You can't resist it (CC M/L, Teen) Part 5/5 Feb 14 2010
Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 8:01 pm
Title: You can't resist it.
Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Roswell, the Pod Chamber, Max, or especially Liz. Just makin' stuff up. (Like Blackie's Grill, which is my own invention.)
Pairings/Couples/Category: Romance/Suspense Max/Liz
Rating: Teen
Summary: After Max takes a step up in 'Balance', Liz comes to him on New Year's Eve, and persuades him that it's time for him to step up again, and spend the day together trying to work out their fears about what they feel for each other. But Max comes back with a restriction - that they can't kiss until midnight, and a challenge - to find the cave where their pods have been hidden for more than ten years!
Dreamer insurance free to all. This is much more of an exclusively shipper piece than usual for me - Isabel appears at the beginning a bit, and she'll return with Alex and Michael for cameos at the end. But in general it's all about Max and Liz.
I was vacuuming the living room, and trying to actually do a reasonably good job and not keep getting distracted, when the front doorbell rang, so I didn't pay that much attention. Figured that it would be some friend of my mom's dropping by to offer her something for the party tonight, or offer regrets in person or whatever. She had to call my name twice from the front hall before I actually looked up.
"Max? You've got a visitor waiting out on the porch," she said with a secretive Mom-like kind of a smile. My initial reaction must have seemed very startled. "Turn off the machine, and leave it over next to the fireplace, out of the way enough that nobody'll run into it, but well within sight so that we all remember these carpets aren't done yet. Yes, that's fine honey, and don't keep your friend waiting any longer."
I'm not normally one to get bossed around quite so thoroughly by my mother, I have to explain, but I'd already gotten the talking to from Dad about doing everything I could to help her out, since today was such an important day for her, and my mind was still partly off on other things no matter how hard I tried to concentrate. For all of these reasons, I was particularly blown away when I got out to the porch and confirmed that my 'friend' was definitely not Michael. Like he'd have been content to wait outside, or come to the front door in the first place, really. I hadn't especially been expecting it to be him, and wasn't at all sure if I was expecting anybody.
But for Liz Parker to come to my doorstep, this morning of all days, was something that I hadn't counted on.
She looked as gorgeous as ever, and my first mental reaction to this was to direct a bit of scorn at Mom for not doing anything more to warn me - she had to have known that Liz isn't just a 'friend' at this point, though I'm not sure if she's aware of the specifics of the one week that we dated, earlier this month, right after the heatwave. Actually, there are a lot of specifics that I really hope Mom knows nothing about - like how that week ended, and some of the things about how it started. Most of the middle would only be usually embarassing, aside from a threat to the rules of my existence.
But anyway - Liz Parker! (Yes, I've probably said this line before, but Liz deserves an exclamation point for nothing other than being herself.) Her brown eyes seemed to spear through my brain as she leaned against the wooden railing and looked back at me, and then after taking a single breath, she nodded her head and started talking, even though I wasn't prepared for whatever she might have to say yet. "Okay, I realize that it took some nerve to come up here and knock on your door, considering the way that you left things with me."
"Umm - yeah," I agreed. "Shows chutzpah, but then, that's an underrated quality I think."
She smiled that sunny smile that usually makes me think that everything's going to be alright, but today I wasn't sure if I could believe it. "Okay, give me full marks for chutzpah then. Max, I have a few things to ask you, on this day of all days. That night we - the night Michael was cured in River Dog's cave, you said that you needed to take a step back, for a while."
I was starting to get a sense of where Liz was heading, and for the life of me I couldn't decide whether I wanted to go there with her. "Um, yes, that's what I said," I agreed. Everything seemed to be overwhelming, even the brilliant blue of the winter Roswell sky, and Liz's own presence - forget about it. I hadn't managed anything close to mental equilibrium since seeing her, and it was a little surprising that my physical balance had lasted for this long without an obvious weakening in the knees.
The 'December heatwave', of course, was weeks behind us, but the weather on this particular late December day was - well, cool but not cold. We *do* occasionally get cold weather and even snow, even out here in the Southern desert, but we also have a lot of surprisingly mild and warm weather when the rest of the country is in winter. Put this scene slap in the middle. I was starting to feel a bit chilly standing outside in only my oldest pair of dockers, (they made good cleaning clothes,) and a fairly thin short sleeved t-shirt. I hadn't thought of grabbing a jacket or anything when Mom told me to go outside. Liz was dressed a bit more appropriately for the weather, at least, with a rose-purplish sweater clinging to her upper body everywhere, and even tighter blue jeans on. A part of me wondered if she was deliberately dressing up to toy with me, to provoke some kind of a reaction. I wouldn't have thought of Liz for that kind of maneuver, though my sister is a master artiste at it - but I couldn't explain why she'd moved away from her more usual and casual styles for today.
"Okay, so then - I think that we've been more than one step away from each other - though that may be partly my fault," Liz continued. "I wasn't sure how easy it would be for me to stay around you but not too close, and I guess that I wouldn't have been able to take it too well if you'd told me off for getting too close again. But - but 'for a while' implies that we can get close again at some point, and I guess that today I wanted to push the issue, to not give you all the choice of when things happened between us, if I could help it."
Right. That was more or less what I thought she was leading up to. "It's not just you," I admitted. "I've been avoiding you - more than I meant to, when I said - what I said to you. And for the same reasons - I thought it would hurt to be around you, and to know that I couldn't - couldn't be with you the way we were; couldn't kiss you again. And if my willpower should break, and you threw those words of mine back in my face..."
"That's alright, Max," Liz said. "Past is the bygones. But today's a day where the present becomes the future, moreso than usual at least symbolically, and - and I don't want my future to be one where I'm estranged from you. I realize that we both have some issues to work through, and things that we're not crazy to be afraid of. But can the two of us take a little time, right now, to work through all that stuff together instead of angsting about them all by ourselves, and not really getting anywhere?"
"So let me put all of that in a slightly different context," I said boldly. "It's New Year's Eve, and you wish that things were enough better between us to kiss me at midnight tonight. Since that might take a lot more effort than showing up at eleven-thirty at night and trying to say a few of the right things, you want to spend the day working on fashioning a slightly better-looking bandaid solution."
"Some of that's right on target," Liz admitted. "I actually did entertain the notion of showing up in the middle of your parent's party, and when I didn't like the sort of imaginary outcomes I got from that, I decided to move it up and give us a bit more time - and work on my speeches a lot." She sighed, looking away from me out at the neighbor's flower garden. With Liz unable to track the focus of my eyes, it was impossible to resist taking a good look at her rear end in those jeans. "But I'm not sure that whatever was going on between us, it needs healing, Max. It's not perfect as it is, but I'm thinking more along the lines of building our relationship up, further and stronger, not repairing what was already there." She spun back around, and I instantly wrenched my stare away, before she caught me fixedly looking at her crotch. She might have wondered what was suddenly so fascinating about the porch eaves. "And if it does need healing, sometimes a bandaid is the right way for healing to start."
"Okay, Liz, your speeches are very good," I admitted. "I'm still worried and scared about if I can spend that much time with you, and not - not cross the line into territory that we shouldn't be covering." I was looking at Liz out of the corner of my eye as I said this, and saw her entire face fall when I said this. "But I think that this may be one of those situations where I'll need to compromise on my stubborn choices, if I don't want to burn my bridges with you later."
"I, umm, I wish that I could tell you that it didn't matter so much, that I wouldn't hold it against you, if you turned me away," Liz said slowly. "But I guess that wouldn't be true, no. This matters to me, and it would widen the chasm between us, if..."
"Okay, okay," I said, not really wanting to hear the end of that sentence. "Does New Year's Eve really have that much significance to you?"
"What can I say?" she said, shrugging uncomfortably. "I do realize that the tradition is something like superstition, but - but in our case, it's a useful catalyst, I think. The ultimate 'put up or shut up' moment, as it were, that can't be pushed backwards in time."
"So what next?"
"Umm - it's up to you, though I do have some notions if you don't have suggestions. My only two requirements are that whatever we do, we have to do it together - and that we don't spend time with parents or friends."
"You realize that I'm supposed to be spending the whole day helping my mother get ready for her New Year's Eve party, right?" I pointed out.
"Oh, no. Could we, umm... hmm." Liz pouted prettily. "We probably don't want to set the precedent of just skipping out on family and responsibilities without a word of explanation... unless it's an alien emergency and we don't have any other choices. Maybe I could talk to her?"
"Umm - let me try," I said, smiling a little bit. "Mom likes you, actually, and I think that she does want the two of us to work things out, not that she has any ideas what issues we've got. But..."
"But you're the one who knows what to say to her," Liz confirmed. "Alright. I'll wait out here, if you like."
"No, come on in, warm up a bit, and say hello to everybody. That could help."
Liz nodded agreement as I held the door open for her to walk through.
