla in bed?" Her eyebrows raised.
"Umm... a little of both, I guess, come to think of it." And there was something in her look for a moment that was subtly alluring.
They chatted more about the oral history assignment, which had happened right around the same time that Michael had taken off for Marathon to find Atherton's geodesic dome, so that all of them had had to rush to finish it at a time when they really had much bigger issues on their minds. Max, in particular, had had to go back to work with his partner, Kyle Valenti, after Kyle had caught the five of them (Liz, Maria, and Isabel, Michael and Max,) in a motel room miles from Roswell, and the young jock had peppered him with questions that weren't on the assigned list.
"Okay," Max muttered once the stories, and the ice cream cones, were all done with. "Head back to the interstate now?"
Liz considered a moment, looking around her. "Yeah I guess." She seemed regretful about not having a better chance to explore Socorro, but this really wan't the time. "Can I drive for a bit?"
Max smiled. Liz wasn't the best driver in their little group, but she actually wasn't bad on freeways, and his hands were a little tired of holding the wheel. "Sure." And he kissed her long and deep before giving up the keys.
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Isabel knew that something was wrong as soon as she pulled up to the house. It didn't take any exceptional intuition to come to that realization. It was the fact that the Jeep was nowhere around that started her off.
Max was supposed to come straight home after school on days when he wasn't working at the UFO center, (which weren't many days lately - Dad had gone down to talk to Milton and personally gotten Max switched to a lighter work schedule that was mostly weekends,) and he wasn't scheduled for work this afternoon. Her dad's car wasn't there either, and and her parents weren't expected back from a deposition marathon until... well, until half an hour from now.
A quick search of the house was enough to convince her that nobody was home. "Maybe... maybe mom and dad came home early," she whispered to herself. "And they decided to go out to dinner with Max or something... without calling my cell to see if I wanted to come along... and driving in seperate cars."
She couldn't really make herself believe it... and then she started to notice things missing. Max's favorite blue suitcase. The little box of houseware stuff that Grandma Chalmers had left to both Evans siblings, for when they wanted to live on their own the first time. A better-than-decent CD boom box.
Exactly the kind of stuff that Max might grab in a hurry if he were leaving Roswell, and not planning to come back.
It was actually twenty minutes before Isabel's parents pulled into the driveway, but somehow it felt more like twenty seconds. She hadn't had time to make up her mind what to say to them, but somehow her mouth opened and formed words without any hesitation.
"I... I think Max did something really stupid."
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"Oh-- okay, here we are," Liz said, as she pulled into the motel parking lot. "I think this'll probably be the last place to stop for the night that isn't actually on the Albuquerque outskirts, if you think that makes a difference."
"Maybe not," Max replied, "but it seems as good a place to stop as any... I have to admit I'm a little stressed out and tired, and going any further tonight probably isn't a good idea."
"Right, so... what now? Do we just walk into the office together and ask for a room?"
Max thought about that for a long moment. "Yeah, we go in together... that way it seems like we've got nothing - and nobody - to hide. Though it's probably best if we can keep from being all over each other while in there." He laughed cheerfully. "I know that'll be hard on you." Liz rolled her eyes slightly, but chuckled too. "One thing first." Max pulled out his wallet, prduced his driver's license, and concentrated hard on the tiny little molecules of pigment that represented the printing on it. (The picture he left alone, of course.) Once he was done, which took almost half a minute, he passed the little laminated card over to Liz, who peered at it critically. "So you're, umm... twenty years and eight months now. And your name is... Jacen. Jacen White." Liz seemed to consider that name, whispering it silently as if getting her lips used to it. "Not too bad I guess... has a bit of a ring to it. But why'd ya spell Jason in such a funny way?"
Max shrugged. "No particular reason... except that I thought it might seem less suspicious to be more conspicuous, if that makes any sense. You wouldn't think that Jacen with a c was a fake name to avoid attention, would you?"
"Umm... I guess not," Liz admitted softly. "What about me?" She already had her license card out and passed it into his hands.
"Any preferences for your new name? You're the one who's gonna have to be answering to it."
"Hmm... is Alisa okay, or does that seem too close to my old one?"
"Sounds great to me," Max admitted. "Alisa anything in particular?" Liz shook her head, and Max started to focus on her license. Soon it was ready and handed back.
