Rebuilding Lives(CC,I/A,L/M,K/T,ADULT) Complete 6/16/06

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 6:41 pm

Part Eleven

The old-fashioned beige dial tone telephone rang, and Alex hit a button on his CD player before picking it up. "Goldman house, Whitman speaking."

A laugh rang out over the connection. "Hey Whitman, how's it going? DeLuca here."

For an instant Alex was too surprised to make the connection. "Maria? You calling from the Big Apple?"

"Where else, little grape?" Her choice of comeback puzzled him, but then that wasn't particularly unusual with Maria. Probably she had just groped for a common fruit that was well known for its smallness, to contrast against 'Apple.' (Though apples weren't particularly big for fruit... if that were the point, they should have called it the Big Pineapple or the Big Plantain. Anyway...) He was also stunned by how clear Maria's voice sounded across the hundreds of miles. "Isn't it pretty late over there?"

"Eh, quarter to eleven. Not like I'm gonna turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight or anything... though I might turn into a snoring lump on my matress by then I suppose. But I guess you're probably wondering if there's a reason why I called."

"It occured to me," Alex admitted. "Hadn't decided if I was gonna ask yet."

"Well, no real reason I suppose," she said, and Alex felt and heard a half hoot of laughter escape from his chest. "Just, I dunno, feeling a little homesick, but I didn't want to bother Michael in the middle of his big dinner, and my mom probably has her cell phone turned off. So... I dialed you! Hope you don't mind."

"No, I guess not," Alex said. "Though I think Liz would love it if you called her cell phone just to say hi to everybody. I did that around... um, not quite half an hour ago." He had to peer at his clock radio before finishing the thought.

"Oooh, yeah, I guess so," Maria agreed, seeing the value of the idea. "Okay, then we'll keep this short I guess. How's the settling in going?"

"Not too bad," Alex said. "Moved into my room, including the small amount of stuff I put into the storage locker here in Los Angeles over the summer. Got the final copy of my class schedule with the room locations and everything. Took some time today to look at laptops in the store." He sighed. "Met with the guys from the band... looks like Denny and Tomas have developed some creative differences over the summer."

"Uh-oh," Maria said, whistling softly. "Stormy waters ahead for the Good Ship Foreboding??"

"Yeah," Alex agreed. The whimsical band name they had settled on last year was starting to seem less cute and more on the nose. "What about your guys??"

"Umm... really well, actually. Sophie's rustled up a few gigs for us, and Spence has this whole plan about recording and mixing an album and putting it up for free downloads on the 'net. I was looking forward to going through with the usual record deal route, but maybe this'll work out okay, since the labels still aren't returning our calls."

Alex laughed. "By the way," Maria continued, "I am officially jealous of you, just so you know."

"Me?" Alex blinked. "Umm... can I ask why?"

"Just because you get to see Isabel tomorrow," she said. "And Lex. I'm still not sure when Michael will be able to get up here."

"Yeah, that's rough," Alex admitted. "But... well, but you know that he loves you, and that nothing will keep him away for long, right?" Maria made a little mm-hmm noise. "Hold on to that... I think it just might help."

"Okay. Well, I'll hang up now and call Liz at the dinner party. Drop you an email soon, okay?"

"Yeah, sure. Until I get my own pooter, I'll be down in the labs probably twice a day, or more," he assured her. "And I always love to hear from you."

"Me too. Bye, Whitman." She hung up.

Alex turned his music back on, then reconsidered, shut it off, grabbed a few things and headed out the door, to see if there was a computer free right now.

----------

"Oh, man," Isabel said. "I... I still remember the look on Jim's face when he *really* started bawling us out. The rest of them nodded. "Thanks a lot for bringing us all into that, Michael." Tess chortled.

"Hey, wait!!" Michael insisted. "I did *not* bring you, Isabel, or most of the group in fact, to Vegas of my own decision. If it had gone my way... then it would have been Max and me, and if we were caught, I'd have taken all the rap for dragging him along. But no... Isabel, you guilt tripped me into it, and Kyle spilled the beans to Tess, and Tess basically invited herself and Kyle along, and Maria was all 'you need me there to help spend the money' and she convinced Alex, and finally Liz, you showed up at the last moment, all 'hey, room for one more'?? If Kyle hadn't blown off detention, then Jim-bo probably wouldn't have clued in on time. I take no more than my fair share of the blame here, which doesn't look much bigger than anyone else's."

There was some staring at him for a moment. "You know, I don't think Antarian politics was that good an influence on you," Isabel teased softly. "You've gotten entirely too good at weaseling out of things." Max punched Michael on the shoulder in a manly fashion, and that got Tess telling Liz (quietly) about some public debate or other, in the Civil Square of Kynntassios Summit.

"Hey, hey guys, sorry I'm a bit late!" Tess broke off in mid-word of her story, her head snapping up to zero in on the new voice, and she actually leapt out of her chair to give Kyle a full-body hug that shared a few elements with a football tackle. "Umm... er, glad to know that you missed me babe," he muttered, more than a little surprised at the impulsiveness of her reaction.

Isabel got a chair arranged for Kyle, and they set about deciding on dessert choices and flagging down the waitress. One of the reasons that Tess was a little on the uninhibited side was that they'd brought home a small supply of an Antarian inebriant that was safe for hybrid metabolisms... a dark blue elixer that was esterized and then distilled from the fruit of the Garrad shrub - and Tess had sneaked the little vial into the restaurant and suggested that there probably wouldn't be a better occasion to indulge together for a long time. Isabel hadn't taken any - she still wasn't sure that the stuff might not have ill effects on nursing Laex, even though one of the homeworld doctors had told her she didn't have anything to worry about. But Max had taken a little of the syrup in his coffee, and Michael and Tess had been consuming more of it.

"So," Kyle said once they were all settled. "What were you guys talking about when I showed up?"

"Umm... Inhuman politics," Liz said. "and Las Vegas. Specifically, your dad catching us when we ditched school that time."

"Oh, right," Kyle agreed, an oddly content look crossing his face.

"I... I can't quite believe that... that you heard me tell you about my flash," Max said, looking at Liz but loud enough that everyone else at the table could hear him. "About you and me... knowing what Future Max had told you about getting married in Vegas - and you didn't tell me then."

"I... I wanted to," Liz admitted. "I came so close to blurting it out, that you'll probably never understand. But somehow... somehow the moment passed without my saying anything, and... oh, right, that was it. Maria stopped singing, and people started clapping and that distracted me, and of course I wanted to clap too, to support her, and because the song had been so beautiful. Once all of that was over, I felt really stupid about getting back to the subject. I wasn't sure how much attention you had paid to your flash."

Max sighed. "I... I can't help but wonder if anything would have been different if I'd know before."

"Maybe, maybe it was better this way," Isabel said. "You and Liz being together... probably wouldn't have had any effect on me getting knocked up, having to evacuate to Antar... except that it just might have sped things up a little bit." She chuckled ruefully. "We still needed you to launch the Granilith, Max, and we couldn't have taken Liz. It would just have made saying goodbye even harder."

"I... I'm not entirely convinced that was possible," Max muttered. "Ooooh, giant sundae!" Indeed, a remarkable mountain of confection, chocolate hazelnut ice cream and caramel sauce and whipped cream and cookie crumbles, with a cherry on top of course. Isabel passed him a tiny little bottle of red hot sauce to add as the final ingredient.

"Well, now that we're all here, a toast," Tess decided, raising her glass of blue-tinted sprite. "To... to reunions of the heart, and happily ever afters."

"Hear, hear!" Michael agreed, and they all did the multiple clinky thing, which took about eleven or twelve seconds, and drank.

"By the way, Kyle, Tess, do you guys think you'll be able to do something fun with me, day after tomorrow?" Michael asked, with a slightly melancholy smile. "Something tells me I'm going to need a little cheering up, that day."

"Ahh... yeah, probably," Tess replied. That would be the day between Isabel, Max, and Liz leaving, and Laurie coming to town... and he'd probably miss Maria even more then than he did right now. "Let's see... I've got the evening shift, and I think you've got late classes again then, right sweetie?" Kyle nodded. "So maybe something earlier in the day."

"I think that the travelling carnival will be in Elkins or somewhere around there, that day," Liz suggested. "That could work."

"Hmm... yeah, not bad," Kyle agreed. Elkins was a little place, about an hour's drive east northeast of Roswell. "We'll talk about it tomorrow, okay Michael?" He nodded.

"Oh, hey!!" Isabel realized a few seconds later. "We forgot about the fortune cookies." Sure enough, a tiny little tray with the familiar crescent-shaped treats had been left in the middle of the table as their desserts had been served out... including one for Kyle, even though he hadn't had dinner."

"Alright!" Max exclaimed. "Now, are we going to do this straight, or with any of the usual party games?"

"Straight I think," Liz said.

"Aww... I would've thought the classic 'in bed' would have had some fans around here," Kyle teased. "But I'll take it straight if everyone else wants to." There was a bit of a murmur of agreement. "Who's first?"

"Isabel should," Tess suggested, and Izzy shrugged, reached out for a cookie, and broke it open.

"'The greatest power in this world,'" she read, "'lies in the heart of a beloved child.' Hmm."

"Maybe it's telling you to watch out once Lex hits the terrible twos," Kyle joked.

"Okay, my turn," Liz said, taking one and reading it silently to herself first. "Oh, my god. 'Your fingers sparkle with the electrical voltage of passion.' That's actually what it says."

"As opposed to the NON-electrical voltage of passion," Tess quipped.

"I dunno... they seem pretty magnetic to me," Max joked, taking two of Liz's fingers in his for a moment.

"You're next," she told him with a smile. Max broke open his cookie.

"'Buy many boxes,'" he read out. "'and fill them up with dreams. Ask a friend to' -- and that's it. Did the rest of it get cut off accidentally?"

"Could be," Isabel said. "Doesn't sound like a complete sentence there."

Michael was already reaching for his. "Okay. 'Take chances in business, and joy of the heart will be within reach.' Huh. As far as I know, I don't have any chances to take."

"You could start a lemonade stand outside the Evans house," Tess joked.

"I think you're next," Michael said.

"Alright, alright." She took the second to last cookie. "'This for...' What the heck? It says 'This fortune is a lie.' What a gyp!"

"Oh, we've got a fairly comedic batch here maybe," Liz said. "Try yours, Kyle." He did, and passed it to her with a sour, silent look. "Oh, my god," Liz continued, reading it herself. "'YOU LOVE CHINESE FOOD!'"

"Oh boy," Max replied, laughing deep down. "I... I think that might be the funniest cookie fortune I've ever heard of."

"What about the 'I'm being held prisoner in a chinese bakery' one?" Isabel asked.

"Isn't that an urban legend?" Liz asked.

"Nah, I saw a picture of it on the internet," Michael replied.

"Oh, and that clinches it. Because nothing that's a picture on the internet could ever be faked up for a joke..." Tess chimed in.

----------

"Okay, that's us I guess," Liz said, getting up after the message had been announced. Her parents, Max and Isabel's parents, Michael, Isabel, and Lex all crowded around to give goodbye hugs.

"See you soon," Max whispered to Isabel. He had been a little disappointed to realize that they wouldn't be on the same flight out of Roswell's small airport... had not even consciously realized that there was more than one place to go from Roswell. But while Isabel and Lex's flight went through Albuquerque, Max and Liz's tickets were direct from Roswell to Dallas, and from there, to Boston. Which made this goodbye, since their short hop to Dallas was getting ready for boarding.

"I'll call tonight, to make sure everybody got everywhere okay," she whispered back. And then it was time to go up to the counter with their boarding passes, and line up for the gangplank with their carry-ons, and finally take places in the reasonably nice 'standard class' section of the plane.

"I... I have to admit that there's a part of me that isn't really looking forward to this trip," Max whispered in Liz's ear as she tried to get settled in her seat.

That made her look up at him in surprie. "Really? Um... why?"

"It's going to be terribly frustrating, being right next to you for hours on end and not having the opportunity to... well, you know. To do any of the things to you that keep rushing through my head."

Liz laughed. "Well, you never know I suppose. Maybe we'll get a chance to be really naughty and join the mile-high club or something." She considered that for a moment, and cocked her head, then leaned closer to Max, bending his ear down so that she could whisper directly into it. "Too bad I didn't think of that before we left... we could've used the ship and joined the million-mile high club, or something. Did that ship have artificial gravity, anyway??"

"Yeah..." he whispered back. "Couldn't you tell? It would have had to be designed completely different if we were in free fall the whole time. Actually, it was partially customizable, when we were in deep space, but we only experimented with that a few times. It got really inconvenient, flying into mid-air and bumping off the ceilings. Isabel was really afraid that Lex would hurt himself somehow, like that." Max's imagination was starting to work overtime, though, imagining the things that he could do with Liz in zero-gee or just lower gravity. Hmm... would they have a chance to get back to Roswell within the next few weeks? Or maybe Michael or Tess could run the ship over to Cambridge for a little while... no, not Tess, because she had to keep to her work schedule. Even if Max and Liz drove the ship and dropped her off... well, *maybe.*

Then Max realized that daydreaming of the mile-high club and the million-mile-high club was not exactly the best way to get ready for takeoff... in the literal launching jetliner sense. "Umm, can we talk about something else, please??"

Liz laughed that soft, delightful laugh that made his heart go soft a little... which was an improvement. "Sure. Any ideas for plane-safe topics?"

"Not sure." Pause. "What was it like when you came to Cambridge for the first time. Umm... was that when you were getting ready to start classes, around this time last year, or did you go up to visit the campus before you enrolled??"

"Umm..." Liz's face assumed its usual 'concentration look' as she considered. "No, I didn't manage to visit the campus beforehand. Was supposed to, and then mom was in the accident and had to go into surgery, so of course I didn't feel like flying up to New England, and..."

"Ohmigawd," Max exclaimed, and Liz blinked, suddenly realizing how the story would sound to Max, since he hadn't heard any of it before. "You... I didn't know that..." He calmed down, breathing hard but regularly. Liz reached out to touch his hand with her own, and got a series of flashes... how her mother had hugged her goodbye, just a few minutes ago. Hearing Liz mention to Max her reaction when Liz told her parents that Max was back in Roswell. Meeting her in passing when picking Liz up for a picnic lunch out in the desert. Obviously, he had seen enough to tell that her state of health was now quite good, but she wasn't at all surprised that he was slightly upset he hadn't heard until now.

"I... I'm really sorry. I don't think about it often, so it completely slipped my mind to tell you until now," Liz mumbled.

"That... I understand, it's okay," he assured her. "Was... do you mind if I ask what kind of accident it was? A car crash??"

"Yeah," Liz said, nodding slightly. "She was just waiting for a chance to turn into the parking lot when some jerk rear-ended her into the oncoming traffic. We found out later that he was probably high... a thirty-five year old salesman who likes to snort crank on special occasions." She took a deep breath. "None of her injuries were terribly life-threatening... both legs broken, a fracture in her arm, and two cracked ribs. There was a little internal bleeding near the top of one of her lungs, but they got that cleaned up pretty quickly." Liz sighed. "Anyway, as I was saying about campus visits??"

"Sure," Max said, nodding encouragingly.

"I ended up going to an information session up in Albuquerque, and talking to a lot of people who'd been at Harvard for one or two years there, and I made up my mind then that I didn't really need to go see it myself. So, my Dad ended up driving me across the country to Massachussets last year, and I arrived in the last week of August, because I wanted to get settled in well in advance, and there was supposed to be some great early out-of-state orientation stuff happening over the labor day weekend..."

It was at that point that the pilot broke in over the speakers with his little pre-takeoff spiel.

----------

"There's my little guy!" Isabel shot off a somewhat startled look at Alex that might have developed into an expression that was actually pissed... but he winked at her and she broke out laughing. Alex finished closing the distance and reached out to tickle La'ex, who squealed in delight, making other deplaning passengers shoot the three of them dirty looks.

"Hi, honey!!" Isabel threw an arm around him in a half-hug that seemed like the best she could manage at the moment, since she didn't want to let go of Lex either. "I... I didn't expect that you would make it further in than baggage claim."

"Ehh, I wanted to make a little extra effort," he said casually. "Meeting your girl at the gate says 'I love you.'"

"Well, I love you too," she added with a little sigh, as they started to continue on, side by side. "Anything of interest happen since you last called?"

"Ehh, not really, except that a big band mediation meeting has been set up." Alex sighed. "If we can't get D&T to agree on settling their differences this time, then I think someone, or more than someone, may leave." Isabel awwed with just the right about of feminine sympathy. "Yeah... well. To be honest, the group isn't exactly my highest priority at the moment, though if we can keep it together I'll hold up to the commitments I've made as much as I can, of course."

Isabel told him about some of the stuff that had been going on in Roswell since he left, as they picked up her suitcases, and headed out into the concourse. "Okay, I've got money here, and the address of the apartment," she said. "Where do we go to catch a cab?"

"Umm, that way probably," Alex replied, pointing out a heading where, in the distance, a multiple set of double doors could be seen. Lex was looking around and craning his neck at all of the people, the sounds, the lights, the colors, and at least a few appetizing smells.

It didn't take long for the three of them to maneuver through the crowd, arrive at the doors, and wait for those ahead of them in line to get into cabs so that it was their turn. Taxicabs as such did not seem to be at all in short supply -- there were probably more cabs waiting than parties waiting for them, but it took time for one party to get settled in and the next driver to move up. Isabel thought that the whole process could be managed more efficiently if there was space for more than a single file line of cabs, with room for fares to board only at the head of the line, but the operation didn't seem to work too badly as it was. When the driver asked them for their destination, Isabel already had the little slip of note paper out in her hand and read it out to him.

"Alright I guess. Might take us a little while in the traffic - I'm not sure if there's any particular way to take a short cut at this time of day."

"I... I'm not sure we mind going the slow way," Isabel said after a moment. "Don't think money's a huge problem."

He shrugged. "Gotit. Don't worry, it shouldn't be over twenty-five if I make my guess." Isabel smiled in relief.

"Wait a second," Alex said with a slight jump on his side of the seat. "How... how are we getting into the apartment? Did they send keys out to Roswell for you, or are you supposed to meet an agent there, or..." He stopped babbling when Isabel held up a silvery door key. "Okay, guess that answers my question."

After crawling through a few crowded streets, the driver got them to a pleasant little street, just outside a four-story walkup, and Isabel paid him with a ten-dollar bill and a five, for the change of which he was quite grateful. Isabel's new place was... well, it turned out to only be up a single flight of stairs that was four and a half feet high. The entire building was split-leveled, with the front half apartments being at ground level, one story up, two stories up, etcetera, while the back was half a story down, half a story up, one and a half stories up and so on.

They had only just brought the laundry in, and taken a brief look around the place, (a fairly simple one-bedroom apartment,) when someone knocked on the door. Alex traded a look with Isabel and then went to the door, while Isabel went to set Lex down in the playpen.

The person at the door was a woman in her late twenties, fairly short, with quite a mass of middling-dark, curly brown hair. "Umm... hi, are you Alex Whitman?"

Alex blinked. Who the heck would have known to find him here. "Maybe... who the hell are you?"

"Um, sorry. My name is Aileen Morrisson, and I'm... well, it gets a bit complicated to explain. Is Isabel here? I was contacted by her father, Philip."

"I'm Alex, yeah." He was still confused and didn't volunteer anything else.

"Okay, umm... gee, I guess I really should have waited longer before coming and introducing me. Mister Evans... he said that you're starting your second year at UCLA, and Isabel's going to be busy with applications to start school in January, and she's got little Lex to think about. That she doesn't really know anybody here in Los Angeles, so he was looking for someone that you could count on to watch the little guy sometimes..."

Isabel had approached the door by now, and stood next to Isabel where Aileen could see her. "So... so you're some sort of special babysitter, then?"

"Umm, yeah. Bonded, master's in child psychology and care... all of that stuff. I was just driving by because I was curious, and saw a taxi turning off the street, so I wondered if you'd gotten here." Isabel frowned slightly... not sure if she liked the idea of her father giving her address away to some babysitter, but realizing that he might have done it without thinking.

"Well," Isabel muttered, "thanks, and nice to meet you, but we've just got started settling in, and we don't need a babysitter tonight I think. Do you have a card or something?" One was produced and handed over. "I'll probably be in touch."

"Right, gotit. Hope to hear from you soon." Alex waved, reached out, and closed the door.

"What do you think?" he asked her softly, after they heard the footsteps receding.

"Umm... not sure. It wasn't a half-bad idea... but where did he find her? Some kind of business-to-business search firm thingee? Not sure I like the idea of trusting my boy with someone I don't know, no matter how highly reccommended she is."

Alex put his arms around her. "I know. Well, maybe after you get everything organized, you could invite her over for a trial session with him... one or both of us here in the apartment, just kind of watching how confident she is, how she interacts with him." Isabel considered this, grudgingly at first, and then with a little more good grace.

"Mommie?" They grinned at each other and went back into the bedroom. Lex was probably wondering what the fuss was about, that was keeping the people he cared about away.

----------

Maria hurried into her dormitory room and closed the door behind her. For a few seconds she hardly moved, not even to shrug off the backpack she'd been wearing, but instead just looked at her watch as the digital numbers clicked up towards a round number of hours. She also let her glance flicker over to the cordless telephone handset.

However, Maria was more than a little surprised when the phone actually began to ring at 7:00:01. She hadn't really been expecting that he would call on time, and had been waiting for the moment to pass more as a formality than anything else. She wondered as she scooped up the telephone, if it might be coincidence, a telemarketer or someone like that.

