Roswell Oneshot: We Cannot Kindle When We Will
Title: We Cannot Kindle When We Will
By Jesterlady
Summary: Her lips are still burning and she makes a mental note to tell him if they’re ever going to kiss again he needs to be tabasco free.
Pairing: Michael/Maria
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t own Roswell. Some lines are from the show. The title is by Matthew Arnold.
A/N: I have only just watched Roswell and I wrote this right after watching 1x7 River Dog. I promise it is a complete coincidence that so many things parallel actual show events. When I wrote this, I'd never seen Heatwave or heard Michael reference being a stone wall, or knew that him genuinely laughing would ever be a thing. But I like that I apparently have such a bead on them.
We Cannot Kindle When We Will
Maria does not consider herself to be a well-put together person. She is easily freaked out and scared and does not handle stress or crisis very well, dependent on bottles of essential oils to do what she can’t to calm herself down. She knows this about herself and most of the time it doesn’t worry her. After all, she has other good qualities and not much in her life to push her over the edge. That is, until the day her best friend is shot in front of her eyes and Maria finds out aliens are real.
More specifically through this event she finds out Michael Guerin is an alien.
She panics and she is petrified though she thinks she pulls it together pretty darn well, thank you very much. Enough to save their hides that night and let this whole crazy charade of a life start. Because now Maria is involved and she knows things, things that could get her locked up or killed, and she has spent weeks being utterly terrified that something bad is going to happen.
Bad things do happen and even though she continually makes the decision to follow her best friend down the rabbit hole of alien conspiracy theories, she is always on edge, wondering what is going to happen next. There’s this constant push and pull between them and their new alien pals; one day they’re all in this together, the next they’re out in the cold because it’s not safe or they’re not trusted or something in between.
Of course there’s the day when Michael steals her mom’s car and pretty much abducts her and they end up at a sleazy motel and she has no words to describe the myriad of emotions she goes through that night. Some of them are surprising and unexpected, but it starts something else inside her besides panic and she begins to see something she never expected to see. Something inside him. They sit and talk about their feelings, their need to get away, and she feels a connection she never expected to. The next day when he can’t see what he needs to see, she doesn’t know how she knows to tell him to try again, but she does.
Tonight she is worried though, worried about Liz and about Max and whatever crazy fool thing they’re doing while she and Michael and Isabel sit and wait and wonder. She can’t stop her irrational behavior even though she knows it’s irrational. She also knows that after Isabel gets annoyed and leaves that Michael is just as worried as she is, but he won’t admit it.
Even when he’s visibly worried, he’s a veritable stone wall of a person and she just wishes he were anything normal, anything close to someone she could turn to for comfort in such a stressful moment. So she rants at him and she doesn’t know why, doesn’t know what she’s hoping for. But he’s all she has right now and something about their trip to Marathon together, something has made him somehow important to her. She just doesn’t know how or why.
Michael turns her around and she has no warning before he’s kissing her. Of all things, she did not expect this, but she kisses him back, one hand coming up, reaching for his face but settling for sliding against his chest. She feels heat blossoming inside of her but the kiss is almost gentle, tentative even, both shorter and longer than she thinks is necessary. She is kissing Michael Guerin, an actual alien, and when he pulls away she stares at him expectantly, feeling very confused. He looks almost as dumb founded as she feels.
“That was to calm you down,” he says.
“Thanks,” she says automatically and he wipes his hand across his lips and then she is almost jolted away from him by the realization of what they’ve just done.
He walks away and so does she and she is surprised her brain doesn’t explode with how much she is thinking right now. Kissing, kissing him, kissing, kissing him. Her lips are burning.
It’s not just because he’s a good kisser although he is. She tries not to think of how many girls he’s kissed in sleazy motels - just like the one they’ve been in twice now - and in back alleys next to dumpsters and in the eraser room when he bothers to show up to school. Clearly he’s had to have kissed a lot to get that good at kissing and he has a certain reputation even though he’s always kept his distance from everyone except Max and Isabel. She refuses to believe it’s some kind of alien superpower.
