Fateful Moments (CC ALL,ADULT) Part 55 COMPLETE Dec 13 2008

Finished Canon/Conventional Couple Fics. These stories pick up from events in the show. All complete stories from the main Canon/CC board will eventually be moved here.

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Chrisken
Obsessed Roswellian
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Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2001 4:58 pm
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 11
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Rating: ADULT content begins in this part, sexual situations.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'


(Alex):

"Aahhh... oh, *boy* Isabel that feels great!"

Tess and Liz had gone their separate ways so that Iz and I could get some quality time alone together - Liz going off to explore the University library, and Tess accepting Mitch's offer to show her around more of the campus.

As might be expected, we'd spent a good majority of our alone time making out, but that phase was over now. I was lying down on my bed, flat on my stomach. Isabel was giving me an incredible back-and-shoulder rub.

Frankly, this was *better* than the making out! "So, what happens next?" Isabel asked conversationally.

"Well, tomorrow I'll probably be hitting the textbooks from dusk to dawn," I sighed, waving vaguely at the pile of thick, large hardcover volumes sitting on my desk. "Trying to get up to speed with the computer languages they're using here at the project, to tell the Quantum computers what to do." I groaned a little. "More of that on Monday, as well as gofer-ing for Mister Ramirez, to learn my way around the premises. And on the day after that, they're going to make the first big trial of my algorithm, to see if it can solve a sample transliteration problem that's resisted computerized analysis so far."

"Hmmm..." Iz weighed that. "Will it work, do you think??"

"I... I can't tell you that," I teased her. "It's... it's confidential. Top secret!"

"Oh-ho," Isabel laughed, playing along. "We'll just SEE about that!!" And she applied soft pressure to a particular spot on my lower back that sent a relaxed pleasure tingling all over my body, to the tips of each finger and toe. "Wanna spill the secret yet?" She laughed sexily.

"Umm... no. No!" I managed to blurt out.

"I have ways of making you tell me every single thing you know," she teased, "and you'll love every minute of it." She rubbed again, harder, in another spot near the first.

"Ohhhhhwaa," I groaned, or some combination of sounds to that effect.

"Tell me and I'll do that again," she taunted.

"And... and if, if I d... don't??" I managed to get out.

"Well, then you're being difficult," she decided, "which means no more Miss nice girl. I guess I'll have to bring out the heavy weaponry, starting with... thiis..." I could feel her soft fingers tracing down my inner thigh, (still clothed, in blue jeans,) and down underneath, to tickle in the vicinity of my crotch.

"Whaoo!" I exclaimed, quickly scrambling back up to a sitting position. "Okay, I give, I give... but I really don't know for sure if the code'll work on Tuesday."

"Oh," Isabel replied, and she was pouting temptingly. I couldn't tell if she was more disappointed that I had brought a 'chicken' end to our little play-acting game, or that the information I had been holding out on hadn't been worth the effort. (The fact that this was the first time in the whole sequence that I'd seen her face, since she started the rubdown, didn't help in gauging her mood.)

"The algorithm should work... I'm confident about that. But it may take more than one try -- or one day -- to get it to interface properly with the rest of the translation programs that they're running." No response. "How about I take my turn, give YOU a massage? You're the one who has to face a five-hour drive back tonight, not me."

She considered that. "It's okay... you don't have to," she said.

"I know I don't," I replied, "but I'm offering."

Apparently I didn't need to ask her more than twice. Smiling impishly, she ran one hand down the front of her black V-neck top, popping the snaps that fastened it closed. Smoothly, she shrugged her arms out of the sleeves, and casually tossed the garment through the air so that it hung neatly on the back of my desk chair. She was only wearing a silky black bra underneath. And then she stretched out, front first, on the bed, like I had, turning her face slightly to the side, and reached up behind her back and unfastened... the clasps... of her bra. She pushed the straps to the side and then let her arms rest at her side.

"C'mon, Whitman, what are you waiting for," she asked after a few moments. Although I couldn't hear any more sound, from the way her upper body was moving slightly, I guessed that she was laughing to herself.

Well, I'd made the offer, and though I wasn't sure I would be able to give Isabel quite as pleasurable a massage as she'd done for me, I knew the basics. I leaned over her slim body, touched my hands lightly to her neck, and started to delicately knead the soft muscles there.

It definitely did seem like there was a fair bit of tension there, and I worked at it tenderly. "Been feeling stressed??"

"Ehhh." She shrugged slightly, as well as she could under the circumstances. "Long day. Finals. Vague and uncertain future. You figure it out."

I kept rubbing her neck. "You always bottle everything up inside... for as long as I've known you... and many years before that, I'd bet." She made a vague sound of protest. "Not that you haven't had your reasons... but there are people who care about you, people you could share all those frustrations and grievances with. People who are ready to help carry your load, because you've done it for them."

"Alex, I appreciate the thought... I really do. But... I'd rather not hear any more of it now, all right?"

"Okay." I moved down to her shoulders. "Anything in particular you DO want to talk about at the moment??"

"I dunno," she admitted. "Have you... have you thought about what might happen next? After... after you get the book translated, I mean??"

"I have," I admitted. "Pretty much given up speculating on it, though. There are so many possibilities for what might come next, so many different combinations of what the book might read, that there doesn't seem to be that much use in guessing." I rubbed at her back, and leaned over to kiss a spot on the side of her neck. "Except there's one thing that I know won't change... that I'll still be with you."

"Damn straight," she said with a short chuckle. "I've been guessing, and wondering, though... I have to admit. Wondering if maybe the book will tell us how to go home. Tell us that it's safe, and right, to go back." She took a deep breath. "If there were a way, and I could take you with me, would you even... would you want to come? I wouldn't leave you if you didn't."

"Boy." I blinked in amazement. "That's a pretty huge concept to take in... leaving Earth behind." Sigh. "I don't know. I can tell you that I'm flattered that you thought of inviting me along. I guess a lot of it depends on if we can learn more about what your planet would be like."

"That's fair," she agreed. Suddenly she sat up and looked at me, instinctively moving her arm to cover her chest where her bra wasn't in the best position to do that anymore. "What time is it??"

I looked over to the clock on my bedside table, and leaned over to actually read it, since the light from the window was kind of glaring it. "Seven thirty-five pm... you're late!"

"We lost track of time," she admitted, fumbling with the bra straps behind her back. "Liz and Tess are probably waiting out in the hall, for fear of interrupting us in something they didn't want to see."

I laughed at the thought. As Isabel stood up from the bed, her bra apparently dealt with, I met her with a quick and passionate kiss. "Thanks for coming up. Do you know when you'll be back for your classes?"

"Tuesday, 2 p.m. and not a minute later, so help me," she breathed. "I love you. Bye!!" She threw on the shirt, snapped a single snap, and hurried back out of the room and out of my life... for two more days, that is.

-------

(Kyle):

It was nearly eight in the evening by the time I got home... in a pretty nasty mood, I have to admit. Tossed my jacked into the vicinity of a hook on the front hall wall, (by some almost-miracle, it managed to catch the hook and hang very precariously,) and undid the top two buttons of my shirt. I was starting to hate cars... hate everything about them. But I knew that I couldn't quit that job.

The house seemed very quiet, much more quiet than usual. Of course, Tess had been talking about going up to Las Cruces with Isabel, so maybe she hadn't gotten back yet. And Dad... was he over at the DeLuca's house? Somehow I didn't think so, though I couldn't say why.

I searched through the entire house before I tried the garage... and before I'd done any more than step out the back door, I knew that had to be it. For one thing, there was the unmistakable sound, kind of a soft buzzing that got anything but soft when I opened the garage door. A circular saw going at full tilt.

"Dad!!" I shouted at him. "DAD!"

He heard me the second time and shut down the motor, turning and grinning at me lopsidedly, holding the piece of gambel oak that he'd been working on and showing it to me.

"I gotta ask... are you back in the dark place again??"

He laughed. "No, no, definitely not. In fact, I think you're gonna be very happy when I tell you what I'm doing in here - what I'm starting. But I can't tell you yet."

I blinked in surprise. "Why the heck not??"

"Promised Amy that we'd tell all of you kids together. This was a decision that's going to affect... well, I guess I might as well get used to saying it now. Going to affect the whole family."

"Wow, sounds big." I hoped that he was right that I'd be happy to hear the news. "Well, I'm going to go and crash in the living room."

"You're that tired? It's still early." Dad looked around. "I could knock off for the night, we could play some Horse or something."

"Nah, that's all right." I sighed. "Long, hard day at work."

"Just a sec," Dad called before I left the garage. He dusted his hands off against each other and walked up to me.

"Kyle, all of this effort you've put in for the sake of our family since I was dismissed... I'm proud of you. It was a situation you never should have been in... and I'm sorry for that. And while there's less that I can do about it than I'd like to, I don't mean for you to have to carry this weight much longer." He sighed softly to himself and brushed a bit of hair away from my forehead.

"Sounds good to me, dad," I agreed. "See you in the morning?"

"I'll be there," he agreed with a smile, and when I turned to go he started to head back to his tools.

-------

(Maria):

"Thank you, thank you." The polite applause died down. "Ladies and gentlemen, our award honorees: Philip Rendon." This was an old guy, kinda stooped with hardly any hair left, but he still moved energetically enough to the stage and up the stairs. "Hal Carver." I cheered loudly, much more vehemently than anyone else had all evening. Michael shot me a look but he shook his head and grinned. Mister Carver deserved it. "And Laurel Zeyenner." This was a light-haired woman who looked a few years younger than Hal... pretty forgettable in appearance.

The dinner had been pretty boring, until now. Actually, the ceremonies and awards had been the boring part. The actual *dinner* part of the dinner had been interesting enough, or at least pleasant enough to make up for being less than interesting. Roast beef, well done and very lean, noodles in a garlic white sauce. Fresh green salad with a choice of piquant dressings. Most of the people around us had taken wine or other alcoholic beverages, but the waiter hadn't even given us a chance to ask. I had two and a half glasses of a nice ginger ale, and Michael settled for Dr Pepper. And there was Baked Alaska for dessert, something I've always wanted to try, and it was almost as good as I'd hoped.

The ceremony was almost over when they called Hal and the others up on stage. Each of the three honorees gave a little speech, but I have to admit I don't remember a word of any of them. Plenty of people were already clearing out of the banquet hall by the time Hal got back to the table.

"Hey, it's my biggest fans," he said with a smile, and sat down in his seat. Checked his watch. "Getting pretty late - shouldn't the two of you be heading back for Roswell now?"

"Umm..." I shot a glance over at Michael. "Not... not really. Because we knew the dinner was going to go late, and it's such a long drive back, we -- we got a reservation at a hotel just out of town to spend the night."

Hal looked at the two of us for a second and then gasped. "What... what is it??" I asked.

"Oh..." he sighed, and continued in a low voice. "Just for a second, the two of you... you reminded me so much of myself and Betty that it took my breath away." He shook his head. "Take a word of advice from an old geezer who missed his chance - don't be content with seizing the day. Live every minute of every hour to the fullest, because you never know what it is that you'll look back on and regret. If you take your chances and play the cards you're dealt..." he coughed, "well, it helps a little."

Oh, my god. Did he know what I'd been thinking about all night, about that hotel room, and Michael... and whether it was the right time to... well, to consummate everything with Spaceboy. Everything I'd said to Liz about it still made sense, but I wasn't sure if it was enough to convince me... especially considering my mom's overprotective warnings. To have the argument taken up by this guy I'd really only just met... but I doubted he was talking about that, just about taking chances in general.

"Well, how about this," he said in a moment, shaking off the extremely sentimental moment. "You kids'll still want to get to your hotel before it's too late, or they might give your room away. Why don't we walk over to my hotel, and talk along the way, and then you can walk back to where you parked from there??"

I looked over at Michael, who hadn't said a word since Hal had come back. He just nodded. "Okay, sounds good to me!!" I answered.

We chatted about what Leesburg was like - that was the town in Florida that Hal had moved to when he retired - as we walked through the dark and still-busy streets of Albuquerque. From there the conversation managed to jump to the aromatherapy oils that I used to blend myself... haven't had time for that sort of thing in over a year... and the fortunes of the Orlando Magic and the Phoenix Suns. Despite the sports talk, (eghh,) I realized that I really liked Hal... and I was glad that Michael had offered me this chance to come and get to know him.

We continued to talk for a little while in the lobby of Hal's hotel, and then he stood up and said, "Well, it's been a great day, but I think I'd like to make my getaway at this point. Michael?" He nodded at Michael, who was standing up too, and suddenly Hal was giving him a manly bear-hug goodbye. I extended my hand for a handshake and he kissed it.

"I'll give you a call sometime, Mister Carver," I told him.

"Sounds great. Just so long as you don't expect me to pick up the phone in the middle of a pro game," he quipped, and then he was gone.

As we walked back out into the night, I took the opportunity to express my thanks out loud to Michael for inviting me up.

"You're welcome," he said after a moment. "During the ceremonies there, I was a little worried that you were wishing you were down in Las Cruces with the others."

"Not sure if they'd have still been in Las Cruces," I pointed out absently. "Depends on what point in the ceremony - it did kind of stretch out." I sighed and shook my head. "But the point is no, I stand by my decision. The awards were kinda dull, mostly, but I would have sat through much worse in exchange for meeting Mister Carver."

"Yeah, I think I know what you mean," he agreed, and we walked along in silence for a few minutes. "He told you like five times to call him Hal!"

"So what, I gotta stick by that even when he isn't here??" I asked.

"Seems like the thing to do."

I ignored that. "I do wonder how Alex is doing. Guess I'll hear all the latest tomorrow, when we get back to good ol' Roswell." Michael nodded.

We arrived at the parking lot then, the one that we'd parked at near the coffee shop... got in, paid the attendant, and headed off. The hotel was a pretty nice one, about five minutes past the city limits on I forty. I started to suspect that Michael had something up his sleeve when he insisted that I stay down in the lobby 'for a few minutes' after we'd checked in, while he went up to the room. On the other hand, I was intrigued, so I let him play out his gambit.

Once he came down for me and led me into the room, I was blown away. The light fixtures were dimmed and to that soft light were added candles, not a huge number of them, but set up all around the room. Arranged on the dresser, well clear of the candle flames but lit by them, was a huge arrangement of pink tulips -- my favorite. Some not-immediately-identifiable romantic rock music was playing softly on the stereo. The room itself was beautiful... the bed wasn't actually a four-poster canopy but seemed somehow reminiscent of that style, and the sheets somehow seemed to scream their luxuriousness. Beds, actually, I should say - there were two of them, identical and each queen-sized. And at the wide window, all the drapes were pinned up to each side except for the sheerest possible curtain, through which the bright lights of the city winked.

I turned and stared at Michael. "No pressure," he said as he closed the door.

"Oh, yeah right," I scoffed. "Do you even believe that??"

"Maybe forty-five percent," he admitted with that grin of his.

I went over and sat on the dark blue couch, idly playing my fingers around the flame of the candle on the end table. Not getting too close to the fire, of course, I'm not stupid, but letting the warmth slide around the surface of my hands. I didn't trust myself enough to sit on the bed, not yet. "I -- I want to. To, you know... make love to you." I couldn't believe I had just gotten that phrase out without exploding on the spot. "I'm just not quite convinced yet that I *should* want to."

"I'm not trying to pressure you, really I'm not," Michael said softly, sitting beside me and taking my left hand in both of his. "I knew that you'd enjoy all of this for the sake of it, regardless of what we did or how far you wanted to go. But..." He turned to look at me, and the shadows played off his hair and the curves of his face, glinting on his dark eyes. "I love you, Maria. I love you more than I can come up with words for it. I've never... brought up this subject before, and not just because I could tell that you didn't think you were ready. *I* wasn't ready, not to let someone in to the core of myself, and I didn't want to be..." He shook his head, trying to get the thoughts to come out in some kind of sensible form.

"I tend to put up walls and keep people out, but for a long time I've known I wouldn't be able to have sex and still keep that wall up. Maybe no... no Czechoslovakian can, because we connect to people in ways that humans don't. Maybe the ability to have sex with someone and have it be just a casual thing is a human specialty." He was musing at this point, philosophical, distracted from the question of him and me, I knew. He wasn't trying to say that he thought I was the casual sex type.

"I... I don't even know what it will be like to, to share THIS with you," he finished after a moment. "Maybe there's no way that either of us can know. But I'm sure that I want to find out -- if you are."

I smiled at that, and suddenly realized that tears were flowing down my cheeks. "Let's take it one step at a time and see where things go from there," I whispered to him. I knew that I had made my decision and exactly what it was, and I knew that Michael knew it too. But this way of putting it seemed more romantic than 'okay, let's fuck.'

He leaned over and kissed me, and some kind of fire started to immediately spread through my body. Now, needless to say, I've kissed Michael before MANY, *MANY* times. But there was never anything like this! Every part of my body was starting to rev up, to run faster and better. As that kiss started to get longer and more passionate, it was like I could feel things happening inside me step by step. The nerves were first... a jolt of energy running along the major conductors and flowing down every little fiber and synapse, without pain, without disturbing anything, and yet heightening every sensation. Then the blood began to flow more quickly and surely through every artery and vein, sending vitality and energy through my whole system. Muscles hummed with readiness, and every sense, every single hair on my skin seemed more fully alert than I'd ever been before.

Our lips separated, both of us out of breath and panting. "Did... did you feel that?" I muttered, running my hands against Michael's arms through his clothes. It sure seemed like he felt *something*..

"Like my entire body went into hyper-drive without leaving the room??" I nodded. "Yeah, right there with ya."

"Good," I panted, somehow getting MORE out of breath from the *not* kissing. "Just wanted to check." And then my hands were at his collar, undoing the buttons of his shirt faster than I had known that I could. Rubbing my hands across his chest seemed to... I don't know, stabilize me? Helped me to breathe easier.

Michael gasped, and I tried to look at what he was surprised about without interrupting what I was doing. At the moment, he seemed to be moving one hand up and down the vicinity of my forearm without touching it, about two or three inches away from my skin. And... in between, I could make out a soft pink glow.

"Oh my god," I breathed. I recognized the phenomenon instantly from something that had been described to me, It wasn't exactly the same, but it certainly seemed closer to something that Liz had described to me than, well, than anything else I had ever heard of, by a long shot. The night that she and Max had ended up finding the orb, after some kind of strange sensual connection had briefly entwined them.

Thoughts started racing through my mind, which despite the lust I was feeling seemed stronger and clearer than ever before. Was this an alien thing... the results of their mating cycle or some such thing? But Max and Liz hadn't actually... mated that night, hadn't gone all the way. Then again, no-one had ever explained how their passion had led them to the orb - maybe Nasedo had known some way of tapping into Max's mating urge to deliver that piece of information, and had been able t terminate the cycle once its purpose was done. Hey, this was starting to actually make sense.

On the other hand, I didn't really want to think about it any more. As clear as my thoughts were, my priorities and values were distorted, and I could tell that they were, but I didn't really care. I bent down and licked at Michael's nipple, feeling the ecstasy inside myself ramp up further with that simple contact, and I knew somehow that it was having an even greater effect on him. I could feel what he was feeling, and he could feel what I was experiencing, and it was starting to form a cycle that was feeding into itself. As the craving grew, I guessed, so would the rapport between us, until we'd surely be lost.

I couldn't wait.

Michael pushed back and took the lead, kissing down my neck to my collarbone, and rubbing his hands against my upper arms. Suddenly he gasped, in surprise and wonder. "What is it?" I asked.

"Umm... flash." He nibbled teasingly at the underside of my chin, a pleasant enough physical sensation, but I was a little bit disappointed inside. I'd still never gotten a flash directly myself, and though Michael had always said that was because of him, because he was still too guarded to let me in... well, what if it was a lack in me? Because I was just an ordinary human girl, no matter how much I loved Michael and he loved me? Liz had been healed by Max, been *changed* by him, supposedly, so that explained why she got flashes, perhaps.

"What did you see?" I couldn't help but ask.

"I... I saw..." Michael extricated himself and moved his face up to parallel mine, looking deep into my eyes. "I saw... you, Maria. In some light pink dress, your hair as bright and beautiful as the summer morning sun." He brushed a lock of hair behind my ear. "I... I'm not sure where you were, but somehow I don't think it was anywhere on earth. And I was there with you. I can tell."

"Aww." I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but it sounded sweet. We french-kissed again for several minutes, and then Michael was unzipping my dress at the back, pushing it off my sleeves. The material thus kinda gathered up around my midsection as I lay on the couch. He rubbed his hands over the exposed parts of my torso, and I groaned with the delight of it.

"...If I reach for you, will you take my hand, are you willing??" The music, playing on the stereo, caught my attention only dimly through everything else that was happening, and yet at the same time it seemed to be a perfect reflection of everything I felt at that moment.

I moved my face up and started to kiss Michael's neck, and he seemed to hum with barely suppressed energy. His hands started to reach around me and fumble with the straps they found there. I grinned to myself and popped the snap in the middle of my cleavage, as easy as pie, pulling the cups away to either side.

"You turn more than the music on. Will you be there by my side at the dawn??"

Michael moaned softly, and I had to pull back so that I could take a look at his face. He looked like... well, 'kid in the candy store' is cliche, right?? Well, in that second, Michael looked like a seven-year old boy who had just caught his first glimpse of the infinitely elusive, one-of-a-kind, legendary gummie Venus de Milo... now that I've finished that analogy, I'm not sure I'm wild about the part I play in it myself, but you get the idea, right?? Or, for that matter, (and this kinda sounds weirder, but I'm not about to censor myself *now*,) like he just discovered that Santa Claus was real and had left him the best present EVER under the tree.

"Then I say 'All right, I give in.' I will dance with you, just this one time..."

I giggled softly. "Well, what are you waiting for? At this stage, they're not sitting there to be stared at." And darned if Spaceboy didn't dive right in, mouth first. He seemed to know what he was doing, which wasn't something I really wanted to think about... but then again, considering how weird this all was, it didn't mean that he'd done it before with some other girl.

"And all night, we will turn and spin; then stand eye to eye at the sunrise."

Everything was starting to develop faster and faster by now. The blood rushing through my system was having a huge effect on me - on US, because I could the effect it was having on Michael as easily as I could feel the effect it was having on me, by now. "Maybe we should move over to the bed, honey??" I asked.

"And I'll offer love - and it all begins when I say 'All right...'"

"Yeah, I couldf go fer thlat," he mumbled around my nipples, which made for quite an unusual and interesting sense of stimulation, actually.

"...I give in..."

He disengaged temporarily and I stepped up and let the dress fall to me feet, stepping out of it and kicking off the shoes. Michael took the hint and started stripping off what was left of his jacket and his pants. By the time we lay down next to each other on the bed, the only clothes that were still being worn were my silk panties and his black boxer shorts. There was, I think, an unspoken understanding that taking these off each other might be more fun. I stood there staring at Michael for a moment - I had never seen this much of him before, uncovered by clothing, and it was quite a sight. Smooth skin shone with the glow of health in candlelight and revealed the muscular, athletic physique underneath. His eyes were staring at me with exactly the same lust and admiration that I was feeling for him... and *fuck* but it feels good to be appreciated!!

I hope I'm not insulting Michael to say that, in the state of body and mind I was in, sitting down on whatever sheets those were on the bed was about as much of a sensual shock as him sucking on my tits. I don't know what they were made of, (though frankly I'm a little interested in trying to find out,) but they felt softer than anything I'd ever even dreamed of... and that's, I think, even after allowing for the fact that all of my senses were heightened.

Michael pounced onto me like a cougar, focusing on the generally lower-to-middle part of my body, partly because it was now much less covered than it had been a minute ago. He licked at my stomach while rubbing my inner thighs and teasing them with his fingertips, and then switched. I ran my hands over every part of his body I could, which was changing from moment to moment... I wanted to bring my own lips and tongue into the action but couldn't bear the notion of possibly depriving both of us of the fun that his activities were providing already.

A sense of moistness had been developing deep in my crotch throughout most of the action, and I started to become aware of a building case of fluid overload, which carried with it a burning impatience to get to the main event. I reached out and somehow managed to rip Michael's boxers off in one single snatch. "Come on, do it Michael," I groaned. "Make love to me, stick it in, screw me but good."

He smirked and started pulling my underwear down my legs, so slowly, teasing me. I wasn't quite in a mood to be teased, though, and I kinda kicked him a little, and he picked up the pace. Now it was my turn to play the predator, I flipped him over onto his back, grabbed his stiff, pulsing dick in one hand, and started to rub the edge of my pussy against it. feeling the lubrication flow even faster from inside my depths, as he started to buck his hips in anticipation. "Wait a second," he groaned.

"What is it??"

"Protection." Oh, right. The temptation to just dive into him, (or whatever the reverse of that is,) was great, but I tossed myself onto the pillows, biding the time and tweaking some of the most sensitive parts of my own anatomy while Michael scrambled over to where he'd left his pants, retrieved the necessary item, and put it on. I was breathless with anticipation by then.

He crawled up onto the bed, kneeling between my spread legs, and was about to maneuver himself into position when I rolled him over so I could get back on top. (Seemed more fun that way, for some reason.) He was still as erect as ever and I was hot and ready, and I eased my body onto his member and began to shift up and down.

I'd always expected my first time to hurt. Everyone said it did, unless your hymen had already been broken from some non-sex activity, and I didn't think mine had. But there was no discomfort I can remember, maybe because we were so connected, lost in the rhythms of an otherworldly mating urge, or whatever. It was right, and my body had been preparing for this for many long minutes, answering to a power that was beyond anything humanity knew.

It was... transcendent. I'm not sure how long we coupled, moving with the intensity of that primal beat. Probably only around ten minutes, though it seemed like much more, and also like barely seconds. I was resting my hands next to the sides of his abdomen, teasing and tickling them intermittently. He was massaging and tweaking my breasts nonstop, all through it. I kept moving my channel up and down his cock, each moment of slick movement and friction and indescribably pleasure.

I could feel both of our systems building towards the culminating moment... his dick preparing to erupt, my insides making ready to boil and spasm. But I didn't expect that orgasm, when it hit, would be an out of body experience. And it was - literally.

My soul shot out of its flesh and blood shell and enveloped itself in Michael's, then surrounding it, our two essences reaching heights of bliss and ecstasy that a physical body could never hope to attain. We began to... well, if you ask Michael he might describe it differently, but throughout the entire experience I felt that he was a part of me, and I of him, so I'll keep using the plural pronouns for what I remember of it. We experienced the pleasure of the entire city, of possibly several of the southwest states. I sang to him in the stratosphere and we played tag among the northern lights, then raced each other to Mars and back. Finally, his essence embraced me again and we... we sank into this peaceful harmony that connected every world in the galaxy, every sun in the universe, every speck of dust and asteroid and quasar. (For some reason, even universal harmony seemed to steer clear of the black holes, though, but that part might have been just my imagination.)

When I returned to my senses, I was snugly wrapped up in some of the most comfy blankets I'd ever felt... still completely naked underneath, of course. My eyes weren't blurry -- I looked around the room, seeing perfectly clearly in the darkness. The lights had been turned off all the way, the candles put out, and the curtains pulled shut. I saw Michael standing near the miniature fridge, wearing a black terry-cloth bathrobe, power-chugging a bottle of something that looked suspiciously like Snapple.

And damned if the first words out of my mouth weren't "Wanna do it again??"

TO BE CONTINUED...
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
Read my other roswell stories!

"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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Chrisken
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 12
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'


(Max):

When I woke up that morning, twilight was just starting to shine through the windows. I could hear a lawnmower whirring along next door, smell the scent of lemonade drifting in from somewhere, and Liz was lying next to me in the bed.

Wait a second, that really deserves a paragraph of its own:

Liz Parker was lying next to me in my bed!!!

I had to think about that for a long moment. I'd barely even seen Liz yesterday, what with the whole Las Cruces trip... I'd given her and Isabel a ride down to Tess' place really early in the morning, but that was it. And... well, come to think of it, I had a dream about Liz, not so unusual these days, but it took place in Hawaii and I woke up afterwards, around 2:30 am, and there had been no sign of Liz then either.

I propped myself up a bit and rubbed my eyes, not because I thought they might be playing tricks on me, just because they were feeling a little cloudy from lack of use over the past several hours, you know? I leaned over Liz and very delicately brushed a lock of dark brown hair away from her face.

It wasn't a light enough touch to keep from disturbing her, apparently. Liz's eyes popped open and she grinned up at me. "G'morning!"

I smiled back down at her. "Morning!" Short pause. "Not that I could ever, ever EVER be upset to see you, but I can't help but wonder exactly how you got here... into my bed and all."

Liz threw off the covers and sat up, and I saw that she was pretty much dressed... cute tie died t-shirt and lower-thigh cutoff shorts. Her feet were bare, but she had probably slipped some shoes off next to the bed, not wanting to get dust on my sheets or whatever. "There's not really a story there," she told me. "Came by, um, about half an hour ago, snuck through your window. You looked so adorable lying there, and I suddenly felt a bit bushed myself, so I joined you." She shrugged, apparently leaving the subject behind her. I considered asking exactly why she had been sneaking into my bedroom before seven a.m. in the first place, but it didn't really seem to be necessary to know.

"I'd like to kiss you right now," I told her, sitting up next to her, at an angle. "But there would probably be a morning breath issue."

Liz didn't reply out loud immediately, other than a "Hmmmmm..." but she leaned her face close to mine. Still a little sleepy, I didn't realize what she was doing until she poked me, very lightly, in the stomach, at which point I exhaled. "Naw, you're good," she chirped. "Surprisingly so, in fact."

I had to laugh out loud at that. "What makes you think I was talking about *myself* having morning breath?"

"Oh PLEASE," she shot back. "I brushed before I came!" And with that she didn't wait for another reply but leaned towards me again, adjusting the angles slightly, and our lips met with the usual fireworks.

"So... what now?" I asked after the kiss had run its course. I was lying on my back, sideways/diagonally across the bed, with the young woman that I loved snuggled up in my arms.

"Well, I wouldn't say no to breakfast," she hinted teasingly.

"Okay. We may get the kitchen to ourselves," I told her with a smile. "That is, if Isabel has the decency to sleep in a while."

"What about your parents, where are they?" Liz asked.

"Down in Clovis again," I said. "It's almost as if they're never around anymore. Liz sat up, and so I did too. "Not sure if Michael would be back in Roswell... he said something about them crashing out near Albuquerque instead of driving back all through the night."

"I don't think they've come back yet," Liz said, a small smile on her face. Soon we had both stood up, and as I hunted for a dressing gown and slippers, Liz kicked her feet back into a pair of green sandals that she had, sure enough, left beside my bed when she climbed up, and then pulled up her t-shirt, tying it up into in a knot in that way that somehow all girls know how to do. She looked around and caught me staring. "You like?" she said, striking a pose.

"I love," I admitted, and I wasn't just talking about the shirt or how it showed about five inches worth of her midriff now. I just stood there, watching her, as she went over to my dresser mirror and started fumbling in her shorts pocket for something. After a few seconds, she retrieved two of those little scrunchies, and quickly tied back her hair in them, two big bunches, one on each side. It wasn't a style I'd ever seen her wear before, but it looked good - well, pretty much everything looks good on Liz when it comes to that, but you know what I mean. Somehow exotic and innocent all at the same time.

I finally managed to get myself organized. "You done making yourself beautiful?" I teased. "Not that you have to try."

She pouted at me as she led the way out of my room. We stayed silent by unspoken agreement down the hall, not wanting to do anything that might disturb Isabel, "I need to do *something* with my hair this summer," she whispered to me as we climbed down the stairs. "What do you think??"

Oooh - loaded question. "I think you look gorgeous no matter what, you know that. And... well, I have to say that I love your hair just like th... well, you know. The way it usually is."

"You're no help," she complained. "I... I can't explain it, but I really do want to make some big change." She brushed one side of her hair back. "A shorter cut -- or a perm or something."

This was serious. "You're talking about cutting your hair off??"

"Well, not *all* of it," she qualified. But... well, how about this??" She turned to face me as we walked through the living room and put her hand just ever so slightly below the top of her shoulder - certainly short of the point I had ever seen her hair coming to.

"Go with the perm," I said to her, and she frowned rebelliously. I realized that I might have just pushed her a little closer towards getting the cut, and attempted to drop the subject gracefully. Fortunately, getting breakfast started provided a convenient distraction.