"Alisa Miller," Liz said, and smiled. "Cool." She looked at the date figures and blinked. "You made me twenty-one?"
"Umm, yeah. I thought it might open up some new job opportunities for you. Why, don't think you can pass for 21?"
"Umm... I'm not sure," Liz admitted. "Never really thought about trying to. I'm short, after all, and, well..." She crossed her arms over her chest diffidently.
"Lots of women who are twenty-one, or even older, are short and... slender," Max pointed out. "If you're confident about it, then you'll be fine. We'll go shopping tomorrow for some clothes that are a bit less high-school - that should help." A pause. "And now the moment would seem to be upon us."
"Hmm?" Max nodded towards the motel office. "Oh, right. Yeah, better go in or they'll wonder what were're so scared of, sitting out here." And so they hopped out of the Jeep again and went into the office.
There wasn't anything particular to be worried of. The desk clerk seemed to be far too bored to be suspicious or pay much attention to them in any particular way. The only thing he said that wasn't absolutely essential to the basic transaction of getting a motel room was that there were no discounts or adjustment on the room rate just because the cable TV was out. Max had to stop himself from saying that that wouldn't be a problem. They got room number 107. Liz went over to park the Jeep in front of their door, while Max went to investigate the premises more directly and see just what they were in for for the night.
It didn't look too bad. A slightly stiff double bed, a little television across from it blaring static at high volume... who had turned that on? If it had been the last people in, wouldn't housekeeping have turned it off, considering that the cable was out? Or maybe they usually left it on, and this room had been cleaned before it cut out. Certainly the room seemed sufficiently clean, if not extravagantly so. There was a small bedroom with a stall shower, two armchairs, a coffee table, a bare desktop with a slightly wobbly chair pulled up next to it, and... well, and that was about it.
Liz showed up at the door before Max had done more than give the interior a once-over. "Ehhh."
"Were... were you expecting something nicer?" Max asked, his spirits suddenly crashing.
"Umm... no, er, well, I dunno. I probably was, even though I know that I shouldn't have been." Liz looked at him apologetically. "But it's alright, really it is. We're here together, and that's the most important thing of all." And she closed the door and melted into his embrace, in just exactly that way that they hadn't been able to be close all day... or for nearly two weeks, as far as that went. Max brought his lips to Liz's, and a sudden surge of heat flooded through his body, weakening his knees as it passed through them towards his feet.
Apparently the 'weak in the knees' effect had been a little too strong, and maybe it had affected Liz as well as Max himself, because all of a sudden they were falling - Max backwards, Liz forward on top of him. For a split second while he was in mid-fall, Max wondered if this might be fun. Then the impact hit, more than a little jarringly, and his bones seemed to rattle with it. "Ohhhhh," he moaned into Liz's face.
She backed off just a little. "Oh, are you... I'm sorry!"
Max looked up at her... not that he had much choice about that it seemed. "Did... did you push me on purpose?"
"N--no!!' Liz exclaimed. "Well, not, no, not really 'on purpose.' I... I felt myself going a bit weak, and I leaned harder into you, and then you were leaning away and pulling me with you." She reached out a hand to stroke the side of my face. "Is your delicate little head all goose-egged now?"
"I... I'm not sure," Max said. He shifted his head slightly and felt an irregularity that might become a bump. "Yeah, I'm pre-bump. And... and I think my wrist is wonky from how I landed on it."
Liz made a sad-puppy-dog face. "Can... can you heal yourself, or just other people?"
"Umm... I'm not sure about bigger things, but I can fix little scrapes and strains like this, yeah." He started to get up, and Liz hurried around to support as much of his weight as she could by draping an arm around her own shoulders. Her assistance seemed to help a lot, though Max couldn't tell if that was a physical effect or emotional, or some of both. They headed over to the bed, and Max relaxed and concentrated on trying to access his healing talent.
"Not... not a very auspicious way to start the night, was that?" Liz said forlornly.
"No, I guess not," Max admitted. "But it doesn't really matter much. Like you said... we're together, and that's the only thing that matters. I just need to remember not to kiss you that hard when we're standing up, and away from soft surfaces to fall onto." Liz laughed at that phrasing.