No, it’s because of the blasted tabasco sauce he poured all over the cake he stole. Now her lips feel like they’re on fire and she even like spicy things most of the time, but right now it’s unbearable. He’s gone and poisoned her lips and maybe she won’t ever be able to eat chocolate cake again. She needs something to stop the burning, that’s the one coherent thought she’s having, so she goes to the fridge and she’s going to drink an entire carton of milk and pay the Parkers back later.
She pulls out the milk and takes the top off and when she closes the fridge, Michael is standing right behind her, frozen. She freezes as well and he stares at her and at the milk and she feels exposed and irrational and starts to say words meaninglessly.
“I needed it. The milk. Um, my lips. Need milk for my lips. Burning.”
His mouth twitches and she knows he didn’t want it to because he’s still staring intensely at her with the rest of his face. He’s impossibly close and she can almost feel his body heat. It really must be something alien drawing her in because she can’t stop looking at him and can’t move away even though it would be awkward to be standing so close to anybody else. She knows now what it feels like to kiss him, but she’s suddenly afraid she’ll forget, that she’ll never remember since it will never happen again, and she lets her eyes flick to his lips without really meaning to.
He tracks the motion with his own and somehow he’s even closer than before and when he grabs her and pulls her actually flush with his body she just barely has time to set the milk on the counter so that it doesn’t spill though she’s not actually conscious of doing so. He kisses her again and this time there’s nothing gentle about the way he does it. It’s urgent as if he knows that if he doesn’t kiss her with everything he has, he’ll never get another opportunity. She thinks he might be right so she responds with the same fervor. She isn’t thinking at all really, she’s just reciprocating, this time letting her hands wrap around his neck, and feeling his own firm against her waist.
Somehow he’s backed her against the fridge and is leaning into her, bending his neck to reach her lips and she’s standing as high as she can to reach him. It’s not close enough and she thinks he mutters something about being too damn short against her lips because the next thing she knows, he’s lifting her and she instinctively wraps her legs around him.
He’s holding her with one arm and she has enough brain power to be impressed. She knows she’s not a large person and that she’s helping with her legs but she’s still a whole person he’s holding with one arm. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised, after all, she saw how hard he’d shoved Kyle in the motel, but she still is. The hand holding her is edging under her shirt and the electrifying feeling of his fingers on her skin causes her to wildly wonder if he’ll leave a mark on her somehow like Max did on Liz. She can’t bring herself to care if he does though; the thought is even a little intoxicating. In fact her mind flashes back to the fleeting moment his hand had covered the skin on her breast when he had been faking healing her. The handprint he’d left had been paint, but her memory treats it like a permanent mark. Right now his other hand is cupped behind her head, holding it firmly, and she allows her own hands to fist in his hair, making it even wilder than it normally is. His hair is softer than she expects it to be and she imagines him using his alien powers to make his hair stick up instead of using product like a normal human.
He’s not normal though and this kiss feels anything but normal.
She’s uncertain how long they kiss, but she knows it has to be at least as long as one round of seven minutes in heaven and as far as she’s concerned they can go as many rounds as they physically can. He’s so much more than she can handle but she doesn’t care about that. She just cares about kissing him forever and it’s a release from worry and stress and everything she can’t normally deal with. There’s something about him that lets her feel free and she likes that, even when he drives her crazy.
His lips travel to her neck and she tilts her head back, banging it against the fridge, but she barely notices, just needing him to have as much access as he possibly can. In fact, she’s about ready to start pulling at his shirt, craving to know what his bare skin feels like, when all of a sudden Isabel’s voice comes crashing through the heat that’s flooding her body like a fire.
“I guess my life can get even worse. That’s just perfect. Now you’re sucking face.”
Maria opens her eyes and spies Isabel over Michael’s suddenly tense shoulders rolling her eyes and leaving again.
Maria is frozen in his arms before she lets her eyes meet his again and she can’t read them and then he’s sliding her back down again until her shaky legs reach the floor and she still holds onto him just so she won’t fall down. He’s breathing just as hard as she is which makes her absurdly proud somehow and even though her lips suddenly miss his, she’s glad for the chance to catch her breath.
He’s staring at her again but this time she can tell he’s somehow angry, not with her, she doesn’t think, but probably with himself. He grabs the milk from behind them without ever taking his eyes off her and hands it to her.
“It can’t…again,” he says and she can’t tell from his tone anything about how he’s feeling.