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It was easier than I thought to get formal dispensation from all of my party-related duties. After a bit of consideration, I decided to leave any mention of issues that Liz and I had to work through as an ace in the hole, starting with the explanation that she had a New Year's eve surprise for me, that might take all day, as far as I knew. I was more than a little surprised when Mom said that she wouldn't be one to stand in the way of a New Year's eve surprise, and that Liz had custody of me for the day, up until ten to midnight, at which point she wanted to see both of us back at the party.
The rest of the family had gathered to see what was up, and Dad took the whole thing fairly well, with a bit of a nostalgic twinkle in his eye that made me not want to know who he was remembering. On the other hand, Isabel seemed a bit miffed that I was getting out of my party chores - some of which would probably get dumped on her, I had to admit, I heard her mutter under her breath something about how she 'should have' something involving Alex and a call - not sure if she was saying that she should have called Alex or should have taken a call from Alex, but the overall effect is the same I guess. Liz must have caught part of it too, I think, because she shot Isabel a teasing, 'so there' kind of smile.
So soon Liz and I were back outside with the parental blessing for just about anything that might fall under the header of a New Year's surprise, and considerably more complicated feelings of our own about the day - at least I felt that way, and I thought that Liz was still struggling with the ramifications of her idea. "First thing, a relatively idle question," I said, looking around. "Just how did you get over here anyway?"
"Took the bus up from the downtown, no big deal," Liz replied. "Except that I had to wait longer than usual, because I didn't realize they were on a holiday schedule today. It still seems kinda weird that you live all the way across town from West Roswell."
"Ehh, well." I'd already given Liz the explanation for how my Dad had gotten us into what he considered the best school in the city, even if we weren't that close to its district, and I didn't really want to rehash that particular discussion. "Then I guess we're in the Jeep - again."
"Watch out for horses," she muttered, and that actually made me smile somewhat, but neither of us laughed.
"Yeah. And as much as it might be tempting certain kinds of fate, I kinduv think that going driving out in the desert is about as good a way to start as any, given your stipulations," I said, circling around the vehicle to open the front right door for her. "By the time we get well out of town, it'll be coming on lunchtime, so we can hit Blackie's - have you ever been there?"
"I don't think that I've ever heard of it," Liz admitted.
"Good enough, then I won't spoil your first impressions," I quipped. "And I've got another idea for an activity north of town, but that can wait until we're on our way." We both climbed up into our seats at about the same moment. "And I say this as a sort of a pre-New Year's resolution, which I hope you'll swear to as well and hold me to: We don't kiss until midnight, and we don't even kiss then if we haven't put in the effort and made a breakthrough."
"You drive a hard bargain, Mister Evans," Liz said, with that laugh that really drives me crazy with wanting to kiss her, so I gunned the ignition hard at just that moment to try and drown the sound out. Somehow it didn't help that much, and just seeing her laugh was hard on me in the same way, especially the way her ponytail bounced a little up and down. Why did she have to pick today to wear the ponytail?? "But yeah, that does sound like a good idea, and I'll - well, I'll do my best. Not sure I can make any promises."
Couldn't promise that she wouldn't kiss me, or couldn't promise that she'd stop me if I tried to kiss her? Neither mental image was helping, so I pulled out quickly and turned onto the main road. That seemed like the best kind of distraction that was going to offer at the moment.
"Okay, are you going to tell me about your second activity, or is it up to me to come up with some hard-working line of conversation?" Liz asked after a moment.
I considered, realizing that we were already a few blocks away from the house. "Alright, I'll tell you now. Do you remember how I told you about the pods that the three of us came out of, ten years ago?"
"Well, yeah," Liz agreed. "Not as if I'm likely to forget a detail like that."
"I thought the two of us might try to trace our way back to the pods. We've all tried and never been able to find our way - Michael's spent the most time on it, and Isabel probably the least. I think I had a dream about it recently, that might give me another clue."
"So you don't know where they were?" Liz confirmed. "I don't guess I realized that until you said that." She sighed. "I actually thought of asking you to take me there, but figured that there was a reason you hadn't volunteered."
"No, we remember a few things about what the 'where' was like," I explained, "but not how to actually find it - big desert, not many clues about the route that we took until we got to the point where Mom and Dad found us. Even our memories of emerging are far from clear... we can remember a little something about the space - dark and enclosed, like a cave, but I still feel like there's something that I'm missing about it."
"Well," Liz said, smiling. "I'd certainly be pleased to go pod cave hunting with you. And thank you for suggesting it." I shrugged slightly. After a moment, we both started speaking at the same time, and both stopped after a word or so. "You go ahead," she insisted.
"Umm, okay I suppose. I was just wanting to ask if you'd intentionally dressed to impress me today."
"What, these old things?" She chuckled to herself. "Umm, yeah kind of. The clothes were more Maria's idea, really, but I actually liked the notion of knocking your socks off a bit. She's still upset about Michael giving her the silent treatment, especially since the healing ritual."
"Oh. Well, I wish her the best of luck, but a part of me thinks that might be that she finds a way to get over my mostly indescribable best friend instead of expecting something different out of him."
"I'm not sure I'd believe that," Liz countered. "Yes, Michael has his own share of issues, and Maria does too - but I really do believe that people can change for the better. Has Michael ever really been - interested in a girl before? Ever let anybody in besides you and Isabel?"
"I'm not sure how much he lets us in," I said. "As far as Michael and girls - no, not really. We both went through the first wave of teenage hormones at the same time - and he had a crush on Pam Troy for a while, actually, except she blatantly refused to say a word to him..."
"Figures, the high and mighty bitch," Liz muttered under her breath.
"...and asked Stephanie Foster to hang out with him over at Hank's one time, which I think went slightly better, but he never tried again and didn't tell anybody why."
"Okay, that doesn't count," Liz insisted. "Somehow I can tell that Maria's the one. Before the two of them are through with each other, Michael will be a very different guy. Can't tell much other than that, but count on it."
"Okay, I guess we'll see," I said. "So did Maria have that plan of trying to dress up and seduce Michael, but chose not to go through with it and helped you do something a little bit similar?"
"Umm - not sure if what she was daydreaming about was seducing Michael, but maybe that's as good a way to put it as any," Liz agreed. "Have I seduced you?"
I took a deep breath and thought about that one. "Not yet. If you get me to kiss you early, then yes - but you've promised to try not to do that. Persuading me to come along doesn't quite count as a seduction I think."
"Aww, too bad." Liz laughed softly again. "Okay, new subject I guess, or something of a return to an older one. What were things like for you and Isabel after the Evans found you? After they adopted you?"
"That's two questions, really; I'm not sure if you realized that."
"Umm - well, I guess I did know that all of the paperwork couldn't have gone through instantly as soon as you got into their car... but we might as well start there, if there was anything interesting about that hiatus before you became their kids."
"Interesting?" I thought about that. "I'm not sure. We didn't go home with them straight away, though I think that Mom would have liked to take us and never let us go. But Dad insisted on reporting us to county social services, and they wanted to take us for medical examinations and see if they could find our parents quickly, or anything else about us."
"That makes sense," Liz agreed. "It was probably really scary for you, huh?"
"Ummm..." Part of me was agreeing with what Liz was saying, but it was something that I'd never admitted out loud, and so I went along with the impulse to shy away from saying so - at least not while I was concentrating some of my attention on driving. "Pass."
"Oh... okay." Liz considered. "Something a little less hard-hitting? I didn't mean to get into the really deep stuff right off after all, it just seemed like a promising cue."
"Yeah, that's okay," I said. "I - I didn't really understand a lot of what was going on, with people I mean, back then. None of us learned much English for the first two days or so." Liz nodded some kind of understanding. "It's kind of weird, actually - I was able to memorize the sounds, and understand sentences later that had completely confused me at the time."
"Alien brain development," Liz commented. "Has to be full of mysteries. Did they bring in anyone to see if they could reach you in another language? Thinking that you might have been raised to speak Spanish, or a native language, or French or something?"
"Yeah," I agreed softly. "Along with a therapist or something like that, trying to figure out if there was a trauma-related reason that we couldn't communicate in speech. In fact, when I've compared our memories of the different kind of experts we talked to against the old budget records for Chavez County services, it looks like they must have gotten quite a few people down from Albuquerque or Santa Fe."
"That's a bit scary, when you think about it," Liz commented softly. "I mean, these people examined you when you were at your most vulnerable, before you even understood that you were different I guess, never mind how important it was to blend in and keep the secret. Obviously it wasn't completely apparent to any of them at the time that you weren't - weren't of this Earth, or the Evanses would probably never have been able to adopt you." I nodded agreement to this - she wasn't saying anything that I hadn't thought about beforehand. "But any of them might remember something 'weird' that could turn into a clue for somebody looking for aliens - someone like Topolsky or the people who sent her."
"Yes, that's one of the things that I worry about," I admitted. "And one of the reasons that somebody I care about shouldn't be too close to me, maybe - that you might get hurt when the FBI comes after me next time."
"I don't agree with that reasoning," Liz insisted. "If I'm close to you, if I'm in your life, then I'm one more person who could help protect you, help you hide. I've been helpful already, going to River Dog the first time because you couldn't while Topolsky was watching - and helping Alex expose Topolsky for what she was. And since the shooting incident, I'm a material witness whether I'm your girlfriend or not, Max. Maybe if you're in my life, you can help protect yourself by protecting me."