It was weird... I had a sense of deja vu, of having gone through this scene before, but with a difference - and then it hit me. The breakfast I'd had with Isabel and Alex, which everybody else seemed to have come and crashed - well, practically everyone EXCEPT for Liz. And that had been the day that I had...

I realized it with a ladle of pancake batter above the hot griddle, and Liz had to prompt me to let it down before the first little drops to escape got browned too much. "This is our anniversary, isn't it?" I blurted out, mortified. "Three weeks ago today, we got back together. That's why you came over, isn't it?"

"Yeah," she nodded cheerfully. "Don't worry, considering that you just woke up - I'd say you're doing good to have realized by now. I HAVE been distracting you a little, after all."

"I don't have anything for you."

"Well, you've got time before the day is out," she pointed out. "Or let it go for four weeks, or one month. You know me - I'm easy to please." She grinned at that. "All I need is you."

"Well... we'll see," I said quietly, I did want to get something special for her today, instead of letting it wait, but I wasn't sure what I could get on Sunday - a lot of places around Roswell not having embrased the holy day shopping thing - or, for that matter, how much money I could scrape together on such short notice. Quickly it seemed, the first batch of pancakes were ready, and I served them all out to Liz, but she dumped one on a plate for me, (that's just the kind of person she is,) and proceeded to spread raspberry jelly onto the rest... I'm not sure if I'd ever heard of that as a pancake topping before, but hey.

She came up behind me at the stove a few minutes later. "Oooh, bacon! Can I have a piece??"

"It's not done yet," I told her. "You can have some in a few minutes."

"C'mon, it looks really good already, and it smells great. One piece??"

"Nope," I said with a smile.

I wasn't prepared for what happened next. The first thing I was aware of was her body pressing against mine from behind and slightly to the side, her right leg against my left, her torso touching mine more softly. Something wet and supple brushed against my left earlobe - that would be Liz's tongue, of course. "Please??" she breathed teasingly into my ear.

I didn't raise any objection, needless to say. I think I'd have been hard-pressed to speak at that moment, and Liz grabbed a nearby fork and expertly flipped a piece of bacon out of the pan. I looked around and saw her blow on it for just a moment before slipping it between her lips. "Ooooh, mmmmmmmmm... tasty!!" She grinned flirtaciously back at me.

-------

(Michael):

I sat at the desk looking out the hotel window... the thin curtain still pulled down all the way, obscuring but not blocking the light of morning, breaking over the city. I took a swallow from my bottle of iced tea, futzed for a second with the hem of the hotel bathrobe, and looked over at Maria, still lying asleep on the bed.

The two of us had made love... what, four times, over the night... like a single, interrupted but sustained episode of passion that surprised me. Something had been awakened, something strange and wonderful inside the non-human part of me, and had spread quickly to envelop Maria. Yes, four times, that was it. And somehow I knew that despite the rising of the sun, the 'something' had not gone away, though hopefully the effect of its impact would change, or the two of us would never be able to leave the room.

Leaving the room before now had been in the plan, come to think of it. I wasn't quite sure what Maria had told or not told her mother about where she'd been going, but between Maria and I we had discussed staying at the hotel only five hours or so through the night, and being on the road before morning traffic started to go anywhere.

But there hadn't been much chance of that... at quarter to five in the morning, we had been -- well, we had been in the middle of time number four, the only one in which we'd tried one of the more, uh, exotic sex positions. After that, it seemed, the reserve energy of each of us had finally been exhausted -- I'd slept for hours, until the morning sun and the sound of people going about their business in the hallway outside woke me up. Maria still hadn't stirred, and I planned to let her get her rest as long as she needed to.

One of the things that occupied my mind as I sat there was that my feelings for Maria seemed to have... changed. I had believed that I loved her last night, of course... that I respected her, adored her, cared about her. None of that had changed in basic nature, but it had... broadened, becoming bigger and more important than I could have conceived of, only a few hours ago. I couldn't imagine being without her, nor could I bear even the notion of something hurting her.

Was this something alien, the other aspect of the mating passion that had hit us during the night? Some kind of mating bond? Could it be possible that, by the standards of the 'Czechoslovakians,' Maria and I had married, and committed to each other utterly, last night? That last notion seemed like too much of a stretch. But there was definitely a change in my attitude about her, a bond to her. Did she feel it too? I'd have to ask, if I could get up the courage to.

It was right about then that I kinda dropped the bottle, and caught it just at the instant that it landed on the desk with a loud cleenk. For a few seconds, there was silence. And then a rustling behind me, across the room, and a loud yawn. "Sheezh, what time is it??"

I smiled as I turned around to look at Maria, but I was a little concerned too. As... well, mind-blowing as the night of rapture had been, there was logical voice in my brain that was telling me that I didn't want to get caught back up into it, and each time before, it had started up again practically as soon as both of us were conscious. "Around a quarter to nine," I told her. "How do you feel??"

She stayed silent a long time, sitting up in the bed without seeming to care that she was naked except for the lower half of the body, still covered by the sheet. "Not really sure. Everything's changed." A moment's reflection. "And hungry, and thirsty."

I laughed. "I got some vending machine stuff for you -- couldn't really afford the room service rates. Ummm... any particular urge to... jump my bones?"

"Huh? No, not really at the moment... enough is enough I suppose." She giggled, as if to convey the sentiment of 'anything but.' "You?"

"I think I can keep my hands to myself," I joked, "though it might help if you put a robe on." I gestured vaguely in the area of my own chest, hoping that she'd get the point. Maria looked down at her bare chest, blushed all over, and looked around, spotting the robe that she'd left on the opposite bed, and climbed out of the covers so that she could take it and put it on. I couldn't resist taking one last good look at Maria-ness all over... well, last for now, Somehow I suspected it wouldn't be too long before we found some other occasion for naked fun after THIS.

"You let me sleep so late," she commented.

"Well, I don't think either of us realized how much we'd... get caught up in things," I pointed out. "All night. I only woke up about twenty minutes ago myself."

"Yeah, I guess I needed it," Maria commented, finding the plastic container of cold orange juice and two granola bars that I'd gotten for her, and starting to consume them with a will. "So, what's the plan, straight back to Roswell now?"

"Pretty much, I'd figured," I said. "Hit a drive-through place on the highqay for a coffee and pastries breakfast. It'll be after one by the time we get there... what did you say to your mom, anyway?"

"Campus visit at the state university," Maria sighed. "Not a great cover, but it worked... though I'm really starting to hate lying to her. But THIS she would never understand. Well, at least the story will work for an early afternoon return - it wouldn't make much sense to have been leaving a university before the crack of dawn, come to think of it."

"From what little hints you've dropped about your mom when she was our age," I commented, "I think she probably would understand. A little too well." I thought about that. "That might be the problem, actually."

"Yeah, something like that," Maria agreed. She had already nearly finished the food bars and the juice. "Well, before we check out, I want to use the facilities. Clean up."

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea for me too," I pointed out.

Maria beamed coquettishly, and started to sashay towards me across the room. "Wanna go in the shower together, spaceboy??" From the lusty look on her face, I had no doubts what had just popped into her mind.

Oh, boy. No way could I turn *this* down!

-------

(Isabel):

There was a soft double knock at my door. I looked up from the book I had spread out on my bed. "Come in."

The door opened and Max poked his head around it, then somewhat awkwardly stepped across and stood there in the corner of my room. "Liz gone?" I asked him.

"Uh, yeah... she had to go meet her parents. You knew she was here?"

"Neither of you were that quiet," I pointed out.

"You could have come out and joined us," he said, stepping further into the room and sitting himself down on my desk chair, turned around so he would almost face me where I sat on the bed. "Didn't have to hide out in your room."

"Nah," I rejected that thought. "Liz stayed out of my way yesterday when I needed some alone time with Alex - I thought I'd return the favor. Plus... well, I don't think I'm very good company for anyone today."

"You miss him, huh?" Max told me. "You miss Alex the more for having been up to see him yesterday, and for knowing that it'll only be a few more days before you're up in Las Cruces for the full summer yourself."

I stared at him. "How did you know that?"

"I guessed," he put in. "I just had to imagine how I would feel, if Liz were four hours away from me now that things are finally starting to work out between us."

"It won't be long," I repeated to myself. "I'll call him a little later today... once he's done with his own research." I waved vaguely at the book in front of me. "He's working so hard, for all our sakes, and he'll never ever complain."

Max cocked his head, looking at my book. "What is that, anyway??"

"Introduction to western philosophy," I told him, reaching a hand out to quickly lift the cover up on one side to show him... and not managing to move it with my lighthearted effort. BIG book. So I just let it sit there, feeling somewhat embarassed. "While we were up on the campus, Alex showed me the bookstore, and I got most of my reading material already. Was better than waiting in line once all the other summer classes students have shown up, and I thought I could get a jump start on the material."

"So you're planning on sitting in your room all day with your nose in a big fat book?" Max asked. "Somehow that doesn't sound like the Isabel Evans I know."

I opened my mouth to reply, and couldn't at once, and shrugged. "It makes me feel like I'm there with him," I said softly.

Max nodded, and got up. "Okay. But come out and find me if you need a study break of your own, okay? We'll do something brainless and stupid." And he got up and left.

"Thanks," I called out with a smile, and returned to the influential pre-Socratic Greek thinkers.

-------

(Maria):

"285 South," Michael remarked quietly, a smile playing over his face. "Don't that bring back memories?"

I smiled myself, unable to keep back the thought of that trip to Marathon... really the first occasion that Michael and I had spent any time together, the first chance the sparks had had to fly between us.

Not that I really wanted to avoid thinking of it, really. Even though that had been before we had really started to feel much for each other, in a way it had been the beginning of the road that had brought us here, (play on words unintentional there,) and thus sentimentally a fond memory.

Back then, the 'South' had been south of Roswell, heading away, towards that chunk of Texas that was content to sit underneath eastern New Mexico on the map. Now we were north of home, travelling south on 285 TOWARDS Roswell. It was almost as if the two of us had just finished going full circle.

We were just a few minutes out of Vaughn, a small town at a crossroads halfway between Albuquerque and Roswell -- we had stopped a gas station on the way out of the town to take a fill-up and bathroom break, and Michael had taken over as driver, for which I was grateful.

After having one last round of mind-blowing sex in the fancy Albuquerque hotel, standing up in the shower, Michael and I had washed each other off, (quickly but carefully, hee hee,) and gotten dressed in clothes that we'd each brought along, just in case. (I had even packed some sexy lingerie that Michael actually never got to see... a black silk Janet Reger babydoll set, but things had proceeded too quickly to stop and get changed. Somehow I doubted that I would be lacking for opportunities to show it off to him in the future, the way things were going.) So right now I was wearing a denim miniskirt and a green camisole top. Michael was in jeans and a t-shirt, no big surprise there.

A few minutes after leaving the hotel, we'd gone through a drive-through coffee and donuts place on the highway, and for the next twenty miles we had feasted on mocha cappuccinos, chocolate and cherry iced donuts, and lemon tarts... not exactly my usual breakfast, but both of us were craving a little fat and sugar - probably to replenish the energy we'd been spending all night!

"There's something I've been wanting to ask you," Michael blurted out as he followd the road, suddenly sounding nervous. Uh-oh. Michael nervous usually means something that I should be nervous about too, I've noticed.

"Ummm... yeah? Ask away," I said trepedatious-ly, if that's a word.

"Since, since last night... did something change?" He asked quickly. "Between us, in the way you feel about me I guess I mean. Because I..."

"I swear, I will die right here in this car if you go 'Luv ya too, I'll call you,'" I muttered under my breath, prompting a shocked enough look from Michael that I was worried that he'd crash the car. "Eyes on the road!! Jeez, it was just a very inappropriate Buffy joke."

"What... oh??" Michael scowled. "No. NOT changing that way. I..." He shook his head, slightly, and turned off the radio which had been been blaring some kind of hip-hop funk since we got to Santa Rosa. "I feel... like I'm five times more in love with you than I was last night, though I didn't think that was attainable."

"What??" I couldn't quite believe my ears.

"I'm dead serious, Maria!!" he shot back, somewhat excitedly. "I'm not sure, but... well, what happened to us wasn't normal in human terms, was it? At least, if sex is normally like that, then everything I've ever heard about it is pitifully incomplete. Why shouldn't the morning after be unusual too?? I am now... *incredibly* committed to you, and all I'm trying to do is find out if you were affected the same way, alright?!"

"Ohmigawd," I breathed. "I thought I was imagining it, or that it was a usual female imprinting reaction, you know?? Nesting behaviour, or whatever the hell it's supposed to be. But, I didn't.... I wasn't going to say anything to you, because supposedly guys are affected the opposite way. Once they've planted the flag and claimed the territory, they're off to discover new ground." I aimed my best puppy-dog eyes at him through the rearview mirror. "I didn't wait to scare you away or anything"

"HUMAN guys are like that, you mean," he muttered with a soft chuckle. "Bunch of pitiful schmucks."

"Take that back," I laughed. "Some of my best friends are human guys. Like Alex... and you'd have to admit *he*'s not at all like that."

"Oh, he's never really gotten the chance, has he?" Michael shot back. "Wait a second... if he does THAT with Isabel and then jerks her around, bass-man's in for a planet of pain!" He considered that for a moment. "Which really doesn't sound like his style, I have to admit that much."

"No, of course it isn't!"

There was a bit of a silence there, and then Michael nodded as we passed a mile marker with Roswell listed. "What's the plan when we hit town?"

"Umm..." I paused to consider that. "I hate to say this, but you'd better drop yourself somewhere so that I can hurry over and put in face time with mom."

"Understood," he agreed. "But you'll come over tonight, yeah?"

I could feel myself blushing. "Oh yeah."

"Good. We have to christen my bed in the apartment." And he grinned indecently at me.

-------

(Kyle):

"I'm really sorry," Mrs DeLuca said, pacing through the room. "I really thought she'd be back here by now."

"It's okay, Mrs. DeLuca," Tess said, pondering the game board. "That's... five, and -- two." She moved two red counters among the different triangles of the backgammon board. "Your roll."

"Come on, you can call me Amy now," she said. "Or... maybe m--"

"Not mom," Tess said quickly. Amy's face fell. "Don't take it personal, it's just..." she screwed up her face in frustration, trying to get the right words out. "I don't even call Mister Valenti dad, you know? I'm so grateful that... that you guys have let me into your family, but I'm not there yet, you know??"

Amy looked at her for a long moment. "Yeah, I guess I understand."

We continued to play for a while, with Tess beating me both times, (oh well,) and Amy serving out snacks while my dad sat and waited, reading from some book that he didn't seem to want to let me see. As you might have picked up by now, we had come over for a big combined-family meeting, only to find out that the DeLuca side wasn't complete and fully accounted for yet. Maria hadn't come back from 'an overnight visit to the University of New Mexico' which was really something involving Michael, and doubtfully having anything to do with a university, from what little Tess had told me about it. Something about some military type who'd lived in Roswell in 1947 when the crash happened - I didn't really follow that part.

Maria's black-sheep cousin Sean was sitting on the other side of the living room, fidding with one of those odd looking puzzles made out of heavy, rigid metal wire contorted into odd shapes and joints, free to move, slide, or shift at a few points... where the point is to remove a tiny steel ring that looks like it's physically inseperable from the rest.

Sean looked the most uncomfortable out of all of us, which made sense in that his connection with the core 'family' was in some ways more tenuous that even Tess's. She was officially my dad's dependent now, while Sean was really just an indefinite guest. Maria had mentioned that Sean had enrolled in the local junior college, but various events had interrupted his plans to get his own apartment. Big surprise, says I

Myself, I hadn't seen Sean around much since... well, since Liz and Max had gotten back together, which pretty much put two and two together all by itself. Parker had gone back to her old soulmate, and the rebound guy had seen fit to make himself around them and all of their friends. I'd probably have done the same thing, in his place.

All of a sudden, I heard a car door slam in the driveway, and Maria came in through the front door only seconds later. "Uh, hey everybody. What's going on?"

"Little impromptu family meeting," Amy told her. "I kinda thought you'd be back already, though it's 'no big.'" I shook my head slightly at the use of dated slang on her part.

"I hope this isn't too big of a shock," Dad said as Maria sat down, and Tess pushed the game board aside. "We're probably going to be getting together more, all five of us, as time goes on. Of course, the wedding plans are still mostly up in the air, but at some point we're going to become just one family, more or less," that was with a nod to Sean, "and I think Amy and I would like it if that happens sooner, rather than later."

There was a bit of a silence. "Umm, okay by me, I guess," I muttered, having at least had a little warning that something like this was coming. Maria seemed totally shocked by the whole thing... which I can understand; this probably wasn't what she thought she'd be coming home to. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"We're not sure," Amy admitted.

"One thing I've been concerned about is my own role," Dad admitted. "I don't think it's a surprise to anyone here that I've been, well, seriously at loose ends ever since getting dismissed from my post. I've had a lot of stuff to work through, but I know that I need to find something else. This may sound old-fashioned, but I do strongly believe that a man with a family should be a provider, a bread-winner, and that's become especially important to me now that I have a fiancee and a soon-to-be stepdaughter."

"Now, I've looked into a few dependable, regular jobs..." he continued, but Amy interrupted.

"That he would have DESPISED going to, day after day," she said. "So I talked him out of taking any of them. This is an important decision, and I didn't want him to jump into anything just because it seemed like the responsible move."

"Ummm... okay, so, er, what then??" Tess asked.

"Oh, boy... how do I say it?" Dad muttered, looking over at Amy, who nodded at him encouragingly.

"Just blurt it out!" Maria called out encouragingly.

"Okay, um... I'm going to be going into business for myself as a carpenter," he said.

There was a moment of silence. "For real??" Tess asked.

"Yes, for real!" Amy insisted. "Come on, I know a little about this sort of thing, and he's *really* good. It might be a little hard getting started, but I think he'll do REALLY well once people get a look at his work." She looked around the room as if daring us to disagree.

I cleared my throat. "Well... I'm happy to hear it, Dad, and wish you the best of luck. Not just because I stand to benefit from your good fortune, either."

He laughed. "Thanks so much."

"Yeah," Maria chimed in. "Kick some wood!" That got a small laugh from the room.

"Congratulations, sir, and good luck," Sean chimed in.

"And I'm going to be setting aside some time to work as his business manager," Amy continued, "because frankly he doesn't understand that sort of thing." Dad turned to look at her. "Well, honey, you don't! Should I not have told them that part?"

"Are you sure about that part?" I asked. "I mean, you specifically being his business manager? What with mixing the business and the pleasure, as it were... or should that be mixing business and family?"

"We're a team," Dad said, standing up and putting his arm around Amy's shoulders. "A team in life, why not a team in business??"

"Okay, great," Tess said, standing up. "C'mon, this calls for a celebration, doesn't it??"

--------

(Alex):

When I got back into my room that evening, I noticed right away that the phone was blinking a bright red light. For an moment, I didn't understand what that meant, and then the likely answer hit me. "You'ge got voice mail!" It took me about two minutes to find the telephone instructions that had been waiting for me when I'd moved into the room, and only seconds to find the correct instructions.

"You have - one - new message. Press 3 for your new messages..." BEEP! "Message - one. Recieved - today, at - six, twenty, five, p.m. From -- an unidentified number." There was a slight click as the line switched from the automated narrator to the actual message.

"Hi, Alex? It's Izzie. Just calling to chat, you said you'd be in your room, but I guess you have to leave sometime, huh? Just my luck. Well, don't worry about dialing me back, I'll give you another try in three quarters of an hour or so. Love you." The line clicked away. Impulsively I hung up before the voice-mail guy could give me a list of options.

I looked at the phone. Iz had left that message between five and ten minutes ago, and I didn't really want to have to wait longer to really hear her voice, and talk to her. So, in complete defiance of her advice, I tapped out the code sequence for an outgoing long-distance call and then the full number for Isabel and Max's private line at their parents' house.

It rang several times, five, six, seven. I was starting to worry that she had actually left the house when she hadn't been able to get ahold of me when the phone picked up and raised my spirits. "Hello?" My heart sank down again a little - it was Max's voice.

"Hey, man, I was just calling back for Isabel."

"Oh, Alex, um... hi," Max mumbled, as I got more and more nervous. "Just a second, I think she actually went downstairs!" He left the line, and I couldn't make out anything more for over a minute.

"Alex??" it was Isabel's voice now. "I told you that I'd call back for you."

"I couldn't wait," I told her with a soft laugh. "You just missed me coming back - I was down at the student union getting some supper."

"Oooh. Me too, well, the kitchen for I, of course, not the student union." She giggled a little, nervously. "What did you have?"

"Linguini and meat sauce, with garlic bread and an orange soda."

"I miss you too," she replied, which I thought was a non sequitur for a few seconds until I realized the point. I did only drink orange soft drinks when I was seriously depressed or out of sorts... Isabel not only knew that about me, but had accurately guessed the reason behind it... somewhat to my surprise.

"What about you, what did you get to eat? How was your day??"

"I have here a freezer-microwaved burrito," she said, "and my day was pretty dull. Boning up on the first few chapters of that western philosophy monster of a textbook. How about yours??"

"Well, don't let your food get cold," I advised her. "We may be here a while."

"What, eat and talk on the phone at the same time??" She sounded shocked.

"I won't mind."

"I... sorry, that's not a line I'm prepared to cross at the moment, eww." I shrugged and returned to her question.

"Well yeah, my day's been pretty similar to yours. Going over the linguistic conversion algorithms that the quantum work is based on, familiarizing myself with the program structure. I experimented with the material a little with that laptop computer they issued me, and read through all the documentation on the programming environments for the nondeterministic multiphased processing - though that isn't something I can experiment with on anything but the real quantum machines, of course." I stopped, realizing that Isabel had to be getting bored or confused by that point. "Got everything planned for Tuesday??"

"Yeah," she said, "I'll be packing probably all day tomorrow, and then Max is driving me up there at the crack of dawn. We unpack the Jeep as soon as possible so that he can get back for his shift at the Center, and... do you think there's any chance you'll be able to extricate yourself for a late lunch??"

"Probably," I said. "They don't tend to spend all day locked up with the servers unless they're on the trail of something REALLY hot, and I don't think my work qualifies. I'll give you a call on your cell to let you know."

"Okay, great," she said. "I can't wait. Kellerman hall seems really cool, and it's just across the way from your dorm."

"Yep," I agreed, smiling. "So, what's been going on back home in Roswell? How was Maria and Michael's thing?"

"Oh, you know, I haven't really heard anything about that," she said. "You know how it is. NOTHING really exciting *ever* happens in Roswell!!"

TO BE CONTINUED...
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
Read my other roswell stories!

"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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Chrisken
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 13
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'


(Liz):

"Oh, my gawd," I breathed. Maria had been catching me up on her recent... activities, as we walked through the deserted park - it was sometime between six and seven in the morning. "So *how* many times did you do it??"

"Ummm... let's see, total to date?" Maria blushed. "Four times in the hotel room, saturday night. Once in the bathroom the next morning. Two times at his place yesterday evening... would probably have been three, but I had to get home so my mom wouldn't freak."

"I think she'd freak even more if she'd known about the two," I laughed, nudging her softly on the arm with my elbow. "Oh sheez, Maria, you're like a sex addict all of a sudden!!"

"I am *not* a... well, it's hard to explain," she muttered, the flush red in her cheeks. "I wouldn't say I'm addicted in the literal sense, but, well--" she moaned, low and throatily. "The high is *seductive*."

"Really?" I asked, giggling nervously. "How intense are we talking about here?"

"I... I don't think I have the words," she muttered. "Did... did I tell you about the out of body experiences??"

"You mentioned one, the first time," I replied. "What, it was like that every time??"

"As far as I could tell, they only got LONGER!!" My mouth dropped open. "But... but it wasn't just about climax. Every step of the way, from that first kiss to lying in his arms afterwards, was just -- more *exciting* than I'd ever imagined it could be!"

"Wow," I muttered, my eyes bugging out. "But you've kissed Michael before. Does it *really* make that much difference, just because it's the first step on the road to... to you-know??"

"That's the weirdest part -- well, one of the weird parts," Maria confirmed. "As soon as we'd crossed that imaginary line in our heads, it was like instinct and passion took over. Just you wait until it's you and Max, girl, you'll see what I mean. At least, I think it'd be the same with you guys. For your sake, I hope so!!"

"Maria," I groaned. "The last thing I need right now is you putting dirty ideas in my head! I love Max, he loves me, and we've been having a lot of fun, but we're not there yet, and not in the forseeable future, I don't think."

"You kinda were last time," Maria pointed out. "Before the..." She stopped herself before uttering whatever nasty nickname had been on the tip of her tongue, I noticed. "Before you-know-who came."

"Well, yeah, I guess we were within sight of IT back then," I agreed a little slowly. "But there's no such thing as just picking up where you left off. There's some trust that still needs to be rebuilt, on BOTH sides. Max and I have each changed and grown, in the months we were apart, and we have to spend time getting to know each other again."

"Okay, your loss," Maria chirped happily. "I wonder if Max is as 'big' as Michael is."

"MARIA!!" I shrieked, then remembered to keep my voice down. "I can't believe you even said that!" At this point, I suddenly realized that I needed to take control of the conversation myself if I wanted to avoid exposure to my best friend forever's newly dirty mind -- or at least, that such a tactic was worth a try. "Alex was sorry that you couldn't come down."

"Yeah, I know, I got an email from him yesterday afternoon," Maria agreed. "I wrote back and assured him that I'd be down there in Las Cruces soon. Did you have a nice time?"

I thought about that a moment, "Yep. Thanks for contriving to get Tess along, actually... she was surprisingly good company."

"I guess destiny-girl's turning over a new leaf," she said agreeably. "Just as well if she's going to end up my step-foster-sister or whatever. Oh, did you hear about Mister Valenti's new career??"

"Yeah, Kyle called last night and mentioned it," I told her. "Professional wood-working. Whatcha think??"

"Wish him the best -- seems a little risky to me, but I admire him for having the guts to chase a dream instead of cave in and get a McJob," she said after a moment's consideration. All of a sudden her eyes fixed on a glint of silver pinned to my jacket, and narrowed, realizing that it was a new accessory. "Hey, where'd you get the hardware?"

I picked up some of the fabric between my fingers so that Maria could see the brooch better. "Max got it for me... brought it over to my place yesterday evening. Three week anniversay present."

"Ohh..." I wasn't sure if the sound from deep in Maria's lungs was more admiration or friendly jealousy, and I didn't worry about it much. Her fingers traced the stylized silver arrow. "Lemme guess - Cupid's arrow on its way to pierce your heart?"

I shrugged. "I guess... or pointing the way back to him no matter how far apart we may be. I didn't really discuss the meaning with him, Maria -- I just kissed him thanks."

She nodded and smiled. "The stone isn't a real sapphire, is it?

"Only if you're living in a dream world... probably colored quartz, or maybe glass for all I know."

"Still, it's so pretty," Maria commented, then jumped back to an old subject. "C'mon, you've *gotta* let me spill a little more about Michael - you're the only one I can tell this sort of thing to."

"Okay," I sighed. "One more tidbit."

"One time at the hotel, I actually timed us," she shared gleefully. "He went *twenty-five* minutes!"

I groaned.

-------

(Tess):

"Sigh." Flip the page.

I had printed off a list of... well, I guess I'd better begin at the beginning, or at least as close to it as I can think of. At the beginning had been... the question.

The question of what to do with myself over the summer.

Last year, it hadn't seemed to even come up. Everything in Roswell was still new, and final exams had come pretty much right on the heels of all of the craziness with the special unit. We had heard the message from home and it drew us together... well, except for Max, who didn't want to get close to me because he was busy rejecting his destiny and longing for Liz.

But I spent a lot of time with Michael, mostly when he wasn't working, teaching him a little of what I had learned from Ed, getting ready to use our powers in self defense. And I hung around with Isabel as well, just hanging around at her house and generally trying to pretend that we were normal teenage girls. I even got to know Maria and Alex a little bit.

Also, not everybody was working last summer. Michael, Maria and Max had had their jobs, of course, but they hadn't worked terribly long hours and Isabel and Alex hadn't been doing anything much. This time around, everything seemed different. Roswell was no longer even close to new, and there wasn't any particular threat to make the dullness exciting or relieving. Alex was gone, Isabel would be joining him tomorrow, and everyone else seemed determined to put in as many hours as possible at their respective jobs and earn money for a great senior year. Well, except for Kyle, who might quit his position at the garage any day now, as soon as he was convinced that we could scrape by, but...

Well, anyway, the upshot was that I'd decided to get a job of my own. I'd printed out about twenty-five pages of local student employment listings off the web, and now was sitting by myself at the dining room table, going over them. And groaning to myself.

The doorbell rang, and after a few seconds I could hear Mister Valenti moving to answer it. "If that's anyone, I'm not here," I called out for his benefit. Not quite sure why I didn't want to talk to anyone, but I sure as heck didn't.

The door opened, and a short conversation ensued, that I couldn't really make much out of. Then the sound of shutting came, and footsteps lightly tromping back down the porch stairs of the house. Jim walked over until he could see me through the open exit into the living room.

"When you get back," he said with just a slight trace of friendly humor, "I'm supposed to mention that a Martin Bryce dropped by looking for you. Didn't say why..." he drew that last word out pensively, looking at me as I sat there, still scowling a little at my printouts of bad jobs. "Though I suspect that I can guess."

I tried to connect a face with the name. Bryce... Martin Bryce?? For a long moment it was just a blank. And then I had the impression of a melancholy artist-type walking the hallways of West Roswell high with his shoulders hunched and a sad look in his sea-green eyes. A loner, a 'reject' as some of the other kids might say, but handsome in a darkish-brown hair and pale skin kind of way.

Was that really Martin? I couldn't be sure, and the cliche immediately went through my head about teenage girls checking such things out through a yearbook. I didn't actually have a high school yearbook, and the only person I knew who did was Isabel, who used hers for considerably... DIFFERENT things.

And then... Jim was still standing there and watching me, and I suddenly realized the only thing he could possibly mean. Did this Martin person, whoever he was, like me? Like me enough to go walking up to the house I lived in, (the house that the ex-sheriff owned to boot<) out of the blue?? Someone who hardly even knew me, knew nothing about what my life was really like? Knew nothing about who and what I really was?? It hardly seemed possible.

And then... something else hit me. How much had I known about what Max was like, what his life was like here in Roswell, when I decided I still loved him on earth? I'd known what he was, and I'd remembered a little of who he used to be. But by then I had known how much I myself had changed since the other lifetime. I should have realized...

I couldn't finish that thought. I burst up out of the chair, leaving my printed sheets where they lay, and brushed pass Mister Valenti. The only thing on my mind was driving over to Isabel's place and asking if I could use her yearbook, even though I knew she was in the middle of packing to leave.

But that was before I stopped still in the living room, looking at all of Kyle's stuff scattered around the couch and on the coffee table. Including... his WRH yearbook, stacked on top of a couple of schoolbooks and underneath a few Buddha books. Of course!! How had I not thought to see if Kyle had one?

Jim was still watching me, and so I tipped the Buddhism books up on one side and extracted the yearbook out from underneath them, hurrying back as quickly as I could with it to my room and closing the door once inside.

B... Bryce... Martin. Yes, that was the face I had seen, vaguely, in my memories. Martin seemed a little -- cooler, in the photo, but that had probably been the point at the time. Organizations... literary magazine and model UN. Memories, hmm. Not much here that made any sense to me, not surprisingly. 'Long night, getting the words just right. Third city of comedy - *you* know what it is! Slovakia forever!! Will our heroes ever disarm the total conversion bomb and foil Doc Dastard's plan?' Hmm.

And his quote: "Whatever there is inside you that's unique or worthwhile, hold it up. Let it show for the world to see." Was that taken from a book or something, or was it original? It didn't seem familiar.

Well. I couldn't say why, but after all of this I did want to get to know young Mister Martin Bryce a little better... though probably not caught in a teenage dating ritual.

Just as I was closing the yearbook, my eye was caught again by a phrase in the middle of Martin's 'memories.' Slovakia forever?? What... what was that key term that Maria and Liz had been using for the other hybrids, long before I got to town? Checkoslovakians or something - I wasn't too sure how to spell the word, but it had popped up a few times since I came to Roswell, and I'd looked it up. Used to be a country in eastern Europe, until the Soviet bloc fell and they started redrawing all the boundaries. That country had split into two, the Chezch (?) republic and... Slovakia.