Wasn't so. "Hey, babe, I've got big news!" Michael's voice told her practically as soon as she'd pressed the TALK button, and definitely before she'd had time to figure out what greeting to use.

"Umm... um, that's great, but can it wait literally a few seconds?" Michael made a noise of confused acceptance, and Maria used those seconds to dump her packet, strip off her warm sweater, and sprawl out on her bed. "Okay, sorry about that. Hit me baby!"

Michael chuckled, and Maria suddenly realized that he was in the mood to tease her and draw out the story, now that he'd attracted her attention with that initial declaration, instead of satisfying her curiosity immediately. "Oh, first of all, before I forget, Laurie wanted me to tell you hi from her. Maybe she'll call you before she leaves Roswell... she's going to be staying Chez Evans, probably even after I head back up to New York."

Maria laughed softly. "Okay, I'll take 'heading back to New York' for four hundred, bud. As in, *when*?"

Michael laughed. "I'm probably going to be arriving on Saturday afternoon, three days from now. The outstanding question, though, is HOW I come... Amtrak it, see a lot of America close-up, maybe not get that much sleep because the train's always going and I'll be riding in Economy class without a real bunk... or borrow money, buy a plane ticket, and hang around Roswell for an extra two days with Laurie." He sighed. "Got any suggestions?"

Maria considered it and sighed. "I... I don't think that this is a decision I can make for you, honey. If it was me, I'd probably stay away from the long nonstop train trip... but I'm not you, and my reasons for that decision are ones that I think don't apply to you." She considered a moment longer. "And I know that you'd love to spend a little more time with Laurie, but you sounded like you were looking forward to the train thing when I talked to you last." She made a nonverbal 'Ehhh' sound and waited to see if Michael would reply.

"Yeah... I think that helps, actually. I really want to do the train thing... and I think that Laurie understands and won't be disappointed. She's probably going to be able to make it up to the Big Apple soon herself."

"Whoooh!" Maria squealed in uninhibited delight.

"Okay, now on to the BIG news," Michael said. "Laurie got me a dream job interview in Manhattan!"

"What?" Maria blinked to herself. "She did? What kind of job?"

"Umm... Marketing boy Friday... and yes, I realize that I don't know anything about marketing. It's a place doing accounts for cutting-edge video stuff, really wild stunts, and they were looking for someone who could help with... with getting really UNUSUAL stuff done on a time limit."

Maria's breath caught, imagining the possibilities. Obviously, Michael had a lot of practice in jerryrigging a plan on the spur of the moment and thinking outside the box, and a setup like this might give him a chance to use his more unusual abilities without being noticed. Only one question remained to be asked. "How much do they pay?"

Michael laughed. "Not much to start, but it could go up quickly if I prove myself valuable... and if they can land some more juicy accounts. I'm looking forward to the challenge."

Maria grinned. "Cool. Do you want me to meet your train at Penn station, if I can fit it into my schedule?"

"Umm, how did you know that it'd be... wait, I suppose that every Amtrak that goes near NYC probably goes through Penn, huh?"

"Umm, nearly," Maria admitted. "And I was looking up likely schedules this morning, since you'd mentioned it."

Michael laughed. "Okay... I'd love to see you there. Will email you my scheduled time of arrival when I can." A pause. "And I love you, miss you, very much."

"So do I," Maria whispered. "Enjoy your trip, and I'll see you soon."

There was one more moment that passed between them, a sweer silence, and then Maria hung up the phone. She sighed, thinking about Michael for a moment, and then tried to figure out what she had to do before classes the next morning.

----------

"I wonder if I should be worried about the fact that I've fallen asleep in class twice this week," Liz mumbled lazily.

Max chuckled softly. Liz grinned as she heard him chuckle. She was aware of a faint but definite warmness from Max's body, lying next to her in bed, but she couldn't really see him because she was stretched out and lying on her front, and her face had for some reason ended up pointing the other direction, away from him. A few seconds later, she felt his fingers running lightly over the skin of her back, deliciously tickly.

"So, are you low on sleep because my being here all night is distracting you?" he asked in a low, sexy tone that sent shivers through Liz all the way down to her bones. (The fact that he was still touching her skin ever so softly probably had something to do with her case of the shivers too.)

"Um, yeah, that's pretty certain," Liz admitted. "Though if you're going to suggest that you should go back to your place, or spend more nights in that dark nasty little hole they called a bachelor apartment, I'm not sure that'll do any good, because somehow I get even less sleep when you're not here beside me. I miss you too much, and get distracted imagining your touch on my skin, visualizing the things I want you to do, and that leaves me hot and bothered and COMPLETELY unable to sleep. At least when you're here I usually grab a few hours' worth... mostly between."

Max laughed huskily. "Yeah... yeah, I know what you mean." Big sigh, and Liz scrambled to turn around, propping herself up on her side so she could look at him. "But I feel guilty about leaving you drowsy and sleep-deprived, even if it IS a catch-22. We need to find some way to break out of the pattern."

"Hmm..." Liz gazed deeply into his eyes, nearly lost in them. "Did you have anything in mind?"

"Welll," Max drawled, sitting up slightly straighter. "There's a little something I learned to do with my powers on Antar... a kind of a sleep aid. Whether we'll have the willpower to use it regularly remains to be seen, but I think it'd be a good place to start."

"A sleeping aid?" Liz blinked, curious now. "How does it work?"

"You just concentrate and focus a slight trace of energy on empty space, and it generates this kind of hologram, a glowing shape... except, not a shape, because the shape is always changing, and with subtly shifting colors. It's just pleasant to look at, and then, the more you look at it, the more tired you get, until you close your eyes and fall deeply asleep."

"Hmm," Liz considered that, reaching out to stroke Max's side as she did. "Is it... is it safe, for humans, you know?"

"Umm... I guess I never thought about it in those terms," Max said, surprised. "You mean, it might work based on some weird aspect of Antarian biology, and have bad side-effects for anyone without Antarian genes??" Liz nodded. "Well, they never seemed to worry that it would hurt us as hybrids, but..." He snapped his fingers, almost right over Liz's head. "No, it has to be okay. There were some true humans with the resistance, I saw one of them using a Torrie-teng once, and he was fine."

Liz shook, startled by this revelation. "*Humans*?? On an alien planet, really?" Max nodded. "What... what were they doing there?"

"Working, fighting, living, raising families... most of the same things that the Antarians were doing," Max explained. "They're descendents of people that got, umm, got snatched off of Earth by early alien scouting parties... a few of them Antarians, also other races. Because everybody wanted to find out what humans were like, and, well... the absolute easiest way to do that with little risk was to grab one, or a few, and take them home. Teach them your language and start asking questions." He sighed. "A lot of them ended up finding their way to Antar once whoever had taken them didn't need their information anymore. The old royals... Zan's father and ancestors were sympathetic to their situation and helped them build new lives and homes."

Liz smiled slightly. "I... I never thought about there being other human beings out there in the galaxy. Not sure, but it seems like a comforting thought." Even though Max seemed determined to stay here on Earth with her right now, circumstances could always change and Liz wasn't entirely ruling out the idea of going to some other planet with him... especially since Tess and Isabel would apparently have to leave again if they ever wanted to have kids... not counting La'ex of course. "Okay, well, let's try out that Terrie-teng thing then, if you want to. It's late enough that I probably should be getting to sleep. The clock CD player radio on her bedside table, which Liz could see past Max, was reading 12:55, with the little PM indicator unlit.

"Alright." After thinking for a moment, Max reached out an arm in a kind of looping position. Even though he didn't make any clearer gesture or say a word, Liz could somehow tell that he wanted her to lie up next to him, with her back next to his front. Maybe she was able to pick up stray thoughts of his on a subconscious level now? It made sense, in any event, for them both to look at the sleeping aid, and Liz took the position, letting Max's arm drape comfortably over her chest, the back of her head naturally nestling against the hollow of his throat, between chin and collar. Max must have concentrated, because a fascinating, kaleidoscopic phenomenon of pure light coalesced just above the edge of the mattress, shifting intensity and color patterns as it changed shape. Liz's breath caught.

"Wow, yeah, I can feel myself getting sleepy already," she mumbled, surprised. Focusing on the apparition seemed to sap her nervous energy in the pleasantest way imaginable. "Pretty, too. Wow, this could really wor..." She trailed off.

Max kissed the hair on the top of her head drowsily. "Sweet dreams, my darling."

"With you next to me?" Liz yawned. "Always."

----------

"Okay, so what do you do?" the instructor asked.

"Arrest the sick bastard," Tony Williams replied with a chuckle, and then hastily blurted out, "Um, just kidding."

Mister Pollack, who was running a discussion session for Kyle's Police procedures class, shook his head in frustration. "Anthony, I've warned you once before about making jokes like that in class. Don't make me repeat myself. Does anybody want to state for the record why Anthony's suggestion wasn't serious?"

Christy Munroe looked up, and Pollack nodded at her. "I don't have enough evidence to get an indictment, and if I look for evidence after he's in custody, that could get thrown out as illegal seizure."

"Makes sense to me," Pollack replied. "So what do you do, then?"

He was addressing the question at Christy, but she suddenly seemed uncertain. "Go to a judge and get a search warrant?" She hmmed a bit, knowing that the familiar answer was not complete in this case but not sure how to correct it. Pollack, too, seemed half satisfied at best.

Kyle signalled for permission to speak, and got it. "The judge isn't going to be wild about issuing a search warrant without more probably cause."

"Right, so what do we do about that?" the teacher asked socratically.

Bryan Sheffield interrupted before Kyle could begin his answer. "There are places you can look for probable cause that aren't violating the suspect's rights... the public sidewalk where he dragged the bundle from the car to his house, for instance. If you can get a little evidence there, you've got your search warrant."

"And the perp notices a cop sniffing around outside his place, and destroys the evidence while you're off talking to the judge," Tony pointed out cynically.

"Yes," Pollack agreed. "That does happen sometimes, though there are ways to make it less likely..."

The class debate came to an end a few minutes later, and Kyle noticed a few mild expressions of surprise from his friends as they made it out of the room ahead of him. When Kyle got into the corridor, he pretty much realized why. Tess was leaning against the wall, simply beautiful in a pleated blue skirt, nearly down to her knees, and a long sleeved whit button shirt. "Umm, what are you doing here?" he asked, hurrying over to her.

"Um, just dropping in to see you," she replied. Suddenly, an anxious look crossed her face. "That's okay, right? W-wouldn't want to break any academy regulations or anything -- I looked for notices about guest check-in or anything like that, but didn't see any."

Kyle smiled. "No, I don't think it's against the rules or anything, just slightly unexpected at most." Kyle had been surprised himself not to see a posted guest check-in policy himself, but the county academy was small enough that it apparently didn't need to take such precautions. And, well... now that Kyle thought of it he had heard Tess mention that she would be on a 'split shift' today that involved arriving early, staying at the store til late, but not getting paid for several hours in the middle of the day. He just hadn't expected that she might use that extended break to come and pay him a visit. "Well, I have a free stretch now, but we're not really supposed to take off betwee classes. Wanna treat me to lunch in the comissary?"

"Um, if that's anything like a cafeteria, then... still yes," she quipped. "Since I hardly know my way around here, lead the way."

Kyle did. "Since you bring up the topic of navigation, can I ask how you found the classroom?"

Tess looked around to see who was nearby and how close, then leaned up on her tiptoes, pulling Kyle's head aside and down slightly. A stray bit of Tess' hair, which was growing out since her return, tickled against the side of Kyle's face as she whispered directly into his ear. "I used my... talents, and tracked down the pattern of your mind. I could hardly help tracking you down, with that - it was like there was a compass in my head that was pointing straight to you, as soon as I got on the grounds.

Kyle blinked in surprise about this revelation, but he couldn't help thinking that he actually liked the idea somehow.

"So, umm..." Tess said, moving back to a more normal distance, (much as Kyle liked her being as close to him as she had been,) and starting to move forwards again. "How was your class?"

"Not too bad," Kyle said with a smile. "Good discussion period, even though somebody else stole a point that I was going to make." He shrugged.

"Awww, that sucks."

"Yeah, but it doesn't really matter," he insisted philosophically. "I'll get plenty of other chances. How about you?? Anything interesting happen at work?"

"Not unless you count the senior executive who chewed me out because we didn't carry her black skirt in a size two." Tess sighed. "And... if you're about to ask me why a senior executive wants to buy her skirts at Walmart, well, I couldn't tell you that, I really couldn't."

"Maybe she's stingy," Kyle said, not really caring that much. "Does that happen to you a lot? Customers giving you crap for stuff that's completely beyond your control?"

"Hmm." Tess considered that for a moment. "Maybe once every day I'm working, or nearly." She sighed. "Occupational hazard of working in retail, I think." She looked up at him. "If you're worried about me, don't me. I can take it, and I'm not going to go all mindwarp on their ass to get some payback, or anything like that."

"I... it's not that I was worried, exactly... or at least I don't think so," Kyle replied. "I... I just don't like to think of you in situations like that. I know that you're tough and you can handle a lot, but... well, even if it's something that really doesn't matter, it's an unpleasant situation, and when I think of you being in an unpleasant situation, I get bummed out -- especially if there isn't really anything I can do to help, which I think there might not be."

"Ohhhh..." Tess reached out and hugged his arm to her. "I... maybe I shouldn't have said anything about it, then. I don't mind so much, really I don't, and I don't want you to be bummed out."

"Well... it's done, but maybe you can do something to turn my mood around," Kyle joked. Soon they walked into the mess hall. "Feel like a Big Copper with red peppers and horseradish?" Tess blinked in surprise. "It's what they call a hamburger... don't ask me why a place like this bothers with the silly names.

"Heheh, I think I like the name," Tess replied. "But maybe I'll wander around a bit first, and see what else they've got."

Kyle nodded, and watched her rush off and explore the food selection section.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 5:42 pm

Part twelve

"I'm home!" Tess announced as she stepped down the stairs to their apartment.

Kyle emerged from the bathroom a few seconds later, drying his hands off against each other. "Glad to hear it, honey."

"Oh, hi." Tess giggled as she walked over towards him. "I didn't really mean to say that in a big announcement, 'honey I'm home' way, so much as just 'I'm home, my working day is done thank god.'" She stepped close to Kyle and put one arm around. "However, now that I AM home, honey..." She reached up on tiptoes and kissed him.

"Welcome home. What do you..." Kyle's words were cut off as Tess once again pressed her lips to his, kissing him more passionately, and maneuvering to pull him into the bedroom. Kyle tried to finish what he was saying for a few more seconds, as Tess walked backwards and turned the corner, and then gave up.

Once Tess got him into the bedroom, they fell immediately down onto the bed, because the bed was right there past the doorway and there was pretty much nothing to do BUT trip over it. She rolled slightly so that Kyle wasn't quite lying on top of her, and wasted little time in stripping both of their clothes off, kissing and rubbing six of her favorite parts of Kyle's body, and then sticking number seven all the way into the back of her throat. Once that particular escapade was done, Kyle felt obligated to return the favor in Tess' favorite way.

"Okay," Kyle mumbled, as they cuddled together among the covers en afterglow, "I was gonna ask you what you wanted for dinner, but it kinda looked like you were hungry for something that wasn't exactly food."

"Heeheeheh, yeah, I guess so," Tess agreed. "I picked up some greasy junk food before leaving the plaza." A pause. "You haven't had dinner yet?"

"No, nothing since lunch," Kyle said, and Tess' face fell.

"Ohh, if I'd realized that you were going to wait for me, I'd have been coming straight home."

"It's okay," Kyle assured her. "I can grab a can of veggie rice soup with some whole wheat crackers or something... quick food, keep my strength up... and then I suspect we might be able to pull a round two before getting to bed!"

"Go to it, tiger!!" As Kyle got up, Tess reached out to slap his rear end, and then giggled when he jumped slightly and shot her a surprised look.

"So, erm..." Around the time Kyle had found his soup, got it mixed up in a big glass beer mug, Tess had made it to the bedroom door, one of the bedsheets wrapped around her. Kyle looked up at her, carefully putting the mug into the microwave and setting the cooking timer. "Have you, um, heard anything from, uh, any of the others since... ummm..." Tess' voice trailed off.

"Babe, you know I'd have told you before now if they'd called," Kyle pointed out. "I think everybody's been busy. You could pick up the phone yourself if you want... a little discount long distance is not gonna break the bank."

"Yeah, but it won't help the balance sheet any," Tess pointed out. "Maybe I'll try to make it to the public library, or the Evans house, and check my email."

"Also a good possibility," he agreed. "Or 'elle matriarch' may have some news that she can pass on directly." Tess nodded. "By the way, why did you, umm, do that with the sheet??"

Tess looked down. "What do you mean? As opposed to what exactly?"

"Well... I wouldn't have thought you really needed to get dressed or anything." Kyle didn't have a stitch on still. "It's just you and me, and by now I have a pretty good idea what you look like naked, dear."

"Oh, that." Tess giggled. "I dunno... just felt more comfy somehow that letting it all hang out."

"Are you cold?" Kyle immediately asked.

"Umm... no, well... not really. Maybe that was part of it. Mostly, umm, habit, and the fact that I keep worrying about one of the guys from upstairs coming down and catching a peek or something." She sighed. "Yes, I know that we've barely seen them since we moved in, they weren't given a key for the stairs or the side door, and there's no particular reason to suppose that I'm someone they'd be interested, but..." Tess let that particular rant trail off. "And don't you go turning up the heat on my account, Kyle Valenti!"

"No, no, noo... I'd never dream of it."

Tess cocked her head at Kyle's tone, and strode across the kitchen. "Kyle?? Come on, I think I've learned what to expect when you say you're not gonna do something in that tone of voice."

"Okay, well... why shouldn't I?" Kyle exclaimed. "We're... we're not doing that badly for money... I know we're not. Being prudent and a little bit cautious makes sense, but I feel sometimes as if you're turning into Scrooge McAlien! We can afford to pay a little more on the oil bill so that you can walk around naked, and we can afford to pay for a phone call to New York or Los Angeles or wherever."

"Well, maybe I don't really want to burn the oil and walk around naked, and I'd rather put some clothes on and email my friends for free," Tess insisted, and stormed off to the couch, making sure to tuck the sheet underneath her before she sat down.

Kyle waited until his soup was ready, crumbled five whole wheat crackers into it, and brought the beer mug over to the wooden chair opposite the couch. "Tess... answer me this if you feel comfortable with it. Is there... is there something else you want to save that money for??"

She looked up at him. "Well... there's, ummm... there's all the people who helped us get started here. Mrs Evans loaned me the security deposit and the first month's rent, and I'd like to pay that off, not have it hanging over my head for months and months. And some kind of thank-you gift for everyone who gave us something really useful that we needed, like Liz's parents and so on. More than that... I dunno, I'd like to be saving up some kind of rainy day fund. Just... you know, just in case something happens. Maybe I'll get let go at the store, or... well, you know, just about anything could happen. I want to do what I can so that we're prepared for it."

Kyle smiled. "Okay. Umm... sorry that I didn't realize that before." He paused. "Do you wanna turn the heat *down* half a notch??"

Tess looked at him, surprised, and then laughed. "No, I think it's fine where it is. So, how were the rest of your classes today?"

"Not bad. We spent some time at the pistol range. I don't think I'll ever be a crack marksman or whatever, but I think I'll do okay. And some studying for the comm-tech test coming up on Friday." He chatted on for several minutes more, while finishing his soup, and then Tess started talking about the second half of her shift. Kyle filled his mug up with rinse water in the sink and sat down next to her on the couch.

"So, erm, that was it, I grabbed some chicken nuggets, fries, and a coke at the Mister Clucker's, drove back home here, and we..." Right then, realizing that he had a perfect opportunity, Kyle pulled Tess' sheet back open. "Oh, okay, got it." Tess wrapped her arms around Kyle and started to rub one hand down between his naked thighs.

"Mmmm..." Tess' voice took on a dulcet cooing tone. "Wanna try number four on your carnal fantasies list??"

"Umm..." Kyle seemed to nearly choke on his own watering mouth. "All... always. Really?"

"Of course, baby." She backed away slightly. "You start that one down on your back in the bed, right?"

"Uhh... yeah," Kyle confirmed after a moment. He went and took that poition, and a moment later Tess posed in the door from the bathroom into the bedroom, dropping the sheet down to the ground. "Get ready, titty lover." Kyle groaned slightly as she climbed up onto the bed, her pert and exquisitely rounded boobies swinging underneath her. She reached out to tweak Kyle's dick, checking to see how hard and ready it was, and rubbed it a little with her soft and limber fingers.

"Here," Kyle muttered, holding up a little bottle that he'd managed to grab from the bedside table. Tess looked at it and giggled. "So, exactly what am I supposed to lubricate again? Oh, right... myself." Sitting up between Kyle's legs, she made a big production of squeezing out some of the tube's slippery, slightly jellylike contents onto her hands and rubbing it all over her chest, particularly the shallow but well-defined channel between her shapely breasts. "Okay, anything else I forgot?" she breathed huskily.

"No, not really, unless you forgot me," Kyle joked.

Tess leaned down, orienting her bosom and Kyle's stiff cock carefully. "Never that, lover darling."

----------

Alex chuckled, a bit bittersweetly, as his cell phone sang out about three seconds after he had walked through the lecture hall doors and out into the hallway. "Hi baby," he said as he answered it.

Isabel's bemused chuckle sounded pretty clearly over the ethereal connection. "I guess I reall have gotten that predictable, huh?"

"Umm... well, let's just say that I was pretty sure who I'd expect might call me as soon as my class was done," Alex replied. "Unfortunately, I kinduv had not-the-best news to share."