She just raises the milk carton and drinks from it, needing a moment, anything to clear her thoughts and relieve the burning that is still attacking her lips from his stupid tabasco dietary habits. The milk either helps or doesn’t help depending on which side of her brain is talking, but she knows one thing. She might be crazy and she might still be really worried about her friends and what’s going to happen, but she likes kissing Michael Guerin and she doesn’t want to stop.
It’s not just physical, not really, though judging by how flushed she’s feeling, she’s clearly very attracted to him. He is a jerk most of the time but now she knows his secret and she’s spent time with him and she knows he feels things the same way she does. He has moments of kindness like when he brought her food from the vending machine or when he offered to pick her up so they could go through the files together. Even kissing her she thinks had been an attempt to be kind.
He does scare her sometimes, okay, a lot of the time, but she hasn’t backed down from him yet and she doesn’t intend to. She can’t force him to do anything but she doesn’t want to. She wants him to want to let her help him. That doesn’t mean he gets to make all the decisions though. She’ll challenge him anytime he tries to pull anything she doesn’t agree with. She may not know exactly what she wants out of life and she may not have things planned out like Liz does or Alex does, but she knows people, even if they’re aliens. She likes to puzzle things out and wing it and she wants to figure him out so badly she can almost taste it like she can still taste tabasco.
She thinks he might be just a little bit afraid behind that blank stare and she doesn’t know how to let him know it’s okay to be afraid, that he doesn’t have to be strong and alone all of the time. He doesn’t have to be so different that he can’t trust someone. She doesn’t even know him, not really, but she knows a part of him maybe not even Max and Isabel do and she doesn’t want to let go of it. She’ll keep it and add to it, if he’ll let her.
“You know,” she says finally, putting the carton down and licking the excess moisture from her lips. His eyes watch her tongue, but his face remains impassive. “We did say not if we were the last alien and woman on earth, right?”
“Right,” he says and maybe she imagines the disappointment in his voice.
“But we’re not,” she says, daring to move an inch closer, even though they’re still insanely close as it is. “We’re not the last. So according to our agreement we have to…keep going.”
He laughs at this and she’s startled by it. He sounds different when he laughs and she likes that it’s genuine and that she makes him sound almost happy for a moment. It’s only a moment though because then he stops and he shakes his head. He tugs on her hair and glares at her.
“You’re ridiculously impossible, you know that?” he asks.
“It has been said,” she replies, not sure what he means by that.
“I’m not…I’m not used to…this,” he says.
“Like I am,” she retorts.
“I don’t get…close,” he says.
“So start with closer,” she replies, putting a hand on his chest.
He sighs and pulls her against him again, kissing her one more time. This time it’s quick and almost chaste, yet it’s remarkable to her how much his lips feel like hers already.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll consider it.”
“Fine,” she says.
“Fine,” he says again.
She has no idea where to go from here because even though she feels like kissing him again, she’s not sure that’s such a good idea. They just stare awkwardly, pressing against each other, and she can tell he’s getting antsy again. Her own insides are crawling with a mixture of anxiety and desire and confusion.
Isabel yells from the front and Maria jumps, almost knocking her head into his chin.
“They’re back!”
Michael instantly turns tense and tugs away from her to head back out, but then he stops and looks back at her and she really wishes she could see inside of his head. He holds his hand out almost reluctantly.
“You coming?” he asks.
She looks at his hand and then back at him and he looks cold and starts to drop it, but she almost lunges forward and takes it. It’s calloused and large and foreign but she likes the way it fits with hers.
She doesn’t know anything about the future or his past or where on earth or where in the universe this could end up. She’s scared again, anxious to know what happened to Max and Liz. She’s afraid of her own feelings that are starting to send confused and mixed-up signals to her brain. Her lips are still burning and she makes a mental note to tell him if they’re ever going to kiss again he needs to be tabasco free. But there’s something else inside of her that feels a little bit more put together, like she might finally have taken a directional change that was right. He is a mystery but that’s okay because she’s a mystery to him. She has a feeling they are going to fight as much as they kiss but she’s not frightened of that. She’s only frightened of missing an opportunity to explore as much as possible of Michael Guerin, extraterrestrial, her somehow friend, and now something more.
