Uninvited (Ros - Michael/Liz) G
Crappy old-old fic reposting :)
Title: Uninvited
Fandom: Roswell
Ship: Michael, Liz
Summary: Liz is starting to feel the grain of her life, will she accept the epiphany knocking in her heart?
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit being made, belongs to Jason Katims, Melinda Metz et. al.
Uninvited
He watches me.
He's watched me two weeks now; somehow I can sense it; somehow it is welcomed. Perhaps intrigue always runs both ways like vibes in the atmosphere, it circulates. For now, when he watches me I stare straight back, straight into his eyes. He has the strangest smile then. The smirk feels like a click and a wink - 'gotcha'. Too many movie scenes flick against the edge of mind: the intelligent sweet, all-American girl taming the roustabout rebel in two hours of easy viewing. I'm irritated just thinking about my own hackneyed banality. I guess I'm an ordinary girl anyway, no matter how much I tried to convince myself I wasn't. My individuality inconsequential in the face of moulded triviality.
I mean, knowing Aliens, having a profound question answered as a scientist, at such a young age, you'd think something would happen to mark my life as special - significant. I'm what they call the passive observer, those in the show who never have a leading roll and become an active bystander, a spectator with a face. I don't feel original, I feel inconsequential. I feel like...I feel like Tara in Buffy to put it in the terms of my medium. When Buffy dies they all can't live without her and bring her back several times, when Tara dies they sob and cry and she stays dead. Some mould should be shattered; I should be taking a form that God never intended. I’m better than this, I have my own destiny; do I have to be on the periphery of someone else’s? Like every girl that turns seventeen, the boy with the devilish glint in his eyes is starting to make me shiver. Starting to make me want to hurt myself, hurt the people around me for that taste of life. If life is anxiety and pain and being noticed for the wrong reasons. It’s being noticed. It’s being.
I have truly become pathetic...
I don't know if the shivers are from the cold, it's hard to tell whether his eyes are admiring you or glaring at your defects. They stay in the same state of slate wariness, they never shine, and they never let anything out. Eyes don’t really change but most people at least have an illusory emotional depth to them. Not his. He closes them when he kisses her, does he show her who he is by hiding behind closed lids? She must know something is there, or he wouldn’t need to hide. Maybe his kisses are born of the same cold expression as pressing naked lips against chilled metal - eventually the heat conducts into his skin, becomes his own ephemerally. He will always cool down again when you step away. Nothing lasts in a conductor. And me? I'm an insulator.
It keeps me sane to think this way, like a scientist and not a person. Feelings are chemical reactions, nothing of more substance. I tell myself that. It keeps me sane to imagine things I shouldn't. I get a chill, a burning inclination and that is all that needs to be done. There’s no point in acting out rebellion, it only hurts others and imagination creates the same chemical sensations anyway. They did tests on the human brain, the same colours for thought as action. The same.
"Get a move on..." He hisses, "Order up!" and for a moment I think every callous word deserves a silk embroided pillow. Are there such things? Do his words even reach the abyss inside me that has become the complex threads of an internalised world? Do I even respond to the world around me? Can I see it at all how it really is?
Eyes...mouth...hair...body...skin...lips...
Soul.
I used to dance when I was young to get out all of my expression, later all of my aggression and then I didn't have the time to twirl. Now I fester and submit to an old pilot light that festers with the urge to burn out. I need to make something of this wasted energy. These feet were trained to turn and pirouette but now they only walk. I dangle them over the edge of a stool on my break. I sway slightly to some tune on the radio, I can just make out from the kitchen. Back and forth, no real inclination to follow the beat.
I haven't blinked for a few minutes.
"Hey Liz..." His lips press softly on my cheek and he slides into the stool next to me, it takes a moment for me to turn and give him a similar gesture. Have you ever felt like someone has pumped air into your head? You know you’re fairly intelligent, normally quite quick, but there're those times in life when everything is slow, simple sentences seem complex, your mind is determined to think about cloudy matters over every passive thought, and everything becomes confused.
"Hey Max...I have work." I stare at him for a moment, marvelling at how his face seems to be shapes instead of a naturally blurring mass. He is chiselled and defined shapes. A triangle, a circle, a rectangle, an ellipse. I guess they could have been designed that way, nothing about them is real or by chance. Manufactured. Artificial. Am I artificial? Am I just…me?
I feel him watching me from the kitchen again. Why does he do that? Did he stare this way in another life, in another world? Did the designers get the stare right or is there something wrong with it? Not enough chemicals in the early stages, he didn’t turn out quite right. I’ve been reading Aldous Huxley too much.