Isabel gave him a not-favorably-impressed sound. "Okay, I gues you'd better give me the not-so-great details."

Alex smiled slightly. "Won't be able to get over to see you guys until late." Isabel made a fairly emphatic 'Awwww' sound. "Sorry, wish that I could help it. Got a long lab session with the guys in my database access course... for our term project assignment. Stage three is due by the end of the week."

"This is the website one?" Isabel asked.

"Yeah, we had a few choices for what medium to work in, and our team chose a PHP web-app." Alex sighed. "So, I can probably swing by at getting on for nine, and spend the night, if you'd like that..."

"It wouldn't suck, but maybe we can do a little better by meeting you on campus," Isabel suggested. "Got nothing else really interesting to do cooped up here in the apartment. Meet you at that statue in front of the undergrad computers building?"

"Um... both you and Lex?" Alex asked, as he navigated the corridors and hoped that his signal didn't cut out unexpectedly. Thinking of that, Alex suddenly changed course to NOT head into the computer labs in the interior of the Morriman building, because the walls there seemed to be prticularly effective at cutting off a cell phone signal... (the reasons for this were often debated but seemingly never settled.)

"Yes, me *and* Lex," Isabel repeated, laughing quietly and with a merry tone to her voice. "He can be a handful sometimes, but he likes going to see 'campezz' and he's normally pretty well behaved on the bus. I know he wants to see you tonight, hopefully before his usual bedtime."

"Is that his hope or yours?" Alex kidded. "Okay, well, I have to admit I'd love for you to come down, and you can probably do better than eight fifteen. I've got a dinner break set up in my schedule for six thirty to seven... not long enough to go over to your place, but if you want to meet me at the student union food court..."

"Definitely," Isabel insisted. "Are you sure the guys on your team won't mind?"

"Nah, we didn't organize for a working supper or anything," Alex assured her. That did happen sometimes when working on a group project... everyone schedules their breaks away from the lab at the same time, and they talked strategy and debated tricky points of the programming while fueling up... but it could be tricky to arrange people's lab schedules like that. "And the two of you will be okay waiting a little over an hour while I'm back in the batcave?"

"Yeah, we'll just go exploring somewhere, or if Laex is really tired maybe I'll read him a story," Isabel said. "Well, see you then -- unless there's anything to say?"

"I love you both so much," Alex repeated, by habit as much as anything else now, but not thinking about the words beforehand didn't make them any less true. "I'd better go now before someone tries to squat at my machine."

"Okay, good luck honey. I love you too, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one here who does." She made a quick blown-kiss sound, and then the line went dead.

Alex sighed slightly and headed off to find the machine that he had reserved.

----------

Michael burst through the door to Maria's room calling out "I got it! I got the job!!"

Three pairs of eyes began to stare at him with varying degrees of frustration and annoyance. Maria's own green ees were at the low end of that annoyance scale, followed by Sophie's, and then Brian Ho... Holloway?? (Michael shrugged away his frustration of not being entirely certain about the name.) The three of them were spread around the room, Maria sitting on the edge of her bed, Brian on the desk chair, turned around so that its back was up against the front of Maria's writing desk. Sophie was in an identical writing desk, pushed up against the door of Maria's dresser drawers... probably it had been carried through the hall from Sophie's own room next door, since Michael didn't remember there being a second desk chair in Maria's dorm room before.

All three of them had a guitar in his or her lap... Maria a favorite accoustic, Brian a fairly similar model, and Sophie a sexy-looking electric bass that was plugged into a tiny little battery-powered amplifier at her feet... well, Mihael was assuming that the amp was battery powered since it didn't seem to also have a connection into the wall. Very deliberately, Brian turned around slightly and turned off a cassette tape recorder/player at the edge of the desk.

"Um, whoops." Michael was about to apologize much more profusely for interrupting their recording session, but then he realized that this couldn't be a tremendously important part of the 'cyber album' undertaking... just an impromptu jam session perhaps, with the tape recorder going to capture anything worthwhile that they might want to practice and learn pat later. They were doing the serious recording in a home studio, not in Maria's room, and in any event the entire band wasn't here. "Um, should I leave and le you get back to it?" he asked a little nervously.

A series of glances were exchanged between the bandmates. "Um, no maybe we'd better call it a wrap early, okay?" Maria suggested, to Brian's evident further annoyance and Sophie's tolerant acceptance. (Michael and Sophie had gotten to know each other fairly well by this point, and decided that they were mostly friends.)

"Do you want me to take the tape, Hurricane?" Brian asked as he was stowing his guitar in a case, which had itself been stowed under the desk while they'd been jamming.

"No, leave it, if that's okay," she asked. "I'll review it when I get a chance, make a 'best of' copy for the next full rehearsal, and you can take the original tape then if you want it. Cool?"

Brian nodded, seeming neither exceptionally displeased not particularly happy about any of this turn of events. He cleared out quickly, and Sophie took a chance to whisper something in Maria's ear. "Um, hey Sophe..." Michael said once the little huddle was completed. (Did just two people qualify as a huddle?) "Need any help carrying your gear back?"

Sophie blinked at him for a second. "Umm, sure I guess... I was thinking of just leaving the chair here and picking it up later, but if you wanna grab, erm, that and the amp, I'd appreciate it, and I'll just take my baby."

Michael grinned, got the little speaker balanced on the seat of the chair, and followed Sophie back to her room next door with them, leaving the chair just far enough in from her door that she would be able to close herself in alright. When he got back to Maria's room, she had the closet door open and seemed to be experimenting with how her hair looked held up in a few different ways. "So, good news, huh??" She looked around towards the door and grinned her pixie grin at him.

"Great news, but I really do feel bad about interrupting session," Michael said softly.

"Ehh, don't worry about it," Maria insisted. "We'd probably have stopped soon anyway, and I said I'd hit you if you didn't come and tell me as soon as you knew, right??" Michael nodded, as Maria reached up to look her arms around his neck. "So... what do you wanna do to celebrate?"

"Umm... well, nothing fancy," Michael started, putting his own arms around her.

"What? Well, I guess you don't get your first paycheque for a few weeks..." Maria teased him.

"It's not that," he mumbled immediately, then reconsidered. "Well, maybe it's that TOO... I hadn't really thought of that. But... I dunno, I just don't really feel like going out for a glamorous dinner or anything. Would rather stay right here, with you... get some delivery and eat it on your floor by candlelight... and have a nice relaxed evening in. But, umm, if you want to get all dressed up and etcetera, we could..."

"No, no," Maria insisted. "I'm... I'm touched that you offered, but actually the eating in part sounds REALLY good, the way you describe it." She kissed him softly. "So, any idea what kind of delivery you want??"

"Hmm... not Mexican or chinese," Michael decided. "How about some good Italian, like Antonio's? We could get a sausage salami, an order of that macaroni in Bolognese sauce that you like, maybe some soup..."

"Oooh, I'm sold," Maria told him quickly. She went for the phone. "Should I call it in?"

Michael watched her for a moment, and then grinned. "Go right ahead." Maria was the one who'd introduced him to Antonio's eatery, both as a venue for eating out or getting takeout, (they hadn't gotten delivery before this, though Michael knew it was an option,) and she knew the menu there much better than he did. There would be a few surprises showing up in the order, he was certain, and at least two of them would be things that he'd love and would never have thought of.

Michael excused himself to use the gentleman's room while Maria called, partly to keep the surprises as suprises until the food actuall arrived... also, he'd run quite a few blocks as soon as he'd heard the good news, and really did need to take a leek. When he got back, Maria had already turned off the flourescent fixtures and was starting to light the candles that she kept sitting around.

Her face lit up when she saw him. "Oh... now that you've finally been offered the job," she started, and Michael chuckled. Like it had been a foregone conclusion... well, maybe it'd been more certain than he'd been able to tell, since he was so nervous about job stuff. "I... I wantta invite Laurie out here to New York. Celebrating your new line of work is as good an excuse as any... but really I just want to see her again. I don't think she's too busy to make the flight."

Michael smiled, and tousled Maria's hair a little. "No, I think she'd love the chance to spend a little more time with the two of us. Do you wanna call her together?"

"Yep." Michael let his grin widen, pleased that he had anticipated that much. In the absence of truly incredible news, (like when he'd shown up in Roswell for the first time in two years,) Maria would feel awkward calling his sister in a situation like that. However, she didn't want to be left out of the phone conversation either. The only problem was, there was only the one cordless handset in Maria's dorm room, as far as he knew, and Michael didn't even want to use the phone in Spence Kenner's loft... where he'd been crashing on the couch whenever Maria needed space of her own. (Spence and his roommates had been very cool about the situation, and he did his best to help out and take care of a few bills when he could. Now that he had a job though, Michael supposed that he'd better start looking for a crappy apartment of his own.)

"So, umm... while we're waiting for the delivery guy, tell me - what were you guys working on? A new song??" Maria, Bryan, and Sophie were generally the three members of the gang with the most songwriting of bents.

"Oh, no, you don't get off so easily," Maria teased him, and Michael blinked. "You have to give me ALL the details on the callback interview and this new job. Not a mininuti left out. And then maybe I'll take my turn and fill you in on our latest musical doings."

Michael let out a soft breath. On some level it was probably true that he'd asked Maria the question in an effort to divert her... he was still uncomfortable talking about himself in a way that she had never been. But he did his best to share the scoop that she was so curious about... and was only about a third of the way through the story when there was a knock on the door. Delivery guys (and girls) from all sorts of neighborhood eateries entered and left the dorms freely, and soon Michael was trying the tomato rizotto, since Maria recommended it so highly.

"Mmmm... really good!" he said. "What are the little meaty bits?"

Maria's face fell a little. "I haven't ever asked, because I'm worried that it's veal." She sighed. "And yes. if you're about to point out that it's dubious reasoning to purposefully stay in ignorance of something like that..."

"No, umm, I think I understand where you're coming from with that," he said. "Okay, so after showing me around most of the office, he brought me back to this little room where another guy and a woman were waiting..." As Michael retold the story of his offer-interview, he pushed the rizotto container over in case Maria wanted to have some, and picked himself out a slice of the mozzarella pie, which was sloppy with tomato sauce and oven-baked to perfection.

Soon, Michael's tale had been narrated to Maria's satisfaction, and she started to chatter happily to him about the afternoon's session, which had indeed been a little songwriting workshop, in which they'd made progress on a few different projects. And the eating was over surprisingly quickly... a few slices of pizza were wrapped up in a plastic bag, and parts of three other dishes were loaded together in the smallest styrofoam container, and stowed into Maria's mini-fridge for munching on later.

"Okay, now... give me some loving, darling," Maria said... standing up from her crouch in front of the fridge, and laughed because Michael was already sitting on her bed, his pants off, t-shirt rolled up a bit at the bottom, and an oddly alluring expression on his face. She kept chuckling softly as she slipped her own sweater, boots, and jeans off, and joined him there. "U... usual rules," she blurted out a split second before Michael kissed her.

She felt a little bit weird about her 'usual rules.' It was by now pretty clear, even at distances of up to 2800 miles, that out of their four couples, Michael and Maria were the only ones who hadn't had sex together... and Maria thought that was all because she kept insisting so in her 'usual rules.' (She wasn't entirely sure that Michael would want to move forward... he kept finding ways to not answer the question on a hypothetical basis, but-- well, anyway.) When they'd met Max and Liz for the weekend in New Haven, she'd found it hard to escape the impression that Max and Liz would practically have done it in front of them and in public -- if they could have without embarassing their friends, or getting busted for public indecency.

But... well, Maria couldn't quite put a finger on the reason why she was still hesitant. She did love Michael very much, and she knew that he loved her too. He'd come back from his home planet with important assurances... confirmation that he wouldn't have to go back there to fight a war anytime soon, that they could use human birth control effectively, and if she DID get pregnant one way or another, she'd be safe and able to have the baby without any particular problems. And yet... well, there was a voice deep down inside her that kept insisting that this wasn't the time, and she'd generally learned to trust that voice -- if she couldn't argue it out of what it was saying relatively quickly at least.

She forgot about the little voice as michael kissed her neck, took her camisole carefully off, and licked tenderly over her upper chest. Maria took the initiative for a while herself, 'helping' him off with his shirt, nibbling at his nipples and blowing on them, and massaging his back and his strong, muscular legs. Michael took off her bra and kissed her warm, eager breasts, taking her nipples between his lips.

"Ohh... oh, that feels good," she muttered. "I... I'm sorry, baby. I feel like a complete idiot for putting you off like this."

"It's okay," he assured her. "When you're ready, I'll still be here. TRUST ME."

She laughed. "Well, you do deserve a, erm, a kind of a treat for being so patient. Ooooh, alright, here we go." Maria slipped her right hand into Michael's undershorts, and almost immediately encountered his stiff piece of iron... in fact, the tip of his meat started to poke out past his waistband now that she had opened up the way, as it were. Carefully, concentrating on the task as much as she could, she wrapped her hand around him and stroked up and down, gently at first, and then more vigorously as she began to tune in on his reactions.

"Ohh, baby darling," Michael muttered. "This... well, first off, this is really good, I just felt I had to say that for the record." Maria giggled. "And secondly... I, umm... I think you're about to push me past the point of no return. Are - are you sure you want to..."

"Yes, I want to push you all the way," she whispered softly. "Like this... if that's okay."

"Umm, fine by me!" he insisted. "Much better than, um, than having to do it myself."

Maria laughed... partly because it wasn't embarassing to her that he said that, as she might have expected. Actually, it was a bit intriguing, and she mused on the possibility of asking him to 'do it himself' while she watched, and maybe put on a bit of a show for him. But that would probably have to wait for another night... especially since Michael was already crying out with his climax and, well, exploding in his pants.

"Wow, umm... would it be too weird to say thanks?" Michael mumbled, looking for something to help clean up with.

"A little weird, but always appreciated," she teased him.

"Now... is there anything I can do to return the favor?" he asked, as Maria took the sodden wads of tissue paper and dumped them into a trash can. She considered the question for a long moment.

"Okay, how about this!" Maria giggled helplessly for a few seconds. "My... my underthings stay on, and you can't touch me directly down there in any way. But... well, I've heard through the grapevine that you hybrids can do a few very clever things by stimulating the pleasure nerves directly. So... if you want to try getting me off, under those rules, then I'll give you... say, fifteen minutes?"

Michael grinned. "And I can touch you, anywhere except, erm, between your legs - with any part of my body??"

"Well, don't go nuts," Maria laughed. "Umm... anywhere except there on me, but as far as you -- just leave it as hands and face?"

Michael chuckled too. "That'll work. Yeah, just lie back there." Maria stretched out, and Michael immediately focused his attention on her breasts. In fact, he didn't seem to let his focus slip from them entirely the whole time... not that Maria was complaining. Just as she was deciding that one particular technique represented the most deliciously arousing form of sexplay she could ever imagine, he would change his methods to something that was arguably even better. One hand would often reach out to explore other parts of her nearly unprotected body -- scratching her midriff softly, reaching around to stroke her thighs, outside, above, and inside. The other arm, when it was his turn, caressed her neck and her lips delicately, and the bits of her scalp that were most easily reached, at the edges of her thickly luxuriant hair.

But it was the constant and creative activity around her bosom that was pushing Maria strongly towards her own orgasm, incredibly enough. Michael was tuned into her reactions to tease her about the process, driving her body towards the brink, then slowing his activity, keeping her near the edge for delicious minutes. Finally he let her come with a sharp cry, and it was like diving off a waterfall peak into bottomless misty realms of satisfaction.

"Okay, if that was to pay you back, then I think I owe you a big bunch of change," she muttered weakly once words were once again conceivable.

"Maybe tomorrow morning," Michael said with a grin. "Should I get the bedroll out?"

"No... no, stay here," she insisted, edging back towards the wall. "Hold me in your arms as I fall asleep."

He gave her a half-smile. "Alright. But you'd better not steal all the blankets in the middle of the night."

Maria giggled.

----------

"No, no, no," Karen Seaving broke in. "If there's only one alcohol grouping, then there's no way that the vaporization point would be so low. Now, if we give it two alcohol groups, and place them like this..." She started to roughly sketch out a complicated diagram on some scrap paper.

"But..." Rae Adams argued back, "That brings up the issue of why aqueous solubility is so low... doesn't it?" She frowned at the diagram a moment. "Parker, anything you wanna add??"

"Me??" Liz asked. The other girls turned to look at her. "Sorry, I'm trying to keep up, really I am. And yes Rae, I think I agree with you. Two alcohol groupings would make the aqueous solubility too high. So we have two choices... we can try to add in some other molecular feature to send solubility back down... or we can try to think of some other way to address the vaporization point problem with just one alcohol group -- or maybe none at all. I think the latter is our best bet."

The other teammates shared a look. The girls were sitting at a table in the sciences library, (not a shh-shh part of the library,) working on an assignment for analytical biochem that involved being given basic statistics on organic compounds, including how many of what kind of atoms they were made of, and trying to figure out exactly how they were structured and put together by pure reason.

"Okay, I'm up for that," Karen said with a sigh. "Any ideas in that brilliant head of yours, or is it..."

"Back to the books," Liz joined in at the same time as Karen finished the sentence. Liz nodded with resignation, and Rae opened one of the big reference books and pushed the rest between Karen and Liz.

"So, Parker" Rae asked conversationally after searching through organic molecules and groupings fruitlessly for a few minutes. "Are you still spending a lot of sleepless nights with that handsome dreamboat of yours??"

Liz blushed. She'd much rather have kept Max a secret from her classmates, and he hadn't objected much, but practically that notion hadn't worked for long. And Rae had been the first one to connect Liz's lack of alertness in the first month of classes with 'her dreamy friend.' Rae continued to look at her, and Karen joined in, tapping her fingers softly and expectently on the tabletop for about ten seconds before Liz's silent resolve broke.

"Actually, no. Been getting my fair quota of sleep lately... just can't seem to focus that much of my attention on molecular structures today."

"Oh," Karen replied, zeroing on the juicy details. "Did 'Max' have to leave town or something?"

Liz couldn't help but giggle softly. "Oh, no, he's still here in Cambridge, and we've been spending about as much time as ever. It's just..." Liz considered breaking off here, but she knew that the girls would not let up for long without badgering her into continuing. Might as well get the whole thing over with now, more or less. "Max taught me this, umm, relaxation technique. We've both been using it, and so we've been pretty much sleeping through the night instead of, erm... spending the hours doing other things."

"Hmm..." Rae considered this. "Relaxation technique, ehh?"

"Yeah," Liz replied. "Come on... I think that's enough of the first degree for now, or whatever. Oh, hey, how about this." Liz angled her book towards Rae and tapped a pencil eraser meaningfully at a chemical grouping whose name she couldn't easily pronounce.

"Hmmm..." Rae reluctantly turned her attention back to their mystery chemical. "Yeah, that might work, if we can keep the carbon-hydrogen ratio from getting out of hand in the rest of the chain."

"Double-bond the carbons?" Karen put in hopefully.

"Yeah, yeah, that might just work," Liz agreed, starting to sketch out another diagram.

By the time the three of them left the library, Liz was pretty sure that they had solved all but one of the mystery chemicals. She was fairly deep in thought when a restrained squeal from Rae attracted her attention to a tall figure standing next to a lamppost, across the walkway from the library entrance.

"Max!!" She hurried forward to meet him unself-consciously. About half of the way there, something clicked with recognition deep inside her mind. "The GED - how did you do, Mister Evans??"

Max smiled himself, and tried to sweep her up in his arms as Liz had been in the middle of punching him encouragingly on the shoulder... the result of these two actions together was a very confused mess. Max, blushing, took a quarter step back and remained still, letting Liz decide what she wanted to do, and she wrapped herself around him and brought her lips up to his for a fierce kiss. (What could she say - his idea of a hug was better, and a good idea was a good idea!)

"I won't know for sure for a few days at least," he said softly to her, playing idly with the edges of her hair with a few left fingers, and keeping his face close to her as if to bathe himself in her perfume. "But it seemed to go pretty well, so I'm hopeful."

"Really cool!!" Liz said, and was just about to blurt out whatever occured to her next as a followup when her brain got interrupted.

"See ya tomorrow, Liz," Karen called out, from a respectful distance maybe nine feet back. "I gotta jet."

"Me too," Rae added, a little more quietly. "Bye, Maaax!" The last two words were a bit of a playful singsong. Max shook his head slightly - he'd met Rae before, and knew a little of what to expect from her

"Don't mind her," Liz whispered playfully. "I think she's jealous of me... just a little."

Max let his eyes widen, and they started slowly off down the path, Max with an arm around Liz's shoulders, she with a hand stretched out to rest at the far side of his waist. "Jealous??"

"...He says, as if he can't possibly imagine why," Liz teased. "You're extremely cute, as I think you know, and have a bit of a romantic, mysterious air about you." Max chuckled at the thought. "Also... well, I think Rae's had her own share of guy troubles lately, but I'm not sure how much I should blab to you about that, so let's change the subject. It went pretty well, and you're hopeful??"

Max blinked slowly a few times before nodding. "Yep. Reading and writing, science weren't too bad at all." He laughed at the thought. "Math and Social studies were trickier than I expected, but... ehh."

Liz thought about that for a moment. "If you pass most of the sections and fail one or two, do you have to retake the entire thing or just the sections you, erm, didn't pass?"

"Good question," Max allowed. "I think that it's only the missed parts, but it would be good to check on that." He pulled Liz more tightly to him. "So... any chance I can take you out on the town in early celebration of my..." He seemed to struggle for a way to end the phrasing of that sentence, and then shrugged. "Aww, the heck with it. I want to take you to Boston just because. How about it?"