"I suppose that's a point," I admitted. "Although we've all had one major exposure scare that wouldn't have been a thing if it weren't for you and your journal."
"Hey, I do *not* deserve further grief over that," Liz insisted. "It's been taken much better care of now, and besides, I told you that you don't need to worry about my - my friend having looked at it."
"Yes, you did tell me that," I said. "Haven't really explained it to my satisfaction, but oh well." By this time we were starting to leave Roswell on the North road. "New topic?"
"Return to the old one, moving forward," Liz countered. "So your Mom and Dad adopted you, after County Social had given you the once-over and failed to come up with any trace of your true parents."
"Yeah," I agreed, trying to find my place in that narrative. "I was so glad to see them again - somehow they made me feel like everything was alright - though they'd tried, nobody at Social Services had been able to do that. So we went home with them, and Mom had set up rooms for each of us by then, and everything fit so we that for a while I was reminded of the way it had been out in the desert, when Michael had been with Isabel and I, and I actually expected Mom to introduce him to us, or him to just pop out from a closet like he'd been hiding there all along."
"But you didn't actually meet him again until a lot later, right?" Liz asked. "Sorry, not meaning to interrupt the flow of the story, just trying to get things straight, You mentioned, when we were waiting for the others to drive Michael up to the reservation, how he'd stepped up onto that rock so you could see him, how he ran away when the car was stopping, and - and that Isabel cried about him."
I snickered - at myself, not at Liz. "You know, I might have shed a tear or two myself - especially after Izzie got me started. But yeah, it was nearly two years before we had any idea what had happened to that other little boy we remembered. We didn't know that he was 'Michael' then of course, even after we'd picked our own names out of the baby names book."
"Okay, and when did you next see him and find out that he was Michael?" Liz pressed.
"The first day of third grade, Isabel and I had agreed to meet at the schoolyard gate and walk home. This was before we were going to school across town, of course. I got there a bit late, because I was talking with Jack Barber about some club thing, and when I got outside, I saw her talking with this other boy. At first I didn't understand who he was, and then they moved around and I could recognize his face." I laughed a little. "None of us really talked about the fact that he was - was like us, or that we remembered each other. It was all sort of unspoken."
"Cool. How did Isabel run into him?"
"In the lunchroom. For the rest of that story, I think that you'll have to talk to one of them." Liz nodded. "Okay, umm - back to our early days at our house. I guess those first few weeks were when we really started to soak up English and speak it ourselves. Mom and Dad figured that meant that we'd really known it all along, and had either forgotten how or just not wanted to say much."
"Okay, one other possibly side-tracky question," Liz asked. "When did you really realize that something was different about you - that you were aliens and had powers and that kind of thing?"
"Oh boy." I sighed. "Not a simple question, it's the sort of thing that happened in stages, a dozen little times."
"Sorry."
"No, that's okay," I admitted. It was the sort of thing that - well, that if I was 'making an effort' with Liz, I did want her to understand, so I racked my brain trying to find a way to organize all of those memories. "Isabel and I each used our powers a couple times before even understanding that we were doing anything at all, and after that it was a bit tricky to say if we realized that they were things that - well, that grownups might not be able to do when we weren't looking." Liz giggled again. "I healed a bird with a broken wing, and Isabel, well, she thought that she was having a weird nightmare the first time she accidentally wandered into one of Dad's..." I only caught myself at that point. "Uh, whoops. Never mind. The point is, I guess we were nine by the time we really understood most of the headline news about ourselves. I actually looked at blood samples from all three of us under a microscope to clinch the evidence that we weren't human - much like you did with my cheek cells that day in class."
"Okay," Liz said. "But sorry, today, 'never mind' is not an option. I'm not going to let go of that reference. What power does Isabel have, that related to nightmares and wandering into something belonging to your Dad?" She paused, and leaned so close that her shoulder was brushing mine, and I could smell a hint of some fruity and flowery perfume. If her hair had been down, it would have been falling against my neck, but fortunately that was one trick that the ponytail couldn't match. "Tell me, Max," she whispered sweetly.
"It - um, it's not my secret to tell," I managed to choke out, and we both laughed at that.
"You should know that never works," Liz reminded me, sitting back in her seat again. "Okay, let's see how close I can get to working it out by myself. Nightmares. She thought that she was having a nightmare, so - not a power that she'd be using if she was really up and actively exploring in the daylight, I'd say. Something that she actually did when she was in bed, maybe? A power that's like a dream, or has to do with dreams? She has prophetic dreams, or something to do with dreams? No, that doesn't fit wandering, unless..."
She made a gesture like one hand clapping. (Don't ask me what sound it made.) "Can Isabel actually go into somebody else's dream? Is that - is that how she got the idea of vamping Alex at the soap factory rave party? She was concerned about what Alex might say to Valenti, she told me that, and said that she'd 'look into it.' I didn't have any clue what she meant by that at the time. She could have dropped into one of Alex's dreams, and it was a dirty one about her, or something like that... and so she thought that gave her the leverage that she needed."
"Yeah, actually that fits with what I know," I admitted, sighing. "I'm not sure of the details of the dream - Isabel wouldn't tell me, but she did 'dreamwalk' him. And, to be honest, I'm glad that Alex didn't rise to her bait so easily - not so much for his sake, though he's probably lucky to not be wrapped around Izzie's finger as tightly as she intended to get him. But it would have been cheap for Isabel too, to resort to a trick like that for all of our sake, when Alex was worthy of the truth - and you were the first to see that in him."
"Right, I'm glad that he knows now, though it was a bit weird the way he first reacted to the news," Liz agreed softly. Taking a silent hint, Max let the conversation lapse, as they drove off into the desert.
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"So, what's Blackie's, anyway?" Liz asked after a little while, startling me out of a slightly prurient daydream. "I mean, I can sort of guess based on the name, but figured that I'd better get the real story."
I had to laugh at the question. "Whatever you were guessing, it's probably pretty close. It's a barbecue and grill restaurant near the 20 split on the highway - mostly drive-through, though I think that they do have a few picnic tables outside, mostly for warmer weather than this. The food isn't really overcooked, though that's kind of a running joke that they use for publicity - there's an oversize grill that's set up outside just to pour thick clouds of smoke into the sky that you can see for miles away, and a billboard with a cartoon of a Dad putting some crispy charcoaled burgers on a picnic table, while the rest of the family looks horrified."
"Huh, sounds kinda cool," Liz admitted. "I wonder why I haven't heard anything about it before. Just how far is this place from Roswell?"
"More than thirty miles, not sure," I admitted. "Which is quite a distance, I have to admit. Michael and I discovered it about a year and a half ago, when we first started exploring the desert looking for where we came from."
"Wait a minute," Liz immediately said. "Wouldn't you have both been on your learner's permits back then?"
"Ummm..." was all I had to say at first. "I was a very good driver, and Michael's foster dad had an old beat-up Chrysler that he really didn't care if we took out together." Pause. "Don't tell my parents."
"Of course I won't," Liz said, sounding a bit stiff and prim. "I'm just a little disappointed in retrospect. What would I have done if you'd gotten yourself killed before I'd even met you, Max Evans?" I couldn't come up with an answer to that. "Okay, okay, moving on. Blackie's sounds good for lunch - but since you picked the restaurant, I'm ordering for both of us. Sound fair?"
"Sure," I agreed without hesitation, wondering what Liz would pick to get me from a menu that would be initially unfamiliar to her. "We should probably park and go inside, then, instead of lining up for the drive-through. That sound alright?"
"Certainly," Liz agreed. "I could do with a stretch, it's been a long ride to get this far." Ooh, and there went my (recently far too hormone-drenched) imagination, just picturing the way Liz's hips would move in those tight jeans as she stre-etched. This no kissing until midnight deal is possibly doomed to last no later than 2 pm. "How far have we come so far?"
"Umm, maybe twenty miles," I said, looking around to see if I could spot any other nearby landmark.
Liz nodded acceptance of that. "So it'll be a while." I went uh-huh. "And after we grab lunch it's off hunting for a pod cave? Do you have any idea of approximately where that is? I mean - well, I guess you know the spot where your parents found you, right?"
"Yeah," I agreed. "Actually, that was pretty close to this stretch of highway, I'm pretty sure. Err, not actually on the main road, though - they were on one of the much smaller roads through the desert." I managed to catch something as it whizzed by. "Okay, we're at mile marker one twenty-nine, that's a bit further than I thought we were. We were found on a lane that meets up with the 285 between 127 and 128. Dad's never pinpointed the spot on that smaller road, but after some pestering he took Isabel and I down there and gave us a 'it was somewhere around here', and with Michael's help we were able to pinpoint the spot with some certainty."
"Umm, okay, back up for a second," Liz said. "Where does the numbering start, anyway?"
I chuckled. "At the spot where route 285 crosses from Texas into New Mexico, between Carlsbad and Pecos."
"Oh, right. And the location where we committed a felony."