Of course, it had to be a coincidence. Martin had been in the model UN, and they pretended to be ambassadors from far-off countries, maybe he had been representing Slovakia. Or for all I knew, he had family over there.

But what if? a little voice inside me asked. Was it possible that this shy and unassuming young man new something about my secret??

-------

(Max):

"Okay, come on, come on, hit it to me!" I muttered to myself, clapping one of my hands into the other.

In a few seconds, I saw the small white sphere shooting through the air towards me, seeming impossibly fast. But with a practiced gesture, I reached out with my left hand, on which I was wearing an oversized gauntlet thing made of a thick brown fabric, and it did its job, protecting me from the impact. Smiling grimly, I took the projectile with my right hand and shot it back to whom it had come from, with as much energy as I could muster.

Or maybe I should say, with as much energy as I could *humanly* muster.

Okay, I gotta stop this now. Sorry for trying to make the whole thing sound like a mysterious alien encounter - I was just playing catch with Michael in the park. But that seemed so unutterably pedestrian that I had to liven it up for a minute. You guys don't mind, do you??

So, Michael caught the baseball again, and we belted it back and forth a few more times, and then Michael went over and picked up a wooden baseball bat that he'd left sitting on the grass nearby. "You mind pitching it to me for a bit?"

He assumed stance and I shrugged, then threw a nice, fairly easy overhand pitch to him. CRACCK went the bat, and the ball sailed over my head and landed a good ways away. I smiled at Michael, and he put down the bat, grinning, and made a little 'go fetch' gesture.

I looked over that way again, shrugged a little, and jogged over to find the ball and bring it back. Michael was in batting stance again, and I considered. I'd come out here largely for the exercise, and it felt good, but there was something that felt slightly demeaning about this.

"You get five hits," I told him. "Then I get to bat."

"Sounds fair," he called back. "What about any pitches that AREN'T hits?"

"Well, you have to run and fetch those, of course," I said with a grin. "Only fair." And he shook his head as I prepared to wing my best fastball past him... then he hit it anyway.

It wasn't long before both of us had had five hits, (and only a few strikes each,) and were both feeling exerted enough from running around all over the place that we didn't want to start over again with Michael batting. We walked around the edge of the park together, warming down, and talked softly. There weren't many other people there, and nobody was paying us any attention - just two best friends, who might as well hav eben brothers, practicing a little ball.

I told him, in hushed tones, about my learning session with my powers out in the desert on Saturday afternoon and how I wanted him to come out and try some things along with me, and he agreed, said we'd work something out between his work schedule and mine. He shared some details about the trip up to Albuquerque and the awards dinner with Hal Carver and Maria, though I kinda got the feeling that there was something he wasn't telling me about afterwards, once Mister Carver had gone up to his room and he and Maria went to a hotel outside Albuquerque to spend the night before driving back.

Oh, well. Maybe they'd gotten into another argument or something. Michael did tend to be a little private about Maria sometimes, though there wasn't much else in his life that he didn't talk to Isabel and me about. He also shared the news that Mister Valenti was apparently going into business as a carpenter, with Amy DeLuca's help on the business side.

"I've got a little time before I have to show up at the UFO center," I pointed out as the afternoon began to draw to a close, "and you're off work tonight, yeah? Wanna grab a bite to eat or something??"

Michael checked my watch. "Oooh, actually Maxwell? I gotta jet now, I was supposed to be meeting Maria in like two minutes. She has the house to herself this evening." He smiled.

Well, apparently there wasn't anything too wrong between the two of them. "Go, have fun," I told him, though he was already rushing off towards his new car, or should I say his very very old car.

I went by the Crash and had a venus meatloaf platter, cosmic cola, and a hot fudge blast-off, (and flirted with Liz as much as I could while she wasn't busy waiting tables of course,) before heading across the street to the UFO center. Brody was waiting as I came down the stairs.

"Evans." I nodded hello. "Sorry I haven't had that much for you to do lately, but all of that should change now. That is, if you're still interested in putting in the hours this summer."

"Ummm... yeah, of course I am," I said after only a moment's hesitation. What was this going to be about??

"Okay, well, then..." He looked around, then fixed me with an intense stare. "Maybe I'm being too paranoid, but not out here. Come on." He led the way up to his office, and checked a few things on his computer while I sat down.

"Now, I have to admit that what I'm about to say sounds strange, even by my standards." Brody's english accent tends to get a bit more pronounced when he's stressed, and it was coming out clearly now. "But you know me, right Evans? Max," he corrected himself suddenly. "I may be a bit... eccentric, by some people's standards, but I'm not a raving loon. When I make something my business, I do the research and I find out what's what."

"What're you leading up to, Mister Davis?" I asked. "Just say it... by now there's very little that surprises me."

He flicked his gaze at something on the desk... was it some kind of counter-surveillance device?? -- and dropped his voice. "I have... acquired some - *apparently* solid information about a government installation holding the remains of a crashed space vehicle of extraterrestrial origin. Possibly even THE ship from the '47 crash, though none of my sources appear to have reliable information on that."

I blinked in surprise. Was this real? As Brody said, most of the time he did really have a lead when he thought he had a lead, though it wasn't always what he thought it was. There WAS really a ship that had crashed in forty-seven, I knew that much, of course, and there might have been others. "So... what do you plan to do with this information??" I asked him.

"Find out more. Find out everything I can. Maybe even... get into this installation, if possible, and have a look for myself. For *ourselves,* I mean." I looked at him in shock. "Evans, you're quite a remarkable young man, and you have nearly as many questions you want answered as I do. You could be quite an asset to this endeavour, if you choose to be." He fixed me with an intense stare, his dark blue eyes drilling into my face. "On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that you have your own secrets, Max Evans."

I nearly jumped out of the chair. "I, I..."

"It's alright," he assured me. "You have your own reasons, I understand that. But... for this, I have to have your word. Whatever you may learn based on the information I provide... I learn as well. Nothing kept back. If you can't promise me that, then I'll find other duties to assign to you and pursue this on my own. Do I make myself sufficiently clear??"

"Yes, you do," I said softly.

"And your decision? If you need some time to consider it, that's all right, but I'd like to ask that you hold what I've just told you in confidence for the time being."

"I understand," I said quickly. "If I agree, is it alright if I mention to some of my friends what we'll be up to? People who can be trusted?"

Brody considered that. "All right."

"Then I'm in." I wasn't altogether sure about this... having made this commitment to Brody, I didn't want to go back on it, and I really wasn't sure what discovering the ship might lead to. On the other hand, it was an opportunity that I couldn't just walk away from. "When do we start?"

"Right now," Brody said, indicating the computer, "There's a number of files for you to bring yourself up to speed on. We'll talk about it all then."

-------

(Isabel):

I stepped out of the shower as steam started to condense on the mirror and the walls, grabbed the big black towel and started rubbing myself down. Checked the clock -- quarter to ten. Still a long time to go... I hoped I had enough stuff to keep myself busy with.

I spent a lot of time in the bathroom, drying every little square inch carefully, moisturizing, and blow-drying my hair thoroughly because it wouldn't be too long before I would be lying down in bed. I also used a little power to give myself some soft curls because... well, you'll understand why later.

It was the night before I was making my own migration down to Las Cruces, to finally be with Alex - oh, and to take some summer university classes of course, hehe. I'd spent most of the day packing, and nearly everything was ready, with the exception of a few things I could throw together in the morning. I already had nearly twice as many boxes and bags as Alex had taken, but what the heck. I've never exactly been the type to travel light, especially when we're talking about three months of classes in a city four hours away from home.

Max had called a little while ago with a change of plans - some big thing had come up at the UFO center, and he was going to be there probably until midnight and then back at dawn. Said it might be 'important,' but I asked him not to bother me with the details today. The big problem, as far as I was concerned, was that now he obviously wouldn't be able to drive me and my vast acres of luggage down tomorrow.

There was a little bit of telephone tag to sort out a solution... in the end Kyle had volunteered to take Max's place with the driving duties, at least on the homeward leg. I could drive down to Las Cruces myself, obviously, but I'll be staying there and so obviously can't ferry the vehicle home. Max is still lending the jeep - he'll pick Kyle up, then drop himself off at the UFO center and walk home or get a ride home from Brody when he's done, and meanwhile Kyle takes the Jeep back here so we can start loading it up with my stuff.

I should probably be going to bed already, but there's no way I'm going to. I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a little while, and it kinda jumped out at me this morning and declared that its time was near. No way to argue with the little critter. And so I'm not going to be going to sleep myself for a little while. Oh well - it's not like I actually have any classes tomorrow!!

I slipped across the hallway from the bathroom to my own room, wearing an old floor-length terrycloth dressing gown, and noticed en route that the lights were out in the master bedroom. That was a good sign, though I wasn't going to presume too much on it. And I frowned at the little clock in my room, (not the nice clock radio, that was already packed,) as soon as I saw it. Over an hour yet until the time I figured I could put the plan into motion.

There wasn't much to do while waiting. So much of my stuff was already sitting in the boxes... I went down into the living room, treading quietly, and found one of Dad's old books, some science fiction anthology. I was frankly meaning to just give it a casual flip through and then turn the TV on quietly, but I got caught up in some of it. The first thing was a long story about a post-nuclear future, and church sermons decrying the evil of deviations from the true species, and young people with mutant mental powers running away from an intolerant posse -- some parts of it hit a little close to home, but I enjoyed it.

Also a series of really short blurbs, just a few pages each, about life on a space station... I loved the one about a guy breaking the rules and getting all of his friends to cover for him while he uses a space-jet to go to the observatory in orbit about a mile or so away so that he can spend an hour with his girlfriend there, every week. One time he sees an alien spaceship while he's on his way back and doesn't mention it because they'd want to know what he was doing out there and he wouldn't be able to go on those jaunts again afterward.

Then the girl dumps him, and he wishes he'd chosen to report the alien ship back when he'd have actually had a little credibility. (Rim shot.)

It was actually a few minutes after my self-imposed deadline when I realized it and hurried silently back upstairs, taking the book with me to sneak it in amongst the stuff I'd be taking. Quarter to midnight. Even though it was well after I'd planned on getting started, I forced myself to calm down and prepare carefully. Time wasn't THAT crucial.

Off came the dressing gown, and the underthings I had had on beneath, and from the dresser came that silk chemise that I ordered from Fredericks of Hollywood mail order the day after Alex spent the night, after the Beth Orton concert. Super-short, spaghetti straps, clingy, and fire-engine red, this little number was pretty much guaranteed to push all of young Mister Whitman's buttons - or at least, all the right ones.

I hadn't expected that I'd be premiering it for exactly this occasion when I bought it, but life does keep things surprising sometimes. Slipping into the skimpy excuse for a robe, I straightened it out once over myself once at the mirror, then sat carefully down amidst my covers and picked up the framed picture of the two of us from prom.

Tapping my finger against the side of the picture with Alex in it, I could get a clear sensation from him immediately, which was more than a little unusual, but nice. He was... he wasn't dreaming yet, but I was pretty sure that he was asleep and moving subtly towards REM sleep, which is something that I've never been able to tell before when trying to dreamwalk someone. I guess he and I really are getting close to the same 'wave-length' now, huh??

And then, somehow, I realized that I could begin to set the stage for the dream before Alex even began dreaming it, if I wanted to!!

-------

He opened the door and stepped through, looking around the room. It was a big room... blue mood lighting around the moulding and balconies and elegant furniture and it suddenly occured to me that I had based it, at least in part, on the gorgeous stateroom in the presidential suite in Vegas.

Instantly I hoped that that wouldn't be a bad association for Alex -- being that I'd, you know, danced with and kissed another guy in that room. Well, I danced with Alex before we left Vegas, didn't we? The fact was, it had simply been the first thing I thought of for an elegant, romantic setting.

For the moment, though, Alex didn't seem to care about the room in particular. "What on... Isabel??"

"Yeah." I stood up from the bed... a giant king-size brass bed festooned in silk and fleece. Alex walked toward me, letting the door swing closed behind him, his eyes tracing every curve in my body, those covered, (barely,) by the chemise and those left completely bare. I shivered from the intensity of his stare. Alex himself was just wearing a t-shirt and dockers, but looking at him made me feel weak in the knees.

"Is this... are you really here??" he whispered, stepping closer and stretching his hand out, ever so slowly, as if he were afraid to try touching me for fear his hand would pass right through.

I grabbed his hand in both of mine. "I'm not sure that *here* is anywhere real, but I'm with you," I told him honestly. "That's all that counts, isn't it?? I'm really me, and you're really you."

He looked around again, and brought up his other hand to gently stroke my cheek. "Dream walking?"

"What do YOU think?" I laughed at him. "May I have this dance?"

"There's no music playing."

"Like that ever stopped us before." He opened his arms, and I stepped into his embrace, pressing myself closely against him, nestling my chin on his shoulder contentedly. "I just wanted to be with you so bad... I'm going to be there with you tomorrow, I know, but I couldn't wait. And there's a lot of fun we can have, I bet, in a dream."

"Yeah, I know," he agreed. "But this is great for now," He rubbed a hand against the bare skin at the top of my back, between the shoulders, and the touch of his skin was making me tingle and itch to the tips of my toes. "'...she's callin' my name again.'" The words seemed to surround me in a soft, semi-melodic baritone whisper, so indistinct that I couldn't tell if Alex was singing or they were coming from somewhere else. "'Days breaking, I ain't waking up; I'm sleeping in...'"

I tried to look at Alex's face, but I couldn't without pulling away from him, which I didn't want to do. However, I realized that by moving my head over a little, I could put my ear in contact with his throat, and I picked up the vibrations right away. It was definitely coming from him. "'I'm on a roll now, I gotta know how this dream ends...'"

"What's that??" I asked him softly. "'Snice,"

"Ohh, ummm..." He seemed embarassed that I had commented on the song. "'Dream walking.' I tend to think of that every time your... your talent becomes the topic of conversation. But I don't want to think about it right now, really."

"Why not??"

"It's a sad song... the girl left the guy after a one-night stand and he can't get her out of his head. That's not you, or us."

"No, it isn't," I said, pulling back just enough to look at him. "Come to bed, honey."

We got set up on the huge bed, and kissed, and necked, and groped... the usual stuff, though being in a dream made all of it seem new and exciting. My arm kind of bumped into the vicinity of Alex's crotch as I was trying to get a good grip on one of his hips and slipped on the silk sheets, and in the seconds after that accidental contact I realized that there had been quite a bulky something right there in the front of his pants... long and kind of thick and detinitely twitchy.

As Alex started to massage my breasts through the silk fabric I was wearing, paying particular attention to the area around my nipples... "Oh yeah, lover boy, RIGHT there..." I realized I was losing the battle against a particular naughty notion. This was an opportunity to cross boundaries that we weren't ready to breach face to face -- because it wasn't quite real. I hadn't made up my mind exactly how far I wanted to try pushing things yet, but this seemed like a good way of getting things going without scaring him off.

I pushed Alex back gently and went for the zipper of his pants, fumbling slightly as I opened it and unfastened the single button at his waist. He realized what I was doing then and seemed a little nervous and reluctant, but he didn't stop me. With the fly of his pants undone, the bulge was even more prominent, tenting his white cotton briefs, and I unhooked those from the obstruction and pulled them down.

His thing was... well, I have to be honest and say it was a little funny-looking at first glance. Sorry!! But... well, it *fit* him. It was exactly the dick I'd want Alex to have, if that makes any sense. And, as I had noticed earlier... certainly not too small!!

I reached out and, carefully, touched it. Laid my hand across it. "How's that?" I asked softly. "You like it??"

"Ohhhh... no complaints so far, I have to admit," he mumbled, stroking my hair with one hand and pushing his pants down a little with the help of the other... (and some hip movements, which had the side effect of moving his cock around under my hand - at least, I initially THOUGHT that was an unintended side effect. The way he grinned at me afterwards left me not so sure.)

Trying hard to recall some helpful details from the racier stories I've read on the internet... (hey, I was curious,) I started to rub him rhythmically. Concentrate on the head... not too hard... Not having any direct experience with male equipment, I tried to apply what I'd learned from -- well, you know. Taking care of business myself. Not sure if Alex was just humoring me, but it seemed to work. It suddenly struck me that I was, almost literally, a succubus. A dream spirit, seducing my man as he slept.

"Oh, my g... I'm gonna... I'm gonna come," he gasped out. Alex's whole body was starting to shake, and there was... I'm not quite sure what, a sudden spasm or something, and he let out a deep groan, and a spurt of white stuff came shooting out of his dick, some of it sticking to my fingers, and the rest of it landing somewhere on the sheets. Good thing neither of us has to wash them, I thought with a mental giggle.

"Wow, that was..." I mumbled, a little surprised by the suddenness of it. Alex's rod was still stiff under my hand, but not throbbing as much, and starting to soften just a little around the edges.

He pushed up and kissed me. "You are incredible," he whispered. "Are you sure you're not just a dream??"

I laughed at that, and he bore me down, his tongue massaging mine and... and all of a sudden the dream was starting to collapse. "Aww, hell, don't fall into deep sleep on me now," I mumbled, but it was too late. In bare minutes I was back in my own bed, home in Roswell, and more than a little hot and bothered.

Alex must have gone out of REM sleep... slipping into a lower brainwave pattern in which I couldn't reach him. The fact that I'd gotten him off might have been a contributing factor. Oh well, I just hoped that he'd remember it in the morning, and appreciate it. As for myself... I rummaged around a moment and pulled out a little battery-operated gizmo from the box that I'd extremely carefully packed it away in.

TO BE CONTINUED...
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
Read my other roswell stories!

"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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Chrisken
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 14
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'


(Michael):

I'm not quite sure how long I lay there with my eyes closed. "You awake, Michael??"

I smiled, though I doubted that anyone could see it. "Yep."

"Feel like getting up?"

"No I do not!"

We lay like that a little longer. Maybe I should clarify now that the other voice was Maria's, (though you probably guessed as much.) I had drifted up from sleep to semi-wakefulness with one arm draped around the woman that I loved, and I definitely reccomend that as a way to wake up. We were in her bed, just a little twin-sized so it was a kinda tight fit -- but the company more than made up for any feeling of being cramped.

"This is getting to be something of a pleasant habit," she said in a still-sleepy voice.

"Which part?" I asked her, chuckling, but didn't get any response to that.

Instead, after about a minute, she yawned, and wriggled around a bit delightfully, and spoke again sounding considerably more awake than we just had. "So, how many was that?"

I thought a second. "Three more notches for the fuck-meter. What's the obsession with keeping count anyway?" I regretted how cranky that sounded as soon as it was out - as if I were getting on her case about it. I'd felt the odd impulse to keep track of the numbers myself, but wasn't sure if I understood the notion or where it came from.

"Dunno," Maria replied, splendidly unconcerned. "Gotta admit, though, that consideing we've had other things to do and couldn't stay in a bedroom the whole time, ten times total in fifty-five odd hours isn't a bad record. It reflects well on you, buddy, so don't knock it." I had to laugh at that.

"Plus some stuff that doesn't really count," I added, and let out a low, satisfied moan myself. "You sure your mom isn't going to be back here soon?" The question came suddenly, as I recalled the last time I had been lying on this bed with Maria, and the huge broohaha that had resulted. This time, Maria wouldn't have been able to make the same claims that we weren't having sex and so forth.

"Nope." Maria shook her head and her hair brushed back and forth along my chest as I lay on my side, spooning her. "She set up everything very carefully so that she could go from the Valenti's place directly to work."

"Ahhh." That was another big development, and the reason that Maria and I were able to spend all night together at her place, of couse... that, and the fact that Sean was on a short road trip by himself before his classes at the college started in a few days. For a while, pretty much since the engagement began, according to Maria, her mother and Jim Valenti had obviously wanted to spend the night together, but been nervous about the signal they would be sending to their various kids and dependents.

Apparently something else had trumped nervousness.

"Remind me to thank Jim for giving us some time alone too," I joked quietly. We'd had the opportunity for a nice intimate dinner, a DVD... (Highlander... the original one,) a little talking about nothing in particular, and dancing together in the living room before coming up to Maria's room... quite an involved date, all without leaving the house. (I've learned a few things in the past year.)

"It was fun," I muttered out loud, and Maria tried to turn around and look at me, which wasn't easy with the way I was holding her, and I didn't want to have to let go. "No, no," I whispered into her ear, and she settled down. I hadn't meant to say that out loud, but now obviously I owed her an explanation. "Spending time with you, last night. Having it not just be about the bada-bing, or whatever."

"You sure about that, boy?" she whispered huskily, and shifted position slightly. The roundness of her breast made contact with the fingers of my right hand, under the covers, and we could both feel those fingers tremble and my cock respond with a good solid twitch of appreciation, practically jammed between us as it was in this position. (Come to think of it, I'd been lying there, with my crotch nearly pressed up against Maria's soft behind, and I hadn't even really noticed it until now. Who'd have thought it??)

"I'm not saying that... *this,*" I reached around quickly to tweak her nipple, while bucking my hips against her and savoring the pleased gasp, "isn't great, but I want to do more." I thought about that a moment. "Something that's fun, and non-sexual, in public." My hand, which had slowly been tracking up Maria's skin towards the vicinity of her head, swept back a lock of her hair and I planted a kiss on her ear. "Any suggestions??"

"Hmmm... let me think about it." Maria managed to roll herself towards me so that she was on her back, (I backed away a little to keep her from ending up on top of me,) and brought my head down to hers for a good-morning kiss. "Right now I think it's time to get up."

I didn't object as she sat up, as naked as the day she was born, (though a whole lot sexier,) and started searching un-self-consciously for the lingerie that I had stripped off of her carefully, but with a considerable amount of energy last night. The skimpy purple lace babydoll nightgown had ended up hanging on the corner of the bookcase, while the matching bikini panties had ended up on the inside windowsill. Shrugging a bit to herself, Maria put them back on, then crossed the room to her dresser. "Do you remember the phone ringing??" As she picked up the cordless handset, I could see that its red light was blinking regularly.

"As a matter of fact, yeah, though I'm not quite sure when," I muttered. Maria dialed in quickly, listened a little bit, took a look at the clock, then hung up.

"Max wants to talk to both of us, something important, but he won't be back home until the end of the afternoon. You can listen for yourself after."

I thought about that for a second. "After what??"

Maria hit me with her most tempting stare. She knew how much of a -- *provocative* effect this outfit had had on me last night... and it still did. I stood up slowly, taking my opportunity to admire the view... that mane of caramel-brown hair cascading down about her shoulders and upper back, hazel eyes shooting into me like a ray gun, the subtly exotic and lovely lines of her face... the cheekbones, her chin... those soft and richly red lips. The smooth skin and contours of her collarbones, her shoulders, her arms -- the soft and deeply inviting skin or her cleavage, the firm and globular outlines of her breasts inadequately covered by purple fabric, the triangular patch of sleek and toned stomach revealed by the way the babydoll was designed to fall away underneath...

"Okay, you're right," she teased, knowing she had my full attention. "We should do something simple together. Reconnect with our PG roots. Maybe hit Stanley Hill?" That was a local recreation park with go-kart racing, bumper cars, batting cages, and a shooting gallery. I could see a glint in Maria's eyes... presumably as she saw me smile at the idea.

"Okay, now that that's settled... let's get down to business."

"What, again??" I said, shaking my head, as tempted as I was.

"Oh, spaceboy my spaceboy..." She jumped to me and french-kissed my mouth vehemently. "As you might be able to tell, I'm not satisfied yet."

I grinned wickedly. "Then lie down." Somewhat dubiously, she stretched out on her back on the bed, and I teased her bikini bottoms back off. "Get ready, because I'm not about to stop until you're screaming my name." I knelt down at the foot of the bed and kissed one of her long, soft, luscious legs, starting at the knee and working my way up.

-------

(Isabel):

I sighed loudly, watching the desert scenery pass by without much enthusiasm. Travelling this route twice over on Saturday... once in this direction, and once the other way, had killed the novelty fast. Once I'd settled in at Las Cruces, I wondered how long it would be before I actually *wanted* to drive home... and whether some unearthly emergency would force me to make the trip before then.

Kyle shot me a dirty look. "Sorry," I remarked without too much conviction. "Up late last night, big day, all of that..." I trailed off uncertainly.

"Hey, I don't really mind I guess," Kyle put in. "Little distracting maybe, but you can breathe however ya want to."

Okay. "By the way, Kyle, thanks for volunteering to this."

"Nah, it's no big. Actually, to tell you the truth, I'm glad enough for an excuse to stay out of Roswell all day today."

"Well, that's g..." My boilerplate response got cut off as I thought about what Kyle just said. "Come again??"

He didn't repeat himself... instead he stayed silent for a moment and took a deep breath. "I quit my job yesterday."

I gasped in surprise. "Really? Why??"

"Uhh." He shrugged awkwardly. "Not really sure. Toby was getting on my case again, about how he didn't have to listen to what an assistant mechanic had to say and to just stick to de-clogging the injectors... which maybe I should have. But I started talking back, and he yelled at me, and it got a bit to the shouting stage before I just stormed off."

"Wow," I blinked in surprise.

"Yeah. I was going to go back and apologize... and if I had he'd probably have kept me on... god knows he'll be short on hands without me. But I bumped into my dad while I was still stewing about it, and he talked me out of going back. Said we'd get along somehow. Hell, he went down and managed to talk mister Sour-wrench into coughing up my back pay, so that's pretty much that."

"Okay," I said after a moment. "Well, I know you weren't wild about working there... things may be a little scary, but -- Why exactly does that mean you want to stay out of Roswell??"

"Well, neither Tess nor Mrs. DeLuca were really wild about the news," he said in a low voice. "Haven't heard if the news made it to Maria yet, but I'm not at all sure she'd be thrilled either."

"Yeah, I can understand that," I mentioned. "On the other hand... you carry the weight for as long as you can and then you set it down. That's all that you can do and it sounds like that's what you did. YOur father is right -- this isn't a disaster."

"I know," he agreed. "Just waiting for that notion to catch on. And, of course, now I need to decide what I'm doing with my summer." He thought about that for a moment. "Hey, maybe I can take summer classes too - at the community college or something. Hell, if they'll take juvie-boy!!" He weighed that notion for a moment, then put it aside. "But that's enough talking about me. You excited??"

"Oh, of course!!" I said. "Little nervous too... I've never been away from... well, from everything for more than a few days. My parents, Roswell, Max, the house." I stopped to reconsider that. "Well, there was riding camp I guess, but that was years ago." Before Liz and Alex and the others had found out about us -- man, that seemed like it had been centuries.

"You'll be fine, you brought half of your house along," Kyle joked. "And Alex is there too... I think the two of you will make each other feel at home somehow."

That line hung awkwardly for a second, and I blurted out, "Kyle, do you wish... oh, never mind."

I wondered if he would ask me to complete the question, but he didn't. Somewhat to my surprise, he completed it himself. "Do I wish I had someone special like you and Alex have each other??" He shot a quick glance over as if to ask 'was that your question??' and I attempted a combination nod and shrug to try and communicated 'pretty much/close enough.'

"Of course I do... how can I not? They may say you never find true love in high school, but I know better. Watching all of you guys over this past year... Michael and Maria, for all that they bicker and tease each other, a blind man could see that there's a lot of love there. Even Max and Liz got their act together... and maybe you and Alex are the luckiest of all."

"You've got such an amazing connection, free of the subtle power plays and self-deluding selfishness-es, you can just exchange a glance and completely understand each other. And I don't think either of you realize just how rare that is." He sighed. "For a while, I was wondering if Tess was my natural partner, but whatever there is between us, it isn't that. I love her a lot, but I don't feel the passion... the natural attraction. The fact that she's a smokin' hottie notwithstanding."

"Don't worry about it," I told him. "You'll find Miss Right one day -- probably when you least expect it. Love's funny like that." I looked around and saw a sign. "You wanna grab something to eat, and let me take over driving for a while?"

"Sure... I could stand going to the bathroom too," he put in.

-------

The rest of the drive down passed without much incident. Kyle and I chatted about a lot of things... Tess, and Max and Liz, and the wedding plans, which were apparently starting to get nailed down a little more. Jim and Amy had set a tentative date - August the twenty-fifth, the last Saturday of the summer. Not too long away, just about two and a half months, but neither of them really saw any reason for an extended engagement I guess. Amy had started to call around about locations and other arrangements for that day.

I had escaped being asked to serve as bridesmaid, if you wanted to look at it that way... Tess had been tapped, as a semi-daughter of the new Valenti/DeLuca family, and Liz, who had been almost like a second daughter to Amy ever since she and Maria had become friends, it seemed. Max would be joining Kyle as an groomsman.

We had run out of topic though, and were playing I spy and the license plate game when the Las Cruces city limits snuck up on us and turned me into a bit of a nervous wreck again. Let's see, what else... finding my dorm, meeting the Orientations advisor who was on duty for new students arriving this week, getting shown my room... in a suite with four other girls, oh joy. (My parents went over the various housing options available and picked one out, with no arguments.)

We were halfway done moving stuff in when my mobile phone rang, which made me drop my makeup case onto the stair three in front of me. I'm not normally that clumsy or jumpy, but... I wasn't expecting it, for some reason. Didn't even know who it would be when I muffled the curse on my lips and activated the talk button.

"Hey, sweetie. How close are you??"

I shook me head - I was *supposed* to have been waiting for the phone to ring, after all. It was Alex. "Pretty close - I'm standing in the stairwell of Kellerman hall - was moving some stuff into the room."

"What, already?"

"It's..." I frowned and looked at my watch. "It's after eleven thirty, and we got on the road as soon as we could."

"Oh, okay. Say hi to Max for me." Whoops - had I not mentioned in the email last night that it wasn't Max who would be driving me up? Well, I didn't feel like getting into that right now.

"So... lunch! Can you make it??"

"Things have been crazy here, but I should be able to get away in a little bit. Say... twelve fifteen??"

"Okay," I agreed instantly. "Should be all done unpacking by then. Where do I meet you?"

"How about right where we met last time?" he suggested. "The courtyard outside the dining hall across from the library?"

"I remember," I said, hoping that I could find my bearings enough to locate it easily from here. "How's things going?"

"Ehh, not that great," he sighed. "Tell you more when I see you." And he made an adorable kissing sound into the phone, which I tried to repeat, and then he hung up.

It wasn't too long before Kyle and I had gotten everything into my room; unpacking the boxes etcetera would take longer, but I didn't plan to worry about it immediately. "What'll you do now?" I asked Kyle.

"Ahh, since your brother doesn't really need his wheels back, I may go into town or something," he said. "Don't worry about me, I'll find something to do - and I don't plan on sticking around right here."

"I don't - worry," I quipped, and he took off. I checked my watch. Still about twenty minutes until I was supposed to meet Alex. I wandered about, getting the lay of the little suite. Short hallway, four small bedrooms along one side. On the other, an open living room/lounge type space and a small kitchenette, one more bedroom, and two bathrooms. "Hi," a redhaired girl said, stepping out from the furthest bedroom door from the main entry into the suite. "You're in B?"

"Uh, yeah," I agreed. That had been my designation... the second room over on the back side, pretty much opposite the kitchenette. "Isabel Evans. And you?"

"Marcie Stuart," she said, shaking my hand. "I enrolled late last year and got locked out of a few of my prerequisites, so I'm sticking around to take them now so I'm not behind going into sophomore. And you??"

Ahh, I nodded, deciphering that. Marcie had already been through her freshman year, then. "I graduated from high school a little early, and I'm taking a few courses... well, to find out if I'm really ready for college, I guess, as much as anything."

"Ahhh." Marcie nodded, evaluating this. "Who's the guy who was helping you move in? Boyfriend??"

"You noticed him?" I asked. "Why didn't you introduce... ahhh." I was starting to guess the answer.

"What, and get asked to carry things myself? Didn't feel like it." She laughed softly, and somehow I didn't get the impression that she was selfish, just... I'm not sure what, actually. Not sure if I'd have volunteered to help out a total stranger in a similar circumstance, though I might have a chance to find out, with at least two members of the suite apparently yet to arrive.

"No, that isn't my boyfriend, just a friend who didn't have anything much to do today and volunteered to drive my brother's Jeep back home to Roswell."

Marcie nodded, taking that in. "But there *is* a boyfriend in the picture?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"Staying back home in Roswell while you fly free on campus?"

I laughed softly. "Actually, he's been here a few days already. He's a genius and he's working on this computer research project."

