Rating: Teen for language and light thematic elements.
Warnings: None, except the obvious UC.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Roswell High Books or the TV show Roswell and am not affiliated with either in any way. They belong to Melinda Metz and Jason Katims. I'm just borrowing Michael and Isabel for my own purposes.
A/N: Whoo! This is my first purely Cliffhanger work, so I hope it's okay. I tucked it away for awhile and then dug it out, dusted it off, and finished it after my writer's block had faded a little. It's not perfect, but I think that in spirit it gets out what I was trying to convey. I did my best to keep it in-character and to highlight the differences between this story and the actual bedroom scene that was aired in Independence Day. So, regardless, I hope you all enjoy.
Anchor
Why is he here?
He asks himself the question but can’t come up with an answer. It sits heavily on his shoulders, mocking him and draining his already sapped reserve of energy.
He thinks maybe this is his body’s latest in a long line of betrayals, because for all that he doesn’t know, he’s still sure that he did not mean to be here of all places.
His feet were supposed to carry him to Maria.
(Maria, who would understand and help and for once not pry, because this is something she would understand.)
He was supposed to end up somewhere safe, where he could lick his wounds in private and free of his own kind’s censure.
Instead he is outside Isabel’s window.
(Isabel, who has never in her life let anything go. Isabel, who argues with him and needles him until she is blue in the face and he is walking away with clenched fists and curse words tripping off his tongue.)
This is all wrong.
He is too raw to be seen by her right now. One look into those eyes and he knows he will break or lash out, and his instincts scream that either would be worse than hiding.
But he’s here. And even though it’s not too late, even though he has yet to be seen, he can’t make himself walk away.
Suddenly it is too late. He stays glued to the spot, watching her.
She steps into the room with red-rimmed eyes and tense shoulders, and his stomach turns and pangs in a way that’s as unfamiliar as it is uncomfortable.
Isabel never cries. She yells, yes, and holds grudges that last longer than a regular human’s long-term memory; but she never cries.
He made her cry?
A strange mixture of shame and hope overtakes him.
She sees him standing outside, and her eyes widen noticeably. It’s only when she opens the window and he sees her hair and shirt getting soaked by the downpour that he understands why. The realization sends an obligatory shiver ripping up his spine.
He trudges through the muddy backyard, his scuffed boots quashing drowned grass and dying flowers. His jacket provides no protection from the rain.
When he reaches the window Isabel is moving around her room efficiently. Two neatly folded towels have been placed on the desk and a t-shirt and pair of sweatpants most likely filched from Max’s laundry are lying complacently on her bed.
She pulls a blanket from her closet shelf as he tumbles haphazardly into the house. His bruising fall ends in a tangle of limbs. Dirty water stains her pristine carpeting.
“God forbid you use the front door,” she sniffs, but her voice is low and wavers slightly.
There’s no real criticism in her words, and he thinks he must have known there wouldn’t be even as he was rushing past Hank and out into the storm. There’s relief in him that she’s not trying to placate him like Max would, or bite his head off like Maria.
He studies her intently. The tiny, unruly boy once called a welfare punk by the cafeteria lady urges him to do something to upset her.
(If they’re fighting then he is safe and none of this is really happening. If they’re fighting then she is still just Isabel, not this new Isabel who is making his heart ache and his hands tremble and who is forcing him to disregard everything he ever knew himself to feel about her.)
The moment passes, and he sees his opportunity to be belligerent slipping away.
But as he has been watching her she has been moving forward until she is close enough to fall to her knees and gently begin tugging at the large boot encasing his left foot. Her movements are brisk and constrained, as if she’s afraid of hurting him.
He has the inconceivable wish that she would linger for a moment.
Before she moves to the next foot her hand travels up his shoulder and into the hair behind his neck. Her eyes scan his face carefully.
She collapses before him.
He’s never seen anything like this raging uncertainty in her eyes, and even as it mingles with relief it cuts him to the marrow. “I was so worried you weren’t coming back.”
The whispered confession embeds itself in his skin, enflaming and irritating until he just wants to be away from it. Against his will he feels tears burning his eyes. Her fathomless brown eyes drill holes straight into his chest, the only feature still intact in her stricken face.
Isabel goes to work again, pulling off his other boot and then rolling down his socks. All the while her quiet sobs trickle up to his ears. She jerkily pushes his jacket past his shoulders, hands trembling and tears racing down her face. She picks one of the towels off the desk and lays it on the floor, lining his boots up neatly on top of it and setting his socks to the side. Then she reaches for his jacket, clutching it to her chest as if she needs something to anchor her to the floor. She rocks with it from side to side.
“I was so – so scared – that you would run away from me again,” she sobs. He finds it hard to breathe. “You’re always running from me, and I don’t--”
“Isabel,” he whispers, shattering internally.
(Doesn’t she know that it’s not her he’s running from at all?)
“– and I don’t know how to help you anymore, Michael. You talk to Max. You talk to Maria. But you won’t talk to me.”
“You don’t want me! You want after-school activities and varsity football players. You want normal,” he sneers. He welcomes the building anger, fueling it and directing it at her because it’s so much easier than facing the brokenness in his being and on her face. “You and Max, and this life you have for yourselves? I’m not a part of it. I was never a part of it! But every time I go after the things that I want, that I need, the two of you are pulling me back because it’s not fair to you!”