It's the same with Max as well, did he incessantly order Cherry Cokes as he signed royal decrees and ate hamburgers when he proposed to his beautiful w-
Max picks up his menu, I pick up my notebook and feel as if our relationship should always have these objects between us. I think I should take notes on what he wants, what I want, order the goods and make sure I always know what I'm getting. That way I can always be this simple. "Cherry coke...fries...burger..."
I smile and scribble and don't think about what I'm writing, only think about the boy on the other side of the stupid window. He’ll glance up for half a second when I drop off the order, barely an acknowledgement, just a brief glance to check the smudge appearing in his line of sight wasn’t a trick of the eyes. He'll reach out his hand, or I'll reach out mine - and if I'm lucky his skin will briefly stroke across my own and that will make him look up and really see me. I’ll stare back and he’ll raise an eyebrow, patiently ordering me away.
I'm pathetic.
Brushing the hair from my eyes, I wave to Maria as she heads out the front door, the bell as always chiming like pixie music behind her. The sound of the street only disappears when the glass door shuts of its own spring-volition.
"Max's order..." A grunt passes over his lips and he looks up at me, down at the order in his hand. The world is made of some form of viscous fluid, the minutes ticking away with five-hundred seconds in each, hours never seem to pass away and I'm trapped in this other dimension of stasis. I don't feel at home any more. I'm so uncomfortable in my skin, like I've been running with these friends for miles, and my skin is sticky with uncleansed sweat. Max smiles at me, seeing my intended return as I spin on my heel but a hand snaps up and grabs my wrist.
I can feel him watching me, I could look over and see it. But I don't. I never do.
Slowly I turn, my cheeks already burning with a rush of the unexpected tension. My eyes don't deviate from the bar he leans on, focusing on the outstretched arm offering the order back to me.
"I hope this is a personal order..." I sense the humour in his voice and he places it in my hand softly. I hold the moment more than I hold the paper, and it's almost as if he lingered, as if his fingers craved that contact with the unknown as well.
I open the order I wrote with a calm air of nonchalance, quickly it dissipates and my face flushes as I read my own hand writing - "This is Bullshit. Get a life." I look at Max and he's drinking the Cherry Cola that I didn't bring him. Courtney must have completed the order after my absentmindedness. She leans on the counter, pressing her cleavage together, flirting with him lightly and he smiles back, engaging in pleasant and purely friendly conversation.
I feel sick.
"Liz, are you okay?" And I turn to face him and I meet his eyes for what feels like the very first time in all the years I've known him.
"I quit." I feel the words roll off my tongue but I have no control in catching them between chattering teeth.
A smile spreads across my face as I take off the stupid antennae bobbing and clapping together as if offering me applause. I walk through the employee doors and into the kitchen, stand before him, feeling energy and excitement and not caring why because I don’t want to make sense of it this time.
"Uh...Liz...why are you telling me? You're the goddamn manager..." without a word I block out the sounds I don't care for the beauty of what could be my sirens song. His eyes are flecks of hazel in a light chocolate pool - partial copper and god knows what else. I don’t care. Just stare straight back and maybe he’ll need to look away this time.
"Tell my dad I'm going away..."
"Liz?"
"No - tell him I've lost it and am seeking counselling in the sun of Florida."
"What?"
"No - tell him I did this -" Without hesitation, without any admission of thought, the instinct wrapped my arms around his neck - pressed my lips to his. He wasn't as cold as ice, he was slightly wet and aching, shocked and warm. His arms didn't close around me, my eyes didn't close to his and I stared into him as I kissed him with everything that told him I'd liked it when he watched me. As the kiss drew on I felt my heart start to ache, I felt a tension inside that was more like pain but his eyes softened and his hands shook by his side and I felt it as his tongue stroked mine that he wanted to wrap his arms around me and hold me.
So I pull away.
"He'll understand then." I whispered onto his lips and he nodded slightly staying perfectly still as I inhaled him. I didn't know who I had spoken about, my father or Max, as I dragged my hand slowly down his face and tried to understand why we could never be friends, why we could never be anything - why the chasm between us was so impenetrable. I don’t think I’d bridge that gap if I could, it had given me this moment, I needed it.
It didn't matter. I could change my world without the feel of a conductors fleeting heat, I had to. But as I walked away I felt him watching me and I didn't feel the urge to turn, I'd left all the confusion inside his mind, inside his mouth and I didn't want it any more.