Liz smiled. "Umm... I'd love to, but... um, how are you doing on funds?"

"Don't worry about it," he insisted. "Or at least, not about *that.* You don't have any more schoolwork to worry about?"

"Umm... a few things that need to be done over the weekend, but it's only friday night so there should definitely be time," Liz insisted. "So... Boston? Got anything more specific than that in mind?"

"Er, not yet." Max thought a bit more. "How about if I say I want to take you dancing?"

Liz grinned. "Sounds great! But we'll have to swing by my apartment first, so I can dress myself up all pretty."

"I don't think you could ever be less than gorgeously beautiful, and you're ravishing just as you are right now," Max whispered near her ear. "But... yeah, a change of clothes might be more appropriate for the venue I have in mind."

"Alright I guess." Liz looked up and down Max's tall form as well as she could from as close up as she was. "You might want to rethink the wardrobe yourself, come to think of it." Max was always handsome to her, of course, but he was wearing a relatively plain pair of jeans and a slightly odd-looking checkered t-shirt, along with black and green running shoes. It wasn't an outfit that would blend in many places... though on the college campus it didn't seem so bad."

Max laughed. "Not a problem. I think I've got some clean stuff in my drawer." It hadn't been very long after they arrived in Cambridge that Liz had offered Max the use of one of her dresser drawers - a sensible arrangement, but one that Max had quickly discovered he could effectively tease her about. This time, though, he didn't really say anything more.

Arms still around each other, they walked quickly to Liz's residence building and climbed the stairs to her room. Max kissed her as they slipped through her door and crossed over to his drawer, finding a tighter, fancier pair of jeans, midnight blue, and a silvery-white shirt that Liz had given him. "Think these'll be ohhhh..." Max's voice trailed off as he saw the clothes that Liz had taken out of the prefab wardrobe at the other end of the room... two pieces of clothing, about the same size, one bright white and one vividly red. Neither was *incredibly* small in the cliched way... 'small as a hankerchief, as a belt,' or so on. But when Max realized that they comprised all the outfit Liz was planning to wear to the dance club... they seemed skimpy enough.

"Yeah, those'll be great," Liz told Max, just exactly as if she didn't realize that Max's attention had moved on from his own outfit choices to hers.

"You're, yy--" Max had to clear his throat to actually get it to work right. "You're not joking, are you?"

"Umm... should I be?" Liz pouted and stepped over to nestle herself against his chest. "Max, in case it isn't clear... YOU are the only person that I want to show off for. If you don't want me wearing stuff like this in public, then -- well, it's something open to debate at least. But I guess I never thought of you as the kind of guy who would have problems with it. Seems like fun to me."

Max thought about that. "Well, it seems like jumping the gun to come to a conclusion, one way or the other, without seeing you wearing them."

Liz laughed merrily. Max suspected that he wouldn't end up objecting much at all, and quickly the two of them started to get ready. Max spent about ten minutes in Liz's onsuite bathroom - it had been a long day, and washing up quickly with a washcloth and a sinkful of hot water felt very refreshing. Liz took her turn in the bathroom when he was done, and he watched her saunter back into the bedroom in only silky, skimpy black lace underwear. Max was already dressed, and made no attempt to hide his appreciative gaze as Liz slid on the tight white miniskirt, and the red top, which was a tube-style... (back in sophomore year, Max would probably have bet that he'd never see Liz Parker wearing a tube top,) stating just below the top of her perky chest, and reaching down her abdomen, short enough to show off belly button and a little bit of midriff that peeked out between the red and the white. Smiling back at Max, Liz slipped on black high heel boots and elbow gloves to complete the effect. It was a sexy outfit, but not over the top, and Max decided he liked Liz pushing the envelope a little like this. There was just one concern preying on his mind.

"If we go to Crypto like that, I'm going to be stuck chasing off other guys who want to cut in and steal you away, all night!"

Liz laughed that melodic laugh again. "You're exagerating... I think. I'm not going to stand out in a crowd at Ultra like this. Yeah, a few guys might try their luck, but it wouldn't be that many."

"I'm not so sure," Max insisted. Liz had never been able to perceive the magnetic effect she had on guys, because in most situations it didn't directly affect her. (Of course, if she *could* tell, she might have gotten a bit of a swelled head over being 'all that' by now, and Max was just as glad that she hadn't.) "If we keep count of every guy that hits on you or makes a definite move, and stay at the club until eleven... gotta be at least seven."

"Hmm." Liz raised her eyebrows. "Looks like we might have an actionable wager here. I'm willing to take the bet, assuming that we can agree on what is or isn't hitting on me, which I'd like to think so." She peered into Max's face as he didn't reply immediately. "I'll even spot you one and make the bet as 'five guys or less I win, six or more you win.'"

Max laughed. "Well, okay I guess - why not? It'll add some extra excitement to the evening I think. But what are the stakes?"

Liz stepped back from him and posed dramatically. "Why mess with the classics? Loser has to be the winner's slave 'til sunrise, following all orders faithfully once we get back here... on the understanding that all the orders must be carried out on or within the bed." Max realized that his eyes were widening.

"It's a bet." They shook on it, and headed out the door, Liz walking carefully in her boots and short skirt, but making pretty good time. "Now... I assume you'll insist that girls hitting on you don't count," Max continued, and Liz laughed.

"Of course not. You said *guys.*"

"Just checking. What if the gender is hard to identify on sight? Do I get the benefit of the doubt??"

She sighed softly. "Yeah, I guess so. " And as they started down the stairs Liz smiled a small smile to herself alone.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Thu May 11, 2006 3:25 pm

Part Thirteen

"Oh, hello Kyle," Mrs Evans said when she answered the door. "Haven't we given you a key yet?"

The young man standing out on the porch smile awkwardly. "Nope. And I think Tess gave hers back - either that or she took it with her to work. Not that I'd have really been comfortable using it even if it had been laying on our kitchen counter."

"Oh." Diane made a disappointed face at the same time as she waved Kyle inside. "I hope that maybe we can change that. You and I havent'd had much of a chance to talk since... well, since everything started, but I -- well, I kind of feel like Philip and I have taken Michael and Tess into our adoptive family, when they came back. Which means, I think, that I'm not THAT far away from being your mother-in-law, young man."

Kyle had just sat down at the dining room table when she dropped that bomb, and his eyes bugged out in surprise. For an instant it looked like he might leap up and make a dash for the door, but that didn't actually happen. "Far... far enough," he managed to choke out afer a long moment.

Mrs Evans looked into his face, then turned off to the kitchen. "Coffee your usual?"

"Oh? Umm, yeah sure." Almost before he'd finished saying it, she was heading back to the table with a large steaming mug. There was another coffee on the table, he suddenly realized, a little over half full. When she handed him his drink, Kyle swirled it a little to make sure that it was well mixed, then sipped carefully, smiling as he recognized the taste of a double helping of half and half cream, and just a trace of sugarless sweetener.

"There isn't anything wrong happening between you and Tess, is there, Kyle??" Diane asked after a moment.

"Hmm-huh? Oh, no... definitely not! I, uh, I didn't mean to give you that impression when I said, erm, you know." She nodded slightly, keeping up a pretty calm, unblinking stare. "Well, I hope you aren't upset or anything, but both Tess and I have parental intimacy issues, I think. It's nice that you think of us almost like your own kids, her more than me, but neither of us are quite there yet." He sighed. "As far as marriage, well... I don't think the subject has ever come up enough that I feel like I can say how she'd react. Myself..." Kyle trailed off at that point, taking a deep breath and then a long swallow of the hot coffee. (He'd won a lot of bets back in high school on chugging coffee fresh out of the pot without creamer... some kind of natural resistance to overheating his mouth. Maybe he'd inherited that much from two generations of cops.)

"We... we don't have to keep talking about this," Diane said, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. "But I'm interested, if you don't mind continuing."

"Al- alright I guess. I... I love Tess a lot, and I know she loves me, and living together has been... well, there have been the unexpected moments and a few things that each of us have had to get used to about each other, being together so much and sharing living space... but none of those have been too bad, and aside from those moments, it's been really fun. On the other hand... well, I guess I have some issues about getting married, which might have to do with losing my mother when I was so young."

"Right..." Kyle looked up at Diane. "Kyle, don't even bother doing more than shaking your head if this is too personal a question, but did you ever hear anything from your mother after she... after she left?"

Kyle froze, and blurted out. "Now... that's a personal question, but not *too* personal actually. So when I shake my head in a moment, realize that it wasn't meant as a 'no talking about that' signal, but simply a mannerism because I need to shake my head a little before I figure out what to say." Diane laughed wryly as he said that.

"Let's see... yes, I did hear from her a bit, after she left," Kyle said slowly. "Just little bits now and then... a birthday card when I turned nine, a phone call some christmas eve. A letter right out of the blue one time. But there weren't many things like that, and they sort of stopped after a few years." He sighed deeply. "I made a really serious attempt to track her down when I was fifteen, and didn't get far. Now I don't have any clue where on earth she is, or even if she's alive or not."

Kyle stared morosely into his coffee cup for a long time, and then took another sip. Diane breathed briskly a few times and smiled as warm a smile as she could manage.

"Well, I doubt that you came over to talk about this kind of stuff today, Kyle. Do I owe the pleasure to anything in particular?"

Kyle blinked, roused out of his melancholy mood by surprise about something else. "Umm... Tess told me that we were coming over to visit you this afternoon... didn't she arrange it with you beforehand?" Now it was Diane's turn to look surprised. "Nothing special, just a real homecooked meal would be nice, and Tess said she was hoping to talk to some of the others, though she didn't go into details... she was going to come straight over here when she's off work, which will be in a little less than half an hour."

"Hang on a moment." Diane crossed over to the fridge in the kitchen, considered it for a long moment, snatched away a slip of paper without touching or jostling free the banana magnet that had been holding it in place, and brought the paper back to the table. "Philip should really be prevented from handwriting notes, ever. I thought that this was saying October twenty-seventh, not the twenty-first. But I've got the fixings for a big chicken potato pie I think, and that should be enough to feed all four of us, and some leftovers for you to take home. How does that sound?"

"Um, I'm not really sure what a chicken potatoe pie is, but damn if it doesn't sound pretty tasty!" There was a pause, and Kyle blushed when he realized what strong language he had used. "Um, excuse me, I'm really sorr..."

"That's alright, I understand I think," Diane replied. Without saying so, she managed to make it quite clear that she'd rather Kyle *did* try to steer clear of words like that around her. "It's... well, it's kind of like a chicken pot pie, except with freshly diced potatos in it." Kyle smiled.

"As far as Tess talking to her friends... she might have been talking about using the webcam. I'm pretty sure that Alex and Liz have been able to set up compatible systems. Neither Michael nor Maria have a computer of their own yet, but..."

"Cool," Kyle said softly. "Umm... do you need any kind of a hand with the pie?"

"Hmm... just let me get the recipe out, and I'm sure I can find things that someone helpful could do," Diane answered, smiling at him.

----------

"And that makes five, with over twenty minutes left to go," Max whispered into Liz's ear as he held her closely on the dance floor. "The crowd is going absolutely wild. Quite an exciting wager so far this evening, and nothing is settled yet. Will..."

"Oh, give me a break on the play by play, darling," Liz whispered back. "Shut up and dance." It was indeed going to be close. Liz couldn't tell exactly WHY other guys culdn't seem to keep their eyes off her and Max tonight - it couldn't just be the outfit she was wearing, could it? Really didn't seem to be anything special compared to what other gorgeous ladies all around the club were pretending were clothes. Liz would probably have lost the bet already if it hadn't been for her tactic of telling off and insulting the five guys who HAD hit on her, in an attempt to discourge others who might have had the same idea.

At least Liz thought that something like that would be discouraging. It was a little hard to measure the effect in practice, and there HAD been five guys so far.

For a second, she was caught up in a thrilling bit of music playing over the speakers, an imressive guitar instrumental, and the feeling of Max moving so close to her. When the momentary euphoria faded, Liz started to wonder... was Max playing a deeper game than she was, this one time? He'd noticed her main tactic - it would have been unlikely that he wouldn't see it, or that anyone knowing the terms of the bet wouldn't recognize her hissy fits for the maneuver that they were. He couldn't complain, of course, as there was nothing in the terms of the bet that prohibited her yelling at guys who tried to pick her up.

But Max hadn't done anything so obvious, which naturally made Liz curious about whether he was doing anything un-obvious. He was a guy himself, after all - did guys have unspoken signals that girls weren't tuned into? Could he be sending some sort of vibe that explained why she was getting so much attention - probably not anything so direct as 'please use your corniest pick-up lines on my girlfriend...' at least, that seemed unlikely. But what if the unspoken message was more like 'We're not really together, she's just my sister/best friend. Come try your luck."

When the song ended, Liz suggested that they take a break off the dance floor, enjoy some refreshing drinks or something. It was in the back of her mind that staying off the dance floor might make herself less of a man-lure... everybody appreciates the the visual appeal of a body in motion to a certain extent after all. And when she was caught up in the music and the rhythm of a dance, she tended to forget about the bet entirely and not even notice if she was accidentally showing off.

Max smiled and started to lead the way towards the bar. "Sure." They had to wait in line for several minutes before giving a bartender their orders, and Liz had settled on a Cherry up by then. Max took a few seconds before asking for a rock latte. Liz grinned in expectation, never having heard that phrase as a drink order before. It turned out to be a mostly predictable, but appealing, variant on iced coffee.

"So, once you get your GED results... or before, for that matter - what's next?" Liz asked with a grin, trying to distract herself from the bet with something familiar. "Are you going to be able to take college boards in time to... hmm. Apply in time for summer, or next ear?"

"Well, that's not going to be hard," Max said with a smile. "The thing is... well, there was really no way to meet the winter deadline, considering when we landed and how much I had to do to get ready." Liz nodded. "So I kind of want to find something to keep myself busy for a few months."

"Hmm..." Liz considered. "Have you thought about trying to get a job at one of the historical sites or something like that? I mean, you have two years of experience at a tourist attraction - admittedly, the Rowell UFO museum won't be ESPECIALLY impressive sounding to Boston blue-bloods..." Max laughed. "But tourism is tourism, and the skills carry over I think."

"That's actually not a bad thought," Max admitted. "I might be able to take some courses at the junior college, Pineleaf or whatever." Liz smiled at the thought. "The tricky part is going to be that they only have so many spots for out-of-state students. But I know that my parents would love to see me back in school."

"They're not the only ones," Liz said in a soft breath. Max looked up at her and smiled.

"Have you... um, have you heard from Alex or Maria lately?" Max asked. Liz smiled too, and started talking about an email she'd read from Maria just before meeting the girls for assignment session that afternoon. They started talking about a few other things, and then all of a sudden Max's watch beeped. They both turned to look at it.

"Eleven o'clock," Liz whispered. "Does this mean I win??"

Max looked around. "Umm... it does if you can get out of the building without getting 'tagged.' Do you want to go now? Every minute increases the odds of a drive-by flirting."

Liz thought about it for a long moment. What Max was saying made sense, though it didn't seem as likely that a guy would come up to her while she was sitting here as when they were moving through the building. The big question was... would there be any reason that she'd be more likely to get a pick-up line on their way out now, as opposed to say in five minutes? The entrances and exits might be slightly busier right now, at the top of the hour, but she decided to risk it. "Yeah. Roll, Maxwell."

It was an interesting trip out to the parking lot, to say the least. Every guy nearby, Liz watched intently, (glowering in a slightly unfriendly fashion,) wondering if he might be the one who would cost her the wager. But none of them was, and she crowed with delight as she stepped out into the parking lot. "Ha-ha!! That's it, right? It's just getting out of the building?"

"Yep." Max smiled equably. He didn't seem too worried about losing the bet in and of itself... Liz supposed that she wouldn't have been either, except for the disappointment from the pure sense of competing and losing. Certainly the agreed-upon stakes of the wager were something that she would generally consider to be a no-losing proposition (which was why she'd picked it.)

As they headed over to Max's time-share car, a blond guy not much taller than Liz, impressive muscles visible under his thin white t-shirt, gave her a lopsided, drunken grin. "Hey, baby, wanna make out??" he slurred, showing absolutely no signs of noticing Max's arm around her shoulders.

"Umm... no thanks," Liz managed to blurt out. Blond guy stumbled onto his hands and knees, and neither Max nor Liz could help bursting into laughter as they hurried into the car and headed back to the campus.

Liz was intrigued by the car-sharing plan that Max had signed up for. Most of the details about the system still escaped her for the moment, how parking the cars in agreed-upon places at certain times, ignition keys in special combination lockboxes, and a monthly fee added up into having the use of a decent car for most of the times that Max needed one, without needing to worry about parking it for all of the time that he wasn't using it, or being responsible for much in the way of repairs, but he was pleased with the arrangement and Liz had no real complaints at this point. It wasn't a long drive back to Harvard, but Liz knew that she was just tired enough that she'd have been cranky if they'd had to walk, (with her not wearing much to warm her against the cool New England fall weather,) and the car was definitely more intimate than a city bus would have been, even if a prior passenger had left some scraps of paper in the little cavity inside the door armrest, which Max had told her never ever to do in a shared car.

She didn't really remember getting out of the car again or climbing up the stairs to the room. Max opened up the door for her and let her walk in first, and Liz did, shaking her head to try and clear it. She didn't want to forget or waste a second of this night that she could help.

So she crossed over to the mini fridge and grabbed a Jolt out of the door. "Okay, come'on bub," she chided Max after taking a first sip. "Into bed and start stripping down. You should have anticipated THAT much, slave."

Max let the door close all the way and followed her instructions, unable to keep a slightly dopey smile off of his face. Liz chugged down some more highly caffeinated soft drink, and considered a moment. "Now, you have to obey all my instructions until morning," she recapped. "As long as they can be followed without you having to leave the bed, and bearing in mind that you do not leave without my permission, and return as soon as possible. Correct?"

"Yep," Max agreed. "That was the deal."

"As I see it, that covers instructions to answer all my questions, with complete honesty and holding nothing back that might be relevant," Liz pressed. "You can tell the truth, and the whole truth, without getting up after all - right?"

Max's eyes widened, just a little. "I guess so. Though, I thought I was always honest with you, but... ask what you will."

Liz smiled. She didn't intend to push this particular angle very hard, but there was one question she had to ask. "Were you doing anything secretly to try to win the bet? Sending a signal to the other guys in the club, something like that?" She sighed, slipping off her top. "It was closer than I'd expected it to be."

"Umm..." Max took only an instant to think about the question. "I was trying to show you off, nothing more. Once any guy got a look at you, there wouldn't really be any need for other 'signals.'"

"Hmmm." Liz considered that. "Alright, Max. Take the briefs off too." She went over to the desk, looking for something that would be suitable. Hmmm. She picked up a thick ruler, a foot and a half long, made entirely out of black plastic, and brought it over to the bed. "Reshape this. I want it to be cylindrical, just a little over half an inch in diameter, with one end rounded off, and a handle on the other end."

Max's eyes widened a little, holding the ruler as Liz went to search through a drawer in her dresser, looking through various items she'd bought from the campus drugstore. "Umm... Mistress, if your humble serf may but ask one question..." Liz turned around and nodded curtly. "When I *do* reshape this... what is Mistress going to do with it?"

Liz giggled and brought up a little bottle that should work fine as a lubricant. "Well, to start with, the business end isn't going inside ME, slave!" Max gulped.

----------

"Come on," Isabel insisted. "It's a beautiful day, and you finally managed to get off campus. We should be able to think of something better to do than lie here next to each other on the couch watching reality TV."

"We could see if there's any good movie on the sci-fi channel," Alex quipped, and she shot him a nasty look. "Hey, I was kidding!!"

"Yeah, I know," Isabel said, "but sometimes there's truth even within the joke. Come on." She rose to her feet and then pulled Alex up until he was standing next to her. "We're going for a walk around the neighborhood or something." he groaned softly. "Come on! I know that you're tired, but it's not physical exhaustion, right?? You've been working hard on your courses, but that's your brain getting strained. Exercising your body will make you feel LESS drained, not more." Alex wasn't sure about that, but she seemed to be so certain.

"Well... I can think of another way to get some exercise," he whispered, pulling her close.

Isabel giggled. "Yeah, I bet, but if it's what I'm thinking of, that doesn't get us out into the fresh air... well, unless we start getting off in public, and I don't think that's on my kink list yet."

"This is Los Angeles, sweetie. The air isn't fresh," Alex commented, but he went over to where Laex was with a ball anyway. "Whatcha say Lex?? Do you wanna go outside?" The little boy looked up at his father with a big wide smile, stood up, and started to walk up to the door. He smiled.

"Nearly two months and I'm still getting used to him," Alex admitted in an aside to Isabel. "Never spent much time around little kids since I *was* one, without any brothers or sisters, cousins or nephews or anything. I guess it was like that for you too, when he was really really young."

"Heck, it's not like he doesn't still surprise me," Isabel admitted, scooping her little boy up to hold him in her arms for a moment. La'ex squirmed a little, in the mood to get around on his own two little legs, and she set him gently down. "I may have spent more time around him, but since he's growing and changing so quickly, the time I spent with him when he was only, say fourteen months, doesn't really-- Well, I'm not sure what it doesn't really, but he's almost a different little person from what he was like back then." Alex smiled a little sadly at that thought... he would never get to meet the person that Lex had been back then, now that the time had passed and he had grown.

They walked to the front door of Isabel's building and out into the busy neighborhood that Isabel lived in, not far from Santa Monica boulevard. Alex brought the snuggly to carry Lex in if he got tired, but right now the youngster was walking ahead of them in high spirits.