"Heh? Did I miss that one?"
"When we were following Michael to Marathon," she explained. "Crossing a state line as minors, without parental permission."
"I'm not sure that's really a crime, in our case," I had to say. "For an adult to take minors across the state line, without their parent's permission, yeah, I think that there might be a case there. Since we're ALL under eighteen, I don't think the same one applies."
"Okay, well, never mind that," Liz agreed. "So, just to help map this system into my own little Roswell-centric world, what mile marker would the Crashdown be at?"
"Umm, I think somewhere around one hundred eight is the closest to downtown Roswell. Not sure if they actually have a marker for it, in the city, but that would be the equivalent."
"Alright," Liz said. "So, we have a location on a small road off the highway, and - well, I'm not sure, but it seems to me that as little kids, you couldn't have walked that far."
"Well, we thought so too," I said, and laughed, "when we first started looking. Between Michael and I, we pretty much combed all through the mile-radius circle around that spot, looking for anything that seemed familiar or at all like the cave that we remember leaving, and didn't have much luck." I sighed. "We didn't have any ideas about what direction to widen the search in until I was able to find out a bit more about the Roswell crash in forty-seven, and the original crash stories."
"Right, okay," Liz said. "I've picked up a lot of the mythology, so let me see what I can remember. The original reports of debris were made by William Brazel - he was the foreman on a ranch, north and west of town... but I can't put my tongue on the name of the place."
"Puhlman ranch," I told her, smiling. "It's nearly six miles from where we were found, which is definitely a long way to think of little kids travelling by themselves during the night, but I'm not sure that we couldn't have made it. An adult hiker can make three miles in an hour, and I kinduv think that we were a lot of hours travelling, most of the night."
"Okay," Liz said. "So have you and Michael explored much of the ranch and nearby territory?"
"Not that much, actually. There are still some people keeping an eye on that area, actually, and it would be suspicious if we were found or stopped near the Crash site. There was - well, there was a bit of a scare, and all three of us made pact that we wouldn't go back until we had a better notion of what we were looking for."
"Ooh, interesting phrasing," Liz immediately realized. "Did you actually pact that when you went back, you'd take Michael or Isabel?" I shook my head. "Do they realize that you didn't promise it? I mean, I still remember how much Michael freaked when he realized that you were holding the cave maps out on him - and now you're taking me pod cave hunting without letting him know that you've got a lead?"
"Well, I was going to mention it to them - after the party, tomorrow," I told her. "Didn't realize that I'd have any time to go looking today, until you showed up. Guess I thought that was sort of a sign. Of course, if you're really worried about what Michael will think, we don't have to go looking."
"No, hell are you kidding me? Of course I'm up for this. It's exciting to think that I might be here when you find the place you were - were born, or something like it." She laughed. "Michael will have to get used to the idea."
I smiled and drove off towards Blackie's.
-----------
So, lunch was great and made me see something completely familar in a totally new light - just like lots of other stuff with Liz has turned out, I have to admit. She picked the steak-on-a-bun sandwich for me, which I told her was one of the things that I always pondered trying and then never actually did order, choosing more familiar standbys instead. She gave me one of those 'See, I told you' stares at that point, which I have to admit is also particularly cute on Liz Parker. (Don't even ask me if she has any expressions that I don't find adorable. In way too deep...)
I didn't actually let her go through with the entire order exactly as she'd wanted for me, though, because she picked the sweet potato fries on the side, and I've never liked anything to do with sweet potatoes. I've never had them here, but I've had sweet potato fries and a number of other ways you can prepare them, often at parties that my mom has dragged the entire family to or special elaborate dinners that she tries to make all by herself, and usually ends up calling Dad or one of her friends to rescue the main course or the dessert. My mom is a huge sweet potato proponent herself, and seems to think that if she can only get clever enough about hiding them, I won't recognize the things and will realize that I really do like them. This is punctured by the fact that even when I don't recognize the tuber ahead of time, I never do actually like the taste. Actually, she caught me by surprise with sweet potato fries once, which is why they fall into a special loathing category along with all the other sweet potato dishes that I've eaten under false pretences.
So, anyway, after I got through about half of that speech, Liz changed her mind and gave me spicy curly fries, which aren't my favorite but pretty cool, especially for a special occasion like this. For herself, she got a Big Bad Sirloin burger, which is nearly half a pound of beef and looked like the patty was about an inch and a half thick, on a fairly skinny sourdough bun so that even Liz, who has a fairly small mouth, could bite without having to strain - and she paired that with the charcoal-grilled potatoes, and ordered large cherry cokes for both of us.
We chatted about Maria and Isabel, and school and my new job at the UFO center -- well, I've had it for over two months now, but it's still new in comparison to the rest of my life, and Liz's gig at the Crashdown that she's been at for years really -- while having our lunches at one of the picnic tables - most of them were empty on a December day like this. Despite keeping up her end of the conversation, Liz made quick inroads on everything, and I still had nearly half my fries left and a bit of steak and bun when she was done her potatoes and her Big Bad. (We both still had some of our drinks left at this point, not that that really matters.) I popped the last bit of sandwich into my mouth, enjoying the texture of the meat and the way the flavor of the mushroom sauce mixed with everything else, and after several seconds of vigorous chewing, swallowed in satisfaction.
"Okay, do you want to head back onto the road?" I asked. "I can wrap the fries back up, and snack on them later." Bam - instant puppy-dog eyes from Liz, and I was melting before I even figured out what she was getting at. "Umm, err, that is, we can both snack, I suppose." That got me a grin, and I figured that Liz was probably going to be doing most of the snacking, especially since she would so-generously offer to hold the wrapped curlies while I drove away.
Once we were settled in the Jeep and away, though, something else distracted both of us from the fries, and in fact I think that they slipped away from Liz's lap and ended up in a lump under the seat, the wrapping just starting to come apart. "Max, did you notice the well-dressed guy in blue, with sandy blond hair, who was all by himself at one of the picnic tables?"
"Umm - yes, I guess so," I said, starting to get a bad feeling. "I didn't pay particular attention to him, why?" Liz didn't answer immediately, and I thought of something to add. "I know that the people who were working with Topolsky back when she was spying on us tended to wear blue suits, but that doesn't mean that anybody in that sort of outfit is - well, you know. We haven't seen any sign of that kind of person since she left."
"Yeah, and maybe I'm jumping to conclusions," Liz said, starting to sound just a bit testy, "but as we were settling in to the car, he got up and left part of a burger at his table. I noticed that, but didn't think anything particular about it - until now, when I notice that there's a car that left the Blackie's parking lot following us back towards town, and it might be the man in blue driving."
"How big of a 'might' is that?" I asked, feeling a bit upset myself. The part that was the most upsetting, actually, was that I didn't seem to have enough information to decide if I should actually be worried that we were being followed by a mysterious person, or slightly aggravated at Liz that she was acting too paranoid, or more calmly in-between somewhere. "More than half of the cars that leave Blackie's would head back south, I tend to think, between travellers stopping off on a bite who were coming from further north, and people who only went out this far for the food. You didn't see the guy approach a car?"
"He was walking towards somewhere where there were cars, but I didn't see him step right up to one, no," Liz shot back. "You asked me something about grandmothers, and I was thinking about my answer. But it wouldn't have been the other party at the picnic table next to us, and I don't think anybody was in the drive-through lane just as we were getting up."
"Hmm." Somewhat reluctantly, I decided that it was necessary to treat this guy as an FBI agent until he was demonstrated to be something else, or until it didn't matter one way or another. "Okay, so if he's tailing us, then I don't think I want to turn down the right desert road while he's there. Does that mean we should just go back into town, and see if he's still with us wherever we stop?"
"Umm - no," Liz suggested. "Take an earlier turning first - see if he comes after us. Maybe it's all just a coincidence."
I nodded, accepting the idea, and slowed down somewhat so that when a turning came up, we'd be ready. The dark burgundy-ish sedan in the rear view also went down to a crawl after a moment, which seemed to support the idea that the driver was in 'tailing mode' and didn't want to approach us too closely. Soon enough, there was an opportunity to leave the highway to the right, a fairly straight gravel lane, and I took it. We waited, both holding our breath for long seconds at a time, until the sedan reached the turning - and followed us onto it.
"Okay, we've got a serious problem," Liz muttered. "What now? Can we go around in a loop and pass Blackie's again? He can probably stay behind us the whole way there, but if the point is to tail you, he probably won't do anything more threatening. In point of fact, if he realizes that we know he's there behind us, he might just give up and go back to home base, wherever that is - kind of like Topoksly did."
"Nice idea, but there's a problem with it," I told her. "You can't do loops without cross roads, and there aren't any cross roads out here in the desert - just little roads like this coming out from the main highway at intervals. We wouldn't be able to cross to another side road until we get to the county line at least - not on a road, at least, and though the Jeep is good at offroading, I wouldn't want to take it off the road for that long."
"Oh, boy," Liz muttered. "And we can't turn around and go back to the 285, can we?"