“I am,” she tells him.
By Jesterlady
Summary: Her lips are still burning and she makes a mental note to tell him if they’re ever going to kiss again he needs to be tabasco free.
Pairing: Michael/Maria
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t own Roswell. Some lines are from the show. The title is by Matthew Arnold.
A/N: I have only just watched Roswell and I wrote this right after watching 1x7 River Dog. I promise it is a complete coincidence that so many things parallel actual show events. When I wrote this, I'd never seen Heatwave or heard Michael reference being a stone wall, or knew that him genuinely laughing would ever be a thing. But I like that I apparently have such a bead on them.
We Cannot Kindle When We Will
Maria does not consider herself to be a well-put together person. She is easily freaked out and scared and does not handle stress or crisis very well, dependent on bottles of essential oils to do what she can’t to calm herself down. She knows this about herself and most of the time it doesn’t worry her. After all, she has other good qualities and not much in her life to push her over the edge. That is, until the day her best friend is shot in front of her eyes and Maria finds out aliens are real.
More specifically through this event she finds out Michael Guerin is an alien.
She panics and she is petrified though she thinks she pulls it together pretty darn well, thank you very much. Enough to save their hides that night and let this whole crazy charade of a life start. Because now Maria is involved and she knows things, things that could get her locked up or killed, and she has spent weeks being utterly terrified that something bad is going to happen.
Bad things do happen and even though she continually makes the decision to follow her best friend down the rabbit hole of alien conspiracy theories, she is always on edge, wondering what is going to happen next. There’s this constant push and pull between them and their new alien pals; one day they’re all in this together, the next they’re out in the cold because it’s not safe or they’re not trusted or something in between.
Of course there’s the day when Michael steals her mom’s car and pretty much abducts her and they end up at a sleazy motel and she has no words to describe the myriad of emotions she goes through that night. Some of them are surprising and unexpected, but it starts something else inside her besides panic and she begins to see something she never expected to see. Something inside him. They sit and talk about their feelings, their need to get away, and she feels a connection she never expected to. The next day when he can’t see what he needs to see, she doesn’t know how she knows to tell him to try again, but she does.
Tonight she is worried though, worried about Liz and about Max and whatever crazy fool thing they’re doing while she and Michael and Isabel sit and wait and wonder. She can’t stop her irrational behavior even though she knows it’s irrational. She also knows that after Isabel gets annoyed and leaves that Michael is just as worried as she is, but he won’t admit it.
Even when he’s visibly worried, he’s a veritable stone wall of a person and she just wishes he were anything normal, anything close to someone she could turn to for comfort in such a stressful moment. So she rants at him and she doesn’t know why, doesn’t know what she’s hoping for. But he’s all she has right now and something about their trip to Marathon together, something has made him somehow important to her. She just doesn’t know how or why.
Michael turns her around and she has no warning before he’s kissing her. Of all things, she did not expect this, but she kisses him back, one hand coming up, reaching for his face but settling for sliding against his chest. She feels heat blossoming inside of her but the kiss is almost gentle, tentative even, both shorter and longer than she thinks is necessary. She is kissing Michael Guerin, an actual alien, and when he pulls away she stares at him expectantly, feeling very confused. He looks almost as dumb founded as she feels.
“That was to calm you down,” he says.
“Thanks,” she says automatically and he wipes his hand across his lips and then she is almost jolted away from him by the realization of what they’ve just done.
He walks away and so does she and she is surprised her brain doesn’t explode with how much she is thinking right now. Kissing, kissing him, kissing, kissing him. Her lips are burning.
It’s not just because he’s a good kisser although he is. She tries not to think of how many girls he’s kissed in sleazy motels - just like the one they’ve been in twice now - and in back alleys next to dumpsters and in the eraser room when he bothers to show up to school. Clearly he’s had to have kissed a lot to get that good at kissing and he has a certain reputation even though he’s always kept his distance from everyone except Max and Isabel. She refuses to believe it’s some kind of alien superpower.
No, it’s because of the blasted tabasco sauce he poured all over the cake he stole. Now her lips feel like they’re on fire and she even like spicy things most of the time, but right now it’s unbearable. He’s gone and poisoned her lips and maybe she won’t ever be able to eat chocolate cake again. She needs something to stop the burning, that’s the one coherent thought she’s having, so she goes to the fridge and she’s going to drink an entire carton of milk and pay the Parkers back later.
