Entrance - Polar ficlet, Roswell
It was an hour after closing, and he and Liz were wrapping up the cleanup, as they so often did at the bar where they currently worked. It was a dive, but their boss was generally a good person, and he didn’t ask too many questions, which was pretty much all they could ask for.
The two of them took their sweet time that night, more than willing to delay the inevitable return to the two-bedroom apartment they shared with four other people. “Crowded” was too mild of a word for their living situation, but at least they were living. Every day that the FBI and their other, less human enemies caught up to them was a day to be thankful for. Or, at least, that was what they told themselves when things got rough.
They told themselves that a lot.
It was a hot night in the dead of summer, the muggy Texas air making their clothes and hair stick to their skin. They had the fan going at full blast, but it wasn’t enough to cut through the oppressive heat, and they knew it would be even worse back at the apartment.
The ancient radio played softly in the background, settled on the country station since that was what the owner of the bar preferred, and Michael and Liz never could get the radio to bring in any other station reliably, even with their powers helping things along.
As Liz finished with the mopping, a familiar song came on, and she turned to look at her companion, a light dawning in her eyes that was too often absent. She held out her hand, requesting, “Dance with me.”
“Parker,” he replied, “you know I can’t dance.”
“That is such a lie, Michael. You’ve gotten much better since our junior prom, and anyway, this is a line dance. Line dances are about as easy as it gets. You can totally do this.” That was true enough, he supposed. In the first few years after they all ran away from Roswell, the girls had all taken turns trying to help him improve his dancing, since a lot of the time, the only thing they had for entertainment was the pleasure of each others’ company and the decrepit radio in their beat-up old van. He allowed it more to keep the peace than out of a desire to learn, but it had actually paid off.
He put up a few more protests, but they were all half-hearted, at best, and eventually he walked over and let her take his hand in her much smaller one. He squeezed the delicate appendage, feeling the callouses worked into her palm and the pads of her fingers from years of work that mirrored his own. Then he indicated both their hands questioningly. “I thought you said this was a line dance. Even I know you don’t hold hands for those.”
“Oh, um,” she swallowed and shook her head, letting go of the hold she had on him. “Yeah. You’re right. You don’t.” She stood there, staring up at him for a long moment, her eyes even darker than normal in the low lighting of the bar. She licked her lips, and her eyes drifted down to his own.
He knew what that look meant. In the last few years, he had even stopped feeling surprised when he caught Liz directing it at him, the further Liz and Max’s relationship deteriorated from the long hours spent on the road and the close quarters and the jobs that were so far from any of the dreams they once had for their future. That did not mean he was able to respond to the hunger he could see so clearly. There were lines they could not cross. Rules they had to follow if they wanted to keep everyone together. And as bleak as things could get sometimes, neither of them could stomach the idea of being what finally dissolved their little group for good.
“Pretty sure you don’t do it standing still, either,” he told her quietly, before they did something they would both have to do their best to forget when they finally went home for the night. They could let down their walls and share their stress when they were together, but they could never give in to the heat and the longing steadily building up between them. Their hearts were not theirs to give. Not anymore.
“Right, yeah,” she agreed. “Of course.”
Only seconds later, Michael started to regret saying anything, because there she was, dancing, watching him with her big brown eyes, beckoning him closer whether she meant to or not. By the time he gathered himself the song was half over, but he’d told Liz he would dance with her, and if nothing else, he was a man of his word.
He drew level with her and began to follow her lead, not finding the need to watch her every step a hardship in the least. She was always pretty, but when she smiled and had that love of life in every line of her body, with her dark waves flying all around her, she was a vision. He lost himself in her, not even paying attention to what his own body was doing, and all too soon, the song was over.
She stilled as the song came to a close, reaching up to drag her long hair out of her face, which was already beginning to lose some of its joy. Still, she found enough happiness left within herself to gift Michael with a grateful smile and a soft, “Thank you, Michael.”
“Don’t mention it,” he told her, and then he reiterated, “no, seriously, don’t. I’d never hear the end of it.”
Nodding slowly, Liz agreed, “Yeah, Kyle can be a real pill sometimes.”
Pressing his lips together against what he was dying to say, he dipped his head and finally muttered, “Right.”
They both knew it had nothing to do with Kyle.