"Hmm - just let me think about that one a minute," I grumbled, still keeping an eye on the sedan in the mirror.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Roswell, the Pod Chamber, Max, or especially Liz. Just makin' stuff up. (Like Blackie's Grill, which is my own invention.)
Pairings/Couples/Category: Romance/Suspense Max/Liz
Rating: Teen
Summary: After Max takes a step up in 'Balance', Liz comes to him on New Year's Eve, and persuades him that it's time for him to step up again, and spend the day together trying to work out their fears about what they feel for each other. But Max comes back with a restriction - that they can't kiss until midnight, and a challenge - to find the cave where their pods have been hidden for more than ten years!
Dreamer insurance free to all. This is much more of an exclusively shipper piece than usual for me - Isabel appears at the beginning a bit, and she'll return with Alex and Michael for cameos at the end. But in general it's all about Max and Liz.
I was vacuuming the living room, and trying to actually do a reasonably good job and not keep getting distracted, when the front doorbell rang, so I didn't pay that much attention. Figured that it would be some friend of my mom's dropping by to offer her something for the party tonight, or offer regrets in person or whatever. She had to call my name twice from the front hall before I actually looked up.
"Max? You've got a visitor waiting out on the porch," she said with a secretive Mom-like kind of a smile. My initial reaction must have seemed very startled. "Turn off the machine, and leave it over next to the fireplace, out of the way enough that nobody'll run into it, but well within sight so that we all remember these carpets aren't done yet. Yes, that's fine honey, and don't keep your friend waiting any longer."
I'm not normally one to get bossed around quite so thoroughly by my mother, I have to explain, but I'd already gotten the talking to from Dad about doing everything I could to help her out, since today was such an important day for her, and my mind was still partly off on other things no matter how hard I tried to concentrate. For all of these reasons, I was particularly blown away when I got out to the porch and confirmed that my 'friend' was definitely not Michael. Like he'd have been content to wait outside, or come to the front door in the first place, really. I hadn't especially been expecting it to be him, and wasn't at all sure if I was expecting anybody.
But for Liz Parker to come to my doorstep, this morning of all days, was something that I hadn't counted on.
She looked as gorgeous as ever, and my first mental reaction to this was to direct a bit of scorn at Mom for not doing anything more to warn me - she had to have known that Liz isn't just a 'friend' at this point, though I'm not sure if she's aware of the specifics of the one week that we dated, earlier this month, right after the heatwave. Actually, there are a lot of specifics that I really hope Mom knows nothing about - like how that week ended, and some of the things about how it started. Most of the middle would only be usually embarassing, aside from a threat to the rules of my existence.
But anyway - Liz Parker! (Yes, I've probably said this line before, but Liz deserves an exclamation point for nothing other than being herself.) Her brown eyes seemed to spear through my brain as she leaned against the wooden railing and looked back at me, and then after taking a single breath, she nodded her head and started talking, even though I wasn't prepared for whatever she might have to say yet. "Okay, I realize that it took some nerve to come up here and knock on your door, considering the way that you left things with me."
"Umm - yeah," I agreed. "Shows chutzpah, but then, that's an underrated quality I think."
She smiled that sunny smile that usually makes me think that everything's going to be alright, but today I wasn't sure if I could believe it. "Okay, give me full marks for chutzpah then. Max, I have a few things to ask you, on this day of all days. That night we - the night Michael was cured in River Dog's cave, you said that you needed to take a step back, for a while."
I was starting to get a sense of where Liz was heading, and for the life of me I couldn't decide whether I wanted to go there with her. "Um, yes, that's what I said," I agreed. Everything seemed to be overwhelming, even the brilliant blue of the winter Roswell sky, and Liz's own presence - forget about it. I hadn't managed anything close to mental equilibrium since seeing her, and it was a little surprising that my physical balance had lasted for this long without an obvious weakening in the knees.
The 'December heatwave', of course, was weeks behind us, but the weather on this particular late December day was - well, cool but not cold. We *do* occasionally get cold weather and even snow, even out here in the Southern desert, but we also have a lot of surprisingly mild and warm weather when the rest of the country is in winter. Put this scene slap in the middle. I was starting to feel a bit chilly standing outside in only my oldest pair of dockers, (they made good cleaning clothes,) and a fairly thin short sleeved t-shirt. I hadn't thought of grabbing a jacket or anything when Mom told me to go outside. Liz was dressed a bit more appropriately for the weather, at least, with a rose-purplish sweater clinging to her upper body everywhere, and even tighter blue jeans on. A part of me wondered if she was deliberately dressing up to toy with me, to provoke some kind of a reaction. I wouldn't have thought of Liz for that kind of maneuver, though my sister is a master artiste at it - but I couldn't explain why she'd moved away from her more usual and casual styles for today.
"Okay, so then - I think that we've been more than one step away from each other - though that may be partly my fault," Liz continued. "I wasn't sure how easy it would be for me to stay around you but not too close, and I guess that I wouldn't have been able to take it too well if you'd told me off for getting too close again. But - but 'for a while' implies that we can get close again at some point, and I guess that today I wanted to push the issue, to not give you all the choice of when things happened between us, if I could help it."
Right. That was more or less what I thought she was leading up to. "It's not just you," I admitted. "I've been avoiding you - more than I meant to, when I said - what I said to you. And for the same reasons - I thought it would hurt to be around you, and to know that I couldn't - couldn't be with you the way we were; couldn't kiss you again. And if my willpower should break, and you threw those words of mine back in my face..."
"That's alright, Max," Liz said. "Past is the bygones. But today's a day where the present becomes the future, moreso than usual at least symbolically, and - and I don't want my future to be one where I'm estranged from you. I realize that we both have some issues to work through, and things that we're not crazy to be afraid of. But can the two of us take a little time, right now, to work through all that stuff together instead of angsting about them all by ourselves, and not really getting anywhere?"
"So let me put all of that in a slightly different context," I said boldly. "It's New Year's Eve, and you wish that things were enough better between us to kiss me at midnight tonight. Since that might take a lot more effort than showing up at eleven-thirty at night and trying to say a few of the right things, you want to spend the day working on fashioning a slightly better-looking bandaid solution."
"Some of that's right on target," Liz admitted. "I actually did entertain the notion of showing up in the middle of your parent's party, and when I didn't like the sort of imaginary outcomes I got from that, I decided to move it up and give us a bit more time - and work on my speeches a lot." She sighed, looking away from me out at the neighbor's flower garden. With Liz unable to track the focus of my eyes, it was impossible to resist taking a good look at her rear end in those jeans. "But I'm not sure that whatever was going on between us, it needs healing, Max. It's not perfect as it is, but I'm thinking more along the lines of building our relationship up, further and stronger, not repairing what was already there." She spun back around, and I instantly wrenched my stare away, before she caught me fixedly looking at her crotch. She might have wondered what was suddenly so fascinating about the porch eaves. "And if it does need healing, sometimes a bandaid is the right way for healing to start."
"Okay, Liz, your speeches are very good," I admitted. "I'm still worried and scared about if I can spend that much time with you, and not - not cross the line into territory that we shouldn't be covering." I was looking at Liz out of the corner of my eye as I said this, and saw her entire face fall when I said this. "But I think that this may be one of those situations where I'll need to compromise on my stubborn choices, if I don't want to burn my bridges with you later."
"I, umm, I wish that I could tell you that it didn't matter so much, that I wouldn't hold it against you, if you turned me away," Liz said slowly. "But I guess that wouldn't be true, no. This matters to me, and it would widen the chasm between us, if..."
"Okay, okay," I said, not really wanting to hear the end of that sentence. "Does New Year's Eve really have that much significance to you?"
"What can I say?" she said, shrugging uncomfortably. "I do realize that the tradition is something like superstition, but - but in our case, it's a useful catalyst, I think. The ultimate 'put up or shut up' moment, as it were, that can't be pushed backwards in time."
"So what next?"
"Umm - it's up to you, though I do have some notions if you don't have suggestions. My only two requirements are that whatever we do, we have to do it together - and that we don't spend time with parents or friends."
"You realize that I'm supposed to be spending the whole day helping my mother get ready for her New Year's Eve party, right?" I pointed out.
"Oh, no. Could we, umm... hmm." Liz pouted prettily. "We probably don't want to set the precedent of just skipping out on family and responsibilities without a word of explanation... unless it's an alien emergency and we don't have any other choices. Maybe I could talk to her?"
"Umm - let me try," I said, smiling a little bit. "Mom likes you, actually, and I think that she does want the two of us to work things out, not that she has any ideas what issues we've got. But..."
"But you're the one who knows what to say to her," Liz confirmed. "Alright. I'll wait out here, if you like."
"No, come on in, warm up a bit, and say hello to everybody. That could help."
Liz nodded agreement as I held the door open for her to walk through.
------------
It was easier than I thought to get formal dispensation from all of my party-related duties. After a bit of consideration, I decided to leave any mention of issues that Liz and I had to work through as an ace in the hole, starting with the explanation that she had a New Year's eve surprise for me, that might take all day, as far as I knew. I was more than a little surprised when Mom said that she wouldn't be one to stand in the way of a New Year's eve surprise, and that Liz had custody of me for the day, up until ten to midnight, at which point she wanted to see both of us back at the party.