She pulls out the milk and takes the top off and when she closes the fridge, Michael is standing right behind her, frozen. She freezes as well and he stares at her and at the milk and she feels exposed and irrational and starts to say words meaninglessly.
“I needed it. The milk. Um, my lips. Need milk for my lips. Burning.”
His mouth twitches and she knows he didn’t want it to because he’s still staring intensely at her with the rest of his face. He’s impossibly close and she can almost feel his body heat. It really must be something alien drawing her in because she can’t stop looking at him and can’t move away even though it would be awkward to be standing so close to anybody else. She knows now what it feels like to kiss him, but she’s suddenly afraid she’ll forget, that she’ll never remember since it will never happen again, and she lets her eyes flick to his lips without really meaning to.
He tracks the motion with his own and somehow he’s even closer than before and when he grabs her and pulls her actually flush with his body she just barely has time to set the milk on the counter so that it doesn’t spill though she’s not actually conscious of doing so. He kisses her again and this time there’s nothing gentle about the way he does it. It’s urgent as if he knows that if he doesn’t kiss her with everything he has, he’ll never get another opportunity. She thinks he might be right so she responds with the same fervor. She isn’t thinking at all really, she’s just reciprocating, this time letting her hands wrap around his neck, and feeling his own firm against her waist.
Somehow he’s backed her against the fridge and is leaning into her, bending his neck to reach her lips and she’s standing as high as she can to reach him. It’s not close enough and she thinks he mutters something about being too damn short against her lips because the next thing she knows, he’s lifting her and she instinctively wraps her legs around him.
He’s holding her with one arm and she has enough brain power to be impressed. She knows she’s not a large person and that she’s helping with her legs but she’s still a whole person he’s holding with one arm. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised, after all, she saw how hard he’d shoved Kyle in the motel, but she still is. The hand holding her is edging under her shirt and the electrifying feeling of his fingers on her skin causes her to wildly wonder if he’ll leave a mark on her somehow like Max did on Liz. She can’t bring herself to care if he does though; the thought is even a little intoxicating. In fact her mind flashes back to the fleeting moment his hand had covered the skin on her breast when he had been faking healing her. The handprint he’d left had been paint, but her memory treats it like a permanent mark. Right now his other hand is cupped behind her head, holding it firmly, and she allows her own hands to fist in his hair, making it even wilder than it normally is. His hair is softer than she expects it to be and she imagines him using his alien powers to make his hair stick up instead of using product like a normal human.
He’s not normal though and this kiss feels anything but normal.
She’s uncertain how long they kiss, but she knows it has to be at least as long as one round of seven minutes in heaven and as far as she’s concerned they can go as many rounds as they physically can. He’s so much more than she can handle but she doesn’t care about that. She just cares about kissing him forever and it’s a release from worry and stress and everything she can’t normally deal with. There’s something about him that lets her feel free and she likes that, even when he drives her crazy.
His lips travel to her neck and she tilts her head back, banging it against the fridge, but she barely notices, just needing him to have as much access as he possibly can. In fact, she’s about ready to start pulling at his shirt, craving to know what his bare skin feels like, when all of a sudden Isabel’s voice comes crashing through the heat that’s flooding her body like a fire.
“I guess my life can get even worse. That’s just perfect. Now you’re sucking face.”
Maria opens her eyes and spies Isabel over Michael’s suddenly tense shoulders rolling her eyes and leaving again.
Maria is frozen in his arms before she lets her eyes meet his again and she can’t read them and then he’s sliding her back down again until her shaky legs reach the floor and she still holds onto him just so she won’t fall down. He’s breathing just as hard as she is which makes her absurdly proud somehow and even though her lips suddenly miss his, she’s glad for the chance to catch her breath.
He’s staring at her again but this time she can tell he’s somehow angry, not with her, she doesn’t think, but probably with himself. He grabs the milk from behind them without ever taking his eyes off her and hands it to her.
“It can’t…again,” he says and she can’t tell from his tone anything about how he’s feeling.