Her eyes widened in sincere astonishment. "Well, now that's a twist I didn't expect. High-school sweethearts, away from their parents for the whole summer..." She looked at me apprasingly. "Did you know he'd be here when you applied for classes?"

"Can't put anything over on you," I said, a little ambivalently.

"Well, you won't get any trouble from me. I've got an on-campus boyfriend myself... well, he isn't actually on-campus at the moment, but close enough. It sucks that these suites are not exactly well laid-out for entertaining..."

"I think that might be the point," I muttered under my breath. "From what I've seen of Alex's room, I'll probably be spending a lot of time over there -- no offense."

"None taken - where is he?"

"Ummm..." I tried to remember the detail. "Rhodes hall, fourth floor, east wing, north side."

"Oh, yeah, those aren't bad, compared to this place at least. So, d'you wanna go take a bit of a walk around?"

I looked at my watch again, out of pure reflex or something because I *knew* I didn't have time for that. "Rain check, okay? I gotta jet."

"Ahh." Marcie smiled. "Gotcha. Well, I'll walk part of the way with you, at least, if that's okay. Kinda bored."

"Sure," I agreed. Marcie yattered about what her own first days had been like all the way down the stairs and down the path... she seemed a nice girl, very friendly... a little nosy, but I was sure that I'd learn a lot about campus life from her tales. (Needed to be careful about using my powers in the suite, of course, but that pretty much went without saying.)

We parted company outside the library, and I waited. And waited. Twelve fifteen crept by without any sign of Alex, and then twelve-eighteen. I growled and sat down at a table, as if not looking would make him appear any faster.

The next time I checked, the stratagem seemed to have worked!!

-------

(Alex):

"Mister Whitman!!" Doctor Pryor called out. I looked up. "Would you do us the favor of giving your code a final review?"

Final review. Luis had warned me about this. It was mostly symbolic... to give my algorithm a full and detailed review would take hours at the very least... far longer than anyone here wanted to wait. I was just supposed to give the logic a cursory check and go over the compiler options with a little more care. I bent over the screen and scrolled, trying not to think about the roomfull of men and women waiting on me. "Umm... looks good as far as I can see, yes."

"Very well then. Mister Ramirez, you may compile when ready." Luis grinned and tapped in 'make' on the keyboard and hit the enter key. I could tell that Doctor Pryor was making a bit of a grandstand out of this whole scene... and nobody seemed to mind. It livened things up a bit, though it was also making me kinda nervous.

"Very well." I guess Luis must have nodded while I wasn't paying attention, signalling that the compile process had completed. Pryor riffled through a short stack of old-fashioned microfloppies sitting on the table next to him and selected one, which he handed to Luis, who put it into the workstation he was sitting at, which was, in turn, connected to the main Quantum computer. Luis began copying a file off the floppy to the server hard drive.

"What's on the disk?" I asked softly... I'd been talking to Luis, but it was Doctor Pryor who answered.

"One of our most challenging source samples yet... a passage from a well-known novel translated into a rare language that the computer knows nothing about. None of our routines have been able to figure this one out yet."

"And that's the first test you're putting my algorithm to?" I asked softly.

"We think your code's up to it... assuming that we've got the interfacings right," Luis put in. "File has finished copying. Ready to begin processing... full debug and monitoring options?"

Pryor looked at me as if expecting *me* to answer the question. "Of... of course," I managed to blurt out.

Luis finished typing in the rest of the command and nodded to someone else... a brown-haired woman not too much older than I was, who was sitting at a different workstation. Colorful graphics and lists sprang up on her display... presumably the monitoring of the execution process as it continued. Around the four of us were five other men and women, mostly in their late twenties to mid thirties and considerably north of a master's degree.

All kinds of questions were running through my mind. How long should something like this take? If something went wrong, what would be the first sign? I wanted to ask Luis, but felt inhibited by all of the very educated people standing around.

When the first sign came, it was a little orange-ish box that popped up simultaneously on both display screens, and I leaned in close to look at it. "Unhandled severe exception raised from within quantum multiprocessing code block... recognizeMatch dot qc, unit deriveFracional, line nineteen." Unhandled exception... basically meant that a function in the program had come up with an error condition that none of the error-handling routines could tell what to do with. Luis clicked a button, and another list of program lines appeared indicating the chain of software units that exception had bubbled up through.

A muted sigh swept through the room. "Do the two of you think you can solve this little hiccup quickly," one of the senior researchers on the project asked, "or should we adjourn until further notice?" He had been indicating Luis and I.

"Just a second, sir, I'll be able to tell better once I call up the source code reference," Luis put in. Soon enough the relevant file popped up in a user-friendly text editor and he paged immediately down to the correct point. "Whatcha think Alex?" I scanned the lines of computer instructions, but under the pressure of the moment they made no sense to me at all.

"Hmmmm..." The girl from the other workstation had come up and was looking at the source code too. "What was the exception description, Luis?" He tapped a button and brought it up. "What if you change that call to ShiftArrayLeft into SliceArrayLeft? If your recursion depths are getting above oh, three hundred, that could explain the error."

"We'll have to abort and begin over for that," Luis muttered, "but it's the best suggestion I've heard all day. Whitman?"

I blinked furiously, trying to concentrate. "Yeah, sounds worth a shot," I muttered. Luis began working expertly at the keyboard, first aborting the program run from the exception dialog box, then making the change that had been suggested... modifying a library reference directive to compensate for that, and adjusting a few minor bookkeeping commands in other units from the same module, and one in a different module. Then he recompiled, fixed a spelling error he had made and recompiled again, and began setting up the same problem for the new version of our software to solve.

It seemed to work... at least, no aggravating dialog boxes popped up at around the same time as the other one had. After about five minutes, the girl, (whose name I had to ask about,) reported that systems were entering deep processing mode and everything seemed fine."

"Let's give it forty-five minutes and then take lunch," Pryor suggested. "If anything goes wrong, it'll probably happen within that window." I smiled, and asked if I could step out quickly to use the pay phones.

I called Isabel... was a little surprised to find out it was so late in the morning and she had already shown up on campus, but that was good! I made a lunch date with her and hurried back inside. Things were pretty quiet, and I stepped up to the monitoring console, where the girl was clicking with a mouse here and there, looking at progress statistics.

"Hi," I said softly. "I know we've been introduced, but I have to admit I've forgotten your name."

"It's okay, things must have been so crazy over the past few days I'm surprised you remember your own," she pointed out. "Kristin White."

"Nice to meet you, again," I said with a soft laugh. "So, how're we doing??"

"Quantum multi-processing is running a chunk slower than anticipated," she muttered. "I think we're not getting full carry-through of the global/local activation frames, so ever once in a while the quantum processors are having to go back and query main memory. That's not good, but I kinduv expected it. Your algorithm isn't particularly light-weight, Mister Whitman."

"Any idea how much it's going to slow down processing?" I asked.

"Assuming it doesn't get much worse, only a few hours, which isn't that bad if you can offer us a decent increase in solubility."

"Wow, you really know your stuff," I had to admit. "Mind if I ask how far through the department you are? You don't look as old as... well, as Luis, for instance."

She laughed at that. "Good thing! I've just finished my junior year in the undergraduate program, focusing on low-level programming languages and recursive structure design. I was able to do an independent study assignment on Doctor Pryor's work in the fall semester last year, and I guess he was impressed enough to offer me this research placement... though quite a lot has changed in the project just since December. But you... a junior in HIGH school, coming up with this algorithm out of the blue - everyone's talking about it over the whole department. How did you even find out about this stuff??"

Oooh... had to play down the curiosity factor, keep a low profile, much as I might like to enjoy the attention - it wouldn't be good for Isabel or the others, or maybe for myself as far as that went. "A friend found some stuff on the web about Doctor Pryor's work and passed it on to me, knowing that I'm a bit of a computer nut myself. Coming up with the code fragment was just a sheer fluke - I still really have no idea where it came from."

Kristin shrugged, a little, and then went back to her station.

There wasn't much else that happened while I was waiting to get off for break... everyone was a little disappointed at the slowdown that Kristin had remarked on, but interested in completing the test anyway (which would probably take until late that evening at the rates being mentioned.) One of the grad students started talking to me about self-contained data dictionaries, and I did my best to follow it.

Finally we adjourned, except for Luis, who had brought some food in an insulated lunch bag and was quite prepared to monitor the connection until everyone else got back. I dashed out of the lab, stopped at a drinking fountain to get a handful of water and use it on my hair, smoothing it back and trying to straighten it, and then dashing off towards the library. The session hadn't quite let out on time, and Isabel would probably be waiting for me already.

I ran out of the computer science building heading in the wrong direction, of course.

By the time I finally got there, I spotted the cascade of golden blonde hair first, slightly wavy today, as she sat down at a table facing away from me. Was she upset?? It was hard to tell without seeing her face.

Just as I was about to call Isabel's name, she turned to look over her shoulder and saw me, and her eyes lit up. She was grinning by the time she stood up and faced me, spreading her arms wide.

For a long moment, I was too stunned to move... the way her body had moved as she had risen to her feet, the slight wave in her hair... it all reminded me of a pretty racy dream I'd had about her last night -- one that I'd completely forgotten until now. And then it hit me... had I dreamed Isabel or had Isabel walked into my dream again??

There was no way to ask her about it right now, here in public. But for a long instant more I was completely caught up in remembered sense impressions... the way a tiny scrap of red silk had clung to the incredible lines of her body and teased me by leaving forbidden flesh uncovered, the way her voluptuous fram had fit so well in my arms as we danced alone, the nervous tremble in her voice as she invited me into the bed, the fain scent of perfume and pheromone coming from her excited cleavage...

The pleasure her soft and supple fingers could bring...

I shook out of the trance with an incredible effort and hugged Isabel, the present-and-real Isabel standing in front of me, hello. "Come on," I mumbled, trying to keep the excitement in my pants from being too noticeable to either her or anyone else as I kept an arm slung around her shoulder and led her away. "I know the perfect place."

It was only after we were forty feet away from the courtyard that I realized maybe I should have sat down there with her and tried to let the memories from the dream fade a little first. Oh well.

"You're a little late, not that I'm upset," Isabel said, quickly disclaiming herself. "Anything go wrong?"

"Not really... there was a bungled exception, but we restarted," I explained airily, suddenly hoping that that change hadn't somehow subtly ruined the logic. No-one would be too impressed with me if the Quantum 3 was tied up all day running this test, only to end up with gibberish at the end of it. Well, there wasn't anything to be done about that now -- and even so, it wasn't like I'd get booted off the project immediately, I was sure. There'd be an opportunity to work with some of the junior members... Luis and Kristin maybe, and hopefully correct the mistake. "It'll take about eight hours to find out if the test worked, though."

"Really - that long??"

"Deciphering languges is really complicated," I told her. "Even with the most powerful computers ever developed, it takes time. So... how're you doing? Considering how early you must have gotten up for packing and driving... and unpacking too, you look incredible!"

That was true enough... if I didn't mentally compare her to the outfit she was wearing in the dream, of course, which still wasn't a good idea. She was wearing a black short-sleeved thin T-sweater kind of top, which left a bit of midriff and her belly button visible, tight designer jeans, and low-heel boots, kinda cowboy-ish but not really cowboy boots. Tiny yellow jewels dangled from her earlobes, and she wore only a single ring - a plain gold band with a deep groove running all the way around it, nearly splitting it into two ridges. I'd seen her wearing that before but wasn't sure if it had any special significance.

"Flattery will get you... well, far enough to be interesting," she teased. We chatted more along the way past the student union, about her trip up, (turned out it was Kyle who had driven her up, because Max had had something come up at the last minute,) and latest developments on Amy DeLuca's wedding. I just listened, not having any news that seemed particularly interesting to share.

I almost missed the door, standing as it did plain and unmarked on the outside of a red-walled building. "Come on." It opened when I turned the knob, and I led Isabel into the tiny, darkly-lit french bistro that Luis had told me about. "I think you'll like this place."

TO BE CONTINUED...
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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Chrisken
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 15
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'


(Liz):

"Order up on eight!" The voice calling out from the kitchen wasn't any of the usual cooks... actually it was my father, who didn't usually get so hands on, but he was pitching in today because we were short-staffed this week... and maybe next week, as far as that went.

"Eight, hello??" Dad poked his head through the window and craned it, looking around. I was just finishing getting the drinks for table three poured at the soda fountain. "Where's Brenda?" he asked.

"Uhhh... I think she had to leave," I pointed out a little nervously. "It's more than ten after one."

Jeff Parker shook his head in frustration. "And still no sign of Maria *or* Michael?"

"They'll probably show up any moment," I told him hopefully, balancing all the drinks on a tray in one hand and grabbing the freshly deep-fried food off the kitchen window with the other.

"Well, thanks honey." He flashed an apologetic look at me, realizing I would be running myself ragged trying to cover all the bases until Maria punched in. "Don't... uh, don't wait too long to take an order on table one."

"I know," I told him, and took off to deliver my load.

The cold drinks for table three went first. I was just wondering who had ordered the saturn rings and chili rocket dog when I spotted her at table eight. Tess. Brenda had taken her order before she had to leave, and I hadn't even seen Tess Harding walk into the room, or noticed her sitting alone in the booth.

"Enjoy your meal," I said, putting the plate down in front of her.

"Oh, hi Liz!" she said, looking up in surprise. "Wh-- what happened to..." She apparently decided not to complete that question. "Thank you. How're you doing??"

"Crazed," I told her, waving bye as I left, picking up someone's money and taking it to the cash to ring it through. "When are you going to hire some help?" I asked towards the vicinity of the kitchen. "The doctor said that Agnes won't be able to stand on that leg for four months, Clara was in her car and heading for Florida the minute she got her West Roswell High diploma, and Jose started today in Senor Chao's kitchen." I was feeling more than a little bitter about that one... Jose had been working for my parents for years, and Chao's (Max's and my special place, at that,) had stolen him away with a bigger paycheck and a chance to run their big fancy kitchen. "Plus, this is on its way to being our busiest summer in five years... that is, if everybody doesn't get tired of the erratic..." I cut off the rant at that point.

"Yeah, I know, I know honey. We're looking for people, but it takes a little time." He passed out a Sigourney Weaver with space fries and a Plutonium platter, and I delivered those to table three, took an order for table one, filled up a few water glasses, and by the time I was back, there was a brown paper bag and plastic drink glass sitting on the counter.

"What's this??"

"Delivery order," he said, carefully flipping some burgers.

I was stunned speechless for a second. "But... things are CRAZY in here!" I pointed out, just as a reminder. "We don't DO delivery, as a general thing, and..."

He stepped up to the window and took my hand through it. "Liz... everything's gonna be okay. Maria just called, she and Michael are a minute and a half away. Once Michael gets set up in the kitchen, I can help Maria cover tables until you get back."

I smiled. "But..."

"This is for a very important customer," he said, waving at the bag and supressing a wink with an effort. His eyes were twinkling with some unsaid joke. "Could you run it over for me? It's just across the street."

I looked into his face for a moment, then picked up the bag. "Okay. Back in a minute." Very important customer? I tried to ignore anybody who might be trying to signal me as I slipped out the door.

Just across the street... who could it be? Brody?? I checked the address on the little slip stapled to the bag - yeah, it was the UFO center all right. Since when was Brody a very important customer? I mean, yeah, okay, Maria often ran Galaxy subs over to him, especially last year... and he did try to tip her a hundred dollars that one time, yeah, but she gave it back.

It was only after I was heading up the stairs to Brody's office in the center that I actually noticed the slip read 'Max Evans.'

Well, since I hadn't seen Max around anywhere else, I poked my head into the office anyway, and there he was, sitting behind the desk at the computer. "Someone order a Will Smith, Alien blast and... chili orbit rings??"

He looked up at me and smiled that incredible smile. "Hey baby." An instant's pause, and then, "What's wrong??"

Huh... I hadn't realized that my frustration was showing so clearly on my face. "Oh, nothing big... just busy across the street. We're short on hands."

Max's face fell in guilt. "Oh my god, I didn't even think of that... and I asked for you to run it over. I'm really sorry!"

"It's okay," I assured him. "I'm covered... for a few minutes at least." I stepped over, putting the food down on a corner of the desk far from the computer, and signaled Max up with a small gesture. Slipped an arm around and kissed him softly on the lips. "And being with you, even if only for a minute, has an incredible way of recharging my batteries." He grinned and kissed me back for a second. "Would you mind if I went for the grub now? Sorry, but *totally* famished."

I had to laugh at the way that he asked. "Go right ahead." He pushed past, every fiber of my being aware of the contact for a second, and pulled a folding chair up to the far side of the desk, unpacking the paper bag. Somewhat uncertainly, I sat down in the big chair - I would have to be leaving in another two or three minutes, before Max was done eating. Max looked over at me.

"Oooh, you probably better not look at that..." he waved vaguely at the off button on the monitor, and with a little poor grace I flicked it.

"So, how long are you going to be sealed up in here?" I asked. "I thought you were supposed to be driving Isabel up to Las Cruces today anyway.

"Kyle took over for me," Max said apologetically after finishing his first bite of burger. "As far as how long I'll be sealed in here -- until I get up to speed with all of these files... and possibly longer, brainstorming with Brody. After that, we may be all over the place." He must have seen my face fall. "Don't worry - there isn't anything on this earth more important to me than you. There'll be time for us."

I tried to plaster a smile on my face. "Yeah. Of course." And yet, a little voice in my head pointed out, if I was Max's highest priority, why hadn't he asked me before accepting this mysterious assignment that sure seemed like it'd be keeping him pretty busy?

I forced that thought back and had another, more constructive one. Maybe I should find something else to do this summer, that I can occupy myself with while Max is chasing hither and yon.

I couldn't tell if Max was aware of any of what I was thinking, but he reached out and grabbed my hand. "Are you off work tomorrow night?"

"Uhh... yeah," I agreed, hoping that the schedule wouldn't change.

"I'll pick you up at seven. Wear something nice... sexy, not that you have to work very hard at that." He laughed softly, the rich sound of it making me melt inside, as usual.

"Okay," I said, and got up, wanting to end the visit on a high note. "See you then, if not before." He hiked his chair closer to the table so I could pass him, and I kissed him on the temple on my way out.

When I got back to the cafe, Michael was settled in the kitchen and Maria and my father were working the tables. Tess had (already?) finished her food and left the money on the table, including a big tip that I made a mental note to give most of to Brenda. Well, half of it anyway.

-------

(Maria):

"Come on, quit that," Michael said, nudging my hand away from his crotch as we waited at the front door. "Can we just keep our hands off each other for a few minutes??"

"Well, if you hadn't noticed," I pointed out, squeezing his shoulder tenderly, "I've been keeping my hands off you all day, and I have no willpower left! Besides, I don't want to!!"

"Come on, if we're like this, or especially like THAT," he shot a glance down towards his private parts, "Max is gonna notice that something's..." He broke off, hearing a car slow down as it approached on the street. A dark green sedan pulled up and Max hopped out of the passenger seat, lugging a black case that seemed pretty heavy. He waved at the driver, (who we couldn't quite make out,) and hurried up the walk to us.

"Who was that?" I asked as the car started to pull away.

"Oh, Brody. Lift home," Max mentioned as he unlocked the front door and led us inside.

"Where's the... oh, right," Michael said. "Las Cruces??" Max nodded. "Who'd you get to drive Isabel, anyway??"

"Kyle." As Max and Michael continued to chat and make small talk, (and Max unpacked the bag, which included a thin little laptop computer among other things,) I started to drift off mentally, remebering the incredible, multiple (and conventional,) climaxes that Michael's amorous efforts had pushed me to this morning... and into this afternoon.

I suppose that "multiple conventional" may be redundant, come to think of it. Bearing in mind how long the Czechoslovakian orgasms last, and especially how much recovery time is required, I'm not sure that multiples of them are conceivable... or survivable, at any rate.

But between the two of us, we discovered Sunday night at Michael's place that oral or manual activity doesn't seem to follow the same pattern, with the out-of-body experiences and so forth. Though I'm not sure I understand the wherefores, I think it has something to do with the basic mechanics and the way that a rapport builds between the two of us when we're... doing stuff. When we... make love, full-contact style, there's an awful lot of high-intensity stimulation going on for both of us. When the rapport kicks in and each of us feels what the other one is experiencing, that has a strong tendency to build into a serious feedback loop... I get what he's experiencing and add it to what I feel directly, and send that back to him, and he adds to it and sends it back, and pretty soon the ecstasy is practically multiplying. Once that kind of feedback loop is in place and either of us comes... well, you get the picture.

Oral isn't like that -- quite. The first time I tried going down on Michael, I could feel what it was like for him, but I really didn't have that much of my own to contribute, so it seemed much more normal, more human. Which didn't really make it any less fun, just very different. On the other hand, the way Michael was working me over today, either he's got nerves of steel, or he was able to block out even that basic rapport enough to not feel everything that I feel, because by the end there, I was a dribbling mess, (more ways than one,) and he was acting cool as a cucumber, just keeping me going and going. (Of course, once he was done, he was all worked up and I was grateful, so we did it the Czechoslovakian way and blissed out, which is most of what made both of us late for shift at the Crash.)

"What do you think, Maria??" Max asked, and I half jumped -- there was NO way I was going to tell him what I'd really been thinking of right then, but really I was pretty sure that wasn't what he'd been asking.

"Sorry, wasn't paying attention," I said as casually as I could. "Cliff notes?"

Max groaned, and Michael quickly caught me up to speed on the general situation... Brody had offered to take Max on as a partner in this hunt for a crashed spaceship... good pay on long hours, made him promise that he wouldn't keep any results hidden that followed from the use of Brody's data and files.

"And, let me say... these files are incredible," Max chimed in. "Aside from the whole crashed spaceship thing, there are a dozen ways that they could come in handy... except that I'm not sure I want to share the results with Brody."

"Now, wait a second," I spoke up. "I'm not sure that anyone wants to hear this, but is Brody you know... stable?? I mean... well, I like him as much as anybody, more than a lot of people, but..." I dropped my voice. "You both remember what happened."

Max nodded. "Yeah. But I've been watching him - he hasn't acted at all weird since that day..."

-------

April 4th, 2001. Blackout all over Roswell...

Brody Davis had gone a little bit crazy, calling himself Larek and holding Max and Tess, mom, Sean and I, and later Liz in the UFO center with an automatic pistol. Sean had tried something stupid and attacked Brody with a knife, and gotten a minor stab wound of his own for his trouble. Brody noticed that Liz was wearing a disguised micro-camera, and that's when he really got mad and ordered us into his office...

"This is bad," Sean muttered under his breath, wincing slightly and holding his stomach.

"This is really bad," I agreed, feeling very upset myself. "They always put you in the back room before they SHOOT you."

"No, stop it," Mom objected. "We're gonna be fine. We are all gonna get out of here, I promise."

Meanwhile, Max, Liz, and Tess were all gathered around some piece of computer equipment, and I stepped over, trying to get close enough to listen without diverting mom or Sean's attention to it. They didn't pay any notice to us, being too wrapped up in their own rambles.

"...Looks like it was short-circuited or overloaded or something," Max was saying.

"If Brody was wearing this," Liz whispered, in her usual brainy tone, "when it short-circuited..."

"A powerful jolt of energy might have been sent right to his brain," Max finished the thought.

"And that must be how he's accessing Larek's memories," Tess added in.

"Ahem," I broke in with a soft cough. "Alien 101, for the rest of us not in the know??"

Max shot a glance at me and nodded slightly. "Well... we know that aliens have been jumping here to the earth somehow and using human bodies, when there's business they need to take care of here. When they're done, they must be able to block off or erase everything they've done from the human's brains, so they won't remember anything."

I nodded, a little doubtfully. "Why should there be anything in the brains at all?"

"They don't just use the people as puppets, while they're sleeping or something," Tess put in. "They *use* the human brains... they think with them while they're on earth, they keep their own important memories there - because having everything going over the interstellar connection would take too long and be too tiring."

"Okay, I got that. Starting to make sense now..."

"Given that Brody has a history of 'abductions,' it seems a pretty safe basis that Larek has been using him as a vessel for years," Liz put in. "There must be a lot of Larek material inside Brody's head, blocked off for safe keeping, like selective amnesia."

"But the shock would have broken through all the barriers that Larek set up," I said, finally seeing all of it. "So he's got his own memories and Larek's memories, all messed up and not making much sense." Brody's behavior was starting to make more sense. "Is there anything you can do for him??"

"If this was all started by an electric shock -- a kind of injury," Liz started promptingly.

"Then I could heal him," Max said. "Except..."

"That the pentagon is still turned on," Tess pointed out. "We can't use any of our powers."

Max scowled. "We've got to get him to turn it off."

"I'm gonna go talk to him," I told them... and I did. Even Larek seemed to trust me partly, and I talked to him about my own memories of Brody... about delivering lunch to him, and our fun and offbeat talks. And his daughter. It was as if the same shock had not only given him access to Larek's memories, it had blocked off a lot of Brody's old memories... he didn't even recognize the picture of little Sidney, and I could tell that that was tearing him up, the thought of forgetting his own daughter.

It was that pain that, finally, let me get through to him... Brody agreed to turn off the alien pentagon, and let Max heal him... which worked pretty well, I had to admit.

Of course, by that time, the police were making their way through the steel barrier door with a blowtorch, and we still had a problem. Two problems, actually, Sean and my mom, though Sean was not a difficult one. Liz sweet-talked him a bit and agreed to go out with him, (ugh,) and he was perfectly willing to clam up about everything that we'd been through.

My mom was more difficult. I tried to use the cute little picture of Sidney on her too, (hey, why give up a winning trump?) to make her feel sympathy for Brody and try to convince her to protect him. That kinda backfired, or at least it didn't work well; she started rambling about how he was a danger to his family and all that.

I hurried over to Tess and Max. "Do something!!" I whispered. Brody was such a sweetie, and I couldn't face the thought of my mom pressing charges against him and maybe getting him thrown in jail. "You've got your powers back," I whispered. "Can't you..." I couldn't believe I was actually asking for Tess to muck with my mother's mind, but... "convince her, somehow??"

"How??" Tess muttered back. "I can touch her mind, but there are limits to what I've been able to do. I can change what she thinks she's seeing or hearing, But I've never been able to affect memories reliably, or higher decision making. Changing what she sees NOW isn't going to fix the problem."

"Well... maybe there's something we can do," Max suggested in a low voice.

It didn't work great, I had to admit that, but Max's plan got the job done. He'd play-acted the part of a police officer taking Brody off for psychiatric evaluation, and Mom bought it. (With Tess' power working, she didn't recognize Max of course.) There was a bit of a scary moment when the REAL police came in and Amy asked Hanson what was going to happen to Brody, but Jim Valenti came in and ran interference, and nothing more ever came of it.

-------

"By the way," I said, after those memories had flashed over be, (considerably more quickly than it took to tell you all about them, of course,) "what happened with you and Tess there, Max??"

"Ummm..." Max looked more than a little uncomfortable. "When I healed Brody, I got flashes of us... myself and Tess. He'd been talking, before, of Larek's memories of us, how he had introduced us and so forth. I saw some of that directly, more than just saw it, and it was a shock." He sighed. "That's when I started working with Tess to get at my own memories of our past life." I growled a little bit at the mention of that.

"But the more I learned, I realized something," Max continued after a moment. "No matter how close Tess and I *used* to be, I don't love her, and I'm not sure I could ever love her in this lifetime. Even what I remember from when we were married -- it's a pale imitation compared to what I feel every time I think about Liz. That's why i made the choice I did."

"Um, okay, why don't we leave it there for now, okay??" Michael said, clearly feeling a little awkward about this. "Max, you said you had something you wanted to show us in your room??"

"Oh, yeah." He led the way through the house, and held the door open for us to get through. "Don't close it, it jammed up on me this morning and wouldn't come open for fifteen minutes," Max warned. He headed over to his desk - and the phone sitting on his dresser rang.

"Hello? Oh, hi Iz," Max said after he had picked it up. "Umm... well, I'm here with Michael and Maria, no, I guess it's nothing that can't wait... do you wanna say hi?? No? Okay, just a minute." He covered the mouthpiece on the portable phone. "She warned me she was going to talk my ear off, so I'm sure it's gonna be a while. You guys don't mind if I leave you alone here for a little bit?"

Michael's eyes glittered with a secret notion. "Naw, we'll be fine." Max walked out, heading back towards the living room, and slowly, deliberately - quietly, Michael closed the door behind him.

"What'd you do that f..." I started, and then recognized the expression on his face. "In *here*?? Are you frickin' crazy??"

"Come on," He took me in his arms, his hands teasing, stroking. "We've been working together side by side for hours. In public." He leaned closer and whispered in my ear. "You weren't the only one who's been straining willpower... every time I saw you in that uniform I was fighting down the urge to drag you into the bathroom."

One of his hands was cupping the left cheek of my butt through the pleats of my skirt, and the other traced the skin at the side of my neck, ever so delicately. I could feel the channel starting to moisten. I brought my hand down to the front of Michael's pants, and was amazed at how big and hard his stick was already... practically busting the zipper straight off. What the fuck?? (Excuse the pun.) Just half a minute ago he had seemed completely, err, relaxed!!

I was feeling the pull of temptation take over my body. But one serious objection still presented itself. "If we do it here... we'll crash out, after it's done. We always do!! Max will probably be worried enough to use his powers and bust down the door, if he can't hear an answer from either of us!"

He ran his fingers across my chest, and I felt the tingle in my breast even through the two layers of fabric. "Nah, I think I've got it figured. I'll damp down the connection just enough to keep either of us from passing out."

So he *had* been working on that. "Why have you been practicing on AVOIDING mind-blowing, out of body orgasms strong enough to knock us both out??" I asked in a whisper, guessing the answer already.

"What do you think... for quickies in public! I didn't want to have to miss out or anything."

I tried to groan, but it just turned into a long, drawn-out sigh. I was getting so horny that I couldn't think straight, so there was only one answer to give. "Okay, let's do it."

"Umm..." Michael, obviously as randy as I was, shook his head and seemed to be pondering ways and means. "Okay, lie down." Disappointed with the prospect of the missionary position at a time like this, (it's alright but seems to take me longer to get off than anything else... even with the connection at full.) "No, no." Michael corrected me, and vaguely indicated that I should turn around and move towards him.

"Ohhh." This was something that we'd tried at the hotel in Albuquerque... though not quite like this. I arranged myself with half of my butt hanging off the bed and my legs bent so that my feet touched the floor, bracing me. As an afterthought, I flipped up the front of my skirt so that it wasn't obstructing the field of play.

Michael kneeled down, and with a wave, passed a hand over my pink cotton bikini, and suddenly the bottom part of it was hanging away, and the other half he flipped up. "You better be able to put that back together again," I teased him.

"Oh yeah, like you're gonna repair the boxer shorts you tore right off my body in *shreds* in Albuquerque," he shot back.

"Okay, that was DIFFERNT." Michael had pulled down his pants and brought out his cock by this point, but he paused to lick at my pussy and my clit, as if checking to see if I was hot enough. I definitely was.

He drove into me, hard enough that I had to struggle not to cry out, but it felt great. I swung one leg around so that it was kinda hooking around his shoulder from above and just lay there as he screwed me. As Michael had said, I could feel what Michael was feeling, but not nearly as strongly as usual. Michael had been bracing all of his weight on Max's matress, but he moved one hand now and started to rub my stomach, reaching up under the folds of my skirt, above the scraps of panty.

"Did you hear something??" Michael asked, and all of a sudden the forbidden excitement, the mental picture of Max or, worse yet, his parents barging in on us was pushing me on to climax. (I never thought I was the type to get off on the fear of exposure... or maybe that was Michael's reaction affecting me slightly. The waves of tingling energy spread through my body, until fingertips, toes, and scalp were tingling with it... along with the more obvious places. Michael groaned and erupted, and suddenly I realized that we hadn't bothered with protection. How many times, in the past few days, had we actually remembered to use the glove?? But I couldn't concentrate on that right now, it felt too good.

"Hey, why's the door closed??" There was a quiet knock on the other side following Max's voice, which shook us both out of the after-revelry and into frenzied action. Michael restored my underwear almost as quickly as he had split it asunder and started to put his willie away and get his pants back in order, as I shook my hair back out, fussed momentarily with the sheets on the bed and tried to see if my skin was still flushed.