THE END
Title: Uninvited
Fandom: Roswell
Ship: Michael, Liz
Summary: Liz is starting to feel the grain of her life, will she accept the epiphany knocking in her heart?
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit being made, belongs to Jason Katims, Melinda Metz et. al.
Uninvited
He watches me.
He's watched me two weeks now; somehow I can sense it; somehow it is welcomed. Perhaps intrigue always runs both ways like vibes in the atmosphere, it circulates. For now, when he watches me I stare straight back, straight into his eyes. He has the strangest smile then. The smirk feels like a click and a wink - 'gotcha'. Too many movie scenes flick against the edge of mind: the intelligent sweet, all-American girl taming the roustabout rebel in two hours of easy viewing. I'm irritated just thinking about my own hackneyed banality. I guess I'm an ordinary girl anyway, no matter how much I tried to convince myself I wasn't. My individuality inconsequential in the face of moulded triviality.
I mean, knowing Aliens, having a profound question answered as a scientist, at such a young age, you'd think something would happen to mark my life as special - significant. I'm what they call the passive observer, those in the show who never have a leading roll and become an active bystander, a spectator with a face. I don't feel original, I feel inconsequential. I feel like...I feel like Tara in Buffy to put it in the terms of my medium. When Buffy dies they all can't live without her and bring her back several times, when Tara dies they sob and cry and she stays dead. Some mould should be shattered; I should be taking a form that God never intended. I’m better than this, I have my own destiny; do I have to be on the periphery of someone else’s? Like every girl that turns seventeen, the boy with the devilish glint in his eyes is starting to make me shiver. Starting to make me want to hurt myself, hurt the people around me for that taste of life. If life is anxiety and pain and being noticed for the wrong reasons. It’s being noticed. It’s being.
I have truly become pathetic...
I don't know if the shivers are from the cold, it's hard to tell whether his eyes are admiring you or glaring at your defects. They stay in the same state of slate wariness, they never shine, and they never let anything out. Eyes don’t really change but most people at least have an illusory emotional depth to them. Not his. He closes them when he kisses her, does he show her who he is by hiding behind closed lids? She must know something is there, or he wouldn’t need to hide. Maybe his kisses are born of the same cold expression as pressing naked lips against chilled metal - eventually the heat conducts into his skin, becomes his own ephemerally. He will always cool down again when you step away. Nothing lasts in a conductor. And me? I'm an insulator.
It keeps me sane to think this way, like a scientist and not a person. Feelings are chemical reactions, nothing of more substance. I tell myself that. It keeps me sane to imagine things I shouldn't. I get a chill, a burning inclination and that is all that needs to be done. There’s no point in acting out rebellion, it only hurts others and imagination creates the same chemical sensations anyway. They did tests on the human brain, the same colours for thought as action. The same.
"Get a move on..." He hisses, "Order up!" and for a moment I think every callous word deserves a silk embroided pillow. Are there such things? Do his words even reach the abyss inside me that has become the complex threads of an internalised world? Do I even respond to the world around me? Can I see it at all how it really is?
Eyes...mouth...hair...body...skin...lips...
Soul.
I used to dance when I was young to get out all of my expression, later all of my aggression and then I didn't have the time to twirl. Now I fester and submit to an old pilot light that festers with the urge to burn out. I need to make something of this wasted energy. These feet were trained to turn and pirouette but now they only walk. I dangle them over the edge of a stool on my break. I sway slightly to some tune on the radio, I can just make out from the kitchen. Back and forth, no real inclination to follow the beat.
I haven't blinked for a few minutes.
"Hey Liz..." His lips press softly on my cheek and he slides into the stool next to me, it takes a moment for me to turn and give him a similar gesture. Have you ever felt like someone has pumped air into your head? You know you’re fairly intelligent, normally quite quick, but there're those times in life when everything is slow, simple sentences seem complex, your mind is determined to think about cloudy matters over every passive thought, and everything becomes confused.
"Hey Max...I have work." I stare at him for a moment, marvelling at how his face seems to be shapes instead of a naturally blurring mass. He is chiselled and defined shapes. A triangle, a circle, a rectangle, an ellipse. I guess they could have been designed that way, nothing about them is real or by chance. Manufactured. Artificial. Am I artificial? Am I just…me?
I feel him watching me from the kitchen again. Why does he do that? Did he stare this way in another life, in another world? Did the designers get the stare right or is there something wrong with it? Not enough chemicals in the early stages, he didn’t turn out quite right. I’ve been reading Aldous Huxley too much.
