Disclaimer: Insert something appropriately witty and clever here. Oh right, and I own nothing related to Roswell, the show. Surprise.
Summary: Times change, people change with them. But change them enough and they all come full circle in the end.
Timeline: Approximately four years after Graduation.
Author’s Note: This is dedicated to Joia, without whom this story would never have been completed, yada, yada, yada, blah blah blah. Basically, she’s an evil whore who bullied poor, innocent me into doing something I ordinarily would never even consider. I mean, me, complete a story? Egads! The mind boggles. So yeah, blame her if you don’t like it. If you do…well I take full credit. It was all my idea, after all.
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Southern San Diego scratches the sky with brick-red fingers of steel and glass, and the night bleeds black shadows. Running down the lengths of buildings and lampposts and casting themselves long across the pavement below, they play a game of cat and mouse with anyone who ventures too close, swallowing them whole until the click-click-clack of sandals and worn running shoes is all that’s left. She knows better though, and she keeps center stage in her own puddle of lamplight on the corner of Rosecrans and Sunset Boulevard, arms hugged protectively across her chest like a second coat she doesn’t need. It can’t be less than sixty degrees out.
A car whips around the corner, features indistinguishable in the dark of a Monday morning at three a.m. A fender screeches its protest when it hits the dip in the road without even slowing, and then its gone as quickly as it came, only a few whistles and a catcall lingering in their slipstream. College kids most likely. Drunk almost certainly. But they didn’t stop, so it doesn’t really matter.
She shifts her weight and leans against the safety-glass window of the bus stop, foot tapping restlessly, spent cigarette butts crushed beneath her heel. Turns, glances around in search of the public transportation that has to still be running this late or she doesn’t know what she’ll do. Sees the strip club she’s standing in front of, the sign says Deja Blue, whatever that means. There’s a female figure posed just beside the ‘D’, all sharp lines and hollow spaces like a silhouette. Its probably blue when its lit, but it’s the same shade of gray as everything else right now. They’re closed for the night. Probably locked up just before she got off work at the Denny’s down the block. She wonders if the definitely-drunk maybe-college boys that didn’t stop thought she worked here, decides she’s too tired to care. Turns back, faces the road again. Catches him watching her from across the fifteen-foot wide chasm of dirt, asphalt and possible vehicular manslaughter.
He just smirks when he sees that he’s caught, the subtle shift of his lips almost invisible in the cloaking shadows, but she knows its there, same as the apologetic grunt he won’t give until he’s asked, maybe not even then. The chainlink fence behind him loosens its grip; he straightens from the slump that held him glued to rusted iron, crosses the street like that was his intention all along. From five feet away his voice carries clearly over the salty sea-breeze that whips her hair across her eyes and between her lips.
“Want a ride?”
“Have a car?” She volleys the sarcasm right back at him, catches the double entendre too late. A rush of blood brightens her cheeks, shifts easily enough to a glare, daring him to laugh at her expense. His mouth doesn’t oblige but his eyes tell a different story; reminds her, never let it be said Michael Guerin can’t dance. If his disdain for earthbound pursuits carries over to that, its only for the complicated footwork. He’s as skilled with his eyes and mouth and words as any tap dancer is with snapping fingers and iron plated soles. Never mind that only the most observant partners could ever hope to match his tempo. Only to be expected, after all. Its not in his nature to make it easy for anyone to follow along.
Its not in hers to resist a challenge.
“Fine. Would you like me to walk you home, Parker?” He concedes without conceding, never one to bother with semantics. It irritates her as much as the eye roll that never comes.
“You came all this way just to hold my hand? I’m touched, but I don’t need a bodyguard, Guerin.” Two syllables. Both laced with acid. Parry, riposte, en garde. How easily a harmless dance gains razor sharp blades and fencing masks, assuming it was ever harmless to start with. Has it always been this way with them?