The rest of the family had gathered to see what was up, and Dad took the whole thing fairly well, with a bit of a nostalgic twinkle in his eye that made me not want to know who he was remembering. On the other hand, Isabel seemed a bit miffed that I was getting out of my party chores - some of which would probably get dumped on her, I had to admit, I heard her mutter under her breath something about how she 'should have' something involving Alex and a call - not sure if she was saying that she should have called Alex or should have taken a call from Alex, but the overall effect is the same I guess. Liz must have caught part of it too, I think, because she shot Isabel a teasing, 'so there' kind of smile.
So soon Liz and I were back outside with the parental blessing for just about anything that might fall under the header of a New Year's surprise, and considerably more complicated feelings of our own about the day - at least I felt that way, and I thought that Liz was still struggling with the ramifications of her idea. "First thing, a relatively idle question," I said, looking around. "Just how did you get over here anyway?"
"Took the bus up from the downtown, no big deal," Liz replied. "Except that I had to wait longer than usual, because I didn't realize they were on a holiday schedule today. It still seems kinda weird that you live all the way across town from West Roswell."
"Ehh, well." I'd already given Liz the explanation for how my Dad had gotten us into what he considered the best school in the city, even if we weren't that close to its district, and I didn't really want to rehash that particular discussion. "Then I guess we're in the Jeep - again."
"Watch out for horses," she muttered, and that actually made me smile somewhat, but neither of us laughed.
"Yeah. And as much as it might be tempting certain kinds of fate, I kinduv think that going driving out in the desert is about as good a way to start as any, given your stipulations," I said, circling around the vehicle to open the front right door for her. "By the time we get well out of town, it'll be coming on lunchtime, so we can hit Blackie's - have you ever been there?"
"I don't think that I've ever heard of it," Liz admitted.
"Good enough, then I won't spoil your first impressions," I quipped. "And I've got another idea for an activity north of town, but that can wait until we're on our way." We both climbed up into our seats at about the same moment. "And I say this as a sort of a pre-New Year's resolution, which I hope you'll swear to as well and hold me to: We don't kiss until midnight, and we don't even kiss then if we haven't put in the effort and made a breakthrough."
"You drive a hard bargain, Mister Evans," Liz said, with that laugh that really drives me crazy with wanting to kiss her, so I gunned the ignition hard at just that moment to try and drown the sound out. Somehow it didn't help that much, and just seeing her laugh was hard on me in the same way, especially the way her ponytail bounced a little up and down. Why did she have to pick today to wear the ponytail?? "But yeah, that does sound like a good idea, and I'll - well, I'll do my best. Not sure I can make any promises."
Couldn't promise that she wouldn't kiss me, or couldn't promise that she'd stop me if I tried to kiss her? Neither mental image was helping, so I pulled out quickly and turned onto the main road. That seemed like the best kind of distraction that was going to offer at the moment.
"Okay, are you going to tell me about your second activity, or is it up to me to come up with some hard-working line of conversation?" Liz asked after a moment.
I considered, realizing that we were already a few blocks away from the house. "Alright, I'll tell you now. Do you remember how I told you about the pods that the three of us came out of, ten years ago?"
"Well, yeah," Liz agreed. "Not as if I'm likely to forget a detail like that."
"I thought the two of us might try to trace our way back to the pods. We've all tried and never been able to find our way - Michael's spent the most time on it, and Isabel probably the least. I think I had a dream about it recently, that might give me another clue."
"So you don't know where they were?" Liz confirmed. "I don't guess I realized that until you said that." She sighed. "I actually thought of asking you to take me there, but figured that there was a reason you hadn't volunteered."
"No, we remember a few things about what the 'where' was like," I explained, "but not how to actually find it - big desert, not many clues about the route that we took until we got to the point where Mom and Dad found us. Even our memories of emerging are far from clear... we can remember a little something about the space - dark and enclosed, like a cave, but I still feel like there's something that I'm missing about it."
"Well," Liz said, smiling. "I'd certainly be pleased to go pod cave hunting with you. And thank you for suggesting it." I shrugged slightly. After a moment, we both started speaking at the same time, and both stopped after a word or so. "You go ahead," she insisted.
"Umm, okay I suppose. I was just wanting to ask if you'd intentionally dressed to impress me today."
"What, these old things?" She chuckled to herself. "Umm, yeah kind of. The clothes were more Maria's idea, really, but I actually liked the notion of knocking your socks off a bit. She's still upset about Michael giving her the silent treatment, especially since the healing ritual."
"Oh. Well, I wish her the best of luck, but a part of me thinks that might be that she finds a way to get over my mostly indescribable best friend instead of expecting something different out of him."
"I'm not sure I'd believe that," Liz countered. "Yes, Michael has his own share of issues, and Maria does too - but I really do believe that people can change for the better. Has Michael ever really been - interested in a girl before? Ever let anybody in besides you and Isabel?"
"I'm not sure how much he lets us in," I said. "As far as Michael and girls - no, not really. We both went through the first wave of teenage hormones at the same time - and he had a crush on Pam Troy for a while, actually, except she blatantly refused to say a word to him..."
"Figures, the high and mighty bitch," Liz muttered under her breath.
"...and asked Stephanie Foster to hang out with him over at Hank's one time, which I think went slightly better, but he never tried again and didn't tell anybody why."
"Okay, that doesn't count," Liz insisted. "Somehow I can tell that Maria's the one. Before the two of them are through with each other, Michael will be a very different guy. Can't tell much other than that, but count on it."
"Okay, I guess we'll see," I said. "So did Maria have that plan of trying to dress up and seduce Michael, but chose not to go through with it and helped you do something a little bit similar?"
"Umm - not sure if what she was daydreaming about was seducing Michael, but maybe that's as good a way to put it as any," Liz agreed. "Have I seduced you?"
I took a deep breath and thought about that one. "Not yet. If you get me to kiss you early, then yes - but you've promised to try not to do that. Persuading me to come along doesn't quite count as a seduction I think."
"Aww, too bad." Liz laughed softly again. "Okay, new subject I guess, or something of a return to an older one. What were things like for you and Isabel after the Evans found you? After they adopted you?"
"That's two questions, really; I'm not sure if you realized that."
"Umm - well, I guess I did know that all of the paperwork couldn't have gone through instantly as soon as you got into their car... but we might as well start there, if there was anything interesting about that hiatus before you became their kids."
"Interesting?" I thought about that. "I'm not sure. We didn't go home with them straight away, though I think that Mom would have liked to take us and never let us go. But Dad insisted on reporting us to county social services, and they wanted to take us for medical examinations and see if they could find our parents quickly, or anything else about us."
"That makes sense," Liz agreed. "It was probably really scary for you, huh?"
"Ummm..." Part of me was agreeing with what Liz was saying, but it was something that I'd never admitted out loud, and so I went along with the impulse to shy away from saying so - at least not while I was concentrating some of my attention on driving. "Pass."
"Oh... okay." Liz considered. "Something a little less hard-hitting? I didn't mean to get into the really deep stuff right off after all, it just seemed like a promising cue."
"Yeah, that's okay," I said. "I - I didn't really understand a lot of what was going on, with people I mean, back then. None of us learned much English for the first two days or so." Liz nodded some kind of understanding. "It's kind of weird, actually - I was able to memorize the sounds, and understand sentences later that had completely confused me at the time."
"Alien brain development," Liz commented. "Has to be full of mysteries. Did they bring in anyone to see if they could reach you in another language? Thinking that you might have been raised to speak Spanish, or a native language, or French or something?"
"Yeah," I agreed softly. "Along with a therapist or something like that, trying to figure out if there was a trauma-related reason that we couldn't communicate in speech. In fact, when I've compared our memories of the different kind of experts we talked to against the old budget records for Chavez County services, it looks like they must have gotten quite a few people down from Albuquerque or Santa Fe."
"That's a bit scary, when you think about it," Liz commented softly. "I mean, these people examined you when you were at your most vulnerable, before you even understood that you were different I guess, never mind how important it was to blend in and keep the secret. Obviously it wasn't completely apparent to any of them at the time that you weren't - weren't of this Earth, or the Evanses would probably never have been able to adopt you." I nodded agreement to this - she wasn't saying anything that I hadn't thought about beforehand. "But any of them might remember something 'weird' that could turn into a clue for somebody looking for aliens - someone like Topolsky or the people who sent her."
"Yes, that's one of the things that I worry about," I admitted. "And one of the reasons that somebody I care about shouldn't be too close to me, maybe - that you might get hurt when the FBI comes after me next time."
"I don't agree with that reasoning," Liz insisted. "If I'm close to you, if I'm in your life, then I'm one more person who could help protect you, help you hide. I've been helpful already, going to River Dog the first time because you couldn't while Topolsky was watching - and helping Alex expose Topolsky for what she was. And since the shooting incident, I'm a material witness whether I'm your girlfriend or not, Max. Maybe if you're in my life, you can help protect yourself by protecting me."