"Sorry man, I forgot," Michael called, and I had to fight down the giggles.

"Oh. Well, I had to use my powers on it last time," Max said. "Up near the top of the frame, on the left side, just kinda push the frame and the door away from each other. I can't focus right from here, you need to see it."

It took about a minute and a half for Michael to get the door open. "Maybe we should just take a chunk of the door straight off, make sure that doesn't happen again," Michael suggested, "Unless you like the idea of having your door stuck closed so that the parental units can't get in... and catch you with Liz, maybe??"

"Gutter mind," Max said, swatting Michael on the shoulder in friendly fashion. "Sure, let's give it a try."

"Umm, Max, can I use your bathroom??" I asked.

-------

(Alex):

"So, it worked??" Isabel asked me. We were sitting next to each other on my couch... arms around each other, but the tv that the couch was pointed at was black. We were listening to music on the stereo instead, and talking.

"Yeah, eventually," I confirmed. "Well, it almost worked. There was a bit in the middle that didn't quite come out right, but my code still got them quite a lot further than anything else they've ever tried on this particular problem. So everybody's really excited." We'd had to wait until almost nine in the evening for the batch to finally complete processing... though that's good enough, I suppose. Should count myself lucky that it hadn't taken days or weeks, considering how complicated the tasks we were accomplishing really were.

"So, what's the next step??"

"I'm gonna be spending the next two or three days closeted with Luis, and Kristin and this other guy, trying to refine the coding. Making sure that the little hack Kristin put in today didn't throw something out of whack, though it couldn't be anything too bad or we wouldn't have gotten a nearly-complete answer back. Then we tackle the speed issue, see if we can get it running leaner, or more completely accurate. They'll probably run some more tests over the weekend, which hopefully I won't have to hang around for, and then a big meeting with Pryor and the other project heads, and maybe some other important people, early next week. Sponsors, the department head, etcetera." I blew out a loud breath, trying to conceal how nervous I was.

"Relax, sweetie, you'll do fine," Isabel said soothingly. So much for concealment. "You didn't mention a Kristin before."

I sighed loudly. "Have I mentioned ANYONE at the project before, except for Luis and Doctor Pryor?"

"Well, no..." she admitted, and I actually couldn't help letting out a short chuckle.

"Are you actually jealous just because there's a girl who happens to be on the project??" I asked, looking deeply into those intense brown eyes of hers.

"I'm not jealous," she insisted. "But... well, excuse me if it catches my notice when you say you're going to be closeted for several days with a woman..."

"...With a woman and two grad student men..." I corrected.

"...With a woman," she continued, steadfastedly ignoring my interjection, "who you then mention has got her hands on your code. Makes my non-literal rabbit ears perk up to attention immediately, as it were."

I just sat there for a moment, looking into her eyes. "You're teasing me," I decided finally, far from sure.

"Mostly," she admitted, and I swooped in and stole a kiss, which prompted her to tickle me on the side of my waist, just where she knows I can't resist it and we started to wrestle it out from there, in a PG but definitely non-innocent way.

"So what about you?" I asked. "How was your day??" We were kind of stretched out along the couch by this point, side by side, which was actually surprisingly comfortable. Several arms still around each other.

"Pretty uneventful - scouted out some of my lecture and tutorial locations, explored a little more of the campus. Dinner at the tex-mex place in the student union, settling into my room, a bit of a chat session with the girls in the suite." She sighed pneumatically. "I don't really like my room in the suite much... the bedroom's too small and there are too many other people around. I'll probably be spending a lot of my time around here... if that's okay." She nudged me promptingly.

"Oh, of course," I assured her. "We can get a copy of my key cut, so you don't have to worry about people seeing you use your powers on the door or anything."

She sat up a little, me following her because we were still linked, enough to look around the place. "It's a nice room. Too bad it isn't QUITE big enough for me to move into entirely." She looked back at me and grinned.

"Yeah," I agreed a little weakly, and then I kissed her again and smiled. It was certainly a nice room... personal bathroom with a shower-tub, and then the room itself. It was about as big as the living room, dining room, and kitchen in my house put together... double-sized bed, desk, a table I thought of as the 'lunch table' with a hot plate and small microsave on the cupboard near it, and a fridge that went up past my waist sitting next to the cupboards. And of course the entertainment area that we were in, with the couch, tv, and stereo.

All in all it was a cherry room, probably the kind that would usually be offered to highly contested scholsarship students. Guess they had been trying to throw the perks at me to make sure I'd join up with the project, and stick with it. (If only they knew how much I'd schemed to get the invitation to the Quantum project... though I was just as glad they didn't. Either they'd throw me out, if they knew that much, or leave me in the worst room they had.)

By this time we were sitting back up, and Isabel was scanning the room again, thoughtfully. "There isn't a freezer compartment in that thing, is there??" she asked, pointing to the short fridge. "I can't see that there'd be room for it."

"Nah, little tiny rack for ice cubes, that's all," I told her. "There's a big chest freezer back in the storage room that a couple of us can share, though it's less convenient."

She nodded, a little absently... well, I have to admit that it wasn't really world-shattering information. And then she looked deeply into my eyes. "Let's go to the bed."

The similarity of phrasing suddenly reminded me of the dream, and I just blurted it out. "Did you... did you dreamwalk me last night??"

"Well, yeah I did." She grinned sexily. "Nice to know that you actually remembered it... did you enjoy yourself?!"

"Umm, yeah," As I stood up, it was suddenly very obvious to both of us just how excited I was from the memory of the dream.

Isabel stifled a giggle. "Sorry."

"No, it's okay," I assured her, as we went over to the bed and started to make out. As she unbuttoned my shirt a little at a time, planting kisses as she went, I muttered "Maybe I'll return the favor, live and in person. Wouldja like that??"

"MMmmm... yeah, if you're up for it!!"

"Though I'm not..." I was suddenly stricken with performance anxiety over what I had just blurted out. "Not that sure I'd be able to get the job done, actually."

She shrugged a little as I kissed her ear and started to work down her neck. "I wasn't exactly working off of a lot of first-hand information on you, and I blundered through." It was an interesting sensation when Isabel spoke at the same time that my lips were in contact with the skin on the outside of her throat.

"Yeah," I murmured, "but guys' equipment is simple, comparatively. The woman's setup has been something of a mystery even to experienced men for ages."

"Well, I could give you a demonstration, I guess," she murmured, and tweaked my nipple. I groaned, both at the physical stimulation and the mental picture. "But only if you put the lesson to use and try it for yourself next time!!"

"Oh, yes!!" I agreed at once. kissing her on the lips and closing my eyes as her tongue snuck through to meet mine.

TO BE CONTINUED...
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
Read my other roswell stories!

"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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Chrisken
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 16
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'


(Kyle):

I laughed to myself as the Jeep shot past the limits of Ruidoso and back out onto the open highway, heading east by northeast for Roswell. Man, this was a pretty cool car - I don't think Evans really appreciates it enough. Turned the sound from the MP3 disc player up a little louder.

I'd had a great afternoon in downtown Las Cruces, what there was of it... lunch at a japanese place, early matinee movie, (Swordfish, pretty exciting despite the glaring plot holes,) hanging out some in an open-air cafe, flirting with a pretty brunette. I felt completely ready for whatever I might face once I got back home.

My cell phone rang and I took one hand off the wheel carefully to get it, slowing down a little so I was about four under the speed limit. "Y-ello??"

"Hi Kyle, it's Max. Where are you and my car??"

I laughed a little. "Don't worry Evans, I'm on my way to bring 'him' back to you. Should be there around eleven thirty."

"Eleven thirty!! Isabel said you were done helping her unpack by noon, and you're *still* what, almost two hours away from home??" A pause. "She also said something about you hanging around Las Cruces downtown... and that wasn't part of our deal."

"It wasn't something I agreed *not* to do," I argued back hotly. "I told you, fairly generously I think, that I would go to Las Cruces with Isabel, help her unpack, and return your wheels to you today. I've done the first two, and I firmly expect to accomplish the last with time to spare." The silence on the other end of the line was stony. "What... did you expect me to come all that way, help your sister unpack her stuff, and then head right back home?? That would've been too much, man, I'd probably have run your precious Jeep into a head-on if I'd tried. I needed a little time to rest and recuperate."

"I understand that," Max admitted. "But just how long did you spend in Las Cruces, Kyle?? I didn't think I'd have to wait up that late, I've been staring at a computer screen all day."

"I'm sorry man," I said. "Got a little carried away with myself, I admit, and didn't keep in mind just how long of a drive back it was."

"It's okay," he assured me. "Hope I haven't dozed off by the time I get here -- if I don't come out..."

"I'll find a way to wake you up," I joked, and hung up the line.

The music had switched over to something by Dido while Max and I were talking, and I pressed the 'skip ahead ten' button firmly, and smiled at the results.

-------

(Michael):

"Are you sure you want to do this??" I asked her as I started to nudge the car up the narrow road.

"I want to do it if you want to do it," Maria assured me. "Are *you* sure??"

I only had to think of that for a moment before the answer came, and along with it, a slow smile I could feel spreading across my face. "Yeah... I've been fantasizing about this for years, I have to admit. Doing it in the back seat of a car parking at the top of Passion Peak."

"Awww," she let out, patting my knee, and starting to rub it. "After all, we've been to this much trouble, we might at least give it a try."

She was right about that. After leaving Max's place, we had gone out for a late dinner, then swung by Maria's place to get ready for this final tryst. Maria had changed out of the clothes she had been wearing, and was now wearing a loose, fairly short black skirt, and a short-sleeved soft pink crop top... and no underwear. That was something we had agreed in dirty talk over dinner for this little escapade. Agreed for me as well -- I'd given up my undershorts and Maria had hidden them away somewhere in her room that her mother wouldn't be likely to find them until I had a chance to come collect them again.

It wasn't long before we were up at the top of the small rocky mountain that had been dubbed 'Passion peak' by horny young people, way back when it became one of the official places "to park" (as in, make out in a car,) in Roswell. As I maneuvered my car into a good spot, I was struck by the impressivness of seeing the lights of the town, and the desert horizon all around it.

Maria took in the view for a long moment herself, then turned to me. "So... any particular notion of how you wanna do this??"

I thought about it a minute, and shrugged. "You got any ideas??"

She pondered a moment. "Back seat, me on top??"

"You think the roof's high enough for that??"

"If I need to, I'll bend forward," she assured me, tweaking my earlobe teasingly. We got out of the vehicle through our own doors and kissed a little standing up, leaning against the passenger side door. After a few minutes, getting into a little light petting through clothes, Maria undid my pants, and my dick poked out, unfettered by underpants. Maria grinned in the moonlight, and handed me a tiny little package.

"Why don't you put it on?" I teased her, and she kissed me once, took it back, and proceeded to do just that.

On the way from Max's house to the restaurant, Maria had laid into me about the condom thing... well, not really just me. She'd been mad at herself as well, upset that both of us had let ourselves get carried enough away to forget, and also that neither of us could be completely certain that it was the first time we'd done without a rubber.

She had said she'd make sure to pick some up at her place, (when she had bought condoms I didn't know,) and I guess she had. Even the sensation of her carefully unrolling it against my member and checking to make sure there were no air bubbles was exciting me.

I opened the door and tried to arrange myself. At least the back seat, like the rest of this car, was roomy and relatively clean. Roomier than the Jetta. Maria followed me in, fiddling at the hem of her skirt as she did so. I thought I could see a tiny bit of moisture trailing down the inside of her thighs... probably going without panties had been oddly arousing to her.

She arranged herself squatting over my midsection, not making the main connection yet, but rubbing her hands across my chest, indulging in a little foreplay, and I returned the favor, my hands moving to her breasts with only that thin, soft fabric in between. cupping them. Tweaking her nipples through the pink cloth, stroking her tits, rubbing them. Savoring every second as her sighs grew lower, turned into moans, and as the moans became throatier. "You're so beautiful," I whispered under my breath. "Why on earth do you love ME?"

She didn't answer at once, just moved a hand behind herself and started massaging my leg through my jeans. I reached up a hand to tenderly caress the bare skin near her collarbone, left uncovered by the neckline of her pink shirt, and she gasped.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I... I had a flash," she reported, her eyes closed, her voice trembling. "I'm sure that was it. I saw you... little hatchling boy you, running away from a light, from an outstretched hand..." She took a deep breath, almost a sob it seemed, and continued. "Max's hand, it must have been. Walking into the darkness, the desert, away from the only people who loved you." She opened her eyes, locking on mine with an amazing intensity, though tears were slipping free.

"You've lived a lonely life, Michael Guerin, but you don't need to be alone any more. Your heart has always let mine in, and you're noble, and loyal, and generous. That's why I love you." She let out a sob again and wiped the tears away. "Did you get one too??"

"No," I said with a smile. "Do me." I waved vaguely that she should do something with her hand in the vicinity of me head, as she had done.

She did, leaning down and running her thumb softly across my cheek, and suddenly the image was popping up in my head. Maria was standing, staring defiantly and with so much determination in her expression... I remembered this moment. I had been there the first time -- it was the instant she realized I had gotten behind the driver's seat of the Jetta and put it in gear, out at the gas station, the time I got it into my head to go to Marathon, Texas.

"I see you," I told her. "I could see you a thousand times and realize a new facet to your being over and over, and each is lovelier than the last. Maria. Maria, Maria, Maria. I love you so much."

"Three seconds," she whispered. I was just starting to wonder what she meant by that when it happened. Maria propped herself up, flipped her skirt around my midsection, and lowered her pussy down onto my cock. I shouted out loud with the sudden ecstasy of the sensation.

"Oohhhhhhh..." Maria moaned at the same time, looking down and grinning at me through the hair that was falling down about her face, every which way. "Grab my tits again," she demanded, while slamming her sheath down around me again and again. "Come on, it felt so good," she urged, when I was a little slow to reply. "Grope me, squeeze my nipples."

"It feels great on this end too," I managed to whisper, suiting action to her words. "You've got such great boobs, they feel amazing in my hands, and they taste even better when I get the chance to suck on them."

"MMMMmmmmmmmm..." Maria hummed, in sheer delight. The rapport between us was wide open, and I could feel exactly what it was like for Maria, almost as if I had breasts of my own to be molested, and a pussy to be penetrated... and oddly that notion wasn't at all disturbing. Everything that was happening between the two of us felt exactly right.

And between what Maria was experiencing, and what I was feeling from myself, and what Maria had dubbed 'the fuck feedback cycle,' we were rapidly being boosted towards the biggest climax ever. I felt the shower building inside of me, and then my seed was gushing against the inside of the condom. Even contained as it was, the momentary pressure and the involuntary spasm of my pelvis set Maria off, her sheath flooding with girl-juice. I felt my body collapse against the seat, and Maria's torso fall forward to land on top of me, and then that odd sensation of my awareness being propelled out of its usual body.

This wasn't like the usual experience from then on, though. I was aware of Maria's essence, her energy, near mine -- that much was as ever. But our psyche's fell quickly through some kind of vortex, and were propelled through a long, twisting tunnel filled with strange colored lights... after a long moment, we emerged out through another aperture and...

Back into our own bodies again. But not as before - not ourselves in the same place and time, but --

-------

We stood on a wide desert plain, pretty featureless as far as the eye could see, except for the crash-landed Granilith not far behind us of course, and the people.

Max and Tess hung back for this stage, and Maria and I stood side by side, still wearing our earth clothes, a little grubby from the hair-raising express journey... t-shirt and jeans for me as usual, a short skirt and tank top for Maria.

Watching us were a crowd of about thirty alien beings, fairly close to human people in the general details I guess. Two legs, two arms, one head. They seemed to have four fingers on each hand including the thumb, from what I could tell, with skin tones mostly in the gray through blue to purple stretch, hair that ranged in lengths from buzz cuts to almost floor length, featuring colors like black, white, red, and green. (Often several of those colors in the same person's hair.) I couldn't make out much in the way of eye colors: a few of the natives closest to use seemed to have irises of silver, gold, and aquamarine, but I couldn't be sure about any of those other than the last.

Aside from those noticeable changes, they seemed to be quite similar to humans indeed... down to the muscular patterns on the torso and the, er, sexually distinctive characteristics, as far as I could tell. Faces seemed a little different, but I couldn't put my finger on how - none of those weird ridges and projections they have on 'Star trek' and such. All of the same parts as a human face I guess, just put together and proportioned slightly different... it was disconcerting to focus on it, so I decided not to.

There were a couple of basic types of outfits that I could distinguish... two-piece jumpsuit type uniforms (millitary or otherwise institutional?) peasant-style blouses and tunics, and more complicated clothes that might be... business wear??

"A greeting, Rath Far-selezir," the alien man nearest to me said, holding his right hand up with the fingers splayed, except for the two furthest away from his thumb, held closely together. "You have returned, as the Liaret supporters promised us you would. I am Kelim, your -- first cousin, once removed, and I have led our house for the past eleven revolutions." He was the one with the turquoise eyes, as well as blue-purple skin and black hair about three inches long. He was wearing a long flowing white tunic that seemed a little like noble robes.

About this point it occured to me to wonder how it was that I was understanding this guy... there was no way in the world that he was talking english. Some sort of automated translator?? No, I had heard only the words that he had spoken -- and they definitely had NOT been english. But I had understood him, and I spoke in his own language, without the slightest trace of doubt or hesitation.

"I am not Rath," I started, sticking to the script that we had all agreed on. Accepting our past lives literally seemed far too big a can of worms to open up willingly. "No man returns after his body is burned, through the work of science. I come before you as a relative of Rath Far-selezir, a son or partial clone of him, whichever is easier for you to accept. His heir, if you find me worthy. But my name is Michael Guerin."

Kelim nodded, a little taken aback, but clearly doing his best to continue in stride. "You bear the seal of our house," he continued softly. "I accept you, by whatever name and whatever relationship you ask. Meye-kehll..." he mangled the pronunciation of my name, but I had to smile at it. "Cousin. We welcome you home... to a home that you have never set foot on before, I suppose."

"Thank you, Kelim," I answered, hoping that I wasn't misspeaking his name just as badly. "Cousin."

"And... might I inquire of your companion?" he asked, gesturing faintly in Maria's direction. I realized that a lot of the watchers seemed to be paying more attention to her than to me - maybe they could sense that she had no Antarian DNA.

Ohh. "This is Maria DeLuca... my beloved." I took her hand and urged her slightly forward. "And my betrothed." I caught sight of the gold ring on her finger, the slight glint of a tiny reddish gem visible on it, and grinned at the thought of it.

"Your... betrothed," Kelim repeated, seeming thrown by this. (Possibly he was still lost in expectations that Rath would return with Princess Vilandra by his side.) And then he brightened visibly. "Have you a marriage date in mind, my lord? Should an announcement of the engagement be distributed publicly??"

Now it was my turn to be thrown, and I turned to look at Maria, who seemed similarly shocked. "Umm... cousin, we haven't even begun to get used to things here." An awkward pause. "What would you suggest?"

The alien man considered this for a moment, and called over a woman in a long flowing gown of something that looked like yellow linen, and they consulted in low voices. "If it is not unacceptable to you, Micall, Mehreeya, I would suggest to hold the bonding ceremony at moon's noon a little over three periods from now. I would be honored to perform the ceremony myself, and we could hold it at the Mecsh-tar gathering place."

I wasn't quite sure about the time references, 'periods' and moons-noon, but that didn't seem too far away. I looked at Maria, who shrugged a little helplessly. "Umm... can I ask why?"

"Yes," he replied, "but perhaps we should speak of it later." I was grateful enough to nod my acceptance of that. Kelim bowed and melted back into the crowd, and after a moment a woman, dressed in a decorated jumpsuit, stepped away from two others, male and female, who she had been hurriedly consulting with. I realized suddenly that the crowd was a little bigger, and there were what looked like hovercraft of some sort sitting nearby... which presumably some of the extra people, at least, had arrived in.

I think this new alien lady was one of the new arrivals, because otherwise I believe I'd have noticed her earlier. By human standards, as it were, she seemed to look in her late thirties maybe, and quite pretty, though her face still threw me a little. Her hair was past shoulder length and intensely wavy, its color changing in streaks from cherry red to an orange that didn't look as if it would be too out of place on a human redhead. Her skin, smooth and soft, was slate gray, but as she approached Max and the rest of us, I realized that her eyes were a soft, light brown, a shade I hadn't noticed yet on any of these Antarians. Between the orange hair and brown eyes, I found myself wondering if she was quarter human or something.

She addressed Max without introducing herself. "You claim the legacy of Zan ril-Sanren vi Liaret??"

"I do," Max said simply after a second. "My name is Max Evans. May I ask who you are?"

"My name is Raydeleen," she replied evenly. "I am the *Gehhrvehlkka* of her majesty, the Queen widow, Alinda dil Liaret." She nodded as if the implications of that should be completely obvious.

Of course, they weren't. "Ummm... we have studied the language of our original homeworld hastily," Max began diplomatically. "I... I don't believe I'm familiar with the significance of that term, Gervellkah." It was as if a blip had fried out the mental translation when Raydeleen had spoken it - which had to be because it wasn't in the limited conversational vocabulary.

Rayde, (as I started thinking of her for shorthand,) smiled a little -- tolerantly. "It isn't the easiest notion to grasp," she admitted. "Essentially, I have taken an oath to serve as her... her personal proxy. Her majesty's health is not good, and she can not lead the rebellion personally as she would like to. But there is no conventional substitute for her as royal figurehead, so, by the bonds of the Gehhrvehl, I replace her."

I blinked in appreciation. It seemed a novel solution to the problem, at least. Rayde turned to Tess. "And whose clone are you supposed to be?"

"Umm, err..." Tess muttered, caught by surprise at the question. "Queen Ava dil Liaret, of the clan Derven-see out of..."

"Thrilacta," Rayde finished along with her. "Good enough. What about Princess Vilandra fe Liaret? Was there not supposed to be also a hybrid bearing her essence?" Hmmm... did they know anything about the duplicates, that there had been two of each of us? Well, I wasn't going to be the first to mention it.

"My sister, Isabel, did not come here with us," Max supplied. "She wasn't sure if she would be welcome, what with the stories of Vilandra..."

"We know better than to believe those stories here," Rayde commented, "but the point is well taken." She paused for a moment, then moved on to a new topic. "If we gather out here in the open too long, it might tempt the Neodynast usurper into a raid. He has spying eyes watching the entire planet from orbit." She looked up meaningfully.

"As do we," a swarthy Antarian man put in, laughing. "Hidden more carefully. And the tyrant will find out that his satellites will fail him when we are ready to make our move, hahahh!!"

"Enough of that for now, Jevell," Rayde said to him in a soft aside. Turning to us, "We'll need to get the Granilith out of here to a secure location under cover, and I think our hoverjet-craft will be able to tow it if it's levitating, but not drag it along the ground. I don't suppose you'd hand over the key, one member of the house of Liaret to another, as it were??"

I turned to whisper a warning to Max, but it wasn't necessary. As nice as these people were being to us, we had no proof that any of them were who they said they were. They could be Kivar's people, playing out an intricate ruse for exactly that reason -- to get control of the big G back.

For anything short of handing over the keys, it seemed like our best route was to play along, trusting in caution and our own powers to get us out if these Antarians turned on us. But we couldn't take that step of ultimate faith yet... though it reflected well on Rayde that she realized it would probably be this way.

"Yeah, i'd rather not," Max agreed. "I can try to get it hovering for you myself..."

-------

And all of a sudden, like some timer had quietly counted off its last few seconds and went BING! I got flicked out of that Michael body on Antar, through the strange and insubstantial conduit that connected 'there' with 'here', and...

++++++

"Maahn," Maria's voice groaned. "That was FREAKY!"

It took me a few seconds to remember where I really was, or where Maria was. Then it began to come back to me... Passion peak, sex in the back seat, and then--

"*What* was freaky??" I asked. The two of us were lying in the backseat, arms around each other and pretty snuggly given the available room or lack of it. Maria was still on top of me, and I realized that our private parts were still pretty much exposed to each other... and exposed in general, except for the slight protextion her skirt offered. But then, considering how things had gotten that way, did I really care?? Was a strange time to be getting modest.

Wait a second - back to the point. Maria hadn't answered me, so I put the question. "Did you... did you have the sense of being somewhere else just now? Not just a flash or an out-of-body, but being... maybe being INSIDE your body in another time??"

"Uhh... yeah," Maria whispered, and her soft voice sent a shock through my whole system. "I was... were you there too? In the future? On... on your home planet??" She sounded doubtful, and I jumped in reassuringly.

"And we talked to people..." I agreed. "Aliens. A cousin of mine, and a woman named Rayde something..."

"And you told them..." She started filling in details, and I did too, and there was quickly no doubt that we had experienced the same thing. And then came the big question. "Was it... real?? Was it a true... thingumee, visit to the future? Or just some kind of weird fantasy that we shared??"

"I... I don't know," I admitted. "We've both experienced an out-of-body experience before with these mega-orgasms, and I'm not sure if those are imaginary or a real, temporary disassociation of... of our energy, our essences, from our bodies. I've heard a theory that out of body experiences happen when the brain has too little sensory information to build up a model of the body from inside, or something like that."

"On the other hand, if we really do leave our bodies briefly... we both had the sensation of travelling through a wormhole or something like that. What if there's a non-physical connection between this place and time, and that one??" I sighed. "There's no way to know."

"Well... maybe there..." Maria propped herself up to look at me. "Maybe this wouldn't prove anything, but I wanna try again. If your notion is right, we probably won't have another chance. Once we leave this place and time..."

"We've left that time already," I pointed out.

"Not by much, and it has to stretch in time for a little bit, because we got back okay."

I shook my head and focused on the major point. "You want to go for another super-O right now, or within a small enough window of time to still catch that wormhole, assuming that it exists??" She was giving me puppy-dog eyes in the faint light. "Come on, we're already drained. If the payoff with this kind of lovemaking is high, then so is the energy expended - we've figured that out the hard way."

"I want to try," she told me simply. "I can't do it without you, for obvious reasons, so I'll just ask. Will you do it for me??"

I couldn't fight back a grin. "Oh, the things I sacrifice on your behalf." Maria laughed. "Let's do this the smart way though."

There were some sugary drinks and salty snack foods in the car, and I insisted we each eat a little and drink more than a little. Replenish... uhh, you know, stuff. Fluids, energy... essential electrolytes, I dunno. We also each took a little time to take care of personal details... I stashed the used condom in an old plastic bag so I could get rid of it easily later, and got a fresh one later. "You okay with being on top this time??" Maria asked when we were ready to get started again.

"Yeah," I muttered, "when we get to the main event. Start sitting side by side??" And so we got into the back seat of the car next to each other; I kissed her long and deep, and she answered back with her tongue. and our hands started to wander again, slipping under items of clothing. After a few minutes, Maria took her mouth away from mine, and pulled my T-shirt up and off of me with a single motion, (which surprised me and impressed me, I have to say.) As she began to kiss and lick my neck and chest, I melted into the sensation but wanted to do something to return the favor, which, as usual, the position didn't make easy. After all, we were on a clock here.

And then, an idea struck me. Running my hand over Maria's upper arm, I tried to connect to her and stimulate a pleasure sensation in the nerves on her skin. "Oooohhhhhhhhhhhh..." Maria breathed, the word bursting out of her in mid-kiss and leaving a little dribble of drool near my right nipple. "WHAT did you just *do*???"

I grinned and switched arms, bringing my left up to the right side of her neck and her ear, which I've known for a long time is a sensitive area for her. "I guess this is foreplay, Czechoslovakian-style." And I did it again, harder.

"My gawd," she breathed, "you just figure this out NOW??" She grinned, presumably in memory of the sensation, and then pouted. "But I can't do that back to you."

"You do pretty well the human way," I assured her. "Just the touch of your skin against mine turns me on like a christmas tree."

She laughed at that, sexily. "Okay then, come on spaceboy, let's kick it up a notch." She unzipped my jeans, pulling my pecker through, and started to rub it. I caught the idea and brought my hand under the curtain of her hair, touching the side of her face and firing off another pleasure stimulator as she began to lick my rod.

Drain-age or not, we got our game back on pretty quickly after that, with Maria applying the best blow-job techniques I've ever imagined, (of course she's been a quick study,) and every time I tweaked her nervous system the feedback cycle would assert itself, though not quite the same as usual because I couldn't keep the connection up for long while Maria was... distracting me like that. After about seven or eight minutes, I could tell that there was a danger that I'd shoot off at this rate.

"Maybe we should get in position soon," I muttered. "You ready to go yourself??"

She dimpled cutely. "For achieving orbit? Not quite sure... I'd hate to ruin our chances. Maybe you'd better check me out, hands-on. I think you'll be good for a little bit." And she smiled that smile that always KILLED me... so sexy and so innocent at the same time.

So I helped her lie back on the seat and slid up that tantalizing top, revealing her perfect, supple, luscious bosom. I bent down and licked around the edged of the left breast, massaging the right one with my hand, at the same time using the CFT, (Czechoslovakian foreplay technique,) very carefully to slowly excite the nerve complexes connected to her nipples and aureoloe... and the extended sigh of pleasure that escaped her lips at that made every part of me quiver.

I moved on and flicked my tongue out to, ever so lightly and softly, touch the tip of Maria's right nipple, while moving my hand down to rub her thighs and connect to the nerve endings there - and she yelped in delight. "Okay, I'm ready, I'm ready," she insisted. "Let's get on with it!!"

"Don't have to tell me twice," I laughed. After applying the new condom, I carefully crawled up onto the seat with her, my dick, as stiff as ever, pointing in towards the promised land between her legs. (Sorry about that one.) I kissed her on the lips, and caressed her shoulder through pink fabric, and started to push my way into her moist, silky crevice.

Every part of my body was tingling with the energy of our lust. My system seemed to be straining with the effort of recapturing the climax in time. My chest was moving up and down... well, forward and backward, against her bare tits, and she flung an arm against my back, stroking and lightly scratching it.

Maria started to shake, and her pussy clenched around my member, and that was it. I blasted off, in more than one sense of the word.

-------

"So... how do you like the Rynec??" Kelim asked us. The three of us were sitting in a fairly pleasant, private room, with the walls, floors, and ceiling all stone. A house made of stone, or a chamber in an underground labyrinth?? I couldn't really tell. There was a small lamp on the table that threw a fluorescent-ish light up towards the ceiling without getting it in our eyes, and around the edges of the room reddish light filtered in through cracks... sunlight from outside, or more artificial lamps intended to give the impression of natural light? (The sun of Antar was considerably redder than Earth's.)

I recognized that he'd been asking us a question, and since I didn't really remember anything about the taste of the beverage he'd offered us, I put the green crystal cup to my lips and sipped again. "It's not bad," I admitted. "Got a bit of an odd aftertaste, but I think I like it."

My alien cousin nodded, relieved. "I had no idea how it would suit the palate of a... a human hybrid."

"It suits the palate of a full human damn well," Maria laughed. There was only a little of the reddish-purple juice left in her cup, and she drained it and set it down on the table, just a little expectantly.

"Would you like some more?" Kelim asked, blinking his eyes repeatedly in a mannerism that I suspected, for Antarians, was something very close to a chuckle.

"Please!!" He picked up the pitcher and refilled Maria's cup quickly. "Sorry if I'm being a pig," Maria continued, "but the food and drink they were able to scrape up for me on the Granilith didn't really sit right. None of the crossbreeds seemed to have any trouble."

"It's alright," he assured her. "You're family here, as far as I'm concerned; what's mine is yours."

"Gee, thanks," Maria said after a moment, blushing slightly, and took a sip of her Rynac.

"So, um..." I breathed in deeply and nerved myself to plunge in. "You were saying something about a bonding ceremony... in three periods, at some Mech-star place?" I had spoken with one of the other Antarians about comparative time scales while they were towing the Granilith... Antar's largest natural satellite only completed one complete cycle in the sky, setting and rising and returning to the same position, a little under every seventeen Antarian days. (It also rose and set in the opposite direction from their sun.) That cycle was a 'period', the rough equivalent of a lunar month in their terms (though the moon went through phases during the night because it orbited their planet so quickly... I'll stop it with these parenthetical explanations now.)

The point was, that seventeen day cycle was a 'period' and moon's noon was, of course, the time when the moon was highest in the sky. So, three periods worked out to a little more than a month and a half... in their days at least. We didn't really know how the length of their day worked out to earth's, and there didn't seem to be any way to work it out except comparing their clocks with our digital watches on an ongoing basis.