He shrugs. Quirks his lips just a little bit more. Scratches his eyebrow with exaggerated care. Waits five more seconds, looks around, drawls, “Don’t flatter yourself. I just needed an excuse to escape the Hellmouth.” He snorts. “Mom and Dad are arguing again.”
The Hellmouth: a Holliday Inn just ten blocks down, the tenth of its name. Christened by Kyle after too many reruns of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and too many rooms whose previous inhabitants could only have been ‘hell beasties’, if the off color splotches decorating walls and carpets were any indication. Mom and Dad: Kyle and Isabel were at it again, masking sexual tension with battles for the remote or some other such idiocy, getting louder and more obnoxious until the only solution was to roll your eyes and leave, finding somewhere else to spend the night and hoping that maybe this time they’d just get it over, fuck already, and put the rest of them out of their misery. Bottom line: Maria was off in search of men, margaritas and music, or some combination of the three. Max was putting in extra hours at the 24 hours convenience store two streets down from the motel.
They’ve played through this particular scene often enough it’s easy to read between the lines. Up until a point, at least. Then its time to improvise. Not really a gift of hers, but then, practice makes perfect, right?
She tugs her hair behind one ear, huffs an annoyed breath, a show of exasperation for anyone who cares to look.
He’s watching her like a hawk.
“Carlos called in sick today, I had to work a double, got off late, and missed the bus,” she stops. Sighs. “I so don’t want to deal with those two right now.”
“Then don’t.”
Her turn to watch him, and he puts on a fine performance. A careless shrug, a quick dare glinting in amber eyes, then he’s looking down the street with pursed lips. Mind lost in thought; face lost in shadow. A show of squinting, surveying the block when there’s nothing really to see. Now he’s looking down, watching her watch him, arms crossed expectantly.
“There’s a Motel 6 just two blocks down. Plenty of vacancies.” It’s his attempt at being subtle.
“There’s something to be said for a change of scenery.” It’s her attempt at being coy.
Neither’s very good at it, but they play the game anyways. Her turn to lead; she starts walking, he’s exactly one pace behind. His jeans whisper with each stride, legs brushing together and muting the clatter of her heels hitting the sidewalk step by step by step, a steady percussion beat she doesn’t bother trying to hide. A beer can adds the bass, the wind rolls it down the gutter, provides a discordant harmony for the windows briefly rattling in their frames. An uneven staccato intrudes, a door slams two buildings down, another across the street, a slammed gate a block away punctuates the refrain. Wind dies down. Pianissimo, a dramatic pause. They turn the corner, see the Motel 6 she passes every day on her way to work. A car alarm shatters the silence, crescendoes as they walk up the driveway. The paint is chipped off the curb where it should be a fire zone, and the lambent glow of the Vacancy sign stains the moon blood red. There’s a muffled shout in the distance, the night’s orchestra builds to a climax, fades to a roar, the unseen conductor bows and a curtain falls.
End Act One.
He pays for the room but its not chivalry so much as stubborn male pride. She shakes her head in exasperation but he takes no notice.
Point to him.
Their room is first floor, far end of the first block of buildings. The key is brass alloy, old, rusted and obstinate. It won’t fit in the lock, so he uses a glowing hand instead.
She heads straight for the bathroom, doesn’t even stop to take off her clothes, but she slips her wedding ring off and leaves it on the dresser. She doesn’t want to get it wet, after all. It’s the only jewelry she owns. His eyes track her motions until she turns around and pins him with her own. Challenge met and accepted. Forward, forward, backstep. He grunts, the television snaps on with the flick of a finger, he drops onto the bed and is immediately lost in the dim blue glare of the screen.
A dismissal, not a concession.
Still. Point to her.
She shuts the door behind her and Late Night with Conan O’Brien dulls to mute. The bathroom’s cramped, the walls cracked and the ceiling mildewed. She’s been in worse. The shower faucet’s chipped and stuck in its ways, but she has her own version of the green thumb and when the water finally comes down it’s a neutral lukewarm. Not pleasant but not unpleasant, so much as just there.