"I suppose that's a point," I admitted. "Although we've all had one major exposure scare that wouldn't have been a thing if it weren't for you and your journal."
"Hey, I do *not* deserve further grief over that," Liz insisted. "It's been taken much better care of now, and besides, I told you that you don't need to worry about my - my friend having looked at it."
"Yes, you did tell me that," I said. "Haven't really explained it to my satisfaction, but oh well." By this time we were starting to leave Roswell on the North road. "New topic?"
"Return to the old one, moving forward," Liz countered. "So your Mom and Dad adopted you, after County Social had given you the once-over and failed to come up with any trace of your true parents."
"Yeah," I agreed, trying to find my place in that narrative. "I was so glad to see them again - somehow they made me feel like everything was alright - though they'd tried, nobody at Social Services had been able to do that. So we went home with them, and Mom had set up rooms for each of us by then, and everything fit so we that for a while I was reminded of the way it had been out in the desert, when Michael had been with Isabel and I, and I actually expected Mom to introduce him to us, or him to just pop out from a closet like he'd been hiding there all along."
"But you didn't actually meet him again until a lot later, right?" Liz asked. "Sorry, not meaning to interrupt the flow of the story, just trying to get things straight, You mentioned, when we were waiting for the others to drive Michael up to the reservation, how he'd stepped up onto that rock so you could see him, how he ran away when the car was stopping, and - and that Isabel cried about him."
I snickered - at myself, not at Liz. "You know, I might have shed a tear or two myself - especially after Izzie got me started. But yeah, it was nearly two years before we had any idea what had happened to that other little boy we remembered. We didn't know that he was 'Michael' then of course, even after we'd picked our own names out of the baby names book."
"Okay, and when did you next see him and find out that he was Michael?" Liz pressed.
"The first day of third grade, Isabel and I had agreed to meet at the schoolyard gate and walk home. This was before we were going to school across town, of course. I got there a bit late, because I was talking with Jack Barber about some club thing, and when I got outside, I saw her talking with this other boy. At first I didn't understand who he was, and then they moved around and I could recognize his face." I laughed a little. "None of us really talked about the fact that he was - was like us, or that we remembered each other. It was all sort of unspoken."
"Cool. How did Isabel run into him?"
"In the lunchroom. For the rest of that story, I think that you'll have to talk to one of them." Liz nodded. "Okay, umm - back to our early days at our house. I guess those first few weeks were when we really started to soak up English and speak it ourselves. Mom and Dad figured that meant that we'd really known it all along, and had either forgotten how or just not wanted to say much."
"Okay, one other possibly side-tracky question," Liz asked. "When did you really realize that something was different about you - that you were aliens and had powers and that kind of thing?"
"Oh boy." I sighed. "Not a simple question, it's the sort of thing that happened in stages, a dozen little times."
"Sorry."
"No, that's okay," I admitted. It was the sort of thing that - well, that if I was 'making an effort' with Liz, I did want her to understand, so I racked my brain trying to find a way to organize all of those memories. "Isabel and I each used our powers a couple times before even understanding that we were doing anything at all, and after that it was a bit tricky to say if we realized that they were things that - well, that grownups might not be able to do when we weren't looking." Liz giggled again. "I healed a bird with a broken wing, and Isabel, well, she thought that she was having a weird nightmare the first time she accidentally wandered into one of Dad's..." I only caught myself at that point. "Uh, whoops. Never mind. The point is, I guess we were nine by the time we really understood most of the headline news about ourselves. I actually looked at blood samples from all three of us under a microscope to clinch the evidence that we weren't human - much like you did with my cheek cells that day in class."
"Okay," Liz said. "But sorry, today, 'never mind' is not an option. I'm not going to let go of that reference. What power does Isabel have, that related to nightmares and wandering into something belonging to your Dad?" She paused, and leaned so close that her shoulder was brushing mine, and I could smell a hint of some fruity and flowery perfume. If her hair had been down, it would have been falling against my neck, but fortunately that was one trick that the ponytail couldn't match. "Tell me, Max," she whispered sweetly.
"It - um, it's not my secret to tell," I managed to choke out, and we both laughed at that.
"You should know that never works," Liz reminded me, sitting back in her seat again. "Okay, let's see how close I can get to working it out by myself. Nightmares. She thought that she was having a nightmare, so - not a power that she'd be using if she was really up and actively exploring in the daylight, I'd say. Something that she actually did when she was in bed, maybe? A power that's like a dream, or has to do with dreams? She has prophetic dreams, or something to do with dreams? No, that doesn't fit wandering, unless..."
She made a gesture like one hand clapping. (Don't ask me what sound it made.) "Can Isabel actually go into somebody else's dream? Is that - is that how she got the idea of vamping Alex at the soap factory rave party? She was concerned about what Alex might say to Valenti, she told me that, and said that she'd 'look into it.' I didn't have any clue what she meant by that at the time. She could have dropped into one of Alex's dreams, and it was a dirty one about her, or something like that... and so she thought that gave her the leverage that she needed."
"Yeah, actually that fits with what I know," I admitted, sighing. "I'm not sure of the details of the dream - Isabel wouldn't tell me, but she did 'dreamwalk' him. And, to be honest, I'm glad that Alex didn't rise to her bait so easily - not so much for his sake, though he's probably lucky to not be wrapped around Izzie's finger as tightly as she intended to get him. But it would have been cheap for Isabel too, to resort to a trick like that for all of our sake, when Alex was worthy of the truth - and you were the first to see that in him."
"Right, I'm glad that he knows now, though it was a bit weird the way he first reacted to the news," Liz agreed softly. Taking a silent hint, Max let the conversation lapse, as they drove off into the desert.
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"So, what's Blackie's, anyway?" Liz asked after a little while, startling me out of a slightly prurient daydream. "I mean, I can sort of guess based on the name, but figured that I'd better get the real story."
I had to laugh at the question. "Whatever you were guessing, it's probably pretty close. It's a barbecue and grill restaurant near the 20 split on the highway - mostly drive-through, though I think that they do have a few picnic tables outside, mostly for warmer weather than this. The food isn't really overcooked, though that's kind of a running joke that they use for publicity - there's an oversize grill that's set up outside just to pour thick clouds of smoke into the sky that you can see for miles away, and a billboard with a cartoon of a Dad putting some crispy charcoaled burgers on a picnic table, while the rest of the family looks horrified."
"Huh, sounds kinda cool," Liz admitted. "I wonder why I haven't heard anything about it before. Just how far is this place from Roswell?"
"More than thirty miles, not sure," I admitted. "Which is quite a distance, I have to admit. Michael and I discovered it about a year and a half ago, when we first started exploring the desert looking for where we came from."
"Wait a minute," Liz immediately said. "Wouldn't you have both been on your learner's permits back then?"
"Ummm..." was all I had to say at first. "I was a very good driver, and Michael's foster dad had an old beat-up Chrysler that he really didn't care if we took out together." Pause. "Don't tell my parents."
"Of course I won't," Liz said, sounding a bit stiff and prim. "I'm just a little disappointed in retrospect. What would I have done if you'd gotten yourself killed before I'd even met you, Max Evans?" I couldn't come up with an answer to that. "Okay, okay, moving on. Blackie's sounds good for lunch - but since you picked the restaurant, I'm ordering for both of us. Sound fair?"
"Sure," I agreed without hesitation, wondering what Liz would pick to get me from a menu that would be initially unfamiliar to her. "We should probably park and go inside, then, instead of lining up for the drive-through. That sound alright?"
"Certainly," Liz agreed. "I could do with a stretch, it's been a long ride to get this far." Ooh, and there went my (recently far too hormone-drenched) imagination, just picturing the way Liz's hips would move in those tight jeans as she stre-etched. This no kissing until midnight deal is possibly doomed to last no later than 2 pm. "How far have we come so far?"
"Umm, maybe twenty miles," I said, looking around to see if I could spot any other nearby landmark.
Liz nodded acceptance of that. "So it'll be a while." I went uh-huh. "And after we grab lunch it's off hunting for a pod cave? Do you have any idea of approximately where that is? I mean - well, I guess you know the spot where your parents found you, right?"
"Yeah," I agreed. "Actually, that was pretty close to this stretch of highway, I'm pretty sure. Err, not actually on the main road, though - they were on one of the much smaller roads through the desert." I managed to catch something as it whizzed by. "Okay, we're at mile marker one twenty-nine, that's a bit further than I thought we were. We were found on a lane that meets up with the 285 between 127 and 128. Dad's never pinpointed the spot on that smaller road, but after some pestering he took Isabel and I down there and gave us a 'it was somewhere around here', and with Michael's help we were able to pinpoint the spot with some certainty."
"Umm, okay, back up for a second," Liz said. "Where does the numbering start, anyway?"
I chuckled. "At the spot where route 285 crosses from Texas into New Mexico, between Carlsbad and Pecos."
"Oh, right. And the location where we committed a felony."
"Heh? Did I miss that one?"