Now... I had asked Maria to marry me before we left, and she had agreed. But there'd been a comfort zone where we hadn't felt any great need to set a date or make preparations... even before we'd known that we would be able to make the trip here... well, we were still only out of junior year in high school. No big rush or anything, and things had been so up in the air all summer...

"Yes," Kelim finally said, startling me a little. "I... I realize that it's a little callous to talk of using your engagement for political capital, but..." He shrugged, a gesture that seemed to be in common with our people. (Or had he seen us using that mannerism and imitated it??) "I have the best interests of our house to consider, and the good of the Senedynast movement. Not to mention what I feel is well for the planet and the entire stellar neighborhood."

I decided not to argue the point. "You really thing our... our marriage would help with any of that?? Why the hell would anybody care?"

"You are the genetic heir of Rath," he started. "Many of the common folk will take you for Lord Rath returned from the dead... no matter how you try to spin your return away from that interpretation," and he gave me a piercing look, "there will be no way to stop them from thinking that."

"Word is already spreading around the planet about how the four of you have arrived in the Granilith, and the most unexpected part is... well, is your part in this, Maria, and your connection to Michael. This was what you planned, is it not, that your return would help swing public opinion back to loyalty to the old Royal family and away from Kivar's cadre of insurgents??"

"Well, yeah," Maria said after a moment, beating me to it.

"Then, the best way to capitalize on the attention you have already attracted is with... well, with a grand spectacle," he admitted. "A wedding certainly sounds good... though we can't open it up to the public on a planetary basis for fear of assasins. But the story will spread, and reproductions will pass from one person to another to entire crowds. Rath of Selezir... or a reasonable approximation," he corrected before I could object, "taking his beloved human princess for lifelong bondmate in a glamorous moonlit ceremony..."

"Wait a second," Maria finally managed to burst in. "I don't know what kind of conclusions you may have jumped to, but I'm not royalty or anything. About as far from it as you can get, actually."

Kelim smiled at her. "I was speaking metaphorically, actually..." he raised up a hand as if to cup her cheek in his hand, but stayed about two inches away from her skin. "The beautiful, emotive, courageous stranger from a strange land. But come to think of it, I don't think it would be any harm if a... an unfounded rumor, " he flcked his eyes again in that 'chuckle' mode, "about your royal bloodlines were to leak out. Aside from the four of you and any you tell, who is to know the difference? And there is the folk archetype in our culture of the lovely princess from FarAway..."

Maria had to laugh, surrendering. "Yeah, yeah, we have that one too. Though Prince Charming is probably a little more popular these days." She turned and shot a sweet glance at me sidelong.

"So... have you reached a decision?" Kelim asked us.

I looked over at Maria, and she shrugged, and nodded just a little, and I smiled at her. "You can start making the arrangements, but I think we both want to be involved... we'll probably have a few human touches we want to add to the festivities, if that isn't a problem."

"Of course not," he assured me.

"Is there any way we could push it back another period?" Maria asked.

"If only I could," he told her gallantly. "But that time the height of moon's noon will fall during the daytime, and you lose the full glamour of it if you move back or forwards... or if you can't see the moon at all for the sunshine."

"Figures," I muttered.

"And the period after that, we're getting into the stormy season in this area," he finished.

"Plus, I know Max is going to want to make his move against Kivar before too long," I added. "Which both suggests that I'll be busy helping him, and that it'll be too late for any political capital from the wedding to really help him out." I turned to Maria. "Come on. It'll be okay."

She nodded, putting on her best smile. "Three periods. All right, I'm in."

"Good, we couldn't do it without you," Kelim said gravely. I looked at him... that was just what I had been about to say, but from me it would have been a joke. Somehow I suspected my Antarian friend was completely serious.

After a long moment, he continued on. "You mentioned something about different human customs, and maybe that explains this: when you first said you were betrothed, I was a little surprised because neither of you are wearing pledge pendants."

He said no more than that, and for a second I didn't understand. Then... "You mean you guys use pendants to signfy engagement? Necklace dealies??" I confirmed.

"Well, yes... and later bonding pendants are exchanged at the wedding ceremony. Why... how do human beings do it?" Kelim seemed just as caught by surprise at my reaction as I had been by his statement.

"Umm... rings, mostly," Maria put in. "The girl gets a ring at the engagement, usually a fancy one. At the wedding, both the bride and groom get one, considerably plainer." She put her left hand forward a bit, but didn't mention the pretty gem that glittered on her third finger directly.

Kelim looked at the ring, then at Michael, and smiled. "You sealed your alliance with THAT?" He didn't seem offended, just surprised at something that, for him, was slightly outrageous, but then, it would never have occured to him before now.

"Didn't really have the resources for anything else."

"Well, if you'll allow us, I think we can fix that, unless you want to leave her with just the ring for sentimental reasons?" There was a pause. "Either way, I think we can arrange for you to get a traditional pledge pendant to formally give to Michael, Maria -- you wouldn't object to that, would you? Without it, I'm not quite sure people will believe that he's really engaged and spoken for."

"Oh, sure," Maria agreed offhandedly. "Speaking of making arrangements..." she waved down generally at her clothes, "any chance we could use some cleaning facilities and get new clothes? There wasn't any way to take much luggage into the Granilith -- or to shower while we were en route."

Again, Kelim took just a fraction of a second to decipher her meaning. "Oh, yes -- of course. Just a moment, I'll need to talk to someone about things... you'll need living quarters too, of course." He stood up, crossing his hands quickly in a momentary gesture of respect, and hurried off. I stood up too and realized that we were indeed in a stone house of some sort, but one that seemed to be connected with the other buildings in the area through underground tunnels as well as pathways through the open air. After only a few seconds I heard footsteps coming back up the stairs from the tunnel Kelim had disappeared into - but it wasn't Kelim, coming back so quickly. It was...

"Max!" Maria exlclaimed from behind me - I hadn't realized she had stood up from the table as well. "I'm so glad to see another human face, what have you been..." she trailed off.

Max looked over his shoulder at a little... a little Antarian toddler, climbing ever so carefully up the shallow steps by himself. His skin was a pale lavendar, almost hot pink, and he was wearing ice green overalls on top of what looked like a blue tunic shirt. As he looked up to see the stairs ahead of him to Max, and then to the top of the landing, where Maria and I were standing, I could see that his eyes were wide and the irises a very dark burgundy, almost black-ish. His hair was shaggy and vivid green.

"Awww, oh my gawd, he's so cute," Maria said. "Who is he? Whose is he??"

Max smiled, stepped back and very gently took the tired little youngster into his arms, as he emitted a vague but ineffectual protest and then quieted down. "His name is Mardelek, and he's... my first cousin, once removed, or something like that. His mother's here in the refuge, part of Alinda's household here." I noticed with interes that the little kid's fingers seemed more flexible than those of the adult Antarians... almost as if they went through a tentacular stage.

Maria looked forward and cooed softly out of her throat at the little tyke, while I hung back a bit and did the mental figuring. "So... first cousin -- does that mean he's a part of the royal line??"

"Yeah," Max agreed. "We had... that is, Zan and Vilandra had a younger brother and two younger sisters who survived the uprising. Mardy is Zan's brother's daughter's son."

I smiled at that, and then started to wonder what they'd want to do with the royal line - assuming that we managed to beat Kivar. Max was a human hybrid, and though I hadn't even gotten the chance to ask him what he thought of marriage and dynastic considerations, I doubted he'd want to wed an Antarian. He was probably hell bent on going back for Liz, as soon as he could.

Would they want the throne to pass through full-blooded Antarian heirs, when the time came, instead of to part humans? Well, that was something to worry about later.

"To answer the question you almost asked, Maria," Max put in, "I've pretty much been playing the 'meet the family' game. What's up with you guys??"

"You'd better bring that little kid over and sit down, Maxwell," I told him. "It's big news." He'd have to be my best man, after all.

-------

When we woke up, the second time, I checked my watch and it was after 1:30 am. Hadn't even thought to look at the time during the interval.

"Better get you home," I mumbled, feeling groggy, but still high off of this peek we had received (possibly,) into our future. "Don't you have breakfast shift at the cafe tomorrow??"

"NOW he remembers that," Maria mumbled to nobody in particular.

But we got ourselves out of the back seat and straightened up a bit, and I started nosing the car back down the hill. The extended vision sequence, both parts, had been weird, but certainly not an unpleasant look ahead. Maria and I were still together, we'd gone to my planet, where the loyalist rebels seemed very friendly and welcoming.

There were some bits that seemed confusing and mysterious though. Why exactly hadn't Isabel come along, or Liz for that matter? (Or Alex, but that was really only a question if Isabel came.) Was it actually possible that the Granilith could be used as a transportation device that could get us home? Why had we decided to go to Antar, anyway?? When, exactly, had I asked Maria to marry me? Did we really have living family over there that would accept us like that??

We drove in silence for a little while, not talking about it, and then...

"Why the heck did we stay up on Passion Peak for so long?" I blurted out, feeling a little confused. "Man, I'm so tired I feel like I might turn into a pile of rocks at any moment."

Maria looked over towards me, seeming a little unsettled herself. "We... you wanted to go for doubles, or something."

"*I* wanted to??" I weighed this notion over in my head. "I thought *you* wanted to go for doubles." Another beat of silence. "Why the heck would we have gone for doubles in the car, when we couldn't rest up for it?? I think it was more than either of us were up to."

"Yeah, you might be right," Maria agreed. "After two out-of-body climaxes, I feel like I could sleep for... oh, a good four days straight, at least. Too bad I have to show up for work in about FIVE hours!!"

Something was nagging at me. Out-of-body. Had there been something weird about our out-of-body experiences tonight? I couldn't seem to quite remember, though maybe that was just the general exhaustion I was feel...

"Michael!!" Maria exclaimed. "Left - turn left!!" And I stopped paying attention to anything but the road back to her house then.

It was only when I started getting undressed for bed, back at my place, that the realization sunk in: neither of us had remembered that I needed to collect my undershorts from Maria's place.

TO BE CONTINUED...
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
Read my other roswell stories!

"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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Chrisken
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 17
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'


(Kyle):

As I approached the courtyard picnic tables of West Roswell High, I was surprised to see someone else there. A particular someone I recognized, her long dark hair falling forward as she concentrated on a piece of paper on the table before her. As I approached, I saw her worry her lower lip just a little as she concentrated, then start writing on the paper.

"Hola, Parker!" I called out, and Liz looked up at me with a shocked smile. "Figured I'd be the only one to head over to the school on a beautiful summer day like this." Summer makeup classes were always held over at the other high school on the East side of the city, the one that got to call itself just 'Roswell High,' for budget reasons or something...

"Oh, uh, hi Kyle," Liz yammered, obviously as startled to see me here as I had been to discover her. "J-- just wanted someplace quiet to work on this I guess, and the school seemed like a no-brainer." She waved vaguely at the opposite side of the picnic table, and I took that as an invitation to stop standing around, and I sat down on the bench facing her.

"I guess I'm just trying to figure out what to do next with my summer," I said, letting out a long and noisy breath.

Liz frowned for a moment, and then nodded in recognition. "Yeah, I heard about your big emancipation."

"From whom?" I asked idly. "My dad, or Tess?"

"Um... Sean DeLuca, actually," she replied.

That name startled me a bit. "Didn't know the black sheep was back in town!"

Liz scowled briefly at that label, but didn't make an issue of it out loud. "Yeah, he came back into town yesterday evening. Road trip didn't last very long I guess. I think he heard from his aunt Amy."

I nodded, agreeably enough. "Well, the backlash from Mrs. DeLuca and Tess has pretty much died out... I think they were startled by my timing as much as anything." I smiled a little. "A little surprised that I haven't heard word one from Maria about the subject... not even sure if she's heard about the whole thing."

"Well, Maria's been really busy lately," Liz replied, and then got a weird expression on her face like she'd blurted out something by accident. "With work I mean, at the Crashdown," she hurriedly added. Huh, that was strange.

"And with Michael," I added idly, and Liz flushed with embarassment. "Come on, it's like they never get out of each others' sight anymore, except when one is workind and the other isn't on shift. Doesn't take much to notice that."

Liz seemed to relax slightly. "Yeah, they've been hanging together a lot lately - I *had* been aware of that."

I decided to change the subject at this point. "So, what drives you out to the old high school on such a beautiful morning? Both figuratively and literally..." When she shot me a curious look, I elaborated. "The buses don't run out here any longer until September, and there weren't any other familiar cars in the parking lot."

She smiled. "I met Max for breakfast, and he gave me the lift out here -- he'll be back on his lunch break. As far as what I'm doing out here..." Rather than try to explain aloud, she sorted through the papers in front of her, fanned them out with a few near the top meant to be clearly visible, turned thestack about and pushed it across the table so I could see easily.

I spent a few long seconds (as it were,) scanning through the type and script, and then looked up at her. "Scholarship application??"

"Yeah," Liz nodded. "Isn't any too early to start worrying about that kind of thing." She paused for a long moment... I wasn't sure how well off Liz's parents were, but owning a business like the Cafe could be risky, I knew. And college costs were always going up - everyone knew that.

Wait a second... my dad was just about to try starting his own business...

"I picked up a whole bunch of forms while I was down at Las Cruces," Liz continued, startling me out of that train of thought. "Was going through some of them yesterday and realized that this one was deadlining in a few days. It's a good one, only for outgoing juniors, and would be nearly enough money to cover all my expenses for any four-year program in the southwest. So I thought I'd give it my best shot, but these application essays are driving me crazy."

"Oh?" I looked at the instructions for one of the pages more clearly, then read it aloud: "'What one experience in the past year has broadened your horizons the most, and how?'" I sat there for a moment, then couldn't help bursting out with laughter, and that set Liz off in gales.

-------

(Tess):

I crossed seventh street at the lights, enjoying the summer morning sunlight as it shone down, and headed through the front doors of Mario's pizza. The dining room was spacious, well lit, and laid out in the cafeteria or fast-food style... you got your order on a tray back at the sales counter and carried it to the table yourself. At not quite ten-thirty in the morning, few people were eating heavily yet, but the place was packed -- Mario's was a popular hangout for the high school and twentyish crowds, and the management made no issue of loiering, knowing that when the kids started to work up an appetite, they would spend what money they had eagerly.

Because of that, I didn't even feel the need to step up to the counter for a token soft drink or anything - not just yet, at least. Instead I headed for the right wall, second booth from the front of the building. Babs Stennerman, who had been my lab partner for physics last term, told me I would probably find three teenage boys sitting at that table, and she was quite right.

One of them started to get up and leave the table before any of them spotted me - leaving his pack behind, so he had probably been about to either go buy something or use the boy's room. I knew his face vaguely - Jonas Wilson. He blinked in surpise when he turned away from his buddies and saw me standing there, about six or seven feet away. I stopped there and smiled pleasantly.

After a moment, Jonas dropped his plans for going anywhere and stepped smoothly into the role of spokesman for the group. "Can we help you?"

I chuckled softly. "I hope so... or maybe the other way around. Word is the three of you are planning to make a pretty kickin' movie this summer." Actually, 'the word' that was out among the teenage Roswellians didn't really comment on the merits of the project, so far as I'd heard, but a little flattery couldn't hurt. Besides somehow *I* felt...

Comprehension had dawned on Jonas' face. "You want to audition? We're not quite ready to start casting, but I'll make sure to let y--"

"No," I interrupted. "Actually ACTING, on camera, for all of, well, everybody to see, forever? No thanks." Jonas didn't seem to be the only one who was disappointed. "No, I was hoping to be able to help out behind the scenes. I'm not proud... well, not *too* proud, and I can run errands or gofer or..."

"Gofer-ing *is* running errands," a second guy, Trevor Adams, put in... not rudely, just kind of an absent-minded clarification.

Jonas took another look at me, pensively. "How about... wardrobe? You seem to have a good sense for clothes."

I blinked, somewhat taken by surprise. "Sounds great!" Pause. "Out of curiosity, what's the budget look like?"

"Minimal," the third member of the trio put in, speaking for the first time. This was none other than Martin Bryce, and he was the real reason I was here at all. "Unless the grant comes through from the 'Trevor's aunt in Denver' foundation, in which case... small." I couldn't help a laugh at the way he put that.

This seemed like it might prove to be a fun diversion, quite apart from being a sufficiently subtle way to get to know Martin a little. From what I'd heard, Trevor was the budding wannabe filmmaker of the group, and he'd written the basic storyline - some kind of short fantasy adventure. Martin, the literary one, had been brought in to flesh out the script and dialog, and Jonas was the guy with a little organizational talent and a flair for computer graphic special effects.

We chatted for a bit, going over a very rough outline of the plans, and Jonas told me he'd call a crew meeting in a few days. I smiled as I slipped back out of the pizza place and headed southeast towards the center of town.

Was twenty after eleven by the time I got to the Crashdown, but they were still serving breakfast for anybody who wanted some. I ordered a 'Conquer planet earth (start the day off right)' combo - short stack of blueberry pancakes, sausages, multigrain toast, and one egg sunny-up. Let my mind wander as I waited for the food to arrive, pondering what Isabel's first night in Las Cruces had been like, and whether Jim Valenti's woodworking business would be a success.

"Hey." Maria looked... well, it wasn't easy to pin down just how she looked as she started putting dishes and utensils in front of me. Not bad... in fact, there seemed to be a subtle radiance about her, in the figurative sense, but also... distracted? Overtired??

She had put the bottle of tabasco sauce on the far side and gone back for the last item when her grip failed. The small, heavy bottle of maple-corn syrup slipped from her fingers and landed with a crash under the table. Both of us poked our heads halfway under the table to look at the cracked glass container sitting there on a slight angle, sticky brown goo oozing out of it through half a dozen fractures.

"Ohh, damnit!1" Maria expostulated. She let out a low groan and made eye contact for the first time since stepping up to the booth to take my order. "Last straw for a *perfect* morning."

I smiled as comfortingly as I could and looked around. No-one had paid any attention to the crash, or at least they weren't still looking now.

Judging the coast to be pretty much clear, I bent down under the table and tweaked the molecules in the of the syrup just a little. Then I brought it up and put it back on Maria's tray, the syrup temporarily hardened to the consistency of rock candy, almost as hard as the glass that was now partly embedded inside it.

"Thought it would be easier to clean up this way," I whispered to my very surprised waitress. "Stuff will soften again in about five minutes, or if you heat it up." Maria took the hint and bustled off to the kitchen to dispose of the evidence.

When she was back to, very carefully, place a replacement beaker of syrup on my table, I chuckled a little. "Rough day so far?"

"Ehh, it's my own stupid fault for staying up so late when I knew I had a six thirty shift," Maria explained.

"Don't suppose you'd be able to sit down and share my grub?" I offered.

"Nah, still too busy," she replied. "Thanks for the off, though."

"'Kay," I agreed quietly. "Say, are the owners around?"

"Huh?" It took Maria a moment to understand what I was asking... she certainly must be sleep deprived. "The Parker parents? No, not at the moment, though Miz should be showing up in half an hour with... well, why do you ask?"

I probably should have told her, but I just smiled and ate a little bit of my pancake, well drenched in syrup and tabasco. "No real reason."

-------

(Alex):

"I'm still not quite sure I understand what you were thinking, Whitey."

At first there was only a soft, muted growl in reply to that. Then: "The key fact is that the bit vector behaves like a cyclic array. So I used the splice methods... they're overloaded to treat long integers as bit vectors naturally, to make sure that the cyclic order was presev..."

"Wait a second, are you kidding me?" the first voice interrupted. "A *circular* bit vector?"

"Whitman?" I looked up from the manual files I'd been poring over and looked at Kristin White and one of the grad students on the project, Brendan something, were arguing about the patch that Kristin had slapped onto my code. "Circular bit vector, yup," I confirmed.

Brendan blinked a little in shock, while Kristin smiled slightly at the confirmation of her point. Brendan rolled his eyes and went back to scanning the code printout sitting in front of him for a moment.

"Well, I don't know if you'd call it intuition or just instant comprehension, but you did exactly the right thing, Kris. Couldn't have put it any more neatly myself if I'd tried."

I regretfully turned back to my monitor. Observing the way the different members of the project interacted was teaching me a lot. Kristin, for instance, as an undergrad was one of the most junior people here... except for me of course. But she had no qualms about arguing her own interpretations with the grad students and even the researching doctorals -- and more often than not, she convinced them of whatever point she was trying to make.

"Okay, both of you," Luis said, looking up briefly from a thick book he had been poring over. "Now that you've got THAT settled, what about the recursion efficiency issue? Kristin, this is your specialty... any input?"

Kristin's face creased in thought, and she brought out a laptop, set it up in front of her, and pulled a burned CD out of her bag. "What's that?" I asked curiously.

She smiled. "A few of the relevant extrapolation logs from the transcription experiment yesterday." She inserted the disk into the computer, and a motor hummed to life spinning it around. "We're getting way too much information being passed between quantum recursive virtual states... or being SENT from one state to another -- not all of it is getting through. That's why we saw a slowdown yesterday, and it doesn't look good for scalability. Any truly difficult challenge..." She sighed. "Could tie up the big Q for months, if not indefinitely."

"Okay then, what can we do about that?" Brendan asked. "Clean up the source code, get it through the bottle neck."

Kristin turned a frosty glance on him. "Oh yes? Care to point out how??" She punched a key on the laptop and turned the screen around to face him. Without even waiting longer than two seconds for an answer, she continued emphatically (and with conviction,) "The problem is *NOT* in the source code... the source code is as tight as feasible. And the fault isn't in the algorithm or the architecture..." She flicked a glance towards Luis, though I wasn't quite sure why. "If the MACHINE code were as tight as it could be, as tight as the source code was, we'd have no problem. The fault is in the compiler... or maybe I should say, in the source language."

"So what," Brendan shot back, having settled fairly comfortably into the role of devil's advocate against Kristin's fiery certainty. "You're talking about... about redesigning the compiler? Re-writing the language??"

"It's the only way to get the results we'll need," she insisted. "We've all learned a lot since they were designed in the first place."

"Okay," Luis said, entering the conversation again with an air of complete authority. "We will *research* making major design changes to the compiler... and possibly the source language. Present a report to Jonas and the other senior members."

"They'll agree to it," Kristin insisted. "That is, unless they're beating us to the idea already in which case we'll just be agreeing with THEM." Brendan shook his head and started rooting around in his own backpack.

"Requested data file not found," he quipped after fifteen seconds, rising to his feet. "Retrieving from archives. Stand by." And he walked out of the room.

Kristin must have caught my somewhat bewildered expression. "That just means he's off to his room to get some books... probably Miller's text on compiler structure, for one."

"You okay, man??" Luis said, shaking me on the shoulder gently.

"Umm... I guess so," I admitted, sounding none to sure of myself in my own head. "Most of that stuff you guys were talking went..." Rather than admit it out loud, I swooshed a hand back, a good ten or eleven inches above the top of my head.

"I'm not too surprised," he agreed gently. "How much do you understand about the basics of compilers, source code, machine code, and all that??"

"Umm... enough, I used to think." I rhymed it off. "Source code is a set of precise but reasonably abstract and comprehensible instructions for a computer, which we use to write programs. Machine code is a series of binary instructions... just an incredibly long, impossible-to-understand series of zero and one digits that a computer's processor actually understands and executes. A compiler is a program that has been written to convert an input file of source code into an output file of machine code according to strictly defined rules."

"That's it in a nutshell," Luis agreed. "Since the Supercomputer we're working with, the quantum multiprocessor part of it anyway, works in a completely different way from any other computer in the world pretty much, it runs on its own set of machine code instructions, and so we have a special compiler and a special source code language for it."

"But the compiler isn't working well enough to give us exactly the machine code we need," Kristin continued, "no matter what source code we might give it. That's not too surprising in itself... ever source language and every compiler has blind spots, certain perfectly legal sequences of machine code instructions that they can't generate, usually because the source code needs to be less precise than the machine code, or else it wouldn't be any easier for human beings to work with and write. Normally this doesn't matter - you can get the results you need with the source code and the compiler, it just takes a few extra bytes here and there, which doesn't slow you down or cause too much of a problem. Only..."

"Because of the way quantum computing works," Luis finished, "a few extra bytes here and there can make the difference between getting a program that gives you an answer in three hours, and a program that gives you an answer in three months - or more."

"So you're rewriting the source language," I repeated, the point behind it sinking in. "And the compiler. Well, I guess I don't need to study these manuals," I waved at my screen, "if they're about to become obsolete."

Luis laughed at that. "Well, as I said, we're just putting up a proposal, but yeah, might be a better idea if you switch to the developer docs for ansi C," he agreed. "That's the language that the compiler is written in." He helped me call up the appropriate files, and I groaned -- they seemed even more bizarre and cryptic than the other documentation files, which had actually been starting to make sense.

Brendan came back in a ltitle later, and the four of us spent a little time focusing on our seperate efforts mostly in silence for a while. "Okay, time for lunch," Brendan finally announced. I checked the time icon at the corner of the computer screen - it was after two in the afternoon, and we'd started at around nine thirty. "Burger hut at the student union?"

"Okay by me," Kristin agreed, packing up a few things, though mostly we just got up and Luis locked the door behind us with all of our stuff still in the room.

"By the way," he asked me as we headed out of the building. "That girl of yours, Whitman... you said her name was Isabel Evans?? Any relation to a Mister Philip Evans who lives in Roswell? A Lawyer??"

I blinked in surprise. "Yeah, she's his daughter. Adoptive daughter, actually..." Now why had I just blurted THAT out? As if Isabel needed complete strangers to know that she was adopted - a fact that might get them curious about her background... oh well. Couldn't be helped now. "Why do you ask?"

"I've got a cousin who works at the same firm," Luis said. "Jesse - Jesse Ramirez. Ever heard of him?"

"No, can't say that I have," I told him.

-------

(Michael):

I pulled up and parked next to the sidewalk... not the third-hand car. I was on the motorcycle for this -- it would tend to attract a little less attention, I had decided.

Scanned the entire area, trying to not let a single detail escape me. Not much traffic on Hemlock Avenue right at this moment, either of the automotive or pedestrian variety. Probably the best time to make my move... except for that there was a car in the driveway. Well, either go in now or head off and try my luck again later.

I shook my head -- in no mood to keep trying again and again, letting this consume my entire day. And yet, I didn't want to just let it go either. I got up off the bike, leaving it on its kickstand, and headed up to the door. Front door was locked - I bent down and took the key from under the edge of the mat where I knew it was always kept. Unlocked the door and put the key back, locking the door again once I was back inside.

"Hello?" I called softly... more to say that I'd made a bona fide effort than anything else. Wasn't exactly keen on anyone knowing that I'd been here. I climbed up the staircase, headed down the hallway, and...

"Michael??" I turned to look back behind myself. On the other side of the second-floor corridor from the stairway landing was a very surprised Amy DeLuca. "What in the world are you doing here??"

"Well, uh, I left something here yesterday afternoon," I mumbled, "and Maria said it would be okay if I came and got it."

"Oh, okay." She accepted that with a slightly rueful smile. "What is it?"

"Ummm..." I froze, but tried to keep from giving anything away to Mrs. DeLuca. "A book!" I finally burst out, not quite sure why.

"Oh." She nodded, and we stood there in the hallway for a minute.

"So... I guess I'll --" I turned and headed on to Maria's room, and Amy followed. In the silence it occured to me that I might have made a mistake. If I'd just stayed there for a bit longer, she might have gone on about her business - to do otherwise would be admitting that she was being nosy. But since I'd moved first, she wasn't necessarily being nosy, just curious.

I smiled at her awkwardly before opening the door to Maria's room... and almost sagged with relief when I realized that there actually WAS a book of mine on the little bedside table. A copy of 'Heart of Darkness' that Maria wanted to borrow, though I was pretty sure she hadn't had the time to get very far with it lately. It'd be nice to reread some parts of it, and she could always borrow it back if she wanted. I stepped in and picked it up.

"Wow, Joseph Conrad??" Amy peered at the book, and I reflexively offered it to her for a quick look. "Maria told me that you had... unexpected taste, when it came to books."

"Yeah," I agreed. "She really refused to believe that I'd actually read 'Ulysses.' I guess junk television is more what she expected of me than books that have been around for more than seventy years."

Amy smiled just a little. "Well, maybe she shouldn't have been quite that surprised. There's a LOT more to you than meets the eye, Michael Guerin." She smiled slightly. "Well, I'm off to the store. Make sure that whatever door you leave by is locked behind you?"

"Of course," I agreed. She headed off, and I sighed with relief and turned to Maria's dresser once Amy was clearly away. In the second drawer down, I found my real target -- the undershorts that Maria had hidden there last night.

I wasn't quite sure why I'd gone to such lengths to ocme and get them myself... it just seemed weird that I'd forgotten to reclaim them last night, and I didn't want to wait until Maria managed to remember to get them back to me. I tucked them carefully into the front pocket of my jeans and headed back downstairs.

"Oh, hey."

I didn't even groan very loud, I don't think. "Hey, Sean, how's it going?"

"Not bad, whassup??"

"I kinda gotta go, okay?"

He waved from the living room chair, and I made my escape.

-------

(Isabel):

I sighed, drank the rest of the sprite I'd bought from the guy in the hot dog cart and tossed it into the recyclable cans container outside the entrance to Kellerman hall. Sigh, and I went in and started to climb the stairs, the weight of my western philosophy book seeming to drag heavier and heavier in my arms with each step I climbed.

The front door to suite twenty-nine was unlocked when I got there, and Abby Wilson, one of the girls who I'd only met briefly, was sitting in the lounge watching a daytime talk show. "Oh, hey, Isabel. How was your first day of classes?"

"Tiring." I admitted, smiling a little and putting my book down on the little kitchen counter. I wanted to just beat an instant retreat to my room, but that wouldn't be polite or even civil. I had to live with these girls for quite a while, and there wasn't any harm in making a little effort.

"Ahh." She looked up sympathetically. From what I'd gathered, Abby had finished her second year, and was something of an overachiever -- not that I was about to hold that against her of course. "What was your schedule like again, anyway??"

I rattled off the info as I searched through the kitchen cupboards. "Philosophy lecture, wednesday afternoons, three hours. Philosophy tutorial, monday afternoons, three hours. Art history lecture, wednesday and friday mornings, an hour and a half each. American history lecture, Monday morning, one hour. American history tutorial, thursday noon, one hour." I grabbed a package of snack cakes that would go great with the little bottle of tabasco I had in my room... after a day like this, I could REALLY use a little dose of spicy and sweet.

"Ahh, so today was your toughest day," Abby realized, "with Mondays a close second. Sorry. Heck of a way to start your university experience."

"I'll be okay," I said, picking up the book again.

"Gonna go call Alex??" Marcie had made sure that news of my on-campus genius sweetie had spread quickly, even if nobody from the suite had met him yet.

"Actually, yes." I flashed her a tight smile and took that opportunity to leave. I wanted to dial up Alex's number and hear his voice, even if that was just the message on his voice mail... which was likely. He said he'd be tied up until late today, and it was only about quarter after four, but...

"Hi, this is Bass-man Whitman, and I'm not in the room at the moment, so leave your message at the beep. Miss Evans, you know the code." I smiled. One of the features in the university voice-mail system that Alex had found was the ability to leave special outgoing messages, tied to a special number sequence -- and he'd created a 'status box' for me, as he called it, as soon as he'd known that he could. Little things like that were part of what I loved so much about him. I tapped in the three-digit number he'd given me and waited a second until the new message clicked in.

"Hi, Iz!! It's about quarter to three in the afternoon, so you'll be getting out of your philosophy class soon, but we've only just got back from lunch. Maybe, if I'm lucky, we'll break for the day around five-thirty or six... you know I'll call your room first thing when I can, right?? I wish I could be waiting for you, to hear all about your first day, but..." I almost started to choke up at the long drawn-out sigh coming through the earpiece, for no very good reason. "We all gotta do what we gotta do, right? Speaking of which, I had really better go - they're waiting for me. Bye!!"

I took a deep breath as the high tone sounded. "Hi, Alex... I'm gonna ramble on for a bit here, because I want to talk to you, even if it isn't really talking to *you*, but DON'T bear with me! Hang up right now and either call me or come over to Kellerman... that is, unless you've already seen me tonight, in which case it's okay if you listen through all the way to the end." I laughed at myself softly.