They chatted a bit, and Liz turned off the television, examined the bathroom, and brought in some luggage while Max relieved the inflamed tissue on top of his skull and fixed the strained tendons in his wrist. Then Max made Liz sit down in one of the armchairs and relax, while he went out and brought the rest of the luggage in - stuff that they didn't need to spend the night, but Max was worried that somebody might swipe stuff out of the car. When he had finished bringing the last load - the heavy box of dishes - in, Max only just had time to let it fall to the floor inside the door before Liz took his hand and led him back to the bed. She kissed him passionately and fell back onto the mattress, and Max was laughing inside his mind. He'd said that she shouldn't kiss him unless they'd fall onto a soft surface, and she was taking him very literally.
Very quickly, Max got a flash, a mental image of the two of them... sitting in the Jeep, parked somewhere dark, and Liz suddenly bent down and stuck her head in the vicinity of his lap, maneuvering away from the steering wheel. Was she about to... no, this was something that had already happened, the night that they went to spy on Topolsky spying on Michael. But Kyle had been spying on THEM, and had jumped to the conclusion that Liz had been giving him a blow job from the position... she actually dropped her ring near his feet and had been reaching down to look for it--
Max found himself looking into Liz's eyes, wide open and staring at him slightly. Max traced a line from her mouth to her right ear with his own lips. "Did you have a flash too?" Liz nodded. "What did you see??"
"Umm... you and me, together -- we looked a little different but I can't say exactly how," Liz gasped out as Max continued to nuzzle her ear. "You kissed me, and we closed a door, locked it, and went downstairs... it's like we were living in a little apartment on top of... of a general store, or a laundromat or something."
Max grinned at the thought. "Sounds good to me. Now all that we need to do is find that store, and we'll be set." Liz giggled. "Did you see any of where we went to when we got to the bottom of the stairs?"
"No, the flash wasn't that long," Liz said with a sigh, "but I think we might have been heading off for seperate jobs or something." She sighed. "I... I don't really care that much about our future at the moment. Tomorrow will come soon enough. Right now, I just want to live in the moment, to think only about tonight."
"That sounds good to me," Max said, and he bent down to kiss her cheek. "What do you think ABOUT tonight??"
"I think... I want to do this..." And Liz kissed him on the lips again, her tongue quickly moving into his mouth with the urgency of her passion, her hand stroking his shoulder and his arm. "And this..." She started to lave his jaw and neck with her tender tongue, washing it carefully and thoroughly like a sexy catbath, her arms both going under the hem of Max's shirt and starting to push the fabric up, exploring and teasing Max's abdomen and his lower chest.
"And maybe even just a little bit of this." Within a second Max's entire shirt was pulled off of him, and the sexy dark-haired nymph was pushing him back so that his head rested on the fluffy pillows, stradding his hips, and bending down to suck hard and nibble gently on Max's nipples. The combined sensation sent Max's libido nearly through the roof, and he struggled to keep it contained rather than letting loose something that the two of them still weren't ready for.
"Oh, wow, that is absolutely amazing," Max cheered her, which elicited a sexy laugh from Liz, an even more intense sense of suction that concentrated more directly on the tips of his nubbins, and some deliciously teasing fingertip action as Liz let her hands explore the skin near Max's waist. "How... how far are your prepared to go tonight??" he asked in a low growl. "I kinda need to know now."
"Umm." Liz backed away slightly to consider the question, first taking her lips and hands away from Max's torso, and then, belatedly, she seemed to realize just how close their private parts had been in that position, and shuffled down nearly to his knees.
"I... I'm not s... well, I'm sure about some things, so let's start there. We... we're not going 'beyond the galaxy' -- err, do you know what I mean by that?"
"Umm... mostly by the process of elimination, but yes," Max said with a soft laugh. "There's only one thing that tends to deserve euphemisms that big. No actual sex."
"Riight," Liz agreed. "And, erm, nothing with the term 'sex' in it... I know that that's a little ambiguous, considering how many different names different physical activities have, but..."
"Yeah, I got it," Max said with a tolerant smile. "If even one well-known name is 'such-and-such sex' then it's off limits." A thought occured to him. "What about, erm, using our hands, below the belt? Hand job, fingering... I don't think that fits your previous rule, but..."