"Oh!" Alex exclaimed, remembering something suddenly. "How did it go today with, umm, whatsername? The girl who would be babysitter." He smiled slightly.

Isabel smiled slightly too. "Not bad. I... I dunno why I'm being so insistent about not leaving her alone with my little guy. I didn't raise a fuss about letting people babysit back in Roswell."

"Back in Roswell," Alex pointed out, "the people who were volunteering to babysit were family, or friends close enough that they might as well be family. People who... well, who knew your big secret, and thus wouldn't be terribly surprised if Lex suddenly did something... er, something unusual - not that he's likely to, of course." Alex smiled. "There's a lot of ground difference between people like your parents, Liz, Max, Michael... and someone here in LA who your Dad's firm found for him."

"Yeah, I guess that's pretty much the point," Isabel agreed. "Well, as long as I'm around, I don't mind her watching Lex. She gets her money, and I get a chance to take care of some chores without keeping watchful mother... watch on him all the time myself." Isabel groaned, obviously dissatisfied with her turn of phrase there. "Oh, I can't believe I forgot to tell you this until now - I got a letter from the University!"

"Really?" Alex asked. "Was... was it about the late applications you sent in for winter admission?"

"Yeah," she enthused. "And it's better news than I was expecting... about as much as I could have hoped. Wait-list!"

"Umm... congratulations," Alex told her. "I suppose they didn't say how far back on the list you were or the chances of getting taken?" Isabel shook her head slightly.

Back when she had first come to Los Angeles, Isabel had filled out an application for starting classes at UCLA in January. The formal deadline had been nearly a week earlier, and while her high school transcript had come through, the only SAT scores Isabel had been able to provide were the ones from her junior year, much lower than she hoped to score on the test she'd taken three weeks ago. But she'd charmed the woman at the administration office by taking Lex with her when she dropped the form off, and apparently that had gotten her into consideration. Her impressive high school records had probably also helped in getting her onto the wait list.

"Daddy!" Alex almost looked behind him in surprise. Lex had never called him Daddy before -- sometimes 'Attics' or 'hun,' (both of which terms he had gotten from his mommy, in different contexts,) but Izzie had been trying to teach him to call Daddy by his right name. She grabbed Alex senior's arm and crowded close to him in excitement.

"Um, yeah, La'ex?" Alex asked, bending down slightly to get closer to his little man.

"My regs aw tiyud!" Alex grinned and littled Lex off his 'tiyud little regs.'

"Hmm... should we head back home?" Alex asked after a moment of carrying Lex in his arms.

"Yeah, but let me help you get him buckled in anyway," Isabel replied, staring to get the fastenings of the snuggly in order. "I think we've warmed ourselves up for some indoor exercise."

"Exorthize!" Lex repeated, imperfectly but enthusiastically.

"Okay." They turned around, and started to head back to Isabel's building.

"So... Halloween is coming up," Isabel said suddenly. "Do you think we'll get any trick or treaters at my place? Or is there something else you want to do?"

Alex thought about it. "Well, there are going to be some fun costume parties on campus... but not the sort of deal we could really take a little tyke to." He let the implication hang in the air unsaid.

"So maybe I should ask if Aileen wants to stay with Alex the first time alone on Halloween night?" Isabel interpreted.

"Well, it doesn't HAVE to be the first time on Halloween," Alex put in. "Bottom line, as the Mommy this is entirely up to you. I... I won't deny that I'd appreciate going to a party or a movie sometimes, just the two of us, as much as I love my son. Aileen seems like a very respectable, dependable person, and I trust her with Lex."

"Hmmm..." Isabel considered that. "Maybe we could do that thing where we send friends in on her the first evening, to spot-check her... except that we don't have that many friends here in town."

"Some of the guys I know in school would probably go for a caper like that," Alex admitted. "But we probably shouldn't use too many of them, or it'd be obvious that something was weird."

"Hmm..." Isabel was still deep in thought about that as they came back to her building.

----------

"Hmmm." Max drifted awake, looked around a bit, and nudged the petite shapecurled up a few inches away, near the edge of the bed.

"What is it, worthless thrall?"

Max laughed shortly. "Not any more, my darling dear. Sun's up - my stint as a slave is over." He pointed out a single clear spot of sunlight that had made it past the south wing of the residence and through Liz's window, to land on the wall.

"How... how very scrumptious for you," Liz groaned. "Now could you let me sleep, then? We were up most of the night, VERY busily, and it's Saturday morning." She sighed restlessly.

Reaching over, Max connected to her, without even realizing what he was about to do, and willed her into a deep, restful sleep, that would hopefully grant her peaceful, restorative dreams in about twenty-five minutes. (If he'd realized that he could do that before now, they wouldn't have needed to use the torrie-teng - well, at least Liz wouldn't have. Max doubted that he could use the same 'will to sleep' technique on himself somehow.)

Right now, Max wasn't tired, or at least he was too keyed up to want to sleep. As Liz had said it had been an eventful night, and as Max had guessed, the fact that Liz had been in the driver's seat and holding the reins, (not literally, though there had been a riding crop at one point,) hadn't kept it from being enormously erotic and oddly satisfying for Max... not that he'd want to share most of the details with the guys. (But then, he wasn't much of one for kissing and telling... or going beyond kissing and telling, anyway.)

Something about that night made him feel closer to Liz in a way that went even beyond sex... an odd kind of trust that he felt for her that he'd never have even thought about. Even with the usual rules and conventions of their relationship put aside, Liz hadn't stepped across the line - as his Mistress, she had been caring and considerate, even if she felt the need to hide that behind a stereotypically icy dominatrix facade. (Not a perfect domme act, but then, when would Liz have had the opportunity to practice one before?)

Max sat down at Liz's desk, watching the sunlit fields and paths of the campus, and the people already going about their business at this early hour - students, a few teachers. One gardener raking up some brightly colored leaves that must have fallen from trees Max couldn't see at this angle.

All of a sudden, Max scrambled for a piece of blank paper and a pen. There was something that he wanted to try to capture in words - wasn't sure if he'd be able to make it come out right, but he'd almost certainly lose it if he didn't make the attempt right now. He wasn't sure what it might turn into, a story or a poem or just a little disjointed ramble, but he started to write, slowly and a little unevenly, writing a few words, a phrase, and then pausing, trying to feel where he wanted to go from there.

----------

"Oh, umm... hello. Nice costumes. Um -- who are you?"

Maria frowned at the guy who had opened the door in a pantsuit and a Hilary Clinton mask. "Erm... I'm supposed to be Sheena Easton, and the big guy here is..."

"A real estate mogul, possibly the Donald himself. Sorry, I should have phrased that differently. Who are you *actually*?"

"Umm... Roy??" 'the Donald' asked. "Sorry... it's me, Guerin. And this... um, 'Sheena' is my girlfriend, Maria. I... I must've mentioned her, right?"

"Guerin??" Hilary replied. "Oh, sorry... I should've recognized your face. LOVE the hairdo." He turned to call into the fancy Manhattan loft. "Hey, Guerin and his bird are here."

Maria grinned as they came in... surprised by how much she liked the thought of being like a bird. Michael had talked her into going to a party thrown by the owners of his company, as long as they left just after midnight, which would be enough time to hit whatever event back on campus her friends had settled on by then. As they entered, things started off shy of great... getting introduced to the other people working in the marketing company that had hired Michael wasn't really her idea of fun... even if they were all wearing silly Halloween costumes.

But the introductions were over quickly, and as the festivities loosened up slightly Maria felt like she was having more fun. It wasn't a terribly large party - a little more than twenty people in attendance perhaps, with eight or nine of them being 'significant others' like herself. There were drink offers... Michael didn't take anything alcoholic, of course he couldn't, but nobody seemed to be too curious about that and Maria accepted a rum and coke. Soon Bryant Willis, Michael's boss, (wearing a ridiculous Dracula vampire getup -- black cloak with a high collar, fangs, pale makeup, and something odd in his hair to darken and slick it down,) started telling a story of a promotional stunt that they'd just finished organizing, with thousands of stuffed toy ants left on the subways, and in bus stops, and gigantic anthills six feet high or higher 'made' on short notice in the park.

"So, umm, let's see," someone in a devil costume said once Bryant's tale telling was done. Maria couldn't remember anything about this guy from the introduction that Michael had made only fifteen minutes before. "How about we hear from some of the newer faces. Umm... captain Blackbeard, how about you?"

The man who he'd nodded at, certainly dressed up as a pirate of some description, blinked in surprise, and Maria whispered a mental prayer of thanks that she hadn't been called on - yet. (Was this guy one of the founders of the company, the president perhaps??) "Err... I am Silas Eneas," he said in a fairly thick accent that she couldn't place at once. "I, I am husband to Melissa, and have found work as a network technician in an insurance office. Have -- have only been in America for slightly more than a year, since shortly before the wedding..."

"Now that's interesting," the Devil interrupted. "Umm... sorry, I didn't mean to break in, it just seemed like an interesting detail." He turned to a pretty woman with dark hair next to Silas the pirate, who was dressed up as - well, Maria couldn't tell what she was supposed to be right away, but maybe some kind of native north american, with beads in her hair, a rough leather vest and skirt, and sandals. Probably that was his wife. "Melissa, you married this guy right off the boat? Did you know him already or was it a mail-order husband kinda deal??" There was a little laughter about that notion.

"No, no, I knew him *very* well," Melissa insisted, blushing slightly and holding Silas' arm to her. "We... well, we met when I was eighteen, I have roots in Kastoria, and I spent a year studying there, staying with cousins of my father. That's when I met Silas, and... well, we argued for several months, mostly in different languages, before realizing that we liked each other. Kept in touch when I went back to Jersey, and two years later I was able to go back to Greece for the summer - we both got jobs at a beach resort in Volos. By... well, by the time I was finished at junior college, I knew that I wanted us to be together... I wanted Silas to come to America. He... well, he wasn't so sure, he wanted to be with me too, but he was a bit put off by the idea of how far he'd have to come, and the immigration stuff, and one night when we were on the phone, half-joking, I promised that if there was anything I could do to make it easier for him to make the decision, I'd do it, and he came right back with, 'Okay then, will you marry me when I come?'"

"But... but you actually did it?" Michael asked softly.

"I didn't agree to it right away," Melissa agreed. "We met one more time - I flew over, met up with him on the west coast of Greece, and we took a boat trip to Southern Italy and then went back to his home the long way, by train and hitchhiking. When we got back to his grandfather's house in Pteria, that's when he formally asked me to marry him and gave me a little engagement ring and everything. And I said yes, right away."

"She went home two days later, to start making preparations and plans for the wedding," Silas finished, and several of the guys laughed at that.

"Okay, good enough I guess," the Devil said -- and turned to Michael and Maria! "How about our eighties rockerbabe?" At least he didn't seem to remember her name any more than Maria remembered his.

"Maria DeLuca, born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico. Umm... met Michael in sophomore year - his best friend and my best friend had actually, erm, well, they weren't ACTUALLY dating, but they'd definitely gotten to know each other quite a bit that fall, and so that kind of meant that a whole bunch of us were getting thrown together in unusual circumstances." She looked over at Melissa. "And I guess you could say that the sparks started to fly pretty soon. Umm, let's see." Maria considered, not knowing how much about his 'running away from town' Michael would want her to tell these people. "Well, we kind of split up not quite two years later, and I came to New York because I got a chance to study at a great music school." She smiled enigmatically. "Michael showed up in my life a year later."

"Hmm," Hilary-boy put in. "Does that mean you came to New York, and to us, because of her, Guerin??"

"Well... yeah, there was a very good reason I wanted to find a decent job around here," Michael admitted. "Just luck and a family connection that hooked me up here."

"Wait a second, though," Bryant asked. "Your sister, Laurie... she didn't grow up in Roswell, did she?"

"No," Michael admitted. "That's kind of a long story."

"Well, tell us at least the first half of it," the Devil in red commanded.

----------

"Trick or treat!!"

"Happy halloween," Tess called out as she opened the front door of the Evans house, wearing a blue 'Star Trek' uniform and carrying a big bowl of candy. "Okay, let's see... we've got a cute little ghost," (with that she dropped an especially big and sweet piece of candy into the ghost's goody bag, "and a sea captain, and a Time Force ranger, and a fairy tale princess, and a gremlin." Treats were handed out to every kid in the small crowd, and then she realized that two of the kids had little boxes to collect money for charity slung around the necks of their costumes. "Um, just a second, and I'll grab the--" A little ice cream bowl full of quarters seemed to suddenly appear in front of her face, held by a familiar hand. "Okay, maybe someone else will grab the charity change."

"IT'S BATMAN!" the sea captain called out, in a more amazed voice than the season would seem to call for. (Hadn't he ever seen a grownup dressing as batman on Halloween before?) But Tess wrapped an arm around the Caped Crusader affectionately.

"Yep, it's my batman. How's the trick-or-treating going so far?"

"Umm... really good," the princess said shyly. "This is my third bagful I'm working on, but I probably won't get to finish it up, because my mommy says it's late."

"Well, two, two and a half bagfuls of candy is a *lot*, though, isn't it?" Tess asked, bending down slightly. The princess nodded. "So count yourself lucky is my advice." At this point a parent called out from the other end of the driveway, and the children all started to get ready to go. "Bye!" Tess called out, and three of the kids waved back to her as they left.

"It *is* getting late," Batman said in a soft voice. "I wonder how many more kiddies we'll get?"

"Not sure, honey," Tess replied, pulling up the batman eye-mask to reveal all of Kyle's face for a moment. "But this has been fun, and when it looks like the trick-or-treating has run out, then we can head over to Bryan and Jessica's party, right??"

"Yeah." Kyle's head cocked to one side slightly, and he put his mask back on. "I think we've got another few. Mind if I take them?"

"Sure, go ahead." Tess straightened the mask slightly and walked back into the living room, where she was startled to see Max's father sitting in the armchair. "Oh... hi. Um, thanks for letting Kyle and me do this, by the way. I really wanted to hand out some candy, I have fond memories of it from the year I was living at Valenti's, and -- well, living in that basement apartment it didn't seem very likely that we'd get any kids knocking on the side door."

"Yeah, I can understand that," Philip Evans said. "On the other hand... well, I'm wondering if there was any reason you couldn't go back to Kyle's father's place, just as a Halloween thing. Not that we mind the company or anything - quite the opposite, but..."

"Yeah, well..." Tess sighed. "I dunno. I didn't ask him, or ask Kyle to ask him, though it did kind of run through my mind. I guess that I'm still a little upset at Mister Valenti, and Mrs DeLuca, because they tried to convince us to move in together."

Philip nodded. "I can understand that. But their hearts were in the right place... both of them have a lot of experience about the damage that jumping into a relationship too early can do. I'm pretty sure that none of it was personal - based on them disliking you or thinking that you weren't 'good enough' for Kyle."

Tess smiled. "Guess you've got a point." She thought about that a little while longer. "Maybe I should talk to Kyle about whether he wants us to meet his Dad for lunch sometime."

"Yeah, that sounds like a good place to start rebuilding the bridge."

"Hello?" Kyle called out. "We're running low on the caramel chew bars! Is there still another bag in the kitchen?"

Tess jumped up to her feet, surprised. It was clear even without looking, from the sound, that another fairly big pack of kids, maybe nearly a dozen, had showed up. But... well, even if the caramels were gone, there should be plenty of chocolate nutty chunks and fruity rings and the whatchama-gums to satisfy everyone. Why did he have to open up the last bag of... of the caramel chews that Tess loved, herself, and had been hoping to sneak out to the car. At that moment, she realized how foolish she was being, trying to bogart candy away from trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, and she quickly hurried into the kitchen, found the bag, opened it up, and went back to the front door. Just as she was pouring the chewy candied into the treat bowl, though, her eyes and Kyle's caught, and he nodded slightly. Then, a second later, he stirred the candies around so that the caramels were all over on one side, and not terribly conspicuous, and when he handed out candies in front of her he only gave one caramel away. Tess walked back into the front hall, wondering what Kyle had seen in her eyes. Had she been signalling that she regretted giving the caramels away, so that he would try to save some for her? Well... she couldn't deny that that would be a nice gesture.

"Oh, Tess?" Mister Evans called out again, and she stepped into the living room once again. "Diane wanted me to mention this - apparently Laurie's coming back into town soon, in about a week, and probably staying until Thanksgiving. She wanted to have all three of you over for dinner as soon as possible."

Tess smiled at him. "That sounds great to me."

----------

"I... I hope you don't mind not going to that party, Alex," Isabel said, sitting on the floor and watching La'ex play among a pile of round pieces of orange and black pieces of paper.

"It's okay," he assured her with a hug. "I understand the reasons why you didn't feel comfortable with it." He sighed. "And a quiet little halloween at home is pretty great too."

She grinned back. The two of them had dressed up a bit, Isabel choosing a Buffy-style vampire, (without the worst of the facial prosthetics, so basically a girl in dark, old-fashioned clothing with pale makeup.) And Alex had put together what he said was a Gondorean swordsman from 'Lord of the rings.'

Suddenly Alex's laptop, which was sitting on the desk in the living room, beeped. Vampire Isaebl looked up at him. "Does that mean..."

"Video files converted, I think." Isabel had rented out a digital videocamera to take some home movies, and Alex had thought of taking the video files and turning them into a burned DVD that her parents could watch on their home theatre system. Alex got up, dragged a finger over the touchpad to wake up the screen again, and smiled at the 'Conversion completed successful' message. As he closed the converter program, Alex noticed something else... the familiar icon of a sealed rectangular envelope down in the corner of his screen. "We've got email!"

Isabel did her best to look up at the desk while still keeping half an eye on her mischievous son. "From whom??"

"Just a sec, checking on that," he said. It didn't take long to wake up the email program and read the listing. "Max and Liz." He opened the message and skimmed it. "Nothing terribly important. They went to a mystery masquerade ball tonight, in one of Harvard's oldest buildings or something like that. Sounds like they had a pretty good time. Must've sent the message after they got home."

"Cool," Isabel agreed. "Oh... you know that I love being out here with you, but I miss our friends so much... Max and Michael especially."

"Yeah, I know," Alex agreed. "Well, everybody's going to make thanksgiving back at your mom's house, that's... well, nothing is entirely for sure maybe, but seeing everybody then is darn close." Isabel smiled. "And you could fly up to the northeast with Lex before then if you want to."

Isabel looked into her partner's face. "But then you'd miss *us*, wouldn't you?"

"It is a true thing and I cannot lie -- yes, I'd miss you and Lex a lot, even for just a few day trip."

"Okay, well, let's leave it as it is," she said softly. "Not that long until Thanksgiving, and then there's the December holiday season. Ohh... I think Max is going to try to arrange for all of us to spend Christmas and New Years up there in New England. which sounds pretty good I have to admit. Snow and old-fashioned Yuletide and all of that stuff we could never really appreciate growing up in Roswell. I mean, yeah, we got snow a few times, but it was never like getting several feet dumped on you for days and days."

"I'm not sure that they even get a guaranteed White Christmas in Boston," Alex pointed out. "Sometimes the real snow doesn't start until the second week of January, or what have you."

Izzy shrugged that off. "With North Atlantic weather patterns to work with, there'll be a white christmas. Even if some talented people need to help it along." Alex laughed.

"Oh, look at that!" Alex exclaimed, pointing across the room. Isabel looked, and gasped. Lex had brought a huge bunch of the confetti circles over to his favorite big ball, and was covering the ball with spots of orange and black.

"How... how is he getting them to stay stuck?" Isabel asked softly.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Mon May 29, 2006 10:02 pm

Part Fourteen

"Are we nearly there yet?" Liz asked with a groan... and a bit of a wink. The slumbering New England woods, cold and mostly bare in the second week of November, seemed to stretch out for miles in every direction, though Max knew that it hadn't been that far away where they'd driven into the forest. "I... I'm not sure," he admitted.

Suddenly, with a flamboyantly bright flash, a short blond girl appeared on the path ahead of them. "Actually, you're not too far away. Keep going ahead this way for maybe a quarter-mile, then there's a crossroads with a pretty, tall pine right in the center of the intersection. Hang a left and go maybe another hundred and fifty yards, and well, I'll meet up with you there I guess."

Liz smiled. "Tess! Um... you're not really here, are you?"

The apparition shook her head. "Nope, just mindwalking. I hope you don't mind?"

Liz considered. For a long time she had objected to Tess' sensory projection power because it seemed to be inherently deceptive... or maybe that was just the ways Tess had tried to use it the first year she'd been in Roswell. This application seemed to be quite innocuous - a way of communicating with somebody at long distance. Could come in quite handy. "Nope, not like this. Did you have to appear in a bright flash of light, or was that on purpose."

"Tess likes to create her dramatic effects," Max said, and the mindwarp of the subject of his statement appeared to blush. "I guess I've pretty much learned to take them in stride. Why... have you got a problem with letting her make her own fun."

Liz smiled. "No, I guess not. But we should probably get going," she pointed out. Max nodded, took her hand, and they started up the path again. Tess' image smiled at them, and then disappeared in a pretty convincing 'transporter beam.'

"So, erm, uhh..." Liz grasped for a new conversation topic and found nothing.

"You're... you're still a little unsure what to make of Tess, aren't you?" Max observed softly.

Liz hesitated. Obviously Tess could 'overhear' them somehow with her powers, since the first thing she'd said when she appeared via mindwarp was answering Liz's question about how much further they had to go. But... well, if Max didn't have a problem talking about it now, she wasn't sure she wanted to put it off. "Yeah, I guess I do. I know that I have no reason to feel jealous or treatened anymore... you and I are together, and she seems very happy with Kyle. I guess there's some stuff I still need to work through from... well, from Destiny with a capital 'D' and Future-you and Nasedo kidnapping me and all of that stuff. I never really realized how much frustration and resentment was building up inside me at the time... but talking about it is probably the first step to getting rid of it."