"Classes... were pretty crazy today, but cool. I like the art history professor, Miz Watson - the philosophy guy not so much, but hey. There's something really... I dunno, *intense* about the classes, in a way that high school never was. Part of it is because these courses are only six weeks..." I hadn't wanted to pick a schedule that would leave me here in Las Cruces all summer - partly because we had no idea how long Alex would be spending here, and partly just because I wanted to have some of the summer to spend back at home in Roswell. This seemed like a reasonable compromise.

"Let's see, what else? My feet are so sore... I scouted out all my class locations yesterday afternoon, but for some reason I went with Marcie to see the student shopping councourse this morning, and I went to find the Texas grill place for lunch -- which just adds up to more walking than I'm used to, really." I dropped my voice into that flirty tone that Alex loved. "If you were here, I'd ask you to rub them... my poor abused feet that is, of course. Maybe we'll do that a little later." The voice mail beeped once, which I'd learned was a fifteen second warning. "Okay, there's the beep and I'm talked out for now - Goodbye! See you later tonight!" And I made a kissing sound and hung the phone up.

After I had finished off two of the twinkies and three tracks off the mix tape that Alex gave me for our three week anniversary of when we got together after prom... there was a knock on the door. "Yeah?" It was Marcie. "What is it??"

"Little ice breaker session out in the lounge, princess," she told me. "Get your loner ass out there."

"Who put you in charge of the suite?" I asked her, while getting up and turning off the CD player.

"Self-appointed," she told me with a low chuckle.

It wasn't that bad. We had some tunes on, and a few salty snack foods, and the four of us just talked and got to know each other a little - me, Marcie, Abby, and Sarah, who was another high school girl like me, (more or less.) The fifth room was still empty, and apparently would remain so for more than a week. After a little while Marcie let the icebreaking kind of fade away, and we watched a video, meet the parents, while Abby and Marcie whipped up a quick spaghetti sauce for dinner.

And I wasn't halfway done my plate when the phone in my bedroom started to ring. Three minutes to six, and I almost spilled the spaghetti running for it.

TO BE CONTINUED...
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
Read my other roswell stories!

"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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Chrisken
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 18
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'

Send me youf feedback please, and I will give it a good home and hug it every day. :D

(Liz):

I only had to wait in the back room for less than a minute before the parking lot door opened and Max looked in. His jaw literally dropped when he saw me.

"You... wow..." I hurried over and threw my arms up around my neck as he stood there in the doorway, and after a moment he clued in enough to kiss me, his lips so soft and tasting slightly spicy. After a few second he broke the clinch and detatched me to get a better look.

"Like what you see?" I teased. First off - I'd gone to the salon today, and followed up on my threat about doing something completely different to my hair. The long straight dark tresses falling halfway down my back were gone -- and good riddance, at this point. The new 'do... well, I'd left the dark brown color alone... because it suits me and I think Max sees it as one of my best features. The tresses were now only just shoulder-length though, layered and feathery and a little wavy and I really liked the effect -- even if there was a bit of hair that was constantly falling over my left eye, which was annoying. But possibly sexy, as well... we'll have to see about that.

As far as the rest of me -- well, I'd pressured Max into dropping a few hints other than 'wear something hot,' and pretty much figured out what the evening's surprise was. I'd gone through my closet, including stuff from Florida and last year, and was wearing a cut-off black halter top that let a little skin show without being trampy, and a pink silk miniskirt... not TOO short but not much past mid-thigh either.

Let's see, what else... a light white scarf around my neck, more for the fun of taking it off than anything else... a gold necklace underneath that with a blue sunrise pendant that only hung about an inch and a half below the base of my neck. An abstract wire-art broach that I pinned to the halter strap of my top -- that wa something that Kyle had given me back when we were dating, actually, but I really liked it and still wore it occasionally - there's nothing wrong with that is there?

Two navajo bracelets that my Mom had given me for my fifteenth birthday on my right wrist - my favorite watch on my left, it's fourteen carat gold and pretty enough to qualify as jewelry. A few rings - including the green garnet one that Max gave me, and a plain silver band that I'd picked up out of state last summer. Black strappy leather shoes, inch and a half heel, and plain gold stud earrings - not that anyone could even SEE my ears when I was wearing my hair this way...

"Definitely," Max said, shaking me out of my self-appraisal, and bent forward to kiss me on the cheek, and then below my cheek, where 'jaw' was starting to turn into 'neck.'

"I think that's enough public displays of affection for now," I whispered. "Better get while the getting is good - before my Dad comes through and asks where the heck I think I'm going dressed like this. For one thing, I'm not sure I'd be able to give him an answer besides 'it's a surprise,' which probably wouldn't go over too well."

Max smiled and led the way out the door, towards where his Jeep was parked. But when he spoke, the tone was cajoling and faintly flirty. "Come on... I know you've figured out where I'm taking you. You have to have."

I noticed before answering that Max was looking pretty damn fine himself, in a light blue button-down shirt and white pants, also black shoes. "I know you're taking me dancing," I admitted with a smile, climbing into the passenger seat, "but not *where.*"

Max grinned to himself at that, and soon we were out on the road. "Well then, you're gonna have to wait a little longer to find out," he said softly. First he swung us by Mario's for a quick bite to eat, and I remembered to take the scarf off and leave it behind in the Jeep before going in. Eating buttery italian bread and greasy pizza while wearing fancy clothes isn't generally my idea of fun, but we were both careful and just being around Max kept me from feeling too annoyed. The food was certainly tasty, and seemed to be boosting up my energy reserves, which was a good thing.

The other thing was that since I'd happened to mention Mario's while pondering the menu at the Olde Towne, on the lunch where Max and I first started to get back together, this was something like the sixth time that he'd taken me here. I do like their slices, but enough is starting to look like enough. Better tell him that, but tomorrow - it would hurt his feelings tonight. Plus, it was really sweet that he was trying to please me in little ways like this.

"This is really going to take a lot of your time this summer," I blurted out all of a sudden, once we were back on the drive from Mario's to the eventual dancing destination. "The Brody thing, searching for this spaceship that he has a line on."

Max spared enough time for a quick glance at my face before going back to awareness of the traffic. "Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly, after a long pause. "Are you upset by that? Do you want me to go back and tell Brody that I've changed my mind, or that I can't put as much time into it??"

Uh-oh. On one level I wanted very much to tell him I wanted exactly that. But... Max would resent it, if I made a demand like that out of him. I was sure of that, somehow. This spaceship thing was very important to him, and speed could be critical. If they took too long figuring things out, there might be nothing left when they got there -- if the government agency currently looking after the spaceship realized that they had caught wind of it. Max could either stay out of this investigation or give it as much of his attention as it required - to go about it halfheartedly could actually put him in danger.

And it wasn't worth it for me to ask him to give it up. It was an annoyance, yeah, but a compromise that I was willing to make. "No, not really. But it means a lot to me that you offered -- if that was an offer??"

"Um, pretty much."

I nodded, feeling a knowing smile on my face. Max hadn't been quite sure what he'd do if I asked, probably would have gone along with whatever request but hadn't made his mind up for certain. Well, I was quite happy to give him the full brownie points for it. "I was actually thinking -- maybe I need a little project of my own. Aside from working at the cafe, something I can do to keep myself busy while you're otherwise occupied."

Max considered that for a few seconds. "Sounds good, actually. Any ideas on what??"

"Actually, yeah." I kept my voice down by reflex, even though there was no-one in a nearby car that could hear what I was saying, and Max was pretty careful about checking through the Jeep for anything that might be some kind of eavesdropping device. "You guys... there's a lot of things that you've heard, or seen, or things you have that have a connection to... to all of the stuff that's been going on. Where you came from, who's looking for you, that kind of stuff -- and that you don't understand the significance of. Normally, as a group, we only start to pay attention to that stuff when a new crisis breaks." I waited for a response.

"I guess you're right, to a certain extent," Max agreed. "Go on?"

"I was thinking of starting to cross-reference that stuff," I said, a little awkwardly. "See if I can come to any conclusions. At the very least, index it, so that when the next crisis does break, we can use all that I've summarized to figure out what's probably relevant and what's probably less so."

Max grinned. "Sounds great. What do you need... you'll probably want to get inside the chamber for that, since it's where we keep all the artifacts. I'm going to be too busy to drive you up often... maybe Michael could. Or Tess. I'm sure either of them would be happy to, schedules permitting."

"Yeah, thanks," I agreed. "But I'll leave that stuff for later. Right now, there's a lot of material just inside my own journals... and I can talk to people about anything that I didn't experience directly, right??"

"Sure. Oooh." Max signalled me silent, as a convertible drove up alongside us, full of junior college students talking excitedly amongst themselves and calling out 'what?' when they couldn't hear each other, and I let the subject drop then. Soon enough we were at Close Encounters, a nightclub that had been set up in a small ranchhouse just outside the town limits of Roswell... supposedly they didn't have to follow city regulations out there, when it came to noise limits, alcohol, closing time and what have you. (Personally this story never made sense to me - if they don't have to follow Roswell city regulations they'd have to follow Chavez county regulations, and I can't see that the county would be any more generous.) The college kids in the roadster had been heading to the club too.

Max drew the Jeep into a space on the far side of the mid-sized parking lot and came around to open my door... which I'm glad I realized a few seconds before I opened it myself. The club wasn't too busy - it wasn't yet quarter to eight in the evening by this point. The vibes coming from inside, on the other hand, were as energetic as could be asked for, and I was psyched as I pulled Max through the front door, (where he stopped long enough to pay the cover charge for both of us,) and out into the large L-shaped room that served as the main dance floor. He grinned and drew me close to him.

The edge of the room was rimmed with simple brown wooden chairs, tiny little white tables with square tops, and black sound equipment. It was all clearly arranged so as to not cut down on the dancing room any more than necessary, but the chairs were cool because they could be turned either to watch the dancing or to face someone in another chair (if that person had turned his or her chair to face you, of course.)

I've been to 'Close' before, of course, uhh... how many times has it been? Let's see: once with Kyle, not long before we broke up. Twice with Maria the next winter, when things were so horribly stuck in limbo with Max... and one of those times Alex was along too. Once with Max, late that spring, just before Tess came... no, it was AFTER Tess came to town but before any of us realized she was anything more than a new girl in town who Isabel had met. Once this past fall, with Maria again, before she got her issues with Michael sorted out. And once just about a month ago with Sean DeLuca, on our first date. That adds up to -- um, whoops, I lost count! Six, maybe? So tonight is the seventh... lucky number seven!!

It's a popular party destination with the high school crowd in town, maybe because they don't card at the door - just at the bar, if you ask for something hard. I think if you get tired with having to show your ID over and over again, they put a thingee around your wrist... after examining your photo and face very carefully. Not sure how that works (for obvious reasons.) I think the place was opened by a few kids right out of university who'd seen the first few episodes of 'Buffy the vampire slayer' and decided that Roswell needed a place kinda like "the Bronze."

We danced for four songs at first... two fast, then a slow, then another fast. They were long mixes, and so both of us were feeling pretty tired when we dropped out and headed towards the refreshments counter, which was in an adjoining room, slightly less noisy and vaguely brighter. Another thing that was pretty good about this place was that they'd come up with an interesting collection of nonalcoholic drinks, so you didn't have to just pick between a coke or a sprite if you were underage. I had a rose de mai, which is a virgin cocktail with pineapple and raspberry syrup and cream, that I really like, and Max had a 'brown pelican'. We grabbed two empty chairs on the edge of the dance floor and watched people while we drank and talked.

"It's weird, Isabel beling out of town," Max called, not too loudly, just enough to be heard over the music. (Unfortunately, the only seats we could find were not too far from a speaker - which was true generally in this room.) "I keep waiting for her to come home or expecting her to be hanging in her room."

"Yeah, I can imagine," I agreed. "Have you heard from her since she left??"

"One email, last night. She'll call in a few days - not before. Wants to emphasize her independance a little, I'm sure."

I sat there a bit, thinking about Alex and Isabel, off in a faraway city... well, far enough away when you think about it. Were they together right now? And if so... what were they doing?? The possibilities that jumped to my mind were intriguing, and I dropped my free hand to Max's leg, just above the knee. Those white pants were pretty tight, and a little on the thin side... I caressed his flesh through them, then squeezed, teasingly.

Max smiled at me. "And just exactly what are you trying to start, Miss Elizabeth Parker??"

"Me, start something??" I tried to give him my best innocent look as I moved my hand further along his thigh... a hard combination to make work, and I'm not sure I did exceptionally well at it. "Whatever gave you that idea? Is there some rule that a girl can't happen to touch her boyfriend on the leg without 'starting something'??"

"Well, no, but..." Max shook his head, as if he was having trouble thinking of the end to that thought... which didn't surprise me too much actually. He raised the plastic cup to his lips, tipped it high, and then set it down on the other side of his chair, with just a few ice cubes rattling in it. "Finish your drink," he told me.

I grinned and drained the last of the 'rose', stood up, and reached across to put the glass next to Max's... making sure to brush the front of his shirt with the back of my hand and press one leg up against the curve of his hip as I did so. He waited until my fingers had left the narrow beverage tumbler, and then sprang to his feet, knocking me off my balance and catching my upper torso in his arms, all in one fluid gesture. And then he led me back out onto the floor.

I'm not sure how long we danced this time... it was impossible to focus hard enough to keep track, and different from the last set. Well, that time, we'd been pretty much behaving ourselves. (LOL.) This set, there was a mischievous intensity starting to develop between the two of us, and out on the dance floor we indulged it. Neither Max nor I knew how to dirty-dance like in the movies, but we gave it our best shot... it helped that the DJ had chosen exactly this time to play a few songs with a relentless salsa beat. Or maybe *wasn't* helpful, depending on what your point of view was.

I think a few people noticed that Max and I were getting all frisky out there... hands wandering over each other's bodies -- (not TOO outrageously,) and such and thelike. There was no stopping us... perticularly me. Well, I don't know if the chance of anything stopping Max was greater than the slim chance of anything stopping me, but... well, I am here to tell you that the chances of anything stopping me were pretty slim. And nothing stopped Max.

Well, SOMEthing stopped us, obviously, or we'd still be dancing and feeling each other up at this moment, which we kinda obviously aren't.

Okay, so... after I'm not sure how many songs we danced, something stopped Max in his tracks for a second. It was a pretty slow dance, so he was holding me close... closer than a good high school dance chaperone would have let anybody get away with, in fact. I only had time to look questioningly into his eyes before it happened again, and this time I saw the reason.

Someone had tapped him on the shoulder.

For a second it was hard to see anything but a hand, in the confusing and flashing lights. We stopped moving to the music and kinda broke apart to look at the interloper, one arm of each of us still around the other at one level or another.

The person who had tapped Max was a tall, muscular guy with dark hair shaved off very close to his head. I'd seen him around school, I think, with Kyle maybe, though I don't believe they were exactly friends. Holding his hand was a girl with dark blonde hair in a slinky red dress - I'm guessing at the color of both hair and dress, but fairly sure I'm in the right ballparks. She had a pretty voluptuous body (though not quite as stacked up top as Isabel,) and seemed to have that 'college co-ed' vibe hanging around her like a cloak, except that it didn't cover up her shoulders, or any other part of her.

Max smiled tightly. "What's up, Bryce??"

"Wanna try switching partners, man??" 'Bryce' bellowed over the music, which wasn't really loud enough that it needed bellowing over, but it was plain that he wasn't really aware enough to know that. It looked like he'd been drinking, which meant that he'd probably been using a fake ID.

Max was stunned speechless for a minute... I guess I was too, but I would probably have stayed quiet even if I wasn't. Bryce took the time to run his gaze up and down me in a way that made me feel just a little creeped out. The girl hadn't stopped looking at Max with a hungry intensity that was no less disconcerting, if a little more subtle.

"Ummm... are you pulling my leg, man??" Max said with a forced smile. "Not a chance!!" He turned to look at me. "Am I right??"

I winked teasingly at him, turning my head so that of all the other players only Max would be able to see it, then turned to Bryce. "Sorry, buddy. Nothing personal... but I'm happily spoken for."

The girl shook her head, stung, and spread a miffed look between the two of us. At least, I think she was trying for something in the vicinity of 'miffed.' It came off more 'dopey' than anything. "Like the two of you are anything so special."

"Why else were you trying to split us up and make your moves??" I muttered under my breath.

"Not really," Max replied out loud, looked at me, and then beamed at the two interlopers. "We're just in love." He turned back to address me. "D'you wanna go somewhere else, sweetie??"

I smiled back at him. "Actually, yeah." And we strode past the two of them, stopped at the bar for more drinks -- I had another 'rose' and Max switched to a cherry coke -- and then we hurried up the stairs and into the west room, which was better for intimate conversation... not to mention the possibility of making out without attracting too much attention, because half of the people there were doing it too. (And not necessarily just in pairs: as we were looking for an unoccupied space, I saw Lisa Weston, Tommy Graves, and Anita Romeri all sprawled out on the same sofa and doing some pretty serious petting and kissing... all the way around, as it were, a la 'menage'. Was that a new thing? I would have expected to hear something about the grapevine - but then, school being let out, I wasn't exactly ON the grapevine.)

Well, fixating on *that* any more would be more than a little strange, wouldn't it?? We found a spot, a snug little loveseat that might have been just an oversized armchair, but comfy enough. The music was a little quieter in here, only a little, but enough to notice, and the lighting was brighter and less distracting, but still dim and subdued.

"I can't believe you actually did that," I muttered. Actually, I kinda could, because that's the way Max was sometimes lately, but... "It wouldn't have hurt us to dance one dance with them. It's polite."

"Yeah," Max agreed, "it's polite, and if they were just mixing things up to be sociable, I'd have probably gone along. The way that pair was looking at us, though, I didn't trust either of them to behave themselves - at all, once they got us alone. THAT'S not polite either."

"You're right," I agreed, craning my neck up so I was whispering in the vicinity of his ear - or at least talking softly, which was just as good with the music. "People should always behave themselves... I mean, we were comporting ourselves perfectly properly out there, weren't we??" I reached around Max's neck and shoulders with my right arm to tweak the earlobe on the far side of his face, which I know is always a good button to press if I want to get Max a little horny - or a little horny-er.

He growled low, deep in his throat, and turned to push my softly back against the armrest and the back of my chair, licking my neck and kissing my jaw. "That's different," he stage-whispered back. "We're going steady, and thus have options in how we want to behave in public, if we like, that aren't open to relative strangers."

"Oooh, tell me more," I muttered, but he didn't. He showed me instead - something that involved enthusiastic tongue kissing and slipping a hand up inside my top. I felt a growl excape from deep inside my throat and let my hands drift down to cup his butt.

That was about the way the whole evening went... a happy confusion of high-level hormones, music, tasty beverages, and other simple diversions. We stayed in the mellow room for a while, alternating between the makin' out and small talk without seeming to care which, as long as we were together. There was another dance floor upstairs that turned out to be playing more hip-hop influences -- we tried it out, but didn't really find it as much fun as the downstairs. I ran into the girl who'd been in the seat next to me on the plane ride back from Florida, while I was waiting to use the bathroom, Nita something, and had to be a little rude to get away from her, because she just kept yattering at me.

There was a bit of a media room set up on the ground floor on the other side of the building from the main dance floor... big projector DVD player, you couldn't hear any of the dialog over the music, but it was fun to hang around there and watch it... they were playing the star wars prequel, I think.

I was a little dazed and out of it when Max finally led me back out into the parking lot... not that I'd switched to alcoholic drinks or anything, just music and sense overload I think. After a few seconds I checked my watch - it was a little after ten thirty, getting late but not all that late... "Now that it's summer and you're eighteen your parents don't really seem to care as long as you get home before midnight... same for mine more or less... they trust me."

"I'm counting on it," Max muttered, kissing my ear and running his hand across the front of my top, and I nearly melted into a puddle. "Come on, Liz... we can find somewhere that we can be alone... I love you, I need you so much..."

Oh, boy!! Suddenly I was completely lucid and there was no doubt whatsoever in my mind of what he was talking about. *Cementing...* What I wasn't clear was how I felt about it.

By one standard, a part of my brain insisted, we were already more than seven months 'behind schedule.' We were supposed to have done it back in October, and gotten back together then, but it had caught Tess at a vulnerable time and driven her away from the rest of the gang, out of Roswell. Future Max had intervened, forced me to wait and stall Max until Tess had settled herself in better. I don't think that anything we did could provoke that reaction from her now.

But -- did that mean it was the right thing to do?? When it came to this, like a lot of other things, Max's future self had been maddeningly vague - probably to keep from spoiling any secret that might throw everything out of whack if I figured it out too early. And what that meant, I think... was that I had to put Future Max and everything that he had told me out of my head. Make decisions based on what I knew in the here and now, as nearly as I could. And that meant --

My mind kept going back to Maria and everything she had told me about what it was like, 'cementing' with Michael. She seemed to more or less like the ride she had gotten on, but some of the stuff she was going through sounded definitely freaky to me. If anything remotely like that was going to happen to me if Max and I had sex, I didn't think I was ready for it. And when I started to think of things in those terms... I realized that even if it was all 'normal', as in human terms -- I still didn't think I was ready.

Now, a little quick catchup for you guys. While I was thinking through all of this stuff and trying to come up with a way to explain things to Max that wouldn't be a hard blow to his ego or anything, he had led me back to the Jeep, which now that the twilight had long since faded, was in the dark corner of the lot, almost entirely cloaked in shadows. And now, he swung me up so that my back was against the passenger side of the Jeep, which was the one further from the club entrance and the rest of the parking lot. He reached behind my neck and the straps of my top suddenly fell loose, letting the material bunch around my lower rib cage. My nipples instantly popped erect as they, and the rest of my breasts, felt the sudden relatively cool air of the desert night.

"MAX!!" I shrieked softly, scrambling to cover myself up partway.

"What??" His voice was low, scratchy. Seductive.

"First of all," I hissed, trying to stand on righteous indignation, "there wasn't even a *knot* up there!!" I'd had to put the halter top on like a shirt, stretching my arms through, popping the strap around my head, and then straightening the rest of the fabric around my torso. "Secondly... that's a bit of an intense thing to do to a girl, isn't it? Without, you know... asking??"

"Well, umm, not really," Max insisted. "You always tell me that I don't have to ask permission to do every little thing when we're making out, that it kills the mood. And..."

"This is NOT a little thing!!" I maintained. Max's glance flicked down for a second, and I raised the fabric I was hodling in front of my breasts a little higher. Well, at least *they* weren't little things, or I didn't think so at any rate...

"I didn't know you were naked under there," Max pointed out, soothingly. "I guess I figured you had one of those strapless bra thingees on beneeath." That shut me up for a second... I had thought about wearing a strapless, and then impulsively decided that I didn't need one. "And for the record, I can put the shirt back to rights as soon as we're done, it's just a question of joining the molecules back up."

I stared him down, determined not to let him side-track me, but uncertain where to pick my ground to stand firm. Well, first things first: "Ask me." It came out in a husky whisper, probably pretty sexy, though I wasn't really trying for that effect.

Max stared at me for a second, and then it was like he got a cue from the expression on his face what I was talking about. "Let me see them... please??" He let out a long breath. "I want to touch you, to taste you..."

I had to smile. "Okay... since you asked nicely." I let my arm slip lower, and grinned to myself when I realized that Max's eyes were tracking down on my exposed skin and flesh, bit by bit, as it was revealed. He reached down and traced the sensitive skin between my breasts with one finger... I couldn't help but gasp with pleasure.

Max chuckled softly and brought his other hand up to my chest, tweaking one nipple ever so gently. I opened my mouth and panted; Max brought his lips down to the top of my other boob and kissed it tenderly.

This was starting to feel almost too good. It wasn't unearthly, like Maria had described, in fact it seemed quintessentially normal and human -- but that was probably a good reason why I should cut things off right now. Maria had said that the instinct kicked in when they had crossed a mental dividing line that they were going to do it, and then it was almost impossible to back off. I smiled regretfully and gently pushed Max back away. "This has been... been such an amazing night, Max, but I think it's time we went home. Seperately."

He looked up at me, and instead of the puppy-dog eyes I was expecting there was understanding, and a certain whimsical disappointment. "You sure about that??"

"Yeah, I think so,"

He smiled, and backed off a step. "You, uh -- you wanna, er..." He gestured at my top. "Put yourself back together??"

"Uhh..." I smiled, knowing that I was probably blushing but Max couldn't really tell anyway. I pulled my top back up, linked the straps behind my neck, and turned around to give Max a good view from behind. (Of my halter straps, of course.)

After a few seconds, he tapped me on the shoulder, and I realized that my top was staying in place. I climbed into the Jeep and Max went around to the drivers' side. I couldn't help but snicker a bit to realize that there was a sixable bulge in his lap, which the thin white fabric made almost comical. Max shot a look sidelong, but he didn't seem annoyed and tried to act like it wasn't there, buckling up around his waist and pulling out.

As we drove back towards the center of town and the Crash, I irrationally felt like I had to explain myself further. "It's not that I don't want to... to be alone with you, somewhere comfortable, and do all the things I think you were trying to tell me you wanted to do," I said, feeling like I had no idea of the right way to say what I wanted him to know. "I wanna do it very much. It's just that..."

"That tonight isn't the right time," Max filled in, not at all resentfully or downhearted. "I think I feel the same way, now. Making love to you was the furthest thing from my mind when I woke up this morning... well, nearly. As much as I love you, I had no intention..." He shook his head and started again. "Can we just chalk it up to a hormone overflow??"

"For now, I think." Something about the phrases that he had used was ringing a bell - and when I realized what I remembered them from, the surprise was like a physical slap across my face... No intention, 'furthest thing from my mind.' Those were the things that I had said to the older Max, when he had been trying to relate his memories of making love to me, the night that neither of us made it to the Gomez concert.

How was that even possible? Was it some kind of cosmic coincidence or kismet, or had he subliminally picked up some of that scene one time when we'd kissed?? Then again, maybe we had both subconsciously gotten the phrasing out of some book we'd read at school or what-have-you, or a TV show. This was no time to dwell on it."

"Or maybe, we should just ch-chalk it up to wild dreams," I stuttered, trying to recapture that ideal teasing tone of voice. "I have a pretty good notion that I'll be dreaming about you tonight. Think maybe you can return the favor??"

"Ohh, if there's any way possible to choose my own dreams, I think so," he agreed. We both feel quiet at that point, and I realized that already we were close to my place.

He pulled into the cafe's parking lot, and I gestured that he shouldn't bother with the routine of opening my door, or even getting out himself. I hurried around the chassis of the vehicle myself, instead, and leaned in through his car window to kiss him goodnight - a perfectly sweet kiss, and there wasn't anything I could think of that would be a better way to end this magical evening we had had together.

Except for one last little detail. Thinking so much about Future Max and his crazy visit had reminded me that there was a little unfinished business between Max and I, and right now seemed the right moment to get one particular revelation out in front of him. "I never made love to Kyle," I whispered as the kiss broke, still hanging my head and shoulders through the window. "He played along with me, creating that scene for your benefit. Please don't ask me why I was posessed to do something like that, I can't tell you - not yet. But I wanted to let you know that you were right, all those long weeks when you refused to believe it."

Max shook his head slowly. "Elizabeth Sara Parker, you are something else."

"Better believe it!!" I reached across to take my scarf back, pressed two fingers first to my lips, then his, and grinned as I ran off and up the fire escape to the 'back door' to our apartment. Mom was sitting in her den, probably working on a sketch or something. I didn't know where my dad was, maybe he'd gone to bed already. I didn't know, and tried to make as little noise as possible as I headed into my room.

I wasn't expecting what was waiting for me when I got there. Or, maybe, *who* was waiting for me.

"What are you doing here??" Michael Guerin was sitting down in my desk chair, facing the door.

He looked me up and down for an instant, appraising cooly. "Nice outfit!"

TO BE CONTINUED!!
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
Read my other roswell stories!

"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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Chrisken
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 19
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'


(Alex):

"OOHHHHHHHHHH that feels good," Isabel moaned, wriggling her whole body back and forth and leaning back further, a blissful grin on her face. "Do it again, Alex, just exactly that spot."

"Umm... okay." I tried my best to identify exactly which 'spot' she had been talking about, repeated the motion, and was rewarded with a sudden cheerful yelp, followed by an 'mmmmmmmmm' that was almost like Isabel was purring.

"I never thought I was that good at giving foot massages," I said, moving my fingers in towards her delicate arches, careful not to squeeze too hard in the wrong spot. "Come to think of it, I've never really had a good opportunity to give it a try!!"

"Well, maybe necessity is the mother of great discoveriiiiiiiii--"

It was just approaching seven forty in the evening, and Iz and I had only managed to rendezvous at my place about twenty-five minutes ago. The day's session had run long, and when I found out that Isabel had been eating dinner with her suitemates and watching a video, I encouraged her to take her time while we finished up the first draft of the proposal. Once I'd made it to Rhodes hall and let her into the room, (hadn't yet gotten around to cutting a copy of the key for her, things had been so crazy and we'd probably do it on the weekend,) there hadn't been much small talk before Isabel made her proposal, or request, about me trying my hands, literally, to give some relief to her sore and sorry feet that had been much put upon, and pressed upon, all day.

"So, I guess not as much walking around from now on??" I asked.

"Maybe not..." Isabel agreed, sighing with pleasure, "or at least not until I get used to it. I guess I never realized that I was taking it for granted to have a car, or to have access to cars, I mean. To get wherever I wanted to in a snap, unless it was way out in the boonies. And now..."

"Yeah, I guess I can understand that," I agreed. "At least neither of us is too far from the student center, and there are city buses that stop there. Doesn't really help you getting to the far corners of campus though, I guess."

"Maybe not." She sat up, kinda jerking her legs away from my lap as she did so, and kissed me. "But thanks. Not sure if I'd have thought of that... very soon."

I smiled, and Isabel got back into position. "So... do you want me to ask about your day," she asked as I started rubbing again, "or would I get immediately lost in the technobabble??"

I laughed quietly. "Let's see... we're starting a big new phase of the project that's going to take quite a while, and probably I'm going to have to learn quite a lot, very quickly if I don't want to get left behind."

"What, you mean you don't already know everything there is to know about computers??" she teased.

I couldn't help but sigh at that. "Far from it, actually. Umm... not to change the subject too quickly, but have you actually been watching this??" I waved at the television.

"Umm... not particularly much, I've seen this episode before. Why??"

"I was just wondering why Buffy seemed so... well, a little bit unstable, emotionally. She was practically crying when she was talking to Tara."

"Hmmm." Isabel reached for the remote and turned up the sound a little. "Oh, right, this one was right after Riley left town. Buffy took it hard and she was kind of transferring her feelings onto some of the other pairings." She frowned a little. "Didn't you see this one already? I know you used to follow the sh... you couldn't because you were in Sweden then, weren't you??"

"Pretty much," I agreed. "Got back around the time that Dawn discovered she was the key."

"Ohh, that was just a few weeks after this, then." Isabel sighed. "Umm, hmm --" I looked over at her, and she had an odd expression on her face.

"What is it?? You look like there's something you're not sure how to ask me about, sweetie."

She smiled and rolled her eyes. "Right again. Umm... well, it's about Sweden. You liked it there?" Before I could start a reply, she added "By the way, I'll mention right now that in starting this topic of conversation, I'd really rather not hear a single word about *her*."

I laughed. "Okay, duly noted. As far as Sweden... well, yeah, I had a really great time there. Not sure if it's anywhere I'd want to live for more than a couple of months you know, but a heck of a nice place to visit. Then again, I suppose that a lot of places are probably a nice place to visit."

She nodded. "I remember hearing secondhand that Liz got a bit of a case of the itchy feet right after you came back. Wanting to go and visit a few places herself." I sighed. "As far as me, I dunno, I think I may be more of a homebody. I've been to Vegas, of course, I've been to Texas and Florida and Arizona... and I see how it would be fun to visit Paris or Honolulu or Tahiti -- but I don't think I'd really feel a loss if none of that happens. It'd be a bonus, not something I ever need to do - does that make sense??"

"Yeah, I think it does," I agreed.

There was a moment and a half of awkward silence, and then Isabel waved at the game console on the floor in front of the TV, with one of the controllers just within her reach if she stretched a little. "Mind if I play some Tetris?"

I laughed. "Knock yourself out, please!" Izzy didn't like very many computer games, but the quick-reaction pace and fundamentally organizational objective of that one had intrigued her instantly, and quickly she was kicking my lattice in head to head play and cleaning up on solo.