It's the same with Max as well, did he incessantly order Cherry Cokes as he signed royal decrees and ate hamburgers when he proposed to his beautiful w-
Max picks up his menu, I pick up my notebook and feel as if our relationship should always have these objects between us. I think I should take notes on what he wants, what I want, order the goods and make sure I always know what I'm getting. That way I can always be this simple. "Cherry coke...fries...burger..."
I smile and scribble and don't think about what I'm writing, only think about the boy on the other side of the stupid window. He’ll glance up for half a second when I drop off the order, barely an acknowledgement, just a brief glance to check the smudge appearing in his line of sight wasn’t a trick of the eyes. He'll reach out his hand, or I'll reach out mine - and if I'm lucky his skin will briefly stroke across my own and that will make him look up and really see me. I’ll stare back and he’ll raise an eyebrow, patiently ordering me away.
I'm pathetic.
Brushing the hair from my eyes, I wave to Maria as she heads out the front door, the bell as always chiming like pixie music behind her. The sound of the street only disappears when the glass door shuts of its own spring-volition.
"Max's order..." A grunt passes over his lips and he looks up at me, down at the order in his hand. The world is made of some form of viscous fluid, the minutes ticking away with five-hundred seconds in each, hours never seem to pass away and I'm trapped in this other dimension of stasis. I don't feel at home any more. I'm so uncomfortable in my skin, like I've been running with these friends for miles, and my skin is sticky with uncleansed sweat. Max smiles at me, seeing my intended return as I spin on my heel but a hand snaps up and grabs my wrist.
I can feel him watching me, I could look over and see it. But I don't. I never do.
Slowly I turn, my cheeks already burning with a rush of the unexpected tension. My eyes don't deviate from the bar he leans on, focusing on the outstretched arm offering the order back to me.
"I hope this is a personal order..." I sense the humour in his voice and he places it in my hand softly. I hold the moment more than I hold the paper, and it's almost as if he lingered, as if his fingers craved that contact with the unknown as well.
I open the order I wrote with a calm air of nonchalance, quickly it dissipates and my face flushes as I read my own hand writing - "This is Bullshit. Get a life." I look at Max and he's drinking the Cherry Cola that I didn't bring him. Courtney must have completed the order after my absentmindedness. She leans on the counter, pressing her cleavage together, flirting with him lightly and he smiles back, engaging in pleasant and purely friendly conversation.
I feel sick.
"Liz, are you okay?" And I turn to face him and I meet his eyes for what feels like the very first time in all the years I've known him.
"I quit." I feel the words roll off my tongue but I have no control in catching them between chattering teeth.
A smile spreads across my face as I take off the stupid antennae bobbing and clapping together as if offering me applause. I walk through the employee doors and into the kitchen, stand before him, feeling energy and excitement and not caring why because I don’t want to make sense of it this time.
"Uh...Liz...why are you telling me? You're the goddamn manager..." without a word I block out the sounds I don't care for the beauty of what could be my sirens song. His eyes are flecks of hazel in a light chocolate pool - partial copper and god knows what else. I don’t care. Just stare straight back and maybe he’ll need to look away this time.
"Tell my dad I'm going away..."
"Liz?"
"No - tell him I've lost it and am seeking counselling in the sun of Florida."
"What?"
"No - tell him I did this -" Without hesitation, without any admission of thought, the instinct wrapped my arms around his neck - pressed my lips to his. He wasn't as cold as ice, he was slightly wet and aching, shocked and warm. His arms didn't close around me, my eyes didn't close to his and I stared into him as I kissed him with everything that told him I'd liked it when he watched me. As the kiss drew on I felt my heart start to ache, I felt a tension inside that was more like pain but his eyes softened and his hands shook by his side and I felt it as his tongue stroked mine that he wanted to wrap his arms around me and hold me.
So I pull away.
"He'll understand then." I whispered onto his lips and he nodded slightly staying perfectly still as I inhaled him. I didn't know who I had spoken about, my father or Max, as I dragged my hand slowly down his face and tried to understand why we could never be friends, why we could never be anything - why the chasm between us was so impenetrable. I don’t think I’d bridge that gap if I could, it had given me this moment, I needed it.
It didn't matter. I could change my world without the feel of a conductors fleeting heat, I had to. But as I walked away I felt him watching me and I didn't feel the urge to turn, I'd left all the confusion inside his mind, inside his mouth and I didn't want it any more.
THE END