Max nodded, smiling kindly at her. "Well, I'm certainly always happy to be talked to."

"Thanks." Liz thought for a second. "Actually, it might help if you take a turn at talking instead. Tell me something about Tess back on Antar... a moment from not long after you got there." Max's eyes widened. "Well, you told me that you were taking some things out on Tess during the trip home... that you were upset about having to leave me, leave Earth behind. and subconsciously blamed Tess for the whole thing. Was there any particular moment when you remember putting some of that frustration aside?"

Max smiled as he started to understand what she was asking. "Actually, yeah... a lot of it was the sort of thing that happened bit by bit, when I wasn't looking, but... okay. This was... maybe five Antarian days after we landed in the Granilith. Michael, Tess, and I had spent a lot of that time just trying to learn as much of the language as we could. Isabel was... well, she'd gotten in a pretty bad way, and was still recovering. On our trip there, the Granilith still maintained an Earth-like atmosphere, and Isabel was in a coma when we landed. They got her into something like a respirator... the Antarian air was doing her good, but the adverse reactions that Lex was having had started to damage HER lungs somehow, so she wasn't breathing enough on her own." Liz's breath caught in her throat - she hadn't ever realized that things had gotten so dire. Obviously, Isabel hadn't wanted Alex to find out about that part.

"There... there was a bombardment, then." Since Liz's breath was already caught, this revelation prompted a slightly embarassing squeak. "Kivar had, well, he'd found out that the Granilith had come, and who had been inside, and he'd confirmed everything. Guess he'd decided that he could get rid of us by blasting the whole place up. None of us were really in much danger... the hideout that we were living in had been designed as a missile protection bunker, but it... it was horrible to live through. Over two and a half days of the whole place shaking with explosions and blaster weapons trying to drill their way in and all -- and Antarian days are a couple of hours longer than Earth days." He sighed.

"Near the end, just when I didn't know whether I could take it much longer, Tess came to my room. For a few minutes we just talked about -- well, I don't even remember what the topic of conversation was any more. Probably nothing very important. And then she brought out something for me." He smiled slightly.

"Somewhere, in the midst of the confusion, she'd found some kind of flexible cloth mat - it would probably have gotten recycled into something more useful if she hadn't swiped it, and a few jars of Antarian art supplies." He smiled. "Isabel and I have fooled around with making pictures through our powers, using molecular manipulation to create color changes in whatever kind of flat surface, but I guess that isn't typical back home - they see it as a waste of internal power. Instead, they have these artificial pigments, a bit like paint, except they're specifically designed to be mixed and applied using telekinesis. It's still easier than molecular manipulation, because all that you have to do is move the paint instead of changing anything's internal structure, though it takes some practice to get the trick of it." Liz wondered a bit to herself exactly where this was going.

"And... and Tess had made a picture to help me feel better - so she decided to have the picture be of you." Liz gasped slightly. "Vegas was a favorite memory for all four of us around that time... it hadn't been that long before we had to leave, and so much of the usual angst had been left behind by that final night at the Sierra lounge. And so that's what Tess painted, from memory... you in that gorgeous red dress, with your hair up - it looked almost exactly like the first moment I saw you there, when I came back." He sighed.

"At that moment, I knew that everything would be different between us," Max said with a smile. "Just for Tess to give me a mememto to remember you by, something so beautiful that had taken so much of her time to craft -- and from that day on, she never tried to push me into anything. I didn't find out until much later that she was missing Kyle nearly as badly as I was missing you - that she realized HE was the one for her. I was just certain that Tess would stand beside me, as another sister, no matter what... and that when the time came she'd move heavens and worlds to help me get back to you. Which, in a way, she did."

Liz grinned. "That... that's an amazing story, and I think I feel a whole lot better about her myself, already. Oooh, the pine - we almost missed our turn."

She was right... in fact, Max had already started to circle the great tree to the right and would have kept going on straight if Liz hadn't called his attention to the intersection that had been in their directions. "So... how did the bombardment end, anyway?" Liz asked softly, wondering if Max would answer. He'd never been too inclined to talk about stuff involving fighting on the alien planet - but he'd brought it up this time after all, and maybe he'd finish the story. (Well, obviously, to HIM the end of the story had been Tess giving him the picture.) "Ohh! And do you still have the picture?!"

"Let's see," Max said with a soft laugh. "There was a counterattack that ended the fusillade... other Royalist forces, deciding to hit Kivar's people from the side if they were bound and determined to keep attacking a stronghold that would take days yet to blast their way into." He sighed. "And no, I don't still have the picture, though I wish I did. I think it fell out of my pouch when I was in the middle of a sortie through the Adravan marshes. I got Michael to help me dig through the mud to look for it, too, but with no luck." Liz giggled softly, picturing Michael's reaction to that. "Tess offered to try making me another one, but I said not to bother, that a replacement wouldn't have been quite the same, anyway. I practiced with the same art technique and made a portrait of you of my own, though... a very different one." He smiled, rolling his eyes backward slightly in thought. "You know, I think I forgot to pack that when we came up to Cambridge - it must still be in my room back in Roswell."

"Well, you can show it to me sometime... no big hurry," Liz told him. "Ohh, I think we've come nearly a hundred and fifty yards from the pine tree, don't you?"

"Hmm... getting close," Max admitted. "Oooh, it's probably over there." There was a... it wasn't quite like a natural clearing, more like a small rectangle of cleared pasture-land, for which the path they were walking down was the border on one side. No-one seemed to be using it for pasture now, or for growing anything, and Liz found it hard to imagine who would have gone to the trouble of clearing it, here in the middle of the forest. But there was no doubt that it was just the right size. Letting her hand slip free of Max's, Liz ran ahead, squeezing easily between the two upper logs of the fence, which wasn't really very hard -- one was only two and a half feet up, and the higher one, at around four and a half feet, was almost as tall as she was. Once inside the pasture field, Liz dashed forward, and then suddenly stopped, realizing that if the ship was there, it was cloaked so as to be invisible, and she might easily have run straight into an invisible metal wall like the whale doctor had in the 'Star trek' movie. (She had, hadn't she?)

Max chuckled slightly, as if he knew what was going through her mind, and stepped between the fence logs himself, (though he had to bend down a lot more obviously than Liz had.) Just as he stepped over and put his arm around Liz's shoulder, there was a shimmering, and the spaceship was suddenly there in front of them, filling up nearly the whole field. The door was open, and Tess and Kyle waved at Max and Liz from the hatchway, their arms also around each other.

Max laughed softly and hurried Liz over to the entry hatch. "Permission to come aboard?" he asked, and Tess giggled, then granted him permission just as formally. They stepped inside, and Max closed the hatch behind him. Tess cleared her throat and stepped up to address Max.

"Your petition to take over command of the 'Repatriot has been received in triplicate, formally reviewed, and authorized, as of this date." She grinned expectantly at him.

Max frowned for a moment, trying to figure out what response she expected out of him... and then he had it. "Captain Harding, I relieve you."

"Captain Evans, I stand relieved." They both broke out into a spell of laughs.

"Okay, urm, now that all of that's been settled," Kyle muttered, steping forward to once again wrap an affectionate arm around Tess' back, "Captain Evans, can you get us back to Roswell? I have an exam review session to make it to, and we're a little behind schedule."

"Oh, sorry about that, Kyle," Liz started, but didn't really get any further before Max spoke up too.

"Yeah, I'll get us underway. Umm, you three wanna settle yourselves in the recroom, and I'll come in once I can?"

Tess and Kyle backed away without question, but Liz clung to Max, (which meant that it was hard for them to maneuver through the narrow hallway together,) and pouted a bit. "I... I wanted to see you fly, boy!"

Max smiled at that. "You'll get your chances... when it's just the two of us. I thought you'd appreciate the time catching up with the others. I know I would... but you don't know how to fly the ship, and we definitely can't all fit into the cabin."

"You could let Tess fly back," Liz pointed out teasingly, and then felt compelled to ask, "But I guess I'm not serious about that as a situation. Go, take off, and hurry back." But she kissed him, and couldn't resist the urge to follow him up to the 'cockpit' in order to get a brief look at the controls. Then she went back to the recreation deck door, where Tess and Kyle were enjoying glasses of cold lemonade, (probably not from real lemons, but they tasted pretty real,) at a sidewalk cafe in Albuquerque. Soon the three of them were talking about Halloween adventures, and Liz and Kyle's classes, and Tess' attempts to get a walmart transfer to work the main cash registers, and Max's plans for Christmas.

Max came by to join them maybe ten minutes later, (though he insisted on getting a cherry coke instead of lemonade,) "Okay, so..." he said after taking his first good long swallow. "We keep the ship here in the woods for a few weeks, and bring it back for Thanksgiving? Sound cool??"

"Fine by me," Tess admitted. "I don't think I'd had time to go out into the desert for, oooh, for nearly a month anyway, right Kyle??"

"At least a month," Kyle agreed. "Maybe before the beginning of October... actually, there was that one time..." He broke off, blushing. "Can we delete that program out of the recreation deck computer, actually?"

Tess turned a carefully calm expression on him. "Why, darling? You don't think that Max and Liz would enjoy trying it out for themselves?" Liz raised an eyebrow, and Max just chuckled slightly, looking amused at the distress on Kyle's face.

"You can do anything you want to the computer, I guess, within reason," Liz offered. "We'll even leave the deck if we have to, right Max?"

"Oh, come on," he said, and Liz shot him a look.

Liz leaned forward to whisper into his ear. "How would you feel if it was the other way around, if *they* had a chance to find out something deeply personal and embarassing from OUR sex lives, eh??" Max hesitated.

"Well... I don't have anything to hide," he whisper-bluffed back. "But I'd feel protective of YOU in a situation like that, so yeah, if he wants a chance to clean it up, I'm okay with it."

Liz raised an eyebrow, and sat back, realizing that the other couple was also having a hushed conversation of your own. "On second thought... I won't insist," Kyle replied. "Just... well, you know. Mum's the word, if you happen to figure out what I'm talking about."

"I promise," Max insisted. "The topic dies here and now."

"Are... are you really going to try doing it in free fall?" Tess asked. Liz spit out a bit of lemonade. "Umm, sorry. Max didn't tell you that I'd badgered the real reason he wanted the ship out of him?"

"No, no, he hadn't gotten around to telling me that," Liz said, shooting a glance at her boyfriend. "But yeah, that's the plan... one of the things we have planned, actually. Seemed a perfect opportunity to find something new out that bunches of people have been wondering about, and that probably nobody from earth has ever experienced."

"Would it be too weird if I asked you to tell me how it went... in general terms, without a TMI factor?" Kyle asked. "Just for... for future reference, since I imagine we'll have a chance to use the ship again."

"Sure," Max said after a long moment of thought and sharing a glance with Liz. "Once Tess found out, you guys could have beaten us to it, couldn't you? I mean, if you were both interested."

"Yeah, I suppose we could have," Kyle admitted. "But Tess didn't... wouldn't let herself, or me." Max turned to Tess with the question on her face.

"A few reasons," the blonde alien explained. "First... well, it *was* your idea, and I felt like it would have been stealing and 'unfair' in some sense to take your idea and beat you to the implementation just because we had the ship here. Secondly, I promised that we'd get the ship up to you as soon as I had a chance to, and taking time to go out into earth orbit and fool around with Kyle would have been time that I could have been flying over here." Max nodded. "Also... well, I don't really see the problem in letting you guys with inquisitive minds do the experimenting. If you decide that null-gee sexcapades are more pain or bother than they're worth, then we don't even need to try."

"We don't?" Liz put in. "But... well, different strokes for different folks, as they say. It might be a matter of individual taste and luck... something that wouldn't work for Max and I might be great for you guys... or vice versa."

"True," Kyle agreed. "But your experience is still a pretty good advance indicator of whether it's worth it to find out for ourselves." He chuckled. "We might go and buck the trend even if you don't enjoy yourselves, but... well, we already know plenty of stuff we can do and enjoy!!" Liz shook her head at Kyle and Tess swatted him.

Liz suddenly cocked her head, struck by something different about Tess that, up until now, she had been too busy with other things to really consider. "Your hair looks great like that by the way, Tess... did you, erm, did you do anything 'special' to make it grow out so long?" Tess' pale tresses were currently almost straight, about six or seven inches long, framing her face and neck in a curtain of platinum-gold. "I mean, since it was so much shorter when you guys landed."

"Actually, yeah," Tess admitted. "A little specific bio-control over the individual hair follicles... the same trick that Isabel used with Maria, the first summer I was in Ros... oh, you were off in Florida then, weren't you? Still, you must have noticed the change when you got back."

"Yes, I did, and she told me the backstory," Liz agreed. Of course, there had been other people who had noticed Maria's relatively quick change from a chin-length cut to long red-brown curls halfway down her back, and she'd actually asked Liz herself what she should say to those who wouldn't understand the alien explanation. Liz had considered it, done a little research, and reluctantly told her friend that the best way was probably to say that the hair was not real, but she was wearing extensions.

"Okay, erm... back to Thanksgiving talk?" Max asked.

"Well, that brings us back several conversational loops," Liz teased, "but okay. I have to admit I can't wait to see the whole gang at once... especially Alex and Isabel."

"Oh, I have some news," Tess said, leaning forward conspiratorially. "I think some of Laex's grandparents might be moving out to Los Angeles, to help out with him, especially since Isabel's having a hard time trusting a hired gun babysitter to be alone with him."

"Hmm..." Max thought about that. "Any notion if it's my parents or Alex's?"

"Seems to be still a little in doubt," Tess continued. "From what I heard, your mom, Max, she came up with the idea, but she mentioned it to Mrs Whitman and she's even more excited about the possibility for herself and Alex's dad. They came from California in the first place, I think, and there's nothing much keeping Alex's dad here -- err, there in Roswell lately, after he got retired early from the pharmaceutical company." Liz frowned, and Max stiffened in shock - obviously he hadn't heard about that. "He's been doing some guest lecturing, but he'd probably have better opportunities to do teaching work out on the coast."

"Well, that sounds nice and all," Max said softly, "but the thing is... before Isabel will be any happier letting Alex's folks spend much time with the baby... she's probably going to want to make sure that they're in on the secret. In some ways, it's even worse - if some random babysitter witnesses anything unusual, they may have to stop calling her, but that would in all likelihood be the end of it. If Alex's parents see the same thing... then it wouldn't be over for a very long time." He sighed. "And I'm just not sure if they're ready to know, yet."

"Well... it's not entirely up to us, is it?" Liz asked softly. "Isabel might ask your opinion, but I don't think it'd be a good idea to stand in the way if she and Alex want to tell them. Ultimately, it's kind of their call."

"Yeah, I agree," Kyle put in.

There was a bit of awkward silence, and Max hit the cafe table in a particular rhythmic pattern - a small screen appeared on it. "A little over ten minutes before we're back in Roswell." Another pause. "Anybody feel like playing a few hands of poker?"

----------

"Well, that's enough about us for now," Maria said, spearing a brussel sprout with a fork and putting it into her mouth with only a slight trace of regret. "What about you, Laurie -- anything interesting going on with you of late?"

"Umm... not really," Laurie admitted. "Going to be taking some classes starting in January at the University of Arizona, it looks like -- Art Education."

"Wow, looks like *everybody's* getting into college but me," Michael cracked in the middle of chowing down a very expensive steak. They were having dinner in a pretty fancy Manhattan restaurant, at Laurie's treat. "Cool... so what, do you think you'll be a high school art teacher when you grow up?"

"You never know... sounds like a job that I'd like to have, actually," Laurie admitted. "After all, all this talk about public school teachers getting salaries they can't live on - who better to teach the kids than an independently wealthy heiress, huh?"

"I can't argue with that logic," Maria told her. "So... well, good luck with doing the university thing... have you done any pre-reading on your classes yet?"

Laurie blinked a little. "No... I only got the acceptance letter two days ago." She sighed. "Guess I'd better get to that soon, though."

"I don't think it's as high-pressure a thing as Maria makes it sound," Michael argued. "Just crack a book if you have time beforehand."

"So, Laurie..." Maria hesitated just a moment. "Is there a guy in the picture, by the way? Your picture, I mean... your life."

"Um, actually..." Laurie dropped her voice a bit. "I wasn't quite sure if I should mention this, but... there's kinduv a girl in the picture." Michael's and Maria's eyes popped a little bit. "Yeah... I figured you'd be surprised... and hopefully not upset or anything."

Maria looked like she was about to say something, then stopped and turned to Michael. "Umm... no, I'm not upset I don't think. I certainly didn't know that... that your tastes ran, umm, that way..."

"I'm not entirely sure that they do, or whether it's an exclusively girl thing," Laurie added. "And it's only lately that I've even started to wonder, but... well, there you have it."

"Not quite," Maria put in. "I'm sorry, but I want details on this chick - where you met her, what she's like, the whole kit and caboodle. Not just any lesbian girl off the street is good enough for my Laurie-waurie!!" She blushed a bit when she realized the cutesy name she had spoken.

But Laurie seemed to take it in stride with a smile. "Okay... well, let's see. Her name is Holly, and she lives in the... well, I guess you probably didn't notice the big house across the road from Grampa's and north by two park-lengths, but that's where she's from."

"No, can't say I remember it," Maria agreed. "But I guess that she's pretty well off too, then?"

"Yeah, I guess so. She's a younger sister, and her parents are still alive and well, so she's not absolutely rich like me, but well 'privileged.'"

"Hmm..." Michael considered that. "I'm not so sure I like the looks of this, actually... Since you mentioned the younger sister bit and all that... well, I guess I'm a little worried that she's some spoiled country clubber who's worried that her parents won't let her live in the lap of luxury for much longer, so she's hoping to be able to shack up with an independently wealthy girlfriend."

"Michael!" Laurie exclaimed. "Trust me - it is *not* like that! I'm not going to be 'shacking up' with anyone soon, Holly's folks aren't gonna 'cut her off' until she's finished school, by which time I expect she'll be quite able to provide for herself. Not all of us country club girls are spoiled princesses, I hope you realize."

Michael looked a little embarassed. "What's she studying, then? Engineering? Medicine, or law?"

"Business and Finance," Laurie explained.

"Hmm... still gotta get your foot into the door and pay some dues, before you start making the big bucks that way... or any way, I suppose," Michael put in.

Maria sighed, realizing that she'd have to try just a bit harder to keep these siblings from their sniping match. "How did you meet her, Laurie?" Maria asked, hoping it was a story cute enough to even thaw Michael's heart a little. "I mean, have you known her for years, since before you knew us, or..."

"No, actually, her family moved into the neighborhood while I was locked up in Texas," Laurie explained. "It was, um, maybe five months after you guys killed the alien and went back to Roswell. I was heading into town to get a little shopping done, still nervous about being away from the house a little, and I see a red Porsche at the side of the road, white smoke pouring off of the engine..."

The story was about half over when a waiter interrupted deferentially, taking the dishes away and asking about desserts. By the time the dessert arrived, (two frozen yogurt sundaes and a slice of peach pecan pie,) Laurie had finished the tale and managed to get Maria talking about her own classes again.

"I hope I enjoy going back to school as much as you do," she said softly. "Music is so obviously in your heart."

Maria smiled, taking a spoonful of mostly raspberry sauce, and decided that she liked the way Laurie put that.

"Oh, hey," Michael put in. "Laurie, you've got to bring Holly to Roswell, for Thanksgiving dinner with Mrs Evans. You realize that, right??"

The looks that Laurie and Maria gave him of absolute disbelief were eloquent.

------------

"Oh, my... Max, it's SO BEAUTIFUL!"

Max looked up at the heartfelt tone in Liz's words. He was sitting in the pilot's seat of the ship, and she was hanging onto the edge of the door and staring at the screen so intently she didn't even seem to notice him looking at her. They were just starting to climb out of the highest levels of the atmosphere, the daylight blue of sky overhead fading to black speckled with stars above them. Underneath the ship, Earth still spread out immensely enough to cover nearly half the sky, almost entirely distant ocean - Max's instruments said that they were above the North pacific, and very far to the south there was a brown spot that might be part of Hawaii. From this height, there seemed to be a slight whitish glow all around the horizon... possibly from light bouncing off the atmosphere and back upwards, Max wasn't sure.

"It hit me like that when we first left Antar," he told her softly. "Just wait. As we start to climb into a higher orbit, Earth will gradually shrink into a tiny, precious and perfect marble."

Liz smiled at him. "Can we go to the rec deck and watch it from there?"

"Certainly, my lady," Max assured her. The ship was already proceeding on autopilot, though he'd wanted to be in the cockpit while flying out into space, just in case something unspecified went wrong. It didn't take long for them to set up in the holographic recreations of their ship's surroundings. Liz wasn't entirely comfortable with sitting in apparent mid-air, so Max had programmed a few imaginary metal beams, which helped her to feel better without impairing the view any... they pretty much made the recreation deck look like a glass box.

Liz rubbernecked for almost two minutes without a word, picking out details silently, some of which Max could guess at - nearby planet, Venus Mars and Jupiter, and a few nearby manmade satellites. Finally she turned to Max. "How fast are we going? The earth seems to be smaller already!"

"Umm... I'm not sure, I can never work out the physics of this thing right... which means that it's a good thing the autopilot is great at math," Max joked. "We've been accelerating up from low orbit at twelve times gee-force, for, what, about four or five minutes now, counting the time for me to check all the readings and set up the observation mode. So, erm..."