As level 3 started, it was hard to fight the feeling that she wasn't even paying attention to the foot rub anymore. "Is it okay if I get up?" I asked her with a smile. "Didn't really get that much for dinner today, and I was planning on making myself a snack."

"Oh!!" She dropped a skew in precisely the wrong place, and paused the action. "Of *course*, Alex -- go ahead!" From the expression on her face, I could tell she felt a little ashamed - guilty that she'd kept me rubbing her feet, tending to the consequences of HER long hard day, while I was (in her mind,) starving from my own long hard day.

"It's okay," I assured her quickly. The food issue wasn't critical even yet; I had grabbed some rice and grilled chicken from one of the dining halls when I'd first called Isabel this evening. And I'd been HAPPY to perform for the foot rub, of course.

But the time seemed to be right, and as Iz struggled to recover from her digitized blunder, I got up from the couch and headed over towards the 'kitchen corner' of the room. After inspecting the contents of my small fridge for several seconds with something less than satisfaction, I extracted a miniature pizza pie and slid first the pizza onto a plate, and then the plate into the microwave.

Seventy seconds later the mozarella cheese was melted, and I took the plate and a glass of cold water back to the couch to how Isabel was doing. There was no trace of the dropped 'skew' or any disorder that could be traced to the consequences of its placement... in fact there was almost no disorder at all, and soon she scored a Tetris and a hefty bonus for unoccupied rows, and then level 4 began.

I was starting to feel a little weird about this. I'd told Isabel she could go ahead and play, but now I wanted to talk and I knew she didn't like to be disturbed while she was on the game. Well... it wasn't a big deal, after all. I could find something to do until she got up several more levels, and then say something. I watched her play while scarfing down the pizza, and then picked up a Terry Pratchet book that was sitting on the end table and read a little while. I decided that I'd say something once she cleared level 8.

I didn't get the chance -- Isabel reopened the conversation herself, halfway through level seven. "You're bored - or disappointed or something, right??"

I couldn't help but laugh. "A little bit. You'll have time to come over and play the game when I'm not here, I'm pretty sure of that."

She switched the whole thing off as an L-block was still in midfall and turned to me. "So, what do *you* want to do now?"

I thought about it. "Well, we could play something together. NOT tetris - maybe castles in the sky." That was one title that had been a hit with both of us - running and jumping through incredibly intricate mazes, avoiding robots and strange-looking fierce animals, and trying to discover keys and other useful items. She didn't seem to like many of the titles that involved guns or other weapons too much, but...

I'd thought about chatting, but now that the option was open to me I realized that I wasn't really in the mood for small talk. "Or, we could just go straight to this," I quipped, leaning forward over the sofa and kissing her on the lips.

"Works for me!" she laughed, after having stroked my lips with her tongue for nearly a minute.

We frolicked there on the couch for several minutes. and she had licked my neck and ears pretty thoroughly while I had been working on getting her cream yellow shirt unbuttoned, and then she stopped to help me get it pulled off her arms and dropped onto the videogame console. I had spent several long moments covering her upper chest and shoulders in passionate kisses when it occured to me.

"You know," I muttered in as low and alluring a voice as I could manage, "it occurs to me that this is 'next time.'"

"Uhh... ohh!" I looked up at her face and caught the tiny delighted sparkle in her eyes as she remembered what I was talking about. "You sure you're up for it, bad boy??" she whispered back.

"I'm up for giving it a try, as we agreed," I told her, and her hands strayed downward towards her jeans.

"No." I put a hand over one of hers. "Let me handle all that. You just go and lie down on the bed." I was grinning now, probably a hungry and proud grin of anticipation. And so she stood up, (after I'd backed off in order that she could be free to do so,) and hustled over to the big bed on the far side of the room, swinging her delectable ass to and fro just enough to drive me crazy with desire.

She made as if to kick off her heels before getting onto the bed and then obviously realized that they were already off from the foot massage, lay down on her back, legs spread apart slightly. "How do you wanna do this??"

I wasn't far behind her by this point. "You just lie back, as it were, and tell me if you like what I'm doing. Sound good??"

"Umm, sure." She was smiling, but there was something about the set of her face as she closed her eyes that seemed uncertain. I wasn't too surprised at that - Isabel had never taken a passive role while we'd been fooling around before. I began in familiar territory, stroking up and down her arms with my hands, letting my fingertips dance lightly over her bare stomach, rubbing the length of her legs through the fabric of those so-tight, tantalizing designer jeans. "I like, I like, but do you have to start off so damn slow, Alex??"

"Yes," I quipped, but took the hint, unfastening the slender, black leather belt buckled around her waist, noticing the colored thread decorating it. The snap fastening her jeans together came next, and the short metal zipper. Anticipating the necessity, Isabel arched her torso and thighs slightly, letting me pull the pants free of her hips and butt. I left the material bunched up around her knees for a little while, taking the opportunity to explore and softly fondle all the new bare skin that was exposed, from the inner curve at the side of her waist to the back of each lower thigh. Then I slowly pulled the jeans the rest of the way down, planting soft kisses on her calf as I went.

"Come on..." she moaned, and I turned back around after hanging the jeans up on the back of a table chair. Izzy was wearing skimpy black bikini panties - couldn't quite tell what they were made out of from looking at them. As I hooked my fingers into the waistband and pulled them smoothly down, I could tell that they were nearly as soft as her skin, but not silk. She kicked as the tiny little scrap of underwear was almost off, and the black fabric sailed across the room.

"Uhhh... wow," I muttered, suddenly realizing that I had Isabel Evans, naked from the stomach down, in my bed. Her pussy was just sitting there - waiting for me. Of course, this wasn't the first time I'd seen it - that had been the deal. Last night Isabel had gotten herself as I watched, and now it was my chance to try and do the honors. "Come on, I'm waiting -- this doesn't feel so good," she teased me.

"Okay," I said, kneeling down beside the bed and kissing the inside of her thigh again, while taking a closer look at the area between her legs again. As well as the in-person exhibition last night, I'd done some crash research on sex guide websites last night and this morning, getting ready. But everything looked different when I was about to touch her, there, for the first time.

Well, nothing to do but get started. I identified her clitty, reached out, and brushed a fingertip against it, and Isabel moaned, a soft sound that was crammed with more erotic subtext than anything I'd ever heard, and a bit of moisture started to emerge from her cunt. My rod twitched to itself, but it wasn't going to get to come out and play tonight. Feeling more daring, I added my thumb, squeezing the tiny knob as softly and tenderly as I could. I knew you weren't supposed to get too rough with the clitoris first thing.

"Umm... you're supposed to be giving me feedback here," I pointed out with a soft laugh. "Am I doing okay or not??"

"Yeah, yeah," she panted, tittering softly. "You're doing great. Maybe... maybe," She couldn't seem to complete the thought, but I had a notion of what might come next.

I moved off to the lips surrounding her slit, stroking the outer limits first, then the innter ones. "Oh yeah, that's nice," she moaned. "Try a spiraly motion."

"What, like this??" The groan that came next was reply enough - and so loud that I was wondering if anybody in the nearby rooms would be able to tell what was happening, more or less. I also wasn't sure if either of us had locked the door, but couldn't bring myself to check or even mention it.

"I can't be everywhere at once," I murmured. "Want to try working on your tits yourself??"

"Okay." From where I was I couldn't see much more than her elbows sticking out a little bit and the fact that her hands were in the vicinity of her bra, but she was starting to squirm around a bit more on the bed, which I couldn't help but think was a good sign, and the area all around her pussy was getting damper and damper, which made me think it was time to move to the next stage.

Keeping the two first finger of my right hand stiffly together, I pushed into her juicy sheath, and Isabel almost *yowled* as I did it. "Oh, myyyyyyyyyyyy... FUCK it that feels good!!"

"Just wait," I promised, and delved carefully further in, as her hips bucked in response. Bend the fingers up, just slightly, stroke and, nothing. Maybe a little further in... Isabel let out a little 'wiew' sound, but that was not what I was after. Third try, a little to the right, and...

"Whhhaaaaaaee what the hell was that??"

"Did you like it," I asked, a little nervously.

"I'm thinking yessssssssssss." Mission control, we have located the G-spot, I realized. Pulling the rest of my hand a little closer, I scratched at that same spot gently, while using the fingers from my left to rub at and fondle her clit, guessing that she was warmed up enough for a little rougher treatment there.

The results were beyond anything I can describe... Isabel was clearly beyond words, or any intentional sound louder than a mumble, although reflex exclamations still escaped through her lips every so often.

And then, something changed, and it was like the calm before the storm. "Oh man, it's coming," Iz grunted, confirming my suspicions.

"It... what do I do??" I asked.

"Just keeping on with what you're doins seems goooooo..." And then she was shaking and quivering all over, panting like a dog, her skin felt warm for a few seconds, and her pussy gushed a little bit, Then -- stillness.

I pulled my fingers back out of her crevise, sniffing at them idly and wiping them against the front of my t-shirt, and then scurried up the bed to crouch by her head. "Izzy? Isabel??"

"Yeah??" Her voice was sleepy, which somehow made me hot all over again, though I knew that wasn't appropriate. "Well, I have to say, you learn quickly and VERY well."

"Good to know," I laughed. "You wanna snuggle for a while?"

"Sounds like heaven." I stripped off my own pants and lay down on the other side of the bed, pulling the covers up over us, and she turned over so that I could spoon her.

-------

(Michael):

Liz's mouth worked, hanging a little slackly, as she stared at me, a reaction I couldn't quite read and didn't much like in her eyes. "Wwh... Buh... Ee!" Finally she shook her head and that seemed to do the trick for organizing some of her thoughts into words. "I'm not in the mood for a joke right now, Michael. It's not a good time."

Well, that killed the followup comment I had been about to make about her new haircut. "Sorry, was just trying to break the tension," I said softly, indicating that she should close the door behind her. "I came here for a serious reason, though if it's a really bad time, we can try it again later." I cocked my head at her, putting the question in her court without words.

She kicked the door closed quietly, gave me a weak smile, and headed past me to sit on the corner of her bed. I turned the chair around to face her again. "Sorry," Liz said, shrugging awkwardly. "Didn't really mean to get short with you like that... but you popping into my bedroom unexpectedly has led to chaos before."

I managed a hollow chuckle. Liz had never referred since to the time I broke in here and stole her journal, but apparently she wasn't exactly over the experience yet. "So, what's the business?" she asked with a tired sigh.

How the hell did I start?? "Well, um, Maria's mentioned that she told you about..."

"About the two of you going at it, not entirely unlike bunnies??" she finished the thought. "Yeah, color me 'in the loop' as far as that goes."

"You're the only one besides Maria and I who is," I told her. "That is, the only one that I know of."

"I haven't told anyone else," Liz quickly insisted. "I admit, I was a little surprised that Max didn't seem to know - in fact, until right now I'd wondered if you HAD told him and he was choosing not to say anything to me for the same reason that I wasn't saying anything to him - that he wasn't sure if Maria had told me. But I knew that I couldn't find out for sure without clueing him in that there was some secret, if he didn't know already. And I knew that it wasn't my place to tell him." She paused and took a breath. "Did that make any sense?"

"Surprisingly, yes," I told her. "As far as why I didn't tell Max..." I tried to find the right words, and shrugged helplessly. "Everything that happens between me and Maria is automatically something I don't necessarily want to tell Max about, or Isabel. And this, because sex is involved, qualifies as about four times as private. I'm probably going to tell Max sometime... there are reasons why he'd need to know, given the secret we all share. But right now I like that it's something that the rest of them aren't in on, you know??"

"Yeah, I think so," Liz agreed. "So, um, it's been good talking to you about this, but I can't help but wonder exactly why you've been waiting for me in my room 'til after eleven at night..."

"Ummm..." I shrugged actually. "That was it, really -- just kinda wanted to know if you'd been spreading the news, say, in Maxwell Evans' direction."

"No," she assured me again, shaking her head, and for the first time I clued in that her hair was considerably shorter. "Not even a peep or a hint -- well, a very vague hint or two might have slipped out, come to think of it, but he didn't clue in at all."

I nodded, weighing that. Vague hints sometimes came together into an answer much later, I knew, and Maria and I hadn't exactly been able to act as if everything was entirely normal. Maxwell might guess what was up with us at any time. "Thanks for the heads up."

Liz blushed, apparently taking my meaning - even a hint was worth a warning. "Sorry."

"It sokay." And with that I stood up and crossed over towards the balcony window. "Won't keep you any longer, since you're pretty tired out." Threw the window open and stepped most of the way out. "Hey, it's raining!!" I exclaimed with a little surprise.

I just stood there for a moment as Liz got up and came closer to the window. It was only a few light drops so far, but definitely rain.

"They did say beginning to rain tonight on the tv," Liz commented. "Getting really heavy by tomorrow late morning, all over south-western New Mexico."

"Huh," I muttered. Never really bothered watching weather on the television, mostly because it never seemed to change much around here. "See ya." And I finished pulling myself through and closed the window behind me, sliding down the ladder as quickly as I could.

Maybe the cosmos figures turnabout is fair play: there was a girl waiting for me in my bedroom. Not quite as unexpectedly as I was waiting for Liz - it was Maria of course. "Now, just where were you??" she asked.

Now, although it was pretty dark in the room, two things were pretty clear. One was that Maria had one of my blanket on top of herself. The other was that, as far as I could see, (though that didn't go particularly far,) she wasn't wearing anything. I could see a few peeks of her legs and one arm, but that was about it.

"Off to have a little talk with your confidante," I muttered, trying to make it sound like a non-issue. "Didn't know you'd be here waiting for me," I admitted. "Or else I probably wouldn't have kept you waiting long."

She grinned that mischievous grin at me. "The waiting can be fun too - pleasures of anticipation, all that stuff."

Okay... pretty clear what was going on here, not that I'd had many doubts from the start. Quickly I shucked off everything *I* was wearing but the underclothes, and sat down on the bed next to her. "You know me, babe," I muttered, stroking her hair gently. "Never been the patient type, have I??"

"I'm not sure," she whispered back throatily. "But if you say so... then what the heck are you waiting for, spaceboy??"

I grinned unashamedly and started to pull back the blanket. Maria wasn't completely nude underneath after all - she was wearing a red camisole -- a tiny, silky thing with those ultrathin shoulder straps, and something that looked very much like a G-string.

I kissed her neck, knowing where the impulse would take us from there.

TO BE CONTINUED...
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Read my other roswell stories!

"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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Chrisken
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Post by Chrisken »

Title: Fateful moments, part 20
Author: Chris Kenworthy
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Homepage: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity. ;-)
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 'Cry your name'


(Liz):

The sound of light drumming dragged me out of a sound sleep. Drumming rain against my window, down on the roof. It must be starting to really pick up -- I took a look at the clock radio - 3:52 am.

I looked around the room, my eyes getting accustomed to the dim light. There was lightning flashing erratically outside, and I got up to close the drapes so that the light wouldn't interrupt my sleeping patterns. I was making my way around the bed when a bright sheet of light came shining around the side of the building, turning the balcony into a blaze for a second. I blinked my eyes, trying to shake the afterimage, when I realized something that was hanging there, right in front of me along with the rest of the scene.

The tall, slender figure of a young man. Darkish hair soaked by the pouring rain. Ears sticking out just a little. Max. I was over at the window and had started to open it, water leaking inside, before I realized. He wasn't really there. What the... okay, that was weird.

What did it mean? I thought a little as I closed the window, slid the drapes along the curtain rod until they met in the middle, but I couldn't come to any answer. I walked back to my bed and... well, this part is definitely strange. It was as if I fell asleep in a time-cut, where there's no obvious transition between being awake during the night and being awake in the morning... rested but not really aware of sleeping, which is definitely not usual for me.

A voice was calling at me from outside the room. "Lizzie?? I've got to head out into the rain now... are you getting ready for your shift??"

I turned over to look at the alarm clock, and gasped in surprise -- it was four minutes to eight o'clock, which meant that I had the same number of minutes before I was supposed to b showing up for work. There was no way that I'd make it, but I washed up as quickly as possible, threw on the waitress uniform I kept in my bedroom for just such a contingency, and rushed down the stairs. Somewhere in the above I vaguely noticed that the drumming on my window was really awfully loud.

Once I got down to the cafe, I realized that on a practical level, I might not have bothered. There were no customers, and Michael and Maria were smiling as they chatted through the kitchen window. I had the completely certain sensation that I had just missed a major public display of affection by seconds. (Maybe if there was no-one around it doesn't count as a PDA, but if I'd been watching it would have.)

I hesitated a second, then headed over to join them. "Hey, Michael, under the circumstances, think you could whip me up some grub??"

Michael laughed softly. "No time for breakfast??" I nodded silently. "Well, as you can see, I'm *very* busy..." he quipped sarcastically, and we all laughed. "How about a pilot's breakkie?" That was toast, hash brown, and bacon... sounded really good, and it wasn't something that I'd have to sit down with cutlery to eat, which is possibly why Michael suggested it.

"You're a saint, mister Guerin," I told him with a bright smile.

"Yeah, he is," Maria agreed. "Now that that's settled, can we return to our regularly scheduled flirting?" Catching the hint, I mumbled an agreement and backed away into the back room, where I ran right into another short figure in an aqua waitress uniform. With pale blonde curly hair...

"Tess?! What the heck are you doing in --" I aborted the question as the only logical (and yet unnatural) answer seemed perfectly obvious. "You work here now??"

Tess smiled nervously. "I was hoping it wouldn't be an unpleasant surprise. I was looking for a summer job, something to keep busy with and earn a little money... I overheard you and your dad talking about needing more help, and I asked Maria about it..." She trailed off, but my brain still seemed to be whirling, trying to grasp this sudden change in my world.

As so often happens, the first thing I could latch a firm hold on was a triviality. "I thought you were helping out with Trevor Adams' movie this summer."

"I can do both, can't I?" Well, what do you say to that?? I slowly backed away into the dining room, and Tess followed me. Looking around at the place, deserted of customers, and the rain drumming down into the street outside, gave me an idea.

"Okay, so you've been hired," I announced slowly. "That makes you a trainee, right?" Somewhat uncertainly, Tess nodded. "Get ready for your first day of lessons!!"

----------

(Isabel):

I woke feeling stong arms surrounding me, hearing the dull roar of heavy rain somewhere distant. It took a few moments for me to remember last night, and to realize that I was still in Alex's room. Even though my eyes weren't focusing really well yet, when I squinted I could bring the LED hands of Alex's dial clock halfway across the room into resolution... better than a quarter after eight. "Oh, man, I can't believe I slept through the whole night."

"I didn't," a soft, throaty whisper came from just a little bit away from my ear, and I realized that Alex was awake already. "I woke up around one AM but you looked so serene and peaceful that I decided not to wake you up and send you home. Besides, the rain had started by then."

"Rain??" Curious now, I sat up, smiled down at Alex to reassure him that I wouldn't be gone for long, and crawled out from under the covers to stand on my own feet. Realizing with a start that I was still naked except for a bra, I took a moment to steal a t-shirt and pajama shorts from a drawer that was open a crack, and then made my way around the bed to pull the curtain away from his one small window. No rain was falling down on the window itself, but even in the dimness outside I could definitely make it out falling on the grass, and the concrete paths, and a few unlucky individuals who were trying to rush from their personal points A to points B. The wind was blowing away from this side of the building, I realized.

"Man, it's a terror out there," I commented sitting down, "and I don't think I even brought a jacket, never mind an umbrella."

"Well then MAYBE..." and Alex reached out an arm at that point, which circled round my waist and pulled me back a little ways toward him, "you'll have to blow off your classes today, and I'll blow off the project, and we can just spend the day together."

"Really!!" I blinked in surprise at that suggestion. "It's probably alright for me... I just have the history tutorial, and if the rain doesn't let up I'd be surprised if that many people actually show up. What about you, with all of that new language stuff? Won't the powers that be be upset if you flake??"

"Well, to be honest, we put in a really long day yesterday, and a lot of the research I can probably do from here, jacking into the university network," he mentioned. "I'll call Luis in an hour or so, see what he thinks. In the meantime... how about I cook some breakfast??"

"We'll both cook," I told him with a smile.

"There isn't really room for both of us to crowd around the hot plate," he teased.

"Then you work the hot plate, big boy, and I'll pull microwave duty," I shot back with a smile.

It actually turned out to be a pretty good meal. Not as nice as breakfast at home could be, of course, because Alex didn't really have that much choice in terms of food available... or kitchen appliances, for that matter. The cornmeal pancakes weren't freshly fried, they were frozen and cooked in the little pop-up toaster. But Alex whipped me up a mozarella and tabasco omelette, and fried some store-bought hash browns, and I nuked the (pre-cooked) bacon and toasted the toast and there's probably something that I'm forgetting about.

So Alex pulled the comfy armchair around so it was pointing towards the window instead of the TV, I sat cross-legged on the bed, and somehow got started talking about the things that I was looking forward to about my psychology class. (Hopefully.) Alex didn't really know that much about it, but he seemed interested, asking a few questions -- and one of the things that I love so much about Alex Charles Whitman is that way he has of really LISTENING to you... like you're the only thing he's aware of in the universe at that moment -- though by now I know him well enough that I realize he probably has a couple of unrelated things chugging through the back of his mind, just because that's the way his brain works. But when he pays attention to something, he seems so focused that... well, or maybe he just does that trick with me, hee hee.

So we chatted our way all through breakfast, as the wind shifted outside and the heavy rain started to drum against the window. We cleaned up some of the dishes together and left the rest soaking in the sink for a while. "Well, it's nearly nine thirty... what now??" Alex asked me, smiling.

"Ummm..." I thought, and laughed as a naughty idea popped into my brain. "We could take a shower... together."

Number two on the list of things I really love about Alex, (even though I'm just kind of making this particular list up off the cuff, as it were) : the expression he gets on his face when he's *really* embarassed about something, especially having to do with sex -- and myself maybe, I suppose. "Umm, uhh, errr..." he vocalized after a long, pregnant moment. "I... I'm game if you are, I guess."

"I was kinduv half teasing," I admitted, "but I don't really see any reason why not." Alex and I hadn't gone that far... well, we hadn't up until the past few days at least, and there's still a lot that we haven't done. But we were starting to explore sexuality together, and this seemed to be very much like the pattern... daring each other to go further. To underscore the challenge, I pulled the t-shirt of his that I was wearing off and tossed it aside.

Alex grinned a little, and without saying a word, slipped his pajama bottoms off so that the fabric fell into a soft heap at his feet. He was wearing white cotton briefs underneath, and we held the tableau for a second, each staring a little at the other. And then I rushed towards the bathroom door, he followed, and we started playfully and enthusiastically taking the rest of our clothes off as a co-operative effort.

The shower was fun... possibly not quite as sexy as it might sound. Plenty of chances to get a good look at each other in the birthday suit, of course, and some good-natured lathering and scrubbing the other person. We kinduv each cleaned our own naughty bits as an unspoken agreement... partly because neither of us were sure the other knew exactly how to best do that task with tender flesh, and maybe also half because we didn't really want to get too excited and end up in a situation we weren't ready for.

Once both of us were both squeaky clean and out of the tub, we played around with toweling each other off as well, of course, and had just started to get dressed again when the phone rang, and Alex had to run across the room dressed in nothing but a clean pair of briefs to answer it.

I put on, somewhat reluctantly, the same underwear from yesterday... (would *have* to bring some necessities over here when I could, for just this sort of situation,) and the stolen t-shirt and shorts from Alex's dresser; tied my hair back in a quick ponytail and walked back out into Alex's room proper in my bare feet. He was sitting on the bed, trying to set up the laptop computer and plug several different cables into it while still talking on the phone, so I sat down in the chair and just watched him, smiling.

"Okay, okay, yeah," he was muttering into the receiver. "Give it just a few more seconds -- yeah, I'm online now. You can give me that list of DNS addresses now." There was a fairly long stretch after that when all Alex was saying was 'yeah, okay' or 'go on' or some variant of that... he was typing down a note of whatever the guy on the other end of the phone -- possibly Luis Ramires -- was dictating to him. "Okay, yeah, I'll give that a try... no, I won't. Okay, see you tomorrow Luis." Alex hung up the phone and looked over at me.

"So, you're on the clock now?" I said, disappointed. I had hoped to have him to myself for a little while yet.

"Not officially," he said, grinning at me. "I was afraid I was, when I realized the phone was him, but all he really wanted was to confirm that session was cancelled for today. By the way, apparently some of the roads into campus are starting to flood." The fact seemed to please him.

"So what was all that about the DSN addresses?" I asked.

He took a moment, and I realized that I'd mixed up the order of the acronym. "Just a few things that I can check out if I have a chance... but not now. He told me not to work too hard." And with that, he flipped the screen-cover of the portable computer down, until it closed against the keyboard, and there was a sudden whine of the hard drive inside as it coasted to a full stop, and then a click as some system or other went to sleep. I smiled.

"Okay then, if we've got some more time..." I cast around for something fun to do, and ended up staring behind my chair at the game console. "Maybe something two-player on that thing?? Not castles though, that seems too energetic."

He smiled. "Okay, what then??"

I thought. "Something laid-back... a puzzle game, a mystery or something. Where we can take our time."

Alex thought about that for a second. "Nothing for the console, but actually," he waved at his laptop. "This thing has 'legends of interactive fiction,' which kinda sounds like it fits the bill."

"Hmmm... any fighting?"

"In some of them, but never very much. The focus of every game is on solving the puzzles... a fight scene is usually just on the level of 'hit troll with sword', 'you wounded him and he wounded you', 'hit troll with sword', 'okay he's dead.'"

I smiled. "Guess that's okay... but the laptop screen is a little small for both of us to be crowding around."

"It is not to worry," Alex replied, standing up grandly... and then realized his lack of clothes and rushed over to the dresser to pull on a light sweater-top. "I've got an audio extension cable around here... can hook it up to the tv so I can watch it easy, and you can run the keyboard."

So he opened up the laptop again, and set up the adventure game interface, and then busied himself with setting up the secondary audio cable feed while I selected a game title and started exploring the introductory area -- a small cabin in the middle of a forest.

The games seemed really old... no graphics even, just printed descriptions and typed in text comments. But it was really fun somehow - trying to figure out ways to solve problems by interacting the environment... like crossing a flooded reservoir by draining a dam, or exorcising an evil spirit with a holy book and a pair of candles. I wasn't great at solving the puzzles, though I tried my best and figured a few of them out. Alex seemed to do better. (He told me that he hadn't played any of them since he was really young, except for one that he spent five hours on last week while he was settling in, so we didn't try that.)

And there were hint files that were kinda funny in themselves... including these really odd questions that were just making fun of you, because you're only supposed to use them when you're having a lot of trouble solving a puzzle, but there are questions about puzzles that aren't in the game at all, so if you're looking at all the hint questions, those ones mock you. It was actually really fun to read those ones, but we kept from looking at them too much and played by the rules.

We managed to find fifteen of the treasures by around noon, so I saved our progress and nuked up some pizza Alex had in his fridge for lunch, and Alex put in an Oasis CD. The rain still hadn't let up by this point, and I mentioned while finishing my last slice that I was starting to feel a little stir crazy.

"Well," Alex pointed out after wearing his thoughtful face for a few seconds, (which I guess is number three on the list of things I love about him, no wait, number three is coming up with ideas out of the blue for things I'd like, like those computer games, so number four is thoughtful face.) "We may not be able to wander the campus with impunity and not get wet, but there's no real reason we have to stay here in my room. It's a big building, and I'm sure there's some other fun stuff we could find."

I smiled. "It's a nice thought. Except..."

He waited for it for a few seconds. "Except -- except what??"

I tried to convey the concept with the expression on my face, which really never works. "Except... except all I've got to wear are these borrowed things of yours -- which are great when it's just the two of us, but I really wouldn't feel comfortable meeting new people in -- and my dirty clothes from yesterday. And I can't go back to my dorm for clean stuff without going through the rain."

He looked at me for a moment. "It's that important? Slightly used or ill-fitting clothes can just close the door on meeting new people?" I nodded, a little regretfully. "Heck, can't you just... I dunno, wave your hand over those old things..." he waved at my top and jeans, which I'd folded carefully after the shower and laid on top of his dresser, "and get rid of the dirt and sweat and anything else?? Just move those molecules out of the fabric??"

I opened my mouth to say something dismissive... and got stuck that way, with my mouth open, for a long moment. Why the heck *couldn't* I do something like that?? I stood up, turned to the dresser, stretched out one hand over the folded clothes, and concentrated. Alex got up too, grabbing hold of my other hand with one of his -- and something very strange happened.

There was something that felt like a flash of light right in front of my eyes, that cleared quickly. "Did you see that?" I muttered.

"See what?" Alex muttered. "I don't think I saw anything weird, but I might have heard something... like a whistling. And I got dizzy for a second."

"Do you see this??" I asked, picking up the clothes and spreading them out so they hung downward from my hands. The top, which had been something of a pale bisque color, was now definitely a vibrant and intense red. The blue jeans were now shaded from midnight navy to absolute black.

"I see... I like," Alex quipped with a smile. "You didn't do that on purpose??" I shook my head no. "Well, are they clean??"

I felt the clothes, and sniffed delicately. "Could be fresh from the store, for all I can tell."

He grinned. "Well, then get dressed, we've got some mingling to do."

I took the t-shirt off and winked.

----------

(Kyle):

"So...." Sean said, and then there was an awkward silence for nearly half a minute.

I looked at him, and he just kinda shrugged. "Heck of a rain coming down out there," I offered lamely.

The rain was definitely coming down hard. The street that the DeLuca's house was on was flooding freely, and apparently it wasn't the only one. Radio had said that everyone in this part of town should just stay put in their homes until the late afternoon.

As far as why I was here... well, Dad had insisted on paying my new Mom-to-be a visit before we headed down to the community college to see if I could still enroll in some summer classes, and then we were trapped here by the rain. Dad and Ms DeLuca didn't seem to be at all upset by having to spend some time together, of course, and I let them have their time alone. So...

"You mind if I use the phone??" I asked Sean.

"Sure, knock yourself out." He waved a hand lazily.

I went into the dining room, found the cordless handset, tapped out a few digits. And then I had to stop for a moment before I remembered the rest of the number. The phone on the other end got picked up after only two rings.

"Did you forget something sweetie??"

I laughed. "Think you've got the wrong guy, Liz."

She laughed softly. "Yeah, uh, that'd be right. I thought it was, well..."

"You thought it was Max again," I filled in. "The two of you been phone-chatting a lot today??"

"Not much else to do," she confirmed with a sigh. "We've had like two customers all day, each of whom were just running in for something quick and then dash back out to their cars. Michael and Maria are starting to drive me nuts with the PDA."

I chuckled at that thought. "Well, not that it isn't nice talking to you sweetie, but I was really calling to talk to the new girl."

"You knew about this too, Tess applying for work here?"

"Of course... she made me promise not to tell you before she had a chance to surprise you her first day."

"You'll pay for that." Before Kyle could think of a snappy comeback, the telephone must have been passed on, because Tess' voice followed Liz's parting shot quite quickly.

"Hey, brother... what's the word??"

"The word for today is *bored*, that's bee oh are ee dee... and from what I've heard about the cafe's business today, I guess you'd agree."

"Ehh." Tess made her noncommittal 'shrug sound.' "Liz has been keeping things busy for me, pulling rank."

"Really? That doesn't... well, it's not *extremely* out of character for her, I guess..."

"Nothing too bad. I pretty much expected it. But yeah, no customers. Hopefully things will pick up once the rain starts to let up."

"Well, I'd be happy to come in for a galaxy melt, if the flood watch gets lifted."

"Oh my god, are we flooded in??" There was a second's pause. "But wait a second... we're up on a rise --"

"I'm not at our place right now," I explained. "Dad insisted on paying a visit to the Valenti's, and now I'm stuck here with cousin Sean."

"Awww. I feel for you, really I do," Tess insisted. "Well, they're saying on the radio that the worst of the storm is nearly passed over Roswell now."

"Yeah, but how long is it going to take for the water level to drain away??" I complained with a sigh.

TO BE CONTINUED...
Last edited by Chrisken on Wed May 18, 2005 7:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Read my other roswell stories!

"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. If the Rowan tree's roots are shallow, it bears no crown." From 'the farthest shore', Ursula LeGuin.

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