"No, again not tonight." Liz sighed. "I... I want to get there, or even further, but I'm not quite ready." She considered. "Actually, I think I'd like to, umm, to touch your thing, if that's okay. I can understand if you don't want me to until I'm really ready to, uhh, to take care of it, but..."
"No, no, come on," Max insisted. "What kind of a chauvanistic frat boy do you take me for? If you want to get used to the fact that I have guy parts gradually, then go RIGHT ahead, please, and I will do anything I can to assist. Better than you not getting comfortable with... with those parts of me."
"Guy parts?" Liz grinned, and pulled off her demure blouse in a single gesture to reveal a black cotton bra that, though similarly plain in cut, made Max's heart pound. "And I suppose that makes these girl parts?" She did something to the place where the bra seperated her girl parts, and pulled one cotton cup aside, giving Max just an instant's glimpse of pale curvy skin and a small pink stiff mountain peak, before teasingly covering herself up again.
Max's breath caught. Somehow he hadn't thought of Liz as the kind of girl who'd wear a 'front-clasp-bra,' but now that he'd seen it, he definitely approved. "Umm, er, yeah. Very nice girlie parts, I would have to say. Do I... do I get to, um, to learn more about them tonight?" A pause. "They're not 'below the belt...' not the way you're wearing your belt at the moment at least."
Liz hesitated, but she started to smile, and then to grin. "Oh... okay, but just one word of warning. I'm not sure how much veracity to assign to stories I've heard and read, but there are some who believe that fooling around with a girls' breasts can have a huge affect on her willpower with respect to going further. So... umm, watch it, and when I say no more, I mean seriously no."
"Of... of course," Max said, and he sat up and gently pushed Liz's bra away from her chest and helped her shrug out of the garmet altogether. "One other thought that I thought I'd mention... when we back off from the point of no return, umm... maybe one or both of us would want to take care of business him or herself? And possibly even letting the other person watch?"
Liz's face went through a number of changes of expression too fast for Max to really catch them, ending in a mixture between shock and intrigue. "You mean, ummm..."
Max cringed, deciding that he'd gone too far. "Um, have you ever, ehhh..."
"Only once or twice before," Liz whispered softly. "But... but it's a good idea. I could probably do with one once we're done tonight."
Max grinned and stated to let his fingers wander softly over Liz's supple and silky flesh. "How -- how's this?"
"Not... not bad. You could stroke a little bit more firmly, if you want to." Max followed the instruction instantly, and they moaned at almost exactly the same time. He let his fingertips drag over the rougher, rosy skin at the foot of one of her passionate peaks.
"How... how about trying to use my mouth?" he asked. "Any suggestions?"
"Umm... careful to start... lick softly with your tongue, brush lightly with your lips," she advised. "I think. Never done this before, obviously."
He shot her a stern glare. "No? Kyle said differently."
"Ohmigawd, he did not. Max Evans, you fibber."
"Honestly, he did." Max bent down to lick carefully. "Of course, he was drunk at the time."
"Oh... valentine's day? Before I, um, bumped into you??"
"Yep. He asked if the meaningful stuff got guys any further, and said that he'd gotten to second base with you - as a reference point."
Liz giggled. "Well, now *you've* slid into second I guess, and WOWWW you're good at sliding." She giggled nervously. "So - um, what did you tell him, about if you got further?"
"I... I said that I'd seen into your soul." Max made Liz cry out in pleasure again. "Didn't seem to impress him as much as this... and I have to say I can kinduv see his point."
"That's the hormones talking," Liz chided him goodnaturedly. "Plenty of kids have had this kind of purely physical experience, but I don't think any of them could match the rare emotional connection we've experienced. Though... ahhhh, I have to admit that the physical is nice."
"True enough," Max agreed. "And together, they should add up into something greater than the sum of the parts... once we're comfortable enough with the physical that we don't automatically put up emotional barriers." He tried sucking on one of Liz's nipples, and it seemed to go over well - for both of them. "But the question remains - did you let Kyle get to second base?"
"Umm... well, he stuck his hand up under my shirt once, while we were french kissing," Liz said. "Nothing... NOTHING AT ALL like this, I can assure you."
Max grinned and let his fingers wander over Liz's skin, wondering how long it would take until he knew how to 'play her like a musical instrument.'
TO BE CONTINUED...