"Don't worry about it," Liz said, getting up and kissing him. "Next question: Do we really need to get a million miles away from earth before we start to experiment with sex in zero gravity??"

"Umm... no, I guess not," Max groaned, because Liz was letting her tongue trace a narrow line down his throat. "Just sounded kinda cool, I have to admit - 'joining the million mile high club.'"

Liz giggled enticingly. "Can you turn the gravity generators off while we're still at maximum thrust??"

"Umm... never tried, but I don't see why not. Or rather, I can reset them to replicate a state of apparent free fall, since I don't think either of us want them 'turned off' in the sense of actually feeling that force of acceleration. Right now we're getting one gee, crosswise to our direction of movement, so it shouldn't be hard to turn that down to nothing." He considered. "I think I'll have to do it from engine control, though... you just sit here and enjoy the view."

"Um, okay, I guess." Liz actually didn't feel like sitting back down, so she stayed on her feet, watching as the globe of the Earth shrank slightly beneath her. When the door closed behind Max, it vanished beneath holographic illusion, just as it had after they'd first come in, until Max had walked back towards it. She looked around for a long time, staring at the earth beneath her, trying to identify the land that was slowly coming into view, and suddenly... there was a disorienting swimmy moment and Liz felt that her feet had drifted away from the glass-seeming floor. "Houston, we have zero gee," she muttered, trying to stay very still. Making a sudden move in free-fall was a good way to get yourself hurt. She drifted up to the glass ceiling, caught it with her hands flat, and pushed herself back down ever so slightly.

She touched the ground again and this time, by virtue of catching herself only the minimum necessary to absorb the energy of her motion and staying very still, was able to stay in a standing position. Where was Max, though?? After a moment's thought, Liz thought she knew - he was probably having a hard time making it back through the corridor under null-gravity conditions. Well, he would probably just get a little bit embarassed if she rushed out to try to assist... and she might get into trouble herself, which would also be embarassing. So, after a moment's thought, Liz decided to try some cautious experimentation, launching herself into the air again, but this time at a sharply forward angle, and with a few soft bounces of the ceiling and floor, she was able to get to the 'forward wall' of the observation deck. There, a little more enthusiastic gymnastics were sufficient to get her oriented so that she was facing straight down towards the earth, her knees bent against the wall, and she pushed off towards the opposite wall as if she were swimming, and the room half full of water. Except, of course, that it didn't feel as if the room was half full of anything, and in fact, it didn't seem much different this way than it had when she'd been vertically aligned in a more conventional way, except that the position of the earth was different. Without gravity, there was no particular 'up' direction in this box, and her brain tended to tentatively assign 'up-ness' to the direction that her head was pointing in relative to her body.

After pushing off again, more gently, from the ceiling/far wall, Liz decided that there was something else that she could profitably be doing while waiting, which was getting a head start on taking off her clothes. (Though... well, Max often enjoyed seeing her doing that, or taking a part himself, so it was a little bit of fun lost, but... oh, there'd be other opportunities for that she thought.) It was easy enough to slip her shirt off her head and toss it away, just like she would have on earth. The tight blue jeans were a little harder, but not much, actually... gravity was more of a problem than a help when taking clothes off, she realized... at least in the sense that you couldn't slide clothes off of any part of your body that was being pushed into the floor or furniture by the force of gravity. The process managed to twist her about in midair, though, and she had to push herself gently away from a glassy floor in the middle of it. Just about the moment that she finally pushed the denim away to float off into the air, the door opened again, and Max looked out of it at her, nearly upside down compared to her current orientation. "Aww..."

Liz smiled to herself... knowing that a lot of Max's disappointed groan was probably a put-on... as much as he might have been sorry to miss watching the disrobing process itself, the sight of her, wearing only a skimpy white bra, panties, socks, and some jewelry, floating among the stars, had probably been a considerably erotic turn-on for him. A few seconds later she drifted in towards a corner where two of the walls met, and was able to stay there for a long moment and reorient herself in several different dimensions. Max was inside the deck proper now, though still holding on to part of the doorframe. seemingly reluctant to actually start floating through the air. (Had he maybe bumped part of himself against a wall??) Liz took a moment to aim and launched herself straight towards him. Max panicked for a second when he saw her coming, but then made the connection that the best way to avoid her knocking him into anything hard was to get away from such things, and to meet her with some momentum of his own, so that the vectors mostly cancelled out. It was an exciting mid-air collision, and Liz lost no time in wrapping her limbs around Max's body and kissing him long and deeply.

Max's own arms went around her, one holding the middle of her back strong and tenderly, and the other stroking the back of one of her shoulders and the side of her neck. A faint sensation, halfway between a remembered voice and a private thought, appeared in her head. **So, what do we do next, darling??**

For a second, Liz actually thought it WAS her own thought, but something didn't seem quite right about that. The shock when another possibility occured to her was enough to break even the passion and energy of the kiss... it was almost enough that she jumped away from him... but Max was still holding her tight, and she realized that it would be a bad idea to make such a vehement movement right at that moment. "Did... did you just, umm..."

"Yeah, I think I did," Max admitted. "Send a thought directly from my mind to yours, or something. I didn't do it on purpose... it was just something that I was thinking I would say if my lips weren't occupied, not that I was complaining about that part, of course -- and it happened."

"Well, I don't mind about the telepathy bit," Liz assured him. "Just really took me by surprise. I think Alex said that he and Isabel have been able to do that occasionally -- it happened quite a bit in the first day or two when she came back, but hasn't happened as much."

"Yeah, I think I heard something about that too," Max agreed.

"I wonder if I can do it to you," Liz said, and brought up one hand to trace the side of his face, in case bodily contact near the head of the other person was a plus. **I love you so much, I never want to leave you.** There was an awkward moment. "Umm, anything?"

Max shrugged sadly. "Maybe there's some trick to it that I don't see well enough to explain it." Seeing Liz's face fall, he hugged her to him. "Well, umm... now that we've discussed the medium in considerable detail, how about the message?"

Liz took a moment to work that out, and then she laughed. "What next? Umm... well, do you want me to help take YOUR clothes off? You might not need the help -- but I think it'd be fun AND instructive."

"Only if I get to take you the rest of the way," Max laughed, running his fingers over and under the flat shoulder strap of her bra. Liz laughed and nodded, but told him that'd have to wait until after he was finished.

The next few minutes were an interesting course in what to do and not to do with another person in free-fall. Liz found that her natural instincts often betrayed her... if the task at hand was helping Max take his dockers off, for example, she would automatically tend to move down his body so that her face was around the level of his waist. However, when they were floating without gravity, that old law about equal and opposite reactions, (not to mention the one about a body moving in space tending to continue to move at that same speed and direction,) reigned supreme... Liz would go one way, which would send Max off in the other, and they'd quickly have to catch hold of each other, (with an oddly jerky sensation,) to avoid drifting into seperation entirely. "You know," Liz muttered in frustration as she got his pants off, "this actually bodes badly for when we try to move beyond foreplay. I guess 'sex in zero gee' sounded so cool, I didn't really think about the possible problems."

"Hmm... you may have a point," Max admitted. "But I didn't come all this way just to give up because things looked tough." He smirked a little. "Taking turns with oral sex seems like a worthwhile warmup... you blow me off, I lick you out. Doesn't require as much, umm, moving back and forth as going all the way, and there are actually positional advantages that I can see. Then if we really want to go further, at least we have some experience, err, interacting in free-fall."

Liz grinned a secret grin. She'd figured out fairly quickly that Max loved the sensation of her tongue and lips on his pecker, and a little while later it had dawned on her that he didn't like to ask for that kind of treatment too often... maybe he thought she'd confiscate his 'sensitive mature boyfriend' card for it. (Which she certaily didn't intend to do unless he started doing the 'pushing her head down towards his crotch' thing that she'd read about.) "Okay... so who gives first and who gets first??"

Max thought about that only a second. "We throw odds and evens. If the total is odd, you're receiving first, otherwise I am. Sound fair??"

"Hmm." Liz thought about that, considered insisting on even, then didn't. It was traditionally the male designation, somehow. "Alright. One, two, throw!!" Liz stuck out four fingers... and Max had just one. She grinned, delighted at having (probably) outthought him... he thought that she'd throw odd herself, so he'd thrown odd as well - but she hadn't. "Okay, buster... you wanted to undress me? Get those undies of mine off!!"

Max grinned, and holding her tight with both hands, looked down towards her waist... and her bikini panties started to slip down over her hips without either of them touching the fabric, well, except that they touched Liz in the areas they were meant to cover, but she couldn't have MOVED them like that. But Max was using his powers to get her naked, which made sense, in that it let them avoid the difficult gyrations.

Max reached down then to the little bit of fabric covering up the very bottom of her cleavage, and it parted before he touched it... leaving said cleavage a little less cleav-ey than before, since the push-up effect of that particular brassiere was no longer operating, but neither of them seemed to mind as Max stripped it entirely off her. He stroked her breasts tenderly with his fingers and palms, rubbing her nipples just a bit, and then sucked and tongued them. Soon, Max was reorienting the two of them even further, moving slowly, always aware that the vectors he set in motion would remain in motion until they were countered, and that the two of them were effectively floating about a common center of gravity... if he moved lower, she would float higher. It didn't take much doing, that way, for Max to orient his face in between Liz's legs, which she spread in midair, and began to apply his usual technique, which seemed more like anything to be writing out thoroughly alien glyphs and symbols upon the most tender and sensitive parts of her skin, using his lips and tongue.

"Did... did, was there anyone you, you were with on Antar?" she suddenly blurted out, not wanting to speak of such things, but the curiosity had suddenly gotten the better of her.

Max, to do him credit, didn't even slow down, and his words were thus few and far between since the relevant equipment was very busy with other things. "No, no, of ... course not." Pause. "There could... never be anybody.... but you."

"Then... then how do you know how to do this so well?" Liz asked, letting out a moan. "I... I'm not being accusing, but - well, I just kind of feel like you have tricks up your sleeve that I wouldn't have expected from an innocent, no matter how - how imaginative and devious he might be."

"Well..." and in the midst of licking the button of her clit, Max put a hand carefully on the underneath of her thigh, and a surge of pleasure shot up and down her foot as all the pleasure nerves in the section of her skin where he touched caught fire. "There was... a, a book or two. Kind of the -- call them the alien Kama Sutra!" Liz gasped again, making the connection, delighted by both the concept and the physical sensations that Max's patient ministrations were setting off. **I never, *never* tried anything out with another living soul, but I definitely read up on a lot of different notions and made my own guesses as to what would carry over to... to a girl who was born human but slightly 'changed' from having her life saved by alien powers.**

"Keep doing that, keep communicating to me silently," Liz insisted, and she felt a wordless thought of curiosity impinging on her mind. "That way it... it doesn't slow you down or make you stop. I promise I'll do the same when it's my turn." Now the thought was merrily laughing.

**As you wish, my lady... but I think I have answered your question,** Max sent as he started to poke the tip of her tongue into her shallower depths. **Would you have me say more**

"No, just... just keep doing that!!" Max's thoughts fell silent, but his hands reached around to her backside, and she could sense, more dimly, how much he liked the pleasant firm roundness of her butt cheeks and the pliancy of the luscious flesh there... and a dim memory of how much they could fuel his passion with just a momentary glimpse of her ass in a short, tight skirt. Liz grinned, wondering when she'd next get an opportunity to dress up like that for him... and as Max's lips returned to suck harder on her small passion-mountain, he fired a strong flood of sensation into the nerves in the vicinity of her butt, both those on the surface and... and deeper down.

Liz screamed as a hot, rushing climax overtook her, but even at the height of the pleasure there was room for wonder and surprise at the manner of it, and Liz wondered if she was the first girl to have an anal orgasm this way, without any true penetration up the butt. (Well, it wasn't *entirely* anal, but seemed to be at least half so, which made it at least half a new experience for her.) She realized that Max was letting his mouth slip free of her clitty, and wondered what, if anything he was up to. It didn't take her long to find out, as he floated gently through the air, turning himself through a remarkable gyration, and left one hand stroking her crotch, while the other moved to pay further attention to her breasts... running a finger over nipples that were still highly excited and prominent in sympathy to the festivities further down. And then Max sent another charge of pleasure through her... no, two charges, though they quickly seemed to melt into one, but coming from his two hands... one nearly overloading the nervous strands leading to her nipples and the rest of her breasts, and the other up her dripping tunnel and activating her G-spot. Liz laughed, cried, and shouted all in one moment as she came again, even harder than the first time.

Liz wasn't sure if she lost consciousness, afterwards. Certainly there was a transition that was, at the least, a little blurry for her, which pretty much ended when she clearly noticed that Max was embracing her as they floated in mid-air. "Wow," she muttered, and heard Max chuckle softly. "Okay, I guess you're entitled to feel a little pleased with yourself, after that trick. Just remember, bub, if you hadn't been born with hybrid alien powers, things woulda been a LOT tougher for you."

"You're right," Max admitted, "and so I guess I don't deserve props or applause. Just knowing that you've appreciated my humble talents is enough."

"No, it's not quite enough," Liz said, and Max made a questioning noise. "Well, I promised that I'd return the favor. I may not be able to do it quite as, erm, as explosively as you did, but..."

"Oh, trust me," Max said, nudging her slightly with a part of his anatomy that she hadn't realized was quite so stiff until that moment. "There'll be an explosion, don't worry about that part!"

Liz giggled and started to float herself into position, licking up Max's long hard shaft, and making a big production of wrapping her lips around the head of his dick. "Ohh... I have to say, that feels incredibly good," Max muttered, stroking his fingers through the hair near the top of her head as a gentle carress.

"I'm glad... *slurp* -- and just for the record," **I don't think I'd mind doing this for you a bit more often, especially as long as you take the opportunity to show your own appreciation ** Max moaned softly. **We can even try out more stuff like THIS.** Remembering something that Maria had told her long before their alien friends came back... (Liz hadn't asked and didn't want to know if Maria got her information first-hand,) Liz moved her mouth further down Max's cock, having the side-effect of pushing the tip of his member down into her throat, and hummed loudly on no particular note. Overcome by the sensation, Max started to shake a little and groan as he floated in mid-air, bouncing softly off one of the walls. It didn't take him long until he exploded into her mouth, just as impressively as promised.

----------

**We're crossing the moon's orbit now,** Liz called to Max mentally. She was sitting in sensor ops, since it was a good place to watch the ship's progress through near-earth space and less intimidating than the little flight control unit. She hadn't felt great about floating around the ship naked, and hadn't wanted to get back into her usual earth street clothes either, so Max had made a comfy robe for her out of some Antarian clothing that had been left on the ship. **What are you doing in there?**

**Come and take a look, if you want,** the answering thought came back. **I think it's ready now.** Curious, Liz got up and crawled along the corridor wall, mostly, until she came to the place she'd seen him last, the large stateroom that Isabel and Tess had shared for the trip home. Max had cleared a lot of the furniture out or fixed it firmly to the sides of the room, out of the way, and he had also rigged up some kind of weird-looking alien device to what had been the ceiling, back when the artificial gravity had provided an 'up' direction. "What is that?" she asked him, pushing herself into the room. Max pushed a button, and pushed himself down to meet her.

They collided softly together, and sailed down towards the edge where the far wall of the room met the floor... and then slowed in midair, and started to drift back towards the middle of nowhere. "It's a kind of a containment field," Max explained. "No matter which way we drift, it'll bring us back into the middle without hurting us. I figured it would be a good thing to try for doing the free-fall, umm, big nasty."

Liz chuckled weakly. "I don't really like calling it that... it's *not* nasty." She kissed him, and wrapped an arm around Max's side to pull him in closer to her passionate bosom. "But I'm up for giving containment a try if you are." It took her only a second to strip off her robe and Max's. "Umm... okay, so how do we do this?"

"Face to face?" Max suggested. "And talking about you on top, me on top isn't exactly relevant."

"All... alright," Liz agreed. They kissed, and let their hands wander a bit, and soon it became clear that further foreplay was not going to be necessary. "Okay, erm... okay, put your hands on my shoulders I guess," Liz mumbled, and Max did, and she took her own hold at the sides of his waist.

"Okay, here goes??" Max asked

"Yeah, come on baby," Liz urged, and oriented her hips into the right position. Max drove forward, and Liz inhaled sharply. "Oh, wow!!"

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chrisken · Post by **Chrisken** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 12:32 pm

Part fifteen

"I do wish we could have gotten a window seat." Isabel said with a sigh.

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "Well, next time."

"It's because I said three all together," Isabel decided, casting her eye around the airplane cabin. The pilot had just announced about a minute ago that they had reached altitude. "And because of the way the plane is built, with three seats across in the middle and only pairs on the outside. Of course, you can't have three all together like that. But when I said 'three all together, and a window seat if possible,' you think she'd have mentioned to me that I was asking for the impossible."

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "Or maybe they were just plain sold out of window seats anyway." He grinned as an idea hit him and dropped his voice. "If we want to give Lex a fun trip and let him see some great scenery, we can borrow the spaceship, right??"

Isabel looked around, and put a finger to her lips, asking for greater privacy before continuing that line of conversation. But she seemed pleased by the idea, so Alex was well satisfied.

In fact, they might have done better to ask for a trip home to Roswell via Antar airlines than bothering with the commercial flights at all, Alex decided sourly to himself. It wasn't that he tyically thought of himself as one 'far from the madding crowd', or whatever... above the common peons. Heck, who was he to deserve special treatment, really?? But travelling with his girlfriend and son on a commercial airline was bothering him somehow. Part of it was the fact that Isabel had insisted on Laex sitting between them, as if he needed to be protected from the big bad world still. Okay, she had a point that he would tend to want to get up and go running up and down the aisles if left to himself, and the other passengers and service crew would probably take a dim view of that. But Alex wanted to be next to Izzie, and the fact that her arrangement was outwardly a sensible one just made him more aggravated at the necessity.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" The flight attendant asked, stepping up next to Isabel's seat. "Need anything for the baby?"

"Umm... I think he's fine," Isabel said, just slightly chilly - and then regretted the sharpness in her tone. "Thanks very much. Umm... can I get a real grape juice maybe? NONE of that nasty stuff with fake grape flavors and pear juice and what-have-you." She smiled apologetically.

"I, uh, yeah, I think we can do that," the attendant said. "Um, sir?" Alex wasn't sure if she was taking his order or just wondering why he was looking in her direction.

He couldn't resist the set-up line. "Do you happen to have pear juice??"

The poor girl, (she had to be only about as young as Alex and Isabel themselves,) stared with her eyes growing even wider. "Actually, yes, I think we do. Real grape juice and real pear juice, coming up."

Isabel looked back over at him. "You enjoyed asking for that FAR too much."

"Compared to what?" Alex asked. "C'mon, it'll be a good story for her to tell to other flight attendants." Isabel seemed far from convinced, but didn't pursue the subject any further. "I just wish we could've heard about the wait-list thing before leaving for home."

"I... I'm not worried," Isabel insisted. "Or, at least, I'm not worried about the simple question of whether I get in for winter courses or not."

Alex thought about that. "Then is there something else that IS worrying you, my dear?"

"Umm.. the question of how I'll manage if I *do* get accepted? I mean... the two of us juggling courses and La'ex, and you with the band to think about, and the research team position that you're gonna get on top of everything else..."

"Sssh, we'll work it out somehow, right?" Alex insisted. "Remember, by Christmas it's not just going to be the two of us alone in LA. Your parents pretty much swore up and down that we'll be having trusted family babysitters come to town, one way or another." Isabel rolled her eyes. "What, don't you think she means it?"

"Oh, I know she means it," Isabel said. "That... that's kind of the problem. How can I let my mom turn her life around for me like that? I mean... Dad won't be able to just get a transfer out to California, no matter what he thinks. And are they going to live in two different states, two thousand miles away from each other or whatever, just because I've got too much on my plate?"

Alex thought about that. "Maybe it'd be easier to have it be my folks."

"Yeah, except..." *Except that we'd have to tell them, and are you SURE that they can handle the truth?* She sent mentally. Alex didn't reply... for one thing, he was too busy kicking himself for not having thought of telepathy as a solution to the 'not-sitting-together-talking-about-secrets' problem.

Suddenly Alex was filled for a second with an intense sensation of hunger, or at least an awareness of hunger. He shook his head... that hadn't been his own appetite he'd been feeling... not that it was impossible that he could be hungry... but he knew what being hungry himself felt like, and this wasn't quite it. He looked over at Isabel. She nodded, and started to dig into her carry-on bag, coming up with a little plastic sack of whole-wheat breakfast cereal.

----------

"Hey, welcome home!"

Michael looked up at the voice that had spoken, and blinked a little in surprise, because quite a large reception commitee was waiting there in the middle of the Roswell airport's baggage claim - both Evans parents, Kyle and Tess, Laurie, Liz's father, Amy DeLuca, and... and Tess again? No, that didn't make sense, it had to be... "Ava?"

Ava nodded, but hung back while other members of the welcoming party rushed forward for enthusiastic greetings. The party of incoming travelers was also fairly great in number - Michael and Maria had met up with Liz and Max in Chicago O'hare and travelled the rest of the way home together - Liz had arranged their tickets appropriately beforehand, of course. Liz got a big bear hug from her father, the Evanses mobbed their son, (with Tess waiting her turn patiently,) Kyle and Amy went up to Maria, and Laurie came straight to Michael himself.