She runs her hands through her hair and pulls it tight into a ponytail behind her neck. The soap hasn’t been changed recently and she trusts her hands more than its shade of brown grey, scrubs at her skin until her fingernails are more polished than the tiles. The water cuts off and she grabs a towel from the rack above the toilet, dries herself off. Looks in the mirror but its all fogged up and she can only make out the roughest reflection of her face, but she tells herself its okay.
The lights are out when she steps out of the bathroom, but the ceiling fan is on, stirring the air in lazy circles and pulling at the towel wrapped around her like a cloak. The streetlight that makes its way through the slitted window blinds is poor illumination, but she’s good at seeing through shadows. When she wants to.
And she sees his clothes on the floor and him on the bed, and she’s about to stammer out an excuse, an apology, a hysterical babble that’s still enough of a reason to run back to the bathroom, but his eyes stand out in the darkness and she can’t help but look. He’s smirking. She can’t see it but his lips are still crooked and his left eyebrow is raised. Challenge met. Challenge accepted. The towel drops to the floor.
He moves on the bed, growing out of the dark until he’s kneeling on the bed and pulling her up beside him, his pale skin luminescent in the dim glow of the television. Weathered hands trace the curve of her face and they’ve never been quite this far before. She wonders what’s changed, but that doesn’t stop her from leaning into his palms and turning his touch into a caress, because truth be told, she doesn’t really care. Conan O’Brien laughs softly behind her.
Her fingers tangle in his hair and her lips drift down to his skin, smooth but solid, hard with muscle and definite shape but soft enough that her teeth find purchase. Half a crescent moon marks his shoulder. First blood to her, even though she didn’t break the skin. She licks the spot clean anyways.
He ducks his head down, eyes demanding attention, and his teeth hold her ear still, nipping lightly while he whispers things she doesn’t really hear because she’s too busy twisting her head, lips seeking the path from his head to his chest, tiny featherlight butterfly kisses on his neck, if butterflies could taste of Colgate and peppermint. Then her fingers are in his mouth and he’s sucking them clean, licking, tasting, and doesn’t she feel just a little bit guilty?
But no, because Liz Parker might have been perfect but Liz Evans is a different creature, and still, she’s sure she could justify it if she tried. She could argue that marriage vows were never meant to include aliens, or even that she’s just indulging her innate curiosity, wondering what’s in it for him. And anyone would agree that man and wife is only til death do us apart, and she died once, she knows she did, but she’s not so sure she ever came back to life. It’s all true in its own way, and its all meaningless in every way that matters.
They have sex beneath a ceiling that could claim to have seen a hundred men and women joined just like them, on a bed that creaks every time he shifts his weight, between brass endposts that bang against the wall every time she throws her head back and cries out from some undefinable emotion she can’t even begin to name. They don’t make love because they’re not in love. This..whatever this is… it’s not about secret crushes and mariachi bands, white roses and charcoal-made-diamonds. It’s about the flushed red her teeth leave amidst the white tracks of his biceps, the way his calloused hands are sand-paper rough against her cheeks. It’s about the silver moonlight that slips in through the window to lick the skin of his shoulder the way her tongue did just moments before, the way his breath fogs the chilled air even as his sweat steams between their conjoined forms. Its about everything and its about nothing, but most importantly it just is.
They seize the night and all its comforting anonymity, wringing every last drop of guilty pleasures from the shadows before they disappear. The walls of their room retreat and the world falls away beneath them, and they’re above the heavens in a way that has nothing to do with alien genetics and everything to do with the primitive beauty of bodies entwined, a link to a time before there was need for conscious thought and all the regrets and missed opportunities, all the broken promises that come with it. Their bodies meet at the horizon, or maybe they are the horizon, the curve of his belly and the flat ridges of her hips where earth meets sky and the two become one. Fireflies dance behind her eyelids, as much at home in the black void as the stars scattered so close she could touch them. And in that moment she’s as divine as any celestial entity, and she really could wear the moon on a necklace if she wanted to. And she thinks that just then he’d give it to her if she asked.