She just raises the milk carton and drinks from it, needing a moment, anything to clear her thoughts and relieve the burning that is still attacking her lips from his stupid tabasco dietary habits. The milk either helps or doesn’t help depending on which side of her brain is talking, but she knows one thing. She might be crazy and she might still be really worried about her friends and what’s going to happen, but she likes kissing Michael Guerin and she doesn’t want to stop.
It’s not just physical, not really, though judging by how flushed she’s feeling, she’s clearly very attracted to him. He is a jerk most of the time but now she knows his secret and she’s spent time with him and she knows he feels things the same way she does. He has moments of kindness like when he brought her food from the vending machine or when he offered to pick her up so they could go through the files together. Even kissing her she thinks had been an attempt to be kind.
He does scare her sometimes, okay, a lot of the time, but she hasn’t backed down from him yet and she doesn’t intend to. She can’t force him to do anything but she doesn’t want to. She wants him to want to let her help him. That doesn’t mean he gets to make all the decisions though. She’ll challenge him anytime he tries to pull anything she doesn’t agree with. She may not know exactly what she wants out of life and she may not have things planned out like Liz does or Alex does, but she knows people, even if they’re aliens. She likes to puzzle things out and wing it and she wants to figure him out so badly she can almost taste it like she can still taste tabasco.
She thinks he might be just a little bit afraid behind that blank stare and she doesn’t know how to let him know it’s okay to be afraid, that he doesn’t have to be strong and alone all of the time. He doesn’t have to be so different that he can’t trust someone. She doesn’t even know him, not really, but she knows a part of him maybe not even Max and Isabel do and she doesn’t want to let go of it. She’ll keep it and add to it, if he’ll let her.
“You know,” she says finally, putting the carton down and licking the excess moisture from her lips. His eyes watch her tongue, but his face remains impassive. “We did say not if we were the last alien and woman on earth, right?”
“Right,” he says and maybe she imagines the disappointment in his voice.
“But we’re not,” she says, daring to move an inch closer, even though they’re still insanely close as it is. “We’re not the last. So according to our agreement we have to…keep going.”
He laughs at this and she’s startled by it. He sounds different when he laughs and she likes that it’s genuine and that she makes him sound almost happy for a moment. It’s only a moment though because then he stops and he shakes his head. He tugs on her hair and glares at her.
“You’re ridiculously impossible, you know that?” he asks.
“It has been said,” she replies, not sure what he means by that.
“I’m not…I’m not used to…this,” he says.
“Like I am,” she retorts.
“I don’t get…close,” he says.
“So start with closer,” she replies, putting a hand on his chest.
He sighs and pulls her against him again, kissing her one more time. This time it’s quick and almost chaste, yet it’s remarkable to her how much his lips feel like hers already.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll consider it.”
“Fine,” she says.
“Fine,” he says again.
She has no idea where to go from here because even though she feels like kissing him again, she’s not sure that’s such a good idea. They just stare awkwardly, pressing against each other, and she can tell he’s getting antsy again. Her own insides are crawling with a mixture of anxiety and desire and confusion.
Isabel yells from the front and Maria jumps, almost knocking her head into his chin.
“They’re back!”
Michael instantly turns tense and tugs away from her to head back out, but then he stops and looks back at her and she really wishes she could see inside of his head. He holds his hand out almost reluctantly.
“You coming?” he asks.
She looks at his hand and then back at him and he looks cold and starts to drop it, but she almost lunges forward and takes it. It’s calloused and large and foreign but she likes the way it fits with hers.
She doesn’t know anything about the future or his past or where on earth or where in the universe this could end up. She’s scared again, anxious to know what happened to Max and Liz. She’s afraid of her own feelings that are starting to send confused and mixed-up signals to her brain. Her lips are still burning and she makes a mental note to tell him if they’re ever going to kiss again he needs to be tabasco free. But there’s something else inside of her that feels a little bit more put together, like she might finally have taken a directional change that was right. He is a mystery but that’s okay because she’s a mystery to him. She has a feeling they are going to fight as much as they kiss but she’s not frightened of that. She’s only frightened of missing an opportunity to explore as much as possible of Michael Guerin, extraterrestrial, her somehow friend, and now something more.
“I am,” she tells him.