It was quite a while before they got all the hellos sorted out, never mind the luggage. (One of Max's suitcases had apparently gotten redirected to Orlando, and he had to fill out several forms and leave contact information so that they could let him know when it got in, and on and on.) Finally they were out of the airport building, and splitting up to several different cars - Laurie insisted on driving both Michael and Maria, and actually flipped a coin with Mrs DeLuca to settle her competing claim. (As much as she tolerated and even liked Michael by this point, Amy was really making a big fuss only about her daughter.) Ava came along with them in Laurie's car... Max and Liz split up to spend some time with their parents on the drive back... and Kyle and Tess got stuck with some of Maria and Michael's luggage.

"Okay, come on, I'm dying of curiosity here," Michael said as Laurie pulled out into the road around the airport. "What's the story with Tess showing up?"

"Pretty much an out of the blue thing," Ava said shyly. She had apparently left some of her wilder punk styles behind her... right now she was wearing a leather miniskirt and a cropped sweater, but her hair was now light brown, long and straight, and...

"Haven't had much to do with Roswell in ages - volleyed a few postcards back and forth with Liz in the autumn two years ago - found out that you guys split around then, but that was it. Got a little nostalgic when I realized it was coming up on thanksgiving again and hitched my way into town, figuring that I'd see if Liz still came back to visit her parents from whatever school she was going to now. Ran into Kyle outside the UFO center and he thought I was Tess... which made for a fun little scene, actually."

"I bet," Maria agreed. "Did he like the idea of Tess' apparent 'makeover'??"

"Ehh, parts of it yes, parts of it no," Ava sighed. "Get the feeling he's a sucker for the blondes, young Valenti is."

"Wouldn't surprise me," Michael agreed. "Though he did really like Liz. So... what's the plan now?" A new question hit him. "Where are you going to be staying, Ava?" The original plan had called for Laurie to bunk in with Jim Valenti, Michael and Max to take the bedrooms in the Evans house, and Isabel and Laex to go back over the garage. But...

"Ms DeLuca's offered, thanks. Assuming that's okay with you, Maria."

"Hmm... yeah, sounds like it'll work great," Maria said. She had never really gotten to know Ava, but liked her well enough, especially because Liz counted her as a friend, and because she'd risked a lot to help them when the chips came down. "So what's the plan? Settle Michael in first, then take me home to face the music?"

"Pretty much," Laurie said with a laugh. "We've got a lot of catching up to do, since I was in the Big Apple."

"Hey, that was only... what, three weeks ago?" Maria said. "More like two and a half, really."

Laurie's only answer right then was a little shrug.

----------

Once again the Evans dining room was filled to capacity... in fact this time there was a second table set up, stretching into the living room, and still every available spot was filled. Philip and Diane Evans, Jim Valenti and Amy DeLuca, Max and Liz, Michael and Maria were at one table, while the other held Isabel and Alex, Laex sitting in a high chair, Kyle and Tess, Laurie and Ava. There was plenty of roast turkey to go around for everyone, and vegetables and gravy and three different kinds of potatoes, and little bread rolls and sparkling fruit punch.

"So, how's the world of Manhattan marketing treating you, Michael?" Mister Valenti asked after passing the yams along.

"Quite well, sir," Michael answered. "In fact, I just got the news of a raise before we had to leave for our flight."

"They just want to make sure he'll come back," Maria said, patting her boy's arm. "They'd be lost without him." Michael shrugged at this, looking like he wanted to appear humble and had no idea how anybody did it.

"It's interesting work, certainly," he said after a moment. "Usually don't have much clue what I'll be doing from day to day, but that's kind of refreshing and fun."

"Hmm... example, please?" Mrs Evans asked.

"Okay, about a week ago, Roy comes into the office and asks me if I have any idea where to get over four hundred lego bricks two feet long and one feet high. I didn't even know that there WERE legos that big... but we found them, and assembled them." Max chuckled at that mental picture. "Yeah."

"They're gonna be deciding soon, probably on the first of December," Kyle was saying to Alex and Laurie, meanwhile. "Obviously I hope that I can get deputized here in Roswell, so that we can keep the apartment. Though it'd be weird working with Dad I guess."

"And Tess wouldn't have to give up her job, either," Isabel put in.

"Actually... well, if I get the job here in Roswell, then hopefully she'll be able to give up that job, or at least take a much lighter part-time schedule," Kyle said. "But that's a big if... there's probably only one spot up for grabs, maybe two, and a bunch of guys, and one girl, applying for it."

"Well, I wish you plenty of luck Kyle," Ava said.

"Thanks," Kyle and Tess answered at the same time, and started to laugh together too.

"Hey, can we get some more of the sweet and spicy gravy up here?" Max asked out loud.

----------

After dinner was finished, the kids all crowded into Isabel's apartment... taking the lion's share of dessert that had been prepared in with them. Alex lost no time in putting on some music, and Liz helped serve out pie and ice cream. La'ex kept Michael and Tess busy, all three of them crawling around on the carpet and chasing each other.

"By the way, Max," Isabel said as she sliced. "There's something that I wanted to mention, but didn't seem worth the risk of communicating via phone or email." He looked up at her, slightly alarmed. "Lex has been starting to demonstrate his powers."

"All- already??" Max asked.

"What... what's wrong with that, Max??" Liz asked, suddenly nervous himself.

"Umm, well, there's two reasons why I'm concerned," Max explained. "One is just that it was unexpected... from everything that they were able to tell us back home, Antarian children generally don't demonstrate any ability to use the power before they're four or five years old in human terms... sometimes even longer."

"And... well, no-one was sure about the onset in first-generation hybrids, because we were in those pods until we were...well, nearly forever, but we were about six in human terms when we came out," Isabel recapped. "They thought as a second-generation hybrid, only one quarter Antarian, La'ex's powers would probably be weak and late in arriving, but he's already demonstrated molecular alteration, and some kind of an empathic broadcast that Alex and I can pick up. At least, I hope that it's only the two of us who can receive him."

"Which brings me to the other point of concern," Max said, sighing. "Lex is so young that it'd be difficult or impossible for him to understand that he shouldn't do this sort of thing in front of strangers." He looked gloomily into his wedge of baked apples and crust, topped with a mound of ice cream that looked oddly like a jaunty sort of hat. "Maybe... maybe we should try to figure out a way to deprive him of his powers, Isabel -- just until he grows up enough to understand them a bit better.

"Not a chance," Isabel shot back. "He's *my* son, Max, and whatever powers he has, they're a part of him, of what makes him unique and precious. I'm not going to start mucking around with his body chemistry or his neurobiology or whatever just because that might be a little 'safer.'"

"Alex?" Liz asked. Alex had stepped up close to the table while the conversation had been going on.

"Hehehe... big surprise here, but I agree with the mommy," Alex replied, slipping his arms around her waist from behind. "Thing's be alright as long as we're extra careful."

"There you go," Isabel added. "Father knows best."

"I really hope so," Max said, still heavy of heart.

"And... I think I've made another decision, over dinner," Isabel continued. "Alex... I want to tell your parents my secret... our secret. Soon - maybe tomorrow. And ask them to come out to Los Angeles to help us raise their grandson. Alright?"

Alex grinned. "Fine by me... but I suspsect that you knew that all along." He modified their embrace in order to get a look at Isabel's face, which was slightly smug and she nodded at him. "Okay... I'll let mom know to expect us for a Black Friday lunch."

"Black friday?" Ava asked curiously, as she had drifted close enough to hear what they were talking about.

"It's what they call the friday after thanksgiving... err, I mean the day after thanksgiving, which is always a friday because thanksgiving is always a thursday," Alex explained. "I'm not sure if I know why it's called that... it sounds kind of unpleasant, doesn't it?"

"It's not, originally," Isabel said. "Comes from a retailer's superstition, the way I've heard it... because it's a big shopping day, and supposedly foretells whether the rest of the holiday season is going to be a profit or loss. Blank ink being good, in accounting and all that."

"Ahhh, okay."

----------

"Hi, Tess," Laurie said, sitting down next to the other girl on the couch with her bowl of applesauce cradled in her hand. "Umm... are you nervous about something?"

"A... a little, yeah," Tess replied. "This whole thing with a job opening or two in the Sheriff's station for Kyle. He's convinced that the whole thing won't be decided for several days... his way of avoiding the stress, I guess. But I heard Mister Valenti talking to someone about it on the phone, when we were getting ready to come over here. It sounded like there might be word tonight."

"Oh, wow," Laurie breathed. "Wish the best of luck to both of you, of course."

"Thanks," Tess replied. "That... that's not all of why I'm so nervous about it, I guess." She was silent, and Laurie made a 'go-on' gesture with her free hand. "Well... the thing is, I got a scholarship to the state school, for this winter term. Kyle's so excited for me, but... the thing is, he's worked so hard to put himself throught the police academy. I... I guess I'm worried that if he doesn't get a posting here in Roswell, he'd put all of that aside and take some crappy mcjob, so that he can help put me through school. And I... I want to stay here in Roswell and go to the college - and be with him, but I'm not wild about the thought of doing it on those terms."

"Wow," Laurie breathed. "Say, this isn't one of those problems that could be made to go away by throwing money at it, is it??"

Tess laughed. "Umm... if you're talking about sponsoring me for university somewhere else where Kyle can get a job... um, thanks, but I'm not sure about that. It would feel like taking charity, and we're trying to do this life thing basically on our own for the time being... I mean, without relying for huge amounts of help on someone else. Err..."

"It's okay, I think I get the point," Laurie assured her. "Well, we'll leave it on 'best of luck' then."

"Oh my gawd, what are you..." Maria's voice sounded from over the room. "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhh..."

By the time Laurie and Tess had hurried over there, they were at the back of quite a crowd. Michael was sitting on the floor, a huge cheshire-cat grin on his face, as La'ex toddled over from him towards Maria. Finally reaching her, he slipped something carefully from the palm of his hand into hers. Maria brought the object up to hold it in the light, about ten inches away from her face, and it glittered and shone. "Ohh, lordy," Liz breathed.

"I think there are words to this part, Michael," Isabel prompted sternly but with a hint of sweetness, from the other side of the stereo table. "And one knee, for cryin' out loud - sheesh!!"

Michael rolled his eyes, but got down on one knee - still about ten feet away from Maria - and spoke. "Maria, I know that... that it's kinduv early for this, in a bunch of ways... we're both still young to be talking about spending the rest of our lives with one other person, and it's only been about three months that I've been back home. But... but every part of my soul is telling me that this is right. Will you marry me?"

"Umm... uhhh... are you kiddin' me?" Maria finally choked out. "YES - of course I will!!" And she hurried over to him and squatted down to throw her arms around his shoulders. "Of course, you do realize that it was completely unfair and underhanded to exploit your godson for his powers of cuteness that way, right??"

"Ex... exploit?"

"Yeah - I mean, come on! What girl could be expected to resist a ring delivery trick like that."

"Not many, which is why I picked it," Michael said smugly. "I don't see what's 'underhanded' about it simply because it's an effective mood... right Lexer?" Lex was gazing with rapt attention at the wallpaper and didn't reply to him. Maria chuckled... and then gasped slightly as Michael rose to his feet, somehow managing to sweep Maria up in his arms at the same time. "I... I think we need to kiss, to make the proposal official," he stage whispered.

"Yes, but not quite yet - there's the ring thing to do yet." Michael frowned, and then realized that Maria was still holding the ring cupped in her open left palm. Obviously she wanted... he grinned and managed to take the gold band, hold it out, and slip it onto her third finger. (The entire operation would have been much more stable if he hadn't been carrying her still.) Then they kissed, and Liz led the applause. Even Lex clapped once he realized that everyone else was doing it too.

"Congratulations, man," Max said, hugging his best friend a few moments later. "You've set the bar high for all of us 'sensitive guys' now, you realize that?" Michael nodded happily. "How big is that rock anyway? Half a carat?"

"Nearly - point four six on the specs I think," Michael explained offhandedly.

"And you didn't even give me a hint," Max complained.

"Ehh... to be honest, I was a little worried you might try and beat me to the punch - with Liz."

"Umm... no, actually not. But that's okay. Wish you guys every happiness."

"Thanks." Michael turned around and saw that everyone else was crowding around to give Maria their congratulations. "Hey, why does *she* get all the attention now??"

----------

Things had settled down somewhat, by a half an hour later. Maria had dragged her fiance back to the main house, to show him and her ring off to the grown-ups, especially her mother... Amy hadn't been especially pleased at the sudden news that her little girl was engaged to an alien, but couldn't really throw that big a fit in front of Jim Valenti, the Evanses, and Liz's parents, who had dropped by in time for coffee and pie.

Alex had gotten a multi-player electronic adventure game hooked up to the television, and was playing with Tess, Max, and Laurie. Liz was reading a story to Lex off in the corner, and everybody else was once again gossiping and catching up on the news. Suddenly, a knock sounded on the door. "Who is it?" Isabel asked, getting up and coming over to open the door, not sure who to expect.

"The father of Roswell's newest deputy!!" came the enthusiastic answer. Tess let her thief princess skid off a patch of ice and into an abyss of flames, completely ignoring the controls as she looked up and over at Kyle, who seemed stunned by the enormity of the news. Then Isabel let Mister Valenti in, still holding the cell phone by which he had received the news, and reality began to sink in. Once again, the apartment became a happy kind of mob scene. As everyone crowded near to Kyle, Laurie caught Tess' hand.

"Congratulations, college girl," she whispered softly.

"Okay, okay, okay," Alex said once the hubbub had died down slightly. "Let's see now. Michael and Maria are getting hitched... though we're not sure how soon yet." Maria giggled slightly. "Kyle's gonna be a man of the law, just like his daddy, and Tess is going back to school." Tess covered her look of surprise - how had Alex found out about that? "And, well, we've shared our own news... my son's some kind of impressive alien prodigy... and also, Isabel's going to be matriculating herself, if she can tear herself away from Lex long enough to make it to registration." Michael and Liz laughed at that one.

"So... is there ANY other remarkable news?" Alex continued, flashing a huge grin. "Max, Liz?? You guys have been a little bit quiet and mysterious all night - speak up, if you've got anything worth saying. The floor is yours."

"Sheesh, way to put us on the spot," Liz grumbled. "Max, don't tell them anything."

"Which obviously means that there's something to tell," Maria shot back, still in high spirits. "You should know better than to give away that much, girl -- I will badger it out of you if it takes all night."

"You can't stay here all night," Max retorted. "Or at Liz's place, when she goes home."

"Ohh, come on, Max," Liz sighed. "She's right... might as well let it out I guess." She took a deep breath, and Max stepped over to her side, wrapping an arm around her waist supportively. "It... it's a little early to be telling so many people, but oh well. Looks like... like Lex is going to have a cousin showing up in nine months or so." Another breath, and Liz restated in slightly plainer terms. "We're pregnant, Max and I, we are."

"Wait a second, is that just the usual euphemism??" Laurie asked. Several people turned around to look at her, "Okay, stupid question I guess, but I didn't know... maybe with alien biology, it was possible that both of them *really* were."

"Okay, okay, okay," Liz said, rolling her eyes. "Technically, I'm the only one who's baby, though it's Max's child too."

"Congratulations," Isabel said. "I know you must be feeling a little scared right now, but trust me... in years to come you'll remember this moment as the evening you stood up in front of your friends and shared the news of the greatest blessing ever given into your lives." She picked up Lex and sat down with him in her lap, just to make the point. "Trust me."

"And you'll be able to have your baby together, surrounded by all your family and friends - if you want to let us near the delivery room," Alex pointed out.

"So Liz won't need to go away to another planet to have the baby?" Kyle asked. "Just checking."

"No... human girls get off lucky," Tess said. "We asked, like ten different times, ten different medical experts just to be sure."

"I think we're overdue for a toast," Jim valenti said, crossing over to the fridge. "Not just for Max and Liz's baby... but it seems to me like there's been an awful lot of good news spread around tonight." He found a bottle of sprite and Alex started setting out lots of little plastic glasses. Everyone present there gathered around the table, picked up a glass, raised it, and...

"Okay, so what exactly do we toast to?" Kyle asked, as several people shook their heads indecisively.

-----------

"Wow, the snow is really coming down out there, isn't it?" Michael asked as Kyle and Tess hurried into the lodge. (Maria, standing beside Michael, held out a hand for the newcomer's coats, and noticed that Tess was wearing a cute fur-fringed cap and scarf in christmas red and green.)

"Yeah, shaping up to be quite a blizzard," Kyle said. "But don't worry - the roads are really still pretty good, as long as you're careful. Laurie and her girlfriend will be okay."

Michael smiled awkwardly. "Careful isn't exactly her strong suit." But he suffered himself to get cheered up a little when Maria wrapped herself affectionately around one of his arms.

Tess, meanwhile, was looking around and gawking. "Wow. Lz, Max -- how did you manage to nab this place? It's just incredible."

"No arguments there," Isabel agreed, walking slowly out of the kitchen... the slowness was because she was holding Laex's hand as he walked beside her. The lodge had enough bedrooms for all of them, a wide spacious front hall that served as a combination living room-dining room, copious indoor plumbing, and just the right touch of rustic old-fashioned charm for their New England christmas.

"When's dinner?" Kyle asked.

Michael laughed slightly at that. "Oh, you'll know when dinner is ready. Everybody'll be helping."

"That's okay," Tess agreed. "But you didn't answer about the lodge... just what's the deal?"

"It's a rental place, obviously," Max explained. "Liz was the one who negotiated the deal... it's quite in demand for Christmas, as you might imagine, and she arranged a good chunk less than the usual price. And my mom put up most of the cash."

"Let me help you with your bags," Alex added. "You guys have the leftmost room, over there."

"Alright," Kyle agreed, handing a heavy suitcase over to the other young man and carrying the rest himself. "Are those single rooms next to the kitchen and the bathroom, there?" Kyle pointed to other doors, at right angles to those that led into the four double bedrooms."

"Yep," Michael agreed. "For Laur and Holly, when they show up." He grinned slightly.

"You know," Tess put in, "You're not really her big brother, or her chaperone or anything? What business is it of yours to insist on their sleeping arrangements?"

"Well, there *were* two singles," Max pointed out, "And Laurie said they didn't mind taking them. They're not really at that point yet, I think, while the other four couples here - pretty much are." There was no arguing with that sentiment - given that Kyle and Tess were already shacked up back home, Max and Liz were expecting a little one, Michael and Maria would be getting married... and Alex and Isabel spent most nights alternating sleeping arrangements in Los Angeles. Alex was talking about giving up his residence room, (and avoiding the expensive housing payments for it,) and moving in with Isabel for real in January.

Once Kyle and Tess had been settled into their room just a little, everyone drifted back in towards the kitchen. The turkey had been the oven for several hours already, but not many other preparations had hardly been started... side dishes and vegetables, desserts, and on and on. Isabel had drawn up a list of jobs to be done, taking suggestions from all the others. "So, Liz, how do things look with respect to... you know, the baby?" Tess asked curiously. "I... I mean, you were more than a little new to the idea at Thanksgiving, and we've hardly spoken since then. I... I'm not sure what I'm wondering, but..."

"I... I think I understand, kind of at least," Liz answered. "Umm... my parents still aren't happy, as you might imagine. My dad thinks that I've made a big mistake, and he's really angry with Max for having tempted me off the path or something." She laughed sarcastically. "Myself, I'm a little scared, but I know that it's right... neither Max nor I might have planned it this way, but - how can we not be excited about becoming parents together??" She giggled softly. "As far as more practical stuff... well, I've got the spring semester before most of that needs to get worked out. Maybe I'll need to take a year off classes... or a term at least." She sighed and looked up at Isabel, who was splitting open pea shells. (Liz wasn't sure where anybody had found fresh peas in the shell in New England in late December.... she was peeling yams at the time.) "You... well, you're the only one who's been through it, though I understand the circumstances were a bit different. I'd appreciate a chance to pick your brain about it sometime, though."

Isabel looked at her, and over at Max for a second, the realization hitting her of how great the love was that her brother and this precocious waitress from Roswell had found together... maybe soon enough, Liz would be her sister in law - and Alex Max's brother-in-law for that matter. What would that make Liz and Alex to each other, if anything?? "Sure, of course, anytime," she promised.

"Speaking of parents not being so happy," Alex said slowly, "Maria, did your mom get back from Planet Conniption yet?"

"Umm... I think she'd approaching earth orbit at the moment," Maria laughed. "She's got a soft spot for Michael, though she tries to hide it. Is all good."

"Cool."

Soon the veggies were in to cook, and Tess suggested that they start opening presents while waiting. Michael turned to look out the window moodily again - the snow was continuing to arrive in higher and higher drifts over the fields outside the lodge. Maria went up to him and hugged him silently.

"Okay, well, here's mine for Michael," Isabel said, taking a long and slightly slender package out from under the eclectically decorated tree. "Better make sure not to have any of your friends at the office see it, but..."

All of a sudden Isabel broke off, and they all looked up at hearing a car pulling towards the lodge from the direction of the road outside... and collide with the wall, but not terribly hard. Michael rushed to the door and saw two girls piling out of a flashy rental car - one blonde, one with curly auburn hair. They stopped to pull a few things out of the back seat and raced towards the door amid the falling white stuff.

"Michael!!" Laurie exclaimed. "Merry christmas, and may I introduce Holly Christopher. Holly, my brother Michael. Well, kinduv brother... it's complicated."

Michael smiled. "Come on in - nice to meet you Holly."

"Thanks." She shook Michael's hand. "Sorry I wasn't able to make it for Thanksgiving in Roswell."

"That's okay," he told her. "You're here now, and that's what matters." Everyone else was crowding around to meet the new girl.

Until the buzzer sounded, and Isabel and Tess rushed off to stir the potatoes and check on the turkey.

THE END.