And then the night explodes in a shower of color, lights so bright it hurts to look. So she doesn’t, just rests her eyes and floats in the waters of the river Lethe, gently bobbing up and down with the current, drifting forever until sleep finally claims her.
She doesn’t dream.
He’s gone when she wakes, just the faintest outline of his body to warm the sheets at her side, but she expected as much and actually thinks its probably for the best. Things always look different in the light.
She slips into her clothes and turns off the T.V., straightens, looks around. Not really sure what’s thinking she’ll see, or maybe even what she wants to see. One last look, her hand tracing the wall as she turns, taking it all in, imprinting it to memory for reasons she’ll examine some other time. Golden light flashes; she snatches her ring off the dresser and slides it into her pocket, closes the door on her way out.
She cuts across the parking lot instead of heading back the way they’d arrived, slips through the gap in the fence and makes her way through an empty lot. There’s a rumbling in her ears, cars roaring by on the freeway overpass just overhead, and that’ll get her back into the busy part of town, that alley right there.
Sullen gray tenement buildings flank her on both sides, their ashen surfaces scarred by rainbow arcs of graffitti, the red, yellow and blue acts of vandalism the only things differentiating them from the dozens down the block. She looks past them, looks all the way down the alley to the doorway at the end, that lighter patch of darkness the furthest she can see. But she can imagine what’s past it, its only six more blocks to the sea shore and she can smell the salty spray from here, can taste it on her lips along with the faint promise of rain and there’s a new roar in her ear, drowning out the cars behind her. It’s the sound of rocks and ocean spray, the first waves of morning breaking on sandstone cliffs and she hurries just a little bit faster to meet it, but she’s not making any progress.
And itt’s Zeno’s Paradox, she’s caught halfway between the last hours of the night and the first minutes of the morning, but she’ll never make it there in time to meet the sun rise. She exists in a time outside of time, a shadow’s echo in the gray of dawn. She’s somewhere just beyond the world she chose to leave behind but not quite to the one she knows is waiting for her, but at least she’s on the right road now, she’s sure of where she’s going. The first fingers of dawn reach through the dark remains of yesterday and crack open the sky, and suddenly the not-so-distant horizon is rosebud pink and the vastness overhead is a shade of blue she can’t remember ever seeing before.
The world she used to know fades faster and faster behind her but her pace hasn’t quickened any. Tomorrow rushes in to fill the silence left in its wake, and between each blink of her eyes another silhouette is sketched in the air around her. Quick brushstrokes of shadows and light filling them in with the smell of gasoline and stale cigarette smoke, the impatient blare of the car horn stalled in front of a red light that’s brighter than anything man-made has a right to be. And somewhere…not far…a baby’s crying and a dog is barking and god, how could she have forgotten what it was like to be this real?
Her strides lengthen and she’s running, running even as the oncoming foot traffic jostles her elbows and forces her to turn her shoulders, squeeze her way through the six am rush just like everyone else, but she’s laughing, a breathless, gasping laugh that forces its way up her throat only to be lost amongst the squeal of tires and that humming noise that must be the waves crashing on that not-so-distant shore. She’s laughing because they’re not faceless anymore, no, she can see them all, acne scarred and chubby faced and they’re looking at her funny but it doesn’t matter. For just this moment, this one moment she clutches tight, afraid it could vanish the second she closes her eyes, for just right now there’s no more gray, no more ‘I don’t know’, and if their features flee her memory the moment they’re out of sight, well, its just the fault of her overworked brain and not some alien conspiracy or FBI-wielded-drug, that’s all just part of some dream she had years ago. But she’s awake now, and she’s laughing, and she’s real and racing through the shadows into a future she can’t see but can’t wait to know.
And its six am on a Monday morning in southern California, and the sun is more than bright enough on its own, and a flick of a switch…
….another one, two more, three…
…a diner here…
…. that auto garage over there…
….and one by one the lights go off on Sunset Boulevard.
Fin