"When we were following Michael to Marathon," she explained. "Crossing a state line as minors, without parental permission."
"I'm not sure that's really a crime, in our case," I had to say. "For an adult to take minors across the state line, without their parent's permission, yeah, I think that there might be a case there. Since we're ALL under eighteen, I don't think the same one applies."
"Okay, well, never mind that," Liz agreed. "So, just to help map this system into my own little Roswell-centric world, what mile marker would the Crashdown be at?"
"Umm, I think somewhere around one hundred eight is the closest to downtown Roswell. Not sure if they actually have a marker for it, in the city, but that would be the equivalent."
"Alright," Liz said. "So, we have a location on a small road off the highway, and - well, I'm not sure, but it seems to me that as little kids, you couldn't have walked that far."
"Well, we thought so too," I said, and laughed, "when we first started looking. Between Michael and I, we pretty much combed all through the mile-radius circle around that spot, looking for anything that seemed familiar or at all like the cave that we remember leaving, and didn't have much luck." I sighed. "We didn't have any ideas about what direction to widen the search in until I was able to find out a bit more about the Roswell crash in forty-seven, and the original crash stories."
"Right, okay," Liz said. "I've picked up a lot of the mythology, so let me see what I can remember. The original reports of debris were made by William Brazel - he was the foreman on a ranch, north and west of town... but I can't put my tongue on the name of the place."
"Puhlman ranch," I told her, smiling. "It's nearly six miles from where we were found, which is definitely a long way to think of little kids travelling by themselves during the night, but I'm not sure that we couldn't have made it. An adult hiker can make three miles in an hour, and I kinduv think that we were a lot of hours travelling, most of the night."
"Okay," Liz said. "So have you and Michael explored much of the ranch and nearby territory?"
"Not that much, actually. There are still some people keeping an eye on that area, actually, and it would be suspicious if we were found or stopped near the Crash site. There was - well, there was a bit of a scare, and all three of us made pact that we wouldn't go back until we had a better notion of what we were looking for."
"Ooh, interesting phrasing," Liz immediately realized. "Did you actually pact that when you went back, you'd take Michael or Isabel?" I shook my head. "Do they realize that you didn't promise it? I mean, I still remember how much Michael freaked when he realized that you were holding the cave maps out on him - and now you're taking me pod cave hunting without letting him know that you've got a lead?"
"Well, I was going to mention it to them - after the party, tomorrow," I told her. "Didn't realize that I'd have any time to go looking today, until you showed up. Guess I thought that was sort of a sign. Of course, if you're really worried about what Michael will think, we don't have to go looking."
"No, hell are you kidding me? Of course I'm up for this. It's exciting to think that I might be here when you find the place you were - were born, or something like it." She laughed. "Michael will have to get used to the idea."
I smiled and drove off towards Blackie's.
-----------
So, lunch was great and made me see something completely familar in a totally new light - just like lots of other stuff with Liz has turned out, I have to admit. She picked the steak-on-a-bun sandwich for me, which I told her was one of the things that I always pondered trying and then never actually did order, choosing more familiar standbys instead. She gave me one of those 'See, I told you' stares at that point, which I have to admit is also particularly cute on Liz Parker. (Don't even ask me if she has any expressions that I don't find adorable. In way too deep...)
I didn't actually let her go through with the entire order exactly as she'd wanted for me, though, because she picked the sweet potato fries on the side, and I've never liked anything to do with sweet potatoes. I've never had them here, but I've had sweet potato fries and a number of other ways you can prepare them, often at parties that my mom has dragged the entire family to or special elaborate dinners that she tries to make all by herself, and usually ends up calling Dad or one of her friends to rescue the main course or the dessert. My mom is a huge sweet potato proponent herself, and seems to think that if she can only get clever enough about hiding them, I won't recognize the things and will realize that I really do like them. This is punctured by the fact that even when I don't recognize the tuber ahead of time, I never do actually like the taste. Actually, she caught me by surprise with sweet potato fries once, which is why they fall into a special loathing category along with all the other sweet potato dishes that I've eaten under false pretences.
So, anyway, after I got through about half of that speech, Liz changed her mind and gave me spicy curly fries, which aren't my favorite but pretty cool, especially for a special occasion like this. For herself, she got a Big Bad Sirloin burger, which is nearly half a pound of beef and looked like the patty was about an inch and a half thick, on a fairly skinny sourdough bun so that even Liz, who has a fairly small mouth, could bite without having to strain - and she paired that with the charcoal-grilled potatoes, and ordered large cherry cokes for both of us.
We chatted about Maria and Isabel, and school and my new job at the UFO center -- well, I've had it for over two months now, but it's still new in comparison to the rest of my life, and Liz's gig at the Crashdown that she's been at for years really -- while having our lunches at one of the picnic tables - most of them were empty on a December day like this. Despite keeping up her end of the conversation, Liz made quick inroads on everything, and I still had nearly half my fries left and a bit of steak and bun when she was done her potatoes and her Big Bad. (We both still had some of our drinks left at this point, not that that really matters.) I popped the last bit of sandwich into my mouth, enjoying the texture of the meat and the way the flavor of the mushroom sauce mixed with everything else, and after several seconds of vigorous chewing, swallowed in satisfaction.
"Okay, do you want to head back onto the road?" I asked. "I can wrap the fries back up, and snack on them later." Bam - instant puppy-dog eyes from Liz, and I was melting before I even figured out what she was getting at. "Umm, err, that is, we can both snack, I suppose." That got me a grin, and I figured that Liz was probably going to be doing most of the snacking, especially since she would so-generously offer to hold the wrapped curlies while I drove away.
Once we were settled in the Jeep and away, though, something else distracted both of us from the fries, and in fact I think that they slipped away from Liz's lap and ended up in a lump under the seat, the wrapping just starting to come apart. "Max, did you notice the well-dressed guy in blue, with sandy blond hair, who was all by himself at one of the picnic tables?"
"Umm - yes, I guess so," I said, starting to get a bad feeling. "I didn't pay particular attention to him, why?" Liz didn't answer immediately, and I thought of something to add. "I know that the people who were working with Topolsky back when she was spying on us tended to wear blue suits, but that doesn't mean that anybody in that sort of outfit is - well, you know. We haven't seen any sign of that kind of person since she left."
"Yeah, and maybe I'm jumping to conclusions," Liz said, starting to sound just a bit testy, "but as we were settling in to the car, he got up and left part of a burger at his table. I noticed that, but didn't think anything particular about it - until now, when I notice that there's a car that left the Blackie's parking lot following us back towards town, and it might be the man in blue driving."
"How big of a 'might' is that?" I asked, feeling a bit upset myself. The part that was the most upsetting, actually, was that I didn't seem to have enough information to decide if I should actually be worried that we were being followed by a mysterious person, or slightly aggravated at Liz that she was acting too paranoid, or more calmly in-between somewhere. "More than half of the cars that leave Blackie's would head back south, I tend to think, between travellers stopping off on a bite who were coming from further north, and people who only went out this far for the food. You didn't see the guy approach a car?"
"He was walking towards somewhere where there were cars, but I didn't see him step right up to one, no," Liz shot back. "You asked me something about grandmothers, and I was thinking about my answer. But it wouldn't have been the other party at the picnic table next to us, and I don't think anybody was in the drive-through lane just as we were getting up."
"Hmm." Somewhat reluctantly, I decided that it was necessary to treat this guy as an FBI agent until he was demonstrated to be something else, or until it didn't matter one way or another. "Okay, so if he's tailing us, then I don't think I want to turn down the right desert road while he's there. Does that mean we should just go back into town, and see if he's still with us wherever we stop?"
"Umm - no," Liz suggested. "Take an earlier turning first - see if he comes after us. Maybe it's all just a coincidence."
I nodded, accepting the idea, and slowed down somewhat so that when a turning came up, we'd be ready. The dark burgundy-ish sedan in the rear view also went down to a crawl after a moment, which seemed to support the idea that the driver was in 'tailing mode' and didn't want to approach us too closely. Soon enough, there was an opportunity to leave the highway to the right, a fairly straight gravel lane, and I took it. We waited, both holding our breath for long seconds at a time, until the sedan reached the turning - and followed us onto it.
"Okay, we've got a serious problem," Liz muttered. "What now? Can we go around in a loop and pass Blackie's again? He can probably stay behind us the whole way there, but if the point is to tail you, he probably won't do anything more threatening. In point of fact, if he realizes that we know he's there behind us, he might just give up and go back to home base, wherever that is - kind of like Topoksly did."
"Nice idea, but there's a problem with it," I told her. "You can't do loops without cross roads, and there aren't any cross roads out here in the desert - just little roads like this coming out from the main highway at intervals. We wouldn't be able to cross to another side road until we get to the county line at least - not on a road, at least, and though the Jeep is good at offroading, I wouldn't want to take it off the road for that long."
"Oh, boy," Liz muttered. "And we can't turn around and go back to the 285, can we?"
"Hmm - just let me think about that one a minute," I grumbled, still keeping an eye on the sedan in the mirror.
TO BE CONTINUED...