Even in this he can’t be untouchable because it’s all insecurities and half-truths tumbling from his mouth. They incite Isabel’s own rage.
“That’s bull and you know it! None of those people mean anything to me. God, I haven’t told my parents that I’m not the same species because you are so afraid of rejection.”
Her eyes glitter angrily. Her voice lowers. “It’s all for you.”
Queasiness takes hold, makes it hard to think. Michael shakes his head from side to side, wanting so badly to deny it. She claims to be devoted to him, but it’s not true, can’t be true.
No one comes for him. No one wants him. And no one offers him the love she’s throwing in his face, an insult and a prayer.
But even so, his voice is weaker than he’d like when he objects. “You haven’t told them because Max--”
“Since when has Max ever stopped me?” she hisses. “Who was by your bedside while he scampered off to the reservation with Liz Parker? Who went to the library and sent up that goddamned signal with you? Not Max and not Maria. Me! Who knew you took Liz Parker’s journal–” and she doesn’t bat an eyelash at his surprise, doesn’t even acknowledge it – “– but didn’t say anything to Max? Damn it, Michael, I care about you, and if you can’t see it it’s not because I haven’t shown it!”
He shivers.
She hesitates.
Her drying tears leave her face raw and perfect.
“Isabel–”
“I love you,” she tells him.
Michael knows that she means it. He knows the way that she means it, too; and that somehow makes it more painful to hear than a million ‘I hate you’s.
(But it shouldn’t, because before tonight this “I love you” would have been all he could ask for from her.)
So he says the only thing he can, the only thing to makes sense to him in an evening filled with nonsensical words. “You shouldn’t.”
Isabel is suddenly holding him, the sopping wet jacket pressed between their chests as her arms band firmly around him. “Don’t,” she commands. Her voice in his ear is harsh and blistering, and it makes him lift his arms and pull her even closer.
He lays his head on her shoulder and revels in her warmth/softness/goodness. His face burrows into the crick of her shoulder and he does his best to hang on, hoping desperately that if he clings hard enough she’ll be the gravity that keeps him on earth.
Her grip on him never falters.
He tries to make himself speak, to separate himself from the moment, but is unable to form the words.
For the first time in five years, Michael Guerin finds himself crying.
She murmurs soft, incoherent words over him that sound like “no” and “okay” and “here” and feel like poetry. Although she’s a hundred times closer than she was before, the suffocating feeling is gone and in its place is simply home.
Not once does she tell him to stop crying.
When it’s over and he’s a mass of nerves and spent emotions, the instinctive restlessness once again taking root, she rears back and wipes at his tears with the palms of her hands. The gesture makes him feel as if it’s not his face she’s cleaning but her own.
“You don’t have to go back, Michael. You never have to face him again. Max will know what to do, and my dad can help. We’ll –”
He doesn’t quite cut her off. To do that he’d have to be much quicker and harder. Instead, he’s gentle and slow and a million other things he never knew he could be.
The air still explodes when they meet.
She sucks in a surprised gasp just before his lips close over hers, and the feeling snaps his control. Gone is his carefulness as he kisses her. He demands her mouth and offers his own in return, barely registering the heady moan released from her throat or the delicate hands that bunch the shoulders of his t-shirt.
It’s amazing that with all their first-time clumsiness and emotional exhaustion they still manage to get this right. For some reason they don’t even have to try.
He breaks the kiss. He hides how affected he is behind critical eyes and the tiniest of smirks, needing to know if she’s qualifying this as wrong/gross/a mistake before he embarrasses himself by going in for more.
But her eyes are fluttering, and her fingers squeeze the fabric in her hands convulsively. “Michael…”
The hitch in her voice isn’t hesitation. He’s not quite sure what it is, although a hidden and optimistic part of him has an idea.
“Thank you,” he tells her. Michael watches fresh tears brim in her eyes before she reaches for the bottom hem of his shirt. She tugs it up; still carefully, but no longer treating him as if he’s breakable. He obediently lifts his arms and lets her discard it. Her knuckles skim the expanse of his stomach when she pulls the new t-shirt over his head, and it is dry and warm and drenched in her scent.
She isn’t so quick to pull away this time.
He grasps the sweatpants, and Isabel stands up and turns away as he steps out of his jeans and pulls them up. He finishes and walks over to her.
He rests his hand on her shoulder, wanting to ask for reassurance but not quite sure how to.
She turns to face him. Her eyes offer the silent guarantee he was looking for.
“Stay with me tonight,” she pleads.
His lips twitch. “Maxwell will be pissed.”
She rolls her eyes, an old-Isabel gesture that manages to integrate the girl he’s known with the woman he’s found tonight. “Screw Max.”
He studies her, surprised at how badly he wants to fall asleep wrapped up in her. “Okay.”
The smile she gives him isn’t radiant or ecstatic or loud. It is sincere in its contentment, and he thinks he’ll probably always remember her face at this moment.
She leads him to the bed, and they lie down facing each other. One of her hands lace with his. They fall asleep this way, turned into each other but still with a respectable amount of distance between them.
When a sound wakes him in the middle of the night, they are tangled together comfortably.
He recalls the sensation of being adrift that usually accompanies nights; and as if she’s heard his thoughts, she shifts, trapping him under her.
For the first time in his short life, Michael feels no